# Board 8 wiki -- GameFAQs Contests corpus _19 contest overviews and 1528 match writeups. Board 8 wiki content, CC BY-SA 3.0. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ # Summer 2002 Character Contest _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 63 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Summer 2002 Contest _source: Summer 2002 Contest (revid 87611)_ | Started: | July 1, 2002 | |------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Ended: | September 1, 2002 | | Winner: | Link | | Contest Winner: | Burney (178/192 points) | | Notable matches: | Aya/DK, Pac-Man/Scorpion, Sonic/Samus Mega Man/Sephiroth, Mario/Cloud Crono/Snake, Mario/Crono | **Summer 2002 Contest** **Summer 2002 Contest** was better known as **The Great GameFAQs Character Battle** and was the first site-wide tournament ever held. Because no character's strength had yet been gauged, the seeding was quite inaccurate and the contest is considered by many as the hardest one to predict. One of the most surprising results of the first round was Half-Life star Gordon Freeman's defeat against the much less renowned Tina Armstrong. The bracket was full of weak characters who would never come back during later contests. RPGexpert became famous for a while for having the only perfect entry left after the first round; after the second round, no perfect entries remained. Early in the second round came the first truly close match in contest history: Aya Brea vs. Donkey Kong. The lead fluctuated during the earlier half of the match and it was unsure who the winner would be for quite a while, something that had yet to happen in any previous match. Donkey Kong ended up building a decent lead and winning the match. Scorpion is generally regarded as the biggest "bracket buster" in the tournament, defeating several opponents including 1st-seeded, videogaming icon Pac-Man to reach the quarterfinals before finally falling to Link. In eighthfinals, Sonic the Hedgehog and Samus Aran faced off in what would become one of the most heated match in the contest. The match was close, but throughout the afternoon Sonic enjoyed a fairly comfortable lead. As the later hours of the match approached, however, Samus Aran began to make a comeback and kept decreasing Sonic's lead. Minutes before the end of the match, Samus took the lead and won the match by a mere 34 votes, by far the smallest margin that the contest had yet seen. The board exploded with complaints and accusations of cheating from both sides. Mario, the favorite to win the tournament, faced his first challenge in quarterfinals against Cloud Strife. The match was extremely close, and in the end, Mario won by only 277 votes. Many were not expecting Mario to have so much trouble in this match. Mario's next opponent was Crono. It was a very close match and Crono had the lead during the afternoon, but a last-minute comeback by Mario, which was aided by the fact that the poll ended late, sent the board into chaos again. This match marked the beginning of a rivalry which would continue in later contests. The final match was considerably less exciting than some of the previous ones as Link comfortably defeated fellow Nintendo star Mario and became the winner of the Great GameFAQs Character Battle. ## Bracket *Click on **the date above each match** to see its article page for more details. Alternatively, see this category page for complete writeups for every poll of the original Character Battle.* ### Division Rounds | | |--------------------| | **North Division** | | | | Jul 01 - **53213** | | 1 | | 16 | | Jul 02 - **57359** | | 8 | | 9 | | Jul 02 - **56566** | | 5 | | 12 | | Jul 03 - **52618** | | 4 | | 13 | | Jul 05 - **61706** | | 6 | | 11 | | Jul 06 - **52874** | | 3 | | 14 | | Jul 07 - **56447** | | 7 | | 10 | | Jul 08 - **73242** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------| | **East Division** | | Jul 09 - **64249** | | 1 | | 16 | | Jul 10 - **55392** | | 8 | | 9 | | Jul 11 - **64189** | | 5 | | 12 | | Jul 12 - **58198** | | 4 | | 13 | | Jul 13 - **60878** | | 6 | | 11 | | Jul 14 - **56361** | | 3 | | 14 | | Jul 15 - **62021** | | 7 | | 10 | | Jul 16 - **71676** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------| | **South Division** | | Jul 17 - **56989** | | 1 | | 16 | | Jul 17 - **53920** | | 8 | | 9 | | Jul 19 - **59609** | | 5 | | 12 | | Jul 20 - **50816** | | 4 | | 13 | | Jul 21 - **52419** | | 6 | | 11 | | Jul 22 - **70376** | | 3 | | 14 | | Jul 23 - **58323** | | 7 | | 10 | | Jul 24 - **70585** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------| | **West Division** | | Jul 25 - **64315** | | 1 | | 16 | | Jul 26 - **63121** | | 8 | | 9 | | Jul 27 - **62555** | | 5 | | 12 | | Jul 28 - **58014** | | 4 | | 13 | | Jul 29 - **68296** | | 6 | | 11 | | Jul 30 - **54997** | | 3 | | 14 | | Jul 31 - **69969** | | 7 | | 10 | | Aug 01 - **57416** | | 2 | | 15 | ### Final Four | Character Battle I Finals | |---------------------------| | | | Aug 30 - **107547** | | A | | B | | Aug 31 - **102870** | | C | | D | ## Results and Analysis ### Interesting Facts - Ironically, the Ultimate Loser in the contest was Gordon Freeman. Gordon lost to Tina, who lost to Aeris, who lost to Snake, who lost to Crono, who lost to Mario, who lost to Link. - 22 of the 64 characters in this contest haven't appeared in one since. ### Ulti's Analysis The final may have sucked, but the buildup that accumulated during this contest is something we'll likely never see again. We had three 1 seeds fail to make it out of the first three rounds, and even though there weren't all that many close matches, predictability was at an all time low this contest. No one knew what to expect. Everyone simply rooted for their favorite characters to do as well as they could, and damned voting trends and transitivity to hell. That's what we're missing from today's contests. With the advent of Extrapolated Standings and everyone's willingness to help everyone out with brackets, the predictability has all but died from the contests. The beautiful thing about 2002 was that no one knew or cared about a character's potential or transitive value; everyone simply rooted for their favorites, which is something horribly missing from today's contests. With every passing match, the anticipation of future matches and the unknown grew larger and larger, and it all came to a climax during the trifecta of Sonic/Samus, Mega Man/Sephiroth, and Mario/Cloud. Those were three highly anticipated matches all held in a row late in the contest, and they were the first three matches in which characters that had a real shot at winning the entire thing went down. Our board was also at its busiest point during those three matches, and we'll likely never see such times again. 2002 was, for all intents, the best contest we've ever had. Spring 2004 came close, but aside from Starcraft, it still had a slight predictability problem. Maybe CJayC will figure something out that will bring the feel of 2002 back. Maybe not. ### Ngamer's Analysis The GameFAQs Character Battle was a great *idea*, and it featured the greatest stretch of matches we're ever going to see on this site, and it of course produced an atmosphere that can never again be matched... but it wasn't exactly a great *Contest*. I mean, just look at those names; the bracket was so filled with terrible fodder and bad seedings that not a single Round One or Two match produced a memorable result, and that's 3/4 of your Contest right there! Now I don't want to be *too* harsh, because like I said, Round Three and up will never be touched, but the vast majority of the bracket being bad to very bad matches holds 2002 back from "best Contest ever" status in my mind. ## Kamekguy's Contest Video Retrospective This is a really cool video, made almost 20 years after the fact. Check it out! --- ## (1)Mario vs (16)Servbot 2002 _source: (1)Mario vs (16)Servbot 2002 (revid 79380)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 1st, 2002 - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 1st, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 25,659 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 95.87% (16,071 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis The first match between Mario and Servbot was a predetermined win for Mario, the odds-on favorite to win the entire contest, but it at least got the ball rolling. This match wasn't about whether or not Mario would win, but how impressive he would be in his efforts. And despite knowing what we know now, this match was impressive on Mario's part at the time of the match. The thing to remember here is that this was the very first match of the very first contest. Statistical error was bound to be a result of the first match due to low vote totals, an unusually high number of joke/underdog votes, and the fact that the contest was still a very niche, GF-only affair at the time. Take a look at virtually any user-made poll held on the site's various social boards. A ton of joke votes are cast simply because people like to be different, and the only way an entity in any of those contests can truly suck is if an entrant *truly* sucks. We all know that Servbot isn't stronger than half the field like his match with Mario would suggest, but this is only because this was the very first match to ever take place in a contest, and the match had the "user-made poll" feel to it. If this match were ever to be held again, Mario would cream Servbot like the no-name that he is. Even back then, this was still a blowout of somewhat epic proportions. Take a quick look at all of the 2002 results. Very few matches saw any one opponent score more than 80%, and it's unfortunate that Mario has never truly gotten the respect that he deserves. Even today, Mario is one of the elite characters that has yet to show the strength necessary to get over the hump and flat-out win a contest. One thing was for certain after this match. A monster was born, for better or for worse. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match This was the first match ever and with Mario being the favorite to take the contest this wasn't whether or not he would win, it was by how much. Just because he was the favorite didn't mean he was going to win, he had to prove that he had the power to beat the likes of Cloud, Solid Snake, Link and Sephiroth, who at the time was thought to be the strongest characters. #### After the Match Mario almost tripled Servbot and at the time it was an impressive performance, then again this was the first match ever and as more characters started to put up better numbers against stronger characters than Servbot, Mario's performance wasn't really all that good. If anything it makes him look weak. When you're the favorite to take the contest you shouldn't be giving up more than a quartre of the votes to somebody who many people thought was a lego character. Many people said that Servbot's performance was a fluke and that Mario would easily score over 85%, if not 80% if they were to meet again, but the chances of Servbot returning are really slim. #### Interesting Facts - First match ever. - Because of Servbot's performance and the lack of strength in the bracket in general he was able to finish in the top half of the 2k2 x-stats. • **(No Previous Match)**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Spyro the Dragon vs (9)Morrigan Aensland 2002 _source: (8)Spyro the Dragon vs (9)Morrigan Aensland 2002 (revid 80261)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 2nd, 2002 - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 2nd, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 20,987 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Morrigan - 42.28% (7,087 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis As obvious as this match seemed at first, this would wind up being the first match to cause any real controversy among the boards. When people filled out their brackets in 2002, more people filled out their brackets based upon favorites and who they had heard of above anything else, except for in very obvious situations. That said, this was a match that saw most people pick Spyro simply because they had heard of him. Most of GameFAQs isn't that high on fighting games, and because of this, most people had yet to know about Morrigan Aensland or the Darkstalkers series. But once the match started, everyone was given a nice refresher course. Not only did Morrigan beat the hell out of Spyro in this match, but this match wound up coining not one, but two catch phrases that have become board traditions ever since. For those who weren't around back then, Spyro was the original "Wait until the kiddies wake up!!" character; furthermore, Morrigan Aensland was the original TJF (The Jug Factor) character. And because the board wasn't entirely aware of how difficult large scale comebacks were yet, Spyro supporters kept claiming that the kiddies (who are supposedly immune to TJF) would save him. One glance at the results obviously shows that Spyro not only failed to do much of anything, but that Morrigan gained the favor of all the voting demographics throughout the match. It was a brilliant performance on her part, and because people wanted to see Mario go down so badly, the Morrigan over Mario support began after this match. Most knew that it was impossible, but it was still fun to get involved with. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match This was supposed to be an easy win for Spyro the Dragon. He was more known to the public and besides fighting games weren't all that popular on GameFAQs and Morrigan is from an obscure fighting series. If it wasn't for this contest most people would have never have known about the Darkstalkers series. #### After the Match Not only did Morrigan start off with the lead, she was destroying Spyro. It wasn't like people gave up on him. Topics of "Wait until the kiddies wake up" were posted throughout the night because people thought that Spyro would get the kiddy (or morning) vote. No such voting came. Spyro didn't even cut into the percent and if he did it wasn't much, that's how much Morrigan dominated during the match. Morrigan was the first TJF (The Jug Factor) character. Even though the term isn't used anymore it was one of the biggest sayings during the 2002 contest. The way TJF worked was if a person who was the type that always voted in a contest didn't know either character the person would go with the one with boobs probably because of the high number of males on this site (see Male/Female polls). In the end the board wasn't that much in an uproar despite most of them picking Spyro to win, they just figured that just because people know you doesn't mean they would vote for them and there might have been a lot of anti-voting in this match. TJF had taken its first victim, but it wouldn't be its last. #### Interesting Facts - This was the first upset both seeding and prediction wise. - Started "Wait until the kiddies wake up" - First signs of TJF • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Terry Bogard vs (12)Aya Brea 2002 _source: (5)Terry Bogard vs (12)Aya Brea 2002 (revid 80262)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 3rd, 2002 - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 3rd, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 16,708 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aya Brea - 56.27% (9,433 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis As big a surprise as Spyro/Morrigan was for some people, most were able to see why Morrigan wound up winning. Spyro simply does not have mainstream GameFAQs popularity; however, Terry/Aya sent the board into its first true frenzy. Terry Bogard was expected to roll over Aya Brea in this match, especially considering he is a mainstay from the critically acclaimed King of Fighters series. If Morrigan, star of a fighting series in her own right, was able to roll over a little-known character in Spyro the Dragon, then why should Terry Bogard have any issues with the likes of a "nothing but looks" character from Parasite Eve? Naturally, the 2002 contest began a tradition of making no sense whatsoever during this match. One day after Morrigan's victory, the same voters that propelled her forward turned on another fighting game character and gave Aya Brea an easy win in her own right. The board noticed this, and the cries of TJF were all over the place. Everyone remembers how bad the Street Fighter 2 whining was, right? Terry Bogard's loss had a very similar effect to it, perhaps even moreso. The Summer of 2002 was the busiest time period that this board has ever seen, and when a ton of Terry Bogard fans start whining, you had no choice but to notice. Not that they didn't have a good reason, mind you. This match took place directly after Morrigan's victory, and it made no sense that Terry would lose all of one day afterwards to an opponent that could not have possibly been that much more popular than Spyro the Dragon. But regardless of all the complaints, it happened, and the complaining continued for quite a long time afterwards. I distinctly remember a "What? Terry Bogard LOST??" 200 post topic being created two weeks after this match. Terry Bogard fans may not be that large in size (obviously), but they're quite the vocal bunch, as are most fighting game fans. On the other side of this is Aya Brea, derivative of ertyu's aya pe 001 account (he closed ertyu after "CJayC" IMd him) and star of Parasite Eve. Parasite Eve is a decent little game, but Aya is in no way, shape, or form a mainstream GameFAQs character. When all factors were considered, the board blamed two factors for Aya Brea's success in this match. One, and most obvious, was TJF. TJF wasn't a fad after Morrigan, simply because there was absolutely no proof of it. But when a female fighting character beats down a relatively unpopular male character, then the next day features a male fighting character lose to a relatively unpopular female character, there were few other conclusions that could be drawn. And considering now niche the contest was at this time, small things like match pictures and such could easily be blamed for such things. After all, if you're one of those "I have to vote in every match" types of people and you see a poll with two characters you had never heard of, who will you vote for? TJF may not be a proven fact presently, but it sort of was at the time. The second factor was the Square factor. Everyone knows how anti-Square this board is, because Square is supposedly the evil empire that can simply never be defeated no matter the circumstances. This match was the beginning of that tradition. Aya's Square affiliation cannot be proved as a factor for her victory here, but it's easy enough to blame Square for it. Because of this, any match featuring Square anything was viewed with disdain by this board after this match. It's unfair, but it happened. The unfortunate thing is that Square gets a lot of bad publicity from angry anti-Square people for whatever reason. The fact is that Square makes good games and they aren't popular by accident. Not that this board or the anti-Square folk care, of course. Of course, Square still has its fair share of fans. Those fans had no problems rubbing in their victory here, and this whole thing may have also been the start of the "Square vs the world" mentality seen among board users both pro Square and anti Square alike on this board. As annoying as anti Square people can be, pro Square fans are just as bad. And is Terry Bogard vs Aya Brea can generate such hostility, God only knows what this board was going to see should two high class characters from opposite companies duke it out. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match Terry Bogard was the favorite to win the match. He was from the popular series King of Fighters and was easily thought to be the strongest characters in the series. Aya Brea on the other hand is from Parasite Eve. Even though she is from Squaresoft, they are more known at making RPGs at GameFAQs. Besides just yesterday a person from a fighting series had no problem winning against her opponent. #### After the Match One day after a person from a fighting series won Terry Bogard lost despite being from a more popular fighting series. Aya Brea couldn't be that much more popular than Spyro. There may have not been that much whining from yesterday's match, but there was a whole lot in this one. The factor, TJF became a popular saying after this match because one day we have an obscure female fighter winning a match and the next day we have a popular male fighter losing to female from an obscure game. Even though Terry Bogard's fanbase may be very small; they were very vocal, there were topics of people whining days after this match. #### Interesting Facts - Despite Terry Bogard being the huge favorite on the board, it was Aya Brea who had the majority of brackets picking her to win. - TJF becomes a popular factor. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Donkey Kong vs (13)Bub 2002 _source: (4)Donkey Kong vs (13)Bub 2002 (revid 80263)_ ## Results Thursday, July 4th, 2002 - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 4th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 12,586 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong - 94.18% (15,788 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis For the first time since the very first match of the contest, we had a match that was horribly predictable from the start. This was an obvious win for Donkey Kong. After all, did anyone know who Bub was when the bracket was first released? Even if you managed to think of either Bust-a-Move or Bubble Bobble, Bub isn't exactly a household name here on GameFAQs. He had no chance of winning this match again a timeless icon like Donkey Kong, and the prediction percentage for Donkey Kong (almost as high as Mario's prediction percentage against Servbot, for the record) proves it. However, Donkey Kong's performance in the match was cause for concern even among his most loyal of fans. For an icon like Donkey Kong to not even double a relative no name like Bub despite his status and high prediction percentage is simply inexcusable. Donkey Kong's odds of getting past Mario were slim as is, but this match proved that despite Donkey Kong's status, he simply does not have the staunt Nintendo support that Mario had in his own match a mere three days earlier. For Donkey Kong to become any threat whatsoever to Mario, he needed to make a strong recovery in the second round against Aya Brea; not only did he need to beat her, but he needed to flat-out destroy her in the process. But knowing what we know now about contests, it's very difficult for a character to become any more than what they are, meaning that if a character is underperforming at the start, they're likely to perform on the same levels in any contest poll. Donkey Kong would eventually wind up becoming the biggest example of this. He never was able to reach the potential that many thought he was able to reach. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match After having two upsets the board needed a match to calm down and this was the one. Even though he hasn't done anything over the past few years Donkey Kong was still a Nintendo icon. Most of the board thought he would easily make it to round 3 where he will give Mario a match. Bub is from Bubble Bobble and Bust-a-Move, not exactly a household names at GameFAQs. Bub had no chance against the icon that is Donkey Kong and most people knew it. #### After the Match In the end Donkey Kong may have won, but the win was very unimpressive. The people who thought Donkey Kong could beat Mario didn't look so good after the match. Even though Donkey Kong is an icon he just isn't that high up in the Nintendo ladder as Mario. Surprisingly over 90% of the people predicted that Donkey Kong would win (only a small group of characters did that in 2k2) yet Bub was able to break 38% on him. Donkey Kong may have bracket support, but this is a great example to show that bracket support doesn't translate into strength. For Donkey Kong to have any chance against Mario Donkey Kong would have to crush Aya Brea next round, which doesn't look likely after she easily beated her opponent. #### Interesting Facts - This was the first match where over 90% of the people predicted it right yet the winner failed to double its opponent. It wouldn't happen again for another 8 years. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (11)Miles "Tails" Prower 2002 _source: (6)Alucard vs (11)Miles "Tails" Prower 2002 (revid 80264)_ ## Results Friday, July 5th, 2002 - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 5th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 5,326 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard - 51.41% (8,618 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis Ignore the prediction percentage and the odds for a moment. Very few people, if anyone on Board 8 saw this coming. Granted, most of the people who had played Symphony of the Night before the 2002 contest figured that Alucard would be stronger than our board made him out to be, but to date, SOTN has sold around 1 million copies, and that number was lower two and a half years ago. As critically acclaimed as SOTN and Alucard were coming into the contest, few people outside of Castlevania fans even knew who he was, let alone picked him to win. Though the prediction percentages and the odds may suggest a lot of faith for Alucard, some of this was undoubtedly due to Alucard's seeding. To be blunt, very few people on the board had heard of either Alucard or Symphony of the Night before this match. The general assumption was that Tails would win because Tails was the character that everyone had heard of. I myself had Tails not only winning this match, but the next one as well. But a conversation that I had with NeoElfboy (one Mario/Cloud match away from a perfect North Division that year; check the archive of the first stats topic for proof) foreshadowed the other point of view of this match. Not only was Alucard very much mainstream enough due to the Castlevania name to win the match, but Sonic was a series in decline for years prior to this contest. Everyone talks about how popular Shadow the Hedgehog is and all right now, but Sonic Adventure 2: Battle was released in February of 2002, months before the 2002 contest. NeoElfboy used the Sonic declining logic to take Alucard to win this match, and obviously, the theory had some merit to it. Granted he used the same logic to pick Tidus over Sonic, but we'll ignore that \>\_\> When the match began, Alucard jumped out to a fast lead that he would never come away from. Tails made a decent run at chipping down at Alucard's percentage later in the match, but as everyone fully knows by now, chipping away at the percentage does not mean chipping away at the lead. The Alucard/Tails match, as well as the mayhem that ensued because of it, was the match that begun the tradition of arguing percentages versus vote totals. Isn't it amazing that after two and a half years, people still cannot grasp the concept of a small percentage drop not equaling a comeback? Thanks to virtually the entire board rooting for a Tails comeback, this ugly little tradition got started, and it has unfortunately yet to end. Of course, Tails's efforts were all in vain. As close and exciting as the match may have seemed at the time, a 5300 vote difference at the end is a convincing win by today's standards despite the fact that it was the closest match yet to be seen in a contest poll at the time. Tails's fans accepted the loss by the time the match ended, and by the time the match ended, we were well on our way to one hell of a contest. Through five matches, we had seen three major board upsets, as well as a massive DK underperformance. Only Mario seemed convincing by this point, but even that match looks tame by today's standards. As vocal as Tails's supporters were that day, Alucard managed to thrust himself into the limelight, and as everyone knows, his match with Tails was no fluke. It may have *seemed* like a fluke at the time, but one quick look at the rest of his contest matches obviously suggests that Alucard is for real in these contests. He may not be elite, but he is no slouch either. And as good as Alucard beginning his tradition of surprises was, Tails began an unfortunate tradition of first round disappointments in his own right. It would take another two years before he would finally break his slump. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match Despite what the prediction percent showed almost everyone on the board thought Tails was going to win. Back in 2k2 nobody on board 8; outside of Castlevania fans heard of Alucard and even then some of them were taking Tails to win the match. This was one of the many round 1 matches in this contest where people took the character that they heard of over one that they know nothing about. Even though no one thought Tails would be as strong as Sonic or Knuckles, they thought he shouldn't have to much problems with Alucard, while some people thought he would be able to beat Duke Nukem as well. #### After the Match Alucard started with the lead and ran away with it. All Tails was able to do was to use the Sonic morning vote and cut into the percent during the morning and day. Cries of comeback were heard in the board and almost every single one was replied with "cutting into the percent =/= comeback". Despite being close it wasn't very interesting, it was one of those matches where it was close, but the loser did next to nothing at trying to comeback. Even though this match isn't close by today's standards it was the closest match so far in the contest and it would stay like that for the next two weeks. #### Interesting Facts - First match to have "cutting into the percent =/= comeback" replied to people when a character wasn't really coming back. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Duke Nukem vs (14)Iori Yagami 2002 _source: (3)Duke Nukem vs (14)Iori Yagami 2002 (revid 80265)_ ## Results Saturday, July 6th, 2002 - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 6th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 13,446 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Duke Nukem - 83.87% (14,060 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis Before the days of Milk Nukem and a blowout loss in 2003, Duke Nukem was actually very well-respected on this board. Yes there was the issue of Duke Nukem Forever, but aside from that, Duke Nukem was treated like a well-respected character in the gaming industry. He was given a 3 seed in 2002, as well as a very winnable four pack. His first match was against a character that most people had never heard of, Iori Yagami. More people picked Ryo Hazuki to win the contest than they did Iori Yagami. He was that unknown, and even now, I'll bet that most people still don't know who he is. For those unaware, Iori is a character from the King of Fighters series. The 2002 bracket had an ass-load of fighting game characters, and Iori was one of them. However, this match wasn't even in question, and even if you were a fan of Iori hoping for her to pull out a win, the Terry Bogard/Aya Brea match shot down the theory before this match even begun. If Terry Bogard, mascot of the KOF series could not muster the strength to take down Aya Brea, then how would a lesser KOF character manage to defeat a character that nearly everyone has heard of in Duke Nukem? Sure enough, the match began, and in simple fashion, Duke Nukem found himself cruising home to an easy victory. And because Duke had a rather convincing win (for its time), he looked primed and ready to take down Alucard in round two. After all, Alucard had just come off of a struggle against Tails, a lesser character from a series that was dying well before the contest ever started. Of course, there was the slight possibility that Duke underperformed and that Tails was much stronger than originally thought, but at the time, this theory did not hold much water. If Alucard had to struggle to take down the likes of Tails, then Duke Nukem should be able to wipe the floor with him. Believe it or not, most people felt that the biggest threat to Duke making the Sweet 16 was Tails, and with him out of the way, it seemed like smooth sailing from here. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match Other than the issue of Duke Nukem Forever he was a respected character in 2k2. Not only was he expected to win the match, but many people thought he will win the 4-pack as well before bowing out to Cloud. Iori is one of the characters from King of Fighters and since their most popular character, Terry Bogard has already lost; to Aya Brea of all characters anyone who thought Iori might upset wasn't looking that good right now. #### After the Match In the end Duke Nukem won, it wasn't impressive but it was around at what people expected. There have been three fighting characters already and two of them have lost badly. There were still many fighting characters left in the bracket and as each fighter loses it keeps makes the other fighters look bad. Because of Duke Nukem's performance it looked like he should be able to beat Alucard and make it to the Sweet 16. Duke Nukem's biggest threat was Tails and Alucard already showed that he was a flop and Alucard's performance didn't really turn any heads so winning next round was all, but won. So the board thought at the time. #### Interesting Facts - This poll was unique in that there was nothing interesting about it. ....or was it? ~\_^ • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Pikachu vs (10)PaRappa the Rapper 2002 _source: (7)Pikachu vs (10)PaRappa the Rapper 2002 (revid 80266)_ ## Results Sunday, July 7th, 2002 - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 7th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 4,975 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pikachu - 64.82% (10,866 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis Many "anti" factors are discussed on Board 8, from anti-Square to anti-Nintendo to anti-Xbox to even anti-RPG. But of all the anti factors that do or do not exist, the only one that truly matters is the anti-Pokémon factor. Pikachu and Pokémon used to be decent enough, but thanks to the series being advertised on everything from suppositories to goat fondue, not to mention the fact that the games are constantly thrown in everyone's faces over and over and over again, Pokémon quickly grew to be one of the most hated series on GameFAQs, if not gaming itself. Pokémon still has a very solid fanbase, but that fanbase is simply not on GameFAQs. Pokémon is loathed around here (for the most part, anyway; I'm well aware that quite a decent amount of people here play the games and visit the boards), and it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. When most of the board is rooting for *PaRappa the Rapper* to defeat you, you know you have some problems. Even funnier was the fact that once the match started, Pikachu managed to have a moment of glory in his own spotlight. Sure the match was relatively close (find a Pokémon poll held on this site in which Pokémon actually does well), but Pikachu was never in any danger of losing the match. Not that this stopped virtually the entire board from rooting for PaRappa, of course. When I say Pokémon is hated around here, I'm not kidding. PaRappa the Rapper had virtually the entire board's support in the match, and we were rooting like hell for him to come back, albeit in vain. It was one of the single funniest matches in the history of the contest, because even though most people knew Pikachu had the match locked down, they didn't care. If anything, this was more PaRappa's time in the sun than it was Pikachu's, because the odds of PaRappa ever returning to the contest were slim at best. As for Pikachu's seven fans, they realized that this was likely the only chance he had of ever having a victory in the contest, because with the hate that Pikachu generated during a match with PaRappa, it was unlikely that Pikachu would ever take down anyone of substance. Bias aside, Pikachu won this match because he managed to go up against a character more hated than he is, and even *then*, most of the board was rooting against him. It was quite the sight to see. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match This was one of those matches where many took Pikachu to win, but almost everyone wanted PaRappa the Rapper to win. Back in 2k2 there was massive Pokémon hate, mostly because of the overadvertising of Pokémon over the past few years. At the time along with the Xbox Pokemon was the most hated thing on GameFAQs In the center of the advertising was Pikachu; who was the only Pokémon where both fans and anti-fans alike would vote against and the tv show wasn't helping either. If there were any Pikachu fans on the board they were very quiet. PaRappa is from PaRappa the Rapper, another game this was also hated on GameFAQs, but not as much as Pikachu was. #### After the Match Pikachu may have won the match, but during the whole day everyone was hoping for PaRappa to comeback. Even when it looked like it was impossible for him to people were still cheering on PaRappa. The match was basically Pokemon fans vs anti-Pokemon fans and had PaRappa had any fans he probably could've won. After the match any of those quiet Pikachu fans knew he had no chance against his next opponent and that this will probably be Pikachu's only win in the contest. #### Interesting Fact - Pikachu is the 2nd least impressive winner in contest history. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Cloud Strife vs (15)Fox McCloud 2002 _source: (2)Cloud Strife vs (15)Fox McCloud 2002 (revid 80267)_ ## Results Monday, July 8th, 2002 - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 8th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 36,044 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 80.20% (13,445 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis Despite the seeding, the board hyped the hell out of this match, due to it being the first real Square/Nintendo duel. The board was busier during this match than at any point in 2004, and this match was important because it would start giving comparisons between Mario and Cloud. After all the hype and all the debating (and there was a ton), the only thing left to do was to start the match. And once the match was started, Cloud kicked the ever-loving crap out of Fox and never looked back until the poll was over. The contest was young, but Cloud set almost every record he could after the beating he laid into Fox on that day. He had the most votes in any poll of the contest to that point, his poll had more total votes than any other poll to that point, and his margin of victory was the largest of the contest to that point. Simply put, Cloud mocked the hell out of all the hype given to this match. Fox was never in it at all, and if you cite the stats that we now have access to, it's clear that Fox never had a chance in the first place. It was a thorough beating by Cloud, and even though we were but eight matches into the contest, Cloud looked like he would be a force to be reckoned with later on in the contest. If you compare Cloud's match with Fox to Mario's match with Servbot, Cloud was far more impressive against a much more impressive opponent. Mario looked to be in trouble, but the contest was still young. Now given how bad the beating of Fox was, one would assume that the board would calm down and move onto the next match, right? Heh, no. Not just no, but hell no. Fox's beating only fueled the fire that was the Square/Nintendo bloodbath on Board 8. All of the pre-match antagonizing that was given to Square fans by Nintendo fans before the match was being thrown back in the direction of the Nintendo fans in full force, and this match was the beginning of the Square/Nintendo Board 8 feud as we know it today. Fox getting his ass kicked meant little to either side after a few hours, because everyone started ignoring the results and tearing into each other with a venom that would only be heightened in later matches. This 2002 blowout had our board busier than it was at any point in either 2004 contest. Part of this has to do with the fact that the poll used to open/close at 1 AM, but another part was that the contest was fresh. As I said, there were no stats to work off of or trends to follow. There were simply hundreds of people rooting for their favorite characters and companies, and it was only natural that a Square/Nintendo match would generate the most hostility yet. And if Cloud/Fox could cause the board to be that busy, one could only imagine what we were in store for later on. And yes, you read that correctly. Cloud/Fox 2002 was a busier day on this board than any of the 126 matches held in 2004. It was simply the nature of the contest. It was new and unpredictable, whereas most people today don't even bother due to knowing who will win most matches before they ever happen. Oddly enough, people started predicting how the rest of the North division would go during and after this match, and despite a ton of people making some insane picks (I remember one guy having an Aya Brea over Duke Nukem final), we all knew where this division would end up: Mario vs Cloud, clash of the titans. Slice it however you want, but it was obvious that there would simply be no other way to solve this division, and even though Cloud currently looked stronger, Mario's match with Servbot was somewhat of an aberration. The Mario/Cloud hype, as well as the board tradition of fanboy wars and massive amounts of whining/fighting all began during Cloud/Fox and helped mold the board into what it is today. Sure there was arguing before the Cloud/Fox match, but it was nothing compared to what went on that day. I'll say this again. Cloud vs Fox 2002 was busier than any day in 2004. Think about that for a minute, then try to digest the fact that this contest was just getting started. As massive as Cloud/Fox was for the board, it served as only the beginning of the massive attack that would end up being SC2K2. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match Despite the seeding there was a lot of hype going into this match, mostly because they were from Nintendo and Square, but also because this was the first match where almost everyone knew about both characters. Cloud is from Final Fantasy VII, the game that basically put GameFAQs on the map and Fox is from Star Fox, one of the many Nintendo series. Despite already being the underdog many Fox fans thought that just being from Nintendo would be a big factor and would guarantee them the win. After days of debating the match would soon come. #### After the Match Not only did Cloud win, he won by even more than what the Cloud supporters thought he would. At the time Cloud had the biggest win percent and vote wise, the highest individual votes and the highest total votes. Any reason for any hype people thought was laughed at and the Cloud fans were making sure that they laughed at every single person that thought Fox would have been able to make a match out of it. Flame wars followed suit which lasted for days. This match also added fuel to the hype in Mario/Cloud, the most likely division finals. Both characters were one of the five most predicted winners and by comparing both matches Cloud did better on what many people agreed to be a stronger opponent. There still may be two more matches to prove themselves before they meet up, but already Mario is at a disadvantage. #### Interesting Facts - First Nintendo/Square match. - Started Nintendo/Square rivalry. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Lara Croft vs (16)Chop Chop Master Onion 2002 _source: (1)Lara Croft vs (16)Chop Chop Master Onion 2002 (revid 80268)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 9th, 2002 - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 9th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 25,225 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Lara - 88.51% (14,837 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis Thank God Chop Chop lost this match, because his name is a real bitch to write. Of course, Chop Chop didn't exactly lay an egg in this match, either. He scored 30% on a 1 seed, and if my memory is correct, only Starcraft has managed to do better given the same circumstances. If this match wasn't a clear indication that Lara isn't exactly 1 seed material, then I don't know what is. Chop Chop Master Onion is not a character who should be able to score 30% on most 1 seeds, and it takes a clear case of overseeding on the part of the 1 seed to allow him to do something like this. The reasoning behind this is simple. Rarely has a character had a faster fall from grace than Lara Croft. Once recognized by Guinness as being more recognizable than Mario, Lara was the start of a Tomb Raider series that aided Playstation in their dethroning of Nintendo as head of the gaming market. But for whatever reason, Lara's same fans have since turned on her and grown to hate her. Lara's plight is similar to that of Pokémon's, and the results show this. Everyone knows how much Lara has bombed since 2002, but the fact is that she was dead meat in 2002. Allowing Chop Chop Master Onion to score 30% on you (not to mention the load of people that were actually rooting for him to win the match) is a sign that you're in for a long, long contest. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match Back in her day Lara Croft was one of the most known characters in gaming, with many of her games being a big hit during the Playstation era, but by 2k2 she had lost a lot of her fame and even had some hate. Yet through all that she was still able to get a 1 seed ahead of characters such as Cloud, Snake, Link and Sephiroth. Chop Chop Master Onion is from PaRappa the Rapper who the main character just lost to the mosted hated character in the tournament. So even if Lara's time had come and go she would at least be able to thrash this nobody. #### After the Match Lara Croft did thrash Chop Chop, but not as much as what people were expecting. She failed to break 70% on a character who's main character failed to beat Pikachu. With just one match Lara Croft proved that she just doesn't deserve that 1 seed and with many strong characters such as Snake, Aeris, Dante and Crono in the division showing that much weakness is a bad thing. #### Interesting Facts - At the beginning of the contest Lara Croft was voted as the most likely 1 seed to lose first. - Chop Chop Master Onion is the only character (other than StarCraft) to break 30% on a 1 seed. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Ryo Hazuki vs (9)Guybrush Threepwood 2002 _source: (8)Ryo Hazuki vs (9)Guybrush Threepwood 2002 (revid 67539)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 10th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 10th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 23,756 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryo Hazuki - 77.27% (12,954 brackets) Believe it or not, Ryo Hazuki didn't always suck. In fact, Ryo Hazuki was respected by the 2002 contest stats even after all was said and done. Unfortunately for him, we now know that Ryo Hazuki's numbers were vastly inflated in 2002 due to facing some horrid competition. Unlike Ryu Hazuki, Guybrush Threepwood has *always* stunk it up in these things. Before getting killed by Bowser in 2004, Guybrush was busy getting his face pounded in by --- you guessed it --- Ryo Hazuki. And unlike other matches in the 2002 contest, bracketmakers going with the character that they had actually heard of wound up paying off. From an unbiased perspective, Shenmue is simply much more well-known and popular on GameFAQs than the Monkey Island series is. When the bracket was first released, Ryo was the sentimental favorite simply because virtually *no one* knew who Guybrush was. Oddly enough, it worked out. For one day, Ryu Hazuki actually looked good in a match. Unknown or not, he managed to break 70% in a match, which was no easy feat at the time. But was this a result of Ryo's strength, or Guybrush's weakness? Of course we all know that both characters suck now, but at the time, Ryo surprised some people. Bear with me here =P • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Crono vs (12)Simon Belmont 2002 _source: (5)Crono vs (12)Simon Belmont 2002 (revid 67540)_ ## Results Thursday, July 11th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 11th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 34,377 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 76.39% (12,806 brackets) This match was somewhat strange. Unlike Alucard vs Tails, people felt that the Castlevania character had a chance to win this particular match, because unlike Alucard, the Belmont name is synonymous with the name Castlevania. It's possible to have played a Castlevania title without knowing who Alucard is, so expecting Alucard to lose to Tails was possible; however, it's practically impossible to have played a Castlevania title without having ever heard of the name Belmont. Consequently, Crono (as well as his game) weren't nearly as well-known to this board as they are now. In the 2002 contest, most of the board had yet to play Chrono Trigger at all. Sure people knew who Crono was, but many a poster had not played his game and therefore didn't know how strong he was. The end result of all this were quite a number of people underestimating Crono and giving Belmont a chance to win the match. So how does Crono respond? He turns around and lays the biggest beating of the contest to this point upon Simon Belmont's vampire slaying arse. Not even Mario and Cloud's blowouts could compare to what Crono did on this day. He took a fairly well-known character and completely embarassed him. Of course, the only people that were truly surprised by this were the people who had yet to play Chrono Trigger. Those who have played the game expected this the entire time; it was everyone else who sent the board into a mini hysteria. It wasn't Cloud/Fox insane, but there was a fair amount of complaining there. Pretty ironic considering everyone was complaining about Alucard *winning* not too long before this match took place. Of course, there was a slight possibility that Crono's numbers were slightly inflated in this match and that he wasn't quite as strong as the match made him seem. The contest had begun to grow a little bit of popularity throughout the site, and even though it wasn't at an astronomical level yet, it was at least building some momentum. Breaking 60,000 votes was very difficult in the first few days of this contest, so the argument was that Crono was simply leeching off of GameFAQs's Square bias and looked stronger than he really was. Whether this was true or not remained to be seen. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Dante vs (13)Q*Bert 2002 _source: (4)Dante vs (13)Q*Bert 2002 (revid 88702)_ ## Results Friday, July 12th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 12th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 23,292 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 74.49% (12,487 brackets) Q\*Bert had absolutely no chance of winning this match, and most people on the board knew this coming in. I think I saw one person admit to picking him, and that guy was simply an old-school gamer who had no idea who Dante was. This match was all about how well Dante would stack up to Crono in the second round, because no sooner did Crono's match end did the Crono/Dante hype start piling up. And after Dante's expected thrashing of Q\*Bert was over, there was no reason to believe that we weren't in for an epic in the second round. Both Crono and Dante had similar odds of winning the contest and similar prediction percentages. Crono may have had an advantage both in total votes (in his poll) and direct votes (for himself), but at the time, this didn't matter. 2002 wasn't a contest where you could pinpoint percentages with X-stats, so to the board, Crono/Dante looked like it would be quite the epic after the two characters were done dispatching their first round opponents in similar fashion. Yeah, Crono/Dante was massively hyped. Sounds odd, doesn't it? • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Kasumi vs (11)Aeris Gainsborough 2002 _source: (6)Kasumi vs (11)Aeris Gainsborough 2002 (revid 67542)_ ## Results Saturday, July 13th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 13th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 15,502 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aeris - 67.44% (11,305 brackets) After a few predictable matches, we were greeted to our second taste of an FF7 character in the contest realm. Aeris may not have proven to be as strong as Cloud, but she was more than strong enough to handle to likes of Kasumi of Dead or Alive fame. In all three seeding upsets seen thus far in this particular contest, all of them involved fighting game characters, and only Morrigan managed a victory in such a situation. Another odd thing about this match was the fact that Aeris was an 11 seed in the first place. As everyone is well aware of by now, Aeris is far stronger than her 11 seed would suggest. If anything, the seeding in this match was backwards. Aeris was favored to win by a 2:1 ratio, Kasumi was three times the longshot to win it all than Aeris, and if the seedings were reversed, both the prediction percentage and the vote difference would likely increase in Aeris's favor. Final Fantasy 7 made GameFAQs what it is, and even though Aeris is only the third most popular character from the game, the likelihood of a lesser-known fighting game character taking her down was never in question. If anything, this entire four pack involving Kasumi, Aeris, Gordon Freeman, and Tina Armstrong was Aeris's for the taking from the onset of the contest. This match helped prove this, and all that was left for Aeris after her simple dispatching of Kasumi was to win another match before bowing out to Solid Snake, who had a similarly easy four pack. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Gordon Freeman vs (14)Tina Armstrong 2002 _source: (3)Gordon Freeman vs (14)Tina Armstrong 2002 (revid 88703)_ ## Results Sunday, July 14th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 14th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 11,241 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tina - 43.71% (7,327 brackets) Of all the matches ever held in the contest, this is easily one of the funniest. The legend of Gordon Freeman Never Wins began on this day, and it may easily live on forever. I could try explaining it myself, but that would be somewhat pointless. Just look at the man's contest history and see how long it took for him to finally get off the schneid. The entire legend started here, in this very match. Coming into the match, the assumption was that Gordon Freeman had a free pass into the second round. Sure some people may not have heard of him, but Gordon stars in Half-Life, one of the best FPS titles ever made according to gaming history. Even though Gordon may not be a household name, Half-Life most certainly is. And that isn't even the beginning of how easily Gordon was supposed to win this match. Gordon was a 3 seed, and as most people who follow bracketed contests know, it's very difficult to take down high seeds early in tournaments. It should be even more difficult in a contest in which the fans decide the victor, simply because the more popular character will be the one that wins. Furthermore, Gordon wasn't exactly going up against Kasumi here. Tina Armstrong may be a character in the Dead of Alive series, but she's no where near as popular as Kasumi is. So with all of this laid out, there was absolutely no way that Gordon should have had any trouble with this match. He was the 3 seeded main character from a popular title, while Tina was the meager 14 seeded fodder that was supposed to roll over and serve as a waste of space en route to the Aeris/Gordon clash. But when the match began, everything went backwards. Not only did Gordon begin the match by losing, but he wound up getting his ass handed to him from beginning to end. A link was posted on one of the Half-Life sites, but it wasn't nearly enough to save Gordon from one of the first and biggest embarrassments in contest history. Gordon went from being a heavily-favored 3 seed to a character getting his ass handed to him by supposed fodder. In one match, Gordon Freeman went from being the respected main of Half-Life to the biggest laughingstock of the contest, and this stigma stuck with Gordon for a LONG time. We used to root for Gordon to win, but it has gotten so bad for Freeman that we would be shocked if he did anything but lose. It's a sad state of affairs for Gordon, but had he taken care of his business against Armstrong that day, it never would have happened. Not only did Gordon lose to fodder, but he got killed by fodder. On a more serious note, Gordon's loss most likely has to do with the fact that you don't see or hear him all through Half-Life, but at this point, does anyone honestly care? This match is all about the beginning of a legend, and luckily for us, the legend of GFNW continues. Lost in all of this is the fact that Tina Armstrong actually won a match, which made Aeris's path to Solid Snake even easier. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Forget Master Hand. Forget L-Block. Forget Bidoof, Mudkip, CATS, whatever joke characters you want to throw up on the list. No match will ever be as funny as this one. This saw the birth of a legend and a repository of jokes for nigh unto five years of rich contest history: Gordon Freeman Never Wins. And when he loses, he always does so in a spectacularly embarrassing fashion, in a match he could easily have won, against an opponent he has no business losing to. What makes this match so funny is that, unlike Max Payne, Sam Fisher, or Leon Kennedy (or Duke Nukem, for that matter), nobody cares about Tina Armstrong. She’s a D-list character in a C-list game series. As Amazing Telephone put it, all that’s pretty much ever been written about Tina Armstrong is her aspirations in life, her relationship with her cowboy father, and her measurements. And she beat Gordon Freeman. There is no mathematical solution for why this was possible – people have tried to figure it out over the years, and explanations have ranged from “nobody knows who Gordon Freeman is” to “Gordon Freeman is an avatar for the fat, nerdy gaming community – and we don’t like ourselves” to “LOL BOOBIES.” Regardless, this match will always take the cake as funniest damn match in contest history. You’ll always be a winner in my book, Gordy. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Knuckles the Echidna vs (10)Akira Yuki 2002 _source: (7)Knuckles the Echidna vs (10)Akira Yuki 2002 (revid 67544)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 15th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 15th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 37,907 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Knuckles - 69.02% (11,571 brackets) As surprising as this may be, this was our first-ever 80%+ blowout in contest history. Even more remarkable is the fact that we would not see another such blowout until Link vs Little Mac. What Knuckles did here was truly amazing, and it's even more amazing given the fact that just under 70% of people had him winning the match in the first place and the fact that the match only had 62000 votes. And Knuckles, biggest badass in the Sonic series, was the character who managed to pull it off first. No matter what winds up happening with him in these contests, no one can take that away from him. In fact, the rumblings of a Knuckles over Snake upset began swirling around a little bit during this match, even though most people knew that it was impossible. Hey, think fast. What fighting series is Akira from? And no using Google, either. ... ... Okay fine, I admit it. I had to use Google to figure out that Akira is from the Virtua Fighter series -\_- This 2002 contest was littered with fighting game characters, and as you can see, most of them didn't do all that well. Knuckles is a good character and all, but truth be told, he couldn't sniff 80% unless he was going up against absolute fodder. What strikes me here is the low prediction percentage for Knuckles. But then again, this was the 2002 contest. Most brackets were either favorite brackets or "NCAA" style brackets in which people tried picking upsets all over the place. This match may have been one such match, because as any NCAA guru can tell you, 7-10 matches are sexy upset specials. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Solid Snake vs (15)Squall Leonhart 2002 _source: (2)Solid Snake vs (15)Squall Leonhart 2002 (revid 88704)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 16th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 16th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 22,118 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Snake - 83.88% (14,061 brackets) For those who weren't around in 2002, 2002 may very well have been Solid Snake's best contest appearance ever. When the contest board first opened, the two big choices to make the finals were Sephiroth and Solid Snake, and most people honestly felt that Snake would win such a match (this match would eventually happen many, many years later and Solid Snake did actually win it, albeit against a much weaker version of Sephiroth). Solid Snake wound up being the second most favored character in the contest; more people had Snake winning than Cloud, Link, and Sephiroth (today's "Big Three"), if you can believe that. Snake was a huge board favorite, and despite the fact that Squall also had his fair share of fans during this match, it didn't matter. Aside from being a sentimental board favorite, Solid Snake was also coming off of the release of Metal Gear Solid 2, a game so popular that it was given the first ever perfect rating by EGM (don't quote me on that, but I'm 80% sure that it was EGM), not to mention multiple rereleases and spinoffs. Snake was arguably at the height of his career at the time of this contest. But Squall, unlike Snake, was still suffering from being the "star" of Final Fantasy 8, a game that didn't get any proper respect until after the release of Kingdom Hearts. Because of this, the mass of pro-Squall spamming that went on on every major Final Fantasy board, not to mention a lot of it going on on board 8 as well, did absolutely nothing for every female's favorite gaming character. Squall wound up being given one of the single worst non-SFF beating that you'll ever see a Square character take. But like I said, when you pair FF8/Squall's hate up with Snake being such a huge board favorite at the time, you wind up with a lot of happy people that could care less about how bad Squall had it with his seeding in this contest. Aside from a few detractors, everyone was quite pleased to see Squall get the crap kicked out of him. Of course, anyone that was here during 2003 knows that this match was a direct setup for Squall/Luigi, one of the single best surprises to ever happen in a contest match =) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Pac-Man vs (16)Goemon 2002 _source: (1)Pac-Man vs (16)Goemon 2002 (revid 68738)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 17th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 17th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 25,311 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pac-Man - 81.69% (13,694 brackets) Remember how Lara Croft showed to be a character not worthy of a 1 seed after her very first match? The same philosophy applied here. Goemon may not have broken 30% on Pac Man like Chop Chop Master Onion managed on Lara Croft, but he came close enough. Furthermore, more people chose Solid Snake to defeat Squall than they did Pac Man to defeat Goemon. Goemon *who*? Exactly. Pac Man may be a gaming icon in his own right, but his weakness was shown right out of the gate. Pac Man doesn't really have a large fanbase on GameFAQs, assuming he has a fanbase outside of his status in the first place. And because of this weakness, he would eventually go down as one of only three non-Halo 1 seeds to ever allow a 16 seed to break 25% on them, with Mario and Lara Croft being the others. But because Mario's match with Servbot was the first match ever in a contest, Servbot's result can be taken in jest. Allowing Goemon, who most people still have yet to hear of, to come close to breaking 30% on you is very bad news. And Pac Man, like Lara Croft, simply did not perform up to their seedings right out of the gate in this contest. Whether or not those matches were flukes had yet to be seen, but it was somewhat obvious that neither character deserved their 1 seed. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Abe vs (9)Kyo Kusanagi 2002 _source: (8)Abe vs (9)Kyo Kusanagi 2002 (revid 88705)_ ## Results Thursday, July 18th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 18th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 8,400 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kyo - 50.51% (8,468 brackets) Another seeding upset, another fighting game character involved with it. The surprising thing about this particular match was that Kyo managed a victory after both Terry Bogard and Iori Yagami got creamed by characters who aren't exactly household names here on GameFAQs. And because those two characters were beaten as badly as they were, the only logical conclusion to be made from Kusanagi's victory here is that he won the match based upon's Abe's huge weakness, not his own strength. Sure, people may have heard of Abe. They may have even heard of Oddworld series as well. But as everyone is well aware of by now, platformer characters do not do well in contests unless they are flat-out legends such as Sonic or Mario. The lesser-known platformer characters have little chance to do well, and Abe getting defeated by a King of Fighters character after two other King of Fighters characters had had their brains beaten in previously in this contest is one of many such examples that would arise as the contest evolved. Future edit from Ulti - I'm happy in retrospect Kyo won this match, for one very special reason: His theme song is BEAUTIFUL. Sure this is a nothing moment that no one remembers, but with the stat topic doing contest retrospectives since the site likely won't run these things anymore, it's nice to relive old memories under newer tastes. It's neat Kyo got his day to shine given his music is as wonderful as it is. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Scorpion vs (12)Kazuya Mishima 2002 _source: (5)Scorpion vs (12)Kazuya Mishima 2002 (revid 88706)_ ## Results Friday, July 19th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 19th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 25,045 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Scorpion - 72.89% (12,220 brackets) In our first matchup featuring two fighting game characters, Scorpion won as expected. The prediction percentage and odds favored Scorpion to win with ease, and win with ease he did. The intriguing thing, however, is one of the site's earliest poll results: *Poll \#16 (from 1999)* *Which fighting series do you love the most?* *Mortal Kombat 7.53% 411* **Tekken 20.49% 1119** *TOTAL VOTES 5461* Of course, old polls with 5500 total votes have to be taken with a grain of salt; still, one would assume that Mishima would not have simply rolled over and died the way he did. Either Tekken has not aged well, Mortal Kombat *has* aged well, or Scorpion was simply much stronger than originally thought. Or maybe it was all three. It would be interesting to see how Kazuya would do now that he's been in Smash Bros. I doubt he would win, but he'd certainly put on a better showing than whatever this was. Otherwise, totally forgetful match in a contest loaded with forgetful matches. This contest had a good final stretch, but man were these early rounds loaded with garbage. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Max Payne vs (13)Dirk the Daring 2002 _source: (4)Max Payne vs (13)Dirk the Daring 2002 (revid 88707)_ ## Results Saturday, July 20th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 20th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 26,598 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Max Payne - 91.92% (15,410 brackets) Back in 2002, Max Payne was not the joke that he is now. Before the days of being forced into matches with Gordon Freeman and characters from his own company, Max Payne was a widely respected and favored character. Take for example his prediction percentage in this match. It was the highest number seen since the two matches involving Donkey Kong and Mario's victories. His odds of winning the contest were very high, and there was even talk about Max possibly taking down Pac Man and making an Elite 8 appearance. His odds of winning the contest outright were even relatively high, scoring better odds than the likes of Duke Nukem, Squall, and Pikachu. And once Max Payne's first match began, the favoritism showed. Part of the reason Max did so well in this may have to do with the fact that most people still don't know who Dirk the Daring, the character who tied with Pitfall Harry as having the worst odds of winning the contest, is. But still, blowouts are blowouts. The only issue affecting Max Payne after this match was the fact that this was the lowest-scoring match to take place in the contest. Even still, Max looked strong enough to be primed for a Sweet 16 appearance, at least. There was absolutely no reason to worry about him having problems with Scorpion after this match, which is the big reason why his next match was so shocking to everyone. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Bomberman vs (11)Kane 2002 _source: (6)Bomberman vs (11)Kane 2002 (revid 88708)_ ## Results Sunday, July 21st, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 21st, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 29,467 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bomberman - 70.94% (11,892 brackets) That isn't Kane the wrestler, or even Kane from Command and Conquer. Well it's supposedly Kane from Command and Conquer, but thanks to what may very well be the worst match pic of all time, we were treated to Kane the TV set. Any and all doubts about Bomberman winning this match were quickly put to rest after seeing the match pic, because no matter how popular C&C might be, Bomberman was going up against a TV. Kane helped prove that no matter how popular your game is, name recognition alone may not be enough to propel you to victory in a contest match. Command and Conquer would likely beat any Bomberman title, but obviously, this doesn't translate to the characters themselves having success. Allowing Bomberman, who isn't that strong to begin with, to get nearly 80% on you proves that you more or less suck. This match makes me very skeptical about how well a Starcraft character would truly do in one of these polls. Starcraft the game would eventually become a contest legend, but the characters themselves? I wasn't exactly proven wrong there, given how Kerrigan would very famously drop the ball when her turn came up to be in a poll. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Jill Valentine vs (14)Kirby 2002 _source: (3)Jill Valentine vs (14)Kirby 2002 (revid 88709)_ ## Results Monday, July 22nd, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 22nd, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 4,702 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Jill - 50.77% (8,511 brackets) When the bracket was first released, our board embraced Kirby from the beginning. It's nearly impossible not to love the little guy, and it didn't take long for there to be a huge outcry about how low Kirby's seeding was in this contest. Take a quick look at some of the characters who were seeded higher than Kirby in this contest, but lost before Kirby's match came up. Kirby would beat or outright *destroy* Iori Yagami, Q\*Bert, Dirk the Daring, Bub, Kazuya Mishima, Kane, Akira Yuki, PaRappa the Rapper, Abe, Spyro the Dragon, Kasumi, and even Gordon Freeman. And those are only the higher seeded characters who lost. Kirby was horribly underseeded in this contest, and if you go by the Extrapolated Standings and Expected Seeding of every character or game to have appeared in all four contests, only Starcraft has ever been more underseeded than Kirby was in his match against Jill Valentine on this day. That said, the board support for Kirby was astounding. Kirby having higher odds of winning the contest than Valentine is no accident, and neither was the match's prediction percentage. Most of the board was pulling for Kirby to take this thing, despite the seeding discrepancy among the characters. After all, we had already seen a 3 seed lose a match this contest. But once the match started, Jill Valentine grabbed a small lead and hung on tight all the way until the end of the poll. This match was similar to Alucard and Tails in that despite the match looking close, the character who wound up winning was in control from start to finish despite the board's best efforts to turn the match around while it was going on. Remember, a few thousand votes was close for its time, so for the entire match, Kirby was thought to have a chance at coming back. Unfortunately for Kirby, the match's final results make it look closer than it really was. Kirby was never really in this thing, and even though many people cite the seeding as the reason for Kirby's loss, I feel that the prediction percentage and odds prove otherwise. Starcraft proved that popularity will be there regardless of seeding, and even though I feel bracket voting happens a lot more than some stats show, it wasn't necessarily present in this match. Bracketmakers were split directly in the center. The explanation here is a simple Occam's Razor -- Resident Evil is a lot more popular and respected than people thought. Sure Jill has taken a decline since 2002, and would get utterly annihilated today, but back then it wasn't a worldbreaking surprise to see her win. There would have to be another match or two before Jill's strength could be validated in the eyes of many, but regardless, a win is a win is a win. This match set up Jill vs Bomberman in the second round, which was *completely* up in the air at the time. Really, it was. Sounds crazy by today's standards, but remember, we knew nothing back then. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Strider Hiryu vs (10)Raziel 2002 _source: (7)Strider Hiryu vs (10)Raziel 2002 (revid 88710)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 23rd, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 23rd, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 3,001 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Strider - 55.79% (9,353 brackets) The Jill/Kirby complaining was so bad that people forgot to realize that there was another match going on afterwards, and oddly enough, that match would wind up being the closest match thusfar in the contest. Of course, one look at the final vote totals shows that this was one of those fodder vs fodder matches that no one but the bracketmakers cared about too much. Strider and Raziel have decent-sized fanbases, but both them and their games aren't exactly household names on GameFAQs. The result? A boring, low-scoring match that was barely in doubt despite how close it seemed. Strider had the match on lockdown the entire time, and despite the final vote totals being so close, that was a result of the low vote total moreso than Strider's difficulty in handling the match. This match was so low-scoring that Strider set the record for least impressive contest winner and held onto that record for quite a long time. Winning a match despite only scoring 30,000 votes says a lot about both characters, but more about Raziel. He may not have been favored to win the match, but his odds of winning the contest were far better than Strider's. Considering that this was a very winnable match for Raziel, him never being in it was a disappointment. Even more of a disappointment however is the fact that despite Raziel's loss, Legacy of Kain has had future representation in contests while Strider has yet to return. Strider's one victory may have been against fodder, and he may be fodder himself, but there is no reason to lock Strider out of the contests while Kain is allowed to stink it up every year. Fast forward to 2026, and our contests likely being over for good. Strider and Raziel both failed to ever return. Not even in the absurd bracket in 2013. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Link vs (15)Little Mac 2002 _source: (2)Link vs (15)Little Mac 2002 (revid 88711)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 24th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 24th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 48,433 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 96.39% (16,159 brackets) Despite having a lot of board support (which ranks with CATS board support; baseless), Little Mac was the first example of how dominant Link is in these contests. After having one character hit 80% in the entire contest, Link shattered the 80% barrier en route to almost breaking 85%. Furthermore, Link's Prediction Percentage of 96.39% in this match would wind up being the highest prediction percentage of the entire contest. Link was a monster right out of the gate, and even though many people were surprised at what he would wind up doing in this contest, the warning sign of his dominant potential was in black and white from the start. Breaking 80% was not easy at the time of this contest, yet Link did it with ease. And thanks to the rest of the South division not looking nearly strong enough to combat this, Link literally looked like he would walk to the Final Four, whereas the other two divisions that had already seen action were still very much up in the air. As for Little Mac, knocking out Mike Tyson is one thing, but Link is a completely different animal. Little did we know at the time -- and this was stalled a bit thanks to Summer 2003 -- but Link was the absolute final boss of these things from contest one. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (16)Pitfall Harry 2002 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (16)Pitfall Harry 2002 (revid 88712)_ ## Results Thursday, July 25th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 25th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 41,731 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 95.59% (16,024 brackets) Not one day after Link showed us what the true meaning of dominance was, Sonic went out and did the exact same thing. We had gone through an entire contest having only seen one character break 80%, yet in back to back matches, both Sonic and Link managed to do the same thing. Granted Little Mac and Pitfall Harry are little more than fodder, but still, blowouts are blowouts. You could conceivably say the exact same things about Sonic during this match that you could about Link in the last match. The only differences were that the total votes of Sonic's particular poll were less than Link's, plus the fact that in comparison to Link, Sonic's odds of winning this contest were horrible. Sonic may not be as good in the 3D era as the 2D era, but the fact remained that he was a gaming legend coming into this contest, and not only that, he was fresh off of what may be his best 3D title: Sonic Adventure 2. Yet for whatever reason, people did not put Sonic on the same level as a Mario, Link, or Cloud. Despite what we know about Sonic now, there was absolutely no way to see Sonic's fate coming after his blowout of Pitfall Harry. To us, Sonic was the lovable blue guy that almost helped Sega take down Nintendo, not the semi-joke that he is today, and because of the Pitfall Harry result, there was no way to assume anything but Sonic being as elite as the other elites. Maaaaaan would that end up changing. Not even in future contests, either. We had no *idea* what was about to happen to the poor guy. Zero. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Tidus vs (9)Claire Redfield 2002 _source: (8)Tidus vs (9)Claire Redfield 2002 (revid 88713)_ ## Results Friday, July 26th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 26th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 6,887 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tidus - 60.80% (10,192 brackets) With Jill Valentine's impressive victory over Kirby proving that Resident Evil was alive and well in 2002, this match had upset potential. Bewlieve it or not, once upon a time Tidus was loathed by the gaming community and did not at all have the respect or reputation he has now. People may have liked FFX, but Tidus was not one of the reasons why. Believe it or not, Tidus was more hated than Squall at the time of this match. A lot more. While Squall had at least some people rooting for him in his match against Solid Snake, virtually no one was rooting for Tidus to take down Claire. As a result, this match may have been closer than it should have been. Tidus may have been the slight bracket favorite as well as the main protagonist of the defining Square title of this generation, but rarely has a Square lead been hated in the beginning as much as Tidus. Even to this day, Tidus has a lot of naysayers for being the character that helped usher in the "Metro Era" of lead RPG characters. But despite this, the Square tag is usually enough to get a character past a tough match. Tidus, despite all the hate he gets, helped prove that in this match. Claire had everything she needed to pull the upset, yet it simply wasn't there despite her best efforts. Tidus went on to claim a relatively easy victory despite the low vote total margin; however, having problems with Claire Redfield is bad news when your next match is against the elite force known as Sonic the Hedgehog in the second round. Tidus did well to win this match, but it would take a miracle for him to get into the West Semifinals at his current rate. Fast forward to 2026. Tidus *never* made it into round 3. Not one time. Jecht got there in his first try, btw. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Samus Aran vs (12)Ken Masters 2002 _source: (5)Samus Aran vs (12)Ken Masters 2002 (revid 88714)_ ## Results Saturday, July 27th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 27th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 19,159 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 80.12% (13,432 brackets) Samus's four pack in this contest was one of the more interesting we've seen, at least by 2002 standards. There was Samus, Ken, Ryu, and CATS. That's Metroid, Street Fighter, and All Your Base all wrapped in one little group. It began with Samus vs Ken, a match that turned out to be rather boring. Everyone expected Samus to win, and win she did. Ken Masters, while popular in his own right, is not at Ryu's level in popularity, and coming into the contest everyone figured that the only character standing between Samus and the divisional semifinals was Ryu himself. Ken Masters served as more of a measuring stick for how well Samus would do against Ryu than anything else, and thanks to Samus nearly doubling Ken, she looked primed to take down Ryu with ease as well. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Ryu vs (13)CATS 2002 _source: (4)Ryu vs (13)CATS 2002 (revid 88715)_ ## Results Sunday, July 28th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 28th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 35,724 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 86.98% (14,581 brackets) 2002 was CATS's biggest year for hype, simply because there was thought to be a chance for him to actually win at the time. Anyone who has ever been on this board during a CATS match knows exactly what was going on, so all that was left to do was to actually hold the match. And once the match began, the fact that most of CATS's fanbase was comprised of people who hadn't ever played his game showed. CATS was beaten into a pulp, allowing Ryu to become only the fourth character all contest (but third in the span of six matches) to break the 80% barrier. It was a complete beating in Ryu's favor, but c'est la vie. CATS is unique in that no matter how badly he performs, he'll likely always remain in the contest as the quinissential humor nomination. His, uh... "streak" would end in 2009 and get put to bed for good in 2013: This match set up a Samus vs Street Fighter reunion special, and even though Ken got beaten pretty soundly, Ken is no where near Ryu's level. It was an intriguing match, to say the least. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Mega Man vs (11)Ms. Pac-Man 2002 _source: (6)Mega Man vs (11)Ms. Pac-Man 2002 (revid 88716)_ ## Results Monday, July 29th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 29th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 57,782 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 94.08% (15,771 brackets) Up until this match, we thought we had seen some blowouts. After all, we had seen many characters break 60%, and some even break 80%. But nothing prepared anyone for the surprise that would come from Mega Man's utter beating of Ms. Pac Man on this day. Not only did Mega Man win, but he took every weapon he has ever had and annihilated Ms. Pac Man into utter oblivion with them. While other characters were having trouble breaking 70 and even 80 percent on characters that may or may not have been weaker than Ms. Pac Man, Mega Man was sitting here breaking ninety percent in a match. This was absolutely unheard of, and in one quick match, Mega Man became a huge player in this contest. After the initial shock of seeing what Mega Man was accomplishing, the attention quickly turned into Mega Man's chances at doing some real damage later in the contest. Mario, Cloud, Solid Snake, Link, and Sonic had already proven themselves to be elite characters in these polls, but could Mega Man take them down? There was no way to know unless he actually managed to face one of them, and with the way Mega Man was performing, it was obvious that we would see him in action against a big player sooner than later. Neither Serious Sam nor Mr. Driller would likely pose a threat to as complete a machine as Mega Man, so the attention quickly turned to Sephiroth. Blowing out Ms. Pac Man is nice, but could Mega Man manage to perform to such elite levels when facing a real threat? Considering Sephiroth's path to the Sweet 16 was as big a joke as Mega Man's, we were practically guaranteed to find out. The funniest part of this match wasn't even this particular match. It was round 2. I know Draven in round 2 in 2013 is what a lot of people consider the biggest shock update ever, but Mega Man in round 2 of 2002 is also in that conversation. Just wait. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Serious Sam vs (14)Mr. Driller 2002 _source: (3)Serious Sam vs (14)Mr. Driller 2002 (revid 88717)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 30th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 30th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 9,605 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Serious Sam - 64.87% (10,875 brackets) This matchup was little more than a battle between two characters that few (if any) people have heard of or cared about, and with Mega Man's slaughter of Ms. Pac Man, this match became little more than a "Who wants to get killed by Mega Man?" match. Believe it or not, both characters are the stars of their own series of the same name. But like Abe and the Oddball series, appearing in a lot of games doesn't necessarily mean contest strength. Just look at Serious Sam's odds of winning the contest, 300:1 as a 3 seed, for proof of how much this match meant to everyone. Serious Sam may have taken this thing home with relative ease, but this match was little more than filler between seeing Mega Man and Sephiroth in action. It isn't like Serious Sam or Mr. Driller were going to make a dent in this fourpack anyways, especially not after what Mega Man had done the match before. After Serious Sam's victory was all but secured (which was a few minutes into the match; it takes strong characters to make comebacks, and Mr. Driller isn't exactly strong), the attention turned to Sephiroth and whether or not he would be able to prove to be a threat to Mega Man later in the contest. That sentence may seem backwards, but at the time, it was true. Honest. And on the off-chance that one of the five combined Sam/Driller fans reads this, my apologies. It isn't my fault that your two characters wound up being two of 2002's most uninteresing bottom-feeders. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Sephiroth vs (10)Gabe Logan 2002 _source: (7)Sephiroth vs (10)Gabe Logan 2002 (revid 67589)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 31st, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 31st, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 52,765 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 90.17% (15,116 brackets) This match was expected to be a slaughter from the beginning, and even the people who were rooting against Sephiroth doing well in this contest agreed that he was horrifically underseeded. Sephiroth as a 7 seed made absolutely no sense, and the first character to suffer at the hands of an underseeded, pissed off Sephiroth was Gabe Logan of Syphon Filter fame. The fact that two years have passed and people still don't know Gabe Logan or what game he came from sort of showed what kind of chance he had against an elite such as Sephiroth. With the match never in question, the attention turned to the imminent Mega Man/Sephiroth showdown. Serious Sam, Crash Bandicoot, and Ulala had no chance of taking down either of them before this match were to happen, so it was fair to begin assessing the match during Sephiroth's killing of Logan. After all, Mega Man vs Sephiroth seemed like it would be the first high-profile match of the contest. Unfortunately for Sephiroth, Mega Man looked to have the clear advantage going in. While Sephiroth easily scored the second biggest blowout of the contest, Mega Man scored the biggest. And how were we to know whether or not 87% on Gabe Logan was good enough to allow Sephiroth to beat a charcater who scored 92% on Ms. Pac Man? It was difficult to compare characters at the time, and what we were left with was Mega Man having the seemingly shocking advantage going into the match itself. Some major hype began rounding itself up during this match, and the contest as a whole would only experience a gigantic buildup as the hype continued to progress. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Crash Bandicoot vs (15)Ulala 2002 _source: (2)Crash Bandicoot vs (15)Ulala 2002 (revid 67590)_ ## Results Thursday, August 1st, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 1st, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 15,194 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crash - 81.34% (13,636 brackets) It was clear before this match even begun that Crash and Sephiroth's seedings were backwards in their respective four pack. Sephiroth performed at an elite level against Gabe Logan, while Crash Bandicoot's odds of winning alone were more than enough to suggest that his seeding, much like Lara and Pac Man's, was given to him on a status basis. Case in point, look at how Crash performed in this match. He let Ulala break 35% on him. *Who?* Exactly. Considering Crash's final numbers against Ulala, it's somewhat clear that he had little to no chance of taking down Sephiroth, and that the seeding between the two was backwards. Crash may have won this match with *very* relative ease, but he lost the war in that his contest was pretty much over after this point. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (8)Morrigan Aensland 2002 _source: (1)Mario vs (8)Morrigan Aensland 2002 (revid 68739)_ ## Results Friday, August 2nd, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 2nd, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 22,364 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 81.71% (13,698 brackets) As much as a good deal of the board wanted to see Mario show a sign of weakness, there was no such thing in this match. Mario defeated Morrigan Aensland rather easily in another match that served as filler for the eventual Mario/Cloud showdown. The only real thing to be drawn from this match is that Mario did not seem as strong as the other elites of the contest. While Link, Sonic, Sephiroth and Mega Man were out killing their first round opponents, Mario was struggling to double a fighting game character. It was understandable to believe Mario's "struggle" against Servbot to be a fluke, but two such underperformances in a row could leave open questions about how elite Mario truly was. The aforementioned characters seemed like the types who could rip open anyone who showed any signs of weakness, and even though we didn't knowhow strong Servbot or Morrigan were yet, it's hard to believe that the elite first round characters wouldn't be able to do better than Mario's 66.81% against Morrigan Aensland. All focus was on Cloud and how well he would or would not do against Pikachu at this point, and if Cloud were to annihilate Pikachu, most would be hard-pressed not to see Cloud as the favorite going into the Mario-Cloud duel. Mario had to improve on some level if he wanted to compete with Cloud, or any other elite for that matter. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Aya Brea vs (4)Donkey Kong 2002 _source: (5)Aya Brea vs (4)Donkey Kong 2002 (revid 88718)_ ## Results Saturday, August 3rd, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 3rd, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 1,320 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong - 69.58% (11,665 brackets) As obvious as this match seemed at first, it would wind up being our first *true* match of this contest. It had everything you could ever ask for in a match, with the sole exception of the match actually meaning something. It was fun while it lasted, but everyone soon realized that this was a "Who wants to get killed by Mario?" affair. Still, unexpected close matches are usually among the best. Before the match ever began, this was supposed to be an easy win for Donkey Kong en route to becoming fodder for Mario; however, Aya Brea's shocking blowout against Terry Bogard coupled with Donkey Kong's struggle against Bub was a warning sign of things to come. A character can be as big as legend as he wants, but if people won't vote for you as such, bad things can happen. The end result of all of this is that Aya Brea took a 1000 vote lead on Donkey Kong in an absolute flash in the beginning of this poll. This not only proved that Brea's victory over Terry Bogard was no fluke, but that Donkey Kong, despite his icon status, simply does not have the support that the elites of Nintendo's crew gets during matches. Donkey Kong has proven this time and time again over the years, and it all started with his struggle against Aya Brea. Aya may be a Square character from a fairly well-known Parasite Eve series, but Jill Valentine was Aya Brea before Aya Brea was ever Aya Brea. And there is simply no way that an icon like Donkey Kong should ever have problems with a Jill Valentine clone. But he did. Before anyone knew what was even going on, Donkey Kong found himself down by 1000 votes and staring at the first big-name choke to ever grace a contest. But after his early struggles, Donkey Kong managed to gather himself. Fueled by the early morning vote and the hordes of "T3H KIDDA3Z AERE W4K1N6 UP!!!!11!1" topics, Donkey Kong began what would go down as the first real comeback in contest history. He began slowly at first, but he soon picked up a head of steam that would begin the legend of the Nintendo morning vote. By 10 in the morning (EST) the match was deadlocked, which gave rise to the tradition of massively refreshing the poll results page. Aya Brea tried her best to stop Donkey Kong's momentum once he pulled the match to a standstill, but he was simply too much for her. After some jockeying for poll position, Donkey Kong was eventually able to build a small lead that he would manage to slowly build all the way until the end of the poll. The very first thing to be drawn from a match like this is the fact that Donkey Kong isn't an unreliable character for no good reason. This match was the beginning of Donkey Kong's curse; for whatever reason, DK simply cannot get nearly the support of other Nintendo icons such as Link, Mario, or Samus. On the other side, Aya Brea proved that she was no joke in 2002. Not only did she take down the king of fighters himself, but she came damned close to beating one of gaming's most recognizable characters. It's a shame that Brea's only other chance to shine was in the goofy 2018 bracket, and her appearance there was so forgettable that many still think her only contest appearance was here in 2002. This match may have set up Mario vs Donkey Kong, but everyone and their mother knew that that match was a simple bye for Mario en route to the divisional finals. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (3)Duke Nukem 2002 _source: (6)Alucard vs (3)Duke Nukem 2002 (revid 88719)_ ## Results Sunday, August 4th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 4th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 13,419 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard - 28.78% (4,824 brackets) If Alucard's "shocking" victory over Tails didn't cause everyone to notice how strong he was, making it to the Sweet 16 over the 3-seeded Duke Nukem did the trick. Not only did Alucard take down Duke Nukem easier than he did Tails, but Duke wasn't even able to break 40% here. Remember, before this contest, virtually no one on board 8 even knew who Alucard *was*, yet here he was taking down the likes of Tails and Duke Nukem as if he were a contest elite from the beginning. Mario and Donkey Kong in the Sweet 16 made enough sense, but *Alucard*!? Outside of the true believers in Alucard's Plan, who would have thought? The only real issue with Alucard is that even though he was likely stronger than everyone gave him credit for (only 28.78% of bracketmakers thought he would make it this far, meaning that even the people who knew who him were skeptical), the respective weakness of his opponents also played into Alucard's two victories. Tails is easily on the weaker end of Sonic characters, and Duke Nukem's has-been status places him weaker than Tails. That's pretty pathetic, and the result of this was a pass into the Divisional Semifinal round for Alucard. All Alucard needed to do now was pray to all that was unholy in his own little world that Pikachu somehow managed to take Cloud down; Cloud winning would surely mean the end of him. Duke Nukem, like Donkey Kong, obviously suffered has-been status in this contest. During Nukem's prime, he would have likely taken down Alucard with relative ease. But because of a throng of Forever setbacks, Duke had to rely on the strength of old games that weren't popular on GameFAQs in the first place. The only good thing about Nukem in this match was his match picture, and when that's your ace in the hole, you have issues. On a random side note, everyone claims that Crono's success caused both he and his game to inexplicably rise every year. Couldn't the same be said about Alucard? Symphony of the Night has gone from being an unknown cult game to one of our board's most beloved titles. It makes you wonder. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Pikachu vs (2)Cloud Strife 2002 _source: (7)Pikachu vs (2)Cloud Strife 2002 (revid 88721)_ ## Results Monday, August 5th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 5th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 44,481 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 69.51% (11,653 brackets) If sales directly translated to GF popularity, Pikachu would have won this match (and this contest) with ease; unfortunately, sales mean little to GF users. We are a very set bunch in terms of who we like, and in this particular 2002 matchup, we proved just how little sales actually matter. Pikachu, star of the best selling RPG series ever, was flat-out annihilated by Cloud here. Not only did Cloud almost break 80%, but he did so in the second round. Nearly breaking 80% on a character who had already won a match was obscene, at least at the time. After comparing Mario and Cloud's matches, it seemed that Mario was in a bit of trouble. While Mario struggled to double a fighting game character, Cloud nearly broke 80% on Pikachu. And while it may be somewhat difficult to imagine Mario scoring 80% on Pikachu, it's hard to imagine Cloud not doing better than Mario did against Morrigan Aensland. But aside from this (which was blatantly obvious), the one thing that stands out from this match is Solarshadow's test, which is pictured below. Solarshadow tracked how well Cloud did through the day in this match, and what he discovered is that Cloud was at his peak in the early voting, as well as the evening. Whether or not this would translate into a trend or not remained to be seen; remember, we didn't have a Poll Updater or update topics back in 2002. Solarshadow not only gave us the stats topic, but he was the progenitor of the poll updates we've come to know and love. What a swell guy. ## Match Updates The solarshadow update page Ulti was talking about can be found at [](http://solarshadow2002.tripod.com/distribution.html). Here's the graph from that page, which covers how many votes per minute each character was pulling in during every point in the day, and also how many total votes per minute were being cast. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://solarshadow2002.tripod.com/distribution.html) (as collected by solar) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Lara Croft vs (8)Ryo Hazuki 2002 _source: (1)Lara Croft vs (8)Ryo Hazuki 2002 (revid 88722)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 6th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 6th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 11,474 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Lara - 74.13% (12,427 brackets) The biggest thing to remember about this match is that at the time, we had no clue that Ryo Hazuki or Lara Croft were hiding the fact that they were contest jokes. None. The days of Ryo Hazuki and Lara Croft getting blasted to hell by Yoshi and Samus were two years away, and at the time of this match, all we had were two respectable characters performing at somewhat expected levels. We knew no better. It's very easy to say that Lara is a joke for allowing Hazuki to break 40% on her (especially as a 1 seed), but we didn't know at the time what either character's real nature was. What he had was a ho-hum match that saw the expected character win. That's it. The only real concern here was Lara Croft, a 1 seed, allowing relatively unknown characters such as Chop Chop Master Onion and Ryo Hazuki to do so well against her. She was not performing up to her seeding at all, and with characters such as Crono, Dante, or Solid Snake lurking right around the corner, showing such a large sign of weakness could mean a mound of bad news in a hurry. It's possible that Hazuki truly was strong enough to do this well, but it was highly unlikely. It's hard to imagine Hazuki breaking 40% on true 1 seed material such as Link, Cloud, Sephiroth, or even Mega Man. The fact that he did this against Croft ensured that her odds of surviving such a stacked division were quite slim. Another clear warning sign of a possible Croft weakness was the fact that only 75% of people picked her to win two matches. This means that over 4000 people had either Chop Chop Master Onion, Ryo Hazuki, or Guybrush Threepwood (three complete scrubs) taking down the 1-seeded Lara Croft. Something was definitely amiss. On a final note, pay close attention to Hazuki's score in this match. It's easily the last amount of respect you may ever be able to give him. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Crono vs (4)Dante 2002 _source: (5)Crono vs (4)Dante 2002 (revid 67598)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 7th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 7th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 21,884 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 51.77% (8,679 brackets) After the events of the first round, this match was *supposed* to be a knock down, drag-out affair. Both characters had similar prediction percentages of getting out of the first round (83.88% and 81.69%, respectively), both characters had similar odds of winning the contest, and both characters had eerily similar victories in the first round. But because this was before the dawn of extrapolated standings, few people bothered to take into effect the fact that Simon Belmont was likely far stronger than Q\*Bert. All we had back then were the raw numbers from two matches, and those numbers lead to some serious hype surrounding Crono vs Dante. Even Solarshadow himself postulated that this could very well be the best match of the second round. However, not only did Crono manage to win this match with ease, he managed to nearly double Dante in the process. What was once a hyped match turned into a complete dud that few people expected, as evidenced by Crono's somewhat low prediction percentage in this match. Chrono Trigger was still a very niche title on many parts of the site, so those who had not yet seen Crono or his game would have likely gone with the more mainstream character from the more mainstream game. But like many times before in this contest, GameFAQs is partial to Square RPGs and Nintendo elites. Dante doesn't fall in either of those categories, and is therefore not liked nearly enough to put any real dent in the likes of Crono. Another thing that this match did was show that Lara Croft was in a world of trouble come the next round. If you compare Crono and Dante's first round scores, they're rather similar, but after Crono/Dante it was easy to see that Dante did as well as he did because he was facing Q\*Bert, a complete scrub, while Crono was going up against a more respectable Simon Belmont. For Dante to do as well as Crono did against Simon Belmont, he would have needed to face a weaker opponent than Belmont. What this means is that in two Divisional Quarterfinal matches in the East Division, we saw Lara Croft allow Ryo Hazuki to break 40% on her, while Crono nearly doubled Dante. It's hard to imagine Dante being weaker than Hazuki, and if transitivity held at any level in the Lara/Crono match, then one could easily call Crono the favorite and Lara Croft as being the first 1 seed in danger of being booted from the contest. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (14)Tina Armstrong 2002 _source: (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (14)Tina Armstrong 2002 (revid 67599)_ ## Results Thursday, August 8th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 8th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 35,046 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aeris - 53.48% (8,965 brackets) This is one of those matches that was decided well before it begun. This was supposed to be a match between Aeris and Gordon Freeman, but thanks to Freeman's historic flop against Armstrong in the first round, Aeris was given a virtual free pass into the divisional semifinals. After all, if Aeris already beat the more popular Dead or Alive representative in Kasumi, what could Armstrong possibly do? Of course, don't tell that to the 46% who thought that either Kasumi, Armstrong, or Freeman would actually take down Aeris in this four pack. Late in this contest, you'll see all sorts of prediction percentages that make absolutely no sense, such as this one. If Aeris was the 3 seed in this four pack (which she should have been), there is no doubt that her prediction percentage would have been much higher. But regardless of all that, Aeris fulfilled her role well. She won this four pack with ease (and made Freeman look like an absolute joke in the process), and was set to move on to the Eastern Semis where the board expected her to bow out nicely to Snake. #### Interesting Facts - This is one of only three matches in contest history, and one of only two in the 4x16 format (the other being Ganondorf Vs. Magus) to occur between two lower seeds. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Knuckles the Echidna vs (2)Solid Snake 2002 _source: (7)Knuckles the Echidna vs (2)Solid Snake 2002 (revid 88723)_ ## Results Friday, August 9th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 9th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 14,587 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Snake - 76.18% (12,771 brackets) After Knuckles's killing of Akira was paired with Snake's half-struggle against Squall, minor Knuckles over Snake hype ensued; however, this match was yet another example of board hype not meaning much. Snake jumped out to an early lead, and despite barely breaking 60% by the end, him winning this match was never in question after the first few minutes. It could be easy to assume that Snake struggled in this match, but considering that Knuckles scored an 80% blowout in the first round, holding him under 40% in his successive match was quite the feat. This not only helped show that Snake was a player in the 2002 contest, but that Akira Yuki was an absolute joke. Getting blown out by someone who eventually gets his ass handed to him is *horrible* for your contest stock, and there may be good reason why he hasn't returned yet. Oddly is Knuckles was, by the numbers, the second strongest character in this four pack in 2002. Ahead of Squall. Ouch. Funny thing is, Knuckles and Squall would eventually have a match against each other: The other funny thing is Knuckles would prove over the years to be a total round 1 monster, with his only loss coming in the dreadful fourway contests (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3250-division-2-round-1-fei-knuckles-mario-zelda), and not one time has he ever made it into round 3. It's a crime we never got to see Knuckles vs Tidus in round 2 to get one of them over the hump. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Pac-Man vs (9)Kyo Kusanagi 2002 _source: (1)Pac-Man vs (9)Kyo Kusanagi 2002 (revid 88724)_ ## Results Saturday, August 10th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 10th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 13,325 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pac-Man - 64.85% (10,871 brackets) Earlier I mentioned how Lara Croft's performance suggests that she may not have been worthy of her one seed, but after two round of action, Pac Man may have proven even less worthy of the 1 seed than Lara was. First of all, not even two thirds of bracketmakers picked Pac Man to make it out of a four pack featuring Goemon, Abe, and Kyo Kusanagi. Secondly, of all the 1 seeds in the 2002 contest, Pac Man had the biggest problems with vote totals through the first two rounds. He followed up a 41150 vote performance in the first round with a match in which he dropped by nearly 10000 votes. Not only was Pac Man clearly not deserving of a 1 seed, he, like Lara Croft, was failing to blow away cannon fodder. Not that a match against Kusanagi was ever in question, of course. The issue is that even though Pac Man is more a status symbol than a strong character in polls, he wasn't exactly in a Lara-esque position. Croft had Crono to deal with at this point in this contest. Pac Man had either Max Payne or Scorpion, and it would take an act of God himself for someone like *Pac Man* to lose to one of those two. ...ahem. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Scorpion vs (4)Max Payne 2002 _source: (5)Scorpion vs (4)Max Payne 2002 (revid 88725)_ ## Results Sunday, August 11th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 11th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 18,417 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Scorpion - 33.62% (5,636 brackets) After the first round, this match was expected to be a simple bye week for Max Payne en route to what was now a possible showdown against Pac Man. After all, Max Payne blew the hell out of Dirk the Daring while Scorpion and Pac Man struggled (in comparison to Payne against Daring) in their matches. There were two things that slipped well under the radar about the Scorpion/Max matchup. One, Max Payne vs Dirk the Daring set (and held for a long time) the record for the lowest-scoring match ever. And while Max did win with ease, the low vote total may have hinted that no one really cared about either character. Secondly, Max may have held Dirk to 23.83%, but Scorpion didn't do all that bad himself in the first round. He held Kazuya Mishima to 28.99% in a match that had a far higher vote total than that of Payne/Daring. The problem here is that people gave Daring respect, and blew off Scorpion's blowout as Fighting Game SFF. After all, why would anyone give Scorpion a chance here? Max Payne was fresh off of an acclaimed self-named title, while Scorpion wasn't even the most popular character from a fighting series that many fighting purists consider to be inferior. But as Chris Berman loves to say, *that's why they play the games*. When the poll first opened, not only was Scorpion doing more than hold his own against the heavily-favored Payne, but he was flat-out destroying him. Payne was given the pain in this match, and he was never in it from the start. The board had its typical outcry for quite awhile, especially considering how badly Payne was being beaten in a match that he was so easily supposed to win. Aside from the aforementioned warning signs involving perhaps the true nature of what Payne's first round truly meant for him, he also suffers from his genre not being well-received on GameFAQs. A game being loved by the mainstream is a completely different animal from a game being received by GameFAQs, and Max Payne is an example of this. Tommy Vercetti, Tanner, and Ryu Hayabusa are other examples, and Carl Johnson will likely fall into this trap as well (boy did THAT ONE come true later on). Action games sell by the millions, but on GameFAQs, no one cares. The fighting genre, as niche as it may be on this site, seems to be more respected than the action genre, and even if that isn't the case, its the only thing I can think of that explains why Scorpion won this match in such a simple, overbearing manner. Max Payne, despite being heavily favored in most categories that matter, was killed. Clearly, someone out there forgot to care about him. This also shows that Dirk the Daring was an absolute scrub. Getting blown out by someone who gets blown out never bodes well for you, and this was a good indication that it would take a small miracle for Daring to return to the field. And finally, was it possible for Scorpion to be a threat to Pac Man? Pac Man may be the odds-on favorite, but Max Payne came off of a low-scoring match and was promptly blind-sided by Scorpion. Could the same thing happen to Pac Man as well? Unlike Max Payne, one could say that Pac actually struggled in his first two matches. It was quite the interesting prospect. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Bomberman vs (3)Jill Valentine 2002 _source: (6)Bomberman vs (3)Jill Valentine 2002 (revid 67603)_ ## Results Monday, August 12th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 12th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 10,396 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Jill - 32.45% (5,440 brackets) As much as a few angry Kirby fans were rooting against Jill Valentine in this match, it was one of those bouts that was barely in question from the start. If Kirby couldn't take down Valentine, it's a stretch to think that Bomberman would be able to outdo Kirby's performance and pull of the stunning upset. Besides, Jill Valentine HAS TEH HOT TEE JAY EFF!1!!! The surprising thing about this match is the horrid prediction percentage. More people has Scorpion winning his four pack than Jill winning hers, despite the fact that the only real competition to Valentine in her particular four pack was Kirby himself. After getting past Kirby, Bomberman was little more than a free ride to a maiming at the hands of Link. Still, the impression that Valentine made on the 2002 contest was set in stone. Because of her two "surprising" victories (don't know how a 3 seed's wins could be surprising, but that's a different story), Valentine's slot in this contest has pretty much been etched in for life. CJayC loves leaving characters in these contests after they pull surprises, after all. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Strider Hiryu vs (2)Link 2002 _source: (7)Strider Hiryu vs (2)Link 2002 (revid 88726)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 13th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 13th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 36,722 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 80.49% (13,493 brackets) This is one of the easiest analyses ever, simply because there was absolutely no chance in hell that Strider was going to win this match or even get close. The only thing to draw from this match was the fact that Link was easily one of the favorites to win the entire thing at this point. He literally had a free pass into the Final Four from the beginning, and all that was left was to see who could possibly match up with him. And after scanning all of the characters still in play, the only ones who looked like they could give Link any sort of run were Cloud, Mario, Crono, Solid Snake, Sonic, Sephiroth, or Mega Man. And of all those characters, only Cloud's numbers stacked up with Link's. His prediction percentages and vote totals were even with Link's, while everyone else's numbers were a bit weak in some spots, save for the West elites who hadn't had their second matches yet. But we still had a long, long way before seeing which (if any) characters would possibly take Link down. He came out like a machine, and thanks to his weak division, it would be quite awhile before Link saw any actual competition at all. Hilariously enough in the above list, Samus is missing. For those who weren't there in live time in 2002, I promise before the Sonic debacle, she was not seen as equal to the other Noble Nine characters. We didn't even have the term back then. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (8)Tidus 2002 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (8)Tidus 2002 (revid 67609)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 14th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 14th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 10,086 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 60.77% (10,188 brackets) As decent as Tidus's win over Claire Redfield seemed, the fact remained that most people cannot stand Tidus. This was bound to catch up with him sooner or later, likely sooner, despite the fact that a few people actually picked Tidus to win this match. Sure enough, Tidus absolutely collapsed at the first sight of elite competition. What was a match that some people thought could be a shocking upset turned into a relatively easy win for Sonic. The only reason that Sonic didn't do better than he did was because of the Square tag attached to Tidus (it's very difficult to flat-out kill anything related to Square), and a small glitch in the poll that caused it to not count votes for a little while. But make no mistake. This was a thorough beating of Tidus, considering his status. The odd thing about Tidus, and this plagues him even to this day, is the fact that he cannot seem to draw popularity from his own game. Every generation has a chosen Final Fantasy/Square title attached to it, and this generation's such title is Final Fantasy X. Despite Tidus being hated by so many sources, it's still hard to believe that he could be that much weaker than his game. It isn't like he's the only annoying character in that game, either. Wakka, Yuna, Kimahri, Seymour, and everyone on the Luca Goers need to be shot just as much as Tidus, if not moreso. Yet for whatever reason, Tidus not getting the full Square support still plagues him. As for Sonic, it wasn't necessarily the blowout that he was hoping for, but it was good enough. After all, the only thing standing between Sonic and the Final Four at this point was the winner of the Sephiroth/Mega Man showdown. It isn't as if the likes of Samus or Ryu would beat him, and even though Sonic didn't flat out kill Tidus, a win is a win is a win, and Sonic's victory was impressive enough. There was absolutely no reason to believe that Sonic wasn't still an elite character in this contest with a fair chance at winning it after this match. Absolutely none. The only thing that really gets me are Sonic's low prediction percentage and relatively low odds of winning. 45:1 as a high-status 1 seed makes no sense, and neither does a mere 60% picking him to make it out of his four pack. I understand that Tidus and Redfield are popular characters, but to beat Sonic? Please. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Samus Aran vs (4)Ryu 2002 _source: (5)Samus Aran vs (4)Ryu 2002 (revid 67606)_ ## Results Thursday, August 15th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 15th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 10,663 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 58.02% (9,726 brackets) This had trap match written all over it from the very beginning. Ryu over Samus was a very sexy upset pick, especially considering that Ryu over Samus wouldn't have even been a seeding upset. It's easy to look back on this contest and wonder how anyone could have possibly picked someone other than Samus to win this four pack, but back in 2002, Samus hadn't had a game since Super Metroid, while Ryu was arguably the most popular fighting game character out there. The Ryu over Samus hype wasn't necessarily large, but it was logical. The prediction percentages against Samus in both matches prove it, to a point. Not that this mattered when the match began, of course. One could have argued that Ryu was done for after Samus's convincing win over Ken Masters in the first round, but they play out the matches for a reason. And when this match was played out, Ryu was never in contention. He may be the most popular fighting character out there, but this is GameFAQs, the land of Squaresoft and Nintendo. Ryu beating Samus would have been nice, but it was clear almost from the first round that Samus would have no trouble winning this match. With two easy victories over the Street Fighter elites (on a side note, I still say Chun-Li should get into one of these things at least once), all that was left for Samus was to bow out respectfully against the potential championship buzzsaw entitled Sonic. She had little chance of actually getting in the way of the Sonic/Megaroth showdown, but they still have to play out all of the matches. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Mega Man vs (3)Serious Sam 2002 _source: (6)Mega Man vs (3)Serious Sam 2002 (revid 88727)_ ## Results Friday, August 16th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 16th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 55,500 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 84.66% (14,192 brackets) It was a quiet, peaceful day on Board 8, and we were up for a quiet, peaceful match between Mega Man and Serious Sam. Sam had little chance of winning, and most people knew this. Because of this, everyone got to sit back, relax, and enjoy themselves. ....right. It was one thing to see a killing in the first round, but seeing a similar maurauding in the second round *against a character who actually won a match* is a different animal altogether. What we witnessed from the onset of this match was a sight to behold, and everyone knew it. Through the entire match, the board was filled with cries of HE'S KILLING HIM! HE'S KILLING HIM! OHMYGAWD HE'S KILLING HIM! MEGA MAN IS A MONSTER! And honestly, who can blame them? Not only was Mega Man becoming the star of the contest, but he proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was a real threat to take down Sephiroth. Anyone who felt otherwise was deluding themselves. I could go on and on about how impressive Mega Man was in this match, but I don't need to. The numbers are clear as day, and the records that Mega Man set through the first two rounds have been well-documented by this point. To put it simply, Mega Man was the star of the contest to this point. Had he ended up beating Sephiroth, or if Crono didn't run around performing miracles, he would have been the star of the contest outright. The entire board went from a status of knowing him and not caring to hanging on his every move. It was quite the fun transition to watch, and even better was the fact that Mega Man had a real chance of taking down Sephiroth. Aside from Mario vs Cloud, Mega Man vs Sephiroth became the match that everyone was waiting for. We all know what eventually happened, but from this match until that round 3 match actually happened, it's very hard to put in words how crazy the hype was. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Sephiroth vs (2)Crash Bandicoot 2002 _source: (7)Sephiroth vs (2)Crash Bandicoot 2002 (revid 67608)_ ## Results Saturday, August 17th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 17th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 41,721 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 77.02% (12,911 brackets) Everyone already knew that Sephiroth was going to kill Crash in this match, and trying to explain why in depth is pointless. Most, if not all platformers not named Mario or Sonic have next to no popularity on GameFAQs, even back in 2002. When watching this match, one could easily get the seedings backwards. Remember, Crash was the 2 seed, not Sephiroth. Another thing that gets me is the low prediction percentage. How anyone could fathom Ulala, Crash Bandicoot, or Gabe Logan having a chance at taking down the main villain from this site's most popular game is about as perplexing as it gets. I can understand some people being odd, but almost 25% of brackets? The only thing left to do after this match was to wait for the epic Megaroth duel. Through two rounds, there was absolutely no indication whatsoever of how that match would go, and everyone knew it. All we could do was watch and wait. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (4)Donkey Kong 2002 _source: (1)Mario vs (4)Donkey Kong 2002 (revid 88728)_ ## Results Sunday, August 18th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 18th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 40,826 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 72.52% (12,158 brackets) After two rounds, Cloud had a clear advantage over Mario. His vote totals were better, his draw was better, and it looked like Mario was in for the fight of his life come the Northern Finals. It was time for Mario to stop making losers look good, to pull his head out of his ass, and to make a statement. And make a statement he did. Mario took his first-ever villain and showed him who was truly the boss. Donkey Kong never really had a chance to win this match, especially considering how badly he struggled with Aya Brea, but being made to look like such a fool was a different story altogether. Mario was back as a contest elite, and it would take Cloud's absolute best game to bring him down at this point. Then again, was this really the case? After the Mario/DK match, a new term started getting thrown around a few places; a term we now universally refer to as SFF, the Same Fanbase Factor. If two characters are so closely linked together, such as Mario and Donkey Kong, wouldn't it make sense for the winner's popularity to directly syphon from the losers? It's difficult to imagine two linked characters having separate fanbases to the point of strength being close enough to warrant concern. However, despite SFF being universally accepted today, it was a small theory back in 2002. It wasn't until much later did SFF become a board staple, and it was treated like the fledgling theory that it was back then. It was fun to pass off Mario's newfound strength by some voodoo acronym, but it made more sense at the time to give him the respect that he deserved. Cloud may have proven himself superior through two rounds, but Mario was very much back in the thick of things after his killing of Donkey Kong. And believe you me, everyone knew it. The hype for this match exceeded anything that most of you have ever seen on this board. No hype generated since the 2003 contest can even compare to what was going on on this board leading up to the Mario/Cloud affair. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (2)Cloud Strife 2002 _source: (6)Alucard vs (2)Cloud Strife 2002 (revid 67682)_ ## Results Monday, August 19th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 19th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 29,209 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 53.53% (8,973 brackets) As surprising as Alucard's first two victories were, it was well-known before this match ever began that he had no chance of winning. What he did have a chance of doing however, was proving that Cloud was still beatable. It could be argued that Mario had no chance against the FF7 lead after the first two rounds, but thanks to a surprising performance by Alucard in this match, Cloud was quickly brought down to earth. Not only did Alucard prevent Cloud from scoring a killing similar to his first two matches, but Cloud's prediction percentage for someone preparing to go up against the king of all video games was downright atrocious. Honestly, 53.53%? This means that almost half of bracketmakers thought that either Alucard, Tails, Duke Nukem, Iori Yagami, Pikachu, PaRappa the Rapper, or Fox would take down Cloud. That's pathetic, and even though 2002's stats are screwed up, there is no way that nearly half of the same group would consider any of those seven characters capable of beating Mario. We were in a similar position for Mario/Cloud than we were for Mega Man/Sephiroth after Alucard's last stand. We had no clue who would win, despite how well Cloud performed in the first two rounds. The best part was that we only had to wait a week to find out. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Lara Croft vs (5)Crono 2002 _source: (1)Lara Croft vs (5)Crono 2002 (revid 88729)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 20th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 20th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 30,917 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 33.05% (5,541 brackets) As in denial as people were about it coming into this match, Lara Croft's performances in the first two rounds indicated that she was in a lot of trouble, not to mention the fact that Chop Chop Master Onion and Ryo Hazuki weren't nearly as strong as they looked; they were simply facing a character weak enough to make them look that way. But if the warning signs weren't clear enough, Lara getting flat-out nuked by Crono in this match sure as was. Croft, a 1 seed, was held under 30% by Crono in this match. I don't care how weak you are; there is no excuse to score under 30% in any match as a 1 seed. This matchup not only proved that Lara Croft was an absolute fraud in that position, but that Crono was a serious player in this contest. He was growing stronger with each match, and he was in serious contention to take down Solid Snake after such a performance. Crono's wasn't necessarily going to win, but saying that Snake had an easy win after Crono's dominance in this match was foolish. Snake's match with Aeris could have been a good indicator of how well he would do against Crono, considering that Crono was clearly stronger than Aeris was. Only time would tell. As for Lara Croft, there is no reason at all to overseed her this badly ever again. She was an absolute embarrassment to her seeding this contest, and if you didn't actually look at the seedings in this match, you may make the mistake of getting them backwards. Croft was doomed to lose from the start, but even then we didn't realize how badly she would get beaten here. Contenders don't allow the likes of Chop Chop Master Onion to break 30% on them. It took two years for Lara to drop all the way down to a 15 seed. She would end up a 2 seed again when each division capped at 8, but 2002 was her one chance to prove she belonged in the upper tier and she blew it. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (2)Solid Snake 2002 _source: (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (2)Solid Snake 2002 (revid 67684)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 21st, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 21st, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 9,843 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Snake - 67.51% (11,317 brackets) Aren't easy analyses late in a contest beautiful? We all knew Aeris would lose, and it was only a question of comparing Snake's win to how well he would potentially do against Crono. Aeris may have only scored 43.46% on Snake, but Crono was clearly in a whole different league than Aeris. Crono may not have necessarily been strong enough to take Snake down, but it was clear that he would be able to come far closer than Aeris. Crono was going to score at least 43.46% on Snake, likely a lot more, and whether or not Snake was up to the challenge of someone finally being able to punch him in the mouth remained to be seen. Hats off to Aeris, though. She made it this far as an 11 seed, and she was clearly the lowest-seeded character left in the contest before this match. After her loss, the lowest-seeded character left in the contest was Sephiroth. Yeah, Sephiroth. I understand that Kirby and Starcraft are the two big examples of underseeding, but Sephiroth as a 7 was equally idiotic if you ask me. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Pac-Man vs (5)Scorpion 2002 _source: (1)Pac-Man vs (5)Scorpion 2002 (revid 88730)_ ## Results Thursday, August 22nd, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 22nd, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 10,603 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Scorpion - 17.33% (2,906 brackets) Go look at the Lara/Crono analysis. The entire thing applies to Pac Man as well. I understand that Pac Man may be a bit more loved universally than Lara Croft, and I'll keep the bashing to a lesser value for him, but the fact remains that Pac Man, like Lara, was an absolute disgrace to his seeding. Pac Man, like Lara, was seeded based off of status. Pac Man, like Lara, was showing warning signs of an inevitable screwup from the opening bell. He allowed a no-name by the name of Goemon to break 25% on him, and a little-known fighting game character to break 35% on him, not necessarily 1-seed-like victories. Pac Man's vote totals and voting draw in each of those matches was also absolutely horrible. But in defense of Pac Man, he was better than Lara Croft in that next to no one actually expected him to lose his third round match. Just look at the prediction percentage. Pac Man may have been horrifically overseeded, but his half division was weak as hell. It isn't like anyone was going to actually beat him despite his weakness, right? Heh, sure. One character was bound to prove just how weak this half division was, and Scorpion wound up being that character. I love upsets as much as anyone else, but when a character like Scorpion is able to make the Elite 8 in such a simple manner, you know something is royally screwed up. This match, while an impressive win for Scorpion, was more a testament to the half division's weakness than it was Scorpion's strength. Fact: If Ken Masters was in this half division, he would have done the exact same thing. Scorpion's run was only unexpected because other fighting series get far more respect than Mortal Kombat does. If Ken was in Scorpion's shoes, I feel that more people would have seen the upset over Pac Man coming. It was nice to see Scorpion do so well, sure, but he was horribly overrated by this board afterwards. Almost half the 2002 field could have won this half division if placed in Scorpion's spot. These eight characters, all of them, were just weak, and it only proved that Link had a free pass into the Final Four. On a side note, I demand someone post the Pac Man strip Penny Arcade made during this match. I can't find it. ### The [Penny Arcade](http://penny-arcade.com) Comic ## Ed Bellis' Analysis The first contest, unpredictable as it was, didn’t really start getting good until this match. This was the match that made everyone stand up and start noticing the contest, all over the Internet – Penny Arcade even did a strip about it. For most people, this came waaay out of left field: Pac-Man, the original gaming icon, losing to a palette swap from Mortal Kombat? But the signs were there – Scorp’s dismantling of Max Payne and Pac’s pitiful performance against bottom-end fodder. We just didn’t know how to look for them then. The match itself was unexciting – Scorpion won by a handy amount – but the fallout and commotion were incredibly intense. People literally could not believe it. This was when the character battles started really getting there, started really being something more. This was the original upset, and it’s still easily one of the best. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Jill Valentine vs (2)Link 2002 _source: (3)Jill Valentine vs (2)Link 2002 (revid 88731)_ ## Results Friday, August 23rd, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 23rd, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 38,589 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 69.01% (11,569 brackets) As if Jill had *any* chance. This match was all about Link showing how dominant he is, plus how horribly weak his division was. Jill and Kirby rank 2nd and 3rd in this division, if you need a quick example. This match was a given from the start, and all we had to work with was to survey the rest of the field and see who actually had a chance of taking Link down. Link even had the added boost of this particular poll running for 26 hours, which only made his vote total climb even higher =) And that's it, really. We all knew Link was going to the Final Four after the first round, so essentially Link had to win all of two actual matches (the Final Four itself) to win the contest. The only thing that really sucked about this match was the two hour delay of the next match. Considering how the next match would eventually go down, the first two lost hours could have easily been the difference, though I'm saving all that for later. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Samus Aran 2002 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Samus Aran 2002 (revid 88732)_ ## Results Saturday, August 24th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 24th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 34 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 31.75% (5,323 brackets) This match was supposed to be a simple victory for Sonic. He had flat-out dominated in his first two matches, while Samus had two ho-hum victories against the Street Fighter duo. But even before the contest started, Sonic was a 1 seed and was expected to not have any challenges whatsoever until at least the Elite 8, where he would then face either Sephiroth or Mega Man. Better yet, many people expected Sonic to win the division, and possibly even challenge for the contest as well. Through the first two rounds, there was no reason to believe otherwise. He was clearly on the elite level after his slaughter of Pitfall Harry, and he had an easy win against arguably the strongest chraracter of the 128 bit era. When paired with Samus's victories, there was no indication at all of what was about to happen. The first issue for Sonic was the two hour poll delay. Board 8 was highly pro-Sonic in this match, and because of the massive delay, few people stayed up until 3 AM to vote early. Because of this, Samus was able to withstand a very mild initial onslaught and keep the match close early. Sonic would eventually recover however, and when the Sega morning vote began kicking in, Sonic started running away with the match. Slowly but surely Sonic increased his lead, and he continued doing so even when the traditional Nintendo day vote started kicking in. However, Sonic was never truly able to pull away during the match, and it was surprising in and of itself that Samus was keeping it as close as she was. After all, she was expected to get killed. It was at this point that I feel that the contest became less about what GameFAQs members favored and more about outside influence. First off, Penny Arcade had a direct link to our contest posted after Pac Man's loss. That in and of itself helped increase vote totals; furthermore, Samus may have been losing, but it wasn't by much at all. Samus fans saw an opportunity to pull off a shocking upset, and began spamming for her all over the internet. To counter this, Sonic fans did the same. Buddy lists, chat rooms, online gaming chats... you name it, it was spammed for votes. The end result of this was a paradigm shift in our contests, meaning never again would a match be decided purely by what GameFAQs wanted. The cat was out of the bag. But despite the clear spamming, Sonic continued his methodical lead gain through all of Samus's best efforts. Samus did an amazing job staying close, but in the end, Sonic and his iconic status proved to be a bit much for both Samus and the advertising going on on both sides. Despite all of Samus's best efforts, she found herself down by 1500 votes at 10 PM, with 3 hours left in the match and the Nintendo voting block all but gone completely. It was little more than a walk to the end for Sonic at this point, and even though Samus gave Sonic the fight of her life, the fact that Samus had not starred in a game since Super Metroid clearly hurt her in this match. Maybe if this match had taken place two years later, Samus may have done better, but for now, she simply wasn't strong enough to hang with the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog and his amazing lineup while not having a recent lineup in her own right. But then, off in the distance, as if the entire force of every weapon Samus had ever possessed in any of her games all came together in one microcosmic moment of nuclear hell, the unthinkable began to happen. As soon as the clock struck 10:00 PM EST, Samus began unloading. For anyone who has ever played a Metroid title, this match wound up playing out exactly like a Metroid game. Samus started off weak, but as the match went on, she only grew stronger and stronger until she finally became an unbeatable weapon. The same thing happened here. Samus started off weak, but regained her composure during the day vote despite never being able to cut into Sonic's lead. But once 10 o'clock hit, she got fully powered up. What was a lead of 1500 votes began dropping like an absolute rock. No matter what Sonic did to try and halt the advance, Samus just slapped him back down to earth before commencing her relentless assault upon the lead. Worth noting here is this was the first time any of us had seen anything like this in a contest poll, and to this very day as I do future edits in 2026, 1500 vote comebacks in 3 hours is pure madness. Trends don't behave that way. In the beginning it was a question of whether or not Samus had enough time. As the comeback wore on, it only became a question of when. Samus was clearly riding football-like momentum all the way to at least tying the match, and in the closing minutes, tie the match she did. What happened in those closing minutes would not only change the direction of the 2002 contest, but go down in our history as one of the single largest shocks ever. As soon as Samus tied the match in the closing minutes, Sonic finally decided to pull his head out of his ass and fight back. From there, Sonic and Samus were absolutely dead even for the final two minutes. Attention quickly went to the Poll Results Page, as well as everyone's Refresh buttons. The two went back and forth at each other like true warriors with everything they had, and the only man who could stop them was CJayC himself. After one of the biggest and best fights in the history of the contest, the poll closed. When the dust settled, we learned that Samus managed to complete her comeback by being lucky enough to have a lead of 34 votes upon the closing of the poll. Sonic gave Samus everything he had in those final few minutes, but Samus simply had too much momentum going for her to lose after making up such a large gap in such a short time. Not that anyone on our board was happy about it, of course. Of all the board explosions you people have ever seen, none of them can compare to some of what went down in 2002. After the poll was closed, CJayC created a topic to state that the results were official and that Samus was the victor. This place went absolutely insane afterwards. Most close matches have somewhat equal support on both sides, but on this board, nearly everyone was rooting for Sonic. People were so upset at the fact that no cheating was detected in such a large-scale comeback that they went berserk all over the place. It got so bad that there were a mass of moderations and even threats to sue CJayC. CJayC noticed all of this, and created a *second* topic to state that the results were final. The only other time I can recall CJayC making more than one topic in such a match was for Starcraft vs SSBM, and those who were here for that particular match can guess how a board almost double the size it is today would have reacted to such a surprising match. About half the board were rooting for SSBM. Next to no one was rooting for Samus, and with a board so large during a contest so unpredictable, one can only imagine what was going on that night. The complaints were so noticeable and so plentiful that no one seemed to notice that fact that the highly anticipated Sephiroth/Mega Man duel was underway, and that Mega Man had jumped out to the early lead. But even then, the Mega Man match took a back seat to the Sonic/Samus backlash. That only goes to show just how large the backlash truly was. The obvious question to ask was how in the world this could have happened. It was nice seeing such an amazing comeback, but the way it happened was questionable at best. CJayC may have said that there was no cheating, but it's not like anyone believed him when he said it. Samus became the dark fly on everyone's bracket that everyone began rooting against from here on in. Cheating or not, Sonic was (and still is) beloved by the board and people did not take his loss lightly. Even to this day, you'll find a select group of people who refuse to believe that he actually lost that match. On the winner's side of things, Samus pulled off something that we may very well never see again. A 1500 vote gap being sliced off in less than three hours is no easy feat, and the ending was so surprising that one of the GF servers crashed due to the massive refreshing. Because of Samus's surprising closing speed, it would be Samus, not Sonic, facing off against the Mega Man/Sephiroth winner. No matter what truly went down during this match, it is difficult to deny the impact that it would have not only on the 2002 contest, but every contest afterwards as well. Fun facts: - Because of the server crash, a 15 minute poll update was soon implemented to prevent future similar server crashes in the future. - Three 1 seeds all lost in a row, and all of them lost to the respective 5 seeds in their division. - The 34 vote margin of victory stood all the way until the Summer 2004 Contest, when it was broken by Ryu Hayabusa vs Jill Valentine's 27 votes, and it was then broken again by Master Chief/Frog's 7 votes. - Despite the upset, Samus's odds of winning the contest were actually higher than Sonic's. Crono's win over Lara Croft actually had a higher prediction percentage. - These two wound up going at it again in 2004, but this was after Samus had Prime/Fusion/Zero under her belt; she easily kicked the crap out of Sonic with her newfound strength. - Lastly, this match scored 84,000 votes despite only running for 22 hours. Speaking of those 22 hours, do not forget that the loss of the first two hours may have cost Sonic the match. There is no doubt that Sonic would have received a sizeable mass of board votes early, which may have very well allowed the lead to be a possible 200-300 votes higher, possibly even more, come the time of Samus' eventual comeback. What I truly found amazing about this match was the fact that Sephiroth vs Mega Man was playing out in shocking fashion early on, yet no one seemed to notice. The Sonic/Samus backlash was that crazy. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Mega Man vs (7)Sephiroth 2002 _source: (6)Mega Man vs (7)Sephiroth 2002 (revid 88733)_ ## Results Sunday, August 25th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 25th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 987 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 55.74% (9,344 brackets) The worst part of the Sonic/Samus fiasco was the fact that the match that took place directly afterwards didn't get nearly the attention it deserved for a rather long time. As many people postulated before the match started, Mega Man vs Sephiroth was a complete toss-up. Both characters were absolute monsters going in, and once the match started, they went at each other with everything they had. Unfortunately for Sephiroth, the strength Mega Man showed in the first two rounds was no joke. Not only was Mega Man giving Sephiroth a fight early despite Sephiroth's best efforts, but Mega Man was actually winning the match and pulling away. The match wasn't getting the necessary attention early on, but once people noticed that Sephiroth was actually losing, it wasn't long before there was a massive fanboy war going on. Mega Man, despite being an underdog coming in even though he was arguably doing better than Sephiroth through two rounds, absolutely shocked everyone early in this match. Everyone figured that Mega Man may keep it close, but few actually figured that he could win. Sephiroth managed to give Mega Man all he could handle, but after half the poll was over, Mega Man found himself ahead by just over 700 votes. All Mega had to do to win was to continue what he was doing for another 12 hours, and he would walk home with inarguably the single biggest upset of the entire contest. However, Sephiroth would not go down quite that easily. Halfway through the poll, Sephiroth managed to stop Mega Man's advance completely, and soon thereafter, the nightmare that was a Sephiroth comeback --- at least, it sucked for those who were rooting for the upset --- began. As well as Mega Man did in building his 700 vote lead, Sephiroth sliced it away like it was nothing. By the time the afternoon was over, Sephiroth had tied the match and had begun building his own lead on Mega Man. Mega was never able to fully recover, and despite all his best efforts, Sephiroth was simply too much for him down the stretch. The match ended with Sephiroth pulling a swing of over 1700 votes over the final 12 hours of the poll, and even though Sephiroth wound up winning the match, a world of questions opened up about how strong he truly was in this contest. If it took everything Sephiroth had just to take down Mega Man, how would he manage to take down Link, or even Samus for that matter? Only time would tell. Remember, at the time we didn't understand things like "Final Fantasy 7 has a great day vote". We just saw a 700 vote lead for Mega Man and hoped he would keep it going. But it's damned difficult to look at such an amazing match and give Sephiroth all the credit. Sephiroth was not only expected to win that particular match, but many expected him to roll through the contest as well. To see Mega Man give Sephiroth such an amazing fight through the first half of that poll was amazing, and even though he lost, Mega Man went out of this contest with a bang. He came close to beating a heavily favored character, and may have wound up exposing him in the process. The truly unfortunate thing about this match is where it took place. It was sandwiched between Sonic/Samus and Mario/Cloud, and doesn't get the proper credit for being one of the best matches of the contest, simply because of where it was in the bracket. Then again, there is a bright side. Because the match was decided before the end of the poll (unlike Sonic/Samus), the imminent showdown between Mario and Cloud was given every bit the support and hype necessary. Sephiroth and Mega Man were nice, but compared to what was about to happen, they were but a side show. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis The hype for this match was, quite literally, deafening. The first two rounds saw both characters evenly matched on paper, both with two commanding blowouts and what many thought was a comparable level of popularity. Sephiroth was still the favorite, but some people thought Mega Man could put up a legitimate fight. And put up a fight he did. In the aftermath of the Sonic vs. Samus debacle, most didn’t notice that Mega Man was quietly pulling away a lead on Sephiroth. The one-winged angel would eventually come back and put Mega Man away, but it was still close enough that anything could have happened, and the margin of victory was impossibly slim for what may felt was an easy win for Sephy. Mega Man really went out with a bang here – of all his matches over the years, this may have been the one where he looked the best. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (2)Cloud Strife 2002 _source: (1)Mario vs (2)Cloud Strife 2002 (revid 88734)_ ## Results Monday, August 26th, 2002 - **Round:** North Division Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 26th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 277 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 44.24% (7,416 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis Considering the two matches that had just passed, it would be difficult for any match to draw the attention away from what had just happened. But along came the much-anticipated Mario/Cloud duel, and suddenly everyone forgot what had just went down. For many people, the entire contest rested on this one match. For others who were already out of the contest, this is the one match they wanted to see. For the rest, a complete lack of order was the main desire. Everyone got all they wanted and then some from this matchup. There was a massive vote total on both sides, likely cheating on both sides, supposed admissions of vote-stuffing that went unpunished, massive amounts of spamming, and of course, a two day long board explosion that saw this board reach its busiest point ever. By the time the purge hit, this match generated well over 100 pages of topics and well over 100,000 posts. It was that crazy. When the bracket was first released, it was somewhat obvious that the relatively weak North division would come down to Mario and Cloud. There was simply no one else to get in their way of each other, and after two rounds, it looked like Cloud would be able to take down Mario. His vote totals were higher than Mario's. In the third round, however, Mario's killing of Donkey Kong paired with a Cloud performance against Alucard not up to par with his first two matches put this match in the air once again. There was absolutely no way to know who would win this thing. After the massive board explosion of Sonic/Samus, the massive anti-Square whining of Mega Man/Sephiroth, and the massive anticipation of Mario/Cloud, there was only one thing left to do; 1 AM EST was closing in fast, and the match from hell was about to begin. When the poll first opened, Mario had to do all he could just to prevent Cloud from steamrolling him from the start. Cloud wasn't the hated character who gave up the early lead in every match like he is now; in fact, he was rather well-liked back in 2002. But despite Mario's efforts to grab the early lead, Cloud eventually weathered the storm and started taking the advantage. His lead was small at first, but he was eventually able to begin increasing it. As the match went on, Mario was fighting back less and less, to the point where Cloud was able to stretch out his lead into the hundreds without much in the way of resistance. This pattern continued all through the night, and Cloud continued to do well even as the morning vote --- a vote that usually favors Sega and Nintendo --- began. By the time the match was well into the morning hours, Cloud had built a lead of 1000 votes, and it looked as if Mario was going to be unable to do much about Cloud's eventual victory. It was at this point however that everything began to completely collapse for Cloud's momentum. First of all, this match took place on the very day that Super Mario Sunshine was released. This didn't matter for the early parts of the match, but once everyone who went out to buy the game came to GameFAQs to seek help, a massive amount of people who may not have noticed that a poll was even going on began to vote for Mario. This stalled Cloud's advance, and gave those rooting for Mario hope that Mario at least had some life left in the match. But Super Mario Sunshine alone was not enough to take down the mighty Cloud in this matchup. Mario getting votes at the same rate as Cloud didn't mean much; he had to actually overtake him. This is where www.planetgamecube.com comes in. PGCN is a Nintendo-loving site that eventually took notice of the contest. When they noticed their hero losing by 1000 votes, they couldn't help but put a direct link to our contest on their home page. That was all Mario needed to begin his comeback. Aided by PGCN, the typical Nintendo day vote, and Super Mario Sunshine, Cloud literally found himself going up against Super Mario himself. Mario would likely be unable to take down Cloud on any other day, but on this day, he had everything he needed to get back into the match. The comeback was slow at first, but once everything started clicking on all cylinders, Mario was able to begin a methodical siphoning of Cloud's lead that would last all the way until the end of the match. Unfortunately for Mario, despite everything going his way, his comeback may not have been fast enough to allow him to come back and win the match. When the evening rolled around, Mario was still down by a few hundred votes despite the massive effort to get him back into the match during the afternoon. But then, out of literally no where, Mario went on a massive push to not only tie Cloud, but to pull ahead of him by 200 votes. The push looked odd, and it was, considering how slowly Mario had come back in the first place. But even still, Mario was only up by 200 votes, and he still had to hold off Cloud for the rest of the match during a time when Square usually does the best. Unfortunately, despite every effort Cloud could have possibly made to come back in the match, Mario was one step ahead of him the rest of the way through. There was simply too much going Mario's way for Cloud to be able to overcome, and no matter what Cloud did for the rest of the match, everything and everyone that was supporting Mario was able to keep Mario's 200 vote shield in tact. Mario would eventually go on to win the match in one of the closest matches you'll ever see in one of these contests, but there were a horde of questions posed after the match was finally over. Face it. Without Mario Sunshine and PGCN, Cloud easily goes on to win this match. This has been accepted by most of the board, and is evidenced by Mario's crappy performances in 2003 and 2004. That said, I can accept these things happening. Rallies were all part of the game even back then, though CJayC laid the hammer down on PGCN after the match was over. Even to this day, you'll be banned from PGCN if you try to go there and spam. As for Mario Sunshine, the odds of another big-time match taking place on the exact day of a release partial to the match itself is next to zero. (Spoilers, it did manage to happen again. What are the odds? ) My issue comes with the 500 vote surge in the evening. After the match was over (and assuming you could even find it among the massive amounts of posts/topics), a screenshot began floating around the board from an online game named Graal. The screenshot was pretty much someone saying that Mario would not lose, due to him having 500 proxy votes ready for Mario at any time during the match. There was also an accompanying chat log with the same Graal player that showed the same admissions. Could Mario have won without a supposed 500 proxy votes? Of course. He was well on his way to coming back anyway, and there was no evidence of a Square evening vote back in 2002. Even if these 500 proxies existed but never happened, Mario and Cloud didn't stall until after the surge. There is little reason to believe that the supposed proxies couldn't have been made up by people simply spamming for Mario. I saw people spamming for this match on pogo.com, for crying out loud. Were there, in fact, 500 cheated votes? No one knows. The problem with the screenshots is that they could have been easily faked by an angry Cloud fan looking for a way to get Cloud the win regardless, and even if they were true, the match would have long since been over by the time CJayC got a look at any e-mails regarding them. There is also the matter of a certain Sonic/Samus match two days before in which CJayC had already gotten loads of practice at scanning the IP addresses for suspicious activity. It's hard to believe that he didn't do the same for Mario/Cloud. But despite any and all suspicions about the match, the results were official regardless, and in an odd way, this one match compared with Cloud/Link in 2003 may have kept our contests around. Had Cloud won, there is no doubt that we would have seen a Cloud/Link final in 2002. And there was a Cloud/Link final in 2004. And there was essentially a Cloud/Link final in 2003. Mario/Cloud proves that on any given day, you can't know what will happen. You can guess with the latest in mathematical analysis, but you simply can't know. That's what's keeping the contest going to this day, I think. Every bracket will feature a Starcraft, Mario, or Sora that simply refuses to be gauged correctly. There is one final thing to think about, and then I'm moving on. No matter who would have won between Mario and Cloud, had the match been symmetrically reversed in every conceivable way, Mario fans would have been every bit as upset as Cloud fans were. To accuse Cloud's fans of being idiots for defending Cloud after looking at the facts is foolish. Not that Cloud wouldn't get more than enough revenge in 2003 or anything. ## Stats and Analysis The greatest all-time contest match is Mario vs. Cloud. On a website where we’ve seen over 500 contest polls since 2002, I personally feel that a match needs a combination of factors to set itself apart and truly be considered a classic. No one match exemplifies a combination of these factors better than Mario/Cloud, and here's a funtabulous list of reasons why! ### Key for Classic Status \#1: Hype and big-game feel. We’ve had several matches that have been decided by fewer votes. Frog/Master Chief was decided by seven. Liquid/Alucard was decided by three. Jill Valentine lost by 27 *twice*. All great matches, no doubt, but all would have been greater had we cared more. Whether people want to admit it or not, hype plays a pivotal pole in differentiating from a good close match and a close match for the ages, and Mario/Cloud is inarguably (don’t even try to argue it!) one of the two most hyped, anticipated matches in contest history. Link/Cloud? Halo/Starcraft? Mario/Samus? The Legend of Zelda/Final Fantasy? All child’s play. The only match which contends with Mario/Cloud from a purely hype-o-thetical (hahahahaha) standpoint is FFVII/OoT, and unlike that snoozefest, this one actually lived up to the hype. Yes, people were waiting on pins and needles for this match. We were all wide-eyed contest virgins, and this match represented the face of Nintendo going up against the face of Square. Seven years prior, when CJayC established GameFAQs, the cosmic gears started turning, and the strings of time plucked themselves in a way that would give us Mario/Cloud on this day, as if to decide our collective fates. It was that big. I was a 16-year-old Nintendo fanboy who had never played a Square game. The very thought of god damned Mario losing to a spikey-haired, effeminate looking character I barely knew (and, truth be told, I didn’t even know who his buddy, Sephiroth, was when the contest began) had my blood already set to pre-boil. There were many others like me on both sides. I got to Board 8 on the contest’s second day, and Mario/Cloud was already the one match on everybody’s lips. The unprecedented big-game feel, coupled with the fact that Cloud actually looked like the favorite going into it, gave us hype that may never be equaled. Truly an awesome sight, and I wish everyone on the board now would have been there to see it. ### Key for Classic Status \#2: Uhh… match itself better be great. This kinda goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway so that this little write-up will have more than two or three Keys for Classic Status. =P You can have all the hype in the world, but unless the match isn’t great, you won’t be remembered very fondly, or, even worse, won’t be remembered at all. The best example of this is the one match that I feel actually rivals this in hype, Final Fantasy VII/Ocarina of Time. Like this match, it was the one clash of the polarizing titans that everyone couldn’t help but get all up for in 2004. While it wasn’t as much of a complete toss-up as my favorite match, the fact that Ocarina was an absolute wrecking ball heading into the damn thing nearly made it so. Thus, the unexciting 54/46 result felt like the entire board letting out a big, tired beer fart in unison. Not very nice. This match, like I’ve said before, actually lived up to and exceeded the hype. To tell you guys the truth, I don’t remember too many specifics from the match itself. We don’t have poll updates from back then, fewer and fewer people remain who can recall it, and it did happen over five years ago. Still, I remember going insane at the very beginning, when Mario jumped out to a big lead in the opening seconds (something that we’d see a mile away had this match taken place in 2007), and at the very end, when it was totally up in the air. With a fantastic battle raging on in the front page, the board was a madhouse all day, with Nintendo and Square fans ready to rip each other a new one or two or three. It wasn’t until the final few minutes (seconds?) when Mario did the deed, pulling ahead of Cloud in a comeback fashion and giving us a finish he’d come to be known for. For some, it was bliss. For others, it was \*\*\*\*ing bull\*\*\*\*. For everyone, it was history. ### Key to Classic Status \#3: Controversy! Yeah, I guess you don’t need it, but oh boy oh boy congratulations if you can get it. Controversy, coupled up with hype and a good match, will ensure you with something that will be remembered for the ages. To this day, I feel the few matches that can objectively compete with this one for the title of best ever are Mario/Crono II, Starcraft/Halo, Starcraft/Wind Waker, and Frog/Master Chief. What do all these matches have in common? CONTROVERSY. Mario’s infamous after-hours comeback against Crono, Battle.net’s rallying that has turned into the stuff of legends, and Frog’s miracle comeback – these matches all had some people screaming “WTF is this \*\*\*\*?!?!?!” and others rejoicing “haha, when MY guy cheats, it’s A-OK!!lol!!!” And when it comes to controversy, boys and girls, no match can contend with Mario/Cloud. I’m talking barrel loads of controversy. Truckfulls. God damned gobfulls. Heaping helpings of controversy! Gobs and gobs of the stuff! Mmmm it was delicious. For those of you unfamiliar with the legend surrounding this match, let me take this opportunity to blow your minds: Super Mario Sunshine launched on the day of the match. Yes, Mario got his first true platformer in six years on match day. If you believe in some all-powerful GameFAQs contest god, this fact better be the one you use most to back up your ridiculous claims, because it was inexplicable. I mean, how does something like that even happen? Coincidence? Nintendo conspiracy? No, it smacks of cosmic interference, and it proves that the forces governing the universe itself hate Cloud’s guts. Pwned. In addition to getting his biggest game since Mario 64 right on cue, Mario also received help from several Nintendo-friendly sites linking to the poll. The most notable of these was the large Planet Gamecube community, and to this day, when someone so much as utters “Planet Gamecube,” a contest old-timer will immediately know what you’re talkin’ about, and will either shower you with candies or throw his plastic teeth at you thusly. It all made for a very controversial match, and the only match from our first contest which still gets serious consideration as the best ever. ### Key to Classic Status \#4: That… certain something. I don’t think I can explain it, which makes me wonder why I just put in a bolded title trying to. Despite all the classics we’ve had over the years, I feel that Mario/Cloud has an essence that sets it apart. It’s that special mystique that a crappy writer like me could never capture in words. Something very special that you guys just had to experience for yourselves. I suppose the best way to try and paint a picture of this is to imagine what would happen if some of the all-time greats were to happen again today. Starcraft’s matches? They could go either way. Chrono Trigger/Link to the Past? Either way. Mario/Cloud? An absolute embarrassment. Even if he pulls an infamous overperformance from his big butt, Mario would get killed, and I think we all know it. It’s this realization that makes the match special. After five years of theories, analysis, and evidence, we realize that what happened in 2002 should not have happened. Cloud should have crushed Mario and gone on to challenge (and possibly defeat?) Link. But he lost. He didn’t lose to Mario Sunshine, or the various poll-linking, or even to Mario himself. He lost to the will of the people, the people that refused to see their gaming icon, the face of video games themselves, lose on what was easily GameFAQs’ most historic day. The fact that Mario and Cloud have never fought since, coupled with the fact that a rematch would feel so very unsatisfying, only accentuates this battle’s greatness. ### Mario vs. Cloud, 2002: The greatest contest match in GameFAQs history. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Crono vs (2)Solid Snake 2002 _source: (5)Crono vs (2)Solid Snake 2002 (revid 88735)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 27th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** East Division Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 27th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 5,820 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 14.63% (2,452 brackets) That prediction percentage is the second-lowest of the entire contest, bested only by the finals. Remember that. The warning signs of Crono being capable of this were all over the place, from his *killing* of Dante to his slaughter of Lara Croft. There are defeats of one seeds, but a win of 70%+ on a 1 seed is insane. Pair this up with Snake's performance on Aeris, and you have the chance of a monumental upset. Remember, no one really knew what Crono was capable of coming into this contest. People just assumed that Dante and Croft sucked. Everyone sure as hell noticed how strong Crono was when he started easy winning against Solid Snake, however. Remember, Solid Snake was one of Board 8's most favored characters. When Crono started the match on fire in the manner that he did, people were shocked. And despite how close the final results look, this match played out like an Alucard/Tails in that Snake was simply never in any contention of actually winning the match. It's a shame too, because 2002 was probably the year when Snake was at his best and had the best chance to win. (Spoilers, his best chance was 2013, and he absolutely wins that contest without the Draven rally because the final would have been Link, Snake, and Samus.) As for Crono, he was like the 2004 Boston Red Sox. As the contest wore on, he grew stronger to the point where it would take an act of God to keep him down. Luckily for God, he had Mario in his back pocket come Crono's next match. If Cloud couldn't beat Mario, there was no way that Crono would be able to do it. Crono had a nice run in making it to the Final Four, but there was little chance of him doing much else. Mario's pass to the finals was all but secured as was, but without Solid Snake to worry about, Mario could start thinking of how to win the last match in this contest. Lee Corso: "NOT SO FAST, my friend!" • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Scorpion vs (2)Link 2002 _source: (5)Scorpion vs (2)Link 2002 (revid 67691)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 28th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** South Division Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 28th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 47,553 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 57.01% (9,557 brackets) Yeah, like Scorpion had any chance. This match was a testament to how crappy the South division was more than anything else. When you see this big a blowout in a divisional final, you know something is wrong. There are only two notable things about this match. One, Link's vote total was the highest of the contest by far. Two, if Link somehow managed to win his Final Four match and make it into the finals, it would be hard to imagine him not winning the contest outright. Link is not the type of character to receive the ass end of SFF at the hands of Mario, and if Link were to get by Sephiroth, it's hard to imagine Crono beating him. And even if Samus were to beat Sephiroth, we would likely get a taste of how "well" Mario would do against him. Mario may be the \#1 Nintendo character, but not on GameFAQs. Link essentially only had to worry about Sephiroth beating him at this point. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Samus Aran vs (7)Sephiroth 2002 _source: (5)Samus Aran vs (7)Sephiroth 2002 (revid 82873)_ ## Results Thursday, August 29th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** West Division Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 29th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 5,130 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 38.34% (6,428 brackets) Both Samus and Sephiroth struggled to win their previous matches, but considering how big a favorite Sephiroth was (on Board 8) to win his division from the start, most expected Sephiroth to roll over Samus en route to a showdown with Link. Little did most people know that Samus, despite not having a game released in eight years, was more than powerful enough to hold her own. Take the beginning of this match, for example. Samus performed brilliantly through the first couple of hours. Not only did she prevent Sephiroth from rolling over her in the match, but she actually took a lead of 500 votes. On *Sephiroth*. Sephiroth would eventually rebound, however. Much like Samus's 100 vote lead on Cloud in the Summer 2004 Contest, her 500 vote lead on Sephiroth disappeared in a flash. Not only was Sephiroth able to come back with ease, but he was able to make this match far less interesting than his duel with Mega Man. He soon tied the match with ease, and before Samus could even think about what happened, Sephiroth was able to stretch out a lead that Samus would be unable to recover from. Samus may have lost the match, but one could argue that the damage done to Sephiroth was extensive at this point. If he had this type of a struggle against Samus, one could only imagine what Link would be able to do to him. You could almost argue that the contest itself was over at this point, if you look from a transitive point of view. If Sephiroth couldn't beat Link, who would? Hats off to Samus, by the way. Not only did she prove that her comeback against Sonic was no fluke, but she also gave Sephiroth the fight of his life early on in the match with *her last game being Super Metroid* prior to the 2002 contest. That's amazing, and one could only wonder what she was capable of afterwards. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (5)Crono 2002 _source: (1)Mario vs (5)Crono 2002 (revid 88736)_ ## Results Friday, August 30th, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Semifinal - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 30th, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 115 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 30.96% (5,190 brackets) Considering the fact that Mario had just defeated Cloud, there was no way in the world Crono should have been able to stand toe to toe with the icon of video games; Final Fantasy 7 \> Chrono Trigger on GameFAQs, after all. In fact, most people were writing in Mario's ticket to the finals at this point, considering that it was nearly impossible for Crono to win this match. Not that this stopped people from rooting against Mario, of course. Cloud was absolutely beloved by this board back in 2002, and the board did not take his loss well. As futile an effort as it may have seemed, Crono got a hefty chunk of support from the Cloud faithful during this match. Unfortunately, it didn't help nearly as much as expected. When the poll first opened, despite any and all effort for Crono to put up a fight, Mario simply proved to be too much. He survived the early struggle from Crono, and eventually weathered the storm before stretching out a lead of a few hundred votes. Crono fans tried all they could to keep him in the match, but as the morning and afternoon voting blocks rolled in, Mario was easily able to keep Crono down en route to building a lead of just over 1000 votes. Crono kept trying to fight back, but Mario constantly proved to be too much for him and kept any and all would-be comeback attempts at bay. Still, it was a true shock to even see Crono this close. Mario was expected to roll over him by most people, and seeing Crono even this close was a moral victory in and of itself. Not that moral victories matter or anything. But then, out of nowhere, the absolute unthinkable began to happen. Mario took on a complete role reversal from the Mario that was able to come back against Cloud. Crono not only put a few pauses into Mario's lead push, but he actually began to make a comeback effort of his own. It didn't take long for everyone to take notice of what was going on, and before long, an absolute Crono mania took over the boards. It was warranted, as well. People viewed Mario was a huge villain after his defeat of Cloud, and with each 100 vote cut into Mario's lead by Crono, the board grew ever the more insane. Unlike what Mario was able to do against Cloud, he was completely unable to hold Crono down. As the poll began drawing to a close, Crono was coming back with more and more momentum, to the point where it was almost certain that he would be able to take a lead. Finally, the update everyone was waiting for took place. Crono took the lead against the seemingly infallible Mario, and all he had to do was hang on for a short while longer to pull of inarguably the biggest upset of the contest. Enter CJayC. He created a topic telling us that Crono's magical comeback effort was a sham perpetrated by someone with knowledge of Script, and took 400 votes away from Crono. This was just enough to give Mario the win, because despite the fact that Crono kept his momentum going, there simply wasn't enough time left for him to complete a comeback effort. This allowed Mario to take home a close win, but don't tell anyone on the board that Mario's win was legit. People were still seething over his win against Cloud, and given the recent events, a massive board explosion ensued; most topics were calling for CJayC's head. Two years later, in the Spring 2004 Contest, we were given a bit more insight into what truly happened with Crono that day. During one of Starcraft's matches (slips my mind which; I believe it was WW/SC), CJayC mentioned that the only time he ever removed votes was when someone found a glitch in the system that allowed him to vote 3000 times. There was only one match when CJayC ever removed votes, and that was Mario/Crono. CJayC essentially admitted that the Crono vote-stuffer cheated Crono 3000 votes, not a mere 400. Why CJayC decided to remove a mere 400, who knows. But after reading the post, it's difficult to think that Crono was kept in this match by the power of his will alone. Even after Crono's 400 votes were removed, the 2002 X-stats have him being stronger than Cloud, which simply makes no sense. Regardless, the legend that was Mario vs Crono was born, and we've had a taste of it in every contest since. As for 2002, Mario was, as expected, in the finals. Whether or not he would win remained to be seen. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis The semifinals of the first contest had seen arguably the finest Cinderella run in contest history until L-Block came around: Crono. Practically no one expected Crono to make it out of Round Two against Dante, let alone beat gaming icons Lara Croft and Solid Snake (and to a lesser extent, Simon Belmont). And here was this match, where Crono almost did the unthinkable and beat the gaming icon himself and the undisputed favorite to win the whole shebang, Mario. Sadly, this was not meant to be. This was one of the only times CJayC actually intervened and took votes away from a particular entrant, in this case removing about 300 votes from Crono for blatant vote-stuffery. Still, the excitement and thrill of the best contest rivalry (besides Gordon Freeman and winning) had begun. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Link vs (7)Sephiroth 2002 _source: (2)Link vs (7)Sephiroth 2002 (revid 88737)_ ## Results Saturday, August 31st, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Semifinal - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 31st, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 13,676 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 30.63% (5,135 brackets) As hyped as this match was, one could essentially have called it in Link's favor after Sephiroth's struggle with Samus. If Sephiroth had such a large problem with arguably only Nintendo's third strongest character, then how was he supposed to take down Link himself? Sephiroth defenders tried arguing that this would be another Mario/Cloud affair, but it would be nothing of the sort. Link began the match on fire, and proceeded to lay the hammer down all the way until the end of the poll. The only thing Sephiroth had going for him in the match was his match picture. But even then, it was a bit iffy. Seph looked very blurry here despite the sword being a *unit*, and Link had his badass SSBM arrow pose. Link essentially won the contest with this match, and it was unfortunate for yours truly. Link is the one character whose matches are all easy to analyse. Link is a monster, barely anyone can lay a hand on him, end of story, time for some pie. Simple as that. Link may have had a weak division, but his beating of Sephiroth this soundly simply couldn't be ignored. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (2)Link 2002 _source: (1)Mario vs (2)Link 2002 (revid 88738)_ ## Results Sunday, September 1st, 2002 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 1st, 2002 - **Vote difference:** 24,619 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 12.77% (2,140 brackets) An amazing contest came to a close with about as boring a final as you could have. It was all Nintendo before our board was ever pro Nintendo in the first place. Even worse is the fact that Link confirmed what many figured out long before this match took place. On GameFAQs, he is Nintendo's \#1 character. Mario had little chance despite being the favored character in the contest, and the final was a testament to this. Link was virtually unstoppable in 2002, though it would have been nicer to see him have a more difficult path. His only difficult match was against Sephiroth; Mario had barely any chance whatsoever on our site. The shocking thing here was the prediction percentage. I know it was the first contest, but for Link to come out of left field for this many people is quite a surprise. All that remained was the future, and this contest was such a hit that we would see many, many more of them. • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Summer 2003 Character Contest _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 63 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Summer 2003 Contest _source: Summer 2003 Contest (revid 80271)_
Summer 2003 Contest

Started:

July 1, 2003

Ended:

September 3, 2003

Winner:

Cloud

Contest Winner:

Leo0820 (183/192 points)

Notable matches:

Kefka/Pac-Man, Ganon/Magus

Squall/Luigi, Vercetti/DK

Mario/Crono, Link/Cloud
**Summer 2003 Contest** The **Summer 2003 Contest** was the second Summer Contest in GameFAQs history, and is also known as **Character Battle II**. It is considered by some to be the best Character Battle in GameFAQs history. ### See Also 2003 Contest Matches - complete writeups on every poll from the second annual Character Battle ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
North Division Link Samus Aran Link Cloud Strife Cloud Strife Sephiroth Cloud Strife
\(1\) Link (16) AiAi Link Fox McCloud Link Magus
\(8\) Pikachu (9) Fox McCloud
\(5\) Tidus (12) Ganondorf Ganondorf Magus
\(4\) Sam Fisher (13) Magus
\(6\) Squall Leonhart (11) Jill Valentine Squall Leonhart Luigi Squall Leonhart Samus Aran
\(3\) Luigi (14) Ratchet
\(7\) KOS-MOS (10) Crash Bandicoot KOS-MOS Samus Aran
\(2\) Samus Aran (15) Isaac
East Division Cloud Strife Sonic the Hedgehog
\(1\) Cloud Strife (16) CATS Cloud Strife Auron Cloud Strife Bowser
\(8\) Auron (9) Tails
\(5\) Bowser (12) Ness Bowser Yoshi
\(4\) Yoshi (13) Conker
\(6\) Sora (11) Aeris Aeris Master Chief Aeris Sonic the Hedgehog
\(3\) Master Chief (14) Felix
\(7\) Zero (10) Scorpion Zero Sonic the Hedgehog
\(2\) Sonic the Hedgehog (15) Ken Masters
South Division Mario Sephiroth Sephiroth Mega Man
\(1\) Mario (16) Captain Olimar Mario Shadow the Hedgehog Mario Crono
\(8\) Wario (9) Shadow the Hedgehog
\(5\) Pac-Man (12) Kefka Kefka Crono
\(4\) Crono (13) Tom Nook
\(6\) Alucard (11) Bomberman Alucard Kirby Alucard Sephiroth
\(3\) Kirby (14) Ramza
\(7\) Gordon Freeman (10) Max Payne Max Payne Sephiroth
\(2\) Sephiroth (15) Raziel
West Division Solid Snake Mega Man
\(1\) Solid Snake (16) Raiden Solid Snake Knuckles Solid Snake Ryu
\(8\) Knuckles (9) Yuna
\(5\) Ryu (12) Duke Nukem Ryu Dante
\(4\) Dante (13) Ryo Hazuki
\(6\) Donkey Kong (11) Vyse Donkey Kong Tommy Vercetti Tommy Vercetti Mega Man
\(3\) Tommy Vercetti (14) Kite
\(7\) Lara Croft (10) Zelda Zelda Mega Man
\(2\) Mega Man (15) Mr. Resetti
Note: This is the only site-wide 1v1 Character Battle tournament as of yet in which Link has actually lost a battle (to eventual winner Cloud Strife). ## Results and Analysis ### Interesting Facts - The Ultimate Loser in 2003 was Ryo Hazuki. Ryo lost to Dante, who lost to Ryu, who lost to Snake, who lost to Megaman, who lost to Sephiroth, who lost to Cloud. - Only six of the 64 characters in this contest haven't appeared in another one since. ### Ulti's Analysis The hype for the sequel to follow Summer 2002's smash success had finally dawned upon the site, and for those who don't remember, this was the first contest in which a formal nomination form was created. Summer 2002's nominations were all done in a topic on Current Events, but in 2003 CJayC polled all willing to fill the form out for ten nominations each. The results were a very well-balanced bracket, though before the contest started most people felt that Summer 2003 would be too easy. Link absolutely dominated the field in Summer 2002, and the main complaint this time around would be that everyone would have perfect brackets and that the tiebreaker would decide who won it all. People were also complaining that Link would win the contest too easily and that there was no real point in holding another one. Yeah, right. The 2003 field was a good one thanks to more public nominations, and gone were all of the cult characters and obscure fighting game characters that hardly anyone had heard of. The field featured a Nintendo-dominated field and characters that were more mainstream, but a few lesser-knowns still slipped through the cracks. Pay close attention to how this contest was, because it was the last of its kind. The dawn of the extrapolated standings and creativename's dominance of the 2003 Oracle Challenge (which he credits the stats for, though he didn't reveal his method until after the contest) caused everyone else to want to be equally good at predicting matches. This led to a tool that is useful, but sucks all of the unknown out of these polls. Gone are the days when we simply ask who win. Now we almost always know who wins; it's a matter of what the final percentages are, and the stigma that was in these first two contests hasn't been there since. It's not that the contests grew bad, but the stats deciding everything for us (including how we all debate matches before they happen) takes a lot of the fun out of them. You can't say much of anything anymore without some stat whore trying to correct you. This was also the final contest to feature the classic GameFAQs layout and 15 minute poll updates. One died during Soul Calibur/Kingdom Hearts in the first round of the Spring 2004 Contest, the other died in Metroid Prime/Half-Life directly after. On the brighter side of things, the contests still existing is a plus, as is the fact that Summer 2005 was proof that CJayC is still willing to put insane effort into them. We were all worried there for a bit. CJayC also brought back poll updates, but shortened them to 5 minutes. And now for the standard ranking of the contests: Summer 2002 \> Summer 2003. ### Ngamer's Analysis When the nominations were announced for '03, I was very upset. We'd already seen Characters, and in my mind we should have moved straight to Games with the second full Contest. When the results started rolling in and it eventually became clear that it was going to be Square's year, I was even more upset. But looking back on it, this was a fantastic Contest, perhaps the best of all time. All of '02s fodder meant there were tons of exciting newcomers joining the field, and even though we all thought we were experts on the returning characters, KHF threw a wrench in our plans and gave the whole season a unique new twist. The nomination system created a strong, well-seeded bracket and there were good matches all up and down the board... not much more you could ask for. --- ## (1)Link vs (16)AiAi 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (16)AiAi 2003 (revid 55463)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 1st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 1st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 84,196 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 99.12% (40,697 brackets) One the many lesser-known Nintendo characters to sneak into Summer 2003 was AiAi of Super Monkey Ball fame, and this is where the much-hyped Summer 2003 Contest kicked off. Much like Summer 2002, the first match wasn't about who would win, but by how much the favorite would win by. Link was the overwhelming favorite going into this thing (if odds were created, Link's would have been lower than 1.5:1, which is RIDICULOUS), and even with CJayC announcing that he would use Wind Waker pics in all of Link's matches Link still looked every bit the contest favorite in his first match. Breaking 90,000 votes was absolutely unheard of in 2002, yet Link broke that with ease in this match. The match itself also managed to break 100,000 total votes, which was also nearly unheard of in 2002. But above all was Link breaking the 90% barrier, a feat that only the true elites will ever have the chance to see, and starting this contest off by letting everyone know that he was the character to beat going in. Granted this may have had a little bit of SFF attached, but 90% is difficult to break regardless of who the opponent was. All that there was left to do from here was to soak in the blowout, welcome in a new contest and see what would happen next. • **(No Previous Match)**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Pikachu vs (9)Fox McCloud 2003 _source: (8)Pikachu vs (9)Fox McCloud 2003 (revid 88740)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 36,894 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fox McCloud - 57.41% (23,573 brackets) We got our first debated match of the contest fairly early, though you have to wonder what the big deal was going into this. For whatever reason, many people felt that Pikachu (who barely beat *PaRappa the Rapper* in 2002) stood a good chance to win this despite both characters sharing an opponent in 2002: Cloud Strife. [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=947) [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=975) I'm fairly sure that SFF wasn't a largely discussed factor back in the early parts of 2003, so it came down to simple extrapolation to see who had the advantage in this match. There was also the little matter of Pikachu being one of the only characters in which anti-voting actually made a difference, and when factored in with him going up against a character from his own company (which would later be known as the fabled SFF) his odds of winning were next to zero. Another reason that many a Pikachu supporter held (and this would bite many a bracketmaker in the ass multiple times through this contest) was the FAQ list on the homepage. Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire was all the rage during this contest, and people didn't yet know that FAQ hits on the home page meant squat. The people who were rooting for Pikachu woke up to quite the surprise in this one, eh? Fox was all over him from the start, and little can be said about this match other than the fact that it was an SFF doubling waiting to happen. I almost wonder how it wasn't an even bigger blowout, given how much Pikachu (and Pokemon in general) was once so hated on this site. As for Fox, though he was destined to get his ass whipped by Link in the second round, he managed to get past his horrendous (at the time) seeding in Summer 2002 and actually win himself a match. It's funny to think about the fact that Fox's blowout win over Pikachu was last time Fox won a match for quite a long while, at least as far as 1v1 is concerned. He couldn't even get into Summer 2005 with the help of Star Fox Assault, being the second best character in SSBM and having no company cap in place. Has Star Fox Adventure actually knocked Fox down so far that we'll never again see him winning matches? On a side note, Fox vs Pikachu in the original Super Smash Brothers would have been a much more entertaining fight than this match. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Tidus vs (12)Ganondorf 2003 _source: (5)Tidus vs (12)Ganondorf 2003 (revid 88741)_ ## Results Thursday, July 3rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 3rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 1,582 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 47.72% (19,595 brackets) We saw our first debated match on the second day of the contest, but it was the third day of this contest that gave us our first taste of "hell yeah, this is awesome". But let's back up for a moment. Despite the 5-12 seeding discrepancy in this match, there was a general consensus about this match (and this fourpack in general, but we'll get into that in a second). Most people felt that Ganon beating Tidus was a lock, for several reasons. Tidus was hated, Ganon was a hyped newcomer (weren't they all back then?), Ganon had SSBM exposure behind him, but most of all, Link had won the Summer 2002 Contest and this was clearly going to allow Ganon to steamroll Tidus en route to a tough second round loss to Magus. There were a few Tidus/Square fans in the mix, but even they had their doubts about whether or not Tidus could actually win this thing. For those who weren't here back in 2003, know that Ganon and Zelda were hyped to such extreme lengths that it's funny to think back on as I type this. (Side Note: Despite the overwhelming belief that Magus would beat Ganon with ease in the second round of this contest, many people were hoping for the "upset" because they wanted to see a "more fun" Link vs Ganondorf match. True story, and Slowflake can attest.) As many of us have come to realize, unexpected close matches are usually the best kind. Ganondorf started off as planned, though there was a slight glitch before we saw actual poll results (the first 100 or so voters got an error message). He was ahead, though not by the dominating numbers that many expected. Still, after Tidus gave Ganon a slight struggle early on, Ganon was able to build a lead in the high hundreds and it seemed as if Tidus's minor early fight in the poll was but a fallacy. Yeah, whoops. We didn't know about voting demographics with relation to the time of day back then, so once people began to see Tidus making a comeback they all went insane. And before thinking that we Summer 2003 fans were all idiots for this, put it in proper perspective. There were no X-Stats, no Square Night Vote, no Zelda Morning Vote, and nothing to suggest anything other than that Tidus's beginnings of a comeback was a simple glitch in the system against the heavily-favored Ganondorf. All we saw was Ganon's lead dropping ever-so-slightly with each passing 15 minute update before Tidus went insane in the early morning hours. Now if this poll happened today, we'd all call the match over once Ganon built a lead of nearly 1000 votes regardless of what Tidus did due to everyone knowing that Zelda dominates in the morning when ALL T3H KIDDAYS WAKE UP omg. But back in 2003, everyone was literally losing their minds and wondering how in the world whimpy little Tidus was even making a game of this, let alone making a comeback that would eventually make it look as if Tidus was going to actually win. It should be noted that this match began the tradition of update topics. Some guy I can't recall made a topic once Tidus began coming back, and his updates looked something like such: Tidus 4000 Ganon 4500 Tidus down by 500 - next update\* Tidus 4100 Ganon 4550 Tidus down by **450** Tidus would eventually slice Ganon's once-massive lead of nearly 1000 votes down to 170 before the two stalled. Ganon then caught fire during the morning vote and was able to pull away by a few hundred, though Tidus was able to make it interesting in spots. However, despite Tidus's best efforts Ganon was able to slowly increase his lead to over 1000, and eventually hundreds more. Tidus was able to use the evening vote (remember that polls closed at 1 AM EST at the time) to stall Ganon, but Tidus was never able to make a game out of the match again. As the match was closing and people realized that Ganon had it safely put away, the talk of the match was the update topic. People who were asleep during all of the best action were beyond grateful for a topic being around that showed how intense the match truly was. A 1600 vote match may not sound like much by today's standards, but back then it was a huge deal; we simply hadn't become so desensitized to such things like we are now. The update topic showing every little detail from every little update was even better for those who weren't insomniacs, and its popularity soared afterwards. It eventually had to have a very specific format, and people fought for claims to the update topics for the rest of the contest, especially for heated matches. Creativename has since created an auto-updater on his site that does all the work for us (and update topics have pretty much become pointless as a result), but nothing beats the drama of the old days. We'd all sit around, refresh like mad every 15 minutes, comment on the results and then flood the update topics with our fanboyism when we weren't busy yelling OMG COMEBACK in new topic titles all over the board. The other, more subtle motif of Tidus's near-upset was how he managed to get that close to such a heavily-favored character in the first place. Or was he even favored at all? This was one of the first cases of Board 8's hardcore contest knowledge almost biting everyone in the ass ("Did you see how easily Link won in 2002? OF COURSE Ganon is going to win this! He might even beat Magus!"), and it's interesting this hasn't gone away yet. There always seems to be a conflict of the casual bracketmaker versus the hardcore when it comes to some matches, and matches like this started all of that. What we felt was obvious in this match was actually the upset, as evidenced by the prediction percentage. We all believed that Ganon was a lock to win, but the reality is that people were split on who the favorite actually was, for several reasons. Square vs Nintendo, Tidus being an FF lead, Ganon being a newbie, the seeding.... the list goes on. Though people got over Tidus's unexpected strength real quick when they realized that Ganon's allowing Tidus to get so close *obviously* meant that their beloved son (Magus) would see no resistance whatsoever en route to the true final of the contest: Link vs Magus. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Sam Fisher vs (13)Magus 2003 _source: (4)Sam Fisher vs (13)Magus 2003 (revid 88742)_ ## Results Friday, July 4th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 4th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 29,732 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Magus - 56.92% (23,370 brackets) Before getting into the background of this match, let me quote Ngamer64 about how weird the beginning of this poll was... "Magus had just the strangest opening of all time... Let me break it down, for history's sake: 1\. The poll opened 22 minutes late, meaning it was being ransacked by about 400 gamers, all trying to get the first vote in, and refreshing 100 times a minute. 2\. The poll finally opened, but with a message saying that Ganon/Tidus was over, and you couldn't vote in it anymore. 3\. The results came online, but Magus was marked as having every single vote... plus 5-15 more added to that! He reached over 103% at one point. 4\. It got really strange here... at the same time as the results changed to show TWO Sam Fishers competing against 1 Magus (who still had more than all the votes), the pic at the front of the page got seriously messed up, stretching to about 50 times its normal size, all the way down the right side of the page. 5\. Normal results finally surfaced, with Magus leading with 72% of the vote with 240 votes cast." With that out of the way, this was the first tune-up for what was supposed to be Magus's dash at taking away Link's crown. Magus was the most hyped character after Summer 2002 due to Crono's success and people feeling that Magus was much more popular. Ergo, here we were. Magus was given a ton of board support during the nomination phase, yet somehow only received a 13 seed. And it was this 13 seed that people blamed for Magus not doing so hot in this match. It wasn't that a near-doubling was bad, but one needed to do a lot better than simply doubling Sam Fisher to have a shot at beating Link. But no matter. People simply blamed seeding and/or bracket voting and went on believing that Magus was the Second Coming. It should be worth noting that right from the beginning, Magus had a problem with starting off very well in his matches, then slowing down as the match went on. He went from being over 70% at the beginning of this to missing out on a doubling. As for Sam Fisher, the big talk wasn't how he did in the match or even who he was (am I the only one who had never heard of him before this match?), but how in the world he managed to get a 4 seed in this contest. The board was so unbelievably annoyed about this that in one contest, Sam Fisher cost his team a finals appearance because people didn't want to see him in it. It was one of those contests where the creator had 16 entrants, each grouped by the characters in the contest seeding. The 2 Seeds (Samus, Sonic, Sephiroth, and Mega Man) won with extreme ease, but the 4 Seeds could have beaten them if Sam Fisher wasn't on their team. The board's hate for Sam started with him getting this 4 seed, and it really hasn't stopped since. He's one of the worst of all time with the board vote, and his less-than-stellar games (all of which are failed attempts at being better than MGS series) don't exactly help stave this off. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Squall Leonhart vs (11)Jill Valentine 2003 _source: (6)Squall Leonhart vs (11)Jill Valentine 2003 (revid 88743)_ ## Results Saturday, July 5th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 5th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 19,118 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 62.09% (25,492 brackets) This was an odd match in that 60-40 was fairly unexpected. A very large part of the board felt that Jill would be able to win fairly easily, and virtually the entire board would have lost on this match if X-Stats existed back then. Check the 2002 numbers for yourself. Once the match began, many people were in for quite the surprise when Squall had over 60% of the vote early. Jill was eventually able to get Squall down into the 50s for a bit, but as you can see Squall went on to a fairly routine 60-40 win over an opponent that many felt would take him down without much trouble. People didn't have much faith in the guy after the egg he laid against Solid Snake in Summer 2002. What would be a good modern match to compare this to... \*hunts\* EarthBound vs Doom is a good one. Though the match was pretty much split down the middle, there was a general feeling that EarthBound would win. Doom then went out and whipped EarthBound in a match where it was barely challenged. The same thing applies to Squall/Jill, though Squall had it much easier than Doom did. Unfortunately for Squall, this was probably the end of the line for him. He was to take on the powerhouse Luigi in the second round, and really, Squall had no chance whatsoever. If Mario was a powerhouse, then surely Luigi would follow in his footsteps. Squall was done, though at least he got to win a match! Ahem. Side Note: It's actually interesting to look at the 2002 numbers. Neither Squall nor Jill were behind SFF or the like, and Jill would be expected to win with 55.5% of the vote based off of them. Clearly something happened between 2002 and 2003 that gave Squall a boost. Gee, wonder what that was. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Luigi vs (14)Ratchet 2003 _source: (3)Luigi vs (14)Ratchet 2003 (revid 88744)_ ## Results Sunday, July 6th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 6th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 46,451 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 87.92% (36,099 brackets) This was an odd little match, to say the least. Quick background on Luigi. After Magus, I'd have to say that Luigi was the most hyped character going into this contest. The man was literally supposed to kill his first two opponents, and many people felt that he was a legitimate threat to Samus. There were even those who felt he was a threat to beat Link, which is almost ridiculous given how favored Link was. Then again I think some of that was out of people desperate to see Link get upset, but that's a different story. When Luigi's match with Ratchet finally began, he started off looking like everything he was made out to be and more. This wasn't a Magus deal where Luigi was hyped to all hell, yet began a poll with 70% and failed to double the weak opponent he was up against. Luigi began his match against Ratchet with over 90% of the vote, which is obscene; only the true elites ever hit 90% in a poll. But something very strange happened after that. Luigi's percentage just sort of.... dropped like a rock after his fast start. He went from being near 93% at the match's onset into a rapid decline to what you see above. And while a dropoff of 20% isn't so bad when you start that high, it makes you wonder how we didn't see what was coming a little sooner. Another oddity was the vote total for the match. Compared to the standard set by the young contest prior to this, 94600 votes wasn't very high, especially for a character who was supposedly the second coming of Mario. People stopped assuming that Luigi had a chance at beating Link or Samus after this, though few people felt that Luigi was to be threatened in the next round at all. OMG FORESHADOWING. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)KOS-MOS vs (10)Crash Bandicoot 2003 _source: (7)KOS-MOS vs (10)Crash Bandicoot 2003 (revid 88745)_ ## Results Monday, July 7th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 7th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 23,631 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** KOS-MOS - 42.45% (17,431 brackets) The pre-match debates involving this one were fairly low-key, though this match would have been a much bigger deal if it weren't one of those "Oh well, the winner is guaranteed to lose so it's only one point" things. Contests back then weren't as easy to predict as they are now, so one point didn't matter so much. It's not like today where everyone has a fairly decent chance at going perfect. There was a split, though if I remember correctly, KOS-MOS fans picked the right winner but had a totally whacked out argument. Apparently since Xenogears kicked all sorts of ass, KOS-MOS being from Xenosaga would be a clear case of popularity leeching and she would win with ease despite Crash's popularity. On Crash's side, his fans... pretty much supported the favorite. It wasn't as if Crash were overly powerful or anything (especially when looking at 2002), but someone as well-known as Crash should surely be able to take down some cult character who takes all of her popularity from her game's title, right? Come match time, KOS-MOS went out and proved what many of her supporters have believed all along, which is that KOS-MOS isn't necessarily strong (though she sure looked it early) but that people no longer cared about Crash Bandicoot at all. Crash was the easy favorite going into the match, but was simply blown away from the beginning. He made a nice percentage recovery as the match progressed, but couldn't take away from the fact that this match was good symbolism of the era of the 3D platforming character being over. And if this match couldn't convince people of that, the Summer 2004 Contest (featuring Crash, Jak, Ratchet, Conker, and maybe others I'm forgetting) surely would. The odd thing about this match is that it didn't seem like most people were upset about Crash losing, almost as if they expected it to happen. If a favored character's loss being greeted with complacency isn't a sign of people not caring about him, I don't know what is. Unfortunately for KOS-MOS, this match sort of gave a false sense of her being stronger that she really was. Not that it would matter in the grand scheme of things, but it's odd looking back on 2003 and remembering all the people who thought that KOS-MOS could possibly give Samus a run... • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (15)Isaac 2003 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (15)Isaac 2003 (revid 88746)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 8th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 8th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 54,563 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 93.80% (38,512 brackets) Ah, Samus. She's one of the biggest oddballs to ever grace these contests, and believe it or not her matches used to be far weirder than they are now. Her 2002 feats are well-documented, but 2003 was just a strange year for her. Before the contest began, and again this was perhaps all out of "Can anyone beat Link?" desperation, Samus was right there with Magus in the discussion of possible upset candidates. Samus over Link was a hot topic in 2002, but Sephiroth put an end to all of that by beating Samus in the West Finals and we never saw the match. Enter 2003. Samus is literally given a free ride through her first two matches, and all she would need to do from there to take on Link would be to get past Luigi and hope that Link survives Magus. It sounds strange for people to actually be thinking along these lines, doesn't it? Unfortunately, something happened in Samus's very first match that threw a giant monkey wrench into all of the Samus \> Link hype. Isaac, this little-known character from Golden Sun, made Samus look fallable. It's not that he did anything more than get completely blown out, but for Samus to be involved in any form of "\> Link" hype, doing anything other than giving Isaac the SFF beatdown of his life would not be good enough. At least, that's how it went according to us. We had some fairly ridiculous expectations for Samus back in the day, though she has somewhat caught up since. In the beginning of the match, Samus only had just under 80% of the vote. This was disappointing, but most figured that she would go crazy later on, stave off Isaac's little cult following run and deliver the massive beating that most were expecting. It never happened. Not only did Isaac avoid allowing Samus to score in the 90s on him, but he turned the match into one of the most consistent of all time. In fact, Isaac spent the rest of the match taking Samus down from being near 80% to the 75% that she finished with. This little hiccup from Samus remains as one of the oddest matches to ever take place, because we have yet to figure out how Isaac avoided taking a good old SFF beatdown from his fellow Nintendo brethren. We could use a match between Samus and a weaker Nintendo character to see if she has issues SFFing him. Samus/Yoshi would be nice. Samus \> Link didn't slow down however, because people pretty much passed off Samus's disappointing performance as Golden Sun's fanbase being larger than expected and/or a few other things. People also began to realize that Samus \> Link could still happen. After all, both are Nintendo characters (and one had TJF)... what if the fanbase randomly supports Samus instead? Who will the leftover fans vote for? Sounds like the beginning of rSFF postulation to me, though the general idea is that Isaac was stronger than expected and that Samus was still ready to lock in. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)CATS 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)CATS 2003 (revid 88747)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 9th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 9th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 79,918 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 94.91% (38,968 brackets) After the North Division gave us a fairly good start to the Summer 2003 Contest, it was the East's turn to show its stuff. Tidus/Ganon especially gave the East a pretty high standard to live up to, though it took all of one match to give us the biggest laugh of the contest. HISTORY LESSON omg: Cloud wasn't like other characters who had suffered tough losses in 2002. Board opinion of him (and Final Fantasy 7) has always been fairly split, oft going against FF7 whenever possible. A good microcosm of this was the fact that many a user fully expected Sonic to win this division over Cloud due to Sonic fans being out for blood after his 2002 loss to Samus. Never mind the fact that to this day, Cloud was the victim of the single biggest miracle in these contests. Cloud has his fans, yes, but our board hasn't been in his corner in any regard since 2002. I think that this match was the beginning of this little trend. In 2002, CATS was little more than a joke. In 2003, someone (I think gotspork) created the CATS Army solely because a, the AYB fad is hilarious, and b, because it would have been hilarious to see CATS ahead of Cloud at any point in the match. Cloud was a lock to win, but the unthinkable happened as this match began. CATS, a character whose fanbase consists almost entirely of people who haven't played his game, actually took the lead on Cloud at the beginning of the match! This wasn't like today in which we're all aware that we can see any character lead the beginning of a poll if the board agrees on where to vote, mind. This was back in the day where it was still widely believed that whoever was winning at the beginning of a match would win the match outright. To see CATS ahead of Cloud was almost unthinkable, and the legend of The Army™ was born. Many a coalition has been created since, but the CATS Army is the only one to have ever amounted to being worth a damn. Cloud would eventually go on to absolutely slaughter everyone's favorite ZIG weapon, but the damage was done to him in terms of respect. He went from being a lock to defeat Mario to a guy that couldn't take the board vote from CATS in the span of a year, and Cloud has lost the board vote in virtually every match he's been involved in since. Not that this has much of a bearing on Cloud's wins and losses (for the most part, he's only lost to Link since this contest), but to not be able to win the board vote against anyone is sad. He'd probably lose it to Sam Fisher. The funniest thing of all however is the fact that people used Cloud's seconds-long blunder against CATS to preach that he was in trouble against Auron (who wasn't even a lock to beat Tails at the time). I guess some things never change :D Side Note: creativename claims that through extrapolation, Cloud's eventually winning this contest shouldn't have come as such a big surprise. Him preaching this, along with creative's dominance in solar's first Oracle Contest is a large reason for the eventual boom of the X-Stats. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Auron vs (9)Miles "Tails" Prower 2003 _source: (8)Auron vs (9)Miles "Tails" Prower 2003 (revid 55485)_ ## Results Thursday, July 10th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 10th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 31,514 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 60.70% (24,921 brackets) The hype entering this match was strange, because there probably shouldn't have been any hype at all. That said, most people felt that Tails would win. I can't exactly say what the reasoning was, though it was probably out of hope more than anything else. Many people were snake-bit by Alucard last year, and I guess they were hoping for Tails to beat Auron as a sort of make-up? I dunno. It's tough to make a case for why Tails can beat Auron if he can't beat Alucard. A lot of people brought up how hated Tidus was, though given that Auron has almost always been the most popular FFX character, Tidus hate was irrelevant. It was further irrelevant after what Tidus did against Ganondorf, and come match time Tails was out of this thing despite a good amount of the board being behind him. Auron began this thing by having nearly 70% of the vote (and as a new character that we didn't yet have a solid reading on, this was impressive), though Tails managed to get that down a little as the match went on. For the second year in a row, Tails went up against a character that a lot of people felt he could beat, but lost -- and it didn't take long for people to realize that his odds in 2002 were a hell of a lot better than 2003. Tails would eventually go on to win a match in 2004, though his stigma of not being able to win one (and being seeded 12th) caused a lot of people to pick against him that year. As for Auron, this was the first match of his career, though it took a long while before people began to feel that he was the strongest character from FFX. Even now, some people still believe it's Tidus. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Bowser vs (12)Ness 2003 _source: (5)Bowser vs (12)Ness 2003 (revid 55487)_ ## Results Friday, July 11th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 11th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 49,537 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 79.47% (32,629 brackets) Be honest. Did you pick Ness to win at least one match in 2003 because of Super Smash Brothers? \>\_\> I almost picked him to win *two* matches, but decided against it at the last minute and had Yoshi winning the fourpack instead. And I'm far from the only one. Ness was a very popular upset pick in this contest, mostly because we have a lot of SSB/M fans around these parts, but also because we have a few EarthBound fans as well. Board consensus eventually shifted from Ness to Yoshi (and more on why later), and everyone seemed to forget about ol' Bowser in all of this. Perhaps because for Bowser, it was his first contest appearance and people did not know what to expect. But after his poll with Ness began, the upset-minded phychic boy from EarthBound learned real quick that Bowser was no slouch in these things. Not only did Bowser start off on fire, but he had nearly 80% of the vote. That's pretty insane to do against a character that was supposed to be able to win this match. Bowser eventually calmed down a bit, but not enough for Ness to avoid being tripled. This was one of the more unexpected blowouts we'd ever seen, and soon the attention turned to Yoshi. For whatever reason the board shifted from Ness's upset prospects to Yoshi being the easy favorite to win this fourpack, but Bowser's getting 75% threw a wrench into that one real quick. Unfortunately, most people didn't read the warning signs on that one until it was way too late. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Yoshi vs (13)Conker 2003 _source: (4)Yoshi vs (13)Conker 2003 (revid 88749)_ ## Results Saturday, July 12th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 12th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 30,424 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 77.23% (31,710 brackets) Looking back on this match, it's a wonder why the Bowser upset was so unexpected. Probably because SFF discussions weren't all the rage back then like they are now. Yoshi is very good at putting on boring (See Also: Consistent) matches that tend to be blowouts one way or the other, and this trend of his began right from his very first match. Yoshi was around 70% at the beginning of the poll, and he settled down to a near-doubling later on. The problem is that people overestimated the hell out of Yoshi before this match. This was his first contest after all, and you know how we used to be with newbies. Remember the Yoshi \> Cloud hype? Despite Yoshi doubling Conker, many people expected Yoshi to do much better in the match. The faith in him beating Cloud was essentially gone after this match, though few figured that Bowser stood much of a chance due to some nonsensical factor about how Nintendo fans don't stick by their villains. Back then, most people didn't really know what SFF was, so they couldn't look at these two matches and go "Well since Bowser SFFd the hell out of Ness while Yoshi couldn't even SFF Conker down to a doubling, Bowser should win easily." And besides, it wasn't until Summer 2004 that people began to believe that Ness was even SFFd in the first place. As for Conker, he has yet to win a match. 0-5 lifetime. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sora vs (11)Aeris Gainsborough 2003 _source: (6)Sora vs (11)Aeris Gainsborough 2003 (revid 88750)_ ## Results Sunday, July 13th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 13th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 32,582 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aeris - 70.68% (29,021 brackets) Remember Aeris's 11 seed in Summer 2002? Remember how she blasted through her fourpack before a respectable loss at the hands of Solid Snake? Her reward for all that was another 11 seed, and another fourpack that she was destined to own the hell out of before an inevitable loss to Sonic in the third round. Her first opponent was Sora of Kingdom Hearts fame, and though Aeris was destined to blow him out his case was an interesting one. Kingdom Hearts, a little experiment where Square and Disney would work together, was one of the most hyped games of all time. And it delivered. It sold four million copies in a year, and this helped propel Sora to an easy first contest appearance. Unfortunately Sora was the guy stuck taking on Aeris as she was screwed with another of her 11 seeds, and the end result was an expected win for Aeris. 70% prediction rate when you're the seed underdog is no joke, and most of this was due to Aeris being in Sora's game. The funny thing about all this is that despite how easily we all picked Aeris (due to an extraneous form of SFF), most of us were too stupid to realize that this was an SFF match until after Sora's lovely little run in Summer 2004. The other funny thing is that I remember how much I loved Kingdom Hearts when I first played it, and mostly out of KH fanboyism I predicted that if Sora were put in a winnable situation, he would do much better than he did on this day against Aeris. Cue 2004 where Sora rips through the favored Ryu Hayabusa, then 2005 where he rips through the favored Alucard. *And* the man has Kingdom Hearts 2 coming in April, barring no more delays. He and Riku could be beasts this summer. By The Way, 66.66%, awesome. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Master Chief vs (14)Felix 2003 _source: (3)Master Chief vs (14)Felix 2003 (revid 88751)_ ## Results Monday, July 14th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 14th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 6,318 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Master Chief - 73.13% (30,026 brackets) All through Samus's match with Isaac, everyone wondered why Samus wasn't going Mega Man on his ass. It didn't take too much more time to figure out that the Golden Sun duo in this contest was no joke, and one has to wonder why it took so long for them to return. That said, Felix's supposed strength was not the story of this match at all. From day one, GameFAQs has hated the Xbox. It was once seen as being as big of a joke as the N-Gage is now, and after the Xbox finally launched the system was horrendous. Demo systems were literally breaking and overheating in malls all over the place, and the system was not received very well by hardcore console gamers (which is GF's main userbase) at all. The Xbox essentially only had one quality title worth playing during that rough beginning, and that game was Halo; by extension, the Xbox only had one exclusive character worth discussing, which was a little-known soldier named Master Chief. There has always been a bit of a rift between Xbox fans and those who feel that the Xbox was a joke. Those who went through with buying an Xbox eventually discovered a fairly good system that was a heaven for tech freaks, and I don't mean that term as an insult at all. I have some friends who have done so many things with their Xboxes that it's insane. What this led to on GameFAQs was a small group of hardcore Xbox fans willing to promote their favorite system above all others versus.... pretty much everyone else. For those wondering why Master Chief has always been such a hated-yet-beloved character in these things, he's simply always been that way. Take his first contest. Chief, despite both he and his system being bashed to high heaven for his nabbing of a 3 seed, was actually one of the top favorites in terms of the number of people picking him to win the entire contest. Oddly enough, Felix over Master Chief was also a fairly well-discussed upset prospect, especially given that Aeris beating the winner was a near-lock and giving up one point on the upset special was no big deal. When the match finally began, we were all shocked to see that there was some heavy anti-Chief sentiment going on. Not only was Chief disappointing, but the two characters were going 50-50! It didn't take long for Chief to begin pulling away for the eventual win (if you can call a 6300 vote victory pulling away, that is), but the damage was done regardless. As good as Golden Sun may be (I've never played it) or as powerful as the alleged TSF (The Sword Factor) was in this match, I doubt that Felix is actually strong enough to score 47% in most matches. There was some heavy anti-voting going on here, and it was all due to people having no respect whatsoever for Halo or the Xbox. The hate hasn't been \*quite\* as bad now that the system has had a couple of years to sink in, but it's still there. In every match that Chief has, the man has to get past thousands of anti-votes just to win even the simplest of matches save when he faces pure fodder. Had Chief faced Donkey Kong back in 2003, he may not have been able to win -- and we all know what happened to Halo itself. The Xbox and Chief have recovered somewhat since this minor debacle (it almost feels like Chief actually lost, given the performance), but who knows if the franchise will ever see real respect here on GameFAQs? • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Zero vs (10)Scorpion 2003 _source: (7)Zero vs (10)Scorpion 2003 (revid 55495)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 15th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 15th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 28,969 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 47.28% (19,414 brackets) Zero made quite the splash in his first contest match, though you need to look all the way back at 2002 to see why Zero's performance was such a surprise. You all know the story by now. Scorpion gets put into a wonderful spot in 2002 and proceeds to shock everyone by beating Max Payne and Pac Man in succession (both of which were *heavily favored*) before finally getting his ass handed to him by Link. Enter 2003, where Scorpion is stuck as a 10 seed after his wonderful performance against a character that few people around here had ever heard of, Zero of Mega Man X fame. People didn't want to get snake bit twice in a row by Scorpion, and they all overcompensated his 2002 performance by favoring Scorpion to win this match. Zero not being all that well-known to people who hadn't played the MMX series added to all of this, and you can see by the prediction percentage that Scorpion was the favorite both to us and the casuals. His 2002 run really was that important to everyone. But along came the beginning of the match, and Zero managed to prove that it wasn't Scorpion's strength, but his soft-as-crap half division that led to his run in 2002. This match started off badly for Scorpion and only grew worse, and the only good thing that can really be said about him is that a massive amount of people rallied to vote in this match one way or the other. Nearly 113,000 total votes in a first round match is no joke, but this tends to happen when a heavy favorite starts going down. Scorpion isn't exactly a weak character; he was simply a bit overestimated going into this match, and his opponent being somewhat of an unknown helped overrate Scorpion even more. The only reason this match was even relatively split (outside of the people who have actually played Mega Man X games) is because of Mega Man's massive success in Summer 2002. He left an impression on people, and the words "Mega Man" on Zero's little bio were an eye-opener to many. Zero would go on to have a rather impressive contest career (though we still need to see him in a close match), while this match would quietly end Scorpion's time in the sun in these contests. He hasn't won a match since, and recently he lacked the support to even get into a contest field in the first place. In an odd way, it's almost a shame that CJayC's bracketmaking skills have improved. It would be nice to see more middle strength characters like Scorpion make the Elite 8, but we simply don't see things like this anymore. Despite the bad loss from the favorite's seat, a seat that Scorpion hasn't sat in since he defeated Kazuya in 2002, that magical 2002 run cannot be taken away from him. All we need now is for Sub-Zero to get into one of these contests, or better yet, a match between Scorpion and Ken Masters. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (15)Ken Masters 2003 _source: (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (15)Ken Masters 2003 (revid 55497)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 16th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 16th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 40,338 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 84.41% (34,656 brackets) Talk about getting screwed over by seeding something fierce. In 2002, Ken was stuck as a 12 seed against a powerhouse Samus. Despite giving it his best effort, he stood no chance. His reward for losing? Being stuck as a 15 seed against the character that Samus pulled her miraculous upset on, Sonic the Hedgehog. This was seriously one of the worst cases of mis-seeding ever, and don't let Sonic's performance here fool you too much. Ken Masters is not your standard 15 seed, so Sonic not being able to break 70% on him or having a relatively low prediction percentage wasn't so bad. The issue is that for the longest time in this match, for whatever reason, Sonic was very slow. He hovered at just above 60% until the standard SEGA morning vote hit, but most people didn't think anything of it and simply chalked it up to people having sympathy for Ken due to how badly he was screwed over by the seeding in this contest. The big blow to all of the Sonic \> Cloud hopefuls didn't come until Sonic's later matches, though there were a few murmurs of Sonic not being all he was cracked up to be as he failed to break 70% on Ken. Then again, Samus had only scored 65.31% on Ken in 2002. Sonic, who lost to Samus, bettered this by over 3%. Sonic's match against Ken was no real cause for concern, and in fact him outdoing Samus by well over 3% against the same character showed signs of hope that this may have been Sonic's year. Though the thing that stands out the most in my mind is that after having to deal with Samus and Sonic in two consecutive contests, Ken has yet to return to the field. Here's a forgotten character that could use some board support, as well as a decent seeding. Ken vs Scorpion for 2006! \m/ • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (16)Captain Olimar 2003 _source: (1)Mario vs (16)Captain Olimar 2003 (revid 55499)_ ## Results Thursday, July 17th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 17th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 77,511 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 97.99% (40,235 brackets) And finally, the analysis reaches the South Division. You kids think that Division 128 hype was bad? It had absolutely nothing on this. The South had a little bit of everything, and just about every match was widely debated and up in the air. Mario, Crono, and Sephiroth were all packed into one division after their wonderful 2002 runs, and they were all on a collision course for beating the hell out of one another. Wario was hyped, Shadow was overlooked, Kefka was hyped beyond belief, the Kirby/Bomberman fourpack was back in swing, and we even had yet another match that caused Gordon Freeman to be overestimated. But the highlight of the division was Mario/Crono/Sephiroth, hands down. A great case could be made for any of them winning the division at the time, and all of the massively hyped newcomers added to the melee. This division really stood out as being the best of the contest, and this was before anything even began. The first match was a fairly mundane SFF beating in Mario's favor, though there are a few interesting notes to make about Mario's performance. With all of the hype surrounding Link, Mario was the forgotten Nintendo character in this whole thing. He didn't exactly get the attention he deserved (outside of the debates on who would win the division) until he started pummeling the hell out of Olimar, though SFF was in full swing by the time this happened and most people didn't think much of it. People also remembered that Mario was fairly ho-hum against non-Nintendo fodder, so this match was a given to get the division going and little else. Looking back, I'm actually surprised that Mario wasn't able to break 90% in this thing. Granted Mario Sunshine was a disappointment, but come on... Pikmin? It was tough to really tell if Mario was in it to win it after this one match, especially given that people hadn't exactly forgotten about what he pulled in 2002. Even if the miraculous occurred and Link went down, would Mario even be able to take advantage? Only time would tell, but Mario had to get out of his hellhole division before worrying about winning the entire contest. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Wario vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (8)Wario vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 88752)_ ## Results Friday, July 18th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 18th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 31,165 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shadow - 42.11% (17,291 brackets) True Story: Before this match began, not only was Wario the massive favorite (mostly due to his release of Wario world on the GCN in June of 2003, one month before this contest), but people actually felt that Mario vs Wario would be an entertaining match. This was well before the days of people realizing that most SFF matches were pure crap, so many such matches still seemed intriguing. Wario was the massive favorite until the picture was released for the match. We were greeted with a fugly cardboard looking picture of Wario against a badassed black and red Sonic, and it caused Wario's supporters to become a little nervous. Shadow did have his fans back in the day, and his exposure/support was very similar to Zero's. The people who knew of Shadow felt that he would easily win due to knowing his strengths, while almost everyone else went with Wario because it was the more "obvious" choice. However, there wasn't much hype surrounding the match due to Wario being far more of a lock to win than Scorpion was. Yeah, whoops. When this match began, we were all greeted with one of the most lopsided board upsets of all time. It was so bad for Wario that there was simply nothing to discuss; he got his ass whipped and was an overall flop that was never in the match at all. You can imagine the whining that took place, and Shadow has essentially been hated around these parts ever since. Then again this is mostly Shadow's own fault (people play the games after a character surprises them in one of these contests), but this isn't the place to go on an anti-Shadow/Sonic rant. CJayC went through two contests where he tried setting up "cute" SFFish matches, but in almost every case the third party would ruin it. Dunno how much this factored into Summer 2004's bracket, but that's besides the point. These two characters went in very opposite directions after this match. Wario was never hyped for anything again, while Shadow has been a fairly regular mainstay over the years (Doesn't stuff like this happen much more often than it should? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Magus didn't make the Summer 2006 field.). Granted this amounts to three matches, but the recent release of his own game should help him get past his getting snubbed in Summer 2005. On a side note, I love all the hoopla that surrounds these 4/5 or 8/9 matches. They're always worth one point, yet they all receive a ton of hype and way too much whining for what they're worth. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Pac-Man vs (12)Kefka 2003 _source: (5)Pac-Man vs (12)Kefka 2003 (revid 88753)_ ## Results Saturday, July 19th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 19th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 1,773 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kefka - 43.47% (17,850 brackets) This match was unintentionally hilarious to the highest degree even before it started, and it would only get better as everything unfolded. Kefka was one of the most hyped newcomers to the contest field. There were people literally talking about how he was a real threat to Crono, and some even went as far as to say that Kefka could win the division. This was back during the days of everyone thinking that FF6 could be at or near FF7's level, as well as the pre-X-Stats era where every newcomer could be overestimated to hell and back without recourse. Unfortunately for Kefka, there aren't any good pictures of him outside of his sprites. When the match pic for this thing was released, it marked the single biggest picture-related board explosion to ever grace this place. And if that thing was representing one of your favorite characters in a match, wouldn't you be a little peeved? People went nuts over this thing, and I distinctly remember going to SS and making a petition for the picture to be changed. It got over 200 posts within hours before being closed, and the picture was left alone. Kefka went from being the massive board favorite to win the match to causing everyone to be scared to death about his chances of doing much of anything in the contest. Forgotten in all of this was the fact that Pac-Man himself isn't exactly a slouch. He was coming off of being a 1 seed in 2002, and people kept treating this match as if Pac himself were the 12 in this 5-12 affair. Pac was perfectly capable of winning this thing even before the Lettuce Kefka fiasco hit, and the match pic being so horribly in favor of everyone's favorite pill popper only opened the window of opportunity wider for him. And people knew all of this, hence why Kefka's lettuce mug annoyed everyone so much. This was a classic battle of Board 8 versus the casual bracketmaker, and all that was left to do from here was to actually get the match going. The early stage of the match was all Kefka, and though he didn't dominate he was able to use the board's massive support for him to build a lead of over 1000 votes. I don't fully remember where this capped off, but I'm 99% sure it was in between the area of 1000 and 2000 votes before Pac Man was able to stall Kefka from pulling away with the match entirely. Kefka has been a champion of the board vote from the very beginning, though most people think that this trend began with Kefka's match against Knuckles. There's always been a certain sympathy/overestimation surrounding Kefka in these contests, with the sympathy coming from how damn ugly he is and the overestimation coming from Lord knows where. But Pac-Man would have none of Kefka simply running away with this thing, and in the wee hours of the morning Pac was able to stall Kefka and begin a slow comeback attempt. It was during this match that the now-popular "X number of votes needed per update to tie" thing got popular in the update topics, and given how slowly Pac Man was chipping away at Kefka's lead it was almost a necessity. Pac spent most of the morning and afternoon whittling Kefka's lead down to the hundreds, but Pac's dream of putting Kefka down ended once the evening vote hit. Kefka exploded in the latter stages of the match to pull away once and for all, though permanent damage was done to his reputation in the process. Kefka was no longer a real threat to Crono at all, and there was literally nothing stopping a Mario-Crono rematch as a result. Crono being a 4 seed in Mario's division looked like a setup, and it was. A few people clung to the hope that Kefka performed badly solely because of his picture (someone even created a lettuce Kefka account, and you can still catch it posting even today) and that he had nothing more than his name to get him by in this match, but that still wasn't enough to explain how Kefka would turn around and get past Crono after this. Kefka would eventually go on to having a decent contest career, though it hasn't come close to matching the early hype surrounding him. As for Pac-Man, he's always been an oddball case. He's never been one to draw in votes, and as such I'm convinced that Pac wins this match if 2002 vote total levels are in place. Part of the reason why Pac was able to upset Ocelot in 2005 was because of the vote totals being so hideously low. But on the down side, Pac is more prone to SFF than most other characters (everyone has played a game of his... I hope) and has been on a gradual decline since his days of being a 1 seed. His recent upset of Ocelot probably only prolongs the inevitable, which is that Pac-Man's time in gaming, and these contests, is coming to an end. He only appeals to an older audience and can't hack it against most characters. Seeing what's happened to Pac Man in his contest career is like watching Brett Favre in the 2005 NFL season. You can't help but respect the guy regardless of how you feel about his games. Pac may never see a good seed again and his upset of Ocelot may not be a sign of things to come, but he still means as much to gaming as anyone else. He's simply not been able to recover from Scorpion whipping his ass in 2002, though it's funny to think about the fact that Pac Man has held a 1 seed, while Crono has not. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis You may have noticed a user by the name of “lettuce Kefka” around these parts. Well, he got his name from this catastrophe of a match, featuring one of the most infamous match pictures in contest history. In 2003, the Noble Nine concept hadn’t yet come into play. People thought all sorts of crazy things – Magus could upset Link, Tommy Vercetti could make the semifinals, and generally the board abounded in chaos and disarray. Kefka was one of the most hyped newcomers to the game, especially since he was fated for an epic showdown with his fellow 16-bit gaming icon, Crono. But first he had to get past Pac-Man. Piece of cake, right? Pac-Man lost to friggin’ Scorpion last year. But then the match picture came out: Ask yourself, dear reader: what the hell is that on the right? If you answered "Why, it's Kefka, of course! Uwehehehehe!” you probably have the mental stability of a radish. This piece of lettuce would go on to fight in Kefka’s stead, doing quite horribly and actually turning a lock of a match into a semi-debatable, close slugfest. Unfortunately for Pac-Man, Kefka went on to look horrible in Round Two, even with a scary clown picture. But Lettuce Kefka has become something of a running gag in these contests, and the joke began here. ## Interesting Facts - Due to the picture fiasco this was the last time CJayC posted the picture early in the 2003 contest. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Crono vs (13)Tom Nook 2003 _source: (4)Crono vs (13)Tom Nook 2003 (revid 88754)_ ## Results Sunday, July 20th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 20th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 73,838 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 92.80% (38,103 brackets) After the madness that was Pac/Kefka(which lasted longer than the 24 hours allocated to the actual match thanks to the picture mess), we were greeted with a wonderful cooldown affair to relax everyone. It involved Crono's debut, which was virtually a bye against contest newcomer Tom Nook of Animal Crossing fame. Both Tom Nook and Mr. Resetti managed to make it into the Summer 2003 field after the massive success of Animal Crossing on the Gamecube, but both were put into bad spots. Nook was stuck with a 13 seed and up against a Crono who was on a collision course for revenge against Mario, and Crono proved that he was well above Nook's league within seconds of the match beginning. Crono was well over 90% as the match began, and the best Nook could manage was to get Crono's percentage down as low as he could by the end of the match. Crono's percentage leveled a little, but not enough to say that Tom Nook did anything worth noting in the match. Mario vs Crono 2 was officially a toss-up going by how well the two did in the first round of this thing, and all that was left to do was to get the formalities done and over with by dispatching their second round opponents. Though this was Tom Nook's first and last contest appearance, this match was virtually meaningless. His lasting impression to these contests is actually a moment that occurred in a contest on Board 8 itself in Summer 2003: (1)Final Fantasy 7 (16)Animal Crossing Enough said. And that wasn't the only upset that Animal Crossing managed to pull off in that contest, either. There may never against be such a massive case of the board rallying behind an underdog in a large user-made contest. Sure there will always be upsets in small contests with low vote totals, but nothing quite like Animal Crossing almost winning Ngamer's Best Game contest. It took SSBM and a high degree of SFF to finally bring it down, and only Presea's run in Leon's NCAA Contest can come close. When your best contest moment has nothing to do with the actual contest, you know you've got issues. Nook may return to another contest one day, but it would likely only be as fodder. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (11)Bomberman 2003 _source: (6)Alucard vs (11)Bomberman 2003 (revid 55509)_ ## Results Monday, July 21st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 21st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 29,318 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard - 62.96% (25,852 brackets) The first match in Alucard's fourpack marked a rather odd tradition in these contests. In Summer 2002, we saw the fourpack of (6)Bomberman/(11)Kane/(3)Jill/(14)Kirby. Jill had to go through both Kirby and Bomberman to get into the third round of the contest. Oddly enough, Summer 2003 featured another fourpack with Kirby and Bomberman in it. And as everyone knows, Summer 2004's bracket proved that this was no accident when Kirby and Bomberman were stuck in the same fourpack yet again. The strange thing is that they've never faced each other; they were always on opposite sides of the fourpack, and one character had to take both of them down in succession every year. Even funnier is the fact that Jill, Alucard and Squall all lost their third round matches after making it past the Kirby/Bomberman combo of death. Summer 2005 was the only contest where this wasn't the case, and this was only due to Bomberman not making the field. But I'm getting well ahead of myself. Despite Alucard's good run in 2002, he was still a fairly unknown character that people didn't want to place much faith in. The big debate surrounding this fourpack was not whether or not Alucard would beat Bomberman, but which of the big trio (Alucard/Kirby/Ramza) would have the honor of getting their ass whipped by Sephiroth. Apparently beating Tails and Duke Nukem wasn't enough to convince people of how awesome Alucard is, and he remained as another of those Zero-like unknown characters. Most of the people who had played Alucard's game (Symphony of the Night) realized that he had the potential to be good in these contests, or at least good enough to win this fourpack, while those outside the circle barely had any clue who he even was even after his 2002 run. It literally took Alucard's run in this contest and edouble to get this board to see the light, but that's a different issue. The point is that people didn't have nearly the faith in Alucard that they should have, and most of the debates surrounded Kirby and Ramza. But more on that in the next writeup. The formality of Alucard actually beating Bomberman had to take place first, and Alucard did so in standard fashion right from the beginning of the poll. Bomberman's loss wasn't eye-popping enough for Alucard to get his due credit (though Alucard had a massive percentage early in the poll before leveling off), but it was a prototype win for Alucard regardless. He never flat-out kills opponents, but he's always been good enough to beat them. All the support of Japan couldn't save Bomberman from getting his soul stolen with ease in this match, and I don't know that he's really recovered since. Bomberman's big moment was in 2002, in a loss to Jill Valentine that saw the board whine like hell due to Bomberman not getting revenge for Kirby. Since then he's been knocked down to the role of decent fodder. He has a fanbase, but not a large enough one to avoid getting bad seeds. Most recently in Summer 2005, he missed the field outright. For Alucard, the fun was only beginning given that the first part of this massively debated trio was finally set into place. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs (14)Ramza Beoulve 2003 _source: (3)Kirby vs (14)Ramza Beoulve 2003 (revid 88755)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 15,380 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 80.03% (32,861 brackets) The first part of the lesser Southern trio had been decided (Mario/Crono/Sephiroth being the big one), and it was finally time for the real fun to start. Like with so many other new characters in 2003, Ramza was vastly overestimated and hyped for no real reason. It was a common theme all through the contest, and maybe it's because the large board traffic caused it all to be more noticeable. At any rate, this match was debated fairly loudly even before the contest started. And as more and more people began to notice that Square characters were kicking ass in this thing, the Ramza \> Kirby upset buzz grew louder as match day drew near. Final Fantasy Tactics was a widely respected game right from FF7's time period, so why couldn't Ramza be popular? Probably because no one outside the FFT circle knows who in the world Ramza even is, and the people who know that Ramza is the main character of FFT but haven't played the game had no reason to vote for him other than to hope for the upset. He has no name appeal at all, and he isn't like other FF characters of the time period who can draw votes without requiring much help. On the other hand, Kirby had a disappointing 2002 to make up for and just the situation to do it in. Yet Alucard/Kirby/Ramza hype marched on. Alucard/Kirby was a match worth discussing, but as everyone found out seconds after the match began, Ramza had no upset potential whatsoever in this match and this fourpack was a two horse race from the beginning. But with this said, even though Ramza couldn't actually pull off the upset of Kirby he still had a fairly decent showing. Even as a 14 seed and with only 20% of brackets on his side, Ramza began the match with over 40% of the votes and did not go under later on like most cultish characters tend to do in these things. It was a fairly odd performance from both sides, but above everything it perhaps showed that Kirby was overrated in 2002 after all. Giving up 42.34% to a cult character (I love FFT and all, but let's be honest here) isn't ever a good sign, especially when you're a 14 seed with 80% of brackets behind you and were up against a "Here, blow out this guy en route to having an actual match" type of opponent. Granted Ramza may have overperformed due to all of the upset hype, but 42.34% seems a bit high for such a case. There was upset hype all over Ness, and he was tripled with ease. This could have meant several things for Kirby, the most obvious of which being that he was in real trouble in the next round if he didn't step up his game fairly quickly. It was also one of many warning signs that 2003 was Square's year, but that's something to delve into much later. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Gordon Freeman vs (10)Max Payne 2003 _source: (7)Gordon Freeman vs (10)Max Payne 2003 (revid 88756)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 7,284 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Max Payne - 65.42% (26,860 brackets) Gordon Freeman may have lost in 2002 to Tina Armstrong as a 3 seed, but his legend wasn't truly born until this match against Max Payne. Amazing Telephone went absolutely insane during the time leading up to this match with various forms of hilarity and wit, and even though most people refused to put any stock whatsoever into Gordon there was still a fairly well-sized base of people that believed Gordon could win this match against Max Payne. But once the match began and everyone saw Gordon again tank a match that he probably could have won, the Gordon Freeman Never Wins (GFNW) fad was born. It obviously hasn't died since, because Gordon has yet to win a match. Future Edit -- it took 2006 against Phoenix Wright for him to finally win one, and Phoenix would likely win that one if a rematch ever happened. If you count the Rivalry Rumble, Phoenix DID win that rematch. At present, Gordon has only ever managed to beat Phoenix Wright and Princess Peach 1v1. He also finished in first place in a 3-way poll in 2013 over Hades and Simon Belmont. He got through in the 4-ways with some second place magic, but first place and second place is a huge difference in that format. What's lost in Gordon's failures is that he has yet to allow an opponent to break 60% on him. There's a very select list of characters that can claim this, but Gordon is far and away the character with the worst winning percentage (.000) among them. You'd think a character capable of breaking 40% in every match would have broken through by now, but no. Then again, CJayC has caught on to the whole GFNW joke and puts Gordon in these types of matches on purpose. One day Ceej'll probably crack and pit Gordon against pure fodder, but hopefully not. It would kill the joke if Gordon ever won one. It took Sora in 2006 to finally get that barrier. In 2018, after years of Half-Life disrespect and people giving up on 3 ever happening, Bowser came close to breaking 80% on him. Fun fact. In terms of final percentage, this is the closest that Gordon has ever come to actually winning a match. Ceej has gone the "stick Gordon against a generic male character with two names" route twice since, but Max Payne fit the whole near-miss thing for Gordon the best. Yet despite almost being given winnable matches every year, Gordon never manages much of anything. Even against Payne, a match that looks close when one looks at the final percentage, Gordon was never in the match and the vote total was the lowest of the Summer 2003 Contest. We really need Gordon Freeman versus Face CATS. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sephiroth vs (15)Raziel 2003 _source: (2)Sephiroth vs (15)Raziel 2003 (revid 55515)_ ## Results Thursday, July 24th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 24th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 70,526 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 93.91% (38,560 brackets) In the final match of the South division's first round, we finally got to see Sephiroth in action. He was an absolute lock to make the finals of his division, and all he really needed to do until he got there was to impress in each successive match to keep the whole Mario/Crono/Sephy thing going. Fun Fact: Most people still felt that Sephiroth was stronger than Cloud (and Cloud's 2002 match against Mario certainly didn't help matters), so most people felt that Sephy would be able to handle Mario with ease if they fought. The big debate was that many people felt that Crono, if he managed to get past Mario, was able to beat Sephiroth. Hilarious. Sephy did exactly what he was supposed to do in his first match in blowing out Raziel with ease from start to finish. Sephy didn't carry the anti factor that Cloud did, so he wasn't stuck dealing with massive amounts of anti-voting at the beginning of his polls like Cloud was. Raziel was simply a bug in comparison to the likes of Sephy, and it showed. After Raziel's loss to Strider in 2002, he was brought down to the role of fodder in 2003. Since his loss to Sephiroth, Raziel has yet to see another contest. Yet Strider, who beat Raziel in 2002, also has yet to see another contest. Makes sense. I remember a few people saying that Sephy was in trouble after this match, mainly because he only did slightly better against Raziel than he did Crash Bandicoot. It literally took until KOS-MOS/Samus for people to realize that Crash was dead and buried, but more on that later. Of course, the biggest note about this match wasn't actually the match, but Slowflake. In some random topic where people were picking the final percentage for each match, Slowflake managed to nail a perfect prediction on this match. The Oracle Challenge was born mere hours later. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (16)Raiden 2003 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (16)Raiden 2003 (revid 88757)_ ## Results Friday, July 25th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 25th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 67,158 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Snake - 92.56% (38,004 brackets) The final division of the first round finally got its time in the sun, though it was widely believed that this division was the weakest (and thus most boring) of the four. Solid Snake and Mega Man were locks to make the divisional finals, though Vercetti and his massive Vice City hype caused Master Chief-like overestimation from his end. There were a couple of minor matches that were debated a little here and there within the West, but nothing that split hairs even after upsets took place. One of the strangest matches of the first round was Snake vs Raiden. A lot of MGS fans despised Raiden back in 2003, and as such they expected Solid Snake to SFF Raiden to epic proportions. Many people were calling for Snake to break Mega Man's percentage record in this match. The issue however is that Raiden actually does have a lot of fans out there, and while said fans wouldn't be nearly enough to help Raiden avoid an SFF beating, there were enough to help Raiden from becoming Tanner before Tanner even existed. All through this match, the only thing people were talking about was how Raiden was doing so well. Not that being below 20% can constitute "doing well", but people expected far worse. As an MGS2 fanboy, I can safely answer this by saying that both Raiden and MGS2 kick ass. Great story, great gameplay, great graphics... MGS2 is almost perfect save for the lameness of Fatman and Fortune, and I even liked those two. Raiden is no Solid Snake (and in fact Snake looks more awesome in MGS2 -- almost invincible, even -- when you're not in control of him), but there is a certain appeal to watching his maturation. Raiden may have been SFFd to hell in this match, but he and his game garnered him just enough support to avoid a Ms. Pac Man level of percentage. Raiden didn't see a contest for a long time after this match, but I maintain that he wouldn't be as weak as this match would assume. Lopen's Raiden drive has my support. As for Snake, 2003 was the continuation of a very successful contest career that has only grown stronger with time. In 2003 itself, the only character Snake had to worry about was Mega Man. He likely wouldn't win his Final Four match against Mario/Crono/Sephy if he got that far, so Snake's big goal was to try and upend Mega Man down the line. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Knuckles the Echidna vs (9)Yuna 2003 _source: (8)Knuckles the Echidna vs (9)Yuna 2003 (revid 80273)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, July 26th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis The prediction percentage really says it all about this match. No match has ever had a prediction percentage closer to 50% than this one, and for a time, there was a good reason for the hype. Three characters from Final Fantasy X got into this contest, and though few could agree on the order of the three strength-wise, they all helped add to a massive Square hype in this contest. And this was before the contest had even began. Tidus, Squall, Auron, Crono and Ramza all impressed, while Cloud and Sephiroth were at or near their 2002 levels of power after their first matches. There was little rhyme or reason behind the Knuckles/Yuna debates other than the fact that everyone knew that both characters had a good chance to win. There weren't really any stats to go off of, and it was simply a case of being lucky enough to pick the winner. The board was literally split down the middle in just about every topic, including the big contests like the Prophet Challenge. Two characters with essentially an equal chance to win, and no past stats to make your pick off of. Isn't this when the contests are at their best? The match to see who would get their asses kicked by Snake in the second round began (and quite a number of people were annoyed that we could see yet another Snake \> Knuckles affair in the second round), and Knuckles was able to slightly pull away at the start. Yuna fought to stay in the match for a few minutes, but Knuckles soon began to roll her over en route to getting his lead into the hundreds. Yuna made random stalls on Knuckles's lead at various times through the night, but she was never able to actually cut into Kncukles's lead; she simply went 50-50 with him for a time before Knuckles took off again. This culminated in Knuckles finally reaching a lead of 1000 votes, but Yuna beginning an hours-long stall with him. After it seemed like the two characters would be deadlocked until the end of the match, the day vote hit. You can all guess what happened from there, though it wasn't yet known that Knuckles was the champion of the day vote. His turning a deadlocked match into a 10000+ vote victory came as a surprise to many people, though this wouldn't be the last time that Knuckles snake-bit a Square character with that vaunted day vote of his... Yuna was one and done in Summer 2003, and Knuckles was again stuck facing Solid Snake in the second round. And while Knuckles would go on to have a good contest career and cause one of the biggest upsets of all time, it took Final Fantasy X-2 to even get Yuna back into another one of these things. - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 26th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 10,832 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Knuckles - 50.22% (20,620 brackets) ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match This was one of the most hotly debated match-ups heading into the contest. Strong cases could be made for both the echidna who performed respectably against Solid Snake in 2002, and the heroine from the most recent Final Fantasy. The final bracket stat was a testament to this split, with Knuckles barely eking out a win there, and the arguments for this match continued up until game day. #### After the Match Knuckles would take a small lead of about 1,000 votes early in the match, and both competitors would be in a stalemate throughout the wee hours of the morning. Yuna tried to cut into the lead, but Knuckles wouldn't budge. Once the daylight hit, Knuckles took off like a rocket, leaving Yuna in the dust and coasting to an easy 10,000+ vote victory. #### Interesting Facts - This match had the closest prediction percentage margin of any 1 on 1 match in contest history, as 50.22% sided with Knuckles and 49.78% took Yuna. - This was the second Sonic vs Final Fantasy X matchup of the contest, with Team Sonic securing a win to avenge Tails's loss to Auron. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Ryu vs (12)Duke Nukem 2003 _source: (5)Ryu vs (12)Duke Nukem 2003 (revid 55521)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, July 27th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 27th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 38,418 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 72.33% (29,696 brackets) Given that Duke Nukem went from being a 3 seed in 2002 (one that lost handily to then-unknown Alucard, no less) to being in a 12 seed fodder role against Ryu, it was widely believed that Ryu would come out and beat Duke with ease. However, I doubt most expected Ryu to dominate quite like this. Duke wasn't really considered full-blown fodder until this match, and this was supposed to be Ryu's tune-up for his eventual loss to Dante. Ryu blasting the hell out of Nukem should have been a warning sign for the upcoming match between Ryu and Dante, though that match definitely falls into the "Where the hell were the stats back then?" category. If they existed, people would have picked Ryu \> Dante without a second thought. As is, people had to make excuses for why Ryu was going to lose anyway. And the 70% he scored here could have actually been far worse; he was close to 75% when the match began. After Ryu's horrific beatdown of Duke Nukem, all the people who treated Dante \> Ryu as if it were a lock had to sit back and hope that Dante was equally, if not more impressive in his match against Ryo Hazuki. Of course, we're not even having this discussion if Duke Nukem Forever comes out on time. What the hell is taking them so long, anyway? • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Dante vs (13)Ryo Hazuki 2003 _source: (4)Dante vs (13)Ryo Hazuki 2003 (revid 55523)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 28th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 28th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 52,752 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 83.54% (34,300 brackets) The fear of Ryu beating Dante only lasted for one match, because those hoping that Dante would come out and vastly outperform Ryu against Ryo Hazuki got their wish. Dante came out almost exactly like Ryu did, except that Dante's percentage rose throughout the day instead of dropping like Ryu's. Dante \> Ryu was seemingly back in order, though Ryu \> Dante "upset" hype would have been massive if the stats existed back then. Check out where Ryo Hazuki and Duke respectively are in the 2002 stats. Not to take away from Dante or anything, but Devil May Cry 2 caused him to be overrated to all hell going into this contest. Sure it wasn't a good game, but what has Ryu done to appeal himself to the non-fighting game crowd since Street Fighter 2? As for Ryo Hazuki, he fell from the ranks of being put in positions to win matches to the role of fodder within one year, and he would only see one more contest after this before losing the support necessary to make the field outright -- it was a one-and-done loss against Yoshi. Ryo has always relied on Shenmue's cult fanbase to get him into these things, but he has gradually lost his luster and appeal in these things. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Donkey Kong vs (11)Vyse 2003 _source: (6)Donkey Kong vs (11)Vyse 2003 (revid 55525)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 29th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 29th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 24,284 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong - 87.73% (36,020 brackets) The West continued a fairly boring first round with another fairly boring match, this time between Donkey Kong and Vyse. The match was predictable as could be (DK was going to win, durr), though it had a couple of interesting second round undertones. There was massive hype for Tommy Vercetti going into this contest thanks to the insane sales of Vice City, as well as the fact that people at the time believing that FAQ hits would directly translate into votes for Vercetti. Vercetti had a lot of people picking him to win the contest, though the more realistic but still insane only had him getting out of his division. A couple of people (including one of my all-time favorite posters, NeoElfboy) were smart enough to play Devil's Advocate and note that Vercetti was being overrated; "He might even lose to DK". But I'm getting ahead of myself again. For DK to have a real shot at the OMG MASSIVE popularity of Vercetti, he would have to come out and impress. In 2002, he did no such thing. He had a very odd win against Bub (you'd think that a Nintendo icon would be able to blow Bub the hell out) before going toe-to-toe with Aya Brea and getting SFFd to hell by Mario. DK came out against Vyse and did fairly well -- He had 70% at the start of the poll -- but his percentage gradually slid down to what you see above until the end of the match. This wasn't the overly impressive performance that the DK \> Vercetti hopefuls were looking for, but given that Vyse was a new character it was tough to judge exactly how well DK was "supposed" to do. Still, Vercetti had a very similar match upcoming and how strong he was remained to be seen. As for Vyse, this was his first contest appearance, but not his last. Skies of Arcadia has a hardcore fanbase, albeit a bit small to get Vyse a good seeding in these things. He has an all-time record of 1-3, with his one win coming against a character more cult than he is and his most recent performance helping to hype Tifa up as the next FF7 Noble Niner. We may be seeing the end of Vyse's run. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Tommy Vercetti vs (14)Kite 2003 _source: (3)Tommy Vercetti vs (14)Kite 2003 (revid 88758)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 30th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 30th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 30,750 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tommy Vercetti - 83.74% (34,384 brackets) Remember the first Summer 2003 writeup for this match where I called Kite a girl because I knew nothing about the games and went only on match picture? Good times. I also distinctly remember saying that this match exposed the hell out of Vercetti, and it did. Characters who are supposedly able to take down Mega Man and Solid Snake in succession are not supposed to only score 65% on cult classics like Kite. Even funnier is the fact that during the early parts of the vote (which is all board vote; the same board that overrated him in this contest), Vercetti was only barely able to get above 60% and had to spend the rest of the match getting his percentage up to the 65% he finished with. At this point, Vercetti being overrated was a given. Forget about him beating Mega Man. The question from here is whether or not he would even beat Donkey Kong -- and man, I love making NEB look like a genius. Pardon the fanboyism \<\_\< As for another poster who made a very excellent point involving DK/Vercetti, MMXcalibur eventually noted in the Prophet Challenge for that match that it could be very close; if you stick Vyse and Kite in a match, no one would know for sure who would win. Enter DK and Vercetti both having similar scores against these two. What was once a lock for Vercetti became quite the interesting match. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Lara Croft vs (10)Zelda 2003 _source: (7)Lara Croft vs (10)Zelda 2003 (revid 88759)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, July 31st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 31st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 28,001 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 61.72% (25,340 brackets) How the mighty have fallen. Remember when Lara Croft was a 1 seed? This was a very debated match before the contest began, for several reasons. Lara Croft's 1 seed in 2002 was a big one, but the biggest was that Tomb Raider 2 was scheduled to hit theatres the weekend before this match. And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't this match take place on either a Sunday or a Monday? That would mean that Tomb Raider 2 came out mere hours before this match. Maybe that has something to do with the ridiculous vote total for a meaningless first round matchup, though your guess is as good as mine on that one. Unfortunately, Lara was stuck facing Zelda in a year when Link-mania was at an all-time high. His massive support carried over into Ganondorf and Zelda on the boards, as anyone who remembers any of the pre-polls or the Prophet Challenge remembers. And then, in the biggest blow of them all for Croft hopefuls, movie-goers came home and wrote multiple reviews to say that Tomb Raider 2 sucked. Whoops. Enter match time, specifically the part where Zelda has 70% of the votes at the beginning. Lara made somewhat of a recovery later on, but it wasn't nearly enough for her to retain any ounce of public favor after this match. I'm actually surprised that she didn't lose worse than she did, and if this match were ever held again, Croft would lose by a much bigger margin. This match took place when people still bothered supporting Lara in her matches, and this match also signified the last time this ever happened, both in these contests and in gaming itself. Lara's fall from being the most mainstream gaming character out there to being universally hated came very swiftly, as did her fall from being a 1 seed to being out of these contests. Zelda missed making the contest in 2004, but came back in a big way in 2005. And after Twilight Princess finally comes out and Zelda is actually playable, forget it. She's going to be a beast. PS - Sir Chris's guess in this match's Prophet Challenge was 28000. Only a perfect guess will ever break this record. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Mega Man vs (15)Mr. Resetti 2003 _source: (2)Mega Man vs (15)Mr. Resetti 2003 (revid 55531)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, August 1st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 1st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 80,505 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 95.61% (39,257 brackets) Believe it or not, people considered this a disappointment for Mega Man. You need look no further than 2002 to see why. In 2002, Mega Man's run was nothing short of ridiculous. He broke 90% in two straight matches at a time when breaking 90% was considered to be nearly impossible. He then backed this up by coming within six hours of beating Sephiroth, and he would have done it if Sephiroth wasn't the massive board favorite and the match was solely decided by GameFAQs visitors (if you look at all of 2002's matches, you can really tell that the contest went from being a GameFAQs thing to something much more by contest's end). I maintain that Mega Man beats Sephiroth in 2002 if it's a first round battle, but that's beside the point. The point here is that people were expecting Mega Man to back this up with more of the same in 2003. And why shouldn't he? He was literally put into a division that would require a complete choke job to lose, and it was possible that we'd see a Mega Man/Sephiroth rematch in the Final Four. People were all over this (minus those who actually thought that Vercetti would throw a wrench into this whole thing, though that was long gone by the time Mega finally hit the polls), and given what Mega did to Ms. Pac Man and Serious Sam in 2002, why couldn't he have a repeat performance against Image Not Available? But CJayC eventually did find a picture of Mr. Resetti, and to the shock of many, Resetti was actually able to break 10% in the match. And I'm not kidding about this. Many people expected Mega to set a new percentage record in this match, and were disappointed when he didn't even come close. Only in a GameFAQs contest can a character fall short of 90% by 1.04% and be considered disappointing. It's not like Resetti returned to the contests as a powerhouse or anything; this was his only match. And again I say Animal Crossing. Final Fantasy 7. It doesn't really matter what Nook and Resetti did in this contest, because their run came elsewhere. There was no reason to believe that Mega was in any sort of trouble after this match, despite it being an OMG DISAPPOINTMENT!1! for him. And on that note, we had finally reached the end of the first round of this thing. There was a little bit of everything in this contest's first round, but it was only a sample of what this thing had in store for us later on. One match in particular gave us the shocking upset we were all hoping for, albeit much faster than anyone expected. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (9)Fox McCloud 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (9)Fox McCloud 2003 (revid 88761)_ ## Results Saturday, August 2nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 2nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 63,666 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 82.13% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 95.42% (39,180 brackets) The second round of this contest kicked off with Link further proving his dominance over the rest of the field. The man had performed to rather insane heights in 2002, but he came out in 2003 fully prepared to outdo himself. Poor Fox never stood a chance, especially given that you're more likely to see ESPN admit to being wrong about how badly they were owned by USC than you are seeing Link facing the ass end of Nintendo SFF. It simply won't happen. For the second match in a row, there was no real reason to believe that Link repeating was in any jeopardy whatsoever. If anything, he came out and did more than what we expected of him, and that's a lot given what he was coming off of. A few upset hopefuls took the Mario/DK 2002 route and claimed that this match proved nothing due to it being SFF (as was Link's first round match, come to think of it), but breaking 80% is good regardless of who the opponent is. Still, it is fair to cite that these were two SFF affairs that Link exploded in. The next round would be a much more telling sign for his repeat chances. On a side note, it's interesting comparing today's match to this Link/Yoshi 2004 affair: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1766-hyrule-division-semifinal-link-vs-yoshi) Granted it's a much stronger Link, but Yoshi only managed to do .72% better on him than Fox. Yet Yoshi is a contest staple while Fox's last match in contests was back in this very 2003 loss to Link. It was a quiet exit, but one that needs to end fairly soon. Fox could be a strong character if put into the right situation, and him being the second best character in SSBM can't hurt. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Ganondorf vs (13)Magus 2003 _source: (12)Ganondorf vs (13)Magus 2003 (revid 88762)_ ## Results Sunday, August 3rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 3rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 650 - **Oracle Expectations:** Magus - 57.44% 44 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Magus - 24.25% (9,955 brackets) Talk about Board 8 and the casuals being on completely opposite sides... You're all aware of what the Magus hype was by now. If Crono was able to almost beat Mario, then certainly a character whom the CT faithful all love vastly more than Crono should be able to be stronger than Crono; as such, Magus was the best chance at ending Link's shot at repeating in the Summer 2003 Contest. And he was not only hyped as such (remember, Link vs Magus was this contest's "true final"), but he was almost hyped as possibly being more dominant than Link was in the future. On our board, anyway. The casual bracketmaker looked at this thing and thought "Wow, Link kicked ass in 2002. Ganon and Zelda will be strong as well.... and who the hell is this 'Magus' character, anyway?" For a small while in the actual match, the casuals were shocked at the proceedings. Remember back in the first round of this analysis when I noted that people actually thought that Link/Ganon would be a good match? That was the topic of the night for quite some time, and the casuals simply weren't aware of who Magus was. It's another case where the people who have played the game like the character's chances, but no one else knows who the character is at all. And for the first six hours or so of this match, Magus schooled the casuals who went with Ganon based off of Link's success. Magus began the poll fairly well, and even though he slowed down a little bit as the early morning hours dragged on he was still able to increase his lead fairly easily. The only concern that people had is that Magus only had an 1800 vote lead after 6 hours, 30 minutes of the match had passed. But most people simply chalked this up to Ganondorf feeding off of how strong Link was and respected how well Ganondorf was doing. These people didn't have any clue what was about to happen to their golden boy, nor did they actually envision the possibility of Ganon coming back and winning this match. Think USC hype versus Texas being slighted, with Magus as USC and Ganondorf as Texas. That's essentially how people felt this match would play out. However, there was one slight problem. Ganondorf was only 1800 votes behind, and the morning vote actually favored him over Magus. It wasn't a drastic shift in vote intake, but it was enough for Ganon to cut off 36 votes with his first 15 minute update victory. Magus turned around and took 27 of this back, which was met with much relief. Little did Magus know that this was the last update that he would win for quite some time, and that Ganondorf was about to give him the fight of his life (until Knuckles showed up years later and exposed Magus as a fraud, that is). Ganon laughed off Magus's update win with a good hour and a half of small-but-solid update victories, and then at 9:45 AM EST, Ganon dropped the hammer by slicing off over 100 votes from Magus's lead and dropping it to under 1500. Ganon had caught the full swing of the morning vote, and he had plenty of time to get back into this match. He followed up his momentous 100 vote update by going on a tear that saw Magus's lead drop to under 1000 before lunch. It took Magus 6:30 to build an 1800 vote lead, but it took Ganon less than 4 hours to get the lead under 1000. At this rate, Ganon could win the match with ease and he knew it. He followed up getting Magus's lead under 1000 with two straight update wins of over 100 votes to bring Magus's lead down to 750. The time at this point was exactly noon, and at the rate Ganon was going (he cut off over 1000 votes in 4 hours, 30 minutes) he would be able to tie the match in three hours before winning by a good 2000 votes or so. If panic didn't hit Magus's supporters after Ganon started catching the morning vote, it had definitely set in by now and all eyes were fixed on the poll to see which character would come out on top. Unfortunately, for whatever reason Ganon completely ran out of gas after noon passed. He was able to ride the momentum of his massive morning vote (And his massive nose!) to continue winning updates, but he was winning them in much less stellar fashion than he was in the morning. Because of this, Ganon was only able to take off a few more hundred votes throughout the entire afternoon. After Magus's lead was dropped all the way down to the 200-300 range, Magus finally remembered that he had a pulse and began fighting back in the match. He wasn't able to gain back any votes for quite some time, but the important thing is that he was able to stall Ganon's advance from the late afternoon all the way until the evening vote began. Many a topic sprouted up about how Ganon couldn't get the lead any lower than 200, and finally, after an hours-long stall, the evening vote hit and Magus was finally able to begin gaining votes back. Ganon tried as hard as he could to get back into the match, but everything he threw at Magus was answered with Magus either stalling him or increasing the lead outright. By the time the poll was in its waning stages, Magus's lead was at a comfortable 600 and Ganon was simply unable to make up all the ground in such a short amount of time. It's difficult to say whether or not Magus won this match or if Ganon simply lost it, but the one thing most agreed on at this point was that Magus wasn't going to come anywhere near Link in the next round. If Magus had all of these problems with Ganondorf (who struggled with Tidus), how would he beat Link? The simple answer is that he wouldn't, though the way Magus would eventually perform against Link would set the stage for him to become one of the biggest frauds in the history of these contests. As for Ganondorf, his combined differential through his two matches in this contest was +932. He went through two razor-thin matchups in this contest that no one who saw them will ever forget, and he was able to use his first contest appearance as a building block for future showings. There was a minor hiccup in 2004 when CJayC decided to give everyone their wish and put Ganon up against Link in the second round, but Ganon has been kicking ass ever since and has been as noticeable as anyone in 2005. And like with Zelda, Ganondorf is going to be an absolute beast in these polls after Twilight Princess. I'm getting a little ahead of myself again, but if you ask me it wasn't necessarily Magus's match against Link that made him so overrated. Warning signs were all over the place that that match was a complete fluke that could be discarded for several factors. The issue is that before Summer 2005, whenever someone noticed that Magus could be a fraud, his match with Ganondorf was always the one that stood out as him being legitimate. I personally think that this match was every bit as responsible for Magus becoming overestimated as his match with Link was, and I often wonder if things would have taken a different course had Magus lost this match. He and Ganon have clearly gone in opposite directions since, and if this match were held again I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Ganon broke 60%. #### Interesting Facts - This is one of only three matches in contest history, and one of only two in the 4x16 format (the other being Aeris Vs. Tina) to occur between two lower seeds. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Oy, this cluster of a match. So many weird things went into this match, before, during, and after it. First off, Magus: the most hyped newcomer in the field. As I mentioned before, some people figured he could be a serious threat to Link, as weird as that sounds now. Second, Ganondorf: another hyped newcomer who struggled with an incredibly close match with Tidus. Two “badass” dark wizards with an awesome FFP match accompanying them. THE STAGE WAS SET INDEED This one saw a literal ton of lead changes, reversals, and crazy F5ing from everyone on the board. The match was completely up in the air until towards the end, when Magus finally pulled it out. In a rematch today? Ganon totally wrecks Magus. Doesn’t change that these two were evenly matched back in the day and delivered one of the best slugfests in contest history. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/GanonVSMagusUpdates.txt) (text file as collected by Ngamer) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Squall Leonhart vs (3)Luigi 2003 _source: (6)Squall Leonhart vs (3)Luigi 2003 (revid 55537)_ ## Results Monday, August 4th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 4th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 23,726 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 39.99% 6 for - 53 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 38.10% (15,642 brackets) There have been a lot of unexpected upsets through these contests, but no poll has ever generated a more insane "WTF?" reaction than this one did. For those who weren't here in 2003, I say again that Luigi was hailed as the second coming of Mario. He was supposed to tear through his fourpack before being a true threat to Samus, and given how hated Squall was at the time there was no reason to think that Luigi would do otherwise even after Squall's impressive showing against Jill Valentine. It's just Jill, right? Who cares? Luigi was going to smoke Squall like no other. One person was vocal enough to challenge all of this: nanasilencer. She's the biggest Squall fan to ever post on these boards (You think Leonhart is a fan of his? Pfffft.), though even she had her doubts about him going into this match. Her support was out of fanboyism more than anything else, though this didn't stop the board in its entirety from remembering every little thing she said. And when the poll began and Luigi was winning, there were a few "Take that, nana!" topics sprouting up all over the place. Little did these people realize that Squall had begun taking away Luigi's slim lead even before the first update hit. And then the second update came. Squall was in the lead. But... but how? And when the third update came and it was clear that Luigi was about to get his ass kicked, all hell broke loose around these parts. nanasilencer rubbing everyone's nose in it was only the tip of how bad things got that night. Not even Mario/Crono 2 brought as many cheating accusations as this match. Wylvane also committed account suicide over this match, which spearheaded a massive suicide movement from legions of Luigi fans. People were also getting banned from PlanetGamecube left and right, because the place was mail bombed and spammed to holy hell all night long. Thankfully, the idiots over there learned their lesson after the Mario/Cloud 2002 debacle and did nothing. Not that it would have mattered anyway. Everything that Luigi's supporters threw at Squall was met with Squall's furious push that lasted throughout the entire match, and one can imagine the reaction that came from the people who fully expected Luigi to kick ass, only to see him barely over 40% when they woke up in the morning. The board explosion lasted all through this match and well into the next one, and some of the most ridiculous reasons ever were brought up as to why Luigi lost. I should say Uigi actually, because people actually bothered postulating that people didn't know who Luigi was due to what the match picture read -- there is an L on Luigi's hat, and CJayC cleverly put "uigi" after it. And on top of the account suicides, there was a massive amount of flaming, trolling, and flooding that literally led to thousands of moderations throughout the match. By the time the dust settled, Luigi flat-out got his ass whipped en route to not even breaking 40% come match's end, and he went from being the favored Nintendo newcomer to a character whose stock was lower than Jill Valentine herself; she actually managed to break 40% against Squall in the prior round. Luigi hasn't been the same since, either. He was put in a very winnable situation against Yoshi in 2004, but choked. Come 2005, people finally stopped putting faith in Luigi. Against Tifa, in a match where he could have finally redeemed himself, he again lost. He has yet to make it out of the second round of these contests, and it will be difficult for people to put real faith in him even after the recent widespread Nintendo boost. Squall used this match as a launching pad to a good contest career, though some would argue that he has never been as strong as he was in 2003. This match also drew another line in the sand between Square and Nintendo, and I believe it also marked the beginnings of all the "Kingdom Hearts Factor" talk. What other factor could there be for Squall making such a large jump in popularity out of no where? KHF was a factor that would eventually become a fairly mainstream saying, though Squall was far from the last character who would give us evidence to such. But more on KHF later on in the analysis. It wasn't long before the focus turned to a Squall \> Samus bandwagon. If Luigi was a threat to beat Samus, then why couldn't Squall be as well? You know how this board is. Every time a major upset happens, they rally around the character that wins out of not wanting their overrated character to look so weak. Remember all of the recent Kuja \> Master Hand hype? Maybe Knuckles \> Squall rings a bell? Squall \> Samus was in the same category, and it should be noted that this was the first poll of Summer 2003 in which the character winning in the first few seconds didn't win the poll outright. It also wouldn't be the last. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Though this match seems easy to predict by today’s standards, it was a massive upset back in the day and was also one of the only 2003 matches where the eventual winner didn’t lead right out of the gate. Luigi was one of the most hyped newcomers in 2003, one many people felt could give Samus a run for her money. Squall, on the other hand, had lost badly to Snake last year and most didn’t think he could get past Jill Valentine. Well, the match started off normally, with Luigi winning, but Squall then absolutely ran away with it. I am not exaggerating when I say that the subsequent outcry and accusations of cheating rival those of any GameFAQs match in history, so much so that after this CJay cut off the board’s access to any accounts below Level 15 (fun bit of history for ya). This was the Magus/Knuckles of its day, and was possibly an even bigger upset, given its placement in the bracket and Squall’s crazy surge in strength. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)KOS-MOS vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 _source: (7)KOS-MOS vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 (revid 88763)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 5th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 5th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 44,702 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 70.94% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 82.29% (33,788 brackets) As odd as it sounds knowing what we now know about KOS-MOS, Samus's going 70-30 blowout on her was fairly surprising at the time of this match. People loved overestimating new characters back in 2003, and KOS-MOS's killing of Crash certainly helped her stock along. But when KOS-MOS entered her match with Samus, cold reality smacked her in the face and asking for her to go 70-30 with Samus again would probably be asking for too much. KOS-MOS's time in the sun in these contests ended almost as fast as it had started. She won one match here in 2003, and has been blown out in every meaningful match she's been in afterwards. The Xenosaga series not being all that good certainly doesn't help, and you have to wonder whether or not Monolith will actually go through with making the six planned games given the low sales. It would take a long, LONG time plus one of the weakest fourpacks in history for KOS-MOS to get her redemption arc. For Samus, this was more of the same. It wasn't quite the dominance that people were hoping to see from her (remember, Samus \> Link hype still existed at the time), but this match somewhat helped people get over her disappointing first round showing against Isaac. It also proved to most of the Squall \> Samus hopefuls that Squall had little if any chance of actually winning that match. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Auron 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Auron 2003 (revid 55541)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 6th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 6th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 50,246 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 69.10% 43 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 81.52% (33,470 brackets) Believe it or not, this was a fairly hyped match, especially in the first few minutes of Cloud's match with CATS. Both characters are FF leads from popular Square games, both characters wield huge swords, both characters are moody loners (CJayC literally called Cloud, Squall, and Auron 'The sully, moody character from FF7/8/X', or something alone those lines, in their bios), and both characters are OMG Badass! Badass! Badass! Badass! Clearly the idea of SFF and its nasty effects weren't in full swing yet, as was the idea of rSFF actually being worth much in matches like this. Cloud was the clear favorite going in, and what people were hoping for was a hardcore case of rSFF giving Auron the win. I do wonder how many people took Auron's upset prospects seriously, however. Well, aside from the 20% of people that actually gave CATS/Auron/Tails a chance of beating Cloud. It's a very bad prediction percentage, and it goes to show that people had no faith in Cloud after Mario broke everyone's hearts in 2002. Not that it had much bearing on Cloud's match with Auron, however, as he predictably jumped out to an SFF beating from the beginning of the poll and never looked back. This didn't drastically debilitate Auron from the contests like blowouts do with certain other characters, though. The guy is a shade or two under Noble Nine status, and has proven it in his days since the Summer 2003 Contest. The company he represents certainly doesn't hurt. This match went a long way to prove that Cloud was \#2 in the Square pecking order behind Sephiroth, and he may wind up being \#1 some day. At least, that was the mentality at the time. For the longest time, people either liked Sephiroth more or simply put more faith into him. It took a long time, Summer 2004 in fact, for people to fully agree to the contrary. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Bowser vs (4)Yoshi 2003 _source: (5)Bowser vs (4)Yoshi 2003 (revid 88765)_ ## Results Thursday, August 7th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 7th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 12,489 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 49.74% 22 for - 26 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 40.65% (16,689 brackets) At the time that this match took place, Bowser defeating Yoshi was a fairly large shock. The reason for this is simple. [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/634-which-mario-character-is-your-favorite) Because of that poll, everyone assumed that Yoshi would walk all over his fourpack in the event of Ness not pulling off any upsets. And using that poll wasn't exactly wrong, because people didn't know at the time that those polls weren't very reliable. This caused Yoshi to not only be the board favorite against Bowser, but a lot of people stretched out that poll into saying that Yoshi stood a chance to beat Cloud. Mario beat Cloud, and Yoshi finished ahead of Mario in that poll.... This all caused Yoshi to be the clear favorite in this match, and for the first few seconds of the poll he was in the lead. His lead was very slim however, and within a few minutes Bowser was able to catch up to Yoshi before laying an SFF beatdown on him throughout the rest of the match. It wasn't a Mario/DK type of a beating, but it was enough to ensure that Yoshi had no chance of winning the poll after only enjoying his lead for a few seconds. The only explanation that can really be made here is that Bowser is more popular than Yoshi in the Nintendo landscape, though it was almost impossible to know that GameFAQs felt this way before the match started. Both Bowser and Yoshi faced new characters in the first round, and the aforementioned poll showed that Yoshi was allegedly the \#1 Nintendo character on the site. One could have looked at the total votes and percentages from the first round and said that Bowser looked more impressive, but it was impossible to really see this coming ahead of time. Since this poll, several things have happened with both characters. Bowser, like Ganon, has massively increased his strength and is almost at Noble Nine status, while Yoshi is a solid middle character who can always win one or two matches in contests. People have also learned not to take those mass character polls all that seriously, though it would take awhile before Favorite Game polls and FAQ hits were discounted as viable sources as well. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (3)Master Chief 2003 _source: (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (3)Master Chief 2003 (revid 88766)_ ## Results Friday, August 8th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 8th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 21,975 - **Oracle Expectations:** Aeris - 67.88% 49 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aeris - 45.89% (18,844 brackets) I know this has been said multiple times already, but it's fairly sad that Aeris so thoroughly dominated her fourpack two years in a row as an 11 seed, yet somehow had to take a contest break until 2006. But of Aeris's four wins, the one over Master Chief was perhaps the one that has the biggest potential for the higher seed actually winning the match. Or at the very least, the potential was there until Master Chief's gag job against Felix. After that match it became fairly clear that Aeris was going to win this match with ease. However, despite Master Chief completely blowing his first contest appearance down the toilet while being the overwhelming favorite to win his fourpack, there was a silver linine in his performance. As I mentioned earlier, Chief's matches almost always involve the people willing to vote Chief over anything else. What Chief would pull off in future appearances surfaced a bit in his match with Aeris. In the early stages of this match, Aeris was easily on her way to a doubling; Chief almost got her under 60%, and shaving percentage from a Final Fantasy 7 character is no small task. Chief being put in matches against characters at or near his strength, all after gaining more fans would make for some of the best matches of all time in future contests. But in 2003, he was simply the guy that Xbox fans overrated to all hell. The amount of people that had him winning it all was insane. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Zero vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (7)Zero vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 55545)_ ## Results Saturday, August 9th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 9th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 4,642 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 59.14% 46 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 60.55% (24,860 brackets) After the first round, the Sonic \> Cloud hopefuls were looking great. Cloud had done God knows what against CATS, while Sonic performed better in his victory against Ken than Samus did in 2002. Sonic was flyin' high, livin' large, ready to take on the world. And then his second round match with Zero came along, and Sonic was only able to nab 60% of the vote as the poll started. Fine, whatever. Zero was a new character that people were unfamiliar with, and maybe he was a bit stronger than anticipated. But then the absolutely unthinkable happened, and Sonic really hasn't been the same since. Actually he hasn't been a dominant force since his choking away a 1500 vote lead in three hours against Samus, but this match with Zero proved that recovering from that would take far longer than one year. Zero, this upstart newbie who had no business whatsoever being mentioned in the same breath as someone of Sonic's caliber, shoved that Z Saber right up Sonic's ass and began taking off percentage like no other. Sonic wasn't put in any jeopardy of losing (and for the most part, he was still increasing his lead fairly easily), but he went from blowing Zero the hell out to being in a Pyrrhic Victory, and his status grew worse as the match progressed. There was no massive Sega morning vote, no massive rally, and no huge voter shift that allowed Sonic to get back into blowout mode. Zero avoided all of this, and he even managed to win updates here and there throughout the match. Sonic went from blowing Zero out to having to struggle to build a lead, and he only wound up winning by a few thousand in the end. He was never in any danger of losing, but winning by less than 5000 votes against a new character that most people had never heard of? Something was either very wrong with Sonic, or Zero was the strongest new character in the field. And since very few people outside the MMX fanbase even knew who in the heck Zero was, the former was the consensus conclusion. It's not that Sonic magically became a weak character or anything, and in fact he still has his Noble Nine status well in hand -- but the aura of invincibility that he had before Summer 2002 was dead and buried after this match, as were any hopes of Sonic taking down Cloud in this contest. Clearly, the "2002 Revenge Vote" factor wasn't doing much. People went from wondering whether or not said factor could take down Cloud to wondering if the poor guy could even beat *Aeris*. Zero went out of this contest with a bang, and he later proved that he was no fluke. He put on a clinic in 2004 before having an equally good showing in 2005. In my personal opinion however 2003 was Zero's best performance, and his loss to Sonic is still his best match. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (1)Mario vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 55549)_ ## Results Sunday, August 10th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 10th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 11,062 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 70.68% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 85.85% (35,250 brackets) I'll let Ngamer64 handle the intro for this one: "This contest is officially stupid in the extreme. Ok, so..... Let me see here. Sonic HIMSELF came within a hair of being beaten yesterday. By a 2nd rate character from another series, who doesn't have great name recognition, and didn't look cool in his picture. WTH? This officially makes Sonic the weakest of the \#2s in the whole contest, who may not even make it to Cloud. Which means, the Sonic series is DEAD. D-E-A-D. No one respects it anymore, it's been way too long since it's put out a good game, Sega is over. RIGHT? So then we take a glance at today's matchup. Let's see here... oh, it's FREAKING Mario. You know, the \#2 character last year, the legend, the man who represents all things Nintendo, the most famous icon in gaming history. Playing who? SHADOW, a completely second rate character from the Sonic series (which was flat out EMBARRASSED last night, if you recall one paragraph ago), of which he has only appeared in a single game. Yeah, he has no name recognition, no character development, and he looks like crap in his picture. Blowout city! WRONG Holding the biggest gaming icon of our generation to below 60% is nothing less than a crime against sanity. Not to mention my predictions. That's it, I need to go lie down." And it gets much worse for Mario. He had over 60% of the vote at the beginning of this poll, and Shadow managed to get him all the way down to 55% by the end of it. And this wasn't some random character that Shadow pulled this off against, either; this was Mario. You can imagine how many topics were made during this match from people wishing they had picked Crono to make the divisional finals, and for good reason. Characters hoping to win contests don't only get 55% in matches like this, and it brings up another fairly good point. What happens if Mario and Sonic are ever in a match together? Assuming that rSFF is the reason Shadow managed to pull off 45% on Mario, could Sonic rSFF his way to winning such a match? A year or two ago, I would have said that it were possible. But we've since seen a massive Nintendo boost. As for the match at hand, rSFF is the only thing I can think of that would have allowed Shadow to do such a thing, especially given what we know now. Shadow isn't nearly as strong as the hard stats for 2003 show, and something fairly mythical happened in this match that allowed him to impress so much. Him performing so well due to being the black Sonic and perhaps getting a lot of rSFF may sound strange, but it's not like most other ascertains sound any more sane than that one. This wasn't 2004 or even 2005 Mario. In 2003, Mario was perceived as invincible against anyone not named Link, which caused massive amounts of hate for him in seemingly every match he was involved in. Mario was the favorite to win this division by a wide margin, and most of the upset talk came from hope more than anything else. There was some validity, but nothing major to fall back on. But in one match in the summer of 2003, Shadow changed all of that. Granted he hasn't seen nearly the same amounts of success since -- he's only appeared in one match over the past two years, which was a loss to Tidus -- but it changed Mario's image for quite some time. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Kefka vs (4)Crono 2003 _source: (12)Kefka vs (4)Crono 2003 (revid 55551)_ ## Results Monday, August 11th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 11th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 58,626 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 68.19% 51 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 60.93% (25,018 brackets) People expected Kefka to get rocked after he was barely able to beat Pac Man (and he was lucky as hell to win that match, quite frankly), but most didn't expect his beating to be quite this bad. Remember, Kefka/Crono was a massively debated battle before this contest started. However anyone with any sense knew that Kefka stood no chance after first round events, and Crono blowing him out wasn't exactly a surprise. The only real surprise (aside from Crono's 79999 votes.. how awesome is that?) was the arguments that happened during this match. SFF wasn't vastly mainstream at the time, and many argued that this wasn't an SFF affair. I can't remember too many blowouts that generated more arguing than this one, though in fairness I didn't bother believing that this was an SFF match until Kefka/Knuckles. For myself and others it was a little more difficult believing in Square SFF at the time due to each game having its own fanbase. For Nintendo characters, SFF is easier due to the widespread appeal. Though all of this was minor compared to what this match set up: Mario versus Crono, the Rematch. And this time, Crono was coming in with a full head of steam while Mario was struggling. You can imagine the hype, especially from those hoping for the upset. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (3)Kirby 2003 _source: (6)Alucard vs (3)Kirby 2003 (revid 55553)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 12th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 12th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 4,510 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard - 54.00% 40 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard - 40.40% (16,589 brackets) If this match were ever held again, I think most people would go with Kirby fairly easily. He's got all the mainstream appeal, plus recent history would say that Kirby takes it with ease. But if you rewind back to 2003, it was an entirely different story. Alucard/Kirby/Ramza was a hot item, though Ramza fell out of the race early and made this a two-horse affair. Alucard vs Kirby was an odd debate, given that there weren't really any stats to work with. All we had was one close first round loss from Kirby and a good showing by Alucard in 2002. A lot of people picked Alucard to win this fourpack, but only because Alucard had a mystique about him after the Summer 2002 Contest -- I call this "Scorpion Syndrome", where people overcompensate for getting snake-bit one year by overestimating the characters who surprised come the next contest. Sometimes doing this works (2005 Sora is a good example), but most of the time it doesn't. For people doing this in Summer 2003, backing Alucard was a rare case of this working. However, if you slap Alucard into Jill Valentine's place in Summer 2002, I almost guarantee that Kirby would have been the massive favorite and that Alucard would have shocked the hell out of anyone watching. Alucard's upset of Tails would have been child's play by comparison. But this wasn't Summer 2002, and people were a tad wiser this time around. It's not that Alucard turned the hype into a 50-50 style board split out of stats or anything; there was simply a certain aura about him that couldn't really be explained when compared to Kirby's miserable 2002 showing. It should be noted however that even though I'm making it sound like Alucard was the clear favorite going in, he wasn't. At best it was a dead even board split, though more people seemed to favor Kirby winning this match. I'm simply saying that a lot more people would have been on Kirby's side if the events of 2002 weren't taken into account. The match to decide this hyped fourpack finally began, and it was dead even at the beginning. Come the first poll freeze, Alucard was ahead by the score of 59-55 and it seemed as if we would be in for quite the duel. Unfortunately Kirby fell off the map come the second update, and more of the same would continue until the end of the match. It was a close match on paper, but in reality it was one of those matches where the winner was never in question for more than a few seconds. For the second year in a row, Alucard won his fourpack in alarming fashion, as a fairly sizable underdog. And for the second year in a row, Kirby suffered a very disappointing, close early loss in the contest. Thankfully for Kirby, a widespread DS-fueled Nintendo boost was only two years away, and he would certainly be a large reason why. As for Alucard, he hasn't made it into the third round since this contest. It's not that he lost his strength, but he was stuck behind Ganondorf in 2004 and Sora in 2005. Alucard is strong, but beating the Square/Nintendo elite isn't something he can handle. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Max Payne vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 _source: (10)Max Payne vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 (revid 55555)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 13th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 13th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 70,809 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 83.53% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 84.23% (34,582 brackets) It's pretty sad if you're Max Payne and the only thing to talk about during one of your matches is how it looks like you're taking a crap in the match pic. Max Payne began this match by getting his ass whipped, never looked back, and everyone watching fully expected this to happen. There's not much else to say, save that it's interesting that Raziel did better than Max against Sephy, as well as the fact that Strider having not seen a contest since 2002 really sucks. Granted he's probably not actually stronger than Max Payne, Gordon Freeman or Raziel anymore, but it's worth a second appearance for confirmation. It should be noted however that Sephiroth is lucky that Gordon Freeman did not defeat Max Payne, as he would have failed to break 60% in the match and his image would have been tarnished forever from that point forth. On that note, the Mario/Crono/Sephy trio was finally set into place, save for the little matter of Seph having to get through Alucard first. And believe it or not, people still felt that Sephy would be able to take down Mario with ease, but would have issues with Crono. And given that a lot of people felt that Crono was going to defeat Mario, there were multiple topics from people wishing they had picked Crono to go a bit further. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (8)Knuckles the Echidna 2003 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (8)Knuckles the Echidna 2003 (revid 88767)_ ## Results Thursday, August 14th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis As everyone is well aware of by now, Solid Snake and Knuckles were stuck seeing each other in the second round of contests for three years running. In 2003 (the second match in this "rivalry"), people were pretty upset that we were seeing a repeat of a blowout match that took place in 2002. And you can imagine how riled up everyone got when they saw the 2004 bracket. It's not like this match occurred three times in a row by accident, either. It was set up to happen in the second round every year on purpose, and it was the least bit funny. On that note, here's the 2002 poll: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/979-east-division-round-2-knuckles-the-echidna-vs-solid-snake) Everyone knew that rerunning this match was stupid and that Knuckles wasn't going to make a match of this one year after getting blown out, and the general apathy towards this match led to a comparatively low vote total and Knuckles losing worse than he did the year before; not that anyone expected anything less than Knuckles getting blown out again, mind. Knuckles would be stuck facing Snake in the second round for another contest after this one, and when he finally got a bracket in which he didn't have to face Snake in the second round, he extracted his just revenge. Coincidentally, 2005 would also be Snake's best year to date, though he was far from a weak character in 2003. Snake's predictable defeat of Knuckles was business as usual, and the only thing to really look at in regards to Snake was his future match against Mega Man. His three opponents leading up to that match were simply stepping stones, and everyone knew it. - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 14th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 25,392 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 64.10% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 79.70% (32,725 brackets) ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match Unlike the first round, Knuckles did not generate interest in his second round placement. This match had been seen just one year prior, and Solid Snake beat Knuckles comfortably. This lead to disgust from some users who did not want to see the match again. Some even petitioned votes for Yuna just to keep this re-match from occurring. #### After the Match Knuckles did not do as well in 2003 against the Metal Gear Solid hero, finishing under 37% as Snake snuck on by to the next round once again. There was little to no intrigue in this match, because we had all seen it just a year ago. #### Interesting Facts - This was the first ever re-match in Character Battle history. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Ryu vs (4)Dante 2003 _source: (5)Ryu vs (4)Dante 2003 (revid 55559)_ ## Results Friday, August 15th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 15th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 7,609 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 53.20% 41 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 37.54% (15,413 brackets) As odd as it may sound, Ryu defeating Dante was the second-biggest upset in the first two rounds of this contest. Only Magus defeating Ganondorf was bigger, and the board actually expected Magus to win that one. You could fairly say that this match was the upset of the first two rounds, both from a casual and board standpoint. ...and no one really cared. Most people had Dante winning this match without putting a second thought into it during the bracket phase, and Dante \> Ryu looked just fine after the first round. But when the match began and Ryu was in the lead, complacency was the victor despite Dante still being in the match early on. It's not that the match wasn't an upset, but most people didn't really care that Dante was losing. Either Ryu is massively respected, or people hated Devil May Cry 2 enough to not mind seeing Dante get his ass whipped. Ryu maintained a steady beating of Dante all through the match, and the final result was one of those polls in which the numbers weren't a true indicator of how dominant Ryu actually was in the match. If anything, Ryu underperformed a little due to being the underdog. This match remains as one of the more boring upsets, simply because there was no outcry. Skipping ahead a little, a quick glance at the 2002 stats reveals that Ryu wasn't really the underdog in this match at all. There was simply no way to know this before the contest started, and I again say damn the stats for sucking all of the unknown out of these polls. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Donkey Kong vs (3)Tommy Vercetti 2003 _source: (6)Donkey Kong vs (3)Tommy Vercetti 2003 (revid 85182)_ ## Results Saturday, August 16th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 16th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 968 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tommy Vercetti - 53.80% 44 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tommy Vercetti - 52.43% (21,529 brackets) Donkey Kong Always Has A Close Match (DKAHACM). Going into this contest, Vercetti was the Playstation 2's version of Master Chief. He was a hot new character with a legitimate fanbase, but as such was very overestimated. Many people had Vercetti not only scoring some upsets, but winning the contest outright. The Top 50 list was used as a backbone for a lot of the reasoning, but then DK came along and helped people to realize that FAQ hits amount to squat. There was a general feeling of DK having a chance to win this from a few people, and while most realized that Vercetti was very overestimated after this match they still believed that he would beat Donkey Kong fairly easily. Whoops. It was clear when the match began that we were in for a classic, what with Vercetti jumping out to an early slim lead but doing everything in his power to choke it away. For the first 30 minutes of the poll, Vercetti couldn't get his lead above ten. It took until the 0:30 update for Vercetti to get on track, in which he enjoyed an update win of over 100. Normalcy seemed to hit the poll as Vercetti extended his lead past 200 before the poll's first hour was over, but DK was able to hit back quickly. In one update, he took Vercetti's lead from over 200 down to just under 150. But Vercetti was quickly able to recover, and he was able to spend the next two hours building a 500 vote lead. It wasn't pretty, but it was a lead nonetheless. DK began fighting back again at this point, but the best he was able to manage was a 50-50 stall for awhile. Vercetti was able to do his thing fairly easily en route to fighting off DK's efforts and building a lead of nearly 600 votes. But then the morning vote came, and all hell broke loose in the poll and on the boards. Vercetti's fall from contest contender to contest bust was not a nice one, and you can imagine how his loud-mouthed supporters were being treated on the boards. In the poll, the morning vote was very nice to DK. DK began chipping away at Vercetti's lead little by little, and though Vercetti was able to hold his own every now and then, DK was able to win the morning vote overall and get Vercetti's lead under 100 by lunch. A couple of nasty updates in DK's favor helped this along considerably. By this point the board was going nuts, much like they always do when the board favorite is in trouble. The big argument here was "Donkey Kong is a legend!" versus people wanting the two points from this match. Things got even more crazy when DK and Vercetti stalled at around the 100 vote barrier for a good two hours, before DK went nuts and took off all 100 votes in all of two updates. One update later, we saw one of the single coolest updates of all time: 14:00 \| Vercetti \| 50% \| Kong \| 50% \| Lead of 1 \| TV down by 3 The only thing that sucks is that updaters didn't put votals in the updates at the time (in fact if you look at Ngamer's chart, it didn't become a trend to do this until the latter stages of this very match), but it's still awesome to see a poll freeze with a gap of one vote. One update later, DK reaped the benefits of an update victory of over 100 votes, the first triple digit update score since the match was a mere 30 minutes old. The match looked to be over, but Vercetti was quickly able to fire back. It only took two updates for him to get his lead back. Just when Vercetti looked to be in control of the match, DK fired back with another 100+ vote gain to retake the lead. One update later, Vercetti scored a 90+ vote update to take the lead back yet again. The two characters went back and forth like this for hours, which led to arguably the best seesaw battle of the 15 minute update poll era. Whenever one character looked to be in control of the match, the other would come back one or two updates later and take the lead again. The two characters put on an absolute clinic, and the match wouldn't be decided until the evening vote. And as everyone knows, this classic battle had a very anticlimactic end. After DK and Vercetti went at each other like gladiators hour after hour, Vercetti caught fire with the evening vote and put this match away in a flash. He turned a deadlock into a lead in the hundreds with the same speed that he had in the early stages of the match, and at the time most people blamed bracket voters for DK's failure to close the deal. If you look back at this match, Vercetti's bracket advantage wasn't all that large. DK simply isn't good at bringing in votes at night, and it caused him to lose a match that he probably could have won had he begun putting up a fight earlier in the match. Knowing what we know now, I think it's safe to say that it wasn't bracket voting, but DK's night vote failures in general that cost him his match. As for the board, they were mostly happy given that they favored Vercetti in this one. But all of the people who thought that Vercetti had a shot against Mega Man weren't doing much talking after his near-loss against Donkey Kong. This match was a sign of things to come for both characters; both Vercetti and DK have each gone on to have similar matches against other characters, though neither is anything more than a midcarder in the contest setting overall. But for one nice 24 hour period, they were the stars of this thing. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Okay, maybe it does get more hilariously embarrassing than MC/DK '05. Vercetti entered the season hyped to possibly make it to the semifinals... Yeah, then he almost lost to Donkey Kong. What is it with people almost choking to Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong letting them come back? This match was basically the same as Master Chief vs. DK, but with more lead changes and more random wacky pull-aways and the like. At the end of the day, Vercetti was the winner… sort of. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/TommyVsDKupdates.txt) (text file as collected by Ngamer) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Zelda vs (2)Mega Man 2003 _source: (10)Zelda vs (2)Mega Man 2003 (revid 67610)_ ## Results Sunday, August 17th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 17th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 23,199 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 69.79% 57 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 52.18% (21,426 brackets) To this day, I'll never get why people underestimate Mega Man in every contest. 52.18% prediction percentage to get into the third round when his only competition was Resetti, Zelda, and Lara Croft? This hasn't gotten much better in future contests, either. The funny thing about Mega's match with Zelda is that it's the first match he ever had in which he didn't blow everyone away. Everything up to this point was either a killer blowout or the near-upset of Sephiroth. And while people didn't expect Mega Man to go berserk on Zelda, they expected him to do a lot better than this. It's not the 60-40 that bothered everyone so much as the fact that Mega Man had a doubling on Zelda when the match began. Mega then spent the rest of the match watching his percentage slowly being lowered, especially in the morning and early afternoon. This wasn't a bad match for Mega Man per say (you know, given that Link and friends were the stars for the first two rounds), but it's tough to imagine Mega taking down Sephiroth in a rematch when he can't manage more than 60% on Zelda. The only thing that really made Mega's supporters feel better was Link's dominance, by extension perhaps Zelda was much stronger than many expected. She is after all SSBM's best character. And on that note, the first two rounds of this contest were over. This contest had given us everything we asked for -- close matches, shocking upsets, classic Nintendo/Square battles and new characters doing well -- and the home stretch would continue to impress. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (13)Magus 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (13)Magus 2003 (revid 55565)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 20th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 20th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 33,441 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 64.71% 50 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 84.53% (34,708 brackets) Few people actually believed that Link/Magus was the hyped "true final" of this contest after Magus's flop against Ganondorf, but it's safe to say that Magus performed very well in his final match of 2003 -- perhaps too well. Fun fact: Everyone knows that I snapped my foot in half after beating Balk in the Calc SCC (cement floors in bedrooms suck ass). That actually happened when this match was less than an hour old. After killing Balk, I spent another couple of hours killing Altima, then I drove to a nearby college's computer lab (I didn't have a computer until after I graduated high school, which would explain the lack of PC RPGs on my recent top ten list that was posted on the homepage) to post everything in one of the SCC topics. I had a stick shift car at the time, and I still don't know how I managed to drive 20 minutes away given that I had to use my left foot to drive the stupid thing. I also checked out this match while I was there, and I was absolutely stunned to see that Magus was just barely under 40% against the infallible Link one round after almost losing to Ganondorf. I mean, Link is the same guy that had Sephiroth within a few percents of 40. I thought for sure that Link would crush the hell out of Magus and stake his place as this contest's dominant character with ease. Well after seeing all of this damn hype about Magus for a month and a half, I went home, went to bed, and started up a Chrono Trigger game via Final Fantasy Chronicles. Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed and could see why everyone loved Magus so much back in 2003. But Magus \> Link hype? To this day, I have no idea how all of that began. Crono coming close to Mario and Magus being so far ahead of Crono so as to challenge Link are two completely different things. Eventually the morning and day votes caused Magus to fall from his 40% down to under 35, but Link has always kicked ass during the day; consequently, Chrono Trigger characters have always tanked during those same time periods. It's a wonder that Magus only lost 5%, and I wonder how much the Magus hype played into Magus doing so well in this match. Most of the time I'd call a 65-35 affair utter destruction on the part of the winner, but in this match against this guy in Summer 2003, flirting with 40% was no joke. Unfortunately, everyone knows what happens to Magus next. His matches against the Zelda duo of Link and Ganondorf paired with the hype stemming from this contest caused him to be one of the most overrated busts of all time. He went from beating Ganondorf to losing to Knuckles in the span of two years, and every time someone mentioned that something was amiss about Magus, it always came back to 2003. Did board hype really make enough of a difference so as to cause Magus to overperform by this much? Who knows. The other factor that is always brought up is that Chrono Trigger characters seem to overperform when they get their sprites in a match pic, and in this match we saw Magus's sprite against the Link sprite from the original Legend of Zelda. Other matches involving CT characters could suggest that this is a valid claim somewhat, but again, overperforming by this much? And that doesn't explain how Magus was able to beat Ganondorf while his horrid artwork was in the match pic. Perhaps we'll never truly know the answer. The other thing that came out of this match is that for the first time in two years and nine matches, Link seemed beatable. Granted Sephiroth never came close to Link, but allowing an optional side character who is an NPC for well over half of Chrono Trigger to almost break 40% on you can't be good news. Then again, making Link look bad and actually beating him weren't the same thing. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Squall Leonhart vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 _source: (6)Squall Leonhart vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 (revid 88768)_ ## Results Thursday, August 21st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 21st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 18,479 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 59.14% 50 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 64.90% (26,647 brackets) Speaking of characters that people were hoping could beat Link, all Samus needed to do to face him in the Northern final was to take down Squall. Some people believed that Luigi was a threat to Samus before the contest began, and given that Squall slapped Luigi around like a doll, some expected that Squall could do the same to Samus. It was clear from the beginning of the poll that this wasn't going to happen, but it's not like Squall was disrespected in his final match, either. In fact, Samus was only a few percents over 60 when this match began. Squall was then able to spend the rest of the match doing to Samus what Magus could not do to Link, which was to finish the match over 40%. He almost finished with over 42%, which was good given how people had been trashing him for such a long time. Of course, most people blamed Samus's horrendous NES Metroid sprite for her not doing so well, completely ignoring the fact that Final Fantasy 8 characters are animated like crap when they aren't in cutscenes. Thus, the Samus \> Link hype was still on in some parts. And in less than a week, we would finally see a match that many of us had been waiting for for two contests running. As for Squall, he would go on to prove that 2003 was not some fluke occurrence. He's been impressive in just about every match he's been in since his wonderful 2003 run, and though he didn't go out with a bang in this contest, we now know that breaking 40% on Samus (sprited Samus in the pic or not) isn't exactly easy to do. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (5)Bowser 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (5)Bowser 2003 (revid 88769)_ ## Results Friday, August 22nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 22nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 44,610 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 64.81% 52 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 73.13% (30,027 brackets) As soon as Bowser took Yoshi down, a pre-poll was made for Cloud/Bowser. The results were almost unanimous in favor of Bowser, and it was clear that the board had begun hating Cloud for reasons unknown to myself. Even Sephiroth didn't have it that bad until Spring 2005. This makes what Cloud did to Bowser in the actual poll all the more alarming. Even with the board almost fully behind Bowser, Bowser never came close to Cloud even in the opening seconds. Cloud would go on to a massive 70-30 beating of Bowser that opened quite a few eyes when it came to the strongest characters of this contest. Given how Sonic had performed against Zero, Cloud's path to the division title and a showdown with Link almost seemed inevitable. But could Cloud actually give Link a run? Of course, many will say that Bowser only did this badly because Bowser was stuck with his Mario 1 sprite in the match pic, while Cloud was blessed with an in-battle polygon from FF7. It was quite the mismatch in terms of appeal, but could it really have made enough of a difference so as to prevent Bowser from getting his face kicked in? Bowser spent two matches kicking the hell out of his fourpack, yet Cloud shot it all down in seconds. It would be the final time that Cloud ever won the board vote in a contest poll, because hate for him only magnified after this match -- and given that there were still many who wanted Sonic to take Cloud down after the Summer 2002 Sonic/Samus collapse, revenge voters were ready to go. Of course, this assumed that Sonic even made it to Cloud at all. He had to get past Aeris first, which was no lock given recent events. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 88770)_ ## Results Saturday, August 23rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 23rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 6,460 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 57.02% 49 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 33.76% (13,860 brackets) It was clear that Sonic was a bit off in Summer 2003, but only 33.76% of people had him winning three matches? That seems beyond strange, because it made this match the third-biggest upset to date in the contest. Only Magus \> Ganon and Ryu \> Dante tore up more brackets than this battle did, and if this wasn't an indication that Sonic lost a step after Summer 2002, I don't know what is. The prediction percentage wasn't the only bad thing to happen to Sonic in this match, either. In his previous match, Sonic went from being close to 60-40 on Zero before his percentage collapsed throughout the rest of the match. Against Aeris, he once again was close to 60-40 at the beginning of the poll -- only this time, Sonic didn't bother waiting for a percentage collapse. Aeris pulled Sonic under 54.5% with the second update, and spent the next 23.5 hours taking off another 1.5% from the blue blur. Sonic not doing so hot against Aeris wasn't nearly as unforgivable as his collapse against Zero was (Welcome to FF7FAQs!), but it was a tell-tale sign that he wasn't coming anywhere near Cloud in a few days. If Aeris came within 6500 votes, then one could only imagine what FF7's posterboy would do Sonic afterwards. This match wasn't quite the disaster that Sonic/Zero was, but it was still proof that Sonic was done for in this contest. On a different note, this was the last time we saw Aeris in a poll for 3 years. For whatever reason she hasn't had nomination support since Summer 2003, despite being an 11 seed in two straight contests and winning her fourpack both times out. And when one paired this match up with Cloud/Bowser, Final Fantasy 7 being stronger than ever began to come into focus. Not that most people considered the prospects of Cloud beating Link (yet), of course, but all three FF7 characters had kicked ass in every match they appeared in. On the funnier side of things, even with Aeris performing so well, Zero performed better than she did. Ouch. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (4)Crono 2003 _source: (1)Mario vs (4)Crono 2003 (revid 88771)_ ## Results Sunday, August 24th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 24th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 137 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 48.84% 17 for - 29 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 65.42% (26,862 brackets) No match was more debated before the contest than this one, and for good reason. All of those stupid little factors that people fling around like fact in every debate actually mattered in the rematch of the century. Never mind the sheer appeal of seeing these two in a match again, but the backstory itself was off the charts. In 2002, Mario was the overwhelming favorite to win it all, but the big question was Mario versus Cloud. After an epic match that saw Cloud go up by 1000 votes before Mario's clutch kicked in (namely Super Mario Sunshine being released on the day of the match and PlanetGamecube's linking to the homepage) to barely save him, Mario became Public Enemy \#1 on GameFAQs. People swore to not allow Mario to win that contest, regardless of who he was up against. Enter Crono. After an amazing run that saw him defeat the beloved Simon Belmont, the beloved Dante, the favored Lara Croft and the huge fan favorite Solid Snake, Crono was thrust right into the middle of the mess surrounding the hate for Mario. People vowed to support Crono, even if they knew that he had little to no chance of actually winning the match regardless. When the match began, Crono slowly fell behind by 1000 votes despite the best effort of everyone to put him over the top, and people had all but resorted to hoping that the winner of Link/Sephiroth would have enough gas in the tank to take Mario out come the final. But then the miraculous happened. The evening vote hit, and much to the shock of everyone watching, Crono had actually begun coming back in the match! Crono mania took over GameFAQs, and Crono's comeback gained more and more steam as the evening hours marched on. Crono eventually won an update that put him in the lead, and absolute pandemonium took over the entire site. Unfortunately, everything quickly died down once CJayC announced that a vote-stuffer was largely responsible for Crono's comeback, though he wouldn't say how many votes were stuffed until two years after this match. CJayC took 400 votes away from Crono (though after Starcraft/Wind Waker, he admitted that he should have taken away 3000) with less than 30 minutes remaining in the match. Crono's momentum allowed him to take off over 250 votes in that time, but it wasn't enough for him to win. You think people didn't want to see a rematch after Crono was robbed so badly? Of course they did, and CJayC knew it. Crono wasn't underseeded this badly by accident, nor were the two characters given such soft paths to each other by accident. The rematch was on before this contest even began, and the characters that Crono and Mario tossed aside could easily be considered collateral damage. Save for one: Shadow the Hedgehog. Of the four matches involving Mario and Crono leading up to this match, Mario/Shadow was the only one in which either character looked like complete crap. It was also the only one that allowed us to see whether or not either character had an advantage going in, because let's be honest, anyone who felt that they knew who would win this match with 100% accuracy was fooling themselves. This was all about two characters with equal chances to win being put on the biggest stage of them all, and the hype leading up to this thing practically led to liquid tension all over the boards. And to boot, the match was a Nintendo/Square affair at a time when both companies were amazing. Pity that Square has done nothing since. People didn't have to wait long for the match to start either, because CJayC ended Sonic/Aeris 20 minutes early, which caused Mario/Crono II to begin 20 minutes early. This would eventually go down as the single dumbest choice CJayC ever made in these contests, and you'll notice that CJayC has since added language related to this to the official contest rules. But more on this when the time comes. When the match finally began, voting was clearly going to be at an all-time high. Everyone and their mother was ready to go for this match, and it all led to Crono having a slight lead at the first poll freeze. It wouldn't last however as Mario jumped out to a lead of over 120 once 1 AM (which is when the poll should have started) finally hit. But Crono would weather the early bracket voting storm and begin his march toward a lead of his own in a flash. Crono stalled Mario the second the 120 vote lead occurred, and it took all of 30 minutes more for Crono to go berserk and win an update by 130 votes to give himself a 50 vote lead. Mario was unable to do much after this, for Crono was able to spend the entire night building up a lead for himself. Mario stalled Crono in an update every now and then, but these stalls were little more than blips in the radar en route to Crono building a lead of 750 at 6:00 AM EST. 750 may not sound like much, but in a match this large with two even characters, a lead in the hundreds is a good one. But just like in Mario/Cloud, the lead that Crono worked so hard to build began to slip away once the morning vote hit. At 6 AM, Crono had a lead of 750. It only took Mario until 10:30 to tie the match, and Mario's momentum gained more and more with each passing update before finally tying the match, to the point where it looked as if the match were over well before Mario even tied it in the first place. In the three updates involved with Mario finally tying the match and taking a lead, he won by 135, 124, and 103 votes. Football-like momentum carried Mario all the way past Crono, and given that CT characters perform like crap during the morning and afternoon, it seemed as if Crono's dream of scoring the all-time biggest upset of these contests had come to an end. But just like in their match in 2002, one could almost give credit to the miraculous when it seemed that Crono needed ethereal help the most. Somehow, some way, Crono was able to hold Mario at bay during what is historically his worst part of every match. After Mario stormed past Crono, Crono was able to regain his footing and prevent Mario from getting a lead of over 200. By the time noon hit, Crono had already begun fighting back and taking Mario's 200 vote lead away from him. Crono kept Mario deadlocked for another hour, and was able to bring the lead down to 120. It was at this point that Mario began to run out of gas, and Crono didn't wait long to let the killer instinct take over. When Mario's lead was 126 at the halfway point of the match, Crono proceeded to take off over 200 votes over the next 30 minutes en route to a lead of nearly 100 votes. Crono won the next update by 140 votes to take a lead of over 200, and it was at this point that people really began to feel that this was simply Crono's year. Mario threw everything possible at the mute one, but Crono took all of it and kept on rolling. Crono began to use his newfound love from the afternoon voters to his advantage, and he slowly began to extend his lead. Mario was able to stall Crono every now and then and even at times looked to be on the verge of making a big move, but the overall landscape of the afternoon vote is that Crono was able to use both it and the early evening vote to build a lead of over 800 votes. When Crono finally got his 800 vote lead, the time was 8:30 PM EST. Mario then won an update by 51 votes to scare everyone half to death, but Crono was easily able to recover. And given how well Crono did in the evening against Mario one year ago, people began to concede that this match was over. There was some disdain from some circles, but since the board was mostly for Crono winning this match there was an overall feeling of happiness and relief that Crono was able to pull this thing out. Mario gave Crono his best shot, but it simply was not enough on this day. Crono made it clear multiple times in this match that he wasn't going to be stopped, and he was finally able to reap the benefits at the end of it all. It was around this time that Heroic Mario and his concession topic became famous. He had talked a lot of trash in the weeks leading up to Mario/Crono II, and to see him concede was the nail in Mario's coffin. In Summer 2003, I picked Mario to win this match. I used pretty bad logic, too: "If Mario beat Crono one year, why couldn't he do it again? Crono needed to cheat to stay with Mario in 2002, anyway!" I remember reading over the boards, looking at all of the topics congratulating Crono and feeling pretty down about it. I knew nothing of Chrono Trigger at the time, and wasn't even rooting for Mario to win out of fanboyism; I just had a good chance to win that contest had I gone perfect the rest of the way, and I remember asking myself how many people were in the same boat as I was. Even when the match was essentially over, I still checked the poll every 15 minutes in hope of Mario pulling off a miracle. Yet all I kept seeing was 50.3X% next to Crono's name; nothing was changing in the poll, and maybe Crono really had pulled off the stunner to end them all. Mario finally gave a tiny bit of hope to the few remaining that were rooting for him when he won an update by 48 votes, but this quickly ended when Crono came back to win the next update by 15. At 11:00 PM EST, Crono was ahead by just under 800 votes. Even the most diehard Mario/bracket supporter didn't possibly believe that Mario was going to come back from this, and there were a ton of hugs and handshakes among the Crono faithful. Crono had finally taken Mario down! Mario won the next update, but no one thought much of it. It was only an update win of 26. Mario won the next update by 88 votes, but even then no one thought much of it. It was 11:30. Crono was up by 675 votes with all of 80 minutes remaining in the match, two hours if CJayC felt like extending the match to 1 AM. It took Mario 30 minutes to take 100 votes off of Crono's lead, and even then most felt that the match was over. But then, the absolutely unthinkable happened. Mario won the next update by 104 votes, and Crono's lead was taken down to 571! Absolute panic set in all over the place, and it would only grow larger as this poll continued. Mario win the next update by 60 to bring the lead down to 511 at midnight. This left Mario a now-massive 40 minutes to take off another 500 votes. When the next update hit, absolute madness set in. Mario took off another 130 votes from Crono's seemingly insurmountable lead to bring it down to 381, and people on both sides started losing their minds. Mario supporters were back in the game and frantically rallying for votes, while Crono fans had no idea what had just hit them. They too began to rally in an effort to help Crono hang on to his ever-slimming lead. Mario won the next update by 86 votes, which brought it down to 295. Crono fans were relieved at this point, because there was no way in hell that Mario was going to overcome a 295 vote lead in ten minutes. At this time, it was 12:30 AM EST. Remember, this poll started at 12:40 AM the night before. Had this match lasted 24 hours, the poll would have been over in 10 minutes. Even though Crono had tried his hardest to lose this match, it seemed as if he would hang on to pull it out anyway. Much to everyone's horror, the match did not end at 12:40 AM. Or 12:41. Or 12:42. People began to realize that this match was going to run until 1 AM, and the complaints began to roll in like you wouldn't believe. And could you really blame them? Crono's loss in 2002 could easily be blamed on a vote-stuffer, and it was likely that Crono wouldn't have come anywhere close to beating Mario without the additional help. But this time around, CJayC took the full blame for what was going on. And rightfully so. There was absolutely no reason to run this poll for longer than 24 hours, but that was secondary compared to seeing what the results of the next update would be. Come 12:45 AM, people were greeted with the largest update win of the entire match, and it once again went in Mario's favor. Mario had taken off 144 votes in 15 minutes to bring Crono's lead down to a measly 151. Absolute insanity took full hold on the entire site at this point. People could not believe that CJayC was allowing this to go on, yet despite this Crono was still in good shape to win the match. For Mario to win, he would have to follow the biggest update victory of the entire match with an even bigger update victory, and certainly Crono's supporters couldn't have had enough of a mental lapse to allow this to happen. Right? It's almost impossible to put what happened next into words. You really had to be there. When the 1:00 update hit, Mario came out with a lead of 92 votes after being down by 151 all of 15 minutes before. This means that despite there being no update win of more than 144 votes through 23 hours, 45 minutes (and there were only two updates over 140 through the entire match outright), Mario was able to win the final update by 243 votes to clinch the match. A lot of people will tell you that CJayC extended the match from this point to allow Mario's victory, but make no mistake. Mario was in the lead at 1:00 AM. The extra five minutes, so CJayC claims, was to check for possible cheating on both sides. For those five minutes, Crono's fans were almost certain that CJayC's little investigation would turn up cheating on Mario's behalf. Coming back from being down 800 with such speed is bad enough, but winning the final update by 243 votes? Something sure as hell was amiss about all of this. CJayC made a topic to state that there was no cheating detected and that Mario was the winner. He mentioned that he extended the poll to 1:05 AM to check for cheating, but gave no reasons why the poll was started 20 minutes early or why the poll wasn't closed at 12:40 AM 24 hours in. The biggest board explosion I've ever witnessed began mere seconds later, and CJayC's topic hit 500 in less than ten minutes. Almost all of the topics were filled with the standard order -- cheating accusations, celebrating, whining and the like -- but a few were actually filled with legitimate complaints. Why was such an important match begun early? It's not like CJayC didn't take into account that this could have happened one way or the other. The other major complaint came in the form of people reporting that they had been asked to take part in an "Are you male or female?" poll through various means. Apparently, people went out to spam for Mario votes by asking a trick question among internet sites that were predominantly male-oriented; those reporting that this poll existed said that they were spammed to take it via AIM, e-mail, and most notably there were AOL users claiming that the poll was spammed all over chat rooms. There were also allegations of the poll showing up on various message boards all over the internet, thought I don't remember a link to any such board. How could such a poll alter the results of a poll on GameFAQs, you ask? The top option was "Male", and the bottom "Female". The top option in Mario/Crono was "Mario", and the bottom "Crono". If such a poll redirected you to vote on GameFAQs upon answering... I don't know how valid the whole Male/Female controversy was, but it's hard to deny that something very odd happened in the final two hours of that poll. Regardless, CJayC said that Mario would advance. We couldn't exactly do much about it other than complain, valid as the complaints may be. The board explosion stemming from this match lasted for a very long time. Most people went to bed before Crono's collapse began, which led to everyone waking up to "Mario WON?!??!?!" topics all through the next match. This would easily go down as the most controversial match by far in the history of these contests. It's not that we haven't had cheating accusations or close matches before or since, but there has yet to be a match as large as this one. This match went beyond the hype when almost nothing ever does, and regardless of which side you were on, this match was one of the most memorable in the history of GameFAQs. For the second year in a row, Crono fell just short of defeating Mario. But in 2004, Crono would get a good measure of revenge. In the Spring 2004 Contest, Chrono Trigger took down Super Mario RPG, Super Mario World and Super Mario 3 en route to making the finals of the contest and losing to Final Fantasy 7. In Summer 2004, Crono himself was again stuck facing Mario in the third round. Crono began that match by blowing Mario the hell out, and there would be no miracle comeback that would save Mario from getting his ass kicked. Crono would beat Mario by over 6000 votes in that contest. The two again met in Summer 2005, in the grandest stage of them all: the finals. Crono fought to stay with Mario early, but Mario would eventually return the 2004 favor by beating Crono by almost 8000 votes. The rivalry has been a good one through the years and has had many great matches. Crono even managed to pull out a win in several of them. But you will be hard-pressed to find any match in or out of the Mario/Crono feud that tops this one. It had everything, plus so much more. If you take only one factoid from Mario/Crono 2003, let it be this one: There is no 24 hour voting block in this match that Crono lost. Mario only won because of getting 27 highly suspicious extra minutes to work with. And as a random aside, even the Mario backers felt dirty about this match. Everyone felt Mario cheated to win it, and everyone felt CJayC allowed the cheating to happen. Even now, as I do future edits and proofreading in 2026, no match has EVER come close to this one for controversy and nonsense. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MarioVSCronoUpdates.txt) (text file as collected by Ngamer) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=53) ### Cool Screencaps - [Mario takes the Board Vote (well, 5-1 at least)](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MariovCrono.jpg) - [B8's reaction to Mario surging ahead right at midnight](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MarioWinsBoard.jpg) - [B8's reaction after the polls close, at 16 minutes past the hour](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MarioWins.jpg) - [The classic picture](https://imgtc.com/i/fM4Kxos.jpg) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 _source: (6)Alucard vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 (revid 55576)_ ## Results Monday, August 25th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 25th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 49,648 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 69.98% 48 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 70.89% (29,105 brackets) I doubt one single person actually cared about this match as it was happening, and why would they? This took place directly after Mario/Crono II, and you can guess what people chose to discuss given that Sephiroth blowing Alucard away was to be expected. The only thing to really be drawn from this match is that Alucard faced Cloud in 2002, and Alucard actually did better against Cloud than he did against Sephiroth: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=989) Then again, this match took place at a time when a lot of people still believed that Sephiroth was stronger than Cloud was, so Sephy doing better than Cloud didn't come as much of a surprise. The issue is that this gave us a lot of insight into the upcoming Mario/Sephy duel. If Mario = Cloud, and Sephy performs 2.5% better than Cloud against a common opponent, wouldn't this mean that Sephy was in line to beat Mario? Not many people bothered looking at the numbers for this, however. They were all out for blood after what had happened to Crono, and Mario/Sephiroth quickly turned from a debated match into Mario versus the world. Again. People obviously weren't yet aware that Mario didn't need the revenge voter's help, though it couldn't hurt. Mario/Crono/Sephy was once a debated trio. It turned into Sephiroth being the fairly obvious favorite going into the divisional final. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Ryu 2003 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Ryu 2003 (revid 55579)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 26th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 26th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 15,595 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 69.98% 48 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 65.68% (26,966 brackets) There was some discussion before this match that Ryu had a real chance of pulling off the upset. Take a wild guess as to why. It was the sprite round, and Solid Snake looked horrendous in the match pic. Not that Ryu looked much better, but at least people could pick out who Ryu was. Snake would have to rely on his name alone to win the match, though reports of his early demise were vastly premature. When the match began, Snake was comfortably in the lead and simply never looked back. Ryu never came close, and those who argued that Snake's sprite would hurt him ate their words fairly quickly -- for this match, at least. Future contests would prove that Snake sprite match pics yield some very bad results. For the second contest in a row, Ryu went down in fairly routine fashion. He broke 40% on a strong character in a match that most expected him to lose. Can't say much more than that, though this didn't exactly bode well for Snake come the next round. He was the underdog against Mega Man as is, and it's tough to imagine Snake beating Capcom's ultimate mascot when he can't even break 60% on one of Capcom's lesser characters. It's not that Snake didn't have a chance, but it wasn't a good one. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Tommy Vercetti vs (2)Mega Man 2003 _source: (3)Tommy Vercetti vs (2)Mega Man 2003 (revid 55581)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 27th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 27th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 38,095 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 66.86% 48 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 31.11% (12,775 brackets) All the Vercetti hype that existed before the match had certainly died down to a deafening silence by the time this once-debated match took place. Everyone knew that Vercetti was overrated going in, and it was about time we saw just how much. Remember, many people expected Vercetti to win this match with ease before the contest started. As you can see, no such thing came close to happening. Mega Man pummeled Vercetti into the ground from start to finish en route to a fairly easy doubling, though Mega was a far cry off from the days when he was flirting with 90% and coming close to beating elites in every match. Still, a doubling over a character that many once thought could beat you is still impressive, and it made for a nice tune-up going into his match with Solid Snake and eventual possible rematch with Sephiroth in the Final Four. People were more reasonable with Vercetti's stock after he bombed in 2003, though most were smart enough to not have him making it past Mega Man. Had Donkey Kong pulled off the upset, Vercetti would have gone down as a much bigger bust than history shows. Vercetti has been in both contests since this one, but he was never able to live up to what people first expected of him. With that, the final week of the contest was upon us! The Elite 8 all being 1 and 2 seeds was a crime, but there were some very interesting matches coming up. People have wanted Link/Samus for two years, there was still talk of Sonic upsetting Cloud, Mario/Sephy was guaranteed to be huge, and Snake still had a chance at beating Mega Man. The funny thing about this final week were all of the people claiming that Mario/Crono symbolized the end of this contest when it came to excitement. What a difference seven days can make. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 (revid 55584)_ ## Results Thursday, August 28th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 28th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 26,155 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 60.38% 38 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 72.17% (29,632 brackets) Almost 3/4ths of people having Link win his division should really tell you something about how dominant people thought he would be in this contest. Anyhoo, NeoElfboy can handle the intro for this one: But what if Samus \[beats Sephiroth\]? I didn't think it would happen due to Sonic revenge votes, but those just don't appear to be materialising at all. It appears that perhaps the revenge vote just isn't much of a factor, after all. Samus/Link... interesting. On the surface, one is inclined to favour Link, based on the fact that Zelda has been big in recent years, but one has to go back to 1994 to find Samus' latest effort (don't even bother with SSB). But... call me crazy... but if that happens, I think Samus will win. Reasons? 1\. For the embittered Square fanatics, she represents the lesser of Nintendo's evils. 2. The tremendous amount of respect for the Metroid games, particularly Super Metroid (you know, the best-game-of-all-time jazz that several major video game reviewers have blessed it with) 3. TJF. Figuratively, that is. I know I love Samus for what she represents as far as female characters go, and I also know many others like me. A little girl power could propel her to victory. As I said, call me crazy. I'm probably almost the only one predicting this. But I really do give Samus the edge if it comes to it. That post was made in the 2002 stats topic when Samus was in the middle of building a 500 vote lead for herself. Samus would eventually lose the match to Sephiroth, but the Link/Samus stigma remained until the next contest for all of the reasons NEB lists above. Thanks to little resistance in the North, we were finally greeted to the match we were all hoping to see in 2002. And for a little while, the match was fairly entertaining. Many people supported Samus in her upset campaign, and she was able to keep it close early. But it wasn't long before SFF started kicking in, and Samus's best efforts couldn't prevent her from being on the ass end of a 62-38 beating. Granted this wasn't hardcore SFF like seen in other Nintendo matches, but it was enough to make Samus look pretty bad when the stats came out post contest. All through this contest, Samus seemed a bit off. Isaac did much better than people expected, and Squall went from being below 40% to being above it with ease during his match with Samus. And while Samus did well against Link, hard stats after the contest show that she went down after the release of her first game in eight years, Metroid Prime. That sounds just a tad ridiculous, and it proves that Link SFFd her pretty handily in this match. The odd thing about Samus is that this is really the only contest where she has ever disappointed. Save for one bad loss to Mario in 2005, she has done very well in just about every match of every other contest. As for Link, this was his 10th win in a row in these contests. Two more would mean his second straight title, and it certainly didn't look like anyone would come close to him at this rate. Of the six characters remaining, Link didn't really have anyone to worry about. Cloud lost to Mario the previous year, and Mario got his ass kicked by Link. Sonic lost to Samus, who had just gotten her ass kicked by Link. Mario already proved that he was no threat, and Snake was probably too weak. This left Sephiroth and Mega Man, who at this point were the only two characters projected to even break *40%* on Link in a match. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 55587)_ ## Results Friday, August 29th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 29th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 35,080 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 58.29% 38 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 54.13% (22,227 brackets) The Sonic fans that remained pissed off after what happened against Samus in 2002 were ready to go for this match, and for a few seconds they were effective. They were actually able to take the board vote from Cloud, and Sonic was ahead for a tiny little bit. But then the floodgates opened on Sonic, and Cloud proceeded to open up a can of whoopass the likes that Sonic never thought he would ever see in these contests. This match quickly turned into a bout where Sonic had upset potential into a complete laughingstock, as well as a microcosm of just how far Sonic had fallen in the past year. He went from having the lead on Cloud to almost being doubled by him, and no amount of spin can suggest anything other than the fact that Sonic had fallen a bit since his 2002 glory days in which many had him making the finals. I've said multiple times in these writeups that Sonic hasn't been the same since 2002, and this match was the final confirmation for this. In 2004, Sonic was given a rematch against Samus and got his ass whipped. In 2005, Sonic was handed a very winnable match against Mega Man, but handed the match away twice. As for Cloud, this match started up a very large Cloud \> Link stigma, and for good reason. Coming close to doubling Sonic is no joke, and it soon became very clear that Cloud had grown much stronger since 2002. Whether or not this would even get him close to Link remained to be seen, but *something* happened between these first two contests that lit a fire under Cloud's ass. And in the match that directly followed this one, people started to see exactly what caused all of this to happen. They had their suspicions, yes, but it took Sephiroth to confirm them. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 _source: (1)Mario vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 (revid 88772)_ ## Results Saturday, August 30th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 30th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 28,671 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 50.96% 24 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 32.76% (13,452 brackets) Howdy folks, and welcome to the Kingdom Hearts Invitational™! Remember when Mario/Crono vs Sephiroth for the South title was the most hyped trio of the entire contest? Mario/Crono certainly delivered, but hardly anyone expected what would happen next. Mario vs Sephiroth was supposed to be one of the biggest matches of the entire contest. It was supposed to be Mario vs Cloud Part the II, only bigger and better this time around. After all, Sephiroth was still believed to be more popular than Cloud, and he was the perfect guy to extract revenge on the ol' plumber after the latest Crono screwjob, not to mention what happened to Cloud the year before. But Mario still had.... the clutch, dundundun. Could Mario pull the clutch on a character stronger than Cloud? For one update, the match looked as expected. Sephiroth was slightly in the lead, though it seemed as if we were in for an epic. And then another update came. Then another. Then another. Within an hour, Sephiroth was beating the absolute holy hell out of Mario in the poll. But so what, right? This was FREAKING MARIO! Certainly he would come back and make a game of this, right? Wrong. As the updates kept pouring in, it became more and more clear that Mario was in for the beating of his life. The man never bothered putting up a fight, but with every coming update people expected Mario to begin the greatest comeback of all time. He never came close. Sephiroth whipped Mario at all points of this poll to the tune of an eventual beatdown of over 60-40, and the onlookers stared at the results as they were unfolding in absolute disbelief. Most truly believed that this would be the second coming of the Mario/Cloud fiasco, but it turned into the second coming of Mario's beating at the hands of Link instead. Given what had just happened to Sonic, it didn't take much longer for people to decide the cause of all this. Kingdom Hearts, arguably Square's most hyped and successful title since Final Fantasy 7, was released in September of 2002, just after the Summer 2002 Contest. When paired with the massive hype of the Summer 2003 Contest and the massive influx in total votes, it was clear that most of the new voters favored Squaresoft. The evidence was all over this contest. Cloud, Sephiroth, Squall, and even Aeris all did much better than most expected; as such, most people began giving credit to Kingdom Hearts. You could even argue that the Kingdom Hearts Factor (KHF) benefited Tidus. He did finish ahead of Auron in the stats this year, though he likely needed help from SFF to do it. It was very difficult to deny the game's effect on this contest, unless you feel like believing that several Square characters in the game all boosted for no reason whatsoever, while other Square characters not in the game were fairly disappointing. A voter influx all massively favoring one company arbitrarily was certainly possible, but there needed to be a reason for all of these new voters to come to this site in the first place. As for the non-KH Square characters that disappointed, Magus and Kefka were certainly in the discussion, and Crono's failure to beat Mario despite everything going Crono's way for over 22 hours of the match is certainly evidence. But for those who weren't quite ready to accept KHF as having a legitimate impact, there was still more contest to be played out. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Mega Man 2003 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Mega Man 2003 (revid 55593)_ ## Results Sunday, August 31st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 31st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 8,317 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 54.54% 31 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 14.53% (5,964 brackets) Someone please give me a good reason how only 1 in 7 pick Mega Man to win his division after what he did in 2002. A 2 seed beating a 1 isn't some massive upset. Going into this match, Snake was the underdog to win, but not by all that much and he still had a decent chance to pull the upset. Unfortunately, Mega Man was able to jump on Snake early without ever looking back. At the beginning of the poll, Mega Man had 54% of the vote. For the rest of the poll, Snake did nothing more than slowly shave off .5% from that original 54% en route to being handed a steady, respectable loss. This is what most people expected, which made it a fairly boring match. But things quickly turned around once people realized that we were in line to see a rematch between Mega Man and Sephiroth, not to mention the fact that in no way would Link roll over Cloud come the next match of the contest. From the looks of things, we had a very exciting Final Four coming up. The question from Mega Man's perspective was whether or not he would be able to keep up with Sephiroth's massive boost. Breaking 60% on Mario is no joke, but that didn't stop the Mega Man faithful from hoping against hope. The interesting thing about Snake's loss is that in the early days of this board, Solid Snake versus Sephiroth was the most hyped final. We were 8318 votes away from actually seeing it happen, though knowing what he know now it would be a miracle for Snake to receive anything other than the SFF beating of his life at the hands of the big FF7 duo. Snake would return to the contest in 2004, and would again run into Mega Man. Again, he would easily lose. 2005 was Snake's moment of glory, as he finally made his long-awaited Final Four appearance after three straight Elite 8 losses. Unfortunately, he ran right into Mario. He lost, but not before actually managing to win a couple of updates in the early hours. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2003 (revid 88773)_ ## Results Monday, September 1st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 1st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 4,761 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 48.19% 9 for - 24 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 13.37% (5,491 brackets) People figured that Cloud would be able to give Link a run after Cloud and Sephy annihilated Sonic and Mario in the Elite 8, but there was still the feeling that Link was invincible. Yes Cloud would do well, but actually win? Psssssh. When the match began, the first thing that everyone noticed were that the vote totals were insane. I don't have the updates for that match saved anywhere (TRE for the save, maybe?), but I'm fairly sure that the total was near 500 at the first poll freeze. That's ridiculous. At the first freeze, Cloud was certainly giving Link a run. Link only had a double digit lead, and it was not a large one. But even then, Cloud was just putting on a show. He couldn't actually beat Link.... right? When the next update hit, Cloud was not only winning, but winning by a large amount. This caused a bit of a stir, but people were still confident that Link was still going to win this match. But when the next update came and it looked as if Cloud was running away with the poll, the board exploded into a massive cesspool of disappointment. Almost half of people that filled out brackets picked Link to win, and a running joke for a long while is that a first round match (Crash/KOS-MOS) would end up being more difficult to predict than the winner of the contest. Even then, people still felt that Link would easily be able to come back and win this match. There was talk of a Link comeback even after Cloud built himself a lead all throughout the night. No matter, right? Link would simply catch the standard Zelda day vote and crush Cloud's lead into oblivion. It never happened. The best that Link was able to manage were a few stall updates and a small time period in which Link took off about 20 votes per update. Cloud was always able to counter with something better, and the realization finally hit that we were witnessing the biggest upset of all time in these contests when Cloud took Link's best shot and marched forward as if nothing had ever happened. By the end of the match, Cloud dispatched Link en route to a fairly large victory of nearly 5000 votes. The fallout from this match wasn't as bad as you might think, save for the massive amounts of whining and cheating accusations that took place. But I'm a believer that the cheating/rallying was equal on all sides in this match, so the cheating accusations were fairly standard blame game stuff. As for why the fallout wasn't that bad, most people wanted to see Link go down. Yes there were a massive amount of Link fans that either picked him to win it all or simply hated FF7, but there were also a massive amount of people who felt that Cloud saved this contest by preventing a repeat champion. This might not be too far from the truth. It's also worth noting that on top of KHF being in the discussion more than ever before (and this wouldn't even be the match that fully cemented KHF's place in this contest), a lot of people blamed the fact that Link's fugly Wind Waker mug cost him this contest. I'm a believer that pics can account for a 1-2% difference in the polls, and this one falls within that gray area. You're also looking at wind Waker Link matched up against Kingdom Hearts Cloud, which was a definite imbalance that a lot of people were fairly upset about. To this day, many people still point out that Link has never lost a match in which he was fairly represented, almost as if the match against Cloud can be thrown out due to the picture. Regardless of what happened or why during this match, it still remains as the biggest upset of all time. Even after Cloud's demolition of Sonic, people only felt that Cloud would come close. Few actually expected the victory, and those few who stuck with Cloud through this match were vastly rewarded once the final contest standings came out. This match also set records all over the place when it came to vote rallying and vote totals. We may never again see a match flirt with 150,000 total votes, not to mention a character breaking 70,000 votes in a loss. The only thing left to do from here was for Cloud to bring the contest home, though in the final he would once again be the underdog. People have assumed Cloud to be weaker than Sephiroth since the Summer of 2002, and given that massive amounts of anti-voting that Cloud would have to deal with in the final his victory there was anything but guaranteed. Assuming Sephiroth even made it past Mega Man, that is. 2005 was a contest in which CJayC (and many voters) felt that Link, Cloud and Sephiroth were too strong for the main bracket. As such CJayC created the Spring 2005 Villain Contest as a free win for Sephy, then took all three out of the main bracket in Summer 2005 and put them in the Tournament of Champions. Will Square ever be able to recover from all of this Nintendo love? It's possible, but Square needs to get their heads of their asses first. Ever since they almost went bankrupt making The Spirits Within, they've barely been a shell of the company they used to be. They were forced to accept Enix buying them out, and they should bend over backwards to thank Enix for turning around and allowing the union to be called a merger as opposed to the buyout that it truly was. Unfortunately, this hasn't much helped Square until very recently. They've had to release multiple cash grab titles (Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Final Fantasy X-2 are all excellent examples of this) to a fairly ignorant fanbase to get back into the game, and only recently have they finally begun to rebound from their failed box office attempt. Dragon Quest 8 and Kingdom Hearts 2 are seeing excellent success, and Square has promised that the final release of Final Fantasy 12 will not feature FFXI's horrendous MMORPG battle system in console format (the outcry from that demo packed in with DQ8 was murderous). Square looks as if they've finally begun to care about the people who have made them famous once again, but they need a smash hit Final Fantasy release to fully get over the hump. What does this mean in the contest landscape? Cloud beating Link in 2003 was the last time Square did anything of note in these contests against Nintendo unless you count the Spring 2004 Contest. Up until and including Summer 2003, Square vs Nintendo was a good, even rivalry. In Summer 2005, Nintendo won 10 matches against Square. The only victories that Square had were Sephiroth's victory over Mario and Crono's victory over Mega Man. Square has tailed off recently, and they need to get it together if they want any hope of pulling off upsets like this again. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis I am a firm believer that this single match saved the GameFAQs Character Battles. This anomaly of anomalies is one of only two times (Jay Solano excluded) that Link has lost a match, and the first time proceeded in spectacular fashion. Even after Link’s less-than-stellar performance against Magus and Cloud’s great performance against Sonic, few people saw this bombshell coming. Attribute it if you will to Link’s Wind Waker pics and Cloud’s Kingdom Hearts boost or whatever other factor you want to come up with, the fact is that Link lost. I remember Link having upwards of 70% brackets picking him to win… maybe even more. That’s huge, especially for just the second contest. But Cloud won, and Cloud, not Link, would go on to the win the second character battle. Which brings me back to my first point – if Link had won again, I honestly doubt we would have gotten any more character contests. Why bother when Link won so commandingly two times in a row? Instead, this match affirmed the time-honored belief that the 2007 contest struck home yet again: anything can happen. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sephiroth vs (2)Mega Man 2003 _source: (2)Sephiroth vs (2)Mega Man 2003 (revid 55597)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 27,766 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 57.16% 33 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 21.73% (8,922 brackets) This is the best proof for KHF. This match was hyped to a fairly high degree after what happened between these two in 2002, yet Mega Man was absolutely never in the match. Sephiroth rolled through Mega from start to finish with almost the exact same trend he displayed against Mario one round before, and Mega's only saving grace here was doing a tad better than Mario. But that's somewhat secondary compared to their match in 2002: (6)Mega Man - 48185 \[49.49%\] (7)Sephiroth - 49172 \[50.51%\] Total Votes - 97357 Vote Difference - 987 The 2003 version of the same match in which Mega Man almost pulled off the historic upset of Sephiroth drew an extra 26835 votes. Of those 26835 votes, **28** went to Mega Man. If you have some proof to discount KHF after hearing that, I'd love to hear it. Mega Man is akin to Sonic in that ever since 2002, he simply hasn't been able to find the same luster. Yes he's been successful, but he has yet to come as close to the true elites as he did in 2002. Ironically, Mega Man and Sonic faced each other in a 2005 match in which both characters tried their hardest to lose. Sonic would eventually wind up losing, which goes to prove which character has fallen father over the years. The only thing left to do from this point was to have the final, and Sephiroth was the favorite going in in some circles. People have believed him to be stronger than Cloud since 2002, and he would have the added benefit of Link's revenge voters giving him their full support. In fact if X-Stats were popular at the time, Sephiroth would have been the easy favorite in such a match, that is until Cloud's shocker against Link. All that remained would be to see how the match played out. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 (revid 55599)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 3rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 3rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 4,713 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 49.99% 11 for - 19 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 6.04% (2,482 brackets) After the first poll freeze, Sephiroth was in the lead and looked as if he would be able to pull this off like so many were hoping. But similarly to what Cloud did to Link, Cloud recovered nicely en route to a very high-scoring, close victory that was barely ever in question. Up until Cloud's upset of Link, most people felt that Sephiroth was the stronger of the two characters. He had higher odds than Cloud to win the contest in 2002 and didn't have the anti stigma that Cloud was stuck with in 2003. Yet despite seemingly everything going in Sephiroth's favor up until this match (doing over 10% better against Mario than Cloud had done the year before, having the backing of Link fans, etc), Sephiroth was completely unable to pull off the win in a match that was not nearly as close as the final score indicates. This match played out almost exactly like Link/Cloud, with most rooting against Cloud but watching in disappointment as he won anyway. Only the true Final Fantasy 7 faithful really enoyed this final, but then again we all had to deal with a Mario/Link final in 2002. Unlike Mario, the loser in the 2003 final actually made the match somewhat interesting. SFF likely had the most to do with Cloud winning this match, and this was later confirmed in 2004 when Cloud beat Sephiroth 56-44 in a rematch. Perhaps 56-44 was how this final would have gone had Cloud not defeated Link two days prior, which explains how Sephiroth lost despite so many people pulling for him to win. This was the final nail in the Summer 2003 Contest, and Cloud Strife was crowned the winner, with the assist going to Kingdom Hearts and its selling almost 4 million copies before this contest took place. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Spring 2004 Game Contest _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 63 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Spring 2004 Contest _source: Spring 2004 Contest (revid 88287)_ | Announced: | March ?, 2004 | |------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Started: | April 2, 2004 | | Ended: | May 6, 2004 | | Winner: | Final Fantasy VII | | Contest Winner: | UltimaterializerX - 185 points | | Notable matches: | CT/LttP, Halo/StarCraft, MGS/FFT SC/Wind Waker,Vice City/SSBM, FF7/OoT | **Spring 2004 Contest** **Best. Game. Ever.** was the first **Spring Contest** held on GameFAQs, in 2004. Many B8ers still consider it the best Contest ever. ### Ulti's Analysis **Division 8** The idea of the brackets being split up by division was nice, but Division 8 suffered the most from it. A good chunk of the games here didn\`t deserve to be in the contest at all, and the lack of Mega Man upset a large number of people. From the beginning, this was about Mario 3 vs Zelda 1, which was an anticlimactic as could be. Far too easy a division to call in my opinion, though I would suppose that Phantasy Star vs Contra was the sole reason 32-64 wound up being easier to predict according to percentage. That, and FF7/OOT was in that division as well. My favorite thing about this division was that the game which won the division -- Super Mario Brothers 3 -- was definitely a proper choice the game representing 8 bit gaming. **Division 16** This division had the best games of any division in this contest. All 16 of these games belonged here for one reason or the other, though some of them were obviously doomed in a contest setting. It made for legendary games going down early, most notable of which are Doom and Super Metroid going down in the second round. I still can't bring it to myself to believe LTTP was only a 6 seed. Something tells me that the match between LTTP and Super Metroid was forced. The same goes for Sonic 2 vs Mario World. That's quite the odd pair of coincidences. Either way, it was the best division in the contest, complete with its final being the best match of the entire contest. I couldn't necessarily agree with Chrono Trigger being the definitive game of the 16 bit era, but it was still a good representative all the way into the finals. Great story, great gameplay, decent characters and a great game. **Division 32-64** Thanks to Final Fantasy 7 and Ocarina of Time, this division had the highest prediction percentages in the entire contest. It also featured the closest match of the entire contest, and it also seemed to be a division split in half. FF7's half was loaded with Playstation titles, while OOT's half was stacked with Nintendo gems. I don't know if this happened on purpose, but it made for some wonderful irony in the end. Sadly, that irony was the only entertainment this division had to offer. **Division 128** Pure and absolute hell. Never in my life did I ever think I would see a division in which only 7% of people thought that the 2 seed would make it out. This was the most stacked division, as well as the strongest overall, in the contest by far. And this was a division in which a game that wasn't even from the 128 bit era dominated the headlines. There was also another Link vs Samus match that seemed somewhat forced in Prime vs Wind Waker. I also find it interesting that Starcraft had to go through the Xbox mascot, a Square RPG, and the Zelda game of the generation before finally bowing out to the Gamecube mascot. Which, I might add, only had to go through the three big Playstation 2 hits. This wasn't an easy task, but PS2's fanbase is beatable when they're isolated. Starcraft had to face off against entire fanbases, while SSBM got little chunks. Starcraft just seemed worn down by the time the divisional finals rolled around. But hey, tt least my favorite game from the division won it all. Having faith in SSBM is probably the biggest reason I won this contest \<\_\< ### See Also - 2004 Spring Contest Matches - complete writeups and information on every poll from the original Best Game Ever Contest ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
Division 8 Super Mario Bros. 3 The Legend of Zelda Super Mario Bros. 3 Chrono Trigger Chrono Trigger Final Fantasy VII Final Fantasy VII
\(1\) Super Mario Bros. 3 (16) Metal Gear Super Mario Bros. 3 Metroid Super Mario Bros. 3 Final Fantasy
\(8\) Metroid (9) Pac-Man
\(5\) Phantasy Star (12) Contra Contra Final Fantasy
\(4\) Final Fantasy (13) Pitfall
\(6\) Donkey Kong (11) Duck Hunt Donkey Kong The Legend of Zelda The Legend of Zelda Tetris
\(3\) The Legend of Zelda (14) Adventure
\(7\) Pong (10) River City Ransom Pong Tetris
\(2\) Tetris (15) Galaga
Division 16 Chrono Trigger LoZ: A Link to the Past
\(1\) Chrono Trigger (16) Secret of Mana Chrono Trigger Super Mario RPG Chrono Trigger Super Mario World
\(8\) Super Mario RPG (9) Street Fighter II
\(5\) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (12) Shining Force Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Super Mario World
\(4\) Super Mario World (13) The Simpsons
\(6\) LoZ: A Link to the Past (11) Gunstar Heroes LoZ: A Link to the Past Super Metroid LoZ: A Link to the Past Final Fantasy VI
\(3\) Super Metroid (14) Phantasy Star IV
\(7\) Earthbound (10) Doom Doom Final Fantasy VI
\(2\) Final Fantasy VI (15) Mortal Kombat
Division 32-64 Final Fantasy VII LoZ: Ocarina of Time Final Fantasy VII Super Smash Bros. Melee
\(1\) Final Fantasy VII (16) Suikoden II Final Fantasy VII Xenogears Final Fantasy VII Metal Gear
\(8\) Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal (9) Xenogears
\(5\) Final Fantasy Tactics (12) Dance Dance Revolution Final Fantasy Tactics Metal Gear Solid
\(4\) Metal Gear Solid (13) Resident Evil
\(6\) Perfect Dark (11) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Goldeneye 007 Goldeneye 007 LoZ: Ocarina of Time
\(3\) Goldeneye 007 (14) Panzer Dragoon Saga
\(7\) Super Mario 64 (10) NiGHTS into Dreams... Super Mario 64 LoZ: Ocarina of Time
\(2\) LoZ: Ocarina of Time (15) Fallout 2
Division 128 Starcraft Super Smash Bros. Melee
\(1\) Halo: Combat Evolved (16) Starcraft Starcraft Kingdom Hearts Starcraft LoZ: The Wind Waker
\(8\) SoulCalibur (9) Kingdom Hearts
\(5\) LoZ: The Wind Waker (12) Skies of Arcadia LoZ: The Wind Waker Metroid Prime
\(4\) Metroid Prime (13) Half-Life
\(6\) Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (11) Fire Emblem Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Final Fantasy X Final Fantasy X Super Smash Bros. Melee
\(3\) Final Fantasy X (14) Shenmue
\(7\) Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (10) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Super Smash Bros. Melee
\(2\) Super Smash Bros. Melee (15) Metal Gear Solid 2
### Ngamer's Analysis I was pumped for the Games Contest when it was announced, and enjoyed the heck out of it all the way through... even so, I think it's somewhat overrated in Best Contests lists. Yeah, all of Division 128 was fantastic, but that's only 1/4 the Contest, and outside of the modern era you just had CT/LttP, MGS/FFT, DK/DH, and then a ton of SFF killings and super-hyped matchups that ended up being busts (FF7/OoT, Mario 3/Zelda 1). Not to be too harsh, though, because like I said, 128 was so far and away the greatest Division in Contest history (plus CT/LttP is perhaps the best match ever) that even with all its faults Games '04 is still a top contender for "greatest Contest" status. --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (16)Metal Gear 2004 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (16)Metal Gear 2004 (revid 80275)_ ## Results Friday, April 2nd, 2004 - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 48,162 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 80.59% 81 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 86.56% (35,438 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis This match was never actually in any doubt. Everyone knew that Mario 3 was going to win, and big. Only MWIS decided to be a joker and swing the other way on this match, despite the fact that he also knew Mario 3 was going to win. This match was instead more about how the rest of the contest was going to shape up, and sadly, it got off on the wrong foot. The first two polls in this contest were placed underneath a 'main' poll which was sponsored by GameRiot. At first, we thought nothing of it. But trust me, there would be plenty of places to put blame on for the low voter turnout in so many matches in this contest. We ended the Summer 2003 Contest by swinging in over 100,000 votes per match. Yet those numbers were ancient memory in this contest. Blame the spring, blame school, blame the video game industry being a mere shell of what it once was, blame the contest not being as popular as it once was, or even blame the contest itself for being rather predictable. But at the very least, something can be blamed for such a drop in contest popularity in a mere six months, and we had yet to deal with a new layout at this point. If you ask me, the contest didn't have enough time to be hyped up this time around. That, and most people felt that FF7 was a lock to win it all anyway. Still, it has its good side. After all, it's a contest on gamefaqs. The boards were busier, polls were getting more votes, and we were seemingly in for one hell of a ride. Bumpy of course, but at least we had something to do for awhile. One thing I need to note about this match before moving on is the prediction percentage. 40090 people filled out brackets, and 5388 of them picked Metal Gear (or 'Meal Gear' if you're looking at the current stats page) to win this match for whatever reason. If anything in this match stands out, that would be it. Other than that, just a starter match with somewhat of a low turnout. And a free point for everyone, which is always nice =) ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match The news of a contest in the spring was something new and exciting; the fact that it was a game contest made it all the better. There was worry about the contest being an April Fool's joke, as this match was slated to begin on April Fool's Day, but CJayC pushed this match back one day to reassure us that everything was genuine. The matchup between Super Mario Bros. 3 and Metal Gear was expected to be a one-sided affair, but it would open the contest with a bang, and to show us what one of the most popular Mario games could do in this setting. #### After the Match The match was a big blowout, as expected, as Super Mario Bros. 3 ripped Metal Gear a new one. The real controversy was just outside of the match. CJayC had put an additional poll sponsored by GameRiot above this match, which lead to a decrease in vote totals compared to many matches in the Summer 2003 Contest. This sponsored poll would appear in the next match as well. #### Interesting Facts - On the [stats page](http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/contest/c04spr), Metal Gear was listed as "Meal Gear". ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Metroid vs (9)Pac-Man 2004 _source: (8)Metroid vs (9)Pac-Man 2004 (revid 88776)_ ## Results Saturday, April 3rd, 2004 - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 3rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 26,931 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid - 61.75% 72 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid - 76.22% (31,204 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis Unfortunately, Pac Man was surprisingly blown out in this match. The match was the first of the contest that had any board hype whatsoever coming into it, but Division 8 and its voting block was all about nostalgia. Along those lines, Pac Man simply doesn't fit the bill on our site. It appeals to the old-time gamers more than anyone, as it was one of their first titles. And when I say old-time, we're talking guys like ChichiriMuyo and myself, or the old women that go and play Pac Man slots in the casinos. Our little gamefaqs fanbase whose average age is between the teen years and the young twenties doesn't care about Pac Man as much as a game that has the word Metroid in the title. I think it's that simple, when it comes down to it. Hell, Pac Man lost to a piece of lettuce named Kefka last year, so it's no surprise that he lost to a badassed bounty hunter with a knack for Kid Icarus. Yet all this being said, board hype was high, prediction percentages were low, and the hype surrounding the Metroid games having a chance to beat the Zelda games was beginning to take form. Yeah, we wish. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match The second match of Division 8 was another blast from the past, as the debut games of Samus Aran and Pac-Man squared off. While Pac-Man ushered in an arcade frenzy in its day, Metroid was the favorite in this matchup, due to its Nintendo roots. The match pic wasn't doing Pac-Man any favors either. #### After the Match Pac-Man would not make a match out of this, as Metroid cruised to the easy doubling. Despite the cries of Villainous Magus, there was no hope for the underdog. The GameRiot poll appeared for the second straight match and hurt the vote totals. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Phantasy Star vs (12)Contra 2004 _source: (5)Phantasy Star vs (12)Contra 2004 (revid 80277)_ ## Results Sunday, April 4th, 2004 - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 4th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 20,080 - **Oracle Expectations:** Contra - 52.70% 49 for - 27 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Contra - 56.40% (23,090 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis When the bracket first came out, there were only three matches in Division 8 that were hard to call at all. One of them was this match, Phantasy Star vs Contra, where CJayC's flawed nomination system took precedence. You were only allowed to pick one game per system. This caused all sorts of chaos on parts of the bracket. We won't get into the example of this until later, but I'm sure everyone can guess what it is. The problem with this system? The weaker systems that only have one or two notable titles got their best games into the bracket with ease, while the more competitive systems had to duke it out with games from their own system to get in the contest in the first place. Many undeserving games got into the contest because of this, which shafted a few legendary titles. As such, Phantasy Star, one of the few notable games from the Sega Master System, got into this contest as a 5 seed. Meanwhile, Contra has to claw and scratch its way through Nintendo nominations just to get in. Its reward? One of the most overhyped matches of the first round. Not only did Phantasy Star prove to be totally undeserving of its seed, but it helped prove that franchises don't help games with individual matches. The success of Phantasy Star Online was supposed to be the deciding factor in Phantasy Star's victory here; instead, Contra beat Phantasy Star all over the place in this poll. I guess franchise votes don't matter much if your game's title doesn't have 'Final Fantasy' in it somewhere. It's a shame too, because barely half of the bracketmakers managed to get this one correct. The 5 seed was reassuring for some reason, but it failed miserably. The game with the rugged soldiers and the most legendary cheat code in the world moves on with relative ease. This not only proved that Contra has quite the fanbase, but that Phantasy Star 4 had zero chance whatsoever of taking down Super Metroid. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match This was a matchup between two games on different ends of the spectrum. Phantasy Star came in with the 5 seed, and was the only Sega Master System game in the contest. Contra was, like others, an NES game and made the underdog in seeding. There was arguments on both sides, with Phantasy Star to get support from the other Phantasy Star titles, and Contra's popularity in the hardcore crowd (don't forget the Konami Code!) #### After the Match This was a match that Contra would not lose. It took the win easily with 61% of the vote, leaving the board to debate the reasons for Phantasy Star's failure. The widely accepted reason was that Phantasy Star received many nominations due to the nomination system, which asked for one game per game system. #### Interesting Facts - This match happened on the same day as Daylight Saving Time, which meant that the match only lasted 23 hours. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Final Fantasy vs (13)Pitfall 2004 _source: (4)Final Fantasy vs (13)Pitfall 2004 (revid 80278)_ ## Results Monday, April 5th, 2004 - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 5th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 74,682 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy - 81.80% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy - 96.46% (39,491 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis As you can see, this was a beating of epic proportions. Not only did Final Fantasy completely own this poll despite having no exclamation points in its title, but it managed to have the second highest prediction percentage of any match in Division 8. Many of the stat nuts on this board were, including myself, were wondering why Super Mario 3's prediction percentages were so low, but I think much of the blame can be placed on Final Fantasy. Honestly, go look at the percentages for this half division. It makes no sense for Mario 3's stats to be so low in an eight pack that it had no chance of losing, but the numbers don't lie. In other news, isn't it nice to see high-scoring polls? We didn't get too many of them, but this poll was uninterrupted. The old layout, one poll, no distractions. The good old days, which sadly shall never return to us. Another thing that was sad was how obvious it was that Contra had no chance to beat Final Fantasy as this poll was taking place. Sheer dominance for one of the more mediocre games in the series. Am I missing something here....?? Oh of course! I AM THE BLACK MAGE! I CAST THE SPELLS THAT MAKES THE PEOPLES FALL DOWN!! Like you were getting through this analysis without an 8-Bit Theater reference. Keep dreaming. ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match Final Fantasy was developer Square's last shot at making money, and the result was a franchise. It was the effect of franchise voting that made Final Fantasy an intriguing competitor in this tournament. Final Fantasy VII was regarded as the most popular game on GameFAQs, and if enough fans of that game supported the NES original, an upset over Super Mario Bros. 3 was possible. But first it had to take care of business against the classic Pitfall. #### After the Match Final Fantasy took care of business alright, winning this match by a massive margin. It was clear that Final Fantasy was on a collision course with Super Mario Bros. 3, while Pitfall Harry was left to pick up the pieces of his game. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Donkey Kong vs (11)Duck Hunt 2004 _source: (6)Donkey Kong vs (11)Duck Hunt 2004 (revid 80279)_ ## Results Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 143 - **Oracle Expectations:** Donkey Kong - 52.70% 52 for - 25 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong - 73.22% (29,976 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis This was the most hotly-debated first round matchup within Division 8. Contra/Phantasy Star and Pong/River City Ransom came close, but most people knew where those polls were going. In this poll however, each game had a decent shot of pulling it out. And why? Because for whatever reason, Donkey Kong has become one of the weak links for the Nintendo franchise in these contests. Back in 2002, Donkey Kong was the first to show us what it was like to wear out the F5 button on our keyboards during his matchup with Aya Brea. He fell behind early, but came back with the morning vote. After the two characters were tied for what seemed like forever, Donkey Kong finally took the lead for good. In 2003, Donkey Kong had a similar matchup with Tommy Vercetti of Grand Theft Auto fame. Vercetti took a small early lead on Donkey Kong, but the big ape spent the entire day fighting his way back into the match before bracket voters were barely able to put Donkey Kong away. With Donkey Kong's tradition of getting into close matchups in this contest, the bracket was kind enough to give him Duck Hunt as his first round opponent. What seemed like a simple 6-11 victory turned into a massive board debate once people learned of Duck Hunt's good chances at winning the match. Erasers were taken to brackets all over the board, and this turned into a bigger Division 8 upset special than Phantasy Star vs Contra. Again, most people on the board knew that Phantasy Star had no chance. In Duck Hunt's case however, it was much different. Even the Prophet Challenge was only favoring Donkey Kong by a 2:1 ratio, which never happens for a game that was once so heavily favored to win its match. In the span of a few days, Donkey Kong went from a lock to win the match to a game with a bullseye on it for upset-minded bracketmakers. Unfortunately, the poll started around as bland as it could. Donkey Kong jumped out to an early 60-40 split in the poll, and Duck Hunt was all but dead in the water. All that excitement for nothing, apparently... ...or was it? By the time 10:30 AM Eastern rolled around, Donkey Kong was seemingly in complete control over the match. He had a commanding lead of nearly 3300 votes, and it was nothing more than waiting for the next poll to open up after so much hype had been put into the match. But hold the phone here. Did Duck Hunt just cut into the lead? Eh, no big deal. It was only one update. Wait a second, did Duck Hunt just slice into the lead again? Aww, who cares. Donkey Kong is still up by over 3200 votes. But do my eyes deceive me? Did Duck Hunt just cut into the lead again? And again? And AGAIN? Oh believe it, for the comeback trail was on. Duck Hunt began throwing everything it had at Donkey Kong in this match in its efforts to come back, despite the fact that the largest successful comeback ever seen in any contest was merely 1500 votes in the Sonic/Samus match of 2002. Still, Duck Hunt could care less. It felt that it could easily come back from being down over twice as much, and put on one of the most amazing charges ever seen in one of these contests. Throughout the day, Duck Hunt kept chipping away at the lead, with minimal resistance from Donkey Kong in retaliation. Duck Hunt also picked up a ton of steam as the day progressed, and managed to tear into Donkey Kong's lead with updated in which it cut over 100 votes off the lead all at once. As you could imagine, the board was going nuts by the time the evening rolled around. The update topics were on fire, the bracketmakers were going at it all over the place, and with each new update, the hysteria only grew louder. Only on GameFAQs could Donkey Kong and Duck Hunt going at it ever be exciting. In the evening hours, Duck Hunt managed to get the lead to less than 1000 votes, and the anticipation of the closing of the match was imminent. However, Donkey Kong had almost 75% of the brackets, time, and bracket voters on his side. Throughout the evening hours, Duck Hunt's gains grew smaller and smaller, and Donkey Kong even managed to win an occasional update to keep himself from being upended in the match. But on the other side of all of this, Duck Hunt was still making a push to try to win the match. And had time not run out, Duck Hunt would have most definitely won. For the last three hours of the match, the voter turnout slowed down to the point where Duck Hunt's gains simply weren't enough for it to be able to overcome the bracket voters before the end of the match. For every small push Duck Hunt made within the final few hours, Donkey Kong managed to fight back just enough to hang on tight to the lead, as well as the match. This irritated the Duck Hunt fans to no end, but it was still fun to see. Within the final hour, Duck Hunt made a huge push to close the gap to 143, but the poll closed before any more damage could be done to the big ape. Despite being battered, bruised, and beaten halfway to hell for 16½ hours of the poll, Donkey Kong walked away a winner. How did this happen? If bracket voting was ever the difference in a match, this was it. Compared to how close the match turned out to be, an overwhelming percentage of people had Donkey Kong winning in their brackets. And while I firmly believe that people don't care about their brackets given the right match, I don't exactly think this was one such matchup. Donkey Kong, despite all of his strengths and the various pleas from Donkey Kong (the user on gamefaqs named Donkey Kong, of course =p) himself, found himself in another knock-down, drag out match. Only this time, it is obvious that he would have lost had the poll gone on just a tad bit longer. Donkey Kong, in his own right, is a gaming legend. His game was the first to feature Mario (or Jumpman for you technical people), and it was one of the games that influenced the industry. But as a character, he doesn't seem to be able to get the love that his fellow Nintendo brethren are able to see. Outside of the Donkey Kong Country series and the original title, he doesn't come across as being as well-loved as the heavy hitters of the franchise, which causes him to be about as unreliable as they come in these contests. It's not like Nintendo has made any real effort to boost Donkey Kong's popularity, either. His last game was Donkey Kong 64. Think about how long ago that was, then think about how bad the game was. Not fitting for a character who is trying to make it to the next level in our popularity contests. By the sheer letter of the match, Donkey Kong won. But in spirit, his game got his ass handed to it by Duck Hunt. For the better part of 16 hours, Duck Hunt was winning nearly every update in the poll. And we aren't talking weak updates here either. We're talking a consistent push on the lead, with 100 vote gains mixed in to make sure Donkey Kong was being threatened. In this match, Donkey Kong was very lucky to have his bracket and fan support, because he could have easily lost otherwise. And any doubts as to how unreliable Donkey Kong is were proven beyond any doubt in its next match. ## Stats and Analysis Division 8's most debatable match was an unassuming one: a giant ape taking on a flock of ducks. Duck Hunt was a popular upset pick due to Donkey Kong's prior failures (nearly losing to Aya Brea in 2002, leading Tommy Vercetti only to blow the match in 2003). When it's close, don't support Donkey Kong, is what they said, and who could have guessed that Donkey Kong the game would experience something very similar to Donkey Kong the character. Donkey Kong took control of the match early, and even had a solid lead after 10 hours. It looked like Duck Hunt would be the underdog pick that didn't pan out...but there will still 14 hours to go. With that time in its pocket, Duck Hunt began to chip away at the lead. Donkey Kong entered panic mode as its lead kept draining away slowly. But Duck Hunt's gaining was too slow, and in the end, Donkey Kong escaped with a win of 143 votes after being pecked to near-death for much of the poll. Once again, Donkey Kong presented a match for the history books, and looked bad doing so. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Remember when I said that the most inconsequential matches are often the most entertaining? It doesn’t hold true for any match more than this one. A hotly-debated Round One match saw what IIRC was the single biggest comeback in contest history at the time – and I’m pretty sure it remained that way until DK himself tried to come back against Master Chief in 2005. In both cases, the comeback failed, but it made for a helluva match regardless. Donkey Kong led for the majority of the match, but Duck Hunt - Duck Hunt! - zoomed back in for an amazing comeback that nobody thought was possible at the time. The two classic games duked it out for the rest of the day until Donkey Kong managed to pull off a narrow win. Either way the match was destined to be a one-pointer, but who cares? It’s not the end result that makes these contests, it’s the journey to get there. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)The Legend of Zelda vs (14)Adventure 2004 _source: (3)The Legend of Zelda vs (14)Adventure 2004 (revid 85570)_ ## Results Wednesday, April 7th, 2004 - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 7th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 88,208 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 89.08% 78 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 99.02% (40,539 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis This is about as dominant a performance as you can get. This match set records all over the place in terms of pure beatings, and Adventure, while very influential in the industry, got its ass whipped in this match. It's simply too old and far obscure to do much of anything in a poll on our site. Why did it make it, you ask? The nomination system. Few titles from the various Atari systems are noteworthy, but Adventure would be one of them. There is also the tidbit that CJayC openly stated that he tweaked the bracket a tiny bit to get more interesting matches. So maybe he knew how influential Adventure was and put it in to see how it would do? Who knows. A couple of interesting things to note about this match before I move on. Adventure managed to make the Top 100 list on IGN's list. And while their list truly has some issues (no Mario 3 or Final Fantasy 7), Adventure even being mentioned was something. Also, Aventure managed to make it all the way up to \#13 on our FAQ list on the site during this match. Another thing of note is that this match featured the highest prediction percentage of any in the contest. As for The Legend of Zelda, this was no surprise. It's Zelda. But when your opponent sets a record for futility set back in 2002 by Ms. Pac Man during a time when vote totals were lower than they are now, you are showing some true power. And it wasn't like it was even close, either. Adventure beat Mrs. Pac Man's record by at least 500 votes. Zelda fever started hitting the board after this matchup, and many people, including yours truly, were wondering whether or not Zelda was going to completely own this contest. I originally had Mario 3 over Zelda 1 in the Elite 8, but this match made me think twice about it. I'm sure it made others do a double take as well. 95% of the vote against anything is no joke, and the female population of gamefaqs outnumbers the people who voted for Adventure in this match. Scary. ## Stats and Analysis 3 vs 14. Zelda vs ...what? That was all that needed to be said to give The Legend of Zelda a win in this match. Adventure was so obscure that few people had heard of it. In fact, during the match, Adventure's FAQ rating skyrocketed as thousands of people checked to see just what The Legend of Zelda was facing. But there was something more memorable than Adventure's FAQ rank. Adventure set several records of futility in this match that are not likely to be broken. It could not even break 5% in this match, and lost by over 88,000 votes. The Legend of Zelda flat out destroyed the Atari game, which was lucky to get as many votes as it did. The Zelda series looked like a titanic force after its first match. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Pong vs (10)River City Ransom 2004 _source: (7)Pong vs (10)River City Ransom 2004 (revid 80281)_ ## Results Thursday, April 8th, 2004 - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 8th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 30,544 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pong - 61.98% 75 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pong - 71.71% (29,358 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis This match was a perfect example of when not to listen to board hype. If you had Pong in your bracket and thought it would win because few people have ever heard of River City Ransom, a winner is you. In the hours leading up to the match, River City Ransom fans and bracketmakers swore up and down that RCR was a huge favorite and that Pong was too old to do any damage in this match. When the match picture was brought up and we all saw this dinky little yellow thing named Pong, the cries to give RCR some respect got louder. This all wound up being followed up by one of the biggest letdowns of the contest. Pong nearly managed 70% of the vote against River City Ransom. Pong fever took over the board that day too, in the form of multiple links pointing people toward playing Pong. Normal Pong, Mini Pong, Newgrounds Pong, 3D Pong, Giant Pong... you name it, you had a link for it in this match. Throughout the day, the normal board argument of the better game not winning broke out, which leads me to ask a question. How many people remembered that this is nothing more than a popularity contest? I'm a firm believer that the best games didn't always win, and I even had to go against some of my favorites in my bracket, but it doesn't exactly matter who wins. Does your favorite losing in a poll affect your life in any way at all (unless you're a Starcraft fan)? No. And I'm not trolling the SC fanbase, by the way. More on what I meant later. As for River City Ransom, it was a huge dud in this contest. Billed to be the game out to finally gain some respect for itself, it let the second video game ever made beat it all over the poll. But hey, at least it made our GameFAQs Top 50 for a little while. And to this day, it is still on the Top 10 NES lists for Message Board activity and FAQ hits. The fanbase is definitely there, it just didn't show up in today's match. Come to think of it, some guy at EB tried selling me a rerelease of RCR the other day. I laughed at him and bought Link to the Past. ## Stats and Analysis The 7-10 matchup was between Pong and River City Ransom, name value vs cult classic. If you've found this page, you know what Pong is. It was the first game to gain massive appeal in the United States, and helped start the gaming boom before the crash of Atari. You may not know what River City Ransom is. The NES game has a hardcore fanbase, as evidenced by its 10 seed, but it didn't break into the mainstream like Mario and Zelda games did. The thing about cult classics is that they're called cult for a reason. No matter how loyal the fans of a cult classic are, they can not clone themselves. It was this problem that lead to River City Ransom's downfall, as Pong got the solid win, arcade machine picture and all. Pong may not be very notable in the world of gaming today, but it is universally known, and that was all it needed to get a win here. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Tetris vs (15)Galaga 2004 _source: (2)Tetris vs (15)Galaga 2004 (revid 55656)_ ## Results Friday, April 9th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 9th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 47,747 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tetris - 79.57% 79 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tetris - 88.60% (36,273 brackets) And with this match, the archaic division's first round came to a close. Everything in this division was about nostalgia votes, and every match went as expected without any real upsets. The only thing to really note about this match is that Galaga performed far better than expected for much of the poll, and it was a late push by Tetris that really pushed its percentage higher. Tetris's performance was so 'neh' that our very own Slowflake made a couple of great posts about how Pong might shock the world and beat Tetris in the next round. Scary I know, but a 2 seed underperforming for much of the poll is never a good thing. But still, Tetris survived and advanced, which is all that counts. I'm just curious as to the 11.4% of bracketmakers who actually thought Tetris was winning this match. Galaga performed better than expected for a long time, but it still got its ass kicked. This division was clearly the easiest to call in the contest. Aside from a near-flop by Donkey Kong and the imminent clash of Mario 3 and Zelda 1 in the divisional final, none of these matches were particularly hard to see coming. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (16)Secret of Mana 2004 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (16)Secret of Mana 2004 (revid 55658)_ ## Results Saturday, April 10th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 10th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 53,087 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 81.94% 81 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 92.20% (37,747 brackets) And thus, Chrono Trigger's bid to prove that it was deserving of the 1 seed in Division 16 begun. Division 16 was the second hardest division in this contest to call, simply because it seemed like it would be such a tossup between the three heavy hitters of the division. There were also lesser titles that seemed like they had a decent chance at causing some upsets within the division as well. And then there is the issue of many, many gamers thinking that the era this division represents is indicative of the golden age of gaming. Within it were difficult RPGs (an oxymoron nowadays), legendary titles that have stood the test of time, revolutionary games that are simply a standard for what gaming is supposed to be, and quite possibly the best console ever created in the SNES. Only taking 16 games to represent this era seemed like an insult, but that's simply the way the bracket was laid out. It all begins and ends with Nu, er.... Chrono Trigger. CT nabbed the 1 seed in the division, and quite fairly. Chrono Trigger has become one of the board mascots over the last two years, so it was only fitting that Chrono Trigger somehow manage to land the 1 seed within the division. But could this translate into success in the polls? Well, yes and no. Considering we know how the contest plays out, it's easy to say that Chrono Trigger performed as expected. But if you looked at the match against Secret of Mana, you might have been scratching your head for awhile. Chrono Trigger got off to a fast start, but lost a ton of steam when the time came for the afternoon vote. It lost so much steam that its percentage was actually going down against a 16 seed. Ouch. But Chrono Trigger managed to recover to win with nearly 80% of the vote. But even then, people were concerned for awhile, as this was not the 1 seed style beating indicative of a game that was supposedly a lock for the finals in the eyes of many bracketmakers. The odd thing is that Chrono Trigger would take on this pattern in every match it was involved with. The question was whether or not it would cost Chrono Trigger a match down the line. Beating a 16 seed in this manner is nice, but what of Chrono Trigger's well-being should it take on such a lax approach with the afternoon vote against a game that could actually beat it? Only time would tell. Speaking of which, I haven't yet mentioned that the starting time of the poll was changed prior to this contest. In the past, the poll would start at 1 AM EST. For this contest, it seems that CJayC has updated the poll starting time to 3 AM. It makes enough sense when one considers that 3 AM EST is Midnight Pacific, but I personally think it took a huge part of the fun out of the contest. Not everyone on the eastern half of the US has the pleasure of being able to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning to see the ending of the poll, and even the western crowd may have had issues. Staying up until midnight every day is not all that easy to do, especially for the younger crowd of GameFAQs. This change also varied the trends within the contest. We used to simply have a night vote, morning vote, afternoon vote, and evening vote. But with the start time changed, we now had five different voting blocks going in every match. To be simple, this created hell in many a match, including causing multiple matches to have comeback victories. But if there was one game in this contest that simply owned the night vote no matter who it was up against, it was Chrono Trigger. And it had to prove it time and time again in this contest. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Super Mario RPG vs (9)Street Fighter II 2004 _source: (8)Super Mario RPG vs (9)Street Fighter II 2004 (revid 85572)_ ## Results Sunday, April 11th, 2004 - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 11th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 12,076 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario RPG - 53.10% 53 for - 30 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario RPG - 47.83% (19,582 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis This match had quite the board hype going for it in the days leading up to the match, and for good reason. It was the hardest match to call in the first round of Division 16. It was also the first match in which less than half of the bracketmakers managed to get the winner correct. It makes perfect sense, because few polls could have been split down the middle more than this one. On one end, there is Super Mario RPG, one of the more fun RPGs out there, and labeled with the fact that it is Square, Nintendo, an RPG, and in a poll on gamefaqs. All of these things mixed together seemed like the perfect combination for a win, but not so fast. Mario RPG, while one of the most fun games I've ever played, is one of those games that can be referred to as a cult classic. Big when it first came out, but only a small fanbase remains vehemently dedicated to it nowadays. As a side note, I happen to have just entered Moleville a few minutes ago. Everything that Mario RPG needed to win the match was there, but the game itself was no where near strong enough to allow people to lock it in for a win. Especially not when you consider what it was up against. If anyone has looked at this board since this match, you are now a scholar in the art of Street Fighter. You know that it is the fighting game that revolutionized the genre, as well as the first fighting game that featured combos. For its day, the graphics were amazing, the characters stood out from one another, and the gameplay was so fun and addictive that Street Fighter 2 was to arcades during its prime what Dance Dance Revolution is to arcades in present day. Arcades literally stayed open with the revenue brought in by Street Fighter 2 back in the day, and the amount of fans that are still loyal to and play the game on a regular basis are a testament to how good the game truly is. But all this aside, the games had nothing to do with one another. You either sided with one or the other, and each game had great reasons why it should win. After all of the pre-match discussion was done and over with, the match finally started. Mario RPG jumped out to an early 62-38 split, but it didn't take long for Street Fighter 2 to claw its way back into the match. Throughout the first 5 hours of the poll, Street Fighter 2 managed to not only climb back into the match, but it took a lead of around 120. But we soon learned that Mario RPG was not released in many foreign countries, specifically Europe, and this is why Street Fighter 2 was able to do what it was doing early on. Fighting games are quite big in Europe, for Square doesn't like them for some reason. At any rate, the American fanbase, as well as the gamefaqs bias toward Square RPGs, begun to kick in the with morning vote. Mario RPG not only came back from being down by that small amount, but it soon blew Street Fighter 2 out of the water. It wound up being one of only three matches I missed in the entire contest, but that isn't the half of what went wrong in this match. Once Street Fighter 2 lost, it began the single longest chain of whining ever seen from any fanbase on the board. Most of the 'How in the hell did \_\_\_\_\_\_ lose?' topics end after a few days. But not Street Fighter 2's fanbase, oh no. The topics are still going on, even now that the contest is over. Granted it's just a fad by this point, but some people are actually serious about them. If anything, Street Fighter 2 has quite the loyal fanbase behind it. But the topics make enough sense. Street Fighter 2 is seriously that good. Without it, fighting games would still exist, and they would all suck. But don't let this sound like I'm upset that Mario RPG won or anything. It's one of my favorite games, and one that I was planning on getting with my prize until Tanya brought her SNES collection home from her parent's place one day. It's a fun little Square-Nintendo RPG that I would recommend to literally anyone, save the random fan of the Street Fighter franchise that might smash it with a hammer ~\_^ All in all, it was a good match. Two even games went at it, and only one could win. Sucks, but 63 of the games in this contest were destined to go home unhappy. As for the overall effect of the match, it wasn't as big as some would make it seem. Neither of these two games had any chance in hell of taking down Chrono Trigger, so in the end, it meant one measly little point. Big deal. The true fun of this contest is everything that surrounds it, not just the brackets. ## Stats and Analysis Look up the word ‘incredulous’ in the dictionary and you’ll find a screenshot of the board during and after this match. Even today, the phrase WTF SF2 LOST?!? is synonymous with post-match whining, rivaled in intensity only by a lesser match from the Series contest, Super Smash Bros. vs Dragon Quest and Fallout 3 vs Deus Ex 2010 (and possibly the 2007 contest with “joke characters”). In retrospect the intensity of the board’s whining overplayed the match – it was only a one-point affair, and though it had a tossup winner, it wasn’t anything to get bent out of shape about – the winner still got mauled by Chrono Trigger. Still, the hilarity of the board’s reaction makes this one for the record books. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs (12)Shining Force 2004 _source: (5)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs (12)Shining Force 2004 (revid 55662)_ ## Results Monday, April 12th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 12th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 59,648 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic 2 - 74.05% 80 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic 2 - 89.25% (36,539 brackets) This matchup set off a chain of four straight predetermined blowouts pitting big name games against games that most likely didn't even deserve to be in the contest, let alone have a chance to actually win a match. The first of the four blowouts was Sonic 2 vs Shining Force, and frankly, the only entertaining thing about this match was Popo making a topic asking why Sonic 2 was being put up against a made-up game. Yes, we tried that hard to get drama from this thing. Speaking of which, how did 10.75% of people think that Shining Force stood any chance whatsoever? A little-known Sega RPG stands no chance against Sega's mascot. The odd thing is that Sonic 2 performed quite well in this match. So well in fact that a large contingency of Sonic fans on the board began gathering steam in their efforts to convince people that Sonic 2 could very well take down Super Mario World. After all, it's Sonic vs Mario, right? And 4 seeds always have issues with 5 seeds, yes? HEH. What wound up happening in that match was something else entirely, but we'll get into that later. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Super Mario World vs (13)The Simpsons 2004 _source: (4)Super Mario World vs (13)The Simpsons 2004 (revid 55664)_ ## Results Tuesday, April 13th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 13th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 61,229 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario World - 77.91% 83 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario World - 95.91% (39,266 brackets) If anyone thought Mario was somewhat weakened after the events of Summer 2002 Contest and Summer 2003 Contest, I hope they were at least put to rest after this match. The Simpsons arcade game is no slouch whatsoever, yet Mario World completely killed it. And not only that, but almost 96% of brackets picking Mario World to win is no joke whatsoever. This was the second in our four part series of watching some 16 bit heavy hitters destroy inferior 'Just happy to be here' opponents, and it isn't like I can say much here. The Simpsons never stood a chance, and this match is simply another example of outside mediums meaning squat in polls on our site. But along those lines, don't think I'm bashing The Simpsons at all. Aside from being a good animated series, the arcade game was one of the most fun I've ever played. It's just that it never stood a chance to win this match, that's all. After all, Mario World had the full force of the enigma known as LUE behind it. It was also the launch title for what some believe to be the greatest system ever made, the SNES. What surprises me is how many people maintained that Mario World was in trouble against Sonic 2 after this match. The numbers being somewhat similar only tell part of the story. Mario World scored more than Sonic 2 in the first round, and it also held a stronger opponent to less votes. The game was over for Sonic 2 right then and there, but we're getting well ahead of ourselves. A winner is Super Mario World, and only a seven year old epileptic hermit with one functioning eye could have possibly thought otherwise. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (11)Gunstar Heroes 2004 _source: (6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (11)Gunstar Heroes 2004 (revid 64103)_ ## Results Wednesday, April 14th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 14th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 78,272 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link to the Past - 86.16% 85 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link to the Past - 97.75% (40,019 brackets) Another division, another display of Zelda dominance. This match featured the highest prediction percentage, the biggest blowout in terns of vote difference, and one of the single highest voting outputs in the entire contest. Gunstar Heroes may have been influential, but it doesn't come close to being well-known enough to do serious damage in this contest. Nothing more than fodder for LTTP, despite CJayC's claim that 'Any one of these games can win it all. It just depends on who comes out to vote.' It was no question who would win this match. Zelda is one of the best series in gaming, plain and simple. And this match made a ton of people, including yours truly, wonder just how strong Zelda was in this contest. When you factor in the underdog vote, joke votes, anti-votes, and all of that other jazz, holding any game under 10% is not easy to do. Yet through two matches, the Zelda series was 2-0 and looking like it would dominate the entire contest. Those of us who didn't think a single Zelda game would make the Final Four really started to wonder after this match. There were also a select group of Metroid fans (NeoElfboy, Xenobi) who maintained that this victory didn't mean all that much, and that any performance against Gunstar Heroes, one of the weakest games in the contest, should be taken with a grain of salt. We all know how that turned out, but more on it later. The other thing I found really stupid was LTTP's seeding. CJayC mentioned that 99% of the bracket was done purely based on seeding and that he only tweaked the bracket just a little. The more I think about it, the more I think that LTTP being a 6 seed in this contest, behind Super Metroid, FF6, Mario World, and Sonic 2 I might add, was manipulation by CJayC in order to have LTTP and Super Metroid, arguably the two best Nintendo-based SNES games out there, against each other in the second round. It's very difficult to think that the nomination philosophy of 'It will get in anyway, so I'm going to nominate an underdog' applies to LTTP moreso than any other game in the contest. It sure didn't seem to bother the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, or Halo all that much. The examples aren't many, but they are there. If you look at the bracket very closely, you can cite some instances where CJayC was trying to get the more interesting matches. Perfect Dark vs Goldeneye? Mario World vs Sonic 2? Super Metroid vs LTTP? Metroid Prime vs Wind Waker? Puh-leeze. I don't fault CJayC however, as I might have done the same thing. Anyway, this match was the third in our four part series of blowouts. Only one more to go before this topic starts getting interesting again. But damn, didn't it look like Zelda was unbeatable after this match? And if not this match, then what about your thoughts after the second round? Good grief, some of those matches were flat-out shocking. But more on those later. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Metroid vs (14)Phantasy Star IV 2004 _source: (3)Super Metroid vs (14)Phantasy Star IV 2004 (revid 84037)_ ## Results Thursday, April 15th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 15th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 56,376 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Metroid - 77.74% 86 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Metroid - 91.08% (37,288 brackets) For a game that was billed by some people to take down Link to the Past, they were flat-out shot down in this match. For Super Metroid to stand any chance whatsoever, it needed to perform on par or equal to LTTP in its match against Phantasy Star IV. Allowing it almost 17% of the vote didn't cut it, to be honest. But not to discredit Phantasy Star IV here. I know some people who are absolute masters of the RPG genre, and quite a few of them have mentioned the Phantasy Star series as being the best RPG series out there. And these people have played all of Final Fantasies, Lunar, Chrono Trigger, and other series as well. Yet they put PS4 above them all. Interesting, to say the least. As for Super Metroid, I think that everyone should have seen its imminent second round fate coming after this match. Had LTTP gone up against Phantasy Star IV, I can assure you that it would have been close to the beatings that the Zeldas were laying on Adventure and Gunstar Heroes. PS4 is a great game, but it simply doesn't have the necessary popularity on our site to win most matches. It's a shame that Super Metroid didn't perform to expectations as well, because that one website (the name slips me) was dead-on when it called Super Metroid the best game of all time. It deserves the title, and if I ever made such a list, it would easily make the top ten. Easily. But what other websites think don't matter. On our site, wrong as it may be, it was clear that Super Metroid stood no chance whatsoever of making the sweet sixteen once this match was done and over with. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)EarthBound vs (10)Doom 2004 _source: (7)Earthbound vs (10)Doom 2004 (revid 88788)_ ## Results Friday, April 16th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 16th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 12,164 - **Oracle Expectations:** Doom - 51.12% 50 for - 35 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Doom - 61.92% (25,350 brackets) Some people forget two very simple things (quoted from an Ulti prediction topic): 1 - Earthbound is the very definition of a cult classic. The people who play the game absolutely love it, and they are more likely to nominate Earthbound over any other game. This is the sole reason for its high seed. 2 - Of all the PC games in the contest, I believe Doom has the highest seeding of them all. That's quite an accomplishment, and I would honestly be shocked if Earthbound managed to get 45% of the vote. ^ *Not the exact words, as that was all from memory. But you get the idea.* ^ Anyway, this match had quite the debate behind it. After all, Earthbound was a 7 seed, ahead of Super Mario RPG and Street Fighter 2! But like I said all through the days leading up to that match, Earthbound has one of the most dedicated fanbases of any game out there. Hence the seed. But everyone, EVERYONE, has heard of Doom. First Person Shooters could exist without Doom, and they would all suck. Doom was one of gaming's most revolutionary titles, and it was quite deserving of being the highest-seeded PC game in the contest (not counting FF7 and Halo, of course). So in the end, we have one of gaming's biggest sleeper hits versus one of gaming's most revolutionary titles. Unfortunately, name value normally prevails in these situations. The match played out exactly like expected. Earthbound took a very early lead because of the hardcore fans, but Doom eventually took over with the second update and eventually managed to steamroll Earthbound right out of the match. The surprising thing, outside of Earthbound's seeding, was all of the pre-match hype. Even the Prophet Challenge made it seem like this match would be right down the middle the whole way through, but it wasn't even close in the end. This match was quite the first round bracket buster as well, as almost 40% of people called the match wrong. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Final Fantasy VI vs (15)Mortal Kombat 2004 _source: (2)Final Fantasy VI vs (15)Mortal Kombat 2004 (revid 55672)_ ## Results Saturday, April 17th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 17th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 44,398 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VI - 77.51% 85 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VI - 81.14% (33,219 brackets) I'd love to know how only 81.14% of people thought FF6 would own this match. Did a bunch of people think that Kefka's performance in 2003 meant anything in terms of FF6's overall popularity? Granted, Scorpion did better against Pac Man than Kefka, but the respective games are an entirely different animal. Mortal Kombat, while damned huge for its time, never stood a chance of winning this match. The only question that remained was whether or not the overall board opinion was wrong on LTTP being a shoo-in for the divisional finals. Going by the first round alone, FF6 stood no chance. But my goodness, we were pretty off on how powerful FF6 truly turned out to be on this site. Many people, including me, still consider it the best game in the series by far. Under most circumstances, I'd say that a 74% victory wasn't dominating. But Mortal Kombat is a big franchise, and having it being held to under 30% is quite the accomplishment. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (16)Suikoden II 2004 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (16)Suikoden II 2004 (revid 55674)_ ## Results Sunday, April 18th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 18th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 76,348 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 87.78% 72 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 96.76% (39,614 brackets) And with this match, the total joke that was Division 32-64 began. Going by the pure numbers, this division was the easiest to call by barely edging out Division 8 in overall prediction percentage. Suikoden II, while an amazing game, never stood a chance. This division was all about the imminent Final Fantasy 7 vs Ocarina of Time final, and no game could have possibly stood in the way of either of them en route to kicking the crap out of each other. This match was a simple warmup, and FF7 performed just like a potential champion should. It had a prediction percentage in the high 90s, an insane vote total for the poll in comparison to the average vote totals that we would get in the contest, and it managed complete domination in every facet. No point in saying any more, really. FF7 wins, and everyone knows why. And in case you didn't, gamefaqs because famous because of FF7. Kao Megura's guide brought the initial popularity, and we just took off from there. The site also adopted an RPG identity, hence why other sites refer to us as RPG/Console fanboys. Like it or not, we are. At least the majority of us, anyways. Speaking of Kao Megura, FF7 would get a huge popularity boost right in the middle of this contest. Not that it needed it, of course. But the boost was not because of anything good; quite the opposite, actually. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal vs (9)Xenogears 2004 _source: (8)Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal vs (9)Xenogears 2004 (revid 56333)_ ## Results Tuesday, April 20th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 20th, 2004 - **Notes:** Started on Monday, April 19th, 2004 but was repeated due to voting bug - **Vote difference:** 11,114 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenogears - 49.54% 35 for - 38 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenogears - 48.20% (19,733 brackets) Please note that I do not hate Pokémon. I used to like it, and I still think it's a good franchise. My issues come with Nintendo selling the game out beyond any possible realm of human comprehension. The game itself is fine, as it is a very detailed RPG. But the current franchise is nothing more than a cheap attempt for Nintendo to make a buck, and I've never been much of a fan for that sort of thing. That being said, I'm not going to sit here and say that Pokémon lost simply because it is one of the most hated games on the site. It is. But there are other reasons besides that. The most obvious of which is the game it was up against. Squaresoft RPGs, no matter how obscure, are no joke on this site. Square owns this place, and taking down one of their games in a poll is no small task. For Pokémon, it's a near-impossible task. There's also the issue of the Red/Blue versions not being in the contest. Gold/Silver/Crystal were all cash cow games. Red and Blue were where it was at, and despite any hate the series has by this point, I maintain that it was one of the most fun series out there. Who doesn't remember going at it with your friends during lunch in high school? I do, and I have no regrets whatsoever about it. But sadly, Red/Blue weren't in the contest. If they were, we may have seen something different. So yes, while the big factor in Pokémon's loss was the 'anything but Pokémon' vote, the series isn't something to laugh at, and there were other factors. The fact that over half of the bracketmakers picked Pokémon to win should show that much. But tip your hat to Xenogears in this one. Despite every claim in the book against it, the game has one of the greatest soundtracks and storylines to ever grace a video game. The graphics and the battles weren't anything earthshattering, but Xenogears still possessed two of the key qualities needed for a solid RPG. Oh, and don't forget a kickass cast of characters, a main character who follows the traditional storyline of being a tortured soul to a T, and every Squaresoft plot twist that you could ever think of. Just be ready to get into a ton of random battles so that your gears are always fitted with the latest, or you'll get creamed. Also, you might want to brush up your psychology a bit before playing. Nothing beats being able to understand a storyline involving the multiple egos within the human psyche and the subliminal desire to be more powerful than God himself. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I almost forgot! This was the poll that had to be restarted. CJayC broke out some very sexy new code for the polls and bracket before this match. But sadly, it was only allowing people registered with a gamefaqs account to vote. But not to be outdone by his own misfortune, CJayC plastered a giant FFXI ad on the entire front page during the restarted poll. This caused all sorts of hell for some browsers, and the main page was 11 pages longer on some of them. This could be a good reason why the poll didn't even manage 70,000 votes, wouldn't you say? In short, this analysis was brought to you by FFXI. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy Tactics vs (12)Dance Dance Revolution 2004 _source: (5)Final Fantasy Tactics vs (12)Dance Dance Revolution 2004 (revid 55678)_ ## Results Wednesday, April 21st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 21st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 41,332 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy Tactics - 74.43% 75 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy Tactics - 79.90% (32,711 brackets) Four straight polls featuring four straight victories by Square RPGs came to an end in this poll, as Final Fantasy Tactics managed a very 'meh' 76-24 victory over Dance Dance Revolution. At least we thought it was a ho-hum win at first. After all, DDR is nothing more than an arcade dancing game, right? Well, not exactly. Dance Dance Revolution, for all intents and purposes, is one of the single biggest arcade crazes in the world right now. Believe it or not, DDR has one hell of a dedicated fanbase, and though it wound up being one of the weakest games in the division, its 24% on Final Fantasy Tactics was no joke. I would also like to note that ChichiriMuyo was preaching this from day one, and thought it took two rounds for him to be proven right, he was. The people who picked Metal Gear Solid to take down Final Fantasy Tactics all thought FFT was done for once it gave up 24% to DDR, but were we all in for one of the biggest rides ever seen in this contest or what? Lost in all of this is the fact that Final Fantasy Tactics is a lot closer to the numbered series than we thought (\*mumbles something about having known this for years\*), though it didn't exactly show in this match. The how and why some first round matches went down were predetermined in some cases, such as this poll. simply put, some matches were never going to be more than blowouts, and they served only to make comparisons for later contests. Perfect example? Final Fantasy Tactics vs Metal Gear Solid. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Metal Gear Solid vs (13)Resident Evil 2004 _source: (4)Metal Gear Solid vs (13)Resident Evil 2004 (revid 84039)_ ## Results Thursday, April 22nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 22nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 30,802 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid - 69.42% 76 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid - 80.99% (33,157 brackets) Take a quick look at how truly even Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy Tactics were after their two respective matches. They had virtually the same prediction percentage in the first round. And while Final Fantasy Tactics saw both its vote total and the vote total of its respective poll score higher than that of Metal Gear Solid's poll, it was also going up against a considerably weaker opponent than Metal Gear Solid. In its day, Resident Evil was one of gaming's hottest items. But after Capcom literally beat the series into the ground time and time again, the series has turned into somewhat of a mockery every time a new game is released. Personally, I'm still waiting for Resident Evil 33 and a Third. And it won't take long either, just you watch. (Note: Ulti wrote this before the RE series was revitalized by Resident Evil 4 in 2005.) And because Resident Evil as a series has become what it currently is, the original game in the series was a weak item coming into this contest. Its reward for Capcom being complete morons was a 13 seed in this contest, behind titles such as Dance Dance Revolution and NiGHTS into dreams... mind you, and a one way ticket out of the contest in the first round. It's sad what has happened to Resident Evil, but that's life. And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Resident Evil Outbreak released just days before this poll? Sure didn't help much. As for Metal Gear Solid, it has proven in the past that it is the most popular series on this site outside of Nintendo and Square (if you're counting Mega Man as Nintendo, that is), and it showed no signs of proving otherwise after this match. It quietly dispatched Resident Evil Cyan-style, and it was on to a second round showdown with one of the best strategy RPGs out there, Final Fantasy Tactics. And despite how close the two games looked on paper, few could see what would lie ahead between those two. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Perfect Dark vs (11)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2004 _source: (6)Perfect Dark vs (11)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2004 (revid 55682)_ ## Results Friday, April 23rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 23rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 4,883 - **Oracle Expectations:** Symphony of the Night - 54.82% 61 for - 16 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Symphony of the Night - 53.25% (21,801 brackets) This match was one of the oddest of the contest. For starters, this was the personification of overhype. Slowflake coined the phrase 'BangFang Triangle' during the various pre-match debates invoving the bracket. "If Goldeneye can obviously take down Perfect Dark, then why can't it take down Castlevania?" "If Perfect Dark can beat Castlevania, what stops it from taking down Goldeneye? After all, it's the better game." "But wait! If Castlevania beats Perfect Dark, what stops it from beating Goldeneye? They just the same game, you know." "Touché! Perfect Dark is simply a rehash of Goldeneye. Goldeneye would own either game." "IDIOTS! Catlevania is strong enough to beat Perfect Dark, but Goldeneye is completely out of its league." And so on and so on and so on. As it would turn out, those of us who theorized that Perfect Dark and Goldeneye are two completely different animals in a poll were right. Alucard's past performances were no joke, as his popularity stems from his game. Perfect Dark, while one of the great N64 games out there, was victim of being released during the dying days of the N64. The fact that it sold so much despite this drawback should tell everyone how great a game Perfect Dark truly is. It's one of my favorites, and it really sucked that I went against it on my bracket in this match. But hey, you can't deny Alucard's past performances being a huge warning sign for how strong Symphony of the Night is, and apparently, over half of the bracketmakers saw this as well. The poll itself was close for the few few seconds, but Symphony of the Night soon began torching Perfect Dark with the early morning vote and on through the morning itself. After building a substantial lead, Perfect Dark managed to fight back and come back like a bullet in the percentages. Perfect Dark managed to split the vote evenly with Symphony of the Night for quite a long time in this poll. But then, one of the more odd events to ever hit a poll happened right around noon. The poll stopped updating for literally hours. Votes were still counted, but the poll literally froze until the evening. And when the poll finally updated, we were all pleasantly surprised to see that Perfect Dark literally split the vote throughout the entire afternoon. It didn't make a huge comeback or anything, but the match went from a total blowout to a respectable loss for Perfect Dark. Symphony of the Night made a small push with the evening vote to win by nearly 5000, but the subliminal damage was done. If Symphony of the Night had to scratch and claw its way to a win against Perfect Dark, then there was no way in hell that it was taking down Goldeneye, this making this one of the most overhyped 3 packs ever. Then again, it was all a part of Alucard's Plan to let Perfect Dark hang around a little bit =) ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)GoldenEye 007 vs (14)Panzer Dragoon Saga 2004 _source: (3)Goldeneye vs (14)Panzer Dragoon Saga 2004 (revid 56872)_ ## Results Saturday, April 24th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 24th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 46,575 - **Oracle Expectations:** Goldeneye - 81.65% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Goldeneye - 92.61% (37,915 brackets) I know I said that Castlevania's doom was spelled out for it once it struggled with Perfect Dark, but Goldeneye still had to prove that it would win the match. It did so by easily dispatching the Sega Saturn title in scoring over 80% of the vote. Most doubt about whether or not Goldeneye would make it to the Sweet 16 were doused after this match, with merely a few SOTN hopefuls maintaining that it could still win. But like some of us were saying all along, Goldeneye is a different animal from Perfect Dark. It was the highest-selling game for the N64 until Ocarina of Time was released, and it was fresh. Perfect Dark was simply a sexier (literally) Goldeneye, and didn't have the same suavé to it. But more on all of that later. For this match, it was a simple blowout that proved Goldeneye's superiority in the so-called BangFang Triangle, and nothing more. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1622&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Super Mario 64 vs (10)NiGHTS into dreams... 2004 _source: (7)Super Mario 64 vs (10)NiGHTS into dreams... 2004 (revid 55686)_ ## Results Sunday, April 25th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 25th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 56,834 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario 64 - 84.07% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario 64 - 94.65% (38,750 brackets) Would you believe that NiGHTS has the highest overall review score of any game in this contest? Props to Slowflake for that information, and props to both him and steve illumina for doing previews for each match. It isn't easy signing on to do a writeup every day, believe me. But back to NiGHTS. Of all the games in this contest, a lowly little Sega Saturn title destined for nothing other than being overseeded and getting its ass kicked in the first round, has the highest review score of any game in this contest. Apparently, we have quite a gem on our hands. The problem is that most people haven't heard of it, and it got the beating that it was expected to get against the revolutionary Mario 64. As for Mario 64, talk about a game given the shaft in this contest. It was horribly underseeded at 7, and its reward is a one way ticket out of this contest in the second round thanks to being inevitably paired up with Ocarina of Time. Sucks too, because I wasn't kidding when I mentioned how revolutionary Mario 64 was. It deserved a better fate, but again, 63 games left this contest unhappy. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1623&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (15)Fallout 2 2004 _source: (2)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (15)Fallout 2 2004 (revid 55688)_ ## Results Monday, April 26th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 26th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 69,753 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ocarina of Time - 89.94% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 96.32% (39,433 brackets) Another match featuring a Zelda title, another huge blowout that made it look like Zelda was going to own this contest. And I don't blame people for thinking this, but look deeper into the stats. It especially helps when one notices that the site looked perfectly normal for this matchup, with only one poll on the front page. The same held true for FF7's match against Suikoden II, so the comparisons were easy. Remember the comparison I made between Sonic 2 and Super Mario World? The same exact thing works here as well. FF7 faced a tougher opponent than Ocarina of Time, yet it managed a higher prediction percentage, more votes, and saw the vote total in its poll go much higher than the total in Ocarina of Time's poll. The only difference is that Suikoden II managed to score 2000 more votes than Fallout 2. Big deal. Suikoden II is a stronger game for a reason. The horribly overhyped FF7/OOT matchup was decided once this poll was over, though watching people continue to make cases for Ocarina of Time with the proof right in front of them was pretty funny to watch. Not to disrespect either of these two games or anything. Ocarina of Time sold 10 million copies for a reason, and Fallout 2 is quite the amazing PC RPG. But in terms of pure extrapolated strength, Final Fantasy 7 won this contest 24 polls into it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1624&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Halo: Combat Evolved vs (16)Starcraft 2004 _source: (1)Halo: Combat Evolved vs (16)Starcraft 2004 (revid 88790)_ ## Results Tuesday, April 27th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 27th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 373 - **Oracle Expectations:** StarCraft - 44.45% 13 for - 56 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** StarCraft - 24.09% (9,862 brackets) This was, by far, the most important and most hotly debated first round match we've ever had in one of these contests. In most dimensions, 16 seeds simply don't take down 1 seeds. In fact, they never come close. But not in this contest. The following is my own personal take on why this match would be pure hell from start to finish. **WARNING**: This rant is extremely biased, and you might not want to read it at all if you're a big Halo fan. Now, for the orgasmic Halo/Starcraft analysis. If people didn't know how this match would go before reading this thing, they were even more confused afterwards. DpObliVion himself said of the writeup: *Damn you, Ulti. It's when people like you posts analyses like that (and yours was by far the best one) that make me lose every last bit of confidence in Halo winning this match.* *I wouldn't be surprised in the least bit if StarCraft won. Unfortunately though, I'd be putting that match right next to Phantasy Star vs. Contra under my "Why the \*\*\*\* didn't I listen to everyone?" section of my lost points.* Not to be outdone, smitelf had her own take on the work: *I would like to take this moment to politely and sincerely orgasm over Ulti's Halo/Starcraft analysis.* *Ulti...there is absolutely nothing I can argue with in that analysis. Nothing left out, nothing not said with enough emphasis...it's just perfect. Absolutely \*\*\*\*ing perfect. That is the best post I have ever read anywhere, ever. I don't know words that can describe the beauty of what you wrote. It was as touching as a post on video games could ever aspire to be.* *Okay, now that the touchy-feely crap is over with, damn you! I was looking forward to ripping your analysis apart, but noooo, you have to write as if you tore the thoughts out of my mind -- no, my very soul -- and then go about making them articulate! I curse your perfection!* So sit back and relax. My reposting of that analysis is only the beginning of what may be the longest and most in-depth analysis of the entire topic. > Finally, a match worthy of being read into. Too many first round joke polls. CJayC has openly stated that Halo is a \#1 seed because it got more nominations than any other game. Fair enough, but this means nothing whatsoever. How many of those nominations were from actual fans? Many people just didn't feel like leaving the Xbox part of the form blank, so they put Halo in due to not being able to think of anything else. This allowed Halo to get a ton of nominations from people who hate the Xbox. Starcraft, however, completely earned its spot in this contest. The PC has been around producing games for almost years, yet thanks to CJayC's horrendous nomination system, we could only nominate one game per system, two for the PC if you were smart enough to realize there was both a Windows and a Mac PC form. That being said, Starcraft is in this contest after splitting an absolute ton of PC nominations with a load of other games. If anything, this match proves how bad the nomination method was. Here we have Halo being nominated because people could think of nothing better, while Starcraft had to claw its way into the contest by beating out 25 years of PC games. > > Now, for the actual poll. If anyone remembers 2003, you all know about Master Chief and how badly he performed. In the first round, he only managed to beat Felix by around 6000 votes, and was completely whipped by Aeris in round 2. Some people say that MC was respectable against Aeris, but I disagree. He was picked by over 2000 people to win the entire contest, and lost in the second round. Furthermore, any doubt about whether or not he would lose in the second round were blown to bits after his pathetic first round performance. I mean, honestly, does everyone think that all the people who voted for Felix were actually fans of Felix and Golden Sun? Let's get real here. There is an absolute loathing of the Xbox on gamefaqs, and the 2003 character contest was black and white proof of it. The Xbox and Halo has a lot of fans, yes, but they are horribly outnumbered by the people who would rather play with dog waste than an Xbox. > > Then there's Starcraft. Being in this contest is an accomplishment in and of itself, but to put this in perspective, look at this more closely. Console games on GameFAQs have a few heavy hitters to choose from. Coming into this contest, it was a guarantee that we'd see games from the Zelda series, the Mario series, the FF series, and the heavy hitters from each console. Hell, we even got the heavy hitters from consoles that are now used as emergency flotation devices and self mutilation. I mean, honestly, some of these systems are that old. But for the PC, no game was a guarantee. Look at the seeds of the PC games in this contest. And if any of you mention that Final Fantasy 7 is a 1 seed that was on the PC, you're getting kicked square in the crotch. Look at the PC games that were only on the PC. Doom, Half-Life, Fallout 2, and Starcraft are all seeded low. This is no accident, as they all stole nominations from one other while console games were nominated in with little resistance from themselves. Starcraft even had nominations stolen from Halo, Final Fantasy 7, and every other BLIZZARD game in existence. And what does it get for its efforts from having to duke it out with Diablo II and Warcraft 3 before the contest even started? A 16 seed and a date with the most overseeded game in the entire contest. > > But the match is far from being decided yet. The 1 vs 16 stereotype means nothing in this match. Link proved last year that most people could not possibly give two shits about their bracket given the right match. All over gamefaqs, there were topics asking people to vote for Link, and in ALL of them, you could find at least three people saying they had Link in their bracket, but could care less that he was going to lose. That's just how this contest is. Yes, there are a ton of people who have Halo in their bracket simply because it has the big 1 next to its name, but I can promise most of you people that most of those people don't like Halo and would rather drink nuclear waste than buy an Xbox. It's evident in every poll featuring the Xbox and/or Halo. People simply don't like the Xbox. And for even more proof, does anyone remember the state of the site during the GameRiot polls that sponsored the Xbox? There were topics and petitions to bring them down all over the place, and our own Spring Contest which was strategically placed below the GameRiot poll in an effort for it not to draw attention away from GameRiot's beloved Xbox still pwned the GameRiot poll right in the face, and refused to help clean up afterwards. Those polls were a disgrace, plain and simple, and gamefaqers all over the place let it be known. > > So magically, everyone that has hated the Xbox all these years is going to turn around and vote for Halo just because they have it in their brackets? Are you people on the very drugs that our TOS has now banned us from discussing on our site again? There are legions of people out there who could not possibly give two rat's asses about losing this match if it meant taking down Halo and letting all hell break loose all across gamefaqs. I for one cannot wait for this match, as it has the makings of being the biggest event to hit our site since Mario/Crono 2. This match can seriously cause that much damage all across the boards. This thing could get to the point where people use glitches to spam Barney's Hide and Seek in an effort to gain votes for either side. This match could easily be the biggest and baddest match in the history of these contests on our site. The whole thing comes down to the flawed nomination system overseeding Halo and underseeding Starcraft. It also comes down to how much pride each side has in their favorite. Are the Halo fans and bracket voters ready to support their opinions to the death, and do PC gamers have the grapefruits to finally make the single biggest stand ever seen on the site? Honestly, the PC gamer should feel like they've been slapped by one of the single greatest games on ANY MEDIUM OF ALL TIME being a mere 16 seed in this contest, and if they have any pride whatsoever, they'll at least make sure Starcraft puts up one hell of a fight in this match. Halo beating Starcraft with ease would be the biggest disappointment in this contest. Halo winning a tight match is one thing, but a 65-35 beatdown would be far worse than any Mario victory over Crono and any Samus voter that waited until the final two hours to vote against Sonic. > > Go to any social board on the site. Compare the number of “OMG LET'S GO PLAY HALO ON XBOX LIVE!!” topics to the number of topics where people are calling for their friends to come out for an asswhipping in Starcraft. There is no contest, Starcraft wins. Starcraft has sold millions upon millions of copies across the world, while Halo seems to be more of a cult following among gamers who have nothing better to do on Friday nights than to watch Red vs Blue on Master Chief in Puma yaoi and declare Friday nights the Halo night. And furthermore, compare the two biggest factors among the players of both games. Starcraft is still played by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide on battle.net for free, while Xbox Live has attracted a few thousand people, tops, who were willing to sell themselves out to the lap dog of the revolution in Bill Gates and spend all that money to play a few Xbox games online. Oh by the way, my PS2 port cost me \$40, and it gave me no increase in my internet bill whatsoever. > > Oh, how could I POSSIBLY forget about the Koreans?? Starcraft saved a country. Seriously, it saved a country. South Korea had practically no economy whatsoever, then along came Starcraft. After some advertising on everything from soap to potato chips, Starcraft became the national sport of Korea, and the country has three TV channels dedicated to Starcraft 24/7. Have any of you people ever played against or with a Korean in Starcraft? You're either going to get your ass whipped or have the greatest ally there is. And the population of South Korea has to at least be a few million or so. Think what kind of damage they could cause if this contest was actually advertised over there. If a mere 1% voted in our poll, Halo would stand no chance. What group does Halo constitute being the national sport of? Like I said, people who deem Friday nights the Halo night. Again, no contest. > > So in the end, we have a poll that is completely up in the air. Seedings don't mean jack in this match. The people that vote will simply vote for their favorite and move on. Starcraft has the favor of Xbox hate votes, any and all BLIZZARD fans of the site, the PC gamer, the underdog vote, and the people who simply want to see all hell break loose on gamefaqs. Halo has the vote of the 23 people who like Halo. Should be close. Whew, that was fun. But it wasn't the most popular of opinions from the people who felt that Halo would completely own this matchup. From Moltar's topic: *Back on topic..uh..yeah...nice..lengthy..review, Ulti. Wow..but,Halo will beat StarCraft. I don't care if it's 50.01%-49.99%, 60%, 65%, 66%...Halo's not gonna lose in the very first round. Why? Cause if it really got a No.1 seed, it's not that sucky.* *A No.1 seed is pretty good for people feeling bad...wait, you just presumed that! -\_\_\_\_\_- Anyways, like I was saying, a No.1 seed is pretty good for people feeling bad for a game system and just thinking "uh..what is there to nominate for Xbox..uh..Halo? Oh..I'll just nominate it to show pity for the Xbox...:-)"* *That's a lotta XBox fans. That's a lotta anti-Xbox fans..no wait, you presumed that too?! I hate when people presume other people's opinions! Dude, what the \[ \] makes you think that first, people hate the XBox, but would then nominate a game for it? You're..you're...acting like smitelf! \*gasps in horror\* Yeah, please answer.* ~Tai And surprise surprise, his entire post wound up being 100% wrong. People do hate the Xbox and nominated Halo for no reason. Fast forwarding for a minute, there is no way in the world that Halo comes as close as it does if the seedings are reversed. But enough of all of that. My analysis and subsequent debates were one of many isolated debates and topic surrounding this match. When the bracket was first released, this was the one first round match that everyone set their eyes on as having the potential to be the best the first round, and maybe even the contest, has ever seen. The debates were all over the place, and it wasn't isolated to our board either. A little for everyone who deeply follows this contest: go spy on the boards involving the games or characters in a hot poll. You'll see some of the funnier topics and posts around. So after all of the pre-match hype, the stage was set. And neither game could make an excuse for losing either, as the site was to enjoy one final day of being normal. It was all or nothing for the next 24 hours, err...... what's this? The poll started at 2:30 AM! Either CJayC was sick of Ocarina of Time killing Fallout 2, or he knew of the pre-match hype and wanted to give us all an extra half hour of enjoyment. The odd thing is that there was no mention of when the poll would close. It could have been 2:30 AM the next day, or it could have been later. All I know is that I personally was happy beyond belief. I was looking forward to this match more than any other, so an extra half hour was fine by me. Coincidentally, I wound up getting a stomach virus the day before this match, meaning I got to call out of work and watch the entire thing unfold =) With our early start to the poll, the only thing we do do was sit around, vote, and wait to see what happened. After the two games were merely 7 votes apart through the first update, everyone was utterly shocked (and quite pleased) at what wound up happening next. Starcraft not only began taking command of the match, but it was building its lead at an insane pace. (Note: check the update graph below to see what Ulti's talking about from here out) As you can see, Starcraft was laying quite the beating on Halo through the first four hours of the poll. Remember, Starcraft was a 16 seed in this contest. 16 seeds don't push 1 seeds down to 44.44% of the vote; it's unthinkable. But Starcraft was no joke in this poll. Not only did it build a lead of 1045 through the first 3:45, but Starcraft fever took over the site. Starcraft quotes were all over the place, Starcraft topics were all over the place, and if you were watching Bnet closely, a ton of people began playing Starcraft to sort of celebrate their win. But in the timeless words of a man named Lee Corso, "NOT SO FAST, my friend!". While the entire site was busy with the fever of Starcraft vs Halo, the site stopped paying attention to the poll. Halo won an update at the 4 hour hark. It then won another, and another. The gains weren't anything huge, but they were still gains. And much to the chagrin of Starcraft fans site-wide, Halo started picking up a little bit of steam. The 1 seed, it seemed, would not go down without giving Starcraft the fight of its life. The two games started going at as if it were one of the greatest one on one battles ever to be seen. Shades of Hector vs Achilles, Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels, Gore vs Bush, David vs Goliath, and any other legendary battle that you could possibly think of were littered all of this match. Halo began to gain the upper hand after the fourth hour of the poll, and it even gained a little bit of steam. But it was far from easy. While Starcraft was busy gaining nearly 100 votes per update early in the poll, Halo had to scratch and claw its way for every vote it received. The result was Halo making a slow, meticulous effort at cutting down Starcraft's lead. It has the occasional string of decent gains, but nothing that led anyone to believe Halo had the match won yet. But this didn't stop the entire site from going into a frenzy. I spoke to a couple of moderators after this match was done and over, and it's no exaggeration when I tell you that there were literally thousands of moderated messages stemming froM this match alone. All throughout the day, the games and their fanbases were going at it with one another worse than the games in the poll themselves. It was quite the event to watch, and it would only get progressively worse between the fanbases as the day would wear on. It took 10:15 into the poll for Halo to finally pull even with Starcraft, but could it keep the momentum going? For quite a long time, it seemed as if this would be the case. Starcraft, despite a mass of Bnet spamming both on every game Bnet provides and every forum on battle.net itself, showed no signs of gaining back the magic it had in the early hours of the poll. With the exception of a couple of meager gains in the middle of Halo's advance, the best Starcraft could manage was to keep the advance as slow as possible and hope to regain the momentum later on in the poll. Then again, this is Starcraft we're talking about. Right when it looked like Halo was going to finally steamroll Starcraft right out of the poll, Starcraft managed to hold strong for a good hour and a half before finally caving in to the pressure. It was a good dream for Starcraft, but it seemed as if it was all dead in the water for Starcraft and its fans after that hour and a half of fighting between the two was over. 12:45 into the poll, Halo finally started making the push that a supposed 1 seed should have made long ago in this poll and it looked to end Starcraft's dream run in this poll once and for all. And Halo may have been making a huge push, but Starcraft kept fighting back with these occasional small gains that kept giving the people rooting for Starcraft some hope. But every time it seemed like Starcraft was going to cause some damage, back came Halo with a huge gain to shoot everything down. But even then, the Starcraft fans never gave up hope. The common belief was that if Starcraft could hang on during the Halo surge, it could come back and win with the night vote. After all, Starcraft still had the potential to gain votes at a pace that it had going for it in the first few hours of the poll. But with every new update that popped up, the Starcraft dream died a little more. The supposed Starcraft evening vote that was supposed to save it did little more than give a false hope to all of its fans, as the best Starcraft could manage was to split the vote 50-50. It was 19:15 into the poll, 9:45 PM EST, and Halo had built a lead of 1108 votes. The vote totals were insanely high at this point, and the poll would wind up being the most popular poll of the contest. But even then, it seemed like Starcraft was done for at this point. There was, at most, 5:15 left in the poll, and possibly even only 4:45. There was no possible way that Starcraft could come back at this point, because Halo seemed to be too strong. It seemed as if Halo had it won at this point. The vaunted Starcraft evening vote that its hopes were all pinned on had done little more than allow Starcraft to give a falso hope to its fans. All Halo had to do was to hang on for another 5 hours or so. **"NOT SO FAST, my friend!"** Starcraft sliced 74 votes off of Halo's seemingly unbeatable lead with the next update. But no big deal, right? WRONG. Starcraft then cut 104 votes off of the lead! Out of no where, Starcraft looked like it was back in this thing! The update topics caught fire, Bnet saw the spamming increase to ethereal heights, Xbox Live started getting spammed, and even bungie.net started getting involved. It only took 30 minutes and two updates for this poll to turn into an even bigger war than it already was. At this point, you were either with one game or the other. That, or you were caught in the crossfire. It seemed that Starcraft had a chance, but time was beginning to run out. Even worse, the next three updates were not good for Starcraft. It only gained 38 and 26 with the first two, and Halo managed to win the third. But not to be outdone, Starcraft fought back with a brilliant 82 vote update. Halo fought back again by winning the next update by two votes. But at this point, we were 21:30 into the poll, Midnight EST, and had at most three hours to go. Taking down a lead of 796 within three hours at a time when the voting slows down was nearly impossible. Starcraft made a nice push, but it still looked to be over. But as if we all spoke too soon, Starcraft set the entire world of gamefaqs on fire that fateful night. One night between Starcraft and Halo may have changed the courses of the two games involved forever. One night caused one of the biggest site-wide explosions ever seen on gamefaqs. One night had the entire community of one game wondering what went wrong, and the other game wound up getting a popularity boost seven years after its initial release. As you can probably guess, Starcraft set gamefaqs on fire that night. With the next two updates in the poll, Starcraft sliced 98 and 94 votes off of the lead, which was a pace faster than that required for Starcraft to come back and win this thing. But Halo fought back like the 1 seed it was supposed to be, and delayed the inevitable by only losing 6 votes off of its lead with the next update. But what would happen next would easily change the course of gamefaqs forever, or at least the course of gamefaqs during this contest. What Starcraft managed to do at this point in the poll was none other than miraculous; a game surviving against all odds to keep the dream of Starcraft fans everywhere alive and well. Starcraft not only went on a push, it went on a *dominating* push rarely seen in such close matches. The update topics, as well as the entirety of the site, completely exploded. The odd thing is that it was extremely late at night, yet everyone stayed up to see what was going on with the poll. In comparison, the explosion that followed this poll was as large or larger than that which was caused by Mario/Crono II. I could tell you what happened, but it would simply be best to post the rest of the chart. The result is obvious enough to see for yourself, and I'm not kidding when I said the entire site exploded during this match. Come to think of it, three sites exploded. So how did it all happen? Before I move on, let me make one thing perfectly clear. Though I was obviously biased as hell towards Starcraft throughout the match, I like Halo. It's one of the best and most important multiplayer games ever made, Master Chief really is a great character, and legendary multiplayer games are not easy to come by at all. Selling all of those millions of copies across the US alone was no joke, and like Cromage said, Halo is absolutely huge outside of our site. The same argument can sort of be made against Starcraft, but there is clearly a bigger Starcraft fanbase on gamefaqs than there is a Halo fanbase. And come to think of it, there is a larger Starcraft fanbase outside of our site as well. I don't know if anyone noticed, but this poll was easily the highest-scoring of the contest. Outside forces were being brought in from all over the place to vote in this thing. Both Starcraft and Halo had their times to shine within the poll, but Starcraft simply got all of the votes when it needed them the most. Either game could have won this thing, but it just so happens that there are more Starcraft fans that are immediately accessible than there are Halo fans. But tip your hat to both games in this match. Halo was obviously not a 1 seed, and Starcraft was obviously not a 16 seed. I feel that both games performed far better than expected in this match, and they both have my respect afterwards. Halo went down exactly like a highly-seeded game is supposed to go down. It went down fighting until the very end, and its performance can't really be shot down here. It did well. As for Starcraft, an absolute monster was unleashed upon this contest once it won this match, and believe it or not, it was destined to become even stronger once it knocked off the 1 seed in miraculous fashion. Starcraft winning one match in this manner can be attributed to luck, but I doubt that anyone could have possibly said that Starcraft simply got lucky once this contest was all said and done. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1625&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)SoulCalibur vs (9)Kingdom Hearts 2004 _source: (8)SoulCalibur vs (9)Kingdom Hearts 2004 (revid 64088)_ ## Results Wednesday, April 28th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 28th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 1,088 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts - 64.65% 66 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts - 45.45% (18,607 brackets) This match was flat-out shocking. Kingdom Hearts was billed by many, including myself, to be one of the strongest games in Division 128. Most of us assumed that Kingdom Hearts would steamroll SoulCalibur and the Starcraft/Halo winner en route to a loss to Wind Waker in round three. But every contest has something that no one saw coming, and in this contest it was Kingdom Hearts. Simply put, it was the dud of the contest. Billed to be a game to gve threats to Wind Waker, it wound up flopping horribly. But don't let its performance in this contest let any of you people think that Kingdom Hearts was not directly responsible for Cloud, Sephiroth, and Squall doing far better in 2003 than in 2002. You nonbelievers have neglected the facts for far too long by this point. But anyway, Kingdom Hearts helped prove that while it was an amazing catalyst for the Final Fantasy cast, the game itself isn't one that masses of people would readily vote for. The game helped bring more popularity to Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 8, and to a lesser extent Final Fantasy 10, but this spoke nothing of whether or not the game would bring popularity to itself. And there's where so many of us made out mistake. Case and point? And overwhelming majority of the experts figured that Kingdom Hearts woudl steamroll the first two rounds of this contest (over 80% of BOP brackets had it winning against SoulCalibur), yet in the beginning of the poll, SoulCalibur went toe to toe with Kingdom Hearts like it was nothing. But no big deal, right? Most of us figured that this was a Starcraft rollover effect from the last poll. But when SoulCalibur managed to take a good portion of the day and stretch a 700 vote lead out of this, many people started wondering what was going on. After all, Kingdom Hearts was supposed to own this matchup. My take on it would be that SoulCalibur is quite the underestimated title. But don't take my word for it. Go read on of ChichiriMuyo's page-long rants about why SoulCalibur was one of fighting's most innovative titles while SoulCalibur II was a cheap rehash of the original. There's also the fact that even though Kingdom Hearts sold over 4 million copies, it doesn't mean that the majority of people would vote for it. SoulCalibur may not have been expected to do much in this contest, but it looked like it was going to shock the world, or at least the experts, in this match. But like a lot of other games who performed well early on, SoulCalibur fell to a huge push by its opponent. Starting in the afternoon, Kingdom Hearts began making a huge comeback attempt by nabbing 100 vote gains with every update. But unfortunately, we must pause here. Right in the middle of Kingdom Hearts and its comeback attempt, CJayC hit us with the site update. Everyone knows that I feel this was one of the single worst things he ever could have done to the site (go check out www.alexa.com and put our url in the search engine if you don't believe me), but it had a lasting effect on the contest. But this topic isn't to complain about CJayC and his ridiculous idea to change the site layout without telling us (we never would have known anything was going on had LUE not found the url for the beta test), it's about the contest. The site, and the contest as a whole, was simply not the same after the site update. The average voter turnout dropped an average of a whopping 15,000 votes in every match from there on out until very late in the contest, and the contest itself didn't have the same feel to it. It's almost like CJayC stopped caring, more or less. The main poll had its spot taken up by an ad that takes up a quarter of the page, and the poll itself was moved below the ad. You also can't see the poll unless you scroll down, hence the lower vote totals. The same philosophy applies to GameSpy's contest. Did anyone else notice how much of a pain it was to actually find the poll going on? You had to go to at least two links before seeing the thing. Anyway, with the layout change, a whole new set of laws were applied to the contest *right in the middle of it*, which is about as unfair as it gets for everyone involved. Had we been informed ahead of time that such a change were to take place, people might have filled out their brackets differently. There is also the tiebreaker issue, which people would have no doubt gone lower with had they known of a layout change ahead of time. An average of 15,000 votes being cut off the poll is no joke, and it may have directly affected some of the later matchups within this contest. But back to the current matchup. When the site was up and running again, we found Kingdom Hearts in the lead, followed by a push to give Kingdom Hearts the lead for good come the end of the poll. It stalled around 1000 votes or so, but with the way this poll was going, 1000 votes either way was enough. Despite a couple of minor attempts by SoulCalibur to come back later, Kingdom Hearts fought back and finally won the poll. Kingdom Hearts had won the battle, but had it lost the war here? It was a game expected to dominate the first two rounds, but all of a sudden new life was given to Starcraft in the second round. It became the second round match to keep an eye on, and the debates started well ahead of time for it. And I don't blame anyone for doing so, as Kingdom Hearts, good as it is, flopped horribly in this contest. Over half of the people that filled out brackets expected it to lose this match in the first place, but even then, I didn't think SoulCalibur had a chance. Turns out that Ulti = teh pwned in Kingdom Hearts' case. But we all have our favorites, so shut up =p ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1626&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (12)Skies of Arcadia 2004 _source: (5)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (12)Skies of Arcadia 2004 (revid 79918)_ ## Results Thursday, April 29th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 29th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 37,401 - **Oracle Expectations:** Wind Waker - 79.50% 68 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Wind Waker - 92.00% (37,665 brackets) This was one of the few matches in Division 128 where there was both a clear-cut favorite and a clear-cut winner. In fact if my memory serves me correctly, this was the biggest blowout of the division. And even then, it was only a 75-25 win in favor of the Wind Waker. Remember last year when Sonic had a similar win against Ken in the first round and some of us thought he was in trouble? I think the same philosophy applies here. Yes, Zelda's win was convincing. But how convincing? The Wind Waker will always be one of the bastard children of the Zelda series for its graphics, despite how much they are defended by hardcore fans of the Zelda series. I can assure you that had there been the exact same storyline with slightly harder bosses, only with the graphics seen in the Zelda 10 trailer, the Wind Waker could have steamrolled this division over, and possibly even beat FF7. Well, save the fact that you're stuck sailing for 80% of the game. When you factor in how the first round went in this division, then add in that Zelda had the best performance despite the division being so up in the air, the argument could easily have been made at this point that the Wind Waker was the clear favorite to win the division. I certainly wouldn't disagree. FFX, SSBM, and Metroid Prime all wound up struggling heavily in their respective matches, yet the Wind Waker, despite having more of an anti factor than any other Zelda game in the contest, dominated its match. My god, were we ever in for a surprise. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1627&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Metroid Prime vs (13)Half-Life 2004 _source: (4)Metroid Prime vs (13)Half-Life 2004 (revid 88791)_ ## Results Friday, April 30th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 30th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 9,066 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid Prime - 73.24% 67 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid Prime - 56.97% (23,324 brackets) What an interesting match this was. Before our little site ever decided to run this contest, a site called GameSpy decided to run their own garbage version of one such competition. The winner? Half-Life by a mile. Now let's get back to our contest for a minute. In 2002, Gordon Freeman managed to get a 3 seed. What did he do with it, you ask? He was upended by Tina Armstrong, one of the characters from the Dead or Alive fighting series. Gordon Freeman, who is the main character of Half-Life for those that don't know (and a lot of the people can actually play the game without knowing the main character's name, hence why he sucks in the Summer Contest setting; you simply can't piece 'Gordon Freeman' and 'Half-Life' together that well), became the laughing stock of the contest. So in 2003, Gordon Freeman set out to get revenge for himself. He managed to get a 7 seed and an easy first round matchup against Max Payne. But yet again he lost, making Gordon Freeman the biggest joke in the history of the contest. It was so bad that our own Amazing Telephone ran a Google search on Gordon Freeman and found a picture of a cat with a bag over its head. Enter 2004. Half-Life wins GameSpy's contest, and gets a matchup against one of Samus's top two most popular titles in Metroid Prime. Metroid Prime is an interesting story in and of itself, too. It was given the impossible task of being the sequel to Super Metroid and it was made into a First Person Shooter. Yet despite all of the pre-release criticism, Metroid Prime delivered an amazing title to become of the best games ever created. But the same thing can also be said about Half-Life. I vaguely remember someone on this board saying that more people play Half-Life online than any other multiplayer game, including Starcraft. I didn't verify this myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were true. I can assure the readers of this topic that Half-Life is absolutely huge outside of our site, much like Halo. And like Halo, Half-Life can and would kick the living hell out of Metroid Prime on most other gaming sites. But this isn't every other gaming site, it's gamefaqs. Nintendo and Square are the rulers around here, and despite only 57% of people thinking Metroid Prime would win, it had little to no chance of actually losing this match. We have a credo on the contest board called Gordon Freeman Never Wins for a reason. Anyway, to the match itself. Metroid Prime gained an early advantage of 300 votes or so. But Half-Life didn't just roll over and die. It managed to split the vote virtually evenly before it was finally smoked by the morning vote and sent packing in this contest. But that doesn't mean tht Half-Life doesn't deserve respect after this match. If you go by Gordon Freeman's past performances, Half-Life should have been smoked from the get-go in this matchup. Instead, it held its own against one of the mascots of the Gamecube for a few hours in the poll. That has to count for something. One last thing before I move on. This poll marked the return of insta-updating, and it would remain for the rest of the contest. It may have given a 2002 feel back to the contest, but it completely killed the drama of 15 minute updates. All we really had to do to see the match trend was hit refresh a few times, and not only that, but it completely bugged the crap out of creativename's web site. But aside from that, I'm sure the 2002 regulars didn't mind seeing our old friend return ^\_^ ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1628&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Final Fantasy Tactics Advance vs (11)Fire Emblem 2004 _source: (6)Final Fantasy Tactics Advance vs (11)Fire Emblem 2004 (revid 55701)_ ## Results Saturday, May 1st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 1st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 21,557 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - 63.74% 65 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - 81.70% (33,448 brackets) The battle of complete losers right here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't this match have the lowest voter turnout of the contest? Both games had horrendous vote totals, the total votes were horrid, and the match itself was one that people really didn't care about. One thing it did have was the tradition pre-match hype. As the hours drew closer to this match, a large number of people who have played both games preached on and on about how Fire Emblem should win because it is the better game. Decent enough point, but how many people have actually heard of and have played Fire Emblem before the release of Super Smash Brothers Melee? Fire Emblem wound up suffering from Ness disease. The characters appeared in Smash Brothers, and their cult smash hits wound up gaining vocal power because of people finally being exposed to the games. But all that being said, the more recognizable game usually wins against cult hits in such matches. Simply look at Doom vs Earthbound if you need proof of this. Fire Emblem, while a great game in its own right, simply never stood much of a chance against a game that features the words 'Final Fantasy Tactics' in the title. Cheap rehash or not, the name alone was enough to give FFTA the win here. But it was a pyrrhic victory for FFTA; despite winning the match, it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it had no way in hell of getting out of the next round. Failing to double up a cult hit usually spells doom against the first threat that comes along. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1629&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Final Fantasy X vs (14)Shenmue 2004 _source: (3)Final Fantasy X vs (14)Shenmue 2004 (revid 55703)_ ## Results Sunday, May 2nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 37,902 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 83.06% 68 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 92.94% (38,050 brackets) After the Wind Waker put up a tame number against Skies of Arcadia, it was up to FFX and SSBM to prove that they were worthy of winning the division. First up was FFX, and though everyone knew that FFX would win the match, the true test was whether or not it would prove itself as a title worthy of winning the division. Needless to say, it flopped horribly in this match. Yes, Ryo Hazuki has performed well in the two contests, but that doesn't mean that FFX had an excuse to perform worse against Shenmue than Wind Waker performed against Skies of Arcadia. It wasn't much of a percentage discrepency between the two matches, but when one factors in the fact that Skies of Arcadia can and would beat Shenmue on this site in a poll, it meant that FFX was suddenly no longer the favorite to win the division (the BOP had it the most favored, I believe). The title went to the Wind Waker, odd as it may seem, after this matchup was over. When you are the favorite to win a division, 75% on Shenmue is unacceptable, and FFX would pay for it later on. But in all fairness, this division looked as if it would be a battle of the Zelda and Final Fantasy titles from our generation. Gee, doesn't that seem familiar? If FFX had any hope, it would be that it was clear that Final Fantasy 7 was going to beat Ocarina of Time after the first round. So why would FFX not be able to beat the Wind Waker? Makes enough sense to think that FFX could beat Wind Waker if FF7 could beat Ocarina of Time, no? The only thing the games had to worry about at this point was Super Smash Brothers Melee, who had yet to perform. Honestly, what else going to come between them, Starcraft? Puh-leeze. Wait a moment.... ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1630&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (10)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2004 _source: (7)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (10)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2004 (revid 64108)_ ## Results Monday, May 3rd, 2004 Tuesday, May 4th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 3rd, 2004 Tuesday, May 4th, 2004 - **Notes:** Two days match with downtimes - **Vote difference:** 18,491 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vice City - 63.01% 68 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vice City - 79.11% (32,388 brackets) Don't let the 90000 votes allow you to think either of these games are all that strong. This match took place during the day of the board layout being changed, the poll went on for 48 hours. But that one tidbit aside, this was still a good match, if for no other reason then to set up some serious second round hype. KOTOR has done what no other game could do: Shake openly stated that a game, any game, is better than Grim Fandango. There are also a ton of KOTOR fans of the board who went on and on about how great the game was, and how it would be a threat in this match. As an aside, is Xbox hate starting to come to an end? KOTOR, Ninja Gaiden, Halo, and EA's support of Xbox Live seem to be allowing the system to gain some serious boom in the market. But anyway, despite all of the hype for KOTOR, Vice City managed to put up over 60% on it. Apparently, selling 7 million copies of yourself is no joke. This victory immediately allowed Vice City to gain serious steam from the board in this contest, and the debate for Vice City's chances to make the sweet sixteen were on. After all, SSBM was a game that could lose any match between the first round and the Final Four, and since we hadn't seen it before Vice City's matchup, there was no guarantee of how well SSBM would do. Hell, Metal Gear Solid 2 had a serious chance of taking down SSBM. Another interesting debate that stemmed from this match was which game was stronger, Metal Gear Solid or Metal Gear Solid 2? I wound up being very happy at the results of that little situation, but more on that later. For now, all that we needed to worry about was how Vice City was suddenly a strong oponent for whoever it would go up against in the second round. ...or was it? In 48 hours, this entire poll managed 90000 votes. We've had 24 hour polls in the past that have horribly outscored this one, so Vice City wasn't locked into the sweet sixteen just yet. It would have to earn the spot. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1631&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (15)Metal Gear Solid 2 2004 _source: (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (15)Metal Gear Solid 2 2004 (revid 55707)_ ## Results Wednesday, May 5th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 5th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 10,065 - **Oracle Expectations:** Melee - 64.68% 67 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Melee - 60.69% (24,846 brackets) With Vice City's impressive win against KOTOR, it was all up to SSBM to prove that it was worthy of being a 2 seed in this division. The problem here is that SSBM didn't prove itself to be a favorite in this matchup. Metal Gear Solid 2 managed to put up a crazy fight early on in this poll, and though SSBM wound up winning by 10000 votes, the damage may have already been done. SSBM's struggle in this match paired with Vice City's good performance set up an interesting second round matchup between the two games, and the hype for it started before this poll was even over. Another interesting thing to note is how little faith the bracketmakers had in SSBM throughout this entire contest. 2 seeds simply don't have merely 60% of people pick them to win in the first round, yet that's what SSBM was facing after this matchup. If you go by the past, SSBM was in some trouble in this contest, and this poll turned Division 128 into a giant clusterfuck. Most of the games left had great chances of winning the division, and though we knew this after the first round, few of us knew just how crazy of a race it was going to be. But I can't go through this match and speak nothing of the strength of Metal Gear Solid 2. I've always believed it to be the best game in the series. The entire game from start to finish, Raiden or not, is pure genius. Kojima was going for a genius tough on the ending to this game, and I feel that he pulled it off perfectly. Others don't agree with me, but hey, opinions are opinions. I also find it funny that Metal Gear Solid 2 wound up being stronger than Metal Gear Solid once the final extrapolated (and non-SFF) standings were released, despite all of the people who swear up and down that Metal Gear Solid 2 completely sucks. There was also a developing pattern from SSBM that can be taken from this match. It likes to start off slow, win the day vote, and then end slowly. Not all that good when you have a 7 million copy title awaiting you in the second round. This was a very 'meh' win for SSBM. Not breathtaking, not large enough of a win against a strong title that it made the game not look as bad as some might think. One last thing. Time and time again, people kept posting how they felt that SSBM had no chance to win this division because of SSBM's weak showing in this match, and time and time again, I kept preaching that Metal Gear Solid 2 was being vastly underestimated and that the game was far stronger than its seeding may show. These posts were of course deemed simple denial and shot down immediately. Funny how these things work out, no? Interesting side note: This is the match where I made some crack about how Melee was utterly destroying Metal Gear Solid 2. Thus, a fad was born. 57-43 is now considered an Ulti-Style Blowout. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1632&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (8)Metroid 2004 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (8)Metroid 2004 (revid 55709)_ ## Results Thursday, May 6th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 6th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 45,447 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 67.96% 63 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 72.04% (29,493 brackets) Finally, a new round was upon us! Some normalcy returned back to our contest, as we entered back into the Archaic Division of 8 Bit with an easy match to analyse. Another new addition to this round was the match pictures. We were back to the character portraits as shown in the first rounds of the 2002 and 2003 contests, which created all sorts of nostalgia. As for the actual match, if you go solely by stats, Mario and Samus are supposed to be close together in character strength. I personally don't believe this, as I think Mario would take Samus apart in a poll. But this isn't a character contest, it's a game contest. And in this game contest, Mario 3 showed that it was the favorite to win the 8 Bit division after it utterly destroyed the original Metroid. It was up in the air after The Legend of Zelda trounced Adventure so badly, but this match seemed like a huge wakeup call, at least until Zelda 1's next matchup. Three Metroid titles were in this contest, and this was the first one to go down. And it went down with a huge thud, too. Nice to see the board calm down, too. This was the first of many predictable matches all in a row. Bad for drama, but at least there was no reason to stay up all hours of the night to see what was going on. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1633&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Contra vs (4)Final Fantasy 2004 _source: (12)Contra vs (4)Final Fantasy 2004 (revid 88792)_ ## Results Friday, May 7th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 7th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 31,994 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy - 73.70% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy - 82.01% (33,575 brackets) First and foremost, I am disgusted that the Black Mage was not the character representing Final Fantasy in the match picture. I mean, what did he ever do to deserve such punishment? ...besides all the sinning... And then there is the prediction percentage. Only 72% of people predicted Mario 3 to reach the sweet sixteen, while 82% of people predicted Final Fantasy making the sweet sixteen. Mario 3 was a lock from the beginning to win its half division, yet it was outnumbered by Final Fantasy by 10% to even reach the sweet sixteen? If that isn't gamefaqs Square bias, I don't know what is. Either that, or people relying too much on past results to choose their brackets in this contest. Anyway, Contra wound up performing well in this contest as a whole. Phantasy Star was overseeded, yet Contra beat it soundly. As for its match against Final Fantasy here, yes it lost 70-30, but 30% of the vote on a Final Fantasy title on this site is nothing to laugh at. In the overall standings, Contra isn't powerful at all. But within the realm of Division 8, I don't think it did badly at all. If we knew of the results of the Final Fantasy/Mario 3 poll before this match, we wouldn't call the game that lives on the best cheat code ever made losing 70-30 to Final Fantasy all that bad. It's still a decent franchise -- nothing amazing, but nothing too bad either -- and it still has some very loyal fans. Just look at MWIS ~\_^ The perspective on Final Fantasy is slightly different. As I said before, 10% more people thought Final Fantasy would get here than Mario 3. Did people look at their brackets and assume that since Samus and Solid Snake could pose threats to Mario that their games within Division 8 stood a chance? It's the only thing I can think of, and it makes enough sense. But looking at the stats before the imminent Final Fantasy/Mario 3 match, one could actually assume that Final Fantasy had a chance of winning. I maintain that Mario 3 was a lock for at least the elite eight in this contest, and the very thought of another game in Mario 3's half division being able to pose any threat whatsoever was simply unheard of before this contest. Final Fantasy did that well in the first two rounds, and it wound up doing very well in the third as well. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1634&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Donkey Kong vs (3)The Legend of Zelda 2004 _source: (6)Donkey Kong vs (3)The Legend of Zelda 2004 (revid 88793)_ ## Results Saturday, May 8th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 8th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 54,634 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 78.64% 63 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 87.68% (35,896 brackets) While Mario 3 was getting ready its next bid to stake claim as the favorite in the division, Zelda 1 was waiting in the wings with a counterattack to cement Zelda's place in this division, as well as this contest. The Zelda games were the most convincing games in round one, and the board hype for an all-Zelda Final Four was running rampant. Zelda didn't just own the first round, it *owned* the first round. The only games that looked like they could take down Zelda titles after the first round were Mario 3, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, and the cluster within Division 128. In fact, it almost seemed as if the Wind Waker was the only one that could lose (save my belief that OOT was doomed after the first round, but we're not getting into that argument again). And in the second round, it seemed like Zelda was going to roll all over this contest even more. An 80-20 win over Metroid is nice if you're Mario 3, but how do you feel if you're watching Donkey Kong get his TJF handed to him (he clearly had exposed jogs in that picture!!) under silver platters with fillet mignon on the side? Killing Adventure is one thing, and Donkey Kong may be the most unreliable character and/or game in these contests, but an 87-13 victory for Zelda 1 in this match? If there was ever any doubt that Donkey Kong was one of the weak links of the Nintendo franchise, this match ended them. This match was a complete domination from the start, and even DK Junior felt this one. But that's Donkey Kong for you. He has a close match in all of these contests, followed by him getting his ass kicked next round. Well, save the fact that he lost to Tommy Vercetti, but Mega Man would have destroyed him. His matchup with Duck Hunt was legendary, but this was the single worst followup Donkey Kong has ever had after a close match. He'd be better off actually losing the close calls; he would have more respect that way. Instead, he's made into someone's bitch every year. Back to Zelda for a minute. Five Zelda games had appeared in the contest to this point, and they were a resounding 5-0. And when I said that Zelda was the most convincing force in the contest to this point, I wasn't being biased. It's just that FF6 was unimpressive, Chrono Trigger isn't Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy X could have been labeled a bust, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is in the contest. Zelda, to this point, had absolutely no issues whatsoever save for a 'meh' win against Skies of Arcadia. But Skies is a Sega title, and Sega fans are among the most loyal in gaming. For those who didn't think Zelda was going to dominate this contest, were you the least bit worried after this match? It's almost as if they were unstoppable, and even the legendary Mario 3 looked like the underdog going into its match against Zelda 1. And if you weren't worried after this match, were you worried after the next one? That match was as shocking as any match in this contest, but we'll get into that later. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1635&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Pong vs (2)Tetris 2004 _source: (7)Pong vs (2)Tetris 2004 (revid 55715)_ ## Results Sunday, May 9th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 9th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 31,767 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tetris - 66.29% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tetris - 71.52% (29,280 brackets) BEST. PICTURE. EVER. Since the days of 2002, we've all joked around about how a Pong/Tetris pic would be the best we've ever had in this contest. But we never actually thought we would see such a picture. But sure enough, CJayC proved that he can actually have a sense of humor when we saw the Pong Paddle go up against the Line Block in the match pic. The actual match itself sucked, but the hilarity that was the match pic was more than enough for the board to enjoy a good laugh for a day. It was necessary as well, because Division 128 caused every flame war in the book, while the first three matches in Division 8 put everyone to sleep. A good site-wide fad was a nice break. An actual analysis, you ask? The Tetris Line Block didn't win the Best Tetris Block contest for nothing, and this is clearly the reason why Tetris won this match. Had it been that pain in the ass Staircase Block, we may have seen a different result. The Pong Paddle takes crap from no one, and had it not gone up against itself in this match, it could have easily won the contest. But alas, it was not to be. Tetris and its 33 million copies distributed were simply too much for one Pong Paddle to take, and Pong bowed out of the contest after this matchup. Still, the two matches involving Pong were among the most fun in the contest, and it almost made up for Zero Wing not making it in. ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO PONG, bitches =) On a more serious note, this match truly did suck. 67000 votes is a horribly low voter turnout, and it was blatantly obvious that Tetris wasn't going to do squat against Zelda 1 in the next round because of this. Division 8, from day one, was nothing more than filler until the Mario 3 vs Zelda 1 final. The other games are nice, but they simply don't stack up to the fan bases of the aforementioned two on this site. I won't lie though, I was rooting for Pong to win this match the whole way. It sucks that it got killed so badly, but hey, I had Tetris in my bracket. And with this, the second round of Division 8 is done and over with. Four matches, four insanely easy picks to make. And for the 28% who didn't think Mario 3 was making it out of its 4 pack alive, pass some of that stuff over this way please? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1636&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (8)Super Mario RPG 2004 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (8)Super Mario RPG 2004 (revid 55718)_ ## Results Monday, May 10th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 10th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 27,228 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 66.54% 61 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 73.20% (29,968 brackets) Anyhoo, Division 16 was upon us and with it, a watered down version of Mario vs Crono. It may have been those two in the match picture, but this match was Chrono Trigger the whole way. How only 73.2% of people thought Chrono Trigger wouldn't get past Secret of Mana and Super Mario RPG/Street Fighter 2 is simply beyond me. As I said in Chrono Trigger's last matchup, Chrono Trigger had a pattern in this contest. It started off hot against Super Mario RPG, and looked like it was going to cement its spot in Division 16 with a victory convincing enough to make it the clear-cut favorite. But once the day vote began rolling in, Chrono Trigger lost percentage like crazy. I tried looking on SC2K4.com for the update charts (are they on the site, creativename?), but couldn't mind them. If my memory serves me correctly, Chrono Trigger lost around 8% during the day before finally coming back a little bit to make the percentages what they were at the end of the match. During this little tailspin by Chrono Trigger, the people who were rooting for it not to win the division were all rooting for the percentage to fall even farther, as it meant that Chrono Trigger was in a high probability for losing future matchups. Personally, I think that Chrono Trigger simply faced two great games up to this point. SNES Squaresoft RPGs are nothing to take lightly, and I think that even the best of games could have possibly lost percentage points to Secret of Mana and Super Mario RPG at some point during matches against them. Still, that big a percentage loss could really kill Chrono Trigger if it kept that pattern up against games such as Link to the Past or Super Mario 3. Whether or not this would actually come into fruition was made to be seen, though this little pattern of Chrono Trigger's made for one of the best matches we had ever seen in this history of our contests. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1637&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs (4)Super Mario World 2004 _source: (5)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs (4)Super Mario World 2004 (revid 88794)_ ## Results Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 30,264 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario World - 56.61% 55 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario World - 72.98% (29,878 brackets) This match shocked quite a number of people, apparently. Some of the best posters on this board went on and on from day one about how this match was the Mario vs Sonic duel we've all been waiting for, and how Sonic 2 would win the match because of it. There's also the fact that a 4 seed had yet to beat a 5 seed in any of these contests, and the fact that Sonic is simply the cooler Mario, and deserved to win this match. **IT'S A TRAP!** I picked Super Mario World to win this match, and I didn't even have to think about it. I've played and beaten Sonic 2 many, many times. I've literally sat in the Casino Night zone for hours racking up tons of extra lives for no reason, have beaten the game with just Sonic, just Tails, and with both of them. I know that game inside and out, and trust me when I tell you that the game has some serious gameplay issues. Speed is nice, but when it starts getting all glitchy, then you have a problem. I've died on platforms that were going up because the game thought I was stuck between the platform and a wall. There are also the zones where you can't go fast at all, or you will die. Hill Top is a perfect example of this. And don't even get me started on how useless it is to play with Sonic and Tails in that game, be it single or multiplayer. It pretty much goes like so. Sonic runs way past his little two-tailed friend Tails, then Tails gets left in the dust. Tails then comes flying back on the screen, only to be left in the dust again. It's completely pointless, and it makes Tails out to look like a complete pansy. Of course if you've ever seen the Sonic cartoon, you'd know that Tails truly is a complete pansy. They portray him as some whimpy little brat who idolizes Sonic. Why, we've never seen the corny sidekick routine before! And even worse, the ring quota for getting the Chaos Emeralds gets higher when you have both Sonic and Tails. The computer sucks at using Tails, and humans aren't much better. So in the end, you're stuck with Sonic trying to more work than he was doing in the first place. Single player is nice, but only for Sonic. He gets to be Super Sonic before the cave zone is you're good enough. Tails? He gets the shaft again. You don't get a Super Tails in this game, and it becomes completely useless to ever go get the Chaos Emeralds with him. Personally, this is a slap in the face, as we have all been robbed of seeing a sexy beast of a fox with two tails. Damn Sega to hell for that. Now Super Mario World, at my last check, does plenty of the things that Sonic 2 can do, only better. Can Mario not run up walls in Super Mario World? Is Mario not surrounded by complete and total morons at all times? Can you actually see the pits before reaching them and take the necessary course to avoid them? Does Mario not have other forms to take in the game? And lastly, does the game encompass more than simply running to the end of the stage as fast as you can, hitting a sign, and occasionally jumping on an easy boss a few times? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. And Mario World has harder bosses that aren't the same damned thing over and over again. Holy unlyrical lyrics Eminem, Robotnik has taken on yet another useless form that is so slow that Sonic can simply run circles around it for as long as he damned well pleases! At least Mario can actually be challenged in Super Mario World. The only issues that even an average player would have in Sonic 2 is the very last zone of the game. And why? Because you die in one hit, and you have two bosses to go through. Neither of them are hard once you know their pattern, but hey, it's something. And that brings me to another point, and that is this whole nonsense with the rings. If Mario gets hit, he has to go and find another mushroom (or Fire Flower or a leaf or something) before he's safe again. Sonic gets hit, and all he needs to be safe is to pick up one of the hundreds of rings that magically flew off from him out of no where and keep on running. Could you imagine how much the Mario series would suck if Mario only needed coins to stay alive? So yes, Sonic 2 deserved this beating. I didn't think it would be anything along the lines of 70-30, but I'm not going to complain about it. In fact, Mario World was so impressive in this match that when compared to Chrono Trigger's weak showing against Super Mario RPG, we had the makings of an imminent Mario vs Crono clash yet again. Only this time Super Mario World actually had a good chance to win, and the people of the board knew it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1638&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (3)Super Metroid 2004 _source: (6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (3)Super Metroid 2004 (revid 88795)_ ## Results Wednesday, May 12th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 12th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 34,650 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link to the Past - 59.83% 60 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link to the Past - 73.42% (30,058 brackets) Excuse me Samus while I smack you in the head with my boomerang. I've said it many times over the years -- you'll almost never see Samus or any of her games take down Link or any of his games. Unless you're pitting The Adventure of Link against Metroid Prime or something, Link almost always wins. And this goes for everyone else in future contests. Samus beating Link? No thanks. But that being said, Super Metroid was one of the greatest and most revolutionary games of all time. Most top 100 lists have it way up there in the top ten at least, and for good reason. The game featured huge levels, a ton of powerups, some of the best attacks ever, and boss fights that remain legendary to this very day. Samus vs Mother Brain is still one of the all-time great battles in gaming, and for good reason. Long boss fights make for the best boss fights, and I think this is the reason why so many people don't like RPGs much. So many of them get way too easy near the end. Excuse me while I hit you with my strongest attacks and merely heal when necessary! This is all well and good of course, but this is gamefaqs. Square and Zelda reign supreme around here, and if Zelda's dominating 5-0 start didn't open everyone's eyes, then the beating that Zelda laid on Metroid in this match certainly caught some attention. Dominating Adventure, Fallout 2, and Gunstar Heroes is one thing, but sheer dominance over Donkey Kong and Super freaking Metroid is an entirely different animal. I was honestly upset with myself after this matchup, because I originally had Link to the Past over Zelda 1 in the first Final Four match in my bracket, and all signs pointed to seeing that match at this point in the contest. I mean damn, 74-26 over Super Metroid??? This match was as shocking as any other match in this contest, and though I was rooting for LTTP to win this thing, my jaw hit the floor when I first checked the score of it. And even as I type this, I still can't believe how badly Link to the Past flattened Super Metroid in this match. The best series in gaming (IMO) was 6-0 at this point at still going strong. "Ulti, you're a dumbass. Final Fantasy is the best series in gaming. Look at who won the contest!" Eh, we'll get into that later. But let's just say that the weak Link of the Zelda series is The Adventure of Link, which I happen to think is a criminally underrated game. Almost every other game in this series, basically anything other than Wind Waker's art style, kicks ass. Final Fantasy has to deal with such titles as Mystic Quest, Final Fantasy 5, Final Fantasy 8, and the best of them all, Final Fantasy X-2, featuring Yuna both singing like ass and showing ass. Might as well bust out the big question now. Who do you feel would win in a match between Metroid Prime and Super Metroid? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1639&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Doom vs (2)Final Fantasy VI 2004 _source: (10)Doom vs (2)Final Fantasy VI 2004 (revid 55725)_ ## Results Thursday, May 13th, 2004 Friday, May 14th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 16 - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 13th, 2004 Friday, May 14th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 33,793 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VI - 72.33% 63 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VI - 66.89% (27,385 brackets) Doom had no chance in hell of winning this match on our site, so there is really no point saying how FF6 won. This is gamefaqs, where Square and Zelda are boss. First Person Shooters may have existed without Doom, and they they would have sucked. A shame that such a great title went down with such a thud, but hey, gamefaqs is a console-based site. What I will get into is the final four within this division. Originally, this division seemed like a collision course between LTTP and Chrono Trigger. But with Chrono Trigger's struggle against Super Mario RPG and FF6's good showing in this match, it turned into a four way race. There were multiple posts in the discussion topic involving the favorites in each division. At this point, the favorites in the first two divisions were Zelda 1 and LTTP, while the other two divisions were up in the air. I also had a discussion on AIM with BigCow involving Division 16, and he said that despite FF6's low prediction percentage to even make the sweet sixteen (what was going to beat it, anyway? Doom? Earthbound? Mortal Kombat? Give me a break here), that the three heavy hitters in Division 16 all had equal chances of winning. And here is why: - Chrono Trigger's votes against Super Mario RPG: 53516 - Link to the Past's votes against Super Metroid: 53413 - Final Fantasy 6's votes against Doom: 54078 665 votes was the difference between the three big hitters of Division 16 out of 161007 total votes. Oddly enough, Link to the Past had the lowest vote total of the three games, while Final Fantasy 6 wound up with the highest. And despite prediction percentages and bracket voting and all of that other nonsense BigCow, yet again, wound up being dead-on with his analysis of these three games. They did all have an equal chance of winning, with an outside chance that Chrono Trigger may even lose its next match against Super Mario World. And the next three matches that would decide this division wound up showing that these three games were a lot closer than some of us may have thought. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1640&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (9)Xenogears 2004 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (9)Xenogears 2004 (revid 55727)_ ## Results Saturday, May 15th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 15th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 43,431 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 77.69% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 89.52% (36,649 brackets) Three matches in a row, three victories (and two losses, as well) for Squaresoft RPGs. And convincing victories at that. Xenogears never stood a chance in this match, and I'm sure the game getting its ass handed to itself didn't bother smitelf very much. She went as far as to compare the second disc of Xenogears to a miscarriage in her own poetic fashion. The best thing about this match is that it was expected to be a blowout. The only thing this meant was to see how well Final Fantasy 7 stacked up against Ocarina of Time, because no game would come between them. Almost 90% of bracketmakers knew that Final Fantasy 7 would make the sweet sixteen, and the only other game that came this close to FF7's prediction percentage was The Legend of Zelda. Pure dominance right here, and if you weren't a believer that Ocarina of Time was already done for by this point in the contest, then you were hoping that Ocarina would put up a dominating performance against Mario 64. *whew* One of the easiest matches to look at in the entire contest =) Xenogears, Fei, and the Weltall were all creamed by the power that is Cait Sith's pinkie in this match, and the only drama here was seeing whether or not Final Fantasy 7 would get above 80% before the end of it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1641&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy Tactics vs (4)Metal Gear Solid 2004 _source: (5)Final Fantasy Tactics vs (4)Metal Gear Solid 2004 (revid 88796)_ ## Results Sunday, May 16th, 2004 - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 16th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 38 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid - 56.79% 51 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid - 54.77% (22,423 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis What a fantastic match this was. Until this match, I think the closest wire to wire poll we ever had was either Kingdom Hearts vs Soul Calibur or Tommy Vercetti vs Donkey Kong where at no point during either poll did the lead ever break 1100 votes or so. But this match was something else entirely. I believe the largest lead either game saw in this poll was around the 750 mark, possibly a little bit lower. I know for a fact that it was above 700, but not above 750. So we can at least agree on that much. Dammit creativename, do you have those update charts on your site? I can't find them ;\_; Anyway, one could make a good case for either game heading into this match. On one hand, you had the favorite in Metal Gear Solid. A lot of people, including myself, figured that Metal Gear Solid was the clear favorite in this match. After all, Solid Snake is supposedly the most popular non-Square, non-Nintendo character on this site, with the sole exception of possibly Sonic. Personally, I think that Snake would best Sonic in a poll, as Sonic the Hedgehog is a has-been. Deny it all you wish, but compare Sonic's popularity during the Genesis days to his popularity now. Sonic never has (and I doubt he ever will) recover from Poll 994. And speaking of that poll, check out the percentages between that poll and this one. They're exactly the same. Coincidence, perhaps? Maybe, but this match was far closer than Sonic vs Samus way back in 2002. Sonic had a 1500 vote lead on Samus throughout the day back then, but Metal Gear Solid could only manage a lead of ~720 in this match. But we'll get into that later. The fact here is that Metal Gear Solid was the favorite, both by board and bracketmaker standards. the biggest reasons for this would be Solid Snake's performances in past Summer Contests, as well as the release of The Twin Snakes during our contest. Metal Gear Solid was supposedly exposed to an entirely new audience on the Gamecube, and it was supposed to allow Metal Gear Solid to run away with this matchup. ...but there is a big factor to consider when one looks at how much The Twin Snakes affected this matchup. The Twin Snakes has sold roughly 150,000 copies, which doesn't seem like nearly enough to affect this poll one way or the other. And this is where Final Fantasy Tactics and its chances to win came into play. Final Fantasy Tactics is very close to the numbered series in strength. I wouldn't know where to place the game if all Final Fantasy titles were grouped together, but I think it would be in the top five in strength. And as we all know, a strong Squaresoft RPG is dangerous in any poll, any time, anywhere, any place. You simply never underestimate a Squaresoft RPG and its fans on this site, ever. There is also the fact that Final Fantasy Tactics outperformed Metal Gear Solid in the first round. FFT managed 60,000 votes and 76% of the vote against Dance Dance Revolution, while Metal Gear Solid was only able to manage 52,700 votes and 70.6% of the total vote against Resident Evil. Now Resident Evil is clearly stronger than Dance Dance Revolution, but by how much? Another thing to look at if you aren't a believer that FFT outperformed MGS in the first round are the total votes in the respective polls. FFT's poll scored nearly 80,000 votes, while Metal Gear Solid's poll only managed to score around 75,000 votes. Slowflake may not believe that total votes in polls matter, but I feel the opposite. Going solely by the board and prediction percentages, Metal Gear Solid was supposed to own this match. Yet Final Fantasy Tactics managed to make this poll the second closest poll of all time. And now, for my commentary on how the match finally went. After all the incoming board hype and theories, the poll had to happen sooner or later =) As expected, Metal Gear Solid jumped out to an early lead. It wasn't anything huge, but Metal Gear Solid managed a lead of around 720 within the first few hours of the poll. But the morning vote soon kicked in, and the real fun began to kick in. Final Fantasy Tactics began to fight back in the poll, and slowly, very slowly, it managed to slowly take votes off of the lead Metal Gear Solid had built. This pattern continued throughout the entire day. Every time Final Fantasy Tactics made a small push, Metal Gear Solid fought back to make it look like it would hold FFT off for good. But FFT kept countering these small shots all day with small shots of its own. The games went back and forth taking shots at each other all day long, but the upper hand clearly belonged to Final Fantasy Tactics. If the matches still had 15 minute updates, you would find that most of the updates would have been won by Final Fantasy Tactics in the end. Come the evening, when the vaunted Square vote takes full effect, Metal Gear Solid had a lead of roughly 200 votes. Final Fantasy Tactics continued the pattern it had been taking throughout the contest to that point, and simply continued its methodical dismantling of Metal Gear Solid's lead. It was slow and meticulous, but Final Fantasy Tactics kept the push going. And while it seemed at times that FFT was making a fast push, the consistent counterattacks by Metal Gear Solid kept the overall movement very small. But even then, Final Fantasy Tactics made a push to bring the lead to less than 100 votes (actually, it was closer to 50 or so) in the later parts of the evening. At this point, many people of the board felt that FFT would win based solely on the pattern it had going for the entire match after falling behind by 720 votes. But sadly, I had to go to work with roughly five hours left in the poll. I did however manage to get Tanya to send me text messages all the way up until around 12:30 AM EST. From what I can gather, Final Fantasy Tactics made a decent push to try to take the lead back, but Metal Gear Solid managed to fight back to take a lead of over 100 in the match. But with a mere 150 minutes left in the poll, Final Fantasy Tactics began making a push again. It had cut the lead of 100 all the way down to 60, and it was still going strong when Tanya went to sleep. She even sent me a text saying that FFT was coming on so fast that it was probably going to win, and that she was going to go to sleep. So I worked the rest of the night under the assumption that I was coming home to a victory for Final Fantasy Tactics. *SPECIAL THANKS GO TO CREATIVENAME, STARION, AND TEAM ROCKET ELITE FOR THE REST OF THIS ANALYSIS* I couldn't have known the amazing details of what happened in the final 150 minutes without them, and I heart you guys \<3 Final Fantasy Tactics made a quick push within the next few minutes to make the poll dead even between the two games. After some fighting back and forth between them, Final Fantasy Tactics made a push so that it took a lead of around 30 or so. Slowflake called the match in the favor of Final Fantasy Tactics at this point, but no sooner than he finished typing the post did Metal Gear Solid make its push to get back into the match. It pulled the poll dead even again. Soon later, it managed to push itself out to a lead of around 40 or so. But back came Final Fantasy Tactics to push the poll to being even again. But once Final Fantasy Tactics managed to do this, Metal Gear Solid counterattacked with another small push of its own. These pushes were never more than 20-30 votes or so, but in a match this close, everything mattered. This pattern continued all the way until the end of the poll. Around 2:45 EST, Final Fantasy Tactics managed to push the poll to being even again, but yet again, it was unable to make the push necessary to win the match. Metal Gear Solid made a huge push of around 50 votes or so, and since it happened that late in the poll, it meant the end for Final Fantasy Tactics in the match, and a win for Metal Gear Solid. Now, did this writeup sound like I wasn't too into the match? Did the lack of board or site activity make it seem like few others cared all that much, either? Or what about CJayC not posting a topic saying there was no cheating? After all, those pishes from Metal Gear Solid late in the poll seemed fishy, did they not? Or what about the low vote total for the match? Close polls don't score merely 81,000 votes. Mass spamming is supposed to cause the vote totals in such matches to skyrocket. So why not in this match? That's because despite how close this match was, few people outside of the board cared about it. Know why? Because CJayC decided to create an ad for Syphon Filter that took up the entire homepage. Even worse was the fact that the entire homepage was an ugly green color, which caused the page to be unreadable. Of course, this only worked when you used the classic layout. Users who used the new site layout didn't have to worry about the hideous new homepage, as the page blocked the ad. Users who were smart enough to view the site on 1000 pixels didn't see the ad at all, but that isn't even the point. Am I the only one who has noticed that the extra ads have stopped since the end of the contest? No shared polls, no ad-sponsored polls, no page-wide ads, nothing. The site has been normal ever since the contest ended, and why? Does it happen to be a coincidence that all of these ads happened during a contest that the leaders of our site knew would cause extra traffic? I think not, but we won't know for sure until the next contest rolls around. If the ads don't happen for awhile, then all of a sudden start up again during the next contest, we'll have our answer as to whether or not these ads have been interrupting the contest on purpose. I'll give CJayC the benefit of the doubt until such an event happens, but I will say that the Syphon Filter ad killed any and all credibility of this match. No matter who you were rooting for, a 50 vote jump right before the end of the poll is a little odd. I was rooting for Metal Gear Solid the whole way, but if the claim of 50 votes all coming in at once is true, then something should have been done about it. But no, nothing was done, and to our knowledge, there is no proof that the match was even looked into at the end. All we have are the final results, and I believe that they aren't credible because of the ad. But in the end, Metal Gear Solid walked away a winner, and Final Fantasy Tactics walked away a loser. I walked away somewhat happy that Metal Gear Solid was the game that won, but I am flat-out disgusted by the fact that an ad may or may not have been the deciding factor in the match. The only deciding factors in these matches should be the popularity of the entities involved. Now the games have to deal with consistent, changing variables on the very site that they are being posted on? That is completely unfair to the participants in the contest, as well as the people who actually entered the contest itself. In closing, while I may be happy that Metal Gear Solid actually won, I feel that both games were given the shaft in this poll. It's almost like the poll was given a back seat in order for the site to plaster another disgusting ad all over itself like a prostitute looking for a quick dollar. And with the crusty stains of CNET's violation comes a poll in which no one can say who truly won. And while it is well-known how big a fan of Final Fantasy Tactics I am, some of you may have caught me feverishly defending the Metal Gear series as well. I love Metal Gear Solid, and I would have liked to see an actual poll between the two games, not some freak show in which some voters may not have even known who they were voting for in the damned match. On a more serious note, I think it is safe to say that should this match actually be legitimate, every factor in the book decided it for Metal Gear Solid. Can bracket voters can The Twin Snakes, insignificant as they both are in the large scale, be responsible for 38 votes? I'd like to think so, if for no other reason than to not say that the ad solely decided the match. I'll say this much, however. I hope the new Syphon Filter game bombs so badly that the company that made it goes bankrupt. I refuse to adhere to selling out, ever. I stopped liking Metallica because of it, I stopped liking Korn because of it, I stopped liking Evanescence because of it, and you can also say the same about Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and to a lesser degree, most hip hop artists. I'm a Tool fan for many reasons, one of the biggest being that they don't give a crap about you, your opinions, or the intellectual vacuum that some of you casually refer to as skulls. They make music for the benefit of enlightenment for themselves and their fans, and nothing more. And that's how everything should be. It would all be so much better if the entire world didn't revolve around money, but this match was a perfect example that the world will forever revolve around money, no matter the course of action needed. It sickens me. ## Stats and Analysis A very similar match to Jill vs. Peach, in that both games were particularly evenly matched, and the end result could easily have gone either way (Metal Gear Solid ended up winning by 38 votes, which was then the smallest margin of victory). However, this match saw a good deal of controversy via a giant ad being taken up where the poll normally goes for the last part of the match. Whether that contributed to the end result or not (given that the ad was for Syphon Filter, a game very similar to Metal Gear Solid) will never be known, but there was a good deal of complaining and moaning about it after the fact. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), the match was very entertaining, with lots of late surges and pushes from behind. Another solid (no pun intended) matchup that could have gone either way. What ultimately decided the match was Board 8's love of MGS; a strong board vote in the closing minutes proved just enough to shut Final Fantasy Tactics down for good. This wasn't the last time B8 would save the series, as the board later came to the rescue of Snake in his 2006 ToC battle against Sephiroth, as well as saving Liquid Snake's bacon against Alucard in 2007. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1642&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (11)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs (3)GoldenEye 007 2004 _source: (11)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs (3)Goldeneye 2004 (revid 88797)_ ## Results Monday, May 17th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 17th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 13,919 - **Oracle Expectations:** Goldeneye - 54.54% 45 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Goldeneye - 62.26% (25,489 brackets) For all the hype involving the supposed BangFang Trangle (only 62.26% of people got this match right), this match was over before it even started. If Castlevania had such a struggle with Perfect Dark, there was no way it was going to give Goldeneye a scare. Like I was saying from day one, the fanbases of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are two entirely different animals, and though Symphony of the Night managed to squeak by Perfect Dark, it had no chance of getting past Goldeneye. Not only did Goldeneye win, but it laid a 60-40 beating on Castlevania to make it perfectly clear that it was the superior game among this "difficult" four pack. For the first time, Alucard does not go to the sweet sixteen in a contest. What's even more odd is that extrapolated standings show that Half-Life could beat Castlevania. Are the days of GFNW coming to an end? But do not think I'm putting down Castlevania here. I just recently started playing Symphony of the Night, and I can see why many sites agree that it is one of the best games ever made. It's almost like a vampiric version of a Mega Man or a Super Metroid. But Castlevania has simply never had enough mainstream support to keep it up there with the heavy hitters, and it showed in this match. And yes, Goldeneye is a heavy hitter. This game was magic when it was released. The websites all over the world dedicated to [world record times](http://the-elite.net), multiplayer strategies, and single player help are amazing. The cheats were among one of the most fun sidequests ever made, and you all know that you jumped up and down with joy when you finally beat the Facility on 00 Agent in under 2:05. I sure as hell did, and I'm proud to admit it. Goldeneye was *magic*. There have been other FPS games released since Goldeneye, but few of them can catch both the flare of single and multiplayer. Perfect Dark, while a better game than Goldeneye (made by the same company), doesn't seem to have the magic that Goldeneye had. It was simply a remake with different characters and a bad storyline. Halo? Legendary multiplayer, but the single player was a disappointment. And it's on the Xbox, which never helps. When you think First Person Shooters, only three games should really come into your head as being the best of the best of the best: Doom, Goldeneye, and Half-Life. Everything else, at least until something else comes along, are simply wannabe poseurs in my eyes. You can give me all the fancy graphics you want to, but you still need solid singleplayer modes and decent gameplay. I don't think Halo has it, to be honest. Anyway, I'm done. Goldeneye was the best selling title on the N64 until Ocarina of Time came along. Pretty ironic that they would face in the sweet sixteen, no? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1643&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Super Mario 64 vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2004 _source: (7)Super Mario 64 vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2004 (revid 88798)_ ## Results Tuesday, May 18th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 32-64 - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 18th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 41,367 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ocarina of Time - 67.59% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 81.93% (33,542 brackets) For the most part, I bash people when the prediction percentage is a bit low. I mean if this were Mario vs Link in the second round, no way in hell do you see a mere 81.93% of brackets picking Link. But in this case, I understand. Super Mario 64 was one of the most revolutionary and best titles ever to hit the market. For the most part, 3D gaming sucked before Mario 64, if it even existed at all. But after this absolute gem, look how far we've come. It's for good reason too. For those who have never played Super Mario 64, you are missing a masterpiece. It's right up there with Super Mario 3 when it comes to a fun, replayable title. Getting all 120 stars is a fun challenge, and the bosses in the game are varied enough so that you're not doing the same thing over and over again. The exception is Bowser of course, but we'll ignore the big turtle ~\_^ Overall, it's a fun game with a million things to do, and a replay value that had people doing those things over and over again for years. Come to think of it, we're still doing them. The N64 had a knack for releasing timeless titles, didn't it? But in the end, we have another legendary game getting a beating at the hands of the Zelda title from its same genration. We all knew that Zelda would win this thing, but a 76-24 beating? That's insane. Even worse is that the picture of Link for this match had Link wearing two different boots. I mean honestly, what the hell was that? With all the pictures of Adult Link out there, we had to pick a stoned Link wearing two different boots? As if the beatings Zelda laid on Donkey Kong and Super Metroid weren't enough, this match had to open your eyes to the possibility that Zelda could very well own this contest. Many people were complaining of the bore of an all-Zelda Final Four after Super Metroid's beating, but after this match, they were trying to figure out the percentages that were going to be seen in the matches. Zelda was looking that good in this contest, 7-0 and counting, and showed no signs of slowing down at all. All this division was about was how well Final Fantasy 7 and Ocarina of Time stacked up to one another. And what's this? Why, it''s a hope for Ocarina of Time to actually win! Both Final Fantasy 7 and Ocarina of Time had matches riddled with SFF in the second round, but look at how they went down: - Final Fantasy 7's total against Xenogears: 57876 - Ocarina of Time's total against Super Mario 64: 60064 - Total votes in poll 1641: 72321 - Total votes in poll 1644: 78761 Now Super Mario 64 is most definitely a stronger opponent than Xenogears. That much we know. But than that strength alone attribute to 6440 more total votes? Possibly, but look at the individual votes. Against a stronger opponent, Ocarina of Time scored 2188 more votes. If Final Fantasy 7 was up against a weaker opponent, shouldn't it have trumped Ocarina's vote total in this round? Looks like we had a contest on our hands again. And yes, I was leading somewhere when I said OOT clearly had no chance after round one. It's called *drama*, people. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1644&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (16)Starcraft vs (9)Kingdom Hearts 2004 _source: (16)Starcraft vs (9)Kingdom Hearts 2004 (revid 88799)_ ## Results Wednesday, May 19th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 19th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 5,424 - **Oracle Expectations:** StarCraft - 47.83% 11 for - 49 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** StarCraft - 15.62% (6,395 brackets) With Halo being ousted in the first round, the door was wide open for Kingdom Hearts. All it needed to do was take down the lowly 16 seed. Shouldn't have really been a problem, right? After all, Halo was nothing but a weak Xbox title, and even then it took the entire internet to take it down. Surely a Square RPG would make meat out of Starcraft, right? HA! Not only did Starcraft come out and win this match, Kingdom Hearts was *utterly destroyed* (ahem) the whole way through. Kingdom Hearts won a grand total of seven updates in the entire 24 hours of this poll. And in those seven updates, take a wild guess as to how many votes were cut off of Starcraft's lead in all of the updates combined? 61! That's it. I love Kingdom Hearts to death (just wrote a review for it last night, in fact), but it got its ass handed to it in this match. "But Ulti, a 53-47 win isn't a beating." Fair enough, but look at the prediction percentage. Look at the pre-match hype. Look at all of the people who said before this contest that the Starcraft/Halo match was nothing more than a matchup of who would get its ass kicked by Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts, plain and simple, was the biggest dud in this contest. It may have helped Cloud and Sephiroth completely own the Summer 2003 Contest, but as a stand-alone title, it did nothing of note in this contest. It almost lost to SoulCalibur, and it lost a match against Starcraft that it was supposed to own. And it didn't just lose, either. It never came close to winning this matchup. Starcraft beat on it early and often, proving once again that the Starcraft fanbase is nothing to \*\*\*\* around with in polls. Oddly enough, there isn't all that much else to say about this matchup. Starcraft won easily, Kingdom Hearts had no excuses to make for itself, and Starcraft proved that the match against Halo was no fluke. The final thing I will say is that the picture for this match was pathetic. A *Queen*? CJayC has been called a fanboy of many things, and now we can add 'Zerg fanboy' to the list. Good grief. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1645&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (4)Metroid Prime 2004 _source: (5)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (4)Metroid Prime 2004 (revid 88801)_ ## Results Thursday, May 20th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 20th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 6,974 - **Oracle Expectations:** Wind Waker - 58.93% 51 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Wind Waker - 47.04% (19,258 brackets) What's this? A match featuring a Zelda title that doesn't show the Zelda title completely owning the living hell out of its opponent? Even worse are the total votes. Just under 67,000 this late in the contest? Oh, well. Allow me to break from the norm for one moment. This match was the 46th match of the contest, and it wasn't until this match did we get our contest stats. How someone could tell his audience that the stats would be up shortly after the beginning of the contest, then wait until the 46th match of the contest to post them is beyond me. I think that this was completely unfair to the audience of the contest, to be honest. Some people could have been on the leaderboard within the first 45 matches but not have seen themselves because of the stats not being up until this match. For an analogy, imagine a baseball season in which you don't see any stats or records until there were around 44 games left in the season. Pretty asonine, isn't it? Yet CJayC did it to all of us in this contest without any apology whatsoever. He didn't even bother to say 'You know guys, I've been pretty busy with E3, and the stats will be a bit late'. Nothing like that. He just posted the stats and acted like we weren't supposed to be the least bit pissed off that he waited so damned long. I'm a believer that people should either stick to their word or shut up, to be honest. But enough of that. For those that got to see themselves on the leaderboard. For those who did very well in the contest but missed a key match or two that screwed them out of seeing themselves, my deepest apologies. Speaking of people who did well but missed a key match or two, poor Xenobi. Samus was in three matches within the second round of this contest, and she lost all three of them. Granted they were to Mario 3, LTTP, and Wind Waker, but losses are losses. But thankfully, Samus went down for good in this contest by putting up a fight. After The Wind Waker built a small initial lead in the beginning of this poll, Metroid Prime managed to split the vote pretty evenly until the morning vote gave The Wind Waker an unbeatable lead. But despite the fight that Metroid Prime put up, the bottom line was that Samus was completely out of this contest in the second round, while the Zelda titles were a nice 8-0. The Wind Waker was easily the weak link (that was a pun, dammit) for the Zelda series in this contest. The first three divisions looked like they could be won by Zelda games, but The Wind Waker was clearly in an uphill climb if it wanted to get out of this one alive. Its next match against Starcraft was seemingly easy enough, but what about the winner of FFX/SSBM? If either of those games showed any strength whatsoever in their upcoming matchups, then The Wind Waker looked to be in severe jeopardy of not making it out of the division alive. Another note are the vote totals for this match. The SFF matches in the other divisions managed to still score around the post-layout change average, yet this matchup scored just under 67,000 votes. Why was that? Did people not care as much about these two titles as they did the titles in other SFF matches? Was it the division itself? And if The Wind Waker was weak enough to only draw 67,000 voters to its match, shouldn't the critically acclaimed Metroid Prime have been able to win this match? Either The Wind Waker was underrated, Metroid Prime was overrated, or people could not have cared less about these two games. Know what this means? If SSBM showed any strength at all in its upcoming matchups, it was the favorite to win the division. Of course, this all assumes that The Wind Waker even got past Starcraft in the first place. I held a pre-poll in which Starcraft scored 80% of the board vote. But those polls are always nonsense. No way could The Wind Waker possibly lose to some 7 year old PC Real Time Strategy title.... ....could it? After all, Link Always Wins. It's the LAW. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1646&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Final Fantasy Tactics Advance vs (3)Final Fantasy X 2004 _source: (6)Final Fantasy Tactics Advance vs (3)Final Fantasy X 2004 (revid 88802)_ ## Results Friday, May 21st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 21st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 21,576 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 73.55% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 79.81% (32,674 brackets) From the FFTA vs Fire Emblem analysis: *But it was a pyrrhic victory for FFTA; despite winning the match, it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it had no way in hell of getting out of the next round. Failing to double up a cult hit usually spells doom against the first threat that comes along.* Worked out somewhat along those lines. FFTA never stood any chance of winning this match, and this was nothing more than a match to see how well Final Fantasy X was going to do against the rest of the division. If you ask me, FFX failed miserably in this match to give any signs whatsoever that it was a threat to win this division. It started off well enough, but by the time the end of the poll came around, FFX failed to even double up FFTA, a game many hardcore fans of Square RPGs consider to be among the worst games in the series. What was that line again? Oh yes: *Failing to double up a cult hit usually spells doom against the first threat that comes along.* FFTA, at best, is a cult it. It has some vocal fans, but many people can't stand it. And yet through all of this, Final Fantasy X failed to score at least 66.67% of the vote. This spelled disaster for the first major threat that was to face Final Fantasy X, but the problem is that none of us really knew what the first threat would be. The Wind Waker could be considered the favorite to win the division at this point, but its match against Metroid Prime only scored around 67,000 votes. FFX could be a threat to win this division, but it underperformed in both matches it has been in up to this point. Also, this poll only scored around 65,000 votes. Super Smash Brothers Melee? A decent choice, but it only managed to beat Metal Gear Solid 2 by 10,000 votes as a 2 seed, and its prediction percentage for that match was very low considering the seeding. Starcraft? Pfft, please. Starcraft wasn't even going to beat The Wind Waker, let alone a Final Fantasy title. It has performed well up to this point, but Halo and Kingdom Hearts are two games that aren't very well-loved on this site. Surely, it could pose no threat to the rest of this division. Even Vice City could be considered a threat at this point. It beat down KOTOR, and was looking prime and ready to take down SSBM as well. But even then, Vice City has shwon nothing that would prove it to be strong beyond a reasonable doubt. So in the end, we have a gigantic clusterfuck in Division 128, with no clear-cut favorite. The popular favorite seemed to be Final Fantasy X at this point, despite how bad it had performed in its two matches. To this extent, the first game that could be considered a major threat would be the winner of the Final Fantasy 7 vs Ocarina of Time matchup. That's how wierd Division 128 was in this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1647&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2004 _source: (7)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2004 (revid 88803)_ ## Results Saturday, May 22nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 128 - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 22nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 4,893 - **Oracle Expectations:** Melee - 54.95% 54 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Melee - 22.03% (9,019 brackets) Coming into this match, Vice City looked like it could have been the favorite. Its win against KOTOR was seemingly more impressive than SSBM's win against Metal Gear Solid 2. Add in the low prediction percentage for SSBM to even get out of the first round, and you had quite the trap set up to get Division 128's 2 seed out of this contest early. After all, Vice City has sold over 7 million copies and Grand Theft Auto continues to be one of the biggest franchises in the world. But whether or not this would all translate into a win remained to be seen. Neither game was overly strong in the first round, and SSBM's match against Metal Gear Solid 2 was one of the lowest-scoring matches of the contest. So coming into this match, it was more and more up in the air. For the first four hours of this poll, the two games were virtually dead even the whole way through. SSBM managed to build a lead of 100, but the lead literally stalled at 100 until 7 AM EST. Now it would seem like these two games were duking it out like true favorites to win the division, but this was not the case. Look at the final vote total. 69,000 votes in such a hyped match between two games supposedly ready to take down the entire division is not supposed to happen. So while both games were locked in a dead heat for a few hours, it seemed as if both games were simply doing so badly that neither of them could gain an advantage over the other. But like SSBM would do throughout this entire contest, the morning and afternoon votes came to the rescue. It took both voting blocks and built a 4000 vote lead over Vice City by catching more steam along the way. By the time the later votes started coming in, the match was already decided. SSBM's advance slowed down somewhat, but it still wound up winning by nearly 5000 votes in the end. First and foremost, tip your hat to Vice City in this matchup. Whether you hate the Grand Theft Auto series or not, it's still one of the single biggest gaming phenoms to ever hit the market, and Rockstar is rolling in a lot of cash because of it. I'm willing to bet that San Andreas sells 5 million copies without any effort whatsoever. As I've said before, Vice City selling over 7 million copies is no joke whether it's liked on our site or not. Then, look at SSBM. Two rounds have passed, and no games have decided to come forward and say that they're the favorite in Division 128. SSBM once against struggles with a powerhouse title from the Playstation 2, which can be looked upon two ways. One, SSBM could be seen as a pretty strong title. After all, it did manage to take down Metal Gear Solid 2 and Vice City. But on the flipside, the vote totals and prediction percentages in both matches were horrendous. What kind of a 2 seed is only expected by 22% of brackets to even get into the sweet sixteen, anyway? Our Final Four in Division 128 was Starcraft, The Wind Waker, Final Fantasy X, and Super Smash Brothers Melee. Among them are two crowning Gamecube titles, the Final Fantasy for our generation, and a 7 year old PC title. If you care anything about vote totals, the favorite to win Division 128 at this was actually Starcraft. Completely absurd to think about at this point of the contest, but Starcraft had a way of defying any and all forms of logic in this thing. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1648&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (4)Final Fantasy 2004 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (4)Final Fantasy 2004 (revid 67761)_ ## Results Sunday, May 23rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 23rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 14,164 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 61.21% 54 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 54.94% (22,492 brackets) Super Mario Brothers 3 was an absolute lock to make it out of its half division in this contest, yet only 55% of bracketmakers thought it would make it past this match. Even worse, this was not an impressive victory at all for the divisional favorite. I understand that Final Fantasy has the namebrand and the 8-Bit Theater strength attached to it (hence the high picture rating), but a divisional favorite not scoring 60% in the semifinal against an inferior opponent doesn't spell well for it in the future. This match reminded me of Mario's 55-45 flop against Shadow the Hedgehog in the Summer 2003 Contest in that it clearly showed that Mario was not his old self. Coincidentally, this is Mario's best game showing that it was not its old self in the match. But in the interest of fairness, I think that there were some unseen factors involved in this match. Compare the prediction percentages between Mario 3 and Final Fantasy in each round: **Round 1** - Mario 3: 86.56% - Final Fantasy: 96.46% **Round 2** - Mario 3: 72.04% - Final Fantasy: 82.01% Clearly, Final Fantasy was actually the favorite to win this match. I don't exactly think it was by a large amount, but the prediction percentages don't lie. Apparently this site really is FinalFantasyFAQs after all. You could name a game *Final Fantasy: Dog Turds in Flight* and see it enjoy huge amounts of success around here. That's simply the nature of the beast. So on the bright side of all this, Mario 3 won a match that it was supposed to lose 60-40. Whether or not this was simply a bump in the road remained to see seen, but thankfully for us fans, we could make a quick comparison between the division's two heavyweights in the match directly following this one. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1649&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)The Legend of Zelda vs (2)Tetris 2004 _source: (3)The Legend of Zelda vs (2)Tetris 2004 (revid 55745)_ ## Results Monday, May 24th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 24th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 34,396 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 70.88% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 71.26% (29,174 brackets) Poor HoratioQHornblower. If he picks Zelda 1 to win this match, he may have won the contest. But it isn't like his reasoning wasn't good. He owns a gaming store, so I'm sure he remembers the national craze that involved the Game Boy, Tetris, and the 33 million copies that have been released worldwide. But, this is gamefaqs. As I've said all throughout this analysis, Zelda and Square rule everything around here. And after Mario 3 stuttered against Final Fantasy a little bit, it was The Legend of Zelda's turn to show what kind of a threat it would be. Well, is a 75-25 win over Tetris enough of a threat? Or what about the prediction percentages? Only 55% of people thought Mario 3 was going to reach the divisonal finals, yet 71% of people thought Zelda 1 would get this far. And it's a broken record by this point, but Zelda was continuing to dominate this contest. It was 9-0 and rolling at this point, and it looked like the clear favorite to take Division 8 after this match. All of the numbers lined up for it, at least. The only hope that Mario 3 looked to have was the voting total in the two matches. Mario 3's match against Final Fantasy scored nearly 4000 more votes than the Zelda 1 poll managed to score. But then we have to realize that no one cared about any match involving Tetris. It truly did seem like Zelda was going to walk away with it after this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1650&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (4)Super Mario World 2004 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (4)Super Mario World 2004 (revid 55747)_ ## Results Tuesday, May 25th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 16 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 25th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 13,753 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 70.88% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 61.95% (25,362 brackets) Coming into this matchup, Super Mario World was supposed to be strong enough to make this another Mario vs Crono type of match. After all, Super Mario World beat the holy hell out of Sonic 2 in a 70-30 rout, while Chrono Trigger lost a whole lot of percentage against Super Mario RPG through the day. As such, it looked like Super Mario World was on the upset track, while Chrono Trigger looked like it had to struggle through both of its matchups. The pre-match hype, as always, was all over the place as the match built itself up. Yet once the match began, it was absolutely clear that Chrono Trigger was no joke in this contest. In a match that was supposed to be a trap for Chrono Trigger, it jumped out to a quick 63-37 lead and never looked back. This disappointed a lot of the people who were looking for drama after a long string of easy matches, but that's simply the way it was. Chrono Trigger, despite its troubles, was a strong game in this contest. Another thing to remember is the competition it faced. Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, and Super Mario World are damned strong competition. I mean, 2 Square RPGs and a mainstream Mario title? Losing percentage in the day against those three is perfectly okay. Speaking of which, Chrono Trigger managed to continue to worry the people who had it in the finals when it dipped all the way down to 58.75% before making a small recovery to get near 60% again. But the damage was done long before any of this went down. Super Mario World looked prime for the upset in this match, and some people even gave it a chance to win the division before this match took place. But in the end, Chrono Trigger easily shook off Super Mario World like a bad case of the fleas to cement its status as a favorite in the division. But this was all covered in the last round, as the favorites were clearly Chrono Trigger, Link to the Past, and Final Fantasy 6. Chrono Trigger did its part in this match, and it was now time for the next match to defeat the hopes of another one of the favorites. One final thing to note, and that is that Chrono Trigger's vote total had gone down in each of its first three matches to this point. Whether or not this was a warning sign remained to be seen. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1651&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (2)Final Fantasy VI 2004 _source: (6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (2)Final Fantasy VI 2004 (revid 88209)_ ## Results Wednesday, May 26th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 16 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 26th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 4,302 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link to the Past - 55.73% 47 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link to the Past - 39.57% (16,200 brackets) Before I say anything, let me note that this may have been the single worst picture in the contest. It was so bad that CJayC actually created a topic to tell us that it was the official Japanese art for both games, and it was the impetus for user created match pictures in the future (credit to Leonhart4 for this bit of trivia). If he knew the picture sucked so bad that he felt the need to create a topic, why did he use it in the first place? That guy makes no sense sometimes. I think that we were all voting for names in this match, rather than who we knew in the pictures. I mean you could make out that it was Link if you looked hard enough. On the bright side, that was clearly Setzer Gabbiani in the FF6 pic, so some measure of order was restored. An interesting thing to note about this match were the prediction percentages coming into it. In the first two rounds, LTTP managed to outpredict Final Fantasy 6: **Round 1** - LTTP: 97.75% - FF6: 81.14% **Round 2** - LTTP: 73.42% - FF6: 66.89% And that's how it should have been, given the competition each game faced. But after dominating FF6 in prediction percentage in the first two rounds, LTTP's prediction percentage to make it to the divisional finals dropped dramatically, all the way to 39.57%. This leads me to believe that quite a lot of people picked Final Fantasy 6 to win this match, and as I said last round, BigCow was the first one to explain to me in full detail about how the three heavy hitters all had equal chances to win this division. As it would turn out, the guy looked like a genius. Coming into this match, Zelda was 9-0 in this contest, and it looked unbeatable. As such, what reason was there to believe that Final Fantasy 6 would even come close? After all, Link to the Past has flat-out dominated in its first two matches, while Final Fantasy 6 had two very 'meh' wins. However, the bracket/board voters kicked in early on in this matchup. Once it started, some of us were shocked to see Final Fantasy 6 taking the early initial lead on Link to the Past. And it wasn't a lead of 2 or 3, either. After 2:30 of the match was over, Final Fantasy 6 had a lead of 226 votes and looked to being going strong. Now everyone knows what happened at this point. LTTP managed to come back strong, pull even, then pull away with the match through the rest of the day. But anyone who was watching the match can see that. That isn't what this match symbolized. To put this in perspective, the only game or character to ever take a sustained lead on Link or any of his games was Cloud in 2003. But outside of that one match, it looked nearly impossible to take down Zelda. Link flat-out killed every opponent he faced until Cloud came along, and Zelda flat-out killed every opponent until Final Fantasy 6 came along. Now Link to the Past may have won this match, but I feel that Zelda's aura of invincibility in this contest wore off in this match. That lead of 226 votes, though lost quickly, turned the tide of this contest. We need to remember that Final Fantasy 6 is not as upper echelon as some of us would like to think. Kefka is the only character to have gotten into the Summer Contest in each of the last two years, and his performance was pathetic. Final Fantasy 6, despite being the second strongest overall title in the series on our site, is still worlds behind Final Fantasy 7 around here and cannot possibly do more to make up the ground. As such, it had two unimpressive wins against Mortal Kombat and Doom, which are two games that don't come close to being elite on our site. Yet for some reason, Final Fantasy 6 managed to hold strong against Link to the Past for almost three hours in this poll. All of a sudden, things seemed to make more sense in the contest to the expert analysts on the board. Mario 3 suddenly looked like the favorite to take down Zelda 1, and Ocarina of Time was in an even bigger hole than it was in the first place against Final Fantasy 7. Division 128, though The Wind Waker seemed like a logical enough choice to win it, was now in the air more than ever with this sudden lackluster performance on the part of a Zelda title. Oddly enough, Link to the Past seemed to be in the best shape of them all. For a very long time in this poll, Link to the Past's struggle with Final Fantasy 6 made it seem like Chrono Trigger would run away with the division, and possibly even the entire first half of the bracket. But Link to the Past came back strong in this poll to take Final Fantasy 6 down by 4300 votes after being down and out to start it all off. What was a blowout win for Chrono Trigger turned into a match too close to call before Link to the Past's poll was all said and done. Chrono Trigger is clearly stronger than Final Fantasy 6 on our site, but is it strong enough to make up 4300 votes on Link to the Past? Only time would tell. I would also like to take a quick moment to shed some condolences for The Return. He had a perfect bracket until this match rolled around. And in closing, despite finally having a weakness, the bottom line was that Zelda was 10-0 in this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1652&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (4)Metal Gear Solid 2004 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (4)Metal Gear Solid 2004 (revid 55751)_ ## Results Thursday, May 27th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 32-64 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 27th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 33,977 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 66.77% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 78.89% (32,298 brackets) Anyone could see that Final Fantasy 7 was going to the Divisional Finals in this contest, and that Ocarina of Time was the only game that could have stood in its way. What gets me is the absolute beating it laid on Metal Gear Solid in this matchup. In character contests, Solid Snake is one of the upper-tier characters, and will almost never go down without a good fight. Yet in this match, Metal Gear Solid simply wasn't beaten; it was crushed. If Final Fantasy 7 wasn't the clear-cut favorite to win this contest after this match, I don't know what it would take to prove it. And I simply don't see a horde of Final Fantasy Tactics fans voting for Final Fantasy 7 out of spite, either. The other thing that gets me was the total indifference of the Ocarina of Time fans during this match. 72-28 over Metal Gear Solid is about as powerful as it gets, yet a ton of people still claimed that Ocarina of Time stood a decent chance. To put this in a bit of perspective, Metal Gear Solid can and would beat Goldeneye in any one on one poll. For Ocarina of Time to prove that it still had a chance to take down Final Fantasy 7, it had to better against Goldeneye than Final Fantasy 7 did against Metal Gear Solid. If Goldeneye so much as tied Metal Gear Solid's percentage against Ocarina of Time, the contest was virtually over. And Ocarina could make no excuses either, as its match was the day after this one. At least we didn't have to wait long to see how it would all go down =) As a side note, Kao Megura (the FAQ writer whose FF7 guide made this site famous) passed away between FF7's second and third matches, which caused Final Fantasy 7 to make a jump back to \#1 on our Top FAQs list. If you put any stock whatsoever into the Kao Megura theory, it was at least worth mentioning. One thing that must be noted is how much of a badass the guy was. He updated his FF7 guide the day before he died, and if he knew of what was going to happen while he was making his final update, then that is flat-out dedication right there. He will be sorely missed for a long, long time on this site; hopefully CJayC has some common sense and decides to make some sort of a tribute to Chris MacDonald on our site. A yearly award in his name, a page dedicated to him... anything. Anyway, back to the topic. Slowflake said it best: this match was a wake-up call to anyone that doubted Final Fantasy 7's chances, much like Cloud vs Sonic in 2003. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1653&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)GoldenEye 007 vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2004 _source: (3)Goldeneye vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2004 (revid 88804)_ ## Results Friday, May 28th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 32-64 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 28th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 33,409 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ocarina of Time - 70.80% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 60.73% (24,863 brackets) This will be one of the shortest analyses in the entire topic, as it's really easy to look at this match. Pity that no one actually cared about this match, too. It was all about setting up the true final of this contest. As I said in the last match, Ocarina of Time had to clearly outperform Final Fantasy 7's total. It did so, but by only 1.75%. Metal Gear Solid is clearly stronger than Goldeneye, and a 1.75% difference between the two games against their respective opponents did not mean well for Ocarina of Time in the next round. Another interesting note would be that Ocarina of Time's poll scored 7500 less votes. Ocarina of Time also scored less votes, and the prediction percentages did not favor the Zelda title in the next round at all; a difference of over 18% in prediction percentage this late in the contest is not good when you're on the low end. And before people start yelling at me for bringing up prediction percentage again, we had stats by this point in the contest, and the numbers were clear as day. Ocarina of Time clearly had a hill to climb in its next match. There is only one real note I can make about this match, and again Slowflake mentioned it first. The irony of this match was wonderful. Ocarina of Time is the best-selling N64 title, but which game was \#1 until it game along? It was -- you guessed it -- Frank Stall... err, Goldeneye. (mentions something about Zelda being 11-0, then leaves topic) And surely, Zelda would be an easy 12-0 after the first three rounds. I mean, little Starcraft couldn't possibly give Wind Waker a fight.... could it? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1654&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (16)Starcraft vs (5)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2004 _source: (16)Starcraft vs (5)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2004 (revid 88807)_ ## Results Saturday, May 29th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 128 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 29th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 171 - **Oracle Expectations:** StarCraft - 44.57% 5 for - 51 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** StarCraft - 7.91% (3,238 brackets) Starcraft shocked the world by getting this far. It wasn't even supposed to beat Halo, and even then, it was supposed to get crushed by Kingdom Hearts afterwards. Yet here it sat on top of the world after two matches, ready to take on the defining Zelda title of the modern generation. But it was a nice run. Surely Starcraft couldn't begin to have what it takes to take on a Zelda title, correct? Hated game or not, this is GameFAQs. Zelda rules around here, as the 11-0 record coming in would suggest. But back up a minute here. I ran a silly little pre-poll once Starcraft was done beating Kingdom Hearts, and Starcraft had the support of 80% of the people that posted within the topic. It led me to believe that Starcraft had the board's support going into the Wind Waker match; it was all a matter of where everyone else's support would go. But even then, how could a seven year old PC 16 seed ever stand up to a Zelda title? Beating the Xbox mascot and a Square RPG is nice, but this is Zelda. The match was decided weeks before it even started. No sooner did the words come out of our mouths did Starcraft shock the world again. For the first 3:30 of the poll, Starcraft went shot for shot with the almighty and undefeated Zelda. And on top of that, it had the lead for the entire three and a half hours. It wasn't anything large (70 votes at its peak) but it was enough to let everyone know that Starcraft was not the little 16 seed everyone thought it was. We'd released a monster upon GameFAQs when we supported Starcraft like hell in the first round. Now it had come back to kill us all. However, The Wind Waker managed to catch the support of the morning vote. It wasn't anything large, but it was enough to give The Wind Waker the match. It was 6:45 PM EST, and The Wind Waker had a lead of 2022 votes. If it took Starcraft all that time to come back against Halo from a gap of 1108, how in the hell was it supposed to double that performance against a Zelda title on GameFAQs? Those of us who called the match far too early (including me) forgot one very simple fact about this matchup. This match occurred on a Saturday night, which happens to be the busiest night of the week for battle.net. To put this in perspective, I once had a theory that Bnet traffic was static throughout the week. LordOfDabu and company completely blew that to bits when they went on Bnet on a Saturday night and noted that there were over 340,000 people logged on, over 100,000 more people than I saw during my observations. Now during Starcraft's first two matches, there was an increase in votes in the evening as can be attributed to the static traffic on Bnet. The spamming that went on over there was high during all of Starcraft's matches, but it was proven later that the overall effect of the spamming was somewhat static. Save for one match: this one. Starcraft was down by 1100 votes against Halo, yet managed to come back to win in the final hours based off of the strength of how strong Starcraft was in the evening. For all of us who assumed that The Wind Waker was strong enough to combat this, we were proven dead wrong. Up until and including midnight, Starcraft began its massive comeback trail in the match and finished it off by only being down 1000 votes. But even then, a static Bnet would not have been enough to save Starcraft from defeat. However, this was still during static Bnet hours. After midnight on Saturdays, traffic on Bnet goes up dramatically; thus, the spamming was more effective with it reaching a potential new total of 100,000 extra people. The result, you ask? (check the graph below) "But Ulti, there was cheating!" After the Starcraft/SSBM matchup happened and we were given a thorough explanation of things, I have faith that CJayC checks for cheating. He said that there was no cheating in the topic he made that night, and even told us where the votes were coming from in his lovely post where he subliminally bashed the holy hell out of every AOL User/Zelda fan alive. I once thought that Starcraft came back simply because of the varied strength of Starcraft, but as I said before, LordOfDabu beautifully explained where the rallies were coming from. The high points of the comeback coinciding with Bnet's peak hours are no coincidence. All you need to do is hit Alt + Tab to go to your open web page, then Alt + Tab back to Bnet. I would assume that a small fraction of the 100,000 extra Bnet users that night coming to our poll made the difference. I believe it to be true, and it's the one thing that makes enough sense. If this match helped prove anything, it's that Starcraft's strength in this contest was not half as variable as everyone makes it seem. It's a strong game on this site that put out a consistent showing in all of the matches it was involved in. One night in which Bnet was busy as hell for a few hours doesn't change this much. Interesting fact. 41480 - 40698 = 782. Starcraft only managed 782 extra votes between the second and third rounds, so while the Saturday Bnet spam made the necessary difference, it doesn't disprove my belief that Starcraft was static in the contest. And did we ever release a monster or what? After the Halo poll, everyone was all happy-go-lucky when the Starcraft fans started celebrating. After this poll, the wars between Starcraft fans and everyone else were as out of hand as it could have gotten. And it would only get worse. At this point, it was all up to either FFX or SSBM to make its claim to be the favorite in the division. And the door was wide open with The Wind Waker gone as well. If the games underperformed against each other, then Starcraft, Starcraft, would look like the favorite in the division. I mean honestly, who the heck could have thought that up before the contest started? ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis In the spring games contest, Starcraft was the little 16 seed that could. It upset Halo and Kingdom Hearts, but most people figured that the Zelda series would be its end. IIRC Zelda hadn’t lost a match yet in the contest, and most people felt that it would continue its dominant streak past poor little Starcraft and on to the Division 128 finals. Poor little Starcraft my ass. Wind Waker started off in the lead, sure, but then… Link’s face in that last one makes me laugh every time I see it. Starcraft came back and gave an ass-whupping to Wind Waker. If there was any doubt in people’s minds at this point, Starcraft was definitely making a name as a legitimate player in the contest, and this, its most crushing victory, was only proof of that fact. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1655&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Final Fantasy X vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2004 _source: (3)Final Fantasy X vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2004 (revid 88808)_ ## Results Sunday, May 30th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 128 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 30th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 1,545 - **Oracle Expectations:** Melee - 48.03% 18 for - 38 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Melee - 14.18% (5,805 brackets) Thanks to this poll... [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/776-best-of-2001-overall-game-of-the-year) ...the general consensus was that SSBM was overseeded and would go down to FFX in this round with ease. Some people even used that poll to justify picking Vice City to take down SSBM. But like I've been saying all along, I maintained my faith in SSBM to at least to well in this match. It hadn't done well enough to this point to guarantee it a win by any means, but it wasn't going to get doubled up like poll 776 would suggest. One, Metal Gear Solid 2 and Vice City are very strong games -- arguably two of the three biggest hits on the Playstation 2 -- and there was little indication that SSBM couldn't do well against FFX. If it took down two smash hits for the Playstation 2, why couldn't it take down the third. After all, Vice City is a little stronger than MGS2, while FFX is a little stronger than Vice City. When the Playstation 2's fanbase is isolated and spaced out, it can be beaten by the group Nintendo effort that SSBM provides in polls. Secondly, SSBM has aged better than most games I've ever seen. Good multiplayer games are not easy to come by, yet SSBM has slowly become an underground multiplayer phenom, complete with tournaments offering cash prizes that are split 60-30-10 among first through third place. The money that SSBM players make isn't nearly enough to set SSBM in the same league as Starcraft or Madden 2004, but it's enough to say that SSBM has aged well. Final Fantasy X simply cannot claim this, despite how good a game it is. It didn't take long for the game to begin being bashed to hell. Its performances in the first two rounds would also suggest that FFX was not guaranteed a win in this matchup, despite what poll 776 would say. And once the poll started, it was pretty clear that this matchup was going to be a grudge match. SSBM jumped out to a huge early lead, but FFX managed to come back within the next few hours. Once the morning vote hit, the two games literally split the vote nearly even for hours. Finally, the afternoon vote kicked in. It favored SSBM, which allowed the Gamecube mascot to build a lead of 2000 before the Square evening vote began kicking in. And while the Square vote kicked in somewhat nicely, every mini-charge that FFX put on was countered by SSBM. In the end, Final Fantasy X was only able to cut off 300 votes from SSBM's peak lead despite the evening Square vote. Apparently, Final Fantasy X's struggles in the first two rounds were a foreshadowing. And who would have thought? Starcraft vs SSBM in the divisional finals, with Starcraft coming in as the favorite. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1656&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (3)The Legend of Zelda 2004 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (3)The Legend of Zelda 2004 (revid 88809)_ ## Results Monday, May 31st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 31st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 10,578 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 51.98% 46 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 40.31% (16,503 brackets) CJayC was accepting fan art for the final rounds of the contest. Pretty good idea, considering how hard it is to come up with new ideas for game pictures. Character pictures are one thing, game pictures are something else. And my, how the mighty have fallen in this contest. Ever since Final Fantasy 6 took the initial lead on LTTP, the aura of invincibility disappeared for Zelda. The Wind Waker ended Zelda's winning streak, and The Legend of Zelda lost with ease to Mario 3 in this match. It was as hyped as any match could get, but like a lot of other Zelda hype in this contest, it all died after LTTP's match against FF6. And unlike any other match in which Zelda loses, there was no whining here. It was almost a foreshadowing of how badly Zelda was going to do for the rest of this contest. But let's not take away from Mario 3 here. It has always been my opinion that this game is among the objective best of all time, and it's fitting for it to do well in a contest entitled 'Best. Game. Ever.'. It isn't my favorite game of all time, but I clearly think that it's the best. It showed in this match, at least. SFF finally worked against a Zelda title, and I would assume it would be out of respect for what Mario 3 did for the industry. Zelda wound up becoming the superior Nintendo series over time, but Mario 3 was clearly the superior back in the NES days. No surprise at all that it won this match with ease. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1657&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2004 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2004 (revid 88810)_ ## Results Tuesday, June 1st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 16 Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, June 1st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 362 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 51.46% 44 for - 13 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 34.00% (13,920 brackets) Despite the other Zeldas faltering in this contest, Link to the Past remained strong after stalling a bit against FF6. Winning by over 4000 votes after starting out the way it did, paired with Chrono Trigger losing the day vote to every opponent it had faced, set up a match that was truly up in the air. But that being said, Chrono Trigger started this match off on fire. Within four hours, Chrono Trigger jumped out to a 500 vote lead and for a time, it looked like Chrono Trigger was going to win this match as easily as some people thought. A 500 vote lead in a match in which the numbers pointed to it being the best match of the contest is somewhat of a disappointment, to be honest. Soon after this initial jump, however, the true match began. What would follow would easily be the best wire to wire match any of us had ever seen in this contest. As expected, Link to the Past caught the morning vote; however, it was not enough of the morning vote to flat-out say that the match. Link to the Past simply went on a very slow, methodical pace to take down the initial lead of 500 taken by Chrono Trigger in the match. It was such a slow pace in fact that it took all morning and part of the afternoon for Link to the Past to even catch up, and even longer to take the lead. But LTTP still managed to do so, and like any other poll involving Zelda, LTTP managed to overtake and begin building a lead on Chrono Trigger through the morning and afternoon. But no sooner did Link to the Past's slow pace allow it to take a lead of 180 votes did Chrono Trigger begin fighting back. Chrono Trigger as always managed to lose percentage through the morning and afternoon, and as always it began a recovery. This recovery was somewhat different than the rest. Chrono Trigger, after pulling even with LTTP, remained deadlocked with LTTP for literally hours. And I'm not talking about within a few hundred, either. I'm talking DEAD. EVEN. For hours. The two games went at it like heavyweight prize fighters all through the evening while managing to stay within each other by the slimmest of margins. Every time one game made a small push to take a slim lead, the other game countered. Not only did this create complete chaos all over the site, but it made for the best match any of us had ever seen, even counting the madness of Summer 2002. The matchup also managed to finally get the vote totals in our contest back up, as every match from here on in managed to score a ton of votes. The interesting thing about this match was how it was virtually a statistical impossibility for two poll options to stay this close for such a long period of time. When tens of thousands of votes come pouring in, having the two games stay apart by vote differences in the singles and tens through such an extended timeframe, you know you have a legendary poll on your hands. For a long time, many people forgot about who they were rooting for in the match and simply concentrated on how exciting a match it was in the first place. Screen shots were taken, multiple sightings of 50%-50.01% were seen, and for the longest time, we had two games going at it in this poll in the manner that any poll featuring two legendary titles should go at it. Whenever one game would even get a lead as small as 20 or so, the other would counter with ease. There was multiple points during this madness in which Chrono Trigger looked like it was finally going to pull away for good, but LTTP managed to counter. Sadly, the ending of this match was an anticlimactic as it could get. Chrono Trigger, like it did in every other match it was in, managed to recover from its percentage loss with the later part of the vote in the contest. A match that was literally legendary ended with a simple late night Square push to send Chrono Trigger to the win. LTTP tried to recover, but the AOL users (Zelda fans) typically go to sleep before us college students. No seriously, I'm never going to get over how funny that topic was: ''"65% of AOL users are voting Zelda. Just as unsurprisingly, the Korean netblock is voting 65% Starcraft."'' It's as if CJayC was calling all of the Zelda voters kiddie AOL users. Funniest damned thing I have ever seen him say. Getting back to the point, Chrono Trigger won a match in which the largest lead was 500. A difference of 500 in a match that scored nearly 100,000 votes is a wonderful thing to watch no matter which game you were rooting for, and we may never see anything like this again. That time period of four hours or so in which the games were literally dead even was about as crazy as it gets. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis's Analysis This match typifies the point I made in an earlier writeup: a match doesn’t need down-to-the-wire slugfests and tons of lead changes to be exciting. Sometimes the best matches are exemplified by stillness, the greatest tension of all. This match, more than any other, exemplifies this. These two games were literally neck-and-neck with each other for hours. Imagine a poll where the percentages, the vote disparities, the lead – none of it changes for hours on end. That’s tension: waiting for something to happen and you’re not sure if it will. Definitely an underrated gem of a match here. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1658&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2004 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2004 (revid 88811)_ ## Results Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 32-64 Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 7,476 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 51.05% 40 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 58.97% (24,142 brackets) Not only is Ocarina of Time not a better game than Final Fantasy 7, it's not even the best game in its own series: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/n64/review/R74804.html) Your writeup for this match is that review, and I think it explains in great detail why this match was over right off the bat. Ocarina of Time is good, but that's all it is. Like it or not (and most of you won't), Final Fantasy 7 is the better, more popular title. All subjective of course, save for the more popular part. And what better time than the contest's true final than to take a match off? This thing has been analyzed to death anyway, and you all have your own valid opinions why it went down like this. And no excuses can be made either; Final Fantasy 7 won with ease no matter how you look at it. Of all the Cloud vs Link duels these contests had over the years, this one was by far the most boring and easiest to call. As good as Zelda started off, it was just not Zelda's year. From an 11-0 start to 4 straight losses. That's nuts for the most popular series on our site. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1659&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (16)Starcraft vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2004 _source: (16)Starcraft vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2004 (revid 88813)_ ## Results Thursday, June 3rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 128 Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Thursday, June 3rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 534 - **Oracle Expectations:** Melee - 50.57% 32 for - 23 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Melee - 7.16% (2,932 brackets) I believe the prediction percentage for this match was the lowest we've ever had in a contest poll before. Pretty odd, considering that SSBM was the 2 seed in the division. But also not surprising, considering how horribly messed up this division was to begin with. And thus, the division from hell came to its dramatic conclusion. We saw two Starcraft fans act like complete morons in this match; aside from that, the massive war that went on between the two sides in this matchup was at its worst during this match. There are ugly matches, and then there was the colossal mod war that went on during this thing. But in defense of SSBM fans, they had a legitimate gripe here. During the entire contest, even when Starcraft cost me two matches, I have never said that Bnet spamming was illegal. Bnet is a part of what Starcraft is, after all. But a website known as www.sclegacy.com really upped the ante when it came to Starcraft's matches attracting the biggest flame wars. Everything was going fine until we noticed that site. This match was hyped as soon as it was announced, and Starcraft seemed like the favorite going in. As such, the poll was advertised across multiple Starcraft sites across the internet. But thanks to sclegacy going in detail to outline a method to cheat in our poll, the entire thing became as ugly as it possibly could have gotten. I even had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with sclegancy's administrator when he tried coming to the board to defend his actions. Apparently he assumed that the method he outlined was a well-known fact that was perfectly kosher. But by the time he explained himself and fixed up his homepage, the damage was done all across this board, and the ugliest match of the contest was very much underway. As for the actual match itself, Starcraft once again managed to start off strong. But it would not last. After the massive flame war was well underway, the match was heating up as well. SSBM withstood the initial onslaught of Starcraft, and managed to catch fire during the morning vote. SSBM also happened to pick the perfect time to perform at its peak. It was less than impressive in its first three matches, yet it somehow managed to come on strong in this match. It was so strong in fact that it did to Starcraft what its first three opponents failed to do: it built a huge lead that looked damn near unbeatable. SSBM managed to build a lead of nearly 3800 votes on Starcraft throughout the day, which is something that not even The Wind Waker was able to manage. And this all happened during Bnet spamming as well, so no excuses could really be made here. The odd thing about all of this is that SSBM was one of the hardest games to read in this entire contest. In all of SSBM's wins in this contest, none of them were impressive. But wins are wins, and it was blatantly obvious that not even Starcraft could come back from being down 3800 votes. We all settled on 3000 being the necessary lead for SSBM in order to be comfortable going into the final hours, yet it was all the way up to 3800. Not even all of Starcraft's magic could allow it to come back from this, right? \*cues Dr Octopus earthquake sounds\* If you thought the flame wars and chaos that surrounded the end of the Wind Waker match and the beginning of this match were bad, you had seen nothing. Once SSBM built the 3800 vote lead, it was 8:40 PM EST. Right then and there, Starcraft went on the most insane charge any of us had ever seen in one of these polls. Within the next twenty minutes, Starcraft managed to slice the gigantic sum of 1400 votes off of SSBM's lead. To put this in a better perspective, look at the updates that were recorded during this (check out the graph below). And I'm aware that it says 3691 up there, but I can assure you that the lead was just about to break 3800 around 8:40 PM before this all started. Anyhoo, don't those updates look a bit odd to you? Now imagine the entire face of the internet after all of this happened. Yeah, it was pretty bad. As anyone could imagine, cheating accusations flew all over the place during this little spree. But of course, the Starcraft fans disagreed and actually called this surge legitimate. Rumor had it that Korean TV aired a commercial asking people to vote in our poll. Thankfully, CJayC himself came to our board to shed some light on the subject not once, not twice, but thrice. But it took until after midnight for him to finally do it, so the entire site had to see Starcraft continue its comeback attempt all the way through the night. But on the bright side, the lead was around 1900 before CJayC posted his topics. This means that despite the massive Starcraft surges, SSBM still looked like it couldn't lose. 1900 votes being made up within 150 minutes is something that even Starcraft would have issues with. But in the interest of fairness, the Starcraft fans didn't give up in this match, and continued to fight their fight. Starcraft began making a massive push in the match, and it continued all the way through the end, even after CJayC posted this: *From: CJayC \| Posted: 6/4/2004 12:23:59 AM \| Message Detail* *Seeing a lot of proxy server votes for Starcraft, from votes \# 76000 to 79000. Looks like someone got real sloppy; this is kind of obvious. I may end up throwing out that entire block of 3000 votes unless I can sort out the legitimate from the proxy votes. Let me see what I can do here...* And after that, we were greeted with another topic: *From: CJayC \| Posted: 6/4/2004 1:06:25 AM \| Message Detail* *I still haven't found the proxy list this guy used, but I'm piecing it together.* *So far, I've found 400 votes for Starcraft made through proxy servers, all coming pretty much one after another. You can actually see when the proxy program starts in the server logs. This is a case of one person (or a couple of them) going through all the trouble of creating a program to auto-vote through proxy server after proxy server. I can only hope they're doing it for the fun of it and not for their own contest entry.* *I mean, you usually see 1-2 votes from known proxies an hour, but those votes are for both sides. Then suddenly, between votes \#75562 and \#78961, there are over 400 votes for Starcraft, all from known proxies. Of course, I'm fairly sure another 300-400 votes in that range are from proxies as well, but I'm still hunting them down.* In short, one or more random dumbasses (who no doubt are rooted from yaoyuan.com) cheated the poll. What really gets me is that even though the cheated votes were eventually never taken out of the final stats, SSBM won anyway. Oh, Starcraft continued its massive charge, but it fell short by 500 votes. More on that later, as there is one more CJayC post to inform everyone of. > From: CJayC \| Posted: 6/4/2004 1:57:23 AM \| Message Detail Total confirmed open proxy votes found for Starcraft: 637 > > There are likely more, but I've exhaused all of the public open proxy lists I know. All of the votes came within a specific time frame, and 100% of them were for Starcraft (something that can't really be passed off as a coincidence). They started off heavy, then slowed down (I guess as the guy exhausted his lists). > > There are likely more than the 637 I found, but I was only going by public lists (i.e. ones I could find on Google). How I found them: Looked up a suspect vote IP address on Google with the word "proxy" as well, and then taking the lists that popped up and adding them into my known proxy list. I started with around 200 that I already knew about (I hadn't updated my lists in a year and a half), then found the other 400+ through Google tonight. > > Oh, and this is pretty telling:[(link has died, but check the graph below for the same info)](http://www.cjayc.com/kekekeke.png) > > The plot points are votes per game per 1000 votes. > > And now, for the frequently whined questions: > > **How do you know that these are all fradulent votes?** > > They're from known open proxy servers (most of them in countries like Malaysia, Turkey, China, and so on), 100% of them are for Starcraft, and they all came in a huge rush (as if someone started off a program to vote automatically). > > **How do you know that this didn't happen earlier in the contest?** > > I don't know, but I'm fairly sure, given that there wasn't a surge like this on any other contest. Every other lead change has been gradual and taken hours to fully come about; a 1000 vote gain in an hour isn't normal. > > **You're just a Nintendo fanboy, aren't you?** > > How sad is it this? I mean, I've been accused of being for/against so many different companies at this point, it's not even funny. Just a day ago, I was anti-Nintendo for not finding any cheating going on in the LTTP battle... > > For the record, I don't care who wins, as long as both sides play as fairly as the other. If you'll recall what I said just a day or two ago, the only kind of "cheating" that I would remove votes for was when one person attempted to seriously sway the contest vote all by themselves, and low and behold, someone got desparate enough to try it. If you were online and watching it when the swing happened, there can't really be any question that this wasn't legitimate. > > **So, what are you going to do about this?** > > I'm not sure. Ask me in an hour. The options range from nothing (if SSBM holds out), to removing all proxy server votes, removing all votes within the known "cheating" timeframe, or even a complete re-run of today's battle from scratch, with new intensive security measures in place to prevent this from happening again. > > **You're just making this up, aren't you?** > > Why in the hell would I open myself up to this much criticism without a valid reason? I mean, seriously, tracking this crap down has been an amazing waste of my time that I could have spent updating the site. Instead, we've got some guy attempting to ruin things for his own personal benefit, and that's not right. In short, Starcraft's amazing little run had just come under amazing suspicion. Cheating was caught in this topic, and it puts Starcraft's other two comeback wins in doubt as to their legitimacy. But either way, SSBM won despite every effort Starcraft gave it. I don't know if this speaks more for SSBM or Starcraft, to be honest. SSBM proved beyond a doubt that it was indeed a strong game in this contest, while Starcraft proved beyond a doubt that it has the most loyal and vehement fans of any game on this site. 99% of them acted like the fans of any other game, but it was the 1% of morons that stooped to new lows that really brought Starcraft down in an unfair manner. It's one of the greatest games of all time, and for its legacy to be ruined by two or three really stupid people is unfair. I say give props to SC for it having done this well, but none of us truly know if it actually did this well. That's the problem. Either way, FF7 was now a lock for the finals. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Starcraft’s Cinderella sprint through the first three rounds of the 128 Division was fully prepared to keep on chugging along, even through the juggernaut that was Super Smash Bros. Melee. It had already taken down three games that most people figured were out of its league; what was one more? Indeed, Starcraft started off in the lead and stayed there for a little while… until Ceej deducted a bunch of votes for cheating. Whoops. So Starcraft lost, and its miracle run ended on a note of sadness and uncertainty. Still, the match in question was great, and Melee really had to give it everything to hang in there. Starcraft’s crazy run has been one of the biggest reasons people have been looking forward so much to another games contest – who knows what will happen? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1660&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (1)Chrono Trigger 2004 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (1)Chrono Trigger 2004 (revid 88814)_ ## Results Friday, June 4th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Friday, June 4th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 3,881 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 50.90% 34 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 24.63% (10,084 brackets) This was the one match that could have been billed as Mario vs Crono 3. The update topics were even labeled as Mario vs Crono instead of Mario 3 vs Chrono Trigger. But in the end, this was the most anticlimactic match of the entire contest. After the games went through their early scuffle, Chrono Trigger took the lead and never looked back. There was no magical comeback by Mario, no insane voodoo involving a Male or Female poll, and everyone that was hoping for massive drama to overtake this contest before Final Fantasy 7 took a gigantic crap on the rest of the bracket were severely let down. Mario 3 simply got beat; the best it managed after the first parts of the poll were mini-surges that were all countered before the end. Fitting that Chrono Trigger waited until its bout with Mario 3 to pull out its best showing. This was the one match in which Chrono Trigger's percentage gain remained constant throughout the day, with no massive loss in the afternoon vote. It really sucks when the last three matches of the contest are so easy to analyze. Mario 3 lost, and the only explanation I can give is that Chrono Trigger, despite all of the struggles to get here, is simply more popular than Mario 3 on this site. No ifs, ands, or buts. Moving on. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1661&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2004 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VII vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2004 (revid 88815)_ ## Results Saturday, June 5th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Saturday, June 5th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 21,610 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 58.32% 52 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 47.40% (19,406 brackets) Let's be honest here. SSBM had no chance in hell of winning this match, and this thing served as nothing more than a speed bump en route to Final Fantasy 7 being the winner of this contest. The best SSBM could really offer was to put up a respectable showing, which I don't feel that it did. Getting to the Final Four and failing to post 40% in a match, even against the eventual champion, is not impressive by any means. It also serves to prove that your future looks bleak. Just ask Mario, who has no chance in hell of ever winning one of these contests unless we start removing the most popular characters. He never did truly recover after his horrid showing against Link in 2002, and there is no way in hell that Mario only gets 40% of the vote against Sephiroth that year as well. If another of these contests is ever run, I won't have much faith in SSBM. I still love the game with an absolute fury and will pick it to win most matches, but it just has no chance of beating an elite game in one of these things. And with its loss, we had a Square/Square final. Fun. Future Edit: Boy did that one not age well. Melee not only came back with a vengeance, but without the Undertale rally it might have won the 2015 contest outright. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1662&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (1)Final Fantasy VII 2004 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (1)Final Fantasy VII 2004 (revid 57261)_ ## Results Sunday, June 6th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Sunday, June 6th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 16,430 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy 7 - 57.58% 47 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy 7 - 39.22% (16,057 brackets) The only exciting part of this match was the match picture. Go to the link and hit refresh a few times to see what I mean. And yes, I'm aware that Chrono Trigger put up a fight for a good hour of the poll. But Sephiroth also put up a good fight against Cloud before finally getting rolled over. The board has a way of voting against the character or game they know will win, but in the end, their votes don't matter as the true favorite's strength shines through. Still, putting up a good fight against FF7 is no easy task, so props to Chrono Trigger for at least refusing to just roll over and die. Overall, I felt that this contest was quite fun. But I also feel that CJayC really screwed the thing up with the poll starting time being at 3 AM EST and the layout changes. This contest could have easily added to the progression that we were growing with the first two contests, but instead we took a step backwards. Hopefully things are done to help rectify this with the upcoming Summer Contest, and from the initial looks of the bracket, it looks to be that way. Good luck everyone, and thanks again to everyone that helps make this contest what it is =) And special thanks to creativename, who has decided to host my analysis on his site. \<3 ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1663&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Summer 2004 Character Contest _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 63 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Summer 2004 Contest _source: Summer 2004 Contest (revid 88381)_ | Announced: | [Earlier than July 1, 2004](https://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/04Summer/04Summer-CJaySpeaks.txt) | |-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Started: | August 1, 2004 | | Ended: | October 3, 2004 | | Winner: | Link | | Contest Winner: | Balrog0 - 191 points \|-\< | **Summer 2004 Contest** **Summer 2004 Contest** was the third Summer Contest on GameFAQs. It is generally considered one of the most disappointing Contests, as it was filled with Same Fanbase Factor problems and did not produce many very exciting matches. ### Ulti's Analysis With the Spring Contest still fresh in everyone's mind, we barely had any break from the contest setting whatsoever. CJayC waited until August 1st to start the Summer 2004 Contest, but nominations for the contest were open a full month and a half ahead of time. We had all of two weeks of offseason, but it was little more than a breath of air than it was an offseason. This year's Summer Contest was set up different than in the past in that instead of the four cardinal directions being the names of the divisions, CJayC decided to name the divisions after their 1 seeds. It was a good idea on paper, but it wound up not giving us a very good bracket. With named divisions come characters within the divisions based off of that name, and in the end you're left with a disguised company-based bracket. It made for a very boring contest featuring a ton of Same Fanbase Factor matchups that look good on paper, but in reality lead to nothing more than predictability as we got thing rolling along. The aftermath of this match was rather small, and had more to do about the future of the contest than the contest that had just taken place. This contest, to put it bluntly, sucked. It was too predictable, and the only reason we didn't have any zero/perfect brackets were because of stupid mistakes. There was a very small number of surprises, and even the matches that surprised us went the way they were supposed to. We had five people finish one point off of a perfect bracket, and the lowest score on the leaderboard was 188. The winner of the Spring Contest scored 185 points, but in SC2K4, that score isn't good enough to even sniff the leaderboard. Two polls were held after the Summer 2004 Contest were over, and both of them cater to something new being needed next year. Personally, we don't need any drastic changes. Just retire Cloud and Link and put some time into making a decent bracket. The contests are fine, just not this one. I touched base upon this during my finals analysis, but I'll say it again. This contest sucked. It was too predictable, and even the matches that could have been deemed a surprise were not a surprise. Sure, none of us expected Tails to take down Viewtiful Joe, but were we really surprised to see it happen? Aside from Frog and Ryu Hayabusa's matches, there was nothing worth watching in this contest, and there was nothing whatsoever of excitement after the first two rounds. We need a better bracket, and if we are to leave Cloud and Link in, we need to handicap them. The way things went in this contest are simply unacceptable, and something needs to be done. And no, we don't need tag teams or threesomes. We simply need a well-done bracket and something to be done about Cloud and Link. This contest was once the greatest thing about this site, but it's turned into something that half the site no longer cares about.
Hyrule Division Link Mega Man Link Cloud Link
\(1\) Link (16) CATS Link Ganondorf Link Yoshi Link Crono
\(8\) Ganondorf (9) Alucard
\(5\) Yoshi (12) Ryo Hazuki Yoshi Luigi
\(4\) Luigi (13) Pac-Man
\(6\) Magus (11) Luca Blight Magus Crono Crono Mario
\(3\) Crono (14) Conker
\(7\) Bowser (10) Guybrush Threepwood Bowser Mario
\(2\) Mario (15) JC Denton (Deus Ex)
20XX Division
\(1\) Mega Man (16) Earthworm Jim Mega Man Tidus Mega Man Zero Mega Man Snake
\(8\) Tidus (9) Shadow the Hedgehog
\(5\) Tommy Vercetti (12) Max Payne Tommy V. Zero
\(4\) Zero (13) Protoman
\(6\) Frog (Chrono Trigger) (11) Liquid Snake Frog M. Chief Frog Snake
\(3\) Master Chief (14) Crash Bandicoot
\(7\) Kefka (10) Knuckles the Echidna Knuckles Snake
\(2\) Solid Snake (15) Tanner (Driver)
Midgar Division Cloud Samus
\(1\) Cloud Strife (16) Duke Nukem Cloud Vyse Cloud Squall Cloud Sephiroth
\(8\) Vyse (9) Laharl (Disgaea)
\(5\) Kirby (12) Kain (Legacy of Kain) Kirby Squall
\(4\) Squall Leonhart (13) Bomberman
\(6\) Ness (Earthbound) (11) Jak Ness Auron Auron Sephiroth
\(3\) Auron (14) Scorpion
\(7\) Vivi (10) Donkey Kong Vivi Sephiroth
\(2\) Sephiroth (15) Sly Cooper
Chaos Division
\(1\) Sonic the Hedgehog (16) Terry Bogard Sonic Ryu (SF) Sonic Dante Sonic Samus
\(8\) KOS-MOS (9) Ryu (Street Fighter)
\(5\) Viewtiful Joe (12) Miles "Tails" Prower Tails Dante
\(4\) Dante (13) Ratchet
\(6\) Sora (11) HK-47 (Star Wars KOTOR) Sora Ryu H. Sora Samus
\(3\) Ryu Hayabusa (14) Jill Valentine
\(7\) Sam Fisher (10) Gordon Freeman Sam F. Samus
\(2\) Samus Aran (15) Lara Croft
## Results and Analysis ### Interesting Facts - 2004's Ultimate Loser was Viewtiful Joe. Joe lost to Tails, who lost to Dante, who lost to Sonic, who lost to Samus, who lost to Cloud, who lost to Link - Only 9 of the 64 characters in this contest haven't appeared in a battle since 2004 ### Ngamer's Analysis Ugh, just ugh. CJay takes a ton of crap for putting together this bracket (which makes sense, since it was *awful*), but really, this was the Contest we asked for. There had been some ugly SFF in the Spring, but we thought that was pretty much a games-only thing; in fact, plenty of this board was pulling hard for Ganon back in '03 because we thought a Link/Ganon fight would be really cool to watch, and so when it was set up here for the next year we were happy. '04 gets partially bailed out because Cloud's upset the year before helped keep the Final interesting, and at least we were seeing the 2 strongest characters go at it in the Championship for the first time ever, but eh... in all honestly only Frog's amazing run keeps this Contest out of the bottom of the barrel. --- ## (1)Link vs (16)CATS 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (16)CATS 2004 (revid 88816)_ ## Results Sunday, August 1st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 1st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 62,319 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 87.80% 84 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 98.79% (32,819 brackets) CJayC flat-out told us that CATS was nothing more than a joke character, as well as LinkFodder, but appeased our appetite for the little guy by putting him in the contest anyway. Unfortunately for us, a glitched poll early in the match made us unable to see where all of the first votes went in the match. We were unable to see whether or not CATS got his standard early lead, and when the dust settled, Link was well on his way to a blowout win against the mistranslated favorite son of the CATS Army. What was truly impoprtant about this match was that Link and Cloud now had a common opponent: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1313-east-division-round-1-cloud-strife-vs-cats) Link wound up doing better against CATS than Cloud did by nearly a full percent, and the Extrapolated Statistics formula projected that Link could defeat Cloud's 2003 self with around 53% of the vote after this match. I'm not the biggest fan of set statistics trying to judge the transitivity -- or lack thereof -- among human opinion, but one quick look at the results of the finals shows that the Extrapolated Standing (Xst, for short) formula does work in cases where voting patterns remain static. But still, in defense of Cloud, we were only one poll into the contest. Unfortunately, the "wait until next round before deciding where Link truly stands" philosophy was used by Cloud defenders throughout the contest, despite Link doing better than expected in every single one of his matches. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1718&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Ganondorf vs (9)Alucard 2004 _source: (8)Ganondorf vs (9)Alucard 2004 (revid 55788)_ ## Results Monday, August 2nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 12,533 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 59.99% 83 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 63.02% (20,936 brackets) It pleases me to see Alucard do better than he was expected to in this match. There was a small chance to see Link vs Ganondorf last year, but Magus wound up putting an end to all of that after a fierce battle with the King of Evil. This year, the trick to finally pitting Link and Ganondorf together in a poll was to vastly underseed both Ganondorf and Alucard and throw them in an 8-9 match when they should be going at it in a 3-6 match. Regardless, neither one of these characters got what they deserved from the seeding in this contest. They had a decent match that challenged the Xsts by a few percentage points, but in the end, it's fairly obvious that this match was placed where it was in the bracket so that we would be able to see a Link vs Ganondorf affair. I personally don't like that idea all that much, because while such a match could look good on paper, people who analyse a lot of contest data know that Same Fanbase Factor matchups (SFF, for short) usually yield blowouts to the highest degree, and even SFF matches that are hard to call are rarely close enough to be exciting after the first couple of hours in the poll. Both Alucard and Ganondorf did well in their time in the sun, but with Link looming right above their heads, it was all for naught. The thing that really stands out here is the prediction percentage. As powerful as the Zelda franchise is, it is clear that people looked at past results (and Alucard's two Sweet 16 appearances) when deciding who to go with in this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1719&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yoshi vs (12)Ryo Hazuki 2004 _source: (5)Yoshi vs (12)Ryo Hazuki 2004 (revid 84044)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 41,506 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 75.39% 87 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 85.16% (28,291 brackets) This match barely needs any thought put into it. Shemnue, and Ryo Hazuki along with it, have become little more than fodder in every contest. Just look at the results. Ryo Hazuki may have tripled Guybrush Threepwood back in 2002, but it's nothing but downhill from there. He was killed by Lara Croft, he was killed by Dante last year, his game was killed by FFX in the spring, and now he has been killed by Yoshi. I like Yoshi and all, but he isn't all that strong when compared to a lot of other Nintendo characters. When you can allow Yoshi to get 76% on you, it's time to leave the contest in favor of someone else. Sadly, it seems that Shenmue has enough of a fanbase to constantly get Ryo Hazuki in the field, and subsequently killed by characters in the middle of the pack, year after year. Yoshi is good, but he is not good to the point of being able to get 76% on a consistent basis against anyone of decent strength. But trust me, I'm not undermining Yoshi in the least. Yoshi's Island is one of my favorite games, but aside from that, I can't think of how he has managed to stay as popular as he has for so long. Yoshi's Story was atrocious, and aside from good appearances in party games (Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, etc.), he has done very little since Yoshi's Island. For that reason, Yoshi scoring 76% on anyone is a good sign that the loser of such a match needs to go. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1720&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Luigi vs (13)Pac-Man 2004 _source: (4)Luigi vs (13)Pac-Man 2004 (revid 55792)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 4th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 4th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 26,709 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 61.46% 85 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 68.69% (22,820 brackets) I'm really confused as to why there was such a surprise during the actual match between Luigi and Pac Man. Pac Man did around what he was expected to do based on the '03 stats. If you ask me, the match was about as ho-hum as a match could get; the only thing to be drawn from this match would be that Luigi technically underperformed, and given that his hyped second round match with Yoshi was right around the corner, any weakness in the armor could have been disastrous for him. I maintained that Luigi was the underdog in that match from the start, and when you factor in the results of his match with Pac Man here, the imminent Yoshi/Luigi result wasn't all that hard to see coming, despite the fact that the board was split virtually down the middle on that match. I almost have to tip my hat to Pac Man here. He has fallen off dramatically since his days of being a 1 seed in 2002, but so long as he is still here, he is still going to put up decent numbers against good characters. He isn't elite by any means, but he is surely not 13 seed material either. That said, getting doubled up by Luigi is not good, considering how badly Luigi's stock will suffer by the time all is said and done. Pac Man may be respected by most gamers, bu the fact of the matter remains that he has gone from a 1 seed to a 5 seed to a 9 seed to a 13 seed in four contests. He may be hard-pressed to make the field next year, and after that, he might be gone from the contest forever. He has yet to recover from losing to Scorpion back in 2002, when you think about it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1721&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Magus vs (11)Luca Blight 2004 _source: (6)Magus vs (11)Luca Blight 2004 (revid 88817)_ ## Results Thursday, August 5th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 5th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 43,761 - **Oracle Expectations:** Magus - 76.08% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Magus - 90.45% (30,048 brackets) Just to warn everyone well in advance, this may be somewhat biased. Not only is Magus among my favorite characters, but I haven't played a game in the Suikoden series. With that in mind, the only thing that bothered me about this match was the low vote total. Magus had everything else going for him, and considering what fate await Magus in the second round, it was nice to see Magus in a dominating position before he was finally taken down. To see 90% of people predict Magus to win a match after seeing a mere 24.25% of people calling him to make the third round last year was a nice breath of fresh air. I don't know if this spoke of Magus's strength or Luca Blight's weakness among the general population of GameFAQs, but regardless, any stat that goes in Magus's favor will make me a happy guy =) On the other side of all of this, Luca Blight winds up being another glaring example in a long line; cult characters simply do not do well in these contests, and the mentality of the fanbases of cult characters is more of a "Happy to be here" than it is of having a chance to win. When one considers how low the vote totals were in this match, Luca Blight's stock looks even worse for not even being able to manage 20% of the vote. When the final Xsts are released, Luca Blight will look even worse. The Luca Blight army did their job of getting blight into the contest, but a couple hundred people doesn't make a character strong in these polls. Luca Blight may do better next year now that he has been in the field once, but I doubt it. I love Magus and all, but is he not a character who is typically able to get 80% of the vote. Luca just stunk it up that much. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1722&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Crono vs (14)Conker 2004 _source: (3)Crono vs (14)Conker 2004 (revid 88818)_ ## Results Friday, August 6th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 6th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 44,770 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 80.92% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 93.43% (31,038 brackets) Crono seems to get better with each passing year, yet for some reason, he cannot seem to catch a break in seeding. I can understand his getting a 5 seed in the first contest, but he has been nothing but short-changed in the two character battles since then. In 2003, Crono was given a 4 seed for but one purpose: to face Mario. This year, Crono was against seeded lower than where he should have been, and why? To face Mario. I understand that the Mario/Crono saga is legendary, but the same match three contests in a row is not a good way to make an unpredictable bracket. If anything, most people on the boards were tired of Mario/Crono after last year's mess. Putting them close together this year was simply overkill. But even for those of us that would rather see Crono face a character like Samus or Mega Man, there is always next year. We only had this year to work with, and despite an obvious rigging in the seedings to give us Mario vs Crono 3, Crono cared less about such things. Not only did he come out and smack Conker into next Tuesday, but take a quick look at one of the matches from the Summer 2003 Contest: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1346-south-division-round-2-kefka-vs-crono) Not only that, but the 2003 Extrapolated Standings would suggest that Conker performed around where he was expected to in this match: 46 Conker 17.56% 52 Kefka 15.56% Coming into this match, Conker was expected to do slightly better than Kefka. After the match, the final result followed along with this perfectly, and thus, the theory of Crono/Kefka SFF appearing in 2003 seemed less likely at this point. As such, Pac Man's performance against Luigi was around where it was supposed to be after all, which meant nothing but bad news for Luigi come the second round. In English, you could theoretically predict that Yoshi was going to beat Luigi and that Knuckles was going to beat Kefka after just the 6th match of the contest. There is also a running theme that started with this match: no one cares about Playstation platformer characters anymore. Characters like Conker, Ratchet, Jak, and Crash Bandicoot getting into this contest was all nice and good, but every single one of them bombed for a reason. Sales don't always translate to GameFAQs popularity, and Playstation platformers, regardless of sales, are better off not being in the contest. They're a waste of space. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1723&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Bowser vs (10)Guybrush Threepwood 2004 _source: (7)Bowser vs (10)Guybrush Threepwood 2004 (revid 55798)_ ## Results Saturday, August 7th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 7th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 49,079 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 82.53% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 95.00% (31,560 brackets) I'm obviously not the biggest fan of characters like Ryo Hazuki or Conker in the contest, but I can at least understand why they get into it in the first place. Guybrush Threepwood, on the other hand, remains a mystery to me. He went from being tripled by *Ryo Hazuki* in 2002, to not appearing in the next two contests, to all of a sudden making the field this year. And not only that, but he made the field as a 10 seed. Take a good look at all of the characters that Guybrush outseeded this year. Do you actually think he could beat a good number of them? If you ask me, Guybrush's seeding was another prime example of rigging the bracket so that we would see "interesting" company vs company matchups in the second round. Guybrush is clearly overseeded here, but that's okay; he's facing off against a vastly underseeded Bowser. Bowser should be a 4 seed at best, and a 5 seed at worst. Instead, we have a bracket in which Bowser is knocked down a couple of spots so that we may see Bowser vs Mario in the second round? For what? We already know for a fact that Mario would kill Bowser in a poll, so why have the match? Unfortunately, at the expense of unpredictability, we had to sit through another boring match specifically designed to set up another boring match. The idea of setting up Bowser vs Mario looks good on paper, but in reality, we should be seeing a 4-5 matchup between Bowser and Squall. The funniest thing of all about this match is that because Guybrush sucked so much in 2002, a lot of us were expecting this match to be far worse on Guybrush than it actually was. 17.01% is a blowout in its own right, but considering some of the predictions that were being thrown around, you could almost make the case that Guybrush did better than expected. Almost. When it was all said and done, both characters fulfilled their roles in proper fashion. Guybrush was supposed to be BowserFodder from the start, and this was to set Bowser up to be MarioFodder in round two. Just another example of a good character getting the short end of things for favor of CJayC's idea of a "stacked bracket", I suppose. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1724&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Mario vs (15)JC Denton 2004 _source: (2)Mario vs (15)JC Denton 2004 (revid 55800)_ ## Results Sunday, August 8th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 8th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 52,337 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 85.78% 90 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 98.28% (32,650 brackets) Another day, another overwhelming blowout that goes in the favor of the higher seed in the Hyrule division. But unlike the other matches, this one had a special meaning to it. For the first time ever, Mario managed to perform to standards against a non-Nintendo character. In 2002, Mario allowed Servbot to get 25% of the vote against him, and he followed that up by barely doubling Morrigan Aensland. Yet somehow, he managed to turn around and blow away Donkey Kong before edging out two close victories against Cloud and Crono. In 2003, Mario was as much a wild card as the previous year. He managed to blow away Captain Olimar of Pikmin fame before allowing Shadow the Hedgehog to score nearly 45% on him. He once against followed up his supposed underperformance by edging out Crono in a rematch of the 2002 epic before getting killed by Sephiroth in the Elite 8. After all that, we had a few dilemmas facing Mario here in 2004. How could a character fail to blow away opponents, yet manage to turn around and constantly squeeze out close victories against the likes of Cloud and Crono? The answer was simple enough to see after this match. Morrigan Aensland and Shadow the Hedgehog truly are as strong as their matches with Mario would suggest. For the first time ever, Mario managed to make a non-Nintendo character look like fodder, and even though Mario failed in his bid to keep JC Denton under 15% until the end of the match, his blowout victory was nothing to ignore. JC Denton isn't very well-known on GameFAQs, but he stars in one of the better games out there in Deus Ex. If you like badassed characters, you'll love JC in that game. He was pulling the Neo look long before The Matrix ever even existed. The odd one out in all of this would be Servbot himself. Personally, I think that Servbot's 25% against Mario in 2002 was the direct result of it being the first match we have ever had in one of these contests. A lot of joke votes for Servbot were cast simply because Mario's victory was never in question, and anyone who was on the boards around that time knows this. With that in mind, it's easy to throw out Servbot's performance as a fluke and to finally give Mario to credit he deserves. Not only did Mario beating JC Denton so badly prove that he is still strong, but it also gives a new respect to Shadow the Hedgehod and Morrigan Aensland. We need Morrigan back in the contest, plain and simple. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1725&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (16)Earthworm Jim 2004 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (16)Earthworm Jim 2004 (revid 55802)_ ## Results Monday, August 9th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 9th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 55,813 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 86.98% 77 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 97.47% (32,381 brackets) If there was ever a match that proved that Mega Man was in trouble, this was it. Mega Man is responsible for some of the biggest blowouts we have ever seen, and yet he turns around and only manages 83% against Earthworm Jim? What's up with that? Oh that's right, Earthworm Jim *kicks unheralded amounts of ass*. Is there anyone out there who used to own a Sega, but didn't play Earthworm Jim? The guy absolutely owns. Hell, you didn't even need a Sega. He appears across nine different systems, eleven if you count the three different Game Boys as separate systems, and on all of them, Earthworm Jim's coolness is unmatches by most characters. Where else are you going to find a worm in a power suit who fights giant balls of snot in an effort to save cows from aliens? Yeah I know, Earthworm Jim was killed. But I must tell you this: in the first three contests, Earthworm Jim was a rather large example of someone who was missing. I'm aware that he is on the level of the "I'm just happy to be in the field" characters, but I love the little guy. He makes far better fodder to the elites than the likes of Ryo Hazuki, Tanner, and Guybrush Threepwood at least. Earthworm Jim, win or lose, is a character that most would find hard-pressed to dislike. Ask yourself, would you rather see another Tanner, or would you like to see Earthworm Jim? Sure he'll lose, but he is one of those characters that we all love to see so much that it isn't about whether he wins or loses. Just seeing him have a moment in the spotlight is more than enough =) I also don't think I'm alone in this sentiment. This match managed a high vote total in comparison to the other matches in the contest, and I don't think that this was solely Mega Man's doing. There was clearly an I Know Earthworm Jim Will Lose But I Love Him To Death And Will Be Certain To Vote For Him Anyway Factor (IKEJWLBILHTDAWBCTVFHAF) at work here. Mega Man may be a good draw, but so is the worm. God Bless the worm. In all seriousness, this was an impressive performance by Mega Man. I just felt the need to rant about how Earthworm Jim kicks ass, because if you didn't know, *now you know*. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1726&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Tidus vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2004 _source: (8)Tidus vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2004 (revid 55804)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 10th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 10th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 1,546 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tidus - 50.44% 48 for - 29 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tidus - 70.06% (23,275 brackets) After nine of the most boring, predictable matches we had ever seen, we *finally* had something to get worked up about. In fact, the first nine matches were so bad that Tidus/Shadow wound up getting far more attention than it would have gotten under normal circumstances. Simply put, the board was desperate for something, *anything*, to get excited about in this contest. Unfortunately, while Tidus/Shadow looks close when looking at the final score, the match was over after the first thirty seconds. Still, the buildup was fun. When looking at the bracket as a whole, there were very few matches that were hard to call from the start, and most of those matches were in the first and second rounds. With the notable exception of Link vs Cloud, and to a lesser extent Mario vs Crono, all of the excitement in this contest came from the tough matches within the first two rounds. And as boring as most of this contest was, we still had our fair share of decent matches. Coming into the contest, the first match that struck everyone as being hard to call was Tidus/Shadow. They were dead even in the 2003 Extrapolated Standings, and given the track record of both characters, convincing arguments could be made on both sides. On Tidus's side, the argument was simple. Tidus is a Square character representing the defining Final Fantasy title for the Playstation 2. Regardless of whether or not he is liked by Square fans, the fact of the matter is that most Final Fantasy characters get their fair share of support. In close matches on this site, Squaresoft has gotten more and more difficult to defeated. This gave Tidus an innate advantage right from the start simply because of his company alliance, and when you factor in that 2003 Tidus would be expected to get 49% against 2003 Sonic -- an improvement of over 7% from the Tidus/Sonic match in 2002 -- the decision was easier to make for many of the people who were having trouble choosing between them. On Shadow's side of things, the typical argument was something along the lines of OMFG TIDUS IS TEH WHINY NOOBUKLAR GNBOOBIE FROM TEH FINL FANTAYZZY ECKS DEE'D TWO'D ADN SHADOW IS TEH BADAZZD CHARACTER FROM TEH SONIUC GAMEZ SHADWO IS SOOO CUL TIDUS IS TEH SUXXOR SHADWO WILL WEEN TEH MATCH LOLOLOLZROX!1!!++@2@!#!!!11!1SHIFTONE!11!11 Amidst all of the Tidus bashing that went on in the days leading up to (and following) the match, intelligent arguments were posed in Shadow's favor. For one, Tidus only managed around 41% on Sonic in 2002. For Tidus to beat Shadow, he would have to rely on Sonic taking a drop in 2003 on top of Shadow being no where near as strong as Sonic in 2004. That's quite the stretch. Secondly, Tidus was a 5 seed in 2003, and may very well have overperformed in his match against Ganondorf due to bracket voting and the "Anyone but Tidus" votes that plague him in every match. The problem with this match is that despite all of the hype it was getting, it wound up not living up to it. Sure the match was decently close when you look at the final score, but everyone who was here during the match knows that the final score is not indicative of how well Tidus truly did during the match. When the poll began, Tidus not only took the early lead, but he owned it. He did so well in the opening sections of the voting block that one could argue that the match was over after the first few minutes. The truly surprising thing about this poll was that Tidus managed to challenge not only Shadow, but the voting demographic. Sega is the undisputed king of the morning vote, yet when the morning vote came around, it failed to save Shadow the Hedgehog from Tidus's onslaught. Tidus not only withstood the day vote, but he didn't miss a beat en route to building a 1700 vote lead 10 hours into the poll. It wasn't until then that Shadow began fighting back, but by this time, the Sega morning vote that traditionally allows Sega characters to pull out close matches was already gone. Shadow began chipping away at Tidus's lead, but he was doing do during a time period in which other companies dominate the demographic. Shadow was doing a decent job of holding his own after falling behind by so much, but he was relying on the late afternoon and evening votes to help him out. These crowds usually favor Nintendo and Squaresoft respectively, and though Shadow managed to stay 50-50 with Tidus from the time Tidus went up by 1700 all the way until the end of the poll, Shadow did not have nearly enough of his own demographic assisting him in order to make any serious run at winning the match. Tidus taking a 1700 vote lead with the aid of the day vote that was supposed to go to Shadow decided the match right then and there, but that didn't stop the constant stream of OMFG SHADOW IS COMING BACK topics every time he took three votes off of the lead. Despite Shadow's best efforts to make some noise in the poll, all he managed to do was take 14 hours to cut all of 150 votes off of Tidus's lead of 1700. This was somewhat decent for board drama, but it meant nothing to Tidus. He had the match won after 10 hours when he took Shadow's day vote away from him. In the fallout from all of this, I do have a lot of respect for Shadow's strength after seeing what he managed to do in this poll. He may have lost the day vote, and because of this the match itself, but Shadow's ability to hold his own with Tidus for the final 14 hours of the poll was interesting. During a time period where Square usually dominates, Shadow the Hedgehog managed to take Tidus's evening and night vote away from him. Tidus could have very easily gone on to win this match by over 4000 votes, but Shadow held his own and went down fighting. It's hard to say anything bad about a character who takes his opponent's strength from him, and for Shadow, that meant holding his own during the evening vote. Not bad at all. But on the other side of this, this also means that Tidus deserves some respect for taking Shadow's day vote from him. Tidus failing to do well during his own voting block surely meant a collapse in the next round, but at least Tidus managed a victory in a close match this year unlike his near-miss against Ganondorf last year. To this day, I am convinced that Tidus would get the respect he deserves if he managed to take down Ganondorf and/or Shadow last year. After all of that, even though Mega Man was bound to kill the winner anyway, we finally had a match that gave us some excitement. It wasn't much, but at least we had a reason to refresh the poll every 2 seconds for a time. The characters themselves may have failed to have the match we were hoping for, but as characters, it is a true shame that they have such \*\*\*\*y voice actors. Tidus, despite popular belief, is not a bad character. He is the first Final Fantasy lead since Terra (and to a lesser extent, Zidane) to have emotions that we as players can actually relate to. It's nice to see Cloud and Squall rip everything to shreds whenever they see fit, but we can't do that in real life. I like how we get to see Tidus mature from an immature little kid to a man right in front of our eyes throughout the game. Part of the reason why I think people dislike Tidus so much is because a lot of people act the same way he does. They can't handle some of the bad things that happen to them, and instead of being a man about it, they whine for help until someone offers to hold their hand and guide them. Hating Tidus is more a reverse catharsis than it is Tidus not being a good character. And while the laughing/lake scenes were atrocious, there are quite a number of interaction scenes between the leads of Final Fantasy 7/8/9 and the secondary female characters that are equally painful to watch, yet you don't hear a lot of complaining about them. Odd coincidence. Tidus isn't a bad character; people are simply very close-minded. Shadow's case is far easier to analyze. For all intents and purposes, Shadow has been in all of two games: Sonic Adventure 2: Battle and Sonic Heroes. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that Sonic Heroes doesn't exist. Shadow appears in one good game, and despite having a horrible voice actor in the one decent game he appears in, Shadow still finds a way to be as strong as he in these contests. Even more impressive is the fact that Shadow is constantly working against the brackets to do what he does. Despite being bashed by even some of the most loyal Sonic fans out there, only appearing in one good game, and suffering from a case of the Gordon Freeman Herpes, Shadow still manages to pump out solid numbers every year. He was the underdog against Wario, SA2:B didn't even make the Spring Contest, and he was the overwhelming underdog against Tidus. And he still manages to do well. **Conclusion**: Rape, muder, pillage, lie, cheat, steal, harass, annoy, bribe..... whatever, just do whatever it takes to convince Cam Clarke to do the voice acting for Shadow the Hedgehog. With a proper voice actor and some more exposure, Shadow could do some serious damage in this contest. The fact that he continues to perform despite no one knowing who he is means that we have some serious potential here. If Sega plays their cards right (an oxymoron, I know), then Shadow could not only be a force in the contest, but he may also help the Sonic franchise to become mainstream again. It's clear that Sonic's glory days were in the 2D era, but with proper marketing and a few legendary games, that could all change. The fact that more people thought Alucard and Pac Man had a chance at upsetting Ganondorf and Luigi respectively needs to change. Of all the new characters created in this era, only Auron, Tidus, and Shadow come off to me as having any real chance at causing damage in this contest in five years, with Shadow having the brightest future of the three. Hopefully, Sega does not waste this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1727&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Tommy Vercetti vs (12)Max Payne 2004 _source: (5)Tommy Vercetti vs (12)Max Payne 2004 (revid 55806)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 11th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 11th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 18,618 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tommy Vercetti - 66.04% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tommy Vercetti - 76.02% (25,255 brackets) With all of the failures that Max Payne has had in contests past, the 2004 contest could have very well been his last stand to see if he deserves to be here. This is the guy whose track record includes victories over Dirk the Daring and Gordon Freeman, and a loss to Scorpion. This year, Max Payne was stuck in a first round match against a fellow Rockstar character in Tommy Vercetti. In other words, for Max Payne to avoid getting blown out of the field altogether, he had to avoid Rockstar SFF against the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City mainstay. Max Payne may not have won this match, but he more than proved that he belongs in the field. Not only did Max Payne avoid getting blown out of the water, not only did Max Payne avoid suffering SFF, but Max Payne overperformed by 4.5%! Plug 2003 Xst numbers into the \[(CvA)/(BvA)\]\*50 = CvB formula, and Max Payne was expected to get 33.68% on Vercetti in this match without SFF. Make of this what you will, but if Max Payne can avoid being SFF'd to hell by his fellow Rockstar teammate, and perform far better than he was projected to, then he'll always have a place as one of the more loveable losers of this contest. His fanbase is clearly large and loyal enough to keep him in the field, and when he can do this much better than expected, he belongs. His matches are always boring, but it's hard to argue against him being in the field. As for Tommy Vercetti, can you guys believe how far he has fallen since last year? When the Summer 2003 bracket was first released, Vercetti was supposed to be able to ride Vice City's coattails all the way to a massive performance. Since then, Vercetti has been on a constant spiral downward, to the point where he can not only fail to grab SFF against Max Payne, but to the point where he can do 4.5% worse than expected. Blame whatever you wish, but when you go from being as hyped as he was in a near-loss to Donkey Kong to an underperformance against Max Payne, you have some problems. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1728&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Zero vs (13)Protoman 2004 _source: (4)Zero vs (13)Protoman 2004 (revid 55808)_ ## Results Thursday, August 12th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 12th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 35,324 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 68.78% 77 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 86.41% (28,706 brackets) It's easy to blame CJayC for stacking the 20XX Division's first half in order to give us SFF matches involving Mega Man, but unlike the SFF in the Hyrule Division, the SFF in the 20XX division wasn't nearly as boring to watch. Sure we all knew the outcomes of the match as easily as we did in the Hyrule Division, but the "fodder" in 20XX was far more fun to see in action. Protoman is one such example. This match was very hard for a lot of Mega Man fans, simply because it is difficult to decide who to vote for. Zero may be Mega Man's rival/friend/badassed companion in the Mega Man X series, but Protoman was around while Zero was still being put together. Protoman simply reeks of badass. His theme kicks ass, his character models kick ass, his match pic kicked ass (and was better than Zero's pic, I might add), and any part that he had in all of the games in the main Mega Man series kicked ass. I challenge any Mega Man fan to play through Mega Man 3 or Mega Man 7 and tell me afterwards that Protoman sucks as a character. It takes a little work to figure out what to do in Mega Man 7, but still, that isn't the point. Protoman, unlike some other characters destined for a first round loss in this contest, was a character whose appearance in this contest was warranted despite his actual performance. We need a bracket in which all 64 characters can say the same thing about themselves. I also need to tip my hat off to Zero here. Sure he may be somewhat of the "Protoman" of the Mega Man X series, but there is a reason that Zero owned this match in the way that he did. The Mega Man X series, aside from being quite the challenge in early installments, features a character in Zero who does everything that Protoman does, only much, much better. It may have been hard for some Mega Man fans to decide who to vote for, but for everyone else, the choice was simple. Zero didn't do better than Aeris against Sonic last year for no reason, and when the dust settled from this match, Zero managed to pull in almost 72% of the vote in a match that saw over 81000 total votes. No easy task. I simply hope that Protoman doesn't go the way of Raiden. Raiden could be a decent, well-desrving mid-carder in these contests, yet because of one first round SFF blowout, Raiden did not return to the field this year. Despite what these results may show, Protoman deserves to be here. Hopefully he returns. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1729&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Frog vs (11)Liquid Snake 2004 _source: (6)Frog vs (11)Liquid Snake 2004 (revid 88821)_ ## Results Friday, August 13th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 13th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 93 - **Oracle Expectations:** Frog - 61.76% 76 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Frog - 44.33% (14,727 brackets) I barely even know where to start on this one. Due in large part to creativename's sig during the entire 2003 offseason, Frog gathered a lot of board support by the time the nomination page opened up. CJayC even mentioned "a strong fan drive" that got Frog into the field this year. Okay, so most of the board nominated Frog, and we wound up in the field. That's nice. What followed after Frog's acceptance into the contest was one of the greatest epics ever seen in these polls. Frog vs Liquid Snake was wound up being what we were hoping to see from Tidus vs Shadow, and the best part of it all is that this match hit us from well out in left field. Coming into this contest, Frog was expected to dominate a fourpack consisting of Frog, Liquid Snake, Master Chief, and Crash Bandicoot with ease. After all, Crono has been taking names in every contest, and the belief is that due to Crono's performances, Chrono Trigger itself has gotten more popular. Chrono Trigger itself getting into the finals of the Spring Contest certainly helps the claim. As the match drew closer, a couple of people mentioned that Liquid Snake could very well make a run at the match, and most of them were laughed at. Aren't unexpected close matches fun to watch? In the very beginning of the poll, Frog jumped out to the early lead, but instead of letting Frog run away with the poll with ease, Liquid Snake soon fought back. Liquid began chipping away at Frog's percentage fairly quickly, though in terms of the vote gap, Frog managed to hold his own. Frog eventually recovered from Liquid's small push and began building his lead again. However, with every small push that Frog made, Liquid managed to hold his own and avoid being rolled over. Despite the fact that Frog retained control of the poll throughout the first few hours, Liquid constantly made small pushes at Frog's slim lead of only a few hundred as if to let everyone know that the match was far from being over. Despite all of Frog's efforts during the early vote and the morning vote to put Liquid Snake away, he failed to do so. Despite all of Frog's best efforts, the biggest lead that he was able to manage was **460** votes. That's it. It was at this point that the day vote kicked in, and it was at this point that Liquid decided to make a move of his own. Anyone who has been following these contests knows that the day vote is never kind to Chrono Trigger. Crono, Magus, and even Chrono Trigger itself in the spring all managed to suffer during the day vote. And this is where all of Frog's problems began. If characters like Crono and Magus had problems during the day vote, then how could Frog, who is a very distant third in terms of the most popular characters in the game in the first place, avoid the same problems? As the day vote began, Liquid Snake began making a push of his own. Frog's 460 vote lead soon started getting smaller and smaller, and even though Liquid never managed any massive, constant pushes on Frog's lead, he still kept a slow, methodical pace. As Liquid constantly used the day vote against Frog, the best thing that Frog was able to manage was to occasionally stall Liquid's advance. But even then, Liquid kept managing to chip away at Frog's lead. Frog tried as hard as he could to fight back, but by the time the evening rolled around, Liquid proved to be too much for him. Much like the Chrono Trigger/Link to the Past match in the spring, the match between Frog and Liquid Snake was tied before the evening rolled around. The typical evening demographic favors Square, but Liquid seemed to care less about this. Much like the Chrono Trigger/Link to the Past match in the spring, Frog and Liquid Snake defied any and all voting patterns in the dogfight that was to follow. For the next few hours of the poll, Frog and Liquid Snake went at it like animals (bad pun, I know =p). For every small push that Liquid made, Frog was able to counter and keep the match close. Every time one character looked like he was going to pull away and begin building a lead in the match, the other character was able to counter and pull the match even again. This match was unlike CT/LTTP in that during the time that Frog and Liquid were tied, both characters were constantly making pushes to try and separate themselves from the other. In CT/LTTP, Chrono Trigger was the entrant constantly breaking away from its opponent, while LTTP was the one constantly trying to catch up. Frog/Liquid was different. Through the entire evening, there were no subtle hints as to which character would be the one to finally break away and win the poll. The two simply went at it as if they were in a war, and the loser would likely be the first one to blink. Through the entire evening, we were constantly seeing a pattern of one character going ahead by a little bit, with the other character fighting back and refusing to give up. No matter who you were rooting for to win, seeing two characters stay dead even for a time period of several hours was truly a sight to behold. Unfortunately for Liquid Snake however, Frog was the one to finally make a major push at winning the match. As the evening wore on, Frog finally found enough of the evening Square voting pool to draw from, and after a slow push that was similar to the way Frog built his lead in the beginning of the poll, Frog managed to slowly build a lead of 170 by the time 1 AM rolled around. But even still, what happened in the next two hours made Frog's win look very unconvincing. Frog's advance came to an absolute halt at 1 AM, and Liquid Snake, ever the "Why the hell won't you just *die*?" character if there was one, began a desperate final push at Frog's lead. Unfortunately for Liquid, it was too late. There were not enough votes coming in at that point in the poll for him to stage a comeback, and it was clear after an hour that Frog's incoming votes would have to stop altogether in order for Liquid to win the match. Despite all of Liquid's efforts to make a huge push in the match, it soon became clear that it would take a small miracle for him to pull it out. Liquid Snake made a nice push in the final two hours of the poll, but the only thing that there was to root for was for the vote difference in the match to be as close as possible. It was clear that Liquid wasn't going to win, but at least he has a place on the "Closest Matches of All Time" list. A 93 vote difference is nothing to sneeze at, and you only have to wonder if things could have been different had Liquid started his final push an hour earlier. Another thought to ponder is how this match would have turned out had Liquid started his day vote comeback an hour or two earlier. The problem in analyzing this match is that both characters were brand new to the field when coming into it. There are a lot of ways to look at how each character did, though a majority opinion was reached when looking at them both in a positive and negative light. - **Chrono Trigger spoilers**\* \- - - - First, look at Frog. It was nice that he got into the field, but when you look at him as a character, it's very easy to argue that Frog doing well in this poll was little more than him leeching off the popularity of Crono, Magus, and Chrono Trigger as a whole. Frog's entire character is based off of Magus. Frog's best friend was killed by Magus, and Frog himself was turned into a frog in the process. This is tragic for the little guy, but the way he handled it was pathetic. He did little more than sit down in his little hole whining about his fate all the time. When you meet him, he whines about how how powerless he is. He is always toying with whether or not he should join the party, but no matter how much you try to help him, he constantly goes back into his little hole to whine about everything. As events progress, you learn that the only way to defeat Magus is with the Masamune, and you also learn that Frog is the only character who can wield the sword. So naturally, given that Frog can do little more for himself but sit and whine in his little hole, you have to go find the Masamune parts and get the sword fixed for him. But that's fine, right? Given that Frog was such a pain in the ass to get in your party in the first place, he surely has a positive effect when you finally get him in your party for good. After all, he must have some huge in-battle secret that has been hidden for all this time, right? Yeah, the secret is that Frog absolutely sucks in battle. He is outdone physically by three other characters, and his most powerful spell is Water 2. The only way for Frog to be of any use whatsoever is for him to constantly be in critical status so that Frog Drop may cause damage. You can also commit Frog to using Dual Techs, but then you're wasting the turns of other characters when they would likely be better off doing damage for themselves. But all that being said, Frog's attitude once Magus joins your party is priceless. Instead of growing some manlihood and trying to understand Magus's past, as well as his intentions, Frog does nothing more than sit there like a ball of snot and keep to himself about everything. Later in the story, Magus's entire past is laid out in front of you, and Frog still acts like a selfish ball of snot about everything. All he cared about was a duel with Magus. That's it. He's a bad character with little to no development at all, and he sucks in battle. If he isn't a prime example of someone who did well in the contest because of leeching, I don't know what is. - **Metal Gear Solid spoilers**\* \- - - - Liquid Snake, while clearly a better character than Frog, is equally difficult to look at. There is no way to tell whether or not Liquid is weaker than Solid by a great deal, whether or not he comes close to Solid, whether or not he leeches off of Solid, or whether or not Liquid's stock went up simply due to bracket voting. If you noticed, over half of all brackets had Liquid Snake winning this match. If for nothing else, this proves that Liquid has more mainstream exposure than Frog does. And while Frog is busy pulling his best Alice In Chains impersonation (they have a song called "Down in a Hole", for those who don't listen to them), Liquid Snake takes his unfavorable fate and does something with it. Using a group like FOXHOUND to fit your own desires is not an easy task, and even though Ocelot had his own intentions the entire time, he still managed to assist Liquid in his plot. Liquid Snake was so damned good at what he was doing that despite the fact that he could have theoretically done Solid in whenever he chose, he instead chose to toy with him. This, along with Liquid believing that he was the inferior sibling in the Les Enfants Terrible project, were Liquid's only weaknesses. Had Liquid acted to the fullest extent of his power without believing himself to be inferior, I fully believe that he could have beaten Solid Snake. But regardless of all that, Liquid is clearly the better character than Frog, and comparing the two in battle is pointless. Frog's entire character is very easily summarized, while Liquid's character is being debated among Metal Gear Solid loyalists even today. Why did Liquid believe from the start that he was the inferior sibling, and why did he let this influence his actions? We may never know, and I demand that MWIS get in this topic and give me his opinion on the subject. No matter who you were rooting for in this match, it is clear that some degree of respect needs to be given to both characters. Frog may be leeching off of the characters clearly better than him in Chrono Trigger, but regardless of this, he was still able to have enough power to win the match in the end. And Liquid, complete contest newcomer, managed to put up a fight that would allow this poll to go down as the closest wire-to-wire poll in contest history. It may be a very long time until we see another poll in which the largest gap is 480 votes or less at any point. I tip my hat to Liquid here, because even though he lost, he proved that he can cause some real damage in this contest given a bracket that favors his positioning. Another thing that I believed that this poll helped prove is that Liquid may very well be close to Solid Snake in popularity. It's hard to believe that both Liquid and Frog could be all that far away from him. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Board 8’s hero of the year in 2004 was Frog. Probably the board's most-nominated character, Frog had a huge push and a plethora of hype to get him into the contest. Most people figured he was a lock to take his four-pack, which consisted of Master Chief, Crash Bandicoot, and his first-round opponent, Liquid Snake. Well, this was Liquid’s inaugural year as well, and if there’s one thing Liquid Snake does not do, villains contest withstanding, it’s roll over and die. Frog got off the ground to a good lead, but Liquid kept cutting and cutting into said lead until the match became totally debatable. In the end, Frog does what Frog does best and made a huge push to victory. Funny thing is, this wouldn’t be Frog’s last debatable match that year – his match against Master Chief in Round Two was more of the same, and his match against Snake in Round Three was a fluke of Tifa/Samus proportions. Weird guy, that Frog. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1730&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Master Chief vs (14)Crash Bandicoot 2004 _source: (3)Master Chief vs (14)Crash Bandicoot 2004 (revid 64110)_ ## Results Saturday, August 14th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 14th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 31,917 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 63.90% 76 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Master Chief - 76.58% (25,441 brackets) Is it possible to have a bigger fall from grace than Crash Bandicoot? Here we have a guy who has gone from being a 2 seed in 2002 to being not just fodder in 2004, but fodder to an Xbox character. Master Chief's stock in this contest has a very bright future, but seeing anything remotely related to the Xbox score 70% in any poll whatsoever on this site means that the loser of such a poll, Crash Bandicoot in this case, needs to get out of the contest and make way for someone more deserving. No one cares about 3D platformer characters anymore, and it showed in this match. Some people might not like Master Chief, but it seems that no one likes Crash Bandicoot anymore. Easiest analysis ever =) There was one interesting note to be drawn from this poll. While Frog was busy having the fight of his life against Liquid Snake, Master Chief was on cruise control here against Crash. Whether or not this meant the end of Xbox hate was yet to be determined, as was whether Halo's success had anything to do with Master Chief doing so well, but one thing we know for sure is that the Frog/Master Chief match looked mighty interesting after this day was done. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1731&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Kefka vs (10)Knuckles the Echidna 2004 _source: (7)Kefka vs (10)Knuckles the Echidna 2004 (revid 80283)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, August 15th, 2004 - **Division:** 20XX - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 15th, 2004 - **Vote Difference:** 12,358 - **Oracle Expectations:** Knuckles - 60.99% 71 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Knuckles the Echidna - 44.33% (14,302 brackets) \|- ## Ulti's Analysis Don't let the final score of this match fool you. Knuckles was in quite a bit of trouble in this match for quite a long time. Coming into this poll, Knuckles was expected to break 60% on Kefka with absolute ease based off of 2003 numbers. When you factor in that both Luigi/Pac Man and Crono/Conker shoot down the theory of Crono/Kefka SFF in 2003, there was little reason to believe that Knuckles wouldn't be able to steamroll Kefka in this poll. Most of the people who follow stats already knew this, and anyone who dared bring up how they felt Kefka had a chance was laughed at. But as the poll began, we were all shocked to see that Kefka was not only holding his own, but building a lead as well. Despite the Lettuce Kefka match pic, the fact that Knuckles was the overwhelming favorite on the board, and despite the fact that Knuckles was expected to break 60%, not just win, based off of 2003 stats, the board caught fire during the first few hours of this poll. Kefka's lead was relatively small -- around 130 votes at the most, if I recall -- but despite every attempt that Knuckles made to take Kefka's lead away, Kefka held his own and hung on tightly for the first few hours. The board was fun to watch during this time, but after the Sega morning vote kicked in, Knuckles began doing what he was expected to do right from the start. Knuckles not only came back against Kefka with ease, but he made a massive push at the poll and never looked back. Still, Knuckles put forth a very disappointing performance despite recovering from his early setback. The entire theory of Crono/Kefka SFF in 2003 started coming up again, and whether or not it truly existed was the hot topic for the entire match. Personally, I don't think this match proves that there was any SFF during Crono/Kefka at all. Take a look at the prediction percentage for this match. Well over 55% of brackets thought that Kefka was going to win this match despite Knuckles' past performances in this contest. There is also the Lettuce vs Enchilada factor; lettuce is far easier on the stomach than enchiladas for many people. Kefka getting the lettuce pic, in all seriousness, may have helped him get a large amount of the early support in the match. When you pair that with the bracket voters, it isn't hard to imagine Kefka taking the early lead. When you add all that to the people who fill out their brackets under the "Square characters always win close matches" clause, Kefka's performance doesn't come with as big a surprise factor as it did when we were all watching the poll in the first place. Something caused all of those people to go with Kefka, and it certainly couldn't have been last year's performance against Pac Man. Square could very well be on the rise in these contests, and thanks to the fact that Final Fantasy 6 has mainstream appeal on this site, Kefka could very well have been one of the recipients. Crono/Kefka SFF in no guarantee simply because of this one match. I just feel that Kefka was an anomaly in the stats, and Knuckles helped prove my theory in the next round. Knuckles may be the weakest character to win a match in all three contests, but maybe this is because he's always stuck against Snake in the second round? Just a thought. ## Stats and Analysis This match provided some interesting debate before the contest. Though Knuckles had more contest success, Kefka was the 7 seed to Knuckles' 10. Kefka was coming off of an embarrassing near-loss to Pac-Man, while Knuckles was smarting from another Snake loss, and set to suffer another. Before the match, we all learned that Lettuce Kefka would make his reappearance, leading to groaning across the board, who genuinely wanted Kefka to do well. Kefka opened this match up with a bang, hanging onto a 100+ vote lead. But it only took half an hour for Knuckles to cut up this lead. During a war of attrition that lasted 3 hours, Knuckles finally got the lead himself, but his margin increased very slowly. After 3 hours, the lead started to increase more, and by morning, Knuckles had taken Kefka out of the match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1732) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Solid Snake vs (15)Tanner 2004 _source: (2)Solid Snake vs (15)Tanner 2004 (revid 85060)_ ## Results Monday, August 16th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 16th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 69,759 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 85.77% 78 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 97.27% (32,314 brackets) Before this match, the two biggest examples of loser we ever had were Mr. Driller and Adventure. Adventure held the record for the lowest voting output, while Mr. Driller was considered the weakest character we ever had in the field. In one 24 hour time period, this all changed. Solid Snake is a great character and all, but the only way for him to ever score 90% on someone is if they absolutely suck. Snake didn't just score 90, but he came damned close to hitting 95%. This says virtually nothing of Solid Snake's strength, but it says everything about just how much Tanner sucks. How much does Tanner suck, you ask? The aforementioned Mr. Driller and Adventure could each score well over 60% on him. Take a good look at the 2003 Extrapolated standings. Every character above and including Tails could score 80% on him. *Tails* could score 80 percent! But what's worse than all that is the fact that Gordon Freeman could look at Tanner, call *him* a fucking loser, and not sound like a hypocrite. When Gordon Freeman, the man who genuinely tries to lose every match he is involved with, can score over 80% on you, then you know you suck. I love Solid Snake as much as anyone else, but he simply is not strong enough to score 90% in any match, and he's barely good enough to even break 80. Solid Snake was simply the benefactor of squaring off against the worst entrant we have ever had in one of these contests. To think that Tanner was seeded higher than Starcraft is a mockery. Danny Tanner from Full House could probably do better than Tanner did in this match. Tanner got into this contest for one reason, and one reason only. Remember Driv3r? Tanner stars in it, and it was released right smack in the middle of the nomination period. As much of a joke as Tanner is, the Driv3r games have all sold in the millions. Given how many characters are given support during the nomination period, it wouldn't take all too many people to allow Tanner to sneak in above the rest. But I swear, if Tanner somehow manages to sneak back into the field next year, it's time to start hunting down the users who nominate him and allow a perfectly good contest slot to not be used on more deserving characters like Mewtwo, Zelda, Aeris, Geno, Rikku, or even Raiden, Sigma, Dr. Wily, and/or Shion. Anyone but Tanner. I'm not trying to take away from Solid Snake here, because it's nice seeing him do this well in any match; however, something is seriously wrong when Solid Snake can score 90% in any poll. He simply isn't that strong, as his future matches would prove. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis 2004 may have sucked in a lot of ways, but one thing it did give us was plenty of hilarious blowout matches. I’d never thought it possible that there so many different types of blowouts, but 2004 had all of them, and more. But only a select few reach the level of being entertaining, and only a few of that group are classics. Snake vs. Tanner is easily up there with the funniest contest matches I’ve ever seen. The formula is so elegant: put probably the strongest character least likely to get anti-votes against the most generic character imaginable. The result? Over 95% victory. This debacle of a match was the whole reason for the Jay Solano rally (and the reason why Mr. Solano has a Wikipedia page!) – who can we find that’s possibly weaker than Tanner? Whenever you see a new character nobody’s heard of in these contests that’s doomed to failure, they’re “Neo-Tanner.” Tanner reached such high levels of suckitude that he’s doomed to rank last in the all-time Xstats, perhaps forever. Yet his legacy lives on in the hearts of every generic, fodderific protagonist with a gun and a crew cut. Godspeed, Tanner. Godspeed. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1733&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)Duke Nukem 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)Duke Nukem 2004 (revid 55818)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 17th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 17th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 53,705 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 85.32% 70 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 97.97% (32,547 brackets) Cloud *was* supposed to get upwards of 82% in this match, but after Duke Nukem's picture was put on a milk carton for the match pic, how could you not vote for him? It was one of the single biggest acts of genius ever seen in the contests, and Duke rode the humor all the way to pulling an early lead against the Summer 2003 champion. It didn't last long of course, but seeing Duke benefit from having such a great match picture was fun to see, even if it only lasted a few seconds. Cloud went on to do quite well against Duke, and even managed to break 80% by the time all was said and done. However, Cloud did end up underperforming by over 2%. Whether this could be attributed to the milk pic or a genuine underperformance remained to be seen at this point, but if you extrapolated the strength of Cloud and Link after their first round matches, Link would be expected to win with around 53% of the vote. It could easily be argued that Cloud not matching Link's level could be blamed on the match pic of Cloud's opponent, but theoretically, what would happen if Cloud underperformed, or did nothing more but meet standard expectations at best, while Link did better than expected in every single match? It may not have been something to watch after one round, but as the contest progressed, comparisons between Cloud and Link could not be helped. After all, the only character who had even a remote chance of stopping Cloud was Sephiroth, and there was literally no one on Link's side of the bracket that could touch him. If this contest wasn't all about Link/Cloud beforehand, it was painfully obvious that it was all about the two after this match. Cloud may have underperformed by 2%, but the fact of the matter is that he still scored 80% on a character who is able to get in the second round in many cases. No easy task. It was easy to still defend Cloud after this match, but would the same be possible as the contest progressed? We would see. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1734&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Vyse vs (9)Laharl 2004 _source: (8)Vyse vs (9)Laharl 2004 (revid 55820)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 18th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 18th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 14,072 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vyse - 56.04% 66 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vyse - 66.71% (22,162 brackets) As much as I hate admitting this, this match was nothing more than two cult characters going at it. TRANSLATION: Both characters suck in a contest setting, and we had to sit through a crapfest from the opening bell all the way until 3 AM. I love Laharl more than most people, and it would have been nice to see him win, but it was somewhat obvious that he didn't have much of a chance in this match. Vyse had everything going for him coming in. He was in the contest last year, so he has already had exposure in one of these contests. Skies of Arcadia made the Spring Contest, while Disgaea was busy sitting on the sidelines despite being one of the site's most popular new games between this year and last year. Vyse is also the main character in a decent little series, while Laharl, who is kickass in his own right, stars in a game that most people have never played. Vyse even had the indifferent/bracket voters going for him. When it comes to two characters that most people care about, the tendency is to go with who you're familiar with, hence because Vyse was in the contest last year, more of the people who could care less about either character would have gone with Vyse. When it came times to vote, Vyse also had a similar advantage. Put two things in front of any group of 100 people, and over half of them will always choose the first option. The first option in this poll happened to be Vyse. Of course you could just say that Vyse was going to win because he has more exposure than Laharl, but what's the point in covering everything in one sentence? =) As the match begun, it was clear that Vyse was going to have no problems winning the match, and by the end of it, Laharl failed to even break 40% on a character who was blown out by Donkey Kong. I love Laharl to death, but if this is the best he can do, then it might be better if he gave up his contest spot to someone who would be able to go down with respect. Imagine having to choose between Vyse and Mewtwo, for example. It would be much harder than this match. Another interesting note is that Team Rocket Elite, who was in first place on the leaderboard from day one in this contest, picked Laharl to win this match. His little run at the top (sadly) came to an end after this match =( But I take solace in two facts, however. One, 1/3 of all people chose Laharl to win this match. That surely means that I'm not the only one out there who thinks that Laharl is one of the single greatest characters ever conceived. Two, Laharl may suck in contests, but even he could blow the holy hell out of Danny Tanner. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1735&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Kirby vs (12)Kain 2004 _source: (5)Kirby vs (12)Kain 2004 (revid 55822)_ ## Results Thursday, August 19th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 19th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 23,576 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 64.13% 69 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 74.21% (24,653 brackets) That isn't Kain from Final Fantasy 4 up there, folks. That's Kain from the Legend of Kain series. Since Raziel stunk it up for two straight contests, CJayC threw Kain into the mix instead of taking out the Soul Reaver clan completely. Nominations may have also played a part in this, but honestly, who knows. The Soul Reaver clan on the whole has yet to do squat in these contests, and honestly, wouldn't Strider have more of a place here than either Kain or Raziel? Strider took down Raziel in 2002, after all. Regardless, whether it be Kain or Raziel wasting a contest slot, it's still wasting a slot that could be used on a more deserving character. Kain almost got doubled up by Kirby in this match, and even though Kirby kicks ass, he isn't the type of character who is strong enough to be able to do this in most cases. What gets me is the popularity of the Legacy of Kain series as a whole. Kirby's low prediction percentage, as well as Kain getting 35% in the first place, would suggest that the series has its fair share of fans, and because of this we may unfortunately be stuck watching Kain and/or Raziel getting their asses handed to them every year. I've played Soul Reaver, and I honestly don't get what the big deal is. It came off to me as having the gameplay of a vampiric Zelda more than anything, but it wasn't nearly as well-done. In the end, we had another ho-hum match in a contest that had been ho-hum as a whole. With the exception of two matches, virtually every match in the contest was like this. The winner was obvious, the match was boring to watch, and a shakeup was not only becoming a hope, but a necessity. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1736&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Squall Leonhart vs (13)Bomberman 2004 _source: (4)Squall Leonhart vs (13)Bomberman 2004 (revid 55824)_ ## Results Friday, August 20th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 20th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 23,943 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 71.00% 68 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 79.82% (26,517 brackets) In 2002, Jill Valentine went through Kirby and Bomberman in order to reach the Sweet 16, with Kane from Command and Conquer being the odd man out. In 2003, Bomberman and Kirby got stuck in a fourpack with Alucard and Ramza, with Alucard being the one to go through both Bomerman and Kirby. Ramza was the weakest link, and he was left out. In 2004, we have more of the same. Bomberman and Kirby are both thrown into the same fourpack as a character who is clearly stronger than both of them (Squall), and a contest newbie who is clearly weaker (Kain). I don't know if this is a running gag or what, but at least it fits. In all three contests, we have had a character go through Bomberman and Kirby en route to the Sweet 16. However this year, the character who was the benefactor of this position -- Squall in this case -- was royally screwed over. Squall deserved far better a reward for upending Jill Valentine and Luigi last year than being stuck in a company-based bracket in which his fate would be to get his ass mercilessly beaten all over the place by Cloud in the third round. In a better bracket, people could have underestimated or overestimated the holy hell out of Squall. In this bracket, his role was all to clear. Beat up the weaker characters, then take the expected loss to Cloud. But more on that later in the contest. Based off of 2003 numbers, Bomberman was only projected to get 30.88% on Squall in this match. He did nearly 5% better than what he was projected to, which bodes a few questions about the Final Fantasy 8 lead. First off, what was going on here? How could Squall return back to his 2002 level while characters such as Link, Cloud, and eventually Sephiroth, were all performing up to their current standards? Did Squall take a drop between last year and this year, or was it possible that Luigi and Jill were simply far weaker than what we first anticipated? Whether Squall truly took a dive or not remained to be seen, but if this had anything whatsoever to do with the Kingdom Hearts Factor wearing off, then this could only mean good news for Link. It was nice seeing Bomberman doing so well, but to see a match off by almost 5% of the original projection with little to no reasons is very odd. Personally, I think that Luigi and Jill Valentine are simply far weaker than everyone thought after the 2002 contest, and that Squall looked stronger in 2003 than he truly is. Take creativename's 2004 Xsts as an example. Despite Squall's underperformance against Bomberman, 2004 numbers project Luigi getting 38.81% against Squall, and they project Jill Valentine to get a mere 34.89%. Squall's aura of power had little to do with Squall being that good on his own. Luigi and Jill simply made him look that way. I'm not saying Squall did nothing on his own, but when he can take an appeared dive in 2004 yet be projected to blow away some of his 2003 numbers regardless, it puts the strength of his opponents, not Squall himself, into question. For all we know, Squall may very well have remained constant across all three contests. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1737&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Ness vs (11)Jak 2004 _source: (6)Ness vs (11)Jak 2004 (revid 55826)_ ## Results Saturday, August 21st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 21st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 7,397 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ness - 50.18% 43 for - 26 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ness - 54.16% (17,992 brackets) This match was the perfect example of an overrated, overhyped dud. When the bracket first came out, this match was one of the few that was heavily debated before hand. The question, of course, is why? One of the many running themes in this contest was that few people will vote for 3D platformer characters despite the games all selling well, and Jak fit into that mold very well. Because of Ness and Earthbound not having a good contest history, Ness was unfairly treated like a joke coming into this match. There are only two matches that you needed to look at in 2003 in order to make a solid prediction in Ness/Jak: Luigi vs Ratchet, and Bowser vs Ness. Bowser is much stronger than Luigi is, yet Luigi's percentage on Ratchet came very close to what Bowser's percentage was on Ness. For Luigi to have such a close percentage to Bowser, he would have to have faced an opponent much weaker than Ness. If that wasn't a blatant hint as to how Ness/Jak would go, then there was one other number of interest. *Assuming no Bowser/Ness SFF*, Jak would need to be able to beat Ratchet with at least 60% of the vote to be considered as strong as Ness. If you add in the possibility of Bowser/Ness SFF, that number gets much higher. Yet despite all of this, the Jak supporters on the board remained strong in their beliefs that Jak's mainstream exposure, Jak and Daxter's sales, and Ness's cult status would equal a win for Jak. I, like many others, had the belief that Ness's cult status didn't matter. Mainstream voters don't vote in our polls; we do. The average person might not know who Ness is, but most of the people who visit GameFAQs -- a site that favors console RPGs above all other genres -- are hardcore gamers. And most hardcore gamers know who Ness is, be it from Earthbound or the Smash Brothers series. When the poll started, Ness jumped out to a quick 1000 vote lead, and after the early morning vote kept the vote margin tied at 1000 for a time, the day vote favored Ness. He caught fire during that time, and rode the momentum all the way to a 55-45 blowout. I call this a blowout simply because if you went by board polls and/or BOP numbers, this poll was supposed to be dead even. The reality is that many people underestimated Ness simply because Ness, as well as Earthbound itself, bombed in past contests. But like I've said in every match involving them, no one cares about 3D platformer characters anymore. Jak is just another 3D platformer to this site, and he is no exception to the trend. His games may have sold well, but so did Tanner's. And Tanner is still trying to pull little pieces of shrapnel out of his skin over in the corner. The fate of Ness may have been little more than getting killed by Auron in round two, but it was nice to actually see him win a match. Ness isn't the type of character who deserves to be treated like a joke. Save that for the likes of Gordon Freeman and Tanner =) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1738&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (14)Scorpion 2004 _source: (3)Auron vs (14)Scorpion 2004 (revid 55828)_ ## Results Sunday, August 22nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 22nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 26,744 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 61.73% 70 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 70.14% (23,301 brackets) No one really knew what to expect of this match, except that most people knew that Auron would win with ease. The question, of course, was by how much. Scorpion was projected to score 43.06% on Auron going by the 2003 numbers, so naturally, a lot of questions can obviously be raised after seeing that Auron not only beat his projected percentage, but blew it away completely. Any one of a hundred reasons could be blamed for this, but I think that two stand out from the rest. First and foremost, it could easily be argued that Auron suffered a good deal of SFF against Cloud in 2003. The 2003 Xsts are currently unadjusted for SFF, so Auron may look far weaker than he truly is based off of 2003 numbers. But if this were true, then this would mean that Tails would have to be stronger than expected as well. Since this was not possible to know at the time (Tails had not yet had his match), this was merely a speculation. Secondly, Scorpion went down in strength from 2002 to 2003 despite having Deadly Alliance released in the time period between the contests. To my knowledge, Scorpion appeared in no games between 2003 and 2004. With that in mind, what reason could there be to believe that he didn't take another fall in strength? If he can go down despite a new game, there is little reason to believe that he wouldn't go down while appearing in nothing. It's quite possible that Auron's performance was a combination of Cloud/Auron SFF as well as Scorpion's weakness as well, but as the contest progressed, it became clear that it was more a Cloud/Auron SFF factor than it was the strength, or lack thereof, of the two characters in the match. **Summary**: Everyone knew Auron was going to win this match, but Auron doing as well as he did suddenly made Tails look like he could very well take down the heavily favored Viewtiful Joe in their match later on in the contest. Auron looked pretty damned strong after this match, but a certain match with Ness would throw all of this into question later. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1739&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2004 _source: (7)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2004 (revid 55830)_ ## Results Monday, August 23rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 23rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 11,105 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vivi - 51.63% 53 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vivi - 35.13% (11,671 brackets) The "instinct" pick for most board members in this particular match was Vivi. After all, Aya Brea pushed Donkey Kong to the brink before the Nintendo day vote saved Donkey Kong's rear way back in 2002. Could Aya Brea of Parasite Eve fame possibly be around Vivi's level in strength? However, it was soon discovered that Donkey Kong had the mathematical advantage, albeit a false one, heading into the match. For starters, no character had a larger weighted gain in percentage from 2002 to 2003 than Donkey Kong himself. The 2003 stats also put Donkey Kong right in the middle of a pack of decent midcarders such as Luigi, Jill Valentine, Master Chief, Tommy Vercetti, Knuckles, and Kirby. If you would have trouble picking the likes of Vivi to take down any of those other characters, then why pick him to beat Donkey Kong? The DK over Vivi upset special was a decent choice, though there were two factors not mentioned in the stats. Donkey Kong may have had the largest weight gain between 2002 and 2003, but this is more because of the massive SFF that DK suffered against Mario in 2002 than anything else. Secondly, the 2003 stats also made DK look stronger than he truly was. DK was in a very close match with Tommy Vercetti, and characters are oftentimes overestimated by the math after having been in a close match. When the match began, DK was only in contention for the first few seconds. Whether or not Vivi was aided by the Black Mage Factor, Final Fantasy 9, or anything else soon became irrelevant as Vivi jumped out to a lead that he would never look back from. A match that was supposedly going to be close turned into a surprise spanking, and given what Vivi was up against, his win was all the more impressive. Until this match, Donkey Kong had never lost in the first round of a contest. Furthermore, despite FF9 having been out since 2002, Vivi did not get the support necessary to even be in the field until this year. This match also featured one of the single lowest prediction percentages ever seen for a first round match, thanks to Donkey Kong's icon status in the gaming world being paired with Vivi's niche appeal. Final Fantasy 9 was a good game, but if FF9 alone was the reason Vivi did so well in this match, then Vivi would have been in contests of the past as well. This match was a perfect example of one character's weakness magnifying another character's strength. Donkey Kong, despite his status, has never proven to be reliable whatsoever in these contests. If anything, he is one of Nintendo's weaker links. Everyone knows who he is, but that means nothing when it comes to voting for him above someone else. A certain pill-popping yellow guy can attest to status meaning nothing in contest polls. When this weakness is paired with the fact that Vivi is not just a black mage from Final Fantasy 9, but a black mage period, it is no surprise that Vivi won the match. Besides, even if you hated Final Fantasy 9, you only need to play it for all of 15 minutes to know who Vivi is. And what is Vivi's reward for kicking ass as a first-timer to the field? Being the victim of a company-based bracket. I want to see Vivi in this thing next year so that we can verify his strength. Another conclusion that can be drawn from this match is that the math simply cannot cover everything, but everyone knows that already =) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1740&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sephiroth vs (15)Sly Cooper 2004 _source: (2)Sephiroth vs (15)Sly Cooper 2004 (revid 88822)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 24th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 24th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 65,362 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 87.99% 67 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 97.37% (32,347 brackets) This may be the shortest analysis I make for the entire contest, because not only was Sephiroth's win in this match predetermined, but his route to Cloud himself was predetermined as well. That's the beauty of a company-based bracket. Stick a bunch of characters from the same company in each division, stack the seedings so that you get the matches you want late in the contest, add in a little fodder, and you get a bunch of matches that don't matter. This was one such match. Everyone knew that Sephiroth would win this match in a massacre, and sure enough, that's what happened. Like I've been saying all through the analysis, no one cares about 3D platforming characters. The games sell well, but they simply don't draw in the votes. Period. Sly Cooper, despite a lot of exposure, is just another example of this. Even worse is the fact that because we know for a fact that Sephiroth could easily beat any character he would be projected to face before Cloud, we got to see Sephiroth reduced to starring in matches that don't matter. 2002 was different. We got to see both Mega Man and Samus at least give us a decent show in facing Sephiroth. The Midgar division this year was nothing but a gigantic, obvious setup for Cloud-Sephiroth in the Elite 8. That match was decent enough to set up considering how close they were last year, but why make the earlier rounds suffer? I'm not disrespecting Sly Cooper here, but it was clear that he was nothing but roadkill from the start in this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1741&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (16)Terry Bogard 2004 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (16)Terry Bogard 2004 (revid 55834)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 49,299 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 79.49% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 97.47% (32,381 brackets) Only one thing confuses me about this match. As the match was drawing close, a lot of Terry Bogard fans started making the argument that Terry would be able to score 25% in the match. That makes no sense, if you ask me. 2002 Terry would be projected to get a mere 11.35% on 2002 Sonic. Terry obviously suffers in the 2002 stats from Donkey Kong getting SFF'd to hell against Mario, but either way, expecting Terry Bogard to increase from 11.35% to 25% against a contest elite simply because he was in three games that few people had even heard of before Terry was unexpectedly put into the bracket is a little out there when it comes to theories. Those three games may have been what allowed Terry to get back into the field after his abscence in 2003, but I doubt that his small but dedicated fanbase would allow him to make such a large jump in percentage. As the match progressed, many people were surprised by Sonic pushing the issue and breaking 80%. Am I doing these calculations wrong? Because it seems like Sonic scored around where he would be expected to on an adjusted 2002 Terry Bogard. Either way, it was another predetermined, boring blowout in the contest. One thing that this match symbolized was the coming of the chaos division, which was the one division in the entire contest that had an aura of unpredictability to it from the start. 20XX came close, but the surprise in that division was unexpected. In the Chaos division, there were some matches that were hard to gauge no matter how many calculations were done. For a brief time during this match, the argument could even be made that Sonic had a chance against Samus. Not that this came into fruition, but the argument could at least be made after one Sonic match. Of course, Sonic still had to wait until Samus took the field before truly making an argument for himself. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1742&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)KOS-MOS vs (9)Ryu 2004 _source: (8)KOS-MOS vs (9)Ryu 2004 (revid 55836)_ ## Results Thursday, August 26th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 26th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 20,471 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 60.08% 62 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 70.09% (23,285 brackets) This match was never in question, for the simple fact that both of these characters have a common opponent. Ryu faced Samus in 2002, while KOS-MOS faced Samus in 2003. KOS-MOS gave Ryu a tiny scare in the opening minutes of the poll, but Ryu withstood it and managed to blow the poll wide open in his favor. But we all knew that would happen already. The underlying meaning in this match is that Samus was virtually guaranteed in a spot in the Final Four, assuming you actually believed Sonic could challenge her in the first place. 2003 KOS-MOS would be projected to score 32.09% on 2002 Ryu. As you can see, KOS-MOS beat that projection by almost 6% despite having no new exposure between 2003 and 2004. *Something* changed over the past year, and it doesn't take much to figure out what. 2002 Ryu faced a Samus that only had Metroid, Metroid 2, and Super Metroid on her side. 2003 KOS-MOS had to deal with a Samus fresh off of the duel release of Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime. Because of this, KOS-MOS overshooting her projected output helps show that KOS-MOS faced a much stronger Samus than Ryu had to deal with. When you factor in that the 2003 Xsts don't take SFF into effect, Samus was underestimated by the 2003 stats due to her unaccounted SFF against Link. This left the door open for Samus to drastically increase between 2003 and 2004, and the KOS-MOS/Ryu match was a warning sign that this is exactly what would happen. For some proof, go compare Samus's 2003 expected percentages against Cloud and Squall to her expected 2004 percentages against them. For whatever reason, be it SFF, Metroid Prime/Fusion/Zero Mission taking some time to set in, or Metroid Prime 2 hype, you could tell after one match that Samus went up. It must suck to be Sonic when your entire hope of springing an upset is shot down completely one match after you first take the field. It sucks for KOS-MOS and Ryu that their match helped show Samus's strength more than anything else, but we have reached an age in these contests in which unpredictability is rare, and an age in which we can compare stats across multiple contests to not only predict who can win matches, but by how much. Along those lines, it's difficult to do much else but extend the stats in order to make future predictions. It isn't like we didn't know for a fact that Ryu was going to win this match before it even started or anything. One final note about this match. Sonic was coming off of Sonic Heroes, while Street Fighter Anniversary Collection was to be released just days before Sonic/Ryu. Upset special? Considering how desperate we all were for *anything* major to happen by this point, it was nice to hope for. Fun Fact: This was the only match balrog0 missed in this entire contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1743&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Viewtiful Joe vs (12)Miles "Tails" Prower 2004 _source: (5)Viewtiful Joe vs (12)Miles "Tails" Prower 2004 (revid 55838)_ ## Results Friday, August 27th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 27th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 7,673 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tails - 46.96% 13 for - 53 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tails - 46.30% (15,381 brackets) Until Auron's match against Scorpion, Viewtiful Joe's victory in the match was believed to be a foregone conclusion. After all, Tails has been the sacrificial lamb for contest newcomers for two years running prior to this match. Why would this year be any different? Tails's loss against Auron in 2003 was acceptable, but the match to compare Joe/Tails to is the 2002 match between Alucard and Tails. In 2002, Alucard came into the contest as a relative unknown. What he had going for him was that he was the main character in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Despite the game not selling all that well (just under 1 million copies, if I recall), the game received rave reviews all over the internet, and Alucard was able to ride this momentum all the way to a victory against Tails. Viewtiful Joe fits within the same mold, in a way. His game didn't sell all that well, but those who did play the game gave it rave reviews all over the place. But Viewtiful Joe did not have quite as much going for him as Alucard did in 2002. Not only did SOTN sell close to one million coies, but Alucard himself starred in other Castlevania titles within the series as well. Viewtiful Joe, despite being critically acclaimed, did not give Joe nearly the exposure that SOTN gave Alucard. The game itself has sold around half as well as SOTN, and unlike Alucard, Viewtiful Joe's only appearance was in his one game. But even still, a good argument could be made in Viewtiful Joe's favor. He isn't Alucard, plain and simple. He is the main character from a recent hit, and on top of that Viewtiful Joe had his game released for the Playstation 2 just days prior to his match with Tails. But because of Auron's killing of Scorpion, it became clear that Tails was being underestimated coming into this match. Regardless of how bad Sonic Heroes was, the case can easily be made that Tails suffered a few percentage points in strength due to Cloud/Auron SFF, and if you really want to throw the SFF theories out there, it's very possible that the entire North division could have suffered a bit due to Mario's distant SFF against Link in the finals that year. When the match began, Tails jumped out to a small early lead, and after an attempt by Viewtiful Joe to come back, Tails started using the traditional early morning Sega vote to pull away for good. In a match that was supposed to go to Viewtiful Joe with ease, Tails wound up being the one to cruise to the win. This isn't to say that a 55-45 match is a blowout, but considering how easy it was supposed to be for Joe to pull this out, a 55-45 victory in the other direction is very convincing. Few people were surprised (unfortunately), simply because you could feel it coming after Auron's massive overperformance against Scorpion, but still, it was nice to see an upset. The funny thing about this particular upset is that we lost a lot of perfect brackets because of Tails. I can see matches like Tidus/Shadow and Vivi/DK killing perfects, but losing a perfect because of Tails is pretty damned hilarious. NOTE: NEVER LET HEROIC MARIO FORGET THAT HE LOST HIS PERFECT 2004 BRACKET TO A SONIC CHARACTER =) I kid, I kid. Sort of. Another interesting note is that this match became the biggest BOP upset ever, surpassing even the fabled Halo vs Starcraft epic. And I think this is awesome, because even though the match was more boring than we would have liked, we get to see it stand out in a few areas historically. And besides, Tails finally won a match. Like him or hate him, he didn't deserve to be treated like a joke forever. But what does this say of Viewtiful Joe? If having a game released all of three days before a match can't get him a win, then how is Viewtiful Joe 2 going to help him? I doubt that it will, and Joe is one more example that it's nearly impossible to avoid the traditional 5-12 upset that we see in every contest. Even worse is the fact that Joe may very well turn out to be on the level of the 3D platformer characters (TRANSLATION: THE CHARACTERS THAT ALL HORRIBLY BOMBED IN 2004) as the contest continues to evolve. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1744&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Dante vs (13)Ratchet 2004 _source: (4)Dante vs (13)Ratchet 2004 (revid 55840)_ ## Results Saturday, August 28th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 28th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 44,835 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 73.81% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 85.47% (28,394 brackets) Something about Dante just bores the hell out of me in these contests. In 2002, he expectedly defeated Q\*bert, but even in a debated match against Crono, the actual match was very ho-hum as if his path was directly laid out before him from the start. In 2003, it was more of the same. Everyone knew that Dante would take down Ryo Hazuki, and then in the second round, he faced Ryu in a debated match. He wound up losing that match, but once again, Dante went down in ho-hum fashion with very little outcry from those who picked him to win. In 2004, we see the exact same thing. Dante is yet again a 4 seed, and yet again, he gets a very ho-hum four pack. Dante, Ratchet, Viewtiful Joe, and Tails aren't exactly the most exciting characters to watch in a contest setting, no matter how their matches all go. The only difference this year was that Dante was virtually guaranteed a spot in the Sweet 16 right from the start. He did his part by blowing out Ratchet with 80% of the vote, and even though the illusion of Dante actually being strong was created after this match, this turned out to be false. Ratchet, like every other 3D platformer in this contest, flat-out bombed this year. Simple as that. When you can let Dante get 80% of the vote, you know that you've got some problems. We need to see Dante involved in a decent match, because he has been a bore to watch in action for three years now. The biggest thing to note about him is that he is the only character to get the same seed every year. And when something that minor is the most notable thing about you, you need to do something to draw some excitement to yourself. He may have it coming on the way however, as Capcom is promising that Devil May Cry 3 will put DMC on the map as one of the elite series in all of gaming. Dante also has the benefit of his series having one of the highest sales per release ratios of any gaming series of all time, which could explain why Dante performs on a decent level every year. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1745&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sora vs (11)HK-47 2004 _source: (6)Sora vs (11)HK-47 2004 (revid 55842)_ ## Results Sunday, August 29th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 29th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 25,642 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 59.99% 63 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 75.40% (25,049 brackets) Everyone knew that Sora was going to win this match, and the only people who went against this were those using the Spring Contest as their argument. You know, because KOTOR getting 40% on Vice City means that a character not even required in his own game was going to stand up to the lead from Kingdom Hearts, a game with a heavy Square influence to it. The problem with this match is that HK-47 had never been in one of these contests before, and because of this, we had no way to validate the strength or weakness of either character. All we had to go on were two matches involving Sora, and one of them was a 66-34 blowout at the hands of Aeris. For all we know, HK-47 could have been stronger or weaker than expected, and it's fairly possible that Sora was underestimated coming into the contest due to possible SFF suffered at the hands of Aeris last year. But regardless of all the theories, we had no way to validate Sora's strength until the second round. But even then, due to 2003 Xsts, Sora was expected to lose anyway to either Ryu Hayabusa or Jill Valentine. Jill placed so far ahead of Sora last year that it was assumed that no matter who won the Ryu/Jill match, that the winner would cruise to an easy win against Sora. After all, the only way for Sora to suddenly be as strong as the winner of that match would be for either character to be far weaker than 2003's version of Jill Valentine. There is also the Sora/Aeris SFF theory, but honestly, there is no possible way that Sora could have suffered *that* much...... right? Heh, *sure*. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1746&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Ryu Hayabusa vs (14)Jill Valentine 2004 _source: (3)Ryu Hayabusa vs (14)Jill Valentine 2004 (revid 88824)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 27 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu Hayabusa - 59.99% 63 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu Hayabusa - 48.56% (16,132 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis When the bracket was first released, there were the usual number of debates matches in the first round. But Ryu Hayabusa and Jill Valentine was the match in round one. Not only was this match difficult to call right from the start, but it was widely believed that the winner of the match had a free pass into the Sweet 16 simply because of Jill Valentine placing so far ahead of Sora in the 2003 Xsts. Unlike most debated matches, both sides of this match had a very convincing argument going into it. Ryu Hayabusa, despite being a newcomer to the contest, had a strong case as to why he should win the match. Ryu may not have been in the contest before, but he had a good history in the gaming world with his NES Ninja Gaiden series and his appearances in the Dead or Alive games. When you add in Ryu's recent Ninja Gaiden title on the Xbox and the fact that Xbox fans are very loyal when it comes to voting for their system, Ryu Hayabusa had a decent advantage over Jill Valentine in the match. Ryu also had history on his side, as the only 3 seed to ever lose in the first round of a contest was Gordon Freeman in 2002. But the problem with Ryu Hayabusa is that he was completely untested in a contest environment. It could easily be argued that Ryu Hayabusa could be as strong as the theories all suggested, but the fact of the matter is that no one knew what to expect from him. Ninja Gaiden's Xbox title only sold around half a million copies, which is around the same number of sales from Viewtiful Joe's title for the Gamecube. We all know how well that turned out. On the other side of this was a character whose strength has been seen in the contest twice in the past. Jill Valentine put out a solid performance in 2002, and despite falling off a bit in 2003, she was still a character to be recognized in the contest setting. The large debate in this match came from two sources. First of all, Jill Valentine is an established contest character whose strength has been verified from having done well in the contest for two years. Secondly, take a look at the 2003 Xsts. Jill Valentine is just under Master Chief in strength. How could a secondary Xbox character have the strength necessary to take down Jill Valentine if Master Chief himself could only have just enough conceivable strength to take her down? For Ryu Hayabusa to win this match, he would have to hope for Jill Valentine to take a drop in popularity between 2003 and 2004, and even though this was possible due to her drop between 2002 and 2003, relying on a drop in popularity to win a match is not a good thing to rely on in a contest poll. Another interesting number to look at would be Jill Valentine's vote totals across the 2002 and 2003 contests. She had been in five matches, and in three of them, she managed to score within a 1700 vote range around the 38000 vote mark. Given the vote totals from the Spring Contest, how close the match was expected to be, and how neither character involved in the match had the mainstream GameFAQs support to shoot the vote totals through the roof in a close match, Jill Valentine was primed to score at around that same 38000 total in this match. The question was, would 38000 votes be enough to take down Ryu Hayabusa? One could easily argue that Ryu was a cultish type of character going into the match, so a low-scoring match between the two was not out of the question. When the numbers were all crunched, the final result was that we had a match that was seemingly up in the air from the start. Both characters had an amazing argument for themselves going into it, and the only thing left to do was to actually have the match. For the first time in the entire contest, we actually had a match in which neither character could conceivably be favored over the other due to multiple outside factors. As the match drew closer and closer, everyone knew all of these numbers by heart. We finally had a match in this contest in which both characters had a solid case to make for themselves, and both sides of the board argued the points quite well. We had waited for this match all contest, and the solid intensity of the anticipation was only magnified by the fact that everyone felt that the match was worth three points. The weight of the upcoming duel between these two characters soon grew to a deafening pace, and eventually the entire board was on the edge of their seats in anticipation of a match that hadn't even started yet. At long last, CJayC slapped the poll up, and it was game on for these two characters. Ryu Hayabusa jumped out to a small early lead with the backing of the massive board support that he had, but Jill Valentine was not about to back down. She struck back with a passion after withstanding the initial onslaught, and soon managed to come back in the poll. Not only did she come back, but she began taking it to Ryu Hayabusa with a fury. Jill Valentine began drawing off of the support given to her by the mainstream success of the Resident Evil series as a whole, and she soon began building a lead on the favored Ryu Hayabusa. ....but something was drastically wrong. The characters were doing their part, but for some reason, the vote totals were far lower than expected. Before long, everyone had figured out what was wrong. Thanks to a server error, the poll was glitched. The Ryu/Jill poll was only displayed on the home page roughly half of the time, thanks to half of the servers never updating. On said servers, the Sora/HK-47 match was still being displayed. But regardless of this, the people who were eagerly anticipating the match knew exactly where to vote. The issue came with the lost casual votes. If someone were to go to the home page and still see the Sora/HK-47 match, then they would have no reason to think twice about what was going on. It is impossible to know where all of these casual votes would have gone, though history has proven that casual votes usually compliment the voting pattern of the hardcore votes. But even still, a match that had so much promise soon turned into a match that many people viewed under protest. Many people wanted the poll to restarted after knowledge of the glitch was released, and despite the fact that a lot of people disagreed with this sentiment, many people agreed with the fact that the poll should be restarted. The stereotype among these arguments was that the Ryu Hayabusa supporters wanted a restart because their character was losing, and the Jill supporters wanted to leave the poll along because Jill was in the middle of pulling away in the poll. The reality was that a great deal of those who favored a restart, myself included, simply wanted a fair match. However, it seemed as if the cries for a restart were not being heard. The poll was left running even with the glitch, and there was no word whatsoever from CJayC. Considering that we were in the middle of a heated battle with no other choice, we all went with what we had and continued to pay attention to the poll that we had instead of the poll that we would likely never see. Everyone had accepted the glitch's place in the poll, and because of this, everyone got back to enjoying the match at hand. Jill had begun to slightly pull away, but when the morning vote hit, Ryu Hayabusa began to make a comeback of his own. Jill tried her best to avoid the surge, but before she knew what had hit her, Ryu Hayabusa had used the momentum of his surge to tie the match up. But once again, Jill Valentine refused to roll over in the match. After Ryu made his push to even out the match, Jill Valentine quickly recovered and started to pull away with the late morning vote. It was somewhat of a slow advance, but it was an advance that allowed Jill to take a lead of a few hundred votes on Ryu. Not to be outdone, Ryu Hayabusa used the afternoon vote to stem the tide and begin a small comeback of his own. It was agonizingly slow, but this was more the glitch's fault than it was Ryu Hayabusa's. Ryu's push into Jill's lead was slow at first, but Ryu eventually built up some steam en route to using the traditional Microsoft afternoon vote to his advantage. Before Jill even knew what hit her, Ryu was hot on her tail. Around the time that the evening arrived, Ryu Hayabusa had managed to pull even with Jill yet again. After yet another struggle from the two characters during their phase of being tied, Ryu completed his comeback once and for all. He started pulling away from Jill once and for all during the evening vote, and as the hours wore on, Ryu built his lead to over 400 votes. After a very hard-fought match between the two characters, it seemed as if Ryu had proven to be the more popular character on this day. Jill was periodically stalling Ryu's attempts to increase his lead, but Ryu was doing more than enough to prove that he was in control of the match. All he had to do was hold on for another 5 and a half hou-- IN A.D. 2101 GLITCH WAS BEGINNING RYU H: WHAT HAPPEN ? JILL: SOMEBODY SET UP US THE GLITCH. BOARD 8: WE GET TOPIC. RYU H: WHAT ! BOARD 8: MAIN TOPIC TURN ON. RYU H: IT'S YOU !! CJAYC: HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMAN !! CJAYC: ALL YOUR POLL ARE BELONG TO US. CJAYC: YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO RESTART. RYU H: WHAT YOU SAY !! CJAYC: YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO FINISH MAKE YOUR TIME. CJAYC: HA HA HA HA .... RYU H: TAKE OFF EVERY 'VOTE' !! RYU H: YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DOING. RYU H: MOVE 'VOTE'. RYU H: FOR GREAT JUSTICE. The long explanation: It took until there were just over 5 hours left in the poll for CJayC to realize that there was a problem with the poll, but he eventually noticed that something was wrong. Instead of looking at the voting trend and deciding that Ryu Hayabusa had the match won, he did the right thing and restarted the poll. Most people wanted the poll to be restarted, but it was unfortunate that it took so long for CJayC to realize what was happening. But even still, the right thing was being done in this case. The problem is that because so much of the poll had already been completed, restarting the poll on the next day would likely only cause problems. But more on that in a minute. The quick explanation: Genius. Pure genius. With CATS' decision to force Ryu Hayabusa and Jill Valentine to restart their poll, the tension of the match only grew even higher. The two had already fought each other like brahma bulls on sugar highs once as it was, and now they were to do it all over again. A lot of questions were raised about how the restart would go, and whether or not it was even necessary in the first place. Ryu Hayabusa was very much in control of the match when the restart was announced, and when you add in the fact that almost 19 hours of the poll had already taken place, restarting the poll because of a glitch seemed illogical. For one, the vote totals of a second poll would be rather low, as a good deal of the people who voted in the first poll would have little reason to vote in a restarted poll unless they were closely following the contest. Another good point that was brought up was how the restart would affect the voting patterns. Would the Jill Valentine supporters come out in force, knowing that they were essentially being given a second chance? Would the Ryu Hayabusa suporters counter this support, knowing full well that they would need to? And what would be the purpose of announcing a restart so late in the glitched poll in the first place? It was somewhat obvious that Ryu was in control, and should Jill be able to use a restarted poll to her advantage and win, it could have meant chaos. It was fair to restart the poll, but not after 75% of the poll was complete in the first place. There was no evidence that the voting pattern would not have been the same had there not been a glitch, and restarting the poll after no much time had elapsed was an odd decision. Regardless of the risks involved, CATS' decision is the word of Jesus himself. Going against His prophecies means certain death at the hands of gotspork and the CATS Army, and in an effort to avoid a Board 8 civil war, the decision was accepted by most of the masses. There is no screwing with gotspork or CATS around these parts. Period. Death is the only consequence of any rebellious intent. After the debates on whether or not the poll restart being an acceptable decision were over, the attention soon turned to the match at hand. Not only did the debate from the night before rage on, but now there were concrete numbers to work with. And despite the fact that Ryu Hayabusa was in control after 75% of the first poll was done and over with, it took a comeback for him to do it. It was unlikely that Jill Valentine would simply roll over and let him have the match after being given a second chance, so Ryu Hayabusa would once again be in the fight of his life. After much deliberation, discussion, and analysis of the numbers already at hand, there was only one thing left to do: take the two characters and let them go at it one more time. With the agonizing wait finally over, we were finally able to see Ryu Hayabusa and Jill Valentine ripping into each other once more. Ryu Hayabusa opened up the restarted poll by jumping out to the early lead, but like the first poll, Jill Valentine did not take it lying down. She withstood the initial push from Ryu Hayabusa, and began making a comeback that was eerily similar to the first poll. And much like the first poll, Jill Valentine managed to come back and fight with Ryu for positioning before finally pulling away with a lead. But once again, Ryu Hayabusa's ninja skills took over. Despite Jill's best efforts to pull away in the match, Ryu Hayabusa constantly made small efforts here and there to cut into Jill's slim lead and make a comeback of his own. When the morning vote kicked in, he finally managed to get just enough support necessary to cancel out Jill's lead and make just enough of a push to tie the match up again. But yet again, Jill Valentine refused to die. After watching Ryu build a minimal lead of his own, Jill Valentine finally made the move that she had been trying to make since the beginning of this marathon match. She used the late morning vote to not only pull away from Ryu Hayabusa, but she also began to bury him. What was once a very close match had quickly hit everyone by surprise as Jill Valentine began pulling away in a manner that made the match look completely out of reach for Ryu Hayabusa. It was less about who would win the match at this point, and more about how large a margin Jill Valentine would have at the end. Ryu Hayabusa may have made a comeback in the first poll, but Jill Valentine turned a close match into a 970 vote lead for herself in a matter of a few short hours. All that was left to do at this point was to finish out the rest of the poll and avoid the massive whining that was to come from the Ryu Hayabusa supporters that would claim that they had already won the match the day prior. To think that the Ryu supporters had not already started making this claim by this point in the match was absurd. There was a lot of "Ryu already won this match, and what is going on right now is complete BS" sentiment all across the board, and unlike most contest whining, this was actually warranted. But as if possessed by some unseen force, Ryu Hayabusa soon began one of the most memorable comebacks in contest history. When the afternoon voting block began, Ryu Hayabusa began his imminent march to history by stopping Jill Valentine from increasing her lead to anything above 970. After a small bit of struggling, Ryu Hayabusa began slowly cutting into Jill Valentine's lead. It was a meaningless advance at first, but he soon began building up more and more speed until he managed to cut the lead down to 900 votes. No one really bothered to notice what was going on, and people instead chose to take part in the various "Ryu may be losing, but he already won this match once" arguments going on all over the place. Ryu Hayabusa responded to this by slow, methodically cutting another 100 votes off of Jill Valentine's lead. It was down to 800 by this point, but despite a couple of OMFG RYU IS MAKING TEH COMEBACK!!1 topics, people didn't pay much mind to what was going on. For some reason, most of the Ryu supporters still felt that Ryu had little to no chance of winning this match despite his comeback efforts. And in response to his own fans choosing to ignore him for the benefit of arguing a seemingly meaningless cause, Ryu Hayabusa's resolve only grew stronger. As if to give his fans a reason to stop complaining, his comeback speed soon grew even faster. One way or another, someone was bound to take notice of what was going on sooner or later. Despite what was going on on the board, Ryu Hayabusa began to build up some real steam in his comeback effort. Before Jill Valentine even knew what had happened, Ryu Hayabusa drastically turned the momentum of the match in his favor. What was once a 970 vote lead for Jill Valentine soon became 900, then 800, then 700, then 600. By the time Ryu Hayabusa managed to cut the lead down to 500 votes, word of the events within the poll finally caught the attention of the Hayabusa fans who were so fiercely arguing their case as to how they were being screwed by the poll restart. The entire site was seemingly keyed in on the events of the match, and Ryu Hayabusa did not let the sudden attention to the poll divert him from his mission. As if he felt the glow from the eyes of those rooting for him, he turned up the heat on Valentine even more. With the aid of what was now the traditional Microsoft day vote, Hayabusa began tearing into Valentine's lead even faster than he was prior to people taking notice of his efforts, and by the time the evening rolled around, he and Valentine were dead even. Not only did Jill Valentine do little to nothing to stop Hayabusa from coming back, but the traditional "fight as hard as you can while even in the poll" support was minimal at best after Hayabusa tied up the poll. It wasn't until Hayabusa began building a lead of his own did Jill Valentine finally breath some life back into the poll. Hayabusa was still building on his lead, but once the poll drew into the evening hours, Jill started slowing down his advance, and eventually drew it to a complete stop. By the time the restarted poll reached the point of the first poll's end, Ryu Hayabusa had a lead of roughly 450 votes. The voting pattern of the second poll followed the same exact pattrn of the first one, but with two notable exceptions. The voting gaps that the two characters came back from were larger than they were in the first poll, but despite this, the vote totals were actually much lower than they were in the first poll. This was to be expected, of course. But even with the lower vote totals, Ryu Hayabusa, despite getting a huge fight from Jill Valentine once again, proved that his performance in the first poll was no fluke. On two consecutive days, he managed to consecutive comebacks, and after the second poll, he once again found himself in complete control of things. Jill Valentine had stopped him from building his lead, but this was doing little more than assuring a 50-50 split from the incoming votes. Jill was proving to be no threat, and if this continued, then Ryu Hayabusa would need to do little more than keep the split going in order to win the match with relative ease. For the next few hours, this is exactly what was happening. Jill Valentine and Ryu Hayabusa split the vote virtually evenly once the late evening voting block kicked in, and Jill Valentine even managed to take a slight advantage as the evening wore on. But her advantage was minimal at best as she took four hours to cut Hayabusa's lead down from 450 to 300 votes. It was becoming evidently clear that despite the fact that Jill Valentine had given Ryu Hayabusa the fight of his life for two days, Jill Valentine was on her way to a very drawn-out, heartbreaking defeat. But if there was one constant in this match, it was the absolute unexpected. No one could have known what was to happen next, not even the most loyal of Jill Valentine fans. As the final hour of the match began, Jill Valentine did little more than continue at the pace that she had been maintaining for the last four hours. She was cutting into Hayabusa's lead, but it was nothing to be concerned about. After a few minutes however, Jill Valentine built up a slight amount of speed. It was nothing to cause any concern, but it allowed Valentine to cut the lead down to 250 with around 30 minutes left in the match. But right when everyone began to relax after watching one of the most exciting matches to date reach a resolution, Jill Valentine put on a push that would make Starcraft itself jealous. As if 2:30 AM EST was her cue to start raising hell on the poll, Jill Valentine began flat-out exploding once 2:30 came and past. It was a stagnant push at first, but it soon became faster and faster until those watching the poll began to have flashbacks of Starcraft's miracles in the spring. What was a 250 vote lead soon became 240, and Jill then cut it to 230 at an even faster pace. When Jill realized that her pace was not quite fast enough, she put on even more pressure in an effort to come back in the poll. However, despite Jill Valentine's best efforts to make one of the single most shocking comebacks in contest history, she was still working against the clock. With ten minutes left in the poll, even after her virtual orgasm set the poll itself on fire, Jill Valentine still found herself down by 100 votes with 10 minutes left to go. Never one to give up a fight, Jill Valentine began to make a push that was even more fierce than before. Jill Valentine took every cry of "She'll never make it in time!" and used it as extra motivation for herself. That 100 vote lead soon became 90, then 80, then 70, then 60. Jill Valentine made every effort that she possibly could to cap off the miracle comeback. Despite the fact that she was working against low vote totals, the clock, the fact that few votes were coming in, and the fact that most of the board support was going against her, she brushed it all aside and cared about nothing more than coming back in the poll. What was a 250 vote lead with 30 minutes to go became a 100 vote lead with 10 minutes to go, and from there a 50 vote lead with 5 minutes to go. But for all the effort that Jill gave to finally get to the mathematical pace necessary to come back in the match, Ryu Hayabusa did just enough to hold her off for those final five minutes. When the lead was 50 votes with 5 minutes to go, Ryu Hayabusa started fighting her off just enough to keep her under the pace necessary to come back, and as the minutes wore on, Jill's pace was slowing down at a constant rate. It took Jill Valentine almost two minutes to cut the lead from 50 to 40, and it took her another two minutes to cut the lead from 40 to 30. It may have taken a rather long time for Hayabusa to take notice of Jill's efforts, but he managed to do just enough at just the right time. In the end, Hayabusa's slight counterattack within those final five minutes was just enough to save him from disaster. Valentine may have been able to cap off her comeback had there been another two or three minutes for her to work with, but even though CATS was nice enough to give us two polls for the price of one, CATS also decided to stop the poll at exactly 3 AM. When he did so, Ryu Hayabusa found himself up by 27 votes, and barely clinging to the last shred of life he had remaining. He had won the poll, but Jill Valentine had taken him to the absolute brink in the match. If there was ever an example of being saved by the sell, Ryu Hayabusa was it. After the dust settled from the poll, there was really nothing left to do but appreciate what had just taken place. The poll had taken place twice, and when you combined everything together, there were a combined *eight comebacks*. **EIGHT COMEBACKS!!** And there would have been nine had Jill Valentine started her final push all of five minutes sooner. She may have lost, but seeing what she did in those final 30 minutes was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen in one of these contests. Hell, the entire match was amazing. To have a match see such a large amount of hype and exceed them all with such relative ease is a rare sight. No matter who you were rooting for, this match should go down as one of the greatest of all time. It was simply that amazing to watch. Not only that, but we got to watch it all twice. This match was legendary without Jill's final push, but when you add in what she did, this match was truly the personification of tension. The aftermath of a match like this was obvious. The board went crazy. But lost in all of this for quite some time was the prediction percentage. As a 14 seed, Jill Valentine was actually favored. in the match. To my knowledge, this has never happened before. What this symbolizes to me is that Hayabusa did not win this match as much as Valentine herself lost it. If the seedings were reversed, there is little doubt that Valentine would have won. But the seedings weren't reversed, and Ryu Hayabusa was able to ride the Microsoft day vote all the way to victory in a match that wound up breaking the record previously held by Sonic/Samus 2002 as being the closest match of all time. Even better for Ryu was that because he had enough power to take down Jill Valentine, he had more than enough power to take down Sora. We all know what would wind up happening there, but at the time of ths match's conclusion, this was the common belief. As for why the two characters were able to do what they did, this was covered in length before the match even begun. Both characters had a solid fanbase to draw from, even though the Resident Evil fanbase is much larger than the Ninja Gaiden line. In fact, it's difficult to figure out exactly how Ryu was able to pull this out when Resident Evil sales are compared to Ninja Gaiden sales. The only thing I can really come up with is the fact that Resident Evil isn't respected on GameFAQs as much as it is to a mainstream audience. Regardless, Ryu Hayabusa won the match. Twice. Whether this was due to board support, Xbox support, fighting game support, or any combination of the three, the fact of the matter was that Ryu Hayabusa managed to win. An odd theory would be that Ryu Hayabusa winning this match despite having so many things stacked against him would be due to a large drop for Jill Valentine. But this would mean that Sora would theoretically be strong enough to take down Ryu, and considering that Ryu/Jill was practically a guaranteed three points, considering such a possibility was insane. .....or was it? ~\_^ ## Stats and Analysis One of the biggest tossup matches in Round One of 2004’s contest (and heck, one of the only tossup matches in the entire friggin’ thing) actually managed to live up to the hype. Jill and Ryu fought back and forth all damn day, and just as Ryu pulled ahead, with Jill pulling ahead first and Ryu eventually gaining the lead. Back and forth, back and forth, and… what’s this? A glitch in the poll? Turns out on half of the servers, the previous day’s match was still being displayed. Whoops! "What happen" indeed. The match was reran the next day, with the hype factor being even louder. According to Ulti, taking both matches into account, there were a total of eight comebacks throughout the match. That’s absurd, and easily worthy of being one of the best matches in contest history. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1747&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Sam Fisher vs (10)Gordon Freeman 2004 _source: (7)Sam Fisher vs (10)Gordon Freeman 2004 (revid 55846)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 1st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 1st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 8,163 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sam Fisher - 60.67% 62 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sam Fisher - 65.22% (21,667 brackets) And now begins the portion of every contest in which we get to day one day, and one day only, to laugh at Gordon Freeman. In every contest, a spot is given to Gordon Freeman solely to give him a chance to win. In 2002, he was given a 3 seed and a weak Tina Armstrong in a seemingly easy first round match. But the legend of GFNW began on that fateful day as not only did Gordon Freeman lose, but he was blown away by Armstrong's TJF. So what happens in 2003? CJayC was well aware of how big a joke Freeman was after the 2002 contest, so he pits Gordon Freeman against the likes of Max Payne in a match that was seemingly designed to hand over a win to Freeman. But Gordon Freeman winning a match would not adhere to the laws of the universe, not would it? Not only did Gordon Freeman lose to Max Payne, but he was never even in the match. Gordon Freeman went from being a joke to being a flat-out laughing stock, but it would get even worse. Or better, considering your perspective on things. In the Spring 2004 Contest, Gordon Freeman was treated in the way he deserved to be when Half-Life was made a 13 seed and was forced to take on Metroid Prime in the first round. But rather than roll over and die, Half-Life actually wound up giving the heavily favored Metroid Prime a fight in the poll. Metroid Prime jumped out to a 300 vote lead, but Half-Life forced a 50-50 split for the next few hours before finally rolling over to the morning vote. So here we are in Summer 2004, with CJayC back to giving Freeman a first round match that caters to him. Sam Fisher performed well against Magus last year, but even still, he is just another lesser-known male character on the opposite side of Gordon Freeman. Unfortunately for us, we have access to Extrapolated Standings. Fisher finished far too far ahead of Freeman last year for Freeman to have much of a chance in the match, but we still had to sit through this crapfest for 24 hours. When the match began, Fisher jumped out to an expected lead despite multiple Board 8 members voting for Freeman just for the hell of it. But shortly after Fisher jumped out to the initial lead, Freeman began making a push at Fisher's lead. What was once a lead that threatened to hit 200 votes soon became a match separated by a mere 70 votes. But like every match Freeman has been involved with in the past, Freean was merely teasing with the idea of actually winning a match. Freeman's true colors came out, and Freeman's genuine desire to lose soon kicked in to play. Sam Fisher caught the morning vote, and soon after, he ran away with the match. But everyone knew that was going to happen already, didn't they? It was never a matter of whether or not Freeman would actually come back, but how long he would give the illusion of actually trying to win a match. Freeman winning goes against the very laws of the universe, and he soon accepted his role. On a serious note, Freeman did far better than what was expected of him in this match. He was supposed to get blown out, yet he managed to give Sam Fisher quite the battle before finally going down. Whether or not this was a sign of a Freeman strength or a Fisher weakness had yet to be constituted, but it was fun to ponder both sides of the equation during the match. Honestly, what else was there to do? Think that Freeman's good showing in the morning was a sign that he would win? Please. The fact of the matter is that Sam Fisher allowing someone like Gordon Freeman to stay so close to him for so long was only a symbol that Fisher was pretty damned weak in his own right, and he would have likely not won a match in this contest had he faced anyone other than Gordon Freeman himself. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1748&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (15)Lara Croft 2004 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (15)Lara Croft 2004 (revid 55848)_ ## Results Thursday, September 2nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 54,168 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 76.47% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 91.74% (30,477 brackets) The first round of the Summer 2004 Contest ended with a surprise blowout of sorts. Everyone knew that Samus was going to win this match, but the sheer dominance that she showed in beating the holy hell out of Lara Croft raised a ton of eyebrows. Samus began the poll on fire, and she simply did not let up until the match was over. To put this in perspective, Samus had never managed to break 80% in any match she had ever been in in the past, even against Isaac. ....who? Exactly. Samus clearly suffers from unaccounted SFF in the 2003 Xsts, but nothing could have possibly accounted for Samus suddenly gaining the strength to be able to break 80% with ease on Lara Croft, a former 1 seed in the contest. No amount of unaccounted SFF can possible hide the fact that Samus didn't just go up between 2003 and 2004, but she flat-out exploded in popularity between the two years. The question as to why remains unexplained to this day (Metroid Prime/Fusion were released before the 2003 contest), but the rise is there. In fact, if you go by 2003 stats alone, then Samus --- not Cloud, Link, Sephiroth, Mega Man, or anyone else --- but Samus, would be expected to win the contest with absolute ease. It's inexplicable, but for us Samus fans, it was a beautiful sight to see =) On the other side of this, what ever happened to Lara Croft? It certainly takes quite the fall from grace to allow Samus to score 80% on you, but considering that Lara was once recognized as being more popular than Mario himself by the Guiness Book of World Records, as well as the fact that she was once a 1 seed in the contest, a match like this says that she may very well be on her way out the door. Even Pac Man has been able to retain some shred of dignity after falling from his former 1 seed grace, but Lara has seemingly given up ever trying to do any damage in these contests again. She may not be coming back, and to be honest, I doubt anyone will care after she's gone. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1749&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (8)Ganondorf 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (8)Ganondorf 2004 (revid 55850)_ ## Results Friday, September 3rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 3rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 66,655 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 71.16% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 96.07% (31,915 brackets) As if Ganondorf didn't have enough problems going into this match. Take a quick look at that match picture. For the first time ever, we saw Link getting his fresh new look in a match picture, and if it wasn't clear that Ganondorf was going to get destroyed in this match before that picture was posted, the bell was certainly tolling afterwards. But none of this could have possibly prepared Ganon for the beating that he was going to take come match time. From the start of the poll until the closing bell, Link ripped into Ganondorf like a man possessed. It was so bad for Ganondorf that it took him until near the end of the poll just to break 10,000 votes, and in the unadjusted Xsts, CATS is above him. The biggest case of SFF that we had ever seen in a character contest before this match was Mario vs Donkey Kong back in 2002. We thought at the time that it would be the worst SFF beating ever, but this match simply took it farther than we had ever thought possible. Ganondorf went from a character on the brink of defeating Magus to someone beaten down by his Zelda counterpart so badly that the likes of CATS would be projected to do better than him. In fact, CATS did do better against Link than Ganondorf. CATS managed 12.17% of the vote to Ganondorf's measly 12.1%. You know what's really funny? Link vs Ganondorf was the match that every Zelda fan wanted to see in 2003, because it would be "exciting to watch". Link came out in this match to prove that he was championship material, and there was no part of this match in which he looked like anything but championship material. You need flawless performances to prove yourself worthy of the contest crown, and if anyone doubted Link's power after this slaughter, then they were crazy. The only possible way that Link couldn't be crowned the champion right here and now is if Cloud managed to equally surprise everyone during his matches. The entire contest was a game of "Can you top this?" between Link and Cloud, but with Link always being the one to set the bar higher. Oh, and one last thing. I doubt that we will ever see a bigger example of fanbase leeching than Ganondorf. He does very well on his own, but this is with Link out of the equation. When Link is there, well.... you can see what happens for yourself. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Normally SFF matches are pointless bore-fests that are pretty much the opposite of entertaining, but this match remains the exception. Ganondorf, the potential Noble Nine breaker himself, is put against the flagship of the series from which he draws all of his strength. The result? Link beats him worse than CATS. Let me repeat that: Link beat Ganondorf worse than CATS. My god. When SFF gets this bad it stops being a wasted match and starts turning into comedy gold. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1750&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yoshi vs (4)Luigi 2004 _source: (5)Yoshi vs (4)Luigi 2004 (revid 55852)_ ## Results Saturday, September 4th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 4th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 6,769 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 71.16% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 43.86% (14,571 brackets) Considering how debated this match was, the way that it wound up going was somewhat of a letdown for everyone, especially Luigi supporters. But for all of the pre-match hype generated from the match, a small bit of research yielded Yoshi's clear advantage going in. The Bowser/Ness and Squall/Luigi comparison had already been dissected to death by the time this match, but Yoshi's advantage was made even more clear after both characters' performances from the first round were compared. Yoshi's prediction percentage was higher, his vote total was higher, and the total votes from his poll were higher than that of Luigi's. In a match disguised by hype, the math from multiple sources pointed to a Yoshi victory. Sure enough, after some initial jousting between the two Nintendo respresentatives, Yoshi began pulling away in the poll and never looked back. The match was close by comparison standards, but in reality, Luigi barely gave Yoshi a fight at all. It was a surprise to many a Luigi supporter, but to those who analysed the math and/or the Yoshi supporters, this match's result was expected from the start. It was a boring match, but this was the nature of the bracket moreso than the match itself. Even more boring was the fact that the 2003 Xsts called this match to near perfection despite it being an SFF affair. A first round match having this problem is acceptable enough, but not a match in the second round. And even more ridiculous was the fact that this was the only decent match to take place in the entire first two rounds among the Hyrule division. A debated match going exactly the way it was supposed to go = Ulti falling asleep while writing this. On a side note, is anyone else in the mood to buy a bowling ball and paint it Yoshi Green? =) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1751&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Magus vs (3)Crono 2004 _source: (6)Magus vs (3)Crono 2004 (revid 88828)_ ## Results Sunday, September 5th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 5th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 30,822 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 59.79% 58 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 78.50% (26,078 brackets) Of all the contest matches I've seen, this one is the biggest disappointment. How anyone who has played Chrono Trigger could possibly not vote Magus over Crono is absolutely beyond me, but since I promised not to be too biased during this match, I'll keep this short. Crono does nothing throughout the game. Virtually every decision he makes is made for him by party members using peer pressure to drag him along for their asinine needs. And his one moment of glory wasn't anything but suicide. Magus wasn't laughing at him for his own health; he was laughing at Crono because Crono is an absolute moron who flew himself into a fight that was completely unwinnable. And after an entire game in which the main character says nothing whatsoever, the good folks over at Square decided to give Crono some CHARACTER and DEVELOPMENT by having him get married to Marle, whom he had not said a single word to throughout the entire game. "But Ulti!" you exclaim, "*You* are Crono! You play the role of him and put words in his mouth and make his decisions for him and everything!!1" Excuse me, but if I was Crono, not only would I not do half of the crap he did, but I would never be dumb enough to marry Marle. Ever. Oh yeah, the actual match. Crawling, skin, wounds, SFF, etc. Magus was shafted horribly by the seedings in this match. I don't mind seeing Magus losing to Crono (the "hero", if you can actually call Crono that, almost always bests the villain in polls), but a 70-30 beatdown is ridiculous. That said, Magus took the early lead in the poll thanks to the voters that actually have some common sense: Board 8. So the match wasn't a *total* vomit-inducing disappointment. But if there was ever a match that proved that these cute little company based brackets make for some very bad matches, then this was it. I can deal with virtually any other character getting treated like this, but not Magus. Even if you aren't a fan of his, it would have been nice to see whether or not Magus could have verified his strength this year. 35% on Link is no joke, but unfortunately for us, that's the last time we truly got to see what Magus was capable of. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1752&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Bowser vs (2)Mario 2004 _source: (7)Bowser vs (2)Mario 2004 (revid 88829)_ ## Results Monday, September 6th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 6th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 32,796 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 75.50% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 92.85% (30,846 brackets) Thanks to yet another "stacked" match from CJayC, we got to see an "interesting" hero versus villain affair in the form of Mario vs Bowser. Someone really dropped the ball on this bracket, because to have such colossal blowout in the second round simply to set up Mario vs Crono 3 is wrong. Bowser and Magus were horribly shafted in this bracket, because in a balanced field they are among the better characters. But sadly, we got to watch two of gaming's finer villains go down on consecutive days simply because there were those who felt that company-based brackets and rigged matchups late in the contest meant for a better contest overall. I'm sorry, but look at the second round prediction percentages for the Hyrule division. With the exception of Yoshi/Luigi, every match in this division was literally predetermined for two rounds. This isn't just boring, but it's flat out wrong. And what was the point? To give Link the easiest road possible into the finals? To set up Mario vs Crono 3? Most people knew for a fact that Mario was going to make it into the Hyrule Semifinals, and those who didn't were likely filling out joke and/or zero brackets. As for those who actually believed in the OMFG MARIO VS BOWSER HOW INTRESTING!1!! nonsense, I feel sorry for you. All three of you. Even worse here is the fact that Crono and Magus were stuck in the Hyrule Division in the first place. If you're going to make a company-based bracket, at least put the characters in with the right company. Why they weren't stuck in the Midgar division is beyond me... oh wait, that's right. Mario vs Crono 3. My apologies. Since it was already obvious that Bowser was going to get royally screwed over by his placement in the bracket by getting SFF'd to hell again Mario, the only interesting comparison to be made from this match was between this match and the one before it. SFF may be a fickle thing to analyse, but in this case, what else did we have to look at? And to this extent, the math was somewhat of a tell as to who had the edge going into Mario vs Crono 3. Magus is stronger than Bowser by a few notches, yet in the two second round matches, Mario and Crono beat their respective opponents by nearly identical numbers. Assuming that Bowser and Magus remained static, the math leading from this would suggest that Crono was stronger than Mario; Mario would have to be weaker than Crono for Bowser to score the same percentage on him than what Magus was able to manage against Crono. Aside from SFF being inconsistent, this was the only way to explain why the two matches were so even. And if SFF were removed from the equation completely, then Mario was in for an uphill climb in his next match. No other way around it. The only way for Bowser to score equal to Magus in any poll was to face a weaker opponent than that of Magus. And even with SFF factored in, Crono clearly had the edge going into their predetermined duel. But everyone knew that already, as the Hyrule divison was that much of a joke. A quick question for those still following the topic: had Mario vs Crono 3 been as exciting as the first two Mario/Crono matches, would suffering through the rest of the matches in the Hyrule division have been worth it? Personally, I say no. But maybe it's just me, especially considering that Mario/Crono 3 could have easily been set up without screwing over Magus and Bowser in the process. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1753&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (8)Tidus 2004 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (8)Tidus 2004 (revid 88830)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 7th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 7th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 26,036 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 60.08% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 70.14% (23,301 brackets) If there was ever an analysis to be made in tribute of my good friend Heroic Mario, this would be the one, because God knows he got damn near everything wrong in the rest of the contest. Coming into this match, the 2003 Xsts projected Tidus to get 44.36% on Mega Man in this match. Most of the board believed that even though Tidus would likely not reach this number, he would at least break 40% in the match. Most people that is, with the notable exception of Heroic Mario. He believed from day one that Mega Man was going to win the contest, and en route to his victory, he would be able to break 60% on Tidus with ease. Needless to say, Heroic Mario was laughed at quite a bit whenever he noted his confidence in Mega Man being able to pull off the beat. But Heroic Mario vowed that he would be the only one laughing come match time. Needless to say, everyone that vowed that Tidus would break 40% were eating crow come match time. Not only did Mega Man start off the match on fire, but Mega Man absolutely obliterated the living piss out of Tidus from pillar to post for the entire 24 hours of the poll. Tidus was virtually never in the match at all, and not only that, but he never showed any signs of breaking 40%. And believe you me, there was not one single topic missed by Heroic Mario when it came to bragging about calling this match correctly. Many people, myself included, were dead wrong when it came to how well Tidus would do in this match. Mega Man killed him, and there is simply no other way of putting it. Tidus's loss in this match ranks as one of the worst ever suffered by a Square character. The worst part about this match is that it's nearly impossible to explain why Tidus collapsed so badly. He performed well in both contests previously, and given the fact that he is a Square character, there was little warning that he would do as badly as he did. Many things can be blamed for this, from the fact that Mega Man is the type of character that few people hate to the fact that a lot of people don't like Tidus to the possibility of Final Fantasy X itself fading. Whatever it was, Tidus absolutely bombed in this match. What does this set up? Tidus being beyond underestimated next year. Just you watch. I absolutely love the hell out of Mega Man, so seeing him show the projected strength necessary to take down Link was fine by me. But I also like Tidus, and actually think he is a good character. It was nice to see a humanized character in a Final Fantasy title that was not only the personification of what many of us would have done in his given situation, but a character who also matures to levels that most of us would be incapable of by the end of the game. Tidus is one of the finest examples of character development that there is, and even though most don't agree with me on this, I simply find him to be a good character. Nothing wrong with that. But this isn't about Tidus as much as it is Heroic Mario. Like I've been saying for two years, Heroic Mario \>\>\> most of you people. He may have been way off in every other match that he tried to call, but the fact remains that he kicked all of our asses in this match. Bow down and pay the respect, fools =) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1754&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Tommy Vercetti vs (4)Zero 2004 _source: (5)Tommy Vercetti vs (4)Zero 2004 (revid 55860)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 8th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 8th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 19,100 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 62.48% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 31.57% (10,488 brackets) This was one of the single most boring matches in the contest by far. Everyone knew that Zero would win (on the board, at least), and Zero wound up doing almost as expected in the match. As such, I'll just touch on the couple of random other thiings about the match. First and foremost, what the hell is up with this prediction percentage? 20XX was a division specifically designed to give us Mega Man vs Zero (and Zero vs Protoman, come to think of it), in case you couldn't notice. Did anyone see how well Zero did last year? Who was going to beat him? Protoman? Vercetti? MAX PAYNE? Of all the "bracket busters" we have seen, a prediction percentage this low for Zero is borderline stupid. The only thing I can think of is that Max Payne and Vercetti are characters that are well-known among mainstream gamers, whereas the Mega Man X series isn't exactly the most well-known series out there. When most people think Mega Man, they think the original series, not the 2.8 million spinoffs. Secondly, take a quick look at all of Vercetti's matches. He is a horrible draw, which very well could have been a big part of the reason Zero only did as expected in the match. This is only speculation, but what else is there to talk about in such a boring match. Finally, this match set up the blatantly obvious Mega Man vs Zero duel that would decide the true ruler of the 20XX division. Joy. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1755&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Frog vs (3)Master Chief 2004 _source: (6)Frog vs (3)Master Chief 2004 (revid 88832)_ ## Results Thursday, September 9th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 9th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 7 - **Oracle Expectations:** Frog - 51.17% 44 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Frog - 22.56% (7,495 brackets) This was, without a doubt, the best match of the entire contest. It completely shattered the margin of victory record of 27 set by Ryu/Jill just days before this match took place, and the 22.56% prediction percentage was the lowest prediction percentage of any match in the entire contest. But believe it or not, there weren't very many signs of what was about to happen in the days leading up to this match. During the nomination period, Frog was one of the characters that Board 8 latched onto the most. CJayC even mentioned a strong fan drive putting him into the field, and that drive was us. As such, Frog being stuck in a relatively weak half division with the likes of Liquid Snake, Master Chief, and Crash Bandicoot was a blessing. After all, Board 8 got to see their beloved little ball of snot in the Sweet 16 before inevitably going down at the hands of Solid Snake. But as Lee Corso would say, NOT SO FAST MY FRIEND! In the first round of this contest, Liquid Snake was able to give Frog the fight of his life before after falling behind by 480 votes. Liquid not only fought back, but he made every effort he could to try and pull away from the Chrono Trigger swordsfrog. Unfortunately for Liquid, Frog was saved by the skin of his warts come the night vote, and even then, Liquid turned a late 170 lead into a win of merely 93 for Frog. Frog had no momentum whatsoever coming off of a match like that, and given Master Chief's absolute maiming of Crash Bandicoot in the match just after that took place, the wheels for a possible barn-burner were set into motion. Master Chief looked primed to take down the Chrono Trigger representative when it looked like he would never have any chance at him in the first place, but thanks to both Frog and Liquid being new characters, there was nothing to base this on. It was more of a feeling than it was statistical evidence. Circumstantial evidence perhaps, but nothing concrete. For all we knew, both Frog and Liquid Snake could be leaps and bounds above Master Chief in strength, and all of the debating would be for nothing come match time. For a match that wound up being an all time classic, it certainly didn't start off that way. When the poll first opened, Frog looked like someone who was being underestimated far too much. He not only jumped on Master Chief early, but he began opening a can on Master Chief en route to a 60-40 lead after the first hour of the poll. He was up by nearly 600 after the first hour, and with the percentage with which he was racking in the votes, this match looked like yet another one of the many overhyped duds that we had been plagued with through the entire contest. But after that first hour, Frog's advance began slowing down somewhat. Master Chief began coming back in the percentage, but Frog was still able to increase his lead with relative ease, and even though he was no longer pulling in 60% of the vote, he was still able to pull in roughly 58% of it. After 3:30 of the poll was complete, Frog was up by 1155 votes and in absolute control of the match. Once the morning vote hit, Master Chief finally decided to show everyone that he still existed. He managed to slow down Frog's advance very well, and even won a couple of meaningless updates here and there. The overall vote lead was still yet to be in question, but Master Chief was at least starting to show that he was not dead just yet. But even still, all Master Chief was really doing was teasing those who were rooting for him to win the match. He may have begun coming back in percentage, but he never made a true push at Frog's lead during the morning vote. All he did was split the vote 50-50 with Frog for a little while before Frog began pouring it on once again. After Frog absorbed Chief's minor noise in the morning, he began to extend his lead once again. And like the beginning of the poll, Master Chief barely did anything whatsoever to fight back. From the end of the morning vote until around 2:30 PM EST, Frog took it to Master Chief like an absolute champion en route to building a lead of 2400. There was very spaced and very minor resistance from Master Chief during this, but overall, the match looked to be about over. The percentages for Chief was respectable enough, but aside from his minor blip in Frog's advance during the morning vote, there was absolutely no sign whatsoever that Frog wasn't going to cruise to an easy 5000 vote victory in this match. 5000 votes may not be all that much, but considering how hyped the match was, Master Chief never being in it from the start was a disappointment. But just when the Chrono Trigger fans were celebrating the victory for their little ball of snot, Master Chief finally decided to show the power that he was capable of, and the very force that made him such a supposed threat to win the match in the first place. Between 2:30 PM EST and 3:00 PM EST, Master Chief took 80 votes off of Frog's 2400 vote lead. It wasn't much, and everyone simply wrote it off as the standard Xbox day vote. This was a fair assumption, because as the contests have shown, Microsoft has always been at its best during the day. With this said, Master Chief took another 73 votes off the lead between 3:00 and 3:30. It wasn't much, but it was a sign that he wasn't quite out of the poll yet. Still, Master Chief would need to make far more noise than simple 40 vote updates if he wanted any chance of coming back against a Squaresoft character on GameFAQs. He needed to begin pouring it on with absolute overkill, so much so that even the most loyal of Square fans would be powerless to stop it. If the previous hour wasn't a sign of what was about to happen next, then everyone was certainly aware of the upcoming events once the entirety of GameFAQs, as well as many other parts of the internet, were neck high in the events. Not only did Master Chief continue his comeback efforts, but he went on the tear that had to be seen in order to be believed. He went from pulling in 40 votes per update to pulling in 100, and from there, he began pulling in 150 votes per update. Not only was this more than enough to get him back into the match, but Chief also proved that it was no mere inconsistency in the system. He kept up the pace with absolute ease, and what was once a poll that projected Frog to win by 5000 votes turned into a poll that was projecting Master Chief to not only come back, but to win by 4500 votes in his own right. Very few matches have such a dramatic change in the voting pattern, but this was one of them. Master Chief was on an absolute roll, and everyone was powerless to stop it. Not only did Master Chief keep up the massive pace that he was caught from the Xbox day vote, but he managed to maintain it with ease. Most comebacks are stalled at various points, but Frog did absolutely nothing whatsoever to stop the bleeding. He let Master Chief pull in 150 votes per update like it was nothing, almost as if he had given up. Master Chief took advantage of this, and in a mere five hours, he brought a 2400 vote lead down to a tie. For those who can't quite believe their eyes, I have Mumei's update chart for the match archived. Here is the five hour block in which Chief made his comeback (see the graph below) In most comebacks, there is usually a massive stall once the characters are tied. Master Chief's dominance during the day vote was proven once he managed to not only come back, but when he flew right past Frog. During the evening, no less. Square usually dominates the evening voting block, and Master Chief blew past Frog as if he were nothing but a ball of snot. Again, courtesy of Mumei (AND THE FACT THAT HE KICKS AN ABUNDANCE OF ASS AND WILL BE RECOGNIZED AND SUCH), here is a small block of the update chart from after chief tied up the poll. Master Chief may have slowed down a tad after blowing past Frog, but the fact remains that he came back and extended a 620 vote lead as if it were nothing. Frog simply rolled over and died once the day vote started kicking in, which is a shame. ...or was it? Quick, trivia time? At what time during the Halo/Starcraft poll did Halo begin collapsing completely? Somewhere around the middle of the evening, right? Now take a wild guess as to what happened next during the Frog/Chief match. No seriously, guess. SURELY, the Xbox faithful would have learned their lesson and prevented yet another laughable collapse... .........right? Unfortunately, as if the inevitable demise were right on cue, Master Chief began collapsing at almost the exact same time as Halo itself in the spring. I'd go in detail about it, but we've seen the same old story from our friends at Microsoft over and over again. They do well during the day, but inevitably collapse during the night. It happened to Halo, it happened to Ryu Hayabusa, and now it was happening to Master Chief as well. It's almost as if a Frog comeback were expected, despite how badly he had performed in the afternoon and the evening. It was so predictable that people were calling Frog's victory all over the place after he took Chief's lead down from 620 to 500. It's almost as if Xbox was the contest's version of the Philadelphia Eagles. As for what happened afterwards, the best I can do is post the next part of the update chart. It truly speaks for itself. The funniest part about the entire mess was that even though Frog was coming back, he was doing it far too slowly all the way up until his 112 vote update. But even then, people were calling Frog's victory. It's like everyone knew that Chief was going to collapse, which is rather sad when you think about it. Chief will always be remembered for blowing it after shifting the poll an entire 3000 votes in his favor, but honestly, he was doing just fine until the 112 update late in the match. Unfortunately, no one will remember that part. But remember when Master Chief came back and blew right past Frog en route to opening up a 620 vote lead for himself? Frog was completely unable to do the same for himself. Despite every effort made by Frog to hang onto this poll after blowing it away so badly in the first place, Master Chief once again proved resilient, and these two would give us the single best hour we had ever seen in a contest poll. The first 23 hours were meaningless at this point. It was 2 AM, they were tied, and Frog showed nothing that would indicate that he would make the comeback and run with it. Remember when Liquid Snake turned a 170 vote lead into 93? Frog managed to have the exact same thing go wrong with him in this poll, but would it be enough? Despite the fact that Frog came back from being down by 620, Frog was completely unable to keep the momentum going for the final hour. Every time Frog tried to pull away from Master Chief, Chief managed to fight back and keep the score tied. Frog made a lot of pushes over the final hour that gave him leads of 20-25, but every time it looked like Frog would finally win the match, Master Chief was able to come back again. There were two cases over the final hour where Master Chief himself managed to build his own lead of 20-25 votes, and Frog himself had to fight back tooth and nail in order to stay alive in the poll. It was a fierce battle that had everyone on the board on the edge of their seat in anticipation of what would happen next. The F5 buttons were pounding, the IMs were off the hook, and the vote-stuffing on both sides was blatant. It continued like this for 59 minutes, and as we entered the final minute of one of the most amazing matches of all time, Frog was clinging to an eight vote lead. It was not a matter of winning for Frog at this point, but about survival. The seconds within that final minute couldn't possibly tick away fast enough for those supporting Frog, and like the entire match up until this point, Master Chief proved his resilience. Frog's lead of 8 dropped to 7, and then 6, and then 5.... the Frog supporters were growing more and more nervous, and very late in that final minute, Master Chief managed to bring Frog's lead down to three. THREE!! A mere three votes separated Master Chief from victory, but unlike Ryu Hayabusa before him, there would be no luck on Microsoft's side on this night. Frog got a very late (albeit very minor) push of votes to propel him to a lead of seven votes, and this is how the poll would close. After it was finally over, the reaction from the board ranged between every emotion in the book, from anger to sadness to rage and envy, and even "OH MY \*\*\*\*ING GOD, THAT WAS BETTER THAN SEX!!!!!" from the usually infallible ChichiriMuyo. But aside from the obvious accomplishment that was the final margin of victory, the obvious question had to be asked: How in the hell did all of this come to pass in the first place? This match was not normal. Well it was normal for a time, but something very odd happened come the afternoon. Characters simply don't go from being down 2400 to being up by 620. Something went on there, and two explanations can be placed above the rest. First and foremost, the vast majority of the Xbox's popularity comes from North America. All you need to do is take a look at the voting patterns through the Ryu Hayabusa/Jill Valentine match to see how powerful the Xbox is during the day on our site. Ryu Hayabusa's latest game didn't even sell 500,000 copies, yet he managed to come back against Jill Valentine of Resident Evil fame a combined four times in two days. If Hayabusa can pull off a comeback, then what stops Master Chief, the Xbox's main mascot, from being able to do the same? His voting pattern in this match directly agrees with that of Ryu Hayabusa's two voting patterns, and one could easily ake the conclusion that Chief truly is powerful enough to manage something like this. The other reason for Chief's comeback may very well have been the fact that multiple Halo sites across the internet became aware of what was going on over here. Bungie's main site was discussing the match across their forum, and a direct link was posted from halo.bungie.org to our homepage. Could this have been responsible for Chief's comeback? Perhaps. Frog was well on his way to a 5000 vote victory before Chief's comeback began, and even though Chief's comeback coincides with Hayabusa's voting pattern, it also coincides with when the sites became aware of our contest. This is unfortunate, simply because it takes away from Master Chief's performance. No matter which theory you believe in, the fact remains that both of these characters absolutely choked during this match. Frog went from being up by 2400 to being down by 620 a few hours later, and Master Chief capped off his miraculous comeback by blowing away said 620 vote lead, and not only that, but failing to come up with nine extra votes somewhere down the line. If I were a fan of either of these characters (thankfully, I'm not), I would be sickened by the way both of them performed, and would rather choose to focus on how good the match itself was. Unfortunately, there is a darker side to this poll. By now, everyone is aware of the glitch in the poll that allows people to vote multiple times under the right circumstances. As much as everyone would like to believe that there was no foul play in the final hour of this match, everyone knows that this match came down to who vote-stuffed the best at the end. Having been on AIM that entire night and seeing multiple people brag about the number of times they voted, it soon became clear that those stuffing for Frog simply wanted it more than those stuffing for Chief. I saw an absolute ton of people bragging about multi-voting for Frog, and I saw next to no one saying the same about Chief. Board 8 is usually the deciding factor in close polls, and it was no different in this poll. The fact that Master Chief managed to stay within 7 votes at the end is a testament to how strong he is, considering that nearly all of Board 8 was against him at the end. FACT: We don't know who truly won this match. We have the final vote total, and CJayC's distant response of "The cheating cancels each other out". I like the guy and all, but in a match that is this close, the margin of victory falls within the gray area caused by the cheating, and taking the aloof approach is not the way to fix the problem. Unfortunately, fixing the problem would also cause a serious issue in that should a system be implemented to prevent multi-voting with alts, we would see every contest poll have similar vote totals to Pokémon vs Xenogears. It's a major problem that has existed since the 2002 contest, but sadly, what can be done about it? Those voting for Frog simply wanted it more, and if history is any example, then Frog could be a force in the coming years. Samus was in a very similar situation in 2002, and look at how she's doing now. But I don't want to end such an amazing match on a sour note. Regardless of who you were pulling for, this entire match, especially the final hour, could be everything you want from a contest poll. They should all be like this. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis If Frog vs. Liquid Snake was abnormal in terms of board expectations, this match was jaw-dropping. Few people expected the Chief to be able to hang with Frog, but hang he did – and how. If Chrono Trigger/Link to the Past exemplifies how exciting stillness can be, Frog/Master Chief exemplifies how exciting the opposite can be. Lead changes up the wazoo, comeback attempts galore… this match had all that, and more. The last few moments of this poll, with Frog holding on to a shrinking lead in the single digits and eventually pulling off a win with a margin of seven votes, rank among the best in contest history. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1756&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Knuckles the Echidna vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 _source: (10)Knuckles the Echidna vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 (revid 55864)_ ## Results Friday, September 10th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 10th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 15,535 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 66.00% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 68.18% (22,650 brackets) - In 2002, Snake scores 60.71% on Knuckles in the second round. - In 2003, Snake scores 63.13% on Knuckles in the second round. - In 2004, Snake fails to break 60% in scoring 59.54% on Knuckles in the \*gasp\* second round. This could mean a Knuckles improvement, a Snake drop, or a little of both. Either way, this is a stupid, dumbassed, overplayed, overdone, boring match that needs to stop being held every year. Snake over Knuckles in the second round is not a fun contest tradition. It's stupid, it needs to go, it winds up doing nothing but screwing over both characters out of would-be entertaining matches otherwise, and any prediction percentage under 100% for this match by this point is nothing but deplorable, second round or not. I mean honestly, what the hell? I refuse to even give this match the time of day, simply because it's the worst "tradition" ever. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1757&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Vyse 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Vyse 2004 (revid 55866)_ ## Results Saturday, September 11th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 11th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 57,252 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 80.52% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife - 96.48% (32,052 brackets) This could very well be the easiest analysis ever. Cloud did exactly as expected against Vyse, and the only thing of note about the match was Cloud once again giving up the early lead in the poll. The only thing anyone card about in this match were Cloud/Link comparisons, and honestly, Cloud did not impress me here. While Link was busy putting a world of hurt on Ganon, Cloud only did as expected against Vyse. "As expected" is not good enough when your main opponent is exceeding expectations. In fact, all Cloud had going for him after this match was the prediction percentage advantage, and that can easily be explained by Link having to deal with CATS, Alucard, and Ganondorf as opposed to Milk Nukem, Vyse, and Laharl. Cloud did not look good here at all. As they say, one's an accident, two's a trend, three's a problem. Link managed more total votes in an SFF match than Cloud in a pure match. Honestly, assuming transitivity in the finals, what argument could have possibly been made for Cloud at this point? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1758&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Kirby vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2004 _source: (5)Kirby vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2004 (revid 55868)_ ## Results Sunday, September 12th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 12th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 9,378 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 57.47% 54 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 54.91% (18,242 brackets) I played some Kingdom Hearts today, and Squall truly did redeem himself in that game (somewhat). He should have acted that way all through Final Fantasy 8, not just in the first two discs. And I also like the long hair he had in Kingdom Hearts. Oh right, the match. The Hyrule and Midgar divisions were the two most predictable divisions in the entire contest, and this match was another example of it. Everyone knew Squall would win this match, but the surprising thing is how poorly he performed, especially early on. When the poll first opened, there was no match picture. All we had were the names "Kirby" and "Squall", and during this time, the two characters were literally dead even with one another. It wasn't until the picture was posted did Squall finally begin pulling away. This could prove that pictures matter, though Board 8 doesn't seem to like Cloud and Squall in the polls for whatever reason. The rest of the day was very ho-hum and predictable, but Kirby wound up doing better than expected in this match. Kirby's projection in the match was a mere 41.51%, yet he managed to score 45% on Squall. No one knows whether this meant a Squall drop or a Bomberman/Kirby rise, and unfortunately, there is no way to know. Company-based divisions can do that to you, and after sitting through another predictable match, a match between \*GASP\* Cloud and Squall was set up. Gee, how interesting But hey, at least Squall/Kirby had a decent vote total. It's really sad when you're rooting for high vote totals in the match instead of the characters themselves. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1759&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Ness vs (3)Auron 2004 _source: (6)Ness vs (3)Auron 2004 (revid 55870)_ ## Results Monday, September 13th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 13th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 24,796 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 71.88% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 54.43% (18,082 brackets) Another day, another horribly predictable match in the Midgar division. Ness was fresh off of a heated victory against Jak, while Auron was coming off of a killing against Scorpion. So what do they turn around and do? Ness winds up doing far better than his 26.87% projection. But like the Squall/Kirby match, this meant nothing. We had no way of verifying the strength or weakness of either character, simply because of how the Midgar division was set up. Auron winning this match was a virtual guarantee, but thanks to Auron/Sephiroth being set up from the start, we had no clue what to make of this match. The logical explanation, of course, is that Ness went up due to unaccounted Bowser/Ness SFF in the 2003 Xsts. Maybe he truly was stronger than many of us thought, but how do you explain Auron overperforming so much against Scorpion? It really sucks that the bracket was set up the way it was, because there was no way to verify the strength of many of these characters after such odd matches. This match was another example. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1760&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Vivi vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 _source: (7)Vivi vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 (revid 55872)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 14th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 14th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 35,266 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 75.56% 56 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 91.26% (30,317 brackets) This match wasn't flat-out rigged as an SFF match from the start; after all, Vivi vs DK was hard to call. What was rigged however was Cloud vs Sephiroth. There were no characters in this division able to take either one of them down, and this match was little more than another stepping stone on Sephiroth's path to the Midgar finals. Since everyone already knew that Sephiroth was going to win the match, the only thing to really look at here is the fact that Vivi did better than most people expected him to. This could mean a few things, the biggest of which is the fact that Square SFF is far more difficult to come by than Nintendo SFF. Nintendo characters have so much exposure and star in so many games that the Nintendo heirarchy is set in stone at this point. While the same ranks are within Square, the fanbases of characters who appear in a game or two each are far more defined. Voters won't simply turn on Vivi simply because he is facing a character from another Square game. Square titles all have a life of their own, and even though Cloud and Sephiroth are undoubtedly the most powerful Square characters, the rest of the pack has enough of a fanbase so that they will likely never get killed by a fellow Square character. This match is a good example of that. Nearly pulling in 30% on Sephiroth is no joke, and Vivi deserves some respect for it. Other things may have been present, as well. For all we know, Sephiroth could have weakened over the past year. Or better yet, Vivi may have been far stronger than many people initially thought. Sadly, there is no way to truly know. The nature of the bracket makes it difficult to truly verify the strength of many characters, even though logical estimations can still be made. Regardless, we knew two things after this match. It was yet another bore to sit through, and Sephiroth was not looking good against Cloud later on. Showing any signs of weakness whatsoever is not good when you're looking to upend the champion. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1761&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (9)Ryu 2004 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (9)Ryu 2004 (revid 67770)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 15th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 15th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 8,738 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 57.63% 56 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 72.26% (24,005 brackets) After Samus's killing of Lara Croft in the first round, Sonic not only had to beat Ryu, but he had to make a statement to show Samus that he had a chance at taking the division. Unfrotunately, Sonic failed to do so. In the beginning of the poll, Ryu held his own and went 50-50 with Sonic for quite while before Sonic finally managed to pull away for good. Ryu never had much of a chance of winning the match, but he had a moral victory here nonetheless. His performance in this match, even though he performed exactly as expected according to 2003 numbers, more or less showed that Samus had the division wrapped up. This match showed that Sonic had more or less remained consistent, but consistency is not enough to take down a Samus that is on an obvious rise. As for the actual match itself, the one thing I found interesting was the horribly low prediction percentage. Sonic was 2 seed material at worst, yet only 72.26% of people had him into the third round? Aside from that, another predictable match in a predictable contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1762&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Miles "Tails" Prower vs (4)Dante 2004 _source: (12)Miles "Tails" Prower vs (4)Dante 2004 (revid 88833)_ ## Results Thursday, September 16th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 16th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 11,637 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 61.21% 54 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 53.07% (17,630 brackets) Another day, another boring, predictable match. We all knew that Dante would win, and the only thing to even note from this match is the fact that Tails was even in the match in the first place. Well, that plus the fact that Tails did 6% better than expected. Not that it matters, because Tails never had a chance to actually win. For the first time in three contests, Dante was finally out of the second round, but it was no surprise in the least. Equally unsurprising was the fact that no one seemed to care. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1763&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sora vs (3)Ryu Hayabusa 2004 _source: (6)Sora vs (3)Ryu Hayabusa 2004 (revid 55878)_ ## Results Friday, September 17th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 17th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 18,853 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 48.66% 14 for - 41 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 39.06% (12,976 brackets) The match between Ryu Hayabusa and Jill Valentine was widely believed to be a 3-point match, simply because Jill Valentine finished so far ahead of Sora in the 2003 Xsts. Considering how the first round went, there was little reason to believe that Hayabusa wasn't going to own this match. Sora had a decent match against HK-47, but because HK-47 wasn't in the contest last year, there was no way to prove that Sora was any stronger than he was in 2003. And because Ryu Hayabusa managed to beat Jill Valentine, there was no proof that he wouldn't simply take Sora down with ease. But as this match began, it was clear that this match would wind up being the single biggest surprise of the contest. Not only did Sora beat the hell out of Ryu, but Ryu was never in the match in the first place. He began a 60-40 beatdown at the beginning, and never let up until the end of the match. The match itself was never in any real doubt, but most expected it to go like this in favor of Ryu, not Sora. Sora wound up performing so well that after this match, 2004 Sora would be projected to defeat 2003 Aeris, despite the fact that Aeris *doubled him up last year*. No character had a larger weighted gain than Sora this year, and it was all because of this match. And while we had our fair share of OMG WTF SORA IS TEH WINNAR?!?!1!!?1!1 topics, it was no true surprise that Sora won the match to most people despite how favored Hayabusa was by the board. Everyone knows who Sora is, plain and simple. He stars in a game that has sold well over 4 million copies already, and a game that has the Square tag. Ryu Hayabusa starred in the original Ninja Gaiden games in which you'll only see his name if you read the instruction manual, a fighting game series that few people on GF care about, and a Ninja Gaiden title for the Xbox that only sold around 500,000 copies. Hayabusa was able to pull one out against a declining Jill Valentine, but a Square lead is something else. Lastly, take a quick look at Squall last year. He had a decent victory in the first round, but despite this, he was expected to get killed in the second round. Um, oops? Squall turned around and proceeded to layeth the smacketh downeth on Luigi. Only around 35% of people picked Squall to do this. Fast forward to this year. Sora had a decent win in the first round, but everyone expected him to bow out in round two. Yeah, you know the rest. Factor in the prediction percentage, and Sora becomes this year's Squall. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1764&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Sam Fisher vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 _source: (7)Sam Fisher vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 (revid 88834)_ ## Results Saturday, September 18th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 18th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 50,345 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 75.29% 56 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran - 82.85% (27,524 brackets) Don't let that mere 80% fool you. This beating was worse than the percentages may seem. Samus beat Sam Fisher into the ground so badly that people thought the poll was broken early on. But there was no glitch; Samus simply managed to score the first 27 votes in the poll, which I believe is a record. This match was sort of a predetermined beating in the favor of Samus, but one thing to note is how big Samus's blowout was. Remember, she couldn't break 75% against Isaac, and here she was scoring two 80% blowouts consecutively. We all knew that Samus wasn't going to win the entire contest, but just for kicks, extrapolated strength had Samus as the strongest character in the contest after two rounds. The Samus hype began after this match, and even though we all knew that Samus wasn't going to take Cloud down, it was still fun to hop on the bandwagon =) As for Fisher, this was nothing short of pathetic. Losing to Samus is fine, but failing to break 20% on her is pathetic considering his recent exposure. It was a beating from the start, and Samus never let up. Simple as that. If there was any doubt whatsoever as to who was going to win the Chaos division, most of it was gone after this match. Sonic was only performing as expected, while Samus went well beyond her expectations in both of her matches. One match can be overlooked, but not two. All that was left for Samus to do was to actually go out and take Sonic down, and at this point, it looked like she would do so with ease. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1765&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (5)Yoshi 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (5)Yoshi 2004 (revid 55882)_ ## Results Sunday, September 19th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Hyrule Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 19th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 59,394 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 75.47% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 94.05% (31,244 brackets) Everyone knew that Link would kill Yoshi in this match, but what was surprising was the ease that Link had in keeping Yoshi under 20%. Most figured that the SFF wouldn't be quite this bad. But aside from that, there is very little to say about this match other than the fact that Link's prediction percentage was insane for this point in the contest, and the fact that the vote totals were rather high for a straight SFF match like this. 93558 votes total, with 76476 of them going to Link, is no joke. Other than that, the only thing to really note was the new theme for the match pics this round. The third round has traditionally been the sprite round for pics, and this contest was no different. CJayC even went with match pics that made the characters look like they were fighting, which is an added bonus. It didn't help make the matches themselves any better, though. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1766&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Crono vs (2)Mario 2004 _source: (3)Crono vs (2)Mario 2004 (revid 88835)_ ## Results Monday, September 20th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Hyrule Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 20th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 6,265 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 50.03% 34 for - 20 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 38.31% (12,727 brackets) This match was *easily* the biggest disappointment of the entire contest, simply because of the history these two characters have with one another. In 2002, Crono made a miraculous run to the Final Four after taking down Simon Belmont, Dante, Lara Croft, and Solid Snake in succession. But in the Final Four, he was expected to get defeated easily by Mario. After all, if Cloud couldn't take down Mario, then what chance did Crono have? But as the match got underway, Mario was unable to simply blow Crono out of the water. The best that Mario was able to manage was a stagnant 1000 vote lead throughout the day, but even though Crono was doing better than expected, he was still well on his way to a loss. But Crono was not going to let Mario into the finals quietly. He began to fight back against Mario with a tenacity rarely displayed by characters in a contest setting. What began as Crono slowly chipping away at Mario's lead soon became a full-fledged comeback effort that was nothing short of shocking. Here we had a mute protagonist from a game that a great deal of people hadn't even played taking it to the *single biggest icon in the history of video games*. Crono staying within 1000 votes was a shock in and of itself, but Crono managing to make a push at defeating the icon of video games was nothing short of orgasmic. With every passing update that occured in the poll, Crono hysteria took over the board even more. Crono kept up the pressure until the last hour of the poll, and in an update that everyone on GameFAQs was waiting for, Crono took the lead against Mario. The upset to end all upsets was a mere minutes away! Sadly, it was not to be. Thanks to a vote stuffer that was dumb enough to get caught, CJayC removed 400 votes from Crono's total. Not only that, but CJayC would admit over a year and a half later that said vote stuffer cheated 3000 votes for Crono, not the mere 400 as originally thought. Crono tried to keep up the pressure after the monumental setback, but he was unable to keep the magic that he had for hours leading up to the penalty. Mario went on to win the match against Crono before getting killed by Link in the finals, but even though there was penalized vote-stuffing involved in the match, Crono gave us a match for the ages on that fateful day. With this fresh in our minds, why not pit these two characters against each other in a rematch in 2003? CJayC felt that this was the best option, and decided to vastly underseed Crono in order to guarantee us a Mario vs Crono rematch. From the moment the SC2K3 bracket was released, Mario vs Crono 2 was the most anticipated match in the contest. Not Link vs Cloud, not Vercetti vs Mega Man, not the Tidus/Ganon/Magus trio, not even the other matches that were hard to call; Mario vs Crono 2 caused hype that could be concealed in liquid form, and dear God, did they ever deliver on it. Mario and Crono were fed Captain Olimar and Tom Nook in the first round that year, and both handled their business quite well. It was the second round that caused the match to not have a clear favorite. While Mario was busy barely breaking 55% on Shadow the Hedgehog, Crono was beating the absolute hell out of Kefka. Crono seemed like the favorite going into the match, but because of how 2002 went, there was no way to truly tell. All anyone had to go on was momentum. Finally, after literally months of waiting, round two began. Mario jumped out to an early lead again, but unlike 2002, Crono fought back far more valiantly. Not only did he reduce Mario's slim lead to nothing, but Crono himself managed to build a lead of 800 votes. But Mario is not the icon of gaming for nothing, and he soon caught the day vote en route to not only taking down Crono's lead, but building a lead of 200 as well. But yet again, back came Crono. Despite Mario's best efforts, Crono managed to use the evening vote to its full advantage and build a lead of 830. Mario tried as hard as he possibly could to come back, but every single time Mario made any push at coming back in the match, Crono kept him down and kept his lead at 830. All Crono needed to do at this point was play out the final 2½ hours of the match and take home the win, because it was quite clear that he was about to get his revenge. ....or was he? Mario managed to win a couple of updates at this point, but despite this, he wasn't doing nearly enough damage to actually mount a comeback against the Chrono Trigger lead. But once Mario started winning updates in which he was taking off over 100 votes at a time, the entirety of GameFAQs was yet again completely fixated on the poll. Surely Crono wouldn't blow it all away after coming this close, would he? But no sooner did everyone notice Mario's comeback did Mario put even more pressure on Crono in the poll. After the 12:45 AM EST update came around, Mario was only losing to Crono by the slimmest of margins. With the next update, every Crono fan had their worst fears come to life as Mario capped off his comeback by taking the lead on Crono with the last possible update after Crono looked like he had the match all but secured. After a bit of research by CJayC, he deemed the results official, and Mario was declared the winner of the match. One of the single biggest board explosions in the history of GameFAQs came soon afterwards, but what's done is done. Cheating accusations flew all over the site after Mario's miraculous comeback, partly because the nature of the comeback in and of itself was odd, and partly because the poll was supposedly extended by CJayC solely to allow Mario the chance at victory. I don't know how valid the cheating accusations were, or whether or not the infamous Male/Female poll had anything whatsoever to do with Mario's comeback, but I could honestly care less. How Mario came back is beyond the knowledge of any of us, but all of this BS about CJayC extending the poll in 2003 needs to stop. The people who constantly say that the poll was extended always leave out the fact that the poll began 20 minutes early. Was CJayC supposed to close the poll at 12:40 the next morning? Of course not. Mario took the lead with the 1:00 AM EST update, and whether unpunished cheating went on or not, the time that Mario took the lead was completely legitimate. The poll was never extended merely to give Mario an advantage, but rather was allowed to run until 1:00 AM EST. The fallout from that match lingered even after the contest. Crono supporters maintained that Crono was the true victor of the match, while Mario fans could not have been happier with the way Mario won the match. Crono choked worse than the Yankees in his 2003 duel with Mario. So how does one finally decide which character was the true victor? How about three separate "Mario vs Crono" matches in the Spring Contest, followed by Mario vs Crono 3 in the summer? The idea sounded good, but all signs pointed to a very anticlimactic finish. Chrono Trigger took down three of Mario's best games in the Spring Contest. If that wasn't enough momentum for Crono, compare the matches he had with Mario between 2002 and 2003. Mario essentially won the 2002 match by 2700 votes, not 100. CJayC admitted to there being 3000 cheated Crono votes in that match, but he only took 400 of them away. In 2003, all of the votes were left in the poll, and Crono effectively made a 2600 vote swing. When you factor in the high vote totals in the match, this swing becomes all the more impressive despite the fact that Crono took the loss. Momemtum was clearly in Crono's favor going into the match, but the true telling sign of what was to come lied in the second round in the 2004 contest. Crono and Mario had back to back matches in the second round against Magus and Bowser, and the results were nearly identical. Assuming static voting patterns, Crono was clearly stronger than Mario after the second round, simply because of Magus being stronger than Bowser. There is SFF and all that to take into effect, but if there was no SFF in the two matches, then Crono would be assumed to be stronger than Mario based off of those matches in and of themselves. Mario was clearly the one that had a hill to climb in the match, despite the fact that the match picture was on Mario's home turf. Another hint of what was about to happen was the fact that the match itself got no more hype than any other match in the contest. Mario vs Crono didn't have the same feel to it as in the past, and the match didn't stand out from other tough matches as being the match of the contest. Sure enough, the match was over right after it began. Crono jumped out to an early lead, and despite Mario stalling Crono's after each gain of 100 that Crono made in the match, this pattern continued for the entire match. Crono would simply gain 100 votes, deal with a minor push from Mario, then gain 100 more. This was the entire match from start to finish. Boring, isn't it? This was so damned anticlimactic that people were flat-out begging to something drastic to happen. Even the most devout Crono supporters agreed that the match absolutely sucked, and despite everyone's hopes of seeing Mario pull a miracle, it was not to be. This was Crono's day for revenge, and in the end, he managed to get it. Mario was never in the match, and if I remember correctly, Mario only won a single update throughout the day. The one bright side to this of course was the fact that Crono got his revenge. But aside from that, there was nothing good to say about the match at all. The vote totals weren't nearly as high as they should have been, the match was ho-hum (and borderline predictable before it even started), and no one was even surprised at the prediction percentage. Mega Man vs Zero wound up being more exciting than this. MEGA MAN VS ZERO!! Honestly, there is something wrong with this. I understand that we needed to have a match to decide the final winner of this duel, but the duel is over. Crono has won. Stop giving us Mario vs Crono, because it may never again give us the magic seen in 2002 and 2003. How did this happen? Well, it could be any one of a hundred different reasons, but I feel that the biggest one of them all is the fact that Mario hasn't put out a decent game since Super Mario 64. And no, I don't count Mario Golf, Double Dash, or SSBM as Mario games. I'm talking about platformers involving Mario as the main character. Mario has gradually gotten weaker ever since the 2002 contest, and unless something with regards to Super Mario 128 is released soon, the same could happen to him next year. You could argue that Mario getting his Super Mario World sprite hurt him in the match, but I doubt that this allowed Crono to gain enough votes to beat him so soundly. Or maybe the overall population of GameFAQs has outgrown Mario, or maybe they've stopped caring about the contest enough to throw their support Mario in the way that they used to. For all we know, Crono could have been stronger than Mario from the start. Regardless, Crono has finally won the duel, and hopefully we never see this match again. At least not until after Super Mario 128 is released. But no matter how boring this match was, nothing can ever take away from the fun we had with this match in 2002 and 2003. They were two of the single best matches to ever take place on this site, if not the best outright. Crono may have clearlt been the better character on this day in the end, but nothing can take away from the magic caused by the first two matches between these two. I can only hope that we see a rivalry like this once again. On a side note, I feel sorry for Mumei. This was his first Mario vs Crono match, and it sucked. Sorry bro. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1767&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (4)Zero 2004 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (4)Zero 2004 (revid 55886)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 10,049 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 69.33% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 52.73% (17,517 brackets) And thus, we had the match that defined the 20XX division. Zero and Mega Man, two characters from various Mega Man games, got it on in their cute little rigged match to see who the ultimate robot was. The problem, of course, is that we all *knew* that Mega Man would win the match. No analysis necessary in that regard. The issue here comes from Mega Man completely dropping the ball during the match. In most SFF matches, the winner usually winds up killing the opposition. Not so in this case. Not only did Mega Man fail to kill Zero, but Zero had more update victories against Mega Man than Mario had against Crono. To put it simply, this match played out as if there was no SFF at all, which seemed virtually impossible before it began. But as the match progressed and the pattern of Zero being able to avoid SFF altogether became clear, two things could be derived from the results. One, there was no way in hell that Mega Man was going to come close to touching Link. Two, something has to exist in order to give Zero such power against one of his own. Personally, I think that Mega Man fans are smarter than the average voter. Unlike the nonsense that CJayC spews forth about the various forms of Mega Man being the same character, veterans of the series know better. Mega Man and Mega Man X are two completely different characters from two completely different series, and I think that this match helps show that even though the two series are entitled Mega Man, they have two somewhat distinct fanbases between them. In essence, I feel that this match was actually Mega Man vs Mega Man X. It isn't a stretch to consider. Furthermore, Zero stars in his own little series for the Game Boy entitled Mega Man Zero. I've never played it, but from what I hear, it's both fun and difficult. It may not be much, but it could be enough to allow Zero to avoid SFF against someone not even in the Mega Man X series. X might be in the series, but not Mega Man himself. And if none of that sounds valid, then this match would be the one and only example we have ever had of Reverse SFF. Maybe it *is* possible, though I doubt that it will ever allow underdogs in such matches to actually win them. Despite Zero doing far better than expected, he still lost by 10000 votes. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1768&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Frog vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 _source: (6)Frog vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 (revid 88836)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 2,429 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 59.14% 51 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 50.43% (16,753 brackets) "Someone explain this concept of 'Noble Nine' to me again. I *think* it means not choking against a C-Grade Square character, but I could be mistaken." -Amazing Telephone The above result shows a win for Solid Snake, but it also shows Solid Snake being the single biggest flop of this entire contest. In 2002, Snake was expected to take down Crono. It was a shock that he lost, but at least he went out respectfully. He was expected to go down against Mega Man in 2003, but once again, at least he went down respectfully. But what Snake did in this match was simply inexcuseable, even though he won. The assumption that Snake had gone down after he failed to break 60% on Knuckles didn't seem like much, but denying a Snake drop after this debacle is nothing short of ignorant. Not only did Snake let Frog hang around in the beginning of the poll, but Frog actually took the early lead in the poll on Snake. Snake managed to come back with ease, but not before Frog went toe-to-toe with Snake through the first 1000 votes of the match. Snake eventually managed to break away from Frog and build a lead of over 3000 votes throughout the day, but just when Solid Snake was about to regain his respect, the evening vote came. Not only was Frog able to use the evening vote to his advantage, but Frog began a steady momentum that carried all the way until the end of the poll. Frog took a lead of over 3000 and brought it down to 2400 before all was said and done again a character who was elite material. Solid Snake will certainly return to his elite status, but not until after Metal Gear Solid 3. And yes, I'm aware that there was a certain degree of the Solid *BLEEP* Factor going on here, but take a look at a fun fact. Frog faced Liquid Snake, Solid Snake, and Master Chief in this contest. Of those three characters, Solid Snake performed the worst against Frog in the final six hours of the poll. *Liquid Snake* performed better than Solid in the final six hours of the poll. No amount of Solid Shit can possibly explain that; there was something else going on here. There are any one of a hundred different explanations, and to be honest, your guess is as good as mine. When a character performs better on Solid Snake in the final six hours than he did against his two previous opponents, it's nearly inexplicable. Rather than attacking either character in this match, I'm going after something else. This isn't to say that the characters don't deserve some attention, but again, I have no clue why Frog performed the way he did. There may have been cheating, it may have been the SS Factor, it may have even been Snake not having a decent game since 2002 (Twin Snakes and its 200,000 copies =/= decent), or it may have been that these characters truly are as strong (or weak) as this match suggests. Instead, this is the perfect time to attack the extrapolated standings. We all love them. We all use them. But what happens when the standings go berserk? How do you explain Ryu Hayabusa vs Sora, Frog vs Snake, or even lesser matches that skewed the standings like Tidus vs Mega Man or Ganondorf vs Alucard? The only explanations I have ever seen in these cases involve various degrees of SFF or margin of error. The fact of the matter is that even though the Xsts are a great reference point, the people that follow them to the letter will likely find themselves surprised somewhere down the line. And despite this, the same excuses are still used when something goes wrong. Sora may have suffered SFF against Aeris, but his match with Ryu H suggests that he would outright defeat Aeris in a non-SFF matchup. Something is amiss here. The issue with the Xsts is that they assume linear transitivity among voters. Unfortunately, even though we as humans tend to vote in patterns, we are not mindless drones programmed to vote a certain way in every match. CATS may have gotten 12% on Link, but I firmly believe that nearly every character in the field could score 80% or better on CATS. Dance Dance Revolution may have scored nearly 25% on Final Fantasy Tactics, but that doesn't mean that it would do much better against any other game. Each poll has a life of its own, regardless of trends. I firmly believe this. The stats can only tell you so much, and to be honest, the constant stream of "Character X WILL score xx.xx% on Character Y" posts annoy me. Projections are one thing, but using the stats as gospel is something else. I can already see the "Tidus took a massive drop in 2004, therefore he can only score xx.xx% on characters X, Y, and Z in 2005" posts next summer. The Xsts are a guideline. A very broad guideline. They're usually good in their projections, and I use them as much as anything else, but nothing annoys me more than all of the "stats were wrong" stuff that comes after every surprising match. Those standings aren't the bible, and there will be cases of them being wrong in every contest. There is nothing wrong with this. I enjoy picking apart the numbers as much as anyone, but there come times when you're allowed to do nothing more than sit back and enjoy a match. That's what was so amazing about the 2002 contest. There were no stats, no projections, no past results.... nothing. Just a bunch of people on Board 8 rooting for their favorites. It was pure back then. Nowadays, people get upset when their projections are off by the slightest percentage. This isn't necessarily wrong, but it practically guarantees that we will never have a contest as fun as 2002. Back to Frog vs Snake. Frog shocked everyone in this match, despite his loss. Can't we sit and marvel at the numbers that are there rather than the numbers that were "supposed" to be there? Xsts and projections and all of that other mumbo jumbo are a real buzzkill to matches like this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1769&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2004 (revid 88838)_ ## Results Thursday, September 23rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Midgar Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 23rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 46,810 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 71.63% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife - 90.98% (30,224 brackets) Cloud vs Squall, FF7 vs FF8, a massive amount of SFF, blah blah blah. After three matches that held everyone's interest, we were back to matches in which the interest was in everything but the matches themselves. This was one such match. Everyone (except for beloved superfan of Final Fantasy 8, Leonhart4) knew that Cloud was going to win this match with ease, and the only interesting things to happen all day were seeing the match picture in all its glory and seeing how well Cloud would stack up against Link. And after this match, Cloud seemed like the clear underdog. His prediction percentage was lower than Link's, his vote total was lower, and the total votes in his poll were lower. Cloud was clearly on the defensive after this horrible display, and he didn't exactly have a lot of time to get it together. Oh yeah, Squall jumped out to the early lead. But then again, doesn't everyone do that against Cloud? Aside from all of that, this match was horrible to watch. What was even more sad was the fact that no match looked like it would be any more interesting than this one, with the exception of *maybe* the final. Maybe. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1770&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 _source: (3)Auron vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 (revid 88839)_ ## Results Friday, September 24th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Midgar Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 24th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 28,896 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 70.76% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 86.78% (28,829 brackets) Most people had everything in this entire half division called correctly from the start. Only Ness/Jak and Vivi/DK posed any threats to the experts, and along those lines, this match was equally predictable. Whether or not Auron would take down Sephiroth was never in question. This match served no other purpose than to make a comparison between Cloud and Sephiroth, and along those lines, Sephiroth horribly failed: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1341-east-division-round-2-cloud-strife-vs-auron) Cloud and Sephiroth had an equal opponent in Auron after this match, and Cloud did 4.5% better than Sephiroth against him. If Sephiroth can't draw a considerable amount of SFF from Vivi or Auron, then how would he take down Cloud? The easy answer is that he wasn't going to, WHICH SUCKED. Aside from that, another boring match in which we knew the result well ahead of time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1771&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (4)Dante 2004 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (4)Dante 2004 (revid 55894)_ ## Results Saturday, September 25th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 25th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 19,024 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 59.17% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 55.56% (18,458 brackets) Another day, another boring match. Everyone knew that Sonic would win, everyone knows that the Chaos division was set up to give us a Sonic/Samus 2, and everyone was beyond sick of the predictability by this point. The only thing to really note about this match, aside from the hideously low prediction percentage for an icon like Sonic, was the fact that Dante was projected to get 40.43% according the 2003 stats. Sonic did 2.5% better than expected, but no sooner did people start giving Sonic a chance against Samus did everyone realize that Dante's picture in this match absolutely sucked. If a bad picture can hurt Solid Snake, then there is no reason to believe that it wouldn't hurt Dante as well. Sonic *may* have had a chance after this match, but we had yet to see Samus in action against Sora. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1772&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sora vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 _source: (6)Sora vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 (revid 55896)_ ## Results Sunday, September 26th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 26th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 27,747 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 67.57% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran - 71.58% (23,780 brackets) The hope for Sonic fans yet *again* lasted only a single day, because Samus yet again shot them all down like they were nothing. The bad part, of course, was that we had yet another match that was never in question. It was all about future comparisons, because Sora had no chance from the beginning. The problem here was Sora's SFF in 2003. He suffered a lot of it against Aeris, so his 2003 Xst number was somewhat invalid. He was only expected to get 28.83% against Samus after all, and most people know that this is simply unrealistic. So with Sora out of the way, what is there to make of the final results? Most people came into the match saying that Samus needed to score 70% or better to have any chance against Cloud, and even though this match more or less killed the pipe dream that was Samus taking down Cloud, this match was a validation that Samus would be able to take down Sonic with ease. One final number about this match is that even though Sora had a monster of a contest, he failed to even come close to Squall's 2003 percentage against Samus. That doesn't necessarily make Sora look bad, but it makes HK-47, Ryu Hayabusa, and Jill Valentine look like absolute losers. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1773&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (3)Crono 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (3)Crono 2004 (revid 55898)_ ## Results Monday, September 27th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Midgar Division Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 27th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 24,019 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 57.64% 48 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 77.09% (25,610 brackets) Even into the divisional finals round, we still had a constant stream of matches in which the winner was never in question, even before the match started. Few people expected Crono to actually do anything, and it was a moral victory for him if he even managed to break 40% in the match. Sadly, he didn't even come close, and this was just one more blowout in a contest filled with matches barely worth writing about. Yet again, the only thing to draw from this match was how Link would do against future competition. Yet again, Link looked like he had the clear advantage against Cloud in the finals. If Crono could only manage 37.18% against Link (which would have been lower had Crono not made a small recovery in percentage late in the poll), which is lower than what Mario managed to get on Link in 2002, then how was Cloud going to take Link down? It was blatantly clear after this match that Link went up, simply because an improved Crono did worse against Link than 2002 Mario. We could have easily called the contest after Link's massacre of Yoshi, but holding Crono to under 40% is a scary, scary thing. It was nice for Crono to finally take down Mario in getting here, but Crono learned on this day that he has a long way to go if he wishes to take down the more elite characters of the contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1774&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 (revid 88840)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 12,599 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 56.83% 47 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 31.34% (10,411 brackets) Does this match even need an analysis? We had the exact same match last year. From [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1364-south-division-final-solid-snake-vs-mega-man): Solid Snake 46.5% 55322 Mega Man **53.5%** 63639 TOTAL VOTES 118961 In yet another match that proved that this year's 1 seeds had an easier road than ever, Mega Man took down Solid Snake in a rematch that never should have happened in the first place, simply because everyone knows that The Twin Snakes and its 200,000 copies sold isn't going to allow Snake to make enough of an improvement to take down the likes of Mega Man. Mega Man did nearly 4% this year against Snake than last year, which could mean a Mega Man improvement, a Snake drop, or a little of both. Plain and simple. Another day, another boring match to sit through. The only thing exciting about this was Snake's minor comeback attempt early in the poll in which he shaved all of 20 votes off of Mega Man's lead. Aside from that, it was another of those matches that was far too easy to call from the start. Well, most people knew who was going to win this match. Stealth Snake Zero decided to challenge common sense, and everyone knows what happened to him. He got quite literally pwned by Ulti -- he made a friend bet with me and the loser had to write "pwned by" the winner on their butt and snap a picture for the internet, which thankfully no one bothered saving and I blame the fact that we were all children and did very stupid things online back in the early 2000s -- and Snake capped off one of the single biggest bombs in this contest in the process. Oh and before I forget to ask, is anyone ever going to learn not to underestimate Mega Man in these contests? For someone of his status, his prediction percentages have been downright horrible for three contests in a row now. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1775&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 (revid 88841)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 29th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Midgar Division Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 29th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 10,968 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 52.25% 43 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife - 60.59% (20,129 brackets) Before I say a word about the match, is that not the single best match pic ever? That thing kicks all kinds of ass. Okay now, for the match. As everyone knows, the 2003 final was between Cloud and Sephiroth, and as everyone knows, Cloud won with relative ease: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1367-tournament-final-cloud-strife-vs-sephiroth) The poll looks close on paper, but aside from Sephiroth getting the small early lead, he was never in the match the entire day. Cloud went on to win by 4713 votes. So in 2004, why not feed Cloud and Sephiroth a bunch of cupcakes in order to blatantly set up a match between them? After all, it isn't like Cloud and Sephiroth can gain or lose popularity separate from each other, right? Sephiroth should have a chance to not only take down Cloud, but Link as well! Yeah, right. Another day, another boring match. Much like their bout in 2003, Sephiroth managed the early lead before tanking completely later, and Cloud went on to an easy victory en route to his imminent showdown with Link. But unlike a great deal of the other predictable matches in this contest, there was actually a good reason to debate this one. If half of 4713 people change their minds, Sephiroth could conceivably take down Cloud. Factor in that the majority of Boards 8 and 20052 can't stand him either, and you have a true trap match for Cloud. Picking Sephiroth to upset Cloud and/or Link was this year's most logical risk to take, but unfortunately, it simply did not hold true. In one day, we lost our one chance of seeing Cloud upset before the finals, the final perfect bracket, and we even saw renewed hope for those who picked Cloud to win the entire contest. Even though Link had clearly outdone Cloud for the majority of the contest, Cloud turning Sephiroth into a prison beating during this match simply could not be ignored. The problem for Cloud were the total votes drawn in from both he and Link. Link was drawing more attention to his matches, which is all he really needed to take down Cloud this year. Link and Cloud may not have necessarily been about which character increased or decreased in popularity, but rather who showed up to vote for them in the match --- our contest in its purest form, in other words. Even though Cloud won this match with ease, and even though I had Cloud in my bracket, I wasn't exactly thrilled to see Sephiroth roll over and die after taking the initial lead into the poll. I like both characters, but I like Sephiroth far more than Cloud. I find him to be the better character. Simple as that. Cloud's amazing, but he simply can't hold a candle to Sephy. At least not in my eyes. After Cloud's dispatching of Sephiroth with ease, all we were left to think about was the fact that Link vs Cloud was right around the corner, and until Link's match with Mega Man, there was a slight chance of the match still being up in the air at this point. For Cloud to disappoint in nearly every match he has been in yet *still* kill Sephiroth is nothing to sneeze at, and Link needed a solid performance against Mega Man to show who the real favorite was. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1776&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 (revid 55904)_ ## Results Thursday, September 30th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 30th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 12,692 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 57.09% 48 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran - 52.46% (17,428 brackets) In 2002, these two characters became entangled in a match that no one will ever forget --- or at least, those who were here will never forget it. Sonic was the 1 seed that year, and in the third round of the contest, he was slated to get it on with the 5 seeded Samus. Most people expected Samus to roll over and die that day, but in the end, that was the last thing she did. Everyone knows the story by now. The poll started two hours late, but no one cared. The match wasn't exactly the most hyped matchup in the world at the time. But Samus, instead of rolling over and giving up, managed to hang around like a pestilence for the entirety of the day. With a mere three hours left in the poll, Samus only found herself down by 1500 votes to the favored Sonic. Samus then began tear-assing into Sonic's lead in a manner that no one there will ever forget. In the final three hours of the poll, Samus managed to take off the entirety of the 1500 votes, hold off Sonic's desperate attempt to hang on to the match, then made a very small push to allow herself to win the match by a mere 34 votes. Those final moments were so hectic and so controversial that the servers broke from mass refreshing. The outcry was something to behold as well, as not only did CJayC make a topic to announce that the victory was legit, but he had to make a second topic in response to the thousands of people who refused to believe him. It was absolutely insane, and it's difficult to explain exactly how controversial it was to those that weren't there. How does one settle such a heated rivalry? Why, let's pull the old "Stick the two characters close together and feed them fruitcakes so that they're guaranteed a match!" trick. But as you can see by the results of the rematch, there was a slight problem with this. Back in 2002, Sonic was still an absolutely beloved character. He was still fresh in the minds of everyone who was a fan of his back in the Genesis days, and he was even coming off of a monster hit in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Samus had nothing back then except for Metroid, Metroid 2, Super Metroid, and an appearance in Super Smash Brothers. These were good games, but they were all so old that there was no way that they should have been able to propel Samus to victory in the match. Since that match, Samus has released Metroid Prime, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, and is setting up Metroid Prime DS and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Sonic has done virtually nothing since his loss in 2002, unless you count Sonic Heroes, a Sonic collection, and an N-Gage appearance as doing something for himself. If Sonic couldn't beat a Samus that had nothing new going for her, then how would he beat a Samus fresh off of some recent titles? After all, Sonic has performed near his 2002 levels, while Samus was performing at a level that would put her head and shoulders above everyone else in the 2004 field, including Link and Cloud. Samus, while clearly unable to take down the likes of Cloud after this match, proved that there was a definite improvement from 2002 until the present. She has simply released too many games. As for Sonic, Sega's status as a third party developer has likely screwed him over for life in these contests. Sonic started off as "the cool Mario", but his company has become a marketing joke ever since then, and that doesn't even factor in some of the dumbassed things they do with game design. Honestly, have you people heard the voice acting in Sonic Heroes? Sega releases a good game like SA2:B, then makes their fans wait for that trash as a followup. Sonic may never improve in strength in these contests, and honestly, that's sad. Sega was brilliant once upon a time. As for the match, there is no "Sonic deserved to win". There is no "Sonic deserved to do better". There is no "Sonic would have done better had his picture been better". There is no "Sonic will be back better than ever". Sonic got his blue ass handed to him for the entire match, and no excuses can take away from this fact. And unless Sega pulls a miracle, this is the way Sonic may always be. Samus, on the other hand, has a nice future ahead of her. We've already seen how strong she is, but she has yet to release Metroid Prime 2 or her demo on the Nintendo DS. And demo packagaed with the DS could do absolute wonders for her. Remember the 2002 match with Sephiroth in which she built up a 500 vote lead before collapsing? She may very well have what it takes to drop Sephiroth in a match after those next two games. Oh yeah, and the dumbassed rematch ideas *need* to stop. Frog/Master Chief and Ryu H/Jill might be nice, but the rematches that have no potential whatsoever (Sonic/Samus, Snake/Knuckles) are nothing but a waste of time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1777&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Mega Man 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Mega Man 2004 (revid 55906)_ ## Results Friday, October 1st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 1st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 33,291 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 59.47% 46 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 67.67% (22,481 brackets) If there was any doubt about Mega Man having no chance to take down Link prior to this match, how about looking at the results from the match itself? While Heroic Mario got his chance to laugh at everyone in the stats topic after his Mega Man/Tidus prediction was spot-on, I got my revenge here in the Final Four. I theorized that Link would be able to take down Mega Man and get over 65% of the vote, and I was laughed at mercilessly for it. Funny how actual match results can change things. Link not only had little trouble breaking 65%, but he *doubled* Mega Man with ease. The same Mega Man who set blowout records in 2002, who came stunningly close to taking down Sephiroth, was now reduced to being killed by Link. The obvious explanation for this would be SFF, but we can't ignore the fact that Link may very well have gone up over the past year. Maybe Link not getting Wind Waker pics does have a positive effect. Maybe the E3 trailer did make a difference for Link. Maybe Link is one of those characters who can benefit from the absolute slightest of exposure. There was definitely a certain degree of SFF in this match, but to be honest, I feel that Link's rise in strength had more to do with this than the SFF itself. Mega Man simply doesn't get killed like this on the back of SFF alone, even though we had a serious warning sign from Zero earlier in the contest. But don't let this match fool anyone. Mega Man is still a strong character capable of doing real damage in these contests; he simply ran into a nuclear weapon in this match. Link is just that damned good. This is the Link that we all thought we would see last year, but he was handicapped for whatever reason, be it Kingdom Hearts, his Wind Waker pics, or a mix of both. For a true personification of the power of Link, you don't need to look at the finals. Look at this match. *Two thirds* of all brackets entered had Link in the finals. TWO THIRDS!! After zero brackets, joke brackets, favorite brackets, and everything else, over two thirds of everyone entered had Link in the finals. Add in how easily Link doubled Mega Man, and this contest was pretty much over after this match. It would take a small miracle for Cloud to win, and despite Cloud doing as expected in every match thusfar, "as expected" simply isn't good enough to take down a Link not handicapped by Wind Waker pics. Even if Cloud were to break 60% on Samus, that still may not have been good enough for him to take down Link. After all, look at what Link did to Samus and Mario in the past. Oh yeah, one final word about this match. For the final three matches of the contest, we were treated with .php pictures --- in other words, multiple pics per match! For the Final Four, there were two pics per match. Each character was given a pic of themselves flat-out pwning the living hell out of the other character. In this match, we saw Marvel vs Capcom Mega Man blasting the hell out of LTTP Link, and in the other picture, we saw Adult Link holding his sword to Mega Man's throat as the Mega Man 7 version of Mega Man was lying on the ground. Amazing work by CJayC, if you ask me. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1778&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 (revid 88842)_ ## Results Saturday, October 2nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 18,283 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 59.70% 47 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife - 55.11% (18,308 brackets) The only interesting thing about this match was the first five minutes. Like every other match involving Cloud, his opponent --- Samus, in this case --- jumped out to the early lead. But Samus, unlike the rest of Cloud's opponents, had the power necessary to hold a lead against him. Even though we all knew that Samus would eventually tank, it was fun to go crazy after her initial lead of 100 votes. But of course, it lasted all of five minutes. As expected, Cloud easily withstood the early damage and eventually came back to score nearly 60% on Samus. But we all knew this would happen. The question here was whether or not Cloud was powerful enough to take down Link. Unfortunately for him, Cloud looked to be at a disadvantage. Throughout the entire contest, Link has had better prediction percentages, better vote totals (for the most part), and a better aura surrounding his matches. Link was shown no signs of weakness whatsoever, while Cloud has surrendered the early lead to everyone he has faced. The only advantage Cloud had whatsoever going into the finals was the fact that his match with Samus was the first in the entire contest to score over 100,000 votes. But aside from that one fact, the contest was Link's to lose. Sadly, aside from the first five minutes, the only other interesting thing about the actual match between Cloud and Samus were the pictures. And why? Because *both* pictures were of Samus pwning the ever-loving hell out of Cloud. One pic saw SSBM Samus standing in the Fountain of Dreams preparing to let loose a Charge Beam right at Cloud's pasty FFT sprite. In the pic that was supposedly of Cloud pwning Samus, we saw Ehrgeiz Cloud ripping apart Metroid Fusion Samus. But not only was Cloud suffering from the fact that no one gives a crap about Ehrgeiz, he was also suffering from Samus TJF. I mean damn, we got to se a suitless Samus! Anyway, the finals were set, and \*gasp\* it was between Cloud and Link! Not that this wasn't set up from the start, of course. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1779&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2004 (revid 55910)_ ## Results Sunday, October 3rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 3rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 4,533 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 52.60% 40 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 35.39% (11,757 brackets) So here we were, waiting for the match between Link and Cloud, the match that was set up from the beginning, to play out. These two had a minor history between them, but it was a history nevertheless. 2003 was supposed to be the year of Link. He dominated in 2002, and for most of 2003, he showed the same dominance. But in the Final Four, he ran into the buzz saw that was Cloud's championship run. Link managed a minimal early lead after the first update, but he would not lead again for the entire match. Cloud jumped on Link after the first update was over, and even though Link fans were claming that there would be a comeback for the entire day, it was not to be. The best that Link was able to manage were a few minor, meaningless update victories through the match. Cloud's victory was never in doubt through the entire day, and he wound up winning the highest-scoring contest match of all time by the final of 76199-71438, a vote difference of 4761. A ton of records were broken in that match, but above all of the numbers was the fact that Cloud not only stood up to the heavily favored Link, but defeated him. Whether it was the Wind Waker pic, Kingdom Hearts, a mass of vote-stuffing, or any mix of the three, the bottom line was that Cloud upended Link in 2003. With two characters clearly ahead of the pack, why not set them up for a reunion by placing them on opposite sides of the bracket? It isn't like anyone else was about to take them down. The two of them took care of their business despite comparisons being made between the two after every match, and even though Link was the clear favorite going in, the two still had to play out the match. And this year, there were no excuses for Link. Eight different match pics were featured in these finals, and Wind Waker Link did not appear in any of them. This is simply a match decided by the names, not the pictures. Unfortunately, Link confirmed what was seemingly obvious all along. He was the dominant character of the 2004 contest after the first match took place. Like every match involving Cloud, Cloud's opponent took the early lead. But in this case, Link was taking in nearly 75% of the vote early on. Cloud rebounded quickly, but not after Link managed to build his lead to over 200 votes. Cloud's rebound began soon afterwards, but it was so God-awful slow that even those supporting Cloud wondered whether or not he would be able to not only come back, but survive the legendary Zelda day vote in the process. After Cloud spent the next few hours trimming Link's lead down to 40, we got our answer. Cloud looked like he was going to come back against Link and claim the lead for his own, but Link caught absolute fire with the morning vote. What was once a match going in Cloud's favor turned into an absolute rout in the favor of Link, and before Cloud could even blink, the match was completely out of reach. The only thing left for Cloud to do was to hold off Link from beating him by more than 4761 votes. Thanks to a minor push late in the match, Cloud managed to do so and preserve a moral victory, albeit a Pyrrhic one. And despite this, Link still managed to defeat Cloud with a higher percentage than what Cloud scored on Link in 2003. How did this happen? Simple. Link went up in strength. It was painfully obvious to see after every single match Link was involved in, and those of us denying it were only trying to convince ourselves that Cloud stood a chance. At least, that was my position. I felt in my heart of hearts that Link would win the contest after he beat CATS the way he did, but I kept telling myself that we didn't know what would happen until the finals. Well, the finals have come and gone, and Cloud got his ass kicked. Link went up, plain and simple. As for why it could be any one of a hundred things. Maybe the E3 trailor made a difference. Maybe KHF wore off a little. Maybe the fact that both Board 8 and the FF7 crowd loathe Cloud had something to do with it. Or maybe, just maybe, Link was the better character in 2003 after all, and was simply handicapped by his Wind Waker pic. I never waivered from my belief that a Link with adult pics could ever lose on this site, and I stay by that even today. I will, however, tip my hat to Cloud. Despite Board 8 and the Final Fantasy 7 board absolutely hating him, Cloud withstood the initial onslaught and brought the match to within 40 votes before the day vote gave Link the win. That has to mean something. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1780&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Spring 2005 Character Contest _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 31 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Spring 2005 Contest _source: Spring 2005 Contest (revid 83993)_
Spring 2005 Contest

Announced:

April 7, 2005

Started:

May 3, 2005

Ended:

June 2, 2005

Winner:

Sephiroth

Contest Winner:

mankvill - 79 points

Notable matches:

Ridley/Diablo, Ansem/CATS, Robotnik/Sin

Kuja/Master Hand, Bowser/Seph, Ganon/Seph
**Spring 2005 Contest** **Spring 2005 Contest** was the 2nd Spring Contest held on GameFAQs. Its official title was "**Got Villains?**" and is generally considered one of the worse Contests as it was filled with fodder and the winner was never in doubt. (However it did serve an important purpose in allowing Sephiroth to be removed from the main bracket of the 2005 Character Battle.) ### See Also - 2005 Spring Contest Matches - detailed write-ups on every '05 Villains poll ## The Bracket
Mushroom Division Bowser Sephiroth Sephiroth Ganondorf Sephiroth
\(1\) Bowser (8) Pyramid Head Bowser Sigma Bowser Ocelot
\(4\) Sigma (5) Andross
\(3\) Revolver Ocelot (6) Nemesis Ocelot Dr. Wily
\(2\) Dr. Wily (7) Ultros
Jenova Division
\(1\) Sephiroth (8) Ramirez Sephiroth Vergil Sephiroth L. Snake
\(4\) Vergil (5) Ghaleon
\(3\) Lavos (6) Mother Brain Lavos L. Snake
\(2\) Liquid Snake (7) Officer Tenpenny
Ruin Division Diablo Ganondorf
\(1\) Kefka (8) Mithos Kefka Wesker Kefka Diablo
\(4\) Luca Blight (5) Wesker
\(3\) Albedo (6) M. Bison M. Bison Diablo
\(2\) Ridley (7) Diablo
Triforce Division
\(1\) Ganondorf (8) Giygas Ganondorf Ansem Ganondorf Robotnik
\(4\) Ansem (5) CATS
\(3\) Dr. Robotnik (6) Sin Robotnik M. Hand
\(2\) Kuja (7) Master Hand
## Results and Analysis ### Interesting Facts - The Ultimate Loser was Luca Blight. Luca lost to Wesker, who lost to Kefka, who lost to Diablo, who lost to Ganondorf, who lost to Sephiroth. - 18 of the 32 villains in this contest haven't appeared in a character battle since. ### Ulti's Analysis As the months of February and March came to pass, anticipation for a new Spring Contest grew. After all, Spring 2004 was arguably the second best contest we've ever had on the site, and another such contest with games lumped into a gigantic mess instead of separated by era would have the potential to be even better. Unfortunately, as the days and weeks began to pass with no announcement of anything new, it became clear that we weren't getting anything new, and that the Spring Contest may have simply been a one-time affair. But CJayC, ever the one to be fashionably late, slapped up a "Got Villains?" topic out of nowhere in early April. The standard frenzy commenced, and within a few hours, a bracket was posted. The contest was to be a bracket with 32 villains in it, and the entire thing would take place in the month of May. It was a short contest with a rather predictable bracket, but it's better than no contest at all. In the end it wasn't quite as exciting as it could have been, but this was not the fault of CJayC or the bracket. The bracket was actually put together pretty well. The problem is that most of the entrants in this contest were weak bastards. You have Ganon, Sephiroth, Bowser, then a huge dropoff before you reach the strength of anyone else. Weak characters mean weak vote draws, and I also think that the fact that this was a bracket of 32 instead of 64 had a lot to do with the lack of excitement as well. And let's not forget the lack of any true close matches. Robotnik/Sin was the closest we got, and that one wasn't close at all. Hopefully the Summer Contest kicks ass and is either 64 characters or 64 games. No silly gimmicks like females, heroes, 32 entrants, threesomes or tag teams. CJayC did an awesome job in trying to mix things up a little in this contest, but it not working out to its full potential isn't his fault. Weak characters simply make for weak vote totals in most cases. ### Ngamer's Analysis Spring '05 gets dumped on all the time, but I'm here to tell you... oh, who am I kidding, Villains deserves all the heat. I will say though that I feel bad for all the hate CJay gets for this Contest, because honestly, the guy did about the best he could do. All he had to work with was fodder, two mid-carders, and an Elite way out of everyone's league; really his only mistake was not putting Bowser and Ganon on the same side of the bracket, so we'd at least get *one* memorable result between decent opponents. Mostly though CJay was just unlucky... you think if you put together enough matches between two people no one cares about, eventually people would not-care to the tune of 50/50 in one of them, but no, GameFAQs kept not-caring one character to 60/40 wins, and so nothing ever became interesting. Master Hand and CATS were cool in an embarrassing sort of way, but afraid those two alone can't keep this Contest off the garbage heap. --- ## (1)Bowser vs (8)Pyramid Head 2005 _source: (1)Bowser vs (8)Pyramid Head 2005 (revid 88843)_ ## Results Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 52,993 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 83.80% 86 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 96.13% (23,790 brackets) The first matchup of this entire thing was Bowser versus Pyramid Head, the Silent Hill 2 villain that got into this contest solely on the backbone of Inviso's massive support. Unfortunately for PH, the first match in any contest isn't usually about whether or not the 1 seed will win, but by how much. Mario, Link, Mario 3, and Link again all got their turns to kill some scrub in the first match of the contest, and Bowser followed suit by turning Pyramid Head into one of the all-time weakest characters we have ever seen in one of these things. It was a complete killing from start to finish, and Bowser even went so far as to make Pyramid Head look worse than *Guybrush Threepwood*: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1724-hyrule-division-round-1-bowser-vs-guybrush-threepwood) That has to sting a little if you're a Silent Hill fan. The only thing that could really be taken from this match is that Bowser looked to be as strong as ever before; ideas of new voting patterns taking place in this contest as opposed to any other were floating around, but they had yet to actually be confirmed. It would take quite awhile before these ideas were given more sufficient proof. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1989&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Sigma vs (5)Andross 2005 _source: (4)Sigma vs (5)Andross 2005 (revid 88844)_ ## Results Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 4,762 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sigma - 60.45% 83 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sigma - 57.77% (14,297 brackets) Bowser/Pyramid Head may have gotten us going, but this match was the first truly interesting match of the contest. Before reading anything else, take a quick look at Zero's past performances. In 2003, he killed Scorpion and made a close game of his match against Sonic. In fact, Zero's match against Sonic in 2003 marked the end of the perfect brackets. In 2004, Zero was given a seed proper to his strength and flourished. He destroyed Protoman, took out Tommy Vercetti with little trouble, and would wind up giving Mega Man himself a damned good fight before going down. Zero may have only scored 44% in the match, but he only lost by 10000 votes and won multiple updates throughout the day. This is practically unheard of in a late-round SFF match in which one of the competitors barely had any bracket support behind them. Secondly, look at this poll: The moral of the story is that Zero is strong, and the Mega Man X series is the favorite Mega Man series on GameFAQs; transversely, one would expect the main villain of the series to be decently strong as well. Most people who filled out their brackets remembered all of this, coupled with Fox's disappointments in past contests. Many people expected Sigma to roll over Andross and possibly even give Bowser a run for his money as well. It took all of one match to put an end to these thoughts. Sigma did as expected early in the match, but after a few minutes, his percentage began dropping like a rock. Sigma never wound up being in any actual danger of losing the match, but this wound up being a Pyrrhic Victory if there ever was one. Andross won a few updates throughout the day, and though he never put Sigma in any danger of actually losing the match, Sigma's struggle with Andross only meant one of two things. Either Andross was a lot stronger than expected, or Sigma was a hell of a lot weaker. There was little evidence of the former, and Sigma was clearly in a ton of trouble come the second round. You don't struggle with Andross and then turn around and expect to give Bowser any sort of problems. The other thing that this match proved was what would grow to be a rather alarming trend: low vote totals. Here we had a relatively close match, and the vote total failed to break 70000. Either interest in these contests has clearly fallen off the cliff since 2003, or people truly do only care about matches featuring heavy hitters. And unfortunately for this contest, most of the characters in the bracket were already known to be weak bastards. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1990&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Revolver Ocelot vs (6)Nemesis 2005 _source: (3)Revolver Ocelot vs (6)Nemesis 2005 (revid 55944)_ ## Results Thursday, May 5th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 5th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 7,211 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ocelot - 68.19% 87 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ocelot - 65.11% (16,113 brackets) The very day after Sigma completely craps out against Andross, we see another match that puts a heavy board favorite into question. In Slowflake's Board Odds Project, absolutely no one picked Nemesis to win this match. It was foregone conclusion to most people that Ocelot would not only beat Nemesis, but steamroll over the winner of Wily/Ultros as well. A few people even believed that Ocelot could give Bowser himself a run for his money. After all, everyone remembers how well Liquid performed in the Summer 2004 Contest, and if Ocelot is at all comparable to Liquid, he should be able to win his fourpack (possibly even his division) with ease. When the match began, everything was going perfectly for Ocelot. He had 70% of the vote early on, and though Nemesis quickly managed to bring this down to 65%, one could easily blame early percentage fluctuations for this due to a small voter pool. However, Ocelot gave his supporters much cause for concern as the board vote began to wear off, because his percentage continued to drop. It was similar to Sigma's struggle in that Ocelot was never in any real danger of actually losing the match, but Ocelot's failure to completely obliterate someone that he should have easily destroyed brought up a massive amount of questions about not only him, but everyone surrounding the two characters in the match. One, there was the whole Nemesis/Wesker debate. Every Resident Evil fan who was watching Ocelot's match unfold absolutely refused to believe that Nemesis could be stronger than Wesker, and gave multiple proofs of this from the Resident Evil plot itself. Essentially, a lot of people were trying to prove that Wesker was going to take down Kefka in a match that was hotly debated from day one. After all, if Nemesis was strong, Wesker had to be stronger. Two, there was the Ocelot/Wily debates that started ravaging the board almost from the second that Ocelot began to have problems in the match. Everywhere you looked, you saw a topic made from an Ocelot supporter wishing that they had picked Wily to win the fourpack instead of Ocelot, because even the Ocelot supporters refused to believe that Nemesis was stronger than Wesker, nor did they believe that Dr. Wily was at all weak. These debates would rage on for quite a long time, and they set the stats topic on fire as a result. Everywhere you looked, the faith in Revolver Ocelot was dying all due to this one match, and even the people who still had faith in Ocelot winning his match with Wily believed that the situation looked grim. Regardless, everyone on both sides believed that Ocelot/Wily would be a barnburner, and were absolutely shocked with Ocelot's weakness/Nemesis's strength in this match. Knowing what we know now, is it at all possible that this match was hit with what we're now calling "The Spring 2005 voting trend" (ie, a voting pattern that makes absolutely no sense when compared to any other contest)? Or maybe it's the fact that there is a Resident Evil entitled Resident Evil 3: **Nemesis**. Or maybe, just maybe, the massive overlap among the MGS/RE fanbases allowed Nemesis to give Ocelot a large shot of Reverse SFF. After all, if you look at the boss fights involving these two characters, there is little debate as to which character gives the more difficult fight. Gamers typically remember that sort of thing above most others when discussing villains, though it probably made little difference. All we know for a fact is that Ocelot was clearly at a disadvantage going into the next round. He had to hope and pray that Wily was weak as hell, which is a bad thing to hope for when trying to win a tough match. It's much better to believe in your own strength rather than another's weakness in a fight. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1991&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Dr. Wily vs (7)Ultros 2005 _source: (2)Dr. Wily vs (7)Ultros 2005 (revid 88845)_ ## Results Friday, May 6th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 6th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 20,214 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dr Wily - 62.63% 85 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dr Wily - 71.73% (17,752 brackets) Coming into this match, it wasn't a question of whether or not Wily would win, but whether or not Ocelot truly was in trouble come the second round. And unfortunately for Ocelot, Wily began the match on fire and never looked back. Ultros fought to try and get Wily under 60% early on in the match, but Wily eventually recovered to gradually increase his lead to just over 64% as the day progressed. Ultros made a valiant attempt to keep Wily under 64% very late in the poll, but failed. UncleUlty has tried valiantly to get Ultros in one of these contests ever since 2002, and in Ultros's first shot at one of these things, he doesn't completely bomb, but he still fails to do anything of note. Naturally, hardly anyone was actually looking at the match at hand. It was all about Ocelot/Wily at this point, and it was looking rather bad for Ocelot after this match. The only thing Ocelot had going for him once this match reached its conclusion were the vote totals. Ocelot's poll managed 5000 more votes than Wily's, which means that one or more characters in Ocelot's poll were stronger than one or both characters in Wily's poll; thus, Ocelot's poll was a better vote draw. Unfortunately, this ultimately leads to Ocelot having to hope that Ultros is nothing more than an absolute joke for him to have a chance of taking down Wily in the next round. Believing in one's own strength rather than another's weakness is the way to go when entering a fight, and Ocelot was hoping for the latter. This almost always leads to bad news, but the possibility of Ultros being an absolute joke still existed. After all, in Final Fantasy 6, he's little more than a recurring, gimmick boss fight. You fight him four times, and in all four battles, the fight either ends with a really stupid joke (see: the battle in the Magic Cave or whatever it's called... you know, the Relm portrait scene) or is a really stupid joke (see: the final battle where you see Chupon for the first time). The only battle with Ultros that is even difficult is the first one, and that's only if you're too stupid to stick Banon in the back row. But even still, Ultros a joke or not, Wily had almost every advantage you need going into a good match. The only thing left was to actually watch the match take place. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1992&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (8)Ramirez 2005 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (8)Ramirez 2005 (revid 88846)_ ## Results Saturday, May 7th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 7th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 56,738 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 85.81% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 97.41% (24,107 brackets) So, who remembers that guy who made that "I want Ramirez to go up against Sephiroth" topic? I wish I would have archived that one, because it was the ultimate "be careful what you wish for topic" of the entire contest. The topic hit 500 posts, CJayC noticed it and set this match up in jest. Anyway, Ramirez had absolutely no chance whatsoever in this match, and he would wind up being so weak that he was completely unable to benefit from the "Let's all vote against Sephiroth because we know he's going to win anyway" votes that all of Sephiroth's other opponents were able to enjoy at the beginning of their matches against him. Ramirez got his ass kicked early and often in this match, and it eventually grew so bad that he was unable to outdo Vyse's percentage against Cloud in the Summer 2004 Contest: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1758-midgar-division-round-2-cloud-strife-vs-vyse) For anyone hoping that Sephiroth would somehow be off of his game in this contest, this match was a bad sign. Sephiroth was easily the strongest character coming into this contest, and nothing short of an act of God was going to prevent him from winning this contest. On the other side of the equation, all of the "Ramirez is a far better villain then Sephiroth" topics were fun to read at least. It's always neat having entertainment during blowouts. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1993&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Vergil vs (5)Ghaleon 2005 _source: (4)Vergil vs (5)Ghaleon 2005 (revid 55951)_ ## Results Sunday, May 8th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 8th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 18,469 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vergil - 57.95% 77 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vergil - 70.15% (17,361 brackets) For whatever reason that I can't explain, this match started becoming extremely debated as it drew closer, specifically from Ghaleon's side of things. Many Ghaleon supporters argued that Ghaleon actually had a chance at this match, and that those who argued that the RPG rule only applied to Square were sorely mistaken about dismissing Ghaleon or Lunar despite their cult status. The problem with this is that the "all RPG characters have potential" rule does only apply to Square. Non-Square RPG characters being the least bit strong is an extremely rare sight to see, and there is a long line of non-Square RPG characters and games that help support this, and this mainly includes the discussion of the most popular characters within a game. When you start talking about villains, the vast majority of which are not the most popular character within their own game, the massive popularity dropoff that occurs after Square is even more evident. This is a theme that came up again and again throughout the Spring 2005 contest, and Vergil/Ghaleon was the beginning of the trend. Even if you felt that Ghaleon had a chance, go look at that match picture. It's Calender Vergil versus Immodium Ghaleon, and any chance that Ghaleon had of doing damage in this match went out the window the second that match pic was posted. It's almost as if CJayC went out of his way to find the worst Ghaleon picture he could, and though the majority had Ghaleon losing, seeing him go out like that was a pity. Still, the match eventually went underway, and as expected, the massive, multi-million sales mainstream appeal in Vergil's corner almost singlehandedly carried him over Ghaleon's cult support with relative ease. There is some form of moral victory in Ghaleon not getting doubled, but not much. Non-Square cult RPG characters are going to have a hard time doing much of anything in these contests, and there are even a couple of examples from Square itself that being cult is bad news, period. Vergil's reward for easily winning such a debated match? Sephiroth. Congratulations. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1994&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Lavos vs (6)Mother Brain 2005 _source: (3)Lavos vs (6)Mother Brain 2005 (revid 55953)_ ## Results Monday, May 9th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 9th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 8,241 - **Oracle Expectations:** Lavos - 59.52% 85 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Lavos - 62.11% (15,371 brackets) When the bracket was first released, this match looked to be a candidate for the lowest vote total of the contest, simply because both characters are little more than characterless boss fights. Mother Brain is little more than the final boss at the end of a couple of Metroid games, and while Lavos has a little more going for him in the way of being prominent in his own game, he too is little more than the boss at the end of Chrono Trigger. This was a match that few would care about, though it was a fairly obvious match in that it would likely come down to franchise voting. Chrono Trigger is far more popular than any Metroid title here on GameFAQs, so when you have a character from each game that few care about, picking the one associated with Chrono Trigger is probably the way to go. The match played out as expected, save for Mother Brain doing a lot better than many expected she would. This didn't matter much in the long run, given that the entire board expected Lavos to win this match before jobbing to Liquid Snake in round two, though it did add to a lot of building theories about this contest. Despite the fact that Chrono Trigger would likely wipe any Metroid game off of any poll, Mother Brain did a lot better than most people thought. Remember, Mother Brain is hardly anything more than a faceless final boss fight in three Metroid games. For her to almost get 45% of the vote against a clearly stronger Lavos is an impressive feat given the circumstances, unless you believe that Captain N truly did make that much of a difference. The true meaning behind this match was to preview the looming Diablo/Ridley affair, and if Mother Brain could do this well against Lavos, one would have to assume that Ridley was in pretty good shape. After all, there was no way that Mother Brain could be stronger than Ridley, right? \>\_\> Overall, it was a fairly boring match with hardly anything to talk about throughout save for the somewhat surprising closeness of it all, though everyone got a nice laugh when the stats were released after this match. CJayC, our famous leader, lost his perfect bracket to Mother Brain and did not appear on the leaderboard for the rest of the contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1995&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Liquid Snake vs (7)Officer Tenpenny 2005 _source: (2)Liquid Snake vs (7)Officer Tenpenny 2005 (revid 55955)_ ## Results Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 43,853 - **Oracle Expectations:** Liquid Snake - 71.76% 87 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Liquid Snake - 87.08% (21,551 brackets) In the Summer 2004 Contest, few new characters made as good a showing as Liquid Snake. His only match was a loss, but he left an everlasting impression on everyone who remembers the Summer 2004 Contest well. He was an 11 seed, and was stuck facing Frog in the first round. Frog was a heavy board favorite, and managed to jump out to a fast lead of 450 votes. However, Liquid Snake refused to go down quietly and soon managed to stall Frog. He then began coming back, albeit very slowly. However even if Liquid's push was slow, it was constant. Liquid would eventually pull even with Frog in the evening and take part in a duel reminiscent of CT/LTTP before finally falling behind by 200 votes late in the match. Liquid made a valiant effort to come back, but fell just short. When the stats came out after the Summer 2004 Contest, Liquid Snake was ranked extremely high, perhaps too high. Liquid ranked ahead of even Bowser, and major things were expected out of him in this contest. Unfortunately, he got stuck in the same division as Sephiroth. If Liquid and Ocelot were in opposite places, perhaps the top half of this entire bracket wouldn't have been such a lock. But as it stood, Liquid was a virtual lock to win his fourpack before jobbing to Sephiroth in the Jenova finals. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. As the match began, you would never be able to guess as the contest progressed; Liquid beat the hell out of Officer Tenpenny far worse than most people expected him to, and for a short while, it looked like Liquid would be able to break 85% on the San Andreas villain. Liquid eventually calmed down a little and fell under 80%, but this doesn't take away from the fact that Liquid managed one of the biggest blowouts of the contest. For all the speculation that Liquid's 2004 value may have been overestimated, he showed no signs of being undeserving in this match at all. ~80% of the vote is no easy task, and even though Liquid was destined to lose to Sephiroth later on, a powerful win is a powerful win nonetheless. There was no indication at all of what would eventually happen to Liquid, and as we watched this match unfold, we began to realize more and more that we needed something exciting to happen... ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1996&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Kefka vs (8)Mithos 2005 _source: (1)Kefka vs (8)Mithos 2005 (revid 55957)_ ## Results Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ruin Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 20,303 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kefka - 70.28% 72 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kefka - 88.17% (21,820 brackets) CJayC has quite the sense of humor. It was widely believed that this division would be the one to take down most brackets, and he aptly named it the Ruin Division. What a punny guy. The first major issue with the Ruin Division was Kefka being a 1 seed. In 2003, Kefka was one of the most hyped newcomers coming into the contest. He responds to the hype by almost losing to Pac Man in the first round before being completely destroyed by Crono in the second. Granted Kefka was given one of the single worst match pics ever and he beat Pac Man on the backbone of his name alone, but still, a struggle is a struggle. In 2004, Kefka is slapped right in the middle of the infamous Snake-Knuckles duo as a 7 seed. To the shock of everyone, Kefka takes it to Knuckles early and often to build a lead of around 200. Kefka was eventually buried with the day vote, but a hint of strength was there. Now, in the Spring 2005 Contest, a character whose only win was a struggle against Pac Man is given a 1 seed. Sir Bormun was about the only person to see this coming, and everyone was naturally weary about how good a 1 seed Kefka would make. Plenty of people doubted whether or not he would even make it out of the second round, and even less people believed that he could actually win his division given the heavy hitters looming at the bottom of it. His match against Mithos was barely an issue, but it would likely be a telling sign of whether or not Kefka was truly in this thing for the long haul. Even better was that the match picture clearly favored Kefka. He may have gotten the strawberry FFA look, but Mithos looked like Colette in her (his?) picture. Of all the villains in this contest, Mithos looked the least villainous of them all, and Kefka had the added bonus of Mithos not being prominent in his game until the tail end of it. For all intents and purposes, Kefka should have destroyed Mithos in this match. (We'll ignore the fact that CJayC really screwed this match up and should have put a certain.... other form of Mithos in her (his?) place; way to ruin one of the best spoilers in gaming for everyone who had yet to play Tales of Symphonia, Ceej) Despite the fact that most people knew Kefka would win, how strong he would wind up being in this match would be a telling sign of how he would do later. Kefka's big concern was getting rid of the stigma that his percentage will always drop during the day regardless of who he's facing, and when the match got underway, Kefka was very strong early on. He had 75% of the votes early, and was looking like he would dominate the match the way a 1 seed was supposed to. But sure enough, Kefka's percentage began to gradually drop as the match progressed, and though Kefka made minor pushes to get his percentage climbing again, the entire thing essentially dropped like a rock all throughout the match with nothing but minor stalls from Kefka every so often to make himself look respectable. Mithos is a character in Tales of Symphonia that you barely see until the end of the game, is a character with a gigantic sister complex, is a character whose gender cannot possibly be determined with 100% certainty, yet is a character who completely embarrassed Kefka in this match. She (he?) may have had no chance of winning nor did she (he?) even come close, but taking over 10% off of a 1 seed's initial percentage as the match wore on is something to be proud of. I wonder how that certain... *other* character who should have been in Mithos's place would have fared. We may not have seen any other Ruin Division character perform yet, but if Kefka struggled with an effeminate villain that you hardly ever see, it would be tough to imagine him truly holding his own come the divisional finals, and many people felt that Kefka's clock was ticking come the second round. Wesker over Kefka was a popular debate during this match, and from looking at these results, it's tough to say that the Wesker fans didn't have some good ground to stand on. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1997&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Luca Blight vs (5)Albert Wesker 2005 _source: (4)Luca Blight vs (5)Albert Wesker 2005 (revid 88847)_ ## Results Thursday, May 12th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ruin Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 12th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 11,926 - **Oracle Expectations:** Wesker - 60.56% 68 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Wesker - 55.91% (13,837 brackets) The very day after Kefka opens the door for plenty of other people in the Ruin Division to take a stab at winning it, we got to see whether or not the Wesker faithful knew what they were talking about. 2004 stats project Kefka to score over 70% on Luca Blight, and though those stats aren't always accurate, it's a safe assumption that Wesker blowing out Luca Blight would mean bad news for Kefka regardless of the hard numbers surrounding the match. So what does Wesker do? He comes out and absolutely bombs. Screw scoring 70% on Luca Blight, because after the first few seconds of the poll, Wesker found his percentage hovering well under 60%. At one point, Wesker's percentage fell under 56%. Wesker managed to recover a little with the day vote, but every time it looked as if Wesker was going to make a huge push to get his percentage climbing, Luca Blight was there to smack him back down to earth. Wesker was able to break 60% for a short while after putting up a massive fight to do so, but Luca Blight made sure that it didn't last until the end of the poll. Wesker won the match, but the fact that he needed to score 70% in the match and wound up failing to even break 60% was the dominant story of the match. Wesker went from being a possible threat to Kefka to being one of the laughingstocks of the contest in the span of 24 hours. Kefka may have looked like crap in his first round match against Mithos, but it was clear that he had a bye straight to the divisional finals after this joke of a performance by his supposed second round threat. I've done some research on Luca Blight's character, and from the looks of it, he's a very well written villain. However, his game only selling 92,000 copies makes it impossible for him to be little more than a contest joke, and Luca Blight was the latest cult RPG character to drop out of this contest in the very first round. However, his performance opened the door for a few other characters. No longer was Kefka in any danger of losing his second round match, and more importantly, the Ocelot supporters arguing that Wesker could very well be much weaker than Nemesis were no longer as insane as they first looked. Wesker completely crapped out in this match, and this made HoratioQHornblower look like more of a genius than nearly everyone else. *"Every time someone mentions that Wesker was in Resident Evil 4, someone always asks 'Really?!' within three posts. Wesker isn't going to beat Kefka, and you're a fool if you think otherwise."* ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1998&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Albedo vs (6)M. Bison 2005 _source: (3)Albedo vs (6)M. Bison 2005 (revid 88849)_ ## Results Friday, May 13th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ruin Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 13th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 24,927 - **Oracle Expectations:** M. Bison - 55.97% 65 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** M. Bison - 66.45% (16,445 brackets) Albedo vs M. Bison was Vergil vs Ghaleon all over again in that as the match drew close, meaningless hype began to take over. The winner of this match was clear as day, especially if you're a fan of using old polls as a guide: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1743-chaos-division-round-1-kos-mos-vs-ryu) M. Bison may not be nearly as strong as Ryu, but asking Albedo to make up a difference of nearly 25% when he's weaker than KOS-MOS is absolutely ludicrous. Furthermore, though Albedo clearly has a dedicated fanbase behind him, they are a very small fanbase. Xenosaga's sales aren't too impressive, and through the first 15 hours of the game, you see Albedo how many times? Twice? And all he does is laugh manically, then walk away. You have to suffer through quite a lot of boring gameplay before ever actually seeing Albedo do something noteworthy, and there aren't enough of these people out there for Albedo to even have a chance against Bison, let alone beat him. Albedo is another example of a cultish non-Square RPG character with expectations beyond his ability, and had absolutely no chance of winning this match. You have to go pretty far down the Street Fighter ladder before finding someone that Albedo can actually beat. But Albedo fans chose to ignore the obvious, and were up for quite a shock when the poll began. Not only did M. Bison begin the match on fire, but he absolutely kicked Albedo's face in. Most people with any degree of common sense expected Bison to win the match, but hardly anyone expected Bison to flat-out kill Albedo in the process. At one point, Bison looked like he had the potential to break 75%, and his performance was so amazing that it drew out the best night of fads that this contest had to offer. **PSYCHO CRUSHER!** **AIR COMBO!** [bison.ytmnd.com](http://bison.ytmnd.com) [psychocrusher.ytmnd.com](http://psychocrusher.ytmnd.com) This stuff was posted all over the place, and I do mean *all over the place*. It was arguably the most fun we had during the entire contest. Of course, Albedo did wind up getting the last laugh in this match. Few people bothered to notice during the day of fads, but M. Bison went from pushing 75% in this poll to gradually losing percentage throughout the day to the final result you see above you. Few people thought that this would make much of a difference and proclaimed that Bison was a very real threat to win the division, but the percentage loss that Bison suffered in this match would come back to bite him in the ass later on in this contest. Not that it made his match against Albedo any less fun, mind you. PSYCHOOOO CRUSHAAAAA!!!!11! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1999&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Ridley vs (7)Diablo 2005 _source: (2)Ridley vs (7)Diablo 2005 (revid 88850)_ ## Results Saturday, May 14th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ruin Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 14th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 11,358 - **Oracle Expectations:** Diablo - 50.14% 37 for - 36 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Diablo - 48.32% (11,958 brackets) When the bracket was first released, this was viewed as the most important match of the entire contest. The seedings were completely meaningless in this matchup, and though this match had its fair share of disagreements, nearly everyone at least agreed on that point. This match was not widely debated simply because it was difficult to predict, but the fact that the winner of the Bison/Ridley/Diablo trio had an excellent chance to take down Kefka in the divisional finals. Kefka showed no signs on being worthy of the win in his match against Mithos, and it only made this match mean that much more. The premise was simple. No one allowed themselves to forget about the amazing run that Starcraft had in the Spring 2004 Contest, and though games are generally not equal to characters, denying that games play a large part in character strength is foolish. And in Diablo's case, he hails from a series that is more popular than Starcraft in America. It is extremely rare that you'll see more games of Starcraft being played on Battle.net than you will Diablo II, and this is no accident. Neither Diablo nor his games are weak by any means, and when you factor in that Diablo the character and Diablo the game share the same name, Diablo's chances of being a powerhouse in his division were that much better. Another good point for Diablo is that the Metroid series isn't exactly the type of series that lends itself to massive mainstream appeal. It's not a cult series by any means, but it's likely pretty niche. Many people in Europe and Japan haven't even heard of Metroid, Samus, or Ridley, and Metroid's main source of popularity is in America, the same country that prefers Diablo 2 to Starcraft. It's also very likely that there is a massive dropoff in the popularity of Metroid characters after Samus, simply because the games aren't about character or character development; they're about Samus beating the living hell out of anything stupid enough to move. Diablo may be little more than the character that you fight at the end of the Diablo games, but he is extremely prominent in the game's story as you play through it. The same cannot be said of Ridley, who is little more than a recurring, oft nameless mid-boss in a few Metroid games. He's mentioned by name twice in the entire series as of this writing, and I'm willing to bet that a good number of people who have played Metroid don't know that Ridley is the leader of the Space Pirates. He's simply not very prominent in his games, whereas Diablo is. And if these character contests have taught us anything, it's that you almost have to be prominent in your game to be a strong character in these contests. I'm sure there are a couple of exceptions, but not many. Diablo as a series is more popular than Metroid as a series, Diablo's sales to release ratio flattens Metroid's sales to release ratio, Diablo is far more a factor in the story of the Diablo games than Ridley is in the Metroid games, and Diablo had other advantages going into this match as well. He had the mainstream advantage, series popularity advantage, and name advantage ("Diablo" is much more well-known a name among the gaming community than "Ridley"). By the time the match started, Diablo had the picture advantage. Only one good picture of Ridley exists, and CJayC didn't use it. Diablo also had the advantage in the intangibles department. Diabloii.net and its 2000 hits per day could be all the difference in a close match, assuming you believed that Diablo needed outside help to win this in the first place. The only things Ridley had going for him were his seeding and company affiliation. Diablo had everything else. The only thing left to do was to start the match, and once things got going, Ridley found himself in the lead for all of 60 seconds. Ridley managed a minor early lead thanks to a small advantage in board/bracket voting, but Diablo quickly recovered to even things up and take the lead in the match. Ridley tried to recover, but the best he was able to manage was to stall Diablo. Diablo took all of Ridley's early heat, fought through it, and slowly began building a lead in the poll. Within 15 minutes, Diablo had a 100 vote lead. From there, this pattern continued. Ridley managed to constantly stall Diablo, but that was the best he was able to manage. Every time Ridley tried to make a move in the match, Diablo persevered, hung tough, and continued building upon his lead after Ridley was worn down. Before long, Ridley finally ran out of gas, and failed to stall Diablo for much longer. Diablo caught fire after the first few hours of the poll, and Ridley was unable to keep the match close. Diablo turned a close match into having over 56% of the vote and a lead of well over 1000. At around 8 in the morning, Diabloii.net caught sight of what was going on and posted a link on their site, effectively ending any chance Ridley had of winning. Ridley fought valiantly early on, and made a good effort to keep the poll from turning into a complete joke, but Diablo would have the last laugh as he cruised to a victory of over 11000 votes and over 57.5% of the total vote share. What began as a match that lived up to its hype turned into an absolute killing of Ridley, and in an odd turn of events, it turned out that Diablo didn't need outside support to win. He had over 56% of the vote before diabloii.net linked to the poll, and by the end of the poll, Diablo had 57.5% of the vote. That isn't a large difference, and while it's understandable for Ridley backers to be upset about a rally, the match was decided long before diabloii.net showed up. Next up for Diablo was a very intriguing match with M. Bison. Bison looked prime to win the entire division early in his match with Albedo, but his percentage drop throughout that particular poll made their round two matchup anyone's game; at least, it looked like it was anyone's game. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2000&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Ganondorf vs (8)Giygas 2005 _source: (1)Ganondorf vs (8)Giygas 2005 (revid 88851)_ ## Results Sunday, May 15th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Triforce Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 15th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 55,749 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 84.88% 72 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 97.23% (24,062 brackets) This match was quite similar to Sephiroth/Ramirez in that there was barely a point in actually holding the match. Ganon, like Sephiroth, was a pre-contest lock for the finals, and the only reason Giygas is even in this thing is because the very loyal Earthbound fanbase needed something to nominate. Unfortunately, it was somewhat obvious that Giygas would be a contender for weakest character of the contest before the contest ever began, and he went and proved it in this match. The Earthbound faithful prevented Giygas from being a complete joke (see: Tanner), but they were unable to give Giygas a respectable showing in the match. Ganon squashed Giygas like an ant from start to finish and never looked back, and that's about all there is to say. Only Pyramid Head has a chance of being weaker in the extrapolated standings than Giygas. There is, of course, one bright side to all of this: [giygas.ytmnd.com](http://giygas.ytmnd.com) Freaky music... ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2001&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Ansem vs (5)CATS 2005 _source: (4)Ansem vs (5)CATS 2005 (revid 73544)_ ## Results Monday, May 16th, 2005 - **Division:** Triforce Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 16th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 5,484 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ansem - 65.52% 71 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ansem - 55.93% (13,842 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis *"People need to get over the psychological barrier that CATS can't win a match."* -creativename *"I can't believe we're going to lose a perfect bracket to CATS."* -Ngamer64 Coming into this match, the standard CATS discussion was taking place. Most people on the board planned on voting and rooting for CATS, but next to no one actually believed that CATS could actually win a match. He had had three matches prior to this, and in all of them, he was flat-out killed. Some people have been led to believe that there is a ceiling for the number of votes that CATS could receive in a match. If this match proved anything, it's that nearly any character can do damage given the right opponent. Even CATS. Ansem may be from the 4 million+ sales phenomenon known as Kingdom Hearts, but he is not prominent in the game. Until the tail end of the game when he reveals himself, the only thing you know about Ansem is that he was doing some research on the Heartless and left behind some of his work for you to read. Essentially, the only thing Ansem is is the final boss fight of the game, and he has little to no story leading up to the fight with him at all. It was somewhat expected that Ansem may struggle in the match, but even the most devout follower of CATStholocism believed deep down that even if CATS were to grab a lead early on in the match, he would likely screw up later on. And as is in accordance with the prophecy, CATS managed to grab the early lead against Ansem. But when the seconds turned into minutes, then the minutes into lead increases, the board began to experience an explosion. This was not some mere fluke. CATS truly was building a lead on the heavily-favored Ansem in the match. Ansem tried his damndest to follow in the footsteps of all of CATS's other opponents to quickly grab the lead after falling behind early against CATS, but he was unable to do so. Every time Ansem tried to gain his footing, CATS..... **CATS**... managed to kick him back down en route to holding the lead in the match for its first hour. By this point, the board went in an absolute tizzy. Everyone expected CATS to perform somewhat well given that this may very well be the easiest match he'll ever have, but hardly anyone expected him to hold and build a lead in the match. And it would only get even better for the CATS faithful. Throughout CATS's entire miracle push, a ton of people expected CATS to die off the map at any second. It never happened. Ansem eventually managed to recover and slowly cut into CATS's slim lead, but not before CATS was the first of the two characters to 1000 votes. Ansem managed to eventually recover and take the lead from CATS, but not before CATS held the lead for the first two hours of the poll. Ansem tried to shake off CATS on his own, but CATS was able to hang tough and stay dead even in the match. For all of Ansem's efforts to take control of the match for good, CATS refused to stay more than one step behind him. Every time Ansem tried to pull away, CATS fought back. It got so bad for Ansem that *he needed to rely on the morning vote to save him from CATS*! CATS stayed dead even with Ansem for the first five hours of the poll and well over 10,000 votes, and it took over six hours for Ansem to finally catch the momentum of the morning vote to put CATS away for good. This is the same CATS whom no one believes can actually win a match. Even now, with preliminary Xsts being put out almost by the hour, everyone refuses to take CATS's positioning seriously. Ansem eventually went on to win the match, but no one will ever remember this match for Ansem's historic flop; this entire match was all about a character whose fanbase almost entirely consists of people who have never played or seen his game. So how could something like this have possibly happened? For starters, in every match CATS is in, CATS is the beneficiary of the board vote more than any other character in these polls. Board 8 loves the little guy, and no matter who he's going up against, you'd be hard-pressed to find people voting against him. There's also the aforementioned fact that Ansem is not the least bit prominent in his game. He suffers from the "I'm just the guy you fight at the end of the game and I'm here for little to no reason" disease. Lastly, CATS is strong enough to win a match or do damage given the right opponent; he isn't Tanner, and nearly everyone on the board was unaware of how large an impact their "joke votes" would have when added to the strength that he already possesses. Go back and read the quote from creativename, because it's true. CATS is not a complete contest joke like many would believe, and he has no vote ceiling. If you put a weak character in front of CATS, he won't roll over and die. CATS is not an auto-loss when in a bracket, and despite the fact that no one takes him seriously, he's going to shock the world and win a match in one of these things sooner or later. Oh, and there's also the fact that CATS got the pic of him that everyone knows rather than the eggplant mug that he's been stuck with three years in a row. That likely made a huge difference. I have one final point to make, and then I'm moving on to the next match. - Andross: 31732 - Mother Brain: 31468 - Ridley: 31438 - CATS: 31153 ## Ed Bellis' Analysis CATS, everyone’s favorite perennial joke character, was put in probably the easiest match of his entire contest career, and the amazing thing is that he almost won it. CATS led Ansem for damn near the entire morning before the Kingdom Hearts day vote swept the villain to victory. This wasn’t just a board vote giving CATS the edge in the first five minutes or so (as normally happens) – this was CATS actually having a prayer at looking semi-respectable. Heck, in the X-stats for his division, CATS got ranked third, above even Robotnik! Sadly, CATS has never been put in such a winnable situation again, even in 2007, when he couldn’t even muster up enough strength to get past Peach and Meta Knight. But for one brief, glorious morning… it almost happened. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Ngamer's Match Update Topic](http://www.thengamer.com/gamefaqs/05Spring/05CatsTopic.html) - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2002&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Dr. Robotnik vs (6)Sin 2005 _source: (3)Dr. Robotnik vs (6)Sin 2005 (revid 88852)_ ## Results Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Triforce Division - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 1,918 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dr Robotnik - 53.23% 57 for - 16 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dr Robotnik - 55.51% (13,738 brackets) So, who remembers this post? From: Tai \| Posted: 5/12/2005 8:18:12 PM \| Message Detail I say Sin. He comes from the mighty series that is Final Fantasy. People argue Dr. Robotnik is simply more recognizeable, so he should win. What about Pac-Man? Scorpion? Donkey Kong? Didn't they..all..like..get creamed by Square characters? Man, that must suck. :-( Also, think Crono and Mario. Mario has been in so many more games than Crono that EVERYONE must know who he is. Hell, Mario went to the Finals last year. But, Crono? I've heard he doesn't even talk. I guess all the girls like his hair because it looks like Goku's a little, right? Yet, somehow, he rivals to Mario. If that can happen, any "ugly" character can beat a popular one. Also, Sin comes from the game, FFX, which features Tidus, who beat Shadow last summer. So, what can a mere fat loser do against this Final Fantasy character? People think Sin will be crushed because he's a whale. Well, I guess this means the fat scientist will be CHEW'D UP AND SPIT'D. In this topic, it's simple. Vote for a villian. This was one of the many Tai topics leading up to that match, and virtually all of them were written with the same degree of analytical skill as the one you see here. But we'll get to that in a minute. The ironic thing is that there actually was a good reason for thinking that Sin was going to win this match before this contest started. The weakest Sonic character in the 2003 stats is Tails, and the weakest FFX character is Yuna. Tails made a minor jump in popularity between 2003 and 2004, but even then, if Sin and Dr. Robotnik were at all comparable to Tails and Yuna, one could argue that Sin had the advantage despite Robotnik obviously having a bracket advantage going into the match. There was also the matter of Wily/Ultros. Assuming Robotnik was somewhat even with Wily in strength, asking Sin to be 15% stronger than Ultros wasn't that much of a stretch. I myself thought that this match would be close, but it would be Tidus/Shadow close in Sin's favor. Of course, knowing that Sin was already up for a tough road in the match, all hope of him actually winning went down the drain when the match picture came out and we saw Robotnik in all his glory versus a dorsal fin. Not that this took away from the fact that the entire board was in a win-win situation, because thanks to Tai's wonderful little spam topics every other day with insane predictions of Sin with 58% of the vote, even those who had Sin winning the match ended up rooting against him because no one wanted to be associated with an annoying spammer that not only spammed the board, but also kept botting AIM chats and mass marking people with alt accounts. When the match finally started, Robotnik flew out of the gate for 65% of the vote early, and though Sin eventually regained some of his footing, he did little to nothing to prevent Robotnik from steadily increasing his lead. Robotnik's percentage was slowly falling from the 65% he had initially, but he managed to build a lead of 2700 votes through the first 15 hours of the poll. Of course, this caused Tai to absolutely lose his mind. Not only did he attempt to rally votes from other websites singlehandedly (which is a fair strategy in these contests and is to be expected, so no shame there), but he took his loss this match in a worse way than virtually anyone else ever has. When most people make vocal picks that are wrong, they sit around and laugh with everyone else when the time comes to have their picks thrown back in their face. It's all part of the fun. I ate my crow with Magus's choke job in 2005 with a smile on my face, because that's just how these things go. The most famous example was Squall getting his flowers over Luigi in 2003. But not Tai, oh no. There is no having fun with this user. Rather than simply taking a joke lightheartedly, he decided to mark everyone's messages on a bunch of alts, then keep track of the messages that weren't deleted so he could archive them and run off to MBH and Message Detail 2 and spam the site mods personally. It was arguably the worst case of bad sportsmanship we have ever seen, and users like this are a large reason why back end moderation was reworked on GameFAQs. Marking messages with alts no longer boosts priority, and you'll actually get shadow banned from marking people if you try it these days (you can use the form, but it will never show up in the mod queue). And for the record, Tai and maplejet are and always were the exact same human being and he was *always* a troll. Site mods aren't allowed to reveal things like that, but I'm not a site mod. You're welcome. Lost in all of this was the fact that Sin truly did make this a Tidus/Shadow affair. He had little chance of coming back and winning, but he did turn a 2700 vote defect into a respectable 1900 vote loss. It makes you wonder what might have happened if Sin didn't have the worst picture of the contest, because knowing what we know now, all those people who had Sin winning the fourpack may very well have been screwed by one of the worst match pics we'd ever seen. Future Edit: On top of Sin getting screwed by his match picture despite having some very cool images in-game, Magic the Gathering made a Final Fantasy set in 2025 and official sources of art are allowed in match pictures. In an alternate timeline where this match was taken place after he appeared on Magic cards, Sin very likely gets a *much* better picture. ## Match Trends ## That Match Pic After the match pic came online and Ngamer realized that CJay had just killed his bracket, Ng took advantage of the general uproar on the board and created this image, calling it an alternative poster for *Sin City*. No one liked it, but *he* thought it was hilarious, so he didn't care! ### Other Nonsense The awful pic also resulted in one of the better topics of the season, when The Real Truth put up a thread called **Sin the Fin for the Win**. The original topic can be viewed at - "[Sin the Fin for the Win](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/05Spring/05SinTheFin.html)" Some of the better replies: Yeah, let's toss Robotnik in the bin! \*kicks you in the shin\* Now, that's an interesting spin... Now I need some jin :(. This topic makes me grin. Robotnik has a weak chin. What % are you expecting for Sin? I bet 51% is his min. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2003&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Kuja vs (7)Master Hand 2005 _source: (2)Kuja vs (7)Master Hand 2005 (revid 88853)_ ## Results Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Triforce Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 5,526 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Hand - 41.38% 5 for - 68 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Master Hand - 39.11% (9,679 brackets) This match was supposed to be easy. This match was supposed to be an *obvious given*. Games are not supposed to = characters. Yet seemingly from day one, there were two people, HaRRicH and MasterMage119, who actually had vocal faith in Master Hand. Everyone said that they were insane. Everyone reminded them of Ness, the fact that Master Hand could not possibly be stronger than Ness, and of how powerful Vivi was. No way could one of the most well-developed villains of all time possibly be so weak as to lose to a glove, even if he was from the underappreciated Final Fantasy 9. One could even argue that Kuja would obviously be weaker than Kefka; after all, they're both clown lookalikes, yet Kefka is from the more popular game. It's more than possible that Kuja would be weak, but not weak enough to lose to a glove, not weak enough to lose to a character whose sole purpose is to being a faceless boss fight at the end of the two Smash Brothers games. And who in the hell plays Smash Brothers for the single player anymore? This poll came out ([](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1988-which-underdog-would-you-most-like-to-see-pull-off-a-major)) and no one bothered paying attention to it. We said that the voting pool was too small, that Master Hand only had 12000 votes, that the poll didn't matter. You feel that sharp pain right on your Achilles? That's what a snake bite feels like. When the poll started, Master Hand did a little better than most expected of him early, but not by much. Many people expected Master Hand to get killed, but he fought to stay above 45% early on. Still, it mattered little en route to Kuja building a lead of 440 votes through the first three and a half hours of the poll. Master Hand made these minor stalls at Kuja as he increased his lead, almost to remind Kuja that he was still there, but Kuja managed to do just fine despite his percentage dropping under 53%. But then, to everyone's shock, Master Hand caught the morning vote. It wasn't a tidal wave, but it was enough for Master Hand to begin slowly coming back in the poll. As the morning hours wore on, Master Hand took off a few votes here, a few votes there, and though Kuja made every effort in the world to regain control of the poll with minor pushes that looked like he would shake off Master Hand like a bad case of the fleas, Master Hand refused to go away. This pattern continued for a little while longer, but Kuja was unable to stave off Master Hand's inevitable push toward tying the match at the turn of its seventh hour. But even at this point, no one actually expected Kuja to lose. This was just SSBM carryover, a steroid-induced right hand that was simply benefiting from the morning vote more than anyone expected him to. So long as Kuja was able to continue what he was doing and keep the match within a few hundred, the Square evening/night vote would save him later on. It happened for a multitude of other Square characters, so why not Kuja? But despite all of this, Master Hand and Kuja engaged in what went down as arguably the best string of events in the entire contest. After tying the match, Master Hand's momentum died down a little. Kuja wasn't about to let a glove run away with the poll, and he quickly recovered. But like every other attempt Kuja made to run away with this match, Master Hand spanked the monkey away and continued his match forward. Master Hand then slowly built a lead of over 100 votes, and at this point, Kuja threw everything he had into the poll. Unfortunately, the best that Kuja was able to manage was to split the vote 50-50 with Master Hand, and couldn't truly make a real push in coming back in the match. Master Hand noticed this, and continued building a lead whenever he could. Kuja tried his damndest to do what he could, and his efforts were so good that it took two hours for Master Hand to increase his lead from 100 to 200 and keep it there. However, Kuja was slowly running out of steam, and Master Hand was able to up the pace of his push. It took a mere half hour to tack another 100 votes onto his lead, and though Kuja did everything in his power to prevent what was about to happen to him, Master Hand was eventually able to increase his lead to 400 despite all of Kuja's efforts to prevent it. But then, the absolutely unthinkable happened. Even when Kuja was down by 400 votes, everyone still refused to believe that he would actually lose the match. No one believed that Master Hand would be able to keep this up, and absolutely no one could possibly fathom what was about to happen to this poll. When the after school vote began, the voters didn't just side against Kuja, they absolutely buried him. What began as a poll that was virtually even for 12 hours soon turned into Kuja's funeral. Master Hand turned a lead of 400 into a lead of 1000 within an hour, and it would only grow worse as the afternoon vote wore on. It took Master Hand all of an hour to turn the match into a 2000 vote lead in his favor, and it didn't take much longer for him to turn the match into a complete joke. For all the trouble Master Hand had in adding 100 votes to his lead after first taking the lead in the poll, he was soon able to pull in almost 100 votes every five minutes. The only thing the Kuja supporters could do was stare at the results in disbelief and wonder what in the hell just happened. This was the one and only true board explosion we had in the entire contest, and it couldn't have come at a better time: the tail end of round one, when we still had a bunch of people vying for perfect brackets and zero brackets. It got so bad for Kuja that he wasn't able to slow Master Hand down until he was losing by 5600 votes, and at that point he spent the next two and a half hours shaving off a grand total of 100 votes from the lead. However, it wasn't enough to save face. Kuja went from being a possible favorite in his fourpack to the joke of the contest in a span of 24 hours, and he couldn't make any excuses. Games may not equal characters, but there are clearly enough people who seem to think otherwise. A 40% prediction percentage for a 7 over 2 upset is no joke, nor are the voting patterns. However, this match wasn't as much about Master Hand's strength so much as the fact that Kuja turned out to be an absolute joke. Square villain or not, you need to be prominent in your game to be able to do well in polls. Kuja doesn't make his first appearance until the end of disc one, and in a love it or hate it game like Final Fantasy 9, something like that can clearly have an effect. As for trying to explain how Kuja could be such a joke after seeing Vivi kick DK's face in, Vivi is a black mage with one of the best pic factors in gaming history. You're fooling yourself if you think that that didn't help him out, plus there's the fact that Vivi is a character in FF9 that even haters of the game like. There are many possible reasons for Kuja's complete bombing, and at this point, nearly anything you or I could come up with could be a viable answer. All we know is that Kuja got his face kicked in regardless of how you look at it, and that the cursed seed in this contest was not the 3, but the 2. This was a good way to conclude an otherwise boring first round of this contest. Low vote totals and fodder versus fodder matches were the norm in this thing, and other than Ridley/Diablo, Robotnik/Sin, and the aforementioned Kuja/Master Hand, there wasn't a whole lot going on in the way of excitement. However this wasn't CJayC or the bracket's fault, but merely the nature of weak contestants in polls. There simply won't be as much interest in a 32 character bracket as opposed to a 64, especially when nearly all of the entrants are very weak. This would grow to be an unfortunate trend in this contest, as we would eventually have no matches that were close down to the wire, and the only match with any hope of breaking 100,000 votes would wind up being the final. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis There are weird results that kinda make sense after the fact, when taking other factors into account. There are weird results that people can hypothesize about, but nobody can really figure out. And then there are weird results that may or may not make sense, but it doesn’t matter, because the result is so preposterous that it defies all logic. Apart from a few vocal folks, practically everyone figured this match was an easy point: it’s a Final Fantasy villain against a giant hand. But said giant hand is from the flagship of Nintendo fan service, and said Final Fantasy villain is from one of the least popular installments. I don’t need to tell you what happened – Master “Kobe” Hand won convincingly and embarrassed the living hell out of poor Kuja. This match tends to show up on a lot of people’s “worst matches of all time” list because of the result (IT’S A FRAGGIN GLOVE and whatnot), but I think it’s one of the greatest just because the result is so head-scratchingly silly that it transcends any possible indignity and becomes fun. At least it does for me. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2004&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Bowser vs (4)Sigma 2005 _source: (1)Bowser vs (4)Sigma 2005 (revid 55975)_ ## Results Thursday, May 19th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Mushroom Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 19th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 41,367 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 69.88% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 89.79% (22,221 brackets) It feels really weird calling a match a divisional semifinal when it's actually the second round. Anyway, this was one of the first matches that started causing people to believe that this contest may have slightly different voting trends than past contests. Now granted, we didn't have any solid data on Sigma before this contest started, but when the main villain of the Mega Man X series gets his face beaten in this badly, you have to wonder what in the world was going on from the other side of the poll. Was it conceivable to think that Bowser may somehow be stronger in this contest as opposed to any other, or does Sigma just suck that much? We didn't get many definitive answers to this, and even knowing what we know now, we still don't have any definitive answers. It's easy to blame this being a "gimmick" contest on the different voting trends that we saw by the end of the contest, though discrediting fluctuations in character strength may be a bad idea. It's more than possible that Bowser grew stronger between Summer 2003 and this contest, and we don't have any true value for his performance in 2004 due to him being on the ass end of an SFF match against Mario. Of course, the possibility of Sigma simply being that much of a weak bastard wasn't necessarily out of the question, and this match helped explain why he did so badly against Andross. After Mega Man and Zero, there is likely a huge dropoff in character popularity before you reach anyone else, and watching this match made you wonder whether or not Wily truly did have the advantage in his upcoming duel with Revolver Ocelot. Wily was likely stronger than Sigma, but if Sigma was this pathetic, you wonder if Wily was strong enough to be able to handle Ocelot. Ocelot may have had his problems with Nemesis, but Ocelot/Wily looked more like a battle of which character was weaker rather than which character was stronger after seeing Sigma get beaten like this. Sigma managed to save face in preventing himself from falling under 20%, and he managed to gain back a percentage point or two as the day wore on, but a first class ass kicking is a first class ass kicking no matter how you look at it. Sigma was undoubtedly one of the biggest disappointments of the contest. On a side note, you can't help but love the round where the match pics are sprites. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2005&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Revolver Ocelot vs (2)Dr. Wily 2005 _source: (3)Revolver Ocelot vs (2)Dr. Wily 2005 (revid 55977)_ ## Results Friday, May 20th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Mushroom Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 20th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 5,908 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ocelot - 51.04% 35 for - 22 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ocelot - 45.92% (11,364 brackets) Truth be told, and I say this as a Mega Man fan, Zero has been the only Mega Man character worth watching in any contest since 2002. Mega Man took us for an amazing ride in 2002, but ever since then, only Zero has been able to exit these contests with any sort of dignity. In 2003, after Mega Man walked through the weakest division of the contest, he got blasted to hell and back by a steroid-induced Sephiroth after giving him the fight of his life just one year prior. Mega Man/Sephiroth 2003 got over 25,000 more votes than Mega Man/Sephiroth 2002, yet Mega Man only managed to enjoy 28 of those votes. Zero's killing of Scorpion and subsequent close loss to Sonic arguably made more noise. It got even worse in Spring 2004. Of the top ten characters in the 2003 Xsts, only Mega Man failed to get a game into the Spring 2004 Contest. Then in the Summer 2004 Contest, Mega Man walked through yet another easy division before getting absolutely killed by Link in the Final Four. Zero's 10000 vote loss to Mega Man was arguably more impressive than any of Mega Man's wins, which is pretty damned sad. Mega Man had essentially bombed three contests in a row, and now, with a chance for the series to redeem itself in the Spring 2005 contest, Mega Man had bombed to hell once again. It was bad enough when Sigma decided to struggle with Andross before completely bombing against Bowser, but hardly anyone expected Sigma to come out of his fourpack. Wily, however, was quite clearly expected to come out of his fourpack after a quick glimpse at the prediction percentages. Yet Wily, like every other Mega Man character sans Zero since 2003, completely bombed. Ocelot took a fast lead in the match, and though his percentage followed the exact same pattern seen in his match against Nemesis, Wily was never in the match at all. Ocelot put him away early, and for the majority of the match, few people were talking about how strong Ocelot was, but that fact that Wily was virtually equal to Nemesis in strength. No one at all expected this to happen before the contest, and though Wily lost in a respectable manner, the fact is that he had every sign pointing in his favor and still lost the match with ease. There is a slight possibility that Ocelot's MGS match picture helped him out a little, but not to the point of winning this match with such ease. Wily crapped out in this match, and there's little else to say. It was yet another hyped Spring 2005 match that ended in a dud due to one of the characters not bothering to show up, and next up for Ocelot was Bowser. There was a slight possibility that Ocelot had a chance in this match if he were at all stronger than Liquid Snake, though the chances of it actually happening were slim to none. Bowser meant business in this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2006&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (4)Vergil 2005 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (4)Vergil 2005 (revid 88854)_ ## Results Saturday, May 21st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Jenova Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 21st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 47,003 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 77.50% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 95.37% (23,602 brackets) This is one of the all-time easiest writeups ever. Vergil's purpose was to defeat Ghaleon before jobbing to Sephiroth, and he completely fufilled his purpose. He defeated Ghaleon with ease, and after enjoying the lead in this match for a couple of seconds, Sephiroth buried him. There was no rhyme or reason to this battle other than the fact that characters had to be on the other side of Sephiroth in his matches, and due to the fact he was a lock to win, it was all about how badly he beat his opponents. We may know about his later struggles, but there was no indication that that would happen judging from this match alone. Overall, an extremely boring, pointless match with nothing to really examine. The bright side is that this post gets to be short. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2007&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Lavos vs (2)Liquid Snake 2005 _source: (3)Lavos vs (2)Liquid Snake 2005 (revid 88855)_ ## Results Sunday, May 22nd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Jenova Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 22nd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 8,530 - **Oracle Expectations:** Liquid Snake - 65.21% 57 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Liquid Snake - 53.12% (13,146 brackets) Finally, a match worth actually saying something about. After the Summer 2004 Contest, the Extrapolated Standings looked beyond screwed. Everyone already knew about the blatant SFF adjustments, but there was a less known anomaly early in the stats evolution after that contest. Due to Mega Man's bombing against Link, Solid Snake was ranked far lower than he should have been, lower than even Ryu. The only logical adjustment that could be made was to assume that Mega Man suffered SFF against Link, so that Solid Snake could rank above Ryu where he belongs. The problem is that it caused some other characters to make very large jumps based off of Mega Man and Snake's adjustments; namely, the Frog/Master Chief/Liquid Snake trio. It's somewhat difficult to imagine Liquid truly being as high as the the 2004 stats would suggest after one match, simply because he hadn't really been tested yet. Liquid Snake is ranked above even Bowser in those stats. Liquid's match against Tenpenny made Liquid seem like a beast, but you would think that Liquid would have followed it up by demolishing Lavos, the characterless villain of Chrono Trigger, in embarrassing fashion. Instead, Liquid failed to cream Lavos early on, and soon saw his percentage actually dropping. He made a minor recovery in percentage in an effort to get it back over 60%, but it Lavos eventually caused it to start dropping again to the value you see now. Lavos, the villain who is just sort of.... there, wound up breaking 44% on Liquid Snake. This was either a very impressive performance by Lavos, a bombing by Liquid, or both. There are few explanations for such an embarrassment on Liquid's behalf, and through his match picture sucked, there's probably more to it than that. True, it's possible that the Chrono Trigger fanbase will vote for anything that appears in the game, but Liquid's prediction percentage leads me to believe that the 2004 stats massively overestimate him. One would think that a character stronger than Bowser should have more than 53.12% of brackets picking him to make it out of such an unbelievably easy fourpack, yet instead over 46% of people picked either Tenpenny, Lavos, or Mother Brain to beat him. SHENANIGANS. It's possible that both Liquid and Lavos are strong, but I personally find it hard to believe that one could think that Liquid could be anything but overestimated after seeing this match against Lavos. If you do some quick math and plug Lavos into the 2004 Xsts, you get a value of 26.57% for him. This puts Lavos between Kirby and Dante, ahead of such characters as Dante, Tidus, Yoshi, Shadow, and Knuckles. I don't know about you guys, but I think that Lavos being ahead of a lot of characters that he has no chance against is a little strange. Personally, I think Liquid is proof that transitivity does not always exist within the Xsts. It's more than possible, for example, that Liquid's adjusted 2004 value is way off, while other adjusted 2004 values are correct. Frog and Master Chief, for instance. Multiple close matches in a row can cause some strange things, and Lavos's amazing performance quickly shot down any form of elite strength that Liquid allegedly possesses. There's no way in hell that Ryu or Bowser would struggle with Lavos this badly. Most of you have played Chrono Trigger, yes? He gives such a piss-poor fight and has little to no real story other than what your characters say before you fight him. It's possible that Lavos truly was that strong and that Liquid would turn around and perform just fine against Sephiroth, but the odds were extremely small. The 2004 stats are just screwed. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2008&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Kefka vs (5)Albert Wesker 2005 _source: (1)Kefka vs (5)Albert Wesker 2005 (revid 55983)_ ## Results Monday, May 23rd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Ruin Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 23rd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 31,628 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kefka - 58.83% 52 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kefka - 73.34% (18,150 brackets) Before the contest, Wesker over Kefka was supposed to be a reasonable upset pick. After Kefka vs Mithos, Wesker looked like he had the match locked down. After Luca Blight vs Wesker, Wesker went from looking like a possible contender for the division to an absolute joke, and when the time finally came for his match against Kefka, it was officially confirmed. For all the meaningless hype given to this match, Wesker didn't even bother showing up. Kefka flew past 70% of the vote when the poll started, and after Wesker made a minor push to get Kefka under 70%, Kefka recovered, got back over 70%, and proceeded to beat Wesker pillar to post for the rest of the match. Against nearly any other opponent, Kefka's percentage drops throughout the match. Against Wesker, Kefka started above 70% and stayed there. Let me say this again, because even I don't believe it yet. **Kefka** scored *over 70% in a match*. The greatest picture Kefka could have ever gotten may be partly to blame for this, but Wesker being an absolute joke before this match ever took place was a large factor as well. Mithos, the effeminate villain of Tales of Symphonia, would be projected to defeat the main villain of the Resident Evil series if you solely look at their performances against Kefka. That's nothing short of pathetic if you're Wesker, and this match was arguably one of the best performances of the contest. Kefka took a hyped match and made a complete joke out of it almost before the match even began. All of Kefka's other opponents won the day vote on him, but not Wesker. Sad. Next up for Kefka was the winner of Bison/Diablo, and Kefka getting to the divisional finals largely by default was a bit of an issue for him. His fourpack was nothing short of a joke, and his next match would prove whether or not he truly did have any strength. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2009&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)M. Bison vs (7)Diablo 2005 _source: (6)M. Bison vs (7)Diablo 2005 (revid 88857)_ ## Results Tuesday, May 24th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Ruin Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 24th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 4,866 - **Oracle Expectations:** Diablo - 53.05% 41 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Diablo - 30.13% (7,457 brackets) After Albedo/Bison and Ridley/Diablo, the board essentially made Bison their chosen son. Plenty of people around here are fighting game fanatics, and plenty of people were still somewhat bitter over Ridley's loss. Many people had Ridley in the Final Four, and this soon translated into Bison being guaranteed the board vote against Diablo in the match. That's one advantage. Two, there was the match pic. During sprite rounds with video game backgrounds, CJayC gives "home field advantage" to the higher seed. Bison was the higher seed, and thus, we saw a match pic with a Street Fighter 2 background, an Alpha Bison, and a Diablo randomly plugged in out of nowhere. That's another advantage for Bison. Lastly, and most importantly, it was extremely difficult to think that Bison would be weaker than Ridley. It was obvious that Bison would give Diablo a good match, and aside from consolefreak's proof, it was almost impossible to know which way the match would go. You were either rooting for M. Bison or Diablo, and gave random reasons why you thought each character would win; however, it was impossible to know for sure what would happen. When the match first began, Bison got the board vote as expected and started off on fire. However, Diablo quickly recovered and prevented Bison from ever having a vote lead above double digits. Bison tried to break 100 many times in the first hour, and even managed to stave off a massive comeback push from Diablo in the process, but the two characters were essentially deadlocked early on. After the first hour of the poll ended, Bison had a mere lead of 100 votes, but due to what Diablo was able to do against Ridley as well as the wild card known as diabloii.net, it was still anybody's match. Bison made a push soon after this to extend his lead to 150, but that's the best lead he was able to manage throughout the entire match. Diablo began to come back in the match practically the second after Bison took a lead of 150, and though Bison tried his damndest to hold Diablo off in those early morning hours, Diablo was able to catch the morning vote, then tie the match and begin building a lead of his own. Bison tried his best to stall Diablo many times, but the best he was able to manage during the morning vote was just that: stalling. He was never able to truly cut into Diablo's lead, and though Diablo was stalled many times as the morning hours wore on, Diablo was still able to slowly build his lead up to the 1000 vote barrier. However, Bison was not quite done yet. When the morning vote began, it was Bison, not Diablo, that was the beneficiary. He began to come back extremely slowly at first, and it was so subtle that practically no one noticed what was going on. However, when Bison was able to trim Diablo's lead down to 900 with relative speed and momentum behind him, everyone started taking notice of the fact that we finally had a match on our hands. It only took Bison just under 25 minutes to bring Diabo's lead from 1000 to 900, and he wasn't done yet. He continued his Psycho Crusher assault of Diablo, but like the true devil that Diablo is, he wasn't going to simply let Bison have his way. Bison continued cutting into Diablo's lead, however Diablo began to make it far harder on Bison than when Bison first began his comeback efforts. The two characters seemed to be stuck at around the 850 vote barrier forever, until Bison finally went on a massive push to bring the lead to under 800 votes. Diablo seemed to be out of gas at this point, because as soon as his lead was taken down to the 800 mark, it barely took Bison any time at all to slice another 100 votes off of the lead. Bison mania began taking over the board, while there was clear concern coming from Diablo's corner. As if possessed by the Soul Stone itself, Bison continued beating the hell out of Diablo with a relentless assault, and in no time flat, the lead was all the way down to 660. However, as amazing and fast as Bison's comeback attempt was, Diablo's recovery was even better. Diablo began to receive votes as if every Diablo fan on the planet knew he was in trouble, and within a few minutes, Diablo began to turn the tables in the match. If you blinked, you probably missed how fast the turnaround truly was. Diablo, much like Master Hand not too far before him, absolutely caught fire when the after school vote began. At one point before the after school vote, Diablo's lead was 660. One hour later, after the after school vote fully decided who to favor, Diablo's lead was over *twelve. hundred. votes*. It's as if Diablo was toying with Bison before sending him down into the flames of hell, and before long, the match got completely out of hand. Diablo began beating the absolute hell out of Bison, and it wasn't until Diablo's lead was well over 4700 votes did Bison decide to make any sort of attempt at saving face. By by then, it was too little, too late, and even that push was quickly slapped aside by the Satan spinoff. It was yet another close match that turned into a laughingstock, and it made consolefreak look like an absolute genius. There's little to no proof of how or why Diablo was able to catch fire so quickly right in the middle of a heated poll, so I won't even bother trying to explain it. Moving on. #### Interesting Facts - This is one of only three matches in contest history to this point, the other two appearing in the 4x16 format, to occur between two lower seeds. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis They didn’t call it the Ruin Division for nothing. The villains bracket’s most crazy division featured Kefka as a weak 1-seed and an early matchup between Ridley and Diablo, with a second-round matchup between the winner of that and M. Bison (or, if you were me and stupid, Albedo). Diablo beating Ridley was a huge upset in and of itself, but his match with Bison in Round 2 was even more heated. This match saw lots of lead changes and crazy voting patterns, and after a tough showdown Diablo eventually took home the gold, making Blizzard 2 for 2 on crazy Cinderella runs (Starcraft being the first in the games contest). The only satisfying bit of this for the majority of the board (who had either Ridley or Bison advancing) was watching a troll named Fedor lose his perfect bracket after bragging every which way about it. Hochiminh, take notes. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2010&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Ganondorf vs (4)Ansem 2005 _source: (1)Ganondorf vs (4)Ansem 2005 (revid 55987)_ ## Results Wednesday, May 25th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Triforce Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 25th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 38,290 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 78.43% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 88.27% (21,845 brackets) *"Someone with a perfect bracket had Ansem beating Ganondorf. A perfect had*Ansem*beating*Ganondorf*. A **PERFECT** had **ANSEM**-- you get the point."* -Team Rocket Elite And besides that little tidbit, it's RANT TIME. The character in the match picture was not Ganondorf; it was Ganon. If two different forms of the same character are allowed to be in match pictures for said character (Sephiroth, Link, and Cloud are other examples of this), then there is no reason whatsoever that Mega Man should be devoid of a Mega Man X picture in one of these things. After all, CJayC has already said that all forms of the Blue Bomber are essentially the same thing. I know you're reading this topic, Ceej. Use a Mega Man X picture once in awhile. Okay, so you're probably not reading the topic at all. Use a Mega Man X picture every once in awhile, anyway. (Whether or not you believe the above parts of this analysis to be filler in an attempt to put some meat into an otherwise boring match analysis due to the match being pathetic and predictable is entirely up to you.) Anyway, the match. After Ansem defeated CATS, albeit in dramatic fashion, Ansem was expected to clearly defeat Ganondorf. Ansem's victory over CATS plugged into the 2004 stats projected Ansem to defeat Ganondorf with 54.31% of the vote. However, when the match started, we were all shocked to see Ansem getting killed! SHENANIGANS. Oh right, wrong 2004 stats. Anyway, aside from that one guy with the perfect who picked Ansem to win (what in the holy blue oblivion is a perfect doing picking Ansem?), everyone pretty much figured that Ganondorf was going to be a killer in this match, and a killer he was. The only thing you could really draw from this is Ganon doing worse than expected (everyone believed that Ganon would score at least 80% after seeing Ansem's struggle against CATS), but everyone was content blaming his underperformance on the pig pic and waiting for a different match to get excited about. That's.... pretty much it, really. Analyses involving pre-contest locks for the finals doing what they're supposed to tend to suck, but such is life. Work with me, people. Help me help you. *Help me, help you*. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2011&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Dr. Robotnik vs (7)Master Hand 2005 _source: (3)Dr. Robotnik vs (7)Master Hand 2005 (revid 55989)_ ## Results Thursday, May 26th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Triforce Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 26th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 14,675 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dr Robotnik - 49.19% 22 for - 33 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dr Robotnik - 35.33% (8,743 brackets) After Master Hand's shocking victory over Kuja, paired with Robotnik's struggle against Sin, a good deal of the board thought it would be hilarious to see Master Hand in the divisional finals. After all, most people had picked Kuja to beat Bastard Hand and were already out of the contest anyway. Why not cause some chaos? It seemed like such a thing would be possible, because there weren't yet any true answers about the strength of any member of this fourpack. Unfortunately, the entire ordeal all turned out to be little more than a pipe dream. When the poll began, despite the board's best efforts to give Master Hand a push for the win, Glove was under 40% within minutes. Robotnik was absolutely killing him, and it was yet another fun match turned fast, boring blowout. At one point early on, Robotnik looked like he would double Master Hand, and the only thing worth talking about in the match was how pathetic this match made Kuja look. Robotnik was proving that Master Hand was barely anything more than a joke entrant, yet that joke entrant managed to take down a 2-seed PSX era Final Fantasy villain. As the match wore on into its final hours, Master Hand made a massive percentage push to get over 40% by the time the poll was said and done, and though this did absolutely nothing in terms of making him (or Kuja) look like any less of a joke, it did allow Master Hand to both save face and to prove that Robotnik was likely far weaker than his first two matches would suggest. You simply don't lose 7% to a joke character throughout a match and expect to get anywhere. As if Robotnik's prediction percentage in his fourpack weren't enough of a tell that he was in for some trouble, this match pretty such sounded his death knell against Ganondorf before the match even started. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2012&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Bowser vs (3)Revolver Ocelot 2005 _source: (1)Bowser vs (3)Revolver Ocelot 2005 (revid 55991)_ ## Results Friday, May 27th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Mushroom Division Final - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 27th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 26,221 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 63.31% 50 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 69.54% (17,210 brackets) As good as this match looked on paper before the contest started, Bowser turned it into an absolute joke within seconds. Revolver Ocelot was never in this thing, and for a possible pre-contest upset, a 66-34 result was somewhat disappointing. The only real thing of note about the match was the theme for the match picture: head shots of the characters with sprites of their heroes in the background. There isn't much to say about this match besides what's already on the surface, but Ocelot's getting killed raises a few questions here and there. One, Bowser completely rolled through his first three opponents en route to a very easy division victory, but his first two opponents were mere jokes; Ocelot is not. Ocelot may have won his fourpack by default, but this match gives the impression that Bowser may have perhaps been stronger in this contest than in contests past. We have no real 2004 data on Bowser, and a large increase between Summer 2003 and Spring 2005 was not out of the question. Bowser has been in a few good games in that timeframe. There's also the Ocelot/Liquid question, which we wouldn't have to wait long to see answered. Before this contest, the stronger character between Ocelot and Liquid was a good debate, and given Ocelot's bombing in this contest, all Liquid needed to do to both prove his 2004 value and his superiority over Ocelot was to have a good showing against Sephiroth. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility, though we were clearly in for a Bowser/Sephiroth Final Four match, and the question of whether or not Bowser truly did increase would soon be answered. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2013&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (2)Liquid Snake 2005 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (2)Liquid Snake 2005 (revid 55993)_ ## Results Saturday, May 28th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Jenova Division Final - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 28th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 47,522 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 69.39% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 90.90% (22,496 brackets) This is one of those rare matches in which there is a blowout with plenty to talk about. Liquid got killed, and anyone can see this. The problem is that 2004 stats suggest that Liquid should have scored 35% in this match. He quite obviously didn't come anywhere close, despite actually having the lead in the match early on. The "Sephiroth will win anyway so I'm voting against him for the hell of it" vote allowed Liquid to hold a slim lead early, and though everyone knew Sephiroth would have no problems winning, no one expected that Seph would dominate quite like this. Remember all the Ocelot defenders who said that Ocelot could beat Bowser if he were stronger than Liquid? There's true irony in the fact that Ocelot got killed despite very well being stronger than Liquid. Unless Sephiroth absolutely killed Bowser in the Final Four, Liquid would wind up being the weaker of the two. THIS SITUATION SUCKS AND IT IS NOW ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE. The obvious problem with Liquid's complete tanking (which many were weary of after his struggle against Lavos) are the adjustments made to the 20XX Division. The only thing I can think of is that Mega Man, Solid Snake, Shadow and Tidus should be adjusted as if there were Link/Mega Man SFF, and the Frog/Liquid/Chief trio left alone. It's tough to imagine Frog and Chief as being where they belong when Liquid is so closely related yet bombs so badly against a character that everyone loves to hate. Something realy strange happened in the lower half of the 20XX Division in Summer 2004, and if I were a betting man I'd say that Frog is to blame. I feel that he vastly overperformed against Solid Snake, but I have nothing to actually back this up other than Snake's crappy match picture. Your guess on what the hell went down in there is as good as mine. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2014&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Kefka vs (7)Diablo 2005 _source: (1)Kefka vs (7)Diablo 2005 (revid 55995)_ ## Results Sunday, May 29th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Ruin Division Final - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 29th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 6,887 - **Oracle Expectations:** Diablo - 50.37% 27 for - 25 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Diablo - 14.76% (3,653 brackets) **ATTN**: All people who thought Diablo couldn't make a Starcraft-like run in this contest. /ban With that out of the way, this match was actually pretty good early on. The problem is that even though Kefka was able to quickly jump out to an early lead of nearly 300 votes, practically no one on the board throught that he would hold on for the win. Diablo smashed both Ridley and M. Bison with the day vote, and given that Kefka was quickly stalled by Diablo after the board vote wore off, practically everyone knew what was coming next; sure enough, Diablo was able to stall Kefka and begin cutting into his lead. Kefka tried his best to hold Diablo off, but attempting to postpone the inevitable rarely works. Diablo caught up to Kefka at 8 AM, and Kefka barely made any effort to prevent Diablo from running away with the poll. This would have been somewhat unexpected had we not seen Diablo do the exact same thing to Bison one match prior, and by the time the match was over, a close match early became a laugher late. And since Ganondorf was a lock for the Final Four already, we had some interesting info regarding Diablo. With the exception of Mega Man, Diablo is the only non-Square, non-Nintendo character to ever make the Final Four. The prediction percentage of 14.76% is also the lowest we've seen since Starcraft vs SSBM in Spring 2004. Diablo may have had little chance against Ganondorf in his next match, but he made quite the run in this contest en route to stealing his division away from everyone else in it. The only question remaining was whether or not Diablo was the strongest character in a group of rats, or the strongest character in a group of legitimately strong characters. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2015&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Ganondorf vs (3)Dr. Robotnik 2005 _source: (1)Ganondorf vs (3)Dr. Robotnik 2005 (revid 88858)_ ## Results Monday, May 30th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Triforce Division Final - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 30th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 46,370 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 64.05% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 76.78% (19,002 brackets) Earlier in this analysis I bashed Mega Man for constantly flopping. Sonic's turn to be in the sun, because after seeing Robotnik's performance in this match, one could argue that the only Sonic character to actually impress in these contests is Shadow the Hedgehog. Yes Robotnik won twice, but getting killed against real competition does not mean he impressed overall. In 2002, three Sonic characters made the contest: Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. Tails was up against Alucard in the very first round, and at the time, no one knew who the hell Alucard even was. Tails responds by losing in a match that he was never in, though it was close by 2002 standards. Knuckles was next, and though he managed the first 80% blowout we'd ever seen, he turned around and proceeded to get killed by Solid Snake. It wouldn't be the last time, either. That left Sonic, a massive board favorite to make the finals in a duel against Mario, as the only character in the field to give any sort of respect to the Sonic series. He responds by winning his first two matches easily before one of the most shocking meltdowns we've ever seen in one of these contests. Sonic struggled. Against Samus. Sonic was supposed to be a character capable of taking down Mario, yet he struggles with *Samus*. Not only that, but he lost a lead of 1500 votes within the final three hours. Enter Summer 2003. Tails once again loses in the first round, and Knuckles is once again stuck in the same fourpack as Solid Snake. Knuckles is stuck facing Yuna first, and after the poll was deadlocked at a lead of 1000 votes for Knuckles for a few hours, Knuckles caught the day vote and won with ease. Again, he gets killed by Snake in the second round. This once again leaves Sonic as the one character who could possibly bring respect to the series, but before we get to him, there was a newcomer to the contest field, Shadow the Hedgehog, who had to see some action. Plenty of people expected Wario to beat Shadow in that contest with ease due to the release of Wario World, yet Shadow completely maimed him en route to a second round match against Mario in which he not only refused to get killed, but nearly broke 45%. What does Sonic do? He lands a good win over Ken in a 2-15 match, struggles with Zero, struggles with Aeris, and gets murdered by Cloud. Absolutely destroyed. They're still trying to pick up the pieces of Sonic that Cloud left behind in that match, and the only Sonic character to go out on a high note in 2003 was Shadow. Enter Spring 2004. Only one Sonic game got into the contest, and instead of making its second round match against Mario World interesting, Sonic 2 decided to perform like absolute crap en route to a 70-30 loss. It took Tails until Summer 2004 to get his first contest win, and it was a close one against Viewtiful Joe in the first round. It took until Summer 2004 for Knuckles to actually break 40% on Solid Snake, and this was after losing the early part of his first round match to Lettuce Kefka and needing the morning vote to beat him. Oh yeah, Sonic. He decided to split the early part of his poll with Ryu 50-50, then in a rematch against Samus, Sonic completely choked. Again. Except this time he wasn't actually in the match and decided to simply roll over and kill himself. Once again, the only Sonic character to go out on a high note was Shadow. He lost his first round match by a mere 1400 votes, though some would argue that a loss to "Tee-dus" isn't exactly a high note. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this, so instead of wasting time ranting about how Robotnik completely laid an egg (hardy har har) in his match against Ganondorf, I'll simply slap up the "proper" Triforce Division seeding as per the Triforce results and let you draw your own conclusions. (1)Ganondrf (8)Giygas (4)Dr. Robotnik (5)Sin (3)CATS (6)Master Hand (2)Ansem (7)Kuja Oh screw it, I'm trashing him anyway. Robotnik, like many a Sonic character before him, completely embarrassed himself by the time he exited the contest. Not that anyone actually expected him to beat Ganon in the first place, but Robotnik lost so badly that CATS... *CATS*... looks stronger in the Spring 2005 Contest than he does. That's nothing short of pathetic, and congrats to Ganon for making the rest of his division look like mere ants in his presence. By killing Robotnik the way he did, not only did we get to see yet another Sonic character look like a complete loser, but he made the rest of his division look like an absolute joke in comparison. And he did this with his ugly Wind Waker mug. I shudder to think how pathetic Robotnik would have looked (assuming he could have actually looked worse in the first place) had we seen SSBM Ganondorf in the match pic. It takes a true talent to make CATS look like the third strongest character in a division. Congratulations, Dr. Robotnik, for making this happen and bringing further embarrassment to your once-iconic-now-niche series. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2016&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Bowser vs (1)Sephiroth 2005 _source: (1)Bowser vs (1)Sephiroth 2005 (revid 88859)_ ## Results Tuesday, May 31st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 31st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 18,593 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 66.58% 48 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 85.03% (21,043 brackets) There are few things to actually note about this match, since Sephiroth wasn't going to actually lose it. Thankfully, this match treated us to arguably the best thing we'll ever see in one of these contests. Bowser took the early lead on Sephiroth, but unlike the typical Sephiroth opponent, Bowser was actually able to hold on for a few minutes. It eventually led to this piece of perfection in the stats topic: From: Heroic Mario \| Posted: 5/31/2005 8:09:21 AM \| Message Detail Bowser 50% 500 Sephiroth 50% 500 TOTAL VOTES 1000 Hot damn! There were about 10 of these posts, all within a second or two of each other, all with the exact same content. It was the stuff of legend. Everyone was well aware that it wouldn't last and that Sephiroth would eventually pull away for an easy win, but it didn't actually matter much. The only thing to really draw from this match outside of the crazy 1000 vote sample and the awesome match pic was this poll: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1363-south-division-final-mario-vs-sephiroth) Either Bowser increased between 2003 and this contest, Sephiroth was the direct benefit of the Mario/Crono 2003 after effect, or there was a massive anti-voting of Sephiroth in this match that made Bowser look stronger than he really was. As for which are valid, your guess is as good as mine. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2017&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Diablo vs (1)Ganondorf 2005 _source: (7)Diablo vs (1)Ganondorf 2005 (revid 56001)_ ## Results Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 26,503 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 60.34% 46 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 56.56% (13,997 brackets) Diablo made quite the run in this contest, but he came to a complete brick wall in the Final Four. This was the point in the contest where everyone pretty much started packing their bags and accepting the fact that the excitement was over. Diablo was out of this match within seconds, and despite a minor push in the middle of the match that brought Ganondorf from 65% to 63%, it was nothing legendary and we all knew that we were up for the predetermined final that we all knew would happen all along: Sephy over Ganon. The only things I can even think to say about this match aside from the obvious fact that Ganon won was how dominant Ganon was in his matches. None of his matches were even close, and though he had little chance in the final, it was likely that he would do a little better with early Sephy anti-voting than Bowser. But only 56.56% of people picked Ganon to make the finals? The hell? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2018&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (1)Ganondorf 2005 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (1)Ganondorf 2005 (revid 56003)_ ## Results Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 16,907 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 57.28% 48 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 76.51% (18,935 brackets) It all came down to this, and thankfully, we got to see a decent show early. Ganon took the early lead, and though he lost it after a few minutes, we at least got to see something decent in the finals. Ganon even made a minor comeback attempt before finally falling under for good. The only thing left to do from there was to see whether or not Ganon would outperform Bowser, whether or not the match would hit 100,000 votes (which would be the only 100k match in the contest), and to see how the final Xsts would go down. I'd go into long detail about how the match broke 100,000 votes and how Ganon outperformed Bowser, but you can see that for yourselves =p The only thing this match truly did help prove is that there was something amiss in this contest's voting trend, and I only hope it carries over into the summer. In Sephiroth's first three matches, he absolutely dominated; just ask Liquid whether or not Seph was having any problems dominating this contest. But come Bowser and Ganondorf, Sephiroth fails to break even 60%. Anti-voting can be blamed somewhat for this, but not that much. I think that this contest's voting trend was packed with franchise voting, which would help explain Ganon and Bowser's surge. But then you look at Ocelot and Liquid and wonder if this is the truly the case. Then again, Bowser and Ganon are main villains in mainstream GameFAQs series, so it's tough to call either way. It's an effect that we all know exists, but can't quite explain yet. Hopefully we'll get some answers over the summer. Post-contest poll: **Is Sephiroth truly the greatest video game villain of all time?** Yep, there's nobody badder 44.61% 36655 No way, Ganondorf was much worse 24.31% 19977 Yeah right, Diablo's where it's at 7.07% 5808 Hardly, Kefka should have won it 11.54% 9485 All my base are belong to **CATS 12.46%** 10235 TOTAL VOTES 82160 I'd sure as hell love to know why Kefka was in that poll and not Bowser. Did CJayC completely forget about Bowser making it into the Final Four? And judging by Bowser's spot on the bracket, I can only assume he got more nominations than anyone else. One of these days, CJayC will crack and show us the results of the nominations. Hopefully. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2019&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Summer 2005 Character Contest _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 66 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Summer 2005 Contest _source: Summer 2005 Contest (revid 71348)_
Summer 2005 Contest

Announced:

July 1, 2005?

Started:

July 19, 2005

Ended:

September 22, 2005

Winner:

Regular bracket: Mario

Tournament of Champions: Link

Contest Winner:

maar42 - 208 points

Notable matches:

Kefka/Vercetti, Magus/Knuckles, Ocelot/Pac-Man Master Chief/DK, Vincent/Squall, Mario/Samus, Snake/Bowser, Sonic/Mega Man
**Summer 2005 Contest** **Summer 2005 Contest** was the 4th annual Summer Contest held on GameFAQs. Its official title was "The Great GameFAQs Character Battle IV." It featured a number of exciting matches and is considered by many B8ers to be the best Character Battle Ever.
Regular Bracket
Mushroom Division Mario Samus Mario Snake Mario Crono Mario
\(1\) Mario (8) Joanna Dark Mario Ness Mario Zero
\(4\) Ness (5) Carl Johnson
\(3\) Zero (6) Ryu Hayabusa Zero Lloyd
\(2\) Lloyd Irving (7) Albert Wesker
Zebes Division
\(1\) Samus (8) Yuri Samus Frog Samus Ganondorf
\(4\) Riku (5) Frog
\(3\) Ganondorf (6) Yuna Ganondorf Auron
\(2\) Auron (7) Big Boss
Gear Division Snake Bowser
\(1\) Solid Snake (8) Manny Calavera Snake Zelda Snake Sora
\(4\) Vivi (5) Zelda
\(3\) Kratos (God of War) (6) Alucard Alucard Sora
\(2\) Sora (7) Agent 47
Dream Division
\(1\) Kirby (8) Cecil Kirby Tidus Kirby Bowser
\(4\) Tidus (5) King of All Cosmos
\(3\) Bowser (6) Chun-Li Bowser Ryu (SF)
\(2\) Ryu (Street Fighter) (7) Rikku
Flood Division Crono Vincent Crono Mega Man
\(1\) Master Chief (8) CATS M. Chief D.K. M. Chief Crono
\(4\) Donkey Kong (5) Sam Fisher
\(3\) Kefka (6) Tommy Vercetti T. Vercetti Crono
\(2\) Crono (7) Zidane
Devil Division
\(1\) Dante (8) Terra Dante Vincent Vincent Squall
\(4\) Sarah Kerrigan (5) Vincent Valentine
\(3\) Magus (6) Knuckles the Echidna Knuckles Squall
\(2\) Squall Leonhart (7) Geno
Chaos Division Sonic Mega Man
\(1\) Sonic the Hedgehog (8) Jin Kazama Sonic Diablo Sonic Tifa
\(4\) Kratos Aurion (5) Diablo
\(3\) Tifa Lockheart (6) Vyse Tifa Luigi
\(2\) Luigi (7) KOS-MOS
20XX Division
\(1\) Mega Man (8) Conker Mega Man Leon Mega Man Yoshi
\(4\) Gordon Freeman (5) Leon Kennedy
\(3\) Yoshi (6) Laharl Yoshi Pac-Man
\(2\) Revolver Ocelot (7) Pac-Man
Tournament of Champions
Link Cloud Link Sephiroth Link
Sephiroth Mario
## Results and Analysis Opinions on this contest were generally favorable. While the contest had no wire-to-wire nailbiter matches, the bracket was received as being fairly well put together. The decision to place Link, Cloud, and Sephiroth in a separate bracket received mixed opinions, specifically the decision to pit Link and Cloud against one another in the first round of the ToC. Some interesting facts about the 2005 contest: - \- For the fourth year in a row, Gordon Freeman was placed in a match that many had him winning, and for the fourth year in a row he broke 40 percent on his opponent and still managed to lose. For the third in a row, this opponent has been a gunfighter. - \- Had Kefka beaten Tommy Vercetti, we would have been treated to a gratuitous rematch (from 2003) between Kefka and Crono. - \- This was the first year Knuckles the Echidna did not face Solid Snake in the second round, and accordingly it was the year he made the biggest splash in the contest, beating the heavily-favored Magus in a shocking upset before bowing out well to Squall. - \- Thanks to this bracket, Ganondorf has now beaten all three Final Fantasy X leads (Tidus, Yuna, and Auron). - \- This was the second tournament CATS received a face shot (the first was the previous spring's villains contest), and both contests show he did accordingly better with the face shot. - \- Rikku was the only seven seed to get into the top half of the X stats. She also managed to beat the lead female of her game, Yuna, in the unadjusted x-stats. - \- This was the first year Ryu did not lose to a member of the Noble Nine; oddly enough, his loss to Bowser remains his worst defeat. - \- The Ultimate Loser™ of the Contest was KOS-MOS: KOS-MOS lost to Luigi, who lost to Tifa, who lost to Sonic, who lost to Mega Man, who lost to Crono, who lost to Mario, who lost to Sephiroth, who lost to Link. Even with the TOC, the Ultimate Loser™ stays intact! - \- Had Mega Man defeated Crono, the Ultimate Loser™ would have been none other than Magus. Had Mario lost in the final, the Ultimate Loser™ would have been The King of All Cosmos. If Sonic defeats Mega Man, the Ultimate Loser™ would have been Ocelot. ### Ulti's Analysis This was the best character contest that CJayC could have possibly given us given how popular the X-Stats are. Not only did he clearly use the stats to make this contest as hard as possible, but he removed Clinkeroth from the main bracket to help make the contest more interesting, plus he removed the 9-16 seeds and made eight divisions of eight. This is exactly the twist that the contest needed, and kudos to him for taking the extra time to put it all together. I hope that all those people who whined for bracket night after night once nominations closed appreciate the time that Ceej put into making this thing, as well as the courtesy to allow all of our board jokes into the contest. Everyone knows that Manny and The King of All Cosmos don't make this thing under normal circumstances. Great contest all around, and if CJayC continues to put forth this type of effort these contests will never die. The of course rides on CJayC being willing to keep it all up, but I'm glad he went out and gave us our best contest since Spring 2004. On that note, the standard ranking of the contests: 1. Spring 2004 2. Summer 2002 3. Summer 2005 4. Summer 2003 5. Summer 2004 6. Spring 2005 The only complaint I have about Summer 2005 was the lack of a true nail-biter. All the close matches were wide apart come the finish, with Vercetti/Kefka, Vincent/Squall and Sonic/Mega Man being the easy examples to cite. CJayC may not read these topics, but in case he does... nice job. Keep it up :) ### Ngamer's Analysis After an off year, CJay was back in form for 2005, putting together a carefully-crafted bracket that was helped along by the much-needed to decision to save the best (Clinkeroth) for last. Certainly '05 was the best *bracket* of the CJay era (since '03 pretty much created itself), but did it result in the best Contest? ...perhaps! '05 had everything, including awesome 50/50 affairs between powerful opponents in Mega Man/Sonic and Vincent/Squall, a hilarious choke-fest in Master Chief/DK, maybe the coolest R1 upset ever in Knuckles \> Magus, and a very serious scare for the Noble Nine in Snake/Bowser, *plus* what was (for the board) a very unexpected upset run all the way to the Championship. Honestly, the only thing holding '05 back from a surefire \#1 position was how badly Samus let us down in her massively-hyped battle against Mario. If the Nintendo boost would have been a little less powerful, so that Samus could have been in contention and then the Mario/Crono Final could have been closer to their slugfests of '02 and '03, I bet Summer 2005 would top a ton of people's "Best Contest Ever" lists. --- ## (1)Mario vs (8)Joanna Dark 2005 _source: (1)Mario vs (8)Joanna Dark 2005 (revid 56016)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 61,217 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 81.11% 98 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 96.53% (32,620 brackets) The first match is almost never about who wins. We always know the answer. It's about vote totals and setting a trend more than anything else, and though Mario's expected drubbing of Joanna Dark didn't pass 100,000 votes, it was still a fairly decent increase from the vote totals we had seen since CNET's wonderful idea to redesign the site. This was likely due to the Gamespot advertisement (which caused a major stir, especially since the banner was still there on Gamespot's homepage after the contest started; people thought that Gamespot's casual bias would "ruin" our contest), but more voters is never a bad thing. Trend-wise, one could almost make a case for Mario looking pretty damn strong after Joanna getting her ass whipped. Joanna only did 2.65% better than JC Denton did on Mario in Summer 2004, and I don't personally think that JC Denton is even in Joanna's league. As 1000 people would know what game JC Denton is from without showing them a picture. Less than 50 will be able to answer you, and showing them a picture would only net "Enter the Matrix" answers. Joanna is a fairly well-known character from the quasi sequel to Goldeneye, and her game went 50-50 with SOTN for a very large part of their match. Ngamer may have had to go through hell and high water to get Joanna into this thing, but it's not like people don't know who she is. Perfect Dark is a very accomplished N64 title that sold over a million copies; and "despite" only a million copies, most people know what the game is. Even better is that Perfect Dark will soon be moving to the Xbox, so expect possible appearances by Jo in the future. But either way, either Mario kicked Joanna's ass legitimately, or Mario SFFd her a little bit. Either way, with Clinkeroth gone, Mario was seemingly the character with the highest number of picks winning the contest. Statheads will say that Samus was the odds-on favorite, but as you'll see once this analysis gets going, the casual bracketmaker flat-out kicked Board 8's ass time and time again. Two small things to note about this match before moving on. One, auto updating was still around during this match. The stats topic loves long chains of zeroes, and there were thirteen posts in a row of people posting a score of 80094-18906 (= 99000 votes) within 19 seconds. Secondly, the voting technically didn't close after the match ended. Votes could still be cast in the match for a few days after it closed, and despite a few efforts to get extra votes into the match for the sake of it hitting 100,000 votes, the overall total only got an extra 50 votes or so. Overall, not a bad start to a contest. But then again, the first day of EVERY contest is good. The true test would be later on, and whether or not this contest could stack up to the rest in GF history. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2066&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Ness vs (5)Carl Johnson 2005 _source: (4)Ness vs (5)Carl Johnson 2005 (revid 88864)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 10,237 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ness - 43.28% 4 for - 94 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ness - 51.90% (17,539 brackets) Funny that on the mere second day of the match, a firestorm broke out all across Board 8. Before this match showed up, CJ over Ness was the "obvious" pick. CJ is the lead character of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the same game that won Game of the Year on GameFAQs in 2004. And though people figured that Vercetti would perhaps be stronger than CJ or that perhaps San Andreas would cause both characters to underperform, people figured that CJ would easily take the match regardless. After all, it was the lead of San Andreas, one of the highest-selling games of all time, versus a character who gets almost all of his popularity from a series that has nothing to do with where he originally came from. I speak of Ness getting most of his recognition from SSBM and not EarthBound, of course. Even Lucid Faia, arguably the board's biggest Ness/EarthBound fan, figured that CJ was a lock to win. But there was one argument that kept coming from those few people who openly supported Ness winning the match: appeal. CJ doesn't have it, regardless of how popular his game is. And given that people's imaginary Xst values of CJ probably weren't that much higher than Ness's to begin with, Ness had a good chance to win. For what it's worth, Giygas placed ahead of Officer Tenpenny in the Spring 2005 Xsts. Regardless of this, few people actually thought that Ness could actually win. He hasn't done so hot in past contests, and it took a match against a 3D platformer character (a genre whose characters get NO support in these things) for Ness to finally win one. CJ was the consensus board pick, but oh man, did Ness ever go and screw that one up. Not only did CJ bomb like all hell in the match, but CJayC forgot to put CJ in the match pic. Seriously, take a good look at the pic. That isn't Carl Johnson. Not that it mattered anyway, because CJ only had the lead for all of three seconds. After that, it was Ness/Jak all over again. Ness was up against a well-known character that was supposed to beat him with ease, yet after barely being challenged, Ness was off to the races en route to absolutely blowing CJ off of the map in the match. And despite a few people calling for the comeback for the first few hours of CJ getting whipped, Ness never bothered letting up in the match. Call this whatever you want -- this was the progenitor of the RacistFAQs meme -- but this was a Grade A ass-kicking in comparison to how easily the board picked CJ in the match. I forgot to save Slow's BOP stats, but I'm sure CJ had.... some insanely overwhelming number of brackets in his favor. On the surface, one can easily call why this happened. As popular as San Andreas is, the thought of CJ not being as strong as Vercetti wasn't impossible. And if CJ truly did turn out to be weaker than Vercetti, CJ didn't have a whole heck of a lot of breathing room between Vercetti and Ness. He had to be almost even with Vercetti in popularity to beat Ness, and he simply wasn't. As for WHY CJ isn't as popular as Vercetti, I pose a question instead of trying to answer that one myself. *Is GameFAQs racist, or at the very least, does race play any part in these matches?* It's a difficult thing to talk about in a civil manner, especially given that racism is still very much alive in America. One need only look at what happened in New Orleans to see this, and the very mention of the subject can send sparks flying all over the place. But despite it being a touchy subject, let's look at the facts. In five character contests (and 291 character slots when you add up all of them), only eight black characters have appeared in these things: Ganondorf, Shadow the Hedgehog, Jak, Officer Tenpenny, Ansem, CJ, Vivi, and Kerrigan if you count her. Of those eight, how many would you \*truly\* consider to be black? Jak, Ansem, Shadow, and Vivi are... a stretch, to say the least. That leaves four. Ganon, CJ, Tenpenny, and Kerrigan. Kerrigan being black is debatable, because everyone in Starcraft has the same skin tone. Ganondorf being black is also debatable, because he hails from the desert. That leaves two outright black characters to have ever graced these contests, and they're both from the same game. But does them not being popular as characters despite their game selling over ten million copies truly reflect on the voters? One can easily argue that Grand Theft Auto in general is unfairly hated on GameFAQs, as evidenced by Vercetti's lackluster performances in these things. But there is still the issue of Vercetti being stronger than CJ despite San Andreas being more recent and more popular. Does it all really boil down to a simple issue of race and appeal? It's quite possible that it does, though I'd like to think that race was a minor issue in CJ's match. It could easily explain Vercetti being stronger than CJ, but would CJ have really beaten Ness if he were white? It's tough to say. I can't say for myself with any clarity as to race's effect on the match, but I can say for a fact that black characters don't show up in games very often. When they do, they're portrayed as being very stereotypical. You rarely see strong, confident, well-mannered, well-spoken black characters in games. Just look at the cast of San Andreas or Barret from Final Fantasy 7, arguably the most well-known black characters in gaming. And when developers decide to go against this, you can't even tell whether or not they're black in the first place. Just look at Kerrigan, or Ganondorf, or Duran. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places or something, but I've played a LOT of games. It's hard to think of a lot of other than the San Andreas crew and Barret. To me, that's not on gamers, but developers. Gamers are a well-rounded bunch, and I'd like to think that my caste is mature enough that a black character would be every bit as popular (and strong in these polls) as a white character if the two races were given equal exposure. But they aren't. The dominant thing you see in games are white men and white women. The fact that a good majority of the games we play are from Japan certainly doesn't help matters, given their culture. Would this match have been different if CJ were white? Does gaming reflect the fact that there are still very deep, unsolved race issues worldwide? Possibly. I don't want to call gaming outright racist, but there is a thing in psychology called an unconscious bias. Whatever it was that caused CJ to lose, I know two things. One, I was never happier about a loss than I was on that day. EarthBound and Ness are two things I'm a huge fan of. And two, there haven't been too many cases where I was more embarrassed to be a member of Board 8 than I was during this match. This place was absolutely sickening to look at during that match, to the point of me barely wanting to discuss it. As if egos being shattered weren't bad enough due to virtually the entire board losing their perfects on the second day of the contest after cruising through two easy contests prior, the entire board was swamped with race arguments all throughout the match. It's tough to be happy about one of your favorite characters winning a tough match when you're reading "Ness is only winning because CJ is black" every other post. You'd think people would be a bit more mature about it. However, I do have one good thing to say about my fellow gamers as a whole before moving on to the next match of the analysis, and that is that I stand by my assumption that gamers would accept black characters every bit as much as whites if they would actually show up in games more often. If Barret were ever in one of these contests, I guarantee he would be a strong character. In the end, perhaps it was simply GameFAQs not liking Grand Theft Auto that caused CJ to lose, rather than GameFAQs not liking blacks. At least, that's what I'm hoping for. Future Edit: As I write this in 2026, gaming has become a lot more diverse and a LOT more welcoming of characters from non-white and non-Japan spaces. I'd like to update my overall conclusion here, especially with all the contests featuring video games we've had. CJ lost because GameFAQs doesn't like Grand Theft Auto, not because of race. Look at how beloved Barret is in the FF7 remake, or Kratos in God of War, or Rashid in Street Fighter, or Resident Evil fans all asking for Sheva to come back, Or Turok. Among many, many, many other examples I could give. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2067&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Zero vs (6)Ryu Hayabusa 2005 _source: (3)Zero vs (6)Ryu Hayabusa 2005 (revid 88865)_ ## Results Thursday, July 21st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 21st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 23,736 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 67.55% 100 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 69.09% (23,348 brackets) After Ness/CJ got the board into a giant tizzy fit, it was nice to see a predictable, boring match come along to calm everyone down. Zero winning was a foregone conclusion despite Ryu's amazing win against Jill Valentine last year, and mostly everyone knew it. Except for the casuals, anyway. What in the world do Mega Man characters need to do to get some respect from the bracketmakers in these things? Mega Man and crew are almost always underestimated, regardless of opponent. It's not like Mega Man X isn't the most popular Mega Man series on GameFAQs or anything.... Anyway, while Zero began this match on fire, some would argue that he eventually wound up underperforming in the match. The SFF adjusted 2004 Xsts have Ryu scoring 32.6% on Zero, and as you can see, he scored a very even 37% on him after Zero began the match by whipping Ryu's ass all over the place. There are a couple of arguments to present as the reason behind Ryu doing a tad better than people expected him to. The most popular reason is that Ryu underperformed against Sora last year due to having a horrific picture against him, while Ryu was given his Xbox Ninja Gaiden box art pic against Zero. The other popular reason is that Zero overperformed on Mega Man in 2004 by a percent or two due to rSFF and was a bit overrated in the stats. I don't know how valid that one is, but the MMX series being more popular than the original keeps it within reason. Of course, most of this barely matters given that Zero arguably had the easiest path to call in the entire contest. He was a lock to win his fourpack, and was a lock to lose to Mario in the divisional finals. That's all there is to it, though the bad part is that for the second year in a row, there would be no real way to tell where Zero stands. It's not like 2004 20XX is worth looking at for reliable stats these days, anyway. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2068&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Lloyd Irving vs (7)Albert Wesker 2005 _source: (2)Lloyd Irving vs (7)Albert Wesker 2005 (revid 56022)_ ## Results Friday, July 22nd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 22nd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 7,952 - **Oracle Expectations:** Lloyd Irving - 63.62% 100 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Lloyd Irving - 53.88% (18,208 brackets) According to the Spring 2005 Xsts, Wesker is projected to score 41.15% on Mithos. Mithos, the guy with the sister complex who looks and talks like a girl in his own right. Not Lloyd, MITHOS. So what does Wesker do? He goes up against the main character of Tales of Symphonia and outperforms what he is supposed to score on MITHOS. Even worse for Lloyd is that after Lloyd's initial surge of bracket votes (which barely put him over 60%), Wesker managed to cut into Lloyd's percentage like mad. And Wesker managed to win updates every now and then. No matter what type of spin you try putting on this match, Lloyd pretty much bombed. Lloyd was never in any real danger of losing despite the occasional update loss, and he eventually went on to win by a fairly comfortable margin, but he bombed nevertheless. However, being the TOS fanboy that I am, I'll try putting a positive spin on this one anyway. Not that Lloyd deserves it given how much of an idiot he is in the game, but what the hell. The first thing to ask is what in the world happened in Kefka's fourpack in the Spring 2005 Contest? It's easy to look at the spring stats and assume they're crap, but it's hard to believe that we'd see such a massive variation among the voter opinion within all of a month or two. However, all I can think of is that Kefka underperformed against Mithos due to a horrible pic and overperformed against Wesker due to an amazing one. I know I've been an advocate of pics not making a difference of more than 1-2%, but we've seen CT characters do some very strange things when given sprites in their match pics. FF6 is only two years older than CT, and there's also the matter of seeing Kefka bomb when given a bad picture in the past. However, I think there's another factor that few people bothered thinking of. Tales of Symphonia only sold 350,000 copies in the States. GameFAQs is an American based site. In Spring 2005, Kefka/Mithos scored a mere 72605 votes. Lloyd/Wesker, however, scored 84794 votes. When your game only sells 350k copies in the States, you're asking an awfully large percentage of those extra 12000 people to be TOS fans (that are willing to even vote for Lloyd in the first place; remember, in the game he's an absolute idiot). It's possible that Lloyd underperformed due to his game not selling all too well and there being a very large voter pool in the match. And it's not like Resident Evil characters have a way of staying consistent in these contests, either. I'm not saying Lloyd didn't bomb, because he did. However, there are a few vague, non-insane reasons for him to bomb if you bother looking for them. Then again, him bombing didn't matter as it was a guarantee that Zero would beat him anyway. The only thing Lloyd could hope for in his upcoming match with Zero was to do well enough to place higher than Mithos, which is a strange thing to say. And even if that were to happen, it would cause a minor issue of where Wesker belongs. Gotta love massive influxes of new voters throwing old stats for a loop, eh? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2069&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (8)Yuri Hyuga 2005 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (8)Yuri Hyuga 2005 (revid 88867)_ ## Results Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Zebes Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 63,680 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 85.53% 102 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 96.76% (32,698 brackets) Phazon Suit Samus, bay-bee. Her best model by far. Granted she was up against Cleavage Yuri, but that's besides the point. Going into this contest, the most most hyped match was the inevitable Mario/Samus clash. People who favor the stats figured Samus to be the odds-on favorite to win the entire contest (and that she'd blow past Mario with ease, because after all, she is higher in the X-STATS), and argued for her as such. Others decided to go against the stats and preach the now-famous "IT'S FREAKING MARIO!" line. The main argument was that despite Samus being higher in the stats, Mario could still SFF her due to being Mr. Nintendo. However, this would amount to rSFF, something we've never definitively seen before and have no real proof of. Sure there was Mega Man/Zero (and I think RPGuy made a proof that showed Yoshi/Luigi being rSFF, as well), but no clear-cut cases of rSFF giving the "weaker" character the win in a match. In the fifth match of the contest, it was Samus's job to come out and prove that she was still the odds-on favorite to take down Mario; and she delivered pretty easily. Yuri may have been a new character, and it may be difficult to prove someone's strength based off of new fodder, but Samus came within a few percentage points of breaking 90% in a match. 90% is very rare territory in these contests, and only the best of the best will ever be able to see such numbers. Samus started this match over 80%, and gradually blew up her percentage as the match wore on. There were occasional spots in which Samus lost a bit of percentage every now and then, but it was little to be concerned about if you were a fan of hers. What I don't get are the people saying that this was an underwhelming performance by Samus. As someone that had Mario over Samus in his bracket, this match was a bit discouraging. I figured that Samus blowing the hell out of a cult RPG character was more impressive than Mario's possible SFFing of Joanna Dark, especially considering that Samus's score was better than Mario's. Samus also had a higher prediction percentage, for what it's worth. The only knock you could really make against Samus at this point was the fact that the girl simply isn't a good vote draw. Mario's poll did almost 15000 votes better than Samus's, though some would blame the sudden dropoff to the Character Battle IV banner no longer being over at Gamespot once this match came about. Oh yeah, I can't mention Yuri without Kyle Bowen's rallying helping to get Yuri into the contest. Sure Yuri was one of the "just happy to be here" characters, but getting in is an accomplishment in and of itself; it's more than what we can say about Aeris. Of course, this eventually led to one of the biggest whinefests of the entire contest over on the board. Apparently Samus not having "character" makes her unworthy of beating someone as great a character as Yuri Hyuga. I can't really comment on this given that I've had the two Shadow Hearts titles sitting in my room for weeks now without playing them, but you'd think that people would stop assuming that every character has a chance to win any match. They don't. This was just one more day filled with people whining about how Samus doesn't deserve her popularity while praising Yuri to no end, and some idiot managed to ruin the ending of SH:C for me by not putting a spoiler warning. From a board perspective, this match was horrible. Good for Samus in proving that she's a force, but not much else. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2070&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Riku vs (5)Frog 2005 _source: (4)Riku vs (5)Frog 2005 (revid 88868)_ ## Results Sunday, July 24th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Zebes Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 24th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 3,149 - **Oracle Expectations:** Frog - 59.83% 104 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Frog - 53.08% (17,937 brackets) "How in the hell did Frog do so well last year?" That was the main warcry all through this match, and for very obvious reasons. If you assume that Frog's 2004 Xst value is on target, then Riku's hypothetical 2004 value becomes 27.95%. This puts him ahead of everyone below Dante and has him scoring 48.3% on Sora. Yeah, that makes sense. Though if you take a look at the unadjusted stats from this contest, it's hilarious to see how close Sora and Riku wound up being; and it's not like you can adjust for the massive bombing that Sora suffered against Snake in their match. But that's a different conversation for another time. We all figured that Summer 2004 was a messed up contest statistically and that the 20XX Division in particular was weird, but I doubt most of us expected the characters in there to be THIS overrated. Yes Riku is new, and yes he's probably a little stronger than most of us think he is (Kingdom Hearts has a way of performing like crap based on expectations, but being just fine in the stats later), but it's still hard to imagine Riku being as strong as this match suggests. Remember, Frog is the same character that outlasted Liquid, survived Master Chief's 3000 vote turnaround, and then turned around and broke 48.5% on Solid Snake. And then he turns around and allows a near doubling to turn into.... that. The match started off just fine for Frog. He was doing exactly what was expected of him, and was well over 70% for the first couple of minutes. His percentage leveled off a little bit afterwards, but he was still alright; Riku was still getting his ass whipped, after all. Even when Frog's percentage began to fall towards 60%, no one was very concerned for him. After all, Riku could have just been overperforming. He *is* from KH, after all. But as the match wore on and Frog's percentage began to drop faster than Britney Spears's pants, everyone began to realize that whatever Frog managed to do in 2004 was a complete fluke. And it wasn't like Frog's percentage was falling despite him gaining in votes, either. Riku grew stronger as the match progressed, and despite Frog eventually winning by 3150 votes, Riku won several updates -- some saw Riku take in over 55% of the votes! Against Frog, the same guy who made Solid Snake, a perennial powerhouse, look like an absolute fool. To put this in a different perspective, everyone is aware that Frog is usually very good with the second night vote. But in the final twelve hours of Frog's match with Riku, he gained a grand total of 400 votes. 400 votes. This is the same guy who erased a 600 vote defecit against Master Chief in mere hours. The same guy who stole 400 votes from Solid Snake. Yet in the final six hours against Riku, Frog did absolutely nothing but prove how unbelievably overrated he was. In 24 hours, Frog went from being a possible contender to one of the biggest frauds we'd ever seen in one of these contests, but to Frog's credit, Riku was a new character. There was a very slight possibility that Riku's strength was legitimate; of course, if you only look at the final six hours of all of Frog's matches, Riku is stronger than Liquid Snake, Master Chief, and Solid Snake. Hell, he was even stronger than Frog at some points. You don't win updates by occasionally taking in more than 55% of the vote by accident. And while this didn't have a particularly large effect on Frog given that he was guaranteed to lose to Samus anyway, it meant a couple of other things down the line. One, Sora/Alucard was barely debatable after this match. There was a decent case for Alucard once upon a time, but after seeing what Riku did? Secondly, Frog's pending bombing was disappointing for CT fans but this was absolutely nothing compared to what we would see from CT's end later on in this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2071&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Ganondorf vs (6)Yuna 2005 _source: (3)Ganondorf vs (6)Yuna 2005 (revid 56029)_ ## Results Monday, July 25th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Zebes Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 25th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 23,973 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 64.66% 105 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 86.55% (29,248 brackets) Before anything else, we need to discuss that prediction percentage. If that isn't proof of a Spring 2005 carry-over, I don't know what is. Here we had a first round 3/6 Nintendo/Square match between two strong characters, and Ganon had over 85% of people pick him? People definitely took notice of Ganon breaking 40% on Sephiroth a few months back. Going into this match, Ganon was a lock to win. However, this wasn't about whether or not Ganon would win; it was about whether or not Ganon could take down Auron. Ganon/Auron was a hyped match thanks to people who didn't feel like buying into the Spring 2005 stats (and because it's SO OBVIOUS that Tidus/Ganon 2003 was Tidus's true strength despite him doing jack squat outside of that one match, I might add; don't you love it when people only take into account a character's best performance?), so Ganon had to go out and prove a point in this match. Did Ganon wind up proving doubters wrong? Well, that depends. Sure he won the match with ease (and on a side note, TRE pointed out so many examples of blatant cheating coming from Yuna's direction that it got to the level of being downright hilarious; go look at the updater for this match, click on "Time" and see for yourself), but to some, Ganon underperformed. I'd argue that FFX-2 increased Yuna's hypothetical strength, but FFX-2.... isn't well-liked, to say the least. Not too many people want to believe that FFX-2 may have actually produced strong characters, but given what happened in the spring, it's a bit hard to deny. Ganon MAY be overrated a little, but I highly doubt it. Regardless, plug Yuna into the 2004 stats using this match. You get a value of 26.94%, which isn't as far-fetched as Ganon's doubters would lead you to believe. The catch is that Yuna is pretty close to Tidus after doing that, but given that she's the lead in a recent large-scale Square title, I'm willing to buy it. It's better than assuming that Ganon underperformed for the sake of trying to make a case for Auron beating him, at least. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2072&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Auron vs (7)Big Boss 2005 _source: (2)Auron vs (7)Big Boss 2005 (revid 88869)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 26th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Zebes Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 26th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 40,639 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 65.27% 105 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 76.97% (26,010 brackets) I love the occasional easy writeup, and this one is about as simple as it gets. Everyone knew that Auron would win, and win he did. However, this was little more than Auron's tuneup for his impending clash with Ganondorf. If you can even call it a clash, that is. One could argue that the outcome of that match was sealed after this match (I'd argue that it was obvious before the contest started, but that's besides the point). Let's go over all the usual categories: Prediction Percentage? Advantage Ganon. Total Votes? Advantage Ganon. Recent Exposure? Advantage Ganon. Argue against TP hype all you want, but Auron was barely in FFX-2 at all. Besides, I'd count Spring 2005 as recent exposure for Ganon. Individual vote totals? Advantage Auron, but he only managed 2000 extra votes against an opponent that is likely a lot weaker than Yuna is. I wouldn't exactly call this one good news. Intangibles? Advantage Ganon. There was clearly a massive carry-over of support for him from the spring, so he'd likely have the necessary bracket votes to win a close match. Of course, I will admit that this is bias speaking on some level, as I had Ganon winning that match from the start and had my assumption confirmed by this match. But even from an unbiased perspective, I can't imagine feeling good about Auron's chances against Ganon after this match. Sure he wound up overperforming based upon expectations, but look at how often are expectations wrong when discussing new characters. Besides, even if you want to argue that Big Boss should have been strong based off of Metal Gear Solid 3, look at that match pic. I can see Big Boss doing well if he's given a Naked Snake pic, but a melting cartoon pic of a character model that doesn't appear live in any MGS title isn't going to do Big Boss any favors. I'm always an advocate of pictures not mattering too much, but this one may be an exception given the massive popularity of MGS3. Naked Snake does better against Auron than whatever the hell that thing is up there. I practically guarantee it. Come to think of it, I'm really starting to wonder what Big Boss could do in one of these things if given a Naked Snake pic. It's not like CJayC is against completely ruining a game's biggest spoiler in a match pic or anything (Hi, Kefka/Mithos!). ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2073&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (8)Manny Calavera 2005 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (8)Manny Calavera 2005 (revid 88871)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 62,487 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 87.46% 105 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 97.98% (33,110 brackets) What's up with that match pic? I heard someone say that it isn't Solid Snake? o_O Anyway, while Snake beating the hell out of Manny was a given, that wasn't really the point of this match. Shake, who has been trying to get Manny into one of these contests since 2003, finally managed to succeed by making a topic saying he'd leave the board if Manny didn't get into this contest. The board was moved by this (despite practically no one actually believing he'd leave, but who cares? =p) and nominated the hell out of Manny. Shake also e-mailed virtually every Grim Fandango site you could think of in an effort to gather support, and when all was said and done, Manny made it in. This was a moral victory in and of itself despite Manny's appearance being on par with your standard 16 seed in the NCAAs; "It's nice to make it, but reality will set in within the first ten seconds of the game after Duke starts whipping my ass". Another wonderful effect of this match was that I think it got Heroic Mario to play Grim Fandango. I'm not 100% sure of that, but that's besides the point. HM liking a game is a good thing, especially when he decides to start giving copies of it to everyone. Dunno how this didn't happen in the three years Shake has been preaching the game's awesomeness, but ces la vie. It was funny watching some guy try to accuse Shake of only liking Grim because of HM's fanboyism, though. Truly hilarious. As for the match itself, it was... a bit weird. Yes it was a blowout, but it was one of those blowouts where people's expectations fooled them. It all boils down to Snake spoiling us last year with his blowout of Tanner, because I think a lot of people were expecting similar numbers in this match. If you go a bit deeper, people started pulling out Guybrush Threepwood's numbers in an effort to make Snake look bad. Guybrush putting out more games than Manny was supposed to somehow prove that he was equal to or stronger than Manny, I suppose, and that Snake "only" scoring 84.09% of the vote on Manny when the 2004 adjusteds have him at 84.06% on Guybrush is supposed to somehow prove that Snake has somehow lost a step. Because scoring almost 85% of the vote is a regular occurrence, mind you. Regardless of what you thought while this match was going on, you were spoiled by what Snake did to Tanner last year if you assume this match to be a disappointment. And not to harp on last year, but it is at all possible that Snake SFFd the hell out of Tanner? Driver and MGS both appeal to the same fanbase, I'd think. By the way, there's this tiny matter of "appeal". Don't mess with the Grim Reaper, especially when he's got a gun. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2074&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Vivi vs (5)Zelda 2005 _source: (4)Vivi vs (5)Zelda 2005 (revid 88874)_ ## Results Thursday, July 28th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 28th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 20,023 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda - 53.22% 87 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 76.81% (25,956 brackets) Before I even bother trying to explain why this match was obvious (to me, anyway) from the beginning, please look at this poll: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2004-triforce-division-round-1-kuja-vs-master-hand) Kuja, the main villain of Final Fantasy 9, *lost to a god damn glove*. Now with that out of the way, onto another cheap shot at the wonderful X-stats. Frankly, I don't see any other reason why people thought this would be close other than the stats, and the fact that people thought Vivi had any chance in this match is yet another in a long line of examples of X-stats and common sense not always being in line. We'll ignore the fact that 2004 Vivi is projected to score something like 44.65% on 2003 Zelda and that Sephiroth would have had to SFF the hell out of Vivi for Vivi (whose villain was beaten by a glove) to stand any chance in the match. Because after all, for Vivi to have a shot at Zelda, he would have to be able to take down characters like Auron, Dante, and Bowser. But it gets more hilarious than even that. Since 2003, Link has increased. by roughly 2-3%. Since 2003, Ganon was likely increased 2-3% as well. This means that assuming Zelda received a similar 2-3% boost between 2003 and now, Vivi would have to be a perennial top 15 powerhouse to hang with and beat her. This would mean that Vivi (whose villain was defeated by a glove) is on par with the likes of Zero and Aeris, and would be expected to beat the piss out of Squall. On a completely unrelated note, Vivi's game, Final Fantasy 9, saw its villain lose to a glove in the Spring 2005 Contest. We're not even talking an actual character here, mind you. It's just the thing you fight at the end of SSB/M because Nintendo couldn't think of anything better. Where was I, again? Oh right, Vivi. Vivi may have been hit by SFF against Sephiroth, but come on. Was it really enough to put him with the likes of Aeris in the stats? But naturally, the match soon began and everyone (almost everyone, anyway) was beyond shocked at Zelda beginning the match well over 60%, followed by flirting with the 60% level itself for the entire match. Some expected Vivi to fight back a little to retain some respect, but he never did. Zelda began and ended the match by beating the ever-loving hell out of the little guy, and the questions started pouring in about how such a debated match turned into such a joke. Which is why I'm here: to feed you the stuff you want to hear as if I know all the answers myself (even though I don't, I just make contest aftermaths entertaining). First off, I think it's fairly obvious that Zelda received the Zelda Boost™ that Link and Ganon have enjoyed since 2003. Secondly, I don't think Vivi was SFFd by Sephiroth very much, if at all. Thirdly, I think Vivi pulled smoke and mirrors in his match against Donkey Kong and fooled people into thinking he was stronger than he really is. Not to say that he should have lost or anything, but Donkey Kong is Nintendo's version of Alex Rodriguez. He's good, but everyone seems to hate him. I truly think that Vivi did better than he should have in that match by a percent or two. Add it all up, and you get Zelda whipping Vivi's ass with almost 60% of the vote. Cue the Zelda \> Snake bandwagon that I foolishly helped begin. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2075&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kratos vs (6)Alucard 2005 _source: (3)Kratos vs (6)Alucard 2005 (revid 88873)_ ## Results Friday, July 29th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 29th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 10,036 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard - 60.75% 104 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard - 51.31% (17,339 brackets) No, not Tales of Symphonia Kratos. This is the guy who was smart enough not to accept coffee before the sex. After the Frog/Riku debacle, it was extremely difficult to imagine Alucard taking down Sora. It made his match with Kratos relatively pointless, though it was a chance for Kratos to show his potential in these contests. Sony may not be able to produce hardware that works (because God knows that their TVs, computers, stereos, and post-PSX gaming systems are lucky to last for two years before having problems; but hey, at least they make good CD players, and dammit, that's what matters), but when they decide to make games, they usually strike gold. ICO and God of War have received critical acclaim from all over the gaming community, and Shadow of the Colossus may do the same if they ever get the controls worked out. Counterintuitive horseback controls are beyond stupid when you're trying to traverse on something that's actively trying to throw you off of it, but I'm getting way off the subject. The funny thing about this match is that it's the battle of characters from critically acclaimed niche masterpieces. Sure everyone knew that Alucard was going to win, but by the end of the match, Kratos would be the one with the last laugh. Beginning the match well under 40% and then using a strong day vote to bring the heavy favorite down to 55.5% tends to do that, especially when you win an update every now and then. Kratos being from a recent smash hit and going against a guy who people still can't recognize (I swear, the next person that makes a "Who is Alucard?" topic in the middle of one of his matches gets kicked in the crotch; he's beaten Tails, Duke Nukem, Kirby, Bomberman, and Kratos; PLAY HIS GAME ALREADY PEOPLE) perhaps did him some good, because when the casuals began to vote, Alucard's percentage went down. I know that most of us like Alucard and The Plan, but there are only so many Get Out of Jail Free cards you can hand out. Yes, God of War is a recent hit. Yes, SOTN and Alucard aren't getting any younger. And yes, Kratos is an untested character who may very well have been every bit as strong as this match suggested. But Alucard/Sora was one of the most widely debated matches of the contest, and for Alucard to swing 55% on Kratos after what Riku did was nothing short of disappointing. Though despite this, one could still make a halfway decent case for Alucard in the next round, if for no other reason than Kratos's recency causing an overperformance. Maybe. either that, or this match was a sign of Alucard finally starting to show signs of aging. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2076&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sora vs (7)Agent 47 2005 _source: (2)Sora vs (7)Agent 47 2005 (revid 56039)_ ## Results Saturday, July 30th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 30th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 36,552 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 76.49% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 83.68% (28,278 brackets) One day after Alucard went out and... well, performed like Alucard (the guy just can't ever have an impressive win, can he?), Sora came out and laid an egg against Agent 47. I barely know a damn thing about the Hitman series, but it's hard to imagine its main character having any form of strength at ALL in a GameFAQs contest. This is the same genre that produced Tanner, our biggest loser ever. Okay so maybe it's not the same genre, but you get the point. Same type of appeal. 70% may seem like a good number in most cases, but against Agent 47 (who some called Neo Tanner before the contest even began), it's a very "meh" performance. What we were essentially left with after this match was a fourpack of rats, and the winner of Alucard/Sora would simply come down to who has lost less of their luster. It's hard to pin down who had the advantage going in given that they both went up against untested newbies, but it's hard to ignore what Riku did against Frog. It's even harder to think of Sora as being weaker than Riku, which is practically what Alucard needed to win the match. Meet Alucard/Sora, a match in which the pre-match hype was almost resolved by a poll that took place five days before either of them took the field. Frog/Riku virtually sealed this (though many people, myself included, still argued that Alucard had a chance... blah, who were we kidding), and it essentially meant that neither this nor the previous match meant anything. It would have been nice to see one of the two characters beat someone who had been in a contest before without having to look at Frog/Riku over and over again, but you can't have everything. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2077&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Kirby vs (8)Cecil Harvey 2005 _source: (1)Kirby vs (8)Cecil Harvey 2005 (revid 88875)_ ## Results Sunday, July 31st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Dream Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 31st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 45,289 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 63.66% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 87.53% (29,579 brackets) Let me point you all to a poll before discussing this match: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1326-south-division-round-1-kirby-vs-ramza-beoulve) That's the Kirby/Ramza match from 2003, in which Ramza managed to score 42.34% on everyone's favorite pink ball. Now fast forward to 2005, two years after that match took place. Cecil was one of many lesser-known Square characters to make the bracket thanks to CJayC getting rid of the company cap, and even though most people figured Kirby had the match in hand with ease, a lot of people figured that Cecil wouldn't be that much weaker than Ramza. After all, Ramza was a lesser-known lead character from a cult Square hit, Final Fantasy Tactics. And then people started to mention that Nintendo seemed to be on the rise in this contest, and that Cecil may do a bit worse than the ~35-40% that people projected for him. But even then, still not too bad a performance. Then that god-awful Amano Cecil was posted, and people virtually gave up all hope of Cecil having any form of a moral victory in the match. But even then, not a damn person here had any clue what was about to happen to Cecil in this match. The average Oracle prediction for this match was Kirby with 63.66%. That's it. And on a related note, special props to King Morgoth for creating this page (http://oraclechallenge.com/consensus.php) solely due to me noting that average picks were no where on the Oracle site. That's some hardcore dedication, and I... owe him one, to say the least. Anyway, even with Cecil getting one of the worst pics we'll ever see in one of these things, people still figured that it wouldn't cost him too much. After all, Square characters don't get killed. Ever. Except in SFF matches. But when Kirby began this match by beating the absolute living crap out of Cecil, everyone quickly took notice that Kirby was perhaps a force. You don't just come close to breaking 75% on a Final Fantasy lead by accident, and Cecil did nothing in this match to prove that he did anything but bomb. Kirby just totally annihilated him. This match was the first match in which people started to proclaim en masse that perhaps Nintendo received a boost across the board (which creativename would later dub The Boost™), because again, scoring nearly 75% on a Final Fantasy lead on GameFAQs is no joke. Final Fantasy 4 may not be the most popular game out there, but it's still a fairly well-known FF title. It's not like Kirby beat the hell out of Fighter or Bartz. However even then, a lot of people assumed that Kirby overperformed due to an unfair match pic and the recent release of Canvas Curse for the DS. This may be a fair assumption, but it's ironic given that a lot of people figured Kirby to be the most undeserving of the eight 1 seeds in the contest. On the other side of this match, Cecil's getting killed spelled doom for Terra. The Terra \> Dante upset pick HAD a halfway decent case until Cecil went out, got killed, and made Dante \> Terra unbelievably obvious. Even if you wanted to bother thinking that Terra still had a prayer, Dante and Kirby have traditionally been more or less even in the stats in practically every contest. Assuming that they were still even, Terra would have to be able to do over 25% better than Cecil did, despite being in an ensemble cast. ....yeah, that one had a shot of happening. This match was a true shame given how awesome Terra and Cecil are as characters, but you get the feeling that they predate a good deal of GameFAQs users after you watch one of them get their face kicked in in underperforming by well over 10%. On an unrelated side note, Final Fantasy 4 is still a masterpiece. Just had to get that one in there somewhere. \<3 ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2078&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Tidus vs (5)King of All Cosmos 2005 _source: (4)Tidus vs (5)King of All Cosmos 2005 (revid 88877)_ ## Results Monday, August 1st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Dream Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 1st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 45,621 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tidus - 74.88% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tidus - 85.46% (28,879 brackets) Why not? Let's all nominate the King of All Cosmos for the contest! It's not like he can cause damage or anything. > Yeah, right. After a billion Katamari Damacy fads and BA NA NA being repeated over and over again, We had to prepare for Our match. We could have easily crushed Tidus with a flick of Our wrist, but chose instead to formulate a plan to make those who picked Tidus to defeat Kirby feel just a little embarrassed. > > We decided that instead of using Our full capabilities to destroy Tidus 99.9-0.1, We would rather throw the match... but We only allowed Tidus the strength to win this one match, for We proved that he was unable to defeat Kirby. > > Tidus's fans expected Us to start falling like crazy after receiving a good deal of the board vote -- They said that We were a joke character !! -- when We were in fact doing nothing more than proving that Tidus was overrated from the start and that he had no chance of defeating Kirby. > > You see, after the board vote wore off, We did indeed start to fall; but much to everyone's surprise, We stayed at 27% for the entire match despite those Earth people thinking that We would not break 20% and that Tidus was a lock to defeat Kirby from the beginning. > > By the time We were done playing Katamari Damacy -- A fun, action-packed game if there ever was one !! -- with Tidus, We proved that he would lose his next match. Tidus only scored 72.54% on Us, while Kirby scored 75.21% on Cecil. > > As for how this proved that Kirby would defeat Tidus despite Us throwing the match, that's for you to figure out. ....you get the idea. For Tidus to have any chance of defeating Kirby, he would have to not only hope that The King of All Cosmos was a good deal stronger than Cecil, but that Kirby overperformed on Cecil by quite a large amount. That's a bit too much to ask for, and this match was one more step in proving that 2003 Tidus was a complete fraud. In every other match not named Tidus/Ganon 2003, Tidus has shown that his true colors are not near what 2003 would have you believe. The next round would tell us the final answer on Tidus once and for all, but really, I have no clue how anyone could think that Tidus had a prayer after seeing him disappoint by this much against The King. Yes, The King threw the match. But He did so with a very clear purpose in mind. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2079&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Bowser vs (6)Chun Li 2005 _source: (3)Bowser vs (6)Chun Li 2005 (revid 88878)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Dream Division - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 31,958 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 64.10% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 88.07% (29,761 brackets) Before this match ever began, the big debate was not this match of Bowser's, but Bowser's second match. He was a lock to face Ryu of Street Fighter fame, and those who argued that the Spring 2005 stats were invalid or that they inflated Bowser kept noting that Ryu placed a couple of percents above Bowser in the 2004 Xstats. The problem with this is that said stats are simply Bowser being given his 2003 value due to being stuck behind Mario/Bowser SFF, and the entire Bowser/Ryu debate centered around whether or not his match with Sephiroth in Spring 2005 was legitimate. After all, it saw Bowser perform better on Sephiroth than Mario had managed against Seph. Of course, people naturally assumed that this was a fluke just to defend their Ryu \> Bowser picks and completely dismissed the notion that Mario would likely perform better than Bowser against Sephiroth if Mario and Sephy ever had a rematch. And trust me, I'll be using a certain match in the Tournament of Champions to laugh at these people later, because really, you'd be hard-pressed to find a dumber argument than OMG BUT MARIO DID WORSE THAN BOWSER TWO YEARS AGO RYU WILL STILL WIN to defend a Ryu \> Bowser pick. But I digress. In a nutshell, the percentage to watch for in this match was 33.92%. This is what Spring 2005 M. Bison is projected to score on Spring 2005 Bowser, and since it's pretty widely believed that the Street Fighter ladder is Ryu \> Ken \> Chun-Li \> Bison = Akuma in terms of popularity, one could easily assume that if Chun-Li were to go well over 33.92% that Bowser was in trouble next round. And if Chun-Li happened to clear 35.05% (Ken's projected score on Bowser based off of 2003), the warning signs would have gone off all over the place. Unfortunately, the match decided to not tell us anything useful; Chun-Li.... pretty much did what everyone expected her to do, which is fall in between what Ken and Bison would be expected to score in her place. Bowser flirted with holding Chun-Li under 30% for a little while at the beginning of the match, but after the percentages leveled off, the match stayed extremely consistent. Bowser was at just under a doubling within 45 minutes, and at the end of the match, he was.... just under a doubling =p Consistent matches leave us with little to discuss, though if you felt like pulling at strings you could argue that if Bowser's Spring 2005 performance was legit, then Chun-Li performing "as expected" makes her look stronger than Ken. Which doesn't make sense, and makes it look like Ryu still had a good chance at beating Bowser in the next round. Or something. Of course, it would take nothing more than one more day and the very match after this one to end all of these arguments, because Ryu decided to be nice enough to perform like absolute crap. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2080&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Ryu vs (7)Rikku 2005 _source: (2)Ryu vs (7)Rikku 2005 (revid 88879)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Dream Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 12,156 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 62.17% 102 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 74.98% (25,338 brackets) After Bowser spent an entire 24 hours leaving us wondering whether or not his performance in the spring was truly something special, Ryu decided to answer all of our questions for us. For those unfamiliar with who Rikku is, she's that loud-mouthed girl in FFX that serves as a horrible form of comedy relief in the game. Really, she's got jack squat on Ultros or Gilgamesh. And then Square decided to put her in FFX-2 and show her "true personality" (which didn't change, mind you; she just wore less clothes). To this day, I have no clue how I managed to get a 100% in that game without ripping out my eyes. It's SUCH a bad video game. Anyway, to the point. Bowser did what he was supposed to. In fact, some would argue that he did less. Ryu could have gone out there and proved that the Dream Division was his for the taking, because frankly, everyone thought that this division was going to come down to the Bowser/Ryu match. So what does Ryu go out and do? He absolutely and completely chokes. Possible FFX-2 affects aside, the board expected Ryu to do rather well in this match (the average Oracle pick was 62.17%) and prove that we were perhaps overestimating Bowser based on the spring. Not only did Ryu not come close to breaking expectations, but the rate that he started bombing in the match was alarming. It took less than ten minutes for a board vote that had him at nearly 70% to push him under 60%, and his percentage gradually dropped throughout the day. If you stare at the updater long enough, you'll occasionally see Rikku going 50/50 with Ryu in an update or winning an update outright every once in a long while. Rikku. Going 50/50 in spots against Ryu, the same guy who has broken 40% against three different Noble Nine characters, the same guy who almost upset Sonic, and one of the brick walls of consistency in these contests. Some people blamed this entire thing on TJF and/or FFX-2 while still trying to justify Ryu \> Bowser, and I laughed quite hard in these cases. For the record, even if you want to blame this match solely on FFX-2 while leaving Ryu constant, you'd have to convince yourself that Rikku was as strong or stronger than Tidus and that she had a good chance of breaking 48% on Auron. According to 2004 stats, at least. The 2004 stats may be completely screwed up, but not even I'm willing to say they're that screwed up. Either Ryu dropped and had no chance whatsoever on Bowser, or Rikku just happens to be as strong as the two most popular characters in her game despite arguably getting the least amount of character development out of any of the cast in FFX. Yet people actually bothered arguing Ryu \> Bowser after this. Hilarious. This whole thing eventually led into a discussion in which I asked my good pal Slowflake if I could laugh at him if Bowser won. His response? "You can laugh at me if Bowser kills Ryu and comes close to breaking 60%, how about that?" Paraphrased of course, but still hilarious given what was coming. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2081&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Master Chief vs (8)CATS 2005 _source: (1)Master Chief vs (8)CATS 2005 (revid 88880)_ ## Results Thursday, August 4th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Flood Division - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 4th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 35,576 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 76.31% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Master Chief - 92.20% (31,157 brackets) Master Chief has got to be the least transitive character ever. On a related note, while I'm not an advocate of pictures making a difference, CATS is a different story. Watch the video, then compare how long you see Eggplant CATS as opposed to Face CATS. It's no comparison, and Face CATS is quite clearly more recognizable. Given how many times that video has been seen, I don't get how one could assume that it wouldn't make a big difference in a match here on GF. Three times CATS has gotten an Eggplant pic, and three times the stats have seen him as complete fodder. When he got the face pic in Spring 2005, he placed in the top half of the field. Against Master Chief, he got the face pic that everyone knows and loves. Granted this wasn't going to do something as insane as allow him to win the match, but it allowed him to overperform based on past stats for the second contest in a row. Summer 2004 has CATS scoring around 20% on Master Chief. But Master Chief is overrated in those stats, so everyone went and looked at 2003 for more reliable numbers. According to them, CATS scores just under 26%. Makes enough sense, and the average Oracle pick of Chief with 76.31% reflects this expectation quite nicely. And then the match started. CATS took the early lead as expected, and Chief took it back as expected. However, what people didn't expect was CATS holding strong in the upper 30% range for a good while after the board vote wore off. No big deal, right? Chief being the absolute king of the day vote would come through and help him flatten CATS despite only having 63.72% of the vote after six hours of the match were past. Seriously, what does CATS need to do to prove that he has legitimate strength in these contests and can win a match given the right opponent? Better yet, what does he need to do to prove that the face pic makes a difference? Between hours 6 and 12 in the match, Master Chief increased his percentage to 68%. However, during the next twelve hours of the poll (the timeframe he used to KILL Frog), he was only able to increase his percentage to what you see above. And while CATS did allow Master Chief to go insane for six hours, he still performed well above where most people had him pinned. I can't wait for the day in which CATS is given a match against a character lower than him in the stats and is given a face pic in the match. On another note, this pretty much proved that Master Chief was the weakest and/or the most undeserving 1 seed in the contest. Not only did CATS overperform on him, but this is post-Halo 2 Master Chief we're talking about here. Very disappointing match for him. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2082&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Donkey Kong vs (5)Sam Fisher 2005 _source: (4)Donkey Kong vs (5)Sam Fisher 2005 (revid 88884)_ ## Results Friday, August 5th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Flood Division - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 5th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 25,725 - **Oracle Expectations:** Donkey Kong - 59.02% 91 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong - 71.08% (24,020 brackets) Can you possibly have a match any more boring than this one? I swear, this thing was like trying to watch water obil. Then again, virtually everything in the Flood Division not named Kefka/Vercetti had the same feel to it. It just wasn't a division with any luster to it at all. As for the match itself, it was... just horribly, unbelievably boring. The only exciting part of the match was Donkey Kong performing well above expectations for the first hour or so in hovering around the 70% level. It's not that people expected Sam to put up much of a fight or anything (remember, this guy holds the record for going the longest in a match without scoring a single vote), but that Donkey Kong was only expected to score 65.77% in the match. Scoring over 70% would have been pretty decent news, but Sam Fisher put a fairly decent day vote to use to Donkey Kong a full percent under projections. This helped stem all of the OMG NINTENDO WENT UP IT'S SO UNFAIR crap for the time being, but did it really matter? It's not like Donkey Kong was going to go and give Master Chief a decent match or anything, or that this match was somehow a warning sign that his gradual loss in percentage would come back to bite him in the ass. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2083&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kefka vs (6)Tommy Vercetti 2005 _source: (3)Kefka vs (6)Tommy Vercetti 2005 (revid 88894)_ ## Results Saturday, August 6th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Flood Division - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 6th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 2,245 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tommy Vercetti - 50.98% 63 for - 30 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tommy Vercetti - 37.66% (12,726 brackets) When the bracket was first released, this match came up as being one of the hotter matches to debate before the contest began. Many people, myself included, questioned why. Kefka's Spring 2005 performance may have made him look impressive, but the fact is that Spring 2005 only has Kefka scoring an extra .24% against Base Link. Vercetti was above that by a good deal, so for Kefka to win this match, Vercetti would actually have to go down in strength. Kefka was only projected to score 43.89% on the man, after all. A widely used argument however was that Vercetti could go down due to the release of San Andreas, but detractors of this theory pointed out that it was a fairly ridiculous assumption. Cloud and Link don't go down when Square or Nintendo decides to release new games, do they? But regardless of what you thought going into the match, it was unlikely that many thought that this would be one of the best matches of the entire contest. Everything started off horribly for Vercetti early as Kefka roared past him early. Kefka began the poll by taking in well over 60% of the vote, and though his percentage leveled off in the 55% range within an hour, he still managed to jump out to an early lead of over 550 votes. Vercetti supporters noted that Kefka took the board vote from Knuckles and that Knux was far more beloved on the board than Vercetti was, but Kefka never managed to actually begin pulling away from Knuckles in that match. Against Vercetti, Kefka began the poll on fire and barely showed any signs of weakness, while Knuckles is an entirely different animal (Literally!) altogether. Knuckles is a posterboy for the day vote, while Vercetti hasn't ever traditionally been good with it. If Vercetti didn't start doing something to save himself, and fast, he would be well on his way to getting killed in a match that he was supposed to win going away. Vercetti somewhat weathered Kefka's early storm, and for the next few hours, he stalled Kefka the best he could. Vercetti never made any real comeback signs, but he was constantly going 50/50 or winning small five minute updates every now and then. However despite Vercetti's best efforts, it seemed as if the best he could do was to simply cause Kefka to be slow in increasing his lead. For everything Vercetti was throwing at Kefka in an attempt to slow him down, it did little more than cause Kefka to spend five hours increasing his lead from 550 to 1100. And given that Vercetti was never anything decent with the day vote, the odds of him coming back on Kefka were slim to none at this point despite the fact that Kefka was traditionally an embarrassment during the day. Incidentally, Vercetti was doing little more than embarrassing himself. Here we had someone slated to win a match with well over 56% of the vote, yet he somehow managed to fall in strength after a different game was released in his series. Not that San Andreas has anything to do with him of course, but Vercetti's performance against Kefka speaks of the lack of staying power that Grand Theft Auto characters have in these things. But right around this point, six hours into the poll, Kefka's horrible day vote began kicking in. It's not that Vercetti was necessarily beginning a comeback, but that Kefka himself was downright pathetic during the day. However, things started to get a bit interesting once Vercetti stopped stalling, won a few updates and pulled Kefka's lead down to 1000 votes in less than an hour. Not that most people noticed that there was even a possible comeback going on, given how slow Vercetti was in cutting votes off of Kefka's lead in the first place. What then took place was arguably 18 of the most action-packed hours we'll ever see in a contest match. What set this match apart from other matches that have had comeback attempts in them was that this match felt more like a defensive struggle than anything else. Everyone remembers the 1993 Wild Card game between the Bills and Oilers in which the Bills came back from being down 35-3, but not many people remember low-scoring slugfests in which the losing team fights an uphill battle for seemingly the entire game before winning at the end. Last year's game in which the Dolphins beat the Patriots in those fugly orange jerseys would be a good example of that. How many people can honestly remember who caught that final TD pass without looking it up? And that was Vercetti in his match against Kefka. He fell under a mountain early on, and had to scratch and claw his way to gain back every vote for the duration of the match. Vercetti had a way of winning a few small updates in a row, then stalling with Kefka for awhile. Then Vercetti would win a couple more small updates with a random large update thrown in for dramatic value before Kefka would recover and stall the match again. Not that Kefka sat back and let Vercetti back into the match for no reason, mind you. After Vercetti spent two tough hours getting Kefka's lead from 1100 votes down to 900, Kefka realized that he was actually in a match again and started fighting back a little. From this point on, Kefka and Vercetti turned a potential blowout into yet another Ali/Frasier-like contest match. Every time Vercetti tried making a push to make a full comeback attempt in the match, Kefka Havoc Wing'd his ass back down into oblivion. The result of this were the two characters spending over two hours stuck between being 800-900 votes apart in the match. Every time Vercetti made the slightest hint of a push, Kefka shot it back down. When Vercetii was finally able to get the lead under 800 down into the 770 range, Kefka \*again\* managed to easily hit back. Quite literally, Vercetti had to begin fighting the match of his life in his efforts to siphon away Kefka's lead, and he did this by winning updates in such overwhelming fashion that Kefka's attempts to hit back wouldn't cause so much damage. After what felt like hours deadlocked at a deficit of 800 votes, Vercetti took over 50 votes off of Kefka's lead in less than five minutes. This was the largest swing of votes in the match since it was a mere two hours old; and even though Vercetti was able to get the lead down to the 720 range, Kefka quickly hit back to get it back to 750. Vercetti decided enough was enough, and cut Kefka's lead from 750 to 600 in all of 25 minutes. Kefka made a feeble attempt at preventing the inevitable, but Vercetti then spent a mere 25 minutes slicing Kefka's lead from 610 to 450. As one could imagine, the board began to absolutely lose its mind. Cheating accusations were flying all over the place, and for fairly good reason. Both characters were all over the place with their intake of votes, and how CJayC could look at this match and assume that nothing was amiss was a bit strange. And when I say the board went crazy, that's.... an understatement. We may never have board explosions on par with 2002 or 2003 again (thanks for changing the poll starting time, Ceej), but this match was about as big an explosion as one could possibly hope for in present times. To put this in better perspective, we went through over six stats topics in one day. Granted most of the posts were nothing more than RI-style flooding, cheating accusations and various other forms of debauchery that one needn't read if they had fallen behind in their effort to catch up to where the stats topic currently was. And what was going on in the stats topic was actually very lighthearted compared to what was going on everywhere else. To make matters even more hilarious, the two characters decided to stay stuck at a difference of between 400-500 votes for well over two hours. Much like their standoff back when the match was hovering at around an 800 vote difference, the two characters tore into each other like nothing else for seemingly forever. Whenever one character tried making any sort of a move in the match, the other was right there to keep the match at a standstill. And to make things even better, this was going on during the prime of the match; the late afternoon, in other words. But much like their last standoff, Vercetti decided to end it himself by going nuts. After a duel that saw both characters practically kill themselves, Vercetti went on another massive push to bring Kefka's lead down from 400 to 300 in a mere 25 minutes. Kefka was able to stall Vercetti for a full hour after this, but Vercetti soon went on another massive push to bring Kefka's lead down to a mere 200 votes. Kefka tried his hardest to hold off Vercetti's massive evening push, and though Kefka stalled Vercetti quite a number of times, Vercetti's spotty periods of slicing large sections off of Kefka's lead soon tied the match. But Kefka wasn't quite done for yet. Every single time Vercetti tried to break the tie and pull away, Kefka was right there to bring Vercetti back down, often in the form of insane vote intakes after Vercetti looked like he was about to run away with the match. Though despite a TON of cheating accusations being thrown around against Kefka, a very large part of Vercetti's comeback were large updates out of nowhere. Surely, neither character would have to resort to cheating to try and gain the edge in such a close match. \>\_\> As the night wore on, Kefka managed to weather Vercetti's storm of votes. After all of the effort that Vercetti put into tying the match, Kefka was able to use the second night vote to break the tie and pull away. At 11:20 PM EST, Kefka led by a mere 30 votes and was in the fight of his life. One hour later, Kefka had all but sealed away the match by extending a once-tied match into a lead of 260. But just as everyone was throwing in the towel, Vercetti had one final push left in him. He was able to prevent Kefka from getting the lead past 260, and after he nickel and dimed his way to getting the lead down to 240, Vercetti spent all of 15 minutes getting Kefka's lead down to 140. Everyone started going batty over Vercetti still having a shot to win this, but every time Vercetti made any sort of a push, Kefka was able to hold Vercetti at bay. Again, cheating accusations flew all over the place. Right at around this point, CJayC signed onto AIM. He virtually never signs onto AIM unless something is wrong with the site, and given when he signed on, anyone could figure out what was coming next. In one IM window, I was listening to the grapevine about what was going on (I wasn't talking to Ceej, so don't ask for any AIM logs; not that I'd post such a log regardless). In the other, Leonhart was going nuts over Vercetti's latest comeback attempt. The contrast between the IMs was ironic in that Leonhart's side had no clue what about to happen, and I'm sure Leon wasn't the only example. Virtually everyone that was watching the match closely believed that they were watching something normal, or at the very least, believed that if cheating were going on that Ceej would have said something by now. Granted, Kefka's eventually turning a 100 vote lead into a lead of 140 within seconds certainly gave those crying cheat a good reason to wonder what in the hell was up, but more on that in a second. At around 12:30 AM EST, CJayC implemented updates on the poll, and right in the middle of a match. This was a clear sign that something odd was going on, and a few people started calling for Vercetti's victory fanfare already. Unlike 2002/2003, the poll updates were in five minute increments rather than fifteen. To make a long story short, CJayC caught a horribly obvious (see also: very stupid) cheater that was swinging votes in Kefka's favor via proxies and signed onto AIM to try and scare the guy; essentially, CJayC was about to announce that Vercetti had won the match due to cheating, and thanks to Ceej's being willing to tell some people this over AIM a few of us were lucky enough to hear about this before Ceej actually decided to announce it. Just for my own personal kicks, I decided to make a topic on Board 8 telling people that CJayC was about to announce Vercetti's victory (and that the reason he put poll updates back in place was so that potential future cheaters couldn't see the immediate benefits of their work and would hopefully be discouraged from cheating attempts in the future), and it was met with the expected OMG JOO KNOW NOTHING U LIAR LOLOL!11!!1!oneone nonsense. Figures as much (because really, while I do love you guys you are very predictable), but it made the following topic all the more hilarious to read: > **Vote adjustment due to stuffing.** > > From: CJayC \| Posted: 8/7/2005 12:49:27 AM \| Message Detail \| \#001 > > Kefka has lost 1800 votes due to flagrant vote stuffing. The clear majority of the stuffed votes appear to have come from user "George Romero" (who even hinted that he was doing it in his posts here, and has since been banned, although it appears he had no valid entry in the contest). While there are probably many more than 1800 votes stuffed exclusively in favor of Kefka, that's approximately how many I can confirm were done by this group, and it's more than enough to set the balance right. > > While there is, of course "vote stuffing" for both characters, this is a clear case where a few people have gone through extraordinary lengths to alter the vote, spending hour after hour stuffing votes. There was no vote stuffing to this order of magnitude for Tommy, so the vote totals have been adjusted accordingly, and new measures are being put in place to prevent this from happening again. > > As a reminder, this is covered explicitly in the rules, and again, I have absolutely no stake in whoever actually wins in each day's bracket (not counting my own entry for fun, which, of course, I picked Kefka for). And just for kicks.... 21:45 \| Kefka \| 47186 \| +123 \| 50.06% \| Vercetti \| 47065 \| +140 \| 59.94% \| Lead of 121 \| (Down 17) 21:50 \| Kefka \| **45502** \| -1684 \| 49.10% \| Vercetti \| 47179 \| 114 \| 50.90% \| Lead of 1677 \| (Up **1684**) By the way, if anyone has a screen of that weird update that had two copies of each character and almost 200,000 total votes, feel free to post it. I forgot to save the link, for some reason. As one could imagine, it was Board Explosion Central after CJayC decided to layeth the smacketh down on the poll. But he wasn't done yet: > **A few extra notes on the adjustment.** > > From: CJayC \| Posted: 8/7/2005 1:13:12 AM \| Message Detail \| \#001 > > In case you're wondering how bad the cheating was for Kefka, here's a sample: > > [](http://img205.imageshack.us/my.php?image=votes4fz.png) > > The yellow is Kefka votes, the blue is Tommy. The number (vertical) is how many votes out of each group of 1000 (horizontal) came from a IP range from a particular ISP. Based on the user logs, this was clearly perpetrated by a single person or at most a small group of people, and as such, cannot be allowed. > > As I mentioned in the first post, this situation is explicitly covered by the rules: "we reserve the right intervene in the daily tally when there is a clear evidence of mass voting fraud". If that chart isn't clear evidence, well, then nothing's going to convince you. If you want to get angry at anyone, get angry at the people who caused it. The match was essentially over, but the firestorm was only just beginning. Thanks to some idiot who thought that his opinion should matter more than the opinions of tens of thousands of other people, one of the best matches we've ever had turned into a match that was only dramatic because of vote-stuffing. All of those barrier jokes in the stats topic? Yeah, turns out that they were vote-stuffing barriers. The ironic thing is that ChichiriMuyo (and possibly even Nevest, I believe) practically pinned down what would happen through the rest of the match before it actually happened. Some people were quicker to blame cheating before others, and they were right. However, the saddest thing in all of this was the fact that after the entire board was whining about cheating for practically the entire match, a great many people decided to turn around and act like the stuffer was someone actually worth being praised for his efforts. It was pathetic, and it only proves that any idiot can become popular on the internet if he's stupid enough (Future Edit from 2026 -- boy did THAT statement age well, huh?). When Board 8 turns around and practically idolizes someone who did nothing more than cheat in an online popularity contest after whining about the possibility of cheating for an entire match, it certainly makes for some good entertainment. And given all of the attention from nowhere, our wonderful vote-stuffer did what was only instinctual: stretch out all of the positive attention for as long as he could possibly receive it. This soon led to him claiming cheating in virtually every close match we've ever had via AIM conversations with various people, though given how unbelievably stupid and obvious he was in a one-point match, I find it hard to believe that CJayC wouldn't have caught this guy years ago if the claims were actually true. But the board ate it up like candy and continued to think that they were dealing with some misunderstood genius, and the entire situation was nothing short of pathetic. I find it hard to believe that this guy got away with cheating in high-profile matches when he screwed up something as simple as Kefka versus Vercetti. Give me a break. Besides, I IMd the guy myself. He changed his story around with every different match I asked him about, and though I was upset about the possibility of him getting away with cheating in other matches in the past for a few minutes, this was alleviated by him being one of the dumbest liars I'd ever seen. The key to having credibility while lying is consistency, and he sucked at it. Besides, if you read the following post, even Ceej himself subliminally laughs at M410123's claims of past cheating: > From: CJayC \| Posted: 8/7/2005 2:37:34 AM \| Message Detail \| \#059 > > The whole reason I had the conversation with him, of course, is so it \_would\_ get re-posted, confirming that what I did was indeed find one person voting massive amounts of times. Not really devious, but an ulterior motive. Figured this was easier than posting "Yes, AyaneLuverGuy really does know George, I can see the usermap, and he's more than likely really talking to him on the phone". > > As for his claims that he did this for Mario v Crono, I couldn't tell ya. From what I remember, all of the stuffing I saw was pretty much equal on both sides, so his claim that he decided it can be shared by many others. By the way, this was posted by Ceej in a topic in which ALG was allegedly having a phone conversation in which M410123 (Romero's original account, for the curious) gave one cheating claim after the other. Dunno about everyone else, but I don't buy a single one of those claims given that the guy screwed up a one point match in which the winner was guaranteed to lose in the second round. No credibility at all, especially when Romero began using his friend's account to defend himself from the accusations of having no credibility. This match eventually wound down to a close, but someone decided to have the match go out with a bang by vote-stuffing for Vercetti near the end. CJayC responded to the entire situation by posting this topic: > **Oh, by the way, Tommy would have won regardless.** > > From: CJayC \| Posted: 8/7/2005 3:02:58 AM \| Message Detail \| \#001 > > Given the final vote differential was 2245, and I only removed 1800 votes from Kefka... > > In other words, had I just not done anything at all, the same result would have occurred, minus all of the hullabaloo. > > There's irony for ya. Except that had you not done anything and allowed the vote-stuffer to continue without a hitch, Kefka wins. Pretty silly post, I think. And lastly, CJayC's response to Vercetti's being the beneficiary of vote-stuffing near the end of the match, which he posted within the "Tommy would have won regardless" topic: (For the curious: Check out the last ten updates or so to see the Tommy vote-stuffing.) > From: CJayC \| Posted: 8/7/2005 3:11:54 AM \| Message Detail \| \#102 > > Yeah, I did see the Vercetti stuff at the end of it; odd thing though, it good portion of it (half?) came from a wide variety of IPs and ISPs, in China of all places. None of the IPs were known proxies, and given that they were from multiple ISPs, it can't have been one person doing it; it looked more like the Korean ISP floods during the Best Game Ever matches with StarCraft. \*shrug\* Translated: "Starcraft may have cheated in Spring 2004, but the IP addresses are varied enough to where I can't confirm it for sure." Am I the only one who thinks that admitting this was a horrible idea? Assuming that my assumption is correct, Ceej could have very well admitted that Starcraft did far more potential cheat damage than in the match with SSBM. Seeing how, if ever, this plays out in future Starcraft matches will be very interesting. Or maybe Korea just knows how to rally votes at the right time, who knows. The only real issue I have is that one of the best matches we've ever had turned into one of the worst. It wasn't just M410123 doing the vote-stuffing, either. Tombs and GFA's owner both exhausted all of their accounts on the match by using a well-known glitch that CJayC couldn't fix at the time. Tombs was put into Purgatory for publicly admitting this, while GFA's owner has since been axed (and possibly even KOSd, so he thinks) for an unrelated offense. The funny thing is that Tombs and GFA's owner were cheating for opposite characters and essentially canceled each other out. There was also a fourth vote-stuffer (who I won't name) that used the glitch to stuff 80 votes for Kefka. As for whether or not the 1800 removed votes factored in these other stuffed votes, we'll never know. The main issue with this is that Ceej can't fix the glitch without turning every match into what Pokemon/Xenogears Part 1 was. A minor debate broke out about the validity (or lack thereof) of past stats and the affects on untouched cheating in matches, but Romero's complete lack of credibility in conjunction with the Starcraft example (take 3000 votes off of Starcraft's total against SSBM and watch how far it moves in the stats; hardly anywhere) put that to rest rather easily. In the end, we were left with new measures taken to prevent proxy cheating, poll updates were back in style, and the board was left scratching their heads with what to do next, as well as what exactly to make of what had just happened. All of this news had hit everyone in a span of just over two hours, and it took a long while for everything to fully digest and to look at the situation from a better perspective. All over a one point match that meant next to nothing in the grand scale of things. However, this match was a return to form for the contest; we hadn't seen something this strange since Starcraft, and we wouldn't see anything quite like this for the rest of the contest. It may have only been one point, but it was something to talk about -- and in terms of things to talk about, this match delivered more than any other match would deliver through this entire contest. It's actually a shame that we didn't wind up with any true down-to-the-wire nailbiters in retrospect, because our best match wound up being a minor first round match. It was like Ryu H/Jill 2004 in that while it was entertaining, it was overall meaningless. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty, the matches most people will remember as being definitive ones in contest history. This particular match is only so low because a certain cheater got a wee bit careless and ruined the fun for everybody, but it was still a damn amazing showdown regardless. First off, these two were very close in the Xstats, and picking the winner of this was, for most, a tossup, so the pre-match hype was rather big. When the match actually began, there was all manner of crazy lead changes and comebacks and nobody really knew who was going to win even after halfway through the poll. Eventually the stuffer got caught and Kefka lost by a decent amount, but the excitement of the poll and the unpredictability of the updates made this one of the best matches of the whole contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [BARRIERS and Cheating result in one of the biggest Stats Topic explosions in history](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/05Summer/KefTomStatsOwnage.JPG) - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2084&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Crono vs (7)Zidane Tribal 2005 _source: (2)Crono vs (7)Zidane Tribal 2005 (revid 56055)_ ## Results Sunday, August 7th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Flood Division - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 7th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 51,944 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 75.02% 95 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 89.87% (30,370 brackets) What does Crono need to do to prove that he's worthy of a 1 seed? Lara Croft, Pac Man, Solid Snake, Sonic, Mega Man, Bowser, Kefka, Ganondorf, Kirby, Master Chief, and Dante have now all gotten 1 seeds before Crono. Good god. After the madness that was Kefka/Vercetti, a nice simple match was needed to calm everyone down a little. Crono/Zidane did this wonderfully, because the only real question in this match was whether or not Crono would SFF Zidane. 2004 Crono would be projected to score around 66% on 2004 Vivi, while he'd be projected to score a whopping 81% on Spring 2005 Kuja. One would assume that he'd fall somewhere in between the two. That's... about all that Crono did of any note, really. This match was amazingly consistent from start to finish; Crono had 74.81% of the vote one minute into the poll, and his range in the match was only 74.5%-79%. Consistent matches are good for gauging strength given how rare consistency is in these things, but not a whole not else. You can barely take anything from within these numbers if you believe that there was a lot of SFF in the match, no less. My only complaint here is that a lot the new Square characters that got into this contest by CJayC ditching the cap (all of which I like) were given the shaft by being put into matches that they simply had no chance to win. Zidane, whom I absolute adore, is another in a long line of examples. Then again, FF9 isn't exactly the type of game that gets a ton of respect anyway. There is but one true question that can be wrought from this match. Was Zidane SFFd, and if so, would he have been stronger than Vivi if he were faced against someone different? Zidane really should have been switched with Sam Fisher in this bracket. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2085&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dante vs (8)Terra Branford 2005 _source: (1)Dante vs (8)Terra Branford 2005 (revid 88895)_ ## Results Monday, August 8th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Devil Division - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 8th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 41,727 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 61.60% 87 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 88.33% (29,849 brackets) The Devil Division. If there was one division in this contest that was bound to screw everyone up, this was it. There were only three obvious matches in the entire thing, and they were all in the first round. Some would even argue that Dante/Terra or Vincent/Kerrigan weren't obvious, leaving Squall/Geno as the only true given in the entire division. Well there was also Magus/Knuckles, but.... yeah. Dante/Terra caused a few minor debates pre-lockdown, if for no other reason than the hero:villain relationship generally not being close. In this regard, Kefka would be projected to score 41.62% on Dante according to 2004 numbers. Most hero:villain relationships are much wider than that. Another popular opinion for a Terra \> Dante upset was how strong Final Fantasy 6 was in Spring 2004. The issue with this is that Terra isn't the prototypical main character and wasn't very likely to be able to have a wide discrepancy between her and the main villain of the game. For starters, Terra isn't like a Cloud or a Squall; she has little to no appeal among casual voters. There's also the issue of Final Fantasy 6 being an ensemble cast, which means that even though Terra is the "main" character of the game, the attention among the party is divided up relatively equally among all the characters. In the case of FF6, that's a lot of characters. This eventually led to Terra being far weaker than she would need to be to stand any chance in this match (she would have to be pretty close to Auron to be able to beat Dante, to put it in simple terms), and come show time, it wasn't close. Dante began the poll with well over 60% of the vote and never looked back; he was over 68% within minutes, and by the end of the match he was over 71.5%. Dante was remarkably consistent (see also: boring) through the match, but given the way some people hyped Terra as the next big thing, Dante's being able to beat her to a pulp with such ease and consistency makes one wonder how badly Terra was hurt by being in an ensemble cast in a Final Fantasy game. Her game itself is a strong one, but for whatever reason, the characters themselves don't perform well in these things. Terra was another in a long line of new Square characters that never really had a chance to do well, and not only was she up against Dante in a 1-8 match, she was up against post-DMC3 Dante in a 1-8 match. This opens up a few interesting questions about how Kefka is the only character from FF6 that ever manages to do anything in these polls, and how a villain can be this much stronger than a main character. If you plug Terra into 2004 stats after this match, she only scores 34.24% on Kefka. That... doesn't make any sense. On a side note, creativename has said time and time again that Shadow would be the strongest FF6 character due to him having the most appeal to the casual voter. In Leon's next contest, I say we make a Shadow push to see if creative is correct. Future Edit - Shadow never once made a contest, which is sad. Literal Shadow from F-Zero got an appearance, which makes his career snub even worse. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2086&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Sarah Kerrigan vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2005 _source: (4)Sarah Kerrigan vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2005 (revid 88896)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Devil Division - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 58,142 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vincent - 59.82% 91 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vincent - 75.77% (25,605 brackets) Every contest sees its fair share of obvious matches that get debated to hell and back for absolutely no reason, and Kerrigan/Vincent was arguably the best microcosm of such useless debates in the Summer 2005 Contest. In one corner, we had Vincent, arguably one of the biggest snubs in these contests. People have been calling for his appearence for years, and for good reason. Vincent is the fan favorite of Final Fantasy 7, so much so that when Cloud did a cameo in Kingdom Hearts, his design was practically stolen from Vincent. It wasn't a stretch to assume that Vincent could be as strong or stronger than Aeris in these contests, or at the very worst just a tad weaker. In the other corner, there was Kerrigan. Kerrigan was literally a board creation, thanks to how well she did in Leonhart's contest. People assumed that because Starcraft did so well in Spring 2004, that Starcraft would be able to have a strong character in these contests as well. The general consensus for that character was Kerrigan, given that she's the most popular character in the game. But... beating Vincent? Kerrigan was another character that was overhyped and overblown beyond belief, and most people had the "I can't underestimate Blizzard again" mentality going into this match. But there's one problem with that. Just for kicks, slap Diablo's Spring 2005 number into the 2003 stats. He scores 38.16% against Aeris, which seemed to be a good pre-contest estimation for around where Vincent should place. We'll even give Kerrigan the benefit of the doubt, assume that Vincent is weaker than Aeris and say that Vincent only scores 60% on Diablo. This means that for Kerrigan to have a shot at Vincent, she'd have to be able to break 60% on Diablo and thus be around the level of characters like Squall, Aeris, and Bowser. Personally, I had zero belief in any of that and thought Kerrigan wouldn't even be able to defeat Diablo in one of these contests, let alone Vincent himself. Diablo's series has more sales than Starcraft, Diablo 2 is more popular in America than Starcraft, and Diablo just happens to have the same name as his game does. Before this contest, I guaranteed that Diablo would finish higher in the stats than Kerrigan and that Kerrigan would disappoint due to suffering from... well, Terra Disease. Being in a popular game is one thing, but being in an ensemble cast does not usually translate to character battles. And in Kerrigan's case, I'd go far enough to say that she's not even the main character of the game until the last campaign in Brood War. But that's a different debate for another time. So if Kerrigan is unable to take on Diablo (and she isn't), how was she supposed to touch Vincent? Cue the tape for the beginning of the match, in which Vincent not only beats Kerrigan, but absolutely flattens her. The match was never close, and the odd thing is that Kerrigan being just over 27.5% at the start was as good as she was going to look for the rest of the match. It began ugly for Kerrigan, and it would only get worse. By the time Vincent was done beating her into paste, he came close to breaking 80%. Eighty. Percent. In a match that some people were afraid of, for whatever far-off reasons that they came up with in advance. To get an idea of just how bad this was for Kerrigan, the average Oracle pick was Vincent with a mere 59.82%. Kerrigan bombed, and there's really no other way to put it. Vincent just killed her. And before someone goes and blames the picture for Kerrigan doing so badly, run the same match with the fabled Brood War loading screen pic that was supposed to save her. Are Starcraft's fans, the same fans that would vote anything Starcraft over anything else and the same fans that everyone was so scared of ahead of time, so fickle that they would cease to vote for Kerrigan just because she had a bad match pic, so blind that they wouldn't read the name "Kerrigan" as one of the poll options and remember who she is? In the words of Joe Biden, come on man. **Final Fantasy 7 is the mascot of GameFAQs.** Tifa's Orthopedic Underwear could have probably won this match in Vincent's place, and it'll be interesting to see if Kerrigan is overestimated to the same levels next year. Assuming she even makes it in after this poor showing. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2087&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=22) `• `**`Previous Match`**`       • `**`Next Match`** --- ## (3)Magus vs (6)Knuckles the Echidna 2005 _source: (3)Magus vs (6)Knuckles the Echidna 2005 (revid 88897)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Devil Division - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 1,756 - **Oracle Expectations:** Knuckles - 39.23% 0 for - 98 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Knuckles - 35.08% (11,855 brackets) Before this contest began, Magus/Knuckes was in no discussion. All of the debates were whether or not Squall would be able to rSFF Magus, and even those who argued in favor of Squall having the advantage over Magus due to Magus possibly being overrated in the stats didn't figure that Knuckles would actually be able to threaten in this match. No one in the BOP, no Oracle, and no Guru picked Knuckles to win this. The only person I even remember giving Knuckles a chance was HaRRicH, and he wasn't even taking his Knuckles \> Magus stuff seriously. Magus was expected to win this match with ease. He was supposed to be able to take down Knuckles with around 60% of the vote en route to winning the division that was seemingly designed for him to waltz through. The man beat Ganon, who had just broken 40% on Sephiroth not too long ago. The man almost broke 35% on Link, which very few characters have the ability to do. That giant thud you hear is arguably the single most overrated fraud we've ever had in one of these contests falling flat on his ass. In the span of 24 hours, Magus went from being compared with the likes of Sonic and being handed an entire division to being compared with the likes of Liquid Snake, Tidus, Frog, and leaving everyone questioning just how badly Magus has been overrated until this past contest. Everything started off well enough, with Magus pulling in well over 60% of the vote as expected. But within seconds, something seemed amiss. Magus started losing some steam, and even though was still increasing his lead by quite a lot, those with Magus \> Squall in their brackets began to concede that Magus likely had no chance to win his next match. Magus needed to score near 60% to prove that he was able to take down Squall, but in the second 5 minute update, Magus's percentage dropped from over 58% to just under 56.5%. If Magus was unable to score ~60% on Knuckles during his strongest part of every match, the odds of him beating Squall were practically zero. But within a few minutes, the absolute unthinkable began to occur. Not only was Magus proving himself unable of taking down Squall, but he was showing signs that he may not even be able to take down Knuckles. Magus's lead was not increasing at a uniform rate, and he had to rely on wild spikes in his vote intake just to increase his lead early on in this match. Knuckles was stalling Magus every now and then, and Magus would counter with very odd vote spikes. This pattern continued for quite some time, and murmurs began of how Knuckles may actually be able to put his historic day vote capabilities to good use and actually win the match. Remember, Knuckles was slated to lose this match in a blowout. Barely an hour and a half had passed in the poll, and Magus's momentum.... completely stopped. Knuckles was able to stall Magus from gaining any more big increases, and though Magus was able to slowly get his lead up to 650, the realization of what was soon to occur began to set in. Not only did Magus have no chance at all of taking down Squall or winning the division, not only did Knuckles prove that he had a chance to win the match, but it was very possible that Knuckles would be able to use his traditionally insane day vote to absolutely flatten Magus into the ground and win the match by several thousand votes. Knuckles shocked the world not far after Magus's increase was stalled, and Knuckles soon began to slowly chip away at Magus's lead just a couple of hours into the match. It took seemingly forever or Knuckles to gain any large updates, but Knux was able to chip away piece by piece at the lead that Magus built early on. It took seemingly forever for Knuckles to get the lead just from 650 to 400, but it didn't take much longer for the vaunted Knuckles day vote to take effect. However, around six hours into the poll, after Magus's flat-out pathetic vote intake all but cost him the match before three hours of the match were over, the vaunted Knuckles day vote began to take full swing at the overrated Prince of Zeal. Votes began pouring in for Knuckles, and what was once a mighty struggle turned into child's play for Knux. Once Knuckles caught his day vote, he was able to use it to absolutely flatten Magus and bury him into the ground well past having any actual shot at winning the match. At 9:00 AM EST, Knuckles was trailing by just over 300 votes and was struggling to pick votes away from Magus's lead. Less than nine hours later, Knuckles was ahead by over 2700 votes. The funniest thing about this match is that despite Magus catching the evening vote and taking off almost 1000 votes (ramblings of a possible Magus comeback appeared every time Magus went over the necessary tie quota, but Knuckles was easily able to hold him off) from Knuckles's peak of 2700, Magus would still go down as arguably the biggest choke in the history of these contests. Even ytmnds were spawned from this match, with maguslosttoknuckles.ytmnd.com being the funniest. And it's true. In 2003, Magus was an overrated newcomer who managed to use his fresh status and existing strength to overperform in two straight matches. In 2004, we all assumed that Magus was SFFd to hell and back by Crono and simply plugged his 2003 value into the final Xsts. But in 2005, after two full years of many people saying how overrated Magus was, the true colors finally came out. Magus was an overrated fraud, and even though Leonhart had it pegged almost perfectly, not even he mentioned that Knuckles could perhaps win the match... "because of how... out of whack it seemed at the time". In terms of true shock value, this match was the best of the contest by far. Even today, many people still say that this match made the contest interesting, all while Board 8 has put Magus as its favorite character in two straight mass votings. One could argue for Ocelot/Pac Man or Ness/CJ or even something else, but the Knuckles upset was different. People cared a great deal about both of these characters. None of the other upsets through the contest felt like they had the same luster to them as this one did. Matches like this are what keep us interested in these polls. Anyone can look at Magus and say that he was overrated, but how in the world could he have been overrated by this much? You don't just randomly score 35% on Link by accident, and even though CT characters tend to overperform when given sprites, that's still a rather large discrepancy. I'm getting the feeling that perhaps Magus got extremely lucky against Ganondorf and overperformed against both Ganon and Link. We've seen the new character bump before and since. But even then, overperforming this much? Know what's even funnier? Due to bracket voters perhaps pushing Magus rather hard to try and save the match for him, he may also be overrated in these stats as well. Characters that lose close matches have a tendency to do very badly in their next contest. In conclusion, Magus = an overrated bust. He's still one of my favorite characters, but I can't exactly deny that he was overhyped and overblown to extreme levels. Cue the Knuckles \> Squall bandwagon spearheaded by people who refused to believe that Magus wasn't an overrated bust. And Leon4, you deserve a lifetime of apologies for how I acted before this match. To quote Jon Snow, you were right the entire time. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis If you want examples of the board getting completely and utterly blindsided by a result, look no further than this, the textbook example of Board 8 falling flat on its collective face. No Guru, no BOP bracket, no Oracle called this match correctly. Such floppage hadn’t been seen since a certain green plumber fell flat on his face in 2003. But Magus managed to do the unthinkable and lose to Knuckles in Round One, despite the fact that, two years prior, he’d brooked an incredible 35% on Link. So what happened? Were the signs always there and we just missed them? Whatever you think, it doesn’t change the outcome of this match: Magus led for a little bit before Knuckles just surged ahead and won decisively in one of the biggest upsets on the board in contest history. People (myself included) had Magus taking the entire division, and a ton of brackets went up in smoke almost at once. No character has seen such a fall from grace as poor Magus has. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2088&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Squall Leonhart vs (7)Geno 2005 _source: (2)Squall Leonhart vs (7)Geno 2005 (revid 88898)_ ## Results Thursday, August 11th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Devil Division - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 11th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 49,390 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 72.90% 98 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 89.12% (30,116 brackets) One day after Knuckles \> Magus, we... were given a match in which everyone was still only talking about Knuckles \> Magus. Squall beating Geno was an absolute lock, and some argued that it was the only obvious match in the entire division before the contest began. The only question in the match was whether or not Squall would be able to score any decent amount of SFF in the match, and it's a question we received an answer to within seconds of the match beginning. Geno had the lead for a few seconds, but it didn't take long for Squall to absolutely roll all over him. Geno was yet another in a long line of Square characters that made the contest with no company cap, but had absolutely no chance to do well. Personally, I would have loved to see a match between Geno and Terra. There are two things that really get me about this match. One, if you're wondering whether or not Squall would have beaten Magus had Magus lived up to Xst expectations, I think this match proves that he would have. Squall likely SFFd Geno a little, and Geno is a side character in Super Mario RPG (released 1996). If Squall could SFF a side character from SMRPG, why couldn't he SFF a side character from Chrono Trigger. He wouldn't have needed a lot if Magus were actually what we thought he was. Secondly, no one thought that Crono was in trouble when he failed to flat-out kill Zidane with SFF. Yet when Squall "only" triples Geno, people say that Squall has some issues. Hilarious. Squall beating Geno set up a very interesting second round in the Devil Division. The favorite picks seemed to be Vincent \> Dante and Squall \> Knuckles, but there was some reason that Dante and Knuckles had outside chances to win; or at least, overperform based off of expectations. As for the Devil finals, it was almost impossible to call that one at this point. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2089&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (8)Jin Kazama 2005 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (8)Jin Kazama 2005 (revid 56072)_ ## Results Friday, August 12th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 12th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 47,602 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 81.23% 92 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 92.10% (31,123 brackets) This was one of the most boring matches of the entire contest, if for no other reason than the fact that Jin managed to make this contest despite *zero* board support. In every single nomination list posted on this board before the contest, Kazama's name did not show up one single time. As such, given that Sonic was a lock to win, this match was about two things to watch for on the side: how Sonic would do in preparing for the inevitable clash with Mega Man, and whether or not Jin would turn out to be weaker than Terry Bogard. It was a bit tough to pin down whether or not Sonic had a chance against Mega Man based off of one match against an untested character, but it was easy enough to see how the latter issue would turn out. Given that most people expected Jin to not be able to match Terry Bogard's 2004 percentage of 19.16%, Jin wound up being a bit stronger than expected. Even more interesting was the fact that Jin stayed pretty consistent throughout the match. Sonic made a push to get Jin under 20% early on, but Jin recovered to get himself to the range of nearly 26%. When Sonic's vaunted day vote hit, he was only able to push Jin down a mere 2%, which some said was cause for concern for Nintendo's favorite mascot. And yes, Nintendo's favorite mascot is Sonic, much like Vince McMahon's favorite mascot is the old WCW logo \<3 As for how Jin did so much better than expected, compare the Tekken series to the King of Fighters series. To my knowledge, Tekken is much more popular and has gotten more critical acclaim. There was also the matter of Tekken 5 being released not too long before this contest began, which could have allowed Jin to get into the contest despite absolutely no board support whatsoever. And the board didn't mind a Tekken character making the contest, but all of the big Tekken fans here kept saying that the series could have put better characters into this contest. As for whether or not this was cause for concern for Sonic's chances to get past Mega Man and make the Final Four or simply Jin doing better than expected, only time would tell. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2090&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Kratos Aurion vs (5)Diablo 2005 _source: (4)Kratos Aurion vs (5)Diablo 2005 (revid 56074)_ ## Results Saturday, August 13th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 13th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 11,621 - **Oracle Expectations:** Diablo - 60.14% 90 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Diablo - 78.74% (26,609 brackets) This match was an interesting one, not because Kratos was necessarily a threat to win, but it would somewhat validate whether or not Diablo's Spring 2005 performance was legit, as well as help to put the TOS characters in a more accurate line. One could assume that Kratos was the strongest TOS character of the bunch, but by how far? And even if you wanted to give Kratos/Liquid Snake/Cam Clarke a chance, Mithos would only be expected to score 33.07% on the Kefka slayer. That's a whole lot of ground for Kratos to make up. Kratos was pretty much out of the match right when it started, given that a heavy TOS board vote couldn't even keep Kratos within striking distance during Diablo's weakest part of every match. It took mere seconds for Diablo to shake off Kratos's few seconds of decency before running away with the match, however Kratos would go on to avoid being outright killed in the match. The inside joke about my standard for a killing is 57-43, after all \<\_\< Ironically, after all the crap that Lloyd took after his bombing against Wesker, Lloyd was the only TOS character out of three to win a contest match in the 2005 season. Mithos didn't even come close, and though Kratos is probably the most popular character in the series, he was stuck going up against a Diablo who had just come off of arguably being the most impressive character this past spring. However, if there is one thing that Kratos can take from this loss, it's that he's likely so far ahead of Lloyd in popularity that even if Lloyd managed to SFF Kratos a little in a hypothetical match, Kratos would likely win with ease regardless. Which is odd, because we've seen various examples of those "Favorite Character" polls not being the least bit accurate (though we haven't had one for TOS as of yet on our site, I don't think). Yet with TOS, it seems to be fairly accurate. Perhaps it's because of the way that the TOS battle system works, or maybe it's due to the fact that Lloyd is such an idiot in the game that he has virtually no appeal whatsoever. Either way, a match involving two among the Lloyd/Kratos/Sheena trio could be interesting. And hey, on another bright note, Kratos actually managed to win a couple of updates in the later stages of the match. As for Diablo, he did... pretty much exactly what he was expected to do. Beat Kratos, job to Sonic, possibly return next year and give us another good run. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2091&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (6)Vyse 2005 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (6)Vyse 2005 (revid 56076)_ ## Results Sunday, August 14th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 14th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 54,045 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tifa - 69.87% 91 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tifa - 89.72% (30,319 brackets) After three contests in which Tifa was cast aside due to company limits or people nominating other Square characters, she was finally given a chance to perform. And hot damn, did she enter this contest with a bang. The big debate involving Tifa wasn't whether or not she would do well, but it was practically a lock for her to take her fourpack before jobbing to Sonic in the divisional finals. It was where she stood within the Aeris/Tifa/Vincent triangle. Hardly anyone could agree on where to place these three, and unfortunately, Aeris was not in this contest to give us a decent comparison. Essentially, we would wind up comparing the three by comparing 2003 Aeris to how well Tifa and Vincent did in this contest. In Vincent's first match, he performed above and beyond expectations and flat-out killed Kerrigan. However, Vyse was not Kerrigan. Vyse has been in these contests before and had actually won a match in the past. We had a fairly decent number on Vyse, and determined Vyse to be the fodder line in these contests. Most people assumed that he was consistent enough. But like Vincent before her, Tifa came out and flat-out destroyed her first round opponent to go well above and beyond expectations. Blowing out Kerrigan is one thing, but blowing out Vyse is something else entirely. Within 5 minutes of this poll's existence, Tifa was over 77% and climbing. It looked for a few minutes as if Tifa would blow past Vyse en route to a victory well into the 80% range, but she calmed down a little and finished the match with just over 78% of the vote. But even then, what Tifa managed to do here was still impressive. Vyse only managed to score 18.59% on Cloud. He only did 3% better against Tifa, so either Tifa was far stronger than most people expected and was on track to beat Sonic and Mega Man en route to the Final Four, or Vyse was much weaker than everyone assumed and was simply long overdue to reveal his true colors. And man, did the people who assumed a constant Vyse cause a few silly debates in the days following this match or what? Lopen made a very good post in the stats topic recently, and it applies to Vyse possibly being overestimated. He more or less said that the only reason Vyse looked so good against Laharl is because both characters were cult favorites. Vyse had been in a contest previously, and was the top option. This makes enough sense, because when you stick two unknowns together, the human mind tends to favor the first choice. Laharl probably wouldn't have won if the seeding in that match were reversed, but he may have performed better. Besides, Vyse's victory may have been a case of the percentages not being as big an indicator as the vote totals. Skies didn't sell all too well, and when Vyse goes up against someone of the calibur as Tifa, you're asking a very large percentage of a relatively small fanbase to be there. Vyse/Laharl was far and away the lowest vote draw of Summer 2004, and when you add in an extra 30000 votes, Vyse not being able to keep up with what his Xst value projected may not have been as big a surprise. And yes, I'm aware that his value was based off the loss against Cloud. But Vyse doing badly because of an increase in vote totals isn't too far out of the question, and even Vyse/Cloud barely managed 91000 votes. If Lloyd can possibly bomb because of high vote totals, why can't Vyse? Unless you actually wanted to think that Tifa was going to somehow make the Final Four based off of this match, that is. Regardless, why Vyse bombed here is an interesting little issue. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2092&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Luigi vs (7)KOS-MOS 2005 _source: (2)Luigi vs (7)KOS-MOS 2005 (revid 88899)_ ## Results Monday, August 15th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 15th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 34,045 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 56.96% 89 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 84.57% (28,579 brackets) One day after Tifa goes out and performs well past expectations, Luigi goes out and shows that Tifa might not be a lock to take him down after all. Except that in Luigi's case, he arguably had the quietest overperformance of the entire contest. 2003 stats have KOS-MOS scoring 45.48% on Luigi. 2004 stats have KOS-MOS scoring 49.23%. And between Summer 2004 and Summer 2005, KOS-MOS added Xenosaga II to her library. This caused a few minor debates to float around about KOS-MOS having a shot at winning the match. So what does Luigi do? Not only does he completely blow out KOS-MOS, he completely dunks all over the stats. He came out with over 70% of the vote in the match, and even though his percentage leveled off not too far later, he still finished the match close to doubling a character that he was supposed to have a close match with. Yet because Luigi bombed against Squall in 2003 and Yoshi in 2004 (and plenty of people had high hopes for Luigi in both of these matches), hardly anyone really seemed to care about how well Luigi did due to being done having any faith in the man. Yet to borrow a quote from RPGuy, when Tifa goes and wipes Vyse off the map, it's all Tifa. When Luigi goes and does the same to KOS-MOS, it's all KOS-MOS. Or Luigi's true strength being hidden behind Yoshi/Luigi SFF, or some other excuse to hide the fact that Luigi could have gone up this far. But when the Tifa \> Sonic bandwagon starts, everyone breaks their ankles jumping on and off of the thing. Personally, I think this was a combination of KOS-MOS dropping, Luigi joining in on a widespread Nintendo increase, and Luigi being hidden behind SFF against Yoshi last year. This isn't to say that his 2003 match with Squall wasn't proof of how weak Luigi can be or that Luigi was going to beat Tifa, but I took two things from this match. One, Luigi was going to do well against Tifa and expose her for not being as strong as her match with Vyse suggested. Two, this was one of the first true examples we had of what creativename has dubbed The Boost™, or the widespread increase for Nintendo this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2093&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (8)Conker 2005 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (8)Conker 2005 (revid 56080)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 51,894 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 78.46% 87 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 88.83% (30,018 brackets) *"Conker looks like he's decomposing."* -yoblazer33 Summer 2004 was essentially the death of the new-age platformer character in these contests, as evidenced by the horrendous performances of virtually all of them. Conker only returned to the field due to Live and Reloaded being released right around nomination time, and his odds of ever returning again are slim to none assuming no future timely releases. The only thing to really watch for in this match was 22.73%, which was Conker's expected percentage to score in the match. Essentially, this match was but a setup for the Sonic/Mega Man clash, and Mega Man performing well paired with Sonic's perceived disappointment against Jin could essentially end that far-off duel before it ever began. Mega Man started off on a tear, and within 15 minutes had well over 80% of the votes. However, Mega Man's percentage soon began to level off and not only did Conker shave off a few percents, but he managed to get Mega Man under his projected value. The Sonic \> Mega Man bandwagon started picking up a lot of steam once this happened, especially given that Mega Man was relatively underperforming against a rotting corpse. Seriously, look at that damned thing. All its missing are the maggots. However, even if you wanted to believe that this match spelled trouble for Mega Man down the line, there was Conker's newfound Xbox exposure to take into account. Xbox fans will vote anything Xbox over anything else, and Conker's shaving off percentage from Mega Man falls right in line with Master Chief's best part of every poll. In fact, Conker's getting Mega Man under 76% at one point not only fell in line with Master Chief's best time, but Mega Man's recovery fell directly in line with Master Chief's collapse against Frog last year. It may not be a full explanation for Mega Man not performing to speed, but it's not out of the question either. And it's not like we had much else to discuss during the match other than the incoming storm of GFNW jokes. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2094&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Gordon Freeman vs (5)Leon Kennedy 2005 _source: (4)Gordon Freeman vs (5)Leon Kennedy 2005 (revid 56082)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 16,065 - **Oracle Expectations:** Leon Kennedy - 59.49% 84 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Leon Kennedy - 43.62% (14,741 brackets) *"Look me in the eye and tell me that Gordon Freeman will win.* *I dare you. Bring it.* *The day Gordon Freeman wins a match -- The day Gordon Freeman ever wins in a popularity contest on GameFAQs is my final day on GameFAQs."* -Amazing Telephone Everyone knows the joke. GFNW. And it's not like this year was going to be any different. Gordon Freeman, the man who lost to Tina Armstrong, Max Payne and Sam Fisher, was not about to beat Leon Kennedy in the year that Resident Evil 4 (which essentially revived the series) was released. Another year, another predetermined loss suffered by Gordon Freeman at the hands of a generic human character. It's gotten so bad for ol' Gordon that he's actually begun winning the board vote due to how much of a joke he's become. Not that people on this board actually root for him to win mind you (the universe implodes if the man wins, which may explain why he tries his best to lose despite CJayC setting him up against generic opponents every single year); they simply vote for him just to see how badly he'll choke in yet another contest. We all nominate him, we all root for him to get an easy match, we all vote for him, yet we all enjoy seeing him lose. Welcome to Gordon Freeman's world. He took the early lead against Leon on the backbone of joke votes alone, but a lot of people expected Leon to eventually run away with the match en route to putting up Jill Valentine-esque numbers (roughly 68%). It didn't happen. Gordon Freeman kept his amazing streak of breaking 40% in every match he's ever been in in tact in holding off Leon from ever getting close to the magical 60% mark. I could try to explain this with logic and say that Gordon had Half-Life 2 and the brackets behind him, but this is a Gordon Freeman match. Logic does not exist, especially when Leon Kennedy does 10% worse than what 2004 Jill Valentine (who is underestimated by 2004 stats) would be projected to do. Gordon Freeman Always Breaks Forty Percent And Always Increases In The Extrapolated Stats, But Never Wins. GFABFPAAIITESBNW ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2095&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Yoshi vs (6)Laharl 2005 _source: (3)Yoshi vs (6)Laharl 2005 (revid 88900)_ ## Results Thursday, August 18th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 18th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 46,614 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 72.36% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 92.16% (31,144 brackets) This match was like Donkey Kong/Sam Fisher in that it was comparable to watching flies fly in terms of excitement, with the only difference being that I myself am a rather big fan of the two characters in the poll. DK and Sam... not so much. This really was just another poll in which a Nintendo character was given the chance to flex some muscle against fodder. Laharl was projected to score 28.24% in the match. Yoshi began the poll with over 75%, stayed extremely consistent (see also: boring), and ended the poll by doing better than the stats suggested by 2%. Given that Yoshi was a lock to win his fourpack before jobbing to Mega Man, there really isn't much else to say about this match. The only surprise as far as I can tell is that Laharl made it back into this contest in the first place. I figured that the Disgaea cult wouldn't be able to get Laharl in a second time after seeing how badly he did the first time around. Maybe Laharl can get in next year and face someone really weak from a game that sold like three copies, who knows. As for Yoshi, he was.... well on his way to winning his fourpack before jobbing to Mega Man. Stunning. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2096&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Revolver Ocelot vs (7)Pac-Man 2005 _source: (2)Revolver Ocelot vs (7)Pac-Man 2005 (revid 88901)_ ## Results Friday, August 19th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 19th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 2,268 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pac-Man - 41.61% 1 for - 87 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pac-Man - 38.36% (12,963 brackets) More people had Pac Man \> Ocelot than they did Knuckles \> Magus. What in the world. It took a long time before we saw the final match of the first round end round 1 itself going out with a bang. In 2002, the final first round match was Crash Bandicoot vs Ulala. In 2003, we were stuck with Mega Man vs Mr. Resetti. Spring 2004 saw a decent match in SSBM/MGS2, but the only stunner there was the prediction percentage. And Summer 2004? Samus vs Lara Croft. Puke. It took until 2005 for the first round not to have that "get this the hell over with" effect, and it was all thanks to Kuja getting his ass whipped by a glove. But most people figured that this was a one-shot luck deal and that we'd go back to seeing our standard fodder killing as the final match of the first round. In Summer 2005, that match was Ocelot/Pac Man, and virtually everyone simply picked Ocelot without even considering otherwise. This wasn't like Magus/Knuckles in which Knuckles had a couple of people actually suggesting that an upset could happen; virtually no one figured that Pac Man would do anything other than lose in this match, and that this was possibly Pac Man's final match in his contest career. His seed has gradually slipped with each contest (he'd be a 14 if you prorate this bracket to four divisions of 16), and he was nearing his end. The only person I even remember considering the possibility was RPGuy in the stats topic, and his post was more of a "look at how you can manipulate the stats into saying whatever you want them to" situation. And to my knowledge, no one even bothered responding to the post because they didn't consider the possibility of Pac Man actually winning the match. However, as the match drew closer, some people began to theorize that Ocelot would underperform; not lose, but that he would get in a close match and win by less than 52%. But even then, no one figured that Pac Man would win this match. Pac Man is the same character that got killed by Luigi, lost to Lettuce Kefka and was one of two 1 seeds that bombed in 2002. Ocelot meanwhile won two tough matches against (what we thought were) two tough opponents before respectfully bowing out against Bowser in Spring 2005 not two months before this match took place. Surely, Pac Man had no chance. Yet for whatever reason, as the minutes wore on and the match drew closer, there was... a very odd air about this match. Yes Pac performed like crap in three contests leading up to this and had yet to win a match of any note, but there was a feeling on the board that maybe Pac did have a chance after all. The obvious reason is Ocelot not even being a percent above Kefka in the Spring 2005 stats. Pac Man almost beat Kefka, so hey, what's to say that he couldn't almost beat Ocelot? Though Pac Man almost beat lettuce Kefka, so that theory was quickly dismissed. And because Pac Man was likely behind SFF in the stats in both 2003 and 2004, it was a bit difficult to give him an accurate rating based on either contest. The match would eventually begin, and the odd feeling that everyone had about this match possibly being close was soon realized. During the board vote, which was easily Ocelot's strongest time in all three of his Spring 2005 matches, Pac Man managed to take a slim early lead. He didn't exactly run away with the match in those first few minutes, but many a Board 8 poster called the match once the first poll update was logged in. Pac Man was up by 29 votes, and if Ocelot was doing this badly during his best time, most people figured he was pretty much screwed. And he was. Sure Ocelot spent the next two hours giving himself a lead of 250, but Ocelot is historically known for tanking with the day vote. And no sooner did Ocelot get his lead of 250 did Pac Man quickly stall Ocelot from gaining any more votes. Pac then began shaving votes off of Ocelot's lead, and despite a few recovery attempts by Ocelot while this was going on, the reality that Pac Man would soon pull off one of the most hilarious upsets of all time soon set in. All that was left at this point was for Pac Man to catch the morning vote and seal it for good (and pretty much everyone expected him to even though Ocelot was still periodically stalling votes; he was that bad during the day in all three Spring matches); the morning vote came, Pac Man expectedly caught it, then proceeded to slowly build a lead of 2500 votes before midnight. This wasn't like Magus/Knuckles in that the heavy favorite (Magus) turned out to be a board-hyped bust that shocked people when he lost. Ocelot was the heavy favorite, but when he himself proved to be a board-hyped bust, most people weren't really surprised or upset. The upset was simply too funny and Pac Man himself too overdue for a big win for people to get up in arms about Ocelot tanking worse than the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS. Actually, I take that back. No one could ever tank worse than the Tanks (because the Yankees tanked, lol get it?) in the 2004 ALCS. The truly funny thing was that despite the reactions being vastly different, Magus and Ocelot had a lot in common. No Oracle picked either of them to lose. No Guru picked either of them to lose. The BOP however had a discrepancy, but not a large one: no one picked Magus to lose, while a vast three people picked Ocelot to lose. Even the prediction percentages were similar. Hell, Ocelot even made a "last stand" in which he cut off votes from Pac Man's lead but would go down as an overrated bust regardless. Granted Magus cut 1000 votes from Knuckles to Ocelot's paltry 250, but it's the principle. The difference came in the board's reaction to each loss. Magus/Knuckles was just ugly all around. However when Pac Man finally got his big win, most people found the match to be hilarious and celebrated as such. This may have also had a lot to do with Ocelot only being worth one point and Magus seven, but that's a minor technicality \<\_\< On a more serious note however, both Magus and Ocelot still have potential in these contests. Everyone knows what Magus's deal is, though Ocelot is a tad different. I'm always an advocate of pictures not making a difference of more than 1-2%, but this match falls right into the grey area of pictures perhaps making the difference between a win and a loss for Ocelot. In one corner, we had Pac Man, who seemingly has the picture advantage hardcore over every character he faces in a contest match. In the other corner, we has Jolly Saint Ocelot. The man literally looked like Santa Claus in the match pic, and it was only a matter of time before one of those blasted faded melting cartoon pics did in a Metal Gear Solid character in one of these contests. One could even go as far as to say that Liquid Snake could have beaten Frog with a better picture. If Ocelot gets an in-game pic from MGS 2 or 3, I'm willing to bet that he wins this same match fairly comfortably. Unfortunately, we don't know the match pics in advance and can't factor in their wild card affect when filling out our brackets. I'd petition for CJayC to release all first round match pics with the release of each bracket (or at the very least, to make each picture as even as possible), but he's probably too busy with a little-known thing called real life and a career. Sucks to be the rest of us. With this match's conclusion, the first round had come to an end. It was the best first round we had had since Spring 2004, complete with upsets, controversy, board explosions, and our first-ever bracket in which someone did not have a perfect bracket at the end of the first round. This was a true testament to how awesome a job CJayC did in constructing this thing, as well as him finally using the stats, ditching the company caps and making the bracket as strong as possible while still taking the time to allow in the board-heavy characters (Manny Calavera) and to make the matches as difficult to call as possible. And in some cases, he came up with glorious upsets by accident. Truly, the Pac Man upset was a microcosm of the first round of this contest. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Before this match, the end of Round One, the number of perfects left filled up the entire leaderboard. After this match, none remained. This result still baffles me. Ocelot's impressive showing in the Villain's Contest, the good performances of Metal Gear Solid characters that year; none of it mattered. Say what you will about pictures making a difference, but Ocelot's blurry old-man-watercolors couldn't stand up to Pac-Man's Technicolor charms. A narrow win put the Pac back on the map to give him his first win in three years, and easily his most impressive one of his contest career. And it bears mentioning that only DNEA managed to call this one in the Oracle. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2097&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (4)Ness 2005 _source: (1)Mario vs (4)Ness 2005 (revid 88902)_ ## Results Saturday, August 20th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Mushroom Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 20th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 59,870 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 78.39% 82 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 88.74% (29,988 brackets) For those of us who expected a mere doubling by Mario in today's match before the contest started, do keep in mind something important: *CJ lost*. Once Ness pulled the big board upset, everyone changed their minds and looked towards a huge SFF-spree by the King of Nintendo himself. Afterall, Bowser SFF'd Ness to a large degree in 2k3; what would keep somebody from thinking Mario couldn't do the same? Ness has only been in three games in all of his existence while Mario puts out, what, three Mario games a year? It doesn't hurt Mario that he's in the two most popular games Ness is in, either. So the match begins... and Ness is obliterated early. In a time where Ness has a shot of holding the lead for a brief few seconds, he never stands a chance; in the quickest score-update caught by users in the Contest Stats and Discussion topics, Mario was already leading 13-5 (kudos, yoblazer). It only gets worse, too, as Ness finishes with 17.2%. Mario obviously SFF'd Ness, but even then, the SFF was very strong. If you were to compare Mario and Ness in 2k3, Ness would still be expected to get 20.22% (which is when he was SFF'd by Bowser). If you were to compare Mario and Ness in 2k4, Ness would still be expected to get 27.52% (which is when he was indirectly SFF'd by Auron/Sephiroth). Point being, Mario stomped Ness noticeably worse than two previously-SFF'd Ness's have predicted, so Mario came to impress. This goes to show that SFF and stats simply don't mix...though, by all means, we should know this after last year's bracket. With a win like this for Mario, he's aiming to please the majority of the casual bracket-makers (that is, if the Top Fifty's general consensus is a sign of anything). Ness, who made the GameFAQs 2005 Game of the Year's leading character look worse than Jak (and Ness had starmen.net linking to Ness/Jak, whereas he didn't in Ness/CJ), now looks worse than Joanna Dark and Servbot. To add to it, Mario SFF'd Ness more than Mario SFF'd Donkey Kong in 2k2 (DK had 18.03% against Mario). It's hard to gauge Mario just yet though; afterall, he faced one new-comer and SFF'd somebody who we have nothing but shaky readings on. Mario now moves on to face the winner of Zero/Lloyd next round, making it one round closer to the Mario match we've all been waiting for. As a fun little note, this might be the second time in a row that a GTA:SA character ranks at the last position possible in the x-stats. There is no doubt that Board 8 rejoices over the idea of such. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2098&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Zero vs (2)Lloyd Irving 2005 _source: (3)Zero vs (2)Lloyd Irving 2005 (revid 88903)_ ## Results Sunday, August 21st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Mushroom Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 21st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 41,619 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 66.79% 80 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 54.18% (18,309 brackets) The result of the match between Zero and Lloyd was never in question, as the fate of both characters was already predetermined at the release of the bracket with Lloyd beating Wesker before bowing out to Zero, and Zero destined to easily dispatch Ryu Hayabusa and Lloyd Irving before losing to Mario. The match was more about answering questions. Zero had to answer questions about his strength, as he was in 2k4’s controversial 20XX division and many people questioned whether he, along with the rest of his division, should have been adjusted due to Mega Man’s flopping against Link. Many people suggested that the adjustment shouldn’t have been made due to many members of the division not doing as well as they should have this year. Liquid Snake bombed in the Spring Contest against Sephiroth, and Master Chief and Frog both didn’t live up to expectations in their first round matchups. However, Knuckles was able to take down Magus, and Mega Man was able to exceed his projections against Conker, even with Conker having a new release. As for Zero, he seemed to slightly underperform against Ryu Hayabusa, but Ryu also was able to get his more recognizable ninja form as opposed to his Dead or Alive character model. As for Lloyd, he also had to answer questions about his strength. After Wesker’s bombing to Kefka in the Spring Contest, he was made to look weaker than Mithos. Mithos was actually projected to get 58.87% on Wesker. So when Lloyd’s match came along and he only managed to get 54.69% on Wesker, people sounded the alarm. How can Lloyd, the protagonist of Tales of Symphonia, be weaker than his obscure villain counterpart? Most people pegged it on Wesker doing worse on Kefka due to Kefka getting his angel sprite, or the converse of Mithos overperforming on Kefka due to Kefka getting his ugly clown FMV picture. Still, when the day of the match came, Lloyd supporters were optimistic about Lloyd being able to break 35% on Zero. Using the 2k4 stats, Mithos was projected to get 24.38% on Zero, so that was the number Lloyd had to shoot for to rank higher than Mithos. In a boring match, Lloyd was able to get 26.75% on Zero. Lloyd was able to rank higher than Mithos, although it wasn’t by much. Other than a Mithos overperformance on Kefka, one conclusion that was drawn was that since Tales of Symphonia isn’t a widely known game, its fanbase equally supports all of its characters. Nonetheless, Lloyd proved that he didn’t pose much of a threat in a contest setting, as Zero decimated him. He played his role by beating Wesker before bowing out to Zero. The only question left was to see how Zero would fare in his upcoming match with Mario. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2099&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (5)Frog 2005 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (5)Frog 2005 (revid 88904)_ ## Results Monday, August 22nd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Zebes Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 22nd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 38,994 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 67.05% 82 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 85.98% (29,055 brackets) Like a walk in the park, the majority of the board already knew what was going to be seen in Samus/Frog. Samus had already had the majority of her road set before the contest even started: destroy fodder, hammer down on Frog, and SFF Ganon before the huge encounter with Mario (where most casuals had her lose and most board-members had her win the main bracket). Samus successfully made Yuri into mince meat, so she was one round further down her road. Frog also had a road set out before the contest started: take out Riku, then proceed to avoid the doubling by Samus. While Frog *technically* took Riku out, Riku certainly made him fight for it; in a match that had few/no picks from the BOP/Guru/Oracle, Riku made it Frog's fourth match in a row that was decided 52-48 or closer. Granted, Riku was new so it was hard to tell how legit he was...but look at the other three Frog has such close matches with: Liquid Snake, Master Chief, and Solid Snake. Between now having a close match with Riku, Liquid Snake bombing against Sephiroth, and Master Chief not exactly impressing against CATS, Frog was lookin' to be a fraud much like his CT-counterpart Magus. This didn't stop a lot of people from believing that Frog could still break 45% though; after all, he kept it so close against Solid Snake and has never had a match that wasn't close, so Frog had the chance to be a big green anomaly...until Samus/Frog. Frog had dominated the board vote against Liquid, MC, and Riku (and he still had the edge against Solid Snake)... but Samus had Frog doubled after the first minute. Let me rephrase this: before Samus/Frog, Frog has only been under 47% for about 4 1/2 hours TOTAL in his four matches and had never been below 46%, and Samus already had him at 33.33% one minute into the match. Since I mentioned the board vote, if you look at the poll updater, you'll see that he DID "win" the board vote since he had eventually sunk to nearly 29% at one point. Now, to be fair, he got himself back up to being just short of 30%, but this was hardly any consolation to Frog fans. Samus not only (wo)man-handled Frog, but did it in a VERY boring fashion. Frog had only had attention-getting matches before this (2k4 had him only involved in classics, even), yet there was nothing to see here once you voted. Samus took everything Frog was known for and destroyed him with an interest-lacking ease comparable to Crono/Vercetti later this round. So Frog got to the end of his road that the board had set for him, though with more scrapes and bruises than one would hope for. He may have been the final nail in the coffin that it wasn't the 20XX-Division of 2k4 that needed adjusting so much as it was Frog's four-pack though, so he wasn't wasted to those who follow the stats. Meanwhile, Samus's road had more distance to go; she was looking good to comfortably beat Ganon (and probably SFF him) and was looking great for her match against Mario afterwards. Already being the board favorite, it seemed there was next-to-nothing that was going to stop Samus this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2100&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Ganondorf vs (2)Auron 2005 _source: (3)Ganondorf vs (2)Auron 2005 (revid 88911)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Zebes Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 8,141 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 52.54% 68 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 67.25% (22,726 brackets) This is it; for those who remember the pre-contest hype, this match was the beginning of what was supposed to be a terrific string of matches, "The Gauntlet." With Ganondorf/Auron, Solid Snake/Zelda, Alucard/Sora, Kirby/Tidus, and Bowser/Ryu, this was supposed to be the greatest string of matches since 2k2 (where we got Sonic/Samus, Sephiroth/Mega Man, and Mario/Cloud...Crono/Solid, too, if you fancy). While the BOP heavily favored Ganon, many agreed the match was going to stay close, and some who didn't changed their minds when they didn't see Ganon impress against another FFX-member, Yuna, in the first round. Seeing Auron decimate Big Boss didn't exactly boost confidence amongst Ganon-supporters, either. However, once the match started, it got out of hand early; five minutes into the match, Ganon already had nearly 66% of the votes. Many people expected Auron to take the board vote, or at least go even with Ganondorf...but he took it and ran with it (like nearly all the other Nintendo characters did; I think only Tifa/Luigi and Sephiroth/Mario didn't in all of Nintendo's matches). Now, of course, Auron naturally brought it down to a much more realistic percentage (at one point, Auron had 47.77%), but he ultimately failed to bring the kahunas to back up the hype. He showed he had good strength behind him (as could anybody who can understand Cloud/Auron in 2k3 and Auron/Sephiroth in 2k4 had SFF), but it wasn't as much as many of us once thought. At least there is now a more solid number on him than what we had the past two years, though Ganon is always controversial; whether it's being in Magus's four-pack in 2k3, the infamous Link/Ganon annihilation, the validity of the Villain Contest, or facing a potential SFF'er in Samus right before Mario/Samus, it's entirely too difficult to get a true consistent number on Ganon. In a sense, it's good news for fans of both of them; Auron proves he's got true strength, and Ganon gets his first Sweet Sixteen appearance (though, with better placement, he could have arguably gotten as far as the Final Four). With Samus next in line though, he had nowhere further to go. He has enough to be proud of though; thanks to his second-place run in the Villain Contest, this earned him a LOT of bracket-support. 67.25% of the brackets didn't think Yuna, Auron, or Big Boss would beat Ganon, which only continued to show that people paid attention to the Villain Contest...not that people didn't already know him or think he was strong, mind you, but this spring made a lot of people into believers. This would show again in the next round with the drop-off in Samus's prediction-percentage, too. As a fun little note, Ganon had beaten down three FFX members (Tidus, Yuna, and Auron)...and his three matches, by themselves, would lead you to believe that Tidus \> Auron \> Yuna. Ganon was 1,918 votes away from getting to beat Sin, too, if you check the Villain Contest close enough. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2101&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Zelda 2005 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Zelda 2005 (revid 88912)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Gear Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 9,480 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 54.35% 68 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 72.06% (24,351 brackets) Oh, yeah. Snake vs. Zelda. Remember when it seemed like Zelda had a chance of winning this? Well, that all ended about ten seconds into this match. Zelda pretty much fell over and died immediately, and the final poll was not indicative of how this hyped match was anything but. Anyway, let's go over why we all got this match wrong and overhyped it. Let's go back to Round 1. Snake flattens Manny Calavera with eighty-something percent. But wait, Manny who? Exactly. Manny Calavera is a nobody, even though the few people who have played Grim Fandango swear by the game. Anyway, we all thought that eighty-something percent meant that Snake was underperforming. Note: we're dumb sometimes. The next day, the heavily debated match, Vivi vs. Zelda, was upon us. Why this match was ever debated is beyond me. In the spring, Kuja did about as well as a jar of peanut butter. Wait, that's too kind. I like peanut butter. Yet people were still surprised when Zelda kicked Vivi's ass. Over 60%. Sure, you can spew out BS about Vivi being so strong because of the "Black Mage Factor" or something like that, but he's from FFIX. And from what some people on Board 8 will tell you, the good points of FFIX begin and end with taking the disc out and playing another game. I wouldn't know, seeing as I love FFIX to death. But that's a story for a different day. So, anyway, Zelda kicking Vivi's ass should have been no surprise. What victories does Vivi have under his belt? He struggled to edge out Donkey frickin' Kong? Whoamg, powerhouse right there, folks. Fast forward to Round 2. People discover that using Zelda's 2003 value against Snake's adjusted 2004 value makes Zelda almost beat Snake. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? 1\. People are using values from different years to compare characters. This, of course, is absurdly inaccurate. 2\. The adjusted 2004 stats are worthless. Magus at \#9? lolz But that's not quite it! Compounding our statistical delusions was the match pic, which caused an uproar all over Board 8: Okay, we've got a cute Zelda pic, here, but where's Snake? All I see on the left is a vaguely-human looking figure with no face. Oh damn, that's Snake. I guess the "Acid" in Metal Gear Acid is really referring to the part where battery acid is poured all over Snake's facial features. Honestly, "Solid Shit" is a really good nickname because Snake has had some BAD match pictures over the years. As you might expect, this caused many more people to jump on the Zelda bandwagon, because apparently the average GameFAQs user is more inclined to vote for a ten year-old girl than whatever that Snake pic was. The match rolls around, and... you know the story. A pity...all those petitions to get Ceej to change the pic went to waste and it ultimately didn't matter anyway. Boring match, in the end. And we never saw it coming, because we fall for bandwagons a lot. Future Edit: It took a LONG time, but Zelda got her revenge and proved the hype was not undeserved. It just took a boost from Breath of the Wild for us to see her at her full power: Yes, the vote totals are very low, but I have little doubt Zelda wins that match with normal tallies. She was on fire that year. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2102&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (2)Sora 2005 _source: (6)Alucard vs (2)Sora 2005 (revid 88913)_ ## Results Thursday, August 25th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Gear Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 25th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 10,318 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 51.54% 55 for - 28 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 35.13% (11,871 brackets) When the Summer 2005 bracket was released to the board, this match-up was probably one of the most debated matches in the entire contest. Especially to the supporters of the x-stats. Alucard is ranked above Sora in the x-stats and was expected to beat Sora with 51.38% of the votes. Alucard would have to be the favorite in a match-up with Sora right? I mean, who really cares about the goofy clown-shoed kid from Kingdom Hearts? I mean sure Sora performed well in 2k4, handily taking care of Ryu Hayabusa before bowing out respectfully to Samus. But there’s a huge difference between performing well on Samus and defeating Alucard, right? Besides, with Alucard’s plan in effect, there’s no possible way that he could lose to Sora, right? Yeah. Right. Like the many close matches by x-stats standards that we’ve seen before, you couldn’t possibly have relied on the x-stats to call this match. Like Vivi/Zelda, Luigi/KOS-MOS, and Ganon/Auron before it, this match completely ripped apart the established x-stats. There was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Sora was going to take this match with ease. Alucard has performed pretty respectably in these contests, having wins over the likes of Tails and Kirby, and bowing out to the likes of Cloud, Sephiroth, and Ganondorf. Sora doesn’t have as much contest experience as Alucard, but he did have a nice 2k4 as mentioned before. HOWEVER, when it came to a direct match-up between the two, the writing was on the wall for who would be winning this match. First of all, you have to look at the games that the characters come from, and the popularity trends of said games. Alucard hails from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Now SOTN is a very popular game on the Playstation, and is widely heralded. But the game isn’t getting any more popular as time marches on. And Alucard hasn’t done squat since his appearance in SOTN besides a cameo in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow on the GBA. And he wasn’t even referred to as Alucard in that game. Kingdom Hearts, on the other hand, is on an upswing in popularity. Not only did Sora have a GBA appearance with KH: Chain of Memories, but there is also much anticipation for Kingdom Hearts 2. PLUS, Sora had a new redesigned look that is much more appealing than his KH look. Plus you have to add to the fact that Kingdom Hearts pretty much IS Final Fantasy XI as far as popularity goes. Seriously, place 16-year-old Sora next to Cloud, Squall, Zidane, and Tidus. Doesn’t he fit right in as your typical FF protagonist? So we finally get down to the match, and what happens? Alucard jumps to an early 53% lead with the board vote, but he was only able to build his lead to a peak of a whopping 68 votes before Sora began to slice into the lead. And as we all know, Alucard’s best time is with the night vote as he is absolutely horrible with the day vote. It must be the vampire blood within him. We all knew what would happen once the day vote came. With Sora already taking a 1000 vote lead throughout the night, he absolutely EXPLODED upon the arrival of the morning vote and ultimately ended up beating Alucard by more than 10000 votes. Now, you could have only looked at the previous results of this contest and known that Sora was going to take the match. Sora performed respectably against Agent 47, even though many people considered him to be Neo-Tanner. However, that was just due to his looks. Hitman is a very popular series, and Agent 47 is much more appealing than Tanner. However, Alucard absolutely CHOKED in his match against Kratos, of God of War fame. If Alucard was having trouble with Kratos, there’s no way he should have been able to handle Sora, right? As far as the low prediction percentage? Sora had over 80% of the brackets getting him to his matchup with the Alucard/Kratos winner. So it appears that many people took Alucard and possibly Kratos over Sora. The reason for that? “And all the people say LOL X-STATS! And all my ladies say LOL X-STATS! And all the fellas say LOL X-STATS!” Plus it seems that Sora doesn’t get much respect on GameFAQs. And judging by his match-up with Snake and the horrendous picture disadvantage that he got, it seems like that trend continues. Of course, that could just be chalked up to Alucard’s plan. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2103&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Kirby vs (4)Tidus 2005 _source: (1)Kirby vs (4)Tidus 2005 (revid 56100)_ ## Results Friday, August 26th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Dream Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 26th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 15,610 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 48.81% 23 for - 60 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 54.53% (18,427 brackets) Before this contest began, Tidus was considered to be the overwhelming favorite by the board to win this match. To give you an idea of this, Slowflake’s Board Odds Project had 127 brackets picking Tidus to win, as compared with only 24 brackets with Kirby. However, their first round matches put this “foregone conclusion” into doubt. Kirby tripled Final Fantasy IV hero Cecil. In spite of the completely unrecognizable picture Cecil got, this was very impressive. Tidus followed that up with a mediocre performance against the King of All Cosmos, netting only around 72% in that match. People began to acknowledge that Kirby definitely had a fighting chance of winning this match, but that still did not prepare us for what would happen. The match started and Kirby jumped out to a big lead right off the bat. He had a 100 vote lead in merely two minutes and had over 59% at the first poll freeze. Tidus managed to bring the percentage down a bit during the night, but once morning hit, Kirby absolutely exploded, pulling in nearly 60% on a regular basis. Another match in the vaunted “gauntlet” had turned into a blowout of Ultimaterializeresque proportions. After pulling in 49% against Ganondorf, Tidus has been in a huge downward spiral. He got obliterated by Mega Man in 2004, and this match added to that “legacy.” If you want an idea of just how pathetic this performance was, just take a look at this poll: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1326) Tidus only did .01% better against Kirby than Ramza Beoulve, the lead of Final Fantasy Tactics. This also turned out to be a match where the casual bracket makers owned the board, as well over 50% had Kirby advancing to the finals of his division. This match also threw another strike against the so-called “20XX Factor” from 2004, as the stats predicted the match against an unadjusted Tidus within half of a percent. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2104&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Bowser vs (2)Ryu 2005 _source: (3)Bowser vs (2)Ryu 2005 (revid 67792)_ ## Results Saturday, August 27th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Dream Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 27th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 16,428 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 54.45% 72 for - 12 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 64.04% (21,641 brackets) When the bracket was first released, Bowser vs. Ryu looked like it could shape up to be an excellent match. These two characters were ranked right next to each other in the SC2K3 x-stats, and possibly in the SC2K4 x-stats. (Bowser's position in 2K4 is difficult to gauge due to the SFF beating he received at the hands of his arch-nemesis, Mario.) despite being ranked slightly lower than Bowser in 2K3, Ryu has also held his own against the elite characters; scoring 42.2% on Samus in 2K2, 42.74% on Snake in 2K3, and 44.46% on Sonic in 2K4. in fact, Ryu even stayed dead even with Sonic for the first 2.5 hours of their match. however, Bowser really impressed in this past Spring's Villains Contest when he managed to break 40% on Sephiroth - no small feat. After a few days of debating, though, interest in this match kind of fizzled out as the majority of the board admitted that Ryu had a chance of beating Bowser, but the majority decided they were going to stick with Bowser. This resulted in Bowser being the BOP favorite with 124 picks to Ryu's 28 and the Guru Contest favorite with 107 picks to Ryu's 16. In the day leading up to the match, very little was discussed about the match, even though it's supposed to be the fifth consecutive match of the infamous Gauntlet, which wasn't really living up to its hype. the main discussion in the Stats Topic that was relevant to the Bowser vs. Ryu match was whether or not Kirby's impressive performance against Tidus was further proof of a site-wide Nintendo boost. many in the topic figured that it was, and most agreed that Bowser would continue Nintendo's string of dominance. in fact, not one of Moltar's analysist crew members went with Ryu and only 2 of the 7 predicted Bowser to finish under 54.5%. the general consensus prediction seemed to be that Bowser would take the initial board vote, followed by Ryu pulling even or taking a slight lead with the late night vote, only to have Bowser pull far away with the typical Nintendo morning and day vote. Would the match live up to its pre-contest hype, or be over within the first hour, just like the preceding 4 matches of the Gauntlet? The board vote began and to the surprise of no one, Bowser shot out to an early lead. Ryu managed to increase his percentage by a few points to stabilize the match at 56/44 after about an hour, but the infamous Street Fighter 2 early morning vote never arrived. once again, the match was over immediately after it started. as the underwhelmed residents of Board 8 trickled off to bed, many of them hypothesized about whether or not this match was ANOTHER piece of evidence towards a site-wide Nintendo boost. without coming to a definitive conclusion yet, many people throughout hoped that MC vs. DK would wind up closer than the matches of the Gauntlet. Bowser began increasing his lead throughout the anti-climatic day, just like he was expected to. *yawn*- towards the middle of the match, though, Bowser came close to breaking 61%, raising the level of confidence of the minority who chose Bowser to upset Snake. after the uneventful day, Ryu did manage to bring Bowser's percentage down to 59%, even winning a handful of updates. But, hey, at least Ryu was able to remain in that select group of star performers who have been in all 4 summer contests and scored above 40% in every single one of their matches: Link, Cloud, Sephiroth, (if you count the ToC), Ryu, and Gordon Freeman. What a group of winners. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2105&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Master Chief vs (4)Donkey Kong 2005 _source: (1)Master Chief vs (4)Donkey Kong 2005 (revid 88914)_ ## Results Sunday, August 28th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Flood Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 28th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 1,561 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 53.59% 66 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Master Chief - 71.04% (24,007 brackets) When this contest first began, the Flood Division was arguably the most boring of them all. There was one match that was expected to be interesting, and that was little more than a one point first round match that barely mattered in the grand scheme of things. Yet the very day after the fabled gauntlet proved to be a gigantic string of overhyped matches, we were treated to arguably the best type of close match there is: the unexpected. People joked around constantly about how Donkey Kong beating Master Chief would be hilarious, and even though some people expected Donkey Kong to perhaps take the early lead in the match, few thought that he had any chance of actually winning. I mean, it's..... Donkey Kong. He's the master of having close matches that never should have been close. He almost lost to Aya Brea. His game almost lost to Duck Hunt after being up by 3400 votes. And against Tommy Vercetti (a match in which he was actually the underdog), after falling behind early and coming all the way back to tie, Donkey Kong choked under the pressure of bracket voting at the end of the match. And let's not forget how Donkey Kong was completely pasted by Vivi despite arguably being the favorite going in and having 70% of brackets behind him. So how was Donkey Kong, effectively little more than a giant (Literally!) choke artist, supposed to hang with Master Chief in the year of Halo 2's release? "*But that's... why they play the games.*" -Chris Berman A lot of people figured that Donkey Kong would take a slim early lead on Master Chief, and that he did. He jumped out early, and after a small Chief rally got the match within ten votes, Donkey Kong had a lead of 36 at the first poll freeze. This was fairly expected, but what wasn't expected was that DK would continue to increase his lead with minimal resistance. As update after update rolled in, Donkey Kong's lead increased by more and more, to the point where some people actually began giving Donkey Kong a chance at winning the match. By this, I mean that in most cases, a character getting a lead of 2050 votes in 8 hours means the end of the match. However, the track record of these two characters would indicate otherwise. Most of the people rooting for Donkey Kong to actually pull this off knew that he needed a very large lead, because one, Donkey Kong is historically known for choking. Two, Master Chief came back from being down 2400 votes against Frog, and Frog is arguably a stronger character than Donkey Kong is. And Chief had Halo 2 to draw from. And most people knew all of this already, so when Donkey Kong's lead stalled at 2050 and began to rapidly go into a downward spiral afterwards most people had already begun calling the match in Master Chief's favor despite the comeback just beginning. One could argue that such mainstream knowledge of past poll results killed much of the luster that Chief's incoming assault had, though it was still fun to watch. Even if we "knew it was coming", a 2000 vote comeback is still neat. As many people expected, Donkey Kong's lead being stalled was the beginning of the end for him, and in true 1993 Houston Oilers fashion, Donkey Kong began ripping apart at the seams and his lead deteriorated almost as fast as it had formed. Few people actually believed that Donkey Kong's lead would hold, but the rate that he was losing votes come the afternoon really made him look like a joke. For all the work that DK put into getting that lead over the heavy favorite and for all the work he put into holding off Master Chief's onslaught until the afternoon, the historic Xbox day vote absolutely killed him. DK began losing nearly 100 votes per five minutes at some points, and by the time the evening vote came, Master Chief had caught DK and proceeded to blow past him without a hitch. And while Frog was able to hold off Master Chief and eventually come back to win, Donkey Kong didn't have a great night vote to fall back on. The end result was the realization of DK screwing up yet again, and Master Chief was able to add votes to his lead all the way until the end of the match. It got so bad for DK that Master Chief would only come 500 votes short of DK's biggest lead come the end of the match. Not only had Master Chief pulled off the biggest comeback we'd ever seen in one of these polls, but his 3500 vote swing is the largest turnaround on record. Granted a character almost has to face Donkey Kong to be able to pull something like this off, but the fact remains that Chief set a couple of records on this day. The main issue that people had with this match is how DK got so close to Master Chief in the first place. In the year of Halo 2's release, Master Chief not only came close to losing to DK, but managed to underperform against CATS by a fairly wide margin as well. One could assume that this was DK's legitimate strength finally showing through, but this assumption also places Donkey Kong ahead of Vivi in strength. I'm not buying it. I think the most likely explanation for Master Chief is that he's the least transitive character we have in these contests. The Halo series is absolutely hated on this site, yet enough of the game's fans come here to religiously vote for Master Chief over all else. Not only does this cause us to virtually never have an accurate reading on where Master Chief stands, and not only can it constantly cause Master Chief to be overestimated come Xst time, but it has caused over half of Master Chief's opponents to overperform against him. Look at the list. Felix, Aeris, Crash Bandicoot, Frog, CATS, and Donkey Kong have all faced Master Chief. We'll even throw Crono in there. That's seven opponents for the Chief. Felix has yet to see another contest despite finishing in the top half of the field in 2003. Aeris has yet to see another contest despite finishing in the top 15 in 2003. Crash has yet to see another contest, though Master Chief killed him with ease. Frog went on to score 30% on Samus despite being projected to score 38%. CATS... who knows where in the hell CATS lies. I doubt anyone will take DK's placement seriously next year, and Crono's case involves being pathetic with the day vote versus facing a character who is arguably the best with it. Two things. Master Chief may not be well-liked, but you can't deny that his matches are entertaining. A battle between him and DK was poetic irony at its finest, because you may never see another battle between such choke artists ever again. Secondly, a good division of eight just dawned on me: (1)Master Chief (8)Alucard (4)Donkey Kong (5)Frog (3)Magus (6)Shadow the Hedgehog (2)Knuckles the Echidna (7)Tidus There's seven matches that could be decided by a combined 5000 votes or less, highlighted by Master Chief himself. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Of all Master Chief’s many guffaws over the years, this has got to be the silliest. In 2005 there was a string of matches that many stats folks were dubbing “the Gauntlet,” given that they were all semi-debatable and potentially huge upsets. Well, all five of them sucked and were boring and predictable. Whoops. Then we get this. Nobody had any doubt that the Chief could make it out of Round Two here, and once again we got burned for putting our faith in him! Friggin’ Donkey Kong managed to pull out to a decent lead repeatedly in this match before he choked it away and let Chief come back and win. It doesn’t get much more hilariously embarrassing than this. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2106&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Tommy Vercetti vs (2)Crono 2005 _source: (6)Tommy Vercetti vs (2)Crono 2005 (revid 88915)_ ## Results Monday, August 29th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Flood Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 29th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 41,739 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 70.27% 78 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 61.09% (20,644 brackets) After Master Chief pulled off the most boring comeback ever (even the comebacks in this division are boring), the Flood Division went back to being... the Flood Division. Kefka/Vercetti was a classic, but the winner had to face Crono. Really, all of that drama was over one point. It was an exciting match and all, but what you see here is the end result of all the work Kefka and Vercetti put into beating the hell out of one another. This match was little more than a test to see whether or not Crono was still an elite character capable of the numbers he had put up in the past, and it took all of five seconds to confirm that he was. Crono was over 80% at the beginning of the poll, and though he would eventually drop down to being just over 70%, Crono was only expected to get 67.5%. However, Vercetti had likely dropped between 2004 and 2005. How much had remained to be seen, but the only real assumption that could be drawn from this match is that Crono did exactly what was expected of him. Of course one could assume that Crono had lost a step if Vercetti had dropped a good amount, but we wouldn't know that until the stats were released and we saw where Vercetti would end up in comparison to last year. And man, do I love easy writeups. I hate boring matches when they're actually going on, but it evens out come PCA time because the occasional break is nice. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2107&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dante vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2005 _source: (1)Dante vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2005 (revid 88916)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 30th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Devil Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 30th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 7,989 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vincent - 56.42% 70 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vincent - 25.14% (8,496 brackets) What was once a match in which Vincent was a *lock* to beat Dante all over the poll turned into one of the funnier matches of the contest. After Vincent/Kerrigan, a ton of people kept overestimating Vincent. Some even gave him a chance against Crono, all because he managed to beat up an overhyped character that had never seen in these contests before. And those who bothered saying that Dante would expose Vincent were.... treated rather badly, to say the least. We were very callous on Board 8 back then. Not only did Dante come out and prove all of this overestimation wrong, but he put quite the scare into Vincent early on in the match. Much to everyone's shock, Dante took the fight to Vincent and come the first poll freeze, had a lead of 50 votes. Vincent was able to recover rather easily en route to one of the more consistent close matches we've ever had, but that first five minutes confirmed what a brave few men had been preaching for weeks; Vincent was not elite material, regardless of how badly everyone wanted him to be. Vincent would eventually go on to hit 54% in remarkably consistent fashion, but even during Vincent's strongest times in the poll Dante was still finding himself winning spotty updates. Vincent may have won the match, but this was a moral victory for Dante through and through. There are a couple of obvious reasons for Dante performing better than expected (or Vincent doing worse than expected; however you want to look at it), but I think none is more obvious than Devil May Cry 3. Critics say that DMC3 was a return to form for the series, and Dante rode a wave of new strength all the way to being a 1 seed come nomination time. Casual bracketmakers love their high seeds, as evidenced by Vincent being a bracket-buster despite most experts feeling that Vincent was a lock to win the fourpack. Not only did this match throw Vincent's strength into question, but one could argue that Squall had a good chance at taking Vincent down come the divisional finals. Regardless of how you viewed that match, based on the numbers Squall needed to hope that Dante increased by at least a percent or two in order to have a decent chance against Vincent later. I know it makes no sense, but I promise it was true. And Vincent needed to hope that he would be able to either get around SFF, be the beneficiary of it, or that SFF would not exist against Squall in the first place. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2108&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Knuckles the Echidna vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2005 _source: (6)Knuckles the Echidna vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2005 (revid 56110)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Devil Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 7,530 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 52.38% 61 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 43.98% (14,862 brackets) After the historic Knuckles upset, a large Knuckles \> Squall bandwagon began to take form. These bandwagons always form after upsets, and they always form for the same reason every time: people don't want to believe that the character they put so much faith in was as weak as their loss suggested. The Master Hand \> Robotnik bandwagon was another great example, because a ton of people on Board 8 had Kuja winning the fourpack. The interesting thing about the Knuckles \> Squall bandwagon however was that Knuckles actually had a decent chance of winning. All he had to do was hope that Magus was actually as strong as the stats suggested. However, this... was put to rest rather quickly. The "bandwagon" votes put Knuckles ahead by a few votes early on, but Squall was quickly able to recover and begin building a lead. He actually soared over 57% at one point, and though the famous Knuckles day vote kicked in at the expected time, it did not deter Squall from increasing his lead. He had built a lead of almost 2000 votes come 8:00 AM EST, and though Knuckles was able to cut into Squall's percentage come showtime, Squall was easily able to increase his lead and stem any talk of a Knuckles comeback. Knuckles' percentage slice was impressive in that he was able to bring Squall down from being over 57% to what you see above, but he did very little about Squall's lead increase. The best Knuckles was able to do was to either go 50-50 with Squall or win a few small updates every now and then. By the end of the match, Squall would end up winning by over 7500 votes. Pretty impressive, given that some expected the upset. The first thing that this meant was that Magus was absolutely confirmed to be an overrated bust. If the 2003/2004 stats were accurate on Magus, Knuckles would have won this match. Instead, he lost by over 7500 votes. All the people that somehow felt that Magus was fluked out of winning that first round match... pretty much had to shut up by this point. Secondly, Squall meant business in the Devil Division. Unfortunately, given how remarkably consistent Vincent had been in his first two matches, the clear advantage went to him in the divisional finals. Compare and contrast the second round matches between Vincent and Squall: Dante - 46% Vincent - 54% Knuckles - 46.2% Squall - 53.8% And given that Dante has traditionally been stronger than Knuckles in these contests, one would have to assume that Squall was at a disadvantage going into the Devil finals. If Dante \> Knuckles, yet Squall scored a lower percentage against the weaker character.... Squall's only real chance against Vincent was to hope to be the beneficiary of the SFF and the bracket votes. He likely had the bracket votes going in, but even if it was FF8 Lead versus FF7 Optional, FF7 vs FF8 never turns out well for FF8. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2109&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Diablo 2005 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Diablo 2005 (revid 88917)_ ## Results Thursday, September 1st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 1st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 34,150 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 65.31% 78 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 69.44% (23,466 brackets) With most of the entertainment out of the way for the second round, we entered a string of boring matches that essentially only existed to help the round come to a relaxing close. In fact, we weren't going to have another interesting match outright until Kirby/Bowser. Everything up until then were setups and placement bouts that solely exist to cut the weeds out of the bracket. One such weed is Diablo, who could make a great case for being the fodder line these days. It's not like we can use Vyse with any accuracy, after all. In terms of Sonic/Diablo the match, Sonic was a lock to win. No debate necessary. The only thing we could really look for in this match was for Diablo to validate his Spring 2005 strength, as well as to see where Sonic stood assuming a constant Diablo between then and now. Chaos and 20XX were horribly boring divisions, and virtually every match in them was either a lock, a contest to see who would get crushed by Sonic or Mega, or fodder/fodder duels. The only interesting match we would see in either division in the entire contest would be Ocelot/Pac Man. And this match was about as boring as could be. The only thing of any note is that for a rather long while in the match, Diablo was given no link to the poll over on Diabloii.net. There was a stark contrast in how Diablo performed before and after the link was finally posted, and it validates what we knew all along; Diabloii.net was a part of Diabo's strength in the Spring 2005 X-Stats, and one must factor in a potential link should Diablo see bracket placement in the future. For what it's worth, another interesting fact of this poll is that Sonic didn't completely kill Diablo come the day vote; in fact, Sonic was remarkably consistent throughout the poll until the D2 link was posted. This caused Sonic to lose around a full percent of the vote. However, the other part to this poll was whether or not Sonic's chances against Mega Man were good, and given that Spring 2005 Diablo was expected to score 34.79% against 2004 Sonic, it would be foolish to deny that Sonic had an extremely good chance at Mega Man when the time came. Diablo underperformed by a full 3%, and the margin is wider if the D2 link never happens. I don't believe that this performance vaulted Sonic 2004 over what Mega Man would be projected to score, but anything can happen in a match that's close enough. All we needed to do now was to sit through more boring matches in the two divisions until their fated winners clashed. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2110&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Luigi 2005 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Luigi 2005 (revid 88918)_ ## Results Friday, September 2nd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 2nd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 6,883 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tifa - 56.91% 74 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tifa - 41.18% (13,916 brackets) Remember all the Vincent hype leading up to his match with Dante and how overrated Vincent turned out to be? Not that he wasn't a strong character, but some people felt that Vincent was a threat to beat Crono after his match with Kerrigan. Dante would eventually expose him as not being quite that tough. Tifa/Luigi was more of the same, except that this time around, people had a character who had been in a contest before (Vyse) to base their overestimations off of. And because of this, those who supported that Luigi would expose Tifa were not quite as plentiful as those who said the same for Dante. In fact, the only truly vocal advocant I saw for Luigi underestimation was RPGuy, who actually bet his account that Luigi would break 45% in the match. No one took the bet. Which I find to be surprising, because if the X-Stats were as valid as everyone assumes, Tifa breaking 55% on Uigi should have been a lock. She almost performed as well on Vyse as Cloud did, or something. When the match first began, Luigi found himself able to hang with Tifa for awhile. It didn't take long for Tifa to do him in and essentially seal the match, but she wasn't able to completely kill him like many expected her to. She managed to go over 57% for a brief time in those first two hours (which is seemingly Tifa's strongest time for some odd reason; the other FF7 characters are weak at the start and kill during the day), but before long Luigi was able to cut into her percentage at a consistent rate. He didn't make any real push at winning other than a minor scare in which he brought Tifa's lead down from 2175 to 2110 early in the morning, but Luigi's spending the rest of the match getting Tifa down to nearly 52.5% (after Tifa was well over 57% early on) before Tifa was able to get over 53% against with the second night vote helped confirm two things. One, and I'm stealing a quote from Lopen here, Board 8 (and especially the stats topic) is filled with Xst and FF7 marks that overestimate the characters based on one match. They also have a wonderful habit of projecting (and changing projections) based off of the first two seconds of every match. Two, for whatever reason Vyse bombed so badly that the sky was the only thing he saw come the end of his match against Tifa. One could call RPG SFF in that match, but it's a shady theory at best. Though if I ever get around to making my own set of stats, I may slap an SFF adjustment on Vyse and give him his 2004 value just to see what happens. Much like Dante, Luigi may have lost the match, but the moral victory goes entirely to him. 60% was the sexy value for Tifa on this match, given that most people expected her to perform better than Squall did in 2003. Either Tifa bombed (which is somewhat difficult for an FF7 character to do), or Luigi boosted. Given how well Nintendo was performing in this contest, people saw this match as more proof of The Boost™. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2111&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (5)Leon Kennedy 2005 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (5)Leon Kennedy 2005 (revid 56116)_ ## Results Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 27,237 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 71.01% 80 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 72.40% (24,466 brackets) Who the...? What the...? Not only did Leon Kennedy go out and do better than what Jill 2004 would be expected to do, he did so by a whopping 8%. If that isn't proof that Jill was completely screwed by the 2004 stats, I don't know what is. Granted I'm writing the conclusion before the hypothesis, but come on, this match was consistent. And consistency in a contest match = boring. The only thing of any note in the match itself is that Mega Man began the poll over 70%, then slowly fell to hovering over the 64% level. For the entire second half of the match, Mega Man stayed between 64.53% and 64.7%. There isn't a whole heck of a lot to dissect with those numbers other than Leon doing better than many people expected him to. Though given how sporadic Resident Evil characters tend to be, who knows what's going on with Leon. He will likely wind up staying consistent due to being in the most critically acclaimed Resident Evil of all time (and he'll be getting onto the Playstation 2 very soon), but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he went up against a character next year that he'd be expected to crush, yet choke. RE characters do that from time to time. And because Black Turtle demands it, Gordon Freeman would be expected to score 29.36% on Mega Man based upon this match as opposed to 13.18% based upon the 2002 stats. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2112&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Yoshi vs (7)Pac-Man 2005 _source: (3)Yoshi vs (7)Pac-Man 2005 (revid 88919)_ ## Results Sunday, September 4th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 4th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 38,484 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 66.05% 80 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 47.07% (15,906 brackets) One barely needs to analyse this match to assume why it happened the way it did. The only thing Yoshi really needed to worry about to avoid being embarrassed was to outdo Luigi's performance on Pac Man last year, and some people were actually fearing that Yoshi would not be able to pull it off for whatever reason. Something about Luigi's true strength having always been hidden and Yoshi rSFFing him in 2004 or some such nonsense. On another note, this was one of the most consistent (see also: boring) matches of all time. Yoshi's highest percentage caught by the updater was 73.26%, and his lowest 69.77%. I'm not sure if this small range is a record, but maybe a living calculator like TRE feels like wasting the free time to confirm. No shade intended, brother. You're the best. I do however wonder about the casual bracketmaker sometimes. There are cases where they embarrass the board (Tidus/Shadow, Magus/Knuckles, and Mario's 2005 run just to name a few good cases), yet there are matches like this in which you just have to scratch your head. Yoshi was a lock to win this fourpack, yet despite him likely being the bracket favorite less than half had him advancing this far. It doesn't make any sense, and I only have two assumptions to explain it. While the X-Stats may be more mainstream than we think, casuals love to pick based on seeding. The ultimate example of this is Halo, though I'm sure there are plenty of others. Ridley, Kuja, and virtually every 3 seed bust are perfect examples of casual overestimation, and it's funny given how good they are at exposing the board every now and then. Kirby \> Tidus is another great example. After Pac Man's hilarious upset of Ocelot, his reward was to prove that Yoshi was in fact stronger than Luigi and that there was no rSFF in the 2004 match between the two. And if there was, it did little more than cause Luigi to overperform. Though if you glance over at the stats for this contest, look who is ahead of who. Hmmm. Maybe there was indeed rSFF in that match, who knows. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2113&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (3)Zero 2005 _source: (1)Mario vs (3)Zero 2005 (revid 88920)_ ## Results Monday, September 5th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Mushroom Division Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 5th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 27,596 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 58.53% 69 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 80.06% (27,055 brackets) First and foremost, I have to say that that is one of CJayC's all-time greatest pieces of artwork. What many of us thought would be the sprite round became the polygon round, and it looked like CJayC was taking the extra effort to make up for what many people thought was a very lackluster second round of pics (most of the match pics were simply the first round character portraits zoomed in). As for the actual match, there was minor hype going into it involving how well Zero could potentially do. LordOfDabu even had Zero winning, IIRC. The main case for Zero is that this was finally his big chance to validate his strength. He had done very well on Sonic in 2003, but was hidden behind the insane 20XX Division in 2004. Here in 2005, he was up against Mario and was expected to get around 45%. Some even felt that Zero would surpass 45% en route to possibly even giving Mario a scare. Mario put all of this to rest within literally seconds, as he turned a mildly debated match into an SFF beatdown immediately after the poll's opening. There were only three ways to look at this. Either Zero was overestimated, Mario was underestimated, or this was a case of Zero getting hit by the SFF bug. Those hoping that either Samus or Crono would be able to take down Mario were given a ton of doubt after this match. It was clear that both Mario and all the casual brackets supporting him meant business in this contest, and it looked more and more that both Mario and Nintendo as a whole was on the rise. And if Mario was seemingly able to SFF Zero with ease, Samus had all of one day to go out and prove that she could SFF Ganondorf. If she couldn't, she was in for a world of hurt come the fated Elite 8 matchup with Mario. Either that, or Zero was simply overrated to such epic proportions that this match was simply his true colors finally coming out. Just like Magus! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2114&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (3)Ganondorf 2005 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (3)Ganondorf 2005 (revid 88921)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Zebes Division Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 17,413 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 62.43% 71 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 49.86% (16,849 brackets) It was an absolute given that Samus would win this match, but the underlying story was how she would stack up to Mario's impressive performance on Zero not one day prior. Either Mario increased, Mario SFFd Zero, or Zero somehow was overrated. Regardless of which, if Samus failed to impress against Ganon in this match she was in for a world of hurt come the next round. Unfortunately for Samus, after bracket and board votes had her over 70% for a few seconds, Ganon was quickly able to level off her percentage and get her down into the low 60s. It grew even worse for Samus as the match progressed, because not only was Ganon able to get her under 60% before the end, but the vote totals in this match were downright sad. And while one could note that vote totals are almost always low in SFF matches, Mario/Zero brought in over 107,000 votes in the very match prior to this. And if SFF matches always have low vote totals, would this not mean that there was likely very little SFF in Mario/Zero in the first place? Even worse for Samus is that she herself was only barely able to SFF Ganon in the match. 2004 Ganon would be expected to score 41% on 2004 Samus, and all Samus really did in this match was score enough SFF to cancel out the 2-3% Zelda boost that has showed up since last year. How anyone could compare this match to Mario/Zero and still assume that Samus had any chance of beating Mario was absolutely beyond me, but that didn't stop a whole lot of people from bringing up the stats for days on end. Yes, Samus is expected to score 56% on Mario based on stats. We know. But all the signs were there leading up to the match -- Mario looked better all contest, some stats were just outright wrong and were proven as such this year, and this match all but confirmed Mario was winning. It was nonsense, but thankfully it was nonsense that we Mario fans would only have to deal with for one more week before the big duel happened. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2115&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Sora 2005 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Sora 2005 (revid 88922)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Gear Division Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 29,777 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 57.42% 74 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 58.76% (19,857 brackets) I seriously dare anyone to find a better match pic from this entire contest. After Snake's first two matches, he was somewhat reeling and relatively underestimated. Some people felt that Snake underperformed on Manny and that Zelda perhaps had a chance to defeat Snake. After Snake took care of Zelda with relative ease despite a horrendous match picture, it was on to Sora in the divisional final. Snake had something to prove, and he finally went all-out and showed what he was capable of come this match. Sora was projected to score almost 44% in this match. It was clear that he would get nowhere close within the first five minutes of the match. Snake was close to 70% at this time, and no Kingdom Hearts morning or after-school vote was going to save Sora from the beating that Snake would lay on him all throughout this match. Granted Sora did recover a tad to bring Snake down to the percentage you see above, but the fact remains that Sora underperformed by almost 10% in the match. Not only did Snake win, but he went berserk. This was the contest equivalent of Packers \> Saints 52-3. A couple of people brought up this being traditional SFF (KH and MGS2/3 are all on the Playstation 2), and while I completely disagree with this I think a more distant SFF reared its head in this match. Every match has a degree of SFF in it. With tens of thousands of people voting, it's a guarantee that at least one voter is familiar with both poll options. In the case of Kingdom Hearts, the game sold 4 million copies in one year worldwide. Plenty of people are familiar with the game, but how many of these people feel strongly enough about the game to truly care for it when it or its characters go up against other games and characters? For the most part, Kingdom Hearts has been lackluster in these contests. In 2003, Sora was in one match and was blown out by Aeris. In Spring 2004, the game "bombed" against Soul Calibur before suffering a respectable loss to the game that would end up being an absolute beast, Starcraft. In essence, Kingdom Hearts retained respectability in that contest. Come 2004, Sora blows out HK-47 and favored Ryu Hayabusa before a respectable loss to Samus that helped prove that Samus was not nearly as strong as the first round of that contest would have people believe. Then in this contest, Sora blows out Agent 47 and Alucard before being absolutely pasted by Solid Snake on Snake's home turf. Literally! They're sitting right there on one of the struts from MGS2, complete with the exclamation point over Sora's head. And if this match is any indicator, Sora got his tail whipped when he went to investigate. Anyway, my point is that Kingdom Hearts is similar to Resident Evil characters and Master Chief in that you never know what you'll get from them. One contest will see the game's villain require the morning vote to hold off CATS, while the next will see the main rival turn a doubling into a near-win over Frog, a character that looked quite strong after the summer of 2004. Predicting matches involving any of these characters (or the game itself, should the time arise again) is a chore, because hardly anyone knows where many of them truly stand. Though Sora and company do have Kingdom Hearts 2 on the way, so that should help everyone out a bit. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2116&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Kirby vs (3)Bowser 2005 _source: (1)Kirby vs (3)Bowser 2005 (revid 88923)_ ## Results Thursday, September 8th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Dream Division Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 8th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 3,535 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 58.25% 70 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 38.18% (12,902 brackets) After Solid Snake's trouncing of Sora, Snake was once again looking to be the favorite to make the Final Four from among the Gear/Dream divisions. However, both Bowser and Kirby had aspirations of taking Snake down and claiming said Final Four slot for their own; Bowser moreso, because his Spring 2005 performance gave him an excellent shot at beating Snake if he were able to repeat it. But first, Bowser had Kirby to deal with, and Kirby was no slouch in this contest. He blew Cecil out completely before making Tidus look as weak as Ramza, both of which are extremely impressive tasks given that Tidus was the favorite to win the fourpack. And while Bowser was still the board favorite to win the match, Kirby had a very real chance at winning this thing. Early on in the match, it seemed as if Kirby's 1 seed bracket advantage would allow him to pull of the stunning upset. Bowser caught most of the board vote, Kirby the bracket vote, and Kirby found himself tied with Bowser for the first few minutes. But Bowser was soon able to shake Kirby off, and after the next few updates was ahead by a few hundred votes. Kirby still had a decent chance at coming back to win at this point given that it looked as if he was stalling Bowser's lead increase, but Bowser hung tough before catching just enough momentum with the morning vote to put Kirby away. Bowser didn't blow Kirby out of the water, but he slowly and methodically built his lead to 3700 votes by the time the afternoon vote was over. It was at this point that Kirby stalled Bowser for good and took off 400 votes from Bowser's lead before Bowser was able to recover to win the match by just over 3500 votes. One could look at this match in two ways. If you were like me and picked Bowser to beat Snake, this match caused all sorts of problems when compared to how badly Sora just got his face kicked in by Snake one day before this match. On the other hand, one could claim rSFF in this match. Kirby was the 1 seed, likely had much of the bracket support from casuals, and recent starred in Canvas Curse as the main character. Kirby has also been the main character in his own little platformer series for years, while Bowser is simply Mario's villain. It's possible that Kirby stole a few percentage points from Bowser based off of all of this, and even if Bowser would go on to lose to Snake rSFF was still a viable factor to blame his underperformance on. The issue naturally is that characters looking to upend the Noble Nine shouldn't be subject to rSFF in the first place. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2117&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Master Chief vs (2)Crono 2005 _source: (1)Master Chief vs (2)Crono 2005 (revid 88924)_ ## Results Friday, September 9th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Flood Division Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 9th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 22,175 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 65.04% 71 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 38.42% (12,983 brackets) After the Flood Division turned out to be relatively surprising in that it gave us two of the most exciting matches all contest, it was time for Crono to go out and take the division in what was seemingly a predetermined final. We all knew Crono would win handily, but this match was more about Master Chief validating his strength than anything else. He may have been underrated in 2003, but overrated in 2004. And while this match may not pin down Chief to an exact value, it did prove that Chief is one of the least transitive characters in this contest. Some people will vote against him regardless of who he faces, while others will vote for him regardless of who he faces. This poll was a great example of this. Here was Master Chief up against one of the characters heavily favored to win the entire contest, and he did the same thing that he has been doing for two years now. At the beginning of the poll, Crono was near having 70% of the vote and flying pretty high with his intake. But not only are Chrono Trigger characters bad during the day, Xbox characters thrive during this same time frame. And though Master Chief had no chance of winning this match whatsoever, he put on quite the show once his fans showed up. Come Chief's historic day vote, Chief pulled Crono down from being near 70% all the way down to what you see in the poll result. Crono never managed to recover with the second night vote either, as Chief's slice into Crono's percentage was quick and constant throughout most of the latter stages of the poll. And while Chief didn't win any updates in the match, he came close on a number of occasions, oft scoring updates in the 48% range. It was quite a show by Chief, and almost a moral victory. It was also a victory for statheads, because assuming Chief stays relatively consistent with this pattern it's possible that his final value for this contest would be far more accurate than what we've had on Chief in the past. Chief may have overperformed based on seeding, but it's doubtful given CT's popularity on the site. The only question that remained was whether or not this match showed that Crono was in trouble in this contest. One would have to assume that he would get past the winner of Vincent/Squall with relative ease, but would Sonic, Mega Man or especially Mario perform this badly on Master Chief? It's difficult to say, but it was tough to imagine Crono winning the entire contest after watching this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2118&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Vincent Valentine vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2005 _source: (5)Vincent Valentine vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2005 (revid 88925)_ ## Results Saturday, September 10th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Dream Division Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 10th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 1,149 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vincent - 50.25% 38 for - 34 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vincent - 12.47% (4,214 brackets) Take a good look at that prediction percentage, because it would be the lowest we had all contest and the lowest outright since the late round matches in Spring 2004 involving Starcraft and SSBM. Only Diablo \> Kefka really came close to this match in terms of bracket busters in that time frame. Though it's somewhat difficult to figure out why. Either people overestimated characters like Magus and Dante (and thus had them winning this match), or those who were smart enough to pick a Vincent/Squall match had Squall winning. I suppose this was feasible, given that Squall was a main character and that Vincent was optional in FF7. But on GameFAQs, when has FF7 vs FF8 ever turned out well for FF8? Worse yet for Squall is that Vincent was the clear favorite to win this match through extrapolation of Dante and Knuckles. One could assume that for Squall to win this that he would have to net a degree of rSFF on a Final Fantasy 7 character, which made his hopes look quite dim. And when the poll opened, it looked like Vincent was going to roll all over Squall in the match. Not necessarily because he was building a large lead, but because Vincent was up by nearly 200 votes after an hour and (to my knowledge) a comeback has never occurred in an SFF duel. But Squall soon went out and proved all of his doubters wrong in a very, very big way. Not only was he able to stall Vincent after that first hour, but he was able to start taking votes back. After the two characters were stuck in gridlock for another two and half hours fighting over Vincent's ~150 vote lead, the fight was on. As obvious a favorite as Vincent was in this thing, Squall wasn't about to let Vincent run away with this match quietly into the night regardless of how crappy his match pic was. Look ma, I'm floating!! After the two characters were stuck between 100-200 votes all morning long, the morning vote hit. And Squall caught it big time. Not only was he finally able to get Vincent under 100 votes, but the match was tied just over 30 minutes later. Squall then began using his morning vote powers to begin building a slight lead on Vincent despite all of Vincent's best attempts at keeping Squall down, and for awhile it seemed as if Squall would catch the full force of the morning vote and put the match away. But this would only last for a split second, because Vincent would soon stall Squall's advance. After nearly an hour of seeing Squall stuck with a lead of between 50-80 votes, Vincent took all of it away and regained the lead in a mere ten minutes. The two characters remained deadlocked for almost another hour before two more spikes in Vincent's vote intake put him up by over 100 votes. Squall tried his absolute hardest to hold Vincent off from pulling away, but Vincent was able to extend his lead to over 200 after a long and epic struggle. Then another epic followed that saw Vincent expend everything he had into getting the lead over 300. Squall somewhat gave up at this point, as Vincent was able to get the lead from 300 to 400 in a matter of 15 minutes. But Squall had one final stand in him, yet the best he was able to do was to hold Vincent around the range of 400 before Vincent took flight with the second night vote to win by 1150. Do not let the relatively wide margin of victory fool you, because this was arguably the closest and best match of the entire contest. Vincent was the clear favorite, yet Squall gave absolutely everything he had out there. He simply fell just short under the weight of all that was against him. Not only was Squall going up against FF7 in an FF7/FF8 clash, he was up against his own demons as well. Squall gets anti-voted in every match he's in (future edit: this contest was back in 2005, back when FF8 got anti-voted and Squall wasn't universally loved like he is now), and this was the first case in which said anti-votes probably managed to cost Squall a match. And while virtually any factor can be postulated and validated in a close match, I think that a slight touch of SFF and the anti-votes are what held Squall back the most from winning this one. But regardless of Squall's loss, validated his strength in this contest, plus he'll have Kingdom Hearts 2 to work off of next year. As for Vincent, this was a Pyrrhic Victory if there ever was one. He won the battle, but lost the war by a grand amount. As if his underperformance on Dante wasn't enough to prove his overestimation, this all but sealed it; if Vincent weren't able to gain a large degree of SFF on an FF8 character awhile being the fan favorite from FF7, his chances of beating Crono were absolutely zero. But despite all this, one can't deny that these two characters gave us arguably the best match of the entire contest. It's a pity it didn't go down to the wire, because a lack of photo finishes was the one thing this contest was lacking in. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis's Analysis It’s so funny how almost everybody underestimated Vincent. Magus was seen as the lock to get out of the aptly-named Devil Division, and some people had faith in Squall or Dante to get the job done instead. But apart from an unusually correct Heroic Mario, few had confidence in the future Noble Nine breaker to make it out of the division alive (and some even had him losing to Sarah Kerrigan in Round One! My, how delicious hindsight is). But Vincent proved all his haters wrong in this tight match, one of the closest of the whole 2005 contest. These two Final Fantasy fan favorites (try saying that three times fast) gave it all they had in a very good, intense match, and in the end Vincent walked away the winner, with one of the lowest prediction percentages in contest history. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2119&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Tifa Lockheart 2005 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Tifa Lockheart 2005 (revid 88926)_ ## Results Sunday, September 11th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 11th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 13,548 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 55.33% 71 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 48.65% (16,440 brackets) After Tifa's beatdown of Vyse, this was hyped up to be an interesting match. After Tifa's stumble against Luigi, it was fairly obvious that Tifa wasn't going to be the first character to break the Noble Nine any time soon; though some insisted that using a constant KOS-MOS gave Tifa a good chance. Because using a constant KOS-MOS makes sense. For the first hour or so, this match was relatively interesting. Sonic was only able to get a lead of a couple hundred votes, while Tifa was able to win a few small updates every now and then before the vaunted SEGA morning vote blew her the hell away. That's around when the match stopped being interesting, and the only thing to worry about from this point on was how good Sonic looked in preparation for his upcoming duel with Mega Man. Unfortunately, the only character we could really base Sonic's chances off of was Diablo; Jin was new, and Vyse, Tifa, Luigi and KOS-MOS were all erratic. A big-time match in which we had no real idea who would win, which is awesome. In a perfect world, every big match would have this much uncertainty going in. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2120&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (3)Yoshi 2005 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (3)Yoshi 2005 (revid 88927)_ ## Results Monday, September 12th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 12th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 33,676 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 57.76% 72 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 54.38% (18,377 brackets) Sonic vs Mega Man: *A big-time match in which we had no real idea who would win, save for those people who like to predict everything based off outdated stats. In a perfect world, every big match would have this much uncertainty going in.* ~ Ulti And that paragraph would turn out to be valid for all of one day. Mega Man/Yoshi is barely a match worth analysing, because everyone knew that the divisional final would be Mega Man \> Yoshi. The issue is that Yoshi was projected to score 35% in the match, but only pulled in 32%. Mega Man may not "officially" be known as a Nintendo character, but all of his most popular games were on the NES/SNES and one could easily blame SFF for Yoshi's underperformance. Incidentally, the only reason it wasn't worse was perhaps due to Mega Man not "officially" being Nintendo. But this match made it obvious that at least some of the voters view him this way, and after two lackluster wins this is the exact match that Mega Man needed going into his next opponent. The main argument from Sonic \> Mega fans was that Mega Man was not SFFd by Link in 2004. Yet Mega Man SFFing Yoshi but not being SFFd by Link makes absolutely no sense, and thus Mega's 2004 adjusted value is valid. The only chance Sonic had of beating Mega in the next round was to either hope for a boost, to hope that Mega didn't boost or isn't viewed as Nintendo, or that Mega's match with Yoshi was a fluke -- all of which are very bad things to rely on, and Mega even had the bracket advantage going in. Sonic was in for an uphill climb, and there's no other way of looking at it. Oh yeah, this match concluded our divisional final round, and from here on in it we had nothing more than the Elite 8 and Tournament of Champions. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2121&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (1)Samus Aran 2005 _source: (1)Mario vs (1)Samus Aran 2005 (revid 88929)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 19,089 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 50.37% 35 for - 33 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 54.23% (18,326 brackets) *Future Edit -- Of all the writeups I've ever done, this one is my biggest shame. I've made some bad writeups over the years, but the vitriol in this one was just uncalled for, being a sore winner, and generally me overall acting like a jerk in the mid to late 2000s. I won't make any excuses or offer any explanations here, because even then this writeup was and still is garbage. No one deserved any of this, no matter how callous a lot of us acted back then.* *I was originally going to edit this up and rewrite it, but I'm leaving it alone as a reminder of how NOT to treat people. Also notable here is it took over a decade, but the Samus backers were eventually proven right in 2018. These two had a 50/50 match that Samus would have won without a last update rally by Mario. So their logic did end up being sound, but it was just Mario's year in 2005 because he was on some serious steroids.* When the bracket was released, this was the debated match of the contest. Everyone knew that Mario and Samus would blast their respective divisions to bits and that they were in for a match come the tournament quarterfinals. And so, it came down to two simple viewpoints. On Mario's end, he was Mr. Nintendo. He's done more for that franchise and for gaming than any other character of all time. Mario fans figured that regardless of whatever the stats said that Mario would be able to SFF the hell out of Samus and win the match with ease. And for good reason. Not only was Mario the clear choice among the Nintendo faithful, but the Metroid series is fairly niche. It's only popular in North America, while the Mario series is popular the world over. If you don't believe me, go take a look at what happened to every last one of the Metroid games in the Spring 2004 Contest. All three of her entries were owned to hell and back come time to face a Mario or Zelda title. Mario winning the match was fairly obvious to a lot of people, if for no other reason than the fact that Samus being able to SFF Mario at all was absolutely asinine. We'll slap the "IT'S FREAKING MARIO!" tag on the general Mario supporters for this one. On the other end, you had a bunch of statheads who supported Samus solely because their beloved, outdated extrapolated standings had Samus projected to win the match with 56% of the vote. And why not? Let's all collectively avoid any spec of common sense or reason with regards to where the SFF would fall in this match and call it solely based on what the stats said. Let's completely ignore the fact that it was beyond obvious what Mario would be the benefactor of a ton of SFF in this match and simply go with Samus to win the tournament solely due to being the statistical favorite. It's not like the stats have ever been wrong before, especially in SFF situations. Regardless of who Mario was, the stats projected Samus to win with 56%!! Why, this means that the result was obvious. Samus was going to win! And for most of this contest, we Mario supporters had to listen to some of the dumbest arguments ever crafted, solely because Samus was higher in the 2004 stats. Never mind that Samus vastly disappointed against Ganon while Mario destroyed Zero. That was only a fluke! Match after match, pathetic stat fanboy post after pathetic stat fanboy post, blinded-to-reason-due-to this-board-clinging-to-their-stats-like-the-bible Samus supporters had but one thing to fall back on whenever anyone bothered telling them that Mario could very well win the match with ease: SAMUS WAS PROJECTED TO WIN BY 56%!!1 oh noes LOL Needless to say, stat fanboys were in for a much-deserved kick in the teeth when this match finally started. Not only did Mario begin the match in the lead, but he absolutely beat the ever-loving hell out of Samus right from the beginning. What was once the most debated match of the contest soon turned into an SFF beating of epic proportions, and a match that saw every stat fanboy and vehement Samus supporter fall flat on their faces. Not only was Mario beating the crap out of Samus, Samus was never in the match. This thing would go on to be a 60-40 SFF trouncing in favor of Mario, like virtually everyone with any grip on the gaming world (see: the people not blinded by the stats in every match who actually bother using sense once in awhile) foresaw in advance. This was not only a day for Mario supporters to celebrate, but it was a day to round up every stat nut and zealous Samus supporter and take all the feces that they had slung at everyone for two months, and launch it all back tenfold. Not a single one of them liked it, but I doubt that most of the Mario supporters doing it really gave a crap after all the garbage that they had been dealing with for the two months prior to this match. Every. Single. Time a Mario supporter brought up the fact that Mario could SFF the hell out of Samus and win with ease, they were fed stats and were essentially treated like idiots. Isn't it nice that this whole situation was given a drastic turnaround come match time? I don't know about anyone else, but this was one of my favorite matches of the contest for this reason alone. The people who had been mudslinging at the Mario supporters for two months had to lie in the bed that they had made for themselves, and it was hilarious to watch. There are few things that please me more than stat zealots having to try and explain their religion failing and generally becoming embarrassed to all hell whenever something goes wrong. And there was no other point in this contest where it went quite as wrong as this. Yet despite this, those same people will all forget that this ever happened and continue to cling to their religion like a cult. And like in many cases of the past, they'll simply ignore all the cries of lol, X-Stats and continue to make up every factor under the sun to explain any inconsistency in the system, all because the stats have blinded a lot of people to common sense. FACT: If Mario/Samus takes place before the stats exist, hardly anyone here picks Samus and those few who do would all be laughed at. But because of the stats, everyone ignored the obvious and second-guessed the inevitable, all the way down to one of the biggest collective self-ownings we'll ever see around here. lol, X-Stats. lol X-Stats, indeed. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Analysis Samus \> Mario wasn't the pick because "lol we worship x-stats they could never fail baaaa we're sheep." It was the pick because Samus was *legitimately the stronger character* prior to 2005, by all indications. (Which is to say, not indications based on year over year x-stat strengths, but indications based on *actual match results*.) - Samus outperformed Mario in direct matchups against Link (62.06% compared to the 62.53% Mario allowed) - Samus had just defeated Sonic with 57.51% of the vote the previous year. Mario only managed 55.10%... against *Shadow* - Samus had just held Cloud to a respectable 59.01%. Mario got destroyed, allowing 61.60%... to *Sephiroth* Yes, he was always Mario, but he had never been "Freaking. *Mario*." until the Nintendo Boost sent him through the roof in 2005. We're talking about a character that had failed to triple Servbot, barely doubled Morrigan Aensland, needed the biggest miracle in history to top Cloud, needed the second biggest miracle ever to top Crono, who was embarrassed by Shadow and got pounded into the ground by post-KHF Sephy. Have you forgotten that after 2004 Samus was generally considered a favorite to beat Crono? Have you forgotten that Mario had just lost to Crono... allowing *53.24%*? This idea that Samus was OBVIOUSLY going to get crushed by SFF against the King of Nintendo is ridiculous as well. As I just got done saying, she held up better against Nintendo competition against the true king of SFF, Link. Heading into 2005 past results, past stats, everything we'd seen from these two pointed to a Samus win. I shouldn't even be arguing this point, as I was one of the minority on the board who did correctly call the Mario upset, but I just get upset when I hear people acting as if that result was a forgone conclusion. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2122&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (3)Bowser 2005 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (3)Bowser 2005 (revid 88930)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 1,196 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 53.08% 59 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 45.57% (15,399 brackets) After Bowser broke 40% on Sephiroth in Spring 2005, a hot upset pick was Bowser over Solid Snake in this very match. And given the way that every Metal Gear Solid character has seemingly disappointed since Snake's peak in 2003, it wasn't too far-fetched. If you went by stats in comparing Bowser 2005 to Snake 2004, you saw extremely alarming numbers in favor of Bowser. But for the second day in a row, the stat fanboy pick fell flat on its face, and let me tell you from a personal perspective that it really sucked being on the right end of the Mario "upset" but on the wrong side of this one. The Mario buzz lasted all of one day. But on the bright side, the match actually turned out to be one of the best of the entire contest. Before it even began, for what had to have been about the 100th time, Snake was on the wrong end of the match pic. He got his sprite from, uh.... some NES game I assume, while Bowser got his Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga sprite. Bowser was recognizable and was therefore given a mass advantage. For the third time this contest, you could barely make out who Snake was. But that didn't stop Snake from kicking some ass early, and after shaking off Bowser's early fight he jumped out to having over 55% of the vote. As the match progressed Snake was easily able to extend his lead, though his overall percentage gradually went down hair by hair as the morning vote hit. Bowser was able to win an update every now and then and even had a few long stalls, but for the most part Snake was given little resistance from increasing his lead and moving on to what seemed like a fairly easy victory. The most stunning thing of all is that despite being the technical statistical underdog and being given a pic disadvantage that we hadn't seen since Solid Shit, Snake was kicking ass when put into perspective. Once the afternoon vote rolled around however Snake saw his lead cap out at just over 2100. This wasn't a big deal given that the match was almost halfway over and a comeback for Bowser seemed impossible, but it didn't take long for Bowser to give Snake the scare of his life. After Bowser stopped Snake from gaining any more votes, he went on a huge tear into Snake's lead. Most people thought nothing of it given how far in the lead Snake was, but people took notice when Bowser began taking in votes at a rate that would have put Bowser in the lead before the night vote began. At 3 PM EST, Snake's lead was 2100 and Bowser had already begun ripping into the lead that Snake worked so hard to build. In the late afternoon and early evening, Bowser tore into Snake's lead so badly that he managed to have it down to 930 at 9 PM EST. Had Bowser kept up this rate he could have easily won by a few hundred votes, but Bowser's historical struggles with the second night vote came back to haunt him and he just... barely.... ran out of gas. He managed to continue cutting into Snake's lead until it was down to 750, but Snake recovered with the second night vote quite nicely and was able to take 450 of the votes back before all was finished. It was a fairly anticlimactic ending to a match that had all of us going nuts for well over six hours. Personally, if this same match takes place assuming the nonexistence of Metal Gear Solid 3, I still think that Bowser could have won relatively easily. I don't think that the underperformances of Ocelot, Liquid, and even 2004 Snake were all a fluke. Though with that said, this match took place after MGS3 and despite a little bit of a struggle, Snake won fairly easily. I say fairly easily because I'm one of the many that now thinks that Snake wins by a wider margin if he isn't (for once) screwed by his match pic. His match with Sora was the one time he had a pic that did him justice, and look at how well he did with it. As it stood, Snake finally was able to earn the Final Four spot that had eluded him for three contests prior to this. As for Bowser, while he somewhat validated the strength that he showed in Spring 2005, he still underperformed based on statistical expectations and those of us who picked Bowser based on how well he did in the spring looked like idiots after this match. Ahem. With this in mind, a small poll question: If Snake and Ganondorf met in a match after Twilight Princess, but before Metal Gear Solid 4, who do you go with? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2123&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Crono vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2005 _source: (2)Crono vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2005 (revid 56140)_ ## Results Thursday, September 15th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 15th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 10,268 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 57.67% 67 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 31.17% (10,533 brackets) Of the four matches that took place in this round, this match was the only one that wasn't interesting in build-up. But once the match got going, a couple of things went on that at least raised a couple of eyebrows. In the 2004 stats, Squall is projected to get something like 40% on Crono. Yet in this match, despite Vincent being for all intents and purposes even with Squall, Vincent went over Squall's projection by 5%. Not that Crono did so badly early on, because as the match began he had well over 65% of the vote. Unfortunately, once the bracket/board voting died down Crono's percentage began to spiral downward. Crono going down in percentage is typical of pretty much every match involving Chrono Trigger, but the catch in this match was that Vincent put Crono down to having just over 55% of the vote within three and a half hours. From that point on, Vincent found himself involved in another freakishly consistent match that saw he and Crono stuck on virtually the same percentage for the latter 20 hours of the match. While Crono winning seemed like a lock, it's tough to deny that Vincent overperformed here. Either he scored a lot of rSFF due to the whole New Square:Old Square theory, or Advent Children made a huge difference for Vincent between his match with Squall and his match with Crono. It's not like Vincent overperformed on just anyone, either; this was sprite Crono, and for whatever reason CT characters all go SSJ when given sprites in match pictures. So either rSFF due to New-Old or Advent Children taking its course. I think that's fairly reasonable, especially given how well Cloud and Sephy would do later on. The issue that this caused however was a large debate on how to adjust the Devil Division in the final stats (or at all), because as we all know the stats have to look as perfect as possible. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2124&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (1)Mega Man 2005 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (1)Mega Man 2005 (revid 88931)_ ## Results Friday, September 16th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 16th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 742 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 52.14% 54 for - 13 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 31.25% (10,560 brackets) Are there any two characters more fitting of a match than these two? Both characters were amazing to begin their gaming careers, yet both are now masters of putting out one rehash after the other to what has become a standing audience. The two are no longer capable of gaining new fans. Do their companies realize this? Of course not. And it's at its absolute worst in Mega Man's case due to having over 100 titles but only averaging out at around 200,000 sales per. Sonic, as low as he's gotten, hasn't quite yet become what Mega Man is. Yes Sonic has put out a game on the N-Gage of all systems, and yes he's begun putting out collections, greatest hits and rehashes, but at the very least Sonic still puts out a new game with an original idea or formula every once in awhile. Mega Man however has ridden the same tired formula since Mega Man 2, released in 1989. Let it go, Capcom. As for the actual match, I felt that this was a case where the two characters were close enough for the stats not to matter very much. Both characters have been on a gradual decline since their glory days in the Summer 2002 Contest, and it was simply a matter of which character had fallen farther or faster -- a true example of year to year volatility making all the difference in a match, perhaps. All the standard debates took place, though the stats argument was weak this time around given how close the characters were. The buildup was really just fan and anti-fans arguing like hell about which character was worse. And thankfully above all else, the match picture didn't screw either of the characters over. When the match finally began, it almost didn't live up to all the hype. Mega Man jumped out to an extremely fast early lead of a few hundred votes, and by the time Sonic began to stall Mega Man he was down by almost 400 votes two hours in. But Sonic was able to recover, and after a little bit of stalling the traditional Sega morning vote kicked in and gave Sonic a push for the lead. It took Sonic a long while to erase those 400 votes as Mega Man was no slouch, but after about two and a half hours of scratching Sonic was able to tie Mega Man before taking the lead for himself. It looked as if that morning vote would allow Sonic to take off like a bullet after Sonic's lead went from 19 to 72 a mere ten minutes after taking the lead, but Mega Man was somehow able to recover during Sonic's best time in the poll. Mega Man was able to completely stall Sonic and stay deadlocked during a time in the poll in which everyone figured that Sonic was about to go on a killing spree, and much to everyone's shock Mega Man was finally able to recover and take back the lead for himself. After Sonic tried his best to stall Mega Man from doing anything, Mega Man took off and increased his lead from the teens to the hundreds within two updates. This left Sonic absolutely stunned and deflated, because he choked away a golden opportunity to end the match. During his best time, he was unable to put away Mega Man, whom many Sonic fans rank ahead of Mario in terms of most hated characters in gaming. Deus and Smurf are two good examples of Sonic fans who respect Mario despite not liking him very much, but absolutely detesting everything that Mega Man stands for. Not only did Sonic choke away his best opportunity, but Mega Man jumped all over it. After Mega Man held off Sonic's morning push and took a lead of over 100, it only took Mega Man another five hours to get his lead over 1000 votes. It wasn't until this point that Sonic decided to wake up a little and fight back, but was it too late for Sonic to make a real push at winning? After Mega Man pushed his lead to over 1000 votes, Sonic was able to stop him from increasing his lead much afterwards. Soon thereafter Sonic proved that he had one last push left in him, and proceeded to go on a massive late afternoon surge in his effort to win the match. Mega Man's lead topped out at 1085. It took Sonic an hour and a half to get this to under 900, but from then on the floodgates were wide open. Sonic went on a massive push and began to easily erase most of the work that Mega Man had done earlier in the day with relative ease -- after Sonic got the lead under 900, he began to slice off 50 votes or more per update with Mega Man making vain attempts at holding Sonic back. Sonic was soon easily able to get Mega Man's lead under 300, but for whatever reason Sonic ran out of momentum. There Sonic was, on the brink of a huge comeback and perhaps finally getting rid of the Samus 2002 ghost that has haunted him, yet he couldn't seem to get over the hump. The evening vote was dead even for both characters, and they remained deadlocked at a difference of around 300 for hours. The longer the stalemate dragged on, the better it was for Mega Man's chances to pull this thing out. This was confirmed by the second night vote which Mega Man, not Sonic, used to break the deadlock and pull away once and for all. For the second time in 12 hours, Sonic had a golden opportunity to blow Mega Man away, but choked. You had the feeling that this match would come down to whichever character choked last, and in this case Sonic literally handed Mega Man the match on a silver platter. And what was arguably the best match of the entire contest turned rather anticlimactic; the final margin of 742 was the closest we had all contest, which is my big complaint with this contest. There were no true nailbiters, and all the close matches ended.... not close. For now, at least on GameFAQs, Sonic has fallen farther than Mega Man. However this is a rivalry that has good potential, because like I said earlier Sonic still manages to put out something new every once in awhile; Mega Man has simply released the same game 100 times. And though Sonic technically overperformed in this match, he literally had this match won (Twice!) and gave it away. A very disappointing performance, especially given the track record in gaming of the guy that Sonic lost to. With this said, this match could easily go the other way if you stick these two in the same division but give Sonic the 1 seed. This is one of those matches that fell within the gray area that bracket voting can affect, and this swing could easily go the other way and give us an even closer match if given the proper spin. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis This match really could have gone either way for these two gaming icons – and, in fact, it did. Hype, similarities, and overall choking jobs (mostly from Sonic) made this one particularly memorable, as did the fact that it solidified – for the time being – who was the lowest rung on the Noble Nine chain. Not much else to say here, really; just a solid match with two very good competitors of almost equal strength. Those may not be as exciting as, say, a match where the lead changes every other update, but they have a certain charm all their own. Often stillness can be more tense than action. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2125&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (1)Solid Snake 2005 _source: (1)Mario vs (1)Solid Snake 2005 (revid 88932)_ ## Results Saturday, September 17th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 17th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 14,980 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 57.35% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 42.04% (14,207 brackets) After Sonic was done handing Mega Man a free win, our contest's stretch run was upon us. Most of the matches from here on in are typically predictable, though this year we had the Mario/Crono/Mega Man trio to look forward to on top of a possible Link/Cloud epic. But first it was Solid Snake's long-awaited first trip to the Final Four. Everyone knew that Mario was going to win, and Snake's fans simply wanted a moral victory. See: Snake not getting completely killed and perhaps even winning a few updates. And in this regard, Snake delivered. Snake didn't get rolled up too terribly early on, and Snake managed to win an update less than two hours into the match. It didn't really matter that Snake would go on to lose, because the fans had seen what they wished for. Better yet, if you go through the updater you'll see that Snake won 15 five minute updates through the match. And yes he was held in the lower 40% range in most of the others, but who's counting? =p Both sides of this match got what they asked for. Snake got some time in the sun, while Mario easily won the match en route to a finals match that seemed like it could be an epic. All he had left to do was to wait to see who he would face. As a final quick note, here are Snake's three projections against Mario: - 2002: 47.41% - 2003: 47.01% - 2004: 44.33% Moral victory or not, either Snake went down or Mario went up. Mario broke 57% on post-MGS3 Solid Snake and would eventually give Snake his weakest Xst value; and if this wasn't an indication that Mario was easily going to win this contest I don't know what is. The winner of Crono/Mega Man had to flat-out kill the loser if they wanted any chance at this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2126&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Crono vs (1)Mega Man 2005 _source: (2)Crono vs (1)Mega Man 2005 (revid 71350)_ ## Results Sunday, September 18th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 18th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 2,804 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 51.22% 47 for - 19 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 24.49% (8,276 brackets) Seven pics, and CJayC sure did his absolute best to try and keep us from seeing X. Given Crono and Mega Man's performances in this contest, it looked like Mega Man had a very good chance at winning this match. Crono looked less than stellar against Master Chief and Vincent, and though Mega Man didn't look like a powerhouse in his own right it would only take a small drop in Crono's strength for Mega Man to be able to win this. Early on in the match, Mega Man fought like hell to do so. However Crono would soon turn out to be the stronger character and build up a lead relatively easily, and though Mega Man would make minor pushes throughout the match they were little more than 50-50 spurts that were no real threat to the inevitable: Mario/Crono IV. Unfortunately, Mario/Crono IV was given far too much hype through Crono's beating of Mega Man. Mario was clearly stronger this contest, while Crono and Mega Man were not. Earlier I said that the winner of this match had to flat-out kill the loser to stand any chance against Mario, and winning by less than 3000 votes does not accomplish this. One could easily argue that Mario won the contest back when he beat the hell out of Samus, but the only thing left to do from here on in was to actually hold the final and see what happened. Crono still had a relative chance to win, but it was not a good one. One final note. For all the Xst bashing that has been done in this contest, I do have to give them a tiny bit of credit. In two very tough matches -- Sonic/Mega Man and Crono/Mega Man, respectively -- going with the stats gave you a win. Can't say much more than that, really. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2127&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (2)Crono 2005 _source: (1)Mario vs (2)Crono 2005 (revid 56148)_ ## Results Monday, September 19th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 19th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 7,977 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 52.15% 53 for - 13 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 26.17% (8,844 brackets) That pic sure does give a microcosm to the rivalry that these two have, because even when on opposite sides of the bracket they seem to always be on a crash course for one another. You all know the story by now. In 2002, Crono goes in as the huge underdog against a hated Mario, comes back from down 1000 and has 400 votes taken from him by CJayC in the final minutes. In 2003, Mario comes back from down 850 in the final two hours. In Spring 2004, Chrono Trigger beats the hell out of Mario RPG, Mario World and Mario 3. In Summer 2004, Crono gets his revenge by finally beating Mario in a match with ease. The final margin of victory was over 6000 votes. In the overhyped Mario/Crono IV, however, there would be no CPR finishes. In fact, the match was over within minutes. Mario struggled a bit early on and was only able to lead by a few hundred votes, but once the morning vote hit he flat-out murdered Crono en route to winning by almost 8000 votes with minimal resistance. In the span of one year, Mario turned a 6000 vote loss into an 8000 vote win, and given that Crono isn't getting a game any time soon it seems as if this little rivalry is closed once and for all; Crono has no real way to increase outside of a CT remake, while Mario is still putting out games. And that's what this contest was all about -- a celebration of Mario's greatness. Not only did Mario win this contest, but he did so with extreme ease. Like Link, Mario is still putting out games and increasing in strength. Not one character that stood against him came close to beating him, and this contest was over the second he beat Samus as far as I'm concerned. Yes Mario is a paper champion who only won because Clinkeroth wasn't in the main bracket, but who's counting? \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2128&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Cloud Strife 2005 _source: Link vs Cloud Strife 2005 (revid 54628)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament of Champions Semi Final - **Match \#:** 64 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 5,817 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 52.79% 54 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 63.77% (21,550 brackets) Everyone who was here in 2003 remembers the single biggest upset of all time in one of these contests. Link was riding high after his dominance in the Summer 2002 Contest, and virtually everyone had Link winning in 2003 -- so much so that the pre-contest hype was all about predictable and disappointing 2003 would be. Everyone knows what happens next, as Cloud went on to flatten Link in the Final Four that year. But Link would get his revenge in 2004 as he and Cloud were placed on opposite sides of the path for a predetermined meeting in the final. It was hardly ever close. Link took off early on, and after a push by Cloud to come back in the poll Link used the morning vote to take off like a bullet en route to avenging his 2003 loss. So along comes 2005, and CJayC finally concedes that perhaps Clink should be removed from the bracket to make it more fun. He even set up Spring 2005 just so that he could take out Sephiroth as well, and the end result was the post-Summer 2005 Tournament of Champions, the tournament in which the heavy hitters would all get their time in the sun despite not being in the main bracket. CJayC even decided to have every match be worth 8 points just so that it would matter come the final standings. Though no seedings were given in the TOC, everyone is aware that this is probably what it looks like on paper: (1)Link (2)Cloud (3)Sephiroth (4)Mario I'd have gone the standard 1-4 2-3 route to avoid the TOC final being the very first match, but to each his own. What it gave us was a Link/Cloud duel in the very first match, and despite this essentially being the TOC final this didn't mean that it was a good match on paper. Before this contest started and before we were all made aware of Nintendo going SSJ during this contest, Advent Children was the big wild card. Yes Link won in 2004, but a timely release of the movie could have propelled Cloud over the top had Link stayed constant. Unfortunately for Cloud, Link did not stay constant. However, Cloud still performed better than many thought he would. The expected happened early on, as Link jumped out to the early lead. But the same thing happened in 2004, and much like in 2004 Cloud weathered the early surge and made a push for his own. 2005 however saw Cloud do more than simply pull the lead to under 50 before bombing. Much to the shock of everyone who felt that Link would completely blow Cloud away on the backbone of the Nintendo increase, Cloud withstood Link's early lead of 100 votes to make a push at the match in his own right. After a minor struggle with the Hero of Time, Cloud found himself on a major push that saw him take a lead of just under 200 votes three hours into the match. Had Cloud done it? Would Advent Children push him to an upset that was arguably bigger than what we saw in 2003? ...No. Link laughed off Cloud's 200 vote lead once the morning vote hit, and he went absolutely nuclear from then on. It was the same pattern we saw in 2004, only this time Link's surge was almost twice as damaging to Cloud. Much like what Link did with the morning and day votes in 2004, Link used the morning and day votes to absolutely explode and leave Cloud in the dust, and what was once a close match turned into another showcase of Link's dominance en route to Link capping his lead at just over 6350 votes before the second night vote hit. The second night vote was slightly damaging to Link as it saw Cloud take over 500 votes off of the lead that Link worked so hard to build, but it served as nothing more than Cloud's final push at respectability in the match. To this end, I actually do believe that Cloud succeeded despite suffering his worst loss on paper to date. After all, Mario and others proved that Nintendo and The Boost™ ran wild all over the main bracket, and Nintendo dominated Square throughout the contest. This could have easily translated into Link blowing Cloud the hell out of this match, but Cloud actually performed quite well given the circumstances. However, one must wonder how badly Cloud gets beaten if Advent Children doesn't exist. This is the one factor I feel causes Cloud to not get completely blown out, and in effect those who argued that AC would make a huge difference were right. It was simply impossible to see how much Nintendo would increase between 2004 and now, which may be the big reason that Cloud lost. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2129&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=64) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sephiroth vs Mario 2005 _source: Sephiroth vs Mario 2005 (revid 88933)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament of Champions Semi Final - **Match \#:** 65 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 13,972 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 51.96% 46 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 78.20% (26,426 brackets) Personally, Alucard has nothing on Sephiroth when it comes to odd performances, throwing matches and plans. Mario spent two months owning the hell out of the main bracket and many debates took place about whether or not the winner could beat Sephiroth. And given that it looked like Samus had a great shot at it should she have made it this far, why couldn't Mario? After all, Nintendo boosted a TON in this contest. But Sephiroth shut all of these theories up within minutes, because after Mario took the typical early lead on Sephiroth, Sephy proceeded to completely dominate the match. It wasn't just any owning either, because for a long time Mario was doing worse than what Bowser did in the Spring. In fact Mario had to rely on the morning vote to keep himself from falling below Bowser's percentage, and even though Mario made a percentage recovery he would go on to get the crap beaten out of him in a match that many felt he had a good chance at winning. To put this in perspective, Mario won a total of ONE five minute update throughout the match. In this update, he took a grand total of four votes off of Sephiroth's lead. He also tied Sephiroth in another update. Mario did better during the standard Nintendo votes than he did at others, but all this match was was an extended beatdown that was slightly slower at parts. All after Nintendo boosted like crazy, and if this match doesn't convince everyone that Advent Children made a difference nothing will. During this match, RPGuy noted that ~150,000 torrents of AC were on record as downloaded. And that's just torrents; other, more simple P2P programs were likely used to download the movie to hundreds of thousands of other people by the time this match came around as well. But while AC made a clear difference for Cloud and Sephiroth (and possibly even Vincent), how many increases does the FF7 crew have left outside of a remake of FF7 itself? Time is running out, and an FF7 character needs to bring home another of these contests before the window of opportunity is closed for good. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2130&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=65) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Sephiroth 2005 _source: Link vs Sephiroth 2005 (revid 88934)_ ## Results Thursday, September 22nd, 2005 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament of Champions Final - **Match \#:** 66 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 22nd, 2005 - **Vote difference:** 11,769 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 56.12% 60 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 44.70% (15,105 brackets) Someone smarter than me once said something about how the more things change.... [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1001-tournament-semifinal-link-vs-sephiroth) Look familiar? Everyone knew that the TOC final was a foregone conclusion and that it should have been Cloud/Link, but Link/Sephy wasn't so bad a match. It played out almost exactly like Link/Cloud in terms of when Sephiroth had his momentum, but like Cloud, Sephiroth never came close to winning the match and his minor struggle to stay close fell under once Link took off with his standard, unbeatable morning/afternoon vote. And for the curious, the spot where Cloud was eventually able to take 500 votes from Link only saw Sephiroth take off 200. This match proved two rather simple things. One, there is a clear difference between the popularity levels of Cloud and Sephiroth; they performed differently on Link in a time span of three days. Secondly, and more obvious was that Advent Children made a clear difference. Granted none of us truly knew where Sephy stood in relation to Link especially after the crazy Nintendo boost, but I think most of us can agree that Cloud and Sephy did better on Link than we may have previously thought and that we downplayed Advent Children's possible effects a little too much during the pre-contest hype phase. Yes Link won with ease, but at least in my eyes Sephy and Cloud did better on him than they would have if AC doesn't exist. I never dreamed Sephy would break 45% on Link, especially given that it seemed as if FF7 was weakening. But like I said, AC made a difference and perhaps a remake of FF7 could help Cloud or Seph win another contest before the game milks itself dry once and for all around these parts. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2131&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=66) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Best Series Ever 2006 _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 31 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Spring 2006 Contest _source: Spring 2006 Contest (revid 71353)_
Best. Series. Ever

Announced:

May 8th, 2006

Started:

1 July 2006

Ended:

1 August 2006

Winner:

Legend of Zelda

Contest Winner:

metroid13 - 80 points

Notable matches:

Castlevania vs Kingdom Hearts

Sonic vs Super Smash Bros.

Warcraft vs GTA

Zelda vs Final Fantasy
**Best. Series. Ever** *This was the Article of the Week for the week of 6/11/06.* The **Spring 2006 Contest** was a GameFAQs contest called **Best. Series. Ever.** Nominations were opened in early May, having only been announced in a topic on Board 8, and not on the GameFAQs home page. The bracket was released on June 8th, 2006. Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Super Mario are all tipped to dominate, with an all-but-inevitable victory predicted to go to FF. (lawl) Popular outsiders garnering support on Board 8 included Monkey Island, Phoenix Wright, Seiken Densetsu, Mega Man Legends and Densetsu no Stafi. None of which made it into the contest. 32 series were included, with the weakest probably being Civilization (which, while popular, is not typically the kind of game associated with GameFAQs posters) or Shadow Hearts (relatively unknown, although popular on parts of GameFAQs) Prior to nominations appearing, it had been believed that the contest would be cancelled due to the aftermath of the latest redesign. The most popular predictions for possible topics were a second Best. Game. Ever. or a Best. Female. Character. Ever. ## The Bracket
Hyrule Division The Legend of Zelda Metal Gear The Legend of Zelda Final Fantasy The Legend of Zelda
\(1\) The Legend of Zelda (8) Civilization The Legend of Zelda Mega Man X The Legend of Zelda Metroid
\(4\) Suikoden (5) Mega Man X
\(3\) Pokemon (6) Star Ocean Pokemon Metroid
\(2\) Metroid (7) Kirby
Snake Division
\(1\) Metal Gear (8) Soul Calibur Metal Gear Fire Emblem Metal Gear Kingdom Hearts
\(4\) Fire Emblem (5) Silent Hill
\(3\) Castlevania (6) Halo Castlevania Kingdom Hearts
\(2\) Kingdom Hearts (7) Harvest Moon
Mushroom Division Super Mario Bros. Final Fantasy
\(1\) Super Mario Bros. (8) Madden NFL Super Mario Bros. Warcraft Super Mario Bros. Super Smash Bros.
\(4\) Grand Theft Auto (5) Warcraft
\(3\) Sonic (6) Devil May Cry Sonic Super Smash Bros.
\(2\) Super Smash Bros. (7) Dragon Quest
Ultima Division
\(1\) Final Fantasy (8) Diablo Final Fantasy Mega Man Final Fantasy Resident Evil
\(4\) Mario Kart (5) Mega Man
\(3\) The Elder Scrolls (6) Street Fighter Street Fighter Resident Evil
\(2\) Resident Evil (7) Shadow Hearts
## Results and Analysis ### Ulti's Analysis On May 8th, people all but gave up on there being a Spring Contest at all. The next announcement from Ceej involving brackets would likely have to do with the summer, but Ceej was never one to be predictable. The announcement did come, but it was for a series contest rather than a character battle. Around one month later (though it seemed like forever), bracket. One month was by far the longest period ever between nominations and brackets, and you can imagine all the whining that took place. Nevertheless, the stage was set. 32 series, 4 divisions of 8 series each. People complained about a lot of wasted potential and such (and perhaps this would turn out to be true), but contest is better than no contest. Contest rankings, best to worst: 1. Summer 2002 2. Spring 2004 3. Summer 2003 4. Summer 2005 5. Spring 2006 6. Summer 2004 7. Spring 2005 July 2006 would be \> Summer 2005 if it were 64 series instead of 32. I enjoyed this contest, especially the influx of votes. It just needed to be longer with more upsets, that's all. ### Ngamer's Analysis Alot of the time I see the BSE swept aside and dismissed along with the Villains Contest, and I don't think that's too fair. Ok, so there weren't a whole slate of epic matches or great back-and-forth affairs, but at least these were somewhat uninteresting polls between decently-powerful opponents, unlike the utter fodder of Spring '05. I actually like the BSE quite a bit, aside from CJay's fumbling up on bracket placement... when you've got three entrants (Mario/Zelda/FF) so clearly ahead of the field, it's an absolute must that the other quarter be a Division of Death. Leave MGS in there as the one seed, slip Smash Bros. in as an underseeded dark horse, and load the other two positions up with powerhouses of the Sonic and Mega Man variety, and we could have had a Division people would still be talking about today, Div 128-style. Getting back to the point, the BSE had awesome upsets in CV \> Halo and WC \> GTA, insane vote swings in CV/KH, a strong 50/50 shootout in RE/SFII, SSB surprising everyone by rSFFing Mario itself, and all that on top of the greatest Final match in site history. Now granted I'm a little biased due to all the crap me and other Zelda supporters took for daring to suggest that Final Fantasy wasn't going to blow through the whole field in a cakewalk, but even if the result went against your bracket you had to appreciate what an incredible slugfest that Zelda/FF Championship turned out to be. Not only was the final result within a percentage point, FF actually won every update outright for over 10 hours of that poll with its massive Night Vote. So, yeah, highly underrated Contest overall, though I'm not crazy enough to say it deserves a shot at being considered the best Contest overall or anything like that. --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (8)Civilization 2006 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (8)Civilization 2006 (revid 80285)_ ## Results Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 88,994 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 87.39% 151 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 98.15% (45,343 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis "Best. Series. Ever." is the 7th bracket contest on this site. All seven have had a Nintendo representative as the overall \#1 seed, which set up the first match of this thing. Like every other contest before it, BSE's first match was not about who would win --- it was obvious from the start. What mattered was setting the trend for the rest of the contest, and Zelda did this by shattering the old record for individual votes (it was Cloud with 94086 against CATS in 2003 before this contest began). Not only did this set the table for the massive vote totals we would see this contest, but it got all of the Zelda/Final Fantasy arguments going on the very first day despite FF being the overwhelming favorite to win it all. But more on that when the time comes. Zelda's strength continues to impress every contest, but Civ shouldn't go into the night without some credit. The series has a rather dedicated fanbase (as everyone who remembers MWIS's heyday will attest to) that finally managed to get something into a contest, even if it was a mere "happy to be here" entrant. One may also consider Civ's preventing Zelda from breaking 90% to be a moral victory of sorts, given pre-match expectations. ## Stats and Analysis The Legend of Zelda vs Civilization was the first match of the Best. Series. Ever. contest, and from day one Zelda raised the bar on the standards. Nobody expected Civilization to win, but Zelda shattered all records by breaking 100,000 votes by itself in the very first match. This set hopes for higher vote totals throughout the contest, as well as starting up the Zelda \> Final Fantasy bandwagon. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2425&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Suikoden vs (5)Mega Man X 2006 _source: (4)Suikoden vs (5)Mega Man X 2006 (revid 88936)_ ## Results Monday, July 3rd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 3rd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 46,252 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man X - 69.56% 156 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man X - 77.84% (35,961 brackets) Unlike most contests that have a somewhat in-the-air match on the second day (Morrigan \> Spyro in 2002, Fox \> Pikachu in 2003, Metroid \> Pac-Man in Spring 2004, Sigma \> Andross in Spring 2005, and Ness \> CJ in Summer 2005), July 2006's Suikoden/Mega Man X was as predictable as could be pre-contest. Even with the fact that the MMX series is of the spinoff/niche variety, Suikoden's sales and contest history assured that Suikoden the series would not come close to winning this. Luca Blight has been nothing but the purest of fodder, and Suikoden 2's shining moment was a killing at the hands of FF7 two years ago. How Suikoden managed to get seeded higher than half the field is beyond me; was Suikoden V really that good or popular? Anyway, the only thing most people cared about in this match was the fact that X made his way into a match pic, because for whatever reason Ceej doesn't like having X represent "Mega Man" in character contests, even though he's stated in the past that he counts all varieties of MM nominations as tallies for the Blue Bomber himself. And there we had it. X, in all of his badass glory. And Zero. ...woohoo. Serious business. Anyway as for the match itself, it was the prototypical blowout-yet-not-a-record-breaker that most expected. Suikoden was weak, yes, but MMX was just niche enough to not turn this thing into something like an 85-15 drubbing. It was also a rather boring blowout (not like what we saw from Zelda, Mario and FF in their efforts); the percentages were more or less in the same small 3% range all match long. Unlucky bracket placement for MMX would eventually cause X's stat placement to become irrelevant, given that it's reward for winning this was ZeldaFodder in round two. Easy path, bad stats. Unless you believe that Zelda \> MMX wasn't SFF at all, but that's a different topic for a different day. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2426&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon vs (6)Star Ocean 2006 _source: (3)Pokémon vs (6)Star Ocean 2006 (revid 56331)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 34,272 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokemon - 60.25% 153 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokemon - 83.74% (38,686 brackets) Pre-contest, this match got very little debate. It was sort of accepted that despite Pokémon's historical anti-vote drawing ability, Star Ocean was too cult for it to matter. A few of Star Ocean's bigger fans debated that it had a chance to win, but it wasn't taken seriously for quite some time. Then for whatever reason, arguments over this match exploded the day before, mostly out of the boredom borne of Suikoden being on the ass end of yet another beating. There was also a mild fear factor setting in among Poké's supporters, for good reason. Pikachu barely beat *PaRappa the Rapper* in 2002 before getting killed by Cloud. The following year, people had faith that Pikachu could hold his own against Fox (despite the fact that both faced Cloud the previous year, but that's a different issue). He responded by getting destroyed. No Pokémon has seen a character contest since. In Spring 2004, Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal squared off against Xenogears. GSC couldn't even hold its own during a glitched poll. On the following day when the poll was fixed, the beating at the hands of the "MASSIVELY CULT" Xenogears was realized. Pokémon's historical ability to tank had some people worried, and it only grew worse when the match picture was first seen. Pikachu, the rat that even most Pokéheads hate due to overexposure, was front and center on Pokémon's side. Surrounding him was a set of loser starter Pokémon. No Mewtwo, no legendaries, no Gardevoir. Just Pikachu and his fellow band of rats. Flat-out panic set in from Pokémon's side, even from its most devout followers, all the way up to match time. But this would turn into total madness mere seconds after the match began. Not only did Pokémon start out in the lead, it killed Star Ocean from the opening gun. Pokémon flew out to over 90% of the vote early, and though the series would not finish with nearly this high a percentage, it was meaningless to the fans. Vindication for four years of tanking was finally upon them, even if it was a meaningless one point win against a cult series. Speaking of which, all RPG entities in contests not affiliated with Squaresoft will tank. Didn't the villains contest teach you people anything? Star Ocean, like virtually every other such RPG series, has a very small, loud fanbase. Only Square sees sales numbers and popularity on GameFAQs that causes strength in contests. Even games that you'd think would feature up-and-coming contest stars (Tales of Symphonia and Star Ocean 3 are two great examples of this) have sales figures that proportionally speaking don't come close to how loud the fanbases are when discussing said games. Off the top of my head, I can't even think of the strongest true non-Square RPG character. I say true because Mario doesn't count. KOS-MOS maybe? After Pokémon's initial percentage surge and collective Pokéorgasm from fans of the series, Pokémon settled down. Throughout the day, it would eventually lose the doubling. A total killing eventually settled into a nice little blowout for Pokémon, and the discussion soon turned into whether or not Pokémon had any chance against Metroid. Everyone that knows me knows that I despise people calling entire contests after matches have been playing out for mere minutes (the whole "\[..\] is so screwed." fad was born to make fun of this crap, which is why I love it so much), but I will admit to this being a small exception. Metroid \*\*\*\*s up against Nintendo in just about every contest. No matter how cult Star Ocean is, the Pokémon \> Metroid bandwagon would have been widespread to hell and back had Metroid tanked against Kirby. And assume Pokémon actually manages to stay above 80% in this. Granted Metroid put this all to rest seconds after Pokémon's match was over. For one round, at least. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2427&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Metroid vs (7)Kirby 2006 _source: (2)Metroid vs (7)Kirby 2006 (revid 88937)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 43,786 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid - 65.02% 159 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid - 89.22% (41,218 brackets) One day after the Pokémon \> Metroid bandwagon formed, it was all put to rest. However, one needs to look into Metroid's past in Nintendo v Nintendo matches to see why that bandwagon began in the first place: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1361-north-division-final-link-vs-samus-aran) [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1312-north-division-round-1-samus-aran-vs-isaac) [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1646-division-128-round-2-the-legend-of-zelda-the-wind-waker-vs) [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1639-division-16-round-2-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-to-the-past) [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1633-division-8-round-2-super-mario-bros-3-vs-metroid) [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2122-tournament-quarterfinal-mario-vs-samus-aran) [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2115-zebes-division-final-samus-aran-vs-ganondorf) Samus has never been able to SFF anything. I doubt that she even SFFd Isaac. As for why she can't SFF anything, who in the world knows. One could credit Metroid only being popular in America, but this is an America-based website. Yet for whatever reason, Samus' series whipped the holy hell out of Kirby's series. Samus started near 68%, and though the percentages stayed even as hell all match, it doesn't take away from how big a match this was for Samus. Most didn't expect her series to do this, and if this is a character match, I doubt Kirby goes below 40%. Either Metroid scored SFF here (for the first time ever in a Nintendo match), or Kirby's games are just that weak and his popularity stems from SSB/M and character design. As much as I'd like to credit Samus finally breaking through, I think it's the latter more than anything. Why would Samus not SFF anything Nintendo until now? How many people list a Kirby game as one of their favorites? How many Kirby games made it into the Spring 2004 Contest? And for whatever reason the Top 100 Games link goes to recent top ten lists at the moment, so I can't exactly look up how many Kirby games made it. Regardless, I don't know how much of this was Metroid actually SFFing Kirby, though it did put to rest the Pokémon bandwagons. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2428&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear vs (8)SoulCalibur 2006 _source: (1)Metal Gear vs (8)Soul Calibur 2006 (revid 64090)_ ## Results Thursday, July 6th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Snake Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 6th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 44,140 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear - 70.54% 158 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear - 88.25% (40,770 brackets) PSYCHO MANTIS PSYCHO MANTIS PSYCHO MANTIS woo woo woo! Ahem. Anyway, I'll never get why "Metal Gear" made it into this field instead of Metal Gear Solid. Superfluous difference I realize, but still an odd one. Regardless, this was a fun little 1-8 match solely because of SoulCalibur's Spring 2004 Contest standing in the (lol) X-Stats. Check out the stats and see for yourself where SoulCalibur is in relation to the two Metal Gear Solid games that made that same field. No one with sense actually took said standing seriously enough to take this upset in this match, but going solely by stats this was the best chance for a 1 seed to go down in the first round since Halo. There's also circumstantial evidence borne of the Top 100 list that would not only suggest possible SFF walls holding down Metal Gear Solid, Goldeneye and perhaps even SOTN, but that most if not all of Division 128 was overrated. This match would be the first of many that would help prove it. SoulCalibur was never in this match at all, and though MGS would start over 70% before falling to what you see above, this fact is irrelevant. One would assume that SoulCalibur would have gotten something like 40% given its Spring 2004 stat position. It never came close, and the bar was set for other series from Division 128 to bomb as well. Halo? Grand Theft Auto? Super Smash Brothers? You're on notice, and you get a wag of the finger. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2429&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Fire Emblem vs (5)Silent Hill 2006 _source: (4)Fire Emblem vs (5)Silent Hill 2006 (revid 56339)_ ## Results Friday, July 7th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Snake Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 7th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 14,286 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem - 54.58% 125 for - 36 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem - 50.65% (23,399 brackets) This was pretty much the "stinker" match of the contest in that everyone expected it to have the lowest vote totals and least amount of excitement, despite it being somewhat up in the air. Think Vyse/Laharl from 2004. Yet even still, the match broke 100,000 votes. And yes, this was the lowest-scoring bout of the contest. Crazy stuff. Despite the prediction percentage being even, this was an affair in which the casual bracketmaker went one way, but Board 8 went the other. 8 more or less favored Fire Emblem by a mile, and for good reason. This was a match between two cultish series, and whichever one was less cult would win. Silent Hill, even with a movie, didn't look able to match the up-and-coming status of the Fire Emblem series. Two characters made it into SSBM, the first-ever Fire Emblem game to hit the US sold over 1 million copies, and there have been two Fire Emblem games released here since. Fire Emblem Wii is also on the way, plus Fire Emblem is Nintendo. How could Silent Hill, which is cult in every sense of the word, even compare to this? Even more telling is that two of the people that spammed Silent Hill nominations to hell and back in the first place (Inviso and FFDragon) admitted that the game was overseeded and bound to lose. Vlado was more or less the only Board 8 regular I can think of that actually favored a Silent Hill win, with such stunning evidence as "no one cares about the Fire Emblem series". Everyone else more or less agreed Silent Hill would lose with ease. And lose it did. Fire Emblem started the match on fire (lolcwuti.... oh screw it), saw its percentage level off below 60, then proceeded to win in rather typical "stinker" fashion. It increased its lead easily, lost an update every now and then, was never in any real danger of winning, and finished with a 57-43 blowout win. Cue mass whining from Silent Hill fans who overestimated the mainstream value of their series carrying over to a GameFAQs poll. And for the millionth time, a movie or TV commercial or whatever doesn't matter without the popularity of games to back up said appearances. From a totally biased point of view, I'm glad Fire Emblem won. I've yet to play a game in the series that I haven't liked, and it deserved vindication after that horrendous loss to FFTA two years ago. It's a shame it was stuck in one-and-out mode, but a win is better than nothing. Yay FE! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2430&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Castlevania vs (6)Halo 2006 _source: (3)Castlevania vs (6)Halo 2006 (revid 67799)_ ## Results Saturday, July 8th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Snake Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 8th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 11,146 - **Oracle Expectations:** Castlevania - 44.61% 35 for - 127 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Castlevania - 31.49% (14,548 brackets) When the bracket was first released, Halo was an entrant that a lot of people put faith into due to past contest stats. Granted Halo isn't exactly a transitive entity, but its performance has still been impressive. Relatively, anyway. Master Chief has twice come back from being down over 2000 votes in a poll. And if you're one of those people who believes that "winning the day vote" entails not getting your ass whipped as badly during the day that you did during other demographics in a match, then I believe Master Chief has won the day vote in every match he's ever been a part of. Which brings us to Halo itself. Sure Halo lost to Starcraft as a 1 seed, but Halo did come back from being down 1045 votes in that match, plus it used a killer day vote to build a 1100 vote lead for itself before utterly collapsing. However, given what Starcraft did later on in that contest, Halo's Xst strength was clearly not a fluke. And given that Halo did better against Starcraft than Kingdom Hearts did in that same contest, Halo \> Kingdom Hearts was perhaps the best "upset" pick of the contest. Then again, look ahead at the prediction percentages for the entire contest. Halo \> KH was the casual pick for this fourpack. The problem with thinking of Halo so highly is that no one bothered listening to the few Castlevania supporters lying around. Halo biggest strength (it's in every match) is also its biggest weakness. Halo, much like the Jacksonville Jaguars, plays down to competition. It'll almost never blow anything out, save for utter crap. So even though it can be in match with things like Starcraft, midcarders like Donkey Kong can hang with it as well. The power of no transitivity and a site-wide hate of Xbox can do that. Which made this match all the more interesting. Most people expected Halo to win, but most also expected Castlevania to put on a show early. In fact, given Alucard and SOTN's voting trends, some predicted that this match would feature the biggest comeback of all time. The first part of this came true, at least. Halo grabbed a small lead via bracket voting early and led at the first freeze. Castlevania fought back to a small lead at the second freeze. From there, Castlevania exploded en route to whipping Halo's ass. It built a 1000 vote lead within an hour and a half, and showed no signs of slowing down throughout the night. By the time three hours was up, the lead was 2000. By 4:30, 3000. Yet this was the only contest match ever in which something went down by that much and the losing side was calling the match in the favor of said loser, even though it wasn't coming close to winning any updates. Granted Halo has a nice history of coming back, but Castlevania was winning updates with 55-60% of the vote. Nothing short of a small miracle was going to save Halo if it didn't get its ass in gear in a hurry. But it never happened. And one needs to look into that for a second just to see how insane it really was. Halo took the day vote in every single match it had ever been in before it faced off against Castlevania. Every one. Felix, Aeris, Starcraft, Crash Bandicoot, Frog, CATS, Donkey Kong and Crono all felt the burn. Yet Castlevania, master of completely sucking ass with the day vote (I'm fairly sure that all matches involving CV in the past saw drastic percentage dropoffs), took the day vote from something historically known for working miracles with it. Sure Halo won an update every now and then... by like single digit votes. Castlevania took the day vote in stride; instead of winning updates in the 55-60% range, it dropped to a measly 51-55% range en route to CV easily dispatching Halo by over 11000 votes. It's as if there was no difference between voter demographics at all, which would eventually go down as one of the biggest shockers of the entire contest. This was a match in which people called for Halo's victory because Castlevania was "only" up by 4000 votes at 6:30 a.m., which says a lot about past voting trends. Halo has been exposed as a fraud time and time again in these contests, yet people (including me) retain faith in it. I was one of many that had it beating Kingdom Hearts (\<\_\<), and many people even had it beating Metal Gear, as evidenced by the low prediction percentage for Metal Gear winning the division. Xbox hate has died down a little bit, but still very much exists on this site. This was also a possible warning sign for an "It's not a series" mentality taking over the contest, given that Halo is only two games. Sure two games is technically a series, but still. But the real warning sign here is the top half of Division 128 being overrated to hell and back. Halo tanked. SoulCalibur tanked. If Wind Waker and Metroid Prime were in this contest, I'm sure they would tank. And Gordon Freeman tanks no matter what. Though before ending this, some credit to Castlevania. It's a series that has spanned across every console generation and most consoles outright. It may be a niche series, but it clearly had enough strength to hold its own from day one even with the horrid day vote trends from the past. The best answer for why CV won might have come from the Halo 2 boards itself: "Castlevania is the better, more important series". ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis One of the unspoken rules of the contest is that every single match involving Halo or Master Chief must be entertaining or interesting in some way. (The sole exception to this is Master Chief vs. Crash Bandicoot, 2004. Because, c’mon, it’s Crash Bandicoot.) When the series bracket was announced, the 6-seeded Halo faced stiff competition in Round Two from Kingdom Hearts… but first it had to get past Castlevania. Despite the fact that Halo and Master Chief have a reputation for tanking to holy hell in the past, most of the board put its faith in Halo to make it out of Round One without a second thought. I don’t know much about voting trends in terms of day vote and night vote and afterschool vote and the like, but I do know that Halo is supposed to be crazy with the day vote. Well, Castlevania laughed at Halo’s great day vote and absolutely buried it, en route to a 55-45 victory. What happened here? Well, it’s also commonly accepted that anti-votes are an innate property of Halo/Master Chief; at least until this year, Xbox hate ran rampant on this site. That and few people bothered to think about Castlevania as being an influential series with a game on damn near every platform. A satisfying upset for the few who managed to pick it correctly. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2431&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Kingdom Hearts vs (7)Harvest Moon 2006 _source: (2)Kingdom Hearts vs (7)Harvest Moon 2006 (revid 56343)_ ## Results Sunday, July 9th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Snake Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 9th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 51,684 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts - 78.50% 160 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts - 90.30% (41,717 brackets) Kingdom Hearts has got to be the only contest entrant that can score a 73-27 blowout yet still have people going doomsday prophecy on it. This happened last year too, when Sora "failed" to go Snake-Tanner on Agent 47. People thought it was a guarantee that Alucard would destroy him the next round, yet Sora won with relative ease. Fast forward to one year later. Castlevania pulls off a win, then Kingdom Hearts doesn't go historically berserk against total cult fodder in the very next match. Doomsday for Kingdom Hearts again. Never mind KH pulling in almost 82000 votes by itself or anything \<\_\< Not that Castlevania didn't have an excellent chance to win (I figured that CV beat a series I thought could beat KH, so why couldn't CV win?), but totally dismissing Kingdom Hearts after its sequel was silly. After all, this was the same series responsible for the legendary KHF of Summer 2003. And uh... I've never played a Harvest Moon game, so I don't even know what KH was "supposed" to get in this. All I know is that it's anywhere between cult and niche fodder, and that KH did well enough on it to be impressive. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2432&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. vs (8)Madden NFL 2006 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. vs (8)Madden NFL 2006 (revid 56345)_ ## Results Monday, July 10th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 10th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 99,537 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. - 86.14% 164 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. - 96.11% (44,401 brackets) There is a certain charm that comes in historical blowouts, and Madden NFL was this contest's best version of Tanner. Madden was the only series in the contest to crack the all time top ten lowest individual vote totals. But what gets me were all the people before the contest saying that Madden could be a sleeper dark pick if he were given a good spot in the bracket. Never mind the fact that GameFAQs has historically hated virtually all sports games. I'm also one of the 4 Madden fans that exist on GameFAQs, and I conceded that it would be the ultimate of fodder before this contest began. This match played out like all other hilarious blowouts, with the loser having updates where it would pull in like single digit vote totals, and the winner looked like a would-be contest champion. Though in Mario's case, I don't know if the overestimation was too far gone. Zelda came out and set a new record for vote totals, only to see it shattered with ease by its Nintendo brethren eight days later. I put more stock into individual votes than most, so it was during this match that I started to figure that Zelda and Mario both had good shots at taking Final Fantasy down. Either that, or the two series just happened to be handed Barry Horowitz in the bracket. Who would know for sure until the Final Four. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2433&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Grand Theft Auto vs (5)Warcraft 2006 _source: (4)Grand Theft Auto vs (5)Warcraft 2006 (revid 72953)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 1,116 - **Oracle Expectations:** Warcraft - 45.12% 37 for - 128 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Warcraft - 33.94% (15,680 brackets) For whatever reason, this here match was the big argument pre-contest. Not the final, which was probably a tossup from day one, but a one-point match in which the winner was guaranteed to lose next round. Blizzard likes to screw with people in these contests. Everyone knows about Starcraft's run in 2004, followed by Diablo's this-run-makes-me-look stronger-than-I actually-am effort in 2005, followed by Kerrigan and Diablo stinking it up that very summer. And here we were, two years after Blizzard's initial splash in these contests, seeing Warcraft in a bracket for the first time. Compared to Diablo and Starcraft, at least in America, Warcraft was that forgotten third series that people knew existed, but rarely worried about actually playing. Sure people came over to Warcraft 3 from Starcraft, but most of the Starcraft carry-overs were too stubborn to stick around. LordOfDabu burned out on it after about 500 games, so he tells me. How he's played something like 12,000 games of Starcraft without burnout is beyond me, but that's an entirely different issue. Warcraft 3 being released was nothing like Starcraft, which caused virtually all of the Warcraft 2 players to jump ship. Anyway, to the point. If World of Warcraft doesn't exist, I maintain that the echelon goes Starcraft \> Diablo \>\>\> Warcraft in the United States, and I stand by it. However, WoW does exist, which is the one thing that made this match interesting. WoW was perhaps the ultimate wild card due to its rallying potential alone, what with its 6 million players (though I'm not sure how many of them are regulars; a veteran of the game would know that better than I) at the ready. Not to say that we'd see 6 million votes in a poll, but if Warcraft managed to survive the initial GTA onslaught that everyone knew was coming, then the odds of it losing a close match given the fanbase of the most popular game was slim to none, assuming the players felt like taking time away from their busy raid schedules and all. The other side to this was whether or not GTA was too strong for the potential rallying to even matter in the first place. Vice City only lost to SSBM by 5000 votes. San Andreas won GOTY on GameFAQs. It can be assumed that GTA3 would also be a machine in polls, but we haven't seen it in one yet. People could cite the character performances as a potential weakness for GTA, but the performance of the games speaks for itself. And the games have always been miles ahead of the characters, for whatever reason. If GTA was able to live up to the potential seen from it in the past, then Warcraft would need one hell of an effort to win. That said, Warcraft was given a huge break before this contest even began. This thing was originally slated to start on July 1st. The contest started one day late, which pushed this match to a Tuesday. WoW servers are given weekly maintenance and patches and such on Tuesdays, which meant that most if not all of the WoW regulars would be on the forums (because seriously, these people know *nothing* else; I wouldn't be surprised if half of them forgot how to brush their teeth by now). One could have called the match over right then and there. And even if you didn't want to go that far, you could have called this match over after it was an hour old. GTA jumped out to an expected early lead via a huge bracket voting rush, to the tune of 337 votes. 10 minutes later, GTA's lead was down to 200. Given the amount of rallying that was to take place throughout this match, there was literally no way Warcraft was going to lose this if the match turned out to be close. Well, it turned out to be close. Cue what was literally the most boring close match of all time, because everyone saw what was coming hours before it happened. What Warcraft did in this match is similar to how I use Peach in SSBM in that if I get up on you even once, the match is over. It'll all annoying "NONE SHALL PASS!" defense on my end after that. And yes, I can bring up Peach in any rant \<3 Anyway Warcraft was able to take away GTA's lead fairly easily. From then on it was a streetfight between the two, complete with massive amounts of rallying on both sides. The problem for GTA is that nothing it had in its arsenal was able to match the sheer numbers from WoW's fanbase. One topic on the forums exploded in views after a blue posted in it, and various such vote intakes for Warcraft would happen all throughout the match. Whenever GTA tried making a move to come back (and it was never down by an unbeatable amount), Warcraft would slap it back down. This match was the ultimate "Does rallying matter?" test given the circumstances, and Warcraft proved that it can. Warcraft would go on to win by 1100 votes, but the numbers in this match don't really matter. This was over the second Warcraft showed that it would be close. The funniest thing about this match is that GTA fans knew they were defeated, too. Battle cries eventually became "I hope CJayC catches all of the people cheating in Warcraft's favor". Yeah, about that... From CJayC Posted 7/12/2006 12:06:25 AM \#001 As with the last few contests, I'll try to do this whenever a vote is extremely close (under 1% difference). 13 users got axed for egregious vote stuffing (i.e. can't even begin to argue it was accidental, or that their brother, cousin, friend, and dog just happened to vote on the same computer). 12 of them were stuffing for GTA. And, just for the conspiracy theorists, all the fraudulent votes we caught put together would have added just 600 votes for GTA, still not enough to put them over the top. Most Ironic Account Name Banned: "SC2K6Champ". Warcraft benefited from a massive day-long rally, spurred on by World of Warcraft itself, but there were no unusual voting patterns or anything suspect about the vote totals; external influences are allowed, as we simply can't control the rest of the Internet, and you can never underestimate the number of Blizzard fans (although I don't give it a snowball's chance against Mario). There were no unexplained spikes, no mass proxy use, no strange voting patterns, and while traffic was much higher today than for other contests, it was expected to be so and was well within the norm. Sess, EC and Luster Soldier were three of the people axed. And no, 500 of the 600 stuffed GTA votes weren't Lusty's; he only managed to get in about 50 before the doomhammer caught up to him. Warcraft won fairly, and all of the Board 8 WoW fans were vindicated. Truth be told, I don't hate WoW at all. Granted it has the worst fans in gaming and has effectively ruined Blizzard, but the game itself would be fine if there were any decent single player options. I'm just not a big fan of the whole "you need 39 other people and 5-6 hours of free time every day to enjoy the best the game has to offer" stuff, not to mention how elitist guilds are. If you aren't level 60, aren't wearing a ton of the best gear and don't know exactly what to do in every fight before going in, good luck actually getting into a good guild. And good luck having anything relating to a social life on top of this, which is the curse of MMOs in general. More games like Oblivion need to exist, posthaste. There's also the lovely fact that Blizzard has worked its way into a corner with WoW; all of their time and energy now has to go into one game, and Diablo 3/Starcraft 2/Warcraft 4 are all going to suck as a result. Assuming Blizzard even find the time to make them in the first place, which they won't. They'll just release an expansion every 6 months and ride the coattails of 6 million shelling out 12 bucks a month. But on top of even that, my big complaint with this match (and the only one that's actually valid, I'll admit) is that Warcraft won solely because of WoW. I would have loved Warcraft 3 being the reason for all this, because I like it far better than any game in either series. Though because of WC3, you'll never hear me complain about the result or accuse WC of foul play. The better game won =p Fun fact: Rallying began for Mario/Warcraft after GTA lost. "Warcraft is good, but IT'S FREAKING *MARIO*" was the response of choice. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis The board being so wrong has never felt so right. When the series bracket was announced, most people assumed that, given Grand Theft Auto’s excellent showings in things like Game of the Year polls, they would walk all over Warcraft; some particular stat-heads went so far as to take this match as a personal assault on World of Warcraft fans (hey there Ulti), making loud and brash claims about how they wouldn’t care about this match since they couldn’t get away from their game for a few measly seconds. Naturally, this blew up in everybody’s faces when Warcraft decided to make a match of it. Abnormally high vote totals led many to declare cries of vote-stuffing, yet the only stuffers that were caught were, ironically, for Grand Theft Auto. Warcraft’s strength was legitimate, and it managed to silence all the doubters and whoop GTA in a tight match. Some analysts think a lot has to do with the WoW servers being down for maintenance on the day of the match, which is certainly possible, but all that really matters is that there was a lot of crow being eaten on the board after this match. Very satisfying (and this from a guy who had GTA pegged with 58% of the vote). ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2434&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (6)Devil May Cry 2006 _source: (3)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (6)Devil May Cry 2006 (revid 67801)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 48,077 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 65.44% 164 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 77.06% (35,600 brackets) HOW does Shadow make that match pic and not Tails? Ugh. Anyway, everyone (except Lopen, but he doesn't count) knew that Sonic had this match won with ease. The issue was what his percentage would end up being, given that Sonic and Dante had a match once. Sonic scored 62.03% on him in said match. One could assume, based on how much stock you put into series versus characters, that Sonic going well above or well below that 62.03% standard could set off warning signals one way or the other. After all, this match had little if anything to do with Devil May Cry; all eyes were on Sonic vs Smash Brothers, especially given how gaming's newer series were tanking in this contest left and right. As expected, Sonic went out and whipped Devil May Cry's ass. Sonic was near 80% during the initial surge, and though he would quickly level off to winning by just under 71%, his beating of DMC here couldn't exactly go ignored. Matches featuring Dante see very little in terms of percentage swing, so Sonic's percentage stalling and leveling quickly was to be expected. That said, he went well over that 62.03% mentioned earlier. Cause for concern for SSB? I mean, Halo tanked. GTA tanked. DMC tanked. Small/recent series were bombing all over the place, and one can assume that the Sonic \> SSB bandwagon would have gained a ton of steam had Smash gone out and tanked against Dragon Quest. Or maybe Nintendo would prove to be immune to such things, who knows. But enough analysis and more laughing at Lopen, posthaste! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2435&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Super Smash Bros. vs (7)Dragon Quest 2006 _source: (2)Super Smash Bros. vs (7)Dragon Quest 2006 (revid 56351)_ ## Results Thursday, July 13th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 13th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 62,697 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. - 76.26% 167 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. - 81.25% (37,536 brackets) I have to hand it to WoW's fans for not being the most annoying during a contest match in the Best Series Ever contest. That honor goes to Dragon Quest fans by light years, even if primacy and recency effects will cause people to think that it's something else. Dragon Quest fans really took the cake in this department. Never before have I born witness to such massive amounts of nonsensical whining over a premeditated blowout than I have during this match. The general complaints were that Smash Brothers wasn't a series, that it was little more than a party fighter (even though both games are better than any other fighter by eons, regardless of what the elitist traditional fighting game fans say), and that it shouldn't have even been in this contest in the first place. Oh, and that Dragon Quest's place in gaming history should have caused it to win. On NintendoFAQs, as a cult icon (which is all that DQ is these days in America), against Nintendo's most popular game over the last five years. Right. DQ's fans managed to overshadow the fact that based on expectations, Dragon Quest did fairly well here. There was almost no percentage movement at all during the match, save for SSB leveling off a little bit in the first few hours. Those that bothered ignoring all of the whining used this match to sound the Sonic \> SSB alarms, because Board 8 loves to call entire contests based on the first five minutes of any match. We've literally reached an age in these contests where people call everything based on unrealistic expectations instead of something just winning or losing, but that's a different issue entirely. It also has to be noted that Jigglypuff appears twice in the match picture. One is easy to see, but look closely in the middle of Dragon Quest's side. WTF happened there? Anyhoo, based on what you thought SSB \*should\* have done (which is a really stupid way to look at contest matches, but I digress), it either performed well or massively disappointed. Yay possible Sonic/Smash slobberknocker. And congrats to Dragon Quest's fans for representing their series well during the match. I'm sure the way you all acted will convince others to rally behind DQ games and characters for future contests. Or not. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2436&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy vs (8)Diablo 2006 _source: (1)Final Fantasy vs (8)Diablo 2006 (revid 56353)_ ## Results Friday, July 14th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ultima Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 14th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 90,088 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy - 79.25% 165 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy - 97.25% (44,928 brackets) Though this match was a predetermined blowout, the onus was on Final Fantasy in this match to perform well following the killer matches from Zelda and Mario in the matches prior. It was widely believed that Final Fantasy was the favorite to win the entire contest, but Zelda or even Mario pulling the upset wasn't impossible given the NintendoFAQs nonsense that has gone down over the last two years. We had to wait to see what Final Fantasy was capable of, because some glitch caused the poll to be 30 minutes late. When FF and Diablo finally came out of the gate, Final Fantasy showcased itself in grand fashion. FF's blowout of Diablo was so epic that some called Final Fantasy the most powerful force ever seen in contests. On the surface, it's hard to argue with this. Diablo proved to be a fairly solid midcarder through the two 2005 contests, and can assume that Diablo 2 would have decent strength in a games contest. Final Fantasy flattened all of this in the blink of an eye. The vote totals and final percentage for it speak for themselves, especially given that the poll started 30 minutes late. But hypothetically, imagine that this match were Final Fantasy 7 vs Diablo 2, or even Final Fantasy the series versus Diablo 2. Would the percentages be all that different? Given that Diablo is a series featuring two games and an expansion, one could postulate that this match was Final Fantasy versus D2: Lord of Destruction. From there, the blowout here doesn't seem so epic. For what it's worth, there's also the unbelievably unbalanced match picture that features FF's three most popular leads against three blobs and no Diablo the character. Zelda had the prediction percentage advantage, Mario was less than a percent behind, and total votes were effectively even at this point. FF was still the favorite after this match, but not Villains Contest Sephiroth-style. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2437&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Mega Man vs (5)Mario Kart 2006 _source: (4)Mega Man vs (5)Mario Kart 2006 (revid 56355)_ ## Results Saturday, July 15th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ultima Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 15th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 17,348 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 54.09% 122 for - 45 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 62.96% (29,086 brackets) This was one of the most debated pre-contest matches of the tournament, and I'll never for the life of me figure out why. It took me 2 seconds to pick Mega Man in this match. Ditto for Sir Chris, which is why yoblazer33's main account no longer exists. From what I can gather, the logic behind people picking Mario Kart was such. One, the names "Mario" and "Mega Man" both appearing in a poll would automatically cause Mario to score SFF and win with ease. Mario Kart being a side series for Mario was meaningless (which I actually agree with), because all Mario Kart games have sold in the millions and would easily beat any Mega Man title. That latter point may be true, but this match wasn't Mega Man X versus Mario Kart 64. Two, Mario Kart the series was bound to be strong due to said sales, especially when compared to Mega Man. I can get behind this, because you can't really argue with something having both the Nintendo name and large sales behind it. But the last major point was the most ridiculous, which was that people assumed that the name "Mega Man" in the poll wouldn't be an all-inclusive entity in the eyes of voters; "Mega Man X the series is in the bracket, I'm going to not vote Mega Man because of this due to liking the former series more!" Totally ridiculous reasoning (and I never argued that Mario Kart had no chance to win, just that the people saying "Mega Man" wasn't going to be all-inclusive were off their rockers), and a lot of people overthought themselves due to the ramblings of the board. What became an obvious two-second pick turned into a massive debate for literally no good reason. I blame Board 8's obsession with Mario Kart DS, though I'll leave my full hate of Mario Kart and the board's obsession with bad Nintendo games out of this. yoblazer betting his account on this one also caused a lot of people to take the upset, because yo has the best contest history of anyone on the board. He's also convincing when he argues points due to such. Though when the match started and Mega Man beat the living piss out of Mario Kart, half the board's world came crashing down and the other half was left asking why this was such a big deal in the first place. Mario Kart had the lead for all of two seconds, then got blasted away throughout the rest of the match. Absolute destruction Ulti-style, baby. Overly debated matches being this far apart in percentage = total owning. I'd seriously love to know how anyone thought that the people voting weren't going to look at "Mega Man" as Mega Man's entire series wrapped up into one. Phediuk put all the games into his comparison's game for a reason. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2438&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)The Elder Scrolls vs (6)Street Fighter 2006 _source: (3)The Elder Scrolls vs (6)Street Fighter 2006 (revid 56357)_ ## Results Sunday, July 16th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ultima Division - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 16th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 32,622 - **Oracle Expectations:** Street Fighter - 60.31% 154 for - 12 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Street Fighter - 65.96% (30,472 brackets) I saw maybe one update of the match and about 2 minutes' worth of board topics, but it was more than enough to gauge the sad state that this match would become. Despite all evidence pointing to the fact that Street Fighter winning this was a lock, Elder Scrolls fans made it a point to act as loud and obnoxious as possible every day leading up to this match. I even remember Villainous Fawful making a topic guaranteeing that TES would win, and that the board would eat crow solely due to being unfamiliar with the Elder Scrolls as a series. This is actually one of the more tame examples I can remember off the top of my head to bring up. Essentially, TES fans were banking on Oblivion's insane popularity to give TES the match. Never mind the fact that PC and Xbox gaming on GameFAQs is laughable compared to the popularity levels of the consoles Street Fighter has seen, namely SNES, Genesis and Playstation 2. There's also the fact that Street Fighter is an accomplished series that most everyone has experience in, while TES is a niche RPG series. I've said this a million times, but once can't hurt if it helps to hammer the point into a few more thick skulls: non-Square RPG entities will tank in contests. Period, end of discussion. Oh, and bringing up the FAQ Top 50 list is completely irrelevant. Stop doing it. The match eventually began, and predictably, The Elder Scrolls got its ass whipped. Street Fighter flirted with a doubling for awhile, but would eventually fall just short. But the outcome of this match was secondary given that two of gaming's most MATURE AND LEVEL-HEADED fanbases were all over Board 8 during the match. On one end were the elitist Elder Scrolls snobs who could not fathom that any human being could consider any game better than Oblivion. It was also a massive shock that a subpar fighting series like Street Fighter had any popularity, given that any one of 900 others were better. Street Fighter 2 essentially starting the genre and saving the life of the arcade industry was of course irrelevant. Not to say that Street Fighter fans were acting any better, mind. Fighting game elitists are some of the most annoying gamers to talk to about anything, let alone fighting games. So when people began to question Street Fighter's merit as a series through Elder Scrolls getting its ass whipped, you can bet that legions of "LK MK xx MK xx -\> QCF QCF MP -\> 6BBB6BBB6BBB" snobs were ready, willing and able to post their incoherent babble all over the place. Rinse and repeat for hundreds of the most pointless back-and-forth topics of all time. I'm happy I wasn't home to witness most of this nonsense, because my brain would likely chosen to cease functioning. Lost in all this was that the upcoming Street Fighter/Resident Evil clash was actually something worth talking about, even if RE was the clear favorite going in. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2439&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Resident Evil vs (7)Shadow Hearts 2006 _source: (2)Resident Evil vs (7)Shadow Hearts 2006 (revid 56359)_ ## Results Monday, July 17th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ultima Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 17th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 84,069 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil - 76.78% 165 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil - 96.21% (44,447 brackets) Someone needs to keep Shadow Hearts as far away from these contests as possible. One year after Yuri stunk up the joint and managed to place dead last in the X-Stats, Shadow Hearts was at it again, this time against Resident Evil. Not one full week after Madden all but guaranteed himself a spot at the bottom of Board 8's favorite set of percentages, Yuri Hyuga and company made their claim to be the new contest joke. It wasn't all bad for Shadow Hearts, to be fair. The hardcore Resident Evil fans of the board got to see their favorite series almost break 100,000 total votes and 90% in a match. But once the thrill of seeing where RE would place on the all-time vote total list wore down, we were left with another match in which the winner's perceived strength was inflated due to being paired up against complete joke fodder. And no, this comment says nothing ill of SH as a series. But its 5 fans can only get it so far in a contest setting. It's pretty odd that I'm moving rather slow through this contest and yet this match marks the halfway point. Brief first round overview: - HOLY VOTALS batman! It's a pity we didn't see this contest done in the Spring, with a character battle actually in the summer. I say this because Cloud's final chance at Link is gone come Christmas. - Every match broke 100k votes, a first. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2440&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (5)Mega Man X 2006 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (5)Mega Man X 2006 (revid 56361)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 78,823 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 75.39% 125 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 95.59% (44,161 brackets) Before getting into the match, the match pic theme has to be brought up. Sprite rounds are generally kick-ass (though not always for the right reasons), but the thought of having dueling characters on both sides of the picture was genius on CJayC's part. And it's nice to see him use sprites from what is FAR AND AWAY THE BEST ZELDA GAME, LINK TO THE PAST BABY OH YES. And let's not forget that X and the Metool are \*\*\*\*ing awesome as well. Nice theme idea, and I literally couldn't wait to see the rest of the round once I saw this. As for the match itself, the game of "Can you top this?" between Zelda and FF was officially on at this point. It's one thing to blow away Civilization in a Colossus vs Fodder match, but quite another to have record vote totals in an SFF match. How "Nintendo" MMX is and whether or not it causes pure Nintendo SFF can be argued by the stat mongers until the end of time, for all I care. This match was a clinic that proved Zelda was far from unable to take Final Fantasy down, though unfortunately between that and the match pics, there isn't much else to say. Just lots of watching and waiting. I'll also never like the 32 entrant or the divisions of 8 idea. Calling something a divisional semifinal in the second round just seems off. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2441&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon vs (2)Metroid 2006 _source: (3)Pokémon vs (2)Metroid 2006 (revid 56363)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 6,403 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid - 66.37% 128 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid - 57.29% (26,467 brackets) Any Nintendo vs Nintendo match involving Metroid has the potential to be hilarious, and this one was yet another chapter in the tale of how badly Samus sucks in matches involving her own company. After Pokémon shocked people by blasting the holy hell out of Star Ocean, the Pokémon \> Metroid bandwagon started going. And because most people were only doing it for fun and didn't actually expect Pokémon to do anything of note, Pokémon coming out and holding its own here was one of the highlights of the entire tournament. Remember, Metroid was essentially expected to win its first two matches with ease before bowing out to Zelda. Stage 1 of this was done easily enough, though Stage 2 never really happened. Metroid came out of the gates slow as hell against Pokémon; if it weren't an SFF match, some people would have assumed that Metroid's measly 54% updates early on were signs of future trouble. Technically it was (there was no way that Metroid wasn't going to go out and get its ass whipped against Zelda in the next round), though Metroid managed to save some face in building a 1000 vote lead in just over an hour. Pokémon was actually able to win an update at the 1:30 mark, which set the tone for the rest of the match. Metroid was never in any danger of losing and actually built a lead steadily, but the fact that it was even struggling at all was telling enough. Pokémon, a series that is supposedly hated to hell and back all over GameFAQs, managed a respectable showing against a Noble Niner's series and even managed update wins every now and then. Why Samus can't hack it against Nintendo is beyond me. Metroid being the third series on the echelon isn't really enough of a reason, nor is Metroid only being popular in America -- GameFAQs is an American site. The only thing I can think of is that people like Samus for her appearance in the two Smash Brothers titles (I had never heard of her before the original SSB) moreso than they do for the Metroid games. None of the other theories make any sense, and there's enough proof that SSB/M is more than capable of holding its own weight. We would see it again less than a week after this here match, in fact. That said, time to give Pokémon some much-deserved credit. Its one win was over PaRappa the \*\*\*\*ing Rapper, for crissakes. Pikachu's other two matches were on the bad end of killings, and GSC got stuck behind a wall of SFF in 2004 and made to look more hated than it really is. Not only is Pokémon hate all but dead (and perhaps it never really existed to begin with), but Pikachu might have been the wrong proxy to use in 2002 and 2003. Something tells me that Mewtwo could wreak havoc if in the right spot, for reasons related to both Pokémon and SSBM. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2442&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear vs (4)Fire Emblem 2006 _source: (1)Metal Gear vs (4)Fire Emblem 2006 (revid 56365)_ ## Results Thursday, July 20th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Snake Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 20th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 34,560 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear - 73.81% 132 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear - 82.08% (37,919 brackets) Solid Shit, meet Effeminate Marth. Effeminate Marth, Solid Shit. Seriously, the only character in that picture that I recognize is the generic Brigand. This was an odd blowout in that the board vote actually gave Fire Emblem the lead for a few seconds. Metal Gear recovered quickly, but never really wowed in the match. It actually lost three percentage points throughout the day. This wasn't too big a deal given that of the four favored Final Four candidates, Metal Gear's path was the easiest, but one would assume that Metal Gear would be able to blow away something allegedly as cult as Fire Emblem. And it's not that people doubted Fire Emblem's strength after this match so much as Silent Hill's. Looking ahead to the stats we have now, Silent Hill is 22nd. How many of the series below SH would you honestly pick SH to beat? Sadly, that's about the only thing that can be taken from this match. Metal Gear was expected to blow Fire Emblem away, it didn't quite do that, but it didn't really matter in the slightest. It was a lock to win its next match before losing to Zelda in the Final Four either way. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2443&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Castlevania vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2006 _source: (3)Castlevania vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2006 (revid 56367)_ ## Results Friday, July 21st, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Snake Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 21st, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 3,416 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts - 52.63% 80 for - 54 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts - 29.90% (13,813 brackets) Chain of Memories might be an odd game, but you can't deny that it arguably has the best sprites in any game of all time. Also odd is that a once-predictable slot in the bracket became one of the best matches of the contest. Kingdom Hearts was the big favorite to win this fourpack, though a few Halo \> KH dissenters were always around. I'm also fairly sure that the casual pick was Halo winning the fourpack as well. The problem with all this was that Castlevania whipped Halo's ass so badly that the upset here was worth discussing. Going solely by Spring 2004 stats, Halo was stronger than Kingdom Hearts. Castlevania the series beat Halo the series, and by a large amount. If Kingdom Hearts 2 wasn't able to give the series a fairly decent boost, then we were possibly in for a nuclear meltdown in the prediction percentages. Though early on, it looked like the whole CV \> KH mystique would disappear with ease. A large board vote bandwagon pushed Castlevania fairly well, but it barely had 45% of the votes after the first minute. However, Castlevania pulled near-even at the first five minute update. The two would literally go back and forth in near-even status for the first hour of the poll, setting up a potentially legendary match. Had Castlevania not gone berserk in the final five minute update of the first hour, I'm fairly sure it would have been the closest first hour of any contest match. Speaking of that, Kingdom Hearts tailed off badly (in close match terms, anyway) once the true night vote hit. Castlevania used its best voting block to begin building a lead for itself, though Kingdom Hearts was able to win updates and stall every now and then. The end result was a slow grind by Castlevania in which it would build an 1100 vote lead for itself by morning. Kingdom Hearts massively stalled Castlevania once said morning vote hit, but CV was actually able to increase its lead to 1200. Ironically enough, what Kingdom Hearts did throughout the night is what everyone was expecting of Halo. It prevented Castlevania from going totally berserk and put itself in a position to win once its day vote came along. It took a little while for Kingdom Hearts to gain some steam once said day vote hit, but it was unstoppable once it finally happened. In virtually every match that Kingdom Hearts has been involved with (and Ngamer has a chart of this lying around somewhere), it's gained percentage if not votes during the day. This is what allowed Ansem to finally shake off CATS. This is what allowed Kingdom Hearts to come back twice against Soul Calibur, with the final push being to come back from down 700 for an easy win. And more importantly, Alucard and Sora were deadlocked last year until the morning vote hit, where Sora then took off to win by 10000 votes. Being down 1200 was barely anything for Kingdom Hearts, which has had vote swings of several thousand votes before. When paired with Castlevania's historically pathetic day vote, one could have called this match over the second Kingdom Hearts stalled the advance. Not surprisingly, Kingdom Hearts took off during the day. By the end of the match and despite every effort that Castlevania could possibly give, a 1200 vote lead turned into a 3400 vote loss. Given that Alucard allowed Sora to swing 10000 votes on him, Castlevania only allowing 4600 could be considered an improvement \<\_\< It's interesting to consider whether or not Castlevania would have won this if Kingdom Hearts 2 didn't exist, but it's a moot point. Barely anyone even expected Castlevania to beat Halo, let alone hang around with Kingdom Hearts for 12 hours. CV was more or less the biggest surprise of an otherwise mundane contest. As for Kingdom Hearts, the parallel to 2005 was crazy. Alucard beats Kratos, Sora beats some joke fodder, and Sora/Alucard have a struggle before Sora gets his ass whipped by Solid Snake. This year, CV beats Halo, KH beats joke fodder, and CV/KH have another struggle before the winner goes on to get his ass whipped by Metal Gear. The only things missing were Kratos' man-boobs and Snake getting ready to snipe Sora again. By the way, I have to hand it to the fans of the two series in this one. You quite literally made the board unreadable throughout every part of this match, turned this match into the biggest whinefest of the contest and made the more mature members of the board feel disgusted be associated with you. It's easy to say that Castlevania fans were the worse of the two groups ("HOW is CV losing to some kiddy series? It's got HISTORY!!"), but KH weren't exactly any better during the time that CV was winning. Matches like this make me miss the offseason, even if the offseason is generally filled with boring nonsense and people having nothing better to do than troll each other with alts. It's at least better than sitting through what went on during this match, which was amazing otherwise. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis There are few matches in contest history more maligned than this one – not for the result, but for the board’s behavior. What most forget is that this match was actually very entertaining – despite Castlevania’s excellent performance in Round One, most people still thought Kingdom Hearts would take it with ease. That was proven wrong very quickly when Castlevania actually started off with a commanding lead and would hold onto it for the first part of the match. Kingdom Hearts would eventually come back and win via the afterschool vote (again, I think – voting patterns aren’t my specialty), but it was a great fight, and Castlevania gave it everything it had. The board, of course, wouldn’t sit quietly for this, and the sheer amount of whining that went on here was quite possibly the worst since 2003 and until L-Block’s run in 2007. But hey, that’s what good matches often do – provoke mindless fury. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2444&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. vs (5)Warcraft 2006 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. vs (5)Warcraft 2006 (revid 72952)_ ## Results Saturday, July 22nd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 22nd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 75,034 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. - 73.78% 134 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. - 76.46% (35,323 brackets) This match picture was pretty indicative of how the match itself went. The few insane people out there that actually had Warcraft beating Mario in their brackets had their fate laid out for them even before Warcraft's beating of GTA was over. Rally topics were made on the WoW forums about the match, and "IT'S FREAKING *MARIO*!" was the most common response. But even then, few expected Warcraft to get beaten quite this badly. In the beginning of the match, Mario was actually near 85%. It's a telling sign when a fanbase considers a drop from 85% to \*only\* winning with 81% a moral victory of sorts, though the oddity of Mario not increasing his percentage with the day vote was relatively meaningless here. Mario's killing of Warcraft was a clear sign that Mario had a good chance at Final Fantasy in the final four of this thing, at least given how strong most expected GTA to be before the contest started. And if GTA was expected to have possible top four strength, then Warcraft being in the same boat was just common sense at this point. Unfortunately, the only excitement this match had to offer were Warcraft fans whining about the "biased" match pics and Ceej being against it and blah blah blah. Granted the Warcraft pics weren't the best, but Blizzard doesn't really make photogenic games. One question though, for anyone reading this. Are those Grunt sprites really from Warcraft 2? Because I found this: Those look nothing like what's in the match pic. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2445&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (2)Super Smash Bros. 2006 _source: (3)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (2)Super Smash Bros. 2006 (revid 56371)_ ## Results Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 19,332 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. - 51.90% 87 for - 42 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. - 46.03% (21,265 brackets) Though SSB winning its first two matches was the big conclusion across Board 8 (SSBM is the board's favorite game, which is all you need to know about why SSB was favored by so much), one look at the prediction percentage would yield that the casual pick likely went with Sonic here. And given what this contest had shown us to this point, a Sonic \> SSB upset in the bracket wasn't too bad an upset special. In theory. All the new or small series in this contest were tanking. All the established, OLD-SKOOL series with a lot of history and exposure across a billion consoles were doing better than expected, including the series that we all thought would do well. Seriously, 100,000 votes being broken individually multiple times? Added to this was the fact that SSBM wasn't all that impressive in the games contest, and this match was essentially SSBM versus the entire Sonic series. It only beat MGS2 by 10000 votes, Vice City by 5000 and FFX by ~1500 before Starcraft got caught cheating against it. From there, it was 37% against FF7. Far better than most other games could hope to get, but still not overly impressive. All it really did was avoid a doubling at the hands of what may no longer be this site's strongest force. There was one fact, however, that clearly favored SSB in the match: - [gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2362](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2362) - [gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2373](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2373) The Brawl E3 trailer fell between those two polls, and red13n was seriously like the only person to notice. Regardless of how good Sonic looked going into this, the other small slash new series that tanked weren't Nintendo-based. And it showed come match time. You know the rules. Any debated match that ends with a margin larger than 55-45 is an absolute and utter destruction by my standards. Sonic once again played the part of the goat in a winnable big match, which once again robbed us of seeing a Mario/Sonic clash. We were closer this year than any other of finally seeing those two go at it; Sonic winning this would have literally meant Mario v Sonic the following round. But as it stood, Smash put a choke hold on Sonic that it would simply not relinquish from start to finish. The percentages barely moved in the match save for Sonic's day vote chipping away before Smash brought it back up again during the afternoon and night, but it was meaningless. The percentages you see above are essentially the essence of what this match was from start to finish -- the prototypical debated-match turned-killing-by-debated match-standards kind of blowout. Not too large on paper, but given what Sonic had going for it going in, this was nothing short of yet another disappointment for Sonic. And he has a long line of them in these contests. Only Knuckles has really done much, in retrospect. Some argued that this match was our last chance to see something great. It would obviously end differently, but conjecture at the time wasn't too far off. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2446&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy vs (4)Mega Man 2006 _source: (1)Final Fantasy vs (4)Mega Man 2006 (revid 88424)_ ## Results Monday, July 24th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ultima Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 24th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 65,586 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy - 74.99% 129 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy - 92.62% (42,789 brackets) The most notable thing about FF/Mega Man was that the match picture was backwards. This was because in every Mega Man game, you're almost always going right. In every FF game, you're almost always on the right and looking left in fights. And when this is the most notable thing about a match, you know you have a boring blowout on your hands. There was really nothing in this match to indicate that FF was in any trouble in the later rounds. It once again broke 100k votes despite getting killed by the board vote early, en route to yet another killing. And given that "Mega Man" is an all-inclusive name, FF scoring such a huge blowout here was all the more impressive. This contest was more or less FF's to lose after this match, assuming you put a lot of stock into total votes. Fun Fact: During the match, transience made a joke topic saying that Zelda would win in the final due to Zelda doing better on MMX than FF did here on Mega Man. After all, SFF doesn't exist and MMX is obviously the stronger series! Oh the irony. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2447&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Street Fighter vs (2)Resident Evil 2006 _source: (6)Street Fighter vs (2)Resident Evil 2006 (revid 56375)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ultima Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 1,779 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil - 57.28% 113 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil - 55.80% (25,778 brackets) And we finally get a match pic that puts Solid Shit to shame. What in the hell *is* that? Ryu and Akuma going to town on a couple of blobs? RE isn't a sprite-friendly series, it would seem.... On Board 8, the consensus pick was Resident Evil to win this match. The logic was that we had two Capcom series going at it; one featured a certain epitome of badass known as Resident Evil 4, while the other featured Street Fighter 2, the only game in the entire Street Fighter series that appeals to gamers outside of the snotty fighting game base. SF2 is also something like 15 years old. Given RE4's dominance in the 2005 GOTY polls and SF2 not even winning a single match in the games contest, recency effect caused everyone to pick RE to win. And why not? RE4 is better than any game in either series by about 7 miles. The counterargument to this was that every gamer knows what Street Fighter 2 did for the industry, and the name Street Fighter has far more casual appeal than Resident Evil does. Add in the one-sided match picture, and you have the anatomy of an upset in the making. The only thing Street Fighter really needed to get around was Resident Evil 4, which even the biggest of SF supporters conceded. But having the anatomy of an upset and having a close match are two different things, and we've seen the difference quite often. Street Fighter however went out and proved that it wasn't a dead series just yet. RE took a lead of 55% and 50 votes early, but Street Fighter made the match very respectable from this point on. RE slowly built a lead for itself, though SF was able to create a few comeback scares every now and then. For what it's worth, SF cut a 400 vote lead of RE's in half before the morning vote, and then cut the lead down a little more once said vote began. SF put itself in position to win, but couldn't quite close the deal after doing so. RE took the morning vote and ran with it en route to building a lead of nearly 2500 votes. SF did very well during the evening, but RE was too far in the lead for SF's late comeback attempt to matter. It was mere "let's make the match as respectable as possible" territory, and it worked. Given that most expected RE to win this match with ease, SF impressing was obviously unexpected, but still understandable. It's very easy to assume that SF would have won this match is RE4 didn't exist, because the SFF would have likely gone the other way. It's also funny to remember that RE won this match while being on the ass end of the single worst match pic ever. Its reward? A killing at the hands of FF. Yay! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2448&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (2)Metroid 2006 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (2)Metroid 2006 (revid 56377)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division Final - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 93,414 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 77.02% 123 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 89.78% (41,477 brackets) This is seriously the easiest match in the entire contest to look into, because everyone knew it was coming -- especially after Metroid bombed against Pokémon in the previous round. I doubt most people expected the SFF to be this bad, but it wasn't a surprise regardless. Metroid fans are used to all things Samus bombing against Nintendo, as are all fans stuck having their favorite anything face Zelda in a contest. So instead of ranting about how big the beating was, I offer two things. One, WTF CD-i Zelda and Tingle? Two, an updated list of links, in order, involving Samus performing badly and/or failing to get any SFF against Nintendo. I'm sure I'll wind up adding to this in future contests. - - - - - - - - - ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2449&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2006 _source: (1)Metal Gear vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2006 (revid 56379)_ ## Results Thursday, July 27th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Snake Division Final - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 27th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 22,841 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear - 56.97% 118 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear - 46.21% (21,348 brackets) **(1) Metal Gear vs (3)Castlevania** THE PLAN! Actually, Kingdom Hearts was supposed to be in the match. It did beat CV fair and square, after all. But for whatever reason, Castlevania was the bottom option for the first minute or two of the poll. After one of the funniest board explosions of all time (Alucard's Plan had been a three year fad prior to this poll glitch, for those not in the know), CJayC didn't even bother restarting or making a topic. He just fixed the option to Kingdom Hearts and let things roll. So with that said, I'll do the same. After the fix, things were pretty much boring the rest of the way. With Solid Snake v Sora a mere year old, we already had a blueprint for how this match would go: Metal Gear jumps out to a nice lead early, KH slashes a lot of percentage off during its killer day vote before ultimately losing with ease. The only difference between this match and Snake/Sora is that Snake/Sora came completely out of left field. Sora was trashed, to the point where his percentage recovery was something that no one gave a crap about. With KH, it was just a swing that everyone expected, but knew meant nothing. MG was going to win this match with ease regardless. The only thing out of the ordinary about this match was the horrid prediction percentage. Apparently that pre-contest poll about the most likely 1 seed to fall early had an effect on people, because Halo really seemed like the consensus pick to win the division. As it would turn out however we saw four divisional finals of 1 \> 2. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2450&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. vs (2)Super Smash Bros. 2006 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. vs (2)Super Smash Bros. 2006 (revid 56381)_ ## Results Friday, July 28th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Mushroom Division Final - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 28th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 29,147 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. - 69.10% 122 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. - 62.89% (29,054 brackets) Peach not getting into Mario's side of the match pic is a crime. Anyway, WHAT an awesome performance by SSB here. Normally I call matches like this complete blowouts, but this one is different. With the exception of the few people that actually expected SSB to win this (equivalent to that one guy in every fantasy football league that misses the draft and sends some lackey with a half-ass list to draft for him, then whines about his team sucking the day after), most people expected Mario to flat-out kill SSB via the SFF bug. Smash almost breaking 40% is nothing short of a complete shock. Even funnier is that after the day vote when Mario was about to break 64.5%, Smash came back and sliced nearly 3% off of the percentage. It was clinic in how to avoid SFF by Smash if nothing else. Pre-contest, there were many debates about what the fourth strongest series would be. No one expected Smash to actually take that spot, especially after facing Mario in a match that many expected to be an 80-20 SFF killing. All talk of Mario perhaps upsetting FF pretty much died during this match. But it's a testament to the fact that Smash may very well be the last casual appeal that Nintendo has in the gaming market. Nintendo's accepting the place of profitable third place and alienating third party developers (in large part due to said developers knowing that they can't compete with first party Nintendo titles on Nintendo systems, so they go elsewhere), not to mention the girly look of the Gamecube and the odd nature of the Gamecube controller has a lot of casual slash "jock" gamers going elsewhere for their needs. With Smash however you rarely see it lumped into all of the complaints. I've heard every other major title on the Gamecube labeled as kiddy crap and/or flat-out horrendous by casuals, but not Smash. The worst thing people ever call Smash is a party fighting game, which says a lot about its staying power. If this match were held pre-SSBM, we probably would have seen the 80-20 SFFing that everyone expected. But for whatever reason, the massive popularity of SSBM allowed SSB to resist this. Call it rSFF or whatever, but the proof is in the numbers. There is supposedly massive, near-linear overlap between the two series, yet SSB wasn't SFFd to hell. I credit this to SSBM being the last thing Nintendo has done that actually appeals to casuals (save Metroid Prime), but if you have any other reasons I'd love to hear them. I'm sure your guess is as good as mine. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2451&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy vs (2)Resident Evil 2006 _source: (1)Final Fantasy vs (2)Resident Evil 2006 (revid 56383)_ ## Results Saturday, July 29th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Ultima Division Final - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 29th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 70,950 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy - 77.21% 124 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy - 87.42% (40,386 brackets) Resident Evil 4 could only take the RE franchise so far, it seemed. After a record-setting killing of Shadow Hearts and a win over fellow Capcom series Street Fighter, the only thing really left for RE was to job to Final Fantasy in the final match that would give off the illusion that FF was championship material. RE did this quite well. After of course taking the board vote (which everything seems to do against FF, for some reason), RE began its expected decline. From there FF winning was a formality, but the one thing left of note would be to see whether or not Resident Evil would do better on FF than Mega Man, which would effectively put RE at \#1 in terms of Capcom series. Yeah, that lasted all of one hour. RE fell below 25.81% after one hour, and never saw the percentage again in the match. FF's latest blowout meant that the Final Four everyone saw coming was intact: four 1 \> 2 matches, which I think had never happened before this contest. Oddly enough, the Final Four would wind up being far less predictable than everyone had originally thought. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2452&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (1)Metal Gear 2006 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (1)Metal Gear 2006 (revid 56385)_ ## Results Sunday, July 30th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 30th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 62,856 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 70.11% 114 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 75.72% (34,981 brackets) I have to say that the match pic theme for this Final Four was genius. I thought it was crap at first, but then I saw the years on the picture. Very nice touch by Ceej. This match is also pretty funny, now that I look back on it. There were two days left in this contest, and there were literally no signs of the pending shock upset we were two days from seeing. Sure Zelda performed to insane proportions to this point of the contest, but so did Final Fantasy. And though Zelda coming out and beating the hell out of Metal Gear was something everyone knew was coming, it wasn't the TOTAL killing that we had grown accustomed to seeing from Zelda in this contest. Before Metal Gear came along, no series had even broken 20% on Zelda. Even more odd was that Zelda's percentage didn't really move much throughout the match. At the first freeze, it had 72.78%. At the final freeze, 73.74%. You'd expect more from the king of the day vote. I realize that Metroid and MMX saw virtually no movement, but those were probably SFF matches. In the end, Zelda was left with an easy path to the final and an inevitable clash with Final Fantasy as the underdog. Zelda winning wouldn't have surprised anyone, but Final Fantasy was still the clear favorite for obvious reasons. Final Fantasy 7 + other FFs contributing to FF's strength meant an uphill climb for Zelda. Supposedly. Oddly enough, the result of the final was essentially locked in before it ever happened, thanks to the insane performance Mario would put on in the other half of the Final Four. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2453&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. vs (1)Final Fantasy 2006 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. vs (1)Final Fantasy 2006 (revid 56387)_ ## Results Monday, July 31st, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 31st, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 10,221 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy - 59.37% 113 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy - 62.64% (28,938 brackets) Don't let the final result of this match fool you; this contest was done and over one hour into the Final Four match precluding the Zelda/FF final. It's not even the fact that Mario did well, either. Mario did well following a *damn-near collapse* against Super Smash Brothers. All talk of Mario pulling off a miracle died during that match. Three days later, "WTF, Mario isn't SFFing Smash?" turned into whining about Final Fantasy actually winning. It was that drastic a turnaround. And why wouldn't it have been? People were itching like mad for a huge upset in this contest, and had Mario actually pulled this off, all of the 18 or so perfects would have fallen. Early in the match, Mario took the board vote. This was expected, because \*\*\*\*in' everything takes the board vote against Final Fantasy in these things. I'll never understand it. The catch is that this wasn't any normal board vote. Mario jumped ahead by 250 after 15 minutes; even if this was solely an anti-FF board vote, a lead that large for that long meant far more than CATS leading Cloud for a few seconds. Mario was making a serious run at actually winning the match, which is something that very few people took seriously pre-contest. Hell if anyone mentioned the possibility of Final Fantasy not winning this contest in the stats topic, the standard wave of elitist snobs were more than quick to shoot said posts down. Because really, Mario and Zelda had little chance of taking down the "OMG most powerful force we've ever seen in a contest!1". Because really, a year-old match between Mario and Sephiroth was 100% indicative of how a match between the two series of the characters would go after a massive influx of vote totals. Because really, Mario the series scoring 46.76% against Sephiroth and everything else in the FF series, one year after Mario the character scored 43.93% on Sephiroth himself I might add, didn't spell utter doom for Final Fantasy in the next round. Mario the series scoring higher on FF than Mario did on Sephy kind of made the final obvious to me, but what do I know. I, along with everyone else that saw the inevitable of tomorrow, had to sit through 24 hours' worth of Final Fantasy supporters clamoring complete nonsense about how Mario and Zelda are equal enough in strength pre-SFF for FF to win in the final. People seriously will spout anything to defend their bracket, I swear. It's actually funny. Final Fantasy saw Mario's 260 vote lead and cute struggle to hold it, then went berserk during the day vote to win by over 10000 votes. And it mattered not, because Final Fantasy had zero chance to win this contest after that first hour. If Mario (a series that hasn't proven itself to be in FF's league ever since Mario/Cloud in 2002) could pull that off, what damage would Zelda be capable of? Even funnier is that the various scoring records set in this match would last one day. *One*. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2454&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (1)Final Fantasy 2006 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda vs (1)Final Fantasy 2006 (revid 56389)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 3,123 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 51.05% 66 for - 49 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 35.66% (16,474 brackets) Yay user submitted pics. There's always one or two real gems whenever these come up, and getting to see Dark Knight Cecil = win. And for the second match in a row, the final score doesn't do the match justice at all. At a glance, you see a tough 3000 vote win for Zelda. In reality, look at what Zelda was up against for a moment. The mentality here was that the combined strength of the Final Fantasy franchise would be too much for Zelda to handle. And it was a good theory, because FF7 demolished OOT in 2004. Even if you add all the Zelda games together, would Zelda even beat FF7? Would Link beat FF7? After all, everyone knows that Link is a complete and valid proxy for the entire Zelda series and his contest strength in character battles was a perfect indicative of how Zelda would do against Final Fantasy --- see also: "not well". But no one thought to consider the opposite point of view --- that is, Final Fantasy 7 being a complete and valid proxy for the full force of the Final Fantasy series. I made a point pre-contest, and it was of course passed off. It's a good time to bring it back up. Not an exact wording, but it's close enough: "Let's assume that Link actually is a proxy for the Zelda series for a moment, and that Zelda fans are every bit as diverse as FF fans. Looking into the strength of the games, you get a closer match than everyone thinks. - Zelda 1 \> Final Fantasy with ~56.5% - LTTP \> FF6 with 52.66% - FF7 \> OOT with 53.82% Starcraft royally screwed up the D128 stats, so we'll just call WW and FFX even. FF8 and MM are both black sheep in the two series, so we have no real reading on either. This essentially leaves us with FF7 being the only thing in the Final Fantasy series that is reliably stronger than its Zelda counterpart. All the other Zelda games being equal to and/or stronger than their counterparts can't help make up the difference? Link being a complete beast and being a combined 5-1 against Cloud and Sephiroth can't help make up the difference? The massive and ongoing Nintendo boost since the Twilight Princess announcement can't help make up the difference? Plug in Summer 2005 Link against Final Fantasy 7 in the Xst Calculator, just for kicks. FF7 only wins with 50.4% of the vote. All of the other, non-FF7 factors favoring Zelda can't allow Zelda to pull off the upset here? Frankly, Zelda has an excellent chance to win this. All FF has going for it is FF7, because the added boost from the other games is shaky if Zelda gets any boost at all from its non-OOT games as well. I'm sticking with FF in my bracket, but I won't be surprised at all if Zelda wins." This was a great debate before Mario/FF, but the match was a mere formality once FF showed any sign of weakness. The "Zelda might be close to Mario in strength before SFF" logic was wishful thinking at best, plus all of the Nintendo fans were just pissed as hell once Mario went down. The second Mario/FF ended, it's like the entirety of Nintendo decided to try and crush FF all at the same time. And frankly, it worked. Within the first two and a half hours of the poll, Zelda jumped out to a 2200 vote lead with minimal resistance. It's kind of a shame that we have so many Link/Cloud matches to draw trends from, because the FF comeback attempt that happened after this would have actually meant something. As it stood, FF using the night vote to cut that 2200 vote lead down to 1400 meant nothing. It's like when you're dating a really hot girl that you know is cheating on you. You know it's over, but you let it ride out as long as possible anyway just because she's hot. And FF strung this thing out for a long time. Its comeback/stall effort lasted all the way until 8 a.m., well past the time when Link began laying waste to Cloud so many times prior. But everyone knew what was coming. Zelda used its historically beastly day vote to lay Final Fantasy to waste and clinch arguably the biggest contest upset since Cloud \> Link in 2003. Its lead grew to 3800 before the evening vote kicked in and allowed FF to make the match a bit more respectable. FF cut that 3800 vote lead down to 3200. Ceej was even nice enough to count the votes from the poll closing glitch that extended the poll five minutes. That extra five minutes actually allowed FF to break 49%. But like Magus a year ago, a push to make the match respectable doesn't stick with anyone. FF was the overwhelming favorite. It was the obvious favorite. It was supposed to crush this contest with ease, much like Sephiroth in the villain's contest. But it choked. Hard. Welcome to the final transition to NintendoFAQs, folks. The summer of 2003 when Nintendo and Square were even seems like such a long time ago... But unlike Square's gradual decline, Nintendo has no reason to lose strength on GameFAQs for a long time. Not with the Wii as anticipated as it is and Sony and Square doing everything in their power to screw themselves over. We might be seeing NintendoFAQs for quite a while. As a final note on the final, the total votes and FF's votes in a loss are records that may never be broken. Then again I said this after Link/Cloud 2003, and we saw how that turned out. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2455&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k6&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Character Battle 2006 _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 68 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Summer 2006 Contest _source: Summer 2006 Contest (revid 83997)_
Summer 2006 Contest

Announced:

June 26, 2006

Started:

September 21, 2006

Ended:

November 13, 2006 (regular)

Nov 18, 2006 (BR)

Winner:

Regular bracket: Samus Aran

Battle Royale: Link

'''ULTIMATE BATTLE

Contest Winner:

Jakyl25 (220/240 pts)

Notable matches:

Kairi vs. Claire, Luigi vs. Zero, Sub-Zero vs. MC, Jill vs. Peach, Samus vs. Tifa, Sonic vs. Crono
**Summer 2006 Contest** On June 26, 2006, CJayC [announced](http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=11&topic=27984184) that there was going to be a **2006 Character Battle**. However there was now a "twist"- instead of nominating any 10 characters, you had to nominate 7 male characters and 7 female characters. The bracket was made of 32 spots for males and females, with the strongest male going against the strongest female in the Championship. Link, Cloud, Sephiroth, and Mario were separated in a "Battle Royale", similar to the "Tournament of Champions" of SC2005. On August 18 the 1 and 8 seeds were announced, along with the fact that Midgar Zolom and Jay Solano wouldn't make it in, much to the dismay of many Board 8 users. Solano would later appear in a Board 8-only match against Link. ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
Spazer Division Samus Tifa Samus Zelda Samus Snake Samus
\(1\) Samus (8) Nidoran F Samus Ada Samus Rikku
\(4\) Ada Wong (5) Jade
\(3\) Rikku (6) Lenneth Valkyrie Rikku Kairi
\(2\) Kairi (7) Claire Redfield
Limit Division
\(1\) Tifa (8) Ivy Valentine Tifa The Boss Tifa Peach
\(4\) The Boss (5) Celes
\(3\) Jill Valentine (6) Sheena Fujibayashi Jill Peach
\(2\) Princess Peach (7) Princess Daisy
Triforce Division Zelda Yuna
\(1\) Zelda (8) Carmen Sandiego Zelda Terra Zelda Aeris
\(4\) Terra Branford (5) Sarah Kerrigan
\(3\) KOS-MOS (6) Amy Rose KOS-MOS Aeris
\(2\) Aeris (7) Marle
Aeon Division
\(1\) Yuna (8) Roll Yuna Joanna Yuna Chun-Li
\(4\) Joanna Dark (5) Cortana
\(3\) Chun Li (6) Kasumi Chun-Li Lara
\(2\) Lara Croft (7) Alyx Vance
Patriot Division Snake Mega Man Snake Sonic
\(1\) Solid Snake (8) Soma Snake Squall Snake Yoshi
\(4\) Squall (5) Tidus
\(3\) Riku (6) Yoshi Yoshi Dante
\(2\) Dante (7) Ryu Hayabusa
Destiny Division
\(1\) Sora (8) Tingle Sora Gordon Sora Mega Man
\(4\) Phoenix Wright (5) Gordon Freeman
\(3\) Kratos (God of War) (6) Ryu Ryu Mega Man
\(2\) Mega Man (7) Axel
Blast Division Sonic Crono
\(1\) Sonic the Hedgehog (8) CATS Sonic Vincent Sonic Luigi
\(4\) Ganondorf (5) Vincent Valentine
\(3\) Kirby (6) The Prince of Persia Kirby Luigi
\(2\) Luigi (7) Zero
Time Division
\(1\) Crono (8) Captain Falcon Crono Bowser Crono Auron
\(4\) Bowser (5) Leon Kennedy
\(3\) Auron (6) Alucard Auron Sub-Zero
\(2\) Master Chief (7) Sub-Zero
## Results and Analysis ### Interesting Facts - The Ultimate Loser of the 2006 Contest was Master Chief. Chief lost to Sub-Zero, who lost to Auron, who lost to Crono, who lost to Sonic, who lost to Solid Snake, who lost to Samus. - 14 of the 64 characters who appeared in this contest haven't made a Character Battle since. To no one's surprise, 13 of the 14 are female; the only male on that list is Soma Cruz. ### Ulti's Analysis CJayC halfway announced a surprise twist this time around by making the nomination form 7 male 7 female. He never actually said what the twist \*was\*, but the three ideas thrown around were a 32-32 bracket, a tag team battle or a 48-16 bracket. The last one made no sense and a tag team would be match pic hell for Ceej, so even though no one wanted to admit it until they saw it, we were due for some 32-32 goodness. Or badness. The last post Slowflake read before leaving Board 8 for good (allegedly \<\_\<): *From CJayC Posted 8/18/2006 8:00:34 PM \#001* *Preliminary, may change, but looking solid.* *1s:* *Solid Snake, Sora, Sonic, Crono.* *Samus, Zelda, Tifa, Yuna.* *8s:* *Soma, CATS, Captain Falcon, Tingle.* *Roll. Carmen Sandiego, Ivy, Nidoran F.* *And, for the record, Midgar Zolom and Jay Solano weren't even remotely in the running.* This did little more than reveal the 32-32 format, as well as an 8x8 format therein. General consensus was that the male side was a beast to predict, but the female side was horrendous. Given how everything went down, it's hard to disagree with this. My personal ranking of contests: 1. Summer 2002 2. Spring 2004 (Games) 3. Summer 2006 4. Summer 2003 5. Summer 2005 6. Spring 2006 (Series) 7. Spring 2005 (Villains) 8. Summer 2004 ### Ngamer's Analysis Eh, I think everyone knows the story of '06 pretty well. Really terrible and fodderific (as in, *Villains-bad*) Female half pulled out of the fire at least somewhat by Peach/Jill and the complete insanity that was Samus/Tifa, while the Male side was great throughout. That half was just solid top to bottom, and featured some true gems in Sonic/Crono, the truly delightful Subby \> MC, and fun upsets in Luigi \> Zero and Steroid Snake's awesome run. And then to have more surprises in the BR with Mario dropping out early and Snake outlasting Sephy was just the icing on the cake. Overall I'd rate 2006 as a "Very Good" Contest, but the 28 or so useless Female matchups are always going to hold it back from "Great" status. --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (8)Nidoran F 2006 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (8)Nidoran F 2006 (revid 56663)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Spazer Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 74,353 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 90.03% 145 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran - 97.16% (41,435 brackets) Of all the joke characters that were heavily rallied by Board 8, Nidoran F was the one that made it. I don't know how much of this had to do with Ceej manually not caring about some results (there's no WAY Solano didn't have enough noms), but it's a known fact that Nidoran also had the full backing of LUE and LL. Her reward was to be 8 seed fodder. *Insert silly "The first match isn't about who wins, but by how much" line* We've had what, eight contests? And 8 times, we've seen Nintendo take the \#1 overall seed. 8 times, we've seen Nintendo make a killing in that first match. This one was a mite different depending on your perspective. Either Samus was supposed to SFF Nidoran F into oblivion en route to like a 95-5 beating, or you remembered that Samus always stinks up the joint against Nintendo. And in this case, that paired with the joke entrant factor kept Samus under 80% for quite awhile. She eventually would "only" win with 81.85% of the vote, and leave it to Board 8 to start writing a character's epitaph after ONLY scoring 81.85% in a match. Nothing here proved anything about Samus; NF just had the joke factor going for her, plus Pokemon has legitimate strength anyway. NOMINATE MEWTWO PLZ KTHX. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2499&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Ada Wong vs (5)Jade 2006 _source: (4)Ada Wong vs (5)Jade 2006 (revid 56665)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Spazer Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 50,829 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ada Wong - 63.77% 146 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ada Wong - 64.77% (27,622 brackets) This match was the first of many that would cause mass whining about the female bracket, though the whining was kind of funny in this match. "Who the F is Jade?" was the slogan of the day, as well as postulations claiming that Jade from Mortal Kombat would have given Ada a real match. ...come to think of it, I can't remember what game Jade is from. Beyond Good and Evil, was it? Anyway, depending on your perspective, this match was one of two things. Either Ada was a complete beast, or Jade just sucked. It wouldn't take long for us to find out, because Ada's easy win meant a date with Samus in the next round. Fun little note: the Resident Evil day vote is so pathetic that Ada's percentage actually went down a little bit before she made a slight recovery in the evening. I'm also completely out of things to say (boring matches featuring two noobs do that), so I'll just ask "HOW THE \*\*\*\* DID JADE GET A 5 SEED?" and move on. Honestly, Jade was so pathetic that our streak of matches breaking 100,000 total votes ended by about 1850. Damn yoooooooou. On the bright side, I had actually polished up RE4 just before this contest began. Seeing Ada win a match was pretty nice, and I don't care what XIII says. Ada is the third best character in Mercs for her semi-auto rifle *alone*. As for how much damage she takes, stop sucking and learn how to avoid things \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2500&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Rikku vs (6)Lenneth Valkyrie 2006 _source: (3)Rikku vs (6)Lenneth Valkyrie 2006 (revid 63951)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, September 14th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Spazer Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 14th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 55,420 - **Oracle Expectations:** Rikku - 74.78% 147 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Rikku - 85.94% (36,650 brackets) One of these days, I need to get around to playing the iso of Valkyrie Profile that I own (er, HAVE \<\_\<) just to see how Lenneth is doing so well in that "Who Would Win in a Fight?" contest. I don't think I've ever seen KOS-MOS lose a match in one of those things until this year. And with that said, isn't it odd to think that Rikku is the FFX entity to pull off the biggest blowout for the series? Tidus, Auron, Yuna, and even FFX itself couldn't ever pull 75% in a poll, but Rikku could. Says a lot about how many people even know who Lenneth is. I should also get around to playing Valkyrie Profile 2 one of these days, for the same reasons as above. But thinking about that is depressing, because my backlog of games is absolutely beyond catching up with :( Hmm, what else can be said about such a boring blowout... Well the vote totals got back above 100,000, and I believe they stayed there for the rest of the contest. Rikku proved that last year's good match against Ryu was no fluke, at least in terms of being consistent. It's difficult for most flukes to ever break 75% in a match, unless they're up against complete jokes. And if this match didn't prove Rikku's worth, the second round likely would in the eyes of most. You know, I just noticed that of all of Ceej's division names, "Spazer" is the most badass-sounding of them all. Ruin and Patriot come close, but come on. Spazer? FF6 taking a 1 seed in a games contest and being named the Havoc Wing division is the only thing I can think of that sounds more badass. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2501&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Kairi vs (7)Claire Redfield 2006 _source: (2)Kairi vs (7)Claire Redfield 2006 (revid 56669)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 15th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Spazer Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 15th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 4,496 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kairi - 54.70% 110 for - 39 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kairi - 62.48% (26,645 brackets) There were about 9 million good reasons for either character potentially winning this match, and I don't have nearly enough free time to cover them all. So here's a couple of bullet lists of pros that favored both characters: Kairi: - Kingdom Hearts 2 - Sora and Riku's past performances lining up well with RE's, and a KH2 boost would be enough to put Kairi over the top. - KH fans care about Kairi a little more than RE fans care about Claire. The seeding for the two characters helps prove this weirdo theory people had. - Jill went down pretty much every year until she was out of the bracket entirely, while the KH crew went up. Claire was in one bracket, 2002, and her Xst rating in that bracket is completely irrelevant. Claire: - Said 2002 performance proving some potential strength. - Resident Evil 4; there had to be some carry-over to past games, right? - KAIRI DOES NOTHING in either game until the tail end of both. - Resident Evil had a higher Xst rating in the series contest than Kingdom Hearts, and the series contest happened post-KH2. - RE2 fans claim that Claire is the most popular character in the game. Basically, seeding aside, this was a good tossup match. A lot of people picked Kairi based on seeding and KH2, yet she is completely untested and likely only got the seeding because of how fodder-y the female half was. On Claire's side, we've at least seen her in action before with some strength, even if Tidus has since bombed to hell and back since his glory days of 2002-2003. Matches where we have no stats to go on and both characters have good chances of winning are always the best. Kairi began the match with an expected bracket vote surge, and she kept up her momentum en route to a lead of over 500 after just over 90 minutes. But she never took full control of the match, and just like during Castlevania/Kingdom Hearts in the series contest, a night vote beast would put KH back on its heels. 1:40 into the match, Kairi had a 535 vote lead. 5 minutes later, Claire shot that thing down to 463 and just kept on rolling from there. RE's historically good night vote took over, and after a stall effort from Kairi in which she pushed her lead back over 500, Claire took control of the night. It was a painstaking process for her for quite awhile thanks to a ton of Kairi stalling, but the dead of night allowed Claire to push the lead under 200. Unfortunately, the morning vote hit Claire like a storm surge and Kairi was back over 500 in no time. But then all of the kids went to school, and Claire once again found herself chipping away bit by bit. Her breakthrough finally came around lunchtime. 10:40 into the match, Kairi was up by 300 votes. It took Claire one hour to gain the lead for the first time, and she used the rest of the in-school vote very well; by the time the kids got out of school, Claire had a 500 vote lead of her own. Here's where the fun really began. Now for starters, Smurf more or less bragged about vote-stuffing for Claire and got himself axed during the match. Whether or not he actually did will always be 'officially' unknown, but it's very rare for someone to get an axe for simply joking about cheating during a match that wasn't all that close. And regardless, it didn't even matter in the end. All Kingdom Hearts fans and contest veterans knew what was coming, which was KH yet again laying waste to some poor sap during the day vote. KH came back against Soul Calibur twice during the day. Riku gave Frog a mild scare during the day. Sora turned an even match with Alucard into a joke during the day. Ansem, despite being in trouble against CATS for hours, laid waste to him once the day vote came along. And these are just famous example of KH winning matches this way; it's cut off a ton of percentage during the day vote in almost all of its losses as well. Claire Redfield would end up the next sap in line for a KH day vote beating. At 2:25 EST, Claire was up by 500 votes on Kairi. It didn't even take an hour and a half for Kairi to erase all of that, and Kairi went absolutely berserk on Claire once she caught up to her. Claire's 500 vote lead turned into getting her face kicked in by almost 4500 votes by match's end. This rivals the great vote swings ever seen in contests, and turned a pretty good match into a one-sided joke. Claire was 9 and a half hours away from what would have been a pretty nice upset, but not a lot of people are going to remember that; instead, the KH day vote archive was being set in stone. Regardless of who you were pulling for here, put some perspective on what Kairi did here. In all three KH games, the only action she takes that I like her for is the KH1 ending sequence. It's an amazing sequence and I love her for it, but you'll never hear me saying anything about how deep she is. She does hardly anything in any of the games, despite the story virtually revolving around Sora and Riku's shared love for her. And yet because of the series she stars in, she kicked the holy hell out of what RE fans consider an elite. Um... ouch? KH2F confirmed. I don't think there's a chance in hell Kairi wins this if this match is held in 2005, but we'll never really know. What I can say for sure is that a handful of RE characters could certainly use a leading role or two in upcoming RE games, assuming they're as good as 4. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis It’s funny how it’s often the most inconsequential matches that prove the most exciting. This first-round tossup was more exciting than almost all of the other female bracket matches put together (which isn’t saying that much, but still). I’m pretty sure there were a bunch of lead changes (again, IIRC), with Claire leading for the morning and Kairi coming back with the afterschool vote, though it was a very neck-and-neck battle. It’s rare nowadays that a big-name match gets as much excitement as smaller ones do (this year being the exception – thanks, L-Block); four matches in and people were already eliminated from the Guru, including master predictor yoblazer. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2502&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Tifa Lockheart vs (8)Ivy Valentine 2006 _source: (1)Tifa Lockheart vs (8)Ivy Valentine 2006 (revid 56671)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 16th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Limit Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 16th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 66,072 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tifa Lockhart - 79.60% 150 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tifa Lockhart - 90.99% (38,804 brackets) This match wasn't at all interesting, so I'll first discuss the one thing that there is to discuss. Look at that match pic. Did you ever think that you would see the queen of TJF get TJF'D like that? God damn, Ivy could boob-smother Tifa at like a 2:1 ratio. This seriously caused like an extra 40k votes, I bet. But seriously, the vote totals in this match were a bit ridiculous, especially given that this was a premeditated blowout. I know it was a weekend match involving FF7 and all, but you'd think Ivy would have brought the totals down a notch. Tifa's performance here was probably the first truly dominant showing of the contest, given that for whatever reason people felt that Samus disappointed against Nidoran F. She broke 96000 votes against a character from a game that came within hours of beating Kingdom Hearts two years ago. On a related note, Ivy's doing badly, Soul Calibur's doing badly and Nightmare not even making the field despite placing in the Rally Tournament make me think that Soul Calibur's showing against KH was a fluke. Close fourpacks generally see anomalies, and Soul Calibur would be another good example of that. There's also the fact that Soul Calibur 3 didn't make nearly the splash of the first two games. But hey, at least it's got boobs! It's also pretty funny to think that Tifa's future scaring of Samus *may* have been clued in before this contest was a week old. Compare Tifa's first match to Samus's and ask yourself whose was more impressive. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2503&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)The Boss vs (5)Celes Chere 2006 _source: (4)The Boss vs (5)Celes Chere 2006 (revid 56673)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, September 17th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Limit Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 17th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 24,222 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Boss - 50.92% 81 for - 68 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Boss - 68.19% (29,080 brackets) There were many a match unnecessarily debated pre-contest, and this one right here is one of my favorites of the bunch. I \*knew\* that Celes was going to lose despite all of the ridiculous hype given to this thing, and I'll try my best to repeat the reasons I gave when the "omg Celes will win :(" stress grew thicker and thicker as the match drew close. MAJOR SPOILERS FOR MGS3 AND FF6 ARE COMING, HEATHENS. Celes is one of my favorite characters, and by far my favorite FF chick. She has a sense of rugged individuality about her that any man would admire and aspire to, and went through hell to earn it. She's got style. She's got grace. She's got class. And she's a Magitek-infused Imperial General that would whip your ass in a heartbeat if you \*\*\*\*ed with her. Let me live in my illusion that it took hundreds of soldiers to capture and jail Celes, mkay? And even then, The Boss is just a better character and the ultimate patriot. She allows history to remember her as a defector and a traitor, as a woman who took the fall for America so that America could avoid a nuclear holocaust with the USSR. Then she dies for an America that spits on her time and time again in the process just so America could get her hands on the Philosopher's Legacy and clear its name of having fired a nuke in USSR territory in the first place. The Boss dies for a cause that no one knows exists and her own country sees her as one of history's big villains, setting the stage for perhaps the most touching moment in the HISTORY of gaming, and Celes's pathetic little cliff dive in which she fails at failing is supposed to compare? Give me a break. Furthermore, FF6 features an ensemble cast. As a whole, the game is a masterpiece, but no one part of the whole is given overwhelming favoritism by the fanbase. Meanwhile, MGS fans love The Boss. Her character is a masterpiece and one of Kojima's finest works. From a stats perspective, run a (lol) X-stats on 2005 Terra vs 2005 Ocelot. Supposedly overrated Terra gets creamed there, and Celes fans then turned around and assumed that The Boss vs Celes would see Celes make up a difference that large. Um... how? Why? FF6 characters have bombed time and time again in these things, yet people continue having blind faith in them anyway, assuming that SOMETHING from a game that popular has to be strong. Which is a failure in logic, by the way. Are Diablo characters strong? Are Starcraft characters strong? Ensemble casts can be weak in these contests, even if their game is as powerful as FF6. But I digress. The match finally came, and The Boss laid down a 60-40 beating on Celes that everyone should have seen coming way in advance. There is absolutely nothing else to discuss, given all of the information above. But if you must have hard numbers, so be it. The Boss started on the 60-40 path from the opening cell and didn't stop until Celes was a bloody pulp at the end of the match. Period, end of story, see you all tomorrow. WHY do you people feel the need to hype these types of matches? A desperate need to argue? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2504&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Jill Valentine vs (6)Sheena Fujibayashi 2006 _source: (3)Jill Valentine vs (6)Sheena Fujibayashi 2006 (revid 56675)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, September 18th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Limit Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 18th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 27,424 - **Oracle Expectations:** Jill Valentine - 64.42% 149 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Jill Valentine - 85.80% (36,590 brackets) This will likely be the only match we ever see Sheena in; it's kind of a shame that she had zero chance to win. It's tough to write about matches where the winner was all but given a bye, because anyone could have just looked at a few numbers in advance to see what was going to happen. However, there are two things worth noting here. Of all the stupid picks Lopen made, Sheena winning her fourpack was by far my favorite of them. I should make a topic making fun of him one of these days =p As for the actual match, the final numbers are a bad indicator of certain things; namely, Resident Evil being terrible with the day vote. We all knew how bad it was when Street Fighter managed to make a match out of its loss to RE in the series contest, but Jill doing similarly badly against Sheena was just ridiculous. And remember, we've seen RE vs TOS before in the form of Lloyd needing the day vote to really finish off Wesker. Sheena's day vote against Jill was kind of like that, though the match was never really in question. After Jill got an early bracket vote surge to get above 66%, she fell below a doubling 15 minutes into the match. She flirted in the 65% range all through the night vote, then mildly collapsed during the day. Jill giving up over 3% that late in the match to what is essentially a cult character is no small feat, and such lax performance during the after-school vote wouldn't cut it for Jill were she to see a close match later in the contest. omg foreshadowing \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2505&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Princess Peach vs (7)Princess Daisy 2006 _source: (2)Princess Peach vs (7)Princess Daisy 2006 (revid 56677)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Limit Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 72,188 - **Oracle Expectations:** Princess Peach - 83.93% 153 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Princess Peach - 92.66% (39,516 brackets) Two things killed the Jill/Peach hype. One was Jill's collapse against Sheena, and the other was Peach's killing of Daisy here in this match. And let me tell you something. I know I promised to be nicer and as unbiased as possible during this project, but for one match, screw that. I've loved Peach ever since Mario 2 when I was a little kid, and Mario 2 was the Mario game that really got me into the series. In a way, I grew up with her almost as much as Mario himself. Then after a massive hiatus, Peach returned in all her glory in SSBM. Don't even bother challenging me in SSBM. You and your friends probably suck at the game. I'll you in like 4 seconds. Oh and Super Princess Peach is decent; it's not deep and the way you have to use the stylus to get Peach to PMS while playing a platformer and trying to avoid things is silly, but the boss fights are actually pretty good and it's nice to see Peach have to save Mario's fat ass for once. Peach does all that work to look nice for him, wears a tight-ass dress every day that cuts off her airflow, and Mario doesn't even bother to mix in a salad or a trip to the gym every once in awhile? Come on yo, that crap ain't right. Oh yeah, there was a match here. Well Peach owns, and Daisy is a cheap ripoff that deserves a bum like Luigi. Mario may be fat, but at least he's badass. Do you ever see Mario using vacuums as weapons? No. Because Mario is a \*\*\*\*in' beast-ass pimp, baby. What he's lacking in having to lug that spare tire around gets made up for in badass factor and strategic drug use that proves their positive medicinal use. Lugee has never done crap, except act as a palette swap turned pansy-ass. Mario fires FIRE; Lugee fires farts. Discussion over. I mean damn, look how fat Daisy is. That match pic isn't Peach at her best (like here: [](http://www.themushroomkingdom.net/images/ssbm/dfd_peach_bowser.jpg)), but at least she doesn't have a donut for a face. Seriously, WTF @ Daisy. Mix in an Atkins diet sometime. Peach began this poll by ripping her fatass clone in half, and kept at it for 24 hours. LIKE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN. Get Daisy out of my face and out of my contests forever, plz. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2506&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Zelda vs (8)Carmen Sandiego 2006 _source: (1)Zelda vs (8)Carmen Sandiego 2006 (revid 56679)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Triforce Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 85,931 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda - 82.75% 151 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 98.17% (41,866 brackets) Carmen Sandiego was one of the rare mass-rallied characters that made the field, though it may have actually been better for her to stay on the sidelines. Zelda's throttling of Carmen in this here match was arguably the most dominant performance of the entire contest. Zelda actually started this match at a "mere" ~82%, but exploded during the day vote for the 86% win shown above. I'm also 99% sure that Zelda was the only character to break 100,000 votes individually all through this contest, but correct me if I'm wrong. It's also pretty funny how Zelda's performance here made her look like an actual threat to Samus in every regard, which started the whole upset bandwagon. Matches like this give credence to the theory that a supporting character can go berserk if their main isn't in the contest bracket. Or something. That doesn't explain Mario's steroids last year. Well anyway, not much to say. Zelda made a killing here, and her run of dominance was one of gold through the entire contest until very late. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2507&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Terra Branford vs (5)Sarah Kerrigan 2006 _source: (4)Terra Branford vs (5)Sarah Kerrigan 2006 (revid 56681)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, September 21st, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Triforce Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 21st, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 17,219 - **Oracle Expectations:** Terra Branford - 56.82% 138 for - 12 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Terra Branford - 56.52% (24,104 brackets) Before getting into the match, it's worth noting that this is the first time since 2002 where Board 8's childish whining actually convinced Ceej to change a match pic (Anyone from 2002 remember the Mega Man/Ms Pac Man debacle?). Naturally, Kerrigan whiners blamed the picture 100% for why she was about to lose. Ceej finally made a topic, accepted a wonderful photoshop by MYC and changed the pic before taking a funny little jab or two at how pathetic this board can get sometimes. Though if pathetic is defined as whining about nothing and being generally petty, this place might be one of the worst on the internet. It was also funny as hell when the match pic got changed, only to see Kerrigan get her ass handed to her anyway. Matches like this are what the X-Stats are actually good for; taking a match that may be up for debate normally but making an easy conclusion based upon how far apart they are in the stats. Terra was projected to score almost 60% on Kerrigan in 2005, and she came pretty damn close in a match that was not once in doubt. Sure there were the usual amount of people who expected Blizzard rallying to make a difference for one of its characters (which I never understood, because of the ensemble cast and PC characters always being weak issues), but they convinced almost no one that Kerrigan was going to be anything this year. Also, this match was a nice example of how for the most part, match pics \*might\* not matter for more than 1-2% in a match, save for the obvious exceptions like Snake and CT sprites. Kerrigan looked as good as she possible could, but only did something like 1.5% better than she was supposed to. I think it's safe to give up on the idea of Starcraft or any other PC characters ever doing much in these contests. Though with all of this said, Terra's win was about as ho-hum as it gets. The match didn't even break 100,000 votes, and she was actually over 60% at one point before losing 2% during the day. It was kind of clear that Zelda would kill her after seeing this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2508&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)KOS-MOS vs (6)Amy Rose 2006 _source: (3)KOS-MOS vs (6)Amy Rose 2006 (revid 56683)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 22nd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Triforce Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 22nd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 31,627 - **Oracle Expectations:** KOS-MOS - 61.89% 145 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** KOS-MOS - 71.25% (30,385 brackets) There was mild debate surrounding this match, though I don't really get why. Even most Sonic fans despise Amy Rose, and for good reason. She's an annoying tokenism character. Also for what it's worth, Xenosaga 3 did come out between 2005 and 2006, which would possibly give KOS-MOS the slight boost she would need to win a boring match between two characters that few care about. KOS-MOS coming out and winning this thing as easily as she did kind of surprised me, but then I remembered Xenosaga 3 and that even most Sonic fans hate Amy Rose =p. When you get a match between two characters that so few people care about, it doesn't take much to see a blowout happen. Though for what it's worth, the famed Sonic day vote turned this match from a 70-30 thumping into KOS-MOS not even pulling off the doubling. It didn't really matter here, but it would come into play big time later on in this contest. That's, um... all I really have to say about this one. Sorry :( ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2509&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Aeris Gainsborough vs (7)Marle 2006 _source: (2)Aeris Gainsborough vs (7)Marle 2006 (revid 82863)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Triforce Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 45,526 - **Oracle Expectations:** Aeris Gainsborough - 74.78% 149 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aeris Gainsborough - 87.74% (37,418 brackets) I would have enjoyed this match a lot more if I didn't utterly despise both characters, but moving on. I told JP for a good two years that Aeris would get into a contest again if he'd just shut up about her. When he finally decided to "leave" Board 8 (which he never actually did; he was here reading topics but not responding the entire time), she made it back in. Surprise surprise. Granted Aeris was a mortal lock to make it in under this male-female format (though it was odd not seeing her as an 11 seed having to score two "upsets" in a row to make it into the third round again), but that's beside the point. This match had the makings of being an SFF beating for the ages, but then I remembered that Chrono Trigger broke 40% on FF7 in the games contest. If there were any SFF in Aeris/Marle it would likely be minimal at best. And it was. Aeris did well in breaking 80,000 votes, but these percentages don't really line up with the historic SFF killings of the past. 70-30 is more what you'd expect from the natural strength of these two characters. One thing that caught my eye however is that Marle didn't completely collapse during the infamous "lol hi I'm the CT day vote and I suck" part of the match. Aeris only gained like 2% during the day, and Marle took almost a full percent of that back by the end of the match. If Aeris couldn't make a killing during the day vote against a CT character, then what chance in hell did she have of beating Zelda in the division finals? Because really, Zelda/Aeris was the only debatable part of this division going in... until Aeris failed to go nuts during the day vote against Marle of all people. KOS-MOS will get the credit for exposing Aeris, but she doesn't deserve all of it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2510&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Yuna vs (8)Roll 2006 _source: (1)Yuna vs (8)Roll 2006 (revid 56687)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, September 24th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Aeon Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 24th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 72,215 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yuna - 74.69% 147 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yuna - 90.68% (38,671 brackets) As bad as most people considered the female half, the Aeon Division was considered far and away the worst of the four on this side of the bracket. Yuna being a 1 seed, Lara being a 2 and various levels of rat being all below them in this division literally slowed the board down to a halt. This place was dead during most female match of the first round, but it was flat out rancid during the matches in this division. Which was kind of an unfair thing to say, because the Aeon Division is a badass name, plus the competitors did a fair job of impressing. Look at Yuna here. Granted Roll serves a miniscule roll (lolcwutid-\*gets shot\*) in the Mega Man series as a lolibait side character that no one cares about, but not anyone can come close to breaking 100,000 votes in a match by themselves. A lot of people wrote off Yuna's performance here as Roll being low-end crap fodder, mainly due to a psychological barrier people seem to have against FFX. Only a few days after Rikku scored the biggest blowout ever recorded by an FFX entrant, Yuna comes out and nearly breaks 80%. She would have broken 80 outright had she had a little more oomph behind her during the after-school vote. Regardless of how weak you felt Roll was, Yuna impressed big-time here. Quietest dominant blowout ever. And.... seriously, *Roll*? My god, there had to have been someone better out there. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2511&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Joanna Dark vs (5)Cortana 2006 _source: (4)Joanna Dark vs (5)Cortana 2006 (revid 64112)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, September 25th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Aeon Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 25th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 20,544 - **Oracle Expectations:** Joanna Dark - 57.24% 136 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Joanna Dark - 65.77% (28,048 brackets) For a minute (literally), I thought this match would be a good one. I had Cortana in my bracket in the very beginning of all this, but changed it later. And then I remembered a few things, most importantly being that Cortana is to Halo what Navi was to OOT -- a character that almost no one cares about slapped into a good game, meaning that not all things Halo would mean contest strength. Assuming you feel Halo has contest strength anymore, but more on that later in the round. Meanwhile, Joanna Dark might not be beast-level popular, but she at least has *some* things going for her, most notably the fact that she has [more than 4 fans](http://the-elite.net). Perfect Dark was a million seller on a Nintendo system, and Perfect Dark Zero being on the Xbox 360 was the perfect factor to help stem whatever Halo carryover that Cortana may have had going for her coming into the match. The end result was Jo scoring a 60-40 beating that was never in question, with Cortana not doing a damn thing in the match until it was well over half over and already decided. She might have won an update or two late in this match, but it's really not worth looking up. The only people who felt Cortana was going to do anything were a few Halo fans that fell into the trap of overestimating the game's popularity on this site. Happens every contest, and it'll happen again due to how overseeded Halo entrants always are. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2512&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Chun Li vs (6)Kasumi 2006 _source: (3)Chun Li vs (6)Kasumi 2006 (revid 56691)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Aeon Division - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 39,095 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chun Li - 64.85% 147 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chun Li - 73.89% (31,511 brackets) There isn't a whole lot to say about this match here. Everyone knew that Chun-Li would win easily (save a couple of DOA fanboys, though this match brought me to the sad reality that these people actually exist), and potential fighting game SFF would completely wipe out whatever Kasumi had going for her going into this. Until proven otherwise, I'll always believe that Street Fighter is this site's favorite fighting series (well, other than Super Smash Bros). It's actually worth noting that 2002 Kasumi (lol 2002 stats) gets something like 46% on 2005 Chun-Li, with Chun-Li being overrated due to Bowser. Maybe. So the Kasumi fans weren't totally nuts, plus there was DOA4 being on the 360. But even then, Chun-Li losing this seemed impossible, and she proved that it was all of two seconds into the match. Chun just took off and never looked back, though she did lose something like 3% during the horrid SF day vote. Now feels like as good time as any to point out that crap like the DOA "She Kicks High" commercial is the reason gamers aren't socially accepted in many circles. And if you don't agree, you're part of the problem. Glorifying the gamer stereotype of being so desperate that we'd whack it to pixels is pathetic. Show some pride. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2513&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Lara Croft vs (7)Alyx Vance 2006 _source: (2)Lara Croft vs (7)Alyx Vance 2006 (revid 56693)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Aeon Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 53,614 - **Oracle Expectations:** Lara Croft - 67.74% 147 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Lara Croft - 92.95% (39,639 brackets) It was easy to get excited over this match, especially if you were a Lara Croft fan. Sure Lara got off to a ridiculous start against a no-name character, but more importantly this was the final match of the first round in the female bracket. Woohoo! But seriously, Lara's dominance here was deceptive as anything. Yes Lara started strong and kept it going through most of the match, but look at her opponent. Who outside the HL2 fanbase even knew who Alyx was before this contest? Gordon Freeman's contest history is a good indicator of how much people really care about Half-Life characters. And furthermore, look at these vote totals. They're flat-out pathetic, which takes some credibility away from how 'well' Lara did here. This match more than anything was proof that most characters can look good if they're up against someone weak enough. This wasn't some grand return to glory for Lara in these contests, even though I'm sure her X-Stat value will fool a few people next year. You probably could have stuck CATS in this match and saw him break 60%. And with that, on to the males! Finally. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2514&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (8)Soma Cruz 2006 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (8)Soma Cruz 2006 (revid 56695)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, September 28th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Patriot Division - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 28th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 70,210 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 79.83% 135 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 96.56% (41,179 brackets) The biggest reason why everyone hated the male/female idea were the massive amount of snubs. Knuckles, Magus, Ness, Kefka, DK, Nightmare, Raiden, Fox, and probably a ton of other characters I'm forgetting were all booted in favor of seeing characters like Jade, Alyx Vance, Daisy and Nidoran F. I'm all for the spring being a quirky little twist, but call me a traditionalist for the summer contests. Gogogo 64 characters and such. And I get that this contest ended up being a good one, but think back to how this thing was before Snake/Mega Man before anointing and such. But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Before nearly every contest, we see a poll that looks like this: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2497) And it's funny as hell when those polls pan out, but more on that when it's appropriate. At the time Snake/Soma took place, Snake was still widely believed by many to be the weak link of the Noble Nine. He's had dominant performances in the past, but he's never been able to put them together late in a contest. This made it difficult to take Snake's dominant match against Soma very seriously, because this has always been his MO in the past; he goes beast early, gets a good win in the second round, looks like crap in the sprite round and then loses before he hits the Final Four. This changed a bit last year due to Snake's division being a joke and Bowser not keeping up in the sprite round, but Snake still couldn't get that NN win. However, going nuts on Soma Cruz is a bit more impressive than wasting Tanner or Manny Calavera; people actually know who Soma Cruz is. His Castlevania series did beat Halo to a pulp all of a month or so before this contest even began. Granted Soma only stars in two handheld titles, but still. Castlevania is Castlevania, and it's tough to imagine Soma being on even ground with the star of Grim Fandango. Grim what? Exactly. Maaaaaybe Snake showed that he meant business from day one, though to be fair it was still hard to take him too seriously after one match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2515&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Squall Leonhart vs (5)Tidus 2006 _source: (4)Squall Leonhart vs (5)Tidus 2006 (revid 56697)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 29th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Patriot Division - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 29th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 50,198 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall Leonhart - 60.39% 133 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall Leonhart - 68.57% (29,242 brackets) Hot damn, Squall looks hot as hell in that pic. And hot damn, I forgot to mention how badass the name "Patriot Division" is. Good stuff. Anyway, this match would have been a good one to see in 2004 before Mega Man punked Tidus and essentially rendered 2003 Tidus an overrated pile from there on out. Once upon a time, people actually believed that Tidus versus Squall would have been a good match with the site's love of FFX pushing Tidus over the top. I may have actually been one of these people. I honestly don't remember, because it's been while since anyone has considered Tidus strong. Looking back, his only good match was against Ganondorf in 2003. Beating Shadow in 2004 seemed nice, but Shadow's true colors have since shown as well. On top of Mega Man giving Tidus the business, let's not forget how badly Kirby made this guy look in 2005. Tidus barely did better than Ramza. I love FFT and all, but come on. Ramza? People could have simply looked at the 2005 stats to see how this was going, but that calculation only yields a 57.86% win for Squall. After all the crap that Squall has gotten over the years, including an SFF beating from hell at the hands of Cloud, it's almost like Squall was waiting for the chance to finally do this to someone else. And I don't care what anyone says; Squall owns, and even if you dislike FF8 you have to admit that he redeems himself like no one else ever has in the Kingdom Hearts series. Come match time, this turned into a funny SFF beating through and through, and you have to think that Tidus is done and that his 2003 stats can be thrown out. Tidus will never do anything in these contests again, but Squall at least has potential to improve if he keeps getting into KH games. There was even talk of a Squall \> Snake upset after this here match, which was somewhat viable based on past stats. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2516&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Riku vs (6)Yoshi 2006 _source: (3)Riku vs (6)Yoshi 2006 (revid 56699)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 30th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Patriot Division - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 30th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 13,069 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 58.42% 127 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 58.10% (24,777 brackets) This was an interesting little match. Most people in the know figured Yoshi for an easy win, while a lot of casuals took the pick-all-higher-seeds route. The result was a seeding upset and a low prediction percentage. There was some grounds for Riku possibly pulling off the upset, but it revolved around ridiculous KH2 boosts and Yoshi's stat values (all behind SFF) being near-100% accurate. Yoshi began this match on fire, but the rest of the poll was to watch how low he could go. Yoshi began this thing over 70%, then he just bombed down in percentage from there on in. Yoshi was never in danger of losing, but this was one of those moral-victories to-the-loser deals. Riku managed to snag an update or two here and there, and the beast KH day vote was on full display yet again. This left us with one of two conclusions upcoming in round two. Yoshi/Dante was on the horizon, and Yoshi backers argued that he was behind SFF in the stats in every contest, therefore his true value would come through for the win. For this to come through after Riku's performance, it would mean that Kingdom Hearts 2 kicked this contest's ass. The other ending to that whole debate would simply be Yoshi not coming through, and it didn't look too good after Yoshi's first match. Oh and watch us get Riku/Bowser in the first round next year. It's not a character battle without Riku getting fed to some green animal in the first round :( ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2517&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Dante vs (7)Ryu Hayabusa 2006 _source: (2)Dante vs (7)Ryu Hayabusa 2006 (revid 56701)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, October 1st, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Patriot Division - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 1st, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 36,318 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 64.55% 136 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 78.84% (33,622 brackets) Can't get more badass than that pic, can't get more boring than this match. According to 2005 stats, Dante was supposed to beat Ryu with 63.72% of the vote. As you can see, he did 1.5% better. He could have finished with a higher percentage, but he lost some percentage in the second half of the match for whatever reason. Now while this match could easily be used to ring Yoshi's death bell in the second round, that assumption means a constant Riku. Constant Riku was doubtful, and the 1.5% overperformance can easily be chalked up to bracket voting or random variation. That said, the Yoshi \> Dante upset wasn't looking too good after this match. Dante was clearly constant, while Yoshi was a wild card going in, relying on a NintendoFAQs factor to win. It's always nice having debated matches in which both characters have a good chance. Dunno what else there really is to say about Dante's win here, really. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2518&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sora vs (8)Tingle 2006 _source: (1)Sora vs (8)Tingle 2006 (revid 56703)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, October 2nd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Destiny Division - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 2nd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 63,392 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 78.41% 135 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 92.70% (39,533 brackets) Sora's first match was an odd one. After Kairi and Riku beasted the hell out of their opponents with the KH day vote, Sora was set to take on a universally hated POS in Tingle. But even then, Tingle is from Zelda. Pretty funny backdrop, really. KH day vote versus universal hate versus everyone loving the Zelda series. The end result? A 75-25 match for an entire 24 hours. How boring is that? No real vote trends, so no real conclusions to make. Just an easy win for Sora in a predictable path. \[Insert rage about Tingle getting in above all the snubs\] ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2519&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Phoenix Wright vs (5)Gordon Freeman 2006 _source: (4)Phoenix Wright vs (5)Gordon Freeman 2006 (revid 80286)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 - **Division:** Destiny Division - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 18,120 - **Oracle Expectations:** Gordon Freeman - 57.15% 105 for - 32 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Gordon Freeman - 56.79% (24,219 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis Let me be a bit serious before getting into the match. The hype for this thing was 100% useless. There was no way in hell Phoenix was going to win this, and I say that as one of his biggest fans. The game sold like ass, and all of the Phoenix hype assumed that Half-Life 2 never happened. What Gordon did against Leon Kennedy last year was no fluke. It's almost like Phoenix \> Gordon was as big a fad as Phoenix himself, though the game being awesome warrants fad power. Anyway, yeah... hype. Lots of it. For no real reason other than wanting to see GFNW continue on, and a loss to Phoenix Wright would have ended up the most embarrassing of them all. But deep down, I think most people realized that Gordon was going to win. I'm convinced the hype for this was more fad than anything else. Phoenix scored the board vote as one would expect, jumping out to a lead of over 100 in the first 5 minutes. But the board vote died after that, as did Phoenix's chances of pulling out the funniest win of all time. Gordon Freeman got on track at the ten minute mark, and never looked back en route to the first win he's ever had. Dunno if it'll be his last, but his first certainly wasn't as exciting as it could have been. This tends to happen when you beat one of the favored characters of Board 8, LUE and LL. Fitting division name, eh? We've been living in the negaverse ever since. Technically speaking, nothing that has happened since this match has occurred within the bounds of reality. ## Stats and Analysis When the bracket of the Summer 2006 Contest was shown, it seemed that Gordon Freeman would lose his match as usual. The really short sales of Phoenix Wright's game wouldn't break the tradition... especially with the Objection! website. Phoenix was winning in the first updates, but then... Gordon started to rise, and build an advantage. [60, 155, 500, 1000, 3000, 8000](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2520)... In the end, Gordon won. Phoenix and GFNW fans whined, and the universe didn't implode. People asked for the heads of Amazing Telephone, creator of GFNW, ZenOfThunder, whose PW rallying led to his high seed and defeat, and the anonymous who thought about the universe's end. And CATS became GameFAQs' biggest loser. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2520&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kratos vs (6)Ryu 2006 _source: (3)Kratos vs (6)Ryu 2006 (revid 56707)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Destiny Division - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 16,485 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 61.12% 132 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 49.01% (20,901 brackets) How odd that a match like Kratos/Ryu ended up being the first with a prediction percentage of less than 50. We like to bash the stats a lot, but matches like this where a ton of people may have picked the obvious loser without stats existing are a good example of what they're good for. Kratos being the bracket favorite against a staple like Ryu is proof that he has the casuals in his hip pocket. This match was never in doubt, but take a look at the beast day vote that Kratos has. At one point, Ryu was at 62% in the poll. He dropped 5% once the day vote got going, and Kratos managed to win several updates throughout the match. If Kratos is ever put into a winnable situation, we might see a nice comeback from him. It's worth noting however that Kratos's two matches in which he killed the day vote were against characters that tend to suck with it. Alucard is just terrible during the day, and anything Street Fighter isn't all that much better off. For the statheads, Kratos was only expected to get 34.02% here, but his number is warped due to that fluke Snake \> Sora match last year. We need to see something like Kratos against Master Chief just to test out whether or not this match makes him a fluke. On a side note, the SF3 Ryu sprite in M.U.G.E.N. is just unfair. I suck at fighting games and still never lose with him because of all the invincibility frames he has during a midair Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku or whatever the hell it's called. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2521&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Mega Man vs (7)Axel 2006 _source: (2)Mega Man vs (7)Axel 2006 (revid 56709)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, October 5th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Destiny Division - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 5th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 46,619 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 78.04% 136 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 90.46% (38,578 brackets) How many matches do you see between two characters that use metal blades for a weapon? Pay close attention to the night vote of this poll, because it was the one and only time all contest in which Mega Man looked like the Mega Man of old. He took off for 75% of the vote early, and all of the Snake \> Mega Man hype that began after the Soma Cruz beating seemed to be useless. But once the morning vote hit, Mega Man sort of... mildly collapsed. Mega lost a good 2% during the morning hours, then school hit and he stabilized. After school, Axel made another good percentage recovery and managed to get Mega under 70% with two hours left in the poll. Ultimately, Mega failed to break 70% altogether. Given the events of the contest to this point, it was easy to just blame this on Kingdom Hearts 2 and think nothing of it. Axel does kick all kinds of ass and such. But regardless of Axel's potential strength, it was a sign of things to come for the blue bomber. To think, four years ago Mega Man was a few hours away from beating Sephiroth. GOT IT MEMORIZED? (Had to do it at least once.) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2522&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (8)CATS 2006 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (8)CATS 2006 (revid 56711)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, October 6th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Blast Division - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 6th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 66,832 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 79.81% 132 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 96.42% (41,119 brackets) This match was the annual "feed CATS to a contender" duel, with Sonic taking in the benefits. However instead of this looking like Ansem vs CATS in which CATS actually did something early, it looked more like Cloud vs CATS. CATS took the lead for a few seconds, then got steamrolled through the rest of the match. What this match meant depended on whether or not you believe the picture of CATS mattered. It's widely believed that Eggplant CATS and Face CATS have two different strengths, but what we saw here was a bit of a hybrid of the two. That said: 2005 Sonic vs 2005 (Face) CATS: 75.01% for Sonic 2005 Sonic vs 2004 (Eggplant) CATS: 83.05% for Sonic Where Sonic ended up seems to look like the percentage he was "supposed" to get on a hybrid of the two pics, but there really weren't any conclusions that could be drawn from this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2523&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Ganondorf vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2006 _source: (4)Ganondorf vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2006 (revid 88425)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, October 7th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Blast Division - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 7th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 6,636 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vincent - 49.32% 64 for - 67 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vincent - 39.40% (16,803 brackets) This was a WIDELY debated first round match, and the fact that this thing meant as many points as Ada vs Jade should be criminal -- HM's stupid account bet with Sir Chris be damned. The basic idea was Ganondorf's pedigree against Vincent's overwhelming intangibles. The two are close in the stats and Vincent had a ton going for him going into the match, but 40% on Sephiroth and being from the Zelda series is difficult to overlook. As was Link's recent dominance of Cloud, paired with Zelda being the big favorite against Aeris. Picking Vincent over Ganon here was a major going against the grain. Though with all that said, perfect time to repaste this old analysis of mine: > From UltimaterializerX Posted 9/17/2006 3:28:16 AM \#049 > > I was bored: > > Auron scored 45.95 on Ganondorf. Dante scored 45.99% on Vincent. > > 33.02% ; that's Auron's BL value if you take his 2005 match with Ganondorf and plug him into the Villain Contest. Dante's BL value from last summer is 32.73%. > > (32.73 / 33.02) \* 50 = 49.56% is what Dante supposedly scores on Auron, but these two are only even if you assume the villain's contest is accurate. > > Basically, Ganondorf being favored against Vincent is based off of warped stats from when everyone thought Magus 2003 was legit, and a villain's contest in which Sephiroth was anti-voted to hell and back in the last two rounds. Is Ganon really that close to Mario of his own accord? > > If Ganon is overrated at ALL by our stats (and he is; none of the high readings we have on him are valid), Vincent might win that match in an easier fashion that people expect. Vincent might be overrated a bit due to FF7 \> CT SFF, but if he pulled 44.62% on Crono due to Advent Children then his value is kind of accurate by accident. And he's had his own game since last year. And he might even see some KH2F go his way. > > Barring NintendoFAQs showing its muscle again (a real possibility, of course), I really think Vincent might be due to surprise some people in a couple of weeks. Remember the Ganon/Tidus/Magus trio of 2003? Magus and Tidus have since bombed, and Ganon's inevitable coming down to earth was only being delayed because we're on ZeldaFAQs. What Vincent did in 2005 paired with everything he's had going for him since, paired with Ganon's being overrated made Vincent the favorite in my eyes. Not to mention the whole FF7 thing. Barring massive ZeldaFAQs slash bracket voting favoritism, I really felt like Vincent could win this match easily. Which is a theory that got a huge monkey wrench thrown into it early on in the match, because Ganon jumped out to a 130 vote lead within ten minutes. Vincent quickly recovered however, and the match was even ten minutes later. The two went back and forth like this in near dead-even fashion for quite awhile, but Vincent began to make his move once the night vote began to settle in. In between 1:30 and 2, Vincent increased his lead from 15 to 114. Ganon was never in the match again. Vincent went on to build a sizeable lead for himself through the night, and the best Ganon was able to do during the famous Zelda day vote was stall Vincent's lead increase every so often. In the end, the only thing that put this match into any question early was an early Ganondorf push from bracket voting (low prediction percentage as evidence) and Zelda fans that stayed up late. This phenomenon of Nintendo doing drastically better in the first hour or so compared to the rest of the night would be dubbed the Nintendo Power Hour by transience later on in the contest. On top of Ganondorf losing in the first round for I believe the first time ever, the massive Vincent \> Sonic bandwagon began not one second afterwards. This board is pretty sad in how desperate it is to see the Noble Nine break; Ganon was high in the stats based on warped circumstance, so naturally the statheads have to hype Vincent as being bigger than said warped stats in an effort to validate faulty logic. Vincent is good, but he's not that good. Yet. He does have the potential if he makes it into a future Kingdom Hearts title, though. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2524&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs (6)Prince of Persia 2006 _source: (3)Kirby vs (6)Prince of Persia 2006 (revid 56715)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, October 8th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Blast Division - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 8th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 28,545 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 66.92% 131 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 72.27% (30,820 brackets) Prince looks like Aragorn from LOTR in that picture. Sexy stuff \<\_\< Anyway, a lot of things went down in the Blast Division this contest. One of the most overlooked of them was how well Prince performed in this match. Pre-contest, it was blasphemy in some circles to assume that Prince could be in the same conversation as GoW Kratos. Kirby is projected to get 70% on Kratos based off 2005 stats, but those stats are warped in a lot of areas. After Prince almost broke 40% on Kirby, it's accurate to call Prince a decent midcarder, as well as calling into question the entire Kirby/Bowser/Snake thing in 2005. The disappointing thing for Kirby is that he began the match near 70%, then dived down in percentage until the end. Regardless of what you felt Prince's strength was, those who picked Kirby to lose in the next round looked in the clear at this point. Prince's day vote recovery was very... Kratos-like, come to think of it \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2525&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Luigi vs (7)Zero 2006 _source: (2)Luigi vs (7)Zero 2006 (revid 56717)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, October 9th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Blast Division - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 9th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 9,644 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 48.65% 41 for - 89 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 71.84% (30,637 brackets) This match was funny in that it was a great clash between casual bracketmakers and those "in the know". Most casuals picked Luigi without thinking twice, and as you can see there were more casuals than you might have expected. Most people with stat knowledge picked Zero without thinking twice, and the big debate with Zero was whether or not Kirby, not Luigi, would beat him before Sonic could. Most objections on Board 8 were met with either stats (Zero has always performed better than Luigi in them) or a history lesson, because Luigi has never really won a debated match. Even most of the Luigi backers on Board 8 knew this, and were betting on fanboy love or Zero being a fraud in the stats. And then the match began, with "O\_\_O WTF??" being the response of choice. Not only was Luigi in the match, but he was laying the beatdown into Zero en route to an absolute destruction of him. Luigi was on the ass end of everything other than seeding and match picture going into this match, yet Zero looked like the eternal underdog once the smoke cleared. It was Luigi's first win in a tough match, and the prediction percentage being revealed after the match added insult to injury. All of the people with knowledge of all those stats kind of got, um... punked. RPGuy (Loogie fanboy to the max) has the best theory of why it went down this way. Paraphrased, characters like Zero and Ryu and Dante do very well for themselves, but generally never had to face Squintendo characters in order to get the high values that we've all slapped on them. Non-Squintendo characters seem to have two different strengths, based on whether or not they're facing the two big companies. Eh, makes as much sense as anything else. Luigi's "upset" put him in prime position to make the Sweet 16 for the first time ever. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2526&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Crono vs (8)Captain Falcon 2006 _source: (1)Crono vs (8)Captain Falcon 2006 (revid 56719)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Time Division - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 54,784 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 75.45% 128 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 83.15% (35,460 brackets) The final division of this contest to get its first round out of the way was Crono's Time Division. Pretty bad division name, but it doesn't take away from Crono finally getting the 1 seed that had eluded him to this point. His debut as a 1 wasn't too bad, either. Captain Falcon is one of the best examples we have of the SSBM factor. It's a safe bet that of Falcon's 29306 votes, almost all of them were from people who would vote anything Smash over anything else. Honestly, have more than 20 people played an F-Zero title? The end result was predictable: Crono blowout. With one small footnote. Crono threatened 80% at one point, and Falcon brought him down to 74. Crono being ass during the day was bound to bite him eventually. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2527&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Bowser vs (5)Leon Kennedy 2006 _source: (4)Bowser vs (5)Leon Kennedy 2006 (revid 56721)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Time Division - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 13,153 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 63.44% 128 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 71.11% (30,326 brackets) Heeeeeey, it's another chance to tell people how great a game RE4 is! You're not a gamer unless you've played it. Fact and such. Stop whatever you're doing and play from start to finish. Seriously. Anyway, Bowser vs Leon was a gimme match with a twist. Leon was bound to do well given the PS2 version of RE4. And do well he did. Leon was only expected to get 37.63% here. After the initial bracket votes did little to help Bowser dominate, Leon scored what you see above. The match was rather boring; no real percentage swings, nothing to really discuss save for how well he ended up doing. However, PS2 RE4 release aside, this match paired with Kirby disappointing against Prince raised serious issues about how legitimate Bowser and Kirby really were in 2005. Yes we're on NintendoFAQs and such, but both characters setting themselves up for disappointment a year later couldn't have been coincidence. As for Leon, is he slated to be in RE5? The guy has some major potential if Capcom decides to stick with him. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2528&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (6)Alucard 2006 _source: (3)Auron vs (6)Alucard 2006 (revid 56723)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, October 12th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Time Division - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 12th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 33,451 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 59.69% 127 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 70.11% (29,899 brackets) One of the least-discussed contest happenings is the gradual decline of Alucard. As great as he was pulling all those upsets in the first two contests, he's really done nothing since. He has one win in three years, against GoW Kratos -- and it's tough to even imagine him pulling off that win again, for some reason. Alucard has kind of degenerated into fodder for high-end midcarders, which sucks. But we all love Alucard, so we'll never concede the current Alucard likely being the true colors all along. 2005 stats have Alucard scoring 37.14% in this match. Actual results seem good enough, but then you remember that Alucard is stuck behind that whacked out Snake/Sora match from 2005 and wonder WTF is up with him. No one views Snake/Sora as being legit, yet Alucard's warped number is what we saw in the match against Auron. Either Snake/Sora was legit, or Alucard is going downhill in a hurry. Poor guy. It was bound to happen eventually though, given that SOTN is getting old in a hurry regardless of how good it is. Or we could just slap KH2F on this match and move on. Auron's intro in that game is really one of the most badass things I've ever seen. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2529&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Master Chief vs (7)Sub-Zero 2006 _source: (2)Master Chief vs (7)Sub-Zero 2006 (revid 56725)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, October 13th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Time Division - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 13th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 2,426 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sub-Zero - 41.87% 6 for - 121 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sub-Zero - 20.28% (8,649 brackets) GFNW, meet Halo Never Wins (HNW). HNW, meet GFNW. You two should get along well together. Oh? Gordon Freeman has a more recent victory in contests than Halo does? You can't be serious. If Halo gets upset and no one cares, is it really an upset? I can't name more than two people that picked Sub-Zero to win this match out of anything more than fanboyism. The prediction percentage for this match is the lowest first round prediction percentage *in the history of these contests*. And yet... there was virtually no outcry. People welcomed this match on sheer badass factor (really, Sub-Zero has long been overdue to make noise in one of these things) paired with the fact that no one outside of some elitist snobs cares about Halo. It's a tailor-made FPS for people that otherwise suck at FPS games, with noisy-ass fans who think it's the second coming of Jesus himself. "Dual wielding and awesome graphiX!1 Man this has never been done1!1". These people seriously make me never discuss being a fan of the series, because being associated with them isn't exactly one of my goals in life. There are some long-standing reasons why people don't care about Halo getting bit by upsets, not the least of which are the fact that people never learn their lesson when it comes to Halo. If you make a table of lowest first round prediction percentages, Halo or Master Chief losing in the first round takes up three of the four top spots. (Cue RPGuy throwing me a bone here \<\_\<) As for how it happened, Master Chief managed a whopping 34 vote lead during the bracket vote surge. Sub-Zero tore into him after that and just beat the piss out of the Chief all through the night vote, all through the morning vote, and all through the in-school vote. Subby's lead peaked at near 4300 votes at one point. Now, remember Castlevania vs Halo in the series contest and how people announced Castlevania dead for not having a lead of 23489562 votes before Chief's afternoon vote kicked in? Same deal here. People announced Sub-Zero dead all through his lead increase, only there was a slight difference. Master Chief actually did make a good push come the afternoon surge he always gets, but it was all for aesthetics. The Chief was never in contention to actually come back, but he did manage to cut off almost 2000 votes from Sub-Zero's lead before finally going down in the end. Which no one will remember when discussing this match, much like no one gives a crap that Magus lost to Knuckles by 1750 votes instead of 2750 votes. But no one will learn. Master Chief's legions of graphic whores and wannabe FPs pros will overseed him again and again, and more often than not, the Chief will lose one round before he's supposed to in a close match that never should have been close. It's happened to Halo twice, it's happened to Chief twice (with a close call against DK in a match of who choked harder), and it will happen again. Two is an accident, but anything more is a trend. It'll be even funnier if this continues on after Halo 3, which it will. By the way, are these poll results funny or what? In three of the past four contests, the final match has seen a 7 seed upset a 2. The lone exception featured Shadow Hearts as the 7 seed, and Shadow Hearts will never win anything. Also lost in the shuffle is that this was Sub-Zero's first contest match; four years after Scorpion's ridiculous run to the Elite 8 and we finally get to see Sub-Zero in a match. But what may suck above all else is that we keep looking for reasons to ditch the 2002-2003 stats, and for good reason. But matches like this allow those stats to stick around. According to 2003 stats, Scorpion scores 47.3% on Master Chief. Anyone with knowledge of Mortal Kombat or the fighting game fanbase in general knows that Sub-Zero has been stronger than Scorpion all along regardless of who has been put into brackets. If 2003 stats were taken seriously, more people would have picked Sub-Zero. Which everyone knows makes no logical sense, because Halo 2 and Chief actually impressing has happened since. Damn you X-Staaaaats! *shakes fist* And with that, round one came to a close! No zero brackets yet again thanks to Zero (ironic...), yet somehow I doubt anyone would have cared about losing their zero had they lost it to the Chief upset. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Master Chief and Halo always make for interesting matches, even when we think they won’t be. Case in point: this little disaster of a capper on the first round on 2006. Despite Scorpion’s great run way back in 2002 (and the convenient release of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon the day of this match), very few really gave Sub-Zero a chance here. Yet Master Chief proved once again that we were all fools for believing in him, and he choked away the match that, for all intents and purposes, was his to lose. And lose he did, in a spectacular upset that made us all forget about how the female bracket was returning the next day. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2530&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (4)Ada Wong 2006 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (4)Ada Wong 2006 (revid 56727)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, October 14th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Spazer Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 14th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 73,429 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 74.34% 121 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 93.65% (39,938 brackets) The only notable thing about this match was the new match pic theme for the round; Ceej moved from medium shots of the characters to close-ups and changed the background a bit. This match was Ada's effort to somewhat validate herself as a midcarder, and she kinda blew it. At the time of this match, we all figured Samus for someone who was still potentially stronger than Mario indirectly. So according to this and paired with Ada's expectations (I believe the average Oracle pick was somewhere around Samus with 75%), Ada underperformed. No clue how one would go about gauging an untested character before ever being in a match, though. The disappointing thing is that RE seemed on an upswing. It performed respectably in the series contest, and both Ada and Leon did well in the first round of this contest. Even if Ada is a side character, you'd think RE4 would push her to do a bit better. Or maybe it's my fanboyism (semi-auto rifle in Mercs \>\>\> everything) speaking. Or maybe RE4 was a hit because of the Gamecube and Ada got SFFd. Who knows. Another match, another expected result with the contest favorite killing another bug in the road. Neeeext. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2531&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Rikku vs (2)Kairi 2006 _source: (3)Rikku vs (2)Kairi 2006 (revid 56729)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, October 15th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Spazer Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 15th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 21,451 - **Oracle Expectations:** Rikku - 62.04% 119 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Rikku - 58.25% (24,841 brackets) This match was pretty much exactly what I and others expected, but WTF at the 58% prediction percentage. Have all been looking at the same contests or what? Kairi was able to use KH2 alone to take down Claire Redfield, but that logic pretty much goes out the window when you throw a Square character from a recent FF title into the mix, and one that actually... you know, does something in her game? This match was so boring that you can look at the final result and practically see the entire trend from start to finish. Rikku had a minor bracket vote surge, and the fabled KH day vote was only able to give Kairi 1% during the day. I guess you could assume Rikku was supposed to do better if you compared their respective roles within their games, but it's not like it matters. Gotta love the 8x8 format, where the winner of a match like this can actually make the divisional finals. Ugh. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2532&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Tifa Lockheart vs (4)The Boss 2006 _source: (1)Tifa Lockheart vs (4)The Boss 2006 (revid 56732)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, October 16th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Limit Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 16th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 59,661 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tifa Lockhart - 69.73% 124 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tifa Lockhart - 79.01% (33,695 brackets) Tifa vs The Boss wasn't a difficult match to look at; it was another in a long line of "What percentage will the winner get?" matches. The only real X-Stat info was 2005 Tifa versus Villain Contest Ocelot (64.76% for Tifa), so it's easy to call Ocelot stronger than The Boss after seeing this match. Tifa wins easily. Blah blah blah. The real issue here was all of the fighting that broke out over who would win in a fight between these two, mainly because some were dumb enough to say that Tifa stood a chance. Tifa got her ass whipped by some scrub named Loz. The argument should just end right there. Though if you really want to get into the technical aspects, Tifa is a straight-up brawler. The brawler style plays directly into The Boss's hands, and all of Tifa's joints would be snapped four seconds after the fight began. Any questions? No? Good. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2533&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Jill Valentine vs (2)Princess Peach 2006 _source: (3)Jill Valentine vs (2)Princess Peach 2006 (revid 56734)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Limit Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 27 - **Oracle Expectations:** Princess Peach - 54.88% 104 for - 20 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Princess Peach - 62.87% (26,812 brackets) *"It's a shame that Peach isn't facing someone weaker in round two so that more people can get burned by picking her."* -Leonhart4 **I'm making this topic to laugh at everyone that picked Peach.** *From Valvoras Posted 10/16/2006 8:07:30 PM \#001* *That's right. I laughed at those of you who took Celes, Cortana and Phoenix Wright. I proved my superiority to those of you on all three occasions. Now it's time for a more daring topic but with the same result. Jill Valentine is a lock to defeat Princess Peach. Jill is a decent mid-carder, nobody likes Peach. She'll be Wario-esque. You were fools to take Peach, say goodbye to 2 points.* So anyway, this was a debated match for awhile before the contest began. Then Jill went into the tank against Sheena, followed by Peach just killing Daisy and the hype died off completely. That said, Jill supporters had a good reason to think she would win the match; I love Peach and all, but outside of Mario 2, SSBM and SMRPG, she's nothing more than an avatar. And past polls do suggest that the Mario fans care about her as such. A good case could have been made for either girl winning this match. It's a shame I haven't played any of Jill's games yet, because she seems like the type of character I would like. Dammit Ex, get me RE2 :( When the match began, Peach made it look like Jill's collapse against Sheena was in fact imminent of things to come. She took the early (though not exactly *killer*) lead, and led by 450 in under 45 minutes. It would not last however, as Peach's early run was another example of the Nintendo Power Hour in action. Jill got Peach's lead under 400 by the end of the hour, then the two stalled for an hour longer. Once the night vote kicked in, Jill used it to make her move. From 2 to 3, Jill brought Peach's lead all the way down to 229. An hour later it was a paltry 27. Jill took over the match and increased her lead all throughout the night. By the time the morning vote hit and Peach decided it was time to pull her head out of her ass (which would be a rather difficult feat, come to think of it \<\_\<), Jill's lead was over 550. Peach made a small push during the morning vote, but she was never able to get Jill's lead under 300. The Nintendo children had to go to school some time, and that's when Jill really brought the pain. In the six hours between 9 a.m. through 3 p.m., Jill's lead went from 345 to 1400. Barring a miraculous and borderline psychotic after-school vote for Peach, this match was over. And then Peach took off 70 votes in the next 5 minute update. No big deal though, as Jill took half of that back over the next ten minutes. But then Peach took off 50 votes. Then 36. then another 50. In the blink of an eye, Jill's 1400 vote lead was back to triple digits and collapsing fast. It was Jill vs Sheena all over again, only with a match truly on the line this time around. The after-school vote favored Peach so heavily that it took Peach less than four hours to blast away a 1400 vote lead. Jill made several stalls during her collapse, but it wasn't close to good enough. She also made a few stalls as Peach was building up a lead of her own, but it still wasn't good enough. Or so we thought. Despite Jill's best efforts, Peach had a 300 vote lead with three hours left in the match. Remember Ryu Hayabusa vs Jill in 2004? Kind of impossible to forget if you were there. In a match eerily similar to Jill/Peach, Ryu and Jill went back and forth all day long, with Ryu seemingly getting the best of the match at the end. But Jill had one last run in her thanks to the RE night vote, and she made a near-historical march to victory when she came back from down 200 or so with 30 minutes left. She would go on to lose by a mere 27 votes. I don't know the exact extent of Jill's final push, nor am I opening up the poll updater to find out. That thing is a monster, and always crashes my computer when I open it :( People brought up Ryu Hayabusa with reference to Jill possibly coming back against Peach, with the main difference being that Jill's other comeback came in the dead of night. Surely she couldn't come back against a Nintendo character with everyone still awake, ja? Jill made a decent attempt at it early; in the first of those three remaining hours, she brought Peach's lead from 305 to 263. It could have been worse, but Peach managed a stall or recovery whenever Jill made a push. The 22nd hour of the match looked much the same, until Jill managed to take off 65 votes in a mere 10 minutes. Amid legions of cheating accusations that sprung up (and for good reason), Jill was slowed down once again by Peach. She made a decent recovery in getting her lead from 160 to 200, and at this point every vote mattered. And then the final hour of madness came. In a mere 30 minutes, Jill brought Peach's lead from 200 to 87. With 30 minutes left, it was a mad dash to the closing bell, with Jill holding a big edge at the beginning. She killed 50 votes from 23:30 to 23:40 to bring the lead down to 37, and it looked like Jill had this thing all but won. But Peach made her most timely recovery of the entire match; from 23:40 to 23:50, she increased her lead to 73. Jill brought that thing down to 56 in the next 5 minute update, but 56 votes in the final five minutes was a massive stretch. Jill would take off a huge chunk of that 56 however, and ultimately lose by.... 27 votes. Again. If you thought Jill supporters would take this thing quietly however, you wish. But let me back up for a moment. The cheating accusations from Peach's side were more than accurate. Skip ahead to Ceej's topic after the match. *CJayC \| Posted 10/17/2006 9:23:48 PM \| message detail* *An in-depth analysis shows lots of back and forth, lots of rallies, but no individuals who managed to alter the results of the contest.* *Not that they didn't try, of course.* *The "cheaters" vote-stuffed for Jill by only an extra 4%, but that would have been enough to tip the balance if we didn't have measures in place to block it. Of course, none of those votes actually counted, as did none of the votes from the three users were axed for vote-stuffing; all three for Peach.* *\*shrug\** Accurate but not wholly valid, if you believe that post 100%. Then again, who knows if Ceej's security is 100% accurate; he's never really mentioned what methods are in place, for obvious reasons. As for whether any cheat votes went through or whether Ceej had a hand in the outcome of the match, we'll never know. It's worth noting however that the poll update times were going haywire all day. But anyway, yeah, Nintendo fans aren't the most mature out there, but the anti-fanboys are much worse. Between Vlado's constant whining and Valvoras's lovely "Jill will win" spectacle, it's a wonder anyone bothers posting on Board 8 anymore. It's always nice being called mentally challenged over your taste in gaming characters. But on the bright side, check this gem out: *Valvoras \| Posted 10/26/2006 12:49:47 PM \| message detail If I truly felt like I was getting "owned", I would close this topic.* *Valvoras \| Posted 10/27/2006 12:12:46 AM \| message detail It will be closed in 5 minutes.* As for what to make of the match, it was a classic in every sense, and all the people who said it was a tossup were correct. Peach just had more in the tank at the end, and she can definitely thank a combination of NintendoFAQs, SSBM and Jill not being in RE4 FTW. And Peach getting this far was all I really wanted, because I knew she had no chance against Tifa. I also didn't care about her upcoming loss after a win like this =p (See? A Peach writeup with no bias \>\_\>) ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis This match saw a lot of cockiness on both sides (anyone remember Valvoras?), but the end result proved to be as much of a tossup as you could get. Now I know this match had lots of lead changes – Peach in the beginning, Jill in the morning, Peach afterschool, and Jill with a final push at the end that was preposterously intense and made her lose by a margin of 27 votes… which was the exact same margin she lost by two years ago against Ryu Hayabusa. Jesus. This match was crazy excitement and didn’t seem to let up, as the voting demographics kept bringing in new voter pools and such. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2534&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Zelda vs (4)Terra Branford 2006 _source: (1)Zelda vs (4)Terra Branford 2006 (revid 56736)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Triforce Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 68,821 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda - 73.48% 125 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 92.79% (39,571 brackets) Zelda was an obvious force after her demolition of Carmen Sandiego, but that was Carmen Sandiego. Demolishing Terra was another animal entirely. Going on 2005 stats, Zelda was expected to get something like 72.3% here. Given that Terra's match with Kerrigan went according to plan, it wasn't too far off to attribute stats to this match. Except for the part where Zelda decided to go psycho and put the fear of god into Samus's title hopes. Zelda actually began this match over 80%, but a good FF6 night vote allowed Terra to get her down to 76. Then the sorry-ass FF6 day vote kicked in, paired with the beast Zelda day vote. The end result was Terra being embarrassed to hell, and we may never again see Terra or Celes back in contests after the way they performed here. This match also thrust Zelda into the Samus upset conversation, because Samus likes to suck in matches against Nintendo characters. More importantly, Aeris was surely dead next round at this rate, barring a similar psycho demolishing of KOS-MOS. Whatever it was that gave Mario all that strength last year may have aided Zelda in the female bracket, because she looked head and shoulders above everyone through two rounds. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2535&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)KOS-MOS vs (2)Aeris Gainsborough 2006 _source: (3)KOS-MOS vs (2)Aeris Gainsborough 2006 (revid 56738)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, October 19th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Triforce Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 19th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 26,463 - **Oracle Expectations:** Aeris Gainsborough - 67.33% 124 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aeris Gainsborough - 71.70% (30,577 brackets) So yeah, that killer match Aeris needed to prove she could hang with Zelda? Never happened. In fact, she got the polar opposite. Last year, KOS-MOS embarrassed herself by going down 66-34 to Luigi, in a match that was 'supposed' to be a lot closer. The year after, KOS-MOS found herself paired with a character that has perennially been stronger than Luigi, yet made Aeris look a lot weaker than him. Aeris was never really able to take off during the match, despite her fans saying that she would do so once the anti-Aeris/FF7 votes wore off. It never happened. Aeris floated around the 63% area all through the night vote and through most of the day, and then the after-school vote saw her lose percentage instead of gain it. 61.65% on KOS-MOS when you're trying to be in the running to take down Zelda isn't a good sign. Some people tried to blame Aeris' bad showing on the match picture (Aeris looks like a stoner, and KOS-MOS's boobs are practically hanging out), but I'm still convinced that only people without sex lives would honestly blame TJF for anything. Aeris was set up to get her ass whipped next round, and it would take the best match possible for her to perform otherwise. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2536&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Yuna vs (4)Joanna Dark 2006 _source: (1)Yuna vs (4)Joanna Dark 2006 (revid 56740)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, October 20th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Aeon Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 20th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 64,482 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yuna - 67.48% 123 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yuna - 70.13% (29,908 brackets) A lot of noise was made pre-contest about how Yuna was the black sheep of 1 seeds in the bracket, yet her first two wins were as impressive as anyone else's. Then again, she faced Roll and Joanna Dark, two characters not exactly well-known for lighting up contest polls. The only thing Yuna really proved here is that the Chun-Li \> Yuna upset noise was likely misguided, as Yuna was clearly the favorite to win her division. 2005 stats had Yuna only scoring 68% in this match; even behind possible Samus/Ganon SFF, 78% is no joke. And since I have nothing else to say about this one, some fun with X-Stats! Yuna (2006c) VS Mario (2005c) Yuna has a strength of 35.26. Mario has a strength of 43.20. Mario wins with 59.19% of the vote! A win of 22,671 with 123,350 total votes cast. Yuna breaking 40% on Steroid Mario would be something else. Though in fairness, Mario did only do 2% better on Jo than Yuna \<\_\< That's something like Mario only scoring 52% on Yuna if you only take Jo into account. PERFECT DARK ALWAYS WINS. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2537&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Chun Li vs (2)Lara Croft 2006 _source: (3)Chun Li vs (2)Lara Croft 2006 (revid 56742)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, October 21st, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Aeon Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 21st, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 12,788 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chun Li - 57.78% 114 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chun Li - 33.15% (14,137 brackets) I really have to hand it to Lara here, because I expected her to get destroyed -- just like in every other contest she's ever been in. Yet for whatever reason, this contest was different. Not only did Lara have Legends (Tomb Raider's RE4, from what I hear), but she had most of the brackets behind her as well. You have to go all the way back to 2002 stats to consider Lara capable of doing this well in any match. What's funny is that for awhile, it looked like Chun-Li was going to rip into Lara like most everyone before her. She was at 61% and climbing fast early in the match, but then the sad Street Fighter day vote kicked in. Chun bled percentage all through the match and finished with a mere 55-45 win over a washed up hack. Sad effort no matter how you view it, and Chunner's once-viable upset bid over Yuna died after this match. Maybe Lara is another of those characters that can be grouped into the Ryu/Dante/Zero mold, in that she performs decently unless put up against a Squintendo character. 2003 and especially 2004 both saw her lose rather badly to Nintendo characters, and I don't even think she was in 2005. It's a theory that makes as much sense as anything else, because I doubt a new game played by 6 people did all that much. And for what it's worth, 2002 stats did kind of call this \<\_\< (Damn 2002 stats.) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2538&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2006 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2006 (revid 56744)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Patriot Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 20,648 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 55.67% 108 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 79.20% (33,776 brackets) There was a lot of upset discussion going into this match, based off of 2005 stats: Snake (2005c) VS Squall (2005c) Snake has a strength of 36.97. Squall has a strength of 35.16. Snake wins with **52.45%** of the vote! A win of 4,945 with 100,996 total votes cast. Assuming a standard Snake tank-job (happens every year) paired with a potential KH2 boost for Squall, you end with a longshot upset and some noisy fans throwing numbers around. It all made enough sense, but *that's.... why they play the games*. All talk of an upset died within minutes of this match beginning; Snake took a comfortable lead and ran with it, with Squall giving no indication of ever coming back. In fact the polar opposite of an upset was taking place in that Snake was doing much better than his value prediction, and on a KH2 Squall to boot. This was the first true indication that Snake was on steroids this contest, and we all know it wouldn't be the last. Just glancing at the updater, I think Squall only won one update; that's pretty bad considering how close these two were in the stats. But from the silver lining department: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=955) Squall increased 8% in four years! Come 2010, Squall might have a chance in a rematch \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2539&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Yoshi vs (2)Dante 2006 _source: (6)Yoshi vs (2)Dante 2006 (revid 56746)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, October 23rd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Patriot Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 23rd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 1,425 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 49.10% 50 for - 64 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 31.20% (13,306 brackets) Yoshi/Dante being close would have been far more dramatic had we not seen Jill/Peach give us a template of trends a few days prior. The difference this time around is that Yoshi had nothing going for him going into this match. He'd never done better than Dante in the stats, and the two looked like they were in opposite directions after their first round matches. Dante beat Ryu H as expected, while Yoshi struggled with Riku. Even the people who picked Yoshi to win this match acknowledged that Dante looked like he would win easily; we just stuck with Yoshi out of faith more than anything. In fact, here's part of my analysis crew writeup for the match, complete with the one stat (albeit a big stretch) that gave Yoshi a chance: *Yoshi scored 43.67% against Bowser in an SFF match in 2003. Dante 2005 supposedly would score 44.79% on Bowser 2005.* *If Yoshi was noticeably SFFd in 2003, then he has a good chance of beating Dante. The problem is that the entire Dream Division from 2005 has tanked this contest, so Bowser is a bad measuring stick. Dante will likely win this barring some NintendoFAQs magic, but I'm picking Yoshi anyway just to keep with what I have in the bracket.* *By the way, anyone using Riku as a basis for why Yoshi may do bad here needs some common sense. Have you people SEEN what KH2 has done over the past two contests?* Odd as it was to have a lot of faith in Yoshi due to him being behind SFF in all the stats, Yoshi semi-proved early in the match that he's been underrated for years. He came out and smoked Dante early, en route to a lead of 600 in under an hour. But then the Nintendo Power Hour wore off, and Yoshi's lead increase stalled. Dante then began a painstakingly slow process to get the votes back, and I feel during the night is when Dante lost the match. It was reasonable to assume that Yoshi would have strong morning and after-school votes, yet Dante spent the entire night struggling to chip away at 600 votes. By the time Dante was able to break through and tie, the morning vote was already here. Yoshi used the next few hours to build another lead for himself; this time he stalled at 450 or so, but that's only because the Nintendo children all went to school. Dante then went on another struggled comeback train, and yet again was only able to tie the match once Yoshi's next expected surge came. Sure enough, Dante was able to build a lead of 43 before finally going into the tank. The after-school vote completely buried him. Yoshi would eventually lead by 1700 votes before Dante made another push, but by then the match was too late. Thanks to Peach, very few people watching this match believed that Dante had a chance once he made it clear that he would struggle just to break even. This wasn't a Jill Valentine situation in which Dante put the match into question by going berserk during Yoshi's off time. He just... kind of tanked. Dante had no reason to lose this considering what the two characters had going for them coming into the match, but some good old NintendoFAQs magic did him in. Depending on how seriously you took the Jill/Peach trends, Dante was done sooner than later. RPGuy's theory like Vince Young comes through in the clutch once again! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2540&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sora vs (5)Gordon Freeman 2006 _source: (1)Sora vs (5)Gordon Freeman 2006 (revid 56748)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Destiny Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 33,998 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 65.98% 116 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 73.04% (31,149 brackets) Gordon Freeman looks just like Hugh Laurie (guy that plays House). Anyway, two major Gordon Freeman traditions broke in this contest. First, he actually won a match. And second, Gordon had never been held below 40% in any match prior to facing Sora. Sadly, Gordon never even threatened breaking 40% outside the first few seconds. Once Gordon fell below the 40% barrier down to 36 or so, he made a decent recovery. During the night vote, Gordon managed to crawl back up over 38.5%. But then the beast KH day vote hit, and that was the end of that. I fear Gordon may not even be in the bracket next year, as most of his nominations have been based on GFNW fad power. Ceej knew this, and always overseeded Gordon against some scrub. What are we left with now? :'( ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2541&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Ryu vs (2)Mega Man 2006 _source: (6)Ryu vs (2)Mega Man 2006 (revid 66203)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Destiny Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 19,284 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 62.49% 116 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 58.83% (25,089 brackets) Summer 2002: Ryu scores 42.15% on Samus Summer 2003: Ryu scores 42.74% on Solid Snake Summer 2004: Ryu scores 44.46% on Sonic After a slip-up in 2005 (all because Ryu's loss was against a non-Noble Niner, I swear! \<\_\<), Ryu was back to his old self in 2006. Win a match or two, put up 40% on a Niner and wait until next year. At this rate, Ryu breaks 40% on all NN members by 2013. Even though we know better about Mega Man at present, it was easy at the time to just assume that Ryu was back to form and that Mega Man's awful picture cost him a percent or two in the final tally. The only real sign of Mega Man's imminent collapse was falling from 61% to under 57, but he made a decent recovery once the after-school vote hit and few people thought ill of his chances after this here match with Ryu. It wasn't until Sora that people realized Mega Man was done. So anyway, who should Ryu put 40% on next year? Crono? Cloud? =p ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2542&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2006 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Vincent Valentine 2006 (revid 56752)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, October 26th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Blast Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 26th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 5,202 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 54.13% 110 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 52.63% (22,445 brackets) This was an interesting little match, though the final vote margin is a bit misleading. Sonic was never really in danger of losing this match, though all the people desperate to see the NN break were certainly rooting for such. That all ended minutes into the poll, when Sonic had a comfortable lead that he would slowly build on through the night. Vincent managed a few stalls and minor update wins, but all drama was gone once the standard Sega day vote kicked in and buried him. Vincent did manage a bit of face-saving in the end, chipping off a couple hundred votes in the waning hours. The thing I found most interesting is that unlike other matches in which Sonic has struggled, I didn't see a ton of "lolmg Sonic choke'd" stuff being posted. People were more happy for Vincent doing so well than anything else, and it's just beyond me how someone this strong hasn't been in a contest field until 2005. Further, all that stuff Vincent had going for him after the 2005 contest must have made a difference. FF7 or not, the guy went from being 50-50 with Squall to 48-52 with a much stronger Sonic. If Square continues whoring Vincent out instead of the usual suspects, we may be seeing the molding of a future NN breaker. On Sonic's end, regardless of how strong Vincent is you had to think Sonic's chances of winning the bracket were done after this match. 52-48 on a non-NNer doesn't cut it once the true heavy hitters show up. And on a total side note, why was this division named Blast instead of Chaos? We see Triforce get used and reused, yet a badass name like Chaos gets sacrificed for this? Ugh. Actually, one last side note. 52.63%? HM couldn't have convinced that many people... ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2543&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs (2)Luigi 2006 _source: (3)Kirby vs (2)Luigi 2006 (revid 72031)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, October 27th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Blast Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 27th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 4,922 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 50.65% 67 for - 51 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 41.08% (17,519 brackets) Put this match on a bracket any time before Luigi kicks Zero's face in, and most people would tell you Kirby was the favorite without a second thought. But after the Zero collapse, Kirby's lackluster win over Prince and the increasing likelihood of SFF going in Luigi's favor, it was difficult to imagine Luigi losing this match going in. For the first 30 minutes of the match, everything was up in the air. The two characters went even for a few minutes, then Luigi managed a lead of 77. Kirby cut it down a bit, but then Luigi took off FTW at the 35 minute update. His lead went from 37 to 99, and then to 155 five minutes later. While it's usually stupid to call matches that early when they've been close, comebacks in SFF matches are almost impossible; usually the true colors of a fanbase will show in kind no matter how close a match is. Ergo, Luigi won a close match that wasn't nearly as close as the final score indicates. Kirby wasn't in this thing after 35 minutes. This was also the last proof anyone really needed to know that the Dream Division last year was a total fluke; Kirby rSFFd Bowser, and probably by a good amount. The only issue remaining after his loss to Luigi is how this match would have looked without SFF, which may be an issue when people do their brackets next season.= ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2544&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Crono vs (4)Bowser 2006 _source: (1)Crono vs (4)Bowser 2006 (revid 56756)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, October 28th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Time Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 28th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 17,835 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 57.80% 118 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 63.75% (27,187 brackets) Crono's win over Bowser was every bit as boring as the win over Falcon, though the trend of votes had to ring a few alarms. It's funny how when Crono was going 62-38 on Bowser, some people were condemning the fat turtle for only being high in stats because of Snake being ass in sprite matches. And then predictably, the day vote came along and caused Crono to bleed percentage for the rest of the match. It didn't cause him to lose or anything, but I remember thinking to myself "One of these days Crono is going to go up against someone that'll make him pay for being such a slug during the day". To this day, I'll never understand how Crono stayed even with Mario for three years or how Chrono Trigger held off Link to the Past. The game and all of its characters are awful during the day vote, to the point where it's just funny to watch. Oh yeah, and apparently there was some stat scenario where Bowser was behind SFF and could have upset Crono with a true value. Or something. I don't care enough to look it up, because it's obviously completely meaningless. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2545&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (7)Sub-Zero 2006 _source: (3)Auron vs (7)Sub-Zero 2006 (revid 56758)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, October 29th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Time Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 29th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 25,927 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 61.45% 116 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 35.88% (15,301 brackets) It never fails; Master Chief is always going to be overestimated to hell and back in these things. Only 36% of people had Auron winning twice? Anyway, Subby's upset run lasted all of one match, and Auron predictably beat him easily. The vote totals are a bit high due to the match being 25 hours long, but still, nearly 135,000 votes on a meaningless second round match is silly. And Sub-Zero looks like The Shredder in the match pic, which is totally unrelated but I felt like mentioning it anyway. What truly matters here is that a long-standing injustice has finally been rectified. A couple years back, Auron faced Scorpion in a match. The result: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1739) Auron won 64.85% - 35.15%. Extrapolated, Sub-Zero scores 43.53% on his inferior palette swap clone POS. This match made me a happy man, because for two years Scorpion kept getting into brackets on the basis of one weak-ass eightpack while the far superior Sub-Zero sat on the sidelines. When Subby finally got his chance to perform, he not only exposed Master Chief (But who doesn't?) but he also proved that Scorpion never had a place getting into contests over him. Thank you, Rally Contest \<3 And on that note, two rounds in the books with our best contest stretch run since Games 2004 yet to go. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2546&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (3)Rikku 2006 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (3)Rikku 2006 (revid 56760)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, October 30th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Spazer Division Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 30th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 47,052 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 66.80% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 83.98% (35,814 brackets) Always nice to be in the third round of a contest and have a horribly predictable match going on. Samus beating Rikku was never in doubt, and this was one of those "How much % will the winner get?" deals. The only notable thing is that even third-rate Square vs Nintendo matches draw high vote totals. One other thing of note however is that this was my favorite sprite round theme since 2002. It causes a nice mind lapse if you stare at the pic too long, because it starts to look like the background is the foreground with a 3D hole punched through it. But I'm weird and find amusement in silly things, so moving on... Yeah, Samus running through her division was predictable as hell and left zero indication at all of her upcoming near-collapse. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2547&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Princess Peach 2006 _source: (1)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Princess Peach 2006 (revid 56762)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Limit Division Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 38,797 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tifa Lockhart - 64.05% 106 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tifa Lockhart - 61.24% (26,116 brackets) If Jill getting beat didn't put all the "lol Peach is fodder" crap to rest, this certainly did. Honestly, who didn't think Peach would get doubled (or worse) with ease in this match? Still, a blowout is a blowout regardless of final percentage and Tifa won her division with absolute ease. My only argument is that Peach is NOT THE JOKE SOME THOUGHT SHE WAS. Ahem. On a totally different note, where exactly does that Tifa "sprite" come from? It can't be an FF7 model, because it has arms instead of Legos for limbs. And... that's really all I have to say. Outside of Jill/Peach and Samus/Tifa and *maybe* Kairi/Claire, the entire female half was downright awful. But everyone knows that. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2548&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Zelda vs (2)Aeris Gainsborough 2006 _source: (1)Zelda vs (2)Aeris Gainsborough 2006 (revid 56764)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Triforce Division Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 17,297 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda - 53.84% 100 for - 12 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 65.60% (27,976 brackets) Finally, a match with a bit of meat to it. Or a lot, given that Aeris is one of the two characters involved. Zelda was the clear favorite to win this thing even before the contest, and even before the news that Twilight Princess and the Wii would be delayed until the day after the contest was scheduled to close (literally). A rumor was going around about the system being released mid-October, but this never happened. Even then however the Link and Ganon boosts over the last few years put Zelda well ahead of Aeris in potential. This said, there would be zero excuses that could be made for Aeris in the event of a loss. This match happened a day or two after the release of FF12, and Zelda looked like utter and absolute crap in that match pic. Aeris meanwhile had her beyond awesome Chain of Memories sprite going. What excuse could Aeris possibly have for losing? It's actually a wonder she didn't get her face kicked in worse than she did. Zelda flew over 60% early in that looked like the makings of a blowout, but Aeris recovered well in percentage. Aeris chipped the percentage down below 55% with the aid of the night vote, and it took the god-like Zelda day vote to push Zelda back near 57. Aeris was rather impressive in not getting completely killed, but one has to wonder how close this match is if it takes place in 2003. It can also be argued that FF12 and the pic made a difference of a percentage point or two, but we'll never really know nor does it matter. Zelda was never in danger of losing this thing, though she did lose a few updates before the Zelda day vote kicked in. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2549&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Yuna vs (3)Chun Li 2006 _source: (1)Yuna vs (3)Chun Li 2006 (revid 56766)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Aeon Division Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 25,528 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yuna - 56.87% 110 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yuna - 41.27% (17,600 brackets) Yuna was widely regarded as the black sheep of the 1 seeds before this contest began, but she looked as impressive as any other en route to easily winning her division. I believe she performed well over expectations in all of her matches, though you'd have to check Oracle stats for that one. Once upon a time, Chun-Li \> Yuna was considered a decent upset pick. Yuna was only expected to get 52% in the match, but this was before the Dream Division was proven a fraud, along with Chun's relative collapse against Lara Croft. 52% was a pipe dream after all that, but for Chunners to be overrated enough not to even break 40% in a match once thought winnable is pretty pathetic. Makes you wonder if she'll ever make a non-gimmick field again. In the case of Yuna, she wouldn't have to wait long to prove whether or not she was for real with Zelda slated as her next opponent. Some wondered however if FF12 being released mid-contest had anything to do with her good performance here, ignoring that Yuna had been a beast all contest to this point. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2550&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (6)Yoshi 2006 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (6)Yoshi 2006 (revid 56768)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, November 3rd, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Patriot Division Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 3rd, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 17,304 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 57.87% 107 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 68.16% (29,068 brackets) Somehow, some way, Ceej finds a way to make Snake look worse and worse with each successive sprite round. He has to know it to be an inside joke at this point. In 2004 and 2005, Snake delivered two of the worst matches ever given by an "elite" character, both in sprite rounds against green animals. As such, the trendy pick was picking Snake to massively underperform again. And if this were 2005, Snake may have done just that. But Snake did no such thing, and was actually in the 59-60% range in the poll for quite awhile before the day vote came along to knock him down a bit. Given how badly most expected Snake to do here (and for good reason, because his history in sprite matches is GOD-EFFING-AWFUL), 57% on Sprite Yoshi isn't half bad and is only about 4% worse than what would be expected through X-Stats. If his first two matches didn't clue you in that Snake was a beast this year, them him doing fine in a sprite match should have. And if that wasn't enough, we were only one round away from the Snake Victory Tour™ starting up as of this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2551&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sora vs (2)Mega Man 2006 _source: (1)Sora vs (2)Mega Man 2006 (revid 56770)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, November 4th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Destiny Division Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 4th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 11,463 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 57.00% 110 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 38.88% (16,581 brackets) Sora's path was about as exciting as Switzerland in World War II before his match with Mega Man, but his legacy in 2006 was exposing the hell out of Mega Man long before Snake could. There were hints of Mega Man being way off in his first two matches, but the match with Sora was nothing short of a monumental collapse. He literally did everything short of lose outright, especially given what was expected of him pre-contest. Easy road to the Final Four before losing to Crono. Blah blah blah. When the match first began, Mega was actually well over 60% and looked as if he'd score what he was supposed to based off of 2005 stats --- the same stats that don't even account for Snake/Sora being a fluke. Then the wheels just came off. Mega bled percentage all through the night, and he was at a measly 57% by morning. Once the morning vote hit, Sora not only sliced into Mega's percentage with ease, but actually won some updates outright. And this was supposed to be a character worthy of "elite" status? Once the KH day vote went into full swing, Mega bled percentage all through the rest of the match and lost enough updates to prove that he had zero chance against Snake at all. Snake after all beat the hell out of Sora one year prior, while Mega struggled with him. I have no clue how anyone had faith in Mega beating Snake after this, but ces la vie or however it's spelled. Granted there was still a slim chance of Mega pulling off what would be considered an upset after the Sora match, so I'll save my reasons for Mega's collapse for the appropriate time. As for Sora, Kingdom Hearts is the only thing Square has done well on a consistent basis since their FF7 days. If the series continues on the track it's currently on, Sora could be an elite character in a few years. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2552&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (2)Luigi 2006 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (2)Luigi 2006 (revid 56772)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, November 5th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Blast Division Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 5th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 27,001 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 56.22% 108 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 40.04% (17,075 brackets) What a god-awful prediction percentage. Who exactly in this division was going to beat Sonic? And that Luigi sprite reminds me of painful memories of people claiming that Luigi is anything but an uncontrollable hack in Mario 2. Anyway, this match was a large coming down to earth for Luigi after his two, um... "upsets" of Zero and Kirby. Not only was Luigi never in this match, but he more or less did exactly what he was supposed to based off of 2005 stats save for actually breaking 40%. He did no better than what Tifa did last year, and if you paid no attention to any matches prior you'd assume this division to be another in the line of predictable duds. However, this thing said a lot about how fraudulent Kirby and especially Zero have been. Kirby can easily be blamed on SFF (for now), but Zero is another animal altogether. The guy has never really shown signs of being overrated, yet he was slapped around by what ended up being a perfectly static Luigi. Either Luigi \> Zero was SFF, or Zero has been a complete fluke for years. We'll see next year, I suppose. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2553&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Crono vs (3)Auron 2006 _source: (1)Crono vs (3)Auron 2006 (revid 83982)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, November 6th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Time Division Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 6th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 11,250 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 59.41% 112 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 46.06% (19,643 brackets) It's always funny seeing what Ceej comes up with in the sprite round for characters that have no sprites. I'm still waiting for the day when fan-made sprites are put into match pics. It didn't occur to me until just now that Auron's match with Ganondorf is his only non-Square loss. His other three have been to Cloud, Sephiroth and now Crono. Against Cloud and Sephiroth, Auron didn't do so hot. But this was Crono that Auron was up against, which meant guaranteed percentage bleed after Crono's night vote surge. This match was essentially Crono vs Vincent II. Crono made a decent push for 60% early, then bled percentage quickly until the match reached a static intake. The final percentage against Vincent didn't look so hot, but Crono went on to have a respectable finish to last year's contest. Same thing here, minus the respectable finish part. I know putting a lot of stock into likely SFF-heavy stats is stupid, but Auron vs Vincent would be a damn good match based off this result. Or at least, it would have been in 2005. And on that note, all the division winners were decided. This contest seemed like it would have a rather boring stretch run (I mean damn, look at the first three rounds; very little went on), but this thing grew historic at a meteoric rate. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2554&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (1)Tifa Lockheart 2006 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (1)Tifa Lockheart 2006 (revid 56776)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 1,418 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 57.41% 102 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 63.88% (27,242 brackets) Did you ever think you'd see Tifa in not one, but two match pictures in the same contest in which her boobs were smaller? Unbelievable. Anyway it was finally time for division winners to all go at it, and the quarterfinal round set the tone for what would grow to be arguably the best contest stretch run ever. At the very least, it was the best two weeks we've seen since Spring 2004's Starcraft madness. And it was all thanks to Samus's worst match ever. Sure Samus completely tanked against Mario last year, but I'll never concede that that match wasn't bound to happen from day one. Besides, plenty of people saw that coming. No one saw Tifa being the closest character to breaking the Noble Nine (editor's note: other than Bowser, though only by raw totals), nor did anyone think that Samus would be the character on the ass end of this. Holding off on the theories for a moment, this match didn't start all that bad for Samus. Oh and I'm sure I should mention somewhere that Ceej asked Board 8 (seriously, "Board 8"; Ceej should just change the board name and get it over with) for a Kingdom Hearts 2 Tifa pic mere hours before the match, so considered it mention'd. In the first few minutes of the match, Samus jumped out to a rather unimpressive early lead, but had an early lead regardless. 2005 stats say that Samus should have come close to breaking 60% here, but her biggest percentage early on was 57%. Regardless, it just meant Tifa doing better than expected. Surely, Samus couldn't actually lose \<\_\< During the Nintendo Power Hour, Samus showed early signs of her eventual struggle. A quick glance at the updater reveals three stalls in Tifa's favor during a demographic that Nintendo had been dominating since the poll time switch, and on top of this Samus was anything but impressive. She bled percentage like mad en route to her 700 vote lead through the first 60 minutes, but made an excellent recovery over the next 30 minutes in adding another 150 to her lead. After two hours, Samus's lead neared 900 as the dead of night neared, and it seemed as if Tifa's minor scare would fall well short a la Sonic \> Tifa in 2005. Yeah, whoops. After a minor struggle between the two early, the night vote favored Tifa by a fairly wide amount. The two stalled a lot, and then Tifa would randomly have 50 vote updates. Tifa's momentum grew very constant as the night vote progressed, and she shockingly tied the match before the morning vote ever showed up. On top of this, Tifa went on to build a lead of 200 before said morning vote came into play to save Samus. After another long stall between the two, Samus finally gained some momentum and erased Tifa's lead. Samus began building a lead of her own, which reached ~750 before school began. Tifa made a decent push at regaining control of the match during school hours (she brought the lead down below 400 at one point), but anyone who has paid attention all contest knew what was bound to happen once school let out. Samus made a huge after-school push to seal the match away. Samus's biggest lead was around 1700 votes, though Tifa sliced 300 off of that before closing time. Samus may have won the match, but anyone who says she didn't bomb like hell here is out of their mind. Check the stats topics; nearly all of the posts were about how much Samus sucked during this match, especially given that she was the overwhelming favorite to win the entire thing. Now, the door was open for pretty much everyone left. What's even funnier is that had Vincent been in Tifa's place, the Noble Nine would have croaked. Vincent \> Tifa \> Aeris is about as clear-cut as it'll ever get (barring future Kingdom Hearts appearances) given this contest's results, but that's a whole different scenario for another time. Nintendo has been ripping the hell out of Square since 2004, yet here we have a rather flagrant statistical outlier. The factor of choice is the match picture, which I've always found rather bogus. The same people who blame Samus's choke job on the match pic are the same people who give SSB/M most if not all the credit for Samus being elite at all. That said, everyone who loves SSB/M knows the name "Samus Aran" and thus renders most of that argument moot. In fact, most SSB nuts know full well who Zero Suit Samus is by now. For the match pic to have made nearly 10% of a difference, the entire blame would have to be on a damn large chunk of Metroid fans not knowing who "Samus Aran" is without her suit on. It's a theory that makes some sense, given how often (see also: not much) Samus's name is seen in the series. But 10% of difference? Something else was up. Ceej made a topic post-match about how the stuffed votes (none of which were counted, though I suppose that all depends on how good you think the security methods are) about how the cheated votes would have easily given Tifa the win. I actually don't have the topic saved, but I'm sure TRE will show up minutes after this gets posted and do his computer thing \<\_\<. On a side note, can you imagine the uproar had Ceej allowed the votes, then waited until the match was nearly over to remove them? On the off-chance that Ceej actually reads this, you should totally do that the next time a close match has a ton of cheating in it. You know you secretly love making the board go nuts :) Personally, I think Samus tanking against Nintendo characters has more to do with her than it does Nintendo. I'm willing to bet that there's a certain degree of "Mid-1990s SFF" if you will in regards to Samus. Super Smash Brothers was the only game Samus appeared in between 1994 and 2002, and it's not like the people on GameFAQs aren't well-rounded enough to ditch a character they may only know from SSB/M and some Metroid Prime titles and a few handheld titles once a heavy-hitter from that eight-year period shows up in a match against her. Aren't most people on GF too young to remember Super Metroid? Hey, at least that theory makes more sense than "lol I like character A more but her match pic sux so i'm voting character b even though i normally would have voted A normally, and plus i'm too stupid to know the name of a character i luv xoxo". Or maybe Tifa just had the match of her life and there is no real explanation, who knows. Oh, right.... MOTHER \*\*\*\*ING LOL X-STATS. Speak of the devil: *From TRE Public Account Posted 1/12/2007 4:00:59 PM \#005* ** **Battle \#57 Analysis** *CJayC Posted 11/8/2006 12:21:22 AM message detail* *Good stuff. Some suspect voting patterns, but the end result is all good. Results verified by Diebold.* *While Samus won by 2418 votes, there were 2997 more "cheating" votes caught for Tifa than Samus, which means that it could have been an upset if we didn't have these measures in place. Of course, just in case you're worried those might just all have been legitimate votes unfairly thrown out, 2210 of them came from just 6 unique IP addresses.* *Surprisingly, only two axes handed out.* ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2555&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Zelda vs (1)Yuna 2006 _source: (1)Zelda vs (1)Yuna 2006 (revid 56778)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 18,993 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda - 57.99% 101 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 52.81% (22,521 brackets) This was a rather awesome match for us FFX fans, considering Yuna wasn't even supposed to break 40% here. Then again there might be weird Samus/Ganon SFF in the 2005 stats, so who knows what Yuna's true value even was last year. Regardless, this was the easiest match to call in the Elite 8 and it played out as such. The only surprise was that Zelda didn't completely destroy Yuna, which plays into a few theories: Square vs Nintendo doesn't like to follow stats, FFX-2 boosted Yuna and Rikku, and characters gain momentum as they go through contests. I like that last theory the best, because we've seen some rather screwed up late-round matches over the years. It's also worth noting that Yuna didn't get completely buried by the Zelda day vote, and that this match was rather consistent. For all the "Zelda is going to SFF Samus" stuff that popped up during Samus's collapse against Tifa, this was the first match in which Zelda looked imperfect. I've also got nothing else, because I feel like being lazy after that long writeup just now.... plus the only TV I ever watch is about to come on, so screw you guys :) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2556&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Mega Man 2006 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Mega Man 2006 (revid 72838)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, November 9th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 9th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 13,515 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 49.94% 54 for - 52 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 48.36% (20,624 brackets) Ah yes, the collapse that was readily apparent after Mega Man bombed against Sora. Anyone who says they didn't see this coming wasn't paying attention much, but I'll admit I didn't think Mega would collapse this badly. Given how easily Mega Man has defeated Snake twice in years past, this was simply an embarrassment. Snake vs Mega Man was a rather clear-cut match pre-contest, but Mega was the clear favorite due to said two matches of the past. Yet for whatever reason, the two switched roles this contest. Snake seemed like the one out to prove something, while Mega Man was the character just getting by. It all finally came to a head in this match; the only part of the match in which Mega looked halfway decent were the first few minutes in which all the Board 8 bracket votes were flowing in. Mega was \*only\* down 55-45 at that point, and then he just collapsed the rest of the night in a match he was supposed to win. Mega was able to make a decent recovery during the day, because after all Mega is above all else a Nintendo character above any other. His voting trend in this match showed as much, not to mention the Mega Man \> Yoshi reaming of a year ago. Mega made a good recovery during the morning vote, fell off again during the school vote, then recovered after school and all the way through the end of the match... assuming a gain of one percent against a character traditionally pathetic during the day vote counts as "recovering". And thus, the Year of the Snake was born. This wasn't the first time Snake would shock the hell out of those paying close attention to contests, but more on that when it's applicable. 55-45 isn't so great a match in most cases, but look at the prior two Snake/Mega Man matches. - [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1364) - [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1775) Snake was never in either match, and even the most faithful of Snake fan thought him facing Mega for a third time was just unfair. Then the contest started and everyone noticed how the two were doing... and then the upset. Capcom's bastardization of the Mega Man series is finally starting to catch up to the blue bomber, and the series being beyond repair likely means a gradual decline as the years go on. Seriously, Mega Man ZX was awful. If that's the best Capcom can do, then the series is just gone already. Make one last good game, kill off all the characters and just spare us Mega Man fans the pain of seeing how bad everything is. I stand by the topic I made during this match; Mega is the frontrunner to be the one that breaks the Noble Nine. Between how stupid Capcom is and how Mega is already starting to be forgotten, nothing short of an appearance in a Smash Brothers title is going to save him. And what's funny is that because Mega is essentially a Nintendo character in these contests, this match could have been far worse. But since most of Snake's boost came from the Brawl announcement (*the* show-stopper at E3 2006, not to mention GameFAQs), Mega Man was able to tap into a little Nintendo magic and save a tiny bit of face. I mean after all, he won.... two updates, I think =p And for those saying this couldn't be the case, skip ahead and look at Snake/Sonic. With the way Mega Man and Sonic performed this contest, there's no effing way that Sonic and Mega Man are still that close. Credit to Karma Hunter for noting that during the side discussion in this here PCA :) ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis's Analysis ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2557&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (1)Crono 2006 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (1)Crono 2006 (revid 56782)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, November 10th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 10th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 1,940 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 48.76% 23 for - 73 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 13.31% (5,676 brackets) Crono was the favorite here, and deservedly so. There was no indication Crono would lose this match, even after Mega Man's collapse for reasons that would ultimately apply to Crono as well. Crono performed as such early on in the match, using his beastly night vote to take a 2000 vote lead on Sonic within hours. It wasn't until here that Sonic acted like he even belonged in the match; Sonic stalled the hell out of Crono during Crono's best time, and the biggest lead Crono was able to see was 2200. Even though Europe stalled Crono well before Crono's best time was up, Crono like would have still lost even had he been spotted 4000 votes. The guy has been so god-awful during the day vote that someone was bound to make him eat it eventually. When Sonic began going on his roll, Crono was absolutely defenseless. For whatever reason, the people that are on GameFAQs between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. are the only ones who give a crap about Chrono Trigger. Sonic began a very slow push during the waning hours of the night vote, but caught some steam once the morning vote showed up. Crono stalled Sonic a lot during the push, but the overall result was Sonic tearing into that 2200 votes like dogs on bacon. Then came the after-school vote *overwhelmingly* favoring Sonic, and before anyone knew it Sonic would complete the largest vote swing in the history of these contests. Winning by 1940 is rather misleading, because it feels like Sonic just blew the poor guy away for 18 hours straight. In back to back matches, we saw both Mega Man and Crono get their due for having not done anything since the 1990s. I can see how Mega Man lasted so long, but Crono not having a match like this earlier (and hanging with *Mario* of all characters three years running) is just beyond me. Chrono Trigger sold like ass, and even if CT is the \#1 emulated game, how many people really emulate? Enough to make that big of a difference? And on top of all that, Crono is a character that thrives on low vote totals --- 2002-2003 be damned, there's been a huge shift in who votes on these things since then, and Crono just can't keep up. The guy needs either a proper sequel, a proper remake or a release on the Wii's Virtual Console (or all three) or he's done in the same way Mega Man is. Square might not be as inept as Capcom is, but they're close. They've been unbelievably hit and miss since Final Fantasy 7, and it's been mostly miss. FF8, FF9, FFX, FFX-2, FFTA, FFCC, KH:COM, FF4A --- all of these games either have really mixed reviews or are bad outright. KH and KH2 are excellent, but outside of that Square hasn't done much. Even in their good games (FF5A, FF12), they screw something up. It's disheartening, but it's what those idiots deserve for firing Sakaguchi over one mistake. \*\*\*\* Japan and their idiot business policies. And \*\*\*\* Sega while I'm at it. I can't complain about Sonic winning this, as I love 2D Sonic and think he's a better character than Crono (most characters are, but that's beside the point). Not only do they constantly crap on their target audience (check out their pending lawsuit of YTMND; Sega really does think it's more important than it really is), but they constantly churn out awful games and think they're doing something good because of a few psychos in Europe. Enough is enough already; the Saturn and the Sega CD and the Dreamcast and Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Heroes and Sonic 360 and currently being Nintendo's lapdog have apparently taught those idiots nothing. Stop ruining my beloved Sonic and Tails and Knuckles, dammit. But hey, Sega being Nintendo's tool is what they deserve at the moment, but I'm totally off subject here. \*\*\*\*in' go Snake and Sonic! I have nothing against Mega Man and Crono (love more MM games than most, and CT owns), but the better characters certainly won. It made for an interesting setup between Snake and Sonic. On paper, anyway. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Crono was one of the most dangerous matches to ever occur, though few even realized its true potential until it was finally unleashed upon the world. On one side of the poll, you have a character with some inspiration by the later episodes of Dragonball Z. On the other side of the poll, you have a character that could easily be from Dragonball Z... Sonic defeated Crono by a margin of 1,940 votes (50.77% to 49.23%). What is notable about this high-profile match is that fewer than ONE IN SEVEN brackets (13.31%) selected Sonic the Hedgehog to win. There are those who look at this match as the turning point in Crono's career. Since his game was created over 10 years ago, the silent protagonist may find it very difficult to hold a fanbase worthy of the upper tiers of the Noble Nine. On the other hand, the match could also be looked upon as the true power of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic has only lost to four characters: Cloud Strife, Samus Aran, Mega Man, and Solid Snake. A case could easily be made for SFF in the case of Mega Man (old school). This was also the first time that Leonhart's off-the-wall Sonic the Hedgehog related bracket upset paid off. He's not letting anyone forget it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2558&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (1)Zelda 2006 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (1)Zelda 2006 (revid 56784)_ ## Results **Round Five** Saturday, November 11th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 11th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 13,905 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 53.73% 81 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 41.17% (17,557 brackets) After Samus's ridiculous tank job against Tifa, Zelda possibly rSFFing her to death was somewhat possible, and it may very well have gone down that way if Twilight Princess were released mid-contest. As it stood though, what we saw in the first few minutes was essentially the entire match; 55-45, Samus wins in very consistent fashion. Pretty boring, though it's funny to note that Zelda did over 4% better on Samus than Ganondorf did despite Zelda being perceived as the weaker character of the two. On that note, Zelda probably did rSFF Samus a lot in this match, but obviously not nearly enough for the win. This seems like an impressive match given what went down a mere four days prior, but if the Tifa match never happened we'd all be accusing Samus of yet again bombing against a Nintendo character. This win put Samus into the finals, though not in the manner everyone expected. Samus once seemed like a lock, but at this point the door was slightly open for either Snake or Sonic to do something special. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2559&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (1)Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (1)Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (revid 76630)_ ## Results **Round Five** Sunday, November 12th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 12th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 13,767 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 50.68% 59 for - 33 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 27.08% (11,549 brackets) This match was up in the air in terms of who would win, and then it actually started. 1 ripped into 2 even worse than 1 had ripped into.... Err..... [1](https://archive.is/20131016012017/img81.imageshack.us/img81/4931/omgceejmessedupagainbv1.png) (Thanks Zen!) When the match restarted error-free, Snake made Sonic look worse than Mega Man, and by a hefty amount for a damn long while. Sonic was all the way down to 41.75% at one point (Mega finished with 44.67% on Snake) during Snake's downright sick night vote push, and it really did look like Mega Man would be able to save some face. But Sonic had his surefire beast day vote push ready to go, and despite only winning a couple of updates all match, Sonic recovered a lot of percentage during said day vote. Finally, during the after-school block, Sonic passed the magical 44.67% barrier and never looked back. He ended up breaking 45% with 6 hours left in the match, and was barely able to hang on to the percentage before the match finally ended. In 2005, Snake finally broke through and made a Final Four. In 2006, behind a rather massive Nintendo-related boost, Snake made the finals of the entire contest with a damn vengeance. And who knows, maybe Samus would tank against Snake the same way she did against Tifa and give Snake the win outright. This has already been discussed, but something really flukish happened with the Snake/Mega Man/Sonic trio. Mega Man tanked the entire contest while Sonic looked as strong as he always has, yet it took Sonic over 15 hours to get a higher percentage on Snake than Mega Man. Something doesn't really add up, and I think it's entirely Nintendo-related. Mega Man's fanbase is largely Nintendo, while Sonic's is less so. If you ask me, Mega Man overperformed on Snake by a fairly decent amount thanks to the main reason for Snake's boost (Brawl announcement) being much less of a factor given Mega's fanbase. rSFF, if you will. And then there's the whole thing about Mega Man being stronger than Crono in the stats following this contest, which makes zero sense given their match last year. Given the overall performances of the final four male characters, Mega Man is the most likely to be blamed for anything odd given how badly he tanked every match prior to facing Snake. That 44.67% was a gift, because all signs said he should have done much worse. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2560&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (1)Solid Snake 2006 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (1)Solid Snake 2006 (revid 56788)_ ## Results **Championship** Monday, November 13th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 13th, 2006 - **Vote difference:** 7,960 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 48.30% 26 for - 63 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 12.54% (5,352 brackets) The only thing I dislike about user-made match pics is how many get picked sometimes. 12 match pics? Seriously? :( For the first six hours or so, this was the most exciting final we've ever had. You could argue FF/Zelda, but it was a given that Zelda would flatten FF come the day vote. With Samus/Snake however it was tough to guess what would happen, at least for a little bit. The two were close for the first few minutes, then Samus took off for a 1000 vote lead despite Snake's best stalling efforts. The night vote wasn't as nice to Snake as it needed to be, and the best Snake was able to manage was a prolonged stall as opposed to a serious push for the win. He prevented Samus from getting her lead above 1100, then managed to use the tail end of the night vote to get Samus's lead under 800. Then the morning vote arrived, and Samus just exploded for a relatively easy win consider how close it was early on. 800 became 1000, which eventually grew to Snake simply running out of steam and collapsing during the day vote. Samus may have won this contest on paper, but Snake certainly won this thing in spirit. And besides, the contest wasn't even over yet. There was still the Battle Royale left to go, where Snake would have the last laugh in all of this. Snake was in six matches in this contest, and arguably his worst efforts were against Nintendo. The massive jump in Wii anticipation on GameFAQs following the Brawl announcement should be proof enough of why this is, as should Mega Man likely being overrated in the stats. There's also that small bit about how Link, Zelda and Ganon all jumped 3-5% following the TP announcement, showing that E3 has made a difference in the past. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2561&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Link vs Mario vs Samus Aran vs Sephiroth vs Solid Snake 2006 _source: Cloud Strife vs Link vs Mario vs Samus Aran vs Sephiroth vs Solid Snake 2006 (revid 56796)_ ## Results **Battle Royale** Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Battle Royale Day 1 - **Match \#:** 64 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus booted out - 55.68% (23,745 brackets) CJayC's idea to get the heavy-hitters out of the main bracket this contest was a good one; an all-out battle royale in which the winners of every character battle plus the male and female bracket winners were all thrown into a series of polls. The character in last place was to be eliminated each day until Link was the last character standing. Ceej can do whatever he wants, but Link being stronger than everyone is going to be a known fact until another miracle happens. On a totally unrelated note, I vaguely remember the picture for this match popping up literally minutes before midnight; people figured the BR would be pic-less until this happened. Going into the BR, there was a ton of discussion about how it would go down given that we'd never seen anything like it before. Some figured that it would be very different from what everyone expected, while others figured that it would be close enough. Personally, I had Link \> Cloud \> Sephy \> Male \> Mario \> Female. The general consensus was that Link and Mario would SFF Samus (a lock to win the female bracket, though Tifa almost caused the upset of the contest) into oblivion, and that Link \> Cloud \> Sephiroth would be the top three in the BR. The debate came in the form of Mario, the male winner and the effect of Cloud/Sephiroth SFF. There was a Hero SFF theory thrown around as the latest moronic excuse people gave for why they hoped Cloud would beat Link this year, but... yeah. Link finishing first and Samus finishing last was almost a mortal lock given the past; Link is god-like and Samus always gets SFFd to hell by Nintendo. Sephy \> Cloud was an outside possibility, given that fan favorites always seem to do freakishly well in polls involving multiple characters. Call it the Yoshi Effect. The mystery was how badly if at all Mario would get SFFd by Link on Day 2, after Samus's inevitable boot. I actually had Crono winning the male bracket, and I felt Mario would get SFFd enough to allow Crono to finish 4th given how well Chrono Trigger resisted SFF against FF7 in the games contest. Crono resisting SFF against FF7 was much more likely than Mario resisting Nintendo SFF at the hands of Link, so Male \> Mario for 4th wasn't a bad upset pick at all. But then Snake and Sonic went and killed the male bracket, so that logic was kind of moot. Oh right, an actual poll was held on day one. The final results are exactly what I expected, but early on it looked as if Sephiroth was going to collapse. He was in dead last place to start, and it took a good day vote to pull him out of there and ahead of Mario and Snake. Samus, as everyone expected, bit the dust thanks to Mario and Link. Link, despite how low percentage, killed everyone else and it would only get worse later on. The other giant surprise was Snake doing better than Mario, but I'll save that one for the next writeup. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Link vs Mario vs Sephiroth vs Solid Snake 2006 _source: Cloud Strife vs Link vs Mario vs Sephiroth vs Solid Snake 2006 (revid 79327)_ ## Results **Battle Royale** Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Battle Royale Day 2 - **Match \#:** 65 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario booted out - 9.96% (4,248 brackets) Day 2 was my little upset special, which came through perfectly. I figured pre-contest that Link would SFF Mario to death on day two, which is exactly what happened from start to finish. The interesting thing here is comparing the percentages from day 1 to 2. Cloud and Mario barely moved, and it seemed that all of Samus's power went to Link, who just exploded between the two polls. The other thing of note outside of Mario's shocking-but-not-really last place finish was Sephiroth and Snake. Relatively speaking, Snake performed out of his mind in the first two BR polls; with no reason to move up in percentage between the two days, he did so anyway. Sephiroth meanwhile dropped in percentage despite not having a reason to do so either. And for the second day in a row, Sephiroth relied on a good day vote to get himself out of last place and into respectability. The final result isn't indicative of how bad Sephy did, and though it meant nothing (yet), Sephy essentially spent the entire day coming back on and overtaking Snake. However if the percentage trend between the two repeated itself, we were in for Sephy going down on day three, which would be the first real shocker of this thing. Oh and I'd brag about picking Mario correctly here, but it was tough to imagine Mario getting SFFd this badly given the 2002 final. Comparing that final to the FF7/Chrono Trigger match yielded an even comparison, and I only picked Crono to outlast Mario there because 2002 is irrelevant and predates the Zelda crew's TP announcement boost. Snake outlasting Mario in Crono's stead is just blind luck really \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Link vs Sephiroth vs Solid Snake 2006 _source: Cloud Strife vs Link vs Sephiroth vs Solid Snake 2006 (revid 66205)_ ## Results **Battle Royale** Thursday, November 16th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Battle Royale Day 3 - **Match \#:** 66 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 16th, 2006 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 41.74% Cloud - 26.16% Sephiroth - 16.19% Snake - 15.90% - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth booted out - 17.83% (7,604 brackets) One day after Link SFFs Mario to death, Cloud essentially does the same exact thing to Sephiroth. At this point, the BR's final was going to be an obvious Link \> Cloud thrashing. Cloud's percentage of votes barely moved in three days, while Link's increase was just ridiculous. The story here obvious was Sephy versus Snake in a match that wouldn't be up for debate if it were a simple one on one. Sephy began this match as he did the first two, in last place. Well actually Cloud was in last place for a few seconds, but that didn't last. After the board vote wore off, the true match trend unfolded. And it was bad for Sephy. Link and Cloud did their thing, but the only thing that mattered was Snake tear-assing into Sephiroth during the night vote. Snake's lead over Sephy was over 650 by the time Sephy decided to counteract, though Snake managed this lead within two hours. Even if Sephy did manage to start stalling (which he did), there was still a lot of time left for Snake to give himself some distance. For the most part, the two were even the rest of the night, though Snake managed to tack on an extra 100 votes before the morning vote. During the in-school vote, Snake built his lead to 900. Essentially, the match began when school let out and Sephiroth began his psycho charge. I don't even know how one would go about doing the math for this, but a 900 vote lead in a 4-character match equates to what for a one on one match? 2700? Regardless, Sephiroth's after-school push reminded me of Master Chief's comebacks, and I'm sure the numbers would look very similar if Sephy and Snake were somehow alone in a poll. Anyway, at 2:45 EST, Snake was up by 897 votes. Sephy needed less than eight hours to tie the match, which is a crazy pace considering the setting. It looked as if Sephy would just blow by Snake en route to a miraculous comeback, and Day 2 was the reason why. From 9:30 on Day 2 (when Sephy finally overtook Snake) through the end of the poll, Sephy increased his lead from 5 to 162. A similar pace would mean Snake going down on Day 3, save one minor issue. Sephy had an extra hour to build a lead on Day 2, whereas it took him until 10:30 to tie Snake on Day 3. If you look at the final hour from Day 2, Sephy and Snake more or less went even; in fact it took a huge final five minutes from Sephy to even win the hour. The same thing would happen again on Day 3. Even though there was likely a ton of rallying this time around, Sephy and Snake went even for the rest of the poll. It looked as if Sephy had pulled away for good with 10 minutes left, but Snake made a big push in the second to last update to cut Sephy's lead down to single digits. The final five minutes was a mad dash that was mostly dominated by Snake, who made a 60 vote jump in that time. I didn't save the topic Ceej made after the poll, but he said there was no cheating involved. A lot of people disagreed and claimed Ceej's security methods are weak, especially those who remembered Metal Gear Solid pulling the same stunt on Final Fantasy Tactics in 2004. Either MGS fans are the best vote-stuffers ever, or the best at rallying. Regardless, Sephy shouldn't have allowed himself to be put in that position in the first place. If he didn't suck so much throughout all of the Battle Royale, he would have finished in third place with ease. He was easily *the* disappointment of the BR. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Before we were introduced to the four-way format and the loveliness of how it would basically screw with everything, we got a bit of a test run in 2006’s Battle Royale, which pitted Clinkerothio and the two winners from the male and female bracket (Snake and Samus respectively) in a series of polls in which the last-place entrant would be eliminated each day until only one remained. Basically, the Battle Royale came down to how well you could predict SFF, since it was likely that it was going to be two Nintendo characters below Link and at least one Square character below Cloud. Most people had Crono taking the sixth spot. Enter Super Snake, who proceeds to crap all over the entire male bracket and the Battle Royale itself. Thanks to a hefty helping of Link SFF, Snake managed to outlast Samus and Mario. That’s fine. But few expected him to outlast Sephiroth himself, which he managed to do by the skin of his teeth at almost the last possible second. Metal Gear Solid and all its characters seem to have a tendency to do that. Snake’s wild ride through the Battle Royale was the cap on his amazing run throughout the year. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Link vs Solid Snake 2006 _source: Cloud Strife vs Link vs Solid Snake 2006 (revid 56803)_ ## Results **Battle Royale** Friday, November 17th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Battle Royale Day 4 - **Match \#:** 67 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 17th, 2006 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 44.34% Cloud - 36.24% Snake - 19.17% - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake booted out - 8.52% (3,633 brackets) The final two days of the BR were rather boring and predictable, but then again nothing short of Link losing could have possibly topped Snake \> Sephiroth in Day 3. For the first time, Link's percentage didn't go up like crazy, though 2% given the setting is still pretty nuts. Sephiroth going down obviously meant Cloud would go up like a bullet, and Snake, alone like always, almost managed to break 20% on the combined force of FF7 and Zelda. That's *damn* impressive, and it's worth noting that Cloud was in last place at the beginning of this poll. It took him 15 minutes to pull ahead of Snake for good. Even though Snake didn't win the whole thing or the BR, this was his contest and his alone, and he might have more boosts in the works if MGS4 and SSBB are what we're hyping them up to be. Check out the final stretch of this contest: - Samus vs Tifa - Zelda vs Yuna - Snake vs Mega Man - Sonic vs Crono - Samus vs Zelda - Snake vs Sonic - Samus vs Snake - 5 days of BR, and Snake was in four of these matches Not only did Snake ditch the monkey of never winning over another Noble Nine member, but he went through over half of them in one week. The guy went through Mega Man, Sonic, Samus, Mario and Sephiroth before Link and Cloud at the same time finally offed him. The only run better than this was Division 128 in the games contest, which was tainted by mass cheating anyway. Board 8 did a good thing in voting Snake the \#1 character in HE's latest Top 100 project, because the guy has been looooooong overdue. Long live Snake! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Link 2006 _source: Cloud Strife vs Link 2006 (revid 56805)_ ## Results **Battle Royale** Saturday, November 18th, 2006 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Battle Royale Final Day - **Match \#:** 68 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 18th, 2006 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 53.41% 60 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife booted out - 36.05% (15,374 brackets) Link won - 46.78% (19,950 brackets) This match wasn't *nearly* as close as the percentages indicate, and ever since 2003 Link has been treating his matches with Cloud like a new chance to outdo himself. The match wasn't in question after the first few minutes, and the rest of this thing was just an effort to see how badly Link could kick Cloud's face in. For those who remember 2002, did you ever think you'd see a match in which a character struggled to break 46% while scoring 70,000 votes? Or better yet, imagine that during the summer of 2004. In fairness to Cloud, Link was at 58% early on in this thing before slowly bleeding percentage the rest of the match. But like Zelda \> Aeris, percentage bleeds don't mean anything if you're on the ass end of absolute destruction. Barring an FF7 remake, Cloud will never beat Link again. And with that, the contest was officially at an end. **Ultimate Loser™** - Master Chief ! ( • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** # Character Battle VI (2007) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 64 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Summer 2007 Contest _source: Summer 2007 Contest (revid 85769)_ | Announced: | August 1, 2007 | |------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Started: | September 3, 2007 | | Ended: | November 4, 2007 | | Winner: | Winner: L-Block Runner-up: Link '''BONUS BATTLE | | Contest Winner: | SAMIAM7779 (540/768 points) | | Notable matches: | Axel/Frog/Samus/Kerrigan Alucard/Liquid Snake/Ness/Zidane Link/Vincent/Crono/Zero Dante/Amaterasu/Leon/Pikachu All L-Block Matches | **Summer 2007 Contest** The **Summer 2007 Contest** was the sixth GameFAQs character tournament held on GameFAQs. Due to it starting in September, it is occasionally called the Fall Contest. On July 13, 2007, CJayC announced that there wouldn't be a "Quotes Contest" or a "Games Contest" this year, but instead there would be another Character Battle, that would be a "departure" from the old style. The "twist" for this contest was that it is a 4-way affair for each match. Using the Poll of the Day to decide, the top two characters from each match move on to the next round. Bracket makers were asked to pick the first and second place characters who will move on for each match IN THE CORRECT ORDER. It turns out, however, more than half of bracket makers did not realize that the order matters. SineNomine has to make a sticky topic explaining this during the first round matches in order to prevent flooding of this same question being asked again and again. ## Ulti's Analysis 2007 was a fun contest for all the right reasons, but the fourway thing really should have not come back. And it *definitely* didn't need to ruin the return of our games contest, holy hell. Contest ranking up to and including 2007, which people love to see for some reason: Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2007 (Characters 4-way) Summer 2005 (Characters) Summer 2006 (Females vs Males) Spring 2006 (Series) Summer 2004 (Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) For those looking for my standard pre and post contest blurbs, they're in the writeups for the first and last matches of the contest. ## 2007 Contest Detailed Stat Listings - Board 8's 2007 Nominations - Summer 2007 Total Nominations - Most Surprising Results of 2007 - Most Impressive Performances of 2007 - Most Disappointing Performances of 2007 ### See Also - 2007 Contest Matches - detailed write-ups on every '07 Contest poll - Summer 2007 1v1 Bracket
Contest Bracket
Division 1 Samus Mega Man Cloud Ryu SF Cloud Samus Link Sephiroth Link Cloud L-Block Snake L-Block Link
Knuckles the Echidna Rikku Vaan Yoshi Yoshi Knuckles Mega Man KOS-MOS Mega Man Yoshi Samus Scorpion
Arthas Menethil Diablo KOS-MOS Mega Man
Axel Frog Samus Sarah Kerrigan Samus Frog Scorpion Midna
Agent 47 Kratos Aurion Midna Scorpion
Division 2
Kefka Marcus Fenix Tom Nook Zelos Wilder Marcus Kefka Cloud Ocelot Cloud Marcus Auron Ryu SF
Cloud Strife Jill Valentine Midgar Zolom Revolver Ocelot
Auron Chris Redfield Pyramid Head Shadow the Hedgehog Auron Shadow Ryu SF Bowser
Bowser Mewtwo Ryu (Street Fighter) Toad
Division 3 Sephiroth Mario Link Vincent
CATS Meta Knight Princess Peach Sephiroth Sephiroth Meta Knight Fox Wario Sephiroth Fox Mario Big Boss
Banjo Captain Falcon Fox McCloud Wario
Big Boss Mario Pac-Man Wander Mario Big Boss Magus Phoenix Wright
Bomberman Crash Bandicoot Phoenix Wright Magus
Division 4
Agent J Bidoof Link Miles Edgeworth Link Bidoof Vincent Zelda Link Vincent Crono Zero
Miles 'Tails' Prower The Boss Vincent Valentine Zelda
Crono Sam Fisher Simon Belmont Raiden Crono Raiden Zero HK-47
HK-47 Lloyd Irving Jak Zero
Division 5 Master Chief Luigi Pikachu Dante Master Chief Dante L-Block Snake
Luigi Mudkip Pit Tingle Luigi Mudkip Ganondorf Vergil Ganondorf Luigi Master Chief Yuna
Ganondorf Ratchet Thrall Vergil
Master Chief PaRappa the Rapper Tommy Vercetti Yuna Master Chief Yuna Liquid Snake Alucard
Alucard Liquid Snake Ness Zidane Tribal
Division 6
Amaterasu Dante Little Mac Matt (Wii Sports) Dante Amaterasu Ada Balthier Dante Amaterasu Leon Pikachu
Ada Wong Balthier Bunansa Frank West Jade Curtiss
Isaac Pikachu Serge Tidus Pikachu Tidus Leon Vivi
Leon Kennedy Ridley Spyro the Dragon Vivi Ornitier
Division 7 Snake L-Block Sonic Squall
Kirby L-Block Laharl Nathan Hale Kirby L-Block Kratos Donkey Kong Kratos L-Block Snake Riku
Donkey Kong Kratos (God of War) Marth Prince of All Cosmos
Nightmare Rayman Solid Snake Vyse Snake Nightmare Ryu H Riku
Haseo Riku Roxas Ryu Hayabusa
Division 8
Aeris Gainsborough Akuma Geno Squall Leonhart Squall Aeris Sora Lara Squall Sora Sonic Sub-Zero
Albert Wesker Daxter Lara Croft Sora
Duke Nukem Ike Gordon Freeman Guybrush Threepwood Duke Nukem Gordon Sonic Sub-Zero
Sonic the Hedgehog Sub-Zero Prince of Persia Viewtiful Joe
## Results and Analysis ### Ngamer's Analysis The true wildcard of the group; perhaps even as big a wildcard as L-Block himself! Block's run was the most shocking and unbelievable thing ever to happen on this site, and so naturally it's always going to be the first thing that springs to mind when people think back to 2007, and I get the impression that the whole year is going to end up being judged by how people feel about L himself. That makes sense, but it's a long ways from fair, IMO, because '07 had a ton of other notable events and surprises as well. 4-way matches may have been more a "gimmick" than a true twist, but hey, the Character battle needed something new, and 4-ways sure as heck beat Tag Teams or Best Sidekick or whatever other kind of nonsense was being thrown around in early '07. It was a whole new way of looking at character strengths, and for the first time since '03 we pretty much had to throw old stats overboard and expect the unexpected. Pokemon and Halo went from jokes to serious threats, Nintendo's third tier were exposed as SSB-leaches who get dropped the moment something else likable comes along, and with Team Sonic likewise taking a nose-dive, Square was able to come closer to evening the gap with Nintendo than we'd seen since back in 2003. The other great thing about 2007 was, with maybe one or two exceptions, there was no such thing as a bad match. Even when the winner was never in doubt, there was nearly always something interesting going on below the surface, like watching Frog fight back valiantly to overcome Axel, or Phoenix hold the line against Bomberman, or Vincent crush (not *really*, but still!) the Noble Nine against Crono. On the other hand, because there was so much going on at once, no poll could match the full on intensity of the best 1v1 slugfests of the past. I wasn't so crazy about 2007 that I want to start switching over to a 4-way format full time, or even half-time for that matter, but still, it was a cool change of pace and ends up earning high marks across the board in my book. --- ## Knuckles the Echidna vs Rikku vs Vaan vs Yoshi 2007 _source: Knuckles the Echidna vs Rikku vs Vaan vs Yoshi 2007 (revid 88419)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, September 3rd, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1 - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 3rd, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 34.59% Knuckles - 30.32% Rikku - 21.59% Vaan - 13.53% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Yoshi first place (2pts) - 29.96% Yoshi second place (1pt) - 50.91% Knuckles second place (2pts) - 21.34% Knuckles first place (1pt) - 37.78% - **Advancing Prediction:** Yoshi - 80.87% (29,699) Knuckles - 59.12% (21,711) Usually I do a pre-contest thing, but I'm sticking it here because it basically amounts to "CJayC felt like it". But just in case people are looking at this stuff in a few years, I should probably mention a few things since this is getting written in 2011 four years after the fact. First and foremost, this was our first-ever fourway contest so there was a lot of things people weren't really aware of -- like, order mattering when filling out a bracket. Remember all the whining about that? Cripes. And believe it or not, fourway matches didn't always suck. You wouldn't know it by how much we hate them now (mostly bitterness because of 2009's games contest), but the first contest was actually pretty good from start to finish and the first match was fairly hyped. Normally you get a Nintendo overall 1 seed against some slug for an easy blowout, but with no seedings this year you couldn't really do that. Eventually the board settled on Yoshi \> Knuckles at the top, but that ended a few seconds after the match started. This match technically extended Knuckles' first round winning streak, though he didn't need to get first place to do it and like usual he had to work hard for it. Not many people really expected Rikku to give him a challenge, but once Knuckles did well early the typical FFX night vote paired with Sega's *terrible* night vote allowed her to come back from down 300 fairly quickly. Then Knuckles exploded with that typical Sega morning vote before falling down equally quickly by lunch. You'd think Square would have been able to hold even after holding off the Sega morning charge, but ask Magus how well that works out. Sonic characters never behave in polls, but at the end of the day they always have these huge day pushes. Rikku held out for awhile, but ultimately got swamped and lost by 1100. Knuckles is really odd when you look closely at it: 2002 - Blows out Akira, gets wrecked by Snake. 2003 - Weird match with Yuna where he was up by 1000 forever before blowing up in the morning. Loses in round 2 to Snake. 2004 - Weird match where Kefka is winning for awhile, but Knuckles blows up in the morning and loses in round 2 to.... Snake. 2005 - Everyone knows about Magus, but the loss to Squall in round 2 was actually really respectable. 2007 - Barely beats Rikku in another "saved by the morning" match, loses in round 2 to Mega Man and Yoshi. 2008 - Loses in round 1 for the only time ever, and even here he was respectably close to Zelda. 2010 - ANOTHER morning save against a character he should have destroyed and ANOTHER round 2 loss. I can't think of a single character who deserves to get to round 3 more than this guy. He's definitely earned it. Somewhere in here I should probably lament on how 12 hour matches while great completely murdered all sense of high vote totals and drama. I didn't remember how good this match was with the high vote totals until I looked at it again, but jeez. I kinda miss it. Oh and a note on Vaan. This was his only contest match ever, and you can see why. Dude's absolutely terrible and has got to be the weakest post-NES Final Fantasy lead. Does *anybody* like this guy? ## Stats and Analysis Judging by how 85% of Gurus had Yoshi slotted for first place here, you wouldn't think of this as the most exciting match to start a Contest season that GameFAQs has ever seen, but in reality it was. Of course much of that has to do with CJay's always making a Nintendo powerhouse the overall \#1, playing against a fodderific 16/8 seed, but also there were many on the board claiming Knuckles had a good chance for the Day One upset. Because the Female bracket had kept him out of the '06 Contest, Knux's stunning '05 defeat of Magus was still fresh in our minds, perhaps over-inflating his value. Some people also suspected that Nintendo had traditionally benefited from casual support, especially where Melee characters were involved, and so the company would be weaker in this format now that people had three other options to choose from, and that possibly Team Sonic's more dedicated supporters would give them an advantage. The bubble burst on that pipe dream within seconds, as Yoshi shot out to a huge lead that not even bracket voting or the Nintendo Power Hour could account for. Knux did decently with the board vote as well, but from there it was all downhill for him; Rikku was making cuts on him within the hour, and by the time a couple more hours had passed he was getting completely owned on every update. Knuckles fans didn't give up though- the legendary Sonic morning vote was still to come! It came alright... and went almost entirely to Yoshi! This match did a perfect job of setting the trends that we would continue to see in the 63 days to follow: - strong opening few hours for Nintendo - Square domination during the dead of the night - Nintendo ownage for a few hours once the sun rose - no clear Nintendo/Square advantage with the ASV (except where Kingdom Hearts was involved) - Sonic Team flat out disappointing no matter what time of day it was Meanwhile, Vaan was just awful all day. In retrospect the warning bells for an upcoming Balthier flop should already have been sounding, but instead most people choose to just chalk this up to Vaan being the pathetic Tidus to Balthier's Auron. What Vaan DID accomplish though was to bring about the first case of what would become the dominant factor of 2007: LFF (aka Leach Fanbase Factor). The FFXII lead had been embarrassed, but still managed to affect the final result by leaching away enough of Rikku's Square support to cost her a spot in the next round. The other interesting thing to note about Match One was the insane vote total - **158k** were cast, making this the **third** most popular matchup in site history (behind only the Zelda/FF Series Final and the Link/Cloud/Seph/Mario/Snake/Samus Battle Royale). As this was only the first day, we naturally assumed that interest and rallying would continue to grow the rest of the season, and that we'd be seeing 200k in a matchup before too long. We ended up being wrong, as votals instead took a dive for the remainder of Round One, only returning to approach the 160k mark in the L-Block-boosted final stages of the Contest. ## Match Trends ## transience's Analysis historically, the first match of the year is a Nintendo-sized blowout - Mario crushing Joanna Dark, Samus smashing a random Pokemon, Zelda putting up 90%+ on Civilization, etc. our alpha dogs from our alpha company go first, and while people are excited about the match because the contest is starting, we rarely get a good match. that's what makes this match so good. Yoshi and Knuckles were the class of the match, Yoshi having beaten Dante the year before and Knuckles having perhaps the Greatest Upset of All Time before giving potential Noble Nine Breaker Squall a fight two years ago. Rikku was a decent character who had a nice match against Ryu two years ago, but she didn't do all that well against friggin' Kairi and got doubled up by Samus. oh, and Vaan was in the match to ruin her chances. too bad things didn't work out that way. Yoshi came out dominating, just like he always does during the board vote, and Knuckles was out of the running before the poll froze. from there, it just got worse for Knuckles as Rikku slowly gained percentage while Knuckles sat there not doing much of anything. Knuckles grabbed a 300 vote lead, but FF10 is a night vote beast and Rikku took advantage of it, snatching the lead within about 90 minutes and building the lead out to 500 votes by morning. Knuckles recovered with the patented Sonic Day Vote, but Knuckles was no longer the lock to make round 3 due to Yoshi/Mega Man overlap; we had expected Knuckles to be about 7% closer, after all. from here, we tried to explain what happened. some possible explanations were: Yoshi and Knuckles having some overlap (not THAT crazy of an idea - they're both fan-favourite platforming characters, and we've seen Sonic and Mario overlap before); Square doing well in this format; and Knuckles being overrated thanks to fluking that match against Squall. in the end, the answer was a lot simpler - Sonic characters just suck in this format. I'm not about to try to explain why or if Sonic would have had a bad year in a traditional format, but by the end of the contest it was very obvious that Sonic was not in its element in 2007. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2863&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=1) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=1) • **(No Previous Match)**       • **Next Match** • **(No Previous Round)**       • **Next Round** --- ## Arthas Menethil vs Diablo vs KOS-MOS vs Mega Man 2007 _source: Arthas Menethil vs Diablo vs KOS-MOS vs Mega Man 2007 (revid 82892)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1 - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 50.83% KOS-MOS - 19.84% Diablo - 19.43% Arthas Menethil - 10.12% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mega Man first place (2pts) - 43.16% Mega Man second place (1pt) - 50.43% KOS-MOS second place (2pts) - 18.17% KOS-MOS first place (1pt) - 11.92% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mega Man - 93.59% (34,370) KOS-MOS - 30.09% (11,050) Everyone knows about SFF, and most people who follow fourways know what "LFF" means. But before LFF came not knowing what it even was. Then this match happened. The consensus for first place was easy. Mega Man was going to stomp, as he tends to do in the first round. Past that, almost everyone expected Diablo to get second place. The logic there was how he would hammer Arthas into the ground because of them being from the same company, plus KOS-MOS is weak anyway. The only thing she'd ever done of note in a contest prior to this is prevent Balrog0 from getting a perfect bracket in the summer of 2004. Then the match started, and it became readily apparent same fanbases in fourways behave very differently than they would in 1 on 1s. If you put Diablo against Arthas heads-up, Diablo probably wins really easily. Don't forget that Diablo beat Kefka while (3 years after this match) Arthas was thoroughly embarrassed by Kefka heads-up, although this here fourway match had everyone picking Arthas which led to some hilarious whining. Regardless, Diablo and Arthas completely screwed each other out of getting second place, allowing KOS-MOS to advance by default. If you advance in a fourway by only scoring 18%, odds are your competition completely blows or something weird was going on. In this case, it was probably both. KOS-MOS advancing was the biggest upset of the first round, kept that damn second match jinx in tact and got the statheads coming up with a new abbreviation to explain away anything they don't like. One on one, two characters of the same fanbase leads to stuff like Link getting close to 90% on Ganondorf. In a fourway, no matter how good the stronger character in a fanbase is, the presence of another character in that fanbase will always weaken both characters. It's how you end up with dumb crap like KOS-MOS advancing, and it gets especially fun when you get more than two characters of the same fanbase sharing a poll. ## Stats and Analysis - KOS-MOS advancing was the **\#1** most surprising result of Round One - It was also the **\#8** most surprising Round One result of all-time early in the contest, we weren't yet spoiled by every single result being unexpected, or someone wildly overperforming. as such, this match is better than it seems -- KOS took an early lead and never let it go, staying pretty constant throughout the day. Diablo, for the most part, disappointed - people were expecting him to be neck-and-neck with KOS, but it didn't happen. he came out pretty weak and never really went anywhere. the surprise of the match was Arthas, a character most expected to do pretty poorly. his opening vote was bad, but after that, he slowly crept up on Diablo, and after a while people stopped paying attention to Diablo whatsoever and focused on Arthas vs. KOS-MOS, even though Arthas was in fourth place. Arthas ended up slowing down come daytime, but managed to hold his slim lead over Diablo, showing that he deserved a place in the next character battle, assuming we have another one. Arthas got next to no discussion at all, so being within 3000 votes of KOS-MOS and beating out a guy who once won three rounds in a contest is fairly impressive. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2864&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Axel vs Frog vs Samus Aran vs Sarah Kerrigan 2007 _source: Axel vs Frog vs Samus Aran vs Sarah Kerrigan 2007 (revid 88420)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1 - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 53.28% Frog - 21.15% Axel - 14.94% Kerrigan - 10.71% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Samus first place (2pts) - 58.33% Samus second place (1pt) - 38.60% Frog second place (2pts) - 25.40% Frog first place (1pt) - 17.34% - **Advancing Prediction:** Samus - 96.93% (35,597) Frog - 42.74% (15,696) This was the second match in a row where a Noble Nine character took over 50% of the vote, which for now proved the format wouldn't slow these people down much. It was also the second time in the first three matches where second place was heavily contested and the last place character was a complete joke. Kerrigan winning that recent Gamespot contest is going to lead to a bunch of people picking her to win a match she's destined to lose, you watch. Axel vs Frog was the major highlight here, and before the game completely collapsed Chrono Trigger was always good for a classic match or two every contest. Hell even *after* the collapse, we get to see Crono getting upset by a jumble of pixels or the game itself losing to Mario 64 twice. Good times. But here, for awhile, it looked like there wouldn't be much trouble for Frog at all. Frog jumped all over Axel early -- relatively speaking, anyway, there's only so much "jumping" you can do from second place when the top character is getting over 50% of total votes -- up to a lead of 1500 in only a few hours. It slowed down overnight, but so does everything when Samus is sitting here phazon beaming everyone else's collective face. Even when the huge Kingdom Hearts morning vote showed up, which is right about the time Chrono Trigger always bombs, it still barely mattered. Axel got the lead under 1300, then the morning vote gradually wore off before Frog went back up again. Late morning, early afternoon, Frog went way up to 1900. And then...? That damn Kingdom Hearts day vote. We really need to get something KH and something Halo of similar strength in a one on one poll to settle the title of Day Vote King for good. Anyway, at 3 in the afternoon Frog was up by 1900 votes. Pair the Kingdom Hearts day vote up with Chrono Trigger's s\*\*\*-tier awful day vote, and you get Axel turning 1900 votes into 1000 in about 6 seconds. Well, two and half hours, but you get the point. It would only get worse, too. Axel came all the way back by 8, which is completely nuts when you really think about it. A 1900 vote lead in a fourway is what, 4000 in a one-on-one? How many characters could swing 4000 votes in five hours? The problem for Axel is how his fanbase is mostly comprised of people in *bed* by 8, so he wasn't able to keep the momentum going and finish Frog off. Oh he built a lead, but slowly. Way too slowly. Over the next three hours he was only able to build a lead of 330, and with the 25th hour rallying Frog gets in every match that lead needed to be more like 500 or more. Of course Frog was going to come back in the final hour. Doesn't he always? That 300 vote lead disappeared in something like 40 minutes, and Frog completely dominated the final few updates to win. It's rare a character both impresses the masses and completely embarrasses himself via one of the biggest choke jobs ever all in the same match, but that's Frog for you. As for Axel, this was probably his one and only chance to ever win a match. KH is getting weaker with each passing year, and 3 cannot come out soon enough for these people. ## Stats and Analysis this match was a match of trends: Frog is a CT character, one that does great to start out the poll but then goes into hiding the second the sun comes up. in some cases, they go into hiding even earlier, building up a huge lead in 3-4 hours and then holding on for dear life for the rest of the match. Axel, on the other hand, is the exact opposite: pathetic at first, but unequalled in the daytime thanks to the whole Disney thing. Axel is an upset pick that just about nobody even considered, self included. Frog was exposed pretty badly as a fraud in 2005, but even then, he wasn't going to be upended by a guy that was seen as fodder by most. when the match started, people called it within minutes. with the early vote/bracket vote/Axel's patheticness at night, Frog was cruising to a huge lead. 142 vote lead in five minutes, 500 votes after 30 minutes, up 834 by the time the first hour was over. CT was bad in the daytime, but it wasn't going to drop a lead of several thousand votes that Frog was expected to take by morning. the lead hit 1300 votes by the second hour, and by 3 it was up to 1500. from there, the first uh oh of the match happened: Frog stopped increasing. Axel froze him, and by 5am he started fighting back. by the time the morning vote -- usually indicative of the day vote -- was done, Axel had cut the lead to 1250 votes. Frog had the whole during-school vote still to pad his lead, and he did so - by the time school let out, he was up 1900. it was a nice buffer for the inevitable Axel comeback, and most people felt confident that Axel was not going to make a 1900 vote lead disappear. those people underestimated Axel -- or expected too much of Frog's day vote, one of the two. those polar opposite trends made this the most exciting comeback of the contest. by 4pm, it was already down to 1663. Axel tore 400 more votes off the lead in the next hour, by 5:30 it was under 1000, and by 7pm there was only 400 votes to go. Frog was thought to be able to stabilize by 11pm or so, but Axel was just going too fast. Axel made some huge cuts and by 8pm, we were tied. this match was Axel's to lose. Axel went on to take a 200 vote lead with no problem, and while Frog was occasionally stalling him now -- which was much better than the 60 vote cuts Axel was making with ease earlier -- Axel's lead kept on pushing up. 300 votes was hit by 10:30. Frog made an unusual 40 vote cut and followed it with another 20 vote cut, but Axel shut everyone up by winning the next update. Frog's comeback was on, but it was going nowhere. 10-20 vote cuts on a 265 vote lead with 45 minutes to go? it just wasn't fast enough. people believe that Frog has some strange "clutch" ability as if he's a real person, and nothing would convince them more than the last 45 minutes of this match. out of literally nowhere, Frog cut 51 votes off the lead, nearly a quarter of what was needed to take the lead. the next update, he took another 45. there were topics everywhere, including on LL, rallying for Frog. it isn't Frog that's unique, it's how far his fans are willing to go in order to ensure a win. what followed was the single most illegitimate result since Mario/Crono 2003: Frog ripped another 50 votes, then 30 more, then a whopping 67 to punctuate taking the lead. just like that, the match was over with 15 minutes to go. Axel was not going to come back from this kind of rally. Frog went on to win by a fair anticlimactic 128 votes. if I could change one thing about this match, it would be delaying Frog's comeback ten minutes. THAT would have been something. how shady was Frog's final hour? Time \| Axel . . . \| Frog . . \| Samus \| Kerrigan 20:00 \| 21.87% \| 15.37% \| 52.09% \| 10.67% 21:00 \| 21.24% \| 18.84% \| 49.65% \| 10.26% 22:00 \| 21.50% \| 19.01% \| 48.89% \| 10.60% 23:00 \| 18.76% \| **19.57%** \| 49.40% \| 12.28% 00:00 \| 17.09% \| **26.88%** \| 44.86% \| 11.17% [gamefaqscontests.com/images/poll_graph.php?matchnum=2865&type=2&seconds=60](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/images/poll_graph.php?matchnum=2865&type=2&seconds=60&max=0) pretty damn shady. but as far as exciting, wild matches with huge lead changes go, this was the single best match of the year. ## Match Trends ## transience's Day-After Analysis Frog started out on fire; he blew out to an 800 vote lead in an hour and showed no signs of slowing down. Chrono Trigger characters have always had an amazing night vote, so it wasn't unexpected. On the other hand, Kingdom Hearts characters may have the best after-school vote of any we've ever seen, so a big vote shift wasn't unexpected. What *was* unexpected, though, was when Axel ripped 200 votes off Frog's lead at 5am. That was Frog's best time and Axel was ruining it. Frog recovered, though, and built out his lead to 1900 votes before school let out. The second school let out, Axel just started ripping into Frog's lead. It started innocently, but by the time the full afterschool vote was in effect, Frog was getting absolutely destroyed. He was losing 400 votes per hour, and Frog supporters were so desperate that they were calling a mere 30 vote loss a "stall". Axel was moving so quickly that it looked like he would blow by Frog without so much as a struggle, and at 9pm EST, he did. The night vote was starting to kick in, but Axel would slowly push his lead out to 329 votes at 10:45. Even during Axel's peak hours, he was only getting 400 votes per hour. Everyone knew Frog would make a small comeback, but it wouldn't be fast enough. He was out of time. It started innocently with a modest 16 vote cut. No big deal there. I don't think anybody even noticed. Even Frog made that 40 vote cut, though, the entire board woke up. Frog is a bit legendary in these contests - he has two of the closest wins of all time including arguably the greatest comeback - so the second board vets saw this, they were like "oh \*\*\*\* not this again". Most reasonable people said "oh, that was just a fluke. let's see him do it again before we start flipping out." Frog's next cut was smaller, and Axel won the update after that. Frog was just screwing with us. From there, Frog cut off some votes, but he simply wasn't moving fast enough. 20 votes, 18 votes, 55 votes.. *55*? At this point, the board utterly exploded. A good chunk of the board was rallying for Frog and this format allowed it to show. Frog had pulled an update of 30% -- even when the entire board was bracket voting for Frog in the first five minutes, he only got to 24%. The next update came, and 45 more votes were pulled off the lead. At this point, cheating was the only way Frog was going to lose and everyone knew it. Frog's next update as a 31% update - to compare, Samus's was only 39%. Axel was being left in the dust. With ten minutes to go, Frog passed Axel and there was no comeback from there. The entire board celebrated. Was it a legitimate win? Probably not - there's literally no way that Frog would have come back under normal circumstances. But in this format, with a ton of brackets on the line? Frog got everything he needed and more. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2865&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=3) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Agent 47 vs Kratos Aurion vs Midna vs Scorpion 2007 _source: Agent 47 vs Kratos Aurion vs Midna vs Scorpion 2007 (revid 66086)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, September 6th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1 - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 6th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Midna - 34.55% Scorpion - 30.67% Kratos Aurion - 22.43% Agent 47 - 12.35% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Scorpion first place (2pts) - 20.12% Scorpion second place (1pt) - 46.59% Midna second place (2pts) - 26.05% Midna first place (1pt) - 18.69% - **Advancing Prediction:** Scorpion - 66.71% (24,499) Midna - 44.74% (16,430) This was our first "boring" match of the contest, but that didn't stop it from being good anyway. See, most people expected Midna to be the one way out in first place. After all, she was the new Zelda character from Ocarina of Time Rehash: Delayed to Sell Wiis Edition. Most people really like her in said game, and as we all know, Zelda Always Wins. Well, it didn't really turn out that way. Scorpion *dominated* this poll about as well as a non-elite can dominate, and even though she advanced into round 2 Midna completely crapped the bed here. The only reason she advanced at all was being a hyped Zelda character, and the bad competition helped. Agent 47 is irrelevant, and Kratos is another character in the long line of Tales characters unable to win a match. Even if you reran the one match a Tales character was able to win, Lloyd \> Wesker all the way back in 2005, is there any doubt the result gets reversed now? Now that I'm looking back on stuff for the first time in awhile, Midna lucked out big time here and Scorpion did *REALLY* well. With Mortal Kombat 9 getting such rave reviews all over the place, he and Sub-Zero should boost and we should also finally get more than two characters from that series into the field. ## Stats and Analysis - Scorpion overperformed by **+5.97%**, the **\#15** most impressive performance of 2007 - Midna underperformed by **-9.84%**, the **\#2** most disappointing performance of 2007 this was the first real upset of the contest, and it wasn't even close. Midna was touted as the first Zelda character with actual personality and the star of Twilight Princess, the 2006 Game of the Year that crushed the competition. her competition was a washed up fighting game character, a fairly cult RPG character and Agent 47. easy, yeah? well, Scorpion took the lead early, widened the gap quickly and never looked back. Midna may be well-known, but it seems the voters look at her as being more like Navi than Link. Midna was one of the biggest bombs of 2007, and this was looked at as being overestimation of Midna as opposed to underestimating Scorpion. in reality, it was both. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2866&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=4) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Kefka vs Marcus Fenix vs Tom Nook vs Zelos Wilder 2007 _source: Kefka vs Marcus Fenix vs Tom Nook vs Zelos Wilder 2007 (revid 66103)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 7th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2 - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 7th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kefka - 34.86% Marcus Fenix - 27.95% Zelos Wilder - 22.24% Tom Nook - 14.72% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Marcus first place (2pts) - 28.55% Marcus second place (1pt) - 27.59% Kefka second place (2pts) - 14.27% Kefka first place (1pt) - 57.62% - **Advancing Prediction:** Marcus - 56.14% (20,617) Kefka - 71.89% (26,401) It's funny how even when Kefka wins, he loses. The majority of people picked him to get first place, and for a good while he was in first place quite comfortably. He built up a lead near 900 overnight, tapered off a tiny bit in the morning, but then went back up to 900 again during school hours. It sucks when something is called "Summer 2007 Contest" and you're dealing with an ASV. But even without school, Kefka's day vote is a complete joke. He started collapsing away those 900 votes looooooong before school let out, then the ASV hit and it was the Red Sea collapsing on the Egyptians all over again. At 2:30 PM EST, Kefka was leading by 10 votes. 9 hours later, he lost by 5812 votes. I know we were dealing with Lettuce Kefka and Gears of War was Halo Lite for a tiny little while on this site, but still. If Tom Nook or Zelos were worth *anything*, Kefka could have potentially fell all the way down to third place here. Eventually Kefka would get his Dissidia appearance and *finally* get a boost, plus a match picture worth looking at, which ultimately led to him getting that long-awaited big win. But for years and years, this guy was a massive choke artist and would always get listed with stuff like Halo and Donkey Kong. Oh and a note on Zelos. I love the Tales series. Really, I do. But can you people PLEASE stop nominating these guys? Only Kratos will ever win anything, and that's only if he's against some slug. Just stop. ## Stats and Analysis - Marcus Fenix overperformed by **+8.84%**, the **\#7** most impressive performance of 2007 - Zelos underperformed by **-9.71%**, the **\#3** most disappointing performance of 2007 nobody really knew what to think of Marcus Fenix. on the one hand, he was the star of the most popular 360 game to date, Gears of War. on the other hand, he was a generic looking, generic sounding character who most people knew as "the Gears of War Guy" than anything else - it was questionable as to if people would even recognize him. it came down to what kind of picture the guy got, or so we thought. *looks up to match pic* oh, he got it all right. and not only that, we got Lettuce Kefka. what happens when Lettuce Kefka -- the worst thing we've ever seen during the daytime -- goes up against Master Chief-lite? this happens. Kefka did well at the start, building up an 850 vote lead through the poll's first six hours. the morning vote, surprisingly, didn't hurt him at all. all Kefka had to do was hold on during the afterschool vote and he had this match. unlikely, but possible. the during-school vote brought him down into the 600s, but he had stabilized. no one was going anywhere. the afterschool vote thought differently. in one update, he lost 50 votes. he stabilized a little, then lost 50 more. then he lost 80. then 100. within 70 minutes, he went from being ahead 10 votes to being down 1050. within one hour, we went from a match we were all watching intently to a match everyone was laughing at. some of us looked back a couple hours later and saw Kefka was down 4000 votes. hilarious. Lettuce Kefka strikes again, and Kefka finds a way to outdo his previous disappointments with a collapse for the ages. only the Master Hand/Kuja debacle could match this one. one last note about this match -- man, Zelos bombed, and bombed hard. some people were talking him up as a second place finisher to Kefka -- the beating was so bad that a couple of delusional folks called SFF with Kefka, despite the fact that Mithos did better against Kefka one-on-one that he did. pretty funny match all around. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2867&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=5) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Jill Valentine vs Midgar Zolom vs Revolver Ocelot 2007 _source: Cloud Strife vs Jill Valentine vs Midgar Zolom vs Revolver Ocelot 2007 (revid 66102)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 8th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2 - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 8th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 61.29% Jill Valentine - 17.68% Revolver Ocelot - 15.22% Midgar Zolom - 5.95% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (2pts) - 93.00% Cloud second place (1pt) - 3.27% Ocelot second place (2pts) - 52.84% Ocelot first place (1pt) - 2.45% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 96.27% (35,354) Ocelot - 55.29% (20,305) Even back when Cloud was a true elite and wasn't almost losing full 24 hour matches to Solid Snake, he would always get jumped on at the very beginning. But rather than get beat early by Jill or Ocelot, two characters of decent strength, the entire poll was losing early to.... the Midgar Zolom. Yeah. This was our first match with a true slayer elite in it, and the result was.... ugly, to say the least. Getting over 60% in a fourway poll is *hard* to do, but Cloud pulled it off largely due to Zolom being one of the most piss weak characters in the field. He wouldn't end up getting dead last in the LOL X-Stats, but he came close. The match of note here was Ocelot vs Jill, but that wasn't as close as the score suggests. Ocelot won by 3000, was never threatened and without Cloud sucking up all the votes he probably wins even easier. Which is what makes Jill's turnaround on him a year later one of the most puzzling results ever. There's almost no explanation for it at all. ## Stats and Analysis this match was funny in that no one knew who would win between Jill and Ocelot, but everyone sided with Jill. it was just a toss-up, Jill had the impressive performance against Peach in 2006 while Ocelot was a no-show and sucked it up against Pac-Man in 2005, and we left it at that. no one felt good about the match, no one was surprised Ocelot won, and very few got points. the end. Ocelot slowly built a lead in the opening hours, Jill supporters hung onto the belief that Ocelot might bomb harder than her in the daytime, and it just never happened. Cloud did great once the initial FF7 anti-vote wore off, and the Zolom pretty much sucked as expected. not too much to be said about this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2868&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=6) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Auron vs Chris Redfield vs Pyramid Head vs Shadow the Hedgehog 2007 _source: Auron vs Chris Redfield vs Pyramid Head vs Shadow the Hedgehog 2007 (revid 66108)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, September 9th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2 - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 9th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 40.27% Shadow - 31.54% Chris Redfield - 17.35% Pyramid Head - 10.58% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Auron first place (2pts) - 69.36% Auron second place (1pt) - 13.63% Shadow second place (2pts) - 51.65% Shadow first place (1pt) - 13.41% - **Advancing Prediction:** Auron - 82.99% (30,477) Shadow - 65.06% (23,893) Scorpion \> Midna was the first boring match, but at least the result was surprising. This match was just boring period. There was no way Auron wasn't getting an easy first place. There was no way Shadow wasn't getting an easy *second* place. This was all about setting things up for the next round, specifically how Auron/Bowser/Ryu are all kind of close and who knows what could happen in a fourway. The only interesting thing about this match was Pyramid Head miraculously beating Chris Redfield for third place, although it comes with a bit of an asterisk since Resident Evil 5 didn't exist yet. Lame. Pyramid Head's one moment of contest glory can't even be his. If this poll were rerun, Chris probably gets second place. ## Stats and Analysis - Pyramid Head overperformed by **+5.60%**, the **\#25** most impressive performance of 2007 - Shadow underperformed by **-5.28%**, the **\#15** most disappointing performance of 2007 completely obvious first place winner. completely obvious second place winner. the distance between the two was surprising, though. most people thought that Auron would take this without a struggle, but not by 25,000 votes. Shadow actually had to use his great day vote in order to even make it look this close -- during the nighttime, he was actually losing updates to freaking Pyramid Head. Pyramid Head got quintupled by Bowser, the guy Shadow would be going up against next round. needless to say, Shadow's chances at advancing to round 3 were officially screwed here. speaking of Pyramid Head, what an unexpected result from him (it?). Pyramid Head got the exact same percentage against Bowser as he did against all three of these guys combined. that's either a completely static fanbase (extremely unlikely) or Silent Hill is more popular nowadays. Good show. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2869&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=7) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Bowser vs Mewtwo vs Ryu vs Toad 2007 _source: Bowser vs Mewtwo vs Ryu vs Toad 2007 (revid 85791)_ ## Results **Round One** `Monday, September 10th, 2007` ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2 - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 10th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 36.22% Ryu - 32.33% Mewtwo - 20.09% Toad - 20.10% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Ryu first place (2pts) - 70.26% Ryu second place (1pt) - 16.75% Bowser second place (2pts) - 54.53% Bowser first place (1pt) - 18.02% - **Advancing Prediction:** Bowser - 72.55% (26,643) Ryu - 87.01% (31,954) It's easy to look at this in retrospect with current information and go "Oh, Ryu vs three Nintendo characters all killing each other, Ryu easily wins!", and you'd be right. Unfortunately, people didn't really think that way in 2007. Everyone looked at Bowser just absolutely embarrassing Ryu in 2005 and assumed this would be a cakewalk. Just look at the Oracle predictions for this and you'll see what Board 8 was thinking. But every contest has some matches where the casuals murder the gurus, and this was one such match. Because while Board 8 was picking Bowser \> Ryu without thinking twice, the public was picking Ryu \> Bowser without thinking twice. As you can see, the public ended up beating the sharps, and quite handily at that. Bowser having to deal with Mewtwo, a strong Nintendo character in his own right, and then Toad thrown in for the hell of it was way too much to handle. Bowser still advanced, but Ryu got first place almost by default. Normally the public's random win over the sharps is meaningless, because we always beat them in the end anyway. But with this match, it was a bit different. It would take until next round to see why, but needless to say, Bowser wasn't exactly apt to turn this result around once all the Nintendo disappeared. ## Stats and Analysis - Bowser underperformed by **-9.70%**, the **\#4** most disappointing performance of 2007 this was, in my mind, the first real upset. there were a couple matches prior to this that broke a lot of brackets, but this was the match, a match featuring two upper-tier characters in Ryu and Bowser, that had real implications for future rounds. the majority of the board had Bowser to round 4 with confidence - Bowser crushed Ryu in 2005, Auron was going to be in the same match as Cloud, and Bowser was the natural choice there. but oh man, this thing did not go according to the majority's thinking. most expected a Bowser win; some expected a Ryu win since there were two other Nintendo characters in the poll. Bowser did indeed start out with the lead, and held it for a couple minutes. but after that, Ryu went to town on Bowser. by 00:15, he was losing updates by 100 votes. Ryu has one hell of an early/night vote, and Bowser felt the wrath of Ryu here. an hour in, this match was as good as over. but it didn't stop there. Ryu's one of the strongest night characters we have. his day vote is a joke, and while Bowser isn't as strong as some other Nintendo characters in the daytime, it was thought he could at least stop the bleeding. instead, it was Mewtwo that absolutely rocked the daytime, going 50-50 with Bowser all the way to the end of the poll. in the end, Ryu won by 15,000 votes, and Bowser could only manage a 5,000 vote lead over Mewtwo. not the most inspiring of efforts from the guy most had pegged as round 4 material! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2870&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=8) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## CATS vs Meta Knight vs Princess Peach vs Sephiroth 2007 _source: CATS vs Meta Knight vs Princess Peach vs Sephiroth 2007 (revid 66213)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 3 - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 58.24% Princess Peach - 17.69% Meta Knight - 12.32% CATS - 11.79% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sephiroth first place (2pts) - 53.03% Sephiroth second place (1pt) - 40.80% Meta Knight second place (2pts) - 16.65% Meta Knight first place (1pt) - 21.37% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sephiroth - 93.83% (34,458) Meta Knight - 38.02% (13,962) In retrospect, this was a hilarious upset even from my perspective as a Peach fan. The big argument here was whether or not Sephiroth would blow everyone out hard enough for CATS to get second place. CATS gets 11-12% in every poll, and he held serve here. The idea was Peach and Meta Knight would screw each other over, Seph would be too strong and CATS would finally win a match. "Whoops" Sephiroth did well, but not godslayer-level well. This forced CATS into last place quite easily, Seph of course was way out in front, and Peach had the lead on second place and would of course stretch it out because who cares about Meta Knight when Brawl wasn't even... "Wait, what?" The second update hit, Meta Knight stormed out in front of Peach and would never let up after that, en route to a very easy second place. Fourways are kinda famous for an easy first place, an easy last place and two characters close enough to make second place interesting, but Meta Knight dominated this. It's easy to blame Brawl for this huge upset, but in a way that was only half true. All we had at that point was a trailer and I think the DOJO! site, and in retrospect it's easy to say that site plus the first month or two after Brawl's release was that game's strongest time. Of course then people realized the game was terrible beyond words, so all the hype and initial soma wore off really quick. If this were rerun, Peach might actually have a decent chance at second place. Most people in North America prefer Melee, Spam Knight and his Whorenado and his awful game left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, and most importantly Sephiroth is just plain weaker now. He lost to Snake, and could potentially not score 50% in this poll again. Barring the HD Remix treatment, Final Fantasy 7 is slowly going the way of Chrono Trigger on this site. ## Stats and Analysis - Meta Knight overperformed by **+5.88%**, the **\#18** most impressive performance of 2007 - Meta Knight advancing was the **\#8** most surprising result of Round One what a weird, weird match. Peach, maybe the most well-known female video game character in history vs. Meta Knight, known more for his appearance in a trailer than anything else. or so we thought. I really have no idea what's up with Meta Knight. the argument going into this match was Peach vs. CATS, because CATS always gets about 12% in every poll. if Sephiroth were to dominate this poll as expected, CATS had a chance of winning just because he's guaranteed that 11-12%. and he got it. the thing is, Sephiroth did a lot worse than most expected, allowing for Peach to blow past CATS in no time at all. Peach came out with her customary awesome board vote - either because she was the obvious bracket vote, or because we suck Nintendo hard here, or who knows why. but she's always done her best at the beginning, and today was no different. the thing that was surprising everyone is that Meta Knight was not dying off after the board vote. Meta Knight seems like the kind of guy that the early vote would favour, but it was quite the opposite here - as time passed, he was doing better and better. after three minutes he passed CATS, at five minutes he was stalling Peach, and at ten minutes he shot way ahead with a massive 50 vote gain. Meta Knight built up a 300 vote lead fairly quickly but then just stopped - Peach came back a little bit during the dead hours, and then Meta Knight padded his lead slightly during the time people were in school. it seemed logical that Peach would take the day vote - I mean, she's by far the more known quantity here. Peach has had a pretty mediocre day vote though, kind of like Bowser. she just kinda flops in the day, and Meta Knight started tearing into her. after jumping 300 votes in an hour, this match was over. Peach, a fairly popular round 3 pick, was out, and the character a lot of people thought would finish in a distant 4th ended up with a very surprising, impressive victory. I still have no idea what to make of Meta Knight. I imagine that with Brawl out, he'll be like Falcon and Marth and all of those - around the fodder line. Peach seems like the kind of character you vote for when you either don't know or don't care about the others though -- who seriously cares about Peach? -- but when there's more options, you're not likely to vote for her. chances are, the format played tricks on her here, and in a straight-up match she'd take Meta Knight. but who knows? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2871&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=9) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Banjo vs Captain Falcon vs Fox McCloud vs Wario 2007 _source: Banjo vs Captain Falcon vs Fox McCloud vs Wario 2007 (revid 66124)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 3 - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fox - 32.27% Wario - 29.07% Captain Falcon - 21.47% Banjo - 17.06% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Fox first place (2pts) - 44.12% Fox second place (1pt) - 39.68% Wario second place (2pts) - 37.95% Wario first place (1pt) - 16.30% - **Advancing Prediction:** Fox - 83.80% (30,775) Wario - 54.25% (19,923) This match is proof why I take all those dumb Oracle stats with a huge grain of salt; Nlamer says Fox in this match was the most impressive performance of the entire contest, but that's because the Oracle crowd messed up. If you call this Nintendo SFF more impressive than L-Block, please schedule a CT scan at your earliest convenience. That said, Nintendo SFF or not, this was a beast performance by Fox. If you're going to get into a contest for the first time in four years, might as well make it memorable. As memorable as an all-Nintendo fourway match can be, anyway. Past that, things went mostly as expected. Wario was expected to get second place by default, since the consensus is Fox would SFF Falcon more than him. Falcon managed to stay in this match for 30 minutes, but got swamped overnight en route to a reasonably distant third place. Banjo was expected to stink it up and get last place, which he did. Oddly enough, Falcon was probably stronger than Wario all along, but it took all the way until 2010 for us to get the proof of it. ## Stats and Analysis - Fox overperformed by **+13.36%**, the **\#1** most impressive performance of 2007 - Wario underperformed by **-6.56%**, the **\#12** most disappointing performance of 2007 the wiki tells me that Fox's performance is the \#1 most impressive of the entire contest -- moreso than every L-Block, Vincent, Pikachu or Mudkip match. Nintendo SFF can do that to ya. Fox put up one hell of a performance here. though to be fair, it was only partly his doing -- Wario really laid an egg here, and was in a real fight with Captain Falcon for a few minutes until he pulled away during the nighttime. in a match with a guy most people are apathetic on in Wario, an N64 platforming character not named Mario and another SSBM character, Fox really put on a performance here, one of the best of the contest. Wario, on the other hand, proved that he does not need to ever make another contest. Fox on the other hand needs a real shot against real competition. Fox's bracket placement was one of my least favourite things about this contest. this match was probably a little bit better than its ranking, but it's tough to rank a weak fourpack full of fourth-tier Nintendo characters all that high. it was unexpected, but still not very interesting. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2872&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=10) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Big Boss vs Mario vs Pac-Man vs Wander 2007 _source: Big Boss vs Mario vs Pac-Man vs Wander 2007 (revid 66152)_ ## Results **Round One** Thurday, September 13th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 3 - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Thurday, September 13th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 58.00% Big Boss - 17.18% Pac-Man - 16.91% Wander - 8.02% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario first place (2pts) - 81.52% Mario second place (1pt) - 14.91% Big Boss second place (2pts) - 19.19% Big Boss first place (1pt) - 14.60% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mario - 96.43% (35,413) Big Boss - 33.79% (12,409) This was a pretty debated match, although it really shouldn't have been. Mario is the absolute worst possible character for Pac-Man to share a poll with -- worse than Link, even -- because they're both from the exact same time period and appeal to the exact same people. And while both are complete legends in the industry, Mario definitely got the better end of the fame stick. Yet for some reason, most people thought Pac-Man would get second place over Big Boss anyway. Possibly because of the big Pac-Man \> Ocelot upset a couple years prior, I dunno. Board 8 actually got this one right, so it was a good HAW HAW CASUALS day. What most people didn't expect though was just how easy this would be for Big Boss. Mario didn't just beat Pac-Man; he pounded the living crap out of him. Pac-Man v Mario heads-up in this match wouldn't have even gotten Pac-Man 15% of the votes, allowing Big Boss to get one of the more surprising easy second place finishes around. This match was the first in a long line of Mario \> Big Boss results across the years, and while it's not quite as bad as Snake \> Knuckles was it's pretty close. Oddly enough, I'm still not sure how a Pac-Man vs Big Boss match would go. Big Boss probably wins, but I wouldn't feel comfortable picking it. Wander of course got last place even with the ridiculousness everywhere else. lol Wander and lol his game. ## Stats and Analysis - Big Boss overperformed by **+5.82%**, the **\#19** most impressive performance of 2007 - Pac-Man underperformed by **-6.80%**, the **\#9** most disappointing performance of 2007 - Big Boss advancing was the **\#4** most surprising result of Round One Pac-Man beat Ocelot in 2005. Ocelot is stronger than Big Boss. easy, right? yes, actually, since Pac-Man's kryptonite is an old-school Nintendo character, and seriously, who defines old-school more than Mario? Pac-Man stumbled out of the gate and never had a chance. Big Boss went up against a guy with no name in Wander and an icon that got SFFed to death. the result was a boring blowout for Mario, a commanding second for Big Boss, and everyone looking forward to the next match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2873&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=11) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Bomberman vs Crash Bandicoot vs Phoenix Wright vs Magus 2007 _source: Bomberman vs Crash Bandicoot vs Phoenix Wright vs Magus 2007 (revid 88421)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 14th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 3 - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 14th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Magus - 41.48% Bomberman - 21.53% Phoenix Wright - 21.30% Crash - 15.66% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Magus first place (2pts) - 21.17% Magus second place (1pt) - 30.40% Phoenix second place (2pts) - 26.89% Phoenix first place (1pt) - 16.86% - **Advancing Prediction:** Magus - 51.57% (18,939) Phoenix - 43.75% (16,067) This was such a weird match, and we may never again see another match personify a winner so well. First and foremost, what the hell Magus. Ever since Knuckles beat him in 2005, it's been like popping a balloon with him. He went from being hyped as the Link-slayer in 2003 to now getting beat by the likes of Alucard and.... Sandbag. I mean damn. Even here when he gets first place in a poll, it just looks... bad. 31% in a fourway poll is not good when your opponents are fodder, fodder, fodder. Board 8 may be obsessed with Phoenix Wright, but facts are facts. He's weak. And Magus's percentage against these guys is just awful. Any dream of him making a deep run in this contest went totally out the window here. This wasn't like that Oblivion \> Tales of Symphonia match in 2009 where the top game doing bad was due to good competition. Secondly, what the hell Crash Bandicoot. Before this, the best last place finish we'd seen was something like 18% from Agent 47 in that weird Scorpion \> Midna match. Then this happened. Sometimes, last place isn't really last place. We really need to get Crash a better seed one of these years so he can go out in style with a win. One win over Ulala (who?) in 2002 isn't really fair, he needs something else. And of course, what the hell Phoenix Wright vs Bomberman. Before that even happened, Phoenix was scaring the living hell out of Magus himself for first place. Phoenix got this ridiculous board vote, which was to be expected in his first-ever winnable contest match. He ran out of gas quickly, but led Magus for 30 minutes and put another nail in that guy's contest coffin. He's worse than the PS3 at this point. If you look at the update chart, this really shouldn't have been much of a match at all. Phoenix led outright for 30 minutes, and then when Magus caught up he was still out in second place over Bomberman. When an hour was up, he led by 700 votes and just kept on going up. Magus was totally sucking it up in first place, so there was plenty of love to go around for everyone else. What this basically meant is Phoenix had all night to build a lead, and though he slowed down in the dead hours he was still going up. Then the morning vote came, and he still kept going up. He didn't really start losing momentum until the brats went to school, but by then he led by 1300 votes and the match seemed over. I mean really, who cares about Bomberman? OBJECTION! Apparently, lots of people care about Bomberman. Because as the afternoon wore on, he started building some momentum and kicked off one of the slowest comebacks ever. But a slow comeback is still a comeback, and all those update charts people slave over saw Bomberman stay within proper parameters update after update after update. It didn't really seem like such a problem at first, but he kept it up for so long that it became a legitimate trend come ASV time. That 1300 was knocked down to under 800 by the time the brats got out of school, and then it gained a little steam and just kept on going. But as the hours wore on, the comeback got slower and slower. Under 800 at 3 turned into 700 20 minutes later, which turned into 600 over an hour later, and 400 an hour or so after that. The problem Bomberman ran into is he ran out of a lot of steam come evening vote time and he was up against a character Board 8 refused to see lose. It was just like one of Phoenix Wright's games, really. Here you have a character no one cares about (Bomberman) trying to kill Phoenix and a Deus Ex Machina (Board 8) swoops in at the last second to save Phoenix's ass. He never actually does any of the heavy lifting himself. Bomberman got that lead all the way down to 18 votes, but that's the closest he would get. Seriously, did you really think Board 8 was going to let Phoenix lose this? Bomberman could have been up by 1000 with an hour left and he still might have lost. That's how crazy the Phoenix love was in 2007, and to this day he's the mascot of the Board 8 Wiki. Although with how bad Apollo Justice was, with how bad Phoenix's hobo character was in it, and with how mediocre the Edgeworth games are, that series may finally be getting stale on Board 8. ## Stats and Analysis - Crash overperformed by **+5.60%**, the **\#24** most impressive performance of 2007 - Magus underperformed by **-10.61%**, the **\#1** most disappointing performance of 2007 ahh, Phoenix. has there ever been a character as disproportionately loved on board 8? EVERYONE loves this guy, and his games have been played by literally everyone on the board. the only other games that can claim that are major-title Nintendo and Square games. PW games are second only to the Smash series as far as being talked about on board 8. that's pretty impressive for a game that most of the gaming world hasn't even heard of. because of this, Phoenix is totally unique. he truly is board 8's character. his never-give-up underdog personality fits in perfectly in a contest, where he is one of the strangest characters we've ever seen. GameFAQs is about the only place where Phoenix Wright would have a chance against two well-known icons -- albeit third-tier ones -- in Bomberman and Crash. Phoenix may have had a slight bracket advantage, but don't let that fool you - by the time the match came around, most everyone thought Phoenix was the underdog. Phoenix had a dedicated fanbase, but how big was it? was it enough to get 30,000 votes? PW games barely sold that much. with Frog struggling mightily a few days earlier, Magus probably wasn't going to dominate this poll like Phoenix would need in order to place. PW fans -- ie, all of board 8 -- had hope, but not a whole ton. in the minutes leading up to the match, everybody expected Phoenix to take the lead in the opening seconds, but nobody expected this. Phoenix started out with about half the votes -- no big surprise -- but didn't die. he hung in the low-mid 30s for the first five minutes, besting former board 8 wonder Magus with ease. PW rushed out to a 70 vote lead and held it all the way to the freeze. it's difficult to explain how huge this was because of what happened with L-Block later in the contest, but the board exploded. moreso than anything we saw for L-Block, even. the first hour was renamed the Phoenix Wright power hour, cries of **SUCK IT MAGUS** were everywhere, and everyone was floored. we knew it wouldn't last, but holy crap! the 00:10 update came in and Phoenix lost some of his lead on Magus, but picked up another 100 votes on Bomberman. every update that he held the lead was even more amazing, including the 00:20 update where he actually increased in percentage. Phoenix held the lead for 25 minutes and built up a 500 vote lead on Bomberman within that time. pretty damn impressive for a point and click lawyer game character. maybe my favourite stats topic of all time: [thengamer.com/stats/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt451-500/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt478](http://www.thengamer.com/stats/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt451-500/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt478/) Phoenix had a hell of a first hour, but we all knew it wouldn't last. Phoenix rolled up a 700 vote lead in that first hour, but slowed to a crawl from there. Bomberman stalled him at 1:20, a really ominous sign for a group of fans that knew Phoenix was going to flop hard come daytime. Phoenix pushed his lead out to 1300, but it was a slow push and Phoenix was dying off as he was running out of fans. even during the during-school vote, Phoenix was fading. by the time school got out, the lead was already down to 800 votes. it seemed like a matter of time before Bomberman took the lead. Phoenix had a nice little stall to start the afterschool vote, but from there it was all Bomberman. Phoenix's lead shot down below 500 in no time, and by 7 it was below 200. Phoenix stalled him at 139 votes three times in four updates, then started to fight back out of absolutely nowhere. Phoenix's random surge died after an hour and Bomberman cut the lead below 100 votes. 67, 49, 32, 18.. **HOLD IT!** Phoenix simply would not give up the lead, and the longer the match went, the better you felt about Phoenix's chances since you knew his fans would do whatever it took if the match was close. Phoenix pushed the lead back out to 87, Bomberman cut it back to 54, Phoenix responded with a few small gains, and Bomberman just kinda gave up. the last few minutes were anticlimactic, but not to Phoenix fans -- seeing Phoenix hang on for dear life and win was one of the greatest moments of the contest. board 8 celebrated pretty hard after this match. of course, watching Edgeworth get doubled by Bidoof mere seconds later shut us up pretty quick. :) ## Match Trends ## transience's Day-After Analysis Phoenix Wright is a unique character. He is universally adored by the board, and the only people I've seen speak out against him are the ones who think he's "overrated". Granted, we have a lot of those on Board 8, but when you combine Phoenix's never-give-up attitude with his relative unknown stature outside of GF, you have a guy that \*everyone\* likes to cheer for. Because of that, he has an opening vote like you wouldn't believe. Phoenix Wright took the lead the second the poll started, which wasn't unusual. He did the same thing vs. Gordon Freeman last year for 10 minutes. But this was different. Phoenix Wright was dominating the poll, holding one-time board favourite Magus way behind. The board vote used to be Magus's best time, but not with Phoenix Wright in the poll. It took Magus a couple of minutes to even get to 25%, and Phoenix was increasing his lead. The board was going absolutely wild the whole time too. Stats 478 is one of the more legendary stats topics because of it. Phoenix ended up holding the lead over Magus for 25 minutes, and he was absolutely dominating Bomberman at the time. Phoenix built a 709 vote lead over Bomberman within one hour and showed no signs of slowing down. everybody expected a big board vote, but not \*this\* big. Yeah, Phoenix had the majority of the brackets, but board 8 is not exactly objective when it comes to Phoenix Wright. When Phoenix was \*actually\* in the lead, people were like "...holy crap, he can do this." Of course, Phoenix's fanbase is a wild, rabid one, but not a particularly large one. Phoenix stopped increasing at about 2am and just kind of sat there going 50/50 for a long time. Bomberman was already stalling Phoenix and the poll was only two hours old. Bomberman was sure to win the day vote when the time came. Phoenix's chances didn't look all that great. Phoenix pushed his lead to 1300 votes by morning, and amazingly, he didn't get killed by the morning vote. The morning vote is usually a sign of how the afterschool vote would go, but he went 50/50 during that time. Maybe he could hold on after all! Unfortunately, Phoenix is the kind of guy that just runs out of gas as the match gets older and older. He bled percentage throughout the day and started losing votes at about 11am. By 1pm, he was losing votes really fast and it looked hopeless. by the time school let out, his lead had shrunk by 500 and the worst was yet to come. Bomberman didn't slaughter Phoenix like most thought he would, though. He'd take 15-20 votes an update, but nothing brutal. Occasionally he'd win a big one, but then Phoenix would win one back to even it up. Bomberman brought Phoenix's lead down to about 150 votes... and just stopped. At one point, Phoenix stalled him at 139 votes for three straight updates. Then the lead shrunk to 136, jumped back up to 160 or so, and then went back to 139. It was almost comical. It was a dead stall right when Bomberman was about to take the lead. Phoenix fans were pretty much watching the clock and holding he could hold on here. Bomberman pushed the lead below 100 votes at 9:00, but he was getting nowhere fast. He eventually got it down to 67, 49, 32, 18... **HOLD IT!** Phoenix pushed the lead back to 80 votes, Bomberman knocked it down to 50, Phoenix pushed it back to 90, Bomberman cut another 40 votes off.. and then he ran out of time. Phoenix had won. Bomberman had actually won more updates than Phoenix throughout the day, but Phoenix never trailed. He bent, but absolutely would not break. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2874&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=12) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Agent J vs Bidoof vs Link vs Miles Edgeworth 2007 _source: Agent J vs Bidoof vs Link vs Miles Edgeworth 2007 (revid 66166)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 15th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 4 - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 15th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 72.02% Miles Edgeworth - 11.65% Bidoof - 9.98% Agent J - 6.37% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (2pts) - 74.77% Link second place (1pt) - 23.13% Bidoof second place (2pts) - 23.11% Bidoof first place (1pt) - 11.45% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 97.90% (35,953) Bidoof - 34.56% (12,692) It's weird how Phoenix Wright can go and have this epic struggle with Bomberman, then one match later in the next division we see Bidoof come close to doubling Miles Edgeworth in a match many expected to go Edgeworth's way. But to be fair, it wasn't entirely Edgey's fault. Yeah he's piss weak, but Link in the poll meant even a marginally effective Bidoof rally was going to doom Edgey. Because while other so-called elites were out getting percents in the 50s and 60s, Link went out and completely godstomped to the tune of 70.5%. Weak competition or not, this was a championship performance. Over 100,000 votes and 70% in a fourway poll? Holding not one but two characters under 10%? Link was the clear and obvious favorite at this point. Oh, if only Link knew was in store for him... But back to Bidoof for a second. People might not remember this, but he was actually leading this poll at the very beginning. Link obviously murdered him for first place, but Bidoof's 4chan rally was more than enough to put him past Edgeworth. He was also our first true joke character in the field, and Bidoof's success here would help pave the way for many more joke characters to come, both in this contest and contests in the future. Had Bidoof crapped the bed here, we may never have seen the stage set for things like L-Block, Mudkip and Missingno. ## Stats and Analysis - Bidoof overperformed by **+5.98%**, the **\#14** most impressive performance of 2007 - Bidoof advancing was the **\#5** most surprising result of Round One there was no worse way for Phoenix Wright fans to celebrate Phoenix's epic last stand vs. Bomberman than to see Bidoof rocking Miles Edgeworth seconds later. and hey, maybe we deserved it - we were pretty fanboyish and rabid for that entire match. but still -- this was Bidoof, and dear god did it have a strong opening vote. not even the crazy PW opening vote could withstand it -- heck, Link couldn't withstand it in the first few seconds. the vote totals were off the charts, the word "4chan" became well-known to everyone on board 8 during this match, and PW fans were kicked in the gut as a piece of feces was actually crushing their beloved Edgeworth. people were calling for Link's head here, but it was just a matter of time before he was rocking the day vote, and ended up over 70%. what an interesting match -- from the match being 50-50, to Edgeworth being the huge board favourite thanks to Phoenix's match, to Bidoof crushing the souls of every PW fan in existence, all within 24 hours. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2875&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=13) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Miles "Tails" Prower vs The Boss vs Vincent Valentine vs Zelda 2007 _source: Miles 'Tails' Prower vs The Boss vs Vincent Valentine vs Zelda 2007 (revid 83461)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, September 16th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 4 - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 16th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vincent - 34.31% Zelda - 32.40% Tails - 17.55% The Boss - 15.71% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Vincent first place (2pts) - 31.05% Vincent second place (1pt) - 31.38% Zelda second place (2pts) - 49.78% Zelda first place (1pt) - 32.58% - **Advancing Prediction:** Vincent - 62.43% (22,927) Zelda - 82.36% (30,246) This match was hilarious, but not for any relevant reasons. Vincent \> Zelda was a stone cold lock, despite the massive ZeldaFEAR. Vincent beat Ganon, who would probably smoke Zelda heads-up. That's really all anyone needed to know going into this, but it didn't stop some people from picking Zelda to get first place anyway. Whatever, the top two characters were locks and it was only a minor matter of degree. The funny thing here was how great -- and wholly useless -- the Tails vs The Boss match for third place was. If this were for second place or a one-on-one match, it would have been a classic. Unfortunately it was for distant third in a match decided after the opening seconds, so to this day no one cares or remembers that any of this ever happened. The basic rundown is The Boss built up a 900 vote lead, choked all of it away during the crazy morning vote Sega always gets, but then miraculously prevented Tails from ever doing anything once he came back. Even the ASV only allowed Tails to stay in a perpetual tie for a few hours, and then The Boss pulled away with the evening vote. If that match were at all relevant it would have been great, unfortunately they were stuck fighting for crumbs and pretending they were happy about it. ## Stats and Analysis Vincent vs. Zelda was a hot debate one-on-one going into 2007's contest. Zelda had just put up 46% on Samus after beating Aeris without a sweat, while Vincent squeezed by Ganondorf en route to a nice performance on Sonic. Twilight Princess had come out in the last year, too. with the site being so heavily Nintendo, any influx from the Wii and TP and whatever else scared the hell out of everyone and even got its own term -- Zeldafear. Zeldafear was dispelled pretty quickly in this matchup. Zelda took the early lead due to the rabid Nintendo vote early on and how FF7 gets anti-voted to hell at the same time, but pretty soon Vincent took the lead, and before you knew it, the floodgates opened. Vincent took a close, hotly contested match and turned it into an absolute blowout. he even beat Zelda down during the daytime, something that's not easy to do. it's unclear whether the same thing would happen one-on-one, but it's tough to call Zelda stronger than Vincent in any way, shape or form at this point. the real match on this day was Tails vs. The Boss. The Boss took the early lead, collapsed in the daytime as per usual and then, right when the two were tied, started building up a nighttime cushion to hold Tails off. really though, only the truly hardcore cared about the epic battle for third place. this match was over once Vincent started crushing Zelda with 50 vote updates during her best time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2876&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=14) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Crono vs Sam Fisher vs Simon Belmont vs Raiden 2007 _source: Crono vs Sam Fisher vs Simon Belmont vs Raiden 2007 (revid 66168)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, September 17th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 4 - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 17th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 47.50% Raiden - 21.94% Sam Fisher - 15.50% Simon Belmont - 15.02% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Crono first place (2pts) - 72.36% Crono second place (1pt) - 9.13% Raiden second place (2pts) - 36.42% Raiden first place (1pt) - 6.67% - **Advancing Prediction:** Crono - 81.49% (29,926) Raiden - 43.09% (15,824) This was seriously a weird match. Normally when you see an easy first place and close second place, you get a situation where second place was super heated. But here, that wasn't the case. Crono was the obvious overall winner here, and a decent case could be made for any of the other three getting second. Then the poll started, and it was clear Simon Belmont wasn't going anywhere. Although all things considered, early on it didn't look like Sam Fisher was going anywhere either. Raiden was doing the "build a decent lead while in second place" thing on him, and for quite awhile it looked like the match was over and settled about an hour in. Even as the day time hit and Raiden started slowing down his advance, people were just bored of this and wanted to move on to the next match already. It's kind of a shame no one on GameFAQs cares about Splinter Cell and that we pretty much unanimously prefer Metal Gear Solid, because otherwise this could have been a really good match given the ASV. I don't know what game came out in 2007 for Sam Fisher and I honestly don't care, but whatever it was allowed him to go nuts once the ASV hit. Crono's joke of a day vote certainly didn't hurt, either. Putting number to it, Raiden's peak lead was 1500 votes and he only beat Sam by 372. Sam really took it to Raiden here, but he was starting from so far back and no one really cares about his games so everyone knew he wasn't going to finish off the comeback attempt. And even had he gotten super close, it's Splinter Cell vs Metal Gear Solid. I doubt Raiden had even a 0.1% chance of choking this away, although the collapse was still a Pyrrhic Victory at best. But a win is a win is a win, and Raiden was finally able to get one here. ## Stats and Analysis if there was ever such a thing as a forgettable 400 vote result, this is it. this match was seen as one of the true locks of the contest: Crono with a huge win, Raiden easily in second, Sam and Simon fighting for scraps. most people were paying attention Crono more than anyone else here, because both Frog and Magus had sucked it up and Crono had a huge match with Vincent coming up, who had impressed against Zelda in his first match. a few days before the match, we saw the picture - Raiden in his MGS4 getup. "cool" Raiden, if you will. half the board thought this was great; the other half was like "will people recognize who this is? is this Zero Suit Samus part 2?". Raiden had a generic name and an unfamiliar design to a lot of people. his one match was against the one guy he had zero chance against, Solid Snake, so he was as good as new. it was time to see if he would be of average strength or decent, because there was just no way he would lose to Sam Fisher. when the match started, Raiden shot off to a decent lead. Sam Fisher is one of the most unpopular board vote characters ever, though -- I think Samus was beating him like 33-1 or something at one point -- so this wasn't really all that impressive. Raiden slowly built his lead to a thousand votes overnight, and then to 1400 by the time school got out. from there, it was ugly and embarrassing -- he was already doing poorly, but Sam Fisher was ripping into him with the xbox day vote. the lead shot below 1000, then below 700, and soon it was below 500. it seemed like Raiden would fight back some in the late hours, but he never did - stalling was the best he could do, and Fisher was still ripping votes off him until the last second of the poll. he got the lead down to 350, but never any closer. he never really threatened to win the match, but he sure as hell scared a lot of people who were overreacting, and the Raiden \> Zero train was all but derailed. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2877&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=15) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## HK-47 vs Lloyd Irving vs Jak vs Zero 2007 _source: HK-47 vs Lloyd Irving vs Jak vs Zero 2007 (revid 66169)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 4 - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 42.04% Lloyd Irving - 20.29% HK-47 - 19.43% Jak - 18.34% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zero first place (2pts) - 30.17% Zero second place (1pt) - 45.75% HK-47 second place (2pts) - 11.55% HK-47 first place (1pt) - 21.69% - **Advancing Prediction:** Zero - 75.92% (27,881) HK-47 - 33.24% (12,207) You know how some close matches are awesome, while others just suck? Well this was our second garbage close match in a row, and by itself this match coined a new phrase: Jakpack of Suck. Because make no mistake here -- HK-47 did not win this match. Jak and Lloyd just lost it, and all things considered this is where "TALES CHARACTERS CAN'T WIN STOP NOMINATING THEM FFS" all began. Zero of course was going to roll into first place, and early on Lloyd looked decent enough. But then HK-47 took the lead with the second update, never to give it up again. Lloyd made his cuts here and there, but then the Xbox day vote showed up to hammer him away for good. Then you turn around and look at Jak, and he ends up as far away from Lloyd as Lloyd was the meat-hating robot. I know the numbers all look close on paper, but this match was never really in doubt beyond the first hour. And seriously, if Lloyd can't beat HK-47 in a fourway match no one cared about, what can he win? Jakpack of Suck is a catchy name, but Lloyd was the true failure here. ## Stats and Analysis - HK-47 advancing was the **\#3** most surprising result of Round One Lloyd was the overwhelming choice here, but it wasn't like anyone felt good about it -- he was just the least bad choice to most people. this, the Jakpack of Suck as it came to be known, was just a disaster. one of these guys had to move on -- a guy that got doubled by KH1 Sora, a guy that struggled to beat friggin' Wesker and then got crushed by Zero himself, and a guy whose sole contest match was a loss to Ness before the Nintendo Boost. tough crowd. the match started with HK and Lloyd head to head, and Jak lagging way behind. after about half an hour, it was clear this was a two-man race. HK ever-so-slowly built up a lead throughout the night, and Lloyd came back with the morning vote and cut 100 votes off it pretty quickly. HK went back to work during the time school was in, but it looked good for Lloyd - usually winning those morning hours means you'll take the day vote, and TOS has historically had a very good day vote. it was tough to say what would happen though because HK was an Xbox characters, and those guys always have killer day votes. HK built up an 1100 vote lead going into the afterschool vote. at 2:30, Lloyd started going nuts, ripping 40 votes off in one update and not slowing down. by 3:00, 100 votes were erased, and the afterschool vote hadn't even started yet. Lloyd looked to be in great shape, except one thing stood out: usually, the afterschool vote didn't start until 3ish, but Lloyd started unusually early. it turned out that Lloyd was just a huge tease - HK went even with Lloyd in the daytime, even cushioning his lead by a couple hundred votes. in retrospect, that 2:30-3pm time block looked pretty suspicious - Lloyd did a huge amount of damage in a small amount of time and then went back to doing nothing like he had been doing all match. it didn't matter, though - HK was the winner of a match people just wanted to get over. nobody really cared who won, they just cheered for their bracket and looked forward to the next match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2878&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=16) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Luigi vs Mudkip vs Pit vs Tingle 2007 _source: Luigi vs Mudkip vs Pit vs Tingle 2007 (revid 66178)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 5 - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 47.47% Mudkip - 19.57% Pit - 17.67% Tingle - 15.07% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Luigi first place (2pts) - 82.75% Luigi second place (1pt) - 9.63% Mudkip second place (2pts) - 23.36% Mudkip first place (1pt) - 11.14% - **Advancing Prediction:** Luigi - 92.38% (33,926) Mudkip - 34.50% (12,670) Any time the poll makes a neat little staircase on the results page, the match was almost always crap. This was no different, though the pre-match hype was still pretty cool. Luigi was far and away the obvious first place winner, especially given this was our second all-Nintendo match and no one else could have possibly given him pause. But before the contest, there was a lot of debate surrounding who would take second place. A good case could be made for Pit given Brawl hype, a good case could be made for Mudkip given 4chan joke voting and overall Pokemon love, and you could maybe even make a good case for Tingle based on ZeldaFEAR. Then the Bidoof match happened and everyone realized Mudkip was getting second place easily -- though if you look at the Oracle predictions for this match it was still in the air about where the characters would fall. I don't think anyone was able to grasp the magnitude of Mudkip love coming into this. He actually led the poll early, which all but sealed his second place finish. what was surprising though is how constant his percentage was all day. It was at or near 28% for basically the entire match, which is not a sign of being rallied but a sign of legit strength. Mudkip was for real, and if you skip ahead [he got totally robbed in 2010](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3691). He was stuck in a poll with Missingno, and even then he only finished 400 behind Scorpion and 700 behind Lightning. FYI, Lightning was the cutoff line in 2010. Missingno was a psychotic backstabber in that poll, shivving Mudkip for all the glory in 2010 when Mudkip himself could have been the "Missingno" of 2010. As for Pit and Tingle, they were clearly overhyped. Not much more to say beyond that, though one could argue Mudkip would have beaten them even if they were stronger. But if you hold Pit vs Mudkip a year or so from now, it could be a tossup. Pit's a popular pick in Brawl, and he has a very hyped 3DS game on the horizon. ## Stats and Analysis - Mudkip overperformed by **+8.14%**, the **\#9** most impressive performance of 2007 - Tingle underperformed by **-7.45%**, the **\#5** most disappointing performance of 2007 - Mudkip advancing was the **\#5** most surprising result of Round One this was another easy pick for me: Pit was Some Guy in a Trailer, and Tingle was... *Tingle*. Mudkip seemed like the obvious pick to advance, and the whole 4chan fad, stupid as it was, was only more reason to pick him. it's not like he was going against the pinnacle of strength here. after the Bidoof match, everyone decided on Mudkip as a clear second place, and some thought it wasn't going to be close.. but whoa. if memory serves, 4chan wasn't even up when this match started, and Mudkip barely lost any percentage throughout the day. Mudkip wasn't like Bidoof at all: Bidoof collapsed after that first hour. Mudkip just kept going. not even the after-school vote could really stop him - at one point, he actually went up in percentage for about an hour straight. we were all so confused. there was no outrage here since it was just Pit and Tingle, but there was a sense of fear here -- with Luigi and Ganondorf splitting votes next round....... could it happen? oh god ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2879&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=17) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Ganondorf vs Ratchet vs Thrall vs Vergil 2007 _source: Ganondorf vs Ratchet vs Thrall vs Vergil 2007 (revid 66179)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, September 20th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 5 - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 20th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 47.07% Vergil - 19.87% Thrall - 19.19% Ratchet - 13.93% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Ganondorf first place (2pts) - 84.78% Ganondorf second place (1pt) - 8.07% Vergil second place (2pts) - 34.84% Vergil first place (1pt) - 3.15% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ganondorf - 92.85% (34,098) Vergil - 37.99% (13,951) This match was almost exactly like the one prior, except it wasn't all-Nintendo and the three characters debated for second place don't have many fans on this site. Mudkip/Pit/Tingle was a good argument because people care about them. Ratchet/Thrall/Vergil was only debated because people care about their brackets. Big difference there, plus there was no "joke factor" like Mudkip to consider here. People settled on Vergil as the second place favorite here, but it was mostly by default due to his stat number in the 2005 villains contest. Thrall was slated to get anti-WoW votes, and poor Ratchet is just not strong at all. Like Luigi, Ganondorf scored a very easy first place, and with a very similar percentage at that. The other three look like they're making a boring little staircase similar to the last match, but for quite awhile Thrall refused to behave and go down quietly. Ratchet was.... yeah. Anyway, Vergil took a very small early lead but was unable to build upon it. A lot of people acted defeatist and assumed Thrall would get a massive WoW rally to win, but it didn't really happen that way at all. For as close as Thrall got periodically throughout the night -- Vergil's lead was a scant 2 votes at one point -- Thrall never led the match at any point. Then the morning vote happened, and Vergil was able to blow Thrall's doors off an route to an easy second place. And for those looking for a silver lining on Ratchet's performance, he used the day vote to cut something like 500 from Thrall's third place lead on him. One thing I'll never get about this match is how Thrall was unable to form a rally or how Vergil so thoroughly wrecked him with the day vote. If you go back and look at the villains contest, Vergil's day vote sucks. Even here it wasn't so hot, but Thrall just tanked beyond belief. Very very odd how Thrall didn't get a rally here in a once-close match, and to this day I don't understand it. WoW fans love this guy, so why not push him a little bit harder? ## Stats and Analysis - Vergil advancing was the **\#7** most surprising result of Round One this was one of those matches that nobody felt good about. Vergil was proven to be weak, but at least he wasn't pitiful -- like Ratchet is -- while Thrall had a rather large range he could fall into. people went with the proven guy in Vergil, but Thrall had a good shot. that shot evolved into a pretty large bandwagon after Arthas's impressive performance in the second match of the contest. lots of people wanted their brackets back after seeing that. any rallying would be twice as effective here because of the nature of four-way contests. all you needed was ~20,000 votes to prevail in a fourpack this weak. Vergil jumped out to a small lead to open and slowly increased it to 66 votes by 00:10. from there, we saw one of the more impressive stalls in my memory. Thrall would cut 20, Vergil would gain back 30, they'd tie, Thrall would win another update... the match was going nowhere fast. after an hour, Thrall cut the lead to 16 votes, but Vergil responded with a series of update wins and got up to about a 150 vote lead by 3am. at this point, I hit up the World of Warcraft forums and found a thread created by our dear Funk rallying people to go vote for Thrall. I have no idea how long it was up, but the second I posted it, Thrall began a comeback. Thrall cut the lead to double digits and showed no sign of stopping. 50 votes, 18 votes, 17 votes, 2 votes -- it looked like Thrall was going to take over thanks to the rallying effort. Thrall just couldn't take the lead though. Vergil pushed the lead back to about 200 votes by morning. it would come down to who would take the daytime. the answer to that? Vergil, with anticlimactic ease. the match wasn't much to watch after the first six hours, but those first six were really great - back and forth, a lead never breaking 150 votes, rallying, people calling Funk out - it was about as enjoyable as a match between two pieces of fodder could be. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2880&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=18) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Master Chief vs PaRappa vs Tommy Vercetti vs Yuna 2007 _source: Master Chief vs PaRappa vs Tommy Vercetti vs Yuna 2007 (revid 66180)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 21th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 5 - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 21th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 35.35% Yuna - 33.36% Tommy Vercetti - 21.03% PaRappa - 10.19% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Master Chief first place (2pts) - 81.33% Master Chief second place (1pt) - 9.91% Yuna second place (2pts) - 46.10% Yuna first place (1pt) - 10.36% - **Advancing Prediction:** Master Chief - 91.24% (33,507) Yuna - 56.46% (20,734) Master Chief's contest history before 2007: 2003 - 53% on Felix, 40% on Aeris in a loss. 2004 - 70% on Crash Bandicoot, loses by 7 votes to Frog. 2005 - 69% on CATS (lol Crash), needs the biggest comeback ever to beat Donkey Kong, 39% on Crono. 2006 - 49% on Sub-Zero. Chief is quite the oddball. He can only blow out pure fodder, his close matches are always great win or lose, anyone of even marginal strength can expose him, but he never really gets blown out in his losses. 40% on an FF7 character in 2003 is a big deal. so is 39% on Crono and only losing to Frog by 7 votes when EVERYONE wanted Frog to win. Then 2007 happened. Specifically, [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NZodGQ0G90). Whether you like Halo or not, you're not a real gamer if that movie doesn't give you goosebumps. Especially that piano remix of the main theme. Jesus. 2007 was Chief's strongest year, and it goes a long way in helping prove something that's been clear all along: Hype does more to help a character's contest strength than an actual game. It was nuts how huge Halo 3's hype was, and it showed for Chief in 2007. Look at these final numbers, then at me, then at these final numbers, then me, then the numbers, then back to me. Okay, you get the point. Master Chief vs Yuna was a very, very debated match. Not here, because they were clearly and flagrantly going to take the top two spots. PaRappa and Vercetti are unbelievably weak. Not even in round two, since they were again clearly going to take the top two spots over whoever escaped that Alucard/Liquid/Ness/Zidane mess. This was all about round 3, because the thought was Ganondorf and Luigi would weaken each other a bunch, allowing the stronger character between Chief and Yuna to sneak their way into round 4 and possibly even beyond. Think [the gurus](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/CB6/stats.php?match=19) were breathing easier after Chief went out and completely embarrassed Yuna here? To go out and be in a distant second place by 15% when many expected you to get first and perhaps make a deep run is just bad, and there was clearly no way she was going to get through this division after this match. ## Stats and Analysis - Master Chief overperformed by **+10.34%**, the **\#6** most impressive performance of 2007 - Vercetti underperformed by **-6.34%**, the **\#13** most disappointing performance of 2007 this result still kind of shocks me. Master Chief's contest history is fairly... well, pathetic. 53% on some dude named Felix. losing to Sub-Zero in round 1. needing the biggest comeback of all time in order to beat Donkey Kong. yeah, he hasn't done much of note. but for this contest, Master Chief was in his element - multi-way polls, Halo 3 hype, everything just cascaded into this match. the result was a beatdown of a character that's, at worst, equal to him. Yuna had an absolutely fantastic 2006 contest, but the female bracket looks to have overrated her all to hell, because you don't just lose to people you're supposed to beat by 20,000 votes. yet Master Chief did just that, and he was the absolute star of round 1 because of it. a debatable match was over within a few seconds, and a full month was spent arguing over just how legit this huge blowout was. for a moment, people stopped arguing over who would win division 5 and started talking about Master Chief making the finals. not bad, Chief. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2881&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=19) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Alucard vs Liquid Snake vs Ness vs Zidane Tribal 2007 _source: Alucard vs Liquid Snake vs Ness vs Zidane Tribal 2007 (revid 67823)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 22th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 5 - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 22th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard - 28.98% Liquid Snake - 26.32% Ness - 24.72% Zidane - 20.10% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Liquid first place (2pts) - 39.97% Liquid second place (1pt) - 27.92% Alucard second place (2pts) - 15.55% Alucard first place (1pt) - 41.78% - **Advancing Prediction:** Liquid - 67.89% (24,932) Alucard - 57.33% (21,054) It's a shame this was a fourway match that had no lasting effect instead of a one-on-one, because it was such a damn good match. Not to rain on anyone's parade here, but the format murdered this match's glitter. Alucard and Liquid's photo finish only mattered for points, since both advanced anyway. And since neither character had a prayer of advancing past round 2 anyway, this mattered for round 1 and nothing else. That said, a 3 vote finish is still worth talking about, and even before that a lot was going on. Zidane was actually in this match for a few seconds, but fell off the map quickly and was destined for last place. Ness was in this for a considerably longer period of time, and for the first hour of the poll this was a three horse race. But then the Nintendo Power Hour ended, Ness fell off the pace and that was that. He would never again sniff first or second place here. Which meant this was about Alucard and Liquid fighting for points, though for the longest time Alucard was in first place somewhat comfortably. He built up a 400 vote lead overnight, and given how bad the MGS day vote always is this seemed over. Yeah Alucard's day vote is also bad, because that's fitting for vampires, but two bad day vote characters don't often see wild day vote shifts. But then Liquid erased all 400 votes in a couple hours, before the heart of the morning vote even hit, and then the morning vote came in full force to somewhat bury Alucard. Liquid began building a lead, albeit very slowly, and the gist of it is he inched upward all day. Alucard's day vote is terrible, but so is Liquid's so of course any day vote build was going to be super slow. Despite Alucard's periodic stalling, Liquid had a lead of close to 700 with 7 hours left. And he would almost literally need every single one of those votes, because as we all know the sun going down means vampires wake up. For awhile, Alucard wasn't coming back so much as inching back. That 700 with 7 hours left? Yeah, it was still 600 with 5 hours left. With 4 hours left, it was still 550 or so. Even an hour later, it was still 500 votes. So it basically looked like Liquid would win, just win a little closer than he would have liked. Hint hint. It wasn't until the sun went all the way down did Alucard wake up for real, which is fitting given he's a vampire and all. In that 22nd hour, Alucard (SPOILERS this is totally not Dracula backwards END SPOILERSlol) started making his real move. A 500 vote lead became 295, making the pace to come back well ahead of what he needed. Liquid pushed back a little, but Alucard was able to get it all the way down to 170 with an hour to go. It took him only 25 minutes to get it down to 65, and if Liquid were from almost any other series Alucard getting first place probably would have been inevitable. But Alucard made the same mistake several others have made against Metal Gear Solid -- that is, he came back too early. To avoid the 25th hour MGS rally, you have to win on the very last update and/or completely crush all hope. Alucard finished his comeback to go up 11 votes with three updates left, and we all know what happened from there. 11 turned into only 3, and then Alucard pushed it back up to 17 with one update left. Everyone refreshed at midnight, and you can see the end result. To date, our 3 vote margin of victory here is a record, but in my mind the true record is still Frog \> Master Chief's 7 votes. Does this 3 vote first place \> second place really mean anything historically when both characters "won" anyway, only to both lose in round 2? Not really, no. 1 on 1 records \> this stuff, at least in a certain context. If this were a late round match, fine, but it was a meaningless round 1 match. And meaningless round 1 photo finishes to decide first \> second place matter much less than a photo finish in a 1 on 1. What do you remember more, this match or Jill losing by 27 votes twice? This match or the legendary cheating in Vercetti \> Kefka 2005? I'm willing to bet most people can't name the other two characters in this poll without looking it up, too. Not trying to bash fourways or anything, because the first fourway contest was honestly pretty cool. But 1 on 1s have much better finality to them with matches like this. Or to put it a different way (and I'll even keep it in fourway context!): The exact same "1 on 1 within a fourway" happened twice, and I don't need to tell you which one mattered more. ## Stats and Analysis the closest match in contest history -- also the most debated round 1 match pre-contest -- isn't in the top five? what? I admit it - I'm a bit biased against this match, because I wasn't home for the end of it. I remember, at about 6:30, I was tired of Alucard's teasing and called it for Liquid and went out for the night. the very second that happened, the Alucard comeback was on, and I was three votes and one last-second rally away from "pulling a Slowflake." but let's rewind - pre-contest, the consensus was that we'd have three PS1 guys and Ness, a guy who had burned a lot of brackets over the years. fearing the Nintendo Boost - we never really got to see what Ness was made of in 2005, and he skipped 2006 - a lot of people picked Ness out of fear. it's not completely unjustified, really - plus, we hadn't seen Liquid Snake since the Villains Contest, where he got utterly destroyed by Sephiroth. it was tough to have a lot of confidence in him, so the consensus went either Alucard \> Ness or Ness \> Alucard. MGS had been impressing left and right though, and by match time it was a big jumble between the three guys. come match time, the match played out like we expected - Ness getting a nice board vote, Alucard staying right with him, and Liquid Snake in a close third. by the end of the first five minutes, Ness took a 24 vote lead and Liquid was pretty much tied with Alucard. it looked like a tight three-way match that would live up to the hype. the next update, Ness fell off and Liquid surged ahead. he then shot way past Alucard to the tune of a 40 vote lead. from there, it was all Alucard, with Liquid and Ness fighting over second place. Ness's best time was now and he couldn't even hold the lead. it looked pretty bad for him, though we all knew that everyone in this match had a bad day vote except for Ness, so there was still hope. Alucard's lead hit 400 and then... stopped. out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason, Liquid went on a huge tear. he started cutting 40 votes off the lead with ease, and by sunrise Alucard was dying. the thought was that the new xbox/PS3 ports of SOTN would help Alucard out here in the daytime, but it didn't seem to matter. Liquid went on to take a 600 vote lead by 2pm. Ness was 1500 votes behind and an afterthought at this point. from there, one of the hugest stalls you'll ever see happened. Alucard would tease us with a big update, then Liquid would take it all back and a few votes more. it was, dare I say, boring. nothing was happening and Liquid looked like he would hold on to his lead. at 7pm, Alucard finally kicked it into gear. it wasn't a particularly fast comeback to start. he'd gain maybe 100 votes an hour. as the final hour came, he was still behind 171 votes. right when he was running out of time, he FINALLY started coming back with some speed. the 23:20 update must have sent people crazy - a 50 vote cut by Alucard to 86 votes with another 40 minutes still to go. Alucard took a 3 vote lead with 10 minutes to go, and then pushed it to 17 on the second to last update. Karma Hunter was incessant with his complaining here - when was the last time a board favourite lost a close match? - and that was Alucard, on a mad tear to pull off a spectacular comeback in the last seconds. the next match had started, but the last update had yet to come in. when it did, no one could believe it - Liquid's first update win in about 15, and JUST enough to pull off a 3 vote win. KH happily accepted his loss, everyone else took 1 point in their brackets instead of 2, and there were, of course, complaints about cheating. what else would you have in a three vote match? at least this time, everyone actually liked both guys, as opposed to in MC/Frog. people were pretty pleased despite their brackets, from what I could gather. good damn match. #### Interesting Facts - Liquid's 27.79% is the smallest percentage ever achieved by a 1st place finishing character. In fact, it is smaller than the largest percentage ever achieved by a \*third\* place finishing character. - However, a smaller first-place percentage was achieved during the 2009 Games Contest. Twice, actually. - With a margin of 3 votes, the difference between Liquid Snake and Alucard in this match is the smallest ever between any two entrants in a GameFAQS contest poll. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis Analysis 2007’s four-way format (or is it four-mat? Harrrrharrrrr) leant itself to a lot of matches with a guaranteed winner and an up-for-grabs second-place slot. It wasn’t often that all four contenders had a good chance to take home the gold, or at least the silver, but this match was just such an occasion. The consensus pick was Alucard \> Ness, but Liquid Snake has that little Master Chief-esque caveat about making every match interesting, and he refused to go down quietly. Zidane knocked himself out early on, and Ness was out of commission toward the end, leaving a final stretch between Alucard and Liquid. And Alucard finally managed to pull ahead at the last stretch, and – …wait a minute, what? Liquid managed to pull a last-minute surge out of his ass and win by three votes. That’s the smallest margin of victory in any contest, bar none. the victory is marred by the fact that SBAllen obviously wasn’t checking all that hard for cheating, but every match seems to have a little bit of stuffing on each side regardless. Still, Liquid once again did the impossible. Why do we keep underestimating this guy again? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2882&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=20) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Amaterasu vs Dante vs Little Mac vs Matt 2007 _source: Amaterasu vs Dante vs Little Mac vs Matt 2007 (revid 66196)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 6 - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 50.51% Amaterasu - 17.94% Little Mac - 17.34% Matt (Wii Sports) - 14.22% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Dante first place (2pts) - 78.54% Dante second place (1pt) - 14.41% Amaterasu second place (2pts) - 27.74% Amaterasu first place (1pt) - 11.39% - **Advancing Prediction:** Dante - 92.95% (34,135) Amaterasu - 39.13% (14,370) I know we all realize Amaterasu is strong now, but back before her first match she was quite the debated issue. Dante was clearly going to get first place here, but past him this was considered very up in the air. People did not have faith in Amaterasu doing well, and there was a lot of NintendoFEAR at work. Little Mac is a beloved character on Board 8, and Matt had a gigantic joke factor working in his favor. All three characters had a decent case for second place, but the big argument was between Amaterasu and Little Mac. When the poll began, Matt was actually winning. But unlike past joke characters like Bidoof and Mudkip, he was unable to keep the pace beyond a few seconds and quickly fell back into last place. Dante of course was able to take first and keep it for the entire match. I'd like to say Ammy vs Little Mac was interesting, but it wasn't. It was close for 5 minutes, then Amaterasu stormed ahead. People blamed Boxing SFF (lol) and even held out hope Little Mac would catch a Nintendo morning vote, but it was not to be. Amaterasu won fairly easily, which a lot of people didn't expect because even bottom of the barrel Nintendo is still Nintendo. Some people even came out and said Little Mac would have won if Matt were replaced, which is certainly possible but I doubt it. Just look at how legit Ammy is these days, and that's without taking her pending MvC3 boost into effect. ## Stats and Analysis - Ammy advancing was the **\#9** most surprising result of Round One this match seemed really easy to me - Matt was a complete non-factor due to most people not getting the joke, and Amaterasu was a nice little niche game but would be fairly unknown to the average fan, even from people who played Okami, due to her name. Little Mac was the easy pick here. well, I was right about Matt, but not Amaterasu, as she took a solid early lead and only built on it throughout the day. there was talk about the lesser-known Amaterasu crumbling once the board vote ended, but it never did; Little Mac was actually the one to crumble after the first couple of hours. the kiddies just don't know their oldschool anymore! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2883&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=21) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Ada Wong vs Balthier Bunansa vs Frank West vs Jade Curtiss 2007 _source: Ada Wong vs Balthier Bunansa vs Frank West vs Jade Curtiss 2007 (revid 66197)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, September 24th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 6 - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 24th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Balthier - 36.05% Ada Wong - 27.23% Frank West - 21.21% Jade Curtiss - 15.34% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Ada first place (2pts) - 57.51% Ada second place (1pt) - 19.75% Balthier second place (2pts) - 22.20% Balthier first place (1pt) - 26.31% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ada - 77.26% (28,373) Balthier - 48.51% (17,815) Back in the Summer 2007 Contest, Twilight Princess and Final Fantasy 12 were arguably the two most hyped games, leading to Midna and Balthier being the two most hyped characters. FF12 and TP were our top two games in 2006, after all. Midna already crapped the bed, but that could be blamed on Scorpion being strong. Balthier following suit was just pathetic. Jade and Frank West were never going to do anything in this poll, and Jade especially was so bad here that he's listed among the weakest contest characters ever. Look at this crap: Jade Curtiss 47.06% 38,685 Mr. Driller 52.94% 43,521 TOTAL VOTES 82,205 Mr. Driller wins with 52.94% of the vote! So this was basically supposed to be Balthier getting an easy first place while Ada was a distant second, but the match happened in the exact reverse. Ada was over 40% early, settled at 38.5% later and stayed there the entire day. So Balthier being this bad was no fluke of nature or anything; he's legitimately this bad and has been all along, which we've seen several times over since. I won't give my personal opinion of FF12 here, but GameFAQs clearly doesn't care about that game at all. Ada Wong isn't some hidden beast; everyone else in this poll was just awful, as evidenced by the poll giving us one of the lowest voting outputs of the entire contest if not the lowest outright. ## Stats and Analysis - Ada overperformed by **+11.19%**, the **\#4** most impressive performance of 2007 - Jade underperformed by **-6.89%**, the **\#8** most disappointing performance of 2007 there were two hyped newcomers for 2007: Midna and Balthier, characters from the two most popular games of the past year, TP and FF12. Midna had already bombed, but that made sense - a sidekick type character in a game known for its silent protagonist. but Balthier, the Han Solo of FF12, was wildly popular amongst the game's fans. no way does he bomb. but he did. Ada Wong got some more exposure with RE4Wii, but it shouldn't have mattered - Balthier had this fourpack and choked it away. it was one of the weakest fourpacks of the contest. Jade is a candidate for weakest character ever and Frank West COVERED WARS. Ada was the only thing resembling competition and Samus stomped her last year. my after-the-fact explanation for this match was that people had no idea who the other guys were and just voted Ada. FF12 is not the most popular FF game, after all, and I think the site has moved a good bit away from recent Square, at least compared to how it used to be. the result is an embarrassing loss for Balthier, and a pretty easy victory for Ada that was never in doubt after the beginning. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2884&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=22) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=22) `• `**`Previous Match`**`       • `**`Next Match`** --- ## Isaac vs Pikachu vs Serge vs Tidus 2007 _source: Isaac vs Pikachu vs Serge vs Tidus 2007 (revid 66198)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 6 - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tidus - 36.02% Pikachu - 28.27% Serge - 18.84% Isaac - 16.71% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Pikachu first place (2pts) - 58.75% Pikachu second place (1pt) - 23.02% Tidus second place (2pts) - 55.00% Tidus first place (1pt) - 23.35% - **Advancing Prediction:** Pikachu - 81.77% (30,029) Tidus - 78.35% (28,773) This was the second match in a row with a Square character completely crapping the bed, though in Tidus's defense here this wasn't entirely his fault. Given how bad Pokemon was contest-wise for years and years on this site, the rise of the series took everyone by storm. Specifically, the rise of Pikachu himself totally shocked people (\<\_\<). There was also the issue of who Pikachu and Tidus were dealing with. Isaac may be Nintendo, but he's more "JRPG" than he is "Nintendo". He may have actually hurt Tidus in this poll more than Pikachu, and yes I'm aware Pokemon is technically a JRPG. Then you have Serge in there, another Square JRPG lead, and on top of all this is the fact people don't like Tidus very much. The stew was all there for Tidus to underperform badly, and Pikachu just grabbed the torch and ran with it. It was the second time in as many matches where people were expecting Square \> obvious second place but instead got the Square character sucking it up in second place. But at the very least, Tidus had several excuses. Balthier had zero. It's also easy to remember Pikachu winning three matches two years in a row and realize he's legit, but at the time people were freaking out over him having this crazy good luck. Remember, Leon Kennedy and Vivi were guaranteed to get through the match right after this. Vivi and Tidus in a poll together? Ouch, maybe Pikachu could advance again! See a lot of people weren't yet warmed up to the idea of Pikachu being strong, and people didn't fully come around on him until he slayed the dragon (L-Block) in 2008. Until then, lots of people were annoyed with his run here. ## Stats and Analysis - Pikachu overperformed by **+8.35%**, the **\#8** most impressive performance of 2007 - Serge underperformed by **-4.91%**, the **\#18** most disappointing performance of 2007 about five minutes before this match, I got an awful feeling in my stomach that Pikachu was going to win this with ease, and he did. completely unexpected given Pikachu's pathetic history, but if you've seen Pokemon's rise from anti-vote magnet to legit series over the past five years, you'll believe it. Pikachu came out, starting whooping Tidus and never looked back. boring match. the interesting part was how to explain this - Tidus getting held down by Serge (and Isaac, to a lesser extent)? Tidus sucking ass? Pikachu being legit? there was no way to tell, but one thing was certain - people were pissed. Pikachu had gone from anti-vote magnet to a very likely possibility to place second thanks to Tidus and Vivi splitting votes next round. people were scared to death because of this possibility. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2885&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=23) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Leon Kennedy vs Ridley vs Spyro the Dragon vs Vivi Ornitier 2007 _source: Leon Kennedy vs Ridley vs Spyro the Dragon vs Vivi Ornitier 2007 (revid 66199)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 6 - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Leon Kennedy - 35.78% Vivi - 30.68% Ridley - 20.00% Spyro the Dragon - 13.65% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Leon first place (2pts) - 60.57% Leon second place (1pt) - 15.05% Vivi second place (2pts) - 31.69% Vivi first place (1pt) - 8.14% - **Advancing Prediction:** Leon - 75.62% (27,771) Vivi - 39.83% (14,627) If you list Vivi second in this poll, the results page on GameFAQs makes a nice little boring staircase. Which is pretty much exactly what this match was -- a nice little boring staircase. It even came alarmingly close to percentages of 40/30/20/10, which is just bad. The only interesting thing that happened was Vivi leading for a minute. Not even two dragons in a poll at the same time was interesting here. We couldn't even whine about a picture or laugh at something dumb, because for 23:59:00 nothing happened. I suppose one could stretch this match into proof Vivi was boned next round, but I won't go there. Not every match can be good in a full contest, I suppose. ## Stats and Analysis - Vivi advancing was the **\#10** most surprising result of Round One there's utterly nothing to say about this match. 40-30-20-10 matches are as boring as you can get, and this was one of the biggest consensuses (is that a word?) that we had. only two things keep this from being in last: a.) it featured two characters of decent strength (one we hadn't seen since 2005), and b.) the Tidus/Pikachu upset the day before made Vivi's performance interesting. Vivi did what was needed, but would it be enough for the much-hyped round 2 matchup? (No.) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2886&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=24) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Kirby vs L-Block vs Laharl vs Nathan Hale 2007 _source: Kirby vs L-Block vs Laharl vs Nathan Hale 2007 (revid 88422)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, September 27th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 7 - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 27th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 51.03% Laharl - 19.04% L-Block - 18.94% Nathan Hale - 10.93% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Kirby first place (2pts) - 89.52% Kirby second place (1pt) - 6.94% L-Block second place (2pts) - 27.78% L-Block first place (1pt) - 4.99% - **Advancing Prediction:** Kirby - 96.46% (35,424) L-Block - 32.77% (12,034) It's hard to remember, but once upon a time Laharl vs L-Block was a very debated commodity in this match. Kirby was the obvious first place winner here, Nathan Hale was the obvious last place pick (and boy did he deliver on that), but Laharl vs L-Block had some of the craziest arguing all contest. The arguments or the reaction to L-Block's terrible picture aren't worth getting into four years after the fact, especially given L-Block laid them all to rest at the very beginning of the match. Forget beating Laharl; L-Block was beating Kirby, and fairly easily at that. He was up by 40 votes for a few minutes, but then Kirby tied it before the freeze. Kirby was obviously supposed to go berserk from here, and he did in the next update. 33 vote lead, boom, over. "Not so fast, my friend!" -Lee Corso L-Block came back to take the lead in the next update, and held it for 10 minutes. Kirby came back and totally swamped him after that, of course, but the whole L-Block vs Laharl thing was beyond over at that point. What was interesting here is how well L-Block did, and some hype started for him possibly getting to round 3. In the next round it was going to be him, Kirby, another Nintendo character in either DK or Marth and Kratos. Maybe there'd be some weird Nintendo hate crime going on that would allow L-Block to sneak by, you know? Remember, back when this happened we didn't realize the guy was a beast, nor did he look like one early. It was more wishful thinking than anything, although I seem to recall a "be careful what you wish for" quote being written somewhere... ## Stats and Analysis - L-Block overperformed by **+11.95%**, the **\#2** most impressive performance of 2007 - Kirby underperformed by **-6.64%**, the **\#11** most disappointing performance of 2007 - L-Block advancing was the **\#2** most surprising result of Round One I have a very good memory, and as such, I remember all the Laharl vs. L-Block arguments well. "Laharl may not be very popular, but people actually do care about him. who the hell votes for a tetris block?" "L-Block will be SFF'd by Kirby beause of the Nintendo vote." "will anybody even get the joke?" at some point, I just gave up arguing over this match. "it's a freaking Tetris Block vs. our weakest entrant that won't go away", I reasoned. "who the hell cares? give me The Block just because it'll pull 15% just on novelty alone." I remember Draco1214's arguments in particular, ones that absolutely hated the Block. I kinda giggled at them, figuring it was a meaningless two points. and it was! but uhhh, yeah. what happened at the beginning of the poll was one of the most amazing sights of the entire contest. coming up to the match, we all awaited the picture. what was L going to look like? would it be recognizable? *looks above at pic* oh man, the board was pissed. what the hell was that? it was a 3D L! would anyone even recognize the thing? time to wade through the stats archives to get a good feeling for this match.. transience: *hmm. go L! I don't think that's completely recognizable, though.* HM: *... what is that* Ed Bellis: *dammit* Gaddswell: *LOL L-Block* Moltar: *L-Block is so screwed. For once the picture isn't in my favor!* yo: *(looks at picture) \*\*\*\* this contest.* man, yoblazer had a bad contest when it came to calling things. :) of course, everyone's tune changed shortly thereafter, when L had the craziest board vote we've ever seen. L took the lead and managed to get ahead by 40, but Kirby was quickly closing the gap. L-Block managed to stay ahead at the freeze -- by one vote. Kirby took a 30 vote lead at the next update, but L wasn't dying off. Laharl was as good as done for, and L was going to fade, but still embarrass the hell out of our favourite obscure RPG character. but then it happened - L-Block wasn't done. I can remember hitting reload and sitting there laughing for a good minute straight. L cut the lead to 3 votes. transience: *................. L-Block is a legit midcarder. stronger than Balthier, Midna, Raiden..* Ed Bellis: *... ...this is too amazing.* HM: *This is amazing. L-BLOCK FOR ROUND 3 BELIEVE* Moltar: *Round 3? That's thinking too small. Contest Champ? aww yeah* the 00:20 update was maybe my favourite of the entire contest - L-Block, out of nowhere, takes the lead. I had utterly no idea what was going on, and nor did anybody else. this was insane. we usually nominate jokes that people know and will rally for -- but this was a tetris block. it was the last lead it would have, but hoooooooooly crap, a tetris block was outdoing a high midcarder. Kleenex: *WHAT* HM: *oh sweet jesus* yo: *OMGFDOMFMGOMFGOMG I TOSS PROFESSIONALISM OUT THE WINDOW. I WILL HEREBY REACT LIKE A 13-YEAR-OLD AOL USER FOR THE REMAINDER OF THIS MATCH.* L-Block collapsed from there and lost by 17,500 votes -- hard to believe, I know -- but those first 30 minutes were *amazing*. the most surprising minutes of the entire contest, for sure. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2887&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=25) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Donkey Kong vs Kratos vs Marth vs Prince of all Cosmos 2007 _source: Donkey Kong vs Kratos vs Marth vs Prince of all Cosmos 2007 (revid 66242)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 28th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 7 - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 28th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kratos - 34.81% Donkey Kong - 30.22% Marth - 21.79% Prince of All Cosmos - 13.00% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Kratos first place (2pts) - 35.55% Kratos second place (1pt) - 35.41% Donkey Kong second place (2pts) - 19.30% Donkey Kong first place (1pt) - 56.95% - **Advancing Prediction:** Kratos - 70.96% (26,059) Donkey Kong - 76.25% (28,002) This match wasn't quite 40/30/20/10, but it came close enough. In other words, it was a boring and painful watch to watch. But unlike the thoroughly predictable Leon \> Vivi match a few days prior, this one surprised the public. The sharps (Board 8) all knew Kratos was going to win, because even though he was winless coming into this that was all bad luck. We practically predicted 40/30/20/10 in Kratos' favor, while most of the public had DK getting first. I don't know why or how, but casuals will never catch on that DK is not that strong. There were minor debates surrounding a possible Marth \> DK upset or perhaps Prince catching a joke rally, but both were put to rest in literally minutes. Past that, it was a boring match to watch outside a few people crying about DK not being in first. ## Stats and Analysis this is a match that was obvious for people who followed contests closely and surprising to those who don't. on the one hand, we have one of our best-kept secrets, Kratos. Kratos had yet to win a match, but anyone who paid attention knew that was due to bracket placement instead of weakness. Kratos had put up two impressive performances, one against Alucard when he still had some strength and one against Ryu, where he won updates during the daytime. with God of War 2 out now, he might be able to beat both of them now. on the other hand, DK and Marth were going to be sucking each other's votes off, making an already likely win for Kratos a lock. Kratos is already stronger than DK, but nerf him with the inclusion of another Nintendo character and GameFAQs' favourite choker had no chance here. as for the actual match, it was pretty boring outside of the first few minutes, where Kratos does unusually bad. but once he got going, DK looked worse and worse, and the real match was between DK and Marth, not DK and Kratos. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2888&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=26) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Nightmare vs Rayman vs Solid Snake vs Vyse 2007 _source: Nightmare vs Rayman vs Solid Snake vs Vyse 2007 (revid 66243)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 29th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 7 - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 29th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Snake - 54.84% Nightmare - 18.43% Vyse - 15.24% Rayman - 11.50% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Snake first place (2pts) - 58.49% Snake second place (1pt) - 37.11% Nightmare second place (2pts) - 26.55% Nightmare first place (1pt) - 25.44% - **Advancing Prediction:** Snake - 95.60% (35,108) Nightmare - 51.99% (19,093) This was our second to last match of round 1 involving a Noble Nine character. Their percentages in chronological order, just for reference: Mega Man - 50.49% Samus - 51.75% Cloud - 61.24% Sephiroth - 55.23% Mario - 57.91% Link - 70.5% Crono - 48.18% Snake - 57.88% Sonic - 39.64% It's not really meaningful, but it's cool how the percentages almost exactly line up their current order of strength. Link \> Cloud \> Mario \> Snake \> Sephiroth \> Samus \> Mega Man \> Crono \> Sonic is the order here, and you could probably switch Sonic and Crono around but not much else. And yeah, I do think Mario could take Snake or Seph heads-up. I was going to bring this up during Sonic's round 1 writeup, but Sub-Zero did well there so there's actually something else to talk about it. As for this match, it went exactly as expected. Snake dominated, Rayman came in last and Nightmare easily won second place. A lot of Vyse fans made the argument about an absolute voting value or something, and how his fans wouldn't let him lose a close match, something to that effect. The problem there is people keep underestimating how many fans Soul Calibur has. Nightmare is probably the strongest character from that series not counting cameos from people like Link and Vader, most people picked the match as such and it played out that way. Not much else to say when a predictable match does what it's supposed to, really. ## Stats and Analysis - Vyse underperformed by **-4.73%**, the **\#20** most disappointing performance of 2007 this match got a good amount of debate pre-contest - Snake was going to take most of the votes, but Vyse had a so-called "hardcore" fanbase that would not abandon him and honestly, who cares about Nightmare? this line of thinking gave Vyse a decent amount of bracket support from board 8 - not enough to be the favourite, but a respectable upset pick. unfortunately, "cult" RPG characters pretty much bombed all contest while fighting game characters were one of the most successful groups. by the time this match rolled around, pretty much everyone expected Nightmare to take it, but not this easily - Vyse put up one of the biggest bombs of the entire contest. it was the final fall from grace from a guy who, once upon a time, was one of our most consistent performers. it seems that age has doomed him into anonymity. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2889&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=27) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Haseo vs Riku vs Roxas vs Ryu Hayabusa 2007 _source: Haseo vs Riku vs Roxas vs Ryu Hayabusa 2007 (revid 66244)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, September 30th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 7 - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 30th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Riku - 34.64% Ryu Hayabusa - 33.94% Roxas - 20.29% Haseo - 11.59% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Ryu H first place (2pts) - 25.96% Ryu H second place (1pt) - 41.49% Riku second place (2pts) - 25.45% Riku first place (1pt) - 57.93% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ryu H - 67.45% (24,770) Riku - 83.38% (30,620) All joking aside, I still have no freaking clue who Haseo is. HIT ME, WIKIPEDIA! Personality Haseo is a cold person, but holds a soft spot for Shino. He finds it hard to get close to people. Though not as warm, he is a great leader and is willing to risk everything for his friends. When Shino was attacked by Tri-Edge, he stopped at nothing to find out what happened to her and tried get his revenge. As he progressed, Haseo learned to trust his new friends and grew as a person. Despite his profession as the "Terror of Death" in Roots, Haseo hates rumors and forums, disdainfully calling it "idle chatter". His preferred sources for information are PKs and "professional victims" like Bordeaux and Midori, respectively, as they are far more likely to encounter the mysterious PK, Tri-Edge, than the rumor-mills on the BBS. Haseo's player is a sophomore student attending a famous private high school. He lives alone in Tokyo, and his dad owns a major company. He visits Shino, who is in a coma, at the hospital everyday. He decided to play The World R:2 after talking to a friend who used to play its previous version The World. He was once the player behind Sora, but lost all memory before and after The World after being Data Drained by Skeith. Meanwhile his character data continued on as an AI and eventually reunited him as Skeith. Appearance 1st Form Haseo's initial form is a Twin Blade. He has red eyes, shaggy silver hair, an exposed midrif and wears a black leather wardrobe. His shoulders are decorated with wave tattoos and the marks on his face are shaped like red lightning bolts. 2nd Form For his second form his midriff is now covered and additional bronze-like metal plating was added to his arms and hips. He also has a metal decoration on his back. The marks on his face are jagged with a straight line underneath. In this form, he gains access to his Edge Punisher job. This is also the form in which he first awakened Skeith. 3rd Form Haseo's appearance changes drastically in his third form (he is quoted as looking "awesome" by Silabus and Gaspard after completing the Job Extension quest). The bronze-plating components are now gone, in their place being spiky black and red-gradient tipped protrusions littered all over his armor. His torso and abdomen are now once again no longer covered by armour, now covered by a tight, leathery purple piece with a red tattoo on it, akin to his initial 1st form. His facial marks are two curves on his cheeks, each with multiple juts coming out as they run down his face, likening to scars. In this form, he gains the ability to use his Flick Reaper job, Weapon Change, and Skeith the 2nd. Xth Form During Redemption with help from Zelkova, Haseo unintentionally breaks system rules and communicates with his Avatar to obtain a fourth Form. Unlike previous forms Haseo has gold eyes (although they remain red during game play), wears a white striped shirt, pants and has various plates scattered over his arms, legs and hips. His shoulders are bare and have gear shaped symbols on each side. Similar to Kite there are triangular shaped marks on each side of his face. The Xth Form gains the ability to use Skeith the 3rd, drain heart and dash. The initial weapons he is granted with are a pair of dual guns, the DG-X (in reference that they are dual guns, and come with the Xth form). B-st Form In Trilogy Haseo obtains a unique and demonic form due to his hatred. The B-st Form is similar to his 3rd, but appears more primal. In addition to growing a tail and the spikes on his armor become more jagged. Haseo wields dual Broadswords, gains the ability to tear into areas and summons hundreds of weapons to launch at the opponent. Novel Form Haseo gains a new unnamed form in the G.U. Novels when he faces and accepts his past as Sora and Skeith. He wears white armor with wings and carries Skeith's wand as a weapon. This form's full abilities are unknown, since Haseo is never shown using it in normal combat. .....ooooookay? I almost wish I hadn't asked. Japan, you are one screwed up place. Well anyway, he's piss weak in contests. but the rest of this match was hilarious. There was supposed to be some good fight between Riku and Ryu for first place here, but people forgot there was a Roxas in the way. Ryu \> Riku should have honestly been pretty obvious with that fact alone. What people did not expect however was this: Ryu Hayabusa - 57670 votes Riku + Roxas - 56546 votes Yeah, Ryu went out and beat Kingdom Hearts all by himself. I'm sure WHO IS HASEO stole some JRPG votes or something, but still. One character beat Kingdom Hearts. I'm no Kingdom Hearts hater or anything (to a point, the spinoffs are all completely ridiculous), but one character beating 2 KH characters combined is pretty cool. You don't see stuff like that very often. So of course Riku went out and beat Ryu the next round when Roxas was gone, because that's just how fourways roll. Screw you, fourways. Screw. You. ## Stats and Analysis - Ryu H overperformed by **+11.86%**, the **\#3** most impressive performance of 2007 - Riku underperformed by **-7.40%**, the **\#6** most disappointing performance of 2007 the bullet points above say it all right there. it was thought that Roxas wouldn't hurt Riku enough to actually lose, since Riku was a good amount stronger than Ryu already. 45% on Yoshi vs. 35% on Dante -- easy pick right there. Riku wins. but Ryu came along and, inexplicably, beat Riku and Roxas combined en route to one of the most impressive wins of round 1, if not the most. it was between him and Master Chief. nobody had any idea where Ryu got all this strength from, and tons of theories were posited - SFF with Dante, picture factor, Riku overperforming on Yoshi, etc etc. nobody really knew. all we knew is that Ryu Hayabusa crushed both of them combined, and that Riku was as good as dead in their rematch in round 2. oh yeah and WHO IS HASEO ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2890&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=28) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Aeris Gainsborough vs Akuma vs Geno vs Squall Leonhart 2007 _source: Aeris Gainsborough vs Akuma vs Geno vs Squall Leonhart 2007 (revid 66311)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, October 1st, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 8 - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 1st, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 36.34% Aeris - 28.79% Akuma - 20.83% Geno - 13.99% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Squall first place (2pts) - 23.64% Squall second place (1pt) - 56.12% Aeris second place (2pts) - 18.03% Aeris first place (1pt) - 55.78% - **Advancing Prediction:** Squall- 79.76% (29,291) Aeris - 73.81% (27,106) This was a very interesting match, because when you get a bunch of Square into a poll it's always more fun than putting a bunch of Nintendo together. Specifically, we'd get to figure out two things here. One, Squall vs Aeris was an argument in the stats topic for years and years and we would finally get a match to test it. Secondly, this was Akuma's first-ever contest match after years of hype and it was set up perfectly for him to do well. Akuma would end up doing well, and probably wins a match or two with better bracket placement, but in this match we saw all three Square characters basically unable to LFF each other. Squall may have held Aeris down a bit, but not nearly enough to make a difference in the match. The actual match was over in seconds, but Akuma doing this well was pretty cool for us Street Fighter nuts. He also held serve really well during the beastly FF7 day vote and even cut some votes off the lead near the end. If Akuma would ever get good bracket placement, he'd win some matches. As-is, he's gotten into two contests and had to deal with Squall twice. This also settled any lingering Aeris \> Squall possibilities. Squall will never lose that match 1 on 1, especially with Aeris not getting into the first two Dissidia games. ## Stats and Analysis this was one of the last matches of round 1. in that time, two things had happened time and again: - matches featuring two or more characters from the same fanbase/series/company/etc had all underperformed, due to the fanbase split; - fighting game characters had been doing great. thanks to this, one of the more interesting matches was this one, a match where the Square fanbase was split two ways (some would say three with Geno -- I'll be conservative), and one where Akuma had every chance to shine. yes, Aeris was light years ahead of where Akuma was expected to be -- it's doubtful Akuma's even above Ken, and Aeris would crush him -- but this match was tailor-made for him. we'd seen weirder things, anyway. Aeris started out the match with the lead, but it wasn't by much and Squall really got hammered by the early vote. the two went nearly even with the overnight vote, and Aeris has a truly awful day vote for some reason. she lost it to a Chrono Trigger character last year, after all. given that Squall is a big day vote, would Akuma have enough to come back? the answer was a resounding no, thanks to Street Fighter's legendarily bad morning vote. Aeris built up an insurmountable lead and made the match fairly anticlimactic. Akuma stalled her completely by 6pm-ish and slowly started cutting into her lead towards the end. the only other thing of note here was that the match ran 35 minutes late, and Akuma took advantage of them to get the match another 200 votes closer. not a bad attempt for Akuma, but proof that he isn't above Ken or Chun Li on the Street Fighter Popularity Scale. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2891&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=29) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Albert Wesker vs Daxter vs Lara Croft vs Sora 2007 _source: Albert Wesker vs Daxter vs Lara Croft vs Sora 2007 (revid 66312)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 8 - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 43.41% Lara Croft - 24.00% Albert Wesker - 19.29% Daxter - 13.21% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sora first place (2pts) - 30.16% Sora second place (1pt) - 45.52% Lara second place (2pts) - 35.88% Lara first place (1pt) - 33.78% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sora - 75.68% (27,793) Lara - 69.66% (25,582) First picture all contest where I really went "Wow, what a screwjob". I've never really examined 2007 or 2008 super close, but Wesker here looks like zombie Justin Beiber. Gross. Which is a shame, because he could have won this match. The poll started 35 minutes late because lol CJayC glitching polls all the time, so Lara wasn't able to really have a bracket vote. This in large part helped Wesker take a lead on her early for second place, while Sora dominated first place and Daxter was clearly going to finish in last. Wesker was actually up by 150 after an hour, then Lara cut off 40 votes in one update so people started calling the match over. But Wesker made a good recovery and went up by almost 200, which also made people think the match was over. So of course Lara started coming back, slowly at first but then she swamped Wesker overnight to put him away for good. I suspect the poll starting at the correct time would have meant a less entertaining match, because people forget how piss weak Wesker was before RE5 came out. This guy lost to Lloyd Irving, which through 2010 is still the only win a Tales character has, and let God Kefka score something like 2658% on him. Lara isn't much stronger obviously with how she struggled here, but a win is still a win. Although, Wesker's picture may have really screwed him here. That thing is just painful to look at. This match didn't mean much in the grand scheme since Lara was never going to do anything round 2, but a decent match late in round 1 is always nice. ## Stats and Analysis - Daxter underperformed by **-5.04%**, the **\#17** most disappointing performance of 2007 this match started 35 minutes late thanks to a glitch or something, but it didn't matter -- by the time the match came around, everyone agreed Lara would take second place pretty easily. characters of her type -- casual bait in a match full of niche guys and RPG characters with clown shoes -- had been performing really well, and the "hardcore fanbase" idea had long since been proven to be incorrect. Lara was flat-out stronger than Wesker and this match was one of the few "consensus" matches we had. but whoa -- the first few minutes of this match floored us. Wesker was burying Lara early, and for a while Wesker was closer to Sora than he was to Lara. maybe the changing of the poll time ruined the early bracket vote that Lara was expected to get, but no matter -- the WESKERVERSE was out and voting for him en masse, and it was really impressive. this was the guy that lost to Lloyd Irving. of course, the WESKERVERSE would not last, and after building up a 200 vote lead in the first hour or so, Lara stalled him and eventually took back the lead at about 4am. Lara went on to win by over 2000 votes, but it was far from a good win. two conclusions were drawn from this match. one, Wesker's impressive performance, along with Ada's surprising win and Leon's comfortable victory over Vivi, suggested another RE4 boost thanks to the Wii version coming out. Leon \> Dante looked as good as ever -- assuming Ada didn't win another round and screw up the match, anyway. the other conclusion was that Lara didn't really have much of a chance in round 2, where she would be the beneficiary of three-way Square SFF, all between upper-tier characters that was expected to split pretty evenly. it wasn't taken too seriously by too many people, but that upset was killed off pretty quickly in this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2892&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=30) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Duke Nukem vs Ike Gordon Freeman vs Guybrush Threepwood 2007 _source: Duke Nukem vs Ike Gordon Freeman vs Guybrush Threepwood 2007 (revid 84574)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 8 - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Gordon Freeman - 34.74% Ike - 27.67% Duke Nukem - 24.64% Guybrush Threepwood - 12.78% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Duke first place (2pts) - 54.28% Duke second place (1pt) - 23.87% Gordon second place (2pts) - 49.37% Gordon first place (1pt) - 27.33% - **Advancing Prediction:** Duke - 78.15% (28,700) Gordon - 76.70% (28,167) Obligatory "why the F do people keep nominating Guybrush?" Coming into this match, most people expected Gordon Freeman \> Ike. There was also a lot of hullabaloo about Duke possibly sneaking into second place. Yes, people had faith in GFNW getting first place. "lol" I know Half-Life 2 and all, but still. Then the match pic came out and people started freaking out about the Greg House picture, plus Duke looked like a total badass. What was a match with an expected first place winner immediately became a debated match, and what followed was perhaps our best match of round 1. Guybrush sucked early and ended in last place he's Guybrush. Why do people keep nominating this idiot? But other than him, this was a cool match. In the first five minutes, we had 3 characters with 15 votes of one another. And the leader was.... Duke Nukem?! WTF?!?! And it would get even more hilarious. Next update, Gordon took a 50 vote lead on THE DUKE for second place. It wouldn't last more than 15 minutes though, as Duke would slowly but surely gain control of things overnight en route to one of the most surprising first place finishes ever. There was a lot of fluctuation with how big the first place lead was -- it ranged from 300 to 1000 and everywhere in between depending on when you checked -- but Duke was never really threatened once the morning vote hit. Gordon was also never really threatened by Ike for second place, but Ike was perhaps the star of the match even in losing. I'd like to think Fire Emblem deserves the credit for this, but we all know it was the Brawl announcement. Ike fell behind the pace by more than 100 votes 45 minutes in, never to come close to second place again. However, his trends in this match were totally nuts. First off, the guy was down by nearly 1000 headed into the morning vote, and cut that thing down to 700 in a flash before the brats went to school. Then the ASV hit, and he cut a 2100 vote lead all the way down to under 900 before ultimately losing by 1045. It's a shame these three weren't closer, because this wasn't far off from being a truly classic match. As is, we had three characters very close but 1 through 3 weren't that much in doubt once the morning vote hit. Unfortunately this meant nothing for the next round, since Sonic and Sub-Zero are total monsters. ## Stats and Analysis - Gordon underperformed by **-5.17%**, the **\#16** most disappointing performance of 2007 this was one of the funniest matches of all time, and definitely the funniest in this contest. I mean, it featured Guybrush friggin' Threepwood, Mr. All Outta Gum, Some Guy Announced on a Website and The Biggest Joke in Contest History. I don't think anyone realized how hilarious this match was until the picture came out: *looks up to match pic* what the hell going into this match, conventional wisdom was that Freeman had first place locked up, not out of strength, but because the other guys in this fourpack were so bad. Duke had not been relevant in ten years and Ike just wasn't well-known enough yet to pull this off. Ike was overestimated by a lot of people (like all Nintendo characters, really), but most thought he had enough to place since he was the only Nintendo option up against two FPS guys. it wasn't that different than the Alucard/Ness match, where people thought Ness would place because he was the only Nintendo guy in a sea of PS1 characters. the opening five minutes of this match was great. all three guys (sorry, Guybrush, but you just don't matter in this match) had the lead at some point, and they were never separated by more than 25 votes from first to third. the first update showed a big Ike dropoff, Duke Nukem doing the same and Gordon gaining a full percent. Ike looked like a board creation, but otherwise it wasn't too unexpected. the next update went the exact opposite, though, as Ike was the one with the big spike while Gordon flopped. at 00:20, Ike took second place back from Duke while Gordon floundered some more. what a weird match. from there, Gordon's collapse was nothing short of hilarious. Gordon has flopped a half dozen times over the years, but this is definitely the funniest if you ask me. screw Tina whoever and Max Payne, watching him lose to a washed up FPS guy and bleeding votes to a Brawl website was just bad. Duke just slowly built up a lead on him while Ike couldn't keep up the pace. after about 40 minutes, he fell off. Duke built up a 500 vote lead on Gordon by morning, with Ike behind the two by a good thousand votes. Gordon won some updates in the morning, cutting Duke's lead by about 50 votes. but the big story was Ike, who was winning updates outright and crushing both guys with the Nintendo morning vote. the during-school time period put him out of the running, but what he did was still impressive. he ended up pulling 1300 votes off of Freeman's lead during the daytime. if he was a little bit closer, this could have been a three-way battle for the ages. instead, we had to settle for the most hilarious flop of the contest - Freeman trying to pull a comeback on Duke. Duke's lead was at 1000 votes by the time school let out, and Gordon had the slowest comeback you can imagine. he'd win hours by single-digit numbers of votes, he'd get a couple big update wins only to lose them a couple minutes later, and in the end he managed to come back about 200 votes. Gordon Freeman, losing to Nukem. ha. I'm of the opinion that Duke won because he was the most recognizable guy in a poll of four unknown weaklings. the results the next round kind of confirmed that, as Duke got killed by Freeman (who got killed by Sonic). this match was one that should never have happened due to how weak everyone was, but the result was pretty funny and made up for it. #### Interesting Facts - Ike's 28.76% is the largest percentage ever achieved by a character who finished in 3rd place, and is in fact larger than the smallest percentage ever achieved by a character who finished in \*1st\* place. - However, the 2009 *Games* Contest saw a higher percentage achieved by a 3rd-place finisher, when the original Legend of Zelda scored 28.97% in the contest quarterfinals. - This is the only match to feature both a double comeback (Ike against Gordon Freeman AND Duke Nukem) \*and\* a double drop (Duke Nukem against Gordon Freeman AND Ike)and have them both occur at the same time, although neither one was successful. - The disparity between the overall advancing prediction percentage of 78.15% for Duke Nukem and the mere 31.69% of Gurus that predicted him to advance makes this the \#1 most embarrassing result of all time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2893&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=31) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sub-Zero vs Prince of Persia vs Viewtiful Joe 2007 _source: Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sub-Zero vs Prince of Persia vs Viewtiful Joe 2007 (revid 66327)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, October 4th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 8 - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 4th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 44.21% Sub-Zero - 25.76% The Prince of Persia - 17.69% Viewtiful Joe - 12.42% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sonic first place (2pts) - 80.37% Sonic second place (1pt) - 8.46% Sub-Zero second place (2pts) - 40.10% Sub-Zero first place (1pt) - 11.55% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sonic - 88.83% (32,622) Sub-Zero - 51.65% (18,968) This match was close to 40/30/20/10, and you know what that means -- bad match. However despite the match being super boring to look at, some of the percentages were very surprising. Sonic was expected to crush this match and get at least 40% if not 50% like almost all the other Noble Nine characters this round, but here he couldn't manage that 40%. I'd love to say this is all Sub-Zero's doing, but the story of the demise of the Sonic series is well-known by now. People do not like Sonic the way they used to, and it shows. Prince and Joe are also two characters people really want to like, but they'll never have anything really going for them in contests. They're weak and always will be, even with Joe's pending MvC3 boost. The one silver lining of an easy final match in round 1 means I get to reflect a bit. Our first-ever fourway round was pretty decent, but all things considered it wasn't overly crazy. The elite characters are all going to do well regardless of format, and most of the upsets this round involved getting second place while a beast character took most of the votes up in first. I think only two matches had a true issue from 1st place to 3rd, and neither of them mattered in the grand scheme of things. So all in all, round 1 was a mixed bag. The one lasting image for me were all the joke characters. Some did well, like L-Block and Mudkip, others did not. There was also the obvious issue of 128 characters getting into this thing creating a ton of fodder. The Prince of All Cosmos, Guybrush Threepwood and WHO IS HASEO don't really need to be taking up contest slots. ## Stats and Analysis - Sub-Zero overperformed by **+7.13%**, the **\#13** most impressive performance of 2007 - Sonic underperformed by **-4.57%**, the **\#22** most disappointing performance of 2007 the last match of round 1 was another highly predictable result: Sonic in first, Sub-Zero in second, and they'd be advancing together in that order for at least two rounds. and that's exactly what happened - Sonic was never in danger and Sub-Zero nearly doubled third place. but even though this was a highly boring affair, anyone who paid extra-close attention to the contests was fairly shocked by the result: how in the hell did Sub-Zero come so close to Sonic? this was the third strike against Sonic characters this contest - first Knuckles laid an egg, then Shadow laid a bigger one, and now Sonic couldn't even get 40% against a midcarder in Sub-Zero and two weaker guys in the Prince and Viewtiful Joe. it may have been the strongest fourpack for a Noble Niner, but this was still pretty disappointing. an hour into this match, lots of people were calling for Sonic's head, several claiming he was the underdog in the semifinals vs. Master Chief. it was going to take something huge - say, an announcement in Smash Bros. Brawl - in order to rescue him from a Noble Nine-breaking loss. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2894&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=32) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Yoshi vs Knuckles the Echidna vs Mega Man vs KOS-MOS 2007 _source: Yoshi vs Knuckles the Echidna vs Mega Man vs KOS-MOS 2007 (revid 66396)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, October 5th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 5th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 37.10% Yoshi - 26.15% Knuckles - 22.42% KOS-MOS - 14.33% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mega Man first place (4pts) - 25.80% Mega Man second place (2pts) - 53.00% Yoshi second place (4pts) - 18.04% Yoshi first place (2pts) - 38.47% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mega Man - 78.80% (28,939) Yoshi - 56.51% (20,753) So hey, remember this match? One would think Mega Man would annihilate Yoshi yet again en route to Knuckles perhaps sneaking into second place, but then all the Sonic characters went out and sucked in round 1. Knuckles almost lost to Rikku with Vaan sharing the poll, and then the board vote for this match hit and Yoshi won it outright. Game over right from the start for Knuckles, who for whatever reason has been unable to get out of the second round in a single contest. Knuckles was even struggling with KOS-MOS for a little while before finally putting her away for an easy third place finish, but that was still a disappointment for him. The final percentages here ultimately came close to 40/30/20/10, which shows you how good (See also: Boring) this match was. Pre-contest hype does not always translate to a good match. Round 2 of a contest is often about the elites or near-elites smacking away characters of lower strength en route to deep contest runs, or characters that pulled off cute little round 1 upsets, and this was really no exception. By the end of the match, the only thing we had to discuss was the new match picture format for this round: Face shots. ## Stats and Analysis this was a hotly debated match pre-contest. in 2005, Mega Man crushed Yoshi, and it was assumed that he would do the same. most agreed that Yoshi was stronger than Knuckles, but it wasn't by all that much - Mega Man being in the poll would surely hurt Yoshi, it was just a matter of if it would matter. but then round 1 happened, and all argument ceased as Knuckles got blown out by Yoshi and nearly lost to Rikku despite Vaan being in the poll. to make it worse, other Sonic characters started doing poorly as well. by the time this match came around, the only shock was that Knuckles was doing somehow even worse than expected - he couldn't even separate from KOS-MOS for a while, and by the time his great day vote was over he still lost to Yoshi by 10000 votes. this was a match that would have been interesting had we not already seen the writing on the wall that Knuckles was going to bomb. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2895&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=33) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Samus Aran vs Frog vs Scorpion vs Midna 2007 _source: Samus Aran vs Frog vs Scorpion vs Midna 2007 (revid 66379)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, October 6th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 6th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 43.05% Scorpion - 23.06% Frog - 19.62% Midna - 14.29% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Samus first place (4pts) - 78.89% Samus second place (2pts) - 9.54% Scorpion second place (4pts) - 27.07% Scorpion first place (2pts) - 2.44% - **Advancing Prediction:** Samus - 88.43% (32,475) Scorpion - 29.51% (10,837) Someone seriously needs to get Samus off of Frog. If you look back at contests, she's gotten to squash this guy three times -- once in a 1v1, twice in fourways. For all the good things Frog is able to pull off in contests, he cannot seem to get away from MOM. Yeah letting Team Ninja make a Metroid game was the worst idea since the USA taking its money off the gold standard. Anyway. Mostly a boring match, because we all knew what was going to happen in advance. Samus was going to crush, and Scorpion \> Midna was a lock after Midna's round 1 stinkbomb. Add in Samus sucking away a lot of Nintendo votes, and Midna was doubly screwed. And since Axel isn't nearly as strong as Scorpion, this was easy. Frog won the board vote because people like seeing Frog in contests doing Frog-like things, but Scorpion smashed him pretty easily after that and got second place by nearly 9000 votes. There was no way Scorpion would get through the next round with Samus and Mega Man in the same poll together, but this match was still a good throwback to the Summer 2002 days of HOW THE HELL IS SCORPION GETTING THIS FAR. And with MK9 getting such crazy reviews, both he and Sub-Zero are slated for a pretty massive boost. ## Stats and Analysis - Scorpion advancing was the **\#15** most surprising result of 2007 this was a nice little fourpack pre-contest - would the obviously strong Midna be able to resist Samus? would Samus hurt her enough for Frog to sneak in for the win? of course, Scorpion came along in round 1 and ruined everything, and after Frog's near-loss in round 1 it was all but official: Scorpion was going to win this match. the Oracle predictions even show that there was an obvious second, third and fourth place, and it played out according to form here. there were a few people that were convinced Frog had some kind of miraculous comeback ability inside him that would allow him to pull it off, but most logical people went with Scorpion after seeing what happened in round 1, and the result was a fairly expected one. maybe the most unexpected part of this match was the guaranteed part: Samus. 46% against these guys was damn impressive and Mega Man was going to need a hell of a performance to stop her. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2896&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=34) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Marcus Fenix vs Kefka vs Cloud Strife vs Revolver Ocelot 2007 _source: Marcus Fenix vs Kefka vs Cloud Strife vs Revolver Ocelot 2007 (revid 66381)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, October 7th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 7th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 50.86% Marcus Fenix - 19.24% Revolver Ocelot - 17.01% Kefka - 12.87% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (4pts) - 44.53% Cloud second place (2pts) - 47.09% Marcus second place (4pts) - 7.38% Marcus first place (2pts) - 16.15% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 91.62% (33,647) Marcus - 23.53% (8,641) This match was a lot like that crazy Duke \> Gordon match, only there was a killer first place character rather than a useless last place character in Guybrush. Seriously, stop nominating that idiot. Cloud getting first was no huge surprise here, but the fight for second place was pretty awesome. Once the board vote wore off, we tentatively had Kefka and Ocelot fighting for second with Fenix lagging behind a bit. Within an hour, Ocelot's lead on Kefka was more than 100 votes and the lead on Fenix was 150. But with the trends these characters all have, everyone knew that wasn't going to last. Kefka started cutting into Ocelot's lead a little bit overnight, but was ultimately swamped and out of the second place running entirely. And with Kefka's day vote being just about the worst thing ever, it was clear he was out of the match. But even still, Kefka's lead on Fenix for "third place"? It was something like 500 votes come the morning vote, and when paired with Ocelot's 500 vote lead on Kefka that was 1000 votes of buffer Ocelot had to work with. "Not so fast, my friend!" Come the morning, Kefka of course collapsed because that's what he does every morning/day vote. Ocelot's lead on him started going way up, but at the same time we had Fenix making a comeback on Kefka as well. So while Ocelot was able to push his lead on Kefka fairly easily, he wasn't able to make much headway against Fenix. As Ocelot's lead on Kefka breached 1000, Fenix was also busy going nuts. When Fenix finally overtook Kefka for good, Ocelot's lead on him was only 1100 votes. I say "only" because Metal Gear Solid's routinely awful day vote paired with Fenix being Master Chief Junior this contest meant for a lot of bad things. That 1100 votes fell all the way down to 400 before the ASV even showed up, and the rest was just academic from there. Ocelot put up a decent fight to prevent himself from losing, but Fenix's ASV this contest was no joke. He stormed back, fought through all of Ocelot's stalling and ultimately won this match fairly easily. His lead peaked at 800, and he won by 776. 1 on 1 it's fair to say Ocelot probably beats Fenix even in 2007, but with Cloud sucking up all the PSX fan votes it was impossible for Ocelot to really do much here. ## Stats and Analysis - Marcus advancing was the **\#11** most surprising result of 2007 Pre-contest, the consensus was that whoever won the Jill/Ocelot match would take second here. Kefka had Cloud to deal with and Fenix was just too unpredictable to pick with any confidence. It seemed like Jill or Ocelot would be able to survive, though everyone had reservations given that they were both PS1 characters and FF7 absolutely dominates anything from the PS1 era. After Fenix's insane day vote against Kefka, though? Fenix became the sexy pick, and for good reasons. For one, he was the most unique of the three. We'd seen MGS choke to FF7 several times before, and Kefka really had no realistic chance here. Fenix is as casual as it gets, something the others can't even pretend to claim. The opening of the match screwed with people pretty hard, though. At first, it was a virtual tie between the three, and Kefka surprisingly took the lead for a little while. The early vote has always loved Kefka. Nobody was getting more than a single-digit lead, though, and the consensus was that if Ocelot couldn't get any distance from Fenix during the nighttime, it was completely over. they were absolutely right. Fortunately for Ocelot, Fenix fell off pretty hard after the first 20-30 minutes. From there, it was the Kefka's show. It was like 2005 all over again with huge spikes and then dropoffs. Kefka surge, Kefka drop, Kefka surge, Kefka drop, etc. It went on for so long that we started to predict it, and it was kinda frightening. Kefka was hanging in there despite Cloud, and it was pretty impressive, cheating or not. The whole time, Fenix was falling further and further behind while Ocelot kept a 60 or so vote barrier up that Kefka could not break. when the deep night hit, Kefka fell off and Ocelot took command - by 6am, he had a 1000 vote lead on Fenix and a 500 vote lead on Kefka. he looked in good shape, but MGS is not good in the day while Fenix is great. the argument here was that Cloud would hurt Fenix's comeback, and when daylight hit, it looked correct. Usually on weekends, the day vote character does well in the morning, but then kinda falls off come afternoon, but when it comes to Xbox characters this isn't the case. Fenix was coming back on Kefka, but Ocelot was maintaining his 1000 vote lead on Fenix throughout the morning. Most people were calling it for Ocelot, but they were too quick. At 10am, Ocelot's lead hit 1200. And just like that, it was gone. by noon it was under 1000. by 1 it was under 800, by 4 it was under 400, and by 5:30 the comeback was finished. Fenix was steady and Ocelot just faded as the day went on. The comeback wasn't particularly interesting, but the match featured three unique trends - Kefka early, Ocelot overnight and Fenix in the day, and ended up being pretty fun to watch because of that. Oh, and one last note - Cloud. Cloud utterly dominated this match, and at this point, the Cloud \> Link people started getting loud. Cloud hadn't had a chance to face non-Link competition since 2004, and people had forgotten just how strong he was. This match reminded them. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2897&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=35) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Auron vs Shadow the Hedgehog vs Ryu vs Bowser 2007 _source: Auron vs Shadow the Hedgehog vs Ryu vs Bowser 2007 (revid 66397)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, October 8th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 8th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 30.22% Bowser - 27.95% Ryu - 25.55% Shadow - 16.37% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Auron first place (4pts) - 44.90% Auron second place (2pts) - 11.80% Ryu second place (4pts) - 28.11% Ryu first place (2pts) - 8.26% - **Advancing Prediction:** Auron - 56.70% (20,823) Ryu - 36.37% (13,357) So hey, remember this match? It was only two years before the 2007 contest happened. Or hell, just go back to the first round of THIS contest. With all the Nintendo removed and that 2005 beating in his back pocket, Bowser should have been able to get ahead of Ryu easily. This match was four strong characters (so we thought, lol Shadow) from four different companies: Square, Sega, Nintendo and Capcom. No SFF here, supposedly, yet Ryu \> Bowser in this poll is borderline inexplicable. Bowser did well with the board vote, but after 15 minutes he just thoroughly collapsed. Ryu dominated him overnight, especially after the Nintendo Power Hour ended, and Bowser teased a comeback attempt with the morning vote before utterly collapsing once again. It was one of the weirdest matches of the whole contest, and I have no explanation for it other than "fourway hijinx". Maybe the villain's contest overrated Bowser and allowed him to way overperform in 2005, maybe Ryu is a hidden fourway monster, or maybe it's just a combination of the two. But this was a bad loss for Bowser that he wasn't able to get over for three years, and even after beating Sora in 2010 he was stuck going up against Charizard on the very release date of Pokemon HG/SS. Someone needs to cut this poor guy a break. Not to be lost here is how well Auron did and how bad Shadow did. 2004 straight-up overrated Shadow, and he's been paying for it ever since. This match also foreshadowed how much of a fourway monster Auron truly was. Just look at how he did in 2008 if you want proof. ## Stats and Analysis - Auron overperformed by **+5.61%**, the **\#23** most impressive performance of 2007 here was one of the most anticipated matches of the contest. four strong characters, three of them having won updates against Noble Niners, no SFF whatsoever. a rare treat in a contest such as this, and with an audience such as the Square/Nintendo-obsessed one that we have here. on top of that, we had a really interesting round 1 match, where Ryu beat Bowser with the help of two other Nintendo characters leeching like hell off of him. would Ryu be able to continue this trend? by now, it was clear that fighting game characters were in their element in this four-way contest, so Ryu and Bowser were looked at as near-equals, and a complete toss-up. Auron was expected to take first after a dominating round 1 win, and he did -- almost too easily. Auron had one of the great performances no one will ever remember, because it just didn't matter. some of the weaker Noble Niners would struggle to do what Auron did against formidable competition. would Crono get nearly 36%? who knows, really. but Auron had a hell of a match. he did better than Ryu at night. Ryu led Sonic at night at one point. he beat him even worse in the daytime. good show, Auron. the main event, of course, was Ryu vs. Bowser. Bowser started out with the lead, and this time he didn't lose it after two minutes. he couldn't extent it past 20 votes though, and it was clear that people were bracket voting by this point so things looked pretty bad for him. he was up 19 at the freeze, but Bowser has a fantastic board vote.. and bam, Ryu was ahead at 00:10. Bowser fought back, cutting the match to 2 votes, but from there Ryu took off. Ryu zoomed off to an 1800 vote lead by morning time. Street Fighter's morning vote is legendarily bad, and Mario's morning vote is fantastic, so it was no surprise when Bowser started cutting at the lead. it was a pretty pitiful cut compared to expectations, though, and Ryu didn't really go anywhere. by 9am, though, Ryu started really bleeding, and Bowser took advantage of it. Bowser took 500 votes off the lead, and the after-school vote was still to come. Bowser looked like he had a huge comeback in him. but it wasn't to be - once Ryu's awful morning vote was over, he went back to winning updates and actually extended his lead throughout the afternoon. having lost 59-41 to Bowser in 2005, Ryu pushed the Koopa out of contest, having beaten him twice in a row. Bowser has now had two pretty bad contests in a row, and Ryu had a great chance to make round 4 thanks to Auron and Cloud being in the same match. (I hated this match, by the way - I had Ryu in my bracket for most of the bracketmaking period, but wussed out. oh well.) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2898&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=36) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sephiroth vs Meta Knight vs Fox McCloud vs Wario 2007 _source: Sephiroth vs Meta Knight vs Fox McCloud vs Wario 2007 (revid 66393)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 3 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 49.88% Fox - 22.57% Meta Knight - 15.15% Wario - 12.46% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sephiroth first place (4pts) - 83.90% Sephiroth second place (2pts) - 5.48% Fox second place (4pts) - 46.30% Fox first place (2pts) - 3.02% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sephiroth - 89.38% (32,824) Fox - 49.32% (18,112) This was the resolution of a dumb eightpack that featured six Nintendo characters. Fox beat down three of them (Banjo, Wario, Captain Falcon) in round 1 easily, and Meta Knight was coming off of beating Peach. Fox winning a fourpack outright was much more impressive than Meta Knight's distant second place over Peach, so this match was over before it ever started. Fox was getting a distant second place, Seph was getting first and that was that. It was mildly interesting Wario failed to beat Meta Knight I guess, but predictable match nevertheless. Basically, there were only two interesting things of note here. Sephiroth's percentage from round 1 to 2 actually went up against better competition, and the only explanation there is he was up against all-Nintendo instead of 2 Nintendo and CATS. Also, the match pic was really cool. Kingdom Hearts, Brawl, Brawl, Brawl. Brawl is a bad game, but the art from it is cool. ## Stats and Analysis - Sephiroth overperformed by **+7.23%**, the **\#11** most impressive performance of 2007 unlike every other match in the contest, this match had *no* chance of being interesting. everyone knew Sephiroth was going to crush everyone, so the debate came down to a well-liked Nintendo guy in Fox, a Nintendo character better known for his appearance in a Brawl trailer in Meta-Knight, and a guy Fox had already doubled in Wario. basically, it was impossible to debate this because Meta-Knight had no chance of beating a more popular Smash character, and Wario was exposed as a joke after round 1. about the only interesting thing that came out of this match is that Sephiroth actually got a higher percentage despite the increase in competition. you can thank CATS for that one. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2899&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=37) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Mario vs Big Boss vs Magus vs Phoenix Wright 2007 _source: Mario vs Big Boss vs Magus vs Phoenix Wright 2007 (revid 66399)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 3 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 45.28% Big Boss - 20.29% Magus - 20.13% Phoenix Wright - 14.28% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario first place (4pts) - 82.43% Mario second place (2pts) - 8.01% Big Boss second place (4pts) - 6.87% Big Boss first place (2pts) - 8.20% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mario - 90.44% (33,213) Big Boss - 15.07% (5,534) This was a weird match, though it was admittedly a fairly bad one by the numbers. Round 2 is typically filled with matches that smack aside the weaker character so elites can have their fun, and this contest was really no exception. That said, this was funny past Mario's predictable first place finish. People had Magus in their brackets, and round 1 proved he was stronger than Phoenix, but Big Boss was the wild card here in a potential Magus vs Big Boss showdown for second place. And then CJayC posted the picture. Ho-ly crap. Let's look at Big Boss's entire picture history before this match happened: Now look at the picture for this again. Notice a difference? Naked Snake in a picture sealed Magus' fate before this match ever began, and the weirdest thing of all here is Phoenix won the board vote but there wasn't much fanfare when he fell off into last place. If there's a series that can rival Phoenix Wright's unabashed fanboyism on Board 8, that series is Metal Gear Solid. Magus held up with Naked Snake for about 15 minutes, then got completely crushed. There isn't much to say beyond that, since the gap between Big Boss \> Magus and Magus \> Phoenix was almost exactly the same by match's end. Could Magus have beaten the bad melty art of Big Boss? Maybe, maybe not, we'll never know. But the reality here is he got thoroughly wrecked by the Naked Snake pic, in arguably the best match to prove "pictures matter". Hell, it's still an example on the Pic Factor wiki page. ## Stats and Analysis - Big Boss advancing was the **\#8** most surprising result of 2007 So. Much. Hype. why? *looks at match pic* ohhh yeah, Naked Snake. the second this picture was unveiled, the entire match changed - before that, it was Big Boss's ugly-as-sin picture against Magus, who had been disappointing but hadn't fallen enough to actually warrant serious discussion about being upset. but after the picture was unveiled? Solid Snake redux, the greatest picture factor we've ever seen. the board dropped Magus like a sack of bricks and jumped on one of the biggest bandwagons in recent memory -- the Analysis Crew went 9-0 for Big Boss here and the entire board knew their brackets were screwed and wanted to see what would happen. it's a weird day when a match involving Phoenix Wright isn't anticipated because of him, but because of other circumstances. the match started, and it was close as hell -- no one took more than a ten vote lead throughout the first five minutes. the first update after the freeze was also a stall, with Big Boss enjoying a 3 vote lead. after that? annihilation. a lead of 110 votes at 00:30. by 1, it was up to 319. by 2, the lead had doubled and it wasn't stopping. picture factor won out over the experienced entrant -- or so we assume, anyway. it's impossible to tell what Big Boss could have done without the Naked Snake picture. some think that he would have won anyway - he had a nice round 1 performance after all, and Magus really sucked it up in the Phoenix/Bomberman match. this match wasn't even close, either. Big Boss went on to a 10,000 vote win, and Magus truly looked awful. from 35% on Link to half of that on Mario, Big Boss and Phoenix Wright. ouch. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2900&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=38) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Bidoof vs Vincent Valentine vs Zelda 2007 _source: Link vs Bidoof vs Vincent Valentine vs Zelda 2007 (revid 66420)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, October 11th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 4 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 11th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 50.34% Vincent - 28.38% Zelda - 11.18% Bidoof - 10.16% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (4pts) - 89.18% Link second place (2pts) - 5.46% Vincent second place (4pts) - 35.28% Vincent first place (2pts) - 2.67% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 94.64% (34,756) Vincent - 37.95% (13,937) This match looks like boring predictable crap if you only look at the percentages, then you realize Bidoof actually beat Zelda and it's like "wait, what?". Even with Link giving the massive assist to Bidoof there by giving Zelda the Ganondorf treatment, it's not like Bidoof isn't Nintendo as well. But the true fun here was in the Nintendo Power Hour. Bidoof actually won the board vote over Link himself, then went on to lead Vincent by more than 150 votes within 30 minutes. The whole thing was over by hour's end and Vincent went on to completely crush the doofster, but it was still awesome to watch. If only a joke character could actually get a full 24 hour rally, you know? At the end of the day though, Bidoof was another one of those cutesy little round 1 upset characters tossed aside, and Zelda was just unlucky in being fed to Link round 2. Now with that said, Link only got 51% here which is cool. So apparently if you stick Link against Final Fantasy 7, his own series and a joke character, he can almost be held under 50%! Progress! ## Stats and Analysis I was so pissed when I saw this match in the bracket. here you had Vincent vs. Zelda with one of them about to be eliminated, and Link gets shoved into the match. it turns out that Vincent would have beaten Zelda, but this could have been a great debated match - instead, it was two points. but I forgave SB when I saw the hysterical result when the poll opened -- Bidoof. I hate this little thing more than anyone, but even I had to giggle when Vincent was getting his ass handed to him by the stupid little bastard. Vincent and Bidoof went neck and neck for the first five minutes, with neither getting bigger than a 19 vote lead. Bidoof hit the freeze with a mere 2 vote lead, and it looked like things were over for him (it). Vincent was about to blow past him once the anti-FF7 vote dried up. and then it happened. 00:10, up 61 votes to a 63 vote lead. 00:15, the lead doubles. 00:20, Bidoof slows down, but by 00:30 the lead hits 167. the stats topic was a riot -- rallying, stuffing, 4chan, THESE VOTERS THINK THEY'RE SO COOL AUGH GOD INTERNET NERDS, the whole nine. from there it was all downhill and we were just hoping to see Bidoof win an entire hour -- and he did, barely, by 17 votes. he would never see the lead again. pretty impressive for a character that bombed like no one has ever seen after that first hour and lost to Vincent by over 20,000 votes. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis If you were making a list of most surreal contest matches, this one would be near the top. It was commonly accepted that Zelda had no chance to make it out of here alive; you all saw what Link did to Ganondorf in 2004, after all. It was also commonly accepted that Vincent would walk all over Bidoof en route to potentially upsetting Crono next round. Boring match, right? BZZZZT! Wrong! For the first five minutes of the poll, Bidoof, that stupid little buck-toothed Pokemon, went neck-and-neck with Vincent. But it gets better – Bidoof went neck-and-neck with him all throughout the damn evening. What the hell was going on? Blame offsite rallying (4chan being the primary suspect), blame vote stuffing (since it was obvious SBAllen wasn’t paying that much attention to it), blame yourself or God – whatever it was, friggin’ Bidoof was giving Vincent a real scare here. By the time morning hit things had died down and Vincent had taken a very comfortable second-place lead, though the craziness of the morning was still fresh in people’s minds. Coupled with Mudkip, Mewtwo, and especially Pikachu’s performances that year, it was obvious that the Pokemon were getting their vicious, terrible revenge on GameFAQs. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2901&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=39) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Crono vs Raiden vs Zero vs HK-47 2007 _source: Crono vs Raiden vs Zero vs HK-47 2007 (revid 66421)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, October 12th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 4 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 12th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 39.95% Zero - 27.35% Raiden - 17.83% HK-47 - 14.80% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Crono first place (4pts) - 62.89% Crono second place (2pts) - 6.66% Zero second place (4pts) - 38.85% Zero first place (2pts) - 4.12% - **Advancing Prediction:** Crono - 69.55% (25,542) Zero - 42.97% (15,780) This match needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because that picture is awful. Crono and HK-47 are over-sharpened for no real reason, Raiden's stuck in the ugly MGS4 helmet and Zero sticks out like a sore thumb as being the only good-looking character in there. But even he's got issues because he's Zero on a red background. When CJayC makes pictures bad, he makes them real bad (http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/sc2k4/sum04b15.jpg) Now with that said, this was still a terrible match for Crono. It's not that Zero would have beaten him or anything, but he made Crono look thoroughly awful here heading into the massive match against Vincent in the next round. Vincent was looking great, Crono was not. Even worse here is Crono's peak lead on Zero was 5400 votes, but he only won by 4900 votes. If he lost 500 votes to Zero in a match locked up within an hour, what would happen against Final Fantasy 7 given how bad CT's day vote always is? I'm sure something could also be said about Raiden and HK-47 here, but those two were never going to make any noise at all in this match and the pictures are so bad I can't take the final percentages seriously. Neither are strong characters that will ever do anything in a contest, anyway. ## Stats and Analysis here's another match where the winners were obvious but the percentages were, well, concerning. Crono had a pretty decent R1 match, while Zero looked pretty bad... but then Zero came back and got scarily close to the guy who, once upon a time, beat Mario. Crono looked mighty vulnerable going into his huge showdown with Vincent after this match. but the biggest bomb of the match went to Raiden, who went from being a question mark thanks to his MGS4 picture in round 1 to being a legit failure. at one point, he was in a dogfight with HK-47. every MGS character in this contest had an impressive showing except for Raiden, who looked downright bad. we'll have to wait until MGS4 to re-evaluate him, but right now he looks like fodder. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2902&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=40) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Luigi vs Mudkip vs Ganondorf vs Vergil 2007 _source: Luigi vs Mudkip vs Ganondorf vs Vergil 2007 (revid 66426)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, October 13th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis Sorry Vergil, but you're not worth talking about here. For 10 hours, this was the match of the contest. Given the format and the three top characters all being from Nintendo, Mudkip had a very real chance to sneak into second place here given his fad status on the internet. Joke characters had mixed success to this point, but none had yet reached round 3 unless you count Marcus Fenix (and you should given how bad his series is). When the match began, it... didn't actually begin. There was a 30 minute delay for some reason, but when things finally got going Mudkip was in great shape. He, Luigi and Ganondorf were more or less tied for first place for 5 minutes. Then the next update came and.... bam. Mudkip in first place, Ganondorf a close second and Luigi a distant third. Ganondorf \> Luigi was basically decided at that point, and overnight Luigi fell way behind Ganon for good. But the star of this match was Mudkip, even if he did end up losing. Within an hour, even with the delayed start he jumped out to a 500 vote lead on Ganon. Ganon cut off 100 votes really fast once it hit 500, and then overnight he was gradually able to catch up and overtake first place for good. Luigi vs Mudkip was a different story entirely. Remember this match? Same kind of deal. Ocelot and Fenix basically came back on Kefka at the same rate, so come the day vote Fenix caught momentum and won since Ocelot never really built a lead on him. Here, the gap between Mudkip and Luigi was never really more than 1000 votes. Once Ganon came back to take the lead, the floodgates opened and everything collapsed on Mudkip. Luigi easily erased the entire lead by lynch with the morning vote, and then kept right on going all the way until the end of the match. The final numbers are a bit misleading though, because this was an amazing match until Luigi finally came back. However, Mudkip's exit meant L-Block was the only true joke character remaining in the contest. They'd all gotten mixed results, some good some bad, but it looked like the end was near for them and all the people whining about jokes could get back to their kosher contest. ## Stats and Analysis - **Round:** Division 5 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 13th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 34.89% Luigi - 29.06% Mudkip - 20.03% Vergil - 16.03% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Ganondorf first place (4pts) - 22.49% Ganondorf second place (2pts) - 54.52% Luigi second place (4pts) - 17.89% Luigi first place (2pts) - 55.36% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ganondorf - 77.01% (28,281) Luigi - 73.25% (26,900) ahh, Mudkip. the first serious test for "joke characters". Mudkip is fairly infamous on the internet thanks to 4chan's, uh, genius. with Ganondorf and Luigi expected to split votes, could Mudkip sneak in? we already knew that joke characters are fairly static entities that don't really move much based on stronger characters taking up poll space. Mudkip had some legitimacy to it since it's a fairly popular starter in the GBA versions, but a good chunk of its strength came from the internet fad. those votes were not going to abandon it for Luigi or Ganondorf. it all depended on how hard the vote would split. if one "SFF'd" the other significantly, Mudkip had a great chance. I don't think most of board 8 was ready for this possibility, though. a lot of people flat-out detest the Mudkip fad, and it was never more apparent than the start of this poll. a Glitch in the Matrix delayed the poll 30 minutes, but when it did begin, Mudkip was only in third place. joke characters usually rock the opening seconds, but not Mudkip today. Luigi and Ganondorf looked safe. Mudkip fought back from third place and took a 1 vote lead going into the first freeze. all three characters were within four votes, but Ganondorf had been bleeding percentage. given that he was the bracket favourite, this looked bad. the first five-minute update scared the hell out of everyone, though. Mudkip gained 17 votes and Luigi fell off the earth, dropping 78 votes to Ganon. the next update was even scarier - Mudkip exploded and won the update by 150 votes while Ganon and Luigi stalled each other. Mudkip was up 220 votes and showed utterly no signs of slowing down. the next update was another 100 vote gain, and then a 70 vote gain. within half an hour, Mudkip was up 500 votes on Ganondorf and 800 on Luigi. mass chaos ensued, of course. 4chan was blamed, some serious whining occurred, and votes were through the roof despite the poll starting late. half of board 8 was refreshing /b/ and several of them were posting there. I remember someone, I think Albion, quoted a message of mine and called me names. yay, anonymity! it was a pretty wild night. after half an hour, Mudkip slowed down, Ganondorf started fighting back, and Luigi just kinda sat there. Ganondorf grabbed the lead by 6am, but Mudkip was still up on Luigi by a thousand votes. plus, in round 1, Mudkip had a really impressive day vote, suggesting that he wouldn't just roll over to Luigi. 1000 votes seemed quite manageable for a Nintendo icon, though. then the morning came. Luigi's biggest strength is his morning vote, and it showed. within 3 hours the lead was gone and Mudkip ended up losing to him by over 4000 votes. everyone calmed down, hugged their brackets and praised the "kiddie vote" for saving Luigi against an internet joke. the night was scary as hell, but the crisis was averted. :) the main thing I and some others took from this match, though, was that joke characters were not to be messed with. the same situation was going to present itself in a few days, L-Block had already looked stronger than Mudkip, and the competition (DK/Kratos/Kirby) was a lot tougher thanks to the absence of a weakling like Vergil. L-Block's match was the most anticipated of the second round by far after seeing Mudkip scare the hell out of us. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2903&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=41) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Master Chief vs Yuna vs Liquid Snake vs Alucard 2007 _source: Master Chief vs Yuna vs Liquid Snake vs Alucard 2007 (revid 66448)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, October 14th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 5 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 14th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 35.74% Yuna - 24.61% Liquid Snake - 20.01% Alucard - 19.75% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Master Chief first place (4pts) - 66.84% Master Chief second place (2pts) - 8.95% Yuna second place (4pts) - 9.63% Yuna first place (2pts) - 12.81% - **Advancing Prediction:** Master Chief - 75.79% (27,833) Yuna - 22.44% (8,241) In round 1, Master Chief beat Yuna by 15% for first place, but the competition was PaRappa the Rapper and Tommy Vercetti. This round would be much more telling for his strength this contest, since Liquid and Alucard are far more important than those other two losers. Needless to say, Chief delivered. Two stronger characters in third and fourth place, and he goes out and annihilates Yuna by 20% for first place. This was an absolutely dominant performance by the Chief, and showed he was right in his element this year. Hype for a new game, a format that helps him and a good path meant Chief could go really far. Yuna also had zero chance at all of surviving the divisional final. The other odd thing about this match is go look at how far Liquid Snake got in 2008, then look at this match in a different tab or something. I still can't figure that one out. ## Stats and Analysis - Master Chief overperformed by **+8.04%**, the **\#10** most impressive performance of 2007 - Liquid Snake underperformed by **-6.98%**, the **\#7** most disappointing performance of 2007 - Yuna advancing was the **\#10** most surprising result of 2007 was Master Chief for real? that was the main question going into this match. he put up a great show against Yuna and co. last round, but would he do it again? MC answered that question with a resounding yes, and he was a lock to take division 5 at this point. even with increased expectations, MC went and outdid them by 8%. through two rounds, he was the star of the contest. the rest of the match was disappointingly predictable, with the exception of Liquid - what the hell happened? a virtual tie with Alucard to losing by 9000 votes? just another display of how weird this contest was, I guess. Yuna has been stronger than Alucard for a couple years now, and while people questioned her "favourite" status (how many people actually care about Yuna?), she put up a decent performance here, better than her round 1 performance anyway. this round was all about Master Chief though, and he definitely delivered. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2904&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=42) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Dante vs Amaterasu vs Ada Wong vs Balthier Bunansa 2007 _source: Dante vs Amaterasu vs Ada Wong vs Balthier Bunansa 2007 (revid 66461)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, October 15th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 6 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 15th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 40.06% Ada Wong - 22.69% Balthier - 20.66% Amaterasu - 16.44% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Dante first place (4pts) - 74.76% Dante second place (2pts) - 9.15% Amaterasu second place (4pts) - 3.89% Amaterasu first place (2pts) - 5.49% - **Advancing Prediction:** Dante - 83.91% (30,815) Amaterasu - 9.38% (3,445) Ada embarrassed Balthier in round 1, while Amaterasu was very impressive in surviving her match with Dante and two slug Nintendo characters. This match was a lot harder for her, though it was hard match period for everyone. People really fought for their brackets here, and Balthier flat-out won the board vote and was in first place. Dante of course recovered quickly and ran off to a distant first place here. Past that, this was a very close match for a very very long time. But not for Balthier. He kept it close with Ada and Ammy for a little while, but within 30 minutes it was clear he was screwed. His total collapse this contest was sealed at that point, though everyone could see it coming last round. The true entertainment here was Ada Wong vs Amaterasu. For 10 hours, these two had a truly classic duel where they were more or less deadlocked. All night long whenever one character would try to push a lead beyond 50 votes, the other would immediately take it all back. If this happened during a daytime 10 hours instead of a night time 10 hours, this match would have been a lot more memorable because this kind of clash is everything you want from two characters fighting it out for second place. In fact for 10 hours, the lead was never bigger than 115. That trumps even the classic CT vs LTTP match from 2004. Then the morning vote hit, Amaterasu started taking off and the once-classic match became a boat race. Ammy made a slow climb until the end, but a slow climb still ended up in a win. How this all happened, I'm still not sure. FF12 did very well in polls and Balthier is the most popular character, but the guy tanked two straight matches. Ada not being able to finish Ammy off at least makes a little bit of sense, since despite being from a very popular game she's a side character in it. My confusion here comes more from Okami not being strong at all in 2007. I mean yeah it's decently strong now and Ammy would smash this poll in a rerun thanks to MvC3, but this was still a confusing match. ## Stats and Analysis - Ammy advancing was the **\#6** most surprising result of 2007 prior to this match, I made the argument that Ada would struggle more against a well-known guy like Dante than Balthier would, and that Balthier could very well sneak into second because of it. I always thought that Ada got a lot of votes because the voters simply didn't know who the other three were. it was more than a little bit hopeful -- I really didn't want to see Ada crash the Dante/Leon party in round 3 -- and Balthier once again showed why he was one of the biggest duds of 2007. the surprise was the Little Wolf That Could -- check out this poll: Poll 2622 (01/05/07) **BEST OF 2006: Best PlayStation 2 Game** 5331 6.19% Bully 3546 4.12% Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories **25888 30.04% Final Fantasy XII** 12144 14.09% Guitar Hero II 21202 24.60% Kingdom Hearts II 10878 12.62% Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence **7182 8.33% Okami** how Amaterasu pulled this match off boggles the mind. Okami never really showed any signs of being popular on GameFAQs, but there she was in round 3. what a surprising result, one of the more uplifting ones in a contest full of jokes and Pikachu. people felt good about Amaterasu advancing. but it wasn't just the feel-good story of Amaterasu pulling the upset that made this match great -- it was *the single closest match in contest history* for the first half of the match. for ten hours, Ada Wong and Amaterasu were within 100 votes. there were a whole bunch of lead changes. you couldn't ask for a better match. Amaterasu ended up taking the day vote (how the heck does Okami have a better day vote than Resident Evil 4?) and won with relative ease, but those first ten hours were spectacular. this graph says it all -- the first 100 updates: [gamefaqscontests.com/images/poll_graph.php?matchnum=2905&type=0&seconds=60&max=100](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/images/poll_graph.php?matchnum=2905&type=0&seconds=60&max=100) there's not much more to say about this match. it was just a great upset with a great ten hours. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2905&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=43) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Pikachu vs Tidus vs Leon Kennedy vs Vivi Ornitier 2007 _source: Pikachu vs Tidus vs Leon Kennedy vs Vivi Ornitier 2007 (revid 66462)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 6 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Leon Kennedy - 32.87% Pikachu - 25.21% Vivi - 22.95% Tidus - 18.95% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Leon first place (4pts) - 14.52% Leon second place (2pts) - 33.90% Pikachu second place (4pts) - 11.19% Pikachu first place (2pts) - 38.10% - **Advancing Prediction:** Leon - 48.42% (17,782) Pikachu - 49.29% (18,101) People were very worried about the Square split coming into this match, because Pikachu's strength in the first round was very real, few people wanted Pikachu to advance here and Square has a much harder time SFFing itself than Nintendo does. The fear was Vivi and Tidus would split with each other very hard and ultimately allow Pikachu to advance. "Whoops" This match was basically over with the board vote, when Pikachu jumped out into first place and it took Leon the full first 5 minutes to shake him off. From there, everything people feared came into fruition. Pikachu was easily able to stay ahead of Vivi and Tidus, who split too many votes to threaten Pikachu for second place. Worse yet here is Vivi made two key comeback attempts. Vivi cut nearly 200 votes off of Pikachu during the dead zone, but Pikachu built it way up again during the morning vote. Then during school, Vivi cut 400 votes off of Pikachu's lead before the Pokemon ASV ultimately buried him. It's very fair to say Tidus's presence in this match screwed Vivi out of making it into second place, and Pikachu was the benefactor of it. Remember, these were the pre-2008 days of everyone loving Pikachu for killing off L-Block. People were not happy about Tidus's effect on this match, especially given how hated he is and how beloved Vivi is. Then you factor in Dante and Leon having a similar split in the divisional final, Vivi possibly getting screwed out of making a deep run and people were extra pissed. ## Stats and Analysis the argument before the contest -- where would the Square fans go, the less-than-beloved protagonist of a popular game, or a fan favourite from a less popular game? the easy argument was for Vivi -- he got 30% on Sephiroth compared to Tidus who got 35% on Squall. people continually overestimate Tidus though, which is why a number of people still took him to beat Leon. after round 1, the question was still the same, but Pikachu was thrust into the equation. the question now was, would the Square fanbase split hard enough for Pikachu to have a chance? most people agreed yes, and the Oracle predictions tell the story there. Pikachu had, bar none, the luckiest draw of any character - two Square characters in round 1, two in round 2, no Nintendo to be seen. in the end, we got our answer -- Tidus even fails at failing. when the fanbase finally wanted him to lose, he goes and holds Vivi back, allowing Pikachu to take second without too much trouble. he looked much weaker as compared to his round 1 performance, though - Serge is no Vivi, yet Pikachu didn't do too much better against Tidus here. Leon finished a comfortable 10% ahead of him. round 3 would (not) be the end of the yellow rat. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2906&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=44) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Kirby vs L-Block vs Kratos vs Donkey Kong 2007 _source: Kirby vs L-Block vs Kratos vs Donkey Kong 2007 (revid 66618)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 7 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kratos - 30.98% Kirby - 29.12% L-Block - 21.12% Donkey Kong - 18.84% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Kratos first place (4pts) - 15.40% Kratos second place (2pts) - 33.29% L-Block second place (4pts) - 2.14% L-Block first place (2pts) - 4.53% - **Advancing Prediction:** Kratos - 48.69% (17,881) L-Block - 6.67% (2,449) Of all the L-Block matches this contest, this one was the most predictable. I'm looking at the Oracle picks now, and I don't understand the huge gap between Kirby and L-Block there. What this match did show is how insane L-Block's early vote is. Within 2 hours, L-Block built up a lead of nearly 1000 on Kratos and all but guaranteed making second place. Yes, Kratos. Had Donkey Kong not been in this poll, history may never have happened in this contest. DK clearly LFFd Kirby here, and screwed him out of advancing in this contest. This was the first of many times L-Block would actually eliminate someone relevant, but he was the benefit of LFF on top of his own strength. It was a lot like how Tidus screwed Vivi out of beating Pikachu this round. But in the long run, Kirby would get the last laugh. Just go look at the 2008 bracket. As for that 1000 lead on Kratos L-Block built up? Kratos got it down to 300 overnight, then with the morning vote he just went nuts. This had people thinking (hoping) L-Block was an early joke vote powerhouse and little else, and that he wouldn't get much farther in this contest. "Whoops" And just think, replace DK with a mid-tier Square or Capcom character and L-Block never wins this contest. He didn't yet have the football-like momentum to beat Kirby on his own here. ## Stats and Analysis - L-Block overperformed by **+7.21%**, the **\#12** most impressive performance of 2007 - Donkey Kong underperformed by **-4.45%**, the **\#25** most disappointing performance of 2007 - L-Block advancing was the **\#5** most surprising result of 2007 - It was also the **\#10** most surprising result of all time I can't believe that many people had Kirby winning. it's like they didn't even see the huge gorilla in the room. anyway, this is definitely the most boring of L-Block's matches - it wasn't particularly close, L didn't do anything super insane (at least, compared to later matches), and there was an obvious explanation for it - Kirby and DK hurt each other a good amount. I'll even argue that this should have been an expected, or at the very least, a possible result. after seeing what L did against Kirby in round 1, and then seeing how Mudkip performed against Luigi and the 'dorf a few days prior, it should have been clear to people that joke characters don't suffer from other people being in the poll. but no, this match has significance because this was the first time L eliminated someone of significance. in round 1, he/it eliminated Laharl -- the guy who lost 60-40 to Vyse -- and some dude named Nathan Hale. not exactly the toughest of competition there. but now, here was Kirby, beloved Nintendo character, and DK, oldschool icon, being eliminated by a Tetris block. a Tetris block. *a Tetris block*. it was so confusing to people that they rejected L as a first-hour wonder that would crumble against real competition. this was no mere joke though, as it took a 950 vote lead over Kratos in 90 minutes. nothing compared to later matches, but still, one hell of an opening vote. Kirby was just getting killed in the early going, and not even a Nintendo afterschool vote could resurrect him. hell, it took Kratos nine hours to regain the lead, and he wasn't being held back by a gorilla. even Kirby's day vote would only succeed in stalling the Block. it was this match that made people realize that L was a force to be reckoned with. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Before this match, there was some idle joking around that DK and Kirby would SFF (or LFF, or whatever term you want to apply to it) each other enough to let L-Block pass. But few actually took it seriously. And hoo boy, did L-Block make us wish we had! Not only did the Block get second, he got roughly the same percentage he scored in the previous round against much weaker opposition. What was once a silly joke had become a serious contender, and next round’s matchup against Kratos, Snake, and Riku suddenly looked a whole lot different. This match is memorably particularly because of its non-linearity and its spitting in the face of common sense. L-Block does the exact same on much stronger competition and ends up increasing seemingly exponentially each time. Somebody made an apt comparison of the Block to Goku from Dragon Ball Z, which is appropriate. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2907&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=45) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Solid Snake vs Nightmare vs Ryu Hayabusa vs Riku 2007 _source: Solid Snake vs Nightmare vs Ryu Hayabusa vs Riku 2007 (revid 88516)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, October 18th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 7 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 18th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 42.96% Ryu Hayabusa - 22.31% Riku - 19.98% Nightmare - 14.88% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Snake first place (4pts) - 78.47% Snake second place (2pts) - 8.93% Riku second place (4pts) - 33.25% Riku first place (2pts) - 4.29% - **Advancing Prediction:** Snake - 87.40% (32,097) Riku - 37.54% (13,786) Let me repeat something from the first round: Ryu Hayabusa - 57670 votes Riku + Roxas - 56546 votes As for how Riku alone turned that around, I'm still at a loss. The easy explanation though is he wasn't trying to outdo 57670 votes, because Ryu H wasn't going to get first place here. Add in that Snake, Ryu and Nightmare probably overlap in some way, and you've got an opening for Riku to sneak into second place. It's not like Ryu didn't try. After Riku was in second place for 25 minutes, Ryu started going up overnight. Obviously, he didn't go up nearly fast enough. The overnight lead peaked at 550, and Riku threatened to get rid of all that during the morning vote. But once the lead shrunk to 160, the brats went to school. Ryu pushed it back up to 550 again, but do I even need to commentate on how the ASV went? I don't think anything related to Kingdom Hearts has ever lost one. In the grand scheme of things Riku pulling this off didn't mean a whole lot, since whoever got into second place was screwed against the Snake/Kratos/L-Block combo next round anyway. But it was still one of the most inexplicable turnarounds in contest history. Apparently one character does better than two! ## Stats and Analysis This match defined Character Battle VI: in round 1, Ryu went out and scored a higher percentage than Riku and Roxas *combined*. you couldn't even argue Riku over Ryu with a straight face - Ryu went and beat two KH characters combined. everyone's brackets were screwed. so what the hell happened here? the format happened. I still have no idea how this happened, if round 1 was a massive fluke, or whatever else you can come up with - Ryu was supposed to win this match, and he didn't. Riku started out with the board/bracket vote, but Ryu quickly took the lead and after 30 minutes, started building up his lead as expected. it looked exactly like round 1 if you combined both KH characters' votes. it only lasted four hours, though. Hayabusa got his lead to about 550 votes and then just froze. it should have been Hayabusa's best time -- or rather, Riku's worst -- but suddenly, Hayabusa started dropping votes with Riku's killer day vote still to come. the morning vote was especially brutal to Ryu and knocked him below a 200 vote lead. he pushed his lead back up to 500 before the afterschool vote, but we all knew that wouldn't be enough. once Riku got going, the lead was as good as gone, and by 5:30 he started building his own lead. Ryu never recovered and lost by 600 votes. as for why this happened? who knows. maybe Snake hurts Ryu more than Riku, though Snake/Sora in 2005 says otherwise. maybe round 1 was a fluke. maybe Riku's fans are more dedicated than Ryu's. or maybe there's no sense in trying to compare previous performances in this wonky format. who the hell knows? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2908&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=46) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Squall Leonhart vs Aeris Gainsborough vs Sora vs Lara Croft 2007 _source: Squall Leonhart vs Aeris Gainsborough vs Sora vs Lara Croft 2007 (revid 66621)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, October 19th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 19th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 32.78% Sora - 25.12% Aeris - 23.55% Lara Croft - 18.57% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Squall first place (4pts) - 33.44% Squall second place (2pts) - 12.83% Sora second place (4pts) - 38.01% Sora first place (2pts) - 9.97% - **Advancing Prediction:** Squall - 46.27% (16,992) Sora - 47.98% (17,620) So hey, remember this match? A lot can change in four years. Aeris not only doubled Sora, but in all likelihood she SFFd him into the ground during that match. That's a lot of ground to make up, even though Sora had trended way up since 2003 and Aeris way down. Sora upset Ryu Hayabusa in 2004, survived Alucard before getting SFFd by Snake in 2005, broke 45% on Mega Man in 2006 and scored a very good percentage in the first round of this contest. Aeris meanwhile wasn't even being nominated for contests and only had the 2003 match and 43% on Zelda in 2006 to hang her hat on. 1 on 1, Aeris might actually still be able to beat Sora. Because 1 on 1, not many things can beat Final Fantasy 7. Add Squall into the poll however and it becomes exceedingly obvious Aeris is in trouble. Who is Squall going to SFF more, Aeris or Sora? Come match time, the whole debate ended in seconds. Sora led by near 100 at the freeze, and basically dominated from there to bury Aeris. Even more impressive is what Sora did to Squall during the ASV. Squall's peak lead this match was 5100 votes, but he only won by 4343. Cutting 650 off the first place lead like that when the match is long over is no joke. Sora obviously wasn't going to survive next round against the Squall/Sonic combo, but he was still very impressive this year. I suppose I should say something about Lara Croft here, and to be fair her being that close to Aeris shows just how badly Aeris did in this match. ## Stats and Analysis this was one of the heaviest-debated matches. Aeris doubled up Sora in 2003, and is the \#1 reason why we didn't see perfect brackets in the sucky 2004 contest. since then, Sora had been increasing and quickly, while Aeris had either been a no-show or disappointed in every single match she had been in. but still, Aeris went up and doubled Sora; that shouldn't change THAT much. but oh, it did. Squall did good like everyone would expect, but Sora took it to Aeris early on and never let up. it was thought that Aeris would survive because she's from FF7 and some people will vote FF7 over everything, but she almost lost to Lara here. a much-anticipated dud of a match here as Squall and Sora cruised to easy wins. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2909&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=47) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Duke Nukem vs Gordon Freeman vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sub-Zero 2007 _source: Duke Nukem vs Gordon Freeman vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sub-Zero 2007 (revid 66620)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, October 20th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 20th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 38.49% Sub-Zero - 28.94% Gordon Freeman - 16.41% Duke Nukem - 16.14% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sonic first place (4pts) - 35.36% Sonic second place (2pts) - 39.80% Sub-Zero second place (4pts) - 20.02% Sub-Zero first place (2pts) - 4.71% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sonic - 75.16% (27,602) Sub-Zero - 24.73% (9,082) At a glance, it's inexplicable how Sub-Zero can be 7% behind Sonic in the first round and more than 20% behind him a round later. But that's because people forgot when Brawl's hype was in full swing. Remember this video? That video was uploaded October 10th, this match happened on October 20th. I'm sure the trailer was maybe released a day or two prior on the DOJO!, but you get the point. That video honestly pisses me off, because I remember being so hyped for that damn game. Brawl being awful is seriously the biggest gaming crime ever, right up there with E.T. for the Atari and the controls in Shadow of the Colossus. I will never forgive those people unless the next Smash is beyond godlike, Unreal Tournament style. But to the point, that's why Sonic did so well here. Hype does a lot more for characters than actual games do sometimes. As for how Duke beat Gordon and then Gordon turned around to beat him by almost 6%, who knows and who cares. Last place characters are not worth talking about. Easy endings to rounds are cool, because I get to reflect a bit. Oftentimes, round 2 is the worst round of any contest. Since the LOL X-Stats, check out the genuine surprises we've seen in round 2 all the way through this contest: Spring 2004: Starcraft \> Kingdom Hearts Summer 2004: Sora \> Ryu Hayabusa Spring 2005: Diablo \> Bison Summer 2006: Yoshi \> Dante Summer 2006: Luigi \> Kirby That's it, and three of those are due to massive round 1 upsets where the winner also won in the second round. Even with this contest, the only round 2 surprise without a plausible explanation is Riku beating Ryu Hayabusa and that didn't matter in the long run anyway. Mostly everything else we either saw coming in advance or the explanation is easy. Extrapolated standings have killed all the unpredictability in these contests. ## Stats and Analysis - Sonic overperformed by **+5.90%**, the **\#17** most impressive performance of 2007 - Sub-Zero underperformed by **-5.47%**, the **\#14** most disappointing performance of 2007 - Sub-Zero advancing was the **\#12** most surprising result of 2007 this match was interesting because you never get to see a rematch -- Sonic vs. Sub-Zero, round 2. would the results be the same? would they be wildly different? all of that got thrown out when Sonic got announced for Brawl. now, this match was about measuring something totally different -- hype. we got to see Sonic pre-crisis and post-crisis here, and it was time to see how much of a difference Brawl made. at first glance, it looks like it made a ton - Sonic crushed Sub-Zero this time, nearly doubling him up and getting a higher percentage against arguably a better field. but on closer inspection, Sub-Zero ended up being close to Gordon Freeman. yeah, the Orange Box had just come out, but that doesn't explain how a guy that got close to Sonic ended up close to Gordon friggin' Freeman. what conclusions could you draw here? pretty much nothing, because it made no freaking sense. Sonic was still an unknown, and it was hard to tell which match was the anomaly -- the first Sonic/Sub-Zero match or the second. oh yeah, and yet another weird aspect to this match: Duke Nukem got crushed by Freeman this time after a close match in round 1. this whole match just made no sense. it wasn't close or interesting to watch, but the results make you go "*...huh?*" ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2910&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=48) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Mega Man vs Yoshi vs Samus Aran vs Scorpion 2007 _source: Mega Man vs Yoshi vs Samus Aran vs Scorpion 2007 (revid 66622)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, October 21st, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1 Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 21st, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 32.80% Mega Man - 29.87% Yoshi - 20.12% Scorpion - 17.27% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Samus first place (8pts) - 26.00% Samus second place (4pts) - 48.12% Mega Man second place (8pts) - 17.17% Mega Man first place (4pts) - 35.44% - **Advancing Prediction:** Samus - 74.12% (27,220) Mega Man - 52.61% (19,320) Ahh, round 3. Where near elites and elites smack away midcarders, you occasionally get a total shocker and above all you get sprites. I love round 3. Also looking at the old writeups here, apparently Samus vs Mega Man was a debated match. That would make sense after 2002 or 2003, but now? Samus has clearly been stronger for awhile, but people kept pointing to past Metroid/Samus matches as proof Samus collapses against Nintendo, and they'd be right. But Mega Man is a pretty Nintendo-type character too, as his SFF killing of Yoshi back in 2004 showed us. Mega Man and Samus have always been relatively close in the stats, so this came down to which character Yoshi would hurt more. Also I'm cheating here a little, but Samus clearly gets hurt more by Nintendo than Mega Man does. For 5 hours, Yoshi was screwing Samus over. Badly. Samus didn't even build a lead early, and the two were tied for first place for a bit before Mega Man took first place before even the freeze. Mega Man started building a lead overnight, albeit veeeeeeeery slowly. It peaked at 170 overnight, but once the dead zone started (also known as the one time in an entire poll where Nintendo doesn't matter) Samus started coming back pretty easily. Then the morning vote came and erased all doubt about who would take first. Pretty anticlimactic ending, but at least we had a good debate for a few hours. Samus vs Mega Man is one of those inter-Noble Nine matches we really need to see. Actually while on that point, here's all the inter-Noble Nine matches we are in dire need of: Samus vs Mega Man Samus vs Sephiroth Cloud vs Mario Solid Snake vs Mario Sephiroth vs Mario FREAKING MARIO VS SONIC! HOW THE HELL HAS THIS NOT HAPPENED YET?! Pretty much all these matches could go either way, and I may have missed a couple. Also, I cannot believe we haven't seen Mario vs Sonic in 9 years. CJayC and SBAllen both missed the boat hard by not setting that up back during the prime of contests. We need a 24 hour match between those two in the worst way. They've never met, not even in a fourway. WTF ## Stats and Analysis Samus. Mega Man. we'd been waiting for this match since the very second Mario took that 60% lead over Samus in 2005. Samus, more than any other Noble Niner, is a leech. she's not actually as popular as she seems, but she draws strength from all sorts of fanbases. the "mature" Metroid fanbase, which splits into two different crowds, 2d and 3d. the Smash fanbase. people who vote Samus because she's got a cool design, but will abandon her quickly if a real opponent shows up. Samus is so weird like that - she could theoretically be stronger than Mario and no one would really be all that surprised. but head to head, she folds. enter Mega Man. Mega Man is a unique case, a character that resonates heavily with the oldschool crowd and gets a whole ton of his support from the Nintendo fanbase. Mega Man is a lot like Samus, only without the Smash influence. Mega Man is probably a more popular series than Metroid, too. would the Nintendo fanbase abandon Samus for Mega Man? we've seen Mega Man crush Yoshi in the past - Samus probably couldn't do as well and she's far more "Nintendo" than he is. Mega Man / Samus was an endless argument that was finally going to get an answer. not only that, but Samus was handicapped by Yoshi here. not many people went with the Mega Man upset, but most gave it a chance of happening. the opening hour of this match was one for the ages. Samus and Mega Man came out dead-even for the first five minutes. Mega Man took a 16 vote lead into the freeze and extended it to 31 and then 67 votes. it looked like Samus was collapsing to the Mega Man/Yoshi double team here. Samus stalled for an update and then Mega Man pushed the lead to 82 votes. the next update was one of the craziest of the contest. Samus absolutely obliterated Mega Man, ripping 73 votes off his lead. the next update put them into a dead tie, a rare sight and an even rarer sight for two characters of such strength. Samus slowly built a 33 vote lead from there, only to have the second craziest update of the match happen - Mega Man by 56 votes, taking the lead back with some authority. he won another update by 47 votes and looked like he was going build a big lead over Samus, but Samus stopped every big update win with one of her own. Mega Man pushed the lead up to 169 votes, but anyone that had been following Mega Man knew that he was a champion of the early hours but would fall off after that. Samus took the lead back at 5am and the day vote was not kind to Mega Man - Samus ended up smashing him to the tune of a 4000 vote win. Samus had proven that, even with Yoshi in the poll, she was clearly the stronger character, and doesn't just fold to anything Nintendo - just Mario and Link. she even did great against Link a couple weeks later. Samus had a pretty damn good contest, all things considered. in their rematch the next round, Ryu stole Bowser's spot and ruined Mega Man's shot at revenge. without Nintendo flooding the poll, Samus smashed Mega Man and ended that debate for good. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2911&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=49) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Marcus Fenix vs Auron vs Ryu 2007 _source: Cloud Strife vs Marcus Fenix vs Auron vs Ryu 2007 (revid 66623)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, October 22nd, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2 Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 22nd, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 43.68% Ryu - 21.74% Auron - 21.00% Marcus Fenix - 13.66% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (8pts) - 76.84% Cloud second place (4pts) - 7.11% Ryu second place (8pts) - 15.96% Ryu first place (4pts) - 1.43% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 83.95% (30,830) Ryu - 17.39% (6,386) Had Bowser not gotten punked by Ryu twice, he would be in Ryu's spot here and be the main beneficiary of Cloud SFFing Auron. Bowser and Auron both went against Cloud in 2003, and Bowser did better against him. But Ryu beat Bowser this year (twice), so he basically advanced past the divisional final by default. He actually won the board vote and led outright for a few seconds, and it only took him 15 minutes to shake off Auron for good. This was a predictable match by the time it rolled around, because whoever won between Bowser and Ryu was guaranteed to advance here. Most of us just screwed up and picked the wrong character among those two. Notable here is Cloud getting close to 50% in a fourway poll in round 3. That's Link Lite stuff right there, and obviously the format wasn't going to screw over the elites all too much. ## Stats and Analysis - Cloud overperformed by **+5.91%**, the **\#16** most impressive performance of 2007 - Ryu advancing was the **\#9** most surprising result of 2007 Bowser was supposed to be here, but Ryu had ruined that party twice already. Auron won round 2's much-hyped matchup with relative ease, though, making people question if Cloud being in the match with him would even alter the result. after all.. Cloud Strife 70.03% 77991 Bowser 29.97% 33381 TOTAL VOTES 111372 Cloud Strife 72.2% 81716 Auron 27.8% 31470 TOTAL VOTES 113186 Auron didn't lose by that much more than Bowser, despite it being a clear inter-company matchup. Auron did do pretty damn well last round, making some question if he, not Vincent, were the strongest Final Fantasy character not named Cloud or Sephiroth. Oracle predictions for this match were pretty damn even, suggesting a tight match. but nope, Cloud showed his power once again, and the Cloud \> Link hype train grew and grew. three straight matches, three impressive results. Cloud had yet to disappoint, and he was not letting anyone come even close to him. Marcus got crushed here, but he was in the presence of real strength. pretty good contest for him. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2912&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=50) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sephiroth vs Fox McCloud vs Mario vs Big Boss 2007 _source: Sephiroth vs Fox McCloud vs Mario vs Big Boss 2007 (revid 66811)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, October 23nd, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 3 Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 23nd, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 40.15% Mario - 33.85% Big Boss - 13.62% Fox- 12.51% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sephiroth first place (8pts) - 72.73% Sephiroth second place (4pts) - 12.01% Mario second place (8pts) - 66.01% Mario first place (4pts) - 15.29% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sephiroth - 84.74% (31,120) Mario - 81.30% (29,857) Sephiroth \> Mario at the top was extremely predictable, making this one of the least interesting matches of the entire contest. It was also a terrible picture; only Sephiroth looked any good at all, which makes you laugh at the people who try bashing FF7's graphics. Mario kept it close for a few minutes, but ultimately the match went Sephiroth's way with ease. Past those two, we had pure Sony fanbase versus pure Nintendo and all we learned is Sephiroth hurt Big Boss much less than Mario annihilated Fox. I know Link is the Nintendo kingpin, but Mario can get the benefits of SFF just as much. Discussing the Mario \> Sephiroth upset is always worth thinking about, even if Seph has completely dominated the series. Seph is trending down little by little each year. The next match this contest would have Link in it, so obviously Seph was going to advance there. But just look at the numbers here: Seph + Big Boss = 81582 Mario + Fox = 61907 43% for Mario and Fox. We're now in 2011, a year removed from Snake completely embarrassing Sephiroth in a 12 hour day match. IT'S FREAKING MARIO can't have possibly made up 7% over the past four years? It's definitely an upset worth thinking about if we ever see that match 1v1 again. ## Stats and Analysis - Sephiroth overperformed by **+5.70%**, the **\#21** most impressive performance of 2007 - Fox underperformed by **-4.45%**, the **\#24** most disappointing performance of 2007 this match was, basically, five minutes of fun and 23:55 of boring. Sephiroth hasn't really had any notable matches because he's on a bit of an island - weaker than Cloud or Link, stronger than everyone else by a good amount. usually, his only interesting matches is when he underperforms. his one positive over the years has been how he treats Mario like the Midgar Zolom. there's just something about Sephiroth that Mario folds to. 2003, he got utterly annihilated. 2005, Mario spent two months looking untouchable until Sephiroth started ramming him hard. come 2007, Mario had as good a shot as ever - the Wii came out, Mario Galaxy was coming out soon, NSMB, and Sephiroth was simply a year older and more irrelevant. Mario \> Sephiroth was a cute little upset pick pre-contest that went largely undiscussed, but as the contest went on it was talked about a lot more. Mario's impressive round 1 match, combined with Sephiroth's perceived disappointment (he was up against CATS, and we know how percentages suffer when joke characters are involved), made it a reasonable pick. round 2 pretty much ended any discussion of that when Sephiroth came out and took care of business. by the time the match rolled around, it was just a matter of how much Seph would win by. the only fun part was to see if Mario could hold the lead at the beginning -- and he did, for a short while. Sephiroth took it back and just crushed him overnight, though Mario did somewhat respectably when compared to previous efforts. this match wasn't very interesting, but I liked the buildup and always like seeing our strongest go at it, even if it's not the closest of matches. the big disappointment for me in this match was Fox. argh, what a waste. nominate this guy next year, board 8. he deserves a legit shot, not a bunch of weak Nintendo characters followed by being put in a match with Mr. Nintendo himself. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2913&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=51) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Vincent Valentine vs Crono vs Zero 2007 _source: Link vs Vincent Valentine vs Crono vs Zero 2007 (revid 85849)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 4 Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 42.59% Vincent - 20.93% Crono - 20.91% Zero - 15.55% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (8pts) - 81.52% Link second place (4pts) - 5.77% Vincent second place (8pts) - 5.64% Vincent first place (4pts) - 5.30% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 87.29% (32,056) Vincent - 10.94% (4,018) This match pic is in such stark contrast compared to the last one. All four looked great, although Zero was completely irrelevant in the actual match. So was Link, really, when you think about it. He got first place, as usual, yawn. This was all about Crono v Vincent, the most hyped match of the contest and for good reason. Contest people are obsessed with the Noble Nine to an ungodly sad degree -- Remember what the board looked like when Missingno beat Crono? I've never been more embarrassed to be considered a Board 8 regular -- and Crono wasn't overly impressive in either of his first two matches, especially with letting Zero get so close last round. Vincent looked somewhat "bad", but against much better competition. This was the best chance yet to break the Noble Nine's winning streak. I actually picked Vincent to win this, because the writing has been on the wall for Crono's decline for years and part because I am an absolute Vincent fanboy. If there was an upset I had I pick right, this was it, and I am proud to say I was a massive reason the hype for this match was so huge. Adding to that, look at the actual poll. Link, Zero, Crono. Also known as Nintendo, SNES/PSX, SNES/PSX. Vincent stood out like a sore thumb, so he was prime to pull off the upset. Then the match started. tran covered some of the funnier quotes and I'm too lazy to go and look up more, but needless to say people were bragging hard on Crono's behalf. And they had every reason to. In 5 minutes, Crono led by 150 votes and 10 minutes later the lead was doubled. Coming back from stuff like this is extremely rare, and Crono made sure to make it even worse. After an hour, he led by 660 and the lead breached 1000 an hour later. Crono started slowing down a lot from here, but still pushed the lead to 1100 at 3 a.m. Sometimes our hype is worth it, but here it seemed pointless. Tons of bragging about the Noble Nine staying alive, tons of whining about it, and so on and so on. Everyone that was here remembers all of it, and needless to say Noble Nine arguments are seriously the dumbest thing this board argues about. Why some people care this much about whether or not nine characters only lose to each other is just beyond me, and the worst part is it was nothing compared to the crap that happened after Crono lost to Missingno. There is a serious lack of a collective sex life on Board 8, let me tell you. Deny it all you want, but you know it's true. Of course, there was one problem with all this. Right at 3 a.m., Crono just died. His lead would never reach 1150, and come the dead zone (that time between 3 and 6:30 or so when FF7 tends to dominate) Vincent started rolling. He stalled Crono for a couple hours, got the lead under 1000 by 5 and then just started going nuts. 1000 votes was knocked under 900 within 30 minutes, and he just kept right on rolling through the morning vote. Given Crono's historically pathetic day vote paired with Final Fantasy 7's historically good day vote, the match was basically over. There was just too much SNES overlap here and FF7 was on an island being leashed by next to nothing, and finishing it off was academic. Vincent caught all the way up by 10, and though Crono was able to stall him for an hour and a half his bad day vote wouldn't allow him to retain the pace. Before long Vincent started building a lead, and before we knew it the match was over for good. Vincent went on to win this thing by 1700 votes, and what this win meant for the Noble Nine I honestly don't care about. It's not like L-Block didn't come out and render the entire argument idiotic or anything. Crono would also get his revenge in 2008 with a much friendlier poll that wasn't basically 3 SNES characters versus Final Fantasy 7. Honestly, I don't really blame the format here since the first fourway was fine. It was the two that followed that mostly sucked, with the final nail being how pissed off everyone got when our long-awaited games contest sequel was ruined by fourway generational divisions. ## Stats and Analysis - Vincent advancing was the **\#7** most surprising result of 2007 you could argue that the first six weeks of this contest were nothing more than buildup for this match -- arguably the single most anticipated match of the contest before L-Block went silly. *every* match was compared to what it meant for this one. Frog disappointment? Crono's screwed! Aeris sucking? Vincent's screwed! Cloud does well? aw yeah Vince! the hype leading up to this match was so overwhelming that by the time you got to the match, it was almost anti-climactic. Vincent had every conceivable advantage walking into this match. Link and Crono are practically the same character, on the same system, and Zero made for a third SNES character thrown into the mix. Vincent is a fan-favourite - Crono not so much. Crono is aging fast, while Vincent seems to be getting more popular if anything. by match time, Vincent was the favourite, and I'm pretty sure I was the only one that sided with Crono in the Analysis Crew. most of the other Crono supporters were, for lack of a better word, CT fanboys. the opening to this match hit people like a ton of bricks. Crono opened the match tied with Link, and Vincent was closer to Zero than Crono. the overreaction was priceless, especially from people who hadn't defended Crono at all: XxSoulxX: *Gotta ask... Why was so many people so convinced in Vincent beating Crono anyway?* Karma Hunter: *Wow, can't see this one being ANYTHING but over. Noble Nine wins again.* Master Moltar: *Link rising to heaven, Vincent... eh, ova* The n00b Avenger: *Ok, Link kicking ass, Vincent screwed. Next match* [thengamer.com/stats/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt501-550/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt530](http://www.thengamer.com/stats/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt501-550/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt530/) -- a funny topic. I actually called people on this -- despite picking Crono/cheering for Crono! -- and got nothing but laughter back. this was over. Crono took a 149 vote lead after five minutes, added 90 in the next update, and was up 429 votes in 30 minutes. for anyone else, this was over. Noble Nine preserved, a huge bandwagon crushed, all that. but this was Crono. he's more Phoenix Wright than anything these days, and it's kind of sad to watch a classic fall from grace like this. Crono pushed his lead out to 1000 votes in two hours, but then he just stopped. by 5am he was losing votes. at 10am we had a dead tie, and from there it was over. it wasn't interesting, it was just another depressing result from a guy who just couldn't keep it up for 24 hours anymore. it was a mirror result to Crono/Sonic, another match people called en masse when everyone should have known better. the end result was one of the more painful sights I can remember on board 8 - a board-wide explosion over "the noble nine". most stats topic vets didn't really care, as we had expected this for a while, but the rest of the board was obsessed with it. is it over, isn't it over, a ton of arguments over why, what is the noble nine, why do you all care so much, etc. it was really ugly. my opinion on the matter was that, well, it didn't really matter either way, but I'd be hesitant to say Vincent automatically wins one-on-one. fortunately, an L-Block came along and showed us that this format is utter BS and that we can't really say anything definitively, and that whole argument ended up being meaningless. :) ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis In just two years Crono had gone from being Mario’s equal and potentially stronger than Samus to being the low rung on the Noble Nine ladder. Vincent \> Crono was a tantalizing upset for those brave enough to jump aboard, and their diligence was rewarded with this match, which saw an actually thrilling close race for second place between Crono and Vincent that was difficult to call until the last few hours. Crono started off with a decent lead, but Vincent came back with the afterschool vote (if memory serves me right) and though the two remained relatively close, Vincent had done the seemingly unthinkable and ousted a member of the Noble Nine. Of course, for as much attention as I’ve given the term, “Noble Nine” really ain’t all it’s cracked up to be and existed originally as a blanket term for the eight strongest characters (who were coincidentally the Elite Eight of the 2003 contest) and Crono, who was Mario’s equal. There’s no substitution or anything like that. Whether or not you think the term matters, this match was both a big milestone and a good slugfest to boot. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2914&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=52) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=52) - [Vincent's win caused quite the uproar on B8](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/07Summer/07-VinceBreaksNN.jpg) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Ganondorf vs Luigi vs Master Chief vs Yuna 2007 _source: Ganondorf vs Luigi vs Master Chief vs Yuna 2007 (revid 66828)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, October 25th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 5 Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 25th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 33.51% Ganondorf - 25.16% Luigi - 21.39% Yuna - 19.97% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Master Chief first place (8pts) - 17.73% Master Chief second place (4pts) - 40.66% Luigi second place (8pts) - 8.48% Luigi first place (4pts) - 21.39% - **Advancing Prediction:** Master Chief - 58.39% (21,443) Luigi - 29.87% (10,969) Master Chief embarrassing Yuna in this match was a given from the first round and on, but there was a large debate surrounding this match on bracket release date and I remember it very vividly. Master Chief had Halo 3 hype and the format in his corner, and there was a big debate over whether or not Luigi or Ganondorf was the stronger character. The three characters all added up to a good debate over who would finish first and second, and it's rare in a fourway where the top three could potentially fit in any order. Well, then the first two rounds happened and it became clear Master Chief was going to get first place. What people did not expect however was Ganondorf getting absolutely dicked over by that pig picture. He is stronger than Luigi indirectly and he proved it in round 2, but then that terrible sprite picture was released. You had Luigi in all his beloved NES glory against the bacon sprite that you barely ever see in the original Legend of Zelda. Of course Luigi was going to win second place. Oh Ganondorf gave a good effort and all that, but he was screwed from the start with that HORRIBLE picture. He slowly built up a marginal lead early that never passed more than 115 votes, and then Luigi just swamped him with the morning vote. Ganon made his stalls and cuts here and there, but there was no freaking way in a million years GameFAQs was going to let a pig sprite win over NES Luigi. For those who say pictures don't matter, they do. In this contest alone, we had Pig Ganon and Naked Snake to prove it. ## Stats and Analysis - Luigi advancing was the **\#17** most surprising result of 2007 the second the bracket was announced, THIS was the match that would make or break people. Ganondorf or Luigi -- where do Nintendo fans' loyalties lie? Master Chief -- would he thrive in this format, or disappoint like always? and Yuna -- the only Square character in a pack full of question marks. would she be able to ride the Squareheads to victory? for a solid month, this match was argued, and no one was really right or wrong. one thing we weren't counting on: sprites. the second we saw the theme -- "first appearance" -- we wondered if we'd get PIG GANNON, or if "Ganondorf" would get the well-known OOT picture. the answer: *what* this picture is hideous all-around -- Luigi just looks awful, Yuna is blurry, and of course, Pig Ganon. the Oracle picks don't show what the stats topic/Analysis Crew were thinking -- Luigi \> Ganon was now a great possibility, despite Ganon winning convincingly the previous round. the Analysis Crew surprisingly jumped ship to Luigi en masse, with some people picking Yuna. Ganon was just an ugly pick to stand by. opinions on this match had changed greatly since the contest started. multiple characters from the same series/company have all underperformed greatly; Master Chief had dominated through two rounds; Yuna was disappointing, though that was more Master Chief's fault than hers, really. going into this match, MC was a guaranteed first, but everything else was pretty much up for grabs. as the match started, Ganondorf took his typical bracket/board vote to a nice little lead. he was leading Master Chief for a few minutes, and Luigi fell off after the early vote. Ganondorf built up a 59 vote lead within 10 minutes, but that wouldn't last as Luigi came back quickly. a huge stall followed, and neither character could get more than a 100 vote lead for the rest of the night. Yuna was disappointing, but FF10's awesome night vote really helped her out. Master Chief looked human for the first time, and despite the two Nintendo characters, he couldn't get all that much separation. Luigi snatched the lead at 4am and used Mario's customary morning vote to build up a small lead of about 400 votes. it seemed Ganon's picture really was hurting him here -- a couple weeks earlier, Ganondorf easily took down Luigi, but not this time. it all came down to the afterschool vote - Link has always been absolutely dominant then, but this was a heavily handicapped Ganon and it showed. Luigi slowly build up a bigger lead and by 6pm or so, this match was over. Luigi would hold on and top Ganondorf in a match that could have been better if Ganon was at full strength. the other story of this match was Master Chief, who had an amazing afterschool vote as usual but came up short of the mammoth expectations he had built up for himself through the first two rounds. with one of the Nintendo guys going home and two "mature" characters in Dante and Leon advancing next round, Luigi looked to have a great shot at winning round 4 outright. (darn you pikachu) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2915&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=53) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Dante vs Amaterasu vs Leon Kennedy vs Pikachu 2007 _source: Dante vs Amaterasu vs Leon Kennedy vs Pikachu 2007 (revid 66831)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, October 26th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 6 Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 26th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 32.74% Leon Kennedy - 28.44% Pikachu - 22.66% Amaterasu - 16.42% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Pikachu first place (8pts) - 10.50% Pikachu second place (4pts) - 19.25% Dante second place (8pts) - 11.07% Dante first place (4pts) - 51.44% - **Advancing Prediction:** Pikachu - 29.75% (10,925) Dante - 62.51% (22,956) Last round, Pikachu snuck through because Vivi and Tidus screwed each other over. In the match prior to this, Luigi and Ganondorf hurt each other a lot and it allowed Master Chief to roll into first place. A lot of other matches worked in much the same way as well. And not a single one of those matches prepared people for Pikachu doing this. Even with the adored Yellow sprite and being against three other Capcom characters, almost no one expected Pikachu to advance in this match at all, let alone score first place and just thoroughly screw over Leon Kennedy like this. First and foremost, hats off to Amaterasu for a great run and no one would really say Leon Kennedy \> Dante. That was easy to see coming. But Pikachu completely dominating this match after the first few seconds? He led Dante by 66 votes after 5 minutes and it was a total boat race from there. Even when Dante made comeback attempts overnight and during school, Pikachu smacked him back down during the morning and ASV. This was a true clinic from Pikachu, one of the biggest surprises all contest and it was probably the spot in contests where people started coming around on Pokemon. The L-Block upset in 2008 finished the turnaround for that series, but it all had to start somewhere. And just think, replace Tidus with someone not-Square and we're probably talking about Vivi in this spot. Screw you, Meg Ryan. ## Stats and Analysis - Pikachu overperformed by **+11.13%**, the **\#5** most impressive performance of 2007 - Leon underperformed by **-4.59%**, the **\#21** most disappointing performance of 2007 - Ammy underperformed by **-4.49%**, the **\#23** most disappointing performance of 2007 - Pikachu advancing was the **\#16** most surprising result of 2007 screw L-Block -- *this* was the most shocking result of 2007. I argued beforehand about Leon and Dante sharing a fanbase, but I wasn't all that serious -- I just wanted to point out that they may not dominate as much as we thought. but this match.....nah, my words can't describe this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2916&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=54) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Kratos vs L-Block vs Solid Snake vs Riku 2007 _source: Kratos vs L-Block vs Solid Snake vs Riku 2007 (revid 82939)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, October 27th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 7 Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 27th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 39.15% L-Block - 23.30% Kratos- 21.27% Riku - 17.25% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Snake first place (8pts) - 27.09% Snake second place (4pts) - 47.64% L-Block second place (8pts) - 0.88% L-Block first place (4pts) - 2.60% - **Advancing Prediction:** Snake - 74.73% (27,444) L-Block - 3.48% (1,278) Also known as "the match where L-Block started going nuts". In round 1 he advanced because he was against fodder, and in round 2 he advanced because Kirby and Donkey Kong screwed each other over. The prevailing belief was that when L-Block finally went into a match with no trickeration, he'd fall flat. "Whoops" Not only were Riku and Kratos never in this match at all, L-Block dominated Snake himself early. Yes this is the Solid S\*\*\* sprite, but still. L-Block went up by 600 votes in an hour, and the match was basically over from there. It only took Snake three hours to erase that lead and take over first place for good, but that first hour was a massive sign of things to come for L-Block in this contest. If he could dominate Snake that much that early, imagine what he could do with a legitimate rally behind him. You can blame good luck (or bad luck, if you hated the block's run this contest) for L-Block getting through two rounds, but this was all legit. Oddly enough, I don't think Kratos would have even beaten a "normal" L-Block here. Only beating Riku by 3% is very bad. ## Stats and Analysis - Snake underperformed by **-6.71%**, the **\#10** most disappointing performance of 2007 - L-Block advancing was the **\#4** most surprising result of 2007 - It was also the **\#5** most surprising result of all-time L-Block's contest run was all about progression. in round 1, it advanced over two pieces of low-end fodder. in round 2, it advanced because of a fanbase split. In round 3, there were no excuses. Kratos had no reason to flop here, no fanbase splitting, no nothing. L-Block and his 28% were just too much when faced with two opponents of strength. this is the match when people started to really recognize that -- 28% in the Laharl match, 28% in the Kirby/DK match, and now 28% against a noble niner and two legit midcarders. a lot of people thought this would stop when L faced some real competition, but clearly this did not happen. but that wasn't the most significant part of the match. the most significant part was the beginning, when L-Block ran up a sizable lead on Solid Snake. a 600 vote lead on Solid Snake was something you had to notice -- if L could do this against Snake, what couldn't it do it against? would Mario stand a chance against that early vote? would Cloud? Link? and when the competition gets stronger and stronger, would there be some huge casualties at the expense of a Tetris block? we were set to find out next round, where L had its biggest test yet -- two noble niners and perhaps the \#10 guy in Squall. In what may have been the most amusing part of this match (and that is saying something), Snake got the victory in this match in spite of his Solid Sprite match picture. Snake would then go on to lose to L-Block three times with much better artwork used in the match pictures. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis After its dominant and steadily increasing performances in the first two rounds, L-Block went from a silly little joke to a threat to break the Noble Nine itself. This match, featuring three of the most badass characters in gaming (and Riku), would go on to prove those fears and worse – the Block not only took second commandingly, it came damn close to upsetting Snake himself. Kratos and Riku tried their hardest, but L-Block kept those two – who are no slouches when it comes to contest strength, mind you – down to under 10 percent for the bulk of the match. Kratos came back and tried to make a match of it, but the Block isn’t shaped like a boot for no reason. In the end, Snake and L-Block advanced – and even with Sonic and Squall in the mix, L-Block was still a favorite to advance. Crazy stuff. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2917&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=55) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Squall Leonhart vs Sora vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sub-Zero 2007 _source: Squall Leonhart vs Sora vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sub-Zero 2007 (revid 66877)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, October 28th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 28th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 35.29% Squall - 25.15% Sora - 20.80% Sub-Zero - 18.66% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sonic first place (8pts) - 17.32% Sonic second place (4pts) - 38.12% Squall second place (8pts) - 8.67% Squall first place (4pts) - 17.53% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sonic - 55.44% (20,360) Squall - 26.20% (9,622) Best factoid about this entire match is that Squall probably easily takes first place over Sonic without Sora getting in the way. There's proof of this, too, in a 2008 match where Squall was replaced with Auron and Sora was replaced with Sandbag. For whatever reason, Sonic sucks in fourways. He's been trending way down thanks to how badly Sega has ruined him, but he gets especially exposed in fourways because people abandon him for a bag of chips. This is one of the worst first place performances ever. Because not only was Squall hanging with him for awhile even with Sora stealing a bunch of the Square votes, but Sonic needed the crazy Sega morning vote from all the brats to finish Squall off. That's just... bad. There was some hype going into this match about how Sub-Zero could squeak into second place if Squall and Sora screwed each other over badly enough, but that lasted all of 10 seconds. As luck would have it, Sub-Zero's performance in round 1 was a complete fluke and his numbers in rounds 2 and 3 were more indicative of who he really was. This match really makes me wonder what would happen if Sora and Aeris ever had a rematch. Sora is clearly stronger indirectly, but that guy just collapses like a house of cards against other Square characters. ## Stats and Analysis - Squall overperformed by **+5.66%**, the **\#22** most impressive performance of 2007 - Squall advancing was the **\#14** most surprising result of 2007 going into this match, we had no idea what was going to happen. for starters, we had Squall and Sora, two strong characters, sharing not only the same company, but the same game(s), too. the character that could capitalize on this was Sub-Zero, who had an impressive-as-hell round 1 but an awful round 2. god knows what would happen with him. and then there was Sonic, still riding the high of Brawl hype. Squall/Sora/Sub was reminiscent of the Bowser/Mewtwo/Ryu match, only there was a Sonic in the way this time. the match started, and we soon found out what the anomaly was -- Sub-Zero was doing as well as he did in round 2. match over.. or so we thought. Squall, *somehow*, was keeping pace with Sonic despite Sora being in the poll. split fanbase? it didn't matter. Sonic pushed his lead to 700 votes before Squall's night vote kicked in, and Squall actually brought Sonic to within 350 votes before morning hit. Sonic's killer day vote pushed the lead over 2,000 by the end, but Sora was in the poll -- what could possibly happen when Sora was eliminated? combine this with the fact that Solid Snake and friggin' L-Block were going to be in the next match with them, and it was probably my most anticipated match of all time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2918&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=56) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Samus Aran vs Mega Man vs Cloud Strife vs Ryu 2007 _source: Samus Aran vs Mega Man vs Cloud Strife vs Ryu 2007 (revid 66879)_ ## Results **Round Four** Monday, October 29th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 29th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 37.05% Samus - 25.51% Mega Man - 22.10% Ryu - 15.34% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (16pts) - 40.16% Cloud second place (8pts) - 33.46% Samus second place (16pts) - 25.48% Samus first place (8pts) - 25.33% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 73.62% (27,036) Samus - 50.81% (18,659) And thus began the very very VERY long string of terrible user-made match pics. Some were okay before I showed up, most weren't. Summer 2008's set is just embarrassing to look at. Anyway, this was a boring late-round match that all of us could read like a book before it ever started. Last round, Mega Man almost beat Samus with Yoshi in there sucking up a bunch of Nintendo votes, crapping them out as eggs and then using them as projectiles to beam Samus in the face. With Yoshi gone, Mega Man didn't have a prayer of getting into second place here. Dare I say -- this match actually came close to the LOL, X-Stats! Ahem. Even in round 4, 40/30/20/10 is just awful and there's almost never anything to talk about. I think the entire board picked Cloud \> Samus here, and why wouldn't they? Mega Man jobbed so badly here that he was closer to Ryu than Samus, which is just terrible. This is the same guy that almost beat Sephiroth back in the day and rendered Mr. Driller one of our weakest entrants ever? ## Stats and Analysis this was a match of three heavyweights and a strong character (Ryu). Samus vs. Mega Man was a real treat of a matchup, but we had already seen it last round with Yoshi leeching off of Samus, and Samus still won. this match might have been in doubt if Bowser made it here as most expected, but Ryu crashed the party. the highlight of this match was Samus managing to hold onto the lead at the freeze, and Mega Man's absolutely pitiful performance. Samus vs. Mega Man was no longer debatable -- Samus erased all doubts with a very convincing performance here. not to be outdone, Cloud's peformance -- 41% on two Noble Nine guys and one very strong, independent character -- was damn impressive. Link-impressive, in fact. some serious debate raged on whether or not Cloud should be called the favourite over Link at this point. I remember getting into an absolute war defending Link in this match with at least five members of the stats topic. that was a really fun time. I really enjoyed this match, even if it was boring. but the main thing people will remember from this match is Mega Man's bomb. the fact that Mega Man was closer to Ryu than Samus says it all. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2919&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=57) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sephiroth vs Mario vs Link vs Vincent Valentine 2007 _source: Sephiroth vs Mario vs Link vs Vincent Valentine 2007 (revid 66880)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 39.16% Sephiroth - 28.98% Mario - 17.86% Vincent - 13.92% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (16pts) - 22.25% Link second place (8pts) - 48.09% Sephiroth second place (16pts) - 15.06% Sephiroth first place (8pts) - 46.91% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 70.34% (25,832) Sephiroth - 61.97% (22,758) Vincent's reward for upsetting Crono was.... Sephiroth. Goodbye, Vincent. "Ouch" doesn't really cut it here. This was our second straight boring quarterfinal match, since everyone knew going in Sephiroth would outdo Mario thanks to Link being in the poll. What was unexpected however was Mario holding his own for a bit. He didn't come close to being in second or anything, but the early parts of the poll were still pretty fun. Mario also clearly weakened Link in this poll, to the point where removing Vincent and adding in a non-Nintendo/Square character could have potentially allowed Sephiroth to sneak into first place. This was the first time all contest where Link looked at all vulnerable, which gave the people who picked Cloud \> Link in the final some hope. Fun with numbers: Final Fantasy 7 - 59910 Link - 52795 ## Stats and Analysis what looked to be a boring quarterfinal match turned up with an unexpected twist: Mario. in 2006's battle royale, Mario got *trashed* by Link being in the poll, finishing a distant fifth and not doing all that much better than Samus. in this match, though, Mario stood up to Link early, went pretty even with Sephiroth despite Link being in the poll, and had a pretty impressive first hour. he fell off pretty hard after that, but there was some talk that he'd do as bad as Vincent Valentine, and that clearly didn't happen. the main thing we looked at here was Nintendo's votes vs. FF7's votes -- 58.5 to 41.5. Cloud had a tough task ahead of him if he was going to beat Link. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2920&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=58) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Master Chief vs Luigi vs Pikachu vs Dante 2007 _source: Master Chief vs Luigi vs Pikachu vs Dante 2007 (revid 71255)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 31.69% Luigi - 23.14% Dante - 24.15% Pikachu - 20.92% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Master Chief first place (16pts) - 34.04% Master Chief second place (8pts) - 12.80% Dante second place (16pts) - 20.03% Dante first place (8pts) - 5.11% - **Advancing Prediction:** Master Chief - 46.84% (17,202) Dante - 25.14% (9,232) Round 1 - Four JRPG characters in the poll, Pikachu advances on natural strength. Round 2 - Two Square characters in the poll screw each other over, Pikachu advances. Round 3 - Three Capcom characters all screw each other over, Pikachu advances. In the first match where Pikachu actually shared a fanbase with someone, where EVERYONE wanted him to lay down so Luigi could advance, Pikachu screwed Luigi over and cost him a shot at the semifinals. Luigi getting into the semifinal and not Mario would have been pretty funny, but a yellow rat got in the way. Early on, it was clear Master Chief was in his element and he cruised out into first place, never to be threatened at all. Behind him, the order was actually Luigi \> Pikachu \> Dante for 10 minutes. But eventually the Nintendo Power Hour ended, Luigi and Pikachu stole each other's votes and Dante cruised into second place. Neither of the Nintendo characters were able to recover, since they were fighting with each other and not Dante for all the votes. I know everyone remembers L-Block's run from this contest, but Pikachu's was just as impressive in several ways. Not only did he get into round 4, but he totally backstabbed his Nintendo brethren in the match he finally lost. That's one heck of a storyline, and lost in all the whining about it were Master Chief and Dante finally making their well-deserved deep contest run. Flash in the pan or not, they've both done a lot for the industry and really deserved some long-awaited attention on our site. ## Stats and Analysis - Dante advancing was the **\#13** most surprising result of 2007 Pikachu, at this point, was a cross of pure-bred evil and luck. he advanced this far thanks to two Square characters, two Final Fantasy characters and two Capcom characters. if Pikachu was going to go down, he was going to take someone down with him -- and that was Luigi. within 24 hours, Luigi went from a possible first place finish to an underdog to advance. we were looking at three "mature" characters -- Dante, Leon and Master Chief -- with Luigi standing out and going into the next round with ease. add in the dumb rat, though? Luigi was screwed. don't tell that to the first hour, though. Dante came out with the early lead, but Luigi came back and took the lead despite Pikachu doing a great job with 20% of the vote. Luigi build up a 200 vote lead during the opening hour, when Nintendo always does well. the nighttime belongs to Dante though, and Dante took the lead back and built up a 1000 vote lead by morning. Luigi never really made the match any more interesting, either, and even the daytime couldn't save him. even when Pikachu finally got eliminated, he managed to take down one of Nintendo's main mascots along with him. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2921&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=59) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Solid Snake vs L-Block vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Squall Leonhart 2007 _source: Solid Snake vs L-Block vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Squall Leonhart 2007 (revid 67832)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, November 1st, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 1st, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 29.52% Sonic - 25.34% L-Block - 23.50% Squall - 21.78% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** L-Block first place (16pts) - 1.85% L-Block second place (8pts) - 0.50% Snake second place (16pts) - 16.37% Snake first place (8pts) - 40.52% - **Advancing Prediction:** L-Block - 2.35% (863) Snake - 56.89% (20,892) L-Block stomping Link in the final was this contest's most important match, but this was definitely the contest's 1a. To this point, as impressive as L-Block was, he had never gotten above second place and his early push was never a complete godslayer. Then, about an hour before the match kicked off: "L-Block is not going to beat Sonic or Snake." -red13n Is it any surprise what we would see next? Yeah people expected the Noble Nine to take L-Block out, but you could feel that board vote coming well in advance after how awful red's topic was. I know I planned on voting for Snake until that topic came about. Then the match started, and all hell broke loose. L-Block -- not Sonic, not Snake, not Squall -- led by nearly 100 votes through 5 minutes and didn't slow down for a damn long time. The lead hit 600 votes after 15 minutes and after an hour he was all the way up to 1500. It was the first time all contest where we saw the early vote that would eventually win him the contest, and he got his practice in early on some characters that had no idea what hit them. The block peaked at an 1800 vote lead overnight before Snake finally started making a comeback attempt, but lost in all the crazy whining about this match was how far behind Sonic and Squall were. Not only did Sonic screw the pooch for the second match in a row, but Squall was right behind him yet again. I'm not sure why or how, but Sonic is one of those characters that just sucks in fourway matches. First and second place were long sealed away within an hour or two, but Snake made a pretty cool comeback attempt once L-Block's momentum finally slowed down. What was an 1800 vote lead overnight turned into a mere 1200 vote lead come the morning vote, and if anything from Metal Gear Solid had even a marginally effective day vote Snake might have finished off the comeback that day. As it stood, the closest he would ever get is 250, but he lacked the day strength to push past all of L-Block's stalling and counter-rallies. It was the first time all contest L-Block actually finished in first place in a match, and this match was the true beginning of the block's championship form. And as crazy as his board vote was here, this was only a taste of what was coming. We will never again see anything like what L-Block pulled off in this contest. ## Stats and Analysis - L-Block advancing was the **\#3** most surprising result of 2007 and of all-time in the beginning, L-Block was the cute little joke that was upsetting characters due to fortunate bracket placement. in the end, L-Block was a god-killer that drew 195,000 votes and stopped Link's three-year streak of dominance. inbetween, we had this gem - the best match of 2007. two Noble Nine characters, arguably the strongest non-Noble character, and L. it was a heavyweight match, one of the most anticipated in stats topic history at the least. most people put their money on the Noble Nine to stop this thing. the early vote would not be kind, but we were talking about Sonic the Hedgehog, Squall and Solid \*\*\*\*ing Snake. jokes can only go so far... right? Solid Snake 12.96% 7 L-Block 72.22% 39 Sonic the Hedgehog 9.26% 5 Squall Leonhart 5.56% 3 TOTAL VOTES 54 this is how we started, and it really rocked people. I think most agreed that, thanks to the near-even strength in this match, that L-Block had a chance to up-end Sonic and Squall.. but seeing it in action, with 72% of the vote, really floored people. it was pretty hilarious, but everything was under control -- just the board having fun, after all. this was going to stop. Solid Snake 22.92% 380 L-Block 40.95% 679 Sonic the Hedgehog 19.85% 324 Squall Leonhart 16.59% 275 TOTAL VOTES 1658 ahh, more like it. L was coming down in percentage quick, but he had already build up a 300 vote lead at the freeze. people were still reeling here, but you could see L's time coming to an end if you were watching the percentages. L would take some more updates, but soon it would be Snake's time. five minutes later, the lead ballooned to 464. five minutes after that, it was up to 607. then, perhaps the most shocking update of them all, the 00:20 update had L-Block gain .5% and push his lead up 200 more votes. 20 minutes in, already an 800 vote lead. when would it stop? L-Block continued on for two hours, when the lead hit 1750 and abruptly stopped. L's surge was over and it was Snake's time. Snake loves him some night vote, and despite what you'd expect, the overnight is actually L's worst time. L got the lead up to 1800, but crashed from there. Snake took the lead down 500 votes without much trouble. by morning, L was hanging on to a 1200 vote lead. Sonic and Squall were out of the running here; L and Snake were ready to do battle come daytime. most everyone expected Snake to overtake him -- I mean, it was a Noble Niner vs. a Tetris Block come daytime. Snake's day vote is less than stellar, though. it's better than L-Block's, but that's not saying anything. with Sonic and Squall there to slow Snake down considerably, a gimped Snake attempted to eliminate L's lead. by the time school let out, the lead was cut in half again, down to 500 votes. Snake cut it down to 400, but from there it was a huge stall. ever-so-slowly, Snake cut votes off the lead. he got it down to 300 by 7pm, and then took 30 votes off in one update. it seemed like we'd be looking at a wild finish with L-Block hoping for a rally to save him. HM: *time to rally then ... where does one go to rally for a tetris piece* The n00b Avenger: ** my favourite part of the match, right there. I sat there for 15 full minutes resisting the urge to make an account. :) right then, Snake's momentum just kind of... stopped. I don't know if it was a rally or not, but L-Block magically shot up 115 votes in 30 minutes. it was the buffer L-Block needed in order to hold on for the last three hours. Snake's night vote kicked in for the last hour to cut the lead 100 votes, but L was up by too much. L went on to win by 264 votes and lead for the entire 24 hours. this is my favourite match for a handful of reasons. for one, it was the first time we saw L-Block domination in the first hour like that. we had seen flashes before, but not insane opening vote pushes on multiple Noble Niners before. it was also the first time L held on to win a match. it was, of course, close at the end, and it was a HUGE board upset, pretty much destroying every person's bracket all at once. even discounting brackets, verrrrrrrrry few people picked L-Block to take first. the Link match was more significant, but there was absolutely nothing that could touch L's first run at glory -- taking Snake and Sonic on at the same time, and beating them both. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis It wasn’t enough for L-Block to make it to Round Four. It wasn’t enough for L-Block to almost beat Snake in the prior round. No, L-Block had to go all out – and this match was where that damn Tetris block really started going all out. The joke was gathering steam all over the Internet at this point, and everyone seemed to want to rally behind the Block – call it silliness, love of Tetris, frustration with Link winning all the time – whatever, the Block was on a roll, and was neck-and-neck with Snake for the beginning of this match before pulling away to victory. There was also a nifty match-within-a-match here as well, between Sonic and Squall. Having been soundly beaten by Snake two years and counting, Squall seemed to settle for giving Sonic a run for his money, and these two dueled off in an epic showdown mirroring Snake vs. L-Block above them. Simply spectacular. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2922&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=60) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Samus Aran vs Link vs Sephiroth 2007 _source: Cloud Strife vs Samus Aran vs Link vs Sephiroth 2007 (revid 66897)_ ## Results **Round Five** Friday, November 2nd, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 2nd, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 35.56% Cloud - 28.23% Sephiroth - 20.64% Samus - 15.58% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (32pts) - 18.57% Link second place (16pts) - 30.90% Cloud second place (32pts) - 15.71% Cloud first place (16pts) - 38.20% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 49.47% (18,167) Cloud - 53.91% (19,798) Link \> Cloud was an absolute lock here, and it probably always will be in every match they have together from now on barring insane SFF hijinx, like a fourway poll with Link, Mario, Samus and Cloud in it. And even then, watch Link still win anyway. Cloud had the standard early troubles, with Samus this time, but thanks to the assist from Link he was able to dispatch her with ease. I know I'm supposed to say something about how impressive it was Samus outdid Sephiroth here, but I can't find myself caring much about a battle for third place. To me, this means about as much as the Tails/Boss duel did all the way back in round 1. And given how late-round bandwagons can operate, you always see weird overperformances and underperformances late in every contest. Granted this match in part telegraphed Samus going even with Cloud forever in 2010 along with Sephiroth's perpetual decline, but that stuff didn't really need to be confirmed anyway. We could all see it coming. Although with that said, Samus standing up to Link better than Sephiroth stood up to Cloud was impressive given the SFF history between Square and Nintendo. Doesn't make this match at all interesting, though, since Link \> Cloud here was a lock from day 1. And without L-Block getting in the way, it would have been a lock in the final as well. More fun with numbers: Final Fantasy 7 - 63418 Link - 55996 ## Stats and Analysis - Sephiroth underperformed by **-4.90%**, the **\#19** most disappointing performance of 2007 here we had, arguably, our four strongest characters in contest history. unfortunately, none of them are particularly close in strength, so the match itself wasn't expected to be all that interesting. Link was going to SFF Samus into oblivion like he always does, Cloud and Sephiroth were going to do a 55/45 split like usual, and Link was going to look fairly unbeatable despite a 53-47 or so split between Nintendo and FF7. but then, the craziest thing happened -- like Mario, Samus just did not die. Samus came out crushing Sephiroth (which wasn't all that unusual), but she didn't stop. Samus increased or stalled consistently until the last few hours of the poll, where Sephiroth cut 500 votes off the lead and ended up with a 1500 vote loss to Samus. the amazing thing about this match was that, just a year ago, the board went crazy over the same thing -- Snake vs. Sephiroth -- and just about nobody cared about this one. granted, neither one was going to advance, but still: [transience.paragonsigma.com/screens/DpObliVion-snakewins.JPG](http://transience.paragonsigma.com/screens/DpObliVion-snakewins.JPG) just sayin'. Samus's impressive showing here was also notable because it didn't really affect Link at all. he went 3% above expectations, and Sephiroth went way below what you'd expect. those votes went to Link, not Cloud. Nintendo was beating FF7 55.8/44.2 -- Cloud was going to need a hell of a performance to top Link in the final. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2923&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=61) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Master Chief vs Dante vs L-Block vs Solid Snake 2007 _source: Master Chief vs Dante vs L-Block vs Solid Snake 2007 (revid 88423)_ ## Results **Round Five** Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 29.42% L-Block - 28.87% Master Chief - 25.06% Dante - 16.60% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** L-Block first place (32pts) - 0.50% L-Block second place (16pts) - 1.16% Snake second place (32pts) - 24.35% Snake first place (16pts) - 16.22% - **Advancing Prediction:** L-Block - 1.66% (610) Snake - 40.57% (14,899) As luck would have it, the final two matches would take place on a weekend, giving L-Block exactly the boost he would need to finish this contest off. In Lady Gaga's recent Monster Ball Tour, part of the set has a bunch of neon signs on it. One part of it is unmistakable and relates to L-Block's late run very easily: Seriously, what the f\*\*\* have we done? Well, more like what the f\*\*\* have you done. I thought it was pretty cool seeing L-Block smash everything, but I also have a good sense of humor. If only the rest of Board 8 had that same sense of humor, but I'm sure you can imagine all the whining that went on for this entire weekend. Also to back up something transience wrote about, Kotaku linked to us during the day of the match. See that little spike for L-Block around 3 PM EST in the update chart? It's because of [this.](http://kotaku.com/318554/tetris-l+block-trounces-the-competition) Not that Kotaku wasn't the only one. Vote for the Worst, 4chan, Kotaku, and pretty much every nerd site on the entire internet was clued into the last two days of this contest. It was basically a given L-Block would beat Cloud in the final and get into at least part of the winner's circle thanks to all this. The only question that remained was whether or not he could create a miracle and beat Link. Given L-Block led Snake by 1000 votes after 10 minutes, everything was on the table. Lost in all this was how close Master Chief got to Solid Snake. Someone had to get second place here and advance into the final, and Snake basically did so by default. But that didn't stop Master Chief from cutting 800 votes from Snake's lead in one final gasp. We may never again see Chief this impressive, and whether you hate the guy or not it was cool to see him make a deep run. (You really thought I was going to go through an entire PCA without a single Lady Gaga reference? Who the hell do you think I am? \<3) ## Stats and Analysis - L-Block overperformed by **+5.76%**, the **\#20** most impressive performance of 2007 - L-Block advancing was the **\#2** most surprising result of 2007 bandwagon, meet Tetris piece. up to this point, L-Block was a cute joke. ha, it came back to take the lead on Kirby! whoa, it advanced due to Nintendo SFF! tee-hee, three Sony characters vs. a Tetris block! but after the L-Block/Snake/Sonic/Squall match, everyone sat there dumbfounded. it was easy enough to explain -- three really strong characters vs. something guaranteed to get 28% of the vote means it was near-guaranteed to advance -- but seeing L-Block in first place kind of shocked people. even then, it was no big deal - Dante was weaker than Squall, and Master Chief was maybe Sonic's equal, and had a rabid fanbase that preferred him over everything already. L was going to advance, but today, we would be seeing Snake's Revenge. unfortunately for everyone's brackets, the rest of the internet noticed L-Block topping two gaming icons two days prior. after that match, board 8 was absolutely overrun with new people and an infinite amount of L-Block topics. L-Block nation had taken over and it seemed like everyone knew about it. kotaku had linked here by now, I think. so had some other sites, though I can't remember which. 28% was no longer L-Block's ceiling. when this match started, L-Block had a ridiculous 75% and a 300 vote lead over Solid Snake within one minute. by five minutes, it was up to 763. with the next update, it was already over 1000. there was only one thing to say: *"oh god, what have we done?"* to that point, it was the most amazing sight ever seen in a GameFAQs contest's opening minutes. within 20-30 minutes, the match was over. the more interesting thing from a competition standpoint was if Master Chief could come back on Snake with his monstrous day vote. nobody even cared much about that, though - this match was all about the Block. L-Block ended up with 34.63% of the vote. the poll drew 164,000 votes. the ultimate question for the next 24 hours: how much, if any, would it lose when replacing Master Chief and Dante with Cloud and Link? if anyone wants to have some fun, here's the stats topic for this match: [](http://thengamer.com/stats/Pt501-550/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt543/) the match starts on page three. here's some choice quotes: transience: *what the \*\*\*\*ing \*\*\*\* jesus that's an early vote* Kleenex: *UH.... UH.... UH....* chaosarcher07: *what have we done* ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2924&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=62) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Cloud Strife vs L-Block vs Solid Snake 2007 _source: Link vs Cloud Strife vs L-Block vs Solid Snake 2007 (revid 68374)_ ## Results **Championship** Sunday, November 4th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 4th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 30.77% L-Block - 28.89% Cloud - 25.69% Solid Snake - 14.61% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** L-Block first place (64pts) - 0.27% L-Block second place (32pts) - 0.72% Link second place (64pts) - 9.00% Link first place (32pts) - 32.47% - **Top Two Prediction:** L-Block - 0.99% (364) Link - 41.47% (15,229) "What the f\*\*\* have you done?" Look at those total votes again. 195360. We are probably never again getting anywhere close to this number. This match was a perfect storm of hype, rallying, and a whole lot of other things that basically amount to "lightning in a bottle". As an actual match, it honestly wasn't anything special. L-Block led Link by more than 1300 votes after 10 minutes, showed no signs of slowing down at all until the morning vote and even when Link made his paltry comeback attempt the entire internet was ready to backhand him into place. L-Block getting in first place was never in doubt at all, nor was the rest of the order once the dust settled. Of course we'd see Link \> Cloud with Snake distantly behind them. What the match meant however was a different matter entirely, much like Cloud upsetting Link in 2003. Every bracketed contest, with winners: Summer 2002 - Link defeats Mario Summer 2003 - Cloud defeats Sephiroth Spring 2004 - Final Fantasy 7 defeats Chrono Trigger Summer 2004 - Link defeats Cloud Spring 2005 - Sephiroth defeats Ganondorf Summer 2005 - Link defeats Sephiroth Spring 2006 - The Legend of Zelda defeats Final Fantasy Summer 2006 - Link defeats Cloud Summer 2007 - L-Block \> Link \> Cloud \> Snake Summer 2008 - Link \> Snake \> Cloud \> Crono Spring 2009 - Ocarina of Time \> Final Fantasy 7 \> Link to the Past \> Final Fantasy X Winter 2010 - Link defeats Cloud Fall 2010 - Majora's Mask defeats Brawl In 13 contests, the Zelda series has been represented in the final 11 times and has won 9 times. Square has been in the final 12 times, but only has 3 wins. The two matches where Zelda actually lost a finals type of match (Cloud \> Link was the semis, but it might as well have been the final that year, and Ganondorf losing to Sephiroth doesn't count) are regarded as the two best matches the site has ever had, and it can be postulated we would not still have contests without Zelda suffering those losses. And just think, this never happens if L-Block is on the top half of the bracket since he likely meets the higher end of the Noble Nine a round earlier. Snake and Sonic couldn't beat him, but L-Block probably wouldn't have survived, say, the Link \> Sephiroth \> Mario \> Vincent match if you replace Vincent with L-Block. The whole run was perfectly lined up for the block in every single way. Majora's Mask beating Brawl (also known as the best result in contest history) has ultimately saved Link from the ZELDA ALWAYS WINS rant for a damn long time, since ZELDA ALWAYS WINS came through when it mattered most. Brawl is the absolute most disappointing game ever made and had no business whatsoever being named our Game of the Decade. So as bad as it was watching Link win almost every single damn contest, holy hell did he come through when we needed him the most. Enjoy the reprieve from our hate, Link, for you have earned it. Never again will we question your methods. That said, the L-Block run was lightning in a bottle wrapped in a miracle with a hand-written note from God himself on the package. We may never see anything like this ever again, and Zelda has only gotten stronger since the big L-Block upset. I won't complain about Zelda always winning ever again (because f\*\*\* Brawl, seriously, what the f\*\*\* have they done and what the f\*\*\* were they thinking?), but he does need to be retired. He will never lose a normal match ever again. To put in a different perspective, this fanbase is actually hyped for Skyward Sword: Adult Toon Link's Misadventure. Enjoy the memory of this L-Block run, because it's probably the last Link loss we'll ever see barring extreme SFF shenanigans. Couple random last points. As important as this match was, I remember how bad this board was during the final. Worse yet were the people trying to tell me of nearly 1000 PCA articles how I was wrong in my explanation of why L-Block won. I mean really now. L-Block won because it was fun. What other reason do you need? Also, thanks to the scoring system being crap the people that suicided with a Cloud \> Link final outscored the people who picked Link \> Cloud. Needs to be a 3:1 ratio up top, or better yet make a 4:3:2:1 ratio and make people pick the entire match. That way all those awful battles for third place become instantly interesting. Not that this idea should ever actually be implemented or anything, mind. Fourways should never never never ever ever ever never ever EVER happen again. Never ever. Never. Forever. Until the end of time. ## Stats and Analysis - L-Block finishing in the top two was the **\#1** most surprising result of 2007 - the result was also the **\#1** most surprising result of All-Time, surpassing the old mark of **6.04%** achieved by Cloud when he won the 2003 Contest This was the single most anticipated and important match in four and a half years -- since Cloud/Link 2003. I actually made up an excuse to my friends so I could be home by midnight to catch the craziest contest final ever. no way was I going to miss a Tetris Block against our contest gods, Link and Cloud. To people who follow our contests closely, Link is a force, a character that has an aura of absolute invincibility. Link is so revered for his contest strength that when people suggested Cloud as a possible winner, they were usually met with jeers and insults. Link was seen as being so invincible that, even when the hugest bandwagon you can ever imagine formed, people still picked him to win the contest. I won't call it "fanboyism", but people have come to expect Link to crush everything in sight. The only thing that can stand up to Link is Cloud, and even then it takes Wind Waker pictures and Kingdom Hearts and who knows what other factors in order to eke out a win. Even then, Link came back and beat him worse the next year, and then even worse the next year, and then won by even more the year after. Link is unstoppable. Even the analysis crew sided heavily with Link - even Cloud had more picks to win the contest than L. Clinkfear! ohh yeah. that's what makes this match rank so high. L-Block, by all reasonable expectations, should have been viewed as the favourite here. everyone could see the bandwagon growing, but few would admit that Link was actually in trouble. even when L-Block took its familiar massive lead -- 55% of the vote after five minutes -- people still held out hope for Link. truly, this match was over in the opening minutes, and was almost anticlimactic by the way L-Block dominated during its first hour. but in a way, that was what made it so amazing. when was the last time Link or Cloud was done for in the opening minutes of a poll? I'm gonna go with "never", but L-Block made that happen. L came out with its domination in the opening minutes. 65, 70% was nothing new, but to see it happening against Link was an impressive performance indeed. L had a lead of 820 votes at the freeze, and when the first update came, another 500 got added. at 00:20, it was up to 2000. L built a 5500 vote lead on Link in three hours, and then went essentially 50/50 for the rest of the match en route to a 7300 vote win. the real sight to see here was the board - never before have I seen anything like this. board 8 has never been this fast, unless there's a tight match at the end. there was nothing but L-Block topics. we received 195,000 votes. that's insane, 25 hour match or not. it was a fitting end to a ridiculous contest, the greatest single contest run in history. L-Block will probably never be repeated, but you can't say the words "Character Battle VI" without thinking "L-Block". (Note from Ulti: The fastest match we've ever had in terms of board speed was Mario \> Cloud in 2002.) ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis I couldn’t decide which L-Block triumph should be highest, and in the end this one wins out for being the ultimate victory, the ultimate joke character gone horribly, horribly wrong. L-Block vs. Snake was where people starting really believing that this could happen, but it wasn’t until this poll began that it truly sunk in: Link was losing. The king was dead… to a Tetris block. A breakneck first hour acquiesced to an inevitable truth… the 2007 contest had ended, and L-Block was king. All glory to the Block. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2925&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=63) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## L-Block vs Paddle vs Weighted Companion Cube vs ? Block 2007 _source: L-Block vs Paddle vs Weighted Companion Cube vs ? Block 2007 (revid 85781)_ ## Results **Bonus Match** Monday, November 5th, 2007 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Bonus - **Match \#:** 64 (Extra) - **Match Date:** Monday, November 5th, 2007 - **Oracle Expectations:** L-Block - 37.02% ? Block - 30.06% Weighted Companion Cube - 21.84% Paddle - 10.69% It's hilarious how ?-Block can come back from a 950 vote lead at the hands of L-Block, yet Link of all people totally collapses in the final. Seriously, how in the world have we not gotten ?-Block into a contest yet? It's probably too late to realize the full potential too, which is sad. The strength that thing could have had in 2008 would have been nuts, especially given this poll telegraphed the crap out of Cube's 2008 run. You dropped the ball on this one, Board 8. I'd give more of an analysis of the actual match, but beyond the aforementioned ?-Block comeback, the results speak for themselves here. There was a bit of backlash for L-Block's win here in the bonus poll, but the damage was already done and this didn't put an asterisk on L-Block's title or anything. It was neat to see the haters get a bit of revenge and pretend it mattered, though, not gonna lie. ## Stats and Analysis While the real match was going on, the Paddle from Pong proved that nobody remembers the way it used to beat up Chuck Norris all the time, showing off a CATS-like aura in the contest and looking like a complete joke in a battle of heavy hitters. The Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube showed off the strength of Portal, but in the end science is always defeated by irrationality - in this case, the existence of building blocks that destroy nearby building blocks, or the storage of objects in blocks that need to be destroyed to remove them. One can only wonder why the **? Block** hasn't been nominated for a contest, considering the immense strength it wields... ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2926&num=4) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Character Battle VII (2008) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 64 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Fall 2008 Contest _source: Fall 2008 Contest (revid 85867)_ *This was named Article of the Week in September of 2008.* | Announced: | August 8, 2008 | |------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Started: | September 18, 2008 | | Ended: | November 19, 2008 | | Winner: | Winner: Link Runner-up: Solid Snake | | Contest Winner: | Strykr017 - 624 points | | Notable matches: | Marth/Duke/Niko/Kefka Squall/Sora/Yoshi/Fox Crono/Pikachu/L-Block/Alucard Snake/Cube/Mega Man/Zero Samus/Crono/Vincent/Pikachu Sephiroth/Kirby/Sonic/Dante Snake/Cloud/Kirby/Sephiroth Link/Snake/Cloud/Crono | **Summer 2008 Contest** **Fall 2008 Contest** was the seventh GameFAQs character tournament held on GameFAQs. However, many veteran members of Board 8 still call it the **Summer 2008 Contest**. ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis For the wiki readers, this PCA is going to seem very odd. The reason for that is because I'm writing this over a decade after the fact, in 2020 of all years, because I was so disgusted at the thought of another LOL 4-ways contest that I almost quit doing this for good. The results are fun, but I detested the format. I actually did quit for awhile, but the games contest brought me back in. If the contest following this one didn't involve video games themselves instead of characters, I probably would have quit for good. Shows you how much I prefer games themselves over characters for me to bother with a PCA for another 4-way after this one, but I digress. 12 years later, I finally have the time and the motivation to do this thing. It won't be perfect and it'll have some strange references, not to mention it'll be missing some of the usual live anecdotes, but it's better than just having this gaping hole missing in the data. I wish I had found the will to do this earlier, but hey. It happens. There are multiple matches for 2008 that have no writeups, and as much as I hated the 4-ways, in skimming back over the contest a lot of the matches are fun enough to write about. So I figured what the heck, LFG(!) and do this thing. You wouldn't know it to read Board 8 in 2020, but believe it or not, the people here used to have something called a "sense of humor". You know how most people here are feverishly against rallies and joke characters nowadays? Well back in the mid 2000s, most of the same people were all on board. You had the occasional stick in the mud like red13n or Leonhart4 whining about rallies and jokesters even back then, but by and large Board 8 used to love this stuff. It showed in the nominations and final bracket. Ngamer was nice enough to tally it all up for us: I mean look at this list. It's absurd to peek back on. 16 nominations for Tim from Braid. 33 for L-Block, even with a bunch of people rooting for it to lose later on once things got going. A bunch of other stuff that is just so out of place that it made 2008 "the fad contest". The bracket had the typical heavy hitters spread out everywhere, but the big story going into this thing was the utterly insane number of joke characters, fodder, and off-the-wall nonsense. The entire internet got in on the L-Block joke in 2007, and it felt like the internet wanted to keep the laughs going a year later. And why not? L-Block's run was the stuff of legends, because it happened back before the days of social media bandwagons and easy rallies. That thing slowly built momentum, and then exploded at just the right time. We've had rallies since then, some of which I'm in love with, but none quite like L-Block. Only Undertale's run is really comparable to what L-Block did. If you read all this and find it ridiculous, go look at the vote totals and site traffic data from back then and compare it to now. I was proven right long term, and frankly it was easy to see coming. Rallies are better for contests. End of story. I will always call those who say otherwise a bunch of liars, because I refuse to believe anyone actually enjoys contests that struggle to hit 30,000 votes in a poll. Back in 2008, every poll broke at least 121,000 votes. Most did even better. Compare that to the most recent contest that happened before I felt like writing this all up. Here is a semifinal match that was hyped up all contest long: 26,000 votes. That is an embarrassment. That's part of what drove me to get this done. That and having a missing PCA. In the interest of full disclosure, I was originally going to go on a huge rant about hopeful 20-somethings on the board being really idealistic and happy a decade ago, and then growing up to be unsuccessful 30-somethings stuck in the mire of joyless, liberal, woke identity politics and parlay that into why all the same people went from enjoying rallies and jokes to now hating them all. It was going to be really mean and obnoxious, but a friend of mine dying of covid last night put some perspective on things. I just don't have it in me to do that stuff anymore. I debated not including this paragraph at all, but hey, PCAs always have random nonsense in them ;) There will be rants though, no worries, just not those kinds of rants. Life is too short to spend it being miserable. The other major story of this contest was Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and the utterly insane effect it had on the bracket this year. I'm saving a lot of that for the actual matches involved, but trust me, if you weren't there for the obscene amounts of hype that game got before release, there is no possible way to quantify it. "You had to be there" is overused, but it applies here. It's like trying to describe the hype for Infinity War or Endgame. There is just no way. You had to be there. ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis Post-Contest I hinted at it many times in these writeups, but this format SUCKS! It killed so much of the fun, it caused so many weird upsets that would have been far better as 1v1s, and it just sucked so much air out of the room. I know people will look at the vote totals then and now and think we're having first world problems, but this contest could have been sooooo much better. I mean come on people, it took me 12 years to sit down and write all this up. Me, the guy who lives to write PCAs every year, even for contests that are legendarily awful like Years and Rivalry Rumble. Contest ranking up until this disaster: Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2005 (Characters) Summer 2007 (4-way Characters) Summer 2006 (Female Bracket) Spring 2006 (Series) Summer 2008 (4-way Characters) Summer 2004 (Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) No ultimate loser with this 4way junk. Sorry it took so long to write this! ## 2008 Contest Detailed Stat Listings - Board 8's 2008 Nominations - Summer 2008 Total Nominations - Board 8's 2008 Match Pics \| R2 and following - Most Surprising Results of 2008 - Most Impressive Performances of 2008 - Most Disappointing Performances of 2008 - Summer 2008 Match Trends - Summer 2008 X-Stats ### See Also - 2008 Contest Matches - detailed write-ups on every '08 Contest poll - Board 8 on the 2008 Summer Leaderboard - final Top 50 standings with info on what users are from B8 - Summer 2008 1v1 Bracket
Contest Bracket
Division 1 Link Zack Mario Mega Man X Link Mario Samus Crono Link Crono Snake Cloud Link Snake
Cecil Harvey Jade Curtiss Wario Zack Fair Zack Wario Link Zidane Link Zack Duke Altair
Link Luke fon Fabre Shadow the Hedgehog Zidane Tribal
Duke Nukem Kefka Marth Niko Bellic Marth Duke Nukem Altair Lucario
Altair Guybrush Threepwood Isaac Lucario
Division 2
Liquid Snake Luigi Roxas Sho Minamimoto Luigi Liquid Snake Bowser Phoenix Liquid Snake Luigi Mario Mega Man X
Bowser Deckard Cain Geno Phoenix Wright
Fei Fong Wong Knuckles the Echidna Mario Zelda Mario Zelda Mega Man X Mudkip
Lloyd Irving Mudkip Tom Nook Mega Man X
Division 3 Samus Vincent Crono Pikachu
Crash Bandicoot Nightmare Raz Samus Aran Samus Nightmare Ganondorf Frog Samus Ganondorf Vincent Gordon
Frog Ganondorf KOS-MOS Neku Sakuraba
Falco Lombardi GlaDOS Vincent Valentine Wander Vincent Falco Scorpion Gordon
Balthier Bunansa Big Daddy Gordon Freeman Scorpion
Division 4
Amaterasu Crono Frank West Kaim Argonar Crono Amaterasu L-Block Ryu SF Crono L-Block Pikachu Alucard
L-Block Meta Knight Ryu (Street Fighter) The Dog
Alucard Captain Falcon Diddy Kong Kratos Aurion Alucard Falcon Pikachu Arthas
Arthas Menethil Ike Pikachu Spy
Division 5 Snake Cube Cloud Mewtwo Cloud Snake Sephiroth Kirby
Donkey Kong Miles 'Tails' Prower Tidus Weighted Companion Cube Cube Tidus Mega Man Nero Mega Man Cube Snake Zero
Banjo Captain Olimar Mega Man Nero
King Dedede Pit Ryu Hayabusa Zero Ryu H Zero Solid Snake Vivi
Albert Wesker Sackboy Solid Snake Vivi Ornitier
Division 6
Chris Redfield Fox McCloud Sora Tim Sora Fox Squall Yoshi Squall Sora Cloud Mewtwo
CATS Nathan Drake Squall Leonhart Yoshi
Axel Steel Cloud Strife Midna Miles Edgeworth Cloud Midna Mewtwo Pac-Man
Mewtwo Ness Pac-Man Travis Touchdown
Division 7 Kirby Dante Sephiroth Sonic
Big Boss Jinjo Kirby Lucas Big Boss Kirby Master Chief Raiden Kirby Master Chief Dante Leon
Kain Highwind Master Chief Professor Layton Raiden
Captain MacMillan Leon Kennedy Riku Siegfried Schtauffen Leon Kennedy Riku Dante Hogger
Dante Hogger Laharl Ramza Beoulve
Division 8
Commander Shepard Magus Sandbag Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic Sandbag Auron Sub Zero Auron Sonic Sephiroth Kratos
Auron Marcus Fenix Rydia Sub-Zero
Nana Ratchet Sephiroth Tifa Lockheart Sephiroth Tifa Kratos Jill
Heavy Jill Valentine Kratos Revolver Ocelot
--- ## Cecil Harvey vs Jade Curtiss vs Wario vs Zack Fair 2008 _source: Cecil Harvey vs Jade Curtiss vs Wario vs Zack Fair 2008 (revid 85759)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, September 18th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1 - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 18th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Wario - 35.12% Zack Fair - 32.94% Cecil Harvey - 22.14% Jade Curtiss - 9.81% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zack first place (2pts) - 23.36% Zack second place (1pt) - 32.72% Wario second place (2pts) - 31.59% Wario first place (1pt) - 43.97% - **Advancing Prediction:** Zack - 56.08% (24,060) Wario - 75.56% (32,418) To this day I don't know or care whether or not Tales of the Abyss is any good, despite actually owning the game. At some point I should log all the games I own that I haven't played yet, but to the point. This match had two major stories in it. One was how utterly goofy it was as a first match for a contest. In every contest leading up to this one, the first match winner, in order: Mario, Link, Mario 3, Link, Bowser, Mario, The Legend of Zelda's series, Samus, and Yoshi. Yoshi is a clear oddball in that bunch, and then this match happened. Cecil, Jade, Wario, and Zack isn't exactly the murderer's row that is LinkMarioSamus, yet here they were in all their glory setting the tone for the entire contest. And set the tone they did. That is a ridiculous vote total. Jade getting blown out is who cares, but I did a little homework here. If you plop Cecil's 22142 votes into the 2020 games contest, only Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey have any individual performances that are better. Isn't it nuts how far we ended up falling? A little falloff is okay, but looking back on the old polls really makes it eye-opening. The other story was Wario and Zack. Board 8 is a smart bunch, and after an entire contest where we all screwed up our fourway picks by underestimating overlapping fanbases, we all adjusted accordingly. Most of us saw Cecil and Zack in a poll together with Wario sticking out like a sore thumb, we had all played Brawl for the entire year, and we penned in Wario \> Zack and moved on. A few people didn't think Cecil would hurt Zack at all and got rewarded for it big time. This poll was close for a couple minutes, but then Zack just annihilated these clowns. We would see in later rounds it was no fluke, either, but more on that when it comes time for ZackFAQs. As of this match, there wasn't much evidence that this wasn't just Zack strutting all over a bunch of garbage. It's not like Cecil and Wario have ever been worth much. Wario may have gotten second place here and advanced in the contest, but this was just an embarrassing performance by him. I know people who have played those WarioWare games defend them to death, but let's not pretend the vast majority of his popularity doesn't come from Smash -- and given Brawl plus the massive Nintendo boost, Wario should have handled his business. Let's not pretend Crisis Core was any good, either. Zack is an amazing character, but his game is garbage. I will never be convinced otherwise. Crisis Core was so bad I can't even bothered to review it, and that's WITH abusing Costly Punch to speed through it. This was just the start. The real king was coming in match \#2. ## Stats and Analysis - Zack overperformed by **+11.70%**, the **\#3**most impressive performance of 2008 - Cecil underperformed by **-5.79%**, the **\#8** most disappointing performance of 2008 - Jade underperformed by **-3.89%**, the **\#25** most disappointing performance of 2008 Last year's Round 1 was only a warmup. THIS was the most debated match of any contest's Round 1, ever. In all honesty, it will probably always will be. It was easily debated more than ANY other potential match, period - other than the natural continuation of it NEXT round. And of course, it was all due to one character - Mr. Buster Sword, Black-Haired Cloud, the TRUE hero of Final Fantasy VII - ZACK FAIR. (aka Zack UNfair, Zack Attack, aka "I'll Crisis your Core"). This one character, given all of about five minutes of screentime in FF7 - most of it in optional, out of the way sequences - and his own game on that juggernaut of portable systems, the PSP. ...okay. So with any other character, Zack being uber-fodder would have been a given. But because he had the FF7 pedigree, because he's the spitting image of Cloud and bore his sword, and because Random Piece of Final Fantasy VII furniture would probably have won the contest this year, he was given all the consideration in the world, and then some. There were some that warned of him being the next Balthier, or worse - some had Zack so low as to fall to Cecil. Most had him losing to Wario here, and Zack vs Shadow was considered THE match of Division 1. Get it right, and you get who got out of the division correct. Well, after enough discussion that even thinking about it now still brings on a migraine, the match was at hand. And upon looking at the picture, Zack had everything going his way - not only did he have the Buster Sword prominently displayed in his picture, it's probably more accurate to say his picture WAS more the Buster Sword. Zack had zero excuses. ...and he didn't need them, because he started off the match on fire and didn't let up. Wario, who advanced to Round 2 last year behind Fox and getting his debut in SSBB, got absolutely CURBSTOMPED en route to a routing, and the first big conventional wisdom in the contest - BrawlFEAR - was suddenly in terrible doubt (funny how since I popularized that term, none of its subjects have really warranted the terror, huh?). Zack, despite Cecil in the match, looked better than even his most ardent supporters had expected - and that luster would only glow brighter once the rest of the field started performing. But that would be seen later. Wario, for his part, had no excuse - no matter how strong Zack was, the only Nintendo option in the match should look somewhat good, right? The last thing to note about this match was how Cecil did - absolutely pitifully. This was perhaps to be expected considering what he did last time, but between FF4 DS and him having a more recognizable picture this time, it was perhaps not unwarranted to expect more. And after what the rest of FF4 did this contest, I have to postulate that Zack had a pretty fair (oh I slay myself) amount of overlap with Cecil here. That was downright scary. The rumblings began - could he make it into the semifinals? Against Mario and Mega Man X? Time would only tell. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Wario's a chump, and everyone knows it. But he has a few things going for him here... he's out of those suspenders and into his (slightly) cooler biker gear, he's been in Brawl since we've last seen him, and most importantly he sticks out like a sore thumb against all these long haired efeminine J-RPG leads. When you're Nintendo, there's nothing better than being able to stand out in a crowd! Weird to predict Zack for second, as he's going to ride Link's wake all the way through to the final of this division according to my bracket, but as I explained, he's bound to be held back by having so many other Final Fantasy/RPG options in the lineup. So even though I think his Buster Sword and Looks Like Cloud advantage should be enough to easily defeat Cecil, Wario should have just what it takes to edge him. As for Jade, pffffffffffffffft. There's never been a character in history we needed to see less than Jade. We're talking about a guy who managed less than 8 and a half percent against Balthier, Ada, and Frank West, a guy who is quite possibly the weakest entrant we've experienced since Tanner Himself. Why anyone would expect him to score more than 8% here is beyond me. So with those points in mind, these percents pretty much create themselves! - Wario - 35.55% - Zack Fair - 34.75% - Cecil - 22.56% - Jade Curtiss - 7.14% And there you have it. Looking forward to another exciting season! Ngamer Says: **Wario \> Zack** ### Next Day Review Ouch, Crew season is only just underway and already we've made a mistake! Well, I think our readers had better get used to it- even assuming the joke characters don't rise up and sting us, this is an extremely tricky bracket that I think will be full of surprises right down to the wire. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3244&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=1) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=1) • **(No Previous Match)**       • **Next Match** • **(No Previous Round)**       • **Next Round** --- ## Link vs Luke fon Fabre vs Shadow the Hedgehog vs Zidane Tribal 2008 _source: Link vs Luke fon Fabre vs Shadow the Hedgehog vs Zidane Tribal 2008 (revid 85763)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 19th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1 - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 19th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 60.75% Shadow the Hedgehog - 18.75% Zidane Tribal - 14.90% Luke fon Fabre - 5.83% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (2pts) - 94.68% Link second place (1pt) - 3.14% Zidane second place (2pts) - 36.34% Zidane first place (1pt) - 1.92% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 97.82% (41,968) Zidane - 38.26% (16,415) Whenever Link loses a contest, and his loss in 2007 was the stuff of legends, he comes out next time in total eff you mode. Spoilers, if we combine him and his series of games, there are only two spots where he failed to be a champ twice in a row. Once was back during the Summer 2003 - Spring 2004 era. The other was the Fall 2013 - Fall 2015 era. I'll let you decide which of those is more "legitimate", but the point is Link came out this year on some Patriots 2007 noise, only he didn't have the 18-1 choke job looming. Link was winning this match. He was going to win this contest outside of a miracle. We all knew that. The real story was Shadow the Hedgehog's choke job. Most gurus have "their worst pick ever", and mine is probably picking Shadow to get through three rounds. I wasn't alone in doing it, but given what we know now it just sticks out as particularly egregious. But back in 2008, it was totally defensible. I swear! Remember, back then we only had this to work with: We also had Zidane stinking up the joint in 2007, and Final Fantasy 9 didn't even make the field in the 2004 games contest. There was a lot of doubt as to whether he was more popular than Tidus, who went 50-50 with our friend here. So for those who look back and see the silly guru number of 92% picking Shadow, I swear it made perfect sense. I'll also point out that I knew a weird run was coming from this part of the bracket; I just picked the wrong character to do it! :) When this match started and Zidane started to easily run away with second place, there was a lot of shock and awe setting in, but it was a pleasant shock. Board 8 loves Final Fantasy 9, so seeing a game we stan for pulling a huge upset was awesome. He built up a 2000 vote lead by morning, and once the morning vote hit and nothing happened, all fear of him being a choking dog like Magus drifted away -- and just wait until we get to that debacle later. Shadow would at least go out fighting. He was down by 3700 when the after school vote hit, and would end up only losing by 3000. Which was great and all, but it would still end up going down as one of the all-time contest choke jobs. Shadow would never recover from this, either. As of this writing, in the years following this all-time choke, Shadow's one and only contest win would end up being against something named Kat and some useless trash from Persona 4 in a 3-way match. Beyond that it's just a lot of nothing, and it all started right here. And for the love of all things, can we PLEASE stop putting Fails of in every contest? The games are fun and all, but Black Turtle is not wrong on this. The entire series is a waste of contest space outside of Tales of Symphonia getting like 5 minutes of run. Enough is enough. ## Stats and Analysis - Zidane advancing was the **\#5** most surprising result of Round 1 I was so caught up in the whirlwind of ZackFAQs in the last writeup that I forgot to mention Jade Curtiss, the TotA fan-favorite that despite his absolutely wretched performance last year... somehow made it in AGAIN this year. His performance was simply ghastly, and now we came to the main character making an appearance in this match... with LINK. With Jade being the logical Kratos to Jade's Lloyd (seriously, Jade made it in last year when Luke didn't), it was easy to assume that Luke would be made into the next Neo-Tanner. Unfortunately, we neglected to take TSF into account - yes, The Sword Factor. With a big ol' slashy thing held up high and his mouth agape, Luke was a FAR more appealing option to the casual gamer than Jade's standing around and looking smug. And who knows, he might actually be more appealing in his own game, Crono/Magus style. I find it hard to believe that Xenogears' Citan is more popular than Fei, too. Anyway, Luke only performed like bad fodder here, instead of, well, Jade-level fodder. Oh, there was something else here, wasn't there? Oh yeah - SHADOW. This was supposed to be easy for Shadow. This was a formality, a measure of how well Shadow would beat up on high-end fodder before his confrontation with Zack. And he was going to have to pull out the stops today after what Zack did, but still - this was Zidane. Shadow had nearly beaten TIDUS back in 2004, and the unbeloved main character of FFX trumps the unbeloved main character of FFIX no question, right? So aside from the occasional upset rumbling that Link might affect Shadow and that Sonic Team sucks in the format from a select few people (ie yours truly!), this was going to be another Alucard/Liquid/Ness/Zidane. That was probably Zidane's best shot to advance in a match, and he couldn't pull it off. Well, it all fell apart here. After the bracket vote wore off - very quickly, this board hates Shadow - Zidane was in control. BIG control. And he rode it to a very easy, very anti-climactic win to make the showdown... Zack vs Zidane? There were some that argued Zidane had a chance here - and really, after this upset, you couldn't put it 100% out of reach - but it was hard to reason. FF7 vs any other FF rarely works out well for the other FF. Zidane would have to hope Zack not having his Buster Sword prominently displayed and some fan-favoritism would push him over the top, but even that was pushing it. As for Shadow, pretty much everything that was postulated came to pass... Sonic Team really WAS that bad in this format, and Sonic characters were basically Nintendo characters at this point. Because there was no way that Sonic Team was really just THAT BAD... right? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Moltar isn't breathing down my neck tonight, so I'm going to deliver a true treat (and one that I didn't really get to do last night despite my promise): my full Oracle thought process! We begin with Last Known Values - Link - 59.90% (2007) - Luke - Unknown - Shadow - 25.05% (2007) - Zidane - 15.71% (2007) This is Luke's first rodeo, but since he's Tales and super niche and we've already seen Jade drop the ball with one of the worst showings in history, I'm going to just go ahead and assign him Jade's awful value from last year of 5.44. Now Link's value in '07 ended up being a guesstimate due to L-Block weirdness, but oh well, we know he's well over 50 and will be decimating this crowd regardless, so let's just leave it. Shadow's value seems a touch high... but now that I look at it, he DID best Pyramid Head by over 10%, so I guess that's about right for him in R1. However he totally collapsed once the tougher competition arrived in R2, and Link's a one man tough competition group, so when you add in the Nintendo/Sonic Team crossover factor I don't see Shadow performing too far above the fodder line here. Zidane's 16 is based off that really disappointing performance he had against Alucard/Lake/Ness. I guess you can forgive part of that since he was against two other PSX characters, but honestly, I think that was a pretty good indication that the guy is high end fodder, in this or any other format. Still though I'll give him a slight boost because Square always brings its A game against big Nintendo. So we take that all into consideration, adjust the values accordingly, throw it into the pot and after a few minutes of stirring we see... - Link - 61.39% - Shadow the Hedgehog - 19.05% - Zidane Tribal - 14.13% - Luke fon Fabre - 5.44% Lookin' good! Ngamer Says: **Link \> Shadow** ### Next Day Review Oh wow... Wario and Zack I could have seen going either way, but I was so confident in Shadow that I nearly called that result a lock in my Impressions topic a week back or so. Quite the surprise, and it leaves the Crew 0 for 2 heading into... the most unpredictable poll of the entire first round! Uh oh! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3245&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** • **(No Previous Round)**       • **Next Round** --- ## Duke Nukem vs Kefka vs Marth vs Niko Bellic 2008 _source: Duke Nukem vs Kefka vs Marth vs Niko Bellic 2008 (revid 85765)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 20th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1 - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 20th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Marth - 28.56% Niko Bellic - 25.41% Kefka - 24.28% Duke Nukem - 21.84% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Marth first place (2pts) - 19.83% Marth second place (1pt) - 29.09% Duke second place (2pts) - 21.04% Duke first place (1pt) - 30.68% - **Advancing Prediction:** Marth - 48.92% (20,988) Duke - 51.72% (22,189) This is one of the weirdest matches to look back on in 2020, and I legit feel like my eyes are lying to me. Marth winning a debated match? Kefka in last place behind a GTA character without being portrayed as a vegetable? Duke Nukem pulling whatever the hell he pulled here? This was just all kinds of wild, and the match itself was also borderline ridiculous. This thing would be mentioned with the titans of contest lore if it had any meaning beyond round 1 fun. First, the pre-hype. I remember how heavily debated this match was pre-contest, which always tends to happen with these weird round one fodder matches for some reason. Marth was the runaway consensus favorite thanks to BrawlFEAR, which in and of itself was the precursor to the not yet seen PokeFEAR (skip to 2010 for more on that). The real fun came in trying to figure out who would win second place. There was a lot of arguing about whether or not it would be Kefka or Niko Bellic. Niko was an untested GTA character, and the last time people had faith in one of those, well.... RacistFAQs was born. But fine, a lot of people just figured RacistFAQs was real and went back to 2003, when Tommy Vercetti made his debut. Vercetti wasn't some amazing character or anything, but he won a couple matches and went even with Donkey Kong. He also had that all-timer against Kefka in 2005, which to this day is one of the most flagrant examples of Smurf's vote stuffing we'd ever seen: Well Vercetti beat Kefka there, and Niko's game (GTA4) is a lot more popular than Vice City, so it stands to reason Niko should have been stronger than him. It's not like Kefka had done much of anything to instill confidence to this point, but you could go either way. What next to no one expected however was Duke Nukem going totally insane from out of literally nowhere. And I mean literally no where. Duke Nukem Forever's development cycle was so long and became such a meme that CJayC put him on a milk carton in his 2004 match picture against Cloud. Duke's entire contest history leading to this match was a fodder win over Iori Yagami (who?), a fluke victory over perennial contest choke artists Ike and Gordon Freeman, and whole lot of getting his ass whipped. Unless you bought into the 2007 result proving Duke is some hidden 4way star, there was zero indication this was coming. None. The early parts of this match were all kinds of nutty, but Marth pulled away for his expected first place finish. Past him, it was a bloodbath. Kefka and Niko fought it out close, as we sort of expected, but you also had Duke Nukem of all people right in the match for second place. After a couple updates, Niko was the first to fall off, proving yet again that Grand Theft Auto on this site would never be worth a bucket of piss. The users here just don't like that series. But then in the shocker of all shockers, Duke Nukem started putting Kefka away and destroying him overnight. It was not long before Duke caught and passed Kefka for good, only about an hour in, and that was that. Kefka and Niko never made a push for second after that, but Duke was not done there! Remember Marth running away with it at the beginning of the poll? He had a 700 vote lead on everyone two hours in, and no one thought much of it when Duke started stalling the lead. Overnight and leading into the morning, he started coming back to make a push for first place outright. While all this was going on, Niko was coming back on Kefka to push for third place, but third means nothing in these fourways so who really cares. Spoilers, Niko erased an 800 vote lead to win third place (whatever that's worth) and hand Kefka his latest embarrassment. By the time the morning vote hit, Duke had erased Marth's entire lead. This was in the face of BrawlFEAR, an absurd amount of Nintendo hype, and again, Duke Nukem doing NOTHING in gaming for nearly a decade. Nothing. It was one of the most random, nutty performances we'd ever seen, and had Duke pulled this off it would have been such a legendary choke job by Marth. Thankfully for him Marth caught the morning vote and put Duke down for good, but Duke was easily able to hold on to second place. I legitimately don't have the answer as to why Duke was such a random breakout star in these fourway polls. My best guess, legit, is this video: It came out in 2007, and back then Ventrilo harassment was all the rage. In a contest loaded with joke entrants and people trying to get in on various jokes, who knows. Maybe this is why Duke did so well. I can't think of anything else. You got me, Duke. I got nothin'. If anyone else has a better guess, I'm all ears! (And yes I am aware going up against low midcard fodder helps.) "Three matches in and everyone's bracket was in shambles. I'm pretty sure a large portion of the board had yet to get full points." -Charmander6000 ## Stats and Analysis - Duke overperformed by **+4.51%**, the **\#19** most impressive performance of 2008 - Marth advancing was the **\#9** most surprising result of Round 1 Now, there are some that will disagree with me and assert that THIS was the most debated match of Round 1 (to those people I say you clearly haven't gotten your daily dosage of GameZACKS today). And while it's true that it was a doozy, most felt it was really only for second rather than first place. Marth was BrawlFEAR after all, and certainly more proven even in his loss to DK than these three chumps. But then again, Niko was untested - even though untested GTA is never a good sign - and Kefka always has his fair share of supporters each match. Who knows, anything could happen, right? And so it did - while very few took the pick, and even though the writing was on the wall after what happened last year with Duke and Gordon Freeman, Duke Nukem shocked the world by scoring the second upset of his career. And while he would eventually go on to take an easy second place to Marth, overnight he actually took the lead from him. Remember, this is the same guy that we put on a milk box as a 16 seed to Cloud, who hasn't had a new game in FOREVER (you're gonna get a lot of these terrible references with these writeups, just warning you now). Meanwhile, Kefka, with even more levels of fail in his picture than usual, ended up in dead last even to a pretty big disappointment in Niko. Yeah, you didn't exactly need to be much to beat these two chumps, but let's at least give credit where credit is due, right? And at any rate, Duke looked like a heavy favorite to advance next round now as well. Lucario, the board favorite, was going to have to pull some serious magic to keep himself in contention to advance next round. #### Interesting Facts - With 7.98%, this match marked the smallest gap between 1st and 4th place of any four-way contest match. - Kefka's 21.51% was the largest percentage received by any 4th place entrant in a four-way contest match. - Both of these records were broken during the Spring 2009 Contest by Diablo II vs Halo vs Knights of the Old Republic vs Grand Theft Auto III, only to be broken again two days later. - Out of the 24 possible permutations for the characters' order, 16 occur at some point during the match (assuming ties can count either way.) ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction This four pack is just a mess no matter which way you look at it. Let's try to make at least some sense of this probable disaster by reviewing some base stats. Last Known Values - Marth - 17.12% (2007) - Kefka - 19.07% (2007) - Duke - 20.87% (2007) - Niko - unknown Poor Marth got the short end of the stick- he got stuck in a match with Donkey Kong, and those two hurt each other pretty badly while allowing Kratos to scamper off to an undeserved blowout. I give Marth the benefit of the doubt in this pack because he at least showed us something- after trailing big early, he made a huge SSB-fueled after school comeback and beat DK outright for a few hours. Yeah it was just DK, but even so, I wouldn't pick anyone else in this group to be able to do the same. Kefka's 19 is probably just about accurate. After a great start he had one of the worst collapses ever against Marcus Fenix to throw that match away with the ASV. But, we know he's going to do well in the early going, we know Square has been looking great so far this year, and does Niko really have the kind of mini-Master Chief ASV potential that Marcus showed us? Speaking of Niko, he's of course a first-timer without a Contest history, so let's assign him the 16.25% that Vercetti earned last year in R1. Probably Tommy got casual-SFFed somewhat by MC and deserves higher, but on the other hand, why would anyone believe Niko is even in Tommy's league, SFFed or not? I remember when GTA3 became the big thing years back and shot to the top of the FAQ charts. Then VC was launched, and it was almost always the \#1 FAQ page on the site for a year and a half. Then SA came out, exact same thing. GTA4 did the same... for a couple months, but look where it sits now. 26th place. Scroll a little further down the list and... there's GTA:SA, in 33rd. It's September 2008, and yet there are nearly as many people playing and needing help with the GTA game that launched in 2004 as there are for the one from earlier this year. Sorry, but if that isn't the definition of a lack of staying power I don't know what is! And then there's Duke. I've got to admit that with the rest of this group so up in the air, I gave serious thought to picking him for second if he was going to get his Duke Milk'em picture. As is though, he pulled down a value of around 21 in that opening match, which is probably about accurate. But then he completely collapsed as soon as decent competition arrived in R2. The rest of this group isn't exactly "decent", but they're at least a step up from what he saw in '07, so I can't see him picking up those "meh at least I recognize this guy" votes he used back then. In summary, Duke seems like a reliable choice for around 20% but not much more, Marth seems a reliable choice to ride the SSB ASV to around 30, Kefka seems reliable to hang with Marth or lead outright early before collapsing back to the mid 20s during the Day, and Niko... is totally unreliable, and could do anything from jobbing horribly into the teens to giving Marth a serious run. But when I throw my best guesstimates into the pot, here's what I come up with for these guys: - Marth - 32.74% - Kefka - 24.18% - Niko Bellic - 22.08% - Duke Nukem - 21.00% I don't like it, but with Niko involved I probably wouldn't like anything! Ngamer Says: **Marth \> Kefka** ### Next Day Review Haha! Well after that 0/2 start I was pretty much sure we'd be moving to 0/3, given how nutzo that last 4 pack was. And for the first time all Contest I was right! The good news is, now we're moving on to one of the 11 R1 matches that I did go ahead and call a lock in my initial bracket analysis. Does that really mean anything though, with how badly these results have been making us all (I mean Guru, Oracle, BOP, AND Crew) look like fools? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3246&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=3) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Altair vs Guybrush Threepwood vs Isaac vs Lucario 2008 _source: Altair vs Guybrush Threepwood vs Isaac vs Lucario 2008 (revid 85766)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, September 21st, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1 - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 21st, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Lucario - 37.10% Altair - 29.47% Isaac - 21.15% Guybrush Threepwood - 12.23% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Altair first place (2pts) - 52.09% Altair second place (1pt) - 19.89% Lucario second place (2pts) - 41.51% Lucario first place (1pt) - 21.00% - **Advancing Prediction:** Altair - 71.98% (30,882) Lucario - 62.51% (26,819) True fact - this is the only contest Lucario ever appeared in, because his performance was such an embarrassment compared to other Pokemon that no one will invite him back. More on that in a second. The story of this match, and the guru nomination for this contest, was Altair of Assassin's Creed who was making his contest debut this year. With no seedings it was difficult to gauge where he was at relative to the field, but typically guru nominations are a random midcarder that the board loves. Who knew that Altair would be such a beast? Whenever anyone talks about this match, they talk about Lucario flopping around like a fish and almost pulling off one of the great choke jobs in contest history. They should honestly give Altair more credit, but that's how these things go. This Lucario dude was hyped beyond hype this year, especially given how Pokemon looked in 2007 and him having a Brawl appearance. Pikachu looked good. Mewtwo... sucked, but he wasn't turbo fodder or anything. Mudkip and Bidoof caught some joke love, proving that Pokemon past \#151 could maybe get some contest traction going. There was always NintendoFAQs. All that given, the overwhelming consensus for this match was Lucario \> Altair without a second thought. Yeah, whoops. It's a good thing you still advance for getting second place, because if Altair vs Lucario was a 1 on 1 deal this would have gone down as an all-time dud. Maybe not Magus levels of dud, but it would have been in the conversation. Altair dominated this match and got first place with the utmost of ease. It would get so much worse for Lucario, too. If you look at the poll result, you see Lucario only beating Isaac by 1800 votes. This doesn't really tell the actual story, because Lucario came dangerously close to outright losing to Isaac. After initial bracket vote power hour stuff where Lucario choked away his predicted first place finish, he started falling off. Badly. He sat there going dead even with Isaac overnight, and needed the Pokemon morning vote to bail him out of one of the most embarrassing upsets ever. The funniest thing about Isaac almost beating Lucario is he had no actual advantage Lucario didn't already have other than Golden Sun. Brawl? Isaac is only an assist trophy. Nintendo? Please. Hell even Golden Sun being a JRPG darling is dwarfed by Pokemon itself, so that's out. I know Golden Sun has a cult fanbase, but it still feels like Isaac getting this close should have been impossible. If you pretend Isaac/Lucario was a 1 on 1 match, Lucario would have only won with 51.5% of the vote based on these numbers. If 2008 was a 1v1 contest, would any Oracle have picked that? I doubt it. I'd love to give Isaac a bunch of credit here, but there was proof of him being garbage fodder even before we had 20 years of data. Altair was simply underestimated and Lucario is overhyped gutter trash. That's about all there is to it. Pokemon after \#151 are only good if they joke votes, otherwise they're... well, Lucario. Thanks for playing, buddy. It was one of the worst "wins" (if you can call it that) we've ever had, and he would never be seen again after the inevitable round 2 pasting. Not gonna lie, seeing a character beloved by furries and perverts get destroyed... this does put a smile on my face. ## Stats and Analysis - Altair overperformed by **+13.63%**, the **\#1** most impressive performance of 2008 - Lucario underperformed by **-14.89%**, the **\#1**most disappointing performance of 2008 Shadow's epic bombing got all of one day afterward to bask in its glow, because two days later we were treated to THIS debacle. You want to talk about pathetic? Lucario is a Pokemon. Not just a Pokemon - arguably THE Pokemon of the latest generation. Ever since Pokemon nearly beat Metroid and Nidoran F stood up like a champ to Samus, Pokemon have looked like gold in these contests, and doubly so in this format. Pikachu, Mewtwo, Mudkip, Bidoof - the pedigree is enormous, and Lucario had the games, his own movie, and BRAWL to help him out. And all he had to do to get to Link was beat an overhyped Prince of Persia reject, an effective SSB-only character who lost to DK, and a washed-up has-been who probably gets a good part of his strength from the hilarity of his game still not being released. Heck, if Zack bombed there was a good argument for Lucario escaping the division - if Bidoof could hold up against Link, why couldn't Lucario? So what does he do with it? Go out and nearly lose to ISAAC, that's what. A holdover from Summer Contest 2003 whose most notable achievement was seemingly resisting SFF from Samus, all the Golden Sun protagonist has had since then is an appearance as an Assist Trophy in SSB. Y'know... the same game in which LUCARIO IS A PLAYABLE CHARACTER. Lucario has a good argument for being the biggest bomb of the whole damn contest, even looking ahead to the latest of latest bombs. In the end, it was utterly pathetic. Lucario nearly got doubled by Altair, who used his excellent design and enormous game sales to devastating effect, leaving the Pokemon in a stupor of needing the ASV to fight off an Assist Trophy. At this point, BrawlFEAR had been utterly dismantled in the space of two matches, and suddenly every character from the game looked like it was in jeopardy, especially since a good deal of them were in SFF situations. Duke also looked like he had a fight on his hands again, although at this point no one was confident in saying anything. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Last Known Values - Lucario - new - Altair - new - Isaac - 14.20% (2007) - Guybrush - 9.12% (2007) First of all, congrats to the Gurus for banding together and earning Altair such a winnable bracket positioning. That being said... I have almost 0 faith in the guy's actual popularity. Sure, he looks cool in the match pic, but people moved on from AC so quickly after those strong initial sales that I can't see any character having much of a lasting impact. I gave some serious thought to the Isaac upset here, but then I thought that maybe Pikachu hurt him with the Nintendo RPG handheld vote in '07, and if so, Lucario ought to be able to hold him back in a similar way here. Speaking of Lucario, boy, what an unknown. I hear some people saying he's like the face of the new Pokemon generation, but then others say he can't compare to Mewtwo in terms of being the "ultimate Pokemon" or whatever. And in any case I didn't hear people going too wild when he was announced for Brawl- the only reaction I remember was people upset that Mewtwo had been booted. But look, we're talking GameFAQs 4-ways, where even Bidoof is somehow worth 21% on BL- unless I'm 100% off about Altair, Luc's not going to need to be worth much of anything to run away with this. Isaac was worth 14 last season, but as I mentioned that might be unfair... the poor guy was on the bottom of a 4-way RPG totem pole, plus Pikachu potentially hurt him by being a Nintendo handheld draw. He's probably a good bit closer to the fodder line than that performance indicated. As for Guybrush, well, it seems pretty certain that he really IS that weak, and the only question is why 200 people continue to nominate a guy who's proven himself to be 10% on BL three times now. Seriously, we can do better! In summary I still feel this one is a lock, but only because I have an enormous lack of respect for Altair, and just barely enough respect for Lucario's Nintendo presence to keep Isaac out of the running. So if we assign Luc a midrange Pokemon value and Altair something a bit under Marcus from last year, we can stir the pot and find... - Lucario - 36.41% - Altair - 27.90% - Isaac - 24.00% - Guybrush Threepwood - 11.69% Hm... seems just about right. Ngamer Says: **Lucario \> Altair** ### Next Day Review Well now, that was just an old-fashioned kick in the face. The Zack win I could see, Zidane was weird but I could at least blame Link, Duke was crazy but I guess you should never trust Kefka. But Lucario, being this weak, after everything we saw from Mewtwo and Pikachu and even Bidoof for crap's sake? I'm still reeling. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3247&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=4) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Liquid Snake vs Luigi vs Roxas vs Sho Minamimoto 2008 _source: Liquid Snake vs Luigi vs Roxas vs Sho Minamimoto 2008 (revid 85767)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, September 22nd, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2 - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 22nd, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 39.31% Liquid Snake - 29.27% Roxas - 21.59% Sho Minamimoto - 9.89% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Luigi first place (2pts) - 41.44% Luigi second place (1pt) - 36.51% Liquid second place (2pts) - 32.13% Liquid first place (1pt) - 48.04% - **Advancing Prediction:** Luigi - 77.95% (33,443) Liquid - 80.17% (34,395) After a wild first round in the first division, it was nice to have a nice, boring, predictable 40-30-20-10 style of match that went exactly as everyone expected. Everyone picked Luigi to get first. Everyone picked Liquid to get second. People don't really care about the other two as characters and both are known for being in games that range from "okay" to absolute garbage. You will never get me to defend The World Ends With You. It's trash. There was a minor bit of worry over Luigi given how nuts the contest was to this point, but that was put to bed pretty quickly. He got first place easily, despite a small scare from Liquid overnight. The one takeaway from this match was Liquid doing rather well for himself, because his contest history to this point was merely "okay". It was nothing special, despite starring in two of the best matches we've ever had: The issue there is they were round 1 fun, not matches with any actual consequences, so it's not like Liquid was thought of as being worth much. So his performance here was a surprise, though it wasn't expected to mean much until people actually looked at the bracket. If everything went to plan, the next round was going to be Liquid, Bowser, Luigi, and Phoenix Wright. That match could potentially allow Liquid to take advantage of LFF all over the place. From there, could Liquid Snake of all people catch a bandwagon run? Nah. But it was fun to think about at the time! ## Stats and Analysis Finally out of Division 1, where we had just endured FOUR upsets in a row, tensions were high among board users (to say nothing of their poor, poor brackets). People even began to start hushed Chicken-Littleing \*this\* match. Though not for the reasons you might think, looking at the final score - the character being doubted this time was Liquid Snake. And with good reason - Liquid has come out looking suspect in every contest he's ever been in. Yes, he went toe-to-toe with Frog when no one on the board expected him to back in 2004 - but thanks to the toady's shenanigans against Solid in Round 3, it was impossible to tell where Liquid stood. He had a good blowout in the Villains Contest, but then showed stunning weakness against Lavos and got killed beyond all comprehension against Sephiroth. And then there was the strangest performance of all, 2007. Liquid, in one of the most exciting finishes in the contests, managed to use some of that MGS final update magic (read: "cheating") to upset Alucard in a match most expected him not even to place in. So what does he do to celebrate? Gets KILLED by Alucard the very next round. Meanwhile, Roxas was behind SFF thanks to Riku last year and, due to the nature of his role in KH2, had reasons to function as a protagonist-proxy of sorts and shock the world here. And few dared quell the sentiment. Which was fine, because when the match began Solid's twin did that all on his own. It looks like Roxas really was that weak (which made Ryu H's performance last year even more puzzling... little did we know), because Liquid just tore him down worse than most anyone expected. But what was REALLY shocking was how close he got to Luigi. Take Roxas and Sho (by the way - WHO????????) out of the match, and Luigi wasn't even getting 55% on Liquid Snake. The same Luigi that easily beat Zero, Kirby, and Bacondorf. The same Liquid Snake that lost to Fraud Frog and ended up below RIDLEY in the Villains Contest X-Stats. And at the end of it all we had another Nintendo character disappointing, Roxas ending up less close to Liquid than a random piece of fodder I couldn't name if you had a gun to my head, and an MGS character impressing more than most thought possible. The board was able to heave a sigh of relief - overperformance or not, at least we had avoided yet ANOTHER upset - but the fears were soon doubled with what was to come. Suddenly with Bowser in the mix, you had to call Liquid the prohibitive favorite to WIN next round. Rumblings of an MGS4 boost were also in the air, but if you played the game, you had to stop and ask yourself - really? Were GameFAQs voters so easily fooled as to give Liquid a boost from THAT? (in retrospect, it really should have been obvious \<\_\<) ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Last Known Values - Luigi - 29.78% (2007) - Liquid Snake - 21.08% (2007) - Roxas - 17.10% (2007) - Sho - new After a good showing in '06, Luigi once against looked like a stud last year. He advanced ahead of Ganon (pig pic or no) and would have had a great shot at downing Dante if not for Pikachu messing things up. He's got a strong picture here, no Nintendo characters to hold him back, and has no excuse to not perform around that same 30 value. L. Snake on the other hand is something of a wildcard... if he acts like his R1 Alucard-beating self he'll have no problem advancing, but why did he collapse so badly in his second showing? You've got to think he'll be looking more like the former than the latter though, what with MGS4 having been so well-received on the site. Roxas is something of an unknown as well... Riku had a nice showing as soon as KH LFF was taken out of the picture, and of course Sora held up well against Squall, so I'd imagine that 17 is something of an underestimation. But then there's a THIRD wildcard thrown into the mix as well, in the form of Sho. Considering TWEWY was developed by the same team responsible for Kingdom Hearts, and with the characters having similar anime designs, you'd have to image there's a healthy bit of fanbase overlap here. I'd expect Sho to look pretty bad as a result, so we'll probably have to wait until Neku's match to see if TWEWY is worth anything in these Contests. In summary, Roxas is probably a pretty good match for Lake, but between MGS4 and Rox getting held back a little by Sho, he should still be able to get by without too much drama. But heck, I've said this before! Throwing those numbers into the pot with a little bit of mix 'n matching gives us... - Luigi - 39.75% - Liquid Snake - 26.58% - Roxas - 21.67% - Sho Minamimoto - 11.99% Liquid seems a touch low... but with the way things have been going, Roxas is going to take him down outright, so what the hey! Ngamer Says: **Luigi \> Liquid Snake** ### Next Day Review Whew, a little normalcy back in the Contest feels good after that wild and wacky Division One. Although Liquid somehow surviving the Day Vote to continue hanging this close with Luigi has certainly cost me some confidence in my Luigi \> Bowser selection, I must admit... The Koopa King is going to need to put on a powerhouse performance in the upcoming 24 hours if that confidence is to be restored. Fortunately he's going to have an excellent opportunity to do just that! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3248&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=5) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Bowser vs Deckard Cain vs Geno vs Phoenix Wright 2008 _source: Bowser vs Deckard Cain vs Geno vs Phoenix Wright 2008 (revid 85768)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2 - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 45.49% Phoenix Wright - 22.80% Geno - 17.07% Deckard Cain - 14.64% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Bowser first place (2pts) - 72.76% Bowser second place (1pt) - 15.49% Phoenix second place (2pts) - 42.25% Phoenix first place (1pt) - 10.83% - **Advancing Prediction:** Bowser - 88.25% (37,862) Phoenix - 53.08% (22,773) Stay awhile, and listen. When you're a heavy favorite and you're up against trash, your job is to go out there and take care of business. Bowser did just that, and in about 5 seconds he and Phoenix Wright teamed up for their predictable 1-2 finish to settle things down for the day. I guess if you wanted to go full throttle for the EPIC DUEL we were seeing the third place here you could, but why bother? There are more important things to worry about. Seeing Phoenix Wright advance in any contest is always fun with him being the Board 8 mascot, but the main thing to watch here was whether or not Bowser had a shot against Luigi next round. That was a meaningful match, because with those two splitting all the Nintendo votes, there was a very real threat Liquid would scoot by them both, resulting in only one advancing. If you take the 2007 stats seriously, Luigi was a 55-45 favorite. Based on round 1 in this contest.... who really knows? They both did about what we expected, though one could maybe argue Luigi disappointed a bit. Only actually seeing the match in round 2 would give us any answers. On a personal note, Deckard Cain and Geno are characters I just love, from games I love even more. It's rare to get a 4way poll where you adore everyone involved, so it was nice to see. I'm still holding out hope against hope Geno will be playable in Smash one day. No one ever actually said spirits deconfirm someone! And screw everyone involved in the writing of Cain's character in Diablo 3. "Stay awhile and listen was annoying" my ass. Piss off, Jay Wilson. You ruined the Diablo franchise, and your company is the worst in the history of video games. It's so nice that people are finally seeing what I've always known about Activision-Blizzard. They are trash. Oh, sorry, we're time traveling to the future in 2020 again. Back to 2008! :) ## Stats and Analysis After the prior day's more or less expected result - in placement, if not percentages - things had pretty much calmed down on Board 8. Facilitating this normalcy was, of all things, a Phoenix Wright match. Phoenix is best known for being three things - firstly, arguably the most beloved character on Board 8. Secondly, for being the character that finally ended GFNW (and man, Gordon's looked impressive since then). And thirdly, he gave us one HELL of a show in taking down a washed-up, third tier icon in Bomberman. But hey, that's an icon nonetheless! With his jokey trends there was some chatter that Geno had a shot... but as good as Geno is in SMRPG, one character arguably stole the show even more than he and he was in the SAME MATCH. Meanwhile, Deckard Cain was yet another random piece of fodder that I'm told is from Diablo. And if you're a Blizzard character that isn't in the title of one of their games, then well... Bowser dominated as expected, and the fact that he didn't fall flat on his face was a welcome relief for his fans that have had to cringe at every one of his matches ever since his near-upset of Solid Snake. Bowser certainly couldn't be written off against Luigi, especially considering how vulnerable Liquid had made him look, but theirs certainly appeared now to be a fight for survival than bragging rights. Phoenix actually held up quite well, and Geno ended up having to hold off a scare from Deckard. The only real surprise is how far Phoenix had come since 2007 - whether it was the flurry of his games or his upsets spreading his notoriety around a la Chrono Trigger, he was less joke and more natural, legitimate trends. Yes, that's right - Phoenix Wright was looking LEGIT this year. This contest making no sense was confirmed tenfold. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Last Known Values - Bowser - 26.32% (2007) - Phoenix - 17.64% (2007) - Geno - 15.17% (2007) - Deckard - new Bowser's number in the first round was a total crapshoot, what with Mewtwo and Toad doing heaven knows what with the Nintendo support. This number is based on his R2 showing, and it's probably pretty accurate- the guy has still got some legitimate strength, and his loss was more a matter of Auron and Ryu being perfect characters for this 4-way format. I'd expect him to perform at around that 26 level tonight, or perhaps even a little higher because... Phoenix Wright is a character that I don't think holds up very well against Nintendo's upper tier. We've seen him cave badly in the face of Mario, and Edgeworth got blown away worse than we expected by Link, so although Bowser's not nearly at the same level of SFF-ability, I'm still not expecting PW to look his best here. And then poor Geno got about the worst placement possible- as someone who just finished up a Virtual Console playthrough of Mario RPG, I can safely say that despite how cool Geno was throughout, Bowser consistently stole the show in that party. I DO feel he was held back somewhat by Squall and Aeris last time around (no way would I pick Akuma to beat him that badly 1v1), and sadly he probably won't have much chance to improve on that 15 here in '08. Then there's Deckard who... nay, sorry, just can't muster up any excitement about his upset abilities. To be a successful "joke" character in this format you have to make it very clear that you LOOK like a joke to the casual voter, IMO. L-Block just looks ridiculous to everyone, and that grabs people's attention and swings votes his way, whereas Cain just looks like any other old man from an RPG, so I can't see him picking up many votes outside of the DII fanbase. That being said, with the rest of this group swinging so heavily Nintendo, he SHOULD have an opportunity to at least look somewhat decent. And by that I mean... better than Kerrigan. Maybe. Let's turn those thoughts into numbers, turn up the heat for 90 minutes, and we come out of the pot with... - Bowser - 43.73% - Phoenix Wright - 23.44% - Geno - 17.68% - Deckard Cain - 15.51% I don't like it, I love it! Ngamer Says: **Bowser \> Phoenix** ### Next Day Review After two fairly standard results in a row, you just know that the bracket must have another surprise in store soon. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3249&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=6) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Fei Fong Wong vs Knuckles the Echidna vs Mario vs Zelda 2008 _source: Fei Fong Wong vs Knuckles the Echidna vs Mario vs Zelda 2008 (revid 85770)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2 - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 45.19% Zelda - 22.30% Knuckles the Echidna - 21.92% Fei Fong Wong - 10.62% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario first place (2pts) - 74.45% Mario second place (1pt) - 18.84% Zelda second place (2pts) - 59.43% Zelda first place (1pt) - 8.79% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mario - 93.29% (40,024) Zelda - 68.22% (29,268) I know I promised not to time travel too much when doing the 2008 wayback machine stuff, but I can't help it with this one. Look at this poll result from 2008, then look at this: Too good. Anyway, the debate for this match was very simple. Mario was going to win the poll. Everyone knew this already. Everyone also already knew that Zelda was a stronger character than Knuckles. The fun part was whether or not Mario could hold Zelda back hard enough for Knuckles to squeeze into second place. It seems preposterous to think about by 2020 standards, but back in 2008 a lot of people felt like Mario could SFF Zelda, even with the knowledge that the Zelda series is higher in the hierarchy. It wasn't unreasonable at the time, even though I was one of the ones who felt like Mario SFFing Zelda was impossible. You guys need to realize how insane Mario looked from 2005 through 2007, how nuts that Mario \> Samus beating in 2005 was, and how utterly monstrous he looked before Sephiroth and Link showed up in 2007. Remember, this was before Breath of the Wild happened. Back in 2008, Zelda was little more than a Smash character and the wrong name for Link. If you thought Mario would SFF her, I get it. It wasn't dumb to pick Knuckles here at all. It didn't take long for this match to be decided, and it went the way of Mario \> Zelda in a hurry. There was little to no real SFF or LFF or whatever else, and the end result was Knuckles suffering his one and only first round loss in the history of contests -- a record that stands to the time of this writing in 2020. He's only ever lost in round 1 one time, and it took the combined efforts of Mario and Zelda to do it. And he still only lost by just under 5000 votes. That's about as impressive as it gets for a third place finish. Looking forward, Mario and Zelda both performed well here, and this spot of the bracket needed strong characters to hold back an incredibly dangerous, hilarious challenge. ## Stats and Analysis - Mario underperformed by **-4.72%**, the **\#19**most disappointing performance of 2008 It's hard to believe it now, but despite the epic Sonic bombing last year - which consisted of Sonic nearly losing to Squall twice, Tails losing to The Boss, and Knuckles needing VAAN to hold off Rikku - Knuckles was actually a tentative favorite to advance with Mario in this match. And even though Shadow had brought Sonic Team failure to new levels of epic, the tight Oracle spread between Knuckles and Zelda reveals how much the board still believed in him. The question, of course, was... why? Because IT'S FREAKING MARIO! was in the match, of course. This was Mario, who had beat down Samus more brutally than Link had - and Samus was supposed to be a character that was much STRONGER than the plumber. Mario, a character powerful enough to look like he was SFFing characters like Zero, a character that could actually stand up to Link and make Sephiroth look good with the board vote against him. Meanwhile, Zelda was a name-driven character that no one but the biggest of the 'drones actually LIKED, and even the majority of those would fold in the face of IT'S FREAKING MARIO! Sure, there was Zelda's power performance on Samus in 2k6 to think about, but that was the (lol) female bracket at work... and besides, that was Samus, Queen of SFFailure. She couldn't significantly SFF the leech Ganondorf, so obviously Zelda was going to fare better. Yeah, uh huh. Like so many other debated matches, it wasn't even close. Zelda was making not one, but TWO characters look pitiful from the get-go. Yes, there was Knuckles, who even his most ardent supporters had been half-expecting to fail. But then there was MARIO, who couldn't seem to score any significant SFF on Zelda either! Based on 2005 stats, which should be even more favorable to Zelda seeing as how she had to go out against an even more dreadful looking Snake than usual, Mario gets 61% on the princess. So what does he go and do in this match? Barely get 62%. What the...? Make no mistake - if Mario had actually gone and, y'know, SFFED Zelda like he was supposed to, this could have been a match. And while you can partially chalk this up to Zelda's resilience even in the face of overpowering strength - seriously, LoZ's 43%+ on SMB3 is a damn tragedy - I hold that this was the first sign we had that this Mario of new was not the Mario of old. Can you imagine Mario 2k5 scoring barely more on Zelda than SAMUS? And ironically, Knuckles would probably be the Sonic character to come out looking best in all of this after the later rounds - 4% away from Zelda when you're probably being SFFed too, if not even worse, ain't too shabby, though you've got to figure some bracket support figures into that. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Today should be a great opportunity to see something surprising- from the moment the bracket was released this was one of the polls that drew the most attention, and even weeks later we've yet to draw any true consensus. 111 Gurus picked Knuckles, but on the other hand a full 100 went with Zelda... a ton of brackets will be taking a hit here, but which ones? WHICH? Maybe the numbers can help us decide! Last Known Values - Mario - 42.07% (2007) - Zelda - 30.74% (2007) - Knuckles - 27.41% (2007) - Fei Fong Wong - new First off, let's assign Fei a 15ish or something so we can forget he exists. The guy's far from the worst character to have made the bracket, but the rest of this poll is just too interesting to dwell on his presence. Mario really impressed me last season- he held up much better than expected against Link, and even managed to look fairly decent against Sephiroth, despite Fox being there to hold him back by over 5%. Obviously he won't need to show up at his full 42 percent strength tonight to walk away with a win, but how strong he is SHOULD have a pretty big impact on the end result regardless. That's because... Zelda disappointed pretty badly in '07. She came in hot off a great showing on Samus back in 2006 and should have been performing at peak strength, what with TP recently released and Brawl hype continuing to mount. That why many people, myself included, went out on a limb and took her to upset Vincent in the first round- boy did that backfire! What she proved instead was that plenty of her support comes from her name and her Nintendo flagship affiliation, and when you give people other options they'll abandon her at a moment's notice. And then the second round proved that she gets in especially big trouble as soon as you introduce someone higher on the N totem pole into her group. Which should make the second place result in this one obvious here, right? But wait a minute! To be frank, Knuckles didn't exactly set the world on fire last Summer either. Despite having no excuse to not perform at full strength in R1, he was never in contention against Yoshi and furthermore would almost certainly have been knocked out of the Contest by Rikku if not for Vaan holding her back. Seriously, Rikku? That's pretty embarrassing for a guy who only a couple years before had nearly gone toe to toe with Squall! Clearly Sonic Team loses a step when moving to the four way format. When you add to that how badly Link destroyed Shadow just a few days back, it seems hard to deny that Mario's going to be holding Knuckles down in this one. But will he be able to hurt Knux more than he does Zelda? My answer there is... no, Zelda probably gets hurt a little worse. Fortunately, she's also a little bit stronger naturally; I'm banking on that slight advantage being enough to see her through in what should be the closest 2/3 result of the season so far! I don't do so with a ton of confidence, but heck, this one is basically a coin flip in my eyes, and when it comes down to a coin flip you never bet on Tails. ...or Shadow. Or Knuckles. Let's throw these all into the pot, flip in a few coins, stir well, and... - Mario - 41.66% - Zelda - 23.11% - Knuckles the Echidna - 22.32% - Fei Fong Wong - 12.91% Looks tasty! Ngamer Says: **Mario \> Zelda** ### Next Day Review Whoops! Guess this won't be the closest \#2 vs \#3 result so far... or even all that close. I guess that's in line with Link hurting Shadow so badly, but at this point you've really got to start calling Sonic Team as a whole into question. I know this much- certainly feeling better about that Master Chief \> Sonic upset than I was a week back! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3250&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=7) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Lloyd Irving vs Mudkip vs Tom Nook vs Mega Man X 2008 _source: Lloyd Irving vs Mudkip vs Tom Nook vs Mega Man X 2008 (revid 85777)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, September 25th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2 - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 25th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man X - 45.36% Mudkip - 25.56% Lloyd Irving - 16.73% Tom Nook - 12.34% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mega Man X first place (2pts) - 48.92% Mega Man X second place (1pt) - 37.24% Mudkip second place (2pts) - 25.41% Mudkip first place (1pt) - 30.65% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mega Man X - 86.16% (36,965) Mudkip - 56.06% (24,051) Pre-contest, Mudkip was pegged by many as the next potential L-Block. He had all the makings of it, too. A well-known meme, total joke status, he comes from a mega-popular franchise, and perhaps most importantly, people were actually rooting for him to go off and smash this bracket in half. The issue there is round 2 would end up featuring Mudkip in a match against Mega Man X, Mario, and Zelda. There was zero chance of a contest run unless Mudkip had some hidden Draven in him right from the jump, and he... didn't. This is not to say he wasn't super impressive here, but the bracket placement meant he wasn't able to get the bandwagon effect going. Beyond Mudkip himself, the first major factor was there; his first match featured two garbage cans. No one likes Tom Nook, and Fails of is one of the most historically inept-yet-always-nominated entities we've ever seen. The board consensus of Mega Man X \> Mudkip was practically on lock. Unfortunately, you also need good bracket placement for a run like that, which simply didn't happen. More on that in round 2. The other big debut to launch in this match was Mega Man X, who is a character many thought could be just as strong as Mega Man himself (if not stronger), so it was important for X to get started on the right foot. And oh my goodness did he ever. This was a beating, and I'll just spoil you on the stats and let you know this is every bit the number Mega Man himself would have put up. It's an actual crime we've yet to see Mega Man vs X, because that match would be nuts, but it is what it is. We've yet to get a true Sonic vs Mario, either, though that match would be like 70-30 in Mario's favor these days. This all added up to very impressive performances by our two winners, and it became very obvious very quickly that had Mudkip drawn better, he could have won this contest. But even L-Block 2007 couldn't have gotten past Zelda, Mario, and X in round 2. There's just no way. Only Draven or maybe Undertale could have done that. ## Stats and Analysis - Mudkip overperformed by **+4.70%**, the **\#16** most impressive performance of 2008 On paper, this was a pretty boring match. In practice, it pretty much confirmed those preconceptions. But the implications of what all this meant was fun to munch on, at least for statheads. The order of this match was as big a lock as the format would allow - Mega Man is a noble niner, despite his disappointments, and Mega Man X wasn't going to be far enough off from him to fall to Mudkip, who couldn't beat the fanbase split Luigi and Ganondorf. Meanwhile, Mudkip wasn't going to ever be in danger of losing to Lloyd, who barely beat Albert Wesker and who just got done blowing the ASV and immortalizing the phrase "pulling a Lloyd" against HK-47 last year. And in the end, most of our expectations were vindicated, even though there wasn't much to go on - and what was scared the hell out of the board. Mudkip didn't falter in the slightest, breaking 40% on Mega Man X (remember when Zelda couldn't do that against MM?), who in turn was putting 45% on the whole pack. Sure, I've already discussed Lloyd's hilarious failings and no one knows who Tom Nook is, but still, it was hard to assert that Mega Man X was anything less than MM, and could easily be a bit more. yoblazer's hilarious analysis of their pictures and dissecting the badassery of the letter X only strengthened this sentiment. There wasn't too much to say for the moment, though next round seemed damn scary. With Mario faltering, a Zelda that looked like she could stand up to anyone, a potentially stronger Mega Man, and MUDKIP... did we have the potential for something horrifying going down? This was to say nothing of what implications that would mean for L-BLOCK. If there's anything the board bet against en masse this year, it was jokes, and Mudkip's success was making already mangled brackets set for another wail. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction For today we're looking at quite the intriguing matchup. That seems weird to say, given that the \#1 spot isn't going to be in question at all, and neither should the \#2, really. What lends this match its appeal is the long-awaited Contest debut of Mega Man X... firstly because we've never seen him in action before and its hard to say how close to the original MM he's going to perform, and secondly because we'll be getting our first taste of how Mega Man 9 will impact this Contest. Talk about exciting! Let's see if the numbers hold any answers for us. Last Known Values - Mega Man X - new - Mudkip - 21.53% (2007) - Lloyd - 19.97% (2007) - Tom Nook - 12.61% (2007) Original MM looked pretty darn solid in this format last season, scoring a value of around 39 while doing even more than was expected of him, including seriously contending for the win against Samus (sure he was benefited by the sprite round, but STILL). My best guess is that MMX is going to be a touch weaker than MM in these polls. "But wait! MMX beat MM straight up in that 'what's your favorite version of Mega Man' poll a couple months back!" Well yes, he did, but we've seen how far you can trust favorite character in the series polls as they relate to real Contest strength, and MMX \> MM feels like one of those Yoshi \> Mario situations to me. Still, it should be fairly close. What really has me pumped is to see what kind of impact MM9 is going to have here- with the Wii release on Monday and the PS3 and 360 versions also arriving this week, you couldn't have asked for a better time for the game to drop. People seem to be genuinely excited about the Mega Man series for the first time in many years, and IMO that's bound to do wonders for everything connected to the games, including MMX and Zero. But we'll see if I'm right about that. What else do we have going on... oh, there's Mudkip. Even though I don't like Mudkipz, I've got to give the guy some credit, as he held up remarkably well against Luigi and some other decent Nintendo competition last time around. I doubt the fad has died off much, so he might even look better than the 22 value he posted in '07 for this one. But golly, I certainly hope not! Lloyd is just... ew. Couldn't we please just use Kratos A as the pinnacle of what Tales is worth in these polls and stop noming everyone else? Actually I could see Mudkip starting fadilly strong before losing ground to Lloyd overnight. Then Lloyd would get all our hopes up like he did last season before allowing Mudkip to easily skate away from him with the ASV, just like HK-47 did. Ugh. Oh and I guess Tom Nook is involved in this as well. Hate to break it to the little guy, but last year was probably about the best performance he could have expected... with Mudkip in the way to steal his Nintendo joke fans, and other decent Nintendo options also present, he could very well have trouble being worth more than 10% in these stats when all is said and done. Sooo, factoring what should be a good MM showing with what we saw from these last time, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes of stirring the pot to find: - Mega Man X - 48.14% - Mudkip - 24.08% - Lloyd Irving - 18.42% - Tom Nook - 9.36% Yes sir... Realistically, that looks pretty good. Would be so pleased to see MMX perform way above that and Mudkip way below, though! Ngamer Says: **Mega Man X \> Mudkip** ### Next Day Review ...dang it all, Mudkip! IMO today's result gives us one answer (the kipper is fueled by "the kiddies", not 4chan, aside from a couple hundred votes in the first half hour) and leaves us with one question (what in the crap is wrong with Lucario? seriously, how can you have D/P, AND Brawl, and still be this far back of 'kip?). Certainly appears as though Zelda is going to be in for some trouble next round; but might even MMX be at risk as well? I shudder to consider it! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3251&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=8) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Crash Bandicoot vs Nightmare vs Raz vs Samus Aran 2008 _source: Crash Bandicoot vs Nightmare vs Raz vs Samus Aran 2008 (revid 85773)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, September 26th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 3 - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 26th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 52.64% Nightmare - 23.25% Crash Bandicoot - 15.29% Raz - 8.79% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Samus first place (2pts) - 66.60% Samus second place (1pt) - 28.70% Nightmare second place (2pts) - 36.41% Zidane first place (1pt) - 17.48% - **Advancing Prediction:** Samus - 95.30% (40,887) Nightmare - 53.89% (23,120) If you put this match in a time machine and redid it, Crash might actually get second place. It took a looooooong time, but he and his series actually got relevant again: Just look at the time line. See the huge white space on it where nothing happened? Gamers lost their minds when he starred in anything at all, let alone something really good. It was awesome to see! Meanwhile, Soul Calibur is.... Soul Calibur. People can try to sell me on 3D fighters all day long, but I'll always see Soul Calibur as "Tekken with huge weapons". They're good games and I see why they used to be a huge deal, don't get me wrong, but they're just not for me. They seem to have fallen off over the years, too. Thankfully this match happened in 2008, and it was one of the most predictable, boring matches of the entire first round. Everyone knew Samus was going to faceroll this match, and faceroll she did. Breaking 50% in a fourway poll is not easy to do, but Samus made it look simple. Beyond that, there was zero drama whatsoever. We all knew Nightmare would win an easy, yet distant second place en route to getting destroyed in round 2. For those playing the home game, this was his same exact path in 2007. By the way, when I was digging up stuff for this match, I noticed people saying Nightmare is the most popular character in the series. You guys do remember Link made an appearance, right? And even beyond the sardonic answer, I would be shocked if Talim or Taki wasn't \#1. Not that we'll ever get to find out in a contest setting, but hey. ## Stats and Analysis The contest gods willing, this was going to be another easy match to start off Division 3. Samus was in the upper echelon of the Noble Nine, and has looked golden in every match where she hasn't had to run into Nintendo or take off her clothes. Her only debatable match this year looked to be escaping an upset from Vincent when Ganondorf was in the poll in Round 3, but other than that she just had to look good and cruise - at least, until L-Block potentially came along in the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, everything else in this match seemed to be set. Nightmare may only be from the third most popular fighting game on GameFAQs, but he's easily the most popular character from it and can hold his own for the most part, even with his ridiculous pictures. Crash Bandicoot's days are long gone, and the fact that we could get impressed by him coming back on Bomberman and Phoenix Wright last year says it all there. And Raz was another random piece of fodder, albeit one that I'm vaguely familiar with (woo Psychonauts, thanks Mercs!). The only really interesting thing in this match is that Samus actually met expectations, as pretty much every Ninty character up to now had faltered in some way. Granted, the expectations had been calibrated due to those failures, but still. Nightmare had a hiccup or two against Crash some updates, but comfortably beat him down all day. Raz spent all day fighting to stay over 8%. Samus looked good for next round, and Nightmare didn't do nearly enough to justify a potential upset against Ganondorf. Other than that, there was nothing notable about this match other than the poor votals that Samus always seems to drag in with her. Hmm... sigh. Could we bring back Division 1 now? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction This is, unfortunately, one of the least interesting matches of R1. Psychonaughts may be great, but that still doesn't make Raz one of the more intriguing newcomers of the season, and we've already got a pretty decent bead on Crash and Nightmare's strength from last year. I guess something to watch for might be that this is Nintendo's first true chance to shine so far this season- sure Link and Mario have already come through, but there were serious LFF questions in those matches making it impossible to say if they underperformed. Samus is top tier for the company and shouldn't be facing anyone who can hurt her here, so a strong showing could go a long ways toward reassuring those currently fearing an '08 Nintendo drop. Let's start by seeing where these characters would have dropped from, shall we? Last Known Values - Samus - 41.23% - Nightmare - 24.35% - Crash - 16.07% - Raz - new Samus was one of the top performers of last season, though no one remembers it because her path was so predictable. She never showed any signs of weakness (aside from that one sprite match with MM, but come on, she looked like a toilet) and actually beat out Sephiroth pretty handily in her final match. With no other Nintendo option to limit her appeal here, I'm expecting a big time performance from the bracket's top female. Nightmare's a bit of an oddball. He held up impressively well against Snake in R1, but then fell off the face of the earth when Ryu H and Riku were introduced to the equation the next time around. He must be one of those guys with enough recognizability to draw in the apathy votes, but who few people actually like enough to support when given other options. Between that and SC4's release still being pretty fresh in people's minds, I'd except him to look more like his R1 self tomorrow. Crash actually looked fairly decent in his last match, but any semblance of strength people might be gleaning from that result is a mirage, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, he tore it up with the after-school vote, but that was purely a product of Bomberman, Phoenix Wright, and Magus being some of the worst ASV candidates these Contests has ever produced. I'd be shocked if this washed up Bandicoot was able to make similar noise against decent options like Samus and Nightmare. And as for Raz, well... sorry to those who love the game, but we've seen these kind of super-niche characters in action before, and they're almost always "worth" about 10 on BL- not seeing any reason for Raz to be an exception to that rule. With those numbers in the pot, slightly tweaked, and stirred to perfection, we get... - Samus Aran - 52.93% - Nightmare - 23.49% - Crash Bandicoot - 13.99% - Raz - 9.59% Delicious! Ngamer Says: **Samus \> Nightmare** ### Next Day Review Nothing wrong with the occasional slight breather like today provided, but still, it's good to be back into the realm of debatable matches! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3252&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=9) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Frog vs Ganondorf vs KOS-MOS vs Neku Sakuraba 2008 _source: Frog vs Ganondorf vs KOS-MOS vs Neku Sakuraba 2008 (revid 85775)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, September 27th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 3 - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 27th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 41.78% Frog - 24.94% KOS-MOS - 22.48% Neku Sakuraba - 10.87% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Ganondorf first place (2pts) - 70.79% Ganondorf second place (1pt) - 20.39% Frog second place (2pts) - 34.33% Frog first place (1pt) - 17.87% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ganondorf - 91.18% (39,119) Frog - 52.20% (22,395) The World Ends With You is dog shit garbage. Have I mentioned that yet? The game is absolute gutter trash. Neku getting his ass whipped in his debut is well deserved, as is his 0-4 record as of this writing. What a terrible character. Anyway, this match was nothing to write home about. We all knew Ganon was winning, and most people knew Frog was taking second place. There was some debate about KOS-MOS potentially pulling an upset based on Frog struggling with some low tier Kingdom Hearts characters in recent contests, but it didn't take some massive deep dive to see Frog as the favorite here. Other than Diablo and Arthas splitting votes in 2007, KOS-MOS came into this year with two contest wins. One was against Crash Bandicoot all the way back in 2003, and the other was against something named Amy Rose. Meanwhile, Frog was coming in with wins over Liquid Snake, Master Chief, Riku, Axel, and he had that incredible close loss to Solid Snake in 2004. I know the stats say it was supposed to be close, but KOS-MOS just didn't have the resume Frog had regardless of recent struggles. When the match started, there was no picture. So the one advantage KOS-MOS actually had wasn't even there, which gave Frog even more of an advantage in the actual match. Nice job running your first contest there, Allen. There was eventually a picture for the match, but what little suspense may have existed was long gone by then. Frog built up a lead that KOS-MOS was never going to catch, and that was that. There wasn't even the typical Chrono Trigger day vote collapse that we'd come to expect, either, largely because trends will dissipate against weak competition. KOS-MOS didn't exactly have the strength to take advantage of Frog's weaknesses, like, say, a Sonic or Kingdom Hearts character would have. All in all, it added up to another predictable result in a long run of predictable round 1 results. Division 1 was nutty, but as you all can see, things settled down after that as we started getting rid of all the trash. Like Neku Sakuraba. Who starred in a game that was terrible. ## Stats and Analysis THIS match actually had some upset potential, and it's one of the few that I was actually on board with. After all, Frog had managed to drop an unprecedented advantage AGAIN to Axel, had to rely on massive cheating just to advance in the next round, and promptly got his toady rump squished by Scorpion. KOS-MOS, for her part, had looked pretty good in the previous contests - a big overperformance on Aeris and a solid finish last year among them. Big-breasted android girl over the talking Frog seemed like a pretty good upset pick (especially for those who were tired of being burned by Kossy \<\_\<). Still, there were some warning signs. Had it not been for Blizzard splitting between Diablo and Arthas, either one would have likely beaten KOS-MOS last year. And really, who wanted to pick against Frog in a close match AGAIN? Well, the match started, and everything was going according to perceptions save for one thing - the picture. There was NO picture in the match, and with it the whole of KOSland cried foul. This wasn't fair, stripping KOS-MOS of her biggest asset - both figuratively and literally! Well, a lot of complaining and "CURSE YOU BACON"s later, the picture went up, and everyone held their breath. And for one update, it looked like the KOS-MOS adherents would be vindicated - she surged Frog to a stall. But after that it was back to business as usual, with the only competitor who even appeared to be performing marginally better being the random piece of fodder in this match. Uh... good pic for him/her/it, I guess. Frog and KOS-MOS seemed to be benefiting equally, with the only character actually hurt being our laughing stock of near-elites Ganondorf. This match ended up with only a few notable things left from it. Firstly, Ganondorf actually did well for himself relative to match expectations, even with his post-picture drop he was able to wallop these day chumps when the sun rose. (good thing for him, because that was the last we'd be seeing Ganondorf look anything remotely close to "good" this contest) Secondly, KOS-MOS's best days were clearly behind her, and even though I was more hoping that she was going to get a picture more along the lines of what she got against Aeris in 2k6 (shameless [1](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=8&pos=38) plug), she'd almost have certainly lost regardless, and she didn't do too shabby in the overall scheme of the match. The interesting thing to see was Frog - the day vote, his bane against Master Chief, Axel, and even Liquid Snake didn't really do much harm to him. KOS-MOS isn't exactly a day champ, but to see her do NOTHING against Frog when the sun rose was very odd. It was the first sign that CT had perhaps slowed, stalled, or even perhaps reversed that downward slide we had seen from it over the past three years. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction For tonight we've got one heavy hitter, almost-fodders, and one mid-ranger fodder (most likely). There's plenty to be excited about here IMO, so let's hop right to it! When we last saw our heroes... Last Known Values: - Ganon - 31.88% (2007) - Frog - 20.25% (2007) - KOS-MOS - 19.28% (2007) - Neku - new To start, Ganon's head and heels above the competition and shouldn't be challenged here. Even so, how he does could be another of those pretty good barometers for where Nintendo stands currently, much like Samus provided today. It won't be quite as pure since I think Frog works at least somewhat like a Nintendo character himself, but is still something to watch out for. Neku should also be worth keeping an eye on- we've already seen one TWEWY character in action, but he got about the worst draw this side of Geno in having to contend with a Kingdom Hearts character all day long, so I wouldn't put much faith in his final value; today should give us a much more accurate estimate of whether or not TWEWY is worth anything in these Contests. But of course the real heart of the meat is Frog/KOS. As I see it, Frog has two things working for him and two working against him. The two against him are that Neku is a fellow Square RPG character (this probably won't matter too much in the long run through- they're separated by so many years and console generations that I can't see there being a huge overlap like there apparently was with KH) and, much more importantly, he always seems to play down to the level of his competition. As much as we love to glorify Frog and blast his Theme as he pulls out close matches, I think we tend to forget that those matches were only close due to him choking relative to expectations. Axel, Master Chief, Liquid Snake... well alright, so he did rise to a challenge once against Snake, but between Solid \*^&\$ and rally power and whatever other crazy stuff was going on at the time, I don't know how much stock we should put in it. So, its entirely possible that he allows KM to hang in this match much longer than he ought to. The two points in Frog's favor here, however, easily outweigh those two negatives in my estimation. The first is that if you're going to beat Frog, you need to have a very strong Day Vote and/or ASV. KOS-MOS is unfortunately lined up perfectly the opposite in her trends- she's good at the start of matches and through the overnight, but wilts when the sun rises and doesn't do any ASV damage. With Chrono Trigger being such a powerhouse in the first three hours, I'm having trouble seeing her be able to take the lead at any point during this poll. And the second point is of course that Frog doesn't lose close matches. If you want to come away with the win you better have built up a 500 vote lead by the final half hour, because otherwise this Board will do everything in their power to keep the comeback tradition alive. Oh, and I guess there's two other points worth noting as well. In Frog's favor: Chrono Trigger DS. Maybe it hasn't had any kind of impact yet, but even so, it could only mean good things for him as the release date approaches. And in KM's favor: she's going to look really good in this match pic (at least if SB uses the picture Zen submitted for her, and he'd be crazy not to!). So although I think Frog should be able to survive and advance in this one, I don't exactly see him doing so in style. With that in mind, the numbers in the pot, and after a bit of stirring, we find... - Ganondorf - 43.89% - Frog - 21.82% - KOS-MOS - 20.72% - Neku Sakuraba - 13.55% I love it! Ngamer Says: **Ganon \> Frog** ### Next Day Review Can't help but be impressed with Frog today. CT another year older, Ganon having SNES appeal, Neku having Square RPG appeal, KOS looking smokin' in the picture, and yet he was never in danger of losing and \*gasp\* didn't even lay a total egg with the ASV! Has CT:DS made the game somewhat relevant again, or was this just Xenosaga having run out of gas? Hopefully the upcoming Magus match will help clear the picture. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3253&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=10) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Falco Lombardi vs GLaDOS vs Vincent Valentine vs Wander 2008 _source: Falco Lombardi vs GLaDOS vs Vincent Valentine vs Wander 2008 (revid 85776)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, September 28th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 3 - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 28th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vincent Valentine - 47.51% Falco Lombardi - 25.53% GLaDOS - 17.08% Wander - 10.18% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Vincent first place (2pts) - 49.37% Vincent second place (1pt) - 35.89% Falco second place (2pts) - 36.94% Falco first place (1pt) - 26.57% - **Advancing Prediction:** Vincent - 85.26% (36,579) Falco - 63.51% (27,248) One day after seeing Neku get destroyed, I got to watch another garbage can get squished. Good stuff. Wander and his game are both terrible. Beyond that, this was yet another in a pretty long line of super predictable matches. Everyone knew Vincent would cruise to first place in this one, because he had beaten Crono in 2007. I'll spare people the rundown of moronic arguments everyone had about the Noble Nine when that happened, because everyone involved was acting like children over something completely meaningless. Vincent's job this contest was to kick names, take ass, and get ready for the potential Crono rematch down the line that we all wanted. Could he have performed better here? Maybe, but I've been doing this so long that I don't fret over some percentage fluctuations in early rounds anymore. I don't care. Whether Vincent scored 45% or 48% or 50% or whatever does not matter to me. The second place choice was also very predictable, though when I checked the wayback machine, I was surprised to see some people thinking GLaDOS could beat Falco here. Maaaaaaaaybe if you did this match during the apex of Portal fandom and Brawl didn't exist, sure, but in a BrawlFEAR world? No chance. Falco was always going to get an easy second place here. Brawl was that relevant to people's predictions back then. This actually helped set up a really fun round 2 match, which we'll get to when the time comes. ## Stats and Analysis Okay, so the order of the winners was never in question. Vincent Valentine had beaten Crono in the previous year, while Falco was Brawl character \#4827. As much as BrawlFEAR had the capacity to succeed it was never going to put Falco over Vincent, and as much as it had the potential to fail there were two pieces of fodder beneath them. Or so we thought. The end result here is a match where aside from one character, they ALL looked bad. Vincent didn't get nearly the number that some though he could score (thus putting him as the next in a long line of underperfoming obvious winners this round), Wander sucked to an even greater degree than people thought possible, and while one might be tempted to commend Falco's performance, there was a little problem there... ...specifically, letting GlaDOS get 43% on you. what GlaDOS was fodder. FODDER. Portal was a beloved, but niche addition to The Orange Box. And honestly, with the joke and Portal fanboyism votes, we could have easily seen a performance like this come from Weighted Companion Cube. But GlaDOS? I'm stunned that 20% of GameFAQs even knew her name, which isn't given in the course of the whole game. More than that, her picture is wholly unrecognizable, there's virtually no context clues there... honestly, this might be the most befuddling result of the whole contest to me. How does GlaDOS win updates against Falco? What does Portal do in a contest if this is legit? One thing was pretty certain - Tidus and DK were in for a whole world of hurt after this. A stronger entry from Portal powered up with joke votes was a deadly force indeed. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Not an awful match, but don't see it being all that intense either. I never bought into the hype for GlaDOS being anything more than fun fodder that it would be worth a laugh to see in an official match pic (and there's certainly going to be plenty laughing tonight, it looks like!), so I'd be shocked if Falco is ever challenged beyond the first five minutes. Probably the best thing to keep an eye on here will be Vincent- he took down Crono without too much trouble last season, but with CT back on the upswing (maybe?) and there not being "a Link in the way" this time around, he still needs to put up solid numbers these first two rounds to cement his favorite status for that rematch. Speaking of '07, just how good DID he look? Well... Last Known Values - Vincent - 36.25% (2007) - Falco - new - GlaDOS - new - Wander - 10.04% (2007) Wander looked awful in the match pic, performed awfully during the entire 24 hours of the poll, and finished up in an awful position on the final x-stats. Mario/Boss/Pac had no reason to LFF Wander; he's just legitimately one of the weakest characters we've even seen in a poll. And yet we brought him back? \*shakes head sadly\* I'm pretty excited to see what Falco will be capable of here. SF didn't make the Game or Series Contests and Fox always gets placed in unwinnable positions, so this will pretty much be our first chance to see what the series is worth when given a fair shot. I think he's going to surprise some people by looking decent here, which would do wonders for me in terms of creating confidence in that crazy Fox \> Sora upset I took in my bracket! GlaDOS... meh. I have a ton of respect for Portal and love Still Alive as much as anyone, but I knew she was going to look "like THAT" in the match pic which made my Falco pick an easy decision. Really happy to see her given a shot, but sadly it seems a given that WCC's going to be outdoing her by a healthy margin this season. As for Vincent, I think he's in much the same position as Samus and Ganon the last two days. Obviously isn't going to be in any way threatened, but how he ends up could still be a strong indication as to where Square/Final Fantasy will be sitting here in 2008. Zack and Zidane seemed to point to something of a FF boost, but then Kefka bombed out and left us wondering. A big time performance for VV here would set alot of fears at rest in the Square camp, I'd have to think. Soooo basically Vincent and Falco should be able to perform at full strength, while GlaDOS and Wander should be able to prove they have no strength. Throw THAT in your pot and... stir it! And you get: - Vincent Valentine - 51.03% - Falco Lombardi - 22.89% - GlaDOS - 15.91% - Wander - 10.16% Mmm... if that were a cake, it'd be both delicious and truthful! Ngamer Says: **Vincent \> Falco** ### Next Day Review ...holy smokes! Maybe it's unfair to call this a true "bombing" for Vincent, since even though I expected 50% from him some of that can be explained by GlaDOS eating up more percentage than we thought. But there's no way to discount what a great showing Falco is having here- I always thought he and Fox would have some serious power if they could stop drawing Nintendo opponents. Bring on Sora v Fox! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3254&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=11) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Balthier Bunansa vs Big Daddy vs Gordon Freeman vs Scorpion 2008 _source: Balthier Bunansa vs Big Daddy vs Gordon Freeman vs Scorpion 2008 (revid 85778)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, September 29th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 3 - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 29th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Scorpion - 35.06% Gordon Freeman - 27.54% Balthier Bunansa - 21.78% Big Daddy - 15.53% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Scorpion first place (2pts) - 28.78% Scorpion second place (1pt) - 36.79% Gordon second place (2pts) - 29.62% Gordon first place (1pt) - 34.23% - **Advancing Prediction:** Scorpion - 65.57% (28,131) Gordon - 63.85% (27,394) If you hop in the wayback machine and only look at the guru picks and such, you'd think this was some predictable match that we could all just talk about for 30 seconds and move on. And on the surface, that's true. Balthier totally crapped the bed in 2007 when everyone expected him to get first place over Ada Wong of all people -- just a total choke job -- and people also knew that Big Daddy would be weak. GameFAQs, by and large, does not care about FPS characters. Of course I say that with Gordon Freeman of Gordon Freeman Never Wins lore in the same match. Gordon, year after year, managed to keep choking away winnable matches. This dude lost to Tina Armstrong, who most people can't remember without Googling. This dude lost to Max Payne. This dude lost to Sam Fisher. Leon Kennedy was a predictable loss, but still. It took Phoenix Wright for Gordon to finally get off the schneid, and miraculously, Board 8 didn't hate the guy despite getting his first win on our mascot. He then repeated his winning ways in 2007, in a very debatable 4way match against Ike and Duke Nukem. He actually managed to not choke that year! But then The Orange Box happened in October of 2007, and it gave everything involved a boost. We saw a little bit of a hint of this with GLaDOS doing okay in round one of this contest, but it was Gordon himself who really proved that it mattered. I also maintain that if 2008 was a 1v1 games contest and Portal had a good draw, Portal would have gotten a bandwagon and won the entire thing outright. We've seen new games catch fire and so off in these things over the years. To the point. Everyone picked Scorpion \> Gordon Freeman \> the field in this match. We have the template from 2007; Sub-Zero \> Gordon. But that was pre-Orange Box. Memes + good games = "uh oh" in the early parts of a contest poll, when the board vote rules. Gordon caught a bunch of early votes, and had an early lead in the match. Balthier and that thing from Bioshock stunk up the place, as expected, and we all figured Scorpion would handle his business once the board vote died down. And he did. The first place spot was tied 15 minutes in, and we all figured Scorpion would cruise to this contest having yet another predictable result. "NOT SO FAST, my friend!" I'm just saying this while looking at creativename's updater 12 years later. I remember this one very well. When Gordon Freeman won the next update to go by 100 votes, all hell broke loose on Board 8. You wouldn't know it to look at our board or our vote totals now, but people used to live and die by every 15 minute update in crazy matches. This one, despite being a round 1 fun match, had people going wild. GORDON FREEMAN was doing this? The same dude that lost to Tina Armstrong? THAT guy?! Yeah, that guy. Orange Box love was real, and it's not like Mortal Kombat was sitting here doing much of anything. Those few updates where it looked like Gordon was going to shock the world were a total madhouse, and while I hate to rely on "you had to be there" analysis, it's the truth. For those of us who love these things, Gordon Freeman Never Wins felt like family. To see him go from that to this was amazing. It didn't stop there, either. This dude actually held his lead overnight. He didn't build a lead or anything, but he held strong at 100-150 all night long. If he managed to catch the morning vote, he was legitimately going to pull off an impossible feat and actually get first place in this match. You know the rest. Scorpion caught the morning vote, and that was that. It took a little while in the am hours before Scorpion fully controlled things, but fully control things he did. A fun match turned into Scorpion winning by 2200 votes fairly quickly, but no one talks about that part when they bring this match up. They talk about people losing their absolute shit for 7 hours. Conventional wisdom held that this would be Gordon's one and only moment this contest, as Vincent \> Scorpion in round 2 looked like the most predictable result ever. Yeah if you thought people lost their minds in this match, just wait. ## Stats and Analysis - Scorpion underperformed by **-4.95%**, the **\#15** most disappointing performance of 2008 What a difference a year makes, huh? Last year the big debate would've been between Balthier and Scorpion for first, with a few gung-ho Valvers chiming in for some Gordon Freeman upsets. Well, one Balthier bomb and Scorpion impressing later, and we end up with an easy Scorpion \> Gordon pick, with pretty much zero chance of an upset on any side of the table. Well, it didn't really end up that way. Gordon jumped out with his usual awesome board vote (seriously, we're so used to voting for the lovable loser we've forgotten how not to)... but he wasn't losing it. An update later Scorpion cut him, and the next he was ahead by 1 vote, and it looked like gravity was taking over despite the board's love of Mr. Freeman. Then Gordon jumped out to an 84 vote lead, and all hell broke loose. Somehow, some way, Gordon, who had lost as the favorite to DUKE NUKEM and nearly lost to pre-Brawl IKE, was giving Scorpion the fight of his life. For one glorious night vote Gordon was able to nurse a small lead until the day vote took hold... at which point he ended up losing by barely over 2000 votes. The universe saved for the moment (seriously every time Gordon comes in first it's destroyed and a new one is created, ask TRE), the inevitable showdown for next round looked ROUGH for Scorpion, especially if the showdown went down anything like Duke/Gordon II last year. Plus, there was Falco to think about in that whole mess. Suddenly Vincent/Falco/Scorpion/Gordon was one of the big matches of next round. In this midst of this awesome whirlwind were Balthier and Big Daddy's performances. For the former, you really had to give it to Balthier for at least minimally exceeding expectations, although he's got a long way to go before he's even talked about in the same breath as the Zidanes of the world. And Big Daddy did well enough for me to conclude that Gordon probably wins this match outright if he's not here. C'mon Orange Box/Bioshock SFF you know you want some !! ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Today we should be in for another good one. Three characters that are at least somewhat comparable in strength plus a newcomer who should have a pretty wide range. Let's jump right into it! Last Known Values - Scorpion - 26.73% (2007) - Gordon - 19.89% (2007) - Balthier - 17.09% (2007) - Big Daddy - new I'd never bought into Mortal Kombat too much in these Contests, but between that upset of Master Chief and how good both Subby and Scorp looked last season, they've made a believer. Actually pretty much everything connected with fighting games had solid showings in '07, and I don't see any reason for that to change this time around, so even though I don't think he's going to run away with this group as easily as some are predicting, I still can't see him being challenged for the win. Big Daddy is one of our more exciting entrants IMO. Between the critical acclaim, Game of the Year awards, and the very positive reviews I've heard from most gamers, I'd have to imagine that Bioshock is going to have a strong core of support backing it all the way, much like GlaDOS did. Unlike GlaDOS, though, the big poppa ought to have considerable promise as a "joke character" on top of that. By joke I mean, his name is funny enough in itself, and then you look and its a giant mech kind of thing, whoa! Should have some decent casual appeal for those voters who don't feel strongly about any of the other choices (and considering Balthier and Gordon's past history, that could be quite a few!). I'm not going to do anything crazy and pick him for second outright, but heck, we've seen stranger things happen already this Contest. Balthier was a flop in '07, I don't think anyone really denies that. He was supposed to be the next Auron, and instead looked like the next... uh, Cecil or something. And that was when FF12 was at its peak! Even so, I think he's going to have something of a chance here. Zack and Zidane have already impressed, and also, couldn't Daddy and Freeman share something of a fanbase? Moody, atmospheric, really good FPSes that are available on both the PC and the 360... I wouldn't call a huge overlap likely, but again, we've seen weirder things happen, and Gordon certainly has a history of allowing the slightest bumps in the road to throw him off course. Overall though, between the success of Portal and TF2 and the Orange Box helping HL2 reach something of a new audience, GF ought to have enough in the tank to pull this one out. So why can't I get rid of this nagging doubt? Alright, but what happens when you translate those thoughts into numbers? With a little potting and stirring, THIS happens! - Scorpion - 35.32% - Gordon Freeman - 26.15% - Balthier Bunansa - 22.04% - Big Daddy - 16.49% Gosh, do I ever feel nervous about those numbers though... Ngamer Says: **Scorpion \> Gordon** ### Next Day Review Man, GlaDOS alone was enough to get me nervous about WCC crashing the party... now we see that the Orange Box has turned even Gordon Freeman into a stud overnight? DK and Tidus better bring their A games if they want to advance out of that one! Which could be trouble, as I'm not sure either of them have A games anymore. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3255&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=12) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Amaterasu vs Crono vs Frank West vs Kaim Argonar 2008 _source: Amaterasu vs Crono vs Frank West vs Kaim Argonar 2008 (revid 85779)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 4 - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 48.95% Amaterasu - 23.72% Frank West - 14.86% Kaim Argonar - 12.61% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Crono first place (2pts) - 78.50% Crono second place (1pt) - 13.09% Amaterasu second place (2pts) - 33.86% Amaterasu first place (1pt) - 11.97% - **Advancing Prediction:** Crono - 91.59% (39,295) Amaterasu - 45.83% (19,662) Another round 1 match, another predictable result. The Noble Nine came into this contest ready to take care of business and avenge the joke run of last year (even with 2008 being the most brazen root-for-the-joke contest we've ever had), and take care of business they did. When almost 100% of gurus predict a fourway and it goes to plan, you can just go to sleep that day. Casuals thought Amaterasu might lose for whatever reason, but ever contest you get a bunch of matches where the board embarrasses the casuals. This was one of those matches, though every year all you hear about are the times when casuals get one over on us. It happens. If you look at Amaterasu's contest history, even to the time I'm actually writing this (2020), she has never lost in round one. This is pretty impressive given she's the definition of middle of the road. Lastly, speaking of Kaim, I actually have The Lost Odyssey sitting around somewhere. I should really get around to playing it one of these days. Is it any good? ## Stats and Analysis - Kaim underperformed by **-4.56%**, the **\#20** most disappointing performance of 2008 - Amaterasu advancing was the **\#8** most surprising result of Round 1 Ah, Division 4. Home of the Noble Niner who broke the (four-way) Noble Nine, a rat, and a Block that threatened to doom us all. For the board, it - pretty much - all came down to Round 2, where the combined force of Crono and Ryu would steamroll the fourth piece of fodder, and ultimately knock L-Block out before it started down its path of destruction again. So even though this match was pretty much set for Crono \> Amaterasu - some restrospectively HILARIOUS Kaim hyping courtesy of Lopen aside - it was important in terms of garnering information on what would be necessary to eliminate the Block. Well, two things happened. The first was good - Crono was doing even better than most expected, and even managed not to tank his day vote too badly. The second, however, was a bit more foreboding. Amaterasu was not only stunning us AGAIN with her nonsensical strength - seriously, she wasn't even in the running for beating Little Mac and a Mii, and I guarantee you Frank West and Kaim would have been favored over her last year - but she was breaking 35% on Crono. Characters that have failed to do that over the history of the contest include Captain Falcon, Tommy Vercetti, and Dante. That was ridiculous no matter how much one might think Crono has fallen, and considering his overall performance on this pack there was only so far you could take it. Especially considering how the obvious winners had underperformed so far. Which begged the question - how were Crono and Ryu going to get enough combined percentage to kill L when Ammy was easily going to take up 15%+ of the vote? Exactly. Things looked bleak for the anti-L bandwagon. And we hadn't even seen it in a match yet. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Here's another of those where neither first or second place should be in contention at any point, but which isn't a borefest because there are still some things we ought to be able to take away from the result. The main thing we'll be doing, I'm almost sure, is getting that Crono \> Vincent hype train a'rollin! I don't care what anything else says: there was no excuse for Vincent to allow Falco to stick that close to him, and unless Crono likewise drops the ball in this one, I'm going to have to give serious considering to picking against my bracket when that match comes up. Now, what kind of strength gaps are we looking at? Last Known Value - Crono - 34.61% (2007) - Ammy - 19.81% (2007) - Frank - 11.74% (2007) - Kaim - new Pretty big ones! Ammy impressed us several times in '07, but even so, she shouldn't be TOO far above whatever fodder line you want to set up. She might be looking at something of a boost for this season thanks to Okami's pretty successful remake for the Wii a few months back, but it shouldn't matter too much either way in this one thanks to the enormous cushions she's got above and below her. As for Crono, his performance here is certainly what everyone will be keeping an eye on, and with good reason. Frog impressed a couple days back, but was that because of legitimate CT:DS excitement? If so, could that be enough to save Magus in his upcoming battle with the Sandman? Hopefully Crono puts on a show for us tonight to give us another talking point in that debate. Frank West last year was just... wow. Back before we knew there was going to be 4-way matches, I had made Frank my pick for character most likely to come in last in the final x-stats, since I assumed we'd only be seeing 64 characters. Well he lived up to the billing, that's for sure! A percentage that pathetic, considering he was placed in the most pathetic 4-pack in history, leaves little doubt about his status as complete jobber. Fortunately that keeps things interesting, because now Kaim should have a real shot at beating somebody! I'm by no means a believer in Lost Odyssey, but despite the less than stellar sales, characters from 360 games have been looking pretty decent this season for whatever reason. Certainly it SEEMS like a game that ought to have a fanbase at this site- I mean the words "Final Fantasy" are right there on the box! Hmm... hard to say how those bottom two will place, but in any case I'm expecting a real powerhouse showing from Crono in this one, something to send a notice that he won't be the one letting the Noble Nine down anytime soon. With that in mind and some weird numbers in the pot, we can heat for 10 minutes and get: - Crono - 46.30% - Amaterasu - 26.44% - Kaim Argonar - 13.83% - Frank West - 13.43% Go go Crono! Ngamer Says: **Crono \> Ammy** ### Next Day Review Not much to say! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3256&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=13) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## L-Block vs Meta Knight vs Ryu (Street Fighter) vs The Dog 2008 _source: L-Block vs Meta Knight vs Ryu (Street Fighter) vs The Dog 2008 (revid 85786)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 4 - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 34.97% L-Block - 27.91% Meta Knight - 24.42% The Dog - 12.74% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** L-Block first place (2pts) - 49.02% L-Block second place (1pt) - 17.02% Ryu second place (2pts) - 43.81% Ryu first place (1pt) - 30.99% - **Advancing Prediction:** L-Block - 66.04% (28,333) Ryu - 74.80% (32,091) If you look in the wayback machine, you'll think most people wanted L-Block to come out in 2008 and get destroyed. This is simply not the case. It was a mixed reception, with a lot of people fully on the joke train that year. A lot of people were rooting against the repeat, but a lot of others either wouldn't have minded a repeat or were only rooting against the block because they wanted something else -- the Duck Hunt dog, the Weighted Companion Cube, the Sandbag from Smash Bros, CATS, Hogger, your sister's ass, the pony express, et al -- to take the bandwagon title. This was a heavily debated match pre-contest, with almost all of the arguing revolving around the defending champ. It was early in joke trend world, but Board 8 was wise to it early. We all knew that L-Block would fall off a bit (though nothing like what we'd see in the future with Draven), plus this poll also featured another joke all-star with the Duck Hunt dog. So L-Block had two huge things working against it; the novelty wearing off, and a basset hound potentially syphoning off a bunch of votes right in the first match. Jokes winning require the bandwagon effect, and for those rooting against L-Block, the potential existed for him to lose early in this contest. The issue, of course, was whether or not Ryu and Meta Knight were tough enough to pull it off. As someone who both picked against L-Block and would have loved to see him win the contest again, I can explain the logic here well enough. I thought L-Block would have the typical joke trend fallout the following year, and didn't think there was a chance he'd come back with any strength. Ryu has a very consistent contest guy over the years, which is why we all picked him to get first place. The wild card was Meta Knight. Kirby games have never been strong on here, but they also aren't why Kirby himself has contest strength. You can thank character design and Smash Bros for that, which thanks to BrawlFEAR Meta Knight had in spades. He actually made the contest in 2007 pre-Brawl, and though he finished a distant second, he did advance into round 2. With Brawl at his back, with L-Block anti-bandwagon at his back, with the Nova Scotia bloodhound dalmation beagle basset duck tolling short haired pointer retriever stealing joke votes, I truly thought we would see Ryu \> Meta Knight \> L-Block (close third place) \> goodest boy. Yeah we screwed that one up pretty bad, folks. In fairness, most people thought this was going to be Ryu \> L-Block, but even those folks dropped the ball. That's because L-Block, at least early on in this contest, showed no signs whatsoever of slowing down from its 2007 pace. When this poll started, Ryu and L-Block not only left Meta Knight and the dog in the dust, but L-Block showed off its joke trends all over again. It dominated the early voting of this poll even in the face of an anti-bandwagon, and this led to a lot of chicken little junk all over Board 8. There's nothing we can do, L-Block is going to steamroll all over again, and blah blah blah. You guys know I love my rallies and joke trends, so I was loving every second of the early going. Seeing L-Block going nuts for the second year in a row... that. That puts a smile on my face. It sucked seeing Meta Knight and one good boy getting sacrificed for it, but it was a small price to pay for salvation. It looked early on as if we would get a simple L-Block \> Ryu result, but then joke trends took over and L-Block started falling off. We ended up having a very good fight for first place here that would have been the stuff of legends were it an actual 1v1 match in a legitimately formatted contest. Can you imagine if L-Block was defending its title in a 1v1 match and Ryu gave it the duel we saw here? This is why I don't like 4way formats. We had this epic fight for first, and it meant dick. L-Block and Ryu would both advance anyway, so outside of point order and bragging rights, the actual result meant nothing. It's why it took me 12 years to bother writing this, because when epic fights for second place mean more than epic fights for first, your format sucks. That said, this was a hell of a match to watch, and the explosion on the forums was amazing. There was so much whining about L-Block, and it was great. As for the match, Ryu chopped off a 550 vote lead overnight, and then did his best impersonation of rubberband AI for 16 hours. You know how when you're playing Mario Kart or Madden and the AI gets more difficult as you get more ahead of it? That was Ryu in this match. The more L-Block pulled ahead, the tougher Ryu got. But then he would catch up, and just.... die. Then L-Block would pull ahead and it would start all over again. He came back from a 550 vote deficit overnight, died, and fell behind by 620. Then the ASV hit, Ryu won it, he came back, died again, and fell behind by 450. Ryu started coming back again when the second night vote hit, but then the poll ended. If this format wasn't garbage, we'd be talking about a great duel, L-Block outlasting Ryu, and what L-Block's odds were against Crono in round 2. As-is, L-Block and Ryu basically touched gloves at match's end with a gentlemen's agreement to see each other again soon. I hate it. Shadow vs Zidane and Isaac vs Lucario for distant second place should not mean more than the match we just watched. It just shouldn't, and I feel like Allen realized this after the 2009 games contest. It's just not the same as the finality of one and done. But more on that when we conclude all this up. Meta Knight basically crapped the bed here, though one wonders if the dog being here actually hurt Meta Knight as much as it did L-Block, the latter of which got first place even with some factors working against him. Focus quickly turned to round 2, where we would see Crono, Amaterasu, L-Block, and Ryu all in a poll together. For those rooting against the block to repeat, they soon realized that L-Block beat Ryu with a bunch of albatrosses hanging on him. In round 2, there would be nothing to slow him down, and it led to more arguing on the board about whether or not L-Block style contestants were good for contests. People were extrapolating this huge path forward and assuming L-Block would win again, and people were also going nuts extrapolating these crazy paths for characters not yet seen in polls. And Pikachu was just sitting there this whole time like ## Stats and Analysis - L-Block overperformed by **+3.90%**, the **\#24**most impressive performance of 2008 For the OTHER half of the board, if L-Block wasn't going to be done in Round 2, it would fall a round earlier. Ryu was presumably safe in first, so it was down to the posterboy for Brawl's unbalanced gameplay, Meta Knight, to do it. And in theory, it made sense - Meta Knight beat Peach when he was only a trailer, he was THE most overused character in Brawl, and the piece of fodder in this match - The Dog - was going to put a serious hurt on L, allowing Meta Knight to slip through and slay the contest champ. Yeah, right. This theory is probably the reason why Ryu lost this match. One day after Amaterasu lifted her hind leg and pissed all over the dreams of Board 8, the Block itself came down the screen and smashed the remains into oblivion. The match itself started ambiguously, but hopefully - L-Block clearly wasn't the same entity that had annihilated Link, Cloud, and Snake last year, it wasn't hitting those numbers against Ryu, Meta Knight, and The Dog. Meta Knight had a very strong opening vote, and if L's trends from last year held, we could see the miracle not never happen, right? Well, there was a problem. L's trends DIDN'T follow last year's. In fact, even though the first hour was still his best hour, he stayed consistent pretty much all day. And that, combined with Meta's collapse after the first update (which implied he stole Ryu's board vote), and Ryu being a day chump... yeah, you see where I'm going with this. Ryu's morning vote and ASV would be the death of him, as they have in so many years past, while L Block barely seemed phased by either. And that's what was so scary. It is impossible to overstate this - L was looking, for all intents and purposes, legit this year. And this was all with The Dog presumably leeching its support, a bandwagon yet to come, an Ammy that refused to fold... and really, how was Ryu supposed to beat L next round when he couldn't do it in THIS round? With that, and looking at the competition and SFF in future rounds, L making the finals seemed a virtual lock. Even the staunchest of holdouts were beginning to anoint it the repeat champ (with all the whining that goes with that). All we had to do was see how the specifics played out. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction So it begins... the great battle of our time. For the first time in history, we can honestly say that the most important match of the Contest takes place tomorrow... in the first round. What the wha? Let's jump right in! Last Known Values - L - 64.83% (2007) - Ryu - 28.05% (2007) - Meta Knight - 22.80% (2007) - The Dog - new The great battle is, in this case, BRAWLFEAR vs JOKEFEAR. Meta Knight's got alot going for him in this one- he was dismissed as "guy from a trailer" last season and some B8ers picked him to not only finish behind Peach, but behind CATS as well. (CATS!) Instead he proved that he's got a loyal Kirby following that stuck behind him and pushed him on to nice showings, even when SSB competition arrived in the form of Fox. He's still got that loyal Kirby backing, he's still got his very appealing character design, and now he's actually BEEN IN SSB as well. Where, just by the by, he's both a casual favorite and the undisputed \#1 ranked choice on the pro-level tiers. Whoa! What could stand in the way of so many strong positive points? Well, his opponent, uh... beat Link last year. Pretty easily. Does that count for anything? The crazy thing is, maybe it doesn't! Even though L ended the season as arguably the biggest powerhouse we've ever seen, he STARTED it not all that far above the fodder line, and had to rely on extremely fortunate bracket placement in order to survive in both round one and round two. Will the L-Block train need a few rounds to gain steam in '08? Will it even gain steam at all, or will the internet at large agree that the joke has grown stale and its time to move on? So many questions regarding JOKEFEAR, with so few answers to this point in the Contest... lucky for us those answers will be arriving in only a couple hours now. Seems like an epically close battle to this point- but what's this? It appears that SB has introduced a new twist that's going to tip the scales! In a brilliant move on his part, SB has decided to throw a major monkey wrench into L's gears right from the outset: not only are Ryu and Meta strong in their own right, and independent of each other so that both should perform at peak strength, L is also being challenged by a little something called Joke LFF! Could The Dog be L's perfect poison? I contend that it's more likely than you might think. He's an old school character that any gamer from the NES era should recognize, but he's also totally ridiculous and will look look just as out of place in the selection block as any other joke from this season. Plus, he got the perfect match pic! Let's not forget that the last time voters were offered a joke vote alternative to L-Block they jumped ship in droves by \[\| rallying ?-Block to a very easy victory over the '07 champ\], and this on the day when his strength should have been at its all-time height. In summation, Ryu is great in this format and should perform like a champ tomorrow, Meta Knight is very good in this format and should perform well also, and even though L-Block outdid Kirby, there will be no Donkey Kong tomorrow to hold MK back- instead, Blocky's the one who will have to deal with LFF, and The Dog will be the key to his defeat. (Now, how much of that writeup was honest reasoning versus wishful thinking? You decide!) When we take all of that wall of text into consideration, convert it into numbers, and cook it up in the big ol' pot, we come out with - Ryu (Street Fighter) - 34.60% - Meta Knight - 26.85% - L-Block - 26.75% - The Dog - 11.80% Death to the Block, you say? Why that sounds... delicious! Ngamer Says: **Ryu \> Meta Knight** ### Next Day Review Darn you Bloooock! But let me clear up something from yesterday before we begin: I don't hate joke characters. Really, I don't. Block and the Dog turned this into an exciting match, WCC forcing either Tidus or DK to choke away R2 will be pretty funny, Hogger knocking out Laharl and Ramza will be worth a laugh, and if the Sandman can actually rise up and punch Magus out of the tourney it will be hilariously embarrassing. My problem is that thanks to the nature of the format, these jokes AREN'T jokes anymore- instead of being worth some giggles and small R1 excitement, 4 ways only make them more dangerous as the competition around them becomes more legitimate. And that's just silly. Examples: that great Vincent vs Crono rematch everyone's been looking forward to seeing? Sorry, now its going to be a meaningless fight for third. That epic duel for a spot in the Final between Vincent and Mario? (Where Mario is weakened enough by Link and Samus to be in serious danger.) Yeah, that's been canceled and replaced by an obvious Link/L-Block advancement. Past the first round these jokes don't make the tournament more fun, they just turn once-interesting matches into clear results thanks to their dull static joke strength. And that's why we need to return to 1v1s in 2009. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3257&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=14) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Alucard vs Captain Falcon vs Diddy Kong vs Kratos Aurion 2008 _source: Alucard vs Captain Falcon vs Diddy Kong vs Kratos Aurion 2008 (revid 88459)_ ## Results **Round One** `Thursday, October 2nd, 2008` ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 4 - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard - 33.77% Diddy Kong - 23.69% Captain Falcon - 21.76% Kratos Aurion - 20.71% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Alucard first place (2pts) - 41.12% Alucard second place (1pt) - 17.43% Falcon second place (2pts) - 26.54% Falcon first place (1pt) - 35.56% - **Advancing Prediction:** Alucard - 58.55% (25,120) Falcon - 62.10% (26,643) After a long run of predictable necessities, we were given our second surprise match in a row. This didn't have the aura of an L-Block match, but it was a surprise nonetheless. Alucard, Falcon, and Kratos were all known commodities coming in, and because people were wise to LFF this year, Alucard was the clear and obvious favorite to finish in first place. Falcon and Diddy were guaranteed to steal each other's votes and prop Alucard up; we all knew that already. What we didn't know was who would finish in second place. Captain Falcon had been in two contests, and in both he got utterly embarrassed. Losing to Crono in a blowout will happen, but that 2007 result is so bad. In an all-Nintendo poll, this dude finished in third place behind Wario: Wario! Who actually likes Wario unironically? So there was that with Falcon. It was very hard to make an honest case for him to win second place here, because just one year ago we saw him lose in a similar spot. Kratos had made one contest prior to this one, and this was the result: Doesn't exactly fill you with determination to pick him, does it? That, and Fails of gets nominated for every contest and pisses down its leg in every contest. A ton of people thought Falcon and Diddy were collectively weak enough to not finish in second place while stealing enough votes from each other to allow Kratos to squirt by into second place. Yes, people in 2008 had faith in Fails of finishing ahead of Nintendo. This is a real thing. It actually happened. The overall consensus ended up being Alucard \> Diddy Kong, but it was not a confident backing of Diddy at all. It's almost like he was the choice by default. If you check the guru, oracle, and overall prediction percentage of the time, there was not a lot of faith in the little guy winning second place here, but the logic in him being the favorite was sound. Fails of had never proven to be anything but garbage. Captain Falcon had never proven to be anything but garbage. Diddy Kong had BrawlFEAR, The Hierarchy™, and the given fact of Donkey Kong Country being more popular than F-Zero all on his side. Captain Falcon had been in Smash since 1999 and never amounted to much in contests, but Diddy making a hyped Brawl debut had to be worth a lot.... right? When this match started, this was Captain Falcon: When this poll started, Captain Falcon didn't just come out and legitimately end Diddy Kong's whole career -- Diddy got his ass kicked in this poll and hasn't made a contest since -- he was winning the entire poll outright. To this day a lot of people are confused how this happened, but the answer is simple. Rally spillover. Weird things happen after L-Block/Draven/Undertale/etc type matches. This was no exception, as both sides of the L-Block crowd backed Falcon with the board vote. This gave him a lead over Alucard for 15 minutes before things settled down to a simple Alucard \> Falcon finish, and it stands to reason Falcon might have won this poll if it was a 1v1 match. For those playing the home game, the thought of Alucard losing to Captain Falcon 1v1 in 2008, or frankly in any other contest after 2002, was preposterous. But it was very likely would have happened if this was a 1v1 contest and this match happened directly after a Ryu/L-Block 1v1 match. Can you see why I hate this format yet? It robs us of so much. By the way, as one of the people who called this match, my logic was simple. Donkey Kong is a historic choke artist. Why would the less popular Diddy be any different, especially in the face of a character that Smash fans think of in much higher esteem? I know Smash fans really well; they hated Diddy Kong right from the jump and always had a healthy respect for Captain Falcon, plus Falcon has the cool factor. You can't say I didn't warn you, because I legitimately saw this coming. Us Smash fans are really, really picky like that. ## Stats and Analysis - Captain Falcon overperformed by **+6.63%**, the **\#6** most impressive performance of 2008 - Diddy Kong underperformed by **-4.77%**, the **\#17** most disappointing performance of 2008 Well, \*this\* was certainly an interesting little match. From the beginning, this was a debate between two to three characters. Alucard and Diddy Kong were the probable finishers, just with the order between the two debated. While Diddy was thought to be stronger than the constantly deteriorating 'card straight up, he had a weight in Falcon bringing him down. There was also talk of Kratos Aurion sneaking in ahead of Diddy, and while that conclusion would come to be somewhat vindicated by the end of this match, it certainly wasn't in any way that would vindicate his supporters. In the end, one part of the match played out to form - Alucard advanced easily. But on the other side of the spectrum was Diddy Kong - and he was getting his monkey ass smoked by Captain Falcon. Captain Falcon? The same Falcon who has nothing to his name outside of SSB except F-Zero, of which I'm pretty sure only transience and I have played and ONLY I like him from? Against the same Diddy who, aside from Brawl, has the monster hit DKC games to his name as well as a wealth of other AAA titles? Hell DIDDY KONG RACING is probably more popular than F-Zero here, so what happened? Call it Brawl seniority or Diddy Kong simply taking after his elder simian's penchant for choking, but by the end of this match Falcon had a good argument for beating Alucard straight up. He didn't just beat Diddy, he SFFed him down to Kratos Aurion's level (and thankfully for him, everyone was so preoccupied with Diddy sucking they barely noticed his flop). The pattern continued - if the only SSB game you had to your name was Brawl, you did horrifically. Suddenly Ike fans were really scared of a Blizzard entity waiting in the wings next match. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Let's thankfully move on to a non-joke match, shall we? Starting with what we saw out of these folks last time around... Last Known Values - Alucard - 21.09% (2007) - Kratos A - 18.02% (2007) - Diddy - new - Falcon - 15.25% (2007) This is one of the most unique setups we've ever witnessed, really. You've got Alucard, who has clearly taken a couple steps back since his 2003 glory days and is now only a little ways over the fodder line, by all indications. Then there's Kratos A, who was possibly hurt somewhat by sharing the GameCube with Midna; account for that and he's probably right there at the fodder line. And of course Falcon, who got triply held back by Fox/Wario/Banjo, and is probably right there are the fodder line otherwise (as he was in '06). And the newcomer is none other than Diddy, who by all accounts ought to be a little bit under DK in strength and... whoa, that'd leave him just a little over the fodder line as well! What to do when all combatants are right next to each other in strength? Well you account for LFF of course! Diddy was planning to pack some newfound punch in '08 thanks to Brawl, but how much will that series be able to help him when three-time series vet Falcon is going to be right there to scoop up much of the support? On the other hand the Capn't has already proven he's near the bottom of the Nintendo food chain- could Diddy really be on a lower rung? The most likely result would seem to be that neither completely ruins the other, but both do enough damage to drop them to the bottom of this pack. That leaves us with Alucard- fortunately, Ally's already been in a similar position, and he came through with flying colors! I'm referring of course to the last time we saw a R1 fourpack between seemingly equal opponents, where Alucard essentially tied Liquid Snake and both of them beat out Ness handily, even though he had come in with the advantage of being the only Nintendo character in the mix. Tonight there will be no other PSX-era challenger to limit his potential, so I'd be shocked to see Alucard finish anywhere but first. The bad news is, this forces me to do something I'd promised myself never to attempt again... I'm putting faith in Tales! Hate to, but Kratos Aurion is clearly the "cream" of the crop when it comes to that series, and with Diddy probably not being able to Ulti-blow-him-out even 1v1, the collateral damage from Captain Falcon ought to be just enough to allow KA to squeak by. That makes plenty of sense... so why do I feel so awful about picking it? Don't know, but better turn those thoughts to numbers before I lose my nerve! Potted and stirred and: - Alucard - 31.85% - Kratos Aurion - 24.21% - Diddy Kong - 23.79% - Captain Falcon - 20.16% I sure hope an outright Crew victory is part of The Plan- I could really use it at this point. Ngamer Says: **Alucard \> Kratos Aurion** ### Next Day Review So anyways I was thinking about that absolutely absurd start for Falcon, and wondering when we'd ever seen something like it before. And then it hit me- Soul Calibur/Kingdom Hearts! KH was a Square RPG during the height of Square's dominance on the site that had sold 10 million copies and dominated the FAQ listings most of the year- we were expecting it to win with about 65% of the vote. Yet the poll came up and, weird, SC was hanging in there... then a minute later and SC was somehow KILLING! Now the connection here is of course that SC/KH kicked off at the conclusion of StarCraft vs Halo, arguably the most heavily rallied matchup of all time to that point, and one that came down to the final minutes. Much like StarCraft and Halo fans not caring a bit about KH, why would the L-Blockers being rallied to hold back Ryu's powerful second night vote care about Alucard? They wouldn't, and between Falcon dominating that match pic, being a fan favorite in both SSB and Melee, and having a small meme of his own regarding his Falcon PAAAUNCH, now his crazy start makes alot more sense. (Unfortunately there's another character with a weak ASV and a powerful second night vote that figures to be cut out at the knees by Block rallying- guy by the name of Crono. How gross is it that only WCC or Sandbag have any chance of causing a Block loss from here out?) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3258&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=15) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Arthas Menethil vs Ike vs Pikachu vs Spy 2008 _source: Arthas Menethil vs Ike vs Pikachu vs Spy 2008 (revid 85795)_ ## Results **Round One** `Friday, October 3rd, 2008` ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 4 - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 3rd, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pikachu - 35.04% Arthas Menethil - 26.00% Ike - 25.52% Spy - 13.22% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Pikachu first place (2pts) - 50.76% Pikachu second place (1pt) - 34.36% Arthas second place (2pts) - 19.13% Arthas first place (1pt) - 18.73% - **Advancing Prediction:** Pikachu - 85.12% (36,519) Arthas - 37.86% (16,243) In retrospect, the debate around this match should not have been much of a debate at all. Ike lost to Duke Nukem and Gordon Freeman, while Arthas's 2007 number was clearly undervalued from having to split time with Diablo. Pair that up with Ike having to split votes with Pikachu this year, and it's a wonder anyone picked Ike for second place. That, and Ike is a choke artist on par with Donkey Kong in these contests, but he doesn't have a bunch of legendary meltdowns and blown leads so he isn't thought of the same way. And just look at the match picture. Other than Pikachu sticking out like Nicki Manaj's ass implants, The Lich King is one of the coolest character designs out there. I loathe Blizzard with every fiber of my soul and even \*I\* like Arthas. That tells you everything you need to know. When the poll started, Board 8 put their bracket vote support behind Ike. Pikachu didn't need it, Board 8 loves them some Fire Emblem, and they knew Ike needed the help. It lasted all of 30 minutes. Arthas started making headway before the Nintendo Power Hour was finished, and by the time the night rolled on this match was completely over. Pikachu easily took first place, and Arthas took second place so thoroughly that he actually gave Pikachu a small scare overnight when he stalled the little rat. Yes it was due to Nintendo votes being split, but still. It was an impressive showing by Arthas. When the morning rolled around and THE KIDDIES WOKE UP (always a fun thing to mention whenever Pokemon is involved), Pikachu and Arthas both exploded. Pikachu going up had a direct correlation with Ike dropping like a rock, and that was that. Match over. Ike's day vote has always been pathetic, and this match is one of many you can point to to prove it. But then the after school vote hit and we saw one of the funniest failed comeback attempts we've ever had. At his peak, Arthas led Ike by 2500 votes. Ike won the ASV so badly that he would end up losing by only 1000. Ike even cut Pikachu a few times, which is hilarious to think about in retrospect, especially given it meant nothing. Where was all this support before school let out, Ike fans? Maybe Ike's contest history wouldn't be such trash if you all weren't such flakes. It's a cool little event to look back on, but it doesn't mean much and it certainly doesn't take away from Ike's contest history as a choke artist. And for those paying attention so far, BrawlFEAR looked to be a bit overrated so far in this contest. Obviously we know this wasn't actually the case thanks to Solid Snake, but for first party Nintendo characters the case could definitely be made that Brawl was not the factor it should have been. More on that when we actually get to Snake's run. ## Stats and Analysis - Arthas advancing was the **\#3** most surprising result of Round 1 I encourage everyone to go look at the poll update graph if you haven't already. Ike's ASV is truly hilarious. Anyway, this match came down to two characters - Arthas and Ike. Spy was another random piece of fodder there solely to display how bad SBallin' was at bracket-making, while Pikachu, thanks to his ridiculous run last year, was an easy favorite for first. Arthas, for his part, was back after a fantastic showing where he not only prevented Diablo from beating KOS-MOS, but BEAT Diablo outright and would have likely advanced had it not been for Diablo weighing HIM down. Ike, now with a RELEASED SSB game to his name, also had high hopes, though they had been tempered and then some by the flopping of his kindred up to this point. Ike was presumably stronger than Arthas, but he had a weight in Pikachu dragging him down while Arthas was easily the most independent contender in the match. Hmm, this sounds familiar... Well, this match stayed more to form than the last - and after Ike's rush of bracket voting, Arthas quickly took control and rode himself through the night to an insurmountable lead. And by "insurmountable", I mean "cutting updates constantly on Pikachu until morning" insurmountable. Ike made some noise with the morning vote, but Arthas took control with the during school vote and built himself up a lead of nearly 2500 votes. From there, the match was all Ike's to shine - and boy, if he hadn't sucked SO much during the night we would've really had a match on our hands. By the end of the day Arthas' lead was barely over a thousand, and he had pretty much pushed himself out of contention for next round unless Alucard and Falcon turned out to be MUCH weaker than expected. Despite that, he had gotten to shine, Ike did what he could in a match where a big rat-shaped albatross was around his neck all day, and Spy uh produced fodder for interesting topics yeah. The only real disappointment, I think, was Pikachu - being unable to get 55% on Ike despite having reason to SFF him on two platforms didn't bode well for the rat, and Alucard \> Pikachu looked like a sexy upset. Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure I'd take Ike \> Pikachu 1v1. Where do you think those Arthas and Spy votes go, after all? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction We've got another potentially super-wacky result ahead of us today! Let's hop right in. Last Known Values - Pikachu - 24.59% (2007) - Arthas - 16.78% (2007) - Ike - 19.51% (2007) - Spy - new You might as well throw that Arthas value right out the window. If you don't think that he and Diablo flat out devastated each other, and that left alone either would have crushed KOS-MOS with ease, then I'm afraid we can no longer be friends. The victory over Diablo makes it clear that the guy has a dedicated WC3 fanbase, and I see no reason for them to abandon him here. Then you add to that his being the face of the game receiving the biggest media blitz since Halo 3, AND drawing the perfect box art pic from that game for this poll, and its easy to see why I was willing to go out on a limb and make him my "upset special" pick for second place in this one. ...except as time went on Ike kept losing more and more support, until my upset pick had become the Guru consensus by the time brackets locked! What happened? Well I think that in addition to realizing how solid Arthas had performed in '07 (given the circumstances), people also started to realize what a grim situation Ike was looking at here in terms of LFF. Between Mudkip and Pikachu and Mewtwo, 2007 made it pretty evident that well-loved Pokemon from the R/B/Y and G/S/C era can hang in there with anyone in this format, even Nintendo heavy hitters like Ganon and Luigi and Bowser. And sure Ike is a Brawl casual favorite, but heck, so is Pikachu, and the guy ALSO held that title in almost undisputed fashion in both SSB and Melee. How could poor Ike be expected to perform much above the fodder line in the face of all that? I don't think he should be, and its unfortunate that what will end up being credited as 'Brawl Newcomer Weakness' will actually be, at least in this case, just a matter of Pikachu pulling from too many fanbases to be held back in this format. As for Spy, well, Portal has already looked solid and Half-Life has already looked quite respectable itself, so I don't see why TF2 wouldn't continue the trend tomorrow. Picking him to beat an LFF weakened Ike is pushing it IMO, especially when I don't think Spy is going to perform at the level of his more iconic co-TF2er the Heavy, but I wouldn't be shocked if he hung around that level before the SSB morning vote kicked in. In summation, I felt fairly confident about Arthas over Ike earlier today. After seeing this match pic, I'm upgrading that to "very confident." Now the fun will be in seeing where this wildcard named Arthas ends up- will the WoW regions rally him all the way past Pika to set him up beautifully for a Round Three appearance? I wouldn't count it out! After converting those thoughts to numbers, my pot has been stirred and it produced the following numbers: - Pikachu - 33.99% - Arthas Menethil - 28.14% - Ike - 23.17% - Spy - 14.69% Those look so good that I'm drooling! Ngamer Says: **Pikachu \> Arthas** ### Next Day Review After a stretch of bad results there, I'd forgotten how good it feels to go out on a limb and be right for a change. I gave Ike plenty of credit but still expected Arthas to have a little too much in the tank in terms of WotLK hype and rally power to fall back on if need be, and that was correct- whoo! (What's that you say? Arthas wasn't even the risky pick there? Hey, stop killing my buzz!) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3259&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=16) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Donkey Kong vs Miles "Tails" Prower vs Tidus vs Weighted Companion Cube 2008 _source: Donkey Kong vs Miles 'Tails' Prower vs Tidus vs Weighted Companion Cube 2008 (revid 85796)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, October 4th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 5 - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 4th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tidus - 30.16% Donkey Kong - 27.36% Weighted Companion Cube - 23.75% Tails - 18.74% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cube first place (2pts) - 18.67% Cube second place (1pt) - 19.37% Tidus second place (2pts) - 31.81% Tidus first place (1pt) - 24.52% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cube - 38.04% (16,320) Tidus - 56.33% (24,167) Pre-contest, the big debate surrounding this match was Tidus vs Donkey Kong. Neither character had been lighting the world on fire in recent contests, and some of their collective performances were outright embarrassing even in wins. Here are some of the low lights: The 2007 performances were especially egregious, but if you were a fan of the LOL X-Stats method, Tidus was always ahead of Donkey Kong in the stats. Conventional wisdom held that this would remain the case in 2008, and Tidus \> Donkey Kong was the pretty overwhelming consensus pick. Oddly enough, these two would eventually have a 1v1 match in 2018, and all of the same logic that made Tidus the overwhelming favorite in 2008 was used there as well. LOL, X-STATS. Ahem. As for the 2008 match, this was a case where people didn't exactly care about their brackets. This was all about rooting for the Weighted Companion Cube, and I'll say it again. If this was a 1v1 games contest, Portal would have won. It had the type of love that year that you saw from Undertale in 2015, and more importantly when it relates to this match, there was no anti-bandwagon with the Cube. Everyone loved the thing, and they were rooting for it to advance in this match. No one thought it would be L-Block or anything, but hey, maybe if it squeezed by this match, round 2 would be Mega Man, Tidus, the Cube, and some fodder, and from there who really knows? Yeah, the Cube did a lot more than merely "advance". When this poll started, it was clear the Cube had bandwagon joke love right from the jump, Tidus also left Donkey Kong in the dust once early bracket votes were exhausted, which paved the way for a fairly mundane Cube \> Tidus result. Or so we thought. The Cube built up a 1000 vote lead pretty quickly, and the lead peaked at 1500 overnight. What happened from there was a pretty fun comeback attempt by Tidus, but again, I can't bring myself to care about these first place duels. If this was a 1v1 match, and Tidus not only chopped a 1500 vote lead down below 1000, but started winning the morning vote, Board 8 would have lost their minds. As-is, it was a meaningless comeback because both characters were advancing either way. This format robs us of so much. I will say though that Tidus coming back in the face of a bandwagoned joke character, despite not being particularly well-liked himself, was super impressive. He took it on the chin early, but eventually got that 1500 vote lead all the way down to 400. Had he won the ASV he might have made a push for first, but the Cube won it to put things away for good. He got the lead up to 800 before falling off a bit at night. As one might expect, people lost their minds over this one. The Cube didn't get a lucky draw and win second place like L-Block did in 2007. He straight up won his first match, and if he beat Tidus here then round 2 seemed like a bye. All he had to do there was beat Tidus again. And from there, all he needed to do was catch more bandwagon love. A lot of people felt like the contest was over after this match, and frankly the Cube deserved to win this contest. We know what eventually happened, but the crazy run Cube went on all started right here. This was a triumph. By the way, that video has almost 40 million views. Those are Megalovania numbers. I'm telling you, Portal would have won. As-is, the Cube came dangerously close. ## Stats and Analysis - Weighted Companion Cube advancing was the **\#4** most surprising result of Round 1 - Weighted Companion Cube overperformed by **+8.46%**, the **\#4** most impressive performance of 2008 - Donkey Kong underperformed by **-6.11%**, the **\#7** most disappointing performance of 2008 - Tails underperformed by **-3.93%**, the **\#24** most disappointing performance of 2008 Funny how Tidus' most impressive match since Tidus/Ganondorf 2k3 is him losing to a Cube, huh? But seriously, look at that Oracle prediction. After Mudkip, L-Block, and especially GlaDOS I feel justified in saying the board looked like a fool in denial for this match. Cube was placing, it was the favorite to get first, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The "real" match was supposed to be Tidus/DK. After Tidus got exposed, people have talked him and DK as being a good match for awhile, especially considering the Ninty Boost and another probable Brawl boost on the way. Well, things didn't quite turn out that way, but Tidus had been looking nothing but disappointing since then as well. Thus, we got this match - Nintendo and Square's biggest chokers gunning for all the marbles. And what a fizzle it turned out to be - Donkey Kong, shocked that anyone would vie for his title after Vercetti, Duck Hunt, Vivi, Master Chief, and who knows what else, gave perhaps the biggest bomb of his contest career here. He must still be ashamed of winning over Aya Brea, what can I say? Tidus obliterated him 60-40 style, leaving DK much closer to Tails than he. Meanwhile, Tails was finding new ways of making Sonic Team look pathetic even after we knew they were hopeless. What a trooper. Tidus also managed to keep it razor close to Cube the whole day, and even though it was obviously a lost cause - jokes don't let characters complete close comebacks on them - he came out looking like he actually BELONGED in these contests. And really, for him, that's probably just as good as a victory. Meanwhile, the jokes were 3 for 3 and looked like they could all easily make it to the next round as well. "Augh" indeed. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction And now we return to... joke character territory, uh oh! Now as I explained in that post-Block writeup I DO think that jokes add something to the 4-way table. In the first round, that is. L-Block and WCC and Hogger and Sandbag, all of these are legitimately enjoyable matches to discuss and debate beforehand, because the element of the unknown means these jokes could either be true threats or absolute busts. The trouble is that from R2 and on, we're able to pin their strength down pretty easily, and their static fanbases work to actually makes results from then on LESS interesting. But okay, I'm starting to get carried away, got to break that line of thought and jump right into where these fellows finished up last time around: Last Known Values - Tidus - 22.69% (2007) - Donkey Kong - 21.53% (2007) - Tails - 18.26% (2007) - WCC - new (however if you count the bonus match and base it off L-Block, it's... really high) The Cube is undoubtedly the one to watch out of this whole delightful mess. In my opinion it has a pretty tremendous range: I could see it pulling anywhere from 20.00% (which is what GlaDOS managed against Vincent and is probably a pretty good indication of what pure Portal appeal is worth) and 31.81% (what L-Block managed against Ryu; we know Block could have gone higher if not for The Dog, but I can't see WCC having that kind of broad appeal right off the bat, so 32 seems about right). The trouble of course is that if its more to the low end, all Cube can hope for is to hold off Tails for third place... but if it performs toward the high end, it could not only win this four pack but do it convincingly. I hope that I'm just being too knee-jerkingly reactionary, but sorry, the way Block performed at mid-season '07 levels while having enough "funny" jokes left over for The Dog to look like at least somewhat decent fodder has me suffering from a pretty severe case of JOKEFEAR right now. I see the Cube finishing closer to the high end of my given range, which adds a whole new layer of excitement to this match- only one other option can survive here. Who will it be?! Let's eliminate Tails from the running right off the bat. Even if WCC was Tanner-level fodder no one would be giving this guy a shot at advancement, and with good reason; you don't go from losing to The Boss to knocking out decent midcarders, especially not when your Sonic Team pals have been bombing left and right ever since this new format came into play. OK, so how about Tidus? I think the FFX lead has been given a great opportunity here. He gets to act as a lightning rod for all things FF/Square/RPG and really stands out from this crowd of fuzzy animals and weird boxes. The underperformance from Vincent aside (which I still don't understand BTW), that's been a recipe for success so far this season, and I'm not seeing any reason for it to stop now. The only negative I see for Tidus is his match picture, but eh, he always looks kind of embarrassingly feminine in his pics, and that's never stop- Alright, so maybe it HAS stopped him before. But still, bad pics should just be a natural part of his (lack of?) strength by this point, so I don't see him flopping TOO far below expectations. That leaves us with only Donkey Kong. The poor guy... I see him losing here, finishing out of the running in third and having to put up with wave after wave of "better loosen that tie DK, you're choking again!" topics in the next 24 hours, but he really won't deserve it. The King of the Kongs has just been placed in a really unfavorable position here: we've already seen that there's a pretty serious connection between Nintendo and Sonic these days with the way Mario and Link caused Knuckles and Shadow to underperform, and so even though Tails shouldn't be pulling in a very large percentage of these votes, the few voters he does win over will be coming at DK's expense IMO. On top of that I just get the unexplainable impression that WCC, much like L-Block before it, is going to take the biggest bite out of old school Nintendo characters, and since we've already seen how bad DK looked when dealing with pressure from Blocky and Kirby, that feels like another strike against him. Maybe that sounds weird, but yeah, I can't shake the idea that Tidus supporters are going to be more loyal and less willing to toss their vote to the Cube for the sake of a laugh. In summation, if DK is able to overcome all these obstacles and advance tomorrow, I'll be hugely impressed. If Tidus blows all of his advantages and fails tomorrow, he will earn the title of the undisputed biggest choker in GameFAQs history. If JOKEFEAR fails me tomorrow and the Cube flops hard, I will be very surprised (but also overjoyed). Let's numberize those thoughts, stir them in the pot for a few minutes, and come out with: - Weighted Companion Cube - 27.66% - Tidus - 27.55% - Donkey Kong - 26.23% - Miles 'Tails' Prower - 18.56% And with that we reach the sad end of an era, as I've been forced to pick against my bracket (Tidus \> DK) for the first time this year. \*wipes away a single tear\* Ngamer Says: **WCC \> Tidus** ### Next Day Review Hey hey, perfect picks two days in a row now! If only my bracket could say the same... But yeah, today is a perfect example of why I don't mind joke characters in the first round. Even accounting for Tails hurting him and Tidus probably have the advantage of a stronger fanbase less likely to be joke-leached, DK still majorly disappointed in this one, and I have no problem with punishing him by not allowing him into another match. The trouble is that the presence of a strong, legit character in MM will only make it easier for the Cube to again outlast Tidus next round, and suddenly the joke has outworn its welcome. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3260&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=17) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Banjo vs Captain Olimar vs Mega Man vs Nero 2008 _source: Banjo vs Captain Olimar vs Mega Man vs Nero 2008 (revid 85797)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, October 5th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 5 - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 5th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 50.47% Nero - 20.31% Captain Olimar - 16.42% Banjo - 12.90% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mega Man first place (2pts) - 68.87% Mega Man second place (1pt) - 22.83% Nero second place (2pts) - 30.68% Nero first place (1pt) - 8.33% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mega Man - 91.70% (39,342) Nero - 39.01% (16,736) This was one of the easiest matches to pick all contest, because Mega Man \> Nero was a 100% lock. Banjo and Olimar are pretty much bottom of the barrel on the Nintendo Hierarchy™, and having them share a poll with Mega Man while also stealing votes from each other was a recipe to get annihilated. Nero getting second place by default here was a given, and that's exactly what happened. This poll might have different percentages in modern times with Smash Ultimate and Devil May Cry 5 factored in, but who really knows or cares. The last thing we need is more LOL 4ways. Oh and for the people who thought Olimar could beat Nero because of BrawlFEAR, you're a bunch of looney tunes. I hate to break this news, but no one cares about Pikmin outside of getting that one trophy in Super Smash Bros Melee, and no one likes Olimar in Smash Bros. The most hated characters in the series are the zoning types where you need a PHD in blueprints and sectioning to know the matchup. Olimar was never going to do anything here, and him getting dead last shows it. ## Stats and Analysis - Nero advancing was the **\#6** most surprising result of Round 1 - Captain Olimar underperformed by **-4.92%**, the **\#16** most disappointing performance of 2008 First, a hearty "what the HELL" at anyone that thought Olimar had even the faintest glimmer of a shot at Nero. The kid might be the "Raiden" of the Devil May Cry series, but even Raiden beat Sam Fisher and I assure you, Olimar is no Sam Fisher. More importantly, Mega "I CAN STILL OBLITERATE NINTENDO FODDER Y'KNOW" Man was in this match, and anyone that didn't think an effectively Brawl-only character wasn't going to be SFFed into the dust was deluding themselves. Okay, to take a less judgmental tack, this was all about seeing how our only newbie, Nero would do, as well as take measure of Mega Man's strength - calibrated for obvious winner underperforming, naturally. By that measure, Mega Man actually didn't embarrass himself, though looking at what, say, Crono had done a week ago, it just didn't measure up. It was definitely the weakest Noble Nine performance so far, and though SOME people pounced and refused to let go (\<\_\<), it was still NN caliber. Meanwhile, Nero did what he was supposed to do - put up decent numbers on Mega Man, kill Olimar and Banjo. Banjo even got a tiny ray of sunlight by not coming in last, though that's just really to say... get the \*\*\*\* out of my contest, Brawl. Seriously. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction The one hope for the non-jokes is that Nero pulls off something pretty incredible here tonight to make himself a favorite over the Cube. But considering he'd need more or less a Dante-like performance to do so, it's not looking too likely! Let's see what we're up against in this one: Last Known Values - Mega Man - 39.02% (2007) - Nero - new - Olimar - 8.84% (2003) - Banjo - 11.13% (2007) Like I said in the MMX match writeup, Mega Man was as solid as a Rock(man) all the way through the '07 bracket, doing pretty much what we expected of him every time and even impressing us once by giving Samus more than she bargained for in the sprite round. I see no reason for that to change here in 2008, especially not with this match taking place at the height of MM9's popularity (it hit the 360 three days ago and is now available worldwide for all three consoles... and the sales figures have been extremely impressive, at least in North America). Had MMX collapsed I might be worried, but nay, he did well for himself and so I think MM and Zero are safe from a series-wide Sonic Team-style tumble for at least one more year. The only point of concern is that with Mega Man acting increasingly Nintendo in recent times, Olimar and Banjo might hold him back a little and allow Nero a better showing than otherwise, but honestly I can't see that being much of a factor considering neither of those characters have any NES/SNES presence. Nero's something of a wildcard, except... not REALLY. We can probably count on him to perform somewhere in the general 16.71% range that Vergil set up last season. I'd probably have set his ceiling a little bit lower before I saw the match pic that was chosen for tomorrow- that's basically the perfect picture for Nero, as he looks almost identical to Dante and gets to hide his ridiculous oversized demon-grabber arm. Between standing out so well in the picture and being the lone non-Nintendo option, I'd be very surprised if he allowed either of his opponents to seriously contend for the 2nd place position. As for Banjo, should we perhaps revise our thoughts on his chances after seeing what happened a few days back? Fox crushed his fourpack in '07, making the rest of that group look somewhere in the range of pretty bad to extremely bad fodder, and yet Captain Falcon wowed us all by putting on a great show against Alucard, proving that Fox's SFF was even more deadly than we expected. But, uh, nay. Banjo's GOT to be worth more than the 11% he earned, sure, but I doubt MM's presence does him any favors in this one, and it's going to take a major flop from Olimar for him to stay out of last place tonight. That leaves only the good Capn't to consider. Could he be the one to shock us just like that other Captain did a few days back? Again, sorry, but I don't see it happening. Sure Olimar was one of the guys who should have received the most notable Brawl boosts, but just look where he was starting BEFORE that boost. If you replaced MM and Banjo with say Auron and Crash this might be the kind of thing where I'd take a flier on the upset of Nero, but as stands there's just too much working against him in this grouping, and I can't see the little guy having the kind of strength needed to swim upstream against odds like these for very long. Sooooo if MM is strong and Nero is meh and Olimar is ugh and Banjo is ewwww, then... - Mega Man - 51.81% - Nero - 19.44% - Captain Olimar - 16.09% - Banjo - 12.66% Oh man, no matter how I tweak this one it still keeps coming out looking just awful based on my gut reaction. All of a sudden I've lost alot of confidence in this pick. Ngamer Says: **Mega Man \> Nero** ### Next Day Review Darn it! DARN IT!! I just can't beat these Marios! And the video game tournament is tomorrow! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3261&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=18) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## King Dedede vs Pit vs Ryu Hayabusa vs Zero 2008 _source: King Dedede vs Pit vs Ryu Hayabusa vs Zero 2008 (revid 85798)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, October 6th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 5 - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 6th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 35.45% Ryu Hayabusa - 30.42% King Dedede - 17.66% Pit - 16.48% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Ryu H first place (2pts) - 41.77% Ryu H second place (1pt) - 27.88% Zero second place (2pts) - 38.51% Zero first place (1pt) - 25.34% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ryu H - 69.65% (29,882) Zero - 63.85% (27,394) As you can see, BrawlFEAR dominated the nomination process this year. Everything from Sandbags to space ants from that game made the field in this contest, and Nintendo or no, there was a ton of first round fodder from that game in this contest. In fact, here are the only Brawl playables to not make the field in 2008: -Zero Suit Samus, who I don't even count as a separate character from Samus -Peach -Popo, who I also don't really count since Nana got in -Sheik, who is another that doesn't really count -Pokemon Trainer Red, and yes the default in Smash is Red and you will never convince me otherwise -R.O.B. -Mr. Game & Watch -Jigglypuff -Toon Link (please) -Wolf Of that entire list, the only ones who count as actual characters are Peach, Pokemon Trainer, R.O.B. (if I'm feeling very generous), Game & Watch, Jigglypuff, and Wolf. From that list, only R.O.B. has never made a contest. If you go back to Melee, only Pichu, Roy, Popo (I guess), and R.O.B. hasn't gotten in. I don't care enough to do the research past that, especially given Smash Ultimate's roster isn't even full yet and I'm supposed to pretend like these writeups are happening in 2008. To the point. Damn near EVERYTHING from Brawl made this contest, and a lot of it went out in round 1 because all of these characters faced each other. Some people think this proves BrawlFEAR was overrated, and to that I simply point at Snake's run. So when people look at this match and place all of the blame on Zero for shitting the bed, it's not entirely his fault. The Mega Man series is basically Nintendo's bitch at this point, and he had to sit there splitting the votes with two other Nintendo characters. This doesn't mean Zero had any right not getting first place here, but what ended up happening is at least somewhat explainable. That said, this was still an epic choke job. Zero was once thought of as a character that could crack the Noble Nine, and it was mainly due to this set of matches: There was also the fact Zero and Ryu had a 1v1 match before: That poll is real. It actually happened. So we all just penciled in Zero \> Ryu without thinking much of it, because this wasn't some lol x-stats thing. We have a direct 63-37 result. Yeah, whoops. Turns out Zero is good, but not that good. When the poll started, Zero struggled to get out of the gates, while Pit and Dedede pulled up the rear. If you folks want to talk about the one time epical battle those two had for third place, knock yourselves out. You're a manic if you do, but hey, you do you. Zero did eventually get going, and overnight it looked like he would cruise to a comfortable, yet disappointing first place. He built up a lead of 700 overnight, and it seemed like we could all just go to bed. But then the unthinkable happened, and Ryu not only started cutting off votes overnight, but he won the morning vote by such convincing fashion that by the time he caught up, it was clear Ryu was going to win. The dude flew by Zero, and kept laying the wood on him all day long until he ended up winning by 1400. It was one of the most shocking board results of the entire contest, because even with two Nintendo characters bringing up the rear, there was no tangible reason to think Ryu could just turn around a 63-37 match in three years' time like this. This was a very embarrassing loss for Zero, though not altogether inexplicable, and again, it didn't even matter in the grand scheme of things since both of them advanced anyway. Thanks, 4ways. First off, Ryu Hayabusa is not some bottom feeder. Outside of 2005 and 2006, this guy is always involved in entertaining matches and he often wins them. Just ask Master Chief. Just ask Jill Valentine, whose mega-duel with Ryu back in 2004 might legitimately be the most entertaining round 1 match we'll ever have. Just ask Simon Belmont, who almost lost to the guy after Smash Ultimate hype. Or in an actual gaming sense, ask anyone who gets to that hidden mission in Nioh. That fight is some of the most annoying nonsense in the entire game. The other factor to consider is the warning signs have been there for years of Mega Man's gang falling off. Mega Man himself went from beating Snake every year to losing to him, and Zero's gradual downfall is pretty evident. If you want to see how bad it would get, just skip ahead to 2013 and 2018. So... yeah. Another random first place upset that would have meant so much more were it an actual 1v1 contest. Thanks, 4ways. You suck. ## Stats and Analysis - Ryu Hayabusa overperformed by **+6.11%**, the **\#8** most impressive performance of 2008 - King Dedede underperformed by **-4.25%**, the **\#22** most disappointing performance of 2008 That says it all. And believe it or not, this was actually considered to have been a GOOD result for Ryu Hayabusa, to have been mostly attributed to his picture. Zero was a once bright star who has been falling faster and faster ever since. Once good enough for 48% on Sonic, doing better on MEGA MAN than Snake could, since his match with Mario things have gone pretty much downhill. That was, until last year - the Maverick Hunter ended up shockingly close to Crono, both looking good and foretelling the downfall of the Noble Niner in the process. Sure, he got killed in the next round, but Link was there. Mega Man always gets crushed by Link. The bottom line was that Zero had looked good in this format, he wouldn't have had a problem even if he hadn't, and with two pieces of fodder from the same game tearing each other apart he would have the lion's share of the votes to work with in tearing down Hayabusa again. Well, either the star has regained its downward trajectory, or the universe just hates BT. I mean, seriously, just look at those results. The match started innocuously enough, with Zero off to a fast start - but it really just wasn't as fast as it "should" have been, especially considering Ryu H's own pretty poor board vote. Still, just a hiccup, right? Not so much - Ryu was stalling, stalling, stalling, and Zero was struggling to put on a lead during his best time. Mega Man characters are about as frontloaded as you can imagine - if you can beat them during the first three hours, you've got the match in the bag. Ryu H didn't do that, but he managed to keep the match within reach - and as soon as the clock ticked 4 am, he began his unstoppable comeback. Zero tried to keep his head above water with the during school vote, but it was for naught - Ryu H actually ended up taking the lead BEFORE the ASV, and 3 pm was just a formality on top of all of that. It wasn't the most impressive of wins, but we're talking about one of the biggest direct margin reversals EVER. Hayabusa shocked the world in this match, even more than he had when he beat Riku and Roxas combined last year. In fact, this one was even MORE shocking, because we had written that all off as a fluke after he went and bombed to a loss in the very next round. Then the gears in our heads started turning - why had he bombed last time? The only thing that seemed to change was the introduction of Solid Snake, and that didn't make much sense... but just to keep everyone on their toes, he was waiting in the wings AGAIN next round. Still, for the time Ryu Hayabusa got his moment in the sun, and while I actually like Zero more than him personally (not in the contests though, eww BT), the most skilled character in all of gaming with the best action games in the business deserves a good upset win under his belt. By the way, I say "upset" in the sense of the board - Ryu's bracket support was INCREDIBLE, and once again the casuals ended up humiliating us in a Zero match. Oh, and let us not leave without giving token mention of Pit and Dedede. See uh I told you Pit was more popular! Ugh two more Brawlers out of the contest less than a hundred to go ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Last Known Values - Zero - 33.32% (2007) - Ryu H - 23.73% (2007) - Pit - 15.73% (2007) - Dedede - new Zero is pretty clearly a stud in this format. I mean yeah, he folded underneath Link/Crono/Vincent, but who wouldn't have? YOU? Doubtful! Actually I was remembering that match and briefly considering whether or not I should consider, if even just briefly, the Ryu upset. But then I remembered that firstly Mega Man 9 was going to be tearing it up right around this time, and secondly that Zero flat out destroyed Ryu 1v1 back in '05. Hm, actually looking at it now, that was only a 63% beating, not as bad as I thought. But still, even if Ryu gets extra points in this format for looking so cool in the match pic or gains ASV strength for being the only Xbox option, there's no way I could imagine him keeping this competitive for the top spot. Likewise I'd be shocked if either of tonight's Brawl options were able to do anything surprising here. Even if that game had been turning newcomers into GameFAQs Contest superstars left and right, I don't see how either of these guys could get enough of an advantage over the other to upstage Ryu. And since we instead seem to be finding out that it takes Melee + Brawl + something else to not flop out here in 2008, I fear we may be in for something more on par with today's awful Banjo/Olimar showings. Between the two, I'm thinking Triple D should have a bit of an advantage thanks to his Kirby appeal, but Pit looks really cool in the picture and will hopefully be able to keep him from running away. Yeah, short writeup there since I don't see anything too wild happening... but prove me wrong, Dedede! - Zero - 36.45% - Ryu Hayabusa - 27.41% - King Dedede - 20.77% - Pit - 15.37% I... don't like that very much! Ack... Ngamer Says: **Zero \> Ryu** ### Next Day Review Well, color me surprised! I guess you can chalk up this Ryu shocker to those of us "in the know" wearing our previous result blinders... but come on now, this wasn't like Snake/Mega Man, where even though MM kept winning you got the feeling Snake was never all that far behind- this was an old fashioned 63% beatdown! You're not supposed to turn around a 26% deficit in just a few years! I guess MM9 alone isn't enough to make up for three years of doing nothing as a series; either that or these low tier Brawlers are taking a bigger bite out of Zero's pie than I would have thought possible. The good thing is we get to find out the answer in just a few weeks. Will Zero pull back out in front of Ryu with no other Nintendo options? Will Vivi instead capitalize on being the only Square/RPG option in a room full of badasses? Will Ryu take full advantage of being the only Xbox option and surprise us again? Wow, this format can be pretty awesome in those rare cases when you clear out the clutter and the fodder and the jokes and throw three legitimate options of near-equal strength against one another- who knew? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3262&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=19) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Albert Wesker vs Sackboy vs Solid Snake vs Vivi Ornitier 2008 _source: Albert Wesker vs Sackboy vs Solid Snake vs Vivi Ornitier 2008 (revid 85799)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 5 - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 50.65% Vivi Ornitier - 24.45% Albert Wesker - 15.82% Sackboy - 9.34% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Snake first place (2pts) - 78.18% Snake second place (1pt) - 18.86% Vivi second place (2pts) - 44.76% Vivi first place (1pt) - 4.91% - **Advancing Prediction:** Snake - 97.04% (41,633) Vivi - 49.67% (21,310) As silly as many parts of this contest were, there were a lot of predictable early round matches, which given the format is kind of silly. The whole point of the LOL 4ways was to shake it up a bit, no? Snake \> Vivi was a mortal lock that was never going any other way, though there was the occasional yayhoo thinking Wesker would do something here. Right. Dude lost to Fails of and Lara Croft. Whatever you say guys. The match was nothing to write home about, but I'm surprised to look in the wayback machine at people calling this a disappointing showing for Snake. The hell? Do you guys know how hard it is to get over 50% of the vote in a fourway poll without facing three pieces of trash? Snake looked fine here, and he would ultimately go nuts this contest. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Brawl both releasing in the same year will do that. And if you want to call this an underperformance anyway, you could easily say Wesker and Sackboy dragged him down. Moving on. ## Stats and Analysis - Vivi advancing was the **\#10** most surprising result of Round 1 And to round out our fifth division, we were treated to what was probably the lock of the contest. Solid Snake, in addition to being the Best Character Ever, is also none too shabby in these contests, and was a lock to take first due to that upper tier Noble Nine pedigree. Vivi, while not quite as stellar, uses his fan-favoritism from FF9 and his trademark Black Mage Factor to perform at a good midcard level. Their opponents? Albert Wesker, who got held under 30% by Kefka in his first contest outing, and Sackboy, whose game was both unreleased at the time and in the same match with probably the only character in the world who can SFF him. What the hell, SBallin'. As such, the only things to really watch here were the numbers, and Snake went out and put up that classic underperformance that we'd expected from our obvious winners by now. This didn't mean so much to all of the others, but Snake had just enjoyed the best year a character could have asked for in contest history - the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 AND Super Smash Brothers Brawl. People were even going so far as to have him beating Cloud in the semis with Sephiroth (hello), with the really nutty having him place in the finals. I get the feeling some people were expecting 60% here. Meanwhile, Vivi had a really stellar day, putting up good enough numbers on Snake and standing out so much in the next round's lineup that people were considering him for second. And after what Zero had just gone and done, more power to them, you'd think! Wesker and Sackboy were left with the leftovers, of course, with Wesker struggling at many points to win whole HOURS against the little guy. Seriously, when you're struggling to beat a SFFed character whose game isn't out yet, you know you're bottom of the barrel, and I love Wesker. Sackboy, for his part, definitely deserves a shot at another contest if LBP wears well. Just... hope he doesn't get put against Snake again. And just because I can - even though it took the day vote to do it (uhhhhhh), Snake did end up a percent ahead of his Oracle prediction in the end. He was also graced with having one of the strongest fourpacks a Noble would have to deal with next round, so he'd have the chance to stretch his legs there. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Speaking of awesome matches between even characters, today is... well, not one of them. I've been wrong before, obviously, but I'm going to go ahead and say that there's not any way I see this upcoming poll being too entertaining, at least in terms of placement. Should still be fun to watch as an indicator of how next round's fantastic battle for second ought to play out, though. Let's dive in! Last Known Values - Snake - 45.41% (2007) - Vivi - 23.49% (2007) - Wesker - 17.55% (2007) - Sackboy - new The story of Snake in '07 is kind of a sad one. I mean, here's a guy who looked absolutely incredible in this format, performed like a monster, made it into the Championship match, held up decently well against the two strongest characters we'd ever seen... and yet the only thing people recall about him is how seemingly every time you turned around the guy was struggling to pull ahead of a Tetris block. Well now he's back, and this time around he has been playable in Brawl, been top tier in Brawl, sold a ton of PS3s with MGS4- in short I'd be very surprised if between this format and all the extra exposure this wasn't the strongest version of Snake we've ever seen. A shame he didn't get placed in a 4-pack with a set of chumps, or I think he'd have had a legit chance of scoring the biggest blowout of the round. Vivi is a character who I think we have a pretty good bead on. Maybe we were a little surprised to see him unable to hurt Tidus more than he did last season, but aside from that he seems like a reliable guy who we can pretty much depend on to perform in that 23 to 25 mid-range on BL, at least when he gets to act independent of other Square like in this one. Wesker seems fairly reliable as well- he's one of those dudes who is just no good in these Contests, but has enough of a fanbase to never be completely awful either. I'm thinking that in 9 out of 10 cases he would live up to the billing and come out either just below or just a hair above that fodder line. The wildcard of the group is of course Sackboy. Before the jokes started really taking off, I heard him being discussed as a good candidate for the 128th position on the final stats for this season. But a Dog and and a Block and a Cube later, some of those same people are giving this Sack serious consideration for second place in this group- WHAT? Yeah, well afraid I'm not buying either of those two extremes: Sackboy might look like a joke, but with how heavily LittleBigPlanet has been promoted and hyped recently I'm giving voters enough credit to at least somewhat know him. And knowing him could easily work against him... no one hates Valve, but Sackboy is king of setting himself up as a posterboy for all things PS3, and that might be a dangerous place to sit considering this site's demographics. Especially when the console's REAL poster-game has a representative sitting right at the top of this poll. So Snake should be even more Steroid Snake than usual, Vivi and Wesker shouldn't surprise us, and Sacky... dang, I can't count him out entirely because he does look ridiculous, and clearly that's something the voters value highly these days. Let's take all those considerations into the pot a stir for a few minutes until: - Solid Snake - 52.07% - Vivi Ornitier - 21.33% - Albert Wesker - 15.07% - Sackboy - 11.53% That looks... actually, pretty good. Come on Snake, put on a show for us! Ngamer Says: **Snake \> Vivi** ### Next Day Review What a weird year... Remember when the Contest heavyweights used to use the first round to play a game of "how do you like me NOW!", matching blowout against even bigger blowout, constantly setting the bar higher for their next appearance? You know, like in '07. And '06. And every year before that. But this season we've seen Link, Mario, Mega Man, Vincent, Ganon, Samus, and now even Snake perform slightly below expectations. Of all of those, this Snake showing is the most surprising to me, just because he figured to have the most to gain over the past 12 months. ...actually no I take that back, Vincent allowing Falco to hang so close is still the most confusing result from a heavyweight to this point. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3263&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=20) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Chris Redfield vs Fox McCloud vs Sora vs Tim 2008 _source: Chris Redfield vs Fox McCloud vs Sora vs Tim 2008 (revid 85800)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 6 - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 38.44% Fox McCloud - 33.84% Chris Redfield - 17.70% Tim - 9.91% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sora first place (2pts) - 36.52% Sora second place (1pt) - 43.54% Fox second place (2pts) - 35.74% Fox first place (1pt) - 43.13% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sora - 80.06% (34,348) Fox - 78.87% (33,838) Pre-contest, there was a lot of discussion about BrawlFEAR pushing Fox to first place here. Before this match, Fox had been in 6 matches prior, and in every single one other than the Cloud match, he shared the poll with at least one other Nintendo character. With Fox finally being allowed to be his own man, some thought that maybe he could be a breakout star. As the contest played out however, it became clear that Brawl wasn't going to have the ludicrous effect on lesser Nintendo characters that some were expecting, and that made the overwhelming Sora \> Fox consensus rest easy at night. Heck by match time, people were more worried about Tim making a joke run due to Braid than anything else. Come the actual match, after a small early push by Fox, it was a super boring and predictable 40-30-20-10 type of affair. There was no upset, no big swings, and nothing surprising at all unless you count Chris Redfield doing better than he did last year: But again, third place in a fourway poll where nothing interesting happens is fairly ho-hum. It's not like he was ever going to get close to Fox for second or anything. As for those checking this page and wondering why Tim got no joke love, it's because Tim is an asshole. Braid is a wonderful, wonderful video game that I recommend to anyone reading this. I even wrote a guide for it! But Tim? Yeah, not a good guy at all. He got what he deserved in this match. ## Stats and Analysis - Chris Redfield overperformed by **+6.14%,** the **\#7**most impressive performance of 2008 When this match was set up in the bracket, there was a fair bit of speculation as to whether Fox would be able to pull off the upset over Sora here, thanks partially to a gigantic Brawl influx and partially due to him being hidden behind SFF for pretty much his entire contest career. Needless to say, by the time this match actually rolled around more people were wondering if Tim could capitalize on some kind of joke vote to upset Chris Redfield (who had lost to Pyramid Head last year) than any Fox \> Sora buzz. The real point of interest in this match would end up being neither scenario - instead, whether it be due to him standing out like a madman in the picture (1 red team badass vs 3 blue team cutesys), kooky Survival Horror rSFF, or just the strange commodity we would come to coin REFAQs, Chris had the match of his life this day. Fox would end up closer to Chris than he would to SORA, and during the night Chris would shred him repeatedly on scores of updates. I suppose you could say Fox did okay during his first true non-SFF outing in forever, but Chris made it look much, much worse than it could have. He ended up further from Sora than most expected as well, but most observant users expected that by this point. The last thing of note here would be Tim's performance, and he made a strong case for being the flat-out weakest character of the contest here. Clearly I have to try out Braid now, as its indie cred is through the \*\*\*\*ing roof after this showing !! ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Who's ready to see another awesome showing from a member of Team Fox? Me! And my bracket! Last Known Values - Sora - 25.52% (2007) - Fox - 23.93% (2007) - Chris - 15.14% (2007) - Tim - new I picked against the Guru cookie cutter in a total of 16 of this year's 63 matches- a decent number of upsets, at least by my standards, and now the one I felt least comfortable with has arrived: Fox \> Sora. I've always had a strong dislike for ol' clown shoes and Fox has become a favorite of mine thanks to his considerable potential that always gets hidden behind SFF, so when I saw a chance for him to finally perform at peak strength my gut reaction was to jump at it and take Fox for the win (as I did in my Initial Impressions topic). I took plenty of heat for that decision, which only made me more stubborn and forced me to stick with the silly pick right on through lockdown. But you know what, looking at it now, I'm glad I did! Yes Brawl newcomers have disappointed for the most part, but Fox is a mainstay of the series, Star Fox 64 has done great on the Virtual Console this year, and if being the only Melee/Nintendo option allowed Falco to snatch up that many votes against a guy with legit NN-smashing potential like Vincent, I see no reason why Fox couldn't knocked out someone a good deal lower on the Square totem pole. Plus, check out this picture! Not only does Fox dominate everyone and get another super-cool pose like R1 last time, Sora gets stuck with his back to the fans, puffing away on that Virginia Slim! For those who say it won't matter, have you forgotten that the victim of (arguably) the biggest pic factor underperformance in history was... Sora himself? Now some others are saying that Chris will do well with this pic, but again I'm not buying it. Sure it's an improvement on that goofy look from last year, but in my experience realistic-style pictures fail to draw the eye away from bright colorful foxes with their arms crossed in a no-nonsense expressions nearly 87% of the time. And Tim, well... he DOES look pretty good, but this is one of those cases where he'd probably have performed better if he looked more like a joke- as vocal as the Braid fanbase is, small numbers like that can only take you so far. In summary, the KH ASV figures to be as deadly as always, but if there's one thing that can stand up to it (well, aside from Halo) it would have to be SSB Melee. I think Fox will be able to get a large enough lead overnight and during the school that he'll be able to limit the afternoon damage and take this one home with a close finish decided by the second night vote. Whooo Fox! - Fox McCloud - 33.94% - Sora - 33.83% - Chris Redfield - 21.01% - Tim - 11.22% Feelin' confident! Ngamer Says: **Fox \> Sora** ### Next Day Review Hmm... well my upset didn't end up working out, but at least Fox validated himself as a legit Nintendo mid-carder with this performance. This should end any debate about him finishing behind the Donkey Kong's of the world, and it's cool that in only a couple weeks we'll be able to see how he stacks up against that higher tier that Yoshi represents. Actually this was a dang good showing for him- he put up a very strong fight during the ASV and it was actually his best time during the whole poll, which is incredible considering how easily KH has owned that timeframe ever since 2005. If only he hadn't fallen apart so badly overnight, we could have had a real match on our hands here. Darn those Europeans! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3264&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=21) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## CATS vs Nathan Drake vs Squall Leonhart vs Yoshi 2008 _source: CATS vs Nathan Drake vs Squall Leonhart vs Yoshi 2008 (revid 85801)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, October 9th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 6 - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 9th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall Leonhart - 39.83% Yoshi - 36.00% CATS - 13.77% Nathan Drake - 10.56% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Squall first place (2pts) - 52.13% Squall second place (1pt) - 31.07% Yoshi second place (2pts) - 52.02% Yoshi first place (1pt) - 30.42% - **Advancing Prediction:** Squall - 83.20% (35,695) Yoshi - 82.44% (35,369) And thus began the second year in a row of Squall taking a bunch of steroids and HGH. I don't know what it is with Squall, but he always brings the smoke with these multi-way formats. In 2007, 2008, and 2013 he went totally berserk for no discernable reason. Everyone knew the match would be Squall \> Yoshi, but very few people thought it would be such a ridiculous blowout. Remember, this was a BrawlFEAR world and we had just seen a series of very good Yoshi results. If you look at those 2003 through 2007 results, Yoshi was mentioned in the same breath as Nintendo's second tier, with characters like Bowser, Zelda, Luigi, and various Pokemon. The Oracle folks are the smartest people out there for contests, and you can see the numbers off to the right. They picked Squall 40, Yoshi 36, and they are rarely off this much. In fact, this was an ass whipping so severe that it harkened people back to a similar match Squall had all the way back in 2003. The only reason this match here in 2008 isn't mentioned along with that epic 2003 beating is because no one actually expected Squall to lose here. We just didn't realize it would be this much of a blowout, especially with BrawlFEAR involved. But if Yoshi was the heavy favorite and this was 1v1, this would definitely be a contest lore type of match. Speaking of contest lore, CATS won the board vote like he usually does, but then the unthinkable happened. He managed to not get last place! Yes friends, for the first time ever, CATS managed to place in a contest match. I know he didn't advance, but who cares? He finally managed to find someone more pathetic than even him. This match is hysterical to look back on in 2020, because even after 4 games of that series I doubt Drake would beat CATS in a 1v1. He only had the original game for this match, which is why he was dogmeat in the first place, but the spoiler version is that Drake's company would end up loathed by gamers. We're talking Activision-Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft levels of hatred here. Naughty Dog with their SJW idiocy and shady practices has them on the level of the worst companies in all of gaming, which in the long run means these results from 2008 would probably hold up now. Get woke, go broke. Losing to CATS was only the beginning. ## Stats and Analysis - Squall overperformed by **+5.23%**, the **\#13** most impressive performance of 2008 This was it. CATS had waited a long, long time, but he had finally spotted the perfect foe against whom he would finish ahead of in a match. DARKNESS and Jokefodder had finally evaded him, but here, against this PS3-exclusive character, victory would be assured. Oh, and yeah, there was also the little matter of Squall v Yoshi. Despite the overwhelming consensus in favor of the FF8 protagonist, most genuinely felt that this would be a close match between the emo and the dino. After all, Yoshi had beaten Dante and finished ahead of Squall in 2006 - and Solid \*\*\*\* or not, that was impressive at the time. The next year Squall clearly had the edge as he nearly upended Sonic twice, but considering how weak Sonic looked and how good Yoshi looked that year even when masked by SFF... in essence, even with the "deboost", as we had unoriginally coined it, Squall/Yoshi still looked like it could be interesting. Uh huh. That was before Yoshi decided to choke on his own egg shards and make Squall look stronger than Steroid Snake. It's hard to appreciate exactly how shocking this result was to the majority of the observers on the board, even when you look at the close Oracle spread for this match. Yoshi was SUPPOSED to be one of the Nintendo near-elite. His name was spoken in the same breath as Ganondorf's, Sora's, and Zelda's. Yet for 24 painful hours he laid egg after egg as Squall eviscerated him en route to a repeat of Squall/Luigi 2k3. There were really no explanations for this debacle. Yoshi stood out like hell, was the only even vaguely Nintendo option in the match, and was so pathetic that many were suddenly contemplating the idea of SORA moving along next round with Squall. As for me, this match is what exemplified the deboost - Mario characters gained the most with the 2k5 Boost, and now they were feeling the brunt of its reversal. But hey, at least CATS finished ahead of someone in a match! woo CATS ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Now we move on to another match where a strong Square guy ought to likewise finish 5ish points ahead of the not-quite-as-strong Nintendo option. But far from being dull, this is actually a pretty interesting setup for a very odd reason: we might be in for a classic battle... for third place! Oh boy! Last Known Values - Squall - 35.43% (2007) - Yoshi - 32.27% (2007) - CATS - 14.87% (2007) - Nathan - new As we well know, both Squall and Yoshi are studs in general, but especially in this format. Y has got strong credentials- he owned Knuckles with ease, refused to cave to Mega Man, and even the combined N appeal of MM and Samus didn't kill him entirely. And yet, Squall's creds are even better- he smashed Aeris, beat up on Sora, and very nearly "broke the Noble Nine" by edging out Sonic in that crazy L-Block poll. If Yoshi is able to pound Fox with SFF hard enough, I give him a great shot of sneaking ahead of Squall thanks to Sora most likely putting up a better fight. But here in the first round, where both should be unhindered and performing at full strength? Nay, can't see Yoshi taking a serious run at him, although he should be able to use the Day Vote to look plenty respectable. The real slugfest here will be for that meaningless Bronze Medal, as I hinted earlier. CATS is hard to peg... clearly he's got a strong fanbase of around 10% that will support him over anyone, and clearly you'd think that a guy like him could excel in this format, but we heard these same arguments back in '07. Some even were able to keep a straight face while picking him to upset both Meta Knight and Peach... whoops! You'd think we'd have learned our lesson, but with this being The Year of the Joke Character, can you entirely count out the Godfather of All Jokes? I don't know, but one thing I DO know is that I'm not going to be counting on Nathan Drake to be worth much of anything in this format, or any format for that matter. Uncharted reviewed well enough, and apparently it eventually sold over 1 million, but adventure characters have never struck much fear in my heart. PS3 adventure characters, with generic names and looks from new series that hardly anyone on the site will have played? Yeah, CATS sure seems to have an ace up his sleeve here. And yet... it's CATS. Yes sir, this is certainly a toughie. In the end though I think I'm going to put my faith in the joke, though in reality it's more a case of putting my lack of faith in the PS3. And when you put that in the pot and stir slightly, the result is - Squall Leonhart - 38.24% - Yoshi - 34.06% - CATS - 13.86% - Nathan Drake - 13.84% Think of it like this year's Phoenix/Bomberman. You see my drift! Delicious. Ngamer Says: **Squall \> Yoshi** ### Next Day Review I'm still going to go on record as being a firm disbeliever in this so called "Brawl de-boost", but I've got to admit that after the past two days I can see why so many are beginning to hop aboard that wagon. To me though this doesn't look like a Yoshi underperformance... our mistake in this one was giving any credit whatsoever to Nate McFodder over there, and I think if we would have known going in that he'd only be worth 6 or 7 or whatever he's at now, it would have been pretty natural to chalk most of the missed percentage from that PS3 "star" up to the ACTUAL star of the PSX and PS2. That's an advantage Squall won't have going for him in R2, and so even though I'm glad I didn't pick the Yoshi \> Squall upset after seeing these last two days, I still feel that those making Sora \> Yoshi \> Fox out to be a near-lock are being much too hasty in calling a result that's still very much in doubt. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3265&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=22) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Axel Steel vs Cloud vs Midna vs Miles Edgeworth 2008 _source: Axel Steel vs Cloud vs Midna vs Miles Edgeworth 2008 (revid 85802)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, October 10th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 6 - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 10th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 59.13% Midna - 18.00% Miles Edgeworth - 11.48% Axel Steel - 11.39% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (2pts) - 89.27% Cloud second place (1pt) - 6.70% Midna second place (2pts) - 50.43% Midna first place (1pt) - 3.61% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 95.97% (41,174) Midna - 54.04% (23,185) Not gonna lie, I forgot how many laughably predictable matches happened in round 1 of this contest until I started actually looking at them all. There was a loooooot of chaff to cut through before we got to the good stuff this year. This was yet another match in a pretty huge pile of them featuring titans smashing slugs. And you know what? Looking back on it, I want this version of Final Fantasy 7 back. Not the modern one that gets anti-voted to death every year and loses the first debatable match it has. Believe it or not, this site used to like the game. Hopefully the remake gets us back to Cloud, Seph, and the gang all whoopin ass like they used to. Did you know Cloud and Link were the only characters to get 60% in round 1 this year? Yeah, the same Cloud that lost to Squirtle and needed a bunch of clutch magic to beat Mario and Zelda in 2018. It didn't used to be like this, and you're seeing that here. Yes I love FF7 to death and no I will never apologize for it. Cloud \> Midna was a stone cold lock, especially with Twilight Princess fresh in everyone's minds this contest. This was actually Midna's second contest, and in both of them she managed to scrape into the second round with second place finishes. There was some minor hype for Axel or Edgeworth to get some joke love, but it never came to pass. Edgey couldn't even get the typical Phoenix Wright board vote that the series usually gets, so this match was set in stone not long after it started. It's also surreal looking in the wayback machine and seeing all these people claim the heavy favorites were underperforming. No, they weren't. You guys are on the good stuff. It is incredibly difficult to put up godlike numbers in a fourway match. Our elites all looked fine, and when one of them gets 60% in a 4way match only to be called disappointing, it kinda blows my mind. Even getting 50% in this environment is difficult; 60 is preposterous. As such, Cloud was looking real good this year. ## Stats and Analysis Talk about making a debate where there wasn't any! Thanks to the ramblings of some posters \*cough\*, this match was actually argued heavily, though it was really for the sake of arguing than anything else for most involved. But anyway - Cloud Strife is our \#2 character, and he was going to be an easy pick for first in any match not involving Link. Midna was a spectacular disappointment last year, but her two opponents were Miles Edgeworth (Phoenix would be a tough upset over Midna, Edgey sadly had no shot), and Axel Steel. Unfortunately, some users thought that thanks to Guitar Hero's amazing sales and worldwide popularity that the game's most popular avatar would actually be able to do something. And while it was really annoying and made me want to punch people through the internet on multiple occasions, what we got was the expected result in the end. Much laughter was had as Axel failed to garner even 8% of the vote, but other than that this match was as boring as it got. The only two things to note is that Midna did a smidge better relative to expectations than we expected, and that unlike last year Cloud wasn't really trying to compete with Link on a performance level. Seriously, Axel/Midna/Edgeworth is less credible opposition than Luke/Shadow/Zidane, yet Cloud got a lower percentage against the same pack. Cloud's hopes of winning the contest rested on Samus or Mario getting through to the finals with Link, and aside from the obvious SFF problems, at the moment there was an L-Block in the way. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction As for today... like I said in that Snake writeup, there's something weird going on this season that seems to be hamstringing all of our elite performers. They're not looking BAD per se, they're just all disappointing ever so slightly. But today will be the day where Cloud finally snaps the streak of "meh" with a powerhouse performance! (Of course I said the same thing about Snake, and look how that turned out!) Back in the day: Last Known Values: - Cloud - 51.90% (2007) - Midna - 20.42% (2007) - Edgeworth - 12.84 (2007) - Axel - new For a match where the winner will never be in doubt, and most likely second place won't be either, this is actually a highly intriguing poll IMO. You've got a proven stud in this format attempting to fan the flames of that Nintendo deboost bonfire and show us all that he could be a legit threat to Link this season, if given a little bit of help. As noted, I do think he's going to be the first of the NN to do something to really wow us this year, but alot of that will only happen because the rest of this group is so heavily Nintendo. Even GHIII has done over 50% of its sales on the Wii. ...I think. Don't quote me on that! Unless it's accurate! Midna on the other hand is a real oddball. She got chalked up as a bust in '07, which I don't think was fair- ZELDAFEAR aside, how far above above the fodder line could you really expect someone in the Navi mold to perform? That being said, it seems possible for her to turn into an actual bust this season, now that the TP effect will have worn off by another 13 months. If that happens, I don't think Edgey should be entirely counted out for second place. Yes, he was awful in '07, but the poor guy got the worst possible draw in that one, wedged between The King of All SFF, Jokemon personified, and an even MORE niche Nintendo handheld option (who'd have thought that was even possible?). I'd imagine the PW series distances itself from the Twilight Princess crowd far enough to give us a much more accurate representation of Edgeworth's strength this time around, and I'm excepting that to result in a pretty healthy improvement. Despite the other two being so up in the air, the true "wildcard of the group" status has got to belong to Axel Steel. I'd like to just dismiss him entirely, because who really cares about your onscreen avatar when you're playing Guitar Hero? When you're strumming away on GH or Rock Band you're not playing as Axel Steel, you pretend that you're playing as yourself, thrashing through a sick solo and melting the crowd's faces off. That's why there's been such a big drive for player customization in the genre, and why RB2 and GHWT give even more options in that area. HOWEVER, there's still a small possibility that this goes down as the most important Pic Factor of R1, because look, there he is on his guitar; can't miss it! Thanks to that very appealing look, voters should have no trouble recognizing him as "that guy from GH"... but aside from that hardcore group of rhythm game lovers, could there really be another 20% of the site who prefers it over FF7 and TP and PW? I wouldn't think so, be we've already seen crazier things happen in the past three weeks! With so much up in the air, it's tough to get it all back into the pot, but I've done so and here were the results: - Cloud Strife - 61.11% - Midna - 15.51% - Miles Edgeworth - 12.35% - Axel Steel - 11.03% Hmm, that actually looks... pretty reasonable! Ngamer Says: **Cloud \> Midna** ### Next Day Review Another day, another slightly (not hugely, just slightly) disappointing performance from an overwhelming favorite! The trend this year isn't NintendoFAQs, certainly, but as today shows it's also not SquareFAQs. And despite what some overly dramatic purists might be saying, I don't think its fair to call it JokeFAQs either. Sure WCC wowed us, but it's not as though whichever character has the strongest "joke appeal" or stands out the most from the traditional character options is seeing a significant boost in every match. If that was ever a theory, it was certainly disproven by Tim and Sackboy and Axel Steel, and most likely Travis will continue beating that now-dead horse tonight. If there's any trend at play in '08, it would appear to be anti-favoriteFAQs. Extremely odd occurrence, and something we'll definitely have to keep an eye on as these matches continue to play out... for the sake of our Oracles if nothing else! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3266&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=23) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Mewtwo vs Ness vs Pac-Man vs Travis Touchdown 2008 _source: Mewtwo vs Ness vs Pac-Man vs Travis Touchdown 2008 (revid 85803)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, October 11th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 6 - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 11th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mewtwo - 35.80% Ness - 26.92% Pac-Man - 24.89% Travis Touchdown - 12.26% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mewtwo first place (2pts) - 33.15% Mewtwo second place (1pt) - 26.81% Pac-Man second place (2pts) - 32.81% Pac-Man first place (1pt) - 41.71% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mewtwo - 59.96% (25,725) Pac-Man - 74.52% (31,971) Before Mewtwo was known for his FRAUDULENCE -- it kills me to admit he actually is a fraud, because he's my favorite Pokemon of them all -- he was known for beating the ever-loving piss out of people in 2008 and 2013. You guys can skip to 2013 if you want to read about that run, because this is a 2008 analysis. Mewtwo was expected to get first place here and avenge that embarrassing 2007 debut, but this was something else. Not only did he come out ready to stunt on these hoes, but he also ruined any chance Ness had of getting second place by SFFing him to death. Ness was the overwhelming favorite to get second here, because Travis was always going to be gutter trash and Pac-Man only had one bright spot since 2002 -- an upset win over Revolver Ocelot. Pac-Man is just one of those characters people had no faith in, and again, Ness was largely picked for second here due to BrawlFEAR. When the poll started, it became very apparent very quickly that Ness just collapses against anything Nintendo-related more popular than him, especially if Smash Bros is involved. Mewtwo wasn't actually in Brawl, but he was in Melee and he's a part of the original 151. Pac-Man, despite also being a Nintendo character for all intents and purposes, simply had less overlap with Mewtwo. Thus, in The Hierarchy™, it meant Mewtwo \> Pac-Man \> Ness. It feels like we all should have known this easily back in 2008, but BrawlFEAR was a very real thing during the bracket period of this contest and it felt asinine to go against it. For most people, the thought of Pac-Man doing better than Ness here was ludicrous. We saw how that turned out. This also meant Mewtwo was basically getting a bye into round 3, because the next round was him, Cloud, Pac-Man, and Midna. That pile being a round 2 match was.... yeah, but this Mewtwo performance was pretty nuts given he had two leeches in the poll with him. ## Stats and Analysis - Ness underperformed by **-8.61%**, the **\#3** most disappointing performance of 2008 - Mewtwo overperformed by **+6.03%**, the **\#9** most impressive performance of 2008 After what he had done last year against the combined forces of Ryu and Bowser (also with Toad I guess), Mewtwo was the easy favorite for first in this pack, and it seemed like Ness should be an easy second. In fact, the ease at which Ness was designated to place in this match was eerily reminiscent of Ocelot/Pac-Man 2k5, though there was at least a smattering of chatter because of that very fact. Still, we were talking about two totally different scenarios, here. One match was straight-up affair, a niche character with a terrible blob of a picture going up against a guy as universally known as Mario. Ness, at least on GameFAQs, is every bit as well-known as Pac-Man, not to mention Pac-Man has fallen apart time and again against Nintendo icons. With the only non-Nintendo option being TRAVIS TOUCHDOWN, all Ness had to do was retain a fraction of his SSB luster and he would have had this one in the bag. And thus the match began, and within seconds we learned the sad truth that Ness would fall apart against any SSB character not named Lucas. Ness got trounced by Pac-Man here. He ended up significantly closer to Travis Touchdown than he did to Pac-Man here. And the whole of the trio was made to look pathetic - Mewtwo was scoring over 40% of the vote on them here, and that statistic would only look more and more pitiful as the contest wore on. Other than that, there really isn't anything to say - the favorite to place in this match ended up losing a plethora of updates to Travis Touchdown. The only real thing that stuns me is exactly how crazy high Pac-Man's prediction percentages were, especially his first place placing. The casuals didn't really seem to have much faith in Mewtwo, though we wouldn't see that sentiment justified until next round. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I doubt the flight from favorites does anything to hurt Mewtwo's showing in this next one, as there are probably plenty of casuals giving Ness and/or Pac-Man equally good chances of advancing into R2. Let's take a look at how things went last year for these three: Last Known Values - Mewtwo - 23.73% (2007) - Ness - 20.46% (2007) - Pac-Man - 11.19% (2007) - Travis - new Just looking at the numbers, you'd have to call that a disappointing showing for this whole batch of characters. But Mewtwo has a good excuse- he got close to the worst draw imaginable, and the uproar that went out across this board when we first saw it was justifiable. Even against those long odds, Mewtwo put on a nice showing, especially with the ASV where he went on a pretty much awesome tear for a few hours, making some serious cuts on both Bowser and Ryu. There shouldn't be anything in this new group to hinder his ASV appeal either, and in fact I'd be shocked if any of these three hindered him at any time during the day to keep this from being a wire to wire runaway victory for the King of the Pokemon. Pac-Man looked bad in '07, but again, he at least had a good excuse. The guy doesn't respond well to old school or iconic opposition, and considering Mario is the perfect example of both those qualities, we should have known he'd be in for a hurtin' come match day. Mewtwo didn't even arrive on the scene until '97 (and didn't hit it big until the first Pokemon movie in '99), and of course Ness wasn't even on gamers' radars until SSB in '99, and Travis is obviously extremely new, so I don't see any of these options having the old or iconic appeal needed to hold Pac back. He's also the only option for voters who don't want to support Nintendo, which is apparently on of the agenda for at least a decent number of voters this season. I really wanted Pac to get his classic sprite look for this match pic, but even with this colorful 3D version of himself I'm liking his chances to have a decent outing here. Now, Ness also looked bad last time around, but unlike his co-contestants the Boy Wonder had no excuse. He was the lone Nintendo/Smash/"kiddie" option in a sea of mature PSX stars, and his failure to do ANYTHING with that huge advantage was one of the most baffling things about the entire Contest to me. Clearly his past 1v1 success was more a case of people being apathetic about or flat out disliking his previous opponents rather than people actually feeling strongly about Ness himself. However, you could say the same thing (and indeed many have) about Pac-Man. What's the difference? The difference is that there's an ELEPHANT in the way, and his name is Mewtwo. I doubt Mew kills Ness within the Smash fanbase, but honestly all he should need to do is tip the scales slightly, and that would be enough to give Pac-Man the advantage. I see it happening. Travis will be fodder, but like Axel before him, he's that good kind of fodder that I don't at all mind seeing in 128 character brackets. Really cool character design, has the Sword Factor working overtime for him, and heck, even his name is hilarious. He probably could have done better in a group without other recent Nintendo options, but no biggie, I still see him having enough appeal to crack into the double digits without much problem. Anything too far beyond that is probably out of his range regardless of opponent. So with Mewtwo a clear cut above the rest, Ness and Pac very close but the scales getting tipped in the favor of the old schooler, and Travis being able to avoid embarrassment, the end result has been potted and stirred and now I'll serve it to you. - Mewtwo - 37.92% - Pac-Man - 24.50% - Ness - 23.61% - Travis Touchdown - 13.96% Hm... not entirely comfortable with picking Mewtwo that high. But on the other hand, who's going to stop him? Ngamer Says: **Mewtwo \> Pac-Man** ### Next Day Review Wow, awesome showing from Mewtwo in this one. As I said in my writeup I wasn't really seeing where any of the other three would be able to hold him back, so in retrospect I'm not sure why I didn't pick him for a little higher... too much Ness faith I suppose. This sets up a really cool grouping for R2- where is Midna going to fall in relation to a Pac-Man who should once again be running unhindered by icon SFF? Who wins the ASV between Mewtwo and Cloud? (Well Cloud still WINS during that time obviously, but I could see Mew having the Pokemon Power to make it his best time.) And given his horrible starting power, might we even see Mewtwo in the lead for a couple updates? Ha, now that would be funny! Of course the even bigger point is that now Mewtwo's set himself up beautifully for a run all the way through this division- if it's Squall and Sora advancing out of the top half you might as well make him a lock, but even if Yoshi gets into the group instead, who's to say the dino would be assured the heads up win between these two, given what we've seen the last three days? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3267&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=24) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Big Boss vs Jinjo vs Kirby vs Lucas 2008 _source: Big Boss vs Jinjo vs Kirby vs Lucas 2008 (revid 85804)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, October 12th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 7 - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 12th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 38.03% Big Boss - 35.18% Lucas - 14.31% Jinjo - 12.40% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Big Boss first place (2pts) - 40.75% Big Boss second place (1pt) - 31.28% Kirby second place (2pts) - 40.53% Kirby first place (1pt) - 49.95% - **Advancing Prediction:** Big Boss - 72.03% (30,903) Kirby - 90.48% (38,819) To understand how thoroughly and utterly absurd this result was, you have to travel back in time to how people thought back in 2008. Even with Metal Gear Solids 3 and 4 being fresh in everyone's minds, we had already seen Big Boss in a contest. Twice, in fact. Go look at how he did. Even with getting into round 3 in 2007, Big Boss got there by default unless you want to call his win over Magus some huge shocker. But does an upset win over Magus even count? There were also the LOL x-stats, which were the holiest of holy grails of prognostication at the time. Big Boss (2007c) VS Kirby (2007c) Big Boss has a strength of 16.22. Kirby has a strength of 22.67. Kirby wins with 64.23% of the vote! A win of 39,004 with 137,088 total votes cast. Big Boss (2005c) VS Kirby (2005c) Big Boss has a strength of 17.62. Kirby has a strength of 34.99. Kirby wins with 74.82% of the vote! A win of 42,751 with 86,117 total votes cast. Throwing Jinjo and Lucas into a poll wasn't going to close that gap, regardless of how much Nintendo LFF or BrawlFEAR existed. There was just no way. As such, just about everyone penciled in Kirby \> Big Boss, assumed it would be as boring as the litany of "heavy favorite \> easy second place" matches we had this contest, and called it a day. Even when the match picture came out and it looked like Solid Snake himself was in the picture, people didn't think much of it. This is Kirby we're talking about, after all. If anyone has a match picture or sore thumb advantage in a lol 4way poll, it's him. Then the match started and people just totally and completely lost their minds. Not only did Big Boss easily win, but Kirby never even came close, even early when board/bracket votes are a thing. This led to all sorts of absurd extrapolation for the future of this contest, including a bunch of people erroneously claiming Nintendo was dead and buried, a bunch of people claiming Big Boss was about to go on a deep contest run, and various other wild goose chases that happen after every upset. You know how these days when anything gets rallied in round 1, a bunch of people start claiming the contest is over? Imagine that here, but on a much bigger scale given people actually cared about our contests back then. This match was that insane. Kirby was probably hurt by Jinjo and Lucas to a degree, but neither that nor any match picture should have made up the huge gap between these two characters. I'm also not much of a "pictures matter" guy, but that's a different conversation for a different day. And I will yet again say this match is why the 4way format blows. Can you even imagine this match as a 1v1 Big Boss vs Kirby match, with Kirby losing? The internet would have exploded. As-is, it was a fun result that caused a meltdown, but ultimately it didn't matter. Both characters advanced, and round 2 would have Raiden of all characters in the poll. That right there nipped any hopes of a Big Boss run. Fourways suck. They really do. They rob us of so much. Just imagine this as a 1v1 with Big Boss actually winning. It's one of the great what-ifs. As-is, we got the result we all expected, just in the reverse order. For all the meltdowns and all the nonsense, it wouldn't amount to much of anything. And it should have, which is why after 2009, the stupid 4ways never came back. ## Stats and Analysis - Big Boss overperformed by **+12.90%**, the **\#2**most impressive performance of 2008 - Lucas underperformed by **-8.66%**, the **\#2**most disappointing performance of 2008 When the bracket was first released, this thing was an afterthought - for many, many reasons. Jinjo and Lucas are two of the most fodderific fodders that have ever graced the contest, and that's BEFORE Kirby gets thrown into the equation. And Kirby was just a teensy bit below the near-elite tier while Big Boss, as much as he impressed as Naked Snake last year, he hadn't even garnered 60% on Magus. Y'know, the same Magus that let Phoenix Wright lead him for half an hour. There as SFF to think about, but the characters were so weak as to have it be inconsequential. Even IF Big Boss were to get his Naked Snake picture - which wasn't assured - Kirby would have it in the bag. \*I\* waited until the last day to pull the trigger on this upset, and even then I wasn't particularly confident in it - unlike the Magus smashing. Well, Liquid breaking 45% on Luigi and the Deboost Parade put a lot of eyes on this match in a hurry. And when the picture was revealed - seriously, that pointing Snake is better than most of the pictures Solid has received in the contest - you could feel the bottom on the Kirby train drop out like a sack of potatoes. That being said, nothing could prepare people for what was to come next. At the first freeze, with the early Kirby-heavy board vote and everything, when the dust cleared Big Boss clearly had already pulled the massive upset and put the match away - he was up by 70 votes, with 41% of the total vote to Kirby's 37%. The next update? A 207 vote lead, and over 42% of the total vote. By the end of the hour he was over 45%, by the end of the night vote he had hit 49%, and he finished the match over 48% and killing the Kirbster by 15,000 votes. Big Boss put up bonafide Noble Nine numbers, numbers more befitting of Solid Snake than a character that had been tripled by Auron in his first contest outing. And Kirby had next to no excuses - both of the two fodder in the match were under 10% of the vote, with Lucas in particular well under 6% of the vote (with that in mind, a hearty "lol" for Lucas, an even bigger SSB leech than Ness). At this point, people were wondering if Big Boss could make it through NEXT round, despite Raiden being there to sap his MGS support. There was also the quite legitimate point that predicting Big Boss was getting to be like playing a game of roulette - why did we have to base our predictions on the luck of the draw picture a character would be drawing each round? Then again, this was pretty much just another example in a long line of Really Dumb Things this contest would do for the sake of unpredictability, and as much as I enjoyed this match I couldn't help but think, "Man, this contest really sucks." But, train wreck, powerless, etc. There was nothing to do but chin up, look forward, and prepare to complain even harder! ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Last Known Values: - Big Boss - 16.22% (2007) - Kirby - 22.67% (2007) - Lucas - new - Jinjo - new To me the most shocking stat relating to this match is that only 17 Gurus picked Big Boss for first place. That's less than 8% of the field willing to go out on a limb and select a guy who we knew (post-user pic creation announcement, that is) was going to get an awesome pic advantage to defeat a character who would be facing double Nintendo LFF. The same character who got owned handily by Kratos last season, when having to deal with only single Nintendo LFF. I mean I'll give Kirby something of a break for the whole L-Block thing being unfortunate, but even so, he didn't even manage 45% of the vote directly against Kratos in a match most of us had been expecting to be neck and neck. And given Donkey Kong's embarrassingly enormous flop the other day, recent results haven't done much to increase Kirby's stock around these parts. We've seen what even a not exactly well-loved character like Pac-Man can do when he gets to stand out against three Nintendo opponents- given all these trends, and with Big Boss looking like that in the pic, I've got to feel that the ball is in his court for this match. Now that being said, I've got to admit that I give Kirby a much better chance at the win than I did about 48 hours ago. See, the last time BB scored this pic he earned 25% of the vote against Mario, Magus, and Phoenix Wright; obviously much stiffer competition than he'll be facing tonight, so he would seem to be a lock for a take in the low 30s. Trouble is, Ness has disappointed me so much today that I'm no longer so sure that Lucas is going to be able to hold Kirby back whatsoever! I mean, going from Ness to Lucas you lose Melee, you lose SSB... you even lose an Earthbound that has actually been released in this country for heaven's sake! If Mewtwo can score 70% on Ness directly as he's doing today, I see no reason why Kirby wouldn't put up 75% on Lucas... and that could spell serious trouble for Snake-lite. The other thing that has shaken my confidence is Jinjo's picture. A green Jinjo, on a green background, right-side up? Noooooo! I was counting on Zen's upside down picture to get the go ahead in this one, which would have screamed "hey casuals look, this here's a joke character!" Can't guarantee that would have turned him into a joke powerhouse or anything, but eh, I'd have liked his chances much better if he could have grabbed people's attention like that. As is, I can't see the Jinjo meme being worth enough to keep him too far above Lucas. We're likely in for a highly pathetic 3rd place, 15-10%ish rumble to avoid the basement in this one. And again, all the extra percentage being up for grabs should prove to be a major advantage for Kirby- and a major disadvantage for my bracket. (BTW, did I mention that 2 of those mere 17 who picked this BB upset ahead of time are me and yo? Well, it's true! \*sends a disastrously overconfident pre-match high five yo's way\*) Okay, soooo, if Lucas and Jinjo have bad showings, then in order for Bossy to pull off this upsets we're going to need a result somewhere in the range of... - Big Boss - 36.14%% - Kirby - 36.10% - Jinjo - 14.30% - Lucas - 13.46% Bah, I like how far ahead of the curve I was in calling for this upset a month back, but here in the last hours I'm starting to get cold feet. Oh well, soldiering on! Ngamer Says: **Big Boss \> Kirby** ### Next Day Review Hooo boy, what a crazy showing from BB today! HOWEVER, people are going way overboard in terms of what this result will mean the rest of the way. I'm hearing ravings about "the death of Nintendo" (just absurd) and "massive MGS4 boost" (uh, hello, did you see Snake drop the ball only a week back?) and "Big Boss to win the division alongside MC!" Sorry, not buying it. The best way to explain this result in my opinion is by observing that not only does BB look great, he also looks almost EXACTLY like Brawl Snake, with the addition of an eye patch. It seems as though casual Smashers though they had the choice of three characters, and since it's very much a case of Snake \> Kirby \> Lucas within Brawl, that's how much of the undecided votes were swung. In any case, the trouble is that even if there has been a massive MGS4 boost, that's only going to work against BB in R2, in the form of Raiden. Let's not forget that Nintendo isn't the only company that suffers from LFF- next time around Kirby will be on the right side of it, and I bet that's more than enough to swing the results back in his favor. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3268&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=25) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Kain Highwind vs Master Chief vs Professor Layton vs Raiden 2008 _source: Kain Highwind vs Master Chief vs Professor Layton vs Raiden 2008 (revid 85805)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, October 13th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 7 - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 13th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 45.04% Raiden - 28.43% Kain Highwind - 17.29% Professor Layton - 9.30% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Master Chief first place (2pts) - 81.54% Master Chief second place (1pt) - 10.92% Raiden second place (2pts) - 61.52% Raiden first place (1pt) - 6.73% - **Advancing Prediction:** Master Chief - 92.46% (39,668) Raiden - 68.25% (29,281) This was another ludicrously easy-to-predict round one match of this contest. Master Chief \> Raiden was always going to be how this went, because Layton was guaranteed gutter trash and Kain wasn't far behind. Final Fantasy characters pre-6 are nothing to write home about in contests, and we had already seen Cecil before. He didn't do much. What floored people in this match however was Master Chief seemingly returning to form. In 2007, Chief was 3500 votes away from making the final, and that happened in a match with L-Block and Solid Snake in it. Chief 2007 was one of the best contest runs we've ever seen in these things, and believe it or not, there was a time when GameFAQs truly loved the Halo franchise. You're looking at it -- the mid-2000s. So when this match happened and Master Chief seemed to return to pre-2007 levels, alarm bells went off. A lot of people picked the Chief to make a deep contest run this year, and it was pretty apparent right from the jump that this wasn't going to happen. It doesn't take away from his 2007 run or anything, but it would have been fun to see him tear through a contest again, as it's always neat to have new challengers to the throne arise and actually stay in contention. On a personal side note, it's nice to see Raiden finally get a definitive contest win. I still remember to this day how he choked away 1200 votes against Sam Fisher in 2007 and almost lost that match. This time around, largely thanks to Metal Gear Solid 4, there would be no doubt about it. Raiden got a solid second place in this match, which meant all four MGS entries in this contest thusfar (Raiden, Snake, Big Boss, Liquid) all looked good in round 1, and if Ocelot wasn't a gigantic moron we would have had a perfect 5 for 5. MGS came a long way from the Solid Shit days to now. Brawl and MGS4 releasing at basically the same time did a ton of good for that franchise. It's a shame it didn't keep up over the years. ## Stats and Analysis - Master Chief underperformed by **-8.22%**, the **\#4**most disappointing performance of 2008 - Kain overperformed by **+8.13%**, the **\#5**most impressive performance of 2008 The difference between that match and this match is what will go down as one of the biggest year-to-year bombs we'll ever see in this contest. One year ago, Master Chief was incredible. We saw a character who many had losing to YUNA in the first round come within 2% of beating SOLID SNAKE and making the finals last year. This year, while perhaps not in position to improve on that - beating a powered up Snake was likely not in the cards - he would certainly have a shot to take down the most vulnerable Noble Niner out there, Sonic. MC \> Sonic was a ridiculously sexy upset pick, and the Oracle expectations said it all. With one of last year's biggest disappointments in Raiden, an untested FF4 character sure to be weaker than Cecil and another random piece of fodder (btw Layton's pic is HILARIOUS to me), Chief was going to bring the pain in a big way. So when he started this match under 35%, it really kind of floored people. Raiden, who had spent all day holding off SAM FISHER from completing a comeback, was way too close for comfort on the green machine. That wouldn't have been so bad - people were half-expecting MGS4 to do anything for its characters at this point - but KAIN HIGHWIND was keeping it close to both of them. Yeah, Kain, from the game whose main character had just gotten done getting fodderized by Zack and Wario, was keeping over the 25% mark. A good day vote wasn't enough to save Chief from this debacle, and he ended up not even breaking 60% on Kain by the end of it all. Even now people are still picking up the pieces of Chief's one year stint of stardom, and it falls to us to ask: What Happened? I, personally, have a slightly different take than most. While the advertising blitz and barrage of merchandise and the SFF all really helped Master Chief, this year proved that there is no entity that cannot be possessed by the power of The Bandwagon. And Chief had a whole stockade in his Game Fuel 12 packs, and the hilarity of seeing him go even deeper and deeper combined with the Halo 3 hype to make a perfect storm of MC power. Had L-Block not crashed the party, I firmly believe we could have seen a Chief \> Snake upset in the semis, and who knows what happening in the finals. As of this match, however, Chief had been made deeply mortal, if not mortally wounded. I don't think I could bring myself to pick him over Yuna right now, and him beating Sonic seemed like a pipe dream. No egg the hedgehog could lay would be THAT dismal. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Speaking of Raiden and that (probably not all that MASSIVE) MGS4 boost, let's see where he'd be boosting from! Last Known Values: - Master Chief - 37.79% (2007) - Raiden - 18.96% (2007) - Kain - new - Layton - new Even though I don't like MC at all as a character, he's definitely one of the funnest Contest entrants we're ever seen. What joy to see him flop left and right in 1v1s, and on the other hand, what a thrill to watch him suddenly Hulk up to a virtual NNer the minute we switch into 4-ways! I'm expecting another powerhouse showing from the King of the Xbox tonight, although I doubt it ends up being quite as dominating as his R1 from back in '07 just because there won't be any Vercetti to casual SFF. The real question of the day will be Raiden. Is he really as weak as he looked last Summer, or was some of that the result of voters not recognizing him inside all of that toaster armor? If it was just recognition holding him back, then he certainly would be on track for big gains now that everyone interested in the series would have played through MGS4. Even after seeing Liquid and BB look so good, I'm hesitant to get my hopes up too far for Raiden in this one. If he lets us down for the fourth time in a row though, might he even be in danger of getting knocked out early by Kain? Ehhhh, not really. Yes Square has turned in some good showings to this point, but they've all come from new-school Square, while the older games have failed to impress. Plus he looks like total junk in that match pic. That leaves just Layton. Now just looking over the names of our 128 entrants, I'd certainly have considered the Prof for the position of weakest of the whole pack. But after seeing him in this match pic, I've got to admit that this was a pretty favorable draw for him. He stands out like a sore thumb, is the only non-mature option, and has a funny enough name that he might get some joke support. Plus in a match with MC, you know there's always going to be plenty of anti-votes to go around. All the considered, I'd be surprised if he fell into the single digits in this one. Alright, so with MC going off on a sizeable blowout, with Raiden comfortably in 2nd and Layton looking perhaps a touch better than expected, that would shake out to about... - Master Chief - 45.19% - Raiden - 22.80% - Kain Highwind - 18.55% - Professor Layton - 13.46% AWESOME. Ngamer Says: **Master Chief \> Raiden** ### Next Day Review Annnd, here we go again! Like Mario and Cloud and Snake and Link etc etc before him, MC comes into this poll a heavy favorite for the win, but leaves with a heavily disappointing victory. Well actually, all the other NN and NN-breakers were just slightly disappointing, so clearly there was something at work here besides just anti-favoriteFAQs. I guess we were foolish to expect MC to remain at his 2007 levels given how hype and recent release-boosted they must have been... but even so, to finish at 37%? Come ON now! Of course the other way to spin this is that MGS4 has turned Raiden into a 4-way monster, which I might put some stock in if not for Kain. I mean honestly, how far above Kefka could any FF4 character be, really? So overall I'm leaning more towards Master Chief just coming way down from 10 months ago- which is awesome considering we're going to be seeing a weakened MC doing battle with an LFF-hurt Big Boss and an LFF-boosted Kirby in a few weeks. Fatal threeway, here we come! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3269&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=26) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Captain MacMillan vs Leon Kennedy vs Riku vs Siegfried Schtauffen 2008 _source: Captain MacMillan vs Leon Kennedy vs Riku vs Siegfried Schtauffen 2008 (revid 85806)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 7 - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Leon Kennedy - 36.87% Riku - 32.72% Siegfried Schtauffen - 18.37% Captain MacMillan - 12.04% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Leon first place (2pts) - 55.53% Leon second place (1pt) - 22.37% Riku second place (2pts) - 41.97% Riku first place (1pt) - 26.22% - **Advancing Prediction:** Leon - 77.90% (33,421) Riku - 68.19% (29,256) The birth of Swamp Thing! Seriously, what is that? It looks like a weird amalgamation of diarrhea, a sex toy, and a really bad infection. I don't even like Call of Duty, but it deserved better representation than whatever that is. Beyond that, the obvious consensus here was Leon Kennedy \> Riku, though a lot of people worried pre-contest that Leon would choke again. Remember this gem? As luck would have it, Leon didn't get hurt by Swamp Thing and Soul Calibur as much as he did by Dante a year ago, which meant an easy, boring match that went exactly as everyone expected. No crazy Riku upset, no crazy Leon choke job, no weird second place upset, nothing. Riku isn't really a character strong enough to take advantage of LFF anyway, as one can easily see by looking at his contest history. Quick note before moving on. I will never understand why some fighting game characters have last names and others don't. I didn't know what a "Siegfried Schtauffen" even is. Calm down, video game writers. There's a reason you're writing for such a bottom tier medium in the first place. ## Stats and Analysis - Leon overperformed by **+5.49%,** the **\#11** most impressive performance of 2008 - Riku underperformed by **-5.29%,** the **\#11**most disappointing performance of 2008 This pack was watched \*really\* closely as soon as the bracket was announced, because as Dante and Leon were famously responsible for letting the Worst Upset of All Time happen, there was a lot of speculation as to whether it could happen again with Riku. 45% on Yoshi in 2006 was nothing to snicker at (well, before a few days ago), and he had made up for a poor showing against Ryu Hayabusa with a good second round win despite Solid Snake being in the match. Heck, there was a niche sentiment that Riku had a shot at upsetting Leon in THIS match, and even those that thought otherwise knew Riku would perform respectably. But it would seem, at least, that Chris' and Yoshi's performances would both be harbingers of things to come. Leon just annihilated Riku from the beginning, and even the vaunted KH day vote did almost nothing to limit the damage. This was one of the more shocking beatdowns we'd ever seen between two characters, and the only thing that made it marginally less so was the fact that Squall had dismantled Yoshi a few days prior. Suddenly it looked like Dante \> Leon was going to be the favorite prediction next round. There were a few crazies (hello) that were verrrrrry quietly floating a Leon upset of Dante, but even they were pretty sure that was a pipe dream. Lastly, the two pieces of fodder in this match - Siegfried is notable only in the sense that he's the only entrant in the contest to get in under two names (and that he's much weaker than Nightmare), and Captain MacMillan was confused for the Swamp Thing for most of the match. That means he's using his camo properly, people! ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Looking ahead to tomorrow... hm, now this will be a tough nut to crack. Let's start by seeing how far the acorn fell from the tree last time around. Last Known Values: - Leon - 27.70% (2007) - Riku - 24.27% (2007) - Siegfried - new - MacMillan - new As I said, what an odd couple of characters. Who's the real Leon, the one who easily crunched Vivi and then Pikachu, or the guy who folded like a house of cards the minute Dante showed up? And who's the real Riku, the one who looked like total junk when Square SFF was in play, or the one who looked awesome in going toe to toe with Ryu H and Kratos once badass SFF arrived? Given the way Chris stunned us by doing better than awful the other day, I'm going to have to side with Resident Evil continuing the growth trend its displayed since RE4 and give Leon the benefit of the doubt here. That being said though, I'm betting that Riku does a better job of keeping it close than most are expecting, especially as he shouldn't have any serious competition for the ASV tomorrow afternoon. New Square has been putting up plenty of solid showings, and Sora's was just about the best of them all (although its entirely possible that I'm letting that pro-Fox bias get to my head again), so I'd still call it a mistake to count Riku out entirely. But wait, MacMillian is a 360 character- surely he'll draw strong ASV support as well! Uh... have you SEEN him? The guy's only in one CoD4 level (or so I hear) and you can play through the entire single player campaign and not even remember him (again, or so I've heard)- basically the guy looks like a walking joke, and he should perform like a walking joke, getting pushed out to a decent start by 4chan or whatever other internet weirdos find that seaweed hilarious before collapsing the rest of the poll. (Apparently there's even a listing of "Captain MacMillian Facts" out there somewhere, which makes his fad what, a ripoff of a ripoff of a not all that original idea in the first place? Yeah, I'm not expecting huge appeal across the board for this guy.) Siegfried, hmm... yeah, not expecting him to make too much noise either. People seem to have gotten over their SC4 excitement pretty quickly, I don't see the game having given the series the true jump start it needed to become relevant again site-wide. As for Nightmare, I think much of his strength comes from his ridiculous character design and awesome name, while SS both looks and sounds much more generic. Plus he didn't get a huge sword to swing around in the match pic, drawing in casuals with every stroke. So if Leon's legit (until a scary fellow Capcomer arrives!), and Riku's legit (but not QUITE so legit), and Siegfried is pretty bad, and MacMillian is just awful (past the first 90 minutes), then we're looking at something like: - Leon Kennedy - 37.97% - Riku - 31.79% - Siegfried Schtauffen - 17.82% - Captain MacMillan - 12.42% That looks... perfect! Ngamer Says: **Leon \> Riku** ### Next Day Review Gracious, you're got to put Leon right up there with Sora and Squall in that small list of characters that actually impressed while finishing first. I suppose it's not all that crazy- this is the same Leon that scored a 40-30 on Vivi, and I'd certainly have expected Vivi to be stronger than Riku in this format... but not THIS much stronger, especially considering how the Magician and Seaweed-wearer ought to have had more in common with Mr. Kennedy. Maybe everything RE will just keep gaining steam until RE5 hits? I didn't realize hype levels were this high. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3270&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=27) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Dante vs Hogger vs Laharl vs Ramza Beoulve 2008 _source: Dante vs Hogger vs Laharl vs Ramza Beoulve 2008 (revid 85807)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 7 - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 46.45% Ramza Beoulve - 22.49% Hogger - 15.75% Laharl - 15.18% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Dante first place (2pts) - 82.55% Dante second place (1pt) - 10.42% Hogger second place (2pts) - 27.02% Hogger first place (1pt) - 8.53% - **Advancing Prediction:** Dante - 92.97% (39,887) Hogger - 35.55% (15,252) This was one of the most entertaining matches we've ever had in round 1 of a 4way contest, and you can see why in looking at the results. Dante was always going to destroy these goofs for first place. That isn't the point. How often is it do you see three characters all have a fair shot at second place and stay basically tied for 24 hours? That's what happened here, but it wasn't supposed to play out that way. Did you guys know that Final Fantasy Tactics collectively only has one win in contest history? It was a random round 1 killing of Dance Dance Revolution back in 2004. That's tied with (ugh) Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Ramza himself is an 0-for all the way up to when I'm writing this in 2020. His history as a contest choke artist started in this match, though he made his debut in 2003 when he got killed by Kirby. Even still, most people put Dante \> Ramza in this match and thought nothing of it. Laharl is bottomfeeder trash and Hogger exists only to serve as the first elite mob people kill in World of Warcraft. Some people will claim Hogger is a meme, but he isn't. He's the Guard Scorpion of WoW and not much else. Unfortunately for Ramza and Laharl, both were so weak and both stole enough of the minuscule non-Dante vote that Hogger was able to hang around. Ramza being weak was never supposed to happen here, but the combination of unexpected weakness and terrible draw really did him in. Laharl is one of the worst possible characters for Ramza to go up against, because both are strategy RPG leads. They're already the niche of the niche, and then they went up against each other? Oof. When the poll first started, it was clear Ramza was doomed. He struggled to build up a lead against total fodder garbage, and these polls start at midnight. This is generally the time when Square stuff does really well. Here, Ramza struggled to get a lead of 300 before Laharl started coming back on him. Not only that, but Hogger was sitting there in striking distance down by 600. Let's put this in perspective for a sec: Laharl ain't shit, and I say this as someone who loved Disgaea enough to transcript the text into a document for this site. If you're sitting here struggling against Laharl before allowing him to chop your lead away overnight, you suck. Come the morning vote, Ramza and Laharl were tied, but Laharl was never really able to do anything. These two just stayed tied for hours, and both of them ignored the snake in the grass behind them. Hogger was sitting there about 500 votes off the pace, and come the day vote he made his move. I know a lot of people are reading this expecting me to rage out about Hogger coming back on a character from my favorite game, but it's not happening. First off, I don't like Ramza all that much. The characters in Tactics in general don't really get enough screen time to make me emotionally invested, and the plot falls apart in chapter 4 when all the political intrigue dies and everyone just turns into demons. Final Fantasy Tactics is all about the gameplay. Secondly, and more importantly, I support rallies no matter who does them. Would I have preferred Ramza win? Sure. Am I mad about it? Nah. Hogger starting a rally with the day vote was hilarious, especially given how accessible WoW players were to rallying back then. This will seem impossible by 2020 standards, but GameFAQs actually liked WoW back then. Most of that was due to the 2006 South Park episode, but still! There was a time when Blizzard wasn't a dog shit company. So when Hogger started going off, I didn't mind it as much as one might think, outside of one particularly obnoxious user will not get the dignity of me naming him. And by the way, he was straight up lying about his rally influence. Hogger's run came from all corners of the internet. To the point. Around 10 am, Hogger started going nuts in the poll, and we've all seen the rally story before. Within a few hours, he turned a 500 vote deficit to a seemingly insurmountable 800 vote lead. I say "seemingly" because we know rallyers get bored once they're winning. That happened here, which allowed Ramza to put in one last hail mary near the very end. But it was too little, too late. Ramza's effort resulted in him "only" losing by 150 votes, but if he had bothered giving a piss of effort for 24 hours it would have never come down to this at all. People of course started freaking out and claiming Hogger was the latest possible bandwagon contest champ, which was of course impossible. Hogger had to rally to beat Ramza and Laharl. Compare that to L-Block's first result of 2007, which coincidentally also featured Laharl: It's no contest. This was destined to be a fun upset and little else. It was also destined to be the start of Ramza's choke job reputation, something he has yet to get rid of over a decade later. ## Stats and Analysis - Hogger advancing was the **\#2** most surprising result of Round 1 - Ramza underperformed by **-5.79%**, the **\#8** most disappointing performance of 2008 Of all the results that we had this year, none of them really have me going back and saying, "this should not have happened," like this one. There were bigger shocks, of course, but almost without exception there's an explanation, or at least a jaundiced eye and prism to look at the matches through. This thing may be underrated because no one cared about the participants involved, but in terms of "one and dones" it has a ton of not coincidental parallels with Grand Theft Auto/WarCraft. Dante was the easy first in this match - there was a smattering of hype that he could break 50% in it, but that was mostly disregarded - with the second place slot supposed to easily go to Ramza. For those who don't know who Ramza is (and that appears to be a LOT of people these days), he's the protagonist of Final Fantasy Tactics. The same Final Fantasy Tactics that nearly beat - and many argue should have beaten - Metal Gear Solid in the Games Contest. Ramza himself didn't have quite the same luster, but in his sole contest outing in 2003 he put up 42% on Kirby. This was back when Kirby was worth 48% on Alucard, but with 2003 arguably being 'card's best year that's hardly shaming. Well, five years had passed, and Ramza had returned. The big question mark was going to be how much he had deteriorated since his last and only contest outing, but he was up against the wimpiest of wimpy fodder - Hogger, a joke in WoW that only WoW fans get, and Laharl, who to this day has only finished above PS3-exclusive Nathan Hale in a contest match. It might be closer than expected, it might even be ugly, but despite a few WoW fanatics' ramblings Ramza was considered to be a gimme here. So when the match started and Ramza was under 20%, everyone's alarms went off. It's not just that Ramza was uncomfortably close to Hogger - he was an unknown and, hey, maybe a combination of joke factor and WoW power was going to make him worth something. But both of them were sandwiching between Laharl, who is some of the fodderiest fodder you'll ever see make multiple contests. As the night went on Ramza couldn't even build his lead consistently on Laharl, gains turned to stalls, and by morning the two had basically become dead even. Unfortunately for the unsuspecting Ramza and Laharl slugging it out, Hogger had also managed to hang around within striking distance all night - and, as the day vote began his vote intake began to pretty much mirror that of the other two's (who knew the kiddies were so into pork these days?). Of course, in order to win Hogger would need to overtake the two, not just match them. That, of course, is the point where the singular entity of WoW actually mattered. Rallies were formed, the biggest MMO out there was alerted, and Hogger began to throw out vote spikes on a regular, if not consistent basis. There would be some stalling during the school vote, but after the ASV hit Hogger was ahead and stayed that way for the rest of the match. There was a final, crazy push for Ramza at the very end of the match (look at the updater to see how much so), and while he tore into Hogger at a ludicrous rate considering the votes that were coming in, it was too little, too late for it to matter in the end. What was notable here was not the surprising strength of the upsetting character here, but how damn weak the favorite turned out to be. Just like GTA, Ramza was startlingly feeble, and while his weakness was easier to explain than GTA's, it was perhaps more stunning considering the caliber of his competition. We're talking about two LAHARL-level entities, and Ramza may very well have lost to Laharl here if he hadn't been counter-rallied against Hogger's push (to say nothing of brackets). Now, unlike GTA/WC, the format did play tricks here, and if you take Dante out of the picture to boil this down to a three-way Ramza's an easy call. But one just has to wonder how strong FFT even is today, and how much of that strength is derived out of nothing but franchise voting. It's not like there's much of an ensemble cast going on in that game or anything - Ramza is the clear main character, and the big fan-favorite doesn't even join until the game's halfway done. I would have picked Cecil to have won here. I would have picked BARTZ, and he's never even been in a contest! I think I may have taken every non-optional FF6 character to win here. Ramza showed us exactly how pitiful a Final Fantasy character could actually be in these contests, and for that alone I will remember this match. #### Interesting Facts - This is the only match to feature two successful comebacks against the same character, with both Laharl and Hogger coming back against Ramza, albeit at separate times. It is also only one of two matches to feature a successful double comeback (Hogger against Ramza AND Laharl at the same time.) ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Enough nonsense- on to two of the more exciting battles of R1 in my opinion! First comes Hogger, and tomorrow, the Sandman strikes. Let's try to get a bead on this Dante poll to start. Last Known Values: - Dante - 33.17% (2007) - Ramza - 22.31% (2003) - Hogger - new - Laharl - 11.23% (2007) Darn that SB and his slight delay before starting this Contest! This match should haven taken place yesterday or the day before- Blizzcon was just ending and Blizzard fans worldwide were hitting up all the fansites to get the latest info, while at the same time WoW players had no choice but to sit around bored downloading the 1.2 GB Wrath of the Lich King pre-patch and waiting for the servers to come back online. That 1 or 2 day delay could very well cost Hogger this match- Blizzard fans know all the big news already and won't be refreshing the fan pages, and WoW came back online about 5 hours ago and all the players are going to be too busy trying out the new content (I guess it was just about the most game-changing patch so far) for the next 48 hours to do anything silly like vote in popularity polls. What a shame! Well, for my bracket at least. Ramza was the guy I bet against, and I thought I was doing so with good reason. That disastrous loss to Kirby back in '03 certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, but now that I go back and look, it wasn't THAT awful. Sure Kirby scored 57% on him, but Ramza actually ended with a very respectable 22 in those final stats; needless to say, it's pretty difficult to think of a scenario that would land Hogger a spot above the fodder line. Square's been hit (Squall, Sora) and miss (Kefka, Riku) so far this season, but that crazy performance by Kain must have me really feeling the FFFEAR right now, because all of a sudden I'm feeling surprisingly confident in picking against my bracket to take Ramza here. As for the other two in the poll, what is there to say? Dante's a stud normally and even better in this format who should be blowing the rest of these chumps out, especially with that awesome pic. No way he pushes for 50% though like he did last year- these chumps aren't QUITE as chumpish as Ammy/Little Mac/Matt, plus anti-favoriteFAQs. Laharl is just really really bad and needs to stop making brackets. Still, he ought to improve on that nasty 11% value from '07, now that L-Block won't be ruining him. Soooo I guess that means I'll be preding... WAIT, HOLD THE PRESSES! A WoW-playing friend of mine from Europe just IMed me; he says that in Europe the pre-patch was 1.62 GB and that servers are still down while people install it, and that no servers on the continent will be back online for another 11 to 12 hours. Then I talked to an American WoWer, who said that he's been trying to log into his server every five minutes since 4pm today but that it's still down. He thinks most US servers will remain down overnight and probably many won't be back up until tomorrow morning. All of a sudden those millions of bored WoW players are back on the menu! Could this be the perfect storm for offsite joke vote rallying? Exciting! I'm going to have to change my pick to... - Dante - 45.45% - Ramza Beoulve - 21.89% - Hogger - 18.74% - Laharl - 13.92% Yeah, still think Ramza's got too much in his favor to bet against here. That being said, would not be surprised at all if Hogger took him behind the woodshed tonight. This will be a very interesting first 15 minutes IMO! Ngamer Says: **Dante \> Ramza** ### Next Day Review Awwww yeah, what an awesome match today. Too bad that the Stats topic had to be ruined by people crying about rallying for 24 straight hours. Come on guys, its Blizzard, of course there's going to be outside voting if the end result is at all in question. If you want to be upset at someone, vent your frustration at Ramza and Laharl for looking so pathetic (and seemingly LFFing each other a bit) that they couldn't put away a minor character from a game only 31% of the site has played. To me, this is the kind of "joke" character that's actually enjoyable- Hogger's a weakling, but (assuming he holds on these last hours for the win) it was fun to watch him shake things up and snatch the win away from equally undeserving competition here in R1. BUT, there's no danger of him suddenly going all L-Block on us and ruining perfectly good matchups down the line with a dull static strength. In fact, he actually enhances R2, as now Riku will have a much better shot at equaling an LFF weakened Leon than he would have with Square/FF/RPG LFF in play. Hogger: Truly a joke we can all get behind! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3271&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=28) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Commander Shepard vs Magus vs Sandbag vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2008 _source: Commander Shepard vs Magus vs Sandbag vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2008 (revid 85808)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, October 16th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 8 - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 16th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 40.60% Magus - 24.33% Sandbag - 23.62% Commander Shepard - 11.56% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sonic first place (2pts) - 56.25% Sonic second place (1pt) - 34.69% Sandbag second place (2pts) - 21.67% Sandbag first place (1pt) - 11.36% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sonic - 90.94% (39,016) Sandbag - 33.03% (14,171) Called this shit like one of Anton Chigurh's coin flips, son. No, really, I did: As someone who saw this coming, I feel especially qualified to say why it happened. It's easy to look at Magus's entire contest history and judge the guy, but in the interest of 2008 we'll just look at everything prior, and remember I'm saying all this with Magus perhaps being my favorite character in all of fiction. He's way up there, at the very least. For starters, let's remember this dude has been disappointing people right from the beginning. Remember 2003 and everyone thinking the true final of that contest was going to be Magus vs Link? Remember what actually happened? It's frankly a miracle he even beat Ganondorf that year, because the total votes in the match against Sam Fisher showed how little interest there was. People like to point at percentages all day, but total votes matter. They show overall interest in the characters involved, which is why the modern standard of multiple matches per day with forced voting in every match is so laughably dumb. Multiple matches is fine, but not the forced voting. It's one of the dumbest things Allen has ever done to these contests. When Magus's sprite got 35% on Link, people thought it was some great performance, and they also erroneously starting pushing this ridiculous theory that pictures matter far more than they actually do. 2018 thankfully laid that garbage to rest for good. Moving on. In 2004, Magus was once again low energy, as Trump would say. No interest in his matches as all, culminating in getting his ass whipped by SFF. To date, this is perhaps the biggest round 1 upset in the history of contests. Magus went into that contest a favorite to make a deep run. After struggling to build a lead on Knuckles, he choked like a dog. I don't feel like doing the research on this one, but I'd be shocked if any other match in round 1 had every Oracle, Guru, and BOP all be wrong. Usually you have a straggler or two, but not here. Magus was that much of a favorite, and frankly he's been a dud ever since. He may have won a match in 2007 and looked "okay" on his way out, but once again. Low energy. That stuff matters. So when 2008 came around, I was done being burned by the little shit. I saw Sandbag in this match, I knew BrawlFEAR would cause something insane in this contest, and I just knew. I wish I had a better explanation for it, but this is all I got. I just.... knew. When the poll started, Sonic was the easy winner. That was obvious. Shepard was in last place, which was also not much of a surprise. Remember, he only had the original game at his back to this point, and I believe it was only available on Xbox 360 and PC. Mass Effect 2 was only a thought, and people hadn't fully embraced the original game yet. So here were Magus and a punching bag, going neck and neck for the first 30 minutes of the poll. I figured the match was over right then and there, because if anyone can choke away a close match, Magus can. But to his credit, he shook off the initial joke vote (likely helped by Sonic siphoning away a lot of the BrawlFEAR votes; let's not forget he made his debut in the series in Brawl) and started building a lead. He built it fast, too. A tied match saw Magus explode over 1000 votes overnight, and though there was a small hiccup with Sandbag looking to take the morning vote, Magus recovered there as well and continued.... well, knocking Sandbag around all over the place. That's Sandbag's job, after all! Beat him up, get stickers. Magus kept it up all the way until the after school vote, where he had a lead of 2150 votes. Barring the absolute meltdown of all meltdowns, he looked safe. Remember, he only led by about 700 against Knuckles. 2150 votes in a 4way poll would be just an all-time obnoxious choke job that would never have any real compare. In fact, has there ever been a bigger comeback in a 4way or 3way match? Someone check me on that. Chrono Trigger has never been an ASV all-star, but this was another beast entirely. Magus not only started losing the ASV, but he was losing it badly enough that he was likely being rallied against here. Suddenly, all the hype for this match made sense. Sandbag had the joke factor, BrawlFEAR, and Magus was a choke artist. After a few updates where we were at the razor's edge, the floodgates opened. Sandbag's comeback was quick, severe, and brutal. If we may peek into the future a bit, it reminds me a lot of the greatest match picture ever made. Credit to yoblazer for this one! That's basically what Sandbag did to this poll. This was more than a simple ASV comeback and Magus choking. You can tell it was a rally because as Sandbag gained more and more steam for the inevitable win, he was getting close to Sonic himself for several updates. How brutal was it all? The 2150 vote peak was at 2:40 pm EST. Sandbag finished the comeback in under 6 hours, and he never looked back in building up a 400 vote lead for himself. It was a good thing he did, too, because Magus tried to conjure up some of the old Chrono Trigger clutch that this series has pulled off in the past. Unfortunately for him, it just meant losing by 241 votes instead of 400+. It was brutal, it was embarrassing for Magus, and above all, for my money it was the best match we had in round 1 this year. It was either this or the L-Block match to be sure, no? A lot of people worried that Sandbag would go full Sandbag ZERO on this contest following this match. More on that in round 2's writeup, but for Magus this was basically the final nail in his contest career. No one would ever trust him again, and frankly they already should have stopped trusting him. The polls on GameFAQs have a search option; you can see what happened to Magus for yourself. And when you do, you're not dreaming with that 2018 match against Vincent. Magus almost pulled it off, but... he didn't. Of course. That's all he's good for in contests these days. Choke jobs. ## Stats and Analysis - Sandbag advancing was the **\#1** most surprising result of Round 1 It's hard to believe that a match like this had such deafening hype, but that's what happens I guess when you have one of the most elite bracketmakers on the board taking a new contestant to the finals. Sandbag was thought by many to represent a perfect storm; Sandbag was to be the spiritual incarnation of ? Block. Combining both the franchise voting of what would be the site's hottest game with the tenacious power of joke voting, it would be the ultimate cap on a joke dominated contest. Personally, I didn't think it would turn out that way - we'd already seen what an entity like Sandbag could do back when it was called Master Hand, and the format + an enhanced power for jokes wasn't going to put it that far above its gloved predecessor. Ultimately, however, I ended up biting the bullet and having Sandbag advance over Magus here anyway. The logic was simple: the pure Smash vote, even one hampered by Sonic (who has never really been embraced by the SSB crowd, see how Snake curbstomped him after they were BOTH announced for details), was going to be a force for the ever-slipping CT to contend with. Magus, in particular, has seemed to be on an even steeper slide than CT in general, although to be fair he was the most overrated to begin with. Whatever joke support Sandbag got was going to just push it over the top. Now fast forward to the day of the match. After what we had seen from Mudkip, L-Block, and WCC, Sandbag hype was in the process of consuming the board. That tight Oracle spread you see in favor of Magus there is nothing but pitiful, wishful thinking on the part of bracketmakers holding out hope against all hope. (why did we back Magus so decisively AGAIN, again?) Oh, and the other competitors here! Sonic just had to go and perform at his 2007 level (believe me, we weren't asking much) to designate him as a near-lock (Sandbag, remember?) for the semifinals now that Master Chief had run out of GAME FUEL. Still, a strong performance would go a long way toward assuring that he wouldn't falter against Auron in Round 2, either. Commander Shepard would be content with staying above 10%, I think. Well, the match started, and immediately one thing was apparent - Sandbag was no L-Block. Magus rode his awesome bracket support to an early lead... and lo and behold, he was hanging on! Many began to exult in the miraculous redemption of the Fiendlord; if Magus was holding against Sandbag in the Power Hour he surely had the match in the bag! (of course CT has an even stronger early vote than any Nintendo character, but we'll ignore that for now) Sonic, for his part, was doing TERRIBLY - Magus and Sandbag were combining for nearly 50% of the vote, and considering that Magus was on the top end of that comparison and Shepard was pulling 13% that Sonic was reduced to taking percentages we would sooner expect out of Sora or Dante. And Magus would continue to hold on - it wasn't what you would call "dominance", but it was an impressive night vote. This would be no Kuja/Master Hand, within CT's first prime four hours Magus had built himself an 800 vote lead. The Europe/morning vote was as unkind to CT as it always is, but it merely stalled his momentum and Magus would recoup it and then some with the during school vote. By his peak, Magus had attained a lead of nearly 2,200 votes over Sandbag with well less than half the match to go. All he had to do was endure what was sure to be a tough, but survivable ASV. It's not an understatement to say that Magus looked more impressive than he had at any time succeeding Magus/Knuckles. No Noble Nine killer, but enough to safely put away a sack of sand. Then the cuts started coming in. At first they were reasonable, something you'd expect out of a match with a CT character and the protege of Master Hand - 10, 20, sometimes 30 vote cuts. It certainly wouldn't be enough with the time 'bag had left, especially considering Magus was going to put on an epic rally come that last hour. That was CT's specialty, after all. Then suddenly, those 10 vote cuts weren't coming any more. In their stead came slashes of 40, sometimes 50 votes an update. Not only was Sandbag's quota to come back falling dramatically with each update, but Magus was just falling apart. Heck, SONIC was tanking in percentage. The only character not being affected was Commander Shepard of all characters. Personally I think that was Mass Effect telling us it wanted to be the next KOTOR of these contests, but what do I know? Sandbag blasted an ASV that would make Master Hand envious. I saw the 'bag eviscerate Magus by 80+ votes some updates, pulling in on SONIC'S level. It blasted by at 8 pm EST, kept its momentum going until 10 or so, and didn't even let Magus make consistent gains until that final hour... where he ended up coming back all of 150 votes in the end. This from the same guy that was able to shave off over 1000 votes off of Knuckles' historic upset. And with that... it was all over. A match that really no one could be happy with if you'd invested anything in any character performing. Sonic looked like crap, crap enough to look like he'd let Master Chief back into the game and to work the Auron upset train into a frenzy - as long as he just met expectations next match, anyway. Sandbag had certainly done just about everything to disappoint his backers short of actually losing the match, Magus had managed to outdo his outdoing of embarrassing himself, and Shepard probably walked away with the most dignity intact. Which is a shame, because he hadn't started with any in the first place. ...instant classic, right? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction As cool as these last 24 hours have been, the next 24 might even top them! Time to see the Contest's biggest wildcard finally hit the stage- **The Sandman Cometh** He is the sleep stalker. Lock up your son, Lock up your daughter. He'll come past one, So prepare for the slaughter. The Sandman Cometh, To sing his lullaby. Try as you might, Try to defy. But not past tonight, In your grave you will lie. Last Known Values - Sonic - 36.54% (2007) - Magus - 21.17% (2007) - Shepard - new - Sandbag - new Let me be clear here- I'm not a fan of the 'bag, and would be overjoyed if he bombed out of this Contest, hard. I keep looking for ways for that to happen, but all of them seem like too much of a stretch. Sure, Sonic looks really good in this match pic, and sure Crono and Frog held up better than many expected in their matches, so maybe some kind of CT:DS hype effect is going around. And sure, Brawl hasn't turned former fodder into legit contenders this season as some had expected. But every time I try to make a case in my mind for one of those truths, a dozen even better counter points bounce back at me: - Master Hand won a match... in the 1v1 format. and he was arguably even MORE of a joke, competing back when SSB was weaker on this site! - WCC pulled in 32% of the vote - L-Block and Dog snatched 46% of the vote between them, and that wasn't even against weak competition - Magus earned 31% against PW/Bomberman/Crash... and 18% when Mario and Big Boss got involved - Sonic Team is awful in this format, both in '07 and '08 so far - Shepard has 360 appeal and won't just roll over and die, leaving less "legit" percentage for the other two options - Brawl newcomers haven't been world-beaters, but Sandy was the star of the Home Run Challenge, arguably the most popular Melee single player challenge (and plenty popular in Brawl as well BTW) - [youtube.com/watch?v=IunYZIYk1UY](http://youtube.com/watch?v=IunYZIYk1UY) Yeah, so try as I might I just can't come up with a way that the Bag doesn't outdo Magus in this one. Hopefully Sonic at least can stay comfortably ahead of him, so that we'll be able to stay confident in him being knocked out by the deadly Sonic/Auron combo a few weeks from now. With all that being said, here's how things should end up: - Sonic the Hedgehog - 39.51% - Sandbag - 23.98% - Magus - 23.49% - Commander Shepard - 13.01% Bah, it looks so bad... but I just don't know what else to do! Ngamer Says: **Sonic \> Sandbag** ### Next Day Review Oh man, this is one of the most intense nights in Contest history. Magus has blown a 2100 vote lead on Sandy and allowed the Bag to climb out to a 400 vote lead of his own, but now we're into the final two hours and he's attempting an epic Frogish comeback to save everyone's brackets (well not mine, but everyone else's). There was talk of trying to get a Magus rally going, but the trouble is- the boards have died! Only moments before Sandman surged into the lead the boards went down, and no one could post their disgust for about 85 minutes. Then they were back up for like an hour, but 45 minutes ago they passed away again and still haven't returned to life. If they don't come back up soon, and STAY up, this is going to be devastating for the Oracle. Not to mention Crew fans, who obviously will be pulling out their hair because they can't read my writeup before the match starts! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3272&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=29) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Auron vs Marcus Fenix vs Rydia vs Sub-Zero 2008 _source: Auron vs Marcus Fenix vs Rydia vs Sub-Zero 2008 (revid 85809)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, October 17th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 8 - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 17th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 37.42% Sub-Zero - 27.08% Marcus Fenix - 21.31% Rydia - 14.07% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Auron first place (2pts) - 50.74% Auron second place (1pt) - 20.32% Sub-Zero second place (2pts) - 46.73% Sub-Zero first place (1pt) - 21.66% - **Advancing Prediction:** Auron - 71.06% (30,487) Sub-Zero - 68.39% (29,341) If you look at all of contest history, Auron and Sub-Zero have faced each other four times. It's as pointless a contest "rivalry" as there is, because outside of something truly absurd (Sub-Zero in Smash Bros or as a JRPG lead), he will never be stronger than Auron. Ever. It will not happen. Thankfully this was early on in the so-called rivalry, with this contest giving us matches \#2 and 3. Auron \> Sub-Zero was pretty much a mortal lock for this match, and what was also a mortal lock was Fenix being a one-hit wonder. He got super lucky to make it into round 3 of the 2007 contest, and this year saw him fall back down to earth in a big way. He went from outright winning a match in 2007's first round, to... this. Losing to Rydia and being unceremoniously dumped from contest lore thereafter. Gears of War was never going to be the type of franchise GameFAQs cared about long term, so Fenix falling off in a big way was no surprise. We know this about Gears because even Drax replacing Fenix can't convince us to care, and Drax is the kind of dude GameFAQs cares about. This match was easy, predictable, and outside of Rydia's surprise third place and her, um.... assets, it was super boring without much to talk about. Moving on. ## Stats and Analysis - Marcus underperformed by **-5.17%**, the **\#12**most disappointing performance of 2008 Everyone knew the obvious conclusion was Auron \> Sub-Zero here, aside from some murmuring that Marcus might have a shot at advancing (that was shot down HARD, as we'll see). Thus, this match was all about analyzing the nitty-gritty details. And not to go all Ulti-style retrospective on everyone here, but anyone that couldn't read Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin clear as day after this match was just hiding in denial. Sonic had Magus, a character roughly equal to Magus, and an SBallin'-grade piece of fodder in his match. Auron had Sub-Zero, a character roughly equal to Revolver Ocelot, and a character that was thought to be fodder - and he ended up exceeding expectations, and getting a significantly greater percentage on his pack than Sonic did on his. This is made even more damning when the character that was SUPPOSED to be fodder, Rydia, decided to go out and \*finally\* validate the oldest theory we've had in these contests. Seriously, TJF has had a long, rocky road, but its holy grail was found in Rydia's curvaceous C-cups and we haven't let go since. She didn't just overperform, she beat MARCUS FENIX, thought universally to be one of the best newcomers from last year. Sure, that meant doing little more than beating Kefka and Ocelot (the latter in an all-day affair), but still! Sure Rydia would have never pulled this off with Amano art, but this was a victory for mammary-lovers everywhere. And more importantly, it made the pack even STRONGER. Despite all this (and some weird ass fanart for a picture), Auron was able to near 40% here. Something was going to have to give, because if things kept up as they were Auron wasn't just looking set to beat Sonic - he was looking good to blow him away. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction This is so wild that I have to get back to refreshing the boards and poll to see how this plays out, so let's keep this outlook on tomorrow a little bit shorter. Last Known Values: - Auron - 34.73% (2007) - Sub-Zero - 23.80% (2007) - Marcus - 20.84% (2007) - Rydia - new Actually a pretty cool match here... or at least potentially it could be. Auron will roll out to an easy win of course, but I don't think he fully cements himself as the winner over Sonic/Sandbag/Magus(?) next round, just based on the percentage he'll pull down. BUT, he's only going to appear to have had a bad showing, when in reality it will just be a matter of having to split some of his votes with Rydia, and actually he'll be in the clear once she's out of the way next round. Speaking of Rydia, I expect a pretty good result from her. Kain impressed us the other day, and I hear that Ry is decently well-liked by FF4 fans as well, which when added to her getting without a doubt the biggest pic advantage of the entire round (seriously, just *wow*) should spell good things for Miss Mist. Unfortunately she was placed in such an unwinnable position. Not only is Sub-Zero a proven upper mid-carder, but fighting games have always done well in this format, plus he's the face of the upcoming DC vs MK fighter. Which... might help him a little. Then there's Marcus, another guy who proved himself as legit last year, and this time around the 360 vote has only gotten stronger, plus he's also got an even more hyped release coming right up in Gears 2. When you add the fact that all 4 of these options got awesome pics and that AURON is sharing the poll, I'm afraid I don't see any way for Rydia to stay out of the basement here no matter how much she impresses. So an Auron win but not really a blowout, with everyone else looking pretty decent as well ought to result in something like... - Auron - 37.09% - Sub-Zero - 24.09% - Marcus Fenix - 21.25% - Rydia Mist - 17.56% Uhh... sure! \*back to mashing F5\* Ngamer Says: **Auron \> Subby** ### Next Day Review What a weird year... Ryu Hayabusa explodes with the Day Vote to easily pound Zero, but now Marcus Fenix and Master Chief can't even use it to hurt FF4 characters? Maybe you could make a case for Xbox acceptance being on the rise, but only in terms of having a greater ability to attract noncommitted voters who in years past would have apathetically supported the Nintendo option they were most familiar with. If that's the case it could explain this bad result from Marcus today- between FFX and TJF and awesome nostalgic ninjas there are plenty of good choices for the casual voter here, which might have hurt his case. But MC was facing a toaster-wearing character who was barely above the fodder line last year, a FF4 character (without TJF), and Professor Layton. There's just no excuse for flopping with the casuals against competition like that, and combined with today it has me seriously wondering if more than 25-30% of the site actually cares about supporting the 360. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3273&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=30) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Nana vs Ratchet vs Sephiroth vs Tifa Lockheart 2008 _source: Nana vs Ratchet vs Sephiroth vs Tifa Lockheart 2008 (revid 85810)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, October 18th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 8 - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 18th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 50.81% Tifa Lockhart - 23.90% Ratchet - 13.46% Nana - 11.85% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sephiroth first place (2pts) - 80.23% Sephiroth second place (1pt) - 15.46% Tifa second place (2pts) - 64.15% Tifa first place (1pt) - 5.24% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sephiroth - 95.69% (41,054) Tifa - 69.39% (29,770) Given what would end up happening in 2018 (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7369-loser-bracket-round-1-tifa-vs-sephiroth), this match is hilarious to look back on. Pre-contest, there was actual fear that Sephiroth would SFF Tifa into the ground hard enough for a BrawlFEAR-backed Nana to squeeze into second place. Everyone picked Seph \> Tifa, but the fear was there. At least, it was there before watching most of round 1 play out. Once Nintendo's D tier proved that Brawl alone was not enough, people went to sleep 2 seconds into this match. Seph \> Tifa was a lock, and Nana wasn't even good enough to beat Ratchet, of all people. The lone interesting thing about this match was Tifa avoiding getting SFFd into the ground, which gave some people hope for round 2. Tifa got a trash draw in this contest and deserved far better, especially after she went from a near-miracle upset of Samus in 2006 to getting snubbed from the field entirely here in 2008. When Tifa finally got a fair chance a few years later, Seph was waiting yet again. It took her 10 years to finally get her revenge, and you can skip to 2018 for that one. As for why she did better than expected here, that's an easy one. Japanese RPG characters tend to avoid SFF better than Nintendo characters, especially when they're well-liked. Yeah you'll get the occasional Squall \> Tidus mess, but for the most part, JRPG characters all have their own fanbases and the effect is lessened. That, and main characters like to overperform against villains. We saw it here, we saw it with Crono \> Magus, and we definitely saw it once Sephiroth started falling off in strength a few years after this contest ended. As an unapologetic fan of the guy, it's nice going back to the mid-2000s era and seeing Seph demolish people. I miss those days. ## Stats and Analysis - Tifa overperformed by **+4.59%**, the **\#18** most impressive performance of 2008 Poor Tifa. I have no love for her as a character, but she came the closest to breaking the Noble Nine (and likely could have if she'd had any bracket support or if ANYONE had seen the near-upset coming). So what does she get in return? Misses the next contest bracket entirely. This year, she finally gets in again, and what does she get? Sephiroth of all characters on her for the first round. Seriously, this is worse than what happened to Aeris. Tifa is a bonafide near-elite under normal circumstances, but with Sephiroth on her ass from day one what would have been an easily escapable division turned into a scenario where people contemplated if she would lose to Nana. Most didn't go quite that far, but with the up and coming superstar Kratos coming into the picture next round, she would need a heavy-duty performance to prove she had a chance. And, lo and behold, she got it. While absolutely no one was taking the Nana upset seriously anymore due to the epic bombing of Brawl-only characters, Tifa was still expected to get SFFed into the ground. Didn't happen. She ended up well over 37% against Sephiroth here, and was breaking 40% for a good long while until his rise to heaven started. Considering Seph is basically BL these days, she ended up doing better than many thought she could pull INDIRECTLY. If Sephiroth couldn't affect her at all, was Tifa in the clear against Kratos? Well, there was one problem - the competition was PITIFUL here. Seriously, Nana ended up below Ratchet, who is even more pitiful than Laharl when it comes to stinking it up in these things. There was just no option of worth for people that didn't like FF7 here, and that would be a totally different story next round. (not to mention that after what we had just seen Rydia do, Tifa's TJF was a major plus here and she wouldn't have that next round) Still, Tifa did as well as you could have expected of her given the circumstances, and proved without a shadow of a doubt she's still on that near-elite tier. Not too much else you can ask for. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction And now its time for... well, quite possibly the dullest match of the round, to be perfectly frank. After the excellent polls we've enjoyed the past week though, you can't be too upset about this small lull! Let's see what kind of dirt we have on these four. Last Known Values: - Sephiroth - 49.25% (2007) - Tifa - 41.01% (2006) - Ratchet - 13.12% (2007) - Nana - new Still stunned me a moment ago when I realized that Tifa missed the bracket last year. Well, at least she's here for '08 so we can finally get some questions answe- oh wait she's stuck with Seph. GRRRRR. On the plus side at least we get to make a Tifa/Vincent comparison, as Seph shocked me last season by scoring 76% of the vote directly on VV in their one matchup. Granted the presence of Link and Mario must have worked to push Vince further down, but regardless, I see Tifa withstanding SFF way better in this one. The thing to watch for will be if she's able to hold up well enough to seriously threaten against Ocelot or Kratos in the second round. My money is obviously on "no", but heck, the way newer Square has been performing this season I don't want to count anything out. Come on jugs, keep Tifa... afloat! As for Sephiroth, well... he scores about double whatever Tifa gets, which ought to be about 70% of the votes in the match. Next! As for Ratchet... ugh, just ugh. Next! Call me crazy, but I'm expecting to see something decent from Nana tonight. Yes the casuals haven't been clinging to Nintendo as in years past, but when the only other options in the poll are Final Fantasy 7 and a PSX action star that's pathetically weak even BEFORE taking into account any possible Sony SFF, where else can those voters turn? This is the same kind of "sore thumb" argument I'm going to be making for Kirby against MC/BB/Raiden- there's a huge advantage to being the only cutesy/colorful/eye catching/Nintendo option in a room full of mature/Sony choices, and unless your name is Ness you've got to be able to capitalize on that. Now I'm not crazy enough to think this gives Nana any kind of shot at Tifa (Melee/Brawl/bright and colorful can only do so much for someone this incredibly weak normally), but I do see her destroying Ratchet with impressive ease. How does a doubling sound? Eh, that's a bit much... but a 60/40ing doesn't seem out of the question. So if FF7 eats approx 3/4 of the votes here, and Seph eats about double Tifa's, and Nana like 3/5 Ratchet's, then... - Sephiroth - 50.59% - Tifa Lockheart - 25.16% - Nana - 14.11% - Ratchet - 10.13% That looks sooooo good. Ngamer Says: **Sephiroth \> Tifa** ### Next Day Review Impressive hold from Tifa today; this certainly makes things more interesting for Round Two. If she had really crumbled under Seph, say to around 20% or so, I think it would have been reasonable to count her out against Kratos, but as is that result has become a straight toss up in my mind. Man, aside from the one poll that L-Block ruins, this is going to be such a great second round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3274&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=31) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Heavy vs Jill Valentine vs Kratos vs Revolver Ocelot 2008 _source: Heavy vs Jill Valentine vs Kratos vs Revolver Ocelot 2008 (revid 85811)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, October 19th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 8 - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 19th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kratos - 33.50% Revolver Ocelot - 29.32% Jill Valentine - 22.78% Heavy - 14.37% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Kratos first place (2pts) - 53.01% Kratos second place (1pt) - 27.67% Jill second place (2pts) - 21.79% Jill first place (1pt) - 23.19% - **Advancing Prediction:** Kratos - 80.68% (34,614) Jill - 44.98% (19,298) Typically I use the final match of round 1, and sometimes round 2, to do a small round synopsis. These round-enders are usually super predictable and give us all a breath of fresh air before the next round starts. Jill Valentine and Ocelot decided to put a wrench into all that. One year ago, in 2007, these two were in a poll together along with Cloud and the Midgar Zolom. Here is how it went: Jill was a huge favorite in that match, mainly due to extrapolated standings and Ocelot's embarrassing loss to Pac-Man in round 1 of 2005. Jill isn't some strong character or anything, and her and Ocelot have similar strength, but she had no business losing that match in 2007. None. There is no reason to suggest Cloud would have hurt Ocelot less than her, especially given we'd seen Final Fantasy 7 SFF Metal Gear Solid before: And yet somehow, some way, Ocelot got second place in that match despite being the heavy underdog. One year later, and we practically had the same poll. Kratos was the obvious winner and would clearly share more of a fanbase with Ocelot than Jill Valentine. Heavy was the obvious joke character. And there was Jill Valentine, sticking out like a sore thumb. However, we all picked Ocelot to get second place this year for one simple reason. Metal Gear Solid 4. We all figured Ocelot was the easy favorite here, and the Oracle numbers show it. Metal Gear Solid had been pasting fools all over the bracket thusfar, and there was no reason for Jill to boost or even come close to second place. Jill Valentine, of course, never makes a lick of sense in these things. When we all thought Kirby would beat her, Jill wins. We all thought Ryu Hayabusa would beat her. It was 50-50 for 48 hours. We all thought Jill would win in 2007. She didn't. So of course she came out and won this match for absolutely legitimately no reason at all, because that's what Jill Valentine does. If you put her and Kefka in a poll together, the universe would implode. Ocelot had a go at it for about 30 minutes, but once Jill started going up, that was that. Game over. Ocelot never threatened to win, and we were all left here scratching our leads. Because again, Jill had no actual tangible reason to get second place here. My best guess, outside of MGS fans simply not liking Ocelot all that much, is that Kratos did a ton of damage to Ocelot's votes here. They practically have the same fanbase, while Resident Evil has considerably less overlap with everything else in this poll. That's my best guess, anyway. As for round 1, I'm not gonna lie. Most of these matches sucked, and this is a hard PCA to get through. If this was 128+ matches instead of the old school 64, I probably never would have gotten around to writing these. Division 1 was a lot of fun. L-Block, Hogger, the Cube, BrawlFEAR, Sandbag, and a few other things were fun. Most of the round, however, was a predictable drag. Even matches that blew our minds were often a character getting first instead of second, which doesn't affect eliminations in a 4way format. That said, it did continue to get better, and vote totals this year were NUTS. So obviously there were tons of people out there having a ball this year. ## Stats and Analysis - Jill Valentine advancing was the **\#7** most surprising result of Round 1 - Revolver Ocelot underperformed by **-5.10%**, the **\#13** most disappointing performance of 2008 This match, to me, exemplifies everything that is stupid about this format, and why to this day I deride Bacon for running this debacle again. It's not about predicting character popularity. It's not even about predicting fanbase splits. It's about chaos, luck, and the draw of a match picture. The only thing that was supposed to be debatable about this match was who would come in first. Ocelot seemed like a longshot of longshots when the bracket was released, but with the way MGS had lit the contest on fire, it seemed plausible. And Ocelot was the character that had the MOST to gain from MGS4. He had more screentime than ever, he had more importance than ever, and his role in the finale involves some of the most climactic scenes in all of video gaming. No one had as big a reason to boost than Ocelot. If MGS4 could take Liquid, who was equal to Alucard, to near-Luigi level, what could it do for Ocelot? The end result is one of the most nonsensical you'll ever see in these contests. As the match started, it quickly became apparent Ocelot wasn't going to beat Kratos - he was barely ahead, and Ocelot has one of the best board votes while Kratos has one of the worst. But something even weirder was going on. Jill wasn't dying. As Ocelot began his percentage fall back down to earth, Jill was right there to catch him. Despite, y'know, having ZERO bracket support from us after she had just lost to Ocelot last year. Pre-MGS4 Ocelot. From there, it was like last year's match in reverse. After a minor struggle, Jill surged ahead and never lost the advantage, and ReSTALLver Lossalot was never in the match from there on. As evidenced by last year, the two had almost exactly the same trends, thus leaving no room for a comeback on either end. We probably should see Jill/Ocelot 1v1 next year, just for the hilarity of seeing two characters deadlocked for 24 hours. It was strange retribution, in a way. One year ago, Jill was in the heavily favored position, after having nearly upset Jokefodder while Ocelot blew it against Pac-Man. Ocelot basically took that match from the start and never let go. So the board ends up switching to Ocelot en masse this year, and what happens? Exact opposite. Also, because it can't really be said enough - Metal Gear Solid 4. So, what happened? Well, for starters, Ocelot is referred to as "Liquid" for pretty much all of MGS4 - which explains Liquid's boost, but apparently voters are either against the concept of a 2 for 1 or somehow were able to play through the game without eyes. I mean, c'mon, it's Liquid Ocelot. Jill was also the beneficiary of some nice STF - not TJF, but Sore Thumb Factor: her baby blue background and cute artwork really stood out in a sea of testosterone (whoa there Heavy). And, of course, having Kratos as the big man in the match is a lot different than having Cloud breathing down everyone's neck. But let's get serious here. Even with all that, Ocelot shouldn't even have had a chance to lose the match. He'd already won. He had the biggest game of his career. Any excuses were just that - Jill winning here was just nonsense, and while it was nice for her to finally pull an upset after so many near-misses, it just proves how pointless this format is. This would be evidenced in even more bittersweet fashion in later rounds, but this is what exemplifies it the most, I feel. After Ocelot's bomb, though, along with Snake underperforming, Raiden doing only so-so and Big Boss' performance being attributed to the picture, all eyes suddenly turned to Liquid, the odd man out. Was the first round miracle against Luigi a fluke? Was Snake's twin set for another Round 2 epic bombing? We left the first round on that apprehensive note - but thankfully, ZackFAQs was waiting for us! ## Match Trends ## Biolizard28's Analysis This match more or less exemplified the one major gripe with the new format: results that make absolutely no goddamn sense. Coming into this match, the only real debate was about Jill vs. Ocelot. Kratos was the obvious victor, barring some form of Ocelot miracle, and Heavy was more or less confirmed cannon fodder. The two faced off last year, Ocelot squeezing out a win against Ms. Valentine. Though, one could argue that this was merely a case of the Metal Gear Solid fanbase being more hardcore than the Resident Evil fanbase, so arguments in Jill's favor weren't hard to come by. ... This was until Liquid Snake kept up with Luigi and Big Boss curb-stomped Kirby. Two of the weaker characters to come out of Metal Gear, weaker or on par with even Ocelot, had excelled in their round one matches, most likely due to a heavy boost from Metal Gear Solid 4. Everything was going to plan, and the Oracles weren't shy about showing their support for Ocelot. And when the match began, Ocelot took the lead against Jill... For twenty minutes. Jill would soon take the lead, and the best Ocelot could do was stall her. Jill barely made any gains, but Ocelot barely made any sizable cuts. Ocelot got crushed in the day, like MGS characters should, and Kratos rose to heaven... or Olympus... whatever. The Jill/Ocelot stall-fest would end how it "began": With Jill in the lead and everyone cursing Ocelot's name. Now, I could end this summary here, but I just have one, simple question to all you Metal Gear fans, stat heads, and hell, voters. How. The. Fuck? Metal Gear Solid 4 was supposed to be THE Metal Gear game, and it showed. Pretty much every character with sizable representation in the series got a nice boost just from the game coming out. It's a strong contender for Best Game Ever. And do you know who the principle villain of this game is? Revolver. FUCKING. Ocelot. NOBODY had more of a reason to boost from this game than him. And there was no reason he shouldn't have. "Oh, but they call him Liquid the whole game!" Hey, that's fine, except that the match picture HAS LIQUID OCELOT. It doesn't matter what you call him, that's HIS PICTURE. IT'S EASY. The guy with Ocelot under his name? HE'S THE ONE YOU WANT TO VOTE FOR. Honestly, this is a poor excuse, and only makes me think less of the MGS fanbase. Tell me, how hard is it to put a name to face, because I think this is a skill that the grand majority of MGS fans lack. Explain Big Boss's constant over-performances as Naked Snake, or how sprite rounds are enough to make Solid Snake himself falter to Frog. It simply makes no sense that Ocelot wouldn't boost just because he had a different name. This was Ocelot's time to shine, and it's a goddamn shame that he could be beaten like this. On the bright side, he has found a new nickname in his constant disappointments: ReSTALLver LOSSalot. Commit it to memory next contest. ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction There's one more for R1 before we move on, so let's talk about it! Actually this poll could have some intrigue of its own... Is the MGS4 boost legit, and if so could it potentially be enough to lift Kratos into first? Is the all-things RE boost legit, and if so could it potentially be enough for Jill to reverse her narrow '07 loss to Ocelot? Let's take a closer look! Last Known Values: - Kratos - 27.44% (2007) - Ocelot - 20.21% (2007) - Jill - 19.96% (2007) - Heavy - new First off Kratos- one of the many very weird performances we witnessed in 2007. The guy looked all-world in demolishing DK twice, but then against it's Donkey Kong, and plus he was assisted by Marth one time and Kirby another. Is his true strength closer to the one we saw in R3, when he was so badly badass-SFFed by Snake that L-Block killed him and Riku nearly matched him? If so he'd better be on his guard, as it wouldn't even take THAT much of an MGS boost for Ocelot to knock him back to earth. Personally I feel we'll be seeing something more along the lines of R2 Kratos though; clearly this is a guy who thrives on the casual vote and the ASV, and he ought to be able to lap it up against these three, none of whom have much casual/TJF/pic factor appeal and all of whom I would peg as Night Vote characters. Ocelot's the wild card of the group. He impressed me last year by standing up to the FF7/MGS "something fishy factor" better than I had expected against Cloud, so clearly the guy's got a devoted fanbase that's going to be backing him no matter what. The question is how much additional appeal MGS4 can grant him- apparently he's the real star of the game storyline-wise and has a number of really cool cut scenes. That's nice, but frankly I'm not buying into the hype just yet; I don't doubt that plenty of people played all the way through MGS4 to feel the full effect of his awesomeness, but how many of those DIDN'T already vote for him last year? Maybe I'm just being silly in ignoring the apparent boost for this series after what Liquid and Raiden showed us... so heck Ocelot, go ahead and prove me wrong by beating Kratos! I'll reward you by picking Liquid to advance past Bowser if you can pull it off! I really wanted to pull the trigger on the Jill \> Ocelot upset here but just couldn't bring myself to do it... RE5 releasing during the Contest probably would have been enough to tip my hand, but as is I have trouble seeing her improve on her '07 margin against Revolver. That being said, I'd be surprised if he blew her out of the water here, but we've already covered my doubts regarding the MGS4 boost, so moving on to... The Heavy! Well, I expect him to be a decent bit stronger than his partner The Spy just because of his more iconic look and higher playrate, both in TF2 and TFC. Also it should help that he doesn't have to split the PC vote, as Spy did with Arthas. Overall though he probably doesn't have a shot at upsetting Jill unless he starts pulling down the joke vote, which doesn't seem likely- he's just too much of a character for that. Shouldn't have any problem putting up a respectable showing overall though. So yeah, even though I wouldn't be shocked to see Ocelot pull out to an early lead in this one, and possibly even keep it competitive all through the dead of night, I'm fully expecting Kratos to work those Day Vote muscles of his and turn this into a fairly comfortable win. And if Jill and the Heavy likewise have good turnouts relative to expectations, we'd be looking at - Kratos (God of War) - 34.29% - Revolver Ocelot - 27.96% - Jill Valentine - 21.74% - Heavy - 16.01% That looks... marvelous! Ngamer Says: **Kratos \> Ocelot** ### Next Day Review Haha, now that's more like it! Jill over Ocelot in convincing fashion only 12 months after we'd seen Ocelot over Jill in convincing fashion- and this despite all evidence and common sense pointing to the contrary. Results like this are exactly what makes these Contests so enjoyable! I guess there's a couple ways to puzzle this upset out... did the combined FF7 might of Cloud and Zolom suck up so much of the casual vote that Jill was ruined while Ocelot's more hardcore fanbase won out? Did Kratos kill Ocelot by being the bigger PS2/3 star, while Jill escaped by still having RE's GameCube appeal to fall back on? Have we just underestimated the impact of Umbrella Chronicles, and perhaps the series-wide RE boost has more to do with UC than it does RE5 hype? Plenty of questions, so its a good thing Leon and Jill will be involved in very interesting R2 matchups and will hopefully yield some answers. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3275&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=32) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Zack Fair vs Wario vs Link vs Zidane Tribal 2008 _source: Zack Fair vs Wario vs Link vs Zidane Tribal 2008 (revid 85812)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, October 20th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 20th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 50.10% Zack Fair - 24.01% Zidane Tribal - 15.16% Wario - 10.76% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (4pts) - 62.75% Link second place (2pts) - 30.13% Zack second place (4pts) - 16.33% Zack first place (2pts) - 13.26% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 92.88% (39,848) Zack - 29.59% (12,695) A lot of people think the ZackFAQs hype started right from the jump in this contest, but I truly think it started right here with this match. Call me a sucker for the bandwagon effect, I guess! Wario was fresh off of looking decent in round 1, but he was guaranteed to get SFFd into the ground by Link here. And get SFFd into the ground he did. Link was out for blood this contest, and it showed. The dude was straight up not going to let 2007 happen again, and brought his A+ to every match this year. It's truly a marvel looking back on Link's numbers now and again, but this poll wasn't about him. The debate here, obviously, was Zack vs Zidane. Shadow was a chic second place pick here pre-contest, but with him out the debate obviously had to shift. Zack was coming off of one hell of a performance in round 1, while Zidane was coming off of his cute little upset over Shadow. Based purely on eye test regardless of competition (Zack an easy first, Zidane a distant second in their respective matches), Zack felt like the easy favorite here. I'll go far enough to say that a lot of the people honking for Zidane were just bitter Shadow backers that wanted their mistake to not look so bad. In retrospect, this wasn't much of a debate. Final Fantasy 7 is always going to be above 9 in The Hierarchy™, but Zack had a very popular game in his own right to work with. I think Crisis Core is trash, but people seem to like it. Whatever. The point is it can do nothing but help Zack. There's also the "common sense factor", for what that's worth, that puts Zack over Zidane here. Honestly in looking back on this, I don't understand where any of the pro-Zidane arguments were coming from. When the poll started, ZackFAQs and the bandwagon were in full swing! Forget Zidane. Zack left him in the dust so badly that Zidane almost finished below an SFFd Wario. That's real. That actually happened. Zack did so well here -- or at least, as well as "30% on Link" can possibly look -- that people's imaginations started running wild. ZackFAQs was the big Board 8 bandwagon of this contest, and people really wanted to see him make a deep contest run. If he could get through this match, what was stopping him from getting through the likes of Duke Nukem? And from there, who knows? I've said this a few times now, but you had to be there. Believe it or not, Board 8 used to love things like jokes, rallies, and bandwagons. ZackFAQs is one of the better ones we've had. I miss these days. Link may have won this match, but Zack was the star of it. ## Stats and Analysis - Zack Fair advancing was the **\#16** most surprising result of 2008 And with that we entered our much anticipated second round, to ZackFAQs, and what would be the most anticipated match of his contest run - for different reasons than it was initially, to be sure. Zidane, for his part, wasn't supposed to be here, and aside from a few diehards rambling about him being having an exceptionally resilient fanbase,most figured that FF7 vs FFanything rarely turns out well for the latter entity. This time, however, we were potentially looking at a completely different Zack. The picture theme for Round 2 was the customary close-up round, as most expected. And without the iconic Buster Sword taking up half of his picture this time, Zack was going to have to rely on his pretty mug to carry him through the battle. And since Zack is hardly the moody character that Cloud is, there's also the little matter of most of his pictures having him smiling happily at the camera. The only cheery FF protagonist we pretty much have is Zidane - and sheesh, look at him! Then the match began - and Zack proved that he didn't need no dinky little sword to hold him up. Black-haired Cloud never let Zidane even believe he had a chance, blowing out both he and Wario (duh). But more importantly, he rode the momentum en route to putting up near 24% on Link with two 10%+ entities in the match. Those kinds of numbers on our \#1 character are no joke, and in the span of two rounds Zack had come from being compared to the likes of Wario and Shadow to that of Tifa and Vincent. While it was clear (to me, at least) that he wasn't going to be near that strength, to be in that position at all is saying something. And while you might be able to argue Wario was holding back Link a tad, the same thing could be said of Zack and Zidane. At any rate, it was going to take a monumental effort from one of the two characters that wasn't going to be SFFed by Link - if they even escaped next round - to stop Zack from escaping the division with ease. ZackFAQs was in full swing. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction For tonight... oh shoot! I'm working on this Excel sheet with everyone's R1 results and preliminary x-stats that I wanted to break out starting tonight, but I don't have it handy at the moment. Guess I'll just have to wing it for this one and get that sheet rolling tomorrow night... but yeah, there's going to be a new format to my writeups starting soon. But for now, old format a'hoy! Last Known Values: - Link - 59.90% (2007) - Wario - 17.68% (2007) - Zack - new - Zidane - 15.71% (2007) I heard all the arguments for Zidane that were being tossed around in Stats last night- his fanbase is more hardcore than Zack's, that gives him the advantage when facing casual vote eating machine Link, or else maybe Zack was all Buster Sword last round and without it he'll come back down to earth. Eh, reasonable points, but Zack blew me away too much to give that upset any real consideration, sorry. ESPECIALLY after seeing what Rydia and Kain have been worth- even assuming Cecil's naturally the weakest of the three, it's got to take some serious appeal to pound FF4 anything into the ground like that this season. Zidane should have a decent enough showing, but I would be very surprised if he was ever in serious contention for advancement here. As for the Nintendo side of this poll, there isn't really that much to say. Link ought to serve notice that he's still the class of the NN while owning Wario so hard that he'll never come within two miles of third place- not that he would have even outside of an SFF situation. As to where exactly Link falls, that's tough to say... but the 50% ballpark that most seem to be crediting him with seems about right. So Link \>\> Zack \> Zidane \>\> Wario ought to result in something along the lines of... - Link - 52.91% - Zack Fair - 20.94% - Zidane Tribal - 16.16% - Wario - 9.99% Bah, just can't justify Zack any higher, not with Zidane in the mix limiting his appeal... Oh well, come on BusterSwordFAQs! Ngamer Says: **Link \> Zack** ### Next Day Review Well would you look at that- one of the tournament's Elite characters has finally exceeded expectations! True, Link didn't blow us all away as he so often has in the past, but it seemed like the average pred I was seeing for him was right in that 49-52 range, and instead he's going to be finishing above 53 with ease. This goes along with my theory whereby "anti-favoriteFAQs" isn't going to be as big of a factor beyond the first round; it's not that people no longer LIKE Link/Seph/Snake etc etc, its just that after 7 straight years everyone is smart enough to know that they won't be threatened in the first round, and so its safe to throw their support to their second favorite character in the poll (Tifa, Falco, Zidane, or what have you). As we advance further into the bracket, though, a win from their favorites becomes less of a sure thing and so strengths should slowly return to more normal levels. What remains to be seen is what kind of effect this trend will have on our joke characters- L-Block set the bar high with his momentum-gaining run to R6 last season, but I'm not at all convinced that he (or Bag or Cube) will be doing the same here in '08. They've already become entirely different animals by losing their "joke trends" and instead performing more or less like normal character of strength- maybe that's a sign that people were only supporting them out of disinterest in the other options, and as the field around them goes stronger they'll naturally weaken? Good gracious let's hope so! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3276&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=33) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Marth vs Duke Nukem vs Altair vs Lucario 2008 _source: Marth vs Duke Nukem vs Altair vs Lucario 2008 (revid 85814)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Altair - 32.30% Duke Nukem - 25.46% Marth - 25.37% Lucario - 16.87% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Duke first place (4pts) - 19.42% Duke second place (2pts) - 9.65% Altair second place (4pts) - 27.81% Altair first place (2pts) - 8.43% - **Advancing Prediction:** Duke - 29.07% (12,472) Altair - 36.24% (15,548) For a lot of people, BrawlFEAR died in round 1, which makes sense. Brawl by itself clearly wasn't enough to make a weak character win contest matches. The final nail in that coffin where it was buried for good was likely this match, where Lucario followed up his trash round 1 showing with.... whatever you want to call this. Pokemon after 151 clearly aren't anything in contests without the joke factor, and Lucario bombed so badly in this contest that he was never invited back. Seriously, his pair of matches in '08 are his only showing. He was that awful. Even worse, his being here completely screwed Marth out of making it into round 3. Marth outright won his poll in round 1 where Duke Nukem got second place, but any hopes of Marth advancing here died with Lucario's leech job. Marth held on for about 30 minutes, but then he just totally died. The shocker of all shockers though was Duke Nukem being out in first place when this poll first started. Altair getting second place was equally surprising, but Duke himself just blew everyone away with how good he looked. To put this into some perspective, here are the guru numbers for this match. 6 people picked Duke Nukem to get first place here. They deserve to be immortalized, so here are their names: TheRye, alblito, Smurf, Rhyhorn, Han, and LinkLegend27. You guys are geniuses or crazy men, and probably both! Good picking. Only 19 gurus had Duke making it into round 3. Equally shocking was Altair; only 17 had him making round 3. Altair making a hyped new guy run makes some sense. Great character design, popular series, and in most contests we see a new character or game make a run. Duke however makes no sense at all, and I say this as someone who picked the guy to get second place here. It was pure luck, because I thought Altair would be crap and Lucario would SFF Marth into the ground. What actually happened was even sillier. Once Altair shook Marth off, Duke and Altair were locks to advance. Altair actually made a crazy push for first place here, but it was too little too late. Duke had a 2700 lead at one point, and Altair cut almost 2000 votes off of that to lose out by only 750 or so. It was super impressive performance by both characters, and Duke almost blowing the lead does not take away from how shocking this all was. Reason being, here is Duke's entire contest history up until 2008. This dude was bottomfeeder trash for years, and only advanced in 2007 because he was up against a motley crew of losers. This year, however, was no fluke. Duke didn't just squeak by here; he destroyed Nintendo in this one, in one of the most randomly insane matches we'll ever have in a contest. It's up there with Kefka \> Arthas and DMC5 \> Tropical Freeze on the WTF scale, and it's within reason to assume Duke Nukem will never make round 3 of a contest again. Balls of steel, son. You got em. Sure his destiny was getting destroyed in round 3, but for a guy like Duke Nukem, making it into round 3 is basically his version of winning a contest outright. ## Stats and Analysis - Duke Nukem overperformed by **+5.61%**, the **\#10** most impressive performance of 2008 - Duke Nukem advancing was the **\#16** most surprising result of 2008 - Altair advancing was the **\#21** most surprising result of 2008 After putting up a percentage that is typically only seen by high midcarders and near-elites, Altair was looking GOLDEN for this Round 2 throwdown, and the Oracle predictions show it. Duke was also looking great to advance, as Marth had beat him by an unconvincing margin and Lucario, pathetic as he is, was definitely going to hold him back. But we soon saw that Lucario nearly getting upset by Isaac was no fluke, and Altair's 43%+ didn't mean as much as it first appeared when stacked up against characters that actually have a fanbase. It also couldn't hurt that Duke drew all the picture in the match pic and him winning was starting to be embraced as a fad by half the board, but if Duke ever put up those kind of numbers we'd be suspect from the get-go. What ensued what was in retrospect a pretty close match, although not recognizing the potential of Altair's day vote at first made it deceptive. The board did its darndest to keep Marth over Duke in the initial surge, but the power of Lucario-lovers was too much and he was immediately dragged down to earth. Altair was apparently bombing though, so it seemed he was safe to advance. And that thinking lasted all of one update, as Marth just fell off the face of the earth and Altair surged ahead, taking the lead and just not letting go. Duke had a killer night vote on the lot of them, though, and by morning had built himself a practically insurmountable lead. Altair had a go of it, however, and ended less than 1000 votes away from Duke by the end. That retrospective closeness would only underscore the most important thing - Duke had somehow yet again pulled an extraordinary upset and beaten a big favorite for the win. Considering this is the guy who was getting put up as a 16 seed milk carton against Cloud and was thought to have left these contests for good, that's really saying something. For the board's part, we could at least exhale - this weird ass half-division was finally done, and neither of the competitors had put up the numbers to give confidence in beating Zack. We were sort of ignoring the fact that Duke and Altair escaping gave most of us ZERO points in our brackets but, eh, details. Lastly, I'll save one last cringe for Marth. How do you let the equivalent of Isaac get 40% on you? Marth's strength is either much more suspect than I thought, or he somehow let Lucario rSFF him. And if the latter case is true, that means that somehow one of the elite top tier characters of SSBM, fan-favorite in both games, is somehow lower on the totem pole than a Brawl-only nobody. Neither reflects well on the pantsless one. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Anyways, today- wowza, what a mess of a matchup! We knew Division One was going to be wild heading in, and boy has it lived up to the billing. Let's break out my new R1-based writeup format and get cracking! Round One Values - Marth - 22.61% (based on '07 Kefka) - Duke - 21.34% (based on '07 Kefka) - Altair - 18.83% (based on '07 Guybrush) - Lucario - 12.80% (based on '07 Guybrush) Now obviously that Altair number is a little low, because Guybrush looked a decent bit better last month than he did a year ago, but the point remains - everyone going crazy over him needs to take a step back and realize that he only blew out a guy who's as strong as Isaac. Not only that, but an Isaac who was being LFF'd by another Nintendo option! You don't exactly have to be a Titan of the industry to pull that off, and heck, I think even Duke could have done it, so Altair's going to have a difficult time finishing second tonight IMO. Lucario... is just awful, no way around it. His only hope is that he shares less of a fanbase with Marth than he did Isaac- which I guess is ALMOST possible given their Nintendo handheld overlap, but nay, Luc must get almost all his votes from Brawl so it's much more likely that Marth murders him. I'd have to call last place a lock for the guy, and by a large margin. The coolest battle should be for first place between Duke and Marth. Chalk me up as a big Duke disbeliever, but even I've been forced to warm up to him this past month: between making the Contest banner pic, dominating this match pic, Forever, and his taglines making him the best joke option of the bunch, I've got to believe Nukem has the upper hand in this group. Even so, I see Marth beating down Luc so effectively that he'll be able to make something of a run at Duke during the Day to keep this one interesting, and at the same time give himself enough of a gap to not be overcome by Altair's Xbox ASV. Sooo Duke \> Marth \> Altair in a fairly tight one with Lucario lagging well behind ought to spin to something like... - Duke Nukem - 28.28% - Marth - 28.11% - Altair - 28.05% - Lucario - 15.56% That looks... marvelous! Ngamer Says: **Duke \> Marth** ### Next Day Review Pretty much all the long-time Contest vets were up in arms when we found out that this year's Contest would once again be a 4-way, and I'll admit that I was just as opposed to the idea as any of them. While I still feel that we're overdue to return to 1v1s for '09, I've got to admit that occasionally this format can turn out some real gems, and these two matches are a great example. Both yesterday and for tonight you could make a strong case for any of the top three characters finishing in any position, and that's pretty amazing IMO. Speaking of the current match, I can't say too much right now, as Duke has completely fallen off the map with the ASV (the only surprising thing is that it didn't happen sooner!) and will need to recover soon to ensure Altair doesn't overtake him. The one thing I CAN say though is boy, what a disappointment from Marth! You're a two-time SSB veteran, how are you letting a guy who got owned that hard last round hang around in this one? Bah, I guess the D/P generation of Pokemon isn't as pathetically weak as we all thought a few weeks back. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3277&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=34) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Luigi vs Liquid Snake vs Bowser vs Phoenix Wright 2008 _source: Luigi vs Liquid Snake vs Bowser vs Phoenix Wright 2008 (revid 85815)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Liquid Snake - 28.81% Luigi - 28.20% Bowser - 27.77% Phoenix Wright - 15.22% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Liquid first place (4pts) - 35.37% Liquid second place (2pts) - 11.65% Luigi second place (4pts) - 15.62% Luigi first place (2pts) - 31.19% - **Advancing Prediction:** Liquid - 47.02% (20,173) Luigi - 46.81% (20,083) After seeing how round 1 played out, and having just come off of a match where Nintendo self-cannibalized, people were very concerned for Luigi's safety in this match. After all, we had hard data that Bowser \> Luigi: The board consensus for this match was Luigi \> Bowser even in the face of the LOL x-stats, which people were actually right about. Regardless of any stat, common sense would tell you Luigi would beat Bowser heads-up. I actually picked Bowser \> Luigi because direct matches as seen here in our example are a bit different than extrapolated stats. So for those who called me an idiot back then, you were right. What almost none of us saw coming, however, was how Liquid Snake and Phoenix Wright would factor into all this. After Phoenix did his usual thing and won the early board vote, one thing became readily apparent -- the Nintendo vote was being split three ways, which allowed Liquid Snake to waltz into first place unopposed, much to the dismay of many Nintendo fans. This was supposed to be a simple result where Bowser and Luigi stomped. Nope. Liquid probably would have advanced regardless, but Phoenix being here definitely diluted the Nintendo support. Remember how Luigi finished ahead of Liquid in round 1? Well add in Bowser and Phoenix Wright, and you get Liquid walking to first place with Bowser being the odd one out. And if there wasn't a weird Hierarchy™ with Nintendo's second level, a universe exists where Luigi gets third place here. The universe we're in though saw Bowser almost lose to Phoenix himself and finish in last place, which is especially embarrassing in its own right. Hats off to Liquid and Metal Gear Solid 4, though, for taking advantage. You don't choose who you go up against on the schedule, you just have to beat whoever's there. Liquid took advantage of lucky bracket placement and did what he had to do. Oh, and my best guess as to why Luigi finished ahead of Bowser despite the direct results is because main characters tend to overperform against villains in their own series. It's not the only time this has happened. Bowser may look stronger indirectly based on some stats, but I would never pick him to beat Luigi in a match again. The hero \> villain thing among voters is very real. ## Stats and Analysis - Bowser underperformed by **-5.08%**, the **\#14** most disappointing performance of 2008 This match was all about two things. The first, and arguably most important, was to glean something finite on the Bowser/Yoshi/Luigi trio. Bowser had beaten Yoshi soundly way back in 2003, and Yoshi had done the same to Luigi in 2004. Yet from 2006 onward, their performances had been pretty much reversed in terms of impressiveness - Luigi \> Yoshi \> Bowser was how the apparent chain was structured now. For Bowser, this was about proving that he was still at the top of the SFF chain. For Luigi, it was about validating his stellar performances from 2005 and onward. Also in the mix was the X Factor of Liquid Snake, whose pedigree had been cast into serious doubt after Ocelot's bomb a few days back. If his round one showing was a fluke, everything else seemingly fell into line, so we had to wonder if Liquid really had what it took to take first here, or even place. The picture also went a fair bit into altering perceptions. Luigi looked fine, but Bowser looked positively badass (although in retrospect, not as recognizable as he usually is... but it's BOWSER). Liquid Snake looked so horrible in his picture that people were actually getting even MORE nervous until it was pointed out that he's looked awful in every match picture he's ever had. Phoenix Wright, for his part, stole the show - the awesome close-up with anime lines streaking in the background was the greatest thing I could have imagined for him outside of a pointing picture, and it made it close regardless. The time for the match came - but it was late, so we had to wait for one of those delayed "jump-start" Power Hours. When it came, Luigi surged to a lead on Nintendoism and brackets, but Liquid decided for once to NOT flop and easily took the lead in time for the end of the update. The real shock was the so-called "main event": Luigi had taken a big 59 vote lead on third place, which \*could\* be attributed to brackets except for the fact that Phoenix Wright was in third. Not Bowser, but a character that most considered to be high fodder - and that's when we were letting fanboyism cloud our judgment! Still, PW had a killer board vote, so we were waiting for that second update to see if Bowser would make a move. And he moved - to all of a six vote lead on Phoenix. Meanwhile, Luigi had moved out to a 149 vote lead on Bowser and with that the match was decided in a flash. Liquid would go on to easily win despite Luigi KILLING Bowser. How badly did he kill Bowser? Well, he killed him so thoroughly that Bowser lost the lead to PHOENIX WRIGHT, who ended up leading him for a nontrivial portion of the night vote and ended up losing by less than 5000 votes. And this is to a character that was an hour of day vote away from killing Solid Snake. Ultimately, it was a sad day for fans of the Koopa King, even though there was some rambling about Bowser being indirectly stronger based on Liquid's and Phoenix's proportions to one another. But still, just like Samus' throttling at the hands of Mario, it proved to be of little consolation. Liquid, for his part, had finally made the third round of a contest, but considering that he was bound to stand out like hell there was an argument for him there, too. MGS had gotten its second round off to a good start. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Anyways, tonight's got me flustered big time. Let's get right into it before I lose my nerve! R1 X-Stat Performances - Luigi - 26.30% (based on '07 Roxas) - Liquid Snake - 23.92% (based on '07 Roxas) - Bowser - 28.29% (based on '07 Geno) - Phoenix Wright - 19.60% (based on '07 Geno) Just looking that over, the King of the Koopas would appear to be a clear favorite for the advancement in this one. BUT, I'm of the opinion that he overperfomed last round due to pretty much perfect placement- his status near the top of the Nintendo food chain allowed him to SFF down PW and Geno's percentage, while Cain looked like a generic old man from some RPG and couldn't take advantage of the split. He should still do well for himself in this one, and Phoenix should once again get his head handed to him beyond the first 15 minutes, but I don't see him finishing in the top two because... Luigi's even higher on that N food chain! Or at least, that's what Mario favorite polls and the last few years of Contest results would have us believe. Personally I'm not as sold on Luigi \> Bowser in this format as most others seem to be... sure the guy squeezed by Ganon, but he needed every advantage in the book to do so. Today the tables have turned somewhat and it's BOWSER who looks flat out awesome in the match pic, so even though I'm still sticking with a Luigi win, I bet Bowser keeps it closer than you might expect. As for Liquid... ack! I was all set on Ocelot coming out guns blazing the other day to prove the MGS4 boost beyond a doubt with a great showing on Kratos. Then it would have been easy for me to pick against the Big Boss-like three way Nintendo split and have Liquid stand out like a sore thumb right into an easy first place finish. But then... Ocelot crashed and burned big time. And now I'm remembering how the last time I put faith in Liquid he likewise made a total fool of himself against Lavos and then Sephiroth. And NOW I'm checking out this match pic, and Liquid looks like such a tool! Seriously, ugh, could someone please create some decent artwork for this guy some day? Soooo with Nintendo not performing up to standards to this point, Phoenix being there to further hold down the Mario guys, and MGS having at least a decent show of it so far, I'm afraid I can no longer stick with my bracket and the Luigi \> Bowser I picked here. However I refuse to be burned by MGS faith yet again, and so I'm stubbornly not moving from the Luigi side of that prediction. Here's hoping for an awesome fatal three-way tonight! Let's stir the pot and bring out... - Luigi - 29.39% - Liquid Snake - 29.20% - Bowser - 28.29% - Phoenix Wright - 13.11% That looks... like it's not going to happen! But dang it, I tried my best. Ngamer Says: **Luigi \> Liquid** ### Next Day Review Ugh, dang it all Phoenix. You fold to 11% against Mario and Big Boss, yet pull down 19% against Liquid and Luigi/Bowser? Worse yet he ruins both my Oracle and my bracket; I really think Mr. L could have competed for the win here if this triple Nintendo LFF had only been a double. Oh well, at least we won't have to sit through another embarrassing performance from Nintendo tonight... though that's only the case because there are no non-Nintendo options in the bunch! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3278&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=35) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Mario vs Zelda vs Mega Man X vs Mudkip 2008 _source: Mario vs Zelda vs Mega Man X vs Mudkip 2008 (revid 85816)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 34.33% Mega Man X - 27.83% Mudkip - 20.41% Zelda - 17.44% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario first place (4pts) - 71.97% Mario second place (2pts) - 11.07% Mega Man X second place (4pts) - 38.73% Mega Man X first place (2pts) - 5.19% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mario - 83.04% (35,627) Mega Man X - 43.92% (18,843) After round 1, you could cut the tension for this match with a knife. With all four of them being Nintendo characters and us not fully understanding The Hierarchy™ yet, plus Mudkip being the wildest of wild cards, any possible order of these four characters was in play. Looking back on it, would any of them winning the poll or getting second had truly surprised anyone? The Zelda series is king, IT'S FREAKING MARIO, Mega Man X was a potential monster, Mudkip had the joke bandwagon factor, and who really knew which way the Nintendo leeching would fall? I know I personally remember thinking it would be Mario \> Mega Man X \> Mudkip \> Zelda, but I wasn't at all confident in it. You can imagine the insane amount of arguing going on for this one, not to mention the palpable hype with Mudkip. When the poll began, it was very clear that Mudkip would be no factor at all, at least not with actually advancing into round 3. There was too much Nintendo in this poll for him to get any real joke support going, and typically these joke characters catch these absurd rallies and make the rest of the match irrelevant, a la Undertale in the finals against Ocarina of Time. That didn't happen here. Mudkip got some support, but not nearly enough to actually threaten in the match. He did, however, get enough support for third place. The unlucky loser in this spot was... Zelda?! I know it's crazy to think about given the utterly obnoxious boost in strength she got from Breath of the Wild, but Zelda used to be a pretty middling character in these things. Even in 2006, she was the beneficiary of a stupid bracket gimmick. That run was fraudulent, and she didn't really matter in these things until Breath of the Wild. After that though, all bets are off. Whatever the tier is directly below Link, she's on it now. But back then, not so much. She actually finished behind Bidoof in 2007, and after falling behind by 800 votes to Mudkip in 2008, she required the day vote to bail her out and save her dignity. It was a pretty sad display for an upcoming contest legend. The true shock and awe in this match came in the fight for first place. Yet again, I will point this out. The 1v1 format robbed us. Can you even imagine how nuts it would be if Mega Man X threatened to beat Mario 1v1 in his contest debut? Instead we have these ridiculous 4ways where it doesn't even matter who wins, because both advance. That said, your eyes do not lie to you when looking at the updater for this one. That is Mega Man X proving he was worth the hype and building up a 900 vote lead on Mario overnight. And it's not like Mario could claim he was being screwed over by the Nintendo presence, either, because Mega Man X deals with the same exact factor. What ended up happening is very easy to explain, thanks to the little graph we have here on the wiki page. We all know Mario won the morning vote to take first place, but what the graph makes readily apparent is that Mario did this by stealing support from Mudkip. Mario is a very difficult character to have a joke rally against, and this match showed it. The second Mudkip's support died, Mario got all of it. He erased the entire 900 vote lead Mega Man X had by the time everyone had finished eating breakfast, and what started as an entertaining poll ended with a dud. Mario and Zelda had simultaneous comebacks, and the rest of the poll was a continuation of the momentum. This match was very hyped going in, but once Mario and Zelda caught up to 1st and 3rd place respectively, the match was over. Mario \> Mega Man X was the result. Still, Mega Man X advanced anyway and Mudkip being somewhat fraudulent doesn't take away from either's showing in this contest. For Mega Man X especially, a 4-Nintendo match early in his contest debut are some difficult waters to swim through. Even with blowing a lead to Mario, he proved he deserved to be here, and Mega Man X is hardly the first character to lose a lead to Mario with the morning vote. He can thank his lucky stars for the format, too, because the laughable 4way junk meant X got to fight another day. For Zelda, she was probably happy to see this 4way crap disappear. There is also that open world Zelda game that would come in 2017, but skip to the 2018 writeups to see the effect that one had. For now, it was another leeched Nintendo loss. It would happen again in 2013 before she went godmode. This would set up the one and only time we have ever seen Mario and Luigi in a match together. It's true. Look it up. ## Stats and Analysis After Round 2, this match was basically seen as something where pretty much ANYTHING could happen, and the crux of it all rested on Mudkip. After all, we were talking about an entity that led a split fanbase of Ganondorf and Luigi for half the match. Sure, we were talking about much stronger entities in Mario/Mega Man X/Zelda, but there were arguments for all three being essentially Nintendo and the fanbase split being much more severe thanks to it being three ways instead of two ways. Couple that with joke characters seemingly having even MORE power this year than last, and... well, people were scared. Zelda was also a wild card. She had held up pretty well last round, but most thought this is where it would end. With a probable SFFed Knuckles and Fei Fong Wong being replaced by Mega Man X and Mudkip, Fourth Place Factor would likely rear its ugly mug and put her down to an SFF collapse. Mario was pretty much going to be guaranteed in placing, so he had to put a performance up to show he'd be able to handle Luigi next round and stop the winner of Mega Man X and Mudkip from taking him down. The result of all this banter would be an exceedingly strange result, and one that ultimately signified the ultimate end of this contest. Mario and Mega Man X started off on a tear due to their bracket support, but as that wore off they just continued to climb. Mudkip was DYING here, and letting Zelda into striking position. Remember, this was the same Mudkip that nearly edged Luigi and Ganondorf, the same Zelda that got fodderized by Link. For all the power Mudkip had put on display in its first outing, the joke just wasn't connecting here, and Mario and Mega Man X easily had the match in hand by the first update. But here's where things got wonky. Mega Man X, presumably due to the board thinking he needed the help more than Mario, started very close to Mario. The next update would seemingly rectify this - but instead we got a stall, with Mega Man X actually cutting three votes. This got people slightly nervous, but flukish things happen at times like this, right? Then we got an update with MMX taking a 40 vote LEAD over Mario. This was pretty much when Mario in general started to take the heat for all its failings. Nintendo failing was one thing, but at least there were some examples of Ninty doing well - Link and Samus, for example, looked to have at least maintained pace. But Mario had Luigi, Bowser, Yoshi, and now the big plumber himself unable to put away one of the biggest has-beens in video gaming. Fanbase splitting, sure - but Zelda and Mudkip were both still putting WAY too much on the big guy, a guy who looked capable of SFFing characters like Zero back in 2005. This, to put it lightly, was a disaster. And for awhile it looked like the match might morph into a catastrophe for the plumber, as MMX rode his crazy early vote (Power Hour has nothing on MM early vote) to a lead that looked like it was on track for 1000. But MMX is basically just Mega Man in the end, and right around that designated 3-4 hour mark, his momentum stalled out and he pretty much just died. Mario reluctantly came back to the match, took back the lead, and \*slowly\* built himself a lead of not even 1500 votes by the end, despite both him and MMX taking up the lion's share of the pool. This meant a few things - firstly, that you do not mess with anything Zelda as long as it's not put up against Link. Zelda may be one of the most worthless characters ever from a character standpoint, but that name brings with it a kind of resilience that most wouldn't even dream of thinking of. This was also the final step in her slow but inevitable show of performances upending the once conventional wisdom of Ganondorf \> Zelda. Even if the King of Evil was stronger indirectly, it was getting harder to see how he was going to win a direct match against the series' namesake. Secondly, Mario was in deep trouble - not only next round (although a firestorm of debate was triggered on whether or not Luigi would hurt Mario more or less than this), but a stronger than expected Zack and whoever made it out of the quarterfinals was going to make Mario's path absolutely hellish considering Link was going to be in those matches. And if Mario didn't make it through, then the contest was all Link's (or L-Block's, but I'll get to that in a second). The buzz on MMX \> MM was as high as it's ever been during this match, although watching him bomb the last 20 hours of the match just like Mega Man proved a tad deceptive for direct evaluation. The jury's still out for me on how they stack up directly and indirectly, though I will allow in the former that it's a lot more picture dependent. I can't see the MM picture that he got against Ryu in 2k6, for example, come even close to beating MMX. And finally, with Mudkip being the first joke character we'd ever seen to just outright FLOP... suddenly, they looked mortal. Still, we didn't yet dare to believe against L-Block. Still, it was nice to see one of the more annoying jokes fall. Who cares that it took arguably triple SFF and three Noble Nine level opponents to do it! ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Originally I had this one chalked up as an easy advancement for Mario and MMX, but in the end I decided to move Zelda into this grouping instead of Knuckles, at which point I realized... uh oh, the Kipper just might joke himself into contention! Let's try to figure out how realistic that would be. R1 Performance X-Stats - Mario - 40.25% (based on '07 Knuckles) - Zelda - 30.41% (based on '07 Knuckles) - Mega Man X - 36.78% (based on '07 Lloyd) - Mudkip - 29.77% (based on '07 Lloyd) Just looking at those first two you're thinking whoa, not only will this be Mario's in a cakewalk, but Zelda might have a chance to slide by as well! And then you see how impressive MMX was also... and then heck, even Mudkip looked like a champ! In reality it seems pretty clear that all these numbers are too high- Knuckles was surely hit with some platforming LFF by Mario to weaken him from 2007, while it was rather obvious that Lloyd (like Kratos A) got stung pretty bad by having to deal with Nintendo competition here in '08. Regardless though, the gaps are large enough where the Nintendo food chain of Mario \> MMX \> Zelda with decent sized gaps in between shouldn't really be in question. The troubling thing is... where does Mudkip fall? Well last season he had to compete with triple Nintendo in R1 and pulled down 28%. This year he had triple Nintendo in R1 and got... uh oh, 30%. But not to worry! Because in R2 last year he faced tougher Nintendo opponents and fell to... 25%. Crap! Considering Mudkip is apparently stronger this year, and considering that joke characters as a whole are certainly stronger this year, it doesn't seem impossible for Muddy to maintain that 24-25% he seems to like snatching up. And if THAT'S the case and Mario/Zelda keep the same ratio while X bombs and can only hang around with Zelda, then Mudkip is going to pull through easily! This is some serious trouble we're in folks... so why aren't I backing the upset? Two reasons: 1\. Anti-favoriteFAQs. It shouldn't be as big a deal as it was in R1, but even so I think 95% of voters are going to consider Mario an easy choice for the win tonight and some will instead throw their vote to someone who might need it more- and I think that secondary choice will be X more often than not. 2\. The pictures. Hey hey, thanks SB! Not only does Mudkip look sad and way too zoomed and not nearly as jokey-hilarious as last year, but MMX looks awesome and is sure to draw plenty of attention away from such a normal-looking Mario. But best of all, Zelda got Celda'd! I see this as strongly limiting her appeal, and the less appeal she's got the more legit votes there will be for X to eat up. Come on fighting robot, you can do this yet! (Though I still think it could be too close for comfort!) I've stirred this pot and am bringing out... - Mario - 32.23% - Mega Man X - 25.65% - Mudkip - 24.25% - Zelda - 17.88% Looks... dangerous! But that's my middle name. Ngamer Says: **Mario \> MMX** ### Next Day Review Haha, what a fun match that was! I never lost my faith in Mario, because as I kept pointing out in Stats MM has been a beast in the first three hours for a few years now, but that hasn't kept him from dropping like a stone the rest of the time. Still it was funny when I pointed out how Mega had jumped to a 169 vote lead on Samus before collapsing, and then the very next update MM hit 170 and continues climbing by 50 during many updates. So Mario will end up winning and doing so with ease, but this still makes the rest of his run so much more interesting... With Luigi in the picture for R3, will he do more damage than Zelda and allow MMX a win? When it's Link/Mario/MMX/Zack, can we expect Mario and MM to again be in a dog fight, allowing Zack to slip on by? However this match has possibly an even larger impact character: Mudkip. I know I know, he's not a joke, or at least not in the same way as Block/Bag/Cube, but this was still a huge collapse from a guy that many of us though would have a more static fanbase thanks to that extra joke appeal. Is this a signal that voters are tiring of these joke characters? L-Block and Dog put up a huge number, but WCC failed to match that performance by a long shot, and then the Bag was even 6% further back of the mark... Maybe I'm just getting my hopes up only to be crushed once again, but this is starting to make me feel better about Ryu's chances in this next one! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3279&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=36) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Samus Aran vs Nightmare vs Ganondorf vs Frog 2008 _source: Samus Aran vs Nightmare vs Ganondorf vs Frog 2008 (revid 85817)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, October 24th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 3 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 24th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 37.70% Ganondorf - 27.30% Frog - 19.09% Nightmare - 15.92% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Samus first place (4pts) - 72.30% Samus second place (2pts) - 12.40% Ganondorf second place (4pts) - 55.72% Ganondorf first place (2pts) - 9.73% - **Advancing Prediction:** Samus - 84.70% (36,339) Ganondorf - 65.45% (28,080) This match was little more than heavy favorites taking care of business. Frog may have some magic against the likes of Master Chief, and Liquid Snake, and Kingdom Hearts's C tier, but Ganondorf is a bridge too far. It's sad to think about, but other than the contest Chrono Trigger almost won in 2015 (go back and look at how INSANE that game looked before the giga-rallies started), the game and its characters have gotten a little weaker each year. Frog's magic was long gone by the time this match happened, let alone when I actually got around to doing these writeups in 2020. There would be no drama, no comebacks, no picture screwjobs, nothing. Just an easy, simple Samus \> Ganondorf result that was never going to be challenged. It was a good breather after the silly Mudkip match, too, so it's not like anyone complained of boredom here. Every contest, much like every great wrestling match, needs the occasional rest break. That's what this match was. A rest break. ## Stats and Analysis This, like most Samus matches this contest, was a low votal snoozefest that was only good for telling us if Samus would be vulnerable to any kind of upset threat by Vincent next round. That would require Ganondorf to hold up about as well as Zelda did to Mario, of course... and he gave very little confidence in doing so here. Samus blew him out by almost 20000 votes, and Frog ended up slicing him up but good during the night. It wasn't close by the end, but with the competition stepping up to Vincent + Falco/Scorpion/Gordon next round, it was hard to see how the upset was going to materialize unless Falco made it through. The only other thing to really note here is that Nightmare fell apart like he did in Round 2 last year, becoming the next in a long line of characters that utterly fold when placed against real competition. And Frog hadn't failed us, which was almost surprising in and of itself - he did what he was supposed to do. Overall, this looked like it might be an omen for an okay contest for Crono in that he wouldn't slip again. But he didn't just need to stay constant - he needed to improve in order to beat Vincent in the quarterfinals, to say nothing of what the Block would do. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction We'll have to rush into my thought on tonight's battle, as we're running out of time! X-Stats from Round One - Samus - 32.86% (based on '07 Crash) - Nightmare - 19.91% (based on '07 Crash) - Ganon - 31.32% (based on '07 KOS-MOS) - Frog - 22.29% (based on '07 KOS-MOS) This is cool to look over because I feel its one of the rare cases where those x-stat values might be at least somewhat reliable; both Crash and KOS-MOS have been able to avoid LFF situations in '07 and '08, so we ought to be able to put a little bit of faith into the year over year comparison. Nightmare was the disappointment of the group in my opinion- coming in hot off Soul Calibur 4, yet he couldn't even entirely put away Crash? Frog meanwhile had his only good wire to wire showing since 2004, making it a no-doubter against KM when most had been expecting a shoot out. Nightmare's an easy last in this group and Samus should have no trouble getting first, which leaves us to discuss second place. Heading into the bracket this was probably the only R2 result that I considered a "no brainer" no matter how you tried to twist it. Samus \> Ganon, what else could possibly happen? But with the way Nintendo has been coming up short whenever LFF comes into play, and how Ganon took a pretty big dive once the picture came up last round, and how CT:DS has apparently been a real shot in the arm for everything Ct-related this season, I'm going to have to back the upset and say... Nay, just kidding! Ganon will pound Frog and take this down easy. He has already stood up well against Samus directly, Frog is still Frog, and even if he were getting Bacondorf in this one I still wouldn't be too worried. As is he looks pretty good in that pic, while Frog will be lacking his Sword Factor votes. Now keep in mind I'm not calling for a Ganon blowout from wire to wire; its entirely possible that Frog comes out like a house of fire in the opening three hours and puts a real scare into Nintendo for a short while. But no worries, as he'll pull an MMX and be out of contention before too long, except that he's going to fall even HARDER. Sooo with Samus looking great (in the pic too!), Ganon and Frog looking decent, and Nighmare looking awful (in the pic too!), it shouldn't take much pot stirring to arrive at - Samus Aran - 35.81% - Ganondorf - 26.50% - Frog - 20.82% - Nightmare - 16.87% That looks... wonderful! Ngamer Says: **Samus \> Ganon** ### Next Day Review What's this? A match that we all agree is "pretty much a foregone conclusion"... actually turns out that way? Well now, I guess there's a first time for everything! Eh, actually we did learn at least two things from this match: whenever she can avoid looking like an orange toilet, Samus is rock-solid in this format, and two, Chrono Trigger continues to give indications that it has stemmed the tide of its yearly blood loss. That being the case, Vincent needs to really show us something tonight if he's going to prove (firstly) that he'll be able to bounce Samus if full-on Nintendo LFF comes into play and (secondly) that he's still the guy to beat in his upcoming Crono rematch. Now we just need someone to knock off the Block, so that rematch will actually mean something... ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3280&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=37) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Vincent Valentine vs Falco Lombardi vs Scorpion vs Gordon Freeman 2008 _source: Vincent Valentine vs Falco Lombardi vs Scorpion vs Gordon Freeman 2008 (revid 85818)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, October 25th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 3 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 25th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vincent Valentine - 37.50% Scorpion - 21.78% Gordon Freeman - 20.86% Falco Lombardi - 20.04% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Vincent first place (4pts) - 45.93% Vincent second place (2pts) - 13.69% Gordon second place (4pts) - 22.69% Gordon first place (2pts) - 10.00% - **Advancing Prediction:** Vincent - 59.62% (25,579) Gordon - 32.69% (14,025) We've created a monster! Gordon Freeman Never Wins? Fat chance. Now, all he does is win like DJ Khaled. It was a total out-of-left-field shocker, too. Vincent was always going to get first place here. We all know that. This might not be the case if you redid this poll with 2020 voters, but hey. The story was the battle for second place. As you can see by the Oracle numbers off to the right, no one knew what would happen. As you can see by the guru predictions, Scorpion was the massive, massive favorite to advance. And off in the lurch was Falco, who had no other Nintendo characters to deal with and the remnants of BrawlFEAR at his back. There was also the matter of the round 1 results. Scorpion beat Gordon for first place in round 1, albeit only by 2100 votes. And unless you think Big Daddy siphoned off a percentage of Gordon's votes due to some weird Orange Box/Bioshock overlap (which is actually what did happen there, by the way), Scorpion was set to do it again in round 2. Falco.... we should have seen coming. He had no Nintendo competition in round 1 too and only got 27% of the vote, and that poll had Vincent, GLaDOS, and Wander in it. That is weaker than what Gordon dealt with. Still, given what we had just seen in round 1, Scorpion felt like the favorite here. If anyone was going to pull the upset, it was most likely to be Falco. When the poll started, it was never close. Gordon Freeman -- yes, THAT Gordon Freeman -- the guy who lost so often that he got meme'd, was sitting there pulling off contest upsets and getting into round 3 like it was nothing. He beat the absolute piss out of Scorpion right from the jump, and Falco was never a factor. The poll was never close, and Gordon walked right into round 3 like he was born to be there. Even typing these words out makes no sense, because I still remember how awful this dude looked for so many years. It's like those two random years the Jets made the AFC title game under Rex Ryan. As for why it happened, a lot of people blamed Scorpion's match picture. And while it was indeed trash, I don't think it was the only factor. Remember, Scorpion only beat Gordon by 2100 votes in round 1. Big Daddy was in that poll, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if there was a lot of overlap between Bioshock and The Orange Box, the latter of which clearly boosted Gordon to the moon in this contest. With Big Daddy out of the way and nothing to really leech Gordon's votes, the turnaround makes sense. We may never know for sure, because the odds of Gordon and Scorpion ever being against each other again are low. You guys will notice I'm not doing as much picture commentary as usual with this PCA, and it's for two reasons. One is that this was pre-picsmith days for me, and two is 2008 was by FAR the worst year of match pictures these contests will ever have. Starting in round 2, the picsmiths thought it would be funny to get cute with almost all of the match pictures, leading to a series of pure garbage as they kept putting more and more useless trash and bad filters into every single one. I love Zen like a brother, but I include him in all this. You say Scorpion's picture was bad, but I say pretty much every picture starting in round 2 was bad. I could rant about these match pics being dog shit for half the contest, and part of why I became a picsmith who submitted basic stuff for every match in the first place to prevent this kind of garbage from ever happening again. Pictures are supposed to be a fair representation of the entrants, not a failed high school art project. It's like Gordon sitting there looking like Season 1 Water White had some huge picture advantage; his win goes much deeper than that. Thankfully Allen realized the error here and stopped allowing idiots to submit dumb stuff outside of matches with rotating images late in contests. Bathtub Geralt versus Peeping Link is okay as a joke when a match has 10 pictures, but half of the 2008 contest match pics had that type of, uh... "quality". Screw that. I will say that as the years went by, people got much, much better about what they submitted. But it's impossible to talk about 2008 without mentioning just how trash these pictures were overall. It's not why Scorpion lost, but it sure didn't help. ## Stats and Analysis - Gordon advancing was the **\#17** most surprising result of 2008 The threesome of the scientist, spectre, and Star Fox sidekick was probably the most split of the second round, and with good reason. Gordon had gotten scarily close to Scorpion last round, and the memory of Duke/Gordon II was still fresh in our minds. Most people were sticking with Scorpion out of bracket favoritism, but they weren't at all confident in it. Then throw Falco into the mix, who had gotten more on Vincent last round than Gordon got on Sora in 2006, and also the only Nintendo character in the match. The result you see is a tight Oracle spread that would have probably been dead tied if Scorpion wasn't such a massive bracket favorite here, and also a result that could potentially determine if an upset materialized next round. Of course, as so many hyped matches do, it ended up anticlimactically. In this case, the result seemed to be determined before the match even began - the picture's release had the most HORRIBLE picture for Scorpion one could have possibly picked, and even though it's Scorpion - who doesn't know him? - immediately the bottom on confidence fell out on him, which means everything rested upon Falco to take down HL's protagonist. And it didn't even come close to happening. Falco may have been the only Ninty character in the match - but he was still Ninty, and pretty much SSB ONLY Ninty at that. No one cares about Falco's role in Star Fox, no one cares about Falco, and it shows. The character that got 37% on Vincent last round ended up with 29% on him in a match tailor-made for him to overperform. Seriously. I can't get over how exceedingly pathetic Falco was here, and to go on an Ulti-style tangent, it shows exactly how stupid Nintendo was for even letting him back into Brawl, to say nothing of Wolf. He shouldn't have even been in Melee, geez, I have a hard time believing Krystal doesn't hold up better here. As for Scorpion, he went from a 2000 vote win to a 9000 vote blowout, and no amount of picture factor can explain that. Gordon had pulled the first major upset of his career, and did it in an epic style. All that was left was to see him in action against a SFFed Ganondorf for bragging rights. Oh, and Vincent. Yeah, he dominated here, but it was comparable to Samus' win and Gordon, Scorpion, and Falco are no Ganondorf/Frog/Nightmare. Ganondorf would have to stay almost entirely proportional with Samus from round to round, and while that seemed unlikely, we'd seen what Zelda had done just recently. The match would just have to play out. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Can VV redeem himself from that underwhelming opening round performance? Can Falco prove that Nintendo is still a force to be reckoned with on this site, at least when it can avoid LFFing itself to death? Let's look closer. X-Stats from Round One - Vincent - 35.55% (based on '07 Wander) - Falco - 26.31% (based on '07 Wander) - Scorpion - 20.00% (based on '07 Balthier) - Gordon - 19.45% (based on '07 Balthier) I see no reason for that Wander number to be unreliable; he looked utterly pathetic last season and gave us more of the same in '08, without any good excuse for his underperformance in either case. Which means, whoa, was Falco ever impressive! I wouldn't think he could possibly be THAT close to Fox in strength, but the numbers don't lie... or DO they? Scorpion and Gordon better hope they do! There's no way both of those guys have fallen back to the fodder line; clearly Balthier performed a ton better this season than he did in his matches back in '07, for whatever reason. But even adjusting them upwards some, that's plenty of ground they'd need to make up on Falco- can they do so without any help from LFF? That's the best thing about this match: it ought to give us a nice clear reading on all four of these characters, as we've got that rare poll between four unique fanbases where no one has any good excuse for not playing to their full potential. Let's start with Gordon... I've had this Freeman theory for a while which says that no one cares about HIM, but plenty of people do love all things Half-Life. That's why when he was just a zoomed out blob of a generic scientist in '02/'03/'04 he was beyond pathetic, but ever since he started getting these closer shots with the HL logo on his chest plainly in sight Gordon has suddenly become a decent low mid-carder. R1 was a perfect example of a "very good" Gordon pic... and just look at the result! This time around all we get is an ulta-zoomed (seriously SB, why the obsession with super closeups?) mug shot, and sorry, that tiny Half-Life style "A" isn't going to cut it. Much as I'll be rooting for the last Free Man, I can't see him finishing anywhere but last for this match. Scorpion's a real oddball. Even accounting for Gordon's HL logo help and the boost he apparently received from the Orange Box, there was just no excuse for Scorpion to not put him away in that match, especially as he was sporting a full-on killer ninja pic that should have put him way over with the casuals. If people had finally just given up on the Mortal Kombat series I'd be able to understand it, but no, Sub-Zero looked like he hadn't missed a beat just last week, hanging in there with Auron and never letting his second place finish be in doubt. And then to lower my faith even further, Scorp gets THIS picture... good gracious! I know its almost Halloween, but even so I can't see skeletons being more popular than awesome harpoon-throwing ninjas. Definitely expect a dropoff in the casual support for a character who looks this way, and if that's the case he should just be concerned with beating out Freeman to avoid the cellar, not trying to advance! As for the final two, I see Vincent taking advantage of the lessening of anti-favoriteFAQs and also the lack of a joke option in this poll (surely many voters knew he'd be fine last round and threw their vote to GlaDOS for the lulz) to put together the kind of showing we would expect from an NN-breaker. And Falco, well... call me crazy, but I still have plenty of faith in Nintendo. Yes, their inter-company SFF can be nasty, but let these characters lock horns with other independent entrants of about equal strength and I think that fans of the company will put them through to the next round 4 out of 5 times. I'm picturing a good early push for Gordon, Vincent to devour the percentage all through the overnight, and Falco to tear it up once the sun rises and put his second place finish away without too much trouble. Sooo, yup, got to pick against my bracket here and bank on Nintendo and having the best pic of the bunch in support of Falco! Converting those words to numbers and stirring the pot results in: - Vincent Valentine - 37.10% - Falco Lombardi - 22.38% - Scorpion - 20.75% - Gordon Freeman - 19.77% That looks and smells just wonderful! Ngamer Says: **Vincent \> Falco** ### Next Day Review Ugh, darn you Falco! I guess I can't be upset at him for coming up short against Gordon- the guy is clearly just on steroids or something, and I'd never have expected a score like this out of him in a million years. But to not even save face by edging Scorpion despite a significant pic advantage and not having to deal with any LFF? All the faith I had left in Nintendo is quickly leaking out of my left ear. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3281&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=38) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Crono vs Amaterasu vs L-Block vs Ryu (Street Fighter) 2008 _source: Crono vs Amaterasu vs L-Block vs Ryu (Street Fighter) 2008 (revid 85819)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, October 26th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 4 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 26th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 31.48% L-Block - 30.48% Ryu - 24.90% Amaterasu - 13.30% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Crono first place (4pts) - 49.61% Crono second place (2pts) - 20.36% L-Block second place (4pts) - 25.88% L-Block first place (2pts) - 23.62% - **Advancing Prediction:** Crono - 69.97% (30,019) L-Block - 49.50% (21,237) As crazy as the round 1 match was featuring L-Block, this match.... wasn't. If you check out the trend graph, this match was basically set in stone 10 minutes in. People were worried L-Block would start going nuts again, but it just... didn't happen. This was perhaps the most boring match a hyped bandwagon joke character has ever been in. L-Block had already beaten Ryu in round 1, so him beating Ryu again was no surprise. By the way, Ryu has the distinction of losing to both L-Block and Draven. Poor guy. He was never in contention here, but that wasn't much of a surprise. What was a surprise though was L-Block coming out in this match and looking positively normal. He was only in this match for about 5 minutes before falling off, and that was it. Crono got an easy first. L-Block got an easy second. Ryu and Amaterasu, better luck next time. The normalcy here surprised a lot of people in and of itself, because as you can see by the Oracle picks, many people expected L-Block to get a bandwagon going and challenge for first. When he failed to do that, alarm bells went off. Was L-Block falling off? Was he losing the joke appeal? Did he merely run up against a beast in Crono and this match was a speed bump? A lot of people felt it was the latter, and the Save_Us.RAT movement was born. ## Stats and Analysis This match was all about confirming the inevitable. L-Block had beaten Ryu LAST round, and with the Street Fighter icon now playing second fiddle to Chrono Trigger's main, L-Block was going to advance with laughable ease. In fact, if you weren't in denial and looked at it objectively, L was the 'smart money' to take first over Crono. But something happened here, and it would verify what Mudkip had already foretold. The board vote opened up on the match with Crono and Ryu enjoying the briefest of leads, with Ryu getting beaten easily and Crono just inching ahead of L. Considering how anti-L the opening five minutes were considered to be, it looked like the Block had the match all wrapped up right then. But the next update saw a Crono surge to a 72 vote lead. And it didn't really slow past then - 170 votes by the half hour mark, 419 by the hour. This was during L's undisputed best time, mind you - and from there he just began a percentage collapse all day, ultimately finishing under 28% with the lowest percentage of his contest career. Yeah, Ryu was never really in the match. But he only got beat by about 5500 votes, and considering that we were expecting the God-killer free of splitting fanbases with The Dog... in essence, this was the first match in L's entire contest career where he disappointed expectations, and it was very odd to watch. As well as being pretty boring - no exhilaratingly crazy board vote that allowed him to put up a big lead on Solid Snake as early as Round 3, and all the finals magic seemed to be gone. Unfortunately, the best avenue of taking out L also seemed to be gone - Ryu was the second strongest in this division, easily, and with him out of the picture and a mound of SFF awaiting until the finals, L had plenty of time to pick up steam between then and now. It sucked for the board - the Block finally looked beatable, and no one was there to capitalize on it. And finally let's also throw a shout-out to Amaterasu, who really needs to get in one of these things 1v1 and see if she can be a good midcarder. Still one of the craziest unexpected strengths I've ever seen - what a picture and dedicated fanbase can do, eh? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Alright, so, we come to it at least. A month back this was unanimously agreed upon as the most important R1 matchup, perhaps in history. If only Ryu had been able to capitalize with the SNV and sneak out a victory there, we might be talking about this as the most significant R2 tilt of the season. As is... no one seems to be able to muster much hope. X-Stats from Round One: - L-Block - 27.44% (based on Meta Knight '07) - Ryu - 27.33% (based on Meta Knight '07) - Crono - 23.74% (based on Frank West '07) - Ammy - 16.64% (based on Frank West '07) Those MK-based numbers look pretty decent, but clearly Frank West vastly underperformed in that awful fourpack last season, because there's no way I'm accepting Ammy that far beneath the fodder line. Anyways, Crono \> Ryu \> Ammy might as well be set in stone but the question everyone needs answered is, which of those gaps does L fall into? Now, I've been talking for a while about how the joke characters might be weakening before our eyes, while at the same time the favorites seem to be returning to a more normal level of strength. The "evidence" is that despite the Block looking fantastic, WCC was weaker, Sandbag was weaker yet, Hogger was pathetic (just a little LESS pathetic than those other two!), and other character with potential "joke" appeal like Jinjo and the Sackboy have instead fallen on their faces. Also, there seems to be a definite resurgence for Chrono Trigger this season, which ought to give Crono fans a bit of hope. Unfortunately, there's still plenty standing in the way of an L-Block elimination here: - yes, the Block was under 32%, but let's not forget that the Dog was sucking up another 14% of that vote. jokes may be weakening, but they would need to weaken by light years versus R1 in order for this upset to have any chance - Ammy's not a pushover anymore... with her strong Wii sales for the Okami remake she ought to appeal to plenty of new Nintendo fans here, especially as none of these other options have had a real Nintendo release since the SNES. if this were a three way, Ryu would only need to avoid getting killed by Crono and he'd have a good shot at outlasting L's static 30%ish fanbase, but with the wolf not rolling over and surrendering her small percent of the legit votes, a win becomes nearly impossible - Capcom SFF between Ryu and Ammy? it sounds ridiculous, but then again we said the same thing about Dante/Leon and look where that got us. in any case its only one more case against Ryu, when he'd need a good dozen points in his favor before anyone would consider backing him Oh wait, forgot to mention Mudkip's major collapse! After what we saw in 2007 I thought he would have had a much more static, joke-supported fanbase, and instead he fell apart. So yeah, there are reasons to bet against a Block win in this one, but I'm not going to jinx it by picking it myself. Taking the Block for the win, but will be rooting my face off for Crono and Ryu all day! Let's throw those points in the pot and see what we get after a little stirring. - L-Block - 29.58% - Crono - 29.54% - Ryu (Street Fighter) - 25.01% - Amaterasu - 15.87% That looks... awful. Come on voters, win back my respect- drop that Block like it's hot! Ngamer Says: **L-Block \> Crono** ### Next Day Review Okay, so, this was the match where us Gurus almost unanimously agreed that L-Block would be meeting his maker. But... it didn't happen, and in fact, it happening was never even a real possibility, so by all rights I ought to be distressed. And yet... L-Block finally lost to someone, and its got me all smiles! Not only did he lose, he only won a single 15 minute update against Crono (at about 7:30 this morning) while Ryu has already topped the Block in 7 updates and could very well be scoring more before this match concludes, as he's sporting a darn impressive SNV right now. On the down side, L gains a major advantage in the next debatable match where Crono and Vincent will most likely be Square-SFFing each other. But on the plus side the idea of his having a completely static joke vote has been shattered just like it was for Mudkip early this round. Also, the trend of jokes weakening continues unabated... perhaps it will keep up, to put Crono far enough ahead to outlast him in R4? \*crosses fingers\* ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3282&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=39) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Alucard vs Captain Falcon vs Pikachu vs Arthas Menethil 2008 _source: Alucard vs Captain Falcon vs Pikachu vs Arthas Menethil 2008 (revid 85820)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, October 27th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 4 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 27th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pikachu - 29.35% Alucard - 28.00% Arthas Menethil - 23.81% Captain Falcon - 18.89% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Pikachu first place (4pts) - 23.48% Pikachu second place (2pts) - 34.19% Alucard second place (4pts) - 12.24% Alucard first place (2pts) - 25.15% - **Advancing Prediction:** Pikachu - 57.67% (24,742) Alucard - 37.39% (16,041) If you look at the guru picks for this match, people were all over the place, mainly because people overestimated Diddy Kong and the extrapolations for Nintendo leeching were all over the place. A lot of people expected Ike, Diddy Kong, or some other permutation of triple Nintendo to be in this match, so a lot of people had Alucard \> X in their predictions. For those who expected double Nintendo, the pick was Pikachu \> Alucard. Conventional wisdom held that this would be a match with two Nintendo characters, with the weaker one unable to hurt Pikachu very much. Either way, the consensus pick was Alucard and Pikachu advancing in some order. There were spatterings of off-meta picks, but most people had those two advancing here after sorting out the crazy amount of Nintendo in this section of the bracket. The characters who ended up here, Falcon and Arthas, were never going to be strong enough to oppose them. In fact Falcon was so weak that Pikachu managed first place even with the leeching going on, which was some good insight into future Save_Us.RAT performances in this contest. I would love to get into the ridiculous duel Pikachu and Alucard had for first place, but again, what's even the point? This format blows, and continually stole so many great matches from us that would have been epic had they had actual consequences. For those living under a rock somehow, top two advance regardless of order in this format. I suppose one could go nuts about first place duels given point order in the bracket mattered, but every time I see a match like this I'm reminded that second place duels matter than first. It's just fundamentally dumb on every level. It was a great duel though. After Pikachu barely won the morning vote, Alucard started destroying him overnight, or at least he was laying wood as best he could. When the morning vote came along and Pikachu started winning it, the reasonable assumption was Pikachu would steamroll the poll and easily take first. But then the unthinkable happened, and Alucard freaking won the morning vote over a Pokemon. Before getting into what happened next, just think about how absurd that sentence is and marvel at the sheer idiocy of this not being a 1v1 match. Yes, I am well aware Pikachu easily wins 1v1 if Falcon isn't there. Not the point. This format is so bad. Matches like this are why it took me 12 years to do these writeups, because it just annoys me to look back on what could have been, especially with how high these vote totals were. Anyway, Alucard somehow started going nuts with the morning vote, so much so that by the time the ASV rolled around he had an 1100 vote lead. It was then that Pikachu finally decided to stop dicking around, and that 1100 lead got wiped out in like 2 hours. Apparently we've gone from WAIT UNTIL THE KIDDIES WAKE UP to WAIT UNTIL THE KIDDIES ARE HOME FROM SCHOOL. Pikachu pulled a 2500 vote swing in 9 hours to win by 1400, in a poll that feels like it never should have been that close. I'd give more passion and a better rundown, but this match I specifically remember as being the one that made me want to quit. That's when it really hit me at the time that we had this great duel going, one year after Alucard's crazy photo finish, and none of it mattered. At least in 2013 we had the decency of only first place meaning anything. Which is frankly how every poll should work. ## Stats and Analysis - Alucard advancing was the **\#22** most surprising result of 2008 Pikachu got put in a pretty rough position this contest - dealing with fanbase leeching not only once, but twice in the span of his first two matches. This match would pit him against an SSB vet as old as he, and while there was no (real) chatter that he could drop the actual match to him, there was the idea that he would be hurt significantly more than Ike, who would obviously have much less overlap due to a non-trivial portion of his strength actually coming from, y'know, his games. Alucard had his own problems, however, as people were doubting if he'd be able to beat Arthas, who had a pretty good showing last round. Couple that with the chatter that his power stemmed more from WC III than WotLK and that he had his WC III picture this round, and you had some variation there, too. In the end, the expected would happen, but in the kind of dramatic fashion that we all love it to unfold in. Pikachu ripped it up with his disgusting board vote at the beginning, while Alucard showed Arthas had no chance of taking him down - heck, Arthas was losing to Captain Falcon. While he would recover, this would end up being a pretty bad showing for him, and pretty impressive for the Captain considering what he was dealing with and that he had somehow lost to WARIO last year. As for the main event, Alucard's killer night vote took hold - and man, this time it was a doozy. In the span of an hour the nightwalker surged a comeback, snagged the lead, and built himself a healthy margin before morning came. Then, as if gaining one of his anime hax second winds, Pikachu ripped open an improbably large comeback of his own, nearly erasing Alucard's margin entirely. So what does Alucard do? Why, build up a lead even bigger than his night vote peak with the during school vote just to spite the rat, giving the slightest glimmer of hope before the ASV - all before the inevitable happened and he got slapped en route to a close victory for Pika. Honestly, we all knew what we were in for as soon as the match started, pretty much, but the way it unfolded was something that's always good to see in these contests. Knowing the trends can diminish the surprise, but there's something about multiple lead changes and comebacks during a match that just makes me smile, and when trends are defied (as we would see in later matches), it makes it just that much more shocking. As for final impressions, Alucard showed he wasn't completely off the map - but losing to Pikachu despite the rat's split fanbase and looking like he would have lost to Captain Falcon straight up isn't the most reassuring of things. Arthas showed he was an okay low midcarder, probably around current Diablo strength, but not much more - at least for now. Falcon was just "whoa", and Pikachu managed to simultaneously impressive and disappointing at the same time. On the one hand, he did make it to Round 3, this time as the victim rather than the beneficiary of SFF in both matches. On the other hand, he got less than 55% on Ike and let Captain Falcon make him lose to a guy who has become all but irrelevant in this day and age. At any rate, he had no shot against Block next round - though that didn't stop a lot of the crazies from arguing it anyway. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction That was a fun result, and I'm thinking we'll be seeing yet another here tonight! Let's take a closer look at these four goofballs. X-Stats From Round One - Alucard - 27.70% (based on '07 Kratos) - Falcon - 24.60% (based on '07 Kratos) - Pikachu - 21.85% (based on '07 Ike) - Arthas - 19.82% (based on '07 Ike) Eh, I trust those Alucard/Falcon numbers about as far as I can spit (which isn't very far). It was clear that Kratos was hampered by having so many Nintendo options in his R1 poll and didn't match his '07 standard as a result. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Pika and the Lich King appear to have been way underrated, but with the way Ike and Pika must have been ruining each other in that match no number coming out of that match was going to be very reliable. Now then, experience tells us that, at least based on all we've seen this year, when Nintendo LFF gets involved things quickly turn nasty, and you should bet on the non-Nintendo options wherever possible. And yet, look at that R1 result- even with Pika and Ike murdering each other, Pika still took first place with ease, and furthermore Ike came only a little bit short of pushing past Arthas and advancing himself. Today we replace Ike with Captain Falcon, a guy who is sure to be higher on the Nintendo totem poll... I mean, he has to be, right? He's made it into all three SSBs, was a favorite of both casual and tourney players in the first two, has some memes to his credit, and some minimal F-Zero support to fall back on if all else fails. All that Ike can counter with is swinging around a gigantic sword. ...and yet, somehow, I get the impression that that's going to be enough. Falcon's awesome, but I see him pulling a repeat of that OTHER SSB dude with the amazing R1 performance and the same name except for an "N" who nevertheless collapsed and burned when the pressure mounted in R2. So yeah, Falcon for last place, and probably won't match Ike's percentage against Pika. As for Alucard, sorry, just not buying it. He got the ideal setup last round, standing out big time against three pieces of Nintendo fodder or near-fodder, yet he still only managed a 5% win against the guy who should be the weakest today. I picture him contending for advancement or perhaps even the outright win throughout the dead hours of the night, but then shriveling up and dying once the sun rises for a third place finish. That leaves us with Arthas vs Pikachu. Arthas has a couple things working against him, namely that Falcon probably doesn't hurt Pika quite as badly as Ike did and that WoW players aren't going to be spending as much time tomorrow on fansites and message boards (they were back in R1 because a Wrath of the Lich King pre-patch knocked servers worldwide offline for most of that day). But he also has one big thing working for him: the perfect match pic! WoW was already going to be voting in support of him, but this should help him appeal to any Warcraft III players who wouldn't have recognized him in his Lich King form. Also I think his rally power might be a little more effective here, as WoW players might care about the match more now that we're into R2 and the competition is better. All in all I see him improving slightly against Pika; probably won't be enough to net him the win, but ought to be able to outlast Alucard. And Pikachu, well, wins again! Though as I've stated above it ought to be a bit closer than last time. Taking all that into consideration and turning it into numbers, let's see what some pot-stirring results in. - Pikachu - 28.84% - Arthas Menethil - 25.48% - Alucard - 25.22% - Captain Falcon - 20.47% That looks... pretty solid, actually! Ngamer Says: Pikachu \> Arthas ### Next Day Review Heck of a cool match today. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around how Alucard only falls from 35% to 30% when you swap out Diddy Kong and Kratos A in favor of Pikachu and Arthas, especially since he ought to have stood out more against the Nintendo competition last round and overperformed THERE, not here. But I guess this goes to show why Alucard/SotN are so cult or niche or whatever you want to call it- they're not going to blow anyone out, but that 20something% fanbase is going to always be there, just like they were for him last year in R2. As for Arthas, I guess last round all the WC3 players were voting for him based on his name while all the WoW players were voting in support of the WotLK box they'll be buying soon. So switching to this old picture continues to get WC3ers involved, but WoW no longer cares and that caused his drop. In any case, at least we're going to get to see Pikachu tear into the Block's face with full on, un-LFFed Pokemon/Nintendo Power! Sure the odds are still against him, but that didn't stop him from getting an R/B/Y sprite and destroying our expectations in R3 last year. Come on Pika, let's see another amazing run to R4 from you! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3283&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=40) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Weighted Companion Cube vs Tidus vs Mega Man vs Nero 2008 _source: Weighted Companion Cube vs Tidus vs Mega Man vs Nero 2008 (revid 85821)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 5 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 35.98% Weighted Companion Cube - 26.18% Tidus - 22.55% Nero - 15.38% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mega Man first place (4pts) - 29.72% Mega Man second place (2pts) - 42.37% Cube second place (4pts) - 7.08% Cube first place (2pts) - 21.29% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mega Man - 72.09% (30,929) Cube - 28.37% (12,172) Someone really needs to get Tidus away from joke characters in these contests. This dude has had to deal with the King of All Cosmos, the Weighted Companion Cube, Missingno, Serge, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Claire Redfield. He's even had to deal with pre-DMC5 Nero (KYRIEEEEEEEEEEEE) and Banjo. Enough is enough already, leave the poor guy alone. And yes I am aware Claire is not technically a "joke", but as a Board 8er it's impossible to see her the same way after yoblazer's famous topic where he meticulously reviewed every curvature and pixel of fake asses. That was, uh... something else. As for the actual match, it was eerily similar to the Crono \> L-Block match from two days prior. There was a lot of discussion around it given one of the characters was of the bandwagon joke variety, but round 1 had already clued us in as to how the result would go and the round 2 match had alarmingly boring trends. That is exactly what happened here. Cube had already beaten Tidus once when nothing was really on the line. How could anyone expect him to do worse when he had to? On top of that, the match was essentially over in seconds. Mega Man was never challenged for first, Cube was never challenged for second, and Tidus + Nero brought up the rear. As jokey as Cube being in this bracket was, he performed in this match, bizarrely, like a normal character. It was somewhat anticlimactic, as the match itself did not match the surrounding discussion at all. Where this differed from L-Block however was bracket placement. People had a lot of hope in Save_Us.RAT. The Cube was a different story, as people began to math out the possibility of this thing making a very deep contest run. Most people were cool with it, while the crybaby anti-fun brigade was not. In the long run, my side was proven right on that argument. Check out the vote totals being at laughably low levels a decade after this contest to see what happens when you have contests without the fun. On a personal side note, Tidus deserves a round 3 run some day. He's legitimately a very good character, but he gets unfairly hated on due to his voice actor being garbage. If Final Fantasy X had only text, I'm convinced Tidus would be on Auron's level. Instead, we're stuck with what we got. Tidus has been in contests since 2002, and has yet to make round 3. Jecht got there on his first try, as a 14 seed no less. Poor guy deserves better. ## Stats and Analysis - Weighted Companion Cube advancing was the **\#14** most surprising result of 2008 After what we had seen over the past matches this round, the result of this match seemed to be pretty much set in stone. Tidus had failed to overcome WCC last round, but the Cube was no L-Block and L had seemed pretty darned vulnerable a few matches ago. And it ended up that way, more or less. Mega Man took an easy first, WCC beat Tidus by more but got nowhere near MM. There were only two real things of note going on here. Firstly, Tidus managed to improve on his performance on Mega Man in 2004, and considering how both characters have seemed to fall off in recent years that couldn't mean anything encouraging for MM. Secondly, Nero pretty much just FOLDED, making him the next in a long line of casual characters to fold against real competition and making Banjo and Olimar look like the next Serious Sam and Mr. Driller. The important thing to note was the signs for what would happen next match. Unlike L, WCC was looking to have the challenge of a lifetime coming up next round, as Mega Man's easy win coupled with Solid Snake being even stronger made it a heavy underdog. Zero was going to have to make the match just for it to even have a chance. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Speaking of joke characters... X-Stats from Round One: - WCC - 28.98% (based on Tails '07) - Tidus - 28.76% (based on Tails '07) - Mega Man - 27.01% (based on Banjo '07) - Nero - 17.26% (based on Banjo '07) Eh, both sets of numbers look pretty bad. Nero has to at least be at the fodder line based on R1, as he was taking advantage of being the only non-Nintendo option there. And there's no way I'm buying Tidus that high no matter what kind of circumstances he had working in his favor. Alright, let's start with Mega Man. Why in the heck was everyone dancing on his grave (or, that of the whole MM series) a couple weeks back? Sure he was against weak competition, but scoring over 51% in ANY matchup is nothing to sneer at with the way our elite characters were performing that entire round. And MMX had done pretty well for himself also. The only disappointment in my mind was Zero, and even that one I'm not sold on completely... let's see what happens when Snake slithers into the mix tomorrow, because I could still see Zero surviving and advancing there. (heck, even Vivi might!). So yeah, should be a no-doubter of a first place for MM, and I'd have been saying that even before MMX wowed us. Now then, here's my take on why the Cube is going to disappoint tonight. Last time around he was against three options that, while having huge recognizability, voters were sure to be pretty "meh" on. Heck, even within their own series fanbases people are pretty slow to warm to Tidus, DK, and Tails- you might even call them the black sheep of the family in all three cases. Combined with anti-favoriteFAQs and WCC being a cool new option, I think a ton of voters jumped ship to the joke which resulted in that crazy final score we saw from R1. Since that match jokes have continued to weaken (a trend L-Block did nothing to stop, I might add) and this time Cube has to deal with competition that voters are surely more likely to respond to: MM (with an awesome NES-era logo, great!), Nero (with another full-on "Dante proxy advantage" kind of headshot), and Tidus (who at least has a stronger following than DK/Tails, and who ought to be at his best with this anime look that seems to do well with voters). That's why I'm confident in taking this upset. MM for the win, and a close second place will be going to Tid- Nay, can't pull the trigger! I DO think he puts up a better fight than most are calling for, however, and that Nero will at least look respectable while exiting. Bah, if only someone else with REAL fan backing were in contention here, like swapping Auron in for Tidus... but I shouldn't complain, Auron's current placement might deliver a classic for us in just a few days! So MM \>\> Cube \> Tidus \>\> Nero, and when those thoughts convert to numbers we get something like - Mega Man - 35.11% - Weighted Companion Cube - 25.21% - Tidus - 23.22% - Nero - 16.46% ...bah. Try as I might, I couldn't justify WCC falling under 25. Oh well... go ahead and surprise us, Tidus, I dare you! Ngamer Says: **Mega Man \> WCC** ### Next Day Review Well shoot, this match was a bit of a dud. WCC's going to lose about 2.5% off R1, but he's still doing a much better job of keeping a static fanbase than I gave him credit for, which is... troubling, to say the least. On the plus side, next up is the sprite round- surely the Cube will look awful there while MM will as always be going in with a major advantage. On top of that, we'll probably be seeing Solid \*(&% which ought to allow MM to stick closer to a 50/50 with Snake than normally, further hurting the Cube's chances. The one fly in the ointment would be if Zero advanced to that match alongside MM and held him back enough to put WCC back in contention. Luckily Ryu H easily outlasted Zero back in R1, and we have no reason to bel- \*looks back at the last time Snake ran into Ryu H\* Oh crap! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3284&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=41) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Ryu Hayabusa vs Zero vs Solid Snake vs Vivi Ornitier 2008 _source: Ryu Hayabusa vs Zero vs Solid Snake vs Vivi Ornitier 2008 (revid 85822)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 5 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 38.31% Zero - 21.87% Ryu Hayabusa - 20.49% Vivi Ornitier - 19.84% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Snake first place (4pts) - 56.60% Snake second place (2pts) - 32.45% Zero second place (4pts) - 15.88% Zero first place (2pts) - 11.17% - **Advancing Prediction:** Snake - 89.05% (38,205) Zero - 27.05% (11,605) Another match, another Noble Niner taking care of business. However, this was a much bigger deal than Snake simply winning a match easily. Every now and again in the stats topic, you'll see Leonhart4 and Black Turtle arguing about an old account bet. That happened in this match. Leon4 correctly believed that Snake would get an insane boost from the conjoined factors of BrawlFEAR and Metal Gear Solid 4, and that this would be the match where he started flexing some muscle. If you go back to round 1, Snake had to deal with Sackboy, Wesker, and Vivi -- three characters likely to leech off of him -- and the dude broke 50%. This time, he had to deal with much better competition, but Leon4 predicted Snake would finish between 43-45%. Turtle is a huge Mega Man X fan and thought this was preposterous, and you all can see what happened. Snake easily finished above 43%, which is a ridiculous number. In these contests, there is the Link tier, the 1A tier below Link, and then tier 2 where the lower Noble Nine characters live. This number put Snake clean into 1A, and Leon deserves endless love for seeing it coming. As for BT welching, account bets are dumb and I don't blame the guy at all. Who cares if someone closes their account or not? We've had legitimately awful people on here over the years, and BT is not one of them. He's just having fun. He isn't threatening to blow people's heads off with shotguns, he isn't stalking people, he isn't a pedo defender, he doesn't make fun of the various users that have committed suicide over the years, he doesn't pull the trash Preston has pulled via PM, and overall he's not a bad dude. Contests are better with BT around, so good on him. Welch all you want, bro. The actual story here was the battle for second place. I'll spare people the usual rant about how these being more important than battles for first are dumb, because this was just an epic match between two beloved characters. There was a tiny bit of hype for Ryu Hayabusa here, but deep down we all knew it would come down to Zero and Vivi -- and I'm convinced that if people didn't have Zero in their bracket overwhelmingly, Vivi would have pulled this thing off. When the poll started, it didn't look like much. Vivi got some early love, and then it looked like the match would come to a simple finish. Zero beat the piss out of Vivi overnight as if Vivi were Jesse Pinkman, and the overnight is typically Square's best time. Match over, right? One would think this was done, given Zero had a 600 vote lead overnight, but Vivi inexplicably started coming back as the night wore on. But Mega Man X characters, largely due to the series having no love in Europe whatsoever, just DIE overnight. It's brutal to watch, and back then I don't know that most of us knew this trend. The Europe vote wasn't discussed much before geolocation stats happened. Once Vivi started getting momentum, he ran with it. It took a little while thanks to sharing this poll with Snake, but he did manage to catch up thanks to the Europe vote and the morning vote. He caught up at 10:30, and Zero gave no resistance whatsoever as Vivi started building up his own lead. For the second time, the match looked over as Vivi flew ahead by 400 heading into the ASV. With one or two major trends left and Vivi being absolutely adored by people, it looked like he would hold on. Unfortunately, we all saw what happened, and I'm still convinced it wouldn't have happened if Zero wasn't such a massive bracket favorite in this spot. Zero began the slow, painful, methodical match forward. He won the ASV, but not in convincing fashion. Most of the updates during his comeback were +5, +2, +10, +15, and the occasional Vivi push where it looked like he would hold Zero off. But it was not to be. Though it took hours and felt like open heart surgery, Zero caught up. His major push came after dinner, where the perennial stall turned into a legitimate Zero push. When Zero finally caught real momentum here, the match truly was good and over. These two characters were stuck in the 200s for hours after school, but when Zero finally made his move after dinner he pulled off what would end up a 600 vote swing to ultimately win by 400. The 400 vote win wasn't really indicative of how close and how back-and-forth this match was, but only one of them could advance in this spot and Zero was it. 81% of gurus picked Zero here, and even though the board loves Vivi, they were happy to see Zero win here for their brackets. I will remain convinced that if Vivi had 81% of gurus behind him, he would have won. That's often how these things go. This ultimately set up a bizarre matchup between Snake, Mega Man, the Weighted Companion Cube, and Zero -- eerily similar to this match in 2007: Lastly, for those lamenting Vivi's not finishing the job here, no worries. He would more than get his win back. Not only that, but he came dangerously close to winning a division in 2018. Vivi would be alright. He always pulls through. But this day was about Solid Snake jumping up a level, and Zero surviving. ## Stats and Analysis - Ryu Hayabusa underperformed by **-6.54%**, the **\#5** most disappointing performance of 2008 - Snake overperformed by **+5.24%**, the **\#12** most impressive performance of 2008 - Zero advancing was the **\#13** most surprising result of 2008 The most important part of this match, of course, was with Leonhart stating that Snake would be possibly getting 43-45% in this match, and that said performance would be enough to put him up into the Mario/Samus tier of strength. Considering how the Noble Nine had performed this round and that most people thought that performance would be more appropriate for Sephiroth (hello), this prompted one stats topic pariah Black Turtle to state he would close his account right then if Snake pulled that off. Thus Snake started off the match getting just that, BT reneged, and there was much rejoicing and gnashing of teeth by all. And to move on to the less important, non-Solid Snake related part of the match - is there any point where the Oracle DOESN'T mechanically side with their brackets in a close match, even when the logic points against them? One of the reasons why I prefer the superior Analysis Crew, but no matter how you looked at the match it was set to be a three-way fight for second. Vivi had done exceedingly well on Snake last round, and Ryu H had upset Zero in a squeaker. The arguments for each were pretty diverse. Ryu H's supporters believed that he was simply the stronger character this year due to Ninja Gaiden 2, and that Vivi would collapse when stronger competition appeared. Zero's believers relied on the belief that Ryu H's bomb in the second round against Riku after beating Riku and Roxas COMBINED was no fluke, and that something similar would happen here. Vivi fans knew he was going to stand out among three badasses, and combined with his great performance on Snake from the previous round he was the guy to beat. Well, one thing definitely came true here - Ryu Hayabusa, whether it be because of his casual fanbase, disproportionately badass appeal, or just because of something really WEIRD apparently Hayabusa commits seppuku at the first sight of Solid Snake. And while the twitching corpse of the ninja was apparently still enough to give Riku the fight of his life last year, Zero and Vivi are on a different level. He ended up with 14%, and had to fight all day for it - still one of the oddest consistent anomalies in contest history, I say, but now we know it's absolutely true. That left Vivi and Zero, and Zero took control of the match early due to his bracket support and trademarked powerful Mega Man Early Vote. But four hours in, the inevitable happened - as it always does - and Vivi took control of the match in a big way. By the morning he had shaved a 600 vote lead to practically nothing, and the during school vote allowed him to build a 400 vote lead of his own. It looked like Zero was going to drop ANOTHER match that he should have had in hand, but Vivi's historical troubles with the after school vote finally came back to haunt him. It was slow and painfully methodical, but Vivi's weakness during the ASV allowed Zero back into the match, slicing away with Vivi's lead, and Mega Man's nice second night vote pushed him over the top into a 400 vote victory. Zero did what we expected to do in the end, but in the very worst way for the Mega Man franchise to look. Losing to a character you 63-37'd and barely beating Vivi due to what was probably the most favorable picture outcome he could have hoped for - and now he was going to potentially kill his series' flagship character next round. The stage was set for an epic showdown between Noble and Joke, the winner gaining a berth in the quarterfinals. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Time to discuss what could possibly turn into the greatest fatal threeway in Contest history! X-Stats from Round One - Snake - 44.98% (based on Wesker '07) - Vivi - 30.11% (based on Wesker '07) - Ryu H - 27.52% (based on Pit '07) - Zero - 27.10% (based on Pit '07) Yes Vivi looked great, but I get the feeling that was largely anti-favoriteFAQs at work, in the same way that so many jumped off Vincent in favor of Falco back in R1. As with Vincent's match, I don't see that trend holding here for R2. As I alluded to earlier, the last time Snake and Ryu went head to head, Solid came out of the match with 48% while Ryu couldn't even manage 19%. That was back when their competition was Riku and Nighmare; sub those two out for the stronger Zero and Vivi and Snake's percent is sure to come down, as will Ryu's... right? Well on the one hand the 360 has seemingly asserted itself and turned Ninja Gaiden into a better threat, especially with the ASV. But on the other, Snake figures to perform better than back in '07 himself, especially when drawing full MGS4 appeal with this picture, so shouldn't he more or less retain that ratio on Ryu? Not sure, but I've decided not to put much faith in the final result from round one and will be picking Hayabusa for a close last place in this one. Zero's a bit of an odd duck. Sure he hemorrhaged up votes all through the Day and kind of embarrassed himself by giving Ryu the win, but how much of that underperformance needs to be tied back to the two Nintendo/Brawl characters who may have been holding him back? And if Ryu gets held back again by whatever killed him against Snake last time (badass SFF?), is Zero going to be immune? You'd think he'd have a larger hardcore fanbase than Ryu, since it would make sense for Hayabusa getting much of his appeal from looking like an awesome ninja. All things considered I like Zero to outlast the ninja this time around. But will it be enough for second? That all depends on... Vivi! So cool to see him not wasted in this bracket, and sporting full-on Black Mage Factor in this pic, which is undoubtedly his biggest advantage. The more Snake dominates this match, the better Vivi's chances get I would think, as the Final Fantasy fanbase is probably the most dedicated of the three. He should also most likely do the best job of avoiding this "badass SFF" if that's really going to be a factor, as that's where Zero gets much of his appeal within the MM fanbase. All that considered... eh, I still don't feel good about backing him. Yes, he ought to have an excellent chance, but I keep coming back to that Falco result and others like it that we've seen in R2- just have this gut feeling that the bubble is going to burst against tough cookies like Ryu and Zero. So in the end I'll say Snake with a good sized win (nothing like that '07 domination though) and then Zero just barely over Vivi just barely over Ryu. But I don't do so with much confidence! Let's stir the pot and find some numbers... - Solid Snake - 38.20% - Zero - 21.11% - Vivi Ornitier - 20.68% - Ryu Hayabusa - 20.01% That looks... like a heck of a match! Ngamer Says: **Snake \> Zero** ### Next Day Review Awww man, what an awesome match. Ryu sure dropped the ball as far as the fatal threeway went (what the heck, Snake must just be that guy's kryptonite), but what a show Zero and Vivi have put on! When Zero got out to the big lead I wasn't sold- he'd done the same thing against Ryu before fading away, and Vivi figured to have the kind of huge night vote that we often see from FF8-9-10. But when it was four hours in and Zero not only had a huge lead but was still gaining, I threw in the towel on Vivi- no way you can come back from that without an MC-like day vote. Then I checked this aft and... Vivi was up by like 200, and gaining! I was amazed, but figured Zero could probably still take the ASV to pull out a narrow win. But then we were a full hour into what's usually the ASV, and Zero was doing nothing- still down a bunch, only going even, and since Vivi was sure to take the second night vote in any case, I threw in the towel on Zero. Then I got in from work an hour ago and... Zero back out to a big lead! This time around I'm holding on to my towel with a death grip; I've got no idea what to think anymore! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3285&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=42) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sora vs Fox McCloud vs Squall Leonhart vs Yoshi 2008 _source: Sora vs Fox McCloud vs Squall Leonhart vs Yoshi 2008 (revid 85824)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, October 30th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 6 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 30th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall Leonhart - 33.70% Yoshi - 26.65% Sora - 23.41% Fox McCloud - 16.17% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Squall first place (4pts) - 21.60% Squall second place (2pts) - 31.57% Sora second place (4pts) - 14.71% Sora first place (2pts) - 28.91% - **Advancing Prediction:** Squall - 53.17% (22,812) Sora - 43.62% (18,714) A few matches ago, I mentioned how Auron vs Sub-Zero is one of our most pointless contest rivalries. They've faced each other four times somehow, and Auron is 4-0. The opposite of that is Squall vs Sora, who have faced each other five times over the years, and while Squall is 5-0, he has never blown Sora out. He has never SFFd him. He has never screwed him over and he has never leeched support enough to screw him out of some win that Sora would have otherwise had. It never even matters who else is in the poll. These are always inexplicably, bizarrely, and unbelievably close, but Squall always wins the duel. I don't know how Squall never SFFs the guy, but that's what always happens. Sora loses close every single time, outside of the Rivalry Rumble debacle where it looked for a minute Sora might actually pull it off. I have no explanation for why Squall doesn't SFF the guy but Cloud was apparently able to. I don't know. Your best guess is mine. Maybe Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy don't have overlapping fanbases anymore, which would make sense given Final Fantasy in no way matters in those games at this point. This is all important to bring up because it halfway explains what happened in this match. Sora being close to Squall is no real surprise, because we saw them do this twice in 2007. If '08 was the first time we saw these two in polls together, this would have been much more of a stunner. What is a stunner however, even by 2020 standards, is whatever the hell happened to Nintendo in this match. Nintendo rarely just gives up and dies, but this match? They quit. Yoshi not advancing here wasn't a huge surprise at the time, because you can look at round 1 and see it coming. That wasn't the surprise. It's that Yoshi got completely and thoroughly destroyed here. Once bracket votes wore off, Sora beat the tar out of Yoshi by 7500 votes in a match that wasn't even that close. Yoshi was harmed by the presence of Fox. Sora was not hurt by the presence of Squall. That's the quick version of what happened. If someone has a definitive answer for why Sora and Squall are so independent, I'm all ears. Is it Kingdom Hearts being on some Nintendo consoles? Is it Final Fantasy not being in the series anymore? I don't know. This set up a fun match with Sora, Squall, and Cloud, and depending on who would squeeze into second place in the next match, it was practically a bye into the divisional finals. Oh and just for fun, since this was 1v1 Square vs Nintendo. Square - 74965 \[58.78%\] Nintendo - 52569 \[41.22%\] Total Votes - 127534 Savor these matches where Nintendo gets annihilated by Square, because they don't happen often. They seem to happen at a higher clip when Squall is involved, though. Hmm. Oh and the match picture was a huge point of discussion here, no, Smilin' Squall didn't decide this match. All four of them are smiling in this match picture. Outside of a joke 5 people on Board 8 understand, it meant nothing for the match. ## Stats and Analysis - Sora overperformed by **+4.90%**, the **\#15** most impressive performance of 2008 - Yoshi underperformed by **-4.21%,** the **\#23** most disappointing performance of 2008 Another match, another round of the Oracle goombas blindly trying to cling to their brackets. We know the story by now. Yoshi had just gone and put up one of the biggest bombs we've ever seen in these contests, letting Squall go out and tear him apart like he was the incarnation of Solid Snake himself. Not only that, but Sora had just put up a decisive win over Fox McCloud - perhaps with Chris too close for comfort, but we had seen Squall and Sora go two rounds with each other last year. Sora put up 39% against Squall in his worst showing, Yoshi had gotten 43% last round. How in the HELL was Yoshi supposed to beat the kid with Fox breathing down his neck? The answer - one of the bigger beatdowns we've ever seen in these things. Yoshi got KILLED here. He ended up much closer to Fox McCloud, a character who gets the majority of his strength from SSB, than he did in even sniffing Sora. In fact, the match ended up being less Sora/Yoshi as it did Sora/Squall. Whether you want to put it on Kingdom Hearts being more established or Squall's wacky pic where he's grinning like an idiot (I'd go with the latter, Squall killed Yoshi by more than Sora did Fox in the previous round), Sora was keeping pretty close with Squall, and despite being down by an insurmountable margin pretty much just walloped him during the day. The end margin between the two was less than 3000 votes, and considering that Sora had just gone out last year with a piddling 39% on the guy that's something you've really got to hand to him. And more importantly, now with Yoshi out of the picture Mewtwo of all characters had seemingly received a free pass to the quarterfinals. There was some rambling on if Sora could avoid some Cloud SFF and make it a match - Squall was definitely going to get pasted - but it was pretty muted. Mewtwo had just been too impressive last round. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction There's another potentially awesome match on the way for tonight! X-Stats from Round One - Squall - 29.40% (based on '07 CATS) - Yoshi - 24.78% (based on '07 CATS) - Sora - 20.00% (based on '07 Chris) - Fox - 17.50% (based on '07 Chris) Have to kind of hurry with this one as those last innings of the World Series (congrats Phils!) have put me a bit behind. Pre-Contest this was considered a pretty easy advancement for Squall and Yoshi, with the only question being what order they would go in. But after the way both Square guys dropped bombs on their Nintendo counterparts, all of a sudden Sora sneaking through here looks like at least a possibility, while it would take something truly crazy for Yoshi to pull the upset and finish first. A moment ago I was planning to predict Squall for a pretty easy win, Yoshi to advance but not with much room to spare ahead of Sora, and Fox to get SFF-pounded well out of contention. But now let's look at this pic... Good heavens, what happened to you Squall!? For all the grief Tidus has taken over the years for looking like Meg Ryan, that's a MUCH worse look than anything the FFX lead has ever sported. Seriously, wow. Sora looks pretty goofy too, but he's at least saved by showing an anime look that seems to do pretty well with this GameFAQs crowd. Yoshi's pretty meh; not a bad picture for him but pretty generic. And Fox once again looks great! Of course I said the same last round and that didn't stop him getting beaten bloody... but yeah, I'd be very shocked if Yoshi was able to hurt him too badly with SFF when he comes out looking that good. Soooo let's take those thoughts and throw something together quickly. Into the pot and stirred and what have we here... - Squall Leonhart - 31.76% - Yoshi - 25.17% - Sora - 23.06% - Fox McCloud - 20.01% That looks... really bad! But I have no time to correct it! Come on Fox, prove me right. Ngamer Says: **Squall \> Yoshi** ### Next Day Review Oh wow... even with it busting up both my bracket and my Oracle, and with Sora being quite possibly my most hated Contest character, I can't help but laugh at this result. What the junk happened here? Well the way I see it, that picture happened. Everyone was calling for Leonheart's head the minute "Smilin' Squall" hit the presses, and as it turns out with good reason, but what we didn't stop to think was that this was actually the best possible situation for Square overall. Clearly this ridiculous look was a major turnoff to former Squall voters, but the trouble is, nearly all those "on the fence" voters ended up going with Sora! Yoshi finishing much closer to Squall doesn't do him a lick of good when all of the votes the \#1 guy loses are going to the other option that he's ACTUALLY trying to compete against. Which meant Yoshi's only hope was to obliterate Fox, and... \*looks at pic\* nope, that wasn't going to be happening! The poor green guy was caught between a rock and a hard place in this one, and was never really going to have a chance given the circumstances. On the plus side, what an excellent validation for Fox fans this ended up being. (BTW, I'm still taking Yoshi \> Sora in next year's 1v1, so there.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3286&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=43) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Midna vs Mewtwo vs Pac-Man 2008 _source: Cloud Strife vs Midna vs Mewtwo vs Pac-Man 2008 (revid 85825)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, October 31st, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 6 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 31st, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 48.86% Mewtwo - 22.68% Pac-Man - 14.74% Midna - 13.64% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (4pts) - 85.30% Cloud second place (2pts) - 6.08% Mewtwo second place (4pts) - 20.46% Mewtwo first place (2pts) - 1.98% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 91.38% (39,205) Mewtwo - 22.44% (9,627) I had this watch this video. So do you. Somehow I didn't know about this idiot until last week. He's married, by the way. What's your excuse? These are the things we put into PCA writeups for laughably boring matches. I know Midna vs Mewtwo looks like some epic duel based on how close the result was, but it really wasn't. Mewtwo won the early vote, and despite being held under 300 votes on his lead all night, the winner of second place became clear once Mewtwo won the morning vote. There was a small bit of concern Midna might win the morning vote Legend of Zelda style and pull the upset, but thankfully that didn't happen and the garbage from Twilight Princess was laid to rest. Seriously, what an overhyped pile that game was. It was average, that's it, and largely because once you hit the Arbiter's Grounds the game finally decides to stop being garbage. The reason Midna vs Mewtwo was close wasn't because Midna was trying to pull some epic upset, however. Cloud was so laughably, thoroughly dominant in this match that the other three characters were fighting over scraps, like Tony Stark in the cave in the first movie. Pre-contest, Mewtwo was the heavy favorite to advance here. In fact he was such a heavy favorite that only Samus \> Ganondorf had better round 2 guru odds. Mewtwo may have won ugly, but he still won. On top of Cloud being a total badass in this contest, the competition was splitting the Nintendo vote three ways. That said, Mewtwo would have considerably less Nintendo leeching moving forward, and was a real threat to get lucky and make a deep contest run. Next match was Cloud, Squall, Sora, and Mewtwo. After two strange outings, Mewtwo was about to catch a huge break. ## Stats and Analysis - Mewtwo advancing was the **\#8** most surprising result of 2008 - Mewtwo underperformed by **-5.77%**, the **\#10** most disappointing performance of 2008 - Cloud overperformed by **+4.63%**, the **\#17** most impressive performance of 2008 So anyway, this was supposed to be THE easiest match of Round 2, with the POSSIBLE slim exception of Samus/Nightmare/Ganondorf/Frog, and even there some rambling existed on Samus SFFing Ganondorf enough to let one of the other characters in on a win. But this... Midna was one of the biggest bombs of last year, surpassed perhaps only by Balthier in her suckiness. Mewtwo gave Bowser a scare last year. This wasn't supposed to even be close. Yet in a single stroke, everything about last year seemed to be turned on its head in a new light. Mewtwo coming close to Bowser wasn't so much the Poke impressing as it was Bowser putting up another massive disappointment. Ryu's victories over Bowser made him look a lot more cracked up than he actually was, and his near-miss against a SFFed Auron and just rolling over against L-Block twice was indication of this. Let me be clear. Midna and Pac-Man did what they were supposed to do in this match, which was to get similarly fodderized by Cloud. Mewtwo, on the other hand, the character among whom the lamest of Pokemaniacs still cream themselves over, was letting her come within striking distance. A character whom SCORPION had decimated twice, mind you! And since both were extremely close to Pac-Man... it's hard to say it, but Mewtwo proved to be the next in that seemingly endless parade of casual fueled characters folding to real competition. Suddenly, that Sora to the quarterfinals chatter got REALLY loud - even SFFed, could this stinker really pull it out? The other thing to take away from this is that you just do not mess with Zelda on the SFF chain, even if you're dealing with their absolute bottom of the barrel entries. Mewtwo probably takes a more comparable strength entry like Wario much better. But the bottom line here is that this would be Cloud's sole match in which he appeared to be clearly on or above Link's level. And seeing as how virtually no one gave Cloud a chance in the finals (without Mario, at least), that meant that these three were pitiful. Who the heck takes Zack/Zidane/SFFed Wario to be decisively above Mewtwo/Midna/Pac-Man pre contest? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Okay, moving on to a match that kind of looked like a dud not too long about, but that now... who knows? X-Stats from Round One - Cloud - 37.70% (based on '07 Edgeworth) - Midna - 19.16% (based on '07 Edgeworth) - Mewtwo - 33.61% (based on '07 Ness) - Pac-Man - 25.21% (based on '07 Ness) Whoa, what a messed up set of stats. Clearly Edgeworth got owned by Link and Bidoof last season and so Cloud/Midna deserve to go much higher, which in turn puts Midna very easily above the fodder line. People would probably have argued that, given how mad they were at her last season, but after the way she held up on Cloud, there doesn't seem to be much room for debate. Ness in turn was undeniably awful this season, whether from a Mewtwo SFFing or whatever else, which makes sense because there's no way Pac is THAT far over the fodder line. Now conventional wisdom tells us that Cloud destroys this whole pack while Mewtwo in turn destroys Midna Ness-style, turning the poll into a mere pillowfight of the jobbers for third place. But has conventional wisdom EVER been right this year? Cloud blows everyone away and scores around 50%, that much should be a lock. But beyond that I'm starting to have totally ridiculous nightmares about that 2 spot... What if Mewtwo can't lay the SFF hammer to Midna? I mean, he looks like total garbage in the pic (seriously, will that look appeal to ANYONE, aside from Area 51 conspiracy enthusiasts?), Midna's sporting a pretty cool devilish grin, and why would Pokemon be able to hurt Zelda anyways, especially when they don't have SSB in common? Meanwhile Cloud's pulling another of those anime styles that is currently doing wonders for Sora, and the higher his percent climbs the better the independent/more hardcore backing for Pac should allow him to look. Plus he looks good in this picture, and is running out the classic Pac-Man title screen font that should make him more appealing to older voters. How's this for a Halloween horror story: Cloud explodes overnight and posts a Link-like number in this poll, Midna's cool look and Zelda appeal turns this into a Fox/Yoshi style rSFF affair, Pac takes full advantage and eats the largest portion of the pie, slipping past Mew into the next round. ...where he runs into Steroid-Cloud utterly annihilating Squall and Sora while leaving his old school/iconic fanbase untouched (speaking of that old school base, remember that Pac will be showing up to the dance in his original sprite form for the first time ever!), pushing him through to the most undeserved Round Four showing since... Pac-Man, in 2002! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! (Oh wait, actually it was SCORPION who made R4 in '02. Anyways, same idea!) \*deep breaths\* No no, that scenario is just too horrible to imagine. Got to stick with my bracket and the "sensible" Cloud \> Mewtwo pick. Still though, I'm thinking both Midna and Pac come out of this one looking better than most are expecting. Let's throw these numbers into the pot, toss in some candy corn, stir for a few minutes and bring out - Cloud Strife - 49.15% - Mewtwo - 19.74% - Pac-Man - 16.09% - Midna - 15.03% That looks... pretty spooky! Come on Pac, give us all a good scare tonight! Ngamer Says: **Cloud \> Mewtwo** ### Next Day Review Shoot, so close to seeing a classic. This was sure to end up as one of the closest wire to wire matches in history, and there was even a decent possibility of Midna riding a Zelda second night vote to victory, but then Mewtwo messed everything up by finally doing something in the match with the ASV. Well I was right about Cloud tearing it up and right about Mewtwo underwhelming... too bad Pac collapsed to wreck that part of my pred (although I guess to be fair, he at least looks great in relation to Mewtwo). Mew performing to Oracle expectations here would have been enough for me to rubber stamp his spot in R4, but as is we're left with NO IDEA who will be coming out of that one alongside Cloud... I've heard arguments for Sora, Squall, and Mewtwo, and any one of the three is a legit, reasonable guess at this point. Should be awesome! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3287&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=44) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Big Boss vs Kirby vs Master Chief vs Raiden 2008 _source: Big Boss vs Kirby vs Master Chief vs Raiden 2008 (revid 85828)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, November 1st, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 7 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 1st, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 30.98% Kirby - 27.35% Big Boss - 24.99% Raiden - 16.80% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Kirby first place (4pts) - 26.78% Kirby second place (2pts) - 27.03% Master Chief second place (4pts) - 37.53% Master Chief first place (2pts) - 42.55% - **Advancing Prediction:** Kirby - 53.81% (23,086) Master Chief - 80.08% (34,357) For the people who whined all match long about Big Boss losing because of a match picture, pictures do not matter as much as you people think they do. And even if they did, it's a distant fourth on the list of reasons why Big Boss lost. But before that, let's start with first place. Pre-contest, almost everyone agreed this match would be Chief and Kirby advancing in some order. For the Kirby backers, the logic was easy. This match was always going to be Big Boss, Kirby, Chief, and either Kain Highwind or Raiden. Kirby is the lone Nintendo character of the bunch, and he's near-elite. Kirby being the lone Nintendo character in a poll is a far cry from, say, Falco being the loner. There was a 0% chance for Kirby not to advance here, be it in first or second place. For the Chief backers, the logic was equally simple. If he recaptured some of that 2007 magic (and Halo + GAME FUEL was still well-liked in 2008, unlike the state Chief is in now), Chief would threaten for first place here. Granted, he had more potential to get leeched than Kirby did with having to deal with Big Boss and Raiden, two characters who are much closer to Chief in fanbase than Kirby is. Kirby was the very likely favorite, but Chief winning first place here wouldn't have floored us. 2007 was that big for the guy. But once again, first place duels don't matter much in this format. The main discussion revolved around Big Boss, for some reason, even though Raiden being in the poll all but guaranteed his loss barring a Master Chief meltdown. People also pointed to Big Boss's round 1 result where he beat Kirby, somehow forgetting that the Nintendo vote got split three ways. Big Boss was never going to finish ahead of Kirby here now that Kirby was alone with all the Nintendo votes. That said, Boss put up one hell of a fight with Master Chief for second place. Him and Chief were basically tied when this poll started, which allowed Kirby to slowly fly off with first place. Kirby's win ultimately wasn't impressive, but he did end up winning in the end. More on that in a sec. Big Boss and Master Chief spent the first few hours of this poll having a MANLY DUEL OF TESTOSTERONE, and stayed legitimately tied the entire time. It was anyone's game until late into the night, where Big Boss started running away with things. He built up a pretty nice 800 vote lead going into the morning vote, where Master Chief then started making his move. I'm going to pause here and get into those three reasons for Big Boss's loss that I promised earlier. 1 - Master Chief rallied. A lot of people blame Raiden for Big Boss losing here, but given how hard the Chief's base rallied in this match, it's possible Chief gets second place even without Raiden there. I remember this match very well, and around 9am, Chief started getting these wild updates. Not only did Chief erase the 800 vote lead like nothing, but he did so so sharply that human intervention was clearly involved. You don't go from sub-100 vote updates to 150-200+ out of nowhere like that. This rally lasted all through the rest of the match, and not only did it leave Big Boss in the dust, he made a decent run at Kirby for first place. Kirby had a 2300 vote lead on Chief going into the ASV, and Chief managed to only lose by 1500 votes. Had Chief fans rallied that hard for the entire match, he may have won this poll outright. Chief has had crazy rallies before, so it's not inconceivable. 2 - Raiden's presence can't be ignored. Two Metal Gear Solid characters in a match is different from, say, Yoshi and Bowser sharing a poll. Raiden and Big Boss have 100% overlap in their fanbases, and Raiden being here unquestionably hurt Big Boss's chances. 3 - Big Boss is simply not that strong. I don't know why people can't accept this one, but it's the truth. Pictures have nothing to do with it. In the end, we were treated to a very entertaining match in which we got to enjoy a rally completely erasing a lead in seconds. And you know me, I live for rallies causing meltdowns. This rally caused quite the lot of crybabies to pop up, though given most people had Chief and Kirby in some order the whining wasn't quite the level one might expect. This would ultimately set up another match with Kirby versus TESTOSTERONE. ## Stats and Analysis - Raiden underperformed by **-4.76%**, the **\#18** most disappointing performance of 2008 - Kirby overperformed by **+4.12%**, the **\#22** most impressive performance of 2008 This was one of the more anticipated matches of the second round, as the favored first placer among them had laid one of the bigger eggs we'd ever seen in his last match. There was not only talk that Kirby, standing out as only he can against three mature characters, could take first, but that Big Boss - y'know, who had KILLED Kirbs in the previous match - could place or take first outright here even with Raiden holding him down. All he would need is luck and a Naked Snake pic on his side again... ...and for the first time it would matter, he didn't, and it would cost him. The board abandoned the MGS3 protagonist's train as quickly as they had gotten on, as now we were presumably dealing with the entity that had gotten tripled by Auron and needed Mario to beat Pac-Man. There was a good amount of chatter on the old man losing to Raiden, and it wasn't exactly unwarranted - Raiden had gotten the "wow" role of his career in MGS4. The first indication that most people got that Big Boss was even IN the game was the picture in this match. And as weak as he may have been last year in struggling to beat Sam Fisher, that's a far cry from being tripled by Auron. So when old man Boss started the match ahead of Master Chief, you better believe people took notice. Kirby was WAY out in front, which people were kinda anticipating at this point, but still... Master Chief behind a Big Boss with an old man picture, one that was being held down by Raiden (a Raiden that he was SFFing to death, but c'mon). Chief would break back into the lead based on his impressive bracket support, but Big Boss would not let up. By the night he had taken a decent lead of his own on Chief, and even though Chief would end up shredding that lead in minutes when the day vote hit, it was still a sight to see. As for the Chief/Kirby showdown, it ended up being the highlight of the match when Chief got going. Kirby was up by an insurmountable lead, but when the day came Chief gave it his all in what was likely his most impressive showing in this contest. Ending up only 1500 votes away from Kirby in a match where the MGS vote would have almost certainly broken his way had BB/Raiden not been there is something. Granted, we had to deal with the fact that Kirby is a bit of a cupcake when he's not standing out, but the fact remains - Chief holdouts had a little more to cling to after this match. As for Big Boss, he ended up having something more akin to MGS trends of old - running purely off of hardcore fans will do that - but the fact that he did as well as he did with Raiden holding him back was a sign that whether because of MGS4 or people just finally figuring out who the devil the guy is thanks to his Naked Snake pics, the Fox operative has come a long way in these things and clearly established himself as the \#2 MGS character. Well done, old soldier. \*salutes\* ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Another matchup I've got high hopes for takes place tonight. Let's get that hype train a'rollin. X-Stats from Round One: - Master Chief - 31.01% (based on Layton = Tom Nook) - Raiden - 26.98% (based on Layton = Tom Nook) - Big Boss - 33.77% (based on Jinjo = '07 Banjo) - Kirby - 29.27% (based on Jinjo = '07 Banjo) What absolute garbage numers. Since no one out of the Jinjo/Lucas/Kain/Layton group made the bracket in '07 I didn't have any comparisons to make, so bah. Regardless, you can see BB will go down as the strongest character based on results pretty much no matter how you adjust those numbers, and from there it's a mish mash. Raiden at 27 looks so wrong, but how far below 30 would you really be willing to place MC, this format's former stud? But yeah, remove the Nintendo LFF that held Kirby back and it seems clear that Kirby/Naked Snake BB/de-boosted Halo should be right around even in strength, with Raiden not all that far behind. Unfortunately for the MGS guys, these GameFAQs polls don't take place in a vacuum; the same LFF that has been killing Nintendo while making them look like superstars all year to this point is about to suddenly backfire on them, and its a backfire that will be chalking up two casualties tonight, in my opinion. Big Boss had two chances at advancement: One, get a full on Naked Snake picture. Mission Failed. Two, SFF Raiden into the ground so hard he pushes up dandelions in Australia. Well, this DID seem possible for about 5 minutes, and then Raiden went and put up 43% on MC directly. Uh oh! Mission Failed. Frankly I'm not sold on Raiden's picture either, but without the full on Snake effect I can't see BB topping him by more than 60/40 or so, which means that unless the MGS fanbase became half the site overnight (hello there Ocelot!), they're going to be coming in third and fourth. That leaves us with MC vs Kirby, and this one could very well end up being quite the entertaining battle. It would be awesome to see Kirby power out to a big lead with his morning vote and hold off MC's ASV for the win, especially for how it would turn all this "lol Nintendo es ded" talk right on its head, but... I'm not quite feeling it. Yes, Kirby will be the one standing out against all these mature PS2/Xbox options, but on the other hand all of the Contest elites have been recovering from their bad R1 showings here in this round, and Cloud today is just one more example. Yes MC's performance was the most disappointing of all of them, but even so I'm imagining he'll be able to score just enough of a comeback to save his reputation and sneak this one out in the after school period. But feel free to go ahead and prove me wrong, Kirby old pal. Okay, MC ~= Kirby with a decent gap before BB and Raiden, that ought to give us results somewhat along the lines off... \*pots and stirs and delivers\* - Master Chief - 30.18% - Kirby - 29.75% - Big Boss - 22.40% - Raiden - 17.67% Hm... crazy as it sounds, I'm actually feeling pretty confident with those numbers! (Now watch them get blown to high heaven.) Ngamer Says: **MC \> Kirby** ### Next Day Review Haha, what a fun match that was! Sure, it lost some of its luster due to Kirby never being in any real danger of losing to MC, and even when Boss had opened up that nice lead we were still very confident that Chief would be killing him in the Day to make up for it, but even so I maintain that this was a highly entertaining poll. I mean, just check out those vote trends! \*points to graph above\* Note to self: Europeans really loved MGS4, and really, really dislike Halo. I could see that little tidbit coming in handy for the upcoming Game Contest! (Actually I think it's more a case that Europe will go crazy for anything recent and Sony, like how FFX and now MGS always pounds people during those hours, while they refuse to support anything Xbox, which explains why guys like MC and Marcus last year are able to put on such amazing fireworks displays as soon as that continent falls asleep and it's back to 100% American voting.) Okay, well this sets up a HECK of an interesting proposal for Round Three. MC's so weak that he's no longer assured third place in that pack, let alone first, while Kirby will once again be getting the full advantage of going cutesy against three mature action stars. Unless Leon hurts him with GameCube appeal he ought to be able to survive and advance out of that match... but wait, will Riku be the one there instead, evening the mature versus cutesy appeal at 2 to 2? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3288&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=45) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Leon Kennedy vs Riku vs Dante vs Hogger 2008 _source: Leon Kennedy vs Riku vs Dante vs Hogger 2008 (revid 85830)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 7 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 33.60% Leon Kennedy - 27.96% Riku - 24.49% Hogger - 13.91% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Dante first place (4pts) - 32.75% Dante second place (2pts) - 41.48% Leon second place (4pts) - 19.82% Leon first place (2pts) - 29.89% - **Advancing Prediction:** Dante - 74.23% (31,847) Leon - 49.71% (21,327) This was one of the most boring matches of the entire contest, because we had just seen a version of it last year: There was no reason to think that result would flip in a year, and barring Riku or Hogger pulling off a miracle, there was no reason to think this result would be anything other than Dante \> Leon Kennedy. Leon made it fun for a couple hours -- seriously, where did that even come from? -- but ultimately that's all it was. A couple hours of fun. The board exploded, people lost their minds, but... once Dante settled in, this match was done. No upset by Lone. No upset by Riku. No bandwagon run by Hogger. Just a boring, simple match to wind round 2 down that had a fun start. For Hogger to get the type of joke run people were worried about, he would have to star in something people actually like. Even the people obsessed with World of Warcraft don't like World of Warcraft anymore. Hogger pulled a cute upset over trash in round 1, but that was that. As for Riku, there was actually a lot of buzz he could pull an upset and take second place here. As for why, I couldn't tell you. People were vastly overestimating Kingdom Hearts pre-contest, I guess. You couldn't even manipulate the x-stats enough to make Riku anywhere near Dante, yet 76 gurus picked Riku here. I couldn't tell you why. This set up a really funny match of TESTOSTERONE. Leon Kennedy, Dante, Master Chief, and... Kirby. Kirby is of course the MANLIEST character among that group, but the coming divisional final was eerily reminiscent of the 2007 runs of a couple of those characters. We'll get to it when I write up round 3. ## Stats and Analysis This had been one of the more anticipated showdowns... of last year. Dante was the upper midcarder who had never come through when it counted, while Leon was the upstart upper midcarder who had never been given a chance against a character not named Gordon Freeman. But with his great performances against (pre-suck) Mega Man and Bowser, could Leon really give Dante a run? The answer turned out to be no, but that was sort of lost in the whole "Pikachu killing them both" debacle. Now, with Riku here in pretty much the EXACT same setup, could the KH fan-fave ride a fanbase split to advancing? Of course, after last round, there was more talk of Leon keeping close to Dante rather than Riku giving him any kind of a run, some ramblings of certain stattrolls aside. Hogger was also briefly mentioned for, I dunno, \*maybe\* sniffing at third, but most wisely calculated a character that could barely keep pace ahead of Laharl wasn't going to be making any waves here. Well, the match started - and suddenly, it was like how last year was supposed to have panned out. Leon wasn't just doing better relative to Dante - he was within one vote of him at the freeze. Dante was able to pile all of eleven more votes on that margin after the next update, but Leon went and just took that back and then some in the next to give him a 14 vote LEAD. So, expecting Dante to fire back in the next update, we watch with bated breath... only to see Leon crush and surge to an 83 VOTE LEAD. All hell had broken loose on the board at this point, as this seemed to be Jill v Ocelot all over again, except instead of reversing a thin margin Leon looked on track to be turning around a legitimate BLOWOUT. But Dante held strong, and made a major cut of his own in the next update. From there it was a combination of Leon spikes and Dante whittling the lead down, and the ups and downs made it one of the more exciting Power Hours we've seen in these things. Of course, as those who have watched the Power Hours long enough have learned, a close Power Hour usually means a match that doesn't end up that way. And with Leon having the backing of Nintendoland, all of that fell apart once the night came. Dante was really able to put the thing out of reach with the night, and even though Leon recovered somewhat when the day hit... he's still an RE character, and even the most Nintendoey of RE characters are no match for an even semi-casual vote like Dante's. Still, it's important not to understate exactly how well Leon did in this year's showing against Dante, which also made Pikachu's showing against the two even more perplexing. Riku came to a far third in what was clearly his least impressive contest to date. I guess the most you can say about that is that he did what he did (despite?) looking absolutely bangable in the match picture. And by that I mean um ignore that last remark hey let's laugh at how bad Hogger bombed hahahaha oh what happened to you Ramza? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction X-Stats from Round One: - Leon - 24.44% (based on MacMillan = Frank West) - Riku - 19.21% (based on MacMillan = Frank West) - Dante - 22.77% (based on '07 Laharl) - Hogger - 11.45% (based on '07 Laharl) Yuck, what awful stats. There was nothing to base Siegfried or MacMillan on, so the only thing we can really get out of the first match is that Riku REALLY ought to have been able to hang closer with Leon and didn't have an excuse not to. The second result is a little more telling... yes Dante put up over 50%, but Hogger is pretty bad fodder and Laharl and Ramza were destroying each other all day in order to bring themselves down to his level. Surely Dante ought to be a LITTLE higher in the stats than is reflected above, but... probably not all that much higher. Leon had the more jaw-dropping performance of the two, which makes today's battle all the more intriguing. Let's start with Hogger just to get him out of the way quickly. Positive: he stands way way out in this picture. Negatives: everything else. Yes WoW rallying can have an impact, but as we saw in the Arthas match and other things like Mario/Warcraft, people don't care enough to vote unless the match is close enough where their rally effort is going to have an impact. Hogger is miles below the rest of this pack in natural strength, will never be in contention to place ahead of anyone past the first 15 minutes, and is going to flop mightily vs his R1 showing as a result. Next! Riku's just incredibly weird. Sora got an awful smoking pic yet still smoked Fox (which as Yoshi proved is no small feat!), then got a solid anime face shot and nearly bested Squall! Clearly KH is riding high in '08... except why then did Roxas and Riku fold like lawnchairs to Liquid and Leon? I have no idea, but despite how good New Square has performed in many spots to this point I just can't justify Dante allowing Riku to make up the 16% he'd need to catch Leon in this round. That being said, I'm going to have to be conservative and give him SOME credit- he's probably going to make up a good majority of that at least. That leaves us with Leon vs Dante, and it ought to be a no-brainer. After all, we saw this matchup only last year, and Dante put up 30% of the vote to Leon's mere 24%. As to that, I'm going to repeat my initial reaction at the time: "oh jeez, Leon looks AWFUL in that pic!" And he sure did! This time around he's right on par with Dante in terms of "cool factor", and I expect that to be worth plenty between guys so closely related in terms of character design. Also, there's been a sudden unexplainable (Umbrella Chronicles?) new trend called REFAQs taking hold of the site recently. Sure DMC4 sold well, but did anyone really love it? If they did, they sure didn't do a good job of showing it in that Nero match! In summary I'm expecting Leon to have a much better show of it in this matchup, and could perhaps, PERHAPS, even contend for the outright win! So if I'm keeping Leon pretty close to Dante, who in turn will be pretty close to Riku, who in term will decimate Hogger, we'd be looking at something along the lines of... \*gets out his pot and does some stirring\* - Dante - 32.25% - Leon Kennedy - 29.13% - Riku - 24.60% - Hogger - 14.02% That feels... pretty good, actually! Ngamer Says: **Dante \> Leon** ### Next Day Review Well, that was another entertaining match. Really awesome for those first few hours, but I'm surprised Leon wasn't able to use his GameCube (and now Wii as well) fanbase to stick closer with the Day vote. But eh, that's alright, the important thing is how much he improved on last year's showing, which should be enough to prove that was mostly just him looking goofy in the match pic. He won't have that problem in R3 thanks to our B8 artists taking the reigns, and there seems to be some real kind of REFAQs thing going on as well, but... heck, even so I'm not seeing any way for him to catch up to Kirby or the Chief. That's alright; I chalk this up as a strong season for him regardless. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3289&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=46) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sandbag vs Auron vs Sub-Zero 2008 _source: Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sandbag vs Auron vs Sub-Zero 2008 (revid 85831)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, November 3rd, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 3rd, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 30.53% Auron - 29.59% Sandbag - 21.43% Sub-Zero - 18.51% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Auron first place (4pts) - 10.60% Auron second place (2pts) - 28.90% Sonic second place (4pts) - 15.47% Sonic first place (2pts) - 53.47% - **Advancing Prediction:** Auron - 39.50% (16,947) Sonic - 68.94% (29,577) Tohoya, The Real Truth, Terrafire, amyvitality, Zagro, Explicit Content, and Xuxon are the only gurus who picked Auron to get first place here. You guys are geniuses and get to be immortalized in PCA lore forever. Nice job, folks! Bizarrely, two of you went the extra mile and thought Sonic wouldn't even get second place -- Terrafire had Magus(?) in this spot, and TRT picked Sandbag. Doesn't make this insanely beautiful upset pick mean any less though, no worries. As for the match, I was there. I remember the hype. I remember all the people saying there was clear data Auron was a 4way all-star and had the chops to pull this off. I remember ignoring the litany of terrible matches Sonic has had since 2006. I remember looking at this match in 2007, shrugging it off, and thinking "nah, I'll be fine" like a Critical Drinker skit: And to this day, I still cannot believe this result actually happened. Like I'm sitting here looking at this thing in 2020, going "Did this actually happen? Did Auron seriously beat the tar out of Sonic in the year Brawl came out?" Yep. It's real. It actually happened. Props to everyone who called it, and props to everyone who hyped this thing up all contest. It shocked me when it happened and it still shocks me now to look at it all these years later. It wasn't just that Auron won; it was the way he won. After the freeze, this match was never even close. Auron just beat the shit out of the guy for 24 straight hours. You know those weird sports upsets where the underdog wins, but plays the entire game like they knew they were the better team the whole time, and even after it's over the fans are left scratching their heads? The 18-1 Super Bowl felt like that. The Magic randomly beating Lebon's Cavs that one year felt like that. The Pistons getting a gentlemen's sweep over the Lakers definitely fits the bill, and is probably the biggest example I can think of. That was what watching this match felt like for me. It was just like... what on earth was I even seeing? I know Auron boosted from Kingdom Hearts 2 and Sonic wasn't looking too great there in the mid-2000s, but this was something else. The Noble Nine very rarely loses to outsiders, so any loss is a big deal. A loss this decisive is just.... yeah. This was much deeper than one upset, almost as if Sonic fans were punishing the guy for having such a garbage series for so long. I'd bring up how this not being a 1v1 was highway robbery in terms of longstanding contest lore, but I've ranted enough on that subject for now. For all the WTF factor of Auron winning this match, Sonic still advanced anyway. Dumb. Last point. Sandbag was a bit of a dud. There was some fear he would pull an L-Block, but instead it was just one upset over a choke artist before bowing out in an easy last place. It was another data point in an increasing line of them that the joke factor, while still existent, would not be the end-al be-all of deciding this contest. The big names were all out for revenge. ## Stats and Analysis - Sandbag underperformed by **-6.28%**, the **\#6** most disappointing performance of 2008 - Auron overperformed by **+5.05%**, the **\#14** most impressive performance of 2008 This, to me, was probably one of the most enjoyable results of the contest. Partially because I had it in my bracket and argued the stew out of it, of course! - but also because of the validation that it meant for a character who has not only become one of my all time favorite characters, but a contest entrant who really deserved a chance to shine. Auron has always been a character who has straddled the line between upper-midcarder and near-elite. Now after the release of KH2 he's firmly on the side of the latter, but before then he's had to suffer some tough draws. Knocking down fodder before getting fed to Cloud and Sephiroth in 2003 and 2004 is pretty rough, and he got his big chance against Ganondorf in 2005... only to let his Villains Contest high and The Boost send him to a humiliatingly easy loss. Since then and the release of KH2, however, he's looked only better and better - pulling in a great number on Crono in 2006, and then a pair of dominating performances in 2007 before barely - barely - losing to Ryu in the face of Cloud SFF. Despite this, however, there have been some who have treated Auron like Dante - strong, sure, but never able to pull off a shocker against the big boys. Well, the writing was on the wall after his and Sonic's first round matches, and he would have absolutely no excuses if he wasn't able to pull the upset here. And Sonic, having looked AWFUL ever since his upset victory of Crono back in 2006, finally saw his bad performances catch up with him as Auron easily fought off his bracket vote, pushed ahead in the Power Hour, and essentially never looked back en route to a match Sonic was never even remotely in. The hype for this match and the payoff are pretty much the only things of note in this match, because Sonic's efforts were BORING. Heck, watching Sandbag fail and end up getting clobbered by Sub-Zero were more entertaining than the hedgehog, as it really threw into perspective exactly how pitiful Magus had been in the previous round. And with this result, a whole new line of conversation was opened - could Auron end up advancing AGAIN next round? Not too many entertained the idea, but Tifa holding up as well as she did last round gave some credence to the idea. It would have to be seen how well she would do the next day against Kratos. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction And now for maybe the most-discussed matchup of the round! Let's throw a couple hundred more words at it, shall we? X-Stats from Round One: - Sonic - 39.10% (based on Shepard = Marcus) - Sandbag - 31.61% (based on Shephard = Marcus) - Auron - 35.92% (based on '07 Marcus) - Sub-Zero - 29.09% (based on '07 Marcus) What terrible numbers! I guess I didn't want to base anything off that horrible showing by Magus last year, but it's clear Sonic and the Sandman should be way lower. Likewise you can't make a very good case for '08 Marcus... he was just not nearly the same character who surprised us a year ago, for some reason. With a fixed set you would surely see Auron entering the fray as a distinct favorite, I would think. Let's start with ol' Sandy eyes. He appeared to have confirmed himself as the one joke character who was going to perform like a joke about an hour into his match- the early joke push had been there to an extent, but Magus was soon killing him, and it got especially nasty once the NPH was over. But wow, what an ASV he came up with! Fortunately for our sanity, I can't see anything like that taking place again in this one... Sonic will be there to help limit his morning, and then both Auron and Sub-Zero are guys with respectable strength all through the day; a Magus-like collapse from either would be just unheard of. Since he'll be against three guys with pretty unique fanbases, all of whom look great in the pic (while he's got about the most bland image imaginable), I can't see the Bag maintaining his joke base as well as WCC did the other day- a slip from 25 to around 22 or 21 should be more likely. The bad new for Subby: even a Bag weakened that far will probably be too much for him to deal with. Yeah, the blue ninja held up well directly on Auron in R1, but I figure much of that is his ability soak of casual votes like a sponge, much like his partner in ninjadom, Hayabusa. Now that Sega fans and Smash fans have somewhere else to go with their votes, he probably loses a bit of ground versus Auron's more steadfast base, and as a result I have trouble seeing him stay out of the basement here. Which of course means that the real battle should be Auron versus Sonic- and I think it's going to be a true slugfest! On the one hand Sonic is pretty obviously the character with the greater natural strength. On the other, his whole Team has been just dreadful in this format two years running, New Square has been consistently solid and seems to have improved somewhat for '08, and worst of all, he's going to be splitting much of his newfound Smash support with that bag of sand over there. Perhaps I should be more cautious... after all, Squall looked all-world in R1 as well, and that didn't stop him from getting brought way back down in earth a few days ago. But come on, Smilin' Squall versus Winkin' Auron- there's just no comparison! Plus there no option remotely like Sora in this bunch for those on-the-fence Square supporters. - Auron - 29.39% - Sonic the Hedgehog - 29.21% - Sandbag - 22.03% - Sub-Zero - 19.38% That looks... just fine! Ngamer Says: **Auron \> Sonic** ### Next Day Review Uh oh, not alot of time for tonight's writeup because I spent most of it doing an Oracle prediction of the upcoming election. So let me just quickly say, hoooray for Auron! So good to see him finally be given a chance to knock around fodder before getting bounced out by Cloud/Sephiroth... this time he got to knock around a Noble Niner before that happened! Also it's obviously awesome to see the weakening joke trend continue, as Sandy couldn't even manage a real ASV and is going to be punked easily by Subby in this one. I still don't have much hope for Pika over the Block, but after a showing like this I think MM \> WCC once against becomes a good possibility, even with Zero trying to hold him back. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3290&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=47) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sephiroth vs Tifa Lockheart vs Kratos vs Jill Valentine 2008 _source: Sephiroth vs Tifa Lockheart vs Kratos vs Jill Valentine 2008 (revid 85833)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 39.57% Kratos - 24.49% Tifa Lockhart - 20.46% Jill Valentine - 15.58% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sephiroth first place (4pts) - 81.65% Sephiroth second place (2pts) - 8.20% Kratos second place (4pts) - 43.57% Kratos first place (2pts) - 6.43% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sephiroth - 89.85% (38,548) Kratos - 50.00% (21,452) Round 2 concluded with a very easy to diagnose poll, which featured all Playstation characters and a predetermined order. Sephiroth was always going to get first. Tifa was always going to get SFFd to death and get screwed out of getting second place, though if you reran this poll in 2020 it's quite possible that wouldn't happen. Jill Valentine, unpredictable as she is, was probably not going to be strong enough to take advantage of the situation and finesse her way into second place. This left Kratos as the lucky odd man out for the second year in a row. In 2007 he took advantage of Kirby, L-Block, and Donkey Kong all stealing votes from each other. Here, he took advantage of Sephiroth, Jill, and Tifa all stealing votes from each other. Dad of Boy always knew how to make his mark! Also, I think Tifa gets hurt by the presence of Jill Valentine more than most people might think. They're both Playstation-era bombshells, which actually does matter. I wouldn't be at all shocked if there was massive overlap there. This concluded round 2 of our secondary 4way experiment, and it was starting to get pretty decent. I wouldn't say "good" given the format, but it was decent. We had some surprises, we had some bandwagons, we had some arguments... but above all, these vote totals were massive. People were really having a lot of fun this year, and a huge bit of it was coming up to lead off the divisional finals. ## Stats and Analysis Another year, another Kratos easily advancing in a debated match where his opponent was suffering from SFF. Didn't we have something more important to worry about in this match? \<\_\< Okay, okay - so while being overshadowed by the FAR superior poll (the election) going on at the same time as it, this was a pretty interesting match to follow. Kratos had put any murmurs of Ocelot upsetting him to rest by killing his fourpack (not that he needed to, thanks Jill), but Tifa had shocked the world by holding up to Seph better than anyone could have predicted. She was back in this thing, although there was one little problem here - Tifa had two VERY big assists helping her out in the last round, and being the face shot round she was more or less going to have to go on how \*snicker\* likable people found her. Secondly, instead of having an old man hanging on to Kratos' coattails, the unpredictable Jill Valentine was there. And having another lovely lady of the PSX certainly wasn't going to do Tifa any favors. And finally... it's Sephiroth. Who wants to rely on him doing the same thing twice? So past became prologue - Kratos sealed the fate the match's results as soon as he put up anything resembling a fight during the board vote. Tifa kept him within reach as best she could, and even ended up taking the lead briefly thanks to her killer night vote... but this is Kratos we're talking about. The casual day and ASV vote he feasts on is always a sight to behold, and a close match became a 5500 vote loss by the time everything was said and done. All in all it was a pretty standard result, though while it couldn't really tell us anything about the characters specifically it all but shut the door on Auron pulling a second miracle next round - Tifa needed to perform excellently (while still barely losing to Kratos) in order to give the upset any kind of hope. Instead, she got pushed over by Kratos while he got his face kicked in by Sephy. And while Sephiroth was no Cloud, Sonic, for his part, was no Ryu. (yet) And with that, we had the end of the second round! A good end match, the announcement of free-form pictures for the third round (aw yeah Snake), and Indiana going blue for the first time since 1964 were only a few of the highlights we got to enjoy on just that day alone. What could be better? Well, the easiest answer was what we learned the end of a round always gives way to: more Zack Attack! ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Alright, on to the last battle of the round. This one's got great potential! X-Stats from Round One - Sephiroth - 28.80% (based on '07 Ratchet) - Tifa - 21.67% (based on '07 Ratchet) - Kratos - 25.62% (based on '07 Ocelot) - Jill - 20.94% (based on '07 Ocelot) No time to discuss these stats! Why such potential? Well, if Seph once again forgets that he's 1/3 of Clinkeroth and barely hurts a character from his own game with SFF like we saw in R1, there's a very real possibility of Tifa advancing. However, if that realization suddenly dawns on him and he destroys Tifa like he ought to (and like he DID do to Vincent back in '07), then there's a very real possibility that Jill REFAQses her way past her into third. So the question of the match is, which Sephiroth will show up? Personally I'm banking on the later. Ratchet and Nana were horrible competition no matter how you look at it; Kratos and Jill aren't exactly Mario and Link, but they're at least decent options and so I'm expecting trends to return moreso to what we witnessed in the poll where VV got owned. Even so, I see the final percentages here being something where even though Tifa looks pretty bad, Seph doesn't exactly come out looking good, just on account of how his doing so would make some kind of sense, and Sephiroth doesn't roll that way. Sooo, does this mean Jill will be able to catch up to Tifa? Nay, sorry, still don't see it. She and Leon and Chris have already done more than enough to distinguish themselves this season by going well beyond our expectations; should be fun to see them in action again in '09, assuming RE5 is as big a hit as many are predicting. If Jill were a bigger Day Vote threat I'd have to consider the upset more seriously, but as is I can't see her making a real game of it. That leaves us with Kratos, who frankly I'm fairly hesitant to put much faith in... Sure he looked good in R1, but I get the impression that he's one of those guys like Hayabusa or Altair or (apparently) Mewtwo- capable of soaking up enough casual indifference vote to wow us in the early rounds, but who voters will abandon in droves as soon as other legit options are delivered. Plus if there's one thing that's sure to hurt a Playstation star it's the introduction of a compelling Final Fantasy 7 option. But... eh, I still see him doing well enough in the day to put this advancement out of Tifa's reach. Plus he's sporting full-on Banner Factor in that pic, which never hurts! So Seph \>\>\> Kratos \> Tifa \> Jill, which if stirred in a pot for five minutes will result in something along the lines of - Sephiroth - 38.06% - Kratos (God of War) - 24.71% - Tifa Lockheart - 20.68% - Jill Valentine - 16.55% Hmm, that's a decent bit of Jill faith. Come on REFAQs, pull this out for me! Ngamer Says: **Sephiroth \> Kratos** ### Next Day Review This ended up being pretty well-timed... not much to keep an eye on in this match (aside from Tifa taking the lead for a brief while during Europe's voting, but we all knew that wouldn't last), but that was just fine because we had that OTHER popularity poll to follow along with tonight. Just quickly I'll say that I'm a little miffed at Jill for not maintaining more of her base, but ah well, still a great season for her regardless. And I'm also miffed at Seph for not doing what I expected, and instead performing up to expectations. Arg, even when I bet against common sense in the hopes of nailing down his unpredictable nature I still can't peg him! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3291&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=48) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Zack Fair vs Duke Nukem vs Altair 2008 _source: Link vs Zack Fair vs Duke Nukem vs Altair 2008 (revid 85834)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1 Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 47.22% Zack Fair - 22.58% Duke Nukem - 15.87% Altair - 14.52% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (8pts) - 78.03% Link second place (4pts) - 6.77% Zack second place (8pts) - 6.96% Zack first place (4pts) - 6.40% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 84.80% (36,382) Zack - 13.36% (5,732) Before we get to the obvious, the number Link got here is completely asinine. Breaking 50% in a 4way poll this late into a contest, against competition that all advanced twice, is almost impossible. This dude was on an absolute warpath in this contest, and nothing on God's green earth was stopping him. The vote total itself is also absurd. In most of Link's 1v1 matches, he hasn't gotten close to 74,000 votes. Here he was dropping 74k like it was a warmup. I know people are bored of Link, but some of the numbers he gets are a marvel to watch. But that's all well and cute. All that actually mattered in this poll was... Zack. F. A. Qs. Zack is one of the most fun bandwagons we've ever had in a contest, because he has the rare distinction of being liked by everyone. Board 8 loves the guy. JRPG fans love the guy. Bandwagon rally contest people love the guy. It was just a big lovefest with no arguing or anti-bandwagon blowback, and it was just so fun to be there. Zack is so popular despite his small bit role in FF7 that he got his own spinoff game. The game was gutter trash, but still! He got one! It led to people going total fangirl during this match, even though it was fairly predictable when we saw the layout. Duke Nukem's run was fun, but him even being here counts as a win for the guy. Hell, him not being last place here counts as a moral victory. This is the only contest Duke has made round 3 in, and even in getting destroyed by the Link/Zack combo, he got to look respectable on his way out. Shout out to Duke and his run; he is definitely one of the stars of the contest. Altair gets similar love, even finishing in last. We've seen new characters in contests make some terrible debuts, but that didn't happen this year. He represented the gurus well, even with this exit. A third round run is always respectable, regardless of competition, but every character but one was going to lose eventually. Altair would go down as one of the most successful guru nominations ever, topped only by Black Turtle's X vs Zero nomination in the (ugh) Rivalry Rumble. All that said, all anyone cared about here was ZackFAQs running wild, and to say people's imaginations were also running wild is an understatement. There was a loooooot of potential fanbase leeching from Nintendo's heavy hitters moving forward, and we've seen crazier things happen. Who knew how far Zack could go? ## Stats and Analysis - Zack Fair advancing was the **\#5** most surprising result of 2008 - Zack Fair advancing was also the **\#22** most surprising result of all-time - Link overperformed by **+4.30%**, the **\#20** most impressive performance of 2008 After the excitement of the previous day (\<\_\<), we needed a breather - and while it's hard to NOT get all hot and bothered when Mr. UNfair is involved in a match, he did his best to oblige. In all seriousness, this match was pretty much a gimme - Altair was going to need to perform significantly stronger than Duke to even give Zack a run here, and seeing as how he couldn't pull that off LAST round there was no way that was happening with Link sapping every drop of that casual appeal. Anyway, Zack tore a nice percentage into Link as per last time, but without Nintendo and pseudo-Nintendo holding him back Link really swung for the fences. It's not like Duke and Altair are anything special, but they just got absolutely fodderized here. Link was looking more like Link 2k6 than Link 2k7, and seeing as how Mario got his face pounded in by the former it was going to be one tough number awaiting the plumber once he advanced next round. Though against MMX or Zack (or even Liquid!), no one could say. It was also cool to see that our freeform pictures got off to a pretty awesome start as well. I'm of the opinion that we need to go back to one picture a match the whole way through a la 2k2/2k3 - some of these things were WAY too gimmicky - but if you do something, may as well go all the way. Round 1 multiple freeform pics, anyone? \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction And this election has robbed me of my time, so let's hurry on to X-Stats from Round Two Don't have them! I have to set up my spreadsheet to cover the R2 results once election fever is over. So let's rush on to - Link: he one-upped Cloud in R1, but his eternal rival showed him up in R2; I see the mean green machine being out to revenge in this one and looking to toss out a stunning percentage of his own. without anything Nintendo to limit his damage, watch out for Link tonight! - Zack: should look very solid as well; this is tougher competition than last round, and yet he might very well do the almost unheard of and increase his percentage now that Zidane's out of the way. I think he powers past these others in style, number 1 because Square's looked good, number 2 because Square always brings its A game against big Nintendo, and number 3 because these other guys are kind of chumps! - Duke: alright alright, so he's clearly not the same Duke we'd seen in years past, but still, there's a world of difference between not collapsing under Nintendo when it's being represented by Marth/Lucario and when it's being represented by LINK. I think this is finally the time for him to wilt under pressure as he did in R2 last season... but even so, Altair probably flops harder! - Altair: prime casual bait right here. congrats on surviving Marth, I guess (though I still don't think you'd have done it in a legit match without Lucario there wrecking him), but now that he's running into the teeth of the combined casual appeal of Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy 7 it's going to take more than an appealing character design to save him. Altair for last, though he can still probably at least take a run at Duke during the ASV. And converting those thoughts to numbers, potting and stirring should yield a result like: - Link - 47.92% - Zack Fair - 23.47% - Duke Nukem - 14.45% - Altair - 14.16% That looks... rushed! Ngamer Says: **Link \> Zack** ### Next Day Review Yesssss, now here's the Character Battle I love to see. Cloud and Link playing an interstellar game of HORSE- "match this!" "no, you match THIS!" Ah, just like old times! No matter how you slice it, Link holds the upper hand in the '08 version of their rivalry so far thanks to this performance- I'm seeing Oracles for him at 45, 46, 47... to barely fall under 50% all day is truly astounding. Oh, and Zack is once again putting on a very nice show of his own. Assuming Liquid doesn't crash the party, we could be in for one heck of a threeway between Mario and X and himself, something I never thought I'd find myself saying two months back. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3292&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=49) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Liquid Snake vs Luigi vs Mario vs Mega Man X 2008 _source: Liquid Snake vs Luigi vs Mario vs Mega Man X 2008 (revid 85835)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, November 6th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2 Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 6th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 30.52% Mega Man X - 30.02% Liquid Snake - 23.40% Luigi - 16.35% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario first place (8pts) - 45.10% Mario second place (4pts) - 25.76% Mega Man X second place (8pts) - 13.46% Mega Man X first place (4pts) - 3.44% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mario - 70.86% (30,401) Mega Man X - 16.90% (7,251) This is the only contest poll to ever feature Mario vs Luigi in any way. Hopefully it doesn't happen again, because this one shows us that Luigi will just get SFFd into the ground when he faces his big bro. There was a lot of hype leading into this match, because the conventional wisdom is that Luigi being here offered the potential to screw Mario over. Mega Man X came dangerously close to beat Mario in round 2, and that poll had Zelda and Mudkip in it. Add in the possibility of Liquid being the only non-Nintendo character, and people thought it was a recipe for wild upsets. We should have known it wouldn't pan out that way. Of course Mario is going to do better if the Nintendo vote is split three ways instead of four. We overthink these things way too often, and this is one of those times. Add in the clear and obvious fact that Mario directly benefits when a joke character is removed (just look at the match trends for the round 2 Mudkip match), and you were left with Mario doing much better here in the divisional finals. That said, Mega Man X made a real go at it early in this match, proving he definitely belongs in the near-elite conversation. Mario won early, but not in total blowout fashion. He did have Luigi stealing some votes, after all. And Mega Man X, at least for the first few hours in this match, wasn't harmed by Nintendo at all. Shortly after Mario built up a 200 vote lead, X came storming back. He was unable to breach the 50 vote barrier however, and Mario quickly put this thing to bed. Still, Mega Man X came out of this match looking like roses, and was so impressive in getting second place that Liquid never stood a chance. Liquid did well in getting this far, but Water Snek (he attac, he protec, but most importantly, he snek) was not on the level. This all culminated in setting up one of the most hyped matches of the entire contest. Link, Zack, Mario, and Mega Man X. You can imagine where the hype men were focused for that one. ## Stats and Analysis - Mega Man X advancing was the **\#6** most surprising result of 2008 As heavily anticipated as this match was - would Mario, having barely eked out a win with Zelda and Mudkip pulling him down, lose to Mega Man X with Luigi hampering him? Could he lose to Liquid? - the excitement was over within the first update or so. While it seems odd to think that Zelda hurts Mario more than Luigi does, her own natural strength (and the fact that there was a whole 'nother character that, joke or not, is Nintendo at heart) is something that Luigi just doesn't have on his own. Mario was definitely hurting, but this time he never really let X in the match and, once those first four hours were over, cruised on to an easy and decisive victory. Liquid did pretty well for himself considering the overwhelming competition (going from 24% on Seph to 22% on Mario, Luigi, and Mega Man X), but there becomes a point when other characters' natural strengths just become too much for a character that would have killed to just been called a respectable midcarder a year ago. The real point of interest I found here was Luigi's performance. I've always been of the opinion that Player Two would just get pulverized against the superior brother, and while he didn't exactly make any waves here, 16% ain't that. Not to mention that despite pulling that number down while being weaker than Zelda and more connected to Mario, Mario ended up winning EASIER than before. Luigi'd probably pull down the same or better percentage that Bowser did in 2004, and seeing as how hero-sidekick SFF should be much more brutal than hero-villain SFF, that's saying something. What, I'm not sure, but to me Luigi's most impressive match came here in his loss. The same thing would be true of Mario - this would easily be his most impressive match of this contest. Which means, of course, that very bad things awaited the plumber in the matches to come. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Speaking of Liquid, let's see if he'll have any real chance to ruin that threeway, starting with some stats! X-Stats from Round Two ...nope, still don't have them! But shortly, dude. Shortly. Kind of weird circumstances whereby the real question of this match isn't how Liquid compares to X or X compares to Mario, but instead how Luigi compares to Zelda. With that Princess in the mix Mario very nearly embarrassed himself by tripping up against MMX. The good news for the plumber is that there's no way Luigi manages 20% of the vote like Zelda shocked us by doing. The BAD news is, you'd have to imagine Mr. L hurts his big brother much moreso than Zelda did, at least proportionally to Mega Man X. That means Mario's only hope for an outright victory would be to ground and pound Luigi right out of the gate, leaving him beaten down far enough to not mess up the morning vote he needed to power past X last time around. So, will he be able to pull it off? My money's on... No! Nothing against Mario, but Luigi's been making serious strides ever since '05, and with the way he has held up against solid Nintendo competition in Kirby and Ganon and Bowser, I'm starting to put more faith in those Mario character polls that list him right near the top of the series' food chain. Now naturally Mario is still going to make him look bad, but I think the Player Two appeal will be enough the Bros. shared fanbase beyond where Zelda took it, and that ought to be just enough to allow MMX and his awesome character design to sneak through for the win. Now, we know Liquid eats Nintendo LFF alive, and we know Luigi's going to be taking a bite out of the company's flagship... might he also have a chance at the upset? Nay! That 30% was nice, but there's a world of difference when you sub out Bowser for Mario and PW for MMX, and considering how he'd probably need something pretty darn close to that R2 percentage in order to advance, I don't see the Blue Bomber or the Red Plumber being in any real danger during these upcoming 24 hours. Alright, so if Mr. M and Mr. X engage in another slugfest while This Arm hangs around looking respectable and Mr. L gets pretty beat up, that would probably come out something like... \*ponders, pots, and stirs\* - Mega Man X - 31.07% - Mario - 30.97% - Liquid Snake - 22.92% - Luigi - 15.04% That looks... pretty shaky. But I don't know which way to lean, so that's understandable! Ngamer Says: **MMX \> Mario** ### Next Day Review Ugh, really disappointed in myself for last night. I knew I was being foolish by discounting Mudkip's impact on Mario's R2 performance, but I chose to ignore that factor in favor of supporting my bracket and its MMX upset pick. Yeah, Mario has really redeemed himself with this performance, and I was a fool to not see it coming... oh well, I'll make it up to him by taking him over MMX and Zack next time around! The crazy thing though is, check this out, the Mario Bros are pulling down 49% of the vote today! If you'd told me that Mario would be finishing close to 33% in this one I'd have assumed that meant he'd squashed his little brother down out of the teens; very impressive to accomplish this despite L holding on so well. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3293&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=50) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Samus Aran vs Ganondorf vs Vincent Valentine vs Gordon Freeman 2008 _source: Samus Aran vs Ganondorf vs Vincent Valentine vs Gordon Freeman 2008 (revid 85836)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, November 7th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 3 Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 7th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 33.12% Vincent Valentine - 30.40% Ganondorf - 19.47% Gordon Freeman - 17.16% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Samus first place (8pts) - 54.54% Samus second place (4pts) - 13.09% Vincent second place (8pts) - 26.31% Vincent first place (4pts) - 8.13% - **Advancing Prediction:** Samus - 67.63% (29,015) Vincent - 34.44% (14,776) Hey, so remember this match? That's real. It actually happened. It was only two years before the match we're about to talk about, too. Remember this match? That was only three years ago. A couple matches ago, we talked about Duke Nukem going out like a winner. In this match, Gordon Freeman got to go out like a winner -- and that's because Ganondorf got so thoroughly demolished that Gordon Freeman actually managed to not finish in last place. Gordon Freeman Always Wins! This was an all-time terrible match for Ganondorf, though it isn't the first time we've seen him just get demolished by Nintendo in odd circumstances. There was the famous match against Link in 2004 where he got totally embarrassed, and here Samus was to show that 2005 was a fluke. All we needed really was the third member of the trinity, Mario, to do the same at some point. And he would get his chance in 2013, oddly enough. ...oh Anyway, this was just Samus and Vincent flexing a ton of muscle. Samus was doing her usual thing where she destroys everyone until the top half of the Noble Nine came along, and Vincent was getting ready for the much-anticipated Crono rematch. All systems go at this point. ## Stats and Analysis - Vincent advancing was the **\#19** most surprising result of 2008 Someone has got to tell me when the VV disrespect is going to end. Only 35% had him escaping \*this\* division? (68% for SMAUS isn't exactly stellar, either) And it's nice to see some other Samus picture making an appearance, even if it's a photoshop. Picmakers have been positively petrified of changing her up much ever since that Tifa match. Now if only we could do something about that insufferable Vincent DoC model... This was something we all knew was going to happen - Samus and Vincent advancing. What we weren't exactly sure on was the exact order. Samus is much more popular than Vincent here, but that gap closes a lot when you've got a weight like SFF bringing you down a couple dozen notches on the totem pole. And this wasn't just any SFF, now - this was Zelda. We'd seen Zelda herself cause MARIO to nearly lose to a carbon copy of the biggest has-been Noble Niner ever. We'd seen Midna \*somehow\* turn the once thought "unSFFable" God of Pokemon into the same fodderline level as she. But the King of Evil is THE biggest leech Zelda has, and we all know it. Link proved it in 2004, and the cracks (along with a nice pic assist) came to fruition with a humiliation at the hands of Luigi in 2007. But still, a big Zelda leech is still ZELDA. And this was still Samus, she of the METROID pedigree. We'd seen Zelda herself put up nearly as much on Samus as Solid Snake did, surely Ganon could hold it together for a measly 20% or so? Chyeah, right. Ganondorf started this match firmly behind Gordon Freeman, and simply never recovered. The once-biggest laughing stock of the entire contests finally got all the payback he wanted and then some, as for 24 glorious hours he cruised to an easy victory that was never really in question against the King of Evil. As for the 'dorf, he hit a new low, and has reversed some once unquestionable conventional wisdom - I'm pretty sure the majority of the board sides with Zelda in a match between the two now, directly and indirectly. Such is the fate of our (second) most touted Noble Nine breaker... Oh, the ACTUAL match. Well, with Ganondorf's flop, Samus cruised along to a win that was closer than it should have been, but never in doubt. Vincent tried to do something during the night, but this was over in the first handful of minutes. The only thing to do was TRY to gauge this match in the face of the SFF being thrown around, and then see how Vincent was going to stack up for his Crono rematch. But of course, then there was L-Block, which kind of made it all feel fruitless... (for one more day) ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Let's move on to a brand new match where I'll be able to either... trust Nintendo, OR continue backing my bracket. Again. D'oh! X-Stats from Round Two - Samus - 30.55% (based on Frog '07) - Ganon - 23.21% (based on Frog '07) - Vincent - 41.67% (based on Scorpion '07) - Gordon - 31.62% (based on Scorpion '07) Look out Samus, Freeman's gunnin for you! But seriously folks... CT has clearly risen, so I don't buy Frog still being at the fodder line as he was last year, and Scorpion was very obviously a shadow of his former self in that matchup, so VV and GF need a solid drop. Even so, it's hard to argue that Valentine looked like the strongest character out of the group just based on their showings in that round. Let's start with the Last Free Man. Kudos to him for a very surprising, very enjoyable run this season, but it ends here, and in fact I don't see any way for him to stay out of the basement. His more dedicated fanbase ought to allow him to outperform Duke's ~15% from the day before, and I'm expecting Nintendo fans to jump ship to Samus moreso this time around since she'll be trying to fight out Vincent, but there's no way she pushes Ganon down far enough for Gordon to give him a serious run. Then again, I've been betting against Freeman all season long, and look how well its worked out for me so far... I still hold to the unpopular opinion that Ganon could give Vincent a decently interesting run for his money 1v1, but this format does wonders for fan favorites like Auron and VV and so the King of Evil would have no shot at second place tomorrow, even assuming Samus wouldn't be around to damage his Nintendo appeal. Oh well, better than going out looking like a total pig, '07-style! The true battle is going to be between Samus and Vincent, and I think it will provide us with some real fireworks! Now I've been saying all season how good Samus is in this format, how she even held up well against Link, how she beat MM despite a major pic disadvantage, how her appealing design can keep her in matches even if the rest of the company is disappointing. So why would I bet against her now? The Legend of Zelda, that's why. In terms of intrinsic strength in this format, the gap between Mario and MMX is probably pretty similar to the one between Samus and Vincent. Yet when Mario (a guy many have called "The King of SFF") ran up against Zelda he ran up against an immovable object- the strength of the LoZ fanbase on this site refuses to let their series fold. Heck, even Cloud and Mewtwo found this out to some extent, and Midna is miles apart from Ganondorf! That's why I see Samus being between a rock and a hard place in this one. New Square has looked very good, Vincent is going to bring the heat as soon as the Power Hour comes to a close, and she's going to need to start stealing percentage from the Zelda fanbase in order to not get buried during the overnight... which I don't think she can do. Ganon probably sticks a little above that 20% mark that Zelda clung to last time around, which means Samus is only going to be able to reach the low 30s, a position that will leave her very much in play for a guy with independent, NN-breaking strength like VV. So if Vincent gets a large enough lead on Sammy during the dead hours to withstand her morning vote and come back for an SNV victory, and Ganon holds serve with the Zelda base and Gordon's strong base continues to stick with him, we'll see something close to \*gets out the pot, stirs a bit\* - Vincent Valentine - 31.62% - Samus Aran - 31.48% - Ganondorf - 20.93% - Gordon Freeman - 15.97% That looks... pretty respectable, actually! Ngamer Says: **Vincent \> Samus** ### Next Day Review RAGE. That's twice in a row where I've picked with my bracket instead of with my head. THIS time around, though, I'm placing the blame for my failure firmly on Ganon's head. This is SAMUS, not Mario or Link- how do you crumble to her like a total chump after watching Zelda and Midna hold up so well to better competition the last two rounds? If he'd just not made a complete fool of himself and pulled down the 21% that I wanted this match could have been right back into that tossup range where I felt good about taking a flier on Vince. Ugh. In other news, what the junk Gordon- how do you fall from 24 to only 18 when swapping out Scorpion and Falco for Samus and Ganon? I knew your fanbase was hardcore, but that's just nuts! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3294&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=51) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Crono vs L-Block vs Pikachu vs Alucard 2008 _source: Crono vs L-Block vs Pikachu vs Alucard 2008 (revid 85837)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, November 8th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 4 Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 8th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 31.38% L-Block - 27.53% Pikachu - 22.92% Alucard - 18.44% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Crono first place (8pts) - 31.88% Crono second place (4pts) - 11.97% Pikachu second place (8pts) - 19.80% Pikachu first place (4pts) - 5.47% - **Advancing Prediction:** Crono - 43.85% (18,813) Pikachu - 25.27% (10,842) Save_Us.RAT Apparently this all was just a part of The Plan™. Alucard brought Pikachu here to finish the job, and that job was booting L-Block out of this contest. Crono getting first and Alucard getting last was pretty much expected, though with L-Block involved who knew if a crazy bandwagon would boost him into first or not. If you look at this match in 2020, you'll think to yourself "well derp, of course Pikachu was going to win, what's the problem?". To understand how silly this actually was, there are two things to consider. One was L-Block's 2007 run, which everyone knows already. The other is that Pokemon used to be legitimately despised on GameFAQs. Just for fun, I'm pulling up every match Pokemon had up until 2006. That's the entire list. I was there for all of it, and Pokemon anti-votes most definitely used to be a thing. It's a huge reason people picked Fox in 2003. It was a huge reason people picked Xenogears in 2004. No Pokemon even made the field in the 2004 or 2005 character contests. Pokemon getting close to Metroid in the series contest was seen as flabbergasting, and it was the first remote hint that the worm was turning. Fast forward to 2007. Pokemon looked... okay. Bidoof and Mudkip both got into round 2, but that was mainly due to joke votes. Mewtwo bombed completely. Pikachu made a deep run, but a lot of people felt he got lucky and credited the sprite and thought (erroneously) that Dante and Leon Kennedy leeched each other. Even as late as 2007, Pokemon anti-voting was still a thing. The hype around this match was palpable, but then again so is the hype around every "joke character" match. This was a little different, though. The warning signs were all there that perhaps this wasn't the same L-Block as last year. That perhaps those rooting for him to lose so we could get an airquotes legitimate contest winner would get what they wanted. Boy did they ever. In pro wrestling (yes I make a lot of meme, sports, gaming and wrestling comparisons, shut up), there is something called a double turn, where the good guy and the bad guy switch places during a match. If you get two extremely talented people doing it, like Bret Hart and Steve Austin, you get the best double turn in the history of the business. That doesn't really apply here though, since Bret actually won the match where that double turn happened. People were rooting for Austin, but he still lost. As such, you get the best possible comparison for this match: Vince = Crono Pikachu = Steve Austin L-Block = Kurt Angle Ric Flair = Alucard Believe it or not, Kurt Angle was the hero the night before. He turned on the (ugh) Alliance and prevented a hostile takeover. Steve Austin, who has been incorrectly booked as a heel for way too long, was the guy that got screwed over. The night after, fans were over it. They never really wanted to cheer for Kurt Angle. They never wanted to boo Austin. So the night after Survivor Series where WWF won, they did a perfect double turn involving Ric Flair, who much like Alucard, always had The Plan™. By the end of that segment, Austin was back to being the top babyface, Kurt Angle was being booed out of the building, and the fans got what they were secretly rooting for all along. It's exactly what happened in this match. 2007 was great and all and we all had our fun, but anti L-Block sentiment was building up little by little over time, culminating in this match. Conversely, Pokemon was finally shedding the stigma of anti-votes. You could practically feel this coming a mile away, because no one really wanted L-Block to win again. No one really hates Pokemon anymore. Some people don't like it, but they don't actively hate it. It all culminated in a wild celebration on Board 8, much like how the fans in Charlotte lost their minds that night. L-Block had his early joke vote, but Crono was well ahead in first place and Pikachu was tied with him. That's when the double turn happened. Suddenly almost everyone was cheering for Pikachu to pull this thing off, regardless of what they might have had in their bracket. When you get people cheering against their own interests -- Undertale, Vivi \> Mario, Knuckles \> Magus, Sonic \> Crono, et al -- you get these amazing matches. Pikachu and L-Block stayed tied for a few hours overnight, and then.... it finally happened. L-Block choked. Pikachu pounced. By the time the morning vote was in full swing, this was all over barring an absurd rally. This was arguably the most important result of the entire contest. It showed these crazy rallies do in fact have a ceiling, it was the Pokemon face turn on our web site, and it all but closed the door on a joke character winning the contest this year outside of Weighted Companion Cube and Zack, the latter of which would have Link to deal with in every single match. It also ensured our other match of the contest, which was the long waited rematch between Crono and Vincent. There was some fear here Crono might choke and rob us of our fun, but it was not to be. All that was left to do was to finally let those two destroy each other. ## Stats and Analysis - Pikachu advancing was the **\#12** most surprising result of 2008 - Pikachu overperformed by **+4.08%**, the **\#23** most impressive performance of 2008 Alucard was a bit out of his league, and there's Crono SFF'ing him into the floor. Everyone knew Crono was going to get first, and Alucard last, but the tango between Pikachu and L-Block wasn't so easy to guess. After the initial smackdown that occurred between the Pokemon and the Tetris piece, it was pretty clear that Crono \> Pikachu was set in stone for the rest of the day, even if the block looked to be within pixels of the pokemon. L-Block dipped just a few percentage points from its normal value, but that turned out to be its undoing. This came totally out of the blue, and can't easily be explained, but it definitely involved a large antipathy vote against the Character Battle VI champion. Pikachu acted as the tool to remove L-Block. Another possibility is an SFF phenomenon, in which a chunk of L-Block supporters voted for Pikachu instead--perhaps these were people who played Pokemon Yellow. In any case, L-Block's percentage over 24 hours always followed a sort of flipped square root curve, whereas Pikachu often hits a minimum percentage right around three or four hours into the match and goes generally uphill from there, with maybe one other valley. When L-Block is going down, Pikachu is going up, and the mouse is already urinating on the bunch of squares in placing, there's no question as to how it will end. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Oh well, at least I won't be able to continue killing my preds with bracket favoritism tonight, since I had Ryu advancing out of this one. Let's do a quick check to see if there's any real shot of killing off that L joke in the next 25 hours, shall we? X-Stats from Round Two - Crono - 32.90% (based on '07 Ryu) - L-Block - 30.51% (based on '07 Ryu) - Pikachu - 20.38% (based on '07 Arthas) - Alucard - 20.02% (based on '07 Arthas) The Crono and Block numbers look okay, which makes sense since Ryu is Mr. Consistency, after all. The Pika/Aly stuff is way off due to Diablo hurting Arthas so badly last year, but eh, we should keep in mind that Pika wasn't going to look good in any numbers so far this season regardless thanks to Ike and then Falcon holding him back. The King of all Pokemon gets to unleash his full Nintendo potential tonight... but will it be enough? Let's start with Alucard. I sure hope he amended his Plan for this season to mention getting bumped off in a match where he's never remotely in contention for getting out of the basement, because that's all he'll be able to accomplish here. Oh well, at least he increased his Contest stock this season by easily outclassing Arthas and going toe to toe with an LFFed Pikachu; he's a vet that's still well worth seeing in these brackets, so no shame in that. Moving on to Crono, a guy I continue to gain confidence in every day. With Ryu out of the way and the older SNES-loving voters most likely swinging his way, I don't think the CT star should have any problem increasing his margin of victory over the Block. With the way Vincent dropped the ball today, I could easily see Crono impressing us enough tonight to set himself up as a slight favorite in the long-awaited R4 rematch between the Square stars. But will that rematch actually mean anything, or is L-Block going to rain on the parade and turn it into a "just for pride" third place battle? That all depends on Pika riding Nintendo's recent wave of good performances to a second straight season of shocking bracket advancements. Can he do it? Short answer: no. Long answer: I give the electric rat a ton of credit in this format... he's been held back by Ike and Falcon and Luigi and triple RPG LFF, but the one time he was given free reign to flex his muscles he shocked the world by pounding Dante and Leon straight up. Part of that was his surely his classic R/B/Y sprite coming into play, but hey, he's once again rocking that baby in a few pics for tomorrow, so I'm certainly expecting to see a Pikachu closer to peak strength than we've ever seen since that infamous '07 result. So why can't I pick him? For one, Alucard (like Ammy before him) is a legit character with a pretty diehard fanbase, so he isn't going to shrivel up and die tomorrow, which will leave fewer non-joke votes to go around for Crono and Pika. And for two, the match pictures for this round are ridic. A Tetris piece at a presidential debate, wearing a tie behind a podium? If that doesn't scream "lol support the joke vote!" I don't know what does. I think part of the reason for L's growing success in '07 was the internet rallying behind him as he went along, certainly, but that another significant portion of his strength came from looking so silly as the pictures got more dramatic. Like remember Mt. Rushmore, with the "faces" of Link/Cloud/Snake/L carved in? That's the kind of stuff that I'd imagine does a joke character wonders. Alright, so with Crono looking good but L refusing to fold to Pika, while Alucard holds up decently well, we get something along the lines of... \*stirs after potting for a bit\* - Crono - 32.07% - L-Block - 26.95% - Pikachu - 24.04% - Alucard - 16.94% Alright Nintendo, bet against you two days in a row... time to prove me right with another good showing today! Ngamer Says: **Crono \> L-Block** ### Next Day Review Yes. Yes. YES! The King is Dead! WCC can go right ahead and make it to the finals and kill off my bracket in the process and I wouldn't even mind at this point, because... what a fantastic result today! To get the Block knocked out at any time would have been great, but for it to happen like this, with another miracle third round result for The Little Rat that Could when we were once again all counting him out... just wow! By far the most pleased I've been with any result in many a year. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3295&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=52) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Mega Man vs Weighted Companion Cube vs Solid Snake vs Zero 2008 _source: Mega Man vs Weighted Companion Cube vs Solid Snake vs Zero 2008 (revid 85838)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, November 9th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 5 Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 9th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 35.24% Mega Man - 25.68% Weighted Companion Cube - 23.96% Zero - 15.32% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Snake first place (8pts) - 38.40% Snake second place (4pts) - 37.75% Cube second place (8pts) - 5.84% Cube first place (4pts) - 15.30% - **Advancing Prediction:** Snake - 76.15% (32,671) Cube - 21.14% (9,070) Board 8 is a very fickle group. One day after losing their shit in elation with L-Block losing, a lot of you guys were cheering for the Weighted Companion Cube to pull off a crazy upset here. Obviously this never would have happened if Zero, of all people, wasn't also in the poll, but that's the breaks in a format like this. Replace Zero with almost any other character in this contest, and Snake + Mega Man walk into the quarterfinals. As-is, Mega Man almost managed to scrape by even with Zero in the poll. Solid Snake was on a whole other level in this contest, and when the poll started he just flew off into first place. Snake is the only character that had to be in four matches against L-Block in 2007, so he had a little bit of practice in dealing with rallied inanimate objects. You basically have to put them down ASAP, or they become unstoppable. That's what we saw from Snake, as well as a lot of other heavy hitters, in this contest. The upper half of the Noble Nine, Snake included, was all business this contest. They were not dicking around, which is why they looked so good right from the jump. The bottom half, not so much. Sonic showed his cracks in round 2, and Mega Man just straight up failed to place in this one. Zero or no, Mega Man was the only Noble Nine character that didn't get out of their division this contest. It's just a brutal, embarrassing loss. I know we all love the Cube and all, but all love Mega Man too and it would have been nice if this had happened to someone else. Worse still is how close it was. Board 8 loves the Cube and all, but they love Mega Man. They had a feeling what was coming with Zero being in this poll, and voted accordingly. Mega Man built up a small lead early, and then with the first update after the freeze he went up again. All looked good, but then... the wheels came off. Cube erased the lead almost instantly, the two stayed tied for awhile, and then Cube started building up a lead overnight. He got a lead close to 300 at one point, and people assumed the match was done. After all, it's very difficult to come back when a character who so closely has your fanbase is in the poll with you. But Mega Man was determined to go down like a champ. He's the robot master, after all! This dude has been fighting things like the Weighted Companion Cube since 1987! Mega Man, lovable beast that he is, fought against the European trends and the joke trends to come back, caught a little bit of morning vote, and erased that entire 300 vote lead Cube had by breakfast. He kept the momentum going, built up a lead of his own, and before anyone knew it Mega Man had a 250 vote lead of his own. But the Cube once again started to stall and fight back, and unlike the beginning of poll where these two had a good tug-of-war going, Cube brought help. Cube slowly shaved votes off the lead at first, but once he got it down to 150 or so, he rallied. It wasn't as blatant of a rally as Master Chief used, but it was a rally nonetheless and it worked. If you look on the graph here on the wiki page, you'll see a big blue mountain in the middle. That's the rally that ultimately decided this match. Cube swung more than 400 votes in no time at all, and after one last attempt by Mega Man to hold on to this thing, he finally ran out of gas. Cube slowly (very slowly) climbed up to 450, and held on for dear life for the rest of the match in hopes we wouldn't throw him into the incinerator. But Mega Man, fuckin champ that this little guy is, gave one last push at the very end. He was down by just under 400 with just over an hour to go. He gave one final push the rest of the way, but he just.... ran out of time. Ran out of real estate. No more votes. Final margin 238. It led to a lot of complaining, but let's be real here. Zero cost Mega Man this match. It's an easy win otherwise. Cube and Snake would advance to go up against Cloud and Mewtwo, and by beating Mega Man, a lot of Cube's good will disappeared. This wasn't 2007 anymore; the joke bandwagons didn't have the same appeal. As for Mega Man and his fans, don't worry. Much like Vivi would get his revenge in hilarious fashion in 2013, Mega Man would get his in even funnier fashion. Zero was not going to pull this garbage on the Blue Bomber twice, and what made the 2013 rerun even sweeter is everyone expected Charizard to win. Even the gurus who picked Mega Man to win. You all thought he was losing at some point during that match. I see you workin. So yeah, Mega Man lost here, but it's okay. It was all just a part of the redemption arc. ## Stats and Analysis - Weighted Companion advancing was the **\#7** most surprising result of 2008 Anyone could see the SFF coming from a mile away. Zero was going to get pasted. Snake, on the other hand, was a lock for Round 4, and would definitely get first place. The only question was the fate of LFF'd Mega Man tackling a 9 ton block of steel, and it turned out to be one heck of a brawl. The match started out with Mega Man diving into first place, Snake taking a close second, and Zero getting pasted. WCC was just sort of there. Snake trades places with Mega Man in the next update and never lets go of his lead, while the other two straggle. Mega Man loses ground fast afterward, while WCC's Portal fanbase finally kicks in and pushes the cube up a few percentage points. In thirty minutes, the Weighted Companion Cube scrapes past Mega Man. The Cube maintains a threadbare lead until eight and a half hours into the match, when the morning vote causes the brawlers to change places. Mega man keeps a tiny lead until about lunch time, where his lead hits an apex and falls to WCC. The blue guy tries to catch up at the very end, but he can't chop the cube's infinitesimal lead, and loses by 238 votes. A member of the Noble Nine was taken down by a giant box with hearts on it. And there was much complaining. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I've been so busy celebrating all day that I didn't leave much time for this writeup! So let's jump right on in. X-Stats from Round Two - Mega Man - 29.54% (based on '07 Tidus) - WCC - 25.97% (based on '07 Tidus) - Snake - 35.99% (based on '07 Vivi) - Zero - 23.72% (based on '07 Vivi) Pretty reasonable results all around there... Those are solid numbers, but we're going to have to bend at least three of them. First we'll have to lower MM and Zero a bit to make up for their shared fanbase- but which way do we go? Could Zero be able to rSFF his blue pal, as he appeared to back in 2004, or are we going to see a more standard SFFing of Zero, kind of like what we just saw in Mario/Luigi? Personally I'm leaning toward the SFF option... yes Zero impressed by surviving a high powered onslaught from Vivi, but let's not forgot how easily he was (apparently) LFFed by having two Nintendo guys hanging round in R1, or how he has generally disappointed the last few years. The voters seemed to have brightened up this year as we move further into the bracket: they knew to drop Tifa in order to push Seph through, and were quick to drop Ganon in favor of assuring Samus a win a couple days back. If the Cube threatens, and I've got to think he will, I'm picturing voters once again coming to the rescue by dropping that Zero and going with a hero. Even so, I think he'll have a tougher time of dispatching this joke than Pika did today... this was L's 10th main page Contest poll in the last 13 months, 11 if you count that "who is going to win this year?" question where he featured prominently, so I could see how voters might have tired of the joke. WCC on the other hand is still pretty new and fresh, and has the more dedicated Portal fanbase to fall back on if all else fails. Even so... nay, just can't bring myself to pick the joke, not after today. And as for Snake, well, he's going to destroy everyone, of course. We're on an incredible hot streak for Nintendo overperformances here in this round, which means that as the only Brawl representative Solid's going to have to keep the pace. Rock their world, Snakey! A big Snake win, a tight MM survival, Zero getting pounded, that would look something like... \*stirs the pot very quickly\* - Solid Snake - 38.14% - Mega Man - 23.24% - Weighted Companion Cube - 23.18% - Zero - 15.43% That looks... like Snake has his work cut out for him. But MM is no king of the Day Vote, so he'll pull it off! Ngamer Says: **Snake \> Mega Man** ### Next Day Review Haven't been able to follow the poll today... looks like Mega Man went out to a comfortable lead this morning, and then the Cube went on a big surge out of nowhere? Darn these jokes! Ah well, here's hoping that MM can pull a joke-hate fueled Frog in these last hours while I'm out at the theater. But if not, eh, Cloud and Snake will cook his goose next time around, so nothing to worry too much about. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3296&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=53) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Squall Leonhart vs Sora vs Cloud Strife vs Mewtwo 2008 _source: Squall Leonhart vs Sora vs Cloud Strife vs Mewtwo 2008 (revid 85843)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, November 10th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 6 Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 10th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 42.69% Squall Leonhart - 19.29% Sora - 19.23% Mewtwo - 18.99% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (8pts) - 55.21% Cloud second place (4pts) - 29.08% Mewtwo second place (8pts) - 2.86% Mewtwo first place (4pts) - 0.74% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 84.29% (36,163) Mewtwo - 3.60% (1,545) After seeing L-Block and Weighted Companion Cube back to back, we needed a rest break, and that's what we got here. This poll was literally over in 2 seconds when Mewtwo won the board vote over Cloud. Mewtwo actually stayed with him for a couple minutes before finally getting swamped, which led to perhaps the most boring match of the round. In fact, I'll just say it's the most boring match of the round outright, because the other seven all have something interesting to talk about. This one, not so much. It does make me quite happy given Mewtwo is my favorite Pokemon, though. Only three things are worth discussing, and none are particularly relevant. One is that Mewtwo looked really, really good here after a really subpar performance in round 2. If you go back and look at that match, Midna was within striking distance for 24 hours. One rally and she could have pulled that off. Here, Mewtwo made up for it, which makes sense given the Pokemon sprite and him being the only Nintendo character. Two, and I have no answer for this one, is that Squall can't SFF Sora but Cloud somehow can. In fact Cloud whipped them both so badly that they had a fun little leftover duel for third place, which Squall of course won. If anyone can explain how this weird SFF situation happens, please let me know so I can quote you. Hopefully we can get Sora into Smash Bros so he can finally get one over in the series against Squall. Lastly, and most funny, is how most people expected Yoshi to be here in Sora's place and take an easy second. I mean it does make sense, don't get me wrong: Mewtwo (2007c) VS Yoshi (2007c) Mewtwo has a strength of 23.76. Yoshi has a strength of 32.27. Yoshi wins with 63.19% of the vote! A win of 38,415 with 145,669 total votes cast. But Yoshi never got here. I'm not making fun of anyone or anything, it's just fun looking back at the numbers surrounding old upsets. Final point before I move on. This was one of the only good match pictures all contest. Uncoincidentally, it involved sprites. If I may have my soap box for a sec, I'm pretty much over people telling me I only like the sprite round because they think I enjoy pic sabotage. I like the sprite round because I like the sprite round. It's not difficult to understand. The people saying this never actually submit any pictures of their own, of course, they're just being jackasses for the sake of being jackasses. Sprites are beloved in match pics (outside of Solid Shit) and were never complained about by the vocal minority of whiners until 2010, which is of course when I started submitting stuff. Make your agenda less obvious, crybabies. You enjoyed sprites all along and anyone can check the archives to prove it. That's the thing about picsmith stuff -- anyone can do it. If you think you can do better, be like me and go buy Photoshop, shut the hell up, and do better. I'd bust out the man in the arena line, but it seems inappropriate for such a silly venue as this. It does say a lot about people when they make complaints instead of content, though. ## Stats and Analysis - Mewtwo advancing was the **\#1** most surprising result of 2008 - Mewtwo advancing was also the **\#6** most surprising result of all-time, with the only results beating that are that of L-Block's 2007 Championship run and Charizard's Heart Division championship in 2010. - Mewtwo overperformed by **+4.17%**, the **\#21** most impressive performance of 2008 - This marked the third straight round where Mewtwo defied expectations, having overperformed by even more in Round 1 and then underperforming in Round 2. That match pic up there tells you all you'll need to know about this one. With three Square heroes going up against each other there was bound to be some massive SFF going around, especially with Cloud involved. Tagging along with the Square trio was Mewtwo, whose Round 2 bomb against Midna had raised concerns about his prospects of advancing. However, Mewtwo's chances of advancing were somewhat brighter than many had predicted. As mentioned earlier, Sora and Squall were likely to be hurt by being in the same match as Cloud. Also, there was some talk of a "Pokemon boost" after Pikachu's surprising victory over L-Block earlier in Round 3. Once the match began, it was clear that Mewtwo had put the talk of his Round 2 disappointment behind him. Cloud did his thing, Mewtwo capitalized on the massive SFF beating, and the match was never in doubt after the first few minutes. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction And now for what might very well be the best triple-threat of the whole season! Whooooo. X-Stats from Round Two - Cloud - 44.01% (based on '07 Midna) - Mewtwo - 21.14% (based on '07 Midna) - Squall - 31.38% (based on '07 Fox) - Sora - 30.23% (based on '07 Fox) The trend this round has been for our NN and other elites to redeem themselves for those soft R1 showings, and given that this is going to be a massive SFF situation, you'd think Cloud would be all set to outdo Link's powerhouse performance from earlier in the week. But not so fast! Square SFF can be bad at times, sure, but it still seems to pale in comparison to the kind of vicious Nintendo SFF that Link can lay down on the Warios of the world. So even though he'll be hurting his Kingdom Hearts buddies quite a bit, I can't see them collapsing far enough to let him take a shot at Link's percentage... heck, if he can even manage 45% I'll be thoroughly impressed! Speaking of R3 trends, the biggest of all to this point has been Nintendo once again looking like the champs they've been ever since '05. Link, Mario, Samus, Snake today, and of course being topped off by that incredible stunner by Pikachu... which means that Mewtwo has no choice but to do great today! Yes, Cloud certainly hurt his casual appeal a couple weeks back, but I still think that much of that ugly result needs to be chalked up to Midna's decent Zelda appeal. I was feeling pretty decent about Mew advancing out of this one two days ago, but I feel very good about it after seeing an unhindered Pika unleash that full Pokemon power on L-Block. Let's go Mewtwo! The only question that remains to be answered: Sora, or Squall? Well on the one hand Cloud figures to damage Squall a decent bit more, given how connected FF7 and FF8 would have to be. But on the other hand, he's not going to be held back by Smilin' Squall this time around, which in my mind is going to be worth a ton. Even it out, and I think I still have to give Sora an advantage...but only a small one. If he wins this, I imagine he's going to have to do so with his sick ASV. So if Cloud ruins the competition but Mewtwo improves thanks to Midna's absence while Sora and Squall kill each other all day, we'd be looking at something along the lines of... \*stirs in the pot for two minutes\* - Cloud with 44.51% - Mewtwo with 19.09% - Sora with 18.24% - Squall with 18.16% That looks... weird. But with triple Square it's bound to be, right? Ngamer Says: **Cloud \> Mewtwo** ### Next Day Review Haha, Mewtwo goes from 17% on Cloud to 23%... still on Cloud! Golly, I gave Midna plenty of credit for holding him down, but even so I didn't see any way for that crazy Pokemon to crack 20%, not with legit competition like Squall and Sora in the picture. I guess this is the ultimate vindication for the "sore thumb" theory... not that anyone should have really doubted it, but still, yikes. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3297&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=54) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Kirby vs Master Chief vs Dante vs Leon Kennedy 2008 _source: Kirby vs Master Chief vs Dante vs Leon Kennedy 2008 (revid 85845)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 7 Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 27.50% Master Chief - 25.69% Dante - 25.29% Leon Kennedy - 21.48% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Kirby first place (8pts) - 13.19% Kirby second place (4pts) - 10.39% Dante second place (8pts) - 30.76% Dante first place (4pts) - 7.39% - **Advancing Prediction:** Kirby - 23.58% (10,117) Dante - 38.15% (16,367) TESTOSTERONE! Very few matches in contest history have more MANHOOD than this one, and make no mistake. Kirby has all the others beat in T levels and they all know it. Jokes aside, this was a heavily debated match pre-contest and mid-contest. Most people expected this particular fourpack, but if you check the guru numbers, people were just all over the place. The favored outcome pre-contest, believe it or not, was Master Chief \> Dante. The "Dante" part of that favored outcome was highly in dispute, with Kirby only barely having less support for second place. Master Chief was arguably the star of the contest in 2007, and if he stayed at that level, him being a favorite here made sense. The contest itself to this point didn't provide a whole lot of clarity, so it was a cool match where no one really knew what would happen going in. We only knew two definitive things. One, Dante was going to finish ahead of Leon Kennedy. We had already seen this once in 2007 and in round 2 this year. That was a mortal lock. The other certainty was Kirby was absolutely finishing top 2. The main question is whether or not Master Chief would be there with him. Kirby and Chief had a match together in round 2 where they were only 1500 votes apart, but Kirby finished in first place. Some argued that Big Boss and Raiden leeched Chief, and that Chief could have won that one with a better draw. So come match time, we had pretty much all figured out it would be Kirby, Chief, and Dante in some order for top three, with Leon having no shot. And as you can see by the Oracle picks, Kirby was the first place favorite. The match itself was... kind of a dud, all things considered, but it was still fun to hype up. Kirby just wrecked shop right from the jump and put the first place debate to bed immediately. No one was catching him, proving Kirby had THE BIGGEST BALLS OF ALL in our testosterone-fueled Ertyu Special. The other lock was Leon in last, which happened as expected. The fun came in the second place duel. You guys know my feelings on second place duels mattering more than first place by now, so no need to relive it. This was a really fun one though for about an hour. Dante and Master Chief did their thing, talked a bunch of smack in deep voices, gave us some over the top cut scenes, saved a few babes, had a few drinks, had a few laughs, had a few fights, and generally did what dudebros like to do when they're having a disagreement. You settle it like men, and then shake hands and move on. On this day, it would be Dante accepting the brofist-hug-handshake combo from Master Chief, because after an hour the Chief just didn't have it in him. He fell off pretty badly overnight, and his usual ASV fire just wasn't there. I know getting the 2007 magic back was going to be almost impossible, but I was hoping for a tiny bit more warrior from him on his way out this year. But if you're gonna lose, you might as well lose to characters that are just as cool are you are. Semper Fi, Master Chief. This sent Kirby and Dante along for a match with Sephiroth and Sonic. Easy match, right? Turns out this contest had a couple more surprises left before it was done. ## Stats and Analysis - Kirby advancing was the **\#10** most surprising result of 2008 - Dante advancing was the **\#25** most surprising result of 2008 As in Round 2, Kirby was the obvious standout among three "mature" characters, and emerged as a clear favorite to advance, while the other spot was pretty much up for grabs. Kirby came out of the gate on fire, seemingly having gained strength after his first two matches. By the end of the Power Hour, he had built up a lead of over 900 votes, and he coasted to a 5000+ victory. The other story of this match was Master Chief's continued fall from grace. After his big performance in 2007, the Chief looked vulnerable from the start of this contest, and never managed to regain his former strength. After battling for the first half-hour of the match, he fell behind Dante in the race for second, and was never really in contention after that. Dante crushed Chief during the night and into the morning, and built a lead of over 3300 by the afternoon, before eventually winning by 2900. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Speaking of sore thumbs, we've got another today! But even better, we've got a great chance to continue that amazing streak of Nintendo overperformances. Can Kirby pull it off? X-Stats from Round Two - Kirby - 17.86% (based on '07 Big Boss) - Master Chief - 17.53% (based on '07 Big Boss) - Dante - 30.64% (based on '07 Riku) - Leon - 29.17% (based on '07 Riku) Whoa, BB sure is a whole different character from the guy we saw in '05 and the start of '07. Adjust for that, and this one goes right back to being a four way pick 'em. Weak as Master Chief has looked, we know for a fact that Dante and Leon are going to be holding each other back at least somewhat. Set them up for a 1v1 tomorrow and I take Dante easy, and I'd even be sure to take him in a "fair" 4 way situation, but as is those two share the same company, same character design, and leave MC free to run unchecked with the Xbox vote. It shouldn't be a blowout, but I see the Chief being able to advance ahead of Team Capcom, though he might need his ASV to do so. As for Dante vs Leon, well that's no longer really in question, is it? Mistaaaa Kennedy was fantastic in the opening hours last round but Dante soon righted the ship and proceeded to run away from him for the next 20 hours. REFAQs or not, there's unfortunately just not any reasonable way for Leon not to finish this poll in the basement. The odd thing is that Leon is going to decide the final result though, in some way. You see much of his strength comes from being the only M-rated major seller from the GameCube's library, and so even though Kirby gets to look all cute and pink against three mature action stars once again, this time around there figures to be at least a little LFF limiting his damage. How much will that matter, though? Probably not a whole ton... Leon beat out Pikachu by 9% back in R2 of last year, after all. Originally I was planning to take MC for the win over Kirby due to the overlap, but with the way Nintendo's been on fire I'm going to back off that "upset" now and continue to support the puffball. Yeah, so even though all four of these characters are probably very close in natural strength, I don't see any way for this to be the epic 4-way "anyone could win!" battle that would be so awesome to watch. It might LOOK like that during the dead of night, but I've got to imagine and MC and Kirby's strong Days will push them through if it comes to that. But if its still pretty close all the way around, we're talking about like... \*pots and stirs and spits\* - Kirby - 26.17% - Master Chief - 25.75% - Dante - 25.06% - Leon - 23.02% Looking mighty fine! I guess. Ngamer Says: **Kirby \> Master Chief** ### Next Day Review This is seriously pretty upsetting. I've always despised MC and had hearty laughs at his failures, but after last season I had no choice but to respect him (in this format, at least). So I go out and give him credit for the first time ever, and he thanks me by doing THIS... not only do I get this pick wrong, but it's the mistake that eliminates me from the Guru. Bah! I mean, losing to Dante would be weird (considering he beat him by 6% last year in a fair, non-Block match), but at least understandable/acceptable post-DMC4. But to never even be in contention against Dante, in a match where he's being limited by Leon, in a match where there's no one to share your Xbox fanbase? That's just flat out pathetic. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3298&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=55) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Auron vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sephiroth vs Kratos 2008 _source: Auron vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Sephiroth vs Kratos 2008 (revid 85846)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 8 Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 36.49% Sonic the Hedgehog - 26.00% Auron - 20.41% Kratos - 17.47% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sephiroth first place (8pts) - 50.42% Sephiroth second place (4pts) - 29.56% Sonic second place (8pts) - 22.90% Sonic first place (4pts) - 16.66% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sephiroth - 79.98% (34,314) Sonic - 39.56% (16,972) Speaking of testosterone, this was our second match in a row featuring four shit-kicking badasses. And before you tell me Sonic isn't badass, you are wrong. Save it. I take back what I said about the Division 6 final. This was the most boring match of the round, because the result of Sephiroth \> Sonic was a literal 100% guarantee. Sonic was never going to challenge for first place here -- Cloud showed us how far ahead of Sonic the FF7 gang is back in 2003 -- and thanks to Auron sharing the poll with Sephiroth, he was not going to be able to follow up his round 2 upset of Sonic with a sequel. Thanks for being a good format, 4ways. You suck. No one knew it at the time, but this result helped set up one of strangest upsets we've ever had in contest lore. Too bad 2008 has kind of been lost in the memory hole (thanks 4ways, you suck), or else Sonic's awful showing this year would be mentioned along the likes of Donkey Kong and Magus. More on that when we get to it. As for a round synopsis, it was pretty decent! We had a Noble Nine character get upset, two really fun matches involving joke characters, the fever pitch of ZackFAQs, Mega Man X annihilating fools, Crono and Vincent on a collision course, and my favorite Pokemon balling out of control. As much as I despise the format, the results have been fun enough to keep me interested in writing these things. Moving on. ## Stats and Analysis Despite the Auron\>Sonic result from the previous round, this match was a foregone conclusion. Auron was going to get SFF'ed by Sephiroth, and Sonic stood out from the three mature characters (AKA STF). The only question mark was Sonic's performance. Sandbag was no longer around, so if Sonic underperformed, he'd have no excuses. And for the first (and only) time in the contest, the blue blur actually performed to the levels which he suppossed to do in the first place. Both Sephiroth and Sonic overperformed by 2%, whereas Auron was hit hard by the SFF, causing him to only have a 1500 lead on Kratos. Because of Sonic's "impressive" performance, any talk on Dante or Kirby possibly beating Sonic in the next round pretty much died after this match. That said, the division finals were over. Provided if Crono beats Vincent and Sonic doesn't choke, it looked like we would have the first Noble Nine elite eight since 2004. Lastly, no Sonic match can be complete without the annual bad Sonic advancing prediction. No one was going to stop Sonic making it out of his division with Sephiroth in the picture. Sonic's advancing prediction was not only almost the same as Auron's advancing prediction from Round 2, but Sephiroth had twice as many brackets carrying him out of this divsion than Sonic. Not much faith put into SEGA's mascot nowadays. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction But enough venting, we've got a new, hopefully less disgusting result to predict! X-Stats from Round Two - Auron - 31.98% (based on '07 Sub-Zero) - Sonic - 29.69% (based on '07 Sub-Zero) - Sephiroth - 39.24% (based on '07 Jill) - Kratos - 28.93% (based on '07 Jill) I like the Subby-based numbers (especially since they result in Sandbag falling under the fodder line) but those Jill-based babies seem a touch high... she appears to have collapsed somewhat against such tough R2 competition. Can't blame her though, as these were three very daunting opponents- not even REFAQs could make up for that. Some people are trying to come up with ways to validate tonight's match as somehow in doubt, but... eh, I just can't see it. We've already seen the kind of beatdown Seph can apply when he decides he wants to take a match seriously, and even though Auron is sure to hold up better than Tifa managed, it's still got the potential to get ugly. If that was all that Sonic had going in his favor I'd probably still be rocking this upset, but... there's a bag in the way. Everyone wants to dismiss Sandbag as a joke and forget he ever existed, and though I understand that line of thought, I don't think it's very wise. Stupid as it was, that thing exhibited legitimate Nintendoish, SSB proxy-style vote patterns and strength. I just can't visualize something that so clearly symbolized SSB Brawl not taking a decent bite out of Sonic's fanbase. With that out of the picture and Sonic now being the one to stand out from the mature badass crowd like a cute lil' Kirby, the ball is clearly in his court. With all these factors in his favor, if that hedgehog can't take the rock to the hole tonight then heck, it'd be more embarrassing than Master Chief. And that's saying alot! Kratos has impressed me a decent bit the last two times out, but I feel pretty confident picking him for last place regardless. His appealing character design won't win him many votes against cool customers like Sonic/Auron/Seph, the FFX star limits his PS2 base, and I get this odd feeling that Auron's somehow going to do something respectable despite the SFFing. So yeah, 4th place seems a good bet. A big Seph win, then fairly tight races between the others ought to give us something along the lines of... \*pots once and stirs twice\* - Sephiroth - 35.85% - Sonic the Hedgehog - 24.60% - Auron - 21.51% - Kratos (God of War) - 18.04% That looks... reasonable, I suppose. Cloud's 50-18 beating of Auron gets me a little worried, but I've just got this hunch that he holds up way way better in this one for some reason. Ngamer Says: **Sephiroth \> Sonic** ### Next Day Review Well, what do you know- Sonic can still impress! You just need to put about five factors in his favor, and about three factors going against every other option, and a solid pic advantage, and for Smurf to lose his soul to the devil, and then heck, Sonic can almost score 29% of the vote! Well that's wonderful for him, but pretty awful for me... my bracket went down the toilet last night, and now Sonic's desperately pulling the handle on my Oracle season. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3299&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=56) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Zack Fair vs Mario vs Mega Man X 2008 _source: Link vs Zack Fair vs Mario vs Mega Man X 2008 (revid 85847)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, November 13th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 13th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 39.20% Mario - 22.41% Mega Man X - 20.93% Zack Fair - 17.78% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (16pts) - 61.74% Link second place (8pts) - 13.32% Mario second place (16pts) - 40.90% Mario first place (8pts) - 9.96% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 75.06% (32,203) Mario - 50.86% (21,820) Until my dying breath, I will always believe Zack could have caught an unstoppable bandwagon had he pulled this thing off. The next match would have been Link, Zack, Samus, and Crono. Link would have SFFd Samus into the ground, and who knows how the Zack/Crono thing would have gone with all the ZackFAQs and FF7 v Chrono Trigger fuel behind him? From there, it would have been Link, Zack, Snake, and Cloud. Zack probably finishes last place there thanks to Blonde Cloud \> Black Cloud, but still! We've seen crazier results! In all seriousness, as a lover of bandwagons and silly fun, this one hurt. He was so close, yet so far away. Let's start with Link's continued and insidious domination over this contest. 40% in a 4way poll in the quarterfinals against this competition is ludicrous. Just ludicrous. This was some '85 Bears playoff run type shit. Past that is where the fun was. One of these three Nintendo titans was bound to get dicked over, and it was apparent very quickly that Mega Man X was not going to be able to hack it. He was somewhat close to Mario for a little while -- and I will always maintain Mario has more overlap with Link than the Mega Man series -- but he fell off to a distant SFF-fueled third place. This left a clear Link \> Mario \> MMX order for Zack to try and squeeze into, but he just started so damn slow in this poll. When this thing started, Zack was actually in dead last. This spelled his doom right from the jump, because it showed his support was more organic than joke type. He had a bandwagon, but not the kind of bandwagon he would need to work miracles. He was also sitting there behind two characters that were being SFFd into the ground by Link. Still, he gave us an incredible effort and went out almost exactly like he does at the end of Crisis Core. First, he had to come back on Mega Man X, which took quite awhile. He was dead last early, but the gap with X was only 60 votes. It took almost an hour just to erase that lead, and when he did he was unable to make any headway at all. He and X stayed tied for another couple hours, before the typical Europe vote did X in and Zack started going to work. We should pause here and give X some credit for getting this far, and note that him being SFFd twice is not indicative of what his actual strength is. To this day, he is solidly either upper midcard or near-elite. I doubt that ever changes, because the guy is just too damn cool. The entire reason we all fell in love with him in the 90s was because he could do so many more things that vanilla Mega Man just couldn't do. HADOUKEN! The funniest thing happened when Zack came back and finally caught up to X for good -- he was less than 300 votes away from Mario himself. Hey if he could come back once, why not aim for the king? It seemed unthinkable, but why the hell not go for it and give ZACKFAQs the match they all wanted? And give us the match we wanted he did. It took all night of chipping away and chipping away some more, but Zack managed to claw his way up to Mario. Mario! FREAKING MARIO! It was insane! 100% of gurus picked Link to get first (obviously), but over 75% picked Mario to get second. 40 people picked Mega Man X. TWO picked Zack. Two! More people picked Liquid Freaking Snake to pull this magic than Zack. Yet there he was, tied with Mario, with the morning vote yet to come. We all figured the match was over right about here, but then the absolute unthinkable happened. Zack started winning the morning vote and building a lead! It's hard to put this in perspective for those who weren't there, but a lot of you might remember Undertale since it was pretty recent. You know how happy Undertale fans were at the entire tidal wave in that contest? Remember how there was a counter bandwagon? Had Zack pulled this off, it would been all the love and none of the counter bandwagon. That's how hard we were pulling for him to miracle his way into second place here. We all know the rest of the story. Zack only built up a 150 vote lead before getting stalled with the morning vote, and though it took Mario the entire morning, he did ultimately take control of the poll and slowly (very slowly) build a lead for himself. It was so slow in fact that Mario only led by 350 going into the ASV, which let people hold out hope that Zack might still pull it off. When Zack started cutting some votes during the beginnings of the ASV, people lost it all over again. Unfortunately, around 4pm Mario finally stopped dicking around and ended the match. He did it by bludgeoning poor Mega Man X to death and stealing a bunch of support from him, but a win is a win and you do what you have to do to survive and advance. Mario turned a pretty close match into an 1100 vote win, but Zack did have one final bit of fight left in him to prevent the final margin from being bigger. Oddly enough, this match played out almost exactly like Crisis Core, right down to the ending and Zack refusing to quit. It was like Rocky Balboa meets his contest end or something, and it was remarkable to watch. Mario may have won here, but he didn't win our hearts. Zack, bottom's up to you bro. You're the Star of the Contest. For those hoping Mario would get his comeuppance for this, an old enemy of his was waiting in the wings, and this time he had friends. ## Stats and Analysis If you needed any more proof that Link was going to tear this contest a new bunghole... tadah! Aside from Link, every other contender in this match had a pretty interesting run. Zack Fair of ZackFAQs fame managed to wow the board by getting some excellent numbers on the Hero of Time. (Nothing like Blonde Haired Zack, though.) Mario had just gone through what was quite possibly the worst division run he's ever had. The poster boy for bad bracket placement, he endured many underperformances thanks to our good friend SFF. Mega Man X decided to rub some salt on the wounds, and gave Mr. Nintendo two dangerously close matches, and proved that he's more than worthy of comparison to his classic counterpart. With two heavy hitters in the match with him, and Mario with the largest of all monkeys on his back, Link could have taken anyone out of this match with him! The initial rush of bracket votes gave Mario respectable lead for second place, but Zack was making cuts. He pushed past Mega Man X in the early morning, and caught fire at around four and eventually took the lead. Mario would take the lead back in the following hours, but the two would stay amazingly close to each other until the ASV, when Mario built a basically insurmountable lead. Mario may have won, but his fate was sealed. Despite the almost memetic nature of his strength, Zack was definitely no Vincent. Considering he was facing either him or Crono in the next round, there was absolutely no hope for the poor plumber. At the very least, he could put up a good fight while Link laughs maniacally at the top. And with that out of the way, quite possibly the most hyped match of the contest was set to begin. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Bah, another bad Oracle pick. Got to reverse the trend! And how will I do that? Why, by picking the opposite of what I've been doing all year and finally putting a little faith in Mario, that's how. Let's hit it. X-Stats from Round Two - Link - 47.63% (based on '07 Duke) - Zack - 28.59% (based on '07 Duke) - Mario - 36.49% (based on '07 Liquid) - MMX - 31.00% (based on '07 Liquid) Ehh, both Duke and Liquid were clearly stronger in '08 than what we saw in 2007, but that is countered partially by their collapsing somewhat against the tough competition they ran up against in R3. So all in all these look like pretty reasonable numbers to me. As you see, Zack's got an upward climb ahead of him no matter how you try to tweak that. On the plus side for Zack, he's got SFF working in his favor here, and in fact it's working overtime. Link's the King of SFF and has already laid a hurting on both Mario and MM, Zack will be the one standing out from the crowd, and Square always brings its A game against strong Nintendo competition, as I've mentioned many times. On the down side... these are REALLY tough competitors, and we've already seen the very dedicated fanbase of MGS crack under this kind of pressure. On the plus side, the FF7 base is about two steps up the rung from MGS... on the down side, Link is about five steps up from Luigi! Sure it would make for a great story, but nay, can't see Zack ever being in contention against Mario tomorrow- I don't think third place is entirely out of reach though, assuming X feels the Nintendo heat and weakens a bit from where we saw him last round. Regarding Mario v MMX, I'm likewise not buying into the upset hype. X had the win handed to him on a silver platter last round (is there any character who could possibly disadvantage Mario more than his own brother?) and yet he failed me by not taking advantage of it. I'm now convinced that it was Mudkip more than Zelda holding the plumber back in R2, and since Zack is an independent draw like Liquid, I'd be surprised if X manages to get much closer than he did last round. That leaves us with Link vs Mario, which... shouldn't be much worth talking about, really! The last time we witnessed Link v Mario v FF7 we were shocked that Link was only able to score 62% directly on the Nintendo mascot. I've got to imagine Link extends that percentage at least slightly in this one just because Mario and MM share deeper NES roots, but as I've discussed it would take a pounding more along the lines of the Battle Royale before I'd seriously consider either of those two catching up to him, so he ought to remain fairly safe. In summary, while I'll admit to this match having excellent triple threat potential, I just don't think we'll get that lucky and the far more likely result is a 2 - 3 - 4 finish that, while fairly close, is never really in doubt. With that in mind, let's see what five minutes of pot stirring will result in. - Link - 38.22% - Mario - 23.33% - Mega Man X - 20.13% - Zack Fair - 18.32% That looks like a result I have can some real confidence in! Too bad even when I've been able to say that I'm still wrong half the time this season... Ngamer Says: **Link \> Mario** ### Next Day Review Sore Thumb Factor strikes again! As I was talking about yesterday, even though I acknowledged how being the only non-Nintendo option would be important for Zack, I downplayed its significance just because he doesn't LOOK like a sore thumb in the match pics. Kirby and Sonic literally stood out like fuzzy, puffy sore thumbs while Zack just looked like one of two cool dudes with swords. But I guess I was wrong, as has so often happened this season! It's looking like Mario has built himself a big enough ASV cushion to survive Zack's SNV without much trouble, but still, heck of a showing from this black-haired cloud, and it will be very interesting to see how he holds up when we switch back to 1v1s next year. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3300&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=57) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Samus Aran vs Vincent Valentine vs Crono vs Pikachu 2008 _source: Samus Aran vs Vincent Valentine vs Crono vs Pikachu 2008 (revid 85852)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, November 14th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 14th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 31.71% Vincent Valentine - 25.62% Crono - 25.11% Pikachu - 17.69% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Samus first place (16pts) - 29.31% Samus second place (8pts) - 15.74% Crono second place (16pts) - 14.50% Crono first place (8pts) - 9.11% - **Advancing Prediction:** Samus - 45.05% (19,328) Crono - 23.61% (10,129) This is it. The most hyped match of the contest, the best match of the contest, and the entire reason I finally got up off my ass and did these writeups after 12 years. I didn't like this contest overall, but 12 years with no PCA is just awful and I'm sorry for that. And of all the random blurbs you see out there, this is somehow the one match on the wiki that had nothing before today. It's time to fix that. To understand why this thing was so hyped for a full year, you don't merely have to go back to 2007. That would be easy. You have to go back to the beginning. The final of this match had the stars aligning for it for more than 6 years. People talk of bandwagons and rallies. In 2002, Crono was the rallied bandwagon. Mario was the heavy, heavy favorite that year, followed by characters like Link, Cloud, Sonic, and Solid Snake. Crono was no where to be found, and more importantly, neither were things like x-stats, Oracle picks, match trends, update charts, guru contests, and board odds projects. We were just a bunch of kids cheering on our favorites every match, ignorant of everything else. It was a better time back then. I don't want to go off on my usual tangent about how advanced metrics are the worst thing to ever happen in sports, so I simply move on. In that contest, Crono was the star of the whole show. The little 5 seed that could. People expected him to win his first match, and that was about it. Most people thought Dante would beat him. Crono won. Most people picked the 1 seed, Lara Croft, to beat him. Crono utterly demolished her. Then, right after the back to back to back trio that gave us our best 3 day run in contest history -- Samus \> Sonic, Sephiroth \> Mega Man, Mario \> Cloud -- Crono went out and pulled another upset, this time over Solid Snake. A looooot of people were pulling hard for Snake that year. Crono beat him with ease. This set up the first of many Crono vs Mario duels, and by the time that match happened, Mario was the contest villain. He straight up cheated to beat Cloud, and back then CJayC was such an idiot about catching cheating that he just up and allowed a phantom 500 vote spike around dinner time to stand, even though there was literal visual proof of the script used to do it. Before it happened, a user went around posting a screenshot of the script, with an image saying there was no way he would allow a crossdresser to win (his words, not mine) and that there would be a 500 vote spike. I'll never understand how that one stood, but I digress, and Cloud did eventually get a pittance of revenge anyway. By the time the Mario v Crono match happened, people were losing their minds. Mario had to lose that contest. The poll was close for awhile, but Mario was proving to be a bridge too far, and built up a lead of 1000 votes going into the final few hours. You guys know the rest. Crono started pulling off one of the most clutch comebacks we'd ever seen, erased the lead, and then CJayC took 400 votes away before admitting a few years later that Crono had 3000 scripted votes that day. If Crono cheated fine, but we know Mario cheated one round earlier and nothing was done. It just left the entire thing feeling incomplete. A year later, Mario and Crono were blatantly set up for a rematch, and the saga of that match could be made into a documentary at this point: Not only was the match started early for some inexplicable reason, not only did it last past 24 hours with no warning that it would, but it went 5 minutes past the usual closing time (which was 1am est back then) to "check for cheating". After all, Mario erased an 800 lead in 2 hours when trends were pretty close before then. That just isn't natural. Did CJayC find any cheating, even though there was yet another provable script being floated around? Of course not. Mario cheated in that match, and CJayC ignored it. He also ignored the cheating against Cloud. I will absolutely never be convinced otherwise. We know too much about contests and how they work now to look back at the numbers involved and think of them as anything but impossible. I had even picked Mario in 2003 and was rooting for him to win, and it's the dirtiest I ever felt in being right on a match. It's finally getting with the dream girl you've been chasing, only to find out later she has herpes. It's just gross. If you weren't there, you'll never understand the unreal meltdown that occurred. True fact -- there is no 24 hour period in that match that Crono lost. Crono's luck wouldn't get much better in the years to come. In 2004, he finally got his win over Mario, but it was meaningless. That contest was among the worst we've ever had, and Mario went berserker in 2005 and got his win back in spades anyway. In 2006, Crono hit a low point when he blew a 2200 vote lead against Sonic, which I believe was the biggest comeback in contest history to that point. The dude just didn't have that 2002-2003 magic anymore, and it would still get worse. Enter Vincent, who has always been a Final Fantasy 7 fan favorite (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/845-who-is-your-favorite-final-fantasy-vii-character), but never could make the contest field before 2005. His debut however was a huge success. He got thrown into one of the most difficult divisions we've ever had, and won the thing despite being in three straight debatable matches. Well Kerrigan wasn't debatable to anyone with sense, but people argued for weeks that she would win that one. I still couldn't tell you why. Vincent destroyed Kerrigan, then had close wins against Dante and Squall before facing... Crono. Vincent had a very respectable 55-45 loss there, and it began the hype train that maybe Vincent would be the guy that cracked the Noble Nine. For the unaware, the Noble Nine is a winning streak. Nine characters -- Link, Cloud, Mario, Samus, Sephiroth, Crono, Mega Man, Solid Snake, and Sonic the Hedgehog -- never lost a match to anyone outside of their group until 2007, which I'll get into in a bit, but the point here is that the hype around breaking the winning streak was palpable. People talked about it every year, and more importantly, people wanted to be on the right side of history and pick it in their brackets. Every year, there was so much hype around any match one of them might lose to an outsider. Would this be the year? In 2006, we got some more hints. Sonic, Crono, and Mega Man all looked like monkey trash. Vincent and Ganondorf, two characters hyped up to be Noble Nine breakers for years, had a really fun round 1 match. Vincent won it close, then Vincent turned around in round 2 and had a 52-48 loss to Sonic. That one perked some ears up, though in fairness we saw something similar in the past and we know how that turned out: That's the thing. The hype of being a breaker has ruined a lot of these characters. Not Vincent, though. And that's when the absurdity of 2007 hit. L-Block aside, one of the most hyped matches of that entire contest, if not the most hyped match, was Link, Vincent, Crono, and Zero. The match itself was basically a mortal lock to happen, and the hype surrounding that thing was palpable. I helped make sure of that, because I was sick of everyone obsessing over the Noble Nine's winning streak and whether or not a loss in a 4way would be "legitimate" or not. You would think these characters are Board 8's actual children with how much that streak was defended by some people. It was embarrassing then and it's especially embarrassing to look back on it all. Not our finest hour, guys. In contest lore, Vincent/Crono isn't what Mario/Crono is, and frankly nothing can be, but Vincent/Crono certainly comes close. It's an all-time series of matches, and the 2007 match was dope. Crono looked early on like he would reclaim the old glory, and jumped out to an 1150 vote lead overnight. Vincent then spent the rest of the match swinging nearly 3000 votes his way, and that was that. At the time, a lot of people claimed this didn't actually break the streak and that Crono lost due to the format. In 2020 I'm inclined to agree with that logic, but at the time, I felt like the streak was over and people should stop talking about it. I found the argument to be incredibly dull. I've gotten some new perspective in my old age, so I can see where people were coming from back then. Still, a loss is a loss and Crono was the first guy in the Noble Nine to lose to an outsider, regardless of format. That will never change, and frankly it's better that it happened to Crono under these circumstances. Do you guys not get that without this match, L-Block would have been the one to break the streak, and it would have come against Solid Snake and Sonic? I'll take Crono losing to Vincent over ever having to type that sentence again. Oh and not to brag, buuuuuuut.... 52 of us called our shot and got it right. Crono looked terrible for years, was trending down, and Vincent was trending up and had a match against 3 characters who are titans on Nintendo systems. All the makings were there. Which finally, at last, brings us to 2008. Vincent and Crono's duel was hyped for good reason, and the other two characters would be Samus and Pikachu instead of Link and Zero. Those are acceptable substitutes and wouldn't get in the way. All that was left to do was to finally have the match itself, and these two definitely came in ready to throw down. In the first hours of the match, the trend mirrored 2007. Last year, Crono built up a lead over 1100. This year, he built up a lead of about 950 -- almost to the hour. A lot of people figured the match was over at this point, not because Crono was winning, but because the year prior Vincent was able to swing 3000 votes. People were expecting the comeback this time, and with Crono unable to build an equal or bigger lead than last year, a lot of people lamented the inevitable. We had seen the guy get beat in these close debated matches for long now. Right on cue, Vincent started his push. The numbers from 2007 to 2008 were almost exactly the same, which felt so bizarre. At 7:30 am both years, Crono's lead was chopped all the way down to 350. Vincent's win felt inevitable at this point, especially given Chrono Trigger's historical ineptitude with the day vote contrasted with FF7's day vote being really good. But then, the most unthinkable thing of all happened. Crono this year said screw this, we're not rolling over and dying this time. Vincent got stuck at 300, and though he pushed the lead below 300 for a bit, he was just.... kind of stuck there. We all assumed an inevitable day vote would push Vincent over the top, but it just wasn't coming. Crono kept stalling, and stalling, and stalling, and hour after hour, update after update, we were stuck in this bizarre phantom zone of Crono holding this 250-350 vote lead. To give you an idea of how insane the board was during all this, Vincent was the favorite and though a lot of us wanted the guy to win for our brackets (he was the favorite, after all), it wasn't with the typical fervor. As this madness kept going, more and more people remembered the old wounds and wanted to see Crono finally pull one of these things out. The match stayed in this period of odd flux until the ASV, where Crono was still nursing a 250 vote lead. This in and of itself is a miracle given the guy's trends and how the match went down last year. By the time the ASV hit in 2007, the match was already over. Vincent had come back by then, led by over 100, and used the ASV to end the match. In 2008, it once again looked like Vincent was going to use the ASV to put this thing to bed, much to the dismay of pretty much every Crono supporter other than red sox. He was the one guy on Board 8 who never lost hope, and he deserves props for that. Vincent pulled a 166 vote update out of his ass, his highest since early in the match, and that looked like the beginning of the inevitable. It wasn't, but it looked like it. Crono fought like hell, but Vincent literally tied the match up within a couple hours. From there, Crono pulled off the unthinkable for the second time in this match. Instead of Vincent rising to heaven and ending the match like he did at this time last year, Crono refused to quit. Vincent quickly built up a lead of 100, and then just got... stuck there for two hours. And even as Vincent finally started increasing his lead a bit heading into the evening vote, it was never by much and Crono kept fighting back at him. It wasn't until nearly 9pm, with a mere three hours to go, that Vincent breached the 150 vote barrier. Last year, his lead at that time was well over 1400. Obviously, times had changed, and the final three hours were just a mad rush to the finish line. For the next hour of the poll, Vincent looked like he had this thing on lockdown. He slowly increased his lead to 200, and though he and Crono were both really going for it, the clock was running out. I'd say votes were drying up, but there was definite rallying going on. One of the most entertaining parts of this match is that Samus, the character I have yet to even mention thusfar in this writeup and the one who actually won first place, was getting her winning percentage wrecked here. Check out the trend graph and how much of the green was below her actual trend line while all this was going on. It's one of the funniest visuals to come out of this contest. With two hours to go and Vincent up by 200, this thing seemed like a done deal. Even worse for Crono is that the usual Chrono Trigger second night vote wasn't showing up, so while Crono managed to stop the bleeding, Vincent wasn't losing any ground. The 200 vote lead stayed at 200 for a solid hour; as entertaining as this was, it looked bleak for the Crono faithful. The final hour was absolutely wild, and it brought us all back to those childhood days of just cheering for favorites regardless of anything else. First update, Vincent brought his lead from 184 to 192. From there it was all a blur, and the explanation for what happened is easy -- BOARD 8 RALLIED THEIR BALLS OFF. We had seen enough of Crono getting his poor heart broken. Enough of cheating only being enforced one way. Enough choke jobs, enough blatant bracket rigging to always see Mario, enough nonsense. We were going to finally give Crono his moment or fuckin die trying. The next 4 updates went -20, -30, -30, -30 to get the lead under 100. Vincent then stalled to keep his head for an update, but it was postponing the inevitable. BAH GAWD THAT FROG'S MUSIC! BUSINESS IS ABOUT TO PICK UP! For the last half hour of this match, Board 8 rallied so hard and so well that it went far beyond a simple rally in hopes of helping one character win. This was six years of pent up frustration at always seeing Crono get dicked over and pushed around, and while Vincent himself isn't to blame for a lot of Crono's contest history, this rally felt like helping the bullied kid suplex their tormentors and justifiably crack some skulls open. The next three updates were -20, -20, and -30 to tie the match up with 10 minutes to go. God himself wasn't getting in Crono's way at this point, and even if the good lord above tried, Crono has time travel on his side and Dr Strange probably would have let him borrow the Eye of Agamotto just this once. Crono deserved this. Nothing was getting in the way. Not this time! The penultimate update was won by Crono with a totally insane 146 vote push, giving him a 59 vote lead and basically ending this match. He put out 100 more votes in the final five minutes just to be sure, and that was that. Crono finally won one of these damn things. A weird, hyped, close, heavily debated match finally went his way. No cheating, no phantom time extensions, no one-sided scripts, no bullshit, no nothing. Crono won. It was real. It actually happened. Crono's final push was so laughably insane that he didn't just pull the clutch comeback on Vincent. Samus got 1058 votes in the final hour of this poll. Crono got 1191. That's how bad Board 8 wanted this, and remember, this was a time when rallying was REALLY hard to do because of the high vote totals. This wasn't like when we pushed Mega Man ahead of Charizard, Mario ahead of Samus (sorry but I had to do it!), or Resident Evil 2 ahead of Bloodborne. This took a borderline miracle to pull off, but hey. Board 8 was not going to be denied here. Not this time. Crono's reward for pulling this off? He, yet again, had to stare down his oldest of enemies -- FREAKING MARIO. But this time, Crono was bringing friends with him. Samus and Link didn't want any of that smoke. In the long run, we all know this didn't stop the overall decline of Crono. We know what happened against Missingno and Pikachu. We all know about the laughably awful Rivalry Rumble. Doesn't matter. Nothing will ever change how great we all felt when Crono pulled this thing off. The unintended consequence is that this match basically ended Vincent's contest career as an elite. Not that it matters. No one cares. This match was, and still is, a celebration of the greatest contest underdog these things will ever have. For the record, I will never be convinced under any circumstances that Chrono Trigger wasn't on track to win the 2015 contest before rallies happened. I am in favor of those rallies, you all know this, but the board explosion would have been nuts had Chrono Trigger of all games annihilated Ocarina in the final. There is a universe where that happens. I wonder what it's like there? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction This sets us up for Link/Mario/Samus/Vincent. Wait, or do I mean Link/Mario/Samus/*Crono*? Let's look closer... X-Stats from Round Three - Samus - 32.94% (based on '07 Gordon) - Vincent - 30.14% (based on '07 Gordon) - Crono - 32.97% (based on '07 Alucard) - Pikachu - 29.85% (based on '07 Alucard) Oh my, we're in for a real slugfest just based on those numbers! However, it seemed fairly obvious that Gordon has had a nice boost since '07, so to keep those legit you'd have to push Sammy and Vince up at least a couple points... that puts Samus out of danger but fortunately moves VV directly into Crono's range. So here we go again! As I'm sure everyone remembers, Crono jumped out to a very big lead on Vincent last season before giving it all back and then some to lose by 1.2%. Let's look at some pros and cons for Vincent here in '08: - beat Crono by 1.2% 13 months ago - lost to Crono by 10% in a legit 1v1 back in '05 - won't have Link hurting Crono's Hero of Time/sword-wielding fanbase, or Zero hurting Crono's SNES fanbase - WILL have Samus hurting Crono's SNES base and Pikachu pulling some of his Nintendo fanbase - Pikachu came scarily close to Crono last around - Vincent flopped big time last round, finishing 4.5% back of Samus despite her having to deal with Ganon - Crono has flat out looked better than Vincent to this point in the season - Zack just showed us how dangerous FF7 can be against three characters with Nintendo appeal ...arg, can't decide! I was all set to back Crono for the upset, and with a decent bit of confidence, but then Pikachu shocked us by making it here and that swung my scale back into coin flip territory. I'm going to flip a coin and go with.... Crono, final answer! He just seems to be a touch stronger than last year, perhaps thanks to CTDS, and beyond that I expect Samus to limit the damage Vincent does to him thanks to her strong morning vote, while Pikachu limits Vincent's damage later in the match with his good ASV. Also, if it's a nailbiter in the final hour I don't see any way Crono loses, thanks to CT's "clutch" ability and how much the board vote despises Vince. Second question is, if Pikachu goes crazy like last time, is there any chance that the Square boys could catch up to Samus? And my answer is... nay. During the euphoria of L-Block's demise I was considering this possibility, but now that my head is cleared I realize that even if Pika holds on better than Ganon (and he should- darn you, you stupid pig!), it probably wouldn't be by 5% like V or C would need. And even if it WAS by that much, don't forget that they're going to be dragging each other down in a dogfight all day. Given that I'd be shocked if Samus is ever not in first beyond the opening 90 minutes or so. As to Pika, well, I'm expecting good things. He was in this position last year and did well, scoring 18 percent to Luigi's 23, so he seems a good bet to pull down about that much once again. A comfortable Samus win, comfortable Pika last, and a down to the wire finish between the Square leads ought to result in something alot like... \*pots, stirs, deliberates, and delivers\* - Samus Aran - 31.74% - Crono - 25.13% - Vincent Valentine - 25.08% - Pikachu - 18.06% That looks pretty wild... but heck, my bracket's dead, my Oracle is floundering, might as well go with my hunch for once! Ngamer Says: **Samus \> Crono** ### Next Day Review Gah, how am I supposed to do a writeup when there's this epic Crono/Vince battle going on in the background? Currently VV is up about 150 with 2 hours left and it's anyone's ballgame... but in any case, good showing for Crono! He's going to end up having a much better showing directly against Vincent than last season, which is a decent justification for those of us who picked him based on CT:DS hype or lack of Link overlap or whatever else we came up with. Also a nice showing for Samus- will be interesting to see how much she can improve on her '05 outing against Mario in this next round, although I don't see a way for either of them to keep up with Crono/Vincent, considering Link's presence. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3301&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=58) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Solid Snake vs Weighted Companion Cube vs Cloud Strife vs Mewtwo 2008 _source: Solid Snake vs Weighted Companion Cube vs Cloud Strife vs Mewtwo 2008 (revid 85861)_ ## Results **Round Four** Saturday, November 15th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 15th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 36.26% Solid Snake - 29.07% Weighted Companion Cube - 19.89% Mewtwo - 15.14% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (16pts) - 39.61% Cloud second place (8pts) - 31.20% Snake second place (16pts) - 28.02% Snake first place (8pts) - 24.77% - **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 70.81% (30,380) Snake - 52.79% (22,648) We all needed a rest break after the epic nonsense we had just been through, which is exactly what this match was. The only excitement to be had here was Snake keeping it close with Cloud for five minutes, which was a portent of things to come but we can save that for the appropriate time. After that five minutes was up, Cloud looked thoroughly dominant here. Not as dominant as Link, but he looked amazing nonetheless. It ultimately made the final all that much more of a shock. Past that, not much to talk about. Mewtwo did well to make it this far, and he more than made up for his atrocious 2007 showing, but he never really looked that good here in 2008. Cube.... just kind of went out with a whimper. L-Block showed us that the inanimate joke factor was dead and buried, and that these characters were not going to have the same steam here in 2008, and this match showed it. Cube was never in this thing, had no joke trends, and acted more or less like a normal third place character. It was cool to see him not finish in last place on his way out, but L-Block he was not. It was a boring match here today, which is exactly what we all needed. Crono's Redemption Story really took it out of everyone. ## Stats and Analysis Of the four quarterfinal matches this contest, this was easily the most predictable of the bunch. Though given how exciting the other QF matches were, it was perhaps nice to have a breather after Vincent and Crono's epic third act. Most people knew that Cloud and Snake were going to the advance here. Weighted Companion Cube and Mewtwo had deep runs this contest, but both of them more or less got lucky with bracket placement and advanced thanks to stronger characters sharing the same fanbase. Heck, we were 1000 votes away from seeing Midna escape from her division instead of Mewtwo. As for Cloud, he would drop the board vote as usual before taking the lead for good at around the four minute mark. The FF7 lead would end up scoring 56.86% on Snake. A decent victory (and arguably the last good win Cloud has ever had in these contests), but with Sephiroth crashing the party next round, Cloud's performance was bound to weaken due to overlap. The upcoming Semi Final was a great opportunity for Snake to snatch the upset over GameFAQs \#2 character. And with Cloud and Snake joining Link, Mario, Samus and Crono in the Semis, surely we would be getting our first Noble Nine elite eight in four years. No way would a white-haired devil hunter or a dumb pink ball take down Sephiroth or Sonic, right? (AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA) ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Now moving on to what should be the last kind of dull matchup of the season. Or at least it darn well BETTER be dull... \*shakes fist at WCC\* X-Stats from Round Three - Snake - 53.66% (based on '07 Mega Man) - WCC - 39.22% (based on '07 Mega Man) - Cloud - 54.91% (based on '07 Sora) - Mewtwo - 35.23% (based on '07 Sora) What terrible terrible numbers! Mega Man's fate was sealed the moment Zero went and ruined everything by making that ASV comeback on Vivi, and it also left these x-stats fated to be awful. Not even the beastliest of MGS4/Brawl boosts could have pushed Snake above BL... and yet look at that, he STILL can't reach Cloud! That second set of numbers was of course destroyed by the triple Square SFF, which is likewise more or less impossible to adjust for. Oh well, moving on! I took MGS4 boosted Steroid Snake to upset Cloud in the Final, but even \*I\* know that Solid isn't getting within CQCing range of Blonde Haired Zack without some major assistance from either Sephiroth or Vincent. As is, the only thing to keep an eye on is if Cloud can fire another shot across the bow by matching Link's percentage from earlier this round. 40% here would be hugely impressive, but I wouldn't put it past him. Mewtwo had a nice run this season, but let's face it, that was mainly due to some very lucky placement and sliding by thanks to Fox making sure Yoshi wouldn't cut his legs out. After witnessing the ASV that Pika just pulled off against such respectable competition, I think we can put to bed the debate over who the strongest Pokemon is, at least in this format. I'd still like to see the two go head to head in a pure 1v1, but as is I don't see any way for Mew to come close to matching Pikachu's current percentage, and since he'd need to do so to have any shot of catching the Cube, a last place finish is just about a lock. Speaking of WCC, let's check out his round by round progress. From 32% to 29% to not even 24%, ouch. And that was with hundreds of rallied votes and an ideal massive LFF setup, where it still barely managed to survive. There will be no such luck this time around; it's against three entirely independent characters who draw from three very powerful fanbases, and since it'll never be in the running against Snake no one's going to waste their time trying to rally for it. This is about as bad a situation as any joke could face, and as a result I'll be surprised if it can even manage to stay above 20%. As for Snake, well, what's there to say? It would be really neat if he could hang around somewhat with Cloud, giving us some hope of the upset once Seph/VV come into play, but that doesn't seem very reasonable. Also would seem entirely insane (and infuriating!) if Cube ever challenged him. Staying within 10% or so of Cloud while 10% or so above WCC should be about right. Cloud \>\> Snake \>\> Cube \> Mewtwo... sure would be cool to see the Pokemon give him a run though! Sooo, that would work out to about... \*pots and stirs up a heap 'o trouble\* - Cloud Strife - 38.12% - Solid Snake - 27.66% - Weighted Companion Cube - 18.36% - Mewtwo - 15.86% That looks... not very good, somehow. Oh well, if I go down I want to go down hating on joke characters. Ngamer Says: **Cloud \> Snake** ### Next Day Review Hmm, well guess I'll try to get this writeup in before UFC 91 kicks off. Gooo Lesnar! Things went about as expected today, except that Snake did a touch better than I expected and Mewtwo surprised me by collapsing. I realized he wasn't going to have triple LFF working overtime for him like last round, but STILL, he was the only Nintendo option and a Pokemon to boot- I assumed that meant that, like Pikachu, you wouldn't fold to anyone outside of Zelda/SSB. Time to boot Mew to the curb and bring in Charizard as a replacement IMO! As for Snake, darn fine showing here, and I think it sets us up for something extremely interesting once Sephiroth comes to town next round. As long as Sonic doesn't cramp Snake's Nintendo appeal too much, we could really be in for something special there! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3302&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=59) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Kirby vs Dante vs Sephiroth vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2008 _source: Kirby vs Dante vs Sephiroth vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2008 (revid 85854)_ ## Results **Round Four** Sunday, November 16th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 16th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 36.70% Sonic the Hedgehog - 24.63% Dante - 19.42% Kirby - 19.26% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sephiroth first place (16pts) - 41.80% Sephiroth second place (8pts) - 26.98% Kirby second place (16pts) - 3.40% Kirby first place (8pts) - 2.98% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sephiroth - 68.78% (29,509) Kirby - 6.38% (2,737) The Crono/Vincent duel was not the last of this contest's surprises, and hell this match wouldn't be either, but this match was an absolute shocker. Sonic is lucky Crono lost to Vincent in 2007, or he would have caught a lot more flak than he actually got for choking this match away. Shocking as this was, it wasn't completely out of left field because Sonic had just lost to Auron two rounds prior. Heck, he might have lost to Auron last round outright and not been here at all if Sephiroth wasn't in the poll. I covered how bad Crono looked for years leading up to his big duel a couple matches ago, but it's worth noting that Sonic has looked just as bad. He just doesn't have the choke artist pedigree and huge redemption story attached. In fact, his 2200 comeback on Crono in 2006 is what prevents him from being the weakest character in the Noble Nine. But make no mistake, this was coming for quite awhile. Beginning with sis epic choke job against Samus in 2002 where he blew a 1500 vote lead in 3 hours, Sonic has been mostly downhill. He didn't lose the Noble Nine's win streak or anything, but he kept having these awful showings and was constantly mentioned as a potential weak link. I mean just look at some of these low lights. When you pair Sonic's bad track record with how this contest was playing out, people came into this match thinking an upset was possible. But it wasn't Kirby they were looking at; it was Dante. Dante was fresh off of beating Master Chief (flipping their 2007 result), and Kirby wasn't all that far ahead of Dante this year. Dante got smoked by Sonic back in 2004, but given how this contest was playing out, who knows? Sonic and Kirby might split votes and allow Dante to squeeze through. We'd seen crazier things in this contest alone, plus Kirby didn't have some dominant first place performance in that match where Chief finished in third place. Dante was within striking distance if something weird happened. Something weird happened alright, and people were more than correct to think an upset was possible, but they picked the wrong character. Sephiroth was always going to win first place here. Almost everyone knew it, picked it, and forgot about it. What next to no one knew was Kirby taking second place. Sonic was the favorite, that much is obvious, but the Upset Special for this slot was actually Master Chief. People thought a 2007 rerun was possible, so you can't fault anyone for picking Chief. But Kirby? No one saw it coming. No gurus picked it, the Oracles all thought he would get last place, and the sitewide advancement percentage on Kirby here was only 6.38%. That's the second biggest upset of the year, topped only by Mewtwo's absurd 3.6% in the match against 3 Square characters. And remember, that percentage is added up and counts for people who picked Kirby to get first OR second place here. Anyone who actually picked Kirby to get this far had a favorites bracket or something. The match itself was a total dud, which was the other surprise here. Sonic only kept it close for 5 minutes, and outside of one tiny push during the morning vote, he made no threat whatsoever at winning this match. He basically got his ass whipped for 24 hours, leaving no doubts whatsoever. I covered a lot of this during the Auron \> Sonic upset from two rounds before, but I think a big reason Sonic looked especially bad in 2008 was anti-votes. The mid-2000s was the peak of anti-Sonic bandwagon hatred, and it hit its boiling point with a series of atrocious games with bad ideas. I'd get into how trashy it all was, but a picture is worth 1000 words. That is a real screenshot from Sonic Unleashed, which hit shelves two days after this match. If you don't think that piece of trash was a factor in Sonic doing so poorly in '08, you're nuts. It took a LONG time for him to shake that stigma off, and it mainly happened with the Sonic series becoming Nintendo's bitch. Thank goodness Smash and Sonic Mania happened, or the poor guy might still be in the dog house. ... ...I'll see myself out. ## Stats and Analysis - Kirby advancing was the **\#2** most surprising result of 2008 - Kirby advancing was also the **\#10** most surprising result of all-time - Kirby overperformed by **+3.84%**, the **\#25** most impressive performance of 2008 It's hard to sum the match up beyond a simple "wut", but it doesn't hurt to try. This match wasn't really talked about at any point until Dante won convincingly over the heavily favored Master Chief. At that point, Sonic's loss to Auron had sparked talk of a potential upset. Though, Sonic performed fairly enough in his round three, so any talk of Sonic losing quickly simmered down, and this match was, once again, considered a gimme. Nobody seemed to notice the pink ball in the room. When the match began, Kirby jumped ahead of Sonic in a flash. It was entirely possible that Kirby had a better board vote than the blue blur, so people weren't too worried. In fact, they thought it was funny to see Kirby hold the lead against a noble niner like this. (And they'd get to see it again!) But as the match continued, Kirby just held on to his lead. He would steadily decline as the match went on, and Sonic only started making cuts during the morning vote, but then he just completely lost momentum in the last half, and the straight lines just tell the rest of the story. Now, you can try and argue that this is a case of some new "bandwagon factor", which would explain a lot of the strange occurances over the past two contests. Would some form of rallying behind Kirby explain Kirby's victory? Sure. But it does not excuse Sonic's abysmal performance here. The numbers Sonic put up in this match show him scoring 35% on Sephiroth. 35%. Not a single member of the Noble Nine should be able to get away with failing to break 40% in this day and age without heavy SFF being involved. Whether or not Kirby got a bandwagon going doesn't matter. Sonic put up pathetic numbers against Sephiroth and Dante. Nothing can change that. This match made me, at least, feel bad about riding Crono and Mega Man for being the weak links of the Noble Nine. When Crono loses, it's to the tenth strongest guy. Mega Man was being SFFd by an elite level opponent. Sonic was fresh out of excuses the second Sandbag exited the contest. Sonic will always return to the field, but God knows how he's going to do now. This was a complete disgrace to his name. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction As for what's coming up tonight, eh... I think there's potential here for an interesting result, but I've been forced to lower my hopes due to Sonic looking a little too good last around. Let's see what I mean. X-Stats from Round Three - Kirby - 37.97% (based on '07 Leon) - Dante - 34.49% (based on '07 Leon) - Sephiroth - 34.68% (based on '07 Kratos) - Sonic - 28.31% (based on '07 Kratos) Kirby, you monster! Alright, so obviously that isn't fair considering how Leon was being held way back by Dante while Kirby sat there in an ideal position, but still, it goes to show how dangerous the puffball can be with the right positioning. Meanwhile Seph and Sonic look awful, but that goes back to Kratos not having any reliable performances last season due to L-Block; adjust him up to something more reasonable and Sonic moves right into Kirby's range. As I mentioned, I was really pumped for this matchup right after Dante knocked MC out of the bracket without breaking a sweat, despite Leon acting as an anchor (presumably) to his strength all day. Plus Kirby had looked fantastic, which got me excited for Kirby being able to make deep cuts into Sonic's Brawl/Nintendo base- possibly enough to let Dante sneak through for the advancement! But then Sonic went and had to ruin everything by scoring 28% in R3. Dang! To be clear, I still think the Blue Blur is in for a major hurting versus last round due to not sticking out like a sore thumb, but he just did too well there to bet against him. Also, he once again looks solid in these pictures whereas nothing from Dante really stands out to me. Also, silver-haired badass SFF? Not sure I entirely buy that, but eh, Dante would need a few more factors working in his favor to pull this off, so regardless I can't see it happening. So Sonic \> Dante... but can he at least top Kirby? I think so! Leon's gone, which should naturally be a huge weight off his shoulders, and now Kirby no longer gets a free ride against mature opponents, so I see him coming back down to a more natural strength. Kirby probably comes last here, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him keep it very close, perhaps with a strong morning vote after Dante creates a decent lead in the dead of the night. Sonic \> Dante \> Kirby, pretty close between all three. Is that going to leave any room for Seph to impress? I don't really think so. Sure he looked great in R3, but he's the kind of entrant than can eat PSX/2 action stars like Auron and Kratos up for lunch. I could see him damaging Dante somewhat that way, but Kirby figures to stand up much better against him, and if Sonic brings his A game for the second round in a row it'd be easy to see him stumble into the mid 30s. If instead he amazes us and shoots for 40 once again though, oh well, at least a showing like that would increase Snake's R5 chances! Sephiroth \>\> Sonic \> Dante \>~ Kirby, sounds about right, now let's pot and stir this up quick so I can get back to this PPV! - Sephiroth - 35.83% - Sonic the Hedgehog - 24.70% - Dante - 19.93% - Kirby - 19.54% That looks... like I'm undershooting Seph. Come on big guy, surprise us again! Ngamer Says: **Sephiroth \> Sonic** ### Next Day Review The other day I called Pikachu \> L-Block the most pleased I've been with any result in many years. Well, I stick to that, but Kirby \> Sonic is making the Hall of Fame also, as the most hilarious result in a long long while! I wasn't able to check the poll until 15 minutes in, once Lesnar/Couture was over, but my reaction was just to go "what the heck?" ...and then start cracking up. Stat's reactions only made it more funny! I still don't understand how this is possible, but oh well; it sets us up for what could be entirely really absurd result between a weakened Cloud/Seph, a Snake weakened by splitting Brawl, and a Kirby who will once again stand way way out against three mature PSX stars. Oh boy! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3303&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=60) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Mario vs Samus Aran vs Crono 2008 _source: Link vs Mario vs Samus Aran vs Crono 2008 (revid 85858)_ ## Results **Round Five** Monday, November 17th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 17th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 38.51% Crono - 24.02% Mario - 20.96% Samus Aran - 16.25% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (32pts) - 46.50% Link second place (16pts) - 12.53% Crono second place (32pts) - 8.13% Crono first place (16pts) - 1.31% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link - 59.03% (25,326) Crono - 9.44% (4,050) Most of the excitement was gone by this point of the contest (or so we thought), because the rest of it seemed so predictable. The final eight characters were the Noble Nine minus Mega Man and Sonic, with Kirby as the random newcomer to this late stage. The first of the two semifinal matches was incredibly boring and predictable the second it got set up, and really whoever got here in Crono's place was basically guaranteed a spot in the finals. Link was a given for first, we all knew that already. Samus was a given for last, though her getting SFFd twice should not take away from her run at all. Mario was pretty much a given for third, depending on the fourth character. We almost had Zack in this spot over Mario, which would have been legendary and shaken things up, but it was not to be. As for that fourth spot, most people picked Vincent, and he would have waltzed to the final here. Some picked L-Block. The really smart people picked Crono. Crono wouldn't have gotten here without a rally and probably wasn't actually stronger than Vincent in 2008, but so what? He deserved that shit after everything he's been through. And when he got here, his oldest enemy was waiting. But this time, Crono brought friends. He may struggle against Mario alone, but with Link and Samus here helping him? Cakewalk. Samus was happy to step aside, take last place, and do it all while leeching Mario's support. Link acted like Sephiroth in the Smash Ultimate reveal and skewered Mario('s overalls) like a fish. This tag team heel turn Nintendo leeching action allowed Crono to get the easiest win over Mario he'll ever have. This was never in doubt, nor should it have been. It was Crono's time to finally make it into the finals of a contest, and nothing was stopping him. Not L-Block, not Vincent, not Mario, nothing. And no the 2005 run with the three strongest characters removed from the field does not count. This was the first actual contest final Crono made. It should have happened back in 2002, but better late than never. ## Stats and Analysis - Crono advancing was the **\#3** most surprising result of 2008 - Crono advancing was also the **\#17** most surprising result of all-time Back when we were expecting to see Vincent in this match up, it was supposed to be a gimme. Vincent had already proved that he had elite-tier strength, and with Link there to godstomp Mario and Samus, there was absolutely nothing stopping him from moving on to the finals. Of course, Crono couldn't allow that so he decided to pull a Frog, make a wild comeback, and... change absolutely nothing. Anyone who thought Crono had even a remote chance of losing this match was either delusional or thinks that he has as much overlap with Nintendo as, say, Sonic. He was cruising to an easy victory and a well deserved spot in the finals. Not much else to say. But goddamn, it's hard NOT to feel bad for Mario after this. Since day one, he's been held down by SFF. He had to deal with Zelda in the first two rounds. Then he got her off his back to run into Luigi in round three, and shook him off to meet the king himself and suffer through an embarrassingly close match against Zack before this match. On top of it all, he was given crap for sucking it up the entire time through no fault of his own. This was a horrible bracket placement for him. On a side note, no offense, but anyone who considers this a legitimate chapter in the Mario vs. Crono saga needs to slam their head in a car door. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Now it's time to renew the greatest rivalry in Contest history: Mario vs Crono V, here we go! But is there any chance of this being another classic? Let's review. X-Stats from Round Four - Link - 55.28% (based on Zack = Auron) - Mario - 35.87% (based on Zack = Auron) - Samus - 36.30% (based on '07 Pikachu) - Crono - 31.50% (based on '07 Pikachu) Pretty good set of stats. I don't buy Zack being at Auron's level in this or any format, but he WAS being helped along by triple Nintendo LFF, so that value should be about reasonable. 2008 Pikachu was probably stronger than last year, but he was held back by Samus somewhat and may also have been hurt by having to deal with two other RPG characters, so again, it's probably a decent enough value there. Looks like Crono's a pretty big underdog... but wait! LFF to the rescue? Crono had better hope so- I'd pick Mario over him 1v1, and in a 4 way... heck, I think I'd even take Mario over him with Link in the match! (Considering how MMX couldn't keep up, and he's probably not much below MM, and Crono should be right at MM's level in this format.) But with Samus being in the mix as well, I don't see any way for Crono to lose this. I mean in terms of fanbases we're basically talking about LttP v SMW v Super Metroid v Chrono Trigger, and could you see any way that CT loses there? No way, and that makes me think Crono will win over those old school voters handily enough to do what Zack couldn't and pull ahead of the Nintendo competition to advance. So if Crono advances by a percent or two to bring the all-time rivalry to 3-2, what happens between Mario and Samus? Ehhh, I think Mario still edges that one out without too much trouble, but I'd be shocked if he beats her anything like he did in '05. Samus was in a much worse position last year (with Cloud/Seph there as well), yet held up admirably against Link. I think she improves on that showing by a touch, which MIGHT be enough to give her a shot on Mario... but probably not. And how does all this crazy Nintendo/SNES LFF leave Link looking? Probably not too good, I'm thinking. I realize he's the King of SFF and all that, but we've already seen Zack gash him for respectable percentages time and again, and Crono should be able to improve on those showings without trouble. Beyond that, I don't know... I just get the feeling that with all this wacky SFF flying around, something weird is bound to happen, and what could be weirder than both Mario AND Samus holding up well against him? Alright, so yeah, feel pretty confident in saying Link \> Crono \> Mario \> Samus, but my gut is telling me that something really strange is going to happen in terms of how the percentages fall out. Let's take a stab with... \*smokes, pots, stirs, and hands out\* - Link - 38.11% - Crono - 23.01% - Mario - 20.58% - Samus Aran - 18.30% That looks... pretty odd indeed. Come on Samus, don't collapse! Ngamer Says: **Link \> Crono** ### Next Day Review Aww, Mario/Crono V didn't turn into the new classic we'd been hoping to see. Ah well, there's still next year. Galaxy and Brawl will be further from people's memories, and if CT:DS is as big as hit as it ought to be... alright, so I still wouldn't be backing Crono, but at least he'd have a shot at keeping it interesting IMO. Samus was SFFed down a touch harder than I thought and Link is going to overperform my expectations by a quarter point or so, but other than that things went more or less according to plan; odd, I was sure that much LFF would churn out something wacky! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3304&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=61) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=61) `• `**`Previous Match`**`       • `**`Next Match`** --- ## Cloud Strife vs Solid Snake vs Sephiroth vs Kirby 2008 _source: Cloud Strife vs Solid Snake vs Sephiroth vs Kirby 2008 (revid 85859)_ ## Results **Round Five** Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 32.60% Solid Snake - 27.80% Sephiroth - 20.57% Kirby - 19.34% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Snake first place (32pts) - 13.02% Snake second place (16pts) - 10.35% Cloud second place (32pts) - 14.21% Cloud first place (16pts) - 37.57% - **Advancing Prediction:** Snake - 23.37% (10,026) Cloud - 51.78% (22,215) The match picture was a prophecy! All four of those characters ended up in Smash Bros! Thanks to a few factors -- Cloud and Sephiroth in the poll together, Solid Snake being on a rampage thanks to MGS4 and Brawl, and Kirby somehow being the only Nintendo rep in the match -- this semifinal match was guaranteed to be a lot more interesting than the first. There was some hope that either Kirby would pull another crazy upset, or that Snake would manage to sneak out a first place finish from Cloud and Sephiroth eternally dueling. The only real guarantee going in is that Sephiroth had no chance. Before this poll, Cloud and Seph had been in 6 matches together. Cloud was 6-0. The only chance Seph ever had was in the 2003 final when he was boosted up by angry Link fans. Beyond that, unless Smash fans miraculously decide to 100% vote for him against Cloud in the future, Seph will never finish ahead of the guy on our site. For an hour, we almost got both crazy spots. When this poll started, Snake was flying off with first place, and Kirby was riding high as the only Nintendo rep while Cloud and Seph were off dueling somewhere. The first half hour of this poll was something else, because Snake was in first and Kirby was in second, with the latter having a 100+ vote lead on Cloud. Cloud did eventually shake Kirby off despite Sephiroth's best efforts at leeching support, but by the time Cloud got into second place he was already more than 650 votes behind Snake. Kirby would never again contend in the match, but shout out to the little guy for the run he made this year. Of Kirby's 5 matches this year, 4 were very entertaining, including really fun upsets over Master Chief and Sonic, two Ertyu Specials, and a near-upset against Cloud. You can't ask for better than that. Conventional wisdom would say that Cloud would begin coming back on Snake any time now, but the problem is he was sharing this poll with the worst possible albatross there is. Only Tifa could have leeched him this badly, and it led to Cloud never actually threatening for first place at all. Cloud was able to cut 200 votes off of Snake's lead overnight, but Snake got it all back when the sun was up, and had such a hold on first place that he built up an 800 vote lead at one point. By the time Cloud made a legitimate push at first, it was too late, but he still gave it one heck of a run. Snake fell off pretty hard in the evening and second night vote, and Cloud used this time to chop off almost 500 votes from Snake's lead. If Seph wasn't there, Cloud takes first place. If this format wasn't dog shit, this battle for first place might have actually mattered. But I've said enough on that subject for one contest. Let's wrap this PCA up and go home. ## Stats and Analysis - Solid Snake advancing was the **\#9** most surprising result of 2008 - Sephiroth underperformed by **-4.47%**, the **\#21**most disappointing performance of 2008 A lot of interesting things were going to happen here. Cloud/Sephiroth is never good for the latter, and Cloud would take some SFF damage, thereby putting him within striking distance of Steroid Snake, who was going to walk into this match high on overperformance. And then there was Kirby/Sephiroth to watch. Woohoo! The Nintendo Power Hour yelled out as soon as the match started. Kirby was beating Cloud. Granted, that's reasonable, and wasn't going to last long, but the FF7 fanboys had to be crying over it. Dignity -1 for Cloud. But, not even the NPH could overturn Solid Snake. The guy got a vice grip on the lead and never let go. Kirby later folded to Cloud, and after that it was never in question as to who was getting through, although the order still could be debated. To get the unimportant point out of the way, Kirby made Sephiroth look like dirt--SFF takes no prisoners in the 4-way format, and Sephiroth is not immune. From a vote ratio of 1.67 in Sephiroth's favor to 1.41 *in Kirby's favor* is a testament to the power of split fanbases. However, the real show here was Cloud's inexorable march towards Snake. Cloud is the \#2 guy in the Noble Nine by most any account, and he wasn't going to let this Snake guy get in the way of that. Well, math got in the way. anyone here know what an "asymptote" is? Imagine Cloud is the function, and Snake is the asymptote. That's it in a nutshell. Unfortunately for Cloud, he didn't have infinite time. The match was going to be over when the clock struck midnight, and Snake never showed any real signs of a breakdown. Cloud's climb eventually leveled off simply because he wasn't going up in anything other than percentages. He won a few updates here and there, but every time he did that, Snake would come back and take the votes right back. The lead just couldn't be cut down below 300 at any time, and with the two having a tango of practically equal vote incomes, Cloud eventually settled in second place. The match could have lasted another day, but there was no way anything significant could have happened beyond this point without rallies or cheating. Either way, cue the Link \> Snake ruckus for the finale. And I'm going to reiterate: lol sephiroth ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Speaking of which, time for another match featuring Captain Wacky himself- Kirby! Will The Little Puffball That Could be sending his fans home happy once again? Let's see what the stats say. X-Stats from Round Four: - Cloud - 54.10% (based on '07 Mewtwo) - Snake - 45.26% (based on '07 Mewtwo) - Sephiroth - 55.11% (based on '07 Sonic) - Kirby - 38.70% (based on '07 Sonic) For the third round in a row I say, Kirby you beast! Like the last two times though, you have to call this result very much into question. No one seems to know what in the world happened to Sonic, but however you explain that he was clearly nowhere near his 2007 level of strength and so Seph and Kirby both need to come down about three notches. The Mewtwo values are surely closer to legit, though even there I hesitate to put too much faith in a guy who went from Chump to Champ and back to Chump again in three straight matches. Even lowering Kirby to 35%ish looks absurd, I'll admit. But then again, consider the competition- he's once again getting the ultimate in Sore Thumb treatment, standing out big time as the lone cutesy/cartoony bright pink ball of Nintendo against three very grey/drab realistic mature Sony stars. And two of them share the same game! And if there's anything to those persisting rumors of "FF7/MGS SFF", Kirbs could even be considered the outright favorite! Right? Sooo... why am I not backing the upset? Two things: Snake's newfound Nintendo support post-trailer, and the beating Big Boss laid down on Kirby back in R1. The only justification I've been able to make for that crazy result was that because the casual Brawl totem pole goes Snake \> Kirby \> Lucas, that's the way the poll ended up playing out. That being the case, nothing's going to save Kirby here... still, no shame in third place! One upset shot down- time to back the other! After all, Snake stayed within 9% of Cloud in a fair match last round, so once Seph is thrown into the mix FF7 will surely be weakened enough that Solid's hardcore fanbase will be able to push him into a first place finish. Right? Uh... hate to say it, but I'm going to have to back down from this upset as well, badly as I'd like to see it. Yes, Seph's going to bring Cloud down to his level, but now I can't help but see this surprisingly resilient Kirby likewise throw some LFF around, and all it would take is a Brawl-style 1 or 2 percent and the upset hopes would be dashed. So great work in getting here Kirbs, but I fear you may have doomed Snake in the process! As for Kirby/Seph, eh... give me Kirby. Anything could happen there really, but with the way that guy has been swallowing opponents left and right it just doesn't seem wise to bet against him. Cloud \>~ Snake \>\> Kirby =~ Seph. Sounds like an Instant Classic! I'll give it a classic scoring of \*stirs and pots and stirs some more\* - Cloud Strife with 30.74% - Solid Snake with 29.39% - Kirby with 20.14% - Sephiroth with 19.73% That looks... mighty tasty! But come on Snake, pull it out! Ngamer Says: **Cloud \> Snake** ### Next Day Review Awwww man, my boy Snake providing an awesome capper to an awesome Contest right now. People have been bashing this season ever since the bracket first came online and we saw how 4-ways were returning, and I've never thought that was fair. Sure, I can understand how badly we all want to see 1v1 games, but to let that overshadow all the really fun, really strange results we saw out of this bracket isn't too cool. And today is the biggest highlight of all IMO, as this crazy Snake upset means that your 2008 Contest Champ is... creativename! The \$500 couldn't have gone to a better or more deserving guy, even though he's actually way more concerned with the Oracle (which he is ALSO going to win this year, for his much-deserved first \#1 finish). Paratroopa is going to win the Guru, which I'm pretty pleased with as well- I trust him to make an excellent Game nomination choice. But if you don't, be sure to pester him into picking your own choice! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3305&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=62) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Crono vs Solid Snake vs Cloud Strife 2008 _source: Link vs Crono vs Solid Snake vs Cloud Strife 2008 (revid 85864)_ ## Results **Championship** Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 33.00% Cloud Strife - 27.05% Solid Snake - 24.81% Crono - 15.30% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Link first place (64pts) - 29.17% Link second place (32pts) - 10.74% Snake second place (64pts) - 6.55% Snake first place (32pts) - 3.59% - **Top Two Prediction:** Link - 39.91% (17,123) Snake - 10.14% (4,350) This contest had one final surprise for us after all. In the Summer 2008 Contest, it turns out that the most rallied, bandwagoned character would not be L-Block, the Weighted Companion Cube, Sandbag, or any of the other obvious joke characters. It would not be a random midcarder suddenly finding their wings, even though we saw really fun upsets all throughout the spectrum in this contest. It wouldn't be the legion of BrawlFEAR entrants. It wasn't even Zack, Mega Man X, or Crono, and those three had some real chops this year. Turns out our big bandwagon would be... Solid Fuckin Snake himself!! People looked at the semis like a fluke, because there was the obvious issue of Sephiroth being in the match. But when the final started, all hell broke loose on Board 8 for a long time. Before getting into it, let's look at how Snake was building to this for quite some time. In 2002, Snake got tripped up in an upset by Crono. He used the loss to fuel himself, and he got a little bit stronger, a little bit better every year. In 2003, he had a close loss to Mega Man. In 2004 and 2005, Snake took a step back, and I think a lot of it had to do with absurd Nintendo boosts paired with Solid Shit. But hey, if you're going to have a redemption arc you might as well almost lose to Frog and Bowser. In 2006, Snake made a clear leap, avenging his losses to Mega Man, winning the male side of the bracket, and eating a close loss to Samus in the final. In the Battle Royal that year, he pulled a crazy upset over Sephiroth with Cloud's help. The symmetry of him upsetting Cloud with Seph's help this year should not go unnoticed. In 2007, L-Block happened to everyone, but Snake had to deal with him 4 times. Eventually, it all led here. Very, very few characters in the history of video games deserve a rallied bandwagon more than Solid Snake. He took all that momentum, paired it with a Smash appearance and Metal Gear Solid 4 in the same year, and went nuts in this contest. Snake looked like a killer all contest long, and in typical stealth fashion, everyone forgot about him as they focused on the characters mentioned in the first paragraph. They remembered in the semis though, and they definitely remembered him in the final. When this poll started, Snake wasn't merely in a fluke second place spot over Cloud, with an assist from Crono. Nononono. That would be the easy way. Snake does things the hard way. Alone. No help. No sound. Procurement on site. Perfectly. Solid Snake came out in this poll and took aim at the fuckin king, and when you aim for the king, you best not miss. Snake came out in this match and took the lead over not just Crono, not just Cloud, but everyone. Including Steroid Link, the only Nintendo character here, who was out for giga-revenge after L-Block happened a year ago. It was one of the all-time great finals moments we've ever had in a GameFAQs Contest, and it's sad it's so forgotten about with how much everyone hated the format -- and trust me, I get it. Snake didn't lead by much, mind you, but he led. It was a 19 vote lead at the freeze, and he went up with the first update. Link started coming back pretty quickly from there, and we all figured the match was over. ...nope! Snake held strong, built up a 150 vote lead, and held strong in the 100-150 range all night long heading into the morning vote. It was one of the all-time great contest accomplishments, and I would have loved if this poll were only six and a half hours long. Unfortunately, it was 24 hours long and Link went full Giga-Oni-Link when the sun came up to put a wrap on his revenge tour and end the Summer 2008 Contest. Snake did not go out a loser, though, because he would still end up in second place. Cloud, in large part due to Crono's presence and Snake's bandwagon, never had a shot. Cloud did cut a 3700 vote deficit down to losing by only 2100 and go out like a warrior in his own right, but he failed to place in the final nonetheless. And Crono? His final was the rally over Vincent and subsequent demolishing of Mario. His "final" happened long before the actual final of this contest, and for Crono he was just happy to be here. Your winner of the Summer 2008 Contest was Link, finishing the revenge tour and retaking the crown. In second place, in shocking fashion, was Solid Snake. Given bracketeers get points for second place, I say we give Snake half a contest win for this one! All in all, the format may have sucked, but the contest was decent enough with crazy vote totals to keep things watchable until the very end. ## Stats and Analysis - Solid Snake making it into the Top Two was the **\#4** most surprising result of 2008 - It was also the **\#15** most surprising result of all-time So finally, the final match of the Summer 2008 Contest is here. Everything we have seen so far in this contest has pointed to this match as a standard Link's slaughter of Cloud, Cloud's assault on Snake and Crono being in the fourth place far behind. However, Solid Snake managed to do the impossible and maintained a small lead over Link 6 hours into the match. During this time, a large part of Board 8 was hoping for Snake to hold onto the lead for 24 hours. If this holds, Snake will become only the third character to ever beat Link in GameFAQs Contest after Cloud's championship run in 2003 and L-Block miraculous run in 2007 (Well, fourth if you count the Jay Solano's massacre of Link in 2006). Unfortunately, when the morning vote kicked in, Snake allowed Link to build a 800 votes lead and increasing (even Super L-Block lost about 900 votes to Link during the morning vote last year). As a result, Snake fans lost their faith and not bothered to alert the internet in a huge scale during the ASV to counteract Link's advancement. Snake would go on to freefall throughout the day, allowing Cloud to cut his lead by more than 1500 votes from 3600+ to just over 2000 votes win at the end, and Snake has lost to Link by over 9000 votes when all is said and done (it's actually just under 9000, but I can't help it). Still, Snake has fought a great fight. His final mission (to beat Cloud twice) has been accomplished. Karma Hunter is loving it. And Link has won his fifth Character Battle title, out of seven contests. What a beast! Congratulations! ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction So yeah, really good season, one of the better we've seen, and... wait, what's that? There's one more match left? Well shoot, guess I better discuss it! X-Stats From Round Five - Link - 68.52% (based on '07 Mario) - Crono - 51.62% (based on '07 Mario) - Snake - 28.18% (based on '07 Kirby) - Cloud - 28.02% (based on '07 Kirby) Crono's got this. That's funny, you'd think stats would be more reliable as we moved away from the fodder of the opening rounds, but instead this is probably the worst set of the whole year. Massive three way Nintendo LFF combined with massive Nintendo Sore Thumb Factor overperformance will do that to you, I guess! In any case all you really need to know from looking at this is that Link is the heavy heavy favorite going in, just as you'd imagine, but that Cloud is obviously up for a major gain now that Seph will be dropped. Let's start with Crono. Everyone's picking him for last by a mile, which is obvious enough, but even though he'll be getting LFFed by two more powerful cool-looking swordsman I don't see him entirely falling off the map like most people are saying. CT held up extremely well against FF7 all things considered, and of course it did great against both LttP and Mario 3... I don't see that firm fanbase of his entirely abandoning him here, and so I bet he looks better than Snake did in the '07 Final pretty easily. As to Link vs Cloud, well... Cloud had some very good showings this season, including outdoing Link's percentage in R2, and Sephiroth aside this ought to go down as one of his best years. Had L-Block survived long enough to let Vincent and Crono knock each other out with their split it would surely have moved Mario into this match, at which point I'm pretty much positive I'd have been backing Cloud. The two Nintendo icons in one poll, turning it into triple Brawl LFF due to Steroid Snake, with Cloud the lone Square option? Now that would have been some true Championship material Sore Thumb Factor! As is though it's Cloud taking the major disadvantage thanks to CT's strong SNES support, and I don't see any way this setup would not result in Link's biggest win over Cloud ever, percentage wise. The real question of the day will be "can lightning strike twice"? And the real answer will be... sorry, but no. Crono has been great this year, but even so you'd have to figure that Snake needed Vincent in this match applying same-game LFF Sephiroth style to have any legit chance at the upset. Solid gets more bad news in the form of long time SSB star Link- yes he stood up to one Brawler fine in Kirby, but Link is much more likely to cut down his Nintendo support like Samus did back in the '06 Final, which could potentially limit his strength rather drastically. Luckily he's also got some good news! Link/Crono/Cloud, three cool looking sword-wielding RPG/action characters who peaked back in the mid to late 90s... that means Snake gets to be the one to stand out from the crowd here, and much like Kirby today and L-Block in the '07 Final, I think that will result in a decent overperformance. He'll never be in contention for 2nd outside of the Power Hour, surely, but even so I'm thinking he hangs in there closer on Cloud than most are expecting. Alrighty, so all 4 players separated by decent margins but with no one really collapsing and Snake looking the best relatively. That ought to give us percentages along the lines of... \*stirs up the final pot of the year\* - Link - 35.95% - Cloud Strife - 28.27% - Solid Snake - 21.71% - Crono - 14.07% Wanted to do something more crazy here, but ehhh, just can't see it. Great season everyone, this was fun! Ngamer Says: **Link \> Cloud** ### Next Day Review Wow, just... wow. Greatest Final of all time? Ehh, I guess I'd still have to say Zelda vs Final Fantasy was epic enough to top it. But this stunner isn't too far back! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3306&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=63) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k8&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Classic Link vs Young Link vs Toon Link vs CD-I Link 2008 _source: Classic Link vs Young Link vs Toon Link vs CD-I Link 2008 (revid 85865)_ ## Results **Bonus Match** Thursday, November 20th, 2008 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Bonus Match - **Match \#:** 64 (Extra) - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 20th, 2008 - **Oracle Expectations:** Classic Link - 40.25% CD-I Link - 23.32% Toon Link - 18.53% Young Link - 17.90% How this match got more votes than the actual final, I'll never know. I get that this was a big joke to laugh about how dominant Link was, but this match really should have been Link vs Snake. It took 5 years for us to actually get that as a bonus poll and it required Draven pissing everyone off, of all things. The match itself was funny for a minute, as CD-I Link took the bandwagon votes and was winning for a couple minutes. Once that dried up though, Classic Link annihilated everyone in one of the funniest cases of SFF we'll ever see. Not only do we have Same Game SFF, but we have Same Character SFF! And spare me the "different Links from multiple time lines" crap. No one cares. 95,000 votes for the winner of a bonus poll is a record that probably never falls. Seeing CD-I Link get second place here was legitimately funny, and I'm actually surprised Young Link got last place. Do people really like Toon more than him, or was this legitimate Ocarina of Time SFF? I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't like Young Link, given he kinda sucks in the beginning of Ocarina of Time, but that begs the question of why Majora's Mask didn't matter more. Then there's the business of Smash Bros, where we legitimately have three of these characters as separate fighters somehow. I'm probably overthinking it. Congrats to Link on the win, and congrats to CD-I for being what all true warriors strive for! ## Stats and Analysis This is the single greatest case for SFF ever. This is not just a simple "characters from the same genre" SFF, or "the same series" SFF, or even "the same game" SFF. It is **the same character** SFF. Link SFF'd himself into the ground so hard that he seems weaker than CATS. This is the first time that Link has ever been SFF'd and failed to break 10% in a match, but on the other hand, Link also scored the second highest percentage in 4-way contests in this match! This match also has the highest vote total in 2008, proving that Link is one of the biggest vote draws in these contests. On that note, Wee CD-I Link! MAH BOI, this contest result is what all true warriors strive for! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3308&num=4) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Best. Game. Ever. (2009) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 64 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Spring 2009 Contest _source: Spring 2009 Contest (revid 81076)_
Spring 2009 Contest

Announced:

December 1, 2008

Started:

April 7, 2009

Ended:

June 9, 2009

Winner:

Winner: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Runner-up: Final Fantasy VII

Contest Winner:

Krahenprophet - 653 points

Notable matches:

S. Metroid/SMK/Sonic 3/Gunstar Heroes KH/GTA:VC/Metroid Prime/Paper Mario

Pokemon RBY/Zelda:MM/P.Dark/B-K

Oblivion/ToS/God of War/GTA:SA

Zelda:TP/RE4/KHII/HL2

SM64/CT/SotN/SMW2

SMW/SMB3/LoZ/SMB

FFVII/LttP/SM64/FFVI

MGS4/SSBB/Zelda:TP/RE4

Zelda:OoT/FFVII/LttP/FFX

Zelda:OoT/FFVII
**Spring 2009 Contest** **Spring 2009 Contest** was the second **Best. Game. Ever.** tournament held on GameFAQs. SBAllen announced the nomination period for this contest just a mere two weeks from the conclusion of the last contest. However, it was clear that the bracket would not be revealed until mid-January 2009 as SB himself said that he did not have set plan yet on the contest (like the format, number of contenders, etc) when he announced the contest on the first of December 08, not to mention the upcoming holiday period for GameFAQs as a whole, possibly making this the longest nomination period in GameFAQs history. Meanwhile, there are two interesting ground rules posted on the nomination page: - Nominating obvious "joke" games (i.e. low rated or extremely obscure games with silly names) will invalidate all of your nominations. Unlike the Character Battle, we actually want users to decide the best game of all time, and Big Rigs just doesn't fit. - User nominations will count for 1/3 of the bracket seeding; the other 2/3 will be based on professional review scores and GameFAQs user rating and review scores. There has been many speculations on how the seedings and bracket will be assembled due to the mix of "professional review scores and GameFAQs user rating and review scores" for bracket seeding instead of only users' nominations. Ngamer has done an extensive research on this issue on the first week of the nomination period. As it has been 5 years since the last Best. Game. Ever. contest, most Board 8 population were anticipating this contest with great passion. Petition starting from making sure the contest was 1 vs 1 to increasing series limit from 4 to 5 or 6 were brought up across the board to make sure SBAllen construct the bracket to be as fair and interesting as possible. Allen also gave Board 8 the chance to edit the bracket itself via a swarm of add/remove topics. When the dust finally settled, these were the replacements: Fallout -\> DCK2 Super Smash Bros. -\> Soul Calibur Golden Sun -\> Fire Emblem TWEWY -\> Street Fighter IV Panzer Dragoon Saga -\> Deus Ex Super Street Fighter II Turbo -\> Mortal Kombat II ## 2009 Spring Contest Detailed Stat Listings - Board 8's Spring 2009 Nominations - Spring 2009 1v1 Bracket - Spring 2009 Total Nominations - Board 8's 2009 Match Pics (Games Contest)
Contest Bracket
1972-1988 Super Mario Bros. The Legend of Zelda Super Mario Bros. 3 Super Mario World Super Mario World Super Mario Bros. 3 Final Fantasy VII LoZ: A Link to the Past Final Fantasy VII LoZ: A Link to the Past LoZ: Ocarina of Time Final Fantasy X LoZ: Ocarina of Time Final Fantasy VII
Donkey Kong Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! Space Invaders Tetris Tetris Donkey Kong Mega Man 2 Pac-Man Tetris Mega Man 2 Super Mario Bros. The Legend of Zelda
Mega Man 2 Pac-Man Pong The Oregon Trail
Duck Hunt Galaga Ninja Gaiden Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros. Ninja Gaiden The Legend of Zelda Metroid
Dragon Warrior III Contra Metroid The Legend of Zelda
1989-1991
Castlevania III Civilization Sonic the Hedgehog Street Fighter II Sonic the Hedgehog Street Fighter II Super Mario Bros. 3 The Secret of Monkey Island Super Mario Bros. 3 Sonic the Hedgehog Super Mario World Final Fantasy IV
SimCity Super Mario Bros. 3 Tecmo Super Bowl The Secret of Monkey Island
Battletoads Final Fantasy Prince of Persia Super Mario World Super Mario World Final Fantasy Final Fantasy IV Mega Man 3
Crystalis Final Fantasy IV Mega Man 3 River City Ransom
1992-1994 LoZ: A Link to the Past Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy VII Super Mario 64
Gunstar Heroes Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Super Mario Kart Super Metroid Super Metroid Super Mario Kart LoZ: A Link to the Past Donkey Kong Country LoZ: A Link to the Past Super Metroid Final Fantasy VI LoZ: Link's Awakening
Donkey Kong Country Doom Streets of Rage 2 LoZ: A Link to the Past
Final Fantasy VI Mega Man X Phantasy Star IV LoZ: Link's Awakening Final Fantasy VI LoZ: Link's Awakening Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat II Secret of Mana Shining Force II Sonic the Hedgehog 2
1995-1997
Donkey Kong Country 2 Goldeneye 007 Resident Evil 2 Super Mario RPG Goldeneye 007 Super Mario RPG Final Fantasy VII Mario Kart 64 Final Fantasy VII Goldeneye 007 Super Mario 64 Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy VII Mario Kart 64 Star Fox 64 Suikoden
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Kirby Super Star Resident Evil Super Mario 64 Super Mario 64 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Chrono Trigger Yoshi's Island
Chrono Trigger Earthbound Lufia II Yoshi's Island
1998-2000 LoZ: Ocarina of Time Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow Super Smash Bros. Melee Final Fantasy X LoZ: Ocarina of Time Final Fantasy X Metal Gear Solid 4 Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Banjo-Kazooie Perfect Dark Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow LoZ: Majora's Mask Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow LoZ: Majora's Mask Metal Gear Solid Pokemon Gold/Silver Metal Gear Solid Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow LoZ: Ocarina of Time Final Fantasy VIII
Deus Ex Final Fantasy Tactics Metal Gear Solid Pokemon Gold/Silver
Final Fantasy VIII Soul Calibur Starcraft Xenogears Final Fantasy VIII Starcraft LoZ: Ocarina of Time Final Fantasy IX
Chrono Cross Final Fantasy IX Half-Life LoZ: Ocarina of Time
2001-2003
Final Fantasy X Metal Gear Solid 2 Silent Hill 2 The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Final Fantasy X Metal Gear Solid 2 Kingdom Hearts Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Final Fantasy X Kingdom Hearts Super Smash Bros. Melee Diablo II
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Kingdom Hearts Metroid Prime Paper Mario
Diablo II Grand Theft Auto III Halo: Combat Evolved Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Diablo II Halo Super Smash Bros.: Melee LoZ: The Wind Waker
Disgaea Fire Emblem Super Smash Bros. Melee LoZ: The Wind Waker
2004-2006 LoZ: Twilight Princess Resident Evil 4 Super Smash Bros. Brawl Metal Gear Solid 4
God of War Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Tales of Symphonia The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Tales of Symphonia Metal Gear Solid 3 World of Warcraft Metal Gear Solid 3 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion LoZ: Twilight Princess Resident Evil 4
Halo 2 Metal Gear Solid 3 Okami World of Warcraft
Gears of War Kingdom Hearts II Resident Evil 4 Shadow of the Colossus Resident Evil 4 Kingdom Hearts II LoZ: Twilight Princess Half-Life 2
Final Fantasy XII Half-Life 2 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney LoZ: Twilight Princess
2007-2009
Grand Theft Auto IV Persona 4 Street Fighter IV Super Smash Bros. Brawl Super Smash Bros. Brawl Grand Theft Auto IV Call of Duty 4 Super Mario Galaxy Super Smash Bros. Brawl Call of Duty 4 Metal Gear Solid 4 Fallout 3
Call of Duty 4 Pokemon Diamond/Pearl Super Mario Galaxy Team Fortress 2
Bioshock LittleBigPlanet Metal Gear Solid 4 Portal Metal Gear Solid 4 Portal Fallout 3 Halo 3
Fallout 3 Halo 3 Left 4 Dead Mass Effect
--- ## Donkey Kong vs Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! vs Space Invaders vs Tetris 2009 _source: Donkey Kong vs Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! vs Space Invaders vs Tetris 2009 (revid 65234)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1972-1988 - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tetris - 42.27% Punch-Out - 22.62% Donkey Kong - 22.35% Space Invaders - 12.79% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Tetris first place (2pts) - 54.93% Tetris second place (1pt) - 32.82% DK second place (2pts) - 33.69% DK first place (1pt) - 28.19% - **Advancing Prediction:** Tetris - 87.75% (33,605) DK - 61.88% (23,698) The contest started with a heavily debated match between Donkey Kong and Punch-Out, and we quickly learned SFF or LFF or whatever FF you want to pin on four-ways would not be as big an issue as initially predicted. Tetris was obviously going to murder this match, and Space Invaders was obviously going to get destroyed -- old-school SFF and just generally being weak can do that -- so the true fight here was between Donkey Kong and Punch-Out. Though there was a pretty even split here, the basic idea revolved around LFF. Either Donkey Kong would get LFFd by Tetris and be stronger than Punch-Out anyway, or Punch-Out would stick out like a sore thumb and score second place due to... sticking out like a sore thumb. It's a debate you can repeat for nearly any four-way match, but it was meaningful here. DK and Tetris are probably more "Nintendo" than Punch-Out, so it was reasonable to think Punch-Out could benefit from not only this, but hype from the Wii version of Punch-Out artificially inflating the original's strength. In the beginning, this poll was very close and unpredictable. DK and Punch-Out fought a very close duel in the early parts of the poll, but DK eventually seized a small portion of control and built a 100 vote lead once the madness of the first hour ended. DK then pulled a typical "slowly build a lead as the other game stalls you a bunch" thing overnight, before losing 300 votes in something like 3 updates once the morning vote hit. This of course started all the "DK is a choker, knew this was going to happen" stuff, so naturally Donkey Kong went on to easily win a match when everyone expected him to lose. That's just how DK rolls. He lost his whole lead when the morning vote began, then started exploding. The only reason people continued paying attention beyond DK's second wind is because everyone always expects DK to choke a close match away, but nope. Not this time. Donkey Kong of all games turned a close match into a fairly easy 53-47 win. Close, but not a nailbiter. Now despite DK winning this match, I truly do think Donkey Kong is more prone to old school Nintendo SFF than Punch-Out at the hands of something like Tetris. The problem here is Punch-Out is plain weak. I doubt this result changes if you held it even right now, after the release of the most recent Punch-Out. Not even a sports game (which is basically what Punch-Out is) can take full advantage of the DK Chokes-A-Lot Factor. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Alright, five years later and it's finally time for another Game Contest, whoo hoo! Wait, what's this... 4ways? Ugh. And divided by eras? UGH. Oh well, it should still be enjoyable, and at least I have a spot on the Crew so I can keep doing my... huh? I was fired from the Crew, and no one even bothered to tell me?! That's the last straw! Now I'll have no choice but to rebel all season and beat the other 6 Crewmembers senseless the whole while! Starting with Match One: Hmm, the season hasn't even kicked off and already I find that I have to disagree with my fellow Crewmates. While it's true that DK is a monster choke artist both as a character and a game, and I'll agree that the presence of a fellow iconic heavyweight like Tetris isn't going to be doing it any favors, I'm still not sold on Punch-Out being the game to knock it off. Little Mac only managed 16% of the vote two years ago in that match with Dante/Ammy/Matt, and was equally bad back in 2002. But surely the game should be a decent bit stronger than the character, right? I thought so as well, until I discovered this frightening little piece of evidence: Which forgotten Super Nintendo title would you most like to see re-made or given a sequel today? - ActRaiser 8.3% 5333 - EVO: The Search For Eden 8.48% 5451 - Illusion Of Gaia 14.64% 9406 - Secret of Evermore 11.8% 7582 - Shadowrun 8.21% 5277 - Soul Blazer 4.85% 3120 - Super Punch-Out!! 20.26% 13021 - Uniracers 3.12% 2007 - Zombies Ate My Neighbors 20.34% 13073 - TOTAL VOTES 64270 Okay, so this is the sequel technically but we're still talking the same fanbase. A fanbase so small it could only produce 20% of the vote against competition this awful, and didn't even manage a win over ZAMN? Come on now! Tetris is going to eat this poll alive, Space Invaders should have the name recognition to manage something like 12-13 percent, and I don't see Punch Out improving to the 26%+ that it's probably going to need if it wants to advance here. And thats why my final preds are... - Tetris - 39.35% - Donkey Kong - 24.56% - Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - 24.25% - Space Invaders - 11.84% Yes sir, I sense my '09 Crew career getting off to a smashing start! ### Next Day Review Oh my! Only one match into the Contest and already all six Crewmembers have tossed away their perfect brackets while I skate past in style. But before I go sounding TOO cocky here, I've got to be honest... when I went to bed at 3am last night I had 0% confidence in my DK pick. Punch-Out had pulled into a commanding 300 vote lead and I thought "here we go again- Donkey Kong pulled a lead with the late night old schoolers, but just like Duck Hunt before it PO is the better-loved title that's going to kill once the sun rises." What I didn't take into account is how (apparently) PO must have sold something like 17 total copies across Europe, because whoa did they ever bury it! Thanks Euroes, hopefully you guys will be bailing me out a few more times before this Contest is out. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3446&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=1) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=1) • **(No Previous Match)**       • **Next Match** --- ## Mega Man 2 vs Pac-Man vs Pong vs The Oregon Trail 2009 _source: Mega Man 2 vs Pac-Man vs Pong vs The Oregon Trail 2009 (revid 65235)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1972-1988 - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man 2 - 45.93% Pac-Man - 25.41% The Oregon Trail - 14.38% Pong - 14.20% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** MM2 first place (2pts) - 41.99% MM2 second place (1pt) - 20.44% Pac-Man second place (2pts) - 38.45% Pac-Man first place (1pt) - 42.95% - **Advancing Prediction:** Mega Man 2 - 62.43% (23,908) Pac-Man - 81.40% (31,173) A big debate heading into this contest was Tetris vs Mega Man. Personally, I contend Tetris is a part of the holy grail of NES-era games that would just destroy and annihilate anything else from this era -- along with Final Fantasy, Mario 1, Mario 3 and Zelda 1. Others believe a couple of the Mega Man games are also deserving of this tier, but this debate thankfully ended on the second day of the contest. Before getting into Mega Man 2, the Pac-Man/Pong/Oregon Trail triumvirate was a decent pre-contest debate. Thanks to L-Block's run in 2007, people will always try finding the next L-Block. That one entrant capable of a mid-contest joke rally that shocks everyone. The Oregon Trail, along with Battletoads, were the obvious candidates this contest. Both are huge 4chan fad titles, and Oregon Trail especially was played by everyone in grade school. For two and a half hours, Oregon Trail was a legitimate threat here. It had no chance of winning this particular match, but potential joke rallies only need to advance once or twice to get momentum and internet bandwagon rallies going. Oregon Trail stayed neck and neck with the favored Pac-Man, before ultimately and wholly collapsing. The Oregon Trail, for all of its potential, could not keep up with Pac-Man more than a few hours and we saw this contest's L-Block dead in its first match. Pac-Man would go on to a very respectable second place finish, Oregon Trail to a decent enough third place, and even Pong didn't do too badly for being in last. Given how badly some other last place games did this contest, Pong's 16.54% was not a bad score at all. Oddly enough, the only game in this poll that looked bad was Mega Man 2. When some expect you to contend with Tetris (and Tetris is no slouch), you don't go out and score 56% on Pac-Man. 56% on Pac-Man cannot be explained away by any LFF cop-outs, especially given Metroid nearly broke 70% on Pac-Man in 2004. The same Metroid that was SFF skull-\*\*\*\*ed by Mario 3 that year. Mario 3 SFFd Metroid, which might have SFFd Pac-Man, and Mega Man 2 goes out and only scores 56% on the twice-SFFd latter? And then it was supposed to go out and beat Tetris? I can understand defending something so silly pre-contest with fanboyism, but guys like Black Turtle and Lopen were trying to believe in MM2 \> Tetris even after this match. You guys are officially on crack, and I'm even a giant Mega Man fan along with you guys. No matter how you slice it, Mega Man 2 looked really bad here. It would also get worse for Mega Man before this contest was over. Way, way worse. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I guess I'm just not as sold on MM2 as everyone else must be; sure MM is a solid NNer, but Europe hates this guy and his entire series, so there's no way MM2 has the same kind of blowout potential as what we're seeing from Tetris today. For example, check out how MM vs Nero last Summer went if you look at the European votes only: - Mega Man 38.74% 7324 - Nero 33.94% 6417 That's the kind of performance an NNer is supposed to allow to Auron or Vincent, not NERO! So yeah, I don't see MM2 cracking 50% by much, if at all. Pac-Man is getting compared a bunch to DK, which I think is fair. Sure the game/character will collapse to anything iconic, but there's a large gap between MM2 and something like Mario 3 so I think the recognition will result in a good showing. As for Oregon Trail, ehh, I'll admit that it scares me a little bit. If any of these 128 games have the potential for an L-Blockish joke run it would certainly be TOT, but between Pac's recognizability and MM's strength I don't see the Oregon rally wagon ever making it past the first river. That just leaves us with Pong, a game I'm seeming compared a bunch to Space Invaders, and again I have to agree with that sentiment. It's universally known, which works great against cult hits like RCR, but with all three other options being arguably about as well known and definitely better loved, Pong will probably be doing well just to make it to double digits. And that's why my preds for this one look a little something like - Mega Man 2 - 45.86% - Pac-Man - 26.37% - The Oregon Trail - 16.76% - Pong - 11.01% Feelin' good about these! ### Next Day Review Hey hey, another good result for me! Oregon had a little more punch than I'd expected early, but fell apart as soon as the Americans fell asleep just as I'd thought. And yikes, I was a little too right about MM2 underwhelming... My Tetris \> MM2 is looking great as a result, but my MMX \> Link's Awakening and MM3 \> FF4 (R2) are shaking in their boots right now! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3447&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Duck Hunt vs Galaga vs Ninja Gaiden vs Super Mario Bros. 2009 _source: Duck Hunt vs Galaga vs Ninja Gaiden vs Super Mario Bros. 2009 (revid 65236)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1972-1988 - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 9th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. - 57.08% Ninja Gaiden - 16.53% Duck Hunt - 16.31% Galaga - 10.19% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario 1 first place (2pts) - 74.11% Mario 1 second place (1pt) - 21.69% NG second place (2pts) - 29.91% NG first place (1pt) - 8.66% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. - 95.80% (36,688) Ninja Gaiden - 38.57% (14,771) We've seen pretty much every type of SFF possible in contests, until this very match. For the first time ever, we got to see Same Cartridge SFF. In a transitive world, Mario Brothers \> Duck Hunt \> Ninja Gaiden would have been easy. Duck Hunt proved itself reasonably strong in 2004, and any Ninja Gaiden has completely and utterly stunk it up in every single poll it's ever been in. Ever. Look it up yourself if need be. The problem here is Duck Hunt got stuck with the worst possible opponent in Mario 1, but a lot of people still thought it would retain an original audience and beat Ninja Gaiden anyway. NG is seriously that bad in any poll you look at, barring Ryu Hayabusa's character battle results. The match began, and Duck Hunt had a small lead for 30 minutes. But then Ninja Gaiden came back, built up its own lead and the match was effectively over after the first hour was up. It wasn't Ninja Gaiden's strength so much as it was Mario completely dominating the poll. Mario stole all the votes, which is especially crippling to something like Duck Hunt, and there was simply nothing left over for Duck Hunt to make a move with. At times overnight, Mario was only leaving 50 votes per update for the other three games to work with. You can't mount comebacks that way. The morning vote was even worse for Duck Hunt, because as Mario went up, Duck Hunt went down. This match ended the moment Ninja Gaiden made it close, because Duck Hunt leeching Mario 1 and staging a comeback is an impossible task. Mario 1's dominance of this poll was nearly the best of the entire contest, but the fourpack Mario 3 got placed in was even funnier. But hats off to Mario anyway, because 70% in a fourway is no joke. By the way, make no mistake here. This match was decided entirely by Duck Hunt's weakness at the hands of Mario, and it would flatten Ninja Gaiden in a better situation. Beating a Same Cartridge-SFFd Duck Hunt isn't some monumental task and it did not prove Ninja Gaiden had any strength whatsoever, as round two went on to prove. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Mario's even more iconic/important/relevant than Tetris and facing competition just about as weak, so should be a lock for a huge showing. Galaga's a chump, but stands out from these NES choices enough that it should be able to outscore Space Invaders; Ninja Gaiden likewise gets to stand out just because probably half its voters are going to think they're supporting the Xbox game, while Duck Hunt is easily the strongest/most well-known/most played of the non-Mario options, but will be suffering from the first ever "same cartridge SFF". And that might be brutal, to say the least. So since I'm not covering any new ground with the above, let's look at this match pic. Oh cool, NG got just the pic I was hoping for! Ryu looks RIPPED, sporting a blade, a full on Ninjarific appeal that's still generic enough where people could easily mistake him for his Xbox version. But, watch out- Duck Hunt also scored a perfect picture! Here's the exact look that The Dog used to joke-factor his way to 14% of the vote just last season... even with Mario there to try to lay an SFF beatdown, I can't see DH falling below that number in this one. But then there's Mario 1, ALSO getting exactly the pic it would have wanted; look out, we could see a record blowout in this format after all! And Galaga... sorry, text way too blurred, that's not going to get it done. So taking all of that into account, I see DH giving NG a very good run but coming up a touch short due to Mario steal too many of its early NES-era votes. - Super Mario Bros. - 55.40% - Ninja Gaiden - 16.84% - Duck Hunt - 16.69% - Galaga - 11.07% ### Next Day Review Ha, another match where I go to sleep without much confidence in my choice, but Europe and the early morning vote bail me out for another win. I can't believe I'm one of only 3% of the site that's managed to go 3/3 to this point... I mean I had decent reasoning behind my picks but I've still been walking on eggshells for the first half of these matches. And I don't think tonight will be any different! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3448&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=3) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Dragon Warrior III vs Contra vs Metroid vs The Legend of Zelda 2009 _source: Dragon Warrior III vs Contra vs Metroid vs The Legend of Zelda 2009 (revid 65237)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1972-1988 - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 54.89% Contra - 17.56% Metroid - 16.41% Dragon Warrior III - 11.07% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda first place (2pts) - 68.16% Zelda second place (1pt) - 27.05% Metroid second place (2pts) - 54.35% Metroid first place (1pt) - 18.10% - **Advancing Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda - 95.21% (36,462) Metroid - 72.45% (27,745) The Legend of Zelda was expected to kill this match (which it obviously did), but it was also expected to kill Metroid so badly that Contra could sneak into second place. Zelda in general might not have gone Mario 1 and broke 70%, but this was a very impressive performance nonetheless. If I recall, Zelda 1 \> Mario 1 was the consensus pick in future rounds. This poll really did nothing to prove otherwise. I forget the exact stats charmander posted in the stats topic, but the Mario 1 \> Duck Hunt SFF compared with the Zelda \> Metroid SFF here meant something like a 52-48 win for Zelda. This whole thing became more clear once Mario 1 got the chance at crushing Donkey Kong like a beer can, but more on that later. Metroid did exactly what it was supposed to do here. It got crushed by SFF and scored 23% on Zelda --- it got something like 21% on Mario 3 in 2004, if you recall --- so this is exactly what we all thought Metroid would get. So, easy pickings for Contra, right? Yeah, what the hell happened to Contra here? Either it just completely sucks these days, it too is subject to some heavy Nintendo SFF, or the 2004 stats are completely wrong. Probably a mix of all three, though I lean to the former. Contra was the first in a long, long line of casual shooters to disappoint based on expectations. Losing is one thing, but it didn't bother showing up. Another good theory to explore here is Nintendo LFF not mattering quite as much as initially expected, which pops up over and over again in future matches. It's rare to see a consensus pick bomb this badly, and Board 8 bracket people have a big ego about this sort of thing. *Clearly* something weird was going on \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Every single Crew writeup went like this: "I'd take Metroid without too much trouble 1v1, but with Zelda in the way Contra has a clear edge here." Personally, I'm not entirely buying that line of thought. Let's take a look at some results, starting with the early days: - 2004 - Mario defeats Metroid with 78% - 2004 - LttP defeats Super Metroid with 74% - 2005 - Mario defeats Samus with 60% Alright, so these are pretty ugly, and certainly the three most well-known Samus/Metroid SFF'd results, which is why people assume that's still the case for this series/character. But actually things have been looking much better for it recently. Just take a look at - 2006 - Link defeats Samus with 78% (with Mario involved) - 2006 - Mario defeats Samus with 60% (with Link involved) ...okay, so the 2006 ToC was still pretty awful for Samus. BUT, in the 4ways battles of the past two years: - 2007 - Link defeats Samus with 70% - 2008 - Link defeats Samus with 70% (with Mario involved) - 2008 - Mario defeats Samus with 54% (with Link involved) Check it out- a major improvement against Mario, and she even held up quite well against Link all things considered. My theory is that the darker, more mature Metroid franchise continues to distance itself from Nintendo, which is allowing Samus and her games to hold their own more and more in recent years. This line of reasoning has lead me to... but I'm out of time, so here's my pick! - The Legend of Zelda - 57.06% - Contra - 16.08% - Metroid - 15.84% - Dragon Warrior III - 11.01% ### Next Day Review Bah, there goes my chance at the Perfect Bracket. And I was sooo close! \*cough\* As I briefly touched on though, losing these two Contra points doesn't bother me overly much since the remainder of my bracket relies on both Nintendo SFF not being quite so brutal as back in the day and Metroid in general being well-suited to the 4way environment, two ideas that you can make a better case for after seeing this result. So yeah, I'm not going to lie and say I didn't cry myself to sleep last night, but you have to understand it was a good cry. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3449&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=4) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Castlevania III vs Civilization vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Street Fighter II 2009 _source: Castlevania III vs Civilization vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Street Fighter II 2009 (revid 65238)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1989-1991 - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Street Fighter II - 35.65% Sonic the Hedgehog - 34.26% Castlevania III - 17.88% Civilization - 12.22% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sonic first place (2pts) - 46.14% Sonic second place (1pt) - 36.26% SFII second place (2pts) - 45.36% SFII first place (1pt) - 38.65% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 82.40% (31,556) Street Fighter II - 84.01% (32,172) Of these three polls, which loser is the most impressive? - - - Street Fighter 2, right? Sonic 2 was embarrassed at the hands of Mario World, and Mario RPG was similarly embarrassed at the hands of Chrono Trigger. Now you'd think a game that goes 43-57 against Mario RPG could beat a game out getting SFFd half to death, but this Street Fighter 2 we're talking about. Street Fighter is quickly joining the Halo/GTA list of things to never ever trust in contests, as evidenced by this match. Now this isn't to say Street Fighter was some heavy favorite, because there was a good case to be made for Sonic. An SFF beating at the hands of Mario World doesn't tell us much, and GameFAQs doesn't care about any fighting game not named Smash Brothers. Stop denying it, because it's true. But even with the nagging feeling Sonic could do something here, Street Fighter 2 ended up the consensus pick because of the format. Games don't = characters, but it's impossible to ignore how badly Sonic characters have all sucked in the past two fourway character contests. Every single one of them, especially Sonic himself. In 2007, Sonic nearly lost to Squall twice. Then in 2008, he laid one of the biggest contest eggs of all time and not only lost to Kirby, but let Kirby walk all over him from start to finish. It was never close. Sonic's characters couldn't do squat in this format, but his games might be strong? Street Fighter 2 might not be some contest legend, but surely it could beat a game whose characters have all sucked it up in this format, right? Then the match actually started, and it was Super Mario RPG \> Street Fighter 2 all over again, right down to the "OMG SF2 LOST?!" whining. Only this time, Street Fighter 2 didn't build up a lead only to lose. Sonic ran all over Street Fighter right from the opening bell, and it was never a match en route to Sonic's easy win here. The simple explanation is to credit Sonic games as being stronger than the characters, but the simple truth is GameFAQs does not and will not ever care about fighting games. It's been proven time and time again, though this match does bring up an interesting point about voters giving respect to a series' progenitor. We've actually seen this before with stuff like Final Fantasy and the original Zelda being strong despite people not liking them too much, but the original Sonic never got a chance to prove itself until this beating of SF2. Also of note here, for once, is that the weaker games gave us a good match. Castlevania 3 led Civilization for a good two hours before collapsing, which is a damn shame. Castlevania 3 is a brilliant game, but Symphony of the Night truly is the only game in that series with any strength. Some people actually blamed Castlevania 3 for Street Fighter's loss here, which is about as out of this world as it gets. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction We've got a real treat in store for tonight- a matchup between two relatively strong, relatively evenly matched games that are independent enough of the fodder below them for this result to just maybe be as legit as a straight up 1v1. In other words, an extremely rare occurrence for the SB era! My fellow crewmates have already done a fine job of going through the points in favor for either of these two games, so let me just quickly say that I agree with what appears to be the general sentiment. Namely, that Sonic's character appeal and name value would have made this an easy victory for him 3 or 4 or 5 years back, but that now the ball seems to be almost entirely in SFII's court. Sonic Team has been looking worse and worse in each Character Battle since '05 and frankly I can't see why a classic era Sonic game would be expected to perform better than a classic era Mega Man title in the year 2009, and so I'd be very nervous if I were a Sonic fan in the wake of that MM2... unpleasantness. On the flip side Street Fighter is more relevant at this very moment than it has been at any point this decade, Ryu has proven himself to be a dangerously independent entry that thrives in this LFFfest of a format, and then the bracket comes out and we see that SFII has drawn the most fortuitous placement since... well, since 2007 Ryu. Check out this yellow brick road to the 5th round: an easy advancement over Castlevania/Civ, an easy win against a Sonic that gets early 90s platformer'd to death by Mario 3, then a perfect chance to capitalize on the Mario 3/SMW/MM3 split (assuming FF1 spoils FF4's chances), and THEN a chance to play the sore thumb spoiler once again in a totally insane Zelda 1/Mario 1/Mario 3 battle. I'll give you that SFII isn't honestly all that strong, but I think that Ryu '07 and Kirby '08 proved that in this format, you don't need to be as long as you continue to draw the right opponents. So that's what my bracket is banking on, and it all starts with a convincing win over Sonic 1! All that's left is to take a look at this match pic before picking my percents. Hm... Civ just fades into the background, what a nothing of a pic, CV is too mashed together, I love Ryu and Ken in their poses with the classic SFII logo, but I have to admit what catches the eye here is that large and in charge Sonic. And since its best chance in this one is to play up the "Sonic vs Ryu" angle, I'm going to have to give S1 a little bit more credit than I'd been planning. Let's go with, oh say - Street Fighter 2 - 36.76% - Sonic the Hedgehog - 33.23% - Castlevania III - 19.79% - Civilization - 10.13% Yeah, that seems about right. Could definitely stand to see SF2 blow it out of the water by even more though! (PS - Alright, so actually I got cold feet and only took SF2 to make the 4th round this year, not the semi-finals. I still maintain that's one of the smartest upset routes you could have gone with though!) ### Next Day Review I'm still having a tough time wrapping my mind around that result yesterday. Going purely by percentage, SFII had a very respectable day, and in a direct comparison to Castlevania I'd have said it did exceptionally well. But not only did it not win the day outright, it lost in a worse than Ulti blowout! How could Sonic post a performance like that after looking like junk the past two seasons? The most reasonable explanation would seem to be that because no one actually cares about these old games (except maybe Mario 1/3/Zelda/Tetris), anything with strong name/series recognition is going to rock faces. (In that case though, what the heck happened to MM2?) If that's correct, then SFII and its more "hardcore" (maybe?) fanbase should still be fine, since Mario is going to be arriving to suck up all of that apathy vote next round. But if on the other hand this is a case of people actually really loving 2D Sonic and only anti-voting the character because his last generation of games has been so poor, then... well, let's just say it's going to be a long season for people like yo and myself, who made a point of betting against Sonic wherever possible in our brackets. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3450&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=5) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## SimCity vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Tecmo Super Bowl vs Secret of Monkey Island 2009 _source: SimCity vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Tecmo Super Bowl vs Secret of Monkey Island 2009 (revid 88461)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 12th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1989-1991 - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 71.44% SimCity - 11.20% Secret of Monkey Island - 8.62% Tecmo Super Bowl - 8.51% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario 3 first place (2pts) - 87.41% Mario 3 second place (1pt) - 9.61% Monkey Island second place (2pts) - 17.22% Monkey Island first place (1pt) - 1.75% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 97.02% (37,155) Secret of Monkey Island - 18.97% (7,265) Even though this match had a decent fight for second place, this was all about witnessing the raw power of Mario 3. We may never again see a perfect storm of strength as circumstance as we did here, because breaking 75% in a fourway poll should be nearly impossible. To do this, you need to be against three entrants that you're able to hold around 12% all at the same time. It's tough to appreciate what Mario 3 did here given it lost to Mario World twice and barely survived losing to it thrice, but breaking 75% in a fourway poll is insane. But in fairness, Mario did this because the competition flat-out sucked. Not one of these games deserved to even make the contest, let alone place and get to the second round. But one of them had to pull it off, and oddly enough this was the perfect spot for those freaks who always help Guybrush get up to 12%. SimCity was actually the consensus the score second place here due to everyone having played it at one point or another, and it played its part early on. It more or less dominated the poll for three hours (as well as one can "dominate" while first place is on its way to scoring 75%, anyway) and built up a 300 vote lead. But then the Europe block kicked in, and SimCity's entire lead disappeared in about two hours before Monkey Island clinched the match with the morning vote. It was up for good by the time SimCity started stalling again, but a more accurate description is Mario 3 destroyed the poll so easily that no one could really make a move here, a la Duck Hunt losing to Ninja Gaiden. Monkey Island finally winning one was good and all, but let's be serious. It would probably lose to all but a handful of games in this bracket. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Turning our attention to this Mario 3 "battle", I just have to say one thing. As much as I've pushed for a return to 1v1s and bad mouthed SB for withholding them from us, matches like this sure do keep the first two rounds interesting. I mean sure, the fact that either SimCity, Monkey Island, or Tecmo Bowl has to "win" a match is a total joke, but it should still be fun to watch these three featherweights smack each other with pillows for 24 hours while Mario 3 goes on what I would almost guarantee will be a record-setting tear. As to which of these hilarious weaklings has the upper hand, well, that's where things get a little tricky. Let's start by eliminating Tecmo Bowl. PC games in general and older PCs games in particular are so vastly underplayed/underappreciated at this site that I would actually take Tecmo over either of these guys without thinking twice if this were a straight up 1v1. But it's not, and to make matters worse TB has drawn the worst possible opponent- I can't imagine there is any game from the NES/SNES era who would lay a worse beatdown on a old casual Nintendo favorite (not even LttP!). That's why I think the favorite going into this one has to be SimCity. Yes it's old and a PC game, but it's also universally played and well known the world over as the game that launched millions of millions of sales for the whole line of Sim\_\_\_/The Sims/etc games. Plus it has the added advantage of being released on the SNES where I think it did decently. The last contender is Monkey Island, which I automatically dismissed when filling out my initial bracket and am now regretting. I assumed that, like the Tales Of... series, Monkey Island/Guybrush was one of those things with an incredibly dedicated fanbase that was always going to get it into brackets but would never amount to anything when the actual polls arrived. Looking back at it now though, Guybrush seems like a lock to put up 9-13% of the vote regardless of competition, and considering how badly Mario is going to wreck this balance, that could very well be enough to advance. I think it should be pretty close between Monkey Island and SimCity in America, but now I wish I'd bothered to research how those two games sold outside of this continent, because whichever has the international edge is probably going to take this. Hmm... well too late now, so I'll just stick with my original idea that SimCity was big the world over and say: - Super Mario Bros. 3 - 74% - SimCity - 11% - Secret of Monkey Island - 8% - Tecmo Super Bowl - 7% That looks like something I have 0 confidence in. Ahhhhhh! ### Next Day Review Well like I said, it's a shame I wasn't aware that Monkey Island was liked in Europe, otherwise I would probably have called this match correctly. But, come on, we just witnessed a poll where something on the same level of strength as Guybrush Threepwood advanced into the next round- it's hard to beat yourself up too much over a result like that no matter how you called it. Positive notes: not only did Mario 3 smash the record for biggest win, it has also almost single handedly (considering the pathetic contributions of its opponents) outdrawn yesterday's Sonic/SFII match by about 6500 votes, and is only come about 1000 short of matching Zelda/Metroid as the most popular of the year so far. This game is a monster, and so to answer transience's question: after a performance like this, yes, I'm still liking my picks of SFII to R4 and Mario 3 to R6. They call this man the King of SFF for a reason! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3451&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=6) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Battletoads vs Final Fantasy vs Prince of Persia vs Super Mario World 2009 _source: Battletoads vs Final Fantasy vs Prince of Persia vs Super Mario World 2009 (revid 65240)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 13th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1989-1991 - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario World - 42.41% Final Fantasy - 34.65% Battletoads - 12.35% Prince of Persia - 10.50% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** SMW first place (2pts) - 43.55% SMW second place (1pt) - 42.59% FF second place (2pts) - 36.29% FF first place (1pt) - 46.22% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario World - 86.14% (32,988) Final Fantasy - 82.51% (31,598) Rarely do I care about the losers in 4way matches, but they were notable here. Though Prince of Persia might not end up last in the stats, I'm calling it this contest's Tanner anyway. It barely broke 3.5% in a four-way poll, which is pretty legendary in the futility department. Did anyone even know this game existed before this bracket? I figured it was a PS2 series or something. It surely performed like a game no one knew about, that's for sure. The other loser of note was obviously Battletoads. Its votes didn't matter or anything, but to date, the pre-planned 4chan Battletoads rally is the only contest match Bacon has ever made a topic about. Not Mario 3's mysterious 50 vote update. Not Crono's final hour against Vincent. Not even Liquid's final update against Alucard. But Bacon will be damned if he doesn't tell us how 4chan's rally helped Battletoads lose by 31,000 votes instead of 34,000 votes. Could Battletoads have been this contest's L-Block? Who knows, it was put into an impossible match at the beginning and had no time to bandwagon. Final Fantasy and Mario are almost rally-proof, and all 4chan really did was inflate the final vote total. Speaking of Mario World and Final Fantasy, this was about as ho-hum as a match gets. Final Fantasy broke 40% on Mario 3 in 2004, and it got something like 45% on Super Mario World here. This match did nothing to stem the growing round 3 Final Fantasy 4 \> Mario World hype given how strong Mario 3 looked to this point, though if anything this match made FF1 look like a total monster capable of competing with FF4 outright. The Mario World that finished this contest was a whole different animal from where it began, because there was no reason to think World could get close to 3 based on the first round. Letting Final Fantasy break 45% on you is pretty bad, even if it was clear voters were giving extra respect to the first game in a series. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction we're heading into what's sure to be the new \#1 of '09 once it's all said and done. Hopefully soon we'll be reaching back into that 130k range where the last two character battle have been most comfortable! As for the positioning, SMW \> FF1 \> BT \> PoP might as well be set in stone, for the reasons my fellow Crewmates have done a fine job of touching on: Mario put up 60 on FF five years back and World would probably do about the same today, BT shouldn't be worth anything yet it was rallied to 22% and a win over FF in that 4chan'd poll, and PoP's only hope of doing something notable would be if it finished last in the x-stats this season. Which it just might have a shot at, considering how it's sure to be way weaker than Sands of Time, which in turn is probably a decent bit weaker than the Prince himself, which is pretty sad considering how he's only barely worth seeing in character battles. So since all the important topics have been covered, let's just take a look at this match pic. Oh good heavens, poor Prince! The text is too tiny to make out, plus the game's only chance was to trick people into thinking it was Sands of Time (like Ryu Hababusa pulled off a few days back), and that has 0% effective rate now that the characters look like lego men. As if that weren't bad enough, all three other games earned perfect pics for themselves! Yoshi appears in full on LUEshi/box art glory, Battletoads gets an image which probably plays into its internet meme perfectly (I say probably because I still have no idea what the meme actually is, although given the source I'm going to just assume that ignorance is bliss), and FF get to sport the full on 8-Bit Theater effect that served it so well against Mario 3. Given these looks I've got no choice but to lower Persia under 10 while giving BT enough benefit of the doubt for it to score something in the low teens. The toad's NES appeal probably does enough to lower Mario a little bit from the 60/40 it would lay on FF otherwise, and that leaves us with... - Super Mario World - 43.55% - Final Fantasy - 33.17% - Battletoads - 14.08% - Prince of Persia - 9.20% Hmm. Feeling pretty good about that! ### Next Day Review Hey hey, 135k votes for this one- that's more like it! That pounds the old mark (Zelda/Metroid) for this year by a full 17k and hopefully signals that people are going to be involved with this Contest site-wide from here out, now that the oldest and lowliest of the bottom feeders have been weeded out. If you want impressive votals, always schedule a Final Fantasy vs Zelda/Mario match, that's my motto. Speaking of which, it's looking like Mario put up ~56% on FF directly- a slight underperformance for Mario based on my guess, but it doesn't really tell us too much either way, especially not with all the (presumably) SMW votes that were sucked up by those late-night 4chan rallies. I'm still of the opinion that FF1 is going to hold up better than most expect next round, but yeah, not all that much to go on from this result. All we can really do is to give three cheers to PoP for keeping the day interesting with its run at the title of "weakest entrant of all time"! Speaking of that epic R2 FF1/FF4 clash... well, let me clarify. I'm sure it's not going to be an "epic" in the traditional sense, as neither are powerhouses and like most SFF matches whatever leads after 10/15 minutes will almost certainly sail on to a win, BUT, it becomes epic just because so much is riding on that result. If 1 or 4 is clearly superior to the other, the winner gets handed probably the easiest road to Round Five in Contest history thanks to the Nintendo-rific upper half of this bracket. Let's see if tonight's result will help indicate which of the two is going to have the upper hand! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3452&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=7) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Crystalis vs Final Fantasy IV vs Mega Man 3 vs River City Ransom 2009 _source: Crystalis vs Final Fantasy IV vs Mega Man 3 vs River City Ransom 2009 (revid 65241)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1989-1991 - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy IV - 47.70% Mega Man 3 - 33.76% River City Ransom - 10.50% Crystalis - 8.09% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF4 first place (2pts) - 68.03% FF4 second place (1pt) - 24.16% MM3 second place (2pts) - 62.20% MM3 first place (1pt) - 26.97% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy IV - 92.19% (35,305) Mega Man 3 - 89.17% (34,149) This was about as ho-hum obvious as a match could possibly get, and it didn't tell us much of anything unless you wanted to make a bunch of FF1 vs FF4 comparisons and give Mega Man 3 some hope for future rounds. Or more specifically, delude yourself into thinking Mega Man 2 could still beat Tetris. Though in fairness, I'm sure if you did something weird like put FF4 as 55% of FF1's 2004 strength, then assume Tetris wasn't SFFd that year, you could probably get Mega Man 2 \> Tetris. Not like it matters, since this was decided in due time. Worth noting here is the FF1 \> FF4 hype more or less died here. Scoring 50% in a fourway poll is not the easiest task, and it would take some insane SFF from here to get FF1 ahead. Thankfully, this was all decided in round 2. Mega Man also had a decent enough performance for this one round, though this shut the door on some of the crazy talk of FF4 and 1 splitting badly enough to sneak Mega Man 3 into second place. This was impossible. I can't make much more out of such a predictable match, so I'll just whine about Crystalis. Crystalis is the best game none of you have played yet. Any random idiot can access NES games by now, so get to it! It truly is a masterpiece, and it deserved much better than a potential last place X-stats finish. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I'm having a very time deciding where to go with my percentages on this one, and it's actually because of the bottom two games. I'm almost certain that one of them is going to tank horribly and perhaps even challenge PoP's new mark, but I just can't decide which. Crystalis would seem the natural choice given that it's going to be RPG-smashed by an old school FF title, but surely it at least has a hardcore fanbase that isn't going to abandon it for anything? Sure it will be super small, but I'd think it would have to be big enough to save it from a PoPing. So maybe RCR is the better choice- after all, it got absolutely trampled by Pong, a game that we now realize is extremely bad fodder itself. Guess I'll just have to pick them both to do "very bad" but not "super bad" and hope for the best. As regards MM3, bah... I actually picked it to win here in my initial gut bracket, figuring this would be an up year for MM and that FF4 would lose a small percentage to Crystalis. After MM2's bomb I'm very glad I flip flopped on that one, but even so I'm not entirely sold on FF4. I've just got this feeling that old Mega Man couldn't possibly be as weak as Pong made it look, especially in light of Sonic's good showing, and so I'm glad that this time around MM isn't looking at a massive pic disadvantage. In fact, it actually dominates this pic- RCR looks like total junk, Cry I guess catches the eye a little but is so unrecognizable that I doubt it matters, and I don't think that FF4 is going to blast this poll like people are talking, not with it sporting Amano art (or something similar) like that. That's kind of old fashioned look always stings FF characters, and I'm banking on tonight not being an exception. So with MM looking stylin' I think it manages to hold that old and washed out looking FF under 50% and win back at least a small token of respect for the classic series. I'll go with... - Final Fantasy IV - 49.92% - Mega Man 3 - 34.36% - River City Ransom - 8.39% - Crystalis - 7.32% Hm. Seems pretty solid! ### Next Day Review Alright, so FF4 ended up doing a touch better than I called for, finishing a little bit over 50. HOWEVER, check out these vote totals: - FF1 - 49958 - FF4 - 55555 (with 3 updates left to go) Now obviously people weren't as excited to vote in a match without Mario/massive Battletoad rallying and that could have limited FF4's potential somewhat, but still, I'm loving how many voters were attracted like flies to the "Final Fantasy" name. All signs appear to be pointing to a very close SFF-fest between that series come R2, and so I'm still holding out hope for my Mega Man upset. Whooo! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3453&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=8) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Gunstar Heroes vs Sonic the Hedgehog 3 vs Super Mario Kart vs Super Metroid 2009 _source: Gunstar Heroes vs Sonic the Hedgehog 3 vs Super Mario Kart vs Super Metroid 2009 (revid 65242)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1992-1994 - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Metroid - 34.15% Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - 32.64% Super Mario Kart - 26.35% Gunstar Heroes - 6.76% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Super Metroid first place (2pts) - 34.58% Super Metroid second place (1pt) - 41.16% Super Mario Kart second place (2pts) - 32.70% Super Mario Kart first place (1pt) - 44.01% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Metroid - 75.74% (29,005) Super Mario Kart - 76.71% (29,377) Now THIS was a match. But before delving into the obvious, Sonic 3 deserves a mention for how badly it bombed here. A lot of people expected Sonic 3 to place in a match or two, and perhaps be the strongest of the three Genesis Sonic games this contest. Knuckles is the fan favorite of the series, and Sonic 3 always does well in favorite Sonic polls and board contests. But when Sonic 3 was put into its very first match, it sucked. There's no way of sugarcoating this. Two SNES games clearly splitting votes each broke 35%. That's embarrassing if you're expected to be strong, and this in turn made Street Fighter 2 and Sonic 1 look like complete crap. As for the part of this match that mattered, it was a barn-burner softened only by the format. With both games guaranteed to advance no matter what, the typical tension seen in close matches wasn't really there. In fact early on, there was nothing happening here at all. Super Metroid built up a 600 vote lead on Mario Kart overnight, and all the chatter about this match was how badly Sonic 3 was sucking it up. The match was close, but Super Metroid didn't exactly look uncomfortable. Then the dead night and morning votes hit, and it was on. Mario Kart chipped away at Super Metroid's lead all the way until the DSV (during school vote) started, and pushed Super Metroid's lead below 200. Super Metroid recovered during this time, but the game winning the morning vote usually catches fire during the after school vote, to the tune of swinging a couple thousand votes sometimes. Except this time, something really weird happened. Super Metroid looked like it would recover and easily win the DSV, but it was actually Mario Kart that made a push here. Once Metroid pushed its lead to 250, Mario Kart pushed back and used the DSV to get the lead down to 0. With winning the morning vote and DSV, it looked like Mario Kart would rock the entirety of the day vote and win this going away. But nope, this match was completely backwards. It was actually Super Metroid rocking the ASV, and it slowly built its lead back up to 270. It looked like Super Metroid had the match won here, but... nope. The second half of the very ASV Metroid was winning went in Mario Kat's favor, and it back to even by 6. This was about the weirdest close match ever, with trends going totally backwards from conventional wisdom. Metroid only won half the night, lost the dead hours and morning vote, blew the DSV, then... won the first half of the ASV? Before Mario Kart took the ASV's second half? Really, really strange. Metroid flew out to a 100 vote lead from here, but Mario Kart again came storming back to even things. The match stayed virtually deadlocked within 50 votes for a couple hours, but then the evening vote hit and Metroid made yet another move. It pushed itself out to a 250 vote lead by 11, and given how easily Metroid got its initial lead out to 600, it finally looked like this match was over. Yet inexplicably, Mario Kart won the final hour by 100 votes. Super Metroid won the match on paper, but this would be one hell of a 1v1 match after all the nonsense these two pulled on each other. There were of course a lot of cheating accusations, and given Bacon's topic during Battletoads of all things, we all expected a word from him. But nope. Nothing. Either this was legit, or Bacon doesn't care about telling us the numbers are or are not legit for every close match. I'm leaning toward the latter, though I've been told several times in private cheating is next to impossible these days. I'd love to believe this, but that Mario 3/Zelda 1 50 vote spike makes you wonder. This was a wonderful match that would have been a perfect 1v1 duel, but we'll take what we can get in a contest devoid of successful comeback attempts. As for what this tells us, Nintendo games are just whacky. There's no explanation for how some games split 80-20, but others go 50-50. I also think this cemented Super Mario Kart's status as the strongest Mario Kart title, though I think some might argue in 64's favor there. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction it seems like just yesterday we were excited because we were finally going be be seeing a match between two games of at least respectable strength- but now we're got three! I agree with my Crewmates in predicting that this will be the best battle of the Contest so far (then again I'm not sure that's saying all that much), and I'm also going to agree with them in estimating that the final order will be Metroid \> Sonic \> Kart \> GH. The difference is, I think it will be even more hotly contested than most are thinking! Why's that? Well firstly because Sonic really, really impressed me against SFII a couple days back. Now I know everyone wants to point to the SMW result and say "look what happens when Nintendo shows up!", but that's the same kind of '04 logic that had Metroid dead to rights with Zelda involved, and look how that turned out. Even with Samus and Mario featured prominently in the pic, I still wouldn't be at all surprised if Sonic pulled out first place in this one, and except him to run pretty close to Samus all day long in any case. As for Metroid, I have immense faith in this series, and in this title particularly. Even with it having to share the SNES with Kart, I think the genres and fanbases are different enough to allow both to perform closer to their potential than you would imagine in an SFF match. All three should remain pretty close, but I don't see SM ever being in serious danger of not pulling out the win here. As for Kart... I've got to admit, it's hard to get over the mental block imposed by that yoblazer-destroying loss to Mega Man. The series still has huge name appeal and a great casual presence, but I don't think its all that well suited to a 4-way format like this where you needed a large and dedicated fanbase in order to survive close matches. Or at least, it COULD be well suited if there was some way for it to avoid Nintendo's heavy hitters for a while, but with a bracket this N-packed that was never going to be a real possibility. And as for Gunstar, uhhh... thanks for playing! It's got some strong supporters that should keep it well out of that PoP/Crystalis realm, and I might even consider it to hit the double digits as a sneaky upset pick, but with the Genesis-dominating Sonic involved? Sorry, 7% is about the most that can reasonably be expected. With all that in mind, here are my predictions: - Super Metroid - 34.09% - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - 31.76% - Super Mario Kart - 26.95% - Gunstar Heroes - 7.20% Kind of weird how we finally hit a legitimately debatable match and all of a sudden everyone pulls back into their comfortable shell and avoids going for any kind of upset. Except for our savior Ed Bellis! ### Next Day Review What an awesome match today! Even though I gave SMK enough credit to say it'd be able to keep it pretty close, I would never in 100 years have predicted that the two SNES games would be able to eat up 70+% of the vote in this match... and even if you'd told me that I would still have assumed that Metroid was at least 55/45ing the Kart entry. Don't get me wrong, I love the Kart series and have always thought that at least MK64 would have some decent potential in a Contest, but as I explained yesterday I just didn't feel the 4way format was well-suited to MK. Very pleased to see myself proven wrong here, especially since it means Sonic is out of the mix and thus as long as Super Met doesn't get as SFF-crushed by LttP as SMK (something I feel pretty good about), my crazy Metroid to R3 pick is going to be sitting pretty! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3454&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=9) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Donkey Kong Country vs Doom vs Streets of Rage II vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2009 _source: Donkey Kong Country vs Doom vs Streets of Rage II vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2009 (revid 88468)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 16th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1992-1994 - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 58.42% Doom - 18.89% Donkey Kong Country - 15.11% Streets of Rage II - 7.61% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** LttP first place (2pts) - 57.19% LttP second place (1pt) - 32.80% DKC second place (2pts) - 30.79% DKC first place (1pt) - 15.92% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link to the Past - 89.99% (34,463) Donkey Kong Country - 46.71% (17,888) The conventional wisdom for this match was obvious: Zelda was supposed to SFF Donkey Kong to hell and back -- remember in 2004, Donkey Kong scored 13% on Zelda 1 and there was no reason to believe this match would be much different -- and Doom was supposed to win second place by default. Obviously, only half of this happened. Donkey Kong Country went out and scored 25% on Zelda. Better than 13%, but still an SFF beating. The problem here obviously is that while Donkey Kong Country more or less sucked, Doom sucked worse. Donkey Kong quite literally tried choking this match away twice, and Doom could not capitalize despite being in the perfect situation to win. I could give credit to DK for blowing leads of 460 and 300 but still surviving with the ASV, but... no. DK choked (as usual), Doom just choked worse. A lot of casual shooters underperformed in this contest, but Doom perhaps disappointed us the most. You'll be hard-pressed to find a contest entrant blow a better opportunity than this one. Beating an SFFd Donkey Kong with nothing standing in your way is just bad, and a long way off from its 2004 days. Not that beating EarthBound and getting blown out by FF6 is any accomplishment, but it still should have been stronger than an SFFd Donkey Kong. DK was the very pioneer of SFF. Even though DK got its brains beaten in by Zelda, this match helped contribute to a growing trend of leeching not skewing the results as much as we thought. This was supposed to be an easy win for Doom, but DK won instead. Mario Kart and Super Metroid didn't split at all. Et cetera. It's almost like natural strength played as big a part as leeching in this contest. Who knew? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction ...what's that you say? There's one non-SNES title that's still going to be there to rain on Super Metroid's parade next round? We'll just see about THAT! I love the DKC series, DKC2 is one of my favorite games ever, and I'm sure much of GameFAQs feels the same way. You guys must not realize that these games were HUGE sellers at the end of the console's lifespan and that everyone and their mother is going to be voting in support of- oh, wait a minute, What's your all-time favorite 2D platform game series? - Bubble Bobble 1.93% 1755 - Castlevania 14.03% 12738 - Donkey Kong Country 5.96% 5415 - Ghosts 'n Goblins 0.8% 729 - Mega Man 18.54% 16834 - Sonic the Hedgehog 15.67% 14231 - Super Mario Bros. 43.06% 39097 - TOTAL VOTES 90799 Erm, ouch! I'd been a major supporter of getting DKC2 and Diddy Kong into a bracket before this poll result came out in (I think) mid 2007, but this really crushed my hopes for the series having any kind of strength. Now granted Mario was the worst possible opponent, and it probably gets platform SFFed by MM and Sonic somewhat as well, but come ON, to get almost tripled by Castlevania? Then Diddy himself went out and laid a rotten egg last summer to put another nail in the coffin of my DKC enthusiasm. I'm still glad to see them in this bracket, but yeah, I fully expect the results to be kind of ugly. Actually I'm so far from sold on these games right now that I'm not even positive I'd be able to take either of them over Doom 1v1, which of course means that I never gave this upset any serious consideration with Zelda being in the mix. HOWEVER, I'd sure love to be proven wrong, and you could make a case for some signs pointing to the upset... Nintendo has dominated the Contest to this point, expected SFFings didn't end up happening to Metroid and SMK, and older PC games have looked flat out awful- even Monkey Island looked downright terrible despite advancing! But nay, just can't get my hopes up. Feel free to go ahead and prove me wrong though, DKC; it would certainly help my Super Metroid pick if you could manage it! Final answer: - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 57.23% - Doom - 20.57% - Donkey Kong Country - 16.45% - Streets of Rage II - 5.75% Looks... pretty decent, I'd say! ### Next Day Review First of all, a salute to DKC and Doom for putting on such an enjoyable show for us today. I figured DK would get off to a strong start thanks to the board and the early lead didn't surprise me, but I was shocked when it continued to hold up pretty well against Zelda all the way through the opening hour. Still, DK's track record beyond the opening hours is pretty pathetic, both as a character (see DK vs Master Chief or Vercetti) and a game (Duck Hunt), and with Zelda sure to suck up so much of the Nintendo fan vote during the day, I still gave Doom an excellent shot at completing the comeback. I didn't get to see the poll when Doom had maxed out its lead above 300, but if so I think I might very well have thrown in the towel on DKC... who knew it could manhandle the late ASV and second night vote like this? In any case, got to agree with transience- this sets up a heck of an interesting R2 Nintendo-fest, considering how we've just seen DKC hold up almost exactly as well against LttP as Super Metroid managed back in '04. And then to throw a wildcard like Mario Kart in the mix on top of it all... yikes! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3455&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=10) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy VI vs Mega Man X vs Phantasy Star IV vs The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening 2009 _source: Final Fantasy VI vs Mega Man X vs Phantasy Star IV vs The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening 2009 (revid 88462)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 17th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1992-1994 - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VI - 41.22% Zelda: Link's Awakening - 27.29% Mega Man X - 24.57% Phantasy Star IV - 7.18% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF6 first place (2pts) - 55.23% FF6 second place (1pt) - 21.20% Zelda:LA second place (2pts) - 38.39% Zelda:LA first place (1pt) - 21.87% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy VI - 76.43% (29,270) Link's Awakening - 60.26% (23,077) Certain ho-hum matches tell you nothing you didn't already know, and others throw a monkey wrench into the whole system. The overwhelming consensus for this match was FF6 \> MMX without much of a second thought thrown Zelda's way. Even after Mega Man 2 and 3 showed their early signs of weakness, Mega Man X would surely prove itself the strongest Mega Man game in the bracket and take care of business here. The true match after all was MMX vs Sonic 2 in the second round. But as we all learned by the end of this contest, Zelda is no joke. yoblazer commented in the stats topic about Link's Awakening being a million seller twice and the beacon of handheld gaming before Pokemon came along. This actually makes a lot of sense. Link's Awakening kept the Game Boy going, and helped the Game Boy Color take off and take its place in the handheld market. Basically, those of us tossing Link's Awakening aside as some piddly handheld game set to roll over were being ridiculous. And good god, were we ever. Mega Man X didn't even do that badly in the poll -- I'd even say this poll cements X's place as the strongest Mega Man game on this site -- but Link's Awakening was so much stronger it didn't matter. MMX was out of it from the opening, and for a small while Link's Awakening looked to threaten Final Fantasy 6, of all things. This died down and FF6 won first place with ease, but it was a fun five minutes. From here the poll was rather simple, with the games doing nothing but trending percentages. But the message to be gleaned here was simple: Link's Awakening was legitimate, not a fluke, and was very underestimated pre-contest. LA's dominance of Mega Man X here not only cemented its place as a strong game, but guaranteed it would make the third round as well. Sonic 2 had no chance against this monster. The other thing of note is FF6 not looking all that good here. It ends up with a respectable 40%, but it was clearly not the same game that led Link to the Past until the morning vote. It still followed its path like a good little contest entrant, but all contest long it seemed way off from its 2004 days. And it all started with Link's Awakening opening our eyes to a new legitimate game in our midst. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction So after witnessing two of the five closest wire-to-wire matches in Contest history back to back, it's time to settle in for what might very well be the third historically close battle in a row! With the way Kefka and the CT crew had been fading and fading pre-CTDS I was all set to bet against FF6 the next time a Game Contest rolled around, but nah, can't see it being in any kind of danger against competition of this caliber. And Phantasy Star frankly isn't worth talking about. But as for MMX vs LA... my oh my. After a long and bitter internal struggle I ended up going with MMX in my bracket, and here's why: \- LA isn't an RPG, but I still feel that the Zeldas of this period share much of the same fanbase as FF6. with PS4 also taking a tiny bite out of the RPG pie, MMX is the one with the best chance to play the role of sore thumb and benefit from the competition \- MMX did a very impressive job of hanging tight with Mario during all the Nintendo-filled matches last year, including beating down Zelda convincingly in that 2nd round match featuring Mudkip \- as a character, MMX proved he's just as well-liked as classic MM last season (which agreed with that favorite MM series poll that's often cited), so I have no trouble believing that MMX the game is going to be just as strong as MM2 or 3, and could perhaps perform even a little better \- lower tier Zeldas probably need to count on the voters being apathetic about the other options so that they can franchise-vote their way to victory. in a poll featuring (arguably) the most beloved Mega Man title and (arguably) the second most beloved Final Fantasy, along with another series with a very small but (probably) passionate number of fans, there might not be enough "who cares" votes to save Zelda's bacon So those were my thoughts heading into the season. HOWEVER, everything since then has gone against my original prediction- Nintendo's been a beast all around, MM hasn't impressed while both Zeldas have scored very nice blowouts for themselves... And so I was all set to pick against my bracket for the first time in '09 until I saw the match pic. Heck yeah, X is rocking one of his coolest outfits ever while Link looks flat out goofy! Plus PS got some of the least-appealing artwork I've seen and FF6 also underwhelms, so MM gets to dominate the front page all the more. As a result I've flip-flopped back to my bracket, and am going to say: - Final Fantasy VI - 45.10% - Mega Man X - 23.54% - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - 23.39% - Phantasy Star IV - 7.97% Fight, Mega Man! For everlasting something or other! ### Next Day Review Well, let's see here. I predicted MMX to put up 34% directly on FF6, but instead it's going to end up at... 38%. Whoo, nice work Mega Man! Now if only that "4th tier, handheld, don't worry about it" Zelda game hadn't gone and scored an astonishing 44% I'd be sitting pretty. Ever since it squeezed past the 40 mark people are trying to spin this as "not so bad" for FF6, but sorry, I don't buy it. PS4 was super-pathetic and the other two options are very heavily Nintendo- this was an ideal position for what was supposed to be the \#2 entry in the 2nd most popular series on this site, yet it failed to capitalize whatsoever. Everyone in Stats has been jumping on Ulti for claiming showings like this indicate that Ocarina is going to have the upper hand heading into the Final, but seriously, if FFX and FF8 can't impress me way more than 6 did today I'm also going to start having doubts about FF. Anyways, the sad thing about 6's underperformance today is that it doesn't even matter- regardless of what happened, bracket placement has already determined that it will go into the LttP rematch as a heavy favorite (thanks to Metroid and LA tagging along) but will gets its brains bashed once it takes the next step (thanks to FF7 and CT tagging along). This is why you need to take transience and HaR's advice regarding bracket placement, SB! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3456&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=11) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Mortal Kombat II vs Secret of Mana vs Shining Force II vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2 2009 _source: Mortal Kombat II vs Secret of Mana vs Shining Force II vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2 2009 (revid 65245)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 18th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1992-1994 - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 42.24% Mortal Kombat II - 29.56% Secret of Mana - 19.51% Shining Force II - 8.42% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sonic 2 first place (2pts) - 32.34% Sonic 2 second place (1pt) - 42.94% MK II second place (2pts) - 30.33% MK II first place (1pt) - 46.54% - **Advancing Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 75.28% (28,829) Mortal Kombat II - 76.87% (29,438) This was the first truly predictable match in the first round of this division, and it played out as such. There was minor support for a Secret of Mana upset per Chrono Trigger possibly SFFing it in 2004, and Secret of Mana was reasonably impressive in this match. At the very least, we can conclude Chrono Trigger scored a measure of SFF in 2004 on it. But in terms of the actual match, it played out as predicted from start to finish. Sonic 2 \> Mortal Kombat 2 was a mortal lock, and the only thing the games were really fighting for here was percentage and momentum. Sonic 2 may have won this particular match easily, but its performance here meant an easy loss at the hands of Link's Awakening in round 2. It needed to dominate this poll, and it simply did not. Sonic 2 was the third and final Sonic game we saw perform in this contest, and we could safely conclude the Sonic games were not up to par at all. 2 won this, but was clearly going to lose in round 2. 3 lost outright to Super Metroid/Super Mario Kart. 1, a game with a soft path to round 3, could conceivably get SFFd by Mario and also lose in round 2. Sonic games are simply not strong. That's all there is to say about it. Mortal Kombat 2 actually replaced Street Fighter 2 \[Long Subtitle\], and performed fairly well. Not too good, not too bad, and a predictable second place. It was set up for an obvious loss in round 2, but this is still good given it was a last-second replacement in the bracket. It also helped prove something we've wondered for 5 years. In the 2004 raw stats, Mortal Kombat beats Sonic 2 52-48. Here, Sonic 2 only beat Mortal Kombat 2 55-45. This isn't far from raw stat expectations per 2004. So either Sonic 2 wasn't SFFd by Mario World in 2004, or Sonic games just flat-out suck now. No sane person will still argue Sonic wasn't SFFd in 2004, so the conclusion here is obvious. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction BOLD PREDICTION: Tonight will be the least popular match of the Contest. Older games + no Mario or Zelda or Final Fantasy = incredible apathy on the part of our voters. There also seems to be quite a bit of apathy toward this match on the part of our Crewmembers, and I can understand why. Still, there are two semi-interesting benchmarks at play in this one. First, all 4 of these games participated 5 years ago (well MK1 instead of MK2 and SF1 instead of SF2, but come on, it's a horse a piece) so we'll at least see how wacky those '04 stats are and possibly get some idea which entrants have fallen off big since '04. And secondly, we witnessed a very similar match only one week back: Sonic 1 44%; SFII 36%; Civilzation 10%; Castlevania III 10%. How will these 4 compare to their counterparts? Starting from the top, I think Sonic's in for a tumble from that 44- S3's ugly nosedive has me convinced that about half of S1 was apathy voting, and since Mana ought to maintain a much higher percentage than Civ 3 did there's just going to be less percentage to go around. With SoM, I think its '04 percentage on CT will be a good mark to shoot for. On the one hand I don't feel that Sonic 2 + MK2 + SF2 is stronger than Chrono Trigger alone, but on the other SoM feels like one of those games that would have thrived in the more cult-friendly low voter turnout days of 2004, which is why I just can't justify the MK upset. Shining Force will be blasted in the face and won't matter a bit; I can't imagine it coming close to Civilzation's final percent. And as for Mortal Kombat... as little as I respect the series, I have to admit it held up quite well on FF6 back in the day, and then just last month I was shocked to learn how well Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe had sold (despite me never hearing a peep about the game on any message board or ever noticing it in the Top FAQs). Between that and having just about the perfect match pic I've got no choice but to keep MK closer to SF's number than I would have liked, which results in... - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 41.71% - Mortal Kombat II - 31.07% - Secret of Mana - 19.97% - Shining Force II - 7.25% Yeah, that seems alright. But here's hoping SoM puts on a fireworks display instead! ### Next Day Review I'm extremely impressed with how well Secret of Mana was able to hold up in this one- really put a scare into MKII during those Euro-dominated hours and I'll bet it could have been neck and neck all day if MK hadn't nailed such an appealing pic. Looks like SoM will end up improving by about 8% versus its score on CT; guess that game was its perfect poison after all! As for my BOLD PREDICTION from last night, bam, I hit it right on the head! This is going to be the least popular match of the year by a full 3 thousand votes, which is frankly even more pathetic than the lowball estimate I pegged it for. Speaking of pathetic, what the junk is going on here, Sonic?! After throwing together some quick math, check out the result you'd get from setting Sonic 1 = Sonic 2: - Street Fighter II - 49.94% - Mortal Kombat II - 50.06% Nooooooooooooooo! Yeah, I wouldn't have bought into that result EVER, let alone only a couple months after SF4 sold (almost) a million overnight and is still going strong. Which means something wonky must have happened in both those matches, but I'm not even going to try to understand it... Let's just sit back and watch SF regain our respect while Sonic withers under Mario's gaze next round, then see both Sonic and MK reduced to ash beneath Zelda. All will once again be right with the world shortly! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3457&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=12) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Donkey Kong Country 2 vs GoldenEye 007 vs Resident Evil 2 vs Super Mario RPG 2009 _source: Donkey Kong Country 2 vs GoldenEye 007 vs Resident Evil 2 vs Super Mario RPG 2009 (revid 65247)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 19th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1995-1997 - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** GoldenEye 007 - 32.81% Super Mario RPG - 26.81% Resident Evil 2 - 23.11% Donkey Kong Country 2 - 17.47% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** GoldenEye first place (2pts) - 65.15% GoldenEye second place (1pt) - 17.95% SMRPG second place (2pts) - 32.97% SMRPG first place (1pt) - 15.24% - **Advancing Prediction:** GoldenEye 007 - 83.10% (31,824) Super Mario RPG - 48.21% (18,463) First and foremost, *this* was a hyped rally tournament winner? I understand DKC2 was SFFd by Mario RPG here, but my goodness. Some people literally hyped this game's strength for five years in the stats topic. Kind of a dud. As for the games with strength, this was a fairly debated match. Goldeneye \> Mario RPG was the consensus, but some felt Goldeneye could SFF Mario enough to get Resident Evil 2 into second place. This obviously didn't happen, and if anything Goldeneye and Mario RPG operated independently of one another. Some called Goldeneye a flop during this match, but I think Mario RPG is just really strong. This also somewhat proved Chrono Trigger SFFd Mario RPG to a degree in 2004, but I don't think anyone really denied this. Mario RPG actually cut Goldeneye several times in this match, if you look at the updates. Though RE2 lost here, I don't think this match proves it's some weak game. It did fairly well given the competition, and scored almost exactly the same % on Mario RPG that Street Fighter 2 did in 2004. RE2 vs Street Fighter 2 would probably be a really good match, but neither of them are ever beating Mario RPG. Nor should they, since Mario RPG is a vastly better game :D ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Here comes probably the best poll of the Contest so far! This is that rare kind of match that allows me to cut SB some slack on 4ways: Mario RPG would surely destroy RE2 straight up, but the later might be (just barely) independent enough to survive a Mario that's getting pulled in two directions, and if so we could be in for a heck of an entertaining next 24 hours. When the bracket first came out I had GE \> MRPG in this one and called it a no brainer, but then Fallout was replaced with DKC2 and all of a sudden things got much more interesting. Another beloved SNES classic in the mix, Resident Evil being at probably its all time high water mark thanks to 5 still burning up both the sales charts and the FAQ listings... All of a sudden RE2 jumped up to become the trendy pick here, and I liked what I saw enough to also follow that trend myself. Now though- bah, got to pick against my bracket for the first time this year! Sure DKC impressed against Zelda, but \#1 I think DKC2 (like Sonic 2) isn't going to pack quite as much punch as the original, \#2 I think the name "Mario" cripples the DKC series about twice as hard as "Zelda", and \#3 the more important trend there was Doom UTTERLY failing to capitalize on being the only non-Nintendo option in that poll. Sure Doom is a dated/dead series whereas RE is hot hot hot, but even doing 5% better than Doom probably isn't going to be enough to top Mario RPG in this situation. Prior to SMK's astounding performance I think I'd have still given RE2 the benefit of the doubt, but now we've seen what a boost having Mario dominating your match pic can give (also that title font below him looks great- nostalgia city, baby!), and when you add in how SMRPG is the only option here for Square voters, I think it's still got to be the favorite. Speaking of the match pic, ugh, what's with those horrible colors for DKC2? And as for Goldeneye... look out! "Unplayable" my left foot- GE multi is still a blast, and with a sweet (and again, pretty nostalgic) picture like that, expect GE to wreck havoc on this poll! SMRPG will probably hang around in the early going while that older "whoa, my first RPG!" crowd is still up, but I'm expecting Bond to unleash a whale of a day vote one the sun rises and that slightly younger "whoa, my first 4 player multi!" crowd starts hitting the polls. Onwards to victory, GE! - GoldenEye 007 - 35.36% - Super Mario RPG - 25.30% - Resident Evil 2 - 24.29% - Donkey Kong Country 2 - 15.05% I'm lovin' it. ### Next Day Review Good showing from GE today- it's beating my prediction by a good 1/2 percent, and I had one of the loftier picks around! People are calling this a tad underwhelming in that it never was able to bury Mario RPG, but I say "bah humbug" to that; between the very powerful Mario name and the very helpful Square backing, MRPG has every reason to do wonderfully in this format... assuming its able to avoid any REAL Mario or any REAL Square RPG. That won't be the case next round, where I'm expecting GE to pull away much more convincingly, and easily sink a different highly respectable N64 opponent in the process. As for RE2, well, at least it did a better job of capitalizing on the LFF around it than Doom, but in the end this is pretty much a nail in the coffin of anything having any kind of strength outside of RE4. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3458&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=13) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy VII vs Mario Kart 64 vs Star Fox 64 vs Suikoden 2009 _source: Final Fantasy VII vs Mario Kart 64 vs Star Fox 64 vs Suikoden 2009 (revid 88467)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 20th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1995-1997 - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 20th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 56.84% Mario Kart 64 - 20.99% Star Fox 64 - 15.35% Suikoden - 6.74% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF7 first place (2pts) - 84.25% FF7 second place (1pt) - 6.76% MK64 second place (2pts) - 55.42% MK64 first place (1pt) - 11.34% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 91.01% (34,853) Mario Kart 64 - 66.76% (25,566) Isn't it weird how Chrono Trigger is usually considered the cutoff point between old Square and new Square, yet FF7 was in a match before CT this contest? This was our second stupidly easy match in a row, and it was all about Final Fantasy 7 dominance. It of course had the typical bad board vote, but rose to heaven all day and scored 55% against two fairly strong games, and scored nearly 90% on Suikoden individually. It scored 85% on Suikoden 2 in 2004, so FF7 looked as strong as ever this contest. By the end of the contest, even though FF7 eventually came in second place, we saw play out the sheer dominance FF7 and Ocarina of Time have over the rest of the field. Mario Kart 64 and Star Fox 64 aren't slugs by any means, but FF7 just mauled them. In the expected round by round comparison between FF7 and Ocarina, FF7 did better in every round and looked stronger as it went along.... until the one match that mattered most. But more on that when the time comes. As for what happened other than FF7's dominance, Mario was pretty much a lock to outdo and SFF Fox here. And outdo and SFF Fox he did, predictably. That was what we knew the match would be about 2 seconds in, and there was nothing worth noting after said 2 seconds. Very few matches in this contest could be summed up in 10 words or less, but this was one of them. Moving on... ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Before we get into the (hopefully very short) writeup proper for tonight's poll, let me just briefly vent regarding bracket placement. There were 6 games that I've hyped/rally topic'd/cast constant Rally Nom votes for in the last couple years: Goldeneye, DKC2, Majora's Mask, Pokemon R/B/Y, MK64, and Star Fox 64. Can you see my problem here?! At least we've gotten a decent read on the DKC series (okay strength as long as it can avoid Mario or too much other top tier N competition), but Kart and SF are going to look like junk just because everyone who owned an N64 played plenty of both, whereas I think either would have done fantastically in an x-stat setting if sent up against FF7 1v1. And then of course I'll have no idea what to root for in MM-R/B/Y (at least I don't have to worry where my vote's going though, since my actual favorite game is ALSO in that poll). Long story short, dang you SB! Okay, getting back to it. Even if Ocarina has gained something of an advantage in their rivalry, FF7 is still going to smash this poll, naturally. I agree with transience though- there is too much hate surrounding this title for it to pull out the kind of blowout numbers that OoT or Mario 3 could muster, even assuming FF7's still a much stronger game directly. So let's say... anything under 55 would leave me very unimpressed, but if it can rocket past 61 or so that would probably cement its \#1 status for now. Between the two N64 classics, I'd have to imagine Kart is never going to be in any real trouble here. Fox is the kind of game that could be excellent in this format (especially if it would have drawn a more fadish pic), but the series is always going to fold against big time Nintendo, and Kart should be close enough to that definition. And Suikoden... ouch, talk about drawing the worst possible opponent! That should leave us with something along the lines of - Final Fantasy VII - 57.77% - Mario Kart 64 - 19.24% - Star Fox 64 - 16.18% - Suikoden - 6.81% Come ooooooooon lucky 7s! ### Next Day Review Alright, now granted I've already acknowledged that FF7 was never going to have that kind of Mario 3/OoT blowout power, and granted I've also acknowledged that MK64 matches up perfectly against this game, but STILL... the strongest game on the site never solidifying itself above 55% until the final hour, and even then just barely cracking the mark? You've got to chalk that up as disappointing, don't you? I mean, someone in Stats (forget who) did the math and if you give FF7 80% of Suikoden and Kart 60% of Star Fox (and both seem reasonable enough), FF7 would be barely managing 66% on MK64 here. And we're supposed to believe this is the same game that put up 71% on Metal Gear Solid? No sir; it's quite clear that this game, or Square in general (or both) has lost a step in the last five years- I think as long as Ocarina can demonstrate it's still at '04 levels we'll have to go back to calling a 1v1 between these two a tossup. On the plus side this poll DID manage about 127k, making it easily the second most popular this year, so at least you can't deny that the FF7 name still has massive drawing power. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3459&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=14) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs Kirby Super Star vs Resident Evil vs Super Mario 64 2009 _source: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs Kirby Super Star vs Resident Evil vs Super Mario 64 2009 (revid 65249)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1995-1997 - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario 64 - 42.79% Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 24.18% Resident Evil - 19.83% Kirby Super Star - 13.41% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario 64 first place (2pts) - 57.59% Mario 64 second place (1pt) - 31.04% SotN second place (2pts) - 22.53% SotN first place (1pt) - 18.14% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario 64 - 88.63% (33,942) Symphony of the Night - 40.67% (15,575) The obvious first, of course. Mario 64 *dominated* this match, and clearly SFFd the hell out of Kirby. I even had Kirby getting second place in this match initially (based on Kirby's character performance), but went with Resident Evil thinking it was stronger than SOTN. Then I went with SOTN out of pure fanboyism and prayed it could hold on and win. I did not think SOTN was a clear-cut favorite for second place here, and literally only picked it because I love it. My only reasoning. As a side note, this match proved once and for all Kirby is not popular because of his games. When you're SFFd this badly by Mario, but you the character go out and beat Sonic, your appeal comes from character design and Smash Brothers. With that out of the way, we had an actual match here. Like I said before, I felt Resident Evil was a favorite for second place here. MGS clearly SFFd it in 2004, so it had a wild card value going into all this. SOTN, awesome as it is, has gotten no younger. I try not to get my fanboyism get in the way of my analysis, but I was very happy when SOTN jumped on Resident Evil early and went on to easily win the match. Sure SOTN "lost" the day vote and bled percentage to RE, but the match was never in question. RE was deserving, but I cannot deny how happy I am SOTN won this. I love that game to death, and there aren't many match results this contest I was happier about than this one. If you haven't played SOTN yet, you really should. It's arguably the best 2D game ever made. As for what this match tells us, Kirby's games are not only weak, but prone to SFF by Mario. Mario 64 is a beast, but we didn't yet know it was a potential slayer of Chrono Trigger. Resident Evil was in fact SFFd in 2004 -- not to a gigantic degree, but I wouldn't go around calling it a weak game. Both RE and RE2 performed respectably in their first round losses. And as for good ol' SOTN, it's still got some left in the tank! :D ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Now then, tonight isn't exactly the best setup of the season, but there should still be a few interesting things to watch out for. Even with a possible boost from RE5 I never gave RE much of a chance against SotN in this one, but now that I think about it some more, I guess it would at least make more sense than that absurd Jill \> Ocelot result from last year. And if RE2 could manage 23% against decent competition, maybe 1 does a better job of drawing the series vote (as DKC and Sonic seemed to do), and then perhaps... but no, Alucard has shown that SotN fans are too dedicated to lose a close match to anything not named MGS, and with THAT picture I just can't see RE overcoming this obstacle. As for Mario 64, what the heck is all this "disappointment" talk? It "only" managed 13th on the Top 100, and that was somehow a giant slap in the face- excuse me, do you realize how much top tier Mario competition it was facing in that situation? Now the other three options here aren't scrubs, but I'd be willing to bet that M64 makes them look like it. We've seen how getting Mario's face in your pic has apparently done wonders for SMK and MK64 and Mario RPG, so imagine what it will do for an ACTUAL Mario game! As for Kirby, the poor little guy draws the worst possible opponent here (aside from perhaps SMW). But, that's Meta Knight in the picture- surely that assures a TOP-TIER performance tonight, right? Okay so probably not, but even so I'd be surprised if the game gets SFF-crushed DKC2 style, as Kirby fans seem like a fairly dedicated bunch. Turning those thoughts to numbers results in Super Mario 64 - 43.43% Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 25.26% Resident Evil - 21.03% Kirby Super Star - 10.28% Prediction on the prediction: this looks like a very bad pick in the early going of the match thanks to SotN getting a good start and then rocking the latenight vote, but come sunrise Mario and Kirby will combine to cut breathtakingly large chunks off of that percentage in order to bring it down to that 25 area. ### Next Day Review Three cheers for Mario 64! "Vastly overrated" my left eye- it goes out and tops all of our predictions without batting an eye, and that's even with Kirby holding up better than expected. Alright alright, so no one is THAT surprised about it being able to lay the smack down on lower tier titles like these three, but even so, this is the kind of very impressive performance that has me really wishing we'd have been able to see Mario 64 v Chrono Trigger in a fair matchup this season. What a shame that Yoshi's Island is going to be there to goof things up next time, and Goldeneye in the round after that. Although actually, if CT has lost a step (like FF6 apparently has), and then with FF7 punching it in the gut all day... but nah, I get ahead of myself. Regardless, as least this bracket it going to bless us with GE vs Mario 64 as good as straight up, so we do have SB to thank for that. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3460&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=15) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Chrono Trigger vs EarthBound vs Lufia II vs Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 2009 _source: Chrono Trigger vs EarthBound vs Lufia II vs Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 2009 (revid 68768)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1995-1997 - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 49.86% SMW2: Yoshi's Island - 28.52% Earthbound - 15.62% Lufia II - 5.96% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** CT first place (2pts) - 80.14% CT second place (1pt) - 11.30% SMW2:YI second place (2pts) - 36.87% SMW2:YI first place (1pt) - 10.10% - **Advancing Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 91.44% (35,018) Yoshi's Island - 46.97% (17,988) A ton of us EarthBound fans spammed [this poll](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3197) all over the board, trying to convince everyone (well... probably more honest to say we were trying to convince ourselves) EarthBound had a chance at pulling off an upset here. After all, EarthBound did VERY well in that VC poll, and we've seen LFF not matter in this contest as much as we initially thought it would. So even with two fellow SNES RPGs in the poll, maybe some act of God would allow EarthBound to get second place here. Not only did this not happen, EarthBound never even got the standard early lead it tends to enjoy in matches. Yoshi's Island jumped all over it early, and cruised to a second place finish. This was a rare contest match in that it was over 3 seconds after it began, and there's really not much to talk about. We all knew Chrono Trigger \> Yoshi's Island would happen, but hyping up a miracle EarthBound upset was fun while it lasted. Even though Yoshi's Island scored an easy second place here, Chrono Trigger flat-out annihilated this poll. There was absolutely no reason to think Chrono Trigger was in trouble against Mario 64 after this match. None. After the first round, Chrono Trigger looked right at 2004 levels, possibly due to help from the DS release. This match also told us that GOTY polls, favorites polls and random polls like the VC poll are completely useless when trying to guess contest results for the real thing. We learned this for characters very quickly, but for some reason we like to latch onto those older polls for games. The quicker we pretend old polls don't exist for potential future game contests, the better. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Speaking of CT, here comes test \#1 in the post-CTDS era, and it's a test I think it will... pass! Which is maybe a tiny bit surprising, because I mean logically wouldn't this be about the worst possible situation for the game? Up against two fellow beloved, cultish SNES RPGs, at least one of which has an incredibly devoted fanbase that never fails to get itself represented (and has even pulled off a couple cool 1v1 upsets!). And with seemingly everything Mario being smoking hot right now, it almost makes you want to pull the trigger here. But, three things: \- no Mario in that match pic! well actually he's there, but if there's one thing people can agree on it's that crying baby Mario was super annoying- can't imagine that version wins over any fans - no Mario in that title! well, I guess I'm not sure about that, but SB has it listed as just SWM2: Yoshi's Island in the bracket, so maybe there won't be room to spell it all the way out, and if not that has to spell trouble - no sore thumb factor in that poll! I mean sure, YI stands out a little bit for not being an RPG, but it still shares the system with all these other options and probably has massive playership overlap with at least CT, so I can't see it STFing its way to victory Long story short I was all set to call for Yoshi giving Crono a run for his money until I saw baby Mario in a bubble, Crono with his sword out looking his DBZingest best, and Ness and friends looking totally cool for EB. (Lufia looks good as well, but its trying to copy EB's style too much which will surely only aggravate what was already going to be a bad SFF beating!) So in the end I've got to side with a more conservative: - Chrono Trigger - 48.91% - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - 31.20% - Earthbound - 14.56% - Lufia II - 5.32% But feel free to keep the good things coming for the Mario series, YI! ### Next Day Review Whoa nelly, was that ever an impressive performance by Chrono Trigger! Mario was able to take a small bite out of it with the ASV, but aside from that 4 hour stretch or so the game was flat out golden. I'd joked last night about how badly Mario would sting it in Europe, but not only did that not happen, CT actually shot up to its best hours of the day during that time! If those are legit post-CTDS trends (and not just Europe being incredibly apathetic about the other three options), then all of a sudden this game is legitimately scary once again- which is frankly shocking considering I've spent the last three years giggling that red sox and handful of others still considered the CT/LttP rematch "debatable"! Also a quick note of congrats to Earthbound... had it not been placed in just about the worst situation possible S/LFF-wise it seems pretty clear that it could have lead Yoshi's Island outright for the first 6 hours of this one. Now, the Day Vote was going to come around and crush its chances regardless, but still, that would have been fun to see. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3461&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=16) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Banjo-Kazooie vs Perfect Dark vs Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2009 _source: Banjo-Kazooie vs Perfect Dark vs Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2009 (revid 68769)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1998-2000 - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Majora's Mask - 38.77% Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 32.83% Perfect Dark - 18.21% Banjo Kazooie - 10.13% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Pokemon RBY first place (2pts) - 55.44% Pokemon RBY second place (1pt) - 26.07% Zelda:MM second place (2pts) - 44.07% Zelda:MM first place (1pt) - 23.27% - **Advancing Prediction:** Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 81.51% (31,215) Majora's Mask - 67.34% (25,789) Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark both bombed here, but this wasn't as extreme as some other bombings this contest. It was fairly expected given all the Nintendo and N64 overlap, though B-K was another games hyped for years and Perfect Dark completely collapsed based on its 2004 performance. But we'll just chalk that up to N64 LFF and move on. And by moving on, we look at Pokemon RBY's start of balling all over this contest. I personally think Majora's Mask was another of the many sickeningly overhyped games in this contest, but all things considered it didn't do that bad. A lot of people crushed it given they assumed it would easily make the second round, and in the first round it could somewhat fairly be called a bomb. Majora's Mask was the Raiden of this contest -- huge potential, but the reality was nothing close. This said, it still got an acceptable 29% second place finish, but simply ran into an absolute monster here. In a match that was expected to be close, RBY just flattened everything and propped itself right into contender for Top 10 status. There was a very set top 8 or 9 after 2004, this contest threw a big wrench into all that, and a lot of games even ended up with legit claims to "#3" status. After this very match, Pokemon RBY was one of those games. Majora's Mask might not be a top tier Zelda, but it's a Zelda nonetheless. And blowing the hell out of Zelda is no easy task. Pokemon would go on to more than prove this was no Nintendo SFF fluke either, but more on that in future rounds. On a complete side note, I argued for years that Pokemon RBY was legit, and had to argue even harder pre-contest when everyone assumed Majora's Mask would kill it before the second round LFFd it to death. Look at [this poll.](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2739) Could it be more obvious? Everyone and their mother loved RBY; the hate started with cards and the million generations following RBY, not with RBY itself. RBY was always bound to be a beast, and it ended up being even stronger than I thought. Granted I'm a total FFT fanboy and picked it to beat RBY in round 2, but I was still right about RBY being legit. No harm done \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Moving on to one of the best 1v1s of the whole round! First though let me say what a pleasure it is to see the Crew having such nice things to say (and generous predictions to make) regarding my favorite game, Perfect Dark. I didn't rally for it this year in favor of trying to help GE into a good seed just because Bond has so much more potential, and its too bad we couldn't have seen a mixed bracket where a beloved game like PD would have had a chance to slide past some outdated older games, but its nice to see it represented in any case. And wow, what a great match pic! Enough of the mushy stuff, let's move on to what will hopefully be an exciting battle. In my bracket I took R/B/Y for the win here on the basis of MM having to share the poll with two other highly regarded N64 titles (plus the STF of being the only RPG), Pokemon being well suited to this format, and nostalgia. Partly though I just took it because it was a safe pick considering that MM is sure to force its way back on top in R2 (when Red will be losing the RPG sore thumb advantage for sure, and might even be decimated by having to split with another Pokemon!). So, I went with the upset, but without any kind of confidence. Then after LA scored a very easy win over MMX I gave up on this pick entirely- if a 4th tier Zelda can put on a show like that, surely a 3rd tier game like MM was a lock for the win. HOWEVER, then yesterday poped out of the clouds like a ray of sunshine for my bracket. Mario had been smoking the competition right and left, so a Mario game against three SNES RPGs was a sure formula for a franchise vote'd overperformance, right? Wrong! Maybe the voters aren't as sheepish as we often think, and R/B/Y is certainly a well loved 90s RPG with tons of nostalgia behind it... if Chrono Trigger can blast Mario, surely Pokemon can at least keep it close! What pushed me over the edge was that match pic- probably 3 of the 5 most popular Pokemon of all time up against a big purple eye and one of Link's least popular forms? This could really happen! \*pulls the trigger\* - Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 35.90% - Zelda: Majora's Mask - 35.64% - Perfect Dark - 20.44% - Banjo-Kazooie - 8.02% Whooooo! ### Next Day Review Good gracious, I haven't been this shocked by a match result since... well I guess you could say Snake \> Cloud and Kirby \> Sonic, but those were weird L-Blockish bandwagon kind of results that you have to just shake your head at and move on from. This appears to be a completely legit result, considering how R/B/Y is beating three of the N64's best games combined literally all by itself, and has done so with an incredibly consistent performance throughout the day. After a powerhouse Top Ten-level showing like this you'd have to make the game a lock to slide through into Round Three... but wait a minute, will there be another Pokemon option there to hinder its progress? Let's find out! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3462&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=17) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Deus Ex vs Final Fantasy Tactics vs Metal Gear Solid vs Pokémon Gold/Silver 2009 _source: Deus Ex vs Final Fantasy Tactics vs Metal Gear Solid vs Pokémon Gold/Silver 2009 (revid 67329)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 24th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1998-2000 - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 24th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid - 35.60% Pokemon Gold/Silver - 28.68% Final Fantasy Tactics - 28.07% Deus Ex - 7.91% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** MGS first place (2pts) - 63.57% MGS second place (1pt) - 26.19% Pokemon GS second place (2pts) - 38.42% Pokemon GS first place (1pt) - 15.31% - **Advancing Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid - 89.76% (34,374) Pokemon Gold/Silver - 53.73% (20,576) One day after Pokemon RBY went out and beasted all over Zelda's face, its younger brother got to go out and take the field. GSC's number was artificially inflated early thanks to being on one day after RBY, and it actually led Metal Gear Solid for a bit. Though MGS got killed by FF7 in 2004, that was an obvious SFF match. A lot of people guessed MGS could be a potential Top 10 game, mainly because of The List. Fad or not, The List comes through more often than not. For GSC to lead it for a few minutes was impressive, even if MGS did go on to win fairly easily. It's also worth noting GSC cut 500 votes off of MGS with the ASV, which comes into play with impending MGS/RBY duel set up by this match. The true shame here was Final Fantasy Tactics. After going dead even with MGS in 2004 and getting robbed of a win by clear vote-stuffing, a lot of people figured it could get close to MGS again and place in a couple of matches. Instead, it ran into the Pokemon buzz saw right in the first round and suffered an early exit. At least it was a legitimate early exit this time, as FFT has clearly lost a few steps in the past five years. It went from 50-50 to losing with 39%. That's no accident, and this happened a few months after the FFT port to the PSP. Not that we need many reasons to prove the PSP's lack of influence, but there's another one for you. The system flat-out does not matter, and older Final Fantasy on the whole seemed really lagging this contest. This match set up a weird MGS/RBY/GSC threesome for round two, with the true match being MGS vs RBY in round 3. But given how close GSC came to MGS early on here, it seemed like MGS was in a world of trouble once the big brother came knocking. On a total side note, why are Deus Ex fans so damn whiny? It was obviously getting last place here, but half the topics on the board this day were just people pissing and moaning about it doing badly. Don't you guys know you're on ConsoleFAQs? Get a grip. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Got to agree with the earlier comment where SB must have glanced through his records to see what were the close matches back in '04 and then gave himself a big pat on the back for setting up this R1 rematch. Unfortunately for him, the only thing we can be completely sure about is that MGS is going to be finishing ahead of FFT in this one- not only is the site not as Square-crazy as back in '03 and '04, MGS has also had three huge reasons to boost since then compared to FFT's one, or possibly none depending on your respect for handhelds. (Oh I guess the other thing we can be sure of is Deus Ex for last with something like 8-10%, but that's not really worth talking about!) The real question is, what position does Pokemon end up slotting itself into? It's a pretty exciting proposition, considering how you could make a strong case for first, second, OR third! Now, I'll agree with most of the comments I've been seeing today in that MGS and FFT are probably stronger than MM directly and that G/S/C is surely a league below R/B/Y. But what people seem to be forgetting is that in 4ways, many times the most important factor to have going for you is the Sore Thumb Factor, and tonight Pokemon's going to have that baby working overtime. Not only do MGS and FFT share a console, Pokemon is also the only non-"mature", non story-driven option out of this whole poll. I guess you could say that unlike today's battle it's not the only RPG option, but ehhh, Tactics and Gold are about as far apart as any two games can be while still getting labeled RPGs. Plus the site is still going to be swarming with Poke-fans after yesterday, and Platinum still being hot certainly helps as well. ALSO, check out that match pic- G/S/C with the major advantage of being just labeled "Pokemon" up top, which might work wonders! In short, all signs are pointing to this being a 48 hour Poke-fest up in here, and that's why even though I would still take FFT \> G/S/C 1v1 and even though I wouldn't have made this choice a couple days ago, it's time to pick against my bracket for the second time this year and say: Metal Gear Solid - 36.07% Pokemon Gold/Silver - 27.80% Final Fantasy Tactics - 27.70% Deus Ex - 8.43% Come on Poke-fever, don't let me down! ### Next Day Review Goodness me, do I ever like being right! Now granted I actually made a pretty bad pick that's going to be way off percentage-wise, and granted I get as sick as anybody about these half dozen "I can't believe people got this one wrong!" topics that go up after every match is decided, but still... I can't believe people got this wrong! Even if FFT would have been constant from '04 there's no way it could have survived that brutal Pokemon ASV (seriously, did you see that thing?), and even if it'd been a decent bit stronger than G/S/C directly there's no way the sore thumb factor wasn't going to carry it to the win. Alright, I guess I'm overstating things a bit; there was still some kind of chance that Gold would flop, but after seeing Red smash faces the day before it was just weird to see 4 Crewmembers cling to their brackets instead of going with the flow. Most importantly this result leaves poor old Majora's Mask looking much much better than it did 24 hours ago, and those opinions are only going to continue to improve next round when Red vs MGS vs MM turns into a three way dogfight! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3463&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=18) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy VIII vs SoulCalibur vs Starcraft vs Xenogears 2009 _source: Final Fantasy VIII vs SoulCalibur vs Starcraft vs Xenogears 2009 (revid 65253)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 25th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1998-2000 - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 25th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Starcraft - 35.13% Final Fantasy VIII - 34.69% SoulCalibur - 17.31% Xenogears - 12.99% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF8 first place (2pts) - 41.05% FF8 second place (1pt) - 28.26% Starcraft second place (2pts) - 28.65% Starcraft first place (1pt) - 36.55% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy VIII - 69.31% (26,543) Starcraft - 65.20% (24,969) Of all the Add/Remove junk pre-contest, only one such change truly bothered me, and it was this one. SoulCalibur had zero business getting into this contest over the original Smash Brothers, especially given what we know now. None. Is there any doubt Smash Brothers places in this match, and possibly even threatens to take first? It would have clearly gotten Ocarina'd in the second round, but it would have stunned all the Starcraft people. Speaking of which, calling Starcraft is something I'm vastly proud of this contest. While people were out calling for another insane run due to the format, I was out calling Starcraft the most likely game to flop in this contest. People seem to forget how perfect a storm 2004 was for Starcraft, and only L-Block's run has ever been more impressive in my eyes. It was the perfect amount of vote totals, the perfect bracket placement, the perfect hype, the perfect opponents, the perfect everything. This contest? No way. For starters, "fourways are better for rallying" is a myth. Rallying in general is a myth outside of close matches late, and deciding entire matches by thousands of votes is ludicrous. There's a measure of rallying in every match. L-Block aside, people generally just vote for who they want. There's also Starcraft's opponents in 2004: Halo, Kingdom Hearts and Wind Waker are pretty hated on the internet. Against a high-selling mainstream Final Fantasy like 8? No way. And on the note of FF8, it's usually stuck behind FF7 in past polls. We've never really seen it by itself until this contest, unless you look at Squall, who has gotten quite strong these days. There's also the little-known fact that Starcraft is a really, really old PC game on a site that doesn't generally care about PC games. If we get to use the "it hasn't gotten any younger" argument with anything else, why not Starcraft? So no, I wasn't at all surprised when Final Fantasy 8 came out and killed Starcraft in this match. The people that had Starcraft potentially rallying past Ocarina in the division and winning the entire contest were especially ridiculous. Calling FF8 a potential top 10 game (a term used much too loosely in this contest) was obviously premature given future rounds, but I will never call this match an accident. The extent of the blowout was a surprise, but the blowout itself was bound to happen. Final Fantasy 8 shined with 7 removed from the picture, even with Xenogears in the poll stealing some Square votes. Frankly, Starcraft got lucky to place at all. If Smash Brothers were in this poll instead of that slug SoulCalibur like it should have been, Starcraft would have easily been pushed to third place and we would have had a "SHOCKING" contest result right in the first round. From huge 16 seed run to losing in the first round the second expectations are placed upon it. But thanks to scoring second place here almost by default, Starcraft in round 2 was allowed one final stand before its ultimate exit. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Heading into this season there were four entries that I was most excited to see take the field in this 4way format: StarCraft, Diablo II, World of WarCraft, and Half-Life (well, both HL1 and 2, but I combine them in my mind since they should be very similar). Strong yet independent titles like that are always the most enjoyable to predict, especially when a bracket is as flooded with Nintendo and Square as this one- and that's not even getting into the crazy rally potential all of these guys have! So from one perspective you could say that these 4 might be poised to make deep runs through this tourney, but looking at it another way... have you SEEN how badly the PC has been thrashed so far this year? Maybe that's a silly thing to point out given that the only PC title so far with any kind of potential strength has been Doom, but the most important computer FPS of all time going down easily to a Donkey Kong entry (that was dealing with Zelda) doesn't exactly inspire confidence. That's why despite StarCraft being something like my third favorite game, I'm expecting it to be a disappointment this season, at least relative to that magical (if fishy) 2004 run. It just seems like the '05 site shift wouldn't have done this game any favors, nor would the increased vote totals, and with SCII still a long ways off I'm not seeing much here to help it. HOWEVER, the results so far this season have left me with even less confidence in FF8! FF has just not been impressing no matter how you slice it, and this bad loss by FFT is probably the worst outing yet. I originally only took SC for the win in my bracket because of Xenogears being in the mix, but at this point I think I'd have to side with SC even if if X had been replaced with a neutral title. So yeah, I've got to go with StarCraft to take home a fairly comfortable 3-6 percentage win here just as pretty much everyone else seems to be doing. The cool thing about this poll though is that people seem to have no idea what to think about the bottom two choices. Does Xeno's 20% on FF7 mean it could hold up equally well today, like SoM did? Does Soul Cal's near-win over KH mean anything at all five years later? Personally I have no idea what to think about those two games, so I've just got them finishing about the same and will hope for the best. Which puts us at: - Starcraft - 35.67% - Final Fantasy VIII - 32.40% - Xenogears - 15.98% - Soul Calibur - 15.95% Here's hoping to see something exciting! ### Next Day Review Alrighty, well, SC underperformed in this one, no doubt about it, and there's also little doubting that FF8 has some legitimately scary strength; possibly it isn't even all that far behind FFX, to my surprise. Let's check the direct stats.... FF8 \> SC with 61%, SC \> Soul Cal with 64%, FF8 \> Xeno with 77.4%. Good heavens! I was all prepared to come in here and say "don't tear up your brackets yet; SC still pulled 30% against good competition, and with Ocarina and possibly FF9 rolling in next round this could still turn into a barn burner." But I didn't realize how far 8 had pulled away beyond those first 4 hours... okay, guess I've got to agree with the consensus in saying that 8's got 2nd place locked up next round no matter what shows up there with it. Luckily for my bracket, I advanced Half-Life and had SC going out R2 anyways due to the PC overlap- not exactly impressive to get a pick correct for all the wrong reasons, but in a bracket this wild I'll take the points any way I can get them! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3464&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=19) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Chrono Cross vs Final Fantasy IX vs Half-Life vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2009 _source: Chrono Cross vs Final Fantasy IX vs Half-Life vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2009 (revid 67453)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 26th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 1998-2000 - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 26th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 50.25% Final Fantasy IX - 20.42% Half-Life - 19.22% Chrono Cross - 10.46% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:OoT first place (2pts) - 63.59% Zelda:OoT second place (1pt) - 28.13% FF9 second place (2pts) - 23.49% FF9 first place (1pt) - 12.43% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 91.72% (35,125) Final Fantasy IX - 35.92% (13,756) I really have to disagree about Ocarina of Time "winning" round 1 over Final Fantasy 7. The total votes for Ocarina's match were higher, but that's about it. I'd pick Mario Kart 64 over Final Fantasy 9 with ease, I'd pick Star Fox 64 over Half-Life with equal ease, and does anyone care about Suikoden versus Chrono Cross? A game no one has played against one of the worst games ever made, whoopdeedoo. At worst, it was a wash, and at best I'd score a slight win to FF7 here. As for the other games, the surprising second round results and demise of the casual shooter had people expecting a Half-Life loss even with the Square LFF here, and a loss is exactly what they got. GFNW might not be the fad it once was, but Gordon definitely dropped the ball here in a match tailor made for him to win. Even if the overlap between Final Fantasy 9 and Chrono Cross was minimal, Half-Life should have gotten second here. Instead, it never competed and further spelled out the continual disappointment of the casual shooter this contest. This even had people worrying about Half-Life 2's chances against Final Fantasy 12, but I wouldn't go that far. FF12 is way way more hated than FF9 is. The concern about casual shooters as a whole however was warranted, and why wouldn't it be? They were stinking it up left and right this contest. From a personal perspective, I was very happy with this match's results. Ocarina is the best game in the poll, Final Fantasy 9 is the second best, I have too little experience with Half-Life to comment and there are very few games I want to see suck in a poll more than Chrono Cross. And I got my wish: Chrono Cross sucking it up and scoring a distant last place. God I hate that damn game. What an annoying POS from start to finish. Good riddance. I also tire of having to defend FF9 all the time, so seeing it shut the annoying haters up for one day was glorious. What an awesome result all around. But yeah, good if you have my taste in games, boring contest match if you want exciting close comebacks and such. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Hold up a minute, is FF9 actually a lock to advance today, as my fellow Crewmates have unanimously decided? (Funny, I criticize them for sticking to their FFT-loving brackets after Pokemon shows them up yet here they've abandoned those brackets entirely after seeing a few fireworks from FF!) Let's take a closer look, shall we? To start, here are three points that hopefully we can all agree on: - Half-Life should be stronger than Gordon Freeman. mute protagonists like Link and Mr. Freeman aren't loved for their character appeal, they are supported because their games are so enjoyable- that's why Gordon flopped horribly in the earlier years when he just looked like a blob in those match pics but has become a respectable mid-carder since he started getting pics that displayed the HL logo and helped associate him with the growing franchise - HL2 is the GotY-winning game that really put this series back on the map, but if DKC1 \> DKC2 and Sonic 1 \> Sonic 2 and RE1 \> RE2 are any indication, it's pretty helpful to be the first game in a respected series. so even if HL2 is the stronger entrant, the difference is probably minimal - Ocarina is going to be gobbling up 50% of the vote here, and the hardcore Crono supporters are going to be earning CC another 10%. now maybe OoT goes a little below or climbs a bit higher (anything TOO far above 50 though and I'd be shocked; its facing 3 games with very strong fanbases and I doubt any of them cough up free percentage points like Star Fox did) and maybe CC crumbles a little and only does 8 or 9 percent, but basically this match is going to be decided within that remaining 40% Alright, so in other words, the first game to 20% wins. What kind of track record does Half-Life have then it comes to collecting 20% of the vote? Let's look back at last year. \- Gordon pulls down 28.47% against Scorpion, Big Daddy, and Balthier. pretty disappointing, especially considering Scorp beat him cleanly by 2%. clearly Freeman is awful at acting like a vote vaccum against weak competition. but when things get tougher.... - Gordon pulls down 24.49% against Vincent, Scorpion, and Falco. yikes, despite facing the guy who's expected to smash the NN, Freeman only loses 4% and turns a 2% lose to Scorp into a 5% win! clearly this HL fanbase is dedicated, but what happens when we REALLY turn up the heat? - Gordon pulls down 17.82% against Samus, Vincent, and Ganon. even with two NN-level opponents in the house, the HL fanbase not only keeps Gordon around that 20% mark, they allow him to beat Ganon outright! So yes, I'm not crazy enough to pick HL1 \> FF9 directly, but I don't have to be for it to win this one, in the same way that you wouldn't have had to take Freeman \> Ganon directly! Which is well and good, but has the Valve fanbase ever shown us they're capable of 20% outside of Gordon? \- GlaDOS pulls down exactly 20.00% against Vincent, Falco, and Wander. \- WCC pulls down 19.18% against Cloud, Snake, and Mewtwo Alright, so those last two may say more about joke entrant potential then they do the Valve fanbase, but I still maintain that Gordon himself is not a joke, that the HL will be even better supported, and that furthermore the fanbase always looks best when the competition is toughest. Tonight will be that hardest competition of all those examples, but HL is going to come through with flying colors, just you watch! DOWN GOES FF9 to the tune of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 48.64% Half-Life - 20.82% Final Fantasy IX - 20.70% Chrono Cross - 9.84% Take THAT, Crew! ### Next Day Review Ack, darn you HL! Making me look like a fool over here. The sad thing is that my writeup last night wasn't just me grasping at straws in the hopes of one-upping the rest of the Crew; I honestly expected the Valve fanbase to be more static and with HL being in a perfect position where it didn't need a very high percent, I was sure it would be quite close with FF9 in the end. Looking at it now though... actually this poll is massively popular, looking like it's going to end at around 134k which smashes the old record for the season. And HL1 did pretty well for itself when you take that into consideration- it's going to end with 20k votes, which is only a little down from the 22k Gordon pulled in that Samus/Vincent/Ganon match I was pointing back to. Ah well; on the plus side today's result makes me glad for two reasons: because I have Ocarina \> FF7, and because I have FF12 \> HL2 in a few days here! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3465&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=20) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy X vs Metal Gear Solid 2 vs Silent Hill 2 vs The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 2009 _source: Final Fantasy X vs Metal Gear Solid 2 vs Silent Hill 2 vs The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 2009 (revid 66800)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 27th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2001-2003 - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 27th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 41.78% Metal Gear Solid 2 - 33.38% Silent Hill 2 - 12.53% The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - 12.24% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF10 first place (2pts) - 55.60% FF10 second place (1pt) - 22.96% MGS2 second place (2pts) - 45.70% MGS2 first place (1pt) - 30.86% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 78.56% (30,085) Metal Gear Solid 2 - 76.56% (29,319) This is one of the most boring matches of the entire contest, and consequently one of the easiest writeups. Everything went exactly the way it was supposed to go. Final Fantasy X scored an easy first place and proved itself a contender to make the final. Metal Gear Solid 2 scored an easy second place and proved itself a good midcarder. Silent Hill 2 was fodder, and Morrowind was a distant, but decent third place. That's all there is to say, and though I'd love to ramble on about this match and make it sound good, I can't. The one thing I will say is Elder Scrolls fans came out in full force today and proved the series contest was no fluke. You guys really are some of the whiniest gamers I've ever seen on message boards. We get it, a game could be called Elder Scrolls 5: Fecal Matter and you'd eat it right up. For all I know, the games are fine. But you stay classy, TES fans. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Regarding this upcoming battle, I think the Crew has gotten way too spoiled these days. FFX vs MGS2 is exactly the kind of match you'd normally expect from the second round of a traditional 1v1 bracket, yet all I hear is shouts of "boooooring" just because we know how the top two are going to place? Even if that's the case (which I'll agree it is), this should still serve as a pretty good indicator of the legit strength of both games, considering the other two options shouldn't hurt one more than another. But yeah, 48 hours ago we'd seen FF6 underperform by something like 4%, FF7 go under expectations by 2 (and fail to double MK64 in the process), and FFT flat out bomb in what was supposed to be a competitive match, and I was just about to stick a fork in the FF series for '09. But these FF8 and FF9 showings have been way way better than I was thinking (so good in fact that they might nearly cancel each other out next round!), and so I don't see any way that X doesn't show us more of the same tonight. Normally I'd try to make a case for MGS2- I think it's stronger than 3 and the MGS series is better-suited to 4ways than FF, but the trouble is that the other two games are going to offer so little competition that a good 75% of the vote is going to be up for grabs between the two of them, turning this into more of a 1v1 that X will surely win handily. As for Morrowind, I think TES is kind of like Kart in that the whole series doesn't get a ton of love or respect but it does have two pretty strong individual games that stand to do better for themselves, and that should be enough to get it past SH. Which would give us something like: - Final Fantasy X - 40.16% - Metal Gear Solid 2 - 32.85% - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - 13.96% - Silent Hill 2 - 13.03% I... like it! ### Next Day Review 62.24% on MGS2 directly? Incredible! I'm sure people have been trying to spin this as "see, I knew MGS2 was the most hated of the series", but ehhh, I'm still of the opinion that MGS fans are super-dedicated and will support anything from the series, so 1/2/3/4 are probably all relatively close in strength. In which case... well, like I already said, "incredible!" Putting up 46% against legit competition like this makes me feel much much better about my bracket (which has FFX surviving and advancing all the way into the Final where it's such a popular FF choice that it helps seal 7's doom). And speaking of legit competition, let me just take a moment to congratulate Morrowind on a heck of a respectable showing here. Only allowing MGS2 61% directly, despite having to share the poll with another (dominant) RPG option? That's the kind of showing that ought to be making those of us with God of War and GTA:SA advancing in a few days here very nervous, IMO! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3466&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=21) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs Kingdom Hearts vs Metroid Prime vs Paper Mario 2009 _source: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs Kingdom Hearts vs Metroid Prime vs Paper Mario 2009 (revid 65256)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2001-2003 - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts - 41.78% Metroid Prime - 33.38% Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 12.53% Paper Mario - 12.24% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** KH first place (2pts) - 32.73% KH second place (1pt) - 32.52% Vice City second place (2pts) - 21.79% Vice City first place (1pt) - 43.83% - **Advancing Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts - 65.25% (24,988) Vice City - 65.62% (25,130) Unless I'm forgetting something, this was the first match where we had three games with a potential order for 1-2 going in. Some even thought Paper Mario had an outside chance at second place, but the main debate here was Vice City, Kingdom Hearts and Metroid Prime. 2 big PS2 games against 2 big Gamecube games made this even more confusing. Could Vice City and Kingdom Hearts stay out of each other's way and do well, or would Metroid Prime take advantage? Could Metroid avoid its typical "I get screwed by Nintendo SFF" act? There was no way to know, and this was a good match if you're not a fan of years of trends and stats making matches too predictable. We had three games that could be in any 1-2-3 order, with no real way to predict how it would end up. Save one. In 2004, Starcraft's run overrated the hell out of the top half of Division 128. If you thought SoulCalibur, Wind Waker and Halo were as strong as those stats dictate, you're nuts. Kingdom Hearts was the one game notable enough to maintain or increase in strength the last five years. Metroid Prime was likely a victim of D128 being overrated, which in all likelihood meant Kingdom Hearts \> Metroid Prime was the favored result in this match. While Vice City was in the bottom half of D128 and doesn't fall under the "hugely overrated" umbrella, Grand Theft Auto has been dropping like a rock for years and most people don't trust it anymore. Because of all this, Kingdom Hearts \> Metroid Prime was the consensus pick for this match. At least I think it was, I forget the guru stats offhand. When the match began, everything played out per our on-the-fly, lack-of-reliable-stats analysis. Kingdom Hearts flew out to an easy first place and would stay there until match's end, even in the face of another huge PS2 game. For those remaining few people who think Kingdom Hearts doesn't have some insane strength, this was more proof to the contrary. Metroid Prime also began the match in good shape, easily in second place and building a lead through the first 15 minutes. It wasn't an overbearing performance and it looked as if it was struggling to get a lead going, but this is Grand Theft Auto we're talking about. Surely, Metroid Prime would have one of those matches where it wouldn't OMG DOMINATE second place, but handily get there. But then Vice City started stalling Metroid only 30 minutes into the match, when the lead was only 150. Surely this only meant Metroid would have one of those matches where it struggles to wins second place, but is never really threatened... Whoops. Not only did Vice City come back overnight once all the Nintendo Power Hour stuff was over, but it won all the key voting blocks typically reserved for Nintendo throughout the rest of the match and ended up beating Metroid Prime fairly easily. Vice City still has strength in the face of GTA's perpetual weakening, but the real reason it won here is Metroid's continual way of embarrassing the hell out of itself in the face of other Nintendo options in a poll. Paper Mario leeched Metroid out of a win here, and it's as simple as that. Not to say Metroid Prime didn't deserve to lose -- frankly if you're a heavy hitter, you should SFF the hell out of Paper Mario and place in the poll no matter what it takes -- but it wins pretty easily without a Mario in the way. This said, it's impressive that 2 PS2 games not only collectively finished 1-2 in the poll, but collectively won the company battle this time around 63.43% - 36.57%. It's rare you see Nintendo lose so badly, but it does happen once in awhile. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Now we come to one of the cooler setups of R1. During the bracketing phase everyone seemed to be saying how even though they'd take Prime over KH directly, the Square RPG was sure to slide though thanks to a Mario game being in the way to hold Metroid back a bit. I don't necessarily buy that though... for one thing the two games appeal to very different demographics and appeared on different consoles, for two things Nintendo has been gobbling up huge % all Contest long instead of falling into pits of LFF like we thought, and for three things there ARE two games here that share a console, and they're not the Nintendo choices! Sure Vice City and Kingdom Hearts are extremely different games that probably don't have as much overlap as you'd expect from two of the PS2's best-sellers, but what I haven't seen anyone mention is that there COULD be decent overlap between KH1 and PM1. Colorful "my first RPG"-type experiences filled with iconic characters in an attempt to bring in the younger players? I think there could be some truth to that idea, which is why I decided to take the risky Prime upset in my bracket. As for VC, bah, it's hard to say. Sure it SEEMS as though GTA has fallen off the map, but Contests like this can result in some strange results, and I guess it wouldn't be impossible for GTA to have kind of a "Mario Kart effect" where even though the series is bad the games themselves can do decently. But with the way Nintendo has been slaughtering the past three weeks, and how PSX/PS2 Square RPGs have been killing in the last three days, I would still be pretty surprised if it were actually in the picture to advance out of this one. And with Paper Mario... that's another toughie. The Mario name has been doing wonders for every entrant, and after Mario RPG's great showing it's hard to imagine all of those fans would abandon the (kind of) next installment in the series. I mean I can't see it beating out VC, but it ought to at least hold up better than most are giving it credit for. So in the end I'm going to go with Prime because 1. Paper Mario and GTA should both have respectable Day Votes/ASVs, limiting the damage it'll do to Metroid there 2. Samus looks AWESOME in that match pic and 3. my bracket told me so. Final decision: - Metroid Prime - 32.19% - Kingdom Hearts - 32.09% - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 21.75% - Paper Mario - 13.97% Let's go Prime! ### Next Day Review What an absolutely disgusting result. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3467&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=22) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Diablo II: Lord of Destruction vs Grand Theft Auto III vs Halo: Combat Evolved vs Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2009 _source: Diablo II: Lord of Destruction vs Grand Theft Auto III vs Halo: Combat Evolved vs Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2009 (revid 68770)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2001-2003 - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 32.52% Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - 26.47% Grand Theft Auto III - 25.44% Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 15.54% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Diablo II first place (2pts) - 18.70% Diablo II second place (1pt) - 15.05% Halo second place (2pts) - 32.91% Halo first place (1pt) - 47.46% - **Advancing Prediction:** Diablo II - 33.75% (12,925) Halo - 80.37% (30,778) This is the best possible match you could ask for in a fourway format. All 4 games close early, all 4 games breaking 20% late and all four games taking awhile to establish anything on one another. The general consensus here was Halo and Diablo 2 getting some order of 1-2, with Grand Theft Auto 3 still having some people retain faith in the series. No one really expected anything of KOTOR while sharing a poll with fellow Xbox smash hit Halo. Little did we know how awesome this poll would be. When it started, all four games were virtually dead even for a few minutes, with GTA3 straggling behind a bit. It would fall behind pace relatively quickly, and by the 30 minute mark it was clearly not going to threaten a second place finish. It obviously still ended up doing extremely well for a last place game, and it even managed to shave a 700 vote deficit down to 250 with the dead hours, and threatened to steal third place for a time. If you used Vice City's 2004 performance to gauge Grand Theft Auto 3, I guess one could call GTA3 a disappointment here. Its sales and critical acclaim (once upon a time, GTA was actually a good series; now Rock\$\* just rehashes GTA3 with different color tones and the fans eat it up like drones) should have meant it doing better than it showed here, but it was simply not to be. GTA has fallen off the map more and more with each passing year on this site, though I won't trash 3's performance in this match. It helped create one of the best fourway scenarios possible. The true match however took place between Halo and KOTOR. Even though this poll is close in percentage, Diablo 2 established control of first place within 30 minutes and did about as well as a game can do in a close match. After the first freeze, it never lost the lead and shocked casual and Board 8 bracketmaker alike with its first place finish. Diablo 2 placing wasn't a giant surprise to the Board 8 people, but outdoing Starcraft and scoring first place was. Its first place prediction percentage was 18.7%, and partial was 15.05%, one of the lowest of the entire first round. Part of this was casual underestimation (Diablo 2 being stronger than Starcraft was a HUGE leap of faith given 2004), but most of it is Halo time and time again being the most overbracketed series we'll ever have. Everyone always picks Halo stuff to go far every contest, and every contest it falls flat on its face. Which at last brings us to one of the most surprising performances of the entire contest. Can anyone look at this poll and honestly tell me expanding character battles to all fictional gaming characters is a bad idea? Star Wars KOTOR not only performed well, but it performed well in the face of two fanbases -- PC and Xbox -- that should have stolen all its votes and sent it packing to an easy last place. The reason for this is inexplicable to me, unless the name "Star Wars" really means that much. And putting Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker in a contest would be a bad idea? Are you kidding me? I'm all for it. Halo actually spent the first 90 minutes of this match struggling to build a 200 vote lead, but it all fell apart overnight. Star Wars came all the way back during the dead hours, built a small lead, tailed off a bit in the morning and built up a 700 vote lead during the DSV. Halo predictably made a furious comeback with the ASV and won second place (and even cut its deficit on Diablo 2 down to 1900 after trailing by something like 2600-2700 votes), but this was a rare comeback where I didn't notice too much whining. Halo's ASV is well-documented by now, so people saw it coming well before it happened. However everyone was so surprised and happy by Star Wars' initial effort that they didn't mind the end result loss too much. Threatening second place in the face of two stronger games from your two main fanbases is an unbelievable effort, and one of the most commendable results of the entire contest. You won't find many 0-2 games more impressive than Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. For Halo, despite the win and my risking a broken record here, casual shooters were bombing all over the place. This was a bomb regardless of it winning; if you're Halo, you don't rely on a monster ASV to come back on a weaker game from your own system. You just don't. This was one of the most embarrassing contest wins I can remember. On a more personal note, Diablo 2 winning kicks all sorts of ass. It took me forever to get into online, but I did eventually get hooked. How I have two level 90 characters (Hammerdin and Meteorb Sorceress), but I might sell all my stuff on d2jsp given the impending ladder reset. Anyway, awesome to see Diablo 2 get its due. This was an amazing result. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction This seemed like a fairly easy poll to predict not so long ago, but after the wild events of the last 5 days anyone who tells you they have ANY kind of confidence in ANY of the possible results here is a bald faced liar! (Or perhaps an honest lunatic.) Quick hitters: - I'm seeing pretty high Halo picks for this one over in the Oracle, but I'm not buying it. This is a terrible draw for Halo; its against one of the two or so alternative Xbox games that people actually care about, and on top of that casual/frat boy split between itself GTA3 is going to hurt it plenty. Now granted we said the same thing about Master Chief and Vercetti and couple years back, but that was Steroid MC- I think the '08 version would have been held back more like we expected. - Because of the forementioned overlap I also don't think GTA3 runs away with anything here, not even after today's very impressive showing for VC. Although it IS the only PS2 option, and with how crazy hot that system has been all week... yeah, it's going to look very good and improve on VC's percentage, but the trouble is... - I don't think there's anyway Diablo loses to GTA in a close match. And since Halo will be weakening it a little and people actually care about KotoR somewhat, there probably won't be enough percentage to go around for GTA to blow past DII with ease, which could take us back to a Warcraft/GTA situation. Also, despite all the calls of FLOP, SC did still manage over 28% of the vote- Diablo doesn't even need to do that in order to pull out a second place here. So with that in mind I'm taking a 0.000000% confidence pick of: - Halo - 30.91% - Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - 26.76% - Grand Theft Auto III - 26.72% - Knights of the Old Republic - 15.61% ...wait a minute, did I just pick Diabo \> GTA not three hours after stating that Warcraft \> GTA was making less and less sense every minute? What was I THINING? ### Next Day Review Oh man, what an entertaining match that was! I mean, just check out the final graph (listed above). Flat out insane trends, especially from Halo which pulled the closest thing I've ever seen to a perfect horizontal "S curve"- look at it go absolutely dead to rights in Europe before exploding once the American teenagers started hitting the polls. I mean obviously we've seen this kind of thing before from Halo/MC, but this time it was especially powerful thanks to Diablo being the complete polar opposite. Jeez DII, from dominating the next closest competitor by over 6% overnight to finishing dead last in a couple updates during the day! Too bad that the loser in all this excitement had to be the one entrant that was consistently impressive throughout the entire day... check out that straight as an arrow trend for KotOR. Now there's a fanbase you could set your watch to! Too bad that, like Donkey Kong (and unlike Frog and Sub-Zero) before him it just didn't QUITE have what it took to pull off the hilarious upset. And of course the most stunning result has to be GTA3. How in the world do you manage to flop this badly in a poll with no Nintendo, and no Square, and where you're the only Playstation option? The craziest part is that the game did terribly the first couple hours (as expected), but then did very well in Europe and actually held up quite decently during the day, yet somehow got SFFed entirely to death within the fanbase that's supposed to be its \#1 lifeline, the American teens. I mean true, last night I predicted Halo would hurt GTA's casual/frat boy appeal, but even I didn't think it would break its legs off like THAT. (Also, props to this poll for being one of the more popular ones so far this season despite the major 'no Squintendo' disadvantage. And the added disadvantage of none of these games actually being strong... but shh about that, don't ruin the mood!) ## Trivia - Diablo II's 27.43% was the lowest percentage ever put up by a first-place finisher in a four-way battle, breaking the record of 27.79% set by Liquid Snake in 2007. - Likewise, GTA III broke Kefka's record for highest percentage received by a fourth-place finisher. - Neither of these records lasted very long, though. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3468&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=23) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Disgaea: Hour of Darkness vs Fire Emblem vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2009 _source: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness vs Fire Emblem vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2009 (revid 65258)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 30th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2001-2003 - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 30th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 45.55% Zelda: The Wind Waker - 31.43% Disgaea: Hour of Darkness - 11.80% Fire Emblem - 11.25% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** SSBM first place (2pts) - 76.43% SSBM second place (1pt) - 18.10% Zelda:WW second place (2pts) - 61.30% Zelda:WW first place (1pt) - 12.94% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 94.53% (36,201) Zelda: Wind Waker - 74.24% (28,431) It's always nice following a long writeup with something really short, but this match doesn't require anything extensive. It was one of the most obvious results we could imagine. Melee \> Wind Waker was a mortal lock, though some people correctly cited this match as the point where we could spot Melee being in trouble. Perhaps expecting Melee to completely smash Wind Waker with SFF was unfair, but Wind Waker did a lot better than it should have, avoided the doubling and bled Melee's percentage in the latter stages of the match. If Wind Waker could do this, Melee was in a world of hurt when Ocarina came along. Fire Emblem was also put into the absolute worst situation ever. It's become very respected as a series, but getting placed into a match against a Zelda and the very game that put it on the map (Melee) was an impossible mountain. Not surprisingly, it got SFFd to holy hell twice over and allowed a Disgaea-related contest entrant to not be in last place for the first time ever. Now if we could just figure out a way to get Disgaea into first or second place, all would be well! :D ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Wind Waker's in kind of a weird position between MM underperforming and LA looking like a beast, but between the two I'd wager it's more of an MM. Plus the results from Prime and StarCraft the last few days don't exactly speak favorably of its '04 run... Now, if voters are actually going to be turning anti-Nintendo in this last quarter of the bracket as everyone seems to be shouting about, you'd have to imagine that Melee and Brawl would be the prime targets for the backlash. BUT, I don't exactly buy that idea for one, and for two there's really no way to anti-vote Nintendo in this poll anyways, so SSB's sure to still look like a monster. The only real point of interest to me in this one is Disgaea. Clearly this game has an incredibly dedicated fanbase, and clearly this is the perfect setup for the game (only non-Nintendo choice, only PS2 option, and FE sure to be SFF-slammed below it), and you'd have to imagine the fans love the game itself more than Laharl, right? Yet despite Laharl pulling down a consistent 17% in his last two R1s it looks like most people are only taking Disgaea for 10% or so. I've got to think the game can look a little bit more respectable. And... that's about all I have to say! Numbers = - Super Smash Bros. Melee - 47.49% - Zelda: Wind Waker - 27.75% - Disgaea: Hour of Darkness - 13.25% - Fire Emblem - 11.52% Go Melee! ...sort of! ### Next Day Review Well, what can you say about this result? Strong showing from Melee, including a fantastic ASV that pushed it up to over 65% directly on Wind Waker, but... I don't think anyone was all THAT surprised to see it happen. FE had trouble as expected, and so pretty much the only thing to note is that I was correct in suspecting a STF-boosted good showing from Disgaea. (As usual though I wish I'd had more confidence in my hunch and boosted its number in my Oracle.) Anyways, a final score like this might mean good things for next round: Melee will clearly be the runaway winner, but with Halo and Diablo apparently being as weak as KotOR, it seems very possible that a weakened Wind Waker will be right in the mix with them for 2nd place. Could be the best fatal threeway of the round! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3469&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=24) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## God of War vs Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs Tales of Symphonia vs The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 2009 _source: God of War vs Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs Tales of Symphonia vs The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 2009 (revid 65259)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, May 1st, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2004-2006 - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 1st, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 30.94% God of War - 26.40% The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 24.54% Tales of Symphonia - 17.93% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Oblivion first place (2pts) - 15.78% Oblivion second place (1pt) - 28.14% Symphonia second place (2pts) - 10.25% Symphonia first place (1pt) - 5.85% - **Advancing Prediction:** Oblivion - 43.92% (16,820) Tales of Symphonia - 16.10% (6,166) This was basically the best match of the entire contest from a personal level and a match-that-kicks-ass level. As for why? All you need to know here is the consensus pick was San Andreas \> God of War, with some outside support for Oblivion getting second place over God of War. That's it. No mention of Tales of Symphonia doing anything, because its characters more or less suck ass in character contests. Even KP, a huge backer of San Andreas \> Oblivion tried talking himself up for Andreas \> Tales and could not. No logical reason for it. But then the match began, and all holy hell broke loose. But before the actual numbers, let me take a moment to explain something. You know Board 8 is Nintendo Central? Take that fanboyism, multiply it by 10 and you get Board 8 when Tales of Symphonia came out. The game was flat-out HUGE here. So when we finally got another game contest, with Tales in it, we went INSANE when Tales was winning early. All bets and bracket favoritism were off. We wanted Tales to do well. We all figured Tales was just getting the board vote before an ultimate collapse, but it lead by 50 votes at the freeze. And at 10 minutes, the lead actually went UP! And it kept on going up, all the way to 225 votes within an hour in a poll where every game would break 23%. That is amazing. This lead would slowly dissipate overnight, but not to the game we all thought would get first place. Remember how San Andreas \> God of War was the consensus pick, with Oblivion in second place as an outside upset? Well lost in all the early Tales of Symphonia hoopla was what was going on with the other three games. For the second time in three matches, Grand Theft Auto embarrassed itself. San Andreas, the game we all expected would score first place (not due to GTA being trustworthy, but due to the other games supposedly being weak), was actually the first game to play itself out of contention in this match. It fell behind pace the first, and would eventually fade away into a fairly easy last place. Its final score was very respectable of course, but it never really threatened anything. If I recall correctly, this was the only time all contest a consensus first place pick finished in last place. This is of course GTA on the whole falling off the map, but it's really weird thinking of Vice City as the only game in the 3/VC/SA trio to advance this contest. After 3 and San Andreas lost, GTA4 was the only game left to potentially do anything besides Vice City. The overall GTA collapse is rapidly happening before our eyes every contest, but no one saw even this coming. San Andreas was considered far and away the strongest GTA title, but I guess we were wrong. With GTA out, this left Oblivion and ToS battling for first, with consensus second place God of War trailing not too far behind in third place. Oblivion would eventually take the lead from Tales of Symphonia overnight, and would not let it go for the rest of the match. In the end, Oblivion's steady rise allowed it to win the match outright by 2100 votes, in a match in which Oblivion getting second place would have been a huge upset special. Oblivion was not only legit, but was an outright contender after this. This ultimately leads us back to how second place was won. Tales of Symphonia lost its early lead to Oblivion and Oblivion eventually won. We get all that. But as ToS was letting Oblivion fly on by, God of War was trailing behind in a very close third place and also threatening ToS's leads. Oblivion took the lead for good from ToS around 3:00 a.m. EST, and around this time God of War was losing to ToS for second place by 300 votes. Given how well casual action games do during day votes, 300 votes was nothing for God of War to potentially make up in 21 hours of poll. Sure enough, God of War began chipping away at the lead, against a game that more or less shared trends with it. It began chipping away during the dead hours, built up a tiny bit of steam once the early morning vote hit, then got locked into an eternal stall with Tales of Symphonia once the morning vote hit full stride. The lead got under 100 at 7:30 in the morning. It took three hours of progressive stalling from both sides for God of War to shave that 100 down to taking second place position for the first time, which happened at 10:30. After all that fighting, God of War finally managed a degree of control in the match and began one of those prolonged stall lead increases. At 10:30, its lead began at 9 votes. It then began a very, very pain-staking process of lead increases in the face of multiple ToS stalls, with its lead ultimately peaking at 400 votes around 5:00 p.m. EST. For Tales of Symphonia, the game that started the poll on fire and forced two games to fight like hell to get it out of first place and ultimately to third, it seemed like its time was done. Trend-wise, Tales of Symphonia was behaving like a Nintendo game: strong first hour, weak overnight, strong morning vote, strong after school vote. The problem here is God of War was equally or more strong than ToS in all those voting blocks save the Power Hour. During the morning vote and ASV, the best Tales could do was a lot of stalls in the face of an overall lead increase in God of War's favor. But now the ASV was winding down to an end, ToS had given its best effort and like most Nintendo games, would have an evening and second night votes similar to the first night vote -- essentially meaning Tales of Symphonia was screwed. When you behave like a Nintendo game all match, you don't miraculously switch trends and come back 400 votes on a game that will only get stronger as the match nears the end. And yet inexplicably, suddenly, even miraculously, Tales of Symphonia caught fire after 5:00 p.m. It dropped to 300 by 5:20. 40 minutes later, 300 had become 200. Before God of War could even recover from the blitz of the last 70 minutes, it was bleeding percentage and votes all over the poll. Tales of Symphonia was back on its ass, and hard. God of War tried the best it could to stall Tales of Symphonia away, but it was not to be. By 7, the lead was down to 100. And right on cue, Tales of Symphonia took its lead back just past 8. God of War made one last stand and fought against Tales building a lead, but God of War ran out of gas for good at 9 o'clock. It stalled Tales whenever possible, but the last three hours of this poll was a slow grind up to a 280 vote lead for Tales, with God of War cutting 50 votes off of this lead before poll's end. It was a complete and total collapse on God of War's part, because this match was over GoW was putting Tales away with the ASV, then all of a sudden the ASV flipped dead around and buried God of War within a few hours. More shocking here was how Nintendo games generally don't do well in the evening and second night votes, while Kratos trends upwards all the way through to the end of the match. How Tales of Symphonia pulled this off in the face of these trends is just beyond me. It's not something that can at all be explained, I'll just say this was a beautiful match to watch. Four games breaking 23% in a fourway poll, the consensus first place pick coming in last place, and Tales of Symphonia shocking the world all made this the best match of the contest. This was like a match before stats and trends and all that stuff. Just sit back, pick a favorite and root on. There's no real way to gauge potential strength from this match either, since all four games were so close. All could be strong, all could suck. Who really knows until later? Doesn't make this match any less awesome. More awesome was the whining and cheating accusations following this. Some fake stats professor from Cornell (what a stupid internet gimmick) actually tried telling the board that this result was statistically impossible given the prediction percentages; they were too low for ToS, indicating cheating had to be involved in the final ToS push that won it second place over God of War. Yes, because everyone with a bracket entered votes based on bracket and prediction percentages, and only people with a bracket ever get to vote on the main page. Good job, fake stats guy. Way to make a perfect match even better by acting like a whiny little \*\*\*\*\* and giving us all something to laugh at for days afterward. ### Interesting facts - Not surprisingly, this marks the closest four-way match in GameFAQs contest history. Never before has a fourth-place finisher broken 23%, nor has a first-place finisher been held under 27%. - Incidentally, both the record for highest fourth-place percentage and the record for lowest first-place percentage had just been set two days prior to this match, when Diablo II became the first entrant to win a four-pack with under 27.5% and GTA 3 became the first fourth-place finisher to break 22%. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Tonight is one of those rare matches that makes me appreciate how enjoyable R1 4way matches can be. Okay sure, none of these games are all that strong, but if the end result is a cluster of a foursome as wild as the one we saw two days ago, I can't say I mind! My fellow Crewmates have done a fine job of pointing out the pros and cons for all four games, but since this is the first time all season where I've honestly felt (pre-battle) that EVERY game has a good chance of advancing, I'm excited enough to add some bullet points of my own. - I've always been firm in my SA \> VC \> 3 \> 4 belief, and I still stand by that. however we've already seen that when it came to the casual voters Halo was GTA's perfect poison, and I think there's a good chance GoW does something similar. so I'd be VERY surprised if GTA ran away with this one, and could easily see it falling to second - DMC not managing to get a single game into the bracket (come on, even MEGA MAN got three!) really shook my faith in action titles on this site, and has been pointed out it would just make sense for Kratos to be \>\> GoW in the same way that Dante \>\> DMC. I did still end up taking God of War in my bracket, but that was only out of a total lack of respect for TES. but now... - you've got to be more than a little scared of Oblivion after seeing that Morrowind showing, don't you? okay so it was only 17%, but that nearly doubled Silent Hill (which shouldn't be pathetically weak in this format) and that was just a crazy-powerful 4 pack all around, PLUS it was having to contend with the most dominant RPG of the past 11 years. when you consider that Oblivion beats Morrowind in pretty much every area and that TES once again gets the advantage of being the only Xbox or PC option, you've got to love its chances to place (or very possibly win outright). sorry, bracket! - as much as I despise everything Tales Of not even I can count this game out entirely. Lloyd and ToS in general seem to be able to put up 20%ish pretty consistently, and with no one here being a powerhouse and the Nintendo/non-American sore thumb advantage, it certainly has some things working in its favor. but, we ALWAYS say this about ToS, and it ALWAYS finds a way to come up just short. I've been stung by that dumb game too many times to let it happen again- kill it, kill it! BOLD prediction: expect another super cool start near the 25/25/25/25 mark for this one, thanks to ToS's strong B8 support and GTA being so weak in the first couple hours. But when the dust settles, here are the percentages you're going to see: - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 30.50% - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 27.47% - God of War - 22.42% - Tales of Symphonia - 19.61% You can bet on it! (just... don't ask me for a repayment afterwards) ### Next Day Review Haha, yet another awesome match. People keep bashing these close ones with all this "all the options are weak, weeeeeak!" kind of talk, but I say "meh" to that. I mean these polls are still drawing a very nice 120k votes so it's not as though the site doesn't care whatsoever about the games. I just wish we could have seen some of these supposedly "weak" games go up against some of the classics of the past, like your Super Metroids or your Tetrises, so we could have gotten a real reading on where they stand. But anyways, yeah, I'm still absolutely shocked by that ASV... how does GoW do NOTHING with it when Kratos is one of the biggest afternoon studs we've seen? How does Oblivion continue to win despite being a semi-cultish RPG? And how does SA- alright, alright, so we've already beaten that horse to death. \*gives GTA one last kick for good measure\* And of course it's pretty funny to see ToS pulling a Phoenix Wright here and holding off the casual choice with a steady couple hundred barrier... yes sir, 4ways can certainly make for enjoyable R1 outings! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3470&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=25) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Halo 2 vs Metal Gear Solid 3 vs Okami vs World of Warcraft 2009 _source: Halo 2 vs Metal Gear Solid 3 vs Okami vs World of Warcraft 2009 (revid 65260)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2004-2006 - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 32.81% World of Warcraft - 26.85% Halo 2 - 24.77% Okami - 15.69% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** MGS3 first place (2pts) - 20.51% MGS3 second place (1pt) - 25.49% WoW second place (2pts) - 36.80% WoW first place (1pt) - 37.23% - **Advancing Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 46.00% (17,616) World of Warcraft - 74.03% (28,351) One of the biggest arguments pre-contest was the potential strength of WoW. A lot of people figured it would suck because of how bad it always did in past polls, others figured it would be a lot stronger because of rallying potential (and pre-contest, a lot of people were on edge about Blizzard games), while others had it winning the entire contest. Lucid Faia, who once came a single point away from a perfect bracket, picked WoW to win this entire contest. There was no real way to settle this until match time, so a lot of people decided to stop talking about it until the proper time. When the match finally began, all we knew for sure is Metal Gear Solid 3 was a complete lock for first place. The other three games fought it out for a few minutes, but everything took form soon enough. Okami fell off at the ten minute mark, never to be heard from again as Halo 2 and WoW were tied and fighting it out for second place. 20 minutes later, WoW had a lead of over 100 on Halo 2 and the match was essentially over. There would be no miracle ASV pushes from a Halo this time, only a big prolonged stall once WoW's lead hit 2700 or so. Halo 2 actually needed the morning vote and ASV pushes just to hold off Okami and avoid last place. Okami had come back from down 550 votes to Halo, only to watch it all blow up in smoke come the ASV. The damage to Halo 2 however was done. Not only did it not contend for second place, it needed an ASV push to prevent coming in LAST PLACE. Casual shooters bombing all over, etc etc. If there was any doubt about Fallout 3 \> Halo 3 being the easy pick for the final match of this round, that ended today. And while World of Warcraft came in second place, I don't think it was because of rallying or voodoo or any weird mumbo-jumbo. This is likely as strong as the game is -- decent, but nothing overpowering, and surely nothing that would get it a contest-winning bandwagon. Barring a miracle, it was done in round 2. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Before we get started on tonight's match properly let me just give a silent salute to the guys responsible for that match pic (and SB for making the right choices). Just an excellent, excellent piece of work right there- Okami gets to pull the full wolf shirt appeal that has worked so well for Ammy, WoW is awarded with the look that bailed out Arthas against Ike, Halo gets that very recognizable box art that did wonders for MC in '07, and MGS3 looks best of all in sporting that extremely iconic Snake Salute. This is exactly what match pics ought to look like *every night*- all the characters/games sporting their best and most recognizable looks, no "pic factor" having to come into play because everyone comes across as awesome right across the board. Soooo, I took WoW in my bracket but lost a ton of faith in that choice after seeing SC get smoked (despite the common assumption that this format was going to do wonders for Blizzard), and even though Diablo managed that win it didn't inspire a ton of confidence either. Especially when you consider that I'm sure both SC and Diablo are miles ahead of WoW in terms of legit popularity on this site. HOWEVER, MGS3 looks very good in the pic, has no haters and a super-dedicated fanbase, so I think it could pull a solid 35% or so here. And Okami is not going to roll over and die; it's the only option to appear on a Nintendo console, is sporting full on Ammy apeal, and we've already seen many examples of semi-cultish games holding up great against modern competition, so I think it might be able to push towards the 20% mark. And that would mean WoW would need only 23% or thereabouts in order to advance... after we've already seen SC manage 28 and Diablo pull down about 27. I'm a long ways from a Warcraft fan, but I do think the game will be up to that task, especially considering that it just makes sense for Blizzard rallying to be super-effective against competition like Halo. We're already seen it work out twice, and so the only way I see Halo keeping it from happening a third time is by blowing past WoW early and never looking back, which I just don't think it can do. My biggest hope for this match though is that WoW builds up a huge overnight lead before H2 pulls one of the most frightening comebacks in history with the ASV. Seems highly possible considering none of these other options should be beasts with the Day Vote! In any case though I think WoW rallies its way to a win in the last half hour if this is at all in question, which is why I'm going with: - Metal Gear Solid 3 - 34.91% - World of Warcraft - 23.11% - Halo 2 - 22.97% - Okami - 19.01% *24 hours of Albion*, here we go! ### Next Day Review Grrrr, so upset at Halo right now. Sure, I picked it to lose in both my Oracle and my bracket and it's living up to that billing, but if it could just have been a little less pathetic I'd be right in line for a perfect prediction here (think I'm like .41 off on MGS3 and .15 off Okami or something). But yeah, sub 22 in a match where it's the only Xbox option AND only shooter option is just nuts to me... how do you go from hanging tight with Snake in '07 to THIS in only two short years, especially considering how Xbox systems have never been more popular on this site than right now? The other strange thing is that despite WoW needing a "massive rally" to have any kind of strength and despite Halo's supposed casual appeal, this is going to be the least popular match in like a week and a half. Hmm... anyways kudos to Okami for validating itself as a legit midcarder for the third straight year, and to MGS3 for putting on a show that has us wondering if maybe it IS the 2nd most popular of the series. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3471&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=26) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Gears of War vs Kingdom Hearts II vs Resident Evil 4 vs Shadow of the Colossus 2009 _source: Gears of War vs Kingdom Hearts II vs Resident Evil 4 vs Shadow of the Colossus 2009 (revid 65264)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2004-2006 - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 4 - 37.49% Kingdom Hearts II - 30.97% Gears of War - 20.25% Shadow of the Colossus - 11.29% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** RE4 first place (2pts) - 42.21% RE4 second place (1pt) - 36.48% KH II second place (2pts) - 21.65% KH II first place (1pt) - 18.00% - **Advancing Prediction:** Resident Evil 4 - 78.69% (30,135) Kingdom Hearts II - 39.65% (15,184) There were two games in this contest -- Shadow of the Colossus and Chrono Cross -- that I wanted to see lose more than any other. They're the two most overrated games ever made. After this match, I got my wish. I would have rather Shadow of the Colossus scored like 2%, but I'll take what I can get. This result still flooded the board with the "SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS IS ART YOU GUYS ALL SUCK" topics I was hoping to see from its whiny-ass fanbase, so I was not disappointed at all. Good show! Nothing beats the sound of crying from a bad game's whiny fanbase. Nothing. I bet some of those people were even crying in real life, which makes the loss even better for me. I didn't end up winning this contest or even coming close, but man did I love a good deal of the results in it. With that out of the way, \[insert some overused line about casual shooters doing bad\]. Gears of War bombed, even though no one expected it to win. Et cetera. The real match here was obviously the battle for first place, and for once a battle for first place mattered because there was no way both RE4 and KH2 were going to get late into the contest this way. Whoever won this was almost a lock to repeat the effort in round 2, while the loser would likely repeat the trend and lose. This wasn't Mario Kart vs Super Metroid, because both games ended up in a big SNES cluster\*\*\*\* in round 2 and you couldn't guarantee a repeat of trends. This was much much different. The two games obviously ended up very close, but they weren't supposed to be. Before the contest, the consensus for the final was LTTP, FF7, Ocarina and FFX, with FFX being the most likely game not to make it. Contenders to upset it included... pretty much anything in the bottom half of the bracket if you were biased enough, but the big names were Brawl, Galaxy, Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 4 and even Metal Gear Solid. When you're a contender to possibly make the final, you don't go out and struggle to beat Kingdom Hearts 2. Kingdom Hearts is a strong series and all, but it's not finals-caliber. And for a time in this match, it looked like RE4 was in real danger of getting second place. It did well enough in the early parts of the poll, building a lead for itself overnight even though KH2 was performing well. But then the morning vote hit and all bets were off. KH2 started slowly chipping away at a very consistent rate come morning time, and continued chipping away all the way through the DSV. By the time that magical 3:00 p.m. EST came around, a lead that was once 1250 votes was down to 736, and we hadn't seen the insane Kingdom Hearts ASV yet. It looked like KH2 would catch fire with the ASV like it always does and win this match easily, but somehow it did not. Instead we got a prolonged, drawn-out, hours-long stall all the way until the end of the match. At 3, RE4's lead was 736. It ended up winning by 725 votes. An 11 shift in 9 hours is about as close a stall as one could imagine, and any potential KH2 pushes were met with pushbacks (at one point the lead was below 600, but it never felt like we were moving out of stall-land) until the end of the match and RE4's win here. But it was a Pyrrhic victory at best. This match proved RE4 was not a contender to make the final, and in all honestly it got lucky to get first place here. Holding off the entirety of the Kingdom Hearts day vote to win is no easy feat, and it basically won because of building up that 1250 vote lead overnight. Had Kingdom Hearts even prevented a 1000 vote lead overnight, things might have been different here. And if the original Kingdom Hearts were in this match instead of 2, I'm positive RE4 loses this -- X-Stats be damned. The other main reason RE4 won is because it's a quasi-Nintendo game. How else do you explain holding off the vaunted Kingdom Hearts day vote? You need a fanbase that also has a passable day vote, and Nintendo has one. In a way, RE4's massive overlapped fanbase is a blessing and a curse. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Tonight has me a little bit frightened. I'm a firm believer in RE4, but even so I'm very much surprised that no one seems to be giving KHII any real kind of chance at the win in this one. I mean RE4 has some things going in its favor (only option to make it to a Nintendo console, RE5 still bringing in visitors, RE1 and 2 looked decentish and 4 will of course be well ahead of them, KH has to split with another PS2 game), but it seems like a really good case for could also be made for Kingdom Hearts: - KHII sold nearly as well as the original, is owned by even more people on My Games, reviews between the two are about the same... if there's any series where the sequel could be just as strong as the first, I'd think it would have to be KH - New Square RPGs have been on fire- we vastly underestimated FF8, yet refused to adjust our thinking and have ended up underestimating FF9, FFX, and KH1 as well. shouldn't we start giving them more credit at some point? - KH1 put up 38% against what I would still argue wasn't terrible competition. it pounded Vice City straight up despite having to share the poll with another "kiddie" RPG (granted a win over GTA doesn't look that amazing anymore, but still, it was a slaughter) and even outdid Metroid Prime and Mario RPG combined. yeah yeah, everyone's been kicking Prime in the sack for the last week, but come on, isn't there a limit to how weak it could realistically be? - RE4 isn't really survival-horror, it's more of a shooter, and shooters have been bombing right and left this season. plus I'd have to imagine that there are a ton of RE4 fans who also enjoy Gear of War and vice versa- sure they're on different platforms, but I would still imagine there's a decent bit of overlap between the two (whereas KHII and SotC are such vastly different games that I doubt it has the same problem) So yeah, I still think RE4 is quite strong (and pretty independent) and don't disagree with those who took it to make a deep run into this bracket... I just don't think that tonight's poll provides ideal circumstances for it, and as a result I don't think it's going to be blowing KH2 out of the water. I'll go with - Resident Evil 4 - 35.91% - Kingdom Hearts II - 32.29% - Gears of War - 19.97% - Shadow of the Colossus - 11.83% Don't flop on me now, KH! (Watch, it somehow will- this series always does just the opposite of what I expect!) ### Next Day Review Whooo hooo, called a KH match right for the first time in my life! In my writeup I scolded us for continuing to underestimate New Square... based on today's preds, looks like we've finally gotten the picture! That part of the day was great, but in retrospect I'm not sure what I thinking with those picks for the bottom two games. I mean clearly RE4 was going to be hurting Gears (and a little bit back in the other direction), so why did I pick it to score only a few points less than Halo had the day before? And then I made the mistake of trying to set SotC equal to Wander despite every other cultish game doing way better than their protagonists on the modern half of the bracket. Oh well, live and learn! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3472&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=27) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy XII vs Half-Life 2 vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney vs The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2009 _source: Final Fantasy XII vs Half-Life 2 vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney vs The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2009 (revid 65263)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, May 4th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2004-2006 - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 4th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Twilight Princess - 39.27% Final Fantasy XII - 25.08% Half-Life 2 - 20.58% Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 15.26% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:TP first place (2pts) - 41.53% Zelda:TP second place (1pt) - 40.73% HL2 second place (2pts) - 27.37% HL2 first place (1pt) - 34.94% - **Advancing Prediction:** Twilight Princess - 82.26% (31,502) Half-Life 2 - 62.31% (23,862) Phoenix had the standard Board 8-infused early lead, but finished about where he was expected. And one day after RE4 proved it was not a finals contender (but still had good matches left in it), Twilight Princess went out and killed its own poll, putting itself into the discussion. Though it was never really in question, the real match here was Final Fantasy 12 vs Half-Life 2 for second place. Twilight Princess \> Half-Life 2 was the major consensus here, but with all the casual shooters committing suicide this contest, FF12 \> HL2 looked like a possibility more and more with each passing day. FF12 is about as mixed as a fanbase can be, but a mainstream Final Fantasy outright bombing is rare. This all added up to some rather worried people come match time, but this was laid to rest fairly quickly. At the beginning, Half-Life 2 built a 1000 vote lead in a little over two hours. And though FF12 did far better from this point until the end of the poll -- the lead only increased from 1000 to 2800 by the end, with a lot of prolonged stall periods -- Final Fantasy 12 never threatened a comeback or anything of the sort. This was one of those matches whose end result was only close on paper, but the winner was never in doubt. For one day, a casual shooter bothered not embarrassing itself. And make no mistake; losing to Final Fantasy 12 would have been VERY embarrassing. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Tonight... was supposed to be the best match of the whole opening round, according to alot of people pre-Contest. I mean, check out these Guru preds for 2nd place: - Half-Life 2 - 126 (58.33%) - Final Fantasy 12 - 80 (37.04%) - Phoenix Wright - 5 (2.31%) And yet you look through the Crew and Oracle picks for tonight and it's almost entirely a landslide in the other direction- what happened? Well, this happened - Ocarina - 54% - FF9 - 21% - HL1 - 15% - CC - 10% Yikes, hard to argue with that! Let's compare and contrast quickly - Ocarina \>\> TP - obviously, but I'm one of the biggest believers in TP and still think it could very well be right up there with FFX and contending for a Top Ten position, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if it shot up well above 40 - FF9 \> FF12 - the way TP manhandled this game back in '06 after some had been expecting that GotY to go neck and neck was really telling, and I've got to figure it's only lost more steam in the last 2.5 years. but even if 9's ahead by a decent bit, 12 has the advantage of not losing votes to a Chrono game, so I really can't imagine it finishing below FF9's total - HL2 \> HL1 - KHII is doing a great job of proving that just because you were the original doesn't ALWAYS mean you're the strongest, and thanks to the Orange Box and the continued progress of steam you could make a really fine case for HL2. but, sorry, the gap from that last match was just too large to be able to make up with only a minor strength upgrade. if there was some other PSX/PS2 RPG option in the bottom spot I would still at least consider the upset, but not as it stands - PW \>\> CC - cult games have really been shining ever since we got into the 32/64 bit era, and I see no reason why one of the most beloved games on the GameFAQs social boards wouldn't continue the trend. I used to think that heavy Nintendo competition would be bad news for a DS entry like Phoenix, but after the character performed so admirably in '08 I've got to give this series its props against any opponent. would not be shocked if Phoenix was even able to give Gordon a real run for his money here! And with that in mind, the numbers work out to just aboooooout - Zelda: Twilight Princess - 39.53% - Final Fantasy XII - 24.83% - Half-Life 2 - 19.03% - Phoenix Wright - 16.61% I like it! ### Next Day Review Hmm, the underperformance by Phoenix Wright here has me a little confused. I hear people explaining it away with "the character's more popular than the games", but this seems more like a case where the two would be exactly as popular, especially with the perfect match pic like that. I suppose its just more difficult to succeed as a cult/niche title without being the genre this site was built around, and I further suppose that we jumped to conclusions regarding Nintendo SFF; standing up to Bowser is a heck of a lot different from not folding to a top(ish?) tier Zelda title like this. Speaking of which, what a great showing from TP! It's pretty clear that while Europe and Asia have turned their backs on the series, the games are just as well-loved as ever everywhere else, as that was one heck of a Day Vote. And as for the second place battle... I have no idea what to think. I just can't wrap my head around HL2 being that much more popular than the original, even taking the Orange Box and recency and the GotY win (not here, but from most places) into account. Luckily we'll get to see it in action once again in a few weeks, hopefully that will allow me to draw some kind of sensible conclusion. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3473&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=28) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Grand Theft Auto IV vs Persona 4 vs Street Fighter IV vs Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2009 _source: Grand Theft Auto IV vs Persona 4 vs Street Fighter IV vs Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2009 (revid 65262)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2007-2009 - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 42.85% Grand Theft Auto IV - 24.05% Street Fighter IV - 20.99% Persona 4 - 12.09% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Brawl first place (2pts) - 41.95% Brawl second place (1pt) - 39.64% GTA4 second place (2pts) - 31.81% GTA4 first place (1pt) - 46.61% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 81.59% (31,246) Grand Theft Auto IV - 78.42% (30,032) SO MANY FOURS. And oh lovely, the 2007-2009 division. So much whining pre-contest about how these games all sucked compared to past divisions. I didn't bother hopping on that train, because I haven't played a lot of these games yet. I mean sure I hated Brawl and a ton of these games are sequels and rehashes, but I loved Portal and MGS4 and I'm told I'll love BioShock and Fallout 3 and Persona 4. Just at a cursory glance, you have a few great games, a lot of good games and a lot of crap. Isn't that any gaming generation, really? Anyhoo, this was a fun match. Brawl \> GTA4 was the easy pick here, though some people figured Street Fighter 4's recent release and well-done online would help it threaten a dying GTA series. Yeah, no. Yeeah.... no. Yeeeeeeeah noooooo, yeeeeeah noooooooooooo. Street Fighter 4 turned out so weak that it provided us with the most entertaining fight for third place we'll ever see. But more on that in a second. Brawl \> GTA4 was the easy pick, but Brawl dominating the hell out of this match took a lot of people by surprise given the mixed reviews it's gotten. Well mixed on Board 8 and among some the Melee tournament people, anyway. I say some of the Melee tournament people for a reason, since the stereotype is really stupid. Believe it or not, it isn't just tourneycrabs whining about Brawl not being Melee. Most of the Melee pros actually moved on to Brawl and are having a grand old time. Regardless, Brawl dominated the hell out of this match, GTA4 scored an easy second place and Street Fighter 4 embarrassed itself in any way you can think of. It was one of the six replacements in the bracket, and it came out and.... sucked. It was in last place for over an hour, to a cult game that sold like 19 copies. I'd love to give Street Fighter some credit for fighting back from an early last place, then stalling for hours, then fighting back from down 300, then being pretty much tied for hours, and then ultimately coming back again in the final two hours to "win", but I can't. I know Board 8 loves Persona 4 and all, but let's be honest about its contest strength. It has none. Street Fighter 4 having to fight back three times to avoid scoring last place at the hands of Persona 4, when some were expecting a second place finish, is about as sad as it gets. Galaxy ended up the biggest bomb of the contest without question, but I'd argue this very match featured the most disappointing entrant. By the way, this match proved once and for all that Board 8's fabled last-minute rallying power is irrelevant; all the big last-minute pushes clearly come from the collective whole, not a couple of people on one board. You people couldn't find 8 more votes to save your latest fad? Against a game that was in the poll with two hands around its own neck? Really? You guys more or less lost to the Mets. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction The written word can't possibly describe the venom I'm feeling for GTA right now. I was shocked to the core by that pathetic GotY showing three months back and decided to bet against this series every time the bracket gave me a chance... yet even heading in with that mindset I had no choice but to take San Andreas for first place, and how does GTA thank me? A 4th place finish! At least betting against GTA3 worked out for me, but even then I'd never in a million years have expected it to get smacked in the mouth by KotOR of all things. So I was down on GTA heading into this year, am even more down on them after seeing these three results, and I'm 100% confident that GTA4 is the weakest of the series. ...and yet I'm still backing it for 2nd place. WHAT? Sorry. I'd love to take SF4, and in more balanced 4pack (like if Brawl were replaced with Halo 3 for instance) I would jump at the opportunity, but it just seems to me that a Smash Bros. opponent is the worst possible draw for anything Street Fighter. From my experience nearly all older gamers cut their teeth on fighters with some variant of SF2, fell away from the genre after a few years when it didn't do anything new, then were drawn back in earlier this decade thanks to SSB's casual-friendly appeal. And as for the younger gamers who weren't old enough to have experienced SF2 back in its prime, well... I somehow doubt many of them spent the \$60 on SF4, while probably ALL of them have played some Brawl and/or GTA4. I mean, not even the MATCH PIC is doing SF4 any favors in this one; you've got similar poses and placement and photoshop effects, but then you realize that the option touting an ensemble cast of Chun Li, M. Bison, and Ken is about five pixels away from the option offering Mario, Pikachu, and Samus (plus Link's left shoulder, which is apparently the more popular of the two). It's just a bad situation all around. So if SF4 is in a bad spot and GTA4 is just flat out bad, and considering how PS2 RPGs have been on fire and cult RPGs in generally have been impressing, why not back P4 for the upset? ...nah, just not seeing it. Knights of the Old Republic and Tales of Symphonia are sometimes called "cult" but that's really just an oversimplification of the term; Persona is the dictionary-perfect definition. I'm expecting a showing much more along the lines of Phoenix Wright than what ToS pulled off. And as for Brawl, well, those hyping the game to approach 50% are just crazy IMO. Sure none of these other options are juggernauts, but these are still three very strong, very distinct fanbases we're talking about, and between them they provide a good coverage of the 360 and PS3 and PS2. Anything much above 45 would really impress me out of SSBB. Final answer: - Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 44.22% - Grand Theft Auto IV - 21.38% - Street Fighter IV - 20.97% - Persona 4 - 13.43% But feel free to fuel my GTA hatred by pushing it down to 3rd, SF4! ### Next Day Review Tee hee, modern Nintendo's trends have been so fun to watch this season. Europe has turned its back on the company, and so have Asia and Australia so everything looks like complete trash beyond the first two hours. But then the ASV hits and BAM, America to the rescue! Last night I said that anything over 45 for Brawl would be super impressive, but I've sort of got to take that back now- never expected SF4 to get SFFed-owned this shockingly bad. (We're down to the final couple updates of this poll and it's still too close to call between SF and Persona, which is just sad beyond belief.) So yeah, nice result for Brawl but I could still easily see myself calling Galaxy the favorite for next round if it can exceed expectations tonight. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3474&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=29) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Call of Duty 4 vs Pokémon Diamond/Pearl vs Super Mario Galaxy vs Team Fortress 2 2009 _source: Call of Duty 4 vs Pokémon Diamond/Pearl vs Super Mario Galaxy vs Team Fortress 2 2009 (revid 65267)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2007-2009 - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Galaxy - 36.09% Pokemon Diamond/Pearl - 25.39% Call of Duty 4 - 25.37% Team Fortress 2 - 13.27% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** CoD4 first place (2pts) - 58.05% CoD4 second place (1pt) - 22.49% Galaxy second place (2pts) - 38.98% Galaxy first place (1pt) - 25.19% - **Advancing Prediction:** Call of Duty 4 - 80.54% (30,844) Super Mario Galaxy - 64.17% (24,575) The vastly overwhelming consensus for this match is even with Pokemon in the poll, Galaxy \> Call of Duty 4 should have been a gimme match regardless of how strong most of us figured CoD4 would be. Galaxy was supposed to be a *monster* -- the one game universally beloved on the Wii despite everyone realizing how terrible the Wii is. Then it comes out and threatens Starcraft's position as biggest bomb of the contest. Call of Duty 4 rocked Mario's face, and essentially guaranteed a Brawl \> Galaxy result in round 2 given how well Brawl did in its poll a day prior to this. Even if you want to take the route of Pokemon LFFing Galaxy to a second place finish here, this still boded terrible for Galaxy. If a second-rate Pokemon title could leech Mario this badly, think what a Smash Brothers game would do. There was no amount of explaining that could brush off how badly Galaxy did here, and it would get waaaaaaaaaay worse in round 2. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Gah, no idea what to think about this one! Galaxy wasn't hyped through the roof like nearly every other AAA title this generation, but it had fantastic reviews and everyone who has played it has loved it; what more could you ask for? Mario has looked solid all season (aside from crying Baby Mario) and so the one thing I have confidence in is Galaxy cruising to an easy victory despite there being another Nintendo option. Beyond that, you could make a case for just about anything. On the one hand Pokemon has been sensational all Spring, even when put up against Zelda- and on the same hand shooters have been downright dreadful. Plus there are TWO shooter options in the poll, and the lesser one has the benefit of the full Valve support that pushed HL2 to victory just two day back, so you know it's not going to crumble completely. Also if you go back about a year or so the two biggest online shooters on the PC side were CoD4 and TF2, and thanks to the Orange Box TF2 isn't exactly an unknown on the 360 either. Jeez, taking all that into account, why would anyone bet against D/P? Well because on the other hand recent polls have shown that people will jump ship on modern Nintendo the first time a decent option comes around, and the multiplatform CoD4 is certainly that (or at least it was back at the tail end of 2007). And also, modern Pokemon is a huge question mark- do people just vote Pikachu and Mewtwo and R/B/Y out of SFF-proof nostalgia, and if so will they all jump aboard the Mario bandwagon once that factor is taken away? I say no, that D/P is still going to be a very solid, very respectable block of support tonight, and that furthermore TF2 is going to damage CoD more than most are giving it credit for. ...even so, I can't pull the trigger on this upset. Call of Duty was just too good in that GotY to be ignored, regardless of the disdain that voters have been showing for FPSs here in '09. And being the only PS3 option and major 360 option should still be enough to top Pokemon-fever. BARELY. - Super Mario Galaxy - 37.27% - Call of Duty 4 - 23.09% - Pokemon Diamond/Pearl - 23.05% - Team Fortress 2 - 16.59% And now time to check the poll results and be stunned yet again! ### Next Day Review Ugh, haven't been this disgusted by a result since Prime. Why did the best games of the last two Nintendo generations have to receive such unfortunate draws? (Yes, I realize that the draws weren't actually that bad and that in reality both Prime and Galaxy must be way weaker than I expected, but allow me to continue deluding myself, please.) I guess you could make a case for Galaxy still being decent, though, if you consider how bad the other Pokemon entries were able to make even Zelda and Final Fantasy games look. And for the extremely resilient Valve fanbase to allow their game to slip to a mere 12%, the other options must have all been packing a serious punch. Of course that would put CoD4 right up there in the league with Brawl and MGS4... but heck, I'll allow it if that's the only way I'm able to chalk this up as a moral victory for SMG! Unfortunate that Brawl's going to pound it no matter how much spin I try to put on this result, though. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3475&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=30) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## BioShock vs LittleBigPlanet vs Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Portal 2009 _source: BioShock vs LittleBigPlanet vs Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Portal 2009 (revid 88466)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, May 7th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2007-2009 - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 7th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 4 - 42.74% Portal - 22.50% Bioshock - 20.18% LittleBigPlanet - 14.65% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** MGS4 first place (2pts) - 49.69% MGS4 second place (1pt) - 28.54% Portal second place (2pts) - 21.72% Portal first place (1pt) - 10.57% - **Advancing Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 4 - 78.23% (29,959) Portal - 32.29% (12,366) Metal Gear Solid 4 is one of my all-time favorite games, and I'm still in afterglow mode because I beat Portal yesterday and was shocked at how amazing it was. Every possible good emotion a game can give you, Portal gave me. So... yeah, I can't not be biased here. I haven't yet played BioShock and I stopped caring about LittleBigPlanet after playing it for 15 minutes. This was a great result, even if I couldn't fully appreciate it until yesterday. Portal rocked that much. Not trashing BioShock, I just can't make an opinion on something I've yet to play. (UPDATE: Ulti has since played BioShock and likes it a tiny little bit more than Portal.) Anyway, MGS4 getting first here was a lock. LBP getting last was a lock. BioShock vs Portal was a tossup, because even though Portal getting second was the consensus what did we really know? Past polls had no good information on this, so it was more or less a guess. And since this board loves Portal to death (and now I know why!), Portal being the consensus in a tossup was no surprise. Thankfully, this wasn't much of a match at all. Vote totals were obviously low, but an all-PS3 poll will do that. And yes, I'm aware BioShock and Portal are on other systems. Don't care. Portal got the expected board vote, then did the "slowly increase lead and win easily in spite of the opponent getting a lot of stalls and small cuts" thing. BioShock made no major moves until the ASV, where it stalled Portal for a couple hours before shaving a 1600 vote lead down to a 1500 vote loss. Big whoop. Deploying surprise in five... four... God, what a \*\*\*\*ing amazing game Portal was. Words don't do it justice, and I really mean that. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Tonight is kind of a funny one, because this exact question was posed to me about 4 months back in someone's (maybe transience's?) mock bracket they posted in Stats, where Portal/BioShock was an 8/9 matchup. Back then I said that it ought to be close but that there was no way I'd bet against Valve or Blizzard in matches that would come down to the final hour, and so I took Portal. After seeing CoD4 today and KotOR/Oblivion/Morrowind the last couple weeks though, I've gained a healthy respect for (non-Halo) Xbox entries and would have to reverse my decision and take BioShock. ...unfortunately, tomorrow's match is NOT a 1v1 as originally intended though, and with the change in format plus MGS4 being around to swoop up the lion's share of the vote I think the ball is back in Portal's court tonight. There are a few people calling for the LBP upset in this one, but ehh, I just can't see it. Replace MGS4 with a true 360/PC shooter (like say Call of Duty) and I'd be the first to jump on the LBP bandwagon, but as it stands we've already seen Metal Gear Solid post 71% on the game directly and I don't think it's going to get any better tonight, not with Last Place Factor likely coming into the equation as well. The LBP believers say that it's the stand out/sore thumb option, but once again I'm not quite buying it. Portal is so unique and quirky and meme-filled that it would stand out in ANY (non-Valve) crowd, so I can't see that being a major advantage in Sackboy's favor. I'm also of the opinion that of these three choices, LBP is the one that has faded from the public's memory the fastest since those GotY polls were held. In summary we know so little about these games that I wouldn't be shocked by any combination out of the bottom three, but I've got a good feeling about Portal, even after TF2's stinker. I mean, just look how it dominates that match pic- not even a boy made out of sack, a giant walking robot, or the \#5 most popular character on GameFAQs can tear your eyes away! - Metal Gear Solid 4 - 43.57% - Portal - 20.18% - BioShock - 20.14% - LittleBigPlanet - 16.11% And actually I'm wondering why I didn't go lower on LBP now... Dang, better surprise me, Sacky! ### Next Day Review Dang, for a match with such potential, today didn't end up being that enthralling. MGS4 did decently but didn't really impress given the weakness of the competition, LBP disappointed somewhat but it's got a perfectly acceptable excuse, and all of the options were so similar in their fanbases that the overall trends were nearly non-existent. The storyline we'd drawn up was Portal getting out to a huge meme-fueled/WCC-like start in the first couple hours before giving that entire advantage away one the sun rose. Then BioShock was going to Xbox ASV its way into a lead, everyone would get worried for their bracket, but the Valve fans would rally to save the day in the final half hour. And well, it almost happened... BS has been cutting into the lead pretty consistently all afternoon, but like just about every other shooter in this contest, it looks as though the FPS is going to come up just a little bit short. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3476&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=31) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Fallout 3 vs Halo 3 vs Left 4 Dead vs Mass Effect 2009 _source: Fallout 3 vs Halo 3 vs Left 4 Dead vs Mass Effect 2009 (revid 65269)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, May 8th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 2007-2009 - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 8th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 3 - 35.78% Halo 3 - 27.69% Left 4 Dead - 18.67% Mass Effect - 17.88% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Fallout 3 first place (2pts) - 37.81% Fallout 3 second place (1pt) - 33.07% Halo 3 second place (2pts) - 26.07% Halo 3 first place (1pt) - 49.84% - **Advancing Prediction:** Fallout 3 - 70.88% (27,144) Halo 3 - 75.91% (29,070) Not only was Fallout 3 \> Halo 3 the consensus, but it was a near-lock by the time the match actually came up, and it gave us one of the most boring matches of all time. Which isn't all bad. Nice to see the first round end on a boring note and give people more time for first round overviews, since the stats topic guys make some awesome first round overviews. I wish I could be bothered talking about this match, but I can't. The results were locked within 2 seconds and stayed in a perfect staircase shape for a full 24 hours. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I'm not sure what SB was thinking with a grouping like this- if you would take any two of these games and place them anywhere else in the bracket I would comment at length about how they were sure to hurt each other. So instead he heaps them all into a single pile! I guess that, in theory, if everyone is LFFing everyone else then NO ONE is LFFing anyone and it all evens out. But in reality setups like this just lead to dull, trendless matches where no one has a chance at a comeback because without any fanbase diversity the percentages just stagnate after the opening hour. Exactly like what we just sat through! Soooo, with so many kind-of-PC-but-actually-360 mature shooters and semi-shooters to choose from, does any one game have the upper hand? I don't really think so, but if pressed I suppose I would back Fallout to look best tonight. Sure it overlaps a good bit with Mass Effect, but it has the recency advantage (which always seems to be a big deal in GotYish polls like this) and doesn't appear to have faded from the public's mind as quickly as most holiday releases do. That being said I still don't think ME gets totally crunched; Fo3 seems like another MGS4 kind of game that's always going to be heavily supported and look good in a multiway format but that doesn't have the massive playrate or casual appeal needed to blow anyone out. The only question remaining is, can L4D pull a CoD4 and refuse to bend under Halo 3's pressure? My answer: an extremely timid "maybe." Left 4 Dead has had amazing sales for such a small release and continues to have great legs every month, and I think even people who aren't playing it on Live right now still have fond memories of matches they played with their friends in the last few months. I'm banking on L4D holding Halo back enough where first place is never in contention, but the Western RPGs \> Western Shooters trend has me leaning toward ME for 3rd place in this one. Should be close though, especially with how much that green box art stands out in the match pic. Let's say... - Fallout 3 - 34.28% - Halo 3 - 27.55% - Mass Effect - 20.25% - Left 4 Dead - 17.91% Yes sir, about 0% confidence in that! ### Next Day Review Memo to SB: when you group together the same kind of games with the same kind of fanbases from the same system, the result is exactly the opposite of what you told us you wanted out of this Contest. Yesterday's PS3 shooterfest resulted in only 109k votes, the least of the season so far... and then today's 360 shooter/wrpg-fest is going to result in a truly pathetic sub-103k total. For cripes' sake, even the old arcade/8-bit games that no one has cared about for 10 years managed 115k! To solve this problem for the next game contest, you could, gee wiz, NOT DIVIDE THE BRACKET BY ERAS! Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. I'll say one thing about today though- I was wrong about all the LFF resulting in a trendless 24 hours. H3 finally pulled out the kind of fantastic Bungie ASV we'd been expecting all Contest, which was especially impressive in this case since it had to share the poll with three other options that have a big time presence on the 360. Not much to say about this one aside from that; L4D did pretty decent and ME looked a little gross, but WRPG SFF kind of gets it off the hook. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3477&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=32) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Tetris vs Donkey Kong vs Mega Man 2 vs Pac-Man vs 2009 _source: Tetris vs Donkey Kong vs Mega Man 2 vs Pac-Man vs 2009 (revid 65270)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, May 9th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1972-1988 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 9th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tetris - 38.15% Mega Man 2 - 29.13% Pac-Man - 18.41% Donkey Kong - 14.15% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Tetris first place (4pts) - 53.14% Tetris second place (2pts) - 15.55% MM2 second place (4pts) - 24.48% MM2 first place (2pts) - 12.80% - **Advancing Prediction:** Tetris - 68.69% (26,306) Mega Man 2 - 37.28% (14,277) I refuse to call a round 2 "divisional semifinal" in a fourway contest, regardless of whether it actually is. It's round 2. Anyway, this was one of those rare matches where both sides of an argument got to be correct. Tetris people pretty much figured Mega Man 2 would get killed, especially after the first round. Mega Man fans insisted it still had a good chance to win. In the end, we kind of got the best of both worlds. Tetris did not SFF Mega Man 2 here, but it won quite handily and was never threatened past the first few minutes. It wasn't a complete killing as some predicted, but it was a handy win nonetheless. Still, Mega Man 2 looked decent here given the first round made it look like he would just get crushed. It's impossible to really say what if any role SFF played in this match, but it didn't matter too much. There was a decent battle for third place for a bit, but Pac-Man pulled through in a clear case of... SFFing a puzzle game in the face of Puzzle SFF? I dunno. This was our second straight legendarily boring match, so there's not much I can say here. Expected result, less than expected percentages. Simple and to the point, much like what this match was after Mega Man kept it even for a couple minutes. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I absolutely adore the match pic! This format allows our artists soooo much more freedom than trying to cram everything into those skinny vertical rectangles, and you can see how much the product is improved by giving them that extra breathing room. I've heard people saying that DK or Pac is going to collapse in this one, but with perfect, super-nostalgic pictures of their most popular levels like that I just can't see it. MM2 is also vastly improved from last round (though it would have been hard to get any worse), but I don't think it catches the eye quite like the bottom two. As for Tetris, ehh, I think it would have done better with a screen of the blocks actually dropping rather than that title screen. Pic aside, the case for Mega Man in this one is that it has a more "hardcore" fanbase than these other ancient options and also that it stands out as the only game with semi-"modern" gameplay unlike the arcade options. And for the most part I buy into that argument. Where I disagree is when folks start claiming that Tetris is sure to fold against any kind of respectable competition. In a 1v1 setting, sure, but it seems to me that "joke appeal" wasn't the only reason L-Block was so successful in this 4way format. Part of his great run needs to be tied back to what an independent and un-LFFable entrant he was, something that Tetris should have going for it as well- when it gets to a choice between Zelda 1 and Mario 1 and Tetris, I could see a good chunk of voters jumping on the "anti-Nintendo" option, especially when it doesn't have to split its Game Boy appeal with anyone while MM2/Mario/Zelda all fight over the NES. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but suffice it to say that even though MM2 should redeem itself with a slightly better showing in this one (signalling good things for MM3!), I fully expect Tetris to show us that last round was no fluke by taking this match going away. And as mentioned, the pic probably helps the bottom two options not get totally blown out. Which would result in - Tetris - 37.20% - Mega Man 2 - 30.46% - Pac-Man - 18.65% - Donkey Kong - 13.69% Looks... okay, I guess! ### Next Day Review Oh wow, and now this latest poll wasn't even able to scrape past the 100k mark until the final 30 minutes of voting. The apathy created by keeping all of these extremely similar games cornered into the same packs is palpable; MIX THE ERAS NEXT TIME, SB. Alright, I'll stop mentioning that now. Not a fantastic result for me today as I was expecting DK to hold up a little bit better, though on the plus side I was almost spot-on with the Tetris/MM2 split... yeah, not too much to say about this match other than that thanks to the pathetic level of interest shown (Tetris looks like it won't even manage 40k votes despite winning easily) I've lost a ton of confidence in my "Tetris over one of the Big Two" upset bid for next round! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3478&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=33) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Mario Bros. vs Ninja Gaiden vs The Legend of Zelda vs Metroid 2009 _source: Super Mario Bros. vs Ninja Gaiden vs The Legend of Zelda vs Metroid 2009 (revid 65271)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, May 10th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1972-1988 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 10th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda - 39.49% Super Mario Bros. - 38.86% Metroid - 12.02% Ninja Gaiden - 9.52% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario 1 first place (4pts) - 59.46% Mario 1 second place (2pts) - 23.60% Zelda 1 second place (4pts) - 53.98% Zelda 1 first place (2pts) - 28.65% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. - 83.06% (31,809) The Legend of Zelda - 82.63% (31,644) I can understand one or two games sneaking into the second round only to get SFFd to hell, but two in the exact same match? This was just... bad. Expected given what Mario did to Duck Hunt, but still bad. Have some pride. Not that Metroid will ever figure it out against Nintendo -- and Ninja Gaiden won't ever figure it out period, it got very lucky in the first round -- but still. Pride. The match to see here was Mario 1 vs Zelda 1, but as you can see by this final result, it wasn't much of a match. This was all pre-debate match hype, but for once it was legitimate. Zelda 1 scored 43% on Mario 3 in 2004. It's not too unreasonable to ask Zelda to make up a 7% gap on Mario 3's weaker older brother, especially given the lack of any real evidence. We had two polls and guesswork to go on. Anyone who said they were 100% confident one way or the other was just doing the standard annoying pre-contest know-it-all Board 8 thing, because a good case could be made either way. Zelda is generally the SFF king, but Mario 1 is much more respected among gamers than the original Zelda. As for the two polls: - - Favorite Zelda and Favorite Mario. Zelda 1 got 7.63%, Mario 1 got 6.56%. Both bad performances, but Mario's bad score came in the face of a fellow NES title, Mario 3. Zelda 1 had no other NES games to compete with. This was my reason for picking Mario 1 \> Zelda 1 here, and it was as good a reason as any other given how close this was pre-match. The match itself was over within seconds and Mario 1 dominated (relatively) based upon expectations for a close match. However, this match helped set up one of the weirdest runs we've ever seen in a contest. Zelda 1 might have lost pretty easily here, but it would have its day later on. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Time to watch Nintendo's Big Two go head to head for the first time this season! In my bracket I picked Zelda \> Mario here, and did so without giving it too much thought. Sure Mario 3 managed nearly 57% on the game directly, but M3 is universally recognized as the crown jewel of the NES- anything from that era was going to fall down on its knees before it (well, unless it was riding high on the "Final Fantasy" brand name). Mario 1 was a different story... sure it has the respect, and sure it has the same enormous playrate, but no one actually loves the game like they do 3. That monumental beatdown back in R1 really opened my eyes though; maybe this game really IS closer to 3 than I'd ever have expected, at least indirectly? In fact I was so impressed that I would have no choice but to take Mario 1 over Zelda 1 in a direct matchup right now. ...but as we all know, this isn't a direct matchup. Mario's huge playrate gives it an opportunity to score big time blowouts in this format when up against games no one cares about, but we have to remember that blowout power doesn't necessarily mean extreme 4way strength. Once the super-fodder is removed and every option in the poll has a decent fanbase behind it, I think that the format begins to play more and more into Zelda's hands; yes its very possible that the early Mario games have MORE fans than the early Zeldas, but I'm of the opinion that the Zelda base is more dedicated, which could make all the difference. I also think that the competition helps Zelda out ever so slightly- an adventure with RPG elements does a better job of standing out against all these platformer/shooter/action titles. So all in all I've decided to stick with my bracket and give Zelda just the slightest edge in this one. My only other point is that Ninja Gaiden probably holds up a tiny bit better than the numbers I'm seeing here, just because it once again gets to serve as something of an anti-Nintendo choice (though it hurts that this time around there's no mistaking it for the Xbox version). Speaking of the match pic, yikes, that's the perfect super-iconic look for Mario! Very tempted to flip flop over to it... but no, have to stay strong. Final decision quickly before I change my mind: - The Legend of Zelda - 40.28% - Super Mario Bros. - 40.16% - Metroid - 11.34% - Ninja Gaiden - 8.22% Yeah, just don't know about that! ### Next Day Review Well sir, weird to think that Mario 1 is so close to Mario 3 indirectly (I'm sure it still gets crushed head to head), but after today's result there doesn't seem to be any way around it. NG is still a supreme chump, true, but nothing involving Zelda or Metroid is a pushover on this site and yet Mario pounded their heads in and never broke a sweat. If M1 holds down Z1 that far again next round, and then MM2 arrives to bring down the NES options just a tiny bit more, perhaps my surprise upset where Tetris is the independent entry could... alright alright, so I give up on that one! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3479&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=34) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Sonic the Hedgehog vs Street Fighter II vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Secret of Monkey Island 2009 _source: Sonic the Hedgehog vs Street Fighter II vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Secret of Monkey Island 2009 (revid 88465)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, May 11th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1989-1991 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 11th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 50.44% Sonic the Hedgehog - 21.33% Street Fighter II - 20.47% Secret of Monkey Island - 7.93% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario 3 first place (4pts) - 48.89% Mario 3 second place (2pts) - 36.80% Sonic second place (4pts) - 23.86% Sonic first place (2pts) - 18.69% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 85.69% (32,816) Sonic the Hedgehog - 42.55% (16,295) Haha 113114. Anyway, after SF2 disappointed in the first round, a lot of people held hope that Mario 3 would SFF Sonic 1 enough to sneak SF2 into second place. It wasn't too far-fetched, especially given Sonic 1 and Street Fighter 2 wasn't decided by some impossible gap in round 1. It was 10,000 votes, which can be made up by extreme SFF. Ironically, we saw Mario 3 SFF Sonic 1, but not by enough to sneak SF2 into second place. I've lost count of how many "SFFd but still won" matches we ended up getting in this contest, but the number has to be at least 5 or 10. Mario 3 without question SFFd Sonic 1 in this match, and can we please stop with theories about how Sonic and Mario don't have extreme overlap? They clearly do. It explains this match, the Mario World \> Sonic 2 beating and the weird Mario/Shadow match all in one package. They overlap. A lot. Period. I'd love for this to translate into a Mario vs Sonic match in a character contest; it's long overdue. But even with Sonic getting SFFd, Street Fighter could no take full advantage. The match was even for a couple hours, then Street Fighter 2 built up a 200 vote lead overnight. And like clockwork, the Sonic day vote kicked in, allowing Sonic to turn an even match into a fairly easy 2200 vote victory. A match like this might have been exciting a few years ago, but not now with all the past trends we know about. It makes you miss the pre-stat days, in a way. Now? We can take past matches and call the trends down to every minute detail, and some people in the stats topic can tell you when something will happen and by how many votes with stunning accuracy. It's sad in a way, but it also can't be helped. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I'd been counting on SFII/Sonic 1 to be a tight battle directly, but that it would swing in Ryu's favor once the king of the Marios arrived to dish out the platformer beatdown. But uhh, yikes did SF ever get its head handed to it last round! And double yikes, did SF4 ever drop the ball! After those two results I was sure that everyone and their mother would have bailed on the Street Fighter series, yet I check the Crew picks and... EVERYBODY is betting against Sonic (well except for the guy in last place, but I'm not sure if I really count him anymore), whoa! I guess it makes some sense- Sonic has never failed to disappoint in the 4way setting once decent competition arrived, Ryu has already proven that this fanbase can make a run if given a favorable LFF path, and Mario 3 is a lock to eat up a huge percentage of the votes (especially after Mario 1 went above and beyond). But even with all that plus my bracket backing it, I'm not entirely sold. This is one that I'll have to decide based on the match pic. Let's see... Sonic gets his classic title screen, pretty good considering this exact look got the job done for him last time. But sweeeet, SFII tops it with the perfect super-nostalgic ingame screenshot! Ryu posing all cool after unleashing some kind of devastating combo on (probably) the second more popular character of the series... the only way it could be better would be if he had just unleashed a Hadouken. Alright, that's enough to win me over; I'll stick with my bracket here, but would be very surprised if this didn't end up being a close battle for 2nd place no matter who takes it! - Super Mario Bros. 3 - 56.06% - Street Fighter II - 18.49% - Sonic the Hedgehog - 18.43% - Secret of Monkey Island - 7.02% Hmm, I like it QUITE a bit. ### Next Day Review Bah... after Street Fighter pulled a stall on the second update and starting making cuts afterward transience told us not to get excited because this was "going to be Mario RPG \> SFII all over again." I held out hope that the result could be different since there was a MARIO in the way, but as it turns out he was right. What a weird poll... Mario 3 easily beating Sonic and SFII combined is by no means a bad result, and yet its coming up something like 7% below our expectations here, and failed to make major noise with the Day Vote as I'd been expecting. I guess you've just got to chalk that up to Monkey Island's fanbase being super dedicated, the battle for 2nd place stealing some votes away, and maybe that less-than-iconic picture. I'm sure M3's still fine- we were all just coming in a little high off the Mario Kool Aid after that very impressive takedown of Zelda. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3480&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=35) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Mario World vs Final Fantasy vs Final Fantasy IV vs Mega Man 3 2009 _source: Super Mario World vs Final Fantasy vs Final Fantasy IV vs Mega Man 3 2009 (revid 65273)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1989-1991 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario World - 37.01% Final Fantasy IV - 25.59% Mega Man 3 - 19.59% Final Fantasy - 17.99% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** SMW first place (4pts) - 50.43% SMW second place (2pts) - 16.89% FF4 second place (4pts) - 36.18% FF4 first place (2pts) - 11.73% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario World - 67.32% (25,781) Final Fantasy IV - 47.91% (18,348) I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for all those FF1 \> FF4 debates I started leading up to this match. I really did think there was a possibility of this upset given the first round, but I was *clearly* wrong. The original Final Fantasy got crushed decisively here, regardless of whatever SFF and LFF from Mega Man 3 was going on. My apologies on that front, but you're insane if you ever thought one of the Final Fantasies was going to sneak through both Mario games -- especially after this match. Mario World might have sucked it up in round 1, but it was clearly in A-Game Mode from here on out, and Mario 3 was equally dominant. For Final Fantasy 4 to get through to Round 4, you would have to give ALL of Final Fantasy and Mega Man 3's votes to it and hope for a big split. And even then, good luck. In reality, I think this match proved there's plenty of overlap between Mario World and FF4, signaling FF4's death in the following round. And how couldn't you? Mario World let Final Fantasy get 45% on it, then it goes out and nearly gets 70% on FF4. That's not a coincidence, especially when it's fair given this match to assume FF4 is a stronger game than FF1. Oh, and a note about Mega Man 3. Did it not *royally* suck here or what? Mega Man 2 performed passably on Tetris this round and Mega Man X did pretty well given its first round exit, but I think we can safely assume the series as a whole bombed in this contest. Then you look at Mario Kart doing well before realizing the Mega Man \> Mario Kart result in the series contest. Madness, I tell you. You'd think the series contest results would translate into this contest a bit more accurately than they did. tl;dr version: Mario World is a beast, the Mega Man series bombed, I'm an idiot for arguing FF1 \> FF4, you're an idiot for arguing FF4 \> Mario 3 or Mario World regardless of split, and at the end of the day only KrahenProphet can claim to not be an idiot. It's why these contests rock; we can debate stuff for weeks, but only one person is going to look smart after the final match :D ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction tonight is the most important match of the Contest, in my opinion. Maybe that's putting it a touch strongly... but it's the early round matchup that is going to do the most to effect how the bracket plays out down the line. So maybe it would make more sense to call it the cornerstone of the bracket, or the lynchpin? In any case, I decided early on that tomorrow's winner would determine which game ends up representing the 8-bit division in the Contest Final, and I stand by that. If an FF makes it out, the Square games gets a free ride for a bunch of rounds until LttP knocks it out to make the Final, but if MM3 could slide past that would allow Zelda 1 to get further until a double Zelda poll would put Mario 3 in the Championship instead. ...unfortunately, I took what I now realize was the wrong upset. I've never understood all the hype for FF4, and since 1 vs 4 was going to be a tossup in my mind I decided to bypass that choice altogether by saying the MM3 could powerslide past due to LFF. And I'd still argue that it was a good decision IN THEORY; the problem is that in reality MM has just not been up to snuff this season, and that furthermore it seems like any 8/16 bit platformer most likely gets murdered by Mario 1, 3, or World. So I've got to break from my bracket and accept that MM3 finishes in last place here (though I still think it can keep this closer than most expect). However my doubts regarding FF4 have far from subsided! I'm sure it's a great game and all, but I just don't get the impression that most of the Square fanbase on this site has played anything earlier than FF6 (and this year it's looking like even 6 might have taken a tumble), and so when given the option of two games they don't know much about, I'm thinking they mostly take the original. Especially when 1 nabs such an iconic picture with appealing sprites (seriously, even gamers who haven't touched the early FF series are familiar with Black Mage and Fighter) while the other option gets stuck with the "FF2" label that fewer people know and a big blob of blur as a screenshot. Yep, jumping off one upset train just to get on the other, final decision! - Super Mario World - 38.79% - Final Fantasy - 21.62% - Final Fantasy IV - 21.57% - Mega Man 3 - 18.02% This should be an exciting poll check... ### Next Day Review Haha, this is just too funny. Two days ago we (by that I mean the Oracle average) had way too much faith in Zelda and underestimated Mario 1 by 7.33%. Then yesterday we didn't have quite enough respect for Sonic and SF, so we went OVER by 1.76% on Mario 3. Which got us all thinking that lowballing Mario was a good idea... but instead SMW's going to smoke us by about 14%! That's why I love these Contests: 7 years and 11 Contests and 62 matches later and we still have no idea how to even peg Mario, of all things! But, uh yeah, really shocked at FF4 and embarrassed at my lack of respect for Square fans- I was sure FF1 would pull all of the "important" and "original" votes and manage a win despite being the worse game, just like Mario 1 \> Zelda 1. And boy is my face red for thinking a Mega Man game might be worth ANYTHING AT ALL! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3481&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=36) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Metroid vs Super Mario Kart vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs Donkey Kong Country 2009 _source: Super Metroid vs Super Mario Kart vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs Donkey Kong Country 2009 (revid 65274)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1992-1994 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 47.65% Super Mario Kart - 21.24% Super Metroid - 20.14% Donkey Kong Country - 11.52% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:ALttP first place (4pts) - 41.58% Zelda:ALttP second place (2pts) - 29.42% Super Metroid second place (4pts) - 22.00% Super Metroid first place (2pts) - 17.70% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link to the Past - 71.00% (27,190) Super Metroid - 39.70% (15,204) This match ended up having a really close fight for second place, but with two major issues. One, Sonic 3 and Doom choking in the first round turned this match into a big SNES clusterfuck and it really took away from how close this was. Two, we already saw this same match like 3 weeks prior and it was clear within minutes we were getting a replay, but with fewer vote totals for Mario Kart and Metroid to work with. But before getting into that, it's worth noting how impressive Link to the Past was here. Even though it was clearly SFFing all three games in the poll, there were still 3 SNES games here to drag it down a bit. It still broke over 50%. This solidified it as the odds-on favorite to make the final from the top half of the bracket along with FF7, especially given we were on track to have 2 Mario games in the quarterfinals along with LTTP and FF7. As for Metroid and Mario Kart, they went out and nearly perfectly repeated every trend from their first round match. So even though the loser of the round 2 rematch was to be eliminated from the contest, this never had the tension that makes close matches so fun. One could even argue this was one of the worst close matches we've ever had. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar: Super Metroid builds up a 550 vote lead for half the night; Mario Kart begins chipping away at 3 a.m. and isn't slowed down until halfway through the DSV when the lead is 130; Metroid somehow wins the second half of the DSV and gets its lead back to 300; Mario Kart wins the early parts of the ASV, but gets inexplicably stalled a bunch and isn't able to tie the match until 7 p.m.; Metroid wins the evening vote and gets its lead back up to 100; Mario Kart makes a last stand, but Metroid wins the second night vote to escape with the match. Even during the parts of Mario Kart's comeback where it looked like this round would be different, there was always the looming feeling that Super Metroid would win it with the second night vote if things were close. Well things were close, and Metroid won to the surprise of no one. This would have been a great first round 1v1 match, but it was uninspired in this format. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I see some extremely high Zelda picks, but I'm not realling feelin' it. Unlike Mario, Zelda hasn't displayed strong blowout potential so far this season, and I'm also thinking that its such an obvious first place against the all-Nintendo competition that people might be throwing their votes elsewhere. Especially if there's a tight battle for 2nd place going on, which I imagine there will be! All in all this looks much more like a Mario 3 situation than what SMW saw today, so if LttP can still manage 50% I'd be quite impressed. Now originally I was thinking that Metroid's dedicated base would do the best job of avoiding the Zelda SFF to allow it a tight victory, but after the series has disappointed time and again in the last month my faith is shaken. And even going back to 2004- heck, DKC nearly held up better against LttP than SM managed! When you factor in how MK64 went to town on Star Fox, I'm forced to push this into "too close to call" territory. Which means its time to employ the tiebreaker, aka the match pic overanalysis! Whoa, perfect look for LttP- everyone loves the master sword, that's a nice sprite pose for Link, and the title image is big and bold. DKC gets another solid pic pretty close to what worked for it last time, but I have to mark it down a notch for Diddy being almost fully covered up by DK. Super Met, eh... I love the very big title, but Samus seems to be extremely susceptible to underperformances when she doesn't look her best, and I think people expect the classic orange suit from her, not this purple super-suit. Lastly SMK- what a nostalgia overload! It's going to be very difficult for anyone who played countless hours of battle mode back in grade school to vote for any of the other three options with a great look like that. Okay, it's settled: - Zelda: A Link to the Past - 49.86% - Super Mario Kart - 19.84% - Super Metroid - 19.80% - Donkey Kong Country - 10.51% Feeling pretty good about this! ### Next Day Review Hmm, I suppose that's one more knock against same fanbase/same era/same company matches... even when two entrants are clearly neck and neck in strength to the point where the result comes down to the final 15 minutes, watching it is still a good deal less exciting than your Frog/Master Chiefs and StarCraft/Halos of the past. First because the voting base is so similar that there are no massive Day/Night vote swings, but (IMO) even more importantly because fanbases just aren't able to get a good hate going for one another. I mean even if SMK is your favorite game, is it REALLY possible to be spitting venom at a guy who voted a classic like Super Met instead? I don't think so. And where could you even go to rally for either of the choices? Seems no matter what site you hit something like 40% of the voters there would end up picking the other choice. I guess this also partially speaks to why despite having so many "good" polls, its almost impossible for something in the 4way format to be considered a "great" match. But I digress! Pretty good result for LttP, but I'm much more impressed that DKC was able to hang right in there against such tough and (such overlapping) competition. Atta boy DK! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3482&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=37) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy VI vs The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs Mortal Kombat II 2009 _source: Final Fantasy VI vs The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs Mortal Kombat II 2009 (revid 65275)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, May 14th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1992-1994 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 14th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VI - 36.56% Zelda: Link's Awakening - 27.79% Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 20.89% Mortal Kombat II - 15.08% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF6 first place (4pts) - 42.13% FF6 second place (2pts) - 12.93% Zelda:LA second place (4pts) - 14.78% Zelda:LA first place (2pts) - 21.57% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy VI - 55.06% (21,086) Link's Awakening - 36.35% (13,921) For the second time in a week, we had the poll result do a near-perfect staircase; ie, the match is barely worth commenting on. But unlike the Fallout 3 \> Halo 3 match, this had an unbelievably fun first five minutes. Because for five minutes, Link's Awakening scared the bejeezus out of Final Fantasy 6 and kept the match even. FF6 obviously went on to win in staircase fashion, but a ton of damage was done in that five minutes. Remember when FF6 led LTTP for a few hours in 2004, and it was more or less the beginning of the end for LTTP? Same deal here, but backwards. Any and all FF6 \> LTTP pipe dreams died in those five minutes, regardless of any splitting LTTP would deal with. If you let Link's Awakening threaten you for even five minutes, your odds of beating Link to the Past in the divisional final are flat-out zero. Nothing. Especially when you've looked like crap for two rounds going in. I don't know when or why FF6 inherited FF7's voting trends, but they don't work the same. FF7 is a demigod in game contests, it's allowed to suck early. 6 is not. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I'm afraid I have to agree that this isn't going to be an especially thrilling match. Which is a weird thing to say considering that the top two franchises on the site are represented, and so is another in the top five(ish)! FF6 really disappointed me last time around, so you think that would be something to watch for, but even there I'm not sold... Sonic is obviously very Nintendo these days and then the original MKs are generally associated with the Genesis, so already we're talking about 6 getting the full advantage of a sore thumb against plenty of overlap; even pushing up near the 40% it managed last time wouldn't necessarily blow me away. Zelda I guess has more to prove since its once again in a less favorable position, but even with a strong showing here it would be tough to get excited, what with LttP dropping by to rain on the parade next round. Bah. I suppose the most interesting thing to watch for will be if Sonic 2 can match MMX's performance from last round. And I think it'll have a good chance to do so! Just like 4 before it, 6 has been given a very underwhelming picture here while LA is kind of in the same "non iconic" boat as Mario 3, so I wouldn't expect something great like what we saw out of Mario 1 or World or LttP tonight. And MK looks pretty stylin' as well- maybe they'll be able to keep it close to Zelda than most are thinking, allowing FF to run away with the win in the process. I'll make that my final decision. - Final Fantasy VI - 36.73% - Zelda: Link's Awakening - 25.80% - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 19.99% - Mortal Kombat II - 17.48% ...errr, not so sure about that pick now that I look it over again. Oh well! ### Next Day Review Welp, appears as though I just about called this one correctly- FF6 is coming quite close to matching its R1 percentage, but even so no one seems to be at all impressed. Unfortunately I was way off on Zelda. And MK2. And Sonic. Bah! Uhh, not much else to say about that result (except that this was way too close to the dreaded 40/30/20/10 split for my taste). ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3483&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=38) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## GoldenEye 007 vs Super Mario RPG vs Final Fantasy VII vs Mario Kart 64 2009 _source: GoldenEye 007 vs Super Mario RPG vs Final Fantasy VII vs Mario Kart 64 2009 (revid 65276)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, May 15th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1995-1997 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 15th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 47.87% GoldenEye 007 - 20.78% Mario Kart 64 - 17.05% Super Mario RPG - 14.62% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF7 first place (4pts) - 59.19% FF7 second place (2pts) - 25.20% GoldenEye second place (4pts) - 35.77% GoldenEye first place (2pts) - 23.69% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 84.39% (32,318) GoldenEye 007 - 59.46% (22,771) This was a fairly expected result, especially with SMRPG getting into this match over Resident Evil 2. SMRPG and Mario Kart 64 may have had minimal overlap, but both games have "Mario" in the title. Even a little bit of overlap could have made a difference, but this was likely the same minimal overlap as with Mario Kart 64 and Goldeneye. Both were N64 titles. In the end, Goldeneye \> SMRPG \> Mario Kart 64 is likely the intrinsic strength of the three games playing out like it was supposed to. One could argue Goldeneye disappointed here, but of course Goldeneye was going to get killed in the face of FF7. FF7 overlaps with everything on this site. Speaking of which, the FF7/OOT comparison was the only story to be had here. Some will argue OOT had a better second round performance, but I once again disagree. OOT did 2% better against weaker competition, and allowed said weaker competition to score similar results. Just compare each game. Goldeneye vs Final Fantasy 8 is a tossup at worst, but Goldeneye probably wins that match. Super Mario RPG would crush Starcraft pretty easily at this point, and we've already covered Mario Kart 64 versus Final Fantasy 9. I don't see how FF9 getting 20% on Ocarina in an SFF match is any better or worse than Mario Kart 64 getting 20% on FF7 in what may or may not have also been an SFF match. Frankly I think it's an easy match in Kart 64's favor and those arguing otherwise are blind FF9 fans, but it's not like we'll ever see a 1v1 match to settle this. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Tonight ought to be much more entertaining. We get to see the 2nd(!) strongest game on the site in action again, which is always fun, and better yet it got about the perfect draw here so the sky's the limit. Sure these are three very strong games, but Square always brings its A game against good Nintendo competition so I don't think 50 is entirely out of the question. Would be extremely impressive though, especially since it will be somewhat hampered by that less-than-iconic (but more-than-hilarious!) match pic. The bottom three is where the real interest lies for this one... is MRPG ruined by a superior role playing choice? Does two "Mario" choices spell massive LFF? Will the N64 options bring each other down, considering they were the holy grail of 4 player multi for three straight years? Call me biased, but I think Goldeneye redeems itself by scoring an easier than expected win over the other two options. It nailed a very strong/iconic match pic that plays to its multi strengths, and something just felt fishy about that first round to me... got to imagine it blows by MRPG much more easily this time, especially considering how that game is in about the worst position imaginable (I've always contended that Mario RPG would be a beast if matched against non-Square and non-Mario/Zelda opponents, but this time it has no such luck). As for MK64, ehhh, I still think it's the strongest Kart, but GE is so far ahead of Super Metroid that it shouldn't be a major concern. And that's why I'm going to say - Final Fantasy VII - 47.45% - GoldenEye 007 - 21.51% - Mario Kart 64 - 17.02% - Super Mario RPG - 14.02% Go GE! ### Next Day Review Whooo, now THAT'S more like it! GE totally redeems itself and once again has people talking it up as a Top Ten game on this site (well... Top 15 at least), while Mario RPG makes GE's R1 look better by showing that it's a legit upper midcarder after all. As for MK64, ouch. Alright, so it was ugly, but I think you've got to chalk that up to being the lesser Mario option plus getting 4way multiplayer SFFed by Goldeneye- I still stand by MK64 being a serious threat (when it can avoid Nintendo) and the strongest of the Karts. As for FF7, ehhhh, I don't know what to say. 47% is solid against such good competition, but there's no way Ocarina would have been held under 50 given the same kind of circumstances. Luckily I'll get a chance to put my predition where my mouth is in just a couple days here (though I think OoT's at a disadvantage since SC is going to pull a more independent non-Squintendo percentage in that one). Should be fun to watch! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3484&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=39) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Mario 64 vs Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs Chrono Trigger vs Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 2009 _source: Super Mario 64 vs Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs Chrono Trigger vs Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 2009 (revid 88334)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, May 16th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1995-1997 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 16th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 41.39% Super Mario 64 - 29.93% Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 17.60% SMW2: Yoshi's Island - 11.20% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario 64 first place (4pts) - 44.70% Mario 64 second place (2pts) - 25.67% CT second place (4pts) - 38.52% CT first place (2pts) - 30.89% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario 64 - 70.37% (26,949) Chrono Trigger - 69.41% (26,581) "*Brother*... it's been too long!" -Ocelot Contests just aren't the same without a solid Mario v Crono match or two. This was a beautiful, *beautiful* match. I love Chrono Trigger, but I love Mario 64 a tad bit more. Seeing Symphony of the Night become a bottom-feeder sucked, and it equally sucked seeing Yoshi's Island get SFFd to a 7% last place finish. But for once, a 7% last place finish was relevant. More on that in a second. Pre-contest, I swore up and down that this would be a tossup, and picked Chrono Trigger \> Mario 64 solely because of Chrono Trigger's 2004 performance. Not only did it defeat Mario 3, but a 60-40 win over Mario World is no joke. I've always figured Mario 64 was around Mario world's level (best guess I can make given the OOT \> Mario 64 SFF result), and that even a slightly weaker Chrono Trigger could beat Mario 64 heads-up especially given the recent DS Chrono Trigger release. Early on, it was clear Chrono Trigger was in trouble. Mario 64 kept the poll even for a solid 30 minutes before the CT night vote kicked in, and even then it took until 2 hours in for Chrono Trigger to get any momentum going. Once the night vote kicked in, Chrono Trigger built up a lead, but Mario 64 was still managing to score some prolonged stalls. CT managed to build up a lead of 650, but it felt like one of those really frail, "This could blow up in my face at any time" leads. And it was. The morning vote hit, and Mario 64 began dominating the poll. The lead was gone by 9:30, and then Mario started ballin' all over Crono's face. By the time this match ended, it was a close-match-turned-3200-vote-blowout. Crono's performance come the morning vote was embarrassing, but not at all unsurprising. I love CT and all, but this has become a very debilitating problem. Blowing big leads is supposed to be very rare in contests, but all things Chrono Trigger are turning it into a routine. 4000 vote swings are *not supposed to be common*, but CT is making us expect it. That's legitimately insane, and this result was one of those rare results that altered an entire contest midstream. Remember, CT \> Mario 64 was the expected result, and we were supposed to see a hotly contested LTTP vs FF7/FF6/CT match with a possible LTTP \> FF7 upset, and the following FF7/CT/Mario 1/Mario 3 match was supposed to be an aesthetic Mario vs Crono clash. And beyond this, remember all the pre-contest chatter about a potential CT/LTTP rematch getting ruined by the format? Of course you do. At this rate, there would be no CT/LTTP match at all. For round 3 to have a CT \> Mario 64 result, CT would need a perfect storm of Goldeneye leeching the hell out of Mario 64 while Final Fantasy 7 barely affected CT at all. It was possible, but CT's years-long track record of choking paired with Mario's dominance this contest put the odds around 3% or so. It was bad. As for Yoshi's Island legitimately affecting this poll, one could claim an SNES relationship with Chrono Trigger and a Mario relationship with Mario 64. Rarely do you see a last place game do so badly, yet be so widely debated. If you weren't in the stats topic for the CT/Mario 64 round 3 debates, you missed everything that makes the stats topic the place to be in a contest. We have a legitimate reputation for being elitist and closed-minded, but we're still the best topic during contest season anyway. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Not sure if there will be anything too exciting to keep an eye on tonight. Really wish we could have seen Mario 64 vs Chrono Trigger in a fair fight; would have been an excellent chance to test M64 vs SMW and also to see how far CT has fallen relative to Mario in the past five years. Instead Yoshi's Island is there to mess everything up, and then next round gets even worse thanks to FF7 and GE showing up to have a major impact on both games (though how huge and in what direction we still have no clue). A few weeks back people were trying to inject some kind of interest into this one by suggesting that Castlevania could challenge Mario 64 thanks to the help YI would be providing, but come on now, let's not get silly. Yoshi's in a horrible position- bigger, more popular Mario on one side and bigger, more popular SNES game on the other. The game is going to get crunched to such a tiny percentage that I can't see it destroying 64 to that extent, especially not after its frankly awful showing in R1. SotN's still a decent game and ought to pull a respectable percentage, but I'm envisioning healthy gaps between all 4 entries here, to the point where no position will ever be in doubt. On the plus side... Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy, whoo! Was hoping we'd see that level last round, glad to see it pop up here. Also at first I thought the guy on the right in the SotN pic was Captain Falcon, so maybe it will overperform by 10% like in that Diddy Kong match. Final percentage: - Chrono Trigger - 41% - Super Mario 64 - 33% - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 17% - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - 9% Okay, so I made that up in like 2 seconds when I realized it was 11:59 and I didn't have an Oracle pick in yet. BUT, it's pretty close to the 40/30/20/10 split I would have tried for if given more time to think, so I like it! ### Next Day Review Oh man, what an incredible run Mario has been on lately. The SMW result was nuts, yes, but I've got to think this showing from Mario 64 makes even LESS sense. I mean think about it... CT put up 70.30% directly on Yoshi's Island last time around. Sure SMW1 \>\> SMW2, but you'd have to figure CT could have pushed that toward 75 if not for drawing such terrible opponents (two other SNES RPGs, both with dedicated fanbases = yikes). But today the sore thumb turned around and was pointing back in CT's direction- no other RPGs, dual Mario options that would surely have users anti-voting the series (as they did FF the other day); in short the perfect storm for a great showing. But not only does it lose, Mario 64's currently scoring 51.84% on it directly! Combined the two Mario games are putting up 55.97% on CT- I guess it wouldn't be all that shocking given Mario/Crono '05 and how much everything CT might have fallen off since then, but boy does it ever look weird in the light of that R1 performance. Luckily for Chrono, Goldeneye is showing up to limit Mario's damage next round... although will FF7 crush CT so bad that it won't even matter? That result is completely up in the air after seeing this IMO- not even an outright GE advancement would shock me! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3485&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=40) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs Metal Gear Solid vs Pokémon Gold/Silver 2009 _source: Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs Metal Gear Solid vs Pokémon Gold/Silver 2009 (revid 65278)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, May 17th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1998-2000 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 17th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid - 35.31% Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 29.09% Zelda: Majora's Mask - 22.31% Pokemon Gold/Silver - 13.76% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** MGS first place (4pts) - 32.02% MGS second place (2pts) - 36.10% Pokemon RBY second place (4pts) - 19.36% Pokemon RBY first place (2pts) - 33.01% - **Advancing Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid - 68.12% (26,087) Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 52.37% (20,056) Not only did Pokemon collectively combine for 45% of the vote, but the entire poll scored 132,000 votes despite there being three first party Nintendo games. You can look at these very final numbers and see the trouble Metal Gear Solid was in next round. RBY held up well despite GSC and Majora's Mask in the way. Replacing Majora's Mask with Ocarina of Time and removing GSC altogether spelled terrible for Metal Gear Solid, especially given MGS can't pull off miracles unless it's dealing with low vote totals. And this is just from looking at the final numbers. RBY stayed even with MGS for a little while, and MGS didn't truly begin pulling away until the poll was an hour old. If MGS had all this trouble with GSC clearly leeching the hell out RBY, how could it beat an unhindered RBY? The short answer is it wouldn't. Gold/Silver/Crystal and Majora's Mask are worth mentioning here, because they held up *extremely* well given the circumstances. Majora's Mask especially was an unquestioned bomb in the first round, but this match showed it had some bite in it and was perhaps SFFd to a huge degree by Pokemon RBY. GSC, despite a last place finish, leeched RBY quite a lot and cost it a first place finish. RBY would get a chance to prove itself without a younger brother around to suck up votes in round 3, but for now it had to deal with second place. The true loser in this poll was Metal Gear Solid. It's rare you see a game come in first place by nearly 10,000 votes and look the worst, but it looked like *crap* here. MGS vs 3 Nintendo games and it doesn't begin pulling away for an hour? Only 33% of the total vote with Nintendo splitting three ways? Bad performance in every way, it just happened to land in first place. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction After RBY put up 51% you may have seen me playing around with some numbers in this topic trying to find a way for MM to pull back ahead in R2 until I eventually gave up (because I couldn't see G/S/C holding up well enough to make it possible). After all the nonsensical stuff this last week though, I just don't know anymore... Mario World made a huge boost on its R1 percentage thanks to voters rebelling against a half-Final Fantasy poll... perhaps Majora could likewise hold up better than we expect if people decide to vote against Pokemon? If Mario can do it we surely shouldn't count Zelda out entirely, especially now that its the only N64 option in the poll rather than just 1 of 3. The trouble with that theory is how MGS is the much better anti-Nintendo/anti-Pokemon magnet, and since it was able to jettison all of the mature/PSX competition that held it back in R1, I AM counting on Snake doing the near-impossible and improving on his R1 percentage against stronger competition. Still though, I could see the Zelda name doing an okay job of attracting the non-Pokemon votes as well, and as I result I think Majora ought to be able to keep this closer to Red than most are expecting (though the end result will probably never be in doubt). Also, I get the impression that Gold will do a better job of avoiding SFF and Last Place Factor than people are giving it credit for- just a hunch, but I'm going with it. Long story short, I'll say... - Metal Gear Solid - 37.20% - Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 27.18% - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 22.36% - Pokemon Gold/Silver - 13.26% Seems fairly okay, I think? ### Next Day Review Holy junk, the Pokemon Series with over 47% of the vote against the combined might of MGS and Zelda? In a match that's (somehow) going to draw over 130k votes and will possibly be the most popular poll of the season so far? This site is Pokemon-crazy! But come on now MGS, you can't even manage 1/3 of the vote against what is essentially just two Nintendo games, even when you stand out like crazy in the match pic? For shame! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3486&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=41) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy VIII vs Starcraft vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy IX 2009 _source: Final Fantasy VIII vs Starcraft vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy IX 2009 (revid 70847)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, May 18th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1998-2000 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 18th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 44.46% Final Fantasy VIII - 22.07% Starcraft - 20.28% Final Fantasy IX - 13.57% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:OoT first place (4pts) - 56.02% Zelda:OoT second place (2pts) - 24.30% FF8 second place (4pts) - 16.06% FF8 first place (2pts) - 10.99% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 80.32% (30,759) Final Fantasy VIII - 27.05% (10,359) We've already covered why FF7's performance in round 2 was more impressive than Ocarina's here, but thankfully there was a decent match to be had past Ocarina's blowout first place victory. The final result does not do justice how legitimately scared Final Fantasy 8 was early on in this match. Thanks to Final Fantasy 9's leeching of 8 and Zelda destroying everything, Starcraft's independent fanbase was able to sneak it into second place early. After how badly Starcraft sucked in the first round, all the ghosts from 2004 came out of the closet and Starcraft once again miraculously found itself in a position to cause damage. And given the circumstance of the opponents, it wasn't unreasonable to think Starcraft could pull this one off. Pulling off a big comeback is difficult when you're in a fourway poll against your own fans and Ocarina of Time. But this time, there would be no miracle rally and no miracle finish. After Starcraft built up a 100 vote lead, FF8 stalled for awhile before the FF overnight vote kicked in and the floodgates opened. FF8 literally erased the lead in 30 minutes once 1:50 a.m. hit, and then 8 went on to score an easy 6000 vote win. No insane Starcraft run this year, though that first two hours were quite entertaining. FF8 proved in the first round it was no fluke, and it proved in the second round it could stand up to a bit of adversity. It would be nice to see how FF8 held up in a 1v1 game contest, but sadly we'll likely never get the chance. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Much like Majora vs R/B/Y, I'd given up hope for a reversed result in tonight's R2 match after seeing just how badly the underdog had been pounded in R1. Now though, I'm extremely nervous about my bracket's pick of Ocarina \> FF8; let me count the ways: - sure FF4 crunched FF1, but its now pretty clear that 1 relies almost entirely on its series recognition and cute sprites. against an opponent with an ACTUAL fanbase it's much much harder to inflict major SFF/LPF damage, as G/S/C is showing us today. between's 9's very vocal fanbase and its strong showing last round, I could see 8 having almost as hard a time as Red is at beating down its younger brother - Mario 1, SMW, GE, Mario 64... every time pre-GameCube Nintendo has had a chance to stand on its own this round it has demolished our expectations, and I see no reason for Ocarina of Time to snap that trend. sure these other games are all strong, but this draw is just peachy in terms of allowing the biggest of the Zeldas to stand out from the competition, and that's a scary proposition- I think it's going to put up a big time number in this one by the time the smoke has cleared (especially since it should be able to rock this ASV) - the higher OoT goes, the more I like SC's chances. yes yes, I realize that the whole "dedicated fanbase" factor is overblown, but even so, SC pulled 28 and DII did 27 and WoW did 24; I honestly don't think 20% is out of StarCraft's range, and if Ocarina goes wild that might be all it takes - chuckle at Longshot Lopen all you want, but he has a point... there's a reason L-Block and Snake did so great in '07 and '08, and I do agree that being non-Zelda/FF/Mario options was a major part of why those bandwagons gained steam. and if that's a legit mindset for many voters, there could hardly be a more ideal rally proposition than getting to take down two Final Fantasy titles plus the most "overrated" Zelda of them all at the same time! - wowza does Ocarina ever dominate that match pic. the adult version of Link everyone loves, the triforce, logo looking big and bold, man. and Vivi is rocking his coolest look as well. and yikes, StarCraft sportin' the coolest unit RTS unit in the world, the Archon! while FF8 looks like... well, garbage, honestly. I'm sure that's an awesome cut scene, but sorry, its comes out way too small to translate to a match pic And finally... - there's no way StarCraft loses a close match Factoring in all those points, you can see why I'm so frightened that I have to pick against my bracket and say - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 44.99% - StarCraft - 20.36% - Final Fantasy VIII - 20.35% - Final Fantasy IX - 14.30% \*hopes for a good one!\* ### Next Day Review Hm... well on the plus side we're already over 130k and this should end up as the 2nd or 3rd most popular match of the season so far, despite the double Final Fantasy overlap. On the down side, here's another missed opportunity on what ought to have been a great match! Really cool first three hours, looked to be setting up for FF8 to get a decent lead before SC came roaring back with the SNV Halo/SC-style, but then Europe had to go and ruin everything by being WAY too crazy about FF8. That was such a devastating stretch that the Blizzard faithful realized there would be no chance of a rally; instead Ocarina got a free pass to just keep rising all day. And yikes, did it ever! Even combining FF8 and 9, they still only managed to hold Ocarina to 59% of the vote- boy, I'd be shaking in my boots if I had one of those wacky FF7 brackets! Though of course none of this Finals talk matters unless FFX can make it there to help balance the load, and speaking of which... ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3487&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=42) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy X vs Metal Gear Solid 2 vs Kingdom Hearts vs Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 2009 _source: Final Fantasy X vs Metal Gear Solid 2 vs Kingdom Hearts vs Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 2009 (revid 65280)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2001-2003 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 34.73% Metal Gear Solid 2 - 25.23% Kingdom Hearts - 23.66% Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 16.49% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF10 first place (4pts) - 33.72% FF10 second place (2pts) - 14.79% KH second place (4pts) - 21.63% KH first place (2pts) - 12.25% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 48.51% (18,577) Kingdom Hearts - 33.88% (12,975) This was a matchup of four *huge* PS2 titles, and it was very difficult pre-match to tell where all the SFF would lean. FFX \> KH was the consensus based on round 1 results, but SFF can be quite fickle. This match didn't end up fickle, but it started out that way. Kingdom Hearts, FFX and MGS2 all combined to knock out Vice City early on, and were all tied for a few minutes. Final Fantasy X would eventually pull away overnight, and the match was ultimately between Kingdom Hearts 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2 for second place. That mini-match however was over 15 minutes in -- Kingdom Hearts in the 0:10 - 0:15 update increased its lead from 13 to 108 votes, effectively giving us the final result right then and there. MGS2 and Vice City went on to respectable third and fourth place finishes. The story here was how good Kingdom Hearts looked in this match, and in turn how bad FFX looked. We all know FFX would eventually make the final, but there was some doubt of that following this match. This was not an impressive first place by any stretch, and one could easily argue FFX was leeched to holy hell by all three of the other games in this poll. Kingdom Hearts, as usual, looked like a beast. If Kingdom Hearts 3 would ever get announced and released, the entire series could reach elite levels. It's damn strong as-is. Speaking of Kingdom Hearts 3, who do I have to kill in order to get this game announced? The wait is unbearable. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Crazy showing from X last round, easily one of the most impressive of R1 in my opinion. KH1 did pretty well for itself also, but as other Crewmembers have touched on, FFX and KH have such a weird relationship that you never know how they'll affect one another. I could see anything happening here, from X pounding KH so badly that VC is in range (until the ASV kicks in) to KH holding X back so hard that MGS2... okay, strike that, couldn't ever see MGS2 winning outright. MGS2 over KH though, now there's an interesting proposition. Sure Sora has held up well against Squall, but I think things could be different when the two games themselves are in play- FFX was just such the RPG star of that generation that'd I have to imagine it hugely overshadows KH1 or 2 or FF12 or anything else. Also, despite the underwhelming percentage last round, I'm not entirely sold on MGS2 being the weakest of the series, and furthermore I've got a ton of respect for this fanbase in terms of staying resilient despite stronger competition. The base isn't big enough to score blowouts (as MGS1 showed us yesterday), but it's generally consistent enough to manage 25%+ against most opponents, and if FFX is able to cause enough havoc it might not even need that much tonight. On the other hand... gosh that was a great showing for KH2 in that match with RE4. I'm torn on this one; better let the match pic decide! Hmm, love the big bold title for MGS2, plus the "2" has been cut off on the right; might help with the franchise voting! And KH doesn't impress me- the series always seems to be at top strength when it draws the sort-of-anime look they've been doing from KH2 on, so I don't think Goofy and Donald is its best bet. Alright, guess I'll back the upset and take the MGS fanbase to pull out one of their classic close victories here (shouldn't be too hard, as Frog has already showed us that this franchise can be had in the final hour). One final note: I don't think VC gets entirely crunched in this one, as most seem to be expecting. Sure the series has disappointed, but it's been a consistent disappointment, with all 4 games grabbing between 22 and 28 percent of the vote. No chance Vice City matches that against good competition like this, but still, I'd be surprised if it imploded to under 14% or so. - Final Fantasy X - 36.61% - Metal Gear Solid 2 - 23.05% - Kingdom Hearts - 23.01% - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 17.34% Looks... risky, but I like it! ### Next Day Review Well what do you know- guess Sora and Squall are much better proxies than I gave them credit for! After that world-beating performance in R1 I hesitate to call this a straight up disappointment from FFX... seems more like it did about what we have expected, minus the SFFing of KH that we'd all been counting on. Yes sir, I guess that voters just don't automatically think "Square" where KH is involved for whatever reason; the LFF between FFs has been just brutal, yet today Kingdom Hearts acted as if it were an entirely independent entry. Maybe one (or both?) KHs are going to be making much, much deeper runs than we'd expected... As for Vice City, this was a good showing and one that further validates my claim that all 4 have been performing very consistently. MGS2, however, was once again rather underwhelming; guess I have no choice but to accept that I was wrong and it's the weak link of the series, unless 3 drops a real bomb on us. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3488&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=43) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Diablo II: Lord of Destruction vs Halo: Combat Evolved vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2009 _source: Diablo II: Lord of Destruction vs Halo: Combat Evolved vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2009 (revid 67882)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2001-2003 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 37.48% Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - 21.66% Zelda: The Wind Waker - 20.54% Halo: Combat Evolved - 20.44% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Melee first place (4pts) - 28.55% Melee second place (2pts) - 39.08% Diablo II second place (4pts) - 6.24% Diablo II first place (2pts) - 9.30% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 67.63% (25,900) Diablo II - 15.54% (5,951) Melee winning this match was a given, but this was the second match in a row where it seemed a bit off. This was an impressive enough first place and an easy win, but it failed to deliver that SFF killer punch to Wind Waker we all expected. As hard as it is to accept, Melee just isn't that killer instinct dominant game we all want it to be. Remember, 2004 didn't feature dominant performances either. Either Wind Waker isn't all that bad, or Melee isn't *that* good. Good, but not great. If by some miracle we ever saw Melee vs Brawl 1v1, Brawl could be considered a favorite going in. Compare Melee's eye test this contest to Brawl's. It isn't close. The true match here were the other three games, though it wasn't really a match. Diablo 2 won second place very easily, and silenced all the critics thinking the first round win was a fluke. Only 15.54% of people had Diablo 2 getting to the third round of this contest, mainly because Halo is the most overbracketed series we have. Once again, everyone had faith in Halo. And like always, Halo bombed. And this wasn't a simple choking; it scored last place against an SFFd Wind Waker, and it was clear Halo would get last place within a couple hours. Halo is famous for choking in contests, but this ranks up there with the all-time best. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I'm expecting some fireworks from tonight's matchup! Sure it's going to be kind of pointless considering how weak all these options for 2nd place are (well I actually think Wind Waker has respectable strength, just not when Melee's hanging around), but I could still see this resulting in a few lead changes and comebacks. First things first: Melee's going to go to town on these chumps. Maybe that roster screenshot for a match pic is what's raising my confidence, but for whatever reason I have this hunch that SSB comes out of this one looking like a champ, despite the fact that modern Nintendo hasn't impressed when split between two options. Even if my hunch is way off though, it's still a lock for first, meaning the real question is who goes home with the silver. You could make a good case for Halo, it seems to me... sure KotOR and D2 must have some overlap, but its still mainly seen as an Xbox game and as HM correctly pointed out a fanbase split might be devastating given that console's low ownership numbers. Unfortunately there's also a number of things working against Halo: Melee was the more definitive multiplayer experience of the 128 bit generation (and as GE vs MK64 showed us, that could be crucial), DII's the sole RPG choice this time around, DII will once again be allowed to dominate overnight (considering Europe and Asia's low opinion of post-N64 Nintendo, and the Xbox in general), and there's not going to be any massive ASV comeback like last time, not with Day Vote titans like SSB and Zelda there to soak up the votes. With all those factors working against Halo I was all set to go against my bracket and back DII in this one. And then StarCraft happened. I realize what a tough sell a PC-only RTS must be on an RPG-crazy site like this, but even so SC was SO far back of its '04 strength and did so very little beyond those first three hours that I had no choice but to lose a good deal of respect for the Blizzard base. Sure, they're not going to allow Diablo to lose a close match, but now I have doubts about them being able to keep it tight enough for that rally potential to matter. Guess I've got to side with Halo, though I do so with zero confidence. Speaking of zero confidence, I also think it's a mistake to count Zelda out entirely! I mean, even Majora managed 22% despite having to deal with a 3 way Nintendo split- it just seems extremely difficult to keep a Zelda option below 20%, regardless of the competition. If Melee really kicks it into gear as so many other Mario titles have done lately that might be all it takes to advance. But, ehhh, I'll play it safe and stick with Halo. (...oh jeez, did I just use "safe" and "Halo" in the same sentence? all of a sudden I've got a huge sinking feeling regarding this pick!) - Super Smash Bros. Melee - 37.95% - Halo: Combat Evolved - 21.80% - Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - 20.87% - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 19.38% Ermm.... okay? ### Next Day Review Somehow as soon as I locked in my pick for Halo last night I knew I'd made a huge mistake, but it was one of those you don't realize until it's too late to update your Oracle. And whoops, was my late hunch ever correct! Getting punished the entire overnight, not getting a sniff of an ASV comeback, only managing 42% directly on Diablo, and losing cleanly to a massively SFFed Wind Waker, all in a matchup where you were the only Xbox option and only FPS choice... it doesn't get much more embarrassing than that. I guess Halo's saving grace is the "128-bit multiplayer SFF" that I mentioned in my preview, and there's probably some validity to that (the ASV sure made me think so), but still, someone remind me to pick against Master Chief 100% of the time in a couple months! Other points: nice to see Wind Waker sort of redeem itself by hanging at 20%, DII looks good but I'd have to imagine SC could have done almost as well in this situation, and gosh is Melee ever beastly. Wonder how well it holds up to Ocarina. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3489&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=44) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs Tales of Symphonia vs Metal Gear Solid 3 vs World of Warcraft 2009 _source: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs Tales of Symphonia vs Metal Gear Solid 3 vs World of Warcraft 2009 (revid 65282)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, May 21st, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2004-2006 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 21st, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 33.52% World of Warcraft - 23.34% The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 22.29% Tales of Symphonia - 21.00% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** MGS3 first place (4pts) - 9.79% MGS3 second place (2pts) - 13.19% Oblivion second place (4pts) - 8.26% Oblivion first place (2pts) - 9.17% - **Advancing Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 22.98% (8,800) Oblivion - 17.43% (6,675) This match wasn't nearly as close as the first round blockbuster Oblivion and Tales of Symphonia gave us, but it was equally important and fun for a little while. Metal Gear Solid 3 came out early and set the stage for its being a surprise contender in round 3. It would eventually fall short of one of the biggest possible upsets, but for this round it proved legitimate strength by pulling away early from three tough games. Which leads us to the true match. For a time, it looked like the second round ToS match would be every bit as good as round 1. It looked early on like WoW would get last place, but within a few minutes WoW came back and gave us a three-way deadlock for second. The match stayed this way for nearly two hours, where Tales of Symphonia expectedly (based on the round 1 trends) fell off the pace. But unlike round 1, there would be no miracle comeback this time around. Tales of Symphonia had a great round 1 match and *finally* justified a huge amount of its fan-dom, but it fell short in round 2 in the face of Obivion. Not too long after Tales of Symphonia fell off, World of Warcraft looked to follow suit. But after Oblivion built up a 100 vote lead, the match entered one of the most prolonged stalls ever. Oblivion's lead stayed between 100 and 300 for over six hours, but neither game was able to make any headway thanks to the various rallies going on. Then the DSV hit, and WoW was able to tie the match in all of 12 seconds. It looked like WoW would explode and win easily from here, but Oblivion hung tough for a little while before doing the whole pulling-away-while-being-stalled thing. This lasted until the ASV, where Oblivion was finally able to cement the match and score second place for good. We'd had several examples of rallying not mattering too much (namely with Persona 4), but this match can finally put that argument to rest. Unless you have something on a MASSIVE scale (L-Block), rallying is negligible and always has been. If WoW of all games can't rally in this of all formats, we can officially put the rallying nonsense to rest. You can rally more votes all you want, but the people you attract will pick the option they like regardless. The true story here was Oblivion. It placed in two matches despite no bracket support at all, proving it has legitimate strength and could cause real damage if we'd ever get a 1v1 contest again. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Regarding Snake Eater and the RPG Three, hmm, seems to me its more or less a repeat of the match we just saw. You're got one standout title and three pretty weak options below it, but it should still be a fairly fun poll since there's a chance they're all equally weak. And it could be EXTRA fun because once again ToS finds itself in a pretty swell position: only GameCube option, only Nintendo option, Oblivion and WoW share the PC fanbase, and stands out well against the more mature games. (Why in the heck can't anything Metroid ever pull down a cushy no-Nintendo path like this?) Buuuuut, I just can't buy it. I could see ToS challenging WoW if it bombs hard, but that's probably the best it could do. Oblivion vs WoW is a tougher choice, especially after seeing Diablo look so respectable, but I'm going to stick to my initial SC \>~ DII \>\> WoW (without massive rallying) stance and pick against Blizzard in this one. I just get the impression that TES will eat up any overlapping PC fanbase the two have in common, and it's got the Xbox base to help it beyond that, plus I just thought it looked more impressive between the two last round. That leaves us with MGS3 to discuss. I'm seeing some super-high preds for the game, which makes some sense considering how much it stands out from all the mid-carder RPG options, but again I'm going to pick against the crowd here and keep its percent a little lower. I mean, MGS1 had an even better LFF position (against basically two Nintendo options) and is an even stronger game, yet it failed to capitalize. Seems the same ought to happen to 3, especially since even though these are all RPGs they at least cover a pretty good variety of systems/platforms. So if Snake pulls in about the same 1/3 of the vote as he did against Zelda and Pokemon, we're looking at: - Metal Gear Solid 3 - 33.31% - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 23.29% - World of Warcraft - 22.34% - Tales of Symphonia - 21.06% Note: due to leaving early for Terminator I was unable to see the match pic before making this guess. Looking at it now, I think I would lower Oblivion slightly (logo doesn't stand out well enough), raise MGS, lower ToS a bit (too zoomed out, though I guess it does have SWORDZ), and give WoW a slight boost (pink elf TJF is surely the strongest of all!). Let's see if that would have backfired on me... ### Next Day Review Words can't describe how disappointed I am in the MGS series once again failing to capitalize on almost ideal opponents. I guess it lost some late night and overnight votes thanks to WoW rallying and then got crunched in the day by Xbox voters being excited to push Oblivion back out in front, but still, this is what, 60% on a ToS that was dealing with 2 other more popular RPG choices? Really would have thought this game could maintain more of its R1 percentage than that. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3490&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=45) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Resident Evil 4 vs Kingdom Hearts II vs The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs Half-Life 2 2009 _source: Resident Evil 4 vs Kingdom Hearts II vs The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs Half-Life 2 2009 (revid 65283)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, May 22nd, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2004-2006 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 22nd, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Twilight Princess - 33.52% Resident Evil 4 - 23.34% Kingdom Hearts II - 22.29% Half-Life 2 - 21.00% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:TP first place (4pts) - 20.74% Zelda:TP second place (2pts) - 26.62% RE4 second place (4pts) - 19.49% RE4 first place (2pts) - 30.54% - **Advancing Prediction:** Twilight Princess - 47.36% (18,137) Resident Evil 4 - 50.03% (19,159) Resident Evil 4 and Kingdom Hearts 2 gave us a damn good match in round 1, and they followed it up with their best impression of Super Metroid vs Super Mario Kart. Yes this was a very close match, but it had the excitement of a doorknob given we saw the same exact match with the same exact trends in round 1. In round 1, Resident Evil 4 built up a 1250 vote lead overnight and held on for dear life all throughout Kingdom Hearts 2's day vote, squeaking by with a seemingly close win. I say "seemingly" because RE4 was never really threatened. Round 2 was much different in that RE4 only built up a 700 vote lead before the morning vote, 550 less than in round 1. Had Round 1 perfectly repeated itself, Kingdom Hearts 2 would have made a furious comeback and brought the match down to the wire. But round 1 did not perfectly repeat itself, mainly because of Zelda's presence. Resident Evil 4 surprisingly kept up its pace all the way to the ASV, building up a 2000 vote lead in the face of everyone calling on an RE4 collapse. And make no mistake -- RE4 *did* collapse here, to the tune of bleeding 1200 votes. It just did so about 6 hours later than expected. RE4 was very lucky Zelda was around to suck up the traditional Kingdom Hearts morning vote, because Kingdom Hearts 2 would have scored the upset had it been able to get going at the same time as round 1. This was the second match in a row in which RE4 was able to squeak by KH2, and RE4 wasn't close to finished its nail-biting matches. This match more or less showed Kingdom Hearts and Zelda share a ton of fans, and you could also definitely call RE4 a quasi-Nintendo game here. Some how, some way, it survived the Kingdom Hearts day vote twice. That's no easy feat, even if it did prove RE4 was not finals-worthy. We also saw here how Twilight Princess was not finals-worthy. If RE4, KH2 and Twilight Princess are all this close, all three could effectively be thrown out of the discussion. Twilight Princess was dangerously close to being in second place this match, and was saved by the ASV. Skipping ahead a bit, Brawl SFFd the living hell out of Mario Galaxy. It was a safe bet based on round 2 results it would beat Twilight Princess handily, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. If you're a finals contender, you don't stay in first place by 200 votes and rely on ASV pushes to score convincing wins, regardless of any weird fanbase splits. If Brawl and Twilight Princess switched places, there's no doubt Brawl would have crushed this poll within 10 minutes. As is, Twilight Princess was at the very least leeched very badly, which was a bad omen given future opponents. This was a pretty bad effort by TP, even considering KH2 and RE4 are both potentially top 15 or 20 around here. There was actually a time in this match where Twilight Princess only led Resident Evil 4 by 9 votes. The same RE4 that bled 1200 votes later. The winner here, even though it lost, was Kingdom Hearts 2. This whole series is no joke, and it taps into a ton of different fanbases all at once. If we could ever get 3 announced, we'd be looking at three different games from the KH series with top 10 potential. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Heck of a matchup tonight! Let's get the easy (?) stuff out of the way first so we can dig into the meat: TP should win comfortably and HL2 should finish 4th comfortably. Post-N64 Nintendo has been sketchy nearly every time out, its true, but as a mid-tier Zelda option in a poll with nothing else Zelda/Mario/Smash, I feel fine backing TP (though I don't expect any kind of blowout). HL2 I actually think will impress by holding on to more of its R1 performance than you might expect, as Gordon often does, but the other options are a step above and with no Samus/Ganon-style SFF to push one of them back down, I can't see it catching up to anything. And so it all comes down to KH2 vs RE4. Let's itemize this baby. Points in KHII's favor: - RE4 has hands in the GC, PS2, and Wii cookie jars. but there's an option here that out prioritizes it on both the GC and Wii (presumably) and another that out prioritizes it on the PS2 - RE4 appeals to voter who like mature, action-heavy FPS adventures, but there's another mature FPS option in this poll - KH2 already came within a few inches of knocking off RE4 once, and its older brother legitimized that performance by looking arguably even more impressive in going toe to toe with FFX - shooters have been bombing relative to expectations this entire season. nearly the only exception to that rule has been HL2, which... doesn't help Leon a bit! - during their R1 matchup, Resident Evil 5 was drawing in tons of RE fans by being the \#1 FAQ on the site (except for maybe Pokemon Platinum?). but now the hype has died off and it's currently sitting back in 10th place Golly, not looking for very good for RE fans! Let's see what 4 can counter with. Points in RE4's favor: - um... Gears of War chainsaw LFF? - Nintendo SFF probably doesn't bury it THAT bad, considering how well it held up to all those GC/Wii options in that Game of the Decade poll. then again, FFX held up even better, and we now know that KH1 is only a bit back of X, and KH2 is possibly even stronger than its- you know what, scratch this point Wowza, seems like we have a very clear choice here! I'm going to put my foot down and side with... Resident Evil 4. WHAT? I've decided to overlook overlap and x-stats and past results and take a different perspective on this one. Sure there are thousands of people who like Kingdom Hearts, but there are also a good number that support RE4- and they don't just like it, they love it. Seems to me KH is a series with a very high playrate that would have no trouble beating up on "meh" competition, but that voters would abandon when options they really love come along, and I'd argue there are three of those in tonight's poll. Also I'm expecting Europe to limit KH's damage overnight (they generally love both Valve and Square, but seem pretty apathetic about KH for whatever reason) and Zelda to limit KH's morning and ASV kicks. And if push comes to shove, I don't see any way RE fans allow it to lose a match that's still debatable in the final hour. That's why I'm betting against all of the stats and factors I love so much and pulling the trigger on - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 29.97% - Resident Evil 4 - 24.73% - Kingdom Hearts II - 24.70% - Half-Life 2 - 20.61% Whooo! ### Next Day Review I'm so proud of RE4 right now. \*wipes tear from eye\* What a trooper, standing up to the two school bullies and showing that yes, it IS possible for a non-Nintendo non-Square game to show some strength on this site. As to how this could have happened despite all stats and prior results pointing against it, I'm again going to bring up the final point from my match preview: well-liked games with huge playrates are always going to be a threat to post big time numbers in the opening rounds, but when the rubber hits the road and the competition stiffens (and I would argue this was the stiffest 4pack so far this season), they're going to wilt in the face of the well-loved options around them. Also want to give a short note of congrats to TP for surviving both the dreaded RE overnight and the dreaded KH afternoon to pull out the hard fought victory- sure this game is far from the the FF7-killer some were hoping for during the peak of its '06 hype, but its still earned plenty of respect from myself with this showing. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3491&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=46) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs Grand Theft Auto IV vs Call of Duty 4 vs Super Mario Galaxy 2009 _source: Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs Grand Theft Auto IV vs Call of Duty 4 vs Super Mario Galaxy 2009 (revid 65284)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2007-2009 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 31.45% Call of Duty 4 - 31.02% Super Mario Galaxy - 20.49% Grand Theft Auto IV - 17.11% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Brawl first place (4pts) - 35.94% Brawl second place (2pts) - 16.30% CoD 4 second place (4pts) - 32.45% CoD 4 first place (2pts) - 17.67% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 52.24% (20,006) Call of Duty 4 - 50.12% (19,194) Remember the people like me that argued Call of Duty 4 was strong, and could sneak into second place in this match above an SFFd Brawl? Well, we were all stupid. Really, really stupid. Oh we called CoD4's strength well enough, but the SFF in this match went entirely the other way. Brawl didn't just beat down and SFF Galaxy here; this was arguably the most meaningful, embarrassing SFF beating we've ever seen in a contest. This got so bad that Galaxy lost its third place lead over Grand Theft Auto 4 within an hour and a half. This was just horrible. Pathetic. Terribad. Any synonym you can think of for "legendary meltdown". It was a horrible result, and it made Galaxy the biggest flop of the entire contest. This also proved Brawl as the Wii title, above Galaxy (obviously) and probably above Twilight Princess. Yes Twilight Princess is technically a Gamecube title, but hush. Twilight Princess was on a clear path for its chance at Brawl two rounds from here, but it had no chance based on round 2 results. TP was leeched, while Brawl was dominant. The most dominant game of the latter two divisions through two rounds. Easily. Brawl's impressive performance here can easily make you forget how well CoD4 did to finish in second place, but do remember how most people thought Brawl and Galaxy would both be strong enough to finish in some order of 1-2 here, regardless of splitting. After this match, the contenders for the fourth game in the final looked like such: Brawl, Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 4. That's it. RBY and Melee both had Ocarina in the way, so the list was trimmed down to three within two rounds. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Tonight is... well, its super weird. CoD's the clear favorite for first place, and you'd have to say "deservedly so" after the way it didn't have any trouble with SMG past the first few minutes last time around. But somehow I have absolutely zero faith in this game. The entire FPS genre has been awful here in 2009 (aside from shooters with Nintendo appeal, and even then RE4 and GE looked bad back in R1). CoD's closest proxy, Halo, has gone 3 for 3 in wilting under pressure... what makes C4 different? I guess you could say its helped out by having strong PC appeal, and I suppose you could even make a case for it being the "RE4 of the CoD series", and that today's result ought to be give Duty-backers more confidence. But... I'm not sold. Melee was monstrous a couple days back, and I don't think Brawl should be all that far behind it, especially not after that very impressive performance last round. And the Snake + Mario pick is fantastic- there's no doubting that Snake popping out of that box was the moment that Brawl hype reached its peak internet-wide. Yup, everything seems to be working in SSBB's favor... and yet I can't shake the feeling that there was something extremely fishy about that Galaxy/Pokemon match. With the way even G/S/C was able to resist SFF from both Zelda and a superior Pokemon game, you've got to let SMG off the hook for not beating down D/P harder, don't you? And if so, isn't there a chance that we could be vastly underestimating it here? I think so, and that's why I'm going to back... Call of Duty! I do so not out of any kind of respect for the game or that series, but rather because I'm worried that we may have pegged Galaxy way wrong. With the way everyone outside of America has abandoned the Wii its going to be very difficult for Brawl + Galaxy to combine for much over 50%, which means that as long as Mario doesn't crumble badly CoD has to remain in the driver's seat. On the other hand, there's a distinct possibility that GTA4 messes this all up by limiting C4's casual appeal. Yes the GTAs have bombed, but with how much Europe despises the Wii and isn't too sold on the 360 either, G4 should figure to have a very strong overnight vote that might be enough to keep it relevant. Yup, so I'm leaning toward a result looking a little something like THIS: - Call of Duty 4 - 30.45% - Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 30.38% - Super Mario Galaxy - 21.81% - Grand Theft Auto IV - 17.35% Sure would be wonderful to see Galaxy redeem itself by massively improving on that pred though, as all its younger brothers did this round. ### Next Day Review Got to say I disagree with the way everyone's reacting to today's result. Yes Galaxy is looking bad, but "flop of the Contest," come on now! Sure Brawl is beating it down with 72%, but we've always known that same-console Nintendo SFF can be brutal. Ocarina did exactly this same thing to the two N64 titles it overshadowed, and yet Mario 64 and Goldeneye both bounced back with impressive performances that have us talking them up as top 10/15 games once again. And as for R1, well, even R/B/Y was only able to push G/S/C down to 42%- Pokemon generations are apparently just impossible to SFF much (at all?), so again I don't think that's any reason to hate on SMG. I mean clearly its a couple steps below that SMW/Mario 64 tier, but I bet it'll bounce back and show itself to be a respectable mid-carder once we get to see it without Brawl or TP interfering. The only thing we can really take away from this result is that, just like every other FPS this season, CoD4 is a fraud (at least in terms of being able to compete with MGS4/FO3 next round like we were hoping). And also, the hated Wii was surprisingly able to earn 57% of the vote against two options that did a pretty fair job of covering the 360, PC, and PS3 fanbases- between that and TP's strong stand yesterday, looks like all of the gloom and doom regarding post-N64 Nintendo was a bit overblown. Have to imagine both of those heavy hitters will be fine through next round... but TP/Brawl/MGS4/RE4, yikes, now that will be something to talk about! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3492&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=47) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Portal vs Fallout 3 vs Halo 3 2009 _source: Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Portal vs Fallout 3 vs Halo 3 2009 (revid 88469)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, May 24th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2007-2009 Semi Final - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 24th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 4 - 34.57% Fallout 3 - 27.68% Halo 3 - 19.19% Portal - 18.78% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** MGS4 first place (4pts) - 37.37% MGS4 second place (2pts) - 17.44% Fallout 3 second place (4pts) - 22.45% Fallout 3 first place (2pts) - 10.73% - **Advancing Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 4 - 54.81% (20,990) Fallout 3 - 33.18% (12,707) The Fallout 3 \> Halo 3 first round match was one of the most boring matches of the contest, and round 2 wasn't much better. MGS4 \> Fallout 3 was a complete lock, and you maybe make a case for Portal or Halo 3 swinging an upset because of round 1 producing some weird results from splitting. Or not. This match was over within a couple hours, though it was nice seeing Portal hang in there for a bit. If you haven't played Portal yet, you have no idea what you're missing. What a perfect gem of a game, and I love how a next-gen game can be 2-3 hours long and be better than 99% of the crap out there. Stunning how a game being fun is all that matters, trumping all this crap about 100 hour play times and multi-million dollar development costs. God bless you, Portal and Valve. Since this match was so short, another mini Stars and Turds! Star of the Round: -Super Smash Bros. Brawl Turd of the Round: -Super Mario Galaxy ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I was excited about getting another chance to see what MSG4 was made of now that SSBB has made it seem to be such a world beater, but then I remembered that we already know 4's relation to Fallout and we already know F03 \>\> Halo 3 from last round. So yeah, everyone was right, there really shouldn't be all that much of interest about this match. ALTHOUGH when I said "remind me to pick against Master Chief this Fall!" a couple days ago I'd actually forgotten that there was still a Halo alive in the tourney- guess I get to start betting against this series even earlier than expected! Unfortunately it seems just about everyone has already beaten me to it, as I'm seeing Portal picks all across both the Crew and the Oracle. Ah well... it's got a fantastic match pic that really plays up its fad/meme/cult/joke appeal (great work Zen!), which ought to work wonders given how MGS4 and FO3 have such low playrates (compared to most other games that are still alive at this point), meaning there should be a good chunk of disaffected users looking to cast an "Other" vote. Aside from that battle for 3rd, hm... I guess I should mention that I'm lowballing the MGS series for the third time in a row, and feel pretty confident in it going three for three at drawing 1/3 of the votes in a poll. Yes this is a favorable matchup thanks to Fallout and Halo sharing the 360 while Halo and Portal share the FPS genre, but as we've been over many times the MGS series just isn't built for blowouts and so I'd be quite surprised if it surged toward 36% or anything like that. And uh... that's about all. - Metal Gear Solid 4 - 33.40% - Fallout 3 - 28.24% - Portal - 19.19% - Halo 3 - 19.17% Bring on Round Three! ### Next Day Review Well, today was unanimously expected to be a snoozefest, and for one of the few times this season we were... dead right! Darn it Halo- you're so awful these days that even your major flops are no longer exciting! (And I DO consider this one of the worse flops the series has experienced, BTW- being edged out by HL2 or 1 after seeing Master Chief '07 would be been disappointing enough, but the most hyped FPS of all time is going to lose cleanly to Portal and get straight up outperformed by Bioshock in the process... very sad.) Got to give props to MGS4 though for what is in my mind the first "wow" showing from the MGS series this season. I guess it was handed an easy setup since it was a pretty clear sore thumb, but so were MGS1 and 3, yet those games squandered the opportunity. Perhaps transience is on to something with this being the strongest of the 4 games... in any case, after a performance like this it should certainly be in the driver's seat when it comes down to TP/Brawl/RE4. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3493&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=48) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Tetris vs Mega Man 2 vs Super Mario Bros. vs The Legend of Zelda 2009 _source: Tetris vs Mega Man 2 vs Super Mario Bros. vs The Legend of Zelda 2009 (revid 88464)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, May 25th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1972-1988 Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 25th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. - 36.88% The Legend of Zelda - 30.38% Tetris - 20.00% Mega Man 2 - 12.49% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario 1 first place (8pts) - 30.50% Mario 1 second place (4pts) - 29.40% Zelda 1 second place (8pts) - 29.44% Zelda 1 first place (4pts) - 23.75% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. - 59.90% (22,939) The Legend of Zelda - 53.19% (20,370) This was the point in the contest where things got really really fun. We had some good matches to this point, yes, but most of the matches in the last three rounds ranged from good to forever memorable. The first divisional final ranked somewhere in the middle, mostly from how weird it was. But before getting into the obvious, this match was the ultimate final nail in Mega Man 2's coffin. Both Tetris and Mega Man 2 were in a no-lose SFF situation, and Tetris still won. Hopefully this lays to rest all the insane Mega Man \> Tetris stuff, in the event we ever get a 1v1 games contest. As for Mario vs Zelda, this was an extremely odd result, and it would only get even more strange in the next round. In round 2, Mario 1 defeated Zelda 1 by 9000 votes with Ninja Gaiden and Metroid present. You wouldn't think removing these two games and adding in Mega Man 2/Tetris would hurt Mario 1 a lot, but it did. This isn't to say Mario had a ton of trouble with Zelda 1 in this poll, because it had none -- Mario was never threatened here. It jumped out to the early lead much like the previous round, and dominated for awhile. But rather than go on to win by 9000 votes, Mario was vastly slowed down come the morning vote. Mario's lead was 2000 votes come school time. It took another 7 hours for the lead to peak at 2400 votes, and then Zelda spent the rest of the match shaving things down to 2000. The lead was never threatened per se, but this set up one of the best matches of any contest and proved Mario and his games split much worse in the face of Nintendo than Link and his games. You can argue Ninja Gaiden and Metroid can't do much of anything to Nintendo games, but Tetris and Mega Man 2 are a different story. And there's no doubt which game among Mario 1 and Zelda 1 these two hurt more. The funny thing here is had the match been 48 hours long, Zelda 1 would have won -- one round after losing by 9000 votes. Crazy. Even crazier is what would happen a week following this. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction For tonight I went with what I always realized was a pretty wacky upset, Zelda \> Tetris, and my reasoning was as follows: Zelda always tops Mario but it could be a close split and both will certainly hold each other back, MM and Mario always overlap which should weaken the game even more, Tetris will stand out as the only non-NES exclusive option, plus if there's any game that could gain L-Block like momentum and pick up anti-establishment votes it would probably be Tetris. Frankly I realized it was silly going in and probably only took it in the hopes of spicing up this incredibly vanilla division (MIX THE ERAS SB), and it looks even worse now that Tetris had such a hard time putting away MM2 last round. So I give up! On to the real question of this poll: Oh wait, Mario versus Zelda isn't a real question either, since it was spoiled last round (DIVIDE UP THE BRACKET BETTER SB). I wanted to agree with transience about Mario relying so much on its importance and iconic status that Tetris will hurt it on the one side while NES platformer LFF might take it down a notch on the other side, allowing Zelda to make a better match of this. But then I saw the match pic- ugh! I have no problem with these artsy/cutesy/high concept images that often start springing up in later rounds, but I really think they should only be used in tandem with a whole group of pics, to help balance the pic factor out. "Generic Enemy \#1" is a fine theme, but goombas are SO much more iconic and recognizable than these other options that Mario should see a pretty strong boost. Kind of like that bonus poll back in '07, where the "?" block was so iconic that it easily smashed our reigning Contest Champ. With Mario getting that thoroughly unnecessary help, I'm going to predict something along the lines of - Super Mario Bros. - 37.66% - The Legend of Zelda - 31.40% - Tetris - 19.32% - Mega Man 2 - 11.62% Okay, good, now don't completely collapse on me, Tetris! ### Next Day Review Wow, really nice showing from Zelda today. We must have been right about the Tetris "icon overlap" and MM platformer LFF, as this is a heck of a turnaround from R1- Zelda's actually come back to the point now where this might have been a real shootout given a more balanced match pic. Props to MM2 for holding up better than I expected, but some major anti-props are in order for Tetris. Gah, I was already fully aware of how dumb I was to put faith in you in my bracket, no need to rub salt in the wound and ruin my Oracle as well! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3494&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=49) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Super Mario World vs Final Fantasy IV 2009 _source: Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Super Mario World vs Final Fantasy IV 2009 (revid 65287)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1989-1991 Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 32.85% Final Fantasy IV - 26.52% Super Mario World - 25.53% Sonic the Hedgehog - 15.34% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario 3 first place (8pts) - 44.47% Mario 3 second place (4pts) - 15.38% Mario World second place (8pts) - 24.81% Mario World first place (4pts) - 13.45% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 59.85% (22,920) Super Mario World - 38.26% (14,652) Mario clearly SFFs Sonic. This is not up for debate. Also not up for debate is Final Fantasy 4's supposed chances to sneak into second place this match. To steal a line from hochi, anyone who thought Final Fantasy 4 could win here should be executed. That is final. But past this, what an unbelievable development this match was. The 2004 stats are mostly outdated and useless, but Super Mario World and Super Mario Brothers 3 shared a common opponent in Chrono Trigger late in that contest. Based on those results, Mario 3 would score 57% on Mario World. Unless you believe in CT \> Mario World SNES SFF, there was no big reason to think Mario World could reverse this trend. It didn't have a great contest in 2004, and it looked like complete crap in the first round of this contest. Then in one 24 hour period, conventional wisdom turned around and the newer tastes of GameFAQs began to show up. Everything we knew became a lie. Mario 3 struggled with Mario World in the first couple of minutes, and then continued struggling even as it built a lead up. Mario 3 built a lead of only 400 votes overnight, and it was continually stalled and cut the whole way up. Mario 3 was in clear trouble even as its lead peaked, for obvious reasons. Not only was Mario World giving Mario 3 fits, but it was giving Mario 3 fits with two other SNES/Genesis era games in the poll. There were two games to hold Mario World back here, and only the name "Mario" holding Mario 3 back, if that makes sense. And in the face of this, Mario World was able to peak Mario 3's lead at four hundred votes and begin a comeback attempt before we were even done the overnight vote. If Mario World could pull this off given the other games in the poll, Mario 3 was dead in the water in later rounds. The round following this was an impending Mario 1/Mario 3/Mario World/Zelda 1 match, which was essentially a flip of the current state of affairs -- 3 NES era games to hurt Mario 3 while Mario World is only hurt by its own name. Given the match going on while these revelations popped up, there was nothing at all holding Mario World from overtaking Mario 3 in later rounds. But before even that, Mario World had a very realistic chance of beating Mario 3 right here, right now, despite having more of a reason to get leeched than Mario 3 in this very poll. Mario World began shaving votes off the lead overnight, and it took holy hell and high water from Mario 3 to hang on. The lead was shaved down to 150 come the morning vote, where Mario 3 was able to make a recovery. Compared to the fits Mario World was giving Mario 3 to this point, Mario 3 won the morning vote and DSV convincingly. It stretched the lead from 150 to 600 before the ASV, where Mario World unleashed one final push. In less than two hours, Mario World cut the lead down to just below 400 votes. It stalled at this level all the way until the evening and second night votes, where Mario 3 made another recovery and went on to win by 700. But this was a Pyrrhic contest victory if there ever was one, because Mario 3 was clearly and obviously dead in the water from here. Not to sound like a broken record here, but Mario 3 barely escaped with its life with two games leeching its opponent. There was no reason to think Mario World couldn't take down Mario 3 with two games leeching the latter. Beyond the match itself being good, this was a match symbolizing a paradigm shift on GameFAQs. We've seen this site getting younger slowly over time for a few years, but it really jumps out at you when Mario World competes with Mario 3. It's one thing to see Symphony of the Night, Chrono Trigger, Mega Man or Sonic suffering a years-long weakening -- quite another to see the historic, beloved Mario 3 going through it. This is a game a ton of us grew up on, but it's clearly been knocked down a peg or two. If you look closely at the results of this contest, nearly all the older games seemed weaker than 2004 levels. And if we see another games contest five years from now, we'll see more evidence of a gradual youth movement. Sad but true. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Everyone seems really hyped for tonight; I'm even seeing people say this has "match of the season" potential. And I have to... agree! This is one of those extremely rare cases where you've got three games up top that could literally finish in any order- and where that's true NOT because they're all untested lower-midcarders (as we've seen a few times) but rather because two of them are extremely strong and the other is also pretty strong (probably) and in an ideal position. (Oh yeah, and I guess Sonic's hanging around as well. Let's just put that in last but expect that, like MM today, it's not going to utterly fall apart.) Great, now let's move on to The battle of the Marios! I've seen 3 and World and 64 debated back and forth so many times in stats over the years; great that we finally get to put 2/3rds of that debate to bed once and for all tonight! Now I realize how incredible SMW looked last round, but ehhh, the final percentages there made so little sense that I've got to chalk it up as some kind of weird fluke. We're already seen that in big time Nintendo clashes like this (see: Zelda 1/Mario 1) respect and "iconic" and nostalgia votes play a major role, so give me Mario 3 for the win tonight. I do agree it would make sense for the game to have lost a little of its steam since it 60/40'd World in the last Favorite Mario poll, so something more along the lines of a 56% win seems reasonable here. Now for the second coolest question... does Mario taking up 50% of the poll result in anti-voting, as apparently happened last round when Final Fantasy took up two spots? I think it might, but I doubt it will be enough! Old school Square just has such a small (but dedicated) fanbase that fracturing it whatsoever is devastating, whereas the voting pool for international superhits like Mario 1/3/W/64 is so huge that even splitting it three ways might not necessarily doom the series to poor performances. And that's a theory that I'm thinking we'll be able to test next round, since I'm going to go ahead and predict a R4 Mario 1/Zelda 1/Mario 3/Mario World clash of the titans! HOWEVER, I do think that FF will manage to keep this one close- there's just too much working in its favor for it not to, especially with a brand name that powerful urging it on. I'm thinking we'll see something along the lines of FF4 putting on a big time show overnight that has World scared for a while before coming apart at the seams once the sun rises, resulting in a score along the lines of: - Super Mario Bros. 3 - 34.13% - Super Mario World - 26.02% - Final Fantasy IV - 25.73% - Sonic the Hedgehog - 14.13% Yup. Okay M3, show us what you're made of! ### Next Day Review Haha, now here's a match that lived up to the hype! Okay, so I was way off in thinking that FF4 could compete for second, but instead we got an even MORE entertaining result - a Mario Smackdown that went right down to the final hours! Sure I mentioned in my preview how 3 had probably lost some steam in the last 5 years, and actually I wouldn't have been surprised by World putting up nearly identical numbers to its older brother in indirect matches, but I'd never have expected World could go blow for blow in a direct battle like this. At least not with 3 sporting that super-iconic, ultra-nostalgic Raccoon Mario yellow boxshot. Well, a hearty note of congrats to World, and the even better thing about this result is that it keeps things extremely interesting for next round as well. Does the presence of a second NES Mario swing the balance in SMW's favor? If the result between the two stays this tight, wouldn't Zelda's only chance be to beat them both (and after the way they destroyed FF, is that even possible)? Now we just need them to edge Zelda and then have the increasingly possible FF7 \> Mario 64 result take place and we'd have a chance to settle the Great Mario Debate once and for all! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3495&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=50) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs Super Metroid vs Final Fantasy VI vs The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening 2009 _source: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs Super Metroid vs Final Fantasy VI vs The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening 2009 (revid 80608)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1992-1994 Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 36.22% Final Fantasy VI - 33.30% Super Metroid - 16.35% Zelda: Link's Awakening - 14.37% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:ALttP first place (8pts) - 41.19% Zelda:ALttP second place (4pts) - 14.68% FF6 second place (8pts) - 22.73% FF6 first place (4pts) - 11.07% - **Advancing Prediction:** Link to the Past - 55.87% (21,396) Final Fantasy VI - 33.80% (12,944) Very few matches in round 3 and beyond were bad, but this was one of them. The 1992-1994 division was a giant SNES era clusterfuck, culminating in.... a gigantic SNES era clusterfuck and one of the worst rematches ever. Learning that Link to the Past could SFF Link's Awakening more than Super Metroid wasn't the least bit interesting, surprising or relevant. The second place game here was also a lock to score second place once the round 1 results were in. Final Fantasy 6 looked horrible in the first two rounds, but this didn't stop it from an easy second place above two SFFd Nintendo games. In terms of a rematch, this was pretty much awful. FF6 was never in contention for first place, and it was hard to remember FF6 led LTTP for a couple hours in 2004. Even great stretches of contest matches have a couple bad apples, and this was one of them. LTTP \> FF6 was a lock for this match before the contest ever began, and a lock was what we got. This was all about LTTP setting up future success. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction In my bracket I went with the FF6 \> LttP upset here because I expected Super Met to make it into this poll (yesssss, the one thing I predicted correctly all year!) and thought that MMX (d'oh) would also hurt the Nintendo entrants, allowing FF to reverse its '04 defeat. Now that another Zelda game is here in place of MM, and in fact a Zelda game that's looked really good every time out and ought to resist SFF better since its from a unique platform, the FF6 win ought to be a no brainer, right? Well... it WOULD be, except that we just saw Team Mario put up 76% of the vote on Team Final Fantasy, and that in spite of Sonic hanging around to possibly weaken the 2D platformers! Even then, I'd normally counter with "but these Zelda games can't boast 90% playrates like those classic Marios- a fanbase split is going to be much more detrimental to this series". And while that's true, it doesn't explain away how LA was able to score 45% directly on an FF6 that wasn't suffering from any kind of FF or Square or RPG split last time around. Sorry, but that's just an embarrassing performance from something we'd been expecting to contend for a Top Ten position this year- clearly this game has lost a step or three in the past five years, and so just like Chrono Trigger I think it gets exposed in this one. ...which doesn't mean it can't keep it close! Europe ought to give the game a big boost during the dead hours, but again like CT, I just can't see how it survives once the sun rises against Day Vote studs like this. Other quickies: LA probably holds on better than most are expecting (Yoshi's Island this is not!) and Super Metroid likewise probably doesn't completely fall apart versus its R2 percentage. Which ought to give us something like: - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 35.55% - Final Fantasy III (VI) - 35.48% - Super Metroid - 14.74% - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - 14.23% Feeling pretty good about that! ### Next Day Review And the Nintendo domination train rolls on! Kind of sad that the Marios have spoiled us so badly that we weren't even surprised by LttP improving by 1.5% on FF6... despite the presence of Super Metroid and another Zelda game, but I guess that's just how far Old Square has fallen. Other than that, uhh, not much to say about this result really. Super Met did a little better than I expected and LA got SFFed a touch worse that I would have thought, but it wasn't all that crazy in either direction. And as for what it means to next round, hmm... I guess here's hoping that Mario is able to advance tonight, since the M64 vs LttP battle will be about as close to pure as is possible in this format, plus we'd be able to compare CT to FF6 based on how the Old Square Bros hold up against FF7. Speaking of which... ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3496&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=51) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy VII vs GoldenEye 007 vs Super Mario 64 vs Chrono Trigger 2009 _source: Final Fantasy VII vs GoldenEye 007 vs Super Mario 64 vs Chrono Trigger 2009 (revid 81115)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, May 28th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1995-1997 Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 28th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 35.42% Super Mario 64 - 26.46% Chrono Trigger - 22.33% GoldenEye 007 - 16.06% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF7 first place (8pts) - 67.45% FF7 second place (4pts) - 9.74% Mario 64 second place (8pts) - 28.20% Mario 64 first place (4pts) - 6.45% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 77.19% (29,561) Super Mario 64 - 34.65% (13,270) This match was more or less a continuation of the Mario 64/CT round 2 match, but with different games stealing votes. Chrono Trigger needed a complete miracle to pull this off, in the form of not getting hammered by Final Fantasy 7 while Goldeneye leeched Mario 64 half to death -- it also needed weird SFF from Yoshi's Island's votes, to the tune of CT getting like 80% of the votes from SNES SFF in round 2 while Mario 64 got next to nothing.... from a fellow Mario game. Yeah. The funny thing here is Chrono Trigger almost did manage to pull this thing off. Mario 64 jumped out to a 140 vote lead in 25 minutes, but erased the entire thing 20 minutes later. It then built up a 600 vote lead overnight, with Mario 64 doing little stall-wise. For six hours, everything Chrono Trigger needed fell right into place. It wasn't getting 40% on FF7 like it did in 2004, but it was only a couple of percentage points behind in spite of Final Fantasy 7 dominating this match. FF7 ended up with 41% in a poll with two top ten (and possibly top five) games and a game in the 15-20 range in Goldeneye. All contest long, FF7 and Ocarina were a gigantic cut above everyone else, to the point of laughable results. If we ever get another games contest, I think most people would support a Tournament of Champions style where FF7 and Ocarina are removed from the main bracket and other games are given an opportunity to be paper champions. Chrono Trigger was also enjoying a clear case of Goldeneye leeching Mario 64 a lot, as evidenced by Mario being totally unable to stall CT on its way to building a 600 vote lead. But just like round 2, everything fell apart when the morning vote showed up. The 600 vote lead became 100 in just a couple of hours, and it took one hell of an effort from Chrono Trigger during the DSV (as well as a lot of N64 leeching) to prevent Mario 64 from opening a can all over the poll. Chrono hung tough for a damn long time, even using the second half of the DSV to build its lead back to 300 votes. Right about here is where CT fans let hope turn into expectation, and right about here is where CT predictably fell apart. Chrono Trigger's ASV failures are well documented, and this match was no different. That 300 vote lead it worked so hard to get turned into 0 in all of 30 minutes, and we all know what happened from here. Mario dominated the ASV, then hung on tight in the evening to secure a 1337 vote win. Nice final number. This wasn't the horribly embarrassing ASV collapse that led to a 3200 vote loss in the previous round, but it was an ASV collapse nonetheless. Everything Chrono Trigger needed to see line up happened, and it still was not enough to win. It held up on an FF7 that hadn't lost a beat since 2004, it saw Goldeneye put a huge log on Mario's path -- enough to make a nearly 2000 vote difference from the last match -- and yet it still predictably and sadly fell apart once kids came home from school. For whatever reason, Chrono Trigger has turned the ASV collapse into an art form. Can you imagine how a 1v1 match between Magus and Master Chief would go? This match set up a very interesting FF7/LTTP/Mario 64 trio. As good as LTTP was to this point in winning three matches, it seemed just a tad bit off compared to how well Mario was doing this contest. And because of two game contests featuring generational gaps, we'd never seen a match between 2D Zelda versus 3D Mario with both games nearly even in strength. FF7 was the obvious first place there, but LTTP vs Mario 64 was shaping up to be a very good match. This was especially true given the insane Mario 3/Mario World/Zelda 1 match that would go down one day prior. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Very excited for this one! After GE completely redeemed itself in R2 it sure looked like tonight was going to be dullsville; Goldeneye could very well give Mario a run for its money, but they'd be duking it out in a distance third. Boy did the following day ever change that outlook! I think Mario 64 \> CT is still the biggest shocker of the season in my mind, only because there was ANOTHER MARIO in the room. (Seriously, that shouldn't even have been close to possible!) But since we now know that these days Mario can punch Crono in the mouth even with a major disadvantage, a Mario advancement ought to be a straight up lock considering how there's going to be another Square RPG hanging around tonight. Right? Not so fast, my Lee Corso! I think GE is being quite unfairly underestimated here. The game's got nostalgia through the roof, a very dedicated fanbase, and it stands out like crazy here both as the only multiplayer option (something that was HUGE in determining the N64 totem pole- just ask MK64!) and in that match pic. People are being way too quick to assume that M64 beats it into paste- GE's sales were just as good as those of the console's flagship title here in America, and I'd argue there's a chance its overall playrate on this site could likewise be just as high, considering how EVERYONE got in on some GE multi action back in the day, even if you didn't have your own N64. We've already seen it hold up better directly against Ocarina, and just being "freaking MARIO" doesn't necessarily make you the alpha dog of any system post-NES; if you don't believe me ask Galaxy! Taking all this into account, I even picked FF7 \> GE for this match in my initial gut bracket. And now I get to proudly say ...no, sorry, got to tuck my tail between my legs and back down on that one. GE's got plenty going in its favor, but I just can't justify that upset in light of how every single FPS has cracked once serious pressure was applied so far this season (well except RE4, but let's see how it holds up in a few days) combined with how top tier Mario has got to be the year's \#1 success story. I still say GE holds up very well, but yeah, I'm its biggest B8 fan and even I would be stunned if it were ever in serious contention to advance today beyond the first 15 minutes. Does that mean GE will put up such a fight that CT is handed the free win over both N64 classics? Again, sorry, but I can't get behind that upset. The R2 stunner between these two was a huge wakeup call for Old School Square, but unfortunately it seems these RPGs just keep reaching out to slam the snooze button- FF4's showing was flat out pathetic, FF6 didn't improve on it nearly enough, and I refuse to bet against trends this crystal clear. I guess my only "daring" pick for tonight is a low low percentage from FF7. The early voters love all three other options so its sure to get a slow start, from there I don't think it dominates Europe all that badly overnight (GE was very popular over there), and as we've seen several times now this game doesn't have the ASV kick it once packed; have to imagine Mario looks best during that period. Plus as we've already covered I don't think N64 LFF will be anything close to devastating for Mario and GE, since their playrates aren't probably all THAT far back from those of Mario 3/SWM. Long story short, - Final Fantasy VII - 34.22% - Super Mario 64 - 24.13% - Chrono Trigger - 23.90% - GoldenEye 007 - 17.75% \*but crosses fingers for an even better showing from GE!\* ### Next Day Review Wow, alright, so I jumped the gun a little bit. Clearly I was wrong and FF7 is still very much in contention for the \#1 position on this site; actually this performance is so impressive you could even make a good case for it having earned back its favorite status! Let's check the numbers. Hm... looking to finish with about 65.5% on CT directly, up from the 58 it managed five years ago. That's nice, but not exactly unexpected- between revenge votes and bandwagon votes and being the only Nintendo option and Finals in generally being screwy, CT had all kinds of reasons to overperform in that Championship match. What really wows me is that FF7 is going to end up with over 53% versus the N64's \#2 and \#3 options combined (plus over 65% on Mario alone)... and that despite (presumably) losing a decent number of votes to the other Square RPG in the poll. Good gracious! In other news, I'm a little surprised that Mario had so much more trouble putting CT away this round compared to last, but I'm just going to go ahead and chalk that up to GE's incredible SFF-resisting power. Look out MGS, GE will be gunnin' for ya in BGE 2011! Oh yeah and more good news: this was an incredibly popular poll, looks like it will finish with the 2nd biggest total so far this year... but I think tonight's will shoot even higher! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3497&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=52) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Metal Gear Solid vs Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy VIII 2009 _source: Metal Gear Solid vs Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy VIII 2009 (revid 65290)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, May 29th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 1998-2000 Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 29th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 38.16% Metal Gear Solid - 21.28% Final Fantasy VIII - 20.78% Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 20.05% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:OoT first place (8pts) - 48.16% Zelda:OoT second place (4pts) - 22.81% Pokemon RBY second place (8pts) - 13.77% Pokemon RBY first place (4pts) - 11.05% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 70.97% (27,179) Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 24.82% (9,505) Metal Gear Solid had an "Upset Me!" sign painted on it all contest, and it finally happened in the divisional round. GSC gave it fits in round one, RBY only failed to beat it because of GSC's presence in round two, and RBY was finally able to break through in round 3. It got a huge assist from Final Fantasy 8, but you take wins however you can in this format. It's obviously impressive how RBY managed to fend off the standard Nintendo SFF crushing Zelda typically lays down, but Final Fantasy 8 was obviosuly leeching Metal Gear Solid along the way. It's impossible to assume otherwise, given the 2004 FF7 \> MGS result. Though the final margin was 2200 votes, the match really wasn't that close. One would think MGS could do well overnight at least, but Pokemon came out on fire. It built up a lead of nearly 400 overnight, and it took MGS until 5 a.m. to tie it up. By then, the match was clearly over. Even with Ocarina in the poll, Pokemon's awesome day vote paired with MGS's horrible day vote and FF8's leeching made the final result quite clear; ergo, a 2200 vote win for Pokemon. This result didn't mean MGS was a weak game per se. It just meant Pokemon RBY was very, very strong and that we're continuing to see a very clear overlap between MGS and Final Fantasy. If ever see a 1v1 contest and RBY were given good bracket placement, it has the potential to absolutely crush some already very high expectations. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction So we're heading out of one massively hyped poll that ended up being quite entertaining, and heading right into... hopefully the exact same thing! Actually this one could be even better, since we have two very cool storylines to keep track of, namely "Can Ocarina once again outperform FF7?" and "Who the heck takes second out of that train wreck below OoT?" Let's start with the latter. I really like Pokemon's chances in this one. After seeing how close it came to matching MGS last round despite pretty much the worst circumstances imaginable, I think you'd have to be out of your head to argue that R/B/Y isn't naturally the strongest of these choices (at least within the 4way format). Yes, common sense dictates that having the strongest Nintendo-based entrant in history on the other side of the poll would be enough to give the PSX choices an edge, but since when has Pokemon and/or Pikachu ever cared one wit about common sense? I've got to imagine Pika makes one or both of these mature titles more than a little bit nervous once his ASV starts to kick in. Now I'm sure everyone's sick to death of hearing me say how disappointing MGS1's "mere" 33% was last time around given the competition, so I'll skip that speech just quickly say that, surprisingly, I like MGS to top FF8 tonight. That's by no means intended as a slap in the face for 8- it wowed me in R1 and made the best of a bad situation last time around, and actually I wouldn't hesitate to pick FF8 \> MGS if this were a 1v1 situation. But instead its a 4way, the format where MGS and Snake have always excelled while FF has oftentimes dropped the ball- plus its an EXTREME 4way situation in that the Nintendo options are a lock to be eating up 55-60% of the incoming votes, turning this into a Race For 20. When it comes to managing just 1/5th of the votes in a poll on any subject, I want that super dedicated MGS fanbase to have my back every time! Plus you just know the fans will never allow this series to lose a close match; a very nice added bonus in a poll this hyped. Yup, so OoT \>\>\> MGS \> (by a sliver!) FF8 \> (by another sliver!) \> Pokemon, final answer. - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 39.38% - Metal Gear Solid - 20.35% - Final Fantasy VIII - 20.32% - Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 19.95% Come onnnnn fatal threeway, let's spice this Contest up! ### Next Day Review Whoa there Pokemon! The fast start wasn't much of a shocker- I don't think anyone expected FF8 to be in its range during the early vote, and even with MGS being okay there you had to like RBY's chances. But what really blew me away was that ASV- looking THAT impressive, despite the strongest Nintendo entrant ever looking over your shoulder the entire time? I think it's safe to say that Pokemon has replaced Halo as the new King of the ASV! (Well, co-kings along with Kingdom Hearts, perhaps.) Some will say that Ocarina disappointed here since it failed to hit 40, but to me this was entirely Pokemon impressing... I mean I said "Nintendo with 55-60%" yesterday and thought I was being generous, and then the two went out and combined for 61.33! HOWEVER, I do have to swallow my pride and admit that yes, FF7 did have the stronger showing between the two games this round. On the other hand as far as FF is concerned, yikes did FF8 ever get hammered despite having no excuses! Let's see how much better FFX can look in this next one. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3498&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=53) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy X vs Kingdom Hearts vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs Diablo II: Lord of Destruction 2009 _source: Final Fantasy X vs Kingdom Hearts vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs Diablo II: Lord of Destruction 2009 (revid 65291)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, May 30th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2001-2003 Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 30th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 32.36% Final Fantasy X - 26.05% Kingdom Hearts - 22.04% Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - 19.83% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Melee first place (8pts) - 19.69% Melee second place (4pts) - 21.10% FF10 second place (8pts) - 10.56% FF10 first place (4pts) - 16.52% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 40.79% (15,621) Final Fantasy X - 27.08% (10,371) If Melee were the first option in the poll, we would have had a near perfect staircase, thus the most boring 4-way match possible. But at the very least, this was fun for a few minutes... if you care about useless battles for third place. Diablo 2 fought with Kingdom Hearts for a bit, but Kingdom Hearts rebounded. Yay. From there, Kingdom Hearts was unable to make a push to threaten for second place because of the PS2 split with FFX. It got close to FFX in round 2 because of the PS2 split going four ways, but this was only two. This split also allowed Melee to dominate for first place, giving us a round three staircase. Final Fantasy X would eventually get revenge once Ocarina entered the mix, which made up for everyone sitting through this horribly boring match. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction X is certainly going to need to show us something here if it wants anyone's support against that brutal Ocarina/Melee/RBY Triangle of Death. Good heavens, can you imagine the kind of world-beating tear FFX is going to go on overnight against that pack? But then, will it get destroyed just as bad in the other direction once the ASV rolls in? Hm... Well since we have Melee both rounds, we can just use KH as a proxy for its co-King of the afternoon- should be a pretty good indication of how X will fare next time around. If it can end up reasonably close to Melee today, you've got to like its chances to reverse the trend when 1 Square is shifted out for 2 Nintendos. But how close is "reasonably close"? I... don't know! Of course the same could be said of Melee- the sky's the limit here, and it's going to need to REALLY sky if it wants anyone's support for next round, considering some people aren't even all that confident about Melee v R/B/Y straight up anymore. I can't imagine SSBM having any trouble looking great here honestly... the series hasn't given us any sign of weakness all season, and this would be a really odd place to start. As for the lower two games, my guess is that KH1 falls well back of its amazing R2 performance and allows X to widen the gap between the two significantly. This is in keeping with my "everyone's played them but nobody LOVES them" theory I used to explain KH2 dropping the ball when better competition arrived last week. In fact I think KH1's going to look weak enough here that KH1 vs KH2 will once again be up for discussion. And as for Diablo, ehh, I think that comes way down from last round as well. "Dedicated fanbase" hasn't worked out so well for SC or WoW or pretty much anything else this year, so even though DII sure seems to be the strongest of that group I'm still expecting it to get last place factor'd into a pretty poor showing, especially since Melee (and to a lesser extent KH) are going to DESTROY this day vote. That should give us a result somewhere in the range of - Super Smash Bros. Melee - 33.00% - Final Fantasy X - 26.00% - Kingdom Hearts - 20.50% - Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - 19.50% Seems... not so great, but oh well! ### Next Day Review Hmmm, really not sure what to make of that performance by Melee. I mean, the final percentage was pretty respectable, and it didn't have any real trouble distancing itself from FFX by the time it was all over. But YIKES did X ever take it apart overnight! The DSV was solid, but then bam, it fell right off a cliff again when KH started owning the ASV. And since FFX is going to do more of the same next round, and with Pokemon being right there to take the ASV... I don't know, this performance just makes it hard to say with any certainty that Melee's going to hold up better than RBY already has when OoT rolls around. I'm having a difficult time finding a way SSBM finishes anywhere but 4th place actually, something I never thought I'd be saying! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3499&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=54) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Metal Gear Solid 3 vs The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs Resident Evil 4 2009 _source: Metal Gear Solid 3 vs The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs Resident Evil 4 2009 (revid 65292)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, May 31st, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2004-2006 Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 31st, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Twilight Princess - 29.64% Resident Evil 4 - 27.31% Metal Gear Solid 3 - 24.42% The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 18.68% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:TP first place (8pts) - 11.37% Zelda:TP second place (4pts) - 14.44% RE4 second place (8pts) - 17.68% RE4 first place (4pts) - 10.73% - **Advancing Prediction:** Twilight Princess - 25.81% (9,884) Resident Evil 4 - 28.41% (10,880) After Resident Evil 4 struggled and outlasted Kingdom Hearts 2 twice, this was supposed to be an easy match even with how close it got to Twilight Princess the previous round. Twilight Princess was a lock for first, RE4 a lock for second, and MGS3/Oblivion while strong weren't supposed to get close. But a funny thing happened on the way to RE4's victory parade. Metal Gear Solid 3 turned out to be a total beast of a game, and it would come damn close to pulling off the upset here. First and foremost, Twilight Princess dominated this poll compared to its round 2 efforts. Neither RE4 nor MGS3 took a lead on it like RE4 did the previous round, which gives some credibility to the Kingdom Hearts overlapping with Zelda theory. Now as for Resident Evil 4, it was clear MGS3 was going to give it trouble within the first five minutes. RE4 had bracket votes and only had a lead of 20 early, and sure enough it only took 45 minutes for MGS3 to begin building a lead. This was more or less the final blow to any hopes of RE4 making the final, but it had much more pressing matters at the moment. It was a painstaking process, but MGS3 overnight built up a 150 vote lead. RE4 cut it in half rather quickly, but MGS3 was able to recover and then hammer out some solid updates. Before long, the match seemed over. The lead reached 650 votes by morning, which was a death sentence to RE4 given how bad Resident Evil's day vote normally is. Metal Gear Solid's day vote isn't any better, but given how RE4 is a quasi-Nintendo title and a quasi-PS2 title with a strong Nintendo/PS2 presence in the poll, it had appeared RE4's luck had finally run out. However, every contest has one entry whose every match is cardiac, and that entrant for this contest was Resident Evil 4. After somehow stalling MGS3's advance during the morning vote, it began shaving away at the lead during the DSV. And when I say shaving, I mean literally. This was one of the slowest freaking comeback attempts we've ever had to watch. RE4 began stalling a 650 vote lead at around 8:30 in the morning. Come the ASV, the lead was 200, but MGS3 came out and won the early parts of the ASV and pushed it back to 250. But yet *again* when the match seemed over, RE4 pushed back and started shaving some more. RE4 "won" the ASV, but it took three hours to take the lead starting from down 250 votes. This wasn't earth-shattering by any means, but a lead is a lead and RE4 took it around 6. From here, RE4 began its long, looooooooooong effort to sllllllooooooowwwwwwlllllllllyyyyyy build up a lead of its own, which was actually really bad news given MGS's history of 11th hour cheating. This time however there would be no "random" MGS spikes near the end to save the day. RE4's match to the win remained constant all the way until the end of the match, giving it its third straight win by less than 1000 votes. This wasn't good for those of us that had it in the final, but it was good if you liked close matches. For the third straight round, RE4 pulled a day vote rabbit out of its ass to win a match it had no business winning. This could have created a bandwagon effort, but this was impossible given the competition next round. A Zelda, Brawl and MGS4? Not even RE4 could pull that one off, but it ended up having a damn interesting run. Not that this match itself was entertaining (taking 13 hours to swing 1000 votes rarely is), but watching RE4's antics was quite the treat, even if it was destined to end next round. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I've got to agree with the Crew in saying that this one should be rather dull- probably the last less than exciting matchup we'll see this season. Yes RE4 impressed us last round, but I get the feeling that there may have been a slight bit of overlap between TP and KH that could have been helping it out, whereas this time if any two games hold each other back I'd think it would be the mature 3PSes in RE4 and MGS3. So Zelda ought to be able to extend its win a little bit and shoot for 30, while I'd imagine MGS takes a slight step back the the usual percentage the series pulls and is never in contention to advance. If I had to pick a "surprise" result, I'd go with a slight overperformance from Oblivion. The game has impressed despite a rough path where it had to split the RPG vote with ToS twice and WoW once- now that it has free reign on the whole genre as well as all the Xbox and PC vote, pushing for 20 here doesnt't seem out of the question. Possibly it could even contend with MGS3? ...nay, let's not get too crazy! Not too much else to say, so final answer: - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 30.41% - Resident Evil 4 - 27.40% - Metal Gear Solid 3 - 22.32% - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 19.87% Seems... okay, I think. ### Next Day Review Holy smokes MGS3! (As of when I'm writing this, RE4's up about 300 with about 30 minutes left to play.) Golly, I thought if today was going to be interesting at all it would have to be because RE4 made a late run at TP; instead I must have been dead on about it sharing fans with Kingdom Hearts, because boy does Zelda ever look like a worldbeater here. The showing by RE really baffles me though... I mean yes I expected MGS3 to hold it back a little as another mature PS2 action option, but on the plus side it got to jettison a true shooter in HL2- don't get how that makes it fall back to its R1 strength. I guess the easy answer is that it becomes tougher and tougher to knock out MGS games as more quality alternatives are added to the mix, and Oblivion certainly has some legit strength (yess, matching by 20% pred!), so these 4 fit the bill. Just weird that RE4 had a whale of a time pulling in front of 3, considering how 1 barely even put up a fight in going down to the two Nintendo options. Guess I was way off in my original 1 \> 2 \> 3 prediction for this series! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3500&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=55) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs Call of Duty 4 vs Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Fallout 3 2009 _source: Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs Call of Duty 4 vs Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Fallout 3 2009 (revid 88463)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, June 1st, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Division 2007-2009 Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Monday, June 1st, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 33.45% Metal Gear Solid 4 - 28.21% Call of Duty 4 - 20.20% Fallout 3 - 18.38% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Brawl first place (8pts) - 23.55% Brawl second place (4pts) - 10.13% MGS4 second place (8pts) - 18.74% MGS4 first place (4pts) - 12.06% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 33.68% (12,898) Metal Gear Solid 4 - 30.80% (11,795) For the third straight round, the final match of the round was a staircase blowout that barely needs mentioning. What makes this round different from the previous two however was this poll: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3365) And this poll: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3364) And THIS poll: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3363) In GOTY, MGS4 gave Brawl fits for three days straight. In the contest that mattered, Brawl absolutely curbstomped MGS4 and ended the match within 5 seconds. If there was any doubt as to Brawl's legitimacy, it ended during this match. Turning a series of 50-50 polls into 12000 vote blowouts is no joke, which made the next round all the more funny. That's about all there is to note in this poll, since Fallout 3 and Call of Duty 4 were never going to be players in it. Thanks to a round ending on another boring match, I once again get to enjoy a short writeup with Stars and Turds! **Star of the Round:** -Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for the second round in a row. **Turd of the Round:** -The entire FFX/KH/SSBM/D2 match. In a round full of pretty good matches, this was just horrible to watch. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction I made a major mistake yesterday in calling TP/RE/MGS the "last dull poll of the season." First of all because it ended up not being dull in the least, and secondly because I forgot about THIS match! Now I realize some people will try to make a case for MGS here, because 3 looked really good, 3 seemed to confirm that these games do better as you add more options, and 4 has a chance to be the strongest MGS of all. But I'm not buying it. We've already seen F03 come down off its recency-boosted GotY high- I think MGS4 was riding some of that same recency itself, and that if you held the 1v1 final again today Brawl would extend its win. The main reason I'm picking Brawl for an easy win though is expressed quite succinctly in this image: (see it above) Three mature, dark, grimy, grey-palleted PS3/360/PC action shooters (well they're different genres, but you shoot in all of them!) against... one brightly colored Nintendo fighter that gets an entire genre and platform and color scheme to itself? That's a recipe for MGS4 disaster if I've ever seen one! No matter how far down MGS gets pushed though Fallout is sure to fall even farther, so nothing exciting there. If this poll has any intrigue it will be in FO3 and CoD4's battle for 3rd- give me Fallout there just based on RPGs consistently outperforming FPSes this season. In reality though all those two will be doing is holding each other back by gobbling each others 360 and PC bases while Brawl and MGS rise to heaven on their System Savior status. If I'm right about all this (and let's face it, I always am!), this result should end up right around - Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 33.26% - Metal Gear Solid 4 - 27.81% - Fallout 3 - 19.79% - Call of Duty 4 - 19.13% Seems *awesome*! ### Next Day Review What a pure "wow" performance by Brawl. I mean obviously the game was in a great position due to all the factors I got into last time, but two of our best predictors (transience and Leon) also saw all those factors coming in yet still messed up the Brawl/MGS4 gap by nearly 10%- now that's the mark of an impressive performance! SSBB pulled a great ASV, but you really can't go too wild about that considering how MGS is traditionally at its worse during that timeframe. What really shocked me was how well it held up overnight; it never even allowed 4 to make a legit cut, unlike Melee which got gouged by FFX for hours at a time! Between Brawl smacking around MGS4 by 10 and TP crushing RE4 by 9, all of a sudden this next round has gotten a whole lot more interesting. Is RE4 going to top MGS4 to prove 3 \> 4? Since they're clearly the strongest two games, could BOTH Wii flagship titles possibly survive? Is TP going to hang so tough that the two just murder each other and let those strong independent titles advance instead? Anything seems possible right now! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3501&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=56) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Mario Bros. vs The Legend of Zelda vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Super Mario World 2009 _source: Super Mario Bros. vs The Legend of Zelda vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Super Mario World 2009 (revid 65294)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 29.26% Super Mario World - 28.41% The Legend of Zelda - 27.05% Super Mario Bros. - 15.59% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario World first place (16pts) - 7.79% Mario World second place (8pts) - 9.94% Mario 3 second place (16pts) - 16.52% Mario 3 first place (8pts) - 23.03% - **Advancing Prediction:** Super Mario World - 17.73% (6,790) Super Mario Bros. 3 - 39.55% (15,146) It took until the fourth round, but we finally got to watch some matches that weren't inter-generational. Generation divisions are decent enough, but a big mix of games can be exciting as well. Not that 3 Marios and a Zelda is the greatest concept, but this made for arguably the most exciting match of the contest. First, the obvious. Mario World took advantage of a 3 NES vs 1 SNES split and turned the tables on Mario 3's performance of the previous round -- where Mario 3 slipped by Mario World with the help of 3 SNES era games splitting. Mario 3 was in the match for a couple hours, but Mario World and the 3 NES split was too powerful for Mario 3 to overcome. Mario World would eventually win fairly easily, by a final margin of 2200 votes. Super Mario Brothers, despite coming in last place, didn't do *that* badly given it was clearly eating the ass end of SFF from three different games. One could even argue Mario 1 being in the poll cost Mario 3 first place. The true match however was the unbelievably epic and simultaneously weird match between Mario 3 and Zelda 1. Remember, in the previous two rounds Mario *1* took out Zelda 1 fairly easily. Now thanks to the perfect storm of SFF split and circumstance, Zelda 1 was able to blow right by Mario 1 and take its crack at the vastly stronger Mario 3. But early on, this match had no indication whatsoever that it would be the best match of the contest and a down to the wire affair. This match was all about Mario 3 vs Mario World for a few hours, to the tune of Zelda 1 stuck back in third place by 1000 votes within two and a half hours. Mario 3's lead increase slowed down overnight when it was clear it couldn't beat Mario World, but it was still never threatened by Zelda 1 at all. It just slowed down and took until the morning vote to build a 1400 vote lead. No sweat, right? Well from there, Zelda 1 stalled. And stalled. And stalled. And then it stalled some more. It stalled the match at that 1400 vote margin all the way until the ASV, but even then there was no indication at all of having a close match. We were just seeing another weirdly powerful Zelda 1 result, to the tune of keeping the match even for something like eight hours. Then the ASV hit with full force, and all holy hell broke loose. Zelda started cutting into Mario 3 pretty heavily, and before long each of Mario 3's stalls seemed like a divine prank to give us the coolest match possible. Amidst a ton of 30-50 vote gains, Mario 3 would stall now and then. But even with Zelda cutting into Mario 3 like crazy for a little while, it was starting from down 1400 votes. That is a *long* way back in an SFF match, hence all the strange updates from all four games all through the poll. There was however a trend during the ASV, which was Zelda 1 kicking Mario 3's ass. It kept up the pace of 30-50 vote cuts all the way through the ASV, and all of Mario's stalls seemed a desperate attempt to tread water before the inevitable. It's rare we can call a 1400 vote comeback inevitable, but the pace Zelda 1 was on during this match's ASV was unheard of. Zelda's gains slowed down as the ASV wore down and the evening vote began, but the overall trend remained the same: Zelda 1 was coming fast. The lead was cot all the way down to 200 by 9 p.m. Given Zelda's pace, it seemed as if it could take the lead with plenty of time to spare. But much like the previous round, Mario 3 began holding serve during the second night vote, giving us one of the most memorable down to the wire finishes of all time. Though Zelda's gains were drastically slowed, it was still able to overall win updates and it got the lead down below 100 with over 90 minutes left in the poll. With one hour to go, it was down to 50 votes. One update later, 33. Two updates after that, 15. Zelda's win was all but guaranteed at this point, and come 11:30 it *finally* took the lead. All it had to do from here was continue kicking Mario's ass, much like it had been doing for 9 hours prior. Zelda however made one crucial miscalculation here, which is that it forgot it was in a down to the wire poll against Mario. When you're in a close match against one of the most notorious clutches in the history of contests, you choke Mario out when you have the chance. Zelda did not. In the update following the lead change, Zelda only increased 4 votes for an overall lead of 13. Mario began coming back after that, taking the lead down to 2 with 15 minutes left to go. Before Zelda even knew what was going on, Mario pulled out the most questionable update of the entire contest -- a 55 vote swing that gave Mario 3 a lead of 53 votes with only three updates left to go. This gave Zelda time to mount one final offensive. It took the next two updates getting Mario's new lead down to 23 votes, which gave us the first final update match in recent memory. The damage however was done, and Mario secured second place with one final lead increase. The story obviously was the mysterious 55 vote swing (the update graph shows how fishy the whole thing seemed), and after the two winners were put into the overall bracket, Bacon removed them to make cheating checks. He never did make a topic explaining what he saw that night, but he eventually penciled in Mario World \> Mario 3 as the official result, setting off a whole new firestorm of GameFAQs being on the take for Mario. If you were here in 2002 or 2003, you need not be reminded of how badly Crono was screwed over in both Mario matches. Six years later, we had a different cast with the same story and the same ending: Mario pulls fishy updates out in the final few minutes to win. The sad thing here is even if you cut that 55 vote update in half, Mario 3 still wins the match given how good a final update it had. But as things stand, Mario is once again convicted by the court of Board 8 public opinion as a cheater. True or not, Mario has pulled off some stupidly fishy matches for seven years now. As for how Zelda managed to get this close at all, this match had some really weird splits going on. 3 Marios and 1 Zelda meant if you weren't a Mario fan, you voted for Zelda here. It's the only way to explain Zelda losing to Mario 1 twice, then nearly beating a far stronger game. The irony here is this set up an equally weird match in the semifinal. Had Mario 64 pulled off the comeback against Link to the Past, we would have had FF7 against the three strongest Mario titles. Can you imagine how good FF7 would have looked here? ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction This one is... just insane. I know everyone has been way down on LFF this season, and I have to admit that it hasn't been nearly as big a deal as it was back in '07 and '08. And I further realize that last round's Mario \> Mario \>\>\> FF result makes it seem pretty silly to think that a Nintendo-backed and therefore less independent non-Mario option is going to benefit from LFF when Final Fantasy couldn't. Well... call me crazy, but I still like Zelda here! Everything we've seen this season makes it abundantly clear that this is the weakest game in the pack, and probably by a decent margin, but we're talking about a situation we've never even come close to in these Contests before. THREE flippin' Marios? Come on, it's a given that something wacky is going to happen, and a major Zelda overperformance seems the most likely option. That being said, I can't imagine it wins easily. We know World v 3 is going to be very tight (I'll give SMW the benefit of the doubt just for being the most recent slash only non NES option, but it's probably with a percentage pt either way) and I think they'll both finish hot on Zelda's heels. As for Mario 1, ehhh... if any other series were in this position I'd pick the weakest of its three games to collapse right through the basement, but I have a hard time seeing that happen to something as respected and iconic as M1. It'll get hammered, yes, but I'm thinking the game still has enough supporters to keep it afloat in the low teens or so. Which means we should be looking at a final percentage right around - The Legend of Zelda - 29.32% - Super Mario World - 29.21% - Super Mario Bros. 3 - 28.97% - Super Mario Bros. - 12.50% Seems... risky, but I like it! ### Next Day Review Wellll, I called that match wrong, but I still like my pick. I was correct in having Mario 1 get bashed down to nearly 10%, correct in favoring SWM thanks to recency, and ALMOST correct about Zelda capitalizing on the triple LFF. Actually, dang my percents must have been close... let me check the Oracle. 1\) yoblazer33 Legend of Zelda 29.00% SMB 10.00% SMB 3 30.00% SMW 31.00% 49.46 12.37 2\) Ngamer64 Legend of Zelda 29.32% SMB 12.50% SMB 3 28.97% SMW 29.21% 49.11 9.82 3\) Master Moltar Legend of Zelda 27.00% SMB 13.00% SMB 3 29.00% SMW 31.00% 49.01 7.35 Whoa, didn't realize I did that well! Also check out that awesome Crew (and ex-Crew) domination, pretty nice. But anyways yeah, the result was close enough where if Nintendo would have just worked a LITTLE harder to produce a trailer for the new Wii Zelda in time for their morning conference Z1 would have easily advanced, and perhaps even challenged for the win, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3502&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=57) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link to the Past vs Final Fantasy VI vs Final Fantasy VII vs Super Mario 64 2009 _source: Link to the Past vs Final Fantasy VI vs Final Fantasy VII vs Super Mario 64 2009 (revid 65297)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 36.04% Zelda: A Link to the Past - 26.66% Super Mario 64 - 21.98% Final Fantasy VI - 15.57% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF7 first place (16pts) - 49.76% FF7 second place (8pts) - 19.53% Zelda:ALttP second place (16pts) - 16.32% Zelda:ALttP first place (8pts) - 12.40% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 69.29% (26,535) Link to the Past - 28.72% (10,999) One match after the best match of the contest, we were treated to another doozy. The problem here is we literally saw the *exact* same trends the day before, so we pretty much saw what was coming once Mario 64 began stalling LTTP. More on that later. This match was basically three matches in one: FF7 SFFing the hell out of FF6, LTTP vs Mario 64, and FF7 playing one-up with Ocarina. And once again, FF7 looked better this round. FF7 scored 40% in an SFF match with FF6 plus LTTP and Mario 64. Ocarina also scored 40% in an SFF match (plus FFX), but Mario 64 and Link to the Past are collectively stronger than SSBM and Pokemon RBY. You can argue semantics and formats all you want, but Mario 64 and Link to the Past would each beat either of the Nintendo games Ocarina dealt with. FF7's 40% was more impressive than Ocarina's 40%. This said, tell me if any of this looks familiar. LTTP does well early and builds a lead of 800 votes. Mario 64 stalls a bit, but LTTP eventually builds an 1150 vote lead going into the ASV. Mario 64 comes storming back despite a lot of stalling from LTTP, but falls short in the end. This match wasn't quite the nail-biter Mario 3 vs Zelda 1 was -- Mario 64 was never really on a pace to win, got the lead under 200 with only 30 minutes left and lost by 245 -- but the trends were virtually identical. This is fairly strange, for two reasons. One, the games were backwards. Mario 64 played Zelda 1's role and Link to the Past played the role of Mario 3. You'd think two game names swapping places would yield a different trend, even just a little bit. But it did not. And for two, Zelda 1 vs Mario 3 is more or less a pure SFF match given both games are on the NES. Mario 64 and LTTP are both Nintendo games, but one was an SNES game and the other was Nintendo 64 -- 2D Zelda against 3D Mario, with both games being rather even in strength. A 1v1 with these two would be great, but as is they more or less fought for FF7's scraps. This match proved LTTP was legit along with Mario 64, but it also hinted at GameFAQ's youth movement. As of this analysis being typed up, a "Do you still own an Super Nintendo?" poll is seeing "No, I never owned one" score nearly a third of all total votes. We're getting younger, and older games, no matter what series they're from, are slowly decreasing in popularity as a result. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction With two Marios through to the next round the question becomes... can we get a third? It certainly looked possible a couple weeks back when Mario 64 stunned the world with that original CT upset, but after coming back down to earth in R3 (which I still blame mainly on GE BTW) you've got to make LttP the favorite to advance here. That being said, there are still a few things working in M64's favor: - Zelda obviously isn't a true RPG, but I still feel that its fanbase overlaps with Final Fantasy moreso than Mario- the platformer advantage makes 64 the best sore thumb candidate by genre - LttP shares the SNES with FF"3", but FF7 also shares the PSX with FF"6", making Mario one again the clear sore thumb favorite by system. it's also got recency thanks to its many re-releases, and stands out an extra amount as the only true 3D option - outside of Ocarina, Zelda just hasn't had any "wow" moments this season, while the Mario series has been scoring them seemingly every other day. clearly Mario's the one coming into this poll on a hot streak while Link's outings have been largely underwhelming All that being said... ehhh, there's still a reason we consider LttP the \#3 game on the site, and I can't possibly see it having fallen like CT and FF6. I'm expecting Mario to put up another solid performance but never really be in contention to advance here. Other than that, there won't be too much to see, except that FF7 probably looks very good for the second round in a row since it will get to beat 6 into a pulp. In summary, my Awesome Oracle-Winning pred is - Final Fantasy VII - 37.03% - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 24.95% - Super Mario 64 - 24.34% - Final Fantasy III (VI) - 13.68% Seems a sure bet for another Top Five showing! ### Next Day Review Haha, this is too crazy! A day after Zelda puts the fear of the Lord into Mario with an extremely impressive ASV comeback, Mario turns right back around and gives Zelda the scare of its life during this afternoon. Makes sense I suppose, since both times "the kiddies" favored the title with recency, though I think in today's case M64's also seeing a nice sized DS re-release boost to help out with those younger voters. It's just sad that despite so many close matches this season none of them have had that "awesome" factor because its always same company/basically same era and so there's no bad blood between the two fanbases. Currently its looking like LttP's going to hold out for the win, meaning we won't get to settle that Top Three Mario debate once and for all. Ah well; at least we get to see if LttP can capitalize against two Marios where Z1 failed to against three. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3503&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=58) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs Final Fantasy X 2009 _source: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs Final Fantasy X 2009 (revid 65296)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, June 4th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Thursday, June 4th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 34.00% Final Fantasy X - 24.09% Super Smash Bros. Melee - 22.02% Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 20.44% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:OoT first place (16pts) - 50.15% Zelda:OoT second place (8pts) - 10.45% FF10 second place (16pts) - 8.23% FF10 first place (8pts) - 2.84% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 60.60% (23,207) Final Fantasy X - 11.07% (4,239) Not every late round match gets to be fun, and this match definitely fit that mold of not being fun. Pokemon RBY held even with Final Fantasy X for 10 minutes, but eventually felt the brunt of the SFF hammer and the match more or less ended. Final Fantasy X reaped the benefits of good bracket placement here, because Zelda is the Nintendo SFF King. Melee got absolutely destroyed in this match, and Pokemon may very well have beaten FFX if *any other game* from this bracket replaced Ocarina. As is, all this match proved is Pokemon resists Nintendo SFF better than Smash Brothers. This doesn't prove any FFX/Melee/RBY pecking order, doesn't settle the FFX vs Melee debate and doesn't really settle how strong Pokemon RBY truly is. It held up well yes, but it's likely on LTTP's level indirectly. Even though Final Fantasy X didn't look all too dominant leading up to this match, it made the semifinal and would only need one more stroke of luck to give us our cookie cutter final we all hoped against. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction And now for possibly the match of the year! This one has been covered just about every which way in everyone else's Crew writeups, so I'll just do some quick bullet points. - I had to push and shove just to find a way to get Ocarina above 35 in this one since none of these other options are going to collapse- rest assured that FF7's going to "beat" it for the second straight round, but that's a very tainted victory given how I don't think there are any two Nintendo games in the world more likely to hold up well against OoT (and therefore bring its percent down slightly) - insane that I have to take Melee for 4th place; this is literally the only (non-FF7) combination of games in this bracket where I'd pick that way. the bracket just produced a perfect storm that is going to leave this game in the basement despite being possibly the 4th or 5th strongest game on this site in a fair setting - FFX on the other hand is pretty clearly the weakest of these options, in my mind. considering the track record for 'weaker game advances thanks to LFF' this year, expecting it to happen here seems silly, and I agree, but... I'm doing it anyway. while it's true that FF8 didn't even come close to capitalizing on the Nintendo split, I've always felt that MGS and FF series have a little bit TOO much in common, at least when it comes to the PSX/2 era. so killing MGS ought to give FF a boost, replacing it with Melee should boost it even further, and X being a decent bit stronger than 8 in any kind of setting should be the icing on the cake - that being said, I feel awful about counting out Pokemon after all that this series has been through. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if RBY pulled a Pikachu here and advanced easily despite the long odds, and I really wish I could pull the trigger on that upset, but I just get the impression that FFX is no L-Block or Dante or Leon- its got enough of a fanbase to push it through to victory if things get tricky out there Converted into numerical form, those thoughts come out looking something like this: - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 35.05% - Final Fantasy X - 22.52% - Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 21.25% - Super Smash Bros. Melee - 21.18% Seems... pretty good, I think! ### Next Day Review Oh jeez, this is BRUTAL. Ocarina is doing to Melee exactly what it pulled on Mario 64 and Goldeneye back in '04... except SSBM doesn't get the excuse of sharing the N64, AND we thought it would hold up better than anything else (non-Pokemon), AND we thought it was flat out stronger than Mario 64/GE to begin with. Triple ouch! Looking these results over, you can't help but feel bad for Pokemon. All season long RBY has battled long odds, beating off tough competition despite having an anchor named OoT around its neck most of the time (and as Melee is showing us today, that's not a light anchor by any means!), yet it gets snubbed one step short of the Championship (seriously now, Brawl/TP/MGS4 were never going to catch it) only because FFX was handed perfect circumstances. And in other news, check out Ocarina somehow hulking up enough to actually outdo FF7 directly despite drawing its two worst possible opponents- now that's just flat out scary! That makes it 3 rounds Ocarina 1 round FF7 heading into their Championship showdown; at this poing you've pretty much got to be liking OoT in that one unless MSG4 stuns the world to knock out FFX. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3504&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=59) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs Resident Evil 4 vs Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs Metal Gear Solid 4 2009 _source: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs Resident Evil 4 vs Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs Metal Gear Solid 4 2009 (revid 80609)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, June 5th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Quarter Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Friday, June 5th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 29.05% Zelda: Twilight Princess - 24.88% Metal Gear Solid 4 - 24.73% Resident Evil 4 - 21.33% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** MGS4 first place (16pts) - 7.53% MGS4 second place (8pts) - 10.50% Brawl second place (16pts) - 10.21% Brawl first place (8pts) - 9.12% - **Advancing Prediction:** MGS4 - 18.03% (6,905) Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 19.33% (7,403) This was not only an exciting match, but it was the most important match of the entire contest. A ton of debate about the 4th game to make the finals ended on this day, obviously because two of the contenders lost. As lucky as Resident Evil 4 was in getting to this point, its luck ran out despite a very strong last place effort. You know you've got four strong games in a poll when last place breaks 22%. But in terms of actually placing, RE4 never came close. And even though RE4 was in six matches this contest, we have no freaking clue about its fanbase split. Is it quasi-Nintendo? PS2? Independent? We flat-out don't know, which would make it a sick wild card if we ever got another 1v1 games contest. A lot of strong games came out this contest complete enigmas, but RE4 (along with Pokemon RBY) highlight the list. Twilight Princess didn't need much luck to get to this point, but it too suffered an abrupt exit at the hands of Brawl SFFing it. It is extremely rare to see Zelda suffer even 1 percentage point of SFF, but it happened here. If you remove Brawl from the poll, Twilight Princess scores first or second very easily. As is, this match proved Brawl is *the* Wii title of choice on this site, and would likely dominate or easily defeat any Nintendo game from the Gamecube or Wii era. Given how powerful Brawl was in this contest paired with how off Melee looked before its SFF loss to Ocarina, I don't even think Brawl vs Melee would be a match. Brawl likely takes it pretty easily, unless the newfound drawl dominance in polls turns on Brawl and favors Melee, but we're getting off the point here. Brawl, from first match all the way up its loss in the semifinal, proved that it was 100% legit. With the way it brushed aside Galaxy and handled Twilight Princess, there is no argument to be made against Brawl. It's legit and here to stay for quite a long while. At least, it is in the Nintendo pecking order. Brawl ran into a tiny little problem during its Nintendo victory tour, and that problem was Metal Gear Solid 4. Even though Brawl annihilated MGS4 one round prior, the Nintendo splitting in the rematch allowed MGS4 to stick out like a sore thumb and make a real run at upsetting Brawl in this here match. In fact after Brawl's minor early lead, MGS4 came back and started pouring on the pressure overnight. And this wasn't basic pressure. Brawl and MGS4 were in a footrace, but MGS4 was unhindered and Brawl had RE4 and Twilight Princess wrapped around its ankles. Before Brawl even knew what happened, MGS4 had spent all night building up a lead of 1600 votes, and then spent all morning tag teaming with Twilight Princess to stall any early Brawl comeback attempts. The 1600 vote lead held all the way through the DSV, giving MGS4 a 1450 vote lead going into the ASV. Seemed an easy enough win, but Brawl had one hell of a run left in it. When the ASV hit, all hell broke loose on MGS4's lead. Brawl came *storming* back right on cue, and MGS4 just fell off the map for hours on end. Not only was Brawl cutting votes, it was regularly getting updates in the 50-70 range and looked to take the lead by dessert. The pace slowed down considerably once the hard ASV hours passed, but a ton of damage was done with more yet to come. At 7:30 p.m., the lead was all the way down to 400 votes. One hour later, it was below 300. At 10:25, it dipped below 100. Brawl's gains were slowing down as the match progressed, but it was still gaining fast enough to win. It would however slow down a bit too much near the end and never get quite over the hump. MGS4 took from the deep reservoir of late-night MGS strength to hold off Brawl in the last hour of the poll, securing itself a 105 vote win. Brawl made an unreal effort given the splits in this poll, but it was starting from too far back. 1600 votes is no joke. With this, all three games with any potential of making the final as the fourth game would duke it out next round. Final Fantasy X, Brawl and MGS4. Brawl and MGS4 gave us a match for the ages in this growing rivalry, but in the end both games were able to advance and neither could have possibly felt bad about their performance after the match. Both games are and will continue to be 100% legit. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Pre-contest I'd have called you crazy if you didn't think MGS4 would survive past this match- the Wii was drawing huge backlash internetwide and between that and normal same-system LFF there was no way both Brawl and TP could advance. And although I'd take RE4 \> MGS4 1v1, RE was going to be losing some of its GC and Wii fanbase to the other Nintendo options, making MGS the clear choice for first place. Now, however, I'm not so sure... MGS4 wasn't in such a great position last round, as I detailed in that writeup, but regardless of circumstances getting 59%'d by a game you put up 48% on while riding your GotY high is cause for concern. As for the Wii backlash... WHAT Wii backlash? Brawl looked fantastic in pulling down 37% despite strong competition last round while TP's 32% against even stronger opponents was perhaps even more impressive. As for the same company LFF... WHAT LFF? Aside from extreme threeway cases like today or that Mariox3 fiasco, the leach factor has been conspicuous only in its absence this season, especially where huge playrate series like Zelda and Smash Bros are concerned. Also, I don't think the presence of RE does MGS any favors in this one- as we saw last round, there appears to be something of an overlap between these series that could very well limit them both here, at least slightly, and I'm thinking that spells doom for MGS4's chances. As for the all-Nintendo battle at the top of the poll, I've got to admit that I must be missing something. Why is Brawl such an overwhelming favorite here, again? Sure it beat down Galaxy, but that's looking more and more like a case of Mario not being his usual self post-M64 rather than SSBB being any kind of superhero. And after seeing the way OoT took Melee to the woodshed in this most recent result, its become even more difficult to imagine Brawl plastering TP with Wii SFF as most seem to have predicted. I mean granted TP is no Ocarina, and I do still give Brawl the upper hand in this relationship due to recency and being the \#1 "must own" Wii title on the site for the past year, but I still think Zelda puts up a pretty decent fight. Now I said that pre-Contest I'd have taken RE4 \> MGS4 in a 1v1, but after all that we've seen so far this season... I still would! Unfortunately last round kind of spoiled the "surprise" regarding RE running into trouble when other mature action titles like MGS combine with GameCube or Wii games that steal some of its support from those system, and so I'm not seeing any way for this game to stay out of the basement. Even so, its just too well-loved to be fourth place factor'd IMO- ought to manage to avoid the teens, though I doubt it ever seriously contends for third place. And if all of the above nonsense-talk comes true, we'll be looking at something right around - Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 28.62% - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 25.10% - Metal Gear Solid 4 - 24.92% - Resident Evil 4 - 21.36% I... just don't know about that anymore! ### Next Day Review Oh man, this love-hate relationship with Brawl is just too funny. From last place by a mile during the overnight to looking like Ocarina Reborn the entire afternoon... jeez! Finally we get to see a monumental Day Vote comeback this season- too bad MGS had to spoil it with that strong SNV that seems to bail out this series whenever a result is at all questionable. As for my prediction yesterday, I guess it wasn't THAT bad- sure I underestimated MGS4, but at least I was right on the money about TP hanging tough with Brawl and RE4 refusing to fold no matter what competition you put in front of it. Actually this was a heck of a match, wouldn't have expected 4 games this powerful to give us such an entertaining almost-25/25/25/25 result. Hmm, score one for Ed Bellis (we can afford to- it would be his first score of the year)! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3505&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=60) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Super Mario World vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Final Fantasy VII vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2009 _source: Super Mario World vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Final Fantasy VII vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2009 (revid 65299)_ ## Results **Round Five** Saturday, June 6th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Saturday, June 6th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 39.37% Zelda: A Link to the Past - 23.13% Super Mario Bros. 3 - 18.88% Super Mario World - 18.74% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** FF7 first place (32pts) - 43.04% FF7 second place (16pts) - 20.34% Zelda:LttP second place (32pts) - 10.72% Zelda:LttP first place (16pts) - 4.67% - **Advancing Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 63.38% (24,272) Link to the Past - 15.39% (5,894) This match may have been interesting if Mario 64 completed its comeback against LTTP, but as is this is one of the easiest to call late round matches we've ever had. FF7 was a lock for first place, and Zelda was obviously going to prevail among the three Nintendo leftovers given the Mario split. This match was a near-lock for FF7 \> LTTP, and was all about the incoming FF7 vs Ocarina final. And again for the fifth time in a row, FF7 won the comparison game. Its problem was forgetting it was the stronger game once the actual final came around. Nearly 45% is much more impressive than Ocarina's 41% on weaker competition, though the Nintendo SFF obviously helps FF7's percentage along. With half the final set, it was time for our last exciting match of the contest. ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Moving on to FF7 versus The S/NES Gang. Let's start with the obvious: FF7 will look like a destroyer of worlds, going to town on these guys with over 40 and almost certainly increasing its % from last round now that FF6 is out of the way. (If 7 allows OoT to outscore it once again this round despite the perfect setup, I'll have to shake my head in disgust!) Also obvious (I think?): Mario 3 reverses the most recent result by taking down SMW thanks to LttP being around to soak up some of that SNES love. Basically this situation is the polar opposite of last time; now World's recency doesn't do it a bit of good since both LttP and FF7 are newer, while M3's iconic/nostalgic/historic aura will be working overtime. In other words, the only thing to talk about is the battle for 2nd place, and... man, I really wish I could go with Mario 3. From one perspective the upset makes sense: LttP \> Zelda 1, yes, but is it really ahead by THAT much? And this time around the Mario options won't be throwing 12% of the vote away on M1... plus wouldn't it make sense for Mario to hold up better in the presence of FF than Zelda does? I kind of think so. But then Mario 64 has to go and burst my bubble. Even if Mario 3 \>\> M64 (probably not true- got to imagine they're nearly neck and neck these days after what 64 did to CT), 64 had FF7 plus SNES-era FF6 around to hold back LttP last time yet it couldn't get the job done. Now that 6 has been replaced with another Mario option, its got to be lights out. Then again, its not like Mario hasn't shocked us 100 times already this year despite unfavorable circumstances. And whatever happened to all that "with 95% playrates, same series LFF doesn't matter!" talk from rounds past? But, nah, still can't pull the trigger. For the record though, after all we've seen this season I WOULD be taking Mario 3 \> LttP here with any non-Nintendo platformer in the fourth position! Also I think that in any case, the Marios stick closer to Zelda than most are giving them credit for. And that should result in a final percentage right around - Final Fantasy VII - 42.01% - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 21.75% - Super Mario World - 18.40% - Super Mario Bros. 3 - 17.84% Wait, what the JUNK? In my rushing around last night I apparently forgot to swap Mario 3 into 3rd place in my Oracle pick. So I'll, uh, stick with this. Crap! ### Next Day Review Good heavens, was that ever embarrassing! I was dead wrong about FF7 (45% of the vote at this stage of the bracket? It had the ideal situation, I know, but even \*I\* have to admit that FF7 has asserted itself as the game to beat with a showing like that.), dead wrong about the Marios hanging tight with LttP, and even dead wrong about Mario 3 gaining an advantage over SMW with there being no other NES options around. (Luckily my foolishness in not double checking my pred saved my Oracle from that last mistake!) It's the second thing I mentioned that really bothers me... Mario had by far his best season since the Summer of '05, with his three top tier titles stunning us left and right through the whole bracket, and yet the final impression they leave is coming up miles behind LttP and missing out on a Championship that quite frankly they deserved to be represented in. What a shame that World couldn't have been placed in the bottom bracket where it could have challenged R/B/Y and FFX and the SSB/MGSes, and that 3 didn't get a legit shot at LttP or, um... oh wait, that was the only other game of strength in the upper half. MIX THE ERAS next time, SB! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3506&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=61) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy X vs Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2009 _source: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy X vs Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2009 (revid 65300)_ ## Results **Round Five** Sunday, June 7th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Sunday, June 7th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 39.04% Final Fantasy X - 22.84% Metal Gear Solid 4 - 21.34% Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 17.07% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:OoT first place (32pts) - 40.56% Zelda:OoT second place (16pts) - 9.28% FF10 second place (32pts) - 3.12% FF10 first place (16pts) - 2.03% - **Advancing Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 49.84% (19,087) Final Fantasy X - 5.15% (1,972) Ocarina was obviously going to get first place here to secure the third spot in the final, so the true match was between the other three games to finally settle our debate for the fourth final spot once and for all. It would have been nice for this to get decided by base strength, but Ocarina SFFing Brawl prevented this. Brawl could very well have made the final if this were just a three way poll between the three weaker games, but bracket placement and luck are a big part of the game in this format. Brawl fell behind early and was completely unable to catch up based on Ocarina's presence. It was a shame to see Brawl's run end this way, but it happens sometimes. The true match ended up FFX against MGS4, and early on MGS4 was a clear recipient of bandwagoning. MGS4 took a slim early lead, and pushed back any FFX push with a spiked increase. This is usually a sign of rallying and bandwagoning, especially late in contests. MGS4 continued this pattern for a couple of hours, but was unable to hold it once the heavy night vote kicked in. The deep night is Final Fantasy's best time, and FFX used it to erase MGS4's miniscule 200 vote lead. From there it rose to heaven and won second place fairly easily, giving us our fourth entrant for the final. A few games might have beaten FFX given different bracket placement, but in the end we got the cookie cutter final predicted as soon as the bracket came out. Ironically, the final looked like it would be no contest given how FF7 outperformed Ocarina five times in a row. But *that's*, as Chris Berman would say, why they *play the games.* ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction That brings us to the second to last match of the season, and it seems everyone agrees that this will be a dullfest. I'm... not so sure. Yes Ocarina is going to dominate (though I don't see any way it could possibly contend with FF7's Nintendo-bloated percentage) and yes Brawl will be last by a light year (I do think it holds up better than Melee did, but thanks to Pokemon being in the mix last time who knows if that will mean anything). As for FFX/MGS4 though, hmmm. I just don't think its wise to count MGS out entirely. Yes its the weakest of these 4 options naturally, but there are a few things working in it favor to help balance that out, IMO. - many voters are sick of Nintendo/Square domination, and as we saw with Snake last season, that can work to MGS's favor; people might hesitate to vote another FF into the Final, especially after seeing FF7 put up nearly 50 yesterday - the MGS base is more dedicated than anyone, including FF- we saw this when FF8 collapsed to allow MGS1 the heads up win. granted X \>\> 8 while 1 ~= 4, but Ocarina and Brawl combined ought to be sucking up a large enough percentage of the votes to help even that playing field - as I've said before, I think there's a good deal of playership overlap between Zelda and FF, and I guess Square in general- Snake's powerhouse showing in the last Final seems to bear this out somewhat. being the most independent option could work wonders since, again, the Nintendo choices are going to be taking the lion's share here The trouble with backing the MGS upset is that FFX is just so so good overnight and then holds its own fairly well all through the day, whereas MGS falls down the stairs during the ASV. The only way I could see 4 pulling this off would be to get a huge start in the opening three hours, thereby creating enough Snake-like rally momentum to keep it within range for the MGS "clutch factor" of the last two hours. But, eh, that's too much a long shot for me to pull the trigger on. Still think the race for second will be closer than most are calling for though! - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 41.77% - Final Fantasy X - 21.87% - Metal Gear Solid 4 - 20.47% - Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 15.88% BAM, I like it! ### Next Day Review Oh sweet, that ended up being another pretty solid prediction for me! Brawl held up a tad better than I expected and limited Ocarina's mobility somewhat as a result, but I was right on the money when it came to the battle for second place. MGS had an excellent first three hours, then X went nutzo when Europe started to wake up just as it always does, BUT 4 countered by hanging pretty tough all through the overnight. Once the sun rose on the East Coast though, poof, that dream was gone- had to pretty much settle for going even with Brawl from there out. Actually, hmm, I wonder how good my pick was exactly... 4\) Ngamer64 FF X 21.87% MGS4 20.47% SSBB 15.88% Zelda: OoT 41.77% 49.16 4.92 Awwww yeah, that's what I like to see! Anyways, let's check how Brawl vs Melee ended up. From my quick calcs, looks like Brawl managed... 30% directly, while Melee pulled down just 26.25%. But factor in Pokemon plus Melee naturally being expected to overlap more given how the games were only 3-4 years apart, and... CRAP, it's still too close to call between these two. Oh well, guess we'll have to just go on debating that one for the next 24 months! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3507&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=62) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy VII vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy X 2009 _source: Final Fantasy VII vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Final Fantasy X 2009 (revid 65301)_ ## Results **Championship** Monday, June 8th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Monday, June 8th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 36.55% Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 35.19% Zelda: A Link to the Past - 14.72% Final Fantasy X - 13.72% - **GameFAQs Expectations:** Zelda:OoT first place (64pts) - 18.34% Zelda:OoT second place (32pts) - 20.22% FF7 second place (64pts) - 17.79% FF7 first place (32pts) - 34.13% - **Top Two Prediction:** Ocarina of Time - 38.56% (14,767) Final Fantasy VII - 51.92% (19,883) This was obviously the hyped cookie final, but the entire thing was over in about 5 seconds. Ocarina of Time rode a lot of circumstantial factors all the way to the championship, dominating Final Fantasy 7 in the process and becoming GameFAQs' new \#1 game. Thought FF7 outperformed Ocarina of Time in every round leading up to this point, the horrendous early vote for the entire Final Fantasy series, paired with people not wanting a repeat champion and Zelda having Final Fantasy's number since the series contest all factored into a very easy Ocarina victory dance. One could blame Final Fantasy X's presence for Final Fantasy 7 losing, but Link to the Past had equal opportunity to hurt Ocarina. Fact is Ocarina won a fair fight, and Team Zelda defeated Team Final Fantasy, much like the series contest. For FF7 to have won this, it would have needed MGS4 to make the final and for LTTP to hurt Ocarina a LOT more than it did. As is, LTTP barely fazed Ocarina at all. FF7 is still leagues better than all but one game on this site, but FF as a whole gets anti-voted to holy hell in every contest, and as such always gets in a huge hole early against games of even strength. Sometimes they come back, like FFX did against MGS4 or FF the series did against Mario. But against something like Zelda that never shows any mercy in any poll, it's a death sentence. People held out hope of an FF7 comeback for hours, but it was all a pipe dream. This poll was Ocarina's victory tour from the opening bell, and the way it won so easily despite doing worse than FF7 shows how huge the play rate is of this site's most popular games. We talk about SFF and all that in pretty much every match, but the fact is a level of SFF exists in all polls with popular games in them. Ocarina of Time, you're 2009 champion! Now all we need is a third games contest being 1v1 with Ocarina and FF7 removed from the main bracket for a Tournament of Champions thing, since they're both so far ahead of everyone else. If only we could see FF7 vs Ocarina in a 1v1 setting before then... ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Of course the REAL thing everyone's concerned about is Ocarina versus FF7. I said yesterday that FF was sure to win the "looked better in R5" award and I'm afraid I have to stick with that stance. 41% against the strongest MGS (yes, I'm now willing to concede that 4's extreme independence makes it the cream of the crop in this format- I'd still take 1 \> 4 in a 1v1 however!) and 2nd strongest FF is incredible, especially when you consider that combined OoT and Brawl pushed for nearly 60%. But 45% of the vote against ANYONE in R5 is simply unbelievable, and frankly shouldn't even be possible. Raw percentage-wise, I'm going to give FF7 the edge heading into this Championship. Luckily there's something working in Ocarina's favor that could perhaps help balance things out- its vote trends. We all know how legendarily bad FF7 is with the early vote, and that's more or less held true here in 2009, but the classic counter used to be "no problem- it'll just rise to heaven the entire rest of the day!" Now though, not so much... yes the game still dominates like no other during the dead hours of the night, but then its been completely stagnating within an hour of the sun rising. And mostly its had no excuse- aside from Mario 64, all the games its been smashing on the top half of the bracket are old as dirt and shouldn't be stealing the "kiddie vote" from what's supposed to be the most beloved game on the site! Ocarina on the other hand has been a day vote BEAST- even last round when there was an ASV monster named Brawl hanging around OoT still kicked the competition in the teeth for the entire final 15 hours of the poll. In other words I'd be shocked if FF7 didn't lead the match from about the 4 hour mark straight through the night, and there's a good chance it even appears to have the poll salted away during that time. But I'd likewise be stunned if OoT didn't start taking huge chunks out of that least almost immediately after sunrise, and if the comeback gets serious enough to carry momentum and rally power into the ASV, this becomes Ocarina's match to lose. In summary I would favor OoT for the win ever so slightly if this were a 1v1. However as we well know its NOT (darn you SB!), meaning its time to factor in how the presence of the other two options will affect this outcome. Let's start with LttP, which I think is going to do... not a whole lot, really. Sounds weird to say this considering the game technically earned its "third strongest on the site" bragging rights this season, but, was anyone actually impressed by anything Link to the Past accomplished in '09? To me the closest it came to a "wow" moment was when it crunched stablemate LA down to the low teens, but that was a dubious accomplishment at best given how little we know about the lesser Zelda. The rallying cry for LttP against OoT has always been "a ton of people prefer 2D Zelda, and those types are diehards- they'd never betray LttP for a 3D game!" Now though I'm not so sure... haven't we always used the same "classic", "iconic", "diehard" arguments for Mario 3? Those sure don't look so hot after its 15% outing the other day. Just seems that as soon as we moved out of the 8/16 bit-only matchups recency became the driving force of the season, and I see that continuing in the title match- people are going to drop LttP when they see OoT in trouble, and they'll drop it in droves. Okay, but won't people just as easily abandon FFX if they see their beloved FF7 in trouble? I say... not necessarily. Like I was just saying, recency has played a major role in these matches (much like it always seems to do in GotY polls), and there's little doubt that X is THE RPG of the past two generations (and for many people THE GAME, period). Also, the Final Fantasy fanbase has always seemed to be much more fractured than Zelda's- this is what we used to explain the BSE result, and I think it held true when FF6 put up a better fight against 7 than we'd been expecting (alright, FF4 \> FF1 was brutal, but it seems clear now that 1 operates on something like 70% franchise votes). Yes fans will jump ship to help save 7, but I just can't picture X being entirely sucked dry here as I imagine most will be predicting. In summary, even though LttP should still end up ahead of FFX in total percentage, I'm expecting X to do more to hurt its big brother's chances- Square LFF is just naturally a bigger deal than it is for Nintendo, as we've seen all year long. That combined with Ocarina's superior Day Vote and increased rally potential is enough for me to declare OoT a favorite in this Final... though only ever so slightly! Let's see those percentages. - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 37.50% - Final Fantasy VII - 37.00% - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 14.00% - Final Fantasy X - 11.50% Uhhh, would have liked to keep 7 closer to OoT and X a little closer to LttP but didn't have time as I was rushing out the door. Oh well, this is the right ballpark anyways. Goooo Ocarina! ### Next Day Review Hmm, I just don't know about this SB fellow. We tell him to run a 1v1 Contest and he ignores us, we tell him to mix the eras and he ignores us, we suggest how to improve the bracket even with 4ways and era splits in place and he ignores us. Then we ask for an epic Ocarina v FF7 Bonus Poll, and he delivers... but delays the announcement to the point where by the time the match is confirmed, the result is already a foregone conclusion! I mean I give the guy credit for coming around lately (giving us Games like we wanted, letting us replace some games with others, having us make the match pics, now this bonus poll- all nice touches), but he seems to be doomed by bad timing or bad luck or something, as even when he has good intentions things never turn out quite as well as we would hope for. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3508&num=4) - [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=63) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k9&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Final Fantasy VII vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2009 _source: Final Fantasy VII vs The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2009 (revid 71365)_ ## Results **Bonus Match** Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Bonus Match - **Match \#:** 64 (Extra) - **Match Date:** Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 50.99% 32 for - 11 against Sweet, a 1v1 bonus match between the two "winners"! Bacon had balls like grapefruits to give us this poll, because he knew full well going in that a bonus match between FF7 and Ocarina of Time would ruin all of his faulty logic about why we were stuck with a 4way contest. Something about more exciting matches, higher vote totals, higher site traffic and more opportunity for ad revenue? Yeah, BS. This bonus match, a 1v1, outscored the tournament final by over 10,000 votes. From a pure site hits standpoint, the choice is obvious. And even if you take the route of people thinking this match was the actual final, this further proves the point of 1v1s being better. Casual voters considered this a match that mattered, and it far outscored any 4-way match from the main bracket. The fact is, 1v1s will always be better than gimmicky 4-way formats, and this match proved people will come out in equal or greater amounts for a true 1v1 bracket. Bacon just hasn't given 1v1s a legit chance, and of course he can hide behind the site traffic excuse when we haven't seen a true 1v1 contest in three years. Duh Bacon, of course site traffic goes up over a three year period. It's common sense. However it required*huge*nuts to give us this bonus poll, so major kudos to him for it. Now this just needs to be translated into 1v1 contests for the future, since the results speak for themselves. As for the actual match, Ocarina replicated its performance from the final. Final Fantasy 7 was never in the poll, and that was that. Ocarina defeated FF7 twice, fairly and in two different high-scoring formats, to become out undisputed new \#1 game. No excuse can be made for FF7's loss other than Ocarina just being better. Ocarina has always been a guaranteed top 2 on this site, but until 2009 it had never won. It had always been dominant, but no tournament wins. Now it has one. And just in case you're one of the few who thinks 4-ways are more exciting because of raw vote margin and prediction percentage numbers, use some common sense. Of course prediction percentages and vote margins are cut in half when two more entrants are in a poll. Durrrrrrrrrr. It means nothing about which format is better, plus Ocarina finally getting a contest win is exciting regardless of the final margin. With the 2009 PCA now over, time for the traditional contest ranking! 2009 games is arguably the best possible contest we could have had given the format and generations, and was our fourth best contest overall. Summer 2002 Contest (Characters) Spring 2004 Contest (Games) Summer 2003 Contest (Characters) Spring 2009 Contest (Games) Summer 2005 Contest (Characters) Spring 2006 Contest (Series) Summer 2007 Contest (4-Way Characters) Summer 2006 Contest (Female/Male Character Split) Summer 2008 Contest (4-Way Characters) Summer 2004 Contest (Characters) Spring 2005 Contest (Villains) See you all next year, where we hopefully get a 1v1 games contest! ## Match Trends ## Ngamer's Same Day Analysis ### Match Prediction Let's talk about The Rematch of the Century Except Not Really! Ocarina took down FF7 with a little over 52% of the vote directly in their 4way match. Now normally I would say that as a result FF7 has no chance to reverse the decision, because LttP probably hands over 86% of its votes to OoT (because given the similar... well, everything across the series, if you love one Zelda it seems extremely likely that you'd support another one) whereas FFX probably gives FF7 only 78% of its votes or thereabouts (there's a more clear distinction between different games in the FF series and the fanbase is more fractured as a result- I could easily imagine 10% of FFX fans HATING 7 for one reason or another). When you combine that with the fact that LttP surpassed X's vote total last match, things look mighty grim for 7. In fact I would even go as far as to say that Ocarina would have an excellent shot at reversing its 54% loss to back in '04 by throwing that same number back in FF7's face here in 2009. HOWEVER, this match doesn't place in a vacuum- here in the real world there are certain intangibles that need to be taken into account, and two of those figure to work in FF's favor. 1\. "The Revenge Vote". This factor has been highly overrated in the past, but even so, I could see something along these lines working against Zelda in this matchup. In the same way voters were upset with Zelda/FF dominance and backed L-Block and Snake the past two years, I could see people wanting to take Zelda back down a peg after it won so easily, and backing FF7 would certainly be the way to do it. Plus, doesn't it just make sense for some undecided voters to side with 7 in the hopes of keeping the result interesting, given how easily OoT took the poll yesterday? 2\. "Nintendo fans are sometimes... *kind of dumb*." Back in 2004 we had that very strange day where only people logged into their message board accounts were having their votes counted in the Pokemon vs Xenogears poll. Xeno was winning the match handily, but we figured G/S/C would do much better after those results were wiped and the match got a fresh start the following day- surely the unregistered "casual kiddies" would be way more likely to back Pokemon, right? Instead Xeno just won by EVEN MORE than the day before- to explain it we assumed that casual unregistered Nintendo fans just weren't voting as often on the second day, assuming their vote had already been counted. Then in 2006, Samus was eliminated in Day One of the Battle Royale. Yet in Day Two, Mario's vote percentage inexplicably went DOWN, despite the assumption that he had the most to gain from former Samus voters. Again, it appeared that Nintendo backers were confused by what they thought was a match they'd already cast their vote for and didn't look any closer. (This was somewhat backed up by overall votals plunging that day- they recovered in later days once everyone realized what was going on.) In other words, it seems possible that some of Zelda's support will evaporate here out of pure confusion. I don't know if I'd necessarily BET on that happening, but it seems a real enough possibly that, combined with point 1, I'm going to lower my prediction to - Ocarina of Time with 53.11% Boy, sure feels good writing out a prediction in the classic old 1v1 format. Here's hoping I get to do that 63 more times in the next 5-6 months! ### Next Day Review Huzzah for OoT! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3509&num=4) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Character Battle VIII (2010) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 127 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Winter 2010 Contest _source: Winter 2010 Contest (revid 87617)_
Winter 2010 Contest

Announced:

November 6, 2009

Started:

January 15, 2010

Ended:

March 21, 2010

Winner:

Winner: Link Runner-up: Cloud

Contest Winner:

Dr Football - 429 points

Notable matches:

Red vs Ocelot, Crono vs Missingno, Ryu vs Dante,

Charizard vs L-Block, Sephiroth vs Missingno,

Samus vs Cloud Strife, Solid Snake vs Sephiroth
**Winter 2010 Contest** **Winter 2010 Contest** was the eighth GameFAQs character tournament held on GameFAQs. It's more commonly referred to as **Character Battle 8** (CB8 for short), since "2010" is slightly confusing (nominations and bracket creation actually took place in 2009, but the opening matchup didn't happen until after the new year). ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis – The Missingno poll. He won this thing going away, at the expense of fellow Pokemon Mudkip and Jigglypuff. No one knew at the time how many characters would make the main field from here, but obviously it would end up being Axel, Lightning and The Boss. Lightning was the cutoff line, edging Scorpion by 300 votes. The whining about Missingno during this poll was amazing, and it was great foreshadowing for the main contest. The lesser characters here were interesting enough, I guess. The Boss and Raiden seem independent of one another, Toad looks like he has a decent fanbase thanks to NSMB Wii, and Alex Mercer was the casual bait representative. The main thing here is Dan Hikibi and Yoshimitsu sucking it up. Can we stop the rally pushes for these two in every NRT? Fun Tidbit: – This poll had a very clear cutoff point in it. Frog, Rikku, Liquid Snake, Midna and Big Daddy were a cut above everyone else. Even though we didn’t yet know what Bacon’s cutoff line was in these vote-ins, those 5 coming from this poll seemed easy enough. Big Daddy was especially impressive, given he had Andrew Ryan sharing the poll as an albatross. Of all the losers here, very little stands out. It’s hard to believe Diddy and Olimar have made the field in the past, and Archer doing well for a little while made for some great fads for a day. If this match had a picture, Archer probably would have won! He looks just like Dante. – Another poll where a clear cutoff line exists between haves and have-nots. Jecht, Sub-Zero, Spy, Proto Man and Ridley all did well. But by this point, people (namely Mega Man fans) were very worried about how many characters from each poll would actually get chosen. Proto Man finished close to Ridley for fourth place, but the number 4 is a much more mathematical number when talking about brackets. Past the top five, there was a jumbled mess of low fodder and true fodder. Bayonetta, Kain Highwind, Etna, Lara Croft and Sho all did about the same. Bayonetta suffered from bad timing, since her game came out just after the bracket was made. At the bottom, Bub failed to catch any momentum at all from the Gamespot contest and Doc Louis actually made the vote-in after HaRRicH’s year-long joke rally. T E A M C H O C O L A T E – Probably the strongest group of any vote-in. Cid and Aeris from FF7 both did very well, and almost LFFd each other out of first and second place. Tails finished just behind Cid after leading him most of the day, and Simon Belmont finished very close to Tails. There’s a gap after this before you get to Prince of Persia, which ended up being the cutoff line for the poll. Morrigan, Chun-Li and Little Mac all finished relatively close to making the main field, and even Godot did fairly well here. Sol Badguy even making the vote-in was a shock for Guilty Gear fans, and past him is the fodder. Maxwell is from an overhyped disaster, and no one likes Emil. – One day later, we probably got the weakest group of all the vote-ins. This was the only vote-in where 4 characters were taken instead of 5, and for good reason. Mega Man X obviously dominated this poll, and HK-47 and Vault Boy also did well. Past them, everyone either sucked or got caught up in the weak Nintendo character LFF mess. Falco ended up winning that king of the hill fight over Lucas, Wario and Spyro (I know Spyro isn’t technically Nintendo, but he has the same type of appeal). Beyond them, tons of fodder not worth mentioning. – The last vote-in conveniently had a clear cutoff point. Akuma and Meta Knight rolled this thing, and tier 2 was clearly Marth, Peach and Thrall. Tier 3 would have been Isaac Clarke, KOS-MOS and Kerrigan, but they didn’t make the field. You could probably even make a Tier 4 given everyone left over did pretty well. Personally, I like considering these vote-ins a part of the contest itself so we can keep alive the trivia point of CATS making every character field. When the dust settled and Bacon finally announced the bracket, characters and rules, the final result was amazing. 128 characters, 8 divisions of 16 in an NCAA style format, and 12 hour 1v1s until the final four. Personally, this is the best possible format we could have asked for, because everyone gets their own way. The 1v1 fans get their 1v1s, the random chaos fans get potential hilarious bandwagons from the matches being so short, Bacon gets his 128 entrants, and everyone collectively got to laugh at the crying 4way fans for enjoying their terrible format so much. With any luck, this contest symbolized the permanent death of that god-awful format. They are a bad gimmick, nothing more. ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis Personally, this contest ranks \#4 for me. People look forward to my annual ranking for whatever reason, and here it is: Spring 2004 \> Summer 2002 \> Summer 2003 \> Winter 2010 \> Summer 2005 \> Fall 2009 \> Summer 2007 \> Summer 2006 \> Spring 2006 \> Summer 2008 \> Summer 2004 \> Spring 2005 The only thing Winter 2010 is missing are photo finishes, but those are extremely rare and we can't expect them all the time. But this contest had everything else we like; unpredictability, great matches, good runs by characters we didn't expect, great matches, unexpected matches, the works. And most important, 1v1s ARE BACK BABY THANK CHRIST. Given all we know about stats and trends, 1v1s under this new format is the best thing we would have ever asked for. Now all we need is removal of Link, this format for a games contest with no generations and slightly better bracket placement. From there, we're gold. Last but not least... The Ultimate Loser!™ = Geno! Link \> Cloud \> Snake \> Sephiroth \> Tifa \> Big Daddy \> Ness \> **Geno** Poor guy. ## 2010 Contest - Useful Articles - Board 8's 2010 Match Pics - Board 8's 2010 Nominations - Winter 2010 Total Nominations - Winter 2010 Vote-In Polls ### Coming after the conclusion of the Contest - 2010 Contest Matches - detailed write-ups on every '10 Contest poll - Most Surprising Results of 2010 - Most Impressive Performances of 2010 - Winter 2010 Match Trends ## Tournament Bracket *Click on the date above each match to see its article page.* ### Division Rounds | | |---------------------| | **Hyrule Division** | | | | Jan 16 - **60599** | | 1 | | 16 | | Jan 16 - **65187** | | 8 | | 9 | | Jan 17 - **58208** | | 5 | | 12 | | Jan 17 - **81068** | | 4 | | 13 | | Jan 18 - **55360** | | 3 | | 14 | | Jan 18 - **79846** | | 6 | | 11 | | Jan 19 - **49202** | | 7 | | 10 | | Jan 19 - 33295 | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------| | **Chaos Division** | | Jan 20 - **53494** | | 1 | | 16 | | Jan 20 - **71995** | | 8 | | 9 | | Jan 21 - **52248** | | 5 | | 12 | | Jan 21 - **72497** | | 4 | | 13 | | Jan 22 - **53126** | | 3 | | 14 | | Jan 22 - **58971** | | 6 | | 11 | | Jan 23 - **53492** | | 7 | | 10 | | Jan 23 - **76041** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |-----------------------| | **Mushroom Division** | | Jan 24 - **54944** | | 1 | | 16 | | Jan 24 - **74661** | | 8 | | 9 | | Jan 25 - **50552** | | 5 | | 12 | | Jan 25 - **73321** | | 4 | | 13 | | Jan 26 - **51979** | | 3 | | 14 | | Jan 26 - **73599** | | 6 | | 11 | | Jan 27 - **46209** | | 7 | | 10 | | Jan 27 - **78003** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------| | **Heart Division** | | Jan 28 - **50852** | | 1 | | 16 | | Jan 28 - **55285** | | 8 | | 9 | | Jan 29 - **47495** | | 5 | | 12 | | Jan 29 - **70310** | | 4 | | 13 | | Jan 30 - **52093** | | 3 | | 14 | | Jan 30 - **60871** | | 6 | | 11 | | Jan 31 - **56465** | | 7 | | 10 | | Jan 31 - **77724** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------| | **Varia Division** | | Feb 01 - **50755** | | 1 | | 16 | | Feb 01 - **75369** | | 8 | | 9 | | Feb 02 - **54437** | | 5 | | 12 | | Feb 02 - **77410** | | 4 | | 13 | | Feb 03 - **49879** | | 3 | | 14 | | Feb 03 - **61507** | | 6 | | 11 | | Feb 04 - **48896** | | 7 | | 10 | | Feb 04 - **70538** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |---------------------| | **Midgar Division** | | Feb 05 - **55398** | | 1 | | 16 | | Feb 05 - **63025** | | 8 | | 9 | | Feb 06 - **48,172** | | 5 | | 12 | | Feb 06 - **66028** | | 4 | | 13 | | Feb 07 - **55924** | | 3 | | 14 | | Feb 07 - **71165** | | 6 | | 11 | | Feb 08 - **51297** | | 7 | | 10 | | Feb 08 - **71779** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------| | **Gear Division** | | Feb 09 - **51803** | | 1 | | 16 | | Feb 09 - **67654** | | 8 | | 9 | | Feb 10 - **49808** | | 5 | | 12 | | Feb 10 - **66039** | | 4 | | 13 | | Feb 11 - **51628** | | 3 | | 14 | | Feb 11 - **69053** | | 6 | | 11 | | Feb 12 - **51259** | | 7 | | 10 | | Feb 12 - **69949** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |---------------------| | **Jenova Division** | | Feb 13 - **54730** | | 1 | | 16 | | Feb 13 - **66761** | | 8 | | 9 | | Feb 14 - **48501** | | 5 | | 12 | | Feb 14 - **91081** | | 4 | | 13 | | Feb 15 - **55350** | | 3 | | 14 | | Feb 15 - **67191** | | 6 | | 11 | | Feb 16 - **52957** | | 7 | | 10 | | Feb 16 - **77719** | | 2 | | 15 | ### Elite Eight | Character Battle VIII Finals | |------------------------------| | | | Mar 17 - **53759** | | A | | B | | Mar 17 - **77348** | | C | | D | | Mar 18 - **59334** | | E | | F | | Mar 18 - **86776** | | G | | H | ## Trivia - Dr. Football won the first place prize because Heroic Palmer accidentally filled out a "just-for-fun" entry - This is the first Character Battle not involving CATS, unless you count vote-ins - This was the first 1v1 contest to take place in 4 years - The Noble Nine's historic winning streak was shattered by Missingno, and Snake ended an eight year 1v1 winning streak for Clinkeroth --- ## (1)Link vs (16)Thrall 2010 _source: (1)Link vs (16)Thrall 2010 (revid 60839)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, January 16th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Saturday, January 16th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 36,135 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 85.10% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 96.52% (25,105 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis It's funny how spoiled we are. We're so used to hilarious blowouts from contest titans early that Link falling 0.19% short of 80% on Thrall is somehow a disappointment. Some math can probably be done with the Thrall/Vergil fourway match to show Link's exact underperformance here, but it doesn't matter because fourways are a joke. 1v1 is a whole different animal, and this was our first legit 1v1 in four years. A few percentages were bound to change in that time. That said, Link had to deal with early anti-voting early in all his matches this contest. As popular and strong as Link is, people are truly getting tired of him winning all the time. It's not as loud as "WAAAH FF7 ALWAYS WINS", but it's there. Just look at the 2007 final. Link stayed extremely consistent trend-wise throughout this entire poll, and didn't really go up all that much with the morning vote. This meant two things early on in this contest. The old trends we all knew were getting thrown out the window with matches only being 12 hours. Second, we had officially entered AntiBlowoutFAQs. The days of Zelda 1 scoring hilarious blowouts on Adventure are long gone. Because with the play-ins, the lower seeds are all tempered first. So now the higher seeds all go up against someone that's already won something, while the true joke characters get to have decent seeds and face characters like Ike, Zidane and Captain Falcon. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3730&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=1) - **Next Match** --- ## (8)Alucard vs (9)Magus 2010 _source: (8)Alucard vs (9)Magus 2010 (revid 59632)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, January 16th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Saturday, January 16th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 11,113 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard - 50.52% 65 for - 47 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard - 53.09% ## Ulti's Analysis This was a very debated match pre-contest, but was one of those over-in-seconds deals come game day. The basic idea was Magus has looked like such crap for so long (true of all of Chrono Trigger, really) that he was not to be trusted in a debatable match, much like the reputation Kefka has. Alucard is somewhat in the same boat, but shows signs of life now and then, did well in the fourways and just looked better than Magus of late. This is the eye test. One character just looks better than the other sometimes. Alucard might be "lol I lost the day vote to Liquid", but Magus did the same thing to a bag of sand. Plus his entire series is falling more and more over a cliff every year. Then there was this being a day match. Both of these characters suck with the day vote, so a lot of people figured they'd both do so badly that Magus could catch an SNV rally and win. Didn't matter. Alucard jumped out to a decent lead early and never looked back en route to absolutely destroying Magus. Magus didn't win a single update all match, nor did he even come close. Every time this guy looks like he can fall no farther, he does. Were Leonhart4 and charmander6000's stats well-known before this contest, Alucard likely would have been the massive favorite even in a night match. Leon's stats have Magus getting 41.33% based on the Sandbag debacle, and he would cheese his way into some great Oracle picks with those stats. I rail on 4ways all the time (and rightfully so), but these two made a great set of stats with some very intelligent 1v1 adjustments. The 1v1 adjustments are the obvious reason why the stats work ;) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3731&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (12)Revolver Ocelot 2010 _source: (5)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (12)Revolver Ocelot 2010 (revid 59634)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, January 17th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Sunday, January 17th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 182 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokemon Trainer Red - 52.18% 77 for - 38 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokemon Trainer Red - 51.22% ## Ulti's Analysis New characters are the best. A lot of the board, especially the stats topic, was buried in Red hype for months leading up to this match. And because the character is new, there's no evidence to disprove anyone's claims. It's Schrodinger's Verschränkung. Some people had Red challenging Mega Man X in round 2, while others felt Red would be fodder and get crushed by Ocelot with ease. Unfortunately for those who didn't care, there were few people in the middle and the argument wouldn't stop until the match. Ocelot's a big enigma in his own right. Dude beats Jill before MGS4, then loses to her a year later afterwards. Kind of fitting he ends up getting the fewest nominations of anyone not in the vote-ins. When the match finally began, Red looked like he would cruise to one of those only-close-on-paper wins. He jumped out by 500 through the power hour, and he would eventually get the lead up to 666. Everyone expected the match to be a lot closer than this, but for awhile Ocelot was putting up a real stinker. The other thing everyone expected however was a Pokemon character slowing down at night, especially against something from MGS. The match stalled for a bit after 2 am, but then Ocelot started cutting away. He chipped at the lead for a bit and got it down to 450 over the next couple hours, and then the dead zone kicked in. Ocelot started dominating the dead hours, and erased the entire lead by 6. It was obvious however Ocelot needed to pad a lead before the kids woke up, and he did so. Over the next three hours, he built up a lead of nearly 400 votes. This actually lasted until 9 am, so it looked like Ocelot was in the clear and had avoided the worst. Usually, the BSV starts around 7. Inexplicably, Red failed to win the morning vote, and even come 9 he was only able to get in some minor stalls. Come 10, the lead was still over 300 votes. But then, the perfect storm. Metal Gear Solid is routinely awful during the day, and Pokemon is almost always great during the day. Add all this up, and you get Red erasing 320 votes in 80 minutes, then sprinting to the finish line with a win before anyone could figure out what happened. Red did catch the morning vote and run away with it, it just came a few hours later than expected. People didn't know it yet, but this was how Pokemon would be in the Winter 2010 Contest. This match confirmed two things: Pokemon is no joke, and Ocelot is not trustworthy. If this were a full 24 hour match, Ocelot would have gotten his doors blown off. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3732&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Captain John Price vs (13)Mega Man X 2010 _source: (4)Captain John Price vs (13)Mega Man X 2010 (revid 59636)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, January 17th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Sunday, January 17th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 25,484 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man X - 72.95% 114 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man X - 74.34% ## Ulti's Analysis There were some very bizarre misseedings this year, and this was the first match where that was on full display. These seeds are pretty much backwards, because there was no way MMX was going to lose this. Almost all of the next-gen casual bait characters completely embarrassed themselves this contest, although it's not really their fault. Gamers are very traditional people who will not let go of older characters easily. Industry overviews aside, this was a very boring match. Price ended up doing a lot better than many people expected, and with a god-awful match pic to boot. But there isn't much else to talk about when MMX gets a 65-35 blowout instead of 70-30. It's a very easy win over an extremely overseeded character either way. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3733&num=1) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=4) \>• **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Luigi vs (14)Meta Knight 2010 _source: (3)Luigi vs (14)Meta Knight 2010 (revid 60469)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, January 18th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Monday, January 18th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,388 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 65.52% 114 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 76.19% ## Ulti's Analysis Congrats, Meta Knight. Your reward for winning first place your vote-in by 1200 votes and being the S tier in Brawl is…. getting fed to Luigi. Meta Knight is strong enough to make a decent run in one of these things, but he always get stuffed into Nintendo matches. 2007 round 1, he gets stuck with Peach, but wins. Then in round 2, he gets to deal with Fox and Wario. 2008, he gets stuck against L-Block and the Duck Hunt Dog in the first round. And then this year. Boom, Luigi. Instant death. Meta Knight is a Captain Falcon in waiting. Good strength, never gets to show it because all his matches are Nintendo SFF-fests. The match itself here was very mundane, though some contest noobs kept arguing about how Meta Knight was actually really strong and wasn't actually getting SFFd or something (even though lower vote totals always indicate SFF is going on). One guy in particular who won't be named spammed the stats topic about this crap for a month until people finally realized never to take him seriously. Luigi is a beast and rightfully deserves praise for how good he always does, but Meta could have easily repeated Falcon's performance in his place. Looking forward to the inevitable (5)Pikachu vs (12)Meta Knight match next year. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3734&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Amaterasu vs (11)Shadow the Hedgehog 2010 _source: (6)Amaterasu vs (11)Shadow the Hedgehog 2010 (revid 73240)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, January 18th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Monday, January 18th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 4,142 - **Oracle Expectations:** Amaterasu - 46.93% 38 for - 77 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Amaterasu - 36.27% ## Ulti's Analysis I think this sums it up well enough: From: CrocNRoll \| Posted: 1/18/2010 2:30:00 PM \| \#273 From how the contest is going, the match picture might as well look like this: This was a debate very similar to Alucard vs Magus, with a lot of people picking Shadow on psychological barrier alone. For whatever reason, people still can't get past the 2003 Mario/Shadow match being an absolute fluke. What you're left with since is a character falling more and more off the map every year, against a character in Amaterasu who very easily passes the eye test. In all her contest appearances, including this one, she outperforms expectations. And to go a bit deeper on Shadow, throw out the fluke match and look at everything else: 2003: Beat Wario. 2004: Lost to Tidus. 2005: Doesn't get in. 2006: Doesn't get in. 2007 R1: Distant second place against Auron, pre-RE5 Chris Redfield and Pyramid Head. 2007 R2: Distant last place against Auron, Ryu and Bowser. 2008: Third place against Link, Luke von Fabre and Zidane. There is nothing in there to inspire any confidence at all, and Shadow went out against Amaterasu and further cemented his status as a choke artist. Amaterasu went out and won fairly easily, in a match that only looks close on paper. The lead was 1000 within 2 hours, and Shadow didn't win a single update until 3 hours in. Not that it mattered, since this was a boat race. Most impressive is Amaterasu did this during a day match, where Sonic Team tends to be at its best. Remember, it was a massive ASV that allowed Sonic to pull off that huge comeback against Crono. This match began the massive anti-Sonic hype this contest, and it wasn't until future results started rolling in did people look back and acknowledge Sonic Team as not being that bad. They're not at their god-awful 2008 4way levels, but they’re not threatening Samus either. Somewhere in the middle. To be fair, Shadow isn't altogether bad in these things, and is probably a victim of simple bad luck. But if he wants to get some respect, he needs to start turning these close losses into close wins. And I have just the cure for that! Winter 2011: (8)Magus vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3735&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Weighted Companion Cube vs (10)Sandal 2010 _source: (7)Weighted Companion Cube vs (10)Sandal 2010 (revid 59647)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, January 16th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 27,652 - **Oracle Expectations:** Weighted Companion Cube - 65.71% 113 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Weighted Companion Cube - 75.70% ## Ulti's Analysis Enchantments? It's amazing how an already-irrelevant meme from Dragon Age got enough nominations to be a 10 seed, while everyone else floundered about in vote-in polls. I'm positive Bacon set this up as a funny joke match or something, because no one even likes Sandal. It was a joke match in theory and on paper, too. Everyone remembers L-Block's run in 2007. Everyone remembers Weight Companion Cube's run in 2008. That was all well and good, but Cube threatening 80% in its first 1v1 match is something else. It wasn't all Cube being strong, either. You need only look at the awful vote totals to see that. This was all Sandal sucking. He had no business in the field, especially as such a high seed. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3736&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Nathan Drake vs (15)The Boss 2010 _source: (2)Nathan Drake vs (15)The Boss 2010 (revid 59649)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, January 16th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,320 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Boss - 47.61% 33 for - 82 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Boss - 44.82% ## Ulti's Analysis Another match best summed with a quote: From: FFDragon He lost to CATS. He lost to CATS. He lost to CATS. He lost to CATS. He lost to CATS. He lost to CATS. He lost to CATS. Thanks to Uncharted 2 being Game of the Year most places, Nathan Drake was no longer considered "the guy that got doubled by CATS" to many people. He was the favorite to win his match, especially given he was against a weak MGS character during a day match. MGS almost always sucks in polls when the sun is out, and The Boss especially has never done anything of note. 60-40 against Celes in the wonky female contest and fighting with Tails for third place in some fourway match doesn't mean anything. The main logic in Drake's favor is, how would everyone feel about this match if that CATS match never happened? Drake would likely be a massive favorite. As is, he was still the slight favorite going in. Even when the match began and Boss starting inching out with a lead, Drake fans were convinced he'd come back. Even an hour in, when Boss was up by 400, people still discussed an ASV comeback. This was the first match that bunked old trends. Not only did the ASV comeback never show up, this turned into one of the most boring upsets ever. The match stayed at 52-48 for almost a full 12 hours, with no movement or excitement at all. That's just what you get with Boss matches. She can have an all-day duel with Tails…. but for third place in a fourway poll. That's just how the true patriot rolls in these things; painfully consistent. What sucks for Drake is he did get a massive boost from Uncharted 2 to make himself respectable. It was just not quite enough. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3737&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (16)Lightning 2010 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (16)Lightning 2010 (revid 59146)_ ## Results Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,924 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 72.27% 114 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 85.35% ## Ulti's Analysis The reaction to this match was hilarious, and rightfully so. People were expecting good things from Lightning, yes, but not until after the game came out. When this match happened, FF13 wasn't yet released in America. For a good comparison, the consensus Oracle average was Sonic with 72.21%. People figured Sonic, even in a night match would blow the doors off a character whose game wasn't even out yet. Then the match began. Sonic started off a bit slow in the 65% range, but whatever. Weird things can happen early in polls, right? Then another update came in. Sonic didn't budge. Than another update. Sonic didn't budge. Then another update. Sonic didn't budge AGAIN. People soon realized what was going on: Sonic seems to suck now. Not only did Sonic not move, his percentage kept going down bit by bit. He dropped below 62% overnight at one point, and "saved face" by increasing a little with the morning vote. He probably gets to a doubling or something in a full 24 hour match, but this was beside the point. It's rare you see a character look so bad in getting nearly 64% in a poll, but Sonic did that today. And the Sonic Team angst was INSANE. All the people clamoring for a potential upset of Sonic in this division at the hands of Ganondorf or Kirby, and why wouldn't they be? Sonic lost the "Nintendo overlap 4way" excuse with this match. And that was before the Cecil/Knuckles debacle. If you thought Sonic Team looked like crap through this match, it took 12 hours to make it look much, much worse. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3738&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Cecil Harvey vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2010 _source: (8)Cecil Harvey vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2010 (revid 59147)_ ## Results Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,879 - **Oracle Expectations:** Knuckles - 59.56% 111 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Knuckles - 51.54% ## Ulti's Analysis People were really down on Sonic Team before this match happened. But hey, Knuckles \> Cecil was supposed to be an easy come, easy go blowout that helped the Sonic guys get some respect back. Yeah, whoops. The match started, was almost dead even for 30 minutes and the entire site just dismissed Sonic Team on the spot. This wasn't supposed to be a close match in any way; the Oracle had this at 60-40, and that's with some people seemingly down on Sonic for no reason. Cecil is the dude that got 75-25'd by Kirby. Knuckles is the guy that upset Magus and generally has a day vote that rolls heads. No matter how weak Sonic gets, the whole crew will always have a really good day vote. Yet somehow, this was close in a DAY MATCH with Sonic Team against Old Square. This should have been a complete joke, but wasn't. Knuckles did of course slowly pull away after the early shenanigans ended, then with the ASV he made the match look farther apart than it deserved to be. But make no mistake, this was one of the most Pyrrhic victories in contest history and it more or less made Knuckles Turd of the Contest. You're Knuckles, with a godly day vote against Old Square, who coincides with a TERRIBLE day vote. You don't rely on the ASV to put away Cecil Harvey in a day match and retain respect. You just don't. Given what Cecil pulled off in a day match, he might have actually won a night match. Talk about a guru-buster. This was the first match where people really started talking about a Dissidia Boost, but the big blame was put on Sonic Team. I know Sonic gathered himself in later rounds (maybe because of Sonic 4 info or something), but something was definitely wrong with those guys early in this contest. When Tails comes out looking better than anyone else, something is seriously wrong. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3739&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Ganondorf vs (12)Mewtwo 2010 _source: (5)Ganondorf vs (12)Mewtwo 2010 (revid 59148)_ ## Results Thursday, January 21th, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Thursday, January 21th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,036 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 61.06% 115 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 78.61% ## Ulti's Analysis This was a very boring all-Nintendo match where the percentages barely moved for 12 hours. The favorite won, and by a percentage most people expected based on the 2008 stats, so there isn't much to talk about here. What's worth noting is Mewtwo got the shaft this contest. This entire contest was a pokefad, and Mewtwo was the one Pokemon entrant in the entire field stuck in a completely unwinnable position. He did at least make a good run in 2008, so Pokemon fans can't be too upset here. Ganondorf was also a bit of a letdown in this match. The big upset talk this division was Ganondorf potentially breaking the Noble Nine and upsetting Sonic in round 3. If you're looking to do that, you go above and beyond. Ganon didn't do that here, meaning the Sonic upset would have to come from Sonic's weakness and not Ganon's own strength. Bad mix when you're looking for upsets. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3740&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Albert Wesker vs (13)Ken Masters 2010 _source: (4)Albert Wesker vs (13)Ken Masters 2010 (revid 71256)_ ## Results Thursday, January 21th, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Thursday, January 21th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 471 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ken - 56.23% 92 for - 23 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ken - 51.62% ## Ulti's Analysis Every contest has some random first round match that gets stupidly fun for no real reason. This contest's version of that was Wesker vs Ken. Everyone with stats knowledge picked Ken to win this, because Wesker is the guy who got 30% on Kefka and lost to Lloyd Irving. Who really cares about RE5 when you're already so far behind? Besides, Ken was loooooooong overdue to finally get a 1v1 win. There's a reason he smashed the Returner's Tournament this year. Granted he got stuck with a 13 seed, but still. Street Fighta 4 son. Well-known character in any circle. And he's against the-guy-that-let-Kefka-break-70%-on-him. So of course the match starts dead even with Board 8's Ken supporters fighting for their brackets for an hour, then Wesker finally takes control and inches out to a lead of 210. It was one of those close matches where any update gain over 10 was accused of cheating (Side Note: We need 15 minute updates back in the worst way), but the reality is this was just a close, fun match. When Ken started coming back with the ASV, things just got out of control all over the place. Everyone figured Ken would come back with the ASV (especially the insane California ASV, which matters a lot because all the fighting tournaments take place out there and the state's population is massive), but that didn't stop people from having a ball and plastering the entire board with quotes and YouTube videos. It's rare you see a cool match like this between such quotable entities, so people took full advantage. We must have filled 3 full stats topics that day with nothing but IN-DES-TRUC-TI-BLE, YOU CAN'T HIDE FOREVER and CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!!!!!!! Not to mention these two vids: As for how the match ended, Ken did come back with the early ASV. But rather than taking the lead with momentum, Wesker shook him off and got the lead back up to 180 in all of 15 minutes. The match then stalled for a few hours, but the California ASV showed up for mopup duty before long. Ken was losing by 200 at 6, and spent the next three hours coming back for good with a Cali-fueled beach bum rage. Ken passed Wesker at 9, then more or less dominated the final three hours. It was a somewhat bad ending to a great match, because Ken ended up having a lead bigger than 460 and failed to break Frog's wire-to-wire record. But that didn't take away from how fun this all was. It's extremely rare you see a close match where everyone has a good time, doesn't really care who wins and was just happy to be there on the boards with other fun people. If only they were all like this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3741&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs (14)Rikku 2010 _source: (3)Kirby vs (14)Rikku 2010 (revid 59150)_ ## Results Friday, January 22nd, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Friday, January 22nd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,006 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 58.49% 113 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 74.08% ## Ulti's Analysis Kirby had a weird 3/14 match with a cute girl before, but not this year. This was an expected win, it ended within 1% of the Oracle consensus and was wholly boring. Kirby started over 60%, then spent the rest of the night getting pounded down by Asia's love of Square characters. Kirby did pretty much nothing with the morning vote, and finished as expected. "As expected" was bad news for Kirby in the same way as Ganondorf, and more or less proved his 2008 run was a bandwagon fluke. If you're out to upset a Noble Nine character 1v1, you have to overperform in the matches you're supposed to win. Kirby did not do that here. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3742&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)GLaDOS vs (11)Fawful 2010 _source: (6)GLaDOS vs (11)Fawful 2010 (revid 59151)_ ## Results Friday, January 22nd, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Friday, January 22nd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,791 - **Oracle Expectations:** GLaDOS - 56.41% 106 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** GLaDOS - 73.68% ## Ulti's Analysis GLaDOS IS NOT A JOKE CHARACTER. GLaDOS IS NOT A JOKE CHARACTER. GLaDOS IS NOT A JOKE CHARACTER. GLaDOS IS NOT A JOKE CHARACTER. Ahem. Seriously, stop lumping GLaDOS in with joke characters when talking about inanimate objects and such. Portal is like 18 cents on Steam now and 2 hours long. Go play it, stop being ignorant and come back later. For the rest of you, the highlight of this match was probably the picture. These are two of the most unphotogenic characters on the planet, but we ended up with a great pic here. No one had thought to use one of GLaDOS's cores in a picture before, and Fawful didn't look all that awful (rofl) for once. As an actual match, this thing was over in seconds and had some pretty terrible vote totals for being a day match. GLaDOS started out near 70%, fell down to a doubling later and scored a very easy win in what some considered a hyped match. As strong as Nintendo can be, they too can produce total cannon fodder characters now and then. A few people complained about joke characters doing too well in yet another contest (including Ngamer repeatedly ignoring my request to play Portal so he can stop looking silly on the podcast, people don't constantly say GLaDOS isn't a joke character for no reason), although I hesitate to use the term "people" when discussing those who haven't played Portal yet. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3743&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2010 _source: (7)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2010 (revid 59152)_ ## Results Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,734 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vivi - 57.71% 111 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vivi - 39.95% ## Ulti's Analysis This match seems oddly familiar…. Oh yeah, the exact same match has already happened before: 6 years later, almost nothing changed. In 2004, Vivi scored 56.47% in this match. Today? A whopping .18% deviation. In 2004, Vivi's prediction percentage was 35.13. Today? It somehow only went up 5% even though the match already happened. Even more odd is the board vote repeated itself from 6 years ago. DK somehow had brackets and hung in for a few minutes before getting buried. It was a boring match the first time, and was only funny the second time because of how people still had faith in DK against the same character that 56-44'd him six years ago. There was no reason for DK to turn this thing around. I look forward to the trilogy's conclusion in 2016. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3744&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Altair vs (15)Liquid Snake 2010 _source: (2)Altair vs (15)Liquid Snake 2010 (revid 59153)_ ## Results Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,869 - **Oracle Expectations:** Altair - 48.23% 37 for - 76 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Altair - 55.10% ## Ulti's Analysis Chaos's first round ended with an extremely weird match. This was the performance many were expecting from Nathan Drake -- mass appeal casual next-gen character winning a day match over a little-known MGS character. It should have been easy for Nathan, but somehow wasn't. With this match, we were dealing with two much stronger characters in the same boat. Altair was the 2 seed with massive casual appeal, and he got one of the best pictures ever to boot. Liquid was the odds-on stats favorite to win, especially given how berserk he was in 2008, but something just felt funny about this match. Liquid was the favorite, but there was a growing sentiment Altair was going to pull something off. Then the match pic came out, and people started giving up all hope for Liquid. Granted Liquid looks like crap in EVERY match pic, but we're in a new contest age. Everyone has seen all this stuff before, so now everything matters. Picture matters, bandwagons matter, rallies matter, anti-votes matter. And given how much of the Assassin's Creed strength comes from casual appeal and match pictures, Altair had a massive advantage going in. And even still, could anyone have guessed this would be a 60-40 blowout? Liquid, SFF help or not, beat Luigi twice. One contest later, he goes out and just doesn't even show up against Altair, and all this came less than a week after Boss's upset of Nathan Drake. Altair just totally hammered this poll, which makes the Nathan match all the more confusing. Every single factor people came up with to discredit The Boss against Nathan came to fruition here, and against a character who has proven strong in the past. It makes absolutely no sense. You can come up with any factor for Altair you want here, but most of them are discredited by Altair and Ezio proving to be garbage later on this contest. Liquid just decided not to show up for whatever reason today, in spectacular fashion. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3745&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (16)Falco Lombardi 2010 _source: (1)Mario vs (16)Falco Lombardi 2010 (revid 59154)_ ## Results Sunday, January 24th, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Sunday, January 24th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 34,106 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 79.72% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 93.32% ## Ulti's Analysis Falco did decently in the vote-in, but got stuck as a 16 seed against Mario in the first round of this contest. Mario laid down the SFF nuke in this match, and I believe this was the only match where someone broke 80% the entire contest. Mario or Link tend to get the biggest blowouts in contests, and that didn't change even in our new age of AntiBlowoutFAQs. The days of Snake threatening 95% in a poll are probably long gone. Only other thing worth mentioning here is Fire Mario finally getting into a match picture. Took long enough. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3746&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Big Boss vs (9)Miles Edgeworth 2010 _source: (8)Big Boss vs (9)Miles Edgeworth 2010 (revid 62571)_ ## Results Sunday, January 24th, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Sunday, January 24th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 39,147 - **Oracle Expectations:** Big Boss - 70.27% 110 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Big Boss - 81.81% ## Ulti's Analysis AntiBlowoutFAQs or not, this match proved any character can look really good if put against the right opponent. Edgey is a great character and carries a lot of the Phoenix Wright series, but he flirts with the fodder line annually in contests. He might get a slight boost from Ace Attorney Investigations next year, but he'd have to get paired against complete trash to ever win a match. Like Guybrush Threepwood, for example. It's also weird to think about given Snake's eventual run, but Big Boss was the only MGS character that looked good in the first round of this contest. The Boss lucked out completely by Nathan Drake not being any good, Liquid stunk up the joint against Altair, Revolver Ocelot choked against Red and even Solid Snake himself lost the board vote horribly to Proto Man. Big Boss saved face big time for the series in round 1, and even won the morning vote to slam that point home. His reward? A fourth match against Mario. What's a guy gotta do to catch a break? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3747&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Zidane Tribal vs (12)Claptrap 2010 _source: (5)Zidane Tribal vs (12)Claptrap 2010 (revid 62570)_ ## Results Monday, January 25th, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Monday, January 25th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,516 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zidane - 67.79% 110 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zidane - 78.49% ## Ulti's Analysis AntiBlowoutFAQs was mostly a fad before this match, but it became legitimate once this happened. Claptrap was one of those "who the hell is this guy" characters when the bracket came out, and people were expecting complete murder here. As it would turn out, Claptrap is from some cel-shaded game called Bored-erlands and acts like the robotic version of Navi in it. Basically, no one likes him. Given Zidane's weak contest history, expecting him to make Claptrap the next Tanner was asking a bit much. But expecting a huge blowout was still reasonable, especially given this was a night match and Zidane would have the full benefit of the Square overnight vote. He started off well enough, then dropped like a rock down to 63%. The overnight vote got him back up close to his final percentage, but it didn't prevent the criticism. Zidane \> Ike was a hyped upset pick, but the hype died off once Zidane laid an egg here, especially given upsetting Ike in a day match would be hard enough as is. So naturally, Ike went out and laid an even bigger egg next match. That's just how this contest rolled. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3748&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Ike vs (13)Prinny 2010 _source: (4)Ike vs (13)Prinny 2010 (revid 59157)_ ## Results Monday, January 25th, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Monday, January 25th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,319 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ike - 67.71% 110 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ike - 77.84% ## Ulti's Analysis Zidane went out and bombed against Claptrap, so all Ike really had to do here was smash Prinny to quell all upset hype. Or better yet, all he had to do was pick the Prinny up and throw it somewhere. Boom. Instant death, dood. Instead, he goes "Yeah you suck Zidane, I can bomb WORSE". Verily, it came to pass. Yes this was a 62-38 blowout over the guru winner, but this was still one of the most embarrassing performances ever. The final percentage doesn't even tell the story here, because until Ike's monster day vote showed up Prinny was seriously threatening to keep him at or under 60%. Ike saved some dignity by ASVing it up, but not all of it. There is no excuse here at all. This is Ike, in a day match. This is what he was \*supposed\* to do: Match pic, weird momentum, AntiBlowoutFAQs, whatever. There's no excuse here, and Ike is massively lucky his round 2 match against Zidane was a day match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3749&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Mega Man vs (14)Cid Highwind 2010 _source: (3)Mega Man vs (14)Cid Highwind 2010 (revid 59158)_ ## Results Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,553 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 58.83% 108 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 76.88% ## Ulti's Analysis At a glance, this looks like an Ed Bellis Special. I love the guy, but he's famous for making really bad picks and taking it all in stride with an awesome sense of humor. I wish the entire board acted like him about getting a match wrong. In actuality, Cid didn't do that bad here. Yes, he got blown out. But for whatever reason, Mega Man's whole series came back in a huge way this contest and could very well be back near 2002 levels. He did well, Proto Man won the board vote against Snake, and Zero also did very well for himself. Mega Man's just one of those characters that would suffer from 4ways because he overlaps with everything. Him being back to form is a good thing. He might not be able to turn the tide on Snake any time soon, but he just might be able to get revenge on that 2002 Sephiroth loss now. Just for the heck of it, let's assume Cid = Aeris (very reasonable given how accurate the vote-ins were all contest long) and check the LOL 2002 X-Stats: Aeris 35.32% 32,885 Sephiroth 64.68% 60,229 I mean really, this isn't within striking distance for Mega Man now? With how bad Sephiroth is falling off the map? Better yet, put Mario against Sephiroth and watch what happens. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3750&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Zack Fair vs (11)Yuna 2010 _source: (6)Zack Fair vs (11)Yuna 2010 (revid 59159)_ ## Results Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 12,669 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zack Fair - 55.44% 96 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zack Fair - 56.41% ## Ulti's Analysis Time to bust out "Why does this character get so overrated every year?". Current Subject: Yuna. (Side Note: Yuna is not as popular here as people think. Check these two polls out: ) Summer 2002: Doesn't get in. Summer 2003: Loses to Knuckles in a hyped match. Summer 2004: Doesn't get in. Summer 2005: Blown out by Ganondorf. Summer 2006: Wins 3 matches, gets to the quarterfinal and scores 42% on Zelda. Summer 2007: Second place against Master Chief twice, last place against Chief, Luigi and Ganondorf. Summer 2008: Doesn't get in. Where does all the faith for Yuna come from? The only thing she's ever done was as a direct result of the female bracket, which means about as much as the villain's bracket at this point. Meanwhile, Zack more than proved he was legit last year. Bandwagon or not, SFF help or not, he almost beat Mario. And this was after dominating three matches, two of which had Link in them. This really shouldn't have been a match anyone thought about for more than two seconds. On a related note, Leonhart4 had a perfect bracket and first place in the guru until this match, but the REIGN OF TERROR came to an end at the hands of OUR the ZackUNFair, leader of ZackFAQs. The match was never close, either. For a debated match, Yuna got utterly destroyed. And for the record, I'm a huge fan of hers. But why she gets overrated in contests every year is beyond me. And while Crisis Core was one of the worst games ever made, it wasn't Zack's fault. It's nice having a JRPG main character not be some brooding idiot, for once. Not that you could tell by his pictures, of course, but he is generally a happy guy. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3751&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Ryu Hayabusa vs (10)Crash Bandicoot 2010 _source: (7)Ryu Hayabusa vs (10)Crash Bandicoot 2010 (revid 59160)_ ## Results Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,897 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu Hayabusa - 67.31% 112 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu Hayabusa - 74.80% ## Ulti's Analysis This division had not one, but two fourpacks of "I can suck more than you". Zidane and Ike took turns bombing in the first round. A couple days later, Ryu Hayabusa and Master Chief did the exact same thing. Chief can be explained. No one likes him, and he gets anti-voted to hell in every single match. He's probably the one character left who would lose a board vote to Sephiroth. Ryu Hayabusa… can't be explained so easily. This was a very strange match, because most people were expecting at least a doubling. Crash had never been more than useless trash fodder in these things, and Ryu H has always been decently strong. He's had good-enough 1v1 performances, and some hilarious 4way moments. This guy once beat Kingdom Hearts by himself, and a year later he beat Zero -- after losing to him 63-37 in 2005. You don't mess with ninjas. But this was Winter 2010, a contest that made no sense. Ryu Hayabusa lost the board vote to Crash pretty badly, then only got up to 64% or so overnight. Then he turned around and got waxed with the morning vote. Getting only 62% on Crash was really bad at the time, and it seemed to stem all talk of a Ryu H \> Chief upset. All Chief really had to do was not embarrass himself against Spy. But, uh…. yeah. This is Master Flop we're talking about. And on a total side note, being a ninja automatically makes you a midcarder on this site. Gamers love ninjas. Shadow would almost assuredly be the strongest FF6 character (and he would SMOKE some fool if he ever made a sprite round), and Edge from FF4 has amazing official art. Someone make this happen. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3752&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Master Chief vs (15)Spy 2010 _source: (2)Master Chief vs (15)Spy 2010 (revid 59161)_ ## Results Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 15,945 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 66.16% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Master Chief - 91.76% ## Ulti's Analysis Ryu Hayabusa had just bombed against Crash, and lost the morning vote. The much-hyped round 2 match against Master Chief was a day match, which made said morning vote ownage all the more significant. All Chief had to do was not flop. He didn't even have to be that good, he just had to not suck. But this is Master Flop we're talking about. There was a massive rally for Spy on 4chan for this match, but still. Chief floated at almost exactly 60% for the entire match, did almost nothing with the ASV and was thoroughly embarrassed for 12 straight hours. Some 60-40 matches look really good, like Zack \> Yuna. Some, like this one, are just god-awful for the winner. Chief didn't even do anything with the ASV, his trademark trump card. Make no mistake here, Ryu H's performance on Crash was abysmal in every possible way. But leave it to Master Flop to make it not look so bad. Of course when you really think about it, every vote in this poll was a vote for Spy \<\_\< ## Trivia - Master Chief's 91.76% prediction percentage made him the first character since Donkey Kong in 2002 to break 90% prediction percentage and fail to double his opponent. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3753&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sora vs (16)Midna 2010 _source: (1)Sora vs (16)Midna 2010 (revid 59162)_ ## Results Thursday, January 16th, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Thursday, January 28th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,866 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 66.29% 109 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 84.38% ## Ulti's Analysis Midna had one of the weaker vote-in performances among those who placed from them, so it was no surprise she'd be stuck as 16 seed fodder in this contest. But even with her loss as a given, she helped prove a few things about Sora. Sora is basically a stronger version of Master Chief. He never blows anyone out because of Kingdom Hearts anti-votes, never gets blown out because of how popular Kingdom Hearts is and overperforms a lot because of killer morning votes and ASVs. This was a wholly unimpressive 64-36, but this is just who Sora is now. Thrives in fourways, not transitive in 1v1s and can't score a mega blowout ever. Mr. Driller or Tanner could probably break 20% on this dude. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3754&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Laharl vs (9)Neku Sakuraba 2010 _source: (8)Laharl vs (9)Neku Sakuraba 2010 (revid 59163)_ ## Results Thursday, Wednesday, January 28th - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Thursday, January 28th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,983 - **Oracle Expectations:** Laharl - 52.20% 82 for - 28 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Laharl - 61.99% ## Ulti's Analysis This match seems oddly familiar. Oh right, it's almost identical to this one: It was very similar in percentage, prediction percentage and even match pic appearance with all the purple. Granted Laharl was in both of these polls, but still. There's a contest Bacon won a prize in with an unknown user name, and he hasn't revealed which. Given how similar some of this bracket was to Summer 2004, Summer 2004 was likely that contest. With this match specifically, we have two cult characters in an 8/9 match that seem paired together on purpose. In 2004, the logic was Vyse being a contest before, being slightly less cult and being the top option in the poll -- primary and recency effect, in other words. Fast forward six years, and we get the exact same thing with another 8/9 Laharl poll. Laharl is slightly less cult, has been in contests before and was the top poll option. This made him the favorite to win this win-by-default poll, and that's exactly how it played out. It was an easy, expected win for Laharl, but you need only look at the lack of percentage shifts and vote total to see how much people really cared about this one. 55k total votes in a day match is dreadful. Maybe six years from now, Neku will be an 8 seed against Guybrush Threepwood in a day match or something and get handed an auto-win. For now, Laharl finally got his contest win and was removed from the list of long-time losers. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3755&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Kefka vs (12)Arthas Menethil 2010 _source: (5)Kefka vs (12)Arthas Menethil 2010 (revid 59164)_ ## Results Friday, January 29th, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Friday, January 29th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,043 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kefka - 46.68% 22 for - 87 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kefka - 73.87% ## Ulti's Analysis This was one of those most surprising, hilarious first round results. Thanks to Kefka routinely bombing in contests at every turn, people had completely lost faith in him doing anything. Every year he gets hyped, and every year he falls flat on his face. This was contrasted with Arthas, who put up good performances in 4ways and more or less equal to Diablo in the fourway stats. Diablo was a convenient barometer, because arguably Kefka's best contest featured him losing to Diablo. For all these reasons, Arthas was the massive guru favorite. Which made this complete murdering all the funnier. Not only did Kefka win, but he just totally massacred Arthas. There wasn't even an identifiable corpse. Some 60-40 matches can look bad for the winner, but this was not one of those. Kefka completely, thoroughly, utterly embarrassed the heavily favored Arthas. People figured Arthas = Diablo based on fourways, but in reality he's proven to be another Kerrigan in real matches. Just one more character in an ensemble, popular PC cast. Kefka made himself look really good this contest, but that only goes so far. Arthas dropped the ball here, big time. This was one of those guru-buster matches where the casuals made us look like idiots, but more importantly it helped continue proving how unreliable 4ways are for evaluating 1v1s. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3756&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Bowser vs (13)Frog 2010 _source: (4)Bowser vs (13)Frog 2010 (revid 59165)_ ## Results Friday, January 29th, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Friday, January 29th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,588 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 61.69% 109 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 80.23% ## Ulti's Analysis Figures the very match following a perfect LOL 4-WAYS result would go almost exactly as the 2008 stats predicted. That's just how Winter 2010 was. This was actually not a good thing for Bowser at the time, since the whole debate was whether he could upset Sora or not. And even though he did beat Sora this contest, only doing as expected on Frog, followed by that terrible performance against Kefka sort of foreshadowed Bowser's end in this. But the big thing here is "Why does this character get so overrated every year?", Frog Edition. Summer 2002: Doesn't get in. Summer 2003: Doesn't get in. Summer 2004: Barely beats Liquid, barely beats Master Chief thanks to late shenanigans, overperforms on Solid Shit. Summer 2005: Looks like crap against Riku, gets 70-30'd by Samus. Summer 2007: Needs a highly suspicious late rally to prevent Axel from swinging 2000 votes in a fourway poll, then gets third place against Samus, Scorpion and Midna. Summer 2008: Second place against Ganondorf, KOS-MOS and Neku, then gets third against Ganon, Samus and Nightmare. Frog gets overrated annually thanks to past shenanigans, and at this point we can almost guarantee he's cheated multiple times. Yes Chrono Trigger is weakening, but GameFAQs also has airtight security measures against cheating in polls now. If you think this isn't a huge reason why CT has fallen off the map, you're naïve. CT fans always attempt to cheat, all the way back to 2002, and occasionally they've succeeded. Now that the cheating no longer works, they've been awful. Not a coincidence. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3757&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)L-Block vs (14)HK-47 2010 _source: (3)L-Block vs (14)HK-47 2010 (revid 59166)_ ## Results Saturday, January 30th, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Saturday, January 30th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,473 - **Oracle Expectations:** L-Block - 63.23% 108 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** L-Block - 73.48% ## Ulti's Analysis A lot of sentiment flew around this contest about how Winter 2010 would be the death of joke characters, including Ngamer64 picking the HK-47 \> L-Block upset on the contest podcast. This sentiment was only half right, and only for a few characters. This contest wasn't the death of joke characters (just look at how Missingno did), but it did symbolize a lot of the 4way bandwagons becoming transitive. L-Block once built an 825 vote lead on Link in 5 minutes. 3 years later, he proved to be quite mortal and transitive, and in a way he got very lucky to be thrown into a terribly weak fourpack of characters. HK-47, Isaac and Professor Layton isn't exactly murderer's row, and very few people thought L-Block could get past Charizard or Kratos. Not only did L-Block come back down to earth this contest, but he even lost his trademark joke trend. He began this match at 66%, and only fell a little bit from there. Not exactly an overpowering win fitting for a former champion. L-Block will likely always make the field, maybe even with high seeds, but he'll never again be what he was. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3758&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Isaac vs (11)Professor Layton 2010 _source: (6)Isaac vs (11)Professor Layton 2010 (revid 59167)_ ## Results Saturday, January 30th, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Saturday, January 30th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 22,871 - **Oracle Expectations:** Isaac - 58.17% 108 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Isaac - 71.30% ## Ulti's Analysis The one issue with a large contest field of 1v1s is you get a little bit of dilution, and more than a few boring matches like this one. There was never any doubt Layton was going to be complete trash, but letting someone like Isaac get close to a 70-30 is borderline unacceptable and worthy of never making a contest ever again. The one bright side here is Isaac \*finally\* got a contest win, after seven long years of waiting. It all began in 2003 with Samus completely crushing him, and he's been inching forward ever since. He almost pulled off a massive upset over Lucario in 2008 (and helped further how god-awful Guybrush Threepwood is in the process), but this year he finally got that long-awaited win. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3759&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Charizard vs (10)Duke Nukem 2010 _source: (7)Charizard vs (10)Duke Nukem 2010 (revid 59168)_ ## Results Sunday, January 31st, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Sunday, January 31st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 16,117 - **Oracle Expectations:** Charizard - 56.45% 95 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Charizard - 53.36% ## Ulti's Analysis For whatever reason, this match was highly debated in some circles. It shouldn't have been, and Charizard went out and proved that in all of 3 seconds. This was a doubling for a little while, but eventually fell to 64-36. A lot of people thought this was some massive surprise, but the reality is Duke Nukem is just weak. Although it's hilarious some x-stats have Duke \> Kefka even after everything that happened this contest. Charizard would go on be very legit, but that wasn't really proven by this match. Duke is the same guy that lost to Marth, of all people. The main excitement here came from the match picture. Red box art communist Charizard against American Hero Duke was something else. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3760&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Kratos vs (15)Miles "Tails" Prower 2010 _source: (2)Kratos vs (15)Miles 'Tails' Prower 2010 (revid 83459)_ ## Results Sunday, January 31st, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Sunday, January 31st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 16,972 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kratos - 66.94% 110 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kratos - 85.60% ## Ulti's Analysis Even with Charizard seemingly being a strong character, the ball was still in Kratos's court to prove he was worthy of his 2 seed. This contest had some very bizarre 2 seeds, but most assumed Kratos wasn't one of them. On top of all this, Sonic Team looked like crap so far this contest. All Kratos had to do was annihilate Tails to cement his status as the favorite in the suddenly-debated Charizard/Kratos match. So in standard Winter 2010 fashion, Kratos disappoints big time. Not only did he struggle to break 60%, he did next to nothing with his trademark day vote. This can somewhat be blamed on Sonic characters also having a good day vote, but this match was an embarrassment no matter how you look at it. When you're heavy favorite and you let TAILS be the only member of Sonic Team to not look like crap, something is wrong. It doesn't take a big knowledge of extrapolated standings to know Charizard's performance on Duke was a \*lot\* more impressive than Kratos's showing against Tails, and it was clear Kratos was in a bind for round 2. Fun side note: Despite how well Kratos did in the 4ways, this match against Tails is his only 1v1 win. Ever. And he sucked doing it. LOL 4ways. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3761&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (16)Prince of Persia 2010 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (16)Prince of Persia 2010 (revid 59170)_ ## Results Monday, February 1st, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Monday, February 1st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 29,127 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 75.12% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 89.92% ## Ulti's Analysis Over 1 in 10 people picked Prince to win this match? Really? The only noteworthy thing about this poll is how awful Prince's match picture is. Cel shading is normally terrible, but that thing makes even Wind Waker Zelda look well-designed. Samus routinely has one of the best board votes of any character, and it showed up again this contest. It'll be hard for her to outdo that hilarious start against Sam Fisher back in the day, but this came close. She had over 90% of the votes for a bit at the beginning before stabilizing at 81% and falling a bit later. Doesn't matter. Samus was a total beast through her entire path this contest. More on this in later rounds ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3762&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Niko Bellic vs (9)Jill Valentine 2010 _source: (8)Niko Bellic vs (9)Jill Valentine 2010 (revid 59171)_ ## Results Monday, February 1st, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Monday, February 1st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 25,943 - **Oracle Expectations:** Jill - 55.72% 107 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Jill - 62.59% ## Ulti's Analysis Grand Theft Auto and its characters are notorious for falling into irrelevancy quickly, and that trend continued this contest. For whatever reason, Vice City is the only thing related to GTA with lasting strength. Not San Andreas, GTA3 or any of the characters. Niko was the only GTA character to make the field, and he didn't bother to show up. Jill was close to 70% here before the ASV showed up, and even then the match didn't become respectable. Niko just got totally wrecked, and there was some hype after this match of Jill maybe doing well on Samus. No matter how far and fast GTA tends to fall, Jill did a little better than people expected. The fall helps, but this was also the first match where a potential across-the-board Resident Evil boost came into play. RE5 was a god-awful game, but you can't really deny its impact. Everything in the series performed above expectations this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3763&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Roxas vs (12)Heavy 2010 _source: (5)Roxas vs (12)Heavy 2010 (revid 59172)_ ## Results Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,583 - **Oracle Expectations:** Roxas - 59.25% 108 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Roxas - 77.42% ## Ulti's Analysis This was a really strange match. Roxas was a lock to win it, but for the second time 4chan decided to have a huge rally for a Team Fortress 2 character. It didn't help Heavy get anywhere close to winning, but he managed to win a few updates overnight and pull Roxas's percentage down to 55% from 61%. Even with how bad Kingdom Hearts characters do overnight, that's a pretty large dropoff. Then the morning vote hit, and Roxas flew back upwards until the end. Trends aside, the only exciting thing about this match was the picture. When Roxas of all people can look as hard as Heavy, you know there's a good picsmith responsible. Oh right, KP made the pic. Duh. No wonder. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3764&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Tidus vs (13)Sub-Zero 2010 _source: (4)Tidus vs (13)Sub-Zero 2010 (revid 59173)_ ## Results Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,976 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sub-Zero - 49.29% 46 for - 64 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sub-Zero - 41.68% ## Ulti's Analysis "Why does this character get so overrated every year?", Tidus Edition. 2002 (Before any contest): Summer 2002: Beats Claire Redfield 55-45 (LOL), breaks 40% on Sonic. Summer 2003: Barely loses to Ganondorf. Side Poll from 2003: Summer 2004: Barely beats Shadow the Hedgehog, gets 65-35'd by Mega Man when slaves to the X-Stats thought he would score something like 49%. Summer 2005: Beats King of All Cosmos, gets totally blown out by Kirby in a match the LOL x-stats had Tidus winning. Summer 2006: Gets 72-28'd by Squall. Many blame SFF. Summer 2007: Second place against Isaac, Pikachu and Serge, then a close last place against Pikachu, Leon Kennedy and Vivi. Summer 2008: Barely loses out on first place against Cube, DK and Tails, then finishes third against Cube, Mega Man and Nero. Only slaves to extrapolated standings think Tidus is worth anything, but those with common sense realize he's just the Final Fantasy series version of Shadow the Hedgehog or Master Chief. Always looks decent, always loses weird matches he should win easily, always gets overrated because NEXT YEAR WILL BE HIS YEAR. This guy has been in every major character contest and has never once gotten past the second round. People don't like Tidus, anti-vote him a lot and render him non-transitive or non-linear or whatever you want to call it. Shadow the Hedgehog is an especially ironic comparison, because the 2003 stats equally overrated them and the match went as planned anyway. It was hilarious. Which leads us to this year. There was no doubt Sub-Zero would do in this match what he did to Master Chief in 2006. Don't let the final percentage fool you, either. This was never close and is another match in a long line of bad performances by Tidus. Next year they should just set up (5)Tidus vs (12)Jecht and complete the embarrassment full circle. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3765&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Phoenix Wright vs (14)Jecht 2010 _source: (3)Phoenix Wright vs (14)Jecht 2010 (revid 59174)_ ## Results Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,695 - **Oracle Expectations:** Jecht - 52.65% 73 for - 37 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Jecht - 45.40% ## Ulti's Analysis This was one of the most debated matches of round 1 pre-contest, and it was given a little extra oomph with Tidus losing to Sub-Zero in the match preceding it. It was possible we'd have a 24 hour period with father and son losing back to back. The reason this was so debated is because one, the match was very important -- in all likelihood it was a 3 point match because the winner was a near-lock to defeat Ratchet. Two, Jecht was a true untested wild card with strength presumably in Phoenix's range. Untested characters are very fun in today's era of stats and trend knowledge, because it's a good shot in the arm. The only debate here was whether or not you felt Jecht had the strength to beat Phoenix. That's it. Or maybe a better way to say it would be which among these two characters was weaker, because presumably neither of these two would light the world on fire. Phoenix is by far Board 8's favorite character, so every year he'll get nominated a lot and get good seeds. Whether he does anything with them or not is a different story, and you can make a case he's still a cult character. We all love him, but look at his contest history. This guy broke GFNW in 2006, needed massive rallying to hold off Bomberman in 2007, got extremely lucky with his first fourpack in 2008, and his game got totally worked over in 2009. If you set Jecht equal to Tidus, you get statistical values well above these performances (and frankly, Jecht is more popular than Tidus; that is a 1v1 match we need to see one day, and it could happen given Bacon's love of SFF). Even Sin's warped villain's contest value is better than most of this stuff. People knew all this. The main argument in Phoenix's favor was seeding (and thus, bracket votes) and it being a night match. Phoenix has pure joke trends and gets a lot of rallying, so the thought was he could hold off Jecht for 12 hours if he built a good lead early. When the poll began, it was clear Phoenix was done. He wasn't able to stay above even 52% after 5 minutes had passed, which is a death sentence against Square at night. Phoenix held on for a few more updates before completely collapsing, and Jecht pulled in around 55% of the vote overnight to seal the deal. It wasn't all that unexpected a result, but it was pretty disappointing to see Phoenix drop the ball so much in a winnable match. His biggest lead was 87 in a winnable match; he's done much better in matches where he had no chance at all. For Jecht, he proved he was legit and essentially earned a bye into the third round. Fun Fact: We lost the last perfect during Phoenix vs Jecht, which was none other than Dr_Football Factor'D himself. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3766&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Ratchet vs (11)Eddie Riggs 2010 _source: (6)Ratchet vs (11)Eddie Riggs 2010 (revid 61193)_ ## Results Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 22,625 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ratchet - 56.98% 100 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ratchet - 77.71% ## Ulti's Analysis Jack Black might have done better than this. Even in AntiBlowoutFAQs, this contest still had some laughably terrible performances. Eddie Riggs was one of them. Go here: There is not one single poll on there -- not ONE -- where Ratchet was anything but total crap. And before saying that 2007 PS3 poll is relevant, check out pre-Uncharted 2 Nathan Drake getting almost tripled by CATS: Until Eddie Riggs showed up, Ratchet was complete fodder. But once again, we're shown how most characters can look like gods in the right circumstance. Stick Ratchet against Guybrush Threepwood and he probably breaks 90%. Eddie Riggs is lucky this poll wasn't 70-30 or something, and it came close for awhile, but his big role here was finally getting Ratchet off the winless characters list. It took 7 long years, but he finally pulled through. As a total aside, Tim Schafer is one of the most overrated people out there. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3767&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Travis Touchdown vs (10)Zelda 2010 _source: (7)Travis Touchdown vs (10)Zelda 2010 (revid 59176)_ ## Results Thursday, February 4th, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Thursday, February 4th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 20,216 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda - 72.05% 109 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 89.04% ## Ulti's Analysis This was kind of a weird match. Zelda was expected to get something like 78% here based on 2008, underperformed by a bunch and it still barely mattered. Her path was set in stone: win 3 times, lose to Samus. You could probably blame No More Heroes 2's release for Travis doing so well here, and we'll see if he drops next year. The main thing here that was odd is Travis getting a 7 seed. A 7 seed, really? There's almost no way this guy survives a vote-in, yet he was somehow nominated enough to get a 7? I find this impossible to believe. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3760&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs (15)Simon Belmont 2010 _source: (2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs (15)Simon Belmont 2010 (revid 59177)_ ## Results Thursday, February 4th, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Thursday, February 4th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,692 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ezio - 63.94% 106 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ezio - 47.90% ## Ulti's Analysis Alucard's Plan once again came to fruition in this match. The poll was glitched at the start, and Simon Belmont led 8-2 for 15 minutes. Eventually things got underway proper, but Ezio failed to do as expected on Simon for quite awhile. Even after the misspelling in Ezio's name was corrected (it was "Ezio Auditore di Firenze" for awhile) and Ezio blasted off with the ASV to a near 60-40 win, it still wasn't enough. Simon Belmont is one of those characters whose never done anything in these contests dating back to 2002, yet Ezio failed to blow him out. Not only that, but he failed to even be the bracket favorite as a 2 seed against a character that's never won before. Has a 2 seed ever not been the bracket favorite before? This was a thoroughly terrible performance by Ezio, and it shut down all the stupid Ezio \> Zelda hype being thrown around. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3769&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)Ridley 2010 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)Ridley 2010 (revid 59178)_ ## Results Friday, February 5th, 2010, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Friday, February 5th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 24,066 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 77.94% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 93.96% ## Ulti's Analysis For the first hour of this poll, Cloud looked like total crap. He floated around 65%, which seems good at a glance but isn't good at all in this case. For reference, Cloud got 70% on Bowser back in 2003. Now either Ridley got the most massive boost possible from Brawl, or Cloud has simply lost a step. Yes he ended up making the final, but in all his matches this contest he's shown signs of weakening. Back to Ridley for a second, there's only so much credit you can give him. He SUCKED in the villain's contest and is probably overrated in those stats thanks to Diablo's bandwagon run and Ganondorf's overperformance on Sephiroth. Sure Cloud got a terrible picture and Ridley's finally recognizable in his own pic, but still. Holding Cloud steady under 70% until the Total Domination Zone is really something else. Barring a Final Fantasy 7 remake, we're only a year or two away from Cloud and Sephiroth going the way of Crono. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3770&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Chris Redfield vs (9)Captain MacMillan 2010 _source: (8)Chris Redfield vs (9)Captain MacMillan 2010 (revid 59179)_ ## Results Friday, February 5th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Friday, February 5th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 22,705 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chris - 64.05% 107 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chris - 72.07% ## Ulti's Analysis What's truly sad is that might be the best possible picture for MacMillan. Dude never gets out of his bush. This is a very cut-and-dry match. According to Leon's 2008 stats, MacMillan was expected to get 28% here. We saw Resident Evil 5 and Modern Warfare 2 get released since, but the expected percentages stayed about the same during the actual match. MacMillan probably did a tiny bit better than expected because of that terribad picture, but what can you do. This was the second of three straight matches with Call of Duty characters losing badly in the first round. So in a way, Call of Duty has something in common with Chrono Trigger. These guys looked AWFUL this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3771&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Riku vs (12)Ramza Beoulve 2010 _source: (5)Riku vs (12)Ramza Beoulve 2010 (revid 59180)_ ## Results Saturday, February 6th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Saturday, February 6th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 11,862 - **Oracle Expectations:** Riku - 62.73% 105 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Riku - 79.75% ## Ulti's Analysis Huge props to Heroic Mario for that Ramza pic. Making him look sharp is really tough. As for the actual match, it wasn't quite as easy a win for Riku as some people expected, but still easy enough. FFT has a really weird strength to it, plus this was a night match. KH is awful at night, while Square usually does very well. Even still, Riku looked fine in this match and gave no indicators at all of his impending upset in round 2. On a total side note, you people need to get Delita into one of these things. He's the one out doing all the dirty work and nailing hot princesses, while Ramza runs around trying to get his incest on while ignoring all of Ivalice's beautiful women. Explain to me how this makes any sense. Plus he runs around in those hideous buttpants. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3772&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Captain Falcon vs (13)Wander 2010 _source: (4)Captain Falcon vs (13)Wander 2010 (revid 59181)_ ## Results Saturday, February 6th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Saturday, February 6th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 27,908 - **Oracle Expectations:** Captain Falcon - 69.82% 107 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Captain Falcon - 53.09% ## Ulti's Analysis According to Bacon, Revolver Ocelot got the fewest nominations of the auto-bids. Yet Ocelot was seeded higher than Wander? We could have slapped this loser trash into a vote-in poll and kept him out of the field, but didn't? Wander is the main character of the single worst game ever made. No exemptions or mercy; get this garbage out of here. Actually on better thought, let Shadow of the Framerate trash in every contest. It's fun seeing how badly it embarrasses itself annually, plus it's fun seeing how people still try to defend that game. Yes, it was influential. Everyone wanted giant bosses after that game came out. It's also "influential" in the same way lack of waste disposal systems in Victorian-era cities were influential -- but you don't read books about fecal matter lining the streets being the best thing ever. On the contrary, fleas picked up the black plague from raw sewage, infected local rats and ended up killing off half of Europe. And that's what Shadow of the Framerate is: gaming's black plague. Go. The. Hell. Away. Watching Captain Falcon completely destroy this idiot was very pleasing. Some will say he moved on to bigger and better things this contest. I say nothing is bigger or better than crushing Shadow of the Overrated. If we ever got (7)Wander vs (10)Guybrush Threepwood, I just might drive off a bridge. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3773&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Leon Kennedy vs (14)Vault Boy 2010 _source: (3)Leon Kennedy vs (14)Vault Boy 2010 (revid 59182)_ ## Results Sunday, February 7th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Sunday, February 7th, 2010, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 12,090 - **Oracle Expectations:** Leon - 67.55% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Leon - 76.51% ## Ulti's Analysis Some people don't like joke characters in contests, and that's all well and good. Some people want contests to have all legit entrants. How Vault Boy got caught up in that argument is anyone's guess. He did way better than people expected in a match he was guaranteed to lose, and his reward for it were people crying in real life for 12 straight hours about him doing well. Huh? Vault Boy is the face of the Fallout series, is anything but a joke character and this poll proved he can be pretty legit in the right situation. People should be happy there's a new face to get in these, not acting all butthurt and crying like little girls. If Vault Boy saw that sort of thing, he'd kick your pregnant girlfriend in the stomach with a smile on his face. Grow up, children. That said, this was a weird performance by Leon. His path was set in stone, but Vault Boy \> Sackboy/Kratos was not something people expected pre-contest. He and RE4 are basically a different entity from within the RE series. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3774&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sackboy vs (11)Kratos Aurion 2010 _source: (6)Sackboy vs (11)Kratos Aurion 2010 (revid 59183)_ ## Results Sunday, February 7th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Sunday, February 7th, 2010, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,525 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sackboy - 47.33% 32 for - 76 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sackboy - 63.00% ## Ulti's Analysis Kratos Aurion was far and away the guru favorite here, yet it ended up being one of those matches where the casuals embarrassed the experts. Kratos was never in this match, and only did well when the Super Bowl was on. The trend graph for this is hilarious, because you see Sackboy doing well, then he drops off a lot during the Super Bowl before going back up again. It graphically shows the disconnect between casual and hardcore gamers. The stereotype is casual gamers are more likely to be normal, functional people into sports, girls and whatever else the popular guys like these days, while hardcore gamers are the otaku neckbeards who live in their mom's basement and live off their parents income until roughly the age of 30. Both sides of that coin can be rather dumb, but the point here is how it's right on a graph. The proof is right there: hardcore gamers don't like sports as much, and even the ones that do were probably watching the Super Bowl at home. Take from this what you will. There are two other major points about this match. One, it's clear LittleBigPlanet has suffered from always being in polls with Metal Gear Solid 4. It finally got the chance to be in a poll alone, and did really well. Secondly, it's time to stop nominating Tales of Symphonia characters. None of them have ever amounted to anything, and ironically the only one likely to have any strength is Kratos himself. So nominate Kratos until he wins. Everyone else can go away, especially those who keep popping in from other games in the series. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3775&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Ryu vs (10)Balthier Bunansa 2010 _source: (7)Ryu vs (10)Balthier Bunansa 2010 (revid 59184)_ ## Results Monday, February 8th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Monday, February 8th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,457 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 63.82% 107 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 82.50% ## Ulti's Analysis The Midgar division was full of characters and games that really need to go away and stay out of contests. Balthier is another such culprit, even though he might be the one thing from that game worth putting in a positive light. Final Fantasy 12 is a terrible game and is completely indefensible. MMOs are not meant to be single player games. When you try to turn them into single player games, you get Final Fantasy 12. And not only that, but the game is SO REVOLUTIONARY that it plays itself. You can, and will, fall asleep playing it from not doing anything. There is next to no plot outside of "here’s a world map, where do we go next", the design is horribly generic and there are almost no good characters to speak of besides Balthier and Gabranth (for the 3 minutes he's on camera). Maybe Fran and Ashe if you enjoy seeing how far those cosplay freaks are willing to go (Ashe would be better if she didn't spent 95% of the game fretting over one choice and being a complete idiot about it the entire time), and \*maybe\* Basch would be decent if he had more screen time. Beyond that, no one. Not even Cid. We've seen the mad scientist act a million times from a million characters. Why Board 8 has a 200 post topic with the same 3 whackos arguing against these points (I like to call them "facts") every month is beyond me. The game is not good. The characters are not good. Stop pretending there's something good here when there isn't. In related news, Ryu was over 70% in this poll for awhile before the Square overnight vote hit. A hilarious match idea that came from this match and the Pokefad: (6)Kadabra vs (11)Balthier. What's sad is Balthier would probably lose that. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3776&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Dante vs (15)Axel 2010 _source: (2)Dante vs (15)Axel 2010 (revid 59185)_ ## Results Monday, February 8th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Monday, February 8th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 27,803 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 64.27% 107 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 85.08% ## Ulti's Analysis The idea here was simple. Frog = Axel \> Balthier based on really easy 4way stats. You don't even need huge extrapolation there to figure this out, Frog was dead even with Axel in a match and Balthier sucked in comparison. If Dante equaled or bettered Ryu's percentage of 68.97% against a stronger character than Balthier -- a stronger character with a great day vote in a day match, to boot -- then the whole debate about the anticipated round 2 match could be laid to rest. Not only did Dante outdo Ryu's percentage, he did so easily. He was over 71% for awhile, and it took the insane Kingdom Hearts ASV just to get him down near 69%. For all intents and purposes, the Ryu/Dante argument should have ended right here. Really easy statistics and comparing their first round performances this year say Dante should have won that match with ease. And, well…. we all know what happened. More on that at the appropriate time. As for Axel, this is the match where people started to wonder what was up with Kingdom Hearts. All 4 characters had had their matches by this point, and none of them looked particularly good. Only one had a day match, Axel, and he looked awful before the ASV hit. We would learn later that yeah, something really was up with Kingdom Hearts this contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3777&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (16)Proto Man 2010 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (16)Proto Man 2010 (revid 59186)_ ## Results Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 23,161 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 75.23% 102 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 92.64% ## Ulti's Analysis Snake ended up making the tournament semifinal of this contest, but he had a strange path there. In his first three matches, he lost the board vote badly to Nintendo characters. Mega Man might be a Capcom series, but this contest more than proved the Nintendo overlap. Anyway Snake doing weird against Nintendo characters while being his Brawl-boosted self everywhere else proved his newfound Nintendo support collapses against other Nintendo characters. He finished ahead of Samus in this stats this contest, but would likely still lose to her because of this. Snake vs Mario wouldn't be debatable, either. Mario would win easily. We'll never fully know the answer to this until Snake is given a path against Nintendo instead of Final Fantasy 7, but the evidence is there. As for this particular match, Snake was held below 70% for awhile before rising overnight. Not much else to say. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3778&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Lloyd Irving vs (9)Fox McCloud 2010 _source: (8)Lloyd Irving vs (9)Fox McCloud 2010 (revid 59187)_ ## Results Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 23,346 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fox - 63.18% 105 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fox - 84.28% ## Ulti's Analysis Seriously, it's time to stop nominating Tales of Symphonia characters. Fox didn't have a 1v1 win in 7 years before this match, then Tales of Symphonia showed up and Fox scored an easy doubling. The match barely moved all day which made it fairly boring, but it's rare you see a lower seed with such a massive bracket advantage. The casuals learned long ago to never bank on Tales of Symphonia, and the characters aren't getting any younger. Time to stop getting them in altogether. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3779&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Pikachu vs (12)Banjo 2010 _source: (5)Pikachu vs (12)Banjo 2010 (revid 59188)_ ## Results Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 24,998 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pikachu - 70.30% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pikachu - 90.19% ## Ulti's Analysis This match was hilarious. Back in 2002, Pikachu almost lost to PaRappa the Rapper before getting completely annihilated by Cloud. A year later, he got annihilated by Fox. Pokemon was fully anti-voted, and it looked like the series would never amount to anything on this site. Fast forward 8 years, and it's come full circle. Now it's cool to like Pokemon again, and in contests they've gone totally berserk. The thought of Pikachu scoring an SFF blowout 8 years ago would have been laughable, but here it was. Banjo is weak, but getting tripled by Pikachu is something else. For all we know, Banjo could be the next Captain Falcon. He's never had a match against anything but Nintendo and always gets SFFd. Who knows if he has actual strength or not. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3780&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Commander Shepard vs (13)Ellis 2010 _source: (4)Commander Shepard vs (13)Ellis 2010 (revid 68072)_ ## Results Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 34,065 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shepard - 61.04% 104 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shepard - 71.76% ## Ulti's Analysis Left 4 Dead 2 coming out a little before this contest helped Ellis get nominations, but it's pretty clear he has no business in the contest field. He was also stuck going up against Commander Shepard less than 2 weeks after Mass Effect 2 was released, so it was clear Shepard would annihilate this poll. A tripling was perhaps unexpected, but regardless. Ellis making the field was kind of stupid, and it showed. Shepard also proved to be very legit this contest, even beyond this match. He's come a long way since almost getting doubled by a bag of sand in 2008. Well Magus also almost doubled him in that poll, but Shepard would probably beat Magus these days. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3781&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (14)Aeris Gainsborough 2010 _source: (3)Auron vs (14)Aeris Gainsborough 2010 (revid 59190)_ ## Results Thursday, February 11th, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Thursday, February 11th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,888 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 60.86% 105 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 57.70% ## Ulti's Analysis "They're both dead." "My legs, I mean. I just went running. My left leg felt like it was dead before I even started, and my right leg felt like something stabbed it all the way through afterwards." -Weaku This match was all about setting up for the highly debated Auron vs Squall affair in round 3, but Aeris not making the field in 2008 sort of messed the expectations up. If you go back to 2007, Ngamer's LOL x-stats calculator has Auron getting 59% against Aeris. The 2007 stats are warped beyond belief, but upper 50s is a realistic expectation for Auron in this match. And Auron more or less did exactly as expected. This is fine if you're just looking to get wins, but Auron was looking to score an upset over an upward-trending Squall this year. As-expected doesn't really get it done, though we hadn't yet seen what Squall would do. The whole Auron/Squall debate comes down to whether or not Auron's upset over Sonic in the LOL 4ways was legit, but we now know the 4way results are practically dismissible. Not to mention, Squall probably does the same thing in Auron's position last year. By the way, it's still "Aeris" and always will be. Blame Japan for having a terrible language that makes no sense. "su" can have two identical meanings for whatever reason, but a better explanation can come from one of those Japanophile freaks. You know, the bad hygiene, no-friends people who cling to that I'M MOVING TO JAPAN SO KAWAII ANIME RULES I STUDY KANJI notion. Here's a great look into how terrible Japan really is: I have friends who actually made the mistake of moving there. Every single point in that article is 100% true. But hey JAPAN MAKES ANIME SO THEY MUST RULE. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3782&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Zero vs (11)Marcus Fenix 2010 _source: (6)Zero vs (11)Marcus Fenix 2010 (revid 59191)_ ## Results Thursday, February 11th, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Thursday, February 11th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 23,706 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 62.82% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 60.25% ## Ulti's Analysis Zero is one of those characters whose been screwed over by bracket placement, SFF and the Mega Man series' stall for years in these things, but this was the contest where all of Mega Man returned to form. Zero was almost at the near-elite level back in the early Zeroes (history WILL call last decade the "Zeroes", by the way; "aughts" or whatever is just terrible), then got stuck being against Luigi and Nintendo 4way LFF several times. But this contest, Zero is back. Marcus Fenix is one of those beefcake casual-bait 360 characters who tends to fall off the map quickly following a big release, and this contest was no different. Fenix was never going to compete in this match, nor did he. The 360 ASV (which for some reason was diluted a lot this contest, and I don't think the 12 hour format had too much to do with it) almost got it below a doubling before Zero went back up afterward. It's a shame Zero's path was a predetermined second round exit, because he's always been a strong character stuck behind the 8-ball. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3783&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Darth Revan vs (10)Terra Branford 2010 _source: (7)Darth Revan vs (10)Terra Branford 2010 (revid 59192)_ ## Results Friday, February 12th, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Friday, February 12th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,965 - **Oracle Expectations:** Terra - 49.59% 43 for - 63 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Terra - 52.73% ## Ulti's Analysis Both guys who made pics here deserve a ton of credit. Photoshop hates light sabers like nothing else, and that is also an OUTSTANDING picture of Terra from RPGuy. One of my favorite overall round 1 pics this contest. This was one of those matches that was weird at the time, but makes great sense in hindsight. Because of how awful Terra has been in contests for so long, people jumped all over Darth Revan \> Terra. It made perfect sense, and without Dissidia it would have easily happened. Star Wars KOTOR made a great showing in the 2009 games contest, so the natural conclusion was Revan would do well. Add in a surefire good match pic for him, and this was supposed to be a slam dunk win for him. But Dissidia \*did\* happen, which threw a monkey wrench into the consensus. Dissidia didn't boost New Square (though a good case can be made for Jecht), but the effect on Old Square was paramount. Dissidia exposed Old Square to the New Square audience that maybe didn't give those older characters a chance, and it showed this contest. Cecil, Terra and Kefka all did well this contest, and Terra wasn't finished impressing once she was finished backhanding Revan. It seemed embarrassing for Revan at the time, but he ended up being about as strong as everyone thought. Terra just went far, far above everyone's expectations thanks to her newfound EX Dualcast strength. Dissidia is a weird case. The game is unequivocal garbage with one of the worst scripts ever written (and I hesitate to call that fanfic trash a "script"), yet it makes many of the characters look really good anyway. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3784&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Squall Leonhart vs (15)Akuma 2010 _source: (2)Squall Leonhart vs (15)Akuma 2010 (revid 59193)_ ## Results Friday, February 12th, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Friday, February 12th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 25,201 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 67.53% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 82.51% ## Ulti's Analysis Akuma is probably on the M. Bison/Vega level of strength in contests, yet rarely makes the field. And when he does, his seed is bad. Street Fighter fans need to learn how to focus nominations better. For what it's worth, Squall was expected to get 71% here based on the LOL 2007 x-stats. He ended up with 68% in a match that stayed almost exactly at 68-32 for 12 straight hours. Ergo, he "underperformed" by about the same amount relative to Auron, though this doesn't really factor in 2008 because Ngamer and ngirl have been too lazy to get those stats into the calculator. Too busy worrying about User of the Year e-cred! Anyway, this told us very little about the Squall/Auron match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3785&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (16)Marth 2010 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (16)Marth 2010 (revid 59194)_ ## Results Saturday, February 13th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Saturday, February 13th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 23,860 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 71.77% 101 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 93.87% ## Ulti's Analysis This match was pretty much Cloud vs Ridley, but with two lesser characters. Sephiroth started out with the standard terrible board vote, then rose overnight to almost the exact same percentage Cloud got. This is all well and good when comparing Sephiroth to Cloud, but the comparison to make here is between Sephiroth and Solid Snake. Proto Man is assuredly a stronger character than Marth, and Snake got a higher score on Proto Man than Seph got on Marth. Comparing these two 1/16 matches in the first round would be the only time we'd have a round with a fair comparison between the two characters. Sephiroth's path from here ended up being Vincent, Missingno, and Tifa. 2 SFF matches and a bandwagon are awful reads, although Seph would end up doing god-awful in all three. Basically, it was clear from the start Seph was in serious trouble. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3786&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Vincent Valentine vs (9)Guybrush Threepwood 2010 _source: (8)Vincent Valentine vs (9)Guybrush Threepwood 2010 (revid 59195)_ ## Results Saturday, February 13th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Saturday, February 13th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 36,635 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vincent - 76.19% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vincent - 87.80% ## Ulti's Analysis Who are the freaks who nominate Guybrush to good seeds every year? He's a complete waste of a contest slot \*every\* year and needs to go away. Permanently. When "AW YEAH GUYBRUSH WASN'T ON THE LOSING END OF THE CONTEST'S BIGGEST BLOWOUT HE DID 3% BETTER THAN EXPECTED" is your big angle, you know your character of choice is fodder trash. I mean really, this is what we've come to? People being happy when Guybrush holds someone under 80%? Get this garbage out of here. He's clearly never going to win. On second thought, let's have a (6)Guybrush Threepwood vs (11)CATS match. Loser is booted from the contests forever. This is realistic seeding too, since Europe is full of cracked out Monkey Island fans who think “Look behind you, a Three-Headed Monkey!” is the pinnacle of humor. A useless character getting anything above 16 seed every year must be the eighth wonder of the world. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3787&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yoshi vs (12)Jak 2010 _source: (5)Yoshi vs (12)Jak 2010 (revid 59196)_ ## Results Sunday, February 14th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Sunday, February 14th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 25,825 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 68.99% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 86.21% ## Ulti's Analysis Jak is one of those widely-known characters where most people have played his games and like him, but for whatever reason they don't vote for him. He's in that whole 3d platformer group of Crash/Ratchet/Jak/Dexter/Clank/etc where everyone likes him but there's no strength from the group whatsoever. Worse yet, the dude got stuck being paired against Yoshi in round 1. Ed Bellis picked this as his upset special on one of the contest podcasts, which is definitely a contender for the Ed Bellis Award for Excellence in the Field of Ed Bellis. For the rest of us, this was an easy gimme match. It was also a very boring match with no trending at all. Yoshi stayed at 76.6 for almost a full 12 hours. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3788&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Crono vs (13)Missingno 2010 _source: (4)Crono vs (13)Missingno 2010 (revid 59197)_ ## Results Sunday, February 14th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Sunday, February 14th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 527 - **Oracle Expectations:** Missingno - 39.05% 2 for - 104 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Missingno - 21.94% ## Ulti's Analysis This was more or less the highlight of the entire contest, not to mention its most important and hyped match. From the moment Missingno crushed its vote-in poll, people pointed to it as the next potential L-Block and got the bandwagon going. Then the bracket came out, and it got the worst possible draw ever: Crono, a Noble Niner in the first round. Even \*if\* Missingno got past Crono, he'd have Yoshi next, then Sephiroth in a night match. Had Missingno managed to get through all that, he probably would have won the entire contest. RockMFR actually banked on this and picked Missingno to win in his guru. Other people were equally intelligent about their Missingno picks. Palmer predicted Missingno's path perfectly -- that is, he picked Missingno to beat Crono and Yoshi, then lose to Sephiroth. Only 7.08% of people picked this path correctly, and of those lucky few won the contest because of this upset parlayed with Charizard winning the Heart division and Snake \> Sephiroth. But before all that, Missingno had to actually beat Crono. Even with Crono being the weakest member of the Noble Nine right now and getting stuck in a day match against a Pokemon, this was a very tall order. Even those few who picked Missingno knew it was a longshot at best, but no matter what this was bound to be a great match. The pre-match hype was completely ridiculous, and the arguing was hilarious. Oh man, the arguing. Ever since L-Block in 2007, there's been this huge groundswell of anti-joke vs pro-joke people. Both can be really annoying, and Missingno was unfortunately the big target of the backlash this year. It started when he crushed the vote-in, and you can imagine how bad it got once he started winning. There's nothing wrong with being anti-joke and wanting the polls to have as much credibility as possible (whatever this even means these days; for the record, the VERY FIRST MATCH EVER had a joke character in it so arguing "contest credibility" is moronic), but there is something wrong being unreasonably obnoxious about it. We get it. You don't think inanimate objects, jokes and glitches should get in because joke strength isn't legitimate strength for whatever reason. Basically, you have sand on your crotch and forgot how to have fun a long time ago. Stop ruining it for everyone else. As for the actual match, it was worthy of all the hype. There were 1175 votes in the first 5 minutes, and Crono led by a single vote after that first five minutes. It would be the only update all match where Crono led. After that update, Missingno went on a bandwagon-fueled steroid rampage. Within 2 hours, he had a 600 vote lead and the match more or less seemed over. The Pokemon ASV hadn't yet shown up -- even though the match was on a Sunday and the "ASV" was diluted, characters with good ASVs always trend up during the late afternoon for awhile. But in standard Crono fashion, he did the exact opposite of what we all expected and actually started coming back during the Pokemon ASV. But every time Crono made any headway at all, Missingno would slap it back down in a couple updates with the power of bandwagoned rallying. People were ready for this match for weeks in advance, and the match being on a Sunday was great news for the rallyers. The match continued like this for hours, with Crono making some gains and Missingno slapping them all away, until the evening. Around 7 EST or so, Crono finally started a comeback attempt that would stick. He was down 600 votes (and had been down by that much for about half the match), but finally started doing some damage. Over the next two hours, he made massive cuts on the lead and got it all the way down below 200. Missingno slapped that away and got it back up to 270 pretty quickly, but then Crono started coming back yet again afterwards and got the lead all the way down to 115. For the second time, the match seemed over. Crono's second night vote was about to start, and with his newfound momentum it looked like he would put away the glitch for good. But you don't mess with joke character bandwagon rallies. NO ONE, not even Crono with the SNV or Mario with "The Clutch", could beat a bandwagon rallied joke character in a close match. Missingno not only took Crono's SNV from him, but he did so without any mercy or pause. For the last couple hours of the poll, Missingno pulled in updates in the 53-55% range and removed all doubt from this match. People of course wanted Bacon to check for vote-stuffing in such a high-scoring close match involving a rallied joke, so extended the poll for 30 minutes due to technical difficulties. lol j/k The match ended at midnight as planned, and Missingno was declared the legitimate winner. He made another topic explaining all the attempted cheating ("attempted" being the key word here, since cheating is almost impossible on this site now) and where it came from. Crono fans attempted to cheat twice as much as Missingno fans, and Missingno won every single significant voting block: registered users, unregistered users, you name it. It was a legit, rallied win for Missingno. More importantly, it signified the end of the Noble Nine's 1v1 streak. In 1v1s, the Noble Nine was 124-0 against outsiders. Thanks to Missingno's upset, that streak finally ended. The only thing the NN has left where it's undefeated is 24-hour 1v1s, but they might never come back for a full contest. 12-hour polls are too fun. The aftermath was of course nuts with cheating accusations, people complaining how Missingno would become L-Block and all the rest. And for whatever reason, the resident Board 8 trolls (the number of which is unfortunately very high) latched onto anti-Noble Nine sentiment as their latest topic of interest. In every topic about the Noble Nine, the same 10 idiots would derail and talk about how the NN doesn't exist, how new characters should be added, how old-timers who invented the concept had no right to define it and whatever other dumb nonsense these people came up with. I didn't save the topic I made that day, but it went something like this: Title: "As someone who actually helped define the Noble Nine, be quiet." Body: "There's a massive amount of misinformation getting thrown around about the Noble Nine, so allow me to set the record straight for the ignorant. -'Noble Nine' was a term coined by Slowflake in the stats topic in 2003 as extrapolated standings became popular. We all liked Slow, so we all ended up using the term and it stuck. It was catchy, and more importantly it was accurate. We in the stats topic then helped flesh and define things. -The Noble Nine are nine characters who have made every main character contest since 2002, who until today did not lose to outside competition. Those characters are Link, Cloud, Sephiroth, Mario, Samus, Mega Man, Solid Snake, Sonic the Hedgehog and Crono. The only character even up for debate here is Squall, but his loss to Vincent 1v1 puts that argument to rest. -Addendum to the "made every contest since 2002" point. There is no adding or removing anyone. Crono losing doesn't mean anything. You don't get to remove him, then add Missingno, Luigi, Bowser, Tifa, L-Block, Vincent or whoever else. It doesn't work that way. -Crono losing doesn't change who the Noble Nine is. There is no Super Seven, Terrific Ten or whatever else. The Noble Nine is still the same nine characters, they just don't have their winning streak anymore. That's it. It's not brain surgery. -Actually yes, those who were around to define the term get to make the rules. Thanks for asking. Random trolls whining in every topic is wholly irrelevant to the process. This was all decided SEVEN YEARS AGO. You're free to make whatever term you want, but it won't become contest nomenclature. All three B8 wiki admins, including myself, agree with my recount of events, have no issue deleting all the alternate pages people are making out of spite and have no issue with me banning you from making edits. If you think you'll get people to call it the Terrific Ten, best of luck to you. Stop whining. This is how it always will be: " The topic was stickied by Math Murderer within 5 minutes, so one could say even the GameFAQs staff agrees with the term's definition. The aftermath of this match died out over time once people remembered how the ignore button works (it's not like any of the anti-NN crybabies are worth listening to, anyway), and common sense and rationality won the day yet again. As a total side note, the Noble Nine page on the wiki became the most visited page after this match. I didn't know the term was so widespread, and there were a TON of topics from people no one had seen before talking about it. Very interesting stuff. As for the more relevant aftermath, Missingno parlayed this win into a very fun contest run, and might have won the thing outright with better bracket placement. Crono, then Yoshi, then Night Sephiroth was just impossible to get through. Crono however cemented Chrono Trigger's collapse. All three Crono Trigger characters lost in the first round of this contest, which is something that cannot be said of any other game from any other Noble Niner regarding any other contest. CT has fallen off the rails in recent years, and it's only going to get worse. Magus's collapse is well-known, Crono is hopping into that "don't ever trust me" boat along with him, and Frog has been slipping off the map rather subtly. This speaks nothing of CT getting punked by Mario 64 twice in the 2009 games contest. All in all, match of the year. Easily. ## Whoops! Crono encountered 'M, tried fighting it and lost all his save data. Better luck next year. ## Other Board 8 Reaction Crono lost in a very close match that went back and forth all day long. this was one of the highest voted matches of 2010, and due to missingno's impressive performance in the rest of the contest, Despite his round 1 loss Crono would end up looking better than most of his noble nine companions, being projected to get close to 47% against fellow Square powerhouse Sephiroth. Due to the Nature of this match, which did not run througout the whole day, many people question the validity of the "breaking" of the noble nine, as it also looked evident that Crono would have won in a standard 24 hour poll. ## Other Notes - Missingno. advancing was the **\#8** most surprising result of 2010 and the **\#1** most surprising result of Round 1 - It was also the **\#24** most surprising 1v1 result of all-time and the \#**4** most surprising Round 1 result of all-time ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3789&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Soap MacTavish vs (14)Big Daddy 2010 _source: (3)Soap MacTavish vs (14)Big Daddy 2010 (revid 59198)_ ## Results Monday, February 15th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Monday, February 15th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,002 - **Oracle Expectations:** Big Daddy - 52.32% 79 for - 24 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Big Daddy - 51.25% ## Ulti's Analysis Following up the legendary Missingno \> Crono match is an impossible task, but Chrono Trigger wasn't the only game that looked like crap this contest. The whole Call of Duty crew looked HORRIBLE this contest, and all three were overseeded beyond belief. The kingpin for that point is Soap himself, who rode Modern Warfare 2's release all the way up to a 3 seed. Entirely because of his seeding, this was somewhat of a debated match but was still a "Who cares?" above all else. The gurus and even the casuals were not fooled, however. Big Daddy was the slight favorite from both demographics, if only because he did well in his vote-in despite Andrew Ryan sharing the poll as an albatross. That plus no one plays Call of Duty for the characters. A lot of people only get it for the multiplayer and couldn't care less what the story is about. But even with all that, Soap totally embarrassed himself and his series here. Letting Big Daddy 62-38 you as a 3 seed is a joke, and it makes Soap the worst 3 seed ever. At least Gordon Freeman managed 40% on Tina Armstrong in 2002. Ness \> Big Daddy was the guru consensus in round 2, but this match threw a wrench into that theory. At the very least, Big Daddy proved to have some strength. Given how weak Ness is, "some" strength is all you need to beat him. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3790&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Ness vs (11)Geno 2010 _source: (6)Ness vs (11)Geno 2010 (revid 59199)_ ## Results Monday, February 15th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Monday, February 15th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,897 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ness - 59.16% 101 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ness - 71.50% ## Ulti's Analysis I love Geno to death. He's the best thing in SMRPG, and it's a crime he wasn't in Brawl. But this match officially put him in the "stop nominating this guy" category. Dude got SFFd by NESS of all people. Ness almost lost to Jak, only beat CJ because GameFAQs is afraid of black people, failed to place in the Liquid/Alucard/Ness/Zidane 4way despite the supposedly dedicated EarthBound fanbase (you think a midcarder Pokemon would have blown that chance?), and lost to Pac-Man of all people in 2008. Yet when you put Ness up against Geno, he manages to be on the good side of an SFF skull-bashing. This match reestablished Ness as the favorite in round 2 against Big Daddy, and more or less cemented Geno in the "I won't win unless I'm against Guybrush Threepwood in the first round" department. Get Geno out of here. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3791&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Yuri Lowell vs (10)Tifa Lockheart 2010 _source: (7)Yuri Lowell vs (10)Tifa Lockheart 2010 (revid 59200)_ ## Results Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 30,401 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tifa - 73.57% 103 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tifa - 88.84% ## Ulti's Analysis A lot of matches have happened since 2005 that have proven we need to stop nominating Tales of characters, but this one might take the cake. How does Yuri Lowell get a 7 seed? That's almost as weird as Travis Touchdown's seeding. The blowout here was extremely predictable, and Tifa barely had to deal with the standard anti-FF7 early vote. She just rolled face with TJF SFF. I mean Yuri might be terrible in a contest, but at least she's pretty hot with looks that could even rival Tifa in…. …wait, that's a MAN?! /facedesk God dammit Japan, why are you so terrible. Drawing bishounens is one thing. Drawing a male character that quite literally looks female is pathetic, and so is every single person that enjoys this sort of thing. This is why we can't have nice things, and this is why Japanophiles are perpetually single. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3792&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Gordon Freeman vs (15)Princess Peach 2010 _source: (2)Gordon Freeman vs (15)Princess Peach 2010 (revid 59201)_ ## Results Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 64 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,059 - **Oracle Expectations:** Gordon - 56.87% 93 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Gordon - 67.40% ## Ulti's Analysis Oh, Gordon. The last match in the first round tends to have weird things happen. In 2002, we had that ungodly terrible Crash/Ulala match. In the villains contest, who could forget Master Hand beating Kuja? Then a few months later in the main contest, Pac-Man beat Revolver Ocelot. Not to be outdone, Master Flop was the 2 seed in the last match of 2006's first round. He was paired against Sub-Zero, and we all know how that turned out. In the 2008 character battle (the second fourway), we saw Jill Valentine beat Revolver Ocelot one year after Ocelot beat her, AFTER Metal Gear Solid 4 was released. Fallout 3 \> Halo 3 happened in the 2009 games contest, but Halo flopping was massively expected by that point. But every single one of those matches would have stood in awe had Gordon Freeman managed to blow this match against Peach. And for 30 minutes when the poll was glitched out, he was in serious jeopardy of becoming one of the biggest jokes ever. Even his loss to Tina Armstrong in 2002 would have taken a back seat to this. Had Gordon Freeman -- a 2 seed with newfound Half-Life 2 strength who had just come off of winning Gamespot's own character contest -- lost to Peach, the world might have seriously ended. And for 30 minutes, Peach took advantage of a poll glitch and fought tooth and nail with him. Thankfully, the poll glitch was resolved and Gordon went on to win. The world was saved by him yet again, although one wonders how good a 53-47 win over Peach really is. Any hype for a Gordon \> Tifa upset or Steam rallying was dead and buried after this debacle. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3793&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=64) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (8)Alucard 2010 _source: (1)Link vs (8)Alucard 2010 (revid 59202)_ ## Results Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 65 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 26,139 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 71.71% 94 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 90.89% ## Ulti's Analysis Only two things were notable about this match, and one was the match picture. For I believe the first time ever, a filter was put in front of a picture to give a more defined overall theme than "oh hi face shots now". The idea here was an actual picture frame, like what you'd see on a mantle. It was a decent idea, but the filter kinda wrecked a lot of pictures in round 2. The Sephiroth/Vincent match was the biggest example of this. The other point was the match itself. Link's odd performance against Thrall could be seen as first match hijinx, but twice in a row is more than an accident. As of this match, Link was officially dealing with anti-voting for perhaps the first time ever. People are just sick of him winning all the time, and what's funny is he started at 69%, got up to 73% really fast and then dropped all the way down to 71% overnight. One would assume he'd crush Alucard with the morning vote, but he didn't really do that. The anti-voting didn't affect Link winning this contest, but anti-voting can build up quickly over the course of a couple years. Just ask Cloud and Sephiroth. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3794&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=65) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (13)Mega Man X 2010 _source: (5)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (13)Mega Man X 2010 (revid 59203)_ ## Results Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 66 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,352 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man X - 60.52% 93 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man X - 46.24% ## Ulti's Analysis I don't care what KP says, that Red pic is awesome. Looking more hard than X is not easy. Anyway, X winning this match was never going to be in question. How more than half of people didn't have X getting out of this fourpack is somewhat ridiculous, but then again casuals often bury their good picks with stuff like this. The thing to take from this match is Red being legit and Pokemon once again godstomping a board vote and ASV. Red and X were even for a couple minutes before X took off, and then Red went and rolled percentage during the ASV. The match was never in doubt or anything, but this was still a good performance from Red. He proved he was a legit, solid midcarder. When you think about it, Red smashed pre-contest expectations. No matter what anyone says, people don't play Pokemon for the trainers and there aren't legions of people with a massive emotional attachment to this guy. And if you go back to 2007-2008, all the characters who had nothing but Brawl (Pit, Dedede, etc) all sucked in the polls. Yet Red, on nothing but Brawl, Pokemon avatar-ism and Pokemon momentum, won a match and impressed against X. This was just Pokemon's contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3795&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=66) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Luigi vs (6)Amaterasu 2010 _source: (3)Luigi vs (6)Amaterasu 2010 (revid 59204)_ ## Results Thursday, February 18th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 67 - **Match Date:** Thursday, February 18th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,990 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 62.91% 99 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 65.26% ## Ulti's Analysis Every year, Amaterasu continues to impress. Breaking 40% on Luigi is no joke. Breaking 40% on Luigi after he totally rolls you with the board vote is worthy of some huge respect. Luigi was well over 60% at the freeze, then somehow lost the overnight vote badly and was unable to get back over 60% before match's end. Okami isn't a Nintendo game, but it has a sort of Nintendo appeal to it despite being on the PS2 first. Ammy gets the best of both worlds, too, and avoids ever getting SFFd because of tapping into the site's two big fanbases. She's very resilient, she's long since proven we need an Okami 2, and she even threw Shadow the Hedgehog a bone by doing so well in this match. Sonic Team was not looking good at all after round 1, but this was the match where people came around and thought maybe they didn't look so bad after all. Ammy just decided to sun god crush her first 1v1 appearance. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3796&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=67) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Weighted Companion Cube vs (15)The Boss 2010 _source: (7)Weighted Companion Cube vs (15)The Boss 2010 (revid 59205)_ ## Results Thursday, February 18th, 2010 - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 68 - **Match Date:** Thursday, February 18th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,666 - **Oracle Expectations:** Weighted Companion Cube - 60.61% 95 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Weighted Companion Cube - 38.31% ## Ulti's Analysis After Cube's wtfpwn of Sandal in the first round, this match brought him (her?) back down to earth. The Boss is not a particularly strong character, especially during the day, but Cube did the whole easy-win-that-looks-bad-on-paper thing with her for 12 hours. The match stayed at about the same percentage all day long, which proved once again The Boss barely moves all day in her matches. This was practically a win by default for the Cube, and it proved there would be no bandwagon run for him (her?) this year. You don't go from a 54-46 win on The Boss to competing with Luigi, and in a way Ngamer was right about his "death of the joke character" podcast hypothesis. They didn’t do particularly well this contest outside Missingno; they just got extremely lucky placement, plus the bandwagon effect is much harder when you need 50% of the vote in a poll. Remember, L-Block's most impressive win was not necessarily the 2007 final. Before that contest became The Internet vs Everyone Else, L-Block was a normal character. When he shocked everyone and got first place against Snake, Sonic and Squall, he only needed 29% of the vote. In the final, he had 33.5%. 1v1s are a whole different animal. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3797&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=68) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2010 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2010 (revid 59206)_ ## Results Friday, February 19th, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 69 - **Match Date:** Friday, February 19th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,583 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 66.04% 97 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 73.84% ## Ulti's Analysis You know how people always bring up those two favorite Mario character polls Yoshi won and say Yoshi could maybe pull a shocking upset? Take a good look at this match. This is pretty much exactly how Mario vs Yoshi would go, and those fan-favorite one-series poll winners are virtually meaningless. Knuckles won a similar poll once, too, albeit a very old one: Come match time, he was easily SFFd. He did however win the very early vote, which caused everyone to not want to refresh after voting. As an aside, people campaigned for weeks to get the Sonic 3 cover as the match pic here. Bacon couldn't really violate his template for one match, but he picked the next best thing. Major kudos to whoever Master_Mary is for an outstanding match pic. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3798&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=69) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Ganondorf vs (13)Ken Masters 2010 _source: (5)Ganondorf vs (13)Ken Masters 2010 (revid 59207)_ ## Results Friday, February 19th, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 70 - **Match Date:** Friday, February 19th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,408 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 63.76% 97 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 59.54% ## Ulti's Analysis On the final episode of The Show, Ngamer asked me to compare Bacon and Ceej in terms of running contests. One thing I forgot to mention is when Bacon decides to get cute and use a terrible match picture, he likes to keep it fair and balanced. Ceej was terrible about this; every time he did something even like Undertaker Snake vs Young Zelda, he would have 10 instances of Solid Shit versus Sprite Frog, Solid Shit versus Sprite Bowser, Lettuce Kefka vs Pac-Man or melty MGS art. Bacon deserves credit for making a real effort at keeping pictures even. As for the actual match, Ken got slapped back to reality following his first-ever contest win in the first round. He went through all this effort parrying Wesker's various warp-melee nonsense, but failed to properly telegraph something as simple as a Warlock Punch. All you have to do is dash backwards, Ken. Not hard. Random side note. People always ask me why I hate Street Fighter 4, and accuse me of only hating it because of Seth being too hard or something equally ridiculous. There's two major reasons. One is the complete lack of health compared to other traditional 2D fighting games I feel are better (BlazBlue, 3rd Strike, Guilty Gear), and the other are those idiotic charge-one-direction-for-two-seconds moves. It's impossible to play something fast-paced like BlazBlue and then go back to such moronic command inputs. Lastly there's the total lack of variety and side stuff. BB only has 12 characters, but it never really gets old because of the various drive moves. Bang's nails, Hakumen's god-stomping counters, the shield, the barrier bursting, the negative warning, the Heat meter and on and on and on. SF4 has.... a super meter and an EX meter. Yay? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3799&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=70) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs (6)GLaDOS 2010 _source: (3)Kirby vs (6)GLaDOS 2010 (revid 59208)_ ## Results Saturday, February 20th, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 71 - **Match Date:** Saturday, February 20th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,906 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 65.87% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 61.21% ## Ulti's Analysis This was a rather predictable and boring match, but there's one funny thing to take from it. Based on 2008, Kirby was expected to get **76.69%** in this match. Needless to say, XFD 2008 Kirby. If you were banking on a Kirby \> Sonic upset this contest, this was pretty much the exact spot where that hope came crashing down. Kirby was clearly not in his bandwagon-inspired 2008 form. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3800&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=71) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Vivi vs (2)Altair 2010 _source: (7)Vivi vs (2)Altair 2010 (revid 59209)_ ## Results Saturday, February 20th, 2010 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 72 - **Match Date:** Saturday, February 20th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,627 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vivi - 50.16% 47 for - 51 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vivi - 18.46% ## Ulti's Analysis First off, what a freaking outstanding match pic. We've been trying to get that Vivi in for years, and it finally happened. And on top of that, it gets matched against a total godslayer Altair pic that would put the fear of God into Lucifer himself. This is without a doubt the best picture of the first three rounds. The match itself, not so cool. Vivi doing almost exactly as expected against DK, contrasted with Altair's shivving the crap out of Liquid Snake made this match very debatable. Vivi hadn't really shown much in years, and Altair was seemingly a newfound monster of a character. Then the poll started, and Altair was just never in it. Vivi jumped out early, had a 1000 vote lead after 45 minutes and never looked back. Worse yet is Altair won a grand total of…. one update all match. 11 hours in, no less. He came into this looking really good, then just rolled over and died come game time. 56-44 might not look so bad on paper, but consider this: Altair lost so badly that the final 2010 extrapolated standings have GLaDOS \> Liquid Snake. Think about how ridiculous that result is for a second, then go look at how Altair and Liquid did in their losses. This is far beyond the point of being contest trolls. Altair and Liquid are now the official contest condyloma. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3801&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=72) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (8)Big Boss 2010 _source: (1)Mario vs (8)Big Boss 2010 (revid 59210)_ ## Results Sunday, February 21st, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 73 - **Match Date:** Sunday, February 21st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 15,061 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 62.88% 97 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 85.56% ## Ulti's Analysis Of all the recurring rematches in these contests, Mario vs Big Boss is the worst. This even outdoes Snake vs Knuckles three years in a row. Squall vs Snake is also bad, but none of those four matches seemed intentionally set up. But Mario vs Big Boss has now happened FOUR TIMES in the past three character contests (thrice in 2007, to be fair). The results? 2007 Round 1: Mario 71.57%, Big Boss 28.43% 2007 Round 2: Mario 65.31%, Big Boss 34.69% 2007 Round 3: Mario 76.12%, Big Boss 23.88% 2010 Round 1: Mario 63.16%, Big Boss 36.84% Having Mario vs Big Boss 1 on 1 really only shows how stupid 4way stats are. 6% swing from rounds 1 to 2, then an 11% swing from rounds 2 to 3. If this same poll happens next year (REMATCH \#4 BABY), it won't move much. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3800&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=73) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Zidane Tribal vs (4)Ike 2010 _source: (5)Zidane Tribal vs (4)Ike 2010 (revid 59211)_ ## Results Sunday, February 21st, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 74 - **Match Date:** Sunday, February 21st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,229 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ike - 50.87% 62 for - 36 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ike - 35.57% ## Ulti's Analysis This contest was bound to have a match or two definitively decided by time of day, and this was perhaps the big offender. Zidane and Ike were clearly pretty close following their joint round 1 stinkbombs, but no one had faith in Zidane pulling the upset because of this being a day match. Sure enough, the match was a potential classic for 30 minutes, including Zidane winning an update by 46 votes. But before long, the day match trends kicked in and Ike was able to score a close, hard-fought win. It's a match winner we can definitely attribute to the format. Zidane flat-out dominates at night, and Ike does the same during the day. If this were a night match, you could safely assume the numbers are switched. The true fun is thinking about what happens if this were a 24 hour match, but we're likely not to see those for awhile. Ike followed up his first win ever with a tough round 2 win, while Zidane is still looking for his first-ever round 3 appearance. Maybe next year, we'll get a rematch at night to even things up here. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3803&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=74) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Mega Man vs (6)Zack Fair 2010 _source: (3)Mega Man vs (6)Zack Fair 2010 (revid 59212)_ ## Results Monday, February 22nd, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 75 - **Match Date:** Monday, February 22nd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 12,219 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 57.53% 97 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 62.45% ## Ulti's Analysis Most people thought Mega Man would do okay here; Oracle consensus was around 57-43. A respectable beating to be sure, but not a roflgodslayer performance. This match however was pretty close to the latter. Round 1 against Cid can be blamed on the pic, newfound 1v1 shenanigans or whatever else. But Mega Man followed that up with a similar unexpected overperformance against a very legit Zack. Dare we say... 2002 Mega Man is back in full force? Time will tell, but the Mega Man series looked very good this contest. Mega's unexpected bitch-slap of Zack was one such example why. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3804&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=75) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Ryu Hayabusa vs (2)Master Chief 2010 _source: (7)Ryu Hayabusa vs (2)Master Chief 2010 (revid 59213)_ ## Results Monday, February 22nd, 2010 - **Division:** Mushroom Division - **Match \#:** 76 - **Match Date:** Monday, February 22nd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,866 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu Hayabusa - 47.43% 24 for - 74 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu Hayabusa - 15.87% ## Ulti's Analysis This match wasn't \*supposed\* to even be in question. Master Chief is far more important to the Xbox than Ninja Gaiden is, and who even remembers Ryu Hayabusa being the guy's name in the NES Ninja Gaiden series? Chief was supposed to score his first SFF beating ever. And then Ryu H went out and only got 62% on Crash Bandicoot, which supposedly further cemented his incoming beating. Even Chief repeating that terrible performance on Spy was dismissed by most, because 62% on Crash (including losing the morning vote) just sucks \*that\* much. Early on, Chief seemed fine. He always gets anti-voted early, but started off in the 55-60% rage for a couple minutes. No one would actually bracket-vote Master Chief since no one likes the guy anymore, so this seemed over. Then after about two minutes, the wheels came flying off and "Master Flop" was born. Not only did Ryu H come back and win, but did he so with ease. This was about as dominating a win one could earn with percentages as close as 52.5-47.5%. Chief rolled over and died after the first couple minutes, and the best thing is no one cared. No one likes Master Chief, everyone likes seeing him flop again and again in these contests, and it's all thanks to how annoying the Halo crowd was during the early Zeroes. Halo is not good, has never been good, and will never \*be\* good. People who think Halo is the best FPS series haven't played many games, and Master Chief gets the full backlash of this. For anyone who thinks anti-voting doesn't matter, go look at almost every single 1v1 Master Chief match. The only disheartening thing here is Chief winning the early vote because of bracket-voting. People can deny it all they want, but the proof is in the trends: Early voters always vote for their bracket, and in this particular case it's pathetic. It's MASTER CHIEF, king of getting anti-voted and the one character left who could lose the board vote to Sephiroth. You anti-vote this loser, no matter what. Funniest thing is Chief will get a debatable first round match next year against Kefka or something and everyone will pick him to lose. Ryu H \> Chief is one of those "won't get fooled again" type of losses. So of course Chief will win, for no reason other than "hurr hurr I love trolling". ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3805&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=76) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sora vs (8)Laharl 2010 _source: (1)Sora vs (8)Laharl 2010 (revid 59214)_ ## Results Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 77 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 16,688 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 70.62% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 78.97% ## Ulti's Analysis Going back a ways, but: Sora - 73.59% Laharl - 26.41% This is based on the 2004 stats. Remember in 2004, Sora upset Ryu Hayabusa before losing to Samus in round 3. He might be a little overrated in those stats because of Samus's so-called overperformance on Cloud. You could make a decent argument Samus overperformed on Cloud, who then overperformed on Link in the final. As for Laharl, lost to Vyse, who got rocked by Cloud in the very next match. No real arguments there. Now this was before Sora started curbstomping people with Kingdom Hearts ASVs and all the rest. There weren't 4 Kingdom Hearts characters in the field, only one. And that Sora, a weaker Sora than what would show up in future years, would be expected to nearly triple Laharl. If you want to argue Sora is overrated that year, then maybe you can say in 2010, Sora truly did as-expected based in 2004. Here's the point. People who picked Sora \> Bowser did so on the basis of Sora being the godslayer from 4ways. For whatever reason this contest, all of Kingdom Hearts reverted back to decently liked, but not beloved levels. 68% on Laharl as a 1 seed is penultimately embarrassing, and Bowser \> Sora was a stone cold lock upon this match going in the books. There was no possible way to argue in Sora's favor after such a terrible showing. Yes he got unlucky with all his matches being at night this year, but after his Laharl match you could easily argue Bowser would have beaten him during the day. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3806&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=77) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Kefka vs (4)Bowser 2010 _source: (5)Kefka vs (4)Bowser 2010 (revid 59215)_ ## Results Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 78 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,027 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 62.05% 97 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 53.68% ## Ulti's Analysis SMACKefka dab'd in the middle of enemy territory. Classic stuff. Anyway don't look too hard at the final percentage here. Old Square during the day likes to collapse. The fun during this match was the first hour, when Kefka was holding steady over 40%. Kefka has been labeled a choking loser for YEARS in these, but this year he finally got some good pictures and did well for himself. And he deserves a good contest, too. He's gotten screwed by his own picture for far too long. And Bowser's so-called bad performance here meant nothing. Sora had no chance. And do you know what this match means? Kefka - 52.02% Frog - 47.98% No one in the guru -- I repeat, NO ONE in the guru -- would have picked Kefka \> Frog this contest. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Can you imagine how hilarious that result would have been? Two contest legends for totally opposite reasons, with KEFKA winning somehow? Screw GFNW; \*this\* would have imploded the universe. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3807&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=78) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)L-Block vs (6)Isaac 2010 _source: (3)L-Block vs (6)Isaac 2010 (revid 59216)_ ## Results Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 79 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,613 - **Oracle Expectations:** L-Block - 63.92% 96 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** L-Block - 62.47% ## Ulti's Analysis Two match pictures were changed this contest. One was Ike getting an unofficial sprite in the sprite round (on an FE7 background, no less, which is a game he's not even in), and the other was L-Block going up against NotIsaac: Other than that, wholly boring match. It stayed at almost the exact same percentage for 12 hours, and it helped prove how lucky L-Block got with bracket placement this year. He's clearly weakened by a lot, but got a fourpack of HK-47, Isaac and Professor Layton. Stick L-Block in most other fourpacks, and he ain't winning it like he did this one. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3808&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=79) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Charizard vs (2)Kratos 2010 _source: (7)Charizard vs (2)Kratos 2010 (revid 59217)_ ## Results Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 - **Division:** Heart Division - **Match \#:** 80 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,384 - **Oracle Expectations:** Charizard - 53.32% 76 for - 22 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Charizard - 18.62% ## Ulti's Analysis People were REALLY pumped for this match. Hype for an upset was huge after Charizard rocked Duke Nukem (and Kratos subsequently sucked hard against Tails), and everyone was ready to vote right at noon. This could have been the biggest board vote all contest, and come noon.......!! ...the poll glitched. Really, a poll glitch during one of the most important matches all contest? For 5-10 minutes or so, most people were looking at L-Block vs Isaac still. As a result, the first 5-10 minutes... pretty much sucked. But once things got sorted out, Charizard took off and never looked back. This was a heavily rallied match on both sides, but Kratos never got anything going and Charizard won fairly easily. Apparently the win over Duke \*was\* foreshadowing future success, and at this point who knew how far The Zard could go? Remember, his next match was against L-Block. That was a bye. Then in the Heart divisional final, Charizard would have Pokemon HG/SS released on the day of the match. If he won that, the bandwagon would undoubtedly be in full effect. Unfortunately, Mario and Link stood in the way. Stick him on the bottom half of this bracket, and who knows what happens. As for Kratos, he's really unlucky in 1v1s. He'll never have more hype than 2010, and who knows whether God of War 3 will wear off before next contest rolls around. ### Other Notes - Charizard advancing was the **\#7** most surprising result of 2010. - It was also the **\#21** most surprising 1v1 result of all-time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3809&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=80) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (9)Jill Valentine 2010 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (9)Jill Valentine 2010 (revid 59218)_ ## Results Thursday, February 25th, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 81 - **Match Date:** Thursday, February 25th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,173 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 66.91% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 80.53% ## Ulti's Analysis So much wasted potential with the pic for this match, which I had to make up for myself with Samus vs Zelda !! On top of that, Heroic Mario turned an awesome pic into making Jill look like a crackwhore. No clue how that happens. Now as for the match itself, the early parts of this were hilarious. Given the first round for each character, some thought Jill could do well with the board vote. Not only did she not do well, Samus just totally rocked face with it. It was embarrassing to watch, and Samus held steady at 70-30 for awhile. Screw Cloud; it looked like Samus could threaten LINK at that pace. Samus calmed down a whole lot overnight and during the morning, finishing at 67.5%, but still. 67.5% on RE5-boosted Jill is no joke, and given Cloud's awful round 1 performance the Samus \> Cloud upset was legitimately in play after this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3810&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=81) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Roxas vs (13)Sub-Zero 2010 _source: (5)Roxas vs (13)Sub-Zero 2010 (revid 59219)_ ## Results Thursday, February 25th, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 82 - **Match Date:** Thursday, February 25th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,984 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sub-Zero - 58.56% 90 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sub-Zero - 30.84% ## Ulti's Analysis This contest had a few hard-to-see underdog runs that made it to round 3 and beyond, and Sub-Zero was one of them. A lot of people complained about this contest being too predictable one the final rounds came about, but look at the prediction percentages up to and including this match. The Zard, Vivi, and Ryu H all had really low percentages to get into round 3, and then you had a few people like Sub-Zero with only slightly better percentages. The odd thing here was how Tidus/Sub-Zero had such low percentages over a duo like Roxas and Heavy. Really, Roxas and Heavy were beating Tidus or Sub-Zero? Whatever. This was never going to be a close match, though one has to wonder how KP made Roxas -- freaking Roxas -- look more badass than Heavy and Sub-Zero. Someone build this guy a house or something. On top of that, Roxas got to shave off some percents during the vaunted Kingdom Hearts ASV. A 59-41 beating is still a beating, but take a close look at this match. This could very well be the one bright spot for Kingdom Hearts all contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3811&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=82) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (14)Jecht vs (6)Ratchet 2010 _source: (14)Jecht vs (6)Ratchet 2010 (revid 59220)_ ## Results Friday, February 26th, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 83 - **Match Date:** Friday, February 26th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,740 - **Oracle Expectations:** Jecht - 59.46% 91 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Jecht - 26.63% ## Ulti's Analysis When Jecht upset Phoenix Wright in the first round, everyone knew he'd get bye in round 2 before losing to Zelda. What people didn't see coming was just how well Ratchet would do here. The consensus was a 60-40 win for Jecht, but when the poll started Jecht was stuck middling around the 55-45 range. And worse yet for Jecht, it stabilized like this for awhile. At night. Square characters don't do badly at night, lest of all against fodder trash like Ratchet who only got a win because he was against Eddie Riggs. You know, even bigger fodder trash. Jecht went on a rampage overnight, but then the morning vote hit and he lost all the percentage he accumulated. So at the end, he was more or less back where he started. It was bad for Jecht to be sure, but it was one of the weirdest performances ever from a losing character. We can't really blame Jecht's potential weakness, either, because he went on to pull a similar snafu against Zelda. The blame here, if you can call it that, goes on Ratchet finally pulling his head out of his ass and getting it together a little. He gets a new game every year, and funny commercials every year, but for some reason this was the year it did something for him. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3812&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=83) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Zelda vs (2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze 2010 _source: (10)Zelda vs (2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze 2010 (revid 59221)_ ## Results Friday, February 26th, 2010 - **Division:** Varia Division - **Match \#:** 84 - **Match Date:** Friday, February 26th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,600 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda - 64.05% 92 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 61.04% ## Ulti's Analysis For whatever ridiculous reason, this match had upset hype behind it. That hype thankfully, mercifully ended about 2 seconds after the match began. Zelda started off with a doubling and fell to under 65% at the freeze. And to be fair, Ezio rolling with the ASV and cutting off another 2% was pretty impressive. But... seriously, Ezio \> Zelda hype? I should have gone through with that account bet against Curt just to off him for championing a cause so off-the-wall. But I actually like Curt, so seeing him go for something this bad wouldn't have been right. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3813&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=84) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Chris Redfield 2010 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Chris Redfield 2010 (revid 59222)_ ## Results Saturday, February 27th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 85 - **Match Date:** Saturday, February 27th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 24,875 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 68.76% 92 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 89.44% ## Ulti's Analysis So Cloud was looking like crap after that Ridley embarrassment, and Chris was looking like a beefed up RE5-boosted roid rage dude. The stage was set for Chris to have a pretty good performance. So what does he do? He barely wins the board vote, and then he gets plowed from behind for 12 hours and finishes lower than Ridley. Think about this for a sec. Either Ridley is on more steroids than Chris Redfield and could beat an RE5-boosted Chris, or there was some weird FF7 \> RE SFF action going on here. The latter seems more likely, but who really knows with how this contest went. For all we know, Ridley really could go out and beat Chris Redfield. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3814&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=85) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Riku vs (4)Captain Falcon 2010 _source: (5)Riku vs (4)Captain Falcon 2010 (revid 59223)_ ## Results Saturday, February 27th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 86 - **Match Date:** Saturday, February 27th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,438 - **Oracle Expectations:** Captain Falcon - 47.12% 14 for - 79 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Captain Falcon - 46.68% ## Ulti's Analysis For 4 years, Captain Falcon's fans have been saying he'd do well if given a fair chance. And it really did take 4 years for him to get that chance. He got stuck as an 8 seed against Crono in 2006, then had to deal with ridiculous Nintendo LFF in both fourways. But in Winter 2010, there was no Nintendo in the way of Falcon making a good run and having a good contest. There was, however, one huge problem: a Kingdom Hearts character of presumably similar strength in a day match. HOWEVER, it was a day match on a weekend with a vastly diluted day vote. Falcon made the most of this, and took off with the lead after easily winning the board vote. Riku was the favorite and the smart pick, and deservedly so because of this being a KH character during the day, but Falcon just totally punked him in this match. Riku never got his feet under him and looked pretty bad for getting 47.5%. Even the vaunted KH day vote did little for him, making it reasonable to think an ASV wouldn't have mattered here. He won very few updates all match, and updates he did win were scarce. Falcon win this convincingly, leaving no doubt at all about his legitimacy. With Riku's loss, that left only Sora representing Kingdom Hearts. And that wouldn't go so well, either. KH just looked terrible all contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3815&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=86) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Leon Kennedy vs (6)Sackboy 2010 _source: (3)Leon Kennedy vs (6)Sackboy 2010 (revid 59224)_ ## Results Sunday, February 28th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 87 - **Match Date:** Sunday, February 28th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 15,149 - **Oracle Expectations:** Leon - 63.38% 94 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Leon - 56.78% ## Ulti's Analysis Regardless who won the Sackboy/Kratos Aurion duel, the winner wasn't getting anywhere close to beating Leon Kennedy. The caveat here was Sackboy doing worse against Leon than Vault Boy did. How many people would have honestly picked Vault Boy \> Sackboy this contest? The other point here is Leon seemed a little off through the first two rounds, which killed any and all upset hype against the Ryu/Dante winner. A few thought maybe Leon would sneak through there, but not after tripping a bit in the first two rounds. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3816&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=87) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Ryu vs (2)Dante 2010 _source: (7)Ryu vs (2)Dante 2010 (revid 79218)_ ## Results Sunday, February 28th, 2010 - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 88 - **Match Date:** Sunday, February 28th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 531 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 48.74% 36 for - 59 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 37.61% ## Ulti's Analysis The USA went into the gold medal game on a huge high, having come off of completely godstomping Finland or Sweden or whatever other inferior hockey team they wrecked in the semifinal. Doesn't matter who. America rolled them. Earlier in the tournament, they had also defeated Canada 5-3 thanks to a Herculean effort from goalie Ryan Miller. Canada almost went on strike following that loss, but they managed to regroup in time. They too rolled through elimination play, setting up a huge gold medal game against the United States with revenge on the mind. As an added bonus, they would have legions of screaming fans on the home ice behind them. Canada came out flying in this game, setting the tone for what would be a very fast, well-played contest. For a hockey player, it was the perfect game to be a part of. Very fast, good hitting, very few penalties and a lot of excitement and honor to play for. But for the first period and half the second, Canada played with a massive sense of urgency and it showed on the scoreboard by a tally of 2-0. The USA, however, was having none of it and refused to crack under Canada's pressure. Midway through the second period, the Americans scored on a lucky deflection by Ryan Kesler to make it 2-1. At this juncture, the intensity and pressure mounted ever higher into the third period. Though the Americans were game, Canada seemed one step ahead through the entire third period and came close to putting the game away time and time again. Shea Weber and Chris Pronger both hit the goal post on successive shifts, and Sidney Crosby blew a golden breakaway chance late in the period. With the score still 2-1 late in the third, America was forced to pull the goalie and attempt a late 6 on 5 goal. With less than 30 seconds left in the game, America seemingly pulled off another Miracle on Ice. Patrick Kane flung a shot on net, and it deflected perfectly to Zach Parise. Boom, tie game. Canada was shocked, but not panicked, America had forced overtime when they had outplayed America most of the game, and most spectators feared the contest was over once Parise scored. America went on record thinking they would definitely score in overtime. However, America was outplayed in overtime even more than regulation. They only threatened once in the entire overtime, and Robero Luongo easily made the save. Canada meanwhile flew all over the place, played some wicked defense and kept up huge pressure on American goalie Ryan Miller. Not too long after Joe Pavelski's miss, Sidney Crosby found himself loose in the corner of American ice. He made a fabulous pass, beelined for the net, received the assist and banged the puck home to give Canada the overtime win. It was an outstanding game by both teams, truly worthy of worldwide respect, but only one side had Crosby on it. For Canada, they pulled though in perhaps the biggest situation they'll ever have athletically. Hockey is Canada's sport, and with the Olympics in Vancouver they HAD to win gold. Anything less would have driven the country into a depression. America was stung by the loss, by they can hold their heads high knowing they got father than anyone expected them to go. Worldwide opinion of America is very mixed right now, but efforts like this show the honorable blue-collar resilience and toughness that got America so much respect in the first place. Maybe in four years, we'll see a rematch. ## Stats and analysis Ryu and Dante's 2010 match inspired the term Hockey Factor, since it was going on during the men's hockey gold medal game of the 2010 Winter Olympics. In this match, there was an observable trend in which the progress of the match reflected the status of the game: Dante increased his lead while the game was going on, and Ryu made cuts during the intermissions and went on a steady run after the conclusion of the game to eventually take the match, which ended up looking closer than it actually was. The reason for this occurence was that North America prefered Ryu while places like Europe and Asia heavily favoured Dante. While the hockey game was on North America was occupied thus giving Dante a boost due to Europe and Asia having a higher percentage of the votes. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3817&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=88) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (9)Fox McCloud 2010 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (9)Fox McCloud 2010 (revid 72670)_ ## Results Monday, March 1st, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 89 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 1st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,132 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 67.27% 81 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 83.92% ## Ulti's Analysis When did Solid Snake turn into Cloud? This was the second match in a row where his board vote just sucked, but then he shrugged it off and rose to a good percentage. Well, decent percentage. Who really knows what doubling Fox means, since all his losses going back to 2003 can be blamed on Nintendo SFF in one way or another. His last legit loss before this one was getting 25% on Cloud in 2002. So clearly Snake was on pace to get like 40% on Sephiroth, since the 2002 stats are the most reliable thing ever. On a side note, there were 7 rounds this contest. Solid Snake was in 6 of them. Of those 6, two did not have Brawl Snake in the picture. Seriously people, he's been in other games. And my R6 picture barely even counts, so you can make a good argument Brawl Snake disappeared once all contest. It's almost like people are overcompensating for his years of awful melty art and sprites. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3818&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=89) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Pikachu vs (4)Commander Shepard 2010 _source: (5)Pikachu vs (4)Commander Shepard 2010 (revid 61348)_ ## Results Monday, March 1st, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 90 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 1st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,784 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pikachu - 63.13% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pikachu - 72.55% ## Ulti's Analysis Let's go back in time a bit. Remember this match? People remember it for Magus blowing a 2150 vote lead, in a 4way, to a Home Run Contest punching bag (literally). That was bad to be sure, but Shaepard was also in that poll on the strength of Mass Effect alone. He got nearly doubled by Magus and that same Sandbag. You know who else has been doubled by Magus? Luca Blight and Sam Fisher. Enough said. Back to present day. During the AFC Championship Game, Mass Effect 2 had a two-minute commercial that cost a ton of money. After that, you couldn't watch TV for more than 10 minutes without seeing a Mass Effect 2 commercial. The hype was completely nuts. Why is this all relevant? Mass Effect 2's release day was January 26th, 2010. This match took place on March 1st. That's a full month for hype to settle in, and for a ton of people to buy, love and even beat the game. Sales were off the charts, critical acclaim more so, and the game is basically universally loved. Unless you're MWIS, but he doesn't count. If he doesn't like something, you can bet it's probably something really good. So the match starts. There was mild hype for Shepard pulling an upset here, but most reasonable people knew this would never be in doubt. Nor was it. Pokemon doing well a day match in the Winter 2010 Contest was as sure a bet as the sun rising in the east. That said, Pikachu didn't go out and crush the guy. The percentages stayed almost the same all day, which meant no insane trends or Pokemon ASVs. It was a good win for Pikachu, considering this was his first non-SFF 1v1 win since 2002. But for Shepard, you have to tip your hat to the guy. Thanks to one game, he went from getting doubled by Magus to making Pikachu struggle to break 60%. There was an insane amount of whining over this result that blinded people from how well Shepard did here, but people will eventually look back on this match and see how well he really did. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3819&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=90) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (6)Zero 2010 _source: (3)Auron vs (6)Zero 2010 (revid 59228)_ ## Results Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 91 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,649 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 57.44% 86 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 40.41% ## Ulti's Analysis This match pic was rated the highest from the first three rounds. It's a great pic to be sure, but for my money it's \#2 behind Vivi vs Altair. For about 5 minutes, this was a great match. Zero kept it close for no real reason, but obviously fell off the pace afterwards. Auron got this match at night, and Square at night is a no-brainer. Two problems for Auron. One, these percentages probably would have been a lot closer during a day match. And most importantly, this is pretty much exactly what Auron was supposed to do. "What Auron was supposed to do" wasn't going to cut it for his upset chances against Squall next round. Zero having a good match here is also notable, because it proved he never really fell beyond the level of being one step below the near-elites. He's just been stuck behind Nintendo SFF for years now, and this match here proves it. Anyone still arguing Zero wasn't massively hurt by DDD and Pit sharing that 2008 first round match with him need to stop smoking whatever it is they're on. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3820&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=91) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Terra Branford vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2010 _source: (10)Terra Branford vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2010 (revid 59229)_ ## Results Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 - **Division:** Gear Division - **Match \#:** 92 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 20,505 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 69.89% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 66.95% ## Ulti's Analysis Maybe Squall \> Auron wasn't a lock, after all. Never before has a near-doubling looked so terrible. Dissidia Boost or not, this is the same chick who got 28.5% on Dante in 2005. The same character who failed to break 60% on Kerrigan (you know, of "LET'S HYPE KERRIGAN \> VINCENT AND WATCH KERRIGAN SCORE 21%" fame?) in 2006 before getting 80-20'd by Zelda. Furthermore, this was Squall. Had Sonic not been announced for Brawl, Squall would have beaten him in fourways twice. The same guy who beat Luigi, almost beat Vincent, and most importantly, the same guy who SFFd Tidus into the ground in 2006. He's wrecked lesser Final Fantasy characters before. Yet here we are, in 2010, and Squall fails to even double Terra. He was actually barely above 60% in this poll before a time, before um.... "saving face" overnight and getting his percentage up a bit. It's not like there was some huge pic disparity, either. Terra looks god-awful there. Do you realize if you take this match literally, Terra scores 60.5% on Tidus? ...wait a sec (7)Tidus vs (10)Terra Branford, let's do this. Tidus could probably find a way to pull off that choke job. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3821&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=92) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (8)Vincent Valentine 2010 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (8)Vincent Valentine 2010 (revid 59230)_ ## Results Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 93 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 12,396 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 68.37% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 88.55% ## Ulti's Analysis Shut up, Vincent's picture is awesome. A lot of people expected Sephiroth to completely SFF Vincent into the ground here, and only HOCHI, CONTEST GOD and Leonhart4 were smart enough to hype Sephy not breaking 70% or so. Which is fine, but almost no one in their right mind expected Sephiroth to struggle to break 60%. This isn't Sephiroth's failure to SFF Final Fantasy 7 or even Square characters, either. He's done it in the past, quite often, with great results: 2920, the 4way with Sephiroth, Mario, Link and Vincent is especially noteworthy. Yes Vincent was Last Place Factor'd, but saying Vincent wouldn't have done much better without another FF7 character in that poll is ridiculous. Regardless, Vincent scored 24% on Sephiroth in that poll. Auron and Tifa have had similar "I'd do way better if there wasn't a Sephy in the way" moments. Now Vincent legitimately holds Sephy at 60% for awhile (before Sephiroth pulls away for a MASSIVE AND CONVINCING 62.66% win) and suddenly Seph can't SFF other FF7 characters? Not buying it. This goes far beyond SFF or rSFF or whatever else. This is simply, and very effectively, massive anti-voting. Final Fantasy 7, Cloud and Sephiroth have all entered Master Chief territory. It used to be FF7 would get anti-voted early in a cute way before the godstomp. It's not like that anymore. The anti-votes are so massive that they're a part of FF7's growing weakness. Once you're in Master Chief territory, there's no leaving it. FF7 is still very strong, but it's getting weaker and weaker every year. If anything, 4ways hid this fact. If we get another game contest, FF7 could underperform expectations by a lot. As a more immediate effect, this was Sephiroth growing old right before our eyes. He's done. And what's sad is this wasn't close to how bad it would get regarding Sephy failing to do well against FF7 characters -- also, you can imagine how nuts the Missingno \> Sephiroth hype got after this debacle. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3822&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=93) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yoshi vs (13)Missingno 2010 _source: (5)Yoshi vs (13)Missingno 2010 (revid 59231)_ ## Results Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 94 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,348 - **Oracle Expectations:** Missingno - 52.28% 68 for - 22 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Missingno - 14.06% ## Ulti's Analysis After Missingno upset Crono, people assumed he would roll through Yoshi before taking some massive 2000 vote lead on Sephiroth with the early bandwagon vote. Wait, really? Even if Missingno won against Yoshi (which was no guarantee), there was no possible way it would have been some blowout. Yoshi has proven twice he's the fan favorite of the Mario series: Hold that same poll tomorrow and you probably get the same result a third time. People love Yoshi, and rallying against him would be extremely difficult for Missingno to pull off. Mario in general is the ultimate anti-joke kryptonite. If you swap Missingno and Prinny in this bracket, no one would question a potential third-round match between Mario and Missingno. The hype here came from Missingno being in a division full of characters easy to rally against. The one roadblock really to hard rallying in this division was Yoshi, for reasons already stated. When the poll began, this was proven tenfold. Yoshi took a small early lead, which almost never happens against a true bandwagoned, rallied joke. He then held that lead for more than two hours, and it never got bigger than 200 votes. If Missingno truly was the next L-Block, no character would hold a small lead for very long on him. There would have been deathblow "You come into OUR HOUSE, you get yo' behind KICKED" rallying all over the internet. Everyone knows what happened next. After getting the lead down to 55 votes, Missingno fired off six killshots in a row aided by rallying and the Pokemon ASV. The 6 Missingno update wins following 2:40 p.m. EST: 79 votes to take the lead, then 56, 123, 63, 70, and 65. Ballgame. Missingno slowed down a lot after this, but caught the full weight of the Pokemon ASV and put the match away for good. Contrary to popular belief, Missingno didn't catch some joke rally to win this match. He won for one major reason a lot of anti-Pokemon and anti-joke people refuse to accept for whatever reason: Legitimate strength. Past maybe Missingno taking the lead, the chart here is very consistent and even. You know, the exact opposite of a joke trend. Missingno is legit and Pokemon is awesome. Deal with it, haters. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3823&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=94) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (14)Big Daddy vs (6)Ness 2010 _source: (14)Big Daddy vs (6)Ness 2010 (revid 59233)_ ## Results Thursday, March 4th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 95 - **Match Date:** Thursday, March 4th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 4,141 - **Oracle Expectations:** Big Daddy - 48.85% 32 for - 58 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Big Daddy - 27.52% ## Ulti's Analysis yoblazer mentioned this in the stats topic several times, and it's worth repeating. This may be the biggest contrast in a match picture we ever see. On one side, you have Big Daddy in perfect freak-you-out mode. The guy just feels like something you'd never want to see on the other side of a door at night. And on the other side is Ness, one of the happiest world-saving heroes ever. Most silent protagonists are brooding loners or swordsman or something. Not Ness. Everyone in EarthBound speaks of him as a kid who always wears a smile and helps everyone out. Put them together and you get one of the weirdest close matches ever. Ness was the guru favorite, but few people had YEAH NESS WILL WIN THIS FOURPACK NO PROBLEM confidence in the guy, especially given how Daddy's vote-in went and how the first round played out. An SFF beating over Geno means nothing. Sure enough, Ness did very little early on in the match, even with bracket votes and the Nintendo Power Hour. His lead peaked at 100 15 minutes in, then Daddy decided enough was enough and drilled the brat right in the face. No messing around. Just one punch, right in the face. Took awhile for him to put Ness away for good after that, but in an hour or so Ness gave up the ghost. The final numbers aren't really indicative of how close this was early, but that happens a lot in these. Before this contest, we'd never seen a 14 seed win twice. With Big Daddy and Jecht both winning in round 2, we had two 14 seeds win twice. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3824&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=95) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Gordon Freeman 2010 _source: (10)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Gordon Freeman 2010 (revid 59232)_ ## Results Thursday, March 4th, 2010 - **Division:** Jenova Division - **Match \#:** 96 - **Match Date:** Thursday, March 4th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,539 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tifa - 60.22% 85 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tifa - 40.95% ## Ulti's Analysis Not only does Gordon Freeman look like House, Kingdom Hearts Tifa looks a lot like Stacy Warner (House's ex wife, who got a lot of screen time in season 2). Beyond that, very predictable match to end the second round on. All hype for an upset ended when Gordon Freeman almost lost to Peach. To not even break 40% in your loss is pretty embarrassing, especially on the heels of winning Gamespot's own character contest. In fairness, Tifa was at 63% for awhile before Gordon rocked her percentage a bit. As bad as Gordon Freeman is in these -- and it stopped being a cute fad once he finally won, these days he just sucks in polls and little else -- only two characters have ever broken 60% on him 1 on 1: Sora and Tifa. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3825&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=96) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (13)Mega Man X 2010 _source: (1)Link vs (13)Mega Man X 2010 (revid 59236)_ ## Results Friday, March 5th, 2010 - **Round:** Hyrule Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 97 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 5th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,899 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 67.82% 82 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 83.53% ## Ulti's Analysis For the second round in a row, we had an odd pic template with a filter in front of the characters. This time, the idea was TV static. IT'S KANE'S REVENGE EVERYONE RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! Also pretty funny is how Link can get 67% and have it be his worst 1v1 match in 6 years. The comparison here is obvious: Either Mega Man X is stronger than the original model, or Link isn't quite as strong as he used to be. He would of course still win this contest fairly easily (including recovering well from looking off in his first three matches), but maybe he's not the unbeatable force everyone thinks he is. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3826&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=97) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Luigi vs (7)Weighted Companion Cube 2010 _source: (3)Luigi vs (7)Weighted Companion Cube 2010 (revid 59238)_ ## Results Friday, March 5th, 2010 - **Round:** Hyrule Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 98 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 5th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 22,253 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 57.99% 80 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 35.65% ## Ulti's Analysis Cube may have started this contest on fire, helping to make Sandal the lowest character in the LOL X-Stats, but he went out with a whimper. Every "joke" character this contest was going off their legitimate strength, except for maybe Missingno during the Crono match and the first four hours against Sephiroth. Worse yet, Cube ran into a strong Mario character. Mario characters are the perfect anti-joke kryptonite, so this was never going to go anywhere. Luigi just kinda went right for the Fire Flower and exposed Cube's one weakness as early as possible. Now this was an obvious match, so what's up with the prediction percentage? Only 35% of people had Luigi winning three matches? Seriously? Who in the world was going to beat him in the bottom half of this region? There's no candidate at all. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3827&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=98) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Ganondorf 2010 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Ganondorf 2010 (revid 59240)_ ## Results Saturday, March 6th, 2010 - **Round:** Chaos Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 99 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 6th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,510 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 52.78% 74 for - 13 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 47.09% ## Ulti's Analysis This match marked the beginning of the Ultimaterializer 24-Hour Match Pic Special, Featuring Ultimaterializer the Picsmith!™ Though to be serious Bacon loved my template idea for the sprite round this contest for whatever reason, so him picking a bunch of my pictures for round 3 wasn't too surprising. Not a bad showing given this was my first contest doing pictures, if I say so myself. According to Zen, "Ulti is the best pic noob ever, thank god he joined in, but WE'LL SEE COME FREEFORM HOW GOOD YOU ARE HAHA PUNK". Anyhoo, the match. This was some of the weirdest upset hype ever. For literally years, people have been hyping a Ganon \> Sonic upset special. It wasn't in jest, either. People were serious about it, and jumped all over this upset when the match was finally set up this contest. Something about Sonic being crap in fourways and all the near-elites being good enough to take him down and break the Noble Nine. But... really? The premise seemed ridiculous, plus Bacon showed us this particular Ganon picture before bracket lockdown. It was no secret Sonic would have a 2D sprite against Bacondorf, but people stuck with the upset anyway. Even the Oracle people had a consensus of only 53-47 in Sonic's favor here, which in my opinion was just ridiculous. When the match got underway, it went according to form -- that is if the fourways never happened, Sonic scored the 57-43 beating everyone would have expected of him had the fourways never happened. The fourways and the first round of this contest vastly overrated Sonic Team's weakness. In reality, Sonic himself is still Noble Nine caliber and the side characters are still just fine. Not only did this match restore some order that's been missing from contests for awhile, but it also completely destroyed any hope of a Kirby \> Sonic upset. Sonic is doing just fine, thanks, and will probably continue being alright for quite awhile. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3828&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=99) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs (7)Vivi 2010 _source: (3)Kirby vs (7)Vivi 2010 (revid 59242)_ ## Results Saturday, March 6th, 2010 - **Round:** Chaos Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 100 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 6th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,696 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 56.15% 86 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 31.56% ## Ulti's Analysis There was mild Vivi \> Kirby upset hype once Vivi demolished Altair, but that was crushed about 2 seconds into this match. Vivi was never in this. Before long, it came down to whether or not Kirby could perform well enough to keep alive the Sonic upset. In a word.... no. Kirby needed to break 60% here, at least, if he hoped to crack into elite ranks. However, his win against Vivi was one of those matches where the percentages didn't move all day. Kirby's bandwagoned form from 4ways was clearly gone, and his legit strength wasn't going to be enough to beat Sonic. Even with this said, this prediction percentage was as odd as Luigi's. Less than a third of people had Kirby winning three matches? Really? For every good match the casuals have, they follow it up with about 20 of these stink bombs. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3829&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=100) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (4)Ike 2010 _source: (1)Mario vs (4)Ike 2010 (revid 59244)_ ## Results Sunday, March 7th, 2010 - **Round:** Mushroom Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 101 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 7th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 24,981 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 71.97% 87 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 79.25% ## Ulti's Analysis This was the second match this contest in which the match pic was changed. The old version had an unofficial sprite, from some Brawl fan art sprite sheet: Not like it even matters. Mario scoring a total SFF beating here was a guarantee, and seeing someone almost get tripled in round 3 is pretty bad. You have to wonder if Zidane might have broken 30% here. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3830&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=101) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Mega Man vs (7)Ryu Hayabusa 2010 _source: (3)Mega Man vs (7)Ryu Hayabusa 2010 (revid 59246)_ ## Results Sunday, March 7th, 2010 - **Round:** Mushroom Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 102 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 7th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 31,054 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 63.70% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 32.62% ## Ulti's Analysis If Mario wasn't FREAKING MARIO, a great case could be made for a Mega Man \> Mario upset. We all know Mario would just exact the IT'S FREAKING MARIO clause circa Mario \> Samus 2005, but look at Mega Man's performances here. Kicks the crap out of Cid worse than people expect. "It's fine, Cid just sucks more than we thought" is the excuse. So he kicks the crap out of Zack worse than people expect. Again, people bust out "It's fine, Zack just sucks worse than we thought" and call it a day. But 72-28 against Ryu Hayabusa? Not even Mega Man having the best sprite in gaming history can passively explain this one. Mega's haters were out in full force for whatever reason this contest, but the fact is undeniable: Mega Man is back to 2002 ass-kicking levels. Call this SFF or Pic Factor or whatever else you want, but doing better than expected three times in a row goes past being a trend. Mega Man and his entire series went back to where they belong this contest, and we can probably thank the return of 1v1s for it. Screw 4ways. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3831&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=102) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sora vs (4)Bowser 2010 _source: (1)Sora vs (4)Bowser 2010 (revid 59248)_ ## Results Monday, March 8th, 2010 - **Round:** Heart Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 103 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 8th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 4,874 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 50.20% 48 for - 39 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 25.47% ## Ulti's Analysis Every contest has a division that just wrecks everyone's entry, and the Heart division took the cake as guru-buster this year. Bowser upsetting Sora was the first of three straight matches that would wreck brackets, and what's funny is Bowser pulling this off was almost a foregone conclusion once the first two rounds were finished. Sora looked like utter crap, while Bowser looked pretty much like his old self. Not villain-steroids Bowser who broke 40% on Sephiroth, but still more than good enough to beat Sora. Maybe Kingdom Hearts got unlucky with having so many night matches this contest, concluding with Sora's deathblow at the hands of Bowser here, but when you really look into the numbers the ASV wouldn't have mattered. None of KH's four losses were close enough for an ASV to matter much, and Captain Falcon beat Riku during the day. Sora and company need Kingdom Hearts 3 ASAP, or they might continue a rapid downward spiral. One could make a very good case Sora is the least deserving 1 seed we've ever had in a character contest. To get rolled over like this in a debatable match is pathetic, especially to the level of the vaunted Kingdom Hearts ASV being rendered irrelevant. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3832&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=103) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)L-Block vs (7)Charizard 2010 _source: (3)L-Block vs (7)Charizard 2010 (revid 59250)_ ## Results Monday, March 8th, 2010 - **Round:** Heart Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 104 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 8th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,359 - **Oracle Expectations:** Charizard - 55.06% 81 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Charizard - 8.83% ## Ulti's Analysis L-Block had three of the most boring matches of the contest. It's not him having a predictable path, because those happen. But he had three straight matches where the percentages barely moved for 12 hours, and with this match specifically it kind of killed the buzz of how important the match was. Sometimes, you know the exact moment a torch gets passed. You see it all the time in wrestling, porn and sports. We have our own version of that in contests sometimes, and this was a perfect example. SHAPED LIKE A BOOT TO KICK YOUR ASS got absolutely rolled by SHAPED LIKE A DRAGON TO BE FUCKING AWESOME, and L-Block may never be the same again. We already knew he was weakening and we already knew this was coming once THE ZARD beat Kratos, but getting 60-40'd against fellow bandwagon bait is the clear beginning of the end, if not the end already. This was a changing of the guard, plain and simple. Oh and if you think 8.83% is a low prediction percentage, go check out the finals for this division. THE ZARD totally wrecked people. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3833&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=104) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (13)Sub-Zero 2010 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (13)Sub-Zero 2010 (revid 59252)_ ## Results Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 - **Round:** Varia Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 105 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,519 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 63.75% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 66.90% ## Ulti's Analysis Samus ended up with a doubling here, which is very good. Remember, Auron failed to even break 60% on Sub-Zero a few years ago. But for a couple hours, we had something special going on. Samus was flirting with breaking 70%, which would have easily put her above Cloud. But then she fell from that insane pace overnight and ended with 67%, which put her from "above Cloud" to "longshot to pull off an upset on him". Even still, this was an absolutely amazing match for her and throws more proof onto the "Samus is probably stronger than Mario indirectly" pile. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3834&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=105) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (14)Jecht vs (10)Zelda 2010 _source: (14)Jecht vs (10)Zelda 2010 (revid 59254)_ ## Results Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 - **Round:** Varia Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 106 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,556 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda - 62.47% 88 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 46.34% ## Ulti's Analysis Even though Jecht won two matches, he was a real oddball character in this contest. He upset Phoenix Wright, but not in very convincing fashion. Then in round 2, he lets Ratchet of all people get 44% on him including a morning vote choke job. Ratchet, the guy whose been nothing but fodder for years. So naturally, in standard Winter 2010 fashion, he throws one final curveball before bowing out. The Ratchet performance suggested Jecht would get totally rolled on in this match; remember, it was a day match against Zelda when Jecht lost the morning vote horribly twice. So what does he do? After starting off slowly, he fights his way above 40% after an hour or so. Well no problem, Zelda has a killer ASV. But when the ASV showed up, nothing happened. Jecht stayed above 40% for the rest of the match, save for a tiny little while in the evening. It was a total oddity of a match, and Final Fantasy 13 being released the day of this match assuredly had something to do with Jecht inexplicably doing this well. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3835&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=106) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (4)Captain Falcon 2010 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (4)Captain Falcon 2010 (revid 59291)_ ## Results Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 - **Round:** Midgar Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 107 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 21,479 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 68.22% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 83.60% ## Ulti's Analysis Given how bad Cloud's board vote always is, contrasted with how great Falcon's board vote always is, people were really looking forward to the first few seconds of this match. And it did not disappoint. Falcon had over 80% of the vote early and was over 40% at the freeze. He did of course drop later, but not as badly as one might think. 70-30 is a blowout, yes, but not many non-NN characters can claim to have broken 30% on Cloud. Ridley and Chris Redfield couldn't do it, and people considered those matches proof of Cloud's weakness. Characters like Pikachu, Fox, Auron, and even Bowser have failed to break 30% on Cloud. Yet here we are, with Captain Falcon pulling it off. Cloud really is weakening, and 4ways might have hidden just how much of a drop he's really suffered. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3836&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=107) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Leon Kennedy vs (7)Ryu 2010 _source: (3)Leon Kennedy vs (7)Ryu 2010 (revid 59292)_ ## Results Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 - **Round:** Midgar Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 108 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,292 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 54.76% 84 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 22.76% ## Ulti's Analysis It was a long-standing belief that the winner of Ryu/Dante would get a bye through round 4, since Leon beating either Ryu or Dante wasn't going to happen. Then this match pic came out. Resident Evil: Gaiden has been a long-standing joke, but Leon actually got that stupid sprite in a match picture. All hope for a Leon upset or Leon even doing well went right out the window, because people were expecting the next incarnation of Solid Shit. Somehow, this didn't really happen. Yes Ryu won the match pretty easily, but this was far from some laughable blowout. He even lost the ASV against that blob of pixels, proving once and for all Leon Kennedy is a different entity from the rest of the Resident Evil series, and even Capcom as a whole. To win the ASV with that ugly mug against a fellow Capcom character is something else, and maybe, just maybe, this might have been a different match with even pics. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3837&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=108) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Pikachu 2010 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Pikachu 2010 (revid 59293)_ ## Results Thursday, March 11th, 2010 - **Round:** Gear Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 109 - **Match Date:** Thursday, March 11th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,342 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 59.00% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 69.52% ## Ulti's Analysis In the match directly preceding this one, Leon Kennedy went out and did his best impression of Solid shit. But no. Nonononono, you don't mess with the master. Not only did Solid shit grace us with his.... presence?... but Pikachu had a total godslaying sprite of his own to work with. And for 20 minutes or so, we were given one hell of a match. Pikachu got the early board vote, led by 60 at one point and led by 50 at the freeze. Next update, the lead drops all the way down to 19. Everyone assumed Ekans would stop messing around from here, but he only won the next update by 6 votes. And even more hilarious, the next update after that was a tie. 398-398. It took Ekans a full 25 minutes to get the lead in this match, but once he did he took off quite nicely. When you consider he was losing for the first 20 minutes of this match, Ekans actually didn't do half bad here in finishing 55-45. He even stomped the morning vote against a Pokemon, as Solid shit. That's no easy task, given Pikachu's sprite pulling off that insane run in 2007 and beating L-Block in 2008. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3838&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=109) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2010 _source: (3)Auron vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2010 (revid 59294)_ ## Results Thursday, March 11th, 2010 - **Round:** Gear Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 110 - **Match Date:** Thursday, March 11th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,430 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 51.83% 71 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 36.82% ## Ulti's Analysis In the stats topic, this has been a debated match for years. We always want to see 1v1 matches between near-elites and in this contest we got one of the best. Squall vs Auron has been discussed and dissected every which way for ages, and it's nice we got to see it happen. Need more bracket setups like this. That said, this probably shouldn't have been all that debated. Look at it just in terms of 1v1s. On pure results, Squall = Vincent \> Ganondorf \> Auron. No extrapolation needed, we've seen those matches before and Squall/Auron are on opposite ends. There's no real reason to believe anything has changed much since these matches took place, either. So that leaves Auron's trump card, the win over Sonic in the 4ways. Had Sonic not gotten a mid-contest Brawl announcement in 2007, Squall would have beaten him twice that year. It's not like Auron has something Squall himself couldn't have reproduced. Squall can even counter Auron's random Kingdom Hearts 2 appearance. It all added up to a close Squall win, which is exactly what we ended up with. Squall took a 100 vote lead in 15 minutes, then spent the next 10 minutes getting rocked before putting the match completely away. The final percentage may be 52-48, but this was one of those never-in-doubt close matches. Barring Final Fantasy X-0 (why doesn't this game exist?), Auron will probably never boost enough independently of Squall to turn this around. Auron's still a near-elite, he's just not at Squall's level. Few people are. Know what we need? (3)Luigi vs (2)Auron to complete the circle. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3839&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=110) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (13)Missingno 2010 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (13)Missingno 2010 (revid 59295)_ ## Results Friday, March 12th, 2010 - **Round:** Jenova Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 111 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 12th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,841 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 54.29% 66 for - 11 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 74.25% ## Ulti's Analysis The second Missingno upset Crono, this match was hyped beyond belief. The basic idea is Missingno would catch an L-Block run and win the contest if he could get past Sephiroth, and the rallying was set in place days in advance. People thought Missingno could catch an insane early rally, build up a lead of 2000 or so and render the Total Domination Zone irrelevant. And if it was at all close come the morning, forget it. No way would Missingno's ralliers let him lose to Sephiroth of all people. It... didn't really work out that way. Missingno did dominate the early vote, and had a lead of over 200 votes at the freeze. For most characters, this would be an amazing start. But not here. Remember, L-Block had a lead of over 800 votes on Link through the first five minutes. Missingno supporters were actually very disappointed here, and were calling the match over. Unfortunately, they were 100% right. Even as Missingno spent the next two hours getting his lead just over 600 votes, there was a real sense he dropped the ball on a great opportunity. For reference's sake, L-Block had a lead of 4700 votes on Link after 2 hours. Translate that to 1v1 and you get what, 10000 votes? Obviously, Missingno wasn't close to that. Sephiroth was making some great stalls even as Missingno built his lead, and there was a sense of the inevitable once the deep night vote began. Sure enough, this match ended once the TDZ began. Seph erased the entire deficit in about an hour and a half, and turned a once-close match into a complete laugher. This match did set records alright, but not the records Missingno fans were hoping for. Sephiroth ended up dominating well past the TDZ, crushing even the morning vote en route to a 3800 vote win. It ranks up with the biggest vote swings ever, though no one can decide on the criteria for that one. Some call Master Hand \> Kuja the biggest swing ever, and add the "comeback" caveat to keep people from counting matches that have stalled for awhile before someone just takes off. Fine, but what about Sora vs Alucard? Sora was down 50 for awhile before winning by over 10000 votes. Knuckles was losing to Kefka for an extended period by over 100 before winning by 12500 or so. Or if you want a match where a "legit" comeback had to take place, Street Fighter 2 was beating Mario RPG by 230 until the morning vote hit. That match was very much in doubt, we didn't know a lot about voting trends or whatever else. SF2 looked like it was going to win. And then... boom. Mario RPG swings 12500 votes. Someone come up with a good definition for this, because it's one of those "needs a wiki page" topics. Though Missingno lost, he gave us one hell of a run and would have made a match of this were this a day match. I love what creativename has done for these contests, but his stat topics Buzz Killington act got old years ago -- and the assumption Sephiroth's morning vote here proves he would have dominated Missingno in a day match is ridiculous. The ralliers had to sleep eventually, saw how far apart it was in the morning and didn't even bother. That's all this proves. If anything, this match proves just how much Missingno did with legit strength this contest. For Sephiroth, you'd think this would be a huge win for him. It wasn't. If anything, winning this match was the biggest mistake he's ever made. He was already a huge target for anti-votes before beating Missingno; beating him only incurred even more wrath. It's ironic the Missingno fans took this contest more seriously than anyone else -- You know, the whole "we vote for jokes because you guys treat this stuff like it's your life" crowd -- but that's how contests work sometimes. Most other characters beating Missingno could shake such things off. Not Sephiroth. Not in a year when Snake \> Sephiroth was \*the\* hyped upset of choice. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3840&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=111) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (14)Big Daddy vs (10)Tifa Lockheart 2010 _source: (14)Big Daddy vs (10)Tifa Lockheart 2010 (revid 59296)_ ## Results Friday, March 12th, 2010 - **Round:** Jenova Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 112 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 12th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 15,100 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tifa - 63.84% 76 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tifa - 28.74% ## Ulti's Analysis No matter how badly other FF7 characters get anti-voted, Tifa doesn't seem to have that problem. But with that said, this was an odd match for her. The percentages barely moved all day, which is strange given Big Daddy isn't all that strong a character. Maybe Big Mommies have needs, too. The comparison here is obvious. Tifa got 62% on Gordon Freeman, yet didn't really come close to that against Daddy next round. Either the Missingno fans punished Tifa for Sephiroth's win, or Big Daddy would beat Gordon Freeman with ease. Gordon losing that match wouldn't surprise many people, but you won't find too many gurus picking it. This was definite Missingno backlash. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3841&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=112) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (3)Luigi 2010 _source: (1)Link vs (3)Luigi 2010 (revid 59298)_ ## Results Saturday, March 13th, 2010 - **Round:** Hyrule Division Final - **Match \#:** 113 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 13th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 24,393 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 69.63% 76 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 75.43% ## Ulti's Analysis This was the first Link match all contest where he looked like he was in godslayer mode. Apparently he got annoyed at people doubting him after MMX outdoing Mega Man 2004 on him. He did lose the board vote again, but it didn't last beyond a couple minutes before Link rolled right along. Some actually called Link not breaking 70% here, so he had fun laughing at those people too. What's funny is this wouldn't even be Link's best "Don't you know who I am?" performance. Poor Sonic. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3842&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=113) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Kirby 2010 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Kirby 2010 (revid 59297)_ ## Results Saturday, March 13th, 2010 - **Round:** Chaos Division Final - **Match \#:** 114 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 13th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,681 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 54.05% 72 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 31.36% ## Ulti's Analysis This match was the culmination of Sonic upset hype falling flat on its face. First Ganondorf completely crapped out in round 3, then Kirby followed suit by not being in this match for more than a couple minutes. Given the insane hype behind Ganon or Kirby upsetting Sonic in this division, Sonic's thorough beating of both characters pretty much shut the door on him being a lot weaker or being the weak link of the Noble Nine or whatever else. The 4ways overrated Sonic Team's collapse, but 1v1s returned at least Sonic to normalcy a bit. For the record, Crono is the weak link of the Noble Nine and has been for awhile. This probably isn't in doubt anymore. Sonic isn't a mega strong character, but he's surely not the crapfest that 4ways made him out to be. He is what he's always been: third tier of the Noble Nine. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3843&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=114) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (3)Mega Man 2010 _source: (1)Mario vs (3)Mega Man 2010 (revid 67911)_ ## Results Sunday, March 14th, 2010 - **Round:** Mushroom Division Final - **Match \#:** 115 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 14th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,406 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 55.72% 76 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 62.42% ## Ulti's Analysis Haven't we seen this match before? Let me jog my memory here.... Oh yeah, this was the quasi-sequel to a rather famous contest match. The difference this time is no one picked Mega Man pre-contest. There was no x-stat support or anything else. Everyone knew Mario would win this. But during this contest, a good argument can be made Mega Man's first three matches are more impressive than Mario's. But this isn't all that relevant, because it's FREAKING MARIO. He's so FREAKING MARIO that Mega Man didn't even win the board vote despite all the joking groundswell of support for him. Mario is basically the ultimate anti-joke. The percentages here didn't finish far off from Mario's "upset" of Samus in 2005, but this time it was quite expected. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3844&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=115) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Bowser vs (7)Charizard 2010 _source: (4)Bowser vs (7)Charizard 2010 (revid 61349)_ ## Results Sunday, March 14th, 2010 - **Round:** Heart Division Final - **Match \#:** 116 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 14th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,898 - **Oracle Expectations:** Charizard - 47.70% 12 for - 68 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Charizard - 3.17% ## Ulti's Analysis First and foremost, this match had by far the best set of pictures of any freeform match. It's difficult to get much more badass than Bowser vs Charizard, and the picsmiths followed suit. Only one pic (that one with the fire ring in the background) seemed odd, but who cares. It's Bowser and Charizard. Now it took eight years' worth of contests, but we finally have a match that rivals Mario vs Cloud 2002 for perfect release date timing. As everyone knows, Super Mario Sunshine came out on the very day of that match. The timing of something like this is insane, but Mario didn't care and parlayed it to one of the most miraculous wins ever. Charizard's upset of Bowser wasn't two gaming titans in a brand new contest pulling off a classic match or anything, but it's equally perfect release date timing. Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver launched on the day of this match, and had set in by the time this match came around. Remember, this match started at noon. A ton of people were playing the game and looking for help before then. On a normal day, Bowser probably beats Charizard easily. Maybe he even SFFs him. If this match took place next year, Bowser could break 55%. But HGSS day was anything but a "normal day". This thing was even for about a minute, but then Charizard totally took off. The match was never in doubt after that, which was the biggest shock of all. Bowser was never in this thing, to the point where ended up doing worse than Kratos. Bowser losing in a Pokefad bandwagon contest on HGSS is acceptable. It would have happened to a lot of characters. But rolling over like a turtle and being unable to get up afterwards looks really bad for him. The circumstances around this upset were amazing. HGSS launching on match day is insane enough, but Charizard even getting here was a massive longshot. Only L-Block winning the 2007 contest had prediction percentages lower than Charizard winning the Heart division. It would be the one division all contest the 1 seed failed to win. All we were missing here was a Bulbapedia link circa PlanetGamecube's 2002 stunt. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3845&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=116) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (10)Zelda 2010 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (10)Zelda 2010 (revid 68303)_ ## Results Monday, March 15th, 2010 - **Round:** Varia Division Final - **Match \#:** 117 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 15th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,026 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 60.59% 79 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 53.29% ## Ulti's Analysis So hey, remember when these two had a match way back in 2006? It was 55-45, which is probably how that match was supposed to go without SFF. Fast forward 4 years, and suddenly Samus outdoes that match by 9%. Samus, the one Nintendo character who never SFFs anything else, SFFing Zelda of all people? Something was up. Either Samus was about to win the Winter 2010 Contest, Zelda lost a step or two or Samus has finally learned how to SFF people. Given how great Samus looked compared to how odd Zelda looked all contest long, it's probably a mix of the latter two. And even still, a difference of 9% is no joke. Samus was berserk this contest. Zelda getting a deboost across the board was possible, given even with Link winning the other two also looked a bit off this contest. One thing was for sure. Samus vs Cloud was going to be a really, really fun match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3846&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=117) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (7)Ryu 2010 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (7)Ryu 2010 (revid 59303)_ ## Results Monday, March 15th, 2010 - **Round:** Midgar Division Final - **Match \#:** 118 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 15th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 26,284 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 63.90% 73 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 74.63% ## Ulti's Analysis Ryu's streak of breaking 40% on Noble Niners ended with a massive thud this contest, in what could perhaps be seen as Cloud's best match this year. Ryu didn't lead during the board vote like most other characters would against Cloud, and got completely rocked afterwards. Cloud was 10 minutes away from breaking 66% on him, which is a thoroughly impressive performance given Ryu's moniker "Mister Consistency". All that's left now is to get Ryu to complete the Noble Nine gauntlet. He still hasn't faced Link, Sephiroth or Mario. He's been in a match against the other 6, and got the prerequisite 42% against all but Cloud. 42% against Cloud, Link, Sephiroth and probably even Mario will be a tall order, but we can still get him to have matches against all nine members. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3847&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=118) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2010 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Squall Leonhart 2010 (revid 67896)_ ## Results Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 - **Round:** Gear Division Final - **Match \#:** 119 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,172 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 57.59% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 54.64% ## Ulti's Analysis This was our fourth time seeing this match. For reference's sake, the past three: 2002: Snake 65.43% - Squall 34.57% 2006: Snake 57.59% - Squall 42.41% 2007: Snake 58.48% - Squall 41.52% (the L-Block \> Snake \> Sonic \> Squall match) 2002 obviously happened when Squall only had FF8 going for him, so we can throw it out. Squall is a great barometer for how Snake has incrementally increased the past few years, even if two characters facing each other four times kinda sucks. As you can see, Snake keeps going up little by little. He was actually over 60% for a little while in this match, before the TDZ came and got Squall back over 40% for good. It was the first match all contest where Snake looked good for 12 hours straight, and was the match where it was realized Snake was coming for Sephiroth's head. Then Sephy just collapsed against Tifa and the so-called upset became a mortal lock. Beyond that, the story here was Squall's seeding. He was the only 2 seed all contest to do what he was supposed to do and make it to round 4. The other 7 of them -- Nathan Drake, Altair, Master Chief, Kratos, Ezio, Dante and Gordon Freeman -- all failed to even get out of the second round. In the third round thanks to this 2 Seed Curse, we had four straight 3 vs 7 matches (and five total), two 14 vs 10 matches and only one 3 vs 2 match. The biggest irony of this entire contest is outside Squall himself, Kratos was the only properly seeded 2 in the entire bracket. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3848&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=119) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (10)Tifa Lockheart 2010 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (10)Tifa Lockheart 2010 (revid 59311)_ ## Results Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 - **Round:** Jenova Division Final - **Match \#:** 120 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,915 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 63.17% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 64.01% ## Ulti's Analysis This is pretty much the worst match Sephiroth has ever had, including losing to Snake this year. Any other odd match from him or multi-poll loss can be blamed on shenanigans or Cloud SFFing him while someone else snuck by for second place or something. Not this match. Failing to pummel Vincent with the SFF hammer was acceptable enough, since Square SFF is rather difficult anyway. And even then, 63-37 wasn't that bad because Vincent is perennially a near-elite. But this.... this was just embarrassing in every conceivable way. Taking the math literally, Vincent only scores 43.58% on Tifa. That's just a ridiculous pre-SFF percentage for two characters that might be dead even. Sephiroth just sucked here, no two ways about it. He was a prime anti-vote target before the Missingno win ever happened, and then afterwards he became this.... thing. Whatever that is, it surely wasn't Sephiroth. Sephiroth wouldn't only be winning by 15 votes against Tifa after 10 minutes. No, this was Sephiroth against Tifa and "Not Sephiroth", with the latter receiving fresh power from angry Missingno fans. Even after Seph recovered and put the match away, he only ended up with 56%, putting the aforementioned Tifa/Vincent percentage at an insane 56.5-43.5%. This pretty much made it official: Sephiroth was not beating Snake. The match in doubt would be the Samus/Cloud winner against Snake. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3849&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=120) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Sonic the Hedgehog 2010 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Sonic the Hedgehog 2010 (revid 67877)_ ## Results Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 - **Round:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 121 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 21,751 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 64.91% 70 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 68.79% ## Ulti's Analysis It was a long time ago, but Link actually had a barometer for this match: Cloud's 2003 killing of Sonic. Remember, this was the match where everyone took notice that Cloud could perhaps upset Link that year. 7 years later, Link outdid that with ease right from the start. Link was over 70% within 20 minutes, stayed there until Sega's standard morning vote and got it back just before the match ended. A 70-30 beating in a Noble Nine match is insane, and given how off the Zelda trio looked this contest a lot of people are blaming SFF for this match. It makes sense. Against Thrall, Alucard and Cloud, Link didn't look good at all. It was Luigi and Sonic that made him look invincible, and the biggest anomaly of all was that strange MMX match. One would assume Link could lay down the SFF hammer there if he did the same against Sonic, but it didn't happen. Regardless, some felt Sonic even getting to this point was good for him. Everyone also knew he'd get killed, but reenacting Mario World \> Sonic 2 was a bit disappointing. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3850&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=121) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (7)Charizard 2010 _source: (1)Mario vs (7)Charizard 2010 (revid 59315)_ ## Results Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 - **Round:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 122 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,556 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 58.43% 69 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 48.45% ## Ulti's Analysis A visible bandwagon formed for Charizard mid-contest, and when paired with HGSS allowed him to win the Heart division in stunning, convincing fashion. But against FREAKING MARIO, surely his time was done and he'd be lucky to break 40%. Well, not exactly. Pokemon has long since proven it doesn't really get SFFd anymore, and this match probably hammers that point home best of all. The Zard was never in it to win it beyond the first couple minutes of the board vote, but getting 46.4% on Mario in a day match is no joke. Mario was actually over 54% at one point, but THE ZARD beasted all over Mario's percentage come Pokemon ASV time. Yes he lost fairly easily, but this match was about more than winning or losing. We all knew FREAKING MARIO was going to win. But even in a losing effort, THE ZARD helped Pokemon go out as the star of this contest. We all know how good Pokemon was, but borrowing from charmander6000's stats probably tells the story best: Top 10 Most Popular Night Polls 1\. Sephiroth vs. Missingno – 66731 2\. Link vs. Thrall (R1) – 60599 3\. Link vs. Alucard (R2) – 59971 4\. Cloud Strife vs. Samus Aran (R5) – 59334 5\. Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Revolver Ocelot (R1) – 58208 6\. Link vs. Luigi (R4) – 57731 7\. Mario vs. Big Boss (R2) – 57211 8\. Cloud Strife vs. Chris Redfield (R2) – 56563 9\. Charizard vs. Duke Nukem (R1) – 56465 10\. Leon Kennedy vs. Vault Boy (R1) – 55924 Top 10 Most Popular Day Polls 1\. Missingno vs. Crono (R1) – 91081 2\. Solid Snake vs. Sephiroth (R5) – 86776 3\. Charizard vs. Bowser (R4) – 83524 4\. Cloud Strife vs. Ryu (R4) – 82222 5\. Charizard vs. Kratos (R2) – 82168 6\. Charizard vs. L-Block (R3) – 81553 7\. Mega Man X vs. Captain John Price (R1) – 81068 8\. Pikachu vs. Commander Shepard (R2) – 80790 9\. Sephiroth vs. Tifa Lockheart (R4) – 80421 10\. Amaterasu vs. Shadow the Hedgehog (R1) – 79846 Pokemon is nearly half the list. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3851&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=122) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (1)Cloud Strife 2010 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (1)Cloud Strife 2010 (revid 72884)_ ## Results Thursday, March 18th, 2010 - **Round:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 123 - **Match Date:** Thursday, March 18th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,336 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 55.70% 70 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 63.80% ## Ulti's Analysis Samus had legitimate hype coming into this match given four straight godkiller performances, but few actually believed she would win a 12 hour night match against Cloud. Much of the hype was the in-jest hopeful type, although Samus really did make a case going into this. Come match time, the beginning is about what you'd expect. Samus won the board vote and jumped out to a lead of 100 against the FF7 character. Like Missingno before her, the lack of a total slayer board vote surely spelled Samus's doom later, but at least we could have fun for a little while. Cloud went and erased the 100 vote lead over the next few updates, and from this point he normally takes off, dominates overnight and shakes off the early troubles. Yet after Cloud evened the match, Samus shot back up again. So Cloud fought back. Before long, he took the lead and again looked to dominate overnight. But yet again, Samus refused to let the match go and took the lead back. This little dance continued until well past 3 a.m., with neither character doing anything and the match basically being even. But just as hope set in on Samus pulling off an insane upset, the Total Domination Zone set in and Cloud finally put the match away. Anti-climactic ending, but at least it was a fun first three hours. What's funny is this exact scenario happened in 2004, and we all assumed Samus finishing over 40% was amazing for her. But in 2010, she held on for dear life and stayed over 47% (likely falls below 46% or so in a 24 hour match). Maybe in a few years, she can win this match outright. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3852&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=123) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (1)Sephiroth 2010 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (1)Sephiroth 2010 (revid 59320)_ ## Results Thursday, March 18th, 2010 - **Round:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 124 - **Match Date:** Thursday, March 18th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,132 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 48.77% 26 for - 47 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 18.31% ## Ulti's Analysis Because of various multi-way poll results, this was the hyped match of the contest going in. Then as more and more of this contest played out, it became clear Snake was going to win this match. And easily, at that. Not only that, Sephiroth was bound to lose the board vote worse than usual because of beating Missingno. Sure enough, Snake jumped out to some ridiculous early lead along the lines of 25-1 and never really looked back. This was as dominating a performance one can get from a 53-47 win, and this came during a day match. MGS sucks during the day, and FF7 is actually better overall during the day than at night. Night time only looks stronger because of the Total Domination Zone. If this were a full 24 hour match, it would have gotten worse for Sephiroth. A lot worse. How bad did it get for him? It took Sephiroth more than 4 hours to win an update in this so-called debated match. That first update win was by a grand total of 7 votes. He only won about 10 updates all match, and went out like a scared dog. Even worse is it will likely get worse for him before it gets better. Sephiroth is in Master Chief territory, and not even a full remake of FF7 will totally get him out of there. For Snake, the focus wasn't really on Sephiroth here, but on Cloud. 53-47 on Sephiroth is an amazing performance, and this could have been 54-46 in a 24 hour match. If we get this format again, the 24 hour matches need to start one round sooner in the quarterfinals. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3853&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=124) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Mario 2010 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Mario 2010 (revid 59323)_ ## Results Friday, March 19th, 2010 - **Round:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 125 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 19th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 30,450 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 61.39% 70 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 50.88% ## Ulti's Analysis "The more things change, the more they stay the same." -Alphonse Karr As everyone knows, this was the 2002 final. Mario scored only 37.47% there, and it was a fairly anticlimactic finish to an insane last few rounds of that contest. 8 years later, Mario finally gets his rematch and pretty much puts out the same performance. What's disappointing about it is how opinion of the two characters was almost reversed this time around. In 2002, everyone was sick of Mario and sided with Link to slay the beast, as it were. This year, a lot of anti-Link sentiment was getting tossed around because of him being far too good, and people wanted to see Mario do well. Mario only parlayed this into being over 40% at the freeze, and he pretty much got rocked from then on. Not a bad performance per se, because Link doesn't have the "King of SFF" title for nothing. People were just expecting Mario to do a little better. As an aside this marked the first 24 hour match of the contest, and the final three matches (semifinals and final) would all be 24 hours. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3854&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=125) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (1)Solid Snake 2010 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (1)Solid Snake 2010 (revid 59325)_ ## Results Saturday, March 20th, 2010 - **Round:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 126 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 20th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,256 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 50.16% 36 for - 34 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 39.43% ## Ulti's Analysis Snake vs Sephiroth was the hyped match pre-contest, but as the contest wore on it became increasingly clear we should have been hyping the Samus/Cloud winner versus Snake. Snake had a legitimate shot at pulling off the upset either way, although early on against Cloud he didn’t do as well as one might expect. He won the board vote, but was actually going down just before the freeze. He recovered and built a lead of 400 through the first 90 minutes, but everyone knew the Total Domination Zone would end that fun before long. Sure enough, Cloud began coming back and fought through all of Snake's best efforts to stall. But as Cloud got the lead below 100 and started making a push to take control of the match outright, a funny thing happened. Snake stalled. A lot. Like, stalled through the entire TDZ and just completely refused to let Cloud start winning. It was like watching a Solid versus Liquid fight in poll form, with neither character giving an inch. For nearly three hours, these two were either tied or within 30 votes of one another. There was some legitimate buzz in the air about Snake pulling off a miracle and perhaps winning this match -- barring creativename's Buzz Killington act in the stats topic, that is. If the entire board is happy about maybe seeing something new, don't rattle off a million trends and go "well because of this statistical proliferation in the stats, Cloud should begin winning around X hour and win with Y percent". No one wants to hear it, and it totally kills the unknown factor that makes these contests so fun in the first place. For whatever reason it was Snake matches, not Pokemon matches, that brought out the absolute worst of people this contest. Anyway it's rare to see the morning vote save Final Fantasy 7, but it happened. We were also calling for MGS's crappy day vote to show up at the worst time, and in this match it happened. Snake held on for dear life once it was clear Cloud was going to win the morning vote and the match, and before long he gave up the ghost and watched as Cloud buried him. It was a great contest run for Snake, but it came to an end in the semifinal. This left us with a Link/Cloud final. Again. You can imagine how happy people were about this, and some were calling for Link to rise backlash and double Cloud early. Snake's deep runs in recent years have almost always come at Final Fantasy 7's expense, and the day we see Snake upset Cloud isn't far off. The only thing left for Snake to do is to make a deep run at Nintendo's expense. Instead of having to go through Sephiroth and Cloud, he needs to get past Samus and Mario. 1 on 1, too, not in gimmicky 4way crap. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3855&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=126) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2010 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2010 (revid 61460)_ ## Results Sunday, March 21st, 2010 - **Round:** Contest Final - **Match \#:** 127 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 21st, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,130 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 57.17% 74 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 36.55% ## Ulti's Analysis Hmm, Link beating Cloud late in a contest where Link gets a percentage in the low 50s and Cloud something in the high 40s. Seems oddly familiar somehow.... - Link_vs_Cloud_Strife_2004 - Link_vs_Cloud_Strife_2005 - Link_vs_Cloud_Strife_2006 - L-Block_vs_Link_vs_Cloud_vs_Snake_2007 - Link_vs_Solid_Snake_vs_Cloud_vs_Crono_2008 Only 2008 deviated much from this, but Crono was dragging Cloud down in that final. If you look back on this history, Cloud's win over Link in 2003 is as big or bigger a miracle than Mario's win on Cloud in 2002. Kingdom Hearts and a match picture doesn't explain that match anymore, especially given how easily Link gets past everything else. Come 2010, it was the same ending as always. Link \> Cloud, with a percentage close to what we've seen so often before. People were none too happy with Cloud beating Snake, but the LINK ALWAYS WINS anger trumps even Cloud's anti-votes. As a result, Cloud did *far* better than people expected. The Oracle expected Link to get at least 57% here, and many people even had him breaking 60%. So even though Cloud got rocked as expected early, he made an excellent percentage comeback to make the final respectable. It's also amazing how these two still bring in so many votes. That said, this was a disappointing final. Link-always-wins hate being so huge that Cloud of all people benefits is a pleasant surprise, but that's not the point. Cloud making this match as close as he did was not a good thing, because now it's harder to make the case Link needs to be removed. But make no mistake. He *needs* to get taken out of the field. His only two losses, ever, involved Celda and the entire internet ganging up on him. To make a good bracket, you need to have all the good matches on the side of the bracket Link *isn't* on. At least one third of people will always pick him to win and bracket vote accordingly. This is a huge problem. It's time for Link to go. Cloud doing well in the final is almost irrelevant, since he's clearly weakening. Snake could have a legit shot at beating him even next year. But Link? He'll never lose a match again without insane joke/bandwagon support. And that is a huge, huge problem. He's the anti-fun. It's time for him to get the boot and be the super secret final boss at the end or something. Bring back the Tournament of Champions, Battle Royale, whatever. Having Link in the main field doesn't work anymore. What's sad is Link will *still* get the most nominations next year, even though no one on Board 8 bothers with it and everyone knows he always wins. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=3856&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k10&type=match&match=127) - **Previous Match** # Game of the Decade (2010) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 128 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Game of the Decade _source: Game of the Decade (revid 88286)_
Fall 2010 Contest

Announced:

September 1, 2010

Started:

October 20, 2010

Ended:

December 23, 2010

Winner:

Winner: Majora's Mask Runner-up: SSB Brawl

Contest Winner:

LamdaMax - 396 points

Notable matches:

Deus Ex > Rock Band 2, SotC > MGS2,

KHII > KH, Brawl > Melee,

Majora > FFX, Majora > Brawl
**Fall 2010 Contest** **Fall 2010 Contest**, better known as the **Game of the Decade Contest**, was the third Games Contest held on GameFAQs. Only games released between 2000 and 2009 were eligible for this bracket. Nominations opened on September 1st, 2010. ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis Yeah, remember back when this thing started? Probably not, given all the final week hoopla. But back on September 1st, Allen announced this thing. Then after the standard paranoia, things were gradually leaked via Allen's own version of the DOJO and off we went. Format was the same as last winter, but with a twist: Game of the Decade. So no heavy hitters from the 1990s, and nothing from 2010 either much to the disappointment of the various Board 8 denizens that fail at math. That a single topic questioning what a "decade" meant got more than 2 replies is a testament to how badly you people bite at everything. Did you know "gullible" is listed in no dictionary? The contest ended up starting on October 20th, which is a brisk pace. I think the bracket came out less than 2 weeks prior, and some shenanigans took place with Allen coming into board8chat, the vote-in polls and of course the bracket itself. It was a thoroughly well-design mess with no dumb gimmicks like generational gaps or gender splits. Yeah there were a few setups, but nothing worth complaining about since we got Brawl vs Melee and whole ton of unpredictability out of the deal. But before all that, we had to finish getting the field together. Unlike last winter where the vote-ins were stacked and lower seeds made runs, the vote-in polls this year were actually deciding the fodder. In fact all the 1-4 seeds won their first round matches this time around, so there was nothing crazy going on. At least, not at the top. - Assassin's Creed and Devil May Cry getting stuck into a vote-in was a complete disgrace, and it showed in the results. They stomped everything, hinted at DMC3 and AC2 making the bracket with ease, and all the other games were left to pick up scraps. The top 6 games from this poll made it in, which is odd given another poll only had 4. But it's hard feeling bad for Dark Cloud 2 when it misses out on 6th place by 450 votes. BG&E got it worse given its first round opponent was Galaxy. Good grief. - Much more competitive poll all around, and the one that opened the most eyes. First off, this poll had 5 RPGs in it. This meant cannibalism, and in the end it meant Star Ocean 3 and Fire Emblem getting completely screwed. FE10 started strong, but barely missed the cut. Mario Kart DS was laughed at even though it did well, mainly because everyone hates Mario Kart DS, and the top two games more or less shocked everyone. Legend of Dragoon and Star Wars proved themselves legit here, even though neither one went out and won their match. Ninja Gaiden being in this poll and placing was also pretty funny, for reasons we'll get into later. But the big thing here was Legend of Dragoon outright winning this vote-in. That was a fun day on the board, with tons of people arguing about whether the game was good or not. - The worst of the vote-ins. RE5, God of War 2 and Fusion wrecked everything, and inFamous ended up getting in by default from the leftovers. Nothing else even came close, and you get the feeling Allen didn't like this vote-in either with only taking 4 games from it. - One day after a poll where 4 games get picked, we get a poll where SEVEN games - Gears 2, SoulCalibur 2, The Sims, Castlevania DoS, Wii Sports, Guitar Hero 2 and Viewtiful Joe -- all get in. Really, we couldn't have dropped a game or two from this poll and taken one of the games from the 4-only poll? Not that any of these games would have won anything, but 6-7-4-7 is strange. I'm guessing Allen went by individual vote totals, which is bizarre when you think about it. The other new thing worth bringing up was the Battle Challenge, which was used only for this contest. It was a cool little bank-or-bust deal where you'd try getting a streak going to increase your points multiplier, but if you got a match wrong you'd lose everything not banked. Cool idea, although the multiplier didn't change from round to round so the late matches became irrelevant since the winner clinched in round 4 or something. It would be cool to see this brought out for special occasions in the future, but with a multiplier tweak so the late rounds meant more. As-is, it favors round 1 far too much. ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis People look forward to my contest ranking every season for whatever reason, and here it is: Fall 2010 (GotD) \> Spring 2004 (Games) \> Summer 2002 (Characters) \> Summer 2003 (Characters) \> Winter 2010 (Characters) \> Summer 2005 (Characters) \> Fall 2009 (Games 4-way) \> Summer 2007 (Characters 4-way) \> Summer 2006 (Females vs Males) \> Spring 2006 (Series) \> Summer 2008 (Characters 4-way) \> Summer 2004 (Characters) \> Spring 2005 (Villains) Yes, I rank Fall 2010 first. Given all the information we have these days, it was the best contest possible and virtually functioned like a contest where we had no info. Even in some cases where we had info we were shocked, like Shadow of the Colossus's run or Majora \> GSC. This isn't overrating something recent, either, because this contest will last for awhile as being really really good long after it ends. The first day was crazy with the Deus Ex \> Rock Band 2 match, the last day was crazy with the final, and we got a whole ton of crazy in between. Only round 2 was really disappointing, and that was only because we had so many upset recipients from round 1 getting beat later. All in all, best contest. If you look at all the other contests people have called the "best", they're often overrated. Summer 2002 had a great round 3 and onward, but have you looked at the bracket recently? It was terrible. Summer 2003 was great, but only in spurts. Spring 2004 was good, but suffered from divisions by era and got wholly bailed out by Division 128 being so good. Match Fall 2010 up against any other contest, and it comes out looking better. People also took the "Game of the Decade" title very seriously, and the bracket was filled with a ton of worthy games. For whatever reason, be it critical acclaim, social influence, gaming influence or just plain being a damn good game, these games were all worthy of the title (bracket order, and with all joking and personal bias aside): Fallout 3, Deus Ex, Rock Band 2, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Halo: Combat Evolved, Metroid Prime, Okami, God of War, Grand Theft Auto 3, Half-Life 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Guitar Hero 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Super Smash Bros. Brawl (seriously), Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda: Twilight Princess, BioShock, Final Fantasy X, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Devil May Cry, Resident F\*\*\*ing Evil 4 (my own personal choice), Silent Hill 2, Braid, Portal, Mass Effect, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, World of Warcraft, Diablo 2, Shadow of the Colossus, The Sims, Zelda: Majora's Mask, Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion That's almost a quarter of the bracket, which speaks to how smart people were in nominating and how smart Allen was in setting all this up. Last but not least... The Ultimate Loser!™ = Resident Evil 5! Majora's Mask \> Brawl \> Fallout 3 \> Metroid Prime \> Half-Life 2 \> God of War \> Tales of Symphonia \> Resident Evil 5 No need for sympathy here, since RE5 will go down as the most impressive Ultimate Loser™ ever. None of the matches in that chain went above 55-45 and RE5 was in the top quarter of the raw x-stats. See you all next contest! Hope you enjoyed this season's edition of the Post-Contest Analysis! ## 2010 Contest - Useful Articles - Board 8's Fall 2010 Nominations - Fall 2010 Vote-In Polls - Fall 2010 Odds to Win - 2010 Fall Contest Matches - detailed write-ups on every '10 Fall Contest poll - Most Surprising Results of Fall 2010 - Most Impressive Performances of Fall 2010 ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
North Division Fallout 3 Halo: Combat Evolved Fallout 3 Metroid Prime Fallout 3 Smash Bros. Brawl Smash Bros. Brawl **ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK**
\(1\) Fallout 3 (16) inFamous Fallout 3 Deus Ex Fallout 3 Batman: Arkham Asylum
\(8\) Rock Band 2 (9) Deus Ex
\(5\) Batman: Arkham Asylum (12) Psychonauts Batman: Arkham Asylum Team Fortress 2
\(4\) Team Fortress 2 (13) Fable
\(3\) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (14) The Legend of Dragoon Uncharted 2 Street Fighter IV Uncharted 2 Halo: Combat Evolved
\(6\) Sonic Adventure 2 (11) Street Fighter IV
\(7\) Halo 3 (10) Super Mario Sunshine Halo 3 Halo: Combat Evolved
\(2\) Halo: Combat Evolved (15) Ninja Gaiden
Northeast Division Metroid Prime Half-Life 2
\(1\) Metroid Prime (16) Star Ocean: Till the End of Time Metroid Prime Devil May Cry 3 Metroid Prime Okami
\(8\) Mother 3 (9) Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening
\(5\) Demon's Souls (12) Mega Man 9 Mega Man 9 Okami
\(4\) Okami (13) No More Heroes
\(3\) Tales of Symphonia (14) Resident Evil 5 Tales of Symphonia God of War God of War Half-Life 2
\(6\) God of War (11) Left 4 Dead
\(7\) LittleBigPlanet (10) Grand Theft Auto III Grand Theft Auto III Half-Life 2
\(2\) Half-Life 2 (15) Left 4 Dead 2
East Division Smash Bros. Melee Smash Bros. Brawl Smash Bros. Brawl Zelda: Twilight Princess
\(1\) Super Smash Bros. Melee (16) Guitar Hero II Smash Bros. Melee Morrowind Smash Bros. Melee Call of Duty 4
\(8\) Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (9) The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
\(5\) Perfect Dark (12) Conker's Bad Fur Day Perfect Dark Call of Duty 4
\(4\) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (13) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
\(3\) Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum (14) Metroid Fusion Pokémon DPP Fire Emblem: Path Pokémon DPP Smash Bros. Brawl
\(6\) WWF No Mercy (11) Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
\(7\) Valkyria Chronicles (10) Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Valkyria Chronicles Smash Bros. Brawl
\(2\) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (15) Mario Kart DS
Southeast Division Zelda: Twilight Princess Kingdom Hearts II
\(1\) Super Mario Galaxy (16) Beyond Good & Evil Super Mario Galaxy Pokémon RSE Super Mario Galaxy Zelda: Twilight Princess
\(8\) Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (9) Grand Theft Auto IV
\(5\) Dragon Age: Origins (12) F-Zero GX Dragon Age: Origins Zelda: Twilight Princess
\(4\) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (13) Shenmue
\(3\) BioShock (14) Star Wars: Battlefront II BioShock Kingdom Hearts II Kingdom Hearts II Kingdom Hearts
\(6\) Kingdom Hearts II (11) Halo 2
\(7\) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (10) Dissidia: Final Fantasy Modern Warfare 2 Kingdom Hearts
\(2\) Kingdom Hearts (15) Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
South Division Final Fantasy X Final Fantasy IX Final Fantasy X Resident Evil 4 Final Fantasy X Zelda: Majora's Mask
\(1\) Final Fantasy X (16) Viewtiful Joe Final Fantasy X Borderlands Final Fantasy X Golden Sun
\(8\) Tales of Vesperia (9) Borderlands
\(5\) Golden Sun (12) Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal Golden Sun GTA: San Andreas
\(4\) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (13) Dead Space
\(3\) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (14) Devil May Cry Star Wars: KotOR Fire Emblem Star Wars: KotOR Final Fantasy IX
\(6\) Fire Emblem (11) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
\(7\) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (10) Civilization IV Persona 3 Final Fantasy IX
\(2\) Final Fantasy IX (15) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations
Southwest Division Resident Evil 4 Portal
\(1\) Resident Evil 4 (16) Jet Grind Radio Resident Evil 4 GTA: Vice City Resident Evil 4 Persona 4
\(8\) Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (9) Silent Hill 2
\(5\) The World Ends With You (12) Dead Rising Dead Rising Persona 4
\(4\) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (13) Braid
\(3\) Portal (14) Gears of War 2 Portal Final Fantasy XII Portal Mass Effect
\(6\) Final Fantasy XII (11) Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
\(7\) Skies of Arcadia (10) Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Skies of Arcadia Mass Effect
\(2\) Mass Effect (15) Plants vs. Zombies
West Division Metal Gear Solid 3 Shadow of the Colossus Metal Gear Solid 3 Zelda: Majora's Mask
\(1\) Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (16) TimeSplitters 2 Metal Gear Solid 3 Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Metal Gear Solid 3 Paper Mario
\(8\) Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (9) New Super Mario Bros. Wii
\(5\) Paper Mario (12) Katamari Damacy Paper Mario World of Warcraft
\(4\) World of Warcraft (13) Animal Crossing
\(3\) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (14) Assassin's Creed Metal Gear Solid 4 Diablo II Metal Gear Solid 4 Shadow of the Colossus
\(6\) Diablo II (11) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
\(7\) Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (10) Banjo-Tooie Metal Gear Solid 2 Shadow of the Colossus
\(2\) Shadow of the Colossus (15) The Sims
Northwest Division Zelda: Majora's Mask Zelda: Wind Waker
\(1\) The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (16) Wii Sports Zelda: Majora's Mask Chrono Cross Zelda: Majora's Mask Pokémon GSC
\(8\) Chrono Cross (9) Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
\(5\) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (12) Mario Kart Wii Mario Kart Wii Pokémon GSC
\(4\) Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal (13) Advance Wars
\(3\) The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (14) God of War II Zelda: Wind Waker Assassin's Creed II Zelda: Wind Waker Oblivion
\(6\) Assassin's Creed II (11) ICO
\(7\) Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (10) Gears of War Paper Mario: TTYD Oblivion
\(2\) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (15) SoulCalibur II
## Trivia - Coming soon ## See Also - [Final Fall 2010 Standings & Stats](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/gotd) - Fall 2010 Total Nominations - Board 8's Fall 2010 Nominations --- ## (1)Fallout 3 vs (16)inFamous 2010 _source: (1)Fallout 3 vs (16)inFamous 2010 (revid 69144)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 25565 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 3 - 73.68% 125 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout 3 - 93.66% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked - 697 Fallout 3 - 18074 inFamous - 1149 Normally for the first writeup, you get the old rant about how Nintendo is always in the first match rolling heads. That's because it's always been true, even in gimmick formats. The lone exception was Wario finishing in second place in the 2008 4-way, but that still counts as a win. This was the first contest where Nintendo was nowhere to be found in the opening match, and it would take a few days before we saw any Nintendo at all. Even still, this was a total slaughter for a non-Nintendo feeling-out match. Fallout proved itself legit from the very first day, with the only real concern being how it's not a good vote draw. Percentages didn't move much here, and ending at 81% on the nose meant a perfect Oracle prediction during the very first match. We also got to laugh at the 697 jokers who banked on the very first match. Seriously, what in the F? Also for what it's worth, the entire first round being box art match pics kept things fair. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4069&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Rock Band 2 vs (9)Deus Ex 2010 _source: (8)Rock Band 2 vs (9)Deus Ex 2010 (revid 69146)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, October 20, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 752 - **Oracle Expectations:** Deus Ex - 39.60% 4 for - 123 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Deus Ex - 36.61% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1063 Rock Band 2: 11447 Deus Ex: 5957 One day. It took only one, specifically 12 hours, for everyone to start with their cries of THIS CONTEST. Conventional wisdom went out the window 5 minutes into the second match when Deus Ex made it clear it would make a game of a match widely expected to go in Rock Band's direction shortly after the release of Rock Band 3. Then the 10 minute update hit, the match became a boat race and once again we were struck by the Second Match Jinx. This joined the ranks of Morrigan \> Spyro, Ness \> CJ, KOS-MOS \> Diablo/Arthas, Zidane \> Shadow and Alucard \> Magus as matches that just totally tripped people up. There's a couple other low prediction matches in there like Fox \> Pikachu and Sigma \> Andross, but the board was actually on the right side of those so I won't count them. The final score seems close, but it really wasn't a close match. Deus Ex had a 1000 vote lead in a couple hours, but only barely lost the ASV. This led to Rock Band shaving votes for the rest of the match but never really making a game of it, hence the final margin being a comfortable 752. But don't tell that to Deus Ex's fans, who deserve a Turkey Fanbase of the Contest award for how they handled themselves here. Even though Deus Ex was winning, a ton of topics got made by Deus Ex fans about how it wasn't winning by enough. There wasn't such a whiny fanbase of winners before or since, and hopefully we never see it again. That was embarrassing. What actually happened here were outsiders voting, seeing a close match and being disappointed by the margin without looking up the trends. So I can see how one could get worried or something, but it's really not hard to look around for 30 seconds and see what's going on. They got made fun of for the rest of the contest after this stunt, deservedly so. There was a bigger meaning here, of course, which is the rhythm game fad being over and done with. The games were all going to be weak anyway, but it's nice to see a match where the site moves past them for good. Given how the Guitar Hero series was ruined and Rock Band fans are some of the most pretentious people in all of gaming, it was a welcome death knell and a well-deserved loss. And no, I'm not an anti-rhythm game person. I'm an anti-annoying people person who hates having to sing on Rock Band at every single party because of my having a good singing voice. Seriously people, can we play something else? \>\_\> From: -Tofa7- \| \#038 Might be worth mentioning that the fact Deus Ex won was almost solely because of Europe: Because Rock Band took a such a long time to be released there, and sold like crap. The PS2 version was released almost a whole year in Europe after the North American release. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4070&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Batman: Arkham Asylum vs (12)Psychonauts 2010 _source: (5)Batman: Arkham Asylum vs (12)Psychonauts 2010 (revid 69147)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, October 21, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 21, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,888 - **Oracle Expectations:** Batman: Arkham Asylum - 73.17% 130 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Batman: Arkham Asylum - 84.80% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 686 Batman: Arkham Asylum: 16341 Psychonauts: 2190 Matches like this really make you appreciate the 12 hour format. Batman was at 72.XX% for all but 10 minutes during this match. Can you imagine being stuck with 24 hours of this crap? Batman would end up proving itself quite legit this contest, though it was impossible to tell here. Everyone knew Psychonauts would be pathetically weak, and it was. You couldn't even make a guess about the potential Team Fortress 2 \> Batman upset, since it's hard to imagine TF2 not scoring a similar blowout here. The only interesting thing here was MWE making a topic about how Batman deserves to lose everything because of a certain comic strip that hits a bit too close to home for him. You know your match is bad when MWE is the most interesting thing about it, though granted he was warned for the topic so it's not like the match was a total loss. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4071&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Team Fortress 2 vs (13)Fable 2010 _source: (4)Team Fortress 2 vs (13)Fable 2010 (revid 76614)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, October 21, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 21, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 37 - **Oracle Expectations:** Team Fortress 2 - 56.37% 126 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Team Fortress 2 - 61.39% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 874 Team Fortress 2: 11762 Fable: 6201 On the second day of this contest, one day after a real big one with Deus Ex upsetting Rock Band 2, we had a match that just blew everything out of the water. Team Fortress 2's 37 vote win over Fable was an all-timer marred only by how meaningless the match was and how early the match happened in the contest. As I write this, Majora's Mask is finishing up an outstanding comeback/upset over Final Fantasy X. TF2 holding on here was nice, but in the end it was a one point match. This would have meant much more if each game came in with a head of steam or something. Just to put this in perspective, Majora upsetting FFX was worth 32 points. That said, what a freaking outstanding match this was. Team Fortress 2 had a tiny lead early, Fable erased it and we were off to a complete war of attrition. The old record for closest wire-to-wire match was Frog vs Liquid Snake way back in 2004, where neither character led by more than 460. That record would get shattered here. It didn't take long for the match to become a deadlock, but this is actually where Fable went wrong. GameFAQs doesn't like Fable much, which was its first mistake. Molyneux sucks at making games, but Fable got by on this site due to being an RPG. It's all over the match picture, too. But the more pressing issue here is Team Fortress 2's fanbase and bracket supporters were never going to let it lose a close match. Fable needed to blow it out to win this, and it couldn't do it. So what ended up happening for a solid 12 hours was one game building a minor lead and the other coming back super quickly. It was like the 5 minute updates version of Chrono Trigger vs Link to the Past from 2004. Alec was nice enough to track most of it: 12:05 TF2 leads by 40 (TF2 +40) 12:10 TF2 leads by 14 (Fable +26) LEAD CHANGE \#1 12:15 Fable leads by 16 (Fable +30) LEAD CHANGE \#2 12:20 TF2 leads by 28 (TF2 +44) 12:25 TF2 leads by 8 (Fable +20) 12:30 TF2 leads by 31 (TF2 +23) 12:35 TF2 leads by 35 (TF2 +4) LEAD CHANGE \#3 12:40 Fable leads by 11 (Fable +46) 12:45 Fable leads by 23 (Fable +12) 12:50 Fable leads by 26 (Fable +3) LEAD CHANGE \#4 12:55 TF2 leads by 3 (TF2 +29) LEAD CHANGE \#5 1:00 Fable leads by 32 (Fable +35) 1:05 Fable leads by 29 (TF2 +3) 1:10 Fable leads by 21 (TF2 +8) 1:15 Fable leads by 10 (TF2 +11) LEAD CHANGE \#6 1:20 TF2 leads by 21 (TF2 +31) 1:25 TF2 leads by 36 (TF2 +15) 1:30 TF2 leads by 66 (TF2 +30) 1:35 TF2 leads by 40 (Fable +26) 1:40 TF2 leads by 91 (TF2 +51) 1:45 TF2 leads by 115 (TF2 +24) 1:50 TF2 leads by 66 (Fable +49) 1:55 TF2 leads by 15 (Fable +51) LEAD CHANGE \#7 1:00 Fable leads by 16 (Fable +31) 2:05 Fable leads by 27 (Fable +11) 2:10 Fable leads by 36 (Fable + 9) 2:15 Fable leads by 20 (TF2 +16) 2:20 Fable leads by 29 (Fable +9) 2:25 Fable leads by 31 (Fable +2) 2:30 Fable leads by 27 (TF2 +4) LEAD CHANGE \#8 2:35 TF2 leads by 8 (TF2 +35) LEAD CHANGE \#9 2:40 Fable leads by 13 (Fable +21) 2:45 Fable leads by 4 (TF2 +9) 2:50 Fable leads by 12 (Fable +8) 2:55 Fable leads by 10 (TF2 +2) LEAD CHANGE \#10 3:00 TF2 leads by 22 (TF2 +32) 3:05 TF2 leads by 40 (TF2 +18) 3:10 TF2 leads by 28 (Fable +12) 3:15 TF2 leads by 38 (TF2 +10) 3:20 TF2 leads by 61 (TF2 +23) 3:25 TF2 leads by 43 (Fable +18) 3:30 TF2 leads by 39 (Fable +4) 3:35 TF2 leads by 20 (Fable +19) 3:40 TF2 leads by 38 (TF2 +18) 3:45 TF2 leads by 32 (Fable +6) 3:50 TF2 leads by 35 votes (TF2 +3) 3:55 TF2 leads by 38 votes (TF2 +3) 4:00 TF2 leads by 35 votes (Fable +3) 4:05 TF2 leads by 39 votes (TF2 +4) 4:10 TF2 leads by 50 votes (TF2 +11) 4:15 TF2 leads by 57 votes (TF2 +7) 4:20 TF2 leads by 55 votes (Fable +2) 4:25 TF2 leads by 31 votes (Fable +24) 4:30 TF2 leads by 59 votes (TF2 +28) 4:35 TF2 leads by 17 votes (Fable +42) 4:40 TF2 leads by 23 votes (TF2 +6) 4:45 TF2 leads by 29 votes (TF2 +6) 4:50 TF2 leads by 15 votes (Fable +14) 4:55 TF2 leads by 21 votes (TF2 +6) 5:00 TF2 leads by 38 votes (TF2 +17) 5:05 TF2 leads by 37 votes (Fable +1) 5:10 TF2 leads by 36 votes (Fable +1) LEAD CHANGE \#11 5:15 Fable leads by 17 votes (Fable +53) 5:20 Fable leads by 11 votes (TF2 +6) LEAD CHANGE \#12 5:25 TF2 leads by 15 votes (TF2 +26) 5:30 TF2 leads by 61 votes (TF2 +46) 5:35 TF2 leads by 78 votes (TF2 +17) 5:40 TF2 leads by 104 votes (TF2 +26) 5:45 TF2 leads by 90 votes (Fable +14) 5:50 TF2 leads by 75 votes (Fable +15) 5:55 TF2 leads by 22 votes (Fable +53) 6:00 TF2 leads by 43 votes (TF2 +21) 6:05 TF2 leads by 30 votes (Fable +13) 6:10 TF2 leads by 13 votes (Fable +17) 6:15 TF2 leads by 41 votes (TF2 +28) 6:20 TF2 leads by 10 votes (Fable +31) 6:25 TF2 leads by 1 votes (Fable +9) LEAD CHANGE \#13 6:30 Fable leads by 2 votes (Fable +3) LEAD CHANGE \#14 6:35 TF2 leads by 55 votes (TF2 +57) 6:40 TF2 leads by 114 votes (TF2 +59) 6:45 TF2 leads by 115 votes (TF2 +1) 6:50 TF2 leads by 118 votes (TF2 +3) 6:55 TF2 leads by 141 votes (TF2 +23) 7:00 TF2 leads by 175 votes (TF2 +34) 7:05 TF2 leads by 177 votes (TF2 +2) 7:10 TF2 leads by 210 (TF2 +33) 7:15 TF2 leads by 189 votes (Fable +21) 7:20 TF2 leads by 175 votes (Fable +14) 7:25 TF2 leads by 161 votes (Fable +14) 7:30 TF2 leads by 162 votes (TF2 +1) 7:35 TF2 leads by 163 votes (TF2 +1) 7:40 TF2 leads by 154 votes (Fable +9) 7:45 TF2 leads by 140 (Fable +14) 7:50 TF2 leads by 138 (Fable +2) 7:55 TF2 leads by 112 (Fable +26) 8:00 TF2 leads by 107 (Fable +5) 8:05 TF2 leads by 117 (TF2 +10) 8:10 TF2 leads by 121 (TF2 +4) 8:15 TF2 leads by 90 (Fable +31) 8:20 TF2 leads by 84 (Fable +6) 8:25 TF2 leads by 95 (TF2 +11) 8:30 TF2 leads by 108 (TF2 +13) 8:35 TF2 leads by 97 (Fable +11) 8:40 TF2 leads by 65 (Fable +32) 8:45 TF2 leads by 56 (Fable +9) 8:50 TF2 leads by 43 (Fable +13) 8:55 TF2 leads by 37 (Fable +6) LEAD CHANGE \#15 9:00 Fable leads by 1 (Fable +38) LEAD CHANGE \#16 9:05 TF2 leads by 16 (TF2 +17) 9:10 TF2 leads by 13 (Fable +3) 9:15 TF2 leads by 20 (TF2 +7) 9:20 TF2 leads by 15 (Fable +5) 9:25 TF2 leads by 24 (TF2 +9) 9:30 TF2 leads by 23 (Fable +1) 9:35 TF2 leads by 45 (TF2 +22) 9:40 TF2 leads by 43 (Fable +2) 9:45 TF2 leads by 13 (Fable +30) 9:50 TF2 leads by 14 (TF2 +1) 9:55 TF2 leads by 23 (TF2 +9) LEAD CHANGE \#17 10:00 Fable leads by 15 (Fable +38) LEAD CHANGE \#18 10:05 TF2 leads by 1 (TF2 +16) 10:10 TF2 leads by 33 (TF2 +32) 10:15 TF2 leads by 47 (TF2 +14) 10:20 TF2 leads by 29 (Fable +18) 10:25 TF2 leads by 5 (Fable +24) 10:30 TF2 leads by 14 (TF2 +9) 10:35 TF2 leads by 33 (TF2 +19) 10:40 TF2 leads by 42 (TF2 +9) 10:45 TF2 leads by 15 (Fable +27) 10:50 TF2 leads by 12 (Fable +3) LEAD CHANGE \#19 10:55 Fable leads by 11 (Fable +23) LEAD CHANGE \#20 11:00 TF2 leads by 29 (TF2 +40) 11:05 TF2 leads by 57 (TF2 +28) 11:10 TF2 leads by 77 (TF2 +20) 11:15 TF2 leads by 92 (TF2 +15) 11:20 TF2 leads by 88 (Fable +4) 11:25 TF2 leads by 84 (Fable +4) 11:30 TF2 leads by 89 (TF2 +5) 11:35 TF2 leads by 65 (Fable +24) 11:40 TF2 leads by 69 (TF2 +4) 11:45 TF2 leads by 70 (TF2 +1) 11:50 TF2 leads by 50 (Fable +19) 11:55 TF2 leads by 14 (Fable +37) 12:00 TF2 wins by 37 (TF2 +23) Team Fortress 2 actually ended up winning the ASV almost every single hour, including building up a peak lead of 210 at one point to shatter Frog's record, but Fable would come back every single time. With 90 minutes left the two games were a measly 5 votes apart, and this is about when the TF2 fanbase kicked into action. They got this thing up to 92 with only 40 minutes left, and kept their foot on the gas until match's end. Fable made one final comeback attempt, but obviously it fell short. Most games struggle to get 100 votes in the final hour of a poll. Both of these games were pulling 150s out of their ass in an attempt to out-rally the other. For all we know Fable is the stronger game neutrally, but there was no possible way TF2 was losing this match close. Not with that fanbase. I want to feel bad for how Fable lost this match, but then I think back to Thanksgiving, where my father in law was playing Fable 3 and farting in people's faces all over the kingdom, and realize the correct game won this match. You can have a legitimately good, fun game with funny characters winning, or you can have a series that resorts to toilet humor winning. For this match, GameFAQs made the right choice. ## Graphs of Alec's Update Charts - Chart of Lead: - Chart of Updates: ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4072&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves vs (14)The Legend of Dragoon 2010 _source: (3)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves vs (14)The Legend of Dragoon 2010 (revid 69149)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, October 22, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 22, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,040 - **Oracle Expectations:** Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 62.70% 127 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 83.11% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 768 Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: 16341 The Legend of Dragoon: 2526 Not many games can look good in scoring 42% in a match, but The Legend of Dragoon looked good here. Once it won its vote-in poll, people questioned its authenticity. It came out here and proved how legit it was, even though it was never really a match. I'm not sure why people have a hard time believing in Dragoon when it was marketed as an FF killer and we're on a site that caters to RPG fans and gamers filled with nostalgia. Despite this, Uncharted 2 didn't come off looking so bad unless you were one of the people not believing in Dragoon. Uncharted was favored to win 3 matches in this contest going in, and this match did nothing to ruin this expectation. It ended up being a fairly boring match percentage-wise, as it got stabilized quickly and stayed in the 57-43 range most of the way. Uncharted went down a little overnight and in the morning, suggesting it's a night game, but nothing happened here that would have suggested Uncharted was in any major trouble. It was Halo winning twice that screwed it, not its own strength. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4073&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sonic Adventure 2 vs (11)Street Fighter IV 2010 _source: (6)Sonic Adventure 2 vs (11)Street Fighter IV 2010 (revid 69150)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, October 22, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 22, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 808 - **Oracle Expectations:** Street Fighter IV - 47.42% 24 for - 107 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Street Fighter IV - 70.70% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1351 Sonic Adventure 2: 5325 Street Fighter IV: 11840 This was the third day match in a row that was super close or just plain weird. However unlike the first two where prediction percentages were either really low or the guru ended up winning, Street Fighter's "upset" of Sonic was a true guru buster along the lines of "Why do I ever listen to Board 8 when making my bracket?". The case for Sonic was simple. Sonic beat Street Fighter multiple times in 2009, and got Street Fighter 1 on 1 in a day match. Sonic is awesome during the day, and even Board 8's (S)SF4 fans like me were lamenting this. Street Fighter also has a history of embarrassing itself in game contests, from Street Fighter 2's famous loss in 2004 to Sonic beating it up in 2009 to Street Fighter 4 itself almost losing to Persona 4 in a LOL 4-way. That's, as Chris Berman could say, why they play the games. This wasn't even a match within 10 minutes, as Street Fighter 4 taking an early lead during the day on Sonic meant some very bad things. It would increase the lead all the way until the ASV, where it would then barely lose the ASV before the match turned into an ~800 vote stall the rest of the way. It was a great win for Street Fighter, and long overdue redemption for all those clowns who thought Persona 4 barely losing out to SF4 for third place in some meaningless LOL 4-way meant anything, but this was a terrible loss for Sonic. This was a day match. 3D Sonic or not, it was supposed to cruise to an easy win here. This was also Street Fighter, of "WTF SF2 LOST?!" fame. This match going the way it did during the time frame it did was wholly backwards, and it was a true referendum on 3D Sonic. Amaterasu beating Shadow last year should have been enough of a hint, but this match proves once and for all GameFAQs' legit hate for all things 3D Sonic. even the so-called good 3D Sonic games will never do anything here. And for (S)SF4 fans like me, we've never been happier to lose a point. It's the best game in this bracket other than Melee and Fire Emblem 9, and it's nice seeing it get some respect. Even today we have SSF4 jam sessions on Board 8, so the game won't go away any time soon. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4074&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Halo 3 vs (10)Super Mario Sunshine 2010 _source: (7)Halo 3 vs (10)Super Mario Sunshine 2010 (revid 69151)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, October 23, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 23, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,161 - **Oracle Expectations:** Halo 3 - 49.09% 47 for - 85 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Halo 3 - 81.29% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 924 Halo 3: 16489 Super Mario Sunshine: 2752 I will never for the life of me understand why people bought yoblazer's podcast rant and favored Sunshine to not only win this match, but win THREE matches this contest. I mean I know why given the guy's gotten second place three times or something, but this was still strange. The case was decent enough, with the site hating Halo and Sunshine being the first Nintendo entrant people could vote on. All good points. One problem, though: Super Mario Sunshine f\*\*\*ing sucked as a game. GameFAQs agrees, too. Seriously, look at these polls: There was no way that nonsense was winning three matches. Thankfully the whole affair slash hype train ended within 10 minutes, as Halo weathered the early joke votes and went on the embarrass Mario for 12 straight hours. For a series that's been embarrassed year in, year out since 2004, it was nice finally seeing Halo have a good contest and it all began right here. Sure the match was close in percents, but this was one of the only matches ever where the loser scored over 47% and still looked like complete crap. I know most of us had a bad contest with picking stuff, but... Sunshine winning three matches was the guru favorite, seriously? I'm sure there's some silver lining here with Sunshine being so bad and still getting so close, but it didn't deserve nearly the hype it got. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4075&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Halo: Combat Evolved vs (15)Ninja Gaiden 2010 _source: (2)Halo: Combat Evolved vs (15)Ninja Gaiden 2010 (revid 69152)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, October 23, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 23, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,704 - **Oracle Expectations:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 60.02% 129 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 80.34% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 702 Halo: Combat Evolved: 16367 Ninja Gaiden: 2896 "Welcome to HaloFAQs." Given how hilarious the Ryu Hayabusa \> Master Chief upset was last year, of course Allen was going to set this match up and try to catch lightning in a bottle twice once Ninja Gaiden got through its vote-in. However, games =/= characters. The match was surprisingly uneventful given past fireworks, and stayed remarkably consistent even though it was Halo during a day match. The one thing to pull from this is more people had Halo 3 \> Sunshine in both battle and bracket than Halo 1 \> Ninja Gaiden. This meant a full 24 hours of gurus looking foolish for hyping that Sunshine-to-win-thrice crap instead of the standard 12. I can understand almost every other thing the gurus did this contest, but I just cannot wrap my mind around having faith in Super Mario Sunshine, the game that all but killed the Mario series. This match obviously set up Halo 3 vs Halo 1, which was one of roughly 100 matches used to gauge the Brawl vs Melee showdown. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4076&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metroid Prime vs (16)Star Ocean: Till the End of Time 2010 _source: (1)Metroid Prime vs (16)Star Ocean: Till the End of Time 2010 (revid 69153)_ ## Results **Round 1** Sunday, October 24, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 24, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,341 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid Prime - 72.51% 128 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid Prime - 92.44% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 540 Metroid Prime: 18526 Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: 1471 Star Ocean 3 was so forgettable that I forgot it even made the contest when doing the vote-in writeups. Not that it meant much, since the reward was getting completely killed by Metroid Prime. This was actually a night match, and Metroid always has an outstanding board vote. This was over 80% for a time and fell down to 73. Imagine if this were a day match. It was a nice beginning to a fairly relaxing Northeast Division, after the total chaos that was the North. Everyone knew this was coming down to Metroid Prime vs the Half-Life 2/God of War winner, with an outside chance of another game from the bottom half sneaking in there. But overall, this was nothing compared to people actually thinking Super Mario Sunshine was going to win three matches and perhaps challenge Fallout 3. Metroid Prime got to fire the first shot, and it had the advantage of getting the divisional final as a day match. The bottom-half games had quite the task ahead of them. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4077&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Mother 3 vs (9)Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening 2010 _source: (8)Mother 3 vs (9)Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening 2010 (revid 69154)_ ## Results **Round 1** Sunday, October 24, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 24, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 15,634 - **Oracle Expectations:** Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening - 77.29% 129 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening - 78.07% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1398 Mother 3: 3346 Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: 13605 Look at that god-awful match picture, look at how Mother 3 was never released in the USA, then look at this match and tell me how any of this makes a damn of sense. Sure DMC3 won with ease, but this was a match where people were picking it to win with 70, 80, even 90%. The fact DMC3 started off at 65% and stayed there for a solid 12 hours shows it's weak. Mother 3 was never going to win this match and Devil May Cry 3 was never going to lose it, but these percentages are nowhere close to where people expected them. I'm not sure what the Oracle consensus here was, but only 13 people out of 128 picked DMC3 to finish under 70%. That should give you an idea of how weird this all was. DMC3 would go on to its expected loss against Prime, but this match made it one of the contest's turkeys. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4078&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Demon's Souls vs (12)Mega Man 9 2010 _source: (5)Demon's Souls vs (12)Mega Man 9 2010 (revid 69155)_ ## Results **Round 1** Monday, October 25, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 25, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,313 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man 9 - 51.55% 83 for - 46 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man 9 - 54.91% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1214 Demon's Souls: 8601 Mega Man 9: 9811 According to the battle stats, this was the first true tossup of the contest. The prediction percentage ended up close to 50%, too. Where Mega Man 9 was massively favored was in the guru and Oracle, both of which favored Mega Man 9 by a considerable amount. There was no real rhyme or reason behind which game should be favored, since both were bound to be weak and both came in untested. The only real argument that stuck was Mega Man franchise voting and the Mario Kart vs Mega Man match from the series contest, and it stuck on the board long enough to make MM9 the favorite here. Both sides acted like they had sand in the crotch leading up to this match, so it was one of those matches where you wanted it to get here and get out of the way as early as possible. Thankfully, it was all over in minutes. Mega Man 9 stormed out to an early lead, and all Demon's Souls could really do was crawl back in percentage all night and into the morning. It did well in getting back up to 47% before match's end, but this was never in doubt. It would have been awesome for Black Turtle to win the guru by a scant 1 point so he could feel happiest about this match, but it was not to be. The 12 \> 5 upset here was also the biggest seeding upset we'd see in round 1. All the seed 1 through 4 held serve. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4079&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Okami vs (13)No More Heroes 2010 _source: (4)Okami vs (13)No More Heroes 2010 (revid 69156)_ ## Results **Round 1** Monday, October 25, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Monday, October 25, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 21,082 - **Oracle Expectations:** Okami - 62.61% 130 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Okami - 74.60% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 932 Okami: 14803 No More Heroes: 4117 Very boring match that went as-predicted on all fronts, but it's nice seeing Okami become so legit on GameFAQs. Food for thought: Okami \> No More Heroes had a bigger spread than Zelda \> Travis Touchdown last year. I know Okami's legit and all, but Zelda (the character) looked completely off in 2010. This match more or less shut down all hopes of a Mega Man 9 \> Okami upset, though Okami seems to inch up in strength every year. So by the year 2050 or so, Amaterasu could beat Link. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4080&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Tales of Symphonia vs (14)Resident Evil 5 2010 _source: (3)Tales of Symphonia vs (14)Resident Evil 5 2010 (revid 69157)_ ## Results **Round 1** Tuesday, October 26, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 1,728 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tales of Symphonia - 52.40% 99 for - 31 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tales of Symphonia - 43.87% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 769 Tales of Symphonia: 8770 Resident Evil 5: 11154 The reason for Wesker's sudden boost last year was fairly obvious, but this match went and proved it for good. Resident Evil 5, a 14 seed, was the bracket and battle favorite and was the lone game from the vote-in polls to do much of anything in the actual contest. However this is a site made for RPG fans, so Tales of Symphonia was able to never really be threatened here. One has to wonder how this would have gone in a day match, though. Tales won in one of those "not as close as the percentages indicate" deals, and it kicked off a very entertaining bottom half of the bracket. Prime was a lock to make round 4 from the top, but the bottom half was filled with a bunch of games of similar strength. The only games that were guaranteed not to do anything were the two Left 4 Dead games. The other 6 -- Tales of Symphonia, Resident Evil 5, God of War, LittleBigPlanet, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Half-Life 2 -- could all have a case made for them where they could win three matches. And since Metroid Prime was always known for disappointing and Fallout 3 was an unknown commodity pre-contest, it wasn't far-fetched for the bottom half winner to possibly make a semifinal run. We all know now what happened, but pre-contest the semifinalist to come from these first two divisions was a pretty cool debate. And then Tales/RE5 had a pretty good match to kick things off, and it's always nice when things live up to hype a bit. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4081&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)God of War vs (11)Left 4 Dead 2010 _source: (6)God of War vs (11)Left 4 Dead 2010 (revid 69158)_ ## Results **Round 1** Tuesday, October 26, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 15,471 - **Oracle Expectations:** God of War - 59.74% 126 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** God of War - 78.69% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 647 God of War: 16288 Left 4 Dead: 3862 Though the bottom half of the Northeast was an outstanding division, nothing is perfect. And in this contest, both Left 4 Dead games stunk up the joint. God of War got it during the day, too, so the casual-heavy action game was able to perhaps do better than normal. Percentages stayed still all match, so there's really nothing entertaining that happened. The only thing to really make of this is whether or not Tales of Symphonia had a chance at pulling the upset. Tales vs God of War was heavily debated, and it was a very important match given the winner had a decent chance at making a deep contest run. Tales ended up struggling with Resident Evil 5, while God of War went out and took care of business. This made God of War the slight favorite, with only the night match dynamic being what kept the match in question. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4082&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)LittleBigPlanet vs (10)Grand Theft Auto III 2010 _source: (7)LittleBigPlanet vs (10)Grand Theft Auto III 2010 (revid 69159)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, October 27, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,729 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto III - 59.92% 122 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto III - 65.06% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 900 LittleBigPlanet: 6985 Grand Theft Auto III: 12626 This match ended up fairly boring, but you really had to be there for the first few minutes. There were whispers of LittleBigPlanet having a shot at making a run this contest. And then come match time, Grand Theft Auto 3, from the series able to tank more than any other, comes out with over 70% of the vote. This bled all night and eventually fell to a stable 62%, but people were going nuts for those first few minutes with how legit GTA3 was and how badly LBP bombed and everything else. I'm telling you, the stats topic is worth it if only for the overreaction that comes at the beginning of every match. It's as predictable as it is ridiculous. As for what happened when things calmed down, this basically cemented Half-Life 2 \> Grand Theft Auto unless HL2 went out the next match and completely s\*\*\* the bed. Slowly but surely, the contenders down in the bottom half of this division were picking themselves off. At this point, it was basically down to the Tales/GoW winner versus Half-Life 2. After the fast start, GTA3 did not impress. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4083&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Half-Life 2 vs (15)Left 4 Dead 2 2010 _source: (2)Half-Life 2 vs (15)Left 4 Dead 2 2010 (revid 69160)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, October 27, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 23,512 - **Oracle Expectations:** Half-Life 2 - 71.11% 129 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Half-Life 2 - 82.86% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 490 Half-Life 2: 17383 Left 4 Dead 2: 3318 SFF match against a game not totally well-received or not, this was a very impressive performance by Half-Life 2. It was actually flirting with the high 70s for awhile, but got brought down to below a tripling by match's end. People more or less handed the division's bottom half to Half-Life 2 after this match and started trying to project Metroid Prime vs Half-Life 2 based on how Star Ocean 3 vs Left 4 Dead 2 would go and whether or not Left 4 Dead 2 resisted SFF enough to make Half-Life 2 the favorite even in a day match. Yeah it's a lot of abbreviated nonsense, but these are the things Board 8 does during boring matches to keep itself entertained during contests. At least liking numbers a bit too much beats liking partying or illegal substances a bit too much, you know? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4084&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (16)Guitar Hero II 2010 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (16)Guitar Hero II 2010 (revid 69161)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, October 28, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 28, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 30,246 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 81.81% 117 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 90.66% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 406 Super Smash Bros. Melee: 19534 Guitar Hero II: 1797 With two divisions' first rounds in the books, we hadn't really seen a true godslaying performance yet. Then Melee came out with over 90% of the vote early on against Guitar Hero 2 and changed all that. Hilarious blowouts are always fun to watch, and this was no different. Melee came out looking like a champ, bled percentage for quite a while and still came out looking like a champ. Blowouts like this simply don't happen anymore. At least, we thought they didn't. It was one of the biggest blowouts in the history of our contests, and it was the first shot across the bow for the Melee vs Brawl war. It was also further proof that rhythm games are done here, assuming you thought the Deus Ex \> Rock Band match was a fluke. The first two divisions were unpredictable in their own way, but the East was easy. Melee vs Brawl were going to crush everything in their way, meet in the divisional finals and the winner was going to have an outstanding chance at winning the entire contest. Nothing was going to get in the way of this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4085&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos vs (9)The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 2010 _source: (8)Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos vs (9)The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 2010 (revid 69162)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, October 28, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Thursday, October 28, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 456 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - 46.89% 21 for - 97 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - 32.76% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1842 Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos: 10144 The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: 7068 Did you ever think you'd see the day where something related to Blizzard lost a close match? This match was weird, for a multitude of reasons. Obviously, Board 8 massively favored Warcraft due to past success. The battle stats had it as a tossup, while brackets favored Warcraft. Everything went according to plan at the first freeze, too, what with Warcraft having 57% of the votes. It's almost impossible to come back from so low a percentage when you're losing by that much, but then Morrowind went and increased by 5% during the next update. Warcraft 3 was hanging on by a tenuous thread from there, after about an hour it just snapped. It stayed there up by 100 for ages, and then Morrowind finally made a move. The games stayed deadlocked for awhile from there, but then Morrowind won the ASV to take the match. Sure the final margin was close, but it was clear Warcraft 3 wasn't going to do anything by the time the match was half over. It was weird seeing a PC vs PC match go like this, and weirder still to see Morrowind pull the upset. But the weirdest thing of all was Blizzard, the supposed king of the rally, losing a close match like this. Warcraft 3 basically laid over and died after the first 5 minutes, which is just strange. This was another match in a growing trend of people closely missing 1-point matches, and the first round would have many more of them before we were finished. It almost makes you disappointed. Close matches are the best thing about contests, but soooo many of them were these meaningless 1 point affairs. Some of these needed to happen in later rounds, even 2. Round 2 was mostly bad, which I think most people would agree on. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4086&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Perfect Dark vs (12)Conker's Bad Fur Day 2010 _source: (5)Perfect Dark vs (12)Conker's Bad Fur Day 2010 (revid 69163)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, October 29, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 29, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,870 - **Oracle Expectations:** Perfect Dark - 62.47% 115 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Perfect Dark - 79.05% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 756 Perfect Dark: 16409 Conker's Bad Fur Day: 3500 The absolute worst type of match is a ~65-35% type of match, like this one. Not low enough to be interesting, not high enough to be interesting. It's right in the middle, and even worse here is this was an N64 SFF match that we could draw nothing relevant from. Perfect Dark \> Call of Duty 4 was a decent enough match to see an upset happen, but we learned literally nothing by this beating. Even the vote totals sucked. Put it this way: The best parts of this match were the match picture and HaRRicH's day-long tribute to the Great Mighty Poo. Actually thinking of it that way, maybe this match wasn't so bad after all! \>\_\> ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4087&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare vs (13)Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time 2010 _source: (4)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare vs (13)Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time 2010 (revid 69164)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, October 29, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 29, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 11,894 - **Oracle Expectations:** Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 66.04% 117 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 89.03% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 260 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: 20126 Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: 1637 To this point of the contest, more people bet on Call of Duty 4 in this match than any other game in any other match -- more than even Melee against Guitar Hero 2. That plus 89% as a 4 seed in round 1 just screams casual bait. That said, Call of Duty thoroughly embarrassed itself in this match. I've never played a single Prince game, but in contests I seem to remember something from early in the series scoring something like 0.0003% in 2009. For Prince, any Prince, to avoid the doubling against such massive casualbait shows you how much GameFAQs hates Call of Duty. This hate used to get poured onto Halo and Grand Theft Auto, but now Call of Duty and rhythm or sports games get the brunt of it. One match ago I mentioned how ~65-35% matches are the worst, but that wasn't the case here. There's a certain glee in seeing whatever GameFAQs decide to hate next, and this site hates Call of Duty. Then you look up what won our Game of the Year in 2009 and just laugh your ass off. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4088&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum vs (14)Metroid Fusion 2010 _source: (3)Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum vs (14)Metroid Fusion 2010 (revid 69165)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, October 30, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 30, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,640 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum - 64.09% 116 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum - 78.53% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 705 Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: 17523 Metroid Fusion: 3005 This was the first Pokémon game we saw in action, and its performance was a bad sign of things to come in the future. No one wanted to look at this match and extrapolate Pokémon losing a step from it, but this is exactly what it meant. Look even deeper and you can gleam GSC not getting the HGSS boost so many banked on. It's not that Pokémon is weak, because it's not. But the peak for anything past RBY is long over. 55% on a clearly weaker game when it shares a handheld fanbase is awful. The vote totals and prediction percentage based on what should have happened here were also awful. This isn't a random rant, either. Only 20 people in the Oracle picked DPP to get under 60% here. This was a terrible performance by the game no matter what damage control the fans want to come up with. Metroid is a decently strong series on this site, but to embarrass Pokémon takes more than that. This was all DPP tanking out of nowhere, and also worth noting is the game kept losing percentage with the morning vote, against something that isn't totally day-oriented. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4089&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)WWF No Mercy vs (11)Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance 2010 _source: (6)WWF No Mercy vs (11)Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance 2010 (revid 69166)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, October 30, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 30, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,885 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - 53.09% 89 for - 29 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - 70.19% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1389 WWF No Mercy: 4688 Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: 13194 So hey, remember this match? That was the last time such a debated match turned into such a massive blowout. Though to be fair, most of the people on Board 8 picking WWF No Mercy knew it would lose, but picked it anyway because this was a mildly debatable match and people wanted to support the guru nomination. There was also some wrestling love in there and a debate on whether or not GameFAQs considered wrestling games sports-type games that it would be unwilling to vote for. That all ended in seconds. Fire Emblem just annihilated WWF from start to finish, leaving no doubt at all. It meant a lot of things, most notably how we can make it official that GameFAQs doesn't care about wrestling. The other thing is how this match turned Fire Emblem 7 vs Tony Hawk from debatable to lock in a matter of seconds. On a personal level, the only games in this bracket I like as much as Fire Emblem 9 are Melee and Street Fighter 4. I had zero faith in two of those three games, but we can all see how that worked out. All three ended up winning in round 1, which was awesome. And the trio closed the deal with going 72-28 in a debated match, which is always hilarious to see. Though with that said, this was a rare occasion where Board 8 didn't care about losing. Supporting the guru choice and throwing a point away willingly was too tempting to pass up for many. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4090&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Valkyria Chronicles vs (10)Disgaea: Hour of Darkness 2010 _source: (7)Valkyria Chronicles vs (10)Disgaea: Hour of Darkness 2010 (revid 69167)_ ## Results **Round 1** Sunday, October 31, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 31, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 1,508 - **Oracle Expectations:** Valkyria Chronicles - 44.13% 9 for - 108 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Valkyria Chronicles - 58.43% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1261 Valkyria Chronicles: 10581 Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: 7438 Also known as the match where DAT TOP OPTION was born as a legitimate prediction tool. Oh we'd seen it before, such as with Vyse vs Laharl in 2004, but the difference here as opposed to the past is that in particular fodder vs fodder match, the bottom option had literally zero reason to lose. Disgaea has more respect on this site, got a character into contests in the past and was arguably the game that got GameFAQs into loving cult RPGs. You can make a real case Valkyria Chronicles doesn't even exist without Disgaea's success. But unfortunately for Disgaea, it was the bottom option. Everyone knew it, too, which is why everyone called the match over 5 minutes in when Valkyria Chronicles only led by 2 votes. Everyone knew that no one cared about this match other than bracket voters, and that Disgaea not smoking the first 5 minutes meant that it had lost. We didn't even need to look at the rest of the match to know what would happen, and sure enough Valkyria Chronicles started going up before long. Really, all you need to see to know how little people cared about what was a fairly close match was the vote totals. 31k for a close match, which means no rallying or shenanigans, was purely "just get this out of the way, plz". And from this point forth, you can guarantee that everyone will pick the top option in a pure fodder match no matter how many reasons the bottom option has to win. This match just cements the theory. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4091&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs (15)Mario Kart DS 2010 _source: (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs (15)Mario Kart DS 2010 (revid 69168)_ ## Results **Round 1** Sunday, October 31, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 31, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 35,524 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 79.70% 119 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 87.61% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 253 Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 19706 Mario Kart DS: 2005 With how Melee crushed Guitar Hero 2 with this division's first match, it was on Brawl to match. Looking back on it, Brawl was the more impressive game from the start in this contest. Even taking account Melee getting all night matches (Smash is awful at night) and Brawl getting all day matches, 87% on Guitar Hero 2 is not as impressive as a whopping 83% on Mario Kart DS. Mind you this was after Brawl lost the board vote, which would be a common theme for it all contest long. But SFF match or not, 83% on any Mario Kart game is an absolutely insane number. People forget Mario Kart DS finished second in our 2005 Game of the Year polling. It's not a joke game by any stretch, but Brawl came out here and just made it look like absolute crap. Suddenly Melee's murdering of Guitar Hero 2 didn't mean as much, because it was impossible to imagine Brawl not repeating the same performance. The only real argument in Melee's favor at this point would be nostalgia and the fanbase preferring Melee, and we all saw how that went. But on pure strength alone, Melee clearly had no argument. It was at best Brawl's equal indirectly. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4092&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Galaxy vs (16)Beyond Good & Evil 2010 _source: (1)Super Mario Galaxy vs (16)Beyond Good & Evil 2010 (revid 69169)_ ## Results **Round 1** Monday, November 1, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 1, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,183 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Galaxy - 76.68% 112 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Galaxy - 91.93% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 303 Super Mario Galaxy: 20275 Beyond Good & Evil: 1496 Everyone knew BG&E would be weak as hell, but people made the misconception of thinking Galaxy would be weak this contest. So when this match came around and Galaxy failed to triple a game presumed to be pure fodder trash, people were up in arms about it being a 1 seed. If only people knew in advance just how legit Galaxy would end up. It actually started in the high 70s and fell below a tripling, but minor percentage shifts are boring. This match is funny in hindsight because everyone assumed it proved Galaxy's weakness, but as we all know it went out and put up one hell of a number against Twilight Princess later on. Not much else to say about this match, since 1 \> 16 matches are boring. We need another Starcraft \> Halo. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4093&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald vs (9)Grand Theft Auto IV 2010 _source: (8)Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald vs (9)Grand Theft Auto IV 2010 (revid 69170)_ ## Results **Round 1** Monday, November 1, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 1, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 908 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald - 50.66% 69 for - 45 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald - 26.23% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1037 Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald: 6698 Grand Theft Auto IV: 12873 All things considered, this match shouldn't have been debated in any way. This was Pokémon during the day against GTA, a series that can bomb like no other on GameFAQs, coming off of Pokémon's best contest yet. But then KP, who knows the Pokémon fanbase better than anyone else on Board 8, went and said RSE had no chance because it was the black sheep of the series. Suddenly, this easy and meaningless 1 point match had people arguing about it. People really should have left well enough alone and gone "Okay, Pokémon in the day, done deal", though to be fair GTA4 was legitimately the stronger game before 4chan got involved. When the match started, GTA4 had the early lead much to everyone's surprise. But then RSE eliminated it quickly, so people quickly assumed RSE would run away with the match. Didn't quite happen that way, as GTA went nuts after the 20 minute tie update. It exploded about as well as a game \*can\* explode during a close 12 hour match, and things were looking great. Then two key things happened: The ASV favoring RSE and 4chan's rallying. 4chan can't have the effect here that they do on Gamespot, mainly because the people at Gamespot are idiots and deny vote-stuffing takes place in their own version of annual contests, but they can still have a decent enough effect with legitimate rallies during close matches. But more importantly, the ASV favoring RSE just ruined Grand Theft Auto 4 here. As soon as GTA's lead went from 385 to 320 just after 3 when the ASV kicks in, everyone aware of contest trends knew the match was over. In six and a half short hours, RSE swung more than 1400 votes to turn this once-close match into a joke. GTA made a small run at the end, but it was meaningless. A lot of people complained about this result, but... really, we're complaining about this? GTA4 is objectively the most overrated game ever made (No really, it is: ), so the game getting thoroughly embarrassed by a third-rate Pokémon title in the very first round was the best possible thing that could have ever happened to it. And make no mistake: RSE was not a good generation. It shows that voters are smarter than we give them credit for, because they pay no mind to terrible reviews from so-called "professionals" that anyone with a brain realizes are paid off. I mean really, it doesn't take an exceptionally cynical mind to connect a few dots: Rumor or not, let's not pretend there was no truth there and that this doesn't go on. So f\*\*\* Grand Theft Auto 4 for being the posterchild of why professional game reviews are terrible sources for gaming opinions. It helps that every GTA game after 2 wasn't any good, but let's not go nuts here. This was one of the best things that happened all contest. And after all that, it's just icing on the cake when we can look at this match and have a collective, hearty HAW HAW CASUALS: ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4094&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Dragon Age: Origins vs (12)F-Zero GX 2010 _source: (5)Dragon Age: Origins vs (12)F-Zero GX 2010 (revid 69171)_ ## Results **Round 1** Tuesday, November 2, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 2, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,195 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dragon Age: Origins - 60.98% 108 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dragon Age: Origins - 87.21% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 578 Dragon Age: Origins: 18838 F-Zero GX: 1997 Nothing lasts forever, and there was just no way the first round of this contest was going to continue on the insane pace it was on. After RSE \> GTA4, we went on a run of 12 straight predictable snoozefests. Things wouldn't get interesting again until the Persona 3 vs Civilization 4 match, except the match was... you know, Persona 3 vs Civilization 4. Give us a debated match where the games combine to sell more than 35 copies or something. People manufactured drama over dumb matches, like pretending Tales of Vesperia vs Borderlands would be close, but everyone knew better. That said, this match was funny. Oh F-Zero stood no chance to win, but Dragon Age killing in a poll offered Board 8 the chance to see Anagram in action. As everyone knows, Anagram wrote a 16 page essay on why he thinks Dragon Age is bad, but the writeup was so long he had nowhere to put it, so he just left it on his desktop. No seriously, that's a paraphrased quote from the man himself. But he couldn't write all that and not show anyone, so he broke it up and posted it. All over the place. In every single topic about the game, not to mention all the topics he would repeatedly make about it. Then the match hit and Dragon Age just wrecked, so you can bet your ass he wouldn't be able to help himself from going all ADD with that ridiculous rant. People hate how I used to bash Shadow of the Colossus all the time, and I'm literarily capable with a vernacular acumen well above the normal standard deviations. Now imagine how well a months-long rant from someone that can't write went over. For that reason and that reason alone, the match was high f\*\*\*ing comedy. I have no issues with Anagram personally and you can check my friends list on Facebook for proof, but those rants of his are hiiiiiii-larious. If he makes a topic about Dragon Age, ever, I'm reading it. And I will laugh a whole hell of a lot. (And yes I asked his permission to write this, though he can't remember anything beyond 5 minutes ago so he undoubtedly forgot I asked! \<3) I do like the guy though, seriously. And when you start a string of 12 straight bad matches, you need entertainment from somewhere. Not many matches surpassed the Anagram Special. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4095&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (13)Shenmue 2010 _source: (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (13)Shenmue 2010 (revid 69172)_ ## Results **Round 1** Tuesday, November 2, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 2, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 34,814 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 76.65% 112 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 91.61% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 285 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: 20652 Shenmue: 1336 Board 8 sure does, so when Zelda went completely berserk in a day match against fodder as it's prone to do now and then, people lost their s\*\*\* and started whining about ZeldaFAQs and Zelda Always Wins and etc etc etc. Compound this with Shenmue ans being some of the biggest crybabies on the planet -- You guys seriously expected it to beat Zelda when it only got 25% against Final Fantasy X, really? -- and you had one of the worst matches of the contest. Not because the match was bad per se, but the board was completely intolerable. It was almost as bad as the "WHY ISN'T DEUS EX WINNING BY MORE!?!?@?!?@!?" crowd. Almost. And this was before -- long before -- Majora's Mask went apes\*\*\* all over the bracket. But to be completely fair, this was a godlike performance from Twilight Princess that legitimately did call into question the looming Smash match. Zelda 1 on 1 is no joke, and does anyone really think Twilight Princess wouldn't have beaten Final Fantasy X had they met in the final? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4096&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)BioShock vs (14)Star Wars: Battlefront II 2010 _source: (3)BioShock vs (14)Star Wars: Battlefront II 2010 (revid 69173)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, November 3, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 3, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 12,893 - **Oracle Expectations:** BioShock - 60.82% 113 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** BioShock - 88.83% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 554 BioShock: 19232 Star Wars: Battlefront II: 2288 So hey, remember this match? Remember, to this point we hadn't yet seen Portal go nuts. So when BioShock came out and just WRECKED Star Wars it caused all kinds of chatter. Should we really go broad spectrum for a character contest, should we really expose Vader to possibly getting blown out, is Star Wars weak on GameFAQs, and so on and so on. But the most relevant chatter came when people started doing numbers voodoo with the vote-in polls to project BioShock beating both Kingdom Hearts games. We all know what would eventually happen here, but BioShock still had itself a good contest. It's come a long way since 2009, and this was one of those matches where you got the sense voters took the words "Game of the Decade" seriously. BioShock gets MASSIVE amounts of respect all over the place, so maybe it doing well wasn't such a huge surprise. We really need to get a BioShock vs Portal match, 1 on 1. No one would know what to pick. As a random factoid, BioShock's percentage increased overall until the end. This is very rare, and maybe in a different spot it causes massive damage to the bracket. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4097&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Kingdom Hearts II vs (11)Halo 2 2010 _source: (6)Kingdom Hearts II vs (11)Halo 2 2010 (revid 69174)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, November 3, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 3, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 16,223 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts II - 60.28% 113 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts II - 57.84% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1157 Kingdom Hearts II: 11238 Halo 2: 8510 Can you believe Halo 2 used to be considered one of the best games ever? Now it's crapped on even by hardcore Halo fans and weird Kingdom Hearts sequels. I'd seriously pick Chain of Memories to beat Halo 2 heads-up, too. This match was very boring, which is actually notable. It was a day match, and the percentages barely moved at all during the ASV featuring two well-known ASV titans. This would eventually lull people to sleep and give off a false sense of hope during a later match involving Halo and Uncharted 2. But never fear, for the ASV King would have his day. On a related note, this match meant nothing for the Kingdom Hearts duel as any match involving Halo will have wrong numbers because of how hated the series is. Super Mario Sunshine not being a bottom 10 games in the LOL x-stats is pathetic. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4098&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 vs (10)Dissidia: Final Fantasy 2010 _source: (7)Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 vs (10)Dissidia: Final Fantasy 2010 (revid 69175)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, November 4, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 4, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,189 - **Oracle Expectations:** Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 57.46% 111 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 88.98% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 461 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: 19828 Dissidia: Final Fantasy: 2158 When the match pic first went up, people flipped out about this match. Seven FF female leads against Generic Call of Duty Guy (Correction: 6 female leads and a primate)? NOT FAIR, screamed the masses, especially with Dissidia getting Call of Duty at night. And they actually had a point. Look at those prediction percentages, for a lowly 7 seed. Can you imagine the uproar had Call of Duty lost close with that picture? Thankfully the match was never close so it was never a problem, but... man. Now say whatever you will about Activi\$ion and Call of Duty, and most of it would be warranted, but let me remind you who won our [2009 Game of the Year.](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3727) Yeah yeah, GOTY polls mean nothing. But in a sense, they tell you who the midcarders are. So for Dissidia, a terrible fanservice PSP exclusive with awful gameplay, plot, graphics, characters and collect-a-thons to so thoroughly embarrass Call of Duty like this was really something else. Not that Call of Duty: Cash Grab Ops is much better as a game, but this match probably doesn't get closer than 75-25 on any other major gaming site. Call of Duty really has become our new casual series to hate. On a personal note, you won't find many polls where I hate both entrants more than this one. Two terrible games that should not exist, from companies that should have stopped designing games ages ago. If \$queenix and Activi\$ion both disappeared, gaming would be so much better off. And this comes as a guy who really enjoyed Final Fantasy 13. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4099&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Kingdom Hearts vs (15)Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow 2010 _source: (2)Kingdom Hearts vs (15)Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow 2010 (revid 69176)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, November 4, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 4, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 30,760 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts - 68.92% 113 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts - 89.21% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 440 Kingdom Hearts: 19664 Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow: 1948 The Southeast's first round ended with a match that made everyone think the Kingdom Hearts duel was settled before it even began. Granted we had no read on Dawn of Sorrow, but 77% on it is no joke. Add to that how Kingdom Hearts exploded during the ASV here while Kingdom Hearts 2 did nothing with the ASV against Halo 2, and you had KH1 as the clear favorite following this match. Not much else to say here, so I'll just keep it short. I will say on a personal level that seeing Dawn of Sorrow get murdered like that sucked. I loved that game. I love Kingdom Hearts too, don't get me wrong, but this match being a little closer would have been nice. Dawn of Sorrow isn't appreciated enough. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4100&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy X vs (16)Viewtiful Joe 2010 _source: (1)Final Fantasy X vs (16)Viewtiful Joe 2010 (revid 69177)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, November 5, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 5, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 23,091 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 81.55% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 92.77% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 273 Final Fantasy X: 21157 Viewtiful Joe: 1231 The stats topic is big on overreacting early in matches, but Final Fantasy is the one series where it's warranted because it can look so bad early in polls. Early on, Viewtiful Joe was making FFX look like crap. Sure FFX recovered to get a decent number, but this wasn't about whether or not FFX could beat Viewtiful Joe. It was about whether or not FFX could win the contest. And based on the early parts of this match, FFX was screwed. We weren't able to pinpoint the game that would upend it, but we were able to see how it would happen based on this one match. Put it another way: Think Zelda or Smash would have struggled like this? Well Brawl might have, but it would have likely recovered much better than FFX was able to do here. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4101&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Tales of Vesperia vs (9)Borderlands 2010 _source: (8)Tales of Vesperia vs (9)Borderlands 2010 (revid 69178)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, November 5, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 5, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,563 - **Oracle Expectations:** Borderlands - 53.54% 85 for - 22 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Borderlands - 69.75% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1448 Tales of Vesperia: 5193 Borderlands: 13106 Another Tales match, another 55-45 type of loss. Board 8's love affair with the game prevented Borderlands from getting the prediction percentage it deserved, but there was really no way Borderlands was going to lose this even with Vesperia losing the board vote. Even on an RPG dominated site, the Tales series has never been able to do anything beyond Symphonia, and even Symphonia usually tanks. Worth noting here is how this was one of the few 8/9 matches in the first round to go as planned. Most of them screwed people over hardcore, but Borderlands was a good little favorite and won easily like it was supposed to. Tales is weird in that the rest of the site knows it's weak, but hardcore contest people always want it to be strong. So you end up with experts overrating Tales and casuals picking it properly all the time. Go take a peek at Symphonia's prediction percentages for proof of this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4102&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Golden Sun vs (12)Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal 2010 _source: (5)Golden Sun vs (12)Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal 2010 (revid 69179)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, November 6, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 6, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 12,931 - **Oracle Expectations:** Golden Sun - 57.17% 101 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Golden Sun - 63.93% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 903 Golden Sun: 13703 Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal: 6641 We all knew Ratchet & Clank would be weak, but it was still weird seeing Golden Sun score in the high 60s against anything. Either Ratchet was weaker than expected or Golden Sun was very very legit. Given all the whining Golden Sun would end up causing with its second round match, we can probably assume this match meant Golden Sun's legitimacy in hindsight. This was no fluke, either, as the percentages stayed this way all match. One thing was for sure after this: San Andreas was f\*\*\*ed. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4103&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs (13)Dead Space 2010 _source: (4)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs (13)Dead Space 2010 (revid 69180)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, November 6, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 6, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,666 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 64.37% 107 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 78.28% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 449 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: 17936 Dead Space: 4055 This was a day match, which should have helped San Andreas have a great performance. However, its performance was merely average. On a normal day, this might not have meant much with Golden Sun looming in one of the few good round 2 matches we had. But with Golden Sun DS released on the day of the match, San Andreas couldn't afford to look merely on par with Golden Sun. It had to look better, by a lot, and it failed to do that here. As a random factoid, Allen mentioned in board8chat pre-contest that he was very surprised Dead Space got in. It didn't do all that bad, and you'd have to wonder how something like Dead Space vs Ratchet & Clank: Random Subtitle would go. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4104&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (14)Devil May Cry 2010 _source: (3)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (14)Devil May Cry 2010 (revid 69181)_ ## Results **Round 1** Sunday, November 7, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 7, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,949 - **Oracle Expectations:** Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 57.72% 97 for - 11 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 75.37% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 579 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: 16242 Devil May Cry: 5469 People worried about this match going in because they were desperate to see something interesting in our string of 12 straight boring round 1 matches, but it wasn't warranted. Especially not after Devil May Cry 3 crapped the bed against Mother 3. Yes Devil May Cry would end up stronger than 3, but last year proved KOTOR was no joke. Now with that said, KOTOR started off at 63% and fell all the way down below 58% before the match finally ended. That's a significant bleed, which called into serious question the KOTOR \> FF9 upset. And this is all after DMC3 thoroughly embarrassed itself earlier this round. Barring FF9 completely collapsing, KOTOR wasn't getting past round 3. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4105&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Fire Emblem vs (11)Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 2010 _source: (6)Fire Emblem vs (11)Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 2010 (revid 69182)_ ## Results **Round 1** Sunday, November 7, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 7, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,764 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem - 65.89% 105 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem - 62.90% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 813 Fire Emblem: 14040 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2: 6403 This was a mildly debated match pre-contest, but then this poll happened and all that debate looked pretty dumb: A sports game people actually like got wrecked by Path of Radiance, so imagine how a sports game people legitimately hate would do. To be fair Tony Hawk didn't get completely killed like its distant wrestling cousin, but this match was never in doubt at all. Some actually wondered if Fire Emblem could take down KOTOR. Personally, I'd love to see a Fire Emblem 7 vs Path of Radiance match. Radiance probably wins, but who really knows. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4106&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 vs (10)Civilization IV 2010 _source: (7)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 vs (10)Civilization IV 2010 (revid 69183)_ ## Results **Round 1** Monday, November 8, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 8, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 1,576 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - 49.49% 63 for - 45 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - 42.85% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1133 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3: 9009 Civilization IV: 10661 DAT TOP OPTION strikes again! This was the first match in awhile that was a legitimate tossup or good match, marred only by the fact the two games involved were Persona 3 and Civilization 4. Very very very few people on GameFAQs care about either one of these games. You'd assume otherwise from hanging out on Board 8 a lot given 100% of the people who love the Persona series post here, but the reality is these are two series the site doesn't care about. So with a match that's pure fodder vs pure fodder such as this, DAT TOP OPTION is all that really mattered. Switch the seedings here and I guarantee you Civ 4 wins. But as-is, Persona 3 kind of won with ease. For a 52-48 match, it was never really close past the first couple minutes. The PC had a pretty good contest, but RPGs and DAT TOP OPTION reigned supreme here. Though to be fair, Civ 4 being the favorite made sense. The Civ series is weak, but it's at least done something in a contest before. Persona had never done anything notable before this match, so people went with the known entity over DAT TOP OPTION. This will not be a mistake Board 8 repeats in the first round ever again. In a way I'm glad Civ is beyond weak. We still need that Civ 3 vs FFT duel so I can make MWIS honor his loser-leaves account bet with me. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4107&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Final Fantasy IX vs (15)Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations 2010 _source: (2)Final Fantasy IX vs (15)Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations 2010 (revid 69184)_ ## Results **Round 1** Monday, November 8, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 8, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 27,941 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy IX - 69.95% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy IX - 85.88% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 418 Final Fantasy IX: 19393 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations: 2619 DAT TOP OPT--\*gets shot\* But seriously, this match was funny despite being a blowout. I'd take the time pulling up the list of every match ever involving FF9, but you already know where I'm going with this. Final Fantasy 9, no matter what, always loses the day vote. It's like clockwork. So when FF9 started losing the ASV to Phoenix Wright 3, it was hard to not chuckle a bit. Sure it went back up once the evening and second night vote hit, also like clockwork, but FF9's ability to tank the middle of the afternoon against ANYTHING is really something else. And KOTOR vs FF9 was a day match. Hmmmmmm.... ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4108&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Resident Evil 4 vs (16)Jet Grind Radio 2010 _source: (1)Resident Evil 4 vs (16)Jet Grind Radio 2010 (revid 69185)_ ## Results **Round 1** Tuesday, November 9, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 24,967 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 4 - 81.87% 102 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 4 - 95.55% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 158 Resident Evil 4: 22322 Jet Grind Radio: 714 There are many examples of this contest of voters being smart and taking the words "Game of the Decade" seriously. Other than the voters preventing Brawl from winning, there was no better example of this than Resident Evil 4. It was RE4, not a Final Fantasy or Zelda or Smash title, who had the highest prediction percentage and battle pickers in round 1. Though FFX was the most nominated game, RE4 might have actually been the favorite to win the entire contest. Those numbers aren't available, but RE4 getting more people picking it to win than any other game wouldn't surprise me. So when RE4 came out and just destroyed Jet Grind Radio, the "Can RE4 beat FFX?" wasn't typical early match overreactions -- especially with the percentages staying consistent all match. RE4 was legit as hell, likely boosting from the contest's name, and an upset over FFX wasn't out of the question given how bad FFX looked a few matches ago. RE4 would end up losing that match, but this doesn't take away how good a contest the game had. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4109&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (9)Silent Hill 2 2010 _source: (8)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (9)Silent Hill 2 2010 (revid 69186)_ ## Results **Round 1** Tuesday, November 9, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,044 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 64.25% 103 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 73.88% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 837 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: 16494 Silent Hill 2: 4229 So hey, remember this match? SFF with the other PS2 games or not, Silent Hill 2 SUCKED last year. And even if it was SFF, Vice City is a PS2 game that should have taken advantage. And, well... there's really no sugarcoating this. Vice City just absolutely sucked in this match, making it one of the biggest stinkbombs of the entire contest. San Andreas was in enough trouble as-is against Golden Sun, but the case can be made this match proved the entirety of Grand Theft Auto was the turd of the contest. I'll go one step further and say Vice City looked the worst of all four games. GTA4 lost to RSE, but that look a rally and an ASV. San Andreas lost to Golden Sun, but it's possible San Andreas wins if Golden Sun's new game doesn't come out on the day of the match with a gigantic full-page ad on the home page. GTA3 actually ended up looking pretty good against Half-Life 2. But Vice City? It just sucked period. Unless Yahtzee's review and "Game of the Decade" boosted Silent Hill 2 like nothing else (quite possible, in fairness), this match was horrendous for Vice City. It was no fluke, either, because it was consistent for nearly 12 hours. This goes far beyond simple anti-votes -- it's legitimate hate. This site hates Grand Theft Auto. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4110&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)The World Ends With You vs (12)Dead Rising 2010 _source: (5)The World Ends With You vs (12)Dead Rising 2010 (revid 69187)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, November 10, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 654 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dead Rising - 50.74% 55 for - 50 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dead Rising - 64.42% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1175 The World Ends With You: 7363 Dead Rising: 13003 Now THIS was a good match. Persona 3 and Civ 4 gave us a decent effort, but it was meaningless. This match possibly meant three points, which is why the debates surrounding the whole TWEWY/DR/P4 trio (poor Braid) were so heated. Dead Rising and Persona 4 ended up almost even in the guru to reach round 3, but first thing's first. Though Dead Rising was the favorite against TWEWY, TWO-EY was bound to be a difficult match for it. Close night matches against Square RPGs beloved by Board 8 tend to be difficult, and the debate was warranted. TOWEL-IE took the early lead and got it near 100 early, threatening to run away with the match before it really got into the thick of things. But Dead Rising was able to fight back, and we had a war of attrition on our hands. Things stayed deadlocked for a few hours, but eventually Dead Rising was able to build some momentum and get its own 100 vote lead. One problem: This happened at 4 am, when Square RPGs tend to go berserk thanks to European and Asian votes massively favoring them overnight. This match was no exception, and S-TEWEY (DEFEATS TRUMAN) was able to erase that lead in only an hour. Unfortunately for TEWEY, it did nothing to actually try winning the match. It was never able to actually start building a lead once it erased the 4 am 100 vote advantage Dead Rising had stored up, so when Dead Rising started winning the morning vote there was nothing The Worlds Ends With You could do to defend itself. Dead Rising ended up winning the match by more than 650 votes, which is a large margin given how the match was close or deadlocked for such a large amount of time. This also meant Dead Rising was a day game, which potentially meant a lot of trouble for Persona 4 given the round 2 duel was a day match. If Persona 4 was at all comparable to Dumb Acronym Ends With Infinity, it was in trouble. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4111&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 vs (13)Braid 2010 _source: (4)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 vs (13)Braid 2010 (revid 69188)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, November 10, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 11,280 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 - 59.53% 104 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 - 65.96% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 905 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4: 14287 Braid: 5839 This was the one match in this fourpack that was predictable, though Braid winning would have been awesome. We learned very little here. Persona 4 needed to totally wreck house here to make it the favorite next round, and even then people might have just blamed Braid for being fodder or something. What we can look at however is total votes. 40k after the morning match was super close could have potentially meant trouble for Persona 4, but it was one of those things we wouldn't know until match time. Both Personas winning matches in this contest was awesome for the game's fans (all 25 of them), but it's hard for me to look at this match, go "It couldn't even double a download-only game?" and think Persona 4 disappointed. It's not like Braid was Mega Man 9 and had franchise power to draw from. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4112&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal vs (14)Gears of War 2 2010 _source: (3)Portal vs (14)Gears of War 2 2010 (revid 69189)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, November 11, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 11, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 16,038 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal - 63.50% 105 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal - 65.45% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 493 Portal: 14640 Gears of War 2: 7789 So yeah, remember when Gears of War 2 completely wrecked its vote-in poll? Makes pretty much every game from that poll look like garbage in hindsight. Only SoulCalibur 2 did ANYTHING this contest, and that was only because 1/4th of Link's hat was visible. Before the contest, Portal vs FF12 was a good debate to have. Even Mass Effect was a good game to bring up, thanks to the recent release of Mass Effect 2 having a clear effect on how many nominations the older brother got. And then this match happened. 71% on a game that wins a vote-in is impressive enough, but then you look at the update chart and see how high this was before the percentage bleed. Portal was a legitimate threat to score a tripling in this match, which is completely insane when you think about it. yoblazer went on the podcast pre-contest and mentioned something about how people were mistaken in calling Portal such a huge favorite over FF12. And then this match happened. Portal is a beloved game and may very well have gotten the "Game of the Decade" boost, but in reality Valve gave the game away for free for a couple weeks in 2010. That would boost any game, really. The entire bottom half of this division was on lockdown once this match happened, and the only thing to answer here is how high Portal could go on RE4. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4113&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Final Fantasy XII vs (11)Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII 2010 _source: (6)Final Fantasy XII vs (11)Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII 2010 (revid 69190)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, November 11, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 11, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,626 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy XII - 55.80% 91 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy XII - 71.51% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 693 Final Fantasy XII: 15273 Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII: 6379 Fear of Final Fantasy 7 and Zack UNFair got people in a tizzy over this match for some unknown reason. At the end of the day, no matter how bad FF12 is (not that CC is any better) or whether or not "Final Fantasy 7" is in Crisis Core's name, this match was still Playstation 2 versus PSP. This match sucked if you were a 90s Square fan, because it represents everything wrong with them and the FF series these days. But regardless, FF12 was never going to lose this match, even though "FFXII" split in half along the transverse/axial/lateral plane gives you "CCVII". People hyped Crisis Core only because of the subtitle, though I'll admit the match picture really was UNFair. Even still, FF12 won the match easily. As for the war, Portal won that. When you start over 58% and fall down below 56%, you're in trouble against a game that has joke trends. And it's not like people love FF12 or anything. There was no way it wouldn't get killed after how badly it performed in this match. There's something in war called a Pyrrhic Victory, where you win a battle at devastating cost to the victor. Our contests are full of those, and FF12's percentage struggle with Crisis Core was a classic example. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4114&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Skies of Arcadia vs (10)Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn 2010 _source: (7)Skies of Arcadia vs (10)Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn 2010 (revid 69191)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, November 12, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 12, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 1,627 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skies of Arcadia - 53.39% 87 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skies of Arcadia - 47.63% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1109 Skies of Arcadia: 10011 Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn: 9218 Poor Anagram. PC games did well all contest, a ton of 1 point matches had weird results, and Western RPGs also did quite well for themselves. So when he literally put his neck on the line for this match, it seemed like a decent enough bet. Baldur's Gate 2 had a good chance of winning, and was the bracket favorite. Unfortunately, Anagram forgot the most important thing of all: DAT TOP OPTION. Though to be fair, Skies probably also wins if you switch the seedings given how fast it started. This match was over 60% early, but after the fast start Skies pulled one of the most memorable percentage collapses ever. It just kept going down and down overnight, to the point of being comical. Putting it a different way, Skies had a 1000 vote lead in 75 minutes. It only won by 1600 votes, and obviously the match finished 52-48. If this were a day match, you have to think Baldur's Gate might have pulled it off. It did some serious stalling with the morning vote, after all. Even more odd was how legit Skies ended up looking in the final stats. Imagine how funny it would have been had BG2 pulled off some upset over a well-known title. But at the end of the day, Anagram was stuck doing a backflip. I hear he broke his pool doing it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4115&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Mass Effect vs (15)Plants vs. Zombies 2010 _source: (2)Mass Effect vs (15)Plants vs. Zombies 2010 (revid 69192)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, November 12, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 12, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,975 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect - 72.38% 105 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect - 90.18% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 236 Mass Effect: 21080 Plants vs. Zombies: 2008 If you have any lingering doubts about how much Mass Effect 2 affected the original, look at those prediction percentages. That's 1 seed respect for a 2, which doesn't happen often. To put that in perspective, Majora's Mask (our contest winner) couldn't break a 90% prediction percentage against Wii Sports of all things. Now with that said, Mass Effect didn't go out and perform like it deserved 1 seed respect. ME2 boosted it, yes, but failing to break 70% on something like Plants vs. Zombies is embarrassing. Portal was the clear favorite for the division's bottom half after its own round 1 match, and only Mass Effect would stand a chance due to its status as a wild card. But then it crapped the bed here and that was that. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4116&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (16)TimeSplitters 2 2010 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (16)TimeSplitters 2 2010 (revid 69193)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, November 13, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 13, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 20,016 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 78.08% 101 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 92.72% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 281 Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: 21419 TimeSplitters 2: 1404 I know round 1 was all box arts, but that is one hell of a great match picture. MGS3's box art especially is awesome. Much like the match preceding this, the writing was on the wall for the game that won even with a blowout win. MGS3 won, but this was hardly a 1 seed performance deserving of much respect. TimeSplitters just scraped by in its vote-in, then goes out and prevents MGS3 from getting a 1 seed killing. I know hindsight is 20-20 and etc etc etc, but this match was a major sign of things to come for the Metal Gear Solid series and a really bad start to the "MGS division". It's rare a game almost scores 77% and looks like crap, but MGS3 looked like crap. No two ways about it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4117&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Marvel vs. Capcom 2 vs (9)New Super Mario Bros. Wii 2010 _source: (8)Marvel vs. Capcom 2 vs (9)New Super Mario Bros. Wii 2010 (revid 84831)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, November 13, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 13, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 1,624 - **Oracle Expectations:** Marvel vs Capcom 2 - 43.55% 10 for - 94 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Marvel vs. Capcom 2 - 49.31% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 946 Marvel vs. Capcom 2: 9819 New Super Mario Bros. Wii: 10759 This was one of the first round's most entertaining matches, and it featured one of the biggest (at least publicly) rallies of the entire contest. Though the brackets and battle were evenly split here, Board 8's love for Nintendo caused the experts to massively favor Mario. And why not? IT'S FREAKING MARIO. And early on, the theory was doing just fine. The match was of the decently close 52-48 variety, but Mario was winning comfortably and the idea of Mario winning a close day match was impossible. But after about an hour, Mario had a 300 vote lead and MvC2 sliced 100 off of it in 10 minutes. Mario would eventually recover and keep building its lead at a fairly steady pace, but that was just a random blip, right? Surely a tournament-favored 2D fighter wouldn't make noise against a Mario game in a day match, right? That's, as Chris Berman would say, why they play the games. Mario's lead peaked around 400, but then the ASV hit and the weirdest thing happened. MvC2 started stalling, if not cutting votes little by little. It stayed like this for hours, right through the early ASV much to everyone's surprise. Then SRK started rallying for Marvel, and you know what happened from there. I won't link to the graph since it'll be in a picture on the wiki, but the SRK rally made all the difference in this match. 2000 vote swings don't happen often in 12 hour matches, and other than Zelda late it was the most effective rally all contest. Even more impressive was this rally was effective against FREAKING MARIO. I know Mario always wins the close matches late, but this may be the closest thing we get to Mario's clutch not kicking in. This match was murder for battle brackets, as many many people had long streaks end on this match, and it also wrecked the guru. But that's what happens when you doubt DAT TOP OPTION. More relevantly, this match shows you how little respect the Wii brand is worth on GameFAQs these days. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4118&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Paper Mario vs (12)Katamari Damacy 2010 _source: (5)Paper Mario vs (12)Katamari Damacy 2010 (revid 69195)_ ## Results **Round 1** Sunday, November 14, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 14, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 16,544 - **Oracle Expectations:** Paper Mario - 63.77% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Paper Mario - 77.32% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 637 Paper Mario: 17375 Katamari Damacy: 4294 Pre-contest, a few people actually had World of Warcraft beating Paper Mario in round 2. One famous prognosticator actually predicted WoW to score 60% there. Without even looking at the WoW \> Animal Crossing match, you can tell all that was debunked by looking at how badly Paper Mario destroyed Katamari Damacy here. Katamari Damacy used to be a Board 8 darling, but now it's unable to win board votes. Paper Mario ended up being very legit, going as far as winning the If It Were Up To Board 8 contest, but even still it performed very well here. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4119&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)World of Warcraft vs (13)Animal Crossing 2010 _source: (4)World of Warcraft vs (13)Animal Crossing 2010 (revid 72708)_ ## Results **Round 1** Sunday, November 14, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 14, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,763 - **Oracle Expectations:** World of Warcraft - 57.41% 98 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** World of Warcraft - 92.21% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 237 World of Warcraft: 22245 Animal Crossing: 1189 Fun Fact: Animal Crossing received the least number of nominations among the games getting into the bracket without going through vote-ins. So of course it gets to go up against World of Warcraft in the first round and just thoroughly embarrass it. Don't let the 58-42 percentages fool you here, either. World of Warcraft got 1 seed respect from bracketmakers, but went out and performed like this was a 6/11 match. Failing to break even 60% on Animal Crossing, the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to Nintendo, might be a lower point for WoW than the match it actually lost. I know GameFAQs despises World of Warcraft, but seeing just how deep that hate ran this contest was really something else. Can you imagine what Majora's Mask or a Smash would have done to Animal Crossing in WoW's place? I know we throw around the idea of anti-votes a lot, but for WoW it actually mattered a lot this contest. The true irony here is World of Warcraft should have gotten "Game of the Decade" respect, and probably would have on any other site. ## Trivia - This match is the only 1v1 match in contest history where a character or game with a 90+ prediction percentage failed to break 60%. Only two others even failed to double their opponents. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4120&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (14)Assassin's Creed 2010 _source: (3)Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (14)Assassin's Creed 2010 (revid 69197)_ ## Results **Round 1** Monday, November 15, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 15, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,987 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 67.61% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 73.42% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 666 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: 16530 Assassin's Creed: 5718 There's two ways of looking at this match now that the contest is over. With MGS confirmed as the contest's big turkey, you can look at this match and say it underperformed, especially compared to how it rolled heads in 2009. Or you can go hey, Assassin's Creed rocked the vote-ins and MGS4 killed it anyway despite a picture disadvantage. Given how awful the entire series looked this contest, I'm inclined to go with the former. Remember, Assassin's Creed is a hated game. For MGS4 to not even double it given 2009, picture disadvantage or not, was really bad. And if this match didn't convince you MGS4 lost a big step, rounds 2 and 3 certainly would. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4121&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Diablo II vs (11)Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem 2010 _source: (6)Diablo II vs (11)Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem 2010 (revid 69198)_ ## Results **Round 1** Monday, November 15, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 15, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 22,887 - **Oracle Expectations:** Diablo II - 67.44% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Diablo II - 89.21% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 450 Diablo II: 20645 Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem: 1638 Diablo 2 feels like one of those games that boosted because of the contest's name, even though it only won this one match. To be fair it did really well in this match, predictable or not, and given how badly the other two Blizzard games tanked this really means something. I know Eternal Darkness isn't really comparable to Assassin's Creed, but compare the numbers here. Almost 90% of people had Diablo 2, a 6 seed, winning in round 1 compared to MGS4's 73%. 4000 more people banked on D2 as well. It's tough to pass that off as Assassin's Creed getting respect, because I never hear anything good about the game. Contrarily, I never hear anything bad about Eternal Darkness. I know MGS4 beat Diablo 2, but something funny went on in this fourpack beyond "MGS tanked". As a side note, this was my favorite match picture of the first round. It's legitimately frightening and atmospheric, while everything else really did just look like two box arts slapped together. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4122&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (10)Banjo-Tooie 2010 _source: (7)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (10)Banjo-Tooie 2010 (revid 69199)_ ## Results **Round 1** Tuesday, November 16, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 14,647 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - 69.11% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - 85.51% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 536 Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: 20029 Banjo-Tooie: 2345 I know Banjo-Tooie isn't the Banjo game of choice, but MGS2 having 20000+ people pick it in the battle as a 7 seed was nuts. There are 1 seeds that didn't break that number. Oddly enough MGS2 looked like the one game in that series worth a damn once this contest ended, even though it was the first one to lose and the game that kicked off Shadow of the Colossus's upset run. This poll actually started off as a doubling, but MGS2 kept going up until the end and came decently close to breaking 70%. When you look at round 1, you look at The Sims and Banjo-Tooie and just assume Banjo would kill The Sims. But that's why they play the games, and such. MGS2 had absolutely no clue the mountain it would face in the next round, and we had no clue either. There was zero indication Shadow of the Colossus was going to pull that off based on how the two games performed in the first round. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4123&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Shadow of the Colossus vs (15)The Sims 2010 _source: (2)Shadow of the Colossus vs (15)The Sims 2010 (revid 69200)_ ## Results **Round 1** Tuesday, November 16, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 20,241 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shadow of the Colossus - 61.07% 98 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shadow of the Colossus - 66.23% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 845 Shadow of the Colossus: 14881 The Sims: 7253 I don't know if The Sim got a Game of the Decade boost or if Shadow of the Colossus hate is pretty widespread beyond my own tastes or what, but this was one of the weirdest prediction percentages all contest. Even battle people only favored SotC, a 2 seed, at a 2:1 ratio. Something was just way off here, especially when you compare those numbers to MGS2's. As for the actual match, Shadow of the Colossus of course won it easily. There was some buzz about The Sims pulling an upset, and it died about 10 seconds into the poll. But SotC was actually over 70% at one point, then lost the ASV to fall back down near 69. If you ignore the rest of the contest and just look at the first round, there was no way to expect anything other than a 55-45 win, at least, for MGS2 over SotC. Something very, very odd happened in the first round here. And the LOL x-stats can go to hell, too. Banjo-Tooie would wreck The Sims and everyone knows it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4124&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (16)Wii Sports 2010 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (16)Wii Sports 2010 (revid 69202)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, November 17, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 27,526 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 80.34% 100 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 88.72% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 374 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: 21402 Wii Sports: 2108 Looking back on it now, there was evidence Majora's Mask was a threat to win the title right here in its first match. It's funny when you look back and realize the big debate was Majora's Mask vs Pokémon GSC. The true debate should have been Majora's Mask vs Final Fantasy X. People tried to downplay this because LOL Wii and LOL Wii Sports and LOL casual gamers and etc, but the fact remains Wii Sports might have the highest play rate of any game ever made. It has the highest sales, at the very least. Say whatever you will about the Wii, and most of the criticism will be warranted, but facts are facts. You can have your own opinions, but you can't have your own facts. Wii Sports is what it is. And Zelda just murdered it. Good god. Melee might have gotten the biggest blowout of the contest, but no one cares about Guitar Hero anymore. People actually do care about Wii Sports, and Zelda just treated it like garbage here. This truly was a championship performance, and this was before Majora's Mask had any momentum in this contest at all. It actually had over 85% for a long time in this poll, before Wii Sports got the lonely old people morning vote boost. Can you imagine what Ocarina of Time would have done to poor Wii Sports in Majora's place here? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4125&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Chrono Cross vs (9)Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King 2010 _source: (8)Chrono Cross vs (9)Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King 2010 (revid 69203)_ ## Results **Round 1** Wednesday, November 17, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 11,285 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Cross - 55.61% 91 for - 11 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Cross - 60.50% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 1425 Chrono Cross: 12833 Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King: 6525 See now this is how 8/9 matches are supposed to go -- a clear favorite winning 60/40, with some minor debate from paranoid people. You may think it's dumb pointing this out, but look at the list of all the 8 vs 9 matches in this contest: (8)Rock Band 2 - 24365 \[49.24%\] (9)Deus Ex - 25117 \[50.76%\] Total Votes - 49482 (8)Mother 3 - 18174 \[35.14%\] (9)Devil May Cry 3 - 33538 \[64.86%\] Total Votes - 51712 (8)Warcraft 3 - 25066 \[49.55%\] (9)The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind - 25522 \[50.45%\] Total Votes - 50588 (8)Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald - 30021 \[50.77%\] (9)Grand Theft Auto 4 - 29113 \[49.23%\] Total Votes - 59134 (8)Tales of Vesperia - 22346 \[44.47%\] (9)Borderlands - 27909 \[55.53%\] Total Votes - 50255 (8)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 30560 \[63.57%\] (9)Silent Hill 2 - 17516 \[36.43%\] Total Votes - 48076 (8)Marvel vs. Capcom 2 - 26911 \[51.56%\] (9)New Super Mario Bros. Wii - 25287 \[48.44%\] Total Votes - 52198 (8)Chrono Cross - 29368 \[61.89%\] (9)Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King - 18083 \[38.11%\] Total Votes - 47451 Four of those matches completely screwed over battle brackets, notably NSMBWii's loss that all but eliminated most of the field. Of the four that went as expected, two of them were complete mindf\*\*\*s anyway in Vice City and Devil May Cry 3 collapsing against their opponents. So as the first round wound down to a close, Chrono Cross beating DQ8 was nice to see for an 8/9 match. I know 8/9 matches in any seeded bracket are supposed to be wonky, but losing a ton of matches close would bother anyone paying attention to contests. You can even make the case the Borderlands and Chrono Cross wins were mildly debatable as well. It's one of those deals where you're happy the contest is seeing good stuff like this, but it sucks when you're on the wrong side of it like so many of us were. So for Board 8, we reveled in a meaningless 1 point JRPG SFF match because we got dicked over on the 8/9 all first round long. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4126&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney vs (12)Mario Kart Wii 2010 _source: (5)Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney vs (12)Mario Kart Wii 2010 (revid 69204)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, November 18, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 18, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,378 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario Kart Wii - 59.22% 96 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario Kart Wii - 64.29% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 739 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: 7324 Mario Kart Wii: 14908 In two days' time, we got two matches that thoroughly embarrassed the Wii. For my money, this was the funniest LOL WII match of the entire contest. I know NSMBWii losing to MvC2 was out of left field, but that at least required an outside rally. But a multi-million dollar Wii game needing the morning vote to get saved from an upset at the hands of some DS visual novel? That is embarrassing beyond any reasonable comprehension. I know Board 8 loves Phoenix Wright and all, myself included, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking the entire series isn't weak as hell. Yet after Mario Kart Wii took the early lead and pushed it to 500 overnight, Phoenix actually started stalling and cutting -- Phoenix Wright, a series with joke trends, was cutting Mario Kart Wii in the dead of night on a pace to actually win. The morning vote did of course come around and save Mario Kart from one of the most embarrassing losses ever, but the damage was already done. When you let some weak nonsense like Phoenix Wright get that close to you at all, you suck when it comes to contest polls. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4127&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal vs (13)Advance Wars 2010 _source: (4)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal vs (13)Advance Wars 2010 (revid 69205)_ ## Results **Round 1** Thursday, November 18, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 18, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 23,606 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal - 74.43% 103 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal - 80.05% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 375 Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal: 21265 Advance Wars: 2115 Let's just be honest with each other here. Majora's Mask \> GSC became clear after the first round. Sure GSC people will deny it and blame match pictures or Advance Wars being underrated, but that's just denial. Because while Majora's Mask was out giving us a championship preview, GSC was busy bleeding percentage to a game it should have SFFd into the ground. If you're looking to beat a Zelda game of similar strength 1 on 1 and go on to bigger and better things, you cannot show any weakness at all. GSC being above 75% and drop below 72 before the ASV was a sign of weakness, no matter how badly it would have murdered most every other game in this bracket. Zelda does not f\*\*\* around 1 on 1. The unfortunate thing for GSC is a lot of us thought it would ride a mid-contest rally past FFX in the semifinals. The game it lost to would end up doing the exact same thing, so those of us who picked GSC to do big things weren't completely nuts (unlike the jokers who went around preaching LOL RALLIES, FFX WILL WIN AND YOU'RE ALL DUMB as if every single contest ever doesn't get weird near the end). We just picked the wrong game to work some magic this year. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4128&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (14)God of War II 2010 _source: (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (14)God of War II 2010 (revid 69206)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, November 19, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 19, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,643 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 62.06% 103 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 59.75% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 736 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: 13997 God of War II: 8931 If you look at the final numbers of this poll, you end up looking at a fairly mundane match. Zelda failing to double a very popular game from a very popular franchise, not to mention a really low prediction percentage and God of War 2 doing pretty decent coming off of its good vote-in showing. And then you look at the update chart. Zelda started over an insane 75% before bleeding all the way down to 64, and it didn't even recover percentage during the morning vote. This doesn't happen to Zelda games, and it was either Wind Waker not getting much respect, God of War 2 getting a lot of respect or a combination of both. Basically, this match meant Wind Waker was screwed against the Majora/GSC winner. You just don't see main line Zelda games doing weird things like this. Normally they go out and murder souls. Wind Waker showed a lot of the old Celda hate still lingers, which meant certain trouble later. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4129&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Assassin's Creed II vs (11)ICO 2010 _source: (6)Assassin's Creed II vs (11)ICO 2010 (revid 69207)_ ## Results **Round 1** Friday, November 19, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 19, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,494 - **Oracle Expectations:** Assassin's Creed II - 66.49% 103 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Assassin's Creed II - 80.48% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 534 Assassin's Creed II: 19509 ICO: 3642 This was a very weird match to learn much of anything from, especially with it basically staying still in percentages all match. AC2 made a decent ASV increase, but it was nothing huge. With both games untested and the match obvious to call from the start, focus immediately shifted back to Shadow of the Colossus and the MGS series. With how little respect the ICO team got in brackets and battle challenges, it was a safe bet to assume AC2 only getting 62% on it meant bad news. Which in turn meant MGS4's score on AC1 wasn't all that great. You actually could make the case this match foreshadowed the Shadow of the Colossus run since that series plus MGS and AC all seemed weak, but it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to reach that point. And when you look ahead, AC2 ended up doing very well for itself. Just a really strange series of matches all around. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4130&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (10)Gears of War 2010 _source: (7)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (10)Gears of War 2010 (revid 69208)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, November 20, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 20, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,934 - **Oracle Expectations:** Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - 58.89% 99 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - 29.33% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 815 Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: 7740 Gears of War: 14762 For whatever reason, casuals were lost about this match. I even had a couple very high-ranking mods IM me to ask for help on where to go for the battle challenge, so I'm glad Paper Mario TYD won after I spent all day telling people to go with it. Gears of War pulling the upset might have gotten me banned or something \<\_\< Every contest has a match or two where the experts just murder the casuals, and this was one such match in our Game of the Decade contest. Gears of War was a casual shooter that fell off the map fast in popularity, and casual shooters rarely have strength here. Not only that, it was up against FREAKING MARIO and DAT TOP OPTION on JRPGFAQs. CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME AND ET CETERA. I can sort of understand why casuals would pick Gears 1 to win this in their brackets before the contest started, but after Gears 2 just got completely annihilated at the hands of Portal and Paper Mario similarly destroyed Katamari Damacy, there should not have been such a massive discrepancy in battle brackets. Losing a big streak to Marvel vs. Capcom 2's upset was one thing. That's a legitimate upset. Losing a big streak to TYD in a match it was never going to lose is on you. It wasn't some weird fluke win, either, as most people in the oracle were dead-on in picking this. And so, it must be invoked once again: HAW HAW CASUALS. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4131&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs (15)SoulCalibur II 2010 _source: (2)The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs (15)SoulCalibur II 2010 (revid 69209)_ ## Results **Round 1** Saturday, November 20, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 64 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 20, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 11,909 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 63.45% 103 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 79.80% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 544 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: 20058 SoulCalibur II: 3811 People joked on the podcast SoulCalibur might win because of Link being in the match pic. It's sad how GameFAQs has become so predictable with the Zelda series that stuff like this can actually be seriously discussed on the contest podcast. Oftentimes you'll see the last match of the first round have shenanigans, but not this year. SoulCalibur 2 lied down like a good little 15 seed, closing out the first round in peace and ensuring no vote-in game won a single match. That latter point is actually disappointing, but it also speaks of good bracket design on Allen's part when all the higher seeds take care of business. This match closed out what was a really crazy first round, with tons of upsets, close matches, weird results and good storylines. Sure there were a lot of predictable and boring matches, but not every match can be good. Unfortunately, round 2 would not be nearly as entertaining. Very few of the matches were fun, and most of it was just heavyweights blowing away the games that pulled off the close upsets in round 1. In a way, this contest behaved exactly like the NCAAs in that respect. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4132&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=64) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Fallout 3 vs (9)Deus Ex 2010 _source: (1)Fallout 3 vs (9)Deus Ex 2010 (revid 69210)_ ## Results **Round 2** Sunday, November 21, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 65 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 21, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,383 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 3 - 73.84% 95 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout 3 - 79.68% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 301 Fallout 3: 16438 Deus Ex: 1309 The case can be made here Deus Ex was SFFd to a certain degree, though in reality Deus Ex was just weak. This match was the first of many in the second round where those cute little upset winners from round 1 got destroyed against real competition, which is part of why round 2 was fairly mundane. The only thing to really take from this match were Fallout 3's trends, which show it's a day game. This would come up much later in the contest. The big thing here was (finally!) the return of user-made match pictures. As a member of the Board 8 picsmith crew, it's always awesome to see user pics come back ^\_^ This year we weren't able to be quite as creative as in the past, though you can tell it's because Allen was taking this contest super mega serious. And that's more than okay. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4133&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=65) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Batman: Arkham Asylum vs (4)Team Fortress 2 2010 _source: (5)Batman: Arkham Asylum vs (4)Team Fortress 2 2010 (revid 69211)_ ## Results **Round 2** Sunday, November 21, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 66 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 21, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,964 - **Oracle Expectations:** Batman: Arkham Asylum - 58.96% 96 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Batman: Arkham Asylum - 41.97% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 806 Batman: Arkham Asylum: 9802 Team Fortress 2: 6580 After Team Fortress 2's outstanding match against Fable -- one of the contest's best matches by any standard -- a lot of people became worried it could beat Batman. Batman was the guru favorite, but Team Fortress 2 was the higher seed and was generating a lot more buzz. There was also Batman being an unknown commodity, having only beaten Psychonauts. Then the match started, things stayed even for a couple minutes and people thought we'd get another barnburner of a match. But after that, Batman just completely and thoroughly wrecked Team Fortress here. It was one of those matches where if you were arguing for the loser, you kind of felt like an idiot for thinking it had a chance. There was never any doubt here. So naturally, fear started spreading around about a potential Batman \> Fallout upset. Some of you guys need to chillax, seriously. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4134&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=66) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves vs (11)Street Fighter IV 2010 _source: (3)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves vs (11)Street Fighter IV 2010 (revid 69212)_ ## Results **Round 2** Monday, November 22, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 67 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 22, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,945 - **Oracle Expectations:** Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 53.15% 83 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 55.39% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 527 Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: 11290 Street Fighter IV: 4796 Earlier I brought up the concept of every contest having pyrrhic victories, and this was definitely one such match for Uncharted 2. Sure it won the match with no sweat, but take a look at what happened here. Early on, Uncharted was near 60% and started bleeding percentage all over the place. Then in the dead hours Street Fighter 4 started a prolonged stall before Uncharted recovered in the morning, though "recovered" might be the wrong term to use here. I love Street Fighter 4, but I won't go and say it's some really strong game because it beat some 3D Sonic game on GameFAQs, a site that hates 3D Sonic. Yet this game scored 46% on Uncharted 2, which brought up all kinds of "lol PS3 exclusives" stuff. Uncharted 2 would end up not looking so bad, but after this match it was clear whichever Halo game it went up against was going to beat it -- especially given this was Halo in a day match it was dealing with. This was also the only match all contest where Allen changed the match picture. When he first put this image up, Uncharted 2 had this image: ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4135&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=67) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Halo 3 vs (2)Halo: Combat Evolved 2010 _source: (7)Halo 3 vs (2)Halo: Combat Evolved 2010 (revid 69213)_ ## Results **Round 2** Monday, November 22, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 68 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 22, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,848 - **Oracle Expectations:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 57.46% 94 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 41.28% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 563 Halo 3: 8678 Halo: Combat Evolved: 7466 Halo 3 being the favorite here honestly confused me, because Halo 1 thoroughly owns that series. Halo 1 wasn't just the Xbox mascot. It was the Xbox. I know we can look back on this match after the KH and Brawl duels and think Halo 3 being the favorite made sense, but it really didn't. It was never going to win this match, though the casuals obviously thought otherwise. Alec doesn't SackUpOrShutUp™ for nothing, my friends. The match obviously didn't end up a pure SFF killing, and Halo 3 actually started going up a little in percentage during the ASV. So let's give the game credit where it's due, as it easily could have rolled over and given us Link \> Ganondorf numbers under the right conditions. But it was still 57-43, which is a significant inter-series win for the elder statesman. A lot of us got the hierarchy wrong within the MGS, Smash and Kingdom Hearts series, but one thing the majority of experts got right this contest was Halo 1 \> 3 \> 2. Granted I would trade in getting this right for a Melee win any day, but what can you do. When the match ended, the stats page showed Ninja Gaiden somehow winning the match because that's just how ninjas roll. It was eventually fixed, but it was the best glitch all contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4136&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=68) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metroid Prime vs (9)Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening 2010 _source: (1)Metroid Prime vs (9)Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening 2010 (revid 69214)_ ## Results **Round 2** Tuesday, November 23, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 69 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 11,163 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid Prime - 65.16% 101 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid Prime - 71.69% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 328 Metroid Prime: 13357 Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: 3479 I've said previously that matches in the 65-35 range are the worst type of match, and this one was no different. Prime was never going to lose, and the only thing to learn here was something we already knew: Metroid has one hell of a board vote. DMC3 is not a strong game, yet it was able to bleed nearly 8% off of Metroid Prime from the freeze until the end. This potentially meant something for the whole Prime vs Tales/GoW/HL2 thing, but it was still a Nintendo game during a day match versus something lesser. The best part of this match was the picture. GANON is a god of making good match pics when Allen actually decides to accept them, and this one was nearly perfect. One of the best pictures all contest, and maybe even the best. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4137&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=69) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Mega Man 9 vs (4)Okami 2010 _source: (12)Mega Man 9 vs (4)Okami 2010 (revid 69215)_ ## Results **Round 2** Tuesday, November 23, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 70 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,173 - **Oracle Expectations:** Okami - 59.72% 98 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Okami - 36.41% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 603 Mega Man 9: 7110 Okami: 8500 Otherwise known as the match where Black Turtle's amazing season started coming into form, even more than when Mega Man 9 beat Demon's Souls. The guy said Mega Man 9 would give Okami a good match without winning, and it went out and did just this. Yes Okami won 56-44 in easy fashion, but Mega Man 9 made a few small cuts throughout the match and by any standard 56-44 counts as "giving the winner a good fight". Whenever you need to see whether or not a match went outside consensus, you need only look at the oracle. And in the oracle, only about half of people picked Okami to score under 60%. This isn't a sign Okami did bad or anything; Mega Man 9 just did really, really well. And yeah we're stuck looking at oracle stats to make obvious matches seem interesting. I really miss the days where we didn't have this massive amount of information out there. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4138&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=70) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Tales of Symphonia vs (6)God of War 2010 _source: (3)Tales of Symphonia vs (6)God of War 2010 (revid 69216)_ ## Results **Round 2** Wednesday, November 24, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 71 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 1,170 - **Oracle Expectations:** God of War - 53.47% 89 for - 12 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** God of War - 56.70% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 432 Tales of Symphonia: 4361 God of War: 11870 So hey, remember this match? People have been arguing about where God of War stood in that match for a year now, and getting Tales of Symphonia vs God of War 1 on 1 to settle it a year later was wonderful. Even if Allen didn't set this up intentionally, he should just come out and say he did. The match lived up to the hype, too, at least until the morning vote hit. Tales of Symphonia took the board vote, but was unable to run away with the match because of bracket votes. And then overnight, the match was a prolonged, deadlocked, oftentimes painful stall. I'll often exaggerate a bit and say matches were deadlocked when they just fluctuated between 100 vote leads for awhile, but this was a legitimate deadlock. Go look at the graph and update chart if you don't believe me. The two games might as well have been tied for 5 straight hours. And those five hours were glorious, especially given both games were likely to be day vote beasts so the potential for a true classic was there. The reactions across the board were great, too, if only because the Tales fans were much happier than the God of War fans. Tales, despite the characters collectively having one contest win (a Lloyd \> Wesker match that probably goes the other way today), has clutched up in the past. God of War meanwhile was known for choking it up. The LOL 4-ways aside, nothing from God of War could ever get out of the second round. So for five hours when God of War was unable to do much of anything, the fans truly feared it would be another close loss. And then the morning vote hit. You know how the underdog hangs around for awhile in a sporting event (think the NCAA tournament, since that's what our contests are based on), then the stronger team just starts dominating after a certain point? That's what happened here once the morning vote came around. God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher, taking the morning vote and going on to win by nearly 1200 votes. It was such a clear and massive swing that there can be no doubt which of these two games is the stronger of the two, though Tales of Symphonia deserves a lot of credit anyway for how it performed here. It was one of the best matches of the contest. At the end of the day, the people who felt like God of War was held down by San Andreas in that 2009 match were right. Maybe the overlap wasn't massive, as proven by God of War having so much trouble with ToS 1 on 1, but it clearly made some difference. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4139&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=71) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Grand Theft Auto III vs (2)Half-Life 2 2010 _source: (10)Grand Theft Auto III vs (2)Half-Life 2 2010 (revid 69217)_ ## Results **Round 2** Wednesday, November 24, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 72 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,788 - **Oracle Expectations:** Half-Life 2 - 60.09% 99 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Half-Life 2 - 55.90% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 347 Grand Theft Auto III: 4973 Half-Life 2: 11212 Grand Theft Auto had a terrible contest, but GTA3 is exempt from this criticism. All contest long people postulated 3 might be the strongest in the series, and I think they might be right. At least for this contest. When you think "Game of the Decade", not many games deserve that type of respect more than GTA3. So when GTA3 went out and had a pretty good match against the heavy favorite Half-Life 2, it wasn't a major surprise. Even people who despise the GTA series respect 3, and that respect probably outweighed the anti-votes GTA gets in every match. Even more telling here is how Half-Life 2 slowly bled percentage all match. It meant nothing in terms of beating GTA3, but it had to deal with both God of War and Metroid Prime in day matches. HL2 was the guru favorite to get out of this division, but the potential was now there for it to get upset one of two ways. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4140&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=72) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (9)The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 2010 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (9)The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 2010 (revid 69218)_ ## Results **Round 2** Thursday, November 25, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 73 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 25, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 17,587 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 72.95% 102 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 70.72% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Super Smash Bros. Melee Super Smash Bros. Melee: 13860 The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: 2540 On the surface, this was Melee's second blowout win in a row. Look a bit deeper however and you could see how much trouble Melee would be in a couple rounds. It's not just Melee starting near 75% and falling down to about what FFX scored on Morrowind in the LOL 4-ways, but it was also the trends. Melee vs Brawl was a night match, and the Gamecube was virtually nonexistent in Europe compared to the Wii. Melee did fairly fairly overnight in two matches to this point, while evidence suggested Brawl could do decently there. And during the morning, Melee only went up around a half percent in this match. With Brawl killing every day match, this suggested Melee would have an issue coming back if Brawl were to take Europe. Unless you were a believer the Melee fanbase would rally their asses off or Morrowind boosted inexplicably between 2009 and 2010, Brawl was basically the favorite going in. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4141&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=73) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Perfect Dark vs (4)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2010 _source: (5)Perfect Dark vs (4)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2010 (revid 69219)_ ## Results **Round 2** Thursday, November 25, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 74 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 25, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,198 - **Oracle Expectations:** Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 58.69% 101 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 75.37% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 356 Perfect Dark: 1978 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: 13629 There was a mild chance Perfect Dark could pull the upset here. And though it didn't happen, it still went out and embarrassed Call of Duty 4 like few other games have ever been embarrassed in wins. Perfect Dark may be an FPS on the Nintendo 64, but it's no Goldeneye. We'd never seen any real proof of the game having any strength before this poll, and frankly there's still no proof. Call of Duty 4 is just crap in polls. The game went on to only do marginally better against Melee than Morrowind did, and I'm not so sure Morrowind couldn't win that match. And all this was during a day match with a picture imbalance. I know Ngamer likes my Perfect Dark picture (and he's the \#1 PD fan on Board 8), but I didn't like it too much. And even still, it did fairly well here. Call of Duty hate runs pretty deep on this site, and it'll be funny in 10 years to see how badly Black Ops does compared to the other 9 sequels. F\*\*\* Activi\$ion so much. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4142&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=74) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum vs (11)Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance 2010 _source: (3)Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum vs (11)Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance 2010 (revid 69220)_ ## Results **Round 2** Friday, November 26, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 75 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 26, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,740 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum - 59.57% 99 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum - 70.25% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 340 Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: 14248 Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: 1329 When the best part of a match is the picture, the match probably sucked. This was no exception, as it was one of the round 2 matches that existed solely for a big game to blow the doors off of a game fresh off of pulling a round 1 upset. Though in Fire Emblem's case, the gurus simply got it wrong while the casuals correctly predicted it. When it went up against a game that wasn’t bound to finish dead last in the LOL x-stats, it performed as expected from the beginning. Though with that said, Pokémon didn't exactly go out here and set the world on fire. For those banking on an HGSS boost to get GSC into the finals, this match was bad news. Or for guys like Allen who picked DPP to beat Brawl, it was really bad news. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4143&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=75) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Valkyria Chronicles vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2010 _source: (7)Valkyria Chronicles vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2010 (revid 69221)_ ## Results **Round 2** Friday, November 26, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 76 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 26, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 26,735 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 75.96% 103 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 80.44% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 173 Valkyria Chronicles: 1091 Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 14868 Menji makes a lot of lulz pictures (and not the good type of lulz), but his Brawl picture here was awesome even if it is just a badly resized version of Nintendolife's banner: Well technically I guess that means Nintendolife made an awesome picture, so it's HAW HAW MENJI again! One of the best inside jokes all contest, I tells you. It was also the second match in a row where the picture was better than the match, in a block of four straight matches like this. Round 2 really, really sucked. That will happen often in a seeded tournament, but... man. Worth noting about the actual match is Valkyria's clutch use of DAT TOP OPTION was useless against Brawl in terms of winning the match, but this was one of two matches all contest where Brawl actually looked bad. The other was against Fallout 3, but weird stuff always happens late in contests so it barely counts. If you compare the first three rounds, this was really the only one where Melee and Brawl looked even. Brawl looked better everywhere else. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4144&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=76) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Galaxy vs (8)Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald 2010 _source: (1)Super Mario Galaxy vs (8)Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald 2010 (revid 69222)_ ## Results **Round 2** Saturday, November 27, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 77 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 27, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,601 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Galaxy - 59.85% 102 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Galaxy - 55.52% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 464 Super Mario Galaxy: 11529 Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald: 3328 Galaxy ended up having a really good contest and Pokémon ended up having a really bad contest, but you wouldn't know that by looking at this match. Forget the final score for a second. Only 55% of people had Galaxy winning two matches? That is some serious lack of respect, even for a game more than deserving of a Game of the Decade title boost or whatever we're calling it. And then you look at the actual score and just shake your head. Failing to break 60% on RSE when you start comfortably over is embarrassing, and it falls in line with that Nintendo series poll where Pokémon actually finished above Mario. So of course Galaxy goes out and shocks us against Zelda while Pokémon goes and craps the bed. This contest. To be fair the oracle mostly got this right, but this was back when Galaxy was getting no respect. Now, it's clear Galaxy got a contest title boost and just had a weird match along the way. It's reasonable Galaxy was stuck with the LOL Wii stuff and ran into something that could take advantage of it. And since I made fun of Menji's picture last match, let me just say this one rocked face. He did both sides, and the whole image is damn awesome. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4145&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=77) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Dragon Age: Origins vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2010 _source: (5)Dragon Age: Origins vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2010 (revid 69223)_ ## Results **Round 2** Saturday, November 27, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 78 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 27, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,918 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 64.95% 102 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 68.26% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 429 Dragon Age: Origins: 3297 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: 11369 Not even the casuals got tricked by the weird seeding in this division, as even they favored Zelda more heavily than any other game to make it out of the division. This was also the fourth match in a row where the picture was better than the match, so people were getting super bored at this point and needed something good to happen soon. The next match would bring that, kind of. Worth noting here is Dragon Age got kind of screwed in bracket placement with all these western games causing damage. Fallout 3, Half-Life 2, Oblivion and others all did some things this contest, while Dragon Age was stuck facing the biggest Zelda of the Gamecube-Wii era in round 2. Not every game can get good bracket favor, naturally, but it really feels like Dragon Age could have done good things in a different place on such an RPG-heavy web site. People also looked at this and claimed our 2009 GOTY polls were terrible, but it's Zelda. You don't F with Zelda 1 on 1. Besides, we had a much funnier flagship for LOL 2009 than Dragon Age. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4146&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=78) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)BioShock vs (6)Kingdom Hearts II 2010 _source: (3)BioShock vs (6)Kingdom Hearts II 2010 (revid 69224)_ ## Results **Round 2** Sunday, November 28, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 79 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 28, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,426 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts II - 58.91% 103 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts II - 29.25% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 584 BioShock: 7239 Kingdom Hearts II: 7157 BioShock was never going to win this match, but that doesn't mean it didn't put on a great show in its short stay this contest. It goes from annihilating Star Wars to scoring nearly 44% on Kingdom Hearts 2, while being the unexpected bracket and battle favorite at that. This is as good an example of contest title boost as you'll see all contest, and it shows how smart the people participating in this contest really were. BioShock generates massive amounts of respect all over the internet, especially compared to Kingdom Hearts 2, and it really showed here. All that said, Kingdom Hearts 2 still won the match with ease and put up 56% in spite of everyone going against it. This didn't mean a whole lot in preparation for the Kingdom Hearts duel, but maybe it should have. A lot of things went in BioShock's favor this match, but it still easily lost. Sounds like a certain round 3 match involving Kingdom Hearts 2. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4147&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=79) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2010 _source: (7)Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2010 (revid 69225)_ ## Results **Round 2** Sunday, November 28, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 80 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 28, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 20,345 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts - 61.43% 102 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts - 38.31% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 378 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: 7524 Kingdom Hearts: 7292 The 2009 Game of the Year poll on our site ended up laughably bad, but the mascot of it tanked the worst of all. It goes out and does nothing in a win against Dissidia, then gets itself doubled by Kingdom Hearts. A doubling may sound huge, but look at the past matches for those characters, especially Sora. Kingdom Hearts never blows anything out, and never gets blown out itself, much like Master Chief. For Kingdom Hearts to double anything, much less our 2009 GOTY winner, is thoroughly embarrassing. I know this site hates Call of Duty and for good reason, but my goodness. What wastes of space those games were in this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4148&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=80) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy X vs (9)Borderlands 2010 _source: (1)Final Fantasy X vs (9)Borderlands 2010 (revid 69226)_ ## Results **Round 2** Monday, November 29, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 81 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 29, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 18,300 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 71.81% 93 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 76.32% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 250 Final Fantasy X: 12874 Borderlands: 2130 Welcome to the one of the two good matches Final Fantasy X had all contest. It's not just scoring a blowout on Borderlands; it was actually winning the board vote and staying mostly consistent all match. This is a far cry from how the Final Fantasy series -- especially 7 -- has been tanking board votes left and right. People figured this was FFX waking up and that Viewtiful Joe was possibly more legit than previously thought, but I think it's more no one caring about Boredlands. Just look at what happened to FFX in every other match for proof. So it was a good win, but it wasn't the norm for FFX. Which is a shame, because the FF series used to be on par with Nintendo. Now, it's the clear second tier. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4149&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=81) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Golden Sun vs (4)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 2010 _source: (5)Golden Sun vs (4)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 2010 (revid 69227)_ ## Results **Round 2** Monday, November 29, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 82 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 29, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 4,246 - **Oracle Expectations:** Golden Sun - 49.31% 44 for - 52 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Golden Sun - 16.05% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 735 Golden Sun: 3056 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: 10464 Golden Sun winning this match was obviously a massive upset among casuals, but the board more and more knew better as the match grew closer. And for the few left over holding out hope for San Andreas, the match picture just murdered that. Golden Sun couldn't have possibly looked any better, and San Andreas couldn't have possibly looked any worse. And then you add in all the other factors just blatantly favoring Golden Sun... what else was really going to happen? The site is anti-Grand Theft Auto, heavily in favor of RPGs, and the match took place on the release day of Dark Dawn with a full-page ad on the home page. This felt like one of those college preconference games where a school like Florida pays 500k to some tiny school to come in and get their asses whipped, except this was a legitimate contest match. So of course Golden Sun was going to win. Sure the final percentages were close and San Andreas made some cuts here and there, but by and large this match was never close. It's not really the fault of RacistFAQs, either, so much as extraordinarily bad timing for GTA. Run this next year under even conditions, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if GTA won. The true entertainment from this match came in the form of all the whining. No other match, not Deus Ex or final, drew out so much complaining as this one. Toss out Albion's topic (you know, the legendary "This is why GameFAQs is made fun of" topic from someone with a list of 300 beaten RPGs, from a guy who spends more time on this site than anyone else) since it wasn't serious, and you're still left over with people feeling like the poll legitimately offends them. I didn't save any examples because I didn't really care to, but I'm sure you guys remember most of them. Whining, for better and worse, is a huge part of every good contest and we got a lot of it here. But this wasn't really the match for it, since one look at the home page on match day should have shown you how this would turn out. This wasn't even the worst result this contest, let alone ever. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4150&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=82) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (6)Fire Emblem 2010 _source: (3)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (6)Fire Emblem 2010 (revid 69228)_ ## Results **Round 2** Tuesday, November 30, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 83 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,121 - **Oracle Expectations:** Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 58.79% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 66.81% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 499 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: 12149 Fire Emblem: 2034 Both Fire Emblem games in the field managed to win a match, and both of them went out in round 2 and managed to avoid getting killed. They also both partly exposed the games they went up against. I know Fire Emblem did respectably in the series contest, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking the majority of that series' strength comes from Smash Bros. The games on their own aren't very strong, so for KOTOR to struggle for a time to get over 60% (the morning vote was much kinder to it than the overnight vote) was a pretty bad performance. It more or less killed any hope of a KOTOR \> FF9 upset, even during a day match when western games are getting a lot more respect on this site. The match we really needed to see this contest was KOTOR vs Halo 1, just to settle the debate over which is the strongest Xbox game. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4151&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=83) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 vs (2)Final Fantasy IX 2010 _source: (7)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 vs (2)Final Fantasy IX 2010 (revid 69229)_ ## Results **Round 2** Tuesday, November 30, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 84 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,788 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy IX - 69.41% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy IX - 61.99% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 503 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3: 2432 Final Fantasy IX: 11208 Holy crap, it's a match where Final Fantasy 9 didn't thoroughly tank during the day vote! Granted the opponent being embarrassingly weak helped, but still. FF9 went down only a tiny little bit, which is good. We're making progress. Other than that, nothing notable at all about this match. It was another in the long line of round 2 matches where a game pulling an upset round 1 got clobbered in round 2. It was also another match where the picture was better than the actual match. KP makes the best pictures of anyone. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4152&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=84) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Resident Evil 4 vs (8)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 2010 _source: (1)Resident Evil 4 vs (8)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 2010 (revid 69230)_ ## Results **Round 2** Wednesday, December 1, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 85 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 1, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 12,097 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 4 - 64.16% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 4 - 69.55% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 483 Resident Evil 4: 10679 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: 3254 What a difference a few hours can make. The match starts, RE4 is over 70% and people start going nuts about how it can beat FFX and make a miracle run to win the contest. And then it starts bleeding percentage. A lot. For the rest of the match. All the way down to 65.69%. Short sentences. Grand Theft Auto overall had a terrible contest, but it actually got to go out on a high note in its final match. It bled the hell out of RE4, causing Sir Chris to go on the podcast and call RE4 the turd of the week. FFD might have killed him had this been said in person, but Chris was right to a point. That's an awful percentage bleed, and it was difficult to imagine RE4 making some miracle run after this. Oh it would make it to FFX, no doubt about that, but winning was out of the question. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4153&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=85) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Dead Rising vs (4)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 2010 _source: (12)Dead Rising vs (4)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 2010 (revid 69231)_ ## Results **Round 2** Wednesday, December 1, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 86 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 1, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 251 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 - 51.08% 61 for - 35 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 - 27.47% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 751 Dead Rising: 6230 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4: 6405 Looking at the first round and how Dead Rising just took off once the morning vote hit against TWEWY \[decimal system\], one could argue it had the advantage here against a similarly cult RPG. But the Persona 4 fanbase cared a lot more about this contest than the TWEWY fanbase. It single-handedly got Biolizard onto the podcast and liked by Board 8, after all. Looking back on it, Dead Rising's big mistake was not blowing Persona 4 out quickly. By letting the Persona fans build up a 350 vote lead and using the ASV to slowly come back, it lost. When the ASV hit and Dead Rising started one of the most arduous comeback attempts ever, you had the feeling Persona fans would just rally at the end anyway. So even when Dead Rising took over the lead and started slowly building it -- and its lead peaked at a mere 110 votes around 7 -- there was this sense Persona would come back no matter what. This was not a fanbase that was going to sit idly by and watch their flagship title lose close. And sure enough, Persona started taking over the match more and more as the evening wore on. Dead Rising's hold on the match was lessening, and suddenly there was 1 hour to go with Persona 4 having a 150 vote lead. It was done from there, because simply put this site does not care about Dead Rising. Run this same match next year when Dead Rising 2 isn't fresh off the shelves and Persona 4 could potentially score over 53%. Given how close this was I suppose we could credit the picture for Persona's win as well, because KP absolutely killed it here. It was nice seeing a Persona 4 picture that wasn't YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4154&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=86) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal vs (6)Final Fantasy XII 2010 _source: (3)Portal vs (6)Final Fantasy XII 2010 (revid 69232)_ ## Results **Round 2** Thursday, December 2, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 87 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 2, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,232 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal - 53.65% 79 for - 16 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal - 49.95% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 518 Portal: 8999 Final Fantasy XII: 4701 Can you believe this match was heavily debated before the contest? Had the guru picked FF12 while half the site picked Portal, the gurus would have deserved every bashing for following the LOL x-stats that had FF12 equal to Half-Life 2 or whatever it was from the LOL 4-ways. How about we just LOL Final Fantasy 12 instead? Few matches in contests will go exactly as each entrant deserves, but FF12 getting its doors blown off by Portal was very much a well-deserved result. FF12 was a terrible game in my opinion, what with the single player MMO stuff and the no plot and boring environments that literally put me to sleep and etc etc. Meanwhile you get Portal, one of the decade's true masterpieces just killing it. Very few games can bleed percentage all over the place and still end up looking good, but Portal going from 65% to below 60% by match's end was just fine. This was still a blowout, and a damn proper one. F\*\*\* Final Fantasy 12. This was a mother f\*\*\*ing triumph. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4155&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=87) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Skies of Arcadia vs (2)Mass Effect 2010 _source: (7)Skies of Arcadia vs (2)Mass Effect 2010 (revid 69233)_ ## Results **Round 2** Thursday, December 2, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 88 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 2, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 12,560 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect - 62.68% 97 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect - 78.36% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 412 Skies of Arcadia: 1277 Mass Effect: 12386 The final match of this division's second round was yet another one of those matches where real competition destroyed one of those cute little upset winners from round 1. It was nice Skies pulled off the win over Baldur's Gate 2 and all, but Mass Effect with the ME2 boost is the big leagues. I've said many times the predictable 65-35 type of match is the worst kind, and it is. Portal doing that sort of thing to FF12 is one thing, since we didn't see it coming. But a predictable match going that way makes you really thankful for the 12 hour format so we can just get all these out of the way as quickly as possible. I'm sure one could gleam Skies being legit based on this match and Mass Effect's loss to Portal, but I haven't played Skies yet so I really don’t care. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4156&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=88) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (8)Marvel vs. Capcom 2 2010 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (8)Marvel vs. Capcom 2 2010 (revid 69234)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, December 3, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 89 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 3, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,218 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 65.29% 87 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 61.76% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 477 Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: 10719 Marvel vs. Capcom 2: 2631 This was the first of several MGS-related pictures a guy named Mr_Big_Boss would make, which shows Allen's sense of humor above all else. That or he actually likes MGS melty art, either or. A lot of people started getting worried about MGS3 during this match, but we know now that it was the one MGS title in this contest that did anything notable. And that was just luck, because Shadow of the Colossus probably completes the trifecta if it gets this game during the day. But at the time of this match, I think it was more people not willing to take MvC2 seriously. The SRK rally against Mario wasn't successful by accident, and it's within reason this game is our strongest 2D fighter outside the Smash series. And yes Smash games are fighters -- dumb elitists be damned. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4157&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=89) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Paper Mario vs (4)World of Warcraft 2010 _source: (5)Paper Mario vs (4)World of Warcraft 2010 (revid 69235)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, December 3, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 90 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 3, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 10,103 - **Oracle Expectations:** Paper Mario - 54.90% 78 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Paper Mario - 13.73% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 600 Paper Mario: 2771 World of Warcraft: 10086 HAW HAW CASUALS The casuals honestly did have a pretty decent contest, but this match was their Waterloo. WoW getting 1 seed respect from the casuals on GameFAQs of all places was supremely dumb, and it's a shame WoW wasn't a 1 seed to Paper Mario's 8 or 9. One of the few things missing from these contests are a 1 seed losing to an 8/9 in a legit NCAA format, and it would have easily happened here. We already knew WoW was a hated game on this site, but to not even put up a fight against a second rate Mario RPG title is embarrassing. Not that Paper Mario is bad or anything, but SMRPG is the flagship of that series. Though given how Mario Mafia turned out, I almost have to play the games out of tribute. The Shadow Queen has become one of my favorite characters and I don't know the first thing about her \<\_\< The match was also hilarious for the whining it drew out all over the internet, but I'll never get why people love World of Warcraft so much. It ruined Blizzard and has wholly unethical reward systems that are more addictive than some controlled substances. Even now, people are willingly sacrificing their social lives and getting fatter playing Cataclysm instead of... you know, going outside or something. It's an embarrassment, and though gaming is getting cooler socially it will never be fully accepted while stuff like this still goes on. Have you ever been stuck in a room full of WoW players? These people literally cannot talk about anything else, because most of them don't have anything else. It goes to my theory on why gamers are so afraid to lose: It's the only avenue most have for accomplishments, because a lot of them clearly aren't winning much in any other avenue of life -- much like anime clubs at any college. I'm sure Board 8's multitude of college students have seen these people in action. To that end, any time WoW gets embarrassed in a poll is a good poll. WoW actually can be considered a game of the decade, but for all the wrong reasons. In my opinion, the best thing to ever happen in World of Warcraft was the funeral raid. It proved every single possible thing wrong with that fanbase, all in the span of a few short minutes. And as a note, I really did try getting on Allen to change that picture. He was either too busy or didn't care due to the match being a blowout, but it's not above WoW players to think a 59-41 poll could have gone the other way with a different Paper Mario picture. Keep on proving those stereotypes, folks. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4158&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=90) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (6)Diablo II 2010 _source: (3)Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (6)Diablo II 2010 (revid 69236)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, December 4, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 91 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 4, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,936 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 57.92% 87 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 48.69% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 550 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: 8292 Diablo II: 4576 It's funny how obsessed people are with me. No really, they are. All throughout the WoW loss, people whined and bitched and moaned about my submitting a TYD picture by accident in a predictable match that went 60/40. In the very next match, you didn't hear one peep about someone else submitting an incorrect Diablo 2 picture in a 55-45 match, but you can bet your ass people would have kept pacifier companies recession-proof had I done that. Never change, Board 8. I have much more than this subject, but I'm saving it for the Prime/Half-Life 2 writeup. MGS4 started off fairly poorly in this match, and it would only get worse after the slow start. Diablo 2 bled MGS's percentage all throughout the night, and by the end it was clear this wasn't the same Brawl-slayer MGS4 from last year. It was something much weaker, and in the very next match we would see exactly how much trouble this series was in. But let me give Diablo 2 some hats-off praise here. Western RPGs have trended way up on GameFAQs for quite awhile, but Diablo 2 remains the best in its genre. That game was the perfect storm of gameplay, community, and a soma-based reward system without having to sacrifice your entire life to get things. When in doubt, buy it. Sure the economy was eventually based off duped Stones of Jordan and Dupewords, but it all added to the fun. Even now I still post on d2jsp (the best forum on the internet) just to see what's been doing on (they're all waiting on Diablo 3). Diablo 2 deserves a salute. Big Boss agrees. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4159&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=91) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (2)Shadow of the Colossus 2010 _source: (7)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (2)Shadow of the Colossus 2010 (revid 69237)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, December 4, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 92 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 4, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 45 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shadow of the Colossus - 43.99% 3 for - 85 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shadow of the Colossus - 38.86% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 552 Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: 6256 Shadow of the Colossus: 6258 It must be done for the sake of fairness: HAW HAW GURUS. We suck. First and foremost, I firmly believe Shadow of the Colossus wins this match a lot easier if it isn't faced with the biggest picture disadvantage of the entire contest. That's the Snake picture that allowed him to score like 2000% on Sora, paired up against god-knows-what-that-is on the SotC side. I'm the biggest MGS2 fan there is, and even I think it would have been highway robbery had it finished the deal and won close. That picture is beyond unfair, though thankfully SotC would get it all back in future images, not to mention winning this match in the best way possible. People kept expecting me to lose my s\*\*\* over Shadow of the Colossus's run this contest, but there was honestly no reason to. When you follow contests for the better part of a decade, anything that destroys the norm this hard is awesome. I won't magically like the game or anything (unless the HD treatment is kind to it), but this contest convinced me to finally stop bashing it all the time. The game deserves some respect, you know? Ngamer gave me surprise Infidel of the Week for being so classy about this match, which was one of the funniest bits of the season on the podcast. And finally, for my money this was the third best match all contest behind Majora's final two. Brawl/Melee was a letdown, TF2 \> Fable only meant one point and no one cares about the Persona 4 fourpack of bore. But this set off the contest's Cinderella run, and with the perfect storm to boot. Even with that awful picture, SotC was able to hold serve because of a multitude of things -- three MGS games in matches in two days, MGS2 being so mixed with whether people want to like it or not, and a clear contest title boost. If you looked at the MGS and ICO matches prior to this, there was no reason for SotC to win. But it did. More than that was the way it won. After MGS2 got a minor early lead, SotC came back and took over. With how bad the entire MGS series is during the day, it was clearly in for some trouble. But for whatever reason, SotC was unable to take full advantage for the longest possible time. Before long, the poll was a war of attrition and this actually favored Metal Gear Solid. MGS almost always seems to pull out these 13th hour "rallies" to win matches, so the longer this stayed even, the more it favored MGS. I'd go into how nuts the whole day-long deadlock was, but we have graphs and update charts for you to see that yourselves. No reason for me to get into drawn-out, boring narratives about it. Though at almost every turn, there was this sense SotC was getting ready to build this massive lead. At one point it seemed like this would actually happen, during the evening of all times. The evening and second night votes are when MGS usually takes off, yet SotC was the one able to go bonkers during this time frame. I say "bonkers" because it was able to build a lead of 188 votes, which is our new closest wire-to-wire record. There was one other hilarious note to make about all this stuff, which is what happened at 5. SotC had a lead of 97 votes, and MGS2 then won seven straight updates without taking the lead. Then SotC just hovered there for awhile before the evening vote push. We all know what happened from there, MGS2 whittled down the lead like clockwork with the second night vote, looking once again like it would pull a phantom undeserved win out of its ass. And then slow cutting turned into a 50 vote swing with 30 minutes left, which might have been MGS2's biggest mistake. Had MGS waited until the final couple updates to make a big push like it always does, it might have survived here. But taking the lead with such a long time remaining gave SotC the chance to counter-rally and prevent MGS from building any sort of lead at all. And then over the final 7 minutes, Shadow of the Colossus laid down the boomhammer to win this thing. Outstanding win from what is honestly a more deserving game than MGS2 given the contest's title. Seriously. It was also nice to see MGS feel the sting of a 13th hour push, for once. I love the series, but those close wins all going one way gets old. Let MGS fans feel cheated, for once. With this match and MvC2 rallying past Mario, we've now seen every big entity in contests FEEL THE BURN. And yes we're stuck turning to some awful Wii title to make sure Mario feels screwed over. Sad, isn't it? I also do feel like Link losing in 2003 to Cloud and 2007 to L-Block counts, just to make sure everything comes full circle. It was an outstanding match, plus Shadow of the Colossus wasn't done after this, and on top of all that the casuals totally embarrassed us here. I love being a guru, but it's nice to see us crap out now and then in a big match. Also, check out how close those battle stats are. That has to be the contest's closest, right? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4160&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=92) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (8)Chrono Cross 2010 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (8)Chrono Cross 2010 (revid 69238)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, December 5, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 93 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 5, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 15,091 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 65.69% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 70.99% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 181 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: 11245 Chrono Cross: 1895 If you've been reading these in order, you already know where I'm going with this. Pretty much every 65-35 match sucks, and pretty much every match where the picture is better than the match sucks. The match existed to blow away some random 1 point winner from the first round. Et cetera. Though in fairness, that is a damn good match picture. Zen and I actually submitted the exact same image for like the 50th time, which proves that whole great minds thinking alike thing. The only thing to really draw from this match was the Majora/GSC comparison, as GSC now had a number to aim for against Mario Kart Wii. If GSC failed to break 70% in that match, the whole debate was over. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4161&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=93) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Mario Kart Wii vs (4)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal 2010 _source: (12)Mario Kart Wii vs (4)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal 2010 (revid 69239)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, December 5, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 94 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 5, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 23,512 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal - 67.71% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal - 43.48% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 272 Mario Kart Wii: 2803 Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal: 9675 I'm obviously biased, but that GSC picture is the best singular picture in rounds 2 and 3 (before freeform started). But this picture isn't the best one from round 2, though, that honor goes to Prime vs DMC3. As for the actual match, GSC went out and outdid the Majora \> Chrono Cross percentage by enough to keep that match debatable. It was certainly a much better effort by GSC than that embarrassing percentage bleed against Advance Wars, so to this point it was fair to say the match was up in the air. Obviously it didn't turn out that way, but those of us with GSC still had those laughable 4-way polls to fall back on. And of course, we have more LOL Wii action going on. One of the Wii's flagship titles from a popular series can't even get 30% in a poll against Pokémon, really? What in the F happened to the Wii? What happened to Mario Kart, for that matter? Did people finally realize the series isn't any good past the N64? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4162&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=94) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (6)Assassin's Creed II 2010 _source: (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (6)Assassin's Creed II 2010 (revid 69240)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, December 6, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 95 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 6, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,727 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 63.14% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 44.41% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 276 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: 8695 Assassin's Creed II: 3881 It's rare you see Zelda ever get embarrassed, especially 1 on 1, but that's what happened here. Wind Waker started this poll off over 70%, and was bled all the way down to below 61%. This simply does not happen to Zelda games, so either Wind Waker hate hasn't fully died down, Assassin's Creed 2 is really legit, or a combination of both. Notable here is we finally have a decent read on the Assassin's Creed series. Altair's contest matches are all about what picture he has, no one knew who Ezio was in the last character battle (Simon Belmont, a 15 seed, was favored to beat him in brackets) and Assassin's Creed's loss to a weakened MGS4 doesn't really matter. But AC2 bleeding 10% off of a main line Zelda title? That should open some eyes for future contests. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4163&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=95) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (2)The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 2010 _source: (7)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (2)The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 2010 (revid 69241)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, December 6, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 96 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 6, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,848 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 54.21% 80 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 53.37% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 304 Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: 2940 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: 9133 The Paper Mario series ended up having a really good contest, and TYD's exit in the final match of round 2 made those who picked WW \> Oblivion breathe a sigh of relief. TYD exposed Oblivion here as a 4-way wonder, and simultaneously made all that Oblivion \> Wind Waker chatter pre-contest seem ridiculous. Western gaming is on the rise no doubt, but it has some time before it starts taking down titans like Zelda and Mario 1 on 1 in contests. This match also thankfully ended a fairly boring round 2. Only 4 matches -- God of War \> Tales of Symphonia, Golden Sun \> San Andreas, Persona 4 \> Dead Rising and Shadow of the Colossus \> Metal Gear Solid 2 -- were really good. That's 4 matches in 32. Yikes. A few others were decent for various reasons, like Paper Mario \> WoW or MGS4 \> Diablo 2, but as actual matches they were over in 10 seconds. Thankfully, round 3 and on would rank among the best we've ever had. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4164&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=96) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Fallout 3 vs (5)Batman: Arkham Asylum 2010 _source: (1)Fallout 3 vs (5)Batman: Arkham Asylum 2010 (revid 69242)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, December 7, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 97 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,317 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 3 - 60.87% 85 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout 3 - 58.75% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 194 Fallout 3: 10041 Batman: Arkham Asylum: 2186 Early in a contest, a 59-41 match is typically boring tripe existing solely to get predetermined losers out of a bracket. But from round 3 and onward, pretty much all the fluke are gone and you're dealing with games that have won multiple matches on merit. There are exceptions like Persona 4, but normally you have legit games at this point. And even still, Batman's 41% feels more impressive than most. Just take a peek at how high the game is in the final LOL x-stats. I know Fallout 3's match on Brawl overrates the first two divisions by a lot, but Batman being high-ish at all is very good for it. On top of that, consider how it knocked Fallout down below 59% during its best time, the day. This was never a debated match in terms of who would win, but it was still a decent match in terms of seeing how legit Batman's game is. Sounds to me like it's time to remove that "must have originated in a video game" restriction and get the GOD DAMN BATMAN into a contest! As a random addendum, round 3 was the last round with strict match pictures. Freeform would come in from round 4 and onward. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4165&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=97) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves vs (2)Halo: Combat Evolved 2010 _source: (3)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves vs (2)Halo: Combat Evolved 2010 (revid 69243)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, December 7, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 98 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,976 - **Oracle Expectations:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 53.37% 75 for - 12 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 31.00% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 390 Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: 3860 Halo: Combat Evolved: 7343 Why hello there King of the ASV, haven't seen you in awhile. How have you been? This match was like reuniting with a long-lost friend, and I feel like it was only possible due to 1 on 1 matches being back. Say whatever you will about Halo, but its ASV is really something else. Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous this truly was, this was the score of the match 1 hour in: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 3115 \[50.04%\] Halo: Combat Evolved - 3110 \[49.96%\] Total Votes - 6225 That turned into a near 54-46 match over the next 11 hours, thanks to Halo staying at or just below 60% intake for a good deal of updates. Even with this Uncharted 2 had a pretty good contest, but you can't help feeling sorry when someone or something is on the receiving end of one of Halo's steroid ASVs. A lot of people breathed a sigh of relief the Fallout 3/Halo match was a night match, because no one wants any part of that ASV. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4166&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=98) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metroid Prime vs (4)Okami 2010 _source: (1)Metroid Prime vs (4)Okami 2010 (revid 69244)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, December 8, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 99 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,004 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid Prime - 58.46% 87 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid Prime - 58.26% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 235 Metroid Prime: 10100 Okami: 1593 I'd love to bust out the old "picture was better than the match" joke, but is Samus even in that picture? GANON's one of my favorites, but he completely dropped the ball on this one. This was obviously a really predictable match, because no game from the top half of this division was going to upset Prime. But with what we know now about how strong Prime really was this contest, Okami (and Mega Man 9, by extrapolation) were pretty damn legit this contest. When this match happened a lot of people were surprised by how well Okami did in getting near 42% on Prime and bleeding its percentage all day, but the game has gone nowhere but up between every single contest. Granted during the match people were still curious about whether this meant Prime was screwed next round, but what's a PCA without some revisionist history? :) Remember back in 2007 when people worried about whether or not Amaterasu could beat Matt the Mii and Little Mac in her very first match, then were stunned once she beat Balthier and Ada Wong? That whole thing looks pretty dumb in retrospect, and one could possibly say Okami got a contest title boost. Has anyone ever said a single bad thing about that game? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4167&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=99) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)God of War vs (2)Half-Life 2 2010 _source: (6)God of War vs (2)Half-Life 2 2010 (revid 69245)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, December 8, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 100 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 8, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 4,408 - **Oracle Expectations:** Half-Life 2 - 55.31% 85 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Half-Life 2 - 42.92% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 259 God of War: 3550 Half-Life 2: 7876 Before the contest, a lot of people felt like God of War or Tales of Symphonia could pull the upset in this match. Then God of War went out and wrecked ToS with the morning vote last round, and people feared it could wreck Half-Life 2 in a day match. Half-Life 2 went out and shut all that chatter up in about 10 seconds. God of War actually did have a good day vote this match, but it did little more than bleed a whole 1% or so from the beginning. This was arguably HL2's best performance of the entire contest, and it made the pending Prime vs Half-Life duel a true tossup going in. You can't ask for much else. It's difficult to say God of War had a bad contest, because it took care of business when it needed to in its wins. It's more fair to say it just had a bad match here, even in scoring almost 47%. People expected more, and the game probably should have given us more. You have to wonder what God of War 3 might have done in 1's place, since that game is presumably the strongest one in the series. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4168&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=100) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (4)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2010 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (4)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2010 (revid 69246)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, December 9, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 101 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 9, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 15,909 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 66.40% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Melee - 43.75% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 238 Super Smash Bros. Melee: 7913 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: 3661 Other than maybe Majora vs GSC, this was the best picture of the entire third round. Link sidestepping Fox's laser so it shoots the CoD4 slug right in the face is something else, and it's good symbolism for what the Call of Duty series deserves. Though with that said, this was another bad overnight percentage bleed for Melee. To start over 75% and fall all the way down to 69 is bad, and it was another one of those little forshadowings of what Brawl was getting ready to do to it next round. I know Call of Duty is the casual du joir for people that can't play real games, but it's difficult to imagine the other contest favorites bleeding this badly. You think Brawl, FFX or one of the two big Zelda games bleeds 6% in any time frame to a game and series this entire site hates? Add to that Melee's bracket numbers, which are really bad for a 1 seed in the third round, and you get a game setting itself up to disappoint people. Being totally honest here, this was where I started getting worried for Melee. Then the Kingdom Hearts match happened, and I went on record saying Brawl would get 51% in that match. I really really wish that would have been wrong, but the signs were there. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4169&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=101) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2010 _source: (3)Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2010 (revid 85351)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, December 9, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 102 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 9, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 24,236 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 66.33% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 63.15% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 307 Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: 2947 Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 7892 See, now this is how a champion contender is supposed to act. You take a game weaker than you and just mercilessly destroy it from start to finish. Even more impressive about how badly Brawl blew out Pokémon here was this being a day match, which is Pokémon's best time. Writing was on the wall for the Brawl \> Melee thing all contest, but this all but sealed the deal. At best, you could say the two games looked even in round 2. But round 3 clearly made Brawl look better. Other than more Brawl/Melee comparisons, not much to say about this match other than what someone picked for it in their guru entry: \>\_\> ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4170&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=102) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Galaxy vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2010 _source: (1)Super Mario Galaxy vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2010 (revid 69248)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, December 10, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 103 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 10, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,130 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 62.22% 86 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 30.47% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 307 Super Mario Galaxy: 5558 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: 5356 If only Mario was facing the right way, this would have been the round's best picture \>\_\> On the surface this match looks like Mario Galaxy disappointing as usual, but you have to realize no one outside the casuals expected that game to do well in this match. For it to flirt with 40% for a time against Zelda in a match where a repeat of the Ocarina \> Mario 64 killing from 2004 was possible was a moral victory for Galaxy. It definitely came out this contest with a mix of 1 seed respect (just look at those battle stats and bracket predictions for proof) and contest title boost, and it showed during its loss. But then you have to play devil's advocate here for a sec. It was the only 1 seed not to get out of the third round, and this was a contest where both Galaxy and Majora were supposed to crap out in round 3. So we all get to HAW HAW GALAXY at least in that respect. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4171&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=103) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Kingdom Hearts II vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2010 _source: (6)Kingdom Hearts II vs (2)Kingdom Hearts 2010 (revid 69249)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, December 10, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 104 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 10, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 2,564 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts II - 46.93% 19 for - 69 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts II - 11.70% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 396 Kingdom Hearts II: 4207 Kingdom Hearts: 6090 The most even and fair match picture of the entire contest! (shut up, yoblazer) This is the one match all contest I'm unable to wrap my head around. I mean know why this happened -- KH2 is what made Sora popular, "darker and more mature theme" that all the 13 year-old gothic wannabes want to imitate, Organization 13, more FF7 fanservice, the beginning of all Nomura's make-it-up-as-I-go storylines that people eat up because they don't know what a good story actually is and etc -- but I really thought nostalgia would come through here for the original. I'm probably in the minority here, but 1 was the much better game. The Disney elements were seamless instead of feeling shoehorned, the gameplay was much more interesting instead of 2's easymode skills and reaction abilities, the Gummi Ship stuff was better, and the Coliseum. I can't get over how badly 2 ruined that place. But above all, Kingdom Hearts was Square's last great game. Every single new game since, for one reason or another, has not lived up to that A+ status from the 1990s. And I say this as someone who really likes FF13, but I won't be naïve and say the game matches up to the golden age. You'd think people would vote accordingly. Then the match happened, and you could tell right away Kingdom Hearts was in for a world of hurt. It had brackets and battle picks and gurus behind it, and even then it couldn't do anything early on. Then for a little while KH2 hovered with this small lead with 1 making these dinky little comeback attempts. And every single time, 2 would go berserk for one update and start the whole process over again. It stayed like this for awhile, then the ASV kicked in. Just for kicks, this was the score at 2:30 PM EST: Kingdom Hearts 2 - 7028 \[49.98%\] Kingdom Hearts - 7033 \[50.02%\] Total Votes - 14061 The KH2 ASV wasn't as laughably dominant as Halo's, but it came close. To turn a 5 point match into getting well over 52-48 is crazy, and it proved who the stronger game among these two was with no doubts. This was no fluke match, as two Kingdom Hearts duel happened during the day, the series' best time. This match also went and shot down all those nostalgia arguments for Melee \> Brawl, since Kingdom Hearts 2 won this match for all the same reasons Brawl would win the Smash duel. In retrospect it's good this match happened first, so that all us Melee fans were prepared accordingly in advance for what would be the worst match to ever happen. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4172&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=104) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy X vs (5)Golden Sun 2010 _source: (1)Final Fantasy X vs (5)Golden Sun 2010 (revid 69250)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, December 11, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 105 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 11, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 13,109 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 64.61% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 56.78% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 125 Final Fantasy X: 9774 Golden Sun: 1214 So glad that FFX picture was used at least once this contest, though I believe it ended up getting used once or twice more after this. You can make a real case this was FFX's worst match of the contest, since even in the Majora loss it gave a respectable showing. But here, FFX just embarrassed itself and only it being a night match helped it save some face. You really only need to look at the first 10 minutes. Golden Sun was over 40% early on, in a match that should have been JRPG SFF Central, but fell to below 40% right at the freeze. Then in the next update, it flies back up near 42% instead of dropping like a rock. Does anything after that hilarity really matter? Say whatever you want about the stats topic, but there was no better place to be during the first 10 minutes of this match. To be completely fair here FFX recovered nicely overnight, but that's also its best time frame. This might have stayed a bad match for it during the day. It's funny how even though FFX had all night matches until the semifinal, it still went out and embarrassed itself more often then not. This game was not the same entity from the 2004 contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4173&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=105) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (2)Final Fantasy IX 2010 _source: (3)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (2)Final Fantasy IX 2010 (revid 69251)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, December 11, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 106 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 11, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,382 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy IX - 56.02% 82 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy IX - 30.68% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 303 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: 4935 Final Fantasy IX: 5171 Brackets were split between these two games outside of the guru, and for good reason. KOTOR is a very respected Xbox day-type game that might have benefited from the contest title boost, while FF9 pretty much always struggles during the day. Pre-contest, there was nothing wrong with taking this upset. It didn't work out in KOTOR's favor, but that doesn't mean it had a bad match. FF9 was over 55% early, and in standard FF9 fashion it got its percentage rocked during the afternoon hours. KOTOR won its fair share of updates throughout the match, ending with a very respectable 47% on a Final Fantasy title. This was one of those rare matches where both sides seemed content with what happened. FF9 fans were happy to see it win three matches and finally get a legit read on it since it's almost always gets stuck in SFF, and KOTOR scored 47% in its loss. Can't ask for much more than that in a match you were probably going to lose anyway. And hats off to yoblazer for his first-ever accepted contest match pic! He did KOTOR's side, but more importantly he got the knife fight into RE4's picture this round. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4174&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=106) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Resident Evil 4 vs (4)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 2010 _source: (1)Resident Evil 4 vs (4)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 2010 (revid 69252)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, December 12, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 107 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 12, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 16,056 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 4 - 69.03% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 4 - 60.97% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 176 Resident Evil 4: 9219 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4: 1117 We almost got through the contest without Persona 4's YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW, but it was not to be. Of all the games to make it to round 3, Persona 4 was clearly the one that didn't belong. It shows you how bad that whole TWEWY/DR/P4/Braid fourpack was, and P4 did nothing in this match to prove itself. 70-30 in round 3 is bad no matter how you slice it, but it was nice to see just to get the Persona Defense Force to finally shut the F up about that dumb series. Those people are lucky Deus Ex happened, or they would have been the worst fanbase of the contest. They could be good games for all I know, but there's no need to remind people every 15 seconds. As for RE4, the game that actually deserved to make it this far, it made a nice recovery from that embarrassing percentage bleed against Vice City. This match paired with FFX's terrible showing on Golden Sun meant the RE4 \> FFX upset train had a conductor once again. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4175&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=107) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal vs (2)Mass Effect 2010 _source: (3)Portal vs (2)Mass Effect 2010 (revid 88701)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, December 12, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 108 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 12, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 4,439 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal - 58.97% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal - 30.36% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 268 Portal: 5327 Mass Effect: 4303 It's rare a game looks so amazing in an easy loss, but Mass Effect gave us arguably the best loss of the entire contest here. Before this contest, I'm willing to bet less than 25% of gurus, if that, would have picked Mass Effect to beat Final Fantasy 12 in a direct match. For whatever reason, there's this incorrect and pervasive opinion that a big-name release in a series can't boost the entire series. Over and over, people brought up how badly Mass Effect did in 2009 when discussing this contest. And naturally, most of the people discussing this haven't actually played the games and look to old sets of percentages to decide everything in these matches. If orange juice ever beat milk in a popularity poll, I bet some of these people would start putting orange juice in their cereal. So when Mass Effect scored nearly 46% on Portal, it turned a lot of heads. Can't blame Portal, either, because it went nuts between 2009 and 2010 thanks to Valve giving the game away for free, and overall had a great contest. Even the oracle, which time and time again prove themselves to be the smartest collective mind of the contest, totally crapped out on this. I believe only 9 people had Portal getting under 55% here, which shows the power of x-stats in how people predict contests these days. The only thing to learn from Portal here is that it wasn't going to upset RE4. For Mass Effect, the game clearly boosted like hell from the release of Mass Effect 2 and anyone denying this is joking, wrong, or knows nothing about how the Mass Effect series works. I'm hoping 3 is released before our next character battle, because the chance of seeing Commander Shepard as a 1 would be hilarious. Yes, the same Commander Shepard who was a part of this gem. (I really need to go and order all those 2007/2008 matches in poll order, because 1st/2nd/3rd/4th place order is supremely dumb. Not as dumb as A BIG RELEASE IN A SERIES DOESN'T BOOST THE OTHER GAMES, but still dumb.) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4176&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=108) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (5)Paper Mario 2010 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (5)Paper Mario 2010 (revid 69254)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, December 13, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 109 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 13, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 5,937 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 56.89% 86 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 26.79% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 204 Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: 7743 Paper Mario: 2235 Were this a first round match it would have sucked, but in round 3 it's more than acceptable because we can look at Paper Mario getting more than 42% on a 1 seed and go "this was legit". And it was. Paper Mario's small little series had a good contest, and even though it ended here you can't take away from it how hilarious that "upset" over World of Warcraft was. Few things are more entertaining to me than pretentious fanbases whining their asses off when people disagree with them, especially the WoW fanbase. I know most of you guys don't have LL access, but you missed one hell of a classic topic during that match. Now I know MGS3 had WoW to deal with in the top half, but only 27% had MGS3 winning three matches, really? That number stuns me, especially given we have a direct match between MGS3 and WoW: You can't do any Majora \> GSC voodoo there, either. Picking WoW to beat MGS3 was one of the worst moves by the casuals all contest, no matter how bad the MGS series ended up looking this year. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4177&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=109) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (2)Shadow of the Colossus 2010 _source: (3)Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (2)Shadow of the Colossus 2010 (revid 69255)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, December 13, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 110 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 13, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 466 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shadow of the Colossus - 45.37% 1 for - 87 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shadow of the Colossus - 15.19% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 249 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: 6077 Shadow of the Colossus: 3320 A couple matches ago, we had Mass Effect score 46% on Portal and show just how good you can look in a loss. Fast forward one whole day. Did you ever think you'd see a game score 49.57% in any poll and look so thoroughly terrible? In 2009, Metal Gear Solid 4 beat Brawl twice and came within one FFX night vote push of making the final, where it would have undoubtedly gotten third place ahead of Link to the Past. And then this match happened and all of that -- all of it -- just completely went to hell. Contrary to popular belief, "SotC" does not stand for "Shadow of the Colossus". It stands for "Star of this Contest". Or "Star of the Contest", if you prefer something simple. The MGS2 upset, awesome as it was, could be described as a fluke in some circles. Going out and beating 4, however, was raw power with a sprinkle of bandwagon. And you can bet your house MGS3 would have suffered the same fate had it gotten Star of the Contest in a day match. The only contest entrant to ever look this bad in a loss was Magus at the hands of Knuckles in 2005, but I'll make the argument MGS4 looked worse here. For one, Knuckles \> Magus ended up a near-meaningless 1 point match (had Mega Man beaten Crono in the semifinal, Magus would have ended up the Ultimate Loser™) and Magus proved later to be a complete joke. The jury is still out on the Metal Gear Solid series, but this match meant much more than Knuckles \> Magus did. It was later in the contest, and people care far more about games than they do characters. Run Magus vs Knuckles again and it could threaten 60/40 in Knuckles' favor. Run Metal Gear Solid 4 vs Star of the Contest again and MGS4 could very well win. Who really knows? Don't let the final margin of 466 fool you, by the way, even with MGS4 cutting an 850 vote lead down that much in the final 4 hours. It was never in this match beyond the freeze, and that rally meant about as much as Magus's rally did against Knuckles. When you think Magus/Knuckles, do you honestly remember Magus cutting 1000 votes off the lead near the end? This 400 vote final push by MGS4 will be forgotten by history as equally meaningless. I once said there would never again be a match where the Guru, BOP and Oracle all got it unanimously wrong. porchy77 being a lamer aside, this match broke that streak. It might have also happened in the LOL 4-ways, but who gives a flying F about 4-ways? I'd sooner forget about the one correct Oracle pick and remember this match as the first in 5 years to make all three intelligent side projects look dumb, because this match deserves to be remembered for a long, long time. Damn MGS3 getting Star of the Contest in a day match, too. Before this contest, we were supposed to finally get a good read on the MGS hierarchy. Instead, thanks to Star of the Contest, none of them ever had matches with one another. SotC's run was so good that even \*I\* jumped on the bandwagon. Me, of all people. ExThaNemesis would break his femurs trying to keep up with me, the grand master of bandwagon-hopping! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4178&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=110) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (4)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal 2010 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (4)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal 2010 (revid 69256)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, December 14, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest Division Semifinal - **Match \#:** 111 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 4,976 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 49.34% 26 for - 54 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 54.57% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 191 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: 6762 Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal: 2753 For all the hype that went into this match and the GSC run in general, it all came crashing to a surprising stop in 5 short minutes. GSC was supposed to be the game to make a good contest run and perhaps threaten Final Fantasy X in the semifinal. A game to threaten FFX in the semifinal would definitely come from this match, just not the one we were all expecting. Pokémon overall had a subpar contest, especially with how well it did in the 2010 character battle. Then with HGSS and B/W hype, it was expected to do some damage this year with GSC as the flagship. But after taking the very early lead on Majora's Mask in this match, it got rocked. Majora had a 100 vote lead by the freeze and just never looked back an route to a 56-44 beatdown of Kratos-like epic proportions. Majora's Mask being the favorite here might have been common sense for some people, and maybe it was, but this wasn't some x-stat voodoo from GSC people. There were two direct matches from 2009 pointing to GSC being the favorite, and Zelda just wrecked all that. Most of us already have the common sense needed to know how useless 4-way contests are, but this match going the way it did should be the final death knell to any stragglers. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4179&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=111) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (2)The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 2010 _source: (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (2)The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 2010 (revid 69257)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, December 14, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** NorthwestDivision Semifinal - **Match \#:** 112 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,205 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 56.42% 81 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 26.27% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 190 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: 5353 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: 3757 Wind Waker is a terrible game graphically, but you wouldn't know it by that picture. greatone10 always delivers. Oblivion was expected to make some noise this contest and possibly even challenge Wind Waker in this match, but its struggle against TYD the round before signaled how this match would go before it ever happened. It made a decent enough percentage climb during the day, but nothing earth-shattering. As good as round 3 was, this match wasn't all that special compared to the other stuff we got. Dare I say, the match picture might have been better than the actual match. I won't go as far as to call Oblivion a disappointment here, but it definitely could have done better and isn't the western game of choice when citing the western games that really impressed this year. All in all, really good round 3. Very few stinkers, and about half the matches were very good for one reason or another. Much better than round 2. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4180&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=112) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Fallout 3 vs (2)Halo: Combat Evolved 2010 _source: (1)Fallout 3 vs (2)Halo: Combat Evolved 2010 (revid 69258)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, December 15, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Final - **Match \#:** 113 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,326 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 3 - 56.08% 81 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout 3 - 30.53% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 209 Fallout 3: 5595 Halo: Combat Evolved: 3290 You'll sometimes see a match picture not appear or small poll glitch, but we've never had the poll completely disappear before. But for the first hour after midnight, there was no poll. Not a delay, like how Link got to beat the crap out of Jill Valentine for an extra 2 hours back in 2002, but no poll at all. Had this match been close, people would have flipped. Thankfully, the match wasn't at all close. After last round when Halo went on steroids with the ASV against Uncharted 2, people worried that Fallout could have lost this in a day match. Then the poll finally started, and Fallout showed its true strength for the first time all contest. Wins over inFamous, Deus Ex and Batman were nice, but those are all untested games. Halo has been in many contests before, and Fallout 3 went out and 60-40'd it. That's about as legit as it gets, and yet this wouldn't even be Fallout's best match all contest. All talk of the Prime/HL2 winner upsetting Fallout 3 died with this 60-40. Round 4 was also the appearance of freeform pictures, where people were allowed to be as creative as possible with their images. The first two matches of this round only had 2 images each, but it would increase later. And just to give you an idea how many pictures I made this contest, I had a picture accepted for all 16 remaining games at one point or another. Zen called me the new Zen, and he's kind of right \<\_\< ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4181&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=113) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metroid Prime vs (2)Half-Life 2 2010 _source: (1)Metroid Prime vs (2)Half-Life 2 2010 (revid 69259)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, December 15, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast Division Final - **Match \#:** 114 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 828 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid Prime - 50.70% 55 for - 30 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid Prime - 20.90% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 163 Metroid Prime: 4136 Half-Life 2: 4564 This match was amazing for two reasons. Before getting into the actual match, let me get into this picture nonsense since people were waiting on it. When the match first started, a bunch of people made topics complaining about the Hypnogordon picture (http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/gotd/gotd-114-1.jpg). They erroneously thought I had made it, so there was the typical rabble about how I suck and etc. KP went into all the topics and corrected people, since he's the one who actually made that picture. Immediately, all the same people changed their tune to saying the Hypnogordon picture was awesome and my FPS image was crap, complete with the typical rabble about how much I suck. KP and I had a wonderful laugh on AIM about this, and he can absolutely vouch for what happened. It was all the same people changing their minds about which picture they didn't like, completely forgetting about keeping their story consistent. The pictures didn't even matter; people just love complaining about me for whatever reason. If there's any other interpretation for this other than people being obsessed with everything I do beyond any reasonable psychological standard, I'd love to hear it. I used to say this stuff in jest because I like poking fun and going back and forth with people, and it makes the board fun. I don't honestly believe people sit around F5ing Board 8 to see what I do next, because not even I'm that full of myself. But then this whole picture crap happened, and now I'm honestly not sure. I know one thing for sure, though: There is no longer a defense when I accuse people on this board of caring about me way too much. Blame the people who chomped at the bit during this match to complain about me for 12 straight hours, because they ruined the fun for everyone else. There is no excuse for how blatantly dumb that was. You could have at least tried being subtle with the bias, folks =p Then there was the actual match. Months of hype went into this, but the actual match was a bit of a letdown. Yes Metroid Prime only scored 56% on Half-Life (the original) in 2004, but no one brought up how big a gap 6% is. Even with the Valve boost, there's a lot of room for Half-Life 2 to squeeze in there between 44% and 50%, and this is exactly what happened. It wasn't a bad call to pick Half-Life 2 to win this match, especially given how badly Prime routinely looked in the past. This is arguably the first poll Metroid Prime ever looked really legit in, and Samus wasn't about to let the opportunity go to waste. Prime more or less had this match won by the time everyone finished lunch. The match was never in question, but a great trend happened once the evening hit. The lead peaked near 1200, and Half-Life was able to knock it down near 800 by the time the match ended. This highly suggests Half-Life could have won a night match, even with Prime's godlike power hour. This match above all others is why I feel the 24 hour matches need to start a round or two earlier. Even if you pull the 24 hour start time back to the divisional finals -- and really if you win three matches, you should be given every opportunity to win or lose -- it only extends the contest by two weeks. Otherwise, you get troublemakers like me bringing up how certain matches shouldn't be decided by time of day. I don't care about Ike vs Zidane in round 2 last year being decided on time of day, because it's only round 2. Who cares? But a match this late in the contest should not be relegated to that same variable. Make it happen, Allen. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4182&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=114) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2010 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2010 (revid 69260)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, December 16, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Final - **Match \#:** 115 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 16, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 955 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 49.48% 40 for - 44 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 23.72% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 212 Super Smash Bros. Melee: 4780 Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 3636 Sandbag ZERO is without a doubt the best match picture we've ever had. Hats off to yoblazer for it, even if it wasn't a particularly hard picture to make. It really captures what this match meant before it started. There's no need to get into how much hype went into this. It wasn't just how we all assumed the winner would win the contest, but the rivalry between these two games that's gone on since Brawl's release date. The match placement really speaks for itself. And for three hours or so, the match really lived up to its billing. Melee took a pretty sizable early lead thanks to brackets and Board 8 not liking Brawl very much, then slowed down a little over the next few hours. It increased like this until Europe's voting block really kicked in, and then Melee completely fell apart. Brawl was able to come back and take over the lead with little resistance because of what time this all went on, and then it just dominated the morning vote to win the match with over 51%. For how hyped this match was, to only deliver for 3 hours was kind of a letdown. And of course, it was also a letdown because the game we all wanted to see win lost. I won't lie and pretend I'm happy with this result or anything, but Brawl winning this match changed the course of this entire contest. Brawl winning convinced a whole lot of smart people to rally for Majora's Mask over FFX in the semifinal, because everyone knew Majora had a better chance of beating Brawl in the final than FFX. And then in the final itself, we saw our biggest Good vs Evil paradigm since 2002, when everyone wanted to see Mario lose the final because of all his shenanigans leading up to it. People did not want to see a hated game on a hated system win Game of the Decade on our web site. I and others firmly believe Melee winning this match would have given FFX a much better shot at Majora's Mask, and who knows what happens in a final between Melee and FFX. One other note from this match before I move on to other stuff: Melee won the USA, Canada and even the UK. It only lost the match because the overall votes of Europe and the far east vastly favored Brawl, and was more than enough to make up the difference. This means in the regions where people played both games competitively, the fanbase preferred Melee. So of course you'll get troublemaker Melee fans like myself saying Melee could have won this during a day match or a 24 hour match, with the actual match that happened not meaning a whole lot. This is a win by technicality and little else, and don't give me crap about how Brawl winning the morning vote so easily means it easily wins during a 12 hour day match or a full 24 hour match. MGS3 easily took the morning vote from Star of the Contest in similar fashion, but very few people believe MGS3 survives any other type of match given what SotC had done earlier. It's the same deal here. Melee could have easily won a more heavily rallied match when people weren't checked out to go and sleep. It's our second example in a row of why the 24 hour matches need to start a round or two earlier, so we don't get situations like this where a game or character wins a match they might have lost in another time. It should be noted that while the match was a letdown, the Board 8 experience surrounding it was one of the best we've ever had. There was a ton of great stuff going on, but nothing better than The Show going live for a few hours during all this. It was a great time, and it's when we learned how cool a dude BT really was, how foolmo is as funny in real life as he is on the board, how much all this meant to us, and so much more. "You had to be there", as they say. In our new age of too much information making contests a little more predictable with each passing year, it was a nice throwback to the old days. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4183&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=115) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (6)Kingdom Hearts II 2010 _source: (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (6)Kingdom Hearts II 2010 (revid 69261)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, December 16, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast Division Final - **Match \#:** 116 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 16, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 8,937 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 54.66% 81 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 17.67% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 123 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: 6088 Kingdom Hearts II: 2282 Of all the divisional finals matches, this was the one featuring the oddball seeding. Everything else was 1 vs 2 or 1 vs 3. This poll was also really popular for some reason, because the 63000 votes was very high compared to a lot of other day matches. We all know the stats from LOL 4-ways are illegitimate and had more than enough proof of this before this match took place, but it's still funny how badly Zelda can dominate 1 on 1. In 2009's second round, Kingdom Hearts 2 was less than 1000 votes away from RE4 for second place and was only 2600 votes away from Twilight Princess for first. Then you enter these two into a 1 on 1, and Kingdom Hearts 2 gets its face rocked off. To be fair this wasn't all that far away from how last year's stats define it, but Zelda 1 on 1 is really something else and it's almost admirable KH2 was even able to break 40% on it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4184&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=116) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy X vs (2)Final Fantasy IX 2010 _source: (1)Final Fantasy X vs (2)Final Fantasy IX 2010 (revid 69262)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, December 17, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Final - **Match \#:** 117 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 17, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 11,155 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 62.85% 84 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 43.10% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 175 Final Fantasy X: 6721 Final Fantasy IX: 1288 Allen's idea to set up rivalries worked out in a couple cases -- Smash, Kingdom Hearts, Division MGS -- but a couple of those rivalry ideas were just painful. Halo 3 was never going to beat 1, and Final Fantasy 9 was never going to beat Final Fantasy X. 43% of people picked FFX to make it out of its division, the highest prediction percentage by far of any round 4 match. The fact we all had to be happy because FFX "only" scored 63% here, as opposed to other Square SFF matches in the past that have gotten ugly in a hurry. The only real comparison to make here was how well FF9 did compared to Golden Sun, but it's not like that means much of anything. This whole division felt like it was set up to get FFX as far into the tournament as possible. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4185&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=117) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Resident Evil 4 vs (3)Portal 2010 _source: (1)Resident Evil 4 vs (3)Portal 2010 (revid 69263)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, December 17, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest Division Final - **Match \#:** 118 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 17, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,087 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 4 - 57.31% 83 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 4 - 32.62% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 136 Resident Evil 4: 4794 Portal: 2989 This was the first match of Portal's all contest where it didn't act like it had joke trends. It won the very very early vote, fell down to the 55-45 range and the match just stayed there all day. The possibility of Portal upsetting RE4 here died when Mass Effect did so well on it, but Portal still had one hell of a contest here. There is no shame in losing 55-45 to RE4, especially when the stats from LOL 4-ways have this match as 63-37. 4-ways aren't legitimate in any way, but a statistical jump that large is no accident, especially against a game like RE4 that got the contest title boost. What we learned from this match and Portal's run in general: If you want to make gamers happy, give your game away for free. To celebrate, I give you Still Alive lyrics: This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction. Aperture Science We do what we must because we can. For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are dead. But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake. And the Science gets done. And you make a neat gun. For the people who are still alive. I'm not even angry. I'm being so sincere right now. Even though you broke my heart. And killed me. And tore me to pieces. And threw every piece into a fire. As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you! Now these points of data make a beautiful line. And we're out of beta. We're releasing on time. So I'm GLaD. I got burned. Think of all the things we learned for the people who are still alive. Go ahead and leave me. I think I prefer to stay inside. Maybe you'll find someone else to help you. Maybe Black Mesa THAT WAS A JOKE. HAHA. FAT CHANCE. Anyway, this cake is great. It's so delicious and moist. Look at me still talking when there's Science to do. When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you. I've experiments to run. There is research to be done. On the people who are still alive. And believe me I am still alive. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive. I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive. While you're dying I'll be still alive. And when you're dead I will be still alive. STILL ALIVE STILL ALIVE ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4186&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=118) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (2)Shadow of the Colossus 2010 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (2)Shadow of the Colossus 2010 (revid 69264)_ ## Results **Round Four** Saturday, December 18, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Final - **Match \#:** 119 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 18, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 479 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 50.52% 47 for - 35 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 13.13% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 183 Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: 4636 Shadow of the Colossus: 2606 Other than Sandbag ZERO, that's the picture of the contest. It's perfect. It's good symbolism to show how Big Boss succeeded where Solid Snake failed, proving once again how Big Boss \> Solid Snake. This was perhaps our third match this round decided by when the match took place, because it's hard to imagine Shadow of the Colossus not finishing off the Metal Gear Solid trifecta were this a day match. Metal Gear Solid is an entirely different beast at night, and it showed. The final margin may have only been 479, but the match wasn't really that close. Shadow of the Colossus made a decent early push, but MGS3 quickly recovered. Things stayed even for only a little while once MGS3 made the match even, and from there MGS3 made a good night vote push to take the match. SotC tried keeping up with various stalls here and there, but the overall trend clearly favored MGS3 from the start. By the time the morning vote hit, MGS was too far ahead and too many people were asleep to make any difference in who won. Even though SotC lost here, it was still one of the two of three most memorable things about this contest. I fear it might have been a flash in the pan, too, because it's very reasonable the game got a one-time contest title boost. Then again the HD rerelease will be in people's minds before the next contest, so that could boost it. SotC needs the HD remix treatment more than any game not named Final Fantasy 7. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4187&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=119) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2010 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2010 (revid 69265)_ ## Results **Round Four** Saturday, December 18, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest Division Final - **Match \#:** 120 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 18, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,287 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 54.73% 71 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 29.56% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 161 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: 4828 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: 1970 Can you believe some people (WHO I LOVE DEARLY) spent the last 6 years arguing off and on about how Wind Waker could have beaten Majora in a direct 1 on 1 match? Allen setting up rivalries wasn't the best idea in a couple cases and we all looked like idiots for thinking Pokémon would get in the way of this, but at the end of the day this was a match worth having. I hate being that guy, but: There was never any debate here, and Majora would have won this match whether or not it was getting some big contest bandwagon. Majora is a very beloved title, while a lot of people view Wind Waker as the death of Zelda. Zelda games before and including Majora's Mask: The Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link, Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask. All A++++++ games. And go away if you don't think Zelda 2 is godtier, kthx, I don't want to hear it from people who don't like hard games. Zelda games after and including Wind Waker: Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures, Minish Cap, Twilight Princess, Link's Crossbow Training, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword. Otherwise known as boring, gimmick, bad, average, bad, REALLY bad, "not as bad as Phantom Hourglass" and "oh yay Toon Adult Link". It would have been the crime of crimes had Wind Waker won this match. I'd seriously put it right next to Brawl \> Melee as a "what the f\*\*\* were you people thinking?" type of match. I'm not as vocal about the Zelda series as I am the Smash series, but I love them almost equally and Majora \> Wind Waker was absolutely awesome. Good to know you people got a series correct this contest! Twilight Princess being strong is kind of bad, but I'll forgive it since you guys killed Brawl. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4188&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=120) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Fallout 3 vs (1)Metroid Prime 2010 _source: (1)Fallout 3 vs (1)Metroid Prime 2010 (revid 69266)_ ## Results **Round Five** Sunday, December 19, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 121 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 19, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 1,652 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 3 - 52.90% 64 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout 3 - 19.13% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 136 Fallout 3: 4088 Metroid Prime: 2452 This match was AMAZING, but not for the reasons you might think. First and foremost were people posting that [Liberty Prime video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=298Cw3_qGwE) all over the place. Few things lift the spirit more than Liberty Prime yelling at communist scum. And then there was Umineko's 7th episode getting released on match day, which was of course awesome given it was the best episode yet. On top of all that, we ended up getting a really good match. Way back before the contest started, Ngamer had an episode of The Show where he called Metroid Prime making the semifinal and he was literally laughed at by some idiot guest who thought Prime wouldn't even make it out of its own division. Who was that guy, anyway? \<\_\< Ngamer was one Europe/morning vote away from looking like a genius, but even in Prime's loss he looked awesome for calling this. Kudos, bud. Unfortunately for Prime, it never led beyond the first hour. It would be nice to say Prime had a great lead and only lost because of the morning vote, but Fallout 3 started pushing a lead once the crazy Prime power hour ended, and it shook Prime off for good a little while later once the night vote started. Prime is a western game through and through and had almost no success anywhere else, so it was expected Prime would start falling off overnight a bit faster than other Nintendo games might have. Prime may very well have won a day/24-hour match, though, and it's just one more reason we need to start having 24 hour matches a round or two earlier. If you win 4 matches and make it out of your division, you deserve a full 24 hours to win or lose. It's also highly likely this match was decided by the timely release of New Vegas, and who really knows how a potential rematch would go. Fallout could get bigger, Prime could get smaller because it enjoyed a contest title boost, or anything else. We don't really know. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4189&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=121) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2010 _source: (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2010 (revid 69267)_ ## Results **Round Five** Sunday, December 19, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 122 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 19, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 3,171 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 53.42% 68 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 10.96% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 100 Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 3909 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: 2064 Zelda took the first 5 minutes, then completely fell apart en route to an easy loss. On the heels of Brawl \> Melee with a lot of people still pretty pissed off, Zelda only holding a lead for 5 minutes 1 on 1 during a day match against Brawl (and this match can also be considered SFF if you believe TP is a Wii game) was bad news for the rest of the field. There were two ways of looking at this match at the time, depending entirely on where you thought TP was in relation to FFX and/or Majora's Mask. Obviously if they're all on equal footing, the contest was over and Brawl had it won. And for all we know, Brawl would have won without outside circumstances. The other school of thought was how Majora and FFX could beat TP and thus keep the final in question, though Brawl getting 52.75% this late in the contest was nothing to sneeze at. FFX and Majora could have been stronger than Twilight Princess, but there was a lot of room in there to squeeze in and still lose. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4190&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=122) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy X vs (1)Resident Evil 4 2010 _source: (1)Final Fantasy X vs (1)Resident Evil 4 2010 (revid 69268)_ ## Results **Round Five** Monday, December 20, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 123 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 20, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 6,477 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 53.21% 73 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 29.09% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 82 Final Fantasy X: 4101 Resident Evil 4: 1590 Final Fantasy X came out one round too early with its best match of the entire contest. There was legitimate upset hype here, because FFX disappointed in every match but 1 and RE4 equaled or exceeded expectations in every match but 1. By the time the match came around, people relegated themselves to the fact FFX was probably going to win due to this being a night match. However, one would think RE4 would get a big board push or something. Nope. RE4 led for a grand total of 90 seconds, then got its doors blown off in an Ulti-style blowout. When you're hyped to pull off a big upset, you're allowed to lose. It's okay. But you not allowed to only score 43% without being considered a disappointment. Of all the games in this contest, RE4 was the most likely to pull a contest title boost run from nowhere. Instead, it just got its clock cleaned. Know how many updates RE4 won after the freeze? One, by 2 whole votes. Woohoo. It also tied in one other update. Other than that, RE4 just laid down and took a major beating. FFX had several updates this match where it scored above 60%, and it looked like a champion in this match. It was clearly the favorite based off its prediction percentage in this match compared to others this round, and it went out and performed like one. If only it could have kept that up a mere two days later. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4191&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=123) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2010 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2010 (revid 69269)_ ## Results **Round Five** Monday, December 20, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 124 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 20, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 9,474 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 55.23% 74 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 14.79% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 83 Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: 1667 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: 3539 Round 4's first day was pretty good, with an in-doubt close match and a close-but-not-really close match. Day 2? Not so much, what with two godslayer blowouts from two contest titans against lesser competition. Of the eight games in round 4, MGS3 felt like the one that didn't really belong. No MGS game this decade can really be considered Game of the Decade material, whereas you could make a decent case for the other seven games. It showed in the match, too. MGS3 spent approximately zero updates acting like a match that deserved to make it this far into a contest, while Majora's Mask's being a legit threat to win the contest started coming into form here. One wonders how Star of the Contest would have done in MGS3's place. I know it was a day match against Zelda and this was never going to be in doubt, but MGS3 could have shown some life. This match also put to rest any chatter about whether or not an MGS game would have beaten GSC in this match had it actually taken place. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4192&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=124) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Fallout 3 vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2010 _source: (1)Fallout 3 vs (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2010 (revid 69270)_ ## Results **Round Six** Tuesday, December 21, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 125 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 7,565 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 57.64% 73 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 6.88% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 63 Fallout 3: 1756 Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 2900 DAWN OF THE FIRST DAY -72 Hours Remain- Sandbag ZERO, Big Boss vs Colossus, Brawl's Fallout, Santa's Naughty List and Eternal Diablo and Toon Deity are in my opinion the five best pictures of this contest, with honorable mentions going to FPS Samus vs Gordon, INTO YOUR SOUL, GSKart and Brawl's Cast vs Majora's. Not many 54-46 matches are interesting, but Brawl was not supposed to struggle with Fallout 3 here. Like, at all. If you look at oracle PREDIX, not many people had Brawl getting under 55% here. And yet it happened. Early on, Brawl was over 60%. But then after the freeze, it started going down. And down. And down. And down. It just kept on going down bit by bit overnight, and then Europe's vote hit and it kept on going down even more. Fallout even started winning updates on the regular. It wasn't going to pull off any crazy comeback attempts, but it just kept on shooting off percentage one limb at a time. But hey, crazy stuff can happen late in contests and Brawl still had that godslayer morning + afternoon vote, right? After all this was the start (FINALLY!) of 24 hour matches, so Brawl was bound to go way up and escape this rut it was in. Brawl was down below 54% come morning, so it really had nowhere to go but up. And, well... you can all see what happened. Brawl's nadir this match was 53.82% at 10:30 in the morning. Yes, 10:30 in the morning when Brawl started ripping Melee a new one 6 hours prior a couple rounds ago. On top of that, with the morning and afternoon vote in its back pocket, Brawl increased a grand total of 0.61% throughout the rest of this match. Fallout 3 holding up well during the day would have been impressive enough as-is, but holding up this well during Brawl's best time, the time frame that allowed it to crush every game up to and including Melee and Zelda, was really something else. This ranks right with Mass Effect's loss to Portal as the best loss of the whole contest, and it was good foreshadowing for what would end up happening to Brawl in the final. Weird things always happen late in contests, but it would be disingenuous to wholly credit that for why Fallout 3 did so well. Voters get really smart during the final week, and they knew the final four games were Nintendo, Nintendo, Square and Bethesda. Unless you believe Game of the Year polls translate to contests (lol), this was one of those matches where voters were sending a clear "We're sick of Square and Nintendo always winning" message. But unlike years past, their numbers are rapidly growing and making a difference. Nintendo and Square being so bad for so long have really made an impact on people, and in 10 years you might see the equivalent of this match go the other way. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4193&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=125) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy X vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2010 _source: (1)Final Fantasy X vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2010 (revid 69271)_ ## Results **Round Six** Wednesday, December 22, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 126 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 22, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 211 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 48.42% 13 for - 63 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 7.78% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 81 Final Fantasy X: 1838 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: 1541 DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY -48 Hours Remain- Without a doubt the best match of this entire contest. This was a throwback to the days of not having all this crazy overload of information to work with... while having all this crazy overload of information to work with. For 24 solid hours, this was just two sides rooting for a favorite and there was no way of knowing who would win until very very late -- just like the days of yonder when we couldn't predict every trend and percentage and shift and demographic and etc down to the hundredth of a decimal. Majora's Mask came out rocking early but fell off fast, indicating joke/bandwagon trends. Seeing a Zelda game get that type of trend is kind of weird, but one can argue a Zelda game with that trend is the most dangerous type of game there is. Regardless, Zelda rocked the first 15 minutes before falling off a rock -- relatively speaking, that is. FFX recovered and started taking over the match at that point, but it wasn't without a struggle. Zelda fought every step of the way and kept this match at near-deadlocked status for three solid hours. It took FFX exactly three hours just to build a triple digit lead, and one could argue the early struggle is where FFX's eventual downfall sourced from. But even with the early struggle in trying to shake Majora off like a bad case of the fleas, FFX was bound to explode during its dominant dead hours voting block. And dominate it did. Over the next 4½ hours, FFX went from struggling to get a lead over 100 to increasing its lead past 1000 with relative ease. Then the morning vote hit, and Zelda did little more than slow FFX's gains down a bit. Were this a during-school vote, Zelda might have started cutting here. But with it being the week of Christmas, the trends were all diluted. Zelda played the stall game, but the longer it stalled, the more it looked like FFX had this match won. Diluted trend or not, FFX held serve in the morning a lot longer than it might have during school time. It hit a lead of 1400 at 9:30, and then it just hovered there. And hovered. And hovered..... and then it hovered some more. Zelda looked like it would make a comeback attempt after a cut or two, but then FFX would take it all back. At one point, near noon of all times, the lead got near 1500 votes. The match continued in hover mode, and then.... the clock turned 12. For Majora's Mask, be it noon or midnight, things go completely apes\*\*\* once the clock turns 12. For Majora's Mask, this meant 36 Hours Remain. The Moon didn't take kindly to being f\*\*\*ed with. In layman's terms, the lead was 1350 at noon. Zelda then went on a Halo-like daytime tear, scoring several updates over 55% and just all-around making FFX it's b\*\*\*\*. There was almost no resistance at all from FFX during all this daytime afternoon Zelda dominance, and it was so one-sided Zelda only needed 4½ hours to get rid of the entire 1350 votes. Zelda continued flying upwards after this and began building its own lead, though not at the torrent pace of the comeback. The goal for Zelda from here was building as big a lead as possible, because there was no way FFX wasn't going to make a push during the evening and second night vote phase. And build a lead it did. Over the next few hours, it would push upward to a near 450 vote lead. This is where it stood with 5½ hours left, and this is where FFX began its own comeback attempt. 450 votes in 5½ hours is hardly impossible, but the issue here for FFX was that it was trying to come back against a Zelda game. FFX made its cuts, but Zelda would keep pushing back and keep things in stall-world. Every time FFX looked like it was getting ready to make a big push, Zelda would push back. Overall, however, FFX was gaining ground. It was almost like watching the stock market trend of gold, where even despite a few peaks and valleys the overall price continues going up -- only this was overall watching Zelda's lead going down. Unfortunately for FFX, this would ultimately cost it the match. The constant back-and-forth kept gradually increasing the odds of a Zelda victory, and the match was all but over when Zelda still led by 400 with 2 hours left. FFX would finally get its ass in gear over the final two hours, but it was too little and too late and served as little more than window dressing. Zelda would go on to win this match by 211 votes, but one has to wonder how this match goes if FFX starts making the serious push a couple hours earlier. Zelda was obviously the game being rallied more by the voters -- the game people wanted to see win more, because for whatever dumb reason there's this pervasive "SQUARE ALWAYS WINS AND I HATE IT" mentality late in contests even though it wasn't won a contest in 5 years -- and Zelda ended up winning because its fans simply wanted it more. There are many reasons you can cite for why a contest entrant wins a match close -- pictures, rallying, fanbases, companies, brackets and all the rest -- but this match was a throwback to how contests used to be. Just two sides going all-out late in a contest, with one close winner and one close loser. One elated game and one heartbroken game. One really happy fanbase and one really bitter fanbase. Sometimes, that's all you need for a great match. Here's hoping there are many more matches like this to come. You can have your x-stats and geo trends and oracles and calculators. I'll take my matches like this, where no amount of information can predict what happens and things exist entirely in the those unknown spots no amount of math can calculate. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4194&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=126) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2010 _source: (2)Super Smash Bros. Brawl vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2010 (revid 69272)_ ## Results **Championship** Thursday, December 23, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Final - **Match \#:** 127 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 23, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 906 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 50.03% 24 for - 45 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 4.20% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 83 Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 1830 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: 1347 DAWN OF THE FINAL DAY -24 Hours Remain- Right after the dogfight with FFX, Majora immediately had to turn around for what would be a presumed dogfight final against a heavy hitter from its own company. It was not a final many people expected, and it would end up a final not nearly as close as the final score would indicate. Though Zelda would end up winning this match by 900 votes, that number really is a misnomer. Because for the second match in a row, Majora's Mask went out and rocked face early with borderline joke trends. But unlike the match with FFX, Majora and Brawl have near identical trends with Majora getting the clear overnight advantage. So when Majora went out and took control of this match early and kept increasing its lead by a considerable rate overnight, the match was all but over. And whenever Brawl looked like it was going to make an overnight push, Zelda took it all back. It continued on this pace well into the morning and almost until noon. The lead peaked near 1500, but Brawl did come back and win the day vote to make this match respectable. Were this final a 12 hour day match, Brawl would have won it. Beating Twilight Princess during the day like it did and cutting 600 votes off of a Zelda game in the final during the day was very admirable, but the push in the final was window dressing. It was clear Zelda had this match won when Brawl comeback attempt was much too slow, and even the big cuts were pushed back or countered. In the end, this was the closest final we've ever had and arguably the only final where we had zero clue who would win going in. It was also our first true blue Good vs Evil final since Link vs Mario in 2002, and once again it was the good side that came out on top. I joked a lot about Zelda fans being drones this contest, but I will never again make fun of that fanbase. You guys came through when it mattered most, and prevented the terrible Super Smash Bros. Brawl from being named our GameFAQs Game of the Decade. Nothing would have been more embarrassing. Seriously, any of the other 127 games would have been better. Thankfully, we ended up with a pretty deserving one winning. Who knows what happens if Melee beats Brawl, but that's ancient history now. Your Game of the Decade, Majora's Mask! Some argued if Majora deserved it, and Lightning Strikes made the best point about all this: From: Lightning Strikes \| \#009 Brawl is one of the most popular games of the decade, one of the more acclaimed games, and is definitely the most hyped. Majora's Mask is more a shadow of the 90's. It was developed in the 90's, using an engine from the 90's, and was on a 90's system. It's not really "of the decade". Though Majora was technically released this decade, it really does have a 1990s feel to it. That game winning our contest the way it did was a clear old games \> newer games message from this site. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4195&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k10&type=match&match=127) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## Link vs Santa Claus 2010 _source: Link vs Santa Claus 2010 (revid 69145)_ ## Results **Bonus Match** Friday, December 24, 2010 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Bonus - **Match \#:** 128 (Extra) - **Match Date:** Friday, December 24, 2010 - **Vote difference:** 19,556 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 55.07% 33 for - 23 against Some might look at Link winning this match so easily on Christmas Eve as cruel and unusual punishment for Santa, but I disagree. Santa nearly broke 40% on Link in a legit 24 hour match on the home page. Not something dumb like a Board 8-only poll with Jay Solano or a LOL 4-way match -- a legit bonus poll. But look at Link's contest history for a sec. Look at the characters on this list that didn't score 40% on Link. Mario couldn't do it in two attempts. Zack couldn't do it in three. Sonic couldn't do it last year. Luigi couldn't even break thirty percent on the guy. Samus couldn't do it in a year she didn't get SFFd all that badly. You get the idea. This wasn't about whether or not Santa could win, because he wasn't going to. This was about whether or not he could hold up reasonably well, and he did. If you ask me, this is proof Allen is thinking of going broad spectrum next contest and allow all characters appearing in video games to be eligible. And he should. We have no major twists left to do other than letting Batman, Vader, Homer, Spiderman, Wolverine, Bugs Bunny, Ariel and all the rest of the crew in. It would be the most up-in-the-air contest since Summer 2002. Make it happen, Allen. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4196&num=2) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Rivalry Rumble (2011) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 64 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Rivalry Rumble _source: Rivalry Rumble (revid 87765)_
Fall 2011 Contest

Announced:

September 23, 2011

Started:

November 3, 2011

Ended:

December 20, 2011

Winner:

Link vs. Ganondorf

Contest Winner:

TheMightyPeanut (191 pts)

Notable matches:

Red/Blue vs. Ryu/Ken, Alucard/Dracula vs. Frog/Magus,

Squall/Seifer vs. Sora/Riku, Red/Blue vs. Cloud/Sephiroth,
Mario/Bowser vs. Link/Ganondorf
**Fall 2011 Contest** With the **Fall 2011 Contest** (aka the **Rivalry Rumble**) the basic idea was to take gaming rivalries and have a pseudo tag team contest with 64 teams making up the entrants, but Mario vs Sonic being effectively disallowed and the contest having almost nothing interesting happen killed all interest. At least round 1's matches were only 12 hours long each, so that was a relief if for nothing more than seeing the hilariously awful vote totals. Friendly reminder: The worst match ever (Max Payne vs Dirk the Daring) scored 50816 votes. Keep that in mind if you bother reading through any of this contest's information, though it's suggested you don't because it can't be overstated how boring this was. ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis The worst contest ever deserves the worst PCA ever. Seriously, don't expect much. There was ONE good match and it didn't even count. And even when something cool might have happened, this contest's stench was anti-fun the whole way through. There's a lot of reasons for it, but I'll only mention the major stuff. One, Allen asked for suggestions on his admin blog and the overwhelming winner was a tag team contest. Okay, fine, if you want to run a tag team contest of random teams then do it. The rivalry concept was not good. Two and most importantly was the power of suggestion. You know that database Ngamer and Luster always scour during nominations? It's time for that thing to go away entirely, because almost nothing gets into a bracket that isn't in that database and it directly influences what people nominate. At the very least, people being suggested what to nominate needs to go away entirely. The big example was Mario vs Sonic being eligible, but not getting in over Mario and Bowser because only one appeared as a suggestion. And as you can see with the final, Mario/Sonic could have very easily given Link/Ganon a run at winning the title. There was also that dumb rule about how no character could get in more than once, so we couldn't see something like Sonic/Robotnik and Sonic/Knuckles. Allen had a weird vision for this contest, stuck to it no matter what and you all saw the results. Then there was the battle bracket. It was a cool one-time idea for Game of the Decade, but it needs to go away. Brian920 finished with a perfect bracket, which is a godtier accomplishment that we may never see again, but he's only getting half the prizes and attention he deserves because of this dumb battle bracket stuff. Call me old or whatever, but winning with a bracket takes a lot more skill than just picking the right winner each day. Didn't we have something like 60 perfect people going into the last match, and then Allen had to create a hyper version of the Oracle to split them all up? Get rid of this battle junk. Lastly, the bracket itself. It was just awful all around except for Sora's half of a division and the Phoenix division. A lot of mores need to just go away for good. Nintendo is almost always the \#1 overall seed. Snake and/or MGS almost always has to go through Mega Man or FF7. Cloud and Mario need to actually face each other again. Though we did get a lite version of Mario vs Sonic finally, plus the Pokemon trainers getting a chance to do their thing. More on that way later. Vote-Ins These always clue us in on the type of bracket we were facing, and it was confirmed here we would see 64 teams and 128 characters. Yay. At least we only had to sit through three of these things. I never have any clue how to analyze these vote-in polls. Raiden/Vamp outright winning this was hilarious though, and it was our first WARNING SALVO that this contest's field was going to really, really, really suck. The six winners of this poll: - Raiden/Vamp - Banjo/Gruntilda - Yuna/Seymour - Laharl/Mid-Boss - Kid/Guy - Earthworm Jim/Queen Slug-for-a-Butt Not exactly murderer's row there. Beyond them, it was hilarious to see Lightning just totally collapse and San Andreas's duo miss out on making the contest by 130 votes. I'm convinced Little Mac/Tyson would have done something in this vote-in instead of Mac/Sandman, though. Moving on. This is just funny to look at. The 6 winning teams from this vote-in are so hilariously far ahead of everyone else, and I didn't even notice it until going back and looking just now. Much funnier results, too. - Bosses - BJ/Hitler getting second place (what) - Catherines - Arthas/Illidan - Kratos/Lloyd - Falcon/Shadow Nothing else is even remotely worth discussing, and I say that as a BlazBlue fan. Fangirls have absolutely ruined that series, just like they ruin everything else. When the dumb yaoi love interest garbage starts becoming canon in a series where it was never intended, it gives you another of the millions of examples how modern feminism is just a complete failure. Otherwise known as the "holy crap, Chrono Trigger has fallen THIS MUCH?" poll. It also showed us how this bracket was going to be plagued with non-rivalries, because one spoiler does not a rivalry make. Lavos is just a giant parasite, what does he care about Crono? It's like saying a dog has a rivalry with microfilariae (heartworms). - Crono/Lavos - Leon Kennedy/Ada - Gordon Freeman/Dr Breen - Raynor/Kerrigan ...oh wow, only four got picked from this poll. Not really sure how much I like Allen using vote totals instead of poll placement and picking a constant number, but it's not like it matters if Raziel/Kain gets in over Jim/Queen or whatever. ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis This was the worst contest we've ever had, and it's been well documented why so I won't give a huge run-down. The basic idea is bad contest idea, bad contest format, bad bracket selection and bad bracketmaking. If Allen wanted a tag team contest, cool. He should have made one. People look forward to my contest ranking every season for whatever reason, and here it is: Fall 2010 (GotD) \> Spring 2004 (Games) \> Summer 2002 (Characters) \> Summer 2003 (Characters) \> Winter 2010 (Characters) \> Summer 2005 (Characters) \> Fall 2009 (Games 4-way) \> Summer 2007 (Characters 4-way) \> Summer 2006 (Females vs Males) \> Spring 2006 (Series) \> Summer 2008 (Characters 4-way) \> Summer 2004 (Characters) \> Spring 2005 (Villains) \> Fall 2011 (Rivalries) Last, but not least... The Ultimate Loser™! Dan vs. Sagat! ...somehow, that is the most fitting Ultimate Loser™ ever. Until next year, guys. ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
North Division Mario vs. Bowser Mega Man X vs. Zero Mario vs. Bowser Red vs. Blue Mario vs. Bowser Link vs. Ganondorf Link vs. Ganondorf
\(1\) Mario vs. Bowser (8) Earthworm Jim vs. Queen Slug-for-a-Butt Mario vs. Bowser Ike vs. Black Knight Mario vs. Bowser Sonic vs. Dr. Robotnik
\(4\) Conker vs. The Great Mighty Poo (5) Ike vs. Black Knight
\(3\) Kirby vs. Meta Knight (6) Jill Valentine vs. Nemesis Kirby vs. Meta Knight Sonic vs. Dr. Robotnik
\(2\) Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik (7) Katherine vs. Catherine
Northeast Division
\(1\) Mega Man X vs. Zero (8) Captain Falcon vs. Black Shadow Mega Man X vs. Zero Bartz vs. Gilgamesh Mega Man X vs. Zero Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion
\(4\) Guybrush Threepwood vs. LeChuck (5) Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh
\(3\) Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool (6) Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs. Rodrigo Borgia Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion
\(2\) Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion (7) Leon Kennedy vs. Ada Wong
East Division Red vs. Blue Samus Aran vs. Ridley
\(1\) Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue (8) Jim Raynor vs. Sarah Kerrigan Red vs. Blue Luigi vs. Waluigi Red vs. Blue Ryu vs. Ken
\(4\) Luigi vs. Waluigi (5) Cecil Harvey vs. Golbez
\(3\) Ryu vs. Ken (6) Ratchet vs. Dr. Nefarious Ryu vs. Ken Fox vs. Wolf
\(2\) Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell (7) Yuna vs. Seymour Guado
Southeast Division
\(1\) Samus Aran vs. Ridley (8) The Kid vs. The Guy Samus vs. Ridley Terra vs. Kefka Samus vs. Ridley Big Boss vs. The Boss
\(4\) Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo (5) Vyse vs. Galcian
\(3\) Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker (6) Dan Hibiki vs. Sagat Chris vs. Wesker Big Boss vs. The Boss
\(2\) Tidus vs. Jecht (7) Big Boss vs. The Boss
South Division Link vs. Ganondorf Alucard vs. Dracula Link vs. Ganondorf Cloud vs. Sephiroth
\(1\) Link vs. Ganondorf (8) Arthas vs. Illidan Link vs. Ganondorf Amaterasu vs. Orochi Link vs. Ganondorf Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily
\(4\) Amaterasu vs. Orochi (5) Tom Nook vs. Crazy Redd
\(3\) Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja (6) Meat Boy vs. Dr. Fetus Zidane vs. Kuja Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily
\(2\) Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily (7) Banjo vs. Gruntilda
Southwest Division
\(1\) Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth (8) Gordon Freeman vs. Dr. Breen Phoenix vs. Edgeworth Alucard vs. Dracula Alucard vs. Dracula Frog vs. Magus
\(4\) Alucard vs. Dracula (5) Commander Shepard vs. Saren Arterius
\(3\) Chell vs. GlaDOS (6) Ness vs. Giygas Chell vs. GlaDOS Frog vs. Magus
\(2\) Frog vs. Magus (7) Raiden vs. Vamp
West Division Cloud vs. Sephiroth Squall vs. Seifer
\(1\) Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth (8) Lloyd Irving vs. Kratos Aurion Cloud vs. Sephiroth Kratos vs. Zeus Cloud vs. Sephiroth Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake
\(4\) Kratos vs. Zeus (5) Professor Layton vs. Don Paolo
\(3\) Crash Bandicoot vs. Dr. Neo Cortex (6) Pac-Man vs. Blinky Pac-Man vs. Blinky Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake
\(2\) Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake (7) Crono vs. Lavos
Northwest Division
\(1\) Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy (8) Laharl vs. Mid-Boss Squall vs. Seifer Siegfried vs. Nightmare Squall vs. Seifer Sora vs. Riku
\(4\) Siegfried vs. Nightmare (5) Ramza Beoulve vs. Delita Hyral
\(3\) Dante vs. Vergil (6) Sol Badguy vs. Ky Kiske Dante vs. Vergil Sora vs. Riku
\(2\) Sora vs. Riku (7) William B.J. Blazkowicz vs. Adolf
--- ## (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (8)Earthworm Jim vs. Queen Slug-for-a-Butt 2011 _source: (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (8)Earthworm Jim vs. Queen Slug-for-a-Butt 2011 (revid 71967)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 3, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 3, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 22491 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario vs. Bowser - 83.05% 112 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario vs. Bowser - 98.96% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 241 Mario vs. Bowser: 8146 Earthworm Jim vs. Queen Slug-for-a-Butt: 132 We've come to expect Nintendo domination in the first match, and Mario acted accordingly. I think this was actually the biggest blowout of the contest, too, because Link only scored 85.3% on Arthas. Also I should probably mention something about only the first round being 12 hour polls and everything else being 24. Which was actually really cool, but one contest too late. What we didn't expect, at least not at this point, were such god-awful vote totals. Keep this number in mind and you slog through this contest's memory lane: 50816. That's the vote total from our worst match ever, Max Payne vs Dirk the Daring. And we are seeing FREAKING MARIO only score 31805 votes. I know 12 hour night match, but even still that is just beyond embarrassing. Oh and before people start preaching about this site being a relic and traffic being crap, the vote totals stayed bad even after Skyrim and Skyward Sword came out. The answer is bad contest, not bad web site. Traffic isn't much different than it was a year ago, and FFX/Majora scored nearly 100,000 votes in a 24 hour match. Good, anticipated matches will always put asses in seats. Hell go back a little earlier than that, when Crono and Missingno scored 91,000 votes in a 12 hour day match. Calm down with the doom and gloom, seriously. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4510&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Conker vs. The Great Mighty Poo vs (5)Ike vs. Black Knight 2011 _source: (4)Conker vs. The Great Mighty Poo vs (5)Ike vs. Black Knight 2011 (revid 84473)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 3, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 3, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 7282 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ike vs. Black Knight - 58.02% 110 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ike vs. Black Knight - 63.37% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 401 Conker vs. The Great Mighty Poo: 2548 Ike vs. Black Knight: 4400 For those asking why I'm even bothering with a PCA, it's a labor of love. No really, I'm going to have to force myself to get through this. All I'll have to talk about for most matches is the picture, and even then Zen already has a topic for that so who cares. This match was actually debated pre-contest for whatever reason, but Ike of course ended it in seconds and Conker never came close to doing anything. Though for what it's worth, this is the first time anything related to Conker broke 40% in a contest match. Someone give this guy a match against Guybrush or something. Ike's reward for winning this? A rematch with Mario a year after Mario scored like 2348% on him 1 on 1. Good bracket making we had this year, huh? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4511&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs. Meta Knight vs (6)Jill Valentine vs. Nemesis 2011 _source: (3)Kirby vs. Meta Knight vs (6)Jill Valentine vs. Nemesis 2011 (revid 84474)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 4, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 4, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 5166 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby vs. Meta Knight - 56.96% 112 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby vs. Meta Knight - 69.43% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 212 Kirby vs. Meta Knight: 5523 Jill Valentine vs. Nemesis: 1944 SMASH OVERLOAD SON. If Brawl is good for one thing, it's helping Nintendo characters get godly match pictures. Resident Evil never stood a chance. This poll, much like 60 or so of the 64 polls we had this contest, was over in seconds. But this was a fairly debated match pre-contest and early on we hadn't yet been beaten into having Stockholm Syndrome, so we actually looked forward to how this would play out. The match sucked of course, but it was still funny. And why? Let's a take a journey all the way back to 2006. You know, that dumb male/female contest? Remember this poll? Yeah, that's Kairi beating Claire Redfield in a poll that got 108086 votes. Holy crap, and I thought this rivalry stuff couldn't look worse. Anyway, that poll eliminated yoblazer from the guru on like the 4th day. Well the guy went genius on us again and picked Jill to win this match, meaning he was only alive in the guru for a grand total of 24 hours. yo is our best bracket maker by a mile, but every great hero has a tragic flaw and chicks with great asses from the Resident Evil series is yoblazer's tragic flaw. Makes that chicks with great asses, period, since I'm sure he'll get eliminated from the guru in 2014 picking Ariel to beat Vincent Valentine or something. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4512&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik vs (7)Katherine vs. Catherine 2011 _source: (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik vs (7)Katherine vs. Catherine 2011 (revid 84475)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 4, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 4, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 18353 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik - 78.23% 115 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik - 94.48% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 107 Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik: 7413 Katherine vs. Catherine: 392 Kudos to Zen for that pic. You can kind of see how amazing he is and how terrible I am when you match our stuff up in the same image =p Anyway the numbers here are obviously a mega-blowout, but the -atherines didn't do that badly. We've seen mega-niche Atlus characters in polls before, and it's never pretty. Laharl only got to win a match because TWEWY is somehow even less known than Disgaea. I'm sure other Atlus characters have gotten into polls, or maybe not, but I'm way too lazy to actually look any of this stuff up when this entire PCA should be the five words "this contest sucked, moving on". But the point here is Team TJF was the embodiment (ha) of how things like "ingenuity" and "innovation" in game design still trump multimillion dollar graphics engines that rebuild molecules and s\*\*\*. Who cares? Make a game fun, it's all that counts. The game sold something like 500k copies, and led to the most feel-good 27% you'll ever see in a contest poll. There was even a time when people pointed to this and mentioned Kirby having a chance at pulling the upset. Not that fun stuff could possibly happen this season, but hey. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4513&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man X vs. Zero vs (8)Captain Falcon vs. Black Shadow 2011 _source: (1)Mega Man X vs. Zero vs (8)Captain Falcon vs. Black Shadow 2011 (revid 84476)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, November 5, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 5, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 17224 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man X vs. Zero - 71.54% 114 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man X vs. Zero - 83.13% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 176 Mega Man X vs. Zero: 6886 Captain Falcon vs. Black Shadow: 567 So hey, remember when X (gon' give it to ya) totally smoked the first two rounds and Whiskey Nick went on the podcast and called him a legitimate threat to beat Mario? Yeah. The MMX team is probably the most successful guru nomination we've ever had, though. They got an inflated seed, did well with it, and they're one of the few actual legitimate rivalries in this bracket. Also worth noting here is how breaking 80% is not easy to do. Cloud couldn't even break 70% on Captain Falcon. I know this match proves two strong characters just godstomp one decent character, but still. 80% is 80%. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4514&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Guybrush Threepwood vs. LeChuck vs (5)Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh 2011 _source: (4)Guybrush Threepwood vs. LeChuck vs (5)Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh 2011 (revid 84477)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, November 5, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 5, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 8934 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh - 58.16% 108 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh - 69.70% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 632 Guybrush Threepwood vs. LeChuck: 1709 Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh: 3789 Oh right, this match. A lot of people complained about the FF5 picture, but I actually love Dissidia models. Not the art, that sucks and makes Bartz look anorexic, but the models look cool. Kind of thinking no one played Dissidia 012, because Gilgamesh is a boss in that game. As for the actual match, I don't get how many times Guybrush needs to embarrass himself before people stop nominating him. Thanks to Guybrush, Bartz and Gilgamesh now both have more contest wins than like half the Square characters that have gotten into these things. At least us Tales fans have long since grown some dignity and knocked it off. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4515&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool vs (6)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs. Rodrigo Borgia 2011 _source: (3)Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool vs (6)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs. Rodrigo Borgia 2011 (revid 84478)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, November 6, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 6, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 6488 - **Oracle Expectations:** Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool - 51.51% 76 for - 37 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool - 71.94% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 238 Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool: 5486 Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs. Rodrigo Borgia: 1876 A heavily debated match pre-contest that was over in seconds. When an entire contest can be compared to having sex for the first time, you know something went horribly wrong. There was at least decent reason for this to be a debate, though. DK and Ezio were dead even in 2010, and Ezio's value was hidden behind that weird Samus \> Zelda match. Then there were Rool and Rodrigo themselves, both of which we considered useless. Turns out King K. Rool is actually well-liked by a lot of DK fans though, so that was that. Meanwhile, you can play a large chunk of Assassin's Creed 2 without ever knowing who Rodrigo is. Was this about when we realized this contest was going to suck, or did that come later? I don't even remember. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4516&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion vs (7)Leon Kennedy vs. Ada Wong 2011 _source: (2)Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion vs (7)Leon Kennedy vs. Ada Wong 2011 (revid 84479)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, November 6, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 6, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 19001 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion - 56.45% 107 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion - 84.36% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 169 Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion: 6330 Leon Kennedy vs. Ada Wong: 1033 I have almost nothing to say about this match except that Leon and Ada are not rivals. Yeah the ninjas look strong here and yeah they should have been paired against (Sho)RyuKen in this bracket, but so what. Leon and Ada worked together in Resident Evil 2. There wasn't even an argument anywhere, they just work together outright. Then between that and 4 you find out Ada goes to work for someone else, whatever. There's no rivalry in that game either, just one small scene before Leon figures out who Ada is. Who the hell nominated half this crap? I'll give you guys that "not actual rivals" is probably a bit overdone as a complaint but it's legitimate here. Leon and Ada, really? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4517&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (8)Jim Raynor vs. Sarah Kerrigan 2011 _source: (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (8)Jim Raynor vs. Sarah Kerrigan 2011 (revid 84480)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, November 7, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 7, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 18501 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 72.17% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 88.23% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 144 Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue: 6868 Jim Raynor vs. Sarah Kerrigan: 725 Knowing what we do of the trainers now, it's fair to say this match was a bit disappointing for them. These guys started well above 80%, and fell all the way down to 77 by match's end. It's basically joke trends, and we would see it all contest. The picture was WAY in favor of the trainers, too, so it was weird to not see them just totally annihilate the Starcraft 2 duo. Worth noting here is Starcraft 2 is a terrible game and there is no defense for it at all, so it deserved to get wrecked here. That "make one game and release in three parts for full price" crap is just disgusting. Lastly, look at Kerrigan's picture there. Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock. You can't unsee. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4518&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Luigi vs. Waluigi vs (5)Cecil Harvey vs. Golbez 2011 _source: (4)Luigi vs. Waluigi vs (5)Cecil Harvey vs. Golbez 2011 (revid 84481)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, November 7, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 7, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 4176 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi vs. Waluigi - 60.65% 107 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi vs. Waluigi - 60.19% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 347 Luigi vs. Waluigi: 5047 Cecil Harvey vs. Golbez: 1843 This. This match is the best proof for how bad this contest was. For like two full rounds, this was our closest match. Yeah, a Waluigi win was our closest match for all but like the two final weeks of a contest. Just screw me in the eye with a spoon, and I actually like Waluigi. But he and Luigi are not rivals, and this is a good example for the bad contest format. Why couldn't we have Mario vs Luigi AND Mario vs Bowser AND Mario vs Sonic? It's not terrible. Oh and props to the FF4 duo here. In a match they were never going to win anyway, they thoroughly embarrassed the Nintendo boys and made all of us who assumed Luigi could carry Waluigi past the trainers (ahem) out to be complete idiots. Seriously, that was by far my worst. pick. ever. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4519&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Ryu vs. Ken vs (6)Ratchet vs. Dr. Nefarious 2011 _source: (3)Ryu vs. Ken vs (6)Ratchet vs. Dr. Nefarious 2011 (revid 84482)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, November 8, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 18027 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu vs. Ken - 76.92% 113 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu vs. Ken - 91.68% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 101 Ryu vs. Ken: 7280 Ratchet vs. Dr. Nefarious: 436 Leonhart4 has turned me into a Ratchet fanboy, but I would have voted for him anyway because I \*hate\* Ryu and Ken so much with all the idiots on SSF4 online who just shotospam all day with these two. Holy crap. I love Street Fighter, but I despise these two so much. F\*\*\* em. Regardless, if you look at round 1 in a vacuum this match is much more impressive than the Trainers \> Starcraft result. Granted the votals are just god-awful, but the Trainers also had their match at night and didn't fare much better. We went over this with Zero's match, but 80% is a hard number to break. Getting nearly 82% on Ratchet has to be more impressive than 77% on the Starcraft duo, right? I mean we all know what happened later, but maybe the trainers being momentum-based was proven here in round 1. Not that it's really worth mulling over or anything because F this contest so much. At the very least, the match was in doubt following round 1. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4520&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell vs (7)Yuna vs. Seymour Guado 2011 _source: (2)Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell vs (7)Yuna vs. Seymour Guado 2011 (revid 84483)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, November 8, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 8662 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell - 57.98% 107 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell - 70.40% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 263 Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell: 5628 Yuna vs. Seymour Guado: 1578 Okay I made this entire picture and everyone hated it, so let me explain myself here. The Fox/Wolf side is defensible enough, since both guys look awesome in Brawl and good luck making a good Wolf picture without getting help from that game. Zen hated the font, but come on man. Barbed wire font for two feral characters is pretty awesome. Now, the bottom half. Okay. Part of being a picsmith is using what I like once in awhile and I personally think Seymour's base model just totally sucks. I loved all his boss fights in FFX, so I wanted to get one of them into a match picture. I also think Yuna looks better in X-2 than FFX, though I will finally concede to Leon4 that X-2 Yuna was not the best of ideas for a match picture with Yuna and Seymour. That said, dude, she's all sitting there with a gun going GET IT AWAY HOLY CRAP. I love the picture, but I can see why everyone else hates it. There's also the issue of "why make pictures at all if everything just turns into what everyone wants", but that's a can of worms I'm not really willing to get into in a PCA. The match was debated pre-contest for awhile, so naturally it wasn't a fun match at all. This was one of many examples where two characters of marginal strength were able to just torch a pair with one strong character and an anchor, and I feel like Fox and Wolf got a contest title boost. These guys are a damn cool rivalry in Star Fox 64, while Yuna and Seymour aren't remotely close to rivals and deserved to lose here. I'm not really biased here either, because at first I honestly did pick Yuna out of my love for FFX before realizing they had no chance. Yuna did well given the circumstances here, but... yeah. Weird match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4521&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs. Ridley vs (8)The Kid vs. The Guy 2011 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs. Ridley vs (8)The Kid vs. The Guy 2011 (revid 84484)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, November 9, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 17581 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran vs. Ridley - 82.80% 112 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran vs. Ridley - 96.25% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 78 Samus Aran vs. Ridley: 7560 The Kid vs. The Guy: 276 Based on this match alone, you wouldn't really know how much trouble Samus would be in once she eventually made it to the trainers. Though with round 1 alone, the trainers didn't really have their godslayer powers yet. I know I've overused the line about 80% being difficult to get to, but it really is. This contest was tailor-made for Kid and Guy to do well -- good rivalry, popular game on this site -- and Samus just wrecked them. A lot of people felt like Ridley would hold Samus down and potentially hold her back from her 1 on 1 strength, and maybe they would end up being right, but there was no indication that was possible after this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4522&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo vs (5)Vyse vs. Galcian 2011 _source: (4)Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo vs (5)Vyse vs. Galcian 2011 (revid 84485)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, November 9, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 19521 - **Oracle Expectations:** Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo - 64.91% 112 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo - 92.22% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 379 Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo: 5645 Vyse vs. Galcian: 529 80% is a very difficult percentage to get but in this contes-- waaaaaaaaaaaaaait a second. Is that... is that Terra and Kefka going godmode on us? The same Terra who couldn't break 60% on Kerrigan and the same Kefka who was a legendary choke artist until he ran into a World of Warcraft character? And these two aren't even rivals at all. Kefka has no true rival in the World of ruin, no one fits his antithesis better than General Leo in the World of Balance. And yet here we are, watching the FF6 duo make names for themselves. SFF against a weak character and his anchor (guffaw haw haw SKY PIRATES AND ANCHORS GET IT) or not, it barely even matters. FF6 nuts like me have been waiting for years for the characters to finally be legit in contests, and god bless Dissidia for letting it happen. Oh and when Baku hosts FF6 mafia, you should totally sign up for it because mafia \> everything. I'd say more about this match and how Terra could have really done something this contest, but this bracket was designed like crap so they got fed to Samus in round 2. Awesome. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4523&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker vs (6)Dan Hibiki vs. Sagat 2011 _source: (3)Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker vs (6)Dan Hibiki vs. Sagat 2011 (revid 84486)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 10, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 10, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 15938 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker - 63.16% 109 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker - 87.80% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 183 Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker: 6645 Dan Hibiki vs. Sagat: 659 I love how I preach about 80% being hard and this is like the 213th match in a row where we saw someone flirt with that line or break it. Spoilers for those who haven't listened to The Show yet (not up as of this writing): I named Dan and Sagat my turd of the contest. I honestly expected something out of these two, or at least Sagat, and instead we get a performance that makes people think Chris and Wesker had a shot at beating the bosses. It was one of those quasi-joke rallies that actually worked, and Board 8 nominated it enough to have the pair avoid the vote-ins entirely. I'm a Street Fighter fanboy and LOVE these two characters, I make no secret of this, so yeah I was really disappointed. Chris and Wesker are no slouches, don't get me wrong, but those two getting 80% on someone means something royally effed happened. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4524&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Tidus vs. Jecht vs (7)Big Boss vs. The Boss 2011 _source: (2)Tidus vs. Jecht vs (7)Big Boss vs. The Boss 2011 (revid 84487)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 10, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 10, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 7713 - **Oracle Expectations:** Big Boss vs. The Boss - 55.05% 103 for - 11 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Big Boss vs. The Boss - 55.06% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 341 Tidus vs. Jecht: 3462 Big Boss vs. The Boss: 3534 This was one of the most heavily debated round 1 matches, mostly because of the seeding and Winter 2010 performances, so of course the match was bad and over in seconds. Normally I'd go through the whole rant about how Tidus will never win a debatable match ever again, but Jecht is the manliest character in this entire bracket so he cancels out Tidus's ugly mug. The lone weak link in this bracket was actually The Boss, but obviously that proved to be a moot point. Both of these rivalries are among the best in the bracket, both games are among the best in the bracket, but for whatever reason Tidus's constantly being anti-voted outweighed The Boss being weak. This was a "decent" match I suppose, complete with the lowest prediction percentage in all of round 1, but there really isn't much to say about a 60-40. We already know why Tidus couldn't do anything, too: He's Tidus. Doesn't get much simpler than that. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4525&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (8)Arthas vs. Illidan 2011 _source: (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (8)Arthas vs. Illidan 2011 (revid 69027)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 11, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 11, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 22076 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 83.91% 110 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 97.51% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 35 Link vs. Ganondorf: 7833 Arthas vs. Illidan: 178 Oh how the mighty have fallen. Not Link, of course, but this site. 31000 votes for a Link match, even a night match, is just pathetic. Though when you compare Link to Mario in round 1, there was some hope this contest wouldn't be a total Link stomp. Mario got a higher percentage without the aid of anti-votes, a higher prediction percentage and his poll got a higher vote total. Then you look at the Link v Mario contest history and realize it doesn't really matter at all. That's got to be the worst match picture of the contest, by the way. Link and Ganon are just miscolored skewed crap, Arthas looks like a fox and Illidan is invisible. Holy crap. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4526&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Amaterasu vs. Orochi vs (5)Tom Nook vs. Crazy Redd 2011 _source: (4)Amaterasu vs. Orochi vs (5)Tom Nook vs. Crazy Redd 2011 (revid 84488)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 11, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 11, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 10566 - **Oracle Expectations:** Amaterasu vs. Orochi - 69.47% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Amaterasu vs. Orochi - 71.19% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 454 Amaterasu vs. Orochi: 4831 Tom Nook vs. Crazy Redd: 1176 I have no clue what to even make of this match. You'd think Ammy would blow the doors off of such fodder trash, but apparently Tom Nook has a cult following or something. Then you realize Ammy was stuck with a total anchor, and we saw all contest what that does to contest strength. Tom/Redd's joke rally was at least better than Dan/Sagat's, I guess? Not that it matters at ALL thanks to Amaterasu getting fed to Link in round 2. Bad matches plus bad bracket making makes it really, really hard to care about like 90% of what happened in this bracket. There was some hype early, but the more matches we saw the more we realized this contest was going to really, really suck. And this was with the first round having 12 hour matches. Forget ambien and melatonin, this contest having 24 hour matches was enough of a sleeping pill for anyone. Worth noting here is this day match scoring less votes than the night match proceeding, so the LAW (Link Always Wins) holds true yet again! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4527&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja vs (6)Meat Boy vs. Dr. Fetus 2011 _source: (3)Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja vs (6)Meat Boy vs. Dr. Fetus 2011 (revid 84489)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, November 12, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 12, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 7225 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja - 71.17% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja - 78.49% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 196 Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja: 5906 Meat Boy vs. Dr. Fetus: 1326 This was a terrible match for the FF9 pair, though it would have better far better without that match picture, and I even LIKED the match picture. Trance FF9 art rocks, but the average voter probably thought they looked like bloody puke. This whole contest ended up being bloody puke, actually. The reason I say they would have done better with no picture is because for a few minutes the match had no picture and FF9 was near 70%. Then the picture went up and they immediately dropped by 5%. So there you go, pic factor accounts for 5% of the vote total when the percentage is in the 60s, so in the 50s we can probably assume it counts for 2-3 points here and there. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4528&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily vs (7)Banjo vs. Gruntilda 2011 _source: (2)Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily vs (7)Banjo vs. Gruntilda 2011 (revid 84490)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, November 12, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 12, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 18381 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily - 76.96% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily - 91.92% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 83 Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily: 7350 Banjo vs. Gruntilda: 457 Banjo the character has been in three contest matches including this one, and in all three he had to deal with Nintendo SFF. Mega Man isn't "technically" Nintendo, but he might as well be. The game made two contests, one was 4-way Nintendo SFF and the other was scoring 30% on MGS2. Basically, put Banjo in a winnable match against non-Nintendo or stop letting him in outright. He's one of those wasted spots that only gets in every year because of every contest being 128 entrants these days. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4529&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth vs (8)Gordon Freeman vs. Dr. Breen 2011 _source: (1)Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth vs (8)Gordon Freeman vs. Dr. Breen 2011 (revid 84491)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, November 13, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 13, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 3505 - **Oracle Expectations:** Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth - 53.34% 84 for - 24 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth - 57.30% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 323 Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth: 4481 Gordon Freeman vs. Dr. Breen: 2495 This was without question the most hyped match of round 1, and for good reason. Phoenix, even with always getting high seeds, never wins anything. His rival here, Edgey, always does even worse. In 2006, he and Gordon Freeman had a 1 on 1 match and Gordon scored 58% on him to end the famous GFNW meme. However, that was back when Phoenix was a joke character in every sense. Since then he's gotten a whole series under his belt and a hyped Marvel vs Capcom 3 spot, while Gordon Freeman's been sitting around like the rest of us waiting for Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 to actually come out. The stage was set for Phoenix's revenge, thanks to Gordon getting saddled with an absolute anchor and an 8 seed. Gordon by himself could beat Phoenix or Edgeworth easily, but we now know one decent character can't really beat a good rivalry by himself. The match itself was over in seconds, but actually meant a lot. For one, this was probably our best proof that two weaker characters with a good rivalry can beat one much stronger character bogged down by an anchor. Two, Phoenix Wright is finally viable. A win over Bomberman in fourways doesn't really count, but his first one on one win? That actually means something. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4530&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Alucard vs. Dracula vs (5)Commander Shepard vs. Saren Arterius 2011 _source: (4)Alucard vs. Dracula vs (5)Commander Shepard vs. Saren Arterius 2011 (revid 84492)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, November 13, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 13, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 10289 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard vs. Dracula - 60.36% 102 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard vs. Dracula - 67.82% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 289 Alucard vs. Dracula: 4864 Commander Shepard vs. Saren Arterius: 2110 Someone really needs to explain to me what Allen's bias against FemShep is. She's probably one of the best characters in all of gaming, especially in the original Mass Effect, yet she has never one time made it into a match picture. I did theater, so I know how to spot when someone sucks at their lines and the male voice actor for Shepard has no emotion at all and sounds like he's struggling to read off a teleprompter or something. Regardless, this was one of those matches where idiots like me thought Shepard could carry a bad team by herself (yeah, HERself). This whole division was loaded with bad teams and weak characters, and thinking Shepard could carry Saren to a win was pretty lol. Alucard and Symphony of the Night for whatever reason have unreal staying power on this site, and in a way we could call this match a trial balloon for fictional characters making the field. I think Dracula passed the eyeball test, needless to say. Shepard could probably smoke anyone else in this division 1 on 1, but got totally embarrassed when paired with Saren and his godly warship Sovereign. Play Mass Effect, seriously. Amazing game. I should probably get around to playing 2 one of these days too, huh? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4531&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Chell vs. GLaDOS vs (6)Ness vs. Giygas 2011 _source: (3)Chell vs. GLaDOS vs (6)Ness vs. Giygas 2011 (revid 84493)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, November 14, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 14, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 4973 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chell vs. GLaDOS - 60.79% 104 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chell vs. GLaDOS - 74.53% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 200 Chell vs. GLaDOS: 5280 Ness vs. Giygas: 1878 The only thing really worth talking about here is the match picture, since I have no idea what to even make of the match. 60-40 on Ness and Giygas after the release of Portal 2 probably sucks, but Chell barely exists in the Portal games and GLaDOS/Wheatley would have done far better. I'd like to say this performance was bad and that it meant Frogus was destined to win two matches as a result, but we know how close the Portal 2 duo came to upsetting Frogus so who really knows. Anyway for my money, KP made the best picture of the entire contest right there. As an EarthBound fanboy (Play EarthBound.), that definitely captures the scale of the final fight (Play EarthBound.). Probably should have used the robot Ness model, but whatever. Godly image. Play EarthBound. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4532&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Frog vs. Magus vs (7)Raiden vs. Vamp 2011 _source: (2)Frog vs. Magus vs (7)Raiden vs. Vamp 2011 (revid 84494)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, November 14, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 14, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 4294 - **Oracle Expectations:** Frog vs. Magus - 64.32% 107 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Frog vs. Magus - 66.12% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 234 Frog vs. Magus: 4820 Raiden vs. Vamp: 2247 One match after Chell and GLaDOS lay an egg in a match they should have destroyed, Frog and Magus do... this. No one really looked like they wanted to win this division except the Symphony of the Night pair, and we all know what would end up happening there. Raiden and Vamp did rock their vote-in poll though, so maybe they have more strength than we give them credit for. But one thing that would be fun to watch all contest would be Frog's clutch paired with Magus's choke. I feel like metroid composite's sig applies to these two, no? This would ultimately set up a pretty unpredictable match between Portal 2 and Frogus, and I am convinced Wheatley in Chell's place would have won that match. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Wheatley not in the suggestion database? That databse is so bad and needs to stop deciding our nominations for us. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4533&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth vs (8)Lloyd Irving vs. Kratos Aurion 2011 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth vs (8)Lloyd Irving vs. Kratos Aurion 2011 (revid 84495)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, November 15, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 15245 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth - 83.12% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth - 96.54% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 38 Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth: 7774 Lloyd Irving vs. Kratos Aurion: 210 A lot of comparisons can be made here, but just look at this match. Despite all the so-called WARNING SALVOS fired in Link's direction about rivalries actually mattering, this site hating Final Fantasy 7 trumps it all. The contest effectively ended with this god-awful performance from the FF7 duo, barring some miracle upset taking Link down. "Miracle upset" because Cloud and Seph sure as hell weren't going to do it. FF7 is weakening as-is, but the game has such a terrible board vote now that Link was going to do bad, bad things once that match actually took place. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4534&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Kratos vs. Zeus vs (5)Professor Layton vs. Don Paolo 2011 _source: (4)Kratos vs. Zeus vs (5)Professor Layton vs. Don Paolo 2011 (revid 84496)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, November 15, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 15967 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kratos vs. Zeus - 71.84% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kratos vs. Zeus - 92.13% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 177 Kratos vs. Zeus: 6937 Professor Layton vs. Don Paolo: 475 It's hard to really make heads or tails of this match, other than the fact Kratos has an awful board vote and was below 70% against a total joke character for a few minutes. Would have been nice to see how the God of War guys would have done on an actual path, but pretty much any 4/5 in a format like this (or 8/9 seed in a normal format) is in no-man's land thanks to facing the 1 seed next round. Post of the contest goes to transience, since Cloud and Kratos both have such bad board votes that "no one will vote for 5 minutes". Good show. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4535&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Crash Bandicoot vs. Dr. Neo Cortex vs (6)Pac-Man vs. Blinky 2011 _source: (3)Crash Bandicoot vs. Dr. Neo Cortex vs (6)Pac-Man vs. Blinky 2011 (revid 84497)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, November 16, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 6445 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pac-Man vs. Blinky - 59.01% 104 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pac-Man vs. Blinky - 71.96% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 392 Crash Bandicoot vs. Dr. Neo Cortex: 2410 Pac-Man vs. Blinky: 4425 You know a contest is bad when something can score 8706 votes and still manage to avoid getting doubled. Pac-Man has never been known for putting asses in seats, so this was just horrible to watch. Can you imagine if this were a 24 hour match? Also for whatever reason this was heavily debated, but I'm not seeing why. No one gives a crap about Crash anymore, and Pac-Man is pretty much guaranteed to get the better picture against anyone. I'm pretty sure that's the first time he's ever gotten the sprite in a pic, too, so this was pretty much set in stone before it ever started. Not that it would ever be in doubt anyway because it would take two full rounds for us to actually get a match worth talking about. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4536&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake vs (7)Crono vs. Lavos 2011 _source: (2)Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake vs (7)Crono vs. Lavos 2011 (revid 84498)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, November 16, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 6625 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake - 62.01% 107 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake - 80.52% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 158 Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake: 6383 Crono vs. Lavos: 1257 Fun Fact: Crono has not won a match since 2008, where he made the finals of the second fourway contest. It's true. One of the first things everyone noticed in the contest's early stages was Crono being stuck with Lavos as a rivalry, thanks to the vote-ins. Then the bracket came out and we saw him going up against the MGS duo. Dude was screwed, and look at that prediction percentage. Everyone knew he was screwed. He was screwed even with one of the most unbalanced picture advantage ever, because holy crap Lavos sucks. Even if you wanted to make some weird Crono \> Snake but Liquid \> Lavos comparison, the Liquid \> Lavos match happened all the way back in 2005. Then the match started, and... yeah. "And this is how the world ends: Not with a bang but with a whimper" really applies to what is clearly the end of Crono's contest run. Just a bland 60-40 beating all the way through, as if Crono never mattered at all in these things. He will never again be of Noble Nine strength, and one has to wonder if he'll ever win a match again period at the rate he's going. Does anyone take Crono to beat Squall, Vincent, Tifa, Auron, or even Yoshi, Luigi and Bowser at this point? Those near-elites could all wreck him. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4537&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy vs (8)Laharl vs. Mid-Boss 2011 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy vs (8)Laharl vs. Mid-Boss 2011 (revid 84499)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 17, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 17, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 12264 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy - 75.56% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy - 91.49% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 148 Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy: 7007 Laharl vs. Mid-Boss: 509 Seifer finally making a contest was so nice, as a 1 seed to boot, even if it did take a contest specifically made for him to get in to do it. Seifer is a great character, the rivalry with Squall rocks and FF8 really is a good game. I love the Disgaea pairing here too, so for me personally this match was cool. Terrible match pic for the FF8 side, but you can't win 'em all. From a contest perspective, Squallfer needed to do a lot better here. We didn't totally know it at the time since no one was really paying attention to the contest at this point (plus we all assumed Squallfer's path was set in stone), but this was a good WARNING SALVO for how screwed Squall almost was against Sora and Riku. Laharl is not strong at all, but Squall couldn't even triple him. Bad. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4538&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Siegfried vs. Nightmare vs (5)Ramza Beoulve vs. Delita Hyral 2011 _source: (4)Siegfried vs. Nightmare vs (5)Ramza Beoulve vs. Delita Hyral 2011 (revid 84500)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 17, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 17, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 3429 - **Oracle Expectations:** Siegfried vs. Nightmare - 55.15% 92 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Siegfried vs. Nightmare - 68.03% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 470 Siegfried vs. Nightmare: 4905 Ramza Beoulve vs. Delita Hyral: 1443 I'm seriously convinced the Soul Calibur guys only won this because DAT TOP OPTION, though obviously I'm biased. Ramza and Delita might seriously be the best rivalry in this entire bracket, and it's not just me being a big fan of FFT. I'm a big fan of history, and the relationship between those two reminds me of how human history works. Very few people know the true heroes of war, the soldiers, but kings and politicians are remembered forever even if most don't deserve it. Go look up the lyrics to War Pigs some time. Saying Ramza and Delita aren't rivals because they never fought is like saying LBJ and Kennedy weren't rivals; LBJ had a maniacal desire to become president and viewed Kennedy as an obstacle, and he wasn't exactly upset at Kennedy getting assassinated. There are tens of thousands of examples like this throughout history, and FFT touches upon that subject without really trying. Well actually it does try, but I don't think Yatsumi Matsuno realized the depth he'd manage to explore that aspect of history when he was writing FFT's plot. The man is an absolute genius, but his tragic flaw is never being able to seal the deal, so to speak. He always resorts to "kill the big bad magical things" by the end of his plots, whereas if he would ever finish his tales of medieval political intrigue and conspiracy he would go down as one of gaming's best authors. Fun Fact: Ramza and Delita were originally going to be the exact same character, but Square killed the idea of having two branching paths for the plot. I have nothing more to really add here, except that Ramza will likely never win a contest match but he might have pulled it off were the seeding switched in this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4539&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Dante vs. Vergil vs (6)Sol Badguy vs. Ky Kiske 2011 _source: (3)Dante vs. Vergil vs (6)Sol Badguy vs. Ky Kiske 2011 (revid 84501)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 18, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 18, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 15587 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante vs. Vergil - 76.52% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante vs. Vergil - 95.29% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 119 Dante vs. Vergil: 7432 Sol Badguy vs. Ky Kiske: 261 Jesus CHRIST I forgot just how badly Dante wrecked this match until looking at it just now, but yeah it's coming back to me how good those of us who picked Dante \> Sora felt when this happened. And Dante/Vergil would have pulled it off had this match pic been used in round 2, too. I know Guilty Gear is just piss-weak on this site, but this might seriously be the best match Dante has ever had. The percentage here is only 3 below what Mario and Link pulled off, and given Vergil MvC3 hype and Kingdom Hearts trending way down every year, the upset was very possible. It almost ended up happening, too. Unfortunately, this match right here may be the peak of Dante's strength. By the time we get another character battle, we'll have to deal with [this piece of s\*\*\*.](http://th03.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2010/267/7/d/new_dmc_dante__sideview__by_dante584-d2zd1oe.jpg) If you look like a Scott Pilgrim character, odds are you're an absolute piece of trash that shouldn't exist. It has nothing to do with white hair, either, despite what people actually defending this crap think. Capcom never. f\*\*\*ing. learns. anything. We've been down this road with Devil May Cry 2, you know with taking the series in a new direction and letting a new director take over. The end result was an absolute piece of crap game with Not Dante (thanks, Viewtiful Joe 2) running around a city fighting flying goats and infected helicopters before magically popping up on an oil rig before magically popping up to tell people about swan songs and a big puke monster. You think I'm kidding, too, don't you? And that says nothing of half the game's bosses being killable by standing in the starting position and holding down square, or his "hip new look", or freaking Lucia holy god. The point is, WE'VE SEEN THIS BEFORE. Now Capcom decides to learn nothing, as usual, and go with a whole new development team instead of just a director. Bad enough this is happening, but they go with Ninja Theory? Are you effin serious? I don't know how many of you people have actually played Heavenly Sword, but I have. [I'll let Yahtzee handle this one,](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1-Heavenly-Sword-and-Other-Stuff) but I assure you the game is just a total piece of trash that should be incinerated before it can infect the world further. Notable here is how Heavenly Sword was Yahtzee's first video, meaning the game was so bad that it launched Yahtzee's career of trashing bad games. Twing-twang. Oh and I haven't played Enslaved, but my best friend has and he tells me it's somehow even worse than Heavenly Sword. Lovely. And these are the jerkoffs now in charge of the Devil May Cry series. If you can't come up with a way to make a character cool, might as well give him a cigarette and make him look like an emo moron. F\*\*\* Capcom, f\*\*\* Ninja Theory and f\*\*\* that idiot director who literally inserted himself into the series fanfiction style, much like how Stephanie Meyer essentially write the Twilight series as a fanfiction with herself as the main character. Oh and don't think ArcSys Works is above my wrath, either, with how they've catered to fangirls of late. Catering to fangirls is about the last thing any company should do. Guilty Gear isn't popular enough to get ruined by them, but BlazBlue is pretty much trying to figure out how to make Ragna and Jin into a canonical gay yaoi incest love affair. I'm not even freaking kidding, it's unreal. Bad enough fangirls ruined Vegas, but stop ruining my music and my video games. Thanks. (they ruined music because they apparently think hipster douches in skinny jeans are sooooo sexy, thanks for asking) I have no idea where I was going with this, but yeah Devil May Cry 5 is going to blow and fangirls pretty much rendered the BlazBlue plot not worth paying attention to anymore. Yeah I broke 4096 ranting about a first round blowout in the worst contest ever, WHAT NOW BOARD 8? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4540&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sora vs. Riku vs (7)William B.J. Blazkowicz vs. Adolf 2011 _source: (2)Sora vs. Riku vs (7)William B.J. Blazkowicz vs. Adolf 2011 (revid 84502)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 18, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 18, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 7754 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora vs. Riku - 65.45% 105 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora vs. Riku - 89.43% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 183 Sora vs. Riku: 6945 William B.J. Blazkowicz vs. Adolf Hitler: 890 Also known as the weirdest match we'll ever have. Normally at the end a round I do kind of a wrap-up, but it's not really worth it to get too extensive here. Our closest match involved Waluigi winning, which is really all you need to know about this entire contest. Regardless, this match was so dumb. Before the contest ever started, a lot of us asked Allen if Einstein vs Hitler would be eligible. He said no, because "Gamespot already did it". Oddly enough, it was Einstein he considered the problem and not a guy who slaughtered anywhere between 6 and 15 million people, depending on what you read. This match was destined to be the 4chan target of choice, and for a time they didn't disappoint. They even had the picture advantage, because holy crap did Soraku look like garbage. Soraku started over 60%, fell all the way down to 54% with rallying, then people noticed the rallying wasn't working so they went back up to 60%. Hitler was never really in contention to win this match, which is honestly a good thing. I'm all for a good joke, but Hitler making some L-Block run would have been really offensive to me and a lot of other people. I know he's made to look like a total joke in Wolfenstein 3D, but it's the principle of the matter. This would conclude round 1, and all things considered Allen really just got unlucky with the bracket. A lot of cool upsets just didn't pan out, a lot of the pairings were just bad, and a lot of potential upsets or good matches just turned into blowouts. Pair that with a bad concept, a questionable selection process and a bad bracket design and you get... pretty much the worst contest ever, actually. I would say the villains contest had a worse round 1, but at least that contest was nice enough to only be a month long in total. We had over a month and a half of this rivalry blowout junk. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4541&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (5)Ike vs. Black Knight 2011 _source: (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (5)Ike vs. Black Knight 2011 (revid 84503)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, November 19, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 19, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 30576 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario vs. Bowser - 78.63% 98 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario vs. Bowser - 95.68% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 32 Mario vs. Bowser: 5572 Ike vs. Black Knight: 103 Round 2 is usually the worst round in any contest, since it's the round that separates the chaff from the wheat. Fittingly, this contest's round 2 was by FAR the worst one we've ever had. Only one match would end up any good and thanks to trend knowledge it was over even when it was close. Also round 2 began every match being 24 hours, which is good insomnia treatment. This match was just dumb all around. I understand bad bracket placement now and then, but only a year ago we saw this same exact match. Bad rematches are the worst. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4542&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs. Meta Knight vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik 2011 _source: (3)Kirby vs. Meta Knight vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik 2011 (revid 84504)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, November 20, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 20, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 12151 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik - 54.90% 97 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik - 68.61% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 260 Kirby vs. Meta Knight: 1066 Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik: 3930 I'll be the first to admit when a match pic I make blows, so I also get to give myself props for that godly Kirby pic. The pic itself is awesome, but Kirby with Meta Knight's mask on is bangin. Before the contest, this match was relatively hyped for upset potential. Sonic only scored 55% on Kirby in 2010, and most assumed Robotnik would hold Sonic down while Meta Knight would boost Kirby up some more. "Whoops" Not only did none of this happen in yet another match that was over in seconds, but Sonic went up by 7% from the year before with a character most people hate by his side. This goes to show you that iconic rivalries really did matter in this contest, while the vast majority of Kirby's strength comes not from his games, but from Smash Bros games. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4543&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man X vs. Zero vs (5)Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh 2011 _source: (1)Mega Man X vs. Zero vs (5)Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh 2011 (revid 84505)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, November 21, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 21, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 26634 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man X vs. Zero - 75.83% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man X vs. Zero - 73.59% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 76 Mega Man X vs. Zero: 5354 Bartz Klauser vs. Gilgamesh: 267 Literally the only thing worth talking about here is how Allen had to make the match picture for FF5 himself because for whatever reason the picsmiths all dropped the ball. Beyond that, all this match really proved is how trash Guybrush is. The guys who beat his team almost got quadrupled a round later by our most successful guru nomination ever. Guybrush fans are out of their goddamn minds. Still leaves Bartz and Gilgamesh with more contest wins than a whole host of Square characters though, which is hilarious. Yeah, that anorexic f\*\*\* from Dissidia who is in dire need of a hamburger has more contest wins than Red XIII, Barret, Cecil, Marle, Fei, Vaan, Final Fantasy 11, Lightning, Rydia, all the FF1 job classes and a whole load of other stuff I forgot. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4544&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool vs (2)Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion 2011 _source: (3)Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool vs (2)Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion 2011 (revid 84506)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, November 22, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 14323 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion - 67.09% 103 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion - 58.33% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 232 Donkey Kong vs. King K. Rool: 1558 Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion: 3625 If there's one thing DK is good for every year, it's making people overestimate how strong he is. Only 58% of people picked the ninjas to win twice, which is thoroughly ridiculous because DK never had a chance here. At least we saw him instead of Ezio though, so for once he didn't totally choke in a contest. Oh and because a lot of people were asking, the Mortal Kombat pic is from the MK vs DC promo. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4545&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (4)Luigi vs. Waluigi 2011 _source: (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (4)Luigi vs. Waluigi 2011 (revid 84507)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, November 23, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 30492 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 63.09% 98 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 70.88% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 138 Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue: 4702 Luigi vs. Waluigi: 750 This is seriously the dumbest pick I've ever made, even worse than taking WWF No Mercy to beat my favorite Fire Emblem as an ode to the guru. Pre-contest it seemed like a good idea I guess because we didn't fully know the impact of rivalries on certain pairings, good and bad. This match displayed both in pretty hilarious fashion. 1 on 1, Luigi smokes either trainer. But in a rivalry contest paired with arguably the most hated Nintendo character there is? Look out. I hesitate to even call this SFF, because Waluigi is hated that much, but it is kind of hard to imagine the FF4 pair doing this bad here. I guess we'll never know! This is the second contest in a row where a lot of people got it all wrong involving Pokemon and a 1 seed, and I feel like Majora's Mask \> GSC plus Luigi's strength really skewed my view here. At least I wasn't alone in picking this dumbass upset special, I guess? KP likes to say I never own up to dumb picks, and that's why he currently has a bruise the shape of my boot on his ass !! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4546&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Ryu vs. Ken vs (2)Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell 2011 _source: (3)Ryu vs. Ken vs (2)Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell 2011 (revid 84508)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, November 24, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 24, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 13653 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu vs. Ken - 65.28% 96 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu vs. Ken - 67.88% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 162 Ryu vs. Ken: 4130 Fox McCloud vs. Wolf O'Donnell: 1177 Crimson took a lot of heat for that Fox/Wolf pic, but it honestly doesn't look that bad. It's just a bad use of outer glow is all. As for the match, this was never going to be in doubt but given the Trainers going into total godmode on Wa/Luigi it was up to the fighters to prove themselves worthy of taking down the trainers. It's easy to call confirmation bias here and say 78% on Luigi just demolishes what the fighters did here, but I don't think "demolish" is really the right word. The trainers were favorites after these two matches and they were pretty clearly going to win, but not by some absurd amount. Ryu and Ken got every bit the rivalry boost this contest that the trainers did. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4547&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs. Ridley vs (4)Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo 2011 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs. Ridley vs (4)Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo 2011 (revid 84509)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, November 25, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 25, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 10752 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran vs. Ridley - 66.33% 98 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran vs. Ridley - 81.91% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 89 Samus Aran vs. Ridley: 4933 Terra Branford vs. Kefka Palazzo: 539 Lots of stuff to talk about here, and I'll start with the actual match for once. A Pyrrhic Victory is a battle that one wins in war, but at such great losses that it spells eventual doom for the army and the nation. The best example of a Pyrrhic Victory is the Battle of Thermopylae, and I believe the term even comes from that particular exchange. Maybe you've seen [the movie that got made about it?](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/) (Holy s\*\*\*, that movie is five years old already? I am getting old really fast, I remember that launch like it was yesterday.) To the point. Yeah Samus won this match, but only 61% against Terra and Kefka, really? People guessed all pre-contest that Ridley would completely screw her eventually, and they were right. There was zero chance Samus was going to make the semifinals once this match happened, and it's worth noting that it took FF6's piss-awful day vote to prevent Samus from falling below 60%. A lot predicted that Ryu and Ken would be able to take advantage of Ridley being an anchor, but it would eventually be the trainers. Right division, wrong rivalry. The match pic is also entirely mine, and though I'm really happy with how that template looks side by side using outer glow on the top sprites was just freaking dumb. It takes away from how good I feel the picture otherwise looks, though it's balanced by howgood the bottom half is. That Terra picture is adorable as anything, and that's the first time we've ever seen that particular Kefka sprite in a match pic. Angel Kefka is good, but that sprite is really underappreciated. The first time you fight Kefka, that's what you're looking at and the fight can be pretty tough if you don't know what you're doing. Zen can suck it, I give myself a solid 8 for that image. "Pyrrhic victory isn't from Thermopylae, but from King Pyrrhus who was from Epirus when he won against Romans 2 times but he lost so many soldiers that he was doomed." -Safer Sephiroth 777 Thanks, buddy. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4548&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker vs (7)Big Boss vs. The Boss 2011 _source: (3)Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker vs (7)Big Boss vs. The Boss 2011 (revid 84510)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, November 26, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 26, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 6029 - **Oracle Expectations:** Big Boss vs. The Boss - 59.58% 92 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Big Boss vs. The Boss - 37.29% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 236 Chris Redfield vs. Albert Wesker: 2196 Big Boss vs. The Boss: 2726 Given how round 1 went, it was a fair guess that the RE5 guys had a good shot at the MGS3 pair, especially given that The Boss is just weak. Unfortunately this was the Rivalry Rumble, aka the worst contest ever so something fun happening was out of the question. The match was reasonably close in percentages, but RE5 never threatened and then you look up how Waluigi's round 1 win was closer than this. And no, I will not get over that stat because it's the perfect microcosm of the Rivalry Rumble. All that said, I am surprised this match wasn't closer. Chris and Wesker have been trending up on this site and probably got a rivalry boost, and even though the bosses got that same rivalry boost I would never pick The Boss to give Wesker a good match. People either more fondly remembered the MGS3 rivalry, or realized that Resident Evil 5 and the Marvel vs Capcom 3 series is pure trash. Whatever the case, the bosses benefited a lot when I expected a really close match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4549&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (4)Amaterasu vs. Orochi 2011 _source: (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (4)Amaterasu vs. Orochi 2011 (revid 69051)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, November 27, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 27, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 37758 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 77.13% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 95.70% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 8 Link vs. Ganondorf: 5659 Amaterasu vs. Orochi: 75 There was no real hope for Not Link to win this contest after round 1, then this match happened and pretty much everyone stopped caring about this contest outside of the Pokemon trainers. We're used to seeing Ammy overperform and resist SFF, so this was just depressing to watch. It led to a massive argument about whether or not Link should be removed, and for whatever reason people keep playing the "popularity contest and Link is popular, u mad" card and comparing him to the Yankees. To that, some people are really effin dumb. The Yankees actually have a chance to lose in the playoffs, as they prove in the first round almost every year these days. Link will never lose a normal match ever again barring a complete miracle (which happened with L-Block already), otherwise he's a lock to win every contest. Link being retired is about 3 years overdue, though thankfully it finally looks like we're getting him out of here with how this contest turned out. Ammy would hardly be the only character to get godstomped to a "just f\*\*\*ing retire Link already, this is stupid" degree. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4550&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja vs (2)Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily 2011 _source: (3)Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja vs (2)Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily 2011 (revid 84511)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, November 28, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 28, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 16767 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily - 68.49% 90 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily - 79.04% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 93 Zidane Tribal vs. Kuja: 517 Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily: 4844 Just another match in the loooooong line of bad round 2 matches. This was never going to be in any doubt, and the only thing worth talking about is how great the FF9 part of the picture is. Dissidia models are nice, plus the background really works. I guess you could maybe wonder why Mega Man couldn't double a team with Kuja on it, but it barely matters since Link was the opponent next round. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4551&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth vs (4)Alucard vs. Dracula 2011 _source: (1)Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth vs (4)Alucard vs. Dracula 2011 (revid 84512)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, November 29, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 6455 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard vs. Dracula - 57.54% 91 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard vs. Dracula - 34.09% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 243 Phoenix Wright vs. Miles Edgeworth: 2383 Alucard vs. Dracula: 2631 Best overall picture of the contest by a lot. KP's Ness picture is the best individual pic, but this is the best one overall. Would have worked better with Dracula playing Jeopardy, but whatever. The match itself was actually decent for about 30 minutes, because the Phoenix Wright board vote is totally nuts. He fell off in due time though, followed by Aludrac going totally nuts overnight and continuing their assault right on through the day vote. It got so bad that Alucard actually managed to pass the freaking Waluigi percentage. The winner of Alucard/Shepard was always going to beat the lawyers, but man. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4552&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Chell vs. GLaDOS vs (2)Frog vs. Magus 2011 _source: (3)Chell vs. GLaDOS vs (2)Frog vs. Magus 2011 (revid 84513)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, November 30, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 1482 - **Oracle Expectations:** Frog vs. Magus - 52.91% 73 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Frog vs. Magus - 33.41% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 205 Chell vs. GLaDOS: 2572 Frog vs. Magus: 2438 HOLY CRAP A KIND OF GOOD MATCH THAT ACTUALLY STAYED KIND OF GOOD ALL THE WAY THROUGH AND FINISHED CLOSER THAN 55.28%. PRAISE JESUS. IT ONLY TOOK 44 F\*\*\*ING MATCHES TO HIT SOMETHING I'M ACTUALLY EXCITED TO TALK ABOUT. CAPS LOCK. CRUISE CONTROL. AWESOME. And it's even better because GLaDOS and Magus are two of my favorite characters, so whoever wins \*I\* win. When I'm happy, everyone's happy. Plus yoblazer and greatone10 gave us an absolutely perfect match picture, so yeah. Hype? Not too much. Most people assumed Chell would screw GLaDOS over and they were ultimately right. The match was never really close, either, but compared to the rest of this god-awful contest it was so nice to see something end within 55%, let alone 52. The reason GLaDOS was never able to come back from the initial Chrono Trigger surge, aside from Chell being worth nothing, is that CT was able to build a 600 lead overnight and Portal doesn't have quite the day vote necessary to take full advantage of how bad CT's day vote is. So while Portal was able to get some cuts and stalls here and there, it was never able to really push for the win. Doesn't matter though, we actually got a close match and that's all I even care about. GLaDOS scared the hell out of all the perfect battle brackets once that morning vote started, too. "'Fun' fact: Chell/GLaDOS vs. Frog/Magus was literally the only battle upset of the entire contest." -Lefty This is why we pay Lefty the big bucks here at the Board 8 Wiki. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4553&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth vs (4)Kratos vs. Zeus 2011 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth vs (4)Kratos vs. Zeus 2011 (revid 84514)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, December 1, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 1, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 28109 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth - 70.25% 92 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth - 90.19% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 25 Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth: 5345 Kratos vs. Zeus: 289 I'm not even sure if this match was supposed to be bad for Cloud or not, but it really doesn't matter. By this point we were all completely turned off to the contest and were still arguing about whether or not Link should be retired. At the very least, this might be the first match since like 2002 where Cloud had a good board vote. Thank you, God of War, for proving that something has a worse board vote than Final Fantasy 7. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4554&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Pac-Man vs. Blinky vs (2)Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake 2011 _source: (6)Pac-Man vs. Blinky vs (2)Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake 2011 (revid 84515)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, December 2, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 2, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 15717 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake - 72.65% 93 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake - 66.38% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 110 Pac-Man vs. Blinky: 923 Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake: 4391 Were this a contest worth putting effort to, I'd document how Pac-Man is legendary for never putting asses in seats. He routinely shows up on lists for matches with the lowest total votes, and I think Luster Soldier did some actuary that proved this would have been the lowest scoring match of the entire contest were it a 12 hour match. So there you go. This match also showed that MGS has lost a step. We already knew it thanks to Game of the Decade, but Snake is pretty much slowly falling off now. 67% on Pac-Man in a badly scored match is a far cry from upsetting Sephiroth and scaring the hell out of Cloud, meaning it would be almost impossible for the snakes to upset the FF7 duo next round. Liquid alone was enough of an obstacle for that, then this match happened and removed all doubt. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4555&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy vs (4)Siegfried vs. Nightmare 2011 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy vs (4)Siegfried vs. Nightmare 2011 (revid 84516)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, December 3, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 3, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 15298 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy - 68.07% 90 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy - 74.85% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 141 Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy: 4571 Siegfried vs. Nightmare: 622 65-35 type matches are the worst to talk about, though given Squall's seed and no one really caring about Soul Calibur it's hard to really make anything of this underperformance. Normally we could discuss this, but Squall's path was set in stone from the beginning. Win his division, get wrecked by Cloud. Needless to say, no one foresaw just how close Sora came to actually shocking us a round from now. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4556&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Dante vs. Vergil vs (2)Sora vs. Riku 2011 _source: (3)Dante vs. Vergil vs (2)Sora vs. Riku 2011 (revid 84517)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, December 4, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 4, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 823 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora vs. Riku - 51.61% 64 for - 25 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora vs. Riku - 60.66% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 202 Dante vs. Vergil: 1750 Sora vs. Riku: 3046 ChellDOS/Frogus was nice, but this was the first good match of the contest. For 10 hours, at least. There was a lot of hype going in, partly because Kingdom Hearts has been trending down for some time and as primed to get upset, and partly because this contest needed something fun to happen. When the match finally started, things seemed reasonably close but Sora was still winning. Then overnight he slowly increased his lead to 450, and it seemed like one of those matches where the final numbers would seem close but the winner was never in doubt. Then in the dead hours, Dante went kinda nuts. He erased the 450 votes in only three hours, but we all know how Kingdom Hearts operates during the day. Sora was easily able to come back and win comfortably, and in the end Dante failing to perform well overnight is what cost him the match. In other words, this was the Rivalry Rumble and anything fun happening was out of the question. Kingdom Hearts is going down year by year though, and it's obvious to see. We still don't have Kingdom Hearts 3, the spinoffs almost all suck outside Birth by Sleep, and now Tetsuya Nomura is saying Dream Drop Distance for the 3DS \*is\* Kingdom Hearts 3. Can someone please fire that a\*\*\*\*\*\* already? Not worth doing a round 2 wrapup because this one match and Chell v Frog are the only things worth discussing. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4557&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik 2011 _source: (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik 2011 (revid 84518)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, December 5, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 5, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 22155 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario vs. Bowser - 61.86% 85 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario vs. Bowser - 89.48% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 45 Mario vs. Bowser: 5115 Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Dr. Robotnik: 201 Our first Mario vs Sonic match of any contest in any contest (even those Battle Royale things), and we get... an SFF beating not worth talking about. Lovely. Mario v Sonic is a weird beast, because Sonic either overperforms or gets crushed with no in between (Mario v Shadow in 2003, Mario World v Sonic 2 in 2004). And no, this doesn't mean Mario v Sonic as an entry this contest would have flopped. I'm convinced Mario/Sonic win this contest, given how bad Link did in the final. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4558&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man X vs. Zero vs (2)Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion 2011 _source: (1)Mega Man X vs. Zero vs (2)Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion 2011 (revid 84519)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, December 6, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northeast - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 2797 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man X vs. Zero - 57.82% 86 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man X vs. Zero - 34.75% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 157 Mega Man X vs. Zero: 3276 Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion: 1556 This match ending up so close hit everyone out of no where, even though the ninjas never threatened to actually win. It was one of those "close in percentage only matches", though it was a real eye-opener. It doesn't really mean X and Zero were weak, either. The ninjas were just totally nuts this contest, and it's a damn crime we didn't get to see Ryu/Ken vs Sub-Zero/Scorpion. Yeah Street Fighter probably wins, but it could have been a really close match. As for why most people didn't expect this to be close, we've kind of seen this match already. Yeah it's an old match, but still. Ninjas got a RIVALRY BOOST this contest, and for whatever reason the casuals were down on the 1 seed in this division. Look at that trash prediction percentage. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4559&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (3)Ryu vs. Ken 2011 _source: (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (3)Ryu vs. Ken 2011 (revid 84520)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, December 7, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 11815 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 53.50% 67 for - 21 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 44.84% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 142 Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue: 3232 Ryu vs. Ken: 1586 Yeah so remember before this contest where lots of people thought Luigi could beat the trainers, and even if the trainers won that match the Street Fighter guys would get a rivalry boost and smoke them? LOL US PEOPLE The trainers, not the fighters, were the ones that went roughshod over this entire contest with a rivalry boost. Not only did they kick the crap out of the fighters in a pretty hyped match, but they did so in a way that showed Samus was completely f\*\*\*ed next round even \*if\* she beat the bosses. All the fighters really managed here was keeping the trainers under 60% for a short while, and they failed at even that. Right about here is where "TRAINERS SHOULD WIN AND SAVE THIS CONTEST" hype started, and they put the mother of all scares into Mario thanks to it. They ended up the stars of this contest anyway even with losing to Mario, and we'll get to that in due time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4560&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs. Ridley vs (7)Big Boss vs. The Boss 2011 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs. Ridley vs (7)Big Boss vs. The Boss 2011 (revid 84521)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, December 8, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southeast - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 8, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 3550 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran vs. Ridley - 54.96% 83 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran vs. Ridley - 54.17% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 105 Samus Aran vs. Ridley: 3749 Big Boss vs. The Boss: 1010 I loved all the people whining about this picture as if a recolored Samus made a damn of difference toward who would win this match. Also yeah, second Pyrrhic Victory for Samus in a row. The people who thought the bosses could beat her were disappointed here with the final result, but there was no way to compare this performance with what the trainers did to the fighters and expect anything good out of Samus a round from now. It should be noted here that the bosses cut about 200 votes from Samus's lead during the dead hours and that Samus needed the Nintendo day vote to put the match away, so the people who picked the bosses weren't completely nuts. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4561&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (2)Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily 2011 _source: (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (2)Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily 2011 (revid 69063)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, December 9, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 9, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 26120 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 71.25% 84 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 90.72% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 18 Link vs. Ganondorf: 4769 Mega Man vs. Dr. Wily: 138 This match seems familiar... Put Ganon on Link's team and Wily on Mega Man's, and obviously that percentage goes up. Pretty sure HM didn't pick Mega Man to beat Link this time around, too. Sorry if the Link writeups are all short, by the way, but there is NOTHING left to say about the guy anymore. At least not until the match that proved once and for all he needs to go. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4562&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Alucard vs. Dracula vs (2)Frog vs. Magus 2011 _source: (4)Alucard vs. Dracula vs (2)Frog vs. Magus 2011 (revid 84522)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, December 10, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Southwest - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 10, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 2998 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard vs. Dracula - 52.44% 70 for - 16 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard vs. Dracula - 17.25% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 268 Alucard vs. Dracula: 2237 Frog vs. Magus: 1658 This match answers the question "What happens when you pair Frog's clutch with Magus's suck?" Every single time Frog tried doing ANYTHING, Magus was right there to backhand him with the anti-clutch. Overall, it added up to a comfortable win for the vampires in which they were never truly threatened. Thus ended what was probably our most exciting division of the contest, even though none of the matches were legendary photo finish types. By the way, the 17.25% who picked the vampires to win this division are in the elite club of "biggest prediction upset of the entire contest". It wasn't even close, either. \#2 was Trainers \> Samus and Ridley at just over 30%. The final didn't even make the top 5, which is just pathetic. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4563&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth vs (2)Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake 2011 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth vs (2)Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake 2011 (revid 84523)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, December 11, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 11, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 14215 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth - 59.12% 83 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth - 79.76% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 47 Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth: 4176 Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake: 375 So hey, remember these two matches? What in the WORLD happened to Snake over the last 21 months? I know Liquid isn't much, but those two matches turning into Snake getting absolutely rolled is borderline inexplicable. Either Snake is aging too fast (thanks, MGS4), Liquid was THAT bad or this was SFF. Because you can look at what Link did to FF7 later this contest and realize that Cloud and Seph haven't exactly gone up in strength lately. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4564&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy vs (2)Sora vs. Riku 2011 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy vs (2)Sora vs. Riku 2011 (revid 84524)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, December 12, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Northwest - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 12, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 708 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy - 56.71% 71 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy - 34.52% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 146 Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy: 2474 Sora vs. Riku: 1596 For my money, this was the best match of the contest that actually counted. It bucked a lot of our trends and for quite a long time we had no clue who would win. It also caused every single whining crybaby to crawl out of the wall, including the biggest whiner of them all (iGenesis), which is always a plus. The reason no one saw this coming is because Squall had beaten Sora 4 times in a row prior. No matter the bracket placement or extraneous factors, no matter how close or how far away the match actually was, Squall won. So... 5th time's a charm, I guess? After the first update, Sora went nuts and built a 100 vote lead pretty quickly. Then Squall started stalling and it was game on. Right about here is where all the whining began, because everyone assumed the match would stay too close overnight and Kingdom Hearts would just go nuts during the day. Didn't really happen that way, though. Squall went totally nuts overnight, building up an 800 vote lead before the morning vote really began, and once the morning vote started.... nothing really happened. And nothing continued happening all the way up to the ASV where he led by more than 1500 votes. That right there is why Sora lost, because had he kept things closer in the morning he would have come back during the ASV and ruined everyone's day. It's also the trend few saw coming, but Sora is known for going crazy during the morning too. The ASV still happened, of course, but all it meant was Sora would lose by 700 votes instead of 1500. Final Fantasy doesn't get much credit for having a good day vote since it isn't of Nintendo or Kingdom Hearts quality, but it can hold its own against the right competition. I think this match also shows that Seifer was a fraud, and that to an extent Kingdom Hearts has been the major reason for a lot of Square characters retaining their strength even as the games have aged. KINGDOM HEARTS FACTOR LIVES !! With this upset also falling flat, it pretty much meant the rest of the contest was beyond predictable. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4565&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (1)Mega Man X vs. Zero 2011 _source: (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (1)Mega Man X vs. Zero 2011 (revid 84525)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, December 13, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 17969 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario vs. Bowser - 66.62% 82 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario vs. Bowser - 81.01% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 23 Mario vs. Bowser: 4121 Mega Man X vs. Zero: 200 This match seems familiar... Oh, right. Almost the exact same percentage, too, even with adding in X and Bowser. Isn't it nice to see a doubling in the fourth round of a contest? It's not, of course. Man the last rounds of this contest were horrible. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4566&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (1)Samus Aran vs. Ridley 2011 _source: (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (1)Samus Aran vs. Ridley 2011 (revid 84526)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, December 14, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 11652 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 59.30% 77 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 30.21% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 159 Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue: 2591 Samus Aran vs. Ridley: 1145 It's one thing to know in advance the trainers were going to annihilate Samus, but another thing entirely to see it unfold. Remember when Yokozuna ended Hulkamania and Hogan didn't return to the WWF for 10 years? There was a clear changing of the guard there, and everyone sensed it. Same thing here. Granted this match says nothing of Samus's 1 on 1 strength, but Pokemon is clearly going to be a force on this site for years after this contest. Notable here is how no one in the Noble Nine had ever lost a 24 hour 1 on 1 match to anyone else except other members of the Noble Nine, until this very match. We're not far from seeing one of them lose an actual 1 on 1 24 hour match, but at this point people are just using the gimmicked up contests as an excuse to defend them. Crono would have absolutely lost to Missingno if the match were 24 hours long. The only thing that remained from here was just how far the trainers could go. Beating Mario would be a monumental, but not impossible, task. Then in the final, anything could happen. The trainers would go on to lose to Mario, of course, but not before scaring the absolute daylights out of him. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4567&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (4)Alucard vs. Dracula 2011 _source: (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (4)Alucard vs. Dracula 2011 (revid 69069)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, December 15, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 15, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 29852 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 75.77% 74 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 82.11% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 16 Link vs. Ganondorf: 3845 Alucard vs. Dracula: 69 So if you take this match, and add in Ganon and Dracula, Link goes way up. Shocking. This reminds me a lot of Scorpion's run in Summer 2002. Scorpion made a deep run that year, and in the quarterfinals he ran into Link. He scored a grand total of 24.02% of the votes. Alucard and Dracula made almost the exact same run, ran into Link, and almost scored the exact same percentage. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4568&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth vs (1)Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy 2011 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth vs (1)Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy 2011 (revid 84527)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, December 16, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 16, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 26403 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth - 73.69% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth - 74.97% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 32 Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth: 3424 Squall Leonhart vs. Seifer Almasy: 53 7 years made a .06% difference, although this really did help lay out how screwed Cloud and Seph were next round. Putting Cloud and Seph on one side while pairing Squall with a total fraud should have increased Cloud's percentage by a lot, but it didn't. People only really saw this poll as FF7 vs FF8, nothing extra, and Cloud/Seph needed a lot of "extra" to have any prayer of beating Link next round. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4569&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue 2011 _source: (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue 2011 (revid 84528)_ ## Results **Round Five** Saturday, December 17, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 17, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 5848 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario vs. Bowser - 54.93% 69 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario vs. Bowser - 68.11% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 85 Mario vs. Bowser: 2580 Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue: 475 For an hour, this was the match of the contest. These two were more or less tied, and you could make an argument the trainers had some real momentum during those first 60 minutes. Unfortunately, the trainers have joke trends and IT'S FREAKING MARIO. From hour 1 through hour 24, Mario's lead increased by 5800 votes and he more than proved he was worthy of the final. An upset would have been cool of course, but you can't really say Mario and Bowser didn't deserve the make the final of a rivalry contest. Those two are iconic, they've been around forever and they got the most nominations for a reason. They may have even had the most brackets given how much higher Mario's prediction percentage to make the final was compared to Link's, but we'll never really know. The trainers would get one last chance to prove that they were the stars of this contest, though. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4570&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth 2011 _source: (1)Link vs. Ganondorf vs (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth 2011 (revid 69072)_ ## Results **Round Five** Sunday, December 18, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 18, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 9745 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 53.97% 67 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 53.72% - **Battle Contest Predictions:** Banked: 40 Link vs. Ganondorf: 1488 Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth: 417 Normally I'd go through the Link vs Cloud history but it's not really needed here. This match was honestly really hilarious, in a morbid kind of way. For years, we've been saying Link needs to be retired. Then he comes and proves why and it was glorious. I love FF7 as much as anyone, but seeing this match was like reading a sentence that had never been typed or written before, like "I'm not getting into an argument with my unborn child on Facebook". Don't let that 58% fool you, by the way. This match was a lot worse, especially early. At the freeze, Link was at 60.75%. which was hilarious enough, but then 5 minutes later he went up. Then he went up again. And again. And again. Then he peaked at 62.63% before stabilizing a bit and ultimately (slowly) getting brought back down to the percentage you see above. The fact Cloud had to "save face" by keeping Link under 60% shows just how untouchable Link is, as well as just how far Cloud has fallen. Link will never again lose a normal contest match (this includes fictional characters against Batman, which we'll never see anyway because Allen is allergic to listening to other people's best ideas), and after the contest we had a neat poll called "Do you think Link should be removed from future character battles?" The "yes" option overwhelmingly won that poll, so it looks like we're finally all getting what we want. It's only 4 years overdue and the site is a relic now, so we'll never see Link retired fully in a contest with max vote totals, but hey! ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4571&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth 2011 _source: (1)Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (1)Cloud Strife vs. Sephiroth 2011 (revid 84529)_ ## Results **Bonus** Monday, December 19, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Bonus - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 19, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 10 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokemon Trainer Red vs. Pokemon Trainer Blue - 47.33% 21 for - 51 against The ultimate referendum on the Rivalry Rumble -- the best match of this (and maybe any other) contest didn't even count. The lack of prediction percentage is not a typo. In a way, you could argue that this is the most accurate contest result we've ever had since nothing was on the line. No bracket votes to worry about, in other words. This was just everyone voting for their favorite to win and having fun along the way. Though when this started, it looked like the trainers were going to absolutely godmode this match. The trainers were getting board votes out the ass early, and at the freeze they were near 60%. It reminded me a lot of L-Block, actually, because even though we all knew FF7 would make a push later against the joke trends you had to wonder if they would fall behind by way too much first. Remember, this is probably the site's most beloved entity short of Link against the most hated. This was going to get a lot uglier before it got better. And get uglier it did. It only took 3 hours for the trainers to build a lead of 1000 votes, though 3 a.m. EST is about when Square starts going nuts. So in true "classic match" fashion, the lead was not destined to last. FF7 went all Climhazzard on that s\*\*\* and cut it right in half before the morning vote, and FF7 actually has a good day vote so it didn't thoroughly collapse once the day vote started. It actually kept going up, to where we all thought the trainers were kind of screwed and couldn't hold on. FF7 came back, and cameback, even with all the trainer stalling, and then.... bam. The legendary tied update. Imagine this actually happening in an actual bracket. The tie happened at 11:30 in the morning, but obviously FF7 was going to mosey on by, right? Nope. The next four f\*\*\*ing hours was just a gigantic stall/tie, and neither team was able to move even an inch, much like the old Chrono Trigger vs LTTP duel in 2004. So right about here we all assumed the ASV would take over and Pokemon would win. But even that trend didn't shape up as we thought. The ASV did happened, but the trainers only got up to a 250 vote lead with it before getting stalled again. For the next three hours, defying every trend we know, this match hovered between a 200 and 250 vote lead for the trainers. There were even rallies going on. We were actually having fun! It was like... you know, an actual GameFAQs Contest or something! Then the evening vote kicked in, which is historically Square time. Soooo Cloud and Seph dug in and started the slow inchworm act to get rid of the 250 votes, and with 5 hours left in the poll they managed to get that bad boy under 100. Then they kicked up the pace and erased that whole lead in like 10 seconds (it was actually like 45 minutes, but bear with me), and looked like they would stomp to the win here. But no! "AND DOWN THE STRETCH THEY COME!", as Dave Johnson would say. These two just stalled. And stalled. And stalled. It was exactly what the CT/LTTP match was supposed to be, but the goddamn idiotic west coast trash start/end time ruined it. Point is, these two stalled and tied and inchworm'd their freaking balls off for update after update, hour after hour. It was the only time all contest where the board was enraptured in a contest match instead of arguing over pedophilia and anime (because that's totally the way to impress girls you guys, keep it up). This all culminated in perhaps the most legendary final hour we'll ever see. At 11:17, the match was dead effin tied. Then Pokemon started rallying its ass off, but here the thing: It wasn't really working that well. The trainers led by 5, then FF7 led by 7, then the trainers led by 16. It all came right down to the end, where Pokemon finally got an influx of votes and managed to lead by 30 with one update to go. FF7 had the right strategy in place. Don't have Pokemon needing to go nuts in that last update, or you'll lose. FF7 was actually the one to win the last update big, but it was juuuuuust barely not enough. Final Score: Trainers win by 10 votes. Vlado and iGenesis of course made absolute fools of themselves, like they always do when Pokemon is involved, which made this amazing match all the better. Unfortunately, there's no real way to analyze this except that people wanted the trainers to win more and that early vote just annihilated FF7. In a contest match between RBY and FF7? I'd pick RBY, but it would be an absolute barn-burner just like this one. There's also the matter of where this match stands on the all-time list, but the "doesn't count" thing hurts it a bit. My top 10: 1. Majora's Mask \> Brawl, Fall 2010 2. Starcraft \> Halo, Spring 2004 3. Mario \> Crono, Summer 2003 4. Chrono Trigger \> LTTP, Spring 2004 5. Mario \> Cloud, Summer 2002 6. Trainers \> Cloud/Seph, Fall 2011 7. L-Block in the final, Summer 2007 8. Cloud \> Link, Summer 2003 9. Samus \> Sonic, Summer 2002 10. Majora's Mask \> FFX, Fall 2010 ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4573&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (1)Link vs. Ganondorf 2011 _source: (1)Mario vs. Bowser vs (1)Link vs. Ganondorf 2011 (revid 69074)_ ## Results **Championship** Tuesday, December 20, 2011 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Final - **Match \#:** 64 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - **Vote difference:** 8584 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 61.92% 70 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link vs. Ganondorf - 37.49% We follow up the amazing third place match with... this. It was okay for a little while when a combination of bracket voting and Link anti-voting led to Mario winning early, but it didn't last. The silver lining though was Mario finally breaking 40% on Link, which was nice to see. So even though Link won the war, Mario finally won a battle against him. The reason this was important is because Allen put an Oracle Challenge into place for the final, since something like 50 battle brackets were perfect and the tie needed to be broken. There were all these parameters that I don't really feel like going over, but the basic idea is that you could pick a percentage range. The smaller the range you pick, the higher the score payout and you could go Final Jeopardy style and bet all or none of your points. This led to some people being absolutely terrible and losing all their points (with some legendary whining to boot), and other people pulling off amazing actuaries and picking Link with 57-58% of the vote. It was nice to see, and helped ease us through a boring final and ultimately conclude the worst contest we've ever had. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=4572&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k11&type=match&match=64) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match** # Character Battle IX (2013) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 125 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Summer 2013 Contest _source: Summer 2013 Contest (revid 85218)_ | Announced: | June 10, 2013 | |------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Started | July 8, 2013 | | Ended: | September 16, 2013 | | Winner: | Draven | | Contest Winner: | BowtotheTWIG | | Notable matches: | Alucard/Falcon/Rydia, Missingno/Tidus/Banjo, Ezio/Auron/L-Block, Mario/Vivi/Ganondorf, Zelda/DK/Charizard, Cloud/Squirtle/Leon, Mega Man/Zero/Charizard, All Draven Matches | **Spring 2013 Contest** **Summer 2013 Contest** was the ninth GameFAQs character tournament held on GameFAQs. The format diverged from 1-on-1 again, but this time for 1-on-1-on-1, with the top voted moving on. This was probably made to fit something no Board 8er complained about: fitting the ninth edition, there are nine divisions, with the top seeds being the Noble Nine. ### Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis Way back when Allen originally announced this contest, and man that seems like forever ago, there was a ton of excitement in the air. It had been three years since the previous contest for reasons unknown, and Board 8 was allowed massive influence over the entrants. It was the biggest single-board influence over a contest since Current Events had free reign over who got into the Summer 2002 Contest. We also didn't have to deal with the nonsense of vote-in polls this year, because 243 characters got in. Allen was clearly very excited about this contest, because he was in constant touch with us and spoiled everything for us first. The short of it is that he released one seed at a time, outsourced all the character bios, and revealed a massive 243 character, 12-hour threeway poll contest, with 24 hour polling from round 3 on. There were also a ton of cute touches to it, namely the Noble Nine being the nine 1 seeds, an homage to the 3 seed curse with all the 3 seeds being newcomers, and the 8 seeds all being rallied Board 8 characters. I'll save my opinion of the setup for when all the writeups are done, but I will say that this was a cool idea to try once. It meant for some crazy situations where characters could lose matches that they would never lose 1 on 1, and this contest would definitely deliver on that front. Lastly, there were tons of new features to the poll results page. New maps, new results screen, new stat pages, a new expert challenge... pretty much everything was balls-to-the-wall this year to account for the massive layoff. And despite what everyone will say about this contest in the coming years, this was a VERY fun contest much like Summer 2003 Contest. ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis There's a lot I could say about this contest, but I'll keep it simple and positive. Everyone knows about Reddit and Draven, but even without them this contest was completely nuts. The Vivi \> Mario upset, Pokemon going crazy, Mega Man beating Charizard even with Zero in the poll, and Final Fantasy 7 tanking are a few examples, but not to be forgotten in all this is how threeway polls were a cool new idea. Once. Unlike fourways, this is not an idea that should ever come back, simply because it was just way too much. 243 characters is insane, as is 121 matches, 125 if you include bonus polls. The less is more philosophy should be used more often, and the 128 character format with 12 hour polls in the early rounds was really good. Allen had it right with starting the 24 hours polls in round 3 instead of round 4, too, so full marks on that. That being said, ranking this contest is very difficult. Some matches were awesome, some left me wondering how the site's administrator could turn his back on it when the opportunity to stop the rallying was right there. Allen was nice enough to make a topic explaining everything though, finally, and I saved it for archiving purposes: SBAllen posted...I was planning on doing a big writeup at the end of the contest, but since everybody is asking for one now, here you go. 1\) The /r/leagueoflegends factor The 70,000 difference in votes from Link/Shepard/Draven to Sonic/Mewtwo/Bowser is 99% accountable to Reddit users, according to Google Analytics and our own internal tracking. New voters (most of whom were Reddit users, although we don't track where someone visited from to how they vote) voted 3:2 for Draven over Link. They did not 100% for Draven, as many seem to assume. However, those 70,000 visitors from Reddit are a drop in the bucket to our overall site traffic. Reddit accounted for less than 5% of our traffic that day, which is a whole lot more than they normally do, but for comparison, weekends this time of year give us a 16% boost in traffic over weekdays. The poll page, even with the increase in traffic from reddit, wasn't even the most popular page on the site on Labor Day (that was the home page, as always). A lot of people seem to think that I'm doing everything possible to keep Draven in the contest so we keep getting the boost in traffic, but it is simply such an irrelevant boost that it wouldn't be worth the effort. We aren't interested in people who hit the site and never come back. Oh, and one last thing about those visitors. According to Google, from the first Draven rally in July, it was their first visit to GameFAQs for less than half of them. By the Labor Day rally, 80% of them had visited GameFAQs previously, which is what you'd expect from the same people coming back again and again to vote for Draven. 2\) Cheating, rallying, and conflicts of interest I'm not going to define conflict of interest here, but the only way to avoid them in something like this is to be consistent, and to not intervene in the contest except as absolutely necessary. The rules state that we can intervene in case of vote stuffing, which we did, or that we can even just shut down the contests or make massive changes in case of unauthorized intervention or fraud, but that simply didn't happen. First of all, there was no DDoS, from Reddit or anywhere else. Our load balancers/proxy servers for our web servers had an out-of-memory issue after 300+ days of uptime. This had happened before to the load balancers for our database (back on December 26, also during a holiday, when the boards were down for an hour or two), but this was the first time it happened to our web servers, catching everybody off guard due to the holiday. Because the site was slow but still responding most of the 90 minute "outage", the first "site down" alert didn't come for over an hour. Once the operations team was finally paged out, restarting the servers fixed the issue immediately. One thing we absolutely failed to do was to have a clear policy in place in case of outages. If we had one, it would have been very clear and wouldn't have come into effect unless there was a massive failure (something like a full outage preventing or impacting votes for more than six hours). We didn't though, meaning that any action we took in the Link/Shepard/Draven battle was going to be seen as (and may have actually been) a conflict of interest. Without any policy in place, all we could really do is let the battles play out without any intervention, unless there was vote stuffing. This won't be a problem in future contests(?) as we'll have a contingency plan for site blackouts in place before they happen. We state up front that we reserve the right to adjust vote totals in case of vote stuffing, which is one person voting many times. We did just that in several battles where there was clear evidence that one person, using a VPN, was registering hundreds and hundreds of votes all by themselves. We caught that person red-handed, banned them, zeroed out their contest entry (they were on the leaderboard), and adjusted our anti-vote-stuffing code over the course of the next few days to prevent it from happening again, as that same person still kept trying new methods of stuffing votes. The huge boost in the number of votes in Draven battles matches up with both our internal and external traffic numbers, and everything about those voters looks distinctly human. There's not one person spamming thousands of votes (like we caught and stopped), there are thousands of voters visiting the site and voting once, and everything from our internal tracking to Google to ad serving rates confirms that. Last night, I was watching Netflix with my wife and Devin was playing Final Fantasy XIV. I decided to check in on things before I went to bed. I was shocked when I visited this board to find myself being accused of rigging the contest, being a hypocrite, and much worse. I found out that the mods of the /r/leagueoflegends subreddit were shutting down rally topics, at the request of GameFAQs staff. I messaged them with my official reddit account that I used for my AMA, and asked exactly who it was they talked to from our site, confirming that we do not have any restrictions on external rallies. They simply reinstated the rally topic, not mentioning anything else, and that was it. That's all that I know about the topic. Now, if I were to go to reddit and demand that /r/leagueoflegends stop rallying for Draven, then that is a conflict of interest, unless I go out and demand that every other site that mentions the contest stop doing so as well. I'm not the Internet police and the rules on rallies aren't so much that we want other sites to come in and rally votes for their favorite characters, it's that we really have no technical or legal means of stopping it. If a site started rallying, I asked them to quit, and they didn't, what then? Do I shut down the contest, or just award the victory to my favorite character? What if they were rallying to force the other character to win by default? Where does my interference on the outcomes of the battles end? Unless a single person is stuffing votes, which we specifically disallow and try to prevent, I have to let the battles play out. That's the only thing I can do per the rules of the contest, not to mention ethically and legally. 3\) Changing the rules This contest, like any other contest, has a legally binding set of rules, and we can't change the rules, voting restrictions, or guidelines on external rallies in the middle of it just because we don't like the way things are going. Nobody complaining about the rules now complained before the contest started, and those have been the exact same rules for our battle contests for many years now. That being said, we did not expect /r/leagueoflegends to rally like it has. When the contest was being built, we were hoping to get both minor and even major publishers boosting up their games, and even independent game fanbases to rally up for their characters. The real problem is that it only happened once, for Draven, and nobody else, and it happened with such a force that not even Link could survive it. If other companies or fanbases had rallied their characters as hard as League of Legends fans did, there wouldn't have be an issue, but it's hard for any other group to stand up to such a massive and organized group of fans. And let's face it, they are fans. They're not coming to GameFAQs to ruin things (well, a few of them are, and they're very loud and gloating about it, but they're definitely not representative of the whole). 4\) Registered users only If, hypothetically, we were to restrict the contest voting to registered GameFAQs users (which we can't do in the middle of the contest, and which we couldn't get a budget or justify the hours for an entire contest), then we'd have a lot fewer votes (registered users only account for around 1/3 of the total), and a lot of different results: 5149: Jak over Draven 5171: Falcon over Alucard 5220: ?-Block over Rikku 5227: Mega Man X over Draven 5232: Luigi over Big Boss 5246: Mario over Vivi 5247: Missingno over Squall 5251: Zelda over Charizard 5253: Link over Draven 5255: Kirby over Sephiroth 5261: Charizard over Mega Man It's not all about Draven. Non-registered users impact quite a few battles, and would leave us with completely different results. 5\) This contest proves GameFAQs is dying Nope, we're stronger than ever. More users, more traffic, etc. it's just that the Internet has grown around us. Fifteen years ago, the Internet was reserved for the technically literate, five years ago, your parents were using the Internet, and now even your grandparents are online all the time. This contest does show how much the topography of the Internet has changed. Before, if someone needed help on a game, our average visitor came to GameFAQs via the home page, and then searched for their game. Today, the average visitor does a deep search on Google ("How to beat Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts"), and they're directed to one of many different pages on GameFAQs: a FAQ, a board topic, or even a question in GameFAQs Answers. The home page of GameFAQs today gets half of the traffic it received five years ago, and that's reflected in the Poll of the Day totals. Fewer people hitting the home page means fewer people voting. The rest of the site gets a lot more traffic, but they're not even seeing the polls. Even a lot of long-time registered users skip the home page and go straight to the Boards page. Our home page just doesn't have a lot of compelling content and never really has. The Poll of the Day is actually one of the big draws to it. This is something that we actually plan to address in the near future, attempting to make the home page an interesting landing destination for our users. 6\) Is it worth it? That's the big question. This contest was truly created with a lot of love for Board 8, but the rest of the Internet gets to participate, and at that point it's out of our hands. This isn't the first time that outside forces have rallied for a character, it's just the first time it's been such an unpopular one. Future character battles could suffer the same fate. Or, they could just be boring snooze-fests where the Noble Nine reign supreme and Link is unmatched. I don't know which is worse. I was hoping with that between the three-way battles, expanded roster, and the ability to vote from (and promote) the poll page itself, that the old boring Link-always-wins contest would be different this year, but... Despite all of the conspiracies, this contest doesn't really make us any money or bring in very many new users. In fact, when you take into account all of the time spent building it up, checking for vote-stuffing, doing writeups like these, and just trying to keep things running, time arguably better spent actually adding new content and features to the site, it's hard to argue that it's worth the trouble anymore. But it's fun. Or at least, it was. In previous contests, there simply wasn't a dedicated force like /r/leagueoflegends that could singlehandedly swing the outcome of the contest, and it's just going to get worse from here. If we have a Best Game Ever contest in a few years and League of Legends (or whatever the MOBA of the moment is years from now) fans rally their game to win, it's not really fun for the GameFAQs members who enjoy these contests, including me. So, is this the last of the Character Battle (and Best Game Ever) contests in their current format? Maybe. There aren't going to be a lot of good memories from this one, and the issue of large external communities rallying is only going to get worse. Online games are getting bigger and more dedicated fanbases that are making the old Starcraft (Blizzard.net) and L-Block (4chan) rallies look rather tame. The problem is that there isn't really any fair way to limit who can vote. If we require registration to vote, we'll just get flooded with novelty accounts that are abandoned. It won't slow anyone down. If we only allow votes from people with X karma, it's unfair to the normal influx of new users who join our site on a daily basis to tell them that they aren't trusted enough to vote in our polls. But, all is not lost. We've got some ideas for at least one more home page bracket battle that (probably) shouldn't lend itself to such huge external rallies, and some other ideas on keeping the spirit of the Character Battle alive while giving the users of GameFAQs control over the outcome. Whether or not those ideas come to fruition depends a lot on you, the members of Board 8, and what you want to happen. You're some of the oldest and most dedicated users of GameFAQs, and a lot of the most enjoyable, but the amount of hate and vitriol over the past few weeks has been unacceptable. You can disagree with what I did (or didn't do), but the personal attacks don't really help the situation at all. But, I'd like to think that's just a small and vocal minority, so we'll see how it plays out from here. So with that said, it's good to know that Allen was as seemingly annoyed with everything as we were, and Board 8 would be lying to themselves if they tried saying they weren't acting just as bad as Reddit in some avenues. I also did promise the dude in private a fair evaluation in the PCA, so here goes. I'd give him a straight B, since while overall he did a good job, the lack of any foresight or backup plan in case of an outage isn't exactly acceptable -- especially given such outages have happened before and have caused either match restarts or full 24 hour extensions. Technology has gotten out of control, but that doesn't mean it can't break. There should have been a plan in place. I'm also willing to honestly believe that Link/Shep/Draven was a coincidence, but that doesn't mean I think it was handled well. Neither were Draven's last two matches. That being said, I'm okay with rallying from outside sources. Truly, I am. But Allen needs to actually take a stand with it instead of waffling like he did. Once the personal attacks started, he checked out. I don't blame him and I will never defend the idiots who went after him, but I do hope he learned something from the experience beyond "contests aren't fun". Not the least of which should be that he needs to make a decision and stick with it, and people will agree even if it's a decision they don't like. That's what goes into making leaders and men that are respected. If you like rallies, say so and be okay with them. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's no need to explain away people who don't do it. If r/LoL is the only thing that shows up in force, good on them. With that being said, the forums need to be moderated a LOT more heavily during contest time if blatant invasions are going on. The crap Reddit got away with on Board 8 during Draven's last three matches was unreal, and mods really need to stop hiding behind the "if you don't mark it, we can't do anything" excuse. I'll guarantee these people didn't sit around waiting for things to get marked when Reddit spammed for Cory in the House. Why then does Reddit get away with invading Board 8? I don't understand. So in conclusion, I hope Allen starts having fun with contests again. And for the love of all things, can we PLEASE get a 128 game bracket, 12 hour matches for the first two rounds, no division by era? You can even remove FF7 and Ocarina of Time and hold a tournament of champions, though it may not be necessary since League of Legends will be the favorite. That contest would be amazing! You want to prove you listen to us and are a man of the people, Allen? We've been asking for that contest for nearly 10 years. Give us what we want. People look forward to my contest ranking every season for whatever reason, and here it is: Fall 2010 (GotD) Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2013 (Characters) Winter 2010 (Characters) Summer 2005 (Characters) Fall 2009 (Games 4-way) Summer 2007 (Characters 4-way) Summer 2006 (Females vs Males) Spring 2006 (Series) Summer 2008 (Characters 4-way) Summer 2004 (Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) Fall 2011 (Rivalries) Last, but not least... The Ultimate Loser™! Adol Chrisin! Going by first place \> last place.... Draven \> Samus \> Red \> Squall \> Amaterasu \> Adol First place \> second place just for fun.... Draven \> Snake \> Pikachu \> Sora \> Gilgamesh \> Booker Thanks and see you next year! Also, sorry for taking so long to finish this. I got super burned out right in the middle =/ ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
Division 1
\(1\) Link (18) Isaac (Binding) (27) Tingle Link Raiden Yoshi Link Shepard Draven
\(6\) Raiden (13) Waluigi (22) Alan Wake
\(9\) Yoshi (10) Solaire of Astora (19) Demi-Fiend
\(2\) Commander Shepard (17) Captain Olimar (26) Kain Shepard Tharja Aerith
\(5\) Tharja (14) Juliet Starling (23) Tiny Tina
\(8\) Hero (11) Rinoa Heartilly (20) Aerith Gainsborough
\(3\) Draven (16) Chie Satonaka (25) Jak Draven Ryu X
\(4\) Yuri Lowell (15) Ryu (24) Face McShooty
\(7\) Mega Man X (12) Welkin Gunther (21) Jigglypuff
Division 2
\(1\) Sonic the Hedgehog (18) Fei Fong Wong (27) Dan Hibiki Sonic Dracula Barret Sonic Mewtwo Bowser
\(6\) Lucina (13) Dracula (22) Caim
\(9\) Professor Layton (10) Barret Wallace (19) Reimu Hakurei
\(2\) Phoenix Wright (17) Marth (26) Nightmare Phoenix Vincent Mewtwo
\(5\) KOS-MOS (14) Dunban (23) Vincent Valentine
\(8\) Chester (11) Mewtwo (20) Zero (999)
\(3\) Chrom (16) The Boss (25) Heavy The Boss Sub-Zero Bowser
\(4\) Garrus Vakarian (15) Sub-Zero (24) Frank West
\(7\) Bowser (12) Archer (21) Meta-Knight
Division 3
\(1\) Sephiroth (18) Midna (27) Little Mac Sephiroth Morrigan Spyro Sephiroth Big Boss Kirby
\(6\) Morrigan Aensland (13) Miles Edgeworth (22) Agent 47
\(9\) Spyro the Dragon (10) Clementine (19) Reyn
\(2\) Luigi (17) Balthier Bunansa (26) Jade Luigi Big Boss Ness
\(5\) Big Boss (14) Peacock (23) Captain Viridian
\(8\) CATS (11) Ness (20) Locke Cole
\(3\) Elizabeth (16) Poison (25) Thrall Elizabeth Kirby Crash
\(4\) Kirby (15) Terra Branford (24) Princess Peach
\(7\) Wheatley (12) Crash Bandicoot (21) Tommy Vercetti
Division 4
\(1\) Solid Snake (18) Isaac (27) Commander Keen Snake Alucard Bayonetta Snake GlaDOS Kefka
\(6\) Alucard (13) Captain Falcon (22) Rydia
\(9\) Bayonetta (10) N (19) Wander
\(2\) GlaDOS (17) Cole (26) Ragna the Bloodedge GlaDOS Ike Epona
\(5\) Ike (14) Protoman (23) Dr. Robotnik
\(8\) Epona (11) Mordin Solus (20) Niko Bellic
\(3\) Shulk (16) Ratchet (25) Altair Altair Lara Kefka
\(4\) Lara Croft (15) Yuri Hyuga (24) Slime
\(7\) Kefka (12) Zack Fair (21) Ryu Hayabusa
Division 5
\(1\) Cloud Strife (18) Steven Armstrong (27) Prinny Cloud Frog Lugia Cloud Squirtle Leon
\(6\) Handsome Jack (13) Frog (22) Viewtiful Joe
\(9\) Sly Cooper (10) Francis York Morgan (19) Lugia
\(2\) Dante (17) Laharl (26) Raz Dante Squirtle Zidane
\(5\) Squirtle (14) Ramza Beoulve (23) JC Denton
\(8\) Spring Breeze Dancin' (11) Zidane Tribal (20) Ridley
\(3\) Yu Narukami (16) Shadow the Hedgehog (25) Kat Shadow Leon Gordon
\(4\) Leon Kennedy (15) Albert Wesker (24) Oliver
\(7\) Gordon Freeman (12) Hades (21) Simon Belmont
Division 6
\(1\) Crono (18) Sarah Kerrigan (27) Missile Crono Pikachu Magus Pikachu Sora Blue
\(6\) Pikachu (13) Lloyd Irving (22) Big Daddy
\(9\) Magus (10) Hal "Otacon" Emmerich (19) Jade Curtiss
\(2\) Sora (17) Scorpion (26) Aya Brea Sora Gilgamesh Yoshimitsu
\(5\) Booker Dewitt (14) Gilgamesh (23) Kaim Argonar
\(8\) Groose (11) Lu Bu (20) Yoshimitsu
\(3\) Lee Everett (16) Meat Boy (25) Mr. Game and Watch Mr. Game Drake Blue
\(4\) Nathan Drake (15) Steve (24) Pac-Man
\(7\) Fox McCloud (12) Pokemon Trainer Blue (21) Wolf O'Donnell
Division 7
\(1\) Samus Aran (18) Isaac Clarke (27) Sandbag Samus Catherine Knuckles Samus L-Block Tifa
\(6\) Neku Sakuraba (13) Vaas Montenegro (22) Catherine
\(9\) Knuckles the Echidna (10) Seifer Almasy (19) Celes Chere
\(2\) Ezio Auditore da Firenze (17) Miles "Tails" Prower (26) Bomberman Ezio Auron L-Block
\(5\) Auron (14) Revolver Ocelot (23) Roxas
\(8\) L-Block (11) Teemo (20) Palutena
\(3\) Dragonborn (16) Tom Nook (25) Pyramid Head Dragonborn Yuna Tifa
\(4\) Master Chief (15) Yuna (24) Claire Redfield
\(7\) Tifa Lockhart (12) Cirno (21) Chun-Li
Division 8
\(1\) Mario (18) Duke Nukem (27) Fawful Mario Vivi Ganondorf Vivi Squall Red
\(6\) Vivi (13) Adam Jensen (22) Marisa Kirisame
\(9\) Ganondorf (10) Guybrush Threepwood (19) Max Payne
\(2\) Squall Leonhart (17) Rayman (26) Commander Video Squall Amaterasu Missingno
\(5\) Amaterasu (14) Vyse (23) Adol Christin
\(8\) Missingno (11) Tidus (20) Banjo
\(3\) Creeper (16) Wario (25) The King of All Cosmos Wario Red Wrex
\(4\) Pokemon Trainer Red (15) Corvo Attano (24) Sissel
\(7\) Pit (12) Urdnot Wrex (21) Cecil Harvey
Division 9
\(1\) Mega Man (18) Geno (27) Magikarp Mega Man Kratos Jill Mega Man Zero Charizard
\(6\) Kratos (13) Travis Touchdown (22) Recette Lemongrass
\(9\) Red Bird (10) Mike Haggar (19) Jill Valentine
\(2\) Zero (17) Kratos Aurion (26) Boko Zero Cube Rikku
\(5\) Lenneth Valkyrie (14) Claptrap (23) Weighted Companion Cube
\(8\) ? Block (11) Lyndis (20) Rikku
\(3\) John Marston (16) Zelda (25) Sackboy Zelda DK Charizard
\(4\) Lightning (15) Donkey Kong (24) Falco Lombardi
\(7\) Charizard (12) Riku (21) Nier
Final 9
Draven Mewtwo Sephiroth Draven Snake Samus
Snake Squirtle Pikachu
Samus Red Mega Man
--- ## (1)Link vs (18)Isaac (Binding) vs (27)Tingle 2013 _source: (1)Link vs (18)Isaac (Binding) vs (27)Tingle 2013 (revid 88697)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 9th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I'll spare the old lecture about Nintendo always having the overall 1 seed and stomping, because going over that for the 218th time is boring. Instead, I'm going to defend Tingle. Seriously, Tingle is a good character. Japan created him to make entirely fun of the American weaboo, and somehow the weaboo crowd hasn't caught onto this. He's fat, creepy, can't dress, is probably a literal pedophile in-game, and might be one of the most annoying characters ever. The joke caught on so hard in Japan that Tingle got his own game, and the Americans obsessed with all things Japan still can't figure it out. The best irony is self inflicted, and anime-obsessed western audiences are the best example. For that, Tingle is awesome. Hey anime fans: every time you're spending more money on anime than most crackheads will ever spend on their fix, look at Tingle and realize it's what Japan thinks of you. Oh yeah, there was a match here too. The new expert challenge made the placement of all three characters matter rather than only the winner, so while Link winning was obvious, second place mattered. Tingle was actually doing pretty well for himself early, before the SFF kicked in and Isaac, uh... "cruised" to a 1000 vote win. And no, this was not Golden Sun Isaac. Yeah, this contest had complete garbage all over round 1. Seriously, go look at the bracket and look at all that fodder nonsense. The last thing to take from this match, and we've known this for years, is that Link has lost a step. It's just that everyone else has lost a step too, so it hasn't been as easy to notice. But Link not completely obliterating Tingle and Tingle almost getting second here was embarrassing. It was a reminder that Link 2004 is probably the strongest Link. That Link got 88% on Ganondorf, 82% on Yoshi and just obliterated Cloud. 86% on Tingle compared to 88% on Ganondorf is honestly kind of hilarious, all things considered. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis ok yeah it's Link. He got 73% in the opening round against Tingle and Isaac. Does that mean Link is weak? Snake confirmed new strongest Noble Nine member? People jumped to a lot of conclusions because Link didn't absolutely stomp Tingle in this showing. A lot of people said that Link was just past his prime, but I really blame the dip in votals and general lack of interest in contests. Link thrives on that casual vote. The only people left on this site are weirdos like us, and Isaac and Tingle are weirdo icons. Plus, I think the last Zelda game to have come out at this point was Skyward Sword, the one we don't talk about anymore because it was so bland. Hey, remember that time Miyamoto tried demoing SS at E3 and he couldn't get it to work and it was super embarrassing? something something metaphor for this match Also Isaac showed up I guess. The only thing people debated here was whether or not he'd be so weak that he would lose to a heavily SFF'd Tingle. There was an "Expert Mode" this year or w/e it was called so that you'd get more points if you predicted who got 1st, 2nd and 3rd correctly. It was a cool secondary contest and might have been more fun than making a bracket. It kept people interested and debating all the way through. Anyone nominating Isaac this year? I know people still play his game, it's on every system ever. Let's see him come back and get his ass kicked again. --- ## (6)Raiden vs (13)Waluigi vs (22)Alan Wake 2013 _source: (6)Raiden vs (13)Waluigi vs (22)Alan Wake 2013 (revid 82106)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 8th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis The only entertaining part of this match was the picture, because once giant-ass purple Waluigi stuck out like a sore thumb, the debate went from whether Waluigi or Alan Wake would get second place to whether Waluigi could actually upset Raiden for first. As it would turn out, there never should have been a debate on either front. Waluigi got some joke votes early, and I'm sure 4chan got involved in some way, but it was a completely negligible boost. It wasn't long at all before Raiden put this match out of reach, and Waluigi was never going to be threatened for second place because no one cares about Alan Wake. A running joke of this contest is GameFAQs not playing any games after like 2006, and it held true more often than not when it came to weeding out 162 characters from round 1. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Alan Wake is literally just "white dude plaid shirt" holy shit. I've never played his game but I saw my friend playing it once and it looked alright. I think those devs made that game, uh, Quantum Break. That's the name? Right? Is the protagonist also a bland white dude? is that fucking Iceman? what the hell happened to you? X-Men 3? good excuse shit just keeps getting sadder. Anyway, Alan Wake showed up, yeah, but the real match here was Waluigi vs Raiden. I remember there was a tiny bit of debate as to whether or not Waluigi could be the next L-Block or something, but nobody was super serious about that. Fast forward to 2018 and people are super serious about that, but more in a Draven context than L-Block. Poor Sakurai has to endure all this harassment because he doesn't put Wario's doubles partner in a video game representing Nintendo's all-stars. Christ, Waluigi is even on ice skates in his match pic. Raiden was coming off of (cult?) smash hit Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which still has a huge legion of fans. He didn't exactly impress against Waluigi, and if this match had happened now, it might have been much tighter. What can we expect from Waluigi this year? Well it depends on the anti-rallying measures Bacon puts in place, but I guess he could get a big push from 4chan and reddit. I think people are over the initial outrage of his snubbing from Smash 5, so it would be hard to stir up the pot again unless a portion of tomorrow's Nintendo direct is pre-recorded footage of Sakurai taking a dump on a picture of Waluigi while looking straight into the camera. --- ## (9)Yoshi vs (10)Solaire of Astora vs (19)Demi-Fiend 2013 _source: (9)Yoshi vs (10)Solaire of Astora vs (19)Demi-Fiend 2013 (revid 82107)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 9th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Friendly reminder: Link's round 1 match scored 28930 votes. Anyway, this was another of the many round 1 matches where first place was predetermined and the only actual debate was for second place. And thank you based Expert Challenge for that. Unfortunately, second place wasn't much of a debate either. As popular as those Shin Megami Persona Tensei 2387a III games are on this site, the specific characters are a different story entirely. There's a reason they all lost early this contest, Also, any debate there may have been ended once the picture happened. Solaire looks like more of a demi-fiend than Demi-Fiend ever will. Worth noting here is Yoshi got a horrible draw this contest. In a field where Vivi beat Mario, L-Block beat Auron and crazy runs were happening all over the place, Yoshi put up 60% in a match before getting Link in round 2. Yoshi really could have done damage this year if he were put somewhere else. Poor guy :( People talk about characters like Tidus and Dante always losing early and always getting screwed. Yoshi has never been past the third round in one of these things, and knowing what we know now, this could have been the year. And yes, I mad. Yoshi \> your favorite Mario character. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Demi-Fiend got into a contest?? Holy shit I really don't remember anything about 2013 at all. Listen to this track. It is absolute fire and I am too white to be saying that convincingly. Yoshi's unimpressive contest history continues. He's given a round 1 match against two jobbers so that he can march off to get spanked by Link in Round 2. I vaguely remember Ulti once saying Yoshi has never been out of R3 and he never will. I kind of believe that. He's Yoshi. People know him. Girls play as him in Mario Party. Nobody really cares, though. Most people use him as an extra platform to jump off of. I think the real thing to talk about now is Solaire in 2018. Dark Souls has absolutely blown up. Normalcools talk about Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Who would have thought a difficult game could be well received by audiences of all kind? Could Solaire have entered the realm of a low-midcarder? Could he ever be rallied into winning a R1 match? Actually... He might. GameFAQs hasn't played any games past, what, 2007? It seems the big exception is Dark Souls. If Solaire or another DS rep pulled a high seed and a decent matchup he might be able to just pull it off, especially if the votals are low. I legit forgot who the third character in this match was for a second. I sat here trying to remember without scrolling up. It was Demi-Fiend. I have that fire track paused in another tab. How did I forget already? Demi-Fiend is cool but there are way better reps for the SMT series... If you count Persona characters. I don't know if anyone from Apocalypse or SMTIV would be a better rep but I can't imagine they'd do much better than the Fiend. Persona is its own thing now and everyone loves it, but its parent series remains decidedly niche. Maybe we'll see SMT break into the mainstream someday like its counterpart, but without high school handholding hijinks, that may just be the dream of an ideal world. --- ## (2)Commander Shepard vs (17)Captain Olimar vs (26)Kain 2013 _source: (2)Commander Shepard vs (17)Captain Olimar vs (26)Kain 2013 (revid 82108)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 9th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Another match where only the picture mattered because FINALLY WE GOT FEMSHEP AKA THE ONLY SHEP THAT MATTERS IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER in a match picture! I know things like voice acting and music are completely subjective, but there are cases where one can be factually incorrect and Jennifer Hale \> Mark Meer by eons. Before things like advanced metrics, Wikipedia and imdb, some idiot might actually be able to make a case for Meer. Now? You have people like me that literally have done professional theater who would just laugh at you for being dumb. Jennifer Hale actually brings emotion to the character, Meer is terrible, the end. Period. Any other opinion is wrong and people who like him don't know anything beyond the nose on their own face. I could keep the joke going and credit Jennifer Hale for why Shepard scored 54% here instead of something way lower because Maleshep is useless trash (especially the renegade version, jesus christ he sucks and quite literally sounds like he's reading lines off a page, he makes me want to stab out my own ear drums with chopsticks), but Shepard blows this match away no matter what. So does Olimar for second place thanks to Brawl, really. But seriously, Mark Meer? We couldn't get a better voice actor for arguably the best next-gen character out there? I'm not even asking for anything crazy like Keifer Sutherland or David Hayter. But Troy Baker (Yuri Lowell, Snow from FF13, Booker from Bioshock Infinite) and Jamieson Kent Price (Iron Tager, Lu Bu) couldn't be found? I would even take Quinton Flynn. But they go for a guy whose biggest accomplishment is staying awake for 53 hours in a row, something any gamer with Dr Pepper could do. Thanks, Obama. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Jeez, these matches are getting more votes than the opening one with Link. He just can't pull in a crowd anymore, huh? iirc Ulti was obsessed with getting a pic of Femshep on the front page. She had just received official art in ME3 for the first time so he finally could do it. I think he has a crush of Jennifer Hale or something. This was a pretty respectable outing for Shepard, I guess. He couldn't double a low-tier Smash character, which is sad, but lesser Western characters would have fallen in this same spot. Like Kain. Why Kain? Why not Raziel? Who nominated Kain in 2013? We hadn't seen Kain since 2004, and he hasn't had a game since... that cancelled 360 game that got leaked to the internet. How did Kain get more noms than Liquid Snake? Does anyone want to talk about Mass Effect 3's ending still? I do! At the time I was super upset by it, but it's been 6 years, and now I can barely remember what got me so mad. I still remember the worst parts and I remember Kai Leng being awful, but it all seems so distant now. In 2013, the hatred was still strong though, and Ulti choosing a picture associated with the cover of ME3 probably didn't do Shepard any favors. Anyway, this was a match that happened. --- ## (5)Tharja vs (14)Juliet Starling vs (23)Tiny Tina 2013 _source: (5)Tharja vs (14)Juliet Starling vs (23)Tiny Tina 2013 (revid 88778)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 10th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was our first match that was a true match from beginning to end. No one had any clue what any of these three characters would do, the picture shed no light on anything, and a legit argument from boobs to game quality could be made for all three. The only real standout factors were Fire Emblem (Nintendo always does well) and Borderlands 2 winning our Game of the Year poll, though games =/= characters is a pretty big rallying cry in these contests. Come match time, Tharja jumped out to a big early lead, while second place was way up in the air. Juliet led by 60 early, but Tina left her in the dust pretty quickly and Juliet was ultimately stuck in last place rather early. (I feel like I'm announcing a mud wrestling match, this is so dumb.) Once Juliet was out of the picture for good, the match seemed over. We have a line on Board 8 called the Nintendo Power Hour, and Tharja used that to build up a 400 vote lead in this poll. That lead got up to 437 pretty quickly, too, before Tina started her long (very long) and slow (VERY slow) march toward coming back. To put this in perspective, Tharja's lead was 437 at 1:30. At 4, it was 383. I don't know how many of you play Magic the Gathering or did any M14 limited, but That card's nickname is "Wall of Stall", because f\*\*\* that card in limited. It continued on like this for a long time, though Tina was overall getting the lead down. Then the morning vote came, and the lead went from 300 to tied in about 3 hours. Under normal trends, Tina probably would have gone on to win this match. But this was the Contest of Rallying, and it didn't take long for 4chan to notice the match and push Tharja over the top to hold on for a close win. It's hard to really say if Tharja flopped or Tina performed really well, because we have no data here. This is also a good match to get into my opinion on 12 hour matches. For the most part, they're a great idea in early rounds to weed out all the garbage quickly, because no one wants to see 24 hours of Link, Tingle, and Isaac doing nothing. But every now and again, you get a match where 24 hours would have been awesome, and this was one of those matches. But even still, 12 hours for 2 rounds and 24 hours from 3 on is the exact format we need from now on. Hopefully Allen sticks with it. The 1 match in 10 that needs to be 24 hours is not worth making the other 9 suck for 24 hours. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I don't remember exactly how people were predicting this match, to most people it was a battle of TJF between Tharja and Juliet, with people giving Tharja the nod because she was the hot new Nintendo girl at the time. And I mean hot [yowza](https://www.ubuy.com.br/productimg/?image=aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWFnZXMtbmEuc3NsLWltYWdlcy1hbWF6b24uY29tL2ltYWdlcy9JLzUxaHRZc2lKUW1MLl9TUzQwMF8uanBn.jpg) That is the only time an officially licensed Nintendo product has made me sweat other than [this:](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/zQQAAOSw545oRyCN/s-l400.jpg) Ganondorf action figure I blame you for the present-day mess that is my sexuality Anyway, back on track. Kind of. I recently replayed Borderlands 2. All of it. By myself. I had a ton of free time and I remembered that I had never played the DLC, so I got the Handsome Edition and gave it another shot. Is there anything, anything more dated than Borderlands 2's humor? People voted for this character. People think this is funny. To be fair, Tina's voice actress is pretty funny. Or at least she was in 2011 internet humor: Mike Haggars' mustache I blame you for the present-day mess that is my sexuality Anyway, back on track, Borderlands was a surprise hit on the FAQs, and it shows here. I meant, Shooty McSplodeFace or whatever his name was made the field this year. The games are good! The writing is kind of bad though. I wonder if anyone will nominate a Borderlands character this year seeing as the series has been on the backburner while Gearbox throws away its money putting the iconic Battleborn characters into Ready Player One. Juliet Starling was the main character of the flavor-of-the-month game Lollipop Chainsaw which got mediocre reviews but was (and still is) the best-selling Suda51 game. It had a huge marketing campaign and Juliet was at the forefront. There's an embarrassing picture of me with Jessica Nigri dressed up as Juliet Starling floating around the internet somewhere. [Jessica Nigri as Juliet Starling](https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2910/13993734609_a795fb2caf_b.jpg) I blame you for the present-day mess that is my sexuality So yeah this match was way closer than anyone thought it would be but these three are all basically fodder anyway. People overestimated Tharja but she still pulled it off. There's not much to say here, it seems like a close and interesting match but when you try to break it down you end up analyzing your sexuality instead. --- ## (8)Hero vs (11)Rinoa Heartilly vs (20)Aeris Gainsborough 2013 _source: (8)Hero vs (11)Rinoa Heartilly vs (20)Aeris Gainsborough 2013 (revid 82110)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 10th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Chris single-handedly has been trying to get DQ5 Hero into a contest for years. In a contest where Board 8 decided all of the 8 seeds by ourselves, this was the contest for it to finally happen. But actually winning a match? Nah. Aeris \> Rinoa \> Hero was bound to be a lock. Look at Dragon Quest's contest history: Unless some character got into a character battle that I forgot about, that's the entire list. Three matches of absolute crap. So when Aeris blew the poll away and Hero's joke votes got him into second place early, no one really batted an eye. Even later when Hero built that lead to 250 in an hour, it was still seen as a joke. It wasn't until the realization that he wasn't actually slowing down did people realize what was going on here. Dragon Quest 5 Hero was actually winning second place! Yeah it took a massive series of related events, like Aeris being in a poll with him alongside one of the most hated FF females in the series, but who cares! Hero, freaking DQ5 Hero, got into a contest and busted some gurus upside the face. No one can ever take that from the little guy. Also since Rinoa might never get into another poll, it's worth noting how much she sucks as a character. Seriously, she is absolute whore garbage that should have been killed during two different spoilers in that game, and to this day I'm convinced she was never killed because of FF7 disc 1 backlash. But her not being around would have at least made her tolerable. I'm still convinced that all the Squall hate for years and years was just Rinoa hate channeled onto him because of his idiot beta male ass going out of his way for her over and over again no matter how many times she didn't appreciate it. Screw Rinoa, most deserved victim of a contest upset in recent memory. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I'm going to take a second before I get into this match to point out just how awful the font is for the character names in these match pics. It's hard to tell what exactly I mean but having 3x3 little boxes for each letter makes the some letters really ugly and hard to see. I'll point out specifics if I see them. "Tina" in Tiny Tina's pic looks pretty bad. Here's a fun fact, the font used in [R1 of 2008](https://imgtc.com/i/ui7XNcw.jpg) is called "Acquaintance" and is also the font partially used in [the Angry Video Game Nerd logo](https://imgtc.com/i/po0ZjBF.png). yes these are the things zenofthunder remembers but he doesn't remember anything about 2013 OK here is an actual match anal-ysis: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Getting Hero into a contest was not only a victory for long-time B8er Chris but also for everyone ever who has nominated someone that has a name like "protagonist" or "demi-fiend." Seriously, I can't believe we got multiple characters into this contest with BS names like "Hero." So yeah DQV Hero finally got into a contest after a decade of rallies. All it took was a field of almost 250 characters for it to happen! I remember thinking he wouldn't break 15%. Who cares about Dragon Quest in America, right? Especially one as old as V. But thanks to the low votals, Hero was able to ride the Final Fantasy Girl train all the way to second place. He even (just barely) managed to avoid getting doubled by Aeris. Was Aeris always "Aerith" in these contests? Was Ceej a weeb that used the proper name or did Allen bring us into the Age of the "th?" Yeah so Rinoa got SFF'd pretty hard and a lot of people's Expert brackets got ruined. In retrospect though would she have ever had any power in these things? She's a tertiary FF character at best, from a game people have been turning on more and more each year. Can @LeonhartFour tell us what he thinks about this girl that launches a dog like a rocket with her wrist? --- ## (3)Draven vs (16)Chie Satonaka vs (25)Jak 2013 _source: (3)Draven vs (16)Chie Satonaka vs (25)Jak 2013 (revid 82111)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, July 11th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This picture actually got changed from Draven's baller blue skin because people are whiny crybabies. The skin looks far better. This was the first of Draven's matches, but certainly not the last. Under normal circumstances, the debate behind this match was simple. Either Jak or Chie would get first, unless Draven's League of Legends rally power came through. That was the entire debate, and I would even argue Chie never stood a chance because no one cares about Persona's characters nearly as much as the games themselves. Even Draven's fans knew he would suck without rallying. And for almost four hours, that's exactly how this match went down. Jak tore into first place, Chie was easily in second place, and Draven was well on his way to being bottom 5 in the LOL, X-stats. Then the rallies started on the League subreddit and all hell broke loose. For those reading this years later who have no idea how Draven did so much damage, in 2013 the League subreddit had 350,000 subscribers and a constant 12,000 people on the board at any one time. Draven had a massive number of people to tap into at any one time, and once the topics went up this match was over. No other rally outside of L-Block 2007 will ever be more successful than this one. Draven went from being dead last by 2500 votes to winning in 3 hours, and never looked back. Literally. He would end up riding that momentum through this entire contest, though the belief at the time was that he needed the largest legit comeback ever to beat friggen Jak, of all people. This was also the match where Kanz stopped being a Board 8er, more or less. I'm cool with people rallying, it's whatever, but talking s\*\*\* on a board you've visited for years with some of the most offensive insults there are will mean he's never welcome here again. Nor should he be. No one gets to cry "I have a mental disability" in defense of their own being a tool, either. Being a tool is being a tool unless you have something that removes the element of lucidity and choice. Supporting Draven is one thing. Literally calling the entirety of Board 8 r-word and deranged and so on is quite another thing entirely. Good riddance to him, I'm sure the guys on Reddit are more suited to his intelligence level anyway. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis it begins kind of, just slowly at first. I remember stat junkies trying to cobble together some kind of x-stats but because of Draven's snowball rally it put Jak and Chie in like the top 5 strongest characters, I think stronger than Link even? somewhere out there in the multiverse there is a reality where Jak really is that strong and everyone loves him and name their babies "Jak" which I bet is actually a thing that happens anyway **What does Jak mean?** God is gracious - looks at results\* is he tho I think I went on the Show after this match and talked about how I thought the Draven thing was gonna blow over cuz he couldn't double Chie, and if that was the extent of the rally then how dangerous could he be? I am going to Star Wars Holiday Special that shit and hunt down every hard drive with that episode of the Show on it and destroy it Draven started out incredibly weak but the rally was swift and effective. This match only had 7000 more votes than the previous one, and because of that "weak" turnout I don't think anyone expected this to get as big as it did. I mean, Draven wasn't L-Block, right? Looking past Draven, I wonder how Chie would do now that Persona 4 has had a billion spinoffs and an anime and a half. Has the fanbase completely moved on to Persona 5? Will we ever see anyone outside of Yu from P4 in a contest setting again? Will we even see Jak? What's that guy up to? Will he be stronger than his new Naughty Dog brethren? Jak / Ellie / Nathan Drake, who ya got --- ## (4)Yuri Lowell vs (15)Ryu vs (24)Face McShooty 2013 _source: (4)Yuri Lowell vs (15)Ryu vs (24)Face McShooty 2013 (revid 82112)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, July 11th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I know this technically isn't a "win" for Yuri, but I don't even care. Yuri is the best JRPG lead ever, and getting second place when second place matters is something I'll gladly take! Yuri is not a typical lead. Rather than some stupid lecture and boss fight, he just kicks ass and takes names in-game. It's quite a treat to see when a character could tear something in 29478 in-battle, but in a scene he's a candy-ass. Yuri is the best. There was some debate here about whether Face could upset Yuri for second place, given Tiny Tina's good showing, but that went out the window very very fast. And once the match was almost entirely decided in minutes, we thanked the based gods for fourway polling in early rounds. Can you imagine 24 hours of this over and over and over again? I should probably discuss Borderlands somewhere in here among all the good showings, even if none of the characters outright shocked us with upsets. My best friend plays it all the time, and it seems like a first person Diablo 2, only with much better item drops for loot and specific enemies that can drop specific things if you farm long enough. Seems really neat and I should try it once day. It also has pretty cool music. The humor and plot seem unbelievably stupid and forced, though. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Is Yuri the second-strongest Tales character after Lloyd? People love this dude even though Vesperia was a billion years ago. I think it got a PS4 re-release recently, so maybe his strength will stay consistent. Anyway, not much to say here except that Face McShooty got in and finding a picture of a random side character from a miscellaneous Borderlands 2 quest was a huge pain in the ass. Seemed like any rally no matter how small paid off in some way in 2013. Gives me hope for Metal Sonic! Yuri did pretty bad here, he couldn't double Face and got doubled by Ryu, who is a high-midcarder, yeah, but GameFAQs likes Tales a lot, and it's nice seeing these characters get a chance to spank fodder like Face. --- ## (7)Mega Man X vs (12)Welkin Gunther vs (21)Jigglypuff 2013 _source: (7)Mega Man X vs (12)Welkin Gunther vs (21)Jigglypuff 2013 (revid 82113)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, July 12th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was another completely dead match, but there are two things in it worth talking about anyway. One, JIGGLYPUFF FINALLY MADE A CONTEST HOLY S\*\*\* IT ONLY TOOK 11 YEARS AND I'VE BEEN NOMINATING AND RALLYING FOR HER (AND SCREW EVERYONE IT IS A HER, I DON'T CARE IF IT CAN HAVE GENDERS IN-GAME) SINCE 2002 OH MAN I WAS SO HAPPY THE ORIGINAL 12 IS FINALLY FINISHED!!!!!!! Ahem. Two, is Mega Man X Noble Nine strength at this point? 65% in a threeway poll is no joke, and I feel like he should absolutely be able to give Sonic or Crono a match 1 on 1 at this point. I know the Noble Nine is a winning streak, but he has to be at the lower level of them by now, right? Dude's a complete beast. But JIGGLYPUFF GOT IN JIGGLYPUFF GOT IN JIGGLYPUFF GOT IN JIGGLYPUFF GOT IN JIGGLYPUFF GOT IN. For those who wonder why fodders gets in every year, this is why. We don't care if a favored character gets creamed. We just want them in. And Jigglypuff got second place instead of last so poo on you. The next step is to finish up the Melee characters! Dr. Mario Popo Young Link Pichu Roy Young Link and Doc Mario probably aren't eligible, but someone get on the other three. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis who the hell is Welkin Gunther and how did he get a 12 seed? I know very little about Valkyria Chronicles, but why didn't people just focus their noms on the girl from the cover? With red eyes? I think that's a thing? Here's another question mark? The votals here were pathetic, and Mega Man X cleaned house, almost tripling the Puff. Maybe all the theories that any Gen 1 Pokemon would be good are bullshit, cuz Jigglypuff has Smash behind her as well. Maybe Mega Man X SFF'd her? Is there Mega Man and Pokemon crossover? Who knows anymore, with this few people voting I guess everyone on this nerdo site has played everything. Welkin was so close to 3K votes. Getting doubled by Jigglypuff and... sextupled by Mega Man X means you ain't shit. I wonder what obscure JRPG character is going to show up this year? Who will be our Welkin Gunther? ps nominate Shellder pps I just took a long look at Welkin's pics and boy is he lame, if he were 1 v 1 with Alan Wake I'd vote bland plaid white man any way --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (18)Fei Fong Wong vs (27)Dan Hibiki 2013 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (18)Fei Fong Wong vs (27)Dan Hibiki 2013 (revid 82114)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, July 12th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Honestly, I had no idea who would win between Dan and Fei before this match started. I picked Fei entirely because 1990s Square still has some respect on this site, while Dan/Sagat was one of the biggest flops to me of the entire Rivalry Rumble. Maybe I overrate Street Fighter characters because of how much I love Super Street Fighter 4? I dunno. But C to Shining C in that game is my favorite trophy in any game I've ever played. I half wish the online population for PS3 wasn't dead so I could do it all over again. Getting 1000 on every character in SSF4 was soooooo fun. I actually ranked the SSF4 characters awhile back: 39 - Ryu 38 - Evil Ryu 37 - C. Viper 36 - Makoto 35 - Sakura 34 - Ken 33 - Dudley 32 - Dhalsim 31 - E. Honda 30 - Dee Jay 29 - Guile 28 - Blanka 27 - Juri 26 - Rufus 25 - Cody 24 - Abel 23 - Chun-Li 22 - Yun 21 - Fei Long 20 - Rose 19 - Cammy 18 - Guy 17 - Gouken 16 - Balrog 15 - Yang 14 - Dan 13 - Seth 12 - Adon 11 - Ibuki 10 - Hakan 9 - Zangief 8 - Vega 7 - Gen 6 - El Fuerte 5 - Akuma 4 - Oni 3 - Sagat 2 - M. Bison 1 - T. Hawk The only thing I'd even change now is Akuma up to 4, and I only outright despise the last three characters. Point is, Dan rocks. Fei is awesome and deserved second place, but SSF4 deserves as much love as possible at all times. Beyond that, not much to say about this match since it was over in 10 seconds. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Wow I don't remember half these matches, I think everyone was caught up in post-Draven fever to pay any attention to this low votal jobber matches. At least Sonic pulls in more votes than X. I remember some mild debate about Dan and Fei, both had been in contests before and both had looked like trash, and some people believed that Dan would win on recognizability. But with votals this low that logic gets tossed out the window and Fei was able to take the win pretty easily. GameFAQs really doesn't seem to care about fighting game characters outside of the mascots. Ryu, Chun-Li, Akuma, M. Bison, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Morrigan, Nightmare, and... uh... are there any other fighting game characters people vote for here? I must be missing some. Leave a comment on my webzone if you know what fighting game characters people care about here. Sonic has a great match pic here, wow. People have it in their heads that the only good Sonic is Classic Sonic, which is a bad opinion but it is a prevalent one. Nothing else really to say here, I think. It's more interesting to speculate on what you average voter feels about Sonic post Mania and Forces. Did they cancel each other out? Did the great reviews and sales overshadow the awfulness of Forces? We'll find out soon, I guess. --- ## (6)Lucina vs (13)Dracula vs (22)Caim 2013 _source: (6)Lucina vs (13)Dracula vs (22)Caim 2013 (revid 82115)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, July 13th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis There was a minor debate about Lucina winning this match until Tharja's awful performance in her earlier match, but for the most part Dracula winning this was a lock. There was too much going for him, namely his showing in the Rivalry Rumble and this being a night match, and Lucina didn't have much going for her. This match was mainly notable for Caim's historically awful performance, even among a field of 243 loaded with historically awful performances. For a time, Caim was threatening being the worst character in contest history. But he, uh...." recovered" his percentage later in the match to get up to a "respectable" level. He still set all sorts of horrendous records though, because it takes a special kind of suck to only score 1586 votes in a contest match. And even with all of that, Caim wasn't even bottom 5 in the raw LOL, X-stats. This contest had some horrible characters in it. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis My boy Drac!! He was shown off in Smash today as a stage boss, and if the rumors about a new story mode is true, he might get some more screen time. Abysmal votals here, and even then almost none of them were for Caim. 1586 votes. Holy shit. Holy shit. I think Caim was the biggest loser this tournament, right? Freaking 1586 votes. My girlfriend just came over and asked what I was typing, I asked "what would you think of a character that looks like this?" and showed her the match/bio pictures, and she responded "these are bad pictures" and gave me my laptop back. Caim is an obscure character from the cultest of cult games and he doesn't even look that cool. Is there even art for this dude? I think his claim to fame is that his series is distantly related to Nier. There was some LP on SomethingAwful of Drakengard at the time and it made Caim into a minor meme. I thiiiiink KamikazePotato was into it? I read some and it was pretty funny, but it didn't make me want to... nom... Caim. Shit, did I nom Caim? I might have. What a waste. Should have been Liquid here. Liquid/Lucina/Drac? That's a match, baby. People thought this performance made Drac look good, but really, with votals as low as this and Caim in the match, how good of a look can you possibly get from this? Dracula is a decent midcarder and it's cool to have him in a bracket but I doubt without the power of Alucard he could ever have a run like he did in Rivalry Rumble. For someone that we tried to rally in for a while and had to get special permission from Bacon to even nominate him, was it really worth the effort? --- ## (9)Professor Layton vs (10)Barret Wallace vs (19)Reimu Hakurei 2013 _source: (9)Professor Layton vs (10)Barret Wallace vs (19)Reimu Hakurei 2013 (revid 82116)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, July 13th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Normally a 50% performance in a multi-way poll is decent, but not in this case. Not with Final Fantasy 7 during a day match, with its very good day vote. Barret only putting up 50% against absolute fodder garbage, and starting well below 50% and having to build that percentage up no less, was very very bad. It was yet another sign of Final Fantasy 7's huge downward spiral that we've seen play out in contests for years. Not to sell the other two characters short or anything, but Layton and Reimu aren't exactly murderer's row. Also, can someone explain to me the Touhou obsession? I understand pedophiles with their lolicon and tiny anime girls slapped on everything to increase sales (more accurately, mass pirating) among the weaboo audience, but are these games actually good or are R-Type and Gradius still the standard for shmups? ***Tsunami replies:** As one of the Board's Touhou fans...well, the explanation would probably come close to the actual analysis in length so I'll put it on the Talk page instead.* ## Zen's (Late) Analysis do you remember when someone made a joke topic about how "chair from Final Fantasy VII could win a match" and people unironically agreed? this match shows how dated that statement is, here we have one of the iconic FFVII party members who is right there with you from second 1 and he can't double Professor Layton. In fact he can't even triple a Touhou girl. I believe Barret had won the Nomination Rally Tournament, and we thought for sure he'd be the next big thing, and some people thought that Sonic had fallen so far that Barret might be able to squeak by. Then he performs like this. Let's talk about RacistFAQs for a bit. Does it exist? Yes. GameFAQs doesn't care about black people. Actually I have no idea if GameFAQs is actually racist, I mean, probably, but eh, there's no actual proof other than the results of a video game character popularity contest. It's more of a funny meme than anything. If there was ever a highly debated match with a black guy in it maybe I would actually take the other dude cuz I fear the level of racist contained within the FAQs. I think what this comes back to though is that FFVII was no longer the shit on this site, it had fallen and fallen hard, and Barret probably wasn't strong to begin with. People had been trying to get him into a contest for years, and it took a field of 200+ and an NRT win for it to happen. Now he's finally in a contest when FFVII is at its lowest. What did people expect? --- ## (2)Phoenix Wright vs (17)Marth vs (26)Nightmare 2013 _source: (2)Phoenix Wright vs (17)Marth vs (26)Nightmare 2013 (revid 82117)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, July 14th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Like a lot of Phoenix Wright matches, it felt like the pre-match debate was how any of the three characters could win this. Phoenix and Marth have been close in the stats for years, and Soul Calibur's scare of Kingdom Hearts in 2004 paired with fighting game characters being unpredictable made a decent case for Nightmare doing something here. Personally, I never felt like this was going to be much of a match. Phoenix Wright having joke trends ended awhile ago, and him getting popular enough to get into Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 really ought to speak for itself. I think Marth being in Smash makes hype for him grow higher than it should be; Marth isn't really a strong character, and he sucks as a lord in Shadow Dragon anyway so screw him. When the match finally hit, the first thing that stood out to me was Nightmare being so unbelievably awful. This gave credit to the theory of "last place factor", which is the theory that unless a character can threaten to win a multi-way poll, they will underperform. I actually do put a lot of validity into that theory, because it does show up a lot. It's hard to back up statistically, but the eye test speaks for itself in a lot of these multi-way polls. Doesn't it often feel like the character in last place sucked more than they should? The other thing was Phoenix Wright not really slowing down once the "joke phase" ended. He started well, and even though Marth scored 44% on him by match's end, this was never close. The fact is that Phoenix Wright is no longer a joke character, which he would end up proving a hundred times over in round 2. Because while a few select people had the big Mewtwo \> Vincent upset, a third character did have to share the poll with those two ;) ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I thought people on this site liked Fire Emblem? I guess there's some crossover with Phoenix Wright? Jeez, look at those votals. It's nice seeing an "upset" from Phoenix, I know some people were putting him below Nightmare for some reason. Nightmare has had some decent showings before, but it was mostly decent bracket placement and taking advantage of a multi-way format that helped him out. In the end, Phoenix's loyal fanbase (mostly us) were able to give him the win. If this match happened in 2018, who knows what would happen? I'd say these dudes are pretty close in strength, so it would be hard to predict if this happened again. Phoenix's rabid fanbase has dissipated a bit but Fire Emblem has all those games where you can make cousins fuck or some weird anime BS that people like. Side note: I made this Nightmare pic and people HATED it because his arm wasn't in it enough and they said it would ruin his chances. I ask anyone, ANYONE who makes pics to make a Nightmare pic in those tiny, slim dimensions and make that arm the centerpiece without it looking like a weird brown blob. People are too fickle with these things, Nightmare looks like a goddamn lump most of the time anyway: --- ## (5)KOS-MOS vs (14)Dunban vs (23)Vincent Valentine 2013 _source: (5)KOS-MOS vs (14)Dunban vs (23)Vincent Valentine 2013 (revid 82118)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, July 14th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis In retrospect, the writing was on the wall for Mewtwo \> Vincent during this match. But we had no way of knowing that at the time, so this performance was chalked up to all three characters being JRPG types. Be that as it may, and even with this match destined to be predictable, this was a very bad match for Vincent. Like Barret earlier in round 1, Vincent failed the eye test despite breaking 50% in the poll. Like Barret, Vincent was doing very badly early but rode the FF7 day vote to a percentage recovery later. Like Barret, excuses were made for Vincent. And like Barret, there was some serious FF7 decline going on here. I know stats for fourways are for entertainment only, but KOS-MOS's last contest was 2008. In 2008, Vincent was projected to score 71% on KOS-MOS. In 2013, five years later, he gets 60%. There is no amount of hindsight wizardry that can possibly defend that. When I originally made my Sonic \> Vincent \> Bowser, my logic was FF7 decline. Why people thought Vincent would be immune is something I'll never understand. I just didn't realize it would decline this much. FF7 across the board completely flopped this contest. Oh and as a complete aside, Adventure in 2004 was our total votes futility record for years. Seeing Dunban only score 3233 and still break 10% was kind of funny. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Once upon a time Vincent/Kerrigan was a highly debated match, then he quadrupled her, and everybody laughed. Now it's 2018 and if Vincent/Kerrigan happened again it would be a highly debated match because lawd look at those votals Here's Vincent Valentine who was once thought to be a Noble Nine-breaking monster not being able to double KOS-MOS. And damn, look at his match pic! It's dope as hell! Not that it mattered much because most people just voted from the results page anyway. Picsmithing is a dying art. RIP. Speaking of pics, look how anime KOS-MOS is in her pic. She just looks straight out of Evangelion. Dunban looks pretty good. Wait, who? Here comes Dunban from Xenoblade, a game I played for 20 hours, then the game froze and I realized I hadn't saved in 5. So I never touched it again. Dunban was cool but he was one of those party members that was an early-game badass that eventually left and you wouldn't get him back 'til later. I remember I played the game after this contest and I was shocked that he managed to make the field as a 14 seed (versus Vincent's 23, go figure) despite barely being in the game. But I never did beat Xenoblade, which is a shame because it was great. Took me forever to find a copy too, fuck GameStop for charging \$90 for it. Anyway yeah FFVII is pee pee poo poo now --- ## (8)Chester vs (11)Mewtwo vs (20)Zero (999) 2013 _source: (8)Chester vs (11)Mewtwo vs (20)Zero (999) 2013 (revid 88764)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 15th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Mewtwo scoring the contest's biggest blowout will get its just due in future writeups, I promise. It's also getting harder with each passing contest to sing the praises of a blowout we all saw coming. It was a blowout. It takes a series of circumstances. Mewtwo took advantage of those circumstances and crushed, as we all saw. Woohoo. But this was all about Chester. Chester holds a special place for us at Board 8, because favored user Icehawk named his dog Chester. The very short story is that another favored user who goes by aga made a neat little indie platformer on Xbox Live to honor Icehawk, Board 8, and most notably, Chester the dog. If this was Board 8's contest, and if the 8 seed line was Board 8's tribute, then this was Board 8's match. More than anything Phoenix Wright, L-Block, Link, or anyone else has ever done. So for those looking at this in a few years who don't "get the joke" as they see that 3.51%, this was never about Chester doing well, or winning, or whatever else. This was about making history. We WANTED Chester to get the lowest score ever and be remembered as the weakest character ever. To compare, just look at Zero in this same exact match. Who is ever going to care about his second place score, bad as it was? Chester is way more memorable in his own special way, and it's stuff like this that really makes me look back at this contest and hope that people give Allen a break. He did a lot of stuff for us this year. No, this was about Icehawk's dog -- our dog. This was about Tanner's projection to actually win a match now. This was about Chester being a new unit of measurement for stats now. I'd dig up a picture of the actual dog, but I respect Icehawk's privacy more than that. If he wants to put a picture on the wiki later, that's up to him. Just know that we love you and your dog forever in our own special way, buddy. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Board 8 legend aga created a game called Chester, and we decided to get him in because the only thing Board 8 loves more than Character Battles is getting obscure Board 8 in-jokes into Character Battles. And that was the entire plan, because nobody thought Chester would make it in, and due to getting an 8 seed he was actually given... a... winnable situation? What? Now people were conflicted: Originally the idea would be that none of us would vote for Chester so that he'd come up worse in the X-Stats than Tanner, therefore entering the pantheon of Fun Contest History Trivia, but now he was up against big time nobody and obscure visual novel villain Zero. The day came and some people voted for Chester and a lot didn't. He ended up getting over 900 votes, some of which I guess were peeps who thought his match pic (an aga original!) was funny or to anti-vote Pokemon. There aren't 900 B8ers, right? It all worked out though, Zero still quadrupled him, and Chester is definitely the weakest character ever in these things. Could he beat someone (Caim) someday? Maybe. Will we ever see him again? I don't think we need to. You know, I made a game. I got it indexed on this site: The site to download it doesn't exist anymore though so I guess it's just lost media. Maybe in another reality Misplaced Max would have gotten in in Chester's place, but my legacy cannot compare to that of aga's. --- ## (3)Chrom vs (16)The Boss vs (25)Heavy 2013 _source: (3)Chrom vs (16)The Boss vs (25)Heavy 2013 (revid 82120)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 15th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was another of the many matches in round 1 where only the picture was relevant, because anyone who has played Metal Gear Solid 3 will find that picture hilarious. The Boss is many things, but a TJF sex symbol is dead last on her list of character traits. As for the match itself, it was nothing worth writing home about despite how close the numbers look. The Boss was never going to miss out on first place, and Chrom was never threatened for second. Fire Emblem is in a weird place on this site, because while it feels like everyone on here is obsessed with it (myself included!), it doesn't often do that well in contests. Whenever it wins, it usually feels like more of something else doing badly instead of Fire Emblem's own strength. Tharja being the only one in the 3DS Fire Emblem brigade to do anything this contest, which required an outside rally no less, is telling. But a win is a win is a win, and I suppose second place in this contest counts as a win. Not that beating Heavy is some huge accomplishment. Here's the entire list of everyone ever in a poll with Heavy: Kratos Jill Valentine Revolver Ocelot Roxas The Boss Chrom Yep. Heavy has finished dead last in every contest poll he's ever been in, too. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis [look at all these anime boys](https://imgtc.com/i/QnabDsi.png), they are all like... the same thing. why did you do this Sakurai. ps thank you for k rool \<3 I played one Fire Emblem ever and it was the first one for the GBA specifically cuz I thought Marth and Roy were dope in Melee. I think that might have been the gateway drug for a lot of people. But unlike most people, I ended up really not liking Fire Emblem. I don't like anything with an overhead grid. FFT, Disgaea... Just not my thing. I don't like to think when I play games. Give me big dumb Gears of Halo any day. I get why people like it, though, past the weird breeding mechanic I mentioned earlier. They're cool games. Chrom is actually pretty dope, and now he's in Smash. This match would probably be different today. Worth mentioning is The Boss having her boobies out. Who made that pic? Why did you do it? Why? Why would the Boss need TJF? I believe this match was debated a little bit because the Boss wasn't seen as a particularly strong character and hadn't been the focus in an MGS game in a while. Regardless, Snake was a powerhouse in this contest, and his friends benefitted. The votals here were somehow a little better than some of the fodder matches, but they were still low enough that the Boss looked good. I wonder why Team Fortress fans never rallied their boy Heavy at all, that community is pretty crazy for those characters. I think someone tried getting Saxton Hale into a contest once but he hadn't appeared in the games first. Team Fortress is rad. The characters might not do well but it makes me smile whenever they pop up. I don't know if we're going to get one this contest, though. F Will the Boss keep her strength in 2018? Probably not, MGS has died since this contest happened, and I'll talk about the effects of that when I get to a Snake or Big Boss match. --- ## (4)Garrus Vakarian vs (15)Sub-Zero vs (24)Frank West 2013 _source: (4)Garrus Vakarian vs (15)Sub-Zero vs (24)Frank West 2013 (revid 82121)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Given how well the Mass Effect characters did this contest, this match is just depressing. I like Sub-Zero, I really do, but Garrus is arguably the best character in the entire Mass Effect series. I play a female renegade, too, which really lets you see Garrus's character a lot. I won't get into spoilers, but those who have played the series know what I mean. So while Shepard gets to go on a run and be involved in possibly the greatest match ever, and Wrex gets to pull one of the biggest contest upsets ever, Garrus... gets fed to Sub-Zero. I try not to be too biased in these, but that's just a kick in the nuts. That being said, Garrus did very well for himself and deserves to get in again. I normally don't care if my favorite characters get in and lose, but Garrus really, really needs to get in and win a match. So does Tali, really. But not Liara. She can burn. The asari in general all suck, and there is nothing better than Javik just punking the f\*\*\* out of that idiot on Thessia. I'll resist the temptation of turning this into a Mass Effect writeup, but I'll make a topic for that eventually. It's worth noting here that given the rest of this contest and how well Mass Effect did, Sub-Zero did REALLY well for himself in this match. It's a shame he didn't get into the 2002 contest, because he could have done every bit as much damage as Scorpion did. Subby was always the cooler of the two. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Here's a match that I remember got people into some heated debates. Shepard had done pretty well in previous contests, and seeing as Garrus was a (if not the) fan favorite, he should probably retain that strength, right? Well, Sub-Zero is Sub-Zero. He's the dude who made his contest career dunking on lesser-Final Fantasy characters like Rydia and Tidus. Mass Effect is a classic western RPG, right? The Final Fantasy of America, perhaps? Just with more kissing and Seth Green. So would Garrus beat Tidus? That's a good match. FFX has had a bunch of re-releases and has some newfound respect. Hard to believe it's now a retro game people play for nostalgia. Damn, I'm old. Mass Effect, meanwhile, has moved past the Shepard trilogy which went out with a whimper as opposed to a bang, although Garrus had some great moments in ME3. Now we have Andromeda, which... you know. I know you know. Everybody knows. Here's hoping Anthem won't be loot box-riddled garbage (spoilers: it will be) This contest was Garrus' one shot and he blew it to Sub-Zero. I blame it partially on the Klassic Kostume pic. Sub-Zero is like 200% more deadly with his old duds on. Speaking of pics, I made this one for Frank, I was determined to not use that one piece of art everyone always defaults to (see: his bio pic), so I used some art from Chop 'Til You Drop. I thought he looked too bland though so I added blood to his face and shirt. It came out terrible in retrospect, did I just use the spray tool? What was I thinking? I guess I technically turned it into non-official art by doing that but I slipped it past Allen and it seemed like a small victory to me at the time. Who cares? Someone give young Zen a swirly, what a nerd. --- ## (7)Bowser vs (12)Archer vs (21)Meta Knight 2013 _source: (7)Bowser vs (12)Archer vs (21)Meta Knight 2013 (revid 82122)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis As a Meta Knight fan who loved him for Kirby games first and Brawl second, can someone please explain this crap to me? -2007 round 1, his ONE contest "win", he shares a poll with Peach and barely gets second place in a fourway poll that Sephiroth just demolishes. -2007 round 2, he's in the poll with Sephiroth again, but also shares with Fox and Wario. -2008 round 1, he gets third place in a poll featuring Ryu, L-Block, and the dog from Duck Hunt, in a contest that tried way too hard to take advantage of 2007's joke momentum. -2010 round 1, loses to Luigi in the first poll where Board 8 learned about Spirit Tsunami's special brand of spam. -2011 round 1 of the rivalry rumble, he and Kirby beats Jill and Nemesis, and in round 2 they lose to Sonic and Robotnik. The point here is that outside of MAYBE 2008, we have never once gotten a good read on Meta Knight. Can we one time, just once, get Meta Knight in a legit poll in a non-gimmick contest without a bunch of jokes or Nintendo characters dragging him down? I'm not saying he's some hidden powerhouse, but good lord. Also I'm not much of an anime guy, but Archer is neat. On top of looking like Dante pre-Ninja Theory, the dude fires swords instead of arrows. How badass is that? He's one of the few characters the anime crowd rallied in that I can actually get behind, because not many things are more badass than an archer firing swords instead of arrows. You don't see Link doing that s\*\*\*. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis oh man, did KP single-handedly get half these characters into the bracket? Like three Xenoblade characters, Archer, Zero (999), Caim... I remember having extensive conversations with him about all of these. KP tell people to nominate Metal Sonic you clearly have some kind of magic nominating power. When is that quirk going to show up in My Hero Academia? The only thing worth talking about here is how Meta Knight has never had a fair shake in these contests, he's always getting SFF'd in Round 1. Poor dude. He's super cool. He's freaking META KNIGHT. He does that thing where he goes "AIYAYAYAYA" and swings his sword super cool and fast and then he wins every Brawl match ever. My dad thinks Meta Knight is cool. Why doesn't GameFAQs? I must also mention that my dad calls him "Mega Knight" but w/e Bowser stomped Meta Knight so hard here that it made Archer look respectable. That's also because Fate/Stay Night was the current Board 8 darling and the games and anime have a big cult following. I played the first one! It had a sex scene that was super jarring! I don't remember why it exists! It's funny how little impact Zero and Archer made here, people were just asking the other day if Visual Novel characters were eligible as if there wasn't already a precedent set. Yeah I'm out of things to say here, if I spend two lines talking about my dad you know the match is boring. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (18)Midna vs (27)Little Mac 2013 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (18)Midna vs (27)Little Mac 2013 (revid 82123)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 17th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I've already gone into FF7's decline like 26 times in the first round alone, so instead I'll pull up some funny 2007 stats. 2007's Little Mac projection on Sephiroth? 15.39%. He got 24% here, which is nuts for a character in last place that wasn't even going to benefit from the Sephiroth anti-votes. The truly funny one is Midna. 2007 has her getting 20%, and here she gets 30. The jump from 15% to 24 is far easier than 20 to 30, especially given Twilight Princess is a post-Wind Waker Zelda that gets mixed reviews. Yeah Sephiroth won and yeah it was easy, but those numbers can't really be ignored. If we somehow still have contests six years from now, this will only get far worse. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I think I remember in 2006 when Twilight Princess came out and Inviso and I discussed Midna's midriff at length. I was 15. This is a very vivid memory I have and I am horrified that I am so comfortable posting about it on this message board. I am friends with some of you on Facebook. I am ashamed. But not as ashamed as Sephiroth should be of these results, holy shit what an abomination of a match for the former contest champion and member of the Holy Trinity. It's Midna. And Little Mac. This was before Little Mac was even in Smash. Sephiroth should be quintupling these jobbers. I don't care about low votals. I don't care about anti-votes. Sephiroth couldn't break 60% against two Nintendo C-listers. Also his match picture is god awful, just this gray anime smear on a gray rectangle over a gray background. Little Mac really popped here. Good job whoever did that. --- ## (6)Morrigan Aensland vs (13)Miles Edgeworth vs (22)Agent 47 2013 _source: (6)Morrigan Aensland vs (13)Miles Edgeworth vs (22)Agent 47 2013 (revid 85573)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 17th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Morrigan is truly the queen of TJF, and has been since our second match ever all the way back in 2002. Good lord. This was one of those debated matches that really confused me, mainly because I had no idea why there was a debate at all. Edgey was supposed to beat Morrigan with Marvel vs Capcom 3 behind her? even funnier, Agent 47 was supposed to do it with a series no one will ever care about on GameFAQs? That just floored me. Not saying my picks were much good this contest, but there are still some matches where the debate really has me at a loss. This was one of them. But there you have it, 36 gurus actually picking Morrigan to lose this match. Once the early pro-Edgey board vote died down, this was never a match and Morrigan was rather impressive throughout. It makes me wonder how some other MvC3 characters would do. It's a trash game, but there's clearly some boost potential there. Also, I suppose Edgey getting second place in a day match against a casualbait character, even one as weak as Agent 47, stands for something. Oh and this is as good a time as any to mention Ace Attorney Investigations absolutely blew. Bad music, absurd cases even by Phoenix Wright series standards, the no-courtroom thing really hurts it, and in a way it cheapens Phoenix Wright's character. AAI makes Edgeworth out to be an inexplicably perfect genius, yet in other series games he can't get past Phoenix because of deus ex machina garbage. This is typical Capcom oversaturation gone berserk, and there really isn't a series they aren't willing to ruin. Just wait until I get to Dante's round 2 match, too. F\*\*\* Capcom. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis oh man, it's my girl Morrigan. If you're reading this and don't want to pledge a nom to Metal Sonic, please throw one in for Morrigan instead. She beat Spyro once! Then did OK against Mario! Then was not in another contest for a decade! Then she beat Spyro again! I don't think Morrigan's win here was debated, although being that Board 8 is the Worldwide Phoenix Wright Fanclub, some users were adamant Edgey would pull the upset. Hey, remember how we got a nomination rally posted on the Objection! site for Phoenix's first ever contes? are you guys over that yet, do you love me again was it ever truly love Yeah Morrigan's appearance here was to set up a rematch with Spyro in Round 2. Really boring match, somehow broke 30k votes even though nobody is really notable here. Agent 47 might do better in 2018, people really like streaming his games now, especially the new one and I assume the upcoming Hitman 2. Wait, wasn't there already a Hitman 2? Naming conventions for reboots suck. The only other notable thing about this match is that Ulti and I submitted the exact same Agent 47 pic but because he submitted his like an hour before mine Bacon used Ulti's even though it was a really awful render. Just look at that head! It's lumpy! Ulti, step your game up! --- ## (9)Spyro the Dragon vs (10)Clementine vs (19)Reyn 2013 _source: (9)Spyro the Dragon vs (10)Clementine vs (19)Reyn 2013 (revid 82125)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, July 18th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis RacistFAQs strikes again! Assuming Clementine is even black, anyway. I know nothing about The Walking Dead beyond it having zombies, nor will I ever care to find out. The whole zombie fad needs to go the hell away A lot of people think good ideas die in Hot Topic. Good ideas actually die once women jump on board. Seriously, name me one good thing that wasn't ruined once girls started massively liking and accepting it. Zombies, vampires, BDSM, the Democratic party, Boston sports, pop music, rap music, music in general, Las Vegas, a hell of a lot of video game genres, marriage, foreign policy, and even feminism are some great things that they ruined just off the top of my head. There are thousands of other examples, and spare me the garbage about how girls running the world would fix all our problems. Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, and Diane Feinstein are all over most of why Obama's approval ratings are catastrophic. Point being, I was beyond happy Clementine flopped and I don't understand why people didn't see this coming. She was seriously a 50-50 guru pick to win this match? Did I miss a memo somewhere? Maybe I'm biased toward old contests and really wanted to see the Morrigan/Spyro 2002 tribute rematch, but I really don't understand why Clementine was so widely picked in this match beyond "WALKING DEAD ZOMBIES ZOMBIES FAD FAD FAD". Give me a goddamn break. This also clued people in on how badly Lee Everett was going to crap the bed against Game & Watch, which also pleased me beyond all belief. To put Spyro's domination in a bit of further perspective, here's some characters that failed to break 56% in round 1 wins: Barret Aeris Commander Shepard Kirby Frog Zidane Leon Kennedy Gordon Freeman Pikachu Wario Mega Man (lol) Kratos Does Spyro even break 40% on any of those characters 1 on 1? Does he even break 35%? ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I just realized I've been copy/pasting the "2013" from the title of the Wiki pages, whoops. I guess you all know I'm a fraud. I know I was on the Show during the episode where they talked about this match and there was some debate as to whether or not Clementine could pull off an upset here because SERIOUS CHILD CHARACTER I made the point that Clementine was black and that GameFAQs was too racist to vote for her and there was this really awkward pause and I think YoBlazer just said "she's black?" [Yup!](https://imgtc.com/i/ibdCHCf.png) My follow-up explanation was that GameFAQs voters would do their proper research in order to "vote racistly" but obviously I was joking. The real debate here was around Spyro's match pic. This was post-Skylanders, the series Activision threw Spyro into because they didn't think Toys-to-Life was a surefire hit. Which it turned out to be! Thanks to Skylanders we now have mega-franchises like LEGO Dimensions, Disney Infinity and amiibos! One of which still exists!! Wow!!! What a time to be alive!!!!!!!!!! Back to the point, people were terrified Spyro would get a pic where he looked like this: Which none of us Picsmiths wanted to make. I don't think anyone submitted a Skylanders pic, even as a joke. What Activision did to Spyro was low, even for Board 8's standards. Regardless, Walking Dead was just a game getting some decent buzz at the time, this was just before Telltale was at its peak. They've kind of fallen apart in recent years, I think they fired a ton of people. They're only just now remaking their Telltale Engine after everyone on YouTube started shitting on it. Clem never had a chance here, regardless of the picture. She and Reyn (who?) getting crushed by Spyro this hard shows how bad the field was in 2013. More is not necessarily better. also pics don't matter everyone voted from the results page anyway This match was pretty fun tho cuz everyone was spamming "NOW IT'S REYN TIME" on the board. I love it when we can come together and scream all our favorite video game in jokes together. --- ## (2)Luigi vs (17)Balthier Bunansa vs (26)Jade 2013 _source: (2)Luigi vs (17)Balthier Bunansa vs (26)Jade 2013 (revid 82128)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, July 18th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was another of the many "thank god for 12 hour matches early" kind of polls, because this was one of the most predictable matches of the entire contest. You'll get that a lot in any seeding contest, but the craziness of Summer 2013 definitely did not happen early. Luigi crushed, the end. I will however use this space to defend FF12 a little bit, since Balthier is the s\*\*\*. Yeah, the plot sucks until the Occuria reveal what's up. Yeah, the licenses are stupid. But the gameplay is fun, the music is decent enough, Balthier is Balthier, and FF12 has the best optional content in the entire series. That counts for a lot, especially the hunts. Doing all of those was a BLAST, and by itself is almost convincing me to replay the game again. Doesn't make for a good contest match, but hey! ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I always forget Balthier exists. Most of the time I forget Final Fantasy XII exists. You know I once had to explain to a kid in high school that no, Square Enix didn't skip from FFVIII right to FFX, there was in fact a full FFIX and it was really good. I had to show him on Wikipedia before he believe me. That's sad. Like FFXII! Even sadder: The state of Beyond Good & Evil 2! It's been teased so many times and it's just now showing up at E3 with a full trailer. Still no real gameplay, though. Like most Ubisoft games it's probably going to be a fair-to-good open world game where you explore and collect feathers or something. [But Jade looks cool now!](https://imgtc.com/i/Wpiunsw.jpg) That's about it for this match. Luigi does his thing. Did anyone play that remaster of FFXII? Is it better? I remember this board was torn apart when it came out. It was like a mini B8 Civil War. A lot of people loved it but others hated it. At least people actually liked it, though. Unlike FFXIII. --- ## (5)Big Boss vs (14)Peacock vs (23)Captain Viridian 2013 _source: (5)Big Boss vs (14)Peacock vs (23)Captain Viridian 2013 (revid 82129)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, July 19th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was such a weird match, even if it was a Big Boss blowout. First off, what in the world is going on in that match pic? I have no idea where that Boss picture even came from, and I'm a pretty big MGS fan. Viridian has like one picture, but he's facing the wrong way for the match pic. Awesome. And then you get some girl wielding a huge gun, looking like she wants to literally eat Big Boss for lunch. Ooooooo-kay. Skullgirls does honestly look fun, but those characters are damn weird. As for the match itself, I've always been hesitant to call fodder upsets true upsets, similar to Valkyria Chronicles beating Disgaea in Game of the Decade. So few people are attached to VVVVVV or Skullgirls that no one really got upset or anything by Viridian upsetting his way into second place with a massive 450 vote win. Peacock attempted the most boring comeback ever at one point in this match before folding, and even then I'm not sure anyone cared. This was all about Big Boss crushing and people actually having heard what VVVVVV is. Not sure anyone knows Skullgirls beyond some internet voting-for-the-character.... thing. That subject had a topic on Board 8 for every vote and I couldn't tell you what it was, which might explain why Peacock lost. Oh, and this match also made idiots like me who picked Luigi \> Big Boss look especially stupid. I know Balthier and Jade are stronger than these two losers, but good grief. How I forgot about Ness being in that poll, I'll never know. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis oh snap, is that a Venom Snake pic for Big Boss?!?!?!? who is responsible for this egregious error???? [shit](https://imgtc.com/i/kVFPQet.png) Well, we couldn't have known. This match was pretty cut-and-dry, I don't know how Peacock even got in seeing as people on GameFAQs seem to go out of their way to hate fighting games. Do they hate eSports as much as real sports? It was nice seeing a Skullgirls rep get in. Maybe next time we can get in Valentine or Filia? Someone with boobs. All the other Skullgirls have boobs, I think. Except [Beowulf.](https://imgtc.com/i/yrhRYHG.png) oh, that's nice. that is very nice. wait, I guess there's [Big Band](https://imgtc.com/i/RpAr1qf.jpg), too mmmmmmmm What was I talking about? Oh right, yeah, Big Boss cleaned up here. I don't even know what Captain Viridian is from. VVVVVV or something. I only know it cuz KP recommended some music from it to me once. Dope soundtrack. Good on Cap'n V for getting a win here, even if the character he's beating is really bottom-of-the-barrel. Not much else to say here. I'm wrapping it up for the night, I gotta get up kinda early tomorrow. I'll post more when I get back from work. Nominate Metal Sonic! --- ## (8)CATS vs (11)Ness vs (20)Locke Cole 2013 _source: (8)CATS vs (11)Ness vs (20)Locke Cole 2013 (revid 82130)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, July 19th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was one of those matches that seemed difficult on paper pre-contest, with loads of people not knowing what was up, to becoming a fairly easy match to predict once people actually bothered looking at it. For one, CATS is fodder garbage and always will be. He'd probably even lose a match intentionally set up for him to win-- Oh. The other debate was Locke vs Ness, because Old Square has boosted like anything since Dissidia happened and people thought Locke could pull off the upset. But there were two issues with that. One, Locke was not in either Dissidia. And two, I'm not sure Locke wins this even if he was in Dissidia. We only have what we have, however, so you get Ness against no-Dissidia Locke, which I would equate to Celes. 2010 Ness vs 2006 Celes gets us with 70%. I know cross-referring old stats is unreliable, but Ness would ultimately end up scoring 60% on Celes in this poll and we're only concerned about who wins. This match was done within 5 minutes of it beginning for a reason: without Dissidia, Old Square still sucks in contests. Oh and I don't usually like defending my own pictures like this, but the people who were complaining about Locke's picture are absolute idiots. There are no good pictures of Locke beyond fan art. Zero. That might actually be the only good official picture Locke has, and it comes from some card game. People should really learn to stop complaining once in awhile. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis @GANON1025 can you explain your choice of match pic here? Locke looks like a keychain you'd get out of a capsule machine at the trendy boba tea spot in the gentrified part of downtown that's right across from three identical trendy boba tea spots and eight ramen places. There was some non-debate before this match because Ness had been punked by Big Daddy recently and people thought some rando FFVI party member would be able to take him down because of that. Which is not the case, Ness was able to beat Zidane once, why would he struggle with Cole? In fact, Locke was closer to CATS than he was Ness. Speaking of CATS, remember how he beat Nathan Drake in 2008? Good times. I wonder if he'll ever get another shot at a real win. --- ## (3)Elizabeth vs (16)Poison vs (25)Thrall 2013 _source: (3)Elizabeth vs (16)Poison vs (25)Thrall 2013 (revid 82131)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, July 20th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis After Elizabeth jumped out to an early lead, Poison made one huge 50 vote cut due to an early 4chan rally. But after that, this match was not remotely interesting despite what final numbers might suggest. Elizabeth \> Poison \> Thrall was set about 30 minutes in, though the final percentages being fairly close was an early warning sign of Booker being completely f\*\*\*ed in his opening match. Does Gilgamesh beat Elizabeth's score if he replaces her in this poll? Does he break 50%? I actually think he does. Gilgamesh has the Dissidia boost and no one gives a crap about either of the other two characters. That goes for Thrall by the way, you World of Warcraft crybabies. Thrall's picture was fine, it is 100% recognizable as Thrall -- unlike paulg's atrocious and intentional Vincent round 2 sabotage -- and no other picture would have even gotten him into second place, let alone first. Stop whining about everything, get out of your mom's basement, stop spending all of your mom's money on your monthly Skinner Box crack fix, and get a job. Is any other fanbase as whiny, elitist, or socially inept as World of Warcraft fans? Even such social reject classes as bronies, furries, the anime-obsessed, and LARPs will actually bother leaving their house once in awhile. Cry more, crybabies. Thrall lost, your game sucks. It's over. Accept it and move on. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Whoa, POISON was in a contest? What the hell was going on in 2013? Was it the comeback year for fighting games? Actually... Yes. Fighting games had a resurgence around 2010-2014, but then Capcom flooded their own market and ruined it again. There's another small renaissance going on right now, actually. We'll see who makes the field this year. There was a lot of pre-match debate on where Thrall would fall here, he could be in first, second, or third, but Elizabeth was definitely stronger than Poison, so it really depended on your perception of Thrall's strength how to make your Expert picks. The match pic finally dropped and, shit, what is up with Thrall's pic? He looks awful. He's definitely recognizable, but surely there's some better art of him... [oh](https://imgtc.com/i/l8JbXF4.jpg) [oh](https://imgtc.com/i/AIl0gzL.jpg) [ooooooooh](https://imgtc.com/i/u4R8iD1.jpg) I'm being facetious, of course. Thrall actually does have some good art, it's all just like this: Art like this is really hard to work with, it's not meant to be rendered, the lighting and angles don't lend themselves to a clean cut out. It seems obvious to me what kind of art would or would not be good in a match pic, but I guess that logic isn't too common, because any time a character got a bad or mediocre pic you'd get people posting "WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU USE THIS ONE" and linking to shit like this: and not realizing how bad it would look in a tiny match pic box then getting offended when we would tell them to use their brains Back to the topic at hand, yeah, Thrall and Warcraft in general is pretty weak, the characters aren't like Diablo where they have a series named after them and they look badass. To most people Thrall is just some Warcraft orc. Perhaps Hearthstone will change that? Poison impressed here, she has boobs, yeah, but other than that she's fairly iconic even outside of the FGC because of the whole "lol did poison have a penis once" thing that people just can't seem to get over. It's like the most surface level video game trivia and people love to put it in their crappy "6 CRAZY facts about the Street Fighter Universe!!!!" clickbait videos. ps I denied it at the time but I did purposefully sabotage Elizabeth's pic here to remove her TJF and iconic outfit to give Poison a fighting chance. I am despicable. Don't trust anything I say. Close this tab and go read one of the three other threads on this board that are actually about discussing contests. If a Zen bullshit topic is the only place to get your contest fix then it's a sad time to be a stat junkie. --- ## (4)Kirby vs (15)Terra Branford vs (24)Princess Peach 2013 _source: (4)Kirby vs (15)Terra Branford vs (24)Princess Peach 2013 (revid 82132)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, July 20th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I know what you're thinking! "ALL THAT PINK, THE PICTURE IS SO PINK!" And you would be right! But is it the pinkest a match picture has ever been? BAM! No it is not! I don't usually advertise my own pics, but I will find any excuse I can to post that thing. I love that picture. As for this match, it was bound to be predictable, but Terra doing this well was just nuts. We all kind of had a feeling Peach would leech from Kirby pretty hard and Terra would do well thanks to Dissidia and her recent history of overperforming, but even then this was just silly. I hate using the 1 on 1 logic with 3ways here, but does anyone have Kirby only getting 56% on Terra 1 on 1? I know Peach messes up those stats, but even 60-40 just seems crazy. Terra has been beasting since Dissidia, although Kefka getting all the upsets instead of her kind of sucks. Terra is awesome, Final Fantasy 6 might be the best game in that entire series, and Terra's design upgrade from FF6 to Dissidia is one of the best upgrades ever. I know it's technically the same colors, but man does she look good in 3D. I love Terra, and I loved this match. We should set up Terra in some winnable upset and laugh. Actually, does Draven go sophomore slump and get no rallies next time? Draven vs Terra, let's do this. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Even when the match pic is aggressively pink all-around, Kirby still manages to stand out by just being so spherical. Does anyone have more of a pic advantage than Kirby in any scenario? Coming off of Dissidia, Terra was able to take advantage of Peach LFFing Kirby to look really respectable here. She definitely looked much better than Kefka did losing handily to GLaDOS. Terra should be Sakurai's next pick for Smash. I know a lot of people are on team Vivi/Black Mage, but Terra just feels right to me. FFVI is one of the biggest and most beloved SNES games. If Cloud can make it in just cuz he walked on screen once in Chain of Memories, then Terra definitely deserves a spot. Coming off of Mario Odyssey, Peach should have gotten a tiny boost, but probably nothing substantial. It's been a long time since she was in the spotlight. If 3D World had been more recent she probably would have been a bit stronger due to actually being playable. The biggest question is whether or not Daisy makes it in again now that she's an Echo in Smash. --- ## (7)Wheatley vs (12)Crash Bandicoot vs (21)Tommy Vercetti 2013 _source: (7)Wheatley vs (12)Crash Bandicoot vs (21)Tommy Vercetti 2013 (revid 82133)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, July 21st, 2013 ## Ulti's analysis All the credit for this match and this upset goes to yoblazer and Leonhart4. Those two went on The Show and banged for the Crash upset hard, and he came through. Their logic was that Portal 2 was not nearly as big or "meme-y" as the original Portal, that people don't have the connection to Wheatley that people have with GLaDOS, and that Crash being the most recognizable character in this poll would get him the casual vote. They even called that this match meant nothing for GLaDOS's popularity and that she would still do just fine in her own matches. Of course I'm probably done listening to or ever mentioning events from The Show ever again, because Ngamer had the bright idea to not have me on one time this entire season, and doesn't even have the nuts to explain why -- or why multiple other people were getting on multiple times each, or why none of my PMs were never answered, or anything else. Putting that into a PCA is a small form of protest, but it's getting in here nonetheless because that s\*\*\* is so stupid. And yes, "i mad". I probably never will stop being mad, either. Oh yeah, there's a match to discuss here. People who picked Wheatley had a really good reason. Lots of them, actually. Summer 2002 - Crash beats Ulala in round 1, loses to Sephiroth in round 2. Summer 2003 - KOS-MOS \> Crash in round 1. Summer 2004 - Master Chief \> Crash in round 1. Summer 2007 - Magus \> Phoenix Wright \> Bomberman \> Crash in round 1. Summer 2008 - Samus \> Nightmare \> Crash \> Raz in round 1. Fall 2010 - Ryu Hayabusa \> Crash in round 1. Rivalry Rumble - Pac-Man/Blinky \> Crash/Cortex in round 1. Crash's contest history is so bad that everyone completely forgot he actually has won a match in the past. This upset was billed as CRASH IS FINALLY GOING TO GET HIS FIRST CONTEST WIN, and no one actually bothered looking up the Ulala thing from way back in 2002. I even completely forgot about it until looking it up myself just now. He is seriously that forgettable in contests. So if anyone ever deserved to score a close upset in memorable fashion, it was Crash. Wheatley held him off early, and he tried holding serve for half an hour, but Crash finally put him away for good about an hour in. The cool thing here is contest vets were really happy for Crash, and no one was really upset at the little guy finally turning heads. This was really cool for contest historian types, even if we did completely forget that he won a match before LOL Pop some champagne, Crash. You've earned it. Oh, and Tommy Vercetti was also in this match but literally no one gave a s\*\*\*. That dude has fallen so far, so fast. He went from epic matches against Donkey Kong and Kefka to getting doubled by Crash f\*\*\*ing Bandicoot. And good, because screw that terrible casualbait series and all the idiots who are currently mugging people for a copy of Grand Theft Auto 5. I read a story about some mentally challenged guy saving up money for months to get GTA5, getting mugged for it, and it made me absolutely sick to my stomach. People donated the game to him once the media caught wind of that story, which gives me some faith in humanity, but I still can't believe the sick freaks that live on this planet sometimes. People really need to read The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. If you're more interested in baubles than being a decent human being, you can go to hell. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I was trying to find words for describing how flash-in-the-pan Wheatley was at the time, but that just put me in a melancholy mood. Wheatley is great. GLaDOS is great. Cave Johnson is great. Portal is great. Valve... was great. Now you can buy the use of their assets and IPs for a nominal fee. Portal Bridge Builder, anyone? What a timeless classic. Dozens of people are sure to have fond memories of that fun-filled two hours when they played Portal Bridge Builder before requesting a refund. I'm being really sour, but I think we all kind of are. Valve now gives bonuses based on how much of a profit you can turn with whatever you're working on. They encourage their employees to do whatever they can to make money as fast as they can. What takes a ton of employees and a lot of time? Making full Portal and Half-Life games. You know what takes just one or two dudes and a week? Making Team Fortress 2 hats. We're probably not going to see Wheatley again, we might see GLaDOS, but we're definitely not going to see Cave Johnson. Who knows where Gordon will even be? I'll get to him in a bit, there's a lot to say. Alright, rant over, Crash Bandicoot was here and he won, as expected. The only kind-of surprise to people not familiar with these things was Tommy losing to Wheatley and losing pretty hard. This was the guy people had once taken over Crono. GTA protagonists ain't shit on this site. During the big hiatus in between contests, people speculated if Michael, Franklin and Trevor from GTAV would be worth anything. Short answer: No. Long answer: Let's just stick to nominating GTA games into Games Contests and keep the characters out. Because no. Especially not after this long. Crash had a remake of his first three games on PS4, XBONE and, recently, Switch. It got a lot of great buzz and people even started speculating he would be in Smash for some reason. That's... OK. Sure. I also saw a long 4chan post yesterday detailing how Ashley is still in Smash despite being shown as an Assist Trophy and that Sakurai is just pulling one long con to punk us. Hell of a community Smash has. We'll probably see Crash back this year, and maybe thanks to his resurgence in popularity we'll see him get a third win. He deserves better than Wheatley and Ulala. --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (18)Isaac (Golden Sun) vs (27)Commander Keen 2013 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (18)Isaac (Golden Sun) vs (27)Commander Keen 2013 (revid 82138)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, July 21st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match, like most 1 vs 16 or 1 vs 8 or 1 vs 18 vs 27 vs 294564 matches, was very predictable. These usually serve as a tribute to the 1 seed, unless we're talking about LOLHALOLOL, and Snake delivered well. So did Isaac, all things considered. The only thing to really take from this match was whether or not Snake would be able to challenge Link, and this match absolutely proved he could. Link didn't look particularly dominant in his round 1 match, while Snake went out and took care of business. This didn't mean Snake would be able to take Link down 1 on 1 or anything, but the numbers after this match were absolutely close enough to give Snake the win if you throw Mario in there, like we all thought he would be. It would end up being Samus in that spot, and there is not a doubt in my mind Snake wins this contest if the final is Link/Snake/Samus. Cloud probably scores something like 45% on Link these days. Snake can't make that up with an assist from Nintendo? Come on. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Snake comes out of the gate dick first, asserting his dominance over Link and smacking Isaac so hard upside the head that he knocked him out of the Smash roster forever. Hey let's take a trip over to the Smash Ultimate board, shall we? [Wow!](https://imgtc.com/i/Zu79qbn.png) People seem to really want this Isaac guy. They want him so much that Sakurai took him out as an Assist Trophy in Smash 4, the only time that has ever happened ever. Remember how close Felix got to Master Chief back in the day? Look at Isaac now, unable to triple Commander Keen. No wonder Sakurai isn't putting him in Smash. What does he owe to the 6637 people asking for him? I want to take a moment to talk about Solid Snake and ZenOfThunder's newly-coined Martyr Factor (or the MFer): Konami spent the years post-Summer 2013 taking big, steamy dumps all over Kojima, Kojima Productions and Metal Gear Solid V. The franchise itself is in ruins, and everyone is aware. The developers of Metal Gear Survive, the heavily-panned, poorly selling Rust-like spinoff of MGS, were even in on the hate, hiding easter eggs in their own games dissing their Konami producers and crying out for their lord and savior Kojima to save them. But what does that mean for Snake? Well, obviously he's not going to be in any games outside of Smash Ultimate anytime soon. Hayter would be willing to voice him but outside of Sakurai asking him to reprise the role in Smash, Konami doesn't seem (Commander) keen on bringing him back. Keifer Sutherland has such a busy schedule filming such classic new films as Pompeii and Flatliners that there's no way Konami could get him back to record three more grunts for a new MGS game. So where am I going with this? Shouldn't Snake be weaker with less appearances? Well, yeah. Yeah he should. That's where you mix in a vial of concentrated Zen "kind of reaching there, buddy" juice. The downfall of MGS, Kojima and Snake was so highly publicized and Konami was villainized to such an extreme degree that I believe love for Snake has reached a new level, and the story of his fall will be etched into gaming history in such a way that people will vote for him not only out of love but respect and a little bit of pity. Even though MGSV was pretty polarizing, the fate of Kojima offsets all the negative feelings, because even if the game was lacking, it was not Kojima's fault, not Snake's fault, it was Konami's fault, and FucKonami. The MFer. You heard it here first. Snake \> Link 2018 let's go boys --- ## (6)Alucard vs (13)Captain Falcon vs (22)Rydia 2013 _source: (6)Alucard vs (13)Captain Falcon vs (22)Rydia 2013 (revid 82139)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 22nd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was our first photo finish of the contest, depending on how close you thought Tharja winning was. But it goes a bit deeper than that. Until this match, you know what our last true photo finish in a contest was? Not RBY beating the FF7 dudes, that was a bonus match. It was Ryu upsetting Dante all the way back in 2010 with HOCKEY FACTOR. And even then, one could argue that match wasn't crazy close late because Ryu pulled away to win by 500. So you'd have to go back to Crono/Missingno, which was much closer than the final vote margin but Missingno went berserk late. You could go back to Wesker/Ken, but that match wasn't really in doubt for the last few hours. Meaning our last legit, mash-F5 photo finish was Red's comeback on Ocelot in 2010's third match. Point being, it was a freaking long time for us in terms of a balls to the wall match where everyone went nuts at the end. Make fun of us all you want, but this is our Superb Owl and we love it. Alucard and Falcon were close in the stats, but Alucard was the favorite simply because of this being a night match. Except that logic went south really fast, as Falcon built up a 500 vote lead in 3 hours and made this match seem all but dead. Alucard would not only have to come back, but survive the inevitable Nintendo day vote to win. Yet somehow, he did just that. It was just weird, and to this day I have no explanation for it because it defies all the trends we know. I can see Alucard going nuts at 3 am to erase the 500 vote lead, but come the morning vote, Falcon just.... didn't do anything. The match stalled and stalled and stalled, which is weird when thinking about how badly Sora beat Alucard with the morning vote a few years back. Yet there it was, Alucard and Falcon tied in the morning and Falcon doing nothing whatsoever to win the match. From there, Alucard made the slowest of pushes. It only lasted two hours, but this was a 12 hour match and 2 hours was enough to win. He would end up winning by 103 votes, in one of the weirdest first round matches I can remember. It's lame to have no explanation for these trends in a PCA, but I really have no idea what happened. It's probably better that way, because every close match being decided by trends would get really boring. It's part of why we went so long without a nailbiter; we just kind of look at trends from the past and pick out exactly how everything will finish before it happens. Taking things in at face value is kind of lost on us, so a match like this once in awhile is good. It was also a good example of 12 hour matches being better, but I'd rather early round nailbiters be cut in half than deal with Snake/Isaac/Keen for 24 hours. I haven't forgotten Rydia by the way, but the big writeup about FF4 continuing to s\*\*\* the bed will come during Cecil's match. ## Zen's (Late) Write-Up It was here at our 30th match of the contest that we finally got something balls-to-the-walls entertaining. Not counting Draven. Every ingredient for a successful match was here: A reliable contest all-star, a four-time Smash vet and crowd favorite, and a classic, semi-proven Final Fantasy character with titties that, uh, beat Marcus Fenix once. Yeah, Rydia wasn't a lock to pull any upset here, but people always overestimate FF characters. Actually, I don't remember much intense debate here. People dismissed Falcon pretty easily. Alucard, again, has proven himself as a strong competitor in these things. He's no jobber. But thanks to low votals Falcon was able to come dangerously close and the two were able to trade blows throughout the day. These are the matches Allen should aim to create. I was on the edge of my seat all day. My bracket said "Alucard" but my heart said "Captain Falcon" and I suppose my dick said "Rydia" so no matter what I was a winner. --- ## (9)Bayonetta vs (10)N vs (19)Wander 2013 _source: (9)Bayonetta vs (10)N vs (19)Wander 2013 (revid 82140)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 22nd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I originally picked N to win this match out of POKEFEAR, but then I remembered that no one cares about the avatars past RBY. They only care about the Pokemon themselves, and even then only the RBY generation will ever truly go nuts in contests. Bayonetta also has a decent buzz about her, which is probably enough to win a match where few people care about any of the characters involved. True to form, Bayonetta staved off the early Pokemon board vote -- a day vote, no less -- and won this poll with ease. It was a nice relaxing comedown following the Alucard/Falcon match. Bayonetta ended up getting nearly 50% here, which is nothing to slouch at no matter how bad the competition is. And when Wander, one of the absolute stupidest characters in the history of gaming and someone who deserved every bad thing that happened to him, can get a decently respectable last place score, you know the competition was garbage. But any poll where Shadow of the Colossus or its idiot main character gets last place is bound to be a good poll in some way. Awful game plus pretentious fanbase makes for good times whenever it loses, and true to their typical selves, Shadow of the Colossus fans (especially LinkMarioSamus) whined like little girls all throughout this match because ART IMITATING LIFE AND COLOSSUS IS ART AND OHMAN SUCH A GOOD ARTSY ATMOSPHERE ART ART ART ART ART. Apparently watching Shadow of the Colossus LPs is a MASTERPIECE and AMAZING EXPERIENCE because Unikgamer has it on various top 2297645137 lists! I often wonder how the American unemployment rate is so high, but then I go on the internet and realize who is actually out there applying for jobs. No wonder. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Of all the matches that were highly debated in Summer 2013, this one baffled me then, and it still baffles me now. How did N get into a contest? At a 9 seed? Instead of Brock and Misty? Instead of Blastoise? Instead of... There's so many better choices. Who the hell is N? Does anybody stay awake at night with visions of N dancing around in their heads? If you're just reading about this match for the first time ever in 2018, you may be shocked to find out that, yes, many, many people took N here because Pokemon. That was the only reason. Seeing Bayonetta rocket way out ahead right from the start was so satisfying. N isn't even in my top 20 letters. Give me Z or Q any day. Actually I am turning this topic into a [Q](https://imgtc.com/i/u2Qplod.jpg) nomination rally, sign up here: Round 1 match Q / N / Zed from Pulp Fiction, who ya got? Wander showed up here as well, and I guess N was too big of a colossus to climb. I did just dump all over N, but due to recency and being one of those hot characters of the moment, N was able to secure a win over Wander. Something tells me that a 1-v-1 between the two today would go differently. Remember everyone Tweeting at Roger Ebert that Shadow of the Colossus is true art? Then he died. I cut that train of thought short because my girlfriend just came home and asked why I am typing so furiously (I do that when I'm typing about the highest expression of art, ~\*~Shadow of the Colossus~\*~) and I asked "do you remember what game 'N' is from?" "Pokemon?" "Do you remember what he looks like?" "Green... green hair." "Do you remember anything else about him?" "Uhhhh..." "Anything at all." "..." But hey at least she remembered him, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've thought of N this year, or his dumb green anime hair. --- ## (2)GLaDOS vs (17)Cole vs (26)Ragna the Bloodedge 2013 _source: (2)GLaDOS vs (17)Cole vs (26)Ragna the Bloodedge 2013 (revid 82141)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis We had just seen Wheatley crap the bed, so seeing GLaDOS come out and take care of business easily was nice. It definitely shows a huge disconnect between Portal 1 and Portal 2 fandom. inFamous also has a lot of fans for whatever reason, so I guess Cole getting second place was good for them. But you know what needs more fans? F\*\*\*in BlazBlue, son. Ragna finally getting into a contest was awesome as hell, and so is the series. If you've played Guilty Gear at all, you've basically played BlazBlue. If you've never played either but love fighting games, it's worth a try. Very phrenetic, very fun, and combos out the ass without having to rely on the gimmickry of Marvel vs Capcom to do them. Ragna isn't the only great character in those games, either. You get a living cat chick, a giant magnetic robot, an ooze who is beyond insane and thinks everyone else are the crazy ones, a teacher with GGGGGG boobs wielding a giant staff, and so much more. And Hazama. That guy is too nuts for a description, just look him up. The point is, play BlazBlue. It's fun! ## Zen's (Late) Analysis You know nobody on this site cares about your anime fighting game when the main character can't beat freaking Cole McGrath. Of course, Cole is an absolute powerhouse in these things because he had two whole character slots in this site's favorite Smash game, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. The game with [Emmett Graves](https://imgtc.com/i/Dx5d2dx.png) in it. You know Emmett Graves, the star of hit PlayStation exclusive StarHawk. Truly deserving of the title "PlayStation All-Star." GLaDOS looked good here but only because of that Portal 2 recency and also who the hell is Cole and why is that other guy named "Ragna the Bloodedge." That sounds like a Sonic fan character. A pretty good one, actually. Take notes. --- ## (5)Ike vs (14)Proto Man vs (23)Dr. Robotnik 2013 _source: (5)Ike vs (14)Proto Man vs (23)Dr. Robotnik 2013 (revid 82142)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match was basically the Whiskey Nick/Black Turtle special. Those guys have been slamming Proto Man fandom for years in contests, and they came sooooo close to a massive upset. But even in a loss, you have to hand it to Proto Man here. Because until this match, the only thing he had ever done was lose to Solid Snake, and barely lose out to Ridley in a vote-in poll for the rights to be annihilated in round 1 a few years back. So basically, we've never really had a read on the guy. When this match began, Ike built a lead slowly, Proto Man made one big cut, and then Ike slowly (very slowly) built up a lead to 450 or so. Then Proto Man stalled for hours before making a comeback attempt, but there was just too much stalling all over the place for any character to make any true headway. Proto Man would ultimately end up only losing by 170, but this match was never really in doubt once we realized how slowly everything was happening. But even still, this was one hell of a good match for Proto Man, and a very bad match for Ike. Also, am I crazy for thinking Mega Man and Sonic have some overlap in the fanbases, and that Proto Man might have won this 1 on 1? I feel like if you remove Robotnik from this poll, and he did damn well in his own right, that Proto Man actually pulls this off. I also feel like Robotnik being in there and doing so well is why the headline for first place was happening so slowly. We had two guys fighting for first place while the guy in last was getting 29% of the votes. That's a lot of Robotnik love, so the question of who wins if he's out has to be asked. I'll get more into how overrated Ike is in round 2, because that's where we really finally saw what a fraud he is. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Over the past few years the line between the Nintendo, Mega Man and Sonic fandoms has definitely become was more blurred. While Eggman had no shot to beat either of these guys, it's interesting to speculate how many votes he pulled from the other two. Having a match this close a day after another close one was a real treat, and if you still weren't feeling in a contest mood post-Draven, this string of matches was a pick-me-up for sure. In the end Ike barely won, but he didn't really struggle, just fell flat on his face. I don't think he lost the lead at any point, just had to put up with little cuts here and there. Which overall was a bad look for Ike. Proto Man has never been good in these things and Ike is a national treasure and a real sweetheart. He even got his big dick adult Ike pic. I'm not even a Fire Emblem fan and I like Ike. As for Eggman, you know who would have done better here? Metal Sonic! --- ## (8)Epona vs (11)Mordin Solus vs (20)Niko Bellic 2013 _source: (8)Epona vs (11)Mordin Solus vs (20)Niko Bellic 2013 (revid 82143)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 24th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Pre-contest, it was hard getting a read on Epona because some people thought she (at least I'm assuming it's a "she") would get Link in match pictures. As-is, she would end up being a decent midcarder and relatively funny joke entrant. That didn't sit well with some people, and it reminded me of the days where people complained that we might as well start nominating Tifa's Orthopedic Underwear because people like FF7 so much. That hate is turning on Zelda these days, which I suppose is pleasant to see but Epona is not the right character to bash. Epona is awesome, and so are horses. I got to work with one when I did a workshop at Purdue in May, and it was such an incredible experience. Horses are such beautiful animals, and everyone should spend time with one just once in their lives. So even though I'm a huge Mordin fan and got bummed out at Garrus being screwed in the bracket, I didn't mind too much when Mordin got a raw deal. Epona deserved the win, HaRRicH deserved the win for rallying THE STABLE for years and years, and don't mess with us animal lovers. We're insane. Not even talking about PETA, either, because screw them. At their high-level board meetings that people like Bill Mahr attend, they laugh about slaughterhouses while eating steaks. I mean true blue animal lovers. You all know at least one. We're nuts. Right now I have 5 rats, 4 guinea pigs, and 11 hamsters. was only supposed to be 7 hamsters, but one was pregnant when I adopted her and I could easily afford to keep the babies. The point here is Epona winning wasn't some giant affront to contests. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I completely forgot that we rallied a horse into this contest. It's all coming back to me and I want to vomit. We're all anti-rally now, but back in the day we were doing nothing but cramming our bad jokes into this contest and hoping they took off. Everyone wanted to guess what the next L-Block was gonna be. Is Epona a classic video game character? I... guess. Does she deserve a spot more than Ragna the Bloodedge and Commander Keen? Maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure why I'm worked up about this. I fucking made Epona's picture, so who am I to talk? Speaking of Epona's picture, it took forever to render and the end result looks awful. You can see the 1-point brownish-red stroke I put around her mane because I couldn't get the render to look good. Really phoned that one in. I feel awful for Mordin, here's this beloved tertiary Mass Effect character who people legit love. Yeah, he didn't put up great numbers against Niko, but in the right scenario he might escape round 1. Epona looked good here, I remember people posting "SHAPED LIKE A HORSE TO KICK YOUR ASS" or some other really awful jokes all day and it was all just so derivative and forced. L-Block somehow felt more natural. Also, L-Block didn't need a field of 247 characters to finally get in. This wasn't the first time we had try to get Epona in, either. Nobody REALLY wanted a horse in the bracket. Again, it all felt forced, and not very fun. For me, at least. This thread is about me. --- ## (3)Shulk vs (16)Ratchet vs (25)Altair 2013 _source: (3)Shulk vs (16)Ratchet vs (25)Altair 2013 (revid 82144)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 24th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis It's not easy to have a cooler picture or cooler "look" than Altair, but Shulk managed to pull it off. I really need to play Xenoblade one of these days if all the characters look that hard. Is it similar to Xenosaga or Xenogears or whatever? I feel like once I play it, I'm going to look back at this match and be kind of mad. Altair was not a true 25 seed, and I'll never forget how mad the Xenoblade fans got when they saw this bracket first revealed. Never mind that Ratchet ALSO beat Shulk half to death \<\_\< The actual match wasn't particularly interesting beyond 44-33-22 being pretty neat, so I'm hoping people take it upon themselves to tell me how good Xenoblade is! Was Nintendo getting all that hate worth it? I really do want to know, it seems very long and I want some motivation to play it. How's the battle system? ## Zen's (Late) Analysis If I told you that there was a secret pic Shulk could get that would instantly double, nay, triple his expected vote total, would you believe me? Would anyone on this board believe a pic could be that strong? KamikazePotato and the rest of the Xenoblade fans on this board would have you believe that [this](https://imgtc.com/i/qWsZGbM.jpg) was the key. Yes, the key to Shulk's victory was-- Shit, I should be more specific here. It wasn't a bad child-size cosplay of Shulk. It was [this thing.](https://imgtc.com/i/aiyZDBd.jpg) The Monado! People were convinced that if someone could squeeze this giant red phallus into a match pic with Shulk that he would at least be able to beat Ratchet, perhaps even proven multi-way contest veteran Altair! After a few days of bad pic submissions, [KP found the best Picsmith for the job: KP](https://imgtc.com/i/K7xVheY.png), the ultimate weapon wasn't the Monado, it was your heart all along. So Shulk got what was considered the best possible picture, and... lost. Lost pretty hard. I had fallen for all the Shulk hype and taken him over Ratchet in my Expert bracket. Whoops. To be fair, KP is right a lot of the time and he's pretty convincing, and that XENOFEAR got to me. It actually wasn't crazy to consider Ratchet weak enough to lose to Shulk. He had lost to Thrall once, and failed to double Eddie Riggs. Since 2013, Ratchet has received a bad movie and a good, albeit short, movie tie-in game. Where is his strength now? Probably the same, but I don't mind seeing him in these things. Altair once again has a decent contest showing. It's astounding that the basically personality-void protagonist of the first ever Assassin's Creed game is still one of very few reps the series has had in this contest. People don't even like the first AC or Altair in general anymore. Outside of Ezio, there really isn't any better pick, though. --- ## (4)Lara Croft vs (15)Yuri Hyuga vs (24)Slime 2013 _source: (4)Lara Croft vs (15)Yuri Hyuga vs (24)Slime 2013 (revid 82145)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, July 25th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Hold up, a match pic without Lara having DDDDDDDDs? I'm confused. I'm also mega confused by this match. I expect Yuri Hyuga to be really weak, but I was not expecting Lara Croft to be a beast. I guess people liked her series getting a reboot, or something? This was the first time Lara looked even halfway decent in a contest in six years, and barring that pointless female contest, this was the first time Lara completely crushed a match since 2002. That's a long period of contest futility there, and to randomly see it turned around was odd. Oh and let's throw Slime some love. Dragon Quest is a good series, but this match really showed that Slime is the mascot for that series. Lara may have rocked this poll, but Slime did not embarrass himself. We've all killed hundreds, is no thousands, if not even higher numbers of Slimes, but we all love the little guy. Long live the Slime! But not the Metal Slime, that guy is a coward and a dick. You take 1 damage from everything, y u no fight me? =( ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Poor Yuri, he almost got septupled by Samus in his first ever appearance then took a loooong nap and got woken up with Lara Croft's gun in his face. Stick him in the freezer, Lara! Lara was coming off of her hot new reboot game where she looked like Alicia Vikander, the only woman worthy of Michael Fassbender's love. Wait, I think I got my timeline wrong... Regardless, people now take Lara seriously now despite ridiculous scenarios like her murdering 300000 people then getting real real sad cuz she killed a deer. I get it, it's a video game, but other video games do "being a video game" way better. Having Lara grunt a lot and talk to herself sarcastically is enough to get her onto Nathan Drake's level I guess. Should have gone all the way and gotten Nolan North to voice her. Slime finally made a contest appearance and even though it was nice to see copious Dragon Quest reps make the field, unlike Final Fantasy people don't seem to particularly care for that series' characters here, even its mascot. Maybe Jessica from DQVIII would do alright? Boobs. --- ## (7)Kefka vs (12)Zack Fair vs (21)Ryu Hayabusa 2013 _source: (7)Kefka vs (12)Zack Fair vs (21)Ryu Hayabusa 2013 (revid 82146)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, July 25th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis So hey, remember when we looked at this match and all picked Zack to win twice? And how those who thought Kefka would leech Zack to death picked Ryu Hayabusa instead? No, really, this happened: There were stragglers and legit brilliant people who picked Kefka, but the MASSIVE consensus was Zack or Ryu Hayabusa winning twice. Then this match started, Kefka kicked the crap out of Zack and Ryu, and people realized what a godtier-level contest troll Kefka truly is. It isn't just that he won; it's that he easily won with a Final Fantasy 7 character also in the poll, against a third character that, in theory, should have easily taken advantage of this for the win. Everyone knows the list by now, but I'm busting out the ol' poll search feature and bringing it up one more time. Kefka's contest history might be the most insane thing ever. Look at this. Summer 2003 Round 1 - 50.95% against Pac-Man in a match he's heavily favored in, Lettuce Kefka is born. Summer 2003 Round 2 - SFFd into the ground by Crono. Summer 2004 Round 1 - Leads Knuckles for hours before the Sonic day vote crushes him. Villains Contest Round 1 - 64% on Mithos, people credit Kefka having a good picture. Villains Contest Round 2 - 70% (!!!!) on Wekser, people credit the God Kefka picture. Villains Contest Round 3 - 46% on Diablo after leading for 3 hours. Summer 2005 Round 1 - Kefka leads Vercetti by 1100, loses lead, CJayC removes 1500 Kefka votes, then Vercetti cheats like hell at the end just because. Summer 2007 Round 1 - Second place, Marcus Fenix in first, some people expected Kefka to lose outright. Summer 2007 Round 2 - Kefka almost gets second place even with Cloud in the poll. Summer 2008 Round 1 - Last place against Duke Nukem, Marth, and Niko Bellic in a poll where all 4 characters led at some point. Fall 2010 Round 1 - 60% on Arthas as a massive underdog, people credit Dissidia. Fall 2010 Round 2 - 38% on Bowser, possibly the first Kefka match ever where something dumb doesn't happen. Rivalry Rumble Round 1 - Total blowout of Vyse and Galcian. Rivalry Rumble Round 2 - 39% on Samus and Ridley. And then this happens. I understand the FF7 decline, I really do, but still. Kefka could do anything at this point from beating full-strength rallied Draven to losing to Soap MacTavish, and nothing would surprise me. That dude does something nutty in every single contest he's ever been in other than the Rivalry Rumble. The explanation is easy enough -- he has a Dissidia boost plus pictures that aren't garbage -- but it feels so odd that he's done so much more with Dissidia than other characters that also should have benefitted from Dissidia. Final Fantasy 4 for example has yet to win a match in any capacity, and F that. You talk about something that deserves a win in the worst way, FF4 is it. The crazy thing is Kefka wasn't even done trolling us this contest. You think one crazy upset is enough for that dude? Oh no. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Kefka always gives me writer's block. I never know how the hell to talk about this guy. He's the king of inconsistency. In my last writing project I stalled for almost two weeks trying to think about what to say about Kefka. So instead I'm going to talk about how cool it is that Allen made the dimensions of the match pictures 299 x 187. He could have made it 300 x 187 but Character Battle IX whoa what an easter egg better put it in my shitty clickbait article with a picture of Morrigan's boobs and a giant red arrow pointing to nothing Let's talk about how great Zack the Living Buster Sword looked here. I went on a big rant last post about how the Monado ended up amounting to nothing, but here's the Buster Sword pulling so much support from Kefka that it managed to get Zack into second over Ryu Hayabusa, a proven contest vet that's looked good in a ton of situations over the years. Maybe Kefka was really just that weak, or maybe Zack really is just that strong. I find it hard to get reads on either of them, because FF looked so bad this contest that I feel like I can't be sure of anything. Usually Ulti and Leon are better at analyzing FF's popularity trends. At least this was an entertaining match. Kefka never fails to disappoint. I remember having some big projects due in college this week so my memory is a little blurry for some of these matches, so if anyone has personal anecdotes relating to them please jump in and share. --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (18)Senator Steven Armstrong vs (27)Prinny 2013 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (18)Senator Steven Armstrong vs (27)Prinny 2013 (revid 82147)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, July 26th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was yet another predictable 1 seed blowout match, though Prinny getting 26% on Cloud is something that never would have happened back in the mid-2000s. But regardless, it was a good beatdown for Cloud. Not good enough to be on Link's level, but still good. What I don't understand here is Armstrong. Is this seriously what the Metal Gear Solid series has become? A glorified Ninja Gaiden with a boss shouting "NONMACHINES BRO!"? I watched a video of the boss fight in whatever game this dude is in, and it was an embarrassment. I really, truly hope Metal Gear Solid 5 doesn't suck. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Imagine coming to this site not having played Metal Gear Rising and trying to figure out why the fuck a US Senator with a big cigar and a nice suit is in a GameFAQs character battle. Then you go to the totals page and see his bio pic with the weird Resident Evil growth all over his chest. What the hell is up with this guy? Short answer: **NANOMACHINES, SON.** As far as video game memes going around in 2013, that was one I really liked. I didn't even play Revengeance; I don't have patience for parrying or anything, but shit, Armstrong and Jetstream Sam are the raddest characters and I wish they were canon. Then again, nothing in MGS is really canon anymore, right? It's hard to believe it's been so long since Revengeance dropped. It feels like just yesterday. Yet the more time goes on the more it seems to become overlooked and forgotten. You can't even play it legally on Macs anymore: Back to the point: Armstrong is cool but not cool enough to be doubled by Prinny of all things. Is Prinny stronger than Laharl at this point? Would Etna play to the pedo crowd of GameFAQs and pull in more support? Will any Disgaea rep even make the field ever again? The big takeaway from this match is how Cloud couldn't pull off 70% in a Round 1 match against two of the most bottom-of-the-barrel fodder characters this contest has ever seen. Yeah, there were low votals and yeah, FF gets anti-voted, but it shouldn't matter much. If you hadn't already lost faith in FF by this point, now was the time to worry. --- ## (6)Handsome Jack vs (13)Frog vs (22)Viewtiful Joe 2013 _source: (6)Handsome Jack vs (13)Frog vs (22)Viewtiful Joe 2013 (revid 82148)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, July 26th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis So hey, remember this match from way back in the day? (5)Viewtiful_Joe_vs\_(12)Miles\_"Tails"\_Prower_2004 That was the one time Joe was ever favored to win a match, and he lost. He made some other 4way contest and got creamed. For Viewtiful Joe fans, this match was a bit of vindication. Handsome Jack was favored to get second place once Tiny Tina had a good round 1 performance, but Joe more or less pulled off an upset here to finally have something of note of his own in a contest. I'm sure Marvel vs Capcom 3 had something to do with that, but every now and again you have to make a deal with the devil to get what you want in life ;) I know Frog got first place easily and second place was never really a slobberknocker, but I like the little guy and was happy to see Joe do something -- anything -- besides getting last place in a poll. This was also a referendum on the Borderlands characters in the bracket. Tiny Tina doing well overrated them across the board for us, but the rest of them showed how weak the characters are as a collective in contests. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Here's a fun match that was kind of debated for a bit. I say "kind of" because most people assumed Borderland 2's main antagonist, Handsome Jack, would easily beat Viewtiful Joe, the dude who let everyone down when he lost to Tails in 2004. Since 2004 Joe had made a few sparse appearances, the most recent at that time being Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. He wasn't really used competitively and nobody cared. On the flip side, Borderlands 2 did really well in the GameFAQs GOTY polls. No brainer, right? Well, Frog was in the match (good on him for breaking 50%), so by law, it needs to be entertaining. Handsome Jack was the jobber this time, and Joe once again fucked over a lot of brackets. In other news, I recently did a playthrough of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel as Jack's body double, and holy shit is that game so much worse than Borderlands 2. It's amazing how adding one mechanic can ruin a game. Yeah, let's set the game on the moon and give the player a limited oxygen supply that also drains when they double jump or do slam attacks. Let's limit exploration by making players have to run from oxygen supply to oxygen supply. They'll never be able to relax because they'll always be thinking about the ever-diminishing number in the bottom left of their screen. Some people defend this mechanic and say it adds to the game. What a crock of shit. Also [this incredibly annoying 7-second voice clip would play CONSTANTLY as Jack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jdnJkU9Z5M). I almost quit and started over to get a new character. I'm happy Jack lost here. Hope Borderlands 3 doesn't suck! And that it comes out! Gearbox is probably looking for more companies to scam like they did with SEGA and Colonial Marines. Maybe they'll buy another game in development hell and cobble together a poorly-coded release like they did with Duke Nukem Forever for some quick cash to make up for the millions they lost on Battleborn. --- ## (9)Sly Cooper vs (10)Francis York Morgan vs (19)Lugia 2013 _source: (9)Sly Cooper vs (10)Francis York Morgan vs (19)Lugia 2013 (revid 82149)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, July 27th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis You know Pokemon is becoming truly dominant when characters from beyond the RBY generation start rocking out in our contest polls. I'm willing to bet most of the Lugia voters are Smash Bros fans, which was frankly enough to blow out complete garbage. The more polls I see, the more convinced I am that Average Joe characters with Average Joe names are always going to clog up the bottom of our extrapolated standings. To this day, I have no idea how Nathan Drake has any contest strength whatsoever; he seems like exactly the kind of guy GameFAQs would put to 10% in any poll. This was also the second match in a row where I got to see someone I like from the Gamecube/Playstation 2 era get second place in this contest, and second place in the early rounds might as well be a feel-good win. I like the Sly series, and his lone contest match being a blowout at the hands of Sephiroth in 2004 kind of sucked. I don't agree with 243 characters and Allen's more-should-play theory, but I do respect seeing that theory in action. There's nothing wrong with seeing Sly get second place if we have to deal with a 243 character contest, right? ## Zen's (Late) Analysis [Please keep this looping while you read, thanks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzvXBFwcyek) Board 8 was super into Deadly Premonition at the time of the nom period. Well, maybe not all of Board 8, but enough to get York a decent seed. The game burned bright and as far as I can tell it isn't burning anymore. There's been no word of a sequel but I really don't think it needs one. It's astounding that a game as bizarre as DP even made it to a commercial release and any more would take away from the magic. That said, York only managed to get around the same amount of votes as Armstrong, but they were both happy just to be on the front page for a day. Wait... [Did you see that, Zach?!](https://imgtc.com/i/SgLspCX.jpg) Clear as a crisp spring morning! "Lu Gia"...in the contest! [I knew I could count on it. Never fails.](https://imgtc.com/i/64j8iB4.gif) Whose idea was it to get freaking Lugia into a Character Battle? Was he a Guru nom or something? Why? Was it to make a statement? I'd argue this is worse than N but they're both pretty bad. There was a little bit of debate as to whether or not Sly could sneak past Lugia to win this, but when you remember he got quadrupled by Sephiroth in his debut appearance, this result was pretty obvious. This much of a slaughter, though? If you hadn't figured it out by now, Pokefear was very, very real. I'm not sure how widespread that term was before and after this match, but there was no doubt denying it existed after this. Also I think Sly has a movie coming who cares --- ## (2)Dante vs (17)Laharl vs (26)Raz 2013 _source: (2)Dante vs (17)Laharl vs (26)Raz 2013 (revid 82150)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, July 27th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Given the entire debate surrounding this match was whether or not Dante could perform well enough to beat Squirtle in round 2, it was hard to really judge this match. See, Dante has scored round 1 blowouts before choking in round 2 before, except for the one time he got lucky and had to face Tails. 70% on Q\*Bert. 77% on Ryo Hazuki. 80% on Ratchet. 71% on Terra. 65% on Ryu Hayabusa. 70% on Axel. And now, 70% on Laharl. At this point, for Dante to make me believe he wasn't destined to choke against a strong character in round 2, those round 1 percentages would have to start being in the 90s. Every year, we see Dante perform well in round 1 and think he's fine. And every year, he gets his ass whipped early. This year was especially risky because of the whole DmC Donte nonsense, but at least he has his blowout win on Laharl. Congrats, I guess? ## Zen's (Late) Analysis iirc I used a Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne pic for Dante just because I wanted to post it in the Picsmith thread with [this](https://imgtc.com/i/8Wn4BxF.png) under it. I think I got one person who humored me with a "haha" and then Allen used the pic. Kids, never meme and pic. Although it does look pretty dope. We were coming off of DmC: Devil May Cry by this point and the wounds were still fresh. I hear that game got reworked a bit on PC and is actually really good, but it was so divisive that I doubt its original band of haters would ever admit that. But back in 2013, we were all worried that a potential bad pic paired with bad buzz would ruin Dante's chances to beat Squirtle in R2. Again, Pokefear was super real and Dante was the king of letdowns. He's had some good runs, but he also choked to Yoshi and Ryu, lost to Master Chief, and performed like shit against Tails. So he got 70% on Laharl, but that doesn't mean much if you can't beat Yoshi. It was assumed that Dante would have a rough time and if he beat Squirtle it would only be by a little. Nobody knew how bad Squirtle would expose Dante in R2. Also, nice to see Raz. Hot damn does he look ugly. He's just a big sack of potatoes getting used as a punching bag. I hear he has a VR game now and my only thoughts on that are "why would you want to get that close to Raz." This is Laharl's third win, and I think it's a good way for him to end his contest run. He now has the unimpressive heads of Nathan Hale, Neku and Raz mounted on his wall. I don't think he'll ever be more successful than that. Laharl vs Vyse Grudge Match 2018, who ya got? --- ## (5)Squirtle vs (14)Ramza Beoulve vs (23)JC Denton 2013 _source: (5)Squirtle vs (14)Ramza Beoulve vs (23)JC Denton 2013 (revid 82151)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, July 28th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis At least we didn't have to wait until round 2 to compare Squirtle to Dante. We only needed 12 hours and a little common sense to see what was coming. What would you rather have, 70% on Laharl or 64% on Ramza? I'm pretty sure Ramza would kick Laharl's ass in any contest setting. People tried pointing to the 2008 contest involving Ramza and Dante in a match (http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Dante_vs_Hogger_vs_Laharl_vs_Ramza_Beoulve_2008) to defend Dante's position here, but that was a different time. That was before DmC happened, before Pokemon started running roughshod over our contests, and before Dante's reputation as a huge choke artist. Dante is at a weird place right now; he's a strong character, but no one will ever pick him in a remotely debatable match ever again. To be fair, this wasn't really Squirtle-gone nuts either. Squirtle would end up beating Cloud this contest. Would you have known that only look at this match? I doubt it. It took some momentum to pull that one off, but I maintain that Squirtle \> Dante was easy to see coming from day 1. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis JC Denton finally gets a second shot in a contest setting and gets paired with a Pokemon and a fan-favorite Final Fantasy character. Ramza's since been in a Dissidia game or two, in 2018 he'd probably still do OK. It's not like he impressed here or anything and he did get doubled by a cartoon turtle, but at least he didn't lay down and die. People were expecting much worse of a blowout, which lead to people still championing Dante \> Squirtle in R2 as if DmC and Pokefear didn't exist. Another note on the pic side of things: This is one of the first appearances of "anonymous" being credited as the contributor of a pic, AKA "we submitted nothing but shitty meme pics so Allen had to make one himself." In this case it was for Squirtle. I think all the Picsmiths submitted for Squirtle were anime pics of him wearing his Kamina sunglasses as if he needed even more help. Sometimes I think sometimes we get too caught up in seeing what we can get away with instead of thinking what's best for the contest. --- ## (8)Spring Breeze Dancin' vs (11)Zidane Tribal vs (20)Ridley 2013 _source: (8)Spring Breeze Dancin' vs (11)Zidane Tribal vs (20)Ridley 2013 (revid 82152)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, July 28th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I'd love to think Ridley could beat Zidane during a day match if Spring Breeze Dancin' were removed from the poll, but even if you gave ALL of... whatever the hell that thing's votes is to Ridley, he still loses. Ridley is one of my favorite characters ever, and it would be nice to see him pull out a win without having to rely on a gimmick like the Rivalry Rumble. I'm also in the same boat with Zidane. He usually wins a match, but he's never been past round 2 and very much deserves to be. Final Fantasy 9 is such an amazing experience, an amazing throwback to the Final Fantasy series itself, and you can just feel how much fun the team had when making the game. Games now are too serious, you'll never see a company make fun of themselves and tribute themselves in the way Final Fantasy 9 does. I always like matches where I like more than one character for emotional hedge purposes, but it does suck when looking at the contest history and realizing a deep run may never happen. But with that said, Vivi took on the role of "Final Fantasy Underdog" and really fought for old Squareheads like me. But we'll get to that later. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis It always bothered me how blue Spring Breeze Dancin' is in his pic, so I went and [threw an auto-level adjustment on it](https://imgtc.com/i/redqSBp.jpg). It's kind of blown out now but do you see what I mean? \[Imagine 5 minutes passing\] Alright, I can't find the fucking video of Spring Breeze Dancin's performance, but [this came up in YouTube search instead??](https://imgtc.com/i/DTgtVSb.png) 17 million goddamn views and her name is EVERLEIGH. What the fuck kind of name is this? It's somehow worse than every kid being named some hipster variant of "Aiden." Let's adopt this garbage naming convention for the next contest. "Lyyynk," "Claughd," and "Sefeighroughth." Spring Breeze Dancin' is apparently the bottom of the X-Stats this contest, and I'm not surprised. As far as Board 8 in-jokes go, this one is the deepest cut I think we've ever seen actually make it to the front page. Way deeper than Midgar Zolom. .\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \|......O....\_\_.....O......\| IS SOMEBODY POSTING ABOUT ME IN 2018? \|\_\_\_.....\<\_\_\>.....\_\_\_\_\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| Yes, but now I am posting about how respectable Ridley looked here. Zidane was never the strongest but Ridley had been comfortably beaten by Vivi back in the day so it was strange seeing him come within 2000 votes of Zidane. I'm not going to reiterate how bad FF looked outside of the really obvious exceptions. .\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \|......O....\_\_.....O......\| I BET I WOULD HAVE LOOKED GREAT IN 2013 \|\_\_\_.....\<\_\_\>.....\_\_\_\_\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| ......\|.................\| Sure, Zolomy. Now sleep. I'll repost you in 2023 when I do my 5-Year-Late analysis of Summer 2018. --- ## (3)Yu Narukami vs (16)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (25)Kat 2013 _source: (3)Yu Narukami vs (16)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (25)Kat 2013 (revid 82153)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 29th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Matches close to 50-35-15 in a 3way poll is about as boring as a 65-35 1v1 match, but these are the sorts of things we had to sit through to get the early round fodder out of this contest. Shadow the Hedgehog didn't win this match through being popular -- far from it, as almost everyone hates the dude -- he won it by default. No one cares about Persona's characters, and no one knows who in the hell Kat even is. It's as simple as that. Although for Shadow's 7 fans, this was better than the garbage showings he usually puts out. Even through this contest, the only thing Shadow has ever done of any relevance was score 45% on Mario all the way back in 2003. But hey, he managed to get 50% in a poll against two people no one cares about before getting crushed in round 2, so there's that. I'm still confused as to how a guy that started out with so much promise is just LOATHED, even by his own fans. Did Sega really drop the ball that hard? ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I usually only skim Ulti's analysis of each match because I don't want to sound derivative of his writing. Ulti has way more technical information and reading his write-ups for close matches are super entertaining. I skip over the analysis for matches like this one, though. But I did read what he had to say here: "I'm still confused as to how \[Shadow\], a guy that started out with so much promise is just LOATHED, even by his own fans. Did Sega really drop the ball that hard?" I have some things to say about Shadow's popularity in the fanbase. GameFAQs is definitely not a haven for hardcore Sonic fans, but wherever I find pockets of the fandom, people love Shadow unironically. He's really the only character in the series with any kind of depth. Sonic fast. Knuckles punch. Tails smart. Shadow has a tragic past, and as basic as his origins are, at least there's some conflict there. Yeah, there's a ton of "ow, the edge," but that's pretty unique in the franchise, and you can't fault SEGA for trying to do something different with these furry weirdos. They just went too early-2000s with it, because it was the early 2000s. People loved it then, then were ashamed, but now people love it again. Like Pokemon? As for the "7 Shadow fans," I'm living with one, and wake up to [this](https://imgtc.com/i/Dpm44bv.jpg) every day. I'm not in complete defense of how ridiculous Shadow is, though. If you want a laugh, like a real hearty belly laugh, watch this video from the 9m30s mark for about 45 seconds: It's fucking terrible. SEGA knows people like Shadow but they aren't willing to spend more than like \$20 and a pack of Skittles on his DLC pack. [But you know who knows how to treat a franchise right?](https://imgtc.com/i/5hW9E61.jpg) There's a ton of evidence pointing to Shadow being included as an Echo of Sonic in Smash Ultimate. If it all works out, Shadow will probably get a tiny boost in power. Also if he doesn't say "THIS IS THE ULTIMATE" before his Final Smash it'll be the biggest missed opportunity in gaming history. Yu was repping a game that came out in 2008, and because he really didn't have a name and his game was still pretty cult, he didn't make it in 'til 2013. He didn't perform great here, yeah, but Persona has slowly moved from being a Board 8 sweetheart to a GameFAQs sweetheart and now a mainstream sweetheart. If Joker makes the field this year, he might be able to escape Round 1. As for Yu, yeah, he's still around, but P5 characters have recency and cooler designs. As for Kat, her franchise is basically dead before it began. Due to poor sales, Sony decided to shut down the online servers of Gravity Rush 2 after a little more than a year, leading to backlash from the 7 fans of the series: Kat has a great design, I did her pic here, and I remember spending a ton of time touching it up and making sure she looked good for her only contest appearance ever. If we ever see Kat again it would be a small miracle. I'm not a big Gravity Rush fan, I only played the Vita one for a bit then got the PS4 version on PS+, but the games look pretty cool and have a great aesthetic. The controls are fucking weird and gimmicky though and I can see why it never caught on. I hear GR2 is a big improvement, but it's already destined to fade into gaming obscurity. Also the games are called "Gravity Daze" in Japan but Americans don't know that word and "Rush" is more EXTREME ps make Kirby look angry those fat ugly Americans love that --- ## (4)Leon Kennedy vs (15)Albert Wesker vs (24)Oliver 2013 _source: (4)Leon Kennedy vs (15)Albert Wesker vs (24)Oliver 2013 (revid 82154)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 29th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Resident Evil fans were upset at this match for the same reason Fox fans were upset at his draw. Wesker could have drawn 242 opponents, and he gets Leon Scott Kennedy in round 1. There was mild upset buzz, but then people realized that hero \> villain almost always on this site. I can't even think of an example that proves otherwise offhand except for maybe Final Fantasy X, and even there I'm not totally sold on Jecht not being able to beat Tidus. Then again that game has multiple villains that we can't really discuss without getting into major spoiler territory, so we'll drop that one. Seriously, I can't think of any without really stretching the rules or using FPS games as examples. Yeah you get Bioshock and Portal, but no one identifies with the main characters of those games. The fact we'd have to think long and hard about a non-FPS character who could beat their villain shows how screwed Wesker was, then the match started and Resident Evil fans wanted to forget about this as soon as possible. I'm a Wesker fan. His Mercenaries theme in Resident Evil 4 might be the best gaming song ever. He got absolutely f\*\*\*ed in this contest. There is no other explanation. Stuff like this was bound to happen once or twice in such a massive field, but having it happen to Wesker just blew. And given Capcom is fully enthralled in ruining the Resident Evil series beyond repair (much like they do with every series they touch these days), he may never have another shot of making a deep contest run. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I'm not a huge Resident Evil fan but good god does the very idea of this match enrage me. Imagine being FFD or ExTha and looking down the bracket for the first time and seeing that Allen matched up fan favorite and ultimate villain Wesker with the strongest possible RE character in a contest setting. What the hell, Allen? You can only wonder what happened here. Something tells me this was the last match he made for the 4 / 15 / 24 seed pairings and he was probably like "shit, I have two RE characters left over, oh well, fuck it, does anyone care about Wesker? I have to give OLIVER a shot to get second." I cut Allen a ton of slack and I'm usually one to defend his actions but this is really lazy. Oliver who was so weak he couldn't get ahead of a heavily-SFF'd Wesker. Wesker who has done nothing but lose close matches is given nothing to work with here. Yeah, if he was given a real winnable situation he probably still would have lost, but we would have at least had something fun to watch for half a day. I have nothing to say about Oliver but if we ever do get an "all characters" tournament we should get Totoro in. Fuck it, why not? People are ravenous for Ghibli shit. Yeah it's great and yeah the movies make me cry like a bitch but only sometimes. Also this match was the return of the Anonymous Picsmith, meaning nobody actually made a pic for Oliver and Allen had to do it himself. Why nom a character nobody even wants to take 5 minutes to make a pic for? --- ## (7)Gordon Freeman vs (12)Hades vs (21)Simon Belmont 2013 _source: (7)Gordon Freeman vs (12)Hades vs (21)Simon Belmont 2013 (revid 82155)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 30th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis There was very minor debate here about whether or not Hades could upset Simon for second place, and then that atrocious picture came out and the buzz became a very legit fear. Conan the Belmontarian was ugly as s\*\*\*, and it was the second match in a row where I had to watch a favorite character of mine get screwed over, although this one was for a vastly different reason. I know Simon had no chance to win, but seeing him go down with dignity would have been nice. This match was also a decent enough warning sign of just how badly Pit was going to perform in his own match. Hades was supposed to challenge for second place, and never came anywhere close. As an aside, isn't it funny how far Gordon Freeman has come? He used to never win anything, then Phoenix Wright came along and he hasn't lost in the first round since. I know he technically "lost" in the Rivalry Rumble's first round, but that was all Mr. Breen's fault. Individually, I think he could still take Phoenix, and he would annihilate Edgeworth. But even with that, he's gotten out of the first round in 5 of his last 6 contests. That's pretty good for the guy that started the Gordon Freeman Never Wins fad, though he got stuck with Leon Kennedy in round 2, so he was destined for an early exit this year. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis THE ACTION FIGURE PIC RETURNS! This is the second time ever that an action figure picture has been used, the first time was in 2007 when I submitted an action figure pic for Kratos. I tried covering up that it was an action figure and thought I had slipped one past Allen, but in retrospect he was probably like "yeah whatever that's Kratos who cares" and just used it without any thought. I don't know why I was so obsessed with trying to bend pic rules. I'm personally a fan of [the First4Figures Simon statue](https://imgtc.com/i/t0XAPaV.jpg). Of course, now that Simon is confirmed for Smash and looks dope as hell, we won't need action figure pics for him anymore. I'd still take a figure over the truly awful Light Yagami-look alike art he got in his bio pic. With Smash, Simon probably could give modern Gordon a run for his money. Not win, but do a bit more respectably. But... I want to return to the MFer ("Martyr Factor," for those just skimming these writeups) for a second here. There's not many characters this could apply to, but I believe Gordon is one of them. Half-Life 3 is the video game joke as far as I'm concerned. It's the meme that keeps on giving. You think it's gone but then shit like this happens: Which, naturally, gets people riled up again. They look up and shout, "Save us!" And Gaben whispers... "No." So despite not having a new game and probably never getting a new game, Gordon will remain popular, and people will vote for him and his games out of respect and a little bit of pity. We may see Gordon at full strength in 2018, or maybe even stronger. Back to 2013, and Gordon looked pretty good here. This match was just set up to Gordon getting beaten by Leon in a rematch nobody asked for, but eh, they can't all be winners. Oh shit I forgot to talk about Hades uuuuuh unless we get an Uprising 2 within the next week or Hades is announced as an Echo Fighter of my ass then we're never seeing this jobber again. --- ## (1)Crono vs (18)Sarah Kerrigan vs (27)Missile 2013 _source: (1)Crono vs (18)Sarah Kerrigan vs (27)Missile 2013 (revid 82156)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 30th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis There are two major things to discuss here, and we'll start with the bad news. Kerrigan getting her ass kicked by a 27 seed nobody was perfect, and reminiscent of just how bad Blizzard has gotten. They, like Capcom, ruin every single thing they touch. They, like Capcom, are blinded by hubris and refuse to adapt with an evolving gaming market and much more savvy consumers. They, like Capcom, think outright theft from their fans are the way to keep making money. And they, like, Capcom, are going to one day go bankrupt or get bought out by this stuff. It isn't just Starcraft that they've ruined, but we'll get to that. World of Warcraft's success is the worst thing that could have possibly happened to Blizzard, because they stopped trying. Which I understand, you start out poor with a dream, make it big and human nature takes over. It happens to a lot of musicians, it can happen to other genres as well. I get it. Blizzard's problem was choosing to not accept this and roll with it like a parody. Metallica is a joke, but at least they're self-aware of how bad they are these days (a 3D movie, seriously guys?). Blizzard actually does think they're as good as they've always been, though. Just read my Diablo 3 review. Don't read it as an accurate gauge of the game itself, because I'm probably a little biased. Just look at the developer's quotes. These people think their s\*\*\* doesn't stink and are God's gift to gaming, after all these years of failure. In the irony of ironies, Diablo is probably the one series they have not ruined beyond repair yet. I say this because Diablo hasn't yet suffered from "Blizzard Syndrome", which is taking every proper noun in an entire universe and making something extra out of it. This is how Warcraft's lore was ruined beyond repair. This why we have Infested Alexei in Heart of the Swarm for NO REASON. This is why Blizzard's only hope is creating an entirely new IP to get the creative juices flowing again. Before Starcraft 2 ever hit shelves, way back when it was announced that that abomination of a video game would be released in 3 parts, and people laughably tried arguing they would all be worth full price, I predicted that all three thirds of the game would suck, that they would all have useless filler trash to pad out the product and dupe really stupid people into spending 200+ dollars on a 60 dollar video game, and that Stockholm Syndrome is about the only thing Blizzard has going for it in its current state. People laughed then, but I was proven right. Starcraft 2 is hated, just like I said it would be, and gamers being duped is one of the main reasons. If you've bought either one yet instead of just playing it at a friend's house to see how bad it is, you are a sucker and a chump -- the ultimate dream of any con artist salesman. Because those of us with common sense, who have realized how bad Blizzard has been for years and years, all saw this coming. Starcraft 2 is a goddamn joke. I could rant for hours about this, but I'll only get into Kerrigan's part of the plot since she is the symbol of why everyone hates that series now. Everyone knows her story in the original games; she gets betrayed by Mengsk, becomes infested by the Zerg, and then rules the Zerg en route to becoming Queen B\*\*\*\* of the Universe. Kerrigan was an amazing, if not sympathetic, villain. She was a villain done RIGHT. Then Wings of Liberty happens. Very long story very short, Raynor frees Kerrigan with some ancient artifact and turns her back into a human. OR SO WE THOUGHT, DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNN. Heart of the Swarm craps all over that in some of the worst retconning I've ever seen, and it's such an obvious attempt from Blizzard to make more money. I'll actually let our boy Anagram explain this one: Kerrigan Kerrigan is turned into a straight-up hero so that the zerg will be sympathetic instead of being ravenous space monsters. Kerrigan isn't just awful in this game, that would be one thing, she's not Kerrigan. Let me explain this: the half of WoL that wasn't filler missions about Tosh and Haven was about saving Kerrigan, and she spends the beginning of this game going back to being infested (by the way, if the infestation was designed by Abathur, why does the primordial zerg pool make her look nearly identical to Abathur's design?). What's the point of this? The only result is that Kerrigan is no longer the Queen of Blades (they even make her forget being her) but still controls the entire Swarm (by the way, you fight exactly one group of non-Primal zerg in the entire game, who then just rejoin you). So basically, my point here is that the only reason WoL exists (besides to make money) is to make Kerrigan sympathetic by making her not responsible for killing millions of innocent people. That's it. WoL serves no other purpose. The entire game exists to make Kerrigan not the same character people liked from SC1 and BW. So to this, I can only ask one question: Why? We know you can have a zerg campaign where you're the bad guy because we already had two such campaigns. I won't go into why BW Kerrigan was so much better than this mockery, but BW Kerrigan states, many times, that she's in full control of herself and just likes being evil, and they retconned that for this. Sure, you can say it's not a real retcon because Kerrigan was infested when she said that so it doesn't count, but the ultimate point is that they killed BW Kerrigan for Crazy Revenge Girlfriend Kerrigan solely to make her more sympathetic and for no other reason. And I mean it - make no mistakes. This is a Kerrigan who goes out of her way not to hurt civilians to a point where it jeopardizes her plans and consciously commands the Swarm not to kill fleeing enemies, who orders Abathur not to experiment on humans. She does exactly one morally questionable act during the entire game when she destroys that one Protoss ship, and even then she goes out of her way to justify it as a necessity (even while using the exact words "I justify nothing," she justifies it to the audience). And hell, why does Kerrigan even care about revenge this much? Of course Mengsk betrayed her and set her on her horrible path, but revenge is her only motivation in this game beyond rescuing her boyfriend. And \*\*\*\*, Kerrigan and Raynor were not that into each other in SC1, they just flirted a bit. Everyone Else The other characters are one-dimensional and awful Just kidding, there aren't any other characters! There are only cardboard cutouts for Kerrigan to talk at. Zeratul has a cameo to say "Hi, I'm Zeratul," Izsha has literally no personality, Zagara exists solely for Kerrigan to rant about "vision" to (by the way, I love how Abathur can weave abstract concepts into DNA), Dehaka exists to say "essence" fifteen times per minute, and I don't even know why Stukov is in this game at all. Not only does his presence raise the question of why Raynor doesn't mention him to that Protoss chick in WoL who said that infestation is incurable, but they inexplicably infested him again off screen. Just... why? What does he do except remind us of a better game? You could literally replace him with a new character named Larry who would say "I was experimented on but escaped, so I psychically called out to the Swarm's leader" and nothing would change. Mengsk is the worst off. Hey, remember when he was clever, ruthless, and brilliant, but not so strong that he could control the Sector on his own? Neither does Blizzard. Oh, Kerrigan will call Mengsk "the most cunning enemy we've ever faced" and claim that Korhal is her most difficult battle, but really, Mengsk does literally nothing except tell Kerrigan that Raynor is alive after she heard he was dead from the least reliable source possible (the Dominion news) and accepted it without question. \*\*\*\* this guy, the old Mengsk would have installed a gas system in the prison ship to instantly kill Raynor in his cell the moment Kerrigan's ship appeared outside. This Mengsk has a bunch of defenses for Kerrigan to destroy, but that's it. He's just an obstacle Kerrigan creates for herself. What do I mean by that? Well... The Ending This was pointless What was even the purpose of this game? Compare this fecal matter Chris Metzen calls an ending to the final battles of the other zerg campaigns, where they defeat a Protoss army and take control of Aiur, or Kerrigan defeating three enormous armies on her own (during which, by the way, she didn't care at all about Mengsk because revenge is a ridiculous and stupid motive) and becoming the most powerful force in the sector. What's accomplished in HotS? Kerrigan kills a dictator who wasn't even doing anything hostile to anyone outside of his empire (admittedly he was breeding those hybrids, but even then it's explicitly stated that he's just someone else's minion) and goes to fight Amon, a being she only knows exists because she was told by Zeratul (who was told by an Ancient Prophecy, so you know it's serious) and the Ancient One and about whom she knows literally nothing, not even why she should fight him beyond the vague warnings that he'll probably destroy everything, maybe. I know he's obviously the Dark Voice from WoL, but it's not like Kerrigan knows that or saw Zeratul's visions. Amon has literally no presence in this game. So basically: Kerrigan kills a tertiary character who was no longer important to the story in any way and then goes to fight someone whom she's never met based on the warnings of people she doesn't trust and a prophecy she explicitly does not believe, and she takes the entire Swarm to go do it. I'll admit that's a step up from WoL, which has not one but three storylines that are irrelevant (Haven, Tosh, and exposing Mengsk's crazy speech about destroying what he can't control, which does not come up again ever), but it's not actually impressive, it's just ascending from basement level 3 to basement level 2. This game is a crime. Starcraft 1 and Brood War were not the best written games ever, but they were infinitely above this mess. Why did Starcraft even need ancient prophecies at all? They ruined Star Wars, they didn't have to ruin Starcraft as well! So to recap, Heart of the Swarm ruins not only Kerrigan, but the Zerg themselves. It also changes the entire plot behind Kerrigan's original infestation, and basically craps all over the original Starcraft in the process, and makes Kerrigan's personality out to be pointless. She only cares about Mengsk, ignores Raynor who supposedly freed her, then listens to and trusts Zeratul's ancient prophecies as Zeratul is trying to kill her. Makes sense! The plot is trash, the gameplay is trash, Blizzard is trash. Maybe if they spent less time trying to turn Starcraft 2 into THREE GAMES LOL and more time actually writing a plot and designing gameplay that was good, fans wouldn't have completely turned on that company. As-is? Every single thing I ever said about Bobby Kotick running that company into the ground holds true. "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." "I'd raise prices even higher." "In the last cycle of videogames you spent \$50 on a game, played it and took it back to the shop for credit," said the redheaded recidivist at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference. "Today, we'll \[charge\] \$100 for a guitar. You might add a microphone or drums, you might buy two or three expansions packs, different types of music. Over the life of your ownership you'll probably buy around 25 additional song packs in digital downloads. So, what used to be a \$50 sale is a \$500 sale today. "And the best of all margins -- the 25% operating margin business -- has the potential as we can see with World of Warcraft to be a 50% operating margin business. What used to be a low 20s return on invested capital business is now growing to a plus 40% return on invested capital business." The only people still in denial about Blizzard are hardcore PC gaming elitists like joyrock, who believe PC gaming can do no wrong ever. That tells you all you ever need to know about Blizzard, Activision, Bobby Kotick, or PC gaming in general really. Only PC gamers could ever come up with a ridiculous phrase like "PC Master Race", and it's no coincidence consoles started to suck when they began acting more like PCs and less like consoles. So thanks, Blizzard. Since Kotick came along, you have ruined literally everything you have ever touched. Oh, and all this stuff added together is why people could not wait to anti-vote the hell out of Kerrigan. Remember when people thought she could beat Vincent? Yeah. Kerrigan's loss here might be the most embarrassing, but well-deserved, loss of the entire contest. Gamers unifying to put Blizzard in its place on a GameFAQs poll may have been a small form of protest, but the message was heard loud and clear here: F\*\*\* Blizzard. The good part of this match was DogFAQs, because this was a hilarious first round blowout that had the best of both worlds. While people were arguing about PC gaming and Blizzard being garbage (not really an argument since the facts speak for themselves), other people were making topics discussing their love of dogs. Missile may be a Pomeranian no one has ever heard of, but who cares? Everyone loves dogs, and Board 8 was very pleasant that day. I'm a vet tech, so I'll get into a few breeds I like and dislike here. Why not? Everyone else was =p My favorite breeds are usually the big dogs, but there are a few small ones I like too. Pit Bull, English Bulldog, Boston Terrier, Siberian Husky, Alaskan Malamute, Dachshund, Pug, Chocolate Lab mixes (Labradors by themselves are meh, but when mixed with other breeds they're amazing), Rottweiler, Boxer, Great Dane, Chow Chow, German Shepherd, Golden Retriever, and Doberman Pinscher all kick ass. Not many I dislike, but there are a few: Pomeranian (odd, given the match here), Yorkshire Terrier, Chihuahua, Shih-Tzu, Mini Pinscher, Beagle, Poodle, Bull Terrier, and Caine Corso. The common theme there is almost all of those dogs are obnoxious as hell, and the latter two are just too mean even for my taste. I like a dog that'll stick up for itself, but Bull Terriers and Caine Corsos are just nasty dogs. The others are either obnoxious, "I'm tiny so I bite everything herpaderpalol", or Beagle. I absolutely despise Beagles. Oh and if I took only my four favorites from the good list, it would be Pit Bull, Dachshund, Pug, and Rottweiler. One day I want a white female Pit Bull named Cupcake, a brown/white Bulldog named Pork Chop, a Pug named Biscuit, and a Dachshund. Haven't come up with a good Dachshund name yet. I'll probably name it after food like all the rest =p. I'd name it Pickle, but a coworker has a Dachshund with that name and stealing a name is just lame. I should probably close this writeup at some point, so I'll just mention Crono for a sec. He may have embarrassed himself in round 2, but he got to be a part of one of the funniest upsets ever so it wasn't a total loss. This was also his first win in a contest other than the Rivalry Rumble since 2008. Seriously, it's true. Look it up. ===Zen's (Late) Analysis== wow I completely forgot Kerrigan lost to a dog also what the hell is up with Blizzard character pics? They're universally awful. Like Kerrigan looks a tiny bit better than Thrall but slap some jugs on that orc and they're basically the same pic. I guess [Heroes of the Storm Kerrigan would look better cuz at least she looks like a Zerg.](https://imgtc.com/i/MI1VhgX.jpg) But after a result like this? We're probably never seeing Kerrigan again. That's not upsetting. She's done nothing but disappoint in these contests, and all the people ignoring the warnings that Missile would have the ultimate pic factor, people still took her to get second here. I don't have much investment in Blizzard, but as you probably may know from Ulti's recent "Blizzard made the two worst games ever" topic, here's pretty passionate about it, so I suggest giving his rant about Starcraft a read: All I remember about this match was the whining. The insufferable whining all day about Kerrigan losing to an adorable doggy. If Blizzard fans are so passionate, why couldn't they anti-rally Kerrigan past a small canine? Because the Blizzard fanbases suck ass and don't even like each other. Shit, I'm turning into Ulti. So will we ever see Missile again? Apparently Ghost Trick has a very devoted yet small fanbase, but unless someone gives them a call I doubt they'll rally Missile or Sissel into another contest. It's not like Missile was strong or anything, just that Kerrigan was incredibly weak and that the votals were so low they lent themselves to people tossing a vote at the cute dog. Crono was here he would later go on to lose to a Pokemon so we'll talk about that when it happens --- ## (6)Pikachu vs (13)Lloyd Irving vs (22)Big Daddy 2013 _source: (6)Pikachu vs (13)Lloyd Irving vs (22)Big Daddy 2013 (revid 82157)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 31st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was our first match of the contest where second place came down to the absolute wire, and this stuff matters with an Expert Challenge floating around. Pikachu had first place wrapped up before the match even started, but a random second place match between Lloyd and Big Daddy being awesome? Baller. It was hard to really pick what the consensus was pre-match, too because no one cared. Seriously. No one. People plugged Lloyd vs Big Daddy into the LOL X-stats calculator, saw Big Daddy as a 67-33 favorite and called it a day. But then Lloyd jumped out to a 300 vote lead in an hour and a half and threw a wrench into all that. Big Daddy would end up stalling overnight before making a push with the morning vote, but the 12 hour poll means he simply ran out of time. He probably wins second place going away if this poll was 24 hours, but again, I'd much rather a few more popular characters lose due to 12 hour polls than all the early round matches be 24 hours long. It makes for a better contest. Yeah it sucks as a huge BioShock fan that he only lost by 50, but I'll deal. It made sense for Big Daddy to be the favorite, given a recent huge BioShock release and Lloyd having to share the poll with a Nintendo character. It also makes sense why he lost. The novelty of the dude has simply worn off. Big Daddy is barely even a character in BioShock; he's just a random thing you fight, and it would be like pretending a Hammer Bro from Mario is some awesome character that deserves wins in contests. Big Daddy only has character if you play BioShock 2, but that game's plot blows so who cares. The gameplay improved on the original, but not the plot. Not that it could, to be totally fair. Big Daddy losing also wasn't all that painful given I am a huge Tails of Symphonia fan and think Lloyd is alright. It's not like he lost to freaking Wander, Touhou garbage or Donte. He lost to a good character, which anyone should be able to accept. Not sure that quite credits exactly how much Big Daddy bombed in that match. Pikachu scored as much on him as Link would have been expected to. The idea of Big Daddy being overrated due to Missingno. backlash had been thrown around but almost \*nobody\* saw it being by that much. -Karma Hunter ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Pikachu's design is second only to Kirby's in dominating match pics. Your eye just keeps wandering over to this cheerful yellow blob on the left. You can't even get halfway to the giant turd that is Big Daddy before your vision snaps right past the anime boy and back to the rat. Big Daddy was favored for second here, and rightfully so. Lloyd hadn't done much since his first game had come out, he had some cameos here and there and was in an unpopular SoulCalibur game. Big Daddy was in exactly three seconds of BioShock Infinite, the Citizen Kane of video games. You don't get [purer expressions of art](https://imgtc.com/i/nY9EZjN.jpg) than a game where the main character punches people in the face with a big spinning hook. Thanks, Cliff. How's Fortnite working out for your company? Oh, wait, you left your company because you thought Fortnite was the wrong direction only to release a bad knock off of Fortnite at your new company that was so poorly received that it caused you to go out of business? Yeah, Lloyd impressed here, Big Daddy isn't exactly the strongest in these contests but when you look at the timing Daddy had all the moment here to win and win easily. Both of them might make it back into a contest, Big Daddy is an icon of a good series that's on hiatus, and Lloyd has second life through the PC port of ToS and a very devoted fanbase. Maybe he'll even be in Smash 5? He was a Mii costume in Smash 4, and after that last Direct, I'm not taking any ideas off the table anymore. --- ## (9)Magus vs (10)Hal "Otacon" Emmerich vs (19)Jade Curtiss 2013 _source: (9)Magus vs (10)Hal "Otacon" Emmerich vs (19)Jade Curtiss 2013 (revid 82158)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 31st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis As a huge Magus fan, this match made me so nervous. I unapologetically love the so-called gothic characters that all the 13 year-olds want to be like. The Maguses and Sephiroths and anti-heroes of the world. Everyone knows how Magus has become a complete contest joke by now, but I'll give the recap anyway in case someone searches this up on the Wiki without knowing context. 2003 - Even with MASSIVE contest hype following Crono's 2002 performance, Magus only doubles Sam Fisher, needs almost all 24 hours to beat Ganondorf, then gets 35% on Link. 2004 - Blows out Luca Blight, gets blown out by Crono. 2005 - The year where he started being a joke, also known as getting hyped to win his division before losing in round 1 to Knuckles. 2007 - Low-scoring round 1 win before getting blown out by Big Boss for second place in round 2. 2008 - Joke status solidified by losing a huge lead to Sandbag for second place in round 1. This was doubly funny because once upon a time, Magus was projected as being able to outright beat Sonic the Hedgehog, who got first place in this match. 2010 - Blown out by Alucard in round 1, in a match that people were somehow questioning. I'm the biggest Magus fan on Board 8. I was telling everyone he had no chance. It's like asking me how the Colts are going to do, guys. 2011 - Rides his rivalry with Frog through two wins, and loses in round 3 to Alucard v Dracula. Two years in a row of Magus losing to Alucard. Which brought us here. People saw this and thought Magus would lose, but that was joke status gone nuts. I even bought into it for a second, but then I realized that Otacon is a bit loser character in the MGS series that almost no one cares about. It isn't Snake or Big Boss, and hell, it wasn't even Liquid or Ocelot. It was Otacon. Magus losing this would have been like him losing to Naomi Hunter or The Fury. Magus may be a joke, but he does have limits to how much he can suck. Even with Jade in there sucking JRPG votes away. (To be fair, a lot of the Otacon hype came from people that were justifiably pissed off about Crono/Magus in round 2 allowing Pikachu to just steal his way into a win he did not deserve. NOTHING got better draws in this contest than Pokemon, and we were perhaps one Draven rally away from Mewtwo winning this entire contest.) So I told people Magus was winning this. Was I confident about it? Hell no I wasn't confident about it! This is MAGUS we're talking about. But when the poll started and we entered 50-35-15-ville, I was quite the happy guy. A, I was happy Magus finally won a debated match, even if the debate was forced. And B, I was so happy about that round 2 Crono/Pikachu/Magus nonsense. It was both everything good and everything bad about this contest wrapped up in a neat little 12 hour package. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis This match was super highly debated because Magus had previously lost to Sandbag and Snake was on steroids this year, so his brainy best boy would probably get some of that rubbed off on him, right? Unfortunately for Otacon, he was up against the thing he loved most, and he crumbled at the start and never had a chance. Magus "impressed" here but we can't really get a good read on him or Otacon because Magus would go on to get SFF'd by Crono in Round 2. Dude absolutely cannot catch a break. This was not Jade's first contest appearance so I'm sure KP can extrapolate Otacon's relative strength based on that. I don't know how Jade keeps getting into these things, but I'm happy Board 8's everlasting darling Tales gets plenty of reps, even if they end up usually just being bracket filler. Also of note is Otacon continuing the trend of non-Pokemon NRT winners looking like trash. Barret, Otacon... who else won this year that wasn't shaped like a turtle? --- ## (2)Sora vs (17)Scorpion vs (26)Aya Brea 2013 _source: (2)Sora vs (17)Scorpion vs (26)Aya Brea 2013 (revid 82159)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, August 1st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis For a split second I thought Scorpion had a chance in this match, but then I realized this site has a hard-on for Kingdom Hearts for whatever reason. That series has two good games in it and only two: the original, and KH2. That's it. Everything beyond that is Tetsuya Nomura proving that he has no business making video games for any reason. Someone needs to just realize that Disney has become completely irrelevant to Kingdom Hearts and is shoehorned into every game now. Oh and by the way.... That is the most accurate description of that abomination of a plot you'll ever find, and it'll save you from ever having to play any of the games. You're welcome. I take gifts and donations, preferably peanut butter Christmas cookies with that colored sugar sprinkled on top. Also, are the Parasite Eve games worth playing? They're from the era when Square wasn't garbage, and I've always been curious. But they're a third person shooter, or something? Someone explain what those games are about, if you feel like it. Recipe for Parasite Eve -1 cup Squaresoft -2 cups JRPG -A tablespoon of guns and magic -Big pinch of Quest 64 combat system Mix together, make sure not to add extra playable characters, add to baking tray, bake for 30 minutes, let it cool, serve. -LazyKenny I'll take this guy's word for it! ## Zen's (Late) Analysis If Sub-Zero had been in this match there might have been something to talk about, but Scorpion has been around since the beginning of contest history and there was plenty of data to show that he had absolutely no shot. Kingdom Hearts III is finally coming out this year after two centuries in development, and even though Haley Joel Osment looks like he's one cheeseburger away from a massive heart attack, Sora will most likely be stronger than ever in this upcoming contest thanks to the continued KHIII hype train that pulls into the station every few months. It's like Snowpiercer, the hype train just keeps going through the frozen tundra of mediocre KH spinoffs while on board Haley Joel Osment is eating babies to gain strength or something. Not sure where I was going with that metaphor. I'm one to talk I literally had three burgers and eight beers and like five babies last night at my friend's place. Yeah this was a match that happened, Aya Brea got her time on the front page again, and some people argued she might LFF Sora because... Square Enix? OK, sure, yeah. That worked out great. In other news Mortal Kombat XI is probably coming at some point. Did we ever revisit the idea of getting Reptile into one of these things? Or Liu Kang, Johnny Cage or Shao Kahn? There's some kind of potential there. Maybe. Probably not. --- ## (5)Booker DeWitt vs (14)Gilgamesh vs (23)Kaim Argonar 2013 _source: (5)Booker DeWitt vs (14)Gilgamesh vs (23)Kaim Argonar 2013 (revid 82160)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, August 1st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This is the match that started Division 6 down the path of being the division of death (or so we thought), because it started a chain of one upset right after another. Although once the very early board vote wore off, this was barely a match and I hesitate to call it an "upset" more than Booker just being a complete and absolute flop. Losing close if fine, getting completely blown out in a match you're expected to win is quite another. I'm almost convinced that Gilgamesh would have won this even without a Dissidia 2 boost, but there's no way of knowing that. What we are sure of however is the main characters of FPS games have a very, very hard time finding contest strength. What's the strongest one we've got? Gordon Freeman? And it took him years to find strength, as well as Half-Life 2 being amazing. It's also amazing to see Gilgamesh win a contest match like this, because I love the dude. Is there a better mini-boss theme in the Final Fantasy series? Is there better comic relief? Is there a better cameo than what this dude pulled off in Final Fantasy 8? Is there a more fun character to play in Dissidia 2, even though the game is garbage? I think not! If you say Ultros, you are wrong. Gilgamesh appearing to find an ordinary sword of legend is so much better and so much more hilarious than DON'T TEASE OCTOPUS JAM OPERA LOL. Enjoy. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis There's a lot to talk about with this match, but the thing I want to highlight first is that Kaim got into a second contest and this time there was already a Caim in the field. People still chose to nominate him after he got doubled by Frank West. 2013 was a weird year. People were quick to discredit Gilgamesh as "too obscure" of a Final Fantasy character despite being in a ton of games in different cameo appearances that were all great. He was also in Dissidia, I think, but maybe not by the time this match happened? People thought Gilgamesh just looked like a weird Japanese blob and that Booker's recent smash-hit game would have enough recency and momentum to carry him past some obscure JRPG fodder that got rallied into the contest after many failed attempts to do so for years. I'm not sure if Gilgamesh was an NRT winner or just the product of a successful standalone rally, but it was nice to finally see him get his time on the front page. So of course Gilgamesh took a big shit on Booker. I know that Irrational Games tweeted out support for Booker but it didn't help at all because nobody cares about Booker. The twist in Infinite is such forced trash and tries so hard to be deep, but in the end Booker is just DudeBro McShooty from the cover of a highly overrated game. I played through that shit like 3 times and I barely remember it. Who would have thought we'd see Gilgamesh not only make the field but win a match? What a crazy time to follow these contests. Things were only going to get crazier from this point on. --- ## (8)Groose vs (11)Lu Bu vs (20)Yoshimitsu 2013 _source: (8)Groose vs (11)Lu Bu vs (20)Yoshimitsu 2013 (revid 82161)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, August 2nd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was an amazing match for Board 8 on many levels. I got to see a piece of trash character from post-Wind Waker Zelda embarrass himself. DpObliVion got Lu Bu into a contest. And most importantly, GANON1025 got his huge Yoshimitsu victory and was man of the hour. This was a fairly hyped match due to ZeldaFEAR, but I'm pretty sure no one would have bothered picking Groose if he wasn't from that series. Lu Bu and Yoshimitsu being from unpopular games didn't help, either. But Zelda vs Dynasty Warriors and Soul Calibur was a thing, so he was the favorite by default. There was a time early when it looked like any of the three characters could have won this, but then the 15 minute update hit and Yoshimitsu just took off. 10 minutes later, Lu Bu overtook Groose for second place and was never threatened. This could not have made me happier; if you're not a Board 8 regular, it's hard to really understand just how much I love pre-Wind Waker Zelda as a series, and just how much I despise Zelda and Nintendo for everything that's happened to both entities since. So yeah, Groose losing like this was amazing. I'll spare the massive rant about Skyward Sword being trash, but the game's own designer being unable to play it properly at E3 is really everything that needs to be said about it. That, and the game having a stamina bar and forcing Wiimote control garbage at the player for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Trash game, trash character, and such a trash series now. I'll never understand how it happened. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Theme for this post: I had been rallying for Yoshimitsu for three nomination periods and while I once got him into one of the vote-ins, I never had any success until the year I stopped rallying him and he mysteriously made it in. I like to think my years of petitioning helped somewhat. That vote-in was the point of contention for this match. Yoshimitsu came in second-to-last against such jobbers as Dan Hibiki and Alex Mercer. Can you name what game Alex Mercer is from without Googling it? I can but I'm the big nerdo writing this so I have an excuse. So naturally everyone assumed that Yoshimitsu was going to get stomped once the Groose was loose and the Lu Bu was... in... view? I'm not sure where people thought Lu Bu was going to get the strength to beat Yoshimitsu from. He had a half-serious, half-"Hitler got in let's see if this guy can get in too" nomination rally. I know I had seen Lu Bu rallies in the past but they didn't get really serious until Allen decided to relax a little on what constitutes a video game character vs historical figure. Most people had Groose \> Lu Bu \> Yoshimitsu, some had Yoshimitsu over Lu Bu, but almost everyone had Groose winning. Because Zelda. The thing about Groose is that he is a Zelda but he is a bad Zelda. Well, maybe not bad, but, y'know. Not great. Derivative. Polarizing. Nobody even talks about Skyward Sword anymore. The match starts, Yoshimitsu takes off, Lu Bu follows behind, and Groose falls flat on his face. Can I remind you that the 8 seed was given to Groose because primarily Board 8ers nominated him? Being a Zelda meme that Board 8 finds kind of funny does not equate to any kind of contest strength, not even enough to beat freaking Yoshimitsu and Lu Bu. --- ## (3)Lee Everett vs (16)Meat Boy vs (25)Mr. Game & Watch 2013 _source: (3)Lee Everett vs (16)Meat Boy vs (25)Mr. Game & Watch 2013 (revid 82162)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, August 2nd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was one of the few upsets I actually called correctly pre-contest. I freely admit to overrating Smash Bros as an influence, but I also feel like I properly underrate casualbait characters in contests. Lee Everett was never going to be anything, and the only thing that ever even gave me pause here was Meat Boy being in the poll with G&W. I know it makes no sense, but he feels like exactly the kind of character that can steal votes from G&W. Similar off-the-wall design, similar fan base, similar "look" and "humor", I suppose. But even with the final vote margin being 692, this match was never close and I'm convinced G&W just completely blows Lee out if you remove Meat Boy from the poll. Game & Watch took a lead early, slowly built on it, and that slow build kind of increased through all 12 hours of the poll even with the occasional stall from Lee. It was nice to see. I'm a pretty typical "average GameFAQs voter" that casuals like to complain about, after all. I like the early Zelda series, Final Fantasy, and have barely played anything released after 2006 -- and of what I've played from the current era, most of it is garbage. So yeah, I'm unapologetic about loving the Game & Watch upset here, just like I'm unapologetic about chain-grabbing with him in Brawl. It isn't my fault Brawl is designed like garbage and allows me to do it, although I vastly prefer the Melee version where he isn't broken to hell and back and has hitboxes that make no goddamn sense. And remember, help finish out the smash roster come next contest's nominations! ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I won't reiterate what I said in the Clementine match analysis, but I find it hard to believe how this was considered an "upset." Lots of people played TWD, yeah. You know what else people play a ton of? oh I don't know it's just an obscure game you might not of heard of called SUPER SMASH BROTHERS MELEE. Lee put the fear of the casual vote in people's hearts, and yeah, Game & Watch really doesn't have much going for him outside of Smash, but shit, once you see him in action you're never going to forget him. He's a really unique concept for a character and he stands out way more than blank-slate Lee Everett. Yeah, Lee is alright. Yeah, there's some really great emotional moments in TWD. And again, I will stress that while a lot of people did play TWD and it got great reviews, that doesn't translate into votes, especially when the votals were so pathetic. Meat Boy was here too, and I think he might still be getting games? He was one of the first ever "Indie Darlings," but now that market is really oversaturated and there's way better candidates for these things. Shovel Knight will probably do alright this year. He'd definitely have a shot at beating these two. also something something racist ha ha game and watch is black too ha ha haaaaaaa --- ## (4)Nathan Drake vs (15)Steve vs (24)Pac-Man 2013 _source: (4)Nathan Drake vs (15)Steve vs (24)Pac-Man 2013 (revid 82163)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, August 3rd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match was virtually a mirror of the last one, just replace Lee Everett / Meat Boy / Mr. Game & Watch with Nathan Drake / Steve / Pac-Man. You have casualbait, a character destined for last place stealing votes from the guy vying for the upset because of similar appeal, and.... the guy vying for the upset. Pac-Man \> Drake was a good upset pick here, but the difference is Drake has a good following behind him, whereas Lee Everett was a flash in the pan fad type who may never make another contest again. And even then, Drake almost lost. This match was basically tied for an hour before he slowly (very slowly) started pulling away, and Pac-Man was never able to make a push before ultimately losing by 700. If Steve is removed from this poll Pac-Man probably wins, but such is 3ways. Some characters are going to get leeched and robbed of wins, and Pac-Man was one of those characters in this contest. But Pac-Man will be back, he will get put into a similar upset position one day, and he will once again pull off a huge WTF on us, just like he did with beating Ocelot back in 2005. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Here's a match that was basically impossible to call correctly pre-contest. Nathan Drake was a AAA superstar by this point and had come a long way since losing to CATS in 2008. Uncharted 2 is well beloved in the gaming community, and is even well respected on the FAQs. On the other hand, you have Pac-Man, who is always pulling crazy upsets but has wildly inconsistent strength depending on the likability of whoever he is up against. He also got a pic with his less popular Ghostly Adventures design. Have you seen the opening for that shit? That design was "chosen" over three others thanks to [the results of a "fan poll."](https://imgtc.com/i/svVZZJ2.jpg) Which was fake, of course. This image went up and everyone voted for everything but A, but of course, when the results were announced, A had won and won by a lot. About a month later they showed off polished footage of the show and game using these designs. It was all a giant sham to make people think that this was the design people wanted. So who used it in a pic? Uhhh... who knows. Definitely not me. Under an alt. Why would I do that? (I actually have no idea why I did that I'm sorry) On the third hand you had Minecraft Steve who is from Minecraft so he should win because Minecraft. I didn't think MINEFEAR would ever be a thing but here we are. The only thing about Minecraft is that it's mostly played by actual babies who primarily use musical.ly as their primary social network. Those kids don't go to GameFAQs. The adults who play Minecraft are too busy making 1-to-1 recreations of Westeros to visit and vote. The match was a crapshoot and Nathan Drake was the one who won it. He struggled for a bit with Pac-Man but not much. Steve never had a shot, nobody cares about Minecraft characters. I also want to rant about how disappointing Uncharted 4 was and I hate how every game reviewer sucked its dick but I don't have much room left. The game was an Uncharted circlejerk that was a celebration of a series that had one good game, two mediocre ones and an OK Vita port. It reeked of self-importance and I think that took away from the experience. Also the grappling hook was not cool enough to base the game around. Bleh. --- ## (7)Fox McCloud vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (21)Wolf O'Donnell 2013 _source: (7)Fox McCloud vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (21)Wolf O'Donnell 2013 (revid 82164)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, August 3rd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was one of the most hyped round 1 matches of the entire contest, because the belief here is that whoever won between Fox and Blue would cause a chain reaction that decided the winner of the contest. If Blue won, it was believed that he would advance to the divisional final, where he would screw Pikachu and cause Sora to win, who would then screw Cloud and cause Snake to win, and then Snake would be in the final and ride Link/Mario LFF to finally winning a contest. If Fox won, it was believed Pikachu would win the division (without Blue there to jam things up), and then Snake would be screwed against Cloud because Sora wouldn't be there to drag Cloud down. Given Board 8 has wanted to see Snake win a contest for ages now, we wanted Blue to win this match, and badly. The funny part about all this is Fox drew the absolute worst possible third wheel he could have possibly drawn for a match like. Even Falco would have been better, because then we all know Blue wins and there's no debate. But as-is? Oh man. It would ultimately not matter much, which seems to happen when chain reaction slippery slope logic gets used in contests. First and foremost, Blue went well above pre-contest expectations and just blew Fox completely out of the water in this match. A lot of people believed Blue was weak enough to lose this even with Wolf sharing the poll, but Blue put that to rest really quickly even as Wolf rolled over and died in exactly the way he was supposed to do. It made the whole debate funny, because Blue's strength was in question before this contest began, and then gets Fox and Wolf in round 1 to help get a bandwagon going. I'm going to say this a lot during this PCA, but nothing and no one got better draws or more luck than Pokemon in this contest. The other reason this wouldn't matter much is because Pikachu ended up winning the Pikachu/Sora/Blue tilt, and Cloud would never even make it to the Snake match. But this match's hype was still really awesome to be a part of in context. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis A reminder that if you haven't seen A Fox In Space yet you totally should, it's the best Star Fox media we've gotten since 64: This is by far the dumbest match of R1, worse than Leon and Wesker in the same match. At least Wesker had a contest history, but Wolf was new, and he never was given any chance. Some of these matches scream to me that Allen wanted us to be aware the he understood SFF and LFF and wanted us to think he had set up some cool scenarios, but then you get dumb shit like this. Swap Wesker and Wolf and see how the matches play out. Everyone assumed Blue was going to be the next hot thing, especially after coming off of Rivalry Rumble with Red as no doubt the best looking pair that participated. People assumed that not only would he SFF Fox into oblivion, but Fox would look even worse due to Wolf LFFing him. Right at the start we knew something was wrong. Fox was dangerously close to Blue and Blue was not pulling away. Sure, Blue won by a decently comfortable margin and was never really threatened, but his balls were out on stream and everyone could see them. What should have been one of the biggest blowouts of R1 turned out to be... this. --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (18)Isaac Clarke vs (27)Sandbag 2013 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (18)Isaac Clarke vs (27)Sandbag 2013 (revid 82165)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, August 4th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis You really have to hand it to Sandbag here. Even though Dead Space is a series GameFAQs will never care about, an SFFd Sandbag getting second place in this match is still kind of impressive, and it probably pissed off some Expert Challenge folk. He even got to enjoy joke voting trends, which I suppose is something. Beyond that, not much to say about this one. 1 seeds beating up fodder isn't the most interesting type of match, but it is a necessity. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis are we over the sandbag thing yet it was not funny the first time, it is not funny now the only thing worth noting here is that Isaac couldn't beat an SFF'd Sandbag, although Sandbag's joke vote always seems a bit stronger than other weird Board 8 joke entrants. you look at him and instantly "get it," like L-Block but lamer also some funny contest trivia is that there were three whole Isaacs in this contest and all three were 18 seeds --- ## (6)Neku Sakuraba vs (13)Vaas Montenegro vs (22)Catherine 2013 _source: (6)Neku Sakuraba vs (13)Vaas Montenegro vs (22)Catherine 2013 (revid 82167)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, August 4th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was a very debated match pre-contest, which I never really understood. People make the biggest deal out of 1 point matches, when the late rounds mean the most. Even if Catherine pulled the upset, Samus gets to annihilate Catherine instead of Neku. Woohoo. That being said, matches where anyone could potentially win are always the most fun to talk about. the case for Neku was that he already went through his contest lumps, and was being given a fodder match that he was destined to win, similar to how Laharl was fed to Vyse, Neku was fed to Laharl, and so on. this stuff is conveniently in every bracket. Vaas was potential casualbait, for the children who only play recent games and/or pretend to play recent games by watching LPs on Youtube all day. Catherine was the most intriguing option here, which is why I chose her. I figured if Laharl could beat Neku, why couldn't Catherine? She was bound to have a huge picture advantage, and her game selling 500,000 copies at launch far exceeded any expectations Atlus could have hoped to have. It isn't enough to beat even midcarders, but fodder trash like Neku and Vaas? Surely a character with a cult following could beat that. And that is exactly how this match would play out, almost to the letter. Vaas went down early and was never in it, but Neku and Catherine had an absolutely amazing match until the evening vote hit. Neku took a very slim early lead, but was beaten down when he tried pulling away for the win. Then Catherine took a slim lead, and was also beaten down every time she tried pulling away for the win. The margin was never more than 100 votes for the first six hours of this poll, and then Catherine stormed up by 115 and made this look over. Then out of nowhere, Neku tied the poll before completely choking. I don't know if Catherine was rallied or Neku ran out of steam or what, but this poll was tied 7 hours in, and then Catherine beat face for the last 5 hours to pull off a 600 vote win. These are the types of things that happen when people only really care about one character in a fodder poll, and she really deserved to win this. Catherine is a really good game, though I'd be lying if I credited her game instead of her, erm.... assets, for winning this match. I'm sure she won because this game is every otaku nerd's fantasy dream, even though guys like me are the ones actually having crazy relationships with girls like that in real life. For the betas out there who have no experience with this, a word of advice: never see a crazy girl for longer than a month, no matter how good the sex is early in a relationship. No amount of good sex will ever outlast how truly insane a crazy girl can get, and the cutoff is usually a few months. Just get in there for a month and then get the hell out. And never, ever cheat on a girl you're with with a "crazy girl". I know I say all women are crazy, but there are levels to it and you never want a side piece girl you're cheating on to be crazier than the girl you're with. Not that I condone cheating, for the record, but there's also nothing wrong with getting out there and living it up a little. Just know what you're dealing with and how to get out early is all. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis oh man, I forgot how much effort I put into Catherine's pic here. It took me forever to render out those drills nicely. i wish i put that much effort into my day-to-day life. This was another case of "which obscure Japanese character will win and how will the face of a popular western game do comparatively?" A lot of people took Vaas here for the same reason they took Booker and Lee. That was a bad idea. We're probably not going to see Joel and Ellie in these contests now because all new-age Western characters have been exposed as worthless. I hope I eat those words, though. I want a contest completely opposite of this one to keep us on our toes. Neku had lost to Laharl once, and there were very few people who thought Catherine could be much stronger than Laharl, especially after K/Catherine only barely managed to avoid getting tripled by Sonic/Eggman. Catherine sold pretty well though and people love it on this board and site in general. It was even played at EVO for a while: So was this result really that surprising? Yes, kind of, Neku was the safer pick for sure, but in retrospect it seems obvious, and at the time people had very little faith in what was seen as niche Japanese fodder. Also I wanna call back to one of my fave pics ever, my Catherine Rivalry Rumble pic: Pretty sure I used hentai for Katherine's half. Whoops. I was really proud of that symbol in the middle, though. There was no clear version on the internet at the time so I had to pretty much remake it from scratch I think. Catherine is getting an HD remake this year, I encourage anyone who hasn't played it to give it a shot. --- ## (9)Knuckles the Echidna vs (10)Seifer Almasy vs (19)Celes Chere 2013 _source: (9)Knuckles the Echidna vs (10)Seifer Almasy vs (19)Celes Chere 2013 (revid 82170)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, August 5th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Knuckles winning this match was no surprise. He was never going to lose against two second-rate Final Fantasy characters. What floored the hell out of me was Seifer tanking so hard. I didn't think he'd have any trouble at all beating Celes, because even with Old Square going nuts, Celes didn't have the Dissidia boost going for her, and even FF8 haters seem to like Seifer. Or so I thought. Seifer not getting into a contest even after winning a spot from the Nomination Rally Tournament should have clued us in on how bad he is, quite frankly. Not to mention his god-awful Kingdom Hearts 2 appearance. I wish I had better explanations for him doing bad, but the simple one is just people still hating on Final Fantasy 8. Rinoa's showing helps prove that, and Squall being so strong in contests is pretty impressive given that. I think it's fair to say that only Squall should ever bother getting into contests from that game, though a joke option here and there certainly couldn't hurt. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Knuckles was bound to win this match. I talked about it a bit in my last writing project, but Knuckles is probably the most universally well-liked Sonic character. Nobody hates Knuckles. Nobody is capable of hating Knuckles. Well, before he was a meme. People seemed to really like that meme, though. So much that I heard it helped kill VR Chat. Second place was a pretty obvious choice: Our boy Seifer, NRT winner! Finally, after all these years, Seifer would have his time in the sun, we just had to hope Celes wouldn't hold him back too much. Oh, shit, wait, Allen didn't check the calendar before he scheduled this match! What an unfortunate coincidence. Well, Seifer sure did get his ass kicked. I have no idea why, again, I'm not an expert on FF strength in contest, but it just seems to me like Seifer is just a huge weenie from a game that is not particularly strong anymore. Seifer single-handedly wrecked what few perfect expert brackets were left. I'm pretty sure after this nobody had called everything right, and it was extra embarrassing because this match was supposed to be one of the obvious ones. After Seifer's loss, @LeonhartFour was devastated. To this day he is in self-imposed exile, leaving nothing but a note before he left. It read "when I finally pass from this world, have Seifer be the pallbearer at my funeral so he can let me down one last time." --- ## (2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs (17)Miles "Tails" Prower vs (26)Bomberman 2013 _source: (2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs (17)Miles "Tails" Prower vs (26)Bomberman 2013 (revid 82171)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, August 5th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis There was decent logic for picking Tails here, and it was because in the 2010 LOL X-stats, Tails wins with 55% and there wasn't much reason to doubt the number. His path was ultimately decided by how Charizard did, and Ezio's was ultimately decided by Zelda. We'd seen Samus beat Zelda before without SFFing her, so maybe 2010 was just a bad year for Zelda. Even with SFF though, 55-45 is a lot to turn around. Turns out that Charizard was overrated (he flopped like a stone in this contest), and idiots like me totally forgot about Bomberman also being in this poll. That whole thing about two characters with similar appeal stealing votes from each other really matters, apparently! So while Tails led for a couple minutes, Ezio would end up winning this poll with ease. It's one of those matches where I went against the easy pick for dumb reasons, but I can't help it. I love Tails and always look for excuses that cause him to win matches. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis What a bunch of winners we got here. I'm not being sarcastic, they each have a win! Ezio beat Simon, Tails beat Viewtiful Joe, and Bomberman beat a TV. Alright, maybe they're just "wins" by definition but not really "accomplishments." Some people had Tails winning here, but unlike Knuckles, there are a lot of people who don't like Tails. People with nostalgia for the 2D games usually like Tails, but recently SEGA has been shitting all over the guy. When Sonic "dies" in the opening of Sonic Forces, [Tails does nothing but cry in a corner](https://imgtc.com/i/s54d5Ip.jpg) while Knuckles, Amy and literally every other Sonic character step up to stand against Eggman. This did not go over well with the fanbase, and it probably wasn't winning him any new fans either. In the end, this match played out like most people expected it too. It's too bad Bomberman is deconfirmed for Smash, he's a low-level icon waiting to be taken to another level in these things. He did beat Crash in a close match once. If the outpouring of support for him post-Smash deconfirmation shows us anything, it's that the potential for another win is there. Ezio may actually be weaker than Altair, or they're probably about even. AC characters do OK in these things, mostly because of design. Lately, though, people have been really down on the franchise. Between 2013 and 2018 there have been 9 AC games released, with a ton being released [in a state of dubious quality.](https://imgtc.com/i/GvlsKhb.gif) Will we ever see a new AC character? Will Ezio and Altair be back? I'm going to say one, but not both, and probably not at a very high seed. Altair had a good run in his debut contest, so I don't think anyone is itching to see them go the distance once more. --- ## (5)Auron vs (14)Revolver Ocelot vs (23)Roxas 2013 _source: (5)Auron vs (14)Revolver Ocelot vs (23)Roxas 2013 (revid 82169)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, August 6th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was never going to be much of a match, which made that ungodly horrible Ocelot picture all that much more prominent. It's the only thing anyone bothered talking about during this match. Even if you wanted to play mental gymnastics and think Ocelot could win because of Square overlap, that picture...... god. I have paid no attention whatsoever to Metal Gear Solid 5 hype, but is the entire game that ugly? Seriously, all the amazing Ocelot pictures we could have had, and we get that. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I have some choice things to say about Ocelot's pic here. I made it. Everyone was really hyped about Snake and his friends' potential boost from the upcoming MGSV. That E3 gameplay demo was great. Everyone watched it. Everyone got hyped. So I made a pic from the gameplay demo. I went frame-by-frame and picked out the best angle of Ocelot and rendered it myself. I touched up the scarf so that the red would be eye-catching. And when the pic was revealed, people lost their minds. They couldn't believe Ocelot would get such a bad pic from the thing they said would be the reason he had a shot at winning! Now he had no shot at winning!!!! To this day I still can't believe that of all the bad pics I've ever made this (and the really bad one @LeonhartFour is going to post at some point I fucking know it) is the one people give me the most shit for. Ironically, if a contest were to happen, say, in 2018, people probably wouldn't have a problem with me using this perfectly recognizable picture of MGSV Ocelot. I'm just a Picsmith Futurist. I will defend this pic 'til the day I die. Ocelot never had any shot, and if anyone thought this pic made a character named "Revolver Ocelot," who is best known for being an old man in a beige cowboy coat with a red scarf, unrecognizable enough to bleed 3000+ votes from a potentially above-Auron level of strength, then they were out of their mind. I think Ocelot did pretty alright here. The problem is just how strong Auron is. He really stomped Roxas, I'd say he was barely affected by his presence at all. Sure, he could have broken 50% without him easily, but he still looked good here. Again, people seriously thought Ocelot, the dude who lost to Pac-Man, could ride Roxas LFF to victory. There's a dialogue going in Allen's sticky right now about who would win in a contest that is only post-2000 characters. It would probably be Auron. Dude is cool as hell. Also I really wanted to post this: --- ## (8)L-Block vs (11)Teemo vs (20)Palutena 2013 _source: (8)L-Block vs (11)Teemo vs (20)Palutena 2013 (revid 82173)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, August 6th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Also known as the rally that never was. This match is what base League of Legends strength looks like, and it was really funny watching everyone assume Teemo would take off without the little s\*\*\* ever doing it. For those wondering why Teemo was never rallied even with a topic on the LoL subreddit just as upvoted, it's because the League community hates Teemo. He is the most hated hero/champ/whatever of any MOBA ever made, and it isn't even close. Entire streams are dedicated just to watching Teemo die 24/7, all day every day. There are people who would rather study Teemo death stats instead of League itself. Ever go to a store and watch some obnoxious little s\*\*\* of a spoiled kid never get disciplined by their idiot parents because "every child is special"? That's basically how Teemo plays as a champion, and he's Riot's Mary Sue so he's constantly getting thrown in our faces as MASCOT MASCOT MASCOT MASCOT MASCOT MASCOT MASCOT MASCOT MASCOT. The only people who actually enjoy playing Teemo are trolls and bads. Every single one of his abilities is annoying as f\*\*\*, too. His passive lets him go invisible, his Q gets f\*\*\*ing 80% AP because what the hell, all his attacks slow, he gets a movespeed bonus because herpaderpa I'm Teemo, and his ultimate is the dumbest thing ever and thank god they finally patched it to give gold when killing the stupid mushrooms. At least with Techies in Dota, you needed a lot of skill and map awareness to play him well, otherwise the game is 4v5. Teemo is just overpowered garbage whose dad didn't beat the crap out of him enough. So glad he got blown out in this match. Draven winning this contest at least made sense. Had Teemo won, all the hate that GameFAQs gave this contest would have been fine. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Back in 2013, right after this contest, I went to PAX East with some of my buddies who were super into LoL. Again, the convention was right after this contest, so I thought LoL was lame as hell. Riot Games was having some contest where every day in the morning they would hide Teemo mushrooms all around the convention center. If you found one of these glowing green tchotchkes, you could bring it to any Riot Games employee at the foul-smelling LoL booth and they would give you a Teemo hat, free of charge! They'd also let you keep the mushroom. So in I strolled on day 2, my friends scrambled around the convention hall looking for these fucking mushrooms. I saw some nerds grab them from different non-affiliated booths and hold them aloft like it was a Piece of Heart. I had no interest, so I kept right on along to some game demo booth. I think it was Borderlands TPS? I was waiting in line and my eyes, still tired from waking up early, wandered over to some random clothing booth across the way. There, on the floor, under their table, I saw a glowing green mushroom. I looked left, looked right. Nobody was making a move. I made eye contact with the man at the booth. He saw that I saw. I wasn't interested but I felt obligated to get the mushroom for my friends. I got out of line, went over and took the mushroom. "Congrats," the man at the booth said, "A ton of people ran right by it. You must be pretty excited." I looked up and forced a smile. "Yeah," I mustered unenthusiastically, "I, uh, love Teemo." I got back in line. One of my friends caught up with me. "I couldn't find a mushroom anywhere! Maybe tomorrow," he said with a frown. I held up the mushroom. "HOLY SHIT!" He grabbed my arm and dragged me out of line and to the Riot booth. I handed the mushroom to a Riot rep. "Wow! That was fast," the rep said. He took the mushroom from my hand, popped the top off of the base, and put a small black "X" on the inside of it to mark that it had been turned in. He then went to the back and grabbed a Teemo hat and handed it to me. I said nothing during this entire exchange. "Congrats, man! Enjoy the con!" he finished. I turned and handed my friend the Teemo hat. We then walked back to the booth. I looked down at the mushroom. How anti-climactic. "Hey, man," my friend started, "I know you hate League cuz of that GameFAQs thing. You mind if I have the mushroom? You can keep the hat, they're worth like \$15 on eBay right now." Well, I don't like League, but I do like money. "Let me try something first," I said. I popped open the top of the mushroom, licked my finger, and slowly but surely rubbed off the black "X." I turned around. We went back to the booth. It was massive, bigger than Nintendo's, so I found another rep far from the one I first went to. I handed them the mushroom. They handed me a hat and marked the mushroom. I walked away. I did it again. I did it about ten times throughout the day. That mushroom and those hats paid for my PAX East ticket. I love Teemo. Also I don't feel bad because Riot got \#metoo'd yesterday, and I believe it. Fuck those guys: Oh yeah there was a match, people thought Teemo would get rallied but there was a 24-hour Twitch stream that was just clips of Teemo dying so yeah not even LoL people cared. How did he even get in? L-Block looked good here, he has natural meme strength. Palutena was hot off of being made into a real character. Post Smash 4 and 5, she might have grown in strength, but probably not enough to come back. --- ## (3)Dragonborn vs (16)Tom Nook vs (25)Pyramid Head 2013 _source: (3)Dragonborn vs (16)Tom Nook vs (25)Pyramid Head 2013 (revid 82172)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, August 7th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I know we all knew Dragonborn was destined to do nothing more than get his ass whipped by Tifa in round 2, but there was some hype surrounding him anyway since Elder Scrolls games always do well in game contests and Skyrim was a huge success on this site. And maybe if he was big enough, and if Tifa and Yuna overlapped... That all went out the window about an hour into this match, when everyone realized Dragonborn was a total flop. Tom Nook and Pyramid Head are not strong competition, and he managed to make them both look like high-end fodder instead of the trash they are. You could even make the case that if his face and the iconic helmet wasn't on every single Skyrim advertisement in existence, he may have actually lost this match. It makes some sense since Skyrim was not really about the main character, but the world itself. There was also a decent match for second here, even though it was never really close. I'm not sure if I should be impressed by Tom Nook getting second place here or not, but Pyramid Head turning a 650 vote loss into a 500 vote loss has to mean something, right? Dragonborn probably overlaps with Pyramid Head a tiny bit, too, so it's not like a 1v1 between those two losers would be predictable. We can only hope to never actually see a 1v1 match between freaking Tom Nook and Pyramid Head, though. There was a good bit of hype for the 3DS Animal Crossing game for some reason, which probably helped push Nook over Head. -Wylvane ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Picture this: Nominations for 2018 are over, we wait patiently for over a month, spam Allen's inbox with tickets asking where the "damn bracket" is, Allen finally posts a new sticky, says that the contest is taking on a new and exciting format, asks us to click a link. Our browsers go dark, then fade into a horse-drawn wagon on a dirt road. Slowly the title of the contest appears: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Now on GameFAQs. There was some serious DOVAHFEAR going into this contest, everyone assumed Dragonborn was going to be a powerhouse, although that was debatable. The guy was a blank slate, and the "mascot" version of him was pretty boring to look at despite being in all the CG trailers and promo art. We didn't know how people would respond to seeing a generic version of "their" character on the front page. As far as Skyrim goes, yeah, everyone on this site loves it, and I think it won the GotY poll, but "characters who represent big western franchises" usually don't do shit in a contest setting. See: Vaas, Booker, Handsome Jack, etc. But nobody was dumb enough to put Dragonborn behind Nook and Pyramid Head. Pyramid Head, who went from being sextupled by Bowser to beating pre-RE5 Chris to a close loss to Tom Nook. Tom Nook went from losing to Crono to beating Zelos to barely beating Pyramid Head. You know, neither are impressive contest histories, but they are at least histories. Animal Crossing and Silent Hill have polar opposite fanbases, but at least their characters consistently make appearances. Pyramid Head has two movies and a dead franchise whose last installment was a pachinko machine, and while Animal Crossing has had a "mainline" game in a while, it's still getting nods here and there, as well as a terrible amiibo-based Wii U game that nobody played which put a full-stop to the amiibo momentum. I'd say at this point it's time to retire K.K., Nook and Resetti in favor of Isabelle and Villager. Everyone is nuts for Isabelle, she got to be a costume in Smash and is a racer in Mario Kart. She's basically the new mascot for the series, and people are speculating she'll be Villager's Echo in Smash 5. So, these results weren't too surprising, people just used this match to gauge Dragonborn's strength, and he disappointed here. He definitely wouldn't be able to take down Tifa, even with Yuna in the match. In the end, Dragonborn wasn't a complete embarrassment, and he was overhyped to heck, but several years of concentrated meme-ing might end with a small Dragonborn comeback in 2018 if he's given a good bracket spot. --- ## (4)Master Chief vs (15)Yuna vs (24)Claire Redfield 2013 _source: (4)Master Chief vs (15)Yuna vs (24)Claire Redfield 2013 (revid 82174)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, August 7th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis We all saw this coming, but it was hilarious anyway. But just for the hell of it, here is Master Chief's entire contest history leading up to this match. 2003 - 53% on Felix, 40% on Aeris. 2004 - 71% on Crash, loses to Frog by 7 votes. 2005 - 69% on CATS, 51% on Donkey Kong but had to come back from down 2000 votes, 39% on Crono. 2007 - Gets all the way to the semifinals, may have potentially gotten to the finals if L-Block wasn't there. 2008 - Gets to round 3, third place behind Dante by only 3000 votes. 2010 - 60% on Spy, 47.5% on Ryu Hayabusa. And for posterity's sake, Halo's contest history: 2004 - Lost to Starcraft in round 1, as a 1 seed, even after coming back from the early night vote and leading most of the day. 2009 - Barely gets second place over KOTOR, with Diablo 2 barely getting first, in a very close poll. Then in round 2, Halo gets wrecked. 2010 - Beats Ninja Gaiden, Halo 3, and Uncharted 2 before getting 40% on Fallout 3. Halo and Master Chief don't really have "joke status" like a Magus, Kefka, Donkey Kong or CATS. He's just gotten some bad draws and is subject to very wild swings in popularity. 2007 was the peak of Halo 3 madness, and he has lost all of that momentum since. But he isn't the joke-level anti-vote lone ranger king like he was in 2004. A character that the so-called trolls should have rallied behind was this guy. Say whatever you will about Halo and how GameFAQs hates it, but he would have been a good joke champion this year, or even in 2007. It fits the modus operandi of pissing GameFAQs off, but the irony there is that he would actually deserve to be mentioned among the best characters ever. But yeah, he's sort of back to what he was with having minimal respect and a lot of anti-votes, yet people still respect him and he does decent in matches. It's a very weird place he's in, but sometimes we're able to predict it perfectly. Yuna \> Chief \> Claire just "felt right", it's what most of us picked, and that's what ended up happening. Nothing crazy involved or any weird vote swings, just a simple match with Chief losing to Yuna, but having enough support to beat Claire. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis It's nice to know that even when Final Fantasy is looking like shit for an entire contest that Master Chief will do his best to keep his title and choke hard for everyone to enjoy Everyone saw this coming, the result was not a surprise. 343 Industries doesn't know what the fuck to do with Master Chief. The Master Chief Collection was released as a broken, buggy mess with barely functioning online. Halo 5 was embarrassing trash everyone forgot about immediately. Microsoft doesn't even seem to care about releasing exclusives anymore, let alone good ones, so Halo is basically dead. Claire had Revelations 2 recently and it was pretty good. Will we see her again? Probably not, unless the field is huge. She's a fan favorite but it seems like every RE character is a fan favorite. Is Yuna stronger than Tidus at this point? She seems to have aged more gracefully. After a dozen re-releases of FFX and X-2 plus some serious nostalgia for those games and appearances in Dissidia, Yuna is probably going to do just fine in 2018. --- ## (7)Tifa Lockheart vs (12)Cirno vs (21)Chun-Li 2013 _source: (7)Tifa Lockheart vs (12)Cirno vs (21)Chun-Li 2013 (revid 82175)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, August 8th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis You can always count on Smurf to do at least one unbelievably stupid thing every contest, and for him this time around it was cheating for Touhou characters. Cirno's poll here wasn't the only match he bothered vote-stuffing in, either, which takes a special kind of pathetic person to even bother with. I can kinda sorta maybe almost understand cheating in a close poll, because some people will play mental gymnastics and equate it to rallying and "both sides doing it". I get that, I really do. But cheating for a character destined to get last place anyway? Smurf has always been one of those dudes where you can tell there are some serious screws loose and serious real-life issues, but holy crap. That's not even funny cheating like Kefka/Vercetti was, this here was just pathetic. I'd have sympathy for how sad a person he obviously is, but when you channel that inner sadness into trolling a Board with "multiple personalities" for 10 years, it's kind of to the point where you need to see a psychiatrist. Not a psychologist, oh no. A psychiatrist, who can prescribe hardcore things to fix whatever's up with him. Because seriously, cheating for loli bait garbage characters in a bad shooter series? I could almost defend Touhou if the games were actually good, but they aren't. It's 100 parts pedophilia, 100 parts loli nonsense, 100 parts bad shooter, and like 3 parts OH MY GOD HOW DOD I LIVE THROUGH THAT I AM SO AWESOME. If you want that feeling, play Gradius or R-Type. If you play and like Touhou, you're going to be lumped into the loli pedo category with Smurf and Albion (cheating for these losers is creepy and pathetic, and probably both). You were warned. As for the actual match, Cirno got 700 votes removed because Smurf thought he could get away with cheating. Beyond that, there's really nothing to say here. Any doubt about Tifa creaming Dragonborn went out the window with this match, because THIS is how you treat fodder if you're strong. Kind of sad to see Chun-Li as an also-ran to Tifa's dominance and Smurf's cheating, but what can you do. ## Extra Notes The original claim of Smurf vote stuffing during this contest came from Luster Soldier based on a series of emails sent back and forth between Luster, in addition to an investigation conducted by Luster in which he looked through leaderboard archives that came from TRE to see when Smurf dropped off the leaderboard. Smurf eventually claimed that he did not vote stuff for any Touhou characters, but this is a very dubious claim that does not line up correctly with other information regarding the demographics of the stuffed votes. Such as a sizable number of stuffed votes for both Cirno and Marisa coming from Ireland, the country that Smurf lives in. Whether or not Smurf was vote stuffing for Touhou is still a very debatable topic. When Luster announced that Smurf was the Touhou stuffer, he assumed that there were no other users who had the capability and technical know-how to vote stuff in a contest. Luster never thought about the possibility of a second person vote stuffing in this contest. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis If anyone was still doubting Tifa \> Dragonborn, those fears were immediately put to rest. It was good to see Tifa so dominate in this match when so many other FF characters failed. Perhaps TJF is the key to staying strong? Tifa straight-up annihilated Chun-Li, who isn't exactly fodder. Yeah, fighting games looked bad this year, but it's Chun-Li. She, Ryu and Sub-Zero are basically immune from any decline. Maybe Akuma too. also fuck touhou, I do not understand the appeal of those games. Cirno looks like a big diaper baby in her pic. I vaguely remember someone cheated for Touhou. Let me check. \[...\] Oh right, Smurf fucking vote-stuffed for Cirno of all characters. How sad. What motivates someone to cheat for a Touhou? Keep these things out of the contests. --- ## (1)Mario vs (18)Duke Nukem vs (27)Fawful 2013 _source: (1)Mario vs (18)Duke Nukem vs (27)Fawful 2013 (revid 82176)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, August 8th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was a standard boring 1 seed beatdown, but this would have been fun before Duke Nukem Forever happened. Maybe. It's hard to really care about whether or not Mario LFFs Fawful enough to the level of whether or not Duke Nukem could win, especially in the midts of the most boring three match stretch of the entire contest. And that made Mario's round 2 wtf upset at the hands of Vivi all the more shocking. There was no indication whatsoever that Mario could have possibly lost. This looked like another easy 1 seed smash through unchallenged for a long time type of matches, but it wasn't. Somehow. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I'd argue that Duke was once a beneficiary of the Martyr Factor, and the longer it took for Forever to come out the stronger he looked. In 2008 Duke managed to get to Round 3, which is pretty respectable, right? Then Duke Nukem Forever actually came out. As I mentioned earlier, Duke Nukem Forever was only released by Gearbox to make some quick money. They bought whatever 3D Realms had made (three failed iterations of the game that had been scrapped) and stitched it all together really quick, then packaged and released it with some really tacky junk and tried to sell as many Collector's Editions as possible. And it worked, kinda. I bought the shit. One of the worst purchases I have ever made. I think the CE was like \$80?? It came with "playing cards" (they were the size of my thumb), dice, two poker chips, postcards(??) and a bust of Duke. I still have the bust. I realized it shared a mould with my Duke action figure. Like, they took the mould of the action figure, blew it up, made it gray, took the arms and shit off, and it became a "bust." Fuck, I'm an idiot for buying into it. Now Duke will most likely be worthless in contests. He has a movie in the works starring John Cena, but knowing how these things usually pan out it probably won't see the light of day. Fawful made a second appearance here, and he was just happy to be on the front page again (probably for the last time). This match wasn't meant for anything more than seeing if Mario was strong enough to get to at least the semifinals, where he would either meet with Samus and Mega Man or Samus and Charizard. There was also talk of him getting into a match with Squall and Red, and Squall finally getting his time in the sun and riding Red LFF to victory. Yeah, sorry Leon. Nobody knew he would get knocked out in Round 2, especially after this performance. --- ## (6)Vivi vs (13)Adam Jensen vs (22)Marisa Kirisame 2013 _source: (6)Vivi vs (13)Adam Jensen vs (22)Marisa Kirisame 2013 (revid 82177)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, August 9th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis On second thought, maybe it was clear Vivi was going to pull that stunner upset! Vivi got 8% less than Mario, and you could maybe equate Duke Nukem with Adam Jensen and Fawful with Marisa! Eh? Ehhhhhhh? Okay, maybe not. But this was still a good win for Vivi, and an interesting match for all the wrong reasons. Because for the second time in three matches, Touhou's lolicon-obsessed pedophile creeper fanbase was involved in vote-stuffing the poll. The votes weren't removed post-match like they were for Cirno, but rather, Allen made a topic mid-match to announce the cheating and he removed the votes right then and there. Just a heads up that earlier today we made adjustments to the match containing Cirno to weed out fraudulent votes. We'll be doing the same for the current match as the same person/people are at it again with Marisa Kirisame. Just letting you know so you aren't surprised when the totals change a few times during this battle. Votes were removed post-match as well, which makes the updater look hilarious. I won't even bother with the commentary, because none of it was honest from Touhou's end. In total Marisa had 2000 votes removed from the poll, which makes for some very funny spikes if you look at the graph trends for this match. Oh and at Luster's request I'm including the link to the claimed cheater's blog, though I have to wonder if giving that guy's site hits is really the right thing to do here. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I just wanna talk about Adam Jensen for a bit. We have all the time in the world to talk about Vivi (and boy will we next round), so right now let's talk about Adam Jensen. What a fucking hero. I love Adam. Everyone who plays Human Revolution loves Adam. That game had some ass boss fights and a double-ass ending, but what a great game. I wasn't as keen on Mankind Divided, but it was OK. A lot of that "augment your pre-order" bullshit soured me on it pre-release. I don't hold that against Adam, though. At the time, HR was a minor meme-generator. The two videos I remember most from that time are the one with the mirror and the one with the vending machine: Of course, nobody thought Adam would win here, he was another "happy-to-be-there" entrant. Deus Ex is lucky to even have two people in a contest, it's not like JC Denton was turning heads. But what do those Touhou weirdos do? Vote stuff for their next diaper girl, of course. The cheater was bragging about it on his blog, too. He didn't even seem to have a really solid agenda. He posted some weird manifesto and everything. What a freakazoid. I know we obsess over these contests, but at least we don't vote stuff or cheat. And if we did I am positive it would not be for Touhou characters. Yuck. Vivi looked good here, but everyone attributed his mass over-performance more to the weakness of two jobbers. This was definitely not "beat Mario" levels of strength. Again, we'll talk more about it when we get to it. You can write a novella just about that match. --- ## (9)Ganondorf vs (10)Guybrush Threepwood vs (19)Max Payne 2013 _source: (9)Ganondorf vs (10)Guybrush Threepwood vs (19)Max Payne 2013 (revid 82178)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, August 9th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis For the most part, I didn't mind the font that Allen used for round 1. Yes it was ugly, but it was still legible for the most part. Then I came upon this match for the PCA and realized how bad it truly is. What exactly is that supposed to be under Max's picture? Box-ax? Ax? Square-Square-X? Good grief. Also this is where I'd usually rant and rave about how Guybrush's fans are losers and he wastes a slot every year, and I'd be right, but there are characters that are bigger wastes of space than even him. Max Payne is completely useless garbage from a completely useless garbage series, and his pictures from the reboot do him no justice whatsoever. You know you suck when you get me, of all people, rooting for Guybrush in a contest match. On the downside, this was our third match in four days with confirmed cheating and removed votes. Guybrush had 100 votes removed right in the middle of the match, and all the cheating in this contest really makes me wonder if Draven truly won this thing legit. Guybrush probably wins this match anyway, but yet another fanbase I've accused of being losers for years proving me right is not a good thing. Rallying is fine. Cheating just makes you pathetic. There's a reason the New England Patriots haven't won a Super Bowl since Spygate. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I never thought that Guybrush, the who got doubled by Ryo Hazuki, would win a match. Any match. Especially not against Max Payne! He beat Gordon once! Max and Guybrush both have pretty storied histories in these things, and it's interesting to see them finally cross paths. Yeah, Max did beat Gordon, but that was pre-HL2 and pre Valve hype. If you go back and look at Max's history, his claim to fame outside of beating Gordon is tripling Dirk the Daring. People still took Max, though. He had a recent big blockbuster release aaaaaand he lost. Wow, it's like recent western games don't mean shit on this site, huh? Especially with the votals this low. I'm sounding like a broken record, here, but we're going to have to be super careful with any of the "western darling" characters that get into the contest this year, if anyone bothers nominating them at all. Everyone is Tanner now. I'm really happy that Guybrush finally got a win here. Yeah, there was cheating in the match, but even after the 100 or so votes were removed, he still pulled it off. Monkey Island seems to be getting more and more respect as time goes on. I gave a bunch of shit to Uncharted 4 in earlier posts, but the coolest part of the game was the inclusion of [Guybrush Threepwood as one of the pirate kings](https://imgtc.com/i/A9qowhc.jpg). iirc Alan Moore also included Guybrush in a version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, one that focused on famous fictional pirates. People who play Monkey Island really love those games. I wonder if we'll get a reboot any time in the future? I guess Disney owns it now, they must have plans. In May 2016, Disney Interactive announced that they would cease production on gaming and transition to a licensing model. oh. welp. Ganondorf was here, he spent most of the match plotting on how to take down Mario in Round 2. --- ## (2)Squall Leonhart vs (17)Rayman vs (26)Commander Video 2013 _source: (2)Squall Leonhart vs (17)Rayman vs (26)Commander Video 2013 (revid 82179)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, August 10th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match was destined to be boring, though Squall winning so big meant he was in good shape to take on Missingno in round 2. The theory there was that Missingno would suffer from sophomore slump and allow Squall to get in for the "upset", though obviously I question if that was really an upset. The thing I actually want to talk about here is the Bit.Trip games. Those are good, and are exactly the type of thing the Wii was SUPPOSED to be good for. Unfortunately, that system was plagued with all kinds of shovelware and garbage, and people gave up on it. As they should have, since the Wii is a joke. But Bit.trip is a gem and worth playing, and if I may be allowed to spoil it... It tells the story of a guy's life, and at the end the screen starts going white to symbolize his death. Yet the only way to actually "win" is to put the controller down. Basically you have to let go, which is unbelievably profound, and hit me kind of hard. Gaming companies spend like 238943540234 billion dollars per title now, and almost none of them hit me as hard as some glorified Pong game on the Wii that almost no one has ever played. If I of all people am singing the praises of a game on the Wii of all systems, you know it's worth playing. Play it! ## Zen's (Late) Analysis look at this angsty angsty boi and his two cartoon pals. I want a show about Squall in SEED academy or w/e it's called where he has to make moral decisions based on the two angels on his shoulder, one being Rayman and the other being Commander Video. Rayman would just make funny grunts and Video make beeps and boops. Squall would always get flustered by this and never be able to ask Rinoa out and then Seifer would call him a "lamer." Actually I think I just described FFVIII in general. This match was really just to see if Squall was strong enough to beat Mario and Samus later in the contest. Or at least Missingno in Round 2. He looked pretty good. That's about it. We all know what happens so talking about this match seems like a bit of a waste. I never played the bit.Trip games but I hear they're good? I'm struggling to find something to say here. Normally I'd say "maybe if Rayman gets into Smash he'll get a boost but I don't see it happening" but I think anything can fucking happen at this point. Next thing we know Minecraft Master Chief and Pop Figure Marcus Fenix are going to be revealed. Rayman is always welcome in these things but I think he lost to Vyse in his one other appearance so only if the field is big enough. Just keep those fucking Rabbids out, please. Remember when "Best. Quote. Ever." was announced and people were trying to nominate "DAAAAAAA" from Rayman Raving Rabbids? Kill me. --- ## (5)Amaterasu vs (14)Vyse vs (23)Adol Christin 2013 _source: (5)Amaterasu vs (14)Vyse vs (23)Adol Christin 2013 (revid 82180)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, August 10th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was our sixth complete snoozefest of a match in a row, even with three of them having outright cheating, and I want people to remember stretches like this when they complain about 12 hour matches costing the more popular characters a win in 12 hour polls. Would you seriously rather have this stretch last 144 hours instead of 72? We need these early round matches as short as possible, to eliminate all the JRPG fodder garbage that people nominate every year. Ammy looked mighty good in this match, and given what we know now, she got robbed in round 2. If she takes advantage of Squall and Tidus in the same poll and wins, there is not a doubt in my mind she outdoes Red and makes the final nine. As-is, she gets to live with being the cutest little wolf ever d'awwww. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I think this might be the most boring match of the contest. Wow. I got nothing here. I can't even make fun of Adol Christin. He got beaten down pretty hard by Vyse the Living Fodder Line. We really need to get around to picking a new fodder line and standardizing it before the next contest. Also, I assume even though Ammy hasn't had a new game in forever, she'd still do well in a contest because her game is now on every platform ever created. I'm partial to the Game.Com version myself. --- ## (8)Missingno vs (11)Tidus vs (20)Banjo 2013 _source: (8)Missingno vs (11)Tidus vs (20)Banjo 2013 (revid 82181)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, August 11th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis We all knew Missingno wouldn't be able to repeat his run from 2010, but we all took that to mean Squall would beat him in round 2. Almost losing to Tidus in round 1 was crisis averted territory, and it's safe to say that this was another of those barnburner matches that was decided on early bracket voting. Though to be fair, there was no indication early that this was going to be such a great match. Missingno jumped to an early lead, stretched it to 350, and things looked basically over. Even if Tidus made a run during the Square hours, this is Pokemon we're talking about. Day vote, and all that. But then the funniest thing happened. Not only did Tidus stall the hell out of this match for a few hours overnight before he started cutting into the lead, but he actually gained steam with the morning vote. It was completely ridiculous and against every trend we've ever known about Pokemon, but it was happening. Tidus, master choke artist galore, won the morning vote over a Pokemon in a close match. Even as the match drew closer and closer, Board 8 really couldn't process what was going on. It wasn't until Tidus tied the match at 9 am, without slowing down at all, did people realize that this was for real. Tidus passed Missingno, then slowly built up a lead of 80 votes at around 10:30. But that's fine, this was a Pokemon character! Surely the rally would come! ...but then it stalled for another 30 minutes, and the match was still 70 votes apart at 11 am. Then Missingno cut 20 votes, so we all assumed rally time. ...but no. Tidus kept it under control and kept the match 70 votes apart with 30 minutes to go. I'd love to go on and say it stayed that way, but Missingno only needed three updates to erase everything Tidus has worked 10 hours to accomplish, and he himself got up to a 30 vote lead with two updates left. Then the most hilarious thing of all happened. Tidus actually cut 8 votes from the lead, which meant that piddly update from the last couple minutes actually mattered for once. Missingno would end up taking it by 2 votes, winning the match by 23 votes, and just narrowly escaping one of the most embarrassing upsets ever. Missingno would end up getting that morning vote we all assumed he would get, but it didn't happen until there were only 30 minutes left in the match. Better late than never, I guess. Now normally this is where I'd get into Tidus always getting a bad draw and always seeming to lose these close heartbreakers, but yet again, we had a confirmed cheater in the midst. When everyone on Board 8 expected Missingno to get tagged for cheating, Allen gave us this gem: SBAllen posted... The results of this battle are correct as you see them. After the semi-successful vote-stuffing for the Touhou characters, we implemented new stricter anti-bot code. It worked well and weeded out the sources the vote-stuffing came from. We caught vote-stuffing at a 2-to-1 ratio for Tidus. Votes from new visitors (i.e. any possible vote stuffing) was 50.7% for Tidus. There was also a small-scale reddit rush in the last hour which resulted in a lot of last minute voting. Check that again. SBAllen posted... We caught vote-stuffing at a 2-to-1 ratio for Tidus. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Feel-good story ruined pretty quickly, though Tidus can at least take solace in exposing Missingno before the big Squall match. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Listen to my write-up. This... may be our last chance. Now this was a match, probably one of the best ones to come out of this contest. This was back and forth all day, and while Tidus was always destined to lose, he was the one that exposed Missingno and set Squall up for a nice, predictable round 2 victory. Tidus. The one we've been calling "Meg Ryan" for a decade and a half. Everyone assumed 4chan had vote-stuffed vote Missingno, but according to Allen it was actually Tidus who was the cheater. That doesn't surprise me somehow, I'm not sure who did the stuffing, but Tidus is almost as much of a joke as Missingno. I'm (half) kidding, Tidus has grown on me over the years. Yeah, his outfit is dumb and his voice is annoying, but his arc in FFX isn't that bad. I would love to find out who did the majority of the Tidus stuffing and ask them why. I guess it's just someone passionate for FFX? Or the laughing scene. Banjo was also in the match, and if Yooka-Laylee was any indication, people love him and respect him to a crazy degree and will attack the pretenders and non-believers. But they won't vote for him, I guess. Banjo might end up in Smash at this point so who knows if he'll be back. Also: [bleh](https://imgtc.com/i/SXvw0Hu.jpg) As for Missingno, who knows if he'll be back? He definitely makes contests more interesting, and whenever he's on the front page you get the people coming to the board to flood it with topics like DAAAAAA I THOUGHT DIS WUZ CHARACTER BATTLE, WHY U LET IN GLITCH?? GLITCH NO CHARACTER!!! --- ## (3)Creeper vs (16)Wario vs (25)The King of All Cosmos 2013 _source: (3)Creeper vs (16)Wario vs (25)The King of All Cosmos 2013 (revid 82182)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, August 11th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis After the Tidus/Missingno thing, we needed a break, and a break is exactly what we got! There was very mild debate about Creeper possibly upsetting Wario here, but then people remembered that Brawl happened and Wario behaved accordingly. Creeper still ended up getting second place though, over a Board 8 type of character no less, so it was a decent performance by him. I know people are expecting a huge Minecraft-bashing from me here, but I only bash games I've actually played. I know it doesn't seem that way, but it's true. I've never played Minecraft, so I can't comment on it. I will say though that Ric Flair could beat The King of All Cosmos in a fair fight. Yes The King could destroy the universe by accident, but do you see that bulge? Ric Flair being the dirtiest player in the game would not be able to resist, and the best The King could hope for is a draw after getting whacked right in The Bulge of All Cosmos. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis This match was super boring, but everyone had gotten so hyped on stuffing and rallies that MINEFEAR reared its ugly head once again but twice as strong. People thought Creeper would succeed where Steve had failed. Because not only is Creeper from Minecraft but he's a meme too!!! Was Creeper actually a "meme?" I don't remember any Creeper-specific "memes," just the whole turning around and there's a creeper and UH OH boom aaaaaaahh. Is that all it takes to make one of these may-mays? Wario cleaned up here and Creeper ended up closer to the King. It's sad that the King has never had a real shot, but I can't imagine a situation where he'd be able to pull a win without an incredibly lucky draw. The guy used to be the Board 8 mascot before Phoenix Wright. We were all about Katamari back in the day. That's another dead franchise, which is a shame. There's a game coming out this year that's inspired by Katamari called Donut County. If you haven't seen the trailer, watch it here, it looks neat: --- ## (4)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (15)Corvo Attano vs (24)Sissel 2013 _source: (4)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (15)Corvo Attano vs (24)Sissel 2013 (revid 82183)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, August 12th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match proved two things, the first of which is very obvious. Red is a BEAST. A lot of people, myself included, doubted him after the 2010 performance. We were idiots. I don't care how weak your competition is, if you break 70% in a multi-way poll, you're a strong character. The other thing is that 243 characters was waaaaaaay too many. Forget last place, our second place character in this poll scored 4854 votes. For reference, Adventure scored 4686 votes against The Legend of Zelda in 2004, and that record for futility stood for a long time. Now? You can be comparable to that and get second place. So bad. I know round 1 has always been for weeding out fodder trash, but this year was especially awful with it. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I lead the Corvo nomination rally and I was psyched as all hell when Allen revealed the 15 seeds and there he was. I had been starting to doubt he would get in, I didn't have much support at the time. I know someone asked for "handsome characters to nominate" at one point and I posted a bunch of yaoi of unmasked Corvo and the Outsider kissing and he loved it. You have to be willing to do anything for a nomination rally. Like analyze an entire contest to drum up interest for Metal Sonic. I want to really quickly add that Dishonored 2 ruined Corvo by giving him a voice and character, he was so much cooler as a Gordon Freeman analogue. I ended up not finishing Dishonored 2, D1 was a much tighter, cleaner, more appealing package to me. We're probably not going to see Corvo ever again, so I guess having a win, albeit a small one, under his belt is good enough for his fans. Pokemon Trainer Red absolutely crushed it here, and how could he not with a match pic like that? My entire childhood is contained within his pic. Holy shit what a pic advantage. It's not even fair. We should put a paper bag on Red's head. The entire debate here was over second place. Sissel was from the nichest-of-niche games, but Corvo was another "western darling." The thing is that Dishonored, despite appearances, is anime as all hell and had a much more niche, weird fanbase than the other western characters (hence the Yaoi), so he was able to win pretty handily here. It's very strange to consider Missile the definitive Ghost Trick representative but you take what you can get. [I wouldn't have it any other way.](https://imgtc.com/i/9gV1RVX.mp4) the girlfriend wants me to add that she thinks Ghost Dad would be better in a contest than Ghost Trick?? uuuuuhhhh [uuuuuuuuuhhhhhh](https://imgtc.com/i/FABnxXt.jpg) --- ## (7)Pit vs (12)Urdnot Wrex vs (21)Cecil Harvey 2013 _source: (7)Pit vs (12)Urdnot Wrex vs (21)Cecil Harvey 2013 (revid 82184)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, August 12th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis On a personal level, this was one of the best matches ever. Wrex is my favorite character in the entire Mass Effect universe, so seeing him pull a huge upset out of no where was amazing. But it also kind of sucks that Final Fantasy 4, some how, some way, has yet to win any type of match whatsoever. The hype for this match was nuts, too, because all three characters had a decent case for winning. Pit had the new Kid Icarus, Cecil had Dissidia boost, and Wrex had Mass Effect 3. The beginning of the match was also nuts. Pit jumped out to the super early lead, meaning he had the bracket votes. Then the first freeze and second update rolled by, and Cecil was beating Pit by 26. But off in the distance, it was actually Wrex in second place by 6 votes, not Pit. Wrex managed to catch Cecil and build up a 60 vote lead very quickly on him, but Cecil was able to come back and tie things before finally rolling over and dying. From that point Wrex \> Cecil \> Pit was set in stone, though the final vote margins were decently close at the end. Wrex was destined to lose in round 2, but he won a match and I don't care! \<3 But Final Fantasy 4.... man. Not a single win in any contest, ever. We need to change this. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Let's break this down real quick. In this match, we have: 1\) Pit, classic NES game protagonist, character in Captain N, veteran of one very popular Smash game as well as returning in a new one, and star of a brand new 3DS game with good sales and great reviews. Palutena and Hades had done poorly earlier in the contest. Pit had only beaten Tingle and barely beaten King Dedede before his new game had come out. 2\) Wrex, a fan-favorite squad member in Mass Effect 1. He could die if you were bad at the game. Statistically, he died in over half of all ME playthroughs. By default, he is dead in ME2 and 3 if you do not have save data from ME1 with him alive. Shepard had failed to impress against Olimar and Garrus had been handily beaten by Sub-Zero. 3\) Cecil Harvey, protagonist of the beloved Final Fantasy IV. A character in two Dissidia games. Final Fantasy IV was recently re-released and even had a sequel. Kain Highwind had come close to Raiden in 2008. Cecil had only beaten Jade Curtiss. Final Fantasy had been looking like shit the whole contest. So how would you order these three? Great. Fucking. Question. I'd say this was in the top three most debated matches of Round 1. These guys weren't powerhouses or anything. It was freaking Pit, Cecil and [Wrex.](https://imgtc.com/i/PmY6Dg7.gif) I don't know if anyone called this order right, but people were absolutely pumped to see Wrex, the underdog, take this win. I'm still not sure how this worked out, like I said before, Western characters weren't shit this year, but then again, neither were lesser-FF characters and lesser-Nintendo characters. This was the years of memes, rallies, Pokemon and Vivi. Anything could happen. Guybrush Threepwood won a match. [I guess Wrex was kind of a meme after all.](https://imgtc.com/i/SYh5tUp.gif) --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (18)Geno vs (27)Magikarp 2013 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (18)Geno vs (27)Magikarp 2013 (revid 82185)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, August 13th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was supposed to be our last 1 seed beatdown of round 1, but it became the lone entertaining 1 seed match of the contest. The reason? This poll: Magikarp had a pre-planned rally in this contest, and under different circumstances he might have pulled the crazy out-of-nowhere upset. But Mega Man had the big Smash U announcement pre-contest, so Magikarp only got 5 minutes of being tied for the lead. After that, Mega Man completely stomped this match the way any 1 seed should stomp any match. Well, "stomp" being relative. Magikarp still ended up with 37% on him, but poor Geno just got absolutely swamped. This may have been the first time Mega Man overcame a Pokemon threat, but it would absolutely not be the last. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis wow we got Magikarp into a contest huh. and he made mega man look like shit and beat Geno huh. ... 2018 is going to be a wild fucking ride, man. What if we actually get Shellder in and he gets a good draw and beats a lesser character? I can't believe I am even contemplating Shellder winning a match in any way. Fuck. Well, at least he didn't get rallied past our boy Mega Man. That could have very well been possible, at the time, Capcom was treating Mega Man like absolute garbage. They were using Bad Box Art Mega Man for everything and cancelling his games. They didn't give a hot fuck about their mascot. The only one whos who cared were Sakurai and the fans. I still get chills when I watch this video: That's all I'm going to say about this match. Mega Man is around for a while in this contest and I need to save things to talk about. PS Geno for Smash, give him the boost and attention he deserves --- ## (6)Kratos vs (13)Travis Touchdown vs (22)Recette Lemongrass 2013 _source: (6)Kratos vs (13)Travis Touchdown vs (22)Recette Lemongrass 2013 (revid 82186)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, August 13th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match had two things to discuss, the first of which being Recette's hilarious upsset of Travis Touchdown to win second place. Those two may have only been separated by 250 at the end, but that was Travis throwing a last-ditch effort at a comeback out there once he fell behind by 535 early. I don't know if Recette had a planned rally or what, but an unknown character getting second place over a fairly popular character that's been in a contest before is no joke. Travis turned that 535 into a lead below 300 in only a couple hours, but was never able to make any real push at not embarrassing himself. The other thing in discussion here is Kratos. Yes he won the match easily, but there were a ton of topics complaining about the dude. And why? Maybe it's because I'm such an angry guy in real life (it's true), but I love the dude's personality. The gameplay in his entire series is also really fun, and never got old for me. I periodically replay the God of War series, and it's such a blast. Then he gets into a contest match and people start complaining about what a bad character he is, which makes no sense to me. People hating on Kratos is proof that opinions can absolutely be wrong. Recette was at least in small part rallied by the developer of the game, which is much cooler than the usual story of 'reddit/4chan did it for the lulz'. -KP ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Here's another entertaining match featuring the lead character from a game Board 8 was currently in love with, Recececettear. This match wasn't really up for debate, it was very clean cut. Kratos \> Travis \> Recette. Travis wasn't exactly a powerhouse, and he was 3 years out from his last new installment in a franchise that was already really niche. Still, Recette was from an even more niche indie game that only Board 8 seemed to care about. Right? Well, the creator of the game Tweeted about the match and drummed up a small Recette rally, which is way more wholesome than a dumb 4chan thing, although I heard they liked the game too and probably helped. The outpouring of support on top of low votals helped get Recette over Travis pretty easily, meaning Travis is now 0-3 and unless No More Heroes 3 is some level of groundbreaking he'll probably stay that way. I wanna say that by this point everyone's Expert Brackets had been wrecked so nobody was super salty about the surprise upset. We were just happy to have more close matches in a contest with huge dry spells. Kratos did fine here, he didn't blow away Travis and Recette but he did fine. His strength had been on a decline, people all of a sudden thought God of War was lame. Now, in 2018, post God of War reboot, he'd probably be a whole new animal. I think? Again, Western games don't mean shit, but Kratos was already a somebody before getting the modern PlayStation Last of Us treatment. Who knows where his power will fall in 2018? --- ## (9)Red Bird vs (10)Mike Haggar vs (19)Jill Valentine 2013 _source: (9)Red Bird vs (10)Mike Haggar vs (19)Jill Valentine 2013 (revid 82187)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, August 14th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis A long time ago on Board 8, there was a huge argument about whether or not Farmville should be allowed into a games contest on this site. There was worry that it would get rallied to win, and I'm sure now people use League of Legends as an example. But... why? People who play garbage like Farmville, Candy Crush Saga, Words With Friends, and all the rest of that casualbait crap geared toward homemaker women in their 50s and 60s are never going to have strength on GameFAQs. Those people are barely able to use their computers at all, let alone to a level of rallying en masse for some popularity contest on GameFAQs. Red Bird getting last in this poll is about the max strength you'll see from stuff like that. I mean yeah occasionally you'll get a gem like Angry Birds or Bejeweled or Slingo in there -- games that are actually decent -- but the vast majority of them are complete s\*\*\* that this site will never bother with. Just stick them all in polls against Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto characters and watch the funny. It was honestly disheartening to see MAYOR OF EARTH MIKE HAGGAR get second place here however, though OBVIOUSLY he was SFFd by Jill Valentine in a gesture of good will from the Nerf King himself. He didn't want to embarrass Mega Man in round 2 en route to destroying this contest, so he bowed out to give everyone else a fair chance! (But seriously, Jill getting 60% here was a fine performance, shame she was wasted on Mega Man in round 2.) ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Some people had BIRDFEAR here but there was nothing really to worry about. Even with Haggar and Jill giving each other... Marvel vs Capcom SFF (???) neither could possibly be weak enough to lose to a "red bird." And yeah, that was the match. A bunch of nothing. Hopefully we never see casualbait plaguing the contest field again. Just because Little Jimmy plays Angry Birds on his Kindle Fire with that ridiculous protective shell because he keeps throwing it across the room doesn't mean that he's going to go to the game facks dot com and vote. Jill did well here, it was all the confirmation we needed that she'd beat Kratos next round. Jill hasn't had much going on post-MvC3, just some crossovers and re-releases, but she should still retain the same strength in 2018. It was good finally seeing Haggar, yeah I guess he got... Marvel vs Capcom SFF'd (???) by Jill so we can't be 100% sure this is his true strength, but Haggar is the fucking best and I love him On a side note, there is an alright Fatal Fury fan film starring Don Frye as Mike Haggar. He was partially the inspiration for Haggar so it's really cool that this exists: --- ## (2)Zero vs (17)Kratos Aurion vs (26)Boko 2013 _source: (2)Zero vs (17)Kratos Aurion vs (26)Boko 2013 (revid 82188)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, August 14th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Zero winning this match was obvious (and was somewhat depressing for Mega Man fans given it was expected that Mega Man and Zero in the same match would allow Charizard to cheat by), but what we were not expecting at all is for one of the best second round matches ever to come along out of no where. Round 1 was awful, but this was a nice change of pace as we wound down to the contest's stretch run. It's not that people hated Kratos or Boko. Far from it. Zero's just so much stronger than both that their battle for second place was fighting over scraps. Board 8 loves both characters however, but probably Boko more since we have a user named MajinBoko. It was the perfect storm in Boko's favor, and off he went to a 150 vote lead early. This was surprising by itself given Kratos was favored to win, but Kratos was able to slowly (VERY slowly) push that lead back down and tie the poll at around 10 pm with two hours left. It would also, quite literally, stay completely tied for those last two hours. They fought back and forth the whole time, with each character getting a lead of a grand 23 votes, but was no other way for this poll to end other than a photo finish. I can't really narrate this in a way it deserves, so I'll just list nine of the final ten updates. 11:16 PM - Kratos by 16 11:21 PM - Kratos by 10 11:26 PM - Kratos by 7 11:31 PM - Kratos by 7 11:36 PM - Kratos by 5 11:42 PM - Kratos by 3 11:46 PM - Boko by 7 11:51 PM - Boko by 7 11:56 PM - Kratos by 1 So going into the absolute final update of the match, Boko sliiiiiiightly reduced Kratos's already razor-thin lead, couldn't hold it, and then they were basically tied for the last update. Half of us were rooting for our favorite to win, while the other half wanted Alucard's 3 vote record to go down. In the end it was fairly anticlimactic, as Kratos took the final update without much controversy, en route to winning by 7. I should probably note somewhere around here that Kratos losing this poll would have been supremely embarrassing, given how much of an upset he was, but him winning doesn't make him any less of an embarrassment. Almost losing to Boko, seriously? ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I remember absolutely nothing of this match. I don't remember Boko even making the field or having a nomination rally. I don't remember how ridiculously close this match was. What the fuck. It's great seeing Kratos pull off a win, imagine not only losing to Sackboy but also losing to a Chocobo. Boko is pretty cool though, so it would have been fine if he won. Was this a heavily debated match? I need someone to help me out here. I've remembered every match intimately up until this one, I must have had something important going on that day. Zero was on a whole other level, so it would be extra surprising when he would get SFF'd by Mega Man to such a degree that Charizard wouldn't be able to pull a win that everyone assumed would be easy for him. --- ## (5)Lenneth Valkyrie vs (14)Claptrap vs (23)Weighted Companion Cube 2013 _source: (5)Lenneth Valkyrie vs (14)Claptrap vs (23)Weighted Companion Cube 2013 (revid 82189)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, August 15th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match was interesting for about 5 minutes when Lenneth was winning early, but then the second update hit and things returned to normal. We expected Cube \> Claptrap \> Lenneth, and that's what we got--- Er wait a sec, is that Lenneth Freaking Valkyrie going down by 150 and then making a comeback attempt overnight? F\*\*\*in baller! Valkyrie Profile is such an unbelievable gem in an ocean of JRPG junk, and it's nice to see Lenneth making waves in a contest. She would eventually succumb to Borderlands' day vote, but nothing can take away Lenneth getting some notice for us VP fans. That might be the best of all the unsung JRPGs there is. Also worth noting here is that even with all the "joke characters" having sophomore slumps, Weighted Companion Cube seems to be just fine and might not ever lose much strength. Portal is just a different animal. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis People were taking the Cube here without much debate, it had a pretty accomplished contest history (I cannot believe I am saying that about an actual box), so the real debate here was Recent Western Franchise Icon™ vs JRPG Girl With Cult Fanbase®. You see where I'm going with this? I don't know why people nominated Claptrap. Do people like this guy? He was made into a playable character in the Pre-Sequel, they added more Claptraps as NPCs and you also go into his head in the only TPS DLC. Let me show you who likes Claptrap. Click on this video, watch the dude's intro and get back to me. No need to actually watch the "hilarious Claptrap moment." Still, people like that dude were around in force and they voted for their boy and took the win away from Lenneth. She hadn't had a game for quite a while and her only other contest appearance was getting tripled by Rikku in the female half of 2006. Fun fact: The amount of votes Lenneth got herself in 2006 was almost 5000 votes more than the total for this entire 2013 match. Anyone wanna guess what the average votal will be in 2018? Cube didn't really impress here but none of the joke characters other than maybe L-Block seemed to have any strength at all this time, so that didn't surprise anyone. --- ## (8)?-Block vs (11)Lyndis vs (20)Rikku 2013 _source: (8)?-Block vs (11)Lyndis vs (20)Rikku 2013 (revid 82190)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, August 15th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis ?-Block was hilarious for a lot of reasons. One, he was the favorite in the match. That by itself is nuts to me even though I picked him, because L-Block's run in 2007 is still having after-effects. 6 years later, we're still sitting here trying to predict the strength of random inanimate objects in character battles. The other thing is that even though he was the favorite, Rikku had an amazing case for pulling the so-called upset and winning. ?-Block was literally destined to have a sophomore slump in his first actual contest appearance, all because he beat L-Block in the bonus poll back in 2007 (and is still the reason we have bonus polls). That is unbelievably hilarious to me, and given all this the match played out exactly as one would expect. Rikku jumped out to a lead that couldn't be beaten, but ?-Block still had this crazy contest strength that could have won a lot of other matches. Rikku won easily, but 1266 votes isn't some huge number that says ?-Block should never see a contest again. Were he in the 2008 field instead of 2013's, he might have done some serious damage. The killer here is Lyndis might me my favorite female character ever short of Commander Shepard, and after trying to get her into a contest for years I get to watch her lose to a coin block. Yay. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis ?-Block was the favorite here because he had beaten WCC, Pong Paddle and then-Champion L-Block in a post-2007 bonus match. That's cool and all, but as discussed above, nobody seemed to care for these joke objects as much anymore, so people started pushing for Rikku in the 11th hour right before this match. People had been pushing her for a while, actually, but a lot of people clung to that bonus poll and stuck to their ?-Block picks. And Rikku won! And won pretty easily. Leon likes to blame the pic I used for Rikku here. Is it fan art? Yyyyyes. Did I know that at the time? Well... It was willful ignorance is what it was. My entire MO this contest was to "use new pics for characters who always get the same shit." I would scour through fan wikis and obscure tumblrs looking for official art that people either never had found in high enough resolution or were too lazy to render. I can't remember where I found this Rikku pic, but it was Rikku against some palm trees, and it took me almost two hours to render right. The entire time I was thinking "is this official art? I don't think this is official art. Well, it might be. Maybe I should do research. Eh, I'm already an hour in. Fuck it, let's see if Bacon uses it. It's probably official. Maybe. Maybe." Regardless of the legality of the play here, Rikku won by a good amount, and even if her 15-year-old boobs (shame on you) helped her win, it was still a win, and we put another "what if" character/object out to pasture. KP mentioned earlier that Rikku looked pretty strong in the stats here, and I believe it. It's weird to think she might be the fourth strongest FFX character. Have we ever tried to nominate Lulu and her Lulus? Or [this guy?](https://imgtc.com/i/KjkuaZN.mp4) EDIT: I forgot to talk about Lyndis. It's a shame she never made it into Smash, there are already three dozen Fire Emblem characters, why not one more? This was her once chance to shine and she got beaten by TJF and a box. Sorry, Lyn. --- ## (3)John Marston vs (16)Zelda vs (25)Sackboy 2013 _source: (3)John Marston vs (16)Zelda vs (25)Sackboy 2013 (revid 82191)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, August 16th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Not much to say about this match, since Zelda winning was never going to be in doubt. It was nice to see her recover after the awkward 2010 however, and she was en route to having a good contest after this match. She would only last two rounds, but helped expose Charizard a bit after beating up two garbage casualbait characters. This was Marston's first contest, and hopefully his last. And I'm sure I don't "get it" or whatever, but I don't understand the Little Big Planet love at all. I played it, and it was nothing more than bad platforming with bad handling mixed with bad "enjoy our artwork". Some genres just don't mix, and platforming plus all that side crap is a nice example. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Zelda got to stomp not one, but two Western Franchise Mascots! Wow!! She even did it with a pic from Skyward Sword, the one nobody likes. Next contest she is going to be even stronger with [her sassy new Smash appearance](https://imgtc.com/i/azrU9sf.mp4). I can't believe Sackboy has been in three contests and even has a win under his belt in Kratos Aurion. What world do we live in? Do people like his games that much? I had two of them and they're... alright, I guess. I think Sony retired the franchise after the third one sold like shit and the devs demoing it at E3 couldn't even beat their demo level. [Why do we still have live E3 events anyway?](https://imgtc.com/i/hIvSokR.mp4)\] As for Marston, he's another overrated Western character (literally!) but nobody thought he could actually beat Zelda. I do remember some whiners coming to the board, that game has some seriously defensive fans. Defensive of this: I have two friends from college (one of them is the one I gave the Teemo mushroom to) who got jobs at Rockstar and are currently working on RDR2. They do the animation cleanup on the mocap. My one friend was telling me how they work like 60-70 hour weeks right now but there's a masseuse on-staff and lunch is free so that sounds pretty sweet. He asserts that RDR2 is going to be the greatest game of all time, but I really doubt that. I wouldn't say that to his face, though. If you're playing RDR2 and you think the cutscene animation is good, pour one out for Zen's friend and the free masseuse. --- ## (4)Lightning vs (15)Donkey Kong vs (24)Falco Lombardi 2013 _source: (4)Lightning vs (15)Donkey Kong vs (24)Falco Lombardi 2013 (revid 82192)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, August 16th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I know there was one more match to have before ending round 1, but this might as well have been the last match of round 1 given how funny it was. Lightning was expected to win this match fairly easily due to the Nintendo overlap between Donkey Kong and Falco, but more importantly, this is freaking Donkey Kong we're talking about. DK doesn't win debated matches; he chokes them away. Not only that, but DK is notorious for having close matches when he was expected to win with ease. Just for fun, here's every debated or close match DK has ever been in: 2002 - Beats Aya Brea by 1300 after trailing early, our first ever match with F5 spam. 2003 - Loses to Vercetti by 1000 after hours of stalling out. 2004 - DK (the game) almost loses a 3300 vote lead to Duck Hunt. 2004 - Blown out by Vivi in a match he was expected to win. 2005 - Loses a 2000 vote lead to Master Chief. 2008 - Loses to Tidus and Weighted Companion Cube. 2009 - DK almost loses to Punch-Out, DKC1 beats Doom by 600 with LTTP in the poll. Other matches happened, but those are the notable ones. So for DK to come out and end this match in ten seconds was completely nuts. To say that people hate Lightning is an understatement; I think Lightning is the entire symbol of everything that people have despised about Square since FFX or so, and with good reason. Lightning is not a likeable character, and calling her a Cloud clone is just an insult to Cloud. Cloud is an introvert and doesn't openly hate his party, while Lightning just goes out of her way to tell everyone to f\*\*\* off every 2 seconds. I actually like Final Fantasy 13 a lot, but there is no defending this idiot. Square tried making a strong female lead, but succeeded with almost every female in the game except Lightning. Fang is a strong character. Vanille is a strong character. Even Serah in her limited screen time is a strong character. Lightning just acts like a c\*\*\* for absolutely no reason, and somehow Square thought it was a good idea to channel the inner LeBron James and make not one, not two, but THREE games about her? Square is unbelievably clueless, and Lightning flat-out deserved this loss for multiple reasons. DK also deserved this win, for the years and years of contest misery. Just the perfect storm of deserves to win and deserves to lose, all in one match. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis holy SHIT, Lightning's picture is incredible, how did I forget about this?? @superange128 you are my hero and I love you People thought DK might lose here just by the virtue of him being one of the Choke Kings, and that Lightning pic must have put the fear of God in them. A Cloud-shaped God. Of course, nothing surprising actually happened. Maybe in a year where Cloud was worth shit that pic would have changed something. [Lightning is basically just Cloud anyway.](https://imgtc.com/i/KCD04pm.mp4) Falco continued the trend of Star Fox looking like ass. He got SFF'd, yeah, but it's just Donkey Kong. No need to roll over and die. --- ## (7)Charizard vs (12)Riku vs (21)Nier 2013 _source: (7)Charizard vs (12)Riku vs (21)Nier 2013 (revid 82193)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, August 17th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Charizard's predictable beatdown mercifully brought this obnoxious round 1 to an end, and the only thing I can even think to say about the match is that this gave us 24 straight hours of legit Square bashing. Kingdom Hearts and NieR are both published by them, and the games are what, 10 years apart? That being said, look at the match pic at how Riku and Nier are basically clones. That company is beyond clueless. Round 1 ending on a snoozer gives me a good chance to summarize it, specifically how bad it was. Allen is obsessed with this idea of "more is better", but this contest's round 1 to me proves that quality \> quantity. There is no need to have 243 characters in a contest just to make obscure fanbases feel good about themselves. 128 contest entrants should be the absolute maximum; 243 is just ridiculous, and it took us something like a month and a half to get through it. I seriously got burned out on this PCA by Division 7, though I'll get the urge to write back now that round 2 is here. Seriously Allen, more is not better. Round 1 of this contest had 81 matches. Eighty. One. Matches. There have been entire contests with 63. Stop it. How many of those matches were even good? Maybe ten? Round 1 is about weeding out fodder and staying true to NCAA seeding, not making more fodder matches and wasting more time. I'd much rather a few strong characters get snubbed over ever dealing with a round 1 like this ever again. Not that the actual 3-way idea was bad, but if it's eve done again just give byes to the higher seeds and take in less characters. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis If you haven't played the original Nier, do yourself a favor and go get a copy. It's probably like \$2 at this point. It's so worth it. Just don't rage quit at the fishing part! Thanks to KP for the recommendation all those years ago! Charizard was always a lock to win, people just weren't sure by how much. Riku has been a regular since 2005 and he's impressed pretty regularly as a solid midcarder. Seeing Charizard beast on him so hard post-KHIII announcement amped the POKEFEAR up to 11. There's going to be a ton more of Charizard to talk about later so I'll cut myself off here. Thus concludes Round 1! I actually cannot believe I've had the willpower to get this far. Thanks to everyone's words of encouragement and expert input. I really couldn't do this without you guys. I also don't want to leave anyone who is newer to the board with the impression that I am an end-all-be-all contest expert, that is definitely all the others posting in here, they're all the gurus I could only dream of being. That's going to be it for the night! Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like me to mention about R2 and I'll try to include it. (nominate metal sonic he could beat seifer) --- ## (8)Chester vs (22)Caim vs (8)Spring Breeze Dancin' _source: (8)Chester vs (22)Caim vs (8)Spring Breeze Dancin' (revid 82201)_ ## Results **Bonus** Saturday, August 17th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Due to this contest having an odd number of matches in rounds 1 and 2 and ending at awkward times, we were given two mid-contest bonus matches. The first of which was a last place affair between the three round 1 characters that did the worst, because if there is anything round 1 needed it was one more match to determine the ultimate last place guy. We all knew who that was going in, Chester is a champ like that, but there was something hysterical about Caim getting 55% of the vote while only getting 8880 votes. But hey, Chester got a total of 24 hours to make some history, so it can't be all bad. The other great thing here is Luster Soldier's polls on the board decided all of our bonus matches, yet somehow Allen's wife found the time to talk smack on the dude after the contest ended. The whole thing was just great. And with that, round 2 (and somehow, the contest's entire stretch run) was upon us! ## Zen's (Late) Analysis This was the bonus match post-Round 1, it didn't count for points I think and I also think we voted on what match we wanted to see. LusterSoldier usually remembers this stuff better than me. Something tells me we could have come up with something more interesting, but at the time the board was obsessed with finding the weakest possible character in these things. Yet somehow we all knew and wanted it to be Chester but we also voted for him?? You can't make this shit up, we never agree on anything. The only thing we learned from this match is that Caim is so weak he can barely double Spring Breeze Dancin'. We also learned just how low we could get the votals to go. --- ## (1)Link vs (6)Raiden vs (9)Yoshi 2013 _source: (1)Link vs (6)Raiden vs (9)Yoshi 2013 (revid 82194)_ ## Results **Round 2** Sunday, August 18th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis As a match, this only mattered for about 30 minutes. Yoshi tried resisting the SFF to upset Raiden, but there was no way he was going to stand up to Link for very long and Raiden was able to easily win second place. The only thing actually worth discussing here was the outline for the pictures this round, which was.... the quote contest finally happens! This outline was pretty sweet, though the idea for yearbook photos was really stupid. Just have normal match pictures with quotes underneath, not yearbook portraits. This was Allen trying to be cute and handicapping himself, which would raise holy hell later on in round 2. Also, even had Draven never happened I'm convinced Link does not win this contest. His match in round 1 got 28930 votes, and this one got 27732. X-stats and all that are only a part of a character's strength; you have to look at putting asses in seats, and Link generated no buzz this year whatsoever. He would have made the final had he managed to beat Draven, but Snake would have won easily. This contest really showed that people are tired of Link winning all the time. He has lost a huge step, and the low vote totals for both of his normal matches proved it. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis new round, who dis? With a new round comes a new pic theme, and like previous contests, Round 2 was the "uncomfortably close face pictures" round, which I despise. I don't want to see the pores on Link's face, thanks. That's my personal taste though, and as a result I am absent completely in Round 2, but there are some standout pics (lol vincent) we'll talk about when we get there. As for the theme itself, it was pretty divisive, but unlike my dumb Atlas Hale pic, at least the gimmick doesn't get in the way of seeing what you're voting for. It's not bad, I like the idea, it gives the "big dumb faces" theme more of a meaning, and for once Allen was looking more for upper torsos to go along with those dumb faces so that we didn't get shit like this: That Duke pic is simultaneously incredible and the worst pic ever in a contest (lol vincent). I did that Lucario pic and I was so stoked I got the "o" inside his kamehamaha. Much simpler times in Picsmithing. The quote part of the yearbook pics derived from the bios written by Board 8 themselves. I actually think I wrote Draven's bio because nobody else wanted to. Anyone remember what bios they wrote? Also, I'm not sure if we submitted the quotes or if Allen did those himself, but we definitely did the bios for everyone but the 1-seeds. I'm talking so much about the pics because this match was a real snoozefest. People argued whether or not Yoshi could overcome the Link SFF to lock down second, but, y'know, it's Link. Maybe if a lesser Nintendo character were in the match. Raiden was able to take silver pretty easily. --- ## (2)Commander Shepard vs (5)Tharja vs (20)Aeris Gainsborough 2013 _source: (2)Commander Shepard vs (5)Tharja vs (20)Aeris Gainsborough 2013 (revid 82195)_ ## Results **Round 2** Sunday, August 18th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis For the most part the quote thing was only passively funny, but that picture is absolutely golden. Tharja staring at Aeris and warning her about death, in a match where Aeris got killed by the upset bug, is golden. This was the second match in a row where people couldn't wait to anti-vote the establishment, and this time around it was Final Fantasy 7 getting its ass kicked. Early on, Aeris was winning. Either she's more popular than Shepard by herself, or bracket voting put her ahead, or what. She stayed there for quite awhile, too, but never really built a lead or pulled away. While she was going up for the first couple hours of the poll, the biggest lead she managed was 137 votes. But in no time at all, Shepard began coming back with very little resistance. It only took him an hour and a half to get rid of Aeris's lead, and once he tied the poll he just took off. Usually when a favorite is losing a lead, there is a ton of resistance and a tie holds for awhile. When Aeris lost the lead, she just died. Shepard would end up laughing in the face of the so-called legendary FF7 day vote en route to a 700 vote win, and it was one of the coolest upsets of the entire contest. I love FF7 as a game, I really do, but Aeris is a bad character and is only notable because of the end of disc 1. Yeah she probably wins this match without Tharja in the way, and yeah FF7 anti-voting is running rampant in contests these days, but who can possibly complain when Commander Goddamn Shepard is the beneficiary of it? How many characters in this entire bracket are actually better characters than Shep? Maybe 5? This was a great win for Shepard and Mass Effect fans, and Shep has come a loooooooong way from getting 13% in a fourway poll in 2008. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Alright seeing Shepard's quote makes me think we wrote those and not Bacon, that's great. "I should go" would also have been a good quote. Or "Wrex" and make Wrex's "Shepard." Shepard vs Aeris had some minor debate, people were pretty down on FF as a whole by this time so a lot more people on Board 8 were in Shepard's corner than usual. It also helps that Mass Effect is one of very few Western franchises we give a shit about cuz you can plow blue aliens. It's weird seeing Shepard, a dude who got destroyed by Pikachu and once lost to Sandbag and Magus, win pretty easily here. Aeris had put up a decent percentage on Auron in 2010. How did FF fall so far in such a short amount of time? Did that many people blindly anti-vote FF? How did people get the perception that Cloud and FF always win anyway? I've seen that all over the site. You see a match like Master Chief vs Yuna, go to the Halo 4 board, and everyone is posting threads like "WHY DOES FF ALWAYS WIN ON THIS SITE??" ignoring that Cloud only won a single contest that was basically rigged for him and Sephiroth won a Villains contest he was handed on a silver platter as an excuse to remove him. Yeah, FF does well, but Link and (some of) Nintendo have been dominating for years. Tharja looked alright here because of it. Cool to see her in Round 2. Who's the hot Fire Emblem character of the minute now? Anyone more familiar with the franchise want to rank all the FE characters' 2018 strength? --- ## (3)Draven vs (15)Ryu vs (7)Mega Man X 2013 _source: (3)Draven vs (15)Ryu vs (7)Mega Man X 2013 (revid 82196)_ ## Results **Round 2** Monday, August 19th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was basically the match where people realized Draven was going to win the entire contest, and it's also the match that got me started with League of Legends. I have played a TON of Dota (it's pathetic how much I played that game, honestly), so I figured with all the Draven hype League would be worth a try. It's a really good game, but it clearly grew to popularity by being very streamlined, easymoded and shallow. Like I have fun with it, but it hasn't really hooked me the way Dota did. I enjoy as much interaction as possible, League flat-out does not have as much as Dota. Both games do a lot of things better than the other and the constant comparisons are kind of stupid, but that's one I feel is really legitimate. That being said, the things League does better, it does a lot better. The item system especially is so much better than Dota's that it isn't even funny, and Dota will never fix theirs because of "tradition". Screw that, make your items easy to buy and easy to put together and stop being dumb. Anyway, the match. At one point, Draven only had 16% in it. But with all of the rallying, all of League's servers being down, and all of League's attention focused on this match, Draven gave us the most powerful performance ever in a contest. He didn't maintain it, but "Round 2 Draven" is easily the strongest character we've ever had. You'd have to go very far back in the GameFAQs contest archives to find vote totals or characters capable of beating 56937 votes in a 12 hour night match, and that's with Draven slowing down for the last hour or so. How much could Round 2 Draven score in a match where he 100% needed 24 hours of rallying? Is 150,000 votes really out of the question here? 200,000? This match was beyond done and Draven was still pulling 500 vote updates for hours, there isn't a doubt in my mind the full rallying potential could beat things like 2003 Cloud, 2004 Link or 2007 L-Block. Regardless of hating on the dude for winning, you have to agree those numbers are impressive. They also caused one of the biggest hype trains I can remember. No matter what happened for the rest of round 2, there were just as many topics (if not more) of people talking about the Draven/Link/(oh and Shepard was in there too) match. I can't believe all the complaining, because the whole point of this contest was making Link lose, and Board 8 agreed with that. But Draven does it instead of Snake and sand gets up everyone's crotch. I don't get it. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis X's quote is so on point holy shit. Wish he wasn't all talk. If you combine the votals of the three smallest matches from Round 1 they are still like 10k short of this one. This is where a ton of us gave up hope on this contest. Yeah, Link could still win it out in Round 3, but look at those vote totals. You know it's a bad situation when people start counting Link out of the game. The board was in absolute chaos the entire day during this match. Not only did we get the first real wave of BUTTDEVESTATED flooding our topic list, but what really annoyed me were the people hitting us with dozens of topics asking "who draven" like they couldn't click on the fucking bios Allen put on the voting page. I guess they were just confused that this ugly mofo was beating on two icons so easily. From what I understand, this match and the next one brought a good amount of current users to the board, so there was a bright side. Raise your hand if you are a Draven baby boomer! In the end, the board had a mini-civil war that still has repercussions to this day. There were people who really were BUTTDEVESTATED and were vocal about it. You had other long time Board 8ers who thought it was great that votals were back up and that contests were getting attention. That's kind of a "chaotic good" approach to seeing things but I understand that point of view. Those two groups argued day-in and day-out, and I'll admit, even though I was pretty neutral at the time, it was hard to sympathize with the "I for one welcome our new Draven overlords" group. They had absolutely no compassion and a few of them still stand by Draven being one of the better things to happen to this contest. A big defense is "you didn't care when L-Block won!!!" Yeah because L-Block was our thing! Not Reddit's! The entire internet was in on L-Block! Now, if you do bring up the Draven thing on the board in a positive light and say you want more rallies, you'll always get a group of people who will jump down your throat. I don't know if I want Sans, Monika or the others in the next contest. I don't know what I want other than to be able to make a bracket and not base it on predicting what fanbases will be efficient enough to rally. And if Allen really is installing anti-rally measures, then they feel like a waste of a nom, but you know people are going to try anyway. I'm over the BUTTDEVESTATION, it still kind of sucks it wasn't a more interesting character than Draven. LoL isn't even a shadow of what it once was, so the whole "joke" of Draven winning feels extra dated. In 10 years this will probably be an even more baffling result to newer or younger users who come to this board. fuck I hope we're still around in 10 years --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (13)Dracula vs (10)Barret Wallace 2013 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (13)Dracula vs (10)Barret Wallace 2013 (revid 82197)_ ## Results **Round 2** Monday, August 19th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Sonic winning this match was never going to be in doubt, though taking on a Final Fantasy 7 character a round before he was expected to take on Vincent meant something. He crushed Barret and Dracula both, which really should have put all the Vincent hype to rest. Vincent is not immune to the FF7 decline. And though Barret did end up getting second place, this was such an embarrassing performance. Dracula kept virtually tied for 20 minutes before very slowly losing ground the rest of the match, but even with FF7's so-called good day vote Barret only won by 750. I know RacistFAQs and all, but Dracula is seriously only in Symphony of the Night for like 5 minutes. He may have gotten extra votes for also being a historical figure, and holy crap do we need to have an all-inclusive character contest like nothing else because the strength of guys like Batman and Vader need to be tested, but Barret still should have won with ease. FF7 really has become a joke on this site. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Wanna see something fucking dumb? [This](https://imgtc.com/i/pAeodrL.jpg) is from the set of the Sonic live action film, which is pretty dumb to begin with. Look at the population on that sign: 1981! NOT 1991! How could they mess up such an easy gag? It's was free. Barret, the blackest character in the bracket, was up against Dracula, the whitest character in the bracket, for second place. On RacistFAQs. What do you think happened? Dracula had proven in R1 that he wasn't particularly strong without his son, but Barret was still barely able to secure a win. This was a bad sign for Vincent supporters. You know what else was a bad sign for Vincent's match? We were about to find out... --- ## (2)Phoenix Wright vs (23)Vincent Valentine vs (11)Mewtwo 2013 _source: (2)Phoenix Wright vs (23)Vincent Valentine vs (11)Mewtwo 2013 (revid 82198)_ ## Results **Round 2** Tuesday, August 20th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I submitted that DOC Vincent, BRING ON THE WHINING, BOYS! -paulg235 A lot of people complain that Board 8 bullies too much and hate too many people. I would argue that no one gets hated on Board 8 without doing something extremely f\*\*\*ing dumb to deserve it, and guys like paulg, Kanz, XIII once Draven \> Link happened, vcharon after SMFFFC, and so on, all deserve every amount of grief they got. I've been making pictures for awhile now, and I feel comfortable saying anyone who makes pictures just to intentionally sabotage a match, and then acts proud of it afterwards like they did nothing wrong, has no business whatsoever making any pictures. Garbage like that is not why we do what we do, and it especially makes ZenOfThunder look bad when he spends time defending these people. But then they go and prove how useless they are, and there you go. Mewtwo was a very strong character and was going to win this match no matter what, but intentionally ruining Vincent to the point where Phoenix Wright easily pushes him to last place? And going HURR HURR I DID THAT CRY MOAR LOL afterwards? No. paulg is one of those guys that will never be accepted on Board 8 again, and that's a good thing. Some people absolutely deserve to get bullied out of a community after doing something stupid. The bright side here is that Mewtwo proved to be a BEAST, and this match started the hype train of "WE CAN RALLY MEWTWO PAST DRAVEN!!!". Sonic didn't stand much of a chance after all that. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis FF may have fallen, but Vincent is a cut above the rest! He's the Noble Nine breaker! He's a little below Sephiroth in strength! He can take out Mewtwo, regardless of how strong Pokemon has looked! Well, uh, I mean, he can still beat... Phoenix Wright, right? ...right? Alright, I was pretty defensive of this picture when it first came out because I've gotten some shit for my bad pics in the past, but this was a new level of bad pic. The entire board was up in arms about it and people were after user paulg's head. I don't know if there were death threats but there might as well have been. It wasn't bad at first, but once Phoenix took off ahead of Vincent and showed no signs on slowing down, people were screaming "sabotage" from on high. I have never seen a bigger backlash for a pic, ever, and I have seen some trash, most of which is my own. User paulg went into full defense mode, I admire the dude for having the balls to post during this. I think people were still sore about Draven and some kind of weird survival instinct had kicked in. Everyone was talking about this pic. I don't think you could go into a goddamn Mercenaries topic without seeing someone mention Vincent's ugly fuckin' face on the front page. paulg changed his stories several times, and that's kind of where my sympathy stopped. He stopped apologizing and told us all to fuck off, then started claiming he had intentionally sabotaged Vincent. Again, the dude was getting called out by an entire community, so I think he was just saying shit at this point. I don't know what the real story is, or even if the match pic mattered that much in the end. After all, FF had been looking like a huge turd, and Phoenix had looked pretty good. Yeah, the match pic probably didn't help, but I'm super happy our boy Wrighto was able to pull off this crazy upset. And let's be real here, Vincent never had a shot at Mewtwo, regardless of the pic. In the current climate of FF anti-voting, he wouldn't have had a chance in hell. I don't think many people seriously thought Vincent could win by this point anyway. Also: lol vincent Jill \> Crono this year bank on it Also, thank you for the shoutout in your writeup, Ulti! I didn't read it until after I was done writing mine and now I feel bad that I did precisely the opposite of what you said: *Garbage like that is not why we do what we do, and it especially makes ZenOfThunder look bad when he spends time defending these people. But then they go and prove how useless they are, and there you go.* whoops --- ## (16)The Boss vs (15)Sub-Zero vs (7)Bowser 2013 _source: (16)The Boss vs (15)Sub-Zero vs (7)Bowser 2013 (revid 82199)_ ## Results **Round 2** Tuesday, August 20th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis A lot of people noted in this match that The Boss feels like she gets into one weird match every contest (except the female bracket), and they would be right. Check this out. 2007 - Only beats Tails by 350 or so for third place after giving up a 900 vote lead, but no one cared because it was for third place. 2010 - Gets in via vote-in, then upsets Nathan Drake as a 15 seed before getting 46% on Weighted Companion Cube. 2011 - All of Big Boss vs. The Boss's matches finish within 60-40. The reason The Boss isn't heralded in the same way as Kefka is because her matches never really matter, including this year. Who cares about The Boss v Sub-Zero when Bowser just advances anyway, right? But now we have the Expert Challenge, so stuff like this really matters. The very short of it here is that for something like 9 hours of this poll, The Boss and Sub-Zero were basically tied, in a throwback to the Chrono Trigger/LTTP days. This was really surprising, because Metal Gear Solid has a hilariously awful day vote. So come the evening, everyone expected The Boss to pull away. Naturally, Sub-Zero won the evening vote and SNV instead, and pulled away to win by 246. This contest made absolutely no goddamn sense whatsoever, and this was another match among many that helped prove it. Every trend we have said The Boss would take second place here, and she didn't. I happen to love stuff like this, because anything that beats trends and LOL X-STATS and all the rest of the pretentious contest noise is okay in my book. You can follow all that stuff and get into the 99th percentile every contest, but you'll never win unless the field is so predictable like Rivalry Rumble was. To actually win a contest, you need to be like Lopen or raytan. Pick weird stuff and not give two f\*\*\*s. raytan won a guru contest by picking a Samus \> Mario final, for crissakes. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Here's a match that shouldn't have been entertaining, Sub-Zero does pretty well in these things and the Boss had once struggled against Tails. Naturally, The Boss hates keeping things predictable, so she managed to keep the match basically tied all night, but everyone knew that, onces the kiddies came home from school that The Boss would, well... I guess she summed it up herself: I don't even know how this happened, I guess Boss is stronger than Garrus or something, which doesn't seem too surprising, so where does Chrom fall? This contest was fucking wild, man, but I blame the Boss more, she's just too unpredictable, if she came close to a Noble. The Boss might also be a recipient of the Martyr Factor, but it's hard to tell. Hey, speaking of martyrs, have you seen the Metal Gear Solid 3 Pachinko Machine? It's MGS3 remade in the FOX Engine but exclusive to a pachinko machine Take a second and let that sink in then lay down and cry for a very long time also lol @ having the full unedited Boss speech from the end of the game but in the middle of a Japanese pachinko parlour --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (6)Morrigan Aensland vs (9)Spyro the Dragon 2013 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (6)Morrigan Aensland vs (9)Spyro the Dragon 2013 (revid 82200)_ ## Results **Round 2** Wednesday, August 21st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis 11 years later, Spyro got his shot to get revenge on Morrigan for the big upset in 2002, and back then it was our second ever match. It also coined The Jug Factor, so it's been a memorable upset since the dawn of our contests. Unfortunately, Morrigan got Marvel vs Capcom 3 since then. Spyro might have gotten something too, but who cares? So that being said, everyone knew Morrigan was taking second place. She even got the benefit of early Sephiroth anti-votes to flirt with first place for a few minutes, but beyond that the match was standard and boring. The only exciting thing here was Zen's hilarious zoomed in Spyro picture that I was too dumb to save. I hope someone else has it \<\_\< ## Zen's (Late) Analysis My girl Morrigan shows up and just barely manages to avoid getting doubled by Sephiroth. There wasn't much interesting about this match except that Sephiroth really should blown these two out harder, but we all know about FF's fall by now. It's funny to look at this result and then time travel back to the second ever match which had 30,000 more votes despite lacking Sephiroth: Either Morrigan has fallen greatly or Spyro has risen significantly. They both managed to blow away the R1 fodder they were put up against in 2013, so it's hard to tell. Time has passed so much, but back in 2002 everyone on this site was super insecure about their maturity and they'd anti-vote all the kiddies and upvote all the tiddies. Things have changed since then, we now upvote both kiddies and tiddies. Sometimes Rikku, who is somehow both. For shame. Also of note, Morrigan's last major appearance was Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. I love Morrigan and Ghost Rider, and they have this stupidly corny cutscene where they meet for the first time, and I absolutely loved it: "Tell me, Rider, is it business that brings you here... Or pleasure?" "Vengeance." "Ah, a bit of both." she just wants to get into his bone zone, incredible not so incredible: [everything else about Marvel vs Capcom Infinite](https://imgtc.com/i/iVFelzF.png) --- ## (2)Luigi vs (5)Big Boss vs (11)Ness 2013 _source: (2)Luigi vs (5)Big Boss vs (11)Ness 2013 (revid 82205)_ ## Results **Round 2** Wednesday, August 21st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Good old awful Metal Gear Solid day votes. Big Boss was supposed to win this match easily, because he's on par with Luigi in strength without factoring in another Nintendo character leeching away his strength. Add in Ness? This seemed over before it started. But then the match began, and things were actually close. They stayed that way for hours, and we eventually and slowly came to the realization that this was actually going to be a match. The base momentum seemed to be with Big Boss, because he was the character trying to pull away from the 5 hour tie, while Luigi was seemingly playing catchup the entire time. That right there is basically what ended the match, because once the day vote ended and the sun started going down, Big Boss turned a tie into a 300 vote win. Had Luigi taken advantage of the bad MGS day vote and shrugged off Ness even a little bit more, this might have been interesting. But as-is, it was one of those close matches where we all knew the trends and all knew what would eventually happen, and then no one was surprised when those trends came true. Now if we ever have a 1 on 1 contest again, Big Boss and Luigi need a 24 hour match. Nothing was actually settled here because of Ness, and I think it would be really neat. It has the makings of one of those marathon type matches where one character could get a big lead, blow it, and then we get a photo finish late. Then I kind of realize we'll probably never get a 1 on 1 character contest again, which blows to think about. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis [ded](https://imgtc.com/i/ZI3wAUs.jpg) Some people argued for Luigi here, but Big Boss was too close to him in strength so Ness made all the difference. It's interesting that people always come to the board to complain when Luigi wins. People really like the dude, I think there are more Luigi whiners than for any other Mario character. Luigi had every opportunity to lock this down, he actually performed pretty well when you consider that Ness was here, but as Leon said, LFF doesn't seem to matter as much in 3-ways. Speaking of Luigi not being able to commit, you have to feel for [the dude losing his girl to Wario](https://imgtc.com/i/XyRcmwf.jpg). now he's dead, the dude can't catch a break --- ## (3)Elizabeth vs (4)Kirby vs (12)Crash Bandicoot 2013 _source: (3)Elizabeth vs (4)Kirby vs (12)Crash Bandicoot 2013 (revid 82206)_ ## Results **Round 2** Thursday, August 22nd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Crash Bandicoot won his first ever contest match, over some scrub named Ulala, and then spent 10 years as a running joke. So it's only fitting that in one of our weirdest contests ever, someone like Crash Bandicoot gets to go out on such a high note. Can you remember any character getting to feel so good about finishing in last place? There were a couple of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that Crash freaking deserved some run in a contest. The lesser reason is that he helped expose Elizabeth and Bioshock Infinite as a complete and total fraud in this contest. Not that it started that way. Elizabeth actually looked really good for second place early, and built up a lead near 400 overnight. But then the morning vote hit, and Crash went on a torrent pace that looked like a comeback pace, but Elizabeth was able to stall just enough updates to eke out second place by 63 votes. Fact: Crash Bandicoot was hurt a lot by Kirby's presence, and not only would have beaten Elizabeth were this a 24 hour 1v1 match, but this poll being 24 hours long means Crash gets second place with ease. Fact: If this were a 1v1 contest, almost none of the gurus would have picked Crash \> Elizabeth and we would have had one of the best guru upsets ever. I'd talk more about Kirby getting first, but we all knew that was coming and I can't resist FINALLY giving Crash some freaking contest hype. It was 11 years. 11 years!! Hats off to the guy, he deserves some time in the sun instead of just being stuck in another fodder spot. This was one of the biggest losses that felt like a win I can remember. Bioshock Infinite just looked so, so bad in this contest. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Crash was able to beat another Western icon in Round 1, but what about Round 2? Could he beat the face of Bioshock? Well, maybe in 2018. But in 2013 he didn't. One could say he crashed and bur-- you know what, I really don't want to finish that joke. I'm sorry. I should have skipped writing today and gone to see The Meg alone. Crash beat Wheatley, yeah, but Elizabeth, despite being omitted from the cover of BioShock Infinite, was still the most popular character by far in the porn-- I mean, uh, in the game itself. A lot of people have turned on BioShock Infinite in recent years. It was super hyped when it came out because of the ending, but the game itself was pretty shallow. Maybe if they had actually aimed to make a game like the E3 demo it would have been more fondly remembered in 2018: I got off track again, sorry. Crash blew it here, he probably was affected by Kirby in some way, yeah, but he still could have pulled it off if he wasn't such a joke. I don't think anyone even took Crash, someone can check the Guru stats. Post-remake, he definitely could pull off an upset. --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (6)Alucard vs (9)Bayonetta 2013 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (6)Alucard vs (9)Bayonetta 2013 (revid 82225)_ ## Results **Round 2** Thursday, August 22nd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis For my money, that is Snake's best picture of all. Very dark look without resorting to melty stuff. Anyway, this was a supremely boring match, but the 1 seeds will often do that in the first few rounds. Snake's dominance here ended up being relevant later though, because once Mario lost to Vivi and everyone started going Chicken Little about the Noble Nine, Snake's dominance here made people think that he was potentially the only Noble Nine character that could make it out of round three. Think about this for a second. I suppose some debate could have been there about Alucard vs Bayonetta, but it isn't worth talking about because Bayonetta was never getting above last in this one. --- ## (2)GLaDOS vs (5)Ike vs (8)Epona 2013 _source: (2)GLaDOS vs (5)Ike vs (8)Epona 2013 (revid 80831)_ ## Results **Round 2** Friday, August 23rd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match was hilarious in so many ways, especially when you have idiots like me picking Ike without checking to see if it was a day match. Although Ike would have lost this anyway, because day vs night isn't going to fluke a character into last place. Ike was just flat-out terrible this contest, and this match basically confirmed that. GLaDOS may have won the poll, and easily, but the star here was Epona and T H E S T A B L E. Epona got to win a match, and then she embarrassed Ike on her way out and got to leave on a high note. You could also maaaaaaaaaaybe make the case that Epona (or even Ike) could have beaten GLaDOS 1 on 1, but more and more I'm beginning to see that 1 on 1 is a distant memory. But a guy can dream! Lastly, it baffles me that GLaDOS did so well this year while Wheatley did so bad. I have no explanation for it, either, because I feel like both characters should have done really well. It's not like Portal 2 wasn't well-received or whatever. --- ## (25)Altair vs (4)Lara Croft vs (7)Kefka 2013 _source: (25)Altair vs (4)Lara Croft vs (7)Kefka 2013 (revid 82209)_ ## Results **Round 2** Friday, August 23rd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Kefka -- Legendary Contest Troll. It's one thing to beat Zack when everyone expected him to lose, but then he goes on to beat Altair in a match where many would have picked against him had they picked Kefka to beat Zack at all. On top of THAT, Kefka beat down this match so badly that Altair vs Lara Croft -- Altair vs Lara Croft!!! -- ended up being decided in the final minutes. This contest was really something else. First we see Crash overcome ten years of misery by going out like a winner despite last place in round 2, and then we see Lara Croft do the same. Her comeback was even more surprising too, given this was a day match against casualbait Assassin's Creed dude. But she never let him build a lead above 170, then started coming back once the evening vote hit. She managed to tie it up with a couple hours left before Altair was finally able to recover and win by 125, but Lara Croft being in a barnburner after being a running joke for 11 years is really something else. Do people actually like the Tomb Raider reboot? Did Lara and Altair LFF each other? Do people just hate Assassin's Creed? I have no real explanation for this outside of LFF, but the redemption was hella nice to see. You know what else was hella nice to see? KEFKA FINALLY IN ROUND 3 OF A NORMAL CONTEST! LAUGHING SPRITE PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICS!!! Get hype. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis After putting away Zack in Round 1, people still underestimated Kefka in this round. Altair was still seen as too strong to overcome, stronger than Zack I guess? While there were some in Kefka's corner, too many years of a negative stigma and the failure of Kefka to get to Round 3 despite being the main villain in perhaps the second most beloved FF of all time wasn't enough for a lot of people to consider a potential Kefka victory here. But, because it's fucking Kefka, he showed up ready to wreck brackets and destroy all of our perceptions. As if 2013 wasn't wild enough, we now had Kefka overcoming Zack and Altair to finally read round 3 to lose to GLaDOS. How did this happen? Well, it was 2013, 5 years past The Dark Knight. Altair was still pretty cool, I guess, but looking back, he was one of the most 2007 characters ever made. "Badass" generic white dude in hood who has a wrist blade and he's all in shadows and he dives off of buildings then he stabs you and god he's hot Altair is pretty bland, and I bring up the Dark Knight because that was the pinnacle of 2000s edginess. Everyone wanted to be Heath Ledger Joker, all dark and chaotic. Much like 90% of Halloween costumes in 2008 were Heath Ledger Jokers, I used to see people buying white hoodies and wearing them to high school with the hoods up and doing the Altair "push through crowds" thinking they were cool as heck. In 2013 it wasn't cool anymore and in 2018 people would laugh at you. You can see this in the immediate evolution of the AC protagonists to Ezio, who has an actual personality and a sarcastic sense of humor. Actually, every subsequent AC protagonist, even the "serious" ones have traces of Ezio or a Marvel movie. Altair probably wasn't helped by Lara, either. Being the face of Assassin's Creed, a major western franchise, and being put against Lara, the (prettier) face of a major western franchise, was going to drag Altair down. But this much? Well, yeah. It's Lara Croft. She was a 1-seed once because Ceej figured "everyone knows Lara Croft." And they do. Like they all know Pac-Man. --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (13)Frog vs (19)Lugia 2013 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (13)Frog vs (19)Lugia 2013 (revid 82833)_ ## Results **Round 2** Saturday, August 24th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis A standard part of every Cloud match these days is losing the board vote, and when faced with a Pokemon he is guaranteed to lose the board vote in hilarious fashion. This time it was Lugia who stole it from him early, though Lugia fell off quickly and fell off hard. He fell off so hard that Frog was able to overcome an early 50 vote deficit, even in the face of Cloud stealing votes from him, and eventually power through to an easy second place win. One would think Lugia had a shot at second place here, but it was not to be. In reading some topics during the match, and even after the contest, Pokemon gets less and less popular with each new generation no matter what any sales numbers will suggest. People are attached to those original 151, and any Pokemon after that will have some issues with contest strength. I wouldn't even be surprised if Lugia got more strength from being an assist trophy in Smash than he did from Pokemon. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Lugia looks like something sold by Bad Dragon here, wow. People were taking this flying dildo for 2nd based partially on POKEFEAR and partially on how dominant it was in R1. Other people saw getting 60% on Sly and York as not really an accomplishment, and thought Frog would have no problem here. The ladder turned out to be true and this match was pretty boring. A lot of people showed up to the board asking how Lugia ended up in the bracket. That was about the highlight. That, and [this](https://imgtc.com/i/Q5gg3wN.png). Allen was so on point with these quotes, it's like he had future vision. Speaking of quotes, remember when everyone had a problem with Frog losing his old-timey speak in Chrono Trigger DS? I remember users everywhere being LIVID that the core of Frog's character was ruined. Meanwhile, in Octopath Traveller land, I have seen people all over complaining that Haiti the Hunter and her village speak entirely in bad old-timey speak: "Letten us beginin'" and "Letten my arrow'n flyin' true," how they hell did the voice actress say that with a straight face? Can you turn the VA off? Holy shit it's 2018, don't give Audio Atrocities any ammo. Let me leave you with this, I believe these words came from Herman Cain: It says a lot about where I am, where Lugia is, and where we are as a board. --- ## (2)Dante vs (5)Squirtle vs (11)Zidane Tribal 2013 _source: (2)Dante vs (5)Squirtle vs (11)Zidane Tribal 2013 (revid 85225)_ ## Results **Round 2** Saturday, August 24th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I've seen 11 years of contests. Lots of well-deserved wins, lots of well-deserved losses. Lots of comebacks, lots of surprise blowouts, even surprise contest winners. And I can 100% say from the bottom of my heart that no character ever deserved to lose a match more than Dante deserved to lose this specific match. Because oh my fucking god Tameem and Ninja Theory basically went as far out of their way as possible to piss off as many DMC series fans as they could, and I'm not actually sure what's worse: Tameem doing this, or people actually defending this literal abortion (watch the Mundus Spawn fight, assuming you can make it through the vid without puking) of a video game. I always thought Stockholm Syndrome was overblown, until this game came out and there wasn't universal hate for it. Capcom basically has been telling their own fans how much they hate them for years, and somehow people still defend Capcom. I really don't get it. I'm saving my 100% writing energy for the DmC review I'm working on, but the short of it is DmC is by far one of the worst games I've ever played in my entire life, and anyone who actually likes it is obviously a human being with no intelligence that I will never want to interact with or take seriously, ever. There is no defense for that game. Zero. Regarding the actual match, the only Dante match I've ever predicted incorrectly was his 2007 run, and I can get behind the 2007 run because pre-DmC Dante deserves to make waves. But now? Absolutely god damn not. Dante went from a badass slayer to a metrosexual trapeze artist, with a director pulling a Stephanie Meyer and self-inserting into the main character in a glorified fanfic. So yes, I knew Dante was going to lose. I knew he was going to get blown the fuck out. And not only did he deserve every second of it, but 151 people have absolutely no idea what in the hell they're talking about: HOW?! How did 151 so-called experts not see this coming? Did the seething hatred of Capcom, Ninja Theory, and DmC somehow escape you people? I legit want an answer. Who in their right mind could possibly think Dante was winning this? Last note: No character ever has or will have more pic sabotage attempts than Dante in this match. For the first time ever in this contest, we got to see stats on submission numbers for pictures. Dante more than doubled his closest competitor for pic submissions, because everyone was submitting DmC stuff to sabotage him. He ended up getting a fair pic from 4, but there was no chance in hell Dante was ever going to overcome the hate and win this match. Even Zidane stayed even with him for 10 minutes. Burn in hell and go fuck yourself, Tameem. Never make another video game ever again. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis If you zoom out on Dante's match pic, he pretty much expresses how we all felt about his performance here: ["eh"](https://imgtc.com/i/Mz6wOuf.png) People had basically given up on Dante being able to overcome Squirtle by this point, but this match coming right after a small Pokemon loss gave people the slightest bit of hope. Then the match started and all that disappeared. It now became about extrapolating Dante and Zidanes' performances to see how strong Squirtle really was. I'm not sure if people were saying Squirtle \> Cloud yet, but there must have been at least a small minority who predicted it. I know 4chan was really into rallying Pokemon and the slightly higher votals here show that they probably did get involved in some small way, but not on a crazy level. Besides, in this contest rally-strength was just real strength. Squirtle's performance in 2018 will determine where he really truly stands in these contests. Probably still good. Zidane did well here, coming in 2300 votes behind Dante isn't awful. Dante might have won if we had gotten [Donté, el exterminador de demonios](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKHxbOg19s) here instead. --- ## (16)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (4)Leon Kennedy vs (7)Gordon Freeman 2013 _source: (16)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (4)Leon Kennedy vs (7)Gordon Freeman 2013 (revid 82211)_ ## Results **Round 2** Sunday, August 25th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This was one of the weirdest not-close matches of the entire contest, because while Leon \> Gordon \> Shadow was very predictable, the trends would not behave for the longest time. First Shadow and Gordon stayed even for 10 minutes, then Gordon threatened a comeback on Leon with a few cuts overnight, then things slowly separated and the match seemed to end out of nowhere. This was a match that could have greatly benefited from a 1v1 format or 24 hours, but it was not to be. I'm pretty sure the big explanation for things being off here was Leon/Gordon overlap. 25,000 votes is extremely low, even for a night match, so overlap had to have happened somewhere. Leon also had to deal with the very lite version of Dante's Tameem experience, which is being stuck in Resident Evil 6. He's probably the only part of that game that isn't trash, but he was hated on by approximation to the rest of the bile. Capcom on the verge on bankruptcy is some of the best news in gaming history, because I can only think of one other company (Activision-Blizzard) that deserves collapse more than those idiots. All the bad games, all the ruined series, all the shady DLC practices, all the hating of fans... it's really caught up to Capcom, finally. Good riddance to them. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Here's another match with a direct precedent and almost four times the votes: If you extrapolate these results, Gordon would have gotten only about 7000 votes if he still was at his 2005 strength, so he has gotten stronger. Or, maybe, because of Giraffe Felatio Simulator 6 absolutely bombing, Leon has dropped a little. Maybe the votals just don't lend themselves to true strength. Either way, this wasn't really a debatable match. It was Sunday morning so more people were at church praying for Shadow's mortal soul rather than voting on GameFAQs leading to some of the lowest votals of the round. Really sad results here. Just a bland match. I spoke a little bit about Shadow and Gordon already, but where will Leon be in 2018? Unlike Chris, who has had an RE7 DLC and an appearance in MvCI, Leon hasn't had much play outside of being in the much-hyped Resident Evil 2 REmake. Leon will most likely always be a solid-to-upper midcarder, but depending on the current amount of support he has, he may find himself in a bad situation as a low seed if people forget to nominate him. It's been 13 years since RE4, and if that doesn't make you feel old, then consider it's been 20 years since RE2 and that will get you. --- ## (1)Crono vs (6)Pikachu vs (9)Magus 2013 _source: (1)Crono vs (6)Pikachu vs (9)Magus 2013 (revid 82212)_ ## Results **Round 2** Sunday, August 25th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis When the bracket first came out, this was the match everyone immediately pointed to and went "Oh, no" with. Crono and Magus in a poll together with Pikachu, with PokeFEAR running rampant? Pikachu was the massive guru favorite, which would be unthinkable a few years ago. Now, with Crono basically a running joke? Every year we just expect him to lose a funny match now, and this year was no different. Magus beating Otacon was the worst possible thing that could have happened for Crono this year. Magus did his job and was basically SFFd into the ground, but he got just enough of the vote for Pikachu to win with ease. Crono tried holding on early, but was eventually just run over. Pikachu winning by 2000 may look close, but it really wasn't. You have to factor in things like Crono being the first 1 seed to go down. I will say though, that I'm not sure Crono even beats Pikachu 1 on 1 at this point. 47% of the vote is a lot, and are we sure all 4000 of Magus's votes would go to Crono here, in a close match involving a Pokemon? Pikachu would only need half of them to win or be close, and I feel like he could do that pretty easily. He would at least make it a really good match, and by the time we get another character contest, Chrono Trigger will be that much weaker. We had a bonus match in round 2 that proved this in a pretty obvious way. Mario kicked Crono's ass even with Mega Man X in the poll. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis here's a match that would have been great if Magus hadn't beaten Otacon. Remember save_us.RAT? I think that was in reference to Pikachu over L-Block. We have given him too much power now. Otacon, you could have saved us from the mouse if you had been here. How could you? My least favorite part of matches involving Noble Nine members is the absolute tsunami of topics saying "OMG NOBLE NINE BROKEN?!?!?!" which then devolves into discussions as to whether or not the Noble Nine has truly been broken before which devolves into discussions about the Noble Nine being broken before means that there is no longer still a Noble Nine to be broken again which leads to people trying to peg the weakest member of the Noble Nine [and](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWmvbxGpra4) holy shit we have had a billion topics about this, can we stop talking about the arbitrary, outdated concept that is the Noble Nine? CBIX should have been its last hurrah given the vague theming around the concept of the number "nine." It's done. There's no more. The vote totals we're getting no longer sustain the idea of the Noble Nine. It's too easy to undermine. It's nice to talk about them in regards to contest history, but can we get away from talking about the future of the NN? Back to the match: Pikachu won and won easily. People had assumed Crono could still win, because, y'know, Noble Nine, but the writing was on the walls and we all saw it, some just didn't want to admit it. Pikachu was dominant here and we knew his performance was a tone-setter for the rest of the contest and future contests to come. --- ## (2)Sora vs (14)Gilgamesh vs (20)Yoshimitsu 2013 _source: (2)Sora vs (14)Gilgamesh vs (20)Yoshimitsu 2013 (revid 82213)_ ## Results **Round 2** Monday, August 26th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis It's always nice to have a boring match following a crazy one, just to give time to digest. And it doesn't get any more boring than the 50-30-20 variety, where characters who pulled round 1 upsets get to meet their maker a round later. Gilgamesh and Yoshimitsu both pulled great upsets in round 1, but Sora still has strength on this site no matter how hated Kingdom Hearts gets. This was basically all about whether or not Sora had the strength to beat Pikachu + Blue, and one would assume that this match showed he had enough to do it. Shows what we know! Also worth noting here is Kingdom Hearts 3 was supposedly finally announced. Although as one of the last people that actually likes this stupid series, even with all the garbage Tetsuya Nomura has pulled, I'll believe Kingdom Hearts 3 when I actually see it. Nomura is that dumb with making spinoffs instead of the games people actually want. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis If one R2 match could be described with a giant yawn, it would be this one. At least Gilgamesh had a good quote and did alright here. Kind of weird seeing Sora with (what I think is) a KHIII pic back in 2013 when we still don't have the damn game in 2018. There are some worlds that haven't even been revealed yet. What is taking so long, exactly? Really low votals here lead to Sora not even being able to break 50%. Another sad match. Perhaps the "boiled chicken breast with no seasoning" of matches. I just had to feed one of those to my girlfriend's dog. Now he's sleeping next to me on the couch and he kind of smells and is snoring. Like me after analyzing this match. I don't know where the smell is from. Kingdom Hearts fans? --- ## (25)Mr. Game & Watch vs (4)Nathan Drake vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue 2013 _source: (25)Mr. Game & Watch vs (4)Nathan Drake vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue 2013 (revid 82214)_ ## Results **Round 2** Monday, August 26th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Had Pac-Man upset Nathan Drake, his mini-duel with Game & Watch would have potentially been hilarious. As-is, this was just a round 2 tribute to PokeFEAR. If you somehow doubted Blue's strength after the Rivalry Rumble, if you somehow doubted it after round 1, then there was no more denying it after this. 47% in a threeway round 2 poll means the dude is legit. I know hindsight is perfect, but a lot of people assumed Blue would lose in round 3 even with his good performance here, myself included. The belief was that since Pikachu took advantage of Magus + Crono to get into round 3, why couldn't Sora take advantage of Pikachu + Blue to win this division? The easy answer there is "lol Square", but the true answer is Pokemon was just a goddamn freak monster beast this contest. The only thing that actually managed to slow Pokemon down was... Pokemon. But we'll get to that later. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis It's weird seeing Mr. Game & Watch in a second round match. I asked my girlfriend the other night what franchise she would choose to get completely scrubbed from Smash Bros, and after thinking for a bit she answered "Game & Watch, as a kid I was excited to get the last character in Melee and I was bummed it was something so lame." I was like "what?!?!?!" because my friends and I all love Game & Watch, but I guess I can see her logic. He's barely a character, just some weird tribute to semi-obscure Nintendo history that Sakurai has made into a character, similar to how the personality-devoid Captain Falcon was nobody until Sakurai made him a goofy-super-athlete-turned-campy-action-hero. I'm struggling to find anything to say about some of these matches. Leon and some others are debating in the main Contest Stats topic right now about Uncharted 4's strength in contests, and while Western darlings seem to do well in GOTY polls, they either just do OK or poorly in actual contest settings. GameFAQs just doesn't care about many new games. Except, like... Dark Souls, I guess. Or new Nintendo IPs not named "ARMS." Did you know the ARMS Grand Finals at EVO this year only averaged about 1500 viewers? 1500 people in the world were interested in the world championships of a Nintendo fighting game. Is ARMS a bigger flop than Joy Mech Fight? I can't believe this match is so boring that I'm talking about ARMS. There's more to talk about in regards to Twintelle's ass than there is for this match. Blue looked much better here than he did in Round 1, but nothing groundbreaking. We had essentially just discovered a new midcarder, which really makes me question why we never seriously rallied Brock and Misty. Perhaps Board 8 is just sick of Pokemon? Here's a good question: **How many reps from a franchise have to be present in a bracket before you feel they have oversaturated it?** Not counting FF as one big franchise. --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (22)Catherine vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2013 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (22)Catherine vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2013 (revid 82215)_ ## Results **Round 2** Tuesday, August 27th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Samus and Catherine in a poll together is cute if you're into anime fanfiction garbage, but as a contest match in round 2? This was just a 1 seed tribute, with Samus putting Knuckles and Catherine in their place en route to easily moving on. In a contest where practically the entire Noble Nine would end up looking like crap, Samus was one of the few who just took care of business and did what she was supposed to do match after match. Worth noting here is Catherine proved herself not to be pure fodder that just got lucky in round 1. If you stretch this out into 1 on 1, 45% on Knuckles is no joke. I doubt that would actually happen in a real 1 on 1 setting, but let an old contest vet have his delusions of a 1 on 1 contest happening again down the line somewhere =/ ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Here's another example of "Anonymous" Allen submitting a pic. This time it's Samus. Maybe armored Samus looked too weird zoomed in, or maybe Ulti submitted a bunch of Samus tiddie pics like usual. As previously stated, my mission statement this contest was to "use pics nobody has used before" and that was mostly inspired by [these two](https://imgtc.com/i/JlCyeQs.png). Snake and ZSS' Brawl renders are such bland pics yet they are EVERYWHERE. I hate seeing them. They're overused not only here but on other websites to a fault. Stop using them, both characters have tons of other pics that are way better! Oh yeah Samus destroyed here, sorry Catherine and Knuckles. Samus looked good. --- ## (2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs (5)Auron vs (8)L-Block 2013 _source: (2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs (5)Auron vs (8)L-Block 2013 (revid 82216)_ ## Results **Round 2** Tuesday, August 27th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis A stat got thrown around during this match that just absolutely killed me: L-Block has only ever lost a match when Pokemon is involved. And it's actually true! He won the entire contest in 2007, and not once in that entire run did he have to face a Pokemon. In 2008 he won two matches, then lost in round 3 to Pikachu. In 2010, he won two matches and then lost in round 3 to Charizard. So in a way, it almost shouldn't have been a surprise that L-Block pulled off yet another huge upset in a contest setting, but because of how prevalent the sophomore slump theory is, people pick against any "joke" character once their initial contest passes. L-Block is a different beast though, because he is still 4chan's baby and is practically guaranteed to never lose a close match here. That being said, it took awhile before L-Block got a head of steam here. Auron built up an 80 vote lead early, lost it all in literally one update, then fought off the stall and got the lead back up to 100 seemingly just as fast. It continued like this for about 4 hours, with Auron building a small lead, losing it, rinse and repeat. But once 4:30 or so hit, 4chan took over, L-Block took off, and that, as they say, is that. L-Block never looked back, and then I saw that stat about L-Block and Pokemon that still just kills me. This set up a ton of L-Block hype, especially with people wanting to anti-rally Draven so badly, but it wasn't until Mario's loss to Vivi where people thought the entire Noble Nine could potentially all lose before the divisionals were even decided. Think about that for a second. A contest in tribute of the Noble Nine, and people seriously considering not one of them winning a division. That is nuts. ## Zen's Analysis Back when L-Block first won a contest, everyone was in on the joke. That's the general consensus today, although you'll still get some of the OG BUTTDEVESTATED people with no sense of humor that didn't find that contest fun. Now, L-Block has some decent strength, people still vote for him because they think it's funny. Yeah, I guess it still is to some extent. I think there's also some respect for the former champion that brought the internet together, and some users are still chasing that high. In 2013, though, 4chan was really the only one who thought a second L-Block victory would be "teh lulz" or whatever, so they rallied him again semi-successfully. It's scary to consider that the 4chan rallies we once feared are so substantially weaker than those of Reddit/Tumblr/Twitter. Auron should have been able to pull this off, but 4chan took advantage of the low votals once more to give L-Block the edge here, but having L-Block in Round 3 over Auron wouldn't change Round 3's result much. Ezio did OK here, he'll probably be back for one last hurrah if anyone remembers to nominate him. Hey, Ezio fans reading this, what do you think of the current state of Assassin's Creed? Have any protagonists come close to Ezio in terms of likability? --- ## (3)Dragonborn vs (15)Yuna vs (7)Tifa Lockheart 2013 _source: (3)Dragonborn vs (15)Yuna vs (7)Tifa Lockheart 2013 (revid 82217)_ ## Results **Round 2** Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Pre-contest, Dragonborn had a ton of hype. He had an easy match in round 1, then potential Tifa/Yuna overlap in round 2, and then who knows! But then he completely crapped the bed in round 1, and everyone knew his run was over even with the overlap here. Pikachu \> Crono + Magus, this was not. The fact that Yuna only finished 1500 votes behind Dragonborn even with Tifa in the poll really tells the story by itself: Dragonborn was a complete flop in this contest. And even then, I wouldn't be fooled into thinking Skyrim wouldn't be just a complete monster of a game in any potential games contest down the line. Take Skyrim and put it in Game of the Decade in place of Majora's Mask. Doesn't it just win that contest outright? Or at least make the finals? ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I think Dragonborn's picture here is a statue. Woo. Yeah. We did it guys. Again. There was some residual DOVAHFEAR here, and I remember some lunatics took Dragonborn \> Tifa \> Yuna, but they were not only overestimating Dragonborn by a large margin but also the effects of LFF. Tifa and Yuna both did well here. In 2018, a Yuna vs Dragonborn 1v1 might be entertaining to watch, but probably not. Skyrim is strong on this site, but Dragonborn would need to somehow reflect every player's personal Dragonborn for him/her to stand a chance. --- ## (1)Mario vs (6)Vivi vs (9)Ganondorf 2013 _source: (1)Mario vs (6)Vivi vs (9)Ganondorf 2013 (revid 82220)_ ## Results **Round 2** Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis For my money, this was the coolest upset of the entire contest. We saw most of the other coming at some point in some way, or they just didn't mean as much. But this one? Holy crap. A random beloved character like Vivi beating FREAKING MARIO when a 1 on 1 match between the two would be like 63-35 is hilarious. When Vivi kept things close early, we just blamed the board vote. But then the unthinkable happened, and Vivi kept it close past the board vote. Then somewhere in the first hour, probably right around here... ...the realization set in that Vivi wasn't going away. Even more nuts is 4chan caught wind of this poll and started helping Vivi build a small lead, and it probably would have ended right then and there without Mario's legendary clutch kicking in. For the first half of this poll, Vivi would build a lead of 50 or so, then Mario would erase it all in seconds, then Vivi would build a lead of 50 or so. But then the evening vote kicked in, people realized Mario might FINALLY get bitten by the upset bug after all these years, and Vivi got all the support en route to building up a lead of 200 with only 3 and a half hours left. Was the match over then, with Vivi's best time and Mario's worst coming? Of course not! IT'S FREAKING MARIO. He started shaving that lead away very slowly, then 10:30 hit, he went crazy and all of us assumed the Mario Clutch was kicking in. But Vivi somehow, some way, kept his cool and got the lead back to 100. Then Mario tried again, and Vivi again got it back to 100. It says something about our respect for Mario when he's losing by 100 with 10 minutes left and none of us thought the match was actually over. It wasn't until the 11:50 - 11:55 update where Mario only cut 8 did we realize this was actually going to happen, and it took like an hour postmatch for us to really let it sink in. To put this in perspective, Mario has NEVER been snakebit by a surprise upset or heartbreaking loss. Never. Not even in games contests. Everyone else in the Noble Nine has had to deal with it. Cloud has Mario in 2002. Snake has Crono in 2002, plus his inability to win a contest despite making the final every year, and Shadow of the Colossus running his series over. Crono has the Mario saga, plus his entire contest history since 2005 or so. Sephiroth has Solid Snake. Link has Cloud in 2003. Sonic has Samus in 2002. Mega Man has Sephiroth in 2002 and Crono in 2005. Samus has Sephiroth in 2002, and Mario "upsetting" her in 2005 because LOL X-Stats. But Mario? Never. He always pulled off the clutch late, until today. And the best part of all is this basically opened the floodgates to make the rest of this contest completely nuts. We legitimately all looked at the bracket and realized that in a contest meant to pay tribute the Noble Nine, it was possible for none of them to even win a division. That is completely nuts. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis what the fuck can I say about this match holy shit I still think about this match and it gives me absolute chills. Chills. I remember waking up and seeing how close this match was and my jaw fucking dropped. Like in real life, not metaphorically. Vivi going-toe-to-toe with the assumed 4th strongest of the Noble Nine, probably 3rd by this point. Yes, Ganondorf was LFFing Mario. That shouldn't matter. It's fucking Mario. I don't know anybody who called this unless they were half-joking. Nobody is going to say "I think Mario is going to lose to Vivi" unless they wanna get laughed off the board. I am so fucking proud of Vivi to this day. This is one of those matches that makes everything worth it. We put up with so much shit during this contest. Getting buttdevestated was like nothing when you were reminded that Vivi. Beat. Mario. --- ## (2)Squall Leonhart vs (5)Amaterasu vs (8)Missingno 2013 _source: (2)Squall Leonhart vs (5)Amaterasu vs (8)Missingno 2013 (revid 82218)_ ## Results **Round 2** Thursday, August 29th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis The best part about this match was Missingno's quote under the picture, because as a match this wasn't much. It's probably because Sephiroth set the stage for this one back in 2010, so we kind of saw what was coming. In 2010, Missingno built a 600 vote lead on Sephiroth in the first 2 hours of a 12 hour poll, then got swamped once the Square night vote took over. Here, he built up a lead of near 300 in an hour, but Squall was able to take over the poll pretty quickly without ever truly being threatened. Squall isn't Sephiroth, but he didn't need to be to take advantage of Missingno's prime already being past us. He probably doesn't come back on 2010 Missingno, but this was 3 years later. It ended what was supposed to be a good Missingno run a round early. The bad part here is that it meant Squall and Vivi sharing a poll in round 3, which meant neither character was going to be able to make a deep run and Red was given a bye into the final 9. Had Missingno pulled this off, I really think Vivi could have won the division. But we'll never know! ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Super dope match pic here, props to Allen for having fun. This is his Ryu / Jill CATS pic. Or maybe Milk Nukem. Or TV Kane. Damn, CJayC loved weird match pics. I miss that dude. Ever wonder if he still stops by this board? Maybe he's one of us. Maybe he's me. Maybe that explains some of my awful experimental match pics. Maybe I'm bullshitting. I'm bullshitting. This was the most exciting match we had gotten in a while, we knew Squall would beat Missingno, but there were plenty of non-believers. Judging by the snowball effect of these joke characters, Missingno should have grown a bit between rounds and given Squall a challenge. But he didn't. I think the main issue with Missingno goes back to what I discussed in Round 1: A lot of people take the idea of the "Character" Battle very seriously; just as pairings in Rivalry Rumble did well in that contest but badly once split up, people actually pay attention to contest theming. Thus all those topics where people whined that Missingno was a glitch and not a character actually meant something. Yeah, he still got joke votes, but the Pokemon fanbase barely considers him a Pokemon, and despite what your perceptions are, not everyone in the world is intimately familiar with and has nostalgia for Missingno. A ton of us do, but to most people he is as he appears: Just a weird glitch. Leon was super stoked to see Squall win this match but he knew it was going to happen. Ammy looked alright too, I hope she's back in 2018. --- ## (16)Wario vs (4)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (12)Urdnot Wrex 2013 _source: (16)Wario vs (4)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (12)Urdnot Wrex 2013 (revid 82219)_ ## Results **Round 2** Thursday, August 29th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis As a Wrex fan, that picture is an embarrassment and is just as good a reason as Vincent's pic why this yearbook idea was awful. He is not a midget. He's like a 1000 pound thing chiseled from stone (almost literally) that should by all accounts be towering over these other two losers. For all the things Mass Effect 3 does wrong, the biggest thing it gets wrong is lack of enemy variety. You fight Cerberus humans, Reaper stuff, and a few Geth. That's it. There's no massive variety to it like in 2, specifically playing that game on Insanity and knowing full well the fear of staring down a krogan in melee range. Brutes just are not the same, and EA obsessively putting Call of Duty garbage into all of their games is beyond old. As for the match itself, Wrex losing early to an SFFd Wario meant people were just going all-out in bashing Cecil and Pit's strength, and continued even after Wrex easily won second place. There's just something special about FF4's inability to win a match in character contests, I guess. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Ulti mentions in his writeup that he doesn't like Wrex's pic because he looks too small, but if you try to put him to scale with the others all you'd see was his forehead. This was a cool result. Why does Wario do like shit in these things? Yeah, he's not fodder, but it seems he's entirely carried by just being fairly well known but nobody really likes him enough to vote for him against better characters. Wrex did well here, he took advantage of the SFF to beat Wario. People underestimated him pretty hard and were taking Wario here for second despite Red's presence, but the result seems pretty obvious in retrospect. --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (6)Kratos vs (19)Jill Valentine 2013 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (6)Kratos vs (19)Jill Valentine 2013 (revid 82221)_ ## Results **Round 2** Friday, August 30th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis If ever there was a calm before a storm, this match and the one after were definitely it. We thought the Zelda/DK/Charizard tilt would also be boring prep for the big Link/Draven match, but that one ended up being a pretty damn good match in its own right. There would be no random-ass upset here, a la Mario a few days prior. Nope, just Mega Man kicking ass and taking names, the way a 1 seed is supposed to do in the early rounds. The mid-contest Brawl announcement definitely helped him out, though we didn't know exactly how until a round from now. The only thing of any interest here was Jill "upsetting" Kratos for second place, though it was clear that she was going to do that pre-match and it was an upset in seeding only. Kratos has fallen off a lot in popularity for whatever reason, though I'd like to see that duel without Jill's laughable MvC3 appearance. The entire MvC3 franchise, and Capcom in general quite frankly, needs to just go away. So bad. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Jill loves to give us close, entertaining matches. Mega Man blew these two out pretty hard, and he ended up looking great here despite Jill and Kratos not exactly being pushovers. That left Jill and Kratos to fight for the scraps, and if I remember correctly while Jill was the favorite, Kratos had his share of support as well. Kratos was getting a lot of hate at the time and the really mediocre reception of Ascension didn't help. There was also that nontroversy about that Ascension achievement being named "bros before hoes." It was patched after people complained to change it to "bros before foes." I can't believe people made a big deal about literally nothing. Jill seems to stay decently consistent with her strength, and Capcom loves her so much that it's constantly throwing her bones. She didn't get an RE7 cameo or anything but she was in an RE5 DLC (probably the best part of that game) and was a main part of the RE5 story. Revelations was pretty good, too, and it's been re-released several times. So was this really an "upset" of Kratos? Maybe of classic Kratos, but not 2013 Kratos. The new God of War should boost Kratos quite a bit, it doesn't have the deepest gameplay ever and it gets a little repetitive but there are fresh ideas and a good story in there and I think it will win back a good amount of voters for Kratos. The director says he's planned for six (?!) more God of War games, so we're not going to see Kratos fade away any time soon. Did you know that David Jaffe's original ending for God of War III was having Kratos meet Egyptian and Norse Kratos, teaming up with them to kill Ra, Odin and Zeus, and then becoming the three wise men? Like, the ones from the bible. Yeah. Sony rejected this pitch, and who could blame them? That's... pretty bad, even by God of War standards. --- ## (2)Zero vs (23)Weighted Companion Cube vs (20)Rikku 2013 _source: (2)Zero vs (23)Weighted Companion Cube vs (20)Rikku 2013 (revid 82222)_ ## Results **Round 2** Friday, August 30th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Mega Man fans are among the smartest out there, and most of them knew to not vote for Zero in this match. Mega Man and Zero in the same match meant a free pass for Charizard, and Mega Man fans were holding out hope of everyone's favorite little blue guy winning this division. So, a good deal of them voted for everyone's favorite little cube instead! The fact that Weighted Companion Cube is far beyond sophomore slump status as a joke character and still almost beat Rikku anyway is hilarious. None of this made any difference in the grand scheme of the match because Zero was winning this no matter what, but still. The Cube actually got a 200 vote lead cut all the way down to 70 before Square's evening vote took over, too. But between Cube losing here and ?-Block in round 1, Rikku was the joke slayer of this contest. Always seems to be Square in that spot, too. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Another pretty banal match that, despite being close, wasn't much of a surprise in the end. People who still feared the joke vote were championing WCC here, but I think Missingno tanking really put a stopper in a lot of their arguments. Zero did well here, he set the stage for a lot more people pushing for Charizard \> Mega Man. WCC was a bit closer to Rikku at the beginning of the match, but I can just imagine voters rolling their eyes when they saw it on the front page again. Slowly Rikku pulled away. People were getting tired of all these jokes. It's been 5 years, how will people respond to L-Block in 2018? Has the meme made a comeback? Rikku looked good in her two appearances here. Is she the strongest non-main, non-villain, non-love interest FF character outside of Auron? Someone needs to tier all FF characters that have ever appeared in a contest. --- ## (16)Zelda vs (15)Donkey Kong vs (7)Charizard 2013 _source: (16)Zelda vs (15)Donkey Kong vs (7)Charizard 2013 (revid 82223)_ ## Results **Round 2** Saturday, August 31st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This match was supposed to be an easy win for Charizard en route to easily taking advantage of Mega Man + Zero to win the division, but then something funny happened. Zelda and Donkey Kong decided to join in on the fun and create a massive Nintendo f\*\*\*fest, which jammed everything up beyond belief. What ended up happening is once Charizard won the early vote (very early), Zelda started taking off. DK was never a threat to win this poll, but just him being there completely messed things up for Charizard, and would have easily lost without all the rallying. Zelda got the lead up to 160 in an hour, which is Pokemon's best time, and it was everything Charizard could do to keep her from going nuts overnight. He stalled here and there, but Zelda got the lead near 300 overnight. Which leads us full circle. Most of you won't remember this, but that whole joke about WAIT UNTIL THE KIDDIES WAKE UP started back in 2002, when characters like Tails and Kirby faced early upsets. The joke has lived on year after year, but this might be the best example of the kiddies truly waking up and bailing out a Pokemon from a sure loss. Charizard won the morning vote and got the lead all the way down to 40, but Zelda managed to recover and get the lead back to 140 in surprising time. Then the rallies took over. Zelda had a 100 vote lead at around 10:30 in the morning, and Charizard managed to erase all of it in 15 minutes. But Zelda characters are very hard to rally against, so The Zard was never able to take off and go nuts. He only built up a lead of 80, which Zelda them promptly slapped aside. The match came down to the very last update, which is all anyone could ever want. Charizard had a 19 vote lead with 5 minutes left, and in the last frantic push to win the poll, the last update went Zelda 118, Charizard 114. This meant Charizard winning the match by 15, but if ever there was a Pyrrhic Victory in this contest, this was it. A character favored to win a division and challenge for a contest title doesn't almost lose to freaking Zelda-with-Donkey-Kong-in-the-poll. He just doesn't. I won't go as far as calling Charizard a flop in this contest, because he wasn't, but this was just a bad performance. Without the kiddies waking up and without those late rallies, he easily loses. Even with those, he almost lost. If this match was 24 hours, he probably loses. Hell, give Zelda any picture other than s\*\*\* from Wind Waker, and he probably loses. This was just bad, and it really opened the door for what would end up happening to him in round 3. Charizard is still really strong, but he was definitely overrated from 2010's stats due to HGSS coming out the day of the match with Bowser. His true strength is more what we saw in this match, really. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis I forgot what I originally wrote here, it wasn't that interesting. POKEFEAR was still at an all time high and surprisingly people attributed Zelda's performance here more to her strength than Charizard's weakness. I went on The Show a little after this because at the time I was the Guru frontrunner (??) assuming Charizard beat Mega Man and Zero. Apparently I had that but I wasn't feeling so good about it after this, but NG asked me if I was feeling confident and I gave a half-hearted yes because... uh... Well, I did want to win the Guru. I usually don't even take Guru seriously and don't follow the results so when they contacted me I was more shellshocked than anything. NG and Yo were still pretty supportive of Charizard \> Mega Man after this, and I can see why. The general climate of the board was pretty depressing at the time. Everyone had basically resigned the contest to Pokemon and rallies. Probably the worst I've ever seen us. The community wasn't as lively and that was a big reason I took off during the next contest and didn't come back until now. The wounds these Pokemon and rallies have caused were greater than we imagined at the time. Zelda is an actual character now and a real cutie in Smash so I bet she'd beat the Zard if that match happened today. DK also looked bad here, he really falls over and dies at the slightest hint of a challenge. He was lucky to even be in round 2. --- ## (1)Mario vs (1)Crono vs (7)Mega Man X 2013 _source: (1)Mario vs (1)Crono vs (7)Mega Man X 2013 (revid 82202)_ ## Results **Bonus** Saturday, August 31st, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Had this match happened in the early to mid 2000s, people may have cared about it. Now? It's the best bonus match we could come up with through Luster Soldier's polls, and even then we all knew Mario would win. Even with Mega Man X in the poll stealing votes from him. I know Crono may have also had votes leeched due to the SNES connection, but Mario would get hurt more than Crono in a poll like this. And even then, it was never a contest. Mario/Crono is dead and is no longer a debate: Mario won. The end. It makes me wonder how Crono was able to pull off that one win in 2004, but that's an era long past. This also makes me wonder how in the hell Mario managed to lose to Vivi. If you put Mega Man X in Mario's place, does Vivi still win? Hell, if you put Crono in Mario's place, does Vivi win? I doubt it. That upset was as goofy as it was awesome, but I'm not complaining. It would have also been nice to see Mega Man vs Mega Man X pre-Brawl U announcement, because I think Mega Man X could have won that poll. Now? No chance. This ended round 2, and our bonus polls entirely until the end of the contest. It was a pretty interesting round, all things considered, but it could in no way prepare us for how nuts the rest of this contest would be. Round 3 and on of this contest was on par with the 2002 stretch of Samus \> Sonic, Sephiroth \> Mega Man, and Mario \> Cloud back to back to back. I really believe that. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Here's another match where I wonder what the hell we were thinking. Why X in this match? Did we really need Mario vs Crono for a tenth time? Crono has dropped so much in the decade leading up to this match that this didn't even need to be a question. Even with X potentially sapping some of Mario's votes away he was still able to beat Crono quite comfortably. Could X beat Crono if Mario weren't here? Maybe. I seriously don't think Crono is going to be shit come CBX. I'd be shocked if he made it out of Round 3, even with a good seed. Put him up against a Pokemon and watch him crumble. --- ## (1)Link vs (2)Commander Shepard vs (3)Draven 2013 _source: (1)Link vs (2)Commander Shepard vs (3)Draven 2013 (revid 82226)_ ## Results **Round 3** Monday, September 2nd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis "I never thought I'd see the day where Link was the shining, glimmering, white knight of hope for our contests. But by god Reddit has done it." -FFDragon Just a few notes before we get going. For those playing the home game, I took something like a two month break between writing round 2's bonus poll and starting this writeup. I've played a lot of League since then, so people hoping for me to be 100% biased in Link's favor and against Draven are going to be disappointed. As pure characters, Draven is awesome and is vastly better than Link. Both pale in comparison to Shepard, but hey! The other thing to remember is that my tone might not be as fluid or as related to past writeups as in contests past. There were simply too many matches to burn through all at once, and I got burned out. But I'm good now, so let's finish this! There's a ton to talk about here, but let's start with Commander Shepard. I don't think it's a coincidence that Shepard's best contest run ever also coincided with Shepard finally getting some female pictures, because there is a massive number of Mass Effect players that prefer the female version. And regardless of which gender you play as, most people agree that FemShep's voice work is better. Point being, Shepard even being in this match at all was kind of an honor. When people go back and look up arguably the most nutty 24 hours we've ever had on GameFAQs, Shepard's name will pop up. This is also as good time as any to discuss Mass Effect 3. I'm in love with the Mass Effect series, and I suppose I lucked out by waiting a bit to play through 3, since the ending I saw was extended cut right off the bat for me. The extended cut ending is decent, and the original is certainly "bad", but I wouldn't consider the entire thing something worth whining so much about. Gamers are seen as entitled crybabies, and things like the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy definitely prove why. Stuff like this along with gaming journalism have more or less removed all the wonder from gaming, and it's why I don't bother looking anything up before playing anything. I like still feeling like a kid and not feeling like I've beaten a game before playing it, you know? Now, you can practically see an entire game play out in videos before it hits shelves. Some people like that, I don't. To the point. Mass Effect 3 is still really good and I think it's a worthy ending to the trilogy, outside the one new character you get introduced to at the very end and Bioware failing in their implementation of indictrination theory. They were clearly going for the angle of how Shepard gets indoctrinated, but the new writers messed up in getting there because there was no good sense of foreshadowing. I have some issues with the gameplay looking too Call of Duty for my liking, but the heart of things is still there. I have a pretty long rant about multiplayer, but I'm saving it for another day. It's fun and I'm going for Best of the Best, but the massive amount of glitches and Bioware pulling support for something that people like enough to still play is just dumb. The Mass Effect series is amazing and Shepard being involved in a match like this was good times. She gets her own little spot in history. But the headline here was Link vs Draven being the most hyped match since Mario vs Crono 2003, and it ended up being our best match since Mario vs Crono 2003. There was everything: a massive comeback attempt, controversy abound, and enough whining to open a vineyard. The whole reason things were so hyped is because for the first time since the early 2000s, GameFAQs felt threatened by an outside source. Reddit, in this case. Draven clearly cheated in round 1 to beat Jak (which was since admitted and proven, more or less), but that's when Reddit caught on to people hating what Draven was doing in our contest and the trolls made it their personal mission to stick it to crybabies like Black Turtle. Then the legendary round 2 beating of Mega Man X and Ryu happened, and suddenly Link was in trouble. If Link came out and put forth a "normal" performance, like he had done in rounds 1 and 2, he would have no chance and score like 26% in the match. Round 2 Draven is one of the strongest characters we'll ever see in a contest. The hype was so huge that it took over the entire round 2 narrative. You won't see much discussion of round 2 matches after Draven/Ryu/MMX, because half of the board's discussion was about the big round 3 duel. By the time the match actually happened, this place was ready to burst. This match also helped prove that 24 hours for a big match is WAY better than 12 hours. By far. When the match finally started, Draven went completely nuts. Link and Shepard fed a double kill in the lane early, and with the new League of Draven passive (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Draven#League_of_Draven) that can make things snowball out of control at an alarming rate. Draven having all that extra gold early put this match on notice, and overnight he just got masses of kills until he led by 5500 votes. Now under normal situations, the match would be completely over. Draven's 5500 vote lead came at 6:30 in the morning, right? If you go look up Link's other two legendary losses (Cloud and L-Block), Cloud was winning by 1900 and L-Block was winning by 6600 at the exact time. And those matches were over come morning, too. But this one was a bit different. For starters, no rally has staying power and Draven's best shot happened overnight. No matter how busy the LoL subreddit gets, most people who care about things like this will have voted early. The other factor at work is that League of Legends is huge in Europe. Come American morning time, the European dudes looking to go pro in League are all starting to go to sleep. Add in Link's day vote dominance, and the theory was that Draven could have built any amount of lead overnight and it would not have mattered. Link had the potential to come back and win. Draven slowly increased his lead until 6100 or so, and held strong until 9 in the morning, but then the proverbial floodgates opened and all hell broke loose on GameFAQs. Link absolutely began tear-assing through Draven's lead, and just refused to slow down all through the morning and all through lunch. That 6100 votes? It was down to 4000 within hours, and Link was well on pace to finish coming back and pull off the most epic contest win ever. But then, depending on who you ask, the impossible happened. GameFAQs virtually froze to a halt, for about an hour, right in the middle of Link cutting 100 votes off of a lead every 5 minutes. It was almost impossible to consider this a coincidence, and the prevailing theory was a perfectly timed DDoS attack on the site. The site did eventually come back online, and Link got a few more big updates to get the lead below 3000, but then out of nowhere Draven started going nuts again. It only took Draven about 3 hours to get the lead from 3000 to 5200, which was just as weird as the site freezing in the first place. It takes a lot of coincidence for a site freeze during such a massive poll, but it takes a hell of a lot more than just a coincidence for Draven voters to be that ready to go once the site came back to full speed. Of all the theories that got thrown around about whether the down time was DDoS or not, that's the one that makes the most sense to me. Trends don't just flip on a dime like that, it takes a little while to shift. But here, the down time happened and then almost immediately upon the site coming back, Draven went berserk again. That isn't normal, and I think there was outside interference involved in some way. Not that Allen thinks so, mind you. GameFAQs is served by two proxy servers in rotation, and what we see in the logs is that one of them would go down, shifting traffic to the second, which would then get overloaded and go down, shifting traffic back to the first, repeat. Unlike a DDoS attack, there was no increase in inbound traffic, and the two proxy servers were failing one at a time, not simultaneously. It could have been a DDoS, but it looks a lot more like just a bad coincidence. Since the site was never truly offline, just slow and randomly failing, it took a while for the operations team to get paged out, but once they got online and started investigating all it took was rebooting the proxies to bring everything back to normal, which isn't how you'd normally recover from a DDoS. tl;dr: Earlier downtime most likely wasn't an attack. Also since people will probably ask, we are indeed checking into the legitimacy of all incoming votes and so far, everything appears to be legit. Here's a graph of our two load balancers: You can literally see one failing and the other one picking up the load. All these people claiming admissions of DDoS have shown me nothing but hostility. You're seeing what I'm seeing with the load balancers, so show me what I'm not seeing if you have proof otherwise. RockMFR posted... "To me, this is exactly what you'd see in a connection flood attack. Attack starts, both servers overwhelmed, one server stops responding first, load balancer takes traffic off that server, connections gradually released on first server, traffic shifts back, etc. If you're not defending against this type of attack, the attacker wouldn't necessarily have to keep up what they're doing. A few seconds of traffic could lock your servers up for hours, until you reboot them. It wouldn't take massive amounts of traffic, or even traffic from more than 1 IP address. Before you rebooted them, did you see any evidence of a SYN flood? Did you check what connections were open?" Allen: A DDoS typically involves an onrush of incoming traffic, enough traffic to overwhelm a server's ability to handle connections, and an attack against the site would involve both of our proxies at the same time in equal amounts. That's not what happened here. There was no increase in traffic, and the servers failed in series. No SYN flood was spotted, and simply rebooting a server does not end a DDoS attack, it only lets it recover from internal issues. Now, what has happened in the past with our particular build of this load balancer is that they do run into memory issues over time, and the symptoms of this are repeated short periods of lag and failures, quickly building in time and severity until the server is just barely responsive. We've seen this on internal proxies, not just external, and the only solution is to bounce the box. Kind of like what we saw happen today. This would've been handled more quickly by our ops team, but it happened on a holiday when our ops team wasn't around. I'm not saying it wasn't a DDoS attack, just saying that there's no clear evidence of one. In terms of vote stuffing, here's a look at our incoming traffic to the poll page: I'd love to see Link make the ultimate come from behind win, but if he doesn't, it's not because of cheating. You can attack me all that you want to, but Draven's winning on his own. I'll just let Lopen and Noob Avenger handle the math on this one. Then00bAvenger posted... Downtime was affected from 12:16 to 13:51, a total of 95 minutes, in which there was 1680 votes cast. Of those 1680 votes, 55.84% were for Link, 27.56% were for Draven. If you go by the last 20 minutes before the down time, the average votes per 5 minutes is ~335. If you go by that, then if there was no downtime, there would be 6327 votes cast. A difference of 4647. Using the same ratio that they got during the down time, 2595 would go to Link while 1281 would go to Draven. A loss of ~1300 votes for Link against Draven. If you go further and calculate the 20 minutes after the downtime and add it to the 20 minutes before the down time(but skipping the first update after the downtime was over because the totals are going to be inflated there), you get 375 average votes per 5 minute update. That gives a total of 7125. A difference of 5445, with 3040 for Linkand 1500 for Draven. Here we have a loss of 1500 for Link. If you wanted to be conservative, Link would have 1000 extra votes compared to Draven here. On the upper scale, it can go as high as 1500. And at the rate Link is currently coming back, Draven's lead may very well end under 1500. Lopen posted... You do realize the backfire effect applies to your interpretation of the data as well, right? Perhaps moreso, because most people chose to believe your claims that there was no vote stuffing until it was made very very very prominent. I've looked at the data and actually revised my thoughts that Draven was stuffing in r1, but r2 and r3 the rallied votes just got to Draven at too absurd a rate to ignore. I'd also like your thoughts on these numbers and why they would pan out like this. It's an analysis of where the approximated rallied votes went for the first 7.5 hours of the poll for each of the three matches, based on Draven's estimated GameFAQs strength and looking at how each of the three entries in the matches were increasing in votes. I could explain the whole process if you want more-- it's nothing that complicated though. Link vs Shepard vs Draven Time: Link + Shepard's %, (approximated extra votes) 0:05-0:35: 27.4% (5380 approximated extra votes) 0:35-1:05: 28.1% (3102) 1:05-1:35: 33.1% (3031) 1:35-2:05: 28.5% (2650) 2:05-2:35: 24.3% (2255) 2:35-3:05: 19.7% (1859) 3:05-3:35: 19.3% (1643) 3:35-4:05: 19.3% (1627) 4:05-4:35: 18.3% (1428) 4:35-5:05: 21.5% (1329) 5:05-5:35: 16.1% (1042) 5:35-6:05: 13.4% (977) 6:05-6:35: 6.1% (858) 6:35-7:05: 8.1% (854) 7:05-7:35: 7.0% (775) Ryu vs MMX vs Draven Time: MMX + Ryu's %, (approximated extra votes) 0:35-1:05: 10% (4378 approximated extra votes) 1:05-1:35: 10.3% (4878) 1:35-2:05: 11.9% (4106) 2:05-2:35: 12.4% (3620) 2:35-3:05: 7.9% (2838) 3:05-3:35: 12.3% (3259) 3:35-4:05: 8.4% (2481) 4:05-4:35: 5.8% (2221) 4:35-5:05: 9.8% (2265) 5:05-5:35: 5.1% (2173) 5:35-6:05: 5.2% (2029) 6:05-6:35: 8.2% (2126) 6:35-7:05: 6.4% (1946) 7:05-7:35: 2.4% (1864) Jak vs Chie vs Draven Time: Jak + Chie%, (approximated extra votes) (extra votes before here were trace) 3:05-3:35: 4.4% (411) 3:35-4:05: 1% (770) 4:05-4:35: 9.7% (656) 4:35-5:05: 10.4% (888) 5:05-5:35: 11.9% (906) 5:35-6:05: 12.5% (770) 6:05-6:35: 28.9% (944) 6:35-7:05: 35.7% (843) 7:05-7:35: 29.5% (734) Allen never actually ended up responding to Lopen's post there, since it fully covers just how hard Draven was stuffing the the first two rounds. I'm of the belief that Draven beat Link fairly, but anyone pretending those numbers in the first two rounds are legit is just lying to themselves. Now once this topic happened and it became clear that Allen was going to allow the down time results to stand, people absolutely lost their goddamn minds. I won't go crazy mentioning names or bringing up quotes and such, mainly because I was so disgusted by how the board was acting that I didn't save anything beyond Allen's explanation, but it was bad. Like, really bad. Bad enough to where if Allen never wanted to run another contest, no one would really blame him. I will say though that XIII and ExThaNemesis were the worst of the bunch that I can remember, and this needs to be put in the archive somewhere, though an argument can also be made that transience and Sir Chris asskissing through the entire thing can be equally bad but from the opposite direction. It was just a complete mess, and one I'm glad is mostly behind us. I say "mostly" because a couple of people still feel the need to ruin any topic where you bring this stuff up, even though everyone that was there remembers what happened. This isn't like Cloud/Mario 2002 where a lot of people claim they were there but weren't; Board 8 is no longer a magnet community after each contest and our memories are pretty solid. And the people who deny how badly they behaved that day are kind of hilarious, in the same way a dog crapping on the floor tries pretending nothing happened. And this was just the public stuff, apparently people were even worse via PM. The point of me bringing all this up, outside just having it in the archive, is that Allen has tried for years to have a contest where people remembered him alongside CJayC as a contest administrator, rather than simply the guy that took them over once CJayC left. He managed to finally accomplish this, but I don't know if Allen knew going in just how awful that Mario/Crono 2003 match was for CJayC personally. I still remember Ceej bringing that match up years later, and his passion for making contests was never the same. To have that kind of a contest for yourself, you need a controversy somewhere that people remember years later. Link/Draven is that match for Allen. Allen is obviously a lot more emotionally stable and less of an introvert than CJayC, which is why he didn't go on a banning spree like Ceej would have, but one has to wonder if he'll ever have the fire for a contest again after this stuff. I can't overstate just how badly people treated him over this Link/Draven thing, and I'll be surprised if it isn't the first thing Allen considers when deciding on a new contest. Is GameFAQs, despite most people here being between 17 and 32 years old (http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/5097), mature enough to handle losing? That begs the question of how mature gamers are, and I think everyone knows that answer to that one. Gamers have always had a stigma attached to them for a reason, though that's a separate thesis for a separate topic. The point here is GameFAQs lost its collective mind once Allen allowed the DDoS thing to go unresolved, and regardless of how anyone feels about Allen I do think it says a lot about the GameFAQs of today that the entire site froze just because of a big contest match. And even then, this match only finished with 122000 votes. The 2007 final had 195360 votes and ran like a machine. I'm not technoloigcally intelligent at all, but I don't get it. The craziest thing of all is the match still had 5 hours to go, and it just wouldn't be the epic kind if this wasn't always one more story to tell. That 5200 vote lead? Yeah, someone in Link's camp took notice and decided to go nuts in their own right. Between some very obvious vote-stuffing that no one even denies anymore (seriously, there was one update that took off like 260 votes in 5 minutes) and the most hilarious rallies I can think of, Link once again went on the warpath. Oh and those rallies were scraping the bottom of every barrel, by the way, to hilarious levels. You had your basic Facebook and forum rallying, but then there were people getting retweets from WWE superstars like Trent Baretta and also hoping to get AJ Lee to bail Link out. And weren't people also going for Dusty Rhodes before Cody's arm broke, or something? All the stops and all the kitchen sinks got thrown as this match for the final push, but Link, the Hero of Time, simply.... ran out of time. Link would end up losing this match by 765 votes and never truly threatening to come back and win, but even still, Link in this match is the most impressive loser we've ever had to date in a contest. Screw all the other numbers. This dude pulled the largest comeback in contest history, TWICE IN THE SAME MATCH, and still lost. It also makes the down time and Allen's refusal to rerun the poll even worse, because the poll finished close enough to where the gray area caused by the down time was basically the entire reason for the difference. Link got robbed of having a full 24 hours to try and win, and even Draven got robbed in his own right if you use the Rocky analogy. "I won, but I didn't beat him!" -Apollo Creed And the Rocky 1 ending is basically what this match was (spoilers): Us not getting a restart is what keeps this match from being the absolute greatest even instead of just in the discussion, because the down time really is the black cloud hanging over everything. There was no resolution at all. Not that Allen agrees a restart is needed, mind you. Rerunning the poll solves nothing. Even if Link won the second poll, there'd be a completely legitimate argument that we should run it a third time to see the "true" winner, and so on. And disregarding that, the shock of seeing Link lose the first poll could sway people to change their vote in the second poll. There are too many variables that could affect the outcome that are significantly worse than the site not running at full capacity for an hour and some change. 'I'm sitting here, on my vacation time, hunting down information and sharing it with everyone. I've been called so many offensive and rude things that I've lost track of them all, and I'm blowing off my visiting relatives from out of town for the privilege. I've posted all of the information I have to prove that nothing's going on, but you are all still calling me a liar/lazy/etc. I'm done for the day. I'm going to go and spend time with my family who came to see me. I'm not even mad at you guys, just deeply disappointed. Enjoy the rest of the contest. I probably won't.' SBAllen posted...The results of tonight's contest are final, and here is why: There was no evidence of a DDoS. According to our network operations team, this morning's outage had none of the hallmarks of a DDoS attack, and they're very familiar with them. There were plenty of claims that someone on Reddit was bragging about DDoSing the site, but people brag about things on reddit all the time, and nobody seems to have actually produced a screenshot showing where this claim was even made. And, even if hypothetically there were a DDoS attack, there's no telling who was actually responsible, it could have just as easily been a Link fan sabotaging the battle to force a do-over. Anybody who wanted to vote had ample opportunity to vote. While we did have 85 minutes of network trouble in the morning, this happened early in the day, and it's hard to imagine that anybody who wanted to vote in the contest was actually prevented from doing so. They just had to wait a bit longer than normal, or come back later. Even if the slowdown mired Link's rally, you can see from the charts we had an immediate large influx of votes immediately afterwards that negated a good portion of it. Re-running the contest would be seriously biased towards Link, and throws off the schedule of the entire bracket. Extending the vote time another 85 minutes would be just as seriously biased in favor of Link, no question about it. Reddit's rallies had died down, and Link had been gaining for hours. Like I said earlier, despite the outage, nobody was prevented outright from voting during the rest of the day. Plus, averaging out the last 2 hours, Link was gaining 7.09 votes/minute on Draven. Another 85 minutes of the same pattern, that's 602 more Link votes, not enough to change the outcome. Although to be honest, those last 10 minutes of votes were "interesting". There was no evidence of massive vote stuffing. Running comparisons of ISP usage, browser usage, and even first pageview time to first vote time, the numbers matched up between Link and Draven (i.e. 40% of German Draven voters on Vodafine, 41% of Link voters; 47% of Draven voters use Chrome, 44% for Link). The percentages matched up, leaving no distinctions between Draven and Link voters that would reveal a pattern of vote stuffing. Finally, all of the the voting rallies we saw were consistent with traffic from external sites. The Draven rallies from Reddit, the Facebook-driven Link rally, and small boosts from the official LoL boards, Twitter, twitch.tv and even 4chan, it all matched up with the inbound traffic we saw in Google Analytics. Of course, this probably won't change anybody's minds thanks to the Backfire Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias#Backfire_effect). I've tried to be as open and honest as I can be about what's going on behind the scenes here, and if you can't take my word for it then there's really nothing else I can do or say to convince you that even though it's all a big meaningless popularity contest, we're trying our hardest to run it as fairly as possible. So regardless of if anyone agrees, the results of what was basically a 23 hour match stood as final. The aftermath was predictable, and basically the same as what happened when the down time was announced as not a DDoS, so I won't get into all that. The funnier aspect was Reddit invading Board 8 for a few days, which is I would like to expand a bit. I'm a League player, and I really love the game. I've played a looooooooot of Dota, almost an unhealthy amount, but I can finally and with no apologies admit that League is just.... better. Dota's intentionally hanging on to these archaic systems of doing things, going so far as putting Dota 1's glitches into Dota 2 just to appease guys like me. Which I can appreciate, but it makes for stagnant growth. I'll spare the technical details of the nonsense that's still in Dota 2 or why it will probably never be taken out, but the point here is that League never tries to stop growing. They just put in a hero whose ult can only be used on midair enemies, which promotes all kinds of teamwork thinking and strategy in play. Dota flat-out doesn't do things like this. To the point. League is awesome, and has a really good community despite the reputation. Reddit people are not, and are the kinds of players who get banned for in-game verbal abuse every other month. One knucklehead over there even made accounts mocking Kazbar's suicide, which is about as low as it can get, and this contest ending and taking those people away with them could not happen fast enough. Never has Board 8 been worse to read than the time between Link/Shep/Draven and the contest's aura finally wearing down. Reddit's a decent site, but some of the users over there make LL/4chan types look like saints. It's embarrassing what that site allows to go on unchecked over there. Regardless, the way Reddit was acting was no better than how GameFAQs acted, and the entire hype + match was really knocked down a bit because of it. There's nothing wrong with being proud of winning, but pretending facts aren't facts (like how the down time decided this match, period, and at the very least both characters were robbed of a potential legendary finish because of it) and rallying for every single Draven vs Link board poll? I really have to wonder how many of the people involved in this nonsense have jobs. We thankfully have a really humble loser around these parts, though! GloriousSweater posted...Congrats to the Draven/League of Legends supporters! This is your hour, and while I do think the circumstances surrounding the result are at least a little fishy, the result stands, the day is yours, and it is your right - no, your freakin DUTY - to celebrate like champions. And remember, you may have won this time, but the Hylian Hammer - favorite game character of gamers young and old from every corner of the globe - will be back. And to me, even on this day, Link still always wins. =) Congrats to the Hero of Time for another incredible contest! Seems like as good a note to end things on as any, though I do have to question why Board 8 has whined about Link always winning for years, then whined some more when he finally lost. You can't have it both ways and only be okay with Link losing when a character you all like is the one doing it. And play League of Legends, seriously. It's a fantastic game once you get through the learning curve! ## Zen's (Late) Analysis This was the one. This match was hyped up and talked about on and off the site days before it even happened. We knew that this was basically it, ironically all the Snake \> Link talk amounted to a bunch of "can the Snake that we believe to be stronger than Link take down Draven if Link fails?" It's surreal to see people speculating on Snake being the one to save us once a nobody character beat Link in Round 3. I've been following these things since I was 13 and I have never seen a day like this. The toxic LoL community were flooding the board and flooding the votes. 122000 votes exactly, wow. I'm sure Allen enjoyed the traffic, but not everything that came with it. While the board was drowning, we were counter-flooding Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr trying to rally the votes, and it just wasn't enough. Link couldn't keep up. We couldn't keep up. It's astounding we accomplished what we did. Getting an anti-rally together big enough to even come close to the size of Draven's rally is next to impossible. We even got some heavy hitters: I think Jennifer Hale tweeted about it too but I can't find it. The repercussions of this will be felt forever. Draven pulled off what was thought to be impossible. Again, L-Block was a different animal entirely. This was almost exclusively an outside push to interfere with the contests. Same with Undertale. We are now past the age of "Nintendo and FF always win!" and are now living in the age of "Rallied characters and games always win!" Neither are good, but I'd take the former any day. I don't think I can say anything that hasn't been said, but in 2018 I don't think Draven would make it out of Round 2. Just last week news broke that Chinese investor Tencent is really unhappy with Riot, whom they asked to port LoL to mobile. Riot refused, so, Tencent, being a Chinese company, made a blatant ripoff of LoL which is now one of the most popular games in China, eating up LoL's market share there. Heroes of the Storm, hero shooters, Battle Royales and other games made for streaming have taken over LoL's place, and that's also upsetting Tencent. Riot still assures its fans that numbers are good, just not nearly as good as its golden age. I don't see nearly as many LoL cosplayers and the booths are now much smaller than they used to be. LoL is stale now. Still popular, but stale. And as I mentioned before, Draven really dates this contest, just like in a few years the Undertale win will be dated. Link wins all the time, yeah, but a Link win in 2002 still holds up. As would a Link win in 2018. L-Block's win holds up too, it was just the climate of this site at the time. Link and Cloud deserved to be champions. Draven did not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EDIT: I forgot to mention the one hour freeze where Link's momentum was completely halted. See below for more details on that. I'm actually going to ask anyone who is reading this topic to chime in, I think what makes the Draven shit so crazy is that everyone had their own very strong opinions on Draven and the surrounding events I'd love to hear how you reacted during Link/Draven and how you feel about it now, a writeup for that match isn't complete without everyone shouting about their feelings I'll save some more for next round. oh yeah how the fuck did I forget th\[e site being down\]. This shit was INSANE, I cannot believe how obvious it was that this was intentional, but everyone on the site's end just kind of shrugged and let it happen I think I blocked this out of my mind because of how furious it made me --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (11)Mewtwo vs (7)Bowser 2013 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (11)Mewtwo vs (7)Bowser 2013 (revid 82227)_ ## Results **Round 3** Monday, September 2nd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis We needed a relaxing match after the LSD nonsense, and we would end up getting one. But even a "relaxing" match can be a huge surprise in the Summer 2013 Contest, because Mewtwo winning this thing as easily as he did was not expected at all. It may not have been completely out of left field since Mewtwo was the character targeted as an anti-Draven rallying point, but I don't even know if Mewtwo needed the extra help to do as well as he did this contest. He's gone berserk in the multi-way gimmick type contests before, most notably in 2008 when he advanced through three rounds of fourway nonsense to make the contest quarterfinal that year. This match was supposed to originally be a resolution of the Sonic/Vincent/Bowser stuff that people were peddling, and I maintain Sonic wins that hypothetical match with ease. But apparently if you replace Vincent with Mewtwo, you get Mewtwo ending things within a couple hours. Even the vaunted Sonic day vote that's saved his crew so many times in the past was no where to be found here, as Sonic put up very little resistance once the sun came up en route to Mewtwo winning by almost 4000 votes. Mewtwo wasn't going to beat Draven by any stretch, but getting that far and proving that he would have won the match had the rallies stayed off of Reddit was one hell of an accomplishment for the guy this year. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Spilling out of Link vs Draven was a match that had been fairly highly contested until this point. Nobody predicted there would be this much spillage from a rally. Yeah, the rallies had affected votals a little bit, but not to this extent. I don't know if any of us had predicted the Draven rally to be so much bigger in Round 3. I remember visiting one of the Draven rally threads on Reddit after the match was over, and while most comments were discussing how buttdecimated we all were, there were a few here and there saying "dang, I missed it, oh well, voted for Mewtwo" I don't know how much crossover there is between LoL and Pokemon but I'm assuming if you're hardcore enough to go to LoL communities you're probably enough of a huge nerd to absolutely love Pokemon. (ok that's a stretch but follow me here) This is slightly unrelated, but I read some statistics a few months back (that I can't find now, of course) and a lot of the people playing Fortnite have never played another online game before, and there's a chunk where they consider it their first "real game." LoL was huge at the time, I wouldn't be surprised if there were people voting who had never played a Sonic or Mario game but loved the Pokemon anime, but that's just personal conjecture. Originally people were arguing that Bowser would be strong enough to hold Mewtwo back for Sonic to take a win. After all, Ganondorf held back Mario enough for Vivi to win, so Sonic shouldn't have a problem here, right? Well, there's also the weird Nintendo SFF that includes Sonic on some level, but he's still SONIC, Noble Nine member and contest vet. Mewtwo didn't even double Phoenix Wright. Unfortunately for us it was 2013 and Mewtwo absolutely embarrassed Sonic thanks to rally spillover. You can champion the righteous cause of "rallies" all you want, but the definite downside is the negative effects it has on other matches. Reddit and tumblr links often stay circulating for days, and, yes, the GameFAQs site views go up, but our morale go down. Without the rally here, would Sonic have taken this in the year of Pokefear? Probably. Phoenix Wright was either really impressive in 2013 or Mewtwo was on rally roids in R3. Probably more the latter than anything. These results did get us hyped up that Mewtwo would be the anti-Draven, though. Pokefear had become our ally, like Magus or that food critic from Ratatouille. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (5)Big Boss vs (4)Kirby 2013 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (5)Big Boss vs (4)Kirby 2013 (revid 82228)_ ## Results **Round 3** Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis By the time this match actually happened, people expected Kirby to win fairly easily, especially with Big Boss in the poll potentially leeching off of Seph's fanbase. The Noble Nine was collapsing left and right, and Kirby is exactly the type of character who benefits from matches where he sticks out like a sore thumb. The picture I chose to represent this match on the wiki, which I believe was made by Blue_Target, could not do a more perfect job of capturing this match. Seph and Big Boss are sitting there trying to look all hard, and off on the right you have Kirby pop up looking all cute and fluffy. Add in Vivi \> Mario, Draven \> Link and Mewtwo \> Sonic, and the groundwork was laid for Kirby to win this match. Unfortunately, it only worked out that way overnight. For reasons completely unbeknownst to me, Kirby and Sephiroth basically traded trends for this one match. You'd think Seph would be great overnight and Kirby would rock the day vote, but it was the other way around. Kirby built up a 100 vote lead over 45 minutes, then Sephiroth came back and erased things. They continued this dance overnight with Kirby building a small lead and Seph destroying it, which led most people into thinking that come the morning vote, Kirby would take this match and run with it. The morning vote came alright, but it was Sephiroth that went running with the match. He turned what had been a 5 hour tie into a steady rise, and would end up winning by 2269 votes. Things may have been really close for 5 hours, but for the other 19 there was barely any resistance at all, which really surprises me because while FF7 has a good day vote, Kirby doesn't exactly have a bad one. But that's this contest for you, making no sense whatsoever. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis It's weird to say that "Sephiroth pulled an upset here" and even weirder when you expand upon that and say "Sephiroth pulled an upset against Kirby here." Only in 2013! Votals were still pretty high, and for the most part they'd stay around there for a while. There were some wishful thinkers claiming that people brought to the site via rally were genuinely interested in the contest and wanted to see it through I am here to say that is wrong because, again, most people who aren't us just think "GAMEFAQS DUM CLOUD ALWAYS WIN!!!!" I guess those weren't the people who showed up for this match though because Sephiroth ended up winning a decently close match against Kirby, despite the supposed "PlayStation LFF" Big Boss was supposed to subject him to. Is there any actual evidence of that? I feel like that's a Nintendo thing. [Let's look at the PSASBAR roster](https://imgtc.com/i/Q06qPlx.jpg). I guess we'll have to wait for a match with both Emmett Graves and Fat Princess in it before we know for sure, they are definitely deserving of the title of PlayStation All-Star. Can't wait to see how hard Evil Cole LFFs Cole too. It kind of sucked (lol) to see Kirby give this one up to Sephiroth, he had the lead for a while here iirc. I remember waking up and seeing that Sephiroth had come back and wondering why it took the whole fucking contest for the FF fanbase to actually show up. I'm wondering how Big Boss is going to look in 2018 given that he's not even in MGSV for more than a few minutes. Is everyone aware of that twist now? I think I mentioned it in a previous post, whoops. Hope I didn't ruin the late Hideo Kojima's masterpiece. Wait, is Kojima dead, or just his career? Does Big Boss receive a boost from Snake being in Ultimate? Does Big Boss receive equal boosts to Snake whenever he gets one? --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (2)GLaDOS vs (7)Kefka 2013 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (2)GLaDOS vs (7)Kefka 2013 (revid 82229)_ ## Results **Round 3** Wednesday, September 4th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Picsmiths have been waiting for years for Kefka to get into the sprite round so we could go nuts with Laughing Kefka sprites all over the match pictures, so needless to say I think all the pictures had that sprite in there somewhere. I chose this pic to represent the match best though, because Laughing Kefka isn't the only contest all-star in this image. Lettuce Kefka, Potato GLaDOS, GLaDOS Core, Solid S\*\*\*, Angel Kefka, and Codec Snake are all in this one. As for the match itself, a lot of people were worried Kefka would ride his momentum past Snake, but that fear ended very quickly and Kefka's performance was about what we'd expect of him with nothing weird going on. Just Solid Snake taking care of business with no doubts en route to his finals run. But it wouldn't be Kefka if he didn't have a memorable exit, so of course he and GLaDOS go and set the wire to wire record on their way out. Because why not? I could go into the updater and give a massive recount of the duel these two had, but it's become harder over the years to narrate literal ties in matches that don't matter. It was fun to watch and root for, but the battle for second place only really mattered for the Expert Challenge guys at this point of the contest. And by literal tie, once GLaDOS came back from Kefka's very small early lead, these two spent all day never being more than 40 or 50 votes apart, with most of the time actually being in a dead heat. Matches like this usually have the same character building the small lead before losing it, and for about half the poll Kefka was the one trying to build the lead here. But then the FF6 day vote (or lack thereof) took over and GLaDOS became the one building leads that she seemingly could not keep. She would end up finally breaking through come the evening and night votes, en route to a commanding lead of 120, but it wouldn't be Kefka if there wasn't one final comeback attempt falling short. Final Score: GLaDOS wins by 69 votes and the weirdo anime fanfic people rejoice. At this point, Kefka could do anything from beat Link or Draven to losing to Soap MacTavish and I would not be surprised. Dude is flat-out impossible to predict in these things. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Hot on the heels of "Match That Makes No Fucking Sense" comes "Escape From Beneath the Planet of the Match That Makes No Fucking Sense," which is commonly accepted as the "Dark Knight" to the original's "Batman Begins." It was good to finally see Kefka get some laughing sprite pics, but because the rally juices were still flowing steadily nobody even got to see them as everyone just voted from the results page. As a result of the rallies, GLaDOS probably got a huge boost from people who just play PC games. Although shouldn't Kefka have gotten some kind of boost if Sephiroth did? Again, 2013. I still don't get how the fuck this happened. I incorrectly stated early on that GLaDOS had beaten Kefka handily, but that was my faulty memory and my (admittedly justifiable) impression that Kefka ain't shit. It's so ingrained in me that Kefka is a disappointment that I had a picture painted in my mind that this match wasn't close. But it was! Probably one of the most entertaining matches of this contest. Once again Kefka gives us an incredibly unpredictable, super fun match. Even if it's 100 years from now and we're knee-deep in Character Battle XV (at this rate we'd be lucky to hit XV) with a field oversaturated with Generation 62 Pokemon, I still want Kefka to get a spot in the bracket because he will always find a way to impress or massively disappoint. Both is good. At this point everyone had thrown out their brackets so we were just happy to get another good upset in there, although there was a dude so buttdevestated that Kefka lost that they account suicided. I'm not surprised, people get pretty emotional over this big head of lettuce. --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (5)Squirtle vs (4)Leon Kennedy 2013 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (5)Squirtle vs (4)Leon Kennedy 2013 (revid 82230)_ ## Results **Round 3** Thursday, September 5th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis So, remember when Dante was supposed to beat Squirtle? Remember when people said the big Pokemon RBY \> Final Fantasy 7 upset in the Rivalry Rumble bonus poll would mean nothing in this contest? I think Leon overlapping with Cloud to some degree had a lot to do with Cloud losing in this match, but in years past it would not have mattered and Cloud would have stomped this poll anyway. But now, with all the decline in FF7's strength that will only continue on a downward trend? Squirtle can open up a 250 vote lead in an hour an no one even blinks, because by the time this match happened most people expected something similar. But expecting a cool upset is waaaaay different from actually seeing one happen. I'm a huge FF7 fan, but this match was AWESOME. Cloud made a game of things overnight, erasing Squirtle's lead by the time the morning vote hit. And FF7 does have a really good day vote, so in theory if the Squareheads showed up in numbers Cloud could win this while the sun was up, similar to how he beat Samus in 2010. But it was simply not to be, and Cloud's trends in this match were eerily similar to his match with Mario in 2002. Squirtle build a lead of 150, and that lead fluctuated between 150 and 250 for pretty much the entire day. One would assume the evening and second night votes would then be friendly to Cloud in this regard, but just like in 2002 that support completely abandoned Cloud when he needed it most. Come the evening, Squirtle pushed this thing up to 450 votes and simply never looked back. It would end up another loss on the FF7 resume that the game will simply not be able to recover from. It's unfair to FF7, but it's the GameFAQs mascot for Square hatred in the polls these days. This also wasn't one of those upsets where a rally or cheating was needed; Squirtle just outright beat Cloud fair and square, which probably made it the coolest upset of the contest. No stupid 4chan or Reddit rallies required. This would also start a run where in the next 8 matches, 7 of them would feature Pokemon. I know Draven and Link were the story of the contest, and for good reason, but Pokemon dominance is also a storyline in there somewhere. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis ere's the next entry in the "Fuck It I Give Up" Sextology, this time involving a funny blue cartoon turtle beating former contest champion Cloud Strife because reasons Reason 1) 4chan did not like Cloud and wanted Squirtle to win. Ulti mentions in his writeup that Squirtle didn't need a rally but I really don't think that's the case. You can see the votal increase on this match and 4chan had mentioned in a lot of their previous rallies that they were going to support Pokemon in the matches, and although there was less support it was still there. Again, we also still had a little spillover from the Draven rally posts, which probably benefit the Pokemon more than anyone else. Reason 2) Ain't nobody give no shits about FF anymore unless it is specifically Sephiroth when he is against Kirby or Gilgamesh I guess Reason 3) That weird PlayStation All-Star SFF hurt Cloud a bit, Leon is the man Reason 4) Fuck It I Give Up We all collectively saw this coming by this point but it hurt to watch it unfold all the same. Ulti mentions in his writeup that the vote trends are very similar to the original Mario / Cloud match from 2002, where Squirtle got a good size lead and even though Cloud made cuts he couldn't gain any momentum and eventually got beaten by [this thing](https://imgtc.com/i/A5FlOVD.mp4). Don't get me wrong, I chose Squirtle as my first ever starter like any sane person would, but I can't believe it's strong enough to beat legendary character Cloud Strife under any circumstances. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. Bring back asbestos, it didn't do anything wrong. Take Leon out this match and give Cloud the boost from KHIII and Smash Ultimate in 2018, what do you get? Probably a much more boring match where he wins pretty easily. It's just surreal how this contest ended up playing out. We had Vivi beating Mario, Draven beating Link, and now Squirtle beating Cloud. Eventually Sephiroth would get knocked out to Draven and Mewtwo. --- ## (6)Pikachu vs (2)Sora vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue 2013 _source: (6)Pikachu vs (2)Sora vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue 2013 (revid 82231)_ ## Results **Round 3** Friday, September 6th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis When Division 6 was being debated pre-contest, Board 8's Pokemon love kind of took over, but also at a rational level. The board wanted Blue or Pikachu to win the division, and was worried that this exact match happening would cause Sora to get an unearned bye into the contest semifinals -- the thought was that Pikachu and Blue would overlap too much, so when Blue beat the hell out of Fox people were happy, but also a bit bummed out. Turns out Pokemon is strong enough to not give the first flying f\*\*\*, not to mention Sora is about as anti-voted as it gets these days. Of all the symbols of Square hatred following the merger with Enix and all the stupid decisions in the 2000s, doesn't Sora or Lightning represent that hatred better than anyone else? Does anyone actually admit in public that they're a fan of Sora these days? The match would actually end up being really good, albeit Sora waited far too long to make a push. Pikachu resisted enough of Blue's LFF to build himself a 400 vote lead overnight, then the Pokemon morning vote proved much tougher than the Kingdom Hearts morning vote. Pikachu kept running with the momentum and built himself a 600 vote lead by lunch. It was only then that Sora decided to make a comeback push of his own, but comebacks against a character that has the exact same trends as you is unbelievably hard. It's not like Sora could rely on the morning vote or ASV to push him over the top, so he had to get his votes elsewhere. To his credit, he did do this. He started doing a stall-push until the ASV, then took enough of the ASV to make the match interesting. That 600 vote lead was down to 300 by dinner time, but it didn't take Pikachu long at all to get his lead back over 400. The true push came with the late evening and second night vote, which is not Pokemon territory and has enough Square love left in it to make a match like this close. The problem is that Sora was in too big a hole early, and for all his pushing with the SNV he was only able to get it below 300 with two hours left. Sora did ultimately keep going and only end up losing by 150, but does anyone really think Board 8 would have allowed a popular Pokemon to lose to freaking SORA, of all characters? The fact that this match was only interesting because of Blue's presence really gives us all we need to know about Sora's strength, anyway. He barely has any left, and this match was another Pokemon punching their ticket to the contest semifinals. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis jfc What is the opposite of "fall from grace?" "Rise to dominance?" Also I made the mistake of googling "PaRappa Kingdom Hearts" I'm not sure what the most amusing part of the image is, the drawing itself, the "copyright" by Italian Shorty III, or that there were two Italian Shorties before him. They're breeding and soon we will be consumed by the calzone. Board 8 was so soaked with tears and beaten down by the results of the previous five matches that this was somehow not even a shocker of a result. By this point if you had tried to logically argue that Blue would pull Pikachu down enough to let Sora slip by you'd get laughed at. We all feared the Pokemon and we knew what it would do. Spare_us.RAT. Sora actually might have been able to win this one if given enough time. The problem is that Sora shares the same fanbase with Pikachu to some extent, so any time he'd start to gain Pikachu would stop him. The same people obsessed with Kingdom Hearts are also way too into IV training their Pokemon. It's some "advanced weeaboo" thing. Managing Pokemon stats is just as difficult as making sense of the Kingdom Hearts plotline. I want to say this match was entertaining, but it really wasn't. There were occasionally KH fans coming to the board asking how Sora was losing to a big dumb baby like Pikachu as if Sora isn't a big dumb baby himself. You want entertaining? Here's the one time ever Sora was a walkaround character at Disneyland: Yikes, why didn't Disney just get Haley Joel Osment to dress up as him? [oh](https://imgtc.com/i/r0qV78l.png) why is he a duck dynasty now (I'd still take it over whatever Italian Shorty III puts out) --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (8)L-Block vs (7)Tifa Lockheart 2013 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (8)L-Block vs (7)Tifa Lockheart 2013 (revid 82238)_ ## Results **Round 3** Saturday, September 7th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Of all the divisional finals, this was by far the simplest and had nothing unexpected happen at all. L-Block tried making a push early, but wasn't even able to hold second place over Tifa for long before getting completely swamped. It gave the board 24 hours to breathe and relax, and this was the one match among that stretch of 8 I talked about that didn't have a Pokemon in it. So if you're one of those people that hates Pokemon, this was the match for you. Overall, it was clear in minutes that Samus was taking care of business, that L-Block would not recapture the past glory, and that Tifa was not going to give us a repeat of her near-upset of Samus from the female half of the 2006 contest. Just a simple beating, nothing more and nothing less. We can't have EVERY match be nuts, right? Moving on. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Alright so I logged into my Imgur account for the first time since 2013 to look for the raw versions of the magazine covers from my match pic, and holy shit is it just a treasure trove of weird Board 8 culture and history. This match was really boring anyway, some people thought L-Block could upset Tifa but there was never really a chance for that. For a short time we were just able to breathe... Just breathe. So instead of more analysis here are pics from the ol' Zen archives, featuring minimized AIM cameos by @KamikazePotato and @Ashethan: I have no idea of what the context for this is but I love it here's some more: allen was the one with 100% on hannah montana also why did we stop censoring pics with tim allen's head that shit was hilarious here are all the pics I submitted for Round 1, even the rejected ones: also: --- ## (6)Vivi vs (2)Squall Leonhart vs (4)Pokemon Trainer Red 2013 _source: (6)Vivi vs (2)Squall Leonhart vs (4)Pokemon Trainer Red 2013 (revid 82239)_ ## Results **Round 3** Sunday, September 8th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis If Square fans were intelligent, they would have allowed Missingno to beat Squall a round ago. Is there a doubt in anyone's mind that Vivi wins this match if Missingno is here in Squall's place? It would have set up Samus/Vivi/Mega Man, and there's no guarantee Vivi just gets blown out given all the momentum. And Samus/Mega Man DO overlap with Nintendo fans... But that's just wishful thinking and was not to be, though we ended up getting a pretty cool upset anyway. Before this contest, I doubt anyone would have pegged Vivi as somehow being stronger than Squall, and even as I'm writing this it seems nuts to look at. But there it is. I'm sure momentum and the desire for Vivi to make a run played a huge part in upsetting Squall here, but I'm not complaining. I don't know when or how he became the one Square character immune to all the hate going around these days, but it's definitely welcome! Vivi is an aamzing character. The actual match wasn't particularly interesting beyond that, since Red beating the Square tag team was a given before things started. But Vivi ahead of Squall is still damn hilarious, and so is the thought of Vivi in the contest semifinals had Missingno managed to hold a lead one round ago. You just never know in these things anymore. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Because Bacon released the guidelines for Round 3 and beyond's match pics way in advance, there were people who had pre-made Mario / Squall / Red pics that had to resubmit their pics because fucking Vivi beat Mario. I'm almost positive the picture in the top left originally had Mario in it. This match was debated until Vivi pulled his upset, and all of a sudden it became a matter of Squall putting away Red with the newly-awakened sexual tyrannosaurus that was Vivi in the match. Could he pull it off? Short answer: No Long answer: fucking Vivi beat Squall Again, expert brackets had been basically torn to shreds, but this match was cause to take a blowtorch to the scraps that were left. Vivi had a ton of momentum coming off his Mario win and everyone threw their votes his way like teen girls throwing their bras on stage at a \[insert current popular boy band here\] concert. Vivi is going to be riding this win for the rest of his contest career. I wouldn't be surprised if he landed a 2-seed in CBX. That's how strong his win was (and still is!). We're going to be talking about it until contests die. Vivi could lose to Caim in R1 this year and we would still champion him. If we step through a doorway and enter the Berenstein Bears dimension, we'd find a match where Missingno was here instead of Squall, and Vivi would advance to the semi-finals. On the left of that doorway is another leading us to the dimension where Sinbad actually was in a genie movie, and there we'd find a match where Mario beat Vivi and Squall would have had a shot to beat Red and advance to the semi-finals. Are those realities better than the one we live in? That's up to you, the reader, to decide. Then you can complain in the comments and I'll ignore you. --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (2)Zero vs (7)Charizard 2013 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (2)Zero vs (7)Charizard 2013 (revid 82241)_ ## Results **Round 3** Monday, September 9th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis The divisional final round ended with one HELL of a match, because anyone looking at this would automatically assume Charizard wins. Mega Man and Zero have massive overlap, and Pokemon had just been beasting for this entire contest. It seemed like yet another raw deal for Mega Man, who has a contest history just loaded with raw deals. Look at this list: Summer 2002: Puts up two of the biggest beatings ever, loses to Sephiroth by 1000 in round 3 after building an early lead. Summer 2003 - Gets a rematch with Sephiroth in the semifinals, gets blown the f\*\*\* out. Also the peak of FF7 love on this site. Games 2004 - Not a single Mega Man game makes the field. Seriously. Summer 2004 - Wins his division, blown out by Link in the semifinal in what is probably the strongest year Link has ever had. Summer 2005 - Mega Man goes on a huge run, beating the likes of Sonic, but loses to Crono by 3000 votes in the semifinals. Notable here is that Crono was beginning the downswing of his career. Series 2006 - Mega Man X gets fed to Zelda in round 2, Mega Man gets fed to Final Fantasy in.... round 2. Summer 2006 - As a HEAVY favorite, loses to Solid Snake in the quarterfinals. Had Mega Man won that match, he ay very well have won the entire contest. Sonic and Samus were both very weak that year. Summer 2007 - The first fourway contest. Mega Man gets out of his division, but Cloud and Samus are just stronger than him in the quarterfinals. Summer 2008 - Loses to Snake again. There's no shame in that, but he lost to Weighted Companion Cube by 240 votes for second place. By far the worst loss Mega Man has ever had to deal with, and to add insult to injury, Mega Man X was finally allowed into a contest and got much farther than the original character did. Spring 2009 - Three Mega Man games get in -- 2, 3, and X -- but only 2 manages to get out of the second round and that game would lose to to the NES titans of Zelda 1 and Mario 1 in round 3. Fall 2010 - Mega Man X gets fed to Link in round 3, Mega Man himself loses to Mario in the divisional finals. This is notable because in that contest, Mega Man X got 32.72% on Link. In 2004, Mega Man got 32.39% on Link. Stuck in X's shadow once again. Game of the Decade - Mega Man 9 pulls an upset over Demon's Souls, then loses to Okami in round 2. Rivalry Rumble - Mega Man once again fed to Link in round 3. So yeah, it's a who's-who of unlucky bracket placement and having to deal with others at their peak. The lowest point here is statistically being worse than Mega Man X, which is absolutely a match we need to see one day. So yeah, if ever there was a contest character that deserved a big break, Mega Man is it. And though the final push is what gets talked about the most in this match, Charizard lost this match in the first three hours. We jokingly call the first hour of a poll the Nintendo Power Hour, and what does Charizard do in that hour, with freaking Zero also in the poll? A 6 vote lead for Mega Man. Those two stayed deadlocked for awhile, and it took a couple more hours for Charizard to finally start making a push to build a lead. A lot of theories get thrown around for why Charizard was seemingly the short straw of the Pokemon this contest, but the two that make the most sense are Charizard's competition and anti-voting. Charizard had to deal with Zelda and Mega Man, which is a much taller order than what Red or Blue had to go through. It's also a very real thing to be at the bottom part of a bracket when people have seen you before. Charizard's run happened in 2010, and though Pokemon anti-voting is hardly what it was back in 2002 or so, people got tired of seeing Pokemon stomp this contest so hard. I think that's what led to Mega Man doing so well early. But it would not last, as Charizard's strength and Zero being in this poll would eventually take over. Between overnight and the morning vote, Charizard built a 600 vote lead by lunch. Then Mega Man cut 100 votes off in 15 minutes, and the comeback train was on. From here, the push was about as close to consistent as it could possible get. Mega Man cut off about 30-50 votes an hour, until we were looking at a 200 vote lead for Charizard with 2½ hours left. The assumption was that the Pokemon would get the late push, but it did not work out that way at all. Mega Man got that thing down to 100 with 2 hours left, and then it was just a massive rally for Mega Man the rest of the way. Mega Man took the lead with over an hour left in the poll, 27 votes to be exact, then immediately Charizard cuts it down to 13. The standard groan happened here, because Pokemon had won every close finish of the contest. Mega Man fans then watched in horror as Charizard took back complete control of the match, which can best be summed up as him having a 58 vote lead with 20 minutes left. It seemed like a given at this point that Charizard would escape again, just like he had done against Zelda last round. With the next update, Mega Man cut 35 votes off out of no where, then he gained 40 more votes next update to take the lead for good. Mega Man fans unleashed more than 10 years of contest frustration into a rally that managed to outdo a Pokemon rally, and when it was all over Mega Man won the poll by 23 votes. Charizard went from another win to getting completely blitzed and losing in a span of 20 minutes, which is going to be a hard one to forget about in the offseason. Remember, Zero was also in this poll, and he did some very clear and obvious damage to Mega Man's vote totals. Between that last push and Charizard doing nothing for so long when the poll opened, this was a choke job. Plain and simple. For Mega Man fans, yeah it's another contest where he doesn't even make the finals, but the little guy finally gets over the hump and wins one of these barnburners. As a huge fan of his, I'm really hoping this springboards him into finally making the final one day. He deserves it. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis It's amazing how a match with Serious Sam in it pulled in more votes than this crazy quarterfinals match. I'm bringing this 2002 classic up just to show how Mega Man always finds a way to impress in these things. This was the match that ruined my shot at winning the Guru; if Charizard had pulled this off you would all have been nominating Metal Sonic right now. I probably wouldn't have made this topic, though, or if I did it would have been called ~\*~Zen's "Road to Victory" CBIX Analysis - 5 Years and He Still Hasn't Let It Go~\*~. I really didn't care if I won or not, though. I'm happy we got to see POKEFEAR stopped dead in its tracks here. Everyone had counted Mega Man out thanks to Zero being in this poll; Zero had looked pretty good up until this point, too, and Charizard was just considered too strong of an obstacle. A lot of other Noble Nine members had let us down and at this point Mega Man really didn't have many "new" games at the time other than 9 and 10 which were a few years old and basically just cash grabs. Good cash grabs, but cash grabs nonetheless. Charizard never really had a shot at this match once it started. Out the gate he looked like garbage and even when he managed to pull ahead Mega Man was right there to take first place back. It was good to see Mega Man of all NN members escape to the semifinals. How did this happen? Is Mega Man just that universally loved? Is Mega Man so deeply mired in Nintendo SFF that Zero was affecting Charizard too? I don't know. Probably. Fuck it at this point it's 2013 and that's all the excuse I need Here's a fun exercise, rank the Noble Nine members by how much you personally give a shit about them. I'll start: Snake Sonic Link Mega Man Mario Samus Crono Cloud Sephiroth Allen can keep Sephiroth out of the CBX banner forever --- ## (3)Draven vs (11)Mewtwo vs (1)Sephiroth 2013 _source: (3)Draven vs (11)Mewtwo vs (1)Sephiroth 2013 (revid 82242)_ ## Results **Round 4** Tuesday, September 10th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Even Draven was unable to stand up to the Nintendo Power Hour this time around, as people had targeted Mewtwo as the counter-rally the second Draven upset Ryu and MMX back in round 2. But what truly caused Mewtwo to do so well was the r/LoL mods seemingly putting an end to the rally on Reddit. "Hello! After discussing this topic internally, we've decided to remove this and other Draven CBIX threads for the following reasons. First, simply put, they aren't fully relevant to League of Legends. However, even if they were considered to be extremely relevant, there's another reason for their removal: the moderators of /r/LeagueofLegends received a request from a verified staff member at GameFAQs, asking us to remove the thread rallying behind Draven, as it was manipulating the voting on their contest. As many of you know, reddit has long taken a hard stance against vote manipulation, and it would be incredibly unfair of us to tolerate this sort of activity just because it affects another site and not ourselves. This is why the post has been removed. It isn't fair of us to ask other sites not to game reddit, if we allow reddit to game other sites. Posts on reddit should only be voted on by redditors, not bots or spammers. Polls on other sites should be voted on by their communities, not ours. Thanks." It all added up to Mewtwo building up a 2300 vote lead two and a half hours in, and assuming things stayed pat, this match was more or less over. Reddit was the entire reason Draven's rallies had gone so well, and without them he was sunk. Everyone knows the rest. First and foremost, the so-called "verified staff member at GameFAQs" was just some guy pretending to be a GameFAQs staff member. That Reddit even believed that crap at all shows what kind of an outfit those people are running in the first place, and I really hope people are smart enough to separate League of Legends fans from Reddit posters. We all know Reddit is awful, but League honestly does a good job building a good community, and most people who play take good sportsmanship very seriously. They do in my experience, anyway. Riot has a whole tribunal system built around being good sports, and I can vouch how seriously those guys take the mentality of playing nice. They've even banned a professional or two for being mean, so there's no hidden buddy systems where enforcement doesn't happen. Of all the differences between League and Dota, that one might be my favorite. But to the point. Reddit sucks, yeah, but try not to assume League people suck too. As for the match, once the rally went back online it only took Draven 30 minutes to erase the entire lead and put the match away for good. It kind of sucks since I'm a huge Mewtwo fan and would have loved him in the final, but knowing he would have gotten there had Reddit bothered enforcing their own rules is good enough for me I suppose. But this does all lead one to wonder why GameFAQs, Allen specifically, would go over and correct them at all. Him being in bed with Reddit for this entire contest was no surprise to anyone, especially given he himself pre-contest was busy telling Reddit about us, but why he would do that and never bother answering for it is something that is always going to remain a mystery to the people that follow these things. Let's say Allen owns a house. We'll call it A. Next door is another house, B. For Christmas one year, A decides to run a neighborhood decorating contest and tells others about it, including B. The night before the decorating contest starts getting judged, B starts egging A's house and the police show up. Rather than let the police do their job, A's owner tells the police that B's actions are perfectly acceptable. That's basically analogous to what Allen did in this contest and everyone knows it. He had the perfect out to tell Reddit to knock it off, and chose not to take it because anyone with an IQ above room temperature could see which site he was allying himself with. And no, the Link/Snake bonus poll "as decided by the users of GameFAQs" is not enough to make up for it. This nonsense needed to be sorted out during the contest, not afterwards with a pittance poll. A lot of people said a lot of very cruel things to Allen and I will not defend them, but he brought it upon himself by making some questionable (to say the least), oft boneheaded decisions during almost all of Draven's matches. I actually think the worst of them was this match and telling Reddit that rallies were okay, because it showed that Allen cares more about site hits and traffic (which in turn lead to more ad hits and more dollars) than he does what the users of the site think. I would also add that without this site's users giving him free time and free content, this site doesn't exist. So yeah, while I was mostly okay with the Link match, I'm not forgiving him for this one for quite awhile. This was nothing more than pandering to Reddit at the expense of GameFAQs, which really bothers me as someone who has spent untold time writing for this site. Also let's not forget just how bad this match is for Sephiroth. You think Cloud's match was bad? Sephiroth losing to Mewtwo by almost 9000 votes is worse. That dude is never going to sniff a contest title ever again. He's done. Losing to Snake by a few thousand in 2010 was acceptable, but this is just an outright tank in popularity. ## Zen's (Late) Contest I visited Draven's bio on the LoL site and it looks exactly the same as it did in 2013 when I went there to get pics of him and write his bio. Like, literally nothing has changed. It's been 5 years but I remember all the art there and the shallow backstory he was given. Either Draven really ain't shit and the LoL fanbase will upvote anything not named "Teemo" or LoL is incredibly stale. You know what else is incredibly stale? Talking about Draven matches. Draven had beaten Link, so at this point if you took anything over him you were crazy. We all knew he had this shit locked down, but you still had some people pushing for either Mewtwo based on POKEFEAR (fat chance arguing that point after Charizard bombed) or hoping Snake somehow had actually grown stronger than Link and that he'd beat Draven in the finals. Uh, were those people not paying attention to the extra 50,000 or so votes Draven brought in from rallies alone in his last match? Most matches were lucky to hit 50,000 total. In 2013, the year the voters had forsaken us, Draven was free to walk up, kick Link in the dick, buttdevestate our asses and pry first place right from Bacon's open hands. But then this happened: "Hello! After discussing this topic internally, we've decided to remove this and other Draven CBIX threads for the following reasons. First, simply put, they aren't fully relevant to League of Legends. However, even if they were considered to be extremely relevant, there's another reason for their removal: the moderators of /r/LeagueofLegends received a request from a verified staff member at GameFAQs, asking us to remove the thread rallying behind Draven, as it was manipulating the voting on their contest. As many of you know, reddit has long taken a hard stance against vote manipulation, and it would be incredibly unfair of us to tolerate this sort of activity just because it affects another site and not ourselves. This is why the post has been removed. It isn't fair of us to ask other sites not to game reddit, if we allow reddit to game other sites. Posts on reddit should only be voted on by redditors, not bots or spammers. Polls on other sites should be voted on by their communities, not ours. Thanks." Bacon you are our one true God, all hands to the sky, praise this man: But just as lord Bacon giveth, he also taketh away. Turns out that the person who contacted r/LoL wasn't actually Bacon or something. Did anyone ever own up to that? I can't believe the r/LoL mods even fell for it, did they not ask for verification? Guess their mod staff is as much of a joke as the community. I think at some point Bacon asked r/LoL to let the rallies back so he could make an extra \$3.50 off of the ad revenue, and whatever lead and momentum Mewtwo was gone within a few minutes. No exaggeration, Mewtwo was done after less than an hour of rallying. I kind of get why Bacon turned the rally switch back on. Rallies had already fucked up the results of this contest and if some jabroni was going to mess with the status quo by removing rallies to give himself some extra points in his Expert Bracket then it was super unfair to the rest of us who had already accepted Draven as our new lord and master. Talking about all the craziness surrounding this contest is making me really appreciate it, holy shit. I had buried a lot of this in the back of my mind but you can't find drama better than this, even on Bravo!. There needs to be a Real Housewives of CBS Interactive. Speaking of housewives, we'll get to that soon. Can't believe I'm even saying that. What a fucking nutso contest that I have to devote a paragraph to *Bacon's wife.* --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Squirtle vs (6)Pikachu 2013 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Squirtle vs (6)Pikachu 2013 (revid 82243)_ ## Results **Round 4** Wednesday, September 11th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis The downside to Pokemon dominating this contest the way they did is that this contest was made up entirely of three-way polls. Meaning that in the late rounds, if Pokemon won too much like they did this year, there was bound to be cannibalism going on. Neither one of these two characters would have beaten Snake one on one, but it's not like they ever got the chance to either. Squirtle and Pikachu just absolutely destroyed each other's chances of making the finals, and Snake was all too happy to take advantage and punch his own ticket. Rivalry Rumble aside, Snake has made at least the semifinals of every contest since 2005. That has to count for something, right? Granted he's never actually won a contest, but he'll break through eventually. ....right? Snake winning the match wasn't the only story here, though. Even today, I'm completely floored that Pikachu beat Squirtle, and it really makes me question my knowledge of the hierarchy of Pokemon. I know the match was literally dead even until the morning vote and THE KIDDIES WAKING UP is what caused Pikachu to win this, but even still. I would have never picked Pikachu to beat him, by any standard. My biggest guess there is that Pokemon strength at the very top is a jumbled unpredictable mess, and that the Pokemon fanbase is split in two among current adults that grew up on RBY and children. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the tastes are clearly different. Children still prefer Pikachu, but during the hours when adults were the primary voters, Squirtle held a slim lead. It reeeeeeeally makes me wonder how Squirtle's path would have turned out had one guy in the NRT voted for Blastoise instead. Does Pikachu beat Blastoise? I'd be floored if he did, but given this match I really don't know. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis You know what would have made this match more interesting? Cloud here instead of Squirtle. If Pikachu had inherited all of Squirtle's votes he would have been close to Snake in strength, and you can also assume that Cloud would have LFF'd Snake based on Classic PlayStation nostalgia, so the match would have been really close. Funny how I'm saying Cloud would have been the one to hold Snake back. What a year. But instead of Cloud we had Squirtle, and while Squirtle impressed by staying close to Pikachu, that didn't really surprise anybody at this point. Ulti makes a point to say that Blastoise was one vote away from beating Squirtle in the NRT and being our chosen pick instead. I don't know if Blastoise would be stronger than Squirtle, while he certainly is "cooler" as well as being the cover Pokemon for Blue, I'm not sure if that would translate into as much raw strength as Squirtle just being Squirtle. Do you know how many Picsmiths were trying desperately to get Squirtle's Kamina sunglasses into every pic? Yeah, that's cuz of the anime, not cuz of the games. Squirtle gets a huge portion of his strength from that as well as being playable in Brawl. I think Blastoise would be close in strength but not stronger. On the other side of that coin, would Charmander do better than Charizard? Definitely not, no, because Charizard was a focal point of the anime for longer and comes back every time the anime needs to get the views up. He's also cool as heck. Back to the actual match: Yeah, some people took Squirtle over Pikachu, and yeah, he had an early lead, but Pikachu is the face of the franchise, and even though at one point he was a contest punchline he's now a juggernaut. Pikachu is one of the most recognizable things on the planet, and unlike Pac-Man, people actually seem to give a shit. Two shits. Three, even! --- ## (1)Samus Aran vs (4)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (1)Mega Man 2013 _source: (1)Samus Aran vs (4)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (1)Mega Man 2013 (revid 82244)_ ## Results **Round 4** Thursday, September 12th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis I'll concede that my closeup pictures for this round were a bit weird, but this one is good and I'm tooting my picture horn for wiki purposes. Deal with it. People will look back on this match in a few years and assume "38-33-28, how boring", but it can't be overstated how close Mega Man came to winning this match. His support from the Charizard upset continued on through the first few updates of this poll, and he built a lead near 300 within 30 minutes. But it didn't take long for Samus to push back, and when she did Mega Man simply did not have enough left in the tank to fend her off. The silver lining is that it took Samus until about 3 in the morning to grab full control of the match, and she was very truly threatened until then. There was some hope in the morning vote bailing Mega Man out, but it was not to be. It was a trend very similar to his match with Sephiroth back in 2002, where he built a lead of 700 fairly early, but eventually got swamped and lost. It's disappointing for the little guy to still not make the final of a contest, but maybe one day. The last note here is about Red. He stood pat against two Nintendo characters and got nearly 30% of the vote, and if you extrapolate his values in this poll alone he scored 45.55% on Mega Man. He only scored 38.84% on Mega Man X back in 2010, so yeah Red was definitely one of the stars of this contest even in his exit. His exit also meant that even with all Pokemon's wins this contest, none of them made the final. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis This match was a complete tossup, as seen by the three versions of my Andy Warhol Finals match pic I submitted: The common theory was that Mega Man would take advantage of the Nintendo SFF and squeak by here. The second most common theory was that Mega Man was too heavily tied to Nintendo SFF and despite beating Charizard with Zero in the match that he would get beaten by Samus comfortably. The third theory was that Red would win because of POKEFEAR and a lack of common sense. The results make sense once you spotlight just how Mega Man / Charizard / Zero panned out. The results are definitely due to how heavily the MM series is mixed with Nintendo, so the same logic should apply to this match. Samus also looked pretty good so far this contest. What did she have going on in 2013 that gave her this strength? Nothing since Other M? Alright cool what the fuck although I guess the same could be said about Mega Man. Samus had such a boring path to victory, I think everyone was cheering for Mega Man to get to the finals here. It would have been a way better story than "Samus easily beats Sandbag, Knuckles, Tifa and Mega Man then gets knocked out by Snake and the rallied character" Red bowed out gracefully here, he definitely looked pretty consistently good this contest, he lost badly to X once I think so coming close to Mega Man and getting into the semis shows how much he's grown. He didn't really have much of a challenge until this point but at least he never jobbed out to some fodder. Not sure where the guy goes from here, will he stay consistent in 2018? Are we even going to remember to nominate Red in the sea of Shellder and Ditto support? Who knows. He could potentially make a crazy run if he gets a very low seed and a debatable matchup. Imagine Round 1 is (2) Sephiroth vs (7) Pokemon Trainer Red. In the end this match didn't matter much (other than to our hearts) because whoever won here was going to be Draven food anyway. also lmao @ [the Creation match pic](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb9/5264-03.jpg), what the fuck --- ## (11)Mewtwo vs (6)Pikachu vs (1)Mega Man 2013 _source: (11)Mewtwo vs (6)Pikachu vs (1)Mega Man 2013 (revid 82203)_ ## Results **Bonus** Friday, September 13th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis Five days, three Mega Man polls. This match was interesting in theory, but in practice it was no better than Snake/Squirtle/Pikachu. You had one character that was not a Pokemon scoring an easy first place finish as the other two characters cannibalized each other's support. It was cool to pay tribute to Mega Man I suppose, though the one difference in this poll as opposed to Snake's is that Pikachu got last place instead of second. Kind of a fitting revenge, given what Pikachu does to Mewtwo in the movie. I won't pretend to understand how or why Mewtwo is stronger, though I'm sure it has a lot to do with Mewtwo being the ultimate Pokemon to get amongst the original 151. But assuming that's not the reason, I'm busting this out for the first time all contest: DAT TOP OPTION. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis Speaking of which, here's a match that pits all the second place winners of the Semis together, including two whole Pokemon. Mega Man was destined to win this one based on the virtue of heavy SFF, but which Pokemon would come out on top? A lot of people argued it would be Pikachu, but Mewtwo was already on fire, and if any of the rally people were checking in they probably would have voted for him as well. There wasn't really an option for Pikachu to win here. A 1-v-1 between these two in 2018 would definitely be interesting. --- ## (3)Draven vs (1)Solid Snake vs (1)Samus Aran 2013 _source: (3)Draven vs (1)Solid Snake vs (1)Samus Aran 2013 (revid 82245)_ ## Results **Championship** Saturday, September 14th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis The major story in the final was the back and forth on Reddit about whether or not to allow rallies, and it shows on the updater. I'll get to all that in a second, but the story of how these rallies were allowed at all is truly stupid. Allen would ultimately end up claiming that r/LoL mods decided on their own to allow them, but the story he gave was pathetic beyond words. He literally claimed -- and I'm honestly unsure if this is a practical joke, though I pray it is -- that his wife used his Reddit account to ask the LoL mods to stop the rallies. This came about after some screenshots of hidden conversations surfaced, and someone realized that Allen's Reddit name actually fit into the censored spots. SBAllen posted... So I'm reading through the big topic about me explaining myself and wondering what the hell all this is about. So I go over to Reddit and my account and lo and behold, I see that I actually did post those messages. After the initial WTF!? reaction, I finally figure out what happened. My wife loves Solid Snake. He's her favorite character in gaming. She also knew how irritated I was with this whole Draven thing, and worst of all, she knows all my passwords. Thus, her devious plot unfolded. She logged into my Reddit account posing as me and messaged the mods. I honestly had no idea, and feel pretty stupid about the whole ordeal. Feel free to mercilessly mock me for getting completely owned by my wife! Turns out it actually was his account, supposedly, and Allen claims that his wife went into his account behind his back, then had to go back to Reddit to tell them that the rallies were fine. But then when the rally ended up on r/all, Allen claimed publicly that the final was interesting until the r/LoL mods showed up. So I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing, and I seriously hope it was a huge practical joke. I can at least respect that. But if that story is legit and he actually went and used his own wife for damage control (side note: his wife did end up posting in the Board 8 topic once the contest was basically over), I'd have to question a few things. I've been married nearly 10 years, and in that time I've learned that when a decision happens in a household or a marriage, you either stand by it or you don't, with conviction. No waffing. It's the correct and manly thing to do, and no amount of forced feminism or pretending women should be the only ones in charge in our culture is going to change that. You don't trot your wife out there for damage control like Nixon did with his ungodly dumb Checkers speech. You explain what happened like a man and move on. It's why I'm hoping the entire thing was a practical joke, because the alternative is our site being run by an insecure wuss who doesn't answer for things. I actually lean toward the practical joke angle, because Allen was legitimately upset by how things turned out this contest, and I'm sure some legal and ethical things came up regarding the rallies. He made a big post about it in his contest wrapup, which I have but I'm saving it for the conclusion piece. But needless to say, there wasn't the usual contest celebration once things ended, not even a congrats to the winners or a poll asking people what they thought of things. Just a return to the status quo like nothing had even happened at all. As for the actual match, there isn't much to say about it since rallies determined the entire outcome. Samus fell by the wayside early when it became clear that this was Snake vs Draven, and those two stayed within 1000 votes for about 5 hours. Then Draven went on a tear to get his lead up to 3100, before Snake managed to recover and make a massive push in the same way that Link did, with help from David Hayter himself rallying for Snake on Twitter. He cut the lead all the way down to 578, and coincidentally enough things fell apart for Snake at about the same time they fell apart for Link. But rather than a DDoS attack, Draven simply had a rally thread on r/all. That 578 vote lead turned into a 7752 vote lead in an hour, and that was all she wrote for the match en route to Draven winning by 24371 votes. That's probably a record for the biggest vote swing ever, though I can't be bothered to look it up. Draven's 73396 votes, regardless of how you feel about how he got them, is a really impressive total. It would actually be faster to list finals performances that were better. Series Contest - Zelda 80825, Final Fantasy 77702 That's it. The entire list. Nothing else even comes close, unless you want to count the bonus poll of Ocarina of Time vs FF7 after the second games contest ended. Draven basically took strength from the early 2000s and plopped it right into the modern era of terrible GameFAQs vote totals, and nothing Allen says can make anyone who follows these things agree that this site or its contests aren't on the downswing as a result. GameFAQs clearly didn't bother doing enough to keep up with more modern web sites, which is why our vote totals get lower and lower with each new passing contest and rallies mean that much more every year. It all culminated in a little-known character from a free MOBA snowballing out of control once he got his first double kill. ## Zen's (Late) Analysis LeonhartFour posted... *in the finals David Hayter tweeted and insulted Draven multiple times and it actually helped Snake start to make a comeback then Draven fans got buttfurious and buried the rest of the match but at least we had that one cool moment also Jennifer Hale tweeted for Samus at one point too but it didn't really matter because she finished a distant third* You know this is barebones but this is also basically the writeup I would write, just with more purple prose thrown in. Before this match, people still thought Snake might win. I have no idea how they arrived to that conclusion based on the copious evidence that Draven would run away with this easily. Perhaps if Samus had been swapped out for another joke proxy (like L-Block) Snake could have done better but there was no way he was winning at this point. There was a ton of whining, and, of course, this being the finals, the amount of BUTTDEVESTATED MAX: BUTTFURIOUS ROAD comments peppering the boards basically made any serious talk impossible. I believe I was in Canada on vacation when this match happened and when I did log in at the end of the day I wasn't surprised by what I saw. The pillaging of our board went well into the night. It kinda sucked. I wasn't following the "Allen's Wife" drama at the time because of my limited internet access, but I managed to download the last episode of The Show on the train ride back and listened to it all in disbelief. Said Allen: *So I'm reading through the big topic about me explaining myself and wondering what the hell all this is about. So I go over to Reddit and my account and lo and behold, I see that I actually did post those messages. After the initial WTF!? reaction, I finally figure out what happened. My wife loves Solid Snake. He's her favorite character in gaming. She also knew how irritated I was with this whole Draven thing, and worst of all, she knows all my passwords. Thus, her devious plot unfolded. She logged into my Reddit account posing as me and messaged the mods. I honestly had no idea, and feel pretty stupid about the whole ordeal. Feel free to mercilessly mock me for getting completely owned by my wife!* Allen really types like an old man sometimes, but I've chatted with him on AIM before and he's actually more laid back when he's not on GameFAQS. The "owned by my wife" comment might as well have said "pwned" instead for how "fellow kids" it comes off. Where do I stand with the "Allen's Wife" excuse? It reminds me of one of those Yu-Gi-Oh cards invented by the show where Yugi brings it out and it has crappy artwork done by an anime artist and it has a really specific bullshit effect that only applies to the weird situation Yugi is currently in. [Like that](https://imgtc.com/i/xGJ86fH.png), just imagine it says "My Wife Did It" instead. Actually fuck it, [here.](https://imgtc.com/i/7UmdvvY.jpg) That's basically how this all panned out. Snake never had a chance, there was drama surrounding Allen's wife, and to this day we still talk about the time when reddit ran a train on us. The only thing I want to briefly touch on are the long time Board 8ers who flipped to reddit's side and supported Draven. I can't remember specific names, but there was a lot of bickering at the time. Is there anyone reading this that voted Draven over Snake that wants to explain why they did it? This is a judgment free zone. Well, except for [him](https://imgtc.com/i/yrgR8P0.png), I guess. ps great votals here, some of the best ever iirc, top 3 maybe? --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Solid Snake 2013 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Solid Snake 2013 (revid 82204)_ ## Results **Bonus** Sunday, September 15th, 2013 ## Ulti's Analysis This poll was never really in doubt for Link despite all the cuts Snake made along the way, though it was Allen's way of giving a pittance poll to GameFAQs after clearly siding with Reddit for the entire contest. Granted Reddit didn't really see it that way and thought it was just GameFAQs needing to see Link win something to have any closure, but those people aren't exactly known for reading comprehension. Most people who followed this contest wanted Link to lose, including a lot of people who didn't care much for the rallying. Reddit's attitude was the issue. Regardless, this match did prove one thing: if you run a poll with Link, Solid Snake and Samus (or Mario) as the three entrants, Solid Snake wins. I'm also of a mindset that Link did actually get a revenge boost in this poll after what happened with Draven, and that Snake could probably challenge Link one on one these days under more normal conditions. Not that this contest was anything closely resembling normal. ## Backstory What wasn't mentioned in this write-up is that this bonus match was originally scheduled to be Link vs. Draven (through a series of polls that I ran on Board 8), but Allen allowed Board 8 to vote for several alternative bonus match ideas after an r/LoL mod stickied a new rally topic following all of the attempts to sabotage the Draven rallies. When this mod-endorsed rally allowed Draven to put Snake away for good, that was when Allen showed up to let Board 8 vote on the bonus match. Reddit actually attempted to sabotage the Board 8 only poll that Allen put up in order to get a Link vs. Draven match, but Allen finally put a stop to that by closing the poll and choosing Link vs. Snake as the official bonus match. -Luster Soldier ## Zen's (Late) Analysis The only thing super interesting about this match is that originally it was scheduled to be Link vs Draven but reddit set up a rally for Draven because they are scumbags and can't even let us have a bonus. So instead Allen put up a poll for a replacement, but reddit also rallied for Link vs Draven in that poll because they are scumbags and can't even let us have a poll for a bonus. Allen did the right thing and gave us Link vs Snake, which may seem silly for people who weren't here in the 2013 season, but at the time Snake \> Link was the "cool" upset pick everyone was pushing. I will actually admit there was potential for it, but Link was just too strong and probably will be too strong forever. The dude is just a vote magnet, and now with Breath of the Wild beneath his wings he will most likely dominate the 2018 season unless there is some major structural change or gimmick introduced. Still, Snake performed admirably here, and if he were still getting games regularly he might stay near Link's level even post-BotW, but unless my prediction comes true and the Martyr Factor plays a role in his strength, we will probably never see Snake come this close ever again. I really don't have much else to say about the bonus matches, they were super vanilla. Hopefully Luster has the other potential matches written down somewhere. Thanks for contributing to this thread, everyone. It's good to see all of us so passionate after such a long drought (Best Year doesn't count). I want to see every one of you on the leaderboards this year! \<33 # Best Game Ever (2015) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 131 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Fall 2015 Contest _source: Fall 2015 Contest (revid 88288)_
Fall 2015 Contest

Announced:

Started:

November 5, 2015

Ended:

December 15, 2015

Winner:

Winner: Undertale Runner-up: Ocarina of Time

Contest Winner:

Boge - 349 points

Notable matches:

Mass Effect > SMG2, DKC2 > Xenoblade,

Pokémon RBY > SMB3, Majora > Super Metroid,

Melee > Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG > MGS3, All Undertale matches
**Fall 2015 Contest** **Fall 2015 Contest** was the third **Best. Game. Ever.** tournament held on [GameFAQs](http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/GameFAQs). The contest was first announced in spring by SBAllen after cancelling the **Worst. Character. Ever.** contest that supposed to run in the summer that same year. Much to the delight of Board 8, there would be no divisions by era this time around, and all matches were 1v1 and lasted for 24 hours. For the first time, multiple matches were held at the same time. Four matches were held a day in Rounds 1 and 2, two in rounds 3-5, and finally 1 match a day for the semi finals and final match. ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis So two years after the fallout of Draven made us seriously question if we'd ever get contests again, the announcement came that we were getting Best Game Ever 3. The overwhelming response to Allen's topic was to get a fair 128 game 1v1 bracket, with no divisions by era and no BS. The following days saw Allen make a bunch of math topics to spoil the format, which would end up being... a fair 128 game 1v1 contest! I can't really overstate how cool this was. Contest fans have wanted this format for 10+ years, and it really looked like we would never see it. Then vote totals fell off the map year after year, and the concern was such a contest would absolutely suck even if we did get it. On top of that, the contest would end up being 4 matches per day for two rounds, then two matches per day until the semifinals. A lot of people didn't like this idea, myself included, because the fear was we would see low vote totals and have too many matches decided by collateral damage. The example everyone will jump to is that Mario 3 might have beaten Pokemon without the Undertale rally, though one could argue Pokemon would have won that one no matter what. In the end, the fears about the format weren't warranted and we ended up having a DAMN good contest. Snubs was a huge theme of the pre-contest chatter, and there were a LOT of snubs due to Allen's weird contest prerequisites. Notable snubs: Sonic 3 & Knuckles (the guru nomination), Mario 1, Zelda 1, Link's Awakening, Final Fantasy 1, Mega Man 2, Street Fighter 2, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, League of Legends, Star Fox 64, God of War, and I'm sure others I've missed. ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis First and foremost, let's get Allen's data dump out there for archive purposes: Allen: "Howdy all. I've been watching b8 over the contest and time and time again, I see people talking about vote stuffing, how things can't possibly be as they seem, and so on. I'd like to set the record straight and discuss these rallies. I'll show what they are, explain what they aren't, and hopefully that will put an end to it. First, let's look at the referral traffic per match for this contest: You can easily pick out the Undertale matches and can see the effect that the rallies had on both those matches and the surrounding ones. The reddit traffic is generally constant during the contest. It goes up during rallies of course, but not nearly as significantly as other sources. You can see that the Tumblr and Twitter traffic massively spikes during these rallies. Outside of the UT matches, those sources are very small. You can also see that FB became a pretty big rally player near the end once people started reaching out to other sources for rallying. The next 4 referral sources (SA, 4chan, Steam, Smashboards) added just a few sprinkles on top. Let's just look at the most recent match of SSBM v UT. Here are the top four ISPs (making up over 35% of the total vote) and how they voted: Comcast: 48.87% / 51.13% Time Warner: 48.96% / 51.04% AT&T: 46.30% / 53.70% Verizon: 49.41% / 50.59% You can see that these results are all pretty close to the final result. Undertale simply got more votes. It wasn't vote stuffing or any conspiracy, it was actual people coming to the site and voting. Let's actually look into that further. Now, to vote in the contest, we require multiple things: A minimum of two pageviews from a JavaScript-enabled browser that accepts and sends back cookies. This blocks the most pedestrian of vote stuffing attempts, as well as ensures that people can't be tricked into voting in the polls by visiting a link off-site. To counteract bots and people using multiple devices from one location, we restrict votes to one per IP address for logged-out users, and carefully scrutinize multiple votes for logged-in users. For the Melee/UT battle, multiple votes from the same IP were 709 / 641 in favor of Melee, so that's not really an issue. Now, a few people have mentioned that it's "easy" to stuff votes by simply using different devices (or clearing your cookies) and changing your IP address, even by driving around and using multiple open wi-fi signals to vote. Well, of course a few people are going do that, just because they can, and it's impossible to tell the difference between one person using two devices in two locations and two people doing it. But, how many votes can one person could actually get into the system doing this? And remember, by stuffing like this, you'd end up creating clusters of votes from a single area or a narrow range of IP addresses, which are easy to spot (and happens naturally all the time, thanks to cell phone companies re-using narrow blocks of IP addresses, typically evening out for both battlers). So, just in case, if we take all of the potential vote "clusters" (more than 10 votes from a single block of 255 neighboring IP addresses) and add them up... it's 2414 / 1897 for Melee. Finally, just for laughs, on Friday we had one last thought: What if there's some rogue botnet that's forging votes through thousands of compromised home computers? So, we set up one last gasp attempt to catch this phantom vote-stuffer, throwing in an additional hash into the voting script right in the middle of an Undertale rally that would have immediately exposed any voters not actually using a live web browser. And it didn't catch a thing. Well, it did catch one registered user (who we refuse to give any additional publicity to) that apparently tries to get the very first vote each day via curl script. So, from a technical perspective, there's nothing suspicious about the incoming votes, and definitely nothing favoring one side over the other. Real vote stuffing (where a small number of people vote a large number of times) leaves clues and signs, and there aren't any. We've chased down every lead, and explored every possibility. We didn't believe Undertale's fanbase was capable of this at first either, and nobody else saw this coming but the 124 people who picked it to win the contest (making it the 17th most popular pick). And remember, it's all just a big popularity contest, and we all know that the actual Best. Game. Ever. is Final Fantasy IV. Tomorrow will be a fun day of Grudge Matches, so hopefully you'll all enjoy that. During the contest, we are pretty tight-lipped about these types of things because we don't want people looking for patterns and trying to find weaknesses. With the contest basically over at this point, there's no concern, since the methodology changes (and improves) from year to year." Nanis: "Can you tell us how Undertale matches go for registered - unregistered users? Can be funny if it's something like 80-20 against Undertale" Allen: "Sure, why not. It should be a surprise to no one that UT would lose every time if it's just logged in users. But a contest with only logged in users would be predictable and boring. Undertale vs. Mass Effect 3 - 29.49% 70.51% Fallout 3 vs. Undertale - 75.67% 24.33% Undertale vs. Super Mario World - 19.28% 80.72% Pokemon Red/Blue vs. Undertale - 76.30% 23.70% Undertale vs. Super Mario 64 - 26.21% 73.79% Smash Bros. Melee vs. Undertale - 69.59% 30.41% Undertale vs. Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 33.44% 66.56% SSBM would have lost to CT and FFVII. Smash Bros. Melee vs. Portal: 70.37% / 29.63% Smash Bros. Melee vs. Pokemon Gold/Silver: 57.72% / 42.28% Smash Bros. Melee vs. Kingdom Hearts II: 59.51% / 40.49% Chrono Trigger vs. Smash Bros. Melee: 63.28% / 36.72% Smash Bros. Melee vs. Final Fantasy VII: 42.92% / 57.08%" Allen, in response to some of Lopen's ridiculous conspiracy theories: "Lopen, let's get real specific (and a little privacy-invading) for just one second. For the city of (city where you live), using (ISP you are connecting on) the Melee/UT votes were 195 to 245 for Undertale. That's right. Those Undertale voters? They're all around you, right now. They live. And they are watching you." Contest favorites, aka the top 20 games that people picked to win the entire contest in their bracket: 1: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 4145 2: Final Fantasy VII - 1831 3: Chrono Trigger - 703 4: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - 429 5: Grand Theft Auto V - 319 6: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 281 7: The Last of Us - 251 8: Super Smash Bros. Melee - 239 9: Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green Version - 230 10: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 227 11: Minecraft - 205 12: Super Mario Bros. 3 - 203 13: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - 203 14: Dark Souls - 171 15: Final Fantasy VI - 158 16: Super Mario 64 - 125 17: Undertale - 124 18: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 122 19: World of Warcraft - 121 20: Half-Life 2 - 104 I'm pretty sure I covered my thoughts on this contest and rallies in general during several writeups, so I'll skip right to the fun stuff. Allen's grade this contest is a solid A. The only thing stopping me from an A+ is changing formats halfway through. Winning a division is worth having a poll to yourself, and letting the tournament quarterfinal be as originally intended would have meant two extra days for the contest. This is frankly unacceptable to do for several reasons, the biggest of which being that people might pick winners based on who the poll is shared with. The other, like I said, is that winning a division needs to be treated with the utmost respect. That being said, this format is the best idea these contests have had since they were first thought up. It needs to stick around, with 4 matches per day for two rounds, two matches per day for two rounds, then 1 match per day for the quarterfinals, semifinals, and final. If this causes neat rallies and more random results in the future, good. This format is the best one we've had to date, and the whole 12 hour day/night thing has run its course. 24 hour polls are the way to go, and 4 polls per day for 2 rounds lets you blast through the boring matches, then gradually give the more important matches their own time. Most people seem to agree, which I'm happy with. That, along with rallies making contests fun, is my big takeaway from this contest season. People look forward to my contest ranking every season for whatever reason, and here it is: Fall 2015 (Games) Fall 2010 (GotD) Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2013 (Characters) Winter 2010 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2005 (Characters) Spring 2009 (Games 4-way) Summer 2007 (4-way Characters) Summer 2006 (Female Bracket) Spring 2006 (Series) Summer 2008 (Characters 4-way) Summer 2004 (Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) Fall 2011 (2v2 Characters) It's true (I also bumped Summer 2003 down a little). Best contest we've ever had, best winner we've ever had, most fun I've ever had writing a PCA, and best format we've ever had. This contest was really good, especially with the format being so neat. If nothing else, I hope Allen realizes how good an idea multiple polls per day for 24 hours really is. I know we were all worried about wildly different vote totals and such, but it clearly worked out in the end. Someone asked if I enjoyed winning 2004 or cheering for Undertale more. My honest answer is Undertale. You guys have to remember that I'd been very jaded with video games for a very long time. I liked a lot of games, don't get me wrong, but I didn't love them. Undertale got me to love gaming again, and did a lot to help me get my life on a positive track. You can call that lame if you want, I don't mind, but I'm not alone in feeling that way. Undertale's community is one of the best I've ever been a part of, and cheering it on this contest will always be one of my favorite gaming memories. It was a neat thing to be a part of, and it was especially neat relearning what loving video games is like. I was really and truly worried that Brawl murdered gaming for me, but it turned out not to be a permanent thing. I don't think you guys really understand how huge that is. Game of the Decade is my \#2 contest ever entirely because Brawl lost. Fuck Brawl. Last, but not least... The Ultimate Loser™! Bayonetta 2! Undertale \> Ocarina \> Super Mario RPG \> Metal Gear Solid 3 \> Metal Gear Solid \> Shadow of the Colossus \> Red Dead Redemption \> Bayonetta 2. Thanks as always and see you next time! ## Ctes' Pre-Contest Analysis Allen deserves tons of credit for the way he set things up and hyped us contest regulars. It was easy to guess what his polls meant, but the Four Four Two One One One One topic made us discuss. It was easy to come to the conclusion that it must mean several matches a day and we knew they'd all run 24 hours. The discussion was about how matches running at the same time would affect each other. We'll get back to that during this analysis. In any case, it was a great idea to have a 128 game bracket 1v1 that didn't take forever. Even better was his hint topics about the bracket. We've asked about a 1v1 games contest without divisions by era in forever and we finally had it. He put out some good hints for us to discuss and gave more hints as we asked. A really fun way to leak the bracket slightly before putting it up. In general, the bracket is really well constructed. We'll talk much more about that as we go through round 1. For now I'll focus a bit on what didn't make it. Allen made a system heavily favoring new games, which is a bit of a shame considering this is called Best Game *Ever*. I don't mind a majority being new games, but there some unfortunate snubs. First we have the exclusion of Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. The former is especially weird to exclude from a contest like this. It's not the best thing there ever was, but considering its legacy, it deserves a spot for sure. It even was in the top 100 nominations, but having no metacritic reviews or whatever screwed it over I guess, which I really darn unfair! Look at some of the low seeds and it's just weird how they were chosen above SMB. I complained about this back then and was usually met with responses like “do you really need yet another Mario game?” And no, I don't. The amount is fine all things considered, but I'd love to remove one of the others in favor of SMB. How many Mario games there are in the bracket actually doesn't matter here, it's all about this one game. But enough about that! There are a few more notable snubs. Brawl is one. I know Smash 4 pretty much replaced it, but it feels weird not having a finalist from the previous contest making the bracket. I was certain it would too, but I guess it lacked the nominations. Even if no one played it, I think it would be interesting to see what its strength would be now. Another is A Link Between Worlds. After that 2013 GotY match with TLoU, a good bunch of people wanted to see it in a contest, but it just wasn't here. Most notably is probably the League of Legends exclusion. We'll probably never know for certain whether or not Allen created the system he did solely to rule out LoL, but I don't really think that's the only he had in mind when making it at least. ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
Division I Chrono Trigger Smash Bros. Melee Smash Bros. Melee Final Fantasy VII Smash Bros. Melee Undertale **UNDERTALE** Zelda: OoT
\(1\) Chrono Trigger (16) Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal Chrono Trigger Dragon Quest VIII Chrono Trigger Final Fantasy X
\(8\) Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (9) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
\(5\) Batman: Arkham City (12) Mega Man X Mega Man X Final Fantasy X
\(4\) Final Fantasy X (13) Half-Life
\(3\) Super Smash Bros. Melee (14) Portal Smash Bros. Melee Pokemon G/S Smash Bros. Melee Kingdom Hearts II
\(6\) Pokémon Gold/Silver (11) The World Ends With You
\(7\) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (10) Kingdom Hearts II Kingdom Hearts II The Last of Us
\(2\) The Last of Us (15) Halo 3
Division II Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy VII
\(1\) Final Fantasy VI (16) Assassin's Creed II Final Fantasy VI Paper Mario: TYD Final Fantasy VI Zelda: The Wind Waker
\(8\) Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (9) Tales of Symphonia
\(5\) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (12) Xenogears KOTOR Wind Waker
\(4\) The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (13) Pokémon X/Y
\(3\) Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (14) Planescape: Torment Smash Bros. Wii U Mass Effect SSB4 Final Fantasy VII
\(6\) Super Mario Galaxy 2 (11) Mass Effect
\(7\) Minecraft (10) Halo: Combat Evolved Halo Final Fantasy VII
\(2\) Final Fantasy VII (15) Journey
Division III Pokémon R/B Undertale Undertale Super Mario 64
\(1\) Super Mario Bros. 3 (16) Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings Super Mario Bros. 3 Pokémon R/B Pokémon R/B Sonic the Hedgehog 2
\(8\) Pokémon Red/Blue (9) Tetris
\(5\) Portal 2 (12) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Uncharted 2
\(4\) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (13) The Walking Dead
\(3\) Fallout 3 (14) Life is Strange Fallout 3 Undertale Undertale Super Mario World
\(6\) Undertale (11) Mass Effect 3
\(7\) Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (10) Final Fantasy VIII Final Fantasy VIII Super Mario World
\(2\) Super Mario World (15) Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Division IV Skyrim Super Mario 64
\(1\) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (16) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Skyrim GoldenEye Skyrim Metroid Prime
\(8\) GoldenEye 007 (9) Diablo II
\(5\) Metroid Prime (12) The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Metroid Prime Half-Life 2
\(4\) Half-Life 2 (13) Demon's Souls
\(3\) Super Mario 64 (14) Mario Kart 8 Super Mario 64 Final Fantasy Tactics Super Mario 64 Zelda: Twilight Princess
\(6\) Final Fantasy Tactics (11) Resident Evil 2
\(7\) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (10) Skies of Arcadia Zelda: Twilight Princess Persona 4
\(2\) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (15) Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Division V Zelda: OoT SOTN Zelda: OoT Zelda: LttP Zelda: Oot Super Mario RPG
\(1\) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (16) Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Zelda: OoT Suikoden II Zelda: OoT Final Fantasy IX
\(8\) Suikoden II (9) Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
\(5\) Okami (12) Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Okami Final Fantasy IX
\(4\) Final Fantasy IX (13) Kingdom Hearts
\(3\) Xenoblade Chronicles (14) Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest DKC 2 Fire Emblem DKC 2 SOTN
\(6\) Fire Emblem Awakening (11) Super Mario Maker
\(7\) Banjo-Kazooie (10) Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Banjo-Kazooie SOTN
\(2\) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (15) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations
Division VI Zelda: LttP Zelda: Majora's Mask
\(1\) The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (16) Cave Story Zelda: LttP Final Fantasy IV Zelda: LttP Dark Souls
\(8\) Deus Ex (9) Final Fantasy IV
\(5\) Metal Gear Solid V (12) Perfect Dark Metal Gear Solid V Dark Souls
\(4\) Dark Souls (13) Sid Meier's Civilization V
\(3\) Super Metroid (14) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Super Metroid Super Mario Galaxy Super Metroid Zelda: Majora's Mask
\(6\) Super Mario Galaxy (11) Dragon Age: Origins
\(7\) Bloodborne (10) Final Fantasy XII Final Fantasy XII Majora's Mask
\(2\) The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (15) Valkyria Chronicles
Division VII Super Mario RPG Resident Evil 4 Super Mario RPG Metal Gear Solid 3
\(1\) Grand Theft Auto V (16) Shenmue Grand Theft Auto V Super Mario RPG Super Mario RPG Chrono Cross
\(8\) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (9) Super Mario RPG
\(5\) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (12) Shovel Knight GTA: San Andreas Chrono Cross
\(4\) World of Warcraft (13) Chrono Cross
\(3\) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (14) The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth The Witcher 3 Metal Gear Solid 2 Metal Gear Solid 2 Resident Evil 4
\(6\) Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (11) Resident Evil
\(7\) Fallout: New Vegas (10) BioShock Infinite Fallout: New Vegas Resident Evil 4
\(2\) Resident Evil 4 (15) Paper Mario
Division VIII Metal Gear Solid Metal Gear Solid 3
\(1\) Metal Gear Solid (16) Splatoon Metal Gear Solid EarthBound Metal Gear Solid SotC
\(8\) EarthBound (9) Borderlands 2
\(5\) Shadow of the Colossus (12) Team Fortress 2 Shadow of the Colossus Red Dead Redemption
\(4\) Red Dead Redemption (13) Bayonetta 2
\(3\) Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (14) Mother 3 Metal Gear Solid 3 BioShock Metal Gear Solid 3 Mass Effect 2
\(6\) BioShock (11) Silent Hill 2
\(7\) StarCraft (10) Destiny StarCraft Mass Effect 2
\(2\) Mass Effect 2 (15) Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
## See Also - [2015 Bracket](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/bge20_vote) - [Final 2015 Standings & Stats](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/bge20_stats) - Board 8's 2015 Nominations --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (16)Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal 2015 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (16)Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal 2015 (revid 81334)_ | | | |-----|-----| ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 5th, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 5, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 76.73% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 92.68% This spot is usually reserved for talking about a Nintendo \#1 overall seed dominating some schlub, but this year was a little different thanks to WhiskeyNick. After Draven happened, Nick realized that the rules of these contests had changed and that rallies would be the predominant factor in winning and losing. His favorite game is Chrono Trigger (which is a fine choice, Nick), so he figured why not fight fire with fire? He created a Facebook group for the game, which currently has about 28000 members on it. With their help, Chrono Trigger got the \#1 overall seed and Nick gave a very fair warning that it would be very strong this year. The guru ignored him and favored Final Fantasy X anyway, but we'll get to that in due time. We were immediately shown that Chrono Trigger this contest would be a complete steamroller. Old x-stats are not reliable, but the Oracle picked Chrono Trigger in this match with about 75% or so. Overshooting that by 10% is no joke, and even worse is that it started the poll close to 90% and didn't really fall down that much. This was to be the first example of many that the 90s era games were going to completely embarrass everything else in a fair bracket, and this was also to be the first example of many that Chrono Trigger was not. fucking. around. A lot of FFX supporters tried writing this off as R&C perhaps being mega-fodder, but really the writing was on the wall from day one. Chrono Trigger's downward spiral, at least in terms of game strength, is vastly exaggerated. GameFAQs is basically Chrono Trigger's home base. Oh, and play Ratchet & Clank. Those games are really good and aren't deserving of "hey I can only get 5500 votes" contest infamy. ## Ctes's Analysis I became very happy when I learned that Chrono Trigger was the overall \#1 seed. I know it topped THE LIST last year, but it's still nice to see that carry over to the contests. In general, I think said list matters little to nothing when it comes to contests strength, but when it comes to nominations on the other hand, it matters a ton, so I guess its natural that it was the most nominated game. Allen hinted it when he said it wouldn't be a Zelda or Final Fantasy game. RBY was considered (which looks stupid when we saw its \#8 seed), but it makes sense for it to be a game that isn't part of a series. Other fanbases are likely to split their nominations more, but that's not an issue for Chrono Trigger. When the matches rolled, this obviously weren't the one that initially had the most focus, but goddamn did Chrono Trigger ever impress. After looking a lot worse in 2009 than 2004, a bunch of people expected it to have fallen ever more, but that was not what we saw here. Chrono Trigger had entered some god mode. It was above 87% at the freeze and it was so crazy to see it gain a noticeable amount of percentage next update. Naturally, it didn't keep that up and dropped a little bit before stabilizing, but the performance was really impressive. Its inevitable match with Final Fantasy X was heavily debated pre-contest with FFX actually being the guru favorite, but Chrono Trigger came out of round 1 looking as a clear favorite in everyone's eyes. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6051&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King vs (9)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 2015 _source: (8)Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King vs (9)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 2015 (revid 81335)_ | | | |-----|-----| ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 5th, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 5, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King - 46.00% 13 for - 98 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King - 45.85% For whatever reason, the second match of these contests is completely cursed for Board 8. This year, Dragon Quest 8 is the game that got to bite everyone during the second match, and at this point the right play with these is to just find Board 8's popular opinion on them and just go the opposite way unless it's an ungodly obvious match. Check this list out. Weird stuff in bold. Summer 2002 - Spyro vs Morrigan. Everyone picks Spyro, because people have actually heard of Spyro. Morrigan wins, and everyone credits [the match picture](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/sc2k2/sum02b02.jpg). The Jug Factor is born. Summer 2003 - Pikachu vs Fox. Everyone picked Fox because they had a common opponent (Cloud) the year before. No contest. Spring 2004 - Metroid vs Pac-Man. People picked Metroid because they treated games the same as charcaters. Again, no contest. Summer 2004 - Ganondorf vs Alucard. Debated match for some reason, but by now everyone knew about x-stats and picked Ganondorf. Again, no contest. Of course now that x-stats were a thing, the second match would start screwing with people, though one could consider this a match that a lot of people debated and got wrong. Spring 2005 - Sigma vs Andross. Other than Ridley/Diablo, this was the most heavily debated round 1 match and a LOT of people picked Andross. We know the end result. Sigma destroyed. Summer 2005 - Ness vs CJ, shortly after San Andreas came out. Most people picked CJ, figuring the insane buzz around that game would lead to a very easy win. Ness won with ease, spawning the RacistFAQs fad that lives on to this day (and is unfortunately probably true on some level). Spring 2006 - Suikoden vs Mega Man X in the series contest. No debate because it was obvious MMX would win. Summer 2006 - Ada Wong vs Jade was obvious. Moving on. Summer 2007 - Arthas/Diablo/KOS-MOS/Mega Man. People had no idea what LFF in 4ways was, at least not to this degree, and a lot of people picked Diablo to get second place. The guru pick was Mega Man \> KOS-MOS, but enough people picked Diablo to where this gets "DAMN SECOND MATCH" honors. Summer 2008 - Link/Luke/Shadow/Zidane. Everyone and their mother picked Shadow to get second place. This was before people realized Sonic was an honorary Nintendo franchise on our site, similar to Pac-Man. Zidane cruised to second. Summer 2009 - Mega Man 2/Pac-Man/Pong/Oregon Trail. Mega Man \> Pac-Man was the favorite, but a ton of people got scared into picking Oregon Trail because of all the joke trends in the prior contests. Winter 2010 - Alucard vs Magus. If this were held in 2004 everyone would have picked Magus and some people still did. This was HIGHLY debated for whatever reason, even though Alucard cruised. Game of the Decade - Rock Band vs Deus Ex. Rock Band is the overwhelming favorite, then Deus Ex pulls the upset but "not by enough" in one of Board 8's worst days ever. The board was unreadable. Rivalry Rumble - Who fucking cares? (it was Ike/Black Knight beating Conker/Poo) Summer 2013 - Raiden/Waluigi/Alan Wake. Easy Raiden win, though people feared a joke run by Waluigi. So yeah, long list of second match oddities and this year was no different. I myself picked DQ8 initially, then looked at things and realized Persona 3 had a buzz on this site, while Dragon Quest has never mattered (sorry Chris, it's true). Even looking at past polls, both games have been garbage-level, but Persona always showed something. Other people, including casuals filling out brackets, reached the same conclusion, and picked Persona 3. they figured fodder with a fanbase beats fodder that no one ever talks about. Then the match started. Persona 3 took an early lead, likely from bracket votes, but then it became very close almost immediately. Right when this happened, a lot of people knew what was coming because we've all seen the second match screw us time and time again. When DQ8 took the lead 20 minutes in, there was no illusion about Persona 3 doing anything even though the poll stayed close for awhile. We all knew. In fairness this was in question for a couple hours, but DQ8 slowly gained overnight, then buried the poll once the day vote hit. The best explanation I have, outside of Persona 3 having a very vocal yet very minor minority, is that the title "Best Game Ever" on this contest really meant something to people. Dragon Quest is gaming royalty as a series. Persona is just another run-of-the-mill JRPG series, and sorry Persona fans but you know it's the truth. It's obvious that no one outside of very dedicated JRPG fans know or care what Persona even is. That's why Dragon Quest won. Not that Dragon Quest would end up anything but fodder, as Chrono Trigger would so thoroughly remind everyone in round 2. ## Ctes's Analysis Our first debated match of the contest! Already from day 1 it was clear how happy we should be with having several matches a day for the early rounds. Sure, Chrono Trigger exceeded expectations, but it's not like the match was ever in any doubt of being a blowout, so instead of having to wait 24 hours for something else, we can just focus our eyes on better matches.  Anyway, the second match has a history of screwing board 8 over and this was no exception. Persona 3 was the clear favorite here and we do look really stupid for siding with it so much. It manages to win the board vote, probably partly because of bracket votes, but it was clear it wouldn't last. It took Dragon Quest very few updates to take the lead and it never really looked back. In my Last Man Standing contest, a vast majority of the participants were eliminated right here on the first day because of this match. That's how favored Persona 3 was. People actually felt quite safe about it. I guess people just expected it to be closer to Persona 4 than it is, but nope. Persona 4 is not exactly anything special in these things, but it's in a completely different league. That was the breakthrough game for the series. Ironically, this match lines up perfectly with the GotD x-stats, but I didn't see anyone bring that up until the match was rolling. I guess most users just focused their eyes on matches that would end up being worth more than one point! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6052&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Batman: Arkham City vs (12)Mega Man X 2015 _source: (5)Batman: Arkham City vs (12)Mega Man X 2015 (revid 81336)_ | | | |-----|-----| ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 5th, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 5, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man X - 53.03% 87 for - 24 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man X - 50.66% The 12 \> 5 upset lives! We got two of them this contest, one of which on the very first day. Also, can we put to rest this idea that Batman could win a contest if we included licensed characters? I mean I guess a super rally could work, but every time a games contest happens these licensed games never do anything. Cue the latest example. Mega Man X was always going to win this match, that was not in doubt, but when Batman's lone accomplishment here is bleeding a minuscule amount of percentage it might be time to reconsider licensed characters' ability to godmode a contest. I'll believe it when I see it, though I'm sure it won't stop people from picking Batman, Spiderman, Superman and the like. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was also heavily debated pre-contest. There were people feeling completely safe on both sides. Unlike the last one, the cookie cutter bracket and I were correct here. But considering how debated it was, it sure didn't end up being close. That's pretty rarely the case. Mega Man X has contest history and it isn't exactly great. His character had done well, but characters =/= games. His game and series never escaped round 1 even. People expected more of Batman. The games are great and having Batman alone in the title should be enough in some people's eyes, but it wasn't. We have proof right here that having a big name in title means absolutely nothing, but it didn't really become clear until the Mario Maker match.  Batman doesn't end up looking too bad though, it's a low mid-carder, but not exactly fodder. Mega Man X was just a lot stronger than we expected. It looked legit here, but it didn't become clear until next round just how strong it was. It could make quite the run if placed in the last quarter of the bracket. Chrono Trigger was destroying while this match was on, but this is the real first hint we got towards it being the year of SNES. Although we hadn't quite pieced that together yet. What was however clear, was that in terms of old vs. new, old should always be the favorite. That was my own reason for picking MMX too really. Quoting yoblazer from the first episode of The Show: “in a debatable match of new vs. old, always go with old”. Might not have been the exact words, but it's basically what he said, and he was right too. It started here and comes true about every time. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6053&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Final Fantasy X vs (13)Half-Life 2015 _source: (4)Final Fantasy X vs (13)Half-Life 2015 (revid 81339)_ | | | |-----|-----| ## Results **Round One** Thursday, November 5th, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 5, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 67.37% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 60.74% This match was never going to be a contest, and some would argue Half-Life deserved better. Personally I think Half-Life is an average game at best and is [ungodly overrated by the PC crowd](http://www.gamefaqs.com/PC/43362-half-life/reviews/147215). It's just not very good, and my mind is never being changed on this. So as a gaming fan level, watching Half-Life get its ass whipped by a much better game was nice. It was never close and the percentages never really moved, so what you're seeing here is really all there was to talk about. The bigger implication here was preparation for the Chrono Trigger match, and the seeds were definitely there right from round 1 that FFX was screwed. Chrono Trigger looked like a worldbeater against Ratchet, while according to the 2009 stats FFX underperformed by 5%. CT/FFX was frankly already decided, though there were some deniers. There was no denial after round 2, though. ## Ctes's Analysis Final Fantasy X would have to put up a very strong expectation exceeding performance to match Chrono Trigger's if it wanted to show us it had a chance in round 3 and it didn't. But not only did it not do that, it actually managed to disappoint. It actually looks a lot worse after we had it confirmed how much Half-Life had fallen. At this point, we might've expected it, but it wasn't clear until Half-Life 2 looked terrible later down the line. Already at this point, some ridiculous and unexpected shenanigans would have to happen for FFX to make the division finale. And to think that just a day earlier, it was the favorite to get there. On a personal basis, this match should sadden me. I absolutely love FFX, it's a fantastic game. I replayed it recently to platinum, although I got busy and didn't really got back. Half-Life can be fun to play, but the second one is vastly superior. Yet I wasn't sad, because it means good things for Chrono Trigger. Though I sat hours before bracket lockout and went back and fourth on their upcomming match, but decided FFX should have it with recently being released on new consoles and damn was that a mistake. But I realized this day I had a win/win situation. Either I got points or I saw my favorite game winning. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6054&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (14)Portal 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (14)Portal 2015 (revid 84421)_ | | | |-----|-----| ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 6th, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 6, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Melee - 64.22% 111 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Melee - 78.49% Portal deserved better :'( Seeing two of my favorites against each other this early is always painful, though it will happen sometimes. The match itself was nothing notable, though Melee's percentage bleed is impressive sometimes. This game is a godslayer during the power hour, then routinely drops. In this match it started at 75%, then dropped a bunch before recovering to nearly 68. This would have been relevant to make note of had the Chrono Trigger/Melee match been normal, but as we all know it would not end up being normal. This match lined up with the 2009 and Game of the Decade stats pretty well, and gave no real indication that Chrono Trigger would have annihilated Melee in a non-rally match. Speaking of rallies, I think it's fair to say Portal would have been in contention to win a contest had it come out and caught the "cake is a lie" craze during the modern era. Us Undertale fans are obviously very happy right now, but jobbing out as a 14 seed might be our future in due time. Rallied entities never last, and it's hard to imagine Portal not qualifying for that category. ## Ctes's Analysis When we saw this match, we thought it was a shame that Portal was pretty much wasted in the bracket. Both games made top 16 in Game of the Decade, but Portal never had a chance here. It could've won several matches if placed differently in the bracket though. That was what we thought at least, but Melee ended up winning this match by much more than expected. While no one thought this was close, Melee was not supposed to score a doubling. People saw no reason for a Melee decline, it was pretty obvious which of the two had changed since last contest. I still believe Portal could've done better if it had better bracket placement, but it's probably less of a waste than we initially thought. The 3 point match of Sonic 2 vs. Portal 2 was looking really good in Sonic's favor after these first two days. Mega Man X scoring 60% on Batman was one thing, as it made the older game the favorite, but Portal disappointing here was what made the Portal 2 supporters worried the most. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6055&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal vs (11)The World Ends with You 2015 _source: (6)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal vs (11)The World Ends with You 2015 (revid 84422)_ | | | |-----|-----| ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 6th, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 6, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Gold/Silver - 73.98% 111 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokemon Gold/Silver - 90.07% I played TWEWY not too long ago, and holy christ that game is trash. Like not even forgivable "we tried something new and it didn't work out" trash. Just straight-up, unadulterated fucking garbage. The only saving grace is there not being random battles, and thank god for that since this game has some of the worst music I've ever heard, so the less battle music I have to hear the better. Well, and the boss fights. Those were honestly really neat. The characters suck, The music sucks. The gameplay fucking SUCKS. The gimmick sucks. The plot sucks. The use of two screens sucks. Having to be a liberal trendy and convince this dumbass city to be liberal trendies so they fall into a greater plot of becoming liberal sheep at the hands of a corporate master is a cute referendum on American politics and all (I'm sure Shibuya isn't actually meant to convey this, but it's my PCA and I'm taking certain liberties because TWEWY is trash and if a political referendum is my lone form of entertainment from it than so be it), but I can read current events to know about that sort of thing. Playing a game as awful as TWEWY to do it? Puke. And the final plot twist was ungodly stupid and so easy to see coming. Just a massive vomit job by Square, and an example that they have no idea what they're doing anymore. Just writing all this makes me pissed off about the FF7 remake, because deep down I know it's going to suck. Even calling the enemies in TWEWY reapers is a disgrace. Leave the cool things to Mass Effect. On the other side, we had what I feel is the best Pokemon generation, and I know I'm not alone on that one. RBY is great and nostalgic and got me hyped for more. GSC lived up to that hype and filled the perfect sweet spot for the series. 251 is the perfect number of Pokemon to catch -- a lot, but nothing obnoxious like we have now. On top of that, it offered a lot more balance and fixed a lot of glitches. Psychics were finally killable! I'm hardly some Pokemon expert, but maybe someone like TRE or Chris will see this topic and be able to give a better explanation for why GSC is the best Pokemon game. Regardless, this poll was justice. TWEWY, you can eat your tripling and get the hell out of my contest. And yes for those new to this, I often rant about games themselves in these early blowout matches ## Ctes's Analysis Pokemon GSC had such a wasted spot in the bracket as well. No matter the result here, its match against Melee was not in doubt. I think it'd have to score close to 90% for anyone to consider it a threat to Melee and obviously it didn't. Not all fourpacks can be equally fun I guess. GSC might be a top 20 game on our site, but we got no real means to judge that this contest. What's interesting to note about it is that is had a higher seed than RBY had. This is the fan favorite, even if it's not close to RBY in strength, although we already knew that from 2004 when GSC was the sole Pokemon representative. It has come a long way since then for sure. TWEWY is one of those games that do terrible, but has a small dedicated fanbase that'll keep nominating it each time despite how it'll never come close to winning a match. There are so few games in the bracket that I wouldn't pick against TWEWY. The funny part about that match were when a few people from said small fanbase that apparently didn't expect this result complained on the board and gave Steiner and a few others some easy troll bait. But seriously, when a 6 seed has 90% of the brackets, you know that the other game probably shouldn't keep being in these contests. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6056&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (10)Kingdom Hearts II 2015 _source: (7)Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (10)Kingdom Hearts II 2015 (revid 81348)_ | | | |-----|-----| ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 6th, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 6, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts II - 52.06% 89 for - 23 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts II - 56.91% I know KH2 was the favorite here, but I did pick MGS4 for a few reasons. Blind fanboyism was the major one, but I also thought MGS5's release would boost the MGS series, plus I couldn't get this poll out of my head. I know games =/= characters and the picture had a lot to do with that match, but it's hard to imagine that one being practically reversed. I also thought this site was kind of over the whole Kingdom Hearts thing, what with Tetsuya Nomura's dumb ass running the series into the ground and us still not having Kingdom Hearts 3 despite having 3843 awful spinoffs. Bear in mind that the Final Fantasy series and Square in general has been trending down in large part due to the Dream Drop 358/244/1 Birth by Chain of Memories Sleeping Distance Final Mix 4.0 Prototype XE Syndrome -- "Kingdom Hearts has sucked since the original game", in other words. As fate would have it, this site may have issues with Kingdom Hearts but this site is also really over Metal Gear Solid. I knew the honeymoon period with Snake in Brawl and MGS4 would pass eventually, but seeing it here live and in living color was really something else. The entire series looked awful in this contest, and it started in this poll. It was never close, and it took everything just to keep KH2 under 60% given how things started. It was the first in a long line of embarrassments for Metal Gear Solid, and honestly the series trending down makes some sense. I love 4, but I can see why people have issues with it. And given what would happen to 5 later on, it's clear that this site blames 4 for the series and doesn't much care about 5. Or anything else released after the PS2 era, really. Old games beat the hell out of new games in this contest, and I'm positive you can call KH2 \> MGS4 an old game \> new game thing. Which kind of sucks, because MGS4 is an amazing video game and the perfect way to end Snake's story. You see him suffer so much, you grow up with him in many ways... then the events of MGS4 start happening and you eventually hit Act 4. We all geeked out like mad, to where this was going 50/50 with Brawl in Game of the Year. How did we get from that to 41% on Kingdom Hearts 2? Addendum: Konami's treatmment of Kojima and turning into a pachinko franchise almost certainly got met with voters turning on the MGS series in this contest. ## Ctes's Analysis While there weren't really any interesting matches today in the sense that they were all decide within a few minutes, this one at least opened up for tons of discussion. I think in 2009, MGS4 would win this match with ease and KHII wasn't weak then. That's only 6 years ago! My god it has dropped a lot. A majority of the gurus and brackets in general went with KHII here, but it was a debatable match, MGS4 was not supposed to do this bad. Even in 2010, losing to SotC didn't look at bad, it was a day match with SotC riding on a bandwagon from having beaten MGS2. Ironically, MGS4 ended up higher in the x-stats than the rest of the MGS games because Melee stood up like a king to Undertale and Chrono Trigger to Melee, while Melee fans didn't rally against KHII unlike the rest. In other words, tons of things going in MSG4's favor after it lost. Really though, people felt certain in KHII's victory. MSG4 might've looked bad here, but for so many people to have expected such a drop from last time is quite saying. I wonder what exactly caused it, I guess a minor part of it is old vs. new. Yes, there're only three years between them, but they're from different generations, but I think it's just people view on MGS4 having changed it general, while KHII remains the same. Back when it came out, the hype was huge, completely insane. Snake's appearance in Brawl likely helped the support too. Now, the hype is gone. MGS4 has been viewed at the weak link of four MGS games. There's a fifth now yes, I don't know where that places yet, I also haven't played it. The hype from the fifth game wasn't enough to make up for that it seems. It's a shame too, I really like MGS4! Exiting the first round after losing in the semi-final last contest looks really bad on paper, but you gotta remember that KHII is no pushover in these things. MGS4 could've won a couple of matches had it switched placement with one of the other's in the bracket. It has fallen quite a bit, but it still has some strength in these things. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6057&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)The Last of Us vs (15)Halo 3 2015 _source: (2)The Last of Us vs (15)Halo 3 2015 (revid 81351)_ | | | |-----|-----| ## Results **Round One** Friday, November 6th, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 6, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Last of Us - 56.74% 108 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Last of Us - 74.96% There isn't a whole lot to say about this match outside of LOL SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE Gauging brand new games or contest entrants is hard to do, though we all knew this match wouldn't be much. This match was a blowout to start, and a doubling to finish. Easy peasy. I can't comment on Last of Us, outside of KP telling me I'd love it and that I need to get around to playing it one of these days. Given my massive backlog, that might even happen one of these years! What I will do instead is wax poetic about Halo being garbage on this site, and I enjoy that casual stuff isn't popular here. If we're being honest with each other, none of us hardcore gamers really feel like casual gamers are "real gamers" for whatever reason. At a deep level, I'm positive a lot of gamers have been bullied and casual stuff like Halo and Grand Theft Auto are reminders of those people. It's a deep conversation to have, but it's probably very close to the truth of why casual stuff is not popular on this site and gets anti-voted to death. GameFAQs is basically a 90s fan site. Gaming was not exactly a socially acceptable hobby in the 90s. I'm sure other reasons exist for why casual stuff doesn't do well here, but "gamers like to anti-vote anything frat boys like" is as good a reason as I can think of. I'm all ears though if anyone can think of anything better (outside most casual games being absolute garbage, which is just a given at this point). Anyway, outside of one Master Chief run that happened on the back of the fourway format and Halo 3 hype, the self destruction of Halo has been long, topped only by the GTA series, hilarious to watch, and it all began when something named Felix got 47% on Master Chief in 2003. Since then, we've seen some absolute gems from the Halo series: -Halo's legendary 1 seed choke job against Starcraft -Chief's legendary choke job against Frog -Halo 3 getting last place in round 2 in 2009, in a match that was pretty winnable for it -Chief's choke job against Sub-Zero one year after the Donkey Kong comeback -Chief losing to Yuna in 2013 after beating the pants off of her in 2007 And, of course, the most hilarious Master Chief match we'll ever get. There have been bright spots here and there, don't get me wrong, but the fact that people entertained Minecraft beating Halo this year really says a lot. Halo is dead on this site, outside of the original having marginal respect. Halo 3, like we saw in this match, is just a bottom-feeder. ## Ctes's Analysis I know there was a few people believing Halo 3 could pull this off, but I don't the match ever should've been in doubt. Sure, Halo 3 beat Super Mario Sunshine last time, that's not exactly a big accomplishment, people really dislike that game, sadly. I personally find it to be really great! Anyway, Halo has a bad history on this side. Master Chief made a dream run in 2007, but that's about it for good things the series has done here. The original Halo ended up not looking terrible in 2010, but it was not particularly great either. On the other hand, The Last of Us has been extremely well regarded. Very impressive for a new IP too. We expected it to be among the strongest games made in this decade, rivaled only by Skyrim and ME2. And boy were we right! The Last of Us is not really near elite, but man did it look great today. We later learned that Halo had dropped a whole lot more than expected, but today, TLoU just looked incredible, which is ironic considering this board has a habit of bashing the losing game in a surprising result rather than praising the winning one. I guess this does not happen as often when the winning game is still the same. Doubling a Halo game looked great. A few people were thinking its match with KHII could go both ways now, though I personally never believed it stood a chance there. Maybe if its second round match was somewhat debatable things would look interesting now, but it wasn't. Then we had Menji, who lead the guru for the first couple of days and had a perfect bracket the longest, claiming that TLoU had a shot at Melee after this. Shows how much the board can overreact to things. It's also just really nice to see a new game impress this much. It's a rare sight! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6058&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VI vs (16)Assassin's Creed II 2015 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VI vs (16)Assassin's Creed II 2015 (revid 80308)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, November 7, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 7, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VI - 69.40% 109 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VI - 80.86% Though Chrono Trigger went beastmode in the first match, this was the match where people realized that 90s era Square (and 90s games in general) were just on a whole other level in this contest. Final Fantasy 6 getting a 1 seed is impressive enough, but 77% on Assassin's Creed 2 is no joke. Even more impressive is that the percentages didn't move at all during the entire match, even though FF6 is known for having an absolute garbage-level day vote. It was one of many examples this contest of old games just beating the hell out of new games all contest long (people will cite Undertale, but that game plays like a 90's era RPG and might as well be one). It was also bad news for people like me who picked against Square in every debatable match. It did not take long to realize that Wind Waker was not beating FF6 in a poll. (3)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (6)Assassin's Creed II 2010 "Oops" Yes I know the Assassin's Creed series has fallen off a cliff due to too many releases, but FF6 getting 77% on AC2 while Wind Waker only managed 61% is just bad news. That entire debate was over in all of 5 minutes. FF6 was for real this year. ## Ctes's Analysis I think it was the smallest amount of people that actually thought FFVI stood a chance at winning the division at any point, but man did it come off looking good here. It sure looked like the favorite against Wind Waker at least, more than it already was. It more than tripled the strongest entry from the Assassin's Creed series, which looks really good when you look at previous contests. Assassin's Creed was never very good in these things, but it had strength. Altair and Ezio did pretty good all and most notably, there's this: This is the game FFVI would be facing in a slightly debated match scoring only 60% on the game that's getting destroyed here. This is the year of SNES, which became more clear again this match, but it still wasn't enough for us to conclude that SNES games in general received a boost. We also saw an apparent FFVI boost in 2013. But even so, it shouldn't win by this much. Obviously ACII had fallen too… a lot actually. One thing is that it's a recent game, which is apparently bad this year, but the series isn't looked brightly on here in general and I think I know why. It spawns new games constantly and it's getting unoriginal and annoying. I know fans of the games keep enjoying the games and sure, they might not get worse, by how much new do they bring to the series? I haven't played an Assassin's Creed game since Revelations, I'll admit, but that's the impression I get. They come out way too fast, there's constantly a new game out. I have a friend that plays these games and enjoy them as a casual gamer, she hadn't realized one of the games take place in China. Then you know there are too many in a too short amount of time. I think Mario with all his spin-offs is challenged by the amount of titles here. Good grief, I might play another one again some day, but I have no chance of catching up on games if I wanna play a varied set of games and keep my social life intact. This might just very well be the last we'll see of Assassin's Creed in these contests too. Getting a single game in a \#16 seed isn't exactly impressive and it's not something you'd want to bring back after this. It's a shame though, the series might've become what it has, but ACII was legitimately a good game. Very enjoyable in fact. Too bad it came to this. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6059&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (9)Tales of Symphonia 2015 _source: (8)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (9)Tales of Symphonia 2015 (revid 80309)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, November 7, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 7, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - 53.89% 88 for - 21 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - 53.36% This was our first close match this contest, though it was hardly some barn-burner and was honestly decided very early. This contest was pretty lacking in photo finishes, but really you can't expect insanely close finishes when tens of thousands of votes are out there. We were just spoiled back in the day. Anyway, this was the part of the match where Tales of Symphonia got to do its seasonal choke job, and for whatever reason people thought Tales could win this match. Not only was it against FREAKING Mario, not only was it not DAT TOP OPTION in a debated closely-seeded match, not only has Tales proven time and again it doesn't win anything, but it was a JRPG against another JRPG on the exact same system. Tales was fighting very uphill before this match began, and honestly it making this a match at all was an accomplishment. The prediction percentage lined up with bracket voting likely giving Paper Mario its early lead in the match, and 30 minutes in it had a lead of 200 with the percentages hovering around 55-45. From there Tales treated us to one of those matches where the numbers looked much closer than the actual match suggested. Tales bled percentage and Tales made some minor cuts here and there, even slowly bleeding 100 votes off the lead overnight, but when the morning vote favored Mario, that was that. Match over. Not that we would have to wait long for our first "HOLY SHIT" match of this contest, which of course involved Mario yet again because that's what he does. The weird thing about this match is I honestly do feel like Tales wins if the seedings were reversed, but it's Tales of Symphonia's destiny to job out in these things. It's like watching Clockwork in competitive MvC2. He's fun to watch, but you know he's going to lose. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was closest of the contest so far, but it was never really that interesting. TTYD took the lead from the get go and never truly looked back. ToS got a bunch of cuts throughout the match but TTYD almost always got it back within the next few updates. The exception was the deadzone where ToS actually cut off a decent amount of TTYD's lead, but when the morning vote came, that was all lost again. Considering we said we trends were gone, it's weird how they were actually here for this match. ToS stalled very well during different parts of the day, but except for a brief moment during the deadzone, it never really god to make its move. In the big picture, the match was stable the whole way through. If you were a major ToS supporter, I could imagine you'd be hooked on this match especially during the deadzone when a comeback didn't look entirely impossible, but I can't imagine anyone following it for that long. As a major TTYD supporter, I looked at the match a little bit and felt completely safe in TTYD's victory. One might argue that brackets gave TTYD the edge, but it only had a little bit more than half of them, I doubt it really mattered. Top option? Not really an issue this contest considering the format put the games next to each other instead. TTYD was simply just slightly stronger. Nothing more to say about it than that. TTYD is one of the four contenders for my absolute favorite game, I find it to be perfection, so naturally I really enjoyed this match. Of the four, TTYD is easily the least popular one, though it's mostly because the others, FFVII, CT and SMW, are among the most popular games out there. When Allen indirectly hinted that it made the contest by stating that he didn't take “the Paper series” into consideration when claiming Final Fantasy had the most entrants, I was already happy enough. Seeing it get a winnable match was really great, even if I knew it'd be blown out next round. I wish the original Paper Mario had got a different bracket placement, which I'll get back to when that match comes, but I'm glad to see TTYD outlast its predecessor this time. It got a much higher seed this time too proving its the favorite! Glad to see we've agreed on that. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6060&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (12)Xenogears 2015 _source: (5)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (12)Xenogears 2015 (revid 80318)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, November 7, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 7, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 56.70% 102 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 71.86% There was a decent denate pre-contest about this match, and for good reason. KOTOR's strength is nothing insane, but it is respectable. 40% on Vice City in 2004 is alright, because that's back when GameFAQs didn't give a toss about western RPGs. The 2009 round 1 loss where it got third place was just random bad luck. Any of those four games could have gotten anything between 1st and 4th place, and it was one of the closest things we'll ever see to 25/25/25/25 in a fourway poll. Then in 2010, it got to round 3 and put up 47% on Final Fantasy 9. Again nothing nuts, but respectable. But Xenogears had never been in a fair poll. The GSC match in 2004 was back during the Pokemon anti-vote days and had to be run twice because of a glitch on day 1 where only registered users could vote (side note, the vote totals that way were trash and the people who want a registered-only contest to combat rallies are out of their minds, you would literally see every poll get like 10k votes). In round 2, it faced Final Fantasy 7, aka the literal worst opponent Xenogears could ever have. In 2009, it got the lite version and had Final Fantasy 8 in round 1. The case could be made for Xenogears having hidden strength all these years, and I don't think those people were wrong even though Xenogears lost. KOTOR took an early lead, but then bled some percentage all day as Xenogears made various small cuts and stalls. The percentage bleed wasn't anything nuts, but 3% in the 50s is a lot different than bleeding only 3% when the higher game is in the 80s or 90s. It tells me that if the seedings were reversed here, Xenogears might have won. Maybe one day, it'll actually get to win a fair match! We all know the GSC 2004 nonsense doesn't really count. ## Ctes's Analysis There were some Xenogears defenders around here, but overall KOTOR was the major favorite going into this match, both for gurus and casuals alike. My Last Man Standing contest can't by used to judge too much because two thirds of the contestants eliminated themselves on Persona 3, but because I put up four days at the time, they all picked in this, and it was like 80% choosing KOTOR. A few people picked in the previous match, but KOTOR was too big a favorite. I'm honestly surprised Xenogears wasn't supported a little bit more, but I guess KOTOR having the much higher seed and having Star Wars in the title helps out a bit. I think if bracket votes were removed, we'd have quite a match here actually! But we didn't really have a match. A bunch of people not realizing that bleeding percentage doesn't mean anything as long as the lead increases thought we had one, but it was never really interesting to look at. We had at this point already learned that trends were basically non-existing. The only match that even had a lead change after the freeze was DQVIII/Persona 3 and we're talking a 28 vote lead being flipped there. Xenogears was out of this match from the start. The interesting thing about this match is how it goes against the rule system for picking winners that was true for almost all non-Undertale matches this contests. Parts of this system was always picking Nintendo and Square titles above non Nintendo and Square titles and always picking JRPG games above non JRPG games. KOTOR might be a RPG, but it's still Western. Most importantly, always go with the older game. Using this logic to pick your bracket, you'd probably be on the leaderboard for most of the contest, we just hadn't realized before it began, but this match defies all those things completely. To think that a Bioware WRPG for the original Xbox could beat a Sqaure JRPG for the original Playstation. It didn't look that weird at the time, because we had yet to notice this pattern, but after the contest it looks really weird. It's not like Xenogears is terrible and KOTOR is near elite either. I mean in cases like Skyrim vs. Phoenix Wright, no one would apply this rule system, because Skyrim is the strongest new title and one of the strongest non Nintendo and Square titles, but if this match were to happen tomorrow here after our contest ended, I think a much higher percentage would've picked Xenogears after all we've seen. At least not as many people should feel safe about it. But KOTOR is simply one of the few WRPG games with contest strength. They're not common, but we have a good bunch of them out there. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6061&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (13)Pokémon X/Y 2015 _source: (4)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (13)Pokémon X/Y 2015 (revid 84423)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, November 7, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 7, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: The Wind Waker - 61.51% 108 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: The Wind Waker - 77.46% A few writeups ago I lauded GSC as being the perfect Pokemon game. XY is basically in "get the fuck out of my contest" territory on the level of TWEWY or Shadow of the Colossus or World of Warcraft or Wind Waker (no, the irony is not lost on me), among others. 700+ Pokemon and ridiculous mega evolution fanservice, not to mention all the other nonsense? XY can fuck off. Seriously, go to [this link](http://www.pokemonxy.com/en-us/root/) and hover over What's New. It's a gimmick-filled disgrace, and it's a direct result of the other game in this contest ruining everything Nintendo once stood for. The best is when you get Pokemon fans that act like people aren't allowed to like the first two generations, which is just thoroughly ridiculous and it's that mentality that directly caused Undertale to beat RBY's ass. But we'll get to that in due time and testify like Devon Dudley. On the winning end you had Wind Waker, which is the game that ruined Nintendo and they've yet to recover. Before that game, they had real passion with video games and design. Then they made this piece of trash, saw that people ate it up and haven't really bothered trying since. Why would they? Nintendo, much like every other company in the corporate world, found their quantity-for-a-quick-dollar \> quality moment and went off to the races. Then the DS happened, people ate THAT garbage up and we've been treated to Nintendo force-feeding us garbage-level games with force-fed gimmicks for more than a decade. Now we have Mario games ruined by forced motion controls, Samus being a mother with PTSD, and thousands upon thousands of shovelware titles that all suck. All because Wind Waker taught Nintendo that people will buy anything if you put the right label on it. And don't think I'm in any way exaggerating about these fans. When did the TRUE whining about Undertale begin? Oh yeah, when it beat Mario World, a sacred Nintendo title. I'm no-selling everything about this entire match, and Final Fantasy 6 would eventually give us one of the biggest pieces of justice in this entire contest. Everything about post-Nintendo Wind Waker could disappear and gaming would be so much better off for it. ## Ctes's Analysis While we were seeing FFVI destroying, we would need to see Wind Waker put up quite the impressive performance to even consider that upset a possibility at this point. But it's a little bit difficult to judge here. If you assume there's SFF in this match, Wind Waker stands no chance in round 3, but if you assume XY shares what the series has showed in the past, that Pokemon games are pretty much immune to SFF, then this is not really that bad. I don't see why XY should be any different than the other games, so I'm gonna call Wind Waker's performance pretty great here. Not nearly enough to be the favorite, but also not enough for me to consider FFVI\>Wind Waker a lock yet. It's gap in strength between the first two generations and the rest is crazy though. It's pretty amazing that a later generation even made it in at this to be honest. We had several main line games released since last time, they probably split nominations a lot more than the first four generations did in the past. In 2009, three out of four generations made it while in 2010, the reduced field allowed all three eligible entrants in with DPP somehow even achieving a better seed than GSC, something that doesn't make sense to me to this day. This time it was three out of seven games, as BW2 would count as a different entry than BW and XY got a low seed. It made it in because its the most recent entry (remakes don't count) and because it got some casual appeal the last few entries lacked. As a \#13 seed, Wind Waker was one of the worse \#4 seeds it could've drawn, but I don't think it matters much which one you put it against, it'd still come out as as the loser be it Uncharted 2 or Red Dead Redemption even. World of Warcraft would've been slightly interesting perhaps, but with pure GameFAQs strength, I don't even think it escapes that, at least not if we keep assuming no SFF in this match. The thing about XY though is that it has some solid rally potential. Whatever potential it might've had to get a rally going was ruined the entrant it was put against a Zelda entry. But imagine XY being in a debatable match or being lucky enough to be close to Undertale. It would've destroyed for a while. We didn't know most of this at the time, but Pokemon is huge on sites like tumblr and if anyone tried to rally the actual Pokemon fanbase, it would've probably worked with XY unlike RBY, which we'll get back to a lot later in this PCA. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad this was avoided, but I think we dodged a bullet here without realizing, though it might've been a bigger bullet had the contest been closer to the release of XY. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6062&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. for Wii U vs (14)Planescape: Torment 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. for Wii U vs (14)Planescape: Torment 2015 (revid 84424)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, November 8, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 8, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Wii U - 80.62% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Wii U - 88.48% I actually own Torment, but can't get it to work on my computer because the game is so old. I really need to figure out how to play it one day, because it comes up in every "best game ever" conversation and I'm still unspoiled. Unfortunately it's an obscure PC game on GameFAQs, so it being fodder is kind of a given. Smash 4 started at 80%, dropped a little in percentage, then recovered later to almost preserve a quadrupling. It's nice to see that Smash 4 was able to be a popular game and shake the stigma of Brawl away. In most other series, a bad entrant can completely ruin things and just flush future sales down the toilet. The Smash series was thankfully able to recover from Brawl, release the Melee sequel we all wanted in the first place, and go back to being the most fun multiplayer game out there. Smash 4 is absolutely amazing on every front, and is worth a Wii U purchase by itself. It has EVERYTHING I was asking for in a Melee sequel (high-level play that's based on skill instead of exploiting a glitch, balance patches, good DLC, a good roster, a seamless transition to HD, etc etc etc), and every time more news comes out about it I get happier. I suppose this is the match where I should talk about pjbasis's legendary topic, since this match was boring. Every gamer has a "my uncle works for Nintendo" story that ends up fake. Well pjbasis decides to make a topic about his uncle from Nintendo to spoil.... Cloud being in Smash Bros. No one believed him for obvious reasons, and then somehow it turns out to be... true? What?! And yet there is Cloud, right there on my TV in Smash Brothers. It's definitely a surreal experience. ## Ctes's Analysis I know that this is probably the perfect matchup in that favor, but for a Wii U game to score nearly 80% is really something. Look at all the other Wii U games in the bracket. Mario Kart 8, Super Mario Maker, Splatoon and Bayonetta 2 all had close to no strength. It's was a bit hard to get a good read on Smash 4 from this match only, but it has some strength at least. You don't score this high on anything without it. But as mentioned, Planescape is probably the best opponent to put that on. Getting Planescape into the bracket was hopefully victory enough, because it never stood a chance and never will. Despite being from a solid era, being a PC game is just a major hindrance in these things We have a good bunch of games with contest potential missing the bracket and then we have games like Planescape incapable of making an interesting match. Before you fans of the game jump at me, I know that it's a pretty big PC game and that by name alone it might deserve a spot, but if you look at it from a contest stat perspective, it's a waste really. I do know that seeing a favorite game just make the bracket feels great, so let's just celebrate that it happened, one appearance never hurts. I'll have you know that unless you are a PC gamer, there's a pretty good chance you have no idea what this game is. That along with bracket votes likely made Smash 4 look better, I mean, that's a game every single person on a gaming site recognizes. Although I wouldn't be surprised if a thing such as Wii U anti-votes evened that out a little bit, but not completely of course. Depite being a Wii U game, Smash 4 is really greatly received though. Melee and Brawl fans all think this is the sequel the series needed. It beings the best of both games. It comes with a fantastic set of characters even a solid handful from other companies, which they even try to balance occasionally after the game's release. It's a little lacking in singleplayer, but it's pretty much the perfect multiplayer game, be it competitively or just for fun. The daily updates couldn't reach the dojo levels of pre-release hype, but damn the hype for this game was great too. Sakurai does a fantastic job with everything. The game is filled with fanservice from all series down to detail. Small things such as Lucina's eyes have been done with perfection. The movesets of characters like Ryu and Cloud, the latter who was not yet revealed by the time of this match, were filled with references, there are no words. In terms of contest strength, I fully believe that if new games hadn't gotten awful in general here and the Wii U had been better received, we'd be looking at one of the strongest games on our site. If could take the contests by storm, this game at a better time and place could've done even better. I have a lot to say about Smash 4 regarding its actual contest strength, but because we learned nothing from this match, I'll save it for next time. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6063&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs (11)Mass Effect 2015 _source: (6)Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs (11)Mass Effect 2015 (revid 88458)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Sunday**, November 8, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 8, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect - 43.93% 17 for - 90 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect - 51.44% Though Paper Mario TTYD/Symphonia was our first close match, this was our true first close match. You know how every contest has a few matches where the casuals just embarrass us here on Board 8? This was one of those matches. 80% of gurus had Galaxy 2 winning without much thought, and most Oracle folks picked Galaxy 2 in the 55-60% range. The idea, outside of IT'S FREAKING MARIO, is that Mass Effect 1 has never had much strength on this site. On top of that, people have learned time and time again to ignore our Game of the Year polls when evaluating contest strength, so people just ignored Mass Effect 2 embarrassing Galaxy 2 in the GOTY poll in 2010. First off, Mass Effect 1 does have strength. That one match in 2009 was clearly either SFF, or something weird happened. Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, and Halo 3 probably have fanbases that hilariously overlap. Someone had to get the short end of the stick there. For two, Mass Effect winning two matches in Game of the Decade before getting 46% on Portal is no joke. Galaxy had strength that contest as well, but a lot of people just pick the Nintendo option in any debatable match and move on. Usually they're right, but this was a case where they weren't right. I'm sure somewhere here I should blame Mass Effect 3's ending for ME1 being underrated here, but I'm saving that rant for the Undertale match. Galaxy 2 took the early lead thanks to the Board 8 vote and Nintendo Power Hour, but then Mass Effect got a cut very early in the match. Galaxy 2's lead would peak at 265 about an hour in, but then the power hour ended and Mass Effect began the slow (very slow) overnight bleed. It can't really be overstated how slow this was, especially given the low vote totals. These two games were basically deadlocked with Mass Effect getting very slow leeway overnight, but people had to treat Galaxy 2 winning an update 72-62 overnight as OH MAN GALAXY IS PUSHING AHEAD. No, that's just AntiTrendsFAQs in action. This match, among many others, showed this contest that trends mean as little now as they ever have, thanks to things like social media and smart phones not forcing people to wait until morning votes and after school votes to get their options in. Point being, Galaxy 2's 265 vote lead an hour in didn't get knocked below 100 until 5:30 in the morning. Mass Effect kept bleeding away, but people just assumed the traditional Nintendo morning and day vote would save the match for Mario. But before the day vote showed up, we had a dead zone to get through. During that dead zone, Mass Effect got this thing tied up. Then the morning vote seemingly favored Mario, as he pushed back to a 50 vote lead very quickly (I'd like to take this time to once again point out that rallying happens in every single match and the people who whine about rallying are ridiculous, it's no accident when a comeback happens and then just stalls the second a tie happens). People assumed the match was over in Mario's favor here too, because obviously the morning vote would just favor Mario, right? Nope. This match stayed tied all morning long, with Mario trying and trying and trying to pull away and get a lead, but every time he managed even a 10 or 20 vote lead, Shepard was there with a pistol and full points in Marksman to blast that shit away immediately -- the easiest way to cheese through the original game, for sure!! It continued like this all the way to lunch time and even a little bit beyond, and a lot of us hoped it would stay like this all day so we could set a new "closest 24 hour match" record. Unfortunately, Shepard decided to stop dicking around, busted out a shotgun and started going full Carnage on the poll -- that is, the battered remains of our once-mighty ASV showed up, and it favored Mass Effect by quite a lot. What was a deadlocked match turned into Mass Effect pulling in 55-60% updates for the rest of the match, which turned things from a tie into a comfortable 625 vote win. This would end up only being a 1 point match, but contests aren't really contests without F5 spam. It was a great win for Mass Effect, and was a win for the good guys. Galaxy 2 is forced motion control garbage, Yoshi's worst-ever appearance in a mainline Mario game, and one of the biggest offenders of "obvious cash grab" in Nintendo's history. Yahtzee did a very accurate review of the game that I suggest people check out. Nintendo isn't even trying to hide it anymore with how dumb they think their fans are. But hey, you all bought and defended Wind Waker. You deserve what Nintendo has turned into. Every time the Wii U gets embarrassed, a kitten gets a comfortable rest, and a game as amazing as Mass Effect doing the honors makes it all the better. Mass Effect in general was in the middle of a lot of interesting things this contest, but before rallies got involved, there was Mass Effect telling the Wii U to fuck off. Justice. ## Ctes's Analysis This might not be the first guru upset, but it was the first real match of the contest! It was still super exciting after about 13-14 hours into the match. At this point, it became clear Mass Effect would take it, but Galaxy 2 would still make some significant cuts for a while to keep the tension. For the last 8 hours, the match was over despite Galaxy still making attempts to get back in the match. 80% of the gurus had Galaxy 2 winning today, a surprisingly high amount of you ask me, because even as someone who picked Galaxy 2 to win it, I never felt it was safe. I know others could feel the same way, but I also think there was some bandwagon going with some of the picks here, similar to DQVIII/P3. Once people see transience, Leon, KP, Ulti and such agree on a winner for a debatable match in their Pre-Contest analysis, said match apparently stops being debatable. Still doesn't explain completely here as Leon got this match right. In any case, with massive guru support and being well received Nintendo game, Galaxy 2 dominated the power hour, especially the early vote. In 15 minutes, Galaxy 2 almost had a lead of 200. Looking at the other matches that have little to no trends, you'd think the match was already over there. After that Galaxy 2 slowed down a bit. Mass Effect won a few updates every now and then, but Galaxy 2 was increasing its lead until exactly when the power hour ended, totally verifying the power hour name. Then it stood still for 10 minutes before Mass Effect made a match of it. During the next hour Mass Effect removed 90 votes of the lead and looked to be the favorite. Then somehow once again at the hour change, the game changes and Galaxy increases its lead by 30 votes again over the next hour, not enough to recover, but certainly better than the second hour. We were entering the deadzone, which everyone knows doesn't favor Mario. But seeing as the trends have been reduced to almost being purely geographical by now, Galaxy 2 was the favorite. It was expecting to run away with it when America woke up again. Following the first three hours, Mass Effect took half an hour to cut 70 votes of the lead again, reducing it to roughly 130. The match was pretty even about an hour before it began to slightly favor Mass Effect as the deepest time of the deadzone began. Galaxy 2 did a pretty good stalling job with some good increases at times, but Mass Effect ultimately had the bigger cuts. Slow but steady and with bumps on the road Mass Effect shred the lead Galaxy 2 took no time to build. Then at the 7:45 update, Mass Effect took the lead by 2 votes. This was followed by a tie the next update. Ties are cool as they're a rare sight, but it was expecting Mass Effect would build a lead briefly after this. However, Mario isn't exactly known for just rolling over to die when he's behind. After the tie Galaxy build a small lead again. It held it for about an hour before the next lead chance, this time a four vote lead. The very next update, the lead changed back to Galaxy 2, but then back to Mass Effect the next update again, which held it for two update before yet another tie. Galaxy 2 then had the lead for updates until Mass Effect took it back. This was an intense match at this point. We didn't know what to expect, but people were probably right about the morning vote favoring Galaxy 2 slightly, as it was a lot more even now. This is probably the final point of the match where trends makes sense. Mass Effect held its lead for a good while before Galaxy 2 made an insane cut to achieve the lead again. The lead changes the next three updates again and went back to Mass Effect, who held it for a few updates before another three lead changes right after each other put the ball back in Galaxy 2's court. It stayed there for a while before Mass Effect for just one update took the lead and then Galaxy 2 held it for a while again. Mass Effect took it again followed by a major gain, which Galaxy 2 erased in one update as it took the lead back for what would be its final time. Mass Effect took it back and build a 50 vote lead somewhat fast. Over the next hour Galaxy 2 made some solid attempts to take it, but it became clear Mass Effect would stop looking back. The following hour was probably when everyone called the match over. From there, Mass Effect would increase its lead slowly until Europe went to sleep and the lead simply stayed the same for the remaining of the match ending with a 625 vote lead. For a match to swing over 800 votes in 2015 without real outside interference was truly spectacular! Apparently, over half the brackets had Mass Effect winning despite being the lower seed so the casuals get a laugh at us I guess. Has Galaxy 2 been as favored in general as it was on hour board, it would've surely won. The first Galaxy would probably win this match with little trouble based on GotD, so there is a strength gap between them. It makes a lot of sense, the first one introduced a whole new concept for the 3D Mario games that the second one just followed up on. Furthermore, the first one was from when the Wii was huge while the second one came out when the popularity of the Wii was starting to decline. It's a shame though, because Galaxy 2 is definitely the better game when it comes to pure gameplay and I think most people agree on this. It felt like an upgrade to the first game. The levels were much more creative and the endgame was actually challenging. I'm sure no one beat the final level easily. It's personally my favorite 3D platformer and likely ranks in the top 10 of my favorite games overall so seeing it lose was a shame even though I also do like Mass Effect. This match was fantastic, but unfortunately it began the trend of calling Mario a turd this contest, which outside of one game that also has other things to explain its flop, isn't really true. Spoilers: that game is Super Mario Maker. It's like people forgot Mass Effect looked pretty great during GotD. It got about 45% on Portal, which got around 45% on RE4 and those games were legit that year. I'm not sure if people expected ME3 to have weakened the series, but I don't think that's how it works. Of course people didn't know this yet, but ME ends up looking really good, so Galaxy 2 is excused. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6064&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Minecraft vs (10)Halo: Combat Evolved 2015 _source: (7)Minecraft vs (10)Halo: Combat Evolved 2015 (revid 84284)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Sunday**, November 8, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 8, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 57.02% 88 for - 20 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Halo: Combat Evolved - 38.88% 205 people picked Minecraft to win this entire contest. 203 people picked Mario 3. 124 picked Undertale. 4145 picked Ocarina. There are a smart group of bracketmakers who know that contests are very likely to be decided by massive outside rallies, and plan accordingly. There are two main reasons for this, one being L-Block breaking the mold and the other being people are beyond done with Link or Zelda winning every year. All contest winners: Summer 2002 - Link Summer 2003 - Cloud Spring 2004 - Final Fantasy 7 Summer 2004 - Link Spring 2005 - Sephiroth Summer 2005 - Link Spring 2006 - The Legend of Zelda Summer 2006 - Link Summer 2007 - L-Block Summer 2008 - Link Summer 2009 - Ocarina of Time Summer 2010 - Link Game of the Decade - Majora's Mask Rivalry Rumble - Link/Ganon Winter 2013 - Draven Winter 2015 - Undertale Even Majora's Mask, which definitely qualifies as a shocking bracket winner, is a Zelda game. So when people looked at this bracket and tried to figure out who could get a joke rally for the title, Minecraft was one of the games highlighted. There are a lot of things that go into a rally. You need timing, luck, a true internet buzz, a rabid fanbase, a justifiable cause, more luck, and most importantly you need the right contest path. L-Block did what it did because it had the perfect setup to sneak by over and over until it grew out of control. Majora's Mask did the same thing until it eventually caught lightning in a bottle, caught a massive rally against FFX, then beat Brawl on the back of anti-votes. Draven caught a rally in round 1, smashed the fuck out of Capcom, and the rest was history. We'll get to Undertale later. Minecraft was seen as potentially having that path. Halo is an anti-vote magnet, and then it would have another anti-vote magnet in Final Fantasy 7 in round 2. From there, who knows? Unfortunately, it wouldn't quite work out that way. Halo definitely ate some anti-votes early, but it was able to build a comfortable lead and ride a very comfortable, very steady 56-44 percentage all day long. People were scared to death that Minecraft would beat Halo here and then laugh at our contest; they had the right idea, but were scared of the wrong game doing it. It was the 124 Undertale fans that were the real MVPs. ## Ctes's Analysis Halo has definitely fallen a lot since last contest, but we weren't truly aware of that yet I suppose. The original Halo was somehow lucky enough to face one of the few games it could beat and it didn't look impressive doing it. Minecraft was one the games people feared could get a serious rally going pre-contest. It's funny how it works that way with games ending with “craft”. It certainly had a good round 1 opponent to start off with though its second round opinion would really require something else of it. And yet nothing happened at all. The match was very boring, but I guess most regulars would rather have that than the rally it would take to make it interesting. Turns out Minecraft was not the game we should fear rallies from. It makes sense to. This game got a huge amount of its popularity from kids. Very small kids. Take this from somebody who has worked in Toys R Us before. They're not going to rally for it. Besides, if trends existed, Halo might just be the perfect counter to the ASV Minecraft would have. Had Minecraft won this match it would almost certainly perform better on FFVII than Halo did though, but it was never going to happen. Hopefully Minecraft doesn't make the bracket again. I know I talk about this too much, but with this match it should be fair. Super Mario Bros should've made the bracket and based on bracket placement there's nothing I'd rather replace than Minecraft so it can double Halo. Minecraft probably will continue getting into these things though. Look at the prediction percentage. Halo is not badly favored among casuals and Minecraft was the big favorite here. It's mainstream enough to be that way. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6065&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Final Fantasy VII vs (15)Journey 2015 _source: (2)Final Fantasy VII vs (15)Journey 2015 (revid 84911)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Sunday**, November 8, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 8, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 80.10% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 94.02% People will assume I hate Journey because of my opinion on Shadow of the Colossus, but no. Journey is actually an outstanding game. It deserved better than getting fed to FF7 in round 1, and it's everything Shadow of the Colossus wishes it could be -- simple, artistic, and extremely touching. The whole game is about 45 minutes long with no spoken dialogue at all, but has such an amazing message of friendship in it. Actually I suppose it could mean whatever you want, but I enjoy the friendship route. I'm also a HUGE fan of Final Fantasy 7 and will never understand where the hate came from or why it's still here today. It was a great game when it came out and it's still a great game today. can't wait to play the PS4 port and get dat platinum! Regardless, not much to say here outside of "thank god we had four matches per day". Can you believe we used to enjoy sitting through blowouts one at a time for 24 hours each? With this format, we got to see FF7 just godsmash a poll and prove it was a top tier championship contender, we got an intriguing Halo/Minecraft poll, we got Smash U proving it was for real, and we got a great Mass Effect upset. If this took place over four days it would have sucked, but as-is we got the Mass Effect poll to distract us from two boring blowouts. Thank god for this format, and man I hope it stays. Best idea these contests have had since they started. 12 hour matches suck and this is the best way of doing things. You all know it's true. Regardless, seeing FF7 go godmode was awesome. There was no ridiculous anti-voting to give Journey a lead for 5 minutes, no silly nonsense that showed FF7 would lose to Smash U or something... nothing like that. Just FF7 being a beast. It was nice to see for the time it lasted. ## Ctes's Analysis It's not like this match was ever going to be interesting, but you gotta love the result. Nothing I say here is any offense to Journey, I haven't played it and I don't really know anything about it either. With that said, damn was it great to see FFVII godstomp its first round match after everything that's happened to it the last many contests. It took the record for both highest blowout and highest prediction percentage, the first part especially is impressive, but the latter is also impressive considering it beat the overall \#1 seed as a two seed. Unfortunately, having such great prediction percentage would also mean that “FFVII always wins” wouldn't stop. Which it has needed to for a very long time. Seriously, it's way overdue, but we'll get back on that later. Final Fantasy VI looked great in its match, but FFVII kept being the favorite going into that match. Considering the anti-votes we know it still has, getting 84% is just amazing. Journey is probably bottom-tier here, but it doesn't really matter. In the end, it's not shown to be the very weakest and wasn't considered to be so very much. No matter how you look at it, this result was great. Chrono Trigger was probably considered to make the final four after its first round blowout, but with this result, Final Fantasy VII remained the favorite for sure. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6066&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (16)Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings 2015 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (16)Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings 2015 (revid 84286)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Monday**, November 9, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 9, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 85.07% 108 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Bros. 3 - 91.22% We all knew when this contest began that this match would be in contention for biggest blowout of the contest, so seeing Mario 3 go godmode was to be expected. But even in one of the contest's biggest blowouts, Age of Empires 2 getting 16% wasn't all that bad. People get much more attached to games than characters, so in a games contest you won't really see things like Tanner getting 5.7% or Adventure getting 4.8%. 16% is respectable. Even Hearthstone getting 9% was okay. Not much else to say about this match, except that this was the one and only time we got to enjoy Mario 3 winning a match in this contest. It would end up the first 1 seed to lose, which is just sad. Marios 1, 2, and 3, and Zeldas 1 and 2 hold a special place in my heart as being the games that got me into video games. Mario 3 stands head and shoulders above them all. What would eventually happen to it was just sad, though I won't pretend it didn't lose to a damn deserving title in its own right. And no, Mario 3 would not have won a fair poll. I was THE guy pushing Mario 3 in that Pokemon match and I am THE Mario 3 fanboy. I know when I've been beat, just let it lose with dignity and move on. It was never going to win that match. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was never going to be particularly interesting, but maybe it could be used to give us an idea of SMB3/Pokemon. But it didn't really. Putting up nearly 85% is no joke, but AoEII might very well be one of the weakest games in the bracket, well, the seeding is fitting, and SMB3 is probably one of the games with the smallest amount of anti-votes. It's the oldest game in the bracket I believe, and was definitely the biggest thing when it came out. I don't ever see anyone say anything bad about it. AoEII is kinda unknown though. SMB3 also has the highest playrate recorded on this site except for Tetris, so there's that. Can't imagine how low a playrate AoEII would have. It's also not the type of game to be popular on this site to begin with. All this taken into consideration, I wouldn't even say SMB3 looks particularly good here, but it is an old game and the more time goes the more the playrate drops. Fortunately for SMB3, this site has a limited amount of young users on the front page, but they still come. SMB3 was definitely stronger than SMW in 2004, which was super easy to judge as both faced Chrono Trigger, but they appeared on par in 2009. Best case scenario, SMB3 is about the same as in 2009. It did manage a \#1 seed, but if it has indeed fallen a bit as you might expect, this percentage is probably what should be expected of it. It's odds against Pokemon would be much better determined by Pokemon's performance. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6067&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (9)Tetris 2015 _source: (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (9)Tetris 2015 (revid 84287)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Monday**, November 9, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 9, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Red/Blue - 72.79% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon Red/Blue - 72.54% There were very few match pic controversies this contest, but seeing Charizard making out with Blastoise is pretty hilarious. Regardless, this match was used to make Mario 3/RBY comparisons, and the comparison points everyone jumped to were the 2004 and 2009 game contests. In 2004, Zelda 1 laid down an SFF beating of 75-25 on Tetris before losing to Mario 3. The assumption there was that Mario 3 would have also SFFd Tetris into the ground. In 2009, Tetris got through two matches in the fourway format before losing. This time around, it got stuck sharing a poll with Mega Man 2, Mario 1, and Zelda 1. It was once again smashed into the ground by SFF. So when Pokemon RBYG went out there and failed to deliver a similar 75-25 beating to Tetris, people thought this meant bad things for Pokemon in the looming round 2 match. Certainly, Mario 3 would not fail to do such a thing. What people forgot here is that Pokemon exists on a very different plane from normal Nintendo, in that it doesn't really SFF anything, nor does it get SFFd itself. Even against itself, Pokemon polls don't really have SFF in them. We've seen Pokemon RBY and Pokemon GSC in contest polls together, and GSC was basically independent. The point here is this match was just fine for Pokemon. It was a very normal 68-32 beating that had no SFF in it at all, nothing more and nothing less. And given how well respected Tetris is, putting up 68% on it absent of SFF is no joke. Let's not forget that Tetris won a character contest once! Pokemon RBYG was out for blood this year, and had its fans bothered showing up instead of trying to "beat genwunners", I'm convinced it could have won this contest. ## Ctes's Analysis This was the big match that was gonna give us an idea on how SMB3/Pokemon was gonna go down, likely the most important match of the bracket, at least so we thought pre-contest. My impression of this match apparently went against everyone else's except for like MWC, but I actually ended up being correct. I usually don't brag, but I am gonna take credit for this one. Most of the write-up was inspired from a topic I made where I called Pokemon the favorite after today before Undertale rallying would kick in. First of all though, I must mention what shame it is to see Tetris being placed here in the bracket. It has some strength and it'd be really interesting to see what it could do against new games that are not elite tier like RBY is. I personally think Tetris would held up a lot better against more recent games and this match actually seemed to prove that. The two oldest games in the bracket being fed to Pokemon in the first two rounds is sad. Wish we had Tetris, or MMX I guess, in the bottom quarter of the bracket. That would've been fun. But no one with any contest knowledge doubted Pokemon's chances today. The prediction percentage is relatively low, but that's to be expected when RBY was this low seeded and its facing a game everyone recognizes. When I voted and saw RBY close to 70% of the votes, I was actually really impressed and thought it would definitely be the favorite against SMB3. I didn't feel safe about the match at all, because of things like bracket votes and Nintendo hierarchy, the latter which didn't really appear to be a factor at all in this contest. Also because Tetris is terribly hard to read into. After this match however, everyone laughed at RBY and called an easy win for SMB3. Ulti especially was going this, but while he called a 60-40 victory, though maybe exaggerating, everyone agreed that the outcome was obvious. I guess if you already supported SMB3 that was unlikely I change, but the main reason people came up with was actually that RBY had SFF'd Tetris in the match, which makes it look terrible. I tried to defy this logic, but with no luck. The day before the second round match started I made a topic where my main point was that there was no SFF, but not a single person there agreed with me. Seriously though, why the hell would there be any SFF in that match. It makes sense and thus, RBY didn't underperform. It doesn't matter if Zelda 1 put up 75% on Tetris in 2004, that doesn't mean any Nintendo game SFF's Tetris. Pokemon in particular has shown in the past that it ignores any SFF from other Nintendo game, but that's not even the point. I guess if you look way too simply at things, then yes, Zelda 1 would be stronger than RBY and it went ahead and lost to SMB3 twice, big deal. Not only was the Zelda 1 match 11 years ago and things change. Tetris probably improved since. I don't see why it wouldn't with it becoming huge on mobile and everything.It has had two playrate polls on this site. In 2005, 97.36% had played it, in 2014 that number went up to 98.85%. There was also made some good x-stats analysis by KP through 2009 showing RBy as a clear favorite, which I have sadly lost. Everyone ignored it then though. There is some sense in Zelda 1 SFF'ing Tetris. Both are from the same era, you think of both as classic video games. It's hard to judge, but there's sense to it. What there is no sense in is Tetris getting SFF'd the same way against RBY. People were actually arguing that because Tetris was huge on the Gameboy, RBY should be able to SFF it into the ground even harder than Zelda did, but that was a terrible argument! Did a large amount of the people that played RBY play Tetris too as kids? Yeah, sure, that much I agree with. But did a large amount of the people that played Tetris play RBY as kids too? No, aboslutely not. That's the thing. People argued that both was played on the Gameboy by the same people, but not only was RBY released somewhat late into the lifespan of the Gameboy, there's also the factor that everyone who played anything on any console ever likely played Tetris too. It exists on everything in some format. You can find it on the internet no trouble, you don't even need a console. It had 98.85% of people playing it. That's close enough to 100% that you might as well count it is that. That number is not going to decrease btw. Tetris is totally legit in these contests. It beats me that the same people believing that Tetris could've done damage to the bracket elsewhere believes it should roll over and die here. No way does it get SFF'd by a game like RBY that it has nothing in common with. Everything is has in common with RBY, it has in common with any other game too. They're not comparable and there is no reason for a vast majority of the people that played both to prefer RBY more than there is for them to prefer Tetris more. There is however a vast majority that has only played Tetris of the two. And unlike Pokemon, Tetris is surely one of the least disliked games there is. It's much smaller than it used to, but Pokemon will probably always be anti-voted to some extend. I doubt that's the case with Tetris. You're likely to vote for the game you have played in a match like this. Especially when Tetris is the one you have played. It might not be everyone's favorite, but it's perfect for what it is really. The same can't be said of RBY. The current Pokemon community even dislikes it we learned later during the contest. So let's sum up a bit. We sadly don't have numbers on RBY's playrate, but I think it's safe to assume that a vast majority of the people that haven't played RBY voted Tetris here, except for some people simply bracket voting. Of the people that have played RBY, a majority probably voted for it yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be that large a majority, considering people also have some things against it. Tetris being huge on the gameboy doesn't somehow favor RBY, it favors Tetris obviously. The more places you're a bit hit at, the stronger you become. It's not like Cloud coming to Smash will favor Link in a match between them either. We have Snake as confirmation for this. And it's the same principle here. To put it simply, the people owning gameboy would probably vote RBY more if Tetris wasn't released on it, but the people who didn't own one probably votes Tetris. I really can't understand this stupid logic that you have two groups of people liking each game, then introduce one game to the other group and that game which now more people knows would decrease in popularity between the one. But it wasn't possible for me to defy it before the match came. I'm not saying there's any significant rSFF here either, but it's more likely than the SFF people believed there was. Leon is right that if you believe Tetris was able to rSFF RBY, that doesn't give it good chances against SMB3, a game with just as huge a playrate that was also out on gameboy, but again, that's probably minimal. Of course, SMB3 did have some things in its favor as I mentioned. Bracket votes and Nintendo hierarchy being among them. Rivalry Rumble should be forgotten, but Mario/Bowser vs. Red/Blue does point in SMB3's favor if anything. These things were just not what people used to argue for SMB3 for most parts after today. They used something that actually pointed towards RBY being the favorite, because if you assume that it didn't SFF Tetris, which I have went through why you shouldn't, RBY was absolutely the favorite coming out of this match. It's victory here is really impressive. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6068&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Portal 2 vs (12)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 2015 _source: (5)Portal 2 vs (12)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 2015 (revid 84288)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Monday**, November 9, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 9, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 50.98% 61 for - 44 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 40.39% I didn't get many upset picks right this contest, but this was an exception! I'm a massive fan of both of these games, so it felt good to be in tune enough with both fanbases to know how this would go. First, Sonic 2. This game got me to buy a Genesis by itself, and it's a game I'm completely in love with. It'll always be my favorite game in that series, and it's a good reminder of what once was. No series made a worse transition to 3D than Sonic, and no series sabotaged itself harder. But when I play Sonic 2, all is right with the world. Portal 2, good as it was, just didn't quite have the same magic as the original. Wheatley was funny, but at times he felt like tryhard comedy. Everyone knows the one guy who is only funny when quoting comedy bits or stealing jokes, and when he tries on his own he's a huge tryhard. That's Wheatley. We all know the true star of Portal 2 was Cave Johnson. GLaDOS was typical snarky GLaDOS, and the gameplay was much better than in the original. But if the original game was a 10/10, Portal 2 was a 9.5/10. Still an all-time great, but not quiiiiiite on the level of the original. Anyway, there were two reasons I picked Sonic 2. One is that the craze has been over for awhile. We'll be saying the same thing about Undertale five years from now; a certain internet buzz has to go into games like this if they want contest strength. Portal 2 doesn't feel like its ever had it. The other reason was this poll: People can tout games =/= characters all they want, but it's not true. Sure there are examples like Dante and Kirby where the character is MUCH stronger than the games, but Wheatley being that weak was an indicator that the internet isn't behind Portal 2 like it was the original. When the match began and things were basically tied, Portal 2 was fucked. It had bracket votes. Then Sonic won the second update and everyone knew what was coming. Portal 2 had just choked a similar match two years ago when Crash pulled his upset, and this match virtually mirrored that one. Wheatley stayed close to Crash for 45 minutes before getting buried. In this match, Portal 2 kept the match tied for 45 minutes, then got buried. Sonic went off to the races, and Sonic doesn't often lose races. A tie match 45 minutes in turned into a very comfortable 2400 vote, 53% win. It would set up a rather entertaining round 2 match with Uncharted 2, though obviously Undertale would have a massive effect on how that poll would play out. Not that we knew this at this point of round 1! ## Ctes's Analysis This was personally my very first pick against the cookie cutter, so nice to see it being correct. Portal 2 was the favorite on b8 and overall. It had the higher seeding too, so it made sense. The first Portal looked really great in GotD while Sonic 2 didn't exactly impress much last time we saw it. It was expected to be somewhat close, but there was good reason for Portal 2 to be the favorite I suppose. The match also meant a lot, because it was expected of the winner to go to round 3. But while Portal 2 was the favorite pre-contest, I don't it was right before the match began. The first Portal looked terrible against Melee and old games had looked really good in general. Sonic 2 didn't exactly win by a lot, but it was a comfortable victory. So where were the hints you needed to figure out Sonic 2 was the right choice pre-contest? Well again, when it comes to new vs. old, always go with old. Look at the age polls we have somewhat often and compare recent polls to older ones. We're just not having as many new users on the frontpage as we used to. The average user there grew up with games like Sonic 2. That's the main reason, but there's more too. The Portal series spawned a lot of memes, but it has sort of died down, and you shouldn't expect the sequel to be stronger obviously. Wheatley getting embarrassed against Crash in 2013 shows that more than anything. It's a shame that during Year of SNES, we only have a single Genesis game, but I'm happy to that game at least look fine. Although when you consider that Sonic 2 winning became obvious as the contest went rolling, this performance isn't really that great, so people started thinking maybe Uncharted 2 had a shot at round 3, similar to how they thought TLoU maybe had, though that was because of TLoU looking good not KHII looking bad. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6069&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves vs (13)The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series 2015 _source: (4)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves vs (13)The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series 2015 (revid 84289)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Monday**, November 9, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 9, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Uncharted 2 - 58.51% 101 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Uncharted 2 - 77.43% I feel like this comes up a lot, but it bears repeating: when licensed games and characters actually prove they're worth anything, let me know. The Walking Dead is one of the most popular shows in the history of television (especially by modern standards with the insane number of options people have), yet it's meant nothing on this site. It got destroyed in this poll, and Clementine got annihilated two years ago in the character battle. And I'm supposed to think Batman could beat Link, or that Darth Vader could beat Solid Snake? Hell, let's go midcard with it. Give me Venom vs Auron, I'd pick Auron. Captain America vs Jecht, I'd pick Jecht. And so on and so forth. There would have to be something unbelievably obvious for me to have any faith in these licensed characters, like for example a Spiderman vs Vyse match. Spiderman feels like the easy pick there, and even then I wouldn't be surprised if Vyse won. Licensed characters don't matter unless they catch a rally, though in fairness anything could potentially catch a rally. Anyway, it's no surprise whatever that Walking Dead was weak. Uncharted 2 is not a strong game, and it scored a doubling on it before getting embarrassed in its own right one round later. So I say bring on a licensed characters bracket, it'll be free points. Until of course Donald Duck catches a reddit rally and wins the entire thing. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was never going to interesting in the slightest. Uncharted 2 was the obvious winner here and rightfully so. The game is absolutely fantastic and it's a shame it's not stronger here than this. TWD doesn't look very good as a game from what I've seen. In any case, it was obvious it was gonna be really darn weak on this site. Uncharted 2 is not the kind of game with much strength here, it didn't exactly look good in GotD and it was expected to destroy here. A doubling doesn't even look that good actually. Maybe if TWD has a little boost from being a well known title before it was a game but I really doubt that matters enough for it to make a noticeable difference. I'm not sure how serious they were, but a few people were discussing if maybe Uncharted 2 had a round 3 shot because Sonic 2 didn't look more impressive than it did when compared to MMX and such, but this match was going on at the same time and Uncharted 2 unfortunately didn't look that good all things considered. There's also the factor of it being yet another case of new vs. old. If the match was ever in any doubt, it ended tomorrow at least. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6070&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Fallout 3 vs (14)Life is Strange 2015 _source: (3)Fallout 3 vs (14)Life is Strange 2015 (revid 84291)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Tuesday**, November 10, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 3 - 77.76% 104 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout 3 - 92.72% This match was a very predictable blowout, especially on the back of Fallout 4 hype and ultimately being released during the contest itself (Fallout 4 was actually released on the day of this match). I have no idea what Life is Strange even is outside of it being tumblr: The Video Game, but it was getting like 19% of the vote for almost the entire match. Speaking of tumblr, let's get into why this match was a lot more intriguing than your typical 73-27 blowout. Remember when I said Life is Strange had 19% of the vote for most of this match? Well we were bound to have the new multi-poll format have unintended consequences, and polls sharing the spotlight with Undertale's rally were clearly and obviously affected. In the late afternoon, right when the big rally started, Fallout 3 had 80% of the vote. Undertale's rally, which had nothing to do with this match whatsoever, directly caused Fallout 3 to drop all the way down to 72.55%. It would be a very clear warning sign for what would happen in round 2, but we'll get to that in due time. For Fallout 3 to bleed this badly against a complete nobody opponent was a bad sign that it would be defenseless against a big-time rally. Losing 8% in seven hours is no joke. ## Ctes's Analysis Fallout 3 came into this match looking like a beast. I know Life of Strange is fodder, but for a Western game to put up 80% on anything is quite impressive. Fallout 3 was looking really strong and while the people that picked it over SMW would always be stupid, well, at least Fallout 3 looked good here. This was a boring match match and we knew that already before it started. Well, that is until around the 18th hour mark and things changed rapidly. It did in no way change the outcome here or get close to it, but it was still quite remarkable. Fallout 3 has over 80% of the vote when suddenly the Undertale rally attempted was reblogged by people with followers and that match went crazy. It turns out that tumblr prefers Life is Strange above Fallout 3 apparently! In the remaining 6 hours Fallout 3 didn't stop winning updates, but bled percentage like crazy. Don't be fooled by the final result, because Fallout 3 destroyed. Fallout 3 was never in doubt to reach round 3 before but now it was suddenly looking to be in serious danger. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6071&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Undertale vs (11)Mass Effect 3 2015 _source: (6)Undertale vs (11)Mass Effect 3 2015 (revid 84292)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Tuesday**, November 10, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Undertale - 29.65% 1 for - 105 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Undertale - 23.38% Before getting into anything else, I want to defend Mass Effect 3. It is the second strongest game in this contest after all, so someone around here needs to give it some love. First and foremost, "it's not Mass Effect 2" is a dumb reason not to like a video game. 2 went above and beyond every call of duty to get you attached to the last, and had some of the best storytelling in gaming history. 3 could never live up to that, especially given how the reapers finally reached the galaxy to invade it. The whole point is 3 doesn't have time to develop anyone or anything new. You're trying not to go fucking extinct. There's no time to sit around doing 3 loyalty missions to solve James Vega's daddy issues. I know the game does technically give you infinite time (we're not exactly playing Majora's Mask here, though a looming clock probably would have improved the plot!), but the point is that you're not meant to get attached to anything new. 3 was not meant to be your first game in the series. You were already supposed to be attached to everything. The gameplay is the best in the series, outside X having 398 different functions and directly ripping off the awful roll garbage from Gears of War. Not good in a cover shooter when X puts you in cover. Besides that, this game does the best job in all three of making all the jobs feel different. Engineers, Adepts, and Soldiers are NOTHING alike. Story and gameplay are there... for 99% of the game. I played Mass Effect 3 after the emergency DLC that added content to the ending, so I suppose I can't really understand or respect how dumb the original ending was. I've watched it on youtube, and yeah I can see why people hated the ending itself. But the events leading up to it are not as bad as people make them out to be. Yes, we'd be better off not knowing the motivation for the reapers. Yes, the final character's logic is idiotic and was proven wrong by 3's own events. Yes, we'd be better off if everything were completely ambiguous the second Shepard entered that final elevator. But it's not THAT bad, and certainly not worth crapping on and punishing the entire game. Why punish the final 1% of the final game in a series when you've loved everything leading up to it? Plenty of works of fiction have bad endings, but get respected independent of said ending. The ending of Return of the King sucks. The ending of Fight Club sucks. The ending of Final Fantasy 7 sucks. The ending of Superman (1978 version) sucks. The ending of Seinfeld REALLY sucks. And on and on and on. It doesn't change all of these things being good leading up to the bad ending. Why does Mass Effect 3 get punished as a whole for a bad ending? My theory is that gamers are whiny entitled brats who will never be happy with anything, though I'm sure other reasons exist -- Mass Effect 2 being a godlike game being among them. Then there's the multiplayer, which I spent 600 hours on (http://social.bioware.com/n7hq/?name=Ultimaterializer&platform=ps3). It's a buggy, laggy mess, and I still had an absolute blast with it anyway. The shorthand reason why is JOB SYSTEM. The longer reason is that it's unbelievably fun to play. It's horde mode, where you go through 10 waves of increasing difficulty before an 11th "fight for your life and escape after 2 minutes" wave. There are 4 overall difficulties, ranging from bronze to platinum, and as you play more you unlock stronger weapons and characters and such. There are also 4 types of enemies -- Reapers, Geth, Cerberus, and Collectors. The thrill of unlocking everything is great, as is the journey to get good enough to carry platinums. These days I can boot up the Geth Trooper Soldier spec'd for max shields, the Acolyte pistol, and Flamer, and just burn everything to death in seconds. If you go through my page there, you'll see the insane amount of stuff you can unlock and play around with. I've done just about everything in the multiplayer, and it's one of my favorite game experiences of all time. Starting out as a garbage-ass level 1 nobody and becoming one of the best online players in Mass Effect 3 was a blast. I'll get to my Undertale love in round 2, but in round 1 I was rooting for Mass Effect 3 as I hadn't yet played Undertale or learned how ungodly amazing it was. It's funny to think about how our contest champion wouldn't have won a single match if its opponent managed to avoid 500 anti-votes in the first match, but like I said during the Halo/Minecraft writeup, rallies require a lot of luck. Undertale had a great round 1 opponent, and it just snowballed from there. For 17 hours, this was a perfectly normal, run-of-the-mill poll. It was a standard 64-36 beating that would have been forgotten 5 minutes after the match ended. But then a lone user named trace excalibur made a post on tumblr that changed the entire direction of this contest. All he did was ask people to vote for Undertale in the match. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a big fan rooting for his game to do well, which is something we'd seen thousands of times before in these contests. I don't know if someone else managed to get anything going before trace did, but his blog post on tumblr is the earliest thing I can find. By all means correct me if this is wrong. A few minutes later at 5:15, a reddit topic went up on r/undertale. Then twitter got involved. Then 4chan and Facebook got involved. And before long, we were off to the races and watching the beginnings of the greatest contest run in this site's history. Before getting into the ridiculous numbers of this match, I need to put in perspective just how nuts this was. Our biggest 1v1 comeback was Sonic beating Crono in 2006, with Sonic coming back from being down 2207 votes. Our biggest comeback overall before this match was Draven/Jak/Chie in 2013, in which Draven came back from being down 2483 before catching a rally of his own. Big numbers to be sure, and very impressive records to set over 11 years of contests. Undertale would render them completely irrelevant. at 4:40 pm, with a mere 7 hours and 20 minutes to go in the entire match, Mass Effect 3 had a peak lead of 9252 votes. I'll say this again. 9252 votes. Even though the rally pieces would get put into place over the next hour or so, it still took some time to get the ball rolling. So while cuts were happening and momentum was building, it wasn't anything overly insane and wasn't remotely close to the pace needed for Undertale to actually win the match. At 6 pm, with 6 hours left, the lead was 8603. The comeback quota at this time was 120 votes per update. It was at exactly this time where Undertale just went completely berserk. We're talking Undertale getting hundreds of votes per update, while Mass Effect 3 was struggling to even get 80 or 90. There were updates here where Undertale would get in excess of 200, 250, 300, even 350 or more votes, while Mass Effect 3 was pulling in 80 at a time. It was the perfect storm of Undertale being a hyped new game and having a rabid fanbase, and Mass Effect 3 being a game that is unbelievably easy to rally against. Had even one point of the rally faltered, it might have failed. But when all the major players all agree that Mass Effect 3 needed to lose in a display of gaming justice, you have a problem. On top of that, this was genuinely fueled by Undertale's fans wanting the game to do well so it got more exposure. It would culminate in Undertale erasing a 9252 vote lead in a little over 6 hours, with the bulk of the work being done after 6 pm. It's a number so high, and a push so inexplicably unreal that you just had to be there and see it with your own eyes to actually believe what was going on. Reading this writeup will not do it justice for you. It isn't just the number itself, but the sheer speed of it. Doing it that quickly is insane. There was no resistance once the lead was breached, either, as Undertale would go on to win the poll by 1056 votes. To pull this off, it would pull in these numbers after 6 pm. (6)Undertale - 14965 \[73.82%\] (11)Mass Effect 3 - 5306 \[26.18%\] Total Votes - 20271 There was a lot of predictable whining once this happened, with the crux of it being people complaining that we had another Draven on our hands and that another contest was about to be ruined and decided by outside forces. First off, this has literally never been a "GameFAQs only" contest. There has been rallying since 2002, and the entire internet getting involved has been a thing since 2002: Secondly, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with a legal contest rally. Board 8 just likes to complain when such a rally goes against their predetermined and false narratives of what is and is not "morally allowed" in a contest. Did Board 8 complain when Frog rallied against Liquid Snake and Master Chief in 2004? No. Starcraft against Halo in 2004 (before turning on Starcraft the second the almighty Nintendo got beat)? No. Solid Snake when it started beating Final Fantasy 7? No. Pokemon when it started going godmode in the late 2000s? No. Majora's Mask when it did God's work and beat Brawl? No. Melee when it almost beat Undertale in the semifinal of this contest, two rounds after whining nonstop about Melee rallying to beat Chrono Trigger? No. L-Block when it went on its crazy run? No. Chrono Trigger when it came damn close to out-rallying Melee? No. The Trainers beating Cloud and Seph? No. Only rallies that are deemed outsiders get whined about here, and the incessant whining makes it unbelievably easy for other sites to look at GameFAQs and only see us as whiny crybabies. I've said it before and it bears repeating until people knock it off and learn their lesson: you don't get to pick and choose which rallies are allowed. You either support all of them or none of them. If you support none of them, I respect that opinion. If you pick and choose, you're likely to get screencapped and made to go viral every time this happens from now on. And you should, until you learn your lesson. It's basic logic; you cause a de-push by completely no-selling. Had people not whined so much, it wouldn't have caused the perfect storm of "Undertale is an amazing game!" plus "Look at these turbonerds on the contest board" that kept getting quoted by undertale-shitposts on tumblr every round. On top of that, there was no guarantee at this time that the contest was over, at least had people been smart and not started complaining so much. By causing such a massive buzz, they fed the beast. Had this been given positive energy instead, you'd be looking at having to beat Fallout 3 right after 4 was released, then Super Mario World, then Pokemon RBYG (tumblr's favorite franchise, and a game that could win any contest it wanted if the fans would ever go full force to rally for it) or Mario 3, then Mario 64, then Melee or FF7 or Chrono Trigger, then Ocarina in the final. That is an insane contest path, though having Mass Effect 3 first to get the ball rolling, followed by a strong-yet-not-Nintendo game in round 2 was the perfect chain of events. But we'll get into future matches as they come, I don't want to give the entire PCA right here and now. The point is, people on this site did every bit as much feeding of the monster as so-called outside forces did. And they made it very, very easy for people to root for Undertale to do well. Lastly, after this match I went and played Undertale for myself. To say it's deserving of the hype doesn't really put it into proper perspective. Undertale is absolutely one of the best games ever made and deserved every amount of hype generated by this contest. I won't repeat my entire opinion about the game since I wrote a review for it (http://www.gamefaqs.com/PC/180989-undertale/reviews/161494), but I would highly recommend you play the game if you haven't yet. It's a legendary title, and once I played it I was definitely on the bandwagon for it to make a deep run in this contest. Following along and rooting for it is the most fun I've ever had in one of these things, and I'm saying this as a guy that won a contest once. Following along with and rooting for Undertale was better. The game and its community really are that good. As of this writing, there's a post-contest poll asking if people bought Undertale as a result of the contest. 25% of people are saying they refuse to buy it out of spite, which is just ridiculous. You're refusing to play a great game because of how a poll went? Ridiculous. Someone else's opinion, or someone else acting silly should not be any factor whatsoever in whether or not to play a video game. In regards to cheating accusations, from Allen himself: Howdy all. I've reviewed the logs over the past few hours and there's absolutely no funny business going on here. We've seen people rallying in roughly equal numbers from rallies on tumblr, reddit, and 4chan. This isn't a group of hackers trying to mess with our contest, it's a shared love for a new and popular game across multiple fanbases. Undertale isn't exactly a trivial game, like some seem to believe. It's the 33rd most played Steam game right now. It was higher seeded than ME3 because it had more nominations and higher reviews and traffic. It's a bit of a surprise to most people (I picked ME3 in my bracket), but really maybe it shouldn't have been. Don't forget, rallies are to be expected, and are even covered in the contest description: "This is not a contest to see which game is your favorite, or even which one is the best rated. It's all a big popularity contest, and visitors who have never visited GameFAQs before will be sure to stop in and vote." ## Ctes's Analysis This match was never doubted by anyone really. ME3 is frowned upon mainly because of the ending. I played it when it came out first and I enjoyed it all the way through until the end. I heard they fixed it a bit with some DLC, but it can't be completely excused. The game is still good overall though, but it seemed obvious it would be the weakest of the three Mass Effect games. It also had the most predictable path. The first game had a debatable first round match but was never escaping round 2. The second game would go against Starcraft and the weakened Metal Gear series in a fun set of matches. The third one was simply gonna cream Undertale before getting creamed by Fallout 3, not really any fun in that path, but they can't all be. Undertale wasn't going to be a big thing here, it was a victory to a good bunch that it even made the bracket, and it's seeding was quite impressive, but it wasn't going to win. Not sure if ME3 failing to double says good things about Undertale or bad things about ME3, but 65-35 is generally a boring match, so let's move on to the next... Well, considering it was boring match for most of the day and was expected to be so, I don't anyone foresaw that this would be the match that changed the bracket for good. Suddenly Undertale cut 24 votes, nothing remarkable, it had cut before and sure this was a little bigger, but who cares. Next updates it cut 55 votes and people took notice. It was interesting to see Undertale start doing something. We tried to look for the obvious rally without knowing what was about to happen still. Undertale would continue these cuts the next few updates. Remarkable, but not nearly enough if it continued and we all knew it would slow down eventually. It was already slowing down a bit, so that was probably it… only for it to start rolling again. Undertale had in almost one and a half hour shred 800 votes, which is really darn impressive. The board was definitely on the watch now and figured out that the source was tumblr. If you weren't at the board when it happened, you likely missed it all, because there was really no reason to pay attention to any of the matches today outside of the first few udpates, all four were boring. Cutting 40-60 votes an update is no joke, especially with hour low votals, but ME3 despite going a sizable part of it was still 8.6k votes ahead. It was too late. Undertale would go out looking impressive, but you can't flip over 9000 votes in only 7 hours, we knew this. This wasn't Link or Draven. Had these Undertale rallies started earlier, then maybe it could happen, but it was just too late. We thought that at least. The next update Undertale cut off 200 votes. That was when things screamed out danger. The next update was over 300 votes. Rally power was definitely still a thing. The board exploded with panic mostly but also some people enjoying it. People was already calling Undertale a winner. There were ramblings about Hearthstone \> Ocarina of Time out of nowhere, it was crazy. We went from having four boring matches to having a board out of control. Of course the Hearthstone upset were just people overreacting, but the rest really wasn't. Undertale was on its way to winning this match. A few times it slowed down a little bit. Some were predicting that this wouldn't last, but they were not yet aware of how things worked a tumblr. Just another re blog and Undertale would keep rolling. There's also that whenever it started to slow down a little, it would just go big again a few updates later. But it was not over yet. While this was rally power in a league of its own (pun intended), that 9000 lead wouldn't be easy to come. Time was Undertale's biggest opponent here. It did slow down a bit I guess, but ME3 was still looking to lose. People tried to counter rally, but it was totally ineffective. ME3 is hard enough to rally as it is because the Mass Effect fanbase itself dislikes it, but the main reason is that it was ahead. People see the match, notice the lead and decide things looks fine. You can't expect outside people to realize what it happening here, sadly. The counter rallies never stood a chance. Creative's updater started going crazy here spitting out updates constantly. It was really confusing. You'd often think Undertale wouldn't make it, but then it turned out to be only a one minute update. It couldn'tbe avoided. With only 40 minutes to go, Undertale took the lead. It managed to put the lead up by over 1000 votes in the remaining time. What we just witnessed here was history. The single biggest comeback in history happened out of nowhere. People came the next day totally confused as to what just happened those seven hours. The contest had changed for good. We looked at possible rally potentials in the bracket, but didn't consider Undertale. The timing was perfect. It came out at just the right time and hit big at just the right crowd. The aftermath deserves mention to. Personally, I was sorta depressed after this match. I was so hyped about having a contest again and this match made major damage on my interest. The next few days I didn't really care. Undertale had far from won the contest yet, but it was looking likely that we were seeing another Draven and I really don't see the fun in that. I mean, if you like Undertale that's cool and all, but I wouldn't enjoy this no matter what game it was, trust me. I don't see why people believe this is fun to watch, it's pretty much just our contests being completely decided by outside forces. This match was interesting because it kicked in later I guess, so let's save this rant for another match. A bunch of people believed that there had to be ceiling of the Undertale rallying. Fallout 3 was a far stronger game and should be able to overcome this, especially with Fallout 4 having just been released so rally potential was there. Other people realized it depended on tumblr's interests and pointed to RBY being the savior because Pokemon is huge on tumblr too. Some people, mainly Heroic Mario, pointed to OoT as the savior, but it was always gonna be RBY or nothing. If a game like Undertale reached the finale, all would be over. Had OoT met Undertale in round 2 it would've probably stopped this, the same goes for RBY. That was just not the case. Finally, a group of people were saying that if Undertale was able to win this match it would go on to win the contest. And it did. They ended up being right, but it was never really a lock. We get back to this in future rounds, but there were at least two matches that could've gone both ways. It was not for certain that Undertale would win the contest yet, we still needed to see at full force, but I had the fear too. The worst part about this match was how it affected the other matches going on at the same time as well as the matches following it. I know that no result was actually ever changed because of rally spillover and thank heavens for that, but as a stats nerd, it's really sad to see it just wrecking everything it comes across. One thing is its own path, but I wish other matches would be unaffected. The idea of having several matches at the same time is fantastic, even though SBAllen later took it too far, but outside rallies is a real hole in the format. There's no reason to complain too much about that, since we dodged the bullet of having a match flipped because of it. Mass Effect 3 was just the perfect opponent for Undertale to get rolling, really. I don't think it could've asked for a better one in fact. If Undertale faced simply an ever so slightly stronger opponent, it would've lose this match. It took Undertale until the last hour to take the lead, you a little big stronger the opponent and it just misses the victory. The first Mass Effect was an \#11 seed too, I think maybe that would've been enough to stop it. Had Undertale faced a much weaker game like say The World Ends with You, it likely wouldn't have been the same either, because it probably wouldn't need these insane rallies to beat that and then it would've have gained the traction to beat a \#3 seed next round perhaps. But having such a close and intense match that was in doubt until the last two hours made everyone upon their eyes and look at this “underdog” and its potential. There's also the thing that if Undertale had a really weak opponent, maybe our board wouldn't have made all the stupid backfiring whining we saw. Seriously, they're not completely to blame because they didn't exactly start this, but I'm inclined to think that if BracketEntry, ExTha and MWC hadn't been complete idiots during this and the following Undertale matches, a game like RBY would've stopped this. If is beyond me how they can be so stupid especially when we already saw how it worked with Draven. Outside sources likes seeing board 8 whine and wants those goddamn salty tears from us, because apparently they never grew up. No outside sources appears to be smart enough to realize that every forum has their few loud whiners, but that they don't make up the entire forum. BracketEntry became famous after this match and outside of GameFAQs became the face of board 8. No user could be a worse face of board 8 than him. It's a frickin' alt! This becomes a lot worse later, but it started here. I like Extha and at times MWC too, but man did they deserve to have their heads smacked together after this day. As someone who didn't enjoy these huge rallies in the slighest, I was far more annoyed by some of our own users today. This is especially because the Undertale community was being pretty nice this first match. It gave them good reputation the whole contest, even though it wasn't entirely true during future matches. They had an image of just being passionate fans after this match. The guy who made the original tumblr post was a main factor in that. He came to board 8, with an account from 2005, and talked a bit with us about it, and he was really nice. When told that board 8 hated their contests becoming jokes, he was legitimately sad about it being seen as a joke. He just wanted Undertale to do well because he really likes the game and would make clear in future rounds that the intention was not to piss us off but to show love for Undertale. I mean, you can't really hate a guy like that even if you hate what he's going right? This just made things even better for Undertale. It was the nice passionate fans against the whiners from GameFAQs. We stood no chance. In later matches, parts of the Undertale community was being just as terrible as our worst users, but the image was there and couldn't be changed. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6072&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (10)Final Fantasy VIII 2015 _source: (7)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (10)Final Fantasy VIII 2015 (revid 84293)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Tuesday**, November 10, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VIII - 65.29% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VIII - 43.86% This was the first match of many where the Grand Theft Auto series would just thoroughly embarrass itself this contest. The Show talks about stars and turds of the entire contest. Is there any doubt the GTA series was the biggest turd? I have a whole list of hilarious GTA choke jobs in contests, but I'm saving it for a match later on. Vice City, even though it lost, was at least able to lose with a degree of dignity. It was up against FF8, which gets anti-voted in its own right, and didn't really do all that bad. It would have broken 40% on a mainline Final Fantasy title had Undertale's rally not been there, which is probably the best it could have asked for. And even with the rally, FF8 went from 58% to 61%. Nothing crazy, and nothing at all when compared to the effect that rally had on Fallout 3/Life is Strange and Mario World/Animal Crossing. Speaking of Final Fantasy 8, is it finally cool to like this game? Yeah, there was a lot of weird shit in it. So what? They went completely nuts because they knew they were following 7. It's hard following a legend, but FF8 did about as good a job as one could have done. The only real problem with it is the plot, but the gameplay is solid if not hilarious. Abusing junction is one of the funniest things in that entire series to do, right on par with beating yourself to death to gain stats in the original FF2. Intentional comedy is still comedy! Bless your heart, Final Fantasy 8. And let's not forget about Triple Triad. There is no better mini game or side quest in the entire series outside of the hunts in FF12, and that is a damn fact. you loved Triple Triad. Don't even front. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was never really in any doubt. Vice City is very likely the strongest GTA on this site. Probably the only one that has been in a contest and has yet to embarrass itself in some way. Outside of course of being embarrassing for casuals. It even surprised once, by people beating Metroid Prime. Metroid Prime was a victim of LFF then and Kingdom Hearts might have taken some kiddy votes from the Nintendo games, but Vice City was still not supposed to escape that match. A PS1 Final Fantasy game is out of its league though. FFVIII winning here was always a lock. Don't let the prediction percentage fool you, because it's just the casuals thinking GTA is good on this site as always. They never really learn. Vice City managed to get more than 41% too, which isn't that bad all things considered. FFVIII is no joke in these things. Of course, the Undertale rallies played its part here. This was actually the only match of the four where the rallies favored the game that was already winning. FFVIII went from 58% to almost 61%. Not quite as impressive as Life is Strange or Animal Crossing, but you gotta remember that its much harder to gain percentage than take it from a game that it blowing you out. People looked at this and at tumblr loving Animal Crossing and considered briefly that FFVIII could maybe use Undertale's rally powers to give SMW a scare. That was never going to happen in the first place, but the ones of those people that were actually serious simply forgot the main demographic on tumblr. Teenage Girls. GTA wouldn't be favored against anything there, most games would look against it with a tumblr vote influencing. Good thing for the series that the other games were far away from Undertale, even if they managed to find another way to embarrass. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6073&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Super Mario World vs (15)Animal Crossing: New Leaf 2015 _source: (2)Super Mario World vs (15)Animal Crossing: New Leaf 2015 (revid 84294)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Tuesday**, November 10, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario World - 81.41% 104 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario World - 90.18% Mario World beating Animal Crossing to death, likely in an SFF beatdown, looks like nothing on the surface. But when you look at the effect of the Undertale round 1 rally, this match becomes hilarious. Vice City/FF8 wasn't affected much. Fallout 3 bled a lot of percentage, but ultimately it wasn't anything insane. Undertale obviously won its match. But this match? This was not a 73-27 beating the whole way through, oh no. This match started at a godstomp-level ass kicking of 85-15, and stayed that way all day long. It was undoubtedly Nintendo SFF going as berserk as it could during a games contest. Then the Undertale rally happened. Not only was Animal Crossing able to bleed hilarious amounts of percentage, but it actually got several notable cuts throughout the remainder of the match to finish at what you see now. Still a blowout for sure, but hardly an 85-15 annihilation. You don't just see games getting 15% start to bleed percentage and make several cuts in a match. It ultimately meant nothing outside of proving tumblr likes Animal Crossing, of course, but it was still freaking hilarious to watch. And no, this was not a guarantee that Mario World was screwed later on. But we'll cover that one in round 3. ## Ctes's Analysis I thought this match had the potential of having the biggest blowout of the contest because of the difference in strength but also because this match unlike the other biggest blowout contenders would have SFF. Super Mario World looked up have potential to actually achieve this, but it didn't quite seem to be able to reach Chrono Trigger's. It still looked excellent though. It really is the year of the SNES. 84% is no joke. New Leaf isn't exactly isn't the absolute worst. Given how little SFF we saw this contest, I'd say say that there was close to little here and SMW looked stronger than SMB3. RBY was still the favorite to win the division, but SMW had better odds than SMB3 for sure. That'd be my perfect scenario too. RBY beats SMB3 and the Pokefear gets real, but then SMW comes and beats the great RBY, not only saving us from our Pokefear, but also proving once and for all that it's the better 2D Mario. You might argue that it'd be better if SMW just beat SMB3 in a direct match, but it's much more incredible the other way around. Of course, all this ended up not mattering. Suddenly, with 6-7 hours to go, we had a new thread to take the division and make it all way. Undertale rallies kicked in and outside of course of Undertale's own match, this was the one that was affected the most. Turns out Animal Crossing is huge on tumblr with them being cute animals and all. New Leaf shred percentage no trouble. People overreacted to this and thought that “if Animal Crossing could beat SMW doing the rallies”, SMW would be in real trouble next round. Well, first of all, unlike the previous match where FFVIII was favored because of GTA hate, New Leaf was favored here because of love for that game and franchise with nothing against the other. Furthermore, yes New Leaf stalled like crazy. It even managed to win updates, but not by much and overall, SMW was still winning all those crazy hours. It's just that SMW was ahead by so much that New Leaf was allowed to really kill it in percentage. So to the small groups of Animal Crossing fans out there, well, you got something out of these contests. Your game didn't look bad going out! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6074&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (16)Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 2015 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (16)Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 2015 (revid 84295)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Wednesday**, November 11, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 70.97% 105 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 90.05% The first few minutes of this match was a perfect storm in Phoenix Wright's favor. It's Board 8's meme game of choice (including being the logo of our wiki!), tumblr likes it, there was Undertale rally spillover, and Western RPGs aren't big on this site. I mean they're relatively big now, but not big enough to prevent all the factors in Phoenix's favor from giving him a lead for a few minutes. This match was actually tied for a little while, though Skyrim was able to recover by the freeze before ultimately exploding in percentage for the doubling. I'm usually against repeated fodder entrants that waste time like Guybrush Threepwood, but Phoenix Wright at least gets to make Board 8 laugh for a few minutes every year. Plus he was like top 10 in the 2013 character x-stats, so obviously he's just a hidden beast waiting to be unleashed! As for Skyrim, this was not a good opening showing. Games that are true championship contenders, like FF7, Mario 3, Pokemon, Ocarina and the like, went out and dominated in round 1. Skyrim did not do this. Yes it had never lost a poll to this point and did finish with a doubling, but you really imagine Mario 64 (the biggest obstacle in its way of winning this division) struggling with Phoenix Wright? Skyrim proved from the start that it was kind of screwed, and it was frankly lucky to make it to the Mario 64 match at all. ## Ctes's Analysis No game will ever have a board vote like Phoenix Wright. It's sort of amusing, but it's just our thing. It's weird to me how a series like that can be so extremely well beloved here, but it is. More than anything. When it comes to Phoenix Wright, we vote against bracket and favorites without thinking twice. This of course gave Phoenix Wright an early boost. This time though there was also the rally spillover, which seemed to favor Phoenix Wright. So up until a minute into the match, Phoenix Wright was actually in the lead. Everybody knew it wouldn't last, but goddamn a \#16 shouldn't threaten like that be it temporary or not.  Skyrim recovered the whole day through, but man what a bad way to start. Skyrim definitely shouldn't be a \#1 seed, but we still saw it as what might be the strongest Western game, so this was just an unfortunate start. But that rally spillover is no joke. It's influence is huge and Skyrim recovered pretty well all day. It might've gotten 70% without it, which is pretty great. Less votals have meant Phoenix Wright have gotten quite a bit stronger. It's kinda hard to figure out exactly how well it would've done without the spillover, because this time, the rally takes affect from the get go. But the votals were quite a bit higher so no doubt it's there. But the people that considered Skyrim a threat to Mario 64 looked stupid now, rally spillover or not. Skyrim had better chances at not making the division finals than escaping them. It was hard to judge from this, but Skyrim had quite a bit to prove. The unfortunate part is that every single match it could have would be influenced by rally spillover now. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6075&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)GoldenEye 007 vs (9)Diablo II 2015 _source: (8)GoldenEye 007 vs (9)Diablo II 2015 (revid 84296)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Wednesday**, November 11, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** GoldenEye 007 - 55.06% 90 for - 16 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** GoldenEye 007 - 63.66% There was some minor hype around this match pre-contest, because ever since 2004 and the villains contest people have feared Blizzard's rally power. These people clearly haven't played any Blizzard games since the Diablo 2/Brood War glory days, because that company has completely run itself into the ground and turned into absolute garbage. The worst offender was World of Warcraft, which was Blizzard's version of Wind Waker. Once they made that game and realized they could fleece as much money from their addicted fanbase as possible with minimal effort, Blizzard was done. WoW would subsequently run itself into the ground, to no one's surprise. But let's not stop there. Diablo 3 literally did not work on launch day, then when people got it up and running the drop rates on items were so abysmal that people quit en masse just weeks after starting -- not to mention the AWFUL auction house garbage. They tried fixing Diablo 3 with various patches and expansions, but the damage was done. Warcraft 3's single player campaign was okay, but the hero + creep system in multiplayer rendered it one of the worst multiplayer experiences in gaming history. The literal only good thing to come from Warcraft 3 was IceFrog and Guinsoo creating Dota, which spawned the MOBA genre. But that's not technically a Blizzard accomplishment; that's people taking the map editor and showing their own talent. Starcraft 2 is a cash grab abomination of the highest order and is a direct result of the Activision-Blizzard merger. Remember, video games are not about having fun and should exist only to suck as much money from people as possible. Why make a good 60 dollar game when you could release multiple things over time and make a 500 dollar game? The Activision-Blizzard CEP literally said this. Cue Starcraft 2 being released in three parts, even though it was advertised as three games with expansion prices on two of them. I recently played Starcraft 2 over a friend's place since he was dumb enough to actually give Blizzard money (heaven knows I'll never do it again), not to mention the game finally actually being out, and it's absolute trash. Garbage gameplay, garbage plot. The entire plot that was set up over five games and years upon years of hype came down to "hey Protoss, just cut your hair off and we win". I am literally and in no way exaggerating. Dumbest bullshit I've seen in years, and I've played a lot of bad video games. Oh and let's not forget Heroes of the Storm, which is Blizzard's awful attempt to hop onto the MOBA market. It has no items, only hero levels. There is nothing else you need to know. The game is trash. So no, Diablo 2 was not beating Goldeneye. One game comes from a damaged brand that will never be repaired. The other is respected to this day, and even today has world championship tournaments that NGamer64 regularly attends. Diablo 2 by itself is a legendary video game, and is my personal favorite Blizzard game of them all. Some of my best gaming memories of all time involve Diablo 2. But Diablo 2 getting its ass kicked in this poll meant more than a point in a bracket. It was justice for all of gaming. Fuck Blizzard. Fuck Activi\$ion. Fuck everything that company has done since World of Warcraft. They cannot go bankrupt and be out of gaming fast enough. I'm sorry Diablo 2 had to be sacrificed for the greater good, as it did nothing wrong, but certain things must be done in the name of gamer justice. Goldeneye deserved this. It's still the best FPS ever made, and the people who try saying it's aged badly or is overshadowed now have no idea what they're talking about. At the very least, we can agree to disagree. And yes, it's better than Perfect Dark. Sometimes having limits on what one can do is a good thing, since you're left wanting more instead of doing too much. The best-looking girl in any strip club is the one with the most clothes on. ## Ctes's Analysis There was a lot of talk about GoldenEye upsettying Skryim pre-contest, but I didn't see much about the potential upset in this match. It might've just been that NGamer got to hype GoldenEye \> Skyrim a bit on The Show. Diablo II winning here was a cool little upset, definitely not impossible. Count out bracket votes and such, and it might just break 45% too. Then there's the rally spillover, which favored GoldenEye a little bit seemingly. It's difficult to tell and it wasn't much, but GoldenEye started out a lot stronger than it ended. Those two things aside and this would be a lot closer, so you can't blame people for thinking Diablo II stood a chance here.  But while they were close, it doesn't take too much contest history to get this one right. And I don't just mean looking at previous results from these two games specifically, which would also favor GoldenEye. It's just knowing that GoldenEye is from a strong era. It ended up being Year of SNES instead of Year of N64, which gave the GoldenEye and Banjo upsets in round 2 even worse odds, but the N64 era is still powerful here. Diablo II might come from roughly the same time, but it's a PC game and those never do well here. If you're in doubt about a match and one of the entrants is a PC game, well, a good rule is to pick against the PC game. You're pretty much always correct and this match was no exception. Considering that GoldenEye rode a little rally spillover to get this much on Diablo, it would really take some weird shenanigans for it to beat Skyrim. That upset wasn't looking too hot right now. Rally spillover would need to favor GoldenEye a lot and that didn't seem all too likely. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6076&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Metroid Prime vs (12)The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 2015 _source: (5)Metroid Prime vs (12)The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 2015 (revid 84297)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Wednesday**, November 11, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid Prime - 63.68% 106 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid Prime - 71.90% The Elder Scrolls series did not have a good contest outside of Skyrim. Both Oblivion and Morrowind lost in round 1, and the former was expected to make a big run had it gotten out of the first match. That being said, they do have some respectable strength here, and even in a round 1 loss Morrowind showed that Metroid Prime had a serious weakness that its younger brother would take advantage of later. In the beginning of this poll, Metroid Prime was above 70%. As you can see by looking at the final results here, Metroid Prime finished with 63%. Losing 7% over the course of 24 hours is not a good thing, and it's rather odd for a Nintendo game. Usually these games have strong power hour votes and strong morning votes. Some have strong after-school votes. Metroid as a series, for rather obvious reasons, doesn't have typical Nintendo trends. Metroid was a star of this contest, but if it was more Nintendo-like it could have pulled off two of the biggest upsets of all time. As-is, it would suffer two very painful and very close losses in the realm of what-could-have-been. It's always been like this for Metroid, too. Just awful day votes that really mess with it in close matches. This year, Morrowind showed us very early that things weren't going to change. Metroid would end up having a good contest, but it could have been so much better. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was boring in itself, but sorta interesting in the sense that Metroid Prime would have a big upcoming match with Skyrim and this match could show its chances. The issue is that we had no idea where Morrowind would be this contest. It wasn't exactly strong in 2009, but beat Silent Hill 2 and exceeded expectations a little bit against FFX and MGS2 even though it was a boring match and it was never close. It probably had some strength then, just didn't get a match where it could show itself. In 2010 it got blown out by Melee and was expected to. Basically, we have no good read on this game. It was also expected to have fallen a bit this contest. It was already overshadowed by Oblivion last time and now Skyrim could've made this even worse. We just didn't know where it fell from, so it was really hard to tell its strength, but everyone could at least agree that Skyrim should be quite a bit stronger than Morrowind. If you look at Metroid Prime's previous results, then it looks pretty darn good here I think. It doesn't look like a game that would lose to Fallout 3, but we have to once again factor in Undertale rallying from the previous day. Prime was heavily favored by this. It started out above 70% and basically dropped percentage the whole day so Prime would probably not break 60% by this much without coming right after that rally. This didn't exactly pit as the favorite against Skyrim unless it would have the same spillover boost as it had today. To be fair, that didn't seem so unlikely! You also have to factor in that Morrowind might've very well boosted slightly from Skyrim being there at the same time, so that evens out bracket votes at the very least. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6077&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Half-Life 2 vs (13)Demon's Souls 2015 _source: (4)Half-Life 2 vs (13)Demon's Souls 2015 (revid 84298)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Wednesday**, November 11, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Half-Life 2 - 60.70% 103 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Half-Life 2 - 78.90% There's very little to say about this match, outside of the actual result being rather predictable. Predictable match plus no trends in a 64-36 match makes for a pretty easy writeup, which is nice to have once in awhile! This entire fourpack was clearly set up to have a big Metroid Prime/Half-Life 2 rematch, and when Allen released the top 20 games in terms of picks to win the contest, Half-Life 2 was in 20th place with 104 picks. Metroid Prime did not make the list. Prediction percentage also lined up with Half-Life 2 while vote totals were rather even in round 1, so the major comparison point is whether you thought Demon's Souls or Morrowind was the stronger game. Personally I don't think any of this really mattered, since we have a rematch precedent where we almost never see the first-time loser turn it around. But we'll get to that in round 2. ## Ctes's Analysis I personally think this was the match that was the least affected by the Undertale rally spillover. Sure, Half-Life 2 destroyed the first few minutes, but a good bunch of that is probably bracket votes judged by the prediction percentage. If there was any spillover here, it's minimal. Half-Life was quicker than Prime to calm down, so I don't think the spillover had a true preference here. In any case, the match was never in doubt. I don't think round 2 was ever in doubt either, but it was going to be a rematch of a fairly close 2010 poll, so a few people thought Half-Life 2 could pull that one off. Failing to double Demon's Souls put any doubt about round 2 to rest though, if it wasn't already. I'm not saying this is a bad result per say, but it's not enough to get close to Prime and that was obvious. I feel like Morrowind would definitely defeat Demon's Souls and judged by round 2 that does seem true. Half-Life 2 is surely biggest on PC and as we've seen this is not a good contest for those games. The first Half-Life definitely seemed weakened against FFX so Half-Life 2 probably decreased similarly. Anything else wouldn't make sense. It's a shame, I actually really like those games despite them not being the kind of games I typically play. At least one of them got to win a round, and the rematch would probably give us an idea of just how much they fell! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6078&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Mario 64 vs (14)Mario Kart 8 2015 _source: (3)Super Mario 64 vs (14)Mario Kart 8 2015 (revid 84301)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Thursday**, November 12, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 12, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario 64 - 77.79% 104 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario 64 - 86.53% SFF beatdowns of the highest level always amuse me, and a Wii or Wii U game getting its ass handed to it on a plate also amuses me. This was a wonderful performance by Mario 64, and for those of us who picked it to make a deep run in this contest it's exactly the kind of no-mercy poll we were looking for. On a deeper level for me, fuck the Mario Kart series. The only ones that are even remotely playable are Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, because those are the games that existed before things like blue shells, dual cars, snake drifting, and motion controls. Mind you, they're still garbage and I said remotely playable. The entire concept of rubberband AI and punishing the players who do well by giving good items to those in last place is a gigantic example of our "everyone gets a trophy, don't hurt anyone's feelings" PC culture. It helped raise an entire generation of entitled gamers that are unable to face reality. And why would they? They got to sit in front of Mario Kart and get handed blue shells and lightning bolts if they were in last place. What's dumb is this crap is happening in the real world, too. No more tag, no more dodgeball, no more running at recess, nothing. You must be all-inclusive at all times because we can't hurt anyone's feelings. We can't teach anyone how to win by first teaching them how to lose. No more getting in fights. And now they want to ban words like mother, father, husband, wife, boy, and girl, because the liberal PC crowd and LGBT lobby will pretend to get offended if you're not trans-inclusive. This video is not as impossible as you think: Fuck Mario Kart and fuck equality. You're allowed to lose. Suck it up and deal with it. Thank you based Mario 64 for not even letting this trash break 20% on you. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was not interesting and everyone knew that. It might be the Wii U game with the highest playrate, but it's fine just feeding Mario Kart 8 to SM64 too, because it was never going to do anything in the bracket, which is unfortunate, since it's a great game! But yeah, put MK64 or SMK in the bracket and it might be fun. The latter in particular should have huge board support next bracket after Year of SNES and Super Metroid's run in particular. Everyone knew this would be a blowout, but I expected it to be a lot worse due to direct SFF. I think I predicted SM64's percentage to be eight times higher just like the numbers at the end of the game, but this honestly isn't as much as you'd think. Especially considering SM64 was taken to the finale by a few people. Pretty sure pre-contest it was the favorite of the Mario games. But I guess the SFF isn't as direct as I thought. The two games are from different generations and different genre too, even though they feature the same characters. In my head, SM64 haven't held up very good and should go by nostalgia mostly, but I'm in a minority there and the game remains big with speed runs in particular. There's also the fact that we've barely had any SFF all contest in general. It just doesn't really happen much anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't any SFF in this match at all really. At least it's minimal. At this point, it seemed to have kinda disappeared from out contests for whatever weird reason, but that at least makes x-stat adjustments easier and also means that we maybe wouldn't see some game make a great run to be god stomped by OoT or something. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6079&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Final Fantasy Tactics vs (11)Resident Evil 2 2015 _source: (6)Final Fantasy Tactics vs (11)Resident Evil 2 2015 (revid 84300)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Thursday**, November 12, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 12, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy Tactics - 54.24% 93 for - 12 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy Tactics - 52.98% This was a fun little dual between my favorite game and FFDragon's favorite game. Friendly banter is always fun, and to this day the dude will never forgive me for breaking his Wesker Mercenaries Castle record in Resident Evil 4 in one shot. His score wasn't even bad, I'm just kind of obsessed with playing Wesker on that level \<\_\< Anyway, though FFT was the favorite here I'm not going to lie that I was worried it would lose pre-contest. Not for any particular reason; I always get worried about my favorites in matches that aren't 100%. Thankfully once this poll began, it was 58-42% in FFT's favor and barely moved at all for the entire match. It was a good, comfortable win that I was happy with. Everyone wants their favorites to win at least once. Not that it had a prayer against Mario 64, but hey! Worth noting here is that Resident Evil didn't have a very good contest, and the series as a whole has been trending down for years. Most people won't even remember that RE1 and RE2 made this contest, RE4 got upset early, and no other game in that series even matters. I hate admitting this because I love RE4, but I can see where hardcore series fans are coming from when they say 4 ruined everything. 5 was pure garbage, and 6 didn't even happen because it was bottom of the barrel. Now series fans have to get hyped about remakes of old games, because the new ones don't deliver anymore. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes yet again. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was pretty decently debated pre-contest and the prediction percentage confirms that, it's one of the closest to 50% we have. That said, I never really understood that. I know that it's a spin-off Final Fantasy against a mainline and very well received Resident Evil, but it's still Final Fantasy vs. Resident Evil. It's not like 2 was ever anything special in these contests either, only 4 has been. It couldn't get out of a group of three games that SFF'd each other in 2009. Tactics on the other hand has only lost to MSG (and GSC too in 2009), which isn't a bad result. It held up fine too. And while it's a spin-off Final Fantasy, Tactics is bigger than several mainline games. No one doubted Tactics had made the bracket when Allen said eight Final Fantasy games had. I mean, it was confirmed when he said the sum of them all was 56Tactics, but everyone predicted it before then too. I have actually never played it, which is really something I wanna do at some point. Anyway, you don't really need to look at the specific previous results of Tactics and Resident Evil 2 to get this match correct. I am dead tired of people saying “Final Fantasy always wins”, because of one 11 year old contest, when, even though it's mostly directed at VII, isn't really true, but what is true is that it's a strong franchise. That doesn't guarantee wins for it, but when in doubt about a match where one of the games is a JRPG and the other is not, you rarely ever go wrong, especially when it comes to Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy games went 8-0 in round 1 and three of them had debatable matches. Tactics didn't even have any trouble winning this one! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6080&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (10)Skies of Arcadia 2015 _source: (7)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (10)Skies of Arcadia 2015 (revid 84312)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Thursday**, November 12, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 12, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Twilight Princess - 74.45% 105 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Twilight Princess - 86.21% This match was very predictable and barely worth talking about in its own right, though in looking at it, it struck me as familiar... Twilight Princess = Wind Waker seems like a real enough comparison to me, and the match would be very hard to pick. It also ended any talk of a potential Twilight Princess \> Mario 64 upset (which was fueled by Link \> Mario in the Nintendo hierarchy causing SFF), because no one in their right mind would pick Wind Waker to beat Mario 64. You need the full armada to beat that game, and Twilight Princess simply doesn't have it. It does have a weird amount of respect though, which I suppose is understandable because you get Adult Link for the entire game and followed the graphical abomination that was Wind Waker. People seem to like the long tutorial, while I'm all about the dungeon-hopping that begins with the Arbiter's Grounds. There's definitely a disconnect between old-school gamer and new-school with that preference though, and we'll just never agree. It actually floors me that transience has only played Wind Waker among the 3D Zeldas, and it turned him off from the other 3D games. I can see why given Wind Waker is trash, but at least play Ocarina. In the same arena, I really should get around to playing Skies of Arcadia. If KP recommends it, it's guaranteed to be good! ## Ctes's Analysis This match was incredibly boring. While no matches today were interesting, this one just lined up perfectly with the Game of the Decade x-stats and brought exactly nothing new to the discussion. This is one of the matches that makes you the most happy that we have several matches going on at the same time. Although with that said, it is quite fascinating that it lines up so perfectly in some way. They get laughed at more than necessary when they're wrong, but they're right so many times in comparison and lining up this great is just perfect. Of course, you do see a few users you don't know being surprised about a result like this. For as much reputation “Zelda always wins” has, it really does surprise me anyone thought Skies of Arcadia could win here, I mean, it's not a bad game and it didn't even do bad either, but would it win on any site anywhere? I doubt it. It's one of the cases where fans of the game should appreciate that it made the bracket, because that honestly doesn't feel like any guarantee and it received a \#10 seed even! During this contest there was a good amount of discussion about where the featured Zelda games ranked. OoT on top and LttP was obvious. Majora was also obvious as third, but where Wind Waker and Twilight Princess ranked was up for debate seeing as they looked roughly equal, but lost to Brawl and Majora last time, meaning we'd have inflated stats there. Unfortunately, this match couldn't really give us anything new in that regard. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6081&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 vs (15)Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors 2015 _source: (2)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 vs (15)Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors 2015 (revid 84303)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Thursday**, November 12, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 12, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 4 - 70.36% 104 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 4 - 92.48% I shit on Persona's fanbase a lot for being among the most annoying fanbases in gaming (a fact that they're actually proud of, because heaven forbid anyone have the opinion that the games aren't that good), but part of my big face turn is getting more in tune with the hug-it-out stuff. So with that being said, every fanbase should enjoy a contest win here and there, and Persona 4 has more than enough respect to pull wins off. This thing made round 3 in Game of the Decade and pulled off a great match against Dead Rising (though one wonders how impressive a nailbiter against literal Dead Rising is), and this year it got enough nominations to get a 2 seed. This bracket was set up well, and almost all of the top seeds won their first match. This was hardly Nathan Drake getting a 2 seed and getting stuck fighting The Boss. I'm sure 999 is a fine game, but it didn't have a prayer here. Persona 4 is decently strong and all, but it's not 78% strong against anything but an absolute contest bottom-feeder. There aren't many games that I can objectively say should not have been in this bracket, but 999 is one of them. Where the hell was Sonic 3 & Knuckles? Mario 1? Zelda 1? Link Between Worlds? Link's Awakening? Final Fantasy 1? Contra? Mega Man 2? Street Fighter 2? Devil May Cry 3? Super Smash Bros. Brawl (yes, seriously, I objectively think Brawl not making this bracket and trying to redeem the Game of the Decade final is a joke)? Street Fighter 4? Super Smash Bros? Super Mario Kart? MOTHER FUCKING LEAGUE OF LEGENDS?????? God of War? Star Fox 64? As a matter of fact, let's just list the games I objectively think should not have been in this bracket. I say objectively because while I would love certain games I personally hate not to make the bracket, I'm not silly enough to think they shouldn't be in. Any Best Game Ever contest should obviously have things like Shadow of the Colossus, for instance. The "Why did these get in?" list: Persona 3 The World Ends With You Pokemon XY Age of Empires 2 The Walking Dead Life is Strange Animal Crossing: New Leaf Mario Kart 8 999 Monster Hunter 4U Super Mario Maker Bloodborne Fallout New Vegas Splatoon Bayonetta 2 Virtue's Last Reward BioShock Infinite That's 16 games we could easily get rid of, maybe more if I looked again. Some of those snubs are unforgivable, and it was all done to keep League out of the bracket. Allen did a great job with this contest, but not allowing League to get in was a mistake. You cannot prevent rallies from taking these contests over anymore. It's impossible. Just embrace it and tell the crybabies to buy a pacifier and sit with the rest of the children where they belong. ## Ctes's Analysis Seriously, when a game like Persona 4 has such a high prediction percentage and can score such a blowout, the other game really shouldn't make a the bracket. Persona 4 is of course a \#2 seed, which it likely got because it has a more dedicated fanbase that most things. But it has more main appeal than anything else from the franchise. It's a step above the rest. Fans can be just as passionate about other SMT games, but I think the Persona 3 match made it perfectly clear and we're seeing a vocal minority and only Persona 4 is worth having in these contests. But yeah, Persona 4 scoring this much led to some absurd ideas. People were considering if it might give Twilight Princess a scare, but it was obvious Skies of Arcadia would double 999 too. 999 is a contender for the absolute worst game in entire bracket. Just to make it clear, I mean strength wise, I know nothing about the game. I'm sorry once again, but this was one of the times where I had to knock my face into my desk at the decision of letting Super Mario Bros miss the bracket. Seeing as it just missed it, it means games like 999 were looked at and expected to be a better addition by SBAllen and can you imagine having Super Mario Bros at this part of the bracket? One of the absolute most predictable four packs would suddenly be heavily debated. Not sure it'd be that interesting, but more than this for sure. It's a big waste of a bracket spot, so I really hope that the fans of the game were happy that it made the bracket. Also, there was discussion of 999 being SFF'd here. It's an interesting theory coming from the fact that they look like similar games. I don't know if they actually are, but I can see where people are coming from, but I must admit that the theory doesn't really hold water. Different developers and consoles aren't things that lead to SFF, especially in a contest where SFF is very limited to begin with. This is just 999 because turbo fodder in these contests. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6082&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (16)Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (16)Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft 2015 (revid 84314)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Friday**, November 13, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 13, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 80.25% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 95.61% Every contest has a legendary blowout, and for this contest, it was Hearthstone getting its ass kicked. For the anti-rally crowd this was a well-deserved blowout, because once Undertale happened a lot of people feared Hearthstone's massive subreddit would cause something silly. For them, this is the type of beating they feel all potential rally targets deserve. I agree Hearthstone deserved this, though more for a "Warcraft can go away forever" reason than anything else. I'm almost positive 3604 is a new record low for vote total in a contest poll, and we were all cheering like mad for Ocarina to reach and ultimately break 91%. It was a championship performance by Ocarina, which made its other matches seem very strange later on. We all know what happened in the final, if you take this first round match away, Ocarina looked very off this year. This match will ultimately take its place on the list of legendary contest blowouts, and since people love lists, here you go: I don't really care about anything but 1v1 with a list like this, since this is much harder to pull off a laughable blowout in than a multi-way poll. ## Ctes's Analysis Pre-contest, we were discussing a lot if the contest would have the same fate as the previous contest, meaning that some game would rally its way to vicotry. League of Legends failed to make the bracket by missing top 100 nominated games and then having bad reviews kick it out from there, so reddit couldn't rally it to victory here. On the very first episode of The Show, NGamer looked up various subreddits. By far the most active one of any minor game in the contest is that of Hearthstone. Hearthstone just made it in as a \#16 seed, which gives it bad odds to begin with, but had it faced say GTAV, you never know, maybe a rally could be worked out and gain momentum. But it got to face the favorite to win it all right away, Ocarina of Time. You never know, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if SBAllen put them against each other on purpose after all that happened last time. Better just play it safe. Earlier during this contest, Undertale managed to pull off a victory from a successful rally attempt and I think it made some people fear Hearthstone a little, or perhaps get excited, depends on the user. But it was just never going to happen here. I don't know if a weaker opponent would've given Hearthstone a chance to make a match of it, but no one bothered against the defending champ. Not only did Ocarina of Time win without any rallies showing, it also completely destroyed Hearthstone in the biggest blowout of the contest so far. Hearthstone became a contender for the absolute weakest game of the contest, its seeding definitely got justified. I don't think anyone truly believed it, but if Ocarina of Time were to lose before the finals it would be to rally, and such rally just didn't come on this side of the bracket. Ocarina of Time looked to have a very boring path this contest, just as we expected it to. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6083&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Suikoden II vs (9)Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate 2015 _source: (8)Suikoden II vs (9)Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate 2015 (revid 84315)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Friday**, November 13, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 13, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Suikoden II - 50.68% 66 for - 30 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Suikoden II - 51.43% This was a highly debated match pre-contest, and when 1 point matches cause massive arguments all over the place it's always amusing. It's not like this was Mario RPG vs Oblivion or Mario 3 vs Pokemon RBYG, where deep contest runs were on the line. Like I get arguing is fun and bracket hype is the best part of every contest, but man. Matches like this where you get two unknowns and/or two fodder entrants of similar strength follow a very simple flowchart: Nintendo \> Squaresoft \> Japanese RPG \> RPG \> Japanese \> old \> new \> contest experience \> top option \> everything else. Yes I made this as a joke in 2 seconds, but how often is it wrong with matches like this? Yes you'll get exceptions like Mass Effect beating Mario Galaxy 2, but can we really call that a match of two unknowns or two fodder characters? Someone who isn't than me needs to test that flowchart. It probably is accurate, which would be hilarious. Anyway, the point here is Suikoden 2 was never going to lose this match. Suikoden 2 is totally a Japanese RPG, while Monster Hunter 4 is merely an RPG! Clearly, Suikoden 2 wins. Plus it had contest experience, it was the top option, and it was the older game! It's clearly a foolproof method that should be used in all debatable matches from now on. Enjoy the perfect brackets and I will accept a 10% donation of your winnings, please and thank you. ## Ctes's Analysis Whenever I pick something that goes against the guru cookie, I almost always feel at least a little nervous about it. There're a bunch of experts on the opposing side that has looked on the match and thought differently about it than me. It's natural to feel unsafe about it. But I just don't think I ever did here. I know that Suikoden II has not exactly been a world beater in these things, but you should expect it to get a major SFF hammer from the most popular game on the site at the time when said game was also a PS1 RPG. More importantly, why in the world should Monster Hunter be any better here? It's not even about old vs. new. I mean, the fact that old games consistently beat new games in debatable matches made this match obvious, but I think it should've been before that too. Suikoden II is weak yes, but a mediocre 3DS RPG above a PS1 one? MH4 isn't exactly known as one of the top 3DS games either, even though it has been successful. And Pokemon aside, console games are just stronger here. Of course, had new games been stronger this year, it would've been closer, but Suikoden II would've have been in any danger. 57% is quite convincing. Suikoden II is a contender for the absolute weakest game to make round 2, but while you have matches like Final Fantasy IX vs. Kingdom Hearts or Red/Blue vs. Tetris, you also have matches like this, two weak games facing each other. Sometimes a really weak game gets to advance and this contest, Suikoden II got that lucky matchup. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6084&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Okami vs (12)Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos 2015 _source: (5)Okami vs (12)Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos 2015 (revid 84316)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Friday**, November 13, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 13, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Okami - 59.38% 94 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Okami - 54.65% Gamer justice strikes again! Warcraft 3 is just so atrocious on every level, and I will never understand why people like it. Yes the map editor was good and spawned Dota, but that is not anyone in Blizzard having any talent. That's smart people using Blizzard's engine. Warcraft 3 getting its ass kicked in a poll is always a good time, so I very much enjoyed this match. I suppose the plot is passable, but World of Warcraft completely crapped on the entire Warcraft lore so it doesn't really matter now. Okami is a very strange case in these contests. It never blows anything out, but never gets blown out itself, at least in the 1v1 format which we all know is the only format that matters. The trend would continue this contest. To date, nothing has ever broken 60% on Okami or Amaterasu 1 on 1, and anyone who brings up Rivalry Rumble can bite me \<3 ## Ctes's Analysis This match should've been very obvious. Okami and the lead Amaterasu has proved themselves previously in these contests to be worth at least something. A mid-carter. Okami reached round 3 and managed to look respectable against Metroid Prime last time. Being a PS2 game, it also didn't really have reason to have gotten weaker. Anything Blizzard on the other hand, seems to fall each time. World of Warcraft especially seems to keep falling, but it's not really limited to that only. Last contest Warcraft lost a close battle to Morrowind, which with the release of Oblivion shouldn't be worth much. Blizzard games have shown to be good in close matches. Starcraft is the best example, but Warcraft beating GTA in the series contest is another. However, that may have ended. It's probably not as much Blizzard as its PC games in general that we've seen declining over the years, so why should Warcraft be any different? The best argument for a Warcraft victory is definitely that World of Warcraft beat Okami in 2009. That said, Okami shared the poll with MGS3 and another console game, which should at least have held it back a little. Games that gets anti-voted as Blizzard games does will obviously perform slightly better in 4-ways when an anti-vote can go to three different games. In a one vs. one that year, I honestly doubt think Okami would lose. And that's against World of Warcraft, this is Warcraft III. Naturally, Okami ended up winning with ease too. It was a heavy favorite on the board with a few Warcraft supporters but not any noticeable number. And yes, the prediction percentage for Okami is a little bit low, but it's Warcraft, it's casual bait to some degree. Though it's nice to see Okami being the overall favorite. Seeding helps a lot of course, but maybe people in general realizes what kinds of games just wont do well here. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6085&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Final Fantasy IX vs (13)Kingdom Hearts 2015 _source: (4)Final Fantasy IX vs (13)Kingdom Hearts 2015 (revid 84317)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Friday**, November 13, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 13, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy IX - 48.12% 33 for - 63 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy IX - 39.04% I know a lot of people tune into the PCA for rants, political commentary, some bashing, the occasional off-the-wall writeup, and genuine passion. I appreciate it. But once in awhile I just have to geek out about how good something is, and both FF9 and Kingdom Hearts 1 are just all-time, godtier-level games for me. When I first played Kingdom Hearts, I was a massive Final Fantasy fanboy (I still am, in truth). When Squall first shows up to kick the hell out of you, I was completely hooked. Then Cloud and Yuffie and everyone else showed up, and Kingdom Hearts the game turned into a minor distraction between seeing Kingdom Hearts the Cameo. Not that the game is in any way bad, mind you. The original game was the best mix of platforming, Disney, action RPG, and bonus content. The plot was okay. Lots of good things going on, and it existed before things like Tetsuya Nomura being an idiot, Organization 13, and this hilarious series plot synopsis: Seriously, look at that and try defending this series' plot. But KH1 happened before all that garbage, and really was a classic. It holds a special place in my heart, and will always be "the game that showed us everything this series was supposed to be". 2 was good, but you could see the rabbit hole of nonsense opening up in that game. Then there's FF9, which is an unbelievable game in its own right. Yes us fans are insane freaks. Yes the game's random battles are ungodly slow and every single enemy attack shouldn't have been named. Yes there are problems with character development because the game likes to hyper-focus on a new character before forgetting about them for 2 discs. We know all that. We don't care. FF9 the game is better than the problems it has. First off, the cast is great and even with weird character development it tells the story better than any other game in the series. Having scenes exist away from the main character was a great touch that more games need to copy. The real selling point is gameplay. The whole thing is a tribute to FF4, and as we all know, the rule of JOB SYSTEM \> no job system is law. Great extras, great cast, great plot, great everything. The thing I'm most passionate about is probably the artwork. I have the big FF9 art book, and seeing everything come to life after every single little detail was hand-drawn is unreal. The talent that some artists have is just unreal. Come match time, even though I'm in love with both games, I was forced to choose. I chose FF9, because it's hard not to hold the garbage direction of the Kingdom Hearts series in contempt. FF9 was the clear underdog though, especially after KH2 smacked MGS4 all over the place. Much to my absolute shock, FF9 won the early vote and the match was tied 313-313 at the freeze. Then FF9 actually started building a lead after that and my jaw just dropped. Yeah I picked FF9 to win and I was rooting for it, but actually seeing do well was something else. You guys seeing this prediction percentage? People really had faith in Kingdom Hearts this contest. It wouldn't last though, because just as quickly as FF9 built a 100 vote lead, Kingdom Hearts erased it. We all figured the match was over at this point, because Kingdom Hearts has an amazing day vote, and us FF9 fans know all too well that FF9's day vote is pure trash. Like it's just laughable how bad FF9's day vote is. We're talking Chrono Trigger levels of bad here. So when the match stayed tied for hours overnight, we were just kind of sitting there waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then the dead zone hit. This is typically Square's best time, and though this was a Square mirror, Kingdom Hearts has trends that look more like Nintendo -- great morning vote, great ASV. FF9 took advantage of this weakness, and built up a 400 vote lead during the dead zone. Not that this would matter once the Kingdom Hearts day vote hit, right? To say I'm shocked Kingdom Hearts lost the day vote doesn't even begin to describe it. Let me pull up some old matches here. Alucard had a lead in this match two hours in: Kuja had a 450 vote lead before the morning vote: Castlevania had a 1200 vote lead heading into the morning vote: RE4 had a 1200 vote lead for first place and almost lost it in this poll, and if it were a 1v1 poll it very well might have lost: Same thing almost happening in round 2 of that contest: It even cannibalizes itself! This was a tie match for a couple hours, then the ASV happened: Dante/Vergil came back from down 500, but forgot about DAT MORNING VOTE: This was a 1500 vote lead at one point: Zidane probably wins this if it was a night match: Other stuff might exist, but you get the idea. Kingdom Hearts has a legendary day vote, and FF9, uh... doesn't. Being down 400 against FF9 with the morning vote coming is nothing. So for Final Fantasy 9 to win the morning vote and build a 1000 vote lead, then stall the ASV was nothing short of miraculous. I don't care is this is AntiTrendsFAQs, FF9 pulling this off was an early Christmas miracle and one of the coolest things that happened in this entire contest. I love you Kingdom Hearts, but I love Final Fantasy 9. It deserved this. A lot of theories were thrown around about why FF9 pulled it off, with the most logical of them being that the 90s-era games were on a whole new level of respect in this contest (a theory backed up by how this contest's results shaped out). Yes I know FF9 came out in 2000, shut up. This match actually took place on the game's 15th birthday, so it pulling off the most improbable of contest trends was quite the birthday present! This set up an FF9/Okami match, in which I was rooting for FF9 but was worried it might lose. Turns out that was a needless concern. ## Ctes's Analysis This was a big match because the winner would undoubtfully reach round 3. Both games could surely beat the rest of the division with ease except of course for Ocarina of Time. Initially when I saw this match, I thought that surely would a Final Fantasy game beat a Kingdom Hearts game and rightfully so too. I mean, Kingdom Hearts is just a cheesy and easy kind of Final Fantasy with Disney characters, so while they may be close in strength, it'd be natural for me to Kingdom Hearts underperform against a Final Fantasy title, but then I looked up some past polls and saw that Kingdom Hearts in fact holds up incredibly against Final Fantasy. You'd expect it to underperform, but it doesn't. It put up quite impressive performances against Final Fantasy X in 2009 before losing to that and Melee, but it's not only in contests. Earlier this year we had a poll asking which schedules release people was looking forward to the most and Kingdom Hearts III easily beat Final Fantasy XIV. Of course that's different, but it shows that the above reason to support FFIX here doesn't hold water. That didn't mean FFIX couldn't win, but Kingdom Hearts should be considered too. I gotta admit though, I'm very surprised by how many people actually did that. FFIX is a \#4 seed while Kingdom Hearts is a \#13 seed and yet only 39% of brackets favored FFIX? FFIX was even the board favorite, it's quite unlike the casuals to pick against seeding unless it's like World of Warcraft against some obscure JRPG. But this is Final Fantasy they're picking against! Maybe not the most successful of them but a Final Fantasy regardless. In the end I picked Kingdom Hearts myself. In GotD, Kingdom Hearts looked a little bit stronger at least in raw x-stats, but it gets difficult to judge when they're on opposite sites if the brackets and most late Brawl and Majora matches might be inflated a bit. This contest, Majora looked to be completely equal to itself in 2010, but Brawl could still give some wrong results, like if you believe Twilight Princess overperformed against it. Also, FFIX lost to FFX in a SSF beating. They were probably roughly on par, so we knew this would be close. Looking at how well Kingdom Hearts helds up against Final Fantasy actually made me consider if it's the other way around, Final Fantasy underperforms against Kingdom Hearts. The latter has Final Fantasy and Disney, so just maybe, and then I sided with Kingdom Hearts. The match was in no way boring. Considering our low votals, the amount of good matches we've had might be a bit disappointing, this one at least delivered for a while. For the first five minutes, it was very even and then at the freeze, they completely tied with 313 votes each, which is one of the coolest updates of the contest. Ties in general are epic, but at the freeze? Everyone knew we had a match. The next few updates promised good things for FFIX, but it couldn't put the lead above 100 and quickly lost it again. It took longer for Kingdom Hearts to cut the lead down than it took for FFIX to build it, but it happened. FFIX won the If It Were Up To Board 8 contest, so it made sense for FFIX to do well with the early vote. We didn't know this yet of course, but you don't have to be too active to know our board loves the game. When Kingdom Hearts took the lead I felt like that might be it. But it wasn't. The match stood still for too long. Kingdom Hearts kept the lead for a while, but was completely unable to take the lead over 20 votes, in fact, it topped at 16. An hour later FFIX took it back again, but this time, also FFIX was unable to push the lead above the 20 votes. Then Kingdom Hearts took it back and we repeat once again. It's weird we didn't have more lead changes than we had considering how close it was during this time really. It seemed that whenever one of them took the lead, it really took something for the other one to take it back. FFIX did take it back again for what would be the rest of the match, but we didn't know this yet. After the lead change, it only took it one more update to take the lead above what it had been for any side since FFIX dropped its initial lead and it would continue to build that lead. Kingdom Hearts won updates, but things were looking positive in favor of FFIX. The match was currently in the deadzone. While most trends are gone with smartphones and everything, geography still exists. There was hope for Kingdom Hearts when the US woke up. The deadzone should favor FFIX if any of them, which also turned out to be true. The thing was, the rest of the day also favored FFIX just a lot less than the deadzone. Kingdom Hearts consistently won updates, but failed to make a real attempt at this for the rest of the match. As the US woke up, FFIX slowed down a lot, but in the pic picture, the lead was still growing. It slowed down a lot more the further into the morning and day we got and at times the match practically stood still, but stalling was the best Kingdom Hearts could do and it wouldn't be enough. At this point, the final result was obvious, if Kingdom Hearts couldn't push more with the morning vote, well, it wouldn't pull this off. What it did however pull off, was insane stalling. Almost 14 hours into the match, FFIX broke the 900 vote barrier and it never took a real shot at 1000. Everytime it tried getting up there, Kingdom Hearts pushed it down to roughly 900 again proving that FFIX needed that deadzone. The final hours actually favored Kingdom Hearts a bit, naturally, as Europe went to sleep. This match is the perfect example of the trends we still have, which are purely geographical. So Final Fantasy IX won in the end, but I still don't feel bad for picking Kingdom Hearts. Not only was it a close match, I also think that five years ago, the last time we had such a contest, it would've been different. I believe in a FFIX boost. It's not that much, but it was what was needed. It's small enough that KHII might've very well won this match, but it's big enough for FFIX to win. The real hint at this would be the 2013 contest, which saw the crazy Vivi\>Mario upset. And while people are good at completely ignoring Ganondorf, aka the worst possible third entrant for Mario, in the poll as well as pointing out turds more than stars, that still showed good things for FFIX. The game had received some kind of cult status or whatever. For many years, FFVII was the big PS1 Final Fantasy which is obviously still the case in the big picture, then FFVIII had a few people throwing support in its favor. FFIX came out, but with no particularly interesting characters, it was overshadowed by the other games, coming late on the PS1, and also FFX coming for the PS2 not too soon afterward. Vivi being the strongest character here pretty much proves that, because you know looking like a regular Black Mage has been a boost for him to begin with. Zidane has never been notable on this site. Recently though, Final Fantasy IX have made some kind of breakthrough in people's minds. Escaped its status as the overlooked game. It looked on par with FFIX this contest and got beaten by it easily last time. It's nice, it's a good game, though when something comes out of the shadows as some kind of “underdog” it tends to get overrated, but hey, good game! I like it better than Kingdom Hearts as least, which is fun gameplay, but easy. And the story? That's not something to be too proud about. It's a shame I picked incorrectly, but I liked the result. Perhaps if Kingdom Hearts III has been closer, this could've gone the other way around. You gotta give props to Kingdom Hearts for being so consistent over so many years though, not many games do that. A bunch of games pre-2000s look stronger now, but so many games from this current century experience a downfall and while Kingdom Hearts is from 2002 and thus very early into the century, completely avoided that downfall is impressive and deserved to be mentioned as it goes out in an early unfortunate matchup. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6086&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (14)Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest 2015 _source: (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (14)Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest 2015 (revid 84318)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Saturday**, November 14, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 14, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Donkey Kong Country 2 - 47.39% 29 for - 68 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong Country 2 - 37.98% This match generated a lot of pre-contest hype, and unlike most round 1 matches that get hyped up, this one was worth arguing about. The Xenoblade/DKC2/Fire Emblem/Mario Maker fourpack was among the weakest in contest history, and past that there was a chance that the winner of this could beat the Banjo-Kazooie/Symphony of the Night winner. I ended up picking Donkey Kong Country 2, because of FLOWCHART™ reasons: Nintendo \> Squaresoft \> Japanese RPG \> Japanese \> RPG \> old \> new \> contest experience \> top option \> everything else. When in doubt, picking Nintendo will rarely do you wrong. The FLOWCHART™ is honestly a joke I made in two seconds, but the more I think about it the more accurate it gets. How often has it really been wrong since the big Kingdom Hearts boost of 2003? It was also a pick against Xenoblade, which despite its very loud fanbase, is an extremely obscure game even by GameFAQs standards. Not that it's Xenoblade's fault, of course. I know it's a good and well-done game, don't get me wrong, but don't forget that this is the game that spawned this now-infamous Jimquisition video that just shit all over Nintendo's idiotic localization practices: So after that nonsense happened, gamers whined a lot and the game was finally localized. Usually I'd bash gamers who whine too much, but this is a case where they had every right to. Here was a game people were willing to buy on the spot, and Nintendo was virtually giving people the middle finger and daring them to pirate it. Nintendo reluctantly gave North America the game, and to date it's sold half a million units, with a sequel on the way. That's actually an insane number given it was released at the very end of the Wii's life cycle with no promotion at all. Skulk even got into Smash Bros 4, which was bound to get the game extra votes. Hell, Xenoblade even had Donkey Kong's laughable contest history in close matches on its side. It's impossible to discuss any debated DK match without bringing up these gems: I know they weren't all losses and that Donkey Kong Country is a much more respect entity than Donkey Kong the character, but holy crap. There is no way to have any faith in Donkey Kong in any close match anymore. The point here is there was no real way to know who would win this, given both games had good points for and against it come actual match time. When the match actually came, we were treated to the closest 24 hour 1v1 wire to wire poll in contest history. These two games were tied for the first 30 minutes, then overnight Donkey Kong quickly built up a 100 vote lead. A lot of people assumed the match was over at this point, since even if Xenoblade came back and did anything, the day vote would likely favor the "more Nintendo" of the two games -- DKC2 being that game in this case. It had the SNES pedigree in a contest loaded with 90s dominance. As we all know, this wouldn't exactly be what happened. Xenoblade slowly got rid of the 100 vote lead going into the dead zone, and tied things up at 4 in the morning. From there it began building its own lead and peaked at a lead of 290 at 7:30 am. The number 290 was the peak lead either side had in this match, and is our new record holder for closest 1v1 24 hour wire to wire match ever. What Shadow of the Colossus and MGS2 accomplished was neat and all, but it was a 12 hour match. I don't consider that the real record. Anyway, so Xenoblade had this lead of 290 at 7:30 am. Had it won the morning vote, it would have easily won the match. Instead the morning vote was ever-so-barely won by Donkey Kong Country 2, which began the process of performing the two-steps-forward-one-step-back dance on the lead. Every time it would cut 10, it would give back 8 or 9 votes later. But it was, overall, trending the lead downwards. After this continued all morning long with Xenoblade never really acting like it wanted to win the match, things were tied up around lunch time. Now you know how in the stats topic we always joke around about vote barriers? It actually was a vote barrier in this match. Once DKC2 tied the match and began building its own lead, it would reach these milestones that were untouchable. The 100 vote barrier was bulletproof, but the truly funny one was 200. DKC2 got this thing above 200 right around the ASV, then held on for dear life for another 9 hours as this thing just hovered in the 200-250 range. Xenoblade made one push to try and actually come back -- a 15 minute time period where it cut off 30 votes -- and DKC2 just bitch-slapped the push away like it was nothing. This would continue to the end of the match, where DKC2 would ultimately win by 254. It was a hell of a fight and very fun to watch, if not heartbreaking for the Xenoblade fans. They had a 3 seed and the perfect setup to make a deep contest run, instead they were the only game seeded between 1 and 3 to lose in round 1. That's a hell of a bracketmaking job by Allen, when you look at it. For DKC2 and Donkey Kong in general, getting some contest respect was a long time coming. Had it lost in round 2 it could have laid claim to having a successful contest, since so few people (only 24% of gurus and a similar percentage in the Oracle) thought it could actually win. But it had some more tricks yet to come. ## Ctes's Analysis This here was probably the most exciting match of round 1. It was exciting for most of the day too. Xenoblade Chronicles was the massive board favorite to not just win this match, but also to reach round 3 and some people even took it to the division finals too. Xenoblade has a huge cult fanbase, but losing to Borderlands 2 in a GotY poll doesn't exactly spell out Division Finals material. However, this was perhaps the weakest eight pack of the entire contest and very likely the weakest four-pack too. It was exciting in the sense that all four games had a fair amount of people supporting them to reach round 3, with also at least a few taking them to the division finals. A total of six games were considered possible division finalists from this part of the division, which is probably more than anywhere else in the bracket. So while it seems unfair that a game like Kingdom Hearts had to go out in round 1 when there are places like this in the bracket, well, at least it made for some excitement. While the other match in this four pack was over in seconds, this one of was incredibly exciting. Donkey Kong Country 2 has appeared once before in 2009 coming right out of the nomination rally contest and then looking terrible in a SFF beatdown. I mean, losing to GoldenEye, SMRPG and even Resident Evil 2 isn't bad, Resident Evil 2 in particular because of the overlap between the other games, but it didn't look to be worth anything in the defeat. You'd think a fan favorite like DKC2 could've managed more in that match back then, but it had under 10% of the vote. It's hard to get a read on the first DKC as well, due to it getting SFF hammered by A Link to the Past, but it advanced and while it lost to Super Metroid and Super Mario Kart as well in round 2, it didn't look that bad going on. Plus, after this contest, that result looks a lot more impressive! The first DKC is probably stronger is what could be concluded, but only the second one managed to make the bracket due to being the fan favorite. This was its chance to show itself today, and did it ever! Xenoblade was probably more favored than it should be, but had people known this was Year of SNES and that old would destroy new in debatable matches, I'm sure more people would've went with DKC2. I personally got quite a few matches correct just by picking the older game, but I couldn't do it here. Anything Donkey Kong has simply always looked so terrible in these contests and even when you think Donkey Kong finally is worth something, he chokes it away. I couldn't pick DKC2. Xenoblade only needed to have a little bit strength to defy old\>new and win here too, but it was really weak. I know DKC2 ended up looking good this contest, but its still rather weak overall. Xenoblade proved itself to be rather disappointing actually. Had old games not been favored so much now, Xenoblade probably advances to round 3 without too much trouble, but getting past SotN could never happen, now or in the past. People that picked Xenoblade to the division finals probably regret it within the first few minutes, but just because it was closer than we thought, it could still make round 3. Remember the epic tie at the freeze in yesterday's big 3 point match? Well, that repeated itself today. It wasn't obvious this would be a three point match today, but in any case, we actually had another tie at the freeze and damn does that bring excitement from the get go! Xenoblade won the next update, but right after DKC2 took the lead instead. For a few updates the lead was under 10 votes, but DKC2 kept it! Then it actually started building a lead. It was crazy to see. This was definitely not the match where Year of SNES became a term, but I think this match confirmed it most of all. If DKC2 could pull this off, then it truly was Year of SNES. For one and a half hour, DKC2 slowly increased the lead, lost an update every now and then bringing hope to Xenoblade fans, but didn't really look back until it peaked at the 2 hour mark. That was seemingly the entrance to the deadzone, which would undeniably favor Xenoblade. Xenoblade would have to take good advantage of the deadzone, because that was obviously going to be DKC2's worst time. It would need to take back the lead and build one itself so it could stall the morning vote. But DKC2 held on very well for quite a while. It took Xenoblade 2 hours to shred of the 100 vote lead before it finally took the lead. From there, it did start building, but despite us getting deeper into the deadzone it didn't go that fast. It took it an hour and 20 minutes to build a 100 vote lead for itself, but from there it kept going strong. For the next few hours Xenoblade extended the lead to almost 300 votes. It topped at 288 votes at the 7:30 mark before DKC2 would start cutting for real. It had cut a few times before, but it can mostly be seen as stalling. It wasn't obvious this was Xenoblade's peak at first, but the next few updates made it clear that the US woke up. It was once again time for Xenoblade fans to be nervous, but nothing was said and done yet. Yesterday, we saw Kingdom Hearts winning in the US but losing overall. It would not be impossible to see something similar here. Although today the lead was much smaller at this point. Still, 288 votes is a lot to turn around without rallies these times. Undertale set an all time record earlier in the contest by over 9000 votes, but that took an enormous rally. DKC2 would have to pull off the biggest non-rally comeback of the contest to do this. It didn't seem impossible at all, but it was slow. In an hour, DKC2 manages to erase 50 votes from the lead, but then Xenoblade actually starting building a little bit again for half an hour. You'd think that was the sign that the match was over if DKC2 couldn't manage a better attempt. Then in just a few updates, DKC2 removed 60 votes and was looking on pace to get back in the match, but randomly once again, it stopped. Xenoblade just stopped the comeback for almost an hour and the match stood still before DKC2 started moving again. Things looked great for DKC2 now, but still, this should be its hours to move and it sure wasn't going fast. Then we had everyone reassuring themselves by saying “Don't worry, Donkey Kong always chokes”. But DKC2 looked really good as we got closer to noon. It had a pace of removing roughly 100 votes in a hour here, which would be more than enough. Then as we got closer to noon, it slowed down but was still moving. At noon, Xenoblade was only 24 votes ahead and it seemed like a matter of time only before DKC2 took the lead. But man did Xenoblade stall from there. It refused to let go. When it was only 5 votes ahead, it randomly jumped to a 29 vote lead and people were all ready to celebrate and calling Donkey Kong a choke artist once more. Then the next update, it was mostly gone again, but man it was fun seeing the mood swings here. Most people were rooting for Xenoblade as that was the heavy bracket favorite. DKC2 actually has a recent prediction percentage for a \#3 seed. Casuals did better than us here though still got it wrong, but I guess if you don't know Donkey Kong's contest history, you'd have an easier time picking DKC2 here. Xenoblade had a 1 vote lead update before DKC2 took it for good. It wasn't moving fast at first, in fact it practically stood still for quite a while before it jumped up. Two hours later DKC2 had taken its lead to roughly 150 votes, but Xenoblade won updates. People kept telling themselves that Donkey Kong would choke this away. But no, DKC2 was at a solid steady pace. In less than half an hour more it was above 200 votes. This was easily its strongest time of the match. The afternoon. It slowed down after there and hovered around a 250 vote lead for a while. Then Xenoblade took its final shot at the match. DKC2 was at 280 votes, which would end up being its peak. Kind of funny how the loser has the biggest lead of the match today. But from there, Xenoblade would quickly cut down to a 227 vote lead. I'm being specific about this number because that was the vote different for three straight updates. DKC2 was scared here. After that, Xenoblade started cutting further, slowly. It got down to 174 and then stopped. It was a fluke, Xenoblade was out of this match. DKC2 quickly took its lead back above 200 and stayed at roughly the same for the rest of the match. It was over. People kept saying Donkey Kong would find a way to choke it, but he didn't. He's only in the title of the game after all, this game is all about Diddy Kong and today we learned that Diddy Kong doesn't choke. The victory is small, was highly due to Year of SNES and might very well say more about Xenoblade than DKC2, but it was a victory. DKC2 reached round 2 where it might just very well have another match! Donkey Kong's contest history has really messed with us I guess, maybe also that people wanted Xenoblade to have strength, but we should know from GotY it hadn't. I know GotY polls are to be taken lightly, but still, they're not useless. Why would a well-known SNES game lose to a cult favorite Wii game? It is weird that so many felt sure about that. I mean, I had Xenoblade here myself, but I didn't feel good about it and I actually had Fire Emblem to round 3. DKC2 and Xenoblade are very different games so they're hard to compare, but ignore the opponent and it's nice to see a game like DKC2 get a win on this site. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6087&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (11)Super Mario Maker 2015 _source: (6)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (11)Super Mario Maker 2015 (revid 84319)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Saturday**, November 14, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 14, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 51.19% 59 for - 38 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 65.26% It happens now and then that a debatable match isn't close at all. But a debatable match simply shouldn't nearly be a doubling, then you know you made a bad choice. Super Mario Maker disappointed big time here, but it makes sense. A bunch of people saw an opportunity to bash the Wii U here, and while being a very recent game and being on the Wii U clearly doesn't help, it's not all there is to it. Besides, Super Mario Maker might be the second most recent game in the bracket only coming before our winner, but Awakening is only from 2013 too. What matters here is that it's not really a new game. A good amount of people had Super Mario Maker winning here and it was well supported going as far as the division finals. The idea behind this is that its a collection of three very strong Mario games and NSMB. It's Mario fanservice and it has been relatively successful too. The thing is, it's not really a new game. It's cool, but it's something that hardcore fans that knows their coding could probably work out decently too. It doesn't feel like a game and it's certainly not a candidate for Best Game Ever either. It seems really weird that Super Mario Maker made it to the bracket of a Best Game Ever contest when Super Mario Bros didn't. I nominated it myself, but I didn't really expect anything of it. Awakening was always going to win here despite obviously not being worth much, but just being the right place in the bracket. The 3DS in general has a pretty awful contest. Pokemon XY and Monster Hunter 4 lost very badly and lost easily in a match people thought it could win respectively. A Link Between Worlds, which is very likely the strongest 3DS game there is didn't make the bracket. Awakening gave the 3DS some much needed support. It's weird, the 3DS is the second best received console of the current generation and managed close to nothing this contest. But then again, did the other consoles really do that. Picking Awakening to round 3 looked like a pretty good pick after today. It would only need to be ever so slightly stronger Xenoblade and why not? You hear better things about Xenoblade, but Fire Emblem is a more established franchise and Awakening is probably the most successful title from that franchise. We couldn't know just how weak Super Mario Maker was, only that it definitely was weak, so the round 2 match currently looked like it could go either way. ## Ctes's Analysis Ah yes, the match that cemented Super Mario Maker as Turd of the Contest. For some background here, one has to realize a few things. One, this entire eightpack was ripe for the taking. The case could be made for Xenoblade, Donkey Kong Country 2, Fire Emblem Awakening, Super Mario Maker, Banjo-Kazooe or Symphony of the Night all winning three matches. It was a nice jumbled mess of midcarders, any of which could have gone on a run and caught a bandwagon. I doubt any of them could have beaten Ocarina for the division title even with a bandwagon, but who really knows? We've seen Link lose in round 3 before. For Mario Maker's fourpack specifically, the entire reason people thought Mario Maker would do well is our new paradigm of rallies in contests. People are wise to these things now, and they knew Mario Maker would be a potential target. Mario Maker had everything in its favor: "IT'S FREAKING MARIO", a huge presence in social media, a huge internet buzz ever since it was released, a massive concentration of memes, an unbelievably easy contest path where it could potentially SFF two things and get a bandwagon rolling, and so on and so forth. Then it went out there and just completely shit the bed. It was everything just to not get doubled, and when you pair the game's potential with how it performed, you have to give it Turd of the Contest. Furthermore, a lot of us thought this game would boost the Mario series as a whole, when it might have done the opposite. 3 got rolled, 1 didn't even make the bracket, and we can't really guarantee World and 64 wouldn't have also gotten rolled by Pokemon had the Undertale rally not happened. They did give a very good showing against Undertale, for what it's worth, but you also have to look at the other side and realize Mario World was losing updates to Animal Crossing. I can't give a reason for this beyond a few educated guesses, but the best one is probably GameFAQs playing no game released after 2001 or so. Another good reason is Mario Maker is purely a social game, and let's not kid ourselves about the type of person that frequents this site or frequents the gaming hobby as a whole -- anti-social to the extreme. People complained all contest long about rallies and outsiders. Would socialites really complain about having a lot of new people around and new things doing well in our contests? No. This is nothing against Awakening, for the record. I love the game and I love the Fire Emblem series. Awakening did some very neat new things, made good use of the 3D, and Chrom was alright. The cast wasn't all that memorable when compared to 7 or 9, but I can't complain too much. My only real problem with the game is how unbelievably easy it was. You get a support going, and then everything is just setting up a choke point and going 2v1 in any fight. I'm sure the hard modes are berserk, but some of us enjoy the "normal" difficulty having a challenge as well. Dark Souls didn't get popular by giving people shortcuts. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6088&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Banjo-Kazooie vs (10)Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn 2015 _source: (7)Banjo-Kazooie vs (10)Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn 2015 (revid 84320)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Saturday**, November 14, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 14, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Banjo-Kazooie - 61.01% 97 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Banjo-Kazooie - 69.06% Before this contest a lot of people were hyping Banjo-Kazooie up for a deep run, and why not? You had Xenoblade, Donkey Kong Country 2, Fire Emblem Awakening, Mario Maker, Banjo-Kazooie and Symphony of the Night all sitting there in one eightpack. any of them had a shot. Xenoblade and Mario Maker obviously lost in round 1, but Banjo-Kazooie was able to pull off a loss even in winning. Things started great, no doubt, when it had more than 70% of the vote early. That's the type of performance one would expect from a game looking to win three matches in a contest like this. You blow out the garbage early and keep it moving. But then it decided to go and lose 8% throughout the course of the day, against whatever the hell Baulder's Gate 2 is. These are joke trends, and to do it against a game no one on GameFAQs has heard of or cares about is awful. This thing didn't have a prayer of beating Symphony of the Night, a game with legitimate contest strength that's been doing this for years, after a performance like this. This was a terrible showing, and did not do much to prove that Banjo-Kazooie was actually some hidden powerhouse that was just hidden by SFF for all these years. ## Ctes's Analysis I really don't think there's anything noteworthy about this match. It went pretty much exactly as you'd expect. I mean, I'm sure Baldur's Gate has a little support, because Banjo sucks in contests, but while he's not the most interesting character, this game sure isn't lacking. This match also went completely ignored for most of the day because the other three matches were either really intense to follow or a surprisingly big blowout. There was nothing surprising about this. Banjo lived up to expectations, though I guess for the few people that believed we would see N64 games dominate and had Banjo advancing past SotN, this probably wasn't what they wanted to see. Not only did SotN get as close as it comes to tripling Trials and Tribulations, Banjo would need to exceed expectations in the first place to make the round 2 upset seem likely. At this point of the contest, we already knew that it was Year of the SNES and not Year of the N64 though, so I don't think even before these matches began, that anyone actually believed Banjo would advance more than once. Of course, if you had it in your bracket, you'd naturally defend it and search for reasons for why it could happen, but that's different than actually believing it will happen. Besides, a Year of the N64 would be a good year for the era in general so it's not like SotN wouldn't look stronger in such an event either. It was always a long-shot, but hey, crazy upsets do happen once in a while. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6089&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs (15)Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations 2015 _source: (2)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs (15)Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations 2015 (revid 84321)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Saturday**, November 14, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 14, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 64.44% 97 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 88.76% SUBTITLE WAR!! While Banjo-Kazooie was busy stinking up the joint, Symphony of the Night was out there proving it was the clear favorite in the Xenoblade/DKC2/Fire Emblem/Mario Maker/Banjo-Kazooie/Symphony of the Night brigade. Symphony of the Night put out the best performance in all of round 1 among this eightpack, and it was especially important given Banjo-Kazooie's massive percentage bleed. Symphony of the Night had never won two matches in a contest before, and the jinx was clearly about to end this year. It didn't even bother giving Phoenix Wright the typical Board 8 joke trend that Phoenix usually gets. This was just a merciless 75-25 beating right from the start, which in a way is a shame because Phoenix Wright 3 is by far the best game in that series. It doesn't have the best character -- that honor goes to Manfred von Karma -- but it's without a doubt the best of the games. I don't want to delve too far into spoilers here, but it has one of the best villains in gaming and is definitely worth a run if you like visual novels. This match was neat, because it's the biggest blowout Alucard or his game have ever given anything in these contests. Even if you look at fourways or that god-awful rivalry contest, this match right here was it. Symphony of the Night meant business this contest. ## Ctes's Analysis I think a lot of us were genuinely surprised to see Symphony of the Night receive a second seed. The other second seeds were either big names that came out after the last game contest or well established favorites in these contests. Symphony of the Night shouldn't be a \#2 seed based on strength probably, though it's very likely stronger than maybe three of the other \#2 seeds, four at the absolute most. Yet of all of them, Symphony of the Night was the most surprising \#2 seed. It was an \#11 seed in 2004, and while I know that contest had less entrants, failing to be worth much and with tons of newer contests coming since then, for it to somehow get a \#2 seed now is remarkable. We saw it in both the other contests it was eligible in, but losing a 60-40 match to GoldenEye didn't exactly make it shine and in 2009 it was caught in perhaps the strongest division, so getting second place in round 1 was probably lucky. This contest though, it had its time to shine. We weren't even expecting it to be worth much and yet it had a clear and easy path to the division finals. While that has a lot to do with extremely lucky bracket placement, it still made SotN stand out a little bit, so maybe we'll be thinking better of it next time. Symphony of the Night had a mostly predictable path, but this performance was really good. Ace Attorney is not worth much in these contests outside of the board vote, but the first one managed to look relatively good against Skyrim so for Trials and Tribulations to lose this badly here was not expected. They didn't look that far apart last time. Sure, Final Fantasy IX scored roughly the same on Trials and Tribulations as SotN did here, but Mario Kart Wii beat the first Ace Attorney, which is pretty much just as bad imo. And I know it likely took the Undertale rally spillover for Ace Attorney to avoid the doubling against Skyrim, but wouldn't we all expect Skyrim to easily beat SotN? The games shouldn't be that far apart, SotN looked incredible, that's all there is to it. If there was any doubt about SotN winning against Banjo next round, then it ended today, not because of Banjo disappointing, but because of SotN looking really legit. Lastly, here's something extra. When the bracket got delayed and SBAllen gave us hints about the games in return, one of his hints was that the longest title was 52 characters including spaces and everything. Paratroopa successfully figured that to be Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations easily, so here's a little extra deserved credit for that impressive work. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6090&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (16)Cave Story 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (16)Cave Story 2015 (revid 84322)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Sunday**, November 15, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 15, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 84.72% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 95.43% I feel like I just posted this list not too long ago, but here it is again. The "laughable blowouts" list: The two Zelda titans put out championship-caliber performances in round 1 of this contest, but to get a laughable blowout you need the right opponent. For all we know Cave Story might have been bandwagoned in a different spot, but as-is it was simply destined to join contest legends like Tanner and Madden. It did manage to avoid being last place in the stats though, so there's that. ## Ctes's Analysis Here we have the second biggest blowout of the contest and thus a short write-up. A Link to the Past was one of the contenders for second strongest game on out site pre-rally and it certainly looked today like it might just be that, but it's also possible Cave Story is just that weak. However, with this being Year of SNES, A Link to the Past might just have gotten the push it needed to possible threaten Final Fantasy VII and RBY for the title, though Chrono Trigger would still rival it. Of all the games that could possibly be the second strongest game, A Link to the Past was the only one put in the bottom half of the bracket, so we wouldn't really get to know. On one hand, it's a bit of a shame, because it would be nice to see just where it stood compared to the other contenders. But on the other hand, it's kind of nice that we avoid as much Zelda domination as possible, but putting the three strongest of them as close as they could get by their seeding. Some games are gonna get wasted to them, but that can never be completely avoided. It wouldn't be an issue if we had contests more often though. Then we could easily have this now and then set up Chrono Trigger vs. Link to the Past rematch next time or something, but you never know when next time will be. As for Cave Story, celebrate fans of the game, your game made it in. I'd say waste of a spot, but it's nice if you really like the game to just see it in. I know the feeling, as I had it when Jet Set Radio made the bracket in 2010 as a \#16 seed, even if it suffered perhaps the worst loss of the contest to Resident Evil 4, not as the biggest blowout, but by not winning in any single part of the world anywhere, despite how many places we only get like one vote from. It's nice to see your game get representation. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6091&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Deus Ex vs (9)Final Fantasy IV 2015 _source: (8)Deus Ex vs (9)Final Fantasy IV 2015 (revid 84323)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Sunday**, November 15, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 15, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy IV - 64.30% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy IV - 63.46% "And remember, it's all just a big popularity contest, and we all know that the actual Best. Game. Ever. is Final Fantasy IV." -Allen Always nice seeing fellow FF4 fans around. I loved it the first time I played it, and still love it now. The DS version was awesome, and it was nice actually playing a JRPG with real difficulty. I know the SNES version was tough, but the DS version just beats the shit out of you all game long. Those fire dog things when you reach the Tower of Zot just wiping your entire party out in one attack is a great experience. I know that sounds weird to most people, but JRPGs are notoriously easy and I enjoy the ones that are actually hard. I also love the neat little extras in the DS version, like giving your party Bless or the new game plus mode. I do have to ask though why FF4 has been released so many damn times. There's a DS version, the SNES version, a Game Boy Advance version, multiple mobile versions, a PSP version, a freaking sequel that got released on multiple platforms, and even a Steam version. Holy jumping jesus. 800 versions of FF4, yet it took this long to remake Final Fantasy 7? Okay. This match was some great karma for that awful Rock Band match where the Deus Ex fans sat around whining for 24 hours about how their game wasn't winning by enough. Final Fantasy 4 beat the karma out of this poll and did us all a favor by taking out the trash in a 70-30 rout right off the bat. I know Deus Ex is a good game, but that Rock Band nonsense means I'm rooting for a massive blowout every time this thing is in a poll. The board really was that bad that day. Good riddance to Deus Ex in this contest and good riddance to those fans. ## Ctes's Analysis There was never any contest here. I'll always remember Deus Ex for contributing to the tradition of a second match upset back in 2010 against Rock Band, even if I don't really understand why that was an upset looking back. Guess Deus Ex was just expected to be really weak. I mean, it is weak, but we expected worse of it. This time, it was never any contest. Final Fantasy IV has one of the saddest paths of the contest in that it got to draw A Link to the Past in round 2, while it could easily have some fun matches elsewhere. It's definitely not among the top Final Fantasy games strength wise, but it'd be cool to see just where it places against VIII or Tactics maybe. It's Year of SNES, I think it has tons of potential, though if you're tired of your favorite games disappointing against SNES games then we at least have one title here that got wasted.  Oh, and according to SBAllen, we have the real Best Game Ever right here in this match, which is Final Fantasy IV. Not important for anything, but since fun to include and considering what this match was, this is the best place to do so. He mentioned it in a post contest topic that mostly included Undertale talk. It's a solid choice and a good 2D RPG, so I can get behind it. Personally like VI more though.  ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6092&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (12)Perfect Dark 2015 _source: (5)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (12)Perfect Dark 2015 (revid 84324)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Sunday**, November 15, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 15, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid V - 60.38% 97 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid V - 77.32% The biggest thing we heard during Undertale's run is that the game was too new to win a contest called "Best Game Ever". While this is an opinion people are allowed to have (and one I thoroughly disagree with, since you don't need an arbitrary shelf life to be good), where was the outcry against Metal Gear Solid 5 and Witcher 3 making the bracket? What about Life is Strange, Super Mario Maker, Bloodborne, Splatoon, or any other game from 2015 that might have gotten in? Where's the outcry about those games? Oh, right, almost all of them were either fodder or too weak to matter, so complaining about those doesn't fit the arbitrary agenda. David Sirlin wrote a fantastic series of articles called Playing to Win, that I suggest everyone take an afternoon to read: In the series, Sirlin calls those who don't play to win scrubs, and more or less said that tournament play is the only gameplay that truly matters. Scrubs like to make up hidden rules in their own mind to justify their own way of doing anything competitive. This caused a lot of panties to get twisted when he first said it, and it still causes arguments today. All the people who defended Brawl's gameplay over Melee's because "lol tournament players", for instance, are obvious scrubs (side note: this contest far and away proved what gamers actually prefer on the whole, but we'll get to that as we discuss Melee's run). Playing to win versus playing for fun is an argument people love to have, but they don't understand that the "playing for fun" side is objectively wrong. They don't win tournaments, they don't win money, and they almost never taken into account when balance patches happen. There's a reason for that. All those people who pick and choose which rallies are "allowed"? Scrubs. The people who whined about Undertale being too new to have contest success? Scrubs. The people who hated Melee's rally against Chrono Trigger, then cheered like mad two rounds later? HUGE collection of scrubs. When I say you're either all or none with rallies, this is where I'm coming from mentally. These contests are meant to be competitive and win prizes. If you make up fake rules to justify something not in the official rules, you are a contest scrub in the same arena as those who don't understand what playing to win actually means. The only way you can have a for-fun contest is if no prizes are offered. Until then, these contests fall under the playing-to-win umbrella. To my point for this particular match. There was no complaining that MGS5 came out and proved it had no contest strength to speak of. There was no outcry that it made the bracket. Nope, just 24 hours of LOL MGS5 when it was only able to get 55% on Perfect Dark. This is a little unfair for a couple reasons, the biggest of which is that it's just disrespectful to Perfect Dark. That game is awesome, and using it to pretend MGS5 is some joke is ridiculous. It's won a contest match before, and might be able to beat Call of Duty 4 now if those two had a rematch. The other is that MGS5 being weak really isn't 5's fault. It's Konami's for being idiotic. We'll discuss that more in round 2, but for now I'm just happy it won a contest match.. Probably the only one I'll ever get to see it win. ## Ctes's Analysis Back when Metal Gear Solid 4 came out, it boosted the franchise as a whole a ton and MGS4 itself went crazy in the following contest. I don't think anyone expected that much here, but something was to be expected. It was fair to assume that the series would've gotten some kind of boost, even if small and even more fair to assume that the latest entry in the series would have some strength. At this point, we had only seen one of the games in action, but man did that game flop. I know Kingdom Hearts II was the favorite in that match, but that had a lot to do with us expecting it to not have dropped at all and knowing it was a strong entry. We didn't expect the it to be that big a victory though. MGS4 was the first warning that the series has dropped big. Now, Metal Gear Solid V can't really drop, but it can certainly not live up to out expectations. It would never get past A Link to the Past obviously, but it didn't need to be that big to reach round 3. Perfect Dark is not really strong at all, which is shame, because it's a lot better than GoldenEye imo and that game is decently strong. Dark Souls is recent too, and while it's not bad, it should be possible to get past it for a mainline Metal Gear Solid title. That didn't look likely today. Metal Gear Solid V won this match, but it wasn't going into round 2 as the favorite. This was not an impressive performance. Perfect Dark repeats what it did in 2004. Making the game that beat it looking like a lock to lose in round 2. Had this year looked hot for N64 games in particular, MGSV might've looked fine, but that's not the case. Not to mentioned if this was a hot year for N64 games, MGSV could've gotten a real scare here and maybe even lose the match. This is one of the few times a new game beat an old in a close match, but it wasn't expected to be this close. That said, I'm not even sure Metal Gear Solid V disappointing has that much to do with it being recent. It's a well-established franchise and a well received game. Had the series not fallen in general, MGSV would probably be looking a lot better. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6093&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Dark Souls vs (13)Sid Meier's Civilization V 2015 _source: (4)Dark Souls vs (13)Sid Meier's Civilization V 2015 (revid 84325)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Sunday**, November 15, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 15, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 64.70% 96 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 83.88% When I first saw the bracket I almost picked Civ 5 to pull the upset, but that's because I'm dumb and haven't played the Dark Souls series yet. Outside of FLOWCHART™ reasons, Dark Souls could very well be the most popular modern series in gaming. Gamers absolutely revere the series for being mercilessly old-school, and in a gaming world with checkpoints every 2 seconds and linear everything, Dark Souls decides to not give a crap and just chops your balls off whenever possible. Gamers rewarded this by giving Dark Souls the easy doubling over Civilization 5, and it was rather obvious after round 1 that MGS5 was completely screwed in round 2. There was no way it had a prayer of beating this game. It's fun to think about how far Dark Souls could have gone if it was in Division 7 or 8, but alas. ## Ctes's Analysis I don't think anyone doubted who the winner would be here, but the match served as a decent indicator for whether or not Dark Souls would have a chance at upsetting MGSV in round 2. The other match probably says a whole lot more, but we hadn't yet actually seen Dark Souls in these contests and upset wouldn't only require a MGSV disappointment, it would also require Dark Souls showing some strength. Civilization V would obviously be really darn weak. IV was in the last contest and lost to Persona 3, it wouldn't take much, but if Dark Souls couldn't score somewhat big on Civilization V here, then it probably wouldn't have what it took to take advantage of a weakened Metal Gear Solid series against its latest entry. It did however score big. A doubling is pretty good here. Dark Souls is a new game too, and I feel like we took its strength for granted. All debates about the upcoming match with MGSV were about the strength of MGSV, not Dark Souls. Dark Souls fit well with our expectations, but I don't really feel like it was any guarantee. It's nice to see a recent game do well though, just because it's not that common and Dark Souls is a really darn game too. People complain about games being easy today, despite most non-Nintendo games giving you a choice of difficulty, but if you want a challenge, this is the kind of game you wanna play and it's lots of fun! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6094&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Metroid vs (14)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2015 _source: (3)Super Metroid vs (14)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2015 (revid 84326)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Monday**, November 16, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 16, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Metroid - 66.34% 98 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Metroid - 76.28% There were a lot of blowouts in round 1, but not many were more important than this one. Given Metroid's contest history, a lot of people were very down on the series as a whole, and were treating it almost as badly as the Big 10 got treated in the years after Chris Leak's Florida Gators beat the hell out of Ohio State in the 2007 BCS title game. Or in contest terms, it was on par with the decline of Chrono Trigger characters. People did not have faith in the Metroid series. To shake a stigma like that, one has to win, at least do damn well in losing. Metroid's reputation is rather well-earned. It'll do reasonably well in a contest until running into Mario or Zelda, then get SFFd into the absolute ground. Some famous examples: (all it took was a game named "Mario" in the poll, any game, to cause Metroid Prime to get third place!) It's gotten so bad that even Pokemon can cause Samus or her games to lose these days. But if there was one contest where Metroid could cause some damage, it was a contest called "Best Game Ever" where the voters were clearly taking the contest name into account and favoring the 1990s. Super Metroid pops up on any objective list talking of the best games ever made, so this was really the time to shine. And boy did it ever. I know Call of Duty is a hated-beyond-belief series on GameFAQs, but it has done some stuff in polls here. It finished second place in our Game of the Year voting in 2007, Modern Warfare 2 actually won Game of the Year in 2009, and got to round 3 in the 2009 Best Game Ever contest in spite of facing multiple Nintendo games. It might have gotten a round farther with a better draw, too. Then in Game of the Decade, it beat Prince of Persia in round 1, then got 55% on Perfect Dark in round 2 (which seems relevant given how MGS5 did in this very 2015 contest: ), then got 31% on Melee. Call of Duty 4, much as we hate it, is not some joke here. So to go out and just get absolutely fucking murdered by Super Metroid says a whole lot about Super Metroid's contest strength. Remember, we had so little faith in it that we thought it would win this match before getting SFFd into the ground by Galaxy. Then this happened while Galaxy was sitting there looking rather pedestrian against Dragon Age, and reality set in. Mario Galaxy, in one of the biggest twists of fate ever, would have to rely on Reverse SFF to beat Super Metroid. Because there was no way one could look at these round 1 results and think it was indirectly the stronger game. ## Ctes's Analysis I feel like this is one of the most remarkable results of the whole round. Obviously, the winner was never in doubt, but for Super Metroid to score nearly 80% here was insane. It's likely a mix of two things. Call of Duty has got to have fallen a lot. This is the same game that beat Perfect Dark before breaking 30% on Super Smash Bros. Melee. Then you simply don't go ahead and only barely break 20% on Super Metroid. Melee is a top 10 game on this site even before rallies. Even if you expect a Call of Duty drop, this is insane. It's completely crazy to think a Call of Duty game won GotY in 2009 too, it seems like an impossible task today. In the Game of the 00's poll following it even beat lots of near elites here finishing only behind FFX and RE4. That said, the poll was basically a load of Nintendo games leeching each other causing the few non-Nintendo titles to do really well. But Call of Duty still outperformed San Andreas and got close to RE4, and while San Andreas often disappoints here it sure wouldn't get this low on Super Metroid. It's only been five years since this game got 30% on Melee too, how far can you drop so fast? Somewhat far is the answer, but not this far. The other thing is that Super Metroid had new found strength here. Or perhaps it was just its first change to show it, because it got destroyed by A Link to the Past in both contests. In 2004, it did put up solid numbers on Phantasy Star IV, but then almost got tripled by A Link to the Past and despite there being SFF, that wasn't exactly a good showing. Then in 2009 it went neck to neck with Super Mario Kart the first two rounds and had just a few more votes both times. In round three it bit the dust. It looked leagues behind A Link to the Past SFF taken into consideration. It didn't look leagues behind A Link to the Past today though. I think perhaps A Link to the Past SFF'd Super Metroid more than we thought back then, but I also think Super Metroid has new found strength, because this is insane. It truly is Year of SNES, but of all the impressive SNES games, I think only Chrono Trigger's boost rivals the boost of Super Metroid between now and 2009. Pre-contest, Super Mario Galaxy was the favorite to reach round 3 here and there was good reason to pick it to. After this match, Super Metroid started becoming the favorite. Call of Duty drop happened yeah, but it's not enough to explain this result. At this point, it seemed very unlikely to see a Wii game beat SNES a game, especially a SNES game of this strength. Had it been DKC2, sure, but Super Metroid redeemed itself this contest. Practically, the only thing Super Metroid had to worry about would be the Nintendo hierarchy doing its work again in another Mario\>Samus match. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6095&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Super Mario Galaxy vs (11)Dragon Age: Origins 2015 _source: (6)Super Mario Galaxy vs (11)Dragon Age: Origins 2015 (revid 84327)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Monday**, November 16, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 16, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Galaxy - 61.69% 98 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Galaxy - 70.95% Under normal circumstances, Mario Galaxy nearly doubling Dragon Age would be a solid result. Dragon age got 30% in the final of our 2009 Game of the Year voting, got 31% on Twilight Princess in Game of the Decade after winning a match, and Inquisition finished second place in the Game of the Year voting in 2015 (technically 2014, but the actual voting happens in January so we just call it by the actual year the poll happens). Thw Twilight Princess number seems awful, but I included it to show that 31% on Twilight Princess a few years ago and 36% on Mario Galaxy is a pretty comparable number, and is a fine result for Galaxy vis-a-vis the Game of the Decade performance. The problem here is that IT'S FREAKING SUPER METROID was putting 80% on Call of Duty 4 while this poll was going on. It became very obvious, and very quickly, that Super Metroid was a massive favorite headed into that round 2 match. The only reason any of us even doubted it at this point was the IT'S FREAKING MARIO factor. People might try saying in retrospect that it should have been obvious the whole time, but we have nearly a decade of evidence that shows Samus choking harder than a porn star at a casting call the second she's up against Nintendo. This was the first contest where she bothered proving herself. It's not even that Galaxy did badly, Super Metroid was just on steroids. ## Ctes's Analysis At this point people were bashing Mario for his two losses. Super Mario World was even laughed at for allowing Animal Crossing to fight even during the Undertale rally. People were practically ready to laugh at Super Mario Galaxy before this match began. And despite Super Metroid turning out to be a lot stronger than we thought at that same time as this match, it was already clear today that if Galaxy lost next round, it'd be laughed at too. Galaxy was doing what you'd expect of it today. If you assume there was a little SFF between it Twilight Princess in 2010, then this is pretty much exactly what Galaxy was expected to do today. So unless you believe both games have fallen equally, there is really no reason to call Mario a turd, but that also wasn't happening that much before next round. Galaxy did well enough, but with Super Metroid's performance it was in big trouble next round. Galaxy would have to take good advantage of the somewhat established Nintendo hierarchy that says Zelda \> Mario \> Samus \> the rest with Pokemon ignoring everything. Super Metroid was clearly the stronger game now, it just hadn't managed to ever look impressive before. Hope was not lost for Super Mario Galaxy due to the hierarchy and that Call of Duty truly was weak, but it wasn't looking good. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6096&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Bloodborne vs (10)Final Fantasy XII 2015 _source: (7)Bloodborne vs (10)Final Fantasy XII 2015 (revid 84328)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Monday**, November 16, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 16, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy XII - 56.88% 94 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy XII - 42.07% When the contest got delayed for legal reasons, Allen was nice enough to spoil two matches for us just to get our anticipation going. One of the spoilers was New Vegas vs BioShock Infinite. The other was this match. This match felt like it was a perfect candidate for the FLOWCHART™! Two games of relatively close strength, that few people care about outside of a contest setting. Yep, perfect time to consult the FLOWCHART™. Nintendo \> Squaresoft \> Japanese RPG \> Japanese \> RPG \> old \> new \> contest experience \> top option \> everything else. "Squaresoft" is clearly higher on the totem pole than "Japanese", ergo Final Fantasy 12 was the favorite! We all knew as much the second the match was spoiled, too, even though the games that fall under the Hidetaka Miyazaki umbrella (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, et al) come with a huge amount of respect. Dark Souls seems to be the only one with any real contest strength for whatever reason, because while Final Fantasy 12 is a game of decent strength, the literal only reason it won this game is because "Final Fantasy" is on the title. The poll may have been 55-45, but it was 55-45 for 24 hours straight and hardly had any drama to it. I'm sure Bloodborne is a fantastic game since everything under the Miyazaki label is great, but can I defend FF12 for a second? Yes, the plot is trash for 90% of the game. Yes, Vaan is trash. But it's meant to be a Metal Gear Solid 2 perspective where you look at the characters who are actually good through the eyes of a character that's meant to be annoying. Vaan and Penelo are a a nod to the days of royalty where following Ashe without question upon being asked is exactly what would have happened in the old days. Vaan and Penelo don't really need a ton of character development. That was all meant for the other characters. The plot does manage to get good once you meet the Occuria, and thankfully the gameplay is good enough to get you to that point in an entertaining manner. Yes, the gameplay is good in spite of gambits. The whole point is that you can customize them, so if you hate them just do what I did and set it to auto-battle the closest enemy while you manually handle everything else. Done and done. The graphics are about the best you'll get on the PS2, and they are gorgeous. The atmosphere in this game is amazing. And the Pharos Lighthouse. Holy crap, talk about a dungeon worthy of the old school. that thing takes zero prisoners, and it isn't some optional area. You're supposed to climb in the main plot, bitch. Let's not forget that the hunts are the best optional content in the entire Final Fantasy series (no joke, I actually do believe this). Talking about FF12 makes me want to replay it, but I'm waiting for the inevitable HD rerelease of the international version. If FFX can get 28 rereleases, I'm positive Final Fantasy 12 can get one. I don't ask for much! ## Ctes's Analysis There is no doubt in mind here that Bloodborne is better received game overall of the two. When SBAllen pre-contest hinted that there would be eight Final Fantasy games in the bracket, I predicted them all right except for having XIII instead of XII, but once he said they equaled 56Tactics, I wasn't surprised to figure out I had that one wrong. It's just that this game was frowned upon a lot. There is also no doubt in my mind that when it comes to contest strength, FFXII is step below the other seven games in this contest. Additionally, there is no doubt in my mind that I find Bloodborne to be the far better game here, and finally, there was no doubt in mind that FFXII would win this. When you consider that casuals and other websites still go “Final Fantasy always wins”, I'm actually quite a bit surprised the casuals had this one wrong. I know that the phase is moslty associated with FFVII, but it's not limited to. I guess casuals also underestimated the power of NostalgiaFAQs, because that's the real reason Bloodborne lost this one. Recent games simply wont to well here barring outside rallies. It's not like they can't win a match or maybe even two, but put against a game that isn't fodder and is before its own time, a game from the current generation will sadly almost always lose. It didn't matter that FFXII hasn't been that well received, we knew that having Final Fantasy in the name would be enough to give it the edge here, because it has been around for longer. When this match was over, Final Fantasy had officially managed an 8-0 against its competition in the first round. It's very impressive! Although personally, FFIX vs. Kingdom Hearts was the only one I didn't think would be a safe win for Final Fantasy. Unfortunately, such a streak just means that casuals will keep believing this site will support Final Fantasy above anything not named Zelda. Sure it's a strong franchise, but it really isn't true anymore. It's close to 12 years since Final Fantasy VII won the games contest following up on Cloud's victory. Each year since then, it has looked worse, except for the 2007 finale where Cloud held up like a king. In 2008, Cloud and Sephiroth lost to Snake with Sephiroth being swallowed up by Kirby afterward. Vincent couldn't defeat Crono once again. Squall lost to Mewtwo and Tidus lost to WCC from round 1. Then Zack looks good and the rest gets ignored. 2010 was highlighted by Snake beating Sephiroth and let's not forget Tidus embarrassed himself once again, but Cloud still reached the finale. Final Fantasy X was the favorite in GotD and it didn't win. Cloud and Sephiroth lost to the Pokemon trainers in Rivalry Rumble. Then there's 2013, oh god 2013. Where Aerith loses to Shepard, Tidus to Missingno, Vincent loses to Mewtwo and Phoenix Wright of all people, L-Block beats Auron, even Sephiroth falld to Mewtwo and Cloud falls to Squirtle. Yet a Vivi victory against Mario was probably enough to keep the Final Fantasy always wins phase alive, or Draven just overshadowed it completely. But there is no reason for it to exist. Yet a match like this will sadly fuel it. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6097&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (15)Valkyria Chronicles 2015 _source: (2)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs (15)Valkyria Chronicles 2015 (revid 84329)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Monday**, November 16, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 16, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Majora's Mask - 78.95% 99 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Majora's Mask - 89.29% Valkyria Chronicles is one of those games KP has told me to play that I haven't gotten around to yet, so obviously it's a 10/10 title that I'll gush over for years and years once I finally play the game. KP is a boss like that. The problem is it was up against Majora's Mask in round 1, so it was destined to get its ass handed to it immediately in this contest. Seeded tournaments do need their 15 and 16 seeds, after all, so it is what it is. Only one 1 seed has ever lost in round 1 (the legendary Starcraft \> Halo upset), and only a select few 2 seeds have ever lost in round 1 of a 1v1 contest. I suppose 24% on Majora's Mask isn't that bad given this is the Game of the Decade we're talking about, but it's not like "massive blowout" is all that much ahead of "legendary blowout". For those who want a full list of 2 seeds that have lost 1v1 in round 1: (7)Diablo \> (2)Ridley in the villains contest (7)Master Hand \> (2)Kuja in the villains contest (7)Pac-Man \> Revolver Ocelot in summer 2005 (7)Sub-Zero \> (2)Master Chief in summer 2006 (15)The Boss \> (2)Nathan Drake in winter 2010 (7)Big Boss/The Boss \> (2)Tidus/Jecht in the rivalry rumble Majora's Mask's placement in this bracket was just a crime, by the way. Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Ocarina all got their own "I'm the only Zelda in here" division, yet Majora's Mask and Link to the Past have to be paired up? Man. If this was done to prevent all the Zelda games from rolling over the bracket then cool, but why give 3 of the games their own division then? It seemed obvious we would get a pointless LTTP \> Majora division final, when Majora probably could have had a Final Four run elsewhere. Not that the journey wouldn't be really interesting anyway, but we'll get to that. ## Ctes's Analysis Well, on a day where the other three matches gave us plenty of things to discuss, you can't really complain about the last one being really boring. I'm actually quite surprised to see Valkyria Chronicles again, it won a match surprisingly in 2010 before getting tripled by Brawl, so I guess it could have a chance in a similar fortunate matchup. It doesn't look like it dropped that much. Majora's Mask was interesting to follow because everyone expected the 2010 stats to overrate it a lot. It's really easy to compare because Majora's Mask beat Brawl in the finals last time, and Brawl beat Valkyria Chronicles. Brawl won by slightly more than this and the consensus was Brawl looked bad, but I guess Valkyria Chronicles isn't that bad. If you believe that Majora slightly overperformed in its final two matches and wouldn't have won them if Ocarina of Time was in the contest, well, then it adds up very nicely. It's nice seeing the stats be pretty much correct and Majora's Mask was one of the best games at verifying previous stats this contest. At this point, it was just expected to take its predictable path to the division finals and bow out to the stronger Zelda game. I mean, being a OoT proxy did make a few people believe it could win the division, but that was never going to happen. With Majora lining up well with the contest it won, at least no one had any idea of the scare it was in for in round 3 yet. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6098&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (16)Shenmue 2015 _source: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (16)Shenmue 2015 (revid 84330)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Tuesday**, November 17, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 17, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto V - 67.00% 96 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto V - 84.99% This match was the first of a hilarious eightpack in this contest. It featured two GTA games, Oblivion, SMRPG, World of Warcraft, and Chrono Cross. To me the obvious winner of this eightpack was the winner of Oblivion/SMRPG, but that didn't mean we couldn't have a lot of fun with the other stuff. Our best chance at getting a 1 seed upset in round 1 of this contest was in this match. The 1 seeds in this contest were Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, Super Mario Bros. 3, Skyrim, Ocarina of Time, Link to the Past, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Metal Gear Solid. One of those things was clearly not like the others, and the right opponent could have thoroughly embarrassed GTA5. Had Phoenix Wright been in Shenmue's place, it's highly possible GTA5 could have lost this match. As-is GTA5 was still embarrassed, but it at least got to win a match. Shenmue only sold 1.2 million copies, and I say "only" because the game cost something like 60 million dollars to make and was considered a commercial failure by all accounts. Not that this stopped a group of lunatics to start a complete cult following fanbase for the game, and recently the Shenmue 3 kickstarter raised more than 6 million dollars. How such a bust got all these fans is beyond me, but that's gaming for you. Meanwhile, GTA5 has sold something like 55 million copies to date, and was by far the fastest-selling entertainment product of any venture (TV, video game, movie, you name it). You can seriously make the argument that GTA5 is the biggest success in the history of entertainment, at least financially, which is just wild to think about when you consider things like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, the NFL, Casablanca, the Thriller album, or anything else. GTA5 has actually been spoken of on those kinds of lists for financial success. Even Forbes has talked about it. So naturally, GameFAQs despises the GTA series and loves Shenmue. Shenmue actually had GTA5 under 60% for a time, before GTA5 ultimately recovered to get 62% in the final poll. It was an easy win, but hardly becoming of a 1 seed and was surefire proof of impending doom in round 2. It was also one of the best 38% losses you'll ever see in a contest, because GTA5 got thoroughly exposed here. Not that any of us thought GTA5 would be worth anything anyway, but to do this badly against such fodder is really something else. It's worth noting that before this match, Shenmue the game had never broken 30% on anything and Ryo Hazuki's lone contest win was against Guybrush Threepwood. In 2002. Grand Theft Auto sucks. ## Ctes's Analysis Okay, this is how you disappoint greatly as a \#1 seed. I mean, we all knew that GTAV was the weakest \#1 seed before the contest began and it was the board favorite to lose in round 2 no matter what game it faced. We all knew that GTA would as always be a place where we could embarrass the casuals without even thinking about it. We also all knew that it probably only even got the \#1 seed because reviews and stuff matter. But goddamn, this is worse than I expected of it. It's facing a Dreamcast exclusive, how much more terrible can you get? If there was any doubt whatsoever that GATV was a goner in round 2, it stopped here. It's an awful performance that you can't even blame old\>new for. Shenmue is still turbo fodder. Last contest it lost 80-20 to Twilight Princess, that's how bad it is. SBAllen himself taking GTAV to win the division shows that there are some things he just never learns while doing these contests, but whatever. Now, back to the thing about Shenmue appearing in these contests before. I know I complained a lot about this already, but this is the time to complain about it only rivaled by the pre-contest write-up. How in the world can you look at a Dreamcast exclusive that got trashed last contest and think that it would make a better addition that the most legendary video games there is, Super Mario Bros. I don't know if Allen still thinks it's really weak here and would lose to the likes of Halo 1, but that doesn't even matter. Allen said the original Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda were some of the final cuts, meaning he literally chose Shenmue above them. I respect new entrants making the bracket even if we probably know they'll flop. What's the point of Shenmue returning? Had it gotten a much higher seed sure, but you simply don't put in it in this situation. Sure, it had the function of making GTAV look bad, but any game could've done that. Can you imagine how excellent it would've looked to have this matchup? \(1\) Grand Theft Auto V (16) Super Mario Bros That's something I would absolutely love. And I know Super Mario Bros would easily win this match, but it would've had an exciting path. It would probably do the same as Super Mario RPG, but it'd be amazing seeing the original SMB do that, it's a game literally everyone respects, except Allen seemingly, but who else would even mind? And if the idea of excluding most Nintendo and Square from the bottom two divisions were to make something else look good, then just switch Super Mario Bros into another division with one of the other \#16 seeds. Although, it was a Square game with Nintendo characters that won the bottom quarter anyway, so it's not like it matters much. I have nothing against the game at all, it's really good, but Shenmue had absolutely no business being in this contest whatsoever. I promise this is the final time I'll go rambling about Super Mario Bros being excluded from the bracket, but I have to go all out this time, because this is the matchup that actually pissed me off. I understand the idea of giving a bunch of different franchises representation in the bracket, but it makes sense for the Mario franchise to be represented more than anything else, both in terms of quality and quantity. And if the issue is too many Mario games, Super Mario Bros is not the game you exclude. If no one cared for it, then that'd be different, but it was in the top 100 nominations! I simply can't understand the idea that recent games are more deserving of being here in a contest called Best Game Ever. That means of all time. It's not Best Game Today. And Super Mario Bros might've been made pretty obsolete by SMB3, which came out ages ago, but it's influence and status should remain. It deserved the spot. Shenmue did not deserve a second chance. With that, let's leave the case be, I'm finally done complaining. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6099&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 2015 _source: (8)The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 2015 (revid 84331)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Tuesday**, November 17, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 17, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario RPG - 55.39% 87 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario RPG - 51.72% This was without a doubt the most important round 1 match in the history of our contests, at least when it pertains to pre-contest hype actually mattering. Often we'll argue over 1 point matches that don't ultimately matter, or maybe a fourpack. Occasionally we'll get a cool half division where everything is lumped together. For this match, the hype was 100% warranted and everyone knew it. Whichever game won this poll was a lock to win three matches total, and perhaps even go past that if a bandwagon got going. The Resident Evil 4 upset wasn't really entertained until mid-contest, but we all knew this match was worth 7 points bare minimum. The winner of this match would get GTA5, which was a guaranteed win. We're smart enough to know how GTA works on this site. Then in round 3, it would see either World of Warcraft, San Andreas, or perhaps even Chrono Cross. Any of those three games is an easy win for Oblivion or SMRPG. Makes no difference which. For that reason, getting this match right was absolutely necessary for anyone looking to win this contest. Both games had amazing cases to win this match, and both were exceptionally close in past x-stats. The stats were somewhat reliable, too, since Mario RPG proved in two different contests that it either resists SFF well or outright doesn't get SFFd at all. Look at these two polls: Those are ridiculous numbers given what SMRPG was sharing the poll with, and was perhaps the biggest indicator of SMRPG's true strength. One could very easily make the case that SMRPG would be a top 10 game in contest strength if it were ever released in Europe, which we'll get to in a sec. The much simpler argument was how close Thousand-Year Door got to Oblivion in Game of the Decade, and how SMRPG should easily be able to make up a 5% difference: On the Oblivion side, it entirely came down to whether or not Skyrim boosted the series. If there was any boost to speak of, Oblivion would theoretically win with ease since the games were even in the stats. Its run in 2009 was no joke, and getting 44% on Wind Waker after winning two matches is also impressive. But in one of the weirdest twists of fate in contest history, a big-time series release actually devalued a series. Before Skyrim: After Skyrim: Skyrim didn't render Oblivion irrelevant, but it didn't help it either. When you pair that with other intangibles -- Mario RPG being everything GameFAQs likes in one package, Western RPG love being relatively new here, this contest potentially having old games embarrass new games in a fair bracket, Nintendo AND Square in one package, the "4" polls showing Skyrim not actually boosting the Elder Scrolls series, Nintendo rarely losing debatable matches, the FLOWCHART™, et al -- Mario RPG was a slight favorite going into this match. It's a shame the match itself didn't live up to the very worthy hype, because this really deserved to be a barn-burner, photo finish type of match. This contest was pretty short on those types of matches in all honestly, but that doesn't mean this was a bad contest at all. It was rather nice being able to unwind for the last few hours, in truth. As for the match itself, Mario RPG wrecked face in the board vote and stayed above 60% for nearly an hour. Mario RPG would bleed a lot of percentage overnight, but Oblivion never made a true push to actually win the match and would ultimately stay at 46% all day. It was a disappointing match for Oblivion when it could have potentially made the Final Four had it won this match, but those are the breaks sometimes. The only reason Mario RPG even bled percentage is because it was never released in Europe, which would become a rather hysterical trend in all of its matches this contest. For Mario RPG, this meant a guaranteed spot in the divisional finals, and the beginning of a lot of Mario RPG \> Resident Evil 4 hype. By this point of the contest, people noticed that old games beating new games was a noticeable trend, and Mario RPG being over 60% on Oblivion early on in a hyped match caught a lot of eyeballs. RE4 fans were scared to death, and they had every right to be. ## Ctes's Analysis This match wasn't particularly exciting, but it was quite debated due to its importance. Anyone with any contest knowledge knew that this match would be worth a total of six points. Both GTA and World of Warcraft can define casual bait, but no one on the board believed that the division finalist could come out of any round 1 match but this one. Of course, Oblivion directly beat San Andreas and WoW in the past, so just looking there might be enough. Thinking about it, I believe few people doubted Super Mario RPG would win here either, but Oblivion did have its fair share of supporters and there honestly was good reason to. Super Mario RPG had failed to get past GoldenEye before, though that can arguably be blamed to SSF. GoldenEye is good, but not exactly a top game here, SMRPG seemed like a decent mid-carter, just like Oblivion. Five years ago, Oblivion beat Paper Mario II 1v1, and while Super Mario RPG should be stronger, Oblivion had no trouble winning that match at all, so with that in mind, Oblivion was not a bad pick. In general, if a game got above 45% you can't really blame people for going with it. Thing is, you could convince me now that Oblivion would've won this match five years ago. At the very least, it would've been a whole lot closer. I realize Oblivion was never as huge as Skyrim has been, but before Skyrim came out, it was probably a bit stronger. Although, with the contest run SMRPG had, it might be minimal. The above point still stands though. Although Elder Scrolls games in general has held up well here unlike many new games, this site is very nostalgic and it has never been more clear than during this contest. Had that not been the case, as it was a lot less five years ago, well Oblivion might've very well won this match. But not only are we more nostalgic than ever, we're also especially nostalgic towards SNES games. As the contest rolled, SMRPG became the clear favorite, while there was more doubt pre-contest. Super Mario RPG did win too, but Oblivion managed to keep below 55%. This match started out crazy though. SMRPG was well above 60%. It was looking like Resident Evil 4 wouldn't even threat it, and while that did end up being true, when this match was over everyone still felt RE4 was the easy pick to win the division. After the first hour SMRPG started slowing down a bit. It was clearly the board favorite. It stood still for a while and once the deadzone came even lose some updates, so as you can imagine, its percentage bleed like crazy, already being below 55% about 7 hours into the match. It actually continued to drop in percentage for most of the day, though at a much slower pace until it was just right above 54% and Europe went away, so it could build a little bit again. It's very clear that this game was never released in Europe until virtual console because goddamn does it look awful there. The match ended in calm numbers, pretty much what we predicted in the oracle, so despite the outburst early in the match, it looked as had this figured out. SMRPG as a semi-finalist was not clear yet, that's for sure, but it was a clear a division finalist. Really sucks for Oblivion that it drew SMRPG of all games it could draw this division. It ended up looking excellent. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6100&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs (12)Shovel Knight 2015 _source: (5)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs (12)Shovel Knight 2015 (revid 84332)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Tuesday**, November 17, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 17, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 63.99% 93 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 78.63% Didn't I just go on a massive rant about how Shenmue getting 38% on GTA5 was hilarious, if not completely ridiculous compared to how the real world would vote? If you polled regular people for this contest, you could make the case GTA5 would actually win the thing. Both games being unable to break 65% on absolute fodder trash, on the same day no less, would be unheard of anywhere else. And yet here we are on the very same day, watching another Grand Theft Auto title just completely piss all over itself in a contest match. This series underperforming even in wins is just comical at this point, to the point where the Oracle called San Andreas underperforming and still overshot how well it would do in this match. I'm sure Shovel Knight is an ok game, I even got it for NG as an early Christmas present on Steam, but let's not pretend it would come close to breaking 40% on GTA without benefiting from a hilarious number of anti-votes. San Andreas lost the board vote badly, and was lucky to break 60% at all. This spawned a lot of RacistFAQs jokes, and when teamed up with how badly GTA5 was doing in its own right, the SMRPG \> Oblivion match, and the Chrono Cross \> WoW upset all going on at the same time, it made for an absolutely hilarious 24 hours. The funny thing is Chrono Cross \> WoW was probably the funniest thing of all. As bad as the two GTA games did on this day, at least they won their matches. WoW didn't even get that much . Two GTA games hilariously underperform at the same time, yet this fact can't even get top headlines. This has to be a whole new level of "lol GTA" that one couldn't even think possible until actually seeing this nonsense happen. Funniest round 1 contest day ever, or at least this was all damn close. ## Ctes's Analysis This was another pretty disappointing performance from GTA. I think people had concluded before this match that it was an advantage to have two games from the same franchise in the poll at the same time, but I'm honestly not sure that's the case when it's something as heavily anti-voted as GTA. San Andreas was obviously never going to lose this one, but it was the board favorite to lose in round 2. This match didn't really change that either. Shovel Knight is a really great game, but an indie game nevertheless. It wasn't going to do well today. Don't say anything about Undertale, it was losing easily to Mass Effect 3. It's really nice to see the exposure Shovel Knight has gotten, the producers did a really bad job with releasing its amiibo, but getting an amiibo in itself was pretty huge. It's great to see it get into the contest and actually put up a respectable percentage today too. It's a bit difficult to judge it due to a bunch of it likely being anti-votes, but it looks relatively good, so let's just give it that praise as it exists.  As for San Andreas, it sure has fallen, but it was already clear five years ago, so obviously it has only gotten worse. San Andreas lost to Golden Sun back in 2010 and a recent chunk of the board actually predicted it, think it was 20% or so. San Andreas only needed a half strong opponent to lose in a similar fashion, Shovel Knight was just a tad too weak. It might've won a match if it got a lucky bracket placement, but it was means to lose in round 1.  San Andreas won Game of the Year in 2004 on GameFAQs. Competition was not at its best that year, but I don't think it would win today. It beat a bunch of sequels in the final poll, Half-Life 2, Halo 2 and Metroid Prime 2 to be more specific, and I don't even think it would win that today, though it would likely beat Halo 2. The thing with GTA is that it is apparently too mainstream for GameFAQs' tastes. And not in the same way Mario or Pokemon is mainstream, but mainstream to casual gamers and not actual gamers. So for GameFAQs' voters, which are almost only actuals, it is just frowned upon, because while most of them might enjoy it, it's just not as great as reviews make it to be. The fall is similar to Call of Duty. San Andreas is a contender for strongest GTA and couldn't double Shovel Knight. Yet after failing to do that it's still a contender for strongest GTA game. Maybe some years from now the hate will die down a bit, but for a while, you shouldn't expect anything from this franchise. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6101&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)World of Warcraft vs (13)Chrono Cross 2015 _source: (4)World of Warcraft vs (13)Chrono Cross 2015 (revid 84333)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Tuesday**, November 17, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 17, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Cross - 55.96% 82 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Cross - 27.32% When the bracket first got released and I was filling things in, I honest to goodness penciled in Chrono Cross winning twice without thinking about it much. Unfortunately I ended up thinking about it too much and found this poll: I figured Animal Crossing getting 41% is about what Chrono Cross would do, and that even anti-votes have to have some ceiling. Somehow I thought Chrono Cross getting 33% on Majora's Mask was a bad result (mainly because Majora's Mask getting bandwagoned would inflate that result), and just massively overthought things for no reason. Too much thinking, not enough common sense, especially given the entire World of Warcraft franchise has completely buried itself beyond repair in recent years. Blizzard decided to completely trash the Warcraft lore ad infinitum in a grand scheme to give us Pandaria as a realm. Pandaria, a complete inside joke in Warcraft 3, was actually and literally given its own expansion in World of Warcraft. The Fonz has nothing on this level of jumping the shark. When the match began, it was one of the most hilarious blowouts in contest history, and quite frankly every contest match where casuals are whining for 24 hours straight is guaranteed to be a good match. If you get a bunch of "this is why GameFAQs is made fun of" topics, even better! It happened with Golden Sun \> San Andreas, it happened with Ness \> CJ, it happened with Paper Mario \> World of Warcraft, and it happened a lot during Chrono Cross beating the tar out of World of Warcraft. It's always great when the casuals whine, as if they're not handed everything for free in the real world. With World of Warcraft especially, it's just great. I have never suffered a more annoying fanbase in my 30 years of gaming than World of Warcraft fans at the height of that game's popularity, and to date, the only good thing that's ever happened in World of Warcraft was the funeral raid. If you don't know about it, look it up and enjoy. The only thing that comes close to that level of entertainment is every time World of Warcraft loses a contest match. ## Ctes's Analysis Look at that prediction percentage. This is a round one match, isn't It hilarious? Well, when you look at this match you see a huge MMORPG that everybody knows and has sold extremely well against a poorly received spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger. We use WoW to mock casuals a lot, but can you really blame them here? I mean, WoW would've been favored against most things by them, but still. Most of the board initially picked WoW to win this first before thinking about it and switching. Chrono Cross has never exactly been worth anything in these contest, but it hasn't been that weak either. If you had followed any of these contests just a little bit beforehand, you'd know that this match was never in any doubt. Chrono Cross was always going to win this. I'm sure Chrono Cross still has some amount of anti-voters, but that is true for World of Warcraft as well. This eight pack was filled with anti-voted games. Chrono Cross is still the kind of game that this site likes, and 15 years after its release, well, the hate has died down a bit. World of Warcraft wasn't that bad here in 4-ways, but the less opponents it has the less games gets its anti-votes. It lost to Paper Mario in 2010, why would this match be any different? At worst, the reception Chrono Cross had could've made this somewhat close on paper, though never in reality. 58% is quite convincing though. It seemed pretty clear that Chrono Cross' excellent bracket placement would carry it to round 3. It finally got a place in the bracket where it could show it has some worth. In 2009 it drew Ocarina of Time in round 1 and while it could still advance it was also lucky enough to be SFF'd hard by FFIX in the same match. In 2010 it actually had a pretty convincing victory against DQVIII before it got doubled against the eventual contest winner. This contest, it finally got its time to shine. Oh, and as a long time contest follower, a match like this is just pleasing. You don't even have to have played either game. Correctly predicting a match like this without any doubts just feels good. Free points for the experts. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6102&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (14)The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth 2015 _source: (3)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (14)The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth 2015 (revid 84334)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Wednesday**, November 18, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 68.14% 95 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 85.74% Can we agree that Shenmue, Shovel Knight, and Binding of Isaac are of similar strength? Yes? I bring this up because one day after the two GTA games plus World of Warcraft went and flopped all over the place like choking fish, Witcher 3 went out there and completely justified its 3 seed in this contest. Of course there was no outcry whatsoever about Witcher 3 being in this bracket, despite being a popular game from 2015. Wasn't that the big complaint about Undertale? Being "too new" to be in the running for a contest called "Best Game Ever"? Anyway Witcher 3 was at 70% at the beginning of this poll, and then managed to go up from there to get 74% overall. That's really impressive for a first-time contest entrant, even if it is against something like Isaac. It just went out there, took care of business and kept it moving. This would set up a round 2 match against Metal Gear Solid 2, and a lot of Witcher fans pointed out that Witcher 3's developers were known in 2015 to rally like mad for Game of the Year awards. A lot of people dislike this sort of thing, but I'm pretty sure everyone knows my opinion on rallies at this point. I'm also sure everyone knows my opinion on MGS2 and how much I love it, but I would have been fine with Witcher 3 rallying like mad to mow over this contest. And why? Well my belief that rallying makes contests more fun aside, I actually bought Witcher 3 today. When you open the box, this is the first thing you see, in bold letters on a red piece of paper: DEAR GAMER, First of all, we would like to thank you for your support. We really appreciate that you have decided to spend your hard-earned money on our game and hope that you will have a fun time playing it. Over 200 of us have spent the last three years working on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and it is with great pleasure and humility that we present our game to you. At CD PROJEKT RED, we believe that when you buy our games, you're entitled to continuous, free support -- updates, patches, and bits of new and amazing content. We owe you that for believing in us and purchasing our game. To thank you, we have prepared something really special -- 16 DLCs for you to download, totally free of charge, regardless of the platform or edition of the game you own. We salute you for your support and wish you a fantastic next-generation of RPG gaming! CD PROJEKT RED I haven't played one minute of Witcher 3, but they have a fan in me already. The company that made it just shit all over Capcom, Activi\$ion, Nintendo, Ubisoft, EA, and every other greedy-ass company that nickel-and-dimes its customers with a mere 161 words. If the game is half as good as the company's mission statement, then it 100% deserved all those game of the year awards. ## Ctes's Analysis Witcher 3 was what I thought would be the 2015 game that had potential. Turns out Undertale had plenty too, but Witcher 3 has a huge community that has shown to rally in different places before. Would they care to rally on GameFAQs? It's not something I wanted to risk picking, but I thought of it a possibility. It wouldn't require much effort for them to put up a rally huge enough for it to do extremely well in the contest, so why the hell not? We might have small votals in the polls, but GameFAQs is still a pretty huge website! It always almost comes up whenever you google search a game, so obviously Witcher fans would be aware of the page. Being aware of the contest was the question. In any case, it was never going to get a rally for this match, because it wasn't needed. Binding of Isaac is obvious turbofodder. Witcher 3 looks really good here for a 2015 game, but most of it is probably just Binding of Isaac being really weak, but I approve of having Rebirth in the bracket this one time! Witcher 3 would face real competition next round and that's when things would get interesting. First and foremost we'd get a real estimate of its strength, which was very likely to be below MGS2, but an upset wasn't completely out of the question giving how weak the Metal Gear Solid franchise had looked. Then of course whether it would get a rally or not. I didn't expect it to, and I certainly didn't hope it would, but this was a game where you had reason to fear one. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6103&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (11)Resident Evil 2015 _source: (6)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (11)Resident Evil 2015 (revid 84335)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Wednesday**, November 18, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 2 - 57.94% 93 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 2 - 55.96% While Witcher 3 was proving itself to be a potential contender, Metal Gear Solid 2 was proving itself rather average and continued the trend of the MGS series looking like absolute garbage in this contest. I know stats aren't everything, but MGS2 was expected to get 59% based on 2009. I know this match comes close, but a lot of us were expecting an overall series boost due to Metal Gear Solid 5's release. Not only did this not happen, but MGS5 being so divisive and Konami firing Kojima for no reason practically led to a series deboost. MGS2 started the match at 60%, then bled percentage all day long to what you see before you. Not exactly a performance one would expect from a contender, and when paired with Witcher 3's great performance and rally potential, the favorite was clear for the big round 2 match. By the way, shoutout to REmake for being the actual best remake of a game ever made. The original Resident Evil is just unplayable trash at this point, but the remake of that game is absolutely top tier. When Raven 2 let me borrow the Resident Evil main line series, my opinions were REmake being knock-your-socks-off amazing, 2 being good, Code Veronica being "okay", and 0 and 3 were absolute trash. Why anyone likes 0 or 3 is just beyond me, but maybe I had to be there when they first happened. I dunno. Point being, play REmake! That game is the shit. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was not interesting to look at, other than laughing more at Metal Gear Solid I guess, but it comes down as one of the most hypothetically interesting of the contest, but let's look at what actually happened first. Some people were discussing the upset here that would be The Witcher 3 winning. It would've been a cool upset too! Sons of Liberty is not exactly the most well-received Metal Gear Solid and The Witcher 3 has been incredible well-received. It took Game of the Year on GameFAQs as well. I haven't played it personally, but it's on the to do list! I do love Metal Gear Solid 2 as well, but I know not everyone appreciates it. Raiden is apparently considered a bad character too. When you look at things like this, The Witcher 3 should win this match, it really should. But it didn't, and it was never going to either. This is GameFAQs! We are very nostalgia and/or haven't played more recent games. It's also that Metal Gear Solid 2 is part of a great well-established series, and even though said series disappointed this contest, it's still a big one. The Witcher 3 is as well, but the first two were not nearly as big as the third one has become. The Witcher 3 doesn't get its popularity from its series' name. I'm not saying Metal Gear Solid 2 completely does, but it certainly helps it a lot. As I just mentioned, The Witcher 3 took Game of the Year here, that really says everything! Without even looking anything up, I can assure you that Metal Gear Solid 2 would lose to at least three other 2001 games, which are Melee, Final Fantasy X and GSC. Now, 2001 was a really good year, but it still says a lot! 2015 was too and recent games in general are great as well. The prediction percentage reveals The Witcher 3 as the overall favorite and we would've guessed so either way, but Metal Gear Solid 2 was the clear board 8 favorite. We know our nostalgic site. Now, what makes this match so hypothetically interesting? GameFAQs dodged a major bullet on this one. Undertale would end up winning this contest by gained momentum over the course of the rounds and within every single round in itself as well. In this match, we dodged another major bracket destruction by rallies in The Witcher 3. The fanbase and even official sites are ridiculously easy to rally for this game. They have done it before and it would take them nothing to overtake this contest completely either. In round 1, there was no reason to contact them whatsoever because The Witcher 3 was facing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth of all things, which it obviously destroyed. Well, they were contacted this round, but nothing happened, which is weird. I mean, usually, most rally attempt fails and that's just how it is, but this one should've been bulletproof. The answer is in the timing. The day of this match was 11/27. That's Black Friday for you! Not even gamers are home that day. More importantly, the sites were contacted on Thanksgiving, where they weren't working / paying attention. They actually responded to someone explaining that they would've participated in this, but didn't since they weren't contacted sooner than Thanksgiving when the match was on Black Friday. We lucked out due to the date of the match. The rally potential in the Witcher 3 was absolutely the biggest bullet we had to dodge and we did. If they had rallied, The Witcher 3 would've dominated the contest entirely. Undertale won, but at least it kept the board active doing its matches with how its trends were. The Witcher 3 would've destroyed competition in boring matches similar to how Draven did it and this time, there would be no Hero of Time to save everybody with only DDOS attacks to fear. People would probably still say “save us Ocarina of Time” or “save us Chrono Trigger”, even though it would quickly become “save us RBY”, “save us Melee” or even “save us Undertale”. It would likely not happen though. They'd be too many, and Undertale wouldn't be able to jump the same anti-gamefaqs bandwagon if The Witcher 3 was the treat. But none of it ever happened, because of thanksgiving. Most people wont even remember The Witcher 3 in this contest. At most, it was just another entrant to embarrass Metal Gear Solid, but there were so many of those that it went unnoticed here, but The Witcher 3 was the game to fear the most when it came to outside forces, but Minecraft, Heartstone, Destiny and even Undertale were considered more, another reason why people doesn't remember. Who knows what'll happen if the Witcher 3 comes back to the field. Maybe if its past its prime, it wont matter, but if the contest comes somewhat soon, well, you never know! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6104&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Fallout: New Vegas vs (10)BioShock Infinite 2015 _source: (7)Fallout: New Vegas vs (10)BioShock Infinite 2015 (revid 84336)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Wednesday**, November 18, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout: New Vegas - 56.89% 88 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout: New Vegas - 55.18% Before this contest began, Allen spoiled two matches for us. One was Bloodborne/FF12, and the other was this one. All of us immediately knew New Vegas would win thanks to Fallout 4 hype, thought BioShock quickly becoming a one-hit wonder series also helped. BioShock 2 being a disappointment is forgivable, and while Infinite is a good game, it does a few things that don't make much sense. Kotaku wrote a good article called "Bioshock Infinite is Insanely, Ridiculously Violent. It's a Real Shame." That sums up my thoughts rather well. Violence is okay in context, but it's thrown into Infinite for no real reason. There's other stuff, but I don't want this writeup to be a massive spoiler for the game. Some people thought New Vegas was prime to get upset, but this is a case where games = characters is perfectly fine logic. Booker lost to literal Gilgamesh in 2013. Sorry, but that's as obvious an indicator of Infinite's weakness as you can find. I'd make a FLOWCHART™ joke, but I forgot to put "Hype" in there somewhere. This match might have been interesting in 2014, but with Fallout 4 coming out in the middle of the contest it rendered this match an easy 55-45 affair the whole way through. New Vegas with a better draw might have done some damage, but it was saddled with Resident Evil 4 in round 2. ## Ctes's Analysis This is a match I thought about for two seconds, picked New Vegas, and moved on. Yet the prediction percentage is close and we saw a solid handful siding with Infinite. Chris was especially supporting it, picked this as his guest write-up for The Crew too. The reason was actually good. The first BioShock looked really good against Kingdom Hearts II last time, certainly a legit series and BioShock Infinite has been praised quite a bit, New Vegas less so. Fallout 3 was obviously the stronger game from either franchise, but the idea was the BioShock games were closer to each other. Thing is, Fallout 4 literally just had release. It's a very active community right now. New Vegas might not have gotten the same hype as the other Fallout games, but it's a more popular franchise and quite frankly, I don't think Infinite is quite on par with BioShock either, but that wasn't too apparent yet. It's hard to get a good read on Fallout 3 this contest, but it's definitely near elite. Fallout 4 would probably be decent too had it been out a little sooner so it could make it. BioShock is not at all on the same level as Fallout here, that's just how it is. This match probably shows the difference between the franchises quite nicely. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6105&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Resident Evil 4 vs (15)Paper Mario 2015 _source: (2)Resident Evil 4 vs (15)Paper Mario 2015 (revid 84337)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Wednesday**, November 18, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 4 - 60.22% 94 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 4 - 77.09% Most 2 seeds go out there and dominate some fodder en route to an easy contest win or two. Resident Evil 4 did not do that, though admittedly Paper Mario is not a normal 15 seed. Resident Evil 4 lost the board vote, then had to do a lot of recovering to get this thing close to 60%. It would be a clear warning sign of what was coming later, though a lot of people were in denial about it. In looking at this match, I noticed a pretty neat parallel. It depends on how close you think Paper Mario and Thousand-Year Door are in strength, but it's definitely there. In Game of the Decade, Thousand-Year Door got 44.83% on Oblivion: In 2015, Super Mario RPG would end up getting 54.43% on Oblivion: If you assume a constant Oblivion, that's an increase of 9.6%. In this match, Paper Mario got 41.13% on Resident Evil 4. If you add 9.6% to that, you get... 50.73%. Hmmmmmmmmm........ Warning signs were definitely there with Resident Evil 4, though after round 1 the excuse of "we can't compare Paper Mario and TTYD this closely" was there. That excuse wouldn't stay there for long, but denying some relationship between SMRPG, Paper Mario and Thousand-Year Door would be a bit silly. I know the stats topic is known for projecting things a little too far, but it was definitely warranted in this case! Resident Evil 4, right from the first match, looked "off". ## Ctes's Analysis This match feels like such a waste. Last time Paper Mario got the honor of embarrassing our casuals through World of Warcraft. This time, it gets to look at it from the wrong side of the division as Chrono Cross gets the fun. Resident Evil 4 is a league above it, it was never going to win this match and everybody knew it too. Paper Mario: TTYD was in the tougher half of the bracket and won a match, Paper Mario really got unfortunate here and it's due to seeding. Last time, Paper Mario was a \#5 seed, it feel quite a bit to get a \#15 seed. Just for comparison, TTYD fell from a \#7 seed to a \#8 seed which is honestly really great considering that last contest had a field from only a decade. But with that seeding Paper Mario wouldn't have much a chance anywhere. It's a shame to see it fall, but I do appreciate TTYD coming through as the better looking Paper Mario here. The first Paper Mario is really darn good, really fun experience that I could play through over and over again despite a few flaws. TTYD fixed the few things, introduced a new story and created perfection. Seriously, so few games are that. It's a top 3 game for me and my favorite Nintendo game. Paper Mario advanced further than it last time, but this time they had the order I would prefer. This match lines up really well with GotD, which is nice for a match that wouldn't be interesting either way. But the weird thing is that Resident Evil 4 ends up looking a lot worse than it did in GotD. You can explain that through how the series went afterward as well as it being somewhat recent, but then why has Paper Mario fallen accordingly? It's a N64 game, it's still well-liked and despite it not being N64 as most thought, the rest of the N64 games did good. We thought Paper Mario did too, but it ends up looking so bad. If fans now vastly prefer TTYD then perhaps that could be a reason for Paper Mario falling a little bit, but it's still not enough to explain this really. The difference shouldn't be that much, so perhaps Super Mario RPG gained a lot more momentum that we thought from reaching the division finals. It was predicted by board 8, but I guess Super Mario RPG coming out of that eight pack of casual bait, would be a shock to those casuals. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6106&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid vs (16)Splatoon 2015 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid vs (16)Splatoon 2015 (revid 84346)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Thursday**, November 19, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 19, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid - 76.93% 95 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid - 85.77% Given 92% of people picked Mass Effect 2 to beat Virtue's Last Reward in this same division, I'm surprised only 86% picked the 1 seed to beat whatever the hell Splatoon is. Of all five MGS games to make this bracket, only the original looked okay in round 1. 2 looked awful against Resident Evil, 3 looked awful against Mother 3, 4 outright lost against Kingdom Hearts 2, and 5 looked awful against Perfect Dark. The original was at least nice enough to only lose the board vote against Splatoon before shooting way up in percentage and finishing with the 79-21 beating. Not that this would save MGS from falling flat on its face later, but us series fans had to take what we could get when it happened. Remember, a lot of us thought 5 would boost this series to the moon, then the contest happened and almost every game fell way below expectations. Pair that with Mario Maker causing similar issues with the Mario series, and you had yourself one hell of a contest! Comparing the 1 seed prediction percentages for round 1 is always fun: Ocarina of Time - 95.61% Link to the Past - 95.43% Chrono Trigger - 92.68% Super Mario Bros. 3 - 91.22% Skyrim - 90.05% Metal Gear Solid - 85.77% Grand Theft Auto 5 - 84.99% Final Fantasy 6 - 80.86% Not too far off from what the strength of these games would be in order, I think. You could probably throw FF6 above Skyrim and have a pretty accurate list in order, though I suppose some people will argue Chrono Trigger never got a chance to prove itself. I say it got a chance and choked like it always does, but we'll get to that madness in due time. ## Ctes's Analysis At first glance this might look like another bad showing for Metal Gear Solid, but I actually really don't think it is. Getting fourth times as many votes is pretty great, even with your opponent being a Wii U exclusive having just been released. Super Mario 64 didn't get that much more than this against Mario Kart 8, and while Mario Kart 8 is a stronger Wii U title than Splatoon, Super Mario 64 is also a stronger game than Metal Gear Solid. People expected that match to be a bigger blowout too and some of the explanation as to why it wasn't can be used here as well. They games are very different. So you can shoot in both games here, they're nothing alike, from different times, on different systems, different demographics, different everything. As different as can be. I'm inclined to think Metal Gear Solid might have some anti-voting this contest. Everything taken into consideration this is a fine result. That means this is the first Metal Gear Solid match where the MGS game did not disappoint. This was expected to be the strongest of them too, it's old enough for it to have some strength. There was no reason to worry about it not making the semi-finals at this point. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6107&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)EarthBound vs (9)Borderlands 2 2015 _source: (8)EarthBound vs (9)Borderlands 2 2015 (revid 84347)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Thursday**, November 19, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 19, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** EarthBound - 49.69% 52 for - 44 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** EarthBound - 57.62% 60% of the guru picked Borderlands 2 to win this match, and for good reason. EarthBound had never done a single thing in these contests before 2015, and was the type of game that we would expect to get rolled over by anything with any casual bait -- ie, Borderlands 2. In 2004 there was a ton of hype that EarthBound would beat Doom. After winning the board vote, it got rolled. There was minor hype in 2009, but most people understood that a fourpack featuring three SNES RPGs and Yoshi's Island meant EarthBound was a massive longshot to get second place. Ness the character had never really done anything of note, either, outside the occasional win in round 1 over pure fodder. His 1v1 character wins are against Jak, CJ, and Geno. Hardly murderer's row. So in typical EarthBound fashion, it decides to steamroll a poll for its first contest win when there was no hype behind it whatsoever. Because that's how EarthBound rolls. Bear in mind that Borderlands 2 won Game of the Year in 2013, and even won Review of the Year back when we were still having those polls. Borderlands 2 isn't some joke game that no one here has ever heard of. And it just got smacked. EarthBound was well over 60% for quite some time, and it took a hefty percentage bleed for this match to look even remotely respectable. There were a lot of matches and hints that pointed toward the 90s and the SNES in particular being all business this contest, but EarthBound blowing Borderland 2's doors off showed that 90s were absolutely not. fucking. around. Show any weakness whatsoever as a new game and you were absolutely getting waxed. It says something when this match is an example of the casuals laughing at us, too. Even they knew what was going on this contest, and I imagine a lot of people just conveniently ignored these two polls: The potential for EarthBound to show off in a fair bracket was apparently obvious. Seeing it actually happen was really something else. Play EarthBound. ## Ctes's Analysis This match is really darn hillarious. Borderlands 2 was the board favorite and honestly, it makes sense that Borderlands 2 should win this match looking at past results. Earthbound was no match for Yoshi's Island in 2009. That also means that after this contest, Yoshi's Island would be one of the biggest snubs when it comes to strength seeing as this is the Year of SNES. Along with Super Mario Kart, it's a game I'd really loved to have seen in action. I don't care if it means even more Mario games, I prefer games that can do something above games that can't and keep returning. Anyway, in 2004 Earthbound lost to Doom in similar numbers as this match. Then the following round, Doom got tripled by Final Fantasy VI. With that result in mind, there was plenty of reason to think that EarthBound's performance in 2009 wasn't just SFF, but EarthBound being a really weak game here. Furthermore, EarthBound was never released in Europe before virtual console, and while that doesn't stop you from doing good, see Super Mario RPG, it's certainly not something that helps when you're having big doubt to begin with. Now should Borderlands 2 be particularly strong? Not exactly, but it shouldn't be terrible either. The first Borderlands was in Game of the Decade and couldn't break 30% on Final Fantasy X, but it got close and considering Earthbound's lost easily to Doom which did worse against a Final Fantasy you'd expect to be weaker than Final Fantasy X, at least at the time, well, Borderlands 2 should be the favorite today, even if you always thought Final Fantasy VI would be stronger than X. The idea was also that Borderlands 2 would be stronger than its prequel due to being even better received. One last thing is that Borderlands 2 won Game of the Year on this site. It doesn't mean too much, but it beat Xenoblade Chronicles and Mass Effect 3 among others. Not a bad showing. Picking Borderlands 2 was perfectly reasonable. There was of course also reason to pick EarthBound, after all, it was almost 50-50 on board 8 and EarthBound has higher prediction percentage. First of all, it's a Nintendo game and a JRPG. That will always have the advantage above a game that isn't this. But most importantly, it's another case of old vs. new. If DKC2 could come through against Xenoblade Chronicles, then why shouldn't Earthbound win here. Sometimes it was just difficult to pick the old above the new, sometimes the gap just seemed to be big to begin with and hard to have closed even for nostalgiaFAQs. But damn, the gap had closed if there ever was one, then a new and really big gap was created in EarthBounds's favor instead. I don't think anyone felt 100% confident in Borderlands 2, but it was not supposed to lost this badly. In the beginning of the poll, EarthBound was nearing a doubling, it was close to 65% and it was insane to watch. It declined a bit afterwards showing it had the board vote and even more during the deadzone, because damn not being released at its time in Europe matters there, but it still ended up with a really easy win. I like Borderlands, but it's really satisfying too. You might find EarthBound to be a really big game on the internet, but it wasn't, it's sequel couldn't even be released outside of Japan. Ness appearing in every Smash is a great reason for why people even know about it to begin with, but it's fantastic. One of the greatest 2D RPG's. It really showed itself in these contests today. It can't be entirely contributed to Year of SNES though. Borderlands 2 would obviously be stronger a few years ago. It's just the wrong time to be a recent Western game on this site. I mean, being a Western game was never that great to begin with here, but now that recent games generally don't do well, it just becomes even worse. And no, Borderlands was probably never a franchise that was strong to begin with, but it really wasn't this bad. Picking old against new in debatable matches was a good idea, but we didn't know that new had fallen as much as it had before the contest began. Borderlands 2 deserved a contest chance, especially after winning GotY here no matter how small an achievement that may be, in 2012 especially, but it's not a franchise that needs to have reputation in the future really. It's a shame, they're good games, but there's no reason it. It has fallen a lot and it's not something that's gonna get much better probably. Despite Borderlands 2 being weaker than anticipated, Year of SNES is still insane. Let's just sum up how the SNES games have done up until now that the final SNES game in the bracket had a match… - Chrono Trigger scored an insane blowout. - Mega Man X destroyed its opponent in a debatable match. - Final Fantasy VI put up insane numbers against ACII. - Super Mario World ended up fighting a huge rally, but held up like a king and was destroying until then - Donkey Kong Country 2 took a major upset against a game of the most popular genre here - A Link to the Past delivered one of the absolute biggest blowouts - Final Fantasy IV almost put up 70% against Deus Ex - Super Metroid completely destroyed Call of Duty 4 in perhaps the most shocking SNES performance - SMRPG had no trouble winning a highly debated match that a fellow Mario RPG stood no chance against five years ago - EarthBound destroying today as I just went throughout That's 10 matches and 10 very promising victories. DKC2 was the only one in any danger and it was expected to lose that match with ease. Every single of them over performed in percentage (unless you count SMW after Undertale rallies). Super Mario Kart and Yoshi's Island among possible others would only contribute to this list unless they faced each other or some elite opponent from another console. It was a great time for SNES fans. 7/10 of them looked great to go in round 2 as well, with one of the three that didn't being because it faced another SNES game. Had we known this would be Year of SNES, I doubt anyone would have picked Borderlands 2 either. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6108&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Shadow of the Colossus vs (12)Team Fortress 2 2015 _source: (5)Shadow of the Colossus vs (12)Team Fortress 2 2015 (revid 84348)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Thursday**, November 19, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 19, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shadow of the Colossus - 62.86% 95 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shadow of the Colossus - 71.45% I in no way respect Shadow of the Colossus as a video game. We all know this. But I do respect its contest strength. Let's not forget that Team Fortress 2 has won a contest match before, and both it and its characters have made multiple appearances in contests. Shadow of the Colossus just waxing it off the map like this was impressive, and it immediately brought up memories of running the Metal Gear Solid gauntlet in Game of the Decade. As fate would have it, Metal Gear Solid and Shadow of the Colossus were a lock to face each other in round 3 of this contest. EarthBound was not beating Metal Gear Solid, and Red Dead Redemption was not beating Shadow of the Colossus. SotC would have its chance to prove itself as an elite and make a deep contest run, and had it faced any other MGS title in round 3 it really might have pulled it off. There was no indication of a possible SotC \> MGS upset after round 1, but after round 2 there were MGS fans just mortified that we would see a Game of the Decade rerun. ## Ctes's Analysis It's nice having the whole Orange Box represented, but Team Fortress 2 is the entry that there really was no reason to see again. Shadow of the Colossus certainly proved its worth last contest, but in 2009 it only barely beat Gears of War in a meaningless third place match while Kingdom Hearts II and Resident Evil 4 destroyed it. This contest was the time for Shadow of the Colossus to show if its star contest one was a one time thing or it really had legitimate strength now. At a first glance here, it looks pretty good. Not amazing, but it never was. These are not bad numbers. It had the luck of being placed in the bottom quarter where it could actually do some damage and looking at the bracket, there was no reason at all to doubt it'd make round 3 either. Its test would come when it went head to head with the Metal Gear Solid series once again, this time against the original. SBAllen definitely set this part of the bracket up with the last contest in mind where SotC took major upsets against the second and fourth MSG before ultimately falling to the third. That said, we all expected Metal Gear Solid to be the strongest. Several MGS3 supporters in this contest even believed it would take some rSFF shenanigans for it to come out of the division. Without the bandwagon too, SotC seemingly wouldn't stand a chance in round 3. There was however reason to hope for the upset. Metal Gear Solid has had really poor performances this contest mostly, and while the original one was looking fine in this match, let's take a moment to look at its opponent. Team Fortress only needed to be slightly stronger than Splatoon for the upset to look not too unlikely. I didn't believe it myself, but you couldn't blame SotC for having some amount of confidence. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6109&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Red Dead Redemption vs (13)Bayonetta 2 2015 _source: (4)Red Dead Redemption vs (13)Bayonetta 2 2015 (revid 84349)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Thursday**, November 19, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 19, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Red Dead Redemption - 60.44% 91 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Red Dead Redemption - 79.13% I have no clue why I thought Bayonetta could actually win this match, even with it being a Wii U exclusive on a site that doesn't remotely care about the Wii U. I kind of figured a casualbait title like Red Dead Redemption would just get rolled, which tends to happen to games like this when they go up against Nintendo. As it would turn out, Bayonetta is not only not Nintendo, but she is pure fodder of the highest accord. A 64-36 beating is no accident, and RDR actually managed to go up in percentage after losing the board vote. I don't know that RDR deserved a 4 seed, but it did at least deserve to win a contest match. Too bad it was destined to get completely rocked in round 2. Divisions 7 and 8 in general just felt very odd, and loaded with a ton of games that felt very close to each other in strength. This always seems to happen at the bottom of the bracket, too, for whatever reason. You never see all the Nintendo heavy-hitters down here and all the high midcarders up top. Addendum: Beyonetta being announced for Smash Bros really makes one wonder how the Bayonetta games would fare in a contest these days. We've seen smash announcements give insane boosts to characters before. ## Ctes's Analysis First of all, considering Bayonetta 2 is a Wii U sequel, I'm honestly really surprised that's the one of the two games that got into the contest. I have yet to play them, though I did pick up the special edition bundle with both games right before it disappeared. I don't know if there's a huge difference in quality or something, but that's not my impression. I've talked to tons of people that were really disappointed the couldn't easily play the second due to not owning a Wii U and not wanting to get one just for that. So yeah, that's a shocker. For the same reason I'd also expect the second one to be a whole lot weaker, since it's playrate should be lower, and I guess sadly the fact that it's a Wii U game. It makes absolutely no sense people chose to nominate this above the first, but oh well. It actually didn't look all that bad here. I mean it lost pretty easily and Red Dead Redemption is not the kind of game that should have much strength here, but it's not too bad. If I'm right that the first game would do a lot better then I hope it gets in next time! It's a recent game, but it stands out a lot. Bayonetta is a noticeable character and her appearing as a playable character in Smash Bros soon will certainly only help! Of course, that was unknown at the time of this match. Red Dead Redemption got an easy win today because it drew a Wii U exclusive that wasn't Smash 4, but it never stood a chance in round 2. Quite frankly, I don't mind that either. I personally find the game to be somewhat disappointing even if it wasn't bad. Also, I feel like it should be mentioned that Bayonetta 2 ended up being the ultimate loser here, something you definitely wouldn't have thought before the contest began. The chain goes Undertale \> Ocarina of Time \> Super Mario RPG \> Metal Gear Solid 3 \> Metal Gear Solid \> Shadow of the Colossus \> Red Dead Redemption \> Bayonetta 2. No one would've predicted that. Ocarina of Time losing to anything is the biggest upset there, but then Super Mario RPG went on a roll, MGS3 pulled the upset, SotC did not. Bayonetta 2 was really unfortunate, just the contest's way of spitting on the Wii U one last time. What a shame. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6110&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (14)Mother 3 2015 _source: (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (14)Mother 3 2015 (revid 84350)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Friday**, November 20, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 20, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 74.43% 96 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 82.53% Is this the most embarrassing 70-30 win in contest history? I'm not even joking. This really might be the worst 70-30 win in contest history. Most people in the Oracle picked MGS3 to do better than this, and for good reason. Unless Mother 3 got some rerelease that I'm unaware of, the game only got released in Japan. The only way for American gamers to play it is through fan translations on an emulator or by importing, meaning you have to be a very dedicated Mother series fan to even know what in the hell Mother 3 is. I know GameFAQs is JRPG Central and is exactly the kind of site that would put a game like Mother 3 over, but even by our warped standard, Mother 3 is really obscure. Then there's the match picture, which cracks me up every time I see it. Mother 3's box art is literally just a red box with "Mother 3" on it. That's it. There is no reason for this game to have any strength whatsoever, and the case can really be made that it should be the weakest game in the field, if not one of the weakest. You could also make the case that a vast majority of Mother 3's voters are actually just Smash Brothers fans throwing in a vote for Lucas. Either way, there is no reason MGS3 shouldn't have been able to godstomp Mother 3 right out of this contest. Yet there it was, proving the MGS series was absolutely fucked in this contest. Yes 4 of the 5 games that made the bracket won their first match, but only MGS1 looked any good in doing so. 2, 3, and 5 all looked awful, and 4 just outright lost. It lost to a strong game, don't get me wrong, but it still lost. It would not take long for us to see the newfound MGS series weakness in action, either. Some rather hilarious upsets were brewing. Also, this is random but it's hilarious how both Mother games were in one division. One of those hilarious little bracket quirks that pops up now and again. ## Ctes's Analysis Mother 3 was one of the games we predicted to be in from SBAllen's hints. He said that a single one of 128 was never released in America, it obviously had to be Mother 3. It also helped of figure out what games came from 1994, there weren't many so people weren't sure about Earthbound, but this meant EarthBound would have to be in as well. Anyway, it is really impressive that a game can get in despite only being released in Japan. I'm sure that Smash shouldhave some of the credit for it. I know it made it in last contest as well, but GotD had a much smaller library of games that could enter. I really hope Nintendo decided to give EarthBound an ending now that EarthBound beginnings was released on Virtual Console last year. Anyway, Metal Gear Solid 3 had a lot to show today. Most people predicted it to lose the division finals to the original Metal Gear Solid, but a good chunk of people had Mass Effect 2 getting past it. The first Mass Effect had proven itself worthy and the idea was that the second one was stronger due to it being the most well received. At the same time as this match went on, Mass Effect 2 was destroying its opponent badly, though it's hard to judge how much of an accomplishment that was when Virtue's Last Reward sounds like a contender for absolute worst game in the bracket. As for this match on its own, Metal Gear Solid 3 looks pretty bad honestly. Mother 3 is exclusive to Japan, it's not supposed to break 30% on any game that people considered taking to the semi-finals. Doesn't matter if this is the weakest quadrant, that was a red flag for the Metal Gear Solid franchise once again. This was another disappointing performance. No offense meant towards Mother 3, but it has a terrible playrate. Mother 3 surprised us all last contest too by scoring 35% on Devil May Cry 3, but wouldn't you expect MGS3 to beat DMC3 by a bit more? To provide more perspective, Devil May Cry 3 got 35% on Metroid Prime in round 2. I think Metroid Prime vs. Metal Gear Solid 3 would have been a debated match too, but judging by this, it would be a very easy win for Metroid Prime. Metal Gear Solid 3 greatly disappointed today. It was still the favorite against Mass Effect 2, but there was reason to be worried. Mother 3 shouldn't have gotten a nostalgia boost either or anything. I know the people supporting it are all EarthBound supporters, but many EarthBound supporters haven't even played this game. Also, Mother 3's match pic was literally just the game title on a red background. I know that's the boxart, but please, so terrible. Yet Mother 3 did this good. Yes, MGS3 might have disappointed greatly today, but let's give some credit to Mother 3 as well, it ends up looking pretty good. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6111&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)BioShock vs (11)Silent Hill 2 2015 _source: (6)BioShock vs (11)Silent Hill 2 2015 (revid 84351)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Friday**, November 20, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 20, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** BioShock - 62.07% 93 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** BioShock - 69.83% This was a very predictable match, in a rather long line of predictable matches to round out round 1. Chrono Cross \> World of Warcraft was our last good match of round 1, and the 12 matches after that were just round 1 playing out the string. It makes for a rather long PCA grind, to be perfectly honest. I am glad to see BioShock get an easy win after Infinite crapped the bed, though having it come at Silent Hill 2's expense was sad. I've always hated when two games I love are in a poll together, but them's the breaks sometimes. The right game did win, though. For everything Silent Hill 2 does well, BioShock does it just a little bit better. Storytelling, creepy factor, atmosphere, graphics, and especially gameplay. The only thing Silent Hill 2 does best is Pyramid Head, though I can easily argue Big Daddy is every bit as scary if you consider the Big Daddies a villainous clan in BioShock. Even if you don't, they have fucking drill arms and the intro of the game shows a Big Daddy drilling through a guy's chest right after he was dumb enough to try stealing a plasmid. Pyramid Head is cool and all, but come on. Drill arm. This would set up a round 2 match between Metal Gear Solid 3 and BioShock, which on paper looked to be a lock for MGS3. In practice, it ended up being one of the most entertaining matches of the entire contest. As a complete aside, did Big Daddy influence Nautilus's character in League of Legends at all? Anyone know if this is a thing? They're remarkably similar and I'm very much rooting for this to be the case. ## Ctes's Analysis This match just required you to look at previous match-ups real quick if you had any doubt at first. Both games lost in round 1 in 2009, but BioShock lost in a close match to the then strong Portal and very strong Metal Gear Solid 4. This contest, that wouldn't been a particularly good showing, but in their hey-day, those two opponents were very good! Silent Hill 2 got destroyed by Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2 and Morrowind to get a big last place. If that wasn't enough, BioShock got close to Kingdom Hearts II the following year while Silent Hill 2 got destroyed by Vice City. The einner today was clear as the day. That said, BioShock didn't win by all that match these contests considered. At this point I assumed old vs. new was at its work again, helping Silent Hill 2 a little bit out. There is probably some truth to that, but after the contest is over it doesn't look like BioShock fell at all. For the first time ever Silent Hill 2 actually looks somewhat legit, not good, but certainly a lot better than it did in the past, so that's nice! It's weird seeing a PS2 game get a boost like that though, they mostly fell or at best, simply stayed the same. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6112&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Starcraft vs (10)Destiny 2015 _source: (7)Starcraft vs (10)Destiny 2015 (revid 84352)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Friday**, November 20, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 20, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Starcraft - 60.15% 89 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Starcraft - 68.10% Before saying anything about the match, I feel obligated to quote Bobby Kotick: "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Once again, I have been vindicated. I told you people Starcraft 2 would be utter trash and would be nothing more than a 3 part cash grab. Now that Starcraft 2 has finally been released, it was proven as nothing more than a three part cash grab. There was no "holy crap, this is actually three games!". It was 1/3rd of a game released three times to fulfill Activi\$ion's stated mission statement of sucking all the fun out of video games and only seeking to fleece customers for as much money as possible with every release. It was Filler Content: A Three Part Series. Bobby Kotick outright tells you people he thinks you're trash. A lot of you deny this and buy the games anyway because it says "Blizzard" on it. It's similar to how Hillary Clinton somehow still has fans, despite being a war criminal and outright telling people she thinks they're trash. She doesn't tip, doesn't let people look her in the eye, routinely acts like royalty and demands special treatment at all times, covers up all of Bill Clinton's violent rapes, shows up to debates late because she's an entitled douche, and thinks she can get away with ordering a stand down to have troops killed because her last name is Clinton. Liberals just enjoy being lied to and conned. Men in Black perfectly explained how human beings act, but only got it right for people who vote Democrat. Oh. Wait. I can't criticize Hillary Clinton because she's a woman. Just like I can't criticize Obama because he's black. If someone falls under a liberal buzzword, they are royalty now. Thank god Donald Trump went out there and proved what a joke the entire political process is. For those in shock about his poll numbers, he's the only one up there that's real. The public is done with political correctness and not being "real". He changed the entire game, and it's finally swinging back around to where it's okay to act like a badass aggressive male again. Notice how he treats all of these cowardly reporters by cutting them off every time they try their "gotcha" journalism bullshit? Imagine if this dude actually becomes president. It would be the most hilarious day in the history of this country. All these whiny punks who want segregated safe spaces while petitioning to repeal the first amendment might actually have to -- wait for it -- look in a mirror and take responsibility for themselves! Holy shit! So yeah, Starcraft 2 is garbage and people need to stop being suckers. I played it over my friend's place for free, and there is zero reason it couldn't have been released as a single game. Outside of Kotick being a greedy POS, of course. On the bright side, playing it reminded me of how great the original was. On that note, to the match itself. There was a decent amount of debate about this match. Starcraft is a long way removed from its power days of 2004 where it threatened to rally through the Spring 2004 Contest (rallies are totally a new contest phenomenon though, guys, and totally haven't always been there!), as evidenced by 2009 when it folded to Final Fantasy 8 twice. In round 2 when it actually lost, it only lost by 6000 votes. This sounds like a lot, but if its rally power was there it could have easily gotten second place in that match. Six years later in 2015, who really knew if Starcraft truly mattered anymore. I've already covered why Starcraft 2 is garbage and how the entire Blizzard name is damaged beyond repair, so who knows if Starcraft would be negatively affected? On the other side was Destiny, one of the most hyped games in all of gaming since it came out. It was the \#1 game on the site when the contest started (#9 as of this writing), and seemed to be a rally target pre-contest. All the usual tools were there -- a giant internet buzz, a fanatical fanbase, a relatively new release, and a large subreddit. Ngamer brought all of this up during The Show, and really hammered home some solid numbers on why Destiny could have been dangerous. But ironically, whenever someone brought this stuff up pre-contest, it was Destiny's own fans making sure to let everyone know that the game sucked, that the fans hated it, and that would not get rallied in any way. Apparently one has to play the game for like 300 hours to learn that it sucks. Or something. I don't get it, and I won't pretend to. Then again I played a lot of Warcraft 3 before finally realizing the game was trash, all to get a stupid multiplayer icon next to my username. So I can't hate on the Destiny fans too much. Come match time, Starcraft would layeth the smacketh down on Destiny's roody-poo candy ass to the tune of a 75-25 beating. It was a nice parallel to a certain match from Starcraft's past, and it performed as if it waited 10 years to get revenge for said match. You know what I'm getting at. The infamous Vincent \> Kerrigan match: In that match, there was a ton of debate, then come match time we were treated to a 79-21 beating. Starcraft/Destiny had a ton of debate, then the match happened and we were treated to a 75-25 beating. At least Starcraft was on the good side of the beating this time! ## Ctes's Analysis I don't think this match was that debated, if at all, but Starcraft was not expected to score this well. A single user in the oracle challenge predicted Starcraft to do better than it did, by 0.01%. The rest predicted it to win by less, with the average being slightly above 60%. That's pretty darn far from what it ended up getting. Starcraft was in full force today. At this point it was unknown just how weak Destiny was. I mean, it was obvious it was really darn weak, but Starcraft is a game whose strength is really hard to determine after the 2004 run it had, so you never know. The division was mostly about Metal Gear Solid 3 and Mass Effect 2. That was the main excitement, but now suddenly it looked like Starcraft may be able to prevent them from even meeting. Destiny would only need to every so slightly stronger than Virtue's Last Reward for Starcraft to win the next match, and nobody would be surprised if Destiny was a whole lot stronger. Starcraft is really easy to rally too, so if you had Mass Effect 2 going far there was reason to be worried. Plus, if Starcraft won that match, it might be able to catch momentum similar to how it did it in 2004 by winning a match as a \#16 seed. For a game where PC exclusives have looked terrible, almost all of them in fact, it was really nice to see Starcraft not be terrible, but actually exceed expectations quite a bit. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6113&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Mass Effect 2 vs (15)Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward 2015 _source: (2)Mass Effect 2 vs (15)Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward 2015 (revid 84353)_ ## Results **Round One** '''**'Friday**, November 20, 2015 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 64 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 20, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 80.55% 97 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 92.00% It was fun listing prediction round 1 percentages for the 1 seeds, so let's do it for the 2 seeds. Final Fantasy 7 - 94.02% Persona 4 - 92.48% Mass Effect 2 - 92% Super Mario World - 90.18% Majora's Mask - 89.29% Symphony of the Night - 88.76% Resident Evil 4 - 77.09% The Last of Us - 74.96% Seeing FF7 as a 2 seed while GTA5 is sitting there as a 1 is ridiculous. The Last of Us and Persona 4 also don't belong as 2 seeds, but in the opposite direction. Those two were overseeded. I love when the last match of round 1 is a blowout, for PCA purposes. Sub-Zero \> Master Chief or Pac-Man \> Ocelot are fun and all, but I do love some reflection. Mass Effect 2 got a nice, relaxing 79-21 blowout that let us all reflect on Stars and Turds! Remember, this is purely personal. Star of the Round: Chrono Trigger, honorable mention to Super Metroid. I'd give this to Undertale, but for 18 hours that game was hardly a Star of the Round. Star series was the Zelda series for sure. 5 dominant wins, with the two biggest blowouts of the contest. Turd of the Round: Super Mario Maker, dishonorable mentions to Destiny and Mass Effect 3. Mario Maker goes without saying, as does Destiny's being hot garbage, but you have to be mentioned in this category when you give up a 9252 vote lead. Don't forget that our record before this was 2483. Turd series was easily Metal Gear Solid. 5 games got in. Only one looked good in winning, while three of the games looked horrible in wins and MGS4 just outright lost. It was a rather entertaining round 1, even if there were a ton of predictable matches. That happens with any contest, though. It set up what would be a really fun round 2, which would also be four matches per day. Past that, it would drop to 2 matches per day until the semis, then one match per day. The best match of round 1 was probably Undertale \> Mass Effect 3. The worst, at least for me personally, was MGS5 \> Perfect Dark. I love Perfect Dark, don't get me wrong, but seeing MGS5 shit the bed like that was heartbreaking. Kojima getting fired, then banned from the video game awards was stupid. The entire thing just pisses me off, and the match (not to mention MGS5 itself) reminded me of wasted potential. Kojima built up all this good will over years and years of hard work. Konami ruined it. I'm tired of seeing the things I love ruin themselves. My last anecdote for round 1 before moving on is holy crap is this a lot of matches. I've done 64 writeups, which used to be the length of an entire PCA! We've reached the halfway point though; all downhill from here! ## Ctes's Analysis Well, Mass Effect 1 and 3 had tough matches with one of them prevailing and the other one failing and thereby changing the rest of the contest for good. Mass Effect 2 however, had a very easy time. As a \#2 seed, it got to draw an absolutely terrible game strength wise. We wouldn't know how bad yet, but it's obvious it was really bad before seeing it. Mass Effect 2 would have to prove itself as the strongest Mass Effect game as we thought it probably was. The other two being \#10 seeds shows which is the fan favorite, but that's not enough. However, we wouldn't really get anywhere on that before the next round, where it got to face an actual challenge. Both games Starcraft and Mass Effect 2 faced are newcomers and incredibly weak apparently. Not that it was a surprise in this match. There comes a point in the high percentages where things get really hard to determine and x-stats might look weird. This high, things such a play rate and anti-voting really starts mattering a lot. I don't know if the latter matters today, but there is an off-chance that Mass Effect 3 created some backlash for the series. The playrate shouldn't be bad in particular. It's a recent game, but that's the only reason it could be. So I actually don't think Mass Effect 2 manages to look that good today. Look at the prediction percentage, everyone knew Virtue's Last Reward would such. This is one of the highest prediction percentages of the whole contest. There are only six games that managed to get a better one; Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, Fallout 3, Persona 4, Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past. Those are all either among the very strongest games on the site or their opponents were among the weakest. Mass Effect 2 can be compared to Persona 4 the easiest, because Persona 4 had a somewhat similar opponent in 999 and did slightly worse. If you assume Virtue's Last Reward and 999 are toughly equal, then Mass Effect 2 is not that much stronger than Persona 4, which certainly wouldn't make it stand much a chance against MGS3 let alone Starcraft, but it wouldn't be weird for Virtue's Last Reward to be a good chunk stronger either. With how Metal Gear Solid 3 did today, Mass Effect 2 had good reason to do well in that match, but just as much if not more reason to be scared of Starcraft in round 2. Thus the first round ended on a rather boring day. None of the matches were interesting and all four were really predictable too, but it was easy to see how good this division could get though. Seeing which Metal Gear Solid is the strongest, but having threats to the title of division winner in Mass Effect to a previous bandwagon catchers in Shadow of the Colossus and Starcraft. Something to look forward to for sure! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6114&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=64) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (8)Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King 2015 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (8)Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King 2015 (revid 84354)_ ## Results **Round Two** '''**'Saturday**, November 21, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 65 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 21, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 76.20% 92 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 82.20% Dragon Quest 8 pulled a cute little guru upset in round 1, which is nice. It got some nice little contest buzz, and that was all well and good. But round 2 is usually when contest entrants like this eat their loss, if not round 3 with some insanely lucky bracket placement. Chrono Trigger is a whole different animal than Persona 3, and this contest's version of Chrono Trigger was on some serious steroids. Akira Toriyama SFF jokes aside, Chrono Trigger just absolutely fucking demolished Dragon Quest 8 in this match. There may have been some SFF here, but you don't just randomly break 80% after round 1 of a contest. I'm sure people will ask for a list of 1v1 contest matches from round 2 and onward where the winner broke 80%, so here you go! Including this very match, 80% or more has only happened 17 times. A good deal of those matches listed are SFF, too. For a decent anecdote, Mario 3 couldn't break 80% on Metroid in the Spring 2004 games contest. It is not easy to do. With SFF removed, we can make the case that only the following matches saw 80% broken naturally from round 2 and onward. You could make the case that Cloud \> Vyse and CT \> DQ8 are SFF, but I'll disagree just for the sake of proving a point here. Six non-SFF matches where 80% got broken from round 2 and onward is completely nuts. Chrono Trigger was on fire this contest. The case can be made that round 1 was whatever. You can't make that case when it happens twice in a row, and the parallel here was Mega Man in 2002. Mega Man pulling those two blowouts was unexpected and hilarious, as was the board reaction. Fast forward 13 years, and you finally got another case where something pulled off two hilarious and unexpected blowouts in a row. Chrono Trigger got a ton of hype after this, and for good reason. This was the same kind of mojo that caused Kobe Bryant to score 81 points. You just don't see this very often. It wouldn't get stuck facing Sephiroth in round 3, either. Final Fantasy X was clearly a winnable match, given how badly it was embarrassed by Mega Man X. And by "winnable", I mean "holy shit, we were so not ready for what would happen next". ### Ctes' Analysis This result was absolutely insane to watch. No game is supposed to go out and score 82% in round 2 to begin with, that's too much. Then against Dragon Quest VIII, which isn't even a weak game. Persona 3 isn't exactly strong, but DQVIII easily took care of it last round and looked good doing so. Now it's looking close to Up Your Arsenal. The biggest thing about this though was that it was coming from Chrono Trigger. It wasn't Ocarina of Time or Final Fantasy VII blasting through competition here (even though the latter doing so would be a pleasant surprise at this point). It also wasn't Mario or Pokemon or any of the big names. It was Chrono Trigger. This old game not connected to any others. The game that might've beaten a bunch of Mario games to get to the finale in 2004, but kept losing to Super Mario 64 in 2009 while embarrassing its way out of competition. Chrono Trigger was in god mode. This result pitted it as one of the absolute strongest games of all on this site. It was looking like a threat to even Ocarina of Time today. One might argue that there was some SFF in this match, but how much of that have we seen this contest? Close to none at all. Besides that, they're not that closely connected. Different platforms from different companies and in different generations. This is just Chrono Trigger being a beast. How far it could get was debatable, but there was no way Final Fantasy X would get past it the following round. Chrono Trigger was the definite favorite to get out of the division and people started debated how a Chrono Trigger vs. Final Fantasy VII match would go. It was difficult to see Square fans siding with Chrono Trigger in that one, but it looked too good today for it to seem impossible. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6115&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=65) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Mega Man X vs (4)Final Fantasy X 2015 _source: (12)Mega Man X vs (4)Final Fantasy X 2015 (revid 84355)_ ## Results **Round Two** '''**'Saturday**, November 21, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 66 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 21, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy X - 60.36% 90 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy X - 44.02% While Chrono Trigger was busy scoring round 2's biggest blowout, Final Fantasy X was out there doing... whatever in the world this was. Based on 2009 stats, Final Fantasy X was projected to get 68% on Mega Man X. I know "lol 4-ways" and such, and that round loss in 2009 was probably a little weird, but it does not explain being projected to get 68% and then going out there and just completely shitting the bed. MMX potentially being hidden behind some weird SNES SFF from Final Fantasy 6 in 2009 can only explain so much. The true tragedy here was Mega Man 2 not getting into the bracket. You cannot have a contest called "Best Game Ever", with 128 games in the bracket, without having Mega Man 2 in there somewhere. You just can't. Mega Man X being a hidden beast proves this. Things were bad right from the start for FFX, when it was only at 57% at the freeze. MMX then proceed to thoroughly embarrass FFX for the first couple hours of the poll, including even getting a couple of cuts, before FFX recovered during the dead zone (Square's best time) to get things back to 57%. Then the morning vote hit and MMX started going up again, including getting even more cuts throughout the match. MMX was never a threat to win, but any hopes FFX had of beating Chrono Trigger just completely died after this match. This was a horrible win for Final Fantasy X, one of the worst wins of the entire contest, and even then it still didn't prepare people for just how badly FFX was fucked in round 3. We all knew it would lose at this point. The extent of just bad the blowout would be was really something else. ### Ctes' Analysis We've talked about how this year was the Year of SNES many times, but damn was that highlighted today. Mega Man X was in no way supposed to be able to score this good on Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy X reached the finale of 2009, and even though it took advantage of other games suffering from LFF to reach that finale it still got there. Mega Man X for comparison was easily eliminated in round 1 by Final Fantasy VI and Link's Awakening, which are strong games yes, but it should still put Mega Man X quite a while behind Final Fantasy X. Let me remind you Final Fantasy X was viewed as the second strongest Final Fantasy game back then. I don't think anyone doubted that it was. Furthermore, in Game of the Decade, Final Fantasy X was the favorite and might have very well won if Majora didn't get the support from Ocarina not being in the bracket and maybe Brawl beating Melee. Mega Man X wasn't in that contest of course, but I guarantee it wouldn't have done that well. Final Fantasy X today surely wasn't anywhere near Majora's Mask, a game it almost beat despite all the aforementioned things being against it. Final Fantasy X had dropped in some way for whatever reason, which is really weird considering that it's actually pretty old by now. Perhaps Playstaion 2 is a generation too late. Final Fantasy IX looked fantastic this contest. Last contest Final Fantasy X took care of IX easily, such a boring match. SFF? Sure, but IX got destroyed regardless. This contest they looked about even, and while IX has been a fan favorite for whatever weird reason the last few years, I don't think it's enough. FFX dropped for some reason too. Of course, the result today was not just Final Fantasy X. Mega Man X deserves some major props for doing this well. To think it was highly debated whether it would lose in round 1. It was never going to win this match, but it exited the contest looking fantastic. Put Mega Man X in the bottom-quarter of the bracket and man we'd see some brackets getting screwed over. It might very well win against any game down there, but Super Mario RPG is debatable. I don't think it would, but no reason to be ashamed of that. It can't be said enough; it truly is the Year of SNES, and with SMB3 looking pretty great despite losing early, I wish we'd have more NES games in the contest to see if they had a similar boost, because I think they would. The obvious snubs are Mario 1 and Zelda 1, but regarding this match, I'd really love to see Mega Man 2 and maybe Mega Man 3 in this contest, though it's fine with just 2, they're likely equals anyway. While SBAllen quickly revealed that neither Mario 1 nor Zelda 1 were in the bracket by revealing how many games from each year got in. Two games from 1989 made it in and everyone assumed that had to be Super Mario Bros. 3 and Mega Man 2 until Allen explained how he decided what year games belonged in using Tetris as an example, which basically revealed Tetris was one of those two 1989 games, and no one doubted Super Mario Bros. 3 would be the other. Truly a shame we didn't get Mega Man 2 after this result. Mega Man X is a game that definitely deserves a better bracket placement in another contest, not to mention a better seed. It's more than worthy of it. There's not much Mega Man representation in one game, so it's nice to see that one game doing well. As someone who's kinda sad that the last two contests we've had were decided by outside forces, at least both contests had Mega Man exceeding expectations. Let's keep this, Mega Man looked so bad for so many years here, I like this change! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6116&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=66) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (6)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (6)Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal 2015 (revid 84356)_ ## Results **Round Two** '''**'Saturday**, November 21, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 67 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 21, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Melee - 58.71% 91 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Melee - 58.12% Despite this match being an easy win for Melee, there was a lot of intrigue here. First and foremost, let's check the LOL, X-Stats. Based on 2009, Melee was expected to get 57% in this match. Based on Game of the Decade, Melee was expected to get 55%. For about 9 hours or so, this was a perfectly normal match, and Melee was on track for a very comfortable, and very predictable 55-45 win. Melee did its usual thing of dominating the board vote before bleeding percentage, but given the match was well in line to fall in line with the x-stats, there wasn't much concern. Don't tell that to Melee fans, though! They noticed the bleed in percentage, and began a pretty funny rally. I say it was funny because this match was never going to be in any doubt, but the Melee folks rallied anyway and had some really good results. At 9 am, Melee had 56% of the vote. This was a very respectable number given GSC's strength, and nothing to be ashamed of. After that when the rally kicked in, Melee just stomped this poll, to the tune of most updates being over 60%, and it even had a few over 70%. Melee would end the match at 60%, which is a very significant climb in percentage over the course of 15 hours. It would be an indicator of what Melee had to offer in future matches of this contest, though this rally was nothing compared to the raw power Melee would show later. This was basically a successful trial run. ### Ctes' Analysis This was one of the easiest four-packs to predict in the entire bracket. GSC are strong games. They're a solid step behind RBY which came clear in GotD, but they're strong regardless. Definitely a near-elite game, meaning top 20 or something. So in that sense, it really got wasted in the bracket. Not only did it not get as far as it should based on strength, but it didn't get a single debatable match either. I guess you can't make a perfect bracket, so something has to have it this way each time. That's just how it is. Now the only thing interesting about this match is that, Melee got rallied quite a lot. It was winning without any trouble from the start, but don't let the final result fool you. Melee doesn't naturally beat GSC by this much. It started out by this much due to the insane board vote it has, but then it got down and stayed at 55-56%. That's how much Melee would naturally beat GSC by. Then the rally happened and boosted it another 5%. It's really weird. First of all, why would anybody care enough to rally for a game that was already easily winning? What's the point, why bother? Secondly, how was it so successful? I mean, this is far from the strongest rally ever, but it's noticeable and most rallies aren't really. It seems stupid in the long run, as people can get tired from hearing about the contest, but that didn't happen with Melee, so maybe it isn't stupid. Still, waste of effort today. I'm not quite sure if they feared a Pokemon rally, but that was never going to happen. We took this pretty lightly. I don't think people really realized how dangerous a rallied Melee could be at this point. This is due to the fact that it's one of the strongest games on the site in itself. But it also wasn't at its full force yet. Scoring 60% on GSC is impressive, but Chrono Trigger was dominating so heavily in its match that those 60% meant nothing. At least we didn't think so at this point. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6117&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=67) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Kingdom Hearts II vs (2)The Last of Us 2015 _source: (10)Kingdom Hearts II vs (2)The Last of Us 2015 (revid 84357)_ ## Results **Round Two** '''**'Saturday**, November 21, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 68 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 21, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts II - 56.21% 85 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts II - 29.08% The winner of MGS4 vs KH2 was always going to stomp this match. I'm sure The Last of Us is a good game (KP is recommending it, so it's guaranteed to be!), but it was clearly overseeded in this contest. It had no business being a 2, and this match very quickly showed us why. 40% on Kingdom Hearts 2 is a fine result since KH2 is a pretty strong game, but it's not a 2 seed performance. Leonhart4 was kind enough in the stats topic to give us a bracket based off raw x-stats, which needs to be documented somewhere so why not throw it into the PCA? \(1\) Undertale vs (16) Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft \(8\) Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (9) Tales of Symphonia \(5\) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 vs (12) Shenmue \(4\) Mega Man X vs (13) Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King \(6\) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs (11) Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos \(3\) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots vs (14) Bayonetta 2 \(7\) Okami vs (10) Dark Souls \(2\) Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (15) Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal \(1\) Fallout 3 vs (16) Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings \(8\) Skies of Arcadia vs (9) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt \(5\) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs (12) Halo: Combat Evolved \(4\) The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker vs (13) Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn \(6\) Mass Effect vs (11) Red Dead Redemption \(3\) Super Metroid vs (14) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 \(7\) Final Fantasy IV vs (10) Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest \(2\) Kingdom Hearts II vs (15) Planescape: Torment \(1\) Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (16) Destiny \(8\) Halo 3 vs (9) Banjo-Kazooie \(5\) Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars vs (12) World of Warcraft \(4\) GoldenEye 007 vs (13) Perfect Dark \(6\) Super Mario Galaxy vs (11) Mario Kart 8 \(3\) Final Fantasy X vs (14) Shovel Knight \(7\) Half-Life vs (10) Paper Mario \(2\) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (15) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare \(1\) Super Mario 64 vs (16) The Walking Dead \(8\) Demon’s Souls vs (9) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 \(5\) Resident Evil 2 vs (12) BioShock Infinite \(4\) Tetris vs (13) Borderlands 2 \(6\) Metal Gear Solid vs (11) Suikoden II \(3\) The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (14) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves \(7\) Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (10) Final Fantasy XII \(2\) Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal vs (15) Sid Meier’s Civilization V \(1\) Chrono Trigger vs (16) Binding of Isaac: Rebirth \(8\) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (9) Mass Effect 2 \(5\) The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind vs (12) The World Ends With You \(4\) Half-Life 2 vs (13) Minecraft \(6\) Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (11) Silent Hill 2 \(3\) Final Fantasy Tactics vs (14) Valkyria Chronicles \(7\) Grand Theft Auto V vs (10) Starcraft \(2\) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (15) Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors \(1\) Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (16) Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward \(8\) Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vs (9) Xenogears \(5\) Final Fantasy VIII vs (12) Bloodborne \(4\) Super Smash Bros. for Wii U vs (13) Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate \(6\) BioShock vs (11) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas \(3\) Final Fantasy VI vs (14) Deus Ex \(7\) Life is Strange vs (10) EarthBound \(2\) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (15) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations \(1\) Super Mario World vs (16) Splatoon \(8\) Batman: Arkham City vs (9) Fallout: New Vegas \(5\) Diablo II vs (12) Dragon Age: Origins \(4\) Portal vs (13) Mother 3 \(6\) Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs (11) Resident Evil \(3\) The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask vs (14) Assassin’s Creed II \(7\) Shadow of the Colossus vs (10) Xenoblade Chronicles \(2\) Final Fantasy VII vs (15) Team Fortress 2 \(1\) Mass Effect 3 vs (16) Cave Story \(8\) Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (9) Chrono Cross \(5\) Kingdom Hearts vs (12) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain \(4\) Final Fantasy IX vs (13) Pokemon X/Y \(6\) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney vs (11) Fire Emblem: Awakening \(3\) The Last of Us vs (14) Super Mario Maker \(7\) Resident Evil 4 vs (10) Portal 2 \(2\) Metroid Prime vs (15) Journey The Last of us Might be a 3 in the raw bracket, but it really feels more like a 4 or a 5. Not much else to say about this match outside of how cool it was to see Melee/GSC and KH2/Last of Us finishing with the exact same percentage. Given Last of Us and GSC are obviously no where close to one another in strength, any hopes for a KH2 \> Melee upset were thrown out the window. ### Ctes' Analysis This match was never really in doubt, but when The Last of Us completely destroyed Halo 3, it did stir up some discussion. Every expert knew this was never going to be close though. Kingdom Hearts II was a round 3 lock a minute into its round 1 match. RPG's will always be favored on this site, and while Kingdom Hearts II is somewhat new, The Last of Us is much more recent. It's just that Halo has fallen a whole damn lot. It was clear from the Minecraft match. Had their actually been a rally, then that would've of course been different, but Halo let an unrallied Minecraft get somewhat close to it and I don't need to see Minecraft in action to determine it's terrible on this site. However, The Last of Us does deserve some praise here. Sure, it was never close to winning at all, but Kingdom Hearts II is a very strong game, and The Last of Us is only about 3% away from what Metal Gear Solid 4 did. And while that game might have disappointed, it's still pretty strong. It just drew a very unfortunate round 1 game. The fifth game is the only one with no noticeable strength. The Last of Us definitely deserves to get back into another contest. Along with Skyrim, Mass Effect 2 and Smash 4, it was among the games released since Game of the Decade to have some noticable strength. Of those four, it'd probably only beat Mass Effect 2, but that's not bad at all either. It's a shame it didn't get to have its deserved rematch with A Link Between World from GotY 2013, but the latter didn't even make the bracket. Of the four games I just mentioned, The Last of Us stands out. The other's are part of well-established series. Mass Effect might be somewhat recent and Skyrim is the strongest entry in that series, but still, well-established series that helped them. The Last of Us is completely original. It's really impressive that a game not connected to anything else could do this well on a site that heavily prefers older games. It's in a really tough division too, put it elsewhere and we might see it do pretty darn good! I hope that'll be the case in a different contest. Oh yeah, and if we do get a Game of the Decade contest in 2020, I hope this game get claim a semi-final spot. It's definitely not impossible! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6118&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=68) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VI vs (8)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door 2015 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VI vs (8)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door 2015 (revid 84358)_ ## Results **Round Two** '''**'Saturday**, November 22, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 69 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 22, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VI - 66.58% 94 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VI - 65.22% Round 2 is usually the round where we take out the trash, especially when 1 seeds are involved. Almost every 1 seed wins in round 1, and almost always you see that 1 seed move on to beat the 8/9 winner. There are rare exceptions, but that's how seeded tournaments work. Final Fantasy 6 beating Paper Mario here was a predictable result, and was just filler en route to the hyped FF6 matches. There was a lot of debate over whether Wind Waker could beat FF6, and there was even more debate over a potential FF6/FF7 showdown. You can thank this poll for that: Yes the entire poll only got 22854 votes, but FF7 has been eating hilarious upsets for years in these contests. Why couldn't FF6 take advantage? And because this PCA has been loaded with me looking things up and providing LISTS™, why not a list of every 8/9 winner that's beaten a 1 seed 1v1? I'm also including 4/5 winners that have beaten 1 seeds when divisions are seeded 1-8. That's it. 4 times. Two of those were 4/5 \> 1 upsets, with the only two actual 8/9 \> 1 upsets being from this very contest. Pretty neat how it's almost as rare as a 16 beating a 1 (obligatory LOL Halo), and it's a good testament to how well our brackets are usually set up. Usually! ### Ctes' Analysis Obviously this match was never going to be interesting in the slightest. It was all about whether or not Paper Mario II could avoid a doubling, and quite unfortunately it couldn't. This is one of my favorite games, but you gotta set yourself realistic goals for it! Getting to round 2 was the goal, but avoiding a doubling here too would be nice. Anyway, some matches just isn't interesting and this is one of them. There is practically nothing to say, everything went as expected. Plus, tt's not even very useful for determining any of Final Fantasy VI's upcoming matches. It had an easy run so far, the test would begin when it faced Wind Waker in round 3. Final Fantasy VI looked a little better than Wind Waker today, although it's minimal. TTYD and Knights of the Old Republic should be expected to be roughly equals, showing Final Fantasy VI had the advantage in round 3, but it's difficult to determine for sure. It's interesting to note that TTYD didn't appear to have fallen but just stayed around the same strength while the first Paper Mario ended up looking rather weak. That does not initially make any sense, but there is perhaps an explanation, saved for when Super Mario RPG came out of its division. I hope we continue to see TTYD, it might not be a powerhouse and never will be, but it's strong enough to make some interesting round 1 matches. Its match with Tales of Symphonia was decent enough. Can you imagine a match with KOTOR? I think that one would be really good! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6119&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=69) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2015 _source: (5)Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2015 (revid 84359)_ ## Results **Round Two**   Sunday, November 22, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 70 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 22, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: The Wind Waker - 65.18% 94 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: The Wind Waker - 52.18% This match wasn't much to speak of, since we all knew Wind Waker would win. The name of the game here was prepping for the big Final Fantasy 6 vs Wind Waker match in round 3. Wind Waker was expected to get about 60% based on Game of the Decade, so getting 63% was right on cue with what was supposed to happen, if not a little better. The comparison to Final Fantasy 6 at this point was a bit weird, since Thousand-Year Door didn't make the 2009 contest. We also had the whole thing where this contest was a massive celebration of the 1990s. It was expected to get 70% on the original Paper Mario based on 2009, then it went out and got 67% on Thousand-Year Door. There was nothing conclusive here either way, since everything fell into the gray area. Our only real conclusion here was "Final Fantasy 6 vs Wind Waker should be really close", which is all you can really hope for when heading into a hyped match. It's not good when you get something like Chrono Trigger destroying things while FFX embarrasses itself. We all knew what would win before it happened there. With FF6/Wind Waker, there was a real question going in. That's a good thing. ### Ctes' Analysis That match wass not particularly interesting, but I do believe Knights of the Old Republic actually looks pretty good, which is nice to see. There are so few Western games doing well on this site, so that's an accomplishment in itself, but a game that was only released on Xbox and PC avoiding a double from a Zelda game is impressive. Wind Waker is not the strongest Zelda obviously, but it is a pretty strong game. All the 3D Zelda games are. That is not counting Skyward Sword that didn't make the bracket and is also from the late Wii years and relies on motion controls which often doesn't work as intended. KOTOR getting almost 37% here is a good showing everything considered. I know that it has Star Wars in the title, but it's against a Zelda game. I'm sure the Zelda franchise would destroy the Star Wars franchise here and I doubt anyone doubts that. This is a legitimate good showing. That said, Wind Waker probably takes the title as the weakest Zelda game of the ones that made the contest. It was probably only doubtful which of it and Twilight Princess was less strong, but I think Wind Waker is the right choice for that. It looked somewhat good in round 1 depending on how strong you would guess Pokemon XY to be, but it didn't look that impressive today. I fully believe Twilight Princess would've scored a doubling here. We might've already known that Wind Waker was the weakest of the five Zelda games in the contest. It did look like that in Game of the Decade too, but with it losing to Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess losing to Brawl, it couldn't truly be judged. Wind Waker still had a chance to prove itself though. It's upcomming match against Final Fantasy VI was semi-debated pre-contest. Final Fantasy VI was a clear favorite, but Wind Waker had a fair amount of supporters and you can't blame people for it. How often does Square win a debatable match against Nintendo? Or rather, how often does Final Fantasy win a debatable match against Zelda? It never happens! So while Final Fantasy VI clearly looked better today, that match was still up for grabs. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6120&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=70) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. for Wii U vs (11)Mass Effect 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. for Wii U vs (11)Mass Effect 2015 (revid 84360)_ ## Results **Round Two**   Sunday, November 22, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 71 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 22, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Wii U - 60.05% 92 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Wii U - 44.48% Did I go on my huge rant about how good Smash 4 is during my round 1 writeup? I did? Good. Smash 4 is absolutely godlike. I mean yeah the online is a laggy mess, but at least Nintendo bothered trying this time. It's a damn shame Smash 4 is saddled by the Wii U. I'm all for no one caring about the Wii U, don't get me wrong, but Smash 4 is an all-time great game and deserves to have Melee-like strength in contests. The Smash community was clearly ready to go berserk this contest, and I would have fully loved Smash 4 getting all that support. Not that I'm complaining about Melee getting it, but Smash 4 really deserves it as well. As for a 55-45 victory over Mass Effect, it was a good match for both games. Smash 4 did the usual Smash thing where it rolled the board vote before bleeding percentage. 55-45 is a good win here, but hardly the kind of performance that would scare people into thinking it could beat FF7. For Mass Effect, 45% on Smash 4 after upsetting Galaxy 2 was a solid performance. Can't complain about a respectable loss to an upper tier Nintendo title, and what is easily the strongest game on the Wii U. It would however lead to Mass Effect 2 being the only remaining game in the series left in this contest, and that game was due for a rather legendary struggle in its own right. ### Ctes' Analysis This match was over from the moment it began, but man, it screwed with many users in the oracle challenge. A very well received Smash title was not supposed to allow Mass Effect to get above 45%. Most people guessed Smash 4 to win with about 60% or at least close to. It was not at all close to do that. Of course, this was mostly viewed as a major disappointing performance from Smash and not a surprisingly good performance from Smash. There were little to no talks about Mass Effect being legit, or about Mass Effect 2 looking more likely to create upsets in the bottom division, it was pretty much all Wii U bashing. Smash 4 itself has pretty much no haters, so most of the trash talk was not directly aimed at the game. The reason for it not nearly being as strong as Brawl was when that was released, despite Brawl getting very mixed reviews, lies not within the game itself, but its circumstances. First and foremost, there's the title. Melee and Brawl are good and catchy titles. For “3DS and Wii U” are a lame cliche of a pun, and it's really uncreative too. There's a reason this game still goes by Smash 4 even after getting an official title. You never hear anyone say Smash 2 or Smash 3 about the others. It's stupid that it's like that, but I actually believe that it drags it down. It also leads me to the next reason for it being weaker than it should be; it's on the Wii U. That's never really a good thing. It's not as bad a console as people make it out to be, you can play with a good controller and there are good games on it, but in general people view it quite negatively. There's also the fact that it's only a year old. Being recent helped only one game this contest and that wasn't Smash 4. So let's also praise Mass Effect a bit, it did really good today. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. Given what we just discussed about Smash 4, something that wouldn't surprise anyone, that Mass Effect is well received, and Shepard doing pretty great in the characters contests, this is not such a weird result. Mass Effect did pretty good in Game of the Decade, but people simply saw a popular Smash game and didn't think twice. When you don't think twice about the match, it usually doesn't have the winning game below 55%. Despite this disappointing performance today, Smash 4 is a Wii U game that just reached round 3 by beating a fairly good opponent. This puts it a bit below Resident Evil 4 in Game of the Decade, the difference this contest being that being a new game sucks more than ever. The Wii U might not have an elite game, but it has a strong one, and when you look at it that way, Smash 4 suddenly doesn't look too bad. This match also redeems Super Mario Galaxy 2 quite a lot, but almost no one gave that any thought. Mario had a fine contest, but people ignored so many important things regarding the Mario game matches. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is projected to barely beat The Last of Us now. That's pretty darn great for a recent game, even if my example here is also a recent game. This went unnoticed though. After today, Undertale completely stole the spotlight and people forgot about this match. At the same time, Super Mario Bros. 3 became the first \#1 seed, continuing to make Mario an easy target. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6121&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=71) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Halo: Combat Evolved vs (2)Final Fantasy VII 2015 _source: (10)Halo: Combat Evolved vs (2)Final Fantasy VII 2015 (revid 82312)_ ## Results **Round Two**   Sunday, November 22, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 72 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 22, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 74.53% 94 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 77.48% It's a shame Minecraft didn't manage to upset Halo in round 1, because Minecraft in this spot could have been hilarious. Not that the match wasn't hilarious with Halo here, but it was for the opposite reason. Here we had a match between two games that are historically anti-voted to hell, and it led to one of the funniest blowouts ever. As fate would have it, there are actually games out there that FF7 can avoid anti-votes against. Halo 1 is clearly one of those games, and this match was such a merciless beating that it tricked us all into thinking FF7 was fine this contest. Don't forget that before this contest happened, a ton of people picked FF7 to lose early -- and by "lose early", I mean not make the final. The guru picks tell the story better than I ever could: When FF7 went out there and beat Halo so badly that it overshot most Oracle predictions, people noticed. This was the FF7 of old that took no prisoners and absolutely annihilated the 2004 contest. I know Halo anti-votes were a huge part of that, but this was probably FF7's best match of the entire contest. This match happened before things like rallies and "sharing the front page with Undertale", and was probably FF7's maximum natural strength on full display. We'll get into the sheer madness of Melee/FF7/Undertale/Mario 64 in due time, but for now this was just a massive celebration for us FF7 fans. We had to watch one upset after another, and seeing it just beat the shit out of Halo was awesome. Don't forget that a lot of us were worried about the game losing to freaking Minecraft. When you really look at it, this was probably the maximum spot for FF7 hype in this contest. Full remake hype was in full swing, the Cloud announcement for Smash 4 had people going nuts, and this was before "episodic content" ruined everyone's buzz. Worth noting here is for as much as Halo sucks, this was the worst blowout it had ever suffered in a contest. It's true. Here are all four of Halo's losses: Thank you based FF7. ### Ctes' Analysis This match is rather hilarious. I mean, these two games have always been leagues apart, but this is still a pretty big blowout. The Halo franchise, and the first game in particular, wasn't this bad back in the other contests, even though it's mostly known for flopping completely as a \#1 seed in round 1 against Starcraft back in 2004. The series has fallen a damn lot. The only reason there's even a Halo game in round 2 is because Minecraft has the same reasons to be weak on this site as Halo has, plus at the same time, Minecraft has no reason to do good. While we're at that, Halo let Minecraft get close to, despite the latter being completely unrallied. Halo has fallen a lot. There are two reasons for this decline. The first is that the average age of the site is a lot more than it used to be. Halo used to have one of the greatest ASV votes in contest due to being huge was kids. This obviously contributes to its decline. It is however, not the main reason. The main reason is that Halo has become mainstream in the same way Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed had. Similar examples of games that used to be somewhat strong here, with a few of them having GotY titles on them. They're not mainstream in the same sense that Mario is, yes, everyone has played Mario and literally ever person alive would recognize him, but no one plays Mario games like they're all or nothing. A bunch of so called casuals gamers does this with Halo and the other franchises I just mentioned among others. They're so huge in casual gaming that it has gotten really annoying. In short, that's what there is to it. Halo might not ever win a match again here, and I doubt we'll see a Halo game that is not the first again if things stay this way, but they might change back again. Remember back in the heyday of Pokemon, when it was literally the hugest thing? Pokemon sucked in the early contests, a lot. Pikachu struggled to beat PaRappa the Rapper and was destroyed by Cloud and even Fox. GSC lost to Xenogears and Pokemon missed out on a bunch of contests completely until around when Gen IV came along and we saw Pokemon come back again, with all Pokemon winning at least a match and being highlighted by Pikachu and Mewtwo reaching top 16. Look at how Pokemon then did it 2013. These things can easily be turned around, but as of now, Halo has hit rock bottom. Final Fantasy VII has not exactly had it easy either. It has been a target for anti-votes for a long time due to its former status as the greatest thing in existance. Despite it being worthy of this title, it has caused a backlash. It's victories in the early contests still haunt it too. Yet it was able to destroy Halo today. Exceeding your prediction percentage in round 2 for a game like FFVII is pretty great, although it should be mentioned that Halo and Minecraft might be casual bait and in the case of the latter, rally bait too I suppose. It does seem this contest as if Final Fantasy VII redeemed itself a little. Chrono Trigger looked really strong, but Final Fantasy VII didn't look like it would bow down in a match against it. The 2004 finale rematch we assumed to get at this point was looking to be very exciting today! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6122&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=72) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green 2015 _source: (1)Super Mario Bros. 3 vs (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green 2015 (revid 84365)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, November 23, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 73 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 23, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Red/Blue - 52.08% 76 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon Red/Blue - 39.82% This match was just brutal to watch. I have no problem with Pokemon whatsoever and have no issue with it winning, but seeing Mario 3 just get decimated like this was heartbreaking. My childhood just evaporated right before my eyes with this one; Mario 3 was the video game for me as a kid. There was Mario 1 and Mario 2 and Zelda 1 and Zelda 2 and Tetris, but Mario 3 was the absolute pinnacle. To see it get thoroughly destroyed like this was really something else, not that there weren't obvious extenuating factors. Pre-contest, this was the argument everyone was having. Picking the correct paths of these two games likely meant winning the contest, because there was more at stake beyond 2 points. Mario 3, Mario World, or Mario 64 could have all potentially done anything in between losing to Pokemon or making the finals of the contest, and it meant for some amazing hype. Personally I thought Mario 3 was the easy choice, because outside of IT'S FREAKING MARIO™ reasons, we had these two polls: We'd seen a hyped Pokemon game get hyped up to the level of a 1 seed from a more powerful Nintendo franchise before. Majora's Mask smacked it down. The trainers got bandwagoned hard during rivalry rumble, and Mario smacked them down. So I thought for sure this match would be more of the same. Now before getting into the Undertale rally, I really want to put to rest the idea that Mario 3 would have won a fair match. I can admit defeat, and this contest really showed us that Mario's "magic" is just completely gone. He's actually become the contest version of Mario in Smash Bros, which is kind of hilarious. He's very hard to rally against, but he's also very hard to rally for. He's just kind of the standard bearer, which is a pretty funny place for him to be in. People will point to the Vivi loss as his magic disappearing, but really it was this match and Super Metroid \> Galaxy. Anyway, look at the beginning of this poll. Pokemon won the board vote, and while Mario 3 fought like hell to keep things from getting out of control, Pokemon was slowly trending up. Then the power hour ended, and Pokemon just took off. Some people will say the Undertale rallies being there at the start meant Mario 3 was screwed from the beginning, but I don't think there's some alternate universe where Mario could have won this match. This was trending toward Pokemon finishing with a comfortable 55-45 win right when the power hour ended, and if Undertale never happened do we really think Mario gets this any closer than 53-47? It's like the Mario series had any extra luster this contest. The other point is Undertale didn't get berserk until well past noon. Pokemon had things locked up by then and the match had already been 55-45 for hours. I imagine this is a result Mario fans would have been okay with, but once the Undertale rally truly took hold this match just got brutal. From 1:30 pm onward, Pokemon rode the wave of being the beneficiary of rally love. This match went from 55-45 to Pokemon pulling in updates well over 65%, and some hit well higher than that. It turned the match from a respectable loss for Mario into an absolute beating, and things ended with Pokemon getting an insane 63-37 win. Needless to say, the hype for Pokemon vs Undertale hit a fever pitch once this all ended, and for good reason. If Pokemon could benefit a lot from Undertale's rally, logic would say that a lot of the people being rallied for that match would favor Pokemon. Granted this would assume Undertale beat Mario World, which was a massively tall order, and is something we'll go over when we're actually talking about Undertale's match itself. Worth noting here is Mario 3 was the first 1 seed to lose in this contest, and it was the first 1 seed to lose in round 2 to an 8 or a 9. We had seen a couple of 4/5 \> 1 upsets in the past, which are technically the same thing, but there's just something different about seeing 8/9 \> 1. Maybe it's the NCAA fan in me. ### Ctes' Analysis This match was probably the single most debated match of the contest. Before we learned of Undertale's massive rally capabilities, this match would decide a lot of the bracket. Two very strong games that had potential to go very far met in round 2. RBY was the board favorite until the results of their round 1 matches came in and Super Mario Bros. 3 was depicted as the heavy favorite. But the thing is, the round 1 results really should've put RBY as the favorite. I'm not usually one to brag, but I want to take pride in the pre-rally result of this match. I defended RBY like crazy from the Tetris match and until today. The only person I recall being with me on it was MWC, who half the board has blocked and most of the other half doesn't listen too. I tried hard to argue that the round 1 result should set RBY as a slight favorite, but my theories were constantly shut down. The day before this match, I made a topic specifically about this and I don't think a single person that posted in it agreed with me, I discussed with user \_Dog most of the time. Now, when the match started the two were initially were close, with RBY very slowly building a lead. At the 25 minute mark, SMB3 made quite the cut and people were quick to assume RBY had simply won the board vote and SMB3 would now dominate until whenever Undertale rallying kicked in for real, but RBY took it all back the next update and never looked back again. It was clear that RBY would take this match 52-53% doing the first few hours of it. It's hard to judge when exactly Undertale rallying actually began. It was probably partly there from the beginning, but don't misjudge that, SMB3 was never going to win this match any day. It's a shame that isn't as clear as it could've been, but at least most experts agreed on it. I actually like SMB3 more, but seeing this was so satisfying. I had been pointlessly arguing for it for so long and to see it play out just as I said was just really nice. I didn't see \_Dog again until after the contest. Don't know if he was around somewhere, but he disappeared from my topic from the day before completely and didn't see him around in the discussion topic either. Anyway, enough of that. It's a terrible shame that in a contest where people take every chance to laugh at Mario, one of the few games he has that could do some serious damage, a near elite game, is the first \#1 seed to be eliminated. Granted, GTAV lost the same round and to a Mario game even, but still, it sucked to see. SMB3 could've redeemed the series from the false negative spot it was in, but didn't get a chance because it was fed to the most underseeded game in the bracket. RBY absolutely deserves a \#1 seed no contest. This would'be been a close match, but beating SMB3 by a few percentage means that you're a near elite. A single thread about the match on the subreddit of Pokemon and all arguments are off. RBY showing itself as a legit contender for the second strongest game on the site today also makes Tetris a contender for the strongest game that lost in round 1 along with games like Kingdom Hearts and Oblivion. I think Tetris is the strongest of them though. RBY scoring such a great percentage on Tetris should've been a warning sign of RBY's strength and yet people saw it the other way around. But it's confirmed now. RBY definitely did not SFF Tetris, unless you expect Tetris to be a true contest beast. As I've said previously though, the SFF would've made no sense. Tetris was big on the gameboy, but that's unimportant when Tetris has been released on everything, naturally has overlap with everything in some way, and everyone has played it. Hardcore Tetris fans being the same people who are hardcore Pokemon fans makes no sense to begin with and even less sense is there to them all preferring RBy in the hypothetical situation, I mean, it's not like RBY does what Tetris does in a better way, they're completely different. If Tetris really had massive overlap favoring another game, it would have to be something similar and something old school, which does explain Zelda 1 destroying Tetris in 2004, although it probably also has something to do with Tetris being stronger today than then. Partly because of old games in general receiving a boost, but also because L-Block's victory clearly gave the series an overall boost. The final result of this match is sad. It was painful to watch as we bit our nails in excitement of the Fallout 3 vs. Undertale match. When that match was over all discussion was about Undertale, the board was a mess. At the same time though, we saw SMB3 getting completely destroyed in the most unfair way. We can safe the discussion about whether strong deciding outside rally forces are a good thing or not, but I believe we can all agree that rally spillover is quite a shame. Fortunately, no match in the contest was turned around by spillover, but it did bring some obnoxious results. This was one of them. RBY wins any day, but not by this much. I'd much rather have this match played out by itself, especially because it might've been somewhat good to follow. Don't get me wrong, if SMB3 actually attempted a comeback, a post on the Pokemon subreddit would've ended the match, but it could've been good! Instead, SMB3 got destroyed thanks to people that didn't even care about this match probably. People coming to vote for Undertale. It's really nice that Allen made it so easy to vote in all matches so we don't have huge differences in vote totals, but situations like these are the sole flaw of this wonderful format. RBY looked fantastic today, in raw strength and rally forces alike. There were two outcomes of the contest at this point. One was Undertale winning it all, or Undertale getting stopped by RBY. Later, Melee also turned out to be capable of giving it a shot but we had no idea about that at this point. If RBY had met Undertale's rally powers this round, it absolutely wins, I have no doubt about that and the same probably goes for round 3 too. RBY would have absolutely no trouble making it there. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6123&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=73) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs (4)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves 2015 _source: (12)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 vs (4)Uncharted 2: Among Thieves 2015 (revid 84366)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, November 23, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 74 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 23, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 54.41% 83 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 25.64% During round 2's Undertale rally, two of the matches were relatively normal and unaffected. This was one of them, with FF8 vs Super Mario World being the other. Some people thought Sonic 2 might fold to Uncharted 2 in this match, and those who thought Sonic 2 would win did not think it would be a beating to this degree. The Oracle undershot Sonic by a fair amount, and it would have happened even without Undertale going on. Sonic started this poll well above 60%, and only gained a couple of percentage points in the afternoon when the rally showed up. Worth noting here is that of the 4 matches that happened on this particular day, this one had the lowest vote totals. It was a damn impressive win by Sonic 2, though the reasons for this happening were unclear. All we had ever seen from the game before this was beating Shining Force a couple times, an SFF beating at the hands of Mario World in 2004, and that weird FF6/Link's Awakening/Sonic 2/Mortal Kombat 2 match from 2009. I suppose one could make the case Sonic 2 was a hidden beast this entire time, but that contradicts Portal 2 in round 1. I don't really think Portal 2 has much strength. The true reason is likely Uncharted 2's Game of the Decade run being extremely overrated, plus this contest having a massive theme of old games shitting all over new games in a fair bracket. This match was one of the many examples of it, but the sheer level of this blowout was still impressive. Not that the love would last, because the rallyers abandoned Sonic rather quickly next round. By the way, Sonic 2 is the best Sonic game. Being the first one to let you crouch and rev up like a car was awesome, plus it introduced Tails and Super Sonic. Who doesn't love Tails and Super Sonic? ### Ctes' Analysis This match was also a huge somewhat significantly from rally spillover. This probably would've been a 60-40 victory without rally spillover, Sonic 2 was easily winning right from the start, but this would have been far from a doubling. Pokemon is easily the series that would receive the biggest boost from Undertale's rallying, but Mario at least does to some extend. Sonic does a lot too and Uncharted does in no way whatsoever. This was a painful match to watch for me. Uncharted 2 is my favorite PS3 game and probably top 20 of all time. Sonic 2 is an excellent game too, but in a contest where old games were already heavily favored, Uncharted 2 did not deserve to get destroyed even more than it was already doing to be. Of course, this match was never in any doubt, rally spillover or not. It was pretty obvious from before the contest that the winner of Sonic 2 vs. Portal 2 would go ahead and beat Uncharted 2 in the battle of sequels, though I must say that before rally spillover I expected Uncharted 2 to be a bit closer than this. Games from last generation in general are pretty weak here, in particular ones that aren't part of a well-established franchise. Uncharted 2 had a prequel yes, but it was the same that made the franchise what it was today. The first one is mediocre, but nothing special. Not to mention the prequel was on the same console. The Last of Us looked like it would've given Sonic 2 quite a match to name a similar PS3 exclusive. I would've expect the difference between those two to be that big. We have Fallout 3 looking really great next to this match and it did in the past as well. That's multi-platform, but still! Uncharted 2 definitely also sufferede from NostalgiaFAQs being bigger than ever. It would surely beat Halo today, but it would lose to games it wouldn't have lost to in 2010, that's for sure. Glad to see it have some appreciation through its seeding at least! With a sad disappointing result from Uncharted 2, it's nice to see the sole Sonic representative of the bracket due good. NostalgiaFAQs is great for a series that sucked for many recent years and even if it's generally okay again, is nowhere near where it used to be. It's similar to how it was nice seeing the only Mega Man game exceed expectations. Many of us had Sonic 2 going to round 3, but Portal 2 was the clear favorite. Uncharted 2 might be the casual favorite I guess, though I could imagine both it and Portal 2 having a fair share. Portal 2 lost early, but at least it didn't get to suffer from a rally spillover destruction that Uncharted 2 did today and Sonic 2 would next round. There was actually some people arguing that Sonic 2 doing this well today would mean it could avoid a bigger beatdown from RBY than it usually would've. I can see where people from coming from, but there's a clear hierarchy in that regard. Wonder where Animal Crossing would fit into that! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6124&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=74) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Fallout 3 vs (6)Undertale 2015 _source: (3)Fallout 3 vs (6)Undertale 2015 (revid 84363)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, November 23, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 75 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 23, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Undertale - 48.89% 47 for - 46 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Undertale - 6.83% There was a lot of hype for this match once Undertale beat Mass Effect 3 the way it did, because a lot of people were crying that our contest was once again ruined by outsiders. Never mind the fact that Undertale still had to go out and win matches, or that it was facing Fallout 3 on the heels of massive Fallout 4 hype. Let's not forget how strong Fallout 3 looked against Life is Strange pre-rally, with that match happening on the day of Fallout 4's release. There wasn't a whole lot of logic here though, just a question of whether or not Undertale could continue rallying past progressively stronger opposition and a ton of Nintendo games. But before getting to all that, the hype seemed short-lived. Undertale absolutely got its ass whipped at the beginning of this poll by people looking to cut off the head of the snake early, to the tune of Fallout 3 having nearly 73% at the freeze. Undertale would bleed more than 10% overnight, but put forth no resistance whatsoever as Fallout continued building up this massive lead. On top of this, the rally points were all there. tumblr was firing, Reddit had their topics going, Facebook had their stuff going, and none of it seemed to matter at all. Fallout 4 hype seemed to be more than enough to end Undertale, even though bleeding all that percentage overnight was still impressive. Remember, we were very new to tumblr's affect on a contest during this match and didn't realize how backloaded they were with bringing votes in. So at the time, most people saw that the rally was on and was doing little more than a percentage bleed overnight. Then the morning vote hit, and the poll stayed at 61-39. There was a very minor loss in percentage as we crossed lunch, and all Fallout 3 had to do to win the match at this point was prevent Undertale from getting its second massive afternoon rally in a row. A little after lunch, Undertale's rally started picking up as more and more people hopped on the bandwagon on social media. What was 80-90 vote updates were quickly turning into 130-140 vote updates, and the writing was beginning to show up on the wall of what was coming. Lady Hieress, a huge Dark Souls fan on tumblr, was credited with starting the topic that would turn this match around. At 1:10 pm, Fallout 3 had a lead of 6834 votes. It was the biggest lead Fallout 3 would have during the match. We're going to pause here to bring something up that bothered me quite a lot when I saw it. As a result of this match, people went and caused this nonsense: ((I gotta be honest, I seeked the help of someone who had much more Undertale followers in their blog to help me spread it, but some people found their tumblr and started sending message threats of death and rape, so this time, I’ll have to ask my own followers to help me as a unit, so no one gets the shit end of the deal but me.)) I'm sure this was done by people like SvenGoolie and the like, but it's still completely ridiculous. Sending rape and death threats because of a video game popularity contest on GameFAQs. Very mature. This was the beginning of the end of Undertale's rally purely being done for good intentions. What started as "hey we have a great new game, hopefully it can do well and more people will play it!" turned into idiots sending threats online and fanning the flames of "lol look at these turbonerds getting all mad, make sure to vote Undertale to piss them off more". The trends for Undertale radically changed once the internet saw this crap, too. In Undertale's first two matches, the rally took forever to get going and it had to come back from 9252 and 6834 votes, respectively. You think it was going to pull something like that off against Mario World or Pokemon? Hell no. Good job whining and being the key to your own destruction, crybabies. This is the sort of thing that makes me support rallies so hard. If your life is so pathetic that a game losing a poll sets off your rage alarm, you 100% deserve to be on the ass end of rallies causing your favorite games to lose until you grow up. It's basic wrestling logic; if you no-sell something you hate, it gets depushed. But if you act like absolute morons, like the typical NXT/WWE crowd does every time Eva Marie or John Cena comes out, what do you think will happen? The powers that be will go "hey we can make something happen with this" and make money off of your vitriol. So good job with all that whining about Undertale, Board 8. You brought this on yourself. Back to the match. That 6834 vote lead? Once Hieress's post got reblogged everywhere and the rally really picked up steam, Undertale went completely nuts. It went from getting about 40% of the vote every update to getting anywhere between 65 and 80% of the vote every update. But the really impressive part was just looking at the total votes it was bringing in, and how they would keep going up. This thing started in the 150 range at the beginning, then the rally got going and we were seeing updates in the 250-300 range, compared to Fallout 3 doing nothing extra at all. This led to a hundred or more votes getting erased every update, and it only got worse as the lead kept shrinking. Before long Undertale was pulling in 350-450 vote updates, and the entire 6834 vote lead was just demolished in a matter of hours. Remember how Fallout 3 had that peak lead at 1:10 pm? Yeah, Undertale took the lead at 5:25. Turning around 6834 votes in 4:15 is completely insane, and it didn't even slow down once taking the lead. It kept pulling in those massive 250-300 vote updates for almost the entirety of the rest of the match, and just left Fallout 3 in the dust. It would end up winning by 9381 votes, which is a total turnaround of 16215 votes, which is absolutely insane and was reminiscent of Draven's match against Ryu and Mega Man X in 2013. It wasn't quite the insane level of Draven during that match, but it was close enough to get crybaby brigade going. Had people just not whined in the first place, Undertale would not have beaten Mario World. But people did whine, which led to everything getting quoted and immortalized on social media. It was then that the Undertale run took on a whole new meaning. Will people learn their lesson and not do the same exact thing next contest when Linkle goes on some massive run? I doubt it. This would set up Undertale vs Super Mario World, which would be an ungodly mountain to climb under normal circumstances. Pre-whining I don't think Undertale would have stood a chance. Post-whining... well, we all know what happened. I for one support anything that puts crybabies in their place, especially when it's idiotic enough to make radical feminists look rational. I'm putting a different Undertale theme into every writeup for this contest, and for this match we'll just go with Waterfall. Because once that rally started, the impending flood was inevitable. ### Ctes' Analysis This was probably the most anticipated match of round 2 after round 1 ended. This match was supposed to be Fallout 3 easily taking of Mass Effect 3, but Undertale was the one game that came through with its rallying. Fallout 3 was obviously a much bigger challenge than Mass Effect 3, but now that the rally had gained momentum and some of out dear board regulars had acted as idiots, Undertale would be much stronger today. In a lot of people's eyes, we already had a contest winner in Undertale, nothing would be able to stop it. Others pointed to Ocarina of Time or RBY, while a fair share of people also believed it would end today. It didn't end up being the case, but there was some logic to it. Fallout 3 is a much stronger game, yes. If Undertale took as long as last time to get going, then no, it wouldn't stand a chance today, but I don't think anyone doubted that things would go faster this time. First minutes into the match and it was clear from the votals that people were ready. The guy who started the rally last round had explained that he'd do the same again, and it's likely the big names that shared his posts on tumblr would be prepared today. The best argument for a Fallout 3 victory was probably the idea that Fallout 3 would be able to rally on its own, something Mass Effect 3 could probably never do with how disliked it is among the franchise's own fans and also because it's some years old now. Don't get me wrong, I love Mass Effect 3, but that's the truth. Fallout 3 is also some years old, but the contest came just when Fallout 4 released. The community is big and it's very active right now. If they cared enough, then yes, that might be enough to stop this rally. Another thing was that people expected this rally to have a clear roof. There could only be so many people this could be shared to within tumblr that would care. At some point, the rallying would stop, and it would just take a game strong enough to withstand whatever amount of votes was the roof. I personally believe that it became clear today that this was not the case, but people kept this argument for rounds to come, in fact, I don't think it died completely until the semi-finals. Undertale was as strong as it needed to be. Sharing posts from the likes of Bracket_Entry, ExTha or MWC could easily provide Undertale with a good bunch of votes from anywhere, be it people that actually played it or not. It also helps that the rally spawned from people that just really liked the game, even if some hardcore supporters of the rally were huge jerks as well. The match started with Fallout 3 being above 70%, which in any other match would mean it was over. Fallout 3 started building a good lead, but the votals were insane, it was clear that this match was way more anticipated than any other, so for the people that supported Fallout 3 here, there was no time to rest assured of its victory yet. Fallout 3 made some very impressive gains, often getting close to 200. In only half an hour it was more than 1000 votes ahead. It certainly had the board vote. Its gains started slowing down, but they were still good. Less than one and a half hour into the match, Fallout 3 had increased its lead to 2000 votes, looking pretty great. But at the same time, it bled percentage like crazy. At the same time it reached a 2000 vote lead, it also went below a doubling going from above 70%. Percentage is not as important as the actual vote difference, but despite how solid a 2000 vote lead would've looked in any contest ever, but especially this one with the votals being the way they are, we witnessed Undertale shredding a 9000 vote lead last round. There were people arguing for the votals roof theory that means that Undertale had about the same strength as last time, only that all the votes were split more throughout the match. Had this been true, then things looked really great for Fallout 3 yes. At the same time, it was worth noting that none of the big names had shared the match yet. Fallout 3 was going great all things considered, it's a strong game, but it didn't look like it would win. Fallout 3 slowly but steadily extended its lead, but at the 3:35 mark, the vote difference remained the same, then at 3:45 Undertale made its first cut. A very small one, but still a cut. Overall, Fallout 3 still extended its lead during these hours, but Undertale was fighting back in the dead hours of the match. This would mean bad things when America awoke, and more specifically, the tumblr users. Fallout 3 managed to continue extending its lead throughout the morning, it was the ASV that was to be feared. Fallout 3 would ultimately peak at the 13:10 mark with a lead of 6834 votes. Undertale made a few small cuts, which meant little at first, as it had done that before. Suddenly though, it started cutting almost 100 votes an update and very soon it started often cutting more than that. A +6000 vote lead is no joke, but this would be more than enough to make it in time. Undertale was able to shred 1000 votes of the lead in merely half an hour. It was doing rapidly fast. Now was definitely the time to panic and act for Fallout 3 fans. Thing is, the situation is really unfortunate for a counter rally. A good rally is short and precise. Outside forces can't be expected to care about what is happening during the contest. You can't explain to a large group that Fallout 3 is likely to lose when it's 5000 votes ahead. People might vote, but then they'll think “Fallout 3 is winning no problem” and there'll be 0% chance of anyone further sharing it. None of these people will stay around to follow the match when it looks like it's over. Another thing a good rally needs is momentum, which Undertale had the whole day to built. The rallying was going from the beginning of the match, but didn't become strong enough until over 13 hours into the match. It's interesting to note that if we still had 12 hour matches, Undertale wouldn't have won the first four of its matches. It wouldn't even have gotten to the point where it looked threatening in round 1. This new format which allows 24 hour matches in round 1 without the contest becoming too long and dull allowed Undertale to have just enough time. Undertale would go crazy for a few hours before at the 17:25 mark taking the lead by force and never looking back. It took it 20 minutes to extend its lead above 1000 votes, there was no stopping it. In no time it was several thousand votes ahead. Now, this would be a good time to get a Fallout 3 rally going. You might be able to rally for it now, because it's behind, but it's very difficult. First of all, people had already “wasted” rallying at the best places to do it. You could post at them again, but people wouldn't care, they already went and saw how the match was going. Secondly, it's actually really difficult to rally for something that is losing so badly as Fallout 3 was here. That Undertale could do it was a miracle, it happens close to never. Finally, the momentum I talked about. It took Undertale over 13 hours to get rolling despite it having a previous match of rallying in the bank. With only six hours left, there was no way to get a Fallout 3 rally going in the first place, but particularly not when Undertale had one going to. The rally was to difficult to be countered. At this point, Undertale looked pretty unstoppable. Next round it would face Super Mario World, which everyone knows is a stronger game than Fallout 3, but that's not important here. Super Mario World doesn't have anywhere to get rallied and besides, the same things applies to that match, as they do today, only that Fallout 4 just came out, while nothing Mario just did. Honestly, Undertale looked like it could win it all now, but there was one final challenge waiting in its way. At the same time of this match, RBY made a joke of Super Mario Bros. 3. This audience clearly loved Pokemon too and Pokemon is a very active community. With some potential rally backlash and getting the Pokemon community in on this, there might be a chance to stop Undertale from destroying all competition. Unfortunate for the people that wanted Undertale gone, RBY would not meet Undertale next round, but in two rounds, meaning that Undertale had another round where it could gain momentum. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6125&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=75) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Final Fantasy VIII vs (2)Super Mario World 2015 _source: (10)Final Fantasy VIII vs (2)Super Mario World 2015 (revid 84364)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, November 23, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 76 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 23, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario World - 58.88% 89 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario World - 59.93% There were two normal matches during the round 2 Undertale rally, this one and Sonic 2/Uncharted 2. Or rather, "normal" in the sense that the only real change was inflated vote totals. During round 1, Final Fantasy 8 made a pretty funny increase in percentage against Vice City once Undertale showed up. This, paired with Animal Crossing literally getting cuts on Mario World en route to a ridiculous percentage bleed, gave a very slim hope that Final Fantasy 8 might pull a miracle in this match. That hope was short-lived however, as Mario was well above 65% at the beginning of the poll and showed no bleed to speak of overnight once Square's best time hit. Sure there was a small bleed of 2-3%, but then the morning vote hit and erased it all. Then once the Undertale rally happened, it massively favored Super Mario World. There would be no hijinx here en route to Mario World getting a very easy 68-32 win. To say the Undertale/Mario World hype was insane after this happened doesn't even begin to cover it. If you went by Board 8, you would think it was the only match in round 3 at all! Shout-out to FF8, by the way. Coming out after FF7 was an impossible spot to be in, but FF8 was still a damn good game. It just suffered from "trying too hard because I'm following a legend" syndrome. Unfortunately round 2 is often about separating midcarders from contenders, and FF8 was definitely a midcarder going up against a contender. ### Ctes' Analysis After last round, there were people believing that Final Fantasy VIII would get to look really good today as a result of rally spillover. Final Fantasy VIII got to destroy Vice City more than it would've last round while Animal Crossing made Super Mario World bled percentage like crazy. I'm sure nobody expected Final Fantasy VIII to win today, just look good going out. Well, while Super Mario World definitely had the board vote, it seemed like this match would've had Super Mario World winning with about 63% under normal conditions. Super Mario World rose quite a bit when the rally kicked it. It wasn't as heavily favored as RBY and Sonic 2, but it wasn't close either. Turns out they just really love Animal Crossing and Pokemon on tumblr. It was assumed they didn't care for Mario, but that's not correct, they just have higher preferences, which the Mario games also faced. Apparently, it doesn't matter that Super Mario World is before the time of the average tumblr user, it's enough that it's Mario. Maybe the same doesn't apply for Final Fantasy VIII, if it's from before your time, well, you probably don't know the characters outside of Kingdom Hearts. Final Fantasy VIII probably only did as well as it did last round, because Grand Theft Auto is the last thing they care for there. That taken into consideration, it's actually somewhat sad Final Fantasy VIII didn't do better, but I guess they vote for games they love more than anti-vote. Final Fantasy VIII joins the large bunch of Final Fantasy games with a very predictable path this contest. Only VII, VI and IX had any real doubt in their paths of the eight of them that were in the contest. That also means four Final Fantasy games had an easy round 1 match and then lost easily in round 2, Final Fantasy VIII being the first of the four. Not that exciting outside of a cool 8-0 round 1 result! Final Fantasy VIII definitely used to be above IX in strength, but I believe that is no longer the case at all. It's not really VIII falling, it's just that IX is being loved a lot by old time fans all of a sudden. I'm honestly not quite sure why. It's a shame that VIII gets to only do about 7% better than Animal Crossing of all things on Super Mario World. While there is a clear and excusable explanation, it looks pretty sad. Super Mario World is an elite game on this site, it would've especially been this year since it's the Year of SNES, but it had just the bracket spot to get screwed by outside forces as much as possible. Things were looking really bad for Super Mario World next round. There might have been a few believers, but I think it was mostly people desperately hoping for a miracle. I was too, Super Mario World is a top 5 to me and that defines my nostalgia. I hated to see it draw the rally force of the year when it could've been a leading force of its dominating console along with Chrono Trigger and A Link to the Past. I didn't believe it stood a chance next round though. That Super Mario World would at least look respectable going out was the best thing to hope for as a fan of it. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6126&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=76) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (8)GoldenEye 007 2015 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (8)GoldenEye 007 2015 (revid 84367)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, November 24, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 77 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 52.52% 66 for - 24 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 61.64% In round 1, Undertale's rally spillover caused Phoenix Wright to have an early lead over Skyrim before ultimately getting buried. This led people to believe Skyrim was vulnerable in the contest and could potentially lose to Goldeneye -- this on top of some murmuring of a potential Goldeneye \> Skyrim upset pre-contest. What instead happened was Skyrim having its best match of the entire contest. Goldeneye is a damn strong game, and was in a contest where the 90s were wrecking shop and laughing at new games. for Skyrim to go out there and shut it down right from minute 1 was impressive, especially on the heels of how round 1 went. It was a nice, boring 59-41 beating with the percentages not moving at all for the entire match, which is really the best thing Skyrim could have asked for. It solidified itself as a very strong game, and though it may not be on the contender level, it was obviously a very high midcarder. This was basically Skyrim's ceiling heading into this contest, so it met expectations. 59-41 may not sound too impressive, but go check the Oracle. Almost everyone undershot Skyrim. So good Skyrim for going out there, whipping some ass, and completely throwing everyone off the scent for what was about to happen in round 3. You were under better cover than the Dark Brotherhood, my friend. ### Ctes' Analysis Considering what a big deal was made of the upset potential, this match wasn't interesting in the slightest. I guess it should be noted that it may just be listening to the show that made this seem like a big upset potential to me while in reality pretty much no one believed it. The prediction percentage is decent enough. Interestingly, this match was completely unaffected by rally spillover. In fact, it was such a boring match overall. It stayed the pretty much the exact same percentage the whole way through not changing in the slightest. Skyrim appears to be somewhat big on tumblr, so I guess they really like James Bond too. The game doesn't really seem like something that should be big there, so it's probably James Bond love. Spillover is a terrible thing, so despite this match being a bore, not having spillover is great! GoldenEye is a strong game here, there is no denying that, but Skyrim is really legit and proved that for real today. It didn't look too hot last round, but this is pretty great, especially for a recent game. I don't really believe this match should have been in any doubt pre-contest, but after we slowly discovered just how much recent games suck, it's nice to see one of them not doing so. Can you imagine how strong Skyrim could've been if this wasn't NostalgiaFAQs? Look at Fallout 3 in Game of the Decade. It was the \#1 seed overall and reached top 4. I fully believe Skyrim would be even stronger than Fallout 3 if more new users voted in these polls instead of only visiting answers and board pages. Regular poll of the days also suggest that Skyrim would be stronger than Game of the Decade Fallout 3. If we get another Game of the Decade contest in 4-5 years, I think Skyrim would be the overall favorite to win at this point, unless a really appreciated Nintendo game on NX comes out or a rally wins the contest again, and I hope we a contest like that because it was really great last time! Anyway, it really is NostalgiaFAQs, so Skyrim will have to do with the strength it has, but it's quite a bit too! It was very clear Super Mario 64 wouldn't be challenged in the slightest, but Skyrim could still definitely get there. As I said, Skyrim was never gonna lose today, but next round a true challenge would wait in a popular Gamecube game. Metroid Prime looked great in the first two round and seemed to have rally spillover in its favor too. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6127&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=77) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Metroid Prime vs (4)Half-Life 2 2015 _source: (5)Metroid Prime vs (4)Half-Life 2 2015 (revid 84368)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, November 24, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 78 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metroid Prime - 54.14% 86 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metroid Prime - 32.42% Rematches are very rarely as good as the original, and it's very rare for the loser of the original to turn it around in a rematch. There's a reason it's such a big deal whenever a rematch reverses a result. There's a massive precedent for this stretching across many contests, but my favorite example is Sonic vs Samus in 2002 and 2004. In 2002, Samus came back from down 1500 in the final 3 hours to beat Sonic by 34 votes, and when CJayC legitimized the result it set off one of the biggest firestorms in contest history. In 2004, CJayC had the idea to set up the bracket so that Sonic and Samus would have a big rematch. The result? This: There are other examples of rematches not being very good, like Snake having to beat Knuckles three years in a row, but you get the idea. Things like Crono turning around the Vincent upset a year later or Link getting revenge on Cloud don't happen very often. So when Metroid Prime and Half-Life 2 were set up to have a rematch of their classic from Game of the Decade (http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/4182-northeast-division-final-metroid-prime-vs-half-life-2), I knew how it was going to go. Add in Half-Life series fans becoming very disenfranchised by the lack of Half-Life 3 news, and you have a recipe for a virtual parallel to Sonic vs Samus from 2004. Sure enough, the match was 60-40 right at the start and Metroid Prime never looked back. Given how similar the percentages here were to Skyrim vs Goldeneye, it led to the obvious question of Goldeneye vs Half-Life 2. I would assume Goldeneye is the stronger game for rather obvious reasons (NOT THE LEAST OF WHICH IS WHERE THE FUCK IS MY HALF-LIFE 3), but Metroid Prime would have a lot to say about that en route to yet another classic match for one Samus Aran ### Ctes' Analysis I believe this match was set up due to it being a very close match in Game of the Decade. That certainly looks like a match that could've gone either way in a rematch, but I don't see why it would be very interesting to have again. Of all rematches we could have had, this one was a lock. At the very best, the difference in strength would've remained the same, which would result in a Metroid Prime victory undoubtfully. Sure, votals were lower, but there's no reason for all the removed votes to be Metroid fans. The thing is though, a Half-Life drop was to be completely expected. Half-Life is from 2004 and Metroid Prime from 2002, so this has nothing to do with age, but Half-Life 2 has been a dead series for a long time now. There's an internet meme going about the Half-Life 3 we have never seen or heard of. Stuff like that hurts the series. It's been dead for so long, this goes for everything. I'm sure that if the latest Final Fantasy entries had been fantastic, then VII would've held up better too and that's not even the same story, just the same universe. In any case, Half-Life 2 had obviously dropped, it was just a matter of how much. Another reason is that it's by far biggest on PC, which isn't too strong on GameFAQs. Metroid Prime wins with 58% of the vote, but remember there was rally spillover, which clearly favored it. It started out above 60% and fell for most of the match, so on another day it wins by less percentage, but it's still a clear victory, not worthy of repeat. If Allen purposely set up this match as I believe, he should have expected it to be less good, but perhaps he expected a Prime drop too. Other M wasn't too well received and Metroid has stood still since then, but it's only five years ago and the franchise is still relevant through Smash mostly, but when stuff like Nintendo Land comes, you see that Nintendo still remembers the franchise, even though no one actually cares about that game. It is to be expected that a series like Metroid holds up a lot better. Super Metroid and Metroid Prime are the sole representatives of the franchise, but both are very well seeded and did well too, almost pulling off a big round 3 upset each. Prime's run wasn't as great as Super Metroid's I know, but still pretty good. I don't doubt it'll do great in a future contest either. Judged by previous x-stats, Prime looked fantastic in its next match, but the already mentioned reasons explains why we can't go off of that. Not to mention Skyrim's matches have gotten messed with by spillover too. Skyrim still went into the match as the favorite, but Prime supporters certainly had reason to hope for the upset. Rally spillover looked to only help Prime and it could very well be deciding too. Prime failed to get past Fallout 3 in Game of the Decade, so while going with the older game and/or the Nintendo game in a debatable match seems smart, it loss for Prime could certainly happen. But with how Skyrim didn't look as good as Fallout 3 did then along with spillover factor, Prime could very well reach round 4. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6128&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=78) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Mario 64 vs (6)Final Fantasy Tactics 2015 _source: (3)Super Mario 64 vs (6)Final Fantasy Tactics 2015 (revid 84369)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, November 24, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 79 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario 64 - 65.47% 90 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario 64 - 65.94% There aren't many games out there that could blow out Final Fantasy Tactics without me getting upset, but Mario 64 is one of those games. I absolutely adore the Mario series, and if Mario 1 is the most influential video game of all time for saving the industry, then Mario 64 is probably the most influential 3D game of all time for pioneering the transition to 3D video games. I will always love Mario 64 and periodically replay it, and I can totally watch it blow out my favorite game ever and just tip my cap in respect. Oh but Final Fantasy Tactics avoided the doubling after Mario 64 was over 70% at the freeze! Yeah! This actually was somewhat relevant, since it hinted at how Mario 64 would eventually lose and caused some minor Twilight Princess \> Mario 64 hype. It had a rather predictable path until the final 8 of this contest, though that happens when you're far and away the strongest game in your division I suppose. For the record, Final Fantasy Tactics is better than your favorite game. It has without a doubt the deepest and most replayable gameplay of all time. Only the Fire Emblem series comes even remotely close. ### Ctes' Analysis This is one of the matches where the only interesting thing you could follow was whether or not the losing game would avoid the doubling or not. And it's really stretching it to call that interesting, but that's another reason why this format is great. Despite none of the matches today being interesting, at least there are more things to discuss. Well actually, there was something interesting about this match, if you consider rally spillover that. It's not a good thing in general, but it's worth looking at occasionally. Today, it favored Super Mario 64 somewhat significantly. We're not talking that much, but it started out above 70% for a short while before going down for practically the rest of the match. Once again proving that tumblr does care about Mario contrary to what people believed after round 1. At least, it's preferred above Final Fantasy games. I suppose you could take this match to judge next round's match if there was any doubt about it. I don't think there ever was, but for some people taking a big Mario game to beat a big Zelda game feels wrong. Well, these are from different generations, where one generation is generally a lot stronger than the other. Twilight Princess stood no chance in that match. It's not like we haven't sen Super Mario Bros. 3 beat The Legend of Zelda several times either, and they're even on the same console. It's probably the only console where the strongest Mario is stronger than the strongest Zelda. Anyway, not even two additional Mario games could keep SMB3 from winning between the two. A Mario \> Zelda result is not weird in the slightest. Mario 64 was beating Final Fantasy Tactics worse than Zelda was beating Persona 4 today and a match between those two wouldn't even be close. Furthermore, while Persona 4 might have some popularity on tumblr, Zelda was not taking advantage of rally spillover, which it would need to do for the next match to be even the slightest bit interesting. Super Mario 64 looked to get to the top 8 without any trouble, above what the other Mario games seemed to be able to. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6129&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=79) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (2)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 2015 _source: (7)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs (2)Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 2015 (revid 84370)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, November 24, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 80 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Twilight Princess - 65.02% 88 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Twilight Princess - 57.29% Not all doublings are created equal, and though this match's winner was very predictable, Persona 4 was only expected to get 27% on Twilight Princess based on Game of the Decade. It obviously went out and did much better than that, and though it didn't come close to justifying its 2 seed, it at least went out there and didn't thoroughly embarrass itself. The constant overseeding of Persona games does prove its vocal minority fanbase, however, though at least Zelda did us the favor of getting rid of those people. It's going to be funny when Persona 4 becomes only the second 1 seed to lose to a 16 in round 1. (1)Persona 4 vs (16)Portal or (1)Persona 4 vs (16)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door are a lot more realistic than one might think. In this contest alone, we saw Phoenix Wright get a 16 seed and finish in the top half of the stats. Or let's just go full circle. (1)Persona 4 vs (16)Halo: Combat Evolved. You would laugh until the end of time if Halo won that match. Don't even lie. ### Ctes' Analysis A \#2 seed really isn't supposed in to be almost doubled in round 2, even if it did run into a Zelda game. That said, this isn't a bad showing from a Persona game. It's a small niche franchise, but the fourth game is legit in these things and is the only one that might not be niche. It's also the only one that we should see again of the ones currently released at least. Avoiding the doubling here was probably the fair goal, and it wasn't that close to it. Persona 4 received its great seeding because it has a very dedicated fanbase that will always support it, unlike something like RBY, which is loved by many, but it doesn't have the same dedicated group. It took niche fanbases to get stuff like 999 in this, but Persona 4, already being a decent entry, claimed a \#2 seed with it. This also pretty much confirms that Persona 4 will continue to appear in these contests, and honestly, I fear the third one might very well too. After the previous round there were a few people believing Persona 4 could get close this match. It scored one of the highest percentages of the first round. Now, considering that Persona 4 didn't even come remotely close here, that leaves 999 as a huge contender for the absolute weakest game of the contest. As for Twilight Princess, it's a strong game, but quite unfortunately it ran into Super Mario 64 in round 3, which was an outside contender for the finalist before Undertale rallies happened. At some point during this day, Heroic Mario said he believed that Twilight Princess would beat Super Mario 64, because what game would totally beat Final Fantasy Tactics? Well, I don't really doubt a single bit that Persona 4 would not. That match up seems really easy. Like, think of Dragon Quest VIII vs. Persona 3, but here it's just strong games. Plus, it'll probably be less close. Twilight Princess might be able to do wonder in Wind Waker's spot, but not here. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6130&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=80) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (8)Suikoden II 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (8)Suikoden II 2015 (revid 84371)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, November 25, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 81 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 25, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 83.86% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 87.94% A few writeups ago, I said not all doublings are created equal. Well not triplings are created equal either. I feel like this poll is very relevant, even if there was SFF involved: I usually don't link to the Oracle since finding specific matches on that site is a pain in the ass, but for this match the Oracle is definitely worth directly linking you all to: Just about everyone expected Zelda to get well within the 80% range here, and for good reason. Suikoden 2 is complete fodder in these contests, and Ocarina was the overwhelming favorite to win this contest. So when Zelda went out there and only had 75% at the beginning, everyone was completely stunned. Link and Ocarina of Time have been a dominant force in these contests for more than a decade, and I have to equate Link's empire to the New England Patriots. The Patriots are dominant, if not devious as hell, and have won 4 titles. They could easily have more. If not for ridiculous catches by Mario Manningham and David Tyree (as well as a dumb drop by Asante Samuel), the Pats have 6 rings and an undefeated season right now. You could even make the case they should have more rings than even that, if not for some very weird upsets in the AFC playoffs over the years. The point here is that when you beat the Patriots, you barely beat them. It feels like it takes divine intervention to do it. Same for Link or Ocarina of Time in these contests. When you beat the Zelda empire, you barely do it. I'll get into this more when discussing the final, but you get the idea. So when Ocarina of Time went out there and gave us this awful performance, it was an eye-opener. Zelda had shown no weakness whatsoever in this contest until this very match, but then Sukoden 2 went out there and showed us that voters were very much anti-voting Ocarina. This began a very surreal trend of the Zelda series showing it was very "off" this contest, which was odd because until this match it was absolutely dominant. The voters made their allegiances clear. People are beyond sick of Zelda winning all the time. ### Ctes' Analysis This match served as the first hint that Ocarina of Time received some anti-voting after winning last time. I mean, a tripling shouldn't be a bad thing, but in this match you would expect Ocarina of Time to do better. It has showed itself to be ridiculously strong, Suikoden II has not. That said, I don't believe this was as bad as most people made it out to be. Suikoden II sucked in the past, but it has all the reason to have gotten stronger. It's from the childhood of a large chunk of GameFAQs. It's well respected. It's on the Playstation. It's shouldn't be that bad! Last round it won a debated match without breaking a sweat. You can translate that to Monster Hunter 4 being recent and weak, but I don't think it's only that. Only two people in the oracle challenge prediction a percentage for Ocarina of Time lower than this, one of them won this match and the other finished seventh. The rest of us lined up in order of lowest percentage highest and highest percentage lowest. That would make this a disappointing performance and while I'm not saying it isn't, well, it's not that bad either. Ocarina of Time had little to no reason to worry about losing to anything but rallies at this point anyway, with the little recent coming from Chrono Trigger's incredible performances. That said, should Chrono Trigger be a threat, the general idea was that Zelda fans would spawn and vote for it like usual. I believe the disappointing performance from Ocarina of Time today comes from the fact that it's the defending champion now, and of course Link's many victories. Though then the question remains how there appeared to be no anti-voting against Hearthstone. I mean, if there was, Hearthstone is hands down the weakest game ever, but it's pretty clear there wasn't, so why should Hearthstone be an exception to anti-votes? My best guess is rally fear. The core of GameFAQs might want to see Ocarina of Time lose, but not to outside forces. Hearthstone was the biggest contender for a large outside rally pre-contest due to the huge amount of users on its subreddit. People were prepared. In retrospect it's a little stupid. Rallies need momentum, you don't get momentum starting out against Ocarina of Time in round 1, Allen probably knew that too when making the bracket. In any case, that's the best possible explanation. Though we'd still have to watch Ocarina of Time's next matches to be certain that it truly was anti-votes and not just Suikoden II being legit. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6131&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=81) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Okami vs (4)Final Fantasy IX 2015 _source: (5)Okami vs (4)Final Fantasy IX 2015 (revid 84372)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, November 25, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 82 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 25, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy IX - 56.48% 82 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy IX - 28.54% I'm not actually sure why Final Fantasy 9 was such a huge favorite in this match, but those who said it would win easily were definitely right. Not that it was a massive favorite pre-contest since getting past Kingdom Hearts was no guarantee, but these two games were right next to each other in Game of the Decade's stats. Dunno what I'm missing, but hey, I got no complaints about Final Fantasy 9 winning two matches. I've already gone over why I love that game so much, so peek at the round 1 writeup if you want to see it. For Okami, the trend continues! Nothing has ever broken 60% on Okami or Amaterasu 1v1, and if anyone brings up Rivalry Rumble they're getting kicked right in the nuts. It was somewhat in doubt early on, but Okami was able to take advantage of FF9's horrible day vote to secure getting over 40%. Had this day vote been there in round 1, Kingdom Hearts probably would have won. But it wasn't, so we saw FF9 \> Okami instead. I'm still floored by FF9 winning a day vote in round 1, but you won't get any complaints from my end. It's always a good contest when FF9 makes it to round 3. ### Ctes' Analysis This match was pretty much decided pre-contest, we just didn't know for certain which game would win it, only that it would be the bottom option. That said, it Okami actually amazes me. I suppose it's just the kind of game GameFAQs likes. It's a late Playstation 2 game, though early Wii game, but is not part of any already existing franchise. I'm amazed it has held up as well as it has. It's round 1 victory was so convincing that an outside shot at an upset today was briefly considered by some Board 8'ers, even if no one would've bet on it probably. It didn't come close, but this isn't a bad performance. Final Fantasy IX is truly legit these days having risen like crazy. Five years ago, Kingdom Hearts would've probably taken care of it without struggling too much. Final Fantasy IX would ultimately stand no chance next round, but becomes the last Final Fantasy game to join round 3. Not bad! It could've had a fun run elsewhere in the bracket, but I'm not gonna complain about this one, because it gave us a fantastic round 1 match that I really appreciate we got. There is no longer any doubt that it has exceeded Final Fantasy VIII and it honestly looked very close to Final Fantasy X, a game it got destroyed by last time, even considering SFF. It might still lose the rematch, but with its strength boost and general lack of SFF, and the fact that PS1 games has looked so much better than PS2 games, it probably wouldn't be by nearly as much. I must admit, I really don't understand the boost of strength it has gotten. Why is it suddenly viewed as such a fantastic game? What made the difference? What about it was not appreciated at first, but is now viewed as fantastic? I don't get it. The biggest disappointing for me playing it, was that it had incredible lackluster characters compared to its precedents and I don't think anything else made up for it. In my opinion, nothing makes it stand out much, but Board 8 has named it their favorite game in the whole contest if What Would Board 8 Choose is good enough to represent our tastes, which is probably sadly is. It's not a bad game, but I truly don't understand it's suddenly viewed as fantastic here. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6132&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=82) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (14)Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest vs (6)Fire Emblem: Awakening 2015 _source: (14)Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest vs (6)Fire Emblem: Awakening 2015 (revid 84373)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, November 25, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 83 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 25, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Donkey Kong Country 2 - 47.73% 23 for - 66 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong Country 2 - 21.94% Even though Donkey Kong Country 2 pulled off one of the best upsets of round 1, in our closest wire-to-wire match ever, Fire Emblem was the favorite in round 2. Donkey Kong's failures in debated matches are well-documented, and his failures against Nintendo are also well-documented. Let's not forget that Donkey Kong is the original reason we have something called Same Fanbase Factor in the first place: DKC2 fans were hoping for a win here, but they all knew it was hope at best given DK's contest history. Also worth noting here is Fire Emblem Awakening is a reasonably strong game, and is likely the strongest game in the Fire Emblem series. For that reason, Fire Emblem was the heavy Oracle favorite. When the match finally started and DKC2 closely won the board vote, there was much rejoicing. There are DKC series fans that have hoped for years to see something from the series make it into round 3 of a contest. Unfortunately Awakening was recovering before the freeze, so DKC2's 50 vote board vote lead shrunk to 33. People kind of figured the match was over at this point. As fate would have it, the match actually was over at this point, but not in Fire Emblem's favor. Donkey Kong started increasing his lead with constant updates in the 50-55% range, and kept it moving overnight. Fire Emblem made one small push during the dead zone when it cut 50 votes, but DKC2 easily recovered. When the morning vote hit and easily favored DKC2, the match was dead and over. Donkey Kong Country 2 was finally making round 3 of a contest, and it won two close matches to do it. The final number here may have been 52-48, but the match was never truly in doubt. Given Donkey Kong's propensity to choke in close matches, winning two of them was some weird contest alternate universe. DKC2 making it to round 3 was one of the best stories of this entire contest, especially given how debated this fourpack was pre-contest. It could have potentially been SFFd into the ground by the other three games it shared this fourpack with. Not only did DKC2 resist the old Nintendo SFF bugaboo, but it won. Twice. In close matches. Donkey Kong's reputation won't be totally erased by this contest, but these two wins sure help erase a lot of it. There was even a reasonable debate to be had with the DKC2/SotN match, which would have been unheard of before this contest. Congrats to Donkey Kong for finally pulling one off. ### Ctes' Analysis As someone who had Fire Emblem: Awakening going to round 3, this was a major disappointment. Awakening looked so good to win this match after the first round, but turns out Super Mario Maker is just ridiculously weak even for a Wii U game. I am actually a bit surprised that Xenoblade is apparently the stronger game of it and Awakening. I know it was the favorite to go to round 3, but I expected Awakening to be stronger due to being part of a much more established franchise. Maybe things would've been different if Shulk hadn't gotten Smash exposure and Xenoblade Chronicles X wasn't right around the corner. I get that Xenoblade is generally better received of the people that played both, but I thought more people would know and care for Awakening. That would make it do better on Donkey Kong Country 2 than Xenoblade, which would mean winning this match, as the other one was very close. It did not happen though! This match is also pretty close, but Awakening was never really in it. DKC2 rushed off to get a good lead. Awakening did make some cuts and in the deadzone seemed like it would make a run for this. Even if it did though, it was pretty clear DKC2 would take it back in the morning, but it didn't even have to wait until then. Awakening failed to get DKC2 much below the 400 lead difference at any point. Once the morning came it never really looked back. Once again we got confirmed that it really is the Year of SNES. It seemed clear in 2009 that Donkey Kong Country 2 was weaker than its prequel and its prequel was really darn weak. In this contest it's also pretty clear that Donkey Kong Country 2 is the bottom of the barrel (get it) when it comes to SNES games, but the bottom is still really good this time around. Donkey Kong Country 2 was just at the right place in bracket to advance a couple of rounds and also end up looking really good like the rest of the SNES collection. It was screwed in the next round, but most people expected it to look great going out in round 3 with its performances in the first two rounds. I love Awakening, but seeing some appreciation for the best Donkey Kong game is nice. Diddy Kong really does not choke like his father does! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6133&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=83) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Banjo-Kazooie vs (2)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2015 _source: (7)Banjo-Kazooie vs (2)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2015 (revid 84374)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, November 25, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 84 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, November 25, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 61.94% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 57.43% There was a reasonable amount of hype pre-contest for a Banjo \> Castlevania upset, but given the round 1 performances the winner of this match was rather obvious. The oracle agreed and gave 100% support to Castlevania, and only 11 gurus picked Banjo here. I'm not sure where the hype came from given contest experts all picking Castlevania, but it was definitely there. At least the trends were funny, as in Banjo-Kazooie being at 44% early before bleeding a bunch of percentage and giving Castlevania a comfortable 61-39 win. Banjo-Kazooie having virtual joke trends is pretty silly to think about, but the trend is definitely there for whatever reason. For Castlevania, it was yet another contest where gamers proved just how respected this game is. Beating Banjo this easily while DKC2 was only sitting there upsetting Xenoblade and Fire Emblem Awakening clearly meant Castlevania was on track to win a third match this contest. Symphony of the Night has made it to round 2 in every contest it's been in, on top of winning a match in the series contest and Alucard having noted contest success. Given how this game really hasn't sold much, it's really cool how renowned it is on the internet for being one of the best games out there. I actually played Symphony of the Night because of the 2004 contest, and you can definitely throw my hat into the "one of the best games ever made" pile. At some point I should make a list of games I've played because of these contests, but it would be rather long and this writeup probably isn't the place. ### Ctes' Analysis For a match that looked like a hot upset chance pre-contest this is a pretty disappointing result. Even if their was a clear favorite here, a game shouldn't go below 40% if it was thought it could pull an upset. That said, I don't think it's particularly bad, because on my head, Banjo-Kazooie was never going to be in this match. It was always clear to me that Symphony of the Night would go through here. I think the prime argument for Banjo-Kazooie advancing was that people expected the it to be the Year of Nintendo 64 and that would give Banjo-Kazooie the needed push to win. Well, this actually fails to begin with, because if that was the era everybody was extremely nostalgic about, then it'd favor the Playstation as well making it a moot point in this match. we only have one Genesis game here, but that game appeared to have gotten stronger as well being from the same era as the SNES. I know people call this NintendoFAQs, but I'm sure it favors everything from the era people were being extraordinarily nostalgic about this time. Playstation has always been a big hit here and it's not just Final Fantasy VII. The difference in strength between these two games was just too great though. Even if it had been the Year of Nintendo 64 and it somehow didn't give the Playstation a boost as well, Symphony of the Night would still win this match. It's impressive that the game has gotten this far from back in 2004 where it was a \#11 seed and barely beat Perfect Dark before getting destroyed. This time it's a \#2 seed and it actually managed to live up to it, albeit in a rather easy division. You'd think that it would be in danger of making it, but it wasn't. Banjo-Kazooie was its biggest threat and it easily disposed of it. Though that wasn't the general consensus after this match. Since a bunch of people had supported Xenoblade going to the division finals when it lost to Donkey Kong Country 2, people had a lot of faith in the latter. Add to this that it's the Year of SNES. I don't think anyone actually expected Donkey Kong Country 2 to win, but people expected it to be a bit closer than this. After all, would a Donkey Kong game on the SNES really be weaker than Banjo-Kazooie this year? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6134&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=84) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (9)Final Fantasy IV 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (9)Final Fantasy IV 2015 (revid 84375)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, November 26, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 85 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 26, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 66.60% 88 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 79.95% One day after Ocarina went out and shit the bed against Suikoden 2, Link to the Past went out there and showed us that it wasn't just Ocarina having problems. It's not that Link to the Past had a bad match or anything, since this fell within the 2009 stats rather easily (or at least, as well as the 2009 stats could have looked given that dumb final). It's more that when you get nearly 90% in round 1, one expects a follow-up performance worthy of a champion. Failing to double Final Fantasy 4 is hardly a championship performance. Yes we all knew LTTP was destined to get SFFd into the ground by Ocarina later, but the second half of the Zelda titans should have done better than this. It's not like FF4 being released 283 times boosted the game, since we've seen releases not help other Final Fantasy games much. There was serious Zelda fatigue in this contest, and the five round 2 performances from the games ranging from "just alright" to "clearly getting anti-voted" was not a good sign for later. Our voters are wise to the LAW meme and were clearly voting accordingly. By the way, shout-out to Allen for FF4 being his favorite game ever and resisting the temptation to give it a ridiculously easy draw. Everyone on Board 8 that's ever run contests can attest to how hard that actually is to do, and all we do is run random bullshit board projects. Resisting the urge for a site-wide contest must be hard. ### Ctes' Analysis Here we have the actual Best Game Ever according to SBAllen getting a really predictable path. Considering it is the Year of SNES, it is a shame that it doesn't get to show itself elsewhere in the bracket before biting the dust and running into something completely out of its league. Nearly a doubling here is really insane. A Link to the Past definitely is a contender for the second strongest game behind Ocarina of Time, but it's also the one elite game we were never gonna find out about this contest due to its path leading directly to Ocarina of Time. In the end Undertale made us learn very little though. The few people that actually believed Majora would win the division were looking pretty bad with their picks, that's for sure. Obviously, this match also says practically nothing about the following matches and it sadly makes it difficult to determine where Final Fantasy IV falls in line with the other seven Final Fantasy games in the contest. It's definitely above XIII and probably about Tactics too, since that got a lower percentage on Super Mario 64. I believe Link to the Past would beat game. It's very likely to be below the four games that made it to round 3, but it honestly seems pretty close to Final Fantasy VIII, of course, depending on the strength difference between Link to the Past and Super Mario World too. It'd love to get some reads on this eventually. Every contest some games gotta bite the dust and meet a strong force early, but hopefully next time that wont be Final Fantasy IV again, so we can see it show itself on a SNES favoring site, assuming that remains true ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6135&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=85) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (4)Dark Souls 2015 _source: (5)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (4)Dark Souls 2015 (revid 84376)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, November 26, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 86 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 26, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 50.11% 45 for - 43 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 42.15% I knew this was coming after how bad the Metal Gear Solid series looked in round 1, but it didn't make it any easier to watch. I quite literally have MGS5 on next to me, and my file is at 270 hours as of this writing. I absolutely adore that game and love the gameplay, and I really though pre-contest that people would love the game as much as me and boost the series as a whole. I picked all five games to make it to round 3, and I really think that could have happened if Konami didn't suck. And yes, I know MGS5's faults quite well. I'm not denying them. But the gameplay is really good enough to where those faults shouldn't matter much. Obviously we didn't have a contest where all 5 games made it to round 3, and Dark Souls handed Kojima's final project a swift and quiet exit from this contest right here in round 2. It was never ever close en route to Dark Souls getting an easy 55-45 win, and I just kind of sat here doing the Big Boss salute in honor of our fallen hero. Eventually I'll play Dark Souls, and I'm sure it'll blow my doors off when I do (it is on the KP Approved List™, after all!). It'll make this writeup look pretty hilarious in retrospect in a few years, but for now? We mourn. ### Ctes' Analysis I know a fair share of people on board 8 took this upset pre-contest and were right about it, but it's still quite surprising to me. I guess Dark Souls is really appreciated! I know MGSV is very recent, but Dark Souls is also recent. NostalgiaFAQs has really hurt a lot of games from around the same time as Dark Souls, but it appears rather unaffected. Maybe people appreciate that Dark Souls is a legit challenge, which is kind of rare these days unless you can choose difficulty. Even so, it's Metal Gear Solid. I think had the series not has the drop it clearly had and had new games not sucked now, then MGSV would've had this match. It was never even in the match. I'm honestly not sure what has caused this huge Metal Gear Solid decline considering Snake's popularity in the character contests, but it might have something to do with today's Konami I suppose. I have still yet to play MGSV, but from what I hear, it's good, but not entirely satisfying with more potential. That's probably enough to give Dark Souls the edge it won with today. I don't have a single doubt in my mind that any other Metal Gear Solid game wins this match, even if they'll probably look pretty bad taking it. MGSV was supposed to give the series a boost. Not only did it not do that, things associated with it might even be responsible for the series decline and it sucked in particular itself even if playrate explains some of that. It seems a bit like MGSV is the FFXII of Metal Gear and Dark Souls was just that much stronger than Bloodborne. While it's a shame seeing the series drop of Metal Gear Solid highlighted, I do appreciate a game like Dark Souls doing well. It has never been mentioned in talks about strongest games of current decade, which is fair in the sense that it's not a contender for strongest, but it deserves some recognition going to round 3. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6136&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=86) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Metroid vs (6)Super Mario Galaxy 2015 _source: (3)Super Metroid vs (6)Super Mario Galaxy 2015 (revid 84377)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, November 26, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 87 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 26, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Metroid - 54.86% 72 for - 16 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Metroid - 45.83% It was pretty easy to see this coming once Super Metroid damn near broke 80% on Call of Duty 4, but even still, seeing this actually happen was a surreal experience. I'm pulling up this list again because it's extremely important to realize just how badly Samus used to collapse the second Mario or Link showed up to face off against her in a poll. (all it took was a game named "Mario" in the poll, any game, to cause Metroid Prime to get third place!) Every contest veteran knows that list by heart, or at least knows of what would happen to Samus against Mario or Link. 77% of gurus picked Galaxy for a reason. We aren't dumb when it comes to knowing our old contest matches. There are other matches where Samus looked respectable in losses, but they were still losses, like the 2003 loss to Link 1v1. Those of us that have sat here for 10+ years watching Mario and Link just beat Samus at will never thought we would see a day where this ever went the other way. Seeing Super Metroid go out there and just beat the absolute piss out of Mario Galaxy for a 60-40 beatdown... it filled us Metroid fans with determination. We finally got to see Metroid get one over on Mario, which was deemed an impossible ask before this match. People may look back on this and say we should have seen it coming, but no. There was no way to see this coming pre-contest, given the history. This blowout was a really big deal when it happened, and it will continue to be a big deal for years after the fact. This will go down as the match where Mario's magic finally and utterly disappeared. There were hints before this, but Mario always had an excuse. The Vivi loss was a rally. The RBYG \> Mario 3 loss, even though Mario 3 probably lost anyway, was "still just a rally" according to a lot of Mario fans. But this match? No excuse whatsoever. Mario went out there and got his ass beat from pillar to post. Galaxy is no joke, either. It made round 3 of Game of the Decade, and had it gotten a better draw and not run into Twilight Princess it easily could have gone a lot farther. Galaxy is viewed by many as the defining Mario game, in a similar arena to how Mario 1 saved gaming and Mario 64 invented 3D. Galaxy is viewed as the game that gave us motion controls. You guys know my opinion on motion controls, but a lot of people like them and it's become a mainstream thing now. We have Galaxy to thank for that. And none of it mattered, because Super Metroid shut it all down. On a personal level, I absolutely loved this. Fuck motion controls, and fuck Mario Galaxy for helping infect gaming with them. On an objective level, this was a clear and obvious example of old games embarrassing new games in a fair bracket. The 90s was absolutely on the warpath this contest, and when people look back on this contest years from now to show examples of just how hard gamers on this site prefer the 90s, this might be the first match cited. It deserves to be, too. It really cannot be stressed enough just how insane it was to watch Samus lay a 60-40 beatdown on a strong Mario game and end the "Mario clutch" for good. Not only did the 90s thing matter, but gamers were clearly taking the "Best Game Ever" title into account when voting. I'm sorry, but Galaxy doesn't deserve to be anywhere near such a title. ITS' FREAKING MARIO™ died this contest, and Super Metroid killed it. and I for one could not be happier, given the game that was sacrificed at the altar to make it happen. Even better than that was how Super Metroid's contest wasn't necessarily over yet. A few years ago, people would view a Super Metroid vs Majora's Mask match as an easy SFF beatdown in Zelda's favor. But this was 2015, and the whole game changed with this one match. Maybe one day we'll see a Mario vs Samus rematch with Samus getting the ultimate revenge of all. ### Ctes' Analysis This match was quite astonishing. I mean, after the insane blowout Super Metroid delivered in round 1, people were beginning to expect this. A few called it pre-contest too, but not too many. Yet this result still came off really shocking. Seriously, this is huge. Super Metroid has never looked good in these contests at all. Link to the Past kept SFF'ing it badly each time, but it was so much that Super Metroid got severely underestimated this contest. But even after its convincing round 1 victory, there were still a great amount of people believing Super Mario Galaxy could take this match. I guess for some, Call of Duty is just that bad, but the main reason people was holding on was probably the usual Nintendo Hierarchy. You know, the one that says Zelda \> Mario \> Samus \> the rest. It carries over to game contests too and it's almost bulletproof with only Pokemon having shown to be completely out of that system. It broke today though! Super Metroid easily disposed of Super Mario Galaxy and I don't even think it can be blamed on consoles only. It's the Year of SNES indeed, but Super Mario Galaxy is from when the Wii was at its peak and it's not like the consoles get make up for this much. Super Metroid might've gotten stronger than we thought, but it's clear as day that it was pummeled too hard by SFF in previous contests and we just weren't aware of its strength. I try my best to give Super Metroid tons of props here, because initially people were taking this as another chance to laugh at Mario, something he really didn't deserve here, because Super Mario Galaxy did just fine, just like any othe Mario game in the contest that didn't have “Maker” in the title, it's just that Super Metroid was a champ. Fortunately, I do believe that became clearer to everybody when Super Metroid had what was arguably the best match of the contest next round. I'm thinking the hierarchy actually never applied too much, at least, I don't think it ever caused such a thing as rSFF. Sure, Mario definitely made Samus look worse than she was back then, but there's no way Mario wasn't just stronger that year. I have no doubt in my mind Samus loses to Vivi too with Ganondorf in the poll. The hierarchy only works in the way that it describes the series popularity overall. Super Metroid looked incredible this contest, but it's also now confirmed as the strongest Metroid game here and SMB3, SMW and SM64 would all easily beat it. Galaxy is good, but it's nowhere near those. More often than not, you can use the hierarchy when having games from the same system, assuming they are the strongest games of their respective franchises on that system. There are very few exceptions to this, in fact, I think only on the NES do I believe it's completely wrong, where Mario is clearly stronger than Zelda. It's still clear that Super Mario Galaxy is stronger than its sequel, which is somewhat of a shame. It's sequel did pretty much everything better gameplay wise and I think that's a very popular opinion too. Even so, it didn't get the same attention of all. The first one was more beautiful and the idea of taking Mario to space was original at time. It completely took us by storm doing the peak of the Wii. I enjoyed Galaxy 2 more, but I do remember being much more excited with the first one. I really hope Nintendo finds a way to top that excitement with future installments, but it's gonna be tough. The Wii was on decline come Galaxy 2, which clearly doesn't help either. The base station wasn't as cool looking, which is your first real impression of visuals, not to mention the absence of Rosalina or a character that could leave the audience with a similar reaction. It's great that Super Mario Galaxy 2 got to show itself as worthy, despite people seeing it as a flaw, but there probably isn't need for both of them next time. Looking back on this match, it makes so much sense, yet we all went crazy when the poll went up. I guess most of us just went with Galaxy without thinking too much about it. Even if Super Metroid was always strong and just didn't have a fair chance, it still contributed greatly to making the SNES look god-like this contest during the first rounds in particular. Super Metroid looked great to day and we were greatful of what it brought to the contest, but the best had yet to come! You gotta give it to Metroid for delivering some real good round 3 matches this contest. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6137&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=87) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Final Fantasy XII vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2015 _source: (10)Final Fantasy XII vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2015 (revid 84378)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, November 26, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 88 - **Match Date:** Thursday, November 26, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Majora's Mask - 67.07% 87 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Majora's Mask - 73.19% Majora's Mask was the fifth Zelda game to make an appearance in round 2, and oddly enough it was the only one of the five that looked really good in its win. Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, and Link to the Past looked decent but nothing like world-beaters, and Ocarina of Time looked horrendous. But Majora's Mask? That game was busy validating Game of the Decade by getting 69% on Final Fantasy 12, and frankly FF12 was lucky to even break 30% in this poll. FF12 is a good game, don't get me wrong, and I cannot wait for the HD remake, but let's not pretend the game has a lot of strength here. It got released too late in the PS2's life cycle and the director had a nervous breakdown mid-production because Square sucks now. Now I don't know when it happened and I don't know how, but somewhere along the line Majora's Mask became the massive hipster favorite in the Zelda series. I thoroughly approve of this. Because for all the faults Majora's Mask had, it tells the best story in the entire Zelda series by a mile. It's not even close. People theorizing that Link is dead in the game tells you all you need to know. Freaking Link. The invincible hero. That doesn't happen if your storytelling is bad, and more Zelda games need to go this route and get away from the childish bullshit. Kudos to Twilight Princess for trying, even if the game wasn't all that good. Majora's Mask being the only worldslayer Zelda title in round 2 made the upcoming round 3 match all the more hilarious. "Out of left field" does not even begin to describe it. ### Ctes' Analysis If there was somehow any doubt that Final Fantasy XII is the weakest Final Fantasy game in the bracket hopefully it disappeared now. I don't think anyone actually doubted it, but I really don't get why Final Fantasy XII got to be in the bracket once again. When SBAllen said the bracket had eight Final Fantasy games, I guessed all of them correctly except for XII. Instead, I predicted Final Fantasy XIII. It's not exactly that well received either, but it's new and it has yet to make the field, so I thought that would make more sense. Of course, it became clear it wasn't that when the sum of the titles was revealed to be Final Fantasy 56Tactics. I mean, Final Fantasy XII is not a great offender to the bracket, because it is capable of getting to round 2, it did, and it allowed us to laugh at the casuals a bit, though unfortunately also builds to the incorrect “Final Fantasy always wins” phase, but it's not that great a game and that's a popular opinion! We probably wont ever see Final Fantasy XIII in a contest if we didn't know. Maybe if we had one a couple of years ago. Majora's Mask looks pretty great here. It lines up very nicely with the Game of the Decade x-stats, which might seem boring, but Majora's Mask actually had a lot to prove after that contest. Many people expected it to have overperformed that contest, it made sense too! Being an Ocarina of Time proxy, not to mention likely getting votes from the darn Brawl haters made sense, and honestly I do think that happened, so maybe Majora's Mask boosted a little bit, or maybe Valkyria Chronicles and Final Fantasy XII fell. Maybe it's a bit of both. In any case, Majora's Mask didn't look like it would be close to Link to the Past, which is fair, because that was never gonna happen. So depsite having a very predictable path, it's nice that it proved itself worthy of its title last time. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6138&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=88) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 2015 _source: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 2015 (revid 84379)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, November 27, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 89 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 27, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario RPG - 58.75% 83 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario RPG - 22.37% This was a rather predictable match for us on Board 8, since pretty much everyone here knew that the winner of Oblivion vs Mario RPG would roll both through this match and the one after, and not face a situation where it could lose until seeing Resident Evil 4. It was also supposed to be our first true 8/9 \> 1 upset, but Mario 3 had to go and ruin that. I always tend to bring up when the casuals embarrass us, but it's important to remember when we embarrass the casuals. 319 people picked GTA5 to win the entire contest -- 5th most!! -- yet all of us knew it was losing in round 2. That's some serious CasualFAQs going on, and was one of those situations that always allows Board 8 contest experts to finish in the 95th percentile or higher. The only entertaining thing about this match, outside of the idiotic "this is why GameFAQs gets fun of" topics (as if we're the only site that hates Grand Theft Auto), was the hilarious percentage bleed by Mario RPG overnight due to not being released in Europe. It would become hilarious and predictable in all its matches, and never really got old. Mario RPG being at 64% at the freeze and dropping all the way to 56% overnight was really something else. Not that it meant the match was in any doubt, but still. Funny to watch. Also funny is the unbelievable Grand Theft Auto whining every time something from that series loses in a contest, but it reached a fever pitch with the next match. I know it technically happened at the same time as this match, but San Andreas losing was a much funnier upset than this one. ### Ctes' Analysis Here comes another point where we really get to make fun of casuals, our admin included, if we want to. I don't think a single board 8'er that actually cares about contests got this match wrong, unless they had Oblivion winning it. This eight-pack was casual murder. This one isn't even the biggest, though board 8 itself was split on San Andreas vs. Chrono Cross, ujlike this match where they were split on Super Mario RPG / Oblivion. When a 1# seed loss was so obvious, you know something is wrong. Grand Theft Auto V didn't become the first \#1 seed to lose, but only because of being a late division and more so due to RBY's ridiculous underseeding. This is the fourth best selling game of all time people! Getting destroying by an old RPG that didn't even release in Europe. You can credit Year of SNES to this victory if you want, but GTAV would have lost this match regardless, so when it comes to Super Mario RPG's contributions to Year of SNES, we'll save them for another round. This is almost solely the Grand Theft Auto franchise having fallen a lot. It used to be worth something in these contests and now it's not even in the slightest. It took a \#16 seeded Dreamcast exclusive to allow GTAV to even match. Had that \#16 seed been given to the original Super Mario Bros or The Legend of Zelda, we would have witnessed another Halo/Starcraft case, except that GTAV would've been destroyed. Had the game come out before Grand Theft Auto became too mainstream for GameFAQs tastes, it could've had a chance in this match with the fantastic reception it has gotten, but it was bound to lose this one from before this contest began. The final percentage of this match doesn't look bad. GTAV has Europe to thank for that. Super Mario RPG started well above 60% with the board vote, but would've had a chance to stay at 60% if it hadn't been for its terrible vote in Europe where it has only been officially released on Virtual Console. Today was a sad day for fans of the Grand Theft Auto series. Maybe the series can redeem itself a little bit when the hate eventually dies, but its strength doing its peak on this site is probably something it'll never get back to and it wasn't even particularly noteworthy to begin with! Even though this match happened only because of GameFAQs newfound Grand Theft Auto hate, it unfortunately served as contribution to the Nintendo and/or Square always wins points outsiders like to come with. More on that in later rounds. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6139&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=89) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs (13)Chrono Cross 2015 _source: (5)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs (13)Chrono Cross 2015 (revid 84380)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, November 27, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 90 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 27, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Cross - 55.07% 82 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Cross - 13.47% Other than Undertale, Chrono Cross winning in round 2 was the lowest prediction percentage. San Andreas and World of Warcraft are casualbait bracket predictions, and almost all of the casuals would have picked one of those two games to win the fourpack. On Board 8, half of the gurus picked Chrono Cross. This is impressive for such a huge upset to be sure, even half of even us thought GTA or WoW would win the fourpack. Needless to say, Chrono Cross not only winning this, but winning it so easily was a huge surprise. It actually had 60% of the vote early, then GTA had to bleed percentage all match to make this look even remotely respectable. Not that losing this in any way actually could be respectable, but still. This match and this day in general gave the GTA series a well-deserved "get the hell out of my contest" beating, and it was met with some hilarious whining from the casuals. This match and GTA5 losing on the same day to boot the entire series from the contest was just classic for a GTA hater like myself. GTA losing in round 2 and enjoying the casual whining is becoming a contest tradition! I've been waiting until this very writeup to bust out this list, and it's mighty hilarious. The casuals should really know to expect GTA choke jobs in these contests by now, because ever since Tommy Vercetti's run in 2003 GTA has done nothing, and often gets bit by a hilarious upset bug very early in contests. Frankly even Vercetti in 2003 got lucky to beat Donkey Kong in round 2, but I'll give the guy some credit there since he was a hyped newcomer. Regardless, here is the list of hilarious GTA upsets and close matches in contests. I'm including close wins, because even those are funny to look at. Look at how ridiculous some of these matches are, then pull a Laughing Octopus and LAUGH WITH ME. It's all so fucking hysterical. (confirmed cheating on Kefka's side in this match) There are some hilarious blowouts too, like Niko Bellic getting last place in a poll with a horse in it. There is seriously no reason to ever have faith in Grand Theft Auto or its characters ever again unless they are against pure fodder trash. Seriously, look at that list. It's ridiculous, especially in 2009 when four GTA games made the bracket because of GTA4 hype (3, 4, Vice City, San Andreas) and none of them made it to round 3. Not that that's the only example, like GTA5 hype getting three games into this contest and all of them losing early, but good lord that series sucks. Both in the games being garbage and in contests. Just pure trash in every way, and I absolutely love whenever that series loses. ### Ctes' Analysis Now this match is the true slap in the face to casuals! As well as the true slap in the face to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. GTAV might've been the \#1 seed losing in round 2, but San Andreas is the main game of the franchise on this site and its losing to Chrono Cross of all things. The prediction percentage says it all! Chrono Cross' run in this contest is hillarious. It's such a disliked game in general. Being a spiritual successor to the fantastic Chrono Trigger, it disappointed big time. It's a fine game in itself, but it completely fails to live to anything Chrono Trigger did, particularly the cast. It's just the kind of game to get anti-voted, but GameFAQs allowed it to beat two huge mainstream games in World of Warcraft and San Andreas. To think that GameFAQs is so much against the kind of mainstream games that are played intensely by people that play nothing else and call themselves big gamers. It's so much against them that it allowed Chrono Cross to beat them with ease! Grand Theft Auto has fallen so badly that it's ridiculous. This is Golden Sun / San Andreas all over again, but even worse for the latter. Who know, some casuals might begin to catch on soon, though that's highly unlikely given World of Warcraft's prediction percentages each contest. It's actually a shame. Grand Theft Auto is a legit good series. It provides entertainment for all kinds of gamers. You can spend hours doing nothing in the game, but just messing around, with or without cheat codes, or you can take on missions and get a challenge. It's great! Unfortunately, it became a victim of its own popularity. Someone might argue that Chrono Trigger's insane boost caused Chrono Cross to boost as well, but that's highly unlikely. The most hardcore Chrono Trigger fans tend to be the ones bashing this game the most for not living up to their expectations from the spiritual predecessor. Chrono Cross might've boosted a little bit from the hate decreasing slowly, but it's mainly just the San Andreas anti-votes and the same for World of Warcraft last round. If you compare these performances to earlier contests, then this Chrono Cross would be projected to win next match, which everybody knew was never going to happen. Be it Year of SNES or not, Super Mario RPG is just the kind of game Chrono Cross doesn't stand a chance against. It was destined to lose next round, but Chrono Cross gained some respect among Board 8 this contest as the game that destroyed casuals the most. It had just the right bracket placement to do well. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6140&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=90) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (6)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 2015 _source: (3)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (6)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 2015 (revid 84381)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, November 27, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 91 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 27, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 2 - 53.61% 69 for - 21 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 2 - 27.52% This was one of the weirdest matches of the entire contest, specifically because it wasn't a weird match at all. Before getting into the actual match itself, look at how these two games performed in round 1. Witcher 3 got nearly 75% in its match, while MGS2 struggled with Resident Evil. By that alone, I'm very surprised Witcher 3 wasn't able to win this poll through its own natural strength. The evidence that it could have done so was certainly there, so to see MGS2 win this comfortably was certainly there. The poll was 60-40 early, then MGS2 bled percentage all match until it won 54-46. Under normal circumstances, that would be a respectable and close match, if not a bit surprising given the round 1 performances. But by this match having normal circumstances, it wasn't really normal at all. Witcher 3's own developers have rallied on the internet to win something like 200+ Game of the Year awards. Some of thosse it won normally, but a lot were direct rallies where the developers asked the fans to vote in online polls all over the place. The fans responded in kind, and now Witcher 3 is on track to become this weird cult classic video game. I'm sure even the most staunch anti-rally guy could at least see why this is a good thing. If you pour your heart into making a video game, you want to get recognition for it. Witcher 3 clearly had a passionate development team and passionate fans, and they took advantage of that to get some buzz on the internet. Good for them! So why in the absolute holy hell did they not ask their fans to vote in this poll? MGS2 only won this poll by 3323 votes, and in the middle of the afternoon this match was still very much in doubt. The Metal Gear Solid series looked like trash all contest long and was just begging to have people rally against it. It isn't like people didn't try, either. There were Witcher 3 fans all over the usual sites, the fan sites, the developer's twitter, and everything else you could think of during this match to try getting a rally going. And while people are jaded about GameFAQs, this is still one of the biggest video game sites out there; a developer rally to get Witcher 3 a run in this contest would have made perfect sense. Yet while the fans were pounding the social media alarm, the developers did not care. It frankly blew my mind, because Witcher 3's rally potential pre-contest was obvious. Yet none of it would ever happen, and MGS2 would back its way into a 54-46 win. A match like this really puts into perspective just how hard it is to get a successful rally going, and really makes one appreciate the ones that do work. Those fans were everywhere during this match, for a game that has a real buzz online, and it didn't matter. It goes to show you that successful rallies are largely about luck, because Witcher 3 might have won this contest had it bothered showing up for a match that it was just begging to win. Oh and that's no disrespect meant for MGS2 and no complaining by me over it winning this, by the way. It's in my top 10. I was just very, very pleasantly surprised. Even now in looking back at this match, I cannot believe that it actually won this match. "Obviously, the Patriots blackmailed CD Projekt Red into not rallying for The Witcher 3." -swirldude ### Ctes' Analysis This match was not interesting to look at, other than laughing more at Metal Gear Solid I guess, but it comes down as one of the most hypothetically interesting of the contest, but let's look at what actually happened first. Some people were discussing the upset here that would be The Witcher 3 winning. It would've been a cool upset too! Sons of Liberty is not exactly the most well-received Metal Gear Solid and The Witcher 3 has been incredible well-received. It took Game of the Year on GameFAQs as well. I haven't played it personally, but it's on the to do list! I do love Metal Gear Solid 2 as well, but I know not everyone appreciates it. Raiden is apparently considered a bad character too. When you look at things like this, The Witcher 3 should win this match, it really should. But it didn't, and it was never going to either. This is GameFAQs! We are very nostalgia and/or haven't played more recent games. It's also that Metal Gear Solid 2 is part of a great well-established series, and even though said series disappointed this contest, it's still a big one. The Witcher 3 is as well, but the first two were not nearly as big as the third one has become. The Witcher 3 doesn't get its popularity from its series' name. I'm not saying Metal Gear Solid 2 completely does, but it certainly helps it a lot. As I just mentioned, The Witcher 3 took Game of the Year here, that really says everything! Without even looking anything up, I can assure you that Metal Gear Solid 2 would lose to at least three other 2001 games, which are Melee, Final Fantasy X and GSC. Now, 2001 was a really good year, but it still says a lot! 2015 was too and recent games in general are great as well. The prediction percentage reveals The Witcher 3 as the overall favorite and we would've guessed so either way, but Metal Gear Solid 2 was the clear board 8 favorite. We know our nostalgic site. Now, what makes this match so hypothetically interesting? GameFAQs dodged a major bullet on this one. Undertale would end up winning this contest by gained momentum over the course of the rounds and within every single round in itself as well. In this match, we dodged another major bracket destruction by rallies in The Witcher 3. The fanbase and even official sites are ridiculously easy to rally for this game. They have done it before and it would take them nothing to overtake this contest completely either. In round 1, there was no reason to contact them whatsoever because The Witcher 3 was facing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth of all things, which it obviously destroyed. Well, they were contacted this round, but nothing happened, which is weird. I mean, usually, most rally attempt fails and that's just how it is, but this one should've been bulletproof. The answer is in the timing. The day of this match was 11/27. That's Black Friday for you! Not even gamers are home that day. More importantly, the sites were contacted on Thanksgiving, where they weren't working / paying attention. They actually responded to someone explaining that they would've participated in this, but didn't since they weren't contacted sooner than Thanksgiving when the match was on Black Friday. We lucked out due to the date of the match. The rally potential in the Witcher 3 was absolutely the biggest bullet we had to dodge and we did. If they had rallied, The Witcher 3 would've dominated the contest entirely. Undertale won, but at least it kept the board active doing its matches with how its trends were. The Witcher 3 would've destroyed competition in boring matches similar to how Draven did it and this time, there would be no Hero of Time to save everybody with only DDOS attacks to fear. People would probably still say “save us Ocarina of Time” or “save us Chrono Trigger”, even though it would quickly become “save us RBY”, “save us Melee” or even “save us Undertale”. It would likely not happen though. They'd be too many, and Undertale wouldn't be able to jump the same anti-gamefaqs bandwagon if The Witcher 3 was the treat. But none of it ever happened, because of thanksgiving. Most people wont even remember The Witcher 3 in this contest. At most, it was just another entrant to embarrass Metal Gear Solid, but there were so many of those that it went unnoticed here, but The Witcher 3 was the game to fear the most when it came to outside forces, but Minecraft, Heartstone, Destiny and even Undertale were considered more, another reason why people doesn't remember. Who knows what'll happen if the Witcher 3 comes back to the field. Maybe if its past its prime, it wont matter, but if the contest comes somewhat soon, well, you never know! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6141&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=91) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Fallout: New Vegas vs (2)Resident Evil 4 2015 _source: (7)Fallout: New Vegas vs (2)Resident Evil 4 2015 (revid 84382)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, November 27, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 92 - **Match Date:** Friday, November 27, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 4 - 60.30% 90 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 4 - 52.10% Of the four matches that took place during this contest day, this was the only match that was remotely normal. GTA5/SMRPG, San Andreas/Chrono Cross, and Witcher 3/MGS2 were all weird for various reasons, but RE4 was always going to beat New Vegas with ease. I suppose one could call it disappointing that RE4 didn't break 60% in this match (and a lot of Oracle players would agree!), but no one really thought this match was some warning sign for the future. Fallout 4 hype was still in effect, after all. Turns out it actually was a warning sign, though that would not become clear until next round. This match booted the Fallout series from the contest rather early, though the obvious Undertale circumstance (not to mention Fallout fans refusing to counter-rally) was to blame for that more than Resident Evil 4 was. In thinking about Fallout getting a relatively early exit from the contest as a series, it was hardly the only example. Since this PCA is loaded with lists, here's my list of relatively surprising early series exits from this contest, or at least series where not making round 3 could be considered disappointing to various people: Mega Man (I'm including MMX and the vanilla Mega Man series not making the contest here, just a crime) Portal Halo Call of Duty (irrelevant on GameFAQs, but to gaming at large it losing early matters) Fallout Half-Life Mario Kart (only because Super Mario Kart absolutely should have made it in) Warcraft Grand Theft Auto BioShock ### Ctes' Analysis I think this was the first warning sign that Resident Evil 4 had fallen in strength, but I'm not sure anybody truly caught on yet. For reference, by far the most people had Resident Evil 4 above this and well over 60%. It failed to live up to what we expected of it here, but its first round victory against Paper Mario seemed quite convincing! Turns out that Fallout: New Vegas and Paper Mario are near equals. Anyway, for once, board 8 wasn't at full force blaming the game that got lower than expected and calling out upsets the following rounds, which is kind of hilarious because for once it'd actually be correct. It's probably because the Paper Mario result was expected. The result today was credited to Fallout 4 hype. The game just came out, the community was very active, it made sense that there'd be at least a temporary boost to the series. Especially if Fallout fans were annoyed that Fallout 3 drew Undertale in round 2. After today's match, Fallout was completely out of the contest despite having a new game coming out right around when the contest began. New Vegas was never gonna win this match, but it didn't seem weird that it would be a bit stronger than we thought. In reality, it was a warning sign that Super Mario RPG would take advantage of bandwagon and a weakened Resident Evil 4 to win the division, but nobody took note of it. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6142&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=92) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid vs (8)EarthBound 2015 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid vs (8)EarthBound 2015 (revid 84383)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, November 28, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 93 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 28, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid - 63.92% 87 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid - 58.70% A lot of people will point to MGS3/BioShock as the true example of the MGS series being completely screwed in this contest, but that match had a weird triple rally going on where all three rallies were against MGS3. But we'll get to that insanity in a bit. For me, the true sign MGS was completely and utterly fucked was this match right here. I know EarthBound showed it was legit against Borderlands 2 and that it has some newfound strength, but coming close to breaking 40% on Metal Gear Solid was just ridiculous. Remember, before this contest EarthBound had never won a match. Now we were watching it beat Borderlands 2 and get 40% on Metal Gear Solid. This wasn't an old \> new thing, either, as EarthBound is only 4 years older than Metal Gear Solid. I guess you could make the case for an insane SNES boost, but even still. 40% on Metal Gear Solid, which is the one game from this series that should be looking good even when the other games all suck it up. When the flagship game is out there performing like trash, you know you're done. It's really bad when some games in the series looked better in losses than others did in wins. This was just awful, and frankly the series needed a lucky draw to have a game make it into the final 8. It seems relevant that virtually everyone in the Oracle overshot this match, and that MGS1 was a top 10 game in 2009. Six years later and we had... whatever this was. ### Ctes' Analysis Today, I don't think even the original Metal Gear Solid avoided disappointing us. That franchise had looked relatively terrible pretty every single match of the contest so far, all five of them, with the possible exception of Metal Gear Solid, but this doesn't look good either. Earthbound should not be allowed to run for breaking 40% today. It was actually a lot worse until Earthbound's terrible Europe vote kicked in. Albeit in the weakest quarter of the bracket, Metal Gear Solid was the favorite to reach the semi-finals. Then you just don't go and let Earthbound break get this close to breaking 40%. Earthbound is a very great game, but the series has been dead for so many year outside of Japan where its less years, but still dead as well, not counting Smash Bros appearances, which probably do a lot. Earthbound has looked pretty bad previously, hence why Metal Gear Solid gets to look bad today. That said I do think it has gotten stronger. This Earthbound doesn't look like it'd lose badly to Doom. It has always had a high cult status and now with little to no younger users voting, a larger part of the voters has played it and almost all probably know it. In Metal Gear Solid's defense, this year has had a couple of SNES games making their opponents look bad, where the weaker SNES games might not win, but still get to embarrass something going on. We saw that with Mega Man X against Final Fantasy X and it's the same thing happening today really. Another thing is that Earthbound is probably the worst kind of opponent for Metal Gear Solid, so it's really convenient that it's not a stronger one. The two games are really about as different as it gets. So now Metal Gear Solid doesn't “only” have anti-Konami stuff against it (which is stupid given what Konami was at its time) as well as of course Earthbound's fanbase. If you're not into the kind of game Metal Gear Solid is, then there's a completely different game to vote for. If the other one was closer in genre, perhaps just being a shooter, the people that doesn't know either might just very well side with the first option, bracket vote, recognizable franchise name or whatever, but Earthbound is entirely different. It probably helps a little bit at least. Metal Gear Solid didn't get to look too good today, but it was still considered the favorite going against Shadow of the Colossus. Earthbound beating Red Dead Redemption wouldn't be weird considering what kinds of games they are, their times and platforms, as well as their genre and it wouldn't even need to be my much that Earthbound would have to win for Metal Gear Solid to still be safe. At this point it was looking like it might just save itself from exiting earlier than expected by good bracket placement. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6143&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=93) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Shadow of the Colossus vs (4)Red Dead Redemption 2015 _source: (5)Shadow of the Colossus vs (4)Red Dead Redemption 2015 (revid 84384)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, November 28, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 94 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 28, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shadow of the Colossus - 61.08% 87 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shadow of the Colossus - 39.93% Of the four simultaneous Division 8 matches going on today, only one was normal. Shadow of the Colossus was never going to do anything other than beat Red Dead Redemption with ease, though one could argue RDR had some surprising contest strength. It pasted Bayonetta 2 before breaking 40% on Shadow of the Colossus, and not many games could pull of the latter. The eerie percentage similarity between this match and MGS/EarthBound got the hype train rolling for a potential Shadow of the Colossus \> Metal Gear Solid upset, especially considering what SotC pulled off against the MGS series in Game of the Decade. A lot of old wounds started opening up for us MGS series fans once round 2 happened, and even after seeing EarthBound's newfound strength this contest, it was so hard imagining it being so ahead of RDR that MGS/SotC wouldn't be a nail-biter. We had years of proof that EarthBound was garbage in these things. Having to rely on it being ahead of RDR in the stats was pretty surreal. I know it would end up not mattering, but you guys have no idea how bad that SotC run was in Game of the Decade for me. Then there was potential to have to watch it run over MGS again. I was petrified of that match and was beyond worried the game would get a bandwagon going and do something ridiculous like make it to the semifinals. It's my most hated game ever, and every contest it finds some new way to piss me off somehow. ### Ctes' Analysis This match should honestly never have been in the slightest doubt, but I can see why it would be to outsiders. Red Dead Redemption has been pretty successful, big recent name. Shadow of the Colossus didn't quite get that kind of status, but GameFAQs really likes it! No one in their right mind that was here during Game of the Decade would pick against Shadow of the Colossus today. Even if it did get some kind of bandwagon going then, it still proved itself to be legit. Red Dead Redemption is like a western kind of Grand Theft Auto, explaining both lack of success here and why casuals might pick it today. Of course, it doesn't have anti-votes Grand Theft Auto has being less big, but being less in itself is likely to mean it's weaker. Red Dead Redemption is pretty decent in quality, crazy game, there is actually a trophy for tying a random woman up, placing her on trails and watching as a train runs her over, which there is no reason for you to do other than of course getting the trophy. Knowing GameFAQs, you should know that Red Dead Redemption is not the kind of game to have much strength on this site, though I do understand not thinking Shadow of the Colossus would be either. Shadow of the Colossus wouldn't go into round 3 as the favorite, but it should be mentioned that it would've probably finished slightly above 60% had it not been for Red Dead Redemption benefiting slightly from the Starcraft and Mass Effect 2 rallies. It didn't appear to make a big difference in this match though, and it doesn't change anything regarding Metal Gear Solid being the favorite in round 3. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6144&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=94) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (6)BioShock 2015 _source: (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (6)BioShock 2015 (revid 84385)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, November 28, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 95 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 28, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 59.54% 83 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 49.22% This match happening at the same time as Starcraft/Mass Effect 2 created one of the coolest situations in this entire contest, which was two Western RPG games rallying their ass off at the same time. Add that to the Starcraft rally, and you just had an overall really cool day going on. It's important to remember that the west rarely gets a rub on GameFAQs; this site is practically a 90s Japanese fan site at this point. So to see the west completely run our poll for a day... it filled the west with determination. For one day. It wouldn't last, and had this rallying begun earlier in the contest we might have seen some very different results. The funny thing here is all three rallies diametrically opposed Metal Gear Solid 3, which was just hilarious to watch, made it look really bad in winning this match, and made the final raw x-stats look totally ridiculous. This match was really the tale of two different matches, because early on this looked like it would be standard fare for round 2 -- just a predictable win in the 60-40 range. MGS3 was over 60% early, and though it bled some percentage overnight, it was nothing major and it was easily able to build up a lead even as Starcraft was rallying. Even through the dead zone and early morning, MGS3 only really bled some percentage. It's when Mass Effect 2's rally kicked off that things got really weird in this match. Mass Effect 2 got going at around 10 am, which is precisely the moment MGS3 vs BioShock proceeded to stay deadlocked for 14 hours. Not long after Mass Effect 2 started rallying, BioShock started rallying. It turned all of these polls into a giant rallyfest, which was cool to watch even though most of it was centered around Starcraft vs Mass Effect 2. With MGS3 and BioShock specifically, the big western push was able to get BioShock an even vote intake with MGS3 for 14 hours. But to overcome an 1800 vote lead, it would need more than just going 50-50. There was one scare for MGS3 around ASV time when BioShock cut off 300 votes over a 2 hour span, but MGS3 was able to stabilize before ultimately surviving and winning the match. Still, even though BioShock didn't win, it was impressive to see it going 50-50 with a game that's much stronger naturally. This was probably a 55-45 match naturally, and BioShock got it down to 52-48 before the match ended. With a better rally, it could have actually won. For MGS3, it was the latest example in a long line of embarrassing results for the Metal Gear Solid series -- two of which happened on the same day! -- and at this point all three games were just waiting to lose. Would anyone have been surprised at this point had Mass Effect 2 beaten MGS3? ### Ctes' Analysis This match is crazy, in some sense hilarious, but as a big fan of Metal Gear Solid 3 mostly sad and worrying. BioShock got a hell lot more than it was supposed to here. It's frighteningly close. Let me first explain the oracle predictions. A single user, nkansas, had Metal Gear Solid 3 winning by less than this, which 52.00% (then Rose had BioShock winning by 61.42% lmao), but everybody else guessed that Metal Gear Solid 3 would win by more. The average prediction probably falls close to 60% and it got 52%. It's an absolute embarrassment. The Metal Gear Solid series had been embarrassed pretty much each time they were on the field, with MGSV even losing a match it was supposed to win, but this one tops it all off. Now, one of the most notable matches of the contests, Starcraft vs. Mass Effect 2, was going on simultaneously and that one was a minor rally war. The thing is, both rallies appeared to boost BioShock. Didn't matter which one of them had a rally going, it was BioShock that benefit from it. The other matches might've been slightly affected, but definitely not very much. Considering the size of the rallies today, it's incredible BioShock was boosted this much, but I guess it has fantastic overlap with both games. BioShock started at around 43% and then boosted crazily for a while. It ot 4-5% coming from the rallies. That's really great for spillover not coming from like Undertale or maybe Melee. Had these two games been just slightly closer, heck, had it been any other Metal Gear Solid game than Snake Eater except possible the original, BioShock would win it, though it might just very well regardless with how the Metal Gear Solid series already disappointed before rally spillover kicked in. Ultimately, the other match settled and BioShock would not make the comeback. Had the rallies not stopped, it would've been a different story and BioShock could've written history. It also would've been hillarious to see BioShock take enough advantage of spillover to actually win a match when no games present on Undertale matches seemed to do so. That said, spillover is somewhat lame. Like, I'm against strong outsides rallies in general, but games just getting incredibly lucky by sharing a poll with a similar game that gets rallies should be something no one wants. So despite completely unexpected upsets being fun, I'm glad we avoided it today. Also, because Metal Gear Solid 3 is a top 10 game for me of course. If you remove spillover percentage, then Metal Gear Solid 3 has a safe win today, but that still doesn't excuse its performance today. People were expected disappointments from the series at this point and it still somewhat would've done worse than the average oracle expectation. Metal Gear Solid 3 should not be considered the favorite going into the next match honestly. Mass Effect 2 managed to look really good today and Metal Gear Solid 3 definitely didn't. Considering Mass Effect 2's shown rally capabilities, that upset actually seemed likely today. Honestly, the best thing Metal Gear Solid 3 had going for on right now was that it would be sharing a poll with a probably stronger Metal Gear Solid 3 game. I think board 8 still slightly favored Metal Gear Solid 3, but it honestly shouldn't be favored today. There would be no reason really for Mass Effect 2 to be weaker than BioShock. The first on proved itself legit and the second one is the fan favorite. That's how things looked at this point, now, take a moment to realize how many probabilities from this paragraph would end up happening. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6145&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=95) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Starcraft vs (2)Mass Effect 2 2015 _source: (7)Starcraft vs (2)Mass Effect 2 2015 (revid 84386)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, November 28, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 96 - **Match Date:** Saturday, November 28, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 54.32% 66 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 45.40% Before getting into anything else, let's get into some round 2 Stars and Turds! Last edition for the contest as a whole, since I don't think anything getting into round 3 and beyond can be classified as a turd. Even if something looked bad. Star of the Round - Chrono Trigger, honorable mentions to Undertale and the Zelda series. I know Zelda looked off, but it was sporting a 10-0 contest record after round 2. That counts for something. Turd of the Round - The Grand Theft Auto series, with honorable mentions to Final Fantasy X, the Fallout series, the Metal Gear Solid series, and Starcraft. Speaking of Starcraft, let's talk about how utterly dumb this match was and how horrible a match this was for Starcraft. I named it a turd because watching Starcraft fail to show up in a rally vs rally match was just asinine. In 2004, Starcraft scored 56631 votes against Halo, 40698 votes against Kingdom Hearts, 41480 votes against Wind Waker, and 48548 votes against Melee. In 2009, Starcraft scored 33616 votes to get second place in its round 1 match, then 21854 votes to get third place and lose in round 2. For whatever reason, Starcraft didn't show up in that contest. In this contest, it scored 24176 votes against Destiny in round 1, and then followed that up with this nonsense in round 2. 21228 for Starcraft in a 24 hour rally match, given how everyone used to be scared to death of this game being able to win any match at will, was unforgivable. I don't really blame Starcraft though, I blame Activi\$ion for just ruining Blizzard beyond repair. I cannot even begin to tell you how awful Starcraft 2 is. Can you believe that 11 years after that 2004 contest, Starcraft would be in a match that was entirely decided by whether or not its opponent allowed rally threads on Reddit? It seems ridiculous, but that's what happened. When I made my bracket, I picked Mass Effect 2 here out of pure, unapologetic fanboyism. There are logical reasons to be sure, but I wanted Activi\$ion to lose. These contests are more fun when you just cheer for your favorites and root against what you hate. I also figured Mass Effect 2 would be exactly the kind of game Starcraft would have trouble rallying against, but this was no time for logic. Early on in this match, Mass Effect 2 rode bracket votes to a very slim early lead. This match was 53-47 at the freeze, and everyone immediately assumed Starcraft would just rally and win because Starcraft does not lose close matches unless it cheats. Mass Effect 2 began to slowly build a lead over the next couple hours, which would peak at 340 at 2:30 am. At this time, Starcraft began to rally. It was hardly a rally on the scale of Undertale, but it was enough to get the job done. Mass Effect's 340 vote lead disappeared before the sun came up, and Starcraft was easily able to blow on by Mass Effect and win the morning vote. There was some resistance by Mass Effect 2, but not enough to prevent Starcraft from trending upward and looking like it was well on its way to a comfortable win in the 52-48 range. But then shortly after 10, the counter-rally started. It was pretty impressive in scale, too, because Mass Effect 2 was able to erase a 566 vote lead in all of 2½ hours. Against an opponent that was rallying in its own right, and that opponent was Starcraft of all things. But once Mass Effect 2 tied the match and started building a lead, things got really weird. The subreddit mods started disallowing rally threads there, which led to the match staying deadlocked for a few hours. But then around ASV time, the mods allowed rally threads, and the combined force of rallying plus the ASV buried Starcraft for good. This match was basically tied at 3 pm, but finished with Mass Effect 2 winning by 977. The lead actually peaked at 1110 at 10:30 before Starcraft made a last-ditch push for the last 90 minutes, but it did nothing more than make Mass Effect 2's final margin of victory a little bit smaller. Props to Mass Effect 2 for winning here, but Starcraft shit the bed. I never thought I'd ever see the day where Starcraft lost a close match where both sides were rallying, but here we are. It's the twilight zone to think about the fact that this match was only decided by whether or not r/masseffect mods felt like allowing rally threads. One would assume Starcraft could out-rally anything, but then again Activi\$ion ruined everything that used to be good about Blizzard and gamers have really noticed. Then again I never thought I would see Samus 60-40 Mario in any realm, yet this contest gave us that too. This whole contest was awesome when it pertained to paradigm shifts, and we got a lot of those as things transpired. ### Ctes' Analysis This match ranks among the most exciting to watch in the whole contest. Most pre-contest discussion in this division was about whether or not Mass Effect 2 stood a chance against the Metal Gear Solid games. I don't think many people considered Starcraft making this the match of the round. Destroying Destiny was viewed mostly as the latter being weak as hell, but Starcraft showed today it was worth a lot. Of course, most of what made this match as great as it was can easily be contributed to rallying. Notably large outside rallies changing match results are usually not well-liked here, but today we had two games fighting with their rallies somewhat equally. This is also the match where Nick officially lost his call powers by abusing them attempting to win a testicle bet. To elaborate on this, Nick and Alec made a bet on the show on this match. Nick supported Starcraft and Alec supported Mass Effect 2. Nick was the one to put up a really succesful Starcraft rally on reddit and then made his trademark topic “When Mass Effect 2 got this all wrapped up… consider it CALLED. That's just not how it works! Anyway, Mass Effect 2 started out building a small lead, showing that it was probably gonna win this match without any rallies, but it might very well just be bracket votes. When you consider that, things didn't look too great against the remaining Mass Effect game. It took only a bit more than two hours before Starcraft began cutting with the rally Nick had put up. It wasn't the strongest thing, but it got the job done. At the 5:25 mark, Starcraft successfully took the lead! This game here, 11 years later, could still pull its old tricks. At this point people already started worrying about a similar run! Starcraft was just at the right point of the bracket to make it. The Metal Gear Solid had looked horrible and the Division 7 winner wouldn't be a particularly strong game either. Due to spillover from this match, BioShock was making a joke out of Snake Eater. This was a major throwback to 2004. Even if its rally powers were weaker, it might still work. Mass Effect 2 was debated to pull some upsets in this division without them. Starcraft was currently beating that game! Of course, it had to win today before another Cinderella run should actually be discussed. It was currently winning, but the lead building was somewhat bumpy. That said, when the match had been on for over 10 hours and the lead was above 500 votes, I think most people considered this a sealed deal. Well, apparently Mass Effect 2 can rally too! Now this is where the match gets truly exciting. I mean, it showed it could rally a very little bit previously but not much. Here Mass Effect 2 had its chance to prove what the series was truly capable of! And damn, was it capable of rallying, in just two hours Mass Effect 2 took the lead like those 500 votes were nothing. A combination of the rally it had itself and perhaps also Starcraft's rally slowing down a bit. Mass Effect 2 looked to have this match completely under control at this point. Then Starcraft randomly fights back and this was the absolute best part of the match. Both games had showed incredible rally strength. Mass Effect 2 didn't even get above 100 votes before Starcraft turned it around down to the 14 hour mark where we get a tie! It was truly intense. Next thing that happens is that Mass Effect 2 leads by 5 votes, despite Starcraft just cutting almost 100 votes off with ease. Mass Effect 2 completely refused to let go of the lead again. The next couple of had Mass Effect 2 leading by 2 votes, then 4, then 16 and then 9. Starcraft would hold it close a little longer until its rally completely died and Mass Effect 2 was able to take off. At this point, it never truly looked back again. Starcraft cut a lot, and actually managed to take a +1100 vote lead blow 1000 in the end, but the match was over. Mass Effect 2 had put up a really impressive performance today! Mass Effect 2 really looked like it could make the division finals at this point. The series has proved itself to be legit, the Metal Gear Solid series had disappointed match after match, Mass Effect 2 had even just shown noteworthy rally capabilities, and those seemed to be pretty brutal for Metal Gear Solid 3 today, when it wasn't even about that. Mass Effect 2 winning in round 3 should still be considered an upset, but people that picked it seemed to have great chances at getting points from that match. It was a fantastic way to end the round. Much more exciting that the way round 1 ended. This is when rallies can actually be considered fun. I get the hype around a game winning unexpectedly due to a rally, but that's never really exciting. Rally matches usually mean boring matches. Sure the board goes crazy but the match itself tends to be boring. Today it was not, because both games had rallies seemingly equal, so they just meant we'd have a close match with quite the vote swings in more impressive numbers that we're used to these days. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6146&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=96) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (4)Final Fantasy X 2015 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (4)Final Fantasy X 2015 (revid 84387)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, November 29, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 97 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 29, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Chrono Trigger - 57.55% 75 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Chrono Trigger - 57.09% Finally, user-made match pics! greatone completely stole the show this year, beginning the this godlike Chrono Trigger picture. He started from there and just kept on rolling, finishing up with the best match pic we've ever had. I made some good stuff myself, including a few pictures that were shared exponentially on the internet thanks to rallies, but I know I'm not as good the guys with true talent. As for this match, it started our format change of two matches per day instead of four since Allen wanted round 3 and onwards to be important, and this match was also one of the most alarming blowouts we've ever had. It's worth noting that before this contest, FFX was the 59% guru favorite for a multitude of logical reasons. Chrono Trigger was on the decline for years on this site, while FFX was a model of consistency. We kind of assumed that Chrono Trigger would have declined enough to be below FFX by now, and most people just penciled in SSBM \> FFX for the divisional final without thinking about it much. There were also the 2009 stats, which had FFX ahead, plus the alarming downward trend of the Chrono Trigger characters. Crono has won one match since 2008 (and it was against pure fodder garbage), and the other characters are basically jokes. The gurus that had Chrono Trigger were mostly picking it out of faith, and most acknowledged that it was the underdog before this contest started. Then the contest got going. With two rounds in the books, it became very clear that Chrono Trigger was going to win this match. It pulled off two of the biggest blowouts of the contest, including the biggest of round 2, while Final Fantasy X looked rather average in round 1 against Half-Life and looked like outright trash in round 2 against Mega Man X. And even with all that writing on the wall, there was no way to prepare for the beating we were about to witness. I know LOL X-stats and all that, but 51-49 in the stats doesn't turn into a near doubling by accident. If you check the oracle, almost everyone undershot Chrono Trigger by a lot. It was tough to be psychologically ready for this, even among the people predicting the match in real-time. So when the match started and Chrono Trigger had a doubling on Final Fantasy X, the place freaked out. Then the second update hit, and Chrono Trigger went up by two whole percentage points. It was right about here where people were quite literally calling this contest over. An LFFd FFX was worth 35% on Ocarina in the 2009 stats. Chrono Trigger was over that with ease 10 minutes in, and threatened to make this a whole lot worse. It would ultimately settle down, thanks to things like dead zones and slow Chrono Trigger day votes, but the damage was already done. This match caused a ton of wildfires, most notably people thinking Chrono Trigger would win the entire contest. Even now, people are putting adjusted stats out there with Chrono Trigger, not Undertale or Ocarina or Melee, as the kingpin. People thought for good reason that CT at this power level could have easily beaten Melee, then FF7, then whatever came out of the Mario gauntlet, then Ocarina in the final due to the bandwagon effect. I personally find all that to be a bit dumb, but hey, not my adjustments. yoblazer said this best in the stats topic and I 100% agree: contests don't work like that anymore. Every match is its own match, and stats no longer matter. For those who know my opinion on stats making things too easy, you can extrapolate that out into why I think our newfound age of rally dominance is a good thing. This match also cemented FFX as the turd of the contest, or at least one of them. I don't bother with stars and turds past round 2 since I don't like disrespecting anything that wins twice, but FFX pretty much stunk up the place here. I think a lot more went into this match than Chrono Trigger simply going nuts. FFX just went into the tank this contest, there was a massive old \> new theme going on, and I really think there was a huge contingency of voters that took the contest's title into account when voting. Lastly, can this match finally convince people to stop trusting Final Fantasy X? I feel like that game disappoints people every year, and in thinking this I whipped up yet another LIST™. This one is the list of Final Fantasy X choke jobs. This is only a list where FFX was expected to win or have a close match; close wins are not included here. That's 23 examples of choke jobs. Twenty-three. When will people learn to stop trusting this game? Tidus beating Shadow the Hedgehog in 2004 is the last time that game has won a debated match. Everything since has been either an obvious win where there is no way it could have lost, a loss, or an early blowout. No, the 2009 games contest does not count as FFX having a good contest. That contest was divisions by era, and it got perhaps the luckiest draw of that entire contest. Ocarina quite literally carried FFX into the final (which began one round after Melee utterly destroyed it), where it proceeded to get last place. There is not a doubt in my mind that Melee would easily break 55% on FFX these days, if not 60%. When that happens, FFX fans will be SHOCKED AND AMAZED. And no, FFX would not have beaten Melee if that was the Game of the Decade final. That Majora's Mask was able to rally past FFX as a form of Melee Revenge proves this, not to mention what Melee did later on in this very contest. The other thing is I vividly remember people being SHOCKED AND AMAZED during every single one of these matches. It's really time to stop having any faith in that game whatsoever; people clearly see it as the beginning of the end of Square and vote accordingly. The game is simply not that strong, but people put an inordinate amount of faith in it every single contest season. Stop that. It's going to disappoint you and lose every single time. If all these HD remakes couldn't help it, nothing will. It's over. FFX is done. ### Ctes' Analysis Today, casuals got to murder Board 8 completely and hilariously. As a casual, you look at this match and see the overall \#1 seed facing the \#4 seed of this division. Then you don't think much more about that. Board 8 and other experts remember the 2009 contest though. The contest where Chrono Trigger lost to Super Mario 64 twice to face a round 3 exit and where Final Fantasy X made the finale. And despite taking huge advantage of the Ocarina of Time/Melee/RBY collision to reach the finale, that was still a lot more impressive than what Chrono Trigger came up with. Final Fantasy X also looked very impressive in 2010 where it seemed to actually be stronger than Melee for once. Chrono Trigger always stood a chance in board 8's eyes, but there was solid reasoning to pick Final Fantasy X. Then this happens. Not only did Final Fantasy X not win this match, it didn't even get close, in fact it got destroyed. This result is insanity. I mean, Chrono Trigger impressed greatly in the first two rounds and Board 8 had definitely changed their mind on this one, but for Chrono Trigger to nearly double here is crazy. GameFAQs really loves it! I guess for once you could've actually used the list and the seeding as indication that the game would likely emerge victorious in debatable matches, but this match had 45992 votes, the list had about 2000 people participating and people nominating were not at all this many either. You wouldn't expect such things to be that great representation for everybody that visits the front page. They never are! Nick's rallies on the Facebook page had so few likes too, that while they might contribute, they do in no way explain this insane blowout. I'm a huge fan of Final Fantasy X. It's my second favorite game of what is one of my favorite franchises losing only to my favorite game of all time. It's probably a top 10 game for me too. Absolutely fantastic set of characters, cast chemistry, gameplay, story etc. The ending is probably the best ending to any video game. That said, Chrono Trigger is my actual second favorite game. Seeing that redeem itself to 2004 strength in beyond is incredibly satisfying. Final Fantasy X probably dropped a little bit, but the reasons for its seemingly poor performances this contest probably says a lot more about its SNES opponents. I'll contribute 90% of this blowout to Chrono Trigger's newfound insane strength. At this point of the contest, Chrono Trigger should be considered the strongest game on the site before outside forces interject. It should also be considered the big favorite against Melee and the favorite against the redeemed Final Fantasy VII too. No one doubted it'd suffer defeat to Undertale if RBY failed against it, because Chrono Trigger wouldn't be able to compete with rallies, but it was actually being discussed if Chrono Trigger could best Ocarina of Time in a match with Ocarina of Time's strongest argument probably being that Zelda drones would find support for it if needed. On GameFAQs strength alone, Chrono Trigger looked like the king. After Crono flopping year after year from the 2005 finale and onwards except perhaps riding on SFF to the finale 2008, it's really nice seeing his game not only be strong again, but perhaps being the best. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6147&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=97) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (10)Kingdom Hearts II 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (10)Kingdom Hearts II 2015 (revid 84388)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, November 29, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 98 - **Match Date:** Sunday, November 29, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Melee - 58.79% 85 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Melee - 39.55% Hey remember last round when Chrono Trigger beat the hell out of its competition while its pending opponent looked like trash? It's almost like we had a rehash of that, and the percentages were actually a bit eerie. In round 2, Final Fantasy X only got 55.48% on Mega Man X. Not a match that was ever going to be in doubt, but that's about as bad as one can look in a match that was a guaranteed win. Then this match happened, and Melee finished with only 55.3% on Kingdom Hearts 2. The obvious side note here is KH2 would beat MMX 1v1, so hey more proof of Melee \> FFX. Like Hulk Hogan in the Yappapi Indian Strap Match, I will never stop. This match wasn't so bad for Melee at the beginning, as it was over 60% early. But this was also the match that showed us just how hilarious Melee's trends are. It's practically joke trends. That game loves to dominate early, then fall of a cliff before recovering during the day vote. Well in this match, it had over 60% early, then fell off a cliff until ending the match at 55-45. Kingdom Hearts 2 got several cuts during the match, went out like a champ, and completely spelled the death of Super Smash Bros. Melee against Chrono Trigger. I won't even front and pretend that match wouldn't have been a thorough annihilation were it a fair match. It would have been a miracle had Melee broken even 40%. All the evidence was there after KH2 completely embarrassed Melee here in round 3. We know what eventually would happen, but I do want to make sure to give Chrono Trigger its props before completely burying it. If you think FFX's choke job list is awful, wait until you see that one. No game has been involved in more controversy, close matches, or general insanity on this web site than Chrono Trigger. By the way I've gotten some questions about why I call non-rally matches "fair" when I'm pro-rally. It's the Magic player in me. In that game, people differentiate between fair decks and unfair decks by whether or not there's interaction between the two players. If one player can run a deck where the opponent does not even remotely matter and winning depends entirely on whether or not one's deck can go off, it's considered an unfair deck because there's no interaction. The short of it is combo decks are called unfair, because people are whiny-ass crybabies. ### Ctes' Analysis This match went pretty much as you'd normally expect. Kingdom Heart II was never going to stand a chance at winning today, but it was expected to look pretty good going out, and it did! A bunch of people in the oracle guessed Melee to finish significantly better than this, but that was after seeing it rallying against GSC in a match is was already winning last round. GSC is expected to be stronger than Kingdom Hearts II, so naturally, if Melee broke 60% on that it should do better here. It's pretty solid reasoning, but such things are terribly hard to predict. Today, there would be no rallies for Melee, which is really weird. You'd start wondering if they simply feared GSC rallies and didn't fear any for Kingdom Hearts II, if they just forget or what happening. We're still wondering about that btw. Melee's rally against GSC is one of the weirdest things post-contest, because there is no clear explanation of what happening there. It's nice to see Kingdom Hearts II not getting buried in rallies and look good going out. Makes the series look good in the end despite the first game losing its round 1 match. As for the division finals, Melee had been the board favorite before the contest started. There was reason to believe Melee could pull it of too even with Chrono Trigger destroying Up Your Arsenal and Dragon Quest VIII. However, with how Chrono Trigger annihilated Final Fantasy X as this match went on, I don't think a single person believed Melee stood a chance there. Let's look at it this way; who would you pick in a match between Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts II? I don't think anybody would side with the latter in that one. Did Chrono Trigger SFF Final Fantasy X? It'd make sense there's be some SFF in that match, but consider how little SFF we've had this contest and how different those two games actually are. Today, Melee looked to be something Chrono Trigger would run over before it got to play with the real big names. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6148&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=98) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VI vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2015 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VI vs (4)The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2015 (revid 84389)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, November 30, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 99 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 30, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VI - 55.67% 77 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VI - 35.89% Some nutjob actually sent me a PM recently with some ridiculous 2398764 word defense of Wind Waker (numbers approximate), which I only skimmed. When you're on social media a lot, you learn to avoid and spot idiots very quickly. So when I see someone defend Wind Waker with things like "it made Nintendo's business practices better", "the graphics are the best in the series", and "the gameplay is good because cheap enemies like Stalfos and Dark Link, enemies you could only defeat with luck, were toned down or removed", I know I don't need to bother taking anything said by such a clown seriously. I was actually going to save all this until I was less busy, read it in full and give a proper rebuttal, but then the moron sent me another PM on Christmas with the typical "oh you didn't respond, obviously I win" garbage. If there was ever something or someone that proved every single point I've made about Wind Waker over the years, this was it. That game ruined Nintendo, because they dumbed everything down for the lowest common denominator like whoever that idiot was. It actually worked for some reason, and between Wind Waker and the DS, Nintendo has not recovered. Now we have people who are so dumb that they think people should drop everything they're doing during the holidays to respond to their manic nonsense. First and foremost, this is the cheapest enemy in the history of Zelda: Anyone calling Stalfos or Dark Link in Ocarina of Time only beatable by luck would shit their diapers if they tried to play though Zelda 2. Guys like me and transience, true old-school gamers who revel in difficult games and really enjoy a challenge, laugh at Ocarina's version of Dark Link. We laugh at Ocarina's difficulty in general, but hey. The other thing here is while graphics are subjective, certain things are objectively idiotic. Wind Waker's ocean overworld is idiotic, and that ungodly moronic Tingle Triforce shit is unreal. Know why every Nintendo game has forced fetch quest bullshit now? Wind Waker, and the people who actually thought Tingle's garbage was good. I'd go farther, but you get the idea. Wind Waker is shit, and this match was so far beyond justice that I can't even find the proper words to describe how necessary this match was for the gaming world. There was a lot of debate surrounding this match, mainly because of people with Wind Waker PTSD like me who were petrified of it winning this match and people actually thinking it was somehow a better game than Final Fantasy 6. Final Fantasy in general doesn't beat Zelda in debated matches. But this was a contest loaded with good results and gamers really getting it right. We saw Samus beat Mario. We saw Starcraft lose a rally war. We saw Metal Gear Solid beat Shadow of the Bad Controls. And we saw mother fucking Final Fantasy 6, one of the five best games ever made, bury that piece of absolute trash. The match was close by the numbers, don't get me wrong, but it was never truly in doubt. Wind Waker made one threat to win this match, which was an update early on where it cut 50 votes. Beyond that, this was a perfectly comfortable and perfectly boring 54-46 win. No Zelda day vote magic, no FF6 day vote collapse. None of it. Just an all-time great game beating the shit out of all-time piece of sewage. Wind Waker was the first Zelda game to lose in this contest, which was very fitting. It's the worst game in that series (the CD-i games are at least in the "so bad they're funny" camp), one of the worst games ever made, and had no business even threatening to beat Final Fantasy 6. Thank you based GameFAQs voters for making the right decision here. Fuck Wind Waker for ruining a company I once loved, and the lowest common denominator types who defend it as a great new direction for Nintendo can screw off, too. Go pretend trash like Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, Linkle, Link's Crossbow Training, Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, and every other cash grab piece of garbage is good. Real gamers like me will continue playing and enjoying real games. ### Ctes' Analysis This match result is quite spectacular. Final Fantasy VI was always the favorite going into this match, being the only Final Fantasy \#1 seed and even further more when it became clear it was the Year of SNES, but it never felt right to just write this match off from the start. It never feels right to pick the Final Fantasy game in a debated match against a Zelda a game and it hasn't felt right since 2005 really. Since this was expected to be close, you couldn't help but worry that the Zelda game would triumph, even if it is Wind Waker, seemingly the weakest of the 3D Zelda games (that are in the contest of course). Final Fantasy VI now finally had it prove itself before it could face the poll of the day rematch. When the match started, Final Fantasy VI quickly took a solid lead, being more than 50 votes ahead at the freeze and it more than doubled that the next update. Then it slowed down a bit making it clear who was the board favorite as well as who had brackets, if there was somehow any doubt about that. Still slowing down, it had a 200 vote lead after half an hour, almost exceeding what the biggest comebacks have been able to pull. Then a crazy update happened. Wind Waker cut 49 votes. This made the stats topics go crazy. Had Wind Waker just cut a little bit, then no worries, Final Fantasy VI was never gonna go a full match without that happened, but 49 votes in one update seemed really sudden. The next update Wind Waker cut off 8 more votes, nothing much, but still a cut. Perhaps these two updates should just have been balanced better, it was reasonable to worry a bit if you wanted Final Fantasy VI to win. But it takes three updates for a trend and the next update, Final Fantasy VI gained 20 votes, followed by 43, making Wind Waker's attempt totally irrelevant. Final Fantasy VI never looked back after that. It's not Wind Waker never cut again, but Final Fantasy VI would just take it back next update, essentially building its lead until the match ended. Nobody worried about it again and most people stopped paying attention a few updates after the early attempt from Wind Waker. But a result like this almost never happens! When is the last time a Zelda/Final Fantasy match where the loser broke 45% had the losing game being Zelda? That would the answer. Furthermore, the only other two times it has happened is when Final Fantasy VII beat Ocarina of Time in 2004 and when Cloud beat Link in 2003, both at the peak of Final Fantasy VII's popularity. It's been so long since it happened, that it feels incredibly refreshing to see again! Even if might've taken a combination of NostalgiaFAQs and Year of SNES for it to happen, it happened! Final Fantasy VI looked to lose easily next match, but it at least contributed to Final Fantasy's victories against Zelda before going out. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6149&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=99) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. for Wii U vs (2)Final Fantasy VII 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. for Wii U vs (2)Final Fantasy VII 2015 (revid 84390)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, November 30, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 100 - **Match Date:** Monday, November 30, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 65.98% 84 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 68.81% This was our first uninteresting match of round 3, which bummed me out a little. I love Final Fantasy 7 and wanted it to win, don't get me wrong, but Smash U deserves more love. It's unfortunately anchored down by two major problems in these polls -- the Wii U sucks and its name. Seriously, does any video game have a more unappealing name than "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U"? If we had "Super Smash Bros. for Gamecube" instead of Melee, I really wonder if this series would have ever gotten off the ground. It sucks, because I'm positive Smash U has a ceiling because of it and it should be much stronger as a game. Second best game in that series (but it's very close), and now it's getting Bayonetta on top of Cloud recently debuting. I can't think of a single game that does DLC better, and I'm more than happy to buy it all. Not that it made this match remotely interesting, but hey. It was fun watching Smash U copy Melee's trend of collapsing after the first hour, and Allen missed a golden opportunity to give us a Cloud vs Cloud match picture here. It's not like it would have mattered for the match at all. This also cemented that FF6 was not going to upset FF7, even with that poll everyone brings up. FF6 struggled with garbage, while FF7 annihilated a popular Smash title. Pretty easy trends to pick up on there. ### Ctes' Analysis This match wasn't quite as interesting to follow at any point of the match, as the other one of the division and I believe everybody thought it would be. Perhaps if Smash 4 wasn't hindered by a nostalgia heavy contest, being on the Wii U, its own darn boring name and had come out when Final Fantasy VII was at the peak of its anti-votes this could've been a real match. That's so many hindrances though. I'm so sad that Smash 4 couldn't have come out on a better console and with a better name. It would've been such a strong contender in these contests, at least the strongest game of this decade by pretty large margins, a title that Skyrim probably has now, or of course Undertale if outside forces are included. Even people that utterly hate the Wii U appreciates Smash 4 a lot, just ask Ulti! It's brilliant, you don't find better multiplayer games out there. The only thing Melee truly has against this game is Single Player mode, which is better, but that's really it. Sadly, Smash 4 has a much lower playrate, a very dull name and it on the Wii U, so of course it's leagues behind Melee. I think Smash 4 could've gotten the kind of rallies Melee had if not for these things I just mentioned. The post-release stuff for the game has been fantastic as well. I love how they handles DLC and much respect to the creators for not beginning to create DLC until after releasing the game, because that's one of the most annoying things of gaming today and EA in particular are major offenders to that. In this game, you can literally create a match that is Mario vs. Link vs. Pikachu vs. Mega Man vs. Sonic vs. Pac-Man vs. Ryu vs. Cloud. Can we take a minute to think about how terribly unrealistic that would've looked some years ago? Add Samus and Bayonetta to that, it's a dream come true! This game is the best multiplayer I have ever experienced, they even constantly balance patched after the game released. You can't ask for more! But as it is, Smash 4 has a clear ceiling in these contests. It managed to look great againts Planescape, but the ceiling became clear in the following matches. Also, I don't believe it actually made that much of a difference, but if Cloud's recent inclusion could've boosted this game at all, this was the only game Smash 4 should've have encountered, since obviously the people that would be more willing to vote for Smash 4 now than before still prefers Final Fantasy VII. With how big a shame it is that Smash 4 is in the position it is, it's also really great to see Final Fantasy VII be back on track again, not to its 2004 strength, but certainly above what it has been for some years. Every round it has looked a lot better than Final Fantasy VI and this round was certainly no exception to that. Its place in the quarter-finals was completely cemented, where it would seemingly have a huge unforeseen challenge in Chrono Trigger waiting. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6150&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=100) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (12)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 2015 _source: (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (12)Sonic the Hedgehog 2 2015 (revid 84391)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, December 1, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 101 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon Red/Blue - 67.50% 83 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon Red/Blue - 31.81% This match was never going to be anything other than a blowout in Pokemon's favor, but the presence of the Undertale rally coinciding with tumblr's favorite game sharing the poll meant our second straight round of RBYG dominance and insane vote totals for division 3. Had Undertale kicked it into gear a little earlier, this may have ended up only the third match ever in round 3 or later where the winner broke 80%. The other two are Mario beating Donkey Kong in 2002 and Zelda beating Metroid in the series contest, with the latter still being our biggest late-round blowout. For Pokemon to be near those numbers without SFF is really impressive. For the record, this was a 75-25 beating before Undertale took off, so it's not like Pokemon wasn't proving itself a top tier game on this site without the help. But with the help, it was over. This set up what many felt would be the true final of this contest in Pokemon vs Undertale, since it would be the first Undertale match where rallying would take place on the opponent's stronghold. A lot of people feel like Chrono Trigger would have won this contest had rallying never happened, but I honestly believe Pokemon RBYG would have done it. The numbers it pulled off through three rounds were insane, it came as close to beating Undertale as anything else, and I really don't think CT, FF7, or Ocarina could have beaten a bandwagoned Pokemon that late. Remember, we're talking about a no-rally contest so I'm not including Melee in the examples there. Who really would have beaten Pokemon this year without rallies? I don't think anyone would have, and Pokemon is pretty overdue to actually win one of these things. Everyone talks about PokeFEAR, but it's never even made a final. It needs a contest win to justify all these insane numbers over the years. It's proven it can beat top tier Nintendo, so it needs to take that final step. ### Ctes' Analysis This match is such insanity that screws x-stats completely and makes one of my very favorite seventh generation games, Uncharted 2, look way worse than it was. Quite the shame. This match was obviously never gonna be close, but RBY nearly breaking 80% is so insane. Sonic 2 is from the right generation, but it's actually ridiculously weak. Portal 2 and Uncharted 2 are simply just the kind of games to get a lot weaker now, allowing the very weak Sonic 2 to get past them, but RBY is in a whole different league. It's a beast. Today showed that. I know people will credit Undertale for RBY's performance today, and while it helps, RBY was above 72% from the beginning of the poll and just kept on rising from there. Only seven people had RBY above where it started in the oracle challenge and eventually RBY got beyond what even its strongest supporters there expected of it. Rally spillover or not, no one expected RBY to be this strong. Undertale in the meantime was putting up quite a performance against Super Mario World, taking care of it easier than the weaker Fallout 3 as a result of the rallies having gotten stronger and Super Mario World being harder to rally for, but RBY looked like a king in the meantime. It was clear that RBY would be a real challenge for the rallied Undertale. It showed that. I don't think how things would've turned out today, but I fully believe RBY at least wins in round 2 and of course round 1 against Undertale and I actually believe it would win this round as well. RBY proved itself last round, but today was when it showed itself as a contender for the absolute strongest game after Ocarina of Time. Back in 2009, it was briefly discussed that RBY was a possible choice for the third strongest game after its performances there, but it was hard to tell. I think it proved itself a top 5 game at least here today, finally having a challenge next round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6151&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=101) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Undertale vs (2)Super Mario World 2015 _source: (6)Undertale vs (2)Super Mario World 2015 (revid 84392)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, December 1, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 102 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Undertale - 53.24% 73 for - 11 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Undertale - 3.73% "Looks like free exp." This was the match where Undertale showed us its true strategy. It basically sits there and plays dead at the beginning of the poll, then does the spider dance: By the time its opponent actually knows what's going on, it's already dead. Mario World made the fatal mistake of not buying Spider Donuts and contributing to the unification of all spiderkind. Never forget that Muffet was the true hero. She had the most noble goal of anyone! Although to wind it back for a moment, Mario World was well above 70% at the start of this poll and looked to be in decent shape. But much like Fallout 3, Mario World began bleeding an insane amount of percentage overnight. But unlike Fallout 3, there was no illusion of Mario World actually being able to win this match. Don't forget that despite Fallout's percentage bleed, it built up a 6800 vote lead. Mario World barely tried half as hard. It built up a 2400 vote lead a couple hours in, and Undertale starting firing off rallies right then and there. It got the lead down to 2000 overnight before Mario World stabilized and recovered overnight, but the damage was already done. Undertale had found a new form where the bandwagon was getting started earlier and earlier in its matches, to where even though Mario World was building up a lead after Undertale cut 400, we all knew what was coming once everyone woke up later on. Mario World would ultimately peak at 3224 at 7:30 am, and from there the slow downward spiral began. Undertale usually doesn't peak this early and wasn't used to actually making cuts during the morning vote, so it had to get its 8 legs under it during this match and start practicing! These two would stay relatively even for the next couple hours, but around 9:30 it just all fell apart for Mario. The rallies started kicking into high gear, and by this point in the contest everyone knew what was coming. Those 150 vote updates and Mario World's struggle turned into a complete burial, with Undertale quickly pulling in 250 vote updates and getting upwards of 60% of the vote. The scary thing with this match is Undertale took the lead before its best time kicked in. The lead change happened at 2 in the afternoon, which is usually when Undertale takes off. And true to form, Undertale went completely berserk during this time and started pulling in regular updates with 65-70% of the vote. A once-promising match turned into a very comfortable 55-45 win, with a final margin of 9559. Mario World fought valiantly for a little while, but ultimately it got buried like the rest. I think a big reason for this is even though everyone knows Mario, it's very difficult to rally for the guy. So while Undertale got going rather early in this match, Mario wasn't able to counter very well and put up perhaps the weakest effort of any of Undertale's opponents to this point. You can imagine how bad the whining got here, too. Mass Effect 3 was mostly a "whatever" response, since many felt the game deserved it. Fallout 3 got the whining and idiotic threats going, because people are dumb, but even then it was just a Western RPG losing. But Nintendo is sacred on this site, and when Mario World lost and it looked like Undertale might bandwagon and win the contest, people went far enough to give it 0 ratings both on this site and Metacritic. Past that, the whole narrative of "Undertale is ruining matches we wanted to see!" started up, which is beyond idiotic to me. If you look at this bracket in the same way you look at sports (which I kind of do!), that logic makes no sense. You can't get excited about a tournament based on games that might happen; you get excited based on "anyone can win" and rooting for your favorites. Kentucky losing their undefeated season before the final game in the NCAAs last year didn't ruin anything, the Panthers losing their undefeated season today didn't ruin the NFL season, the Cardinals routinely choking in the baseball playoffs after having the best regular season record doesn't ruin the baseball season, the San Jose Sharks regularly choking in the hockey playoffs after having the best regular season record doesn't ruin the hockey season, and Undertale's run in this contest sure as fuck didn't ruin anything. Getting bummed out because of not seeing a potential event is always going to leave you disappointed, but if you just take things as they come you'll generally lead a pretty satisfied life. This would set up a titan vs titan showdown for the division, and everyone felt it would decide the contest one way or another. Pokemon is the game on tumblr, so at least one of Undertale's rally points would potentially be compromised. We saw a lot of evidence for this with how Pokemon exploded along with This is also why the phrase of the Fall 2015 Contest was "backfire rate". I personally think that theory is a bunch of made-up shit that people threw out there to convince themselves Undertale could be out-ralled, so I'll let someone else explain it. The reason why I think it's dumb is because when you ask people to rally, the result is almost always one of two things: a vote for what you asked for, or no vote. A large enough group of people voting against what you ask is a very dubious, negligible stat at best. But some people believe in it, so hey, good for them. Either way, Pokemon vs Undertale was shaping up to be a legendary match. After the match, thanks to an ungodly amount of whining and cheating accusations (some idiot on twitter put out a fake script image to suggest cheating in Undertale's favor), Allen was nice enough to step in and shut it down with a hilarious troll topic. "Turns out that a bot did indeed manipulate the vote." The only problem is that it's just the Twitter account @undertale_bot The account tweeted the following at 9:53am pst: Before this tweet, reddit was providing the most referral traffic that was voting for Undertale. Almost immediately after this tweet, the referrals coming in from Twitter jumped significantly and we saw the first huge spike in votes. You can confirm this yourself if you check Votes Over Time in the poll results (look between 12 and 14). I know a lot of people feel like this rally is done out of spite, but it seems unlikely that anybody could get that many people in on a single effort just to troll us. It's just people who like the game finding out about the poll and coming over to vote. I can assure you that we're very closely monitoring votes. Even ramping up our anti-stuffing code to a ridiculous degree had no impact on the results. It's just fans. This contest wasn't designed to be just for b8, or even just for GameFAQs, but for anyone who wants to participate. There is still plenty of time to try to drum up a rally for SMW if you're interested. Or perhaps you can look ahead to the next battle and plan it out from there. Social media isn't a tool exclusively for Undertale, afterall. SBAllen posted... It's literally in the rules that rallies are okay. "The games have been seeded by a combination of user nominations, popularity on GameFAQs, and critical and user game ratings, but don't forget: This is not a contest to see which game is your favorite, or even which one is the best rated. It's all a big popularity contest, and visitors who have never visited GameFAQs before will be sure to stop in and vote." Allen: Even ramping up our anti-stuffing code to a ridiculous degree had no impact on the results. RyusekiV2: You just can't admit that the code is garbage? Why defend this piece of S game. Allen: You know if botting is so easy that people who never even use GameFAQs can get past our countermeasures that they don't know exist, why aren't all of you guys botting votes for SMW? I mean clearly if our countermeasures are garbage, there's nothing to stop you, right? Right? Generally speaking, crybaby idiots should never get what they want, much like how the radical left should be laughed at at all times. For this reason, Draven winning two years ago was great, and Undertale continuing to win in this contest was even better. Keep those pacifier companies recession-proof, geniuses. ### Ctes' Analysis I don't know if anyone besides Heroic Mario actually doubted the outcome of this match. Undertale had clearly showed itself able to outrally the core votebase and a SNES game was not going to be able to fight back there. Year of SNES only applies on GameFAQs not outside of it, in fact, I think outside of GameFAQs SNES games might do a bit worse because games that are fresh and hot will have the most support. Hence why Undertale won this contest. This one was particularly painful for me though. First of all, in the so called Mario Gauntlet, none of the Mario games would now run into each other, but also because Super Mario World is a top 5 game to me and the game I have the most nostalgia associated with on top of that. This was the first game I beat at the age of 2 or 3 and I played it all the time. I had All-Stars for the SNES too, but preferred this above the NES Mario games. Super Mario World did of course have the lead early on, just like Mass Effect 3 and Fallout 3 before it. However, it was less convincing when it came to percentage. After half an hour, Undertale avoided the doubling already. Super Mario World would extend its lead significantly every update, but it was clear it wouldn't hold up when the rallies actually went rolling. The votals were also sky high straight out of the match. The outside really cared now. Two hours into the match, Undertale cut already and was cutting for about an hour, something it hadn't done in previous matches. It was clear as the day that Undertale few stronger every single round by large margins. However, three hours into the match, Super Mario World stopped it and started gaining again. Not fast and not without cuts now and then, but it gained. All those tumblr users did have school the next day after all. Super Mario World did continue to gain for a while, slowly and steadily building a lead that went over 3000 votes. However, at this point it was clearly not just the passionate teenage users of tumblr caring about this. It was a whole lot more. People still kept going on about that though. Defending the rallies by saying it was just passionate gamers. And while those were obviously still there and we're cool with those, there were also people doing this just to mess with us by now, and I mean a lot of them. Parts of the GameFAQs userbase also jumped on every round, but not too many, it was mostly just more outsiders seeing it. Users like BracketEntry, MWC and ExTha had given us all the bad reputation we needed to have for people to have an even easier time rallying for Undertale. It was also not just tumblr at this point, I think twitter was the biggest source of the rally at this point, and we saw posts there where they were clearly mocking us and shoving it in our face that they controlled our contest. Really sad that such users got to be the face of not only our board, but the site in general. 3224 votes would be the highest lead Super Mario World got. I just explained that the tumblr teenagers wasn't the only force anymore, but this match they made the difference. As soon as they woke, Undertale started cutting. It wasn't going fast at first but it was however a lot sooner than the previous rounds. We knew when Undertale's power hours was and it was clear as the day that it was just a matter of time before Undertale took the lead. While it started slow, it quickly became major cuts. Super Mario World actually looked really impressive doing this time. Occasionally, Undertale barely cut, but it was never going to be enough. It's a shame Super Mario World had to be fed to Undertale this year when SNES games were as strong as they were. I'd really love to see it face some elite games without rallying and show itself. Hopefully next time. As Undertale approached the lead change, a twitter profile named Undertalebot claimed to have rigged the votes. This was obviously just bait, but board 8 actually took it. It caused big commotion on the board with our beloved users being stupid, as they just provided more reason for outsiders to get Undertale to win. Sometimes, we're too easy. SBAllen then made a hilarious topic, but it was unfortunately served as more reason for board 8 to moan and outsiders to user against us. The topic title said that the bot did indeed manipulate the vote, but then the opening post explained that a large source of the votes were coming from twitter, thus it being legit rallying. Nice trolling, but I really wished he hadn't made out stupid users even more angry. We really didn't need that. Though I respect him for actually answering to the case, I don't think anybody changed their minds because of it. If someone believed they rigged the votes before, they still would. SBAllen added that you could just counterrally for Super Mario World, a comment that actually annoyed me a bit, because no, you definitely couldn't. Less than 14 hours in, Undertale had already taken the lead. From that point forward it was just slaughtering. It took the lead faster than last time once again. Still though, it was more than 12 hours. That's three out of three matches that Undertale would've lost in the format we had since Character Battle VIII and until this contest. Just interesting to point out. The rest of the match was just chaos and board 8 looking like morons. It might just be the thing that annoys me the most about all this. A majority of us that care about contests are just following them, accepting what happens and not being babies about it, but a few users completely ruin the reputation of the board, and most outsiders aren't smart enough to think that far. It's a darn shame. After the Fallout 3 match, it was pretty clear Undertale was not to be counterrallied. Especially not when it got stronger each round. Still, RBY seemed like the perfect counter to it. First of all, Undertale fans had greatly supported RBY too, creating some insane blowouts in its favor the past two rounds. But the Pokemon fanbase is also really passionate about their games, so if you could actually make them aware of the upcoming match, it might just be what was needed to stop Undertale. Undertale went into the match as the favorite yes, but people claiming that it was over before it began were definitely wrong. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6152&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=102) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (5)Metroid Prime 2015 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (5)Metroid Prime 2015 (revid 84393)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, December 2, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 103 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 49.97% 45 for - 38 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 42.08% Some people will blame rally spillover for why Metroid Prime took the early lead in this match, but I think it's a lot more simpler than that. Metroid Prime is really strong early in polls, and Skyrim was never quite on the world-beating level a lot of us Skyrim fans were hoping for. That's why we all picked it to lose to Mario 64 in our brackets. The rally spillover did clearly help with vote totals though, which is always awesome! Metroid Prime's trends, and really Metroid in general, are very well-known by now. Wreck shop in the first hour, bleed percentage overnight, and then totally collapse during the day vote. Those ugly trends tend to cost Metroid sooner or later in every contest, and in this contest those trends cost the Metroid series not one, but two major upsets. The Skyrim loss wasn't so bad, but it was Super Metroid's loss to Majora's Mask later on in this round that really stung. Early on in this poll, Metroid Prime was flying high and really looked like it would ride to a rather simple 52-48 win. It built up a 400 vote lead an hour in, and though it slowed down a little bit after that, Prime was still able to go up a little bit more overnight. The lead would ultimately peak at 455 before both games started going 50-50. As we got closer and closer to the dead zone, Skyrim began to slowly pick up steam. It would get the lead below 300 just before 6 am, and we know how Metroid Prime is during the morning and day vote. True to form, Metroid completely fell apart once the morning vote hit. There was minor resistance, but Skyrim was able to catch up at 8:50 am. There was a stall by Prime once this happened, but it was ultimately helpless to stop Skyrim from passing it by as we got farther and farther into the day vote. There was a lot of stalling by Prime even as Skyrim slowly trended upwards, and any hope Prime had of coming back faded when the ASV decidedly favored Skyrim. Skyrim would end things with a 734 vote win, which makes for a respectable 1200 vote turnaround. Without the presence of rallies and only relying on trends, that's pretty impressive. Granted it meant Skyrim was doomed against Mario 64, but we all knew that anyway. For Metroid Prime, it was the same old story. It got stuck against Wind Waker in round 2 in 2004, the day vote plus Paper Mario caused it to lose in round 1 in 2009, it almost lost to Half-Life 2 in Game of the Decade because of having a day match, it did lose to Fallout 3 for the same reason, and now this. Poor Metroid Prime just cannot catch a break. ### Ctes' Analysis This match was semi-hyped leading up to the contest. While Skyrim was a huge favorite before we began, NostalgiaFAQs and previous rounds including rally spillover of previous rounds pointed towards Metroid Prime having a very good chance today. Truthfully, Metroid Prime started out dominating the match full worse with the use of the late Undertale supporters along with the generally great Nintendo Power Hour. Within 5 minutes, it was 85 votes ahead and it continued with insane vote gains twice more. Then Skyrim cut 9 votes, leading most people to believe that what Metroid Prime had was simply spillover and that Skyrim would slowly come back for an easy win. But when Metroid Prime then increased its lead again with each update, we knew we had a match. The cut seemed to slow Metroid Prime at first, but then it got its game back and went up well above 300 close to 400. The vote difference would stay around this for the next couple of hours for the best part of the match. At first, Metroid Prime struggled to actually get above 400 before barely accomplishing it in a great update only to throw it away again the next. The two would then go back and forward a bit, making you think that spillover was about to end and Skyrim would go strong now, but then Metroid Prime stepped its game up, got above 400 and actually stayed there. With a small bump on the road it got all the way up to 455 even. But then it nosedived back down again giving only one update of an attempt to stay above 400. It stayed right below 400 for a while, until Skyrim took it well below only for Metroid Prime to get above again. Had they been this even at a smaller vote difference people would've gone insane. Metroid Prime went below 400 for a single update more until it seemingly cemented itself above it. It lasted two hours only though, then Skyrim started cutting the lead down for real. It was serious now. It probably has a bit to do with the rally spillover that Metroid Prime took the lead by storm, but I don't think it can be entirely contributed to only that. Not when it took Skyrim this long to fight back for real. The board was still suffering from too many Undertale rally topics right now, but I think what made Metroid Prime lose its hold was the dead hours arriving. It's historically a bad time for Nintendo games and Skyrim is just the kind of game that benefits from Europe being the main source of votes. Skyrim was cutting at a decent pace all the down below a 200 vote lead in Metroid Prime's favor. Then it seemed like America woke up to take the match by storm, when Metroid Prime randomly got a huge lead increase. Skyrim took it all back the next update and kept going. Metroid Prime would put up a great fight trying to maintain a +100 vote lead, which it did manage for a while, but when it won updates, they were never really that big, so they couldn't keep up with the huge cuts Skyrim occasionally made. After a full hour, it lost its +100 vote lead for good and continued falling. Skyrim struggled a bit some updates, but on other updates it cut huge, eventually cutting all the way down to an epic tie with 13300 votes each at the 8:50 mark. Skyrim then took the lead and tried to build something, but it wasn't allowed to. After having the lead for half an hour, Metroid Prime took it back with a 3 vote lead, then a single vote lead in another intense update. This would unfortunately be the final time Metroid Prime had the lead, Skyrim started slow at first, but never truly looked back again, actually managing to achieve a three-digit lead in 45 minutes that it would keep for the rest of the match, except for one 98 vote lead update a while later, but that barely matters. Metroid Prime never stopped cutting in pity attempt to fight back, but the match was essentially over from this point forward. Overall, the match provided a good amount of entertaining that was unfortunately overshadowed by another Undertale rally explosion from the day before. Metroid Prime is a strong force in these contests now and ultimately saw a similar run this contest as it did in Game of the Decade. Beating Half-Life 2 and then moving on to lose to the strongest Bethesda game of the contest. Metroid Prime looked more impressive this time, as it destroyed Half-Life 2 and came closer to winning the Bethesda match this time despite higher votals, but ultimately fell just short again. That said, I don't think Metroid Prime is stronger, but actually pretty much the same. It's the other games that changed. Half-Life 2 surely fell in strength here and its Bethesda opponent was not as strong. Don't misunderstand, I do believe Skyrim is stronger than Fallout 3, but I believe 2010 Fallout 3 is stronger than both are now. It makes sense considering everything we've seen so far in this contest. Skyrim managed to get to the point it was predicted to get despite everything it had against it in rally spillover and NostalgiaFAQs, but it was obvious it wasn't going to stand a single chance against Super Mario 64. That match was going to be painful for Skyrim fans. That said, I fully believe Skyrim to be the strongest game from this decade on this site. Of course, if we do get another Game of the Decade contest, it might struggle with something like Smash 4 or a rallied game, but as of now, it's definitely the strongest before outside forces are counted. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6153&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=103) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Mario 64 vs (7)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2015 _source: (3)Super Mario 64 vs (7)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2015 (revid 84394)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, December 2, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 104 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario 64 - 56.52% 81 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario 64 - 50.56% This was one of the more boring matches of round 3. When the most interesting thing to talk about is the match picture, you know a match kind of sucks. Speaking of, holy shit is that Mario 64 picture awful. One of the worst representations of that game we'll ever see. When you pair that with Twilight Princess giving you perhaps the most badass Link picture imaginable, plus rally spillover, it's no surprise that this match was 55-45 early. But Mario was able to recover pretty well after that, and the match pretty much stayed at 57-43 the entire way through. It was Zelda's second loss in a row, a decent tuneup for Mario, and more proof that even when Link loses against Mario, he always seems to look better. I want to point out that this was the only direct Mario vs Link matchup of this entire contest, and Mario won it. 1-0 RECORD AGAINST LINK, BABY! (Mario RPG totally doesn't count as a Mario game! That is obviously Squaresoft's loss!) ### Ctes' Analysis While it will always be a little bit interesting to see a Mario game beat a Zelda game, there was never really any doubt about this match. First of all, console hierarchy mean a lot more than Nintendo hierarchy. When you think about it, everyone looks really stupid arguing for Super Mario Galaxy \> Super Metroid using the Nintendo hierarchy as an argument. Here's also the hierarchy of the series themselves. Super Mario 64 has been included in discussions about what the strongest Mario game is, even if we after this contest probably can conclude that it isn't, and it's definitely the strongest 3D Mario game by miles. Twilight Princess falls below quite a few other Zelda games in the series by quite a bit, including two 3D Zelda games. The thing is, this is games and not franchises, so a franchise hierarchy just wont always work. I know most people knew this was an easy win for Super Mario 64, but there were apparently also people believing Twilight Princess could win. It's true Mario \> Samus seemed weird considering previous contests, but you can't apply the Nintendo hierarchy theory, Zelda \> Mario \> Metroid, for any case where they meet. It's true that this would be the case on most consoles. In fact, the only exception is probably on the NES, where Super Mario Bros. 3 would have no trouble destroying The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros would beat it too. However, when games from different consoles meet, this stupid hierarchy doesn't necessarily apply. We saw this with Super Metroid \> Super Mario Galaxy, a match the board 8 should be ashamed of getting wrong, and we saw it again today. With all that said, I do think Twilight Princess looks impressive going out. These are not bad numbers. It's strong enough to deserve a permanent spot in these contests. Hopefully next time it'll have a less predictable one. As for Super Mario 64, it should easily beat Skyrim, while it's previous somewhat unpredictable path past the division finals had become very predictable, and it would be a loss for Super Mario 64. Because even if RBY would manage to beat Undertale and run into Super Mario 64, a match that was discussed pre-contest, it would be a powered up RBY in the sense that it had rallying behind it and just took down Undertale, which would surely create a bandwagon. Plus, considering how the Super Mario Bros. 3 match went down, it was pretty clear Super Mario 64 would lose to RBY even if Undertale had never gotten past Mass Effect 3. Despite a predictable path ahead with a downfall to rallies, Super Mario 64 would at least reach a point it was already expected to reach and get further than the other Mario games. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6154&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=104) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (4)Final Fantasy IX 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (4)Final Fantasy IX 2015 (revid 84396)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, December 3, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 105 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 3, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 66.67% 78 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 77.77% This was the second match in a row where Ocarina looked completely off, though at least this time it had an excuse. Seriously, what is that Ocarina picture? It looks like Link is giving oral to some blue thing, not playing a musical instrument. Pair that with Final Fantasy 9 getting the best picture it can possibly get, and you're just begging for an underperformance. This match was in the 65-35 range for the entire match, which is a relative surprise given FF9's day vote. FF9 in general had an absolutely amazing contest, from winning the day vote against Kingdom Hearts to blowout out Okami, to helping show us that Ocarina was completely doomed the second it made the final. There was nothing in the bottom half of the bracket that was going to beat Ocarina, but whatever got to the final from the top half was clearly going to beat it. Ocarina underperforming against FF9 was one of the many warning signs of this. ### Ctes' Analysis As you'd expect, the Ocarina of Time match of round 3 gets to be one of the more boring ones. As I've said before, some games just have to run into the powerhouses in these contests unless you want to go back to removing the strongest entries, but I don't think we can actually do that when we don't have contests on a more regular basis. Final Fantasy IX definitely shouldn't be a game to face that though, because the game surely has some new found strength in recent years, where it seems to have become the cult favorite. I'm honestly not sure why, but fans of the series seems to view it as the best game now. I think perhaps it's a natural consequence of the game first standing in the shadows of its two precedents, Final Fantasy VII in particular, then being completely overshadowed by the great Final Fantasy X, which introduced a ton of new elements and visually completely stole the spotlight. I suppose some people looked back and thought “We forgot about this one. It's really underrated!” and games being underrated for quite a while can sometimes have the opposite follow. Now it's overrated. At least I think so. Perhaps it was a bit underrated, but there's a reason it stood in the shadows. It doesn't reach the highs of VII and X nor is it as unique as VIII. Gameplay wise it's really good, but Final Fantasy is very driven by its stories and characters, both of which departments Final Fantasy IX lacks in. It makes sense Final Fantasy X overshadowed it when Tidus is basically Zidane done right. It's a good game, don't get me wrong, but why does it suddenly If It Were Up to Board 8? It lost in round one five years ago! Anyway, it does have solid contest strength now, so for someone like me who doesn't get why its so popular all of a sudden, it's just exciting to see it in action in these contests. It that sense, it feels kinda wasted going against Ocarina of Time, but at least it provided a highly entertaining first round match. It also got to embarrass Ocarina of Time in the eyes of the average contest follower, though I don't think Ocarina of Time looks too bad today. The Suikoden II match was worse in that regard, but I'm still willing to believe Suikoden II got stronger. If you believe Final Fantasy IX is about equal to Final Fantasy X now, then it's not too bad. This is around what we adjusted Final Fantasy X to get in Ocarina of Time in 2009 and quite a bit below what it's expected to get against it in 2004. Of course, it seemed like Final Fantasy X had fallen quite a bit in strength, which does make Ocarina of Time underperform today. However, parts of what made Final Fantasy X look bad was its SNES opponents clearly being stronger. People might underestimate a bit just how much Final Fantasy IX has grown in these things. Ocarina of Time has fallen a bit, but it's probably only a result of being the defending champion. Its anti-votes is the full cause of it I think, so adjust for those and we have the same strength of the game. Besides, it's not like Ocarina of Time would ever be troubled before the final where it was supposed to have a great match with Chrono Trigger, but would likely face a rally force in Undertale instead now. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6155&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=105) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (14)Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest vs (2)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2015 _source: (14)Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest vs (2)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2015 (revid 84397)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, December 3, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 106 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 3, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 56.93% 76 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 39.43% SUBTITLE WAR!! PLATFORMER WAR!! I know Symphony of the Night is technically a Metroidvania RPG, but hey. You know how every year in the NCAAs, you see a low seed or two make the Sweet 16, then they play a team from a power conference and usually get waxed? There are exceptions to this, but usually your Florida Gulf Coast Universities and Valparaisos and Richmonds and Bradleys get their asses whipped in round 3. That was this match for Donkey Kong Country 2. It made a really good run in this contest, but folded the second it came across a really strong game as its opponent. And that's fine. It doesn't change how good DKC2 did this season. It helped Donkey Kong shake off a lot of that choker label, plus 38% on Symphony of the Night really isn't that bad. There were some hopes that DKC2 could win this match and it won the board vote, but Symphony started climbing quickly, got this thing above 60% within the hour and never looked back. Symphony of the Night has gotten out of the first round in every contest it's ever been in, but had never gotten past round 2 before this contest. This year, it got to win three matches before finally losing. So overall, this whole match was a feel-good affair, but unfortunately only one game gets to win it all, so everyone else has to lose eventually. ### Ctes' Analysis No one ever doubted that Symphony of the Night would have trouble winning this match, but people expected it to be a whole lot closer than it was judging by the oracle predictions. I suppose when Donkey Kong Country 2 managed to upset two games it made people think that game was a lot stronger than we thought, but what people forgot was that neither Xenoblade Chronicles nor Fire Emblem: Awakening had the strength we thought. Yes, it's the Year of SNES and without that Donkey Kong Country 2 would've lost to both of those games at their current strength fairly easily, but it's not just Year of SNES, it's also that we're NostalgiaFAQs. Those two games are two recent for out site, we just weren't aware of that pre-contest! It might also have been that Symphony of the Night was stronger than people expected it to be. It clearly is stronger now than then, where it struggled to beat Perfect Dark before easily getting disposed of by GoldenEye. It was also a \#11 seed. Although it was a 64-entrant field back then, meaning that a \#11 seed then would be a \#6 seed if the contest had 128 entrants too, it's still a \#2 seed now. Seeds can be misleading, but when a Playstation 1 game suddenly receives a much higher seed, you should know that it probably has gotten stronger. Despite it not being that era which benefit the most by NostalgiaFAQs, it certainly wasn't hurt by it either and it was clear over the course of the first two rounds that this Symphony of the Night is different from the one we used to know. Of course, it's easy to ignore that when Symphony of the Night was already supposed to win this match, but I'm surprised so many didn't. I don't usually brag, but this the only match I won in the oracle, despite getting closer to a perfect prediction in a few others, so I'm going to a little. I was the only user that did not predict Symphony of the Night to do worse than it did, as I predicted it to do 0.1% better than it did. Only eight people had it above 60%. Would you really expect a Donkey Kong game to have improved enough for it to get so close? It's Year of SNES, but it would take an insane boost. I'm sure most people do their oracle picks fairly fast, in particular when you have so many matches in such a short time, but I'm actually really surprised everybody else had Symphony of the Night doing worse than this. I suppose maybe people had a hard time seeing Banjo-Kazooie outperforming Donkey Kong Country 2 considering their platforms and main characters, which makes sense, but it's still ignoring previous results a bit. Symphony of the Night would obviously stand no chance next round, but although it took a really weak half of a division, getting to the top 16 is a really great accomplish for it. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6156&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=106) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (4)Dark Souls 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (4)Dark Souls 2015 (revid 84398)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, December 4, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 107 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 4, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 65.68% 78 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 59.20% Dark Souls made a pretty good run this contest, but then it goes and gets 29% on Link to the Past and it makes me wonder if anyone on this site has played any game released after the year 2000. It's not like Dark Souls is even a weak game, because it clearly isn't, but games don't just break 70% by accident in round 3. What in the world happened here? It's not like Dark Souls was ever going to win, but man, round 3 is supposed to be the round where top tier games beat midcarders respectably. This was maximum disrespect if I ever saw it. There is some serious old \> new beatdown stuff going on here, and a game and series of respectable strength was given the ass-whipping of its life instead of being allowed to bow out of this contest with dignity. This put a small speed bump onto the "Zelda is off" road, though really it was only Link to the Past that looked like it was in old form this contest. The other ones were off, which we'll definitely touch upon in the next writeup. There is a definite Zelda fatigue on this site, but Link to the Past is the one game immune from it. Unless it's facing a Zelda game from the Nintendo 64, anyway. ### Ctes' Analysis This was a really solid performance by A Link to the Past. It started out well-above 70%, fell below for the middle of the match, but got above again nearing the end. Something that can probably mostly be contributed to geographical trends. It might have helped A Link to the Past that Majora's Mask had a match going on at the same time, a very exciting one too. Plus, if any of the two in this match benefit from Super Metroid being in the poll, it was definitely A Link to the Past too. However, seeing as A Link to the Past did really well from the get go, I doubt the other match made any noticeable difference. It's just really impressive no matter how you look at it. Dark Souls is obviously not the strongest game there is, but it's very well respected among gamers and it's about as different from A Link to the Past as it gets. I still haven't figured out whether or not I think it's a good thing or a bad thing that A Link to the Past was essentially fed to Ocarina of Time. Sure, it did get to make it to the top 8, which isn't bad, even though A Link to the Past has the strength worthy of semi-final spot and maybe even a spot in the finals. However, the path to that was really boring except for the early surprise spillover attack from Majora's Mask, but that ended up not being a threat at all. What SBAllen wanted was sure for the bracket to not be too Zelda dominant by making the strongest of them run into each other. I don't think that's a bad think either. However, when we have gaming contests as rarely as we do, it's nice to get some good reads on all the top contenders and we didn't get that on A Link to the Past. I hope that whenever next time is, we'll get a Chrono Trigger vs. A Link to the Past rematch because that's one I really want to see today. To have an idea on which side of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII and RBY this game stands would be nice. As for Dark Souls, this was inevitable, so no shame for it. Always good to see a recent game from a recent series get this far, although it not have any old games in its way really. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6157&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=107) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Metroid vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2015 _source: (3)Super Metroid vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2015 (revid 84399)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, December 4, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 108 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 4, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Majora's Mask - 56.90% 75 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Majora's Mask - 42.76% I know Undertale's rallying and Undertale in general was the story of this contest, but to me this match was the best match in round 3. Not only did Super Metroid finally get over the Mario hump by demolishing Galaxy in round 2, it was one ASV away from actually beating a Zelda game. And not just any Zelda game, but our Game of the Decade in Majora's Mask. I'm convinced that Super Metroid could have won this match if people didn't want Game of the Decade validated so hard, but I can understand why Majora's Mask was the rooting interest here. The anti-Brawl sentiment and people just loving Game of the Decade in general outweighed rooting for the cool upset. But man this upset would have been awesome, and seeing Super Metroid pull this off just to get pasted by Link to the Past again would have been something else. It would have been a third loss to Link to the Past! At some point I really need to mention how this was the best picture for round 3, too. That might be the most badassed picture Samus or Metroid has ever had, and Majora's Mask had without a doubt its best picture ever. Pretty much everything about this match was top notch, from the background of the games leading up to this, to the pictures, and finally the match itself. At the beginning of the match, Majora's Mask won the board vote, but not by much. This was only a 52-48 style match early, and when Super Metroid started fighting back the second Majora's Mask got a lead of 100, it was on. Super Metroid fought back until Majora stalled and got it to 100 again, but then Metroid went on a rampage to tie it up. The two games then proceeded to be completely even overnight. And by "completely even", I am in no way joking. Super Metroid tied this match at 2:20 am. From that time until the morning vote hit, the lead was never more than 40 votes in either direction and was often far closer than that. Come the morning vote, most people assumed Super Metroid would just collapse. After all, we've seen Samus and her series in action for 13 years. We know how the series behaves when the day vote hits. But in this match, for some miraculous reason, Super Metroid won the morning vote. Majora made a small push to prevent it, but once Samus got going, she took off for the moon. A tie match at 7:50 am turned into Samus building up a lead rather quickly, and it would ultimately peak at 332 later that morning. It was surreal to watch, and seeing Samus beat Link in ANY capacity was insane. Seeing her doing it with the morning vote was even more nuts. When this was going on, people really thought the match was over and started realizing how silly it was for us to see a third Super Metroid vs Link to the Past match. But that dastardly Metroid day vote would rear its ugly head eventually, and the dream would quickly die for Super Metroid. Majora's Mask began to slowly fight back by lunch, and after a very prolonged stall where the lead stayed in the 200s, the ASV showed up and would thoroughly favor Majora's Mask. Super Metroid tried to fight back, but Metroid isn't exactly good at doing that during day votes. Majora's Mask would quickly erase the lead and bury Super Metroid, to the tune of winning by 520. People were mostly happy about this, because people really wanted Game of the Decade validated. Brawl had pissed off this board that much, and thank god for that. Fuck Brawl. It was an anti-climactic finish once things truly got going, but still, it doesn't erase how good this match was. Super Metroid may have lost the ASV and lost the match, but even winning the day vote here was a moral victory. Remember, most people expected this game to get pasted by Galaxy last round. Not only did it thoroughly annihilate a Mario game when everyone expected it to lose, but it was 8 hours and one ASV away from beating a Zelda game. That is mighty impressive given Samus's entire contest history. ### Ctes' Analysis This match was quite possible the single best match of the entire contest. It was not only completely unexpected before the contest began that there would even be a match, it was also unexpected after the past two rounds. I mean, Super Metroid had really impressed the past two rounds, first scoring 80% on a game and then easily taking care of Super Mario Galaxy. That's after looking terrible in previous contests though, even if SFF was involved. Majora's Mask won Game of the Decade, which despite the less strong field is still quite the impressive achievement, and this contest, its performances had been just in line with Game of the Decade x-stats, proving its strength from then was no fluke. I know I've disposed of this theory a lot of times, but again, when does Metroid beat Zelda? Pretty much never. It would be such an obscure thing to see when it's a N64 Zelda, even it's not the biggest one. Then this absolutely intense match happened. It was very close already from the get go up until the freeze. It came pretty unexpected. Majora's Mask was only leading by 34 votes when the freeze happened. It almost doubled that the next update, giving the illusion that Majora's Mask would be winning now, but then it barely gained anything for a couple of updates. It just managed to get slightly above the 100 vote lead before actually being cut. Nothing was decided at this point. Majora's Mask took two serious cuts before gaining a bit again and essentially stalling. About an hour later it had got the same 109 vote lead it first had. Then it started going down and down, further than before, stalled a bit halfway down but continued down to having a 1 vote lead. This was a match would make board 8'ers lose sleep. The next update, we finally saw a lead change. This was it. The Game of the Decade winner was behind to a game it was supposed to be much stronger than. And no shame in this from Majora, it was just Super Metroid proving itself to be near elite. Majora's Mask took the lead back next update, but lost it right away once more. Super Metroid fought like a champ. It was making a slightly boring Zelda dominant division really interesting right now. It struggled actually keeping its lead though. It couldn't really run away. After four updates, Majora's Mask would take it back followed by another exciting 1 vote lead in Majora's favor. Super Metroid swung this to a 1 vote lead in its own favor, then for an update or maybe two, it seemed like it could build, but not really. A few more updates of stalling and then Majora's Mask took the lead back another single update. Super Metroid had the lead once again, but still couldn't do anything with its lead. The match was going back and forth. Super Metroid was ahead most of the updates since the match started having lead changes, but ultimately the match didn't go either way. The next time Majora's Mask took the lead, it actually didn't let go of it, though we did get the first tiebreaker of the match in between its lead updates. It would be the first of quite a few actually. After yet another 1 vote lead in Majora's favor, Super Metroid took the lead for a single update before Majora's Mask kept it for a while, switching their roles. Although three tiebreakers came, Super Metroid didn't get lead back again for two hours. Majora's Mask managed to get a lead of 39 a few times during the two hours it had the lead, but couldn't extend it further than that at any point. Every single update was exciting. The update after the third tiebreaker in that period would be the last of Majora's long leading streak. Super Metroid took back the lead, lost it again, then took it back in a more convincing manner. The lead actually rose all the way to 50 in quite a short time! More than it had been for either side in quite a while, although it then fell again. It feel slowly and steadily down to a lead change, which was the fourth 1 vote lead for Majora's Mask. How come only that had those 1 vote leads anyway. The next update, Super Metroid took the lead by 28 votes and from here, things got crazy. We were 8 hours into the match and it had been incredibly intense the whole way so far. But now Super Metroid started showing that it wasn't just fooling around, giving Majora's Mask a run a bit for it. It was gonna take the match by storm. It would lead the next 8 hours of the math exactly, but it would look like it was gonna take it. It took it no less than four more updates to extend its lead above 100 votes. It made it seem so easy despite them being neck to neck for so long. Despite cuts and no difference updates on the way, it only took 45 minutes more for it to get a 200 vote lead, going way above what Majora's Mask had at any point of the match. Super Metroid would be taken it slowly, but it was going somewhere. It looked like it had taken full control of this match. An hour and 15 minutes later, its lead had exceeded 300 votes. Few matches change that and the ones that do almost all involve rallying. This match had close to none of that. However, it wasn't over despite how it may have seemed. Once Super Metroid went above 300, Majora's Mask had apparently had enough. It wasn't really allowed go go above that. For some updates it hovered slightly above being Majora's Mask cut it below the 300 vote lead again. It would hover around just below the 300 vote lead instead for the next couple of hours, crossing the halfway point in the progress. It's always fun to notice what game would've won a 12 hour match. Seriously, so many matches would've had different outcomes if they were 12 hour matches. Almost exactly two after after falling below its 300 vote lead, Super Metroid took it again. It would only be for one more update though. Majora's Mask started making a real comeback attempt now, after having just stalled for quite a while. It took a bumpy road down to where Super Metroid was only slightly above a 200 vote lead in about an hour. That would leave it winning with plenty of time to spare, though Super Metroid didn't let go that easily. It stalled at that mark for over another full hour before Majora's Mask could finally continue with its comeback attempt. This attempt actually got the job done though. Majora's Mask cut the lead below 200 votes and after staying just below for a few updates, it kept cutting effectively until the lead change. This took it just below one and a half hour. The lead change was quite exciting. Super Metroid had its final lead of the match with just 2 votes and on the next update, Majora's Mask was leading by two votes. Majora's Mask would never lose the lead again, but Super Metroid would struggle two more times. As Majora's Mask went above a 100 vote lead, Super Metroid took it below with a very convincing update, greatly stalling Majora's Mask. Majora's Mask got above the 100 vote lead again, only for the same thing to happen. Well, third time is the charm, at least that's what happened now. Majora's Mask went above the 1000 vote lead yet again and would never really look back. It was moving slowly and steadily upwards for the remaining hours of the match, ending above a 500 vote difference. Something I thought this contest truly lacked was a match that was exciting until the end. A lot of bad things can be said about the 3-way contest we had last time, but it had some very incredible matches like that. This contest didn't really. Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs. Mass Effect, Xenoblade vs. DKC2, Starcraft vs. Mass Effect 2, lots of Undertale matches, Chrono Trigger vs. Melee and this. All fantastic matches, but no excitement near the end. Xenoblade vs. Donkey Kong Country 2 in particular comes close, but it wasn't nail biting near the end, we knew what would happen. This match however was very exciting for 16-17 hours except for perhaps some of the time Super Metroid had a convincing lead. It's insane how long it was so close. Our votals aren't exactly the best they've been, but for the two games to be neck to neck for so long with almost 50000 total votes is still pretty crazy. Super Metroid didn't pull off the miracle run in the end, but at least it had what could be considered an upset in round 2. That said, there is no shame in losing this match, Majora's Mask is legit, and so has Super Metroid showed us it is. It had in the two previous contests jobbed big time to A Link to the Past and it came so terribly close to being able to do that once again. How ironic an end that would've been to such a run. It is the Year of SNES indeed, but Super Metroid has definitely been SFFd more in the past than we thought. This was such an impressive run. I can't wait to see it return to the field again. It's definitely a top 20 game on this site at least, it'd be great to see it fighting some top games around Majora's level. As for Majora's Mask, it was supposed to easily advance to the division finals and struggled big time today, but as I've said, no shame in that, it's actually pretty impressive it pulled this off. One could argue that sharing a poll with A Link to the Past gave Majora's Mask the victory today, but I don't think that has been a big enough factor this contest, unless we're talking about rally factor, for it to have made a difference. Especially because A Link to the Past has quite a few things in common with Super Metroid. That's more clear now than ever from previous contests. It might have mattered a little bit, but I doubt it's enough. Also, this proves that we should all nominate Super Mario Kart next contest, because that game fought neck to neck with Super Metroid in 2009, so it's probably really legit. It is a contender for the strongest snubbed game of the contest. Despite the last couple of hours not being very exciting, I really do think this was the actual best match of the contest. It was exciting for so long and it came quite unexpected in the middle of some boring matches. Unlike some other close matches, both games seemed like they would win for sure at some point during the best, surprising us a few times. Another thing is that this match had no rally controversy, board explosion, trolls from inside or outside board 8, spillover on other matches, or anything bad. It was just a legit good match between two good games fighting with their contest strengths and it was very refreshing. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6158&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=108) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars vs (13)Chrono Cross 2015 _source: (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars vs (13)Chrono Cross 2015 (revid 84400)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, December 5, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 109 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 5, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario RPG - 56.35% 74 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario RPG - 14.06% Mario RPG was never going to lose this match regardless of whether it was against Chrono Cross, World of Warcraft, or San Andreas. The only thing here that would be entertaining would be Mario RPG's percentage bleed overnight, and every time it happens I wonder how strong the game would be were it ever released in Europe. For this match, the percentage bleed actually wasn't all that bad. Mario RPG peaked at around 64%, then fell below 60% before finishing at 61%. That's rather consistent given the game in question here, and on the flip side it's a pretty impressive result for Chrono Cross. 39.26% on Mario RPG when the game would eventually make the semifinal is pretty good. Don't forget that Chrono Cross got 32.9% on eventual contest winner Majora's Mask during Game of the Decade. I replayed Chrono Cross not too long ago, and while a ton of that game is a jumbled mess, it does deserve a lot of the respect it gets. I think the biggest problem it has isn't only people comparing it to Chrono Trigger, even though that's a fair comparison to make. It's that all of the characters in Chrono Cross absolutely fucking suck, and there are way too many of them. And I don't just mean the playable characters, either. ALL of the characters suck. Every single one of them. There are no good characters in Crono Cross. That's not a good thing given how attached people got to the cast of Chrono Trigger. But that aside, the game does almost everything else well. Almost. Here's a rather accurate review for it, if you're interested. It's long, but it's definitely worth a read if you're as fan of the game: ### Ctes' Analysis This match was pretty obvious all things considered, but Super Mario RPG managed to exceed out expectations quite a bit in a progress. I guess we did have a few people believing in Chrono Cross, because its scores the previous two rounds would've put it quite a bit above Super Mario RPG. It's just that it was really obvious how World of Warcraft and the Grand Theft Auto franchise had fallen. Chrono Cross had just the right bracket placement to make a great run, but despite probably being a bit less hated today, the game is still not very strong. You would think it had gained some momentum beating the games it did, but it's probably nothing compared to the momentum Super Mario RPG got from easily beating the \#1 seed. Look at the prediction percentage. Nobody outside of board 8 really expected Super Mario RPG to get to the division finals. It was our favorite, but I'm sure almost every casual had Grand Theft Auto V getting there. I suppose this confirms Grand Theft Auto V is the strongest game from that franchise. It did better on Super Mario RPG than the game that beat San Andreas. However, I'm willing to believe anti-votes make the gap seem bigger than it is. I might pick Chrono Cross against Grand Theft Auto V after this. That franchise has enough anti-votes for me to believe it. It would likely be a good match though. Chrono Cross disappointed a bit today, but overall had a very great run. Besides, I think most of the focus today was praising Super Mario RPG. Close to nobody expected this, but people were starting to consider Super Mario RPG's chances of pulling the upset next round, not that Resident Evil 4 had looked pretty bad. I don't think many considered it likely, especially due to the Paper Mario match in round 1, but no one considered it impossible anymore. It was also likely enough that Super Mario RPG just had opponents with enough anti-votes to make it look really good. There might be a hierarchy for that thing, but Chrono Cross is surely still a victim of that, it will always be. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6159&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=109) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (2)Resident Evil 4 2015 _source: (6)Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty vs (2)Resident Evil 4 2015 (revid 84401)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, December 5, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 110 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 5, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 4 - 55.59% 71 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 4 - 35.01% Given how bad the Metal Gear Solid series looked this contest, this was a horrible result for Resident Evil 4. Mario RPG was not only tearing it up in the top half of this division, but Resident Evil 4 was looking rather weak in the bottom half. Even the match itself was rather benign, as it stayed in the 55-45 range pretty much all day. This match itself was never going to be in doubt as RE4 was always going to win comfortably, but the law of unintended consequences often comes into play in these contests. Take your pick of the more impressive contest path through three rounds: -54.43% on Oblivion, 57.2% on Grand Theft Auto 5, 60.74% on Chrono Cross -58.87% on Paper Mario, 58.11% on New Vegas, 54.44% on Metal Gear Solid 2 It doesn't take much to figure out that the top option is more impressive, and when you take the 2009 stats into account it's even worse for RE4. It was expected to get 59% in this match. MGS was much weaker this year, and RE4 only got 54.44%. It became very obvious very quickly that Mario RPG was going to win this division, though for whatever reason most people stayed in denial. No, really, most people in the oracle still picked Resident Evil 4 in that match. "Whoops." ### Ctes' Analysis This is one of the few Metal Gear Solid matches where I'd say the Metal Gear Solid game didn't disappoint. However, that's only because Resident Evil 4 disappointed correspondingly. We just hadn't had complete information that Resident Evil 4 had dropped yet, because the Paper Mario match seemed legit and why would Paper Mario drop? Fallout: New Vegas being somewhat strong on the top of Fallout 4 releasing wouldn't be too weird, and BioShock Infinite having strength seemed very possible after BioShock's great round 2 performance. All in all, you could explain every result Resident Evil 4 had up until now, including this match. The same actually goes for Metal Gear Solid 2. The Witcher 3 has potential even though it's recent, it's hard to determine just how strong that should be. And Resident Evil had REmake being pretty recent. It was entirely possible that Metal Gear Solid 2 hadn't disappointed and this was a legit result. That's based on this part of the bracket alone though. With the performances the rest of the Metal Gear Solid series put up this contest, you know that Metal Gear Solid 2 is weaker too, it makes no sense for it to have avoided the drop. So it doesn't take much brain to figure out that this result happened because Resident Evil 4 dropped as well. Both are Playstation 2 games, a console which outside of I think Okami, is one that this contest hasn't been kind too. Both are even shooters as well, another thing RPGFAQs aren't too huge about. Of course, Resident Evil 4 dropped as well. That's coming from someone who finds Resident Evil 4 to be a top 10, maybe even top 5 game. It's fantastic, but unfortunately, not a game NostalgiaFAQs favors. The question was now whether or not Resident Evil 4 could still win the division. Considering the round 1 result against Paper Mario, Resident Evil 4 beating Super Mario RPG was still the popular choice. The match would obviously be close, but it should happen all things considered. However, considering that Resident Evil 4 couldn't put Metal Gear Solid 2 below 45%, it was looking very unlikely that it could compete with whatever game escaped the last division. The more popular Metal Gear Solid games than Sons of Liberty were down there, and with this result, Resident Evil 4 shouldn't be able to beat them. Not to mention that Shadow of the Colossus and even Mass Effect 2 winning the division wasn't out of the question yet. That said, despite requiring a weak division to do it, making the top 8 would not be a bad achievement for Resident Evil 4 at all, because that's how far it got in Game of the Decade and it's definitely not a top 8 game on this site. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6160&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=110) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid vs (5)Shadow of the Colossus 2015 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid vs (5)Shadow of the Colossus 2015 (revid 84403)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, December 6, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 111 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 6, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid - 53.77% 70 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid - 39.29% To say I was scared Metal Gear Solid might lose this match would be an understatement. Not only did I have to watch that absolute piece of utter garbage beat up the MGS series in Game of the Decade before MGS3 backdoored its way into a win, then I had to watch Shadow of the Garbage Controls look better than MGS1 through two rounds of this contest. Thankfully Shadow of the Pretentious Douchebag Fanbase got its ass absolutely handed to it for 24 solid hours and never once threatened to actually win this match. Sure 46% is a decent number, but if there was any real justice in this world the game would have eaten the new record for being on the ass end of the largest contest blowout ever. That game is pure trash and has some of the worst fans in the history of gaming, so seeing it lose is always a net gain for any contest and the planet as a whole. Shadow of the Awful Handling getting kicked out of this contest by a vastly superior game was fun to watch, even if the percentage was about 46% closer than it should have been. MGS1 looked like ass for two rounds and really looked as if it could lose this match, but it got the job done. Not only that, but this match proved that EarthBound is stronger than Red Dead Redemption, which is two pieces of gamer justice for the price of one match. Fuck Shadow of the I'm Not Art, and hopefully The Last Guardian never gets released and all of Team Ico gets fired for releasing such bottom-feeder sludge onto the world. Thank you based Metal Gear Solid for having one final mission in you. ### Ctes' Analysis This match is basically the reason as to why Shadow of the Colossus had the bracket placement it had. Game of the Decade was highlighted by Shadow of the Colossus, SotC, Star of the Contest. Despite huge picture disadvantaged and looking destined to lose after round 1, it beat Metal Gear Solid 2 in one heck of a close match. The picture disadvantage back then was probably evened out by the fact that it was a day match. It then rode the bandwagon and beat Metal Gear Solid 4 in the following match. Note that MGS4 was stronger than MGS2 back then. It ultimately lost to Metal Gear Solid 3 in one heck of a match, where its bandwagon could've definitely carried it to victory had it not finally faced Metal Gear Solid in a night match. A similar run was without a doubt intended to make possible here. It was just never going to happen though. Despite pulling off that amazing run back then, it was two significantly weaker Metal Gear Solid games it faced. This is the original Playstation game. It might not be the favorite of many, but it definitely has a higher playrate and undoubtfully has the least amount of haters of the series by large margins. The Metal Gear Solid series had fallen a bit this contest, but even though it has surely fallen less, this would still take a lot of Shadow of the Colossus. Another reason why Shadow of the Colossus was not winning this is that it's a full day match instead of a 12-hour day match. Also, I know they didn't look good last round, but the two Metal Gear Solid games having matches at the same time definitely helps Metal Gear Solid as well. It was just up yesterday too if that matters. I understand why SBAllen would set this up, but Shadow of the Colossus just ends feels incredibly wasted in this bracket slot. After its miracle run last time where it proved itself to be completely legit, you'd really want to see what it was capable of by making it face something with actual strength other than Metal Gear Solid games, but we were snubbed and got an obvious match. Sure, this is a close match, but when Shadow of the Colossus fought neck to neck with MGS2 and MGS4 then obviously it would lose to the original. Not sure if the bandwagon was expected to exist after five years, which would make no sense, or the original Metal Gear Solid was just assumed to be weaker for whatever reason. Also no, I don't believe it to be a coincidence, Allen knows what he's doing when making the bracket, which we should be grateful for, he's just not exactly a contest predicting expert himself. He knows some stuff, but very often makes some dumb casual picks. With all that said, it's not like neither game is looking bad here. Shadow of the Colossus at least proved that its miracle run from 2010 was no fluke, the game really is legit. Not a near elite, but a mid to somewhat high midcarder, which isn't bad for a Playstation 2 game not connected to a preexisting franchise. Metal Gear Solid looks fine too. However, up until now it had looked to be a clear favorite if it did meet Metal Gear Solid 3 in the division finals. Now it's not that Metal Gear Solid disappointed today, it's just that Metal Gear Solid 3 somehow managed to look really good today. Metal Gear Solid would not have a free ticket to the semi-finals, let alone to the quarter-finals, that was for sure. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6161&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=111) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (2)Mass Effect 2 2015 _source: (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (2)Mass Effect 2 2015 (revid 84404)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, December 6, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 112 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 6, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 50.86% 51 for - 25 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 28.59% Round 3 ended with a rather unexpected blowout, so much so that one could easily call this the best match the entire Metal Gear Solid series had all contest. Oracle opinions were virtually 50-50 on this match, and everyone who picked MGS3 to win undershot the percentage by quite a bit. People definitely noticed Mass Effect 2's impressive run coupled with MGS looking less than stellar. So MGS3 laying a 61-39 beating on Mass Effect 2 was a pretty big surprise for most people, and it gave the Mass Effect series a very unceremonious exit from this contest. It also clued us in on how the big inter-series showdown would go between MGS1 and MGS3. A lot of people blamed my Mass Effect 2 picture because they're babies (notice how it's always the people who never actually contribute anything to this site that are the first to whine and bitch about those who do). The picture looks fine, and shows Harbinger in all of his badassery. If you don't like it, try actually getting off your lazy asses and submitting a better image. That's the problem with society these days, everyone wants to bitch and moan but no one wants to do any work. This is how a complete idiot like Bernie Sanders got popular. No really, the guy is legitimately a moron who is running on a platform of GIVE EVERYONE FREE STUFF without knowing basic economic principles like collateral: . That guy being popular is such a fucking joke, and anyone who believes in him is exactly the problem with this country. Get off my lawn and pull yourself up by your bootstraps you darn younguns! =p The real reason MGS3 did so well is it got one of the best possible match pictures it could ever get. Only Big Boss's salute is better. Naturally, the game stomped. Don't forget that Big Boss is arguably the picture factor in these contests. This match put a bow on a rather uneventful round 3. Lots of predictable matches with games making cute runs getting booted, but that happens in any seeded tournament and is a necessary evil. Not that there weren't good matches, but most were of the Symphony of the Night \> Donkey Kong Country 2 variety. ### Ctes' Analysis This match makes so little sense to me, even now. I mean, it was never a certainty that Mass Effect 2 would win this match, it was probably never even the favorite, but it looked in such a good position to take it after last round and you know… everything we've seen so far in this contest. Mass Effect hasn't done that well, but hasn't looked bad either. Mass Effect 3 looks a bit pathetic not being able to hold that big lead in the last quarter of the match, but people have very mixed feelings about that game. And yes, I know it ends up second in the x-stats, but jokes aside, it didn't do well. The first and the second looked great though. Mass Effect won a match against a very well-received Mario game and did great against a very well-received Smash game. It's not bad! Mass Effect 2 looked like a king beating Starcraft in a small rally fight, a match which made Metal Gear Solid 3 look like a joke against BioShock. It's also the most popular Mass Effect game in general, it'd make sense for that to transfer to contest strength. I guess we learned that BioShock has a lot of strength, but seriously, Metal Gear Solid 3 and you know, Metal Gear Solid as whole has looked like garbage this contest. Every single one of the games. Like, Metal Gear Solid 4 lost to Kingdom Hearts II. No shame in that, but the numbers made it look pathetic. Dark Souls is appreciated a lot, but a Metal Gear Solid game has no business losing to it. Metal Gear Solid 2 looked somewhat fine but only until Resident Evil 4 gets trashed next round. Metal Gear Solid allowed Earthbound closer than it should have, Year of SNES or not, that's not something this series should allow itself to do. Then Metal Gear Solid 3 probably looked the worst of all, relatively of course, but still. This game was debated as perhaps being the strongest. Then it allows a Japanese exclusive to break 30% on it. It shouldn't matter that said game has a prequel released outside of Japan, it's still super niche, and Smash appearance helps a lot, but Mother 3 should not have broken 30%. As I just said, Metal Gear Solid 3 followed up by allowing BioShock to almost beat it. Mass Effect 2 trashed Virtue's Last Reward into the group and took down a rallied Starcraft that had just annihilated Destiny. That's freakin' imprssive. We can try to make this look a bit less unfair. Smash appearance does help a lot, we know. Metal Gear Solid 3 and Mother 3 have about nothing in common whatsoever, so in that sense, Mother 3 is the worst kind of opponent for Metal Gear Solid 3, it's just so darn weak that it doesn't matter. BioShock did look legit in Game of the Decade as well and after all, it was being supported quite a lot by both Starcraft and Mass Effect fans. Also, Mass Effect 2 trashed Virtue's Last Reward quite a lot, but that game should be a contender for the absolute weakest. Starcraft was legit in 2004, but it's a PC game, we know those are weak here. Yet, this result still makes so little sense to me given everything we've seen. It's like Metal Gear Solid just finally decided it was tired of being humiliated and stepped up, it looks so darn good in this match. Mass Effect 2 had rally powers, but that never even mattered. People would see Metal Gear Solid 3 stomping and just give up. A few people in my Last Man Standing contest picked Metal Gear Solid today including winner DpOblivion and I guarantee you they weren't thinking they picked in the closer match. This was absolutely crazy. After Mass Effect having looked really great for a while, in character contests too, it just flops completely today. Would you have thought BioShock would beat Mass Effect 2 easily? I know I wouldn't, but that seems clear as the day now. Sure, it probably helps having two Metal Gear Solid games in the poll together, but it doesn't excuse this, Mass Effect 2 can't excuse this performance. You can explain the performance though. It seems clear now that Starcraft was a lot weaker than we thought and BioShock a lot stronger. What I explained about Mother 3 being the worst possible opponent for Metal Gear Solid 3 is probably true as well, especially considering it also explains Earthbound's great performance against Metal Gear Solid a bit. But still, Mass Effect 2 just didn't meet expectations here. It's still fighting a weakened Metal Gear Solid franchise. And I guess it just wasn't the strongest game of its own series after all. It's the fan favorite, but I don't think a good argument can be made for Mass Effect 2 against its prequel. The first of them is clearly stronger on this site. This was the match by far the most people expected Mass Effect 2 to bow out in, but not in this fashion, not after everything we've seen. Considering everything else that franchise showed, it was a bit hard to confirm at this point, but at least on the outside, Metal Gear Solid 3 redeemed the series a bit today. The long awaited. Though a great deal of this can and should be contributed to Mass Effect 2 disappointing, this was a huge win, Metal Gear Solid 3 deserves a lot of credit. It's easily my favorite game of the franchise too, so it's great to see. Metal Gear Solid was still considered the favorite going into the division finals, but its supporters definitely at least lost some confidence after how Metal Gear Solid 3 did today. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6162&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=112) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2015 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee 2015 (revid 84405)_ ## Results **Round Four** Monday, December 7, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 113 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 7, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Melee - 40.80% 1 for - 75 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Melee - 19.19% For about half an hour, this looked very much like the Chrono Trigger we saw in the first three rounds. It was at 60% and rolling right along, and given the first hour is Melee's best time, the match might have gotten rather ugly by the end. Chrono Trigger getting over 60% on Melee would have definitely put it in contention to win this contest, because not many games are able to do that. In fact I'm willing to bet there are less than five. Chrono Trigger, Ocarina, Link to the Past, and Pokemon RBY could do it. I can't think of any others offhand. Oh and 30 minutes into the match against FFX, Chrono Trigger had 67.68%. Here, it had 60.33%. The debate is over. Melee would thoroughly annihilate Final Fantasy X. But unlike Final Fantasy X, Melee was not about to just roll over and die quietly while Chrono Trigger stomped over this contest. r/smashbros changed the entire course of this match, and really the entire course of this contest, with one rally thread. The thread got to the top of the subreddit really fast, too, and the effects were felt immediately. Over the next 20 minutes, Melee stalled the match as the rally gained traction. Then once it really got going, Chrono Trigger just got its shit kicked in. An 800 vote lead disappeared in just over an hour, and it's not like Chrono Trigger wasn't kicking ass and putting good updates out there. Smash was just that much better. There was no resistance once Smash caught up, either, and it just spent the rest of the overnight building up a 650 vote lead. But Chrono Trigger was not done yet, as it was able to take advantage of the dead zone to start pushing back. It was able to shave away the 650 vote lead down to 400 just before the morning vote started. One would assume Melee would win the morning vote and bry Chrono Trigger here given the years-long history of trends these two games have, but miraculously the morning vote also favored Chrono Trigger. It managed to keep pushing and stalling, and it got the lead all the way down to below 300. But the story of this match was rallying, in that Melee had rallies going for it while Chrono Trigger had nothing outside of Nick's Facebook group. And while Nick's group having 28000 members was good and all, that was the only external source Chrono Trigger had to draw votes from. Melee had Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, smashboards, and small fan sites all on its side. Chrono Trigger's biggest site to rally from, ironically enough, is GameFAQs. Chrono Trigger's major push (other than the first 30 minutes of the poll) to win this match was the dead zone and morning vote, but Melee was able to easily counter it with its social media presence. Reddit got going, pros started tweeting every time Melee was threatened, and Chrono Trigger was simply unable to match the armada of social media being on Melee's side. Melee would slowly push forward and build up a lead of 1100. Chrono Trigger would make one final gasp during the evening, and for a time it was actually meeting the comeback quota and making a real push. But Melee's fans noticed this, some more pros tweeted, and that was that. At 7 pm, with 5 hours to go in the poll, Melee had a lead of 931 votes. Chrono Trigger got it down to 728 an hour later, and with more of a bandwagon it really might have made a push to win, but Melee's social media presence quickly noticed this and puts boots to asses. Chrono Trigger's last effort was snuffed out, and Melee would go on to win one hell of a match by 1109 votes. During and after this match, Board 8 proved how idiotic its stance on rallying was, and how loaded with double standards this place is. The vast majority of the board not only wanted to see Chrono Trigger win this match, but they wanted it to win this entire contest. I agree it would have been an amazing story, and I am perfectly okay with people rooting for their favorites (even if it's Shadow of the Colossus, you can cheer or boo anything you want). My issue comes with people picking and choosing which rallies are psychologically allowed based on rooting interest. Everyone was all buttmad over Melee rallying to win this match, and they deemed it "unfair" because it "reversed the natural result of the match". Let's start with this "natural result" nonsense. So long as everything is done within the rules in sports, only one stat matters: scoreboard. Deion Sanders pointed right at it when the Chargers started trying to talk shit as the 49ers were whipping their asses. The "natural result" of this match was Melee 36195, Chrono Trigger 35806. There is no "the natural result of this match was changed". I guarantee you if Chrono Trigger could rally worth a fuck and had won this match, the same people whining about Melee's rallying would have supported Chrono Trigger's rally. That brings me to my other point. THE SAME PEOPLE WHINING ABOUT MELEE'S RALLY DURING THIS MATCH SUPPORTED MELEE'S RALLY AGAINST UNDERTALE. That right there was the dumbest thing Board 8 did during this entire contest, for very obvious reasons. Not only are you picking and choosing rallies, you're literally changing your mind on the same game based on its opponent. That is absolute garbage and is more transparent than the invisible man. Everyone was despondent about Chrono Trigger losing, and while people didn't blame Melee the game, they were just livid over the rally. The same rally they would turn around and support in the semifinal. Good job, Board 8. You support all rallies or you support none of them. Period. Picking and choosing based on rooting interest is intellectual dishonesty. Picking and choosing because of a psychologically predetermined "natural result that you feel would have happened normally", that you can't even prove, is just stupid. How do you know what a natural result would have been? You don't. The only natural result that ever matters is the final vote total. That's it. You don't get to decide based on assumptions, you get to look at the actual score. Lastly, can we knock off the bullshit about how outside rallies ruin our contests, as if they haven't been here since 2002? If you want to blame something for rallies, blame the site itself for treating its users like garbage for the better part of 20 years and chasing most of the regulars away. It's drastically reduced our natural vote totals, and people only come here when googling a game and getting directly linked to a guide or whatever. But the actual site? Shit. You cannot routinely slap your fans in the face and expect them to stick around. Adults want to be treated like adults, and as such, they've all moved on to reddit, social media, youtube, and so forth. So the rallies that have always been there now have a huge effect, because they drop in mid-2000s level vote totals into 2015 matches. Of course the outside will have a huge effect, and I'm happy for it. GameFAQs regularly getting its shit pushed in for treating its users like garbage is a net positive for the internet, and hopefully this continues happening every contest. People need to be exposed to other, better sites where the users are treated like actual adult human beings. The more people realize how good sites like reddit are, the more GameFAQs will realize that they need to stop with the garbage-ass way it treats its users. There's a certain dictionary site that was autoflagged here for years (because GameFAQs loves to coddle people in a little bubble, shield them from the real world and treat them like 13 year-olds, like good little politically correct liberals). Go look up GameFAQs Moderator on that site. There is a reason our polls get no votes and everyone moved on to other sites. Back to rallies. They've always been there, but now they matter a lot more because we not only have no regulars, but our poll numbers are in the tank. Let me pull up a round 1 match from 2009, featuring a game that was very much rallied but still lost: The Oregon Trail scored 25220 votes in that match, got rallied, and was still blown out. The poll scored 117749 votes. That number is unheard of naturally now, and that same exact rally in 2015 would look very different. So don't blame reddit, tumblr, or whatever else for our contests being a lot easier to influence now. Blame GameFAQs. The site you all love so much has gradually and assuredly failed you, and with each new contest it becomes more and more apparent. By 2020, I'm sure our regular Poll of the Day will struggle to break 10,000 votes. But don't try saying rallies are some new thing, because it's flat-out not true. "But Mario's rally ruined the natural result!" Scoreboard. Check it. Oh, and Melee is a better game than Chrono Trigger. I love Chrono Trigger, but the right game won this match. ### Ctes' Analysis I hate to complain about contests and all, but damn I would like if I said this result didn't make me sad. This match is the most depressing contest result of all contests to me. In the blink of an eye what I was enjoying the most about the contest was screwed over completely and out of nowhere. It wasn't even by nice and passionate fans, at least most of them were being were arrogant about rallying their e-sport to victory. It felt awful to see them gloat about beating not only one of my absolute favorite games, but also the game I was most exciting about having in the late stages of the contest. I was so hyped about seeing Chrono Trigger against at least Final Fantasy VII. Especially after last round. It looked ready to dethrone Ocarina of Time and it was something everyone could get behind, since its strength pretty much purely came from inside GameFAQs. A 20 year game suddenly just being much more than legit, suddenly seeming like it could swallow any opponent whole without outside forces. I really wanted to see that, almost everyone really wanted to see that, but then a game that is already really strong, but Chrono Trigger somehow would've run over as well rallied like crazy. The dream shattered today. I wasn't being whiny, I wasn't being rude to anyone, I was just so sad. One could argue that the match itself was good because it was close for so long, but I really don't think it was. Chrono Trigger held up like a king, but it was pretty clear how much rally power Melee had, it always seemed like just a matter of time before Melee would take over completely. Every time Chrono Trigger was coming back, someone just rallied a bit more with little effort and then Melee dominated. Anybody believing in Chrono Trigger after a few hours was just not paying attention to the rallies, only the votals. Chrono Trigger opening the match looking like the beast we had seen in the previous rounds. It was quite shortlived, but you know how amazing Melee's board vote is? How insane it tends to look in the opening minutes? Well, Chrono Trigger held it down in a very convincing manner. After slowly going up to a +100 vote increase during the first five minutes where Melee is a beast, it completely ran away for some updates. This was even still during a good time for Melee. Chrono Trigger was running away during Melee's best time, it seemed like sooner or later, it would bury Melee completely. However, half an hour in it kinda slowed down. The first big warning sign. Chrono Trigger had just gotten above 60%, showing what a beast it is on pure GameFAQs strength, but it stopped and feel below again as Melee starting stalling. After stalling for about 20 minutes, Melee went crazy. Chrono Trigger got about the same votes per update, but Melee got huge boosts and started cutting like crazy. It took it no time to shred Chrono Trigger's crazy lead. After just over 2 hours of the match, Melee took the lead. Ultimately, this would be the only lead change in the match. I think anyone that paid attention to the rallies knew that the match was over at this point, but Chrono Trigger fought like a king and that shouldn't go unnoticed. Once Melee took the lead, it slowed down a bit. It won updates, but didn't have quite as ridiculous updates as before. It would continue like this and raise its lead to about where Chrono Trigger peaked, just over 600, then Chrono Trigger started making its first attempt and definitely a good one too. It cut the lead by about 200 in just over an hour with plenty of time to spare. This looked really great, but as you would expect, the Melee fanboys took notice and it became a stallfest. The reason why Melee rallies wasn't as strong as before was because this time it was in the lead, which causes a lot smaller amount of people to care. It's also part of the reason as to why Undertale was so hard to rally against with its come from behind victories. With lots of updates won by both games, Chrono Trigger actually managed to cut the lead down to below 300 votes doing the dead hours. An impressive performance, but then Melee just went on a rampage again. It answered with another strong rally and quickly shot the lead up above 600 votes again. Yeah for some reason, 600 was when Melee felt safe early on. Chrono Trigger didn't stop fighting, not a single bit. It's pure GameFAQs strength was insane, but it was so easier for Melee ralliers to respond to it. They outnumbered GameFAQs by far. In the previous three matches, Nick had rallied on his Facebook page, and up until this match, we didn't really know how big of an impact that had. It seemed clear here. Nick, being the huge Chrono Trigger fan that he is, made several posts on his Facebook page. Everytime he did, Chrono Trigger would get a small boost, but it was very easily made pointless by Melee rallies. After a while, the boosts became smaller and Nick had other things to do, it really couldn't be helped. Chrono Trigger is a huge game, so people figured it must have fans somewhere out there. Well, it's an old game, it's a community for Chrono Trigger would be anything but active. Turns out the active place its most beloved on is… GameFAQs. What do you know! That obviously didn't help. Chrono Trigger's fate was sealed. It never stopped fighting like the king it is here, but Melee fans took no chances at all, so it lose by just more than 1000 votes in the end. You remember how Melee fans even rallied against GSC when it was clearly never going to lose the match, there's no stopping them. And I guess we'll never learn where they were against Kingdom Hearts II. Chrono Trigger would end up having more than 49%, as the match had very high votals. Thus, due to Melee giving Undertale its final challenge in the semi-finals, Chrono Trigger ends up looking great in the x-stats. Something to appreciate I suppose. For fans of Chrono Trigger and fans of contest matches without strong outside forces, this was probably the biggest bummer ever. The the joy and excitement we got from Chrono Trigger destroying Up Your Arsenal, Dragon Quest VIII and even freakin' Final Fantasy X would disappear in an instant. However, having absolutely all odds against it, Chrono Trigger looked like a king going out. It's a shame it was this early, but damn was it impressive once again today. And we got to see that Chrono Trigger would've gotten a fair bit above 60% too during the opening match. That's super impressive. It's a shame we never got to Chrono Trigger fight against the biggest games on the site such as Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past and Final Fantasy VII because its performances so far shows that it's more than ready to take them down. I think everyone can agree that those matches would've been nice to get. As for Melee, well, another contender for the damn throne just appeared seemingly out of nowhere, although we did get a hint in the GSC match that no one paid attention to. Undertale, RBY, Ocarina of Time and now Melee. I think those were the games people could justify claiming to believe would win at this point. If RBY failed to stop Undertale tomorrow, Melee would likely be the final chance to stop it. Some Zelda fans had hope, but there was just no way Undertale would ever lose in the final against the defending champion. However, some Zelda fans also had redeemed hope because of how Zelda had been able to lay the biggest SFF hammer on Melee in the past and now Melee was in a position where it could perhaps stop Undertale, so Ocarina of Time would meet Melee in the final instead. Optimistic? Definitely, but you could see where they were coming from. It might've been spoken of before, but I think this is the first time Undertale got a significant boost from “bad results”. By this I mean that occasionally some result would happen where people would be like “screw this contest”. For some reason, that helps Undertale. Why? Because that sentence was usually followed up by “might as well just let Undertale win now”. So Undertale slowly got supporters that viewed it as a joke too. They wouldn't rally for it of course, but every vote counts. It's sorta sad. I'm not saying this counts as every supporters Undertale got in the late rounds of course, but it happened and this was probably the first match where it'd be a large amount due to how beloved Chrono Trigger is here and also due to how it was considered a possible winner. Undertale vs. RBY was quite the hyped match right now, but another one would now be Melee vs. whoever won that match. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6163&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=113) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Final Fantasy VI vs (2)Final Fantasy VII 2015 _source: (1)Final Fantasy VI vs (2)Final Fantasy VII 2015 (revid 84406)_ ## Results **Round Four** Monday, December 7, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 114 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 7, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy VII - 56.40% 74 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy VII - 56.90% Pre-contest, this poll got thrown all over the place, and a lot of hype for a potential FF6 \> FF7 upset was thrown around because of it: Early on in this poll, that upset was in striking distance. Final Fantasy 7 had a slim lead early, and Final Fantasy 6 was pushing back rather well. It was a close 53-47 affair for 10 minutes, but it was fool's gold before long. FF6 had simply won the board vote, and FF7 was just doing its usual thing of playing dead for 10 minutes before going off. The only chance FF6 had after that was Melee's rally favoring FF6 over FF7, but when the rally showed up, FF7 began to explode. A 53-47 match gradually turned into a 60-40 beatdown. One can wonder if FF6 could have pulled this upset without the rally, but I think it's more reminiscent of the Mario 3 vs Pokemon RBY match. I don't think there's enough evidence that FF6 would have won this match on its own, with or without an unrelated rally in another poll. Hell of a fun for FF6 though, and seeing two of my all-time favorite games in a poll together filled me with determination. These two games, along with Super Mario RPG, got me into RPGs. There will always be a soft spot in my heart for them. I do wish FF6 had been a little closer here, but I have no complaints about FF7 doing well. Much love for both games all around from me! The one down side here is that an intra-FF series match meant that Final Fantasy 7 was the last Final Fantasy game left in the bracket. It's probably my favorite series along with Fire Emblem and Smash Bros, but in the past few years of these contests I've been routinely disappointed by Final Fantasy's early exits. We were destined to see yet another one in this contest, too. As a complete side note, as of this writing I'm playing the PS4 port of FF7. It's neat getting trophies for this game, and I'm loving the translation fixes and various cleanups that were done. "This guy are sick" was always idiotic, and the script is much, much cleaner now. Full marks for really fixing that game up, and it looks really nice on my HDTV. I don't know if they cleaned the graphics up, too, but yeah. Loving the trip down memory lane here. ### Ctes' Analysis I think what we can use this match for is confirmed once and for all how pointless any Poll of the Day is when it comes to predicting contests. I'm sure everyone remembers that poll. It's the sole reason SBAllen set up this match probably. However, despite that poll having the outcome it did, this was never going to be interesting in the slightest. In fact, of the three \#1 seed vs. \#2 seed matches SBAllen set up, this would end up being the least interesting. Though the Zelda division final was only made interesting due to Undertale spillover. The Mario one was the most interesting, but sadly didn't happen as neither game reached that point. There's just a huge difference between the people voting in every Poll of the Day and the people voting in contests. The first group is such a small part of GameFAQs' core. I'm sure a lot of us didn't even realize it was going on. I know for sure I wouldn't have known about it if it wasn't for the contest stats topics' existence. I don't even check those every day, I could have easily missed it. That takes away a lot of credibility from the poll. Luster made a point about the result coming from the poll title, as it asks which Final Fantasy is better, not which is your favorite, which is what is implied in contests. I really don't think so though. Most people don't really consider those two things different to begin with and furthermore, the game you consider better is almost always the one you like more too. I can see why the last 2D Final Fantasy would be “better” than the first 3D one, but I don't think it is, but as much as I like 2D Final Fantasy, the franchise had an excellent transition to 3D in my opinion. I think the result just comes down to having a small selected group of GameFAQs voting. Perhaps you can consider it a very early sign at the success the SNES had this contest. The core of GameFAQs really likes that console and it was just the right group noticing this poll. I also think this was the peak of the Final Fantasy VII anti-voting. Just look at how the characters fared in 2013 and look at the game's performances now. It had clearly redeemed itself a bit. Final Fantasy VI has really improved too, but it's probably less of a difference since then. It should be noted that Final Fantasy VII likely wouldn't have broken 60% without the force of the Melee rally in the other match. That said, after Final Fantasy VI's great board vote, Final Fantasy VII was already rising fast before the rally kicked in. The rallied Melee people are also likely more “dronish” than the Undertale people, seeing as the latter's rallies were found on various social media and not necessarily always Undertale related profiles while Melee's rallies came from hardcore fans. While the match certainly was a disappointing if you expected something after that poll, I don't think it should be complained about. It was expected all along by everyone who knew anything about contests and Final Fantasy VI got to prove itself before meeting its doom today. It seems pretty clear that it's the second strongest Final Fantasy now, which is quite the improvement. As for Final Fantasy VII, it looked like its run was gonna be cut shorter than originally anticipated, but not by Chrono Trigger as we thought until today. Instead, it seemed pretty clear that it would collapse completely to rallies and rally spillover, which is quite a shame seeing as it could've given us some really fun matches. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6164&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=114) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (6)Undertale 2015 _source: (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (6)Undertale 2015 (revid 84408)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, December 8, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 115 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Undertale - 50.89% 43 for - 33 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Undertale - 2.58% Pokemon fans, plus a lot of contest fans, felt Pokemon was this contest's last hope. One might say they had all of their hopes and dreams for this contest attached to Pokemon's performance in this match: Before getting into the match, I owe Chris a huge thank you. People tried throwing shade at my Pokemon picture, and Board 8's resident Pokemon guru was very kind in defending it and telling everyone the picture was a great representative of the game. That meant the world to me man, I appreciate it. It was really hard to make and took a long time, too. Normally when people whine about a picture I really don't care; it only bothers me when I know I put a ton of effort into one of them, and that picture took forever to get just right. I made the background blurry on purpose, by the way. I've never liked when backgrounds stood out and took the focus away from the foreground. It was a pain in the ass to take the same city, render it 4 times in 4 different colors, line it up so it formed the same original city, then make it blurry enough to put the focus on the sprites while not being a blob. It was a hard picture to do and I'm very proud of it, so having one of Board 8's three big Pokemon guys (Chris, Red, TRE) like it was awesome. It shut down the rumblings of blaming the picture for the loss, too, which I really appreciate. My best will never be as good as KP/Zen/greatone/etc's best, but I do try. These days the PCA, making images, and cheering on my favorites is why I still do this. I've already had "the thrill of winning", so now I'm mainly here to have fun. Making pictures is a lot of fun, and everyone wants to be appreciated. Not gonna lie though, when the rally got going and my image was everywhere on the internet, it was a very weird experience. Then the same thing happened to an even bigger degree with Melee/Undertale and it was a huge "holy shit, hundreds of thousands of people are actually looking at this" moment. It was really neat, if not really intimidating, seeing my stuff all over social media. I don't know how the other picsmiths feel when that happens, but I honestly wasn't expecting how neat it was. It fills you with determination to try even harder to make better pictures for future matches, that's for sure. Anyway, enough sentimental stuff. Match time. This was the match that many people felt would decide the contest, and most people knew that tumblr, one of the major rally outlets for Undertale, was Pokemon's big stronghold. This would be Undertale's hardest test yet, and it would be its first match against a game that would be able to fight fire with fire. Mass Effect 3 had no hope, Fallout 3's fans didn't care, and there's really no way to rally for Mario. He's the standard-bearer. But Pokemon fans? Pokemon fans can and do rally, often to very high levels. And if Pokemon's fandom was on point, it could easily match whatever Undertale could put out. There wasn't much logic here beyond "can Undertale pull votes from tumblr?", just a potential rally vs rally fight with obscene vote totals. When the match began, Pokemon was nothing short of dominant. "Dominant" is a fair word to use because even though there was a massively frontloaded vote for Pokemon followed by a percentage bleed, Undertale's bandwagon had taken a huge hold by this point of the contest. It was putting out updates upwards of 250-300 votes, and it barely mattered beyond high total votes for the match. Pokemon easily matched and surpassed these updates, and just went to town overnight. Every time Undertale seemed to spike, Pokemon would also spike. The belief that Undertale's rally would also draw in Pokemon fans seemed to be true, and all that stuff about backfire rates seemed to be accurate. Undertale was pulling in its highest vote totals of the entire contest, and Pokemon was, relatively speaking, just laughing at it. There may have been a percentage bleed overnight, but it was a slow percentage bleed and did little to stop Pokemon from building up a huge lead. To give an idea of numbers, Pokemon was at 60% with a lead of nearly 3000 votes two hours in. Two hours into the Super Mario World match, Mario World had 60.96% but only a lead of 2376, and was bleeding percentage at a massive rate. This was clearly a different match altogether. Undertale tried to stall overnight, including even a 50-50 stall for a time, but it did not stop Pokemon from going up in the end. It rocked the night vote, the percentage bleed was slow, and things kept right on moving in Pokemon's favor come the morning vote. The percentage bleed actually stopped come the morning vote, and Pokemon really took the gloves off. While Undertale sat there getting 150-2000 votes per update (which is a HUGE number and meant the final vote totals would be nuts), Pokemon was getting a solid 200-300 every update and did not care. This match settled into a nice pocket in the morning, and really looked as if things would finish in the 56-44 range. I say this because despite Undertale's best efforts -- rally threads were clearly everywhere -- did nothing to even slow Pokemon down. This match stayed at 56-44 all morning and every update was "Pokemon +50". It stayed this way until well past lunch. At 12:55 pm EST, with just over 11 hours to go in the poll, Pokemon's lead peaked at 7570. At this point, Undertale would have had to cut 57 votes per update to come back and win the match. Even at this point when Undertale's rally went up a little in power, it was doing nothing more than shaving at the lead below quota and bleeding percentage. Pokemon was even able to win updates with good numbers during this time, so for the next few hours as Undertale rallied the troops, Pokemon was still very much doing well. It was putting tons of votes out there, it was keeping Undertale at more than arm's length, and things looked really good. Remember how at 12:55 the lead was 7570? Even with Undertale cutting votes, the lead didn't get below 7000 until 3:30 pm. Had things stayed like this, with Undertale getting around 200 an update and Pokemon fluctuating between 150-200, Pokemon easily would have won. I'm gonna pause right here for a few side notes. During the entire morning vote, Undertale was pronounced dead, and for good reason. Undertale had a rally going to be sure, but Pokemon had a really good rally going. r/Pokemon had a topic at the very top, there was a Facebook/Twitter presence, and there was a large tumblr presence. Undertale had the same stuff, but to win this match it really needed to be able to beat Pokemon on tumblr. For this reason, most people assumed the match was over. It seemed as if the tumblr/backfire logic was true, and more importantly, this was the first Undertale opponent that bothered fighting back all contest. That's really what was missing all contest from Undertale's opponents, and here, it had an opponent that clearly did not give two fucks about things like rallies, bandwagons, or hype. Any time Undertale stepped out for the first 12 hours of this poll, Pokemon just smacked it down like a weed. Pokemon hadn't even really gone full force, either. Bulbapdia, Serebii, and there were several pros and developers that could basically end the match any time they wanted to. Us Undertale fans always knew this match was probably the end of the line for very logical reasons, though it was still very hard to watch. A lot of people acted ridiculous and pretended they knew this contest was over after the Mass Effect 3 match. Reasonable people knew that Pokemon was the true road block. We really did have our hopes up about winning the contest once it beat Mario World. Even we were resigned to losing and had basically lost hope in beating Pokemon. That's how over this match was. We all knew the trends and knew how strong Pokemon could be when it tried. But then, come the ASV, the absolutely unthinkable happened. @undertale_bot made one tweet asking people to vote in the poll, and the mother of all floodgates immediately opened. There was no gradual build here. Undertale started cutting 100 votes per update, and kept doing it even as Pokemon tried to fight back against what was happening. It's not like Pokemon rolled over and died; it saw what was up and started pulling in more votes. Those fans knew how to rally too, but Undertale had practiced it enough to make it an art form by this point. Pokemon didn't stand a chance, and it was even fighting back! Didn't matter. Allen was nice enough to legitimize the push: "Almost all of this sudden rush is from Twitter, just like last time, and it happened as soon as that account posted." Before long, Undertale was going full Draven pulling in 350+ vote updates. Just insane numbers that Pokemon could not dream of matching, even with Masuda tweeting about the poll. As the match rapidly got close, Undertale just ratcheted things up even harder, began pulling in updates in excess of 400-450 votes, and just absolutely buried Pokemon right at 8 pm. For the next four hours Undertale slowed down only a little, and would ultimately win the poll by 3643. From the peak lead of 7570 to Undertale taking the lead, seven hours passed. This added another insane comeback to Undertale's pile, along with numbers like 9252, 6834, and 3224. Undertale winning this match cemented it as the clear favorite in this contest, and it also set up a potentially INSANE contest quarterfinal. With Melee/FF7 and Undertale/Mario 64 happening at the same time, there was the potential of having 4 simultaneous rallies at the same exact time. Melee proved it could go, FF7 may have had to get a rally going, we all knew Undertale was coming even though Mario 64 was clearly going to roll over like Mario World did, and who knew if Mario 64 would decide to give us one final Mario Clutch moment? And if Melee was rallying, what's to say Mario 64 wouldn't benefit from extra Nintendo love? It was really fun to think about. Undertale deserves credit here for winning, but this is the first match where we can really blame Undertale's opponent for losing. It's not that Undertale didn't deserve it, but Pokemon's fans didn't show up here. Even though a lot of rallies were going, there was a huge sentiment against RBYG from hardcore Pokemon fans -- fans whose support would have easily won Pokemon this match, even against Undertale's full efforts. Serebii did nothing. Bulbapedia did nothing. Most pros did nothing. Among developers, only Masuda cared. It's like Pokemon only wanted to put half a rally effort out there instead of truly going balls to the wall. And why? Some ridiculous "genwunner" nonsense among the Pokemon fanbase. Rather than wanting RBYG to win and get exposure for the series, hardcore fans basically invited the loss intentionally just to prove a point. There is not a doubt in my mind Pokemon at full power would have mowed over this contest, instead the fanbase had to "beat those genwunners". I don't get it, but I certainly wasn't complaining about Undertale backdooring its way into another win and becoming the contest favorite. But make no mistake: Pokemon threw this match "I wanna be the second best." -transience with the quote of the contest The last thing to mention here is that after a joke vote in the stats topic about buying Facebook ads to get people to vote against Undertale, this idea seriously got passed around the grapevine and people seriously considered it as a viable option. Just think about how insane that is. People wanted to buy Facebook ads for Final Fantasy 7 in a potential FF7/Undertale match. Did you guys ever think we would hear of something so hilarious? The match never would happen, but I'd love to know how much money SephG and MWC were willing to piss away on Facebook ads that no one reads. Oh and this for sure fed into the whole "lol gamefaqs" thing, complete with screenshots all over social media. But it's just a vocal minority, right Board 8? ;) ### Ctes' Analysis This in my opinion is a contender for greatest match of the contest. It was major rally forces against each in the same way Melee vs. Undertale would be, and it wasn't the best match either, but it was probably the greatest in the sense that the whole board exploded more than previously, yet the match was still interesting almost the whole way through. Undertale was the major favorite going on, but RBY held up like a king for way longer than Fallout 3 or Super Mario World. You had people, who previously claimed that nothing would stop Undertale, go forward and admit it was over and that RBY had won it. Undertale ended up managing to get in the lead, but nothing was over at that point. The match was still really dramatic and was decided on an insane and ridiculous twist where a fanbase went against their own. Very eventful 24 hours we had here, that's for sure. The match started out as you would expect. A huge explosion in votals, with Undertale falling behind. The votals were insanely high for both games. Rallies were clearly already there and it definitely effecting the match that the previous ones had a huge rally. Probably wasn't too much, but it likely mostly helped RBY come off to this fantastic start. In less than 20 minutes it was over 1000 votes ahead, which would make almost any match a closed done deal. In less than an hour this was extended to 2000 votes. It slowed, but not by much, in a bit more than 2 hours, RBY was more than 3000 votes in the lead. This was insane. RBY was clearly leagues ahead of the games that fought Undertale in previous matches. The votals were a lot higher than in previous rounds for Undertale matches, and RBY was doing a lot better. Clearly this would be an opponent of a whole different strength for Undertale. Now, this might be speaking a bit too soon, you would think. Once RBY passed 3000 it actually stopped and starting dropping a bit, causing literally everyone to call the match over. I don't blame them. I mean, I do often blame people for acting too fast, but we have seen pretty clearly previously that when Undertale starts cutting, it doesn't really stop, not to mention it'd make sense for that to start earlier this time. Well, RBY didn't care a single bit and just starting adding to its lead quickly again afterward. A very absurd answer to what we've seen so far against Undertale. RBY did amazing. Exactly at the 8 hour mark, RBY was exactly 5000 votes ahead. That's way more than Super Mario World ever had despite having way more votes against it as well. It held up incredibly well. Now, this is partly because RBY has quite the active subreddit, which had a very successful rally topic going. Although for it to be this successful is insane. It's fighting a rallied Undertale. I know Undertale wasn't at its peak yet, but still, damn, this was great. Shows that RBY had contest winning capabilities if it could escape this match. RBY had not stopped yet either. Not at all. A bit after the 11 hour mark it was more than 7000 votes in the lead, making Undertale's previous opponents all look terrible in comparison. Mass Effect 3 at this point had actually yet to pass the 7000 vote lead. Of course that match had nothing special going on for it yet at that point, but consider it for a moment. RBY was outperforming Mass Effect 3 against Undertale at this point of the match despite Mass Effect 3 facing no rallies. We all know RBY would wreck the floor with Mass Effect 3, no doubt about that, but this is three rounds later after large parts of the internet caught on. You'd think Undertale had the contest swallowed up by now, it would have if not for other outside forces than its own, but RBY held on greatly. This was the point where people that had previously said nothing could get in Undertale's way started doubting that statement. Not all of them of course, but a solid handful. We had entered prime Undertale hours and it wasn't moving an inch. RBY just seemed way too strong to take down. Despite rallies being what they are, this is when you knew we had a great match. In any battle in any fictional contest ever, where two opponents are fighting and you know that one of them simply had to advance due to plot armor or something or that, the good fight is made when it gives you doubts. Story writers can chose to make it a walkover for the person wearing the plot armor, this is often the case when a villain had plot armor and rarely ever when a hero wears it. However, they can also chose to make the absolute best of the battle. That happens when the person you know will obviously lose keeps holding on, pulling new tricks, overcoming the odds and so on, constantly. At some point you start wondering if this person actually pull through and win this. This is of course not a fictional battle, but a popularity contest with real people voting, but it's honestly pretty similar. RBY did a lot better than you would today. Unfortunately for RBY, Undertale went into its highest gear within the next, which ultimately stopped RBY from gaining. After standing still for about half an hour, Undertale starting cutting. This time though, it was for real. It should be noted that this was the point where Undertale took the lead from Super Mario World. That's how insanely great RBY had stood up. And Undertale starting cutting, but it sure took a while to get going. Not until a few hours later did Undertale start making big enough cuts for it to possible get the lead in time. If you were a RBY supporter, you had reason to believe in your game in the meantime. Though with these big cuts finally arriving, it was time to actually start panicking. By big cuts I mean cutting off 1000 votes in less than an hour. But this was what we had expected to happen since round 1. I think people forgot about that during RBY's glory, but it was never expected to just keep its lead the match through. People thought of RBY as a possible game to beat Undertale because people believed in its power to withstand these rallies, which, despite how things were looking right now, it had done a pretty great job at so far in the match. The votals were sky high with only a bit less than a third of the match left to go. With that said, it was pretty clear that the idea of RBY getting a great enough amount of the votes rallied to Undertale to withstand its rally powers was out of the window. Undertale would win at its current pace. It makes a lot of sense too, which everyone should've figured from the start. These people are rallied to vote for Undertale and don't particularly care about the contest. Naturally, you vote for that game unless you're incredibly passionate about the opposing game, which no one is about RBY. Many people like Pokemon and many people have very found childhood memories of RBY, but it's not exactly anybody's favorite game. It's just beloved in general for being the beginning of one of the absolute most successful franchises. Another reason why the Undertale rallies obviously wouldn't backfire is that at this point, it was very far from only being about love for Undertale, as were the case in the Mass Effect 3 match, A large amount of the force of the rallies were all about craving for our salty tears, to put it their way. I think a pretty big part of people that started just caring about Undertale had begun enjoying the “see GameFAQs whine” part of it. Last match a profile named Undertalebot was being a jerk towards us. Sure sounds like someone that cares about the game but at the same time was clearly in it to make people mad. So yeah, while we're at it, thank you BracketEntry, ExThaNemesis and MichaelWClark among others. You played a major part in getting people to vote for Undertale. It amazes me you would be stupid enough to think it'd help Undertale's opponents that you were being jerks. Our own board is of course not entirely to blame. I can't count how many times I saw topics from users I had never seen before whining about Undertale doing great. This is probably not the case every time, but I fully expect a bunch of those to have been Undertale supporters figuring out a great way to gain votes by making fun of us. It's a smart trick, because obviously not one of us could prevent anything. At one point during the contest, LordoftheMorons made an attempt to create a polite topic talking to them. At first, it just made no difference as you would expect, but then it actually backfired because users such as the ones I just mentioned before apparently don't learn from their mistakes in this regard. It's incredible how much of this can be contributed to the part of our community that actually didn't want Undertale to win by any means. There is just nothing that the ones of us that were being nice, a vast majority of board 8's regulars, could do about it! Didn't matter that there were probably far more jerks among Undertale's supporters than its opponents' supporters by now, if for no other reason than the fact that they just greatly outnumbered them by now. Because people being against Undertale were jerks first, well, there was just nothing to do. Undertale could also keep an underdog status going through the contest despite clearly not being that anymore. The thought of an indie game winning would blind people so much that they didn't care to realize it was a clear favorite to take it all at this point, more than Final Fantasy VII was ever a clear favorite, but that game still gets blamed for always winning. When Zelda gets the blame, it's at least somewhat understandable. None of that should matter during this match, but it does for some reason. CycloReaper made a brilliant sarcastic poll topic about this, simply asking people why they voted for Undertale giving an option that said something along the lines of “Tired of Final Fantasy winning, so I'm voting against beloved Final Fantasy game; RBY.” and another one just with Zelda instead of Final Fantasy among other hilarious answers. I know that's not what people think exactly and that they don't care enough to actually learn a bit about out contest history since SBAllen took over for CJayC, but cmon, it's not like Undertale is like the only hope if you don't want those to win. In fact, it's quite ironic, because if Undertale pulled this match off, the contest would actually be more predictable than it would've been otherwise due to Ocarina of Time clearly having lost a step and Chrono Trigger having claimed 10. Melee would be the only thing in the way of Undertale having a 100% chance of victory if it escaped this match. Undertale's absolutely perfect match trends were once again on its side as well. And once again, but for the final time, 12-hour matches would've caused it to lose. It's much easier for them to rally for the game when it's behind for so long, so it build up a huge loads of support it then fires with Draven like powers in the late afternoon. But the true beauty of it is how difficult it is to rally against. How do you get people to support a game and spread the word when it's leading by a few thousand votes? We saw Fallout 3 completely fail to do anything despite its sequel being completely fresh of release at the time of the match, which was partly due to this. The Pokemon subreddit rally is one of the very few exceptions to this, as it clearly helped RBY a lot when it was already winning early on, but now RBY was having a serious problem because that thread was posted when it was. The subreddit would not allow repeat threads, so now when RBY needed it the most, well, it had fallen down and couldn't be restored. It's fun to imagine what would've happened if it had been made later. Like, RBY would've have kept up as great, but it would clearly be more effective during daytime and when RBY was actually struggling. This is of course very unrealistic, as it takes only a single person not thinking about these things and posting the topic for such a plan to be blown. No, at this point it was more than clear that Undertale would take the lead by storm. RBY managed to held on to its lead a few more hours than Fallout 3 did as well. Once again, very impressive! But the lead change would happen. It happened at 19:55. Ultimately the only lead change of the match as you can imagine. Undertale was at full force at this time, increasing the lead to more than 1000 votes in half an hour. RBY would have to act very fast now. Undertale would slow after getting the lead, but still be in full force. We saw Fallout 3 fail completely at this, but people believed that RBY could counter rally and honestly, they had pretty great reason to. Pokemon has a huge active community to call out for. If people could just get some big sides or people to share the match link, we might just stand a chance. Serebii had already been attempted and had been nice enough to answer. The answer was not what people hoped for, Serebii would only share official stuff. However, a very impressive handful did share this poll. First of all, Bulbagarden. Great active forum consisting of a wikia and a newssite with tons of followers on their twitter profile as well, which is what they used to share the link. But it failed. Pokemon Global News, a Facebook page with more than 200,000 followers, shared this poll. But it failed. Junichi Masuda himself shared this poll on his twitter profile. But it failed. Those three things, especially the last one, should've been huge game changers and they had absolutely no effect on the outcome of this match. They far exceed the Fallout subreddit. ExTha actually took a pretty great screenshot regarding this. Look at that! It really is ridiculous. That top comment though, it's far from the only place we saw that. People hard expected rallies to backfire in this match, but, I don't think anyone ever thought of it the other way around, which is a bit weird when it makes perfect sense. Undertale is brand new and hot right now. It's what people are talking about. RBY's rallies backfired so greatly today. Of course, that can't solely be contributed to the fact that some Pokemon fans liked Undertale better. We learned today how much the hardcore Pokemon community dislikes the first generation of Pokemon. I heard the term “Genwunners” before, but damn, who knew that would backfire within the fanbase like this. Apparently, generation I is grealy disliked for being glitchy and unbalanced and what not, so instead of supporters the last remaining contender of their favorite franchise, they anti-vote it. This clearly made a difference. Not saying Undertale wouldn't necessarily still win, but we would've felt a difference near the end if the Pokemon fanbase wasn't as split as it is and was more passionate about all of their franchise instead of just more recent games. It makes sense the Pokemon themselves are easier to rally for in this regard. That's how the match ended. The Pokemon fanbase back stabbed itself as Undertale fans and anti-GameFAQs people enjoyed themselves. I can't think of anything I've seen in this contest that compared to this. I mean, take Final Fantasy. XII is disliked and does far worse than say VII, but it's not at all the same. It doesn't have the same kind of fanbase. It's so absurd that the by far strongest entry from a franchise is so disliked by the franchise's most hardcore fans. Crazy. Especially when you consider that the games are incredibly similar each generation. Sure, they add new things and balance it out, but the games have the same structure every generation. I completely fail to understand the logic here. While, we're at it, I'd to take this opportunity to greatly trash talk people that use the term “genwunners”, as someone who really enjoys all generations, considers Black 2 and White 2 the best of Pokemon and really wishes more people would play beyond the first two generations. This write-up is crazy long already, but there is no better time to do this in the contest. I do fully understand that it's annoying to talk about a late Pokemon game and be met with a comment along the lines of “it's not gen 1 so it sucks”. That's being ignorant. I get that and sure, such being are annoying, I agree. I will go as far as saying it's a fun term to describe them. However, the people using this term are almost always incredible hypocritical and comes off as huge jerks themselves with their attitude and behavior. Which is honestly very stupid considering most of the people they call “genwunners” are likely just trolling them and doing a good job it apparently. The term actually exists in the urban dictionary. Look at those definitions! We can act like the word is only used for defining the people that are actually being jerks about not playing past generation I. Then these are fine. I guess even if we include the obvious trolls, it's fine, because trolls are generally jerks I guess, it's just that clearly some people are not good at realizing they're being trolled. Then this match happens and apparently this term is being used to describe people supporting RBY against Undertale. I'm not sure exactly where the line goes, but they crossed it so long ago it's out of sight now. I saw several of them during and after the match. They were being huge jerks themselves, much worse than I've ever seen any so called genwunner be. Apparently I, among others, am a huge idiot for liking RBY when the games have become completely obsolete after the release of later Pokemon games. This logic is so flawed, so stupid and so arrogant. It's completely fine that a group of people sees no reason to go back to playing the original generation. I don't mind a single bit. However, apparently, at least a large group of them can't understand that some people do see reasons. Let me go over a few. RBY is first of all really simple, which can be nice. No natures, abilities, EV yield, happiness, genders or anything to look at when catching a Pokemon for example. No grooming, contests, Pokestudios or something additional I really don't care for a mandatory tutorial of. It's just about becoming champion. No gimmicks. Furthermore, it's relatively difficult. Pokemon has never been hard, but you could encounter challenges back in the day to some extend. A rival that actually feels like a rival, something at least half the games lack by now. He's also easily my favorite rival to this day. There are probably more reasons, but this is enough. The moment RBY offers something later games don't, everyone should accept stuff like this, some of us have reason to go back and play these. You don't have to agree, just don't be insulting to the ones you disagree with! This is games we're talking about after all. But they can't do that. They're terribly insulting. I don't know how many insults I received from them during this match from trying to explain this. I was told XY was way better for example and I was a genwunner aka an idiot for not agreeing with this despite Black 2 and White 2 being my favorite games, following by HGSS and Platinum. Sure, Kalos introduced Amie, Super Training, grooming, Battle Mansion and whatever, doesn't mean everyone necessarily enjoys all of that. It's not like the special split, abilities, new types, severely upgraded box and bag systems, moves being either physical or special rather than type among other new permanent features are disliked. I love all those things, but the simple RBY offers some things too that I like going back to. Had this just been a few trolls, I would've let it slide, but it's not, a bunch of people in the Pokemon community literally act this way. Looking down on people with different opinions than their own. It saddens me a lot that the community of the franchise I might just have dedicated the most time overall is such a terrible acting community. Probably my least favorite gaming community actually. Can Charizard please be my favorite fire starter without me being an arrogant, ignorant jerk, please? I also just don't understand this. Even if you think later games have outdone RBY in every single way and you have no reason to ever play them again, that doesn't make them bad! They were the originals, of course they have less material overall than its successors when all the games are practically the same, but it's okay, when they came they were fantastic! Took the gaming industry by storm. A bunch of these people used to love the games. If you think they aged bad that doesn't make them bad, really. They were great for their time. Sure, they're glitchy, but that's very easy to avoid when playing. And sure, it sucked competitively, but how many played that back then anyway. Obsolete is in no way the same as bad. I really don't understand turning this much against the games that introduced you and set the standard for your very favorite franchise today. It's completely beyond me. Finally, RBY is not the biggest Pokemon games on this site because we're all ignorant about the future. It's just that a bunch of people here stopped caring about Pokemon, RBY included, but they played that before they stopped caring, so that one they at least know. Doesn't make the following games bad necessarily, they just have a lower playrate. RBY lost today in such a crazy manner. Even so, it's definitely a beast looking out for in the future. It looked like it had a lot of potential in these things back in 2009 and it proved that this contest. It's a top 5 game whether you include rallies or not. Very strong. Would've possibly won the contest had it faced Undertale just a single round earlier. You can say that Undertale won the contest when it passed Mass Effect 3, but it definitely had a challenge today. A big one. You can look at that 3000 vote lead and say it was easy, but RBY pushed Undertale to its limits and had community liked these games better RBY wins very easily. Which is insane considering the force Undertale is at now. Super Mario 64 doesn't stand a chance. Melee appears to have enough rally power to look impressive and while that match is not completely decided, Undertale goes into it as a bigger favorite than it was today. We have learned that rally backfiring doesn't work for Undertale, it helps it's a recent indie game in this regard. We never had the Mario gauntlet, but it's pretty clear that even if Undertale wasn't there, RBY still would've easily beat all three. It benefits from NostalgiaFAQs on a level of SNES games. It wont grow in a few years probably, seeing as this site will practically be the same people then, so the SNES era will still be the pinnacle of nostalgia, but it will be just as strong. I'm somewhat glad RBY has rally backfire, it evens out a bit its rally power and it also means it can't become a beast in the way Melee has become, which I don't think is fun. It'll be an elite game in future contests, but definitely with losing capabilities. So huge props to RBY for being a major bump in Undertale's path to victory. It would've been more boring to see it swallow the contest more and more each round than what we had today. At this point, only a very few doubted its victory. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6165&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=115) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (3)Super Mario 64 2015 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (3)Super Mario 64 2015 (revid 84409)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, December 8, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 116 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario 64 - 59.11% 76 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario 64 - 26.18% This match took a complete back seat to the Pokemon/Undertale madness, and for good reason. Any prayer Skyrim had of winning this match disappeared when it struggled to beat Metroid Prime, and frankly it was lucky to beat Prime at all. Come this match, it would be time to meet its maker. It's cool how this match barely changed even with two separate rallies going on, which I'm not at all joking about. Sure it makes for a boring match and a boring writeup, but seeing this match stay in the 61-39 range even amidst two rallies that would seemingly favor Mario was rather impressive. Mario had every reason to spike up into an absurd percentage here, but it never happened. It was ho-hum Mario victory to boot the Elder Scrolls series from the contest, but even in losing Skyrim made a good effort. 39% on Mario 64 is not a number to be embarrassed about, and this poll only got 7000 less votes than the poll people actually cared about. That's pretty good for these two, all things considered, and it showed that multiple polls per day is a format that should definitely continue in these contests. Despite a lot of whining about it, no match's result changed because of a neighboring poll. Sure it might happen down the line, but that's part of the fun. We're back to the 2002 era where bracketmaking is largely about common sense picks, smart guesswork and cheering on favorites. It's tournaments as they were meant to be. This would set up the potentially ridiculous FF7/Melee/Undertale/Mario 64 day, which wouldn't pan out into anything ridiculous but it was still very fun to speculate about four simultanous rallies. ### Ctes' Analysis This match was never in doubt at any point of the contest and Skyrim never allowed above 40% made it a boring one too. Don't let the numbers fool you though. Super Mario 64 was heavily favored by the rallies from the other match. It started out almost doubling Skyrim, then fell in percentage for most of the day, though kept gaining as well. When Undertale finally started destroying RBY, Super Mario 64 gained in percentage for the remaining of the match. There is not doubt in my mind that Skyrim breaks 40% in different circumstances. That means in a match not affected by rallying. Breaking 40% wouldn't exactly make it a good match, far from actually. But it shows that Skyrim is legit, which is darn impressive for any Western game, but especially one from this decade. Had Skyrim been in contests when our votals were greater, in other words, when NostalgiaFAQs wasn't as great, it would've been a stronger threat than Fallout 3 in Game of the Decade for sure. Lose to Brawl back then, it probably would, but it'd be a lot stronger than it is now. If the site gets redeemed a bit in this regard, Skyrim is a game to look out for. If a second Game of the Decade contest comes, I guarantee that Skyrim will be a top contender, though I have a hard time seeing a non-Nintendo actually taking the title unless it's a game with huge outside rallies, so expect Skyrim to see the semi-finals or maybe finals depending on bracket placement. Skyrim had the unfortunate placement this contest of being right after an Undertale match every single round until it actually shares poll space with Undertale. This never really seemed to favor Skyrim, though in the second round it at least didn't favor its opponent either. With that said, it's great that Skyrim was ultimately unaffected by this. It's first two opponents were too weak for Skyrim to be bothered by spillover and it did overcome a spillover boosted Metroid Prime as well. Getting blown out today sucks, but it was never going to win this one. This is good for our already bad reputation on the outside when it comes to these contests. Despite being due to outside rallies, had Skyrim lost early, that wouldn't exactly make people look less down on us for favoring older games. This doesn't matter against Super Mario 64, that one was a big revolutionary game that is very popular today too in particular among speed runners. As for Super Mario 64, it managed to get to the point everyone expected it to get, though it wouldn't lose to what anyone expected it to. It could've had an interesting match then perhaps, but would never be the favorite in it. At this point, it was pretty clear that it would lose easily. At least it would be the only Mario game in the Mario gauntlet to actually reach the point where it could've met another Mario game and it got a few rounds further too, so despite pretty clearly being the weakest of the three, it can take that achievement with it. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6166&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=116) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (2)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (2)Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2015 (revid 84410)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, December 9, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 117 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 65.94% 75 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 69.51% Every round has a dud match here and there, but thankfully for this contest the divisional finals only had one match that was truly a dud. Even Mario 64 \> Skyrim was entertaining insofar as its vote total, even if nothing exciting happened there. Rally spillover meant virtually nothing in this match, as it was a 68-32 affair for virtually all 24 hours. Symphony of the Night did well to win three matches and make the divisional final, but it was never going to do anything here. Ocarina, as bad a contest as it had, is still one of our contest titans and was always going to score a huge blowout here. That being said, Zelda got 68.18% here. Based on 2009, Zelda was supposed to get 76.73%. Even in a blowout win that was barely worth talking about, Ocarina still managed to look a step too slow. We all know this wouldn't matter until the finals, but it would have been hilarious seeing it lose before then. Allen really needs to stop putting Ocarina/FF7 or Link/Cloud on opposite sides of the bracket for posterity. Contests are unpredictable enough now to where we don't need that as our "guaranteed fallback finals plan". Guarantee some fresh blood in there right from the start, I say. ### Ctes' Analysis There's always that one match every round that is way less interesting before, during and after the match than any other match of the round. Said match is always the Ocarina of Time match too! Symphony of the Night had a pretty great run, though it had no competition until its eventual destruction. It managed to look pretty great on the way here. Being one of the four \#2 seeds to actually make the division finals is worth something too. Even if it had what was perhaps the easiest path to get there and would've lost in the divisions where the \#2 seed lost as well. It was a surprise \#2 seed but to where it was supposed to. I know this is viewed as another disappointing result from our defending champion despite being one huge blowout. This is supported by x-stats from 2004 and 2009. However, even before taking anti-votes into account, I don't think it's that bad. Symphony of the Night has received a status as a well-beloved classic now. It had really good results, they're just easily ignored because Symphony of the Night was supposed to get here regardless of its strength boost. I guess people forgot they all underestimated it percentage wise last round. Interestingly, this match was pretty much unaffected by rally spillover. At first this is weird, considering how the rallies favor things that relevant today. Zelda is still big today and Castlevania has been a joke since it got 3D games. However, Ocarina of Time is the like the main villain for the Undertale rallies, so that's probably why it evens out and we get a match that is unaffected. Ocarina of Time was obviously still just on the way to the finals despite being affected by this each round from now. The bracket was designed to have one ridiculously boring path for Ocarina of Time, which comes with both up and downsides. I really want to see Symphony of the Night in some actually debatable matches next time. It would be fun to see where it is today, because it has clearly improved. Putting in the seventh division would've been fun. Super Mario RPG beats it, but what else there does? It has cemented itself as a legit game, rightfully. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6167&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=117) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (2)The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 2015 (revid 84411)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, December 9, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 118 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 59.71% 75 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: A Link to the Past - 36.52% Did you know that to this point, Majora's Mask had never lost 1v1 in a contest? It's true. This match was the perfect indicator of exactly how long rally spillover lasts, which is exactly 90 minutes or so. The previous day had seen Undertale/Pokemon madness, which clearly spilled over into the next day. Maybe not Ocarina/SotN so much, but it was definitely felt here. One can argue how close LTTP and Majora's Mask are "supposed" to be normally (which is logic I will never agree with, but whatever), but I think most people agreed that Link to the Past would easily win this match with minimal interference. Well for an hour and a half, Majora's Mask put the fear of god himself into Link to the Past. All that rallying that was going on in the previous match clearly favored Majora here, and Majora rode the wave all the way up to a 600 vote lead 90 minutes into the poll. On top of rally spillover, Majora also had a clear picture advantage, it's been a great contest story since Game of the Decade, and it was the clear hipster option if you were one of those "really, we have to deal with 3 Zelda games hogging the contest at one time?" types. Had Majora retained this momentum, it would have been a really cool upset. It also would have made for a hilarious match next round between Ocarina and Majora's Mask. Unfortunately, Majora's Mask luck would run out, and its lead would disappear slowly and painfully before getting buried. Link to the Past slowly whittled the lead all the way down overnight, and it caught up right as the morning vote hit. The morning vote would clearly favor Link to the Past, and a 50-50 match entering the morning vote would turn into a very comfortable 52-48 win. Link to the Past may have won, but Majora's Mask was the star of the show and sacrificing itself to show us exactly how long rally spillover lasts was very kind. I think Majora did it intentionally just to show us there was a larger force at work !! But seriously, three Zelda games at the same time was completely silly. It's not their fault as the games are strong, but when it does finally come to fruit it is mighty boring to watch. But thanks to the series cannibalizing itself, only two games from the Zelda series made the final 8. It easily could have been 3 or 4 with better draws elsewhere, so we should be thankful. ### Ctes' Analysis I understand that Majora's Mask kinda being a defending champion would make you want to pick it in an upset, but despite what some people like to think, it's leagues behind Ocarina of Time, so naturally it would never going to stand a chance facing A Link to the Past in a one against one match. A Link to the Past is a highly respected and very successful Zelda game, the king of the 2D games in fact and with a high playrate to go. Majora's Mask is the lowest selling home console Zelda, that was released within the end of its console's lifetime and greatly stood in the shadows of its fellow Nintendo 64. It has a cult following due to being quite a bit different from your usual Zelda. With darker tones, an incredibly high amount of side-questing and unusual but brilliant time system, Majora's Mask really became something else. The game is not obscure by any means, and having a notable part of the fanbase favor it certainly helps, but due to the reasons mentioned about, it falls a bit behind the top Zelda games, which are the ones remaining after this round. It don't doubt for a second it would beat Wind Waker and Twilight Princess at the very least on our site, but I didn't doubt for a second it would lose today either. It had cemented itself as a solid third place here when it comes to Zelda games. Personally, I find Majora's Mask to be one of the most unique gaming experiences I have had, which I consider really impressive considering it's actually just another game of a big Nintendo franchise and those don't really ever seem that different in their core. Although it comes with a small amount of dungeons and some backtracking, the game has a fantastic atmosphere and feels a lot more alive the by far the most games ever created. Every NPC is doing their own stuff, they're living on their own, regardless of what you're doing and when, they have their schedules set, which they follow around you. The high amount of side quests is a perfect way to truly experience this. Obviously most games can't pull this off for tons of reasons, but the three day system is a brilliant way of making such a thing work. I'll also give the game credit for being surprisingly challenging for a Nintendo game and while it has few dungeons, it has what is the best dungeon in the series. I am of course talking about the Stone Tower Temple. Now, despite this match being a no brainer, it was surprisingly close actually. For quite a while, the match was favoring Majora's Mask big time due to rally spillover from RBY vs. Undertale, where I'm sure both fanbases greatly prefer the more recent Zelda. With rally and spillover numbers being as relatively large as they are, Majora's Mask jumped off to a huge lead likely causing a bunch of people that never doubted A Link to the Past before to do just that. Although it was obviously spillover, I doubt blame anybody for getting a scare. In just a minute, Majora's Mask had a 100 vote lead, that's quite terrifying in our contests. Of course, as people realized Undertale had finished its job, the rallies slowly disappeared and the spillover with it, so Majora's Mask's income quickly decreased in amount. It kept gaining for almost one and a half hour, managing to go just beyond a 600 vote lead, but then A Link to the Past started cutting and it was practically over. Without spillover, A Link to the Past was just going to win by less than 1000 votes, this was nothing. Despite taking its sweet time and losing occasional updates, A Link to the Past was getting the job done. It took the lead just before the 7 hour mark and never looked back. I guess spillover made an otherwise boring day interesting for just a short time, which is probably the best I can say about it. Although I would've been terribly annoyed had spillover actually flipped a match, but as I said, these two games were never close. It's difficult with Zelda games in these things. I don't know if Allen thought better of Majora's Mask, but while I understand feeding A Link to the Past, Majora's Mask could have probably seen better bracket placement. Of course, I'm very happy it didn't, because a certain SNES games proved to be a lot stronger than we thought last round and provided my favorite match of the contest against Majora's Mask is a shockingly close match. It's interesting. Two contests in a row, Majora's Mask had the best of the contest and barely won it too. With that in mind, it's a happy farewell to our Game of the Decade champion. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6168&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=118) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars vs (2)Resident Evil 4 2015 _source: (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars vs (2)Resident Evil 4 2015 (revid 84412)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, December 10, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 119 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 10, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario RPG - 48.19% 20 for - 54 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario RPG - 6.41% Undertale going on its crazy run partially blinded people to Super Mario RPG also making a crazy run of its own, and even though it winning three matches was predictable the second it beat Oblivion, the match here against Resident Evil 4 was its coming out party. Mario RPG's prediction percentages may not be Undertale level, but they were still drastically low and Mario RPG needs to be given all the credit in the world for the run it made this year. As fate would have it, all those warning signs that Resident Evil 4 showed us leading up to this match were quite relevant. yoblazer makes one call every contest against the grain that pans out, and for this contest it was Mario RPG beating Resident Evil 4. His logic was that old games would embarrass new games in a fair bracket, and he was proven right tenfold as this contest progressed. There were signs all over the place that this was coming, but when the match itself happened and Resident Evil 4 never even came close, eyes were opened. Even the standard SMRPG European percentage bleed did nothing to spare RE4 from getting thoroughly embarrassed here. All it did was turn a 57-43 beating into 54-46 overnight, but then the morning vote came and the burial continued. This wasn't just any game, either. This was Resident Evil 4, which is on the short list of being among the objectively greatest games ever made. And it just went out there and got its ass absolutely plowed for 24 solid hours. There was a host of "this is why GameFAQs gets made fun of" topics, but really, this loss is on Capcom. Their business philosophy basically amounts to "throw as much shit on the wall as possible", and among the 2398432984 Resident Evil games they've made, they struck gold with Resident Evil 4. How did they follow it up? In typical Capcom fashion. Go play RE5 and RE6 and see for yourself just how awful that company is. It sucks that RE4 had to be the game to sacrifice so that Capcom could get its comeuppance in this contest, but certain things need to be done for the greater good. RE4 getting pasted and making more people aware of how shit Capcom is counts as "the greater good". There is not one Capcom series that they have not completely run into the ground, and no one should ever buy games from those idiots ever again. Resident Evil 4 may not have deserved this beating, but Crapcom certainly did. That, the old \> new theme, and Mario RPG getting its own bandwagon going spelled doom for RE4 before this match ever begun. Even more alarming here is how 55-45 against RE4 was such a high number that the winner of MGS/MGS3 was likely also completely screwed. Mario RPG this contest was just on a whole different level. ### Ctes' Analysis Looking at the names and consoles at play here, there really shouldn't have been any doubt this would be the outcome, yet most people didn't doubt the opposite outcome would happen. Super Mario RPG hasn't looked particularly bad in the past, but seeing it put the same percentage on Street Fight II and clearly being a step behind GoldenEye doesn't make a victory today look very likely. Even after we realized this was the Year of SNES, Resident Evil 4 was still supposed to win it. It destroyed Paper Mario easily and its performances in the other rounds had good explanations. May I remind that Resident Evil 4 was legit stronger than Twilight Princess, Kingdom Hearts II and Metal Gear Solid 2 just six years ago? This match was supposed to go be easy for Resident Evil 4 and it just wasn't. Though its not limited to that, the first reason is that Resident Evil 4 clearly lost a step or three. It doesn't matter what Super Mario RPG had going for it, 2009 Resident Evil 4 would've easily won this match and 2010 Resident Evil 4 clearly would too, even if it did seem weaker. I suppose this is partly due to NostalgiaFAQs, but also the Resident Evil franchise never really getting back to where it was at this point. Resident Evil 5 was nothing like 4, 6 is practically joke and who remembers games like Umbrella Chronicles. The series is not beyond saving, but it's in no good position and I think it hurts the overall picture of it. Then of course it is the Year of SNES. This is not the Super Mario RPG from the previous contests. As with any other SNES game, it received this major boost from being from just the right age of gaming and it shows. However, I think Super Mario RPG had a strength boost beyond that. It had just the perfect bracket position. Coming out of an eight pack filled with Grand Theft Auto games and World of Warcraft might seem obvious to us, but is quite the upset to a casual. I'm certain Super Mario RPG had a bandwagon going on for it as this point to make this match even easier. Skyrim or not, there is no way Oblivion is stronger than Resident Evil 4 now. It also explain the percentage trends. Super Mario RPG still dropped a bit of percentage in the dead hours, but it was quite minimal compared to previous rounds and there is really no other explanation for that. You really can't blame anyone for getting this match wrong. The prediction percentage really says it all. Despite this match seeming somewhat obvious in reverse, we had the Paper Mario result to look at the whole time and there was really no reason for Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario to be t hat far apart. For all we knew, the score on New Vegas might have been really great too with Fallout 4 just coming out and after seeing BioShock against Metal Gear Solid 3 the next day. It was discussed, but Resident Evil 4 was the favorite up until the beginning of the match. Super Mario RPG was looking likely to accomplish big things now and get the miracle run of the contest. That title could be given to Undertale's run, but I don't think it should considering it was considering likely to win it all after round 1. Super Mario RPG was a favorite in the quarter-finals after today, but Metal Gear Solid 3 didn't look bad either. Resident Evil 4 was slightly stronger than it in 2009 and slightly weaker in 2010 and despite the Metal Gear Solid series losing a step as well, it's clearly a smaller one, and Snake Eater was currently redeeming itself quite a bit. If Super Mario RPG somehow didn't have a bandwagon going for it now, it certainly needed to have one next round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6168&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=118) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Metal Gear Solid vs (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 2015 _source: (1)Metal Gear Solid vs (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 2015 (revid 84413)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, December 10, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 120 - **Match Date:** Thursday, December 10, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 48.54% 23 for - 48 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid 3 - 13.72% Metal Gear Solid series fans have wanted this match for years, and finally getting it was awesome. We have argued about 1 vs 3 basically since the day 3 came out, and while I know one poll on GameFAQs won't stop us series fans from arguing, just seeing the match was amazing. My own opinion, for those who care, is that MGS3 is the better game among the two, and while I think Solid Snake is a better character than Big Boss in the series (especially after playing 5, holy crap), MGS3 Big Boss is a much better character to me than MGS1 Solid Snake. MGS1 Snake is immature and unintelligent to me, especially in Twin Snakes wheer they tried turning him into fucking Neo from The Matrix. MGS3 also wins in gameplay, graphics, replayability, and how the story is told. It doesn't have the better story, but it does have better storytelling. There is a difference. The entire game up until The End being dry also bogs it down, plus the constant menu-hopping has been discussed ad infinitum. MGS1 wins on story, music, pacing, nostalgia, and characters. By today's standards, MGS3 can be picked up and played right now, while the original Metal Gear Solid has aged like a fucking corpse. I acknowledge the game was great for its time, and while I hate the "aged badly" argument that people always bring up with Goldeneye, Metal Gear Solid is a game where I'll break character and use that argument. That game is unplayable now. Have you people who think 1 \> 3 actually played MGS1 recently? I replayed the entire series to get hyped for 5. I promise you that while 3 has some problems, it's better than 1. It's close, but it is better. So for me, the best possible poll result would be MGS3 winning close. And in a contest loaded with matches that gave me exactly what I wanted, MGS3 went out there and won close. This match was close enough to where MGS1 could be as respectable as possible in defeat, but far away enough to where the match was ever in doubt. Without the presence of a rally, MGS3 was never going to lose this match. This was about as constant a 52-48 as you'll get, and really this was a match with no true losers. It was a day to celebrate and discuss the legacy of Metal Gear Solid, and given how the entire series looked like garbage this contest after MGS5 dropped the ball, it was nice as a fan to just have a poll all to myself. Series ranking: 2 \> 4 \> 5 \> 3 \> 1. 5 has a lot of problems, but having far and away the best gameplay in the series puts it over for me. This match put a bow on the divisional finals. We only had three 1 vs 2 matchups out of a possible 8, which shows how unpredictable things were despite the good seeding, and the final 8 had a good variety to it. Melee, FF7, Undertale, Mario 64, Ocarina, LTTP, Mario RPG, and Metal Gear Solid 3 is a well-rounded bunch. 4 companies and 6 series were represented here, and every game that got this far very much deserved it. There was no Wind Waker. No Shadow of the Colossus. No Warcraft 3 or World of Warcraft. No Capcom, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, or Microsoft. None of those dumb flash games like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush or Farmville that make billions of dollars (though I would support them rallying if they chose to). No Minecraft. No joke games, like Big Rigs or Cory in the House. There was really no bullshit at all, just 8 games that deserved to be here and can objectively be called the best game ever. It was great to see, getting here was a great ride, and the final week of the contest would be an absolute classic. Just everything one could hope for in a contest happened this season. ### Ctes' Analysis Considering what we've seen so far, this result makes little no sense for several reasons. Be there rSFF or not, I wanna say Metal Gear Solid 3 redeemed the series. This is not actually the case, the Mother 3 match and the BioShock embarrassment still just happened, but we'd lie if we said Metal Gear Solid 3 didn't surprise us positively the latest two rounds. Funny enough, a majority of board 8 got 0 of 16 possible points today. The match, boring and linear as it was, sure had quite the shocking result. Most of us were aware that Metal Gear Solid 3 is the fan favorite of the series. Rightfully so, if I may add, it's my personal favorite too. Big Boss is my favorite character from the series as well. It was refreshing to see it do so well again, showing that destroying Mass Effect 2 last round wasn't only because of that game being weak, but also because Metal Gear Solid 3, even if it is past its prime, is still legit. Oh, and somehow Mother 3 isn't complete trash in these things despite not having been released outside of Japan. Despite being the fan favorite, you wouldn't expect it to win a match against the original game for Playstation 1. More people played it and it's also easily the least disliked of the bunch, as in, I'm not sure anybody does. It was supposed to win comfortably and yet that happened the other way. Seriously, how many times this contest has the game from the PS2 era or beyond won a debatable match against a game from before it except of course for Undertale and Melee rallies? The only instance I can think of is Xenogears losing to KOTOR, which was a somewhat debatable match. Furthermore, even taking non-debatable matches into account, the new additions to the list would only be when FFX beat MMX and MGSV, MGS2 and Resident Evil 4's round 1 victories, of which only one of those didn't have the winning game disappoint big time. Consider those trends and Metal Gear Solid 3's victory looks incredibly weird, and especially because it flat out looked some levels below Metal Gear Solid earlier in the contest. I suppose the core fanbase sided with Metal Gear Solid 3 big time, because otherwise it shouldn't be enough to overcome casual votes and bracket votes. This is the only time in the whole contest that a winning underdog in such a match was the more recent game. That's why you can't help, but consider rSFF, even though that's a phenomenon which existence we still haven't agreed on. I personally don't think there was though, the Mass Effect 2 match makes be confident too. It doesn't seem out of the question that BioShock was legit, even before rallies and the match with Mother 3 can be explained too. Earthbound performed almost 10% better on Metal Gear Solid than Mother 3 did on Metal Gear Solid 3, roughly 33% extra votes. Most of that fanbase it pretty passionate about the game, I'm assuming they're all well-aware of Mother 3's existence. A bunch of them likely played it or are at least passionate enough to support a game they're sure they'd like. Not to mention Earthbound and Mother 3 are polar opposites of Metal Gear, so it makes sense they perform better than you'd expect. That a bit more than a fourth of Earthbound's voters don't know or care for Mother 3 is amount that makes sense to me. It's really the only explanation that makes sense of the whole thing, so I think it's what we should go with. We saw two upsets today leaving many experts without points. Metal Gear Solid 3 hopefully managed to make fans of the series smile again. It still had a semi-final shot, but Super Mario RPG's upset today, make it seem a lot less likely that the semi-finalist would be the division 8 winner. Metal Gear Solid 3 defied the usual trends today, but it's something completely different when facing a game from GameFAQs' golden era of gaming that can pull in both Nintendo and Square fans while likely riding a bandwagon. Unlike Metal Gear Solid which had fallen slightly in strength this contest, Super Mario RPG had a clear boost, bandwagon or not. Metal Gear Solid 3 showed the past two rounds to likely not have fallen as much as Resident Evil 4, but it would enter the quarter-finals as the underdog. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6170&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=120) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (2)Final Fantasy VII 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (2)Final Fantasy VII 2015 (revid 84414)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Friday, December 11, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 121 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 11, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Melee - 49.25% 38 for - 33 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Melee - 6.67% So, who remembers this poll? I sure did, and when I made my bracket, I really wanted to pick Melee to pull this upset. But I just could not look past that poll. 62-38 is crazy to turn around, even if the rematch did happen 11 years later. Even if you rely on the 2009 stats (and FF7 was a monster that year), FF7 was expected to get 59.77%, which is very close to the 2004 result. My heart said Melee. My mind said Melee. But my logical center, that stupid part of my brain that seems to override everything else, could not ignore FF7's past numbers. I regretted the pick almost immediately after lockdown. I love FF7 to death, and I knew it was going to lose before the final. But I picked Mario 64 to do it instead of Melee, which I will regret forever. I knew Melee was going to do it, too, I just couldn't pull the trigger :'( This match overlapped with Undertale/Mario 64, because Allen decided mid-contest to make this round two matches per day when it was originally supposed to be one. It ended up working out, but in the future I don't think a contest format should be changed halfway through. A lot of people pick things based on the format. Imagine if during the 12 hour night/day stuff, Allen decided to just swap out night matches for day matches. Thankfully, it made no difference whatsoever in the match winners. Today had the potential to be insane for rallies, but it was kind of a dud on both counts. For this match, Melee won the board vote before FF7 quickly turned it around in the first few minutes. FF7 got a lead of 88 twenty minutes in, but then got thoroughly buried for the rest of the match as Melee revved up the rally engine. Final Fantasy 7, for whatever reason, is an extremely easy game to rally again. It was never a match after that, as Melee just stomped its way to a 56-44 win. That's an 18% turnaround in 11 years, with Melee not really having a reason to boost. FF7, though, had every reason to boost this contest. There was remake hype, Cloud-in-Smash hype, and even a bit of underdog hype. For three rounds, FF7 looked as strong as it ever has. It wasn't until the match against FF6 where it showed any weakness at all, and then Melee took full advantage to just smash FF7 to bits. It was a very unceremonious exit from this contest for the Final Fantasy series, with SMRPG being the only remaining Square representative after this match. It can't be overstated how angry people are about the episodic content announcement for the FF7 remake, and I think it's the biggest reason FF7's strength turned on such a dime mid-contest. People hate episodic content, and for good reason. Almost every episodic video game feels unfinished and lazy, and simply doesn't satisfy players very much. The only good one I can think of offhand is Half-Life 2, though I'm hoping people can provide more good examples. Wikipedia honestly gave really good definition and overview on this subject: The episodic announcement, paired with Melee being a beast this contest, spelled doom for Final Fantasy 7. I would have loved seeing the FF7 from rounds 1-3 in this match, but unfortunately it was not to be. ### Ctes' Analysis Today was a very sad day if you dislike rallies. There was no explosion this time. We just saw rallied games swallow the contest. It didn't help that we just had our last day without rallies or spillover yesterday. I don't think anyone doubted a single bit Melee would win easily today after what we saw last round. This round, where top games were to meet and we used to think we'd have some of our best matches, we just had two very dull ones instead. Next round would be exciting when the games were to probably stand on equal grounds, but if you had been excited to see a Chrono Trigger vs. Final Fantasy VII rematch today, you'd be very disappointed in this match. It was not the slightest bit interesting, before, during or after. I saw a few people arguing that this match were the one instance of the contest where rally spillover actually flipped a match because Undertale supporters would prefer Melee above Final Fantasy VII. It's probably true that they would, but I disagree and stand firm that spillover never flipped a match. There is no way Melee supporters would've simply let final Fantasy VII win this won, just look at what happened against GSC and Chrono Trigger. Melee would never lose this one. If it ever were to encounter any trouble whatsoever winning this match, Melee is apparently ridiculously easy to rally for and Final Fantasy VII is very easy to rally against. Even today people were celebrating because until now it had “Final Fantasy always wins”, a remark which VII is easily the main cause of, and now it wouldn't win. In reality, it won back in 2004, Cloud won in 2003 and Sephiroth won the villains contest that was practically designed to give him a free contest. Almost everything Final Fantasy has been screwed over by Pokemon, and to a lesser extent Snake and Tetris pieces for many years now, but people just don't forget its years of glory a decade ago. I'm actually surprised it took that long. Pokemon used to be anti-voted to death because of how huge it was when it came out, we're over that now. We actually saw Chrono Cross win matches this contest. Why can't Final Fantasy escape this? Well, at least that seems to have somewhat disappeared on out own site. Final Fantasy VII actually looked really good every single previous round in the contest. However, people not keeping up with GameFAQs contests for the past many years logically wouldn't know that. I just wish they were slightly less ignorant about it, though that's hopefully just a vocal minority. I think it'll be over in a couple of years, though it'll probably always be extremely difficult to rally for, yet extremely easy to rally against. Melee looked in top shape this round. It's difficult to believe an actual threat to Undertale could come at this point, but Melee was a huge threat. With what might be slightly less good rally capabilities, though it's hard to say, Melee is naturally leagues stronger than Undertale. We'd have quite the semi-final, which I guess is actually really nice considering they were both expected to both be really boring, just like the final match. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6171&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=121) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Undertale vs (3)Super Mario 64 2015 _source: (6)Undertale vs (3)Super Mario 64 2015 (revid 84415)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Friday, December 11, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 122 - **Match Date:** Friday, December 11, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Undertale - 54.22% 71 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Undertale - 1.68% METTATON MATCH PICTURE!! Mario 64 was about to experience some gorgeous and beautiful Death by Glamour™!! This was the first Undertale match where it was truly the favorite in this entire contest (which is an absolute fact and anyone saying this contest ended after round 1 is being ridiculous, plenty of bandwagoned things have lost mid-contest), and it responded by treating us to the most "normal" match it had all contest. Normal as in there were reasonable trends and such, not Undertale playing dead for half the match before going nuts. Mario 64 was able to get the early lead much like its predecessors, but unlike all of the other Undertale opponents, Mario 64 got to experience the bandwagon/rally effect showing up very quickly in the poll. Mario's lead peaked at 1083 25 minutes in, then Undertale decided to open the gates now instead of after lunch. As a result, Mario's lead disappeared almost as quickly as it showed up. Undertale tied the match before 2 in the morning, then had to experience the new territory known as "building a lead overnight". Being something Undertale never really had to bother with before, it actually kind of sucked at doing it. It tried a few time to build up a lead overnight, but every time it did so Mario was easily able to come back and tie things. Undertale was very slow at lead-building, too. There was one lead overnight of 174 that took forever to get, which Mario smacked away ratther easily. Then after the games went 50-50 for a little while, the morning vote showed up. It favored Mario rather easily, and he was able to quickly build up a 200 vote lead. Undertale, actually feeling threatened, erased the entire lead in all of 30 minutes and started trying to build a lead again. And just like overnight, Undertale completely sucked at it. The game is just not a very good frontrunner, much like how the Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket isn't worth being around unless the enemy is trying to murder him. Then he morphs into the best soldier on the planet. Needing grandes thrown at you at all times is a pretty rough life to live, though. After getting a lead of 300 in the morning, Mario was once again able to smack it away and tie things. Third time's a charm though, and it was right about here that Undertale decided to just end the match. Right around lunch is usually when Undertale gets going, and true to form, Undertale ratcheted things up. The afternoon vote and ASV were Undertale's to lose, and though Mario gave a valiant effort, Undertale would ultimately win by 2964 and preserve Mass Effect 3's spot in the LOL, X-STATS. It was a "normal" match to be sure, but it never truly felt like Undertale was going to lose. Every time it was threatened, it went full rubberband AI on us. But it also proved it's absolutely awful at being ahead early in a match, and that it needs to be threatened for it to show its true form. Even here when the afternoon vote showed up, it didn't truly feel like it was going nuts. It was about as normal an Undertale match as you could have gotten this contest, which allowed Mario 64 and the Mario series to exit with its head held high. No shame in this loss at all, and it showed that Mario 64 is the strongest Mario game on this site. I'm sure Melee's rally favored Mario 64 to a degree, but hey. The real reason for this match being close was Mettaton creating drama for the audience to drive up ratings! The Underground needs stars! ### Ctes' Analysis We finally reached the point of the contest where Undertale had cemented itself as an elite game from the get go, at least for the rest of this contest. It didn't need to wait for the ASV to blow up the poll and give it 300 vote cut updates. The other game wasn't naturally winning for a while as we saw the past three days, except for the first half hour. The match had some interesting trends though. Super Mario 64 didn't bow completely over from the start as I said. It had an insanely good start. Took it half an hour to be a lead over 1000 votes. That's with boosted votals of course, but being 60-40 in percentage at that point is nevertheless quite impressive. It took Undertale just an hour and fifteen minutes to take the lead, so it's not like the 1000 vote lead was worth anything, just somewhat impressive that it good. I'm not sure if it just took Undertale half an hour to get rallies going this time, or if anti-rally people were out at first. It's probably just that people needed to set up rallies and we're at a point where it's ridiculously easy to that, as it can be done just about any hour of the match now. Super Mario 64 actually looked pretty great the whole time though. The match is remembered as if Undertale just won naturally and easily, but Super Mario 64 fought like a king for quite a long time. Every single time Undertale has taken the lead in the contest so far, it never looked back. It just kept being in this beastly mode and destroyed its opponents. That did not happen this time. Super Mario 64 hung in there like a king. I know the lead change didn't happen during the day hours, but at this point of the contest, it's worth noting anyway. After taking the lead, Undertale slowly down and barely got above 100 votes before Super Mario 64 cut it down to a 3 vote lead again. Undertale then made a slightly better attempt, but Super Mario 64 stalled pretty greatly and after a while started cutting the lead down again… and took the lead back. It just seems crazy to me. I know Super Mario 64 far exceeds Undertale on natural strength, but at this point the whole internet seemed in on the rally. Melee would also briefly take the lead, but that was under completely different circumstances because of intense rallying on both sides. Super Mario 64 lost the lead again quickly. It repeated that another time before taking it and actually building something. Just taking it was crazy enough, but the third time it did it, it started building. Except for the votals it almost seemed like a normal match at this time. Obviously no one ever doubted the outcome of the match. Undertale was never gonna lose this one, but it's worth noting that Super Mario 64 hung in there. It exceeded its lead to above 200 votes this time in a bit less than two hours, then Undertale took the lead in three updates and ran away. But still, that's a long time to lead after having been down to Undertale. Even Melee can't match that. It doesn't even end here. Undertale very quickly build a lead of 200-300 votes, but then Super Mario 64 started cutting again. All the way down to taking the lead for a single update after winning one by 40 votes. Undertale was however ready when it needed to be, it took it back and finally ran away for good. Super Mario 64 made a similar attempt as before, when Undertale was a couple 100 votes ahead, and managed to win a solid amount of updates, but at this point of the day, nothing could be done, so Undertale took away for good and eventually won by almost 3000 votes, which despite the votals being very close to what they were in the RBY match and more than in the previous rounds, is still less than what Undertale won its previous matches by except against Mass Effect 3 for obvious reasons. The previous round, RBY vastly outdid Fallout 3 and Super Mario World because it's in a completely different league, but Super Mario 64 outdoing them is different. This Undertale is definitely stronger than the Undertale from previous rounds, but that's exactly why Super Mario 64 did this well. Undertale never being in danger didn't cause the huge and insane forces the previous matches had, that continue well being the lead change because of how big they were. Since so many people are in on the Undertale rally right now, that wasn't needed. This allowed Super Mario 64 to look really good throughout the match and in the x-stats despite facing Undertale in the quarter finals. There's still the votals though, they were just as good as the previous round, making Super Mario 64's performance seem a bit weird. I suppose we have gotten a certain amount of outsiders voting by now and they can't all like Undertale even if it's a vast majority, which explains some of it. Of course, Super Mario 64 also destroys Undertale on natural strength and the rallies have to got have some drawback. Even if it isn't very different from opponent to opponent, there's gotta be people being annoyed by such things and going against them in every forum. Nevertheless, Super Mario 64 did very well. It's clear as the day that RBY destroys all the Mario games, but the Mario gauntlet itself would actually still be a bit interesting if it ever happened. It seems that it's World \> 3 \> 64, but today makes Super Mario 64 look pretty good. Undertale is a bad source to judge it though. I guess we'll have to save truly knowing about their strengths compared to each other for next contest. As for Super Mario 64's run overall, it was never interesting, but unlike I guess any core Mario game in the contest, it actually got where it was supposed to, so that's something. It deserves it too, despite how I personally think it has aged poorly, it's a great game for it's time, and it still entertains greatly with speedruns in particular. Undertale's support at this point of the contest is too huge for us to really do anything about it. It was obvious that Ocarina of Time would have no hope against it at this point. Undertale's rallies were huge, it had the underdog status despite being a clear favorite each round since the first and now it was also getting support from all sorts of sources it shouldn't get support from. Apparently, it's named the only hope for beating Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII and while I understand people thinking this, RBY and Chrono Trigger were more than ready to take those down and likely would at least beat Final Fantasy VII. Not to mention Melee now had the same kind of support and actually just beat Final Fantasy VII without blinking. No one notices or cares, Undertale is our “hope and savior” it seems. To me it would've been more fun to see the previous champions go down in close matches, which they likely would, instead of the blowouts they ended up doing. Just because no one expected it before the contest, it doesn't mean its exciting. There's also another thing helped Undertale. Every contest has some results that some gamers or fans of the contest greatly dislike. Chrono Trigger losing was the first great example of this. Another was Super Mario RPG beating Resident Evil 4. People compared it to when Golden Sun beat San Andreas back in 2010 with RPGFAQs being back again, a term that makes a lot of sense on a guide to games. When such happens, apparently Undertale has the luck of benefiting from it. People are like “screw this joke of a contest, might as well just let Undertale have it now” and that's a huge shame, which I'm saying because Undertale was at no point intended to be a joke entry and now it's getting support as a joke. I know among the ralliers there are people simply trolling and/or being jerks, but in it's core, it's just fans of the game and I'm sure most of people voting just saw a rally for a game they and clicked on it. In other words, the jerks are among the ralliers and not the rallied. Undertale had this contest more or less wrapped up now, however, it just faced the problem that most of its opponents had against it. It's tough to rally for a game in lead. This makes Undertale face an unexpected challenge next round in Melee, which has shown rally capabilities on similar levels and has little to no trouble rallying despite leading. Melee is also a lot stronger naturally. Undertale was thought to have it all wrapped out, but while it goes into the semifinals as the favorite, it did have one final challenge waiting. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6172&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=122) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2015 (revid 84416)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Saturday, December 12, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 123 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 12, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 60.41% 73 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 56.25% This was guaranteed to be the most boring match of the round, but it ended up being rather entertaining in its own way. These two games had only one had one contest poll together prior to this match. Know what happened? Link to the Past got SFFd into the ground and scored only 23% on Ocarina. I know LOL 4-WAYS and all, but an SFF beating is an SFF beating regardless of the format. So for Ocarina to turn around and not lay down the mother of all SFF beatings to Link to the Past... it filled its finals opponent with determination. No matter who it was, Melee or Undertale was going to embarrass Ocarina in the final. Are you guys really seeing how god-awful this match was for Ocarina here? I know Ocarina has had the occasional bad poll and contest loss, which will happen, but this might be up there for the worst contest poll that game has ever had. It's simply not a monster anymore. Letting Link to the Past break 40% on you after holding it to 23% only six years ago is a terrible performance, for several reasons. The biggest one of all is people are done with Link and Ocarina winning every contest (how Majora's Mask escapes this hate is beyond me, but I'm not complaining!), and it's quite possible that both will get anti-voted to hell from now on -- at least from the so-called outside voters this site hates so much. If it was up to GameFAQs, Link and Ocarina would win every match with 99% of the vote. That's why rallies and outside voters are a good thing. This site is stuck in the past and would rather never change, and much like how gay and interracial marriage would still be illegal if old-timers had their way. Every now and again you have to force people stuck in the objectively awful ways of the past to get over themselves, which I'll get into more during the final. ### Ctes' Analysis Obviously, this match was not interesting in any way whatsoever. A Link to the Past is an elite game on our site for sure, but it didn't really get to show that beyond perhaps defeating a large amount of rally spillover in the previous round? Though as the matches weren't going on at the same time, it didn't really have to fight it for long. There was pretty much no spillover influence in this match for some reason, which there somewhat should have been if A Link to the Past's previous match was any indication. One explanation is that Undertale didn't have have an explosion in votes near the end of the match this round, but had its support spread throughout the day better. It might also just be that the spillover voters have no preference in this match. You'd Ocarina of Time should have it, when Majora's Mask did against the same game, but Ocarina of Time is the big bad guy here among the ralliers, so perhaps it evens out a bit. Overall, it was nice having a Zelda gauntlet. Not because it provided interesting matches, everyone knew the outcome of them all, but because a Zelda dominant contest would be no fun. That said, I don't think it's necessary and should be done again. At least we saw that Majora's Mask had no reason to. It was fully capable of giving a great match against Super Metroid, a game which is a very strong here now but not among the greatest. A Link to the Past is certainly in the elite, it makes more sense with that game, but I would still rather see it face Final Fantasy VII or Chrono Trigger, perhaps RBY than be fed to Ocarina of Time next time. I know it got third last contest, but not only was that divided by era, it was also a different time. The Chrono Trigger rematch in particular would be fantastic to have. Besides, it's only two Zelda games that are truly dominant in these things, it's not much different from Cloud and Sephiroth in the character contests, or well, at least in the past. A Link to the Past was a contender for being the second strongest game on the site naturally behind Ocarina of Time. Ultimately, I don't think it is. There might be some SFF in this match, but from what we've seen in this contest, it's probably very minimal. I believe it's on level with Final Fantasy VII, another contender, but I do think RBY beats both, and if not, at least Chrono Trigger likely does. Having been snubbed of any interesting matches this contest, we have a few great set ups with A Link to the Past that can hopefully happen. As for Ocarina of Time, I don't think it disappointed today considering there's probably close to no SFF. It's a fine performance, and we know that it'll easily wreck in the semi-finals anyway. However, while there would be no way Ocarina of Time could take on a fully boosted recent indie in the finals, supporters of Ocarina of Time had gotten some renewed hope. And yes, those supporters actually exist. It's everyone against large outside rallies practically. The hope lies in Super Smash Bros. Melee, a new major threat to Undertale with extensive rally capabilities. The idea is that Ocarina of Time naturally SFF hammers Melee so badly into the ground that the rallies will make it close and Zelda drones can support too. Plus, Melee would've have the underdog status in the final match as Undertale would. Considering our SFF this contest and how dronish Melee supporters have been, I really don't think you should consider Ocarina of Time a favorite in the finals no matter what it faces there. Melee beat Chrono Trigger, Ocarina of Time would definitely need some heavy rally support to make it in the finals. That said, it would obviously improve its chances in the finals if it did face Melee instead, so it was the right thing to hope for if you wanted Ocarina of Time to reclaim the title. It's just that it still wouldn't be the favorite at all. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6173&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=123) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars vs (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 2015 _source: (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars vs (3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 2015 (revid 84417)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Saturday, December 12, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 124 - **Match Date:** Saturday, December 12, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario RPG - 53.10% 61 for - 12 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario RPG - 3.05% Can't blame the picture for MGS3's loss here, because this was as fair as possible. Axem Rangers vs Salute is as badass as you can get! This was the match where the MGS series finally met its reckoning, though at least it would go down respectably. The writing was very much on the wall for SMRPG's win here, as it looked good for this entire contest while MGS... didn't. There really isn't a better way to put it. MGS looked awful, and it was lucky that divisions 7 and 8 were so weak, else it would not have a game in the final 8. Most of the Oracle picks were in SMRPG's favor, so we all knew what was coming. Mario RPG went out and did what it always does, which was easily win the board vote. Mario RPG is everything this site loves -- JRPGs, Nintendo, Square, SNES, the 90s -- all rolled up into one package, and really it was the ultimate example of how hard the 1990s dominated this contest. One could even say Undertale has a 1990s feel to it. SMRPG built up a 700 vote lead after an hour, and from here it was really only a matter of surviving the overnight vote, aka "why was I never released in Europe". SMRPG would eventually build up a lead of 930, which was more than enough to survive MGS3's overnight comeback attempt. MGS3 did a really good job overnight (and with Europe's help) to get the lead down under 500, but then the morning vote showed up. Mario RPG had dominated every morning vote leading up to this match, and it sure wasn't going to choke away a close match now. That 450 vote lead it had spiraled out of control in SMRPG's favor come morning time, and a close match turned into SMRPG's trends becoming a complete parody of itself. It really is hilarious to watch it go off during the board vote and morning vote every contest, and this year it was given a path where it could just laugh at all of its opponents come 8 am. Undertale may have stolen all the headlines, but SMRPG's run was equally impressive. I'm too lazy to look up past prediction percentages, but 3.05% of people picking SMRPG to make it this far has to be among the lowest prediction percentages of all time in these things. It also proved that SMRPG/Oblivion was the most important round 1 tossup we've ever had. There's no telling how far Oblivion would have gone in this contest, but the thought of it making the semifinals while Skyrim couldn't win its own division is hilarious. ### Ctes' Analysis With this match, Super Mario RPG officially made the run of the contest. You can award Undertale with the title if you want, but it really shouldn't have it when it was the favorite to win after round 1. Only a single guru had Super Mario RPG making the semi-finals. It was Kenri, and he almost won the guru because of it actually, though he fell just five points short of Dp. That doesn't matter though, MGS2, Mass Effect 2, The Witcher 3, Starcraft and GTAV all had people picking them to win this match too. A single user having Super Mario RPG through today means nothing in this regard, it was the miracle run. Ironically, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil 4 were the favorites to win this match and neither of them got here. Speaking of irony, how ironic is it that SBAllen constructs a weaker bottom quarter of the bracket with the intention of having a game making the semi-finals that is neither from Nintendo or Square only for the Square developed Nintendo character game to win that quarter? It's probably not a good thing for how the outside views our taste here. When such a miracle run happens, it's no wonder we get NintendoFAQs, SquareFAQs, RPGFAQs and NostalgiaFAQs labeled on us. This match has all those four at once. Personally, I love runs like this. They make the contest really exciting. Overly large rallies just don't provide that same excitement. They provide more chaos instead. That said, I do find it to be a shame that two of my top 10 games, Resident Evil 4 and Metal Gear Solid 3, had to be the ones to close to the miracle run. Despite Solid Snake having things handed to him for a couple of character contests, the Metal Gears Solid franchise sure doesn't catch any luck. Last contest, Metal Gear Solid games were the ones losing during the miracle run, which came from Shadow of the Colossus back then. Metal Gear Solid 3 managed to stop it with a night match. This time, that game gets to lose because of a similar run. Plus, overall, this has been a really rough contest for the franchise. At least Metal Gear Solid 3 managed to look really good two rounds before losing today. And hey, it's not so bad either! Super Mario RPG definitely had a bandwagon going on for it, it wouldn't have won this match naturally. It's not like Metal Gear Solid 3 was never in it either. It actually cut about 500 votes from the lead during the dead hours. Yes, Super Mario RPG is awful during that time, but cutting that much is still impressive. In the end, it was never close, but it doesn't look bad going on. Now, look at the top 4. We have two games that made it there by insanely large rallies, we have the defending champion and then we have Super Mario RPG. I don't think there's any doubt about what the odd one out there is. I know Super Mario RPG had some great bracket placement to push it there, but compared to top 32 in 2004 and top 64 in 2009, top 4 is pretty darn great. Plus, do you realize how much Super Mario RPG redeemed here? We had so much discussion about whether or not a Mario game would make the semi-finals and if so, which one it would be. Super Mario RPG was never in that discussion. The three big Mario games didn't make it there, although none of them disappointed. Super Mario RPG did though. Furthermore, Mario was bashed so undeservedly this contest. With the Galaxies losing earlier than the Cookie predicted them to, Super Mario Bros. 3 failing to beat RBY, Super Mario World letting Animal Crossing win updates against it due to rally spillover, Super Mario Maker being a joke and so on. Mario didn't catch a break early on despite the only one of those things actually being a bad performance from Mario's side was Super Mario Maker. Now, Super Mario RPG made the semi-finals. It's not a Nintendo game, I know, but it is a Mario game. Who developed it makes no difference in this discussion. You know what else the game redeemed? The SNES. You might say the SNES needed no such thing, but after coming off so strong early on, clearly being the most popular console overall on our Nostalgic site, the big SNES games were bested by the rally forces. Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World's potentials were cut short by rallies and A Link to the Past had its path set from the get go. Games like Super Metroid impressed a lot, so it's not like the SNES would've had a disappointing contest if Super Mario RPG didn't pull this off. We'd still remember it as the Year of SNES too. But in a contest remembered as that, you'd think one of the games should at least make the semi-finals wouldn't you? Well, I'm sure no one thought it would be Super Mario RPG, but it really did happen. We have a Mario game in the top 4 and we have a SNES game in the top 4. Obviously, Super Mario RPG stood no chance next round whatsoever, but that doesn't matter. Today it took the title as the star of the contest. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6174&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=124) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (6)Undertale 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (6)Undertale 2015 (revid 84418)_ ## Results **Semifinals** Sunday, December 13, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 125 - **Match Date:** Sunday, December 13, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Undertale - 50.96% 50 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Undertale - 1.17% So remember what I said about feeling weird with my Pokemon picture getting spread everywhere? This was even more nuts. That picture was everywhere during this match, and while I usually try to act humble about my match pictures, this was not going to be one of those times. That's about as good a picture as one could possibly get for this match, especially on the Undertale side. My lone regret is not finding a way to get Muffet in there, but try as I might it simply wasn't going to work. There was no way to fit her in. But even still, that's a damn good picture and all these Undertale fans kept thanking me for it from all over the internet, which was a really humbling experience. A cool experience and one I really enjoyed, not gonna lie, but still humbling. greatone can relate, because they were doing the same thing with him during the final. What an awesome fanbase to be a part of. What an awesome match to be a part of, too. Most contests, even bad ones, have a legendary match or two, and for Best Game Ever 2015, it was for sure this match right here. In the annuls of contest history, this is right there among the best matches ever. This has been a PCA of lists, so I might as well throw a list out there of Best Matches Ever™: There will be snubs according to people, but some of the things I snubbed were for good reason. Sure it was neat seeing Jill Valentine lose by 27 votes twice, but how much did those two matches really matter? Kefka/Vercetti was great, but it was only worth one point at the end of the day. I wanted to include Trainers vs FF7, but it was only a bonus third place match that meant nothing to the actual bracket. I picked these matches based on historical contest importance, hype leading up to the match, how good the match itself was, and how relevant the match is to contests now. There is real historical significance there. If people really want, I can make a separate topic after awhile to rank the best matches ever. I can defend any of these choices well, as well as any snub. Though if I did legitimately forget anything, please let me know. I am an idiot, so I might have just honestly missed something! The point here is after some reflection, this match to me solidly ranks as the \#2 match we've ever had on this site. Only Mario vs Crono in 2003 tops it. This match had everything. Hype, intangibles, controversy, the instant classic factor, Allen having to step in and calm the board down, and above all the match itself was amazing. So sit back, take a trip down memory lane with me with me, and enjoy the ride. In getting here, both games made one hell of a run. Melee had an easy win in round 1 against Portal, a match against Pokemon GSC in round 2 where the Melee fans rallied even though they didn't have to, and then am embarrassing win against Kingdom Hearts 2 in round 3. That match was so bad that it really seemed as if Melee would go out there in the divisional final and get pasted by Chrono Trigger. It did, but only for 20 minutes. Then r/Smashboards and pros got involved. One rally later, and Melee had survived Chrono Trigger. It rode the momentum right through Final Fantasy 7, which didn't have a chance thanks to the episodic de-hype killing its momentum. Its reward? Undertale, the biggest bandwagon these contests have ever had. Melee was equipped to handle it, but would have to give full effort for a solid 24 hours to actually win. Undertale was the clear favorite here. For Undertale, the journey and the rally was well-documented. It came back from down 9252 against Mass Effect 3, 6834 against Fallout 3, 3224 against Super Mario World, 7570 against Pokemon RBYG, and against Mario 64 it had a rather normal match and "only" came back from down 1083. The bandwagon and the rally increased in strength every round, to where its normal strength was on par with Mario 64's. Undertale and Melee were positioned to have an unbelievable showdown here, and if both games rallied at maximum capacity we could potentially look at new vote total records. With the stage set, the only thing left to do was to actually start the poll and have the match. Theme songs! Melee fans, and anti-rally fans, all viewed Melee as the final stand for the contest's integrity. You know, the same people that whined for 24 hours and acted dejected when Melee rallied to beat Chrono Trigger because reasons. The same people who are only anti-rally until a game they support is the one being rallied. The same people who wish the year was still 1999 and all brackets could be predicted with 100% accuracy. They felt that Melee was the true hero of this contest after trying to bury it against Chrono Trigger two rounds earlier. You know, the double standards crowd. Undertale's theme song was easy, because it was about to go full Megalovania on this bitch: When the poll started, the first thing of note is that vote totals were completely insane. Both games showed up ready for a fight, with Melee actually winning the board vote and taking a 100 vote lead. But right before the freeze, Undertale began its blowback. That 100 vote lead for Melee dropped down to 74 at the freeze, with total votes being at 1576. For reference, Undertale vs Mario 64 had 1161 votes at the freeze. Undertale/Pokemon had 1293. If ever the vote ceiling theory was to be tested, this was the match where we would find out. Come the next update, it was clear this match would be off the charts. Literally. Undertale won it by a score of 689-668, which cut the lead down to 53. Undertale took the lead next update by winning the update with a score of 749-643. Both games were going just totally nuts here, but Undertale had the clear advantage. There was no rhyme or reason to it, since both games were bandwagon bait and just rallying their asses off. The one cause for concern Undertale had is that last round against Mario 64, it proved it was an awful front-runner. It blew two different leads against Mario before finally putting the match away for good. Had it repeated that performance here against Melee, it would have been in a lot of trouble. Melee was clearly out for blood this match. After the next two updates were 721-687 in Undertale's favor, then 769-751 in Melee's favor, we got our answer to what Undertale's final form was. 2015-12-13 00:30 - Undertale 941, Melee 673 2015-12-13 00:35 - Undertale 924, Melee 653 2015-12-13 00:40 - Undertale 890, Melee 653 2015-12-13 00:45 - Undertale 866, Melee 800 2015-12-13 00:50 - Undertale 797, Melee 682 2015-12-13 00:55 - Undertale 775, Melee 645 2015-12-13 01:00 - Undertale 742, Melee 634 After one hour, Undertale went beyond any level Draven had and dropped a nuke on this poll. Melee was out there going absolutely apeshit, and it still got completely rolled. People reading this years from now may not truly appreciate how insane these numbers are, so I'll pull up the best two comparisons I've got. Record for most votes in a 1v1 poll (158527): Record for most votes in any poll (195360): An hour into this match, there were 17928 votes, which was on pace to completely shatter both of those records and just fly past 200,000 total votes. Those numbers are unheard of, and it's a testament to both games. Undertale might have been pulling in the craziest numbers we'd ever seen, but Melee wasn't exactly a slouch here. You have to tip your cap to the whole match, and on a personal level I was with toby fox. I was rooting for Undertale because it was the better story, but I would have been happy with either game winning and was really just rooting for the highest possible vote totals. tobyfox put this tweet out during the match that sums up my thoughts nicely. It was a true win-win for everyone: For the record, both tobyfox and the Melee pros that were tweeting all match shared the same "wow this is pretty cool" sentiment. There was very little vitriol on either side, which I wish the anti-rally crybabies would see as an example. There are times when the messenger counts, and this was one of those times. At this point, we were about to see how well Undertale could truly function as a frontrunner. It dropped the ball against Mario 64, and Melee during this match was a far, far cry away from Mario 64's strength from a round ago. For a few hours, Undertale responded far better than it had against Mario. As rally-filled as this match was, there were some clear trends here. After both games went completely nuts during Undertale's initial power hour push, both slowed down by about the same rate. I know it's hard to say that two games getting 400+ votes each update was slowing down, but compared to the early rush it really was true. During this time, Undertale slowly built its lead up to 1950. Normally this would signal the beginning of the overnight vote and drastically lower vote totals, but this was not a normal match. Undertale and Melee were both firing on all cylinders, with both games having massive social media presences on every site you can think of. Facebook, Twitter, tumblr, reddit, 4chan, you name it. This match had trends, sure, but it was all about the rallies. Both games had a steady stream of just insane numbers pouring in, but Melee felt capable of many more spikes on Twitter than Undertale did. It showed as much whenever a pro tweeted about the match, as there would be a noticeable spike in Melee's votes for 15 minutes. With Undertale, there was really only the @undertale_bot account, which was quite large, but still only one account. Overnight, Melee made one of those impressive comeback attempts you'll ever see. People always complain about rallied entrants ruining contests, but we have been rallies and bandwagons lose before. People have this assumption that every rallied contest entrant automatically wins, but it's simply not the case. Mario and Scorpion lost in 2002. Magus and Link lost in 2003. Starcraft and Frog lost in 2004. Diablo and Vincent lost in 2005, and Mario got blown out in the Tournament of Champions. 2006 doesn't feel like it had a bandwagon, but Snake probably comes the closest. He lost in the final. Zack, the Weighted Companion Cube, Master Chief, Pikachu, and L-Block all ultimately lost in 2008, in a contest specifically built for joke characters. Charizard, Missingno, and Solid Snake lost in 2010. The trainers lost in Rivalry Rumble. The only true bandwagons that finished the job were L-Block, Majora's Mask, Draven, and Undertale. These rallied/bandwagoned entrants are not guaranteed contest wins. Melee knew this, and sought to end things overnight. At 2:30 am, Undertale had a lead of 1920. Overnight, Melee shaved away at that lead very slowly. There was some back and forth, but the overall trend was in Melee's favor. It won some updates by 10 and others by 20 or so, but it was winning updates consistently even with the very high vote totals. Come the morning vote, Melee had shaved it down below 1500 and still kept going strong even as more and more total votes kept coming in. The two games kept fighting neck and neck with Melee having the slight trend advantage, and it kept shaving and shaving all morning long. Undertale did a lot of fighting back, but Melee would always maintain that slight trend advantage. I feel that had Melee fought the entire match like this and tried making its move as late as possible, it could have had a great chance of winning the match. As it would stand, Melee made its big move at 10:30 am. After hours and hours of 50-50, Melee caught a rally and started pulling in 500+ votes per update. A 1400 vote lead started disappearing really quickly, and though Undertale countered here, Melee kept pushing. This is very important to note. From the time Melee got that 551 vote update at 10:30 am until the time Melee took the lead, two hours passed. Undertale noticed, but Melee was still able to catch up and win. So I'm fairly confident that a late rally that started at 10 pm would have been a much better idea for Melee, especially late in a poll when there are less votes coming in. But Melee decided that this was the best time to go for the win, so it did. It got a 551 vote update and just kept right on rolling, and even though Undertale noticed the push and tried to counter, Melee was easily winning updates. While Undertale was sitting there pulling in 450-500 votes per update, Melee was pulling in 500-550. This trend continued all the way until lunch, where Melee would take the lead. The lead change update and the updates that followed had some insane numbers, so I'll just transcribe them here: 2015-12-13 12:35 - Melee 618, Undertale 488 2015-12-13 12:40 - Melee 644, Undertale 573 2015-12-13 12:45 - Undertale 673, Melee 598 2015-12-13 12:50 - Melee 552, Undertale 551 2015-12-13 12:55 - Undertale 655, Melee 578 2015-12-13 1:00 - Undertale 720, Melee 520 Other than the early parts of this poll, Melee held a lead for 5 updates. Undertale responded by pulling out some more completely insane numbers to take the lead back, and though I wish the final 11 hours of this poll would have been as good as the first 13 hours, it was not to be the case. Melee simply made its big move too early, and the biggest mistake it could have made here was taking the lead too early. Had it kept the match in the 1300-1500 range until 10 pm and then done this, it might have won. As is, it was impressive to take the lead but it accomplished little more than taking a baseball bat to a hornet's nest instead of a flamethrower. This whole match was like watching wasps (Melee) take on hornets, and the hornets (Undertale) would ultimately just get pissed off and bury Melee for good. Undertale was at its best this entire contest when getting pushed. The Mario 64 match showed us the model to actually beat Undertale, but organizing a late rally is really difficult. It was much easier to just try and get in as many votes as early as possible, and for whatever reason all this did was cause Undertale to go completely insane all contest long. Melee was the best example of this. Once Melee took the lead, impressive as it was in doing so, Undertale just went thoroughly insane and put this match on ice. At 1, the match was tied. For the rest of the match, despite all of Melee's best efforts, Undertale steamrolled the poll and would ultimately win by 4213 votes. It put all frontrunning talk to rest, it put Undertale in the final for a date with Ocarina of Time, and because everyone knew during the second half of the match that things were over, the rallies slowed down considerably -- that is, considerably when looking at the rest of this particular match. It's not like the two games stopped pulling in ridiculous numbers. The match would end with 176159 votes, which would be far and away our new 1v1 record. It didn't score higher than the 2007 final or break 200k votes, but this was still really impressive in its own right. Melee finishing with 85973 votes made it the most impressive loser we've ever seen, breaking Final Fantasy's record of 77702 in the series contest final. People were upset with Melee's loss, but really, the old cliché of a match like this having no losers rang true. The only real issue this match had, aside from the final 11 hours being a boat race, is that it wasn't the actual contest final. If it was the final with the same rallying circumstances involved, I have no doubts this thing breaks 200k total votes. But I sure won't complain about how things turned out. Two of my favorite games went out there and tore the house down in a match that will be discussed as long as this site is around, which is all I could ask for. A lot of people accused Undertale of cheating during the match after analyzing its trends, and to a man some of those updates did look a little weird, especially when you factor in geolocation stats. People brought up China, and for a fair reason. China's stats for all 7 Undertale matches: Mass Effect 3 81.82%, Undertale 18.18% Fallout 3 81.82%, Undertale 18.18% Super Mario World 58.06%, Undertale 41.94% Pokémon 57.78%, Undertale 42.22% Super Mario 64 48.72%, Undertale 51.28% Melee 28.14%, Undertale 71.86% Ocarina 56%, Undertale 44% Melee's match is a huge outlier, which is even more obvious in retrospect after looking at the final. Allen noticed these concerns, and stepped in by giving us a ton of info during and after the match. On cheating: "Undertale isn't vote stuffing. The biggest attempted vote stuff yesterday was a guy who used a bot to create 643 accounts and vote... for SSBM. He, like all other cheaters, were easily caught and their votes ignored. If we restricted voting just to Comcast users in the US (the most popular ISP, with around 15% of the total vote), UT wins 51.13% to 48.87%, which is extremely close to the actual result." On rallies: "I think the real issue and why people are upset is the fact that the rallies make it impossible to predict the bracket." -Black Turtle "...but that's the entire point." -Allen On traffic, and the accusation that the poll gets less votes because less people come here regularly (which is true regardless of any PR spin, though what's often missed here is that the site treats its users like children instead of not modding everything and letting users act like adults; this has chased a LOT of people away over the years): "That's because more AAA titles are coming out now, and the people working on guides are being spread more thin. Also in this age, people value quality over quantity. Back when something like FF7 came out, everyone wrote guides for it because it was THE game to play and there wasn't anything else to do. Now when FFXV comes out, there will be plenty of other popular games to play, too. Authors have also started shying away from creating a billion In-Depth guides because they aren't necessary. It's a shift in mindset and the way that gaming works now, not a sign of our impending doom. Also the traffic on the boards has increased Y2Y every year since they've existed. Again, everyone is more spread out amongst different boards and also the emergence of other forms of entertainment (i.e. YouTube, Twitch, etc) means that people aren't sitting on our boards 24/7 anymore. They are still just as active, if not moreso, just in smaller bursts. Thus you don't get the giant total of people active all at once, but the amount of posts made daily doesn't go down. I'll probably do some kind of information digest when the contest is over. Oh and to nip it at the bud before someone says it, the PotD gets fewer votes now because Google takes people directly to the content that they want to rather than taking them to our front door. Someone can search something verbose like "How do I defeat the Ninja boss when he has the Cloak of Onions?" and Google takes them right to the proper FAQ/board post/Answers post to answer that exact question and then they go back to playing their game. They don't need to poke around anymore so they don't end up seeing the Poll." I wish Allen had delved into the China geolocation, but this was as good as we were going to get. With him legitimizing the result, it cements the match as our solid \#2 of all-time, and had the final 11 hours been as good as the first 13, it would have been \#1. How about you guys? Where do you rank this match on the all-time list? ### Ctes' Analysis I was actually very hyped for this match! Normally, I'm not a fan of overly large outside rallies, because they usually make the match heavily lopsided and can't be countered. Today was a great exception though, because both sides would have heavy rallies, so it had excellent potential. Melee would without a doubt blow Undertale to pieces on natural strength, but that mattered nothing today. The match had a total of 176159 votes cast, which far exceeds what GameFAQs usually provides on its own. It's also not very far from the highest votals we ever had. What's more, even if it went into this match on natural strength, Undertale is completely different from round 1. It has gotten a large amount of support over the course of the contest. This bandwagon goes kinda unnoticed because of the large rallies, but it's there. The people supporting Ocarina of Time, regardless of why, believed to have a lot at stake today as well, because while beating Undertale was beyond impossible now, the idea was that facing Melee in the finals would give Ocarina of Time a chance in the finals due to how Ocarina of Time would smash Melee down with the biggest SFF hammer on natural strength and in a close match, Zelda can be rallied for. It's a nice thought, I'll give people that. However, I think people quickly realized today, that there would be absolutely no way that these huge rallies would fall to anything, be there enormous SFF or not. Which honestly, there probably wouldn't be this contest. Hope isn't necessarily bad, but sometimes there is really just no reason to hope. Melee's late rallies made us have doubts about the winner again for the first time since round 1, unless we count RBY's outside shot, but it was certain that a rallied game would win at this point. The finals is just not a time where you abandon ship, quite the opposite in fact! The hope would have to rely on people being incredibly butthurt over Melee's victory to go against it. I guess that wouldn't be completely out of the question considering it's pretty easy to not like the Melee supporters, but regardless, it would be very unlikely. The match started out with Melee being in the lead, likely because its favored on GameFAQs and has a great board vote on top of that. This lasted about 10 minutes where it 53 votes ahead. Next update it was 53 votes behind. Then Undertale went on a rampage. In that regard it didn't help that even some big Melee players were rallying for Undertale today. I think its supporters knew what they were facing because we saw nothing like this against Super Mario 64. The lead was very quick to exceed above 1000 votes, then slowed down but still clearly progressed. About two hours in the match had far passed the average votals in a round 1 match without rallying, just to put things in perspective. Undertale couldn't quite reach the 2000 vote difference before Melee finally got its game going. It stalled effectively, slowly cutting down Undertale's lead. It took it so long to get anywhere, but it was going there. Undertale had its rallies going, but Melee's were ever so slightly stronger at the moment. They spent many hours hovering around the 1300-1500 lead in particular. Then all of a sudden, after hours of small cuts and stalling, Melee cuts over 200 votes off the lead in one insane update. It finally found its best source of rallying I suppose. It continued this a couple of updates until it stood still around a 700 vote difference for a while again. The trends from here are actually rather weird. It was seemingly random whether an update would be close to even, a boost in Undertale's regard or a heavy cut from Melee. This continued down towards the lead change that Melee had attempted to get for almost half a day. With a very strong update, Melee managed to turn things around and went from being down 36 votes to being ahead 95 votes. Yes, it actually happened. Melee had over the course of many hours managed to slice Undertale's lead down all the way from +1900 in the semi-finals. Despite what was just about to happen, this deserves some recognition. Melee is a major threat to these contests now, it's a completely different beast now than it used to be, where it was a near elite game. It still is, don't get me wrong, but when it's able to easily provide an overly large rally, it's very dangerous. Undertale lucked out that its rally attempt actually went somewhere after 18 hours against a game that was just weak enough for Undertale to prevail. Melee pulled it out of its sleeve in a second. If another game contest happened right now, Melee would be a huge contender for the throne. Now, despite Melee's fantastic efforts over the past many hours, Undertale reacted to it like it meant nothing. After the lead change, Melee won another updated which extended its lead to 166. Undertale took that back again right away. Melee proceeded to win the next update by a single vote, and that was the last thing we saw of Melee. Seriously, it was so ridiculous. Undertale changed the lead again instantly and then won a bunch of insane updates in a row. Took it one and a half hour to gain what Melee had spent half the match cutting down. It just never looked back again either! It slowed down, yes, but practically kept gaining for the rest of match. It was over at this point. After a couple of updates I think every Melee supporter just gave up. There was no reason not to at least. If there ever was a time in the contest to believe that there was votestuffing in favor of Undertale, this would be the time. I unfortunately haven't looked into it enough because I simply don't personally believe it, but I completely understand thinking this looks fishy. It was 6:40 in the morning. I mean sure, that could be the time all the teenage girls woke up, but I really doubt it. Not to mention we can't pinpoint a particular demographic for the Undertale voters anymore. It's everyone by now. The comeback came instantly when Melee was in the lead. Right away. No hesitation. And it wasn't just no hesitation to stall, it was no hesitation to take the match by storm conveniently just when Undertale needed it. It looks utterly ridiculous. I suppose, it was just really easy to rally for Undertale at this point of the contest, at least when it was behind, but damn. A rally force as strong as Melee was taken down like it was nothing. Melee had a much smaller chance than we thought. I think Melee would've had to take the lead at just the last second for it to hold on to it. Otherwise, Undertale would take it back like it was nothing, just like it did now. That was quite anti-climactic after how the match had been until then, but I guess it can't be helped. Undertale would go into the finale bigger than ever. Ocarina of Time awaited as the last challenge, but without a doubt far from the biggest one. I'm actually rather glad Undertale won this one. I understand that most people disliking rallies would cheer Melee on today, since Ocarina of Time winning would be preferable to those people. However, let's get real, Melee would've won the final just as easily. I'd honestly rather have Undertale blowing Ocarina of Time to pieces. The people that started Undertale's rallies were at least nice people passionate about their game. Jerks came along the way, but that can't be avoided. The people that rallied Melee are definitely also passionate about their game, but they're not nice in the slightest bit. I can't mark down everyone of them as a jerk, I know, but the rallies I saw came from very arrogant people. Trash talking people that couldn't realize how their e-sport, Super Smash Bros. Melee was the most superior thing invented. Don't get me wrong, I love Melee and I haven't played Undertale, but such people can really make me want to cheer against the game I would otherwise cheer for. Of course, rallies in itself can do that, but it's sort of a moot point in this match. Melee had quite the impressive run beating my two favorite games the past two rounds. It's not like you should complain as a Melee fan about the run, but I'm sure many of them will. I fully understand the people being pissed off at how Undertale took the lead back, but all in all, Melee had a great run, much better than it should've had. Undertale fans might as well just start celebrating their victory now. As of this match, not a single small doubt was left that the Best Game Ever III title would be awarded to Undertale. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6175&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=125) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 2015 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 2015 (revid 84419)_ ## Results **Semifinals** Monday, December 14, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 126 - **Match Date:** Monday, December 14, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 62.43% 73 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 48.02% In wrestling, heel offense is designed to bring the crowd down so that when the babyface makes his comeback, the crowd cheers louder. Even the most insane of crowds, no matter the sport, doesn't cheer full volume for the entire sporting event. In wrestling, this is controlled with heel offense. After that ridiculous Melee/Undertale match, we needed to relax for 24 hours. Ocarina was nice enough to finally show off its monster side and give us exactly what we needed. Mario RPG made a great run this contest, but it didn't have a prayer of beating Ocarina in this match and everyone knew it. There was lot of rally spillover that caused meteoric vote totals early on in this match, which tricked some people into thinking Ocarina had a chance in the final, but it didn't take long for vote intake to drop through the floor. That alone should have clued people in that Ocarina was done next round, as if we didn't already have a contest loaded with evidence of this. There were only two noteworthy things about this match. One is just a funny little comparison that has no real basis on anything, though it does shine light onto the CT vs Ocarina match that everyone wants to see: The other, more important notation is that Ocarina scored a doubling in the semifinal. This was a good note for Ocarina to hang its hat on before getting absolutely smashed, and it shouldn't go ignored. Silly formats aside (ie, I only care about 1v1 matches), here is THE LIST™ of every match in a semifinal or final that was at least a doubling: The common denominator there is obvious, though I'm confident two of those matches were SFF beatings. And while I loved SMRPG's run, it clearly got this far because divisions 7 and 8 were both extremely weak. Any one of a dozen games could have also made this run, though it does not diminish the accomplishment. Had SMRPG been released in Europe, the case could be made that it's a top ten game on this site. As-is, it's probably in the 15-20 range. ### Ctes' Analysis It'd not that anybody was surprised at it, but could we possibly have a more boring semi-final that this? I mean, we knew it would be regardless of what game ended up here from the moment the bracket came out, but man. It makes the decision to cut the contest 6 days shorter by having two matches run at the same time in the division finals and quarterfinals even more stupid. I mean, this match would still be boring, but the decision was made so that the contest wouldn't lose its pace and we'd safe the standalone matches for when it truly mattered. Knowing about the spillover we had made the decision a pretty bad idea at first, but look at what's left! Allen lucked out that Melee apparently was a rally force, because when he made the decision both semifinals and the finals looked to be incredibly boring one-sided matches. Now just for the heck of it, let's look at what some of the matches that wasn't judged exiting enough for a standalone match. Chrono Trigger vs. Super Smash Bros. Melee Pokemon RBY vs. Undertale A Link to the Past vs. Majora's Mask Super Mario RPG vs. Resident Evil 4 Metal Gear Solid vs. Metal Gear Solid 3 Super Smash Bros. Melee vs. Final Fantasy VII Undertale vs. Super Mario 64 Super Mario RPG vs. Metal Gear Solid 3 Furthermore, Allen himself was excited for the Final Fantasy showdown, so it may as well be there. The Ocarina of Time matches are always boring and Skyrim vs. Super Mario 64 was so too, but otherwise we had a bunch of interesting stuff there. Really don't believe it was worth cutting the contest short six days. It's actually somewhat unfair to change the contest structure at this point too, because it might actually have changed people's predictions that certain games were up at the same time when they thought they wouldn't be. Especially when the payoff is just going on Christmas break six days earlier. This match though, had a full 24 hours of waiting for the inevitable utter destruction of the defending champion. It's the perfect ending to the story of the indie game that swallowed the contest little by little, though if you don't like rallies, it'd probably be far less painful having Ocarina of Time run into Undertale before the finale. Though when Ocarina of Time had a path that allowed it to double its semifinal opponent and have almost half the people predicting it to reach the finale, that's could have only been avoided if Undertale had been in the other half of the bracket. I'm pretty sure Ocarina of Time would've been favored way less to reach the finale in the other half. I mean, it would easily be the heavy favorite, but to win the contest, you gotta take some hot upsets and what is more hot than correctly picking the favorite to lose? Too bad all the games with such potential were in the other half I guess. Though before Undertale happened, it was a good idea to allow them to face each other before the Ocarina of Time loss, so no reason to complain about that. Successful allies are terribly hard to predict beforehand. Now, it has gotten its praise before, but Super Mario RPG deserves a final applause. Today, three games were left in the contest. The King of Rallies, The King of GameFAQs and Super Mario RPG. That's really impressive. My perspective is super unfair though. Not only is it unfair to other semifinalist, but Super Mario RPG also had the easiest quarter by miles. Let's look at the other three. I'm certain it would at least lose to the following games no matter how much bandwagon it had caught: Chrono Trigger Super Smash Bros. Melee Pokemon GSC Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy VII Super Mario Bros. 3 Pokemon RBY Undertale Super Mario World Super Mario 64 A Link to the Past Super Metroid Majora's Mask And let's be honest, in a round 1 match, it probably also at least loses to these: Final Fantasy X Kingdom Hearts II Wind Waker Fallout 3 Skyrim Twilight Princess Final Fantasy IX Kingdom Hearts There are more that could possibly beat it, even if Super Mario RPG would be the favorite. You never know for sure, but I'd say it's likely to lose to all those and it's a lot, so it lucked out big time reached the semi-finals. That's the beauty of our contests though. If we created a 100% fair bracket where the top 16 would literally be the top 16, things would be a lot less boring. Despite ending in a very boring semifinal match, Super Mario RPG entertained us big time with a great run, where it redeemed the Mario franchise and the SNES alike. It was easily overshadowed by Undertale at the time of the match, but Super Mario RPG deserves a ton of recognition. Though not through Nintendo, Mario manages to snag a semifinal spot once again. With this match, the Year of SNES ended. Overall, a very beautiful for year for that console. I knew it has a special place in the place of gamers that were alive at its time and truthfully, some of the best games ever are on it, but I didn't expect it to be as successful this contest as it has been, where even its weakest games came fourth and looked great. Not a single SNES game looked bad, with perhaps only Final Fantasy IV not being remarkable. Such a fantastic year of the console, that despite how the bracket was constructed, it's really weird to believe that the SNES game that got the furthest was none other than Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6176&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=126) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Undertale vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2015 _source: (6)Undertale vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2015 (revid 84420)_ ## Results **Finals** Tuesday, December 15, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Contest Final - **Match \#:** 127 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - **Oracle Expectations:** Undertale - 51.45% 63 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Undertale - 0.91% First and foremost, that Asgore picture is the best match picture in contest history and it's not particularly close. I'd get into the symbolism of it, but tumblr handled that well enough: There were some great images floating around during this match, and I saved the best of them so that they could be immortalized here in the PCA. Any prayer that Ocarina had of winning this match died before it ever began once Kotaku put this article up during the Ocarina/SMRPG match: On top of that, r/Undertale "banned rallies" with a sticky topic at the top of the subreddit asking people not to beg for votes on GameFAQs. It all added up to Zelda getting absolutely smashed right from the start, with numbers and vote intakes that were even higher than what Draven was pulling off during the finals two years ago. I want to point out that the final that year happened during worlds, with a rally topic that made it to the top of r/all. Undertale at the beginning of this poll pulled in much higher numbers than even that. This match was not a match at all. It was a coronation; the crowning of a new contest paradigm that is here to stay. The entire internet showed up to vote for Undertale during this final, much like how it did for Draven in 2013, L-Block in 2007, and Cloud in 2003. You don't see blowouts like this in the finals very often, and for that reason the actual Undertale comparison here is very apt. Undertale spoilers are here for those who haven't played the game yet, which won't translate to the wiki but if you're reading this years from now and still haven't played Undertale that's your own fault. If Melee was Sans, Ocarina was Asgore. Sans was the true final boss, while Asgore just got ran the fuck over. For that reason the theme for this match was obvious: By percentage, here are the only 1v1 finals matches that were bigger blowouts than Undertale \> Ocarina: Undertale actually threatened to stay above 60% for quite a long time during this match, but Zelda's day vote helped it save some shred of dignity in losing so badly. It even managed to win a single update... by one vote. Good job, Zelda. We're very proud of you. I'm fairly certain Melee would have had a similar performance to Undertale in this match insofar as the entire internet just beating the shit out of Ocarina for 24 straight hours, but as it stands Undertale got to be the game enjoying the benefits of bandwagon overflow here in the final. With that being said, I do want to make sure I give Zelda the proper respect here. As much as I enjoyed Undertale winning this contest, and as much as I've enjoyed the Zelda series getting more and more hate due to the LAW, it's the boogeyman of these contests for a reason. Like I said a long time ago during this PCA, Link and his series are the New England Patriots of these contests. The Patriots have 4 rings, should have 6 if not for the Giants making two miracle catches, and really would have 7 had Troy Brown remembered to run an out route in the 2007 AFC title game. When you beat the Patriots, you barely beat them or you get really lucky. Link is the same way. You either barely beat him, get a huge rally on your side, or get very lucky. We've had 16 contests in the history of this site. Link, in some form or another, has won 10 of them: Summer 2002 (characters), Summer 2004 (characters), Summer 2005 (characters), Spring 2006 (series), Summer 2006 (characters), Summer 2008 (4-way characters), Summer 2009 (4-way games), Winter 2010 (characters), Game of the Decade (games), and Rivalry Rumble (2v2 characters). He could easily have more titles, but when he loses, he usually loses due to an insane rally or weird circumstance. Link even got to experience what it felt like to be on the good side of a rally when Majora won Game of the Decade. The man really does always win and has done it all. Because I've enjoyed LISTS™ during this PCA, I present my final list. Contests that Zelda did not win, aka Link's losses: The villains contest can be thrown out, since was designed for Sephiroth to win and to set up the Tournament of Champions (an increasingly stupid idea with each passing year). In 2003, the entire internet ganged up on Link as backlash for Wind Waker and gave Cloud the win. In 2007, the entire internet ganged up on Link because L-Block winning this contest was such a cool story bro. In 2013, the entire internet ganged up on Link as Draven's rally mowed over this contest. In 2015, the entire internet ganged up on Link because Undertale's run was the much better story and finishing the job was a necessity. Of those 6 Zelda contest losses, 4 were due to outside rallies. 1 was due to Sephiroth being handed a contest for free. The only legitimate contest loss Zelda has ever suffered was in 2004, when Final Fantasy 7 beat Ocarina in a match that was never in doubt. And even then, one could make the excuse that the site redesign mid-contest shrank vote totals and messed with a lot of results. Had that match happened under the old site design with higher vote totals, who really knows what happens? Point being, outside rallies are the only thing stopping Zelda from being 14-2 in contests. You are objectively wrong if you think rallies are bad for contests, because if contests didn't have them, I'm confident we would no longer have contests. Not without Link/Ocarina/Zelda getting banned or having dumb stuff like Tournament of Champions, anyway. Anti-rally people who only want the status quo are objectively in the wrong, and are just as bad as anyone supporting any dumb law of dumb status quo. You just are. Do you really want Zelda going 14-2 in contests? I don't. You nutjobs can sit there and act like the 96% that refused to join the Revolutionary War. I'll continue to stay here and fight for what's right. That will sound like an extreme analogy, but it really isn't. History always changes thanks to vocal minorities with the moral high ground. Only 4% of people supported the Revolutionary War. Just last year in 2014, gay marriage was illegal in most states. And just six years ago, no game releaed after 1999 would have ever won a GameFAQs contest. There are millions of examples out there of people being forced to change their ways to make humanity better. All you anti-rally people who want to prop up the 90s at the expense of everything else are in the wrong, and you are going to continue being on the wrong side of gaming history. We continue to have contests because of rallies making them more fun. If you disagree, go look at that Zelda contest list I just posted. 14-2. You are objectively incorrect and will continue to be objectively incorrect. If such rallies have to happen every year until my position is seen as the majority view, so be it. “In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” -Mark Twain Hate on my position all you want, but you'll be on my side of the fence eventually. I'd support even things like Shadow of the Colossus or Cory in the House rallying to win contests. They make contests more fun and don't mean "lol Zelda wins" every year. And don't even pretend you people wouldn't have all supported Melee winning this final instead of Undertale, even after shitting on it for beating your precious Chrono Trigger. You either support all rallies, or none of them. Picking and choosing based on psychological standards is just as bad as hating them all, if not worse. Good games were made after 1999. Try playing a few! I love the 90s too, don't get me wrong, but we're two decades past it now and gaming has improved. Really. It has. Come on over to my side of the fence, gentlemen, it's nice here \<3 ### Ctes' Analysis Remember back after Mass Effect 3 lost when people thought Ocarina of Time had a chance to stop Undertale? I'm sure even Heroic Mario had stopped believing that Undertale could lose the finale at this point, but man, Ocarina of Time was never even in the match. It looked like the whole internet came raging forward in a very similar manner to the end of L-Blocks marvelous run back in 2007. Pressing F5 up until the freeze was particularly brutal. Undertale was actually tripling Ocarina of Time briefly, though at the time of the freeze Ocarina of Time had avoided being doubled. The final score doesn't look like that much of beatdown, but the vote difference was insane. It was above 1000 at the freeze and above 7000 after an hour. In less than two hours the vote difference had five digits, in other words, it took no time to reach above the biggest lead a loser has ever had and it was Undertale itself that came back from being down so much. The votals were looking to set an all-time record too! Ocarina of Time stood absolutely no chance today. It sounds weird to say, but the match was over before it ended. Seeing posts like “At least OoT is avoiding the doubling” and “Can OoT even make a cut all” all over board was very absurd and is very likely to be one time experience. A comeback would never happen, but no one even bothered trying. Undertale was the absolute worst rallied opponent Ocarina of Time could've faced I think and obviously the finale is the worst time to do so. I think people would've tried had it been a different game though. Say League of Legends actually had made it in and got rallied heavily. Ocarina of Time would probably lose, but people would be trying to rally and successful rallies could probably be made. I'm sure it would have ended in a similar way to the 2013 finale where Snake fought bravely, but still lost easily. Undertale is a recently released indie game. It's huge on the internet right now, but it's still an indie game. It would be extremely difficult to get people to vote for the best reviewed game of all time against an indie game to begin with, but in the finale? Forget it. Some games have fanbases that would be dedicated enough to make some kind of attempt here, but they would still fail horribly! The further we got into the contest, the more fun it was to root for the “underdog” as a recently released indie game would always be viewed as. Whatever Undertale faced in the finale would go down big time. Ocarina of Time not encountering Undertale earlier makes it far more brutal though. The defending champion that people are tired of getting too much praise is the perfect final opponent for Undertale with the run it had. It's a bit ironic that Ocarina of Time ended up doing worse on Undertale than every single other opponent it faced, but no shame in that really. Only Melee and RBY would have a chance at doing better at this point. Raw x-stats can't be taken seriously when Undertale had a noticeable increase in strength every single round. As the match went on, Undertale slowed down. Its lead was so big that there was no point in doing anything. Ocarina of Time naturally recovered quite a bit in percentage as a result of this, but Undertale kept winning fairly huge updates for most of the time though. In the morning there were some close calls and this was the most fun part of the match. When Undertale started only winning updates by 10 votes or so every now and thne, we were really rooting for Ocarina of Time to win an update. In relation to what I said earlier, seeing posts such as “Will OoT actually win an update?” is really unusual too. Occasionally, when Ocarina of Time only lost an update by those 10 votes, we got really hyped, then it lost the next one by 70 or so usually, but it was still fun. Then at the 10:30 mark, it happened. Ocarina of Time made a cut. It made a single vote cut. This would be the only time during the whole match where Ocarina of Time cut, but it happened. Ocarina of Time actually made a cut. It sounds so unreal to put it this way. Even in some really one-sided matches, it happens that the losing game wins an update a few times doing the match. Ocarina of Time of all games was getting beaten down so badly that we were celebrating when it cut a single vote off of Undertale's lead. It sounds rather silly to get so excited about the lead changing from 14835 to 14834, but why go out and whine about a rally force winning once again when we can have fun this way instead. When you've been a regular here for a long time, you've seen Zelda dominate all sorts contests. At its worst, it gets second place. In the 2004 it had the second strongest entry though fell short of the finale due to bracket placement. Still, second best is its worst. Despite the beat down today, it's probably still the second best the bracket has. The strongest Zelda entry in the contest has a match where it's not even a certainty that it'll win an update, that's just a moment to enjoy. Despite disliking the way it lost, it was fun to have Ocarina of Time be such a massive underdog as it was today. It might just never happen again. While the votals were on track to reach a new high, that didn't happen, and it didn't come close either. With 156604 total votes cast, there was still a while before we would have reached the insane 195360 total votes the 2007 finale got. I guess it's partly because our average votals were higher back then, but also that the match back then, while never in doubt, was at least more intense that this. Link lost, but wasn't getting destroyed that badly by L-Block. He even cut a solid chunk of L-Blocks lead during the middle of the match. Cloud also held up like a king back then. L-Block still wins, but I'm sure the match would've been had Cloud and Snake not been there. Today was never close, so at some point there was no point in spreading the match further. There was absolutely no way Ocarina of Time could come back, so why bother. That's likely the main reason as to why this match didn't come close to the 2007 in votals despite being on track to beat it at first. Undertale was the favorite to win the contest the moment it took the lead from Mass Effect 3 back in round 1. While people said it made it more interesting who would win the contest, I don't think it did, though at least RBY and Melee proved to be worthy opponents, so the run wasn't boring. Undertale was definitely gonna do the same each round. When a rally is big enough to swallow the average GameFAQs votals, there is little to be done. The opponents need to be able to rally themselves then and that's practically impossible against Undertale. Plus, it's still a major challenge even if you can counterrally, as we saw in the Melee match. Despite being in a tough division, Undertale had excellent bracket placement to pull this off. Had its round 1 opponent just been ever so slightly stronger than Mass Effect 3, the miracle run would never even begin. Its following opponents were just strong enough to provide seemingly interesting matches and allow the word to be spread. Had RBY and Melee encountered Undertale a bit earlier than they did, it likely loses to them as well. It's an endless discussion, but I think RBY beats Undertale in round 2 and Melee as far as the division finals. The contest itself came at a perhaps time for Undertale. Perhaps just half a year later, it wouldn't be hot enough to pull off the round 1 upset anymore. With that said, Undertale's rally was at least entertaining and interesting. While it did practically swallow our contest, it was usually behind for a while every round. It would've lost a 12-hour match the first four rounds if we still had those. That made it seem like less of a beast, unlike Draven who just blasted the poll to pieces right away. Whether or not you enjoy large rallies, you gotta admit this was more fun to follow than Draven's run. It's a huge shame that a major reason as to why people jumped on the rally was that it would make the winner less obvious though. Perhaps we couldn't know, but seeing Chrono Trigger or RBY make a real run would've made the finale way more interesting. Melee also got in the way of this in the end, so the close Ocarina of Time finale was far from happening. But still, Chrono Trigger vs. Ocarina of Time would've been such a fantastic finale. It's a real shame that didn't happen. Regardless, congratulations to Undertale for officially claiming the title of Best Game Ever on GameFAQs, succeeding Final Fantasy VII and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Personally, I don't think it deserves the title. It's great for what it is, a short indie game, but it's not the best game ever. It has some solid humor and a unique battle system, but it's not the best we've seen. It's main appeal is definitely how every little action has such a big impact. It does this better than most games that works this way and naturally has a high replay value because of this. It definitely exceeded what you can expect of it, which made it big when it came out, just in time for the contest. That said, I doubt it would've gotten the same internet appeal if a major game developer created it. Don't get me wrong, Undertale is a great game, and obviously not everyone can agree on what the best game ever is, but I believe it's worth throwing an opinion out on. In future contests, Undertale will likely be stronger because of having won this one than it otherwise would. It's natural strength in the future will definitely be greater than what we saw it was back in round 1. I don't think it'll be near elite though. It'll likely be similar to L-Block in character battles after its victory. It'll be a noteworthy game in the bracket that can potentially win a couple of rounds, but when put against a strong entry, it'll lose. I really doubt people will care to rally for it again. Plus, being the defending champion, such a rally just wouldn't have the same appeal. Perhaps if Melee had won, it would just repeat the same progress in future contests, but the way the Undertale rallies went, this is definitely the only time the game will win. I do find it to be a shame that twice and a row now our contests have been decided based on what entry can get a strong enough outside force. More voters are great, but when they're not even sticking around and they're all coming from the same fanbase, I prefer just having the usual voters around. Undertale definitely improved votals overall, but the amount of people that stayed for non-Undertale matches were still relatively small. Back when L-Block won, it was fun because it was so unusual at the time. Plus, it was a Tetris block, everybody and their mother has player Tetris. It wasn't a particular fanbase that carried it, it was just a very large bandwagon. Also helps that L-Block never really swallowed a match the way Undertale and Draven has done. It stayed a lot more consistent every match. Either way, it's fun one time, but I find it tough to enjoy when it's the standard. I can see why some people do enjoy it, but I personally prefer to have entrants fight on a more equal ground than how it was in Undertale's matches. This is obviously not the exciting finale that one could have hoped for, but honestly, the finales never really are, so it's not good. The great 1-vote cut definitely marks the highlight of match. It's hilarious that Ocarina of Time only made one single cut and that said cut was by a single vote. Perfection right there. I suppose it's the perfect end to an underdog run, if you want to call this run that. The board wasn't as chaotic as it had been throughout the contest at least, mainly because by far the most people had accepted Undertale's victory at this point. I can say that despite not being too found of the way Undertale won, I had more fun doing this finale than I've had going most finales. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6177&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=127) • **Previous Match** --- ## (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 2015 _source: (3)Super Smash Bros. Melee vs (9)Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars 2015 (revid 82393)_ ## Results **Bonus** Wednesday, December 16, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis "Third Place Battle" Allen was nice enough to give us 4 simultaneous bonus polls after this contest, and while none of the matches were particularly good, bonus polls is always better than no bonus polls. The first bonus poll was a third place battle between Melee and Super Mario RPG, which was over in about 10 seconds and stayed at 63-37 for the entire 24 hour time period. The fun there is that there wasn't a massive percentage bleed overnight by SMRPG, which suggests that these games have identical trends. This match meant little outside of a posthumous third place title, though it was nice to see Melee beasting one final time this contest. It also made for some very fun comparisons. In 2004, Chrono Trigger scored 67.06% on Super Mario RPG. In this contest, Ocarina scored 67.38%. Those results were both rally-free, and were very close to what Melee got here in the bonus poll. I know bonus polls are often wonky, but this was close enough to what CT and Ocarina got to legitimize Melee in my view. The Chrono Trigger win wasn't some fluke, and a hyper-rallied Melee clearly would have annihilated Ocarina in the final had it gotten past Undertale. For me, who lists Melee as the second-best game ever made behind Final Fantasy Tactics, it was an awesome consolation prize. ### Ctes' Analysis The first of our four bonus matches, labeled “Third Place Battle”. This match was obvious and really boring, but I don't really mind as much as some of the other bonus matches, because I don't feel any potential was wasted here. It feels completely fair that the two semifinal losers got a bonus match and it might as well be against each other. I'm not sure if the Melee fanbase would rally in a bonus poll, but I wouldn't be surprised, and Super Mario RPG wouldn't have won any bonus match either way. Its inclusion in itself is enough recognition. I wonder how many people would have predicted that out third place battle would be between these two. It's almost certainly less than 1%. Only slightly less than 7% predicted Melee to reach the semi-final and only 3% predicted Super Mario RPG to reach that point, so the amount of people that had both things happened and had both games losing has to be very minimal. The final score today looks really nice, as it's just whole numbers. I know a bunch of users would've rather seen different bonus polls than the ones we got, but it's honestly just rather nice that we got some additional matches. They're more fun than our typical bonus polls. It didn't feel like a bonus poll just to have a bonus poll, which the battle of Links or Link vs. Santa Claus felt like. Allen seemed to try to actually try to create something interesting. Despite no one having doubts about this one, it's nice that we now have an official third place in Melee. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6178&num=2) --- ## (1)Chrono Trigger vs (1)Final Fantasy VI 2015 _source: (1)Chrono Trigger vs (1)Final Fantasy VI 2015 (revid 82394)_ ## Results **Bonus** Wednesday, December 16, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis "The Fallen \#1 Seeds" I'm on such autopilot and have done so many writeups for this contest that I actually had to go and look up the seedings for these two games, in a poll called "The Fallen \#1 Seeds". It's true. Allen was nice enough to give us 4 simultaneous bonus polls after this contest, and while none of the matches were particularly good, bonus polls is always better than no bonus polls. The second bonus poll was Allen choosing two 1 seeds to face each other. Chrono Trigger's selection made sense, but FF6's inclusion here seemed a bit odd. For maximum possible variety given his poll titles for the bonus matches (third place, 1 seeds, death by rally, and 2009 rematch), he should have replaced FF6 with Skyrim here. It would have actually given us a western game in the bonus polls, and we would have seen Melee, SMRPG, Chrono Trigger, Skyrim, Pokemon RBYG, Mario 64, FF7, and Ocarina. That prevents the same series from popping up twice, and gives you a fighter, two SNES RPGs instead of three, a western RPG, a Pokemon game, a Mario game, a Zelda game, and a Final Fantasy game. FF6 being here is really the only bonus poll choice I took exception to, but still, it's just a bonus poll and I'll always appreciate getting some bonus polls. Chrono Trigger predictably smashed FF6 here, and it's a wonder this wasn't a massive SFF beating on par with what always happens when FF7 and FF8 are in a poll together. It made for a neat comparison though, as FF7 scored 60.05% against FF6 in the actual contest. It really gives a lot of validation to those who think Chrono Trigger would beat FF7 1v1, and I agree with that prediction. I don't agree that Chrono Trigger would beat Ocarina (or even Pokemon RBY) 1v1 however. Go look at the writeup for the final and please tell me how Chrono Trigger qualifies as a game that could beat Zelda and win a contest. Chrono Trigger is strong, but it takes the contest version of a natural disaster to prevent Zelda from winning. Chrono Trigger doesn't qualify. If nothing else, natural disasters are what always buries CT. The adjusted stats people keep throwing around have CT at 50% alone, which I can respect the effort for but I thoroughly disagree with it. I'd like to see a version of those stats with CT, Ocarina, and Pokemon RBY all adjusted to 50%. Or at least CT and Ocarina both adjusted to 50%. Personally I think Ocarina gets at least 53% bare minimum on CT 1v1, and probably more like 55-60%. But hey, not my stats or my adjustments. You guys all know my thoughts on x-stats by now, anyway. Fun for comparisons and fun to mess with, but they are as unreliable as they've ever been. As yoblazer said and it's worth repeating: contests don't work that way anymore. Every match is its own. ### Ctes' Analysis The second of our four bonus matches, labeled “The Fallen \#1 Seeds”. This is the one of bonus matches I felt was the biggest waste. I know we should be happy to just have had bonus matches and I am, but I do also think that now that we have them, we should make the most the most of them. Chrono Trigger was more or less the game we wanted to see in a bonus round match, where it could finally pitted against an elite game despite not being an “official contest match”. That opportunity was wasted big time. There was no doubt that Chrono Trigger was leagues ahead of Final Fantasy VI. Even taking a simple look at the contest results shows that. Chrono Trigger almost beat Melee, which easily beat Final Fantasy VII, which easily beat Final Fantasy VI. Usually, it takes more than that to get a real read of the games' strengths, but that's really all that was needed here. I think perhaps Allen still regards Final Fantasy VI a bit too high, which is weird considering its match against Final Fantasy VII ended up being as boring as it was. Putting Chrono Trigger against another game would've just been a lot better. A Link to the Past preferably, but as I understand it, Allen needed to have a better reason for pitting games against each other than that experts would have like the match to happen. A Link to the Past wasn't a fallen \#1 seed and I admit I don't know what I would label that one as myself. However, Super Mario Bros. 3 would've still been a better choice. Don't know if Allen thought it lost too early or whatever, but it would. He could also just put Chrono Trigger against RBY in the death to rally match, that would actually make sense. Putting against Super Mario World or Super Mario 64 also works. I mean, it would be a clear favorite against Super Mario 64 too especially, but at least it wouldn't have been as obvious as this one. It would at least be strong entities from two different companies, and we'd be able to compare to 2009 where Super Mario 64 knocked Chrono Trigger out of the contest to see how much Chrono Trigger has actually gained. However, now that Final Fantasy VI did get a bonus match, we actually have an idea of how strong it is using Chrono Trigger. It was clear by now how little SFF matters. Final Fantasy VI is clearly stronger than Final Fantasy X now, which I'm quite certain wasn't the case at Best Game Ever II, and it's slightly below Melee. That does put it in the near elite pool I guess, though not as near to the elite as Allen probably believed it was. It will certainly be interesting to see it again. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6179&num=2) --- ## (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (3)Super Mario 64 2015 _source: (8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (3)Super Mario 64 2015 (revid 83329)_ ## Results **Bonus** Wednesday, December 16, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis "Death By Rally" Allen was nice enough to give us 4 simultaneous bonus polls after this contest, and while none of the matches were particularly good, bonus polls is always better than no bonus polls. The third bonus poll was pretty neat, even though it was still a blowout, and was the only one that finished closer than 60-40. Allen took two games that Undertale rallied past and put them in a poll together, and him being cool enough to pick Pokemon vs Mario 64 meant that we got a pretty decent indicator of the whole Mario 3 vs Mario World vs Mario 64 hierarchy. If you take this bonus poll literally, the order is probably Mario World \> Mario 3 \> Mario 64. Mario 3 did better against Pokemon pre-rally than Mario 64 did in this match, and we have direct evidence of Mario World being stronger than Mario 3: FF7 was by itself in that match, so it was no factor for the comparison. In that match, Mario World finished higher than 3 even with Link to the Past in the poll. And LTTP has far more overlap with World than 3, so in reality it would have hurt World more. World won anyway. Until I see further evidence, I'm going with World \> 3 \> 64. This match also proved me hilariously wrong about believing in 3 \> Pokemon one final time. Not only would Pokemon have annihilated the Mario games, but there isn't a doubt in my mind it would have won this contest had Undertale and Melee not rallied their balls off. Assuming a non-Undertale contest path, you get Pokemon beating Tetris, Mario 3, Sonic 2, Mario World, then Mario 64. Chrono Trigger probably wins against Melee with no rally, I won't argue that. But Chrono Trigger vs Pokemon is a debate worth having and a match I'd love to see, but I legitimately don't see how Chrono Trigger wins that. Undertale and Melee not getting bandwagoned doesn't mean nothing would, and in a semifinal of CT vs Pokemon and Ocarina vs SMRPG, Pokemon is the rally bait. I really think it would have beaten Chrono Trigger and won the contest, but we have no way of knowing. It did give Undertale its toughest test outside Melee though, which I think counts for a lot. I see no reason Pokemon couldn't repeat that rally in a contest semifinal against a game that always chokes. When and if we get another games contest, CT vs RBYG is absolutely a match that needs to happen. ### Ctes' Analysis The fourth of our four bonus matches, labeled “2009 Rematch”. This match just had to be there. I mean, Chrono Trigger vs. Ocarina of Time would likely be way more exiting, but first of all, spillover would likely ruin it, and secondly, there wouldn't really be any sense in having such a match. I suppose it could go under the “Death by Rally” label as all our elites games beside A Link to the Past technically lost that way, but in Ocarina of Time's situation, it was a bit different. Sure, it was a rally, but at this point Undertale was more than that. The same could be said of Super Mario 64, but at least that game looked like it was actually in the match it lost. Ocarina of Time's death was a lot more than just by rally. I probably wouldn't have named it 2009 Rematch. It's not wrong of course, but a lot of matches could be made where that label fits. “Previous Champion Battle” or something along those lines would've been better in my opinion, but at least throwing “finale” into this label would've been nice. This match was never in doubt at all. It would be an easy win for Ocarina of Time. Spillover from the final seems to have affected the match in Ocarina of Time's favor, but spillover or not, Final Fantasy VII is significantly behind Ocarina of Time these days. Maybe it'll get a boost when the remake comes or if the main nostalgic era of GameFAQs becomes it's time. It boosted Chrono Trigger, but that game aged better as well. That said, it just seemed right to have this match. They are the defending champions and not just that. Link and Cloud have had so many finales that both games have gotten this “always wins” thing going for them, even though that's certainly not fair to Final Fantasy VII these days. I guess to people that disliked seeing rallies take over, the classic final match was brought. It's also nice in that sense Undertale wasn't in the bonus matches. It deserves to I suppose, but coming right after the finale, it would've just been very boring seeing it destroy further. I'm sure everyone can agree that there would be no point in having Undertale in a bonus match. As for this one, I gotta admit myself that it's nice to have the very last match be these two going against each other. Would've thought that if it was the finale too, but as a bonus match, it's just a solid ending to a solid contest. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6181&num=2) --- ## (2)Final Fantasy VII vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2015 _source: (2)Final Fantasy VII vs (1)The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2015 (revid 83330)_ ## Results **Bonus** Wednesday, December 16, 2015 ### Ulti's Analysis "2009 Rematch" Allen was nice enough to give us 4 simultaneous bonus polls after this contest, and while none of the matches were particularly good, bonus polls is always better than no bonus polls. The last of them was a good old fashioned Ocarina vs FF7 duel, and just for posterity's sake, let's pull up every contest match featuring these two (we're not counting the villains or series contest here, just direct matches: Two were bonus polls, but still, Ocarina is now 3-1 against FF7 directly and the result grows more and more in Ocarina's favor with each passing year. FF7 looked great early in this contest, especially with remake hype and Cloud being in Smash 4, but then the episodic announcement murdered FF7's momentum. The final nail in that coffin was Ocarina damn near breaking 40% on it, which would have happened without FF7's traditionally good day vote. I like Ocarina and all, but as an FF7 fan who is currently playing the PS4 port and still loves the game to death, this was painful to watch. I don't mind the game losing, but seeing it this weak is tough. I don't know when or why it became cool to hate the game so much, but it really sucks. Final Fantasy 7 really is one of the best games ever, and deserves better than being Ocarina's bitch. If these two ever meet in another contest 1v1, I'm sure Ocarina will break 60%. Not that this will happen, since FF7 has been routinely jobbing out, and with Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase being involved with an episodic remake, I have zero hope in that remake being any good. Their track record speaks for itself. I was hyped for that remake for about 5 minutes, but honestly, just let the game die with some dignity. FF7 in its original form is just fine as-is. ### Ctes' Analysis The third of our four bonus matches, labeled “Death By Rally”. A label that would've fit so many different matches this contest. Every single game that I would be interested in seeing in a bonus match lost that way, with A Link to the Past being the sole exception. That doesn't mean it shouldn't have been used as a label, but with that said, I think the games chosen could have been better. Also, while Super Mario 64 did lose to a rally, it felt a lot more like a natural match compared to Undertale's first four matches, which had it losing for quite a while and then making insane comebacks. Super Mario World definitely seems like a better choice for this match. Switch it with any of the two in this match and we have a more exciting match. Even if it seems clear that RBY \> World \> 64 is the hierarchy, it'd be very nice to actually have the matches. RBY showed itself a step above the Mario games already when it was beating 3 prior to rally spillover and put up as good a fight against Undertale as it did. RBY does however most definitely deserve to have a bonus match. That's why I think RBY vs. Super Mario World would've been the best choice here. They lost the same way to Undertale and this would've been quite a bit closer. RBY didn't beat 3 by that much and 3 is probably only slightly weaker than World now, which is basically just due to being a NES game, it used to be the more popular of the two. Speaking of that, having Super Mario Bros. 3 in a bonus match too would've been great, but I think perhaps Allen prefers having games that got far in the bonus matches. If you think the three big Mario games are roughly equals then that obviously favors 64 as the representative. I just think it's a step below the 2D games, which are probably closer in strength. It's somewhat unfortunate, the 2D Mario games only lost early because of incredibly unlucky bracket placement and thus their chances of appearing in these matches likely went away. RBY is near elite, but I honestly don't think it rally swallow the contest. It's slightly stronger than the strongest Mario game, which still puts it below Ocarina of Time, Chrono Trigger and A Link to the Past at the very least. Then RBY can be rallied for, but only to some extend. At the biggest places, RBY is apparently despised. If needed, it can boost itself, but there's a very clear roof to that. Particularly because the Pokemon subreddit doesn't allow several threads about the same contest match. Putting it against one of the three aforementioned games would be very fun. For starters though, Super Mario World would've been more fun in this match. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=6180&num=2) # Best Year in Gaming (2017) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 35 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Best Year in Gaming _source: Best Year in Gaming (revid 83766)_ ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis When this contest was announced, most people were skeptical. Allen mentioned before 'nominations' went up (we'll get into that doozy later) that this contest was specifically made to prevent rallying and brigading. Some people were excited about this, most weren't, and we've now seen throughout the contest the people who weren't excited about this were largely proven right. To the point. The contest was about the best year in video games, and the only exciting time we had on the board during such a contest were everyone's retrospective topics about what video games meant for their own lives. transience made an incredible such topic, but he wasn't alone on this. I've largely saved mine for the PCA, but putting mine in here is about the only fun I'll have in writing this thing this time around. This was probably the worst actual contest we've ever had, and even if people disagree due to a couple upsets later on in the contest itself, no one will argue that the first few rounds were just atrocious. So if you're reading this on the wiki, yeah the first round is my own retrospective on video games. Sue me. Another way this got off on a bad foot was Allen asking for blurbs for each year, then not using any of them, thus wasting all of our time. There was no nomination process. No real pre-bracket period where everyone argued due to how predictable everything was. No picsmithing until super late. No idea of how pictures would even work. Nothing. Guru topics and oracle topics went up super late. Vote totals would end up at an all-time low. None of the pre-contest buzz was there at all. The only pre-contest stuff we had were some wild card matches, but all those did would clue us in to how bad everything was about to get. If I could sum up this contest quickly, it would be "no one cared", though it did largely come with the benefit that those of us who prefer unpredictability and rallies were proven right beyond all shadows of all doubts. If you look at a contest as bad as this one and think outside rallies are bad for contest health, you are not very smart. The Undertale/Melee match from last time was more exciting than this entire contest combined, which is sad. ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis A lot has been said about how and why this contest sucked, so I don't need to rehash it all. I give Allen credit for an original idea, but the execution was terrible and the communication was worse. He asked for blurbs that he eventually scrapped. No systems were ever put into match pictures. There were bizarre match pic choices that directly cost some entrants matches. The vote totals were the worst ever and the majority of the matches were record blowouts. Allen has made a couple incredible contests, but also a couple of real stinkers. This was the mother of all stinkers. It was legitimately a chore to get through this PCA, and I don't want it to feel like a chore. This is my favorite hobby on Board 8. I'd like to keep it that way. Anyway, let's do the usual traditions, wrap this up, and never ever unwrap it ever again. Contest Ranking: Fall 2015 (Games) Fall 2010 (GotD) Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2013 (Characters) Winter 2010 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2005 (Characters) Fall 2009 (Games 4-way) Summer 2007 (4-way Characters) Summer 2006 (Female Bracket) Spring 2006 (Series) Summer 2008 (Characters 4-way) Summer 2004 (Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) Fall 2011 (2v2 Characters) Spring 2017 (Years) This was our worst contest ever. By far. Not even debatable. We need to stick to characters or games, with one side contest for systems. Years was just a bad idea. No one cared. Last, but not least... The Ultimate Loser™! 1990! 1998 \> 2001 \> 1997 \> 1996 \> 2000 \> 1990. Thanks as always and see you next time! ## 1985 Console - Super Mario Bros - Duck Hunt - Ice Climber - Wrecking Crew - Excitebike (Arcade in same year) Computer - Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? - Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar - Tales of the Unknown, Volume I: The Bard's Tale - King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne - The Oregon Trail (Apple II) Arcade - Ghosts 'n Goblins \[1986 NES\] - Gradius \[1986 NES\] - Gauntlet - Paperboy - Space Harrier ## 1986 Computer - Tetris (DOS/PC) \[1989 NES/Game Boy\] - The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight - King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human - Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum - Space Quest I Arcade - Life Force \[1988 NES\] - Bubble Bobble \[1988 NES\] - Out Run - Rygar - Wonder Boy - Ikari Warriors \[1987 NES\] ## 1987 Console - The Legend of Zelda - Metroid - Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - Mega Man - Castlevania - Kid Icarus - Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Note: GameFAQs currently lists its NA release inaccurately as 1986) Computer - Maniac Mansion \[1990 NES\] - Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna - Nethack - Leisure Suit Larry Arcade - Shinobi - Street Fighter - R-Type - Double Dragon \[1988 NES\] - Bionic Commando \[1988 NES\] - 1943 \[1988 NES\] - Contra \[1988 NES\] ## 1988 Console - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - Metal Gear (NES) - Super Mario Bros. 2 - Ninja Gaiden (NES) - Castlevania II: Simon's Quest - Phantasy Star - RC Pro Am - Blaster Master Computer - Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom - Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny - The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate - King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella - Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World - Wasteland Arcade - Ghouls n' Ghosts \[1989 Genesis\] - Altered Beast \[1989 Genesis\] - Double Dragon II: The Revenge \[1990 NES\] - Super Contra \[1990 NES\] ## 1989 Console - Mega Man 2 - DuckTales - Dragon Warrior - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) - Golden Axe (Arcade in same year) - The Revenge of Shinobi - The Guardian Legend - Bomberman (NES) Computer - SimCity - Prince of Persia - Dragon Wars - King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! - Populous Portable - Super Mario Land Arcade - Zero Wing - Final Fight \[1991 SNES\] - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles \[1990 NES\] ## 1990 Console - Final Fantasy - Super Mario Bros. 3 - Mega Man 3 - Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse - Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos - Batman: The Video Game - Disney's Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers - Dr. Mario (Game Boy in same year) - Dragon Warrior II - Phantasy Star II - River City Ransom - Crystalis - StarTropics Computer - The Secret of Monkey Island (16-color/256-color) \[1992 CDROM\] - Commander Keen - Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge - Ultima VI: The False Prophet - Wing Commander Arcade - Shadow Dancer \[1991 Genesis\] ## 1991 Console - Final Fantasy II (aka FF4) - Super Mario World - Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis) - F-Zero - Super Castlevania IV - Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts - ActRaiser - Tecmo Super Bowl (NES) - Battletoads (NES) - Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom - Streets of Rage - Phantasy Star III Computer - Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge - Sid Meier's Civilization - Lemmings - Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra - Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi Portable - Metroid II: Return of Samus - Final Fantasy Adventure - Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters Arcade - The Simpsons (Arcade) - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time \[1992 SNES\] - Street Fighter II \[1992 SNES\] ## 1992 Console - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Super Mario Kart - Contra III: The Alien Wars - Soul Blazer - Dragon Warrior III - Dragon Warrior IV - Mario Paint - Mega Man 4 - Mega Man 5 - Streets of Rage II - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project Computer - Wolfenstein 3D - Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant - Ultima VII: The Black Gate - King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow - Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen - Alone in the Dark - Dune II Portable - Kirby's Dream Land - Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins Arcade - Mortal Kombat (Arcade) \[1993 SNES/Genesis\] ## 1993 Console - Sonic the Hedgehog CD - Gunstar Heroes - Star Fox - Shining Force - Secret of Mana - Kirby's Adventure - Lufia & the Foress of Doom - Lunar: The Silver Star - Zombies Ate My Neighbors - Ecco the Dolphin - Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master - Disney's Aladdin \[Genesis\] - Disney's Aladdin \[SNES\] Computer - Doom - Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle - The 7th Guest - Myst - Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle - Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen Portable - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Arcade - NBA Jam \[1994 SNES/Genesis\] - Mortal Kombat II \[1994 SNES/Genesis\] - Super Street Fighter II \[1994 SNES/Genesis\] - Virtua Fighter (1995 Saturn) ## 1994 Console - Final Fantasy III (aka FF6) - Super Metroid - Donkey Kong Country - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 + Sonic & Knuckles - Mega Man X - Earthworm Jim - Super Punch-Out!! - Illusion of Gaia - Breath of Fire - Mega Man 6 - Shining Force II - Contra: Hard Corps - Castlevania: Bloodlines - Ecco: The Tides of Time - Streets of Rage III Computer - Doom II: Hell on Earth - Marathon - WarCraft - X-Com: UFO Defense - Descent - System Shock - Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger - The Elder Scrolls: Arena Portable - Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 - Donkey Kong (Game Boy) Arcade - Killer Instinct \[1995 SNES\] - Tekken \[1995 PS1\] - NBA Jam Tournament Edition \[1995 SNES/Genesis\] - Virtua Cop \[1995 Saturn\] - Daytona USA \[1995 Saturn\] - Darkstalkers \[1996 PS1\] ## 1995 Console - Chrono Trigger - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest - Phantasy Star IV (Note: GameFAQs currently lists its NA release inaccurately as 1994) - Lunar: Eternal Blue (Note: GameFAQs currently lists its NA release inaccurately as 1994) - EarthBound - Breath of Fire II - Earthworm Jim 2 - Mega Man 7 - Mega Man X2 - Vectorman - Comix Zone - Panzer Dragoon - Rayman - Secret of Evermore - Twisted Metal - Mortal Kombat 3 (Arcade the same year) - Street Fighter Alpha (Arcade the same year) - Virtua Fighter 2 (Arcade the same year) Computer - Command & Conquer - WarCraft 2 - MechWarrior 2 - Marathon 2 - Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest - Full Throttle Portable - Kirby's Dream Land 2 Arcade - Tekken 2 (Arcade) \[1996 PS1\] ## 1996 Console - Super Mario 64 - Super Mario RPG - Resident Evil - Tomb Raider (Computer the same year) - Crash Bandicoot - Kirby Super Star - Mega Man X3 - Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! - Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals - Suikoden - Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Dragon Force - Nights into Dreams - Tetris Attack (Game Boy the same year) - Street Fighter Alpha 2 (Arcade the same year) - Twisted Metal 2 - Guardian Heroes Computer - Descent II - Duke Nukem 3D - Commander & Conquer: Red Alert - Quake - Diablo - Civilization II - Heroes of Might and Magic II - Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom - The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall Arcade - Time Crisis (Arcade) \[1997 PS1\] - Metal Slug \[1997 PS1\] - Dead or Alive \[1998 PS1\] ## 1997 - Final Fantasy VII - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - GoldenEye 007 - Mario Kart 64 - Star Fox 64 - Diddy Kong Racing - Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back - Mega Man 8 - Mega Man X4 - Kirby's Dream Land 3 - Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (Computer the same year) - Tomb Raider II (Computer the same year) - Blast Corps - PaRappa the Rapper - Harvest Moon Computer - The Curse of Monkey's Island - Fallout - Quake 2 - Age of Empires Arcade - Street Fighter III - Tekken 3 \[1998 PS1\] ## 1998 Console - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Metal Gear Solid - Final Fantasy Tactics - Spyro the Dragon - Resident Evil 2 - Crash Bandicoot: Warped - Panzer Dragoon Saga - Xenogears - Parasite Eve - Banjo-Kazooie - Breath of Fire III - Gran Turismo - F-Zero X - Mega Man Legends - Yoshi's Story - Mission: Impossible (N64) - Shining Force III Computer - Grim Fandango - Grand Theft Auto - Baldur's Gate - Fallout 2 - Half-Life - StarCraft - Unreal - Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven - Thief: The Dark Project Portable - Wario Land II - Pokémon Red and Blue Arcade - Soulcalibur \[1999 Dreamcast\] - Time Crisis II \[2001 PS2\] - Gauntlet Legends \[1999 N64\] - Metal Slug 2 - Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes \[1999 Dreamcast\] - Street Fighter Alpha 3 \[1999 PS1\] ## 1999 Console - Super Smash Bros. - Final Fantasy VIII - Silent Hill - Mario Party - Sonic Adventure - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater - Donkey Kong 64 - Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage - Resident Evil 3 - Crash Team Racing - Grand Theft Auto II (Computer in same year) - Mario Golf (64) - Star Ocean: The Second Story - Suikoden II - Rayman 2: The Great Escape (Computer in same year) - Gran Turismo 2 - Pokémon Snap - Grandia - Harvest Moon 64 Computer - System Shock 2 - Quake 3 - Age of Empires II - Unreal Tournament - Planescape: Torment - Counter-Strike - RollerCoaster Tycoon - Everquest - Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor - Heroes of Might and Magic III - Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Arcade - Crazy Taxi \[2000 Dreamcast\] - Dance Dance Revolution \[2001 PS1\] - Dead or Alive 2 \[2000 Dreamcast\] ## 2000 Console - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Final Fantasy IX - Perfect Dark - Chrono Cross - Vagrant Story - The Legend of Dragoon - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (Computer in same year) - Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards - Spyro: Year of the Dragon - Breath of Fire IV - Pokémon Stadium - Shenmue - Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (Arcade in same year) - Jet Grind Radio - Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber - Vagrant Story - Legend of Mana - Skies of Arcadia - Banjo-Tooie - Resident Evil Code: Veronica - WWF No Mercy - Digimon World - Mario Party 2 - Mario Tennis (64) - Timesplitters - Grandia II - Harvest Moon: Back To Nature Computer - Deus Ex - Diablo II - Escape from Monkey Island - Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn - Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 - Thief II: The Metal Age - The Sims Portable - Wario Land 3 - Pokémon Gold and Silver Arcade - Gauntlet Dark Legacy \[2001 PS2\] ## 2001 Console - Final Fantasy X - Super Smash Bros. Melee - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - Halo: Combat Evolved - Grand Theft Auto III - Silent Hill 2 - Paper Mario (64) - Devil May Cry - Sonic Adventure 2 - Ico - Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy - Conker's Bad Fur Day - Mega Man X5 - Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec - Luigi's Mansion - Dragon Warrior VII - Pikmin - Mario Party 3 - Pokémon Stadium 2 - Shadow Hearts - Digimon World 2 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 - Phantasy Star Online - Dead or Alive 3 - Max Payne (Computer in same year) Computer - RuneScape - Wizardry 8 - Civilization III Portable - Advance Wars - Wario Land 4 - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon - The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons - The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages - Golden Sun - Mario Kart: Super Circuit ## 2002 Console - Kingdom Hearts - Metroid Prime - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - Super Mario Sunshine - Animal Crossing - Suikoden III - Timesplitters 2 - Fatal Frame - Resident Evil 0 - Digimon World 3 - Dragon Ball Z: Budokai - Ratchet & Clank - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - Eternal Darkness - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Computer in same year) - Shenmue II Computer - Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos - Battlefield 1942 - Heroes of Might and Magic IV Portable - Metroid Fusion - Sonic Advance - Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance Arcade - Soulcalibur II \[2003 Gamecube/PS2/Xbox\] ## 2003 Console - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Computer in same year) - Mario Kart: Double Dash - Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando - Beyond Good & Evil (Computer in same year) - F-Zero GX - Kirby Air Ride - Viewtiful Joe - Jak II - Silent Hill 3 - Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc - Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly - Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne - Xenosaga Episode I - Disgaea: Hour of Darkness - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Computer in same year) - Final Fantasy X-2 - Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (Computer in same year) Computer - Call of Duty - Defense of the Ancients/DOTA - Command & Conquer: Generals Portable - Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Sonic Advance 2 - Golden Sun: The Lost Age - Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! - Fire Emblem \[GBA\] - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire - Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising ## 2004 Console - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Halo 2 - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - Pikmin 2 - Shadow Hearts: Covenant - Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 - Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal - Tales of Symphonia - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords - Jak 3 - Katamari Damacy - Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (Computer in same year) - Doom 3 (Computer in same year) - Burnout 3: Takedown - Star Ocean: Till the End of Time - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Computer in same year) - Fable - Star Wars: Battlefront (Computer in same year) - Mario Power Tennis Computer - World of Warcraft - Half-Life 2 - Unreal Tournament 2004 - The Sims 2 - Far Cry Portable - Metroid: Zero Mission - Sonic Advance 3 - Sonic Battle ## 2005 Console - Resident Evil 4 - God of War - Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening - Shadow of the Colossus - Dragon Quest VIII - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (Computer in same year) - Psychonauts (Computer in same year) - Guitar Hero - Star Wars: Battlefront II (Computer in same year) - Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (Computer in same year) - Star Fox: Assault - Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - Xenosaga Episode II - Timesplitters Future Perfect - Gran Turismo 4 - Call of Duty 2 (Computer in same year) - We Love Katamari Computer - Civilization IV Portable - Sonic Rush - Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones - Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Animal Crossing: Wild World - Mario Kart DS - Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time - Advance Wars: Dual Strike - Kirby: Canvas Curse - The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap ## 2006 Console - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Kingdom Hearts II - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Computer in same year) - Final Fantasy XII - Suikoden V - Xenosaga Episode III - Tales of Legendia - Tales of the Abyss - Wii Sports - Guitar Hero II - Gears of War - Okami - Dead Rising - Bully - Call of Duty 3 Portable - Elite Beat Agents - Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin - New Super Mario Bros. - Kirby Squeak Squad - Magnetica - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue/Red Rescue Team ## 2007 Console - Super Mario Galaxy - Portal (Computer in same year) - Team Fortress 2 (Computer in same year) - BioShock (Computer in same year) - Halo 3 - Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Computer in same year) - Assassin's Creed - Mass Effect - Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - God of War II - Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 - Rock Band - Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (Computer in same year) Computer - Crysis Portable - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice for All - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations - Pokémon Diamond and Pearl - The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - Hotel Dusk: Room 215 ## 2008 Console - Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - Fallout 3 (Computer in same year) - Grand Theft Auto IV (Computer in same year) - Mario Kart Wii - Dead Space (Computer in same year) - Tales of Vesperia - LittleBigPlanet - Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 - Left 4 Dead (Computer in same year) - Gears of War 2 - Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360) - Mega Man 9 - Valkyria Chronicles - No More Heroes - Rock Band 2 - Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts - Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (Computer in same year) Portable - The World Ends with You - Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia - Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Advance Wars: Days of Ruin - Professor Layton and the Curious Village - Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift ## 2009 Console - Assassin's Creed II - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Batman: Arkham Asylum (Computer in same year) - Dragon Age: Origins (Computer in same year) - Resident Evil 5 (Computer in same year) - Demon's Souls - Borderlands (Computer in same year) - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Computer in same year) - Left 4 Dead 2 (Computer in same year) - Infamous - Punch-Out!! (Wii) - New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Street Fighter IV (Computer in same year) Computer - League of Legends - Plants vs. Zombies - Farmville - Minecraft - The Sims 3 Portable - Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story - Angry Birds - Dissidia Final Fantasy - The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor - Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days ## 2010 Console - Mass Effect 2 (Computer in same year) - Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Fallout New Vegas (Computer in same year) - Nier - Red Dead Redemption - Halo: Reach - God of War III - Final Fantasy XIII - Sonic Colors - Donkey Kong Country Returns - BioShock 2 (Computer in same year) - Mega Man 10 - Heavy Rain - Bayonetta - Gran Turismo 5 Computer - Civilization V - Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty Portable - Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies - Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep - Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth - Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey - Pokemon HeartGold/Soul Silver - Professor Layton and the Unwound Future - Ys Seven ## 2011 Console - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Computer in same year) - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception - Batman: Arkham City (Computer in same year) - Portal 2 (Computer in same year) - Dark Souls - Sonic Generations - Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds - Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Computer in same year) - Rayman Origins - Gears of War 3 - Mortal Kombat Computer - The Binding of Isaac Portable - Pokémon Black and White - Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy - Super Mario 3D Land - Mario Kart 7 - Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - Radiant Historia ## 2012 Console - Mass Effect 3 (Computer in same year) - Borderlands 2 (Computer in same year) - Journey - The Walking Dead: Telltale Series (Computer in same year) - Assassin's Creed III (Computer in same year) - Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Far Cry 3 (Computer in same year) - Spec Ops: The Line (Computer in same year) - X-Com: Enemy Unknown (Computer in same year) - Dragon's Dogma - Xenoblade Chronicles - Dishonored (Computer in same year) - Persona 4 Arena - Tales of Graces f - New Super Mario Bros. U - Max Payne 3 (Computer in same year) Computer - Diablo III - Hotline Miami Portable - Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 - Kid Icarus Uprising - Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance - Theatrhythm Final Fantasy - New Super Mario Bros. 2 - Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 ## 2013 Console - The Last of Us - BioShock Infinite (Computer in same year) - Grand Theft Auto V - Tomb Raider (PS3/360, Computer in same year) - Super Mario 3D World - Tales of Xillia - Rayman Legends (Computer in same year) - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Gran Turismo 6 Computer - Dota 2 Portable - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Dual Destinies - Pokémon X and Y - Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Fire Emblem Awakening - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - Mario & Luigi: Dream Team - Shin Megami Tensei 4 ## 2014 Console - Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U - Dark Souls II (Computer in same year) - Dragon Age: Inquisition (Computer in same year) - Bayonetta 2 - Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII - Destiny - Mario Kart 8 - South Park: The Stick of Truth (Computer in same year) - Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - Tales of Xillia 2 - Persona 4 Arena Ultimax - The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Computer in same year) - Game of Thrones Telltale (Computer in same year) - Shovel Knight (Computer and Portable in same year) Computer - Hearthstone (Portable in same year) - Five Nights at Freddy's Portable - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire - Kirby Triple Deluxe - Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call - Bravely Default - Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth  - Fantasy Life ## 2015 Console - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Computer in same year) - Fallout 4 (Computer in same year) - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Computer in same year) - Super Mario Maker - Bloodborne - Splatoon - Life Is Strange (Computer in same year) - Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate - Xenoblade Chronicles X - Rocket League (Computer in same year) - Rise of the Tomb Raider Computer - Undertale Portable - Final Fantasy Record Keeper - Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls ## 2016 Console - Final Fantasy XV - Uncharted 4: A Thief's End - Dark Souls III (Computer in same year) - DOOM (Computer in same year) - The Last Guardian - Overwatch (Computer in same year) - Street Fighter V (Computer in same year) - Battlefield 1 (Computer in same year) Portable - Pokémon Go - Pokémon Sun and Moon - Fire Emblem Fates - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Spirit of Justice - Zero Time Dilemma - Super Mario Run - Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse --- ## 1979 vs 2009 _source: 1979 vs 2009 (revid 81299)_ ## Results **Wildcard Round** Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis 15760 votes in a contest match is laughably bad, but just about every match would be like this. Day one was a good indicator, to say the least. Allen's idea of vote-ins were these pre-contest style of match where four matches would happen two a day. This is actually a cool idea that needs to stick around instead of the old vote-ins where we get something like 10 options to a poll. I dig it. I could get into 1979's 1978 votes being atrocious to historical levels, but we had so many such examples in this contest that I could never cover them all. I am going to make a small comparison once though: Tanner got 4492 votes in that match, and 5.7% of the vote. It was our go-to point for contest futility for years. Fast forward to now, and we get matches where the loser gets 2978 with 19% of the vote. 2004 Tanner could probably finish in the top 10 of the x-stats in the Spring 2017 Contest. So bad. Regarding 1979 as a gaming year, only guys like neon, transience, or other extremely old people could speak to actually "bring there". We've all played Asteroids and Galaxian at some point, but is anyone complaining about them being blown out? No? Good. Moving on. --- ## 1983 vs 1989 _source: 1983 vs 1989 (revid 81301)_ ## Results **Wildcard Round** Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis The other wild card match on day one was this one, and it was equally predictable as the first. The only notable thing here about the actual match is that it was one of only six matches in the wild cards or round one where the winner scored under seventy percent. This contest was blowout city even past that, but still. What I want to know is who on earth are the people that voted for 1983? If you voted as a joke, great. I get it. But if you actually think 1983 was a better year than 1989, you're insane. Atari being stupid in the early 80s almost made it so we had no video games at all, and E.T. in 1983 specifically was the lynchpin for it. Gaming in America was all but dead after that debacle, and if it wasn't for Japan being intelligent with their business practices, gaming would have died. I was born in 1983 so I'm not old enough to have been there, but gamers in my family used to tell stories about Atari almost killing things. I grew up hearing about it. Granted E.T. isn't quite as bad as something like Warcraft 3, Hearthstone, or Shadow of the Colossus, but still. Although in an ironic way, I guess some people actually do hope for another crash and revere 1983's influence in that regard. --- ## 1981 vs 2006 _source: 1981 vs 2006 (revid 81300)_ ## Results **Wildcard Round** Wednesday, May 3rd, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis 2006 even being in a wild card match at all was a complete joke, and I'll get into its lineup more next round when I do a full retrospective, but as for these wild card matches there was zero reason for 2006 to be here. Thankfully this was over in seconds and we were able to just forget about this nonsense immediately. I will point out that if you're a fan of arcade games, 1981 was a really good year. We've all played Donkey Kong and I imagine most of us know about the stories with people getting perfect scores in that game. If not, look into it. It's fascinating stuff. There was also Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga, which are iconic video games that stand up to games made even today in 2017. Even Ultima, which I'm not a fan of, got the ball rolling for RPGs, which is the favorite genre on this site. It also gave us (eventually) one of the funniest video game review videos ever made: --- ## 1978 vs 2005 _source: 1978 vs 2005 (revid 81298)_ ## Results **Wildcard Round** Wednesday, May 3rd, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis The last of these wild card matches was also the biggest blowout, and in a way it's a shame. I really do like the idea of scored 1v1 play-ins that we pick in a bracket, but in a contest this poor people might forget how neat this was. We just need a better selection of what actually gets put into the play-ins next time is all. 2006 and 2005 both had zero reason to be in play-in polls, and for 1978 to get so thoroughly demolished like this says a lot. It makes me wonder why Allen didn't just use the most recent 32 years in a 1v1 bracket instead of doing the weird play-in thing with years before 1985. And believe it or not, this would not be our biggest blowout of the contest! Normally I pull up the blowout list, but that's worth doing when a contest has a rare blowout or two like this one. In this contest's first round it was practically every match giving us this. 1978 honestly deserved better, because every gamer alive has played some version of Space Invaders or Breakout, the latter of which eventually got repackaged as Arkanoid. To this day, I credit Breakout/Arkanoid with being so good at geometry. Come to think of it, a lot of video games have helped us with real world stuff at some point, even if some people might think it's lame to admit such things. --- ## 1995 vs 1986 _source: 1995 vs 1986 (revid 81310)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, May 4th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis Our first match of the contest was also the biggest blowout of the contest, so this is where the annual list of biggest blowouts will go. We also got a few clues about this contest that would have been great to know ahead of time. For the first time ever, our match pictures would scroll and be multi-game pictures with a sprite up top, which is a fantastic idea but was wasted on a contest like this. We also didn't get to picsmith until round 3, and every picture from round 1 got reused. Lastly, and somehow I didn't even notice this until the contest began, but only American releases for games were considered. This turned a disjointed contest into something pretty arbitrary. The Legend of Zelda came out in 1986, but by the standards of this contest it's a 1987 game. We also figured out that vote totals would be very, very, very low. Depressingly low, even. It's sad to think how even bad matches used to get 130,000 votes, and now we sit here not even getting 17,000 in an opening match. I know people don't care about arbitrary things like years, but still. The only game from 1986 I can really comment on is Bubble Bobble, which is better than about 80% of games you could name in this bracket. I maintain the actual years should have been used over the American releases, but hey. Not that 1986 deserved to win this, but go play Bubble Bobble if you haven't. 1995 is a different animal entirely. Video games helped get me through a very rough childhood (and beyond), and 1995 just has so many games that I'm in love with. My favorite might honestly be Yoshi's Island, which is the most unique game in the entire Mario series. I fell in love with that game when hanging out with cousins as a kid, and learning how to get a 100 in every level is one of my proudest gaming accomplishments. I loved the game enough to actually write a guide for it on this site: EarthBound is another game I just adore. After years of Lucid Faia asking me to play that game, I finally took the plunge. And maaaaaaaan was I not disappointed at all. There is an indescribable charm about that game, and while it's known for quirky humor it gets deathly serious and exceptionally emotional later on. The final sequence of that game is something that rivals any other game ever made, and it's why my 500th post of choice was "Play EarthBound" for years and years. The gameplay is top notch, too. To date, it's one of the only RPGs I've played where you automatically win if the enemies are too weak. Heroes of Might and Magic sort of does this, but you only get half the experience. EarthBound just lets you have all of it. Too good. Earthworm Jim 2 is one of those rare sequels where I was massively hyped, and wasn't disappointed at all. I'm still old enough to remember renting video games from independent movies stores and Blockbuster, and I would rent that game every week until finally beating it. As good as 1 was, 2 was better in every way and there aren't many sequels you can say that about. That series is the perfect mix of humor, 2D platforming, gameplay, and shoot-em-up. Blending genres that well is often a complete disaster (Knights in the Nightmare), but when it works well, it's magic. I couldn't believe Lunar 2 came out in 1995 when researching this, but.... yeah. Wow. 1 is definitely the better game, but 2 is still really damn good. Naming the main character "Hiro" is lame as anything and the voice acting is atrocious, but the plot and gameplay are top notch. There's just something special about RPG systems that go beyond attack-attack-attack-cure. My best friend actually owned both of these for the Playstation 1 unopened, and cracked them just to let me play them even knowing how much they were worth. I have the best friends on earth, and for that reason Lunars 1 and 2 are very sentimental for me. Then Dragon's Song happened and it became a huge meme in our little circle. It's difficult to comment in various similar games in massive series like Street Fighter, Mega Man, Mortal Kombat, or Kirby, but I've played most of those games to come out in 1995. Loved them all. A random underrated standout that people here might not have played is Vectorman, which is a really neat platforming shooter for the Sega Genesis. You play as a futuristic green robot and shoot things, which is way more fun than it sounds. You get upgrades, shoot stuff, and you 2D platform. It's basically a more serious Earthworm Jim, but with robots. Play it. Last but not least is Chrono Trigger. Man. I actually remember when this game came out as a kid and cost 80 dollars, which was insane for a Super Nintendo game and I said fuck that. It's actually part of the reason I went with Sega as a kid. I saw the prices of some of the games and went with the cheaper option. It wasn't until adulthood where I realized the SNES was the far better system. Then eventually the Summer 2002 Contest happened and I'm like, okay who the hell is this guy? So I played Chrono Trigger, but the Playstation 1 version. It was INCREDIBLE, and I didn't even notice lag. Eventually I played the other versions, and ultimately the DS port. Chrono Trigger deserves all of the hype it gets, and to this day I still love Magus. I'd say more, but everything good that can be said about that game has already been said. The best review you'll read of it was written by this guy: --- ## 1985 vs 1987 _source: 1985 vs 1987 (revid 81302)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, May 4th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis 1987 winning in a blowout was no surprise, since anyone that's paid any attention knows Zelda SFFs Mario into the ground in these contests and this match was effectively Mario 1 vs Zelda 1. I wanted 1987 to win, but '85 has a really special place in my heart. I still remember being given a Nintendo for Christmas as a kid, and my entire family playing the heck out of Mario 1. I used to love watching my aunt do speed runs of that game, and to this day I can't beat Mario 1 faster than she can. We do a cool little thing for Christmas each year where we have dueling Nintendos and see who can beat the game quicker, and she always wins. The fastest I've ever been able to do it was 10 seconds behind her, and one day maybe I'll get there. Shout out to Duck Hunt and Oregon Trail, too. Who hasn't sat in class in elementary school playing Oregon Trail and shooting buffalo and squirrels all day? That said, getting a Nintendo is much different than playing arguably the best game ever made on it. The Legend of Zelda for me is the pinnacle of video game design, even today. I wouldn't rank it super high on a personal list or anything, but it might objectively be the best video game ever made. Not to review plug too much, but I'm really proud of this one: Zelda 1 is another game my family and I would play together a lot, and it was just different finding every secret back before things like internets and strategy guides existed. The instruction manual told you where the first 4 levels were, and past that you were on your own. It was an incredible game experience, and I'm told my love for Zelda 1 means I'll love Breath of the Wild. We'll see, but I'm looking forward to trying it out! Zelda 1 isn't alone that year, either. I played Metroid 1 not too long ago, and enjoyed it even though it was totally archaic. A Metroid where you could only shoot straight? The fuck? Punch-Out, the first Mega Man, and the first Castlevania are also all incredible games that I have fond memories of for one reason or another. I love Mega Man enough to have written a guide for it, and I've loved Castlevania since day one. Apparently so do the guys that made Bloodborne, since Logarius is basically a Death fight. Made tons of friends playing Punch-Out as a kid, and I wasn't actually able to beat the game until I was an adult. It's one of those games that's super simple on the surface, but man is it actually hard to play. --- ## 2001 vs 2014 _source: 2001 vs 2014 (revid 81325)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, May 5th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis For me, 2014 thoroughly deserved to get demolished in this contest. I like the new Smash Bros and Dark Souls 2, don't get me wrong, but that's basically all I've played from that year that I enjoy. I may have missed some games, but hey. Most importantly, Hearthstone came out that year. Hearthstone is on the level of Shadow of the Colossus or Warcraft 3 with me; bottom of the barrel garbage that shouldn't ever win anything. I could honestly make the case for Hearthstone's RNG making it the worst video game ever made, but Warcraft 3's RPG item system shoehorned into an RTS is so difficult On top of that, look at how damn stacked 2001 is. I could never cram all my love for these 2001 games into a single PCA writeup, but I can shorten it up a bit for the sake of proving a point. Look at this list, and this is just stuff I've personally played and enjoyed: -the Gamecube -the Playstation 2 -Final Fantasy X -Super Smash Bros. Melee -Metal Gear Solid 2 -Silent Hill 2 -Devil May Cry -Jak and Daxter -Conker's Bad Fur Day -Luigi's Mansion -Advance Wars -Castlevania: Circle of the Moon -Oracle of Ages -Oracle of Seasons -Golden Sun -Pikmin That doesn't count Halo. I don't like Halo at all, but tons of people do. I don't care about Mario Party games or Mario Kart games or Runescape, but millions of people do. I don't care about the Xbox, but tens of millions of people do. We're comparing a year like 2001 to fuckin Hearthstone and it's shitty RNG? Give me a break. Fuck you and get your shit wrecked, 2014. There are a few games here I need to give some personal love to, starting with Melee. We all have a Melee story, and mine is pretty simple. I loved Smash 64, and anywhere I went there was a huge circle of Smash fans that loved the hell out of Melee. Any college I attended, any town I visited, any friend I made, we all loved Melee and played the hell out of it. I never became a mega pro, but I always enjoyed using Wedding Dress Peach and shitting all over mega pro strategies. Wavedashing? Take 50 damage. Air garbage? Get DJC'd and Smash Turnip'd. I always got wrecked by Sheik and Marth, but so did everyone else. Melee is probably the one game on this web site we all grew up with, which makes the occasional random anti-Melee idiot you see that much dumber. There might not be another video game that's fostered such an insane sense of friendship and community among gamers than Super Smash Bros. Melee, which is why we all hated Brawl so much for being so terrible. None of us wanted Brawl to be bad. It just was. Final Fantasy X might be the last true blue grade-A legend title in the Final Fantasy series. 12 is good. 13 is good. 15 is great. Kingdom Hearts games are...... yeah. But none are LEGENDS like Final Fantasy X was, and the crazy thing is I didn't like the game all that much until learning Yuna's truth, going to Home, and getting through Bevelle. Then it hit me that this happy go lucky video game with the beach boy blonde guy on the cover was not a happy story at all. Final Fantasy X is one of the darkest games I'll ever play, with an incredibly unique stat system to boot. There sphere grid is amazing, haters be damned. And Blitzball is a solid \#2 or \#3 mini game in that series. The order is Blitzball, Triple Triad, and FF9's chocobo treasure hunts in some order. Then there's Metal Gear Solid 2, which honest to goodness was a game that made me really think twice about how government actually operates. At this point most people don't doubt things like new world orders and deep states, but for Kojima to discuss these things back in 2001 when no one knew about them was incredibly risky. Best plot of any game in this series by far, and probably the best gameplay to boot. I didn't mind playing as Raiden, because the decision to see Snake from someone else's eyes was an incredibly ballsy design choice. A lot of video games try to put the player in as an avatar. None achieve it better than Metal Gear Solid 2 does. I eventually beat this game on extreme, which is a favorite gaming accomplishment of mine. Fighting the plane on extreme is nuts, but fighting 50 Ray units was fucking out of control. I still can't believe I pulled that off. For some quick hitters, I like Devil May Cry but fixed camera angles are trash. Advance Wars is incredibly charming, and the entire series is incredible. Hopefully we get a new one soon. Jak and Conker both have some decent games. And the hidden star from this year is easily Silent Hill 2. If you're a fan of psych thriller horror instead of jump scares like me, you \*MUST\* play Silent Hill 2. It's not negotiable. --- ## 2008 vs 2009 _source: 2008 vs 2009 (revid 81329)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, May 5th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis I'll save the Brawl rant for round 2, but we all knew going into this match that 2008's lineup would be strictly stronger than 2009's. The only games from 2009 I've even played are Demon's Souls, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 4, League of Legends, Dissidia, Angry Birds, New Mario, Kingdom Hearts 358/2, and maybe a game or two I missed somewhere. Most of those games are complete trash, and would never be enough to beat a year with Brawl, MGS4, and Fallout 3 in it. MGS4 was the original reason I bought a Playstation 3, and it has a ton of sentimental value for me since I used my grandmother's inheritance for it. By the late 2000s I was rich and didn't really need an inheritance to buy a gaming system, but sentimental stuff is still there. MGS4 ended up an incredible experience, too. The people who hate on that game are insane. We've spent a decade getting attached to this character, and we finally got to see his story through. It was tough to watch. I can't believe the latest Advance Wars came out 9 years ago. What's up with that series? Days of Ruin was incredible, and yet somehow that was our most recent AW game. I don't get it. Best music in the series by far, and the change of scenery was sorely needed. Battleships and Dusters were too good, but so what? All these games have a unit or two that's too good. That's the point. Can't forget about Tales of Vesperia when talking about 2008. To date, that game is still the only Xbox exclusive, ever, that's been worth a damn. Every other good game on that system ended up on another platform, which I told people on day one would happen. The damn thing was made by Microsoft, of course the good games would all be on PC. What did these people expect? Yet another thing I was ahead of the curve on. I've played a few Tales games, and Vesperia is my favorite one so far. Yuri Lowell is one of the best JRPG leads I've seen, and his voice acting is top notch. Past that, these two years being together gives us a good reason to look at all the trash and laugh at it. Crisis Core, Left 4 Dead, Brawl, Mario Kart, GTA4, LittleBigPlanet, another Gears of War, another Rock Band, The World Ends With You, another bad FFT game, that terrible Apollo Justice game, Infamous, that terrible Punch-Out remake, Spirit Tracks, and the games I mentioned earlier. Probably more I'm totally forgetting. Also, I haven't played a Persona game yet but I'm praying the games aren't as annoying as the fanbase is. If they're even CLOSE to being as bad as those fans, then the games are bottom of the barrel. I'm reserving judgment on that one until actually playing the games so we'll see. --- ## 1997 vs 1999 _source: 1997 vs 1999 (revid 81315)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, May 6th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis I was in high school from 1997 through 2001, so my fondest gaming memories might be within those two years. It makes sense for 1997 to score the mega blowout here, but 1999 got a raw deal. Smash 64 came out that year, and this was really the game that got my friends to hang out more than anything else. I still remember being over my best friend's house jamming video games, and our buddy brings over this weird game we'd never heard of. We start playing it, and we were all hooked immediately. We'd never played something this fun, this unique before, and we were all completely terrible at it. I was especially terrible, because my favorite character at the time was Link. When I first started playing Smash 64, I picked a character that can't jump for shit and would literally walk off the level and die more often than not. Given how day one went, it's a wonder I became the best player in my circle. Final Fantasy 8 can't be forgotten, either. I still remember FF7 hype, and to this day I don't get why people hated 8 so much. I love 8, and loved it right from day one. All the weird stuff they added really hit it off with me, and to this day I enjoy it whenever I replay the game. Unfortunately, FF8 and Smash 64 is about all 1999 has. Past that is a bunch of niche stuff that few people care about. I've played some stuff here and there, but nothing I would be insanely passionate about. 1997 just has a lot more than just two games to get excited about, which is why it won this match. I'm still a huge Final Fantasy 7 fan, and I'm completely unapologetic about this. I think the haters are basically idiots. I've said all the good things I can about FF7 over the years, so we move on. Symphony of the Night is one of those games I played because of these contests. In the 2002 and 2003 contests, Alucard made the second round twice. I got fooled in 2002 and actually picked him to make round 3 in 2003, and finally told myself I had to play his game. When I did, it was a real holy shit moment. It was honest to goodness the first Metroid game I'd ever played, and man did I get hooked on that formula. Never played a Metroid, never played a Metroidvania. Symphony of the Night was my first, and it was fantastic. To this day, there's nothing like the feeling of dual Crissaegrims completely dumpstering that entire game. Can't forget Goldeneye, either. Holy shit, what a damn amazing game that was. Is there anyone on this site that hasn't jammed out all hours of the night with friends playing Goldeneye multiplayer? My circle's rules were License to Kill. Only. Ever. I played so much License to Kill that I could probably feel comfortable in a tournament if such things existed. Especially pistols in the bunker. I wouldn't even know what to do with a health bar at this point, because I'm so used to playing with OHKOs. Can't forget how great the single player was, either! Unlocking all those cheats for a 007 file, especially that damn Facility level, is an incredible thing to do. Holy shit, I'm looking at this list and Star Fox 64 came out that year too. I was decent at that game, but my friend was a literal pro. If he was into streaming, he'd probably set records in it. As much as I loved playing that game, watching my friend Joe play it was an unforgettable experience. He mastered every trick there was, and playing multiplayer with him was completely pointless. I got wrecked even if he was on foot and I had an arwing. I have to give some love to Mega Man 8 here. Yes the voice acting blows and the game is a joke, but it created so many inside jokes for my pals that I have a special love for it. We sat around calling each other WAHWEE for months thanks to Dr. Light being such a fucking loser in that game. Thanks, Mega Man 8. Oh yeah, and this video comes from a game released in 1997: --- ## 2007 vs 2012 _source: 2007 vs 2012 (revid 81328)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, May 6th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis I know 2012 won't finish last in the LOL x-stats, but I'd be hard pressed to find many gaming years worse than 2012. I'm looking at this list of games and it's just rehash city. I loved Mass Effect 3 and Journey, and everything else is either garbage or I haven't played it yet. Speaking of garbage, fuck Diablo 3. I was so hyped for that game and it was bona fide, grade A, complete fucking trash of the highest accord. A real money auction house, bad item drops, a shitty rune/class system, and people STILL defending Blizzard. If that entire company went out of business tomorrow it would be the greatest thing in gaming history and I'm being completely serious. 2007 isn't that much better, but I can at least see why people like some of these games. Super Mario Galaxy gives me motion sickness and it's garbage that we need to use the stupid Wiimote to play it, but I get why people enjoy it. It's a solid game. Team Fortress 2, same deal. FPS battle arenas aren't my thing, but I get why people enjoy Team Fortress 2. Solid game that shits all over Overwatch in every way. And on and on. Lots of games I think are "okay", but I get why they get some love. I can't give you people Phantom Hourglass, Halo 3, Call of Duty, Rock Band, or Assassin's Creed though. Pure trash, especially Phantom Hourglass's 27350 visits to the Ocean Palace. How the hell did that shit get greenlit? And yeah I said it. Rock Band fucking blows. Deus Ex embarrassing that trash series was one of the best contest results we'll ever have. As for what I love, it's a tragedy that Portal didn't come out 5-10 years later. It would have caught an Undertale wave and won a contest here. Easily. That game dominated the gaming meme category for a solid year. Mass Effect 1, which is a game people hate on for some stupid-ass reason, is also great. People bitch about the side quests and open worlds being bad, even though all of them are optional. Hell geniuses, you don't even have to play those. God of War 2 and BioShock are up there for best intros in all of gaming, but BioShock ends up being the better game overall. Barely. God of War 2 is a fantastic action game, but BioShock is a legend, and proof that the best storytelling is subtle. Atmospheric. Indirect. The Soulsborne series has mastered this. Are you a man, or are you a slave? Obey. And then there's Radiant Dawn. Good old Fire Emblem. Path of Radiance is the better game, but this one had the potential to be the best game in the series. If it had just stuck with one team or done the multiple playthrough thing like Fates did, it would have been \#1. But with the constant switching, I can't do it. Still an amazing game and possibly my favorite game from that year, though. --- ## 2000 vs 1990 _source: 2000 vs 1990 (revid 81320)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, May 7th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis I originally picked 1990 in my bracket because I figured the strongest game would make the biggest difference in a contest like this -- though one could argue Mario 3 isn't the strongest game represented in this match at this point. Majora's Mask might have something to say about that. But then Allen showed us how pictures would work about an hour before lockdown, and I didn't get home in time to change my pick to 2000, since it was painfully obvious 2000 was winning once the format came out. This lack of communication was beyond unacceptable, and this sort of thing happened all contest long. It's bad enough to have a bad contest, but bad communication on the format is worse. Come match time, I was in no way surprised 1990 got demolished. This was basically Mario 3 and Final Fantasy 1 versus the world, and by now we knew depth was going to matter given the rotating pictures and such. My love of Mario 3 should be pretty well known by now. It's my favorite Mario game, and one of my favorite games ever. Take everything I said about Zelda 1 a few writeups ago and repeat it for Mario 3. I have an insane sentimental attachment to that game that I will never get rid of. I have a similar attachment to Final Fantasy, which I used to watch my aunt play. It was the first game in that series I played, but I was a kid and couldn't figure it out. I didn't actually beat it until a few years ago. Past that, shout out to Mega Man 3, Ninja Gaiden 2, Castlevania 3, Batman, Chip n Dale, Dr. Mario, Dragon Warrior 2, and River City Ransom. The NES was on fire in 1990. And because it deserves its own paragraph, fuck yeah Crystalis. Incredible, incredible video game. Think Zelda, but faster with a bunch of different elemental swords. All that said, 2000 is the much better year top to bottom. There are way too many games here I love to give full writeups to them all, but here's the list: -Majora's Mask -Final Fantasy 9 -Perfect Dark -Chrono Cross -Marvel vs Capcom 2 -Code Veronica -Mario Tennis 64 -Deus Ex -Diablo 2 I could write for hours and hours about these games alone, but I can't. Got stuff to do. You get blurbs instead. Chrono Cross was the first game my wife and I played together, so I'll always love it in its own special way. Disregard my review, I need to rewrite it from scratch. Majora's Mask was the first Christmas present I got after my mom died, and I still have the gold holo cartridge. It's one of the games I want to get buried with, because I'm so attached to it. If my N64 or that game ever stops working, I'm going to get really upset. Perfect Dark and Final Fantasy 9 I lump together because I skipped a ton of class in high school senior year to play those two games. I got straight As anyway, so it didn't matter. Then there's Diablo 2, which I've been playing off and on since release day. I'm finally "done" with the game since I built a Last Wish and found a Zod rune and Stone of Jordan legit, beat Uber Tristram and SoJ Diablo without help, and built a full Tal Rasha Sorceress. Some things are just untouchable, and my Diablo 2 memories are untouchable. Props to 2000 for winning this match. I love 1990, don't get me wrong, but 2000 really deserved this. --- ## 1996 vs 1989 _source: 1996 vs 1989 (revid 81313)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, May 7th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis I get that most of this contest was predictable, but man was 1989 going to be weak. This year was basically Mega Man 2 and nothing else, though I will give tons of love to Dragon Warrior 1 and The Guardian Legend all day long. One of the best things in this entire contest was Allen putting that game into a match picture, and if you guys haven't played that game you really missed out. Think space-faring futuristic Zelda 1 crossed with an overhead shooter. It sounds weird, but it's an incredible video game. Play it. 1996 was honestly a very thin year by 1990s standards, but the good games it has are really good. The obvious ones here are Mario 64 and Super Mario RPG. Virtually everything good that can be said about those games has already been said, but Mario RPG has a special place in my heart. I met two of my best friends in middle school through that game, and it happened to be the game I was playing when my mom came home and told our family she was terminally ill. It was the summer after eighth grade. I'll never forget it. To this day, I still think of Mario RPG as the last normal thing I was doing before my family was ripped apart. I still feel weird playing it, though obviously that isn't a video game's fault. Most people will find this paragraph a bit weird, but I don't care. Diablo 1 deserves some love somewhere in here. There are a lot of things about that game where people could honestly call it the best game in the series, and its influence was insane. I'm still convinced From Software modeled the chalice dungeons after that game. So yeah. Sorry if this PCA is a bit personal at times, but I've always meant to do something like this and I figured this PCA was as good a place as any. Having a lot of this in print to live on gives me a good sense of peace about things. --- ## 1991 vs 1988 _source: 1991 vs 1988 (revid 81303)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, May 8th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis What a weird match. We all knew 1988 would be weak, but any year highlighted by any main line Zelda title getting 12% is hilarious. I'm looking at this 1988 list and all I'm seeing are Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, Mario 2, Metal Gear, and Ninja Gaiden. So it was the year of awkward sequels and awkward new IPs. I actually really like Zelda 2 and Mario 2, but I get why most people wouldn't. When you look at 1991, it's good, but it's not "75% better than 1988" kind of good. Outside of Super Mario World, which is definitely a great game, there's a lot of mid-tier strength here. Final Fantasy 2, Sonic 1, F-Zero, Castlevania 4, Tecmo Super Bowl, Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden 3, The Simpsons, Metroid 2, and Street Fighter 2 are all games I've played and enjoyed, but pretty much all of them feel like mid to low mid tier contest strength. I get that depth matters and Zelda 2 is weak, but it sucks seeing it get blown out so hard. That game is criminally underrated and deserves better. I don't have a ton of personal anecdotes here, because we probably all have the same story about a lot of these games. "Loved Simpsons in the arcades", "Loved Street Fighter 2 in the arcades", "How the fuck did they get on the moon in FF4, anyway?", and so forth. The one cool thing here though is my best friend had the world speed run record in Castlevania 4 for like an hour once. He spent months getting it just right, then someone comes along and busts him up immediately. He quit speed running after that. --- ## 2002 vs 2010 _source: 2002 vs 2010 (revid 81326)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, May 8th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis Warcraft 3 winning any match in any capacity with any stipulation is a disgrace. Worst video game ever made, from the worst company ever in gaming, with the worst mechanics and glitches I've ever seen. I couldn't intentionally make a worse video game. And on top of that you have Suikoden 3, Mario Sunshine, Vice City, Animal Crossing, Resident Evil 0, and Heroes of Might and Magic 4? Fuck that. I get we have Kingdom Hearts and Metroid Prime in this year, but that doesn't counteract this mound of fucking garbage. I also get that 2010 isn't much better, but even then, it has Mass Effect 2. It's got Nier. It's got God of War 3, Final Fantasy 13, Mario Galaxy 2, BioShock 2, Bayonetta, and a few other decent games. Sure there's a lot of trash past that, but 2010's trash is a lot better than 2002's trash, because 2002's trash has Warcraft 3 in it. Just kill me. Terrible match and terrible result in a terrible contest. Glad this garbage was over, but don't think this counts as Warcraft 3 winning a match. Fuck that. --- ## 1994 vs 2004 _source: 1994 vs 2004 (revid 81308)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, May 9th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis This was our first match where the casuals got burned, because for whatever reason they picked 2004 to win this match. Upon further inspection, it makes a lot of sense. 2004 is the World of Warcraft year, and that game always gets overrated by casuals in these contests. Add in San Andreas, Halo 2, and Metal Gear Solid 3, and you have a year primed to be overrated by casual voters. We even had a few complaint topics during this match, and it was our first match where the winner got below 60 percent. That's how bad this contest was; we were all excited something was closer than 60-40. Now as you guys know by now, I'm pretty much the anti-casual stereotype of a gamer. I hate trash like Halo, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and especially World of Warcraft. It's a shame the good games from 2004 had to get dragged down in 2004's muck, but collateral damage is necessary for a sacrifice because screw all that casual trash winning a match. I love you Tales of Symphonia, but no. Ditto for MGS3, Metroid Prime 2, Up Your Arsenal, Jak 3, Katamari Damacy, and Zero Mission. I'll get around to Half-Life 2 one day. When comparing these two years, 1994 is untouchable. The match picture was a good start, but not close to enough to show everything. Sonic 3 is great, and yes I was one of those kids that couldn't figure out the casino. Fuck that place. Never played a Donkey Kong Country, but one day I'll get around to it. Mega Man X is frankly self explanatory. It's probably the best game in that entire franchise, and there's something special about MMX's powers versus the original's. He's just way more special, and the easter eggs in that game are so great. I didn't actually play a Metroid game until after the 2004 contest, and I honestly hated Super Metroid the first time I played it. I couldn't get the hang of wall jumping at all. I did play it through a second time immediately, and that's when I really fell in love with it. The two big standouts for me in this year are Earthworm Jim and Final Fantasy 6. Earthworm Jim is a pretty self explanatory game; 2D platformer shoot-em-up with tons of humor. It's actually pretty similar to the dry humor of Portal or Ratchet and Clank. FF6 is the highlight of the year for me, and it's also the first Final Fantasy game I actually beat. I met a TON of friends in high school through this game, and it directly led from me being a Sega Genesis sports fan to a more hardcore JRPG type gamer. I think I made the right choice, because casual gaming went to shit not long after I made the switch, while hardcore gaming is as good as it's ever been. --- ## 2011 vs 2006 _source: 2011 vs 2006 (revid 81330)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, May 9th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis Oh hey, a match that was actually a match for an hour. I picked 2006 in this match, but I was rooting hard for 2011. At this point, it's basically a guarantee I get any match involving Kingdom Hearts wrong, so 2011 winning this was no surprise. I figured Twilight Princess and KH2 would be enough, because I didn't really think year depth would matter. Then the match started, and even though the match was close it looked like 2006 was going to run away with things. It jumped up by 50 ten minutes in, and this contest offered no suggestion that matches would actually be good. So when 2011 turned things around and kept things at a stalemate for a little while, I was very pleasantly surprised. It started pulling away at 1:30 am, but I didn't call things over until the morning vote. Kingdom Hearts has come back way too many times in these things to ever count it out, but 2011 safely won the morning vote and ran away with things. Thank god. Maybe one day I'll actually get a stupid debatable KH match correct! Objectively speaking, 2011 is by far the better gaming year. Dark Souls and Skyrim by themselves cement that, as both are in the ten best video games ever made. Then you add in Portal 2 and Radiant Historia and it's not even close. Some would even add in the Mortal Kombat remake, Skyward Sword, Pokemon Black/White, and Marvel vs Capcom 3 as well, even though those games are all complete shit. But still, we have freaking Dark Souls, Skyrim, and Portal 2. That's a hell of a lot better than mediocre Twilight Princess and the dumb trash you have to do in Kingdom Hearts 2. Speaking of, go look at 2006. Twilight Princess is decent, but it's mostly trash until you hit the Arbiter Grounds. Kingdom Hearts 2 is decent, but has SO MUCH lame garbage in it. Final Fantasy 12 is decent, but the plot is total disjointed crap. Then you have the Wii and Playstation 3 coming out that year; the Wii was and still is one of the dumbest scams people have ever fallen for, and the PS3 had one of the worst console launches in recent memory. The year was also very weak outside of the so-called "heavy hitters", too. I haven't played Okami, so I can't comment there, and games like Portrait of Ruin, Guitar Hero 2, and Wii Sports aren't carrying 2006. The objectively better year won, which is nice to see. --- ## 1998 vs 1993 _source: 1998 vs 1993 (revid 81318)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, May 10th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis I'm saving the 1998 retrospective for the final, sorry guys. It wouldn't do this beast of a year justice to waste all my love in round one. We all knew 1998 was winning this contest, and it definitely performed like the contest favorite in its opening match. 1993 could probably annihilate any year outside the 1990-2001 range, but it got stuck against 1998 in its first match and was made to look like an absolute jobber. Granted, 1993 is kind of an oddball year. Star Fox is just "decent". Same for Gunstar Heroes, Shining Force, Secret of Mana, Kirby's Adventure, Ecco, and a few arcade games. When you think of 1993, there's the awkward feeling that the year is best represented by Lunar 1 and Link's Awakening, and Link's Awakening ended up getting absorbed by 1998 later in the contest because LOL. Lunar 1 for me is the pinnacle of that series. My best friend cracked a sealed PS1 copy to let me play it, and man did I fall in love. Those characters and that combat and that plot was just so charming. Lunar 2 was good, but it just didn't feel quite the same. Link's Awakening speaks for itself. Best handheld Zelda by a mile until Link Between Worlds came out, and I still think Awakening is better than Worlds. Worlds was a Link to the Past clone, albeit a good one. Link's Awakening deviated from the norm and struck gold anyway, which is not easy for such a formulaic series. I might replay it and actually buy the bow legit this time instead of being called Thief for the entire game :D --- ## 1992 vs 2016 _source: 1992 vs 2016 (revid 81306)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, May 10th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis There was a lot of pre-contest chatter about 2016 pulling off a rally and potentially being our dark horse this contest, but you know how rallies get shut down? You put them in an impossible match early on in a contest. We've seen rallies fail more often than they've succeeded, and I feel like 2016 is a good example. It might have caught a rally with better bracket placement, but in this contest it was immediately up against the Link to the Past year. Good freaking luck bro, and as we saw 2016 got absolutely demolished. This is the trick to it. Draven doesn't win if he's against Link in round one, but he caught his momentum the right way. Same for Undertale getting Mass Effect 3 in round one and Fallout 3 in round two. Same for Missingno getting Sephiroth in a night match, Melee fans being every bit as insane as Starcraft fans, Mario being a better cheater than Crono, and L-Block getting the perfect sequence of events. Rallies are almost 100% bracket placement and luck, and do not ruin our contests in any way. 2016 getting dumpstered here is a great example. There are other games in 2016 besides Overwatch, which is actually a complete garbage game due to Blizzard making it. Trash company making yet another trash video game. Street Fighter 5 had a bitched launch which really soured me on enjoying the game, but that's Crapcom's DLC practices for you. I've stopped falling for it, but a buddy bought me SF5 and all the DLC for it so whatever. Pokemon Go was a shitty fad that lasted all of a week, and thank god the fad ended before this match. That's actually a rally I would have hated, even though I would have justified it with "Pokemon Red/Blue are the ones actually winning so fuck you". Haven't played Dark Souls 3 yet. The highlights of the year for me are Final Fantasy 15 and Fire Emblem Fates. I could go on HUGE rants about how much I love those four games, but I wrote very long reviews for all of them. Just read those instead. As for 1992, it has MOTHER FUCKING LINK TO THE PAST. THE BEST ZELDA GAME. Do I really need to explain myself here? Oh and it also has the best Sonic game (2), TWO Mega Man games, and TWO Dragon Warriors. This match was the best possible result. --- ## 2013 vs 2003 _source: 2013 vs 2003 (revid 81331)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, May 11th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis This was actually a highly debated match pre-contest, and given the 50% prediction percentage I can see why. These are two very similar years when you look at them side by side, but the difference for me was one of them has a main line Zelda title. I loathe Wind Waker, but when it comes to contest strength Zelda loves to lay down the LAW (Link Always Wins). 2013 only had Link Between Worlds to match, but I know the Zelda fan base. If you put a console title next to a handheld title, almost all the console titles beat the handhelds for whatever reason. I don't get why, but it's how they think. Despite things finishing within the 60-40 barrier, this was never really a match. 2003 won very easily, which is one of the few debatable calls in this contest I actually got right. Final Fantasy X-2 was simply not shitty enough to drag 2003 down into the danger zone, though I was hoping for 2003 to collapse. Fuck The Wind Waker, fuck Final Fantasy X-2, fuck Mario Kart Double Dash, fuck Xenosaga, fuck Dota, fuck WarioWare, FUCK Final Fantasy Tactics Advance... and fuck everybody, now that I think of it. Full George Carlin style. Advance Wars 2 is okay and I liked a few other games, but most of 2003 can burn. 2013 has Fire Emblem Awakening, Bioshock Infinite, and Link Between Worlds. In a perfect world, 2013 would have won, but hey at least I picked the right year in my bracket with the right logic! --- ## 2015 vs 2005 _source: 2015 vs 2005 (revid 81332)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, May 11th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis 2015 was another entrant where people worried about rallies due to Undertale, but this was from people not knowing how rallies actually work. Undertale is now in the Portal slot. It'll make contests, but it's in the permanent 13-15 seed range and probably won't ever win a match again. And that's fine. We had our fun. 2015 was predictably demolished, which is a damn shame. Witcher 3 won something like 3275 game of the year awards, Fallout 4 is in there, Xenoblade Chronicles X is in there, Metal Gear Solid 5 is in there, and most importantly, MOTHER FUCKING BLOODBORNE is in there. Bloodborne is the closest thing we have to a perfect video game in the modern era. I'll save my full rant for the review, but it's pretty damn good and you are sorely missing out if you haven't played it yet. Any real gamer needs to. That said, 2005 is just better. We'll forget Shadow of the Colossus exists and just look at everything else. When the debates were happening for this match, I took one look and went "Resident Evil 4 can carry 2005 all by itself, even if it's in a weakened state". Lo and behold, here we are. Resident Evil 4 carrying fools and taking names. Still the best game in that series, even if it did kinda sorta ruin that series. Devil May Cry 3 is arguably the best single player action game ever made, even today. Soulsborne is technically multiplayer, so we'll cheat there. God of War is in 2005, which is such a damn fantastic series. I love how angry Kratos is and how he just murders everything in front of him. Can't wait for him to murder all of the Roman gods, too. Guitar Hero 1 sucks, but I loved it anyway. Man, and this year even has We Love Katamari, Fire Emblem 8, Phoenix Wright 1, MOTHER FUCKING ADVANCE WARS DUAL STRIKE (best game in the series, bitches), and oh yeah, the best of all the Fire Emblems. Path of Radiance. Ike's story is the best story told in that entire series, and FE9 has the gameplay to match. I still replay 9/10 once a year, and it never gets old. It's the perfect video game, and anyone who likes SRPGs needs to play it at some point. All that said, I did my best to make round one interesting for you guys but holy shit did this contest suck. Even with the one good match we had, this was the worst round one we've ever had and I doubt we'll ever do worse. We had what, 4 matches within 60-40 and most were triplings or worse? Jeez man. At least this was one of those 32 entrant deals instead of some 64 entrant contest. Can you even imagine a 1v1 64 entrant contest as bad as this one? --- ## 1995 vs 1987 _source: 1995 vs 1987 (revid 81311)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, May 12th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis The match pictures were repeated in round two instead of letting picsmiths so nuts, which is such lazy contest design. But that aside, this is exactly when we knew 1995 was completely screwed against 2001. 1995 was never in any real danger of losing this match, but it wasn't able to put 1987 away until the morning vote. This was basically an overnight stall once the board vote wore off, which is totally unacceptable for a contest entrant in 1995's position. You're the \#1 overall seed and coming off of Chrono Trigger looking like the strongest game on the site, and you follow it up with this? Get outta here. 1987 is great and all, but it's basically Zelda 1, Metroid 1, and Mega Man 1 against Chrono Trigger and a bunch of other heavy hitters. 52% in this match with the match itself being in doubt for a few hours is shameful. Picture fuckery can only be blamed so much for this. How much difference would better pictures have made? Probably not that much. 1995 was totally screwed long before the big duel and everyone knew it. --- ## 2001 vs 2008 _source: 2001 vs 2008 (revid 81324)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, May 12th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis You know a contest is bad when we get matches like this in round two. Round one having a ton of blowouts is bad enough, but then you get something like this where a year like 2008 has a ton of pretty strong games in it and gets thoroughly demolished anyway. Quick reminder that 2008 got 72% in its own round one match, and then it turns around and its opponent gets 68%. This contest was blowout city, and I don't have a lot of interesting ways to talk about it. The real shame here is in a games contest, it would be hard for a lot of these 2008 games to only get 31.6% in a match. But a year contest where we're getting under 17,000 votes per match? Oh yeah. The hyped 1995/2001 duel was over before it started, too. No way was the weakened state of 1995 going to take down the SSBM/FFX unholy alliance. Add in all the other great games from 2001, and I went into that match thinking 1995 would be lucky to break 45%. --- ## 1997 vs 2007 _source: 1997 vs 2007 (revid 81316)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, May 13th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis When this match happened, we all thought it was a championship quality performance from 1997 and that it could potentially give 1998 a decent fight in the final. 2007 is a year stacked with high midcarder type games, like BioShock and Super Mario Galaxy, and for 1997 to get 71% on it was crazy. Little we know at the time that 2007 was just hot garbage and 1997 was en route to the typical choke job that Final Fantasy 7 always gives us in contests. I'd like to point out that 2007 got 76.5% in its own round one match, which made all the blowouts in round two super weird. I know we'll never have another contest like this one (thank god), but there is no way the LOL x-stats from this thing are going to make any sense when you have stuff like "76.5% in round one, then 29% in round two" going on. With each new contest, the transitive property means less and less even when rallying isn't going on. I'd love to credit 90s power for this, but the 90s were not invincible in this contest. Low vote totals just gives you a lot of dumb results. --- ## 2000 vs 1996 _source: 2000 vs 1996 (revid 81321)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, May 13th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis This was the first of four or five matches where people blamed the picture for the result, and frankly people really have a point here. I've avoided talking about the picture nonsense until now since it hasn't mattered, but when we finally started getting good matches in this contest, almost all of them were ruined by picture fuckery. Black Turtle or Yoblazer should be our contest winner, and instead they got screwed by Allen's insane picture policy in this contest. Every contest, Yoblazer makes an incredible upset pick that pays off. In this contest, this was the match. People kind of assumed 1996 would win this match easily; Yoblazer saw it differently, like he's done so many times in the past. And if you replace Deus Ex with Pokemon GSC in 2000's match picture, he would have been right. In a contest like this where no one really cares about years, pictures make a huge difference. Luster brought up 1995 as the ultimate example, but let's not kid ourselves. 1995 is not a strong year. 2000 is a strong year, but it wasn't given its best chance to prove it. 1996 however was given Mario 64, Mario RPG, Resident Evil, and Crash Bandicoot. That's the best possible picture 1996 could get, outside of maybe replacing Crash with Diablo 1. All that said, there was still the actual match, and most people didn't know going in that it would be so close. Pictures weren't blamed until we were into the match, but it became obvious quickly what was going on. 2000 actually won the board vote despite being the underdog in the match, but 1996 was able to recover by the freeze. Alright, sure. It happens. But then an odd thing happened on the way to the forum, and '96 was never actually able to build up a lead overnight. It stayed virtually deadlocked with '96 having a slight lead all night long, with 2000 finally evening things up as we were heading into the morning vote. It stayed tied all the way until 8 AM EST, and at this point the Pokemon/Zelda tag team day vote should have taken over and just steamrolled the Mario/Mario RPG combo. Except Pokemon wasn't in the freaking match picture. It didn't take long for 1996 to win the day vote and start pulling away, and even though it would only win by 424 votes, the match wasn't really that close once the morning vote hit. There was no threat whatsoever that 2000 would win this match, and when people realized this was likely entirely due to Pokemon not being in the 2000 match picture, they got really upset. Hell I'm upset just writing about this and I had 1996 winning. I like being right, but I like fairness a lot more than that and this was in no way a fair fight. It's like my Warriors winning the NBA finals in 2015 with Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving injured. Sure we technically won the title, but did we really? It wasn't a fair fight. That's where this match leaves us, and this would not be the first time where we could legitimately blame a match picture for costing an entrant a match. It leaves a bitter taste when the few good matches in a terrible contest are tainted by picture fuckery. 2000 got screwed. --- ## 1991 vs 2002 _source: 1991 vs 2002 (revid 81305)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, May 14th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis As someone who picked 91 \> 94 as an upset special, its weakness in this match just blew me away. I figured the 90s would just wreck everything outside the 90s, so when this match started in the 63-37 range followed by 1991 bleeding percentage all day it was a Carl Lewis UH OH moment. I know 2002 isn't fodder by any stretch, but all contest long we've seen round 1 entrants go from huge round 1 performances to getting wrecked in round 2. 1991 struggling here was bad news, and was basically the warning bell that it had no chance next round without tons of SNES pictures. That being said, 1991 is basically the Super Mario World year. How many games from 2002 would break 45% on Super Mario World? Maybe Metroid Prime and Kingdom Hearts? This contest threw the transitive property and the LOL x-stats all out of whack, which is fine by me given the x-stats influence on these contests has been trash, but man. We really need to never have a contest like this again. Games, characters, and the occasional gimmick is fine. This just wasn't one such gimmick. No one cares about years and no one plays a game they love and goes "YEAH THAT GAME IS FROM 2015 SO 2015 IS THE BEST GAMING YEAR EVER!". I picked 2015 as my random example here because I just got the Bloodborne platinum. I love Bloodborne and couldn't give less than a shit about 2015 the year. What a silly contest idea. --- ## 1994 vs 2011 _source: 1994 vs 2011 (revid 81309)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, May 14th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis I have no idea how the prediction percentage for this match was so low, given this was always going to be a cleanup match for 1994 en route to a deep contest run. I guess 2011 has some heavy hitter casual bait games in it like Skyrim, but if anyone's paid any attention to contests all these years, there was no way this match would be anything other than a huge blowout. Maybe 2011 could have won two matches elsewhere in the bracket, but you can only play who's on your schedule. This was also a much better performance for 1994 than 1991 had in the match prior, so the debate surrounding that duel was basically over here in round 2 before it ever got started. I wish I had more exciting things to say here, but when I'm not talking about specific games I like in each year like I did in round one this contest is even more dull to look at than it was before. At least 2011 has Skyrim and Dark Souls giving a decently respectable performance with their 38% instead of getting completely annihilated, I guess. Moving on. --- ## 1998 vs 1992 _source: 1998 vs 1992 (revid 81317)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, May 15th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis Remember in round one when 1992 got 73% and we were all excited about how well it did? Well 1998 gave no fucks and went out there to prove it was championship material. 73% is impressive in any match, but go on Ngamer's site or check around the Board 8 wiki and look into Link to the Past's contest history some time. That game has scored some epic blowouts in these contests, and it even broke 40% on Ocarina of Time last contest. Didn't mean jack this time around. The most impressive match of round 2 by a mile was 1998 in this match, and this proved beyond all shadows of all doubts that 1998 was winning this contest barring a major rally. Given no one cared about this contest, a major rally wasn't coming. The only question is what would face 1998 in the final and whether or not it would avoid getting completely embarrassed. We'll get more into that when the time comes, but I hope in the future when this contest is long forgotten people are able to appreciate how insane this performance was. This wasn't 73% against some jobber; 1992 is the Link to the Past year and it got thoroughly demolished. 1998 was not dicking around in this contest, and it also proved how much depth truly mattered in this thing. I didn't think it would be a major factor and hoo boy I could not have been more wrong. --- ## 2003 vs 2005 _source: 2003 vs 2005 (revid 81327)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, May 15th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis Rounding out round two in this godforsaken contest was a match that some people were actually worried about. This match was basically Wind Waker and a bunch of trash against Resident Evil 4 and a bunch of midcarders. Even though a match finishing within 60-40 was a rarity in this contest, 2003 would still end up winning with ease in a classic Ulti-style destruction. When in doubt, go with a popular main line Zelda title. 2003's reward was 1998 after the beating it had just laid on Link to the Past's year, so the over-under for 2003 in the upcoming round 3 match was 27.15%. When one can say such things about a round 3 match, you have a terrible contest. We actually would end up having a few decent matches from here on out, but virtually all of them gave us the added benefit of built-in picture dickery, which we'll get to. To recap, to this point of an entire contest, the only highlights were 1998's blowouts (which weren't all that impressive given blowouts of the past) and a match between 2000 and 1996 where Pokemon not making the match picture perhaps decided the entire matchup. We care about games. Not years. I hope anyone wasting their time and reading this on the wiki in the future understands I am not alone in my somber mood here. The entire site hated this contest. --- ## 1995 vs 2001 _source: 1995 vs 2001 (revid 81312)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, May 16th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis (Not linking to match pictures from here on out because they're in a weird order on creative's site and I'm lazy. I will say that I was very happy with multiple rotating pictures for each entrant, which gives more people a shot at getting a picture accepted.) We all saw this match coming given how these two performed leading up to the match itself, but hats off to 1995 for putting up one hell of a fight before finally getting run over. The logic coming in was easy. Chrono Trigger was wrecking face in 2015 before rallies happened, to the tune of 65% on Final Fantasy X and getting ready to get 60% on Melee. So why couldn't Chrono Trigger (1995) beat the FFX/Melee unholy alliance (2001)? Seemed easy, but we learned in this contest that things like year depth and match pictures would be the biggest factors in this contest. For 30 minutes, this match was shaping up to be a classic. 1995 barely won the board vote, then the two years stayed tied for 30 straight minutes. Some people thought 1995 would run away with things, but it would not turn out that way. 2001 started pulling away a little after the 30 minute update, and before long it was clear this match was over. We can't blame anything here other than 2001's strength and 1995's slight weakness, because this was a completely fair fight the whole way through. No picture fuckery or anything. Just a fair fight that 2001 won. We all figured 2001's run was over at this point given 1995's weakness throughout the entire contest, but it would turn out there was one last surprise in store this year. --- ## 1997 vs 1996 _source: 1997 vs 1996 (revid 81314)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, May 17th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis 1997 continued its dominance in this contest with an absolute demolishing of 1996, in a match that was barely worth watching. 1996 actually won the board vote before bleeding all day, and frankly it was lucky to prevent '97 from breaking 70% in this match. I know 1996 is a weak year comparatively, but anything from the 1990s only scoring 31% in a match this late in a contest was a real eye-opener. This wasn't quite on par with 1998 getting 73% on 1992, but it was close. This more or less cemented our final being a 1997/1998 duel, which is why the coming semifinal match between 2001 and 1997 was such a massive surprise. There was almost nothing in this contest suggesting that match would even be close, let alone a 2001 win. '97 looked almost as dominant as '98 in all of its matches, and during this match there were even people complaining about yet another FF7 vs Ocarina of Time final and that Allen wasn't fooling anyone. I know this was a boring contest, but 69% in the final eight is no joke. It gets harder and harder to get blowouts the later you get in a contest, so this was a very good performance by 1997. Too bad it didn't matter at all. --- ## 1991 vs 1994 _source: 1991 vs 1994 (revid 81304)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, May 18th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis My odds of winning this contest were literally zero by the time this match happened, but I'm doing a mini rant about this match anyway. Everyone on Board 8 has a match where they got annoyed by picture fuckery, and this one was mine. Leading up to this contest, system release dates were made into a big deal. Allen asked for them in the blurbs he never used, Allen himself listed them in the year info pages, and a ton of us factored system release dates in our bracket picks. We all assumed systems would be allowed in match pictures, especially given Allen literally asked for them on the picsmith form. Know how many match pictures in this contest featured a system? Zero. Not a one. You cannot call this contest "Best Year In Gaming" and leave out the one thing people actually care about with years, which is system releases. No one gives a shit what year their favorite game came out, but they absolutely know what year their favorite system came out. So for systems to not be included in match pictures in this contest was a fucking joke, especially for a year like 1991. The Super Nintendo is this site's favorite system by a mile, and I'm not pulling that factoid out of thin air. Run a poll search on "Super Nintendo" on GameFAQs some time. Totally unacceptable for the Super Nintendo not to be in this match picture. Totally unacceptable for the Playstation not to be in the 1995/2001 match picture (I don't think 1995 would have won either way given three systems should have been in the 2001 match pic, but the fact that we even have to talk about this is a disgrace). Totally unacceptable for systems to be forgotten. Period. 1991 won the board vote, then got run over. 1994 may have won this match anyway, but we shouldn't even be having this debate. You put systems in the match pictures for a contest like this. The end. Pretty much every close match in this contest had an excuse attached because of this no-system garbage, and I promise you I'm not alone in being upset about it. Why even ask for systems on the picsmith form? Dumb. --- ## 1998 vs 2003 _source: 1998 vs 2003 (revid 81319)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, May 19th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis Remember how I said the over-under for 2003 was 27.15% due to the round two results? WHOOPS. We already knew there was literally no possible way 1998 was losing this contest without an insane rally, but this really cemented it home. I actually looked this up since I should do some research for this PCa at some point, and only one other match in the final eight ever finished above 80-20 like this. It was Zelda \> Metroid in the series contest: 1998 came really close to breaking that record, but not quite. 84.7% stands as the record this late in a contest, which is an insane number when you really think about it. It means something has to be strong enough to get into the final eight, and then turn around and get SFFd into the ground by something Zelda. When you think about it, that's basically what this match was. 2003 got here, then got annihilated by what was basically Ocarina of Time. I was mad about Wind Waker's year getting this far, but then it got the second lowest score of any contest entrant this late and it was somewhat worth it to see Wind Waker get this embarrassed. Good riddance and sit the hell down, you piece of trash. Men are talking. --- ## 2001 vs 1997 _source: 2001 vs 1997 (revid 81322)_ ## Results **Round Four** Saturday, May 20th, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis It's going to be long forgotten if it isn't already, but this upset was one of the most inexplicable upsets we've ever had. There was no indication this was coming. Zero. 1997's results in this contest, in order: 77.25%, 70.98%, 69.15%, 48.26%, and two of those blowouts were against other years in the 90s. Most of us were just hoping 2001 made a game of it, and some openly asked for picture sabotage in 2001's favor, but 2001 actually winning? Hell naw. Then the match started, and 2001 won the board vote. Alright, sure, Melee-related things always win the board votes. But then after a two hour struggle where 2001 maintained a 100 vote lead, it started climbing ever so slowly until it hit 200 overnight. From here it was all about who would take the day vote, and.... 2001 took the morning vote and day vote both. Somehow. The final vote margin may have been 620 votes, but the match wasn't really that close. If the day trend lasted for the entire match, 2001 could have won this thing by 1000 or more, and 1997 never made any real threat to actually win this match. Given the buildup to this thing making it look like 1997 had a decent chance of winning the contest outright, this one blew me away. I was happy about it, don't get me wrong, but it still blew me away. We don't have many examples of dominant, potential contest winning entrants getting upset out of no where with no rally like this. We may not have any, come to think of it. Cloud losing to Mario in 2002 wasn't really an upset. Neither was Crono losing to Mario in 2003 or Ocarina of Time losing to FF7 in 2004. Who do we even put in the slot of "potential contest winner losing out of no where before the final"? Mario in 2003? Maybe Melee or FFX in the Game of the Decade contest? I'm drawing a blank here. This might be the most unexpected non-rally upset we've ever had, and no one will care because no one cared about this contest. If anyone sees this on the wiki in the future, by all means make a note and add it to the end of this in italics. Thanks. This match actually gave us hope in 2001 pulling a second miracle upset in a row and actually winning this contest -- you know, giving us some excitement this year. Then the next match happened, and.... yeah. --- ## 1994 vs 1998 _source: 1994 vs 1998 (revid 85563)_ ## Results **Round Four** Sunday, May 21st, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis Squirrel asked what the closest prediction percentage to 50% was we've ever had in a contest. This right here is your answer. 50.05% is the closest for now. It's one of those weird things I actually keep track of. This was also in a semifinal match, which shows you how predictable this contest was. Anagram asked what the biggest semifinals blowout was. It was Zelda \> Metal Gear in the series contest: 73.74% in a non-SFF contest semifinal is a record I'm confident never gets broken, because getting to a semifinal and then being weak enough to get 26.26% in a match is insane. Our best chance was last year when Mario RPG went against Ocarina of Time, but Mario RPG got 32.62% in that match. Even here, 1998 only got 66.35%. 1994, despite only getting 33.65%, held its own against the all-time semifinal futility records. And it deserved to. Games like Final Fantasy 6, Sonic 3, Super Metroid, and Earthworm Jim don't deserve to set futility records. And on that note, this godforsaken POS contest only had one match left in it. Good riddance. --- ## 2001 vs 1998 _source: 2001 vs 1998 (revid 81323)_ ## Results **Championship** Monday, May 22nd, 2017 ## Ulti's Analysis Hey, a match in this contest finally cleared 20,000 votes! It took until the final, but hey! All hope for 2001 pulling a miracle ended in literally five seconds, and it wasn't much longer until we realized we were about to get our biggest final blowout of all time. I believe the record before this was Link \> Mario in the 2002 contest, where Link got 62.53%. 1998 completely blew that record away, and 2001 was lucky to not get doubled. 66.19% in a contest final is a record we may never see fall, because contest finals are usually close by definition no matter who is in them. Not this year. 1998 was just too strong and was too deep of a year gaming-wise. The only actual excitement for me was finally getting Final Fantasy Tactics Leviathan into a match picture. I played politics and pulled rank to do it, but I don't care. I've wanted that match picture for 14 years and finally got to see it. I'm good. Speaking of, I've avoided doing a 1998 retrospective until the final, because a year like 1998 deserves a retrospective in a writeup that people will actually read in the future. This may be the only wiki article on this contest anyone actually looks at. I love the 2001 games, but 1998 absolutely deserves to set the contest final blowout record. Let's start with the obvious. Final Fantasy Tactics came from 1998, and it's the best game ever made. I actually cheesed out for getting Leviathan into a match picture, and by now I doubt I need to give some long writeup about loving the game. I put thousands of hours into it for a reason, and I can finally say Final Fantasy Tactics won a contest. On top of that, there are so many great games that so many great users can say finally won a contest. FFD can say Resident Evil 2 won a contest. futuresuperstar can say Metal Gear Solid finally won a contest. My best friend in real life can say Xenogears finally won a contest. The anti-rally whackos can finally say Ocarina of Time won a contest (Link not winning in 6 years must feel like a lifetime for those people!). CJayC can say Grim Fandango finally won a contest. Sir Chris and Team Rocket Elite can finally say Pokemon won a damn contest, and I'm sorry but that one is well past overdue and it's good to see that drought end. I don't care if it's on a technicality. Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green finally won, bros! LordOfDabu and the other Starcraft fans finally got their get-back for 2004. Starcraft finally won a contest! Then you have all these other games and characters that get all this love that never get to go deep in these contests. Games like Half-Life, Spyro, Einhander, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Banjo-Kazooie, Breath of Fire 3, Fallout 2, Half-Life, Thief, Baldur's Gate, Unreal, Turok 2, F-Zero GX, Suikoden 2, Star Ocean 2, Soul Calibur, and tons of other examples. I know this contest sucked and I'm as happy as anyone to be past it, but I did want to take a few moments to really give 1998 some credit here. It really did deserve this dominant contest run, because it's unquestionably the best gaming year we'll ever see. This contest blew, but it went out on a high note despite giving us our biggest finals blowout ever. Hats off, 1998. You deserve it. # Character Battle X (2018) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 150 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Character Battle X _source: Character Battle X (revid 88412)_
Fall 2018 Contest

Announced:

August 4, 2018

Started:

October 19, 2018

Ended:

December 14, 2018

Final positions:

Winner: Link

2nd: Cloud Strife

3rd: Zelda

Contest Winner:

half_silver28 - 541 points

Notable matches:

Wario > Monika, Ammy > Draven,

Tifa > MMX, Pikachu > Mega Man,

Zelda > Snake, Zelda > Mario,

Crono > Mega Man, Mario > Samus
**Fall 2018 Contest** **Character Battle X** was the 10th character battle hosted by video game website GameFAQs, and the first such tournament after 5 years. The main event lasted from 2018 October 19 until December 14. This edition saw the return of the classic **1 vs 1** single-elimination format with 128 contestants split into eight 16-player divisions. However, eight members of the "Noble Nine" - except Sephiroth - were excluded from this bracket. Instead, they will be automatically seeded into the newly-introduced **Legends Stage**, where they will meet the eight division winners in a special double-elimination bracket to decide, once again, the most popular character on GameFAQs. **Link** defeated Cloud Strife in their third Grand Finals meeting, earning him a record-fifth championship. Besides the obvious Link \> Cloud final, the tournament was highlighted by Zelda's incredible Legends Stage run resulting from her appearance in *Breath of the Wild*, as she defeated three Noble Niners in the upper bracket, before losing to the eventual top two finalists in consecutive matches. Meanwhile, the defending champion Draven was completely blown out of the first round by Okami Amaterasu, suffering the tournament's most lopsided defeat in the process. This is largely a repsonse to his controversial victory in previous Character Battle where he was carried by rallying voters from /r/leagueoflegends. To add insult to injury, Draven also garnered the fewest votes in the entire tournament, and arguably one of the lowest *in the entire history* of GameFAQs. ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis This was the tenth GameFAQs character battle, and the first contest anyone has actually cared about since 2015. This was our first 1v1 character battle since 2010, our first 1v1 character battle with 24 hour matches since 2006, and our first 1v1 character battle with a traditional format since 2005. 2006 had a half male, half female split that led to a ton of snubs, whereas 2005 was a very traditional format with its seeding even considering the legend rule. So for all intents and purposes, Character Battle X was our first traditional bracket in over a decade. SBAllen walked back the legend rule for Character Battle X. After opening nominations up to Board 8 first and foremost for a few weeks before letting the entire site pick entrants, two cool new features were revealed. The entire Noble Nine outside of Sephiroth was put into a legends bracket where all eight would face the eight division winners, and that bracket would become double elimination for our first ever double elimination championship format. When I get to that in my writeups, I'm putting the seeding in a proper order for the wiki. My PCA, halfway my wiki, my rules =p Seeding was a standard 1-16 per division format, though with Board 8 having far and away the most nominations in the field, some of the seedings were way out of whack. The \#1 overall seed was Dante, for instance, but then we had some insane things like Waluigi as a 2 seed, Metal Sonic as a 5 seed, Metal Man finally making a bracket, and 2B from NieR Automata getting a 1 seed. It was all in good fun, because come voting time seedings don't usually matter much. I could spoil a whole bunch of stuff here, but we have 150 writeups and I need to save some material. Rallies were a huge sticking point in the past, even though those people were all over any related subreddit during this contest begging for votes in every close match. Isn't it funny how that works? Anyway, here is the list of voting changes that Allen implemented to help stymie the effects of rallies: -registered user votes counted double (only users registered before the start of the contest got the bonus when voting, which prevented registering mid contest to rally) -poll start time changed to midnight UTC (8pm EDT/7pm EST), which was very smart because it essentially gives the favorite an extra 4 hours to build up a lead, the theory being that a rally usually doesn't kick off until the next day and then whoops, you only have until 8pm to come back instead of midnight -to vote, one HAD to vote in every match; this one was very underrated pre-contest but its value became apparent later If you want to skip all the writeups and just go right to the post contest section, this contest was very easy to summarize: GameFAQs likes Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Zelda: Breath of the Wild a lot. The former came out mid contest and the entire contest had very noticeable results based on Smash hype. VERY well deserved hype, I might add. Am I allowed to call Ultimate a better game than Melee? Is that blasphemy? Is that a thing I'm allowed to do? I can? Good. Because Ultimate is the better game. Yeah I said it. Don't even try to @ me. Final side note before we get going on this bad boy. For those reading this on the wiki it won't affect you, but for GameFAQs readers I'm skipping match pic links this time around unless it's called for. Allen used super generic images for the first few rounds this contest and digging them up on creativename's site is a massive annoyance. Then when user pics were finally a thing, Allen split up the submissions between character and background, which meant one user could have a character pic chosen and someone else could have a background pic chosen. Why we couldn't just, you know, make a picture is beyond me, but hey. I think Allen wanted to double up the chances people's stuff got picked, because things like "quality over quantity", "the law of diminishing returns", and "less is more" are not in that man's lexicon. Anyway, let's go. My writer's block is gone and I'm ready to beast through this thing. ## Ulti's Mid-Contest Analysis Say what? A mid contest analysis? Yeah, never done one of these but I have to say something that can't be plopped into any one match. I also wanted to explain when this contest shifted, and it deserves its own writeup. Starting in round 4, Allen allowed for user made pictures (finally), there was a Thanksgiving break from voting, and each division winner was plopped into a legends bracket with our top 8 waiting. It was the Noble Nine minus Sephiroth, so (1)Link, (2)Samus, (3)Snake, (4)Cloud, (5)Crono, (6)Sonic, (7)Mario, and (8)Mega Man. There was actual seeding down there, and the more I look at this the more I realize how botched this idea was in execution. It was a good idea, but the actual way Allen did it was all wrong. Those were how the legends were seeded, but they were ordered in the legends bracket like this: (1)Link --- (8)Mega Man --- (4)Cloud --- (5)Crono --- (3)Solid Snake --- (6)Sonic the Hedgehog --- (2)Samus --- (7)Mario --- Allen has gotten 4/5 and 3/6 backwards compared to the NCAAs for years, which is annoying but ultimately doesn't change much. But while the seeding was sort of done by the NCAA style, the order of the legend bracket placement was done by order of division winners. This meant Division 1's winner would face Link, 2's winner would face Mega Man, and so on. This made no sense, and Allen also never bothered explaining how the legends were seeded. Personal preference? Nominations? No one knows. On top of that, this was a double elimination bracket, which is great, but it was done in bracket order instead of NCAA style order for the rerack. So for the loser's bracket, seeding was thrown out and everything was done chronologically instead of just doing the entire winner's bracket first like any tournament would do. It's difficult to explain why this was bad with words, so just look at this page and hop to the bottom: See how the loser's bracket is chronologically ordered instead of spacing everything out to prevent rematches? The loser's bracket was a great idea, but it was done horribly. How it usually goes is this: Match 1 loser Match 8 loser Match 5 loser Match 4 loser Match 6 loser Match 3 loser Match 2 loser Match 7 loser And then you do it chronologically. If it was done like this even including the weird placement of the winner's bracket, as it should have been, the loser's bracket would have looked something like this: Ganondorf vs Sephiroth Solid Snake vs Bowser Auron vs Alucard Mega Man vs Tifa Sephiroth vs Pikachu Solid Snake vs Crono Auron vs Sonic the Hedgehog Mega Man vs Samus And on down the line as things get moving. Or something along those lines. Basically, the correct way prevents most rematches and people would have cared a lot more about the double elimination idea, which I legitimately love in tournaments but it's clear Allen either has no experience doing a bracket like this or just doesn't care. Two. The legends and double elimination idea was good. But not allowing the main bracket to conclude was unbelievably stupid. This was the first time in contest history, even in contests where tournament of champion stuff has happened, where we had no main bracket winner. This pisses me off the more I look at it. The division winners could have all been plopped into a legends bracket anyway, so why rob us of a main bracket contest winner? People not being more upset by that one blows me away. Seeing Zelda win the main bracket and destroy Sephiroth in the process would have been unpredictable, hilarious, and it would have given us more matches to pick. This contest had 150 matches stuffed into a 2 month time frame anyway. What's 7 more matches to make sure the main bracket has a conclusion? DUMB move. Three. Match pictures this year were... bizarre. We could only submit a character or a background, never both at the same time. So for most pictures, one user would have a character credited while another could have the background, which was the case for most of the contest. Ange and I thankfully figured out a style that we could work off of each other with where I would submit most characters and he would get credit for most of my backgrounds, but why can't we just.... you know. Make a full match picture? It made zero sense and it took a really good team of smiths to work around whatever Allen was going for there. I can't even explain the logic there on Allen's part. It was really, really weird. Lastly, I've been holding this one in for years but it needs to be said. Every time user-made match pictures are a thing, the usual cacophony of losers, crybabies, and idiots that contribute nothing whatsoever to this site all cry pic sabotage. If you have a contributor page or you're a picsmith, I'm not talking to you. Well, most of you. One of you is getting called out later. But if Zen or yoblazer or whoever wants to offer constructive criticism and not be a dick, I always listen. But people whining who contribute nothing? Piss off. Sabotage implies a clear and intentional undermining. You not liking a match picture does not imply sabotage. It just means you don't like a match picture. Match pics are a public forum and anyone can submit them. Instead of crying like a little bitch, submit something better or piss off. Nothing is stopping you. And yeah, I have a big contributor page, submit a picture for every match, and my stuff gets chosen more often than other people. I've given a LOT of free time to this web site and Allen likes my material more often than not. So I asked for a sprite round this year, submitted in advance as if we were getting a sprite round, and got one. Don't like it? Too bad. I don't care. A lot of us love the sprite round. There are mature ways of giving criticism past crying sabotage every year, and some of you are complete failures about it. I'll even call you out by name, KP. I don't know when you jumped off the deep end and started acting like vcharon circa 10 years ago, but you very clearly need to look in a mirror. You've done a ton of match pictures and know how difficult they are. For you to whine about pictures and troll people is very unlike you, and you really need to knock it off. That paired with your meltdown during Mario/Samus was as big of an embarrassment as anything I quoted from anyone else this year, but I expect that stuff from people like StupidRaptor and Black Turtle. You? Come on bro, you used to be better than this, not a guy who whines about match pictures and embarrasses the stats topic. Furthermore, some characters don't have good sprites and sprite rounds have been a thing since the very first contest. I and many other people love the sprite round. The people who complain about sprite rounds every year are people I just don't get. Why ruin other people's fun? Sprites are harmless. That's all I got. Sorry for getting upset here, but I love making pictures and I legit feel unappreciated on that front. Unless you're lazy and crop a known image (http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb8/cb8-121-2.jpg), these are very difficult to do. Some of you who complain really need to take the time to make images before whining about other people's stuff, because it's really not as easy as it looks. By the way, user pictures in 2008 were mostly garbage, and I never once attacked anyone personally over them. Grow up. Anyway, back to the show :) ## Ulti's Post Contest Analysis Either get rid of the anti-rallying measures, allow fictional characters that make sense, or stop having contests. At least, stop having character battles and focus on games for awhile. We're at that point. We've now had three contests that either existed as an anti-rallying measure (years, rivalries) or this contest where a bunch of anti-rally stuff was put into place to appease a bunch of hypocritical crybabies who magically love rallying the second one of their characters or games wins because of it. As someone who sees the bigger picture here, it's now plain as day that rallies are a net positive on contests. We can see the difference in vote totals, and the people who think rallies are bad are proof that it's possible for an opinion to be factually wrong. Most matches in this contest struggled to hit 30,000 votes. Most were in the 26k-29k range, including a final between Link and Cloud after 150 matches happened, and this was WITH registered users having their votes count double. In reality, most matches this contest scored about 7k-9k less than the actual total, so really we had most matches struggling to hit 20,000 votes. That is unacceptable garbage. Get rid of forcing people to vote in multiple polls and put the poll start time back at midnight. Those two changes completely murdered this contest in cold blood. I know we had some good matches, but a good match without an audience doesn't mean anything. It's the old saying about trees falling in woods not making sounds if no one hears them. For the wrestling fans, I need a good crowd. If that isn't there, the match is bad for me. AJ Styles v Shinsuke Nakamura at Wrestlemania 2018 and Finn Balor v Seth Rollins at Summerslam are great examples. Both were good matches, but the crowd didn't give a shit about the former and was too busy booing a belt design to care about the latter. But if you watch those matches on mute, they were good matches. That also works in reverse. If you watch Rock/Hogan from Wrestlemania on mute, that was a terrible match. But the crowd reaction makes it A+ and rewatchable forever. This contest was essentially a good wrestling match with a dead crowd. We had some good matches, some good drama, good comebacks, photo finishes, underdog runs, really surprising results, random "how the hell?" moments, you name it. Everything you could want from a contest was there. Hell, even with all the anti-rally garbage, one of the big stories from this contest was people using porn subreddits to rally for Tifa. It's blatantly obvious that the anti-rally people are just talking out of both sides of their mouths and actually do want full rallies, which I've been supporting for 16 years now. This contest wanted to be a good contest. But with how dead this site is and how awful these vote totals were, most of it will go unremembered. Let's take these two matches as an example. Which match means more? Obviously Undertale vs Melee. Now swap everything around. Make Undertale vs Melee a round 3 match with 32,424 votes and Tifa vs Mega Man X a contest semifinal with rallying on all sides and 176,159 votes. Which match means more? That is what this contest was missing. There might be a QB out there better than Tom Brady, but if we don't see that with an audience, no one gives a shit. One final point before I wrap up, which I intentionally left out of my Mario vs Cloud writeup because I wanted to mention here during the wrapup. During the early parts of that match, Maximilian Dood was streaming Smash Bros Ultimate, and someone in the stats topic thought it would be a good idea to donate to the guy to rally on stream. So I threw the guy 10 dollars and asked for Cloud votes. Why not, right? Skip to 2:15 am. When it popped up on stream, Max read my note and then went "GameFAQs still exists?". Cloud got updates of 65 and 68 before going back to normal levels. I don't know the answer to our vote total problem or the reputation we have, but actively putting things in place that tell people not to vote in our polls probably isn't the answer. Dumb move. Geralt should have easily won this contest with a rally, but the creators of Witcher 3 didn't care enough about our site to bother. These contests used to draw in new people, they get people talking about our site, and the contests or matches with rallying are by far better than the rest. I don't care how many good matches this contest had. No one can convince me this was actually a good contest. Average maybe, but not good. As a total side note, Twitch rallying meant dick, because the second the message is read it's gone. It's takes something sustainable like twitter or reddit or a combination of things to actually take off. I will compromise on the registered double vote. Double votes for users is fine, even if I hate it. Everything else has to go. Let Contests Rally Again. Last point. I promise. This was the first PCA where I was looking at it going "150 matches? Where the F am I going to find the time for this?". I can delve up passion all day long, but 150 matches is just stupid. The legends bracket as a single elimination was really enough. Double elim was overkill with all the rematches and such. Less is more, Allen. A big reason for these vote totals is the law of diminishing returns. Contest Ranking: Fall 2015 (Games) Fall 2010 (GotD) Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2013 (Characters) Winter 2010 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2005 (Characters) Spring 2009 (Games 4-way) Summer 2007 (4-way Characters) Summer 2006 (Female Bracket) Spring 2006 (Series) Summer 2008 (Characters 4-way) Summer 2004 (Characters) Fall 2018 (Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) Fall 2011 (2v2 Characters) Spring 2017 (Years) Last, but not least... The Ultimate Loser™!! The double elimination thing made this a little weird to figure out, but The Ultimate Loser this year was... Goro Majima! Link \> Cloud \> Zelda \> Mario \> Samus \> Tifa \> Luigi \> Tails \> Master Chief \> Goro Majima. How fitting for one of those useless Yakuza characters to be this contests's ultimate loser. I mean really. Thanks as always and see you next time! I'd like to give a special thanks to my readers, and an extra special thanks to the guys you've never heard of behind the scenes who keep the wiki looking nice. Ngamer and I get all the credit, but without those unknown folks also helping out we could never do it all. Igordebraga, Averiah, MetalmindStats, Bwburke94, and anyone I might have missed, thanks guys! I really appreciate the help! Bottom's up, bros. ## Safer777's Pre Contest Analysis Oh hi! This is my first ever analysis on these contests! I just decided to write analysis for this contest since it is the 10th one and I am here since the 2nd contest so I thought why not? Of course I wrote these analysis as the matches went on. So that means I didn't know how far and how strong were the characters so you will see some strange remarks and such. So I repeat. These analysis aren't post contest, meaning I didn't had the full picture of all the matches and characters. For this read Ulti's analysis. He always was the best on these things and well he still is of course. Also don't expect in depth analysis and such. I write these for fun. Read Ulti's posts once again! Anyways here I go! So after so many years we finally had 1 VS 1 24 hour Character battle since 2005!!! We had contests since then of course but not with all these things together! Seriously it is that long! We had some changes too this time. Double Register Votes(to counter rallies I guess)and we had to vote in every match to count our votes normally. I like the 2nd thing but not the first. Come on now rallies are fine!  Another thing is that 8 of the NN'ers went to the Legends Bracket where they would face the winners of the 8 divisions. Yeah I said 8 of the NN'ers. Sephiroth was in the normal bracket and that was because the Admin said that we had already Cloud representing FF 7 so we didn't need another representative there. So Sephiroth got an easy dividion with potentially only 1 character posing a slight chance to beat him. Also we had a Loser Bracket too! Meaning characters that lost in the Final 16 had another match with the characters that lost in the final 16 too. Meaning another chance to advance too. So we had 3 Final matches actually! The Normal Bracket one, the one from the Loser Bracket and the Final one where the winner of the Normal Bracket would face the winner of the Loser Bracket! That is a lot of Finals!  So out of all these things I like the we have to vote in all matches thing and the Loser Bracket too. Of course the Loser bracket ended not that exciting but it can be tweaked in the next contest. ## Tournament Bracket *Click on the date above each match to see its article page (which mostly contains analysis / write-ups made by noted Board 8 users).* *Since votes made by registered users count as 2 votes than unregistered users, the brackets will only display the **final scores (adjusted votes)** from each match. For details on each match's vote distribution, **[click here.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/cbx_stats)*** ### Division Rounds | | |-------------------------| | **Division 1 (Devil?)** | | | | Oct 19 - **26394** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 19 - **26403** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 19 - **26398** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 19 - **26402** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 20 - **26022** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 20 - **26039** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 20 - **26042** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 20 - **26037** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |----------------------------| | **Division 2 (Maverick?)** | | Oct 21 - **29219** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 21 - **29219** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 21 - **29223** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 21 - **29229** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 22 - **29107** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 22 - **29119** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 22 - **29119** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 22 - **29121** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |----------------------------| | **Division 3 (Keyblade?)** | | Oct 23 - **29737** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 23 - **29744** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 23 - **29744** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 23 - **29745** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 24 - **29284** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 24 - **29284** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 24 - **29289** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 24 - **29288** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |----------------------------| | **Division 4 (Automata?)** | | Oct 25 - **29525** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 25 - **29527** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 25 - **29526** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 25 - **29532** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 26 - **28762** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 26 - **28758** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 26 - **28756** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 26 - **28760** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------------| | **Division 5 (Garden?)** | | Oct 27 - **28693** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 27 - **28695** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 27 - **28701** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 27 - **28704** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 28 - **28819** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 28 - **28826** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 28 - **28826** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 28 - **28824** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |------------------------| | **Division 6 (Wild?)** | | Oct 29 - **29949** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 29 - **29953** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 29 - **29951** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 29 - **29954** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 30 - **30762** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 30 - **30770** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 30 - **30768** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 30 - **30758** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |---------------------------| | **Division 7 (Mansion?)** | | Oct 31 - **28911** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 31 - **28913** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 31 - **28917** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 31 - **28919** | | 4 | | 13 | | Nov 01 - **30604** | | 3 | | 14 | | Nov 01 - **30607** | | 6 | | 11 | | Nov 01 - **30614** | | 7 | | 10 | | Nov 01 - **30616** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------------| | **Division 8 (Shinra?)** | | Nov 02 - **29025** | | 1 | | 16 | | Nov 02 - **29027** | | 8 | | 9 | | Nov 02 - **29023** | | 5 | | 12 | | Nov 02 - **29025** | | 4 | | 13 | | Nov 03 - **28744** | | 3 | | 14 | | Nov 03 - **28745** | | 6 | | 11 | | Nov 03 - **28748** | | 7 | | 10 | | Nov 03 - **28752** | | 2 | | 15 | ### Legends Stage *Due to the website's limited horizontal space, the first round will be split into a separate section. Afterwards the rest of the double- elimination bracket will be displayed as usual.* #### Round 1 | Legends Stage Round 1 | |-----------------------| | Date | | Nov 27 | | Nov 27 | | Nov 28 | | Nov 28 | | Nov 29 | | Nov 29 | | Nov 30 | | Nov 30 | #### Finals Bracket | Upper Bracket & Finals | |------------------------| | | | Dec 03 - **29424** | | 1 | | B | | Dec 03 - **29425** | | 4 | | 5 | | Dec 04 - **28717** | | E | | 6 | | Dec 04 - **28715** | | 2 | | 7 | | Lower Bracket | |--------------------| | LB Rd 1 | | Dec 01 - **25238** | | Ganon | | **MM** | | Dec 01 - **25239** | | Alucard | | **Bowser** | | Dec 02 - **25886** | | **Snake** | | Auron | | Dec 02 - **25885** | | **Tifa** | | Sephiroth | | | ## See Also - [CBX Main Page](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/cbx) - [Final CBX Standings & Stats](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/cbx_stats) - Board 8's 2018 Nominations --- ## (1)Dante vs (16)Cuphead 2018 _source: (1)Dante vs (16)Cuphead 2018 (revid 84612)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know this contest started two months ago, but doesn't it feel like a year? It legitimately feels like this match was an entire lifetime ago, especially given how utterly bizarre it was for Dante to be the \#1 overall seed in the first place. We are reaching a point of singularity in our culture where everything feels like it's happening at the same time and at no time at all, and it's really jarring. Or I'm just getting old and time is going too fast for me at this point. Anyway, here is the list of every \#1 overall seed we've ever had, in order, even including the weird ones limited to format types. For fourways (puke) or threeways (kinky) I just listed the winner of the first match: -Mario -Link -Super Mario Bros 3 -Link -Bowser -Mario -The Legend of Zelda -Samus -Yoshi -Zack Fair -Tetris -Link -Fallout 3 -Mario and Bowser -Link -Chrono Trigger -1995 -Dante The ones that stand out as being thoroughly ridiculous are Zack, Fallout 3, 1995, and Dante. Fallout 3 happened because of the format (Game of the Decade), and 1995 happened because Allen had the bright idea to make a contest called Best Year in Gaming, an idea so dumb that Allen has yet to add it to the list of past contests as of this writing. Seriously: This leaves Zack and Dante, both of which earned their position from new game hype. I know people reading this after 2010 or so won't believe this, but Final Fantasy 7 used to be liked on GameFAQs. It's true! So back in 2008, Zack got a bunch of nominations and was thrown into the first match. That bracket was largely randomized, but hey. Not taking anything away from the guy. But Dante, somehow, got the \#1 overall seed in this contest based off of this video even with Board 8 deciding everything this year: I like Dante. I honestly do. He's cheesy and over the top in a cool factor way. And DMC5 looks fantastic, don't get me wrong, but that hype video isn't exactly an FF7 remake or grown men openly weeping tears of joy and passing out over Twilight Princess or Super Smash Bros Ultimate. It was just a solid hype vid. That's all. DMC is also a series that's produced two of the all-time worst games (2 and DmC, a game so bad they didn't even call it "5"), two average games (1 and 4), and one A+ game. 3. This is also Capcom we're talking about, which isn't exactly the most scrupulous of companies. The point is here I think some dickery was afoot. And as one could expect, voters weren't buying it. Dante did decent here, but this was nothing earth shattering and nothing to make anyone think he had a prayer of escaping a division with Vivi and Ganondorf in it. It's not often one can call a 71% performance subpar, but we're holding Dante to the standard of a \#1 overall seed. Being in this position is just different; Link has been here five times and this is the spot Chrono Trigger scored 239.44% from. You have to give me better against a character in Cuphead that 19 people care about. And yeah yeah, I know. "Cuphead's game is good and he's underseeded." These indie characters are all flashes in the pan, they all have no sustainable popularity, and their fanbases all think they're bigger than they actually are. That includes the all-time examples of Braid and Undertale, and I say this as someone who drove the Undertale bandwagon. This contest proved that in spades. Cuphead matters about as much as Frisk, Tim, Meat Boy, or the vehicles from Gradius and Blaster Master. He doesn't. Moving on. Oh and Nero is cooler than Dante, even if he does look like a vanilla midget Cody Rhodes wannabe. I love all these ex-WWE fans pretending the NWA title suddenly matters just because Cody Rhodes held it for an hour after winning it on a show he himself produced and booked. Cody and Dustin are both trash, and so was much of All In. Pro wrestling will never, ever be cool again. Ever. Deal with it. That ship has long sailed. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: This was a fairly standard, easy to predict 1 vs. 16 blowout. The only remarkable thing about it is that Cuphead beat expectations, avoiding a tripling and even getting up to just below 30% during the Early Night Vote. Dante did better with registered users, though the prediction percentage was perhaps a bit lower than you might think with 81.71% choosing Dante. **What could this mean?**: That Cuphead was thoroughly under-seeded mainly. It's not surprising that he overperformed the board's expectations and his seed, his game destroyed two GotY polls (it even quadrupled a well-liked Assassin's Creed game) and came third in the final poll. Some people are nervous about Dante vs. Ganondorf or even vs. Lightning from this, but this specific match isn't cause to be I think. Just that Cuphead deserved a better match-up, and hopefully will get one in the future. I also feel better about Shovel Knight thanks to this performance, as the most comparable character in the bracket to Cuphead. ## Safer777's Analysis This is the first match of the contest so of course easy win for Dante. He got a 1 Seed too! Dante was always decent in these things. Not the strongest of course but good enough. He had some nice matches in some of these contests. I still remember the Ryu/Dante match from so long ago with the Hockey Factor! Nice. As for Cuphead he is newcomer and from an indie game. So don't expect much. Still he did okay I believe. He has a unique appearance so people recognize him easy. As for Dante I never seen pics of him with the New Dante look. Hey don't kill me! I am just saying! Yeah I know everyone hates New Dante. Still nice win. However the prediction percentage seems kinda low for a 1 Seed. Eh whatever. ## Tsunami's Analysis Not much to say here. I actually entertained the upset pre-contest because I'm more dialed in to the speedrunning segment of gaming and Cuphead was an indie darling and a *recent* one at that, but as soon as I learned that Dante had gotten a new game and it was a return to the pre-DmC days, that was enough to get me to reject that idea. Still, as we'll see in a few divisions, I was hardly the only one to think that an indie darling could actually be worth something! --- ## (8)Chloe Price vs (9)Lightning 2018 _source: (8)Chloe Price vs (9)Lightning 2018 (revid 85394)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was a debated match pre-contest, and I don't blame or make fun of anyone for this being a debated match for two reasons. One, Final Fantasy is anathema to this web site at this point, especially modern Final Fantasy. One cannot blame anyone for not having faith in Lightning. Her contest history doesn't exactly light the world on fire, and she's hardly a well liked character. And secondly, Board 8 has had Second Match PTSD from getting kicked in the balls by this match for almost 20 years. I've posted this list before but it bears reposting. Just look at this nonsense. Weird stuff in bold. Summer 2002 - Spyro vs Morrigan. Everyone picks Spyro, because people have actually heard of Spyro. Morrigan wins, and everyone credits the match picture. The Jug Factor is born. Summer 2003 - Pikachu vs Fox. Everyone picked Fox because they had a common opponent (Cloud) the year before. No contest. Spring 2004 - Metroid vs Pac-Man. People picked Metroid because they treated games the same as characters. Again, no contest. Summer 2004 - Ganondorf vs Alucard. Debated match for some reason, but by now everyone knew about x-stats and picked Ganondorf. Again, no contest. Of course now that x-stats were a thing, the second match would start screwing with people, though one could consider this a match that a lot of people debated and got wrong. Spring 2005 - Sigma vs Andross. Other than Ridley/Diablo, this was the most heavily debated round 1 match and a LOT of people picked Andross. We know the end result. Sigma destroyed. Summer 2005 - Ness vs CJ, shortly after San Andreas came out. Most people picked CJ, figuring the insane buzz around that game would lead to a very easy win. Ness won with ease, spawning the RacistFAQs fad that lives on to this day (and is unfortunately probably true on some level). Spring 2006 - Suikoden vs Mega Man X in the series contest. No debate because it was obvious MMX would win. Summer 2006 - Ada Wong vs Jade was obvious. Moving on. Summer 2007 - Arthas/Diablo/KOS-MOS/Mega Man. People had no idea what LFF in 4ways was, at least not to this degree, and a lot of people picked Diablo to get second place. The guru pick was Mega Man \> KOS-MOS, but enough people picked Diablo to where this gets "DAMN SECOND MATCH" honors. Summer 2008 - Link/Luke/Shadow/Zidane. Everyone and their mother picked Shadow to get second place. This was before people realized Sonic was an honorary Nintendo franchise on our site, similar to Pac-Man. Zidane cruised to second. Summer 2009 - Mega Man 2/Pac-Man/Pong/Oregon Trail. Mega Man \> Pac-Man was the favorite, but a ton of people got scared into picking Oregon Trail because of all the joke trends in the prior contests. Winter 2010 - Alucard vs Magus. If this were held in 2004 everyone would have picked Magus and some people still did. This was HIGHLY debated for whatever reason, even though Alucard cruised. Game of the Decade - Rock Band vs Deus Ex. Rock Band is the overwhelming favorite, then Deus Ex pulls the upset but "not by enough" in one of Board 8's worst days ever. The board was unreadable. Rivalry Rumble - Who fucking cares? (it was Ike/Black Knight beating Conker/Poo) Summer 2013 - Raiden/Waluigi/Alan Wake. Easy Raiden win, though people feared a joke run by Waluigi. Fall 2015 - Persona 3 was the HEAVY board favorite. Dragon Quest 8 stomped it into the ground with utter ease in a match that was never close. Best Year - 1987 beat 1985. I don't care about this contest enough to look up whether or not this result was weird. You guys get the idea. The second match is just weird, and always treats us badly. I feel like if this match was placed anywhere else on the bracket, Lightning gets 100% board support in all the little side shows we have (BOP, Oracle, Guru, spread betting, bake sales, all that fun stuff), but because it was match \#2, people paused. There was also the fear that Lightning would get anti voted into the ground, plus there was the fear of people loving Life is Strange. It has sold something like 3.5 million copies, after all. Lightning ended up being the favorite, and thankfully, she put all doubts to rest in about 2 seconds. No crazy board vote, no weird comebacks needed. Just her beating Chloe up from pillar to post for 24 straight hours en route to a tripling. If only all the second matches could treat us so well, right? ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: A blowout most people expected, for an 8 vs. 9 match the prediction percentage was a huge 80.74%. I was a little cautious on this one due to distrusting Lightning and wondering if Life is Strange had gained popularity. Obviously I was wrong. Trend-wise Lightning had an awful board vote, but then gradually increased before stabilising at 74% around the halfway point. **What could this mean?**: That Life is Strange is garbo on here. And Chloe might not even have the support of fans of that. Even the prediction percentages showed it. Lightning might be better than expected after her awful 2013 showing, but it is too early to say. How she holds up against Dante is the real test of this. Chloe is probably a bottom 5 character, almost certainly bottom 10. She'd certainly get destroyed by Cuphead so I think Dante will clear Lightning easily, 60-40 or more. ## Safer777's Analysis Chloe is a newcomer and there were some fears for rallies for her since her game is liked in certain circles. Nothing happened of course. As for Light you all know her of course. She is weak actually. Shame.Though I believe Chloe is really weak. Like bottom 5 for sure. Come on we don't care for Adventure games here except Monkey Island. All 4 people that nominate this thing(don't beat me please!). I have seen playthroughs of LIS and it is really good. It manages to focus on everyday things that people face.Especially young adults. Good writing too. Anyways at least Chloe managed to avoid a tripling. But don't be fooled, Light is weak. But still FF always wins so she won here of course. Also the prediction percentage is kinda high for an 8 seed VS 9 seed. Guess people saw FF and thought that Light would win. But nobody likes the modern FF games I believe, except FF 10. But after that...yeah nothing. Still at least Light won a match. ## Tsunami's Analysis Final Fantasy has taken on Pokémon-like fandom trends--the most recent installment is bashed, and everything else grows in stature as a result. The first contest that XV exists, Lightning finally gets a win, and in dominating fashion at that. Chloe Price was considered a near-lock for the bottom of the Raw X-Stats after this, in part because Ganondorf was the favorite to win the division and would be fed to Link, but also because no one believed that Lightning was as strong as she looked in this match. Little did we know that the entire bottom half of the bracket would be trapped behind Link \> Zelda! But back to Lightning looking strong in this match: Life Is Strange is super-niche, while Final Fantasy is, well, Final Fantasy. And while you *could* vote in only some of the matches if you knew what you were doing, if you voted the conventional way, you had to vote in every match of the day if you wanted to vote in any of them. That vastly favors Nintendo and Square, and to a lesser extent Capcom/Konami/Sega. You know, the five companies with a member of the Noble Nine. --- ## (5)Spyro the Dragon vs (12)Chun-Li 2018 _source: (5)Spyro the Dragon vs (12)Chun-Li 2018 (revid 83671)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every year in the NCAAs, we year about the 12 \> 5 upset. We have those now and again too, and we got ours out of the way right on day one. red13n is good for one boneheaded topic every contest, and for him this contest he just couldn't contain his furry-dom over Spyro the Dragon. To call that topic an embarrassment would be an understatement, but I chose not to save it out of respect. I like red, truly, but the annual "how dare people like women for their bodies as I stare at prepubescent fuzzy cartoon animals" topic is getting really dumb. Which is whatever, you do you bro, but TJF was not the reason Chun-Li won this match. For the unaware, TJF stands for The Jug Factor, which ironically enough exists because of.... Spyro the Dragon! Way back in 2002, everyone picked him to beat Morrigan in round 1. Then Morrigan was given a match picture with her boobs flopping all over the place, and people credited her jugs for winning; ergo, "The Jug Factor". TJF. TJF may have been the reason Spyro lost back in 2002, but in 2018? Come on man. First off, Spyro was hilariously overseeded due to the Spyro Reignited Trilogy coming out right during this contest and the bracket having 128 characters. You're bound to get insane nonsense when you remove the 8 strongest people and keep in a field of 128. Secondly, and most obviously of all, this is a picture of Chun-Li: Er whoops. Wrong Chun-Li! This is a picture of Chun-Li: This was Chun-Li's match picture: There's a distinct lack of jugs there, plus Capcom has spent nearly 30 years making her legs look good. Really, it's in her moveset and everything. Ask Justin Wong. Anyway, red wasn't alone in overrating Spyro, as one can see from the prediction percentage. 45% of people thought he was winning for whatever reason, plus he had a respectable showing as the poll went on. Chun-Li was never in any actual danger of losing, but she did have some updates under 50%. If you put Spyro in KOS-MOS's fourpack, he could have won two matches this year -- which is true of a LOT of characters, just wait until we get to that abomination. Does our language have a phrase for whatever the opposite of "murderer's row" is? Creampuff scheduling? This was a good contest for 2002 characters in need of a break. But Spyro got his break in 2013, so his fans can stop whining about a TJF that doesn't exist. Boobs are for children, anyway. Men like ass ;) ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: This was the first debated match of the contest. It shows in the prediction percentage, with just over 55% getting it right. Historically Chun-Li would stomp, but arguably Street Fighter has faded from relevance a bit and Spyro has been the most relevant he's been in almost 20 years. His 5-seed speaks for itself here, his highest ever. Additionally, he looked miles better in 2013 as a result of nostalgia for that era starting up. In the end it wasn't quite enough. Spyro looked pretty good here, and for the first hour-ish looked like it could be close, with Spyro winning multiple updates. Unfortunately soon after the kiddies went to bed, and Chun-Li was gaining slowly for the rest of the match other than a few random spots. Unsurprisingly Spyro looked best in Europe, even winning in a few territories, but it wasn't enough and the match ended up a fairly standard 56/44 affair. **What could this mean?**: For this contest, nothing. Whoever wins is going to get stomped by Ganondorf. In general though, despite losing this was a big moral victory for Spyro. Back in the day this would have been at least a doubling if not a tripling. Spyro has boosted a lot, and that 2013 performance seems legit after all. It's too early to say if Chun-Li has changed at all, but it would probably be pretty slight. She did better with the GameFAQs vote, but it won't matter given what she's up against next round. ## Safer777's Analysis Spyro is a PS 1 icon. He was really famous back in the day. Chun-Li is the most iconic female fighter from the most famous fighting series. Still she barely scored above 56% here. As time goes on we care less and less for fighting games here it seems? Spyro also is in Skylanders which is HUGELY popular! Not here of course. Still she managed to win and that is that I guess. Man I remember when I first saw Street Fighter 2 in an Arcade machine when I was young. I was so impressed! What else to say? Spyro is really weak in these things. Chun-Li is somewhat stronger. But as the years go on, fighthing characters keep doing worse and worse and we have fewer and fewer in the contests. Remember when DOA characters were in these things? Yeah. Also the prediction percentage is low. Well makes sense. They  both had a chance at win here anyways. Also I didn't know when this match first came out but Icons did well in the contest. So it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis Poor Spyro can't catch a break with these fighting game females, can he?  That was the match that created "TJF", which was discussed quite a bit this contest. Spyro got a bad draw regardless, however, because a lot of characters with similar old-school credentials were able to impress this year. Spyro? Stuck behind a fellow gaming icon. Chun-Li might not be the *first* female fighter, but she's the first to reach mainstream consciousness. They even make fun of it at one point; she has a line in one of the more recent games where she reminisces about being the only girl on the roster. As a result, the strength that Crash and Bomberman showed later in this contest came as a surprise. I'll talk about them in good time though. --- ## (4)Ganondorf vs (13)Neku Sakuraba 2018 _source: (4)Ganondorf vs (13)Neku Sakuraba 2018 (revid 83672)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I grow exceedingly happy every time Neku loses a contest match -- the little turd is a well deserved 0-4 now!! -- because Neku and his game are both steaming piles of monkey trash. To this day I am 100% convinced everyone who says they like The World Ends With You are in on a massive inside practical joke, because I refuse to believe anyone actually likes that game. I don't like things like Shadow of the Colossus or Warcraft 3 or Hearthstone or Phantom Hourglass, but I at least understand why people like those games. I don't actually get what people see in TWEWY. Is it the bad writing with a literal repetitive story, the terrible artwork, the joke-tier plot, the confusing gameplay, the embarrassing music, or a mixture of all of the above? I really would love an answer as to what anyone can see in that game. And don't even try defending the music, especially with me. The only possible way anyone can like trash like this is if they're listening to songs for the deaf. You can't even hear it! The only thing, and I quite literally mean the only thing defensible in that game is no random battles. Everything else can go get thrown into a bacon grease fire for all I care. TWEWY blows. Speaking of bacon, Ganondorf came out in this match and showed everyone who's boss. Because who doesn't love a big ol' piece of pork fat with their breakfast, right? Breath of the Wild plus Smash hype was on full display in this match, and it was a huge sign of things to come later. Even Ganon's prediction percentage as a 4 seed dwarfed what Dante was doing, and outside of Vivi, there was nothing standing in Ganon's way in this division at all. Neku getting even one vote was an embarrassment to gamers everywhere, but I'll take Ganon breaking nearly 80% on the little punkass beta. We need a new word for beta males like Neku, because people actually know what a "beta" is and being in second place isn't all that bad. I was thinking Rho Male, because Rho is the one letter in the Greek alphabet everyone forgets about. Which is exactly where Neku Sakuraba should be. If we do have to suffer through him making a bracket, put him against Link in round 1 every year until he goes away. We got rid of Guybrush Threepwood. We can get rid of Neku. Stuff like this is why Square is such a joke now. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: ZeldaFAQs, baby. This was always going to be a stomp (it was the most correctly predicted of the first four matches), but Ganondorf easily outperformed reasonable expectations here. He was nearing 80% during the Power Hour, and looked great otherwise. In 2008 Ganondorf got 77.9 on Neku, in 2010 he was projected to get 71.8 and in 2013 69.6. This was a big overperformance. **What could this mean?**: Either Ganondorf is at his best, or Neku is at his worst. I am sceptical of the latter. Neku has looked better and better with each appearance, and for good reason. TWEWY is a beloved cult-ish game that has steadily gotten more and more eyes on it. Additionally in 2012 there was a major phone port and Neku was in a Kingdom Hearts game. There was a definite boost in 2013 as a result. Now this match came days after the Switch port (which seems to be outselling the original) and I see no reason for Neku to have reverted to 2008 levels or below. This was a great showing from Ganondorf, and he looks primed to take the division. Him overperforming with the GameFAQs vote just shows how much the Zelda franchise will benefit from the new system. Squall had better beware against Zelda herself also. Zelda is bigger than it's ever been and GaneFAQs loves it some Zelda. ## Safer777's Analysis This was a massacre. Neku's game was always a favorite of mine and it recently released again on Switch. BUT Ganondorf is in Smash and oh yeah in Hyrule Warriors too! Oh I guess he is in the Zelda games too or something. Ganondorf was always strong. I mean in the Villains contests he did really good on Sephiroth and back then FF7 was THE SHIT here. But now? Now he can take down N9's for sure. Bad guy yeah but an iconic bad guy since he appears in a lot of Zelda games. Poor Neku. I always liked him. The prediction percentage here is massive too! I think this is the highest for a 4 seed ever too! Seriously not even 1 Seeds have such high percentages! But I believe that after all these years people know that LOZ always win so they went with this too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Geez, Neku, what happened to you? Yes, The World Ends With You has always been niche, but it's still a niche *Square* RPG. And Ganondorf is strong, but not that strong. *This* was the match with the highest prediction percentage? Higher than Zero-Primrose? Squall-Hat Kid? X-Isabelle? Sora-Ryo? Heck, even Kirby-Guile probably belongs on that list. I mean, obviously Ganondorf was winning this, but...the only theory I have is that Neku was a *proven* loser, while those other matches I listed mostly had first-timers as the low seeds (Ryo Hazuki being the exception). Given that I've already admitted to initially having Cuphead before being talked out of it, I guess it makes sense that more people had those upset picks than this one. --- ## (3)Vivi vs (14)Yu Narukami 2018 _source: (3)Vivi vs (14)Yu Narukami 2018 (revid 83673)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I would love to go on a massive rant about Persona fans being among the worst in all of gaming for this match, but I'm actually not going to do that for this PCA. Hop over to Joker/Claire if you want to know why. I was going to, but not anymore. I have a good reason for it, which I'm saving. Plus I haven't actually played a Persona yet, only dealt with the fanbase online during these contests, so for all I know maybe they have good reason for being the ultimate weebs. Not that Yu had a prayer of winning this match anyway. Overall, Squaresoft would end up having a laughably terrible contest, and this includes Old Square, New Square, and everything in between. One of the only exceptions, somehow, is Vivi. He's retained the magic he's always had, and he came out with a purpose this year. I know he had Ganon's help last time, but him beating Mario was clearly no fluke. People absolutely adore Vivi, and he's clearly going to be a character that retains his upper midcard strength no matter how far Square falls..... and man are they falling off a cliff fast. Turns out almost two decades of bad PR and being largely mediocre will do that. The obvious comparison here was between Vivi and Ganon, but they got similar scores against fairly equal levels of fodder. The only difference between them was prediction percentage, which we didn't actually have until halfway through the contest this year. So at the time this match happened, Vivi and Ganon looked like equals and it could have gone either way. We didn't know until later Ganon was the clear favorite, Breath of the Wild or no. How Allen missed on prediction percentages and stats beyond registered voter bonus is beyond me, by the way. That's pretty basic stuff that we all want. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis What happened?: This was a pretty uneventful blowout, without much interesting in the way of trends other than Yu's strong board vote. Vivi performed almost exactly to expectations. This has to be the most boring match of the the contest so far, thank Allen for four matches at once. What could this mean?: The only possible takeaway of value is that Vivi might be as strong as he was in 2013. He is a clear standout among the FF characters in that regard. This is muddied by the possibility of SFF though. As for Yu, Persona is strong and Persona 4 is strong, but as an avatar that doesn't even get the name he's running with in the game, he's inevitably going to struggle. ## Safer777's Analysis Vivi would win here for sure. I mean he has beaten Mario you know! Yeah rallies! Anyways Yu is the main guy from Persona 4. Here is the thing. I like Persona games. They are way too good. But man both the games and their characters suck in the contests! Too bad I say. People should play them! They are so good! At least Yu managed to evade a tripling. Barely. Vivi is also THE black mage. Seriously look at him! How can you not like this guy??? Stronger than the main guy of FF9 too. Oh yeah FF won again. Also people can you stop nominating Persona games/characters? I don't want to see them losing all the time! It hurts my soul! The prediction percentage is good too. Well seems nobody trusts the Persona characters/games. ## Tsunami's Analysis This match was pretty much business as usual. Vivi was coming off that stunning upset of Mario in CBIX, while Yu lost to...who, again? \*looks it up\* Ah, right, Shadow the Hedgehog. Huh, Kat was the third-place character in that match? I could've sworn she was a 26, not a 25, though that's probably because of how forgettable she was (seriously, she's what, a Vita exclusive? Or was it PSP?). I only remember that she was even *in* that contest because of "Who Would You Have Sex With?", because she was one of two characters that basically had a free pass to the semifinals because she was the only female in her division, and honestly hers was freer because the other was Marisa and the Touhou characters were being held back by the question of "are they actually underage or is it just ZUN's art style?" --- ## (6)Victor Sullivan vs (11)Aya Brea 2018 _source: (6)Victor Sullivan vs (11)Aya Brea 2018 (revid 83674)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every contest has some matches where the board takes a giant dump on the casuals (and they give it right back sometimes too!), and this was one such example for Character Battle X. That said, this was a debated match on the board as well, with only two thirds of people supporting Aya Brea. The casuals clearly supported him far more than we did. The basic argument is Victor Sullivan is a huge casualbait character with being from Uncharted, while Aya Brea legitimately hasn't been relevant in gaming for 20 years. On top of that, her only contest highlight was going 50-50 with Donkey Kong all the way back in 2002 for over half the match before choking. Let's not forget that Donkey Kong, one of the biggest choke artists in contest history, clutched on someone. That's Aya Brea's lone point of relevance in these things. Backing a newcomer over someone as unscrupulous as Aya isn't a bad bet, even if it didn't pay off. When the match finally started, Aya ended things in seconds. This was a 60-40 beating for 24 straight hours, and when I say 24 straight hours I mean it. These percentages didn't budge one inch for the entire match, and a once debated match was a pretty boring undertaking within minutes. As we would learn later, this was not exactly a quality win for Aya Brea. Uncharted has just totally fallen off a cliff, as Nathan Drake would show us all later in hilarious fashion. Letting Victor Sullivan break 40% on you isn't exactly something to write home about. This was just a bracket with a lot of fodder in it, and some of them faced each other in round 1 before getting pasted is all. What's sad is remember when Square was actually good? For the entire 90s, every single game they released was good. Even the Final Fantasy Legends, the Saga Frontiers, and the Parasite Eves. All of them. They could do no wrong. And now? Aya can't break 60% on a character no one on this site cares about. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: This was one of the most debated matches of the first round. Literally nobody cares about Parasite Eve anymore, that series is quite dead. Uncharted has always been strangely weak on GameFAQs, despite Sony first party games doing well, including The Last of Us. Nathan Drake lost to CATS, then post-Uncharted 2 has been around the fodder line. Sully was a slight overall favourite, while Aya was the board favourite. This wasn't a blowout, but Aya won pretty easily. Earlier on this looked like it would be a fairly savage beating as Aya trounced Sully with the board vote and through most of the Power Hour, but then it turned into a fairly standard 60/40ish affair for the rest of the match. **What could this mean**?: GameFAQs is decidedly stuck in the past. Parasite Eve and its first sequel were well-received but they weren't classics. However, large numbers of the people voting in these polls have been here for a long time and will definitely vote for the lead of that over a (well-liked) side character from Uncharted. The 90's still reign on here. Additionally, Sully and Uncharted as a whole are quite bad. I don't think this reflects on Ellie vs. KOS-MOS because TLoU is worth a lot more than Uncharted here for some reason. I will say though, I think this match slightly disproves TJF as it was just Aya's face in the picture. Sully was arguably more recognisable in the picture, yet even a mid-tier (at best) 90's Square franchise topped him. The last thing I'll say is that this match and No Mercy vs. Path of Radiance back in GotD have convinced me that the 6-seed is the default Guru nom seed. That bodes well for Aqua and her 2-seed. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this was the first debatable match of the contest.  Although I don't see why. Sully is from Uncharted series who is critically acclaimed but as you know we don't play new games here. We are old. Aya is from a series that the last good game was like 20 years ago. And she is from an RPG. Plus she has tits too! Okay this is sexist, I apologize. So she won easily here, what did you expected? I find it hard though that she got in this contest. I mean why? The last good game as I said was many years ago.  Do people really still care for her? Also a strange fact, Aya got her 2nd win here and she hadn't win since the 1st ever contest! Better late than ever! Nothing else to say here. She won and that was it. The percentage was also less than 50%. Why? Don't people after all these years know that we don't care for new games here? Eh. ## Tsunami's Analysis Sully was one of the Guru noms, right? I know Aqua was one, but I forget who the other was. Aqua got a 2, so if Sully is the other, the difference in their seeding should've made this completely obvious--as well as making it obvious why I forgot who the other was, because seriously, I can't remember all of these western characters with both first and last names. Instead, the Gurus only picked Aya at an 11-5 rate. Which is still far better than the casuals, who outright favored Sully, but still. Not a great showing. Kind of understandable since Aya hasn't been relevant for over a decade, but still, we've seen her impress in these contests before. This shouldn't have been that surprising. --- ## (7)Tidus vs (10)Donkey Kong 2018 _source: (7)Tidus vs (10)Donkey Kong 2018 (revid 83675)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Last match I talked about how the board gets some matches where they get to laugh at casuals, but these contests are such that the casuals often get to give it right back. On the literal same exact day where we picked Aya to beat Victor Sullivan, the casuals destroyed us in hilarious fashion. This was a hotly debated match pre contest for all kinds of reasons, but the main one is both characters have a contest history of being epic choke artists. And if they aren't choking, they're having these insanely close matches for no reason. Donkey Kong: -Goes 50-50 with Aya Brea for over half the match in 2002 before winning with the day vote. -Goes 50-50 with Tommy Vercetti of all people in 2003 before losing. -His game came dangerously close to blowing a 3000+ vote lead to Duck Hunt, and only won because Duck Hunt ran out of time. DK showed ZERO resistance whatsoever and would have lost had Duck Hunt started rallying one hour sooner. -Lost to Vivi in 2004 as a pretty decent favorite. -Choked away a 2000+ vote lead against Master Chief in 2005. -Almost lost to Marth in 2007 before becoming L-Block's second victim in 2007. -2008 speaks for itself, and it's the main reason Tidus was the board favorite in this match: -In 2009 games, Donkey Kong got a DISTANT second place before getting stomped in round 2. Donkey Kong Country pretty much had the exact same story. Barely got through round 1, stomped in round 2. -In 2013, he barely beat Lightning, which is another reason Tidus was favored. Surely, Tidus had to be stronger than Lightning enough to be able to beat DK. -In 2015, DKC2 went 50-50 with Xenoblade and Fire Emblem Awakening before getting rolled by Symphony of the Night. Tidus: -Goes 50-50 with Ganondorf in 2003 and loses. -Goes 50-50 with Shadow the Hedgehog in 2004 and wins. -In 2005 there was a debate between Tidus and Kirby. Tidus lost. -In 2006 there was a debate between Tidus and Squall. Tidus scored 28%. That is not a typo. -In 2007 he finished a close second to Pikachu and then basically went even with Pikachu and Vivi. -In 2008 he lost to a nonsentient hexahedron. Twice. We already covered him rolling DK that year. -In 2010 there was a debate between Tidus and Sub-Zero. Tidus lost. -In 2011 there was a debate between Tidus and Metal Gear Solid. You get the idea. -In 2013 there was a debate between Tidus and Missingno. Tidus decided to cheat that year and he got caught, because Jecht Shots don't work on land. So as you can see, we had two atrocious resumes going at it, but Tidus had good reason to be the favorite here. He had already beaten Donkey Kong badly once, and his stat value was consistently ahead of DK. I'm all for LOL x stats, but when you're stronger every year you're stronger every year. "Whoops." We forgot two very important things. One, Tidus has won one debated match in 16 years. One. He beat Shadow the Hedgehog. "Congrats." And two, we had zero idea the degree Smash Brothers Ultimate hype was going to completely dominate this contest. This match was our first real example, but it was going to get very ugly for a lot of characters very quickly -- even in wins! Tidus was just the first casualty. Without Smash Bros, the Switch being a godsend, and his own contest history being worse than the Minnesota Vikings in the playoffs, Tidus might have had a chance. With all of that, no way. Ask any tortured fanbase. The second anything goes wrong, their team feels it and collapses. There's a very real "oh no" energy to the pre-2004 Red Sox, the Vikings, Cleveland pre-2016, the Cubs pre-2016, and so forth. When this poll started and Tidus only held it together for a grand total of two minutes, his fans all knew. Even the cheaters from the Missingno match. They all knew. Tidus was toast. This match was 50-50 at the jump. By the freeze it was 54-46 and by the end of an hour it was completely over. For how debated this match was, Tidus got completely destroyed. What was especially hilarious is everyone thought this match was a debate in good fun, because this was only supposed to be a one point match. Yeah. About that. Also, Square is just completely done. They can win matches here and there, but their chances of ever winning a contest against given the Switch and Smash Bros are just gone. Nothing they do can compare to the amount of hype Nintendo is able to generate. By all means tell me the last time Square got a reaction like this over a game reveal: I'm happy for my wife's sake I avoided all those hype vids. She would have had to dealt with me openly weeping tears of joy like everyone in those videos did. Sorry not sorry, Square cannot compete with that anymore. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** HA HA HA HA HA HA This match was... Hilarious. Going in this match was a tough one on paper. Two kings of choking going up against each other. Donkey Kong lost the last choke-off against Master Chief, then was redeemed in 2013 when he humiliated Lightning despite having Falco in the poll. Tidus nearly beat Missingno. in 2013 but then that looked pretty bad in round 2. He has also generally slid in strength, now looking like the weakest FF protagonist (other than Cecil) and arguably the weakest character in his own game. If Wakka got in he might look better than Tidus. Still, statistically Tidus has looked very slightly better than DK, so he was the board favourite. Then the match started. It was close for five minutes as board 8 furiously bracket voted, but the Donkey Kong ran away with it. Tidus just about won a few night vote updates but this match was never in question. To top it off the casuals bodied us on this one, taking DK two to one. **What could this mean?:** A few things. First that Tidus is the unquestioned king of choke. Second, Donkey Kong has gotten so much better in recent years. We should have seen it coming really. In 2013 Donkey Kong looked to have boosted which was largely ignored. This made sense, thanks to Donkey Kong Country Returns making that series relevant (and well, existant) again. Since then, Tropical Freeze came out and was beloved, and then the Switch version came out and put it in front of more people. So this is the best Donkey Kong has ever looked. Add to that the Switch boosting Nintendo in general, and it makes sense. I think he will look good against Leon next round. And of course, beware if you're up against Nintendo. Lastly we really should consider new releases and relevance more than just going with the stats. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match was hilarious. It was somewhat debatable but man DK winning easily? Yeah I know he is in Smash but we are talking about the main guy from FF 10 which is in Top 3 of the main FF games! Damn! Man Tidus sucks in these things if you check his contest history. He is really bad in these things! Man people really don't like him. Also in one of his matches he cheated and the Admin removed some of his votes! Seriously who thought to cheat for Tidus to win? Has to be a massive fanboy! Also DK has defeated 2 main FF protagonists! Proof that Kongs always win! But to tell the truth he is bad in the contests too! So we have 2 characters that either choke or are bad in the contests! Also the prediction percentage was massive for DK here. Tidus was the Guru favorite by 67% too. Casuals beat us easily here! Well it happens! ## Tsunami's Analysis While the casuals were being caught off-guard by Aya \> Victor, the Gurus were being burned by DK \> Tidus. I got this right, because I never trust Tidus in a close match. I honestly forgot that Tidus came out on the winning end of his close match with Shadow in 2004, and as such, that said match *was *in round 1 in 2004 rather than being sandwiched between Shadow \> Wario and Mario \> Shadow in 2003. But yeah, this was a matchup of two legendary chokers; I said before the match that they'd somehow find a way to both finish below 50%. So no, I'm not pretending that I was confident in my DK \> Tidus pick. I felt that DK's rep was based more on older results, while Tidus has been declining every contest, but neither character would surprise me by losing. I just guessed right. Apparently, the casuals agreed with me. --- ## (2)Leon Kennedy vs (15)Dragonborn 2018 _source: (2)Leon Kennedy vs (15)Dragonborn 2018 (revid 83676)_ ## Ulti's Analysis The most boring matches to analyze in these things are the non-entertaining blowouts, but they do at least give me a mental break while writing. These types of matches are always too big a blowout to be interesting, but not enough of a blowout to be interesting either. They're just kind of.... there. This match was never going to be in doubt, the end. There's almost nothing more to be said here, outside of Leon's hilarious percentage drop. At the beginning of this match, he had a tripling. By the end of the match he was only able to preserve a doubling. Right then and there we should have known what was coming. Do you guys think Leon was sitting around enjoying himself a little too much during this match and didn't bother taking DK seriously? I do. Then again, there wasn't much reason to suspect anything. While no one plays Skyrim for the main character, that game is really, really strong for a western title and Dragonborn did win a match last time. He even beat Yuna for second place in round 2, too. So Leon getting almost 70% on the guy was pretty impressive despite the percentage loss, and there was absolutely no way to know what DK was about to do. And I don't want anyone trying to tell me there was. The guru/oracle/BOP numbers are all public, folks. As John Gruden would say, hindsight is 50-50. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: Dragonborn looked good last time, but here never stood a chance, losing to Leon as badly as they lost to Tifa. In the early hours this was almost a tripling. To Dragonborn's credit however, they did recover as the match went on, especially with the day vote as you might expect from their respective games. **What could this mean?**: Leon looked really good here, and I think has cemented himself as the favourite over Vivi. He looked bad in 2013 relative to previous appearances and would have only gotten 54% on Dragonborn but here he excelled. This speaks to the health of Resident Evil, with 7 and the 2 Remake it is back. As for Dragonborn, a generic avatar from a beloved game was never going to stack up to a defined character. Skyrim would beat RE4, but nobody cares about the Dragonborn. People LOVE Leon. This was a victory for character (that is also tied to a series people know and love). I am now very curious to see how Joker vs. Claire turns out, as that is in many ways a mirror of this match but the seeds are reversed, the RE character is less popular, and Joker is more of a real character. ## Safer777's Analysis Leon is the strongest RE character. RE 4 is considered the best RE game and after that RE 2 and guess what? He is the protagonist in both of these and a remake of RE 2 is coming soon as the time of this writing. Dragonborn isn't really a character. It is an Avatar of you. No personality, no nothing. You can't get attached to this kind of character. Skyrim is pretty strong as a game of course and  it is really popular here but Dragonborn isn't even really a character as I said. So Leon won with more than a doubling. Go Leon! And it makes sense that his percentage would be so high. ## Tsunami's Analysis Leon got the doubling here, so it wasn't immediately evident that he was in trouble next round. Dragonborn had made round 2 in 2013, albeit against weak competition, and his game had done very well in 2015. Skyrim is a game that I expect to be a lot stronger than its main character, though, partly because Dragonborn is customizable. Honestly, Shepard being at least somewhat strong is a tribute to just how well-written Mass Effect is. --- ## (1)Zero vs (16)Primrose 2018 _source: (1)Zero vs (16)Primrose 2018 (revid 83677)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I won't be able to comment on Octopath Traveler until after Christmas because it's coming as a gift, so for now as far as I'm concerned Primrose is just bottom of the barrel fodder. A bracket like this is bound to have tons and tons of garbage fodder, and Primrose is on that list. For all I know she could be a perfectly fine character, but even if she is, she was a 16 seed against Zero. Didn't have a prayer. For Zero, this match was about one thing and one thing only. Is he still near elite? Getting a tripling is nice, but I'm going to say the answer is "no" on near elite status. As we now know, the definition of "near elite" is "can you beat a Noble Nine character or come really damn close?". Zero no longer qualifies, and one wonders if he ever truly did. That said, this match proved that even had Monika caught a rally, Zero was probably good enough to end that run in round 3. Thankfully, it never came to that because Wario did the job for us. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: This was a fairly standard 1/16 match, though I think Primrose definitely exceeded a lot of the board's expectations here, escaping the tripling. Zero was more than tripling during the Power Hour, but then Primrose gained percentage and it was fairly stable from there. Primrose arguably benefited from the Monika rallies but that isn't entirely clear. **What could this mean?**: some people are taking this as an indictment of Zero but I don't think so. I think Primrose is actually not trash. Octopath Traveler is an open world RPG in the style of a SNES JRPG developed by Square and published by Nintendo. It is exactly GameFAQs's sort of thing. It will probably come second in this year's Switch poll. And Primrose is the shining star of that game. She got in despite extreme recency and no rallies, I think with time she might end up a reasonable fodder line character. ## Safer777's Analysis Zero was always good in these contests. And he is from a really popular franchise. Primrose is a newcomer. So no problem for Zero. Primorse is from a new RPG game that people say it is good and it reminds them the good old days. I can't really say since I don't have a Switch now. But I have seen gameplay and yeah it does look old school. She managed to avoid a tripling at least. Also Zero is a name or a code name or something? Sorry don't know anything about the MM franchise!  The percentage is massive too. I wonder though why Dante which was also a 1 Seed had 10% lower? Who knows. ## Tsunami's Analysis Primrose is from Octopath Traveler, right? I'd never even heard of that game until this contest. It's fairly new though so I'm not surprised. I didn't expect much and that's what we got. The advantage to not being the primary PCA-writer is that I can get away with occasionally writing something this short for a meaningless early match like this. At least this time the feminine name actually turned out to be a female. I think there was one character that I hadn't heard of that I expected to be female and they weren't. --- ## (8)Zidane Tribal vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018 _source: (8)Zidane Tribal vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018 (revid 83678)_ ## Ulti's Analysis All of us have a few feels-good-man calls in contests where we go against the board in the face of all logic and all of the LOL x stats. I got some matches hilariously wrong this contest, but I had some feels-good matches as well. This was one of them. Never a doubt for me. I know the stats and the gurus and all that stuff favored Zidane, not to mention this match happening eight years ago: Knuckles only got 52% against Cecil at the time and it was considered a massive embarrassment. Which it was. Cecil is so laughably bad in these contests that Cecil Harvey Never Wins has taken off as the new lulz. Did you guys know Cecil is now 0-6 in these things and that Gordon only started out 0-4? It's true. And that guy got 48% on Knuckles, so the logic for picking Zidane here made sense. But here's the thing. That was eight years ago, and Knuckles has a way of winning these debated matches he always appears in. He was supposed to lose to Yuna in 2003. He beat her. Some people thought Kefka could beat him in 2004. Knuckles won. Everyone already knows about Knuckles beating Magus in 2005. Knuckles was in the opening match in 2007, and people had no idea what would end up happening. He ended up barely getting second place. He only failed to get out of round one in 2008 because Mario can't SFF Zelda. We've already discussed 2010. Going into this match, Knuckles had appeared in eight contests. He was 7-1 in round 1 coming into this year. He's 0-7 in round 2, but hey! There's also the common sense stuff that one doesn't need the LOL x stats for. Since 2010, a few things happened in Knuckles' favor. One, the Sonic series has all but bent the knee to Nintendo. Sonic was already in Smash Bros Brawl at the time, and since then you might as well call Sonic a Nintendo character. Two, remember how well Mega Man 9 was received by gamers? Sonic had his version, called Sonic Mania. It was very well received, and took the series back to its roots. No doubt this would help Knuckles. Pair that with Square being a thorough abomination, and Zidane and Knuckles are clearly headed in opposite directions. On top of all that, this match was slated to happen on the day of Wario/Monika, and although Monika never came close to winning that match, she was absolutely going to get rallied. I had zero doubts that the kinds of voters who would come over here due to that rally would vote for Knuckles. So when this match started and Knuckles beat the piss out of Zidane en route to an Ulti-style destruction in which he was never once challenged, I was in no way surprised. I thought the match would be closer than it was, but I was not at all surprised that Knuckles won. If he isn't facing elites or near elites in round one, it's a safe bet he's winning. His one loss was because he was in a fourway with Mario and Zelda in the poll. In every other contest, he wins round 1 and jobs in round 2. Every single time. This year was no different. Total side note: it's hilarious to me that Tails made it to round 3 before Knuckles could, despite Knuckles having FAR more high profile wins and being a much cooler character. People must really, really hold that damn elevator in Sonic 3 against this guy. Last point. The casuals wrecked the board on this match, meaning my casual perspective on this match was right. People don't care about Square anymore. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Another debated match turned fairly one-sided. This was very similar to Tidus vs. DK in a lot of ways. It briefly seemed close then reality set in and it was stable throughout. Historically this match would have either been close or even reversed in favour of Zidane. And sure enough, the casuals beat us again in the prediction arena easily, showing that the "mainstream" picks have some weight behind them. **What could this mean?:** That Final Fantasy is DEAD. But more on that in the next match. It was a good show for Knuckles, and there is a fair argument for a Sonic Mania boost. We will have a clearer picture of how much is a Sonic boost and how much is FF decline when Knuckles goes up against Zero. I also have to wonder if Knuckles benefits from the apparent Nintendo boost too, his franchise has been linked to Nintendo for a while. After all, Sonic Mania is as they say perfect for Switch. Expect more Nintendo associated characters showing up Final Fantasy in the future. ## Safer777's Analysis Man another hilarious match. Seriously Knuckles won? Damn! It was a debatable match true but seriously. Zidane sucks! Vivi who is from the same game is much stronger. Also strangely enough almost all victories of Knuckles are against FF characters! What? And it is not that he is strong or anything. Still he is from the Sonic series and that makes him recognizable aI guess. Or most FF characters suck now.  Guess a combination of both!So congrats to him I guess. A fun fact is that he has advanced all but 1 times in the 2nd round but he has never gone in Round 3! Guess we should have watched this when we made our picks! The gurus had Zidane with 61.5% too. So once again the Casuals embarrased us. Hey it happens. Two times in two days too! But it does happen! And yeah the prediction percentage was good for this kind of match too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Today's vote total is quite a bit higher than the previous day's, which suggests that Monika really *was* rallied; it just didn't make a difference. Ironically given that she was up against a Nintendo character, it was Square that got screwed over by this. Zidane wasn't winning this regardless, but it was thought to be a debatable match and it wasn't even close. Knuckles got a better percentage against Zidane than he did in 2010 against Cecil Harvey Never Wins. Did Team Sonic boost, or is this just the seeming blanket deboost for any Square character whose game wasn't released between 1994 and 1997? Because seriously, FFVI/CT/FFVII were the only things that didn't look awful. Alternatively, Zidane has *never* been as strong as we thought he was. His first appearance isn't relevant because he faced a Noble Niner in Round 1, but in 2007 he finished fourth, comfortably behind Ness, in the Alucard-Liquid Snake 3 vote match. In 2008 he broke a lot of brackets by beating Shadow (wait, is that foreshadowing or something?) and beat out Wario for third place in Round 2, but both of those were riding behind Link. In 2010 he lost to Ike, which it turns out is not really a respectable loss after all. There really isn't anything here to suggest a reason to have faith in Zidane against anything with strength--and no, 2013 Ridley doesn't count; Ridley may be stronger than his record but he's not *that* strong. --- ## (5)Noctis Lucis Caelum vs (12)Master Hand 2018 _source: (5)Noctis Lucis Caelum vs (12)Master Hand 2018 (revid 83679)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Before I get into this match, I need to explain something in perfect detail. I loved Final Fantasy 15. I have the platinum trophy to prove it. I have my review to prove it. It's a fantastic video game from start to finish, even with that weird chapter where you need 18 keycards. The gameplay is great, the graphics are superb, the music is good, the scope is the best in the entire series, and most of the characters are fantastic. Most of the characters. Because Noctis is absolute gutter trash and is the exact example of the kind of guy no one likes in real life. This dude is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, gets handed everything for free, and we're supposed to sit around worshipping the ground he walks on because of his status as some prince. He gets handed infinite money. He gets handed a car that flies. He gets handed the hottest girl on the planet. He gets handed the best weapons in the world. He gets handed these awesome teammate bros. Fuck that. On top of all that, he's a whiny little bitch who literally starts crying the second life gets hard, gets bailed out again, then becomes a sensitive little bitch the second his boys slap the taste of his mouth for being a punk. What makes it worse is if this game was about any other character, it would have been perfect. Gladio is amazing. Ignis is one of the best sidekicks in RPG history. I adore Prompto. Lunafreya is awesome. Ardyn is damn cool. Even that chick with the boobs who does nothing more than flash boobs and pretend she knows her way around a car makes for a better main character than Noctis. I loved FF15's ending, because the little shit got exactly what he deserved. The type of people who like Noctis are the type of people involved in Celebrity Worship Syndrome and sit around reading about the British royal family all day. I get that your life didn't turn out like you wanted, but reading about Prince Harry and his doofus wife will not fix it. Put the gossip rag down and hit the gym. Speaking of getting the taste slapped out of his mouth, Master Hand was also in this match and this was a glorious result. Monika losing on the same day sucked, but getting two feels-good-bro calls right on the same day, one of which being Noctis getting absolutely pissed on, was so nice. Leading up to the match, things were 50-50, with the obvious comparison point being Master Hand vs Kuja: And I'm just sitting here wondering why anyone had any faith in Noctis whatsoever. The dude is a garbage character and didn't have a prayer of being stronger than Kuja, let alone the character that beat Kuja in such hilarious fashion. Plus he was up against the Square Decline, Smash hype, and "if Monika gets rallied, her voters are clearly going to pick Master Hand". I had zero doubts Master Hand was winning, and given my bias in the match, it was glorious watching Noctis eat an Ulti-style destruction in a debated match. Fuck that guy. I love FF15, but Noctis is a very real and obvious blight. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Part three in the Final Fantasy protagonist loses to a 90's mascot in a debated match trilogy (?), this was split down the middle in the general bracket results and our own, it seemed like a true tossup. Then the match started and Master Hand ran away with it immediately, with little change other than the standard Nintendo/Square trends. Despite beating Kuja Master Hand looked terrible in 2005 so Noctis should have won. But the meme came back to life, and Noctis lost as Kuja did to a goddamn hand. **What does this mean?:** Final Fantasy is screwed, especially against Nintendo. Master Hand is low tier Nintendo as far as we know, yet beat the best Square has given us for a decade. Add to that Zidane and Tidus losing what should have been close matches easily and it's a bad look for FF. This also further makes Lightning look not strong at all since I can't imagine she does better. Master Hand probably loses to Wario next round, which shows exactly where on the totem pole Noctis is. To be fair, Master Hand is probably better than in 2005 thanks to Ultimate and Nintendo being generally stronger, but still, Noctis looked dreadful here. It is now likely that Lightning and Squall are the only FF leads out of 7 to win their first match, with the former being due to a very lucky draw. Dante might double Lightning, Zelda is likely to beat Squall. This is a terrible contest for FF and a great one for Nintendo. ## Safer777's Analysis If I thought the previous match was hilarious this I don't even! Okay Noctis is from the newest main FF game. Fine. Master Hand is from Smash. Fine. But seriously? A Hand won? How? Yeah more votes I get it. Still I can't understand why this happened. I haven't played FF 15 yet so maybe Noctis suck as a character. I am not sure. But this much? I know we don't play new games here but seriously this match was pathetic for Noctis. I guess congrats to the Hand??? Sad day for FF. We got another main FF character losing in the 1st round too. Damn! Also both the gurus and the percentage was at around 50%! So that seems that half of the people had Noctis losing! This is so sad! I understand losing to a real character but this??? New Square sucks! ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh well never mind. I remember this match being a close one, but it clearly wasn't! Maybe I was thinking of the prediction percentage. 50.55% of brackets had this correct, the only Round 1 match to be within 51-49. (There was a Round 1 Legends match that had an even smaller spread in the Second Chance brackets, but all in good time.) This was Master Hand's first appearance in an "open" Character Contest, even considering how huge the field was in 2013, but he appeared in 2005's Villains Contest and upset a Final Fantasy character in Round 1 then, too. Though the prediction percentages say this technically wasn't an upset! --- ## (4)Monika vs (13)Wario 2018 _source: (4)Monika vs (13)Wario 2018 (revid 83680)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I have no problem holding this L, no worries. Lord knows I've rubbed a few in over the years! I REGRET NOTHING!! :D I vowed I would back a rallybait character in the next character battle or games contest, and here we are. I settled on Monika for no real reasons outside of "I love her" and "this is hilarious". I'm not the only one, either, and some gurus even picked other rallybait characters to win the contest. We had some picks for Monika, plus D.va, Waluigi, and even a Red and a Geralt thrown in there for good measure. Backing a rallybait character was great fun for me, and it was really calming being out of this contest on day 3. I could just sit back and have fun the rest of the way, which I did. No stress, no pressure, no worrying about polls. Just rooting for favorites from here on out, having fun, and making match picks and taking PCA notes for when the time was right. There's also the added factor of being rich, which always helps. I don't exactly need extra help to buy video games, and should I ever win another contest I'd probably donate the winnings to my church or give it away to Board 8ers or something. I mean really, what's 1k in gift cards when I could buy 100k in "things" tomorrow if I wanted to? There were real warning signs that Monika might catch fire, too. The DDLC subreddit started rallying for her before the contest even started and knew about all the anti-rallying measures, and these bandwagons often start against very weak character who no one likes. The perception was that Wario wasn't exactly lightning the world on fire. As luck would have it, Smash Bros Ultimate hype would help every single freaking character involved in that game. Literally all of them. Wario was no exception. If Monika and Master Hand switched places, she very well could have caught fire. All it takes is that first win. However, she was against Wario, not an actual hated character like Noctis. This was never a match, even with Monika catching a legitimate rally. She was too weak to do any damage whatsoever, and Wario just rolled her. It makes one really appreciate the rallies that actually work, because Monika had a lot going and still never came close. But hey, she avoided the doubling and people not voting for her is totally meta, so it's all good! Turns out Allen's anti-rallying measures worked well, and rallies in 1v1 matches are a whole different animal than rallying in multi-way polls. I know rallying in this contest never panned out, but I don't think we're done with it moving forward. If you looked around the internet this contest, a lot of rally requests (99% of which were from Board 8ers on reddit, which proves how unbelievably hypocritical you people all are) were met with "who gives a crap about GameFAQs, that site still exists?". But at some point given our low vote totals, a rally will catch fire again. It just didn't happen in this contest. Make a console or game contest though and watch what happens. Consoles especially get treated like children these days and we've yet to have that contest. We're overdue for it just for the nonsense we would get to witness. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Board 8 got overly paranoid about rallies and convinced itself that Monika might win the whole contest. This did not happen. There was a rally, hence the higher vote totals, but not nearly enough to make Monika a threat to Wario. Stalls and small cuts were all the rally managed. **What could this mean?:** That Allen's anti-rally system works, that we can't predict contest changing rallies, and that small dedicated fandoms not in the zeitgeist the way Undertale and LoL were are not to be feared. It was a straightforward match that was very much overhyped. I think the rallies we will see will be smaller ones like the one in this match, and unlikely to change the course of the whole thing. Otherwise Wario looked reasonable and should get to round 3 with no trouble. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match had a small rally for Monika from Reddit! Our old enemy! She is from a game called DDLC(the initials of course)and it is a visual game. She is a newcomer too. It is very popular in some sites. But here? Yeah you know what? It is a new game so of course we automatically don't like it! Wario you know him. Still I guess she evaded a doubling with the help of the rally probably? I have heard that DDLC is really good. I just don't like these kind of games so I can't comment on this. But you can try playing it. Also for the rally. Think about rallies is that if they work and the character wins 1 match and manages to win a 2nd one too that means that they are going to win the whole thing. Seriously. You just need 2 wins and you are set. Unfortunately here Monika faced Wario who is decent. If there was a weaker character than Wario here she may have done it. Also seems that very few people believed that she would win if you look at the winning percentage. Even the Gurus had Wario with over 60% support too. Also rallies are fine if they are for the character you like of course! Right? ## Tsunami's Analysis I haven't gotten around to playing DDLC yet. I kind of got spoiled to the big twists thanks to this contest, at least regarding Monika, but I still think I'm blind enough to include it in the revival of my Blind VNs Playthrough topic...just as soon as I finish PLvAA. And Zero Time Dilemma, because back when I initially did the VN series in 2013, I ended up getting my sister into the Zero Escape series as well and now she's pestering me to getting around to the third game. And probably also Spirit of Justice. ...Maybe I won't actually bother reviving the topic at all. I tend to write things up in advance in Word, and the formatting doesn't always translate well to GameFAQs posts. Anyway, DDLC is available on Steam, so I'll probably just stream my playthrough of that on Twitch. I forget how long I have to keep the Guru winner in my signature, but I'll put my Twitch handle in my signature when I'm clear. Oh, right, the match! I'm convinced that this board doesn't actually dislike rallies; they dislike rallies that *they don't control*. Had Monika gone on a rampage, there'd definitely be salt, but I don't think it'd be anything like 2013 or 2015. --- ## (3)Yoshi vs (14)Shantae 2018 _source: (3)Yoshi vs (14)Shantae 2018 (revid 83776)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was supposed to be a typical boring blowout, and it was, but for some reason a gigantic argument broke out all over Board 8 about whether or not Shantae was fodder. I don't mean the standard "we're bored so we're making up stupid crap to argue about in the stats topic", either. Shantae and her 19 fans were sitting here screaming over the character having real strength. Just for the hell of it, I went and looked at KP's adjusted stats. Here's yet another fantastic example of why extrapolated standings are a joke. Shantae - 16.22 Noctis Lucis Caelum - 15.96 Kazuma Kiryu - 15.95 Yu Narukami - 15.91 Dragonborn - 15.84 Joker / Ren Amamiya - 15.74 Primrose - 15.64 Aya Brea - 15.56 Goro Majima - 15.32 Metal Man - 15.2 D.Va - 14.82 Miles Edgeworth - 14.51 Gordon Freeman - 14.5 James Sunderland - 14.45 Neptune - 14.26 Neku Sakuraba - 14.11 Aloy - 13.95 Godot - 13.86 John Marston - 13.68 Estelle Bright - 13.45 Sans - 13.15 Monokuma - 13.01 Hat Kid - 12.94 Isabelle - 12.76 Victor Sullivan - 12.58 Quiet - 12.13 Cayde-6 - 11.9 Chloe Price - 8.65 Draven - 6.22 Here's the bottom of his stats. Even by the ridiculous arbitrary adjustments these stat people make, Shantae is gutter trash. Nothing against KP here (he'll eat his L later on in these writeups, don't worry), but half of these characters or more would beat Shantae in a match. No one knows who or what a Shantae even is, and we're supposed to believe she could beat Noctis, Dragonborn, Aya Brea, Quiet, Gordon Freeman, or John Marston in a 1v1 contest match? Get the hell out of here. I cannot believe I had to waste more than 5 seconds on round 1 fodder getting blown out, yet here we are. Shantae's fanbase quickly reached Persona levels of 'way to convince me never to play any of the games you people care about'. Instead of white knighting pixel boobs, try hitting the gym so you guys can have the real thing once in awhile. Some of you clearly need it. Which is fine. We all start somewhere. Shantae is gutter trash fodder, the end. Yoshi scored a very clear and obvious blowout, and Shantae has no contest strength. Deal with it. This match wasn't to the level oF DEUS EX ISN'T WINNING BY ENOUGH, but it came close. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** This was a fairly standard blowout. Shantae is very much a "just happy to be here" character, but did better than a lot of people thought she would. She's weak, but not ultra-fodder. Yoshi soared with the board vote, but then things stabilised below a tripling and Yoshi struggled to get over 74% until the last few hours. It was an uneventful beatdown, but Shantae has something of a moral victory in the fact that she didn't get destroyed. **What could this mean?:** This wasn't nearly as bad for Yoshi as it might look on the surface. Shantae has well-liked, relatively well-known games with a dedicated fanbase and is essentially a low-tier Nintendo character. Her not getting totally blown out is a testament to her being kind of okay (she did get a 14 seed compared to the 16 seeds of comparable characters like Cuphead and Hat Kid). Regarding Yoshi, he performed very similarly to how Zero did on Primrose and in that match I might lean Shantae, but it's suffice to say that Yoshi and Zero are definitely looking comparable. I wouldn't read too much into this one, I think there is just a bit of underestimation of how weak the new characters are. I'm even starting to think that Cayde-6 might not get annihilated! ## Safer777's Analysis Shantae is a newcomer. Yoshi is in Smash and in the Mario games. Yeah pretty easy win for Yoshi. He has a lot of victories in the contests actually. Didn't expected that. He is near Elite actually! Well he is a dinosaur and everyone likes dinosaurs. Or is he a dragon? Or a mix of both? Actually I think it is a Yoshi species? Anyways he won easily. At least Shantae evaded a tripling barely. She doesn't have  any power. To tell the truth I haven't even heard of her before the contest. Hey I haven't heard some of the other characters actually. ## Tsunami's Analysis Shantae's debut game was released in June 2002 for the Game Boy Color--roughly a year after the GBA was already out. And for 8 years, that was her only game. Her next game was originally for the Nintendo DSi. It got a non-Nintendo release the next year on*iOS*of all things, but the series didn't get released on a Playstation or XBox system until 2015 when both the second and third games got ported to PS4. A pseudo-Nintendo *platformer* character breaking 25% on a solid midcarder from the Mario series? Sounds good to me. Banjo couldn't break 25% on one of Nintendo's *non*-platformer characters in 2010, and he already firmly had his paw in the Microsoft cookie jar. Granted Pikachu is overall stronger than Yoshi, as we'd see in two rounds, but nevertheless, this is a respectable performance under the circumstances. Also, unless you're Pokémon or Kirby, being a primarily handheld character is usually a recipe for disaster. (Yes, Kirby is primarily handheld and debuted on a handheld. It's easy to forget this because he's had console games, too, but he literally went over a decade with his only non-Smash console game being *Air Ride*.) --- ## (6)Velvet Crowe vs (11)James Sunderland 2018 _source: (6)Velvet Crowe vs (11)James Sunderland 2018 (revid 85395)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I had to look this up for myself, because I saw it posted during this match and could not believe it. Until this very match right here, Lloyd Irving is the only character from a Tales game to have ever won a match. Ever. None of the other popular characters from those games have ever won. Not Kratos, not Zelos, not Luke fon Fabre, not Yuri Lowell. None of them. I remember crusading back in the day pleading with people to stop nominating these characters, because I adore these games and got so tired of seeing them get flatlined every contest. Turns out all Tales needed was a super popular main character (popular by Tales standards anyway, I am under no delusion about Tales actually being a popular series) from a recent game to go up against a dumpster fire. James Sunderland was all too happy to bring out his gas can and do his best impersonation of a Vietnamese protestor, because I can't imagine many other spots in this bracket where literal Velvet Crowe breaks 60% on someone. Even Aya Brea, who I believe was the weakest character to actually win a match, couldn't break 60%. I like Silent Hill 2, but those characters will always be absolute bottom tier in these contests. I'll speak for myself here because I have a casual perspective on a lot of things that I bet translates with a lot of voters. When I play a video game, I want something decidedly unrealistic. Doesn't mean I won't play a realistic game, or even enjoy some realism from my characters. A good example is Solid Snake. He sits there in a world growing more and more insane by the hour, but we appreciate him both for his realism and for the fact that we'll never be like Snake. That's a hard balance to pull off. In other cases, like with a Link or a Mega Man, it's all about having fun. With Dante or Bayonetta or Doom Guy, it's all about beating up some bad guys and being cool af while doing it. With most RPG characters, like Velvet Crowe or Cloud, we get lost in a huge story. There's all kinds of reasons we love a character. What we don't love are characters where we look at them and go "wow even \*I\* can do that, what's the point?". It's why sports games will never matter here. It's why pro wrestling is done. And it's exactly why James Sunderland is total fodder. Any one of us could waltz through Silent Hill and do exactly what James Sunderland does. He is nothing special. And deep down, the people who were so happy to get him into a bracket all know it. Silent Hill itself is the star of Silent Hill games, not their lame-ass main characters. The villains and the town are the stars in those games, and when you have that paired with characters who control badly, you have a bad formula for contest strength. Well that plus Konami being complete and total garbage, but I'm saving that rant for Solid Snake's loss to Samus in the loser's bracket. Fuck Konami. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis What happened?: This was a slightly debated match. The top tier Tales games (by which I mean Symphonia and Vesperia, mainly Symphonia) are pretty good, but the characters have done badly with the exception of 2005. Lloyd is okay, but doesn't get enough support in nominations to get winnable matches anymore. Yuri isn't a disaster, hovering a bit below the fodder line. Those are the two best comparisons or velvet I think. Silent Hill and its characters have never been good, with even Pyramid Head looking fodder line at best. So this was a match between perennial underperformers in a lot of ways. Then it opens and Velvet just destroys James, especially during the board vote. In some ways this was actually the surprise of the day. Velvet winning wasn't a shock after Aya vs. Sully, but the margin was larger and Velvet wasn't from a 90's Square RPG. In the end this was another debated match turned easy victory, and Tales characters got their first win since Lloyd beat Wesker in 2005. What could this mean?: Well, this could easily speak to issues of recognisability and picture quality. James Sunderland just being "James" in the options can't have helped him, and Velvet was a cute anime girl with a striking artstyle. I did think James's pic was ok though, it had the distinctive Silent Hill look to it. More than just that I do think Velvet would have won without too much trouble anyway. Berseria is definitely a top tier Tales game, it is one of very few games in that series to sell over a million and is the best reviewed behind Symphonia and Vesperia (other than some rereleases anyway). The series is a mixed bag and this is one of the good ones. At the end of the day, Yuri would probably win this match too and I can't imagine a world in which Velvet's much weaker than him. So Velvet won this match legit, but the other factors might have helped too. Now let's hope this shuts Black Turtle up about how much he hates Tales. ## Safer777's Analysis This was a somewhat debatable match. You can see that from the prediction percentage too. James is from Silent Hi;; series and man I like these series. I still remember the very first SH game and man I was scared back then. I couldn't even played it at night! Fun times. But Konami decided to mess all up because they don't care about good games anymore, they care about stupid pachinko machines. Also James is a generic guy and with a generic look too. Both of these were newcomers but Velvet is from the Tales series which is a JRPG series as you know. So since James is really weak she defeated him easily. At least a victory from the Tales series! I think also this is their 2nd victory on the Character Contest too? Well it makes sense. Tales series were never big here anyways. ## Tsunami's Analysis I initially had James in my bracket because he's the older character and Tales never wins in Character Battles except one other time. Then I remembered that this was likely a fodder match, and the higher seed was the one with the boobs. This line of thinking would let me down once in this contest, but this wasn't it. --- ## (7)Pikachu vs (10)Scorpion 2018 _source: (7)Pikachu vs (10)Scorpion 2018 (revid 83683)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Scorpion is a very consistent dude in these contests and is a fantastic measuring stick for other characters. He's pretty much the exact definition of a low midcard character that won't ever win anything, but he's always good to have around because he won't ever gain or lose strength. He's worth about 23-25% on Link. Always has, always will. As we all know by now, outside of fourways, which flat-out do not behave like 1v1 and this contest proved that beyond all doubts, Scorpion's only moment of relevance came all the way back in 2002. That's the year he won three matches, including upsetting the 1 seed Pac-Man before getting utterly demolished by Link. Since then, it's been a whole lot of being used as a measuring stick or missing the bracket entirely. Why do I bring this all up? Because Scorpion helped us see very early this year what a damn monster Pikachu was going to be in this contest. Go back and look at all of Scorpion's losses in his history. I'll even include the LOL 4ways. He has lost to Link, Zero, Auron, Mega Man, Gordon Freeman, Mega Man X & Zero, Sora, and now Pikachu. In that entire list, only Mega Man in 2007 and the Link match in 2002 had winners more impressive than Pikachu in this match. Pikachu was a damn beast for this entire contest, and we would see it right off the bat. 66% on Scorpion is just nuts. Zero only got 63%. Auron got 65. Doing this really cemented Pikachu in near elite status, and this was before the Detective Pikachu trailer happened. Had that thing come out before the contest he might have broken 70% in this match, which is hilarious to think about given only Link has ever pulled that off. It also meant poor Kratos was even more screwed than he already was. Dude had no chance. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** PokeFEAR returns. we all knew Pikachu would win, the question was how much. Scorpion has looked good before, he's iconic, albeit not as strong in these as Sub-Zero (good taste, GameFAQS). He couldn't get destroyed right? Wrong. Pikachu flew out the gate here with a stunning 69%. Scorpion was getting destroyed in the early hours of this match. It did start to turn however, with Scorpion cutting nearly a full 3% off of Pikachu as the match went on, even winning updates at points. In the end he escaped the doubling, and this definitely ended up looking less dominant than it did at first. **What could this mean?:** A lot of people were shaken by this match, I am skeptical. Pikachu gets 64% on Scorpion using 2013 stats, which is only 2% better than this. Add only a slight Mortal Kombat decline (X was three years ago and kind of came and went, and also the next one has not been announced yet leaving the series in a kind of limbo) and this result actually starts looking quite sensible. Pikachu is a true elite, no questioning that, but I'm not expecting him to run rampant by any stretch, at least not on the basis of this match. The one other thing I'll say is that this gives us a really clear view of Pokemon's trends, starting incredibly strong and then calming down. Keep that in mind for close starts in the future. ## Safer777's Analysis POKEFEAR baby! But seriously Pikachu managed a doubling here. Pokemon characters were weak at the start of the contests, reached their peak in strength that 2013 which they did REALLY good and now are weaker true than 2013 but don't get fooled. EVERYONE and their mothers know what Pokemon are. I believe Pikachu is the most recognizable video game character now. So they can get the casual votes or something like that. Anyways as I said above as the years go on we care less and less about fighthing game character. Scorpion was a beast in the 1st ever contest but that was it for him. Nothing since then. He can beat some weak characters of course but yeah. Too bad he got against Pika in his first match too. He could have beat some other characters. Also Pikachu has a low seed I believe. Only 7? Strange. ## Tsunami's Analysis My first reaction when I saw the percentages on the matches in progress were "why is Pikachu not winning by as much as Yoshi and Kratos?" Then I remembered that unlike those two, Pikachu had a worthwhile opponent. Scorpion had about as good a contest as he could've hoped for. He avoided the doubling against Pikachu, who proved to be very strong indeed, and with no shortage of dark horse runs in this contest, his 2002 Elite Eight run kept him in the conversation long after he'd departed. --- ## (2)Kratos vs (15)John Marston 2018 _source: (2)Kratos vs (15)John Marston 2018 (revid 83777)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was our first major case of SFF this contest, and Marston took it right on the nose. This wasn't some legendarily hilarious case of SFF like Link \> Ganondorf in 2004, but it was still brutal to look at. Don't try telling me this isn't SFF, either, because if you look at the final stats Marston is in no way as weak as those stats would suggest. Red Dead Redemption is way too big of a series, even on this site, for the dude to be like bottom 10 in the LOL x stats. His game almost doubled Bayonetta a mere 3 years ago, and then it broke 40% on Shadow of the Colossus. That's pretty respectable. Not crazy strong, but respectable. Then there's that whole Red Dead Redemption 2 thing, which is so huge even South Park did a bit on it. You know what the prime recipe for SFF is? It isn't sharing a fanbase. Mega Man and Zero share a fanbase. Zero got 44% in that match. SFF happens when you share almost the exact same fanbase and one character is clearly stronger than the other. Kratos and John Marston are both casualbait, strong, male, badass tough guys from major, popular series that had recent blockbusters. But Kratos is clearly out of Marston's league, thanks to a much longer history with the gaming audience. That is exactly how you get matches like this. It's also how you get things like Snake \> Tanner and The Legend of Zelda \> Adventure. Take two entities in a popularity contest where one is clearly already stronger than the other and it gets ugly quickly. That's what happened here. Rivalry Rumble aside, did you know Kratos had never broken 61% in a poll before this match? Not once. You don't go from that to 73% by accident when another popular character is involved. This was SFF, plain as day. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** To set up this match we need to look at God of War's history on GameFAQs. That series used to be really good, and I think a lot of people forget that on this board. All three of the original trilogy games got into the Game of the Year finals, with two of them in the top three. It looked quite good in 2009 and really good in 2010, coming very close to peak Half-Life 2. Kratos kind of followed its fortunes, looking better than ever until a great performance against Charizard in 2010 (however strong you think he really is). Then 2013 happened. Kratos looked absolutely dreadful, struggling to double Travis and Recette then getting just annihilated by Mega Man X and losing to Jill. This follows how people thought of the series. In 2013 constant releases and Ascension had almost killed the series. 2013 Kratos would struggle with Marston, who looked alright against Zelda in 2013 and is helped by the fact that RDR2 releases four days after this match. But then we come to the match and Kratos lets loose, starting big and getting bigger as the match went on before stabilising over 73%. It was almost as big a victory as Yoshi's over Shantae. **What could this mean?:** This was a dominant performance by Kratos, and I have to imagine it was legit strength. There is talk of SFF but I don't see why there would be more here than Yoshi vs. Shantae or even Pikachu vs. Scorpion, the two are fairly different, one is multiplatform, and is well-loved. Additionally I'm not sure if Marston has fallen to the bottom or anything, RDR is still floating around the top 30 on this site and RDR2 is very hyped. Marston even had his RDR2 art in the match pic I think. So this was a really good showing for Kratos, and if he wasn't running into Pikachu next round he could really run rampant. Going off 2013 an upset is possible, and I'm not expecting it but I would definitely like to see it. It makes sense that Kratos would look this good - God of War 2018 is the Breath of the Wild of the series. It's not just revived the series either, but it has also redeemed Kratos as a character. I think this is the strongest he's ever been and I wish he was in any other division. Hopefully he will give us a good show in his next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Here is what I don't get about this match. Of course Kratos would win. But this much? When this match happened RDR 2 was days away from release and I thought Marston would have some power based on the hype. Seriously the hype was huge. But seriously? I know GOW 4 came out in this year but man Kratos either gained really much power from that game or Marston is really weak? Or SFF? Who knows. This proves that strong games don't equal strong characters. RDR is a popular game and it is the best Western game ever made. Man too bad for Marston. I really like him. Also this is the biggest win for Kratos ever too! Damn! Also I think Kratos has to be the strongest Western character too. Still nice win for Kratos. ## Tsunami's Analysis I guess this is an SFF match as well? These percentages are very similar, so even if Kratos SFFs Marston just as much as Yoshi SFFs Shantae, you're still left needing a *lot* of rSFF in Yoshi-Pikachu to explain this one away. Also, I may not know a thing about Red Dead Redemption, but if it's the same genre as God of War, well, if it's a fodder match, I'd invoke genre hierarchy to give Shantae the advantage even before TJF. Remember, this is GameFAQs. M-rated games aren't popular here at all. Also apparently there was supposed to be hype for a game that I could've sworn had already come out a long time ago...I think it's because Red Dead *Redemption* was already a sequel to begin with. It became the most popular entry in the series so they kind of renamed the series, kind of like how Metal Gear *Solid* was originally a clever play on the [Third is 3D](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThirdIs3D) trope, refusing to explicitly call it "Metal Gear 3D" even though it was the third game in the series and the first in 3D, except the first two games were on a fairly obscure system that was never released outside of Japan (and the first game got butchered so badly when being ported to the NES that the NES version was eventually deemed non-canon), so it became as good as a franchise reboot and the next game was called Metal Gear Solid 2. Whatever. Not important. 2000s \> 2010s in the hierarchy, especially with so many other factors being identical. --- ## (1)Sora vs (16)Ryo Hazuki 2018 _source: (1)Sora vs (16)Ryo Hazuki 2018 (revid 83685)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match was never going to be in doubt, but that was not the purpose of this match. Sora's entire job in this match was proving he was worthy of a 1 seed and was capable of beating Pokemon Trainer Red in a highly pro-Nintendo contest. He failed, spectacularly, on both counts right off the bat. Ryo Hazuki is pretty much a step up from bottom of the barrel sludge. He's the last good drop or two in the barrel before you hit the indigestible cesspit, meaning he'll never be at the bottom in strength, but he always comes really close. This is a guy whose only win is against Guybrush Threepwood, an all time useless piece of trash comparable to Dirk the Daring. This guy let Dante and Yoshi separately almost get 80% on him, and is so irrelevant he's only made 4 of the 10 character battles -- none since 2004 and he only made this one to pad out the roster. He's fodder. No other way to put it. I will say however that his fanbase is awesome. You can tell they legit just love the dude, and never try to force an opinion on anyone. Persona fans, Deus Ex fans, and Shantae fans could do well to learn from Shenmue fans. Sora couldn't even break 70% on the guy. We've seen a similar omen from a bad 1 seed before against Ryo. Remember this turd of a match? We've seen this story from Sora before. In 2006, Sora was a 1 seed. He underperformed against Tingle and Gordon Freeman before getting demolished by Mega Man. In 2010, Sora was a 1 seed. He underperformed against Midna and Laharl before getting demolished by Bowser. And then 2018 happens, which we'll get to next round. There were some turds laid as a 2 seed in there, too. Sora is always able to get high seeding, but he never does anything with it. Did you know Sora has never won a division with all these high seeds he always gets? Not once. The closest he came was when he came 500 votes short in the Rivalry Rumble. I'd love to call 2013 a close call, but failing to advance in a poll against Pikachu and a Pokemon Trainer is just an embarrassment. I don't care how close that poll actually was. Sora should have steamrolled it. Crono lost early and that division was right there. He still couldn't get the job done. But hey, congrats on getting 69% against Ryo Hazuki in your one win as a 1 seed this year. And I know I'm being hard on the guy, but when you regularly get high seeds, you are held to that standard. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** This is probably the most interesting 1/16 match so far. Square has been consistently underperforming (almost, more on that tomorrow) throughout this contest but KH has always been fairly separate. The two series in question here are in very similar situations (Allen likely knew what he was doing on this one) After being dormant for a long time KH hype is starting to gear back up with the rereleases and III finally, finally, being only a couple of months away. Ryo was near ultra-fodder in the early contests then vanished. However, since then Shenmue 3 got a very high profile announcement and is releasing next year, with the first two games getting a rerelease on modern systems just recently. So Ryo may be much stronger. For reference, in 2004 Sora would have gotten 78% in this match, and 2013 Sora would have gotten 81%. And Sora did come sprinting out the gate with nearly 72%, but then that gradually declined to 69%. Sora looked a lot like Pokemon characters here, and that speaks to how the new start time has suppressed the day vote, instead making the traditional "day" characters very front loaded. Ryo didn't look like trash here, but then Sora didn't exactly impress. **What could this mean?:** Either Kingdom Hearts has weakened as the wait for III has become more and more of a joke, or Shenmue has strengthened significantly. In this case, it's most likely both. A reasonable performance for Sora would have been near a tripling, but I just can't see Ryo making up 12% on Sora from Shenmue 3 hype and 1/2 HD. This was a fairly poor performance from Sora and he't looking great to take the division. Then again who is? ## Safer777's Analysis KH 3 boost confirmed! Yeah sure. Sora always does good againts weak opponents but man he hasn't a victory against a strong opponent. As for Ryo he is here because of the upcoming title as the time of writing called Shenmue 3. Shenmue games were amazing back in the day but they didn't good financially. Anyways for here to Sora not  even break 70% I consider it a bad result. Should there be a KH 3 boost or something? It was coming soon as the time on the writing. I believe at least he should have done better. Or is Shenmue 3 hype boost too? Don't know. But man Sora did good in the start of the contests but after that he get's his ass kicked. But he is always a high seed. Don't understand why. Also he has never won a division too! Seriously? I guess when KH 3 comes he will finally be able to do it? Also his prediction percentages are always high. Guess people expect him always to do good but he never does! ## Tsunami's Analysis Is there any bigger contest underachiever than Sora? Let's ignore Rivalry Rumble, because it doesn't count. Without looking, name the last time that Sora didn't have the *absolute highest seed possible*. A 2-seed in 2013, because the 1-seeds were prereserved for the Noble Nine, or a 1-seed otherwise. Remember, there were no seeds in the fourway contests. It was 2005. He was indeed a 2 in 2013, and a 1 in 2006, 2010, and 2018. Now remember that all nine Noble Niners were in the main field in 2010, and there were indeed 4 Noble Niners in the male half of the 2006 bracket. He wasn't the only one in this match with a long-awaited "3", but Shenmue has always been cult and this is not how a 1-seed should perform. --- ## (8)Neptune vs (9)Pokemon Trainer Red 2018 _source: (8)Neptune vs (9)Pokemon Trainer Red 2018 (revid 83686)_ ## Ulti's Analysis While Sora was busy mucking it up against Ryo, Red was out there showing us who's boss and how screwed Sora was in round 2. The only person on Board 8 who actually knew who Neptune was before this contest was SHINE, which says a lot. I love the guy, so no offense to the dude, but he literally plays every single video game and has no life outside of gaming and working. Which is fine. I legit have nothing against that if that's what you want to do with yourself. You do you bro. For those of us with other interests, this match might as well have had Neptune the planet or Neptune the Roman god in it. I don't even want to know who the freaks are that got Neptune the video game pedophile simulator all the way up to an 8 seed. Oh wait, one look at the characters tells us exactly who they are. They're lolicon fans. Looking at underaged Japanophile cartoon boobs and ass bouncing around because you're too scared of the FBI to look at the real thing doesn't make you any less of a pedophile. Go vote for Roy Moore some more and get the hell out of my life. Thankfully Board 8 has almost none of these people left on it, but they're out there in the world at large and need to be called out whenever possible. Red was doing the lord's work in beating the hell out of this trash and all the freaks who support that subculture, and when compared to Sora \> Ryo, it was no contest who looked better. Red got a better score, and despite a much worse seeding, his prediction percentage for the round was only 4% lower. All the signs of what was coming were there, and that wasn't even counting the esoteric stuff like Smash hype, this being Nintendo's year, and so forth. A Kingdom Hearts 3 hype video just couldn't compete with all that. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Neptune's 8 seed might beat Chloe's for the most baffling in the contest. She is the kind of character you expect to show up as a just happy to be here 16 seed. She looked like ultra-fodder, and got blown out accordingly in the second biggest defeat so far. Red started near 80% but then got hit with those frontloaded Pokemon trends and slowly declined, but he still cleaned house. The question is, did he clean house by enough? **What could this mean?:** Sora vs. Red is one to watch. Red didn't destroy Neptune like he had to to look like the clear favourite but it was still behind only Ganondorf's win for the biggest beatdown thus far. Additionally Neptune has a dedicated fanbase (just look at the seed) which gives her an alright floor even though she's definitely bottom five (so far I'd only solidly take her over Chloe). Ryo would beat Neptune, but 57% beat? I'm not so sure. That match is a true tossup, and their similar trends could mean that it doesn't look settled for a long time. ## Safer777's Analysis I have a question here. Why it says Pokemon Trainer Red in the poll? Is Red a generic word? What about Link? Cloud? Aren't these generic words? Don't get it. Anyways Red won with more than a tripling against a newcomer from a series that we haven't seen again here too. Well I consider it a good result. I mean a tripling is always good.  Neptune has to be a weak character too I guess. But man seeding really doesn't mean anything in these contests. Now where Red stands in the Pokemon hierarchy is  the question I ask. Still awesome win for Red. I haven't even heard of the series that Neptune is a part of myself too! And apparently there are a lot of games too! So obviously I didn't know who Neptune was. Well nice to see new characters but can't we get a decent one at least? Also really high percentage for Red. Is this the highest ever for a 9 seed??? Maybe. Guess not even the casuals were confused with the seeding here! ## Tsunami's Analysis I was thrilled that Neptune's nomination rally got her all the way to an 8-seed. Nippon Ichi is reliably great for quirky RPGs. (Play Phantom Brave.) But this was an absolute nightmare of a draw. Ah, well, that's what happens with these niche characters. You get them in and they stink it up. Like in 2013 when I got three Touhou characters into the bracket. Biggest embarrassment ever; Marisa couldn't even challenge a Generic Two-Name Guy *while stuffing votes.* I wasn't involved with the stuffing, but I was heavily involved with the nomination rally so I'll wear that fiasco as a badge of shame. Seriously, though, Nippon Ichi is great. Don't let this percentage discourage you from checking Neptunia out. --- ## (5)Crash Bandicoot vs (12)Cecil Harvey 2018 _source: (5)Crash Bandicoot vs (12)Cecil Harvey 2018 (revid 83687)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Cecil. Harvey. Never. Wins. GFNW (Gordon Freeman Never Wins) was one of the original contest memes, and it was so well known that even CJayC was joking about it and trying to feed Gordon easy competition to get a win. Well Cecil actually has it worse. He shined in this match for about 3 minutes, and then Crash just swamped him. This match was never close after the 3 minute mark, and would quickly become the latest example in a long line of Cecil Harvey flops in contest lore. If this was going on during the early days, this would be a legendary contest history. And now the Crash loss. Outside the original Kirby match, Cecil was debated to win all of these. He's come close a lot, but he's never actually won anything. He shocked the world by putting up 48% on Knuckles, but didn't win. He surprised everyone with how close he got to Luigi, but still. He lost. He was supposed to win the 3way match with Pit and Wrex. He lost. And then Crash happens. We all like Crash, but in his extensive contest history, he had two wins before this match. 2002 against Ulala (who?) and 2013 in a 3way against Wheatley and some trash from Grand Theft Auto. He's lost every other match. And the guy went out there and beat the tar out of a well known Final Fantasy character, in another match Cecil was supposed to win. The logic was "hey there's no way Crash is stronger than Knuckles, right?". Turns out things change from year to year and your holy extrapolated standings are garbage. Again. Using the LOL x stats is about as smart as picking sports based on who won last year. They mean nothing. The especially funny thing here is it's well known Final Fantasy 4 is Allen's favorite game. He's been blatantly putting Cecil in matches where he has a shot to win, and Cecil keeps losing anyway. This is the steroid version of what Ceej was doing with Gordon Freeman, and we're not far off from Allen just blatantly disregarding normal seeding and putting 2 seed Cecil against 15 seed Cayde-6 or something. And I frankly wouldn't blame the guy. This is embarrassing to watch if you're an FF4 fan. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: In the "Final Fantasy lead loses in a debated match they were the board favourite in" Trilogy, part 4/3, Cecil Harvey Never Wins (CHNW) officially became a thing. With five straight losses he has officially beaten Gordon's record. This match also cements the strength of 90's mascots and the weakness of Final Fantasy. Five years ago this match would have had the same result or worse going the other way around. Cecil always loses but he's not weak, he has come close a few times. This was his to lose. But Crash has boosted just like Spyro did thanks to his rerelease, and Final Fantasylooking generally poor. Once again this started close as board 8 tried to bracket vote their way to victory, but then Crash started to build his lead and it was never in question. **What could this mean?:** There's not much to say really, Crash has gone from fodder to a reasonable midcarder and CHNW. This result was foreshadowed nicely by Spyro vs. Chun-Li and Zidane vs. Knuckles. I actually originally had Crash in my bracket, before you absolute arseholes (joking, joking) convinced me to change it to Cecil, then those two matches happened and I was like "Oh". This match didn't tell us much new, but it did give further confirmation of a few trends. I also wonder if there's been a Sony boost. Crash owes a lot of his strength to the PS4, as does Kratos and arguably Spyro. Lastly, the casuals continue to beat us - I think the only match the B8 favourite beat the casual favourite on is Sully vs. Aya. Oops. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was sad. I didn't know when the match happened but Cecil is one of the few people that have taken part in 5 contests and hasn't a single victory! As for Crash he was a PS 1 icon. The Sony mascot back then! Then he fell from grace. But last year some Crash games were re-released updated of course and they did really good in sales. The Crash Trilogy was in 1st place on sales on UK at least! Guess people really want Crash? Nostalgia? Anyways at least an icon won. But man yet  ANOTHER FF protagonist fell on the 1st round! Also the Casuals beat us easily here. 60% of the Gurus had Cecil win! Man we make mistakes too you know! ## Tsunami's Analysis Cecil Harvey Never Wins became the new meme here, because he's frequently had winnable matches and he's just never managed to pull it off. But it's not quite like Gordon Freeman where he's losing to obvious fodder; the only truly questionable one, except maybe this one, was losing to Wrex in 2013 (when we still weren't sure if he'd win, but it was Pit that we thought he'd lose to). FFIV as a whole is 0 for Character Battles, but I don't think Cecil represents its best chance to break that trend. Even in obvious losses (e.g. his debut in 2005, against Kirby, though Kirby was still flying under the radar then), he underperforms. Rydia's two matches have been obvious losses and she's performed well in them. Her first contest was 2008 and she was in the same fourpack as Auron, but despite being SFF'd, she still came in third place, beating out a character who'd made Round 3 the previous year against legitimate competition. Well, against Ocelot and Kefka, at any rate. Kefka actually advanced to that Round 2 match in second place behind Marcus Fenix. He lost to Marcus *twice* in 2007, and the very next year Marcus can't even beat Rydia with Auron in the poll. That's either the biggest single-year dropoff, the biggest LOLKefka, or Rydia has potential. Probably a combination of all three. Female characters were boosting all over the place this year. Imagine what Rydia could do with an *After Years* pic. She probably wouldn't even sacrifice recognizability, and she'd have a tough TJF to take out. Of course, given how most of our nomination rallies this year fared in bracket placement, if we tried getting her a Returners Nomination Rally we'd probably see (6)Tifa Lockhart vs (11)Rydia. Still, I think it's worth a shot. Also the casuals didn't find this all that debatable. Over 73% got it right. The Gurus didn't even break 40% correct on this. LOL us. --- ## (4)Big Boss vs (13)Ridley 2018 _source: (4)Big Boss vs (13)Ridley 2018 (revid 83688)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Because of how Smash hype was clearly affecting this contest, paired with how Konami basically murdered Metal Gear Solid, there was a ton of fear that Ridley would be able to pull the upset. Turns out Ridley wasn't too big for Smash after all! HE KILLED SAMUS! OH MY GOD HE KILLED SAMUS!! But he couldn't kill Big Boss, or even get the board vote against him. This one was never close, though Ridley was clearly a step above from where he used to be, and Big Boss was clearly a step down. The effects of Smash and MGS's fates are pretty obvious, but they weren't going to close such a wide gap. For Big Boss, this match was a small measure of revenge for what happened in the Rivalry Rumble: Then again, does anyone care enough about the Rivalry Rumble to try getting revenge for it? Without looking it up, all I remember about that contest was Link winning, the Pokemon Trainers beating FF7 in a fake match, and Adolf Hitler making it into a GameFAQs contest match. There weren't many bright spots for non-Smash characters versus Smash characters in this contest, and even some of the wins in that position were rough. But this was one of the few bright spots. We are in a time line where Ridley winning this wouldn't have surprised people, but Big Boss shot that one down immediately. Turns out the old dog can still hunt! ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Battle of the big bosses. This match is a pretty good test of just how much Nintendo has boosted. Ridley is one of the two gatekeepers of Nintendo's low tier characters (more on the other one in the next day). Big Boss is a low elite. This should have been a 61-65% affair. However, the success of the Switch and especially Ridley's fan-pleasing confirmation for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate mean that he's facing a different Ridley. Ridley came out swinging, at times even looking like he would take the whole match during the board vote, but then Big Boss was able to keep a safe distance throughout. Still, this was a major moral victory for Ridley. **What could this mean?:** NintendoFEAR, even when it loses. This doesn't speak to Big Boss's weakness but to Ridley's new strength. It's not exactly the round 1 performance you expect of a potential division winner, but Big Boss has no real reason to weaken. If anything him effectively officially supplanting Solid Snake as the main character of Metal Gear should arguably boost him a little. He did have an old man pic but it was the identifiable MGS4 one and it's not 2005-2006 anymore. Really Ridley just looked good. The Nintendo boost is real, and hopefully next time Ridley can get a winnable match (in fact, outside of the Rivalry Rumble his record is as bad as Cecil's, largely due to bad draws). ## Safer777's Analysis BB would win of course. But people expected a higher percentage. But I have to say 2 things here. Ridley is in Smash so Smash boost and Ridley has taken part in 5 contests and has lost all matches too! Yet if you see the results here it doesn't make sense. So I searched a bit and man he always get the strong characters against him thus he loses. But seriously he can take down some characters in this bracket for sure now. Maybe next time he will win! So I can't really say that Big Boss here did bad. But man what is with these MGS names? They all look strange! Yeah I guess they are code names or something. Also the prediction percentage seems kind of low. Guess people saw Ridley and thought he would win since he is from the Metroid series. ## Tsunami's Analysis AKA the match where I started panicking re: Guru. Big Boss is very pic-dependent, since he can look a lot like Solid Snake sometimes, but not other times. I thought this year's pics were pretty good; you wouldn't mistake him for his son, but he still looked more like he did in his prime than as an old man. Ridley doesn't have any proper wins, either (though unlike Cecil, he at least got to ride Samus to some wins in Rivalry Rumble), but this is far from the first good showing he's had. He beat out Spyro for third place in a fourway, and he broke 40% in a threeway, which would usually be good for a win but the third character was one of the absolute weakest characters in the field. With Smash on his side, it feels like it's just a question of *when* he'll get his first win without Samus's help, not if. He just needs a better seed. --- ## (3)Alucard vs (14)Princess Peach 2018 _source: (3)Alucard vs (14)Princess Peach 2018 (revid 83689)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match was virtually identical to Big Boss v Ridley, right down to the votes, the percentages, the prediction percentages, and the fear going in that Nintendo/Smash was going to roll over everything. Granted Alucard is in Smash as an assist trophy, but he's also dealing with a character more popular than Ridley. Basically after round 1 of divisions 1 and 2, people who aren't fans of Smash and Nintendo had resigned themselves to what was coming. The irony is Smash itself had a mole working from within, but we'll get to Cloud's amazing run later. Let's stick to the early stuff for now. Looking back on people being afraid of Alucard losing this match, doesn't it all seem ridiculous now? This is a dude that would end up dispatching Peach in seconds before moving on to do some pretty amazing things. Alucard is always good for a good contest run, and this is the best one he would end up having by a mile. But if you look at 57% on Peach in a vacuum it's a bunch of whatever. I love Peach, everyone knows this, but let's actually look at her history here. Her one shining moment came in that terrible male/female 2006 bracket, where she SFFd Daisy and beat Jill Valentine by 27 votes. She has won nothing since. She even has a Gordon Freeman loss in there, which would have been a hilarious first victory for the GFNW legend. 57% on someone like that means nothing, but given Alucard's contest this year, I'm counting everything he does as impressive because it helps Peach save face \<3 ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** In some ways this was Peach/Gordon come again. Peach is a reasonable midcarder who is kind of Nintendo's top of the bottom tier. Her exact strength has never been pinpointed though. Alucard is more or less a high midcarder but his exact strength is hard to pinpoint. A lot of people were hyping this one up. Honestly for me this was an open and shut Alucard victory from the off. Peach lost to Gordon, Alucard would easily clear that era of Gordon so it's no trouble. After what he did to Magus in 2010 I am stunned people doubted him - Peach by no means underperformed, doing a fair bit better than Magus. Overall this was a pretty hohum match. **What could this mean?:** They both looked pretty good here. Peach beating Magus's performance makes her look strong, and was another good Nintendo performance despite not living up to board hype. Alucard however took a relatively easy win and looks very strong, better than Big Boss. It makes sense - Castlevania's stock is pretty good right now despite, or even because of Konami not giving a damn about their licenses. The Netflix series is great and very popular, there's rereleases and it's in Smash Bros. now. So this was fine news for both contestants. ## Safer777's Analysis So guess what. These 2 are both in Smash! Doesn't matter than Alucard isn't playable. He is there! Alucard has a decent record in these contests. Peach is a low tier Nintendo character. So Alucard won here with a decent win. I guess Smash boost for Alucard and he SFF'ed Peach? Or something like that? But man in a few years every match in these contests will have a character that has appeared in Smash! Damn! Guess we should have a contest with just characters that have appeared in Smash! Yeah okay bad idea.  Of course we didn't know from this match that Alucard would do so good. Guess Peach was strong after all. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a fairly modest win for Alucard, far from the performance that would mark him as a favorite to win this division. Are we supposed to think Peach is strong now? Peach is the casual choice, one who gets more votes from recognizability than from popularity. Which would make her a decent candidate for the fodder line. I think she'd beat our current pick for that honor, though. But this isn't a good performance for Alucard and it makes this whole division look bad. Is now a bad time to bring up that I had Big Boss \> Crono in Match 130? Because I did. Not that this match should necessarily have made many of us panic, because Peach had as many Gurus taking her to win this division as Alucard did--a grand total of **1**. Sora legitimately had a *majority*, with Big Boss and Red the two next-most popular picks. --- ## (6)Yuna vs (11)Godot 2018 _source: (6)Yuna vs (11)Godot 2018 (revid 83690)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Godot finally gets into a character battle and we all have to watch him get fed to Yuna in round one? Really? We couldn't have had him get put up against Shantae, one of the Yazuka losers, Neptune, or Draven? Come on Allen, how you gonna do us dirty like that? =p The thought of Godot breaking like 85% on Draven is hilarious to me, but I digress. If Manfred von Karma didn't exist, Godot would be my favorite character in the entire Phoenix Wright series. Even if you're not a fan of visual novels or adventure type games, I highly recommend Trials and Tribulations. It's the one game in that series that really stands out, even more than the original, and Godot is the biggest reason for it. Third game, fifth case. I don't need to say much else. There aren't many examples of better storytelling in video games than this dude. Unfortunately, it feels like Board 8 is the only place on the entire internet that's actually gone through these Phoenix Wright games. Then Phoenix appeared in Marvel vs Crapcom: DLC Edition and his legacy was ruined for good. There is just no coming back from something that stupid, even if it did help boost Phoenix's strength a little in contests. Anyway, we got Godot the lead for a few seconds, and then Yuna just smashed him en route to breaking 70%. I don't get sad over blowouts often in my jaded old age, but this one gutted me. I like Yuna. I really do. Her character in FFX was amazing, even if her voice actress was a steaming pile of hemorrhoid cesspool. Outside of a comedy guy acting like an N7 marine commander in Mass Effect, I don't think it can get much worse than whatever the hell Yuna's voice actress was trying to do. But the character is good, hence why Yuna has retained some strength even in the face of bad voice acting, Square being in the toilet, and Final Fantasy X-2. Just sucks her moment this year had to come at Godot's expense. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** We finally got Godot in!!! And he lost easily. He did escape the tripling which was nice. Not much to say on this, it was a fodder blowout of one of the best actual characters in this thing. It did show off how good the Ace Attorney early vote is, but we knew that already. **What could this mean?:** This was a pretty uninspiring performance by Yuna, only slightly better than she'd do on Edgeworth, but it's tough to read a lot into it. She didn't embarass herself either. Godot is bottom ten for sure, very likely bottom five. Given that he lost badly in a vote-in (he got doubled by Simon Belmont and barely beat Sol Badguy), he's not worth much, so to escape a tripling is the best he could ask for. ## Safer777's Analysis Yuna is the main character in FF X and FF X-2. Yeah I know that technically Tidus is the main character of FF 10 but come on now, everything revolves around Yuna. As for Godot he is from the Ace Attorney games. This board LOVES the Ace Attorney series. Seriously. But the rest of the site doesn't. So Yuna did really well. I guess Godot was lucky to avoid a tripling. Still the board get's their favorite characters but yeah don't expect them to have any wins unless they face each other or something. At least a FF character managed to advance on the next round. Not many of them did that you know! But in all seriousness Godot is probably pretty weak. If you see the the prediction percentage it is pretty high too. Seems everyone knows that Ace Attorney games/characters do bad here. ## Tsunami's Analysis If the 8-9 match in this division wasn't enough to make it feel like the bracket was stacked against Board 8, this match sealed it. The first two 6-seeds we saw were complete and utter fodder (and they still went 1-1 because so were the 11-seeds), and then Godot draws...Yuna. Granted, the other five 6-seeds are midcarders, or at least former midcarders. And one of those 6-seed fodders was the Guru nom... but hey, if two of our picks were put against each other in the first round, it'd guarantee that one made Round 2! Board 8 loves Phoenix Wright, and Godot is probably the most beloved single-game Phoenix Wright character here, with good reason. There's one other character that could challenge him for that title if we restricted it to one appearance in the *main* series, but he's been in both of the Edgeworth spinoffs. It was definitely a nice accomplishment getting Godot into the field, but it's painful watching characters we love get fodderized. Let's not repeat this experiment with getting other PW characters in; we haven't even been able to get Edgeworth a win outside of Rivalry Rumble. --- ## (7)Kefka vs (10)L-Block 2018 _source: (7)Kefka vs (10)L-Block 2018 (revid 83691)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was one of the most hotly debated matches in round one, because it was widely believed the winner would be able to go on a deep contest run. Division 3 was perceived as being very weak, and it was well within the realm of possibility that the winner here would be able to win the entire division. The winner of this was almost guaranteed to make it to round 3. If that winner was L-Block, it was not impossible for a bandwagon effect to show up and hand the guy the entire contest. Anyone who claims they had a good beat on this either way was pretty much lying, because neither of these characters is predictable in the slightest. Kefka's contest history is well known for the guy never doing what he's supposed to do. The dude was supposed to easily beat Pac-Man but went 50-50 with him. He was supposed to easily lose to Knuckles but got super close until the morning vote. He was supposed to win a division but lost to Diablo. The 4ways are just a cluster of 'what'. He was supposed to lose to Arthas and beat Arthas's ass. He was supposed to lose to Zack, then won two 3way polls because of course he did. The only contest he's ever made sense in was the Rivalry Rumble, which says a lot. L-Block's runs don't make sense, either. Everyone knows about 2007, but he was making a run in 2008 too before Pikachu beat him. Then the guy gets to Charizard and can't break 40% on the guy, before beating Auron. I doubt most people would call Kefka stronger than Auron, yet here we are. This is a great example of why stats mean positively dick in these contests, especially when we haven't had a proper character battle in over a decade. I ended up picking L-Block, because whenever Kefka is the board favorite the dude falls flat on his face. That's the one predictable thing about this guy. Turns out we couldn't even rely on that much. In what was quickly becoming a pattern in this contest, this was never even a match. It's why so many of my writeups thusfar have been about esoteric feelings instead of match trends and cold facts. "Character A won the board vote and went from X% at the freeze to Y% by the end" 100 times just isn't interesting. That said it actually was interesting here, because debated matches turning into hilarious blowouts are always entertaining. L-Block was a threat to win this match and go on a deep contest run. Instead he lost in round one and made Kefka look as strong as Charizard. That's one hell of a feat, and it was another data point in a very real trend this contest -- people are beyond fed up with rallybait joke characters. Every single one of them got demolished this year, and L-Block was no exception. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: Ahhhh this match. A true headscratcher going in, nobody knew what to make of this one. The two most unpredictable characters in contest history going up against each other. And given that the winner almost certainly goes to round 3, it is a really key decision. And then Kefka came out and won easily, looking very strong early on. Of course that's how this goes, a classic debated match turned one-sided. Oh Kefka. **What could this mean?**: Trying to make heads or tails of this match is a fool's errand. Is Kefka a true elite? Or is the joke just dead? Who knows. Kefka never makes any sense. ## Safer777's Analysis You can't judge Kefka. Seriously. His contest history doesnt' make sense. He loses to weak opponents and beat strong opponents. Then sometimes he does as expected. And other times not. L-Block was the champion from 2007 as people said. Now the strange thing. In the contests after 2007 L-Block always managed to advance to the 3rd round! And now it lost to Kefka in the 1st round! I tell you,nothing makes sense anymore! So Kefka did good here. Or did he? Who knows? Personally I don't want to see L-Block again. The joke is done. ## Tsunami's Analysis No past champion has ever been completely absent from the field of a contest they were eligible for, though this would not be true had Brawl beaten Majora's Mask in GotD. And I don't expect L-Block to be the one to break that trend, if for no other reason that there's another past champion with a much better case for being dropped. (Also, I expect the next contest of any kind to be Game of the Decade in 2020, but let's be honest, Undertale *deserves* to make that field. It'll probably get anti-voted out of fear of a repeat of 2015, but it would be a crime if it missed the field entirely.) The narrative that is often pushed around here is that Board 8 hates *all* past rally targets, but L-Block is in fact a beloved contest institution. Look no further than what hir seed was in 2013. L-Block has taken over CATS' former role as the joke character that Board 8 loves, except L-Block actually has some form of contest strength. Speaking of Board 8's favorite jokes, let's give it up for the Clown Prince of Contest Wackiness! Though to be honest Kefka's recent results haven't been as uniformly weird as they're often made out to be. No, we didn't expect Kefka to make Round 3 last contest, but that's really only *one *unexpected result, not two. Only about 8% of Gurus took him to make it out of Round 1, and of those, 60% took him to Round 3. His two Round 2 opponents were heavily favored in their Round 1 matches, and they each had fewer picks to reach Round 3 than Kefka did to make Round 2. And that Arthas result? If I recall correctly, that was the result of Arthas winning an SFF battle against Diablo in fourways, since Diablo had beaten Kefka in Villains. But honestly it should've been obvious that Blizzard had declined significantly since Villains. It was a defensible pick--B8 even talked me into it--but Kefka's win shouldn't have been surprising, and only was because the board is conditioned to not expect Kefka to do what he ought to. In this contest... well, this is Division 3 so it's hard to say what "ought to" have happened. But the Kefka meme is getting a bit old. --- ## (2)Kazuma Kiryu vs (15)Bomberman 2018 _source: (2)Kazuma Kiryu vs (15)Bomberman 2018 (revid 83692)_ ## Ulti's Analysis It's very rare when you can look at a 2/15 match and immediately pick the 15 seed without thinking, yet here we were. This is because before this match, the only 15 seed to ever beat a 2 was The Boss beating Nathan Drake back in 2010. That was a 12 hour match that went 52-48, too, so I imagine some people put an asterisk on that one. I know we had some 4ways and 3ways and some contests with dumb 1-8 division seeding instead of 1-16, but I can only work with what I got. The point here is these Yazuka characters that got into the field this contest are simultaneously the most unknown, overrated, and overseeded characters we've ever had. The best job a 15 seed had ever done until this was a 52-48 match. All the others easily lost. Yet Bomberman, a fodder character whose only contest win ever came against a TV set (this seriously actually happened, I kid you not: ) went out there and damn near got 61% against a 2 seed. It wasn't because Bomberman is strong, either. It's because Yazuka is gutter trash. Every contest we get some recent casualbait characters to serve as the opening round punching bags. Sometimes those characters are from Grand Theft Auto. Sometimes they're from Call of Duty and you get a match picture with a swamp thing in it. Sometimes they're from Uncharted or a random games contest has a sports title in it. Well in this contest, where we saw nothing from Grand Theft Auto make the biggest field we've ever had, that was Yazuka. Good lord. Who nominated these people to such high seeds? That's why the Kefka/L-Block match was so huge, Neither of these dudes had a chance of beating either one of them, and then who knows. Shout out to Bomberman and the 2002 contest, by the way. Nice seeing those old characters get some shine. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Bet you never thought you'd see Bomberman 60/40 someone! Kiryu is a character that has been around for a while, but along with his series has had a recent surge in popularity. He got a high seed with a heavy board effort, but would have been here anyway, Yakuza's a fairly big deal now. Not big enough however, and Bomberman won an unspectacular match. **What could this mean?:** I'm pretty convinced now that Bomberman is the perfect fodder line character. He has the apathy factor Pac-Man does but is not as strong or significant. To put this into some perspective, Pac-Man got to be playable in Smash and Bomberman's an assist trophy. And Kiryu is fodder. He might build strength over time but for now he's quite weak. 2002 excluded, is he the weakest 2-seed ever? He has to be up there. At least he looked better than Kane. Also Majima might be the true weakest character in the bracket, look out for that. Finally, shout out to the casuals for not getting fooled on this one. They're having a good year for sure. ## Safer777's Analysis Yakuza is an awesome series. But I don't understand how Kazuma got a 2 seed. Seriously? We don't play games after 2005 here! As for Bomberman he is an icon of the really old times. But guess what. Just guess. He is in SMASH! Need to say more? Of course he won. Now I believe he would win even if he weren't there. If you are above a certain age you have played a Bomberman game. You just have. Still nice to see an icon of old days to grab a win even against an awesome character like Kazuma. The prediction percentage though seems to be in the middle. Helps that Kazuma had the highest seeding too. But man not even 40% from the 2 seed on the first match too? Overseeding at it's finest. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a tough loss to take, because I initially had Bomberman solely on recognizability before remembering that he's *Bomberman* and has never been worth anything, and no way he's going to upset someone who got a 2-seed *without* Board 8's support. Oops. Wrong on all accounts. Yakuza *was* a Board 8 creation, which **alone** would've been enough for me to stick with my instincts, but Bomberman... honestly hasn't been that bad! He's had a tendency to get tough opening draws, hence his only prior win being against a TV, but... Yeah. Phoenix may have been a lot weaker then than he is now, but that's still 43.64% on Magus, 49.93% on Phoenix, and *52.91% on Crash.* And we'd already seen Crash this contest, so it's no surprise that anyone in the know--which is to say, almost everyone but me--picked Bomberman in the Oracle. Kiryu had over 25% of Gurus, but only about 9.2% of Oracle picks. --- ## (1)2B vs (16)Cayde-6 2018 _source: (1)2B vs (16)Cayde-6 2018 (revid 83693)_ ## Ulti's Analysis When the bracket first came out, people looked at 2B as a totally bizarre 1 seed and had zero faith in her whatsoever. I had some faith in her, just not as a 1 seed. I did not think she would be legit at all, and stupid me picked Shadow the Hedgehog to win two matches. Pair that with this division having Charizard, Bowser, and Kirby in it, and the girl had no prayer of actually validating her seeding. Even now, people are still arguing over whether or not she was legit in this contest. Spoiler. She was. I don't care who you are or what you're up against. If you start a poll at 90%, spend a good chunk of it over 80, and finish at 78%, you have legit strength. It might not be 1 seed strength, but it's strength nonetheless. Nier Automata is the truth. Granted 2B clearly has the assets to be a popular character among gamer nerds on this site, but hey. Also I didn't know this, but I got it confirmed with the 4 Destiny players on Board 8. Apparently the reason Cayde-6 was so weak is because you can play through all of both games and never actually know or care who that character is. You know you suck when even your own fans don't know who you are, which leads one to wonder how he made the field in the first place. Cayde-6 was destined for only one thing in this contest, and that was being at or near the very bottom of the LOL x stats. I'm sure a joke could be made here about Abbreviated number SFF, but it's so lame that not even my lame PCA should include it :) ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** 2B smash fodder. Cayde-6 is a lot of people's pick for the weakest character in the contest and it's easy to see why (though Majima hasn't been yet). 2B started this match extremely high, over 85% in the board vote, then well over 80% for much of the match, getting the highest margins of the entire contest for much of its duration. The beatdown calmed down a lot after the first few hours though and 2B dropped to around 78% - nearly a 4% drop which is sizeable, even bigger than Pikachu over Scorpion. This was nearly the biggest victory of the contest, but Ganondorf vs. Neku still has it, which is kind of a disappointment - however strong 2B really is, it would be great to say "2B won with the biggest margin of any character in CBX" . **What could this mean?:** Unsurprisingly, Cayde-6 is really, really weak. I would caution against calling him Tanner though. Tanner was a special confluence of nobody knowing or caring about him or his games, and looking like some nobody to boot. Cayde-6 is from games people have played even if they are very weak and at least has a good design. We'll never see a "natural" (i.e. not somebody B8 rallied in to deliberately top Tanner) Tanner again, the closest was probably Nathan Hale and he would double Tanner! As for 2B, without knowing exactly how weak Cayde-6 is, it's hard to get a good read but she didn't fall on her face. You don't get nearly 80% from random apathy voting, so she is at least recognisable enough to get those votes. I know 2B's seed was inflated by the NRT win but given how much of Nier Automata's marketing was centred around her, it's hard to see her lower than a 2 or a 3. My expectation now is a decent midcarder, but her true strength is hidden by facing an unknown weakling. Lastly, with the trends, it's hard to say if 2B is frontloaded, Cayde-6 does better at night, or that kind of beatdown is just hard to keep up, but it's probably a bit of both. I think 2B looks good to beat Ness, but I can't say it with confidence. ## Safer777's Analysis Both of these characters have numbers in their names! Now the question that everyone asked when they saw the bracket. How Cayde-6 got in? Even Destiny players don't like Destiny! What? As for 2B look at her. Just look at her. Ms Fanservice right there! So of course a very easy win with more than a tripling. But something happened after this match too. 2B got announced for Soul Calibur 6! What? I guess that means that she will get a boost in power too and that is good for the matches. What else? Cayde-6 is bottom 5 for sure. Also 1 seed for 2B. Pretty sure nobody expected that. Don't know why. I have heard that Nier Automata is a good game but seriously. I guess since NNers are on their bracket we saw some weird seeding too. ## Tsunami's Analysis How cute, 2B's total is in the 22,000s and Cayde-6's is in the 6,000s. Anyway I'd never heard of either of these characters, so I figured I'd go with the higher seed. Then I heard discussion about hentai and figured that made sense. For some reason having a dash as well as a number made me feel that Cayde-6 was even more likely to be female than 2B. I guess because it sounds more robotic and roboticists in video games tend to be perverts who like "toasters with breasts". Cayde-6 is neither a robot nor a female, so this blowout is entirely expected. I guess I must have found that out in advance of the match, though, because I was going to blame my ignorance of these facts for why my Oracle pick was so bad, only to discover that my Oracle pick for this match was actually really, really good! I feel like my picks in Oracle seem to always be either awesome or awful, never mediocre. I don't think that's actually true but I guess it's easier to get emotional about being near one end of the list than in the middle. --- ## (8)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (9)Ness 2018 _source: (8)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (9)Ness 2018 (revid 83694)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I have to confess something. I legitimately love the Sonic clan and they're a bunch of really cool characters. Yeah yeah, not a great thing to admit. Don't care. The games aren't great sometimes, but the characters are all really cool. Any time Sonic or Shadow or Tails or Knuckles is in a contest match, it takes me back my my Sega Genesis Sonic 2 days as a kid. If you want a great reason for me to loathe furries and despise that fan base, there you go. They ruined something that was once amazing. I also tend to overrate them, especially Shadow, when making picks. I picked the dude to win two matches this year. I picked him to beat Zidane in 2008. I really wanted to pick him over Tidus in 2004. I love the dude. He looks like Sonic, but he's all dark and cool and such. What's not to like? Turns out most voters don't see it that way, and this match stayed remarkably stable for the entire 24 hours. The percentages basically never moved, which kinda sucked. I like Ness, don't get me wrong. You all know my love of EarthBound by now. But Shadow is my dude. At least this was a respectable loss with an obvious reason attached. Ness is no longer the character we thought could lose to Jak, the character who was the odd one out during the closest finish ever, the character that lost to Pac-Man (ugh), the character that got 40% on GlaDOS, the character we all thought could lose to Locke, and most importantly, the character that got rolled by Big Daddy. This Ness has been in Smash Bros for almost 20 years, he's had EarthBound rereleased a few times, and the Angry Video Game Nerd finally did a review of his game. He isn't big time now, but he's certainly big enough to beat Shadow the Hedgehog. Maaaaaybe Shadow could have won this if he were an echo fighter in Ultimate, but it was not meant to be. The real shame is most of us thought the winner of this could beat 2B, too, and I would have loved to see Shadow make it into round 3. Turns out 2B ain't no slouch. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** This was a fairly debated match, but it didn't really need to be - Ness has looked at worst very slightly above Shadow and it would only take a small shift to Nintendo to make this one his. Shadow kept it close however, not letting Ness pull away too much after his early lead, and resulting in a match that got closer and closer as the match went on. This just further highlights the new frontloaded nature of Nintendo, though in this case it was exacerbated by Europe where Sonic is good and Earthbound is weaker. To be fair, Ness did seem to do better in Europe than he usually does, likely helped by his game actually being out there now (finally). **What could this mean?:** Not too much. Ness looked more or less to par here. Shadow has obviously fallen a lot from his 45% on Mario days but hey, at least he ain't falling further. Despite being a fairly close match this match didn't give us much. Ness would have needed to beat Shadow very easily to look like a clear favourite against 2B, but it's hard to say the odds are stacked against him either. ## Safer777's Analysis A close match here. And I don't get why. Ness is in Smash and he is in one of the most beloved games of all time. As for Shadow he was strong in the 1st contest but that was it. Even Tidus has beaten him! Damn! Ness is weak of course but as I said his power comes from Smash. Shadow is low tier Sonic character currentlyI believe. Still Ness won and that it is I guess.  I haven't played Earthbound myself too. Yeah I know. I shoulda have played it but I haven't. Have seen the most important parts of it on various videos too. ## Tsunami's Analysis I was the guest picker for the Crew for this match, and I got it right for the wrong reasons. Sonic Team looked pretty awesome all around this contest, but not as awesome as everything Smash. So my theory that Earthbound would be stronger because it's been getting wider releases via VC and has inspired so many recent beloved games (like Undertale) was completely wrong, but a separate factor led to Ness having boosted anyway. Or did it? One match after expecting my Oracle to have been awful, I look to see that a match I thought I'd called really well, I actually got outperformed by literally everyone who hadn't picked Shadow outright. Maybe I would've been better picking with my heart. SA2 was one of my favorite games growing up and has influenced nearly every one of my usernames across the Internet--yes, including this one, indirectly, the eventual last name of a character that started off as a Shadow knockoff but eventually became humanoid because I was RPing with a bunch of other edgelord teenagers and all sorts of weird stuff happened. We all initially met through the official SA2 BBS, no less, before moving on to a place we'd created using InvisionFree. It was around this time that I first discovered the GameFAQs message boards, though not Board 8. I don't even remember what the name of the account I used back then was and I didn't post on anything that I'd still be able to find my posts on all these years later. I was also possibly one of the more *mature* members of the admin team for that InvisionFree board, which really says a lot. Or at the very least one of the oldest. This was in the early 2000s and I'm *still* not 30 yet so again, I probably don't need to say anything more for you to figure out how hilarious dysfunctional it was. Then again, by that logic, I should've picked Shadow outright! Which I might've done if I hadn't figured this was a three-point match. After all, new characters, especially those from new games, are always complete crap, right? So I couldn't afford to get this wrong. We'll talk more about that in Round 2's write-up, though. --- ## (5)Terra Branford vs (12)Charizard 2018 _source: (5)Terra Branford vs (12)Charizard 2018 (revid 83695)_ ## Ulti's Analysis People are going to look at Pikachu's run and think Pokemon had a good contest, but in reality outside of Pikachu Pokemon had a terrible contest. Remember when the bracket came out and people thought Charizard or Mewtwo or Pokemon Trainer Red would go on these insane runs? That was put to bed pretty early this contest, and this match was one example why. I'll delve into all the FRAUDULENCE later when we get into how Mewtwo did, but for Charizard this was one of the worst wins for a hyped character I've ever seen. He struggled early, and though the match would never end up being in any real danger for him, Terra was able to make a lot of major cuts all throughout the match. I don't know what happened to Charizard, but this is clearly not the same version that won four matches in 2010 or the dude that would have gone on a good run in 2013 had Mega Man not been rallied. I know there was a close Zelda match in there, but Zelda is pretty legit these days. As for Terra, she's one of those characters that doesn't win much but always finds a way to make hyped characters look awful. Outside of one blowout loss to Dante in 2005, she always manages to look good. Kerrigan was hyped once upon a time. Terra embarrassed her. Darth Revan was hyped. Terra embarrassed him too. She even held her own against Kirby and Samus once. But this is probably the best Terra has ever looked. In an era when Square routinely looks like hot garbage and Nintendo dominates this site, we got this result. It's going to be forgotten in the ether, but this really shouldn't be some randomly forgotten contest match. 47% on Charizard given all the outside factors is no joke given all the hype he had. To put this a different way, the Oracle people routinely guess the final percents within razor thin margins. The consensus for this match was Charizard getting 62.52%. The lowest pick was Charizard with 56%. This was a bad match for the dude and all but cemented he had no chance against Bowser next round. ## Lightning_Strikes 's Analysis **What happened?:** Good goddamn question. This match seemed open and shut. Nintendo has been beasting, Final Fantasy has been not, Charizard has looked great twice in earlier contests, Pikachu looked great, Red looked great. Then this match starts.. And it's neck and neck during the board vote? What? Terra then spent a long time over 47%, looking like she might take the whole thing during the power hour. Then things started to go Charizard's way and he began winning updates consistently, and Terra never really got it back. It is very interesting that Terra was best during the Power Hour here, and the match was relatively stable otherwise. Charizard didn't have the 3-5% losses that other Pokemon characters have shown, instead only bleeding less than 1% from his peak. Lastly it's really significant that the match was effectively tied between anonymous voters with the registered boost helping Charaizard keep clear. It didn't change the result, but I wonder if it hadn't happen, would there have been rallies to push Terra over? Who knows. **What could this mean?:** A lot of people are calling Charizard and Pokemon/Nintendo/whatever a fraud, I dunno. Both Nintendo as a whole and Pokemon more specifically have looked consistently great, including in this match. Really I think this is just Terra. She didn't act like most Square characters have, though it's likely no coincidence that the closest comparison is Kefka. I think a lot of this is on her strength. FFVI has been growing over the last several years, and she likely earned that 5 seed. It would be interesting to see Terra put up against some typical midcarders, she could probably do a lot of damage. As for Charizard, well I suddenly feel glad I have Bowser, but a lot of that is to do with the next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result! Just look at it! Charizard is a fraud confirmed! Probably? Charizard in the 2010 contest was massive power house. Just look at the percentages of his wins back then! He did amazingly back then. At 2013 he did really good too. SFF helped him a lot there too. But now? And he is the 3rd most popular Pokemon too! As for Terra she never does good in these things unfortunately. She does have power but she just can't win. Now in this contest either Terra is strong or Charizard is weak. But I guess both. Pokemon isn't as big as it used to be back in the day but still they do good. Still I feel bad for Terra. No matter what though really bad result for Charizard. Still a win is a win I guess.  Even a win such as this one. Pikachu seems to be the strongest of the Pokemon. Makes sense since he is the mascot. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was the match where everyone started crying out that Charizard was a fraud. And with good reason, I suppose, even if all of those "awful" 2013 results suddenly looked really good by the end of this contest. Terra continues to look extremely good in these contests for no discernible reason, though obviously there's that whole thing about females boosting all over the place this year. Obviously Charizard was in trouble against Bowser next round but honestly we all knew that his win in 2010 was a fluke. So I guess technically Charizard is a fraud, the same way Shadow and Tidus and Magus all overperformed in *their* contest debuts. There's another fraud worth mentioning but I'll save it for his first-round match. Finally, take note of what the seeding is in this match. A 12-seed upsets a 5-seed and everyone feels that the *winner* did horribly? Granted, all this really proves is that the seeding was nonsensical (and it was; Terra is a 5 now?), but it's still worth noting that a 12-seed beat a 5-seed and everyone takes it as proof that the 12-seed is not as good as they thought it was (which wasn't necessarily true; the 5-seed was better than we'd thought. Probably.) --- ## (4)Bowser vs (13)Gordon Freeman 2018 _source: (4)Bowser vs (13)Gordon Freeman 2018 (revid 83696)_ ## Ulti's Analysis If we didn't already know Charizard was boned, this hammered it home like a frozen banana in Oymyakon. Look it up. Just for fun, I looked at some LOL x stats. In 2013, Bowser is projected to get 61.14% on Gordon. In 2010, 59.85%. To blow past all that and get 77.39% is absolutely insane, and it opened up the floodgates with people losing their shit over Bowsette and how this contest was already over. For the unaware, there's a Super Crown item in NSMBU Deluxe that allows Toadette to turn into Peachette. Someone made a comic based on the crown where Peach rejects both Mario and Bowser, so Bowser puts the crown on and becomes Bowsette. Mario and Bowser start dating. The internet, doing what the internet always does, took this and ran with it. Unlike most memes, this one stuck: Needless to say when Bowser sat here and just demolished Gordon Freeman like this, Bowsette was given all the credit. That has something to do with what happened, but I think there's a more valid explanation here and we saw it a few times this contest. Gordon Freeman is paying for Valve's sins. Remember when Valve actually made video games instead of trying to nickel and dime gamers for every penny possible? Yeah me either. Valve has become as trash as Capcom or Konami anymore, and it's sad to watch. They were legitimately the best company out there. Now they're just trash, and Gordon has to pay for it. Duke Nukem Forever spent 15 years in development and is the butt of every joke there is about games taking too long to come out. Half-Life 2 came out 14 years ago. If you want to know why Gordon is back his early contest days of being total garbage, that's a good place to start. Half-Life 3 might never happen, because Valve doesn't care anymore. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes) 's Analysis **What happened?:** If it wasn't for the other match's insanity, this would have been the surprise of the contest. Maybe it still is! WTF Bowser? WTF Gordon? For years this potential matchup has looked like a straightforward 60-40 affair. Bowser's great, Gordon is good. The "Gordon Freeman Never Wins" days are long gone. Well, not anymore. Bowser came out of the gate with **80%**, and although it did subside after the power hour he still dominated this match. For the gap between these two to widen by nearly 20% between contest He beat Gordon Freeman nearly as badly as Ganondorf beat Neku! That's really all you need to say to summarise this match. **What could this mean?:** One of my favourite jokes to come out of this contest is that Gordon saw that Cecil took his gimmick and got pissed, so did his best to get it back. A 20% discrepancy doesn't just appear, so I think that this is due to two factors. First, with Nintendo in general being great and Odyssey being what it was, I think Bowser has boosted a lot. Even now I don't think Gordon would lose to Neku. Second, Valve has completely abandoned Half-Life (and all games not called Dota2) and Gordon is feeling a direct consequence. Even with a Bowser boost this may be the biggest drop in contest history. we got a preview of this in 2015 when Half-Life 2 looked notably weaker than during Game of the Decade, but this is a whole other level. Also Cecil vs. Gordon bonus match please Allen! ## Safer777's Analysis Gordon does so bad in the contests that we had a meme. Gordon Freeman Never Wins! Although he has won some matches actually. But here is what I don't get it. Gordon has taken part in all contests! We have some other characters that we consider a stable but they haven't taken part in all contests. And Gordon just keeps coming back!Seriously! Valve doesn't care about Half-Life, why we keep nominating him? I know that Half-Life games are good but still they came so many years ago.So why Gordon is always in these things? Bowser is strong and he keeps getting stronger. Well he is the most iconic Villain of the Mario Brothers. And he is in Smash. So more than a tripling here. Nice win for Bowser! And he will be able to take revenge on Charizard too! Man I feel sorry about the Zard! ## Tsunami's Analysis The original loser, accept no substitutes. We knew that Gordon would be one-and-done for the first time since his first win (not counting Rivalry Rumble), but this is embarrassing. Made me feel good about taking Bowser \> Pikachu, though, which I hadn't felt comfortable with before because I expected Pikachu to be stronger indirectly. Turns out I was right about that part, but not about either Bowser or Pikachu reaching that match! --- ## (3)Phoenix Wright vs (14)Chris Redfield 2018 _source: (3)Phoenix Wright vs (14)Chris Redfield 2018 (revid 83697)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every year Phoenix Wright gets hilariously overseeded by Board 8, and every year his pattern is the same. I have nothing against the dude, it's just hilarious to see the seeds he gets every year. The pattern is usually the same, too. He either wins his first match close, loses his first match close, or gets completely blown out -- usually the latter is reserved for his games, but he's eaten a blowout or two as well in his day. Thankfully for Phoenix, Chris Redfield is no Jecht and while this match would be "close" in percentage, Phoenix still thoroughly demolished Redfield. Which is good, because there might not be a better example of intentional self sabotage than what Capcom has done with multiple series of theirs. For obvious reasons, I'll just look at Resident Evil for now. Sorry, FFD. Since Resident Evil 4 came out, these games have been nothing but trash. Resident Evil 5 was a forced co-op mess where the worst people in our culture, the SJW idiots who currently think Baby It's Cold Outside should be banned, the immaculate conception was rape, and candy canes being shaped as a J for Jesus are a problem, were bitching about the game before it even came out. Of course Capcom caved, and made a bad game even worse before it even happened. The second you start caving to cultural marxists, you're done as a franchise. For the unaware, RE5 takes place in Africa and SJWs were very happy to virtue signal about how killing black people zombies is racist, even though the series has had people of every race as zombies forever. Is there a bigger portent of doom for anything than caving to SJW rejects who would have no effect on you to begin with if you just ignored them? Then came 6, which somehow managed to be even worse than 5. I almost couldn't do words for how bad that game is, but I tried: Chris Redfield was in both of those games, just FYI. If you want to know why he ate his first ever round 1 1v1 loss, those are good reasons why. Marvel vs Capcom 3 is another. Then came 7, which was a good game that no one cared about because people are done with this series. I haven't even gotten into the spinoff nonsense, the remake cash grabs, the ridiculous DLC practices Capcom is involved in, or the other franchises Capcom has ruined. This match was justice. Go away, Capcom. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** For a long time Phoenix and Chris Redfield have been in a similar ballpark. But as Phoenix's series and exposure have risen, so have his strength. He also benefits a lot from the more focused GameFAQs audience these days. He's legit good now. Chris somehow missed CBIX entirely despite its massive roster, and probably weakened a fair bit before climbing back up. Phoenix was a clear favourite but the question was by how much. Phoenix dominated the board vote, but then dropped harshly, going from near a doubling to a fairly standard 57/43 win. This gave him his first 1v1 victory as it happens, and it's about time too. **What could this mean?:** As expected Phoenix is slightly stronger and Chris is slightly weaker I think. Phoenix has a dominant early vote then falls off, which is exacerbated by the new start time. I believe percentage-wise he had the biggest within-match drop of the contest (counting from after the board vote). I think Phoenix looked solid here but not good enough to beat Ike, more on that in the next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Have I mentioned that this board REALLY likes the Ace Attorney games? Because it does! Now I believe Chris is the weakest of the 4 RE protagonists. Also now Phoenix is  considered old since he first appeared in a game over 16 years ago! Man time passes. Also even I who have never played the games know about the Objection Meme. So I  think he did good here. It is not that Chris is super weak or anything. Nice win for Phoenix is what I say. Hey this board deserves to see at least 1 of their favorite  characters win! But man how far RE has fallen. The games are good. Even the spin off ones. I wonder when the RE 2 remake comes, will people care some more at least? ## Tsunami's Analysis One match after GFNW lost in the first round for the first time since his first win, the contestant who gave him that win reached the second round for the fourth time in five tries since. Chris is one of the more pathetic RE characters, only managing to avoid the winless characters list because he ran into a Call of Duty character in 2010. In retrospect, this isn't really a good win for Phoenix. --- ## (6)Ike vs (11)Joel 2018 _source: (6)Ike vs (11)Joel 2018 (revid 83698)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Not gonna lie, I had to hop on the ol' googler machine to see who Joel even was. I haven't played The Last of Us yet, though I hear nothing but good things about it. Apparently I'm not the only one on that boat, because Joel never came close to winning this match. Ike is at least a character people have heard of thanks to Fire Emblem and Smash, so this match was essentially someone people heard of vs someone people haven't. What kind of game even is The Last of Us, anyway? I have the PS3 version sitting right next to me. Also, I picked Ike to beat Phoenix Wright without even thinking out of pure fanboyism and felt pretty good after this match. A better score and a better prediction percentage as a lower seed usually means good things. "Whoops." I will have you all know I love the dude because of Path of Radiance more than Smash Bros. I love him in Smash against AI, don't get me wrong, but his path (ha) in Path of Radiance is fantastic storytelling. He was good in Radiant Dawn too, but that game does the style where we follow 48 different viewpoints. Path is better. Do not @ me. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** This was similar to the last one in that Ike was the large favourite but the question was how much he would win by. It turns out a lot. Ike won easily and looked tremendous during the Power Hour. He also didn't drop quite as hard as Phoenix which is significant. **What could this mean?:** Ike looks like a good favourite over Phoenix now. Joel isn't going to be weak, The Last of Us is strong on here, even though Joel is not the draw. The floor for Joel is likely Booker and Phoenix wouldn't do these numbers on him. It also has to be emphasised that Fire Emblem has gotten a lot more popular since 2013, and Ike is THE guy among the fanbase, he is absolutely beloved. This is probably a stronger Ike and he should beat Phoenix I think. ## Safer777's Analysis Ike is from a SRPG series and Joel is from a series that debuted after 2005. So yeah Ike won easily. Duh. Never mind that TLOU is considered on the best games ever! And we will get the sequel soon! But seriously as you have noticed new characters/games do bad here. Hey we like our past, thank you very much! At least Joel avoided a doubling. And games doesn't equal characters I know. The prediction percentage is high for Ike too. Guess most people didn't got fooled too. As for FE games they became really big in the last years with FE Awakening on 3DS. And the mobile game FE Heroes does extremely good, it earns a ton of money every month. A lot of FE characters are on Smash too. So yeah a lot of people know about FE games/characters now. ## Tsunami's Analysis See, it's not so hard! Just don't give your character a last name! Ike may not be that strong, but he's still a Smash character and Fire Emblem is still a series on the rise. This is a good performance for Joel, though I doubt he'll be returning since Ellie is supposed to be the main character in TLoU2. --- ## (7)Estelle Bright vs (10)Isaac 2018 _source: (7)Estelle Bright vs (10)Isaac 2018 (revid 83699)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Board 8 has a new huckleberry, and its name is Trails in the Sky. You guys were also well aware Estelle was a 'happy to be here' round 1 exit type of character, but getting her a 7 seed when I'd bet 99% of her nominations came from Board 8 is quite the accomplishment. No one made any delusions about Estelle having a prayer of winning this match, which is fine. Isaac is one of our most consistent characters in contest history, which is why the stats topic thinks "Isaac Fodder Line" is a fair thing to move forward with. If you can beat Isaac, you're not fodder. Simple as that. Characters Isaac has lost to: Samus, Tidus, Pikachu, Altair, Lucario, L-Block, Solid Snake, and Kirby Characters Isaac has finished ahead of: Serge, Guybrush Threepwood, Professor Layton, Commander Keen, and Estelle Bright. Yeah I support the Isaac Fodder Line. He can pretty much only beat trash and loses to non-trash. Here's my question. Is Trails actually good or is Board 8 overhyping another bad or mediocre game? Every now and again you guys hype something good, but you have a long track record of overhyping average and/or garbage. For every Symphony of the Night or Chrono Trigger you guys overhype -- and let's be honest, I don't need Board 8 to know those games are good -- there's a SLEW of nonsense. Katamri Damacy, most Phoenix Wright games, and Umineko are average. Brawl, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Shadow of the Colossus, The World Ends With You, any Mario Kart, Phantom Hourglass, any Blizzard game, Dissidia, and Valkyrie Profile are all piles of shit. Some of you have even tried telling me DmC: DMC Devil May Cry dee em shee dmc is good. So where does Trails in the Sky fall in on your list of overhyped hivemind games, Board 8? Be honest. You've overhyped some mega trash? Is Trails mega trash, average, or is it actually good? ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** A just-happy-to-be-here character loses badly to a midcarder, not much too it. When Isaac isn't stuck with other Nintendo characters he looks pretty good. He hasn't had a game in ages, but is a fan favourite, in a lot of demand for Smash, and keeps getting in these things for a reason. Estelle got a big Board 8 push and got a good seed. Her games seem popular and have a dedicated fanbase so she probably isn't super weak, but she is still bottom 10 for sure. So this ended up being a straightforward easy win for Isaac. **What could this mean?:** Nothing. Even the trends were boring. And the winner gets pasted by Kirby. Isaac is one of my favourite characters though and I'm just happy to see him win again. ## Safer777's Analysis I thought first that this Estelle was from the Tales series but no, it is another Estelle. They are both from an JRPG series but Golden Sun is more famous. Also Estelle is a newcomer. Still she evaded a doubling and that is decent I guess. Oh and Isaac is weak. Don't forget that. Meaning his win isn't impressive or anything. Still he won.  At least something from Golden Sun got a win. The prediction percentage for Isaac was pretty big too. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a 7-10 match featuring a new character from a niche RPG against a returning character from an RPG. You could make comparisons with certain 8-9 matches (although Neku wasn't making his debut when he lost to Laharl) and you would've gotten this right, or you could compare it to some past 7-10 matches in which DAT TOP OPTION was the one bringing the TJF and gotten this totally wrong. Admittedly, the matches in question were from *Games* Contests, but I still felt like those matches were a valid comparison. Except Golden Sun's *not niche*. It was damn near a release game (I think it was released a few months in) for the Game Boy Advance, which came at the height of Nintendo's dominance over the handheld market. The series hasn't necessarily aged well, in part because it took seven years to get a third game and what we got was largely disappointing on multiple accounts, chief among them the gameplay but also that it *explicitly ends on a sequel hook* (Lost Age definitely ends with some loose threads, but it would've still been a decent place to end the story. Dark Dawn ends with "hey, remember that thing that seemed like it was going to be driving the plot for the first, uh, maybe at most a sixth of the game? You forgot? Don't worry, so did the characters, because it didn't come up at all once the main villains were introduced, but it's still a threat.") Golden Sun and its characters have really never performed poorly. Isaac doesn't have that many wins largely because he always draws either Noble Niners or high Nintendo midcarders, but he hasn't done poorly, and of course we have Golden Sun \> San Andreas and Felix getting 47% on Master Chief when Chief was still a midcarder. Camelot, please get off your asses and make a fourth game, and make it more like the first two. (Note: I have since checked out Quorak's LP of the first two games, which brutally points out everything that's wrong with them. I agree with the poor writing, but not so many of the other complaints.) --- ## (2)Kirby vs (15)Guile 2018 _source: (2)Kirby vs (15)Guile 2018 (revid 83700)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Guile's theme goes with everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Did I mention everything? Yep. Everything. Everything? Everything. Ev-e-ry-thang? Ev-e-ry-thang. Ev-e-ry-thang? Ev-e-ry-thang. ....EVERYthing? Yep. Everything. You get the idea. Also, apparently there was a match today that Kirby won? Something along those lines? ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** Third dominant Nintendo performance of the day. Classic Board 8 push gets tripled as well. We've seen this happen before, same old same old. **What could this mean?:** Strong, strong performance for Kirby. Guile can't be that weak, he's a major Street Fighter II character. Overall though Nintendo dominating is getting hard to talk about, I'm looking forward to it facing itself for some interesting matches. ## Safer777's Analysis So why Guile and not Ken is here? Don't get it. Anyways for Kirby. As years go by he becomes stronger. And I don't get it. I have never seen anyone saying that Kirby games are his favorite. Or anyone beeing hyped for a new Kirby game. A few years ago I thought no more Kirby games were coming out! Yeah I am stupid I know. But I thought that because nobody ever talks about Kirby games! Also Kirby is in Smash as everyone knows. So of course Kirby did really well, barely missing a tripling here. Also Guile's theme is awesome, so he has this going on for him! As I said before fighting characters are doing worse and worse every year. And it makes sense. The only fighthing series that is good is the Smash series and I don't even know if it counts as a fighting series too. ## Tsunami's Analysis It's hard to believe, given how beastly he is now, that it took until 2008 for Kirby to even *face* a Noble Niner. He wasn't losing to nobodies, but he was always knocked out by a fellow midcarder. Overall I feel like fighting game characters performed better than usual this year but it wasn't on display in this match. Maybe Guile's just weak. --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs (16)Hat Kid 2018 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs (16)Hat Kid 2018 (revid 83701)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Some 16 seeds don't deserve to only be 16 seeds. Some do. For the hell of it I went and looked this up. Here is the list of every 16 seed we've ever had in a contest. Servbot, Chop Chop Master Onion, Goemon, Pitfall Harry, AiAi, CATS, Captain Olimar, Raiden, Metal Gear, Secret of Mana, Suikoden 2, Starcraft, CATS, Earthworm Jim, Duke Nukem, Terry Bogard, Thrall, Lightning, Falco, Midna, Prince of Persia, Ridley, Proto Man, Marth, inFamous, Star Ocean 3, Guitar Hero 2, Beyond Good and Evil, Viewtiful Joe, Jet Grind Radio, Timesplitters 2, Wii Sports, Ratchet and Clank 3, Assassin's Creed 2, Age of Empires 2, Phoenix Wright, Hearthstone, Cave Story, Shenmue, Splatoon, Cuphead, Primrose, Ryo Hazuki, Cayde-6, Hat Kid, Rosalina, Miles Edgeworth, and Wesker. If you want to count the 27 seeds (ugh) in that 3way contest, you get Tingle, Dan, Little Mac, Commander Keen, Prinny, Missile, Sandbag, Fawful, and Magikarp. Of that list, here is my opinion on who is actual 16 seed material, and by this I mean comparable to the NCAAs where they have the 16 for a reason and would have no prayer of ever winning a match regardless of opponent. I know with LOL x stats and such we can give almost anyone a win on a technicality, but bear with me here. My list of true 16 seeds: Servbot, Chop Chop Master Onion, Goemon, Pitfall Harry, AiAi, inFamous, Star Ocean 3, Guitar Hero 2, Beyond Good and Evil, Jet Grind Radio, Timesplitters 2, Wii Sports, Age of Empires 2, Hearthstone, Cave Story, Cuphead, Primrose, Cayde-6, Hat Kid, Commander Keen, Prinny, and Missile. A case could be made no one else on that entire list is immune from winning. We saw CATS beat Nathan Drake once. Terry Bogard would probably beat most other characters on this list. Phoenix Wright is a 3 seed every contest and his game just got forgotten about once. I could go on, but you get the point. Here's my point. Hat Kid is on the 'true 16' list and it took Squall almost an hour to get over 70% on him. I don't know who or what a Hat Kid even is and I frankly don't care. There were a lot of smart people who took Zelda to win this division, and I wasn't one of them, and that debate ended right off the bat. Struggling to blow out Hat Kid? Come on bro. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** A disappointing Final Fantasy performance? In this contest? Well I never. Squall looked really, really bad at the start of this match, struggling to get over 70% in the first hour. He quickly improved from there, rapidly improving to a tripling where it was more or less steady, but it was still a fairly poor show. Hat Kid looked very frontloaded here, for a while escaping a doubling, and Squall showed the same trends expected of a "modern" FF character. Squall also did better with the registered user vote which is fairly critical for his later matches. **What could this mean?:** I hope this is the match that hammers home the poor show that FF has given throughout this contest. Before the contest started there was talk of Squall being the new \#10 character after Vincent declined. He did worse on Hat Kid than Bowser did on Gordon so that clearly isn't the case (and if it is, lol Gordon). Hat Kid is largely expected to be a bottom five character, we won't know for sure for a little while, but looking at the relative popularity of A Hat in Time I have a very hard time imagining her doing better than certain other characters she would need to beat for Squall to be anywhere near his old strength. ## Safer777's Analysis Squall is damn strong. Some people said he might even be the strongest character in the bracket. Of course that is a lie but still you get the idea. Hat Kid is a newcomer and she is from an indie game. Obviously pretty easy win for Squall with a tripling. But man Hat Kid is so adorable! Just look at her! Squall is a monster that dares to go hard to such a cutie! But in all seriousness nothing else to say. Man I just want to see a FF main character do good in this contest at least! Maybe Squall will give this to me! Now that I see this analysis...Things have changed! But back then things were simpler... ## Tsunami's Analysis It's easy to look at this blowout and wonder how Squall managed to get so thoroughly embarrassed two rounds from now, but the answer is that he has a *really* weak opponent here. The enduring memory I have of Hat Kid's time in this contest is how frequently she was mistaken for a boy and someone had to correct someone else. That sounds like the epitome of obscurity to me. --- ## (8)Garrus Vakarian vs (9)Ramza Beoulve 2018 _source: (8)Garrus Vakarian vs (9)Ramza Beoulve 2018 (revid 83702)_ ## Ulti's Analysis "I want Final Fantasy characters to be my pallbearers so they can let me down one last time." On the bright side, heeeeeey, our first contest match that was an actual match! Some of the best matches you'll ever see are when a match with zero debate is unexpectedly close, and most of us just picked Garrus without thinking. After all, Square has looked like a Victorian slum for years and Garrus is someone we all love no matter what Mass Effect looks like. There's also the fact Ramza has never won anything and is from a game that hasn't been relevant in 20 years. Don't even try telling me that garbage PSP port matters, either. The bonus content was cool. Bastardizing the script and that unreal animation lag made the game damn near unplayable without an outside patch, and outside patches do not affect a game's score for me. It's why Warcraft 3 will forever be 0/10 bile regardless of how much I love Dota. When this match started and they were even, we were shocked. Then Ramza was up 28 at the freeze and it was a lot of "uh oh". Then Garrus evened things up and we all figured there was a weird early bracket vote or something. Nope. Ramza spent the next few hours slightly ahead and trying to shake Garrus off like a bad case of fleas. Garrus held his own here, but when things settled down and we entered the dead zone of the night vote, He hit 200 at midnight and it looked like he was going to pull away for the win. After all, Square's night vote is still one trend that holds true with our new start time. As luck would have it, Ramza was only able to quickly get his lead up to 256 overnight, and it was Garrus, not Ramza, that won the night vote. Garrus kept chipping away at the ol' vote lead brick, and after a tie in the morning, the brick broke and favored Garrus pretty easily. Garrus won the morning vote rather convincingly and ended this match, but with the match over there was still one thing left to root for in this one. You all know what it is, because the stats topic goes insane about it any time there's a close match: Could Ramza keep Garrus under a 460 vote lead? That was all anyone cared about. And as luck would have it... A record that stood for 14 years was broken in this contest. The new one was 419 votes, at least for character battles. DKC2 vs Xenoblade is the true record at 290. 12 hour polls do not count and don't try telling me they do. Either way, whether you consider 419 or 290 the true record, both would get broken multiple times this contest thanks to our fossilized vote totals. I want to be proud of close matches, but when polls used to all get 100k+ votes and now we struggle to even hit 30k, it's sad to watch. Speaking of sad, you guys might think I'm bummed out Ramza lost. I was a little, but there are much cooler characters in Final Fantasy Tactics. Ramza stops being interesting some time in chapter 3 when he stops being a naive kid. He pulls a Freya from FF9 and just starts kind of being there. If this match involved Delita, Orlandu, Wiegraf, Agrias, Rafalak, or even Zalbag, Mustadio, Reis, or Elmdor, I would have been sad. Ramza? Boring. Lastly, I cannot cover this match without commenting on the obvious. This was as Pyrrhic a victory as it gets, and Mass Effect is done on our web site. I'll get into this more when I cover Shepard later, but good hell. This match never should have been close, and it wouldn't have been if Electronic Arts wasn't among the absolute worst companies in the history of this planet. I could make a very real argument that EA is more morally corrupt than Monsanto or Apple, and those companies kill people to stay ahead of the game. Look up Monsanto suing independent farmers or Apple's suicide nets in China some time. EA is on that level, and if you only stick to video games instead of geopolitics at large they are easily the worst company to ever happen in gaming. Only Blizzard is comparable. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** The first true nailbiter of the contest. This was generally expected to be Garrus's match, he would win relatively comfortable based on 2013 and Ramza has never been especially strong. Then it started and was neck and neck, with multiple lead changes in the first two hours. This continued throughout the night with both contestants unable to get over a 100 vote lead. Ramza eventually pushed away a little bit, getting over 200 votes which he held for a couple of hours. Things quickly went back to back and forth though, until Garrus finally gained a consistent lead with the day vote. Ramza started to cut again in the last hour but by then it was too late. In the end this match had the smallest peak lead of any character battle match at just 419 votes, and will definitely go down as one of the most exciting ones this contest. **What could this mean?:** Poor Ramza. His record is as bad as Cecil's, but he has had fewer winnable matches. He at least kept this match much, much closer than most people here expected. I think a lot of this has to do with the fortunes of Mass Effect. That series has died an absolute death over the last several years, since Andromeda in particular, and I think all Mass Effect characters, even the ones people like, are going to suffer. There is still a poor taste in people's mouths from Andromeda without a doubt. Brace yourselves for an uninspiring Shepard performance. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was debatable before the contest. And just see the result. Great match for the fist time in this contest. We had lead changes, Ramza winning for 12 hours, then Garrus coming back and taking the lead, Ramza trying to catch up and all drama with the close matches. Anyways good match. One of the closest wire to wire matches I believe. Garrus is from Mass Effect and Ramza is from FFT. ME has fallen and Andromeda hurt the ME name even further and as for Ramza I feel sorry for him actually. FFT  is an AWESOME game! And oh yeah ANOTHER FF main character didn't advanced! Still awesome match. Nobody can deny that. The prediction percentage was in the middle too. But Garrus was the heavy Guru favorite strangely enough. Over 86%! Don't know why. Guess people thought that ME series would be still good? Did people forgot Andromeda? Yeah it hasn't anything to do with the original trilogy but it doesn't matter! ## Tsunami's Analysis Our first match in which the users and the anonymous voters disagreed. In this case, the registered voters favored Ramza, but Garrus won the anonymous voters handily enough to overcome the registered user bonus. Also, it was an exciting match for quite some time. Garrus led at the freeze, Ramza took his first lead on the second update, Garrus had it again after the third by *one vote*, and then Ramza took the lead on the fourth update and started building. Or trying to; Garrus had the lead for four updates in the second hour as well and only three were consecutive. Ramza would eventually max out his lead at 256 at 1:10 AM before Garrus began cutting, but Ramza would not give up his lead easily. Here are the updates from the 5-6 AM hour. Ramza leads by 18 Ramza leads by 23 Ramza leads by 6 Garrus leads by 3 Tie Garrus leads by 7 Ramza leads by 3 Tie Ramza leads by 3 Ramza leads by 3 Ramza leads by 9 Ramza leads by 10 Ramza leads by 13 Garrus would retake the lead at 6:55 AM, and after Ramza took it right back on the next update, Garrus took the lead for good at 7:05. It took only 4.5 hours for him to build that lead above 300, and it never dropped below 300 over the remaining 8 hours and 25 minutes, but also never grew higher than 419 (a little over an hour from the end of the match). It just sort of went into stasis again. I suppose it was kind of even for most of the match, which meant that Garrus going from trailing at 7 AM to up by 301 at 11:35 was enough to put the match away. Ramza has never won a match either, but he's not from a main series game like Cecil so we expect less of him. He barely beat out Laharl for third place in that Hogger match. Why do we keep nominating this guy? Also he has roughly the same hairstyle as Guybrush, who also has never won a match. Though in this year's match pic he just plain looked like a girl instead of a guy with a girl's hairstyle. Apparently FFT got some new port that gave him better pictures? (Post-script: I have been informed that he was also in a Dissidia game. Does this mean that there are now at least three of those, or was he actually in one of the first two, something which I was explicitly certain *was not* the case? Either way that's sad. Upon researching the matter, I have found that there are now *four* Dissidia games and the fourth one, the only one that Ramza is in, is a *mobile game*. Excuse me while I experiment how far I can stick my finger down my throat.) --- ## (5)Metal Sonic vs (12)The Boss 2018 _source: (5)Metal Sonic vs (12)The Boss 2018 (revid 83703)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Giving my loudest possible shout out to the one, the only, THE MAN, @ZenOfThunder for pulling this one off. Zen got me into picsmithing, has been a friend of mine for ages, and never one time has he had a cross or negative thing to ever say about me. Ever. The guy is an angel on a board increasingly filled with a bunch of aging, jaded assholes. He never gets negative, ever, and always finds a way to make everyone laugh during contest season. I'm not alone in feeling this way, either. We all love Zen. He wasn't just the MVP of this match, but the MVP of this entire contest. You the fuckin MAN, bro, and it needs to be immortalized in a PCA at some point. Here you go. So of course when he asks us to nominate someone we all chip in for Metal Sonic, AND THE GUY GOES OUT AND GETS A 5 SEED, WHAT IN THE WORLD. Even better is the guy didn't do badly at all! He was in this match for real for 10 minutes before The Boss showed him the advanced techniques of CQC. Balance the knife, quick strike, and retract. Balance the knife, quick strike, and retr--!! .... Nope. Not a Giant Enemy Crab, just a hedgehog. Metal Sonic can't rip tanks apart. The Boss's knife was ok, just took 10 minutes for her to get warned up and call in the MIGs to blow up the place. In all seriousness, The Boss only getting 56% in the match and only having 55.2% prediction is an embarrassment. People are not happy with Konami and it shows. This also shows that it's past time we get Dark Link into a character battle. If Metal Sonic and Mega Man X are allowed in, why can't we finally see what Dark Link can do? It's long overdue. ## Safer777's Analysis The Boss isn't that strong in the contests and she was facing a character from a Sonic game. As for Metal Sonic I know next to nothing about the Sonic games but I think he has appeared in a lot of games but never as the main antagonist but I think I may be wrong on the 2nd one. Anyways of course The Boss won with above 55%. Don't think anyone didn't expected The Boss to win. As for Metal Sonic don't know what to say. Guess he did all right? Still this proves that women can beat robots. Or something? But the seeding was high for Metal Sonic. Don't know why. And the percentage for The Boss was low. Guess people saw Sonic and high seed and went for that? Still it was above 50% at least for The Boss. Man what is with these MGS names? ## Tsunami's Analysis Zen's Metal Sonic rally was a rousing success, but he got a rough draw. The worst possible draw? No, there were stronger 12-seeds. The 12 line was actually really solid, with Charizard, Chun-Li, and Pac-man also on that line. Or is The Boss simply very *lucky* with her draws? This might actually be the strongest opponent she's beaten to advance in a match (either him or Nathan Drake in 2010, but I don't think Drake was ever really that strong), which is not to say that Metal Sonic is the strongest opponent she's ever beaten. Ironically, the only time she beat someone stronger was also the only time she *didn't* make it to Round 2! In 2008, she narrowly beat out Tails for third place in Round 1, with the top two spots going to Vincent Valentine and Zelda. Every other contest she's been in, she's made Round 2, but never Round 3. Normally an 80% success rate in Round 1 would suggest a sure midcarder, but it's not a sure thing in this case. --- ## (4)Zelda vs (13)Ezio Auditore da Firenze 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (13)Ezio Auditore da Firenze 2018 (revid 83704)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Oh sweet, a match where I can somewhat take a mental break. You need that now and again when doing 150 writeups. After all, we've seen this match already and there isn't much to comment on for the rerun: Zelda got 62% on Ezio eight years ago, and Ezio had zero reason to change in strength since then. Zelda going out and just murdering the poor guy with 13 extra percents was quite a sight to see, and it ended all debate about this division outside of rally shenanigans from D.Va or Waluigi -- and that question was answered very quickly when their round 1 matches came up. This was done, and it was positively adorable watching Leon4 pretend Squall wasn't destined to get raw dogged by a cactus in two rounds. I know LOL x stats and all, but Hat Kid and Ezio got almost the same exact score. Come on bro. I picked Squall like a doofus too, but at least I can laugh about it. Pretending Hat Kid and Ezio are equal strength is just silly. Zelda was pretty clearly meant to steamroll this contest right from the jump, and if it wasn't for Nintendo fatigue by the end she would have made the final. That's how insane this was. More on that later. ## Safer777's Analysis We had the same match before and Zelda had won with around 61%. And check this result. Man Smash and Breath of the wild made everyone from the Zelda games a beast. At least the 3 main characters, Link, Zelda and Ganon. I feel sorry about Ezio. He is an awesome character. AC doesn't really have a main representative so I guess Ezio is the closest one. Losing with more than a tripling is always bad of course. AC games are good games. But they are new so we don't like this thing here. Also Zelda is damn strong. N9 breaker even! ## Tsunami's Analysis Above a 60-40, but not a doubling. This is a tripling. Wouldn't quite be a tripling without the registered user bonus since she won the registered vote more handily than the anonymous vote, but pretty close. Assassin's Creed had some contest strength when the series first began, but it quickly got fatigued by the constant releases. This is the first Round 1 loss by any representative of the series in a Character Battle (except Rivalry Rumble, but who cares about that?), as well as the first time since his game came out that Altair missed the field entirely. Let me repeat that: *This is the first time since Assassin's Creed came out that Altair was absent from the second round and the first time since ACII came out that Ezio was.* Okay, yes, that's partly a function of how few character battles there have been in the past decade, but that is an astounding stat for a Western franchise. This should've been an immediate sign of how ridiculous Zelda would be this year, but it was easy to just figure that Ezio had drastically weakened. He probably did, based on his seed (he was a 2 in each of his first two contests). But maybe not as much as it initially appeared, now that we know how strong Zelda is. --- ## (3)Aloy vs (14)D.Va 2018 _source: (3)Aloy vs (14)D.Va 2018 (revid 83705)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Hey so remember when people were being ridiculous pre-contest and kept acting like D.Va was going to catch a bunch of rally strength and win the entire contest? It's time to puff my chest out and rip this shmedium tee clear off, because the damn thing doesn't fit. Called it. Told you so. Vindicated. Yet another thing I was ahead of the curve on. As usual, Ulti Was Right. How does one man continue to fly all these Ws? When in doubt, just blame Russia! Copy and paste to trigger a liberal today! At least picking Monika to win the contest made logical sense, and if this contest happened in 2017 she probably would have won. That fanbase was prepping a rally before the contest even started. But D.Va? Come on, people. You're better than this. I will now sit here and wait for someone, anyone, to give me a list of every FPS character with GameFAQs contest strength. Seriously. I'll wait. ... ... ... ... ... Still with me? ... ... ... Okay we're done. Unless you want to count Samus because your first Metroid game was Prime, the only FPS characters with any strength are Master Chief and Gordon Freeman. I might give you GLaDOS. That's about it. And I'm supposed to believe a bad character, from a trash tier video game, made by arguably the worst company in gaming, paired with one of the worst fanbases in gaming, is going to care enough about our dead web site to vote in a poll based on reddit traffic and pornography? Are you people insane? I hope this contest has taught you all a very valuable lesson: Reddit traffic does not matter to the extent you all seem to think it does. League of Legends was clearly a flash in the pan and only worked because back in 2013 GameFAQs was still relevant enough to catch rallies. Now? This site is dead and reddit doesn't care. I hope people have learned that, especially the former. GameFAQs, the site we used to all like, is done. I don't care what BS Allen and CBS feed you people; I'm a big contributor and I see the page hits on my stuff. Don't fall for it. I actually picked Aloy to win this match because I just knew D.Va would be garbage. Turns out only having 19 people play your game doesn't win you polls. But even then, as a heavy favorite D.Va went out there and just crapped the bed. She was over 60% early, looked good for about 15 minutes, and then puked everywhere. Losing 7% when you start at 60% is not easy to do -- it's much harder than, say, starting at 85% and dropping to 78 -- and it got so bad for D.Va that she badly lost the morning vote. We had very few trends this contest, but D.Va had a 1750 vote overnight lead get chopped down to 1400 at one point. She would recover the votes as the day went on, but the damage to her candidacy was over. This was a bad match for her, and it showed that outside of Blizzard fans actually caring about something without having to be bribed to care (shout out to neonreaper for calling this one out, too), D.Va was done. Which was fantastic. Blizzard is complete and total garbage, and has been since the second Activision took them ov-- errrrr, merged with them. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match had 3 fun facts. Both are female, both are newcomers and both are from western companies! So this match was debatable. And look at the results. It was a  close match. D.Va is from Overwatch which is extremely popular thus she managed to score a win. Aloy's game is newer too so fewer people would have heard of her. Close matches are always good though. But people thought that D.Va might get a rally too. Obviously she didn't got one. I mean Reddit cares! Right? But you know what? Nobody cares about our site anymore. Sad but that is the truth. It got surpassed because other better sites just got better and such. Still I believe that all of us old members will stay here until the site has ended. The prediction percentage was high for D.Va too. Didn't expected that. I guess a lot of people thought about a rally. ## Tsunami's Analysis Outside rally? What outside rally? This was the second match in which the registered voters and the anonymous voters went in opposite directions, but it was the registered voters who favored the so-called rally threat. The raw votes still favored D. Va, though, as there were more total anonymous voters and, amazingly enough, D. Va's registered votes and Aloy's anonymous votes were *identical,* at 5205. Or was this a case of one rally being swallowed up by another? D. Va wasn't the only rally threat in action today. Still, even with two rallybait characters in action, the raw votes fell short of 20,000. That wasn't true when Monika's match came around. Still, this represented Allen's annual friendliness to rallies. Well, not annual because we don't have annual contests, but you know what I mean. L-Block only needed to overcome Laharl to reach Round 2 in 2007; Draven was threatening to lose to *Jak* namesake of one of the worst fourpacks ever; and Undertale got to start out against a game with an ending so hated that the company released a new ending. Rallies require momentum, and there's always at least one that gets the opportunity. (2007 had more than one. I'll lament this more later.) And here, a feared rally entrant was given an easy first match. Too easy, though; Draven and Undertale weren't strong enough to even beat their opponents without the rallies, and the board's reaction to those huge turnarounds assured that the rallies would be even stronger in future rounds. The only good comparison is L-Block, who got by on natural strength in Round 1 and benefited from LFF in Round 2. Once you've reached Round 3 when you're not considered "strong", even if you beat weak competition to get there, you start to build a bandwagon. We'd see that later in this contest. --- ## (6)Jill Valentine vs (11)Fox McCloud 2018 _source: (6)Jill Valentine vs (11)Fox McCloud 2018 (revid 83706)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Don't worry yoblazer, Jill would have beaten the hell out of D.Va too even had Jill won this match. I can get why you picked Jill to win. Every now and again you just have to make a fanboy pick and hope, you know? Plus I totally get why Jill has her fans. Unfortunately, she's in the Resident Evil series. For the wiki readers, I'll just copy-paste the same rant from Chris Redfield's match. It all applies. And yeah I'm going fifth level narcissist and quoting myself off of something I wrote like an hour ago. What of it? My PCA, my rules. There might not be a better example of intentional self sabotage than what Capcom has done with multiple series of theirs. For obvious reasons, I'll just look at Resident Evil for now. Sorry, FFD. Since Resident Evil 4 came out, these games have been nothing but trash. Resident Evil 5 was a forced co-op mess where the worst people in our culture, the SJW idiots who currently think Baby It's Cold Outside should be banned, the immaculate conception was rape, and candy canes being shaped as a J for Jesus are a problem, were bitching about the game before it even came out. Of course Capcom caved, and made a bad game even worse before it even happened. The second you start caving to cultural marxists (which has no roots whatsoever in Nazi ideology, it's a communist belief from Russia, christ almighty you people are ignorant and need to read a book once in awhile), you're done as a franchise. For the unaware, RE5 takes place in Africa and SJWs were very happy to virtue signal about how killing black people zombies is racist, even though the series has had people of every race as zombies forever. Is there a bigger portent of doom for anything than caving to SJW rejects who would have no effect on you to begin with if you just ignored them? Then came 6, which somehow managed to be even worse than 5. I almost couldn't do words for how bad that game is, but I tried: Chris Redfield was in both of those games, just FYI. If you want to know why he ate his first ever round 1 loss, those are good reasons why. Marvel vs Capcom 3 is another. Then came 7, which was a good game that no one cared about because people are done with this series. I haven't even gotten into the spinoff nonsense, the remake cash grabs, the ridiculous DLC practices Capcom is involved in, or the **other** *franchises Capcom has ruined. This match was justice. Go away, Capcom.* *Addendum: What I forgot to mention the first time is the same people who virtue signal about black people all day are the same ones who call 911 on 9 year old black kids or guys simply trying to go home to their own apartment. And we're supposed to let these people decide policy. Fuck outta here.* Yeah I made an addendum on a self quote on something I wrote an hour ago. Ego level 17, son. Always be the best. Always be \#1. Can you came the 4th person to walk on the moon without googling it? Me either, because no one after Neil Armstrong matters. Shout out to Wendy's twitter feed. All of it applies to Jill, outside of RE5. She wasn't in that game, which is probably a huge reason she's stronger than Cuh-riiiiiiis Redfield in contests. Jill has Resident Evil 2 remake hype. Fox has Smash Bros Ultimate hype. You tell me which character had a better shot of winning this match? Fox slammed the door shut on this mildly debated match immediately, but it would not be his big moment in this contest. That was coming next round, and thank god for it. Props to you, my man. ## Safer777's Analysis Fox would never going to lose here. Come on now, he is Smash and Jill is not. Need to say more? Still Jill did good. I think people expected Fox to win with a higher percentage and Fox barely scored 54%. Man if only Jill was in another match. Also I will say it here even though it doesn't matter. Jill has lost 2 matches and both  times she has lost with 27 votes! Damn! Anyways Fox won and that is it. But as for the result...Don't know. I think it is bad. Fox should have won with more I believe. Guess his games aren't good now and that hurts him. Still seems almost a lock that he will go to Round 3. The prediction percentage for Fox is in the middle too. Guess people were fooled or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Next. . . . . Okay I'm joking. But honestly, there's not much to say about this match. Two low midcarders went at it, they had a fairly close match, but not close enough to be exciting, and the winner was the one affiliated with Nintendo. The casuals were fairly split on this match, but still favored the right character (55.78% got this correct), as expected; the Gurus heavily favored the correct entrant (just under 7/8 of Gurus got this right), as expected. About the most interesting thing about this match was that the Oracles expected Fox to win *more *decisively. Maybe Jill outperforming expectations was part of why even in Oracle, DK's win over Leon came as a surprise. It suggested that RE hadn't fallen as far as we'd expected it to, when in reality, it had and Jill merely overperformed because this contest had by far the strongest TJF boost of any contest. That's probably going to be a running theme in this analysis, because it was the defining trend. --- ## (7)Shovel Knight vs (10)Captain Toad 2018 _source: (7)Shovel Knight vs (10)Captain Toad 2018 (revid 83707)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Okay what in the world happened with Shovel Knight between 2015 and now to where the character is getting a 7 seed and is on the ass end of the lowest prediction percentage in round one? Huh? ...HUH? I thought for sure it would be Tails. Is Shovel Knight really that good? Anyway, to the point. This was a reasonably debated match, with 35% of gurus picking Shovel Knight to win. The logic for Toa-- errrrr, Captain Toad supporters was easy. "When in doubt, pick Nintendo." But most people reading this know that already. What most people don't know is Nick can steal the whole f'n show Rob Van Dam style whenever he wants. Captain Toad wasn't only going to win this match, oh no. Link vs Cloud? Captain Toad. Picsmith controversy? Captain Toad. 2018 midterms? Captain Toad. A fix for climate change? Captain Toad. An answer to how the police treat black men or how we can get California to stop lightning on fire every autumn? Yep, Captain Toad. Stormy Daniels telling us what Donald Trump looks like naked? Captain Toad rSFF, baby. By the time Nick was done hyping up the Cap, I was afraid to put mushrooms on my chicken because I felt like the cure for cancer was in there and I should be donating all my food to the local kitchen for the homeless or something. Nick was right, too, and it always feels good to say that because I love the guy. Shovel Knight clearly got bracket votes early even in the face of the pro-Toad board votes, and this match was in doubt for about an hour. But once that hour was up, Toad took off and easily put things away. I legitimately want to know this: what is Shovel Knight and is it any good? All this public backing has me intrigued. I ignore most indie type games, but this one seems to having staying power for whatever reason. ## Safer777's Analysis Another debatable match and as you can see it was close. Also this match had the lower prediction percentage so far. Around 30%! Don't know why. Toad is from Mario  Galaxy! Do you know this game has 97 on Metacritic and it is one of the highest rated games there? As for Toad. Everyone knows him. But I think this is another Toad or something like that? Sorry don't really understand. Still Shovel Knight did good. I just wish he could win. But he is from an indie game so he can't be strong. Still nice match. All close matches as I said above are always good to see. Also for Shovel Knight. Seems to be the mascot for indie games I guess. Not only the game is popular BUT he got into Smash too! What? Yeah he is Smash as an assist! Also he has appeared in other crossover games too! Guess his appearance is memorable and such? Nice to see at least a character from an indie game taking part in so many games. And maybe next contest will have some power or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was the first of two matches with a controversy over how a character was credited, and frankly, it was a stupid one. Yes, Captain Toad is not the same as a generic Toad, but it probably doesn't make a huge difference and definitely not with a bracket placement this obvious. A character from a major Nintendo franchise, even a D-lister like (Captain) Toad, isn't losing to an indie character from the current decade like Shovel Knight, and at the same time, there's no way he'd be able to challenge a medium-high midcarder like Aerith, nor could he win an SFF match against Waluigi (debatable at natural strength, but for Waluigi to get there he'd have to have the theorized rally strength.) So this was a nontroversy. Oh, did I say "obvious path"? The casuals obviously thought otherwise. At 30.55%, this was the largest bracketbuster of the first round. The Gurus didn't exactly *kill* it, splitting 103-57 in favor of the Captain, but really, that still means that a greater percentage of casuals got this wrong than Gurus got this right. Usually that only happens when the Gurus' prediction percentage is really low. Of course, maybe this really *wasn't* super obvious. The Guru Consensus came out fairly close to the actual result, but the individual picks ranged from Captain Toad 63.85% to Shovel Knight 64%. And I was among those that fairly heavily overrated Captain Toad. This was the match I was referring to in the Dante-Cuphead analysis, and I'll admit, part of why I wasn't sold on Shovel Knight is precisely *because* I took a flier on the game in 2015. I figured that betting against GTA and WoW is never a bad idea and Chrono Cross is often hated for being a poor excuse for a sequel to Chrono Trigger. I was right to think that GTA:SA and WoW would embarrass themselves, but the former still managed to get past Shovel Knight. I had sole possession of the lead in Guru prior to SA \> SK, too, after being I think the only Guru to perfectly call Division 6. It wouldn't have lasted because I had some weird late-round upsets, but it still stands out in my memory. Also, Shovel Knight the game lost to a GTA game in 2015. Why would Shovel Knight the character be any stronger? --- ## (2)Waluigi vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 _source: (2)Waluigi vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 (revid 83708)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I will never, ever, ever call her "Aerith". I in no way care why I'm supposed to and never will. Stop asking. I will continue naming pages on the wiki "Aeris" until the day these contests die, and if they continue after my death I might even put it into my will that whoever I pass this on to should keep that tradition going. I am only partially kidding on that last point. "Aerith" can go off and die for all I care. Aeris is ok though. Always love using her in the game. As far as Waluigi is concerned, I was promised a meme run in 2011. He and Luigi were SFFd by the Trainers. I was promised a meme run in 2013. In round one, Waluigi drew Raiden and Alan Wake. Who? Exactly. Raiden won that match. This year, Waluigi was snubbed from Smash Bros Ultimate and it gave us this poll (this poll is HILARIOUS, by the way): Based on all that, I was promised another meme run and Waluigi rode his Smash Bros snub all the way up to being a 2 seed. Well hey now, before this contest only one 2 seed had ever lost to a 15, Square has looked terrible, Nintendo is boss, and Waluigi was supposed to have all the momentum in the world to go on a deep joke run. Aeris was a very winnable match to start with, right? This match was close for about 5 minutes thanks to bracket votes and Board 8 meme anti-voters. Then the second update kicked in and Aeris just rolled this match. Nothing against the early voters and their funny contest trends, truly, I find those early numbers hilarious, but I think we've proven that those early votes largely don't matter. But that's a different conversation for a different match. This can very easily be summed up as Waluigi being one of the most overrated, overhyped characters in gaming history. Not only in contests. In all of gaming. Who gives a rip if he's Character \#97 in Smash Bros or not? I wouldn't complain if he got in, but I'm not literally crying he's out like some people. If I didn't already know people were serious about liking the dude, I would assume this was some TWEWY-level mass practical joke. Waluigi crapped the bed in a winnable match in a Nintendo dominant environment. I've seen all I need to see. The dude sucks. I know I'm being hard on the dude, but the entire list of characters that have lost as 2 seeds to 15s is Nathan Drake, Kazuma Kiryu, Waluigi, and Ren Amamiya. When you're a 1 or 2 seed, there is a different standard. Waluigi does not live up to it. Period. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this match. Nobody knew what to think. Obviously Aerith would be stronger. But Waluigi is a Troll character. And of the best troll characters too! Plus he is in  Smash too! So he could get a rally thus winning. Plus anti FF 7 votes. Also joke votes too!  And he is Smash too! Damn! But nothing happened. Aerith won. FF 7 is getting weaker every year but not that weak to lose to such characters without a rally. So about this win...Don't know. I guess it is a decent one? Also another 2 seed lost here. Yeah I know seeding doesn't mean anything. Also it is Aeris for me. That was her name when I first played FF 7. But I guess SE changed their mind and they put her name as Aerith in almost all games after FF 7 so I guess I will go with that one myself too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Non-leads in Final Fantasy games often struggle to get decent seeds, but when they make the field, they do well. This year, some of the ancillary characters actually got good seeds, but Aerith wasn't among them. (Actually now that I think of it, Tifa had a decent seed in 2013 as well.) She's never had a great seed except for maybe in the split bracket in 2006, but she's 5-1 in Round 1 and the one loss came against Auron. There's this strange dichotomy with Final Fantasy: most of the leads tend to get anti-voted because of the perception that the series is this dominant force, but the real reason that the series is a dominant force is because side characters that struggle to get the nominations to make the field pull these huge seeding upsets. Aerith, Vincent, and Rikku all had seeds in the 20s in 2013 and they all made Round 2, and in Aerith's case, very nearly Round 3. Though I can't help but wonder if Link-Draven would've been as close with Aerith as the third character instead of Shepard. Final Fantasy 7 has every reason to boost now, because they've finally ported it to a Nintendo system. I really need to get around to picking up a Switch soon; unlike the WiiU which had maybe one game I really cared about and that was released late in its life span, the Switch has so many games that I want. It seems that I'm the only one of the PCA writers who refers to her as Aerith and that's probably because I still haven't played FF7. Also, how is Waluigi still a meme in 2018? He's been a meme for what seems like forever. --- ## (1)Geralt vs (16)Rosalina 2018 _source: (1)Geralt vs (16)Rosalina 2018 (revid 83709)_ ## Ulti's Analysis True fact: I heavily considered taking Rosalina to win three matches, and eventually settled on "Nintendo can't be THAT strong, right?". Picked Geralt here with zero faith whatsoever, because GameFAQs people haven't played anything released after 1999. There was very little faith that Geralt would be able to justify his seeding and largely because of him, this division was seen as the weakest in the entire contest. Pretty much everyone picked Auron to win it, but for the top half there were picks all over the place. The case could legitimately be made for all eight characters winning three times because of how bad they all were. For 15 minutes, those fears were very well placed. This match was a stone cold tie for three updates, and people pretty much lost their shit over it. This wasn't just a 1 seed crapping the bed. This match was very significant, because it was the first time we'd ever seen a character originating from outside a video game in a 1v1 character battle. I know Dracula and Adolf Hitler happened, but those were in a gimmick contest. This was the real thing. A 1v1 character battle where you get the match all to yourself. Geralt was our breaker of a glass ceiling we've all wanted gone for years. And he looked like absolute piss for 15 minutes, and made me wish I had stuck with the Rosalina pick. Thankfully, the dude made a quick recovery and was able to wreck the rest of the poll. I chalk it up to simple nerves, like how a super hyped 1 seed in the NCAAs might look bad for a half before wrecking shop. That's essentially what Geralt did here. He wasn't just a new character; he was representing all of our hopes to one day see a Spiderman, a Batman, a Superman, a Simba, or what have you. Allen broke his rule to allow Witcher 3 representation in this bracket, and I'm glad he did. This would not be the first Geralt match to follow the trend you see here. I need to mention this before I forget. I like Allen a lot, but not changing Geralt's match picture to this when the Witcher Netflix thing was announced was just a crime: Like how does he miss that? Seriously bro. This also bears mentioning: fictional characters 100% need to be allowed into these brackets. None of us want something insane like 90% fictional characters in a bracket, but as a random example, Spiderman for the PS4 is going to get a bunch of Game of the Year hype. Yet Spiderman can't make a bracket? Dumb. The easy exception here is allowing characters in who have obvious reasons for it. Charles Barkley should never make a character battle. It's just a dumb troll nomination. But Batman after an Arkham game, Spiderman after his PS4 game, or Thanos after Fortnite? Come on man, this is easy stuff and should have been a thing ages ago. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** This is definitely the most interesting 1/16 match, featuring an entirely new character versus the rare untested Nintendo character. Geralt also doesn't originate in a video game, one of very few characters in these to not do so (but not the only one, Dracula and Amaterasu).The Witcher (well, 3 anyway) is good on here, and Geralt is both a good representative of the game and a good character, but it's facing a very dominant Nintendo. Rosalina's likely to be no weakling, being very popular in the fandom and having been effectively promoted to the status of Mario main character. Some even took her to win in an upset. That didn't happen but it did look far closer than the typical one of these. Geralt started pretty badly as well but eventually managed a fair looking 56/44 win. **What could this mean?:** Rosalina is probably pretty good, we've seen all the signs from other Nintendo characters. I've seen Rosalina called the weakest Mario character on here and I don't buy it - I'm having a hard time seeing her losing to Captain Toad, Toad-ass Toad, or even Waluigi maybe. She is in all likelihood the strongest 16 seed, so this doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on Geralt. It wasn't necessarily a show of strength either though - Geralt should still squeak by Simon but might have a tough time, and then faces some serious competition from a certain other witchy contestant. ## Safer777's Analysis Man this match suddens me. This is why other sites make fun of us. Geralt who is in one of the best games ever and he is an awesome character barely defeats a low tier Nintendo character. Yeah she is in Smash I know. I recently finished Witcher 3 GOTY. Just play this game. Seriously. Do it. Then you will see how good a writing in a  video game can be! And how main characters should get written! Still Geralt won I guess. Even if only someone could contact CD Project and get a rally for Geralt I don't believe anyone would complain if Geralt won the whole thing. Seriously just play the damn game if you haven't! Also another thing why the taste of the site is bad. Geralt was losing at the start! Seriously! Can you people stop voting for everything from Nintendo? There are other games and characters and companies too. I wonder why other sites don't care for us! Okay he was losing only at the freeze but still. He recovered nicely at least. Also we have something here that is amazing. Geralt originated in a Book but here he is! We had people that were real life people, like Lu Bu and even Hitler! so we now have someone from a book too! Come on Admin, just let us have characters that are in good games too. Arkham games are good. Why not having Arkham Batman? Just a thought. It would make the contests great again! ## Tsunami's Analysis Okay, okay, I've learned my lesson already. I needed to be talked out of taking Binding of Isaac: Rebirth to upset Witcher 3 in Round 1 of 2015, and I underestimated it again here. It's an understandable mental block, though: Recent game, WRPG, this shouldn't be strong, right? Even though in both cases, the opponent wasn't exactly old either. Geralt may not have entered the mainstream until The Witcher 3 in 2015, nor made his video game debut at all until 2004, but he actually made his overall debut just a few months after Link. Much was made of the fact that other characters that debuted in non-video game media were not allowed into the bracket, but Geralt was a 1-seed. Was this a trial run, or did Allen just rationalize it that a lot of gamers might not even realize that Geralt originated in a short story and then a series of novels, while everyone knows that Spider-Man originated in a comic book? And make no mistake, I fully expected Rosalina to be weak. I get the feeling that a lot of people feel that she's been forced into too many of the spinoffs and was better as a single-game character. But she's still a Mario character, and with this division, that could have been enough for multiple wins. --- ## (8)Ryu Hayabusa vs (9)Simon Belmont 2018 _source: (8)Ryu Hayabusa vs (9)Simon Belmont 2018 (revid 83710)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match may look like it was a barn burner due to the final percentages and score, but it wasn't really a classic/great match. You know the phrase in sports "not as close as the final score"? That was this match. Simon Belmont took the early lead, and outside of a few speed bumps in the first hour, he was able to very consistently hold things at 52-53%. Ryu was able to cut the peak lead of 750 down to 450 or so, but it was never at a winning comeback pace. We've seen Ryu in some weird matches in the past where he pulls off some astonishing feats, and I sort of include this match on that list, but he was a victim of two things. One was the 8pm poll start time killing our trends. I honestly think Ryu could have won this match had it started at midnight. Look at how well Ryu did after 2am. Shift this entire poll 4 hours and he may very well have won the day vote to win. I know that makes no sense, but we see weird things happen as polls get closer. The other thing Ryu was a victim of is pretty obvious. Just for fun, if you plug 2010 values into the stat calculator, you get Ryu winning this match with 55%. If you plug in 2013 numbers, you get 62%. If you plug in 2004 Ryu against 2002 Simon, you get 61%. And if you plug in 2007's numbers, you get a typical LOL x stats result of 75%. We can toss that one out as an outlier and just use the mean of the other 3, which is 59%. Is a simple announcement of being in Smash Bros worth 10% in a GameFAQs contest? Nothing else happened that would have affected either character, and without Smash Ryu clearly wins this match. With it, Simon flips things 10%. If you use the lowest possible number, it's like a 6% flip. Any time someone tries denying Smash's influence on our site, just show them this PCA. Couldn't be more obvious. And because I can: ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** Put simply, Super Smash Bros., but more on that in the next section. Ryu H is hard to pin down in terms of exact strength but is at least pretty good, and has a huge pic factor bonus. Simon has been fodder line at absolute best. In any other contest this would have been open and shut. Masahiro Sakurai had other ideas however, and Simon's announcement for Smash made this a tough one. Simon got off to an early lead which he never actually gave up. The match never got further than around 700 votes and it hit that early, at about five hours in. After that it was a slow match of attrition, with Simon only winning by 467 votes. **What could this mean?:** This match was undeniably flipped by Smash. Without that great trailer giving Simon more relevance than he has had since 1991, This was coupled with the best design he's ever had, which was nicely featured in his match pic. Ryu H is probably a bit weaker than usual, as nobody cares about Ninja Gaiden anymore. I want to get The Messenger (from a great game nobody here has played) in here to see just how much being a cool ninja in match pics actually helps. ## Safer777's Analysis This match had the whole Crew picking Ruy. And almost everyone on the board picked Ruy. So Simon won of course. Wait what? Seriously though this was a huge surprise. Ruy isn't that strong or anything but look at him. Pure ninja! And he does have some wins. As for Simon he has taken part in 5 contests and he finally scored a win. So why that happened? You are not going to believe it. Simon is in Smash! Yeah what else could boost him? Ruy has appeared in some Warriors games but we don't care about there here. As for the match. A really close one which is good. Simon was winning for a lot of hours and suddenly Ruy was coming back. He kept winning updates and it  looked that he could do it. Then Simon started stalling. We are talking about Simon winning updates with like 2 votes. So Ruy eventually couldn't do it. Still awesome match.  Also the prediction percentage was good for Simon and that surprised me. I thought almost everyone would pick Ryu here. I wonder why most picked Simon? ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh hey a close match! This was the match where people really started talking about the Smash boost, even though Ryu Hayabusa had no real reason to hold on to any of his past strength. Still, it's no surprise that this tripped up a number of people. Ryu Hayabusa is remembered for the two-day clash with Jill in 2004 and the upset of Master Chief in 2010. He had a reputation for being clutch. Simon Belmont... first managed to finish ahead of someone in a contest match when he came in second place in 2013, behind Gordon Freeman and ahead of Hades. In 2007, he finished comfortably in 4th place behind *Sam Fisher*, a character whose only win was against GFNW-era Gordon. But that doesn't even do justice to how awful Simon was in 2007, because the second-place character in that match was *Raiden.* Yes, pre-MGS4 Raiden isn't exactly strong, but how is Sam Fisher not horribly weak in the same poll as the protagonist of a Metal Gear Solid game? I first arrived to the board in 2009, so my first Character Battle was 2010, and I picked Simon to beat a newcomer because old characters \> new characters. That was the match that Ezio won in order to get to that 2010 Round 2 match with Zelda. Unlike then, I was in good company here, at least on the board. Nearly three quarters of Gurus got this wrong. The casuals got this right, though only at a 57.94% rate, so it's pretty clear that our knowledge of the past was what ruined us here. And this was a *close* match. Most Oracles called it to be close, but not this close, so I got a pretty good position in Oracle despite having the wrong winner because I was one of only two Ryu H pickers to go under 51%. Oracle actually had a *worse* prediction percentage than Guru, 13 for and 61 against. Except...it wasn't ever really in doubt. Simon got off to a triple-digit lead in 10 minutes, 200+ an hour later, 300+ by the end of the second hour, and 500 less than an hour after crossing 300. To be specific, Simon's lead at 10:25 PM--just 2 hours 25 minutes in--was identical to his final margin of victory of 467, and a grand total of *one* update in between those saw Ryu Hayabusa get even a few votes closer than that. Maybe Hayabusa would've been better off with another 48-hour match. Oh, right, and this was another one where the registered and unregistered voters favored different characters, but the result remained the same. The registered voters were the ones that favored Simon. --- ## (5)Sans vs (12)Pac-Man 2018 _source: (5)Sans vs (12)Pac-Man 2018 (revid 83711)_ ## Ulti's Analysis If Monika and L-Block getting their asses whipped didn't prove it already, this match cemented the point home in hilarious fashion. This contest was a contest where people openly revolted against rallybait characters. Some people had real fears of Sans winning this contest, but I said this before: Undertale is the new Portal. It had its moment, but it will never have a repeat performance even though it should be strong enough to make contests moving forward. I took Pac-Man here without thinking, but I didn't in my wildest dreams see this one coming. If we had a games contest in the winter of 2007 following L-Block's run, I have no doubt Portal would have won it. I hesitate to really call this a Smash Boost, because does anyone really care enough about Pac-Man to care if he's in Smash? I'm sure it's helped, but has it helped him as much as it's helped Samus, Simon Belmont, Cloud, or Snake? I doubt it. I also know the stats topic made up the Isaac Fodder Line, but I kind of like calling it the Pac-Man Fodder Line. Pac is the ultimate overlap apathy character. Everyone knows who he is, he's only capable of beating garbage, and anyone of any strength will destroy him. I feel obligated to remind people here that Pac-Man once lost to Nathan Drake. And for all those reasons, THIS MATCH WAS HIGH COMEDY. This was like a rerun to the 2002 glory days when Pac was breaking 70% on fools before Scorpion hooked him. But the guy Pac was breaking 70 on this time around was the most popular character from Undertale, the game that shattered our web site 3 years ago and proved what insufferable manchildren the anti-rally crybabies are. And then all those same people made Reddit accounts and begged for votes during every close match this year. I've let a lot go this year, but the hypocrisy of the anti-rally weirdos is really something else. Those people are just as bad as democrats and all their whining since the 2016 election. I was allowing myself one political reference in this PCA and only one, and it was always going to be aimed at the anti-rally people being as bad as democrats. Might as well put it here in a match PCA that won't be remembered in a year just so it's archived somewhere, you know? But you people are never, ever living that one down until you admit you only like rallying when it benefits a character you like. It's okay to think that, truly, but don't lie about it. And the funniest thing of all about this match? It wasn't close to being the biggest embarrassment for rallybait characters this year. Sans losing this match this badly is bad for him and Undertale, no doubts about it, but there was someone else looming that was about to have his own axes boomerang backwards and pretty much decapitate his entire legacy in one hilarious 24 hour time frame. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** This match was one with a lot of debate, leaving the board split down the middle. There were two arguments for Sans. First, RallyFEAR. Second, Undertale did have some natural strength, and he is a very memorable character from it. On the other hand, big contest-breaking rallies haven't turned up yet, and this is probably a better Pac-Man than we've seen thanks to Smash. Then the match starts and Pac-Man is instantly at 70%. The crazy thing though was how he kept building throughout the match. To top it all off this wasn't GameFAQs's doing entirely, as Sans actually did better with registered users. **What could this mean?:** This wasn't just rallies not turning up, Sans is just that weak. Additionally, this wasn't GameFAQs revenge voting - Sans did better with registered users. Pac-Man is probably pretty decent now, he's been okay for a while and should be at his strongest. Sans has to be bottom 10 here, and I am honestly surprised he is this weak even assuming zero rallies. This was the underperformance of the contest for me. ## Safer777's Analysis There were going to be 2 ways for this match to go. Either Sans(which is from Undertale)would take a rally and win or he wouldn't get a rally and Pac-Man would win. As you can see he didn't get a rally. Pac-Man won. But here is the thing. Pac-Man did really good. Why? I will tell you why. Pac-Man is in Smasn and Sans is not! And it is not that Sans did get a lot of anti-votes or something. He did better with registered users anyways. So yeah Sans is REALLY weak which is to be expected. Still when Pac-Man scores more than 70% in a win you don't know what else to say! Oh wait I have a fun fact. The day after the match the creator of Undertale released a new game! Damn! Nice coincidence I guess. The prediction percentage was in the middle too. Guess people were expecting a rally again. ## Tsunami's Analysis Pac-Man blowing out *anyone* like this is astounding, because Pac-Man is the King of the Apathy Vote. I figured that Sans, being a good character from a popular game, would beat him on natural strength. And from what I heard, Bayonetta was likely to be a major anti-vote magnet, so Sans would probably beat her even worse. And, uh, it wouldn't exactly take the bandwagon forming for him to beat Rosalina *even worse than that*, because as far as I can tell no one actually likes Rosalina and she only got my pick for Round 3 because this half-division was so bad. Sans ended up being the Ultimate Loser of this division, and I *still* only regret picking him to catch a bandwagon past Auron and Sonic (twice), not having him to Round 4. This division was largely unproven recent characters, proven fodder, and a couple of former low midcarders that were rightly expected to have fallen. Oh, and Pac-Man. Pac-Man was there too. Also, this qualifies as a Guru upset, if only barely; Sans had an 83-77 advantage in Guru brackets. Ironically, if I had incorrectly picked the next match, my bracket is probably better off for it in the long run. I'd lose the one point for Bayonetta \> Riku, but pick up points for Auron \> Riku (actually Auron \> Geralt) and Sonic \> Auron. But back to what this meant for the near future. If Pac-Man was getting this type of percentage on Sans, well, suddenly Chloe Price's lock on the absolute bottom of the unadjusted X-Stats was no lock at all. Amaterasu has always been a consistent midcarder, and Draven is far more hated here than Sans/Undertale. It was clear that he was gonna have a bad time, and all that remained was to see just how hard he'd get dunked on. --- ## (4)Bayonetta vs (13)Riku 2018 _source: (4)Bayonetta vs (13)Riku 2018 (revid 83712)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Remember how I said during the Geralt round 1 writeup that a case could be made for any of the top half of this division winning three matches? Well count me in as one of the morons who thought Riku could win three times. Good hell. I did eventually change my mind and picked a Geralt/Auron final, but even looking back on what I almost chose there is so embarrassing. I ended up picking Riku to win twice, and I didn't think the logic was that bad, either! Right before this contest, a massive Kingdom Hearts 3 hype video came out. If ever there was a time for Riku and Sora to go on a tear in a contest, this would be the year. Pair that with Bayonetta being the most hated character in Smash Bros history, and it was a recipe for success. Plus I like the dude's character arc. Sue me. Oh and I'm not joking about Bayonetta being the most hated character in Smash history, either. She has Kirby/Pikachu/Ness from 64, Sheik and Fox from Melee, and Meta Knight from Brawl completely and totally beat. Bayonetta in Smash 4 might legitimately be the most hated character in fighting game history (Smash is a fighting game, fuck off), and it frankly might not be close. People who play her in tournaments get death threats, which says a lot about how dumb the Smash fans are but I digress. Only Akuma from SF2 compares, and he required a complicated code to unlock and was banned from tournaments anyway. I can't do this justice with words. I'll let the pros handle that subject. When you factor all that together, Riku deserved to win. And then on a personal level, when you factor in music it isn't close. Music in games means a lot to me, and if your music is bad I grade you down pretty hard. I'm sure Bayonetta's games are fine. Haven't played them yet, but if they're anything like DMC3, and by all accounts they are, then they're ok. I mean Lady Gaga likes those games, and she would never support anything that's totally dumb like radicalized feminism, right? Oh. But to the point. Every. Single. Song in those games is objectively trash. All of them. It's the singular reason I haven't played those games yet. I can't actually listen to any of it without wanting my ears sewn shut. I'm sure Bayonetta actually deserves her contest strength, but she's probably be on Link's level if we could get rid of that laughably awful pair of soundtracks. And I usually like that style of music, too. It's on the level of The World Ends With You for worst soundtrack ever. This win was convincing enough to make it look like she would make it to Auron, and from there, who knows? No one else in the top half of this division looked all that good in round one, outside Pac-Man but we all know he's fool's gold. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** And now for the overperformance of the round. Again, this was a highly debated match. Bayonetta didn't look great in 2013, Riku is a decent meat and potatoes high(ish) midcarder. Sora didn't look amazing, but he didn't look dreadful either. To Bayonetta's advantage, she has become effectively a Nintendo character since, with 2 being a Nintendo first party game, 1 and 2 coming to Switch this year, and her being in Smash. So, based on the 2013 stats, this would go to Riku with 62%. Then this match starts and Bayonetta destroys Riku after the board vote ends. Not only that, but she built her lead over time. **What could this mean?:** This has to be the biggest boost of the contest. Bayonetta flipped a projected 62% loss to win with over 64%. That is mad. She is looking like a serious division finalist here, perhaps even a division winner. I never thought I would say that. She alsoo didn't trend like a Nintendo character so that's interesting, though that might just be because of Riku. This was possibly the most exciting day yet overall, and I love the way this contest has gone. Anything could happen. ## Safer777's Analysis KH 3 boost oh yeah! Yeah I am kidding. Bayonetta won easily. She is in Smash you know. As for Riku...He does really bad in these contests. At least he avoided a  doubling I guess. But man if only Riku was in Smash or something! But yeah I guess if KH 3 comes out he will gain a boost or something. But as for now he sucks. Also I believe that Bayonetta 3 is a Nintendo exlusive so we can consider her a Nintendo character now correct? Also most people had Riku winning this. The X-Stats were saying that too! But I wonder why he lost that easily? Yeah Bayo is in Smash. But the trailer for KH 3 came a little while ago. But nope. People don't care for KH it seems anymore. That is too bad. KH 2 is an amazing game no doubt. So yeah. Pretty embarassing match for Riku here. ## Tsunami's Analysis The Gurus were split even tighter on this match than the last one, Bayonetta ultimately winding up with the 82-78 advantage. At one point during the inputting of Guru brackets, Bayonetta was the favorite to reach Round 3 despite being an underdog against Riku. (The COOKIE did indeed end up with an impossible bracket, but only because of the double elimination format; Mario was a 78-67 favorite over Snake in the Legends semis, and with Mario-Snake so split it's no surprise that Cloud was the most common pick to win the Losers semi, but Snake was ultimately the most common pick to win the Losers final.) The Oracle Challenge broke 45-29 in Bayonetta's favor, with the Bayonetta pickers largely having a lower average percentage than the Riku pickers, resulting in a consensus of Bayonetta 50.49%. The highest pick was a flat 60-40, which was a full 2% contrast of the next highest picks. 64.40%. That's what Bayonetta got. Holy crap this was a blowout. Casuals got one over on us here; sure we ultimately wound up favoring the right character but they broke 70% in prediction percentage and a 45.60 is an awful score for a first-place Oracle prediction. Not the worst, obviously, since we've had matches where we were unanimously wrong (Magus-Knuckles 2005, for example), but not good. --- ## (3)Auron vs (14)Lucina 2018 _source: (3)Auron vs (14)Lucina 2018 (revid 83722)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I would bet good money I'm one of the few people who mainly likes Lucina for how insanely cool she was in Fire Emblem Awakening instead of her Smash appearances, but who knows. She's okay in Smash, but she is a damn legend in Awakening. Top 5 series character for sure. Unfortunately she was against Auron, who does the brooding swordsman turned softy routine much better than she ever could and comes from a far more popular game. Auron went out there and pretty much showed exactly why he was the division favorite, because while the top half of the division was doing whatever it was they were doing, Auron was out here cracking skulls and taking names. I know Lucina isn't that strong, but getting 65% on a Smash character in today's environment is no joke. Auron even won the day vote and raised his percentages up, which for Square against Nintendo is virtually impossible anymore. I love Auron, but man would I love to see Lucina win one some day. She deserves it. Taking Marth's name before ripping your mask off and taking fucking names on the battlefield next to Chrom is one of the coolest things in this series, and it happens in a game loaded with really fun characters. I know everyone loves Chrom and Tharja from that game, but I'm a Lucina honk. Sue me. ## Lightning_Strikes 's Analysis **What happened?:** Another Nintendo overperformance. Auron used to be a solid elite (he was effectively FFX's Vincent) and is probably still up there. Lucina was a not terrible but uninspiring FE entrant in 2013, and going off of then this would have been near a tripling, instead she escaped the doubling. Also worth noting that there wasn't a huge amount of movement after the power hour, which is a bit unexpected given the franchises involved. **What could this mean?:** Lucina is a lot stronger for sure, thanks to Smash and a general rise in FE's popularity. This wasn't a very inspiring performance by Auron, but if we assume Lucina's pretty decent now he probably still has it in him. ## Safer777's Analysis Auron is awesome. If you don't agree you are wrong and you know it. Auron always manages to advance to at least to Round 2 in all contests he has appeared. He is the strongest FF 10 character too for sure. Here he faced Lucina who I believe that she is the most famous FE female. But because of FE Heroes(I know it is a gatcha game but man is it popular!)she did good. Oh yeah she in Smash too! Yeah everyone is there! She avoided a doubling! Still nice win for Auron. And for next round we should have another fine performance for him too. And I will say  it again. Auron is way too cool. He wears sunglasses! What more to say! Just look at him! Still even though the FE franchise is so popular now, with good games on 3DS, characters appearing in Smash and a really profitable Gatcha game the chararacters don't do good. I know it is a SRPG but still. Eh whatever. ## Tsunami's Analysis On the subject of [Creators' Pets](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatorsPet), meet Lucina. She's basically a Final Fantasy lead--wangsty and androgynous. Except unlike those guys, she's *actually* female, though she pretends to be male (specifically, an earlier androgynous Fire Emblem lead) for the first half of her game because reasons. And because she's "What if Marth were actually a girl instead of merely looking like one", the Japanese part of the fanbase loves her and the rest...well, I guess they kind of like her too? Fire Emblem Heroes tends to reflect the wishes of the *whole* fanbase, unlike earlier entries where DLC was based on the results of popularity polls that were solely based on the Japanese fanbase because the games weren't even out elsewhere yet, and she hasn't received a new alt in quite some time so I guess maybe her popularity really is waning. But yeah Lucina is an awful character and this is a good result. Also the Oracle Consensus was just 0.09% off, the closest of Round 1. --- ## (6)Magus vs (11)Vincent Valentine 2018 _source: (6)Magus vs (11)Vincent Valentine 2018 (revid 83714)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Dammit Magus, you got my hopes up again. At least this time it happened in a match we all knew you'd lose, but still. This dude was one day vote away from what would have been one of the funniest upsets in contest history. Confession time. I never grew out of being a fan of villains, loners, anti-heroes, badasses, or the dark brooding fake gothic types. I don't try to be some badass prick in real life or whatever, I just find them more interesting characters by and large in fiction. Heroes all do the same thing. Villains and anti-heroes and such are far more complex. I could point out a litany of examples where the public is actually on my side on this and tunes in in massive numbers, like Walter White, Dexter, Thanos, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Crow, John Wick, Omar Little, Jack Bauer, Tony Soprano, Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman, The Godfather, or a massive number of Game of Thrones and Quentin Tarantino characters, but I'll mainly stick to video games here since this is a video game analysis. Erm, uh.... okay I went outside video games there, but hey! Some of my favorite gaming characters are people like Magus, Vincent, Cloud, Squall, Auron, Beatrix, Yuri Lowell, Vergil, Shadow the Hedgehog, Alucard, Solid Snake, Kefka, Sephiroth, Big Boss, Garrus, Lightning (sue me), Wesker, Kratos Aurion, Riku, JC Denton, Adam Jensen, Manfred von Karma, Master Chief (sue me), Nocturne, Sovereign, the Old Gods from World of Warcraft (SUE ME), Night Stalker, a whole host of other MOBA characters INCLUDING DRAVEN DO NOT @ ME, Kratos, Samus, GLaDOS, practically any ninja, Akuma, Javik.... you get the idea. I could keep going. You might call them edgelords. I call them Lawful Evil. Orzhov Syndicate forever. I dunno, I just find that archetype awesome. Sue me. So for me this match was awesome on a couple levels, not the least of which is Magus shocking the world for 5 hours. For the first 5 hours of this poll, things were either deadlocked or within 100 votes, and people had a lot of hope Magus could pull this upset off. On top of that, Vincent and Final Fantasy 7 haven't exactly been clutch lately. I had hope myself, but it was very cautious optimism for two reasons. First of all, I've seen way too many contest matches at this point and one trend in deadlocked matches has become exceedingly glaring. There is always one character in a very slight lead trying to shake the other one off. Very very rarely does it go back and forth. And almost always, the character doing the shaking wins. In this case, it was Vincent. So that's point number one. Point number two. The last time Magus was actually clutch was in 2003 against Ganondorf, which is a result that looks weirder every year. I had zero delusions the guy would actually pull this off, and was the least surprised guy on the planet when Vincent finally buried him. Still proud of the guy and still love him, but come on. It's Magus. We really need a Magus v Tidus match so we can have an answer on who our least clutch character is. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** This match was basically SBAllen's love letter to us, pitching two fallen legends against each other. Magus has undeperformed consistently since 2005 (whether or not 2005 is included is debatable), not even appearing in 2006 and bombing really, really badly against Alucard in 2010. He is arguably a fraud, as he basically had two inarguably good performances and that's it. Vincent was good for longer, but just bombed in 2013 (pic sabotage or otherwise). Even on that though, he looked well clear if Magus. Then the match starts and Magus took the lead after the first few updates (FF7 winning the board vote wtf). It went back and forth for a bit before Vincent finally stayed ahead, but he never built a big lead. **What could this mean?:** Oh my god, Vincent looked so damn bad here. Even with a Chrono Trigger boost, which is believable, he should have beaten Magus by more than this. He shouldn't look substantially worse than Alucard. Would Vincent lose to Peach now? Is that how far we have come? He might be alright against Auron because of SFF but he is screwed in the long term. ## Safer777's Analysis When Vincent first appeared in the contests he was strong. Really strong. We called him the N9 breaker! In fact he did beat a N9er but that was in multi way matches. When he first appeared in 1VS1 he won a division! Amazing! So damn strong! And he kept doing good. But in 2013 something happened. There were rallies sure. But man he was in a 3-way match and he finished last.  Okay fine. Mewtwo was strong back then. And he had rallies, everyone knows that. But the guy that came 2nd? Phoenix Wright! What? Man I heard so many people back then screaming about the bad picture that  Vincent got(I was one of them too!). I don't know what happened then. Anyways for this match. It was a toss up actually. 2 fallen characters here. Most favored Vincent to win and he did that.  But look at the result. Pathetic. Magus is weak you know nowadays! Also there is something that people said after this match that I hadn't think about. Vincent is  mysterious and he has a cool design. And that is. I mean he is an OPTIONAL party member and his Limit Breaks suck! Seriously! In a game where Cloud, Barret and Cid can hit multiple times with their Limit Breaks, Vincent turns into a monster for his Limit Breaks and we can't even control him! And he got a spin off game too! Guess if you have a cool design you deserve anything. Still he managed to win I guess. A bad victory is still a victory. The prediction percentage was just under 50% for Vincent too. Magus was the slight favorite it seems. Also for Magus...man this guy has fallen so much too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Remember what I said about forever-overrated **FRAUDS**? Board 8 still hasn't gotten over the fact that a match between two newcomers that was supposed to be debatable (although most people did eventually choose correctly) ended up being a 79-21 blowout, and that Vincent went on to upset Squall. Also there was something about a 4way match that reversed an existing 1v1 loss for Vincent? Bah, it's a fourway; it's not important. Besides, he was the lone PSX character against three characters that shared the SNES, one of which was Link. People blamed Vincent's loss to Phoenix in 2013 solely on the pic sabotage, and while I agree that Vincent should still be naturally stronger than Phoenix, a bigger issue there was that people just didn't *care* enough about Vincent. Board 8 loves its Phoenix Wright, so we weren't going to abandon him to hop on the Mewtwo bandwagon. And let's not beat around the bush: everything that happened from the moment Draven took X and Ryu to the woodshed was centered around trying to stop him at all costs. We identified Pokémon as the one thing that might be able to muster up a strong enough counterrally should Link fail to stop the threat with his natural strength, and since the other Pokémon were too far away in the bracket and would SFF each other out before the finals, that meant Mewtwo was our rally target. 2010, however, showed exactly where Vincent really sits on the FF7 totem pole. Both he and Tifa faced Sephiroth, and one of them did a lot better than the other. But here, he was up against Magus, another character that crushed it in his contest debut and has never lived up to the hype. It was only fitting that the two had to battle it out, and the fact that it was so close should tell you exactly how strong Vincent isn't. Vincent won with 51.89%, which is still comfortable *enough*, but every Oracle that picked this match to finish under 52-48 picked *Magus* to win it. With good reason considering that he was the underdog, but still, not one person who believed in Vincent to win it at all thought it would be this close. --- ## (7)Shulk vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 _source: (7)Shulk vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 (revid 83715)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Remember when there was a debate on contest strength between Sub-Zero and Scorpion? Yeah me either. As the ultimate casual, I am proud to report Sub-Zero was always cooler. I would actually be shocked if people's reasoning for it wasn't similar to mine: blue is just a better color than yellow is, and when you're a kid things like that matter a ton when picking characters, sports teams, and so forth. Laugh all you want, but I bring science! These are the things I dig up for predictable 63-37 blowouts. Favorite color science translating to character tastes. Just for fun, let's plug Auron v Shulk from 2013 into the LOL x stats calculator. Auron gets 75%. In the actual match here, he got 63%. During the Ryu Hayabusa v Simon Belmont match, I asked how much a Smash appearance is worth. I legitimately think the right number is about 5-10%, depending on how strong you were to start off. We've seen these insane boosts from Smash for years, and even though Shulk got blown out here I imagine it would have been far worse without Sm4sh and Ultimate backing him. This match also all but cemented we would see a fourth match between Sub-Zero and Auron. We've never gotten Mario vs Sonic, Sub-Zero vs Scorpion, Dark Link or Dark Samus into a contest, Blastoise into a contest, or a host of other obvious stuff, but we can get Auron vs Sub-Zero four times. Okay. Sure. ## Lightning_Strikes 's Analysis **What happened?:** Shulk is a character a lot of people expected to boost a lot because of Smash Bros. and the growth of the Xenoblade franchise. So of course get gets put up against Sub-Zero, a near elite (and make no mistake, Sub-Zero is well stronger than Scorpion). He had no chance of winning this match, and then did not. Oh well. **What could this mean?:** Shulk clearly got a lot stronger, he did roughly as well on Sub-Zero now as he did on Altair. This was just bad bracket placement and my one real issue with the bracket. ## Safer777's Analysis I always liked Sub-Zero. From the first time I played a MK game which was MK 2 to a friend of mine he was always my favorite MK character. Anyways of course SZ here won. Nobody expected anything else. Even though Shulk is in Smash! Like almost every video game character ever it seems! Still it is not that he scored a really big win. But Sub-Zero is so cool! Did you see what I did there? Did you? Yeah I know. I am stupid. Sub-Zero seems to do good even after all these years and this site's apathy for fighting games that aren't Smash. Smash is a fighting game right? ## Tsunami's Analysis Xenoblade Chronicles was originally meant to be Japan-only, but the rest of the world made a stink and the developers caved. It was hugely acclaimed and beloved, and...as a result, it was hard to get a copy at all. From what I can tell it really *was* interesting, but the battle mechanics were so awful that I eventually gave up on it. Even with the character you're directly controlling, your basic attacks are automatic, so it boils down to "dart in, hope that you actually get an attack off, dart away to avoid enemy attacks. Then somehow manage to build up your special meter because the bosses aren't actually vulnerable to anything other than the specials that are really hard to pull off." Xenoblade is the one entry in the Xeno series that has yet to do anything in contests, with Xenogears having once managed to beat a Pokémon game in a Games Contest (seriously, *huh?*) and KOS-MOS being something resembling a reliable midcarder. The game itself was a 3-seed in 2015 and got upset by Donkey Kong Country 2, which was by no means the only reason that I was the only one to get all eight Round 1 matches in Division 6 correct (three of them had Guru prediction percentages inside of 60-40, with the slight favorites only going 2-1), but was definitely the biggest deterrent. Sub-Zero has a history of pulling seeding upsets, so this was a pretty easy pick. The casuals weren't terribly fooled, either, with Subby coming just shy of a 2-1 advantage in brackets. --- ## (2)Joker vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018 _source: (2)Joker vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018 (revid 83716)_ ## Ulti's Analysis For those playing the home game, you might be wondering why I'm calling him Joker in the PCA and having the page name on the Wiki named "Joker" instead of "Ren Amamiya". To the surprise of everyone and for the first time in my entire life, I'm going to agree with Persona fans. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't planning on it originally. I was actually fully prepared to come in here, act as obnoxious as possible, and aim my most scathing possible rant at you people. You were going to get compared to the worst parts of our culture, you were getting the Election 2016 crybaby treatment, you were going to get absolutely shit on about how Claire pulled off the greatest upset possible due to Allen fixing his mistake and calling him Joker in the poll instead of Ren, the works. It was going to be awesome, and you would have deserved every second of it for how you act in every single Persona match in these contests. There is no fanbase more obnoxious in contest history, and there have been a ton of bad ones. And then this happened. And it wasn't just that. I actively tried looking for anyone, literally anyone, to call the guy "Ren". I didn't find a single example. Not one. So you know what? You guys win. With being in Smash, you're in the big time now and I'm going to give you a fair shot to redeem yourselves. I know exactly how happy you are right now, and I'm not going to take that from you. Plus with me having never actually played a Persona game and only going on contest behavior, for all I know those games deserve their fandom. Who really knows. You have a good thing here, Persona honks. Don't fuck it up. I don't change my mind on people very often! So with that said, let's go back to the beginning and give a fair rundown. When the bracket first came out, Joker was foolishly listed in the bracket as "Ren Amamiya". For those not aware of how absolutely stupid this was, imagine Revolver Ocelot listed as "Adamska", Lightning listed as "Claire Farron", The Boss listed as "Mercury Lady", or Big Boss listed as "Ishmael". It was laughably, unforgivably dumb. On top of that, look at these match pictures. This was the biggest mess of round 1 by a mile, and Allen knew it. By the time the match happened, it was more or less confirmed without being directly confirmed when Allen changed the name to Joker in our brackets that the poll would have his name on it. But by then, the damage was done. People had long since made their picks, and as you can see by the prediction percentage Claire had just enough support to get just enough bracket/early/registered votes to win this match if it was close. I have no doubts this would have been a closer match if things were named correctly from the jump and Joker were given a proper picture. That doesn't forgive the laughably awful Claire picture either, just for the record. Then the match started and all hell broke loose. Well by 2018 standards, anyway. Things were dead even at first, then Claire took a small lead, then Joker erased the lead before falling a bit. Then in a flash, Claire just buried the guy. Two hours in, these two were separated by 97 votes. This match was stone cold over 30 minutes later, and with how close this was to start we can chalk this thing up to the margin of error. Does Joker win with a fair shake in naming and picture? Probably not, actually. Claire's picture was also trash and she has RE2 hype behind her. But the fact we can even have a gray area argument about this entire result is not good. Sure the winner was destined to lose to Sub-Zero anyway. So what? The guru was only won by 3 points. I won a contest on a tiebreaker. These points matter. You can't have doubts about results like this, and well-run stuff makes sure this happens as little as possible. I'll give Allen credit for correcting his mistake but it was bad to make this mistake in the first place. I made a bunch of polls mid contest asking people how important the match pic was when voting. I was expecting virtually no 'yes' votes. To my shock, something like 35-40% of people vote based on picture! What in the actual hell? So yeah, Joker got robbed and the Persona fans are being given one great writeup and one fair shot to be mature moving forward. Don't let me down, bros! Also, level with me. Are the games any good? Oh last point before I forget. Before this contest only one 2 seed had ever lost to a 15. The Boss beat Nathan Drake. In this contest it happened THREE TIMES. This match, Aeris \> Waluigi, and Bomberman \> Kazuma Kiryu. The seeding in this contest was so messed up. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** Early on this seemed like an easy win for Joker, but then as less recognisable characters and avatars faltered, as well as Resident Evil looking good, this started to go to Claire. Joker, at least, did not get screwed with a name nobody knew. The match started neck and neck but then Claire pulled away, with Joker turning out to be very frontloaded indeed. **What could this mean?:** When Leon beat down Dragonborn I knew an avatar from a strong, popular RPG would struggle with a beloved Resident Evil character. Joker just does not have enough to him despite the strength of his game. At least he's a lot better than Yu probably. As for Claire I'll say it again, Resident Evil is back. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was strange. When I made my bracket I didn't even noticed that this is Joker from Persona 5, because they don't use real names in the Persona games for the main characters. You can give them any names too,.  But when I saw he was the Persona 5 main character I picked Joker. The whole Crew picked Joker too. Claire was in 3 contests before and she hadn't a win. But I made a mistake. Persona is weak here in this site. Really weak. There was even a controversy with Joker's real name so we got both names! It should have been only Joker by the way. And the picture wasn't him in the traditional Joker Outfit too! So many mistakes in this match. Come on now! I know the board loves Persona too but yeah. Also the instant RE 2 remake was announced it is in top 10 boards in the PS 4 section here. And you know who is in RE 2? Leon and Claire. So Claire managed to win a victory. Strangely enough for a while Joker was winning! Persona 5 is in my top 3 JRPG's. It is  way too good! Still out of the 5 main RE characters only Leon and Claire advanced. RE 2 remake boost confirmed! And oh yeah another 2 seed lost. This is the 3rd time on this contest too which is a record! I think like 2 seeds have ever lost from a 15 seed in all contests ever too! And in this contest we had 3 losing! Man the seeding was so bad. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was our second accreditation controversy, and the one that actually meant something. The name "Ren Amamiya" comes from the anime, not the game itself; like Yu Narukami when Persona 4 first came out and all of the SMT protagonists before him, the P5 protagonist was not initially given a "canon name". (Yu's canon name was eventually established by spinoffs.) As such, failing to credit him as Joker--especially in combination with an unmasked match pic--was tantamount to sabotage. I picked Joker in my bracket, but had Claire in my Oracle when it was initially believed that the single-word accreditation in the match would be "Ren". Turns out, I shouldn't have wavered on that when Allen changed it to what it should have been all along. So was this a case of old \> new, or merely DAF? (Oh, come on, you know full well you're not looking at what she's got going on in the front. The picsmiths certainly weren't in 2013.) At any rate, this represents Claire's first contest win, which is all kinds of hilarious because the 2002 X-Stats say she could have reached Round 3 if she hadn't been horribly screwed by bracket placement. She finished 13th, breaking 30%, in the Raw X-Stats, following a fairly close (at least by 2002 standards) loss to Tidus of all people. Then she disappeared until the Female Bracket in 2006, where she lost to Kairi. And after that she didn't return until that 2013 match that I linked the match pic from, where she literally has to deal with booty SFF. Joker was later announced as a DLC character for Smash Ultimate, making everyone wonder if he'd have won the match had that happened earlier. He might have, but I feel like Claire could've still gotten by. --- ## (1)Luigi vs (16)Miles Edgeworth 2018 _source: (1)Luigi vs (16)Miles Edgeworth 2018 (revid 83535)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Somehow I forgot Edgey on my list of edgelord characters that I love list in the Magus/Vincent writeup. I should probably be executed for this oversight given I once asked the New Jersey DMV if "EDGEY" was available as a license plate. True story. I've led a rather oddball life, if you can't tell. Anyway this match was always going to be a massive blowout, and it got scarier as it went along. Luigi was the type of character who could cause some serious damage in a non-Noble Nine bracket like this, and he had the 1 seed and the pedigree to prove it. Luigi has historically been an ass kicker in round 1, but he does it in a way that makes him look non-threatening, Smash Bros Luigi Taunt style. For those who enjoy lists, look at some of these numbers. And then this match here today, which was the first match Luigi ever had as a 1 seed and he delivered. This was Kansas beating Niagra. How Luigi never had a 1 seed until today I don't know, but he has one of the best pedigrees in round 1 of any non Noble Nine character. If you face this dude in the first round, don't even show up. You are done. Sucks for Edgey because I adore the dude, but hey maybe don't appear in bad video games like Ace Attorney Investigations and you stop being 16 seed fodder for green people. I did get to see Phoenix carry him to a win in Rivalry Rumble, so technically Edgey is off the schnide! ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** Another standard Nintendo fodder beatdown, in which Nintendo overperforms expectations based on the last contest. The one really notable thing about this match is the trends, with Luigi building his percentage over time. Looks like Ace Attorney is more frontloaded than Nintendo. **What could this mean?:** Strong showing for Luigi. Edgeworth is fodder but he's reliable fodder, and Ace Attorney as a whole has looked better lately. I do think this match should be looked at in the context of Bowser vs. Gordon because even now I'm having a hard time imagining Edgeworth beating Gordon. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was brutal. Nobody doubted that Luigi would do good but this good? Damn! More than 77%. Miles is from the Ace Attorney series. Have I mentioned that this  board loves this series? But anyways a Luigi domination. Also Miles joined the 0-5 club, meaning a character that has taken part in 5 contests and hasn't a single win! Maybe he will get one eventually. Which I doubt it. Oh well. --- ## (8)Frog vs (9)Monokuma 2018 _source: (8)Frog vs (9)Monokuma 2018 (revid 83536)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I have no idea whatsoever what a "danganronpa", a "Happy Havoc", or a "Monokuma" even is. All I know is that thing was given heavy consideration as a rallybait character, and if you haven't noticed it by now the rallybait characters all got completely steamrolled in this contest. This wasn't the worst of it to happen, but letting Frog get 76% on you when you're hyped to catch a rally is pretty bad. Frog is a shell of what he used to be and shouldn't be hitting 76% on anyone under any circumstances. But who knows, maybe Frog got a random boost from the chemicals in the water that are turning the freaking frogs gay. 'Scuse me. Been waiting ages for that reference. Remember when Frog used to be good for a great match every contest? Yeah, me too. I got sad looking this up, but the last entertaining match from Frog was eleven years ago. It's true: For whatever reason, it stopped on a dime right then and there. It teaches you to appreciate what you have while you have it, because those windows close really fast. Now we're sitting here watching Frog get 76% on anime panda bears with zipper lips. I get that not every match can be good but sheesh. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?**: Another overseeded fodder blowout. Monokuma is bottom 5 for sure, but was able to get a decent seed anyway. Frog also built his lead over time, showing that Monokuma is another frontloaded "cult" character. **What could this mean?**: Chrono Trigger is still good and Monokuma is very weak, next. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result. Frog won a match with more than a tripling! Damn. I don't know anything about Monokuma. Haven't even heard about the game too. But I bet my ass that he is really weak. Frog was a beast in his 1st ever contest appearance. Also I believe he is the only character that has a win with 50% percentage against another character! Not even Link has done that! But anyways of course he won big here. Nice to see him get a win. --- ## (5)Master Chief vs (12)Goro Majima 2018 _source: (5)Master Chief vs (12)Goro Majima 2018 (revid 83537)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Master Chief and his games are so loathed by our site's user base that people take every possible opportunity they can to anti vote the crap out of him. I actually like the dude and think he's badass as fuck, but I can understand this site not liking him. The entire Xbox line of consoles is a complete joke and was never destined to have any good exclusives. Ever. I said this before the very first system came out and it was obvious to anyone with a brain. Microsoft is making it. Any good game will end up on PC anyway, and lo and behold. Proven right again. I don't find it fair that Master Chief has to pay for Microsoft's sins, but what can you do. The Xbox has one of the worst fanbases in gaming, too, and they've proved it in spades in 2018. Those idiots were all over twitter spoiling PS4 games intentionally because they were butthurt over the Xbox having no good exclusives, as if everyone else didn't tell them ages ago that there would never be good exclusives. With Tales of Vesperia now officially coming to Playstation, there is absolutely zero reason to own any Xbox system. I knew it was coming, too. Just needed a little patience, Guns N Roses style. The best part about these losers, none of which are actually on GameFAQs, is how they sit around pretending they're all alpha and hard all day, even though they sit online arguing about video games 24/7 and treat consoles like their own children, largely because women are very intelligent and know not to have children with trashy human beings. Trust me, "bros", whenever you try telling us how cool you are we all picture you as the road rage marine and laugh at you. Because as all normal people know, you deal with bullies by laughing at them. It drives you all insane and we love it, and now with everyone having a supercomputer in their pockets you can't even retaliate physically anymore. Fuck off and go pretend the Xbox is good. Loser. I bring this all up because Master Chief, who has all that baggage to carry around and all those hurdles to jump over any time he's in a match, got 69% on someone and wasn't even anti voted in the slightest. He had no trend whatsoever in this match. Multi-way matches aside (a guy like this will naturally overperform in that format), have people already forgotten this dude's history? He almost lost to a guy named Felix in his debut. He lost to Frog by 7 votes in a match that by all accounts he should have won. CATS broke 31% on him and he needed an insane 2000 vote comeback to beat Donkey Kong, of all people. He lost to Sub-Zero as a 2 seed. Then after fourways happened and threw everyone off the scent, he let something named Spy get 40% on him before losing to Ryu Hayabusa. And this guy -- this guy -- gets 69% in a contest match. I like the dude come on man. Can we all have a gentleman's agreement to never nominate a Yazuka character ever again? These guys are the definition of megatrash. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** This should have been a huge blowout and wasn't. Chief was struggling to get over even 65% during the Power Hour. He recovered somewhat and then held steady, but ultimately was far lower than expected. **What could this mean?:** Majima should be one of the weakest characters in the bracket, that Chief could not get over 70% is fairly embarassing. Would he even beat Bomberman? It follows that Majima would be weaker than Kiryu after all. This was a really bad showing. ## Safer777's Analysis Ah yeah. MC. The XBOX mascot. We hate XBOX here I believe. Anyways of course he would win. He went against a Yakuza character and man this series is extremely weak in  this site. Now his win is actually his 2nd highest ever! That is how weak Yakuza is. But man. If only Frog and Tails had the reverse position. We could have the rematch of one of the best match ever in these contests! But alas. At least we will see them again fighting in the same day! And once again nice win from MC. I just want to say that MC once reached a semi final match WITHOUT rallies! I still can't understand what happened back then. We liked FPS? XBOX? No. So I am not sure. His prediction percentage is really high too! --- ## (4)Nathan Drake vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 _source: (4)Nathan Drake vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 (revid 83538)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Only CAPTAIN TOAD had a lower round one prediction percentage than this one, and it did my childhood and my fanboyism a world of good to be on the right side of Tails' path this year. yoblazer made a fantastic topic about best feels-good calls this contest, and my \#1 is Tails. I'll get more into his actual path and why it meant so much to me in round two, so for now let's just focus on this one match. 80% of the board and almost 70% of the brackets picked Nathan Drake to win this match, but I knew. I just knew. Well I didn't "know" per se, because this was a pure fanboy pick that I could not pass up. I was always pissed I didn't take Tails \> Viewtiful Joe back in the day, and I vowed to pick the little guy again if I ever got the chance to pull an upset. How long did I wait? I could not pass it up. Nathan Drake was the perfect opponent for Tails to get some redemption. The guy got less than 7% in a poll and lost to CATS in his contest debut. Then he got a 2 seed and became the first 2 seed ever to lose to a 15. His one win was in 2013 against Pac-Man by 700 votes, and I have my doubts Drake could win that match if it was a 1v1. That was it, Drake's entire history leading up to this match. Why he continues to get these high seeds and all this bracket backing, I will never understand. Nathan Drake is on par with GTA and Call of Duty, only he actually keeps making contests to embarrass himself in while a lot of other casualbait knew when to quit. Not that Tails's history was all that much better, but his round 1 losses were generally to more respectable opponents. And for pete's sake, the guy has never lost to CATS. When the match started and Tails just boat raced this clown, I could not have been happier. I didn't get a whole lot of debated stuff right this contest, but I can always look at this match plus the one after and just smile. You finally did it little man, and with my lucky \#13 to boot. It might be time to retire Nathan Drake, by the way. If he keeps getting in I'm sure this won't be the last of his embarrassing losses. If he does get in again, I would put him 1v1 with CATS for hilarity's sake. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** Another debated match that looked less debated as things went on. Sonic looked good, western characters have been a mix and Uncharted looked bad even despite 4. The match started as 60/40 which is pretty awful, but Drake did redeem himself somewhat as the match went on. Still pretty bad since I can't imagine Tails suddenly being super strong. **What could this mean?:** Uncharted has never been good here for some reason, even among Sony series, and that is clearly still true. Sonic Team has looked good and that continues, this was a better showing for Tails than The Boss managed in 2010, and I can't see Drake being that much weaker. ## Safer777's Analysis Before the contest this match was debatable. But as the contest went on it was obvious that Nathan would lose. He is from a new series and we hate new things here. So Tails won easily. At least Nathan has a win because he will never get another if he appears in another contest anyways. And he is PS All Stars too! Also for Tails  this is his chance to finally reach a 3rd round in a contest too! Also people had so much faith in Nathan that Tails prediction was around 33% too! This is embarassing for Board 8 too because yeah almost all of us thought that Drake would win too. --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (14)Geno 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (14)Geno 2018 (revid 83723)_ ## Ulti's Analysis As Final Fantasy 7 has continued to slowly erode over the years, a few things have kept it from complete and total collapse. One is Cloud appearing in Smash Bros. Another is probably the Dissidia games, even though I loathe them all and think they are absolute filth. I'd rather deal with any parvo diarrhea over ever playing a Dissidia game again. For those not involved in animal nursing, parvovirus destroys a dog's intestinal lining and renders them unable to absorb any nutrients. Without a ton of emergency care, they eventually die from a fatal diarrhea, and this sometimes happens anyway because it's very difficult to get rid of the virus to where the body can regrow the intestines. It's a terrible way to die, but the smell is what's worst. Imagine a bloody, liquid shit death emanating from something that's still alive. That's parvovirus. And it's still better than the Dissidia games. The last thing keeping FF7 afloat is Tifa, who is in the same boat as Vivi. No matter how far Square falls, she still has a "magic" to her that makes it very difficult to anti-vote or hate her. Her contest strength has held well over the years, and it really showed in this match. Geno is a beloved character from a beloved game, and people have been pining for him to get into Smash for well over 10 years. Tifa gave no fucks and just annihilated him. Think she cares he's never won a match? Bitch please. Meteor Strike right upside that doll's head. A good comparison for this match is the Squall/Geno match from 2005 where Squall got 75% on him. For Geno to ever win a match, he needs a Smash appearance. This is plain as day at this point. As for Tifa, this match was about prepping for the Mewtwo scrape. Her fans weren't necessarily worried about division titles yet, because this division was stacked. Her, Luigi, Mewtwo, and Mega Man X were all packed in here and they all had a good case behind them. She definitely got off on the right foot though, that's for sure. ## Safer777's Analysis Tifa is from FF 7 but she doesn't get antivoted as much as the guys. I think there are 2 good reasons for this. Have you checked her gloves? They are awesome! Anyways Tifa is strong. Always has been. Sure she falls as all FF 7 characters but not as much. She manages to advance to Round 3 all the time except 1 time where in a multi way poll Sephiroth was there so SFF'ed. As for Geno I learned something.  He is a record holder! Seriously! He has taken part in 6 contests and hasn't a single victory! Damn! Who keeps nominating him? But there is a twist now. He got in Smash! As a costume. But it doesn't matter. He will be in the next contest and maybe he will get his 1st win too! Which I doubt. The Dissidia games seems they don't do anything for the FF series too. I wonder why? I don't like them to tell the truth but still you would think they would do something for the characters since they have made 3 of them, meaning people care for these games. ## Tsunami's Analysis Geno is another one of those characters that has become a bracket mainstay despite never winning a match. He's now 0-6 after this loss, and none of them have been terribly close. There are many reasons for this. He's a side character from a fairly niche RPG, one that wasn't released in PAL regions until much, much later (via Virtual Console). Furthermore, its initial release was fairly late in its console's lifespan, a Super NES game from 1996, albeit still a good few months before the N64 came out. Unlike its Japanese counterpart, the Super Famicom, which was still getting new games in 1999, the SNES died out pretty quickly once the N64 arrived, with no games coming out beyond 1997. (Though the N64 did even worse, managing to essentially die out *before* the GameCube actually launched, resulting in roughly 85% of Nintendo's US releases in 2001 being for its handhelds.) And worst of all, he's *extremely* easy to SFF, being the product of a collaboration between Nintendo and Square, which means that either company's presence in a poll is bad for him. I don't think he's incapable of winning a match, because that last factor could easily work in his favor if he ever drew one of those overseeded nobodies we see so often, but it's an exercise in futility trying to make it happen. --- ## (6)GLaDOS vs (11)Mewtwo 2018 _source: (6)GLaDOS vs (11)Mewtwo 2018 (revid 83724)_ ## Ulti's Analysis There are people pointing to this match as evidence of Mewtwo's FRAUDULENCE before the Tifa match even happened, but I highly disagree. This is pretty much exactly what Mewtwo was supposed to do against GLaDOS -- a boring 63-37 type of beatdown that gets chalked up into the ether of forgotten round one matches. Given he was only an 11 seed, only had 59% of people behind him, and is finally back in Smash Bros without DLC, I find this blowout fairly impressive. It's right in line with with the LOL x stats from 2010 and 2013. As for GLaDOS, this is the best possible outcome for rallybait characters. You can catch and bandwagon and maybe win a contest, but after that your best hope is getting a middling seed and retaining a fraction of strength. GLaDOS and L-Block are the best examples we have of a life after rallybait (I know Portal never won anything, but it took over the internet in 2007 in the same way Undertale did in 2015). Some strength, maybe a win or two, and it's all good. What's happened to Draven is pretty much the exact opposite of what a rallybait character could hope for. We'll probably see GLaDOS and L-Block every year. I'll be shocked if we see Draven again. ## Safer777's Analysis There were some voices that Mewtwo is a fraud and GlaDOS could do it. I don't understand why. Sure GlaDOS did good in 2013. So did Mewtwo. And in 2013 we had rallies everywhere. So Mewtwo won easily here in this match. You know he is one of the 3 most famous Pokemon right? Anyways nice and easy win for Mewtwo. Oh yeah he is Smash too in case you are wondering. This results is according to the X-stats too so that means everything is fine! ## Tsunami's Analysis Even before the contest started, people were calling for Mewtwo to be exposed as a **FRAUD**, which was perfectly natural because he'd overperformed last time. The thing is, there was nothing "fraudulent" about Mewtwo's strength. As I stated during my write-up of Vincent's match, Mewtwo was our rally target because Pokémon was something we could rally around to try to stop Draven, and Mewtwo was the only one with a bracket placement favorable to doing so, as the others would SFF each other out before they could see Draven. 2013 wasn't Mewtwo's first deep run, however, so it was easy for a casual who merely looked at past results without actually comprehending them to think that Mewtwo was an absolute beast. (Mewtwo's first deep run, in 2008, was the result of extremely fortuitous bracket placement, advancing two rounds on natural strength and then taking advantage of triple Square SFF to advance out of a third-round fourpack in which he was probably the weakest character naturally.) This match, however, would not give the board what they wanted, as Mewtwo handily destroyed a character that had reached the Top 27 in 2013 and finished in second place in her Round 3 defeat. Of course, it wasn't truly surprising as GLaDOS was expected to decline--Games may not equal characters, but Portal falling from Top 16 in GotD to 14-seed fodder for Melee in BGE3, along with Portal 2 failing to reach the second round in BGE3 as a 5-seed, suggested that the series was already on the decline then. It's nothing to be ashamed of; it's not easy for a franchise to walk the line between oversaturation and irrelevance. By opting not to turn into a franchise zombie, Portal instead risked fading into the ether. The Oracle Consensus for this match was less than 0.60% off, and the two worst scores were comprised of one overestimation and one underestimation. That's a sign that we knew what we were doing here. --- ## (7)King Dedede vs (10)Revolver Ocelot 2018 _source: (7)King Dedede vs (10)Revolver Ocelot 2018 (revid 83728)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Dedede (2008c) VS Revolver Ocelot (2008c) Dedede has a strength of 15.97. Revolver Ocelot has a strength of 22.67. Revolver Ocelot wins with 64.78% of the vote! LOL X STATS Before every contest we get a series of prediction topics where people analyze each match. It's a super fun series of topics and you get some really good users making really good points. But every now and again you get a huge dud, and this match was it. Ocelot had a 100% chance to win, really guys? Have you been paying attention to how loathed Konami is right now? OR how insane Smash hype is right now? Come on bros, there was no way this match was going to follow the stats. I almost picked Dedede and I frankly wish I would have even though he lost. I absolutely love the guy. He's a big, overly friendly but overly competitive dude who wants to eat all the food and always teams up with the hero when needed. He gets into some fights with the hero, but hey! Gotta keep things lively! He also swings around a megaton hammer that explodes for fun, belly flops on people to KO them in Smash, sits on people to KO them in Smash, does the foot-foot-foot-foot-foot air dance, chain grabs people, and this is his main taunt. What's not to love? Of course he was going to give Ocelot a good fight! When the match first started, things were even for a few minutes before King Dedede started slowly climbing. And when I say slow, I mean 5-10 votes per update with the occasional Ocelot run. The king's a bit heavy, so it's hard for the guy to climb up. Give him a break, okay? I've been there. Losing weight is tough, but you gotta start somewhere. Down 150 and still dropping, son. Ahem. Dedede was able to peak at 168 early, but Ocelot kept stalling, making cuts, or going on the occasional run to keep Dedede from actually winning the match. It continued like this all throughout the evening, past midnight, and alllllllll night long. The best thing Dedede was able to manage was a 200 vote lead, but Ocelot was able to stall that one out too. We finally got an answer to how this match would go as the morning vote started trickling in. Around 4 am, Ocelot finally started taking the match over. By 5:30 we were tied, and from there it was all about who would win the morning vote. One would assume the Nintendo character would take the morning vote, but not today my friends. Remember that slow climb Dedede made at the beginning of the match? Ocelot started doing that in the morning, and after spending all morning fighting with Dedede with the match in the 100-150 range, noon came and just buried the king. This match never got completely out of control, as you'll see in a second, but Dedede never came close to winning once noon came. There was, however, one major silver lining for King Dedede in this match. 328 votes! It beat Garrus/Ramza by almost 100, which is nuts. Make no mistake here though, Ocelot may have won this match but this was a horrible result. He was supposed to break 60%, and even the oracle people who had sniffed a rat didn't see this coming. Their consensus was 55%. 50.5% is just a total embarrassment, and it required a small miracle with the morning vote, a superhuman effort to not get buried at night, a small reddit rally, and the double votes from registered users to avoid a very embarrassing upset. There was however a silver lining for Ocelot, which is that he finally came up clutch in an unexpectedly close match. He has a bit of a history choking these away. In 2005 no one thought anything of his match with Pac-Man, and then he chokes out of no where. In 2007, he gets this super close win over Jill Valentine for second place in his round one 4way, and then in round two he gets in this weird battle for second place with Kefka and Marcus Fenix. Ocelot lost that one close too, in a match that never should have been in doubt. Who the hell is Marcus Fenix? Then 2008 happens and Jill Valentine erases Ocelot's one moment. 2010 was probably his worst ever match, because for once he was the one making things close unexpectedly. Pokemon Trainer Red was a massive favorite, and Ocelot made it close by some miracle. But as usual, Ocelot lost. So for Ocelot to win a close match like this, and set a record in the process, was an exorcism of sorts for the dude. But given his luck, Dedede will get a rematch next time and beat him by 300. We'll see. ## Safer777's Analysis For this match almost everyone had Ocelot. The Crew had him too. But you aren't going to...Okay screw it. King Dedede is in Smash. Duh. So of course he put a major fight here. Still it is not that Ocelot is strong or something. I mean even Pac-Man has beaten him! So this match had Dedede going up at the start and after a hew hours he was winning with around 200 votes. But then Ocelot came back and he was winning with around 300 votes! Damn! Dedede started cutting though but Ocelot managed to hold on and he won with exactly 300 votes. Also I noticed something strange here, for me at least. Dedede had over 51.50% at USA which is where most votes coming from and he still  lost because Ocelot was winning in almost everywhere else. I think this is the first time in the contest that a character won in USA but lost eventually. Don't quote me on that though. And as always a close match is always good. I think one of the closest wire to wire matches too! As I said in a previous match a bad victory is still a victory. The prediction percentage was in the middle too. ## Tsunami's Analysis This set a new Character Battle record for closest wire-to-wire 24-hour match, though still trailing DKC2 \> Xenoblade in 2015 for the overall 24-hour record. The largest lead by either side was 328. The final margin of 300 is also \#25 on the list of closest 1v1 matches, though unlike the previous stat, that's based on where things stood at the end of the contest rather than at the time that it happened. At the time it would've been \#19. Dedede took the early lead and managed to get it out over 200 for a little while about 5 hours in, but Ocelot took the lead during the 10th hour and never relinquished it. This, like most results, was seen as a sign of Metal Gear declining, but honestly, Ocelot has always been like this. He debuted in the Villains Contest and couldn't even break 55% on Nemesis, but the very next round he got almost as much against Dr. Wily. Made his "regular" contest debut that summer and lost to Pac-Man. Ruined a bunch of Gurus in 2007 by beating Jill Valentine in what probably amounted to a neutral field re: the other two characters in the match (Cloud and Midgar Zolom), then ruined them *again* the following year by losing to Jill despite MGS4 being released in the interim. And then in 2010 he has a match very similar to this one, against Red, coming out on the losing end in what might've been one of the last gasps for "wait till the kiddies wake up" (12-hour match, midnight EST start, Ocelot led early but lost it at the end). This would seem to be a weaker character than he'd been going even with last, but it's long been my belief that each successive appearance in a Smash game strengthens a character. Captain Falcon was one of the original twelve and has become a decent midcarder despite hailing from a franchise that almost no one has played, and it seems likely that Kirby also gets more of his strength from being one of the original 12 than from his own games. Well, Dedede's now on his third appearance in Smash, dating back to Brawl. There's a chance he's not really that weak after all. It's tough to say since he didn't make the bracket in 2013 and wasn't in the Villains Contest in 2005 (not that he's really a villain in most of his appearances, but I'm sure he was eligible anyway), leaving him with only a single previous appearance shortly after Brawl came out in which he had to contend with another Brawl newcomer and two midcarders who were independent of Smash and of each other. At any rate, I think he deserves further consideration. The Smash roster is so big as of Ultimate that an entire 64-character contest could be held without a single non-Smash character. That's a little frightening. --- ## (2)Mega Man X vs (15)Isabelle 2018 _source: (2)Mega Man X vs (15)Isabelle 2018 (revid 83727)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Mega Man X put his hat into the ring for the division title in dominant fashion as division 7's first round came to a close, and it took us back to the 2002 days of the classic Mega Man matches where he beat the absolute piss out Ms. Pac-Man and Serious Sam. TUHDISDAY those are some of our biggest blowouts ever. And though we're well past the days where characters and games regularly break 90% in polls, what Mega Man X did here in this match is about the best one could ask for in modern times. To put this a different way, Link couldn't break 80% on Ganondorf this year. Yeah. Also I think this match might be decent evidence against the whole Smash thing, unless Isabelle would be trash enough without it to get 5-10% against Mega Man X here without it, which she could very well be. As for the division, obviously we know what happened now because if we only factor in round one I honestly think Luigi's performance looked the best. 81% on Isabelle or 73% on Geno just doesn't look as good as 77% on Edgeworth to me. But what do I know, I'm just a hindsight 50-50 guy :p ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result! Damn! Okay I know MMX is strong but a quadrupling? Isabelle is a newcomer yeah but seriously. We are talking about a heavy beatdown here. I wonder how MMX would do in 2013 if there wasn't a rally back then. Eh we will never know. What else to say? MMX is a beast! I wonder though why the first contest for MMX was  2008. Why not in any of the previous ones? I am not sure. Maybe there is something that I don't know. What else to say here? The biggest victory in the contest so far! Americans really love the MM series. Who knows why. ## Tsunami's Analysis There's only so much that a Smash appearance can do for you, though. Animal Crossing is part of the long list of franchises that Nintendo initially thought would be unpopular outside of Japan, then decided (or were told) otherwise. It's far from the most successful franchise of that class, however; if I'm not mistaken, *Pokémon* qualifies as something Nintendo was initially unsure about bringing to other markets, and of course we all know the story of how Fire Emblem only made it to the western world because the localization team for Super Smash Bros. Melee defied orders to remove Roy and Marth from the game. We still can't get a conclusive read on whether Mega Man X or Mega Man Classic is stronger. Up until this year, I thought it was X, but Classic looked good this year. It seems silly to be talking about that in a match where X broke 80%, but there aren't exactly a lot of other opportunities to do so. I guess maybe I could've saved that for Round 2 though. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (16)Albert Wesker 2018 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (16)Albert Wesker 2018 (revid 88240)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match seems oddly familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Hmm. Oh yeah! It was almost the same exact percentages and the same exact trends, too. It was freaking eerie, and it kind of showed how off Sephiroth would be for this entire contest. Division 8 in general was the oddball division, and I feel like Allen did this intentionally to make sure Sephiroth would end up in the Noble Nine's group post-contest instead of just totally snubbing him. With the way this bracket was set up, either legends were waiting for every division winner in a double elimination bracket. This meant one had to be left out, which ended up being Sephiroth. Message From Ultima_X on 10/05/2018   For archiving/post contest purposes only (you're free to just ban me if I share this one publicly before the contest ends, seriously, got no plans on spilling this before its due date): why was Sephiroth not counted as a legend despite winning a contest in the past? Did he just get the least amount of nominations? Did the other 8 get ordered by nomination number or was it kind of planned out intentionally? If this gets answered, am I free to share the info when the contest ends and I do my writeups or no? Message From GameFAQs on 10/05/2018   We only needed eight for the double elimination bracket and Sephiroth was the most obvious cut since Final Fantasy VII already has a more popular rep in Cloud. You can share this with anyone since it's not a big secret and I'm sure plenty of people figured it out on their own. So there you go. But Allen was smart about this and made Sephiroth's division hilariously weak to make sure he won it. Only two threats were possible, a rallied Draven or Seph being so weak now that Ryu would beat him with a Smash boost. Seph would end up really weak this contest compared to what he was, but he's not that weak. Not yet, anyway. I would love to see a Seph vs Kefka match just to see where Wesker actually stands. Wesker got such a raw deal in this contest. I'm sure Seph is stronger than Kefka, but both of them having identical matches with the guy is just weird. ## Safer777's Analysis Finally a N9'er! We haven't seen one of them in a long time! Anyways people were expecting for Seph to do around 70% and see how he did. RE has boosted I believe.  All RE characters did decent I say and 2 managed to advance too. Seph maybe the weakest N9'er yeah but come on he can take out almost all the cast in the main bracket even now. So okay performance I say. Man remember the term Clinkeroth? ## Tsunami's Analysis This should've been an early warning that Sephiroth was off his game this year. Yes, he broke 70%, but the popular line was that Resident Evil had vastly declined. Keep in mind that not only should Wesker be weaker now than he was when he faced Kefka, but Kefka should've been weaker when he faced Wesker than he is now. Yes, that *was* the first time Kefka had gotten his final boss sprite in a match pic, so it was probably a stronger Kefka than what we'd seen up to that point in contest history, but Kefka is definitely a character who seems to have boosted over time rather than declined. So unless a lot of our assumptions are incorrect, a stronger Wesker did worse against a weaker Kefka than this Wesker did against Sephiroth. Is anyone taking the Kefka \> Sephiroth upset? ...Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some people took that upset simply because Kefka has a reputation for strange results and beating his FF7 counterpart is about as strange as it gets. I don't think I would, even though I picked FF6 to upset FF7 in 2015. --- ## (8)Richter Belmont vs (9)Captain Falcon 2018 _source: (8)Richter Belmont vs (9)Captain Falcon 2018 (revid 83729)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Richter Belmont got a lot of nominations and a ton of hype to pull an upset in this match thanks to this trailer for Smash Bros Ultimate. I know it's a trailer for Simon, but Richter was just randomly thrown in there and it shocked everyone. He actually got a higher seed than Simon in this contest, if you can believe that. That trailer even got Alucard a ton of run. And here I am feeling like the odd one out, because fuck Richter Belmont. @KanzarisKelshen and I keep struggling to figure out why I hate games like The World Ends With You, Shadow of the Colossus, the Gwendolyn path of Odin Sphere, and so on. I've finally figured it out. If a character handles like fucking garbage, I'm done with them. It's why Richter Belmont can fuck right off. He's winning me back over in Smash but good hell is he ass in Castlevania. I recently got the platinum trophy in the Rondo of Blood + Symphony of the Night PS4 port, which means I had to suffer through this asshole's garbage-ass handling. Twice. I at least sort of understand why Simon handles like shit. It was the NES. You get a half pass for being on such a weird system. But Richter? Nope. In Rondo of Blood, my first goal was to unlock Maria Renard ASAP and just get the 100% as her, because Richter fucking sucks. That game was in no way designed for him to do well. At least Maria gets a double jump and weapons that can actually handle the game, bad as it is with you dying in 1-3 hits to literally anything and having such trash level design. Rondo is complete and utter sewage, but playing as Maria makes it sort of bearable with her handling ability. Then you play through Symphony of the Night and have a total blast with Alucard while Richter is sitting there letting Shaft do whatever he wants like the little punk that he is. Alucard has to bail his sorry ass out, twice, and it's no big deal. And my reward for clearing everything as Alucard? Having to beat the game with this useless garbage and dealing with all the same issues from Rondo of Blood. Hey Konami, bad handling, bad move inputs, and dying to anything in 1-3 hits wasn't fun the first time. Why the fuck would you not learn from your mistake? Richter's handling is absolute shit, his HP is shit, his move inputs are embarrassing, and his actual character is complete dick. At least Simon, for having similar handling problems, is modeled after Conan the Barbarian. Simon is a man's man. Richter is an idiot. Do not let this video fool you. These inputs are Virtua Fighter tier of bullshit and I am 100% convinced this guy modded his controller or hacked the game for simpler inputs or something. There is just no way. We can't just have a simple hadouken motion for dash, oh no. Gotta have us hit up first for some dumb reason. Can't have high jump be dragon punch, oh no. Gotta hit down then up then jump. Dumb. He is fun in Smash and is winning me over a little, don't get me wrong, but fuck 'em. He deserved to get his ass whooped. Shout out to Captain Falcon for lapping this fucking clown. What a well deserved 60-40 from one of the biggest Smash boost characters ever. I would love to know how many people knew who this dude was before Smash 64. I sure as hell didn't know him. Didn't know Ness or Samus either, let alone Falcon. I would bet at least 95% of his strength comes from Smash Bros alone, yet here is he going 60-40 on a fool. Good show bro. Sucks you had to deal with Sephiroth round 2, because I'm extra bullish on the guy right now with how easily he can cheese the stupid Dr. Wily spirit battle in Ultimate. You know who sucks ass in that fight? Richter Belmont. Know who can cheese it and win without thinking? CAPTAIN MOTHER FUCKING FALCON, THAT'S WHO. Yet another reason why this match was JUSTICE. ## Safer777's Analysis Richter is in Smash! But Falcon is in Smash too so SFF here! If you are in Smash you are a Nintendo character! Or something! Listen even I know the Falcon Punch thing now. Now way he would have lost. Not from Richter at least. He got a higher seed than Falcon too strangely enough. So a win above 60% is pretty good for Falcon. Punch them Falcon! Just punch them! What else to say? ## Tsunami's Analysis AKA the point where the concept of "Smash Boost" eradicated all ability to think rationally. People were calling for the potential upset here because of Richter's appearance in a trailer, noting that he'd managed a higher seed than Simon despite merely being his Echo Fighter. Also there was something about a Castlevania series on Netflix. Based on Alucard's performance, and maybe even the Belmonts', the idea that the series caused a boost might have been valid. But "Smash Boost" doesn't help when you're up against a fellow Smasher, and it *certainly* doesn't help when you're up against someone who's been in *more* Smash Bros. games than you. As I stated just three write-ups ago, Captain Falcon is a midcarder entirely based off of being one of the original twelve. Quick, name the only contest other than Rivalry Rumble (where the nature of the contest *forced* Captain Falcon to bring someone else along) to feature a representative of the F-Zero franchise other than Captain Falcon himself? It's Game of the Decade. F-Zero GX was a 12-seed, losing in Round 1 to Dragon Age: Origins. This result was extremely obvious and all the talk of an upset was silly. Nice showing by Richter, though. --- ## (5)Amaterasu vs (12)Draven 2018 _source: (5)Amaterasu vs (12)Draven 2018 (revid 83778)_ ## Ulti's Analysis For the sake of this writeup, I'm only historically looking at 1v1 results. If someone else wants to look up 4ways or 3ways, have fun. In our very first contest, the Summer 2002 Contest, Ms. Pac-Man only scored 5257 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Summer 2003 Contest, something called AiAi scored 8802 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Spring 2004 Contest, our first games contest, Adventure only scored 4686 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Summer 2004 Contest, Tanner only scored 4492 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the villains contest, Giygas only scored 11966 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Summer 2005 Contest, Yuri Hyuga only scored 10813 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the series contest, Madden NFL only scored 9186 in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Summer 2006 Contest, Carmen Sandiego only scored 16578 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Fall 2010 Contest, Falco only scored 10419 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Rivalry Rumble, Arthas and Illidan only scored 4598 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest, and good, because fuck Blizzard. They are indefensible trash: In the Fall 2015 Contest, Hearthstone only scored 3604 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest, and good, because Hearthstone is by far the worst video game ever made: That brings us to this match, but before we do, take a deep dive into those polls. The winners, in order: Mega Man, Link, a Zelda game, Solid Snake, Ganondorf, Samus, the Mario series, Zelda, Mario, Link + Ganon, and a Zelda game. Snake is the only odd one out, and his Tanner match was pretty blatant SFF on top of Snake himself bending the knee to Nintendo. Hold that thought. Everyone knows the story of the 2013 contest by now. Draven escaped round one with a late rally, caught fire in round 2, and then it was a shitstorm. We don't need to revisit how embarrassing Board 8 and the League subreddit both acted, though anyone on Board 8 who acts like B8 wasn't just as bad as them is being intellectually dishonest. You all acted like garbage. Anyway Draven won the contest, which we all know by now. People knew Draven would be weaker this time, but no one saw this insanity coming. Amaterasu scored something like the first 70 votes of the poll, and before long people realized Draven was about to pay, big time, for what he did in 2013. The crazy thing is Amaterasu never stopped going up and never lost percentage. There would be no rallies. There would be no miracles. Just Amaterasu of all characters scoring the biggest blowout of the contest. By pure votes one on one, Draven and his 3439 votes were the lowest we've ever seen in a 1v1 poll. Ever. Only the failure of Blizzard even comes close, but here's the thing. Amaterasu did this. Can you imagine if Draven was up against a universally loved character or game instead of a mediocre contest entrant like Amaterasu? How many votes does Draven get here against Zelda, Mega Man, Solid Snake, or Chrono Trigger? 1500? Maybe 2000? It can't actually be overstated how nuts this blowout was, and it shouldn't be a footnote in contest history just because it happened during the dead era on our web site. I've alluded to this match several times in the PCA so far, but rallybait characters got destroyed in this contest and Draven himself ate the biggest blowout of them all. It's a fitting punishment for 2013, and I say this as someone who supports rallies. There was one more rallybait character to get rid of, but this match showed us we had nothing to worry about. D.Va wasn't going to pull off a damn thing this year. Not in this environment. It's also really hilarious to see Amaterasu up there with the likes of Nintendo elite in our record books. It shows just how badly people wanted Draven to get his ass whipped. Hell before this match, only Mega Man X had broken 80% in a poll. Amaterasu beat that by 8%. That's just nuts. It leads to the obvious question: Can a rally ever happen again on our site? I think so, but this just wasn't the year for it. Simple as that. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result. What to say? If Draven could get a rally he would win. But if not he would lose. But back in 2013 he was losing to Jak and Chie without a rally.  And these 2 are really weak anyways! And 5 years have passed since then and LOL isn't as big as it used to be. So Draven would be weaker. And he didn't get a rally of course. But I don't think anybody expected this! One of the biggest wins of all times and Amaterasu did it? Damn! Most people were ecstatic to see Draven doing that badly. Me not so. Like it or not he was the Champion! And the board was butthurt back then it was fun to see all the memes and the discussions and the mayhem. Hey it was exciting! Of course most didn't liked that thing and I get it. But then again another champion lost in the  1st round too. I am reffering to L-Block of course too. Still no matter what this prooved that no rallies were in Round 1. Rallies make things exciting. Yeah it is my opinion and all that. But man! I think Draven is the weakest character in the bracket! So the strongest character in the previous contest goes to be the weakest in the next one! Now that is a reversal! Also imagine if a strong character was her instead of Amaterasu. We could see more than 90%! Someone did the math and Link would score like 98%! Damn! Also I believe this is the lowest a character/game has ever scored in 1 VS 1 match! If you check some previous statistics as Ulti posted them you will see that once upon the time even the worse losers were scoring a lot more. Times have changed. Amazing win for Ammy of course. To tell the truth I don't want to have Draven again in a contest. Think about that. 2 contests, in 1 he came first, in 1 he came last! Perfect to retire that character! ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: I won't get into the 2013 Draven rally but it was the worst example of rallying we have seen from a very toxic place, and I am not staunchly anti-rallying. So this match was pure catharsis. It was always going to be a beatdown, even if the League of Legends subreddit hadn't banned rallies it isn't what it was and the joke wouldn't work twice. For it to be this strong however, was stunning. It also built over time which was surprising as well, it wasn't just diehards anti-voting. **What could this mean?**: Draven is the only character in this bracket to truly have a claim at being Tanner level. This really hammers home how much that rally hijacked the last contest, now let's never see him again. Good show for Ammy too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Remember what I said about poor first-place Oracles? Yeah, nobody had Amaterasu winning *this* handily. This is somewhere between a septupling and an octupling; the highest anyone predicted was merely between a quadrupling and a quintupling. Arti took first place with a prediction of 82.28% and only three other Oracles had Ammy breaking 80%. I was one of them, which honestly surprises me because I usually have a mental block about predicting huge blowouts. This place was AntiBlowoutFAQs for a while in the early 2010s, and I had some horrendous Oracle predictions on the biggest blowouts of 2015 because I refused to go much higher than the low eighties even on obvious blowouts like Ocarina of Time vs. Hearthstone. I mean, granted, "low eighties" is exactly what I *did* pick here--82% even--but it worked because Oracle consensus was in the low seventies. Interestingly enough, exactly as many Oracles picked Ammy to fail to break 60% as picked her to break 80%, but three of the four that had her under 60% had Draven winning outright. Also, I feel it should be mentioned again that in 2013, Draven was legitimately the Guru favorite in his Round 1 match. 64.08% picked him to beat Jak and Chie, though only 2.04% picked him to beat Ryu and Mega Man X the following round. That's how weak his opening draw was. I talked about this during the Aloy-D. Va match. Allen does this every time, and he'll continue to do it. I'd give a hypothetical, but given how infrequent contests are, there is a 0.00% chance that anything already released would have the rally potential. Unless it's something Pokémon-related, because that's always a possibility. We had Mudkip and Bidoof in 2007 and Missingno in 2010. I could totally get behind a Mimikyu rally. Of course, given how infrequent contests are, by the time CBXI rolls around we'll probably be rallying behind a Gen IX Pokémon. There was also something that went around the board for a bit in later rounds called the "Lineal Noble Nine." Basically, it was a hypothetical scenario where beating a member of the Noble Nine would make a character a member of the Noble Nine, but rather than expanding, the defeated member would lose their status. It doesn't take into account past results, so it's not like that "defeating one is defeating all of them" argument. At the start of the Legends Bracket, it looked as though there could be as many as eight original Noble Niners in the Lineal Noble Nine, and Amaterasu was the one non-original Noble Niner whose spot in the Lineal Noble Nine was safe. As it turned out, there were only five original Noble Niners thanks to some weird upsets--up from the four that were there entering the Legends Bracket. The idea of it consisting of eight actual Noble Niners and Amaterasu was well received. She's beloved here. Combine that fact with how hated Draven is for hijacking the 2013 Contest, and it added up to a huge blowout. I hinted at this in my L-Block write-up, but it seems highly likely that whenever Character Battle XI comes around, it will likely mark the first time that a former contest champion misses the field entirely. I can't imagine that he'll get any nominations from the regulars, and since we only get a contest every other year and 2020 is reserved for a Game of the Decade contest, we probably won't see CBXI until 2022, at which point Draven's run will be nine years old and few trolls would feel the need to try nominating him again. Draven's vote total of 3439 is the lowest we've ever seen in a 1v1 contest. Vote totals may have been down, but that number is actually inflated thanks to the registered voter bonus; his raw total is only 2287. Is that the lowest ever? It is not! Damn, was 2013 filled with awful fodder. And that's just the ones that fell short of Draven's raw total; far more fell short of his adjusted total, including at least one character that might actually be worth something (though not above the fodder line) when not eating hero \> villain SFF. I am a huge Star Fox fan and this makes me sad. Wolf wasn't the only one to get screwed over in this fashion in 2013, but the third character in Leon Kennedy-Albert Wesker was weak enough that Wesker managed to get second place anyway. Wolf, on the other hand, potentially screws Fox out of a victory. It's tough to say for certain but Blue didn't make it to 50% and it's unlikely that Wolf was eating much of Fox's Smash support. That 7.75% is probably about 90% SF64 fans, and if you give even 75% of that 90% to Fox, you get...well, okay, you still get Fox only at 49.32%. So Fox really does need almost all of Wolf's votes to pull off this win. Wolf's only appearance other than this was in Rivalry Rumble, where he and Fox got to beat up on one of the contest's many "non-rivalries" in Round 1 (Fox would probably be an underdog against Yuna 1v1 at the time, though not now, but Wolf easily outclasses Seymour and the rivalry was stronger) before being unfortunately fed to Ryu and Ken. I can't even advocate for giving him a chance to actually prove his strength, though, because the Star Fox series is completely irrelevant now and he'd just be "Random Smash Character \#37.25964". We can't completely forget about 2017's Years Contest, because sub-3439 wasn't all that rare and even sub-2287 was somewhat common. **** **** There were only 35 matches in that contest, so this is fully 20% of them. Allen really achieved his goal of a rally-proof contest with that one, didn't he? I'd ask for a moratorium on gimmick contests, but we have so few contests as it is and I'd still prefer gimmick contests over no contests. --- ## (4)Lara Croft vs (13)Metal Man 2018 _source: (4)Lara Croft vs (13)Metal Man 2018 (revid 88241)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Hopefully HaRRicH and I can make up one day, because his topics and his rallies are always super fun. The cause celebre this year was for Metal Man, which was pretty hilarious because who knows if some random robot master from 1988 (christ I'm old, I remember when Mega Man 2 came out) would even be eligible. Turns out he was! This match was never intended to actually be a match, it was just a nod from Allen to Board 8 for a job well done over the years. None of us had any delusions of Metal Man actually winning this match, and it's hard to really look at what Lara did here as anything impressive. Congrats, you got 68% on a mid boss that no one actually cares about, who is so awful that he's weak against his own weapon. I'm convinced 90% of the people who voted for Metal Man in this match did so because Mega Man in Smash Bros uses the metal blades as one of the B moves. The other 10% probably voted for him because of how hilariously absurd the metal blades actually are in Mega Man 2. You could do an ESPN 30 For 30 about just how much they utterly break the game. I do know that no one actually gives a crap about Lara Croft anymore. She won this match by default. It's as simple as that. Her glory years were back in the 90s and with Square now publishing the Tomb Raider games, the brand is radioactive. One of the only things worse would be "Blizzard" or "Electronic Arts" on the box. We would see proof of this in round two soon enough. ## Safer777's Analysis For people that know their Megaman games Metal Man is an iconic enemy. For the rest of us he is just an enemy that has appeared in some MM game. Also Lara was a 1 seed in the very first contest! And even though she is an icon and she is from back then when we were playing games as a site she never did good. But no way she would lose against a random robot master! So she won with more than a doubling. Still seeing icons getting wins is always nice. Also I don't understand why Lara isn't that popular now. I mean the new Trilogy did really well. The first game of the new trilogy called just Tomb Raider has sold more than 11.000.000 copies! How many games can say that they have sold that well? The 2nd called Rise Of The Tomb Raider sold more than 7.000.000! Seriously! I have played these 2 and I can confirm there are good games. So why isn't she more famous or why most people don't like her I don't get it. And it is not that there are other more popular female heroes in video games too. And you know some games that people here really like? They have sold like less than 1.000.000! And don't tell me sales don't mean much. Sales mean everything. A game sells well and we have sequels and spin-offs. And that is. I guess this is why people say that gamers are sexist or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh, hey, speaking of "Random (insert game here) Character \#3.14159", have a Robot Master from Mega Man 2. I briefly entertained the idea that an attempt at a Draven rally might actually let Metal Man pull this upset, because the types of trolls that would be attracted to this would pick the most anti-establishment choices possible and Lara Croft isn't strong enough to weather that storm. Turns out, Lara's either not as weak as I thought, or nominating random Mega Man characters that don't recur across the entire series was just *that* stupid an idea. I prefer to think it's the latter. X's presence in contests has conclusively proven that "Mega Man" refers only to the classic incarnation. Why have we not tried to put other Mega Men into contests? I mean, heck, if you go back far enough Mega Man Legends *has* seen representation in these contests. ...Oh, right. Literally every other member of the Noble Nine had a female member of their franchise seeded higher than this. Marle was a 7-seed. Amy Rose was a *6. **Amy Rose!*** And Roll was only an 8-seed, and probably only got that because people wanted to get every Noble Niner's best female co-star into the contest. (Just quietly ignore the fact that with Brawl not out yet, no one on the female half of the bracket had actually been in the same game as Solid Snake as of that time. The Boss is easily the strongest female Metal Gear Solid character, and MGS3 was the most recent release in the franchise at the time. This was a far superior option to putting Meryl or Sniper Wolf or someone into the contest.) If we ever have another half-male, half-female bracket, it should be mixed up rather than split, so that every Round 1 match is male vs. female. Do it evenly, though, so that stronger female characters are against weaker male characters and vice versa. Zelda probably gets a 1-seed and gets to school some 16-seeded male. Link probably gets to feast on Hat Kid in Round 1, which will confuse people who still don't realize Hat Kid's a girl. --- ## (3)Ryu vs (14)Lloyd Irving 2018 _source: (3)Ryu vs (14)Lloyd Irving 2018 (revid 83735)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Not gonna lie, I completely forgot Lloyd had even made this bracket until I was actually doing the PCA this year. That's how forgettable some of these round one matches are, and it's sad because Tales of Symphonia basically took this site over for a few months back in the day. Can you believe that was 15 years ago, by the way? God I'm old. That was one of the 10 games I picked after winning Spring 2004. I can't remember them all offhand, but I remember that one game for HaRRicH, a game for Aeon Azuran, Tales of Symphonia, and Chrono Cross. Tales by itself made the whole thing worth it. I love that style of game where you're actually a part of the action instead of just "press attack x47, cure, cast a spell for fun, repeat". As for Ryu, he is my most hated character in all of Street Fighter but he's winning me over due to -- surprise surprise -- Smash Bros. He finally made it into a game where he doesn't shotospam for 10 minutes at a time, and it's a huge breath of fresh air. The guy is damn satisfying to use, and you feel the weight of his man mode kicks on people. Heaven help you if he lands a perfect shoryuken, too. I feel like this is what he's supposed to be in Street Fighter but he just falls flat when he plays identically in every single game. He even sucks in MvC3 and the other crossover games. But in Smash he really works. Dunno why. But yeah this match was an expected blowout and told us nothing about whether or not Ryu could beat Sephiroth. Moving on. ## Safer777's Analysis Well Ruy is the most popular fighting game character here. He is good enough in these things. He has always in all 10 contests managed to reach at least the 2nd round. As for Lloyd he is in one of the Tales games. And Tales games don't do well here. So of course Ryu won easily. He almost reached 70% too. So what else to say. Supposedly Ruy has a chance to even beat Sephiroth now but we will see about that. Ryu is an icon. Icons deserve to win matches! Oh and also he is in Smash? Of course he is in there.  Also people told me that Ryu is a non NN'er that has faced the most different NN'ers too! He always loses to them of course but this prooves what a fighter he is. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh hey, Tales doing Tales things again. I am pleased that Tales didn't get to fodder up this contest too much. I am also pleased that Ryu got a chance to do Ryu things. He was consistently one of the strongest non-Noble Niners in the earliest days of the contests, though he hasn't quite been the same since his loss to Bowser in 2005. After the Lineal Noble Nine had first been proposed, I made a thought experiment as to what if the then-arbitrary cutoff for the elite tier had been placed at something other than 9 (which ultimately ended up being the perfect number, but that's with hindsight; the Noble Nine had been crowned long before 2006 proved that Nine was the correct number, no more and no less). Ryu ended up taking back his own spot *twice*, once when he avenged his 2005 loss to Bowser in round 1 in 2007 and once when he advanced in second place behind Auron in Round 2 in 2007, only for Cloud to SFF Auron the next round and allow Ryu to advance in second place again. Someone else commented that this was a very Ryu thing to do. There is one Noble Niner who owns a spot in the Lineal Nine that they previously owned, but it's not their original spot and they didn't take it directly from the character they lost it to. After losing his original spot to Vincent in 2007, Crono took Sonic's former spot by defeating L-Block in 2008. After losing that spot to Missingno in 2010, the spot changed hands three times in as many rounds in 2013, ultimately landing with Mega Man (who still hadn't recovered from losing to WCC in 2008), who Crono beat this year (though not before taking Mega Man's *original* spot from Bowser in Round 1 of Legends only to give it to Cloud in Round 2.) --- ## (6)Commander Shepard vs (11)King K. Rool 2018 _source: (6)Commander Shepard vs (11)King K. Rool 2018 (revid 83740)_ ## Ulti's Analysis There are some Mass Effect series spoilers in this writeup. You were warned. I feel like this match would have been a lot more shocking and a lot more interesting had we not literally just watched the exact same match happen with Dedede vs Ocelot two days prior. Seriously, go open this match and Dedede vs Ocelot on the gamefaqscontests updater charts in separate tabs. It's the exact same match. Just replace Dedede with King K. Rool for the plucky Nintendo underdog slot fueled by Smash hype and Ocelot with Shepard as the non-Nintendo favorite who doubles as an anti-vote magnet. King Crue-- errrrrrr, "King K. Rool" (what a freaking stupid name) opened the match with a shocking but tiny early lead, just like Dedede. He got it up to 150 votes, then Shepard fought back overnight just like Ocelot did. Around 5 in the morning, just like last time, we got answer. It would have been in doubt had we not seen this just happen, but we all knew Shep was taking the morning vote and winning. He has more innate strength to draw from than Ocelot and one would think Rool is weaker than Dedede. Not exactly debatable here, though it's quite funny that the villain in Donkey Kong games now has his own personal contest choke under his belt. Had he pulled off this upset it would have been such a randomly awesome result. That said, this match was 100% a referendum on just how badly Electronic Arts fucked up the Mass Effect series and how much gamers loathe that brand now. People like Shepard, but he has the sins of EA crawling on his back and paid for it big time in this poll. Not that he was going to beat Ryu anyway, but needing a morning vote boost to beat Nintendo's 87th tier is such an embarrassment given where the character used to be. We used to joke about how he was actually the best character in that Link/Draven scrap. Now we had people actively rooting for him to lose to a fat alligator with predictable super armor, in a match where almost 100% of the Rool voters were Smash fans or Mass Effect haters. No one voted for Rool because they actually like him from the DK games. I actually disagree with the anti-Mass Effect crybabies and largely think they're a bunch of spoiled idiots who never should have been catered to in the first place, and EA changing the ending of Mass Effect 3 was a mistake. You don't deal with a spoiled POS by catering to it, be it a spoiled SJW moron, a spoiled alt right moron, an incel, a dog, or anything else. In any dog training manual not written by a positive-only dipshit, you learn "let it cry". Dogs will whine to get what they want. You train them by ignoring them when this happens, and because the types of gamers who whined over the Mass Effect 3 ending are on about the same intelligence level as a dog -- that is, the level of a 2 year old toddler -- they should have been trained in the exact same way. Ignore it until it shuts up. Whiny gamers are not people to cater to. Ever. That's how the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy got worse after EA caved, and it directly led to all of the entitled trash surrounding Andromeda. A bunch of whiny trolls and idiots killed off a fine series, and now we're sitting here watching Commander Shepard struggle to beat a reptile no one cares about in a contest. How did we get here? Let's back up a bit. I have a platinum trophy for all four Mass Effect games, so I'm more qualified than probably 95% of people who have played those games to explain why people voted here the way they did. Back in 2007, Mass Effect dropped. It was a sci-fi adventure that most people couldn't make sense of unless they had played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It was fun, but it was raw. It was a glitchy Mess, but it gave us some new characters we could sink our teeth into, some great storytelling, and some amazing plot twists. We were shocked that Seth Green was a voice. We were shocked at how damn cool Garrus and Tali and Wrex were. The whole thing was an incredible, albeit flawed. And then this happens. Oh. Okay. Well, fuck. Then whatever feelings that scene drew up in all of us were there for all of Mass Effect 2, and really that's where this all went wrong. Mass Effect 2 was too good, which made it impossible for 3 to satisfy people. \*I\* was happy with it because I'm not an entitled punk, but I want to point out that 99.9% of that game is on 2's level. Mass Effect 3 is a fantastic game, and even if I agreed with people on the ending it shouldn't ruin how good that game actually was. It's like letting a slightly premature ejaculation ruin a good night of sex leading up to it for you. It's like hey moron, you still got a girl to have sex with you. Shut the hell up and enjoy it. As a random example, these two scenes are legendary for me. Am I supposed to let a weird ending ruin all that? I admit that we're better off not knowing the motivations of a Lovecraft villain, but am I supposed to let that one ending scene ruin an entire series? Fuck no. "They have earned the right to try." Nothing beats bringing Javik on every mission. That guy is such a fucking savage. And EA never, ever, ever should have caved. It caused the nonsense with Andromeda that killed the series, unless some other developer gets to make it I suppose. I feel like my review does a decent enough job of defending the game: Thanks, trolls. No more Mass Effect because you liked the second game too much. And here we are. Here the bleep we are. With Shepard struggling with whatever the King is supposed to be. I get Smash hype and all, but jeez. Three final points. I am better at Mass Effect 3 multiplayer than you: To this day I am the \#1 Geth Trooper Soldier in the world in that game. I could log on right now and within an hour have people asking me for carries in platinum. Second, Shepard was indoctrinated. Do not @ me. Last and most important, FemShep \> a comedy voice actor's trashy acting job. People who compare Mark Meer to Jennifer Hale and try pretending Hale is worse are probably the same people who need to be told not to eat Tide Pods. They are proof that opinions can be wrong. Renegade FemShep \> whatever garbage you like. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result. Need to say more? And people were saying that Shepard is the strongest western character too! But after Garrus barely beat Ramza people got worried. Plus Rool is in Smash. So yeah. But Shepard should be much stronger right? Yeah sure! In fact Rool was winning for a while at the start! Man Smash does wonders. Eventually Shepard managed to recover and won with no problems in a close match. So why this happened? Mass Effect Andromeda came out recently and man this game had so much negativity when it came out it is frightening. I played it out recently with the patches and it was good. But when it first came out? Yeah sure. It was so bad that EA cancelled the series! Not officialy at least but yup. And Shepard wasn't in the game but since he is the face of the ME series he of course have suffered. At least he managed to win I guess. And without Smash boost for Rool he would have win even easier. Still close matches are always good especially ones where there are some lead changes like this one. ME games are amazing. I have played all 4 of them and ME 3 was the only multiplayer game I have ever played. I met some people there and we were playing and having so much fun! Then ME Andromeda came and everything went down. Still seeing Shepard suffer because of this is sad. Remember when he beat Aeris easily? Yeah. ## Tsunami's Analysis Remember what I said two matches ago about another gender-equal bracket? Yeah, forget that I even mentioned it. Thanks to characters so customizable that they don't even have a canon gender, we can never have that particular gimmick ever again. K. Rool is another Nintendo villain that failed to make the Villains Contest. Granted there were only 32 slots, but we had representatives from Grand Theft Auto in there. I mean, technically doesn't that series have a [villain protagonist](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist)/[hero antagonist](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroAntagonist)? Nintendo was boosting all over the place, though, and Mass Effect is a decaying franchise, so this was a decent upset pick. K. Rool led for nearly 7.5 hours, too, before ultimately fading away. --- ## (7)Ellie vs (10)KOS-MOS 2018 _source: (7)Ellie vs (10)KOS-MOS 2018 (revid 85396)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I thought Ellie could win this match, because The Last of Us is popular and Xenosaga hasn't mattered in ages. I have never, ever been more happy to get a random round one match wrong. Because who doesn't love a good melty? Ellie is currently competing in Gamefaq's character tournament. Posted by u/TheStupidRaptor "There is this big character tournament going on over at Gamefaqs, and Ellie was popular enough to make it in. If anyone is already aware of this, then you would know that Joel made it in as well, but he lost to Ike from Fire Emblem in the first round. Pretty unfortunate. But it's Ellie's turn now; so if anyone is interested, you can go to their main page and vote for her. Especially since Ellie is up against Kosmos, and Kosmos is one of the worst, dullest characters ever. How she ended up in a best characters tournament I will never know..... Not that anyone here even knows who she is; the game she's from is extremely obscure and niche after all. Come on, you don't want the amazing, award winning character Ellie to lose to a nobody like Kosmos do you? Edit: Are you fucking kidding me? Ellie lost to Kosmos?! I guess it's true then, Gamefaqs really is ruled by weeaboos who are biased to Japan, RPGs. and boobs. They just lost any credibility they had. Their "tournament" might as well end now." "Are you kidding? The poll just started less than an hour ago. Do you really think that Ellie, an award winning character from a highly successful critically acclaimed game that redefined the survival horror genre, would lose to a bland emotionless cardboard cutout of a character like Kosmos from a obscure forgotten game that made zero impact on the gaming industry? Hell no, Ellie is going to win. I guess all the biased weeaboos got to the poll first. Votes like this fluctuate constantly. Besides, Shulk lost to Sub-Zero. If Shulk, one of the best protagonists to any game ever, LOST, then Kosmos has zero chance of winning. Just you wait, it'll correct itself soon." "What about YOUR and the entire fandom's hatred of Fiora? Everything you all do to her is just uncalled for. And you all cover it up with the whole "we must circle to make Melia our mary sue" agenda. You should be righting the faults in yourself before you call others out for the same exact thing. If you all won't stop hating fiora, why should I stop hating Kosmos? Don't tell me what's unhealthy. ?????? Last time I checked, Mary Magdalene was a real person who died like 2,000 years ago, and not some fantasy game character. I thought Kosmos was a robot, now you're telling me she's reincarnated? I don't even know why I'm talking to you anymore if you're just going to make shit up. And what do you even care? I thought everyone on the internet was an atheist except me." "You're so full of shit. Kosmos in no way overshadows any of the blades that originated in this game. Last time I saw a blade that wasnt Pyra or Mytha on the internet was a rule34 one. You saw porn of Blades. So? I don't know what you're getting at here. (in no particular order) Fiora, Elma, Sharla, Vanea, Pyra, Poppi, Meyneth, Lora, Melia, Celica, Mythra, Hope, Newt, Perun, Morag, Mia, Lin, Haze, Praxis, Kasandra, Alexa, Brighid, Nia, Theory, Irina, Tyrea, Dahlia, Crossette, Pandoria, Oka. There; 30 waifus from Xenoblade Chronicles, and they all hold a million candles to the dumpster fire that is Kosmos. Is your taste fixed yet?" "Stop pretending you're the good guy here; I see through all your empty lies." "Clearly you would need to hear it even more if you think a girl as generic looking and devoid of personality as Kosmos is 'bae'." "Blimey. All of the useless "I got Kosmos" posts get like 50 upvotes each. But when I start an actual discussion on the lack of worth these posts have and how they're somehow allowed despite being against the rules, I get downvoted? .................. Does this mean the subreddit's rules mean NOTHING anymore? Are we allowed to upload all the lets plays, porn, and unmarked spoilers we want now too? And even posts that have absolutely nothing to do with Xenoblade Chronicles too? Because I've seen several posts here a few times that had nothing to do with the game. No one's even allowed to question why rules are being broken? Yeesh; how obnoxious does a group have to be for all this backwards nonsense to happen?" "You are completely blowing things out of proportion. My hatred of Kosmos is irrelevant here. The whole "I got Kosmos" thing is annoying and against the rules regardless. If any other character happened to be the rarest Blade that people bragged about getting, example.......... Vale or....... Dahlia, or Dagas, it doesn't matter who. Seeing these meaningless posts be made over and over is annoying in it of itself. And as for the quote unquote "hate campaign"; you're exaggerating. What happened during gamefaq's tournament does not even come close to being able to be called a "hate campaign". All I did was encourage people on The Last Of Us boards to vote for Ellie because she's a good character and deserved to win far more than Kosmos. I'm sure many other users did the same thing for other characters; there's nothing wrong with that. I only got confused when Kosmos was winning even though the odds were completely against her. I asked why; and it was only then I realized it was because gamefaqs as a whole is unfairly biased to RPG's, games made in Japan, Nintendo games, games that are "old, from their childhood", and they favor "girls with boobs" over actual characters with personality. I doubt 90% of the people that voted for her even heard of Xenosaga before, they just voted for the "weeb" option. That coupled with Shulk losing even though he had so much going for him cemented how hypocritical and contrarian gamefaqs truly is and how they lack any credibility. All the people on this subreddit that said gamefaqs is not a good website, they're totally right. If that all looks like a "hate campaign" to you, and that "I'm only pointing this annoying phenomenon out because I hate Kosmos", you have your head way too far up your ass. Maybe YOU'RE the one launching a "hate campaign" against ME. Ever thought of that?" "Because everyone here is nostalgia blind and can't let go of the fact that their game is dead like a canceled cartoon and has zero hope of ever getting rereleases or sequels. So they made up the "same IP as Xenoblade Chronicles" lie as a way for them to pretend that Xenogears and Xenosaga are still relevant. I get what you're saying. Xenoblade Chronicles is much more impactful when it is its own thing, and not chained down by some games from the distant past that the general public has forgotten about (and probably never knew about in the first place)." "A brand new Nintendo IP in 2010 that unfortunately was not released in the US, but was the subject of a fan campaign of many people begging and trying their hardest to get this game available in the US; for the sole reason that it is just a high quality, memorable game that deserved recognition. It became a highly sought after Wii game as a result, and even got sequels that were just as good and continued it's legacy." Isn't that inspiring? So when people say people only play Xenoblade Chronicles because 'it's the exact same IP as Xenogears and Xenosaga' when one is a Nintendo IP and the other two are not............. that kind of ruins the whole impact Xenoblade Chronicles had, you know?" " I just finished Torna The Golden Country. After trying to go back to the main game, I noticed a new section in the events theater; it was an image gallery. I was pleasantly surprised at seeing it, but then disappointed that there were only 5 pictures; there should've been like 30 or something. Anyway, despite the criminally small amount, I did enjoy what I saw....................... until the last one, which was of Kosmos and Telos; and it was a high quality image to, while the others looked more like concept art. I.............. WHYYYYY?!! This was the very last update, we'll probably never get more than 5 images; so each image slot was valuable. A grand shot of some landscapes, or a picture of all the villains together, lots of great things could've been put there. But, they, WASTED it on these two worthless side characters! And of all the side characters they could've picked, why them? Praxis and Theory would've made a great one, or Wulfric, maybe one with a bunch of nopon npc's, or maybe even a grand picture of ALL the rare Blades together, that would've been so cool. If they had to have a picture of cameo characters, they should've done one of Shulk Fiora and Elma, since they're far more relevant and developed, and a good reward for those who've stuck with Xenoblade chronicles since the start. But............. (sigh) like..... Kosmos is extremely rare and unlikely to be obtained early on, and Telos literally can't be obtained until after you beat the game; so any player would have to be really dedicated to this game, even to the point of continuing to play after the main story is done, to even know about these two. They're not the most well known of the game's side characters, nor would they ever convince anyone to buy this game. But they reserve one of the very limited spaces in the art gallery JUST for them, they put far more effort into their picture than all the others, and they intentionally put it at the bottom, likely being the last one the player sees and what they'll get out of it; it's as if they're very proud of giving Kosmos and Telos special treatment over everyone else. Kosmos................. KOOOOOOOOSMOOOOOOOOS!!! I am so fucking sick of seeing her all the time on Xenoblade Chronicles fansites, getting special treatment over the other side characters, and the fandom treating her as if she's part of the main cast. Monolith Soft had their chance to make Kosmos a good character, and they failed. They failed because they relied on people already knowing who she is and didn't think they'd have to try with her personality. Did they honestly expect everyone who bought Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for Switch, a game they intended to bring a lot of newcomers in, would have played an old game on PS2 that was never rereleased in any form? Big mistake if you ask me. This image is like one last middle finger finger to me. It's like "Oh, you beat Torna The Golden Country, and all Xenoblade chronicles games before it. Do you expect some reward for your loyalty and dedication? Well SCREW YOU! You have to have played Xenosaga in order to understand anything. Oh? You think you don't need to? That the two games are not canon to eachother? HATER! LIAR! You don't know what you're talking about! And since we will never rerelease it, that means you're SOL. You will NEVER be a true Xenoblade Chronicles fan!" And the fandom's perception of it isn't much different; pisses me off so much. Is............ is this the future of Xenoblade Chronicles? Endless Xenosaga pandering to the vocal minority of annoying fans who refuse to let go of a dead game? Xenosaga is not a popular game; the attention it gets on Xenoblade chronicles sites is disproportionate to how popular it actually is; why won't Monolith Soft realize this? All this does is alienate those who are unfamiliar and cause rifts in the fanbase. (sigh) Why?" Don't do drugs, kids. The literal director of these games has talked about Xenosaga and Xenoblade being the same IP, but hey StupidRaptor here is going to educate all of us. When guys like me talk about being a real man and such, just read some posts from TheStupidRaptor, PrestonStarry, Whirlybird, maplejet, LMS, Tsunami the XVIIVIXVI XVIXI ssj3gokux1331x DARK, and so on. I'm not the bad guy here. I'm trying to protect you from turning into guys like that before it's too late and you end up being nothing more than fuel for people who make fun of incels. None of whom have celibacy that's "involuntary", just for the record. Trust me if I hate you, I'll happily let you act like this and laugh during your entire downward spiral. I'm trying to help you. There are entire subreddits dedicated to laughing at incels. Go read them, go learn the behavior and the tendencies, and don't ever act like one. It's how you end up creeping girls out and turning to whining about KOS-MOS before becoming a Board 8 meme for life. TheStupidRaptor is one or two meltdowns away from his dad making a post online about having to kick his son out of the house for being a useless family parasite. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if this dad's son is TheStupidRaptor: And this was only the round one meltdown. There was another one coming, and it made entertaining the weakest fourpack of the entire contest. And trust me Raptor, I know you'll read this eventually -- you brought this upon yourself and it's entirely your own fault. No one else's. Look in a mirror, blame yourself, man up, hit the gym, take the path less traveled, and turn your life around. ## Safer777's Analysis Before the contest this match was debatable. But after some matches it was clear that Ellie would lose. I mean she is from a new game. And you know what we think of new games here. KOS-MOS is from Xenosaga series. I haven't played any of this series but people say that the series is good. I know KOS-MOS though from the Project X games. Plus she is a hot Android. Bonus points for that. Anyways she managed to win with no problems. And this is also her chance to finally advance to Round 3 even for the first time! But man there was some uproar how a character from such a great game which is TLOU was losing to KOS-MOS. Yeah like it matters this here. One from a new series that it is an Action Adventure series and one is from an old RPG series. So that is. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: Ellie had a lot going against her into this match. Her game is strong but it was five years ago with the sequel potentially years away still. She had a very plain looking match pic and KOS-MOS has somehow become relevant again thanks to Xenoblade 2. This match started badly for Ellie but she did build a lot of percentage over the course of the match. The other notable thing is that this was only the second match the site as a whole got wrong, heavily favouring Ellie. Board 8 got one over on them for once instead of the other way around. **What could this mean?**: Ellie didn't look terrible here all things considered. I think without Xenoblade 2 this match is neck and neck, and I think KOS-MOS doing so well in Europe (where Xenoblade is very popular, but 2/3 Xenosaga games didn't even release) probably indicates that. The next match for KOS-MOS is going to be a tough one, but she looked good enough to not be worried about it if you have her. ## Tsunami's Analysis To be honest, I didn't even realize KOS-MOS had been in a Xenoblade game. I figured she was less relevant than this. Like most people, I ignored TheStupidRaptor. Apparently there are people out there who refuse to believe that Xenoblade is part of the same franchise as Xenosaga and Xenogears? Although it's apparently the video game equivalent of a series that has just enough of a fanbase to get picked up by a new network whenever it gets canceled. Xenogears vs. Xenoblade would literally be considered a Square vs. Nintendo match, but neither Xenogears-Xenosaga nor Xenosaga-Xenoblade (which has actually happened) would be. (Namco published Saga; Nintendo published Blade. Both were *developed* by third-party developer Monolith Soft, whom you might also know from the Baten Kaitos series, which was founded by the creator of Xenogears after he left what was then Squaresoft, where he worked when he created Xenogears.) Anyway, it was fairly obvious, though disappointing, that an unrealistically proportioned character from an early 2000s Japanese RPG would beat out a realistically proportioned character from an early 2010s American Survival Horror Game. Not that I'm a fan of survival horror, because I'm not, but everything I've heard about The Last of Us is absolutely amazing. I want Ellie to succeed. Maybe in CBXI, once she has TLoU2 behind her. Though that game's supposed to be coming out this year so she'll probably have to hope for a TLoU3 to be relevant. And really, once you're on the third game, isn't the title "The ***Last*** of Us" kind of misleading? Ah, right then, carry on. Also, while it's way too late now, how did we not get Kalas into even *one* Character Battle back when Baten Kaitos first came out? We've gotten all sorts of other obscure JRPG leads into these things. I tried to rally for one this year, but was handicapped by the fact that the lead in question suffers from Vaan Syndrome but most of the better characters to nominate are spoiler risks. Though honestly most of the reason I continually pimp Stella Glow on this board is just to get music from it into VGMC, because that soundtrack is *amazing.* --- ## (2)Aqua vs (15)Quiet 2018 _source: (2)Aqua vs (15)Quiet 2018 (revid 88243)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Man do I love when the final match of round one is... simple and clean. No? ...ahem. There was some debate about this match pre-contest, because Aqua was clearly overseeded and people were banking on an unknown factor like Kingdom Hearts 3 hype. If it isn't Nintendo hype, it's unreliable. And this is Metal Gear Solid, weakened state or no. But that was pre contest. Any and all debate about this match ended very quickly when this abomination was uploaded to the web site. Not that Quiet was strong enough to win this match anyway, but good hell. What even is that? And this match wasn't due to Aqua being strong, either. I've played Birth By Sleep. Outside of Terra, that game is a pile of sewage and Aqua is a huge reason why. We could have avoided the entire laughable Kingdom Hearts plot if she would have just trusted Terra from the jump. We could have avoided it all. All of Tetsuya Nomura's pretentious drivel. All of the bad artwork. All of the belts. All of the EVERYONE IS XEHANORT garbage. Everything. Kingdom Hearts as a series was amazing for the original, pretty good for Chain of Memories, decent for 2, and pure trash afterwards due to Tetsuya Nomura being a complete idiot. The guy sucks at art. Of course he sucks at game design. He is the \#1 reason for the current state of Square and I will never forgive him for it. We went from the 90s era of Square, where they could do no wrong, to this. To say I was pumped up for the possibility of KOS-MOS beating this bitch's ass in round 2 was putting it lightly. I like Kingdom Hearts. I really do. But there are parts of these games that are so embarrassing that I'd rather get caught watching porn. I at least have a logical explanation for that. What on earth would be the explanation for stuff like those two songs? And with that, round one was over. If this were a normal PCA, I'd actually be done the entire thing. For this bracket, I'm not even halfway done. We are past time to reduce the field in these things and make getting into a contest special again. 136 characters in 1v1 matches is just nuts. This can, and should, get cut back down to 64. I could maybe see the logic for 96 and letting the top 8 in each division have a round one bye. But the way things are is just too bloated, and I think it contributes to the low vote totals. The slow burn of a 64 character 1v1 with one match per day and 15 minute updates was fine. Too many characters with too big a field these days. ## Safer777's Analysis The last match of Round 1 and it was normal. Nothing exciting. Thought it was a debatable match pre-contest  And from the final results you wouldn't know. KH isn't doing well in the contest. And both of these characters are newcomers too. Quiet is from MGS 5 and even though that game got a ton of rewards apparently this site doesn't like it. Don't know why because I don't play MGS games. So Aqua won easily. But it is not that Aqua is strong or anything. Quiet is just weak I believe. Still KH managed to score a victory against MGS. So that is something I guess? ## Tsunami's Analysis As so frequently happens in these contests, the last match of Round 1 was extremely dull. Well not really because we always had four matches going on at once and Shepard-K. Rool was interesting, but you know what I mean. Aqua was a Guru nom, and she failed to double a side character from the least successful MGS game. Quiet didn't even get to use her sex appeal in her pic, either. Kingdom Hearts just flat-out sucked this contest. Okay, yes, Aqua would be fodder even if Kingdom Hearts was still strong. Though it should be noted that there's only one KH character to make even one contest that's never won a match, and he still looked damn good in one of his losses. No really, what is this? Axel almost beat *Frog*? And he's the only KH character without a win? Ansem only appeared in the Villains Contest, but managed to draw beloved loser CATS. Kairi only made the female bracket, but beat Claire Redfield, which is actually possibly a decent win. But this contest suggests that Kingdom Hearts does not hold strength on its own merit any more. Maybe what it needs to get its mojo back is for its *other* set of non-original characters to be allowed in! ...Actually, given that different incarnations of the same characters are allowed into these things, do you think if we tried nominating him as "King Mickey"--that is to say, specifically the Kingdom Hearts incarnation--we'd be able to get Mickey Mouse in? Though as per the Captain Toad debate, that would probably end up limiting his strength. In any case, if we do get an open character battle, Disney characters had better get Kingdom Hearts pics. Tetsuya Nomura and his zippers would definitely help Donald and Goofy. Well, they probably would. Maybe. I don't know. I'd comment about Quiet being the only character to debut in MGSV to make the field, but I'm pretty sure no one that debuted in MGS4 has been in a character battle. Then again, no one of much consequence debuted in that game. The main villain was Ocelot, who's been around since MGS1, and Solid Snake was the main protagonist for the first time since MGS1. (Well, okay, he was still the protagonist of MGS2 even though he was only the player character for a short time, but that's a minor detail.) We got a character from Revengeance into the 2013 contest, though. Of course, I suspect the MGSV character we all really wanted was denied for being a huge spoiler. Criticize Allen all you want, but he has never allowed anything like what happened in 2005's villains contest, where a major (albeit telegraphed) plot twist for Tales of Symphonia was ruined. The character is fought *four* times in that game, and the first three battles all have him going by one name and looking a certain way, but CJayC decided to credit him by the name and appearance from the final battle. And with that, Round 1 is complete. (Also, to answer your question, Ulti, Kingdom Hearts is still technically a *Disney* franchise, not a Square Enix franchise. All of the original characters are Disney property. And while those videos you linked seem extremely out of place in a Square Enix creation, they are entirely normal for a Disney production, which is what Kingdom Hearts is.) --- ## (1)Dante vs (9)Lightning 2018 _source: (1)Dante vs (9)Lightning 2018 (revid 83746)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Feels good to be able to say "quarterfinal". Round 1 in these things takes so long now. Final Fantasy 13 ate a lot of crap from people, and I legitimately believe it was unfair criticism. A good example to point to is Pat's review from SMPS: The game has issues, but it isn't close to being as bad as that review makes it seem. I still remember Albion making dumb topic after dumb topic to trash the game while quoting one dumb review after another. I have a long standing belief that word of the mouth is the only thing worth listening to and that professional reviewers are a bunch of paid off idiots with a bias to push. As a fantastic example, look at any site who defended Blizzard after their Diablo Immortal gaffe this year. Stuff like that is how you know who is or is not honest. Independent reviewers with no bias is the way to go here. FF13 tried to embrace its linearity, it was a mixed bag, and the game is fantastic once you hit Gran Pulse. Only Hope is truly abominable as a character. Sazh is a bit boring. Everyone else is good to great. The optional content is fantastic. The plot is a bit weird, fighting giant turtles is also a bit weird, and the optional superboss being some metal butterfly palette swap you can just poison to death even weirder, but hey! I had fun, which is all that matters. I bring this up because Lightning suffers in our contests for two reasons, with this match being a fantastic contrast of why. Lightning comes from a mixed bag video game (I haven't played the sequels, maybe Robazoid can offer more context on how those are), and though her character is one that tries to be cool, she comes off to a lot of people as trying way too hard. She randomly punches party members in the mouth for no real reason, and it seems awkward a lot of the time. I like her a lot as a character, but randomly trying to break Fang's face without ever getting a receipt just comes off as trying way too hard to be a badass. Compare that with Dante. This dude was in Devil May Cry 2 and DmC: dee em shee devil may cryz LOL, two of the worst games ever made. He was decent in 4, but Nero was legitimately cooler than him in that game. He has scenes that are so hilariously over the top in his games where I should feel like they try too hard, yet somehow it never really feels that way and a scene like this can make sense: Sure let's jump off a building, run down while changing momentum, throw a sword straight down and then shoot it to kill a bunch of bats, then somehow increase speed running to catch the sword, jump off, and get eaten by a flying leviathan monster. Just a regular Tuesday afternoon for Dante. Had Lightning been given a scene like that it would have been laughed at. That's essentially why Dante won this match, even though I personally think Lightning summoning Odin is just as awesome. There's just nothing like a high strung, highly educated alpha female that does badassed stuff while retaining a feminine look. It's a shame people hate her game unfairly. ## Safer777's Analysis 1st match of Round 2 and of course Dante won easily. Duh. Well everyone thought that Chloe was really weak and she was. Probably bottom 5 here. Light is weak. People hate FF 13. Maybe the most hated main FF title! I don't really understand why. I am not saying that is great but the worst of them all? Don't think so. Funny enough in FF13 you can't go back and such and the game opens up after a lot of hours. Okay. But in FF 10 which you can't go back(okay you techically can)and the game opens up  after a lot of hours and nobody complains there. I really like FF 10 and it has my favorite mini game of all time but I am saying. Eh whatever. So for the match.  Light is weak and thus Dante beat her easy. Dante is looking good. Let us see if can continue to win! Also FF 13 had 2 sequels too! First main FF title to do that! This means it is good! Right? Yeah I am joking. I still don't get it why it did receive 2 sequels too. Who asked for them? Another thing is also 1 crew member, who I can't remember the name, sorry, was saying that Light had a chance to win. Hast to be a huge Light's fan. Lol sure. The prediction percentage was good for Dante too. ## Tsunami's Analysis I said it in Round 1 and I'll say it again: Final Fantasy fans are a lot like Pokémon fans, always whining about how awful the most recent entry is and how much better things used to be. Older characters do better on this board in general anyway, but if you're from one of those franchises, the best thing that can happen is for a new game in your series to come out, because it establishes your age. 34.38% on Dante is surprisingly respectable given how awful opinions of FFXIII were, and I suspect the existence of FFXV is a large part of it. Final Fantasy is a lot like these contests. The NES and SNES (well, Famicom and Super Famicom; the US equivalents didn't get all of them) managed three main series games each, and so did the PS1. Not counting the MMORPGs, we've had just four of them since. Meanwhile, we've all turned into crochety old men reminiscing about the good old days when we had contests every year and the upsets were genuinely surprising rather than the result of off-site rallies, except even then they were the result of off-site rallies. Look again at the previous write-up and the linked Frog-Axel match. Everyone suspected that Frog's comeback was less than legitimate, but it was a CT character beating a KH character so we all rejoiced rather than being upset. --- ## (12)Chun-Li vs (4)Ganondorf 2018 _source: (12)Chun-Li vs (4)Ganondorf 2018 (revid 83745)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know these writeups are done post contest and we have the power of Jon Gruden's 50-50 hindsight, but what the hell happened to Ganon in this match? He was supposed to break 60% and look like a division champion. He went out and laid a complete egg here, which looked extra bad compared to Vivi just utterly demolishing his round 2 opponent. This was supposed to be a debate between Ganon and Vivi, but when this match happened there were people seriously wondering if Dante had a shot to beat this guy. But because we know Ganon would eventually win, this is a forgotten match. Make no mistake, this was a garbage performance and it's one of the reasons people who complained about his sprite picture for weeks on end looked like complete idiots. Ganon looked very odd this contest, and I can't put my finger on why. Do people just not like the guy? Are people unimpressed with his Breath of the Wild performance? Are his Smash appearances unimpressive? I legitimately don't get it, and I don't see how Chun-Li could have boosted much. She's a popular character and all, but winning updates against Ganondorf on ZeldaFAQs when you are clearly weaker than him is another thing entirely. Ultimately, this wouldn't mean much, like Mario/Shadow or that one random Sonic/Vincent snafu. Weird match, but a speed bump at the end of the day. People often talk about round 1 being the most boring. I honestly think it's round 2. This is where we get all the low mid tier or lucky fodder getting blown out by clear favorites. Round 1 is us being happy to be here. Round 3 and on is where all the good matches are. 2 is a lot of.... yeah. Moving on. ## Safer777's Analysis Remember when I said that Ganon can beat even N9's now? Yeah I was stupid. Check this result. People were expecting around a doubling for Ganon. And he didn't even  reached 59%! What? And it is not that Chun-Li is strong or anything. Nor that she boosted recently of a game or something. Ganon is in Smash and in almost all of Zelda  games. So him, Bowser and Sephiroth are the strongest bad guys here. But for this result? Is it because he is a bad guy and people don't like him? He dropped for same  strange reason? I just don't get it. So why I thought that he was that strong? Well because back in the Villains contests he was the finalist and after that contest he  was again doing really good. So I thought that he would have boosted now. Guess I was wrong. Still it is not that he isn't strong. He isn't as strong as we thought. Probably? But yeah he won. The prediction percentage is once again really good for a Seed 4 in Round 2 none the less. ## Tsunami's Analysis As usual, the board overreacted to this, suggesting that Dante could challenge Ganondorf. Probably because our inherent biases suggest that "Final Fantasy protagonist" *should* be a more impressive win than "fighting game character". Except Street Fighter (and I guess Mortal Kombat, though we've never tried anyone other than Scorpion and Sub-Zero from that franchise) have never been fodder like other fighting game franchises. You might even be able to add Soul Calibur to that list; Nightmare has managed to do okay in his appearances and Yoshimitsu (who is sort of a shared character between Tekken and Soul Calibur) got a win in 2013. And Lightning still suffers from being a post-merger Square Enix character. Chun-Li put up another solid performance. She's never faced a Noble Niner, but all four of her losses are to solid midcarders from Noble Nine franchises--Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy. --- ## (3)Vivi vs (11)Aya Brea 2018 _source: (3)Vivi vs (11)Aya Brea 2018 (revid 83744)_ ## Ulti's Analysis In every NCAA tournament a low seed wins a game or two and people completely lose their shit. Remember when Florida Gulf Coast shocked the world, dunked all over Georgetown and San Diego State, and Andy Enfield was able to lie to USC and convince them he can actually coach? There was a massive reality check waiting for them after a week of interviews and getting smoke blown up their asses; it was called "Florida", and they got utterly destroyed when an actual good team decided to show up. It's very rare to get a George Mason or a Loyola Chicago, and even those teams eventually got blown out of the gym. Almost always, the underdogs eventually eliminate each other or run into a good team late and get destroyed. The NCAAs have had a few close calls where underdogs almost win the tournament, so let's not act like our version of a mid major can't win anything, but they aren't called miracle runs for a reason. The mid major teams that actually threaten every year (Gonzaga these days, but back in the 80s it was a bunch of teams getting ready to join power conferences) usually end up recruiting like a power conference or just outright joining one. Louisville was a mid major in 1986 when a mid major last won the tournament, but does anyone actually consider them a mid major college? Not really. To translate this into GameFAQs terms instead of making this about college basketball, our mid majors need to catch rallies to win. That's their version of a Cinderella run, with Undertale or L-Block being the ultimate example of one paying off. Usually, you get what happened to Aya Brea here. Yeah your win was cute, but one win means very little. Vivi is playing big boy basketball and just annihilated Aya for this entire match. He did so while Ganondorf was busy choking himself, which got people in a frenzy that everyone's favorite Final Fantasy underdog could win this division even in the face of Breath of the Wild. There was also one other hilarious result going on during all of this, which we'll get into in a second. (For the wiki readers, that's alluding to Leon Kennedy vs Donkey Kong.) Side note. Someone asked how I can still write so much. My favorite sporting event is the NCAA men's basketball tournament (even above the Superb Owl) and my favorite hobby is video games, plus I love math. These contests combine all those worlds, and I could stare at these numbers all day while trying to explain them in an entertaining way. I also bottle up a bunch of writing energy and let it loose come PCA time. It's lame as fuck I'm sure, but I don't care. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this! I believe Aya maybe the weakest character to reach Round 2. So here we have a rare result of a character doing better in Round 2 that he did in Round 1!  Damn! Of course Vivi won with more than a tripling. But we have another strange thing. We can't really judge Vivi's power because he has faced 2 really weak opponents.  So yeah he is Round 3 but haven't really seen what he is capable for. Well we shall see in the next match! Vivi is strong of course but how strong? ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a predictable blowout. Regardless of who won, it would set up a rematch of at least one previous Square vs. Nintendo match, and based on those past results, it was easy to joke in "Why Did They Lose?" that Square had fixed the match. Aya making this contest was honestly kind of surprising; she was a 26-seed in 2013 and hasn't had any releases since then to make her relevant. Of course, she's hardly the only bottom-third seed from that contest to make it to this one. The full list: 19-seeds: Jill Valentine 20-seeds: Aerith Gainsborough Ridley 21-seeds: Ryu Hayabusa Simon Belmont Chun-Li Cecil Harvey 23-seeds: Vincent Valentine 24-seeds: Peach Pac-Man Claire Redfield 26-seeds: Aya Brea Bomberman 8 for 13 at making Round 2, with one of them making it all the way to Round 4. Though we were guaranteed at least one 21-seed from last contest would make Round 2 due to two of them facing each other in Round 1. My only explanation for this was that people saw the expanded field and figured that it would be easy to rally whatever ridiculous obscure character they loved into the field, so contest regulars got even fewer nominations than usual. One of the other seeding gimmicks that year was that the 3-seeds would all be highly touted newcomers who would no doubt fail miserably. Only 4 of those 9 even made this contest and they all lost in Round 1. --- ## (10)Donkey Kong vs (2)Leon Kennedy 2018 _source: (10)Donkey Kong vs (2)Leon Kennedy 2018 (revid 83747)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Of the 160 gurus this year, nine picked Donkey Kong to win this match. Of the 67 people who played the oracle for this match, only six picked Donkey Kong to win it. To put some perspective on this, more people picked Tidus to win in this spot than Donkey Kong. Fucking Tidus! In retrospect, we should have seen this coming, but people are blinded by the old 'games =/= characters' routine. Resident Evil 4 looked like shit for every single match it was in during the 2015 games contest. It got 59% on Paper Mario, 58% on Fallout New Vegas, and 54% on Metal Gear Solid 2 leading up to the Super Mario RPG match. Want to see something eerie? Look at the percentages for Leon/DK here and then look at what happened when Resident Evil 4 got upset. Super Mario RPG - 27502 \[55.53%\] Resident Evil 4 - 22027 \[44.47%\] "But Ulti, Donkey Kong is not in Super Mario RPG!" you explain. Even more eerie is how dominant RE4 looked in Game of the Decade in 2010 compared to 2015. The Resident Evil series decline is real, and Leon Kennedy and Resident Evil 4 can't carry that franchise forever. That game came out in 2005, and Capcom is so desperate to regain lost magic from a decade plus of dumb bullshit that Resident Evil 4 has been released 27 times on every major system since. I wouldn't be surprised if a freemium phone game existed for RE4 at this point. When your parent company completely blows and loses the confidence of consumers, you go back to old habits instead of looking in a mirror and telling yourself to stop being a moron. I feel bad that Leon Kennedy has the sins of Capcom crawling all over his back, but here we are. Here the bleep we are. Shout out to Jim Rome. I feel like if another Nintendo character on DK's level were in his place, more people would have picked that slot to win twice. Let's just hypothetically say Knuckles or Peach were here instead. More people would have picked it. But this is DK, so you get the anti-clutch factor. DK had two obstacles pre-contest. One, he's known for being a choke artist. Two, he drew Tidus in round one in a highly debated match. That's a lot to overcome, and shout out to the 9 people who picked this upset. After the freeze, this match was never even a match. Donkey Kong just went out there and beat Leon Kennedy's ass. Even the trends looked identical to the RE4 upset. This would set up, of all things, Donkey Kong vs Vivi. Again. Could DK, boosted by finally being clutch, some great recent Country games, and Smash good will finally take down his nemesis? lol no As for where Resident Evil goes from here, who the hell knows. Capcom has sabotaged all of their own brands and it will take a long time to recover. The match pic crybabies should look at Capcom or Konami's business practices if they want to know what actual sabotage looks like, just for the record. ## Safer777's Analysis This is the strangest result of the contest so far for me. Donkey Kong defeated Leon almost as much as he defeated Tidus. And you know how many people saw that? We had around 85% of the Gurus having Leon advancing to Round 3! Hell more people picked Tidus than Donkey Kong to reach Round 3! I repeat, more people had Tidus beating Leon, than DK beating Leon! So what happened? Okay DK is in Smash. Fine. And he had some games in the last few years. Okay. Leon of course has nothing in the last years. But here is the thing. The instant RE 2 remake was announced I see it in the PS 4 top 10 message boards all the time. And so many articles talking about it. So many videos! So much hype!Also RE 4 recently got announced for the Switch too! And in both of these games Leon is the protagonist. So it is not that people forgot who Leon is. But DK winning this much? Seriously? As I said around 5.5% of the Gurus had DK advancing. So I don't know what to say. Maybe DK is a really strong character now? Or is Leon and Tidus that weak? Or a combination of both? Anyways an Icon won so that is cool I guess. Icon's winnning are always good. Of course the prediction percentage was bad, but not that bad actually. More than 38% so I guess we were fooled or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Wonderful. Now this is exactly what the grumpy old folks of Board 8 are looking for! This was an upset, plain and simple, and there was nothing fishy about it. It wasn't some newcomer doing unexpected things; it was an established veteran beating another established veteran when we all expected otherwise. Just 5.625% of Gurus picked Donkey Kong to win this match, though to be fair, only 32.5% even picked him to beat Tidus. Yes, we get nice round percentages for this, because the total number of Gurus was 160, a number with 2 and 5 as its only prime factors. Since we work in base 10, these are the only prime numbers that will result in a terminating decimal. I suppose when you look at it that way, the Gurus *were* giving DK a better chance against Leon than they were giving Tidus, as despite having over twice as many picks to reach Round 2 he had not even 1.5 times as many picks to reach Round 3 (Leon was a unanimous choice to reach Round 2, so I don't even need to go deeper to know that this is solely based on the potential matchup with Leon). So this was definitely an lolGurus moment. "But wait!" you say. "The casuals were held under 50% on this one, too!" Yes, they were, and it's certainly possible that Leon was the favorite there, too, but it's quite unlikely. DK's Round 1 prediction percentage: 66.99% Leon's Round 1 prediction percentage: 72.69% DK's Round 2 prediction percentage: 38.06% This means roughly 56.82% of brackets that took DK to Round 2 continued to take him to Round 3. Not a heavy favorite, but a favorite nonetheless. If you assume little to no correlation between DK \> Tidus pickers and Leon \> Dragonborn pickers, you'd expect only about 48.7% of brackets to even have both of those correct. If you further assume that the 56.82% ratio is also applicable specifically to DK-Leon pickers, you're left with just over 21% of brackets specifically picking Leon \> DK. Leaving Leon in need of over 18% of brackets to have Leon \> Tidus, when as per our previous numbers, DK being a bit over a 2-1 favorite over Tidus means that under 24.5% of brackets even *have* Leon-Tidus. Now this *does* make a lot of assumptions. If there is in fact a surprisingly strong correlation, it's quite possible that an inordinate amount of DK picks were actually DK \> Dragonborn, and that both Leon \> Tidus and Leon \> DK were more common picks than Tidus \> Leon and DK \> Leon. After all, it is at least mathematically *possible* that fewer than 40% of brackets had the correct matchup (in the event that no brackets got both matches *wrong*.) But chances are, DK was the slight favorite here. Given that Vivi had been the casuals' underdog in each of his first two matches with DK (conclusively confirmable because they were both Round 1 matches), fans of low prediction percentages were eagerly awaiting Round 3. (Final numbers note: Just 8.96% of Oracle pickers sided with DK here, so it's not like we saw this coming by match time and adjusted accordingly. This was an upset through and through.) --- ## (1)Zero vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018 _source: (1)Zero vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018 (revid 83779)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We knew this after round one, but this match confirmed it. Knuckles is freaking legit, and it's a crime he's never made it into round 3 in one of these contests. The dude has an 8-1 record in round one, and the worst luck on the planet in who he gets for round 2. Check out this ridiculous list, in order. -Solid Snake -Solid Snake -Solid Snake again -Squall -Yoshi, Mega Man, and KOS-MOS -Fei Fong Wong, Mario, and Zelda -Sonic the Hedgehog -Samus -Zero I mean seriously, look at this damn list. There wasn't one year in there where he could draw Aya Brea, Serious Sam, Aqua, or Sandbag in round two? I honestly blame CJayC for this because of his dumb idea to feed Knuckles to Snake three years in a row. Two years in a row I can understand, but by 2004 he couldn't have just swapped places with Jill Valentine or something? Dumb. The closest he came was against Squall in 2005, where he had a small bandwagon behind him after upsetting Magus. He got 46% in that match. We got Tails into round 3. My new crusade is getting Knuckles in there. Dude deserves it for being awesome for 25 years. As for Zero, he did what he always does. He's always around 20-25 in the LOL x stats, never really moves, and is remarkably consistent year to year. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the guy and love him for all the same reasons I love Knuckles. He's a stone cold badass when I don't have to hear a terrible voice actor doing terrible voice actor things. I just wish Knux could catch a damn break one of these years. ONE round 3 run. It's all I ask. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was never in doubt of course. Zero would win. And he did, duh. The question is, is this a good victory? I think it is good. Knuckles isn't that weak. He was never strong true but not weak either. As I said above almost all his victories are against FF characters. So Zero did good here. Nice win for Zero! That proves that Zero isn't a zero! Okay yeah I am stupid. What else? I know him from the Project X Zone games myself. Haven't played a MM game ever. A fun thing is that Knucles ALWAYS get strong opponents in Round 2 that are out of his league. Man has to be a record for bad draws in the matches! ## Tsunami's Analysis Both entrants in this match are red anti-hero rivals to blue heroes from the mid-90s, which is honestly a more interesting bit of trivia than anything in this match. Well, that's not quite true. Zero (2010c) has a strength of 31.71 against Base Link. Knuckles (2010c) has a strength of 27.79 against Base Link. Zero wins with 56.18% of the vote! I usually don't trust adjusted X-Stats as far as I can throw them (and seeing as how they're an abstract concept, I can't throw them at all), but that's only 0.03% away from the actual result and Knuckles literally faced *Sonic* in 2010. And then Sonic got blown out by Link, making the entire division look pitiful in the raw X-Stats when in fact it was full of reliable midcarders such as Ganondorf, Mewtwo, Vivi, Kirby, and Knuckles himself, in addition to others such as Donkey Kong (who is not reliable, but made Round 3 this year), Altair (who as I noted in my write-up of Ezio's loss has *never* lost in Round 1, and this is the first time since his debut that he missed the field entirely), and Rikku (who frequently misses the field but always performs well when she makes it). And yes, I feel like we can call Knuckles a "reliable midcarder" even though he's never made it to Round 3. He's been in 9 out of the 10 contests (only missing 2006 because half the field was reserved for females), and he's only lost in Round 1 *once*, and that was when he had to deal with Mario and Zelda in a 4-way. He's almost certainly the strongest character to never make Round 3. Early on, CJayC was entirely to blame (stupid gimmicky bracketmaking), but as time has gone on, it really just does feel like he's been unlucky. Far weaker entrants have made it to Round 3 due to soft placements, including one from the same series as Knuckles. (At least I'm assuming Knuckles \> Tails. That might actually be a match worth seeing, though!) --- ## (12)Master Hand vs (13)Wario 2018 _source: (12)Master Hand vs (13)Wario 2018 (revid 83780)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I had some hope that Master Hand could pull this upset, because I am an insane Smash Bros fanboy. Well, partially insane. I've toned it down a lot since spending some time with the series pros, and I outright refuse to act like any of those idiots. Every Smash group has a few noticeable "guys" in it. Yahtzee joked about it. Well I'm the chill as fuck turtle who everyone hates playing against because I have the most annoying play style on the planet, but because I'm so nice to everyone while also supplying the house for play space and the food for you parasites to mooch off of, you can all piss off =p. Trust me, there are far worse "guys" out there in the Smash community and I go out of my way not to be like them. I will never forget Inui getting kicked out of my play group within a month for being an arrogant douche to people, then whining on Smashboards about it. Some of you hardcores might remember Inui being last on the tier list once because the entire community hated him so much. You're welcome. That was due to a few incidents, one of which involved my group. It's a very small claim to internet fame for me. Fuck that guy and fuck everyone who acts like him. For the unaware, he showed up just before Brawl came out (there's a big Smash community here in NJ and a lot of us used to play at Mercer County Community College or Rutgers, so we all get around quick) and started acting like Smash people are prone to act, and my group likes to play 4-man Melees with all items off except final smash balls. Top 2 stay in, bottom 2 rotate out, winner picks the level. None of that 24/7 tournament practice bullshit, because some of us are still capable of seeing Smash Bros as a video game instead of a job. Well Inui did nothing but whine and act like only he knows tech strategies and blah blah blah and we should be practicing 2v2s and etc. So what we would do any time that idiot showed up is gang up on him 3 on 1 so he would have to rotate out. He would occasionally throw a fit, but it was nothing we didn't just laugh off because the guy is a harmless idiot. Well one day he shows up acting extra dumb, so we finally decided in Brawl to pick Mario Bros as a stage and just gang up on him first in every match he was in. You all know the stage. So he throws this gigantic manic fit of rage (I legitimately had to punch him in the mouth at one point because he was clearly about to try getting violent, which is hilarious because I am twice his size) about how Sakurai is an idiot and that level should not be in and blah blah blah. The usual idiocy among Smash pros, you've all seen it I'm sure. So after I punch him and he finally shuts the hell up, he drives home, gets his own Wii, comes back, and hooks it up to the TV 10 feet from us. No one interacted with him or played with him all day. I could get into a very deep conversation here about how bullying and peer pressure in certain situations is actually a good thing because it's part of the normal social structure in getting people to not grow up to act like Inui, but I'm pretty far off the point already. With Ultimate coming out recently, just remember that liking Smash is fine. Acting like Inui or Mew2King is not, and frankly either their parents or their peers should have showed them ages ago that acting like they do is in no way socially acceptable. These are the tangents I go on for predictable round 2 blowouts. This was never going to actually be a match, because for both characters their entire job was knocking off larger seeds. Wario was meant to stop Monika's rally, and Master Hand was meant to embarrass Final Fantasy again. The only thing about the follow-up act of any interest was the match pictures side by side made it look like Wario was actually wearing Master Hand as a glove. I don't ask for much but someone PLEASE put that on the wiki for me. I beg it of you :D On a total side note, I love matches or NCAA games with gigantic seeds facing each other like this. It makes me smile. ## Safer777's Analysis After the suprise win against Noctis I thought that Hand would get the joke votes or a rally or something. But alas nothing happened. Wario won fair and square. He scored more than 60%. I guess if you have a legitimate character, even though that character is Wario, he can beat a proxy character from Smash. Yeah I know that Master Hand is the Boss but man you can't really say that it is a real character. I mean it just a hand! No personality! So congrats to Wario. First time he reaches Round 3 too! Still that Hand managed to even reach here is hilarious. ## Tsunami's Analysis And you needn't look any further than this match to see that a decent record doesn't necessarily mean you're strong. This was Wario's first run to Round 3, but his only Round 1 loss was to Shadow the Hedgehog (who immediately had to face Mario after that. No points for guessing which admin that was under), which means he's officially .500. Except not really because two of his contests were 2007 and 2008 and both times he advanced in second place in Round 1 and got 4th place in Round 2, meaning he went 2-4 against individual characters but is credited with a 1-1. His 2013 performance is, I suppose, a "proper" .500, getting last place in Round 2. But the only win he has that's kind of impressive is coming in second place in a match in which he was the only character *not* to appear on the N64, going up against Fox, Captain Falcon, and Banjo. Banjo is weak, but beating Captain Falcon is pretty good. Master Hand is also .500 all time, having lost in Round 2 in both of his contest appearances. --- ## (3)Yoshi vs (6)Velvet Crowe 2018 _source: (3)Yoshi vs (6)Velvet Crowe 2018 (revid 83784)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Yoshi wins a match and gets Velvet Crowe for a round 2 opponent. Knuckles goes 8-1 in round 1 over the years and gets nothing but noble niners and near elites. I don't get it. And no, I am never letting this go until Knuckles wins one in round 2. Thanks for asking. I'm looking at some of these round 2 beatdowns these year just shaking my head. In the 2015 games contest, I made a list of 1v1 matches in round 2 or later where the winner broke 80%. It can be found here: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Chrono_Trigger_vs\_(8)Dragon_Quest_VIII:\_Journey_of_the_Cursed_King_2015 \] I really don't feel like doing that level of research with 70% as the threshold instead of 80, but I can't imagine it would be a much bigger list. These contests naturally have closer margins as you get later. It's just the normal way of things. For a character or game to break 70%, you need two things to happen unless we're talking about weird SFF stuff. One, you need an elite, near-elite, or upper midcarder in the winner's spot. Yoshi qualifies. And two, you need the other half of your fourpack to be abject garbage. I should note that Velvet got 61% in her round 1 match. So yeah this was just a forgettable beatdown en route to Yoshi getting back to where he always goes, and I love him for it. I'm one of those knuckleheads who always votes for Yoshi in those favorite Mario character polls. Love the dude. Always have. ## Safer777's Analysis When a character wins a Round 2 match and isn't a N9'er with above 70% you can't help but wonder how the opponent even reached Round 2! Of course Velvet would be realy weak duh. So Yoshi with above 70% for the 2nd time in this contest! Yoshi is so strong! But seriously I say that I can't judge Yoshi in this contest so far. He has beaten 2 super weak opponents and both of them were newcomers too. So there you go. Of course Yoshi is in Smash and he is recognizable from the Mario series so he has some power of course but how much? We shall see in the next round for sure. Oh and also Yoshi has always managed to reach at least Round 2 in all contests he has appeared. Nice for him. ## Tsunami's Analysis Yoshi is never going to be an elite, but he's never going to be weak, either. Just look at 2010, when he had the misfortune of running into a rally entry *after* it had already taken out a Noble Niner. Normally, once that happens, there's no hope for anything stopping it. Now, that happened to be the one rally entry that *was* stopped after it had done some damage, but nevertheless, Yoshi managed to stand up to Missingno like a champ, and it got him something like \#9 in the raw X-stats. Unfortunately for him, not even *those* numbers would give him a chance next round, because Pikachu was \#6 in the raw X-Stats that year. --- ## (7)Pikachu vs (2)Kratos 2018 _source: (7)Pikachu vs (2)Kratos 2018 (revid 83785)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I like Pikachu and Pokemon, so I'm okay with Pikachu winning here even though Kratos might be my favorite character in gaming at this point. Something about the guy being a bloodraged maniac maturing somewhat as he ages resonates with me, I dunno. I've always adored Kratos and love his games. God of War is one of the best series I've ever played, but there was no chance in hell Kratos was going to win this match even with God of War 2018 getting set to mop up 1398 Game of the Year awards. Even if Kratos had a prayer of winning, I have access to some metrics non-contributors don't. That review won me Review of the Month. As you can tell by reading it and by my platinum trophy, I love the game to death. It was an incredible experience. I don't post the review link to brag. I post it because at the time the bracket came out, that review had less than 30 hits. For a comparison, my Brawl review has almost 50,000. Part of that is GameFAQs being dead, but part of it is because for whatever reason, Kratos and God of War games are just not what resonates on this site. And even then, I did not think this beatdown would be as bad as it was. God of War sold like a bajillion copies and Pokemon fans were mixed at best on that Pikachu Let's Go game. Even with all that, Pikachu damn near doubled the poor guy. It wasn't a surprise Pikachu won, but winning this hard given all the Kratos hype was really something to see. Pikachu was super legit this year and was primed to kick ass well beyond the main bracket. This all but ended any hope of anyone other than him winning this division, too. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was never in doubt. Of course Pika would win. Now people say that Pika did worse than expected. But here is the thing. Pretty sure that Kratos has boosted.  I mean GOW 4 came out recently and it was instantly beloved. Haven't seen anyone talking anything bad about that game. As for Pika you know him. The face of Pokemon.  The best selling franchise of all time? The one character that almost everyone knows? Anyways I think Pika is legit. This win is good. Kratos has boosted as I said before. No way that Marston is that weak. Still another win for Pokemon. Man they always win these things! But next round we shall see if Pika is legit or not. (Spoilers=He is.) Also supposedly Kratos is the strongest Western character but I don't know about that to tell the truth. ## Tsunami's Analysis Why does this match feel so familiar? Ah, that's why. Same seedings and everything. It's kind of depressing to see how far our vote totals have fallen since then, and even more depressing when you remember that the current vote totals are *inflated* by the registered bonus...but it should not be overlooked that, admittedly only thanks to the registered bonus, Pikachu has a greater ***margin*** of victory than Charizard did. And Kratos has had a recent game, so that may actually be meaningful. This was the second time in as many rounds that Pikachu's percentage was lower than that of his next opponent, and the second time that hardly anyone expected that to mean anything because Pikachu clearly had a stronger opponent. --- ## (1)Sora vs (9)Pokemon Trainer Red 2018 _source: (1)Sora vs (9)Pokemon Trainer Red 2018 (revid 84050)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know Charizard looked weak in round one, but after what Pikachu had just done the writing was kinda sorta on the wall for this upset to occur. Most of us saw it coming pre-contest, but the main point in Sora's favor was the Kingdom Hearts 3 hype. Remember, Kingdom Hearts the original was the game that everyone credited for the 2003 contest being so heavily weighted toward Squaresoft results. Yet 15 years later, and here we are with Sora unable to beat a mute Pokemon trainer right after getting a hype video. Not that he didn't try, so let's get to the actual match. I have a thing to explain here anyway. The final score looks close, but the early parts of the match were not. After a few small hiccups early with either small gains or random Sora pushes, Red started taking off in a flash and got a 250 vote lead. Then just as quickly, it looked like things were wearing off and the night was kicking in. Pokemon has these random spots where it's awful at night -- one of the few trends where our old JUST WAIT TIL THE KIDDIES WAKE UP 2002 meme still applies -- and it looked possible here. Sora blasted over 100 votes off that lead in under an hour, and it legitimately looked like he might win the match. So I rallied the Pokemon subreddit. Fuck it. Don't care. I made one topic around 9:30 when Sora was making his push, and I made another for the morning vote. Both were deleted eventually, but they were both viewed a few thousand times and it clearly made the difference. Could Sora have won otherwise? Would someone else have rallied? Don't know, don't care. Red is a better character from a better series. I don't dislike Sora, but I'm over having to choke on Tetsuya Nomura's vomit any time I play a Kingdom Hearts game these days. Had that series stopped at 2, we're good. But it didn't, so I give no fucks. Justice done, justice served. The final score of this poll was close, but Sora was never in contention of winning. The best he could manage is shaving off 150 votes, but you can believe I was ready for more Pokemon subreddit topics with throwaway accounts just in case. Sora was not winning this match. What's extra hilarious about this is all the people who whined over that rally were all over hentai subreddits asking for Tifa votes later on in this contest, or the people not doing that were supporting the people doing it. You either support rallying or you don't. You don't get to have two standards and only like rallies when it benefits a character or game you like. Don't be a hypocritical douchebag. I support rallies, so I like all of them. Hearthstone or Shadow of the Colossus could win a contest tomorrow with rallies and I would support it, because I'm not a punk. This would mark only the third time a 1 seed has lost to the 8/9 winner. Before the 2015 games contest, it had never happened. In that contest, it happened twice. Pokemon Red Blue Yellow Green Teal Orange Mauve Off-White Neon Beige Subtitle Psychic Olive ver 1.3x \#RReload Socket beat Mario 3, and Mario RPG beat GTA5: Casual Gaming is Bad Edition. Add Red beating Sora to the list. All three involve Nintendo pulling the upset, though in only one of those matches (Mario 3) did the 1 seed actually deserve their seeding and eat a legitimate upset. Sora and any GTA are just undeserving of that spot, as we've seen multiple times. ## Safer777's Analysis KH 3 boost man! Yeah I am jesting of course. Well this match was somewhat debatable. We thought that with KH 3 hype Sora would win because who cares about Human Pokemon characters? Seriously. But as you see Red won even though the match was close. I know in the previous contest Sora lost to a Pokemon character again but there were rallies back then. Red had a big lead but Sora started fighting back and was either cutting or stalling. Man after all these years and KH still can come back with ASV.  If that thing even exists anymore. Kiddies have smartphones now from what people told me. So Sora was dissapointing again. Also he is the first 1 Seed to lose and in  Round 2 too! Come on now! I guess if KH 3 was out he would win for sure. But at least the match was good. Also Pokefear baby! Pokemons always win! Except when they don't. Also for Sora he always has a high seed in these things. I guess people really like KH series? Plus Sora has  NEVER won a division! Seriously! And he is always overseeded. Guess when KH 3 comes out he is bound to gain some power for sure. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was another match where the registered and unregistered voters went in different directions, but Red would've still narrowly won without the registered vote bonus. Very narrowly. Sora 10508 Red 10566 Yeah that's narrow. Still, this wasn't exactly a wide margin, either. Sora was the Guru favorite to win this division, which seems wrong to me. Though there weren't really any proven winners in the group. Nearly half the division had been to Round 3 of a contest at least once prior to this year. Based on the huge drop in prediction percentage, along with some other extrapolating based on the prediction percentages for Red in Round 3 and Alucard in Round 4, he was probably the casual favorite, too. ...Huh. Sora's record is better than I thought it was. He's never been to Round 4, but this is the earliest he's exited since *2003*, his first year in the contest. It's been Round 3 exits ever since--and for once, I don't have to say "not including Rivalry Rumble" because he and Riku made it to Round 3 in that as well. Nearly upset Squall/Seifer, too; it's the closest Sora's ever come to Squall (though they've never met in a true 1v1, Sora having advanced in second place behind Squall in Round 2 of *both* fourway contests to allow for four total matches in those two years.) If Bacon ever decides to do another gimmick contest like that one, Sora might actually win in a couples contest; I'm almost certain that Rinoa would hold Squall back even more than Seifer and Kairi actually reached Round 2 in the Female bracket, and not by beating some other fodder that only made the bracket because of the gender segregation. She beat Claire Redfield, who regularly makes the bracket when it's not gender-balanced and made it to Round 2 this year. Red has quietly amassed a rather impressive resume himself. He's never lost in Round 1 and it usually takes nothing short of a Noble Niner or the equivalent thereof (yes, I'm still sticking with the X ≈ Mega Man theory) to finally take him out. Of course, quietly is the only way Red knows how to do anything :) --- ## (5)Crash Bandicoot vs (4)Big Boss 2018 _source: (5)Crash Bandicoot vs (4)Big Boss 2018 (revid 83789)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Crash 100% deserved to win the 2006 Oscar for Best Picture and the people who still whine about it are a bunch of idiots. Not only was that a damn good movie, but its competition was Munich, Good Night and Good Luck, Capote, and Brokeback Mountain. Giving Brokeback the best picture award as a tokenism achievement for gay people just because they're gay people would be every bit as bigoted and short sighted as hating gay people just because they're gay people. In the actual equal society I keep hearing people say they want, sexual orientation wouldn't even matter and we would just pick the best stuff. Crash was the best movie that year and seeing it always get mentioned on the 'most undeserving winners ever' lists is just dumb. And now Hollywood hands out awards to movies about fish sex, so who even knows what's going on over there anymore. I actually really liked The Shape of Water, but best picture? Come on. Oh wait, wrong Crash. Whoops. Well forgive me for having to come up with new material for all these predictable round 2 blowou-- Wait, what? Literal Crash Bandicoot held tough with Big Boss, got 47% on him, and won a bunch of updates throughout the entire match? This actually happened? The fuck? I know Crash had that trilogy, but this match says a lot more about Big Boss. Metal Gear Solid is done. There is just no other way of putting it. This is about as embarrassing a win as you'll ever see. Konami just murdered that series in cold blood and it's translated to contest polls. There is no way this happens in, say, 2008. What's utterly terrifying that Crash probably wins this match if he was a surprise entrant in Smash Ultimate before the contest, and not one person would have picked it. It would have been our biggest upset since Knuckles \> Magus. (Watch Crash get in now.) ## Safer777's Analysis Obviously Big Boss would win. But man nobody expected the match to be this close. I know in this contest old icons do really well but still. Big Boss is good. Or at least he should be. MGS characters don't do so good in this contest. So as I said old icons are doing really well for some strange reason. Still that means that Crash can beat a lot of other characters in this bracket. Who would have thought that? I guess that Big Boss should have dropped too but still this much? Anyways Big Boss managed to do it I guess so that is. Still a hollow victory but a victory none the less. Guess that prooves that MGS franchise has fallen or something. Don't understand why. Yeah EVERYONE hated MG Survive but can this be the only reason? Maybe the way Konami treated the Creator? Who knows. ## Tsunami's Analysis The opponent here seems oddly appropriate, because that's exactly what Big Boss did here. He crashed and burned. This was an absolutely awful performance. Look at Crash's history. 2002: Gets horribly overseeded, allowing him to face fodder in Round 1. (Although he still got lucky because there was a *far* stronger character on the same seed line as his opponent.) Fails to break 20% in his Round 2 match 2003: 38% in Round 1 against KOS-MOS. This might be a high point. 2004: Allows Master Chief to break 70% on him. 2007: Returns from a hiatus; loses to Magus, Phoenix Wright, and Bomberman. At this point, Phoenix's only previous contest appearance was the loss that ended Gordon Freeman Never Wins. 2008: Doubles up Raz from Psychonauts, but still falls well short of advancing over Nightmare (Samus Aran was the obvious first place finisher). 2010: 38.21% against Ryu Hayabusa. Remember, Crash couldn't even break 30% against Master Chief. 2013: Finally gets another win, beating Wheatley and Tommy Vercetti, but finishes in third place in Round 2 behind Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite. All you need to know about her is that she was a 3-seed, which meant low expectations thanks to that being one of the gimmicked seed lines. So is Crash just stronger now? I know there was some sort of compilation release or something, but that shouldn't do that much for a character. It is a mystery. --- ## (3)Alucard vs (6)Yuna 2018 _source: (3)Alucard vs (6)Yuna 2018 (revid 83788)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Not gonna lie, I thought Yuna was going to win this match in a rout. I adore Final Fantasy X and it's been hard coming to grips with how damn weak that entire franchise has gotten these days. Not that I'm complaining! Alucard is one of my all time favorite characters and the recent PS4 port of Symphony of the Night gave me a chance to get a platinum trophy in a game I'm just in love with. Richter Belmont and his terrible inputs can fuck right off, but Alucard is amazing. I wasn't surprised Alucard won, but I was surprised to see a 60-40 beating in a match slated in the 55-45 range. He had clearly gotten a buff from that PS4 release, and some people keep talking about the Castlevania Netflix special. I didn't watch it, but maybe it helped. Who knows. This was another for the pile of examples of why Square has been looking like ass this year. Alucard just keeps finding ways to go on these deep contest runs, and it started right at the beginning. Check out some of the damage he's caused through two rounds in his career, all of which comes with these crazy low prediction percents. Summer 2002 - He beat Tails and Duke Nukem. Duke was the favorite in that fourpack that year. Summer 2003 - He beat Bomberman and Kirby. Almost everyone picked Kirby. I'm one of the few who actually picked Alucard, because I went and played Symphony of the Night before that contest and was on an everglow high. Kirby is a great character, but his games leave a lot to be desired. Alucard has both. Summer 2008 - After a five year break from busting brackets, he was back with a vengeance. The dude advanced twice in fourways, both of which in highly odd matches. He also had that 3 vote nonsense in 2007 and two night vote leads against Kingdom Hearts before getting buried by the morning vote. Dude's a vampire and the kiddies woke up, what do you expect? Rivalry Rumble - Wins his division before getting fed to Zelda. This made two losses to Link and one to Ganon back in the day. And then this year happened. There were a lot of close calls in round two in there that I didn't list, not to mention the ridiculous 2015 snub. The point here is if the guy has a decent path, he can win, and 2018 would prove it in pretty extreme fashion. Unlike most years, this dude was not done in round 3. ## Safer777's Analysis Alucard was the favorite to win true after his first victory but people hadn't Yuna out. Actually she was the favorite before the contest too. But man look at this result. Alucard won easily. I guess that Yuna scoring above 40% at least is  something. Obviously FF 10 has fallen. But I didn't expected that much. I know Alucard isn't weak or anything but still. Also that means Peach\>Yuna I guess? Find it hard  to believe but the stats don't lie! He even has a chance to win the next round too! Proof that beeing a Vampire is a good thing. Still Alucard is looking good in the  contest so far. Ah FF 10. Still has to be the 3rd strongest or maybe even the 2nd strongest FF game here. Right? ## Tsunami's Analysis With Big Boss struggling with Crash, the instinctive thought was "wait, is Kefka the favorite in the division now?" That was what *felt* right, but it was easy to see that it wasn't true, because Alucard was putting up nearly identical numbers against a clearly stronger opponent. I suppose a case could've been made for Red to be the favorite; I didn't think that way because I didn't feel like narrowly beating Sora was all that strong a performance. It *is*, because Sora only feels weak because he never lives up to his seed lines. I'm sure there's some analysis that conclusively shows that yes, Alucard was the favorite now. --- ## (7)Kefka vs (15)Bomberman 2018 _source: (7)Kefka vs (15)Bomberman 2018 (revid 83790)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match right here is why Kefka vs L-Block was such a big deal -- the free win that followed. No matter the Kazuma/Bomberman match, it was a bye for the Kefka/L winner and not even Kefka could have screwed this one up after getting by his first test. This was just a simple, easy, clean blowout. Nothing more to say about it. Except for one tiiiiiiiiiny thing that everyone will find hilarious. As you can see, Kefka scored 59.81% on Bomberman. No big deal, right? We all saw that coming. The guy scored 60.19% on L-Block! Can you even imagine if L-Block and Kazuma switched places on this bracket, and we got to see a 2 seed L-Block against a 15 seed Bomberman, and L-Block lost? Does that go down as our funniest upset ever or is it still Sandbag \> Magus? I suppose L-Block's 2007 run should always be mentioned when we talk about funny upsets, but I'm too busy burying the thing to care. Does even one guru/oracle/bop/\[random Board 8 alphabet games\] pick Bomberman there? I sure as hell wouldn't have. For the record, I would still say Sandbag \> Magus is funnier. That match happened when people still actually cared about this web site and we weren't some far left echo haven. These days no one gives a rip about this place and we're a meme for even existing; there are tons of reasons for that, but the extreme lack of free speech is near the top of the list. You don't even have to talk politics when mentioning that, either. The entire methodology behind this site's moderation system was trash from day one and was always going to cause people to leave. We said it at the time and we were proven right. That's why Sandbag is funnier. It comes from an era when this place was actually cool to be on. ## Safer777's Analysis After Kefka beat the champion in the previous round of course he wouldn't lose now. Bomberman is an icon but against Kefka what could he do? So Kefka did good. I guess? You can never be trully sure with Kefka. Still next round we will finally see if Kefka can be trully good! Yeah? Bomberman scored above 40% too so that means he too can beat the champion? Stats don't lie! I don't know what else to write in Kefka matches. He is too unpredictable. ## Tsunami's Analysis It's tough to say that a character has the most decisive win of the day and still looks bad, but Bomberman's just not that strong a character. We last saw him losing to Ezio and Tails, and that didn't seem awful at the time but Ezio looked awful this year. It probably wasn't awful, though. And he did beat Crash in 2007. Still, Bomberman was a 26-seed in 2013. How did he even make the bracket? --- ## (1)2B vs (9)Ness 2018 _source: (1)2B vs (9)Ness 2018 (revid 83849)_ ## Ulti's Analysis 2B's prediction percentage here was no accident. A lot of people, myself included, felt like the Ness/Shadow winner could win this match and that 2B was a hilariously overseeded character. People have major recency bias about this and think her match with Bowser proves she's legit, which shows a lack of context. Not dumping on her or Automata here, but it's just facts. She beat Ness and beat him easily, but this match was close enough in percents to prove she was not a legitimate 1 seed. Maybe a 2 or a 3, but 1 seeds are held to one standard and one standard only -- "Can they win the contest?". Some will point to characters like Sonic and Mega Man, but low rank noble niners could, conceivably, win a contest without an insane rally. Even high midcarders like Zero or Luigi could do it. Just remove Link from a bracket, have Mario and Samus get randomly upset somewhere, and Luigi or Zero could catch fire. We saw Zelda do something similar just this year. 2B? Nope. Not when you're getting 54% on Ness you aren't. People look at one good match with Bowser as proof, but one good match doesn't erase the point here. Legitimacy means having results like that over and over again for years. Consistency. I like her a lot, but I harshly judge 1 seeds. It's part of the deal, lady, and 54% on Ness is just bad news. I don't care about Smash. You're a 1 seed. To put this a different way, is Shadow the Hedgehog legit? Is Magus? (The hilarious irony here is 2B might actually get into Smash and cause this writeup to fade away and classify itself as ob-so-lete by 2020. Shout out to the Hardyz.) ## Tsunami's Analysis Ness was the straight-up Guru favorite here, and that's even before taking into account that considerably more people took Shadow to win this match than took 2B to lose last round to Cayde-6. So yeah, this came as kind of a surprise. I didn't even realize until this contest was well underway that Nier is a Square Enix franchise. I'm not sure if that knowledge would've given me more faith in 2B, or less. Probably less, because everything post-merger tends to be completely trash in these contests. The casuals didn't exactly jump all over us on this one, either. Given that 2B's Round 1 prediction percentage was only 81% or something, the 46.42% this round means she was probably technically the favorite, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Ness + Shadow had more brackets than 2B + Cayde-6. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this result was a suprise. We have a newcomer defeating a Nintendo/Smash character in Round 2 no less! Damn! Don't know what to say. I guess the SC6 boost is real? Maybe the fanservice is so strong? Okay I know that Ness is weak and such. Still you would think that he would be able to defeat a newcomer from a new game. We don't play new games here as you know! But anyways I guess 2B has some strength with the recent announcent of her beeing in SC 6. Still nice win from her. Once again I will say it was a suprise since most Gurus had Ness here anyways. Again though these kind of results are always nice. --- ## (12)Charizard vs (4)Bowser 2018 _source: (12)Charizard vs (4)Bowser 2018 (revid 83850)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We all knew this was coming after the 'Zard choked in round one, but it still had to be finalized and there was a small tinge of doubt before match time. But there wasn't going to be any crazy Charizard runs this year. Bowser clearly waited 8 years for this one to his get-back at this guy, much like how Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff wanted Warrior in WCW for only one match, and it showed. There wasn't even a Pokemon board vote in this match. If anything there was a Bowser board vote, and the best Charizard was able to do was bleed a few percents throughout the day. It's a good thing a Pokemon game came out in 1998, because it feels like their window to win a contest is completely and totally slammed shut. When you need Best Year in Gaming to win one, you're probably screwed. Relevant point regarding Bowser's board vote: When Smash Ultimate came out post contest and Board 8 had the first Save My contest for Smash characters, Bowser won it. That dude is insanely popular here, which might explain him being over 60% at the start. We just talked about legitimacy. This was legit. Bowser went out there, clearly kept this match in mind as motivation, and just beat Charizard's ass. That was fueled by Heart Gold and Soul Silver. The 'Zard we've seen lately, even with Pokemon Trainer's return to Smash, is the real Charizard. I won't go so far as to call him a fraud, but he is absolutely not what we saw in 2010. It's worth noting here that without Pikachu, Pokemon would have looked like trash all contest long. Their results were all mediocre or garbage, even in wins. All of them. Pikachu was the one standout. I don't know how many of you listen to the John Middlekauf 3 and Out podcast, but this was a John Middkauf Ass Kicking. Hyped match, one showed up. I maintain Bowsette was a huge influence, just for the record. I don't see any mainstream outlets covering Charizard porn, nor do I want to. And for those wondering why I keep making random porn jokes, that was an actual factor later in this contest. ## Tsunami's Analysis Do not let ***anyone*** talk you into believing that this loss made Charizard look bad. This was barely half a percent away from the Oracle consensus. Bowser has always been one of the strongest midcarders, and 43.45% is a good percentage to get on him. I think. ...Actually, the list of characters to do better than that is surprisingly long. Kirby has, more than once. Ryu didn't, but then he turned around and beat Bowser twice in fourways. *Leon Kennedy* outperformed him. So did Yoshi, but only barely. Honestly the fact that Leon's number is better than Yoshi's...oh, wait, I think RE4 was still fresh when that match happened. So Leon was a lot stronger than he is now. Charizard may not have had the perfect timing that he had in his first match against Bowser, but he's had plenty of reasons to remain strong over the years. He's made two more Smash appearances since 2010 and gotten *two* Mega Evolutions. Both Mega Evolutions got showcased in the anime, under the ownership of recurring characters, and prior to that, but still post-2010, Ash's Charizard returned to his party for a while. And then the 20th movie, which was basically an alternate continuity retelling of the entire first season distilled into one movie, again had Charizard as Ash's ace. This is a strong performance, and yes, it was somewhat redeeming after he disappointed in Round 1. Of course, it would be a few more rounds before his "disappointing" 2013 campaign was massively vindicated thanks to the efforts of his anime teammate Pikachu as well as his second-round opponent from that contest. ## Safer777's Analysis Obviously after the first match of Charizard nobody had any doubt that he would lose to Bowser. Yeah Charizard was damn strong when he first appeared. And he beat Bowser with the help of the release of HG/SS since his match against Bowser back then happened the same day that these games came out.. And in the next contest he did good with the SFF and such and won some matches. But yeah he isn't that strong. But since he was my first Pokemon ever I can't say anything bad about him. I guess that Bowser not going above 57% is something. Bowser is legit of course. And Charizard has fallen a lot. I think Pokemon is doing decent in the this contest so far. And they are strong. We saw Pikachu and Red winning and advancing. Also Pokemon seems that it isn't SFF'ed against other Nintendo characters. Still Bowser won fair and square. --- ## (3)Phoenix Wright vs (6)Ike 2018 _source: (3)Phoenix Wright vs (6)Ike 2018 (revid 83851)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This one just floored me. I knew it was possible, and knew Ike was never all that strong, and that there was some stats proof Phoenix was stronger for this match, but I had to see it to actually believe it. The thought of Phoenix Wright, a visual novel character (no one cares about visual novels, get over it people) with a marginal Marvel vs Capcom 3 appearance and dubious contest history, beating Ike was just insane to me. Yet here we are. I can't really overstate how huge this is, because look at how bad Phoenix's history is. This dude got blown out by Gordon Freeman. He almost blew a 1300 vote lead to Bomberman of all people in a second place duel. Bomberman! He was a 3 seed and lost to Jecht. His games always get completely and thoroughly blown out. The only times he has ever looked good are the Rivalry Rumble and Vincent getting a high school prom match picture in one of the biggest cases of sabotage we will ever see -- as a side note to KamikazePotato, that is picture sabotage, genius, not a well known sprite. Ike's contest history isn't too much better, but was at least better than Phoenix's. He also has Smash backing, which is a better cameo than anything Phoenix has been in. In retrospect I should have seen this coming when the dude lost to Sarah Jessica Parker in 2013, but I digress. When this match started, Phoenix didn't have his usual godslayer board vote, which was likely due to bracket voting. Phoenix was only able to slowly build a lead, so I figured Ike still had a shot. Nope. Well I mean he did, but this match stayed too close for too long for him to potentially overcome a rally later. You don't beat Phoenix by having close matches with him. Board 8 won't allow it. You have to beat him. So then this poll was stuck in the range of Phoenix leading by 100-200 for the first 6 hours, it was effectively over. Ike could never truly make any headway, and then the night vote hit and just ended it. Phoenix took off overnight, Ike never got the morning vote, and that was that. This match was relatively close the entire time, but there was never one second where it looked like Ike was going to win it. This was the latest in a long history of underperformances, but this was the worst one. Let's run through the list. In 2007, nominations were open when Ike was announced for Smash Bros. Brawl. His first fourpack had Duke Nukem, Guybrush Threepwood, and Gordon Freeman in it. Ike finished in third place, 1100 behind Gordon, as the only Nintendo character with two FPS characters stealing votes from each other. It's one of the most embarrassing losses I've ever seen. In 2008, his fourpack had Pikachu, Arthas, and Spy in it. Third place again, this time 1100 behind Arthas. Again, a thoroughly embarrassing loss but at least he was sharing the poll with Nintendo. It was explainable. In 2010 he finally got his chance to shine. In the first round he beat up a penguin, and in the second round he would have lost to Zidane but got lucky and drew Zidane in a day match. He would eventually get annihilated by Mario. Ike 100% loses to Zidane in a night match. Make no mistake there. In 2013 his opening threepack had Proto Man and Dr. Robotnik in it. Ike only beat Proto Man by 170 votes and his lead was 500 at one point. If this poll was 2 hours longer, Ike would have lost. As-is, he only won with bracket votes. Then in round 2 he drew GLaDOS and Julia Roberts. He finished a distant third. Which brings us to this year. Phoenix Wright is just an inexplicable loss. My whole job is finding out why people vote the way they do, but I got no answers here outside of Ike being a character that always gets into these weird debatable matches and always underperforms. I would bet most of his strength comes from Smash instead of Fire Emblem, too, and I can tell you the Smash fans are pretty fed up with all the Fire Emblem swordsman in those games. I would not be surprised if the male swordsmen were all anti-voted by those people. Ike, Chrom, Roy, and Marth are pretty much the exact character as far as Smash fans are concerned and none of them are particularly well liked outside the people who play them. That theory would explain a lot actually, because under normal circumstances with Smash backing a character shouldn't constantly choke. Edit: This match was flipped due to registered users having double votes, which explains the odd result as Ike might not have lost otherwise. I do think Phoenix gets rallied late if this is close though. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was our first match to be flipped by the registered user bonus. The raw votes are even closer, with Ike winning by just 28 votes, but Phoenix is Board 8's favorite character, so it came as no surprise that he'd be the first character to outright steal a win because of the registered bonus. It's entirely in character, too. Phoenix always does his best work when the odds are stacked against him, and occasionally he's unable to pull out victory on his own power, but someone else comes along to bail him out at the last minute. 1-2 is obviously the most prominent example, but there are other times, too, like 1-4 when Larry Butz comes busting in and Phoenix finally gets a chance to cross-examine a witness that Manfred von Karma hasn't tampered with in advance. I still need to play Spirit of Justice. I hear Phoenix is back to being the main protagonist in that one after being demoted to side character in the fourth game and being part of an ensemble in the fifth. Still, those games did give us other Ace Attorney leads. If they're any good in Spirit of Justice as well, maybe we should consider them for future experiments with other characters. The Godot thing didn't work out too well, and Edgey's been struggling for years now without a win. Couldn't be any worse than that, right? Well, okay, maybe it could because Apollo's debut game was roundly panned (I kind of liked it). He'll suffer for that. Athena might do okay just because females are doing better. Actually, forget those two. I also heard that Ema Skye is reprising her role from AJ:AA as the main detective, and she's had other appearances in the series before that. If we want to see if two X chromosomes really is an asset in these contests, we'll make *her* the next AA character to get a shot. But even without the registered voter bonus doing him in, Ike would have *barely* squeaked past Phoenix. Given the way Ike regularly dominates the Voting Gauntlets in Fire Emblem Heroes, that really doesn't speak very well for the strength of Fire Emblem as a whole. Or rather...it doesn't speak well for the *characters*' strength. It's been fairly rare in recent entries for there to truly be a lone main character. Ike kind of was in Path of Radiance, but even there he was the first lead to not be royalty in a game that still had plenty of royalty. Beyond that, you really have to go all the way back to Roy. It's quite possible that Fire Emblem will forever suffer from ensemble cast syndrome. The series has done okay for itself in Games contests, though not spectacularly. ## Safer777's Analysis Another suprise win! Obviously Phoenix is the favorite character of this board. But that doesn't say anything. Ike is from FE and he is in Smash so most people had him winning. But Phoenix managed to win! He had a lead but Ike kept coming back and pushing but Phoenix hold on and did it. Also I believe this is the 2nd time where a character wins in USA but loses the match. Ike had in USA more than 52%! But since Phoenix won in almost every region he did it. Still nice to see a Board favorite going to Round 3! Phoenix is legit now! His games are old mpw and like everyone knows the Objection thing by now. And as always as with all close matches this was good too. Also I  believe this is the first match where with the new rules that Ike would win instead of Phoenix. Meaning since registered votes count as double and Phoenix had more of them he won. Still Phoenix won and is all that matter. --- ## (10)Isaac vs (2)Kirby 2018 _source: (10)Isaac vs (2)Kirby 2018 (revid 88244)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match was never going to be anything more than a typical round 2 blowout of fodder that got lucky to get through round 1, and it would barely be worth commenting on outside of a huge argument people had in the PCA this year. That's what happens to the winner of fodder v fodder winners. They face real competition and get slaughterhouse'd. But I saw people trying to say Golden Sun wasn't any good. Are you people insane? And Felix \> Isaac. Yeah I said it. ## Tsunami's Analysis This is an SFF match, plain and simple. Golden Sun is a handheld-exclusive series, and while Kirby isn't quite handheld-*exclusive*, he is very handheld-dominant. His debut game, Kirby's Dream Land, was for the original Game Boy, as was Dream Land 2. Dream Land 3 was a Super NES game...released more than a full year after the debut of the N64. And then there's the little matter of the 2000s. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards came out in June of 2000. Let's look at the ensuing decade--and keep in mind that Isaac's debut game wasn't out yet when this decade begins, while his most recent game was just a few months away from release when it ends. August 2000: Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble for the Game Boy Color. One of the first games to use motion controls. December 2002: Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land for the Game Boy Advance. Remake of his console debut, 1993's Kirby's Adventure for the NES. Like Dream Land 3 with the N64, that was well after the debut of the SNES. October 2003: Kirby Air Ride for the GameCube. Racing game spin-off. Surprisingly fun given how simple the controls are. October 2004: Kirby & the Amazing Mirror for the Game Boy Advance. I really need to go back and beat this game. I think this is the only game that I've ever gotten stuck in and my sister was able to beat. June 2005: Kirby: Canvas Curse for the Nintendo DS. Like Tilt 'n' Tumble, this is about 50% tech demo. Kirby tends to be the go-to series for Nintendo to try out new gimmicks. December 2006: Kirby: Squeak Squad for the Nintendo DS. September 2008: Kirby: Super Star Ultra. An updated remake of Kirby's *second* console outing, 1996's Kirby Super Star. Super Star just *narrowly* manages, in all three regions, to be Kirby's first console outing to be on the most recent console at the time--none closer than North America, where it was released just *nine days* before the N64 came out. And that's it. Kirby did manage another console outing before Isaac's most recent game came out (in November 2010), October 2010's Kirby's Epic Yarn for the Wii, but that's outside the 10-year window from, we'll call it starting from July 2000 since Crystal Shards came out in June of that year. 10 years, seven releases, and only one of them for a home console rather than a handheld. And that one was a single-button racing game rather than the platformers that he's known for. Yes, this conveniently ignores that HAL Laboratory in general and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai in particular are also responsible for Super Smash Bros., and that the focus on the three Kirby characters in the game has led some people to consider Brawl's Subspace Emissary "basically a Kirby game with a lot of guest stars", and thus if you include the two Smash games from that time frame, Kirby had some *very* prominent releases in that decade. Kirby's a handheld star in my mind, just like Pokémon. ## Safer777's Analysis I can't understand why Kirby is so strong. I just can't. Yeah he is the hero of Smash supposedly but still. I have wrote some stuff about Kirby in my first analysis of  his match so go check out why I don't get it. So obviously Kirby scored a massive victory here. When you see a non N9 character winning in Round 2 with above 70% you  know that something is going on. Kirby takes the division for sure. Probably? Also a plus thing I understand is that you can't hate Kirby because just look at him! How can you  hate that? Unless you hate round things I guess? Kirby is too cute and strong! As for Isaac...at least he managed to reach here which is a big thing for this character/franchise! --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs (8)Garrus Vakarian 2018 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs (8)Garrus Vakarian 2018 (revid 83859)_ ## Ulti's Analysis 1/3rd of people had Squall losing to Hat Kid, Garrus, or Ramza. I will never understand some of the prediction percents we see sometimes. This was also a match featuring the manliest of manly men. Squall and Garrus are just incredible characters, and since this was a predictable match with nothing to say I'll just get into why I love these two. First, Squall. I legitimately hated the dude when I first played Final Fantasy 8, but then I replayed it when I got a bit older. Of course the guy is a loner who thinks everyone around him is a moron. Look at those people. Quistis is the only one worth being around, and why Squall was stuck with Rinoa I'll never understand. Rinoa is useless trash. Zell is useless trash. Irvine is mega trash. Selphie might be the worst character in Final Fantasy history. So my party was always Squall/Quistis/Zell, and the latter was only there because of his limit being insane. The side characters aren't too much better with their "everyone is Xehanor-- errrrr, everyone is Ultimecia TIME KOMPRESSION RAWR" plot, but hey at least Laguna's stuff is nice. The constant? Squall. Through all the dumb characters and insulting plot twists, Squall pretty much tells everyone to fuck off so he can stab fools, which is exactly how one should act when surrounded by garbage. Then his Kingdom Hearts 1 and Dissidia appearances happened and brought it home. I love this dude. He isn't grade A or anything, but he's a solid B+. And he's voiced by David Boreanaz who my wife loves, which is always a plus. Then there's Garrus, who is the damn king of Mass Effect for party members. I cannot possibly put my love of the dude into words, so I'll let these videos handle it for me: My \#1 reason for playing FemShep is that I love her as a character. \#2 is getting a romance option with Garrus. He's probably my favorite character in the Mass Effect games outside of maybe Tali. And Tali only comes close because of the emergency induction port joke. Garrus is the man, but he went to someone equally acceptable so I'll take it. ## Tsunami's Analysis As per usual, once you've started heading into the bottom half of a round, you generally get very few relevant matches. This won't actually be the case for this bracket, where some surprise results would come from low divisions, but...well, there were surprising results in low divisions in previous contests under Allen, too, but that was largely the result of the later divisions being worthless. Remember how Super Mario RPG made a contest semifinal? The game that I noted is *extremely* easy to screw over because it eats the ass end of SFF against Nintendo *and* Square? But Division 7, its division, had only one other game from each of those companies: Paper Mario for Nintendo and Chrono Cross for Square. And Division 8 had absolutely no Square and its only Nintendo games were from the Mother series. The prevailing theory was that Allen set it up that way because he *wanted* a company other than Square or Nintendo to be represented in the Final Four (Square was considered the favorite for Divisions 1 and 2, with Chrono Trigger and the 3 most popular Final Fantasy games, while Divisions 3 and 4 had RBY and the top three Mario games and Divisions 5 and 6 had the 3 biggest Zelda games). Well, there was one non-Nintendo, non-Square entry in the Final Four, but it was Undertale. Furthermore SMRPG was the only Square entry at all because Melee got in the way of the Square-fest in Divisions 1 and 2. Divisions 7 and 8 had most of the top non-Nintendo, non-Square entries, like the MGS games and RE4. Didn't matter. Squall failing to double Garrus was another one of those warning signs that we all missed. There, I actually said something about this match. ## Safer777's Analysis Squall winning this round was never in doubt. And after Garrus barely beating Ramza this was a lock. But Squall didn't even managed to score a doubling here. I wonder why. I thought he would do it for sure. Is it anti-votes? Squall has gotten weaker? Both? Who knows. Maybe the result is good and I am beeing strange. Maybe. This is my opinion. It is not that result is not good, don't be fooled. Man next round Squall has to step up his game or else he is out. Guess people don't like the Angsty characters anymore. --- ## (12)The Boss vs (4)Zelda 2018 _source: (12)The Boss vs (4)Zelda 2018 (revid 83860)_ ## Ulti's Analysis If Zelda \> Squall wasn't already set in a tombstone, this match solidified it in metal. I know MGS is down, but 71% on The Boss is far more impressive than 64% on a guy that barely beat Ramza. 76% on Hat Kid also means nothing compared to 75% on Ezio. There were some Squall holdouts trying to pretend this match was a weird form of SFF a la what we saw in some female bracket matches in 2006, because stats people will do anything to justify a bad position. Those are the kinds of people that run the Dodgers and thought sitting their top 4 home run hitters in a world series game was a good idea. If you want to know where too many stats and advanced metrics get you, look at the state of baseball right now. Does anyone under 75 actually care about that sport? Just for fun, people put this Zelda number in some stat calculators and found that it put her on the high Noble Nine level. Which is why some people thought this result was weird and couldn't possibly be legit. After all, Zelda would have no actual reason to boost this much, right? It's not like there was some well received recent game from this site's favorite franchise happened and she played a huge role in that game or anything. Nah. By the way if we get Game of the Decade for the 2010s, and we should, I'd really struggle to choose between Breath of the Wild and Smash Ultimate. Both are phenomenal games, but one has weapon durability for literally no reason whatsoever. That works in Fire Emblem. It does not work in Zelda. Not that Breath of the Wild being great would cause Zelda to boost. No sir. ## Tsunami's Analysis After this performance, it was hard not to think Zelda was the favorite against Squall, though the margin would still come as a shock. The Boss has been fortunate enough to almost always draw a winnable first match, allowing her to reliably reach the second round without ever really establishing herself as a true midcarder. But she's considered one due to her strong Round 1 record, so this beating was a statement win for Zelda. ## Safer777's Analysis Man Zelda dominated here. A victory above 70%? And I know that The Boss isn't that strong anyways. But Zelda is a beast. Number 2 female character here for sure. After Samus of course. Probably at least. Well beeing in  Legend Of Zelda and Smash series does wonders for you. Also people say that MGS characters don't do good in this contest. I don't see that myself. I mean Quiet lost yeah but apparently we don't like MGS 5 or something. Big Boss won 2 matches as it was expected. And of course The Boss lost to Zelda. Eh whatever. Still seems that next round Zelda is the favorite to win but who knows? --- ## (14)D.Va vs (11)Fox McCloud 2018 _source: (14)D.Va vs (11)Fox McCloud 2018 (revid 85755)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Some people point to Draven as the big cathartic result of this contest. Do not listen to those people. They are communists. Shout out to Jon Stewart's A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, and shout out to him in general. Him leaving The Daily Show is the biggest reason our political climate stopped having any nuance or humor whatsoever. He is BADLY missed. Want to know when and why and how democrats stopped being cool? When Jon Stewart stopped being the checks and balances in our discourse. He would make fun of everyone and anyone, not just one side of things like you see now with everyone expected to fall in line. Go read the Board 8 politics topic some time if you feel like puking in your mouth at all the one sided mentally ill leftist garbage in there. These people don't just dislike a president. They LOATHE a president and buy into every single piece of mainstream media brainwashing, because it's very easy to exploit the mentally ill and the mentally weak. It's no accident most of those people end up voting for democrats these days, because the entire media is leftist. It wasn't always like that. There was a balance to things. If Nancy Pelosi acted like a hung over idiot during State of the Union and kept falling asleep, he would make fun of it. If Bullshit Mountain (Faux News) spread their bullshit, he would make fun of it. If CNN or MSNBC spread their bullshit, he would make fun of it. If Jon Stewart were still alive and the media tried telling us an 11 year old drag queen 'performing' at clubs in New York for pedophiles was a good idea, Jon Stewart would eviscerate these people. If Jon Stewart and George Carlin were still alive, people would still be getting along instead of being in echo chambers and listening to fake news like the good little NPC bots they are. That isn't at a shot at either side, either. It's a shot at all of you. You all do it, you all know you do it, and you're all dumb enough to convince yourselves only you're right and the other side is evil 100% of the time. People see me shit on leftists all the time and assume I'm some redneck Trump supporting racist, which couldn't be a bigger lie. They just happen to be the biggest douchebags in America right now. I was just as vicious towards hardline conservative trash in the 80s and 90s back when they were acting the exact same way. But today for the leftists especially, that mentality is why most of you hate religion and churches. I get it. Well look in a mirror, champ. You act the same exact way now. You have become exactly what you hate -- joyless fuckheads who want to censor everything because you actually think making everyone else as miserable as you are is a good idea. Well piss off. You're now hated every bit as much as hardcore fundamentalist conservatives. Congratulations. Was it worth it? Speaking of bullshit no one likes, we have to talk about Blizzard. Their one and only contest entrant didn't get 28% on and blown the fuck out by an overrated, overhyped fifth rate Nintendo character by accident. This was the most cathartic and best result of the entire contest. In 2001, Blizzard released Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, which was an expansion pack that added a fifth act on to Diablo 2 itself. This effectively means that Diablo 2 in the year 2000, almost 20 years ago, was the last time Blizzard would make a good video game. Everything they have done since has been abject, total, and complete garbage. I tried thinking of a few different ways to go about this writeup, but I'll just get into each series one by one. But before we do that, we need to go back in time and look at exactly how and why Blizzard became such garbage in the first place. I will point out that the PC master race idiots, including a bunch of Board 8 users, tried telling me during the Activision-Blizzard merger that Blizzard would be better off for this. Those people looked like idiots then and they look even dumber now, because as usual, I was proven right. I have the patience of a serial killer. It was only a matter of time before I was proven correct, and this is my best and most successful example to date. Blizzard is complete shit. In 1996, a company you've never heard of called Vivendi Games (then known as CUC International) announced their intent to acquire Davidson and Associates, another company you've never heard of. What you have heard of are the names "Activision" and "Blizzard", which are the companies involved in the mergers we're about to discuss. Vivendi Games would eventually acquire Blizzard, a subsidiary of Davidson and Associates due to a corporate merger, in the year 2000. Most people think the Activision merger is what started the decline of Blizzard, but this all started in the year 2000. It just takes awhile for corporations to worm their way into a culture and get rid of all the good people that helped build up a company in the first place. But make no mistake. This started in 2000. When World of Warcraft happened not long after the Vivendi deal, people assumed everything was gravy. It was actually the exact opposite, because it would be the financial catalyst for Vivendi and Activision to complete another corporate merger to form Activision Blizzard. Bobby Kotick came out not long after and said that video game development should in no way be about having fun, which should have been a signal to anyone with two functional brain cells to rub together to stop buying video games from these people, but the public is a bunch of mentally weak sheeple punkass bitches. When I rail on people for being dumb and buying dumb games and funding dumb things, World of Warcraft and the billions upon billions of dollars the disposable income idiots still living with their parents funneled into that game is the prime example. That is the example of millennials being dumb with money and then bitching later about not being able to afford things. It's your own fault. Piss off and stop trying to tell me socialism is the answer for your own stupidity. I don't have to pay for your bad decisions. Fuck you. Got mine. If these people were smart, they would have done their research into Vivendi and realized these people were bad news. But I get it, people only care about video game quality, which is why the Warcraft series is as good a place to start as any. It would be one thing if World of Warcraft was actually good, but it's nothing more than programmable addiction, as beautifully told by Johnathan Blow: Warcraft With the popularity of Warcraft 2 launching the battle.net service and Starcraft being a cultural phenom, the hype for Warcraft 3 was insane. I remember it. I was there. Blizzard promised us better graphics, a new engine, and a new way to play RTS. They would slow burn on the web site and release one unit at a time. The footmen looked so cool! Wow look at those grunts! The animation and graphics are sick! It was awesome. We were eventually told there would be races beyond humans and orcs. There would be elves and undead, too? Say what?! That's nuts! But Blizzard balanced three races perfectly in Starcraft, so adding one more with better graphics should be a breeze, right? Nope. I still remember when that hero RPG item bullshit was first announced, and how people completely lost their shit for it. I remember how disappointed I was and I remember thinking at the time that this was the worst idea for an RTS there could ever be. You can't take a genre about micromanaging units while macromanaging resources in real time and add in singular units that completely warp the game balance into being all about them. It stops being an RTS. People were of course stupid and thought it was a great idea because Blizzard (more on that bullshit mentality in the Diablo section, holy fucking hell), but I knew. RPGs and RTS do not mix. When Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne ultimately came out, it was a mess and stood as the worst video game ever made for 10 solid years. The main reason was the hero RPG item system, which ruined both single player and multiplayer. The other reason was the abominable upkeep system, where you were penalized for having a big army. This was directly intended to make sure your army was small and only the hero units mattered. No longer did you micromanagement skills matter. The entire game became about leveling up 1-3 hero units and micromanaging them only. It was a joke, and it ruined one of my favorite genres beyond all repair. To this day it hasn't recovered, with only Advance Wars providing any sort of an RTS fix, and even Advance Wars has a form of hero system in it. I remember thinking at the time that such idiocy had to be intentional, and it was later confirmed by Blizzard themselves that it in fact was. They never wanted to make an RTS at all and wanted to only go the RPG route. I could not have been more vindicated from the morons who tried telling me this is what Blizzard wanted all along. They wanted RPG only and hamfisted an RTS game because people were hyped for an RTS other than Starcraft. Single player was bad. Multiplayer was infinitely worse. There was no balance to speak of, and almost no units outside of heroes mattered. The only things that did matter were stacking items on heroes, leveling up on neutral minions, and making units that countered opposing heroes -- not that this even matters once a hero reaches a high enough level. The logic behind this braindead, idiotic design decision was to have some action earlier in multiplayer games. It would be the single worst design idea in gaming history, even including all the idiotic trash Hearthstone does. Hero units and RPG effects were never, ever meant to exist in an RTS realm. The genre was not designed for it. It was every bit a mistake as Akuma in Street Fighter 2. That game was in no way designed for aerial fireballs. RTS was in no way designed for balance once hero units got involved. Some were worse than others, but all of them are complete cancer. None worse than the Blademaster unit, which can go invisible from level 1 and warp the entire game around him even existing. If you're playing against an orc, your entire strategy becomes walling your base off with pathing glitches so the Blademaster can't enter your base. If you're in a bad spot on the map, you're fucked. You then have to tech to detection as soon as possible. It's one example of hundreds how the hero RPG item system was so badly implemented in a genre never designed to handle it that it ruined my opinion of Blizzard for good. And this was only the first example. They could have redeemed themselves with other games. Instead it just kept getting worse for almost two decades, and only recently have people begun figuring out what trash this company is. Some people point to the lore as a reason why Warcraft 3 is good. The entire plot, and I mean the entire plot, was ripped from Starcraft and given a medieval coat of paint. No credit given for a rehash of old themes with new faces. Some people claim Dota makes Warcraft 3 good. Again, this has nothing to do with Warcraft 3. Dota was talented people using the map editor. That's it. That has nothing to do with Warcraft 3 at all, but people are so desperate to defend anything Blizzard does that they'll cling to anything. It's also a good way to spot people that know nothing about Dota, because the original version of it that Guinsoo made was garbage IceFrog had to come along and improve on the model, and let's not pretend inventing the MOBA genre is something to be proud of. There is no community in video games worse than MOBA players. Zero. I've played a lot of video games and have been in a lot of communities. Nothing touches MOBAs for people being human waste. I'll let Brian Kibler explain this one, who can do it in a much nicer and quicker way than I can: Warcraft 3 was actually given a balance update recently where they nerfed/buffed a ton of stuff and added new maps. It was the first one in something like 9 years, and people fell over themselves giving Blizzard credit for this. Two seconds on Google offers proper context. Number one, what took them so long? The game was a broken mess from day one. And number 2, the new maps were all player made. Imagine my shock, the players themselves are better at design than Blizzard. Again. It also turned out this all happened due to Warcraft 3 Remastered being on the horizon, because Blizzard has run out of ideas, people have FINALLY figured out they're shit, and the only thing left for them is graphical updates on old games. World of Warcraft happened not long after Warcraft 3 and not long after the Vivendi screwjob, and no game has ever had a worse effect on a company than WoW did. The only comparable example is Nintendo released Wind Waker and discovering just how stupid their fan base actually is. They realized they could sell literal shit with a shiny coat of paint on it and their fans would eat it right up. Well WoW is the Blizzard version of this. WoW is nothing more than accepting a quest and following a yellow map marker over and over again for thousands of hours at a time and 15 dollars a month. I am in no way exaggerating this and it's embarrassing as a human being that so many of my fellow humans fell for such obvious programmable addiction. I still, to this day, see people on my friend list doing nothing with their entire lives outside of World of Warcraft. There is no substance there. There is nothing actually happening. It's just quest, yellow exclamation point, repeat. At one point, this garbage-ass formula had 10 million active players. That's 150,000,000 dollars a month, or 1.8 billion dollars per year. Blizzard con jobbing all these people into paying for a terrible video game remains the dumbest thing I have ever seen in gaming history. It would be one thing if WoW was actually good. It being garbage is another thing entirely. There is zero defense for anyone that's ever paid a dime to play that game. None. You are a sucker and a chump, and you need to stay away from used car lots. Granted you could see a car with no engine, no tires, no transmission, and no steering wheel and you'd take out a second mortgage and a personal loan to buy it if it said "Blizzard" on it. Oh wait, none of you actually have a house to take out a second mortgage because you spent everything playing WoW and now you're stuck living with your parents well into your 20s. And of course you're the same people who think socialism is the answer. Amazing logic. When WoW finally collapsed, which happened very quickly once people realized the game was bad, Blizzard finally panicked and skipped the whole classic leveling thing. Now you can just jump right to level 110 (the cap was 60 when the game first came out, for those who were smart enough not to play this trash) and join raiding parties. This I can actually defend, and it's what should have been there from the jump. Raiding is legitimately fun, and so is the game's storyline. Had Blizzard just done this from the jump, the game would have been defensible. But they didn't, therefore they and the game are not defensible. Chris Rock once made a joke about how black men get credit for being good fathers to their kids and not having babies out of wedlock. Why the fuck am I supposed to give people credit for doing something they should have been doing in the first place? No credit given for doing your job, and no credit given to Blizzard for doing something they should have done from day one. Fuck Blizzard and fuck you too if you defend this crap. They only act in the best interest of their players when they panic. More on that in the Hearthstone section. People will point to "the world" and "immersion" as defenses for WoW, which are fair points. The one thing Blizzard actually does well are aesthetics. It's how they trick people into thinking their games are actually good. You can click on a unit a lot and get funny quotes. You get good graphics. You get immersion. All masks for shitty gameplay. MMORPGs, or Massive Morbidly Obese Recluses Pretending to be Girls, is by far the worst genre in gaming. I don't exactly give credit to any company profiting off of making one. I will never for as long as I live remember how utterly obnoxious that fanbase was in the 2000s, both online and in real life. There was nothing more annoying in gaming history for me than WoW players. If it wasn't jock assholes pretending to be gamers, it was smelly nerds with worse hygiene than usual talking about nothing but WoW and failing out of college. Fuck all of those people. I don't know why abstinence only education is a thing when the religious right could just buy people WoW accounts and have a much higher success rate of ensuring virginity until marriage. The only good thing to ever happen in that game was the funeral raid, which was a great thing for WoW because a bunch of braindead idiots thought a funeral in a PvP zone was a good idea and thus it demonstrated how stupid Blizzard fans are, and it was also a positive for Board 8. It was a major point that drove the jp's fat ass off of our board, because he was literally crying about it and got no support here. For once, Board 8's bullying of the persecuted paid off. Good riddance to that idiot. I'll cover Hearthstone in its own section, because that game is such laughable garbage and Blizzard has lied about it so many times now that it deserves its own section. I need to close this section with one final and obvious point. The success of WoW sucked up all of Blizzard's attention. No Starcraft until 2010. No Diablo until 2012. No updates on old games past the bare minimum, and even then the fans played a bigger part than Blizzard did. Look at this time line: Notice anything funny? Once WoW happens, there is NOTHING else for the entire decade. They're also so embarrassed by anything after 2014 that they stopped updating the time line. It's the classic story of not caring once one gets rich. As of this writing, that company is worth 36 billion dollars on the backs of you idiots funding bad video games. They're buying yachts and spending time not making video games. What are you left with? Bad video games and wondering why you're unsuccessful into your adulthood. Blizzard has lost their grit because they made fuck you money. I'm worth a paltry 11 million (I say paltry because compared to 36 billion I ain't shit), but the difference with me is I got more gritty when I made my money because it showed me how the world actually works. Blizzard? They're just laughing at you all the way to the bank. Starcraft In 1998, Starcraft and Brood War both came out in the same year. I know, hard to imagine given how slow Blizzard is today, but that pair of games paired with bnet was a cultural phenom for years. It set the stage for online tournaments, it revived the economy of a country (really, this happened), it really set the stage for video games as an online platform, and above all it was just a damn good video game. It was so good that Starcraft actually got people to lie to themselves and convince themselves Warcraft 3 was good. Think about this. That is impressive. So given how good Starcraft was, how fast the games came out, and how good the plot was, we wanted more. It was okay if Blizzard took their time, because we wanted them to get it right. Mind you, this is something we started openly asking for back in the year 2000. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. ... ... ... ... 12 years between Starcraft games. Duke Nukem Forever and Half-Life 3 eat all these jokes, yet somehow Blizzard never does. 12 years of time might as well be dog years in the tech world. The iPhone isn't even that old. That's longer than the time period between 9/11 and Obama announcing that Bin Laden was dead. Remember W's presidency? That was only 10 years ago. Facebook is only 14. Youtube is only 13. I could go on. To the point. Let's revisit 2009, where Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision-Blizzard, went on record as saying he would raise the prices of games even higher and that the main goal in game design would be to take all the fun out of making video games. These are literal word for word quotes that happened right before Starcraft 2 was announced. This right here should really be enough for anyone who isn't a complete fucking idiot, but we're talking about Blizzard fans. When Starcraft 2 was finally announced, it was announced as a 3 part series where we would get the three races as three separate games. But don't worry! Fear not! We were promised at the time by Blizzard, the same company that had just gone on record as saying games need to be more expensive and not fun, with profit above all else, that only the first game would be fully priced. I said at the time this was a blatant lie and to this day I have those Escapist articles bookmarked for anyone dumb enough to deny Kotick's literal words. Not that it didn't stop some of you, notably the PC master race idiots like joyrock, from trying to defend this vomit. Well what do you know, Starcraft 2 ended up being three fully priced games. "Imagine my shock." It's almost like Blizzard's CEO went on record as saying he would pull this crap just to see how many people would be stupid enough to defend him. Oh and make sure to buy the collector's edition for 200 dollars each, suckers. As for Starcraft 2 the game, Wings of Liberty and Legacy of the Void are actually decent. There aren't nearly enough missions that are actually RTS, though. Too much timed bullshit or random gimmicks. Give me a base with nothing in it and let me work. Enough with the bullshit. But it's Blizzard, and bullshit is all they know anymore. The Zerg stuff was the biggest dumpster fire of it all, with literally zero RTS maps in the entire game. The highlight of all of Starcraft 2 was a random shooter mini game on the Hyperion. I honestly don't know to this day if that's a credit or discredit to Starcraft 2 itself. I never bothered with the multiplayer, but I'm sure LordOfDabu would be able to destroy it with a rant of his own. Starcraft, like Warcraft, was rereleased with an HD update because Blizzard is out of ideas. It was an absolute dumpster fire. Diablo I'm old enough to remember when Diablo first came out. It was this amazing, controversial game that drove all the pro-censorship conservatives insane. Diablo got lumped in the pile with Mortal Kombat, Doom, Postal, and so forth as games who were corrupting the youth or some such. We would continue to hear stupid shit about games causing mass shootings and sex crimes from more than one republican idiot (including Trump, who I actually like but come on bro, that's just dumb). This is nothing new for those morons, because they would rather blame anything else for their failures as a parent instead of the mirror. Remember when they also tried blaming music, movies, public schooling, their kids' friends, and even TV? There are some stupid fucking people out there. Remember Jack Thompson, the idiot Florida lawyer that made it his crusade to take down video games and he ended up disbarred? Good riddance, trash. Diablo was in it right from the jump, and it's no accident the game itself was fantastic. It was simple, clean, and effective. 16 floors of increasing difficulty, an environment change every few floors, and one town. That's it. Find some items, gear up, and keep it moving. Eventually you kill Diablo and start over until your character reaches level 50. I never bothered much with the multiplayer in the Diablo games, because it was nothing more than a dupe fest that Blizzard never bothered fixing (surprise surprise). Even Hellfire, that weird expansion not totally made by Blizzard, was great. You trap a skeleton behind a wall as the archer and gain like 30 levels right at the jump. Four years later, we got Diablo 2. I was initially put off a bit, because I was expecting a similar experience to the original. Open green fields, more than 8 directions of movement, 4 acts, and a bunch of bright colors? Auras? Hirelings? What the fuck? But the game eventually grew on me a lot, and with the expansion pack I came to love it to death. Outside of dupewords (surprise surprise, duping was again a problem and Blizzard refused to ever fix it), everything added by Lord of Destruction was amazing. Runes rendering all other gear obsolete was dumb, but the rest of the game was good enough to make up for it. Over the years I got paladin and sorceress to 99, and beat the game with all the others. Believe it or not, the most fun I had was with a Kicksin (assassin that kicks). My greatest accomplishment in that game was making a legitimate, real Last Wish. I found the sword and all the runes on one character myself, without really looking for them. I don't know if Blizzard upped the drops of runes or what, but soloing Uber Trist and the buffed version of Diablo that drops an Anni stone was an incredible experience. The Anni was a pretty high roll and the torch was of course assassin points. That whole run was great. Eventually got her to 97. Necro is highly overrated. Never cared about him. Barbarian is boring. Druid is just a bad sorceress paired with a bad barbarian. Sorc, Paladin, Amazon, and Assassin are where it's at. It's kind of funny watching idiots pretend I'm a sexist for liking Trump when in almost every game I play I naturally gravitate toward female characters. Love them in Diablo. I vastly prefer FemShep. I always played as a girl in the Elder Scrolls games. I could go on. It shows the utter stupidity of giving idiots a keyboard, anonymity, and no consequences. People used to get punched in the mouth and taught via peer pressure not to say or do stupid things. Now we give everyone a keyboard, treat everyone like they're special, give everyone a trophy just for showing up, and invent social media to pander to delusions of grandeur. Again, Chris Rock said it best. No credit for doing what you're supposed to do. Social media is the worst invention in our planet's history and it isn't close. But I'm getting off subject here. The two major issues with Diablo 2 were inventory space and Blizzard themselves. Blizzard never once made any real action against botters or cheaters. They deleted accounts, sure, but you had to FLAGRANTLY cheat to do it to the point of selling duped items. If you just duped and gave things to friends, they didn't care. They also time ban legit people all the time while never actually addressing the bot problem. I don't know how it's possible to be that dumb, but it's Blizzard. I'm not surprised by it, but the games used to be good so we didn't care. Then there's the inventory space, which holy hell could Blizzard be stupider about this? It's way too small, we end up having to use the Horadric Cube for more space, and then Blizzard comes out and tells people increasing inventory space would put too much strain on their servers. If this was any other company I would assume it's an April Fool's Joke to say something this hilariously and legendarily stupid, but it's Blizzard. They're in the Tyson Zone at this point. There is nothing about that company I wouldn't believe at this point, because their idiocy is legendary. Which brings us to Diablo 3, one of the most hyped games ever made, and a game none of us were actually able to play at launch because Blizzard had one server when the game was first released. We're thankfully getting into the age of the internet where youtube and internet archiving was a thing, so even Blizzard sycophants can't deny this one. When we were finally actually able to play the game, people thought something was wrong with it. Items were not dropping. Ever. Anywhere. The whole point of Diablo is killing stuff, picking up gear, and getting stronger. That's how dungeon crawls work. We would maybe get an occasional good thing for killing a boss, but that's about it. People actually thought the game was glitched. Nope! "Working as intended." -Jay Wilson, director of Diablo 3 I covered the myriad of lies and bullshit Blizzard put out with Diablo 3 in my review, and there's no reason to repeat them all: The short version: Blizzard opened this game with a real money auction house, made item drops nonexistent, released a buggy mess, lied about it, got caught, insulted the entire player base, and Jay Wilson had to resign over it. They were more worried about emulating what d2jap was doing with Diablo 2 than they were designing a video game. That much is clear to anyone that's not a complete and total fucking idiot. If you didn't think low item drops coincided with a real money auction house, you are thoroughly a moron and there is no helping you. Bethesda is catching holy hell for Fallout 76, as they should. It's being called the worst launch ever. Well I'm here to tell you that Diablo 3 was the single worst launch in gaming history, and I give no fucks about any rereleases or ports or fixes or whatever since. That game is forever indefensible trash, and somehow, some way, it gets worse. "Do you guys not have phones?" If you want to know which people and which web sites are in no way trustworthy for honest gaming information, pay close attention to the people who defended this announcement. There are actually people out there dumb enough to think fans booed because of sexism and that people equate mobile gaming with things females like. If ever you need an example of why SJWs are a cancer on our culture that we need immediate chemo for, this is it. I say this as someone whose mother died of cancer when I was only 17, after a years long battle with something that should have killed her within 6 months. I get my stubbornness from her, clearly =p. SJWs are worse, because when the big C hits someone in your own family it's very easy to see something that needs to be dealt with and overcome. But when cancer disguises itself as something friendly, as SJWs will do at first, that's when you get something truly evil. That's when you get things like open borders for easy invasions, 11 year old drag queens promoting pedophilia, and daily viral meltdowns from people too stupid to understand why their SJW culture doesn't make them happy. These people are parasites and need to be excised immediately. There is no nice way to put it. It's beyond obvious they don't even play video games, and any company who buys into that filth deserves the loss in sales that will follow. Star Wars found that out the hard way. Hillary Clinton tried to embrace that nonsense and lost an election over it, when all she needed to do was stay even keel for a year and she would have won in a landslide. I could go on for years about why SJWs and communism are the worst people in human history (look at the length of this one writeup; don't even doubt me that I could write a book on it and I probably should), but I digress. I won't even link to the sites who tried pushing that dipshit narrative, but they're easy to find. To the point. Females have nothing to do with why Diablo Immortal and Blizzard are dumpster fires. Polygon covered it beautifully, and there's a wonderful quote from Steve Jobs in there that absolutely exemplifies why Blizzard is a shitty company today: There have been a lot of bad press conferences over the years, from 599 US DOLLARS to Wii Music to anything a member of the Bush family says (PLEASE CLAP), but nothing will ever top the embarrassment of the Diablo Immortal announcement. You have to suck at a level never before seen to get booed at your own convention, but that's exactly what happened there. Wyatt Cheng, who by all accounts is a fantastic dude, was in no way ready for that immediate backlash and is in no way a public speaker. The guy was thrown on stage when he wasn't naturally meant for it, and I don't blame him for what happened. That is 100% the fault of his bosses for being fucking trash. Plain and simple. What happened next shocked me, because I'm used to Blizzard getting away with this garbage and their paid off minions like Forbes and PC Gamer using the PR spin machine to make them come out looking good. It's finally stopped working. In October of 2018, Blizzard's stock was over 83 dollars a share. That press conference was the catalyst for a complete stock collapse, the exodus of hundreds of employees, and millions of players. They couldn't even lie about this one. Activision themselves reported it. Eat shit, sycophants. As usual, Ulti Was Right. I only need a long enough time line. There are two major things in play here. One, Blizzard got meme'd. Gamers are a pretty smart bunch for as much garbage as I fling at them, and once something gets meme'd they're out. That press conference was so hilariously bad that there was no other result to be had. Of course people are going to leave. It's why Europe banned free speec--- errrrrrr, banned memes. Social engineers know the effectiveness they can have, and Europe doesn't exactly want their citizens having free speech when they're being lorded over by an unelected beurocracy known as the European Union. And if you support restricting free speech, fuck you. The other is that Blizzard's employees are both quitting and are being paid to leave. Activision took charge after the stock collapse and will take a more active role in cutting costs and developing games, as I predicted. By the way, good job to the PC master race idiots on Board 8 who tried telling me a decade ago that Activision merging with Blizzard wouldn't mean Activision deciding things for them. How does crow taste, you little bitch boy rho male idiots? This will add up to Blizzard getting even worse, as we have recently seen in an ever increasing pace of speed. Former employees are all over the internet in open revolt against their business practices, their work hours, and how they no longer know what game players want. Easy articles to find so I won't link to them all. I will simply give you one: Hearthstone The worst video game ever made, and a game so bad that I can't just lump it into the 'other modern Blizzard games' section to give it shorthand attention. The idiocy of Hearthstone truly has to be experienced to be believed. Things started off well enough because Hearthstone was able to attract two audiences that were in dire need of something new -- frustrated Blizzard fans and frustrated Magic the Gathering players. Blizzard fans I've covered already, but it's impossible to talk about Hearthstone without mentioning why Magic sucks, and a lot of it is for the same reason Blizzard sucks. Hearthstone might be the worst game ever, but Magic is the worst game ever. Behind all the aesthetics and the artwork and the lore of Magic is a game that fundamentally does not work due to the mana system. That game has been around since 1993, and Wizards refuses to fix it, update it, or print anything whatsoever that would help fix the problem. It is very possible, and in fact quite plausible, for a game of Magic to exist where one person literally cannot play due to not drawing their mana producers, and Magic's idiotic community continues to defend this crap even to this very day. I'll get to the community being a virus later. It actually mirrors the Blizzard time line. The only people still hanging on to Magic are company loyalists and stupid people, and the number is a lot less than it used to be. It took a pro tour final having someone get mana screwed into a 3 card starting hand (when you mulligan, you reshuffle and draw a starting hand minus one, so the player had to mull 4 times) for Wizards to actually change something, but all the changed was letting you look at the top card of your library with the option of punting it to the bottom if you mull. That's it. Everything else is the same. The fix is actually really simple, and props to metroid composite for this idea. Allow basic lands in the sideboard. If you need a land, skip your draw step and go fetch one. This makes it so there's two disadvantages to doing it -- a weaker sideboard and you're not drawing a card -- and it adds a lot of strategy to an already overly complicated game (https://twitter.com/nathanfillion/status/428761514984472578). Will Wizards do this? Of course not. Why? "Tradition". If tradition is your only reason for doing something stupid, then you have a very bad idea and very stupid people in charge. Tradition is why gay marriage took way longer to legalize than it should have and why legalizing weed is taking WAY longer than it should. You people can bash me for hating SJWs all you want, but I promise you I hate fundamentalist conservatives every bit as much. Really I hate most people but I'm nice in real life and use the internet to vent, but I digress. Magic has other major problems besides the mana, as well. The community is a virus. Spend a long enough time with these losers and you become a jaded, smelly asshole rules lawyer looking to get one over on people. I could explain this in detail but anyone that's ever visited a hobby store already knows how bad those people smell. It's disgusting, and some stores are having to adopt hygiene standards due to lost revenue. I am in no way making that up: Imagine being a grown-ass adult with bad hygiene. But sure bro, it's the fault of women that you're an incel and not at all an issue with you. Loser. Then there's the secondary market, where an entire thesis can be written over how awful vendors and secondary markets are for any overarcing product they sell. Gamestop is loathed for a reason, and I promise you Magic's secondary market is worse. It's made possible for three reasons. One, printing is a joke. Buy a box or case of any other card game and you'll get most of what you need. Buy one in Magic and you'll be lucky to get half of what you need. This allows vendors to charge stupid prices for already overpriced bullshit, and they get to inside trade to boot. That leads to reason \#2. Wizards has been caught leaking inside information to vendors too many times to list at this point, and it's hilarious watching that virus of a community try to deny it and defend it. There are people who have leaked entire sets in advance and vendors like Star City were magically dumping product before the leak knowing reprints were coming. Three is the reserved list, which started this problem in the first place. Magic players panicked over baseball cards tanking in value, and the tanking of collectible value in general in the 90s, and made Wizards legally sign a contract that certain valuable cards would never be reprinted. It is the most anti-player thing you'll ever see in a game, and if you come across someone who defends the reserved list policy, know right then and there that you are dealing with a massive piece of shit and move on from them socially. Trust me on this. Go hang out with better people. It's why I openly support counterfeit Magic cards The event that got me to quit Magic was rules lawyering in general, specifically this garbage-ass community defending the Borborygmos Enraged Pithing Needle bullshit: If you defend that in any way, you are a fucking scumbag and I want nothing to do with you. Ever. Thankfully, most people have common sense and didn't defend it. Only the virus section of the Magic fanbase did, and they very quickly drove away everyone else. Only a complete and total fucking idiot scumbag piece of trash, like the guy who wrote that Channel Fireball article, would ever defend the rules lawyering trash that goes on in Magic. I and millions of other quit over it. There are other examples I could bring up, like a player getting DQd when his opponent cheated, game quality being at its lowest point since the early 90s, stores having no revenue from the game anymore, and so forth, but I bring up rules lawyering last for the simple reason of no one actually liking a tattle tale. No one likes them in grade school, in the family, or as adults. It's no accident that this childish mentality killed Magic for so many of us, and is currently killing GameFAQs thanks to having the worst moderation system on the entire internet among any major gaming site. If you hop on Google trends, Hearthstone's biggest spike in interest was directly due to that Borborygmos trash. All these factors combined had players thinking there had to be something better out there, and along came Hearthstone. Magic and Blizzard have very similar time lines with very similar issues, right down to the only people left defending either brand being the worst people in our society. It was only natural for these two games to be related. Hearthstone filled a void and beautifully tricked people into thinking it was actually a good game due to providing people what Magic couldn't -- constant mana. On turn one, you have one mana and it's not colored. On turn two you have two mana. If a card says it costs 5 mana, it costs 5. Simple and easy. Above all that, the player on turn decides everything outside some rare exceptions. None of this dumb rules lawyering stack bullshit where I can name a card and have a judge say I didn't name the card. None of that. Hearthstone is digital only with a contained economy, so no secondary markets. No smelly losers. No reserved lists. No politicking or cliques. Just people playing cards, which is all any of us ever wanted. Hearthstone blew up due to filling a void we all wanted filled and had over 100 million players at its peak. But this is Blizzard we're talking about. Too good to be true. Hearthstone started as a little side project from a small indie company, which Blizzard eventually acquired and took over. When Blizzard gets involved with anything, you can guarantee a lot of lying a bullshit will soon follow. When Hearthstone first came out, only 8% of the game was RNG based. This was annoying, but whatever. The occasional misfire on Lightning Storm or Animal Companion kept variance in there. Blizzard thought this was a fantastic idea, and pushed for more and more RNG until Hearthstone was unrecognizable. Now, well over 25% of the game is RNG based and all player skill has been removed from deciding any results. Every single game, no matter what class you play, comes down to randomized luck. Nothing else ever matters. Blizzard wants things this way, no matter how many tournaments get ruined by randomized bullshit and no matter how many players quit over it. What people want is a card game based on skill, because Hearthstone's mana and functional gameplay are legitimately perfect. It even implements 9 classes plus neutral cards in a remarkably balanced way. The issue is Blizzard and their RNG fetish. They intentionally and deliberately removed any and all skill aspects from Hearthstone, because their belief is that this attracts more players and makes more money. There is no ban option on ladder, no card ban options, no sideboards, and nerfs typically take forever to happen on problem cards. We only got quick nerfs recently because Blizzard thoroughly panicked over the insane number of players that quit the second Smash Bros. Ultimate came out. Imagine that, a great game from a company that actually cares attracted people. Shocking and amazing information. Blizzard openly and admittedly loathes their customers, and no game proves this better than Hearthstone does. A few examples offhand: -literally calling the players too stupid to understand a nerf beyond mana costs when nerfing Fiery War Axe. -lying to players when deciding not to update Deathstalker Rexxar for each new set, claiming it's too difficult to code due to text size. Mike Donais got DESTROYED on reddit for this one. -claiming no Druid cards are a problem before nerfing the problem Druid cards immediately after Smash Bros. Ultimate came out and stole away a massive amount of Hearthstone players. -claiming Vicious Syndicate's article about polarity (https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/meta-polarity-and-its-impact-on-hearthstone/) is wrong because Blizzard's internal data says so. This one is just LAUGHABLY stupid given play data is public information, but Blizzard has gotten away with lying to people for 20 years so why not keep trying? -claiming Cubelock was only the 12th best deck in the game after nerfing every other tier 1 deck, then having to nerf Cubelock anyway. -waiting a year to fix Naga Sea Witch in wild, which only happened because one angry player took out ad space on the Hearthstone subreddit and attracted media attention. -nerfing Unleash the Hounds because they don't like players punished for playing minions, then printing Spreading Plague and refusing to touch Mind Control Tech, before banning Mind Control Tech in arena. -when nerfing Tess Greymane, they outright lied and tried to slide it in under "bug fixes" so they wouldn't have to give players the free dust, then blamed the players for being mad about it. Kripp, the \#1 Hearthstone streamer, made a video saying that people should in no way be celebrating a victory here for convincing Blizzard to change course, as them being dumb and trying this in the first place is a massive insult. -they printed The Caverns Below, a card so badly designed that it was nerfed three times, and they tried to not nerf it at all by citing win rate stats before saying it should be nerfed due to 'player feels'. Two nerfs for Caverns directly, and one for Giggling Inventor because Caverns easily abused it. This was also the fault of the players. You cannot make this shit up. -their constant lying about arena deserves its own rant, but just know that a topic like this happens about 5 times per year at least: -failing to properly test Jan'alai's battlecry with Brann Bronzebeard, then lying to players and claiming it was a client side issue. -lying to players about sales data and play rate metrics when this information is all public, which is similar to what Wizards tried to pull with Magic not too long ago. -Shudderwock and Kingsbane. I don't need to say much else. I'd be stealing davidponte's thunder. Ask him about those two cards some time. I could easily go on. Just look at how long this writeup is. If you want someone else's opinion from someone a lot calmer than I am, VaatiVidya covers it very well here: Multiple streamers have quit, Ben Brode has left (shout out to DonnyG for being right on this, Brode was the man and he is BADLY missed, he was never the problem), Blizzard designers are quitting left and right, stock is down \$45 per share in a month, and Hearthstone is at its lowest point in popularity since launch according to Google trends, so I am on the right side of history with Hearthstone being a garbage video game. Yet hilariously, the cultists who defend Blizzard in a sycophantic manner actually continue to claim the game is skill based; Blizzard has openly said it isn't, just for the record. Blizzard 100% does not want Hearthstone to be skill based, and it's hilarious watching the Hearthstone fanbase try to claim otherwise. This company has been lying to people for almost 20 years, and you still get total morons defending this crap like they're being paid. I actually wouldn't be surprised if some were being paid by them, because it's hard to imagine people being that dumb naturally. They never wanted Hearthstone to be an e-sport. That's their goal for Overwatch only, I have this directly from Blizzard themselves, and Hearthstone will absolutely continue to get worse and worse as more people leave and more sets don't sell. Pair this with Activision taking a more active role in the company and the whistle being blown everywhere, and Hearthstone's collapse will be the catalyst for the entire company's paradigm shift for the worse. Despite what idiots with their manic ritalin habits and attention spans shorter than goldfish want to think, I actually have something called a "memory". Go get one and pay attention. Speaking of Overwatch. Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch Shocker. Blizzard lied to their players. This has NEVER happened before! I honestly don't hate either one of these games. I don't like them, but it isn't due to some high-reaching hatred of Blizzard. The games just aren't very good, but at least they aren't bottom of the barrel vomit like Warcraft 3 and Hearthstone. Heroes of the Storm took a big risk and tried to shake up the MOBA genre in two different ways. The game removed all items and it randomly plops giant things right in the lanes. Imagine you're playing League and Baron just shows up mid lane for one side when everyone is level 5. That's essentially what HotS does, while having all the characters available be Blizzard characters. I personally think both of these ideas are really stupid, but I actually appreciate the risks taken. It just isn't a MOBA without character progression beyond experience points. I want to be able to buy items and snowball things. That's the entire point of a MOBA, and it's why Dota and League are well ahead of HotS in popularity. Even the Blizzard machine couldn't get HotS off the ground in any meaningful way, and in December Blizzard once again took a giant shit on their players and announced the end of Heroes of the Storm as an e-sport. Remember when Blizzard paid to stream HotS on ESPN? Well neither does Blizzard, apparently. All the time and all the work put in by the players was gone in an instant because Blizzzard fans are too stupid to know better than to trust a company that has lied to them for almost 20 years. There is no longer anything for you to play for. Take the hint and put your effort elsewhere. Overwatch is a game I want to like, because it puts a new spin on what Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike started. You get these 5v5 FPS arena fights with pretty good characters, you start things, and then.... done in less than 5 minutes. The fuck? Not nearly enough time to get to know your team, the players, or really what you're doing, and things just end. It's like getting a lap dance and 5 minutes in the girl goes 'time's up, 20 dollars please'. Yeah I'll take an hour with an escort and an actual fuck next time, thanks. Overwatch has two major problems. One is the community being every bit as toxic as any MOBA, and we've covered the MOBA issue already. No need to rehash it. The other is Blizzard themselves, and people getting banned for picking off meta. See for yourself: And this subpar version of TF2 is Blizzard's best game since Diablo 2, which says a lot. It's the only game that actually got a character into the field this year, as a 14 seed no less, and D.Va's more known for pornography than she is Overwatch. It's not like Fox is some amazing character, either. Star Fox 64 and the arwing itself is cool. Falco is cool. Fox's dad is cool. The game itself being quotable is cool. Even Slippy's incompetence is adorable in its own way. But Fox? He's kind of lame, and he's been an annoyance in Smash from day one. And he went out there and got 72% in this match, by far the biggest blowout he's ever gotten in these contests. It was not due to Fox himself being any good. It's because finally, fucking finally, people are seeing what I've seen all along. Blizzard is indefensible, unsalvageable waste and D.Va was paying for it. This useless POS character was a threat to win our contest? Please. Voters are too smart for that now. It took you guys awhile, but you're finally where I'm at and I couldn't be prouder of you for it. A lot of you are going to read this writeup and think I'm insulting you directly. For some that's true, but for 72% of you I could not be happier to have you in my life. I'm not even kidding. I made this writeup extra vicious to see who actually has reading comprehension, because if you get this far down and see how much I love you guys, we're good. If you just skim or stop halfway, I'll know because you won't see this. \<3 "So why are you buying Blizzard games when you clearly hate them?" I don't buy them. Haven't spent one penny on a Blizzard game since Warcraft 3. My brother in law did sound engineering for Blizzard in the mid 2000s for a couple years and I get all their games for free. He currently works for EA. Dude really knows how to pick em, doesn't he? I've shown the proof to metroid composite, Forceful Dragon, and Leon4, three people I trust with my life who I know wouldn't share his info with people. You're free to ask them if it's true or not. Another connection I have is through my wife's coworker's husband (they're a gay couple) does web engineering for Blizzard and I meet a bunch of them around Christmas. This is the second year I've run into a bunch of them via holiday parties and such. Holiday parties kinda suck, but it's part of the deal when you're married. 2017 is when I more or less got it from them that Hearthstone is not a skill based game, that they couldn't believe it became an e-sport, and that their main goal was Overwatch. Blizzard would eventually admit this publicly and it made their defenders on Board 8 look completely dumb for doubting me in the first place. This year their main fear is being laid off. Activision is serious about cutting costs and taking things over. A lot of people are being forced to quit. And here we are. Blizzard only got one character in, and she got thoroughly embarrassed. In a way, D.Va is the perfect mascot for them. Good on the eyes, bad on substance, and overhyped trash when all is said and done. Good riddance. Article continues here with monthly updates: ## Tsunami's Analysis Okay, wow. I have to follow *that*? This was also a statement match, and that statement was "goodbye and good riddance, RallyFEAR!" Fox has always been one of the weaker members of the Original Twelve, coming in ahead of Jigglypuff, Ness, and probably Captain Falcon, but behind the other eight. Well, he wasn't always eighth, obviously; the only win he has more impressive than this one came at Pikachu's expense. That was back when Pokémon was anti-voted just on principle. It might be anti-voted again due to its perceived dominance, even though the only time Pokémon outright *won* a contest was as sidekick to Ocarina of Time in the Years contest. Fox breaking 70% in a Round 2 match is fairly astonishing. It wouldn't take very long for the apparent statement to proven completely untrue, but this year's rallies would merely be making already strong characters even stronger. ## Safer777's Analysis After the longest rant ever in these contests by Ulti what is more to say here? Just that D.Va is really weak. I thought maybe she would get a rally or at least did a little better but rallies are out in this contest. Nobody cared and I don't think nobody will ever care again for these contests. Fox dominated. I know that he is a  midcarder but man this victory is impressive no matter how you look at it. More than 70%!  We really hate new games here. Even though the polls say we play new games but it is a lie. We don't play new games here! Anyways what else? Oh yeah. I still remember when I played Fox's game on SNES. I was so impressed back then! They were simplier times. Also  once again awesome win for Fox. --- ## (10)Captain Toad vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 _source: (10)Captain Toad vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 (revid 83862)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Feels weird going back to normal writeups after the behemoth from last match, but hey! It also feels weird talking about Aeris in a 60-40 match with Toad. Is this impressive for Aeris? A failure for Aeris? Just a good performance by Toad? We can't exactly go by the 2007 numbers (the only other time Toad was in a contest) because both characters had SFF everywhere in their matches. I can't reliably go by that Toad number when Bowser was right there. Besides. That was Toad. This is CAPTAIN Toad! SHOUT OUT TO NICK, STAR OF THE CONTEST AND WINNER OF MY HEART. MAPLE LEAFS GONNA DO IT IN OUR LIFETIME SON. One thing I do know is that Aeris was the first, and currently the only, 15 seed to win two matches. And given she was up against Fox next, she was going to win three matches before bowing out. It shows how badly seeded we made this bracket, and I say "we" because it was clear Board 8 had way too big an influence here. This bracket had the worst seeding since Current Events decided everything back in 2002, and Aeris being a 15 seed might be the biggest example. But I love giant seeds facing each other and advancing, so hey, more fun for me. ## Tsunami's Analysis Look at those numbers. Captain Toad lands right on a multiple of 1,000, and Aerith comes up just *five votes short* of breaking 60%. Which actually does amount to a swing of just one registered user's vote making it 60% exactly (17997 to 11998). The overall Oracle consensus was that Captain Toad exceeded expectations, but as you'd expect with it falling so close to a round number, the top picks were all extremely close. Five different people went for 60.00% exactly, and it would've had to fall right on it for them to get first place because 59.99% and 60.01% were also taken (which, yes, means that a score of 49.98 failed to be good for a top five. There's a 49.89 that's outside the top ten.) Also, if anything, Ulti's underselling this. We were literally guaranteed a double-digit seed in Round 4 by the end of Round 1, because all four matches in the bottom half of this division went in favor of the lower seed. The real NCAA tournament has never seen that happen, though it's seen plenty of half-regions where the higher seeds went 1-3 in Round 1, including last year's South Regional where UMBC became the first 16-seed to upset a 1-seed. That regional was crazy, with a 9-seed upsetting a 5-seed in the Sweet Sixteen with *neither* of them having pulled a seeding upset the previous round, only for the 9-seed to *get upset* in the Elite Eight because they were playing an 11-seed. Who only needed to beat a 7-seed in the Sweet Sixteen. Well, at least the seeding helps explain away the weird prediction percentages in these last two matches. Well, that and RallyFEAR. And Fox having had a legitimately debated match in Round 1. ## Safer777's Analysis After Aeris(that is how it was spelled in the game back in my day you know!)beat Waluigi we knew that she would win the 2nd round match of course. Also funny enough  that means that Waluigi\>Toad! Damn! Anyways Aeris was lucky that she got 2 weak opponents and she advanced to Round 3. But I believe next round she loses. Also both  wins were under 60%. I like when the results are closer myself. Well at least FF7 scored some wins. Still that proves that FF 7  always wins. The prediction percentage was low too but this is normal since the bottom division was very strange. --- ## (1)Geralt vs (9)Simon Belmont 2018 _source: (1)Geralt vs (9)Simon Belmont 2018 (revid 83863)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was, by far, the manlist duel of this entire contest. Only Squall vs Garrus was close, but Squall has his spots of being ridiculous. Geralt and Simon don't have this issue. They are the manliest of men and just beat the shit out of each other heads-up with no tricks. It was like watching two heavyweights just throw bombs until someone died. Look at that BEEF! For about five hours we had a damn good match on our hands, too. Geralt was pretty much this contest's version of an overseeded, overhyped mid major who had all the big conference boys pissed off and playing their hearts out to prove a point (think St. Joseph's in 2004). All his matches were good, and Simon really took it to him early. Simon won the board vote, likely on the back of Smash hype and MANILNESS, and even won the second update. Geralt started pushing back after that, and it seemed like the fun was over. For the first few hours of this poll, the match was a stone cold tie, with maaaaaybe Simon having a slight advantage. Castlevania also has a very good night vote, so there was a chance Simon would take off at night and pull off one hell of an upset. But as we started getting closer to midnight, Geralt finally decided to make a push and he built himself up a 100 vote lead. Looked over at that point, but Simon made one last push near midnight. Had he been able to put together a night vote he would have had a shot, but it was Geralt that would win things over at night. After a stallfest in the 100s, Geralt opened things up once he broke the 200 barrier and that was all she wrote. This would become a very familiar trend for Geralt in this contest, and for Simon there was no shame whatsoever in losing. He rode Smash Ultimate hype to giving us two fantastic matches in this contest, and all we ask from people with no chance to actually win the contest is entertainment from their matches. Simon gave us that. Can't complain! ## Tsunami's Analysis And now we're into Division 6, aka the Division of Blah. This division seemed almost custom-made to promote a bandwagon effect, because even in the absence of a true rally, a certain level of bandwagon effect tends to occur when a character is perceived to reach a round beyond what they "should" be capable of, and this division was guaranteed to allow multiple characters to reach rounds that they never had before. Obviously this was true at the highest level for most divisions since normally by Round 5, there's nothing but Noble Niners left, maybe one or two others (non-rally) if the bracket was suitably lopsided (quick, which Noble Niners did L-Block knock out in the 2007 semifinals? The answer is none of them because he'd already knocked one out in the quarterfinals and *seven of the other eight* had been on the opposite side of the bracket.) But Vincent Valentine was the only one in this group to make Round 4, and Ryu Hayabusa, Riku, Pac-Man, and Auron were the only other four to have made Round 3. (Also there were a couple of Round 1 matches in this division where neither character had any prior wins, although only one of the four characters in those two matches even had any prior appearances so that's a little misleading.) Oh, and Riku's only Round 3 appearance outside of Rivalry Rumble came in a year in which he didn't finish in first place in any match, getting second place in two straight rounds of fourways. Geralt-Rosalina was the match where both were newcomers, and with Simon upsetting Ryu H, both of these characters had already reached new heights. The newcomer winning only cemented it, however. Ladies and gentlemen, start your bandwagons. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was a debatable match of course since Geralt is a newcomer and Simon is in Smash and in Castlevania too. For the first 5 hours Simon was barely winning too! Eventually though after around 5 hours Geralt managed to fight back for good and won with no problems. So we have a newcomer beating a smash character! Take notes people! Not something you see many times! I also want to say that Simon was winning in USA with around 51,5% but as you see he lost. Americans ruin everything! And they REALLY like Smash! I believe  Simon's peak is this. He will be weaker from now on at the next contests I believe. As I said in the previous match analysis Geralt is AWESOME! Man wish he won the whole thing. Still good match with back and forths, lead changes, and all that drama we have in close matches. Also SC 6 boost\>Smash Boost confirmed! --- ## (12)Pac-Man vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 _source: (12)Pac-Man vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 (revid 88245)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This is one of the weirdest matches of the entire contest. It's close by final percentage, but legitimately stayed 52-48 for the entire match. Usually when things are close you get a rally in one way or the other, but that didn't happen here. It was just a steady, easy, 52-48 win for Bayonetta where she was never threatened. Either no one cares enough about Pac-Man to try rallying him, no one cares enough about Bayonetta enough to try rallying her, or no one cares about either of these two period so people just left the match alone. What I don't get is how Pac-Man got 48% on her in the first place. I get Bayonetta being decent. She's all over Smash Bros and her series is on Nintendo consoles now, which is about all it takes to have decent strength on this site anymore. Pac-Man only has Smash, and he's not exactly a character people will rally behind. I have no clue what happened here, and we know Bayonetta would end up looking decent, so my best guess is Pac-Man boosted from being in Smash. Your guess is as good as mine, but something happened here. Clearly. Pac-Man is always good for a weird result, and this was his this year. Because let's be honest, the guy has overlap with everyone and it's impossible to actually hate Pac-Man unless you're this guy. ## Tsunami's Analysis But before Geralt cold get a proper bandwagon going, he'd have to deal with another potential bandwagon, and one with boobs, no less. You could argue that Bayonetta hadn't truly reached new heights despite having gone to Round 3 for the first time, because 2013 cut out two thirds of the remaining field each round rather than half, and if you measure simply by distance from the end of the contest, a Round 2 appearance in 2013 is at best equivalent to winning a division in 2018, possibly even equivalent to winning your first Legends Bracket match. Yes, that's right, Link's 2018 record is the same as Draven's 2013 record. Link did it in 1v1s rather than 3ways so he beat fewer characters (not to mention he beat the same character twice), but even with a free pass to Round 5, he needed to win 5 matches to take home this crown, just like Draven did. Of course, it's kind of impossible to come up with a good equivalence between either of those two years and any other year, because the 2013 field using powers of 3 instead of powers of 2 and the 2018 field having a losers' bracket (You know who else besides Link had 5 wins in 2018? Cloud! Also Pikachu, Bowser, and Tifa all had exactly five wins and Zelda had 7, but they were in the main bracket.) It's much easier with the earlier brackets. 2010 had 7 rounds, Villains had 5, and the other brackets all had 6. You could make an argument for counting 2007 and 2008 as though they had 7 rounds, since they also had 128 characters just like 2010 did. Okay, granted, 2005 also had a Tournament of Champions, similar to this year's Legends Bracket. 2005 was essentially an 8-round contest in which 3 out of the 4 characters in Round 7 had direct byes there. It feels wrong to say that a Round 5 appearance in 2005 is only equivalent to a Round 3 appearance in 2004, though. It would be foolish. So then how, even if you ignore the loser's bracket, do you score this season? In 2005, we narrowed 64 down to 1, and then put that 1 in a 4-character bracket. This year, we only narrowed 128 down to 8, and then put those 8 in a 16-character bracket. ...I think we would have to ignore Losers' Bracket and just treat this as an 8-round bracket. I know a lot of people are treating Losers as the "true" values for X-Stat purposes since those are the ones that actually knocked characters out of the contest. I feel that this is a view largely perpetuated by those who feel that the two rematches that had significant shifts in percentage produced more "legitimate" results than the originals, which is a belief that meshes with their preconceived notions. One of the matches I'm referring to is Mario-Samus, where Samus nearly pulled the upset the second time, and the other is a match with only one Noble Niner in it where said Noble Niner outright *lost* the first time, and *only* the first time. Really, the presence of a Loser's Bracket just muddies the waters, especially when it's set up like this with it being single elimination for four rounds and then double elimination. When listing the Most Surprising Results of All Time, Zelda's upset of Mario is listed as a Round 7 match. *Because that's what it is.* That's the percentage of people who thought that Zelda would win *7* matches. Contrast, say, *the very next match*, which is also on that list. That's the number of people who thought that Crono would either lose his first match and win the next three *or* win his first match, lose his second, and win his next two. And it gets murkier the further you go along. How many people who correctly picked Mario \> Samus II did so because they actually had Mario losing in the Legends Semis (most likely to Snake), and how many did so because they mistakenly thought Sephiroth would continue his previous dominance of Mario and would still be alive in the Legends' Finals? So I think you have to just treat the Legends matches as the only ones that matter for how deep a tournament run you've made. By that metric, making Round 3 in this tournament is essentially equivalent to making the field at all pre-2007. It's not exactly the same since there are only 40 characters alive at the end of Round 2, not 64 like there were then, but it's still six wins away from a title. It's either that or you just ignore the 8 legends and pretend that these first four rounds were just the first four rounds of a seven-round tournament, and then...what? Honestly, that whole "128 down to 8, then those 8 are part of the Sweet Sixteen" bit is throwing me. I guess 2005 and 2006 were no better, what with the fact that *technically* Mario and Samus won titles in those years, but Link is still the ultimate champion (no, Jay Solano doesn't count) and Samus in particular was eliminated from *three days before* the runner-up from the main bracket, who was also included because CJayC loved getting cutesy and the favorites on the Male and Female sides were *Crono* and Samus, and even though that would make the Battle Royale 3 parts Nintendo and 3 parts Square, it wouldn't be tough to imagine Link's presence allowing Crono to steal another win over Mario. We've never quite seen if that would be the case. We've seen Crono steal a win over Samus and Mario in a fourway with Link, and we've seen Crono miserably in last place with Cloud, Link, and Snake, but we never saw Link and another Nintendo character and Cloud and Crono. All of this is irrelevant, though, because Bayonetta's Round 2 appearance in 2013 came at the expense of *N and Wander*. So clearly this *is* her best run. Also, you are just now realizing that Bayonetta has never lost in Round 1 (though she *has* failed to advance out of a vote-in poll. She's not the only character whose record is positively affected by *losing* in those polls; I mentioned Wario's .500 record but he's also among those who lost out in the vote-ins in 2010. Pac-Man is also among those who failed to advance out of vote-ins in 2010.) ## Safer777's Analysis Before the contest nobody believed in Pac-Man. But after the 1st match people thought that maybe he had a change? And look at this. Sure he lost but scoring almost 48% on Bayonetta? She is a Nintendo character now. Not only she is in Smash but Bayonetta 2 and 3 are only on Nintendo consoles. Also guess what. Pac-Man was winning in USA with around 51% but he lost! 2nd time in a row where a character wins in USA but loses. Also both of these are in Smash so there is that. Still a win is a win. Wish though that an icon such as Pac-Man would have reached round 3. Next match will be a good one! But why Pac Man got such a boost? I don't get it. He is in Smash and everyone knows him  yeah, but does anybody cares? Don't think so. Still nice match. Of course the prediction percentage was low for Bayonetta. --- ## (3)Auron vs (11)Vincent Valentine 2018 _source: (3)Auron vs (11)Vincent Valentine 2018 (revid 83865)_ ## Ulti's Analysis It dawned on me during this match that Auron always seems to be in matches against other badass male characters, which is probably just a quirk of bracket placement but it's kind of silly when you actually look at his history. He has gone against Cloud, Scorpion, Sephiroth, Big Boss, Ganondorf, Alucard, Sub-Zero, Crono, Chris Redfield, Pyramid Head, Shadow the Hedgehog, Ryu, Bowser, Marcus Fenix, Sonic (he counts as a cool and badass male character, shut up), Kratos, Zero, Squall, Revolver Ocelot, Ezio, Vincent, Geralt, and Snake. It's nuts how long that list is and how relatively few rematches there are, all without him ever facing Link, the king badass of GameFAQs itself. Auron is this remarkably consistent upper midcard dude that wins matches every year at the bottom of the bracket and is great for people who like consistent characters to adjust stats with. This year he added Vincent to the list, and man was this embarrassing for Final Fantasy 7. While this wasn't quite as trashy as the Vincent we saw during that hellacious match picture in 2013, this was still really bad and I dare say Magus might have done better. This was well over 60% at one point, and Vincent's only saving face was bleeding Auron's percentage for awhile. I would love to say Vincent might have made a game of this a few years ago back when everyone believed in the dude, but his recent performances give me serious doubts there. What exactly has Vincent done that's supposed to give me any faith in him? He did well in 2005 when he debuted. Okay, sure. He beat Dante and went 50-50 with Squall. Then he had a close match with Ganon before getting 48% on a neutered Sonic, overperformed in lol 4ways, and collapsed a bunch as the years have gone on. Auron has always been good. Vincent is all over the place. It should be no surprise to anyone this match was never close, and from the looks of it Board 8 pretty much all knew Auron was taking this fourpack. He was the overwhelming favorite in this division period and was definitely performing like it. ## Tsunami's Analysis Bracketmakers were not fooled here; 37.61% may not sound high for a second-round match, but it's higher than three of the previous four winners. Besides, Vincent was a slight underdog in Round 1, and Auron himself had under 70% prediction percentage in Round 1. So let's look at the Gurus instead! ...Whoa. Board 8 loves to hold on to the past. Once they're convinced that someone is strong, it takes a while for them to accept that they aren't. And in particular, there's this feeling that even if a Final Fantasy 7 character is naturally a little weaker than their opponent, they'll pull off the win anyway if that opponent is from a Final Fantasy game other than 7. And honestly, FF7 *does* have a damn good record against other FF games. Squall beat Aerith twice in 2007, and Auron beat Aerith in 2010, and Kefka beat Zack in 2013. But that's it for FF7 characters losing to characters from other FF games, and it's not just Cloud and Seph who keep the record afloat--Vincent beat *Squall* in 2005, and Tifa, Aerith, and even Zack all have wins against other FF characters. (Though admittedly Aerith's is pretty weak.) And when something doesn't fit Board 8's preconceived narrative, they like to come up with excuses for why the result isn't "legitimate". The single highest-profile Board 8 failing is Knuckles beating Magus when literally no one in Guru, Oracle, or Board Odds Project predicted it. It no longer qualifies as the "Most Embarrassing Result" because that's measured by the difference between the Gurus and the casuals and the casuals were surprised by that too, but it was a complete blindsiding and it came because Magus was fed to Crono in 2004 and rather than trying to figure out what the degree of SFF was, the adjusted X-Stats just gave him his 2003 number, which was entirely bogus. The reason I bring this up is because nearly everyone wanted to make excuses for Vincent's 2013 performance, namely that he'd been sabotaged by a picsmith. (They refused to use "rallies" as an excuse, even though that was a much better one, because admitting that Mewtwo was rallied meant they couldn't call him a **FRAUD** for not retaining his 2013 strength. And yes, that is a perfectly valid explanation for why Vincent finished in third; Phoenix's consistent overseeding alone should be evidence that his fanbase is dedicated, and as such he retained a greater portion of his natural strength in the presence of a rally than Vincent did.) But in spite of all the justifications available for Vincent, *95.625%* of Gurus picked Auron! The Oracles even more so, at 98.5%, though that's understandable because Oracle picks are made far closer to the match itself and Vincent's struggles with Magus made Auron \> Vincent even more obvious than it already was. We don't have a list for the matches where we outpredicted the casuals by the greatest amount, but this one probably has to rank up there pretty high. 58.01% difference. Of course, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of our greatest "triumphs" came in later rounds, because prediction percentages naturally wane there but a lot of times we're still nearly unanimous where Noble Niners are concerned. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous round Auron was the absolute favorite. And he won. BUT the strange thing is that people expected Auron to win with more. Also Vincent kept raising the whole match! He started at the 5 minute mark with around 36% and look where he ended. It is FF 7 yeah but still, didn't expected that. Auron is an elite of course. And I believe that even though Vincent lost he still has some power. If people don't give him bad pictures on purpose. I wonder why he did so good back in the day? Seriously. Winning a division in his first appearance! and even breaking the N9 in a multi way poll! Not sure. Both of these characters are so cool based on their designs. Come on now, Auron wears sunglasses as he fights! What more you want? Also funny that not the protagonist of FF 10 is the strongest character from that game, but a party member. Also Auron is consistent all these years. He always does good and he does as expected. This is awesome. --- ## (10)Sub-Zero vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018 _source: (10)Sub-Zero vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018 (revid 83866)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Over half of people thought Sub-Zero would lose to Claire Redfield, Joker, or Skulk. Sure. I don't get it. This match is the reason why all the arguing about Joker vs Claire seemed a bit pointless, because it was alwaus destined to be a one point match. Granted each point is important, but it's not like that winner was going on a run like the Kefka/L winner. Sub-Zero demolished lucky fodder that couldn't even benefit from getting hype in her own series. We talked about Kingdom Hearts 3 hype being a dud, because Resident Evil 2 remake hype was worse. It did nothing and no one cares. That series is dead on arrival on this site and it will take a long time to fix it. Resident Evils 5 and 6 just murdered it in cold blood. Capcom in general is just loaded with self sabotage, and this match proved it. Claire Redfield should never get demolished like this. Blizzard and Konami are the only examples worse than Capcom for self sabotage. What an embarrassment. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh hey there's another match where we're still nearly unanimous (over 90%) and the casuals are split far enough that the favorite has less than 50% of brackets. This one's at least a little understandable because of the seedings; Joker was a 2-seed and a newcomer and Shulk was also the seeding favorite and didn't have Smash yet when he lost in Round 1 in 2013, so it would be easy enough for people to overestimate them. If anything, this shows where our biggest weakness to being embarrassed by the casuals lies--we usually don't have much faith in newcomers, so if one of them actually shows strength, they can easily ruin us. ## Safer777's Analysis This was the only normal match this day. People were expecting around a doubling from Sub-Zero and guess how much he won? With a doubling! Sub-Zero is cool! Get it? Man I still remember when I first played MK 2. Sub-Zero was my favorite since then and he still is. I also believe he would beat Scorpion on this site. Sub-Zero has  to be the 2nd strongest pure fighting game character. I don't count the Smash ones of course. As for Claire well she did okay. RE did bad in this contest unfortunately. She did earned an upset win at least. Divisions should be like this one. We barely knows who will win the next matches! A strange thing is though the prediction percentage. Less than 50%. Why? People thought that Claire, Skulk or Joker would win here? Seriously? I guess people thought that Joker since he had the 2 Seed would win? But seeds mean nothing as we know. --- ## (1)Luigi vs (8)Frog 2018 _source: (1)Luigi vs (8)Frog 2018 (revid 83867)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Green SFF! This was a very standard match that got us yet one more year away from Frog actually being entertaining. I covered the list in the round 1 writeup, but this dude just cannot catch a break anymore. The second his first round match ended in 2007, he was simply not the same when it came to match entertainment value. He's been stuck in the oblivion of predictable paths for over a decade now, and it's sad to watch when for three years running he was our most entertaining character. As for Luigi, this was the dude just taking care of business. I'm sure some could point to his percentage being a bit below expectations as proof he was in trouble later, but frankly he showed no weaknesses until the divison final. Frog is hardly some slacker character and we still love him, so 62% on him is not easy to do. Even if you wanted to call this a subpar performance for Luigi, he went out a round from now and showed how legit he was. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was an entirely normal result, so probably the best thing to do is compare this to Bowser vs. Frog 2010. Bowser got a better percentage there, which is entirely in line with what most seasons would suggest. After all, fellow Mario character Yoshi has met both Luigi and Bowser in 1v1s and defeated the former while losing to the latter. The problem, of course, being that Luigi and Bowser met in a 4way and Luigi won. To that I say lol 4ways. It's that simple. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was never in doubt. Both of these characters defeated really weak opponents in the first round. But man here we have Luigi. You know the brother of Mario? Also Frog...He isn't strong anymore. As for Luigi always managed to advance to at least Round 2 in these things. He is good. Still I believe Frog did okay here. I don't know if CT characters are still good. Maybe they are? We have to wait to see Chrono. I mean Magus lost to Round 1 and Frog lost to Round 2. Not good right? Still Luigi looked good here. Let us see how he does in the next rounds. --- ## (5)Master Chief vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 _source: (5)Master Chief vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 (revid 88246)_ ## Ulti's Analysis My best and most favorite call of the entire contest. One of my favorite characters as a child was Tails (and I still love him as an adult even though admitting this is embarrassing thanks to all the furrydom weirdos but what can you do), and one of my favorite games was and still is Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I kicked myself for years over not picking Tails to beat Viewtiful Joe, and this year I couldn't resist taking him on the upset train in this fourpack. This wasn't just years in the making for my love of GameFAQs contests. It was an ode to my childhood and one of the best games I played back then. Beating Drake was awesome, but I legitimately kind of saw that coming and covered why in the round one writeup. This match was another thing entirely. I had no doubts Chief would win and only picked Tails on a blind fanboy pick. When this match started and Tails was blowing the dude out, I audibly cheered and I don't really do that for contest matches anymore. On top of that, it wasn't some board vote fluke. Tails had a 500 vote lead after an hour and maintained a 55-45 beating for the entire match. There was no day vote nonsense for Chief or any miracles. Nothing. Just a good old fashioned ass beating from one of my favorite, long-deserving characters. Tails had finally made it to round 3, I picked him purely on a favorites pick, and got to cheer my ass off for the dude. That's what these contests are all about and all the advanced metrics have robbed us of that joy (just like in real sports, by the way). It was such a great throwback to the old days os just cheering for favorites, picking favorites in brackets, and having a good time. Good job, Tails. Now we have to get Knuckles into round 3, boys. ## Tsunami's Analysis I'm sure most of you have probably had at least one moment where you look at your bracket during the contest and say "I picked *WHAT?!*" Because it seems so obvious to you that you can't believe that you actually picked it wrong. I had that moment in Round 1. While 55% of Gurus were lamenting the loss of 3 points (yes, that's how many had Drake \> Chief/Majima) and an additional 25% were lamenting the loss of 1, I was celebrating my insight for getting this right...only to discover that I'd picked Chief \> Tails. Why had I done that? Chief hasn't been worth a damn thing for quite some time. The board knew it, as both Drake and Tails had over 50% retention rates for this match. Tails only barely, however, so I guess I wasn't the only one who thought Chief \> Tails was possible. The casuals also felt that Tails vs. Chief/Majima was more or less a toss-up. Only 16.29% picked Tails to win this match, but only 16.87% picked him to *lose* it, with the remaining 66.85% picking him to lose to Nathan. Yes, I know that adds up to 100.01%. We got to see raw bracket counts for correct picks as well as percentages, and I assure you that each of those numbers is correct and the extra 0.01% is the result of rounding errors. Addendum upon uploading: Agh, you're killing me here Ulti. You were one of the Tails pickers and you *didn't* actually expect him to win? I had half a mind back in Round 1 to lie to NGamer and say that the Guru had my bracket wrong and I'd actually picked Tails because I was in such disbelief that I'd done something so stupid. I prepared to go to the Oracle to back myself up on how confident I was in Tails, but, uh... ...my Oracle pick was actually pretty good. Normally when I'm overconfident in a result, I overestimate the character quite a bit. Only the thing is...so is almost everyone else's, including yours. 61 out of 65 Oracles picked Tails, and 20 of those 61 got within 1% of the correct score. ## Safer777's Analysis Afer Tails won the first match he was the favorite to win. MC wasn't out though. But as you see Tails won easily.Well not that easy but you know what I mean. I mean in the first round a lot of people had Tails losing and here he is, winning and reaching Round 3. Damn! Man can you believe that Master Chief has reached a Semi final match WITHOUT rallies once upon a time? Yeah old times were strange! Still I believe MC did decent here. Obviously he is weak now but still he reached Round 2 at least. As for Tails...I am not sure how he reached round 3. I guess Sonic characters do good now? Or western characters are really weak? I mean in most contests he has lost in Round 1! So congrats to Tails I guess.  Also the prediction percentage was abysmal. The lowest so far in the contest. Makes sense. I guess most people had either Drake or MC winning and that was the consensus before the contest anyways. --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (11)Mewtwo 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (11)Mewtwo 2018 (revid 83870)_ ## Ulti's Analysis MEWTWO. IS. A. FRAUD. I would go one step farther and call Pokemon itself a fraud, but I'll be nice. Pikachu did a good enough job this year of preventing that series from looking like a total flop. @Leonhart4 is good for one balls-on-the-table prediction every contest that comes true, and this was his. Dude embarrassed himself hard for thinking Squall could beat Zelda after the results were showing what was coming, but this more than makes up for it and everybody was memeing the FRAUDULENCE line. To get how good this was, you need to understand how good Mewtwo has looked a couple times in the past. In 2007 (the first lol 4way) and 2010 when he faced Ganon in round one, he lost in round one. In his other two appearances, he stomped. In 2008 he got through three fourpacks before going down to Cloud, Snake, and the Cube. 2013 is where he really shined however, where he legitimately came close to winning the contest. He beat Chester and Zero 999 in round one, he beat Phoenix and Vincent in round 2 in a match where no one was actually talking about him (everyone mentions the Vincent match pic and forgets who actually won that match), he beat Sonic and Bowser and somehow got revenge for the 2007 loss, and in the semifinal he was beating Draven and Sephiroth before reddit allowed the Draven rally again. Mewtwo was one topic away from making the final, and if that final was Mewtwo/Snake/Samus instead of Draven/Snake/Samus, it's highly possible Mewtwo would have won that year. The guy looked nuts. But Leon knew. I don't know why or how, but he just knew. He convinced everyone to take Tifa here, and man he could not have been more right. My only thing there is this is a competition. If you see a bunch of people making a pick you think is dumb, let them. Helping someone beat you makes no sense to me, but whatever. Tifa completely pasting Mewtwo right from the jump meant in five short years, Mewtwo went from potential contest champ to a total punk -- excuse me, a fraud. Between him and Charizard stinking up the place in round two and Red's moment to suck coming a little later, Pokemon was on a massive downswing this year for reasons that make no sense to me. It's not like Mewtwo didn't have Smash Bros and Nintendo behind him, which are usually good enough to win debated matches around here. Only getting 42% is such an embarrassing number, and this was arguably the performance of the contest were it not for Tifa doing something much cooler later on. You can't ask for much better from a debated match than Ulti-Style Destruction if you backed the winner, and in a way this reminded me of Vincent vs Kerrigan from back in the day. Kerrigan came into that contest with a bunch of hype, and sucked. Mewtwo came in hyped this year, same thing. But I could argue Mewtwo's performance was worse given the Nintendo/Smash connections. This was only \#2 in a long line of scalps Tifa was collecting this year. That girl was on a mission! ## Tsunami's Analysis Just another piece on the growing mound of evidence that Tifa has always been the \#3 FF7 character, except not really because Mewtwo was rallied in 2013. We all know that. Mewtwo wasn't going to be as strong this year. ...Okay, I admit it: I had Mewtwo here in my bracket. And next round. By the time this match actually came around, I'd realized I'd made a mistake and took Tifa in Oracle, albeit with a very low number that got me fairly low in the rankings for that match. That was largely because I was still rooting for Mewtwo, because my bracket *needed* Mewtwo. We saw very easily in 2010 that Mega Man X was stronger than Luigi; they had a common opponent only a round apart, and yes Luigi probably gets SFF'd *harder* by Link but they're both probably SFF matches. And Tifa outright had a previous win over Luigi. I would have taken either of them to beat Luigi in Round 4, no question--but Mewtwo, being a true Nintendo character, I expected would suffer from Nintendo hierarchy. I had Luigi \> Mewtwo in Round 4 *fully expecting that it would be wrong if Mewtwo lost in an earlier round.* Honestly, I identified this as one of the toughest divisions to predict. In Round 1, you've got Ocelot-Dedede. In Round 2, you've got Tifa-Mewtwo, and then in Round 3 you've got the winner of that vs. MMX (although I think I even gave MMX a slim chance of being upset by Dedede if he got past Ocelot--or was it the other way around? I don't remember; neither of those upsets seems likely now but I'm certain I didn't consider MMX an absolute guarantee, merely a heavy favorite.) And then in the division final, Luigi being a likely favorite against one of his three most likely opponents but a likely underdog against the other two. And that's without considering any other result on Luigi's half of the bracket; Tails/Nathan/Chief was a bit of a mess as well. ## Safer777's Analysis If this was the same Mewtwo we had at 2013 he would win pretty easily here. But he wasn't. FF 7 has fallen but still Tifa managed to win easily here. Also apparently there was a poll on Board 8 that people voted Mewtwo to be the strongest non N9er? What? I am not sure why. He is decent yeah but so much strong? No. Not without rallies. But anybody with rallies can be strong. As for Tifa she looked good here. As you know Tifa is hot and people well they like hot women. Especially fictional ones! Well we have 2 FF 7 characters going in Round 3 and both are females...I wonder does this say anything about this site? Also I like Pokemon so I can't say anything really bad here. Mewtwo did good in multi way matches though.  Back in 2013 he was damn strong. Seriously. He almost won the entire thing! Who knows what happened. --- ## (10)Revolver Ocelot vs (2)Mega Man X 2018 _source: (10)Revolver Ocelot vs (2)Mega Man X 2018 (revid 83871)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We all knew this beating was coming after Ocelot struggled to beat King Dedede of all people, but man was this embarrassing to watch as a Metal Gear Solid series fan. Could you at least show up next time, bro? Then again, if we're calling it the Pac-Man Fodder Line \<\_\<.... It's highly possible this guy has just been trash all along but his opponents have helped hide it. This match also helped confirm Mega Man X to near elite status, which most of us already knew but believe it or not, until this match we had never had a good read or comparison on Mega Man X's strength. Draven kind of killed any opportunity to get one. This match was nothing more than a very strong character beating up a tomato can. Our real read on X would come one round from now. ## Tsunami's Analysis Ocelot's results have always been a tad uneven, as I mentioned last round. But this is unquestionably a good performance for X. The final percentage isn't *that* far ahead of the Oracle Consensus, but that's with the biggest outlier being an overestimation. There is one other significant outlier and it's on the opposite side, though. At any rate, X still looked like he would probably be slightly favored next round. There's some fun to be had with those numbers but I'll get to that then. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was never in doubt. But after Ocelot barely beat Dedede people wanted to see how much MMX would win. And he did really good of course. Almost 69%! I believe MMX might even be the strongest non N9er. Or at least one of the top 3. So nothing else to say. MMX dominated. People say that MGS characters have done bad in the contest but I don't know to tell the truth. Let us see how much MMX can reach. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (9)Captain Falcon 2018 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (9)Captain Falcon 2018 (revid 83872)_ ## Ulti's Analysis There was some buzz Seph could lose this match coming from people who overestimated his downfall a bit. Basically, it went "hey Seph always loses the board vote, and if Falcon is leading early people might rally". Stuff like that. It actually wasn't a bad theory and Falcon did lead for a few seconds, but Sephiroth proceeded to stomp the crap out of him shortly after. This was never a match after the first few seconds, and we have a fantastic comparison point for this one. Seph did right about what one would expect, and as of this point the rumors about his death were greatly exaggerated. It got me thinking about something I read recently though. \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/Board_vote \] I'm sorry but this is just dumb. How many votes do you people think you're capable of getting? Anyone can rally. I'm not impressed there. But for actual votes, how many do we actually put in? Maybe 250? Come on man, the idea that we have the biggest influence on results is ridiculous. The board vote matters for about 20 seconds and then matches go as planned. ## Safer777's Analysis People were expecting Sephiroth to score around 65% and he did that. So what else to say? Obviously Seph would win here. Also he beat a Smash character! Smash boost my ass! But in all seriousness this match was good if you are a fan of Seph like me. Seems that Seph still has some power and it makes sense. Man if only this FF7 remake would come out! What happened to it? As for Falcon of course he did as he was expected. Even I know the Falcon Punch thing now. So yeah pretty normal stuff here. --- ## (5)Amaterasu vs (4)Lara Croft 2018 _source: (5)Amaterasu vs (4)Lara Croft 2018 (revid 83934)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know this match was super predictable, but three things blow me away about it. One, 75% of people thought Amaterasu would lose to Draven, Lara Croft, or Metal Man. What the actual hell? Two, Lara Croft is a 4 seed. How did she pull that one off? Lara in general is weird on seeding. She's been a 1, a 7, a 15, she didn't make it in 2010, and here she is at 4 in her return. The only way to beat that range is to be a 1 and a 16 in separate contests. Good luck with that one. I think the only real chance we have to see that record happen is by Lara beating her own record or Pac-Man randomly being a 16 seed some year. No other 1 seed we've ever had is really something weak enough to be a 16. And three, this match was actually close on percents. That isn't what blew me away though. If you throw out the Draven match (an outlier) and the Rivalry Rumble, did you know this is Amaterasu's biggest 1v1 win? Granted that's due to not showing up until 2007, but still. Amaterasu is wholly unimpressive in these contests outside of one match against the 2018 version of Tanner. This could say a lot about Amaterasu, but it really doesn't. For all we know Lara's recent shift in tone helped her. I'm not a Tomb Raider guy outside of seeing Angeline Jolie in the shower so I don't frankly know or care. 55% on Lara is just a bad performance. As such, this actually proves how bad Draven was this year. Good hell. We're never again going to see a fall that hard. ## Safer777's Analysis I can't understand why Amaterasu does so good. She is on Okami which is a good game yeah. But you know what this game is famous for? For not selling well! Guess people have played a remake or something? She is also in Marvel VS Whatever series too I believe. Or is it the design of Amaterasu? She is a wolf and she does look cool.  As for Lara we all know her. The first video game sex symbol! Yeah! Okay she is in Tomb Raider games where back in PS 1 days they were AWESOME! Man I remember me and a  friend of mine where huge fans! We would buy them at the same day and then compare our plays and what secrets we found too! These were the days. Also Amaterasu has advanced to at least Round 2 in all contests too. As for Lara...even though she keeps having games it seems that people don't care at all now. Too bad. The new games  are good. Also the win was nice for Amaterasu. Seriously the new games are good. And the first one sold really well as I said before and the 2nd one did really good too! Well gone are the days of female characters as sex symbols I guess. The prediction percentage was the 2nd lowest of Round 2 too. Hell even I as a veteran of the contests took Lara here. I mean Amaterasu? Who cares about her? But people care apparently. Still Lara broke 45% so that is good for me at least. ## Tsunami's Analysis Counterevidence to the "pink wave"? Yes if you think it's mainly fueled by horny incels, but if you think it's a sign of gamers' tastes changing, who want their characters to be relatable, this is no such thing. I *think* Lara's reboot has brought her in line with what Gen Z wants, or at least what Gen Y perceives as what Gen Z wants, but I don't know. Amaterasu, however, is busy being an *actual* goddess, saving the world with a paintbrush and being a single mother. I may not be very well in touch with the female half but I seem to remember these being feminist goals. Actually to be honest I'm kind of weak at all direct interpersonal communication. I prefer to express myself through writing, hence the analyses and playthrough topics. I refuse to coopt the "incel" moniker even though it's technically true because I'm too paralyzed by fear. When I was young, it was merely fear of rejection, but I got over that. Unfortunately, we live in the Age of Me Too. I have no doubts that the majority of complaints levied under Me Too are real, but the whole idea of it has me so rattled that my best strategy right now is to just be as charming as possible and wait to find a girl aggressive enough to make the first move. See, that's the other advantage of ***writing things down***; you can see how stupid you're being. I need to get out and mingle and not care what happens next. I somehow turned what was supposed to be an inspiring ode to powerful women into my own complaining. I should not write these this late. --- ## (3)Ryu vs (6)Commander Shepard 2018 _source: (3)Ryu vs (6)Commander Shepard 2018 (revid 83933)_ ## Ulti's Analysis For the wiki readers, I wrote on my love of Shepard and Mass Effect here. No need to relive it: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(6)Commander_Shepard_vs\_(11)King_K.\_Rool_2018 \] Shepard needing to fight off a fat alligator thing meant round 2 was always going to be a predictable blowout, and the sad thing is this might have been a competitive match before crybabies started bitching about a perfectly acceptable ending. And that was back during the last game Shepard was actually in. Shep is clearly going to pay for Andromeda from now on, and we saw it in this contest. We were one morning vote away from this match being Ryu vs King K Rool, of all things. I will say this. Before Smash Ultimate I would have been really annoyed over one of my most hated characters destroying one of my favorites. But Street Fighter 5 was laughably bad and got me to stop playing the series, while Ryu in the Smash games has slowly won me over. So while I don't love the guy, I can at least watch him win matches like this without going nuts. The other story here was whether or not Ryu looked good enough to beat Sephiroth later, since that's clearly where this division was going. Commander Shepard (2010c) VS Sephiroth (2010c) Commander Shepard has a strength of 29.62. Sephiroth has a strength of 44.65. Sephiroth wins with 66.83% of the vote! So far, so good! Especially if you were banking on Smash and Nintendo giving Ryu the boost he needed while also banking on Seph losing more strength. ## Safer777's Analysis Since Ryu beat Shepard with more that Squall beat Garrus obviously everyone said Ryu\>Squall. And it makes sense. Almost always the main character is stronger than the  other characters. There are expections like Vivi from FF9 who is the strongest and Auron who is from FF 10 who is the strongest. But I am not sure about that. But who  really knows? Still bad match from Shepard. Seriously losing with a doubling? Come on now. ME Andromeda wasn't that bad. And Shepard wasn't even in that game! As for Ryu he is the strongest fighthing game character and it seems he has boosted from beeing in Smash too. Still as a ME fan this saddens me. And we thought that Shepard would be the strongest western character too! Remember when he beat Aeris? Well Ryu does good at least and he is an icon so that is fine. ## Tsunami's Analysis Shepard avoided the doubling here. It's clear that s/he still hasn't run out of strength yet. Though this is definitely a huge step backwards from beating Aerith last time out. I may expand upon this analysis later but this was mostly just something to hold the place. This isn't exactly a terribly interesting match. --- ## (10)KOS-MOS vs (2)Aqua 2018 _source: (10)KOS-MOS vs (2)Aqua 2018 (revid 84035)_ ## Ulti's Analysis What, you thought TheStupidRaptor was finished embarrassing himself and proving why he was by far the worst user of 2018? Think again. "Aqua is a beautiful, strong character with a relatable personality. She has many cool moments in her game where her character shines through. The video game IP from 2001 she is from is highly successful well known and relevant, having an extremely hyped over a decade upcoming title coming soon. Said game is made in Japan, is an RPG, and has characters from Disney Movies and Final Fantasy games, of which very few people are not familiar with. And for the shallow folks out there, she has a slim waist, large breasts, stockings, and is showing her bare back. She's pretty without it detrimenting the other aspects of her character. Kosmos is literally just a sex doll with no personality from a dead, irrelevant game no one's ever heard of. Even taking into account Gamefaq's skewed biases due to being run by weebs, Aqua checks all the boxes for "victory" around here. An attractive woman from an old game that's 17 years old, an RPG, made in Japan, and with characters from other IP's that everyone loves. Her game is even actually relevant unlike the other one. It's sad that characters from video games that aren't made in Japan seem to automatically lose here; if this was any other website, Ellie would've won. Literally every character in this tournament should beat Kosmos. But Aqua? She SHOULD have this in the bag. So what BS reason is going on this time that Aqua isn't winning this "tournament"? It makes no sense, no matter what type of logical system you use." "Kingdom hearts has no side games; each game is completely relevant to the story." "Low status?! Of all the Kingdom Hearts games that aren't 1 2 or 3, Birth By Sleep is considered the best. And with all the Kingdom Hearts collections released in recent years, you can't NOT bother playing most of the games in the series (by the way, there are no KH spin offs, every game is relevant). You play as Aqua in the final and secret episodes of birth By Sleep, so she definitely stands out in that game. Aqua's also like the only playable female in the whole series. She's even playable in BBS 0.2, and will have a big role in Kingdom Hearts 3. Said game has been hyped for over a decade, and even more hyped over the past 5 years. How can anyone be apathetic to it? Any if everyone's being shallow and we're going by attractiveness, Aqua is a million times more attractive than Kosmos the lifeless sex doll. Aqua has everything going for her, she should be winning in every sense. What other reason could there be huh? Is it the Disney characters? Disney characters are some of the most nostalgic characters you can imagine; and I thought blind nostalgia always wins on gamefaqs. Does gamefaqs hate Disney movies because they're made in America? Does the existance of American characters and IP's somehow make Kingdom Hearts "less weeb"? And only the weebiest of the weeby weeby characters win on gamefaqs? Please tell me this isn't true; I knew gamefaqs has no credibility, but this is just absurd." "Kosmos is NOT more well known. The game she's from is obscure and niche and exclusive to one old console. Aqua is from a game series that built up quite a reputation and presence, and games from the whole series are on so many consoles. I've knows of Kingdom Hearts and Aqua for many years now, but I've only heard of Xenosaga a few months ago and only due to some annoying nostalgia blind fanboys. Saying that "Kosmos is more well known" is absurdly wrong on so many levels. If it's not cheating, there must be another reason." "Kosmos looks so much like a generic anime girl. Nothing about her stands out. If no one told me that is Kosmos, I literally would never recognize her; that's how plain she looks." "I'm like the only person in the whole world that doesn't like Super Smash Brothers, so I don't give a shit; but I know for a fact that if Waluigi didn't make it, a nobody like Kosmos has no hope of that either. There are no Xenosaga characters in that game, what garble are you on about?" "That is never going to happen in any timeline. If Xenosaga was ever going to be rereleased, it would've done so by now. You know why? Because Nintendo, Namco, and Monolith Soft know nobody will care. It did poorly when it was still relevant; it's never going to get itself out of that hole." "Obvious tasteless trolls are obvious." "Where are all the Aqua fanboys? I think all the people hating me don't even like Kosmos, they just want to be contrarian." "So, no reason then huh? Aqua lost just..... BECAUSE right?! I could stomach American video game characters losing and dismiss it as gamefaqs just lacking all credibility. But THIS?!....... this is just idiotic. If lifeless sex dolls are really the only kind of women people on this site want in their games.......... sigh; Kosmos lost in everything that really matters, remember that. So I'm just going to go with gamefaqse hates Disney movies and characters because "non Japanese cartoons are trash because they're not WEEB, I need muh weeby weeby anime bitches, reeeeeeeee". Is that true? I guarantee like 85% of you grew up with Disney, but whatever; contrarianism is the life blood of gamefaqs right? sigh......" And here we all thought this was the worst fourpack of the contest. Nope. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: Aqua disappointed a bit here, looking worse than Ellie. KOS-MOS also looked very frontloaded again, declining from over 60% at the start. She also did very well in Europe which is novel but significant. **What could this mean?:** Aqua's not bad but I think KOS-MOS has looked her best in some time. I do legitimately think Xenoblade 2 is a big part of that, she has almost Nintendo-like trends and Xenoblade's good in Europe while Xenosaga is not. I think she will outperform both Lloyd and Shepard against Ryu next round. ## Safer777's Analysis This result is strange. Based on this that means that Ellie beats Aqua. How many people would pick that before the contest? Nobody I would say. Seems that KH boost wasn't real. When Sora loses to a human Pokemon character well you see how things are. I know KOS-MOS from the Project X Zone games. She is a hot android with big tits! Yeah sorry about that but I don't know about the Xenosaga series. Sorry again! But man KH sucks. Hope KH 3 comes soon. But even then it will boost the characters for like 1 year and that will be. Still nice win for KOS-MOS. Nice to have such characters winning. Also this is the first time that KOS-MOS reaches Round 3. She faces Ryu next and he has beaten her before so that is for her without a rally. Still she reached round 3 at least! ## Tsunami's Analysis Here, have a quote from KOS-MOS's Contest History page. *What in the world happened to KOS-MOS? After two years in which KOS-MOS was a middle of the pack character, she went out against Luigi in a match that she had a decent chance to win and completely bombed.* *After Xenosaga 2, no less. KOS-MOS's disappointment paired with Albedo turning out to be cannon fodder in Spring 2005 confirms what many already believe, which is that the popularity of Xenosaga is likely gone for good. Either that or Luigi boosted beyond belief.* That's from her 2005 contest run, one and done. Luigi would end up losing the very next round to Tifa, and normally a character putting up 66% in a match that was supposed to be debatable would lead to massive overestimations but Tifa's Round 1 performance literally saw her get a better percentage on Vyse than *Cloud* did in an earlier contest so Luigi was still the underdog. I bring this up because her two "middle of the pack" runs only granted her one win. She's since made it to Round 2 via the awfulness of the female bracket and via Blizzard SFF allowing her to easily come out in second place in a match with a clear winner and three characters of similar strength fighting for second place, but this is her first trip to Round 3. Even though her games proper are over a decade in the past, and she only maintains any relevance via a consistent string of guest appearances. (Play Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier.) This, however, probably is one of the reasons that this site gets ridiculed. There's a perception that we're stuck in the past and that characters/games are worthless until they can be viewed through nostalgia goggles. Sure enough, KOS-MOS finally breaks through to Round 3 only when placed in a fourpack with three characters from the 2010s. Of course, it should be noted that this was only the second contest where that was *possible*, because nominations for Character Battle VIII were in December 2009. Compare this to the six contests in as many years that she was in after her game came out (yeah, she's still too young to have been in CBI). KOS-MOS was actually one of three characters that made the vote-ins but not the main bracket in 2010 that reached Round 3 this year, along with Wario and Bayonetta. We were guaranteed at least one before Round 2 even started because of Bayonetta's 2nd-round opponent also qualifying. The rest of the vote-in field did fairly decently, too. I'll put them all together, even the ones I already mentioned. Round 4: Aerith Gainsborough (Made 2010 bracket as a 14-seed) Round 3: Wario (Missed 2010 bracket) Bayonetta (Missed 2010 bracket) Sub-Zero (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed and reached Round 3) Tails (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Mega Man X (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed and reached Round 3) KOS-MOS (Missed 2010 bracket) Round 2: Lightning (Made 2010 bracket as a 16-seed) Chun-Li (Missed 2010 bracket) The Boss (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed and reached Round 2) Simon Belmont (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Pac-Man\* (Missed 2010 bracket) Frog (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed) Lara Croft (Missed 2010 bracket) Round 1: Spyro the Dragon\* (Missed 2010 bracket) Scorpion (Missed 2010 bracket; apparent final cut) Ridley (Made 2010 bracket as a 16-seed) Peach (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Godot (Missed 2010 bracket) \*Lost to another name on this list. So that's 19 characters in this bracket who were in the 2010 vote-ins--9 who missed the bracket entirely--and those 19 characters went 14-5 in Round 1, with a perfect 19-0 impossible because two were facing each other--the nine that missed entirely going 6-3, with, again, a perfect 9-0 being impossible because two of them were facing each other. Now you might also notice that two of the three listed as being 13-seeds made it all the way to Round 3 in 2010. That's no accident. Frog had the misfortune to run into Bowser in Round 1 in 2010, but the other three 13-seeds that came out of the vote-ins all went to Round 3, and 14-seeds also went 2-0 in Round 2. The four 13-seeds that were direct entrants into the bracket, *plus* the full set of eight 11- and 12-seeds? 1-19 in Round 1. That one actually *was* a 13-seed, oddly enough--Ken Masters' tight win over Albert Wesker. But the point is, the 13-15 seed lines were generally stronger than the 11-12 lines that year (not the 10's; they had some absolute monsters. In fact both of those 14-seeds that made it to Round 3 lost to 10-seeds). The reasoning was obvious: a lot of good characters have trouble with nominations due to having to fight other members of their own series, but those characters easily rise to the top in vote-ins. The other low seed lines can often be filled with all sorts of weird fodder that got a rally. In fact, here's my newest stupid idea: for the next contest, have the *entire* field decided by a series of vote-ins. If you want to speed them along, break out the old 12-hour format for those; you can whittle down 280 characters to 128 in only two weeks that way. Obviously, make sure to use an actual S-curve when grouping the characters for vote-ins, so the \#1 nomination-getter would be in a poll with \#56, \#57, \#112, \#113, \#168, \#169, \#224, \#225, and \#280, etc. (It doesn't have to be 280; I just threw that out there so that the vote-ins would cull more characters than it kept and we'd have a multiple of 70 so it could be an exact number of weeks.) The top characters would *still* get their high seeds, most likely, but the characters who are forever plagued by that little clause where nominating too many characters from the same game/series will get your ballot thrown out can finally get the seeds they deserve. (Due to being a series with a new set of characters in each numbered game, Final Fantasy suffers from this a lot, especially secondary females like Aerith and Rikku.) Yes, the vote-ins will likely become tedious, but it should produce an extremely strong field. Now that I think about it, that's not a stupid idea at all! Finally, it must be noted that this particular result is not an upset. Yes, the prediction percentage is only 23.29% which is too low to even possibly make her the favorite this early in the contest, but that's residual upset effect. KOS-MOS's Round 1 prediction percentage was only 41.48%, which means that 56.16% of brackets that had her in this match had her winning. Not a great percentage, and well within the range where it's possible that brackets that had this particular match-up favored Aqua slightly since she herself fell a little short of 2/3 prediction in Round 1, but it's definitely a decent amount, and while I don't believe that "bracket votes" make a huge difference, it can't be denied that Ellie outperformed Aqua against KOS-MOS and that this effect was even more pronounced among registered voters, which might suggest that the plurality of casuals had Ellie winning this match. (And yes, "voting your bracket" when you've already lost your pick for a match does often mean voting for the one that broke it, especially given those prediction percentages. Pre-match, it would be entirely likely that an Ellie bracket would see that Aqua was a bigger favorite than Ellie in their Round 1 matches and assume that more brackets would be busted by KOS-MOS \> Aqua than by Aqua \> KOS-MOS--which isn't necessarily false, because even if Ellie \> Aqua is the most common pick, if the second-most common is Aqua \> Ellie rather than KOS-MOS \> Aqua, Aqua could have the second-most brackets anyway.) --- ## (1)Dante vs (4)Ganondorf 2018 _source: (1)Dante vs (4)Ganondorf 2018 (revid 84001)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Man does it feel good to be in the late rounds of this thing. Round 2 is always the hardest one to write, because most of the matches suck. But what can you do. A true sternographer covers everything! After how bad Ganon looked against Chun-Li, there was some question about whether or not Dante could win here that was shut down immediately. This was legitimately a boring old 56-44 match for 24 straight hours with no movement whatsoever, so it's time to look into when and how all of our overall \#1 seeds have lost. That's the seed Dante got, so it's the standard we have to evaluate him on. Summer 2002 - Mario loses to Link in the final. Summer 2003 - Link loses to Cloud in the semifinal in famous fashion. Spring 2004 - Mario 3 loses in the semifinal to Chrono Trigger. This contest was seeded by era. Summer 2004 - Link wins the contest. Spring 2005 - Bowser loses in the semifinal to Sephiroth. Summer 2005 - Mario wins the main bracket. Series Contest - The Legend of Zelda wins. Fall 2006 - Samus wins the main bracket. \[4ways didn't have real seeding, fuck outta here.\] Winter 2010 - Link wins the contest. Game of the Decade - Fallout 3 loses in the semifinal to Brawl. This contest was seeded by era. Rivalries - Mario and Bowser lose in the final to Link and Ganon. Fall 2013 - Link loses in round 3 to the Draven rally and LOL 3ways. Games 2015 - Chrono Trigger loses in the divisional final to a Melee rally. Which brings us to this year, and Dante losing in round 3 without putting up a fight. Anything seem a little out of place on this list? Yeah, Dante himself. If you're the top seed, the standard is you make a deep run or you lose to a rally. You can't sit there and not compete before even making the finals of your own division. Normally this loss would be whatever, but this is a bad loss for a \#1 overall seed. Dante clearly did not belong in that spot and was clearly overseeded based on the DMC5 hype video. It's easy to pull a Gruden, claim 50-50 hindsight, and say it should have been obvious Zelda was our \#1 overall seed. I won't go that far, because that's unfair. All I'll say on that is giving my own list of who deserved that spot with pre-contest information. No hindsight. Not who deserved it more than Dante, which would have been a much longer list, just who deserved the \#1 overall seed period with our top 8 characters removed for a legends bracket. Bowser Ganondorf Kirby Luigi Mega Man X Pikachu Sephiroth Squall Tifa Zelda That's 10 characters, with Sephiroth being the most obvious one since he was the odd one out of the noble nine this year. I waffled a bit on Auron vs Squall, but Squall won that match heads-up once. To the point. Stick any of those characters at the top and they aren't losing in round 3 so easily like this unless they face each other. This was a major botch by Allen, who usually does a decent job on seeds. You can't just look at nominations, bro. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous matche Dante VS Ganon was projected as a toss-up match, meaning Ganon was the favorite but of course Dante had a chance. And it made sense. I mean  Dante did really good against Lightining while Ganon didn't do good with Chun-Li. So as you see from these results Ganon won easily. Huh? Why? Don't get it. Also according to this result Dante barely beats Chun-Li! What is going on here? Who before the contest would had Chun-Li scoring like 48% on Dante? NOBODY! I don't know.  I checked around and it seems that nobody knows. Seems DMC 5 hype wasn't real. Chun-Li must have been boosted right? But why? There was a post here from various polls considered the Street Fighter games and Chun-Li does better and better against Ryu. Is it because she is the most iconic female fighthing character? I would say Smash boost but she is not there too! I just don't get it. I guess Dante and Ganon have dropped a lot too? Not sure. Guess after the end of the contest we will have a clear picture. And congrats to Ganon. Maybe he is the strongest bad guy on the bracket now. We will see about that too. Also the prediction percentage was huge for Ganon. Seems people know about the contest stuff now? I mean over 43% for Round 3 for a 4 Seed too? We see some strange things here. ## Tsunami's Analysis An utterly predictable result. Dante's surprisingly strong for a non-Nintendo, non-RPG character, but there's a limit to how powerful you can be if that's the case unless you're Solid Snake. (Technically also Mega Man and Sonic from among the Noble Nine, but they're still pre-PS1 platformer characters so they might as well fall under the "Nintendo" umbrella). About the only thing he has in his favor is that he is not, in fact, a western character, a fact which I frequently forget because his character design *screams* "American developer". Nope, he's actually Capcom, although these days, that might be even more of a liability than being non-Japanese. But this is still a good performance against a Triforce Wielder, even if he is (ironically given that his is the Triforce of Power) the weakest of the three. I say this because even before Zelda boosted to near-Link levels this year, there was probably a wider gulf between the \#3 and \#4 characters from that series than between \#1 and \#2. Then again, it's not like Legend of Zelda has *had* that many characters participate. Midna was at least somewhat of a regular after Twilight Princess came out, getting into four straight contests, but other than that we've had Tingle a few times and Epona and Groose making the giant 2013 field. Of those, only Midna and Epona have managed to make Round 2, and none have made Round 3. But that's kind of to be expected, because The Legend of Zelda has about as much cast carryover between games as Final Fantasy, except Final Fantasy has a full party of characters each game rather than a lone hero and the LoZ protagonists, while technically different characters, have the same name and similar appearances so they end up as a lone entrant in these contests. So you've got these three characters who appear in nearly every game (even if two out of three of them are technically the [Identical Descendants/Ancestors](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdenticalGrandson) of their counterparts from other games rather than truly the same person/beast every time) and a bunch of other characters who are lucky if they manage to appear twice. Why wouldn't there be a huge gulf between that trio and everyone else? --- ## (3)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2018 _source: (3)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2018 (revid 83986)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This is one of our coolest contest rivalries ever. I forget who made this point at first, but the history between these two is legitimately amazing. These aren't noble nine characters like Link and Cloud who always just outlast and see each other. This isn't a forced rivalry like Snake vs Knuckles or Sora vs Squall. This is just two characters linked together. That's it. In 2004, Vivi made his debut in a very debated 7 vs 10 match against Donkey Kong. A lot of us, myself included, thought DK could win. Remember, he wasn't yet known as a choke artist. Vivi got 56.47%: Six years later in 2010, these two got matched up in yet another 7 vs 10 match in round one. It was an exact repeat. Remember? Vivi got 56.29% in the second match, a whopping .18% deviation. I use this terminology because I remember making a joke back then that I'm looking forward to the trilogy concluding in 2016: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(7)Vivi_vs\_(10)Donkey_Kong_2010 \] Turns out my joke prediction was two years off, and these two weren't supposed to see each other this year anyway. Donkey Kong was a 10 seed for the duel yet again, but this time Vivi was a 3. They both had to win twice to get here, which was ok on Vivi's end but DK had to rely on Leon Kennedy shitting the bed in epic fashion to get here. I was hoping DK could make a match out of it this time around, but... nope. We had the literal exact same match for a third time. DK gets the board vote, Vivi wins easily, and I get miffed by the low prediction percentage. Come on, casuals. Your other 7 choices on this half of the division were Yu Narukami, Victor Sullivan, Aya Brea, Tidus, Donkey Kong, Leon Kennedy, and Dragonborn. Who the hell was Vivi losing to on that list? For the actual match, Vivi "only" won with 54.98%. So in 14 years, DK has knocked 1.5% off of there, meaning DK is on pace to win this match in 2069. Seriously. It was nice to see DK do better and prove his run wasn't a fluke, but these small shifts in percentage against the same character prove we're overstating the narrative about DK being legit. In reality, Tidus and Leon Kennedy took massive steps backwards and DK just held steady. Just like Jak's DK did against my Simon Belmont when Nintendo's garbage-ass online functionality gets in the way. Seriously Nintendo, biggest game in over a decade and you still fail at online. Garbage. Buy some servers or fuck off already. Anyway. It was nice seeing these two get a third match that wasn't a blatant setup. I wish DK would have done better, but hey, Vivi is the dude's kryptonite. This was DK's first trip to round 3 since 2002, so of course Vivi was in the way. That's just how it is. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous 2 victories of DK we thought it was finally time for him to catch a bandwagon or a rally or something. And finally beat Vivi and advancing! Also Vivi has defeated 2 weak opponents so we couldn't really judge his power. Personally I was with DK too! But guess what? Vivi beat DK. Again. For the 3rd time! First time he won with around 56.5%, 2nd time with around 56% and now with around 55%. That means that in like 10 years DK will win! So does that means that Tidus and Leon are really weak now? Guess so? I mean Vidi did as he did in all previous times so that means that DK hasn't boosted? Maybe? Still nice to see Vivi continue impressing. His look is amazing. I mean he is the typical black mage. Look at him. Even if you don't know about FF you can recognize him as some kind of wizard. Helps that he doesn't show his face too. As for DK...too bad he didn't win. Come on now, imagine if he kept winning. It would be amazing! Just look at this face! Damn! But yeah. So nice win for Vivi. Strange that the main character of FF9 sucks and a party member is so damn strong! FF always wins it seems! The prediction percentage was very low so this at least makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis I thought it was worth making during the contest, so I did. Through the first two rounds, we were wondering how much Donkey Kong had truly boosted. Unless Vivi also boosted, the answer is "probably not by as much as we thought". This was Donkey Kong's best outing against Vivi, but it still wasn't anywhere near what his first two rounds would suggest. Also, https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Pikachu_vs_Tidus_vs_Leon_Kennedy_vs_Vivi_Ornitier_2007. That's all three of DK's opponents this year in the same match. At the time this match happened, it looked like there was a chance that if DK won this match, he could make it all four members of that match. After all, given DK's past history, if he made it past Vivi, it would signify a legitimate boost, to the point that he probably would stand a chance against Ganondorf. Then DK-Pikachu would most likely occur in Losers' 1, or possibly Losers' 2 if they *both* managed to upset Mega Man but the idea of a DK \> MM upset seemed fairly inconceivable so it would really come down to whether or not Pikachu could beat Mega Man. But of course DK couldn't get past Vivi, so this mostly just served to show how far Leon had fallen. Did you actually follow the link to that 2007 match? *Leon* came out in first place, with 33.31%. Hard to imagine him even getting that percentage in a 1v1 against Pikachu nowadays. But let's take the comparisons to 2007 a bit further, because there's still a point to be made. That match I linked to above was a round two match. This was one of the Round 1 matches that fed into it: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2886-division-6-round-1-leon-ridley-spyro-vivi. Now, aside from the bit where a character with no contest wins outside of Rivalry Rumble where a Noble Niner was carrying him manages to comfortably spank a character that has one (albeit only one which came in the watered-down 2013 field) for third place, the key thing to note here is that even without Tidus LFFing him, Vivi lost to Leon. As such, unlike in 2010 where the casuals had *no* excuse for Vivi having only a 39.95% prediction percentage (not even a full 5% better than the initial match in 2004!), they can actually be excused for dropping nearly two-thirds of Vivi's R2 prediction percentage here (65.96% of brackets had him making it to this match but only 22.96% had him winning it). He was, by all rights, the underdog in this match pre-contest, except the favorite ended up eliminated a round earlier. ...Maybe. DK *was* the favorite with the casuals in Round 1, though not with the Gurus, and his Round 2 prediction percentage, while under 50%, *was* more than half his Round 1 prediction percentage--and more than half of *Leon's* Round 1 prediction percentage. Which means that DK *might* have had the plurality of brackets in the Tidus/DK/Leon/Dragonborn fourpack. Which would mean that there's...maybe less excuse? Heck, once you consider the fact that Vivi had a 65.96% prediction percentage in R2 and DK only had a 38.06%, but the percentages fell in such a way to make it look like that was a plurality...it's possible, if unlikely, that the casuals were so split on DK's fourpack that Vivi's 22.96% is *actually the plurality*. Unlikely, because that still leaves 77.04% to *mostly* be split among DK's fourpack (the other three members of Vivi's fourpack will probably take a little bit, but not much). If we give about 3% to the other three members of Vivi's fourpack, DK's fourpack would be averaging about 18.5% apiece. Given that Dragonborn barely had twice that to get out of *Round 1*...yeah, I doubt Vivi was even the technical favorite here. Though it does bring up another intriguing possibility, that DK was the favorite in his fourpack but Leon was the technical favorite in the *eightpack* due to being perceived as having a greater chance at getting past Vivi. It would only serve to underscore the fact that transitivity is not a thing in these contests. Hell, just look at Bowser/Yoshi/Luigi. --- ## (1)Zero vs (13)Wario 2018 _source: (1)Zero vs (13)Wario 2018 (revid 83999)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Wario getting out of a very weak fourpack was adorable and all, but all these middling characters that sneak into round 2 or 3 all get wrecked eventually. This was just Wario's turn a round later than usual is all. That said, getting 40% on Zero is not easy to do and it puts you right in the middle of the LOL x stats. This blows me away, because what in the world has this fat bastard ever done to earn a fanbase? Toilet humor is just not my thing, so a fat dude farting on people on Smash Bros just autoamtically makes me not like the guy. Fart jokes were George Carlin's one weakness. It's why I don't listen to Howard Stern. There are more intelligent ways to make people laugh, and then I see 'fart of gold' puns on Little Mac's smash stage and it's just stupid. Those WarioWare games cannot possibly be good enough to cancel this stuff out for anyone that isn't childish. Some of the names below him in the stats are just silly to think about, because I never would have picked it pre-contest. Wario over The Boss? Wario over Zidane? Wario over Ocelot or GLaDOS? Wario over Shadow when he got 35% on the dude once? I don't get it and I don't get his fanbase. I don't get people who actually find toilet humor funny. Never have, never will. For Zero, this was business as usual and it's a shame his path was so predictable. Remove the big dogs and he's a good 1 or 2 seed. He goes about his business, cuts people in half, and keeps it movin. It sucks he was destined for Pikachu in the divisional finals this year, because I fully believe he could have beaten Sephiroth or Sonic had those two linked up. One day! All he needs is to be playable in Smash. ## Safer777's Analysis Finally a normal match. I mean Zero winning was set in stone no matter the opponent. And he did good. A victory above 60%. So a character did better in Round 3 and he  did in Round 2. Wario isn't strong or anything. He was lucky he faced weak opponents and reached round 3. So what else to say? Zero does decent in the contests anyways. He is always doing as expected in these things. He is from MM series so that helps. Hey nothing else. Pretty normal stuff. ## Tsunami's Analysis Round 3 is where the last of the weaklings are usually weeded out. Occasionally an entire eightpack is weak enough that something not normally capable of making a deep run gets there (think Scorpion in 2002), but even in the era-divided games contests, there were rarely undeserving entrants in the fourth round. Fourpacks, however, are a small enough entity that they can be comprised of nothing but weak characters. Wario in Round 3 is definitely a weird result in a vacuum that wasn't weird at all given the competition he'd face. What's weird is that his second-round opponent wasn't even the weakest character *in this division* to make the second round! It's been commented that it seemed like as compensation for making him the only Noble Niner not in Legends, they gave Sephiroth an easy division. Personally, I think this was an even easier one for Pikachu. Other "potential Noble Nine breakers" didn't have divisions nearly this easy. Vivi and Vincent both beat Noble Niners in the past, but were given highly challenging paths that they failed to handle. (Well, okay, Vincent wasn't in a terribly strong *division*, in that whoever came out of his fourpack would almost certainly win the division barring RallyFEAR.) Kirby and Bowser had largely easy paths to Round 4, but then had to face each other. And so on. --- ## (3)Yoshi vs (7)Pikachu 2018 _source: (3)Yoshi vs (7)Pikachu 2018 (revid 84000)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This one just warms my heart, because there is something special for me whenever the original eight Smash Bros link up in a contest match. These two have always been pretty close in the stats, with Pikachu being slightly ahead outside of his early days of flopping. It was really, really cool to finally see them in a match together. Pikachu has been around since 2002, Yoshi since 2003, and somehow they never once fought. Unfortunately for Yoshi, Pikachu was the favorite and he was the one Pokemon that bothered showing up in this contest. If this was Charizard, or more hilariously if it was Mewtwo, Yoshi probably wins in epic Al Michaels "HE DID WHAT?" fashion. In fact if you stick Yoshi in Pikachu's spot in 2008, I'm willing to bet Yoshi makes it just as far as Pikachu did. But Yoshi is juuuuust weak enough and juuuuust unlucky enough with bracket placement to have never won a division, while being strong enough to get to round 2 or 3 every year. This one kind of blows me away, because he's the fan favorite in the Mario games and some will tell you Yoshi's Island is the best platformer ever. Come match time, it was never really close after the first five minutes. Yoshi kept it tied until the freeze, and then got buried by Pikachu. Even had Yoshi tried coming back, the Detective Pikachu trailer launched on the day of this match. Yeah, November 12th. Detective Pikachu trailer and Pikachu gets a contest match. That's just silly and it's frankly a miracle Yoshi finished above 45% here. If GameFAQs was still alive and people cared about these contests, Pikachu probably goes above 60% on the strength of that trailer alone. I honestly wonder if Pikachu would have fallen as much as the other Pokemon had he not gotten a Ryan Reynolds movie plus meme treatment mid contest, but those are the breaks! Sometimes you just get them, not that Pikachu would have lost anyway. One last point about this match that made it really cool. We got some more confirmation on the Nintendo hierarchy because of it, plus some stuff that happened later. More on that when the time comes. ## Safer777's Analysis A good match here. But here is the strange thing. Others said that Pika did good, others said he did okay, and others said he did bad! What? Really? This is a good  performance in my invisible book. Listen. Yoshi is good now. He gets stronger as years go by. Plus look at him. Who doesn't like Dragon-Dinosaur hybrids? Everybody likes these! Probably. As for Pikachu...Man is he getting stronger and stronger every year! Beeing the face of the best selling franchise helps too. So here he won with a good performance. If he was above 55% nobody would complain. But anyways. Recently the Detective Pikachu movie trailer got released. And it looks good too! So maybe that will give him a boost too! Pika deserves to go really far! Yeah I like Pokemon! But what else? In all the later contests Pikachu always wins the divisions or comes 2nd in the multi way polls and advances anyways! I believe so at least. So yeah. Seems that Pika is damn strong. And oh yeah he is in Smash too. Personally I want him to win the whole thing! Man this site would be a mess! Still seems he will win the division. The prediction percentage was very good too. Well it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis See what I mean? This was probably Pikachu's biggest challenge, and it's a same-company match. All-Nintendo matches rarely produce unexpected results. One would further down the line, but that's beside the point. That said, this qualifies as a strong performance for Pikachu based on most recent X-stats. Not the raw 2013 X-stats, but Yoshi faced Link in 2013 and Nintendo characters facing Link will always have poor raw X-stats. --- ## (9)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (4)Big Boss 2018 _source: (9)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (4)Big Boss 2018 (revid 84048)_ ## Ulti's Analysis So after an entire contest where Big Boss, Ocelot, and Quiet all made the Metal Gear Solid series live up to the name Solid Shit, and after an entire contest where Pikachu was the only one in the Pokemon clan making that series look good, we get this hilarious match. You don't even need to go far back in history to see why this one is funny. You only need look at this contest. Big Boss flopped twice. Ocelot flopped twice. Quiet embarrassed herself. Mewtwo and Charizard proved they were frauds. Red may or may not have needed my reddit rally to hold off Sora. Only Pikachu was impressive. That said, we didn't know before the match Red was included in the 'Pokemon looks like ass' pile and figured he was just pulling a close upset on Sora, and thus living up up some expectations. Whoops! This match was actually even early, which is highly unusual for a Pokemon character, and then it took a couple hours for Red to actually put this match away. Big Boss kept pulling these huge updates out of his ass, and it wasn't until later on in the evening where Red finally pulled away. Normally this would be whatever, but this match was not too long ago: As much as I'd love to just call the top half of this division all legit based on this match, there are too many contradicting data points here. First off, the Metal Gear Solid series is done. We've been over it enough now to where I don't need to have you guys relive the reasons (and I'm saving my Konami rant for later, fuck those people). For Red to struggle with Big Boss after recently struggling with Ocelot is just bad. This match all but confirms that the Pokemon clan overperform in 3/4ways and those results cannot even remotely be trusted. Red would end up verifying this one round later as The Plan™ came into fruition. ## Safer777's Analysis Well after Red defeated Sora no way he would lose here. I mean come on now, Big Boss didn't do anything good too. But here is the strange part. Look at the result. He did almost as good as Sora. Why? That means he scores on Sora around 49%. Let us be real, would anybody say that before the contest? No. Also Crash scores like 45% on Sora too? Why? So from what I gather from these results. Seems that Crash, Red, Big Boss and Sora are close in strength? Who would have thought that before the contest? So I guess they aren't that strong anyways. Still Red managed to advance and that is all that matters. When you see that Mewtwo and Charizard ddidn't do good but a human Pokemon character advances that far you know that strange things are happening. Man I wish the Zard was here instead of Red. Eh whatever. Well Big Boss fought valiantly but of  course he lost. I mean people had him losing easily but nope. Still any match with around 53%-47% is always nice. Man these Pokemon though. They win even when there are no Pokemon around! The prediction percentage was really low too. Well most people had Sora winning here anyways so it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis Add another one to the pile of results that disprove the popular notion that Pokémon had a bad contest outside of Pikachu. Honestly, other than Charizard's close call against Terra this was a *phenomenal* contest for Team Pokémon, in large part because they weren't spread so thin like they were last time. I mean, yeah, it's kind of disappointing that a character that *literally beat Cloud last contest* didn't get to return, but the quartet we got was really all we needed. And Charizard's poor outing in 2013 would soon be vindicated. Maybe. Honestly it's tough to tell because Charizard's downfall involved a character that had previously resisted SFF from his series' lead like a champ suddenly failing to do so. And Zelda clearly boosted a *lot*, so it's kind of misleading to say that that "disappointing" narrow victory looks a lot better now, but it does look a lot better now, especially with Donkey Kong also suddenly looking good. So for the second straight contest, Red is in Round 4. Dude's been in three contests, one of which only had five rounds, and he's been to Round 4 twice. Oh, yeah, I guess he was also in Rivalry Rumble, whereupon he and Blue literally took home the bronze medal. So from another perspective, he's been in four contests and has two semifinals appearances. Remember when Butler went to back-to-back title games while they were still a member of the Horizon League? Yeah, that's kind of what Red is. Did you know that Red actually finished ahead of *Tifa* in the Raw X-Stats? Because he did. I may rail against Adjusted X-Stats due to the fact that the adjustments are completely arbitrary, but that fact shows why they're necessary. That's entirely on Tifa's number being too low, though; Red's is calculated entirely through non-SFF matches (unless you consider Link-Cloud an SFF match by this point, which honestly wouldn't be that outlandish but it's not the same as Tifa's number being calculated through Link-Zelda, Zelda-Mario, Mario-Samus, and perhaps even Samus-Tifa itself due to the hentai rallies). No Pokémon entry finished lower than 23.92% in the raw X-Stats, and that was Mewtwo's number which, as I said, is behind SFF matches at every round of Legends. All three entrants that failed to win their divisions lost to the eventual division winner and broke 40% in doing so. But please, go on with the narrative that Pokémon was awful this contest. As for Big Boss, this was a respectable exit for him. It's clear that the series is on the decline here, due in large part to the series being completely dead, but it's still got some strength. Honestly, they don't really *need* to create a "new" game, just to make sure that the Konami/Kojima breakup doesn't cause the characters to fall into a legal gray area where no one can use them. Metal Gear Solid V literally ended with the prelude to the original Metal Gear. They officially wrapped up Big Boss's story and brought it back to the start of Solid Snake's. The obvious solution would be for Metal Gear Solid 6 *to literally be an expanded remake of Metal Gear 1*, the way the 11th, 15th, and 12th Fire Emblem games are remakes of the first three games. Except much better, because you're taking a game from the 1980s and giving it the full 3D console makeover. Yeah, the TX-55 definitely needs some upgrades. Hopefully Kojima Productions can get the rights to Kojima's creations; the only game listed for them since they ceased to be a subsidiary of Konami appears to be a brand new IP. (Also still unreleased with release date TBD.) --- ## (3)Alucard vs (7)Kefka 2018 _source: (3)Alucard vs (7)Kefka 2018 (revid 84051)_ ## Ulti's Analysis In the guru, Kefka was the overwhelming favorite in this match. Half of people picked him here, and the leftovers was an even mix of Yuna, L-Block, and Alucard. Pre-contest the Alucard/Yuna match was 50-50 on the board, while most people assumed the L/Kefka winner would make a deep contest run. In the oracle, most people favored Alucard here and had figured out mid-contest the guy had clearly boosted somewhere. I don't know if it was his game coming to PS4 or the Castlevania Netflix series or popping up in that Smash video or what, but this guy was on crack this year. This was a match few people saw coming in a very debatable division, and Alucard just trounced the pre-contest favorite. Well, after five minutes of Kefka keeping things even for the board vote anyways. This was a tie at the freeze, and then after things got going Alucard just smoked this clown. That wasn't TY Hilton, The Joker, or people from The Purge over there that could actually fight back, either, but an actual clown that just rolled over and starting crying the second he got punched in the mouth. Kefka is one of those characters I'll never get a proper read on in these things, because even with Alucard looking better going in you just never know with this guy. Kefka could have been the one getting 60% here with how much of an oddball he is, but unfortunately for him this was Alucard's year. Alucard made Kefka look like lucky fodder that came from a weak fourpack, when he really wasn't. Kefka belonged here and just got smoked. And if it wasn't for PokeFEAR, Alucard would have far and away the universal favorite next match. ## Safer777's Analysis So as matches went we saw that Alucard did good and Kefka did good too. So Kefka we thought had some chances to win. Yeah sure. Man this guy trolls us all the time! How he does that in all the contests nobody knows. But as for Alucard. Not only he does so good but he has a chance to take a division too! First time he does so well. Yeah the opponents are weak sure. But still. Alucard is on a roll here. I wonder why. Alucard...is Dracula spelled backwards! WHAT? Mind=blown! But in all seriousness nice to see such a character to reach that far. Still it seems that the division final match will be amazing. Finally a Castlevania game/character is doing so good. Yeah I know we had SOTN doing good once but still. Variety is always nice! We need to have such things instead of you know FF and Zelda games/characters. As for  Kefka...pretty sure he laughs on us all! Keep doing what are you doing Kefka! And of course in the next contest prepare for a trolling for him again! ## Tsunami's Analysis This match goes beyond simply "lolKefka". This is like a "*lolKefkaception*". Pre-contest, Kefka was a definitive favorite here, getting over 50% of Gurus. The second most popular pick to win this match among Gurus was literally Kefka's first-round opponent, L-Block. Yet it was precisely because of this that, come match time, we all knew that Kefka was the underdog. "Kefka/L-Block winner" was a 154-6 pick over "Kiryu/Bomberman winner", while Alucard was only an 87-67 favorite over Yuna (remaining 6 brackets taking Alucard's Round 1 opponent, Peach.) But Alucard was every bit as dominant as Kefka against what appeared to be a stronger foe! And yet, Kefka still embarrassed himself here, *barely* outdoing Yuna's number against Alucard. In fact, Kefka and Yuna are only two spots apart in the raw X-Stats. Kefka's \#33, and Yuna's \#35. And therein lies the biggest joke of all. That one spot between them belongs to none other than *Terra Branford*! And while the raw X-Stats are a bit wonky due to the number of SFF matches in the late rounds, Division 3 is probably the truest numbers you'll get, and Division 4 the second-truest as it's only stuck behind Cloud \> Crono, which is marginal at best. Division 1 is stuck behind Link \> Ganondorf, Division 2 behind Link \> Pikachu, and Divisions 5-8 behind Link \> Zelda. So it becomes kind of hard to argue that there's some sort of SFF result leading to Terra being right behind Kefka--if anything, you could actually make a case for Terra \> Kefka indirectly, as Terra's number is not only behind Cloud \> Crono but also Bowser \> Charizard, which is probably a stronger SFF result. And even with the evidence that Alucard was stronger, nearly 37% of Oracles still backed Kefka here. Because it just makes more sense. The casuals, on the other hand, seemed to tentatively have this one from the start. Vaguely. Over 25% of them picked this, down from just under 49% having him reach this round. That was largely on the first round, however--Yuna was a far heavier favorite to reach round 2, but Alucard still managed to get that respectable R2 prediction percentage. It's highly unlikely, especially given Kefka's R2 prediction percentage being worse than Alucard's, that any other character had a higher percentage. Which kind of says what we'd all been thinking--Division 3 was thought to be wide open. Or at least, the bottom half was. --- ## (1)2B vs (4)Bowser 2018 _source: (1)2B vs (4)Bowser 2018 (revid 84081)_ ## Ulti's Analysis So this is the match that got everyone calling 2B a legitimate contest character, which she is. Sort of. 42% on Steroid Bowser is legitimately a fine accomplishment and means she isn't some joke tier fodder that lucked into a 1 seed because of a meme or whatever. It's a fine performance, and puts her squarely into midcard status. This is a perfectly fine and acceptable performance, and given the type of female GameFAQs fantasizes over (more on that embarrassment later, way to prove the stereotypes about gamers folks) 2B is set up to be around for awhile. She even won/tied a few updates in this match. Nice job. Except for one thing. 2B was a 1 seed in this contest, which means you get judged by the 1 seed standard. You can not go out there and get 42% in a match in your third match as a 1 seed. It's unacceptable. 2B is a legit contest character, but an embarrassing 1 seed. Her, Dante, and Squall had no business on the 1 seed line. Zero. I'm not Bank of America. I don't get involved in the business of giving credit. 2B had zero business being a 1 seed in this contest, and this match proved she was one of the most over-seeded characters in this contest. She's right there with Squall, the Yazuka losers, and so on. Multiple things can be true. You can both be legit and over-seeded, which 2B was. Simple as that. ## Safer777's Analysis 2B did really good for a newcomer to reach here but of course everybody knew that Bowser would win. You can't just beat the most iconic videogame villain of all time especially if you are a newcomer! But here is the thing. She did really good! Everyone was expecting at least 60% from Bowser! Damn! So why? Well she is a fanservice character yeah BUT she got announced for SC 6 AND her game is actually pretty good from what I gather! Seriously! So people supported her. I mean she got a 1 seed so seems that yeah this is true. So even though she lost, she went out with style at least. As for Bowser well he is strong. Duh. He should be anyways! But funny to see a character losing by a lot and still impressing! Maybe next time she does better or something. Hope that is true! ## Tsunami's Analysis I stated back in Round 1 that Bowser was in a very similar position this year to the one he was in in 2010--a 4-seed, in the division with the weakest 1-seed. The difference was that at least then, said 1-seed was a proven midcarder, and merely had the title of "weakest 1-seed" because the Noble Nine were still in the main bracket and the Heart Division was the only one that lacked one. Of course, while Bowser did knock off the 1-seed then, he had the poor timing to run into Charizard on the release date for a main-series Pokémon game. It's easy to forget that that was only a division final and not an Elite Eight match, until you remember that the Noble Nine were still in the main bracket. This? Was not a worthy use of Bowser's time. When you're a 1-seed and the 12-seed gets a better percentage against the 4-seed than you do...yeah. 2B did well to get a bracket placement that allowed her to reach the third round, but Ness barely qualifies as a midcarder. 2B is not a threat to make a deep run, and it wouldn't surprise me if we didn't see much more of her at all. However, she did show some strength here, and this would actually have an impact on things to come. --- ## (3)Phoenix Wright vs (2)Kirby 2018 _source: (3)Phoenix Wright vs (2)Kirby 2018 (revid 84082)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Given how big a fan of Ike I am and how tired I am of seeing that dude come up short, this was a good measure of revenge for me. I like Phoenix, but I don't love him and his fanbase has become increasingly annoying with each new contest. They're not to a level of causing me to rant or anything, but they're getting there. Phoenix is a hilariously overrated character with a terrible Marvel vs Capcom 3 appearance, so seeing the guy get worked was nice. It's like when the Bears lost to the Eagles last night; Chicago is a gutter run by heroin dealers and routinely ruins people's lives over things that mean nothing in the grand scheme, and that place deserves to get smacked once in awhile. Look at what those losers did to Steve Bartman, or what they're trying to do to Cody Parkey right now, or their murder rate. Sometimes you get a group of people in need of humbling, and Phoenix Wright fans? You're getting there. Knock it off. I like the dude and he has some good games, but you're making me want to not like him. Stop that. Phoenix's fanbase pretends everyone loves him, but Kirby is a character everyone actually does love. Put Phoenix against actual competition and watch the blowouts commence. He didn't even get his usual board vote here, because Kirby is a character no one can actually hate unless they have severe issues. My biggest issue with Phoenix outside of his fanbase is the bad writing in parts of his games, specifically the constant deus ex machina bailouts. Visual novels in general seem to have this problem and have not caught up as a literary art form despite being literal novels, but these dopey main characters always get help from paranormal beings or random AHA moments. It's a terrible writing style and should be used very very sparingly. I felt like Phoenix was getting bailed out by otherworldly stuff in every single case, and it got so ridiculous by the time I was done reading the trilogy. Then Apollo Justice, those awful Ace Attorney Investigation games, and the MvC3 garbage happened and I was just out on that series. Phoenix is a good character, but he is not a great character. He suffers too much from deus ex machina, a genre no one really cares about, and 'everyone around me is cooler' syndrome. That's not a recipe to compete with the big boys on this site. This would set up a match between Kirby and Bowser that would blow my mind, but not for the reasons you guys might think. ## Safer777's Analysis After a miraculous victory on Round 2 we all knew that this match would be end of the contest for Phoenix. He isn't strong or anything, we all know that. I mean Gordon  Freeman got his first victory against Phoenix!This contest is the one that has reached the further too! Damn! So who beat him? Kirby. I wrote above about Kirby, read if you want. Basicallly I don't understand why he is so strong. Anyways of course he owned Phoenix, I mean he won with more than a doubling. Kirby is improving with every contest. Would you believe me if I told you that in the very first contest he lost on the 1st match against Jill! Yeah! Man! Things change eh?So yeah. Kirby is damn strong. Don't ask me why, I just don't get it. Anyways awesome win for Kirby. As for Phoenix hey he did his best so that is all anyone could ask for! Maybe next time he does better? Don't think so but we can hope! The prediction percentage was massive for Kirby too. Well I guess it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis And that "impact on things to come"? Right here. While Bowser was merely cruising to an Ulti-style blowout against 2B, a character with no track record (and thus, not expected to be worth much), Kirby was cruising to an *actual* blowout against Phoenix, who was generally believed to have finally risen to midcarder status after his shocking upset of Vincent Valentine in 2013 (admittedly only for second place in a match that had been decided almost 24 hours before it began, and remember that the matches were only *twelve* hours long). And Phoenix had put up what seemed to be a decent win in Round 2, albeit only with the help of the registered user bonus. Then again, Ike lost to a horse in 2013. A horse from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, mind you, but still an actual horse. Only here's the thing: Phoenix struggling with Ike **ABSOLUTELY SHITS ALL OVER** the idea that Mewtwo was a **FRAUD**. Phoenix got a better percentage on 2013 rallybait Mewtwo than Ike got on GLaDOS in the Epona match, the same GLaDOS that FRAUDtwo annihilated in Round 1. If you really think Mewtwo is a **FRAUD**, then GLaDOS is the Turd of the Contest, because that is truly ridiculous. Check this inequality. Phoenix's percentage against Mewtwo in 2013 \> GLaDOS's percentage against Mewtwo in 2018 \> Ike's percentage against GLaDOS in 2013. Now remember that 2013 Mewtwo is a rally-fueled monster and 2018 Mewtwo isn't. There's no combination of Phoenix dropping and Ike boosting that doesn't still make that embarrassing for GLaDOS. Of course, as I suggested in an earlier write-up, Phoenix's win over Vincent is kind of an illusion, precisely *because* Mewtwo was being rallied as a potential insurance policy if Link failed to stop Draven. Board 8 loves Phoenix. Always has. And they're not alone. Phoenix Wright fans are a loyal bunch; I feel like the rally probably hurt Vincent a lot more than it hurt Phoenix. Oh, but I seem to be getting off track. Sort of. Point is, Phoenix wasn't as strong as he seemed to be. Also, this is a pseudo-SFF match. Kirby gets the majority of his strength from Smash, of course, but he's still one of Nintendo's bigger stars to be primarily associated with their portables rather than their consoles, trailing only Pokémon. Different genres, too...if you're being generous, you could say that Kirby is *the* biggest platforming star on the Game Boy/DS. Yes, bigger stars *have had* platformers on those systems, but most of the better Mario games available for a portable system are merely ports of games that started on a console. (6 Golden Coins is pretty good, and I guess 3D Land isn't bad.) But because Kirby was absolutely wrecking Phoenix here, in fact marginally improving on the number that Bowser put up on a weaker Phoenix in 2008 (in Round 1; we won't even count Round 2 because Bowser was being SFFed by Luigi), suddenly everyone was declaring Kirby the favorite in Round 4. Like, seriously. Bowser is a slight favorite over Kirby in the Guru, based on pre-contest expectations, but in the Oracle, based on what we've seen so far, Kirby is the overwhelming pick. Now let's continue laughing at a psychopathic AI. --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs (4)Zelda 2018 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs (4)Zelda 2018 (revid 88247)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Throughout any contest, you'll see a bunch of topics talking about stars and turds each round. I don't get involved in doing all that every round, but this match showed a wonderful contrast between the two. Zelda, the clear star of this contest as of this match, didn't just beat Squall. She destroyed him. After the early board vote went Squall's way because of brackets or whatever have you, Zelda went out there and put down a beating so bad that if you ran the numbers, this result puts her squarely and high up in the Noble Nine level. Some people weren't ready to go there, but I was. I have the second chance picks to prove it, and even I didn't go far enough because Zelda was on the juice all contest long. She was like this in the first two rounds too, but this was the match that really made people notice. The really scary thing is this didn't start off all that bad, but within 10 minutes this was a laughable blowout. It was basically this match in reverse, actually. Zelda went out there and got some revenge for her distant cousin from the Mario games: On the other side was this contest's biggest turd. You cannot go out there and get 37% as a 1 seed in round 3. You just can't. I don't care who or what you're up against. This was a thorough embarrassment and there is no defense for it, regardless of how down Square is. That 1 seed line is supposed to be special. We had three 1 seeds in this contest that completely failed the 1 seed line for various reasons -- Dante, 2B, and Squall. Squall by far had the worst exit, and I don't know how he comes back from this. Even a port of Final Fantasy 8 to the PS4 wouldn't help at this point, I don't think. By the way, fuck you Square for not saving the original files and giving FF8 the love it deserves. You save it all for every other game except 8? Really? Fuck you Square. No wonder you suck eggs outside of one game on this site. Seriously, look it up. Pretty much every other game in that series has been ported or rereleased at some point all the way up to 12. That company is such a joke at this point and it's a big reason I enjoyed this match so much. Nintendo's online may suck, but at least I can tell they care about their fans when I play their games. Square literally does not give a shit anymore. I used to be very much in the Square camp whenever these duels would happen in contests, but outside of FF7 I am firmly in the Nintendo camp now. They've won me back. As such, this match was great. The star of the contest stomped, and though I like Squall a lot he represents Square's idiocy. FF8 not being ported yet is such a joke. For those who don't understand what I mean about losing source files, I am in no way kidding. Square really is that stupid and Squall is paying for it: ## Safer777's Analysis Don't know what to say. Look at this. Okay. Let us talk about this. Before the contest Squall was the favorite but Zelda had supporters too. As the contest went on Zelda became the favorite but Squall wasn't out too. But man. Don't know. When I first checked the results I thought there was a rally. Or something. Still I can't believe it. A little bit of history for Squall in the contests. 1st contest Squall loses to Snake. 2nd contest Squall loses to Samus. 3rd contest Squall loses to Cloud. 4th contest  Squall loses to Vincent but barely enough and Vincent was a beast back then. 5th contest Squall loses to Snake. 6th contest Squall loses to Snake. 7th contest Squall loses to Mewtwo BUT there were 3 Square characters in that match so a lot of SFF. 8th contest Squall loses to Snake(his cryptonite). 9th contest Squall loses to Vivi but Pokemon was rallied and of course Vivi is another Square character so SFF again. So why I wrote all this? To see that Squall is pretty damn strong! Some people were saying he might be the strongest character in the bracket except Sephiroth of course! So for 1 VS 1 Squall has lost only to N9er's except Vincent back then when he even defeated Crono indirectly. So for Zelda. She hasn't done well in the contests except the Female one where of course she did well, duh. I mean which females are strong here? Tifa, Samus and Zelda. Maybe Aeris too. So NOBODY could predict this result. NOBODY. Don't deny this. So what is going on? Squall has fallen this much or Zelda has risen this much? Maybe a combination of both or just 1 of them? According to these results Zelda beats Squall's opponents with like 85% to 90%. No way this is right. I can't fathom this. But if the boost to Zelda and Link is real and it is so strong that means that nobody can break even 35% on Link! Even with strong rallies.  Seriously. So once again I don't know what to say. The only good thing I can say is that makes Ezio looking somewhat decent. And congrats to Zelda. This match was the one that nobody expected this result, at least not this much difference in percentages. Man Link will beat another Nintendo character with like 80%! Damn! This contest has lost all credibility! Nah just kidding about the last part. Impressive win no matter how you see it. The prediction percentage was really good for Zelda too. Guess a lot of people saw this? Well I certainly didn't and the board didn't too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well. This is certainly a thing that happened. And it was *terrifying*. Squall has been in every contest, and he's consistently been one of the top midcarders, though it took until CBII for this to really be noticed due to some *horrendous* seeding in 2002 that saw Squall fed to a Noble Niner in Round 1, and a Noble Niner that was actually *seeded properly* (which not all of them were). How bad? He was a ***15-seed.*** Anyone who's been reading these write-ups in order should already know how few 15-2 upsets there have been, and while the 2-seed line was in fact the strongest in 2002 (Three Noble Niners were 2-seeds, while only two were 1-seeds and the two 1-seeds that *weren't* Noble Niners have both missed contests outright since then), Crash Bandicoot was also there. Just picture (2)Crash Bandicoot vs (15)Squall Leonhart for a moment. Yeah, 2002 was weird. Squall's not even the only 15-seed that year that could've beaten Crash, so he's lucky that he got a 15-seed that was actually legitimately bad instead. Now, Zelda hasn't been there for every contest, because for some reason it took until CBII for *any* Nintendo franchise to have multiple representatives in the contest unless you consider Mario and Donkey Kong to technically be the same franchise due to their shared origins. But she's been in every contest since then save for CBIII, and it's usually taken a Noble Niner to defeat her (though she did come in second in a fourway to Vincent in a "clean" match, one round before Link showed up and absolutely annihilated her). All things considered, this result might've been far more expected if not for a handful of votes. Stop and think about it for a moment. Yeah, that's right. Zelda lost to Charizard by all of *15 votes* in 2013. And it was widely expected that Charizard would be able to take advantage of Zero's demonstrated ability to not get SFFed into oblivion by Mega Man (see: Weighted Companion Cube, 2008) to win Division 9. Charizard was considered a disappointment in part for failing to do this, by the only slightly less narrow margin of 23 votes, but also for nearly getting "upset" the round before by Zelda. Now, remember also that Pokémon had a representative in almost every match near the end of that contest. Divisions 2, 5, 6, and 8 had all been won by Pokémon entrants, which meant all three Contest Semifinals would also contain one. There was serious Pokéfatigue. Is it unreasonable to think that, had Zelda managed to muster up those 16 extra votes needed to beat Charizard, she could've done what he couldn't and beaten Mega Man? And then of course she easily outpaces Red in the contest semis to get to the 4th place match and, just as Mega did, has no trouble handling the LFF-afflicted Mewtwo and Pikachu to win that match. But back to the match at hand. Nintendo had clearly boosted, and Zelda especially seemed strong, so most Oracles, at least, saw this coming, selecting Zelda at a bit over a 5 to 1 ratio. (Gurus, not so much. 93-65 in favor of Squall.) But the magnitude? Not even close. Zelda won with 63.32%, 3.31% above the highest-scoring Oracle prediction...which was itself 2.75% above the *\#2* Oracle prediction. This was just a gobsmacking. And of course, everyone was quick to dump on Squall, because taking this at face value would mean Zelda was at Noble Nine level, and that just couldn't make sense. After all, it's called "Noble Nine level" for a reason, and that's because they're the only nine that can ever reach it naturally. L-Block and Draven got there with rally power, sure, but when a Noble Niner loses a legitimate match? Only happens because of the Noble Niner's decline. Not because the other character has strengthened to their level. That just can't happen. And yes, it took a conscious effort to write "couldn't" and "can't" rather than "didn't" and "shouldn't". Or "won't". Because that's the way most of the old guard thinks. The Noble Nine, and their peak games (okay mostly just OoT, CT, FFVII, and to a lesser extent ALttP/SMW/SMB3), are put on a pedestal. They've finally accepted that they're not all going to stay invincible forever, but the idea that something else could be as strong as they once were... ...well, it wasn't always that way. CBII was, in many ways, a very weird contest, because a bunch of side characters from games whose main characters were in CBI debuted and people expected these side characters to be stronger than their leads for some reason. Maybe because leads tend to be bland. People figured that if *Crono* could come as close as he did to Mario, then Magus should be able to outright win the contest--but on the other hand, Mario has no real personality at all so surely Luigi will be even stronger than Mario. As awful as CBIII was for all of the SFF matches, it was, one supposes, at least useful for derailing that kind of misguided thinking. But on the flip side, it might just have been what led to *this* kind of misguided thinking, that the Noble Nine have some sort of untouchable aura that no other character will ever be able to attain. Well, okay, there's that, and there's also the fact that new characters tend to do poorly, and the inherent advantage of having existed for a long time means that anything that *could* be on that level *would* have shown that capability by now. That is an entirely more logical reason for thinking that no other character would ever be able to dominate non-fodder the way the Noble Nine do, or once did. Forgive me, I've been railing against the unwillingness to see members of the Noble Nine weakening for so long that I overlooked that the converse, that nothing else will ever *rise up* to that level, actually had a logical basis. That said, there was something overlooked, and if you scroll back up to the point where I mentioned the *games* that are treated with the same reverence as the Noble Nine, you'll probably figure out what it is. No, that wasn't an accidental omission. This contest, Smash Ultimate was certainly considered a factor as to why Nintendo--and certain non-Nintendo characters--had boosted, but far too often, Smash is overlooked. I suspect that this is because of one of the exact same things that I consider to be among the three reasons that Melee isn't looked at in the same light as those other games. Namely, *Brawl*. The threefold reason that Melee isn't given the reverence it deserves are the loss to Brawl in GotD, rallying to turn what was already an assured 55-45 win into a 60-40 win in BGE3, and rallying again to defeat Chrono Trigger in BGE3. That last one, I assume, brings this into grudge territory, because this board loves Chrono Trigger almost as much as it loves Phoenix Wright. (I promise, when I decide to go back and play Chrono Trigger, I'll make a playthrough topic. It's something I intend to do because the reasons that I vaguely remember hating it the first time I played it were things that I actually *enjoyed* when I encountered them in FFVI, so I'm fairly certain that I'd actually like the game if I tried it again.) But back to why Brawl is relevant. In 2007, a bunch of characters made their Character Battle debuts based on being announced for Brawl, and even more debuted in 2008 for getting into Brawl. And the newcomers were largely underwhelming in the contests, which led to everyone believing that Smash wasn't really as big a boost as it seemed. *It is.* They were just looking at things the wrong way. See, being new to Smash is only good for a small boost. But here's the secret. Each time you appear in a Smash game? *The boost gets bigger*. Remember, Metroid Prime wasn't even out when Character Battle I happened. Super Metroid is certainly an all-time classic, but being one of the Original Twelve (and the Original Eight, at that), surely gave Samus the added strength to be a Noble Niner right from the start. (Though maybe people put too much weight on the lack of a Metroid game since SM at the time of CBI; it's only a year older than Chrono Trigger and actually *had* a PAL release on its initial system to boot.) Kirby, of course, gets most of his strength from Smash even now. Same goes for Captain Falcon. And of course, Fox. He had a pretty decent contest this year even though he hasn't had a game anyone really cared about since 1997. (*Star Fox Zero* got panned for being too much of a retread of *64*, but given how poorly received every game since then has been **with the exception of the literal SF64 remake on the 3DS**, why *shouldn't *they try to stick with what people liked?) And it most certainly has trickled down to Melee's cast of newcomers, or at least, some of them. Conventional wisdom coming into this year was that no one really *cares* about Peach; she's just an apathy vote magnet. Which...okay that would actually be a pretty decent explanation for why she gave Alucard a better match than either of his next two opponents; this contest's format made "apathy vote magnet" a surprisingly strong thing to be. And of course, Mewtwo is still the second-most *consistently* strong Pokémon...actually let's face it, Mewtwo should probably be ahead of Charizard in the adjusted X-Stats, because Division 7 is in a horrendous place in the raw X-Stats. Guess which one made it into Smash first. Don't get me wrong, a lot of Smashers would be strong anyway. But Zelda has been there since Melee, and more importantly, there was a kind of big Legend of Zelda game out recently. You know, the series with her name in the title? She was, as usual, only a supporting character despite being the title character, but she still had a pretty decent presence, not to mention one of her best designs yet, which, again, was used for her appearance in Smash Ultimate. Also, if that bit about the Smash Boost becoming stronger with each successive appearance is true? It really explains a lot of characters getting these *massive* boosts. And sure enough, they did exactly that. Cloud recovered from his signs of weakness in 2013, and Bowser hasn't looked this good since he gave Snake a scare in 2005. You figured it out yet? That's right. This was the first Character Battle since *for WiiU/3DS* came out. And since they made a point of bringing back *everyone* from Melee, Brawl, and WiiU/3DS (the original roster has been present in every game anyway), even ill-advised decisions like Pichu, it's a 100% guarantee that any character in *Wii U/3DS* had their *Smash* counter incremented by ***2*** since the most recent contest. So, yeah, there were bound to be some absolutely ridiculous power boosts. Long live NintendoFAQs. Addendum: Response in the topic made it clear that this write-up was poorly worded, as it suggested that later Smash games *gave* larger boosts to series veterans than to newcomers. A more accurate way of putting it would be that the *existence* of newer Smash games *increases the value* of being in older ones, due to the way Nostalgia Factor works. Pokémon is another series with this trait, and one that has it to an even more pronounced degree than Smash, so as both a Generation I Pokémon ***and ***an Original 12 Smasher, Pikachu is by far the most dramatic example of this effect in action. For reference: Pikachu struggling to put away fodder in 2002; Pikachu slaying the threatening joke (and beating another of this year's division winners) in 2008; Pikachu the Noble Nine Breaker in 2018. --- ## (11)Fox McCloud vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 _source: (11)Fox McCloud vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 (revid 84116)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Until this contest, only one 15 seed had ever won a match. With Aeris out here balling on Fox, she was here setting records. We may never again see a 15 seed win two matches, let alone three. This run will probably be forgotten in the contest ether, but it shouldn't be. I love me a giant seed making a deep run, and with this match Aeris tied Starcraft's old record of winning the most matches as a huge seed. The only way to beat this a 15/16 winning a division, which isn't possible outside of a rally or some hilariously awful seeding. Nice work, Aeris. She was destined to get killed off next round by Zelda, but enjoying her being around while still alive in this contest was nice to see. Well, "balling" on Fox isn't really the right word here. This was just a match where the final percent was not indicative of the match itself. Aeris held this at 53-47 for 24 straight hours with no movement, so it was one of those close-looking matches where the winner was never in doubt. Just for fun. Aeris (2010c) VS Fox (2010c) Aeris has a strength of 31.01. Fox has a strength of 30.67. Aeris wins with 50.55% of the vote! Final Fantasy 7 is back and boosted, baby! Cloud's run was now super obvious! But for real, Fox getting this close was fun even though this match was never in doubt. Too bad Aeris had to face Zelda next. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this is a strange match. What I mean? Before the contest Aerith was the slight favorite. As the contest went on Fox became the clear favorite. But Aerith managed to do it. Also a strange fact is that Fox won in USA! And he lost with more than 3% which is a record for sure. Man Americans REALLY like Nintendo! Don't know why. Maybe some Americans can tell me why. Anyways nice to see FF 7 winning at least. Fox is always a midcarder in these things. Also Aerith is the only 15 seed to reach the division finals! Damn! So we have a record that will NEVER break! Unless we have a contest where like Link is the 15th seed so he would win the division. Yeah the opponents were weak. Okay fine. Still that is impressive. Also she beat 3 Nintendo characters! And 2 of them were in Smash too! Square\>Nintendo confirmed! So as a  FF 7 fanboy this match was good. But man I dread to think about the next match. ## Tsunami's Analysis In my mind, this is a good performance for Fox. Aerith's always been a fairly strong midcarder, and Fox, for the longest time, wasn't. Mostly he just preyed on weaker characters, often using SFF to do so. But there is the sincere possibility that FFVII has just weakened. Tifa managed to stay strong because of the rallies or whatever, and Cloud managed to stay strong because he's in Smash. But Sephiroth definitely looked weaker, too, and of course so did Vincent. Maybe Aerith lost a step as well, even if this is her deepest run ever? Sounds weird but I guess it's possible. --- ## (1)Geralt vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 _source: (1)Geralt vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 (revid 84115)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I feel like this match would have been a lot more fun had we not seen the exact same trend with Geralt v Simon Belmont. creativename's site doesn't have working graphs for this contest yet, but I promise they're identical! Against Simon, Geralt struggled and didn't make his move until midnight. Geralt struggled a little more with Bayonetta, but she has a little more Nintendo going for her. Simon has only Smash Bros and very old games that don't resonate here. Bayonetta has multiple Smash games and multiple games that this site cares for, so she was going to be stronger than him. How much stronger? About 800 votes :D This poll was tied at the freeze, and then Bayonetta started slowly (very slowly) trying to build up a lead. Her early push peaked at only 140 before Geralt fought back, and her second push peaked at 213. From that point, this match was a big stallfest and would almost assuredly get decided by the night vote and the morning vote. Well around midnight, Bayonetta had a lead of only 150 and actually started going up during the time of Geralt's push one round ago. It actually looked like she was going to push for the win in this match when she built up her lead to 260 very quickly, but at 2 am Geralt started fighting back for good. It took him all night, but he got that lead under 100 by morning time. This would come down to the morning vote, and like Geralt had done all contest, he swiped that morning vote and ran home with the poll. He took the lead at 8:30 in the morning and never looked back. He didn't even bother keeping it close enough for me to oogle over close wire to wire records :'( This was Geralt's second close match in a row, and third match where the results were the result was close-ish. This was one of the contest's better matches, and while there is a very obvious joke to be made here with a witcher killing an actual witch, I have some limits to how cheesy I'll get. Some of the most fun contest runs you'll see are new characters proving they belong and winning close, and Geralt definitely qualifies for that list after this match. There are people who credit Soul Calibur 6 for Geralt's performance in this contest, but I never cared for that series so I can't comment on whether this is accurate or not. 3D fighters are just not my thing. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was awesome! hightly debatable too. Not only Bayonetta was the favorite to win but Geralt win and a newcomer reaches the division finals too! Yeah the opponents are weak. Fine. But man! Geralt is awesome! Also strangely enough he won in USA too! What?Isn't Bayonetta a Nintendo character now? She is in Smash and 2 of her games are on Ninendo consoles. Also once again like the previous match Geralt was losing but he came back and won.I think he was losing like 12 hours! Don't know why this happens. But this is nice to see. Close matches like this one are always awesome. But this proves that Geralt can't get a rally. If he hasn't gain a rally until now, he will not get one. Still I don't know if this is the best a newcomer has done, meaning reaching the division finals but still as a guy that likes Geralt I can't complain. Obviously Bayonetta did well too but it wasn't enough. And matches like this are the best ones. Close ones and we can't be sure who will win until the match ends. Not like N9'ers who based on the opponent we instantly know who will win and by how much usually. Nice win for Geralt once again. ## Tsunami's Analysis Legitimately close match here. Registered voters actually favored Bayonetta, by a scant 9 votes. This match does feel more appropriate to the second round than the third; these characters are too "new" to be worth anything, or so it seems. In reality, maybe not so much. Geralt, of course, has been around for a long time. Even if you only count from his video game debut, that's probably longer than you realize, because it wasn't until The Witcher 3 that he really made a name for himself. And Bayonetta's coming up on a decade, too. The first game came out in October 2009; if she makes waves in GotD, it'll have to be with the second game. It still feels like she's a newcomer, though, because of how infrequent Contests have been; she made the vote-ins in CBVIII but was so new that she couldn't even make the main field, and then in CBIX she caught an incredibly weak first-round 3-pack and then ran into a Noble Niner in Round 2. That Round 1 match was so stupid; "pick the oldest character/game" is usually a good rule of thumb for fodder matches as long as they aren't *too* old (which usually means 8-bit era), so when the oldest character is the consensus last place finisher in a multiway, well, you'd expect that to be something ancient, not a character whose piss-weakness *also* comes from being too recent. --- ## (3)Auron vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 _source: (3)Auron vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 (revid 84117)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I can't believe I forgot to list these two when talking about tired rivalries during the Vivi/DK writeup. Did you guys know this was their fourth match together, all with similar results? At least this was only their third contest together and second 1v1 match, but we weren't going to have anything new happen this year. The only fun to be had here was comparing this to 2006, and Auron lost 3% on the same character in a 12 year time frame. On that pace, Sub-Zero can win this match in 27 years or so. Until then, can we stop having this match? I suppose one could maybe use this match as proof Auron has fallen a little, but still. Boring match, predictable result. ## Safer777's Analysis We knew that Auron would win here. Auron is an elite and Sub-Zero is decent. So not much to say. Auron won but as I said before he didn't win with as much as expected. Well FF 10 has fallen of course but not that much for Auron to lose. Still a win is a win. Also look at Auron. If his design isnt' badass, I don't know what it is. As for Sub-Zero he was always my favorite MK character. I guess he is still recognizable here. Well I should have expected that. Still nice win for Auron to end this thing. Also I recently learned that these 2 have fought 4 times as of now! And the results are always very similar. Auron is dropping a bit as years go on though like Vivi VS DK has Vivi dropping a bit year by year so that means that Sub-Zero will eventually win!  But we will not see this for a long time though. Auron is awesome. ## Tsunami's Analysis This wasn't a terribly interesting match to look at--the percentage stayed within .3% of 57-43 for the final 21 hours and 15 minutes, which is only mildly interesting in that the final percentage was very close to the edge of that range in favor of the *loser*--but it is an interesting one to interpret. Was Auron one of the weakest division winners this year, or were fighting game characters on the whole doing better than usual? Or maybe both? Division 6 was certainly one of the softest divisions, with the best established track record going to a character already known to be on the decline (Vincent) and the number two and probable number three being said \#1's first two opponents (in reverse order; and yes, as many embarrassing losses as Magus has had, he racked up enough of a resume early that he might still be one of the more accomplished characters in this absolutely silly division). I feel like the fighting game characters were "up", though. The actual wins weren't necessarily there, because of rough draws (Scorpion got Pikachu in R1, and avoided embarrassment but still got beat pretty bad, and Chun-Li drew Ganondorf in R2 and did a very good job in a loss.) But outside of Guile's horrible loss to Kirby, they looked good. Now, part of that is that they weren't bogged down by lesser representatives--Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are the strongest fighting game franchises (not counting Smash) and they were the only ones with reps, and mostly their strongest reps at that. But it's still interesting to think about. --- ## (1)Luigi vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 _source: (1)Luigi vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 (revid 84118)_ ## Ulti's Analysis It was great to see Tails finally make it into round 3 (JUSTICE FOR KNUCKLES), but every middling character that sneaks through a round or two meets their maker eventually and it was time for Tails to meet his. This was a blowout so bad that a lot of people thought this was SFF. It may have been or it may not have been, but we'll frankly never know for sure until we get Mario vs Sonic in a contest match. How we haven't yet had a Mario vs Sonic match is beyond me, and in all of contest history we've only had three matches that even remotely come close to resembling Mario/Sonic. That's it. That's the entire list. Sonic 2 vs Mario World, a fourway match with Mario Kart in it, and the Rivalry Rumble. We can't get one division in 16 years of contests with Sonic as a 1 seed and Mario as a 2 or something? It's the most famous rivalry in gaming history and pretty much single-handedly pushed the 90s gaming environment forward. They deserve a 1v1 contest match. And that's the legacy of Luigi vs Tails. It was the biggest blowout of round 3 and got everyone wondering why we haven't gotten Mario vs Sonic yet -- and a lot of people think it's pointless because Mario would just 70-30 the guy with SFF. Thanks for coming, Tails! ## Safer777's Analysis Obviously this match was set in stone. But man. Almost 70%? Man Tails is weak as expected But the opponents he beat are super weak it seems! Or Luigi is a beast. What else to say? Luigi has reached that far a couple times before but he has never win a division. Maybe he can do it now! Weegee for sure man! And yeah nothing else to say. This match was boring of course. Nice to see a Sonic character reaching that far though. Tails reaching this far is the best he did. The prediction percentage seems low though. Sure it was around 50% but people expected another character to win? I guess Master Chief or something? Who knows. ## Tsunami's Analysis It's a well-known fact that Mario-Sonic is one of the few inter-NN matches that we've never seen in any format. But how many times have members of the two franchises met? 2003 R1: Shadow defeats Wario with 64.90% of the vote 2003 R2: Mario defeats Shadow with 55.10% of the vote 2006 R3: Sonic defeats Luigi with 60.19% of the vote 2007 R1: Yoshi puts up 56.03% directly on Knuckles, who still advances over Rikku and Vaan 2007 R2: Yoshi puts up 58.21% directly on Knuckles; both finish ahead of KOS-MOS and behind Mega Man, so Yoshi advances and Knuckles is eliminated 2008 R1: Mario puts up 65.95% directly on Knuckles, who is eliminated behind Zelda but takes 3rd place over Fei Fong Wong 2013 R3: Sonic puts up 59.43% directly on Bowser, but both lose out to Mewtwo 2018 R3: Luigi defeats Tails with 69.65% of the vote Definitely favors Team Mario; Team Sonic's only wins came when they had the clearly higher-tier representative. (I guess technically Wario's a separate franchise now, but unlike Donkey Kong, who technically also originated as part of Mario's franchise, he hasn't really established himself as a true independent.) Even in cases where the franchises' own pecking orders would seem to at least slightly favor Team Sonic (which is to say, Yoshi-Knuckles), Team Mario handily won. But this *is* an SFF matchup, make no mistake. That's why there haven't really been any close matches in that series. Mario-Shadow is still a huge anomaly that may never truly be explained, but this was predictable. The blowout being as bad as it was, though? Maybe not so much. The Oracle consensus had this at roughly a 65-35 match, and only four Oracles out of 57 overshot the actual percentage. --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Mega Man X 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Mega Man X 2018 (revid 84184)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was one hell of a match and quite possibly the best of the entire contest with all of the meltdowns this caused, but for most of it you would just think we had a great match on our hands. Tifa and Mega Man X have a long history of being in the near elite club, with even debates of Noble Nine breaker status and whether or not X was at or above Classic's level. Having these two plus Luigi decide a division when all of them are at the same strength level was all kinds of awesome. When the match started, it lived up to the hype. It was a stone cold tie at the freeze. But then Mega Man X started taking off, relatively speaking for a close match anyways. 2 hours in the dude had a lead of 255, and despite some hiccups he trended up all the way until 11 and had a lead of almost 500 votes. This thing looked over, but the one trend Square still has is owning the dead zone. On top of that, Mega Man must have murdered a puppy and a firstborn son for every family in Europe or something, because everything related to that series collapses overnight and gets destroyed in Europe. I don't know if the games were never released there or what, and Tifa didn't exactly care. That 500 vote lead? Gone in a few hours and Tifa kept going up before the morning vote even came. She got the lead all the way up to 200, and then it was time to decide the morning vote, aaaaaaaaand... Mega Man X started taking it. On top of that, a topic popped up on a Mega Man subreddit that quickly got over 1000 views. Not to be outdone, a similar topic popped up on the FF sub. This match was turning into a rally war, and if you look at the morning vote it looked like Mega Man had more rally power. Tifa's 200 vote lead? Under 100 by breakfast, but then something funny started happening. Once the lead got under 50, these two stayed stalled around that level for hours. It was awesome to watch, but Mega Man X would eventually and finally take the lead with less than 6 hours to go. He then started slowly building a lead up to 100, but Tifa had one final push left. I'll let Black Turtle explain what happened during the poll's final three hours. "As opposed to the wealth of personality that Tifa 'Tits McGee' Lockhart is known for? X has a pretty complicated struggle with pacifism versus the fact that the world needs him to fuck shit up every once and a while. Tifa has...... daddy issues? Also, 1pm now, the stalling will stop and X will begin to take off. Again, these trends are set in stone and were never in question." "I love how all the people that are supposedly 'anti-rally' have no problem harassing casual acquaintances on facebook to vote for their favourite jerk-off material on a 30 year old video game site" "Any match any Mega Man character has been in has been the same, strong out the gate, die overnight, recover around noon, run away with the match" "I mean, this post is one of the reasons MMX needs to win. The only way this supposed 'deep, well-endowed' character can win is by appealing to horny virgins on reddit. If that doesn't make ExTha think hard about why he's supporting Tifa, I don't know what will." "To be fair, the Tifa neckbeards on this site are posting on literal hentai websites to push this win. How can noone else see how sad this is?" "Unreal. MMX finally gets a decent draw, and he loses because of basement dwelling hentai fans." "I love how everyone that is anti-rally immediately turns around and starts cheering because someone is successfully rallying on a hentai board. Literally any person who has complained about rallies in the past that is supporting this is a hypocrite." "This contest is a fucking joke. Literal hentai perverts deciding a division final with Board 8's blessing. Guess rallying is okay if you can imagine having sex with the winner." "Even though we had people in the stats topic literally admitting to votestuffing, I don't remember the last time Allen ever actually interfered with a fraudulent contest result." "I'm not sure what the worst part of that match was: \- Bullshit rallies   - People posting on hentai websites making a difference in the match   - ExTha praising bullshit rallies after years of complaining about rallies   - ExTha taking credit for the rallies that happened when he wasn't even actively on the board   - People defending ExTha's bullshit   I think the one thing we can take away from that match, is that the board's biggest manchild is no longer Ulti." "Won't matter, the Pokemon furry community would make any close match a wash. Unless you have a fanbase of disgusting perverts to draw from, you won't win a close match on this site." "Let's be clear here, no matter your thoughts on rallies, or the characters in question, ExTha didn't do shit to affect the result. He didn't start posting here until well after the hentai rallies took effect" "At this point who fucking cares, yet another contest has been ruined by the rally crew. Even with the registered voter bonus, these contests are impossible to run in 2018, with all the porno subreddits and shitty Twitch streamers that offer an endless pool of votes for the degenerates on Board 8 like ExTha and Leon." "ExTha, literally the loudest pervert/Tifa fanboi in this topic 2 WEEKS AGO was jumping down Ulti's throat for rallying in the Pokemon Trainer match. And half this topic was siding with him. For as big of an insufferable manchild Ulti is, at least his terrible opinions are somewhat consistant." I'm hot and cold on Black Turtle. Recently he's been a pretty cool dude and I unblocked him for it, but this was the mother of all meltdowns and I'm only quoting the worst stuff from the stats topic. This guy was all over the board whining for two days straight about this match, even though rallying has been an allowed and accepted part of these contests forever. For those who don't want to read that garbage (don't blame you), ExThaNemesis plus a few other people rallied hentai subreddits, of which there are a ton, and continued rallying the FF subreddit for Tifa. This got Tifa her final push and allowed Tifa to come back in the literal 23rd hour for the win. Both characters rallied, but Tifa had more pools to rally from. In a dead even match, that made the difference. Mega Man X probably wins this match otherwise, but that, as Chris Berman would say, is why they play the games. I am pro rallying and I'm completely cool with what happened. Everyone knows my position on this. I will say though that Black Turtle halfway makes a fair point. If you're into hentai because you can't get women in real life, you are an indefensible pervert and will probably show up on an incel forum at some point. Thankfully, Tifa wasn't rallied for that reason. I know ExTha personally. Cool dude. He didn't rally because of hentai love. Far from it. He just wanted Tifa to win. Fair enough. I'm cool with it. Nothing was stopping Mega Man X from rallying everywhere either, you know. The issue is ExTha is famously anti-rallying and was quoted all over the contest when Undertale was running wild. To this day, him and MYC's bitching are credit for Undertale actually winning that contest, because nothing pisses off a fanbase more than people complaining about the thing they like without knowing anything about it. I don't do double standards. You're either for rallying or against it. You don't get to only favor rallying when it benefits a character or game you like. Anyone who picks and chooses is a hypocrite and a punk. If you like rallying, cool. If not, cool. But you get ONE standard. Don't behave like a politician. Pick one standard and stick with it. Picking and choosing is dumb and doesn't fool anyone. There are a lot of people on this forum who pick and choose, and seeing grown men without the nuts to stick up for what they believe in is embarrassing as a man. If you don't agree, go buy a pair of John Kerry/Mitt Romney flip-flops and buzz off: ## Safer777's Analysis If the previous match was boring this is the best match of the contest so far. Look at the result! At the 5 minute mark there was a tie! But after that MMX started gaining and we thought that was it. Tifa cut somewhat but MMX was still ahead. Oh well. Eventually MMX was ahead by around 450 votes so that means in this contest this wasn't possible to beat without rallies. Or was it? But after USA gone to sleep Tifa begun fighting back. As you know Americans really like Nintendo so of course MMX had a huge lead there. Okay MMX isn't pure Nintendo but he started there. So since we Europeans know better of course we supported Tifa, duh. Also MM games and characters do REALLY BAD in Europe. Personally I didn't know MM before I heard him on these contests. So Tifa begun cutting and cutting. And she went ahead! She was winning with 2 votes for 2 straight updates!!! Then Tifa used a Limit Break I guess and she begun pulling. She was ahead with around 195 votes then MMX used his special oves(haven't played the games, don't know what he uses!) and he begun cutting. After some hours he was ahead with like 8 votes! And he begun gaining again! He picked with around 90 votes! The Tifa used her Ultimate Limit Break and started fighting back! She begun cutting and eventually  there was a TIE! Then Tifa ahead with 16 votes and then another TIE! Damn! Then Tifa ahead with like 1 vote! With less than 1 hour for the match to end! And she finally managed to win with around 115 votes! Phew! So what saved Tifa? PORN! Of course! I am serious! Porn man! Someone posted a rally on Hentai sub reddit and this gave her the final push to win! Man porn saves the day again! I think MMX had a rally too but you can't win over porn! So yeah awesome match. Also it is in top 10 of the closest matches. But man! MMX fought bravely but he can't defeat the porn! Nobody can! So yeah even though MMX won easily in USA with more than 53% he lost. So yeah. Man these kind of matches are why I like contests. I had MMX on my bracket but I didn't care! Still awesome match. Wish I was there in the last few hours but I am from Europe so I can't. Still even with this match beeing so close we can't even fill 2 stats topics? Man things have changed a lot. In the old days with stupid matches we were fililng stats topics like crazy! Still as I said so many times amazing match. I think also the user that posted the first reddit porn rally is called Kiraamaya or something like that? That is his Reddit name at least. Others followed of course. So after this match ended there was an uproar with rallies. Others were supporting them, others don't, others supported rallies only for their favorite characters, the usual stuff. As I said before I am all for rallies, for good or bad characters. Rallies make things exciting! ## Tsunami's Analysis For the second time in four matches, the registered vote was separated by single digits, in favor of the loser of the overall match. That said, this was probably the most hyped pre-Legends match, and with good reason. Both of these characters had already shown potential Noble Nine breaker power--Tifa directly, when she finished second in the main bracket X-Stats in 2006 with a near-upset of Samus (even with the Noble Nine getting beaten outright by outsiders more frequently, this is *still* the only time they've failed to break 50.5% in a 1v1 *win* against an outsider) and Mega Man X a bit more indirectly, to the point that it probably wouldn't even be brought up if he weren't **Mega Man** X. Namely, that X's percentage against Link in 2010 compares favorably to the original's 2004 percentage. And as of this point, he'd yet to be threatened by anything that you wouldn't immediately say "this is not a spot where Mega Man Classic would have lost". 2008, he wins his R1 fourpack outright and then finishes second to Mario twice before losing out to the combined strength of Link and Mario. Yes, he also lost to Zack Fair in that match, but given how close Zack got to *Mario* it's clear that Black-Haired Cloud was the beneficiary of some massive STF in that match. Come 2010, it's Link directly who took X down. 2011, if you want to count that, it was Mario/Bowser who took out X/Zero. And then in 2013, it was peak strength Draven. And even in that contest, X doesn't look horrible--because there was never any chance of either of them taking down the rallied Draven, X's battle for second place with Ryu is probably fairly organic, and X won that with 57.21%. Ryu might not be quite the dependable barometer of near-elite strength that he used to be, but he's still a strong character and that's a quality win. Also, games may not equal characters, but when we were finally given a gimmick-free Games Contest, one that wasn't intentionally balanced over the eras, Mega Man Classic got shut out while X still got his debut game in--and it did pretty damn good, almost breaking 45% in a loss to the heavily favored Final Fantasy X. This match had no true Guru favorite. Well, it *did*, because you can only take the match that's actually there, but it was a match in which both characters were picked by more Gurus to reach this match and lose than to win this match. How is that possible? Mewtwo. 49.375% of Gurus had MMX winning here and 50.625% had him losing (no one had him losing in the first two rounds)--but among the 70% of Gurus that had this exact match, he was favored 52.68%-47.32%; those who picked Mewtwo \> Tifa, on the other hand, continued to pick Mewtwo here at a 59.57% rate. So Tifa was a heavy favorite over Mewtwo, MMX was a slight favorite over Tifa, but "Tifa/Mewtwo winner" was a slight favorite over MMX. (Or more accurately, "Tifa/Geno/GLaDOS/Mewtwo winner"--one Guru picked both R1 upsets and had GLaDOS \> Geno in Round 2 and X \> GLaDOS here) But now for the match. This one was deadlocked at 320-320 at the freeze, though X would ride a big third update to a triple-digit lead by the half-hour mark (even though Tifa had already managed her first update win by then). His lead would eventually peak at 469 at the 4:05 mark. At the 7:00 mark, Tifa won her eighth consecutive update, the first time either one had even won 5 straight since X's 7 in a row from 0:20-0:55. Tifa took her first post-freeze lead at the 9:40 mark and X promptly stalled the next one, but that zero-change update was Tifa's only update non-win for a period of just over an hour, from 9:05 to 10:10, which for this match qualified as huge momentum. She reeled off a bunch more after X's update win there, but stalled out in the 110s for a bit before recovering to eventually push it out to 194 at the 12:15 mark. Then X fought back and cut 100 off that deficit in the next 1:40. 45 minutes later, he took off 30 votes in a single update to cut it to 43, only for Tifa to take back 25 the very next update. The next time he got within 50 was met by *two* straight double-digit wins for Tifa, and when he got it below 20 at the 18:20 mark he was again met with a 22-vote update win for Tifa. *Finally*, at the 19:15 mark he took an update by 21 to take an 8-vote lead, skipping right over whatever she might have in store for being pushed down to single-digits,and kept up the momentum to a 66-vote lead 45 minutes later, then fought off Tifa's return push to expand the lead by another 23 over the next hour. But Tifa was not done yet. From that peak of 89 at the 20:50 mark, she quickly picked up a double-digit update win to close out the hour, then fought through a wall of single-digit wins for both sides over the next 1:20 to leave X's lead at the 22:20 mark at 52. That was when she made her move, pulling three double-digit wins in the next four updates to pull it back to dead even, then adding another on the next update--only for X to win the following one by the *exact same amount*, pulling it back to dead even with just 1:10 left in the match, and taking the next one by double digits as well. Entering the final hour, X led by a mere 8 votes, and it only took one update for Tifa to turn her single-digit deficit into a double-digit lead. X would win the next two updates to reduce Tifa's lead to a single vote with 45 minutes left in the match, but Tifa won all nine of the remaining updates, many by double-digits, to win by 114--the first triple-digit lead by either side in over 10 hours. In some ways, it could be seen as an anticlimactic ending--this match barely even makes the Top 25 list for closest final margins, and only does so at all because we don't count battles for placement among non-advancing competitors in 3- and 4-ways. During the final hours of this match, rallies were once again on everyone's minds. Some users, I don't remember who, decided to rally for Tifa on hentai sites, because why not? And since it ended up being such a close match, people blamed the rallies. Did they really make a difference? Maybe. There have always been rallies, though, and it's clear that there wasn't anything this contest on the scale of what Draven and Undertale did in 2013 and 2015. It livened up the contest a bit, and had people wondering what Zelda, Tifa, and Samus could do from here on out--but mostly Zelda and Samus, because Tifa's path was still largely set in stone. She beat Luigi long before hentai rallies were a thing, and she'd be facing Samus and then Sephiroth in the Legends bracket, two Noble Niners that she's already lost to multiple times. Her best chance at pulling some sort of crazy upset would be if Sephiroth managed to continue his historical dominance of Mario, but the consensus was that Mario would finally break through with a win against Seph. At any rate, while there had been some rallying involved, the unlikelihood of Tifa upsetting a Noble Niner this contest meant that the X ≈ Classic bandwagon would finally quiet. It wouldn't last. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (5)Amaterasu 2018 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (5)Amaterasu 2018 (revid 88249)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Just for fun. Amaterasu (2010c) VS Sephiroth (2010c) Amaterasu has a strength of 27.86. Sephiroth has a strength of 44.65. Sephiroth wins with 68.80% of the vote! Amaterasu is a pretty interesting contest character in that she doesn't really score big blowouts (that Draven match barely counts), but she herself doesn't really get blown out in losses. The only time she was ever truly embarrassed was against the Zelda clan in the Rivalry Rumble, and come on. Everyone gets embarrassed by them eventually and no one gives a shit about the Rivalry Rumble. Just ask Squall. This match followed a pretty standard Sephiroth victory pattern. Lose the board vote badly, climb all match, slightly underperform based on the previous stats, rinse and repeat until he loses badly somewhere. Given what would eventually happen to the guy, I'm convinced Allen gave him a weak division intentionally. Hell, he was one handed an entire weak contest intentionally. Allen knows what the Noble Nine is, and it would be an embarrassment if one of them was outright precluded from the legend bracket. So he handed Seph an easy division to waltz through. I will say that only getting 61% on Amaterasu was a portent of doom, even though we would all get tricked by this guy next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Well Sephiroth would win here of course. But look at this result. Is this bad, decent or good? Don't know. Guess it is bad but I don't admit it. This seems that Amaterasu is stronger than Falcon. But is she? Is Falcon that weaker? Can't really say. She always does decent of course in these things. Doesn't win by much, doesn't lose by much. But don't know. There is 1 thing for certain though, the division final will be hell. Since I am a Sephiroth fanboy I will say that it is a good result. Hey! The prediction percentage was the biggest for Round 3 too. Well it makes sense. The only NN'er that appeared in the main bracket. ## Tsunami's Analysis I believe it was sometime during Round 4 that the "lineal Noble Nine" concept was introduced, and I bring it up again because at the time, people were still expecting the Noble Nine to largely hold serve and possibly restore the Lineal Nine to something closely resembling the actual Nine, with probably seven and as many as 8 of them in there--with the one guaranteed outlier, there in place of Sonic, being Amaterasu, courtesy of her Round 1 blowout of defending champion Draven combined with Sephiroth having managed not to lose his spot in 2013 despite finishing in third place in his eventual defeat--largely because said defeat came in the semifinals and as such, everyone else involved in the match had already gotten past an actual Noble Niner that still possessed a spot in the Lineal Nine at the time. (In Mewtwo's case, the aforementioned Sonic.) Of course, things didn't go that smoothly--Zelda ran over almost everyone, taking *Snake's* spot (which he was unable to win back); Tifa defended the spot she won from Mewtwo by defeating Sephiroth; and Mega Man won the rematch with Pikachu so it was *his* spot, not Pikachu's, that Crono took in Match 143. (Yeah, 2013 did a lot of weird things to the Lineal Nine--the lowest finisher is the one that loses their spot, so three characters outright earned their spots in second place finishes because they were the only ones entering the match without a slot and a fourth actually *defended* their slot with a second place finish because the third-place finisher also had one to give up to the winner.) *(Correction: Crono already had a spot by Match 143--ironically, the one that Mega Man had **originally** owned and lost back in 2008 to the Weighted Companion Cube. Luigi beat Cube for the spot in 2010 and then lost to Link so he still had it in 2013, when Big Boss took it in Round 2 but lost it in Round 3, and since Sephiroth still had **Crono's** old spot from beating Vincent in 2010 while Kirby had lost Seph's original spot to Sonic in 2010, it was second-place finisher Kirby who got that spot.)* When this was stated, someone said they were fine with the idea of it being Eight Noble Niners and Amaterasu. Slaying Draven certainly gained her a lot of good will here, but I feel like she's been a favorite here for awhile. The public perception of Board 8 is that we're a bunch of sticks-in-the-mud who hate anything upsetting our established order of expectations, but the truth is that we hate it just as much when things are *too* predictable, finding it boring. The nuance that the outsiders that invaded us in 2013 and 2015 didn't understand is that the upset has to *make sense*. Draven and Undertale putting up 201st-decade numbers in the 202nd decade and generally making a mockery of the elites didn't make sense; it was a clear aberration, and furthermore, because it eventually polarized things to "pro-X vs. anti-X" instead of "pro-X vs. pro-Y", it meant that entrants of vastly different natural strengths could get comparable numbers on the eventual champs, leading to the proven fodder Jak and a game whose ending was so ill-received that the creator's eventually released a "fixed" ending as DLC winding up near the top of the X-Stats. Amaterasu pulled "upsets" because we just vastly underestimated her. In her very first match, she was up against a proven midcarder, an unproven (Round 1 loss to Link in his only previous appearance) but recognizable character, and a potential target for a joke rally; as a new character without the benefit of joke appeal, people weren't expecting her to advance. She did, then advanced again when a more hyped newcomer flamed out massively. Actually, nothing she's done since then can reasonably qualify as an "upset" except maybe beating Shadow in 2010--she's made it to Round 2 in every contest, sure, but she's gotten favorable draws every time. We've learned to stop underestimating her. --- ## (3)Ryu vs (10)KOS-MOS 2018 _source: (3)Ryu vs (10)KOS-MOS 2018 (revid 84135)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Oh hey, I can finally talk about a KOS-MOS match in a normal way. Imagine that. KOS-MOS randomly making it into round 3 was hilarious, and not only because of TheStupidRaptor. She got here not because of having strength or anything -- she is not at all a strong character -- but because her fourpack was laughably, historically, and pathetically weak. I actually went and did some research on this, and I put together a list of fourpacks in 1v1 contests that are comparable to Ellie, KOS-MOS, Aqua, and Quiet. KOS-MOS was by far the weakest character to win twice this year, with only Wario really being comparable. And Wario would probably break 60% on her. My basic criteria here is 'if you plop 2018 KOS-MOS into this fourpack, does she win it?', because I feel like KOS-MOS winning a fourpack is a pretty good indicator your fourpack blows. Though when I went and researched this, the critera should really be whether or not Call of Duty 4 can win your fourpack. Good lord what a shitty franchise CoD is. Summer 2002 - Lara Croft, Chop Chop Master Onion, Ryo Hazuki, and Guybrush Threepwood Summer 2002 - Pac-Man, Goemon, Abe, and Kyo Kusanagi Summer 2002 - Scorpion, Kazuya Mishima, Max Payne, Dirk the Daring Villains - Ocelot, Nemesis, Dr. Wily, and Ultros Villains - Kefka, Mithos, Luca Blight, and Wesker Villains - Albedo, M Bison, Ridley, and Diablo Villains - Robotnik, Sin, Master Hand, and Kuja Fall 2010 - Cube, Sandal, Nathan Drake, and The Boss Fall 2010 - Ryu Hayabusa, Crash, Master Chief, and Spy Fall 2010 - Phoenix Wright, Jecht, Ratchet, and Eddie Riggs Fall 2010 - Soap MacTavish, Big Daddy, Ness, and Geno Game of the Decade - Batman, Psychonauts, Team Fortress 2, and Fable Game of the Decade - Uncharted 2, The Legend of Dragoon, Sonic Adventure 2, and Street Fighter 4 Game of the Decade - Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Call of Duty 4, and Prince of Persia Game of the Decade - Pokemon Diamond, Metroid Fusion, WWF No Mercy, Fire Emblem 9 Game of the Decade - The World Ends With You, Dead Rising, Persona 4, and Braid I didn't bother with years, because look at this shit: I also didn't bother listing the ones that are more debatable, like the year Captain Falcon won twice or the year Mass Effect 1 won twice, where if you held that fourpack now and plopped KOS-MOS in there she probably could win. The point here is KOS-MOS winning twice required a series of unfortunate events, and Ryu was here to put a stop to this nonsense rather coldly. We had this match once before, too: I blows my mind how close some of these rematch results are even though they're held so far apart. 3% in 14 years, jeez. I also still can't believe to this day that Balrog's one miss in 2004 was Ryu vs KOS-MOS, of all things. This concluded round 3 of the contest and got us down to the nitty-gritty. ## Safer777's Analysis Obviously KOS-MOS didn't stand a chance here. Also Ryu and KOS-MOS have fought before like 14 years ago and Ryu won with around 62% back then. Now he did better. Of  course Ryu now is much more known than KOS-MOS. Also this is the 1st time that KOS-MOS advances that far. So I think she did good reaching that far. I know her from the Project X-Zone games but that is. As for Ruy everybody knows him. Also Ryu seems really strong. Maybe he can win another division too. He is in Smash too now! Let us see. Good win for Ryu of course, duh. Another thing that I have to say that Tsunami posted on his analysis. People say that we live in the past. And the instant KOS-MOS faces 2 characters that are after 2010 she beats both of them and reaches the furthest she has reached! Guess this is why people make fun of us and nobody cares for this site anymore. ## Tsunami's Analysis As is often the case with these bracket set-ups, Round 3 closed with a whimper. The later divisions in the bracket are often stacked with the lower-glamour entrants, though it's not a hard and fast rule. 2002 had some interesting matches in the last division, but a bit too high up to truly close out any rounds until we were getting double-elite matchups. 2005 had two good upsets ending its two contests' first rounds, and the 2006 Character Battle had a couple of nice ones, too. 2010, like 2002, largely only suffered in that the notable matches were in the top half of the final division. And...2013 actually had two great matches to close out rounds, which is impressive because it didn't have that many rounds. So maybe it just seems worse than it is because of how Games Contests usually have the designated non-Squintendo divisions near the bottom of the bracket. And yes, even in the division-by-era contests, the final division is the closest thing to the non-Squintendo division, because when we talk about those companies' mystique, we're talking about their classics, not their recent output. We refer to just about everything from the 8-bit era, and much of the 16-bit era, as "pseudo-Nintendo" for a reason. On another note, this was the second match of Round 3 to be a rematch of a Round 1 match from 2004. KOS-MOS was more relevant in 2004 than she is now, so it's no surprise that match was closer than this one was. --- ## (4)Ganondorf vs (3)Vivi 2018 _source: (4)Ganondorf vs (3)Vivi 2018 (revid 84150)_ ## Ulti's Analysis 1200 votes. Dammit Vivi, you came so close to winning a division. I struggled a lot with this pick, because I felt in my heart of hearts Vivi could win this match. I ended up picking Ganon because of Breath of the Wild, Smash Brothers, and the current Nintendo \> Square dynamics on this site. Swap any of those three factors, and I think Vivi could have convinced 600 people to change their minds here. Vivi is immune to the Squaresoft erosion due to his character design, and will be about this strong no matter how far Square falls. People just like the black mage archetype too much. This was actually a real match for an hour, too. Vivi took the early lead, Ganon took it quickly, but then outside of two Warlock Punches these two guys were about even. But once Ganon got that lead over 100, this was done. It was a slow, steady, effective climb for the entire match. Hold this thing before Breath of the Wild or before Smash Ultimate's hype, and Vivi probably wins. But with all of that in Ganon's favor, it was just enough for him to win this despite looking weird all contest long. Ganon's reward for winning? "Uh oh." ## Safer777's Analysis So of course after Ganon beat Dante easily we knew he would win. Vivi did beat Donkey Kong yeah but he did as expected. But man. He broke 48% on Ganondorf! Now this we didn't expected. We were expecting around 55% to tell the truth. Maybe 54%. But no. Vivi did really good. So what this says? It says that Vivi is damn strong! And that is good. But man. I don't know what place is Vivi on FF hierarchy but it has to be a really high one. Gotta be his design. What else could it be? Also I don't understand that he has boosted. From where? And don't say that Ganon got weaker. Don't believe that. Still not much else to say. Ganondorf won and as per tradition he did much better in USA of course. Still Vivi impressed a lot. Now the reward for Ganondorf is to score like 15% on Link and make everything in the division look extremely weak. Fun! ## Tsunami's Analysis Vivi narrowly managed to take the unregistered vote, but registered voters easily carried Ganondorf to a win. This was especially satisfying as Ganondorf was the third-place finisher in Vivi's legendary upset of Mario in 2013, definitively declaring that RallyFAQs was truly dead. --- ## (1)Zero vs (7)Pikachu 2018 _source: (1)Zero vs (7)Pikachu 2018 (revid 84151)_ ## Ulti's Analysis So, uh... remember this match from way back in 2004? Hmm. Had this match happened one round earlier I probably would have dumped on Zero for not living up to the 1 seed line, but I think I've established my standard by now. If you're a 1 seed you have to at least make a divisional final unless you lose to a rally. Zero got lucky Pikachu wasn't a 4, 5, 8, or 9 seed, because he clearly would have gotten bodied by the little rat regardless of when this match happened. But it was a divisional final, so he at least gets to preserve his respect as a 1. I know I keep harping on this, but if you're not an NCAA fan you won't understand how much I respect the royalty of that number. By the time this match happened, we pretty much all knew a 55-45 type of beating was coming, not that it was easy to watch for us Zero fans but hey: Pikachu for whatever reason was the only Pokemon to show up this year, and outside of Detective Pikachu it's not like he had some crazy advantage. Charizard, Mewtwo, and Red are all in Smash and all looked killer in the past. Maybe Pikachu got some extra mascot love, I dunno, but he put an ass whuppin on Zero that the other three clearly weren't going to replicate this year. This wasn't really a match, either, given the crazy Pokemon board vote burying Zero immediately. It's worth noting here that the only time Zero has ever won a division was when Mega Man X helped carry him in the Rivalry Rumble. Zero himself always gets capped at this spot, and one wonders if he'll ever win a division on his own given this contest was a perfect opportunity for it. Pikachu's reward for winning? A very winnable spot, actually. We already covered the 2004 comparison, but this one isn't far off either: ## Safer777's Analysis Well the rat would win no problem here. Also funny enough he beat Yoshi with lower percentage than he did on Zero. Meaning Yoshi\>Zero? The stats don't lie! Some say that Pokemon have fallen but I don't believe it. I mean they are not insane like they were in the previous contest with the rallies and such but they are good. And Pikachu is damn strong. I am with the rat all the way myself! As for Zero he did as expected. Basically this match was as expected. So congrats to the rat. Oh and also Pikachu won a division for the 2nd time in a row! Save_us.rat indeed! The prediction percentage was good for Pikachu too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Division 2's final was a yawner, as while rallies may have been dead, PokéFEAR was still alive and well. But it was still worth something to look at. Pikachu won this match with 56.56% of the vote. Way back in 2004, despite theoretically having SFF on his side, Mega Man was only able to beat Zero with 56.01%. Granted, Zero's fared worse against Mega in two later fourway matches, culminating in Mega Man beating Charizard with Zero as an anchor after having previously lost to Weighted Companion Cube, but 2013 especially showed that SFF is magnified in multiways because the fans will abandon the lesser of the two characters to support the one with the better shot of winning. Last-Place Factor, we call it. --- ## (9)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (3)Alucard 2018 _source: (9)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (3)Alucard 2018 (revid 84152)_ ## Ulti's Analysis 8.7% of people picked Alucard to win this division, and can you really blame people for not thinking he'd get through a division that had Sora, Red, Kefka, L-Block, Big Boss, and Yuna in it? This was nuts, and I never in my wildest dreams thought it was even possible. Even when the match started and Alucard got this massive board vote, I'm sitting here like Dick Vitale. Are you serious? Hell let's get some John McEnroe in here. Alucard got a 300 vote lead in half an hour, which is usually Pokemon's best time, and then just steamrolled this match. The final percentage might look close, but this was never close. Alucard stomped this guy, and put one hell of an exclamation point on Pokemon looking like crap this contest. Only Pikachu did anything notable, and I have a good theory as to why. Pokemon are similar to Kirby in that they're strong characters, but they overperform hilariously in multi-way polls. Stick them in 1v1s and they fall back down to earth with everyone else. Pokemon isn't weak or anything, but they aren't close to being as strong as 3/4way polls would suggest. Red also had these crazy runs in the 3ways and the Rivalry Rumble that he simply could not duplicate heads-up, which made him look very similar to what he was in 2010. He almost lost to Ocelot that year before getting destroyed by Mega Man X. This year he blew out some loli bait piece of trash, then had three close matches (by percent) where he came out on top in two of them. Frankly without my rallying, he doesn't beat Sora and we're sitting here in this spot talking about Big Boss or Sora looking bad. This was just not a good contest for Pokemon outside of the mascot. For those who weren't around in the old days, there was a user named edouble who went on and on every contest about Alucard's Plan™. Any win? All Part of The Plan™. Any loss, even by other characters in unrelated matches? All Part of The Plan™. Well now we know what that Plan was: Alucard winning a division. Props to KP for this image. I cannot stress this enough. I love Alucard as a character, and that dude getting into Smash as an assist trophy and using the fucking Crissaegrim of all things is just so, so, soooooo damn good. It would only be topped by him actually being a playable character, but I'm not greedy here. An assist trophy is enough. I played Symphony of the Night after the 2003 contest, loved it, and was all too happy to be Part of The Plan™ for 15 years. For Alucard to finally see The Plan™ come into fruition was so satisfying. This was one of my all time favorite contest results, and could quite possibly be my favorite result of this contest outside D.Va and her garbage-ass parent company getting annihilated. Alucard, this one's for you bro. ## Safer777's Analysis By the time we reached this match Alucard was the heavy favorite! Nobody expected that before the contest. You know how many Gurus had Alucard winning the division? 1 person! Which is one of the lowest picks ever for a division winner I believe! Seriously! Alucard star of the contest no doubt. Before this he hadn't done anything important. And look at him now! Now why all this though? Has he boosted this much? Personally I don't believe so. I believe everyone on this division has fallen a lot except Alucard who has boosted of course a little. Netflix series and SOTN remake of course. As for Red. He did okay actually. Seems strange though, I mean that means that Big Boss and Sora have fallen a lot! And it makes sense probably. KH 3 boost is fake and it makes sense because after so many years nobody can keep caring. Remember when Sora scored more than 45% on MM? Yeah! And as for Big Boss, MGS characters haven't done so good. We don't like MGS 5 here I guess and Kojima left too. We shall see that Snake does though. But anyways. Alucard rocked man! Also all his wins were under 60% which is impressive on its own way! So yeah. Hybrid Vampires man! They rule! The prediction percentage was the lowest of Round 4 which does make sense of course. The Plan™! It all makes sense now! ## Tsunami's Analysis The PLAN! Alucard may not have been the intuitive choice to win Division 3, and both the Guru and the casuals' prediction percentages show that, but he staked his claim as the favorite to win the division back in Round 2, when he was beating Yuna with the same percentage that Kefka was beating Bomberman. Was he the weakest division winner? Yeah, probably. But he took advantage of a weak division and showed that he's still got some strength, 16 years after he initially shocked the board with a deep run in CB1. --- ## (4)Bowser vs (2)Kirby 2018 _source: (4)Bowser vs (2)Kirby 2018 (revid 84145)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every contest there's a match or two I feel is easy as piss to call, get it right, and I stare in shock at Board 8's consensus being almost entirely the other way on it. This was that match for Character Battle X. I spent all of 5 seconds thinking about this one. They had a match in 2005 where Bowser won 52-48. Close by percentage, but Kirby never threatened to actually win the match. Fast forward to today, and there was no actual reason for that gap to close. If anything, Bowser had reasons to widen it. Let's start with Kirby. You know all those arguments made by very smart people about how the Pokemon characters were fraudulent? How they overform in 3/4ways and such? All of those same arguments apply to Kirby. Kirby isn't a fraud or anything, but he has even more reason to overperform in that style of poll than Pokemon characters, because no one actually cares about Kirby's games. He is liked because of character design, being cute, being an easy character to emoticon on forums \[KIRBY HUGS!!!! \<(^\_^)\>\], and Smash Brothers. yoblazer later in this contest made a fabulous point about Samus being the \#1 example of Smash Bros boosting in these contests. I actually think it's Kirby. If Smash Bros never happens, Samus still has Super Metroid and the Prime series to at least be a midcarder. What does Kirby have? Subpar platformers and Kirby Super Star? I love Kirby's Dream Land for the Game Boy and Kirby's Adventure for the NES, but those are way too old to matter for him on this site. Now look at Bowser, whose obvious comp is Ganon. Zelda fans don't exactly love Ganon. They like him, but he's just kind of.... there. He has ugly character design and we see the fans bail on him in close matches. But Bowser? Bowser means a hell of a lot more to Mario fans than Ganon does to Zelda fans. Mario's fanbase loves Bowser. He looks cool as shit, like a dragon crossed with a snapping turtle. He has those amazing spots in the early games, his hilarity in the Mario RPG games, even more amazing spots in the 3D platformer games, he too has the Smash Bros effect like Kirby does, and oh by the way, Bowsette happened before this contest. Kirby has never once had a meme boost him the way Bowsette helped the big man out this year. I make some 'no doubt in my mind' bad calls all the time, like L-Block \> Kefka or Magus in 2005, and you guys are welcome to make fun of me all you want for those, but I have to puff my chest out a little when I'm on the right side of these things now and again. I had zero doubt Bowser was winning this, and it took all of 10 minutes for this match to be over. In 2005, Kirby put up a fight for about 20 minutes before getting worked. This year, he lasted 15 minutes and ended up losing worse than last time. Kirby is simply not on Bowser's level, for the reasons outlined here. Simple as that, and Bowser is the better character anyway. Kirby is a one trick pony. Yeah I said it. I like the little guy, but he's no Bowser and he frankly falls behind a lot of other characters as well. Kirby isn't even the coolest guy in his own series. Meta Knight and King Dedede take those honors. Bowser is absolutely in the discussion for coolest Mario character. The coolest thing Kirby was ever involved with, and I am 100% convinced this was intentional, was this video. I say intentional because you cannot convince me Snoop didn't get high as fuck while playing a Kirby game when making that song. There's just no way it lines up that perfectly otherwise. Oh, and I'd like to thank me for just being me at all times. ## Safer777's Analysis So before the contest Kirby was the favorite. And as the contest went on Kirby became the heavy favorite. Also all the Crew picked Kirby to win. There is always a crazy person that picks the other guy in most matches but not here. So of course Bowser won! What? How could that have happened? Why almost everyone had Kirby winning easily? The answer is...I don't know! Someone made a post based on x-stats for every year and every year Bowser was above Kirby. Every year! Damn! I guess people thought that since Charizard and 2B did okay on Bowser Kirby would beat him. But here is the thing. Kirby has defeated weaker opponents and that made him looking good. So that is probably why Kirby was considered the heavy favorite. So when the match started the Nintendo Hierarchy came into play. What is this thing? Basically you like Nintendo. So you vote for these characters of course. But the characters from the more popular series beat the ones from the least popular. So when you have a character from the Mario series and a character from the Kirby series you will vote for the one from the Mario series because well that is the one you like better. Or I may be wrong here. So yeah. This is what I believe at least. Also another villain won a division too! If Sephiroth manages to win that would mean that the 3 strongest villains will be winning divisions. Well we shall see. Still awesome win for Bowser. Turtle/Dragon/Dinosaur/Ox(?) hybrids man! Also this match had almost the same percentage as the other match and they both were going at the same time and in both matches hybrids won! Something is going on here I tell you! But seriously Bowser defied(Board 8)expectations too. That is always good. ## Tsunami's Analysis When a greater percentage of Gurus get a match correct than Oracles, you know we've screwed up somewhere along the line. Bowser has always been one of the strongest midcarders; by raw votes, his match with Snake in 2005 was still the closest 1v1 between a Noble Niner and a non-Noble Niner (though that would obviously change this year because of the horrible vote totals), closer than even Samus-Tifa 2006. He'd beaten Kirby before, during that same 2005 season. Now, Kirby had established quite a resume since then as well, so Bowser was only a slight favorite there--69 to 60, with 28 of the remaining 31 Gurus picking Charizard. But in the Oracle, which was made with the additional "knowledge" of the first three rounds? Kirby received 80% of Oracle predictions. But it's a shame it even came to that. I love both of these characters, and if one of them had been in Division 3 or 6 instead, that'd be great. Preferably Division 3, if it's Kirby who was moved; for someone who hadn't faced any Noble Niners until 2008, Kirby sure has had a lot of matches with Sonic. Why do I love them so much? For Bowser, it's mostly the more recent games. The RPGs were what allowed Bowser to really show his character--I was planning on spamming SMRPG and BIS quotes any time Bowser did anything good in his matches with Crono, but he never really did--but it's since carried over into the main games. A common criticism of video game leads is that their personalities are very generic, a necessary evil because they're supposed to represent the player. Think Mario, Link, Crono, and *especially* Red, who Game Freak has decided shall forever remain silent even when not the protagonist. The villains are not bound by this restriction, so they get all the good lines. Remember all the hype surrounding Magus in 2003? It's because Magus actually had a character, so he was thought to be much more popular within the fanbase than Crono. Kirby, on the other hand, appears at first to be one of those low-characterization leads, and in some ways he is, but it's more accurate to say that his characterization *is* a child-like simplicity. Kirby has faced all sorts of cosmic horrors, and he still maintains his cheerful demeanor, waving and dancing and constantly smiling ([no matter how much American box art tries to hide this last fact](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmericanKirbyIsHardcore)). We could all learn a lot from Kirby. --- ## (4)Zelda vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 (revid 84253)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I almost listed Zelda as a 1 seed by accident when doing this writeup, because that's what she was performing like. Just for fun. Zelda (2010c) VS Aeris (2010c) Zelda has a strength of 32.46. Aeris has a strength of 31.01. Zelda wins with 52.23% of the vote! Given Zelda's prominent role in Breath of the Wild, I don't think it's insane to credit that game for giving her a 10% boost. It's very consistent with how she performed in this contest, and right after destroying Squall she went out there and pretty much murdered Aeris in cold blood. We all knew Zelda was never going to be challenged in this match, but this was still just a brutal beating. It made Aeris actually look like a 15 seed, even though it was clear she was underseeded this year. Still, it's always fun watching high seeds made deep runs and we might never again see anything like this without a rally. Aeris, a 15 seed, naturally won three matches, one against a meme and one where she was reasonably close to losing. That's good stuff. But when you get to this part of a contest, you don't fluke your way into wins. It's a crime we didn't get to see a conclusion to the main bracket, because Zelda would have won it. Not that she didn't provide us with some entertainment value during that legends bracket, good hell. ## Safer777's Analysis So after the previous match where Zelda dominated Squall there was only 1 question. Would Zelda do better against Aerith? Personally I thought so. I mean Aerith should be weaker than Squall right? But as you can see she actually did a little worse. So does that means that Aerith is stronger than Squall? Possibly? Can't be sure. Also this is the highest win for the division finals in this contest. Zelda is a beast confirmed! Now if she did more than 65% I would admit that she would beat even some N9ers. But now I don't think so. Or maybe she can? Did BOTW boosted everyone a lot? Still amazing win for Zelda. All her wins in the division are above 60% too! Now that is power! So yeah. I don't know how will she performs against N9ers but we shall see. As for Aerith she did okay. She broke a record that will never be broken again so that is awesome! I mean most had her losing in the previous round anyways. I guess FF7 is still good around here. Well she did beat 3 Nintendo characters in a row! But the 4th one was too much for her it seems. ## Tsunami's Analysis Okay fine I guess I can't avoid this forever. Because honestly, at one point I was all ready to go back to this, then I saw what match was up next and was like "nah, I'm good". Because most of these division finals, even if they were never really in question, the loser still put up a good show. This was just a steady beating, and nobody was really that surprised by it, not after what Zelda did to Squall the previous round. For the casuals, it didn't even take that long--Zelda's prediction percentage was still above 25% and proportionally she lost more brackets this round than the last one (even by raw numbers, it's close) even though Aerith making it this far was considered fairly surprising. Though that's mostly from fear of rallies that never materialized; she was considered an underdog with the casuals all the way back in Round 1. --- ## (1)Geralt vs (3)Auron 2018 _source: (1)Geralt vs (3)Auron 2018 (revid 84252)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Only 10% of people had Auron winning this division? Who exactly was supposed to beat Auron with no rallies? Come on, casuals. Without a rally, this was never in any doubt whatsoever. That said, I have to hand it to Geralt for going down like a man. 47% on Auron in another manly duel is a pretty hardcore way to go out, and it proves the obvious: we are beyond overdue for allowing any character that's been in a video game to appear in our contests. They're legit and it's time. I don't think we should go overboard and have a bracket with 90% Marvel characters or whatever, but not allowing Spiderman into a contest when he might have the game of the year is just stupid. Not allowing Thanos in when he's the most popular character in the most popular game in the world is really stupid. Say what you want about Fortnite, but Thanos getting into a contest on the back of that game's explosion and Infinity War happening in the same year made sense. What a lost opportunity. Allen got rid of the rule, but only to allow Geralt in. Geralt proved that only him being here was dumb. Instead of trash like Shantae, Hat Kid and Neptune, we could have had Spiderman, Thanos, and Batman. This is not a difficult decision, Allen. Geralt had four close matches in a row, but against Auron his clutch factor just ran out, as the top half of this division was clearly a step behind the bottom all contest long. Seeing Auron finally win a division was nice, because it's a goal that's eluded him since 2003. Seeing Geralt's run end kind of sucked, but he'll be back. I really, really hope this opens the door for more all-fictional stuff getting into brackets. Dracula was great and all, but the Rivalry Rumble is not going to be a lynchpin for anything. Geralt could be. Funny side note: how would Geralt have looked in a sprite round had he won this match? Does any official sprite of him exist? ## Safer777's Analysis Man this saddens me. Geralt in all his matches was losing at the start before fightingback and eventually winning! Seriously in all 3 of them! He is a fighter! But yeah without a rally we all knew he would lose here. Yeah Auron has fallen but he is still strong. I mean look at him. We can only dream to be so badass as him! Still Geralt kept fighting and of course he won some updates too as expected but it wasn't enough. But I think he did good for you know a newcomer. I mean he reached the final division match and scored around 47% too. So yeah. Man if only we had some kind of a rally. Well you can't have everything. But I believe in the next contest he will be weaker. Except if the Netflix Witcher series is really good and boosts him, like Neflix Castlevania series boosted Alucard. Also strangely enough Auron did worse here than he did on Sub-Zero. Even though I like Geralt I would never picked him over Sub-Zero before the contest. Did he caught a small bandwagon as some said? I believe that is true. Still nice fight. Also we have finally a FF character that won a division! Still funny enough that Auron and Vivi are much stronger than the protagonists in their games! So yeah good match and nice win once again for Auron. A duel between 2 badasses is amazing! The prediction percentage was really low too. Less than 10%. So many people picked Geralt to win? I don't get it. ## Tsunami's Analysis LOLCasuals. 9.97% for Auron isn't necessarily funny in its own right since this was somewhat of a wide open division, but how we got to that point is. Over 30% of brackets had him losing in Round 1 to Lucina, and the first time that he actually lost more brackets than he retained was this round, even though the top half of Division 6 was extremely weak. I was willing to blame it on RallyFEAR but Pac-Man was actually the slight favorite against Sans in R1 and Geralt seems to have retained enough percentage to be considered the clear favorite every round. 1-seed fear? Whatever; this was a pleasantly close match. Here's hoping that Geralt really was a trial for a character battle that openly embraces having characters not originating from video games. It doesn't even have to be a fully open one; there can still be some sort of requirement for a gaming tie-in. You'd probably have to institute something like what Allen did to determine the field for BGE3, too, when considering the games involved, since most licensed video games are awful and serve little purpose other than to be licensed video games. None of that. I'm talking about characters from highly acclaimed games such as Goldeneye 007, the Kingdom Hearts series, the Arkham series. --- ## (1)Luigi vs (3)Tifa Lockheart 2018 _source: (1)Luigi vs (3)Tifa Lockheart 2018 (revid 84250)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Unlike division 6, this one having a 10% prediction percentage for the winner made a ton of sense. Tifa had to beat, in order: Geno, Mewtwo, Mega Man X, and Luigi. This was also a division with Master Chief and Nathan Drake, noted casual bait, taking up some picks as well. Remember the Miracle on Ice clip? You've all seen it. What everyone forgets is that was only the semifinal. The USA still had to go out and beat Finland in the final, which wasn't exactly easy street. They fell behind 1-0 and 2-1 before ultimately winning 4-2. That's essentially what this match was for Tifa. Beating Mega Man X was great and it's the match everyone is talking about, but Luigi is no joke and Tifa easily could have lost this match had she not shown up. There was one thing she had in her favor, though. These two have met before. It's a very comparison between Bowser and Kirby, who also had a rematch from 2005. The difference here is there actually was a reason for the gap to close between Luigi and Tifa. Square and Nintendo have trended in very opposite directions since 2005, and Tifa getting 53% thirteen years ago didn't exactly inspire confidence. The oracle was split down the middle and most people had this as a dead even match. Much like Finland did in 1980, Luigi scored first. He won the early board vote, and Tifa quickly recovered to tie things at the freeze. As things kept moving, it was Luigi who started slowly building a lead. We can call him getting a 100 vote lead our version of Finland leading 2-1, because after that Tifa just swamped the dude. That 100 vote lead of Luigi's was gone pretty quickly, and though Luigi tried his best to hold off her push leading to midnight, Tifa would eventually take control of the match and win relatively easily. Winning by 850 given how close it was early is pretty impressive, and it sent Tifa off to the legends bracket where she would have one more hilarious match before ultimately bowing out of this thing. ## Safer777's Analysis I think before the contest the winner of MMX/Tifa match was considered the favorite. But Luigi could do it too. Meaning these 3 characters had equal support from what I believe. As you all know in the MMX/Tifa match there were rallies and Tifa managed to barely advanced. In this match there were no rallies and Tifa beat Luigi more easy that she defeated MMX. Tifa VS MMX was the best match of the contest anyways. This match was close of course but Tifa was never in danger. Well she was losing for 1 hour and then she went ahead and stayed ahead. Also once again at the 5 minute mark she was tied! Now that is awesome. You know I thought actually that Luigi would win. Yeah I know that Tifa had beaten him before but I thought she would have fallen while Luigi would have risen. And this was true but in smaller percentages that I have expected. So yeah. Tifa managed to win and that was good. She also had much tougher opponents that Luigi had. So she deserved to win the division! Also a strange thing I noticed. Tifa has taken part in 6 contests including this one only! I always thought she was there in all of them! Luigi has missed the very first contest too. Eh whatever. ## Tsunami's Analysis These two had met before in a match back in 2005, and it was somewhat close, but Tifa was never really in danger of losing. And here, with Tifa fresh off a rally-fueled victory...nothing really changed. This wasn't a blowout, which suggests that Luigi could've fared pretty well against MMX. Honestly, this wasn't really a surprising result, even if it does go against the "cookie" bracket--Luigi had barely over a third of the Guru brackets, with the rest being split between X, Tifa, and Mewtwo--X having the largest portion of those due to the Mewtwo-Tifa split. Which I guess means that the "true favorite" was X? This was a distinctly weird division due to the Mewtwo/Tifa/X kerfuffle making it impossible to declare who the favorite really was in that match. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (3)Ryu 2018 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (3)Ryu 2018 (revid 84251)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every now and again a match happens that I can't explain at first, and this definitely counts. Sephiroth looked like absolute shit in every single one of this matches this contest, except for this one. How? What makes Ryu so special that he's the only one this year who couldn't take advantage of Sephiroth's weaknesses? Wesker, Falcon, Amaterasu, Mario, and Tifa all made the guy look like everything ranging from 'weakened' to 'complete joke'. Yet Ryu, who had a lot of advantages in this match thanks to being in Smash 4 and hyped for Smash Ultimate, went out there and just got destroyed. It's not like Ryu didn't do what everyone else does, either. He won the board vote. He then proceeded to get his ass whipped for 24 straight hours, and when the time came for Seph to break 60% on the guy we all just kind of sat there stunned. It was like watching Clemson just beat the absolute living shit out of Alabama in the 2019 title game. Although when you look at it, Sephiroth does kinda sorta look like Trevor Lawrence: My best guess here is Ryu had a similar fate to that of Gordon Freeman, the Metal Gear Solid clan, the Resident Evil characters, Commander Shepard, D.Va, and some others I might be forgetting. When your parent company is indefensible garbage, the characters pay for it in these contests. Capcom has been so bad for so long that I might have been short sighted here. It's not like the Street Fighter characters or Dante lit the world on fire in this contest, which makes sense. Street Fighter 5 was released as a half finished game, and so was Marvel vs Capcom 3 originally. Ryu is in both of those games, and Capcom at this point is known more for money-grubbing DLC practices than releasing video games that are actually good. When people think of "on-disc DLC", Capcom is the first company they think of. Ryu paying for that against legitimate competition makes sense. This match isn't all that different from Bowser beating the hell out of Gordon Freeman or Fox embarrassing all of Blizzard. People just don't want to give Sephiroth any credit for being a shit-kicking badass, because hating Final Fantasy 7 is the cool thing to do these days. Sephiroth was the only 1 seed to actually win his division, and he had by far the highest prediction percentage in this round. It's true. Look it up. Dante, Zero, Sora, 2B, Squall, Geralt, and Luigi all failed to win their divisions. Only Sephiroth pulled it off, and he do with some Marv Alvert + Eric Cartman + Triple H authority. What a fantastic performance by the dude. Too bad he followed this up by stinking up the joint. ## Safer777's Analysis So well before the contest there was a small chance that Ryu would be able to beat Sephiroth since well everyone was saying that Sephiroth has fallen a lot. But as the contest went on this prooved to be false. People were expecting Sephiroth to win with around 57% but he won with more than 60%. Even I as a Seph fan didn't expected it. Because of Amaterasu. Guess she is strong now or something like that? Also Ryu was beating Sephiroth for like 2 minutes. This is the tradition for FF 7 characters, meaning they lose at the very start, then start winning and then keep rising as the match goes on. In the 5 minute mark Sephiroth was around 52.7% and he won with more than 60%! Damn! So what I gather from  all of these? Sephiroth hasn't dropped as much as people said. Why I say that? Because I don't believe that Ryu has fallen that much and that Amaterasu is  weak. Or maybe it is true? Can't be sure.  Anyways he won a good victory. And in fact some people were even saying that Seph\>Mario based on this result! Yeah sure. Even I as a huge fan can't see that. Still nice to see FF 7 still do good. So there you go. We had in 1 day 2 FF 7 winners! FF 7 always wins. Also a fun fact. Sephiroth was the ONLY 1 Seed to win the division!!! Also no 2 Seed won either! This is the worst contest ever for the high seeds. We have said so many times that seeding doesn't mean anything and this prooves it. Also the prediction percentage was massive. Not even some Round 1 matches had such a big one! Well as the only NN'er it was to be expected. ## Tsunami's Analysis Ryu fared better with registered voters than anonymous voters, so this match isn't even as close as it looks. Which isn't terribly close. Fighting game characters seemed somewhat stronger this year, but you'd never guess it from this match, where the allegedly struggling Sephiroth still managed to break 60% on Ryu, a character that famously always required a Noble Niner to take him down in early contests and always broke 40% in those losses. At this point, Sephiroth was probably only considered to have "weakened" because of the overall weakness of Division 8. Think of it like L-Block's 2007 run in reverse. Sephiroth's always going to draw a certain number of anti-votes, so he looks stronger against strong characters like Ryu here than he does against weak ones, just as L-Block's so-called "joke trends" meant it would draw a consistent percentage regardless of whether it was facing R1 fodder or Noble Niners. --- ## (1)Link vs (4)Ganondorf (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (4)Ganondorf (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88653)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We all know Link would eventually win this contest with ease, but this was a very bad start for the dude. I know calling an 80-20 blowout bad seems weird, but we have a precedent here. Given that match and all the crazy boosts Link has gotten over the years, I honestly feel like he should have broken 90% in this match. What Zelda fan would ever vote for Ganon over him? I know a lot of people were planning on anti-voting Link in this contest, but dropping 8% in this match when we saw other random rematches from that era barely move in percentage feels weird. Not that it really mattered at the end of the day, because without a crazy rally no one was coming close to beating Link this year. I don't have a great explanation for why Ganon got 20% instead of 12%, but at that point you're asking me to explain a 42-10 or 43-8 Super Bowl loss for the Broncos compared to 55-10. Who even cares? ## Safer777's Analysis Finally the(former)champ is here! Of course he would win. And this match has happened before. So the question was with how much he would win though. In the previous match Link had beaten Ganondorf with around 88%! Now he won with less than 80%. So why? I believe Link has dropped a bit. Yeah it happens to everyone.  Probablye at least? Also anti-votes too probably. So there you go. Funny when someone wins with around 80% and it is not considered good! Of course Link will win the whole thing anyways so there you go. Also I hope the stats guys adjust the X-Stats because with this result Vivi scores like 18% on Link which is a lie, since he breaks 30% for sure. Nothing more to add. It is a Link match. He wins.  ## Tsunami's Analysis Normally I hate adjusted X-Stats, because there's no scientific way to determine the adjustments and then you end up with the "sharps" being unanimously wrong about Magus-Knuckles 2005 because Magus was just arbitrarily assigned his 2003 value (which was earned directly against a Link far weaker than 2004's) to account for the SFF Bracket of 2004. But then you get a near-quadrupling in Round 5 and it becomes impossible to defend the sanctity of raw X-Stats. Clearly Ganondorf's stronger than his raw numbers will suggest. But how much stronger? Who knows. About the only clear takeaway from this is that Zelda was able to withstand SFF from Link far better than Ganondorf did. Before this contest, it wasn't necessarily clear which one was stronger, though it seemed more likely even then to be Zelda. Now there's no doubt; Zelda came out looking like the new \#3 character on the site. --- ## (8)Mega Man vs (7)Pikachu (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (8)Mega Man vs (7)Pikachu (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88651)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was SUCH a good match, and it reminded me a lot of Mega Man v Zero v Charizard back in 2013. Mega Man had every reason in the world to just roll over and die in this match, but the little guy just has the clutch gene and refuses to quit in close matches, even when a lot of people on Board 8 were sitting there expecting Pikachu to just roll this dude. Pikachu stomped through the main bracket, and outside of Smash Bros Mega Man hasn't done much lately. No, MM9 through 11 doesn't count. Dude's really something. When this match started, it didn't exactly look like we were getting some great classic. Pikachu held strong early, but then Mega Man had a 100 vote lead in 15 minutes. It looked to be one of those standard matches that looks close on percents, but is never actually close. But then Pikachu won the next update by 26, and it was on. Pikachu got this thing back under 50 very quickly, but then Mega Man started going up again and built a lead of 200. Not to be outdone, Pikachu countered again and in only a few updates it was below 100 again. We continued on the two steps forward one step back routine for Mega Man until he built his biggest lead of the match: 237 votes. Remember that number. After some stalling and as we continued on through midnight, Pikachu slowly but surely fought his way back into things. Remember a few matches ago where I joked about Mega Man going to every house in Europe and killing a house pet, a first born son, and torching the place? Europe despises this dude, and it shows up every time Mega Man has a match. We don't usually notice because most matches with these characters aren't close, but in matches like this it really matters. Pikachu tied this poll at 3 am, and then veeeeeery slowly started building a lead. He hit 100 in time for the morning vote, where one would assume a Pokemon would take over. Mega Man won the morning vote, and in only a couple hours we were tied again. Did Mega Man take advantage and start climbing? Of course not, because these two guys were out there giving us the best match of this contest to this point. King Dedede and Revolver Ocelot having a match like this is great, but Mega Man and Pikachu doing it actually meant something. But despite all the back and forth, Mega Man slowly trended up all morning and well past lunch en route to a lead of 150 votes. But you can't have classic matches if someone just dies, so once again Pikachu fought back. During the afternoon and largely thanks to the ASV (after school vote, for those playing the home game), Pikachu erased that 150 vote lead and yet again we were tied up. At 5 pm, with only two hours left in the poll, these two were dead even. It was going to come down to which fanbase wanted it more, and for once, the Pokemon fans actually bothered caring about a close match. I've been asking these people to try showing up for years. Today, they finally did it. Pikachu built up a 100 vote lead over the next 45 minutes, and though Mega Man fought like hell to get back in the match, he simply ran out of time. Pikachu was ready for that last push, went 'oh hey the guy I'm against is made of metal, maybe I should electrocute the little bastard', and that was all she wrote. Pikachu wins by 62, in our first true loss for the Noble Nine. More on that in a second. Remember when I said to remember the number 237? A new wire to wire record! I'm a sucker for that list, and seeing such a great match set a record like that warms my heart. Props to these two for giving us one hell of a show, and props to Pikachu for finally "legitimately" breaking the Noble Nine. No excuses this time, much as the people obsessed with that list would love to come up with one. We all know it was actually broken in 2007, but I digress. Let's talk about the Noble Nine. Link, Cloud, Mario, Samus, Crono, Solid Snake, Sephiroth, Mega Man, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Nine characters so much stronger than everyone else that they could only lose to each other. Nine characters who have had entire contests warped around them so others have a fair chance of winning. Whenever something happens that proves the LOL x stats wrong, I'm the first guy to laugh. You all know this. I go the other way with the Noble Nine. Sort of. I used to be the guy that made fun of excuse-makers with this list, but now? I've become the kind of guy to make excuses whenever they lose in some weird bracket idea like 4ways, 3ways, and Rivalry Rumble, simply because the whole reason those formats happened was to give other characters a chance of winning. The only losses they've had I consider truly legitimate are 1v1 24 hour losses. I don't care that Crono lost to Vincent in 2007. That was a 4way poll. I don't care that Kirby overperforms in 4way polls and beat Sonic. I don't care that Missingno got a 12 hour day match against Crono with backwards trends. I sure as hell don't care about 3way polls, because anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows why those were stupid. That said, the mental gymnastics I saw after this match were really, really dumb. There are people claiming this "doesn't count" because Pikachu only won with the registered user bonus. There are people claiming this "doesn't count" because Mega Man won the rematch. There are people claiming this "doesn't count" because this sent Mega Man to a loser's bracket instead of actually eliminating him from the tournament. How about you people stop moving goalposts with your mental gymnastics and fuck off? Mega Man lost, fair and square. Deal with it. Mega Man losing here meant this was the first time, ever, that a Noble Nine character lost in a 1v1 24 hour match to someone from outside the group. That is a big deal and the push to cheapen this win so that Tifa or Zelda can take credit instead is an embarrassment. Pikachu is the character that broke the Noble Nine with no excuses, no weird formats, and no doubts. Period. He did so in a really good match, too. Between this and Save_Us.RAT, the little guy is officially a contest legend. ## Safer777's Analysis This is it. This is maybe the most important match in contest history. For the first time ever a non NN'er beats a NN'er in a 24 hour match, with no rallies and no stupid things. Damn. And the one that did it? Pikachu. The guy who barely break 55% on Parappa on the first contest! Man how much he has risen!  Obviously MM was always strong. He is a NN'er after all. Of course in the last years he has fallen and he even was considered the weakest NN'er too. Guess he is? Doubt it. Pikachu is just a  monster. A pocket monster! Yeah I am stupid I know. Still this match was the best of the contest so far no doubt. Also this is one of the closest wire to wire matches ever. Don't know in which position but it is. Anyways at the start MM was winning of course. He managed to get to 237 lead which was the highest for both characters and then Pika started cutting. This started happening after around 5 hours. So after almost 4 hours of Pika cutting he managed to get ahead finally. Then he started getting a lead. Managed to go to around 110. Then MM started cutting and he went ahead too. And then he started building a lead. He went to 150 and then Pika started cutting again. Then Pika went ahead with like less than 2 hours left in the match. And MM started stalling and cutting but he wasn't able to do it at the end. In the end Pika won with around 62 votes. What a match! Now of course people will say that MM won with the resistered voters and that is true. MM also won in USA too. And that is true too. But let's be real. He just lost. And that is. Still he went out with a fight. Of course the term NN'er will not die. There is currently a topic that details the matches from NN'ers. Seriously even if we count ALL the matches ever, including multiways they have like 95% victories too! That is impressive. Still as a fan of Pokemon I like this result. So there you go. Pika got revenge for Charizard for 2013 too! Pokemon man. I still don't get why they are so strong though. And I am a fan too! Still this match will always be remembered. Of course the prediction percentage was under 20% which makes sense. I mean almost all Gurus too had MM advancing here too. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was definitely one of the more interesting matches of the contest, because it was the first time that a Noble Niner had outright lost a 24-hour 1v1 match against a non-Noble Niner--though just like when they lost in fourways and threeways and 12-hour matches against weird glitch characters, there was plenty of room for the Noble Nine apologists to spin this one, chief among them the fact that Mega Man *won the raw vote* and only lost because of the registered user bonus, though technically there was also something about two matches going on at once (though since the other match in this particular case was Link vs. Ganondorf, I doubt it . The stats topics blamed this on the fact that this match was coming right out of the Thanksgiving break, that casuals might not have known to come back while the contest diehards--which is to say, *us*--were ready to come out supporting our horses, or rats as the case may be. And Board 8 has been fans of Pokémon for quite some time now. There's almost always a Pokémon ranking topic or a Save My Pokémon or something floating around this board, and they can last quite some time because there's over 800 of them already with that number only set to rise by the end of the year with Sword and Shield coming out. (And what a time, too--Pokémon has a strong nostalgia factor, such that each new generation seems to make the fanbase like earlier generations even more. So while they'd still be a dark horse to win it all--though barring rallies, the same could be said of almost any game not named "Breath of the Wild"--the fact that Gen VIII will already be out makes me think that the Gen V games could be stronger than expected in GotD next year). Mega Man, on the other hand...well, okay, the classic Mega Man games get some love here, too. I remember buying Mega Man 2 on Wii VC after it was voted Board 8's Game of the Year for my birth year of 1989. (I...never quite got the hang of it. Maybe I should give it another try, seeing as how I'm apparently into platformers now.) And the classic Mega Man series is, amazingly enough, the most "active" at the moment. But Mega Man is always going to suffer from mismanagement--both the fact that the early games never made it to the PAL regions and the fact that it's a series made by Capcom, which is not a good thing to be in this decade. Board 8's favorite series is made by Capcom and I still doubt many people on this board would defend the company itself. So this was an upset ripe to happen. My Oracle pick was initially far more bullish, but that was pure fanboyism/salt about Mega Man \> Charizard being the match to officially eliminate me from the Guru in 2013 (though seeing as how I was banking on Samus and Mario splitting with each other enough for Charizard to get past them, I was probably dead as soon as Vivi upset Mario, and if not then, the very next match when Squall held off Missingno's upset bid to allow an easy path for *Red* to be the one in Mario's place.) I backed down on the prediction of Pikachu winning easily, but couldn't bring myself to pick against him. I'd like to say that I had some great insight, but honestly, I think I just got lucky here. Mega Man is, at least marginally, still stronger than Pikachu, and proved it later in this contest, but Pikachu caught the perfect circumstances for the upset and capitalized, and I got my best Oracle ever, just 0.01% off of perfect. And of course, there's the question of "is this the match that truly 'broke' the Noble Nine?" To which I say, no, it isn't. L-Block's run in 2007 and Vincent beating him to the punch with the win over Crono is cool, and 2013's format was just weirdness and shouldn't be taken too seriously. But again I should mention that Mega Man won the raw vote. It's hard for me to say that "certain votes count more than others and also there's another match going on at the same time" is less of a gimmick than "only 12 hours long instead of 24". So while I personally say that Missingno was the one to break it, I certainly don't think that if *that* doesn't count, this one should. But maybe that's Board 8's fanboyism again (even though Missingno's Gen I as well!)--63.55% of Second Chance brackets got this one *right*, even though less than 20% of main brackets did. Not that it matters because it would be all of two days until a completely unambiguous Noble Nine break, and if the two polls in one day was still too much gimmick for you, that'd be fixed by contest's end as well. --- ## (4)Cloud Strife vs (3)Alucard (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Cloud Strife vs (3)Alucard (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88649)_ ## Ulti's Analysis You can check my other writeups. I love Alucard, but he was overmatched here. This was very tight at the freeze and I hoped for a miracle, but Cloud put that to bed real quick and proved once again that FF7 just has these weird early votes that make no sense. Cloud turned a tied poll at the freeze into a 60% win, and some might look at a result like this and think Alucard doesn't belong in matches with the big boys. Well guess again pal. Way back in the day, Alucard got embarrassed by the FF7 bros. Fast forward 16 years and he's getting 40% on their mascot. I wouldn't honestly be that shocked if he could get 45% on Sephiroth tomorrow. It was nice seeing this match be decent instead of some 71-29 murdering, but at the end of the day, Cloud was able to survive and advance. That's the name of the game in these things. ## Safer777's Analysis Alucard did well to reach this far but he would never win it. He is the weakest of the Division winners no doubt. So of course Cloud won with above 60% too. Of course at the start of the match Cloud was around 51.5% and look where he reached. Man can you imagine this early result like 10 years ago? It would have filled like 5 stats topics! But now? Eh. Also Alucard has faced Cloud in the very first ever contest where he lost with around 70% too. Now he did 10% better. Of course things have changed a lot since then. Also Alucard is one of the few characters that has appeared in all contests too. So yeah Alucard lost easily but he impressed. The plan man! Now for Cloud...I guess this is a good result. I can't really say because I guess that means that either all Alucard's opponents are weak or Cloud has dropped a lot or some combination of it. Or anything I guess. Still Cloud won and that is fine. ## Tsunami's Analysis This is a pretty good performance for Alucard, one that erased any doubt that he was legitimately stronger rather than merely being the beneficiary of a weak division. (Though make no mistake, he *was* the beneficiary of a weak division. Sora's inexplicable ability to always land a 1-seed, or a 2-seed when the 1-seeds were reserved for Noble Niners only in 2013, usually results in a wide-open division. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Allen acknowledged that fact when he put Sora as the 2-seed in *Crono's* division in 2013, since Crono had already shown himself to be the most upset-prone member of the Noble Nine.) I think this was also the match where we realized that the stats for the Second Chance brackets were messed up because they seemed to suggest that Alucard was actually the favorite there, which clearly wasn't the case. Cloud's prediction percentage in primary brackets was *far* lower; over twice as many people picked against him when his opponent wasn't known than when it was. And that makes sense in a way, because Division 3 was host to a number of theoretical threats. Hell, two of the characters in that division had beaten Cloud already, although both of these events should be taken in the context of "weird gimmicky contests". (Mount Gamemore was pretty awesome, though.) Add to that a character that is frequently thought of as a potential Noble Niner proxy, perhaps rightly so since most of the recent Metal Gear games have been prequels, and there was certainly reason to think that *someone* in that division could pull the upset. Yeah, about that... --- ## (5)Crono vs (4)Bowser (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (5)Crono vs (4)Bowser (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88647)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Wiki readers won't get this bit, but board readers will. Bear with me. So the prediction percentage for this match was 41.5%, which means well over half of people who made a bracket picked Crono to lose in this spot, to the winner of Division 4. This means most people had either Bowser, Charizard, or Kirby beating Crono here. I get that Crono has looked like piss for a very long time and that this match would end up looking very respectable for Bowser, but really? 41.5%? Crono did some of you dirty with his early exits and routine choke jobs over the years, huh? Either that or people just really expected Division 4's trio to be really, really good. (Total side note: I don't care one iota about listing second chance prediction percentage while writing this, for the same reason I never bothered listing battle challenge or win streak type stuff. I try to avoid side show stuff in the PCA and only stick to the first bracket everyone submits.) And boy, does Crono have a lot of choke jobs that gave people pause for this year. Mario 2002 and Mario 2003 are the famous examples, but this guy almost lost to Mega Man in 2005 before losing the Mario rematch in the final that year. Mario got his revenge. Hard. Then in 2006 he goes and chokes away a huge lead to Sonic instead of losing to Snake or Samus like he was supposed to. 4ways? Forget it. This guy was the Noble Nine's first loss back in 2007, granted it was a LOL 4way. He got revenge in 2008, but so what? He went 5 years without winning after that, including his ridiculous Missingno choke job, and the 2013 win barely counts. It was a 3way. The point here is until this match, Crono hadn't won a 1v1 match, 12 hours or otherwise, for 12 full years. Did you guys know his last 1v1 win before this was against Auron? Random bit of trivia for you. The counter to all this is before Melee and Undertale started rallying their balls off in 2015, Chrono Trigger was absolutely going to win that contest. So no one really knew what to expect from Crono here. Just for fun. Bowser (2010c) VS Crono (2010c) Bowser has a strength of 37.09. Crono has a strength of 41.69. Crono wins with 55.52% of the vote! Well then. Bowser scared everyone at the freeze and made the first five minutes interesting, but Crono settled in after that and did almost exactly what he was supposed to do. Which didn't bode well for people hoping for big upsets from this guy, but at least he got the monkey off his back en route to going out and winning an actual match finally. It's been way too long. ## Safer777's Analysis So yeah Crono won. These 2 have fought before and Crono won with around 57%. Now he did around 3% lower which is to be expected. Many years have passed since then. I would like for Crono to break 55% but he couldn't do it. Still a nice win for Crono. People say that Crono is weak but the previous contest(the games one)prooved that he is still strong. Don't know why. Also the strange thing about Crono is that ALL other NN'ers have a lot of games and spin offs and guest appearances in other games but Crono has nothing and man he is still really strong. He is only in 1 game and that is! I mean a lot of years ago he even defeated Mario! Do you think that would have happened in any other site? Of course no. Still the next match will be amazing I think. Also of course CT is one of my favorite games of all time. Duh. And also Bowser did good too here of course. ## Tsunami's Analysis Here, on the other hand, was a far more tangible upset threat. By now, bracketmakers have learned to stop trusting Crono; since the start of the Allen era, he'd lost to a non-Noble Niner in 3 out of 4 contests. As such, he was considered an underdog in primary brackets, being picked to beat the Division 4 winner by just 41.5% of them. This, however, is a sidenote to the most awesome prediction percentage ever, which is the Second Chance Bracket prediction percentage. It should be noted that since Second Chance Brackets were filled out during that Thanksgiving break, the first round of the Legends Bracket is analogous to a Round 1, in that the matchup is already set and so you have full knowledge of exactly whom you are picking to defeat whom. And with full knowledge that the matchup would be Crono vs. Bowser, bracketmakers favored... No one. Or both, take your pick. In an event that would've been impossible in Round 1 of the primary bracket owing to the fact that the number of brackets filled out there was odd, the Second Chance brackets were a perfect 50-50 split, 2856 for Bowser and 2856 for Crono. Now if only the match itself were that close. After Bowser briefly led with the board vote, Crono established a lead by the freeze, broke 55% a little before the four hour mark, then fell back below 55% less than two hours later and managed to never reach it again while also never falling lower than 54.67%. Just a dull match where Bowser was always keeping it respectable but never threatening to win. Finding out the Second Chance prediction percentages afterwards was honestly the most interesting thing about the match. Well, that and the fact that Crono was apparently "back". Coming on the heels of Pikachu \> Mega Man--and the Second Chance bracketmakers *favoring Pikachu* when they were merely calling this match a true coin flip--Crono's long-assumed spot as the weakest Noble Niner seemed to be no more. But would we get confirmation, or would the electric rodent get in the way? --- ## (3)Solid Snake vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Solid Snake vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88645)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Blizzard got the full brunt of my wrath, but Konami isn't out of the woods here. What those idiots have done to gaming is completely unforgivable, and it wasn't just one dumb decision. Konami literally and intentionally murdered Suikoden, murdered Silent Hill, murdered Castlevania, murdered the Yugioh card game, murdered arcades, and ruthlessly murdered Metal Gear Solid. And for who? For what? For the unaware, remember Plinko from The Price is Right? Imagine that as a slot machine and you have pachinko machines. Konami decided to kill off all of their gaming franchises to focus on licensed slot machines, largely because Japanese people apparently have a massive gambling problem and spend all of the time and money on the damn things. Which means nothing to you, outside of not getting to play good games from that shitty-ass company anymore. That's the main difference between Konami and Blizzard, and why I'm not writing a 9500 takedown of the former. Blizzard is trash because their games all suck. Konami is trash because their games are almost always good, so them leaving the gaming business for dipshit slot machines was garbage. It's unforgivable, and Solid Snake clearly has the sins of Konami crawling on his back. He has to eat shit twice, because of all the franchises listed, Metal Gear Solid was the only one murdered three different times. One when Hideo Kojima was fired. Once when Metal Gear Solid went full pachinko. And once when this bullshit happened. All that paired with the Zelda boost and Snake's Nintendo support always abandoning him against Nintendo characters made for some very, very bad news for Solid Snake. Had Tails never happened, this would be my favorite call of the contest. I just knew this was coming. Board 8 loves Solid Snake and has developed a habit of anti-voting Zelda characters. You guys tried your best for 15 minutes to save Snake, but it was not to be. After those 15 minutes were up, Zelda slowly and methodically marched her way up to a lead of 350 around midnight. Well, 342 to be exact. Snake fought back overnight, and tied things up as the morning vote showed up. We all kind of assumed Zelda would bury the guy in the morning and that would be that. But miraculously, almost as if Snake knew this was his last shot, Snake started mashing that damn triangle button like he was getting cooked alive in a microwave hallway. This match was pretty much tied all morning, and Snake battled his ass off to try building a lead. But any time he got anything going, Zelda just bitch slapped him. When lunch time hit, Snake just ran out of gas and finally got buried for good. The match stayed between 100 and 200 for the last seven hours of the poll, but I remember watching it and never once feeling like Snake had a chance of winning. 342 puts this in the top 10 of the wire to wire list, but if you look at it this was the one match on there where you never really felt like the losing character had a prayer of winning. There was just too much in Zelda's favor combined with way too much going against Snake here. Snake has had a lot of close non-Noble Nine calls over the years, most of which coming with people blaming the sprite round, but at the end of the day he simply had to kneel at the altar of the Zelda series like everyone else. If I wasn't such a big Zelda fan, I'd be sad about this. But I love the series, so this was great to watch. Zelda deserves all the run she got this year, too. It's about time. Right after Pikachu broke the Noble Nine, Zelda dug its grave. Not long after this match, Zelda and Tifa would combine to bury them for good. The Noble Nine is officially dead. There is no coming back from what happened to them in this contest. The saddest thing of all is something I actually saw ExTha post on Facebook, so shout out to @ExThaNemesis here. Remember Smash Ultimate hype and how great that game would end up being? I do. This video is a huge part of it. (nice job to all the idiots who thought it would be a port, by the way) The best part of that video was Solid Snake -- "everyone is here" -- but then it dawned on me. Nintendo is treating Solid Snake better than Konami ever has. Even worse, Smash Bros Ultimate might be the last game Solid Snake appears in. Bolded for emphasis because let that sink in. That is a really, really big deal. It's also the reason Snake lost. He should have cashed in when he was actually close to Link's level a few years ago, because he is never again coming close to winning a contest. It's unbelievably, incomprehensibly sad. ## Safer777's Analysis This I didn't expected. Snake was the legit Number 2 in this site for a long time, only Link was ahead of him. But man. Okay. Zelda was strong this year. Of course. But beating the possibly Number 2 on this site? Yeah barely but she did it. Okay I know the LOZ series is loved here but seriously? Did BOTW boosted Link, Zelda and Ganondorf that much? I know I like the contests but this is bad. Now you not only have Link beat everyone but Zelda beating everyone too! Where is the fun on that? As for the match. Snake was winning for around 15 minutes at the start. After like 12 hours Snake managed to get ahead for like 2 hours and that was it. Zelda dominated here. Also this is one of the closest wire to wire matches too. This contest has a lot of them at least! This is something I guess. But man. A few people said when Zelda beat Squall that the final would be Link VS Zelda. Of course everyone laughed. But it may happen actually! Don't know what to say. This is unreal. We need to have strong characters that can challenge Link at least. Now? Now Zelda beats everyone too and Link? If he finishes this tournament with a win less than 65% I would be suprised. Also another match when a NN'er lost to a non NN'er obviously. I wonder how many more will lose until the end of the tournament? Also this result makes Squall and Aeris look better at least. So that is something. The prediction was kinda high for Zelda too. Around 25% which may seem low but it actually isn't. Nice for Zelda I guess. ## Tsunami's Analysis The registered and non-registered voters went different directions on this match, but the registered voter advantage for Snake was too small to overcome Zelda's unregistered support. Again, which one was which surprises me not at all; Snake is probably one of Board 8's favorite Noble Niners, because he was almost as big a surprise member as Crono at the start, he took a while to get his first win against a fellow member, and then once he got off the schneid he almost immediately started pulling off all sorts of crazy upsets against the upper echelon--first beating Sephiroth in the 2006 Battle Royale (our first experience with non-1v1s, so we were unprepared for what LFF could do), then beating Cloud twice in 2008 (the first time admittedly with Sephiroth also in the match, but the second time was *relatively* clean, only having a Crono as a weight, though you could certainly argue that Link hurts Cloud more than he hurts Snake because swords. And yes, I linked that first match solely because the same LFF allowed Sephiroth to get beaten by *Kirby*. I will never get tired of that) and beating Seph 1v1 in 2010. All of this was merely a prelude to 2013, when he--and his voice actor!--became the hero of Board 8, fighting valiantly against the Draven menace. And losing, but who cares about that. Point is, we love Snake here. A lot of the Noble Nine, the only ones who really hate seeing them lose are the statheads because the loss is an affront to their expectations. "Link Always Wins" and all that, though honestly we were much quicker to leap to Link's defense when he was in danger than...oh, right, Cloud's embarrassing 2013 loss came against a Gen I Pokémon, so of course Board 8 was on board with that. Of course, Snake wasn't losing to some rallied newcomer. Zelda's only missed two contests, and one of them was CBI, which barely even counts because you look at all of the fighting game characters and you realize that the people creating the bracket seemed to be treating the "Character Battle" name literally. Maybe. Some of the characters in that bracket were just plain weird; I don't know *that* much about Space Channel 5 but I'm pretty sure that its protagonist's presence runs counter to that assumption. Whatever; I still consider characters who debuted in CBII to have "perfect" records if they haven't missed a contest since then, and no, this wouldn't affect the sanctity of the Noble Nine because no one that debuted there has come close to doing what they did. (It's also more convenient because Lightning's presence in CBVIII set precedence that for a character who debuted after CBI to be considered to have a perfect record, they'd need to make the bracket as soon as their game came out in *Japan*, and Kingdom Hearts *was* out in Japan in time for Sora to have theoretically been in *every* contest.) She's done well in all of them, too; 39.25% against Mega Man in her debut in 2003 (with the hated Wind Waker art, no less); 45.59% against this very same Snake in 2005; 44.73% against Samus in 2006...I'll skip the fourways because she ran into Link in Round 2 one year and Mario in Round 1 in the other. And then a loss to Samus again in 2010 and the close match against Charizard in 2013. Charizard in 2013, *barely*, Vincent in 2007, and Mega Man X in 2008. That's it for non-Noble Niners she's lost to when not literally sharing a fourway with Link, and the last of them she was still sharing it with Mario. Those are all very high-tier opponents, or at least they were in the years she faced them (Vincent is definitely nowhere near the near-elite he was in the mid-2000s, though he's probably still a decent midcarder.) But there have been plenty of high midcarders who have gotten multiple shots at the Noble Nine and come up empty every time, so why should this be any different? Because of "hentai rallies"? ...No, probably not. That was just a fun meme on the board, explaining why female characters seemed to be overperforming all over the place, but I doubt they really made any difference in any match except for Tifa's win over Mega Man X. Because of Breath of the Wild? Far more likely. But there's something else that can't be ignored, and that's that the Metal Gear series is, sadly, seemingly dead. And I say "sadly" despite having never actually played one of them for myself. It's just not my genre, which saddens me because everything I've heard about them is that the story is amazing and I love games with strong stories. The movie critic Roger Ebert was once criticized for saying that video games weren't art, although he clarified what he meant and it wasn't nearly as bad as what it was made out to be. The Metal Gear Solid games, especially around the time of 4, were also criticized for largely being movies with a bit of gameplay tacked on, due to the large number of unskippable cutscenes. So, uh...why not actually make movies out of them? Give the superhero movies some competition for the summer blockbusters? This should be a no-brainer. But with the rift between Konami and Kojima, it seems unlikely that much of anything will ever get done, since the license for the series still belongs to the former. I honestly didn't even realize that there'd been another Metal Gear spinoff in 2018, nor that there was apparently a *board game* released here in 2019? That said, even without Kojima's input, Konami could still easily release new Metal Gear Solid games and have them be actually good. Without spoiling any of the twists of MGS V, it's the end of the prequel series and the final scene is set in 1995, the year that the original Metal Gear took place. To me, that just *screams* "Metal Gear remake" for a hypothetical MGS6, especially since the fact that the Metal Gears got more and more complex with each passing game *released* means that the technology suddenly takes a massive step backwards between 1984 (MGSV, released in 2015) and 1995 (Metal Gear, released in 1987). Not to mention that pesky bit about the Soviet Union still existing when it didn't in the real 1995, though I think they officially stated that in the Metal Gear timeline, the Soviet Union legitimately doesn't fall during the 1990s (Metal Gear 2 was also released prior to the fall of the Soviet Union and is set in 1999). Updating the MSX2 games to modern hardware seems like it'd be a great idea. Someone get Konami on this. But back to the match at hand: did Snake's series's status really play a part? It honestly might have. Snake lost for good the moment he ran into another Nintendo character, after beating on Square and Sega characters. Nintendo knows how to take care of their flagship franchises, and it shows with their consistently strong performances in these contests. --- ## (6)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Auron (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (6)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Auron (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88643)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Heeeey, remember 2008? Back when Auron beat Sonic in round 2 of the LOL 4ways and then only turned around and beat him in the divisional final because Sephiroth showed up? I still have no clue how Leon4 called that one, but that's why I write stuff after contests end and he writes stuff before they start when it actually matters :D Seeing Sonic and Auron link up again 1 on 1 with no excuses a decade later was pretty neat, even if it was predictable. Then again over half of people thought Division 6's winner would win this match, which blows my mind. Division 6 was destined to have one of the weakest division winners ever. This was never going to be a match that was in any doubt whatsoever, and on top of that it was very boring. The percentages stayed at 54-46 for 24 straight hours. That said, 46% on Sonic is no joke and it takes us back to the old days when a bunch of people kept calling for Sonic to lose early every year because of how he would have these random bad performances. Which makes sense. This is the dude that let Zero almost break 48% on him, let Aeris get 47% on him, let Ryu get 45%, let Tifa almost get 44%, choked against Mega Man, and almost let Vincent get 48% on him all before 2006. Add in some weird 4way performances and him not looking so hot since, and here we are. Getting into Smash clearly saved this dude's career, because it was going down fast. All that said, the other three Sonic characters (Knuckles, Tails, and even Shadow) all looked decent this year. Sonic, uh.... didn't. And that's putting it very nicely. I have no idea why. I've always loved the guy but he just cannot catch a break. 54% on Auron is just not very impressive, and he followed it up with some bad polls. ## Safer777's Analysis A normal match this one. Sonic would always win this. Auron was always an elite but never in position to challenge a NNer. But he at least managed to hold Sonic under 55%. I consider this good. Okay he has defeated Sonic but in a 4-way match. Don't know what else to say here. Normal stuff I guess. But man at the next  match...Yeah good luck Sonic! Another thing I can say that I find funny is that at the 5 minute mark it was around 52-48 for Sonic and everyone was saying lol Sonic. Well he managed to raise a bit higher but well that wasn't a good result. Well a win is a win I guess --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (3)Tifa Lockheart (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (3)Tifa Lockheart (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88641)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was just a brutal match to look at, especially given this happened back in the day: No, those vote totals are not a typo. Samus once had a match with Tifa where she had a 900 vote lead disappear in under 4 hours, and she needed the Nintendo morning vote to bail her out. Even funnier is Samus built up a 1700 vote lead in that match, but only won by 1400. I know people reading this in 2018 might not know this, but our contests used to have things like "vote totals", "trends", and "outside interest". Square was a real terror with the night vote. Nintendo's power hour and morning votes were just unreal, and you had to be there to get how insane they were sometimes. Fast forward 12 years. In a match that barely broke 29,000 votes, Samus beat Tifa with a bigger margin than a match that got 144,000 votes. If you take the 2018 percentages and apply them to 2006 vote totals, just for fun, you get something like this: Samus - 84859 Tifa - 59141 Total Votes - 144000 That's almost a 26,000 vote victory. I know people are slurping Tifa for her run in this contest, but she got her ass whipped all over the place the second a truly elite character showed up. This match happened twice, too, with the exact same result both times. This was no accident. I'm sorry, but Sephiroth is not elite anymore, Mewtwo proved himself to be a fraud, and Luigi/Mega Man X just got unlucky. It happens. Tifa is clearly a step behind Samus, and the reason I bring up 2006 is because that match is far more interesting to talk about than whatever you guys call this thing. 59-41 this late in a contest without SFF is an epic annihilation. Samus was on some serious steroids this year. I'll get more into why Square is trash later, don't worry. ## Safer777's Analysis These 2 have fought before. And Tifa almost became the second person to beat a NN'er 1 VS 1 since Samus won back then with 50.5%! The first person was Bowser actually who scored around 49.4% against Snake in 2005! Tifa did that in 2006. So as you see in the results things have changed a lot. People couldn't rally for porn sites or something since both opponents are women so no luck there. Funny thing is that after Pikachu and Zelda beat 2 NN'ers, people were afraid and they lowered the win percentages for Samus. But Samus was always extremely strong. Maybe even stronger than Mario from what the stats guys say. Don't know why but she is. So of course she won easily. FF 7 has fallen a lot. Only the FF 7 remake can give it some boost. Or cameos in KH 3 I guess. Samus of course has a lot of games and she is in Smash too. Still I guess Tifa managed to score at least above 41% so that is okay. I want to see how far Samus will reach myself. --- ## (7)Mario vs (1)Sephiroth (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (7)Mario vs (1)Sephiroth (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88639)_ ## Ulti's Analysis One match after Tifa went out there and got annihilated by Samus, Sephiroth went out there and showed he was not to be outdone in the "Final Fantasy 7 is a choking dog" department. Tifa losing the way she did was eye-opening and was a measure of revenge for Samus for that 2006 match, but it was nothing compared to the revenge Mario was after in this one. For years, we called Sephiroth Mario's kryptonite. For good reason. Mario ripped through the bracket in 2002, including close wins against Cloud and Crono, before losing in the final. In 2003 it looked like he hadn't missed a beat, until, well.... He didn't just lose to Sephiroth. He got thoroughly and absolutely embarrassed. Okay, sure, whatever, Mario had an off day. Two years later, Clinkeroth were removed from the main bracket. In their place, Mario went on some anabolic steroids, some HGH, some TRT, and some EPO. The guy was on more juice than Brock Lesnar or Jon Jones before USADA showed up to ruin the UFC heavyweight division. He was on more juice than John Cena, Ultimate Warrior, The Rock, or Hulk Hogan, who are dudes that clearly don't do the correct 4 month cycles. Look at them. I know it sounds ridiculous to compare Mario to real life supermen, but he really looked that insane in 2005. He won the main bracket with hilarious ease. Tournament of Champion time. A rematch with Sephiroth. Mario getting 44% instead of 38% was great and all, but that was still an embarrassing loss given how good he looked. Sephiroth gave no fucks. Oh, you thought it was just 1 on 1 where Sephiroth embarrassed the dude? Here's Sephiroth beating Mario in a LOL 4way so badly that Mario still doesn't win if he takes all of Fox's votes. Here's Sephiroth beating Mario so badly in a 4way that if you take all of Vincent's votes and give them to Mario, Mario only wins by 900 votes. But frankly, if that was a 3way poll Seph would naturally go up in strength and beat Mario anyway. Oh, you thought the pain stopped there? Here's the Battle Royale from 2006. Day 1: Day 2: We can stop on day 2, because that's when Mario got eliminated. Needless to say, when this match was slated for the legends bracket in 2018, all those old wounds reopened for Mario fans. It's like really, the guy couldn't draw anyone else? Well Mario ended those fears in literally two seconds, and then took 15 years of pent up frustration with this Sephiroth guy ending a bunch of his runs and just beat the absolute ever-loving shit out of him with it. This was a good old fashioned ass whuppin, and for Mario fans it was a joy to watch. Mario finally got his revenge. This was clearly Mario's Super Bowl, too, because he took his eye off the ball for the rest of this contest. I doubt he even cares, either, because he finally beat the one guy he could never beat. (Link doesn't count.) ## Safer777's Analysis Remember when Sephiroth beat Mario with more than 61.5%??? This result was always strange for me. Yeah he was really strong back then. But it is FREAKING MARIO! What happened back then? KH boost? Maybe. But why when KH 2 came out it didn't provide the same amount of boost? Who knows. Now after all these years Mario defeated Sephiroth with almost as much as Sephiroth defeated Mario back then. This result now I get it. Mario is the face of the gaming. Pretty sure he is in top 3 of most recognizable video game characters. Tons of games and he is in Smash of course. Sephiroth is the iconic villain of FF 7. And yeah FF 7 is the JRPG that most people that don't know much about gaming refer when they thing about JRPG's. Also so many anime/video game characters that copied his look, meaning long silver or white hair and some form of longcoat. Yup. So anyways. Personally even though I am a Sephiroth fan I was expecting Mario to score around 60%. As I said above we need FF 7 remake or at least KH 3 to have Cloud and Sephiroth to get some boost in power. At least Sephiroth stayed above 40% so I cosinder this a moral victory. Also once again as before people had llowered the winning predictions for Mario. Man Zelda and Pikachu really scared everyone. --- ## (4)Ganondorf vs (8)Mega Man (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Ganondorf vs (8)Mega Man (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88637)_ ## Ulti's Analysis SPRITE ROOOOOOOOOOOOUND!!!!!!! :D The losers bracket was quite the interesting beast, but not on this day. For those skipping around in the wiki, the basic idea was if you lose in the legends bracket, you were put in the losers bracket. Lose here, and you're out for good. Win the loser's bracket and you get another shot at Link-- errrrrrr, the legend bracket winner. But if you take a middling near elite like Ganondorf (I know that's an oxymoron, but still!) and put him against a legit Noble Niner that got upset, you get blowout city. Mega Man was never going to be challenged here, but he did a little more than go out there and just win a match. He put an absolute ass whuppin on Ganon right from the jump en route to a 60-40 beatdown. Ganon doesn't lose like that too often without SFF getting involved, so this was quite the sight to see. This match was so bad for Ganon that a bunch of crybabies to this day (as in, to the time of this writing) are still blaming the sprite round for his performance, because his number here goes against their holy doctrine of extrapolated statistics. These people might as well be Puritans at this point, because they lose their damn minds the second any of the holy LOL x stats are challenged and tons of micro adjustments must be made at all times to preserve their stature. I have legitimately seen religious fundamentalists use less rancor in real life than some of these statheads whenever a percentage is way off in a GameFAQs contest. I said my piece about this during the mid contest analysis, so we won't go back and fully relive how embarrassing these people are. There are a few new points to make that I was saving for this match. One. We have had a sprite round in almost every contest since 2002. I and many others like them, especially now that we get to make pictures for it. Trying to ruin our fun because your oracle percentage is wrong makes you a punk-ass bitch. Sprite rounds have been a part of contests for 16 years. Deal with it. The oracle consensus was Mega Man with 53.65%. If you want to know why people are crying like they're having male PMS, start there. Two. Ganon either looked off or underperformed in almost every single match for this entire contest. If you think a "normal" picture would have turned this match from 60-40 back to Mega Man only winning with 54% like the oracle people said he was "supposed" to, you are an idiot. In fact, that belief is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. Three and lastly, this is what non-sprite Ganondorf looks like: This is what Ganon's true form looks like: This is where Ganon probably looked his coolest in 3D in any Zelda game: This is what Ganon looks like during his best boss fight in the entire series: This is where Ganon looks his coolest, ever, in any game: The dude is just ugly as shit, and a sprite makes zero difference whatsoever. Mega Man is a damn legend, who can whip Ganondorf's ass 60-40 in any contest. Do you guys not remember some of the epic blowouts Mega Man has pulled off over the years? Complaining about the sprite round, or thinking Ganon's sprite meant iota of difference is just objectively, certifiably dumb. ## Safer777's Analysis So after Pikachu defeated MM, MM managed to look really good here. Of course we couldn't judge Ganondorf's power since well he faced Link, but he didn't even managed to score 40% here. MM is very strong of course. It is that Pikachu is damn strong now. He had a new game and he will have a live action movie soon, the first ever for Pokemon too. Also according to stats Ganondorf underperformed here. Still impressive win for MM. Personally I thought he would score around 55% but well I was wrong. Man how much Pikachu has risen! Also guess Ganondorf didn't get boosted enough from BOTW? Because I find it hard to see that MM has boosted actually. Still impressive win for MM. ## Tsunami's Analysis First off, are we actually having two contests in under a year? That hasn't happened in almost a decade! I didn't expect GotD2 to be this early in the year, I guess because the last one wasn't, but then again we started off 2010 with a Character Battle. Oh, we're not? This contest was in 2018? Damnit, how did I let this slide for that long? As for this match, it's clear that whatever it was that gave Zelda a massive boost (generally assumed to be Breath of the Wild) failed to do the same for Ganondorf. Remember this match? That's Ganondorf getting almost 42% against Sephiroth in his prime, or close to it. Not one Oracle predicted that Mega Man would hold Ganondorf under 42%; a few picked Ganondorf to win outright. Nope. Ganondorf got 40.57% with the registered voters, which even with them getting double weight wasn't enough for him to break 40% overall. Was Ganondorf really as weak as his SFF beatdown against Link made him look, or was Mega Man's loss simply a signal that Pikachu was legitimately Noble Nine tier? Probably the latter, honestly. We'll look at that soon enough. --- ## (3)Alucard vs (4)Bowser (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Alucard vs (4)Bowser (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88635)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know that Bowser ended up winning this match relatively easily given how close the final percentages were, and I know Alucard went 0-2 in the legends dealie after winning his division, but I give zero fucks. For Alucard to go out there and give Bowser a real match when the latter was beefed up for this contest was awesome to watch. This wasn't some fluke. Alucard was in this thing for a good two hours before finally getting put away, and even after the match was clearly over he went out in a highly respectable way. Bowser came out slow and only built up a lead of 100 over the first 30 minutes. Alucard then started actually fighting back, but a 50 vote update by Bowser pretty much sealed it. They stalled for a little while after that, but once Bowser got this past 200 he kind of took off. Alucard made one final push once Bowser got it past 400, but it was not to be. Bowser would end up winning by 625, in a sprite round match when both characters had their most iconic images. Bowser may have won this match, but no one was really talking about him. This was all about Alucard's Plan™, and how good The Plan™ looked for this entire contest. Remember my mid-contest analysis where I lamented the main bracket not getting finished? We ended up getting two guaranteed main bracket matches had it kept going. One was this match, and the other was Tifa vs Sephiroth later on. There were a lot of MANLY DUELS in this contest, but few were better than Alucard and Bowser in a match with high stakes. Not that Geralt and Simon Belmont can actually be topped on the True Manliness Scale, but hey! How good was this match even though it wasn't really close? It actually pops up in the top 25 on this list: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/Closest_wire_to_wire_matches \] ## Safer777's Analysis Man look at this. At the start of the match we thought that Alucard would do it actually! And even though he was always close, Bowser was never in fear of losing at any time except maybe at the start. So does that means that Alucard is really strong now? Because pretty sure nobody expected for the match to be this close. However according to stats guys this result makes sense. Because Big Boss, Sora and Red would score similar to Bowser which makes sense according to past results. Also this match had the lowest prediction percentage so far in the contest with around 4.5%! I wonder how much will be the lowest prediction for the contest? Still Bowser did good and he won. ## Tsunami's Analysis Wait, doesn't that light blue border mean that the registered and unregistered voters were split? Yes. Yes it does. Alucard was thought to be the weakest of the eight division winners, but he put up a damn good fight here, taking the unregistered vote by just 7 and holding Bowser to just 51.24%. Bowser was never in danger, however, leading wire-to-wire and staying above 51% from the 15-minute mark of the match onwards. But perhaps that was The Plan all along, as surely Alucard would get a better X-Stat number through Bowser than he would against Crono directly? The max lead of 627 (10 minutes before match's end) would be good for a spot in the top 25 closest wire-to-wire matches, and would rank \#6 among those where the loser never led. --- ## (3)Solid Snake vs (3)Auron (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Solid Snake vs (3)Auron (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88633)_ ## Ulti's Analysis In no small part due to the insane amount of bitching I had to deal with thanks to me helping get a sprite round, I will now list every single match involving Solid Snake getting his sprite in a match picture, not counting this one against Auron. Snake in general is the most famous example of sprites supposedly being harmful, so let's actually put some context on this. Snake with a sprite picture was 10-0 coming into this contest, and in this match with Auron Snake went out there and showed us all what a giant steaming pile Division 6 was. Auron pretty much didn't belong in the legends bracket at all, but in a contest like this you'll get a weird division winner or two. Auron was definitely the odd man out this year. I get that Auron also had a sprite picture, but if you go by people's complaining you would think the so-called Solid Shit either loses every match he's in or comes close. I don't want to hear the sprite excuse only go one way if that's what the play is. Anyway, Snake is now 11-0 with a sprite picture, with only Bowser and Frog even having respectable matches against Snake in sprite rounds -- and those two characters can easily be explained by the bandwagon effect. This idea that sprites wildly affect results is flat-out wrong, and the idea we should do away with sprite rounds entirely is ridiculous. We have no proof it makes any difference. I could easily argue it only matters for Chrono Trigger, and when we start talking about Chrono Trigger sprites during an unrelated match you know we had an epic blowout on our hands. By the way, see those two fourway polls from 2007 and 2008? Snake got first place in those, with the supposed sprite that ruins contests. There are bad takes, there are hot takes, and then there's the molten lava that anti-sprite people throw around. It shows a pretty big lack of research or context. It's no accident that these are the same exact people who are either against rallies or, even dumber, magically support rallies when it benefits a character they like. Sprites make virtually no difference, but if this doesn't convince you we have a hilarious example coming up. We have proof that in the best possible situation, sprites make a 1% difference. That's it. ## Safer777's Analysis Since this round was a sprite round people were afraid that Snake will not do well since well his sprite isn't good or something. People are stupid. Pictures don't really affect anything EXCEPT when they are really bad like when Phoenix beat Vincent. Never forget! Maybe they affect like 1% but that was it. So for Snake. He beat  Auron with more than 7% than Sonic beat him. Snake is really strong, possible even the 2nd strongest. Yeah he lost to Zelda but pretty sure Zelda is out of the charts strong now. So that makes him the 3rd strongest? Who knows. I guess that Auron did good however. He is weaker but his percentage wasn't that bad. So yeah, Snake is good. Wonder how far he will reach. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was another wake-up call re: strength of certain non-Noble Niners. Snake's victory was never in doubt, but not a single Oracle had him winning that handily. Given how unexpected Snake's presence in the loser's bracket was, it might surprise you to learn that Auron barely had more Guru brackets picking him in this match than Snake did...until you remember that Zelda was considered an underdog all the way back in Round 3 against *Squall Leonhart.* Also that nobody was quite sure what to make of Division 6, with fallen stars such as Vincent and Magus along with entirely too many potential rally-bait characters, but Squall was a comfortable Guru favorite to win this match. --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (1)Sephiroth (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (1)Sephiroth (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88631)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Had Zelda never happened, this would have been our lowest prediction percentage of the entire contest. I know Tifa got annihilated by Samus twice, but that does not take away from Tifa's insane run this contest, how nuts this result is, and how epic these two sprites looked next to each other for us Final Fantasy fans. Tifa's wins, in order: Geno, Mewtwo, Mega Man X, Luigi, and Sephiroth. You won't find many contest runs better than Tifa's this year. Remember this match? It was only eight years ago. Sephiroth won 56-44, but I remember thinking at the time Tifa had a damn fine match and that Seph looked like absolute trash. Here's the proof: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Sephiroth_vs\_(10)Tifa_Lockheart_2010 \] It's also worth noting that back when Sephiroth was actually elite, these two had two fourpacks together in 2008. It did not go well for Tifa at all. But here, in 2018, Tifa was done fucking around and decided to just beat Sephiroth's ass for eight solid hours. Seph's early vote struggles were going to catch up to him at some point, and it happened in this match. Tifa had a 200 vote lead in half an hour, and parlayed that into a 1000 vote lead through the poll's first eight hours. Seph actually did really well for the final 16 hours of this poll, and by "well" I mean he "only" lost the last 16 hours of the poll by 200 total votes. But that didn't matter. The damage was done and Sephiroth's exit this year would go down as nothing short of embarrassing. He only looked good against Ryu, his early votes have been garbage for years, and this dude was bound to get exposed at some point. I just never imagined it would come at the hands of someone from his own game who has been weaker than him in these polls for 13 solid years (Tifa's debut was in 2005). Pikachu broke the Noble Nine. Zelda dug its grave. Tifa lowered the corpse in and buried it for good. People know what Same Fanbase Factor (SFF) is by now, but this match is probably our first confirmed case of Reverse SFF. It's been talked about a lot, usually among Nintendo characters, but seeing Tifa beat Sephiroth like this is impossible to ignore. It's also the other direct match we would have gotten had the main bracket concluded, and with this we pretty much know what would have happened. Pikachu \> Ganondorf Bowser \> Alucard Zelda \> Auron Tifa \> Sephiroth Bowser \> Pikachu Zelda \> Tifa Zelda \> Bowser That would have been so, so entertaining. Thanks, Allen :( I still think Seph might be stronger than Tifa indirectly by maybe a percentage or two, but he will never be what he once was. It would also be very, very, very difficult for me to pick him over anyone in that low Noble Nine to near-elite range. Basically, that whole group of Luigi, Mega Man X, Mega Man, Sonic, Bowser, Ganondorf, Pikachu, Kirby, Crono, Yoshi, and so on could all make a case for beating Sephiroth. It's pretty sad given he almost won the contest in 2003, and outright won a contest once. That dude has fallen really far from where he once was. You know what could save him though? And I'm not even kidding about this. Unfortunately, Square is run by a bunch of complete idiots. There is nothing and no one in media that hasn't benefited from compilations. Coachella draws more interest than any one tour from any artist playing at Coachella. Avengers speaks for itself. Smash Bros taking our site over speaks for itself. Lebron ushering in players controlling leagues instead of other way around speaks for itself. "Nah bro I'll do my own thing" just doesn't work anymore. But I'm spoiling something I want to talk about later so we move on. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was hilarious. I mean most expected that Sephiroth would win, he would struggle yeah, but win none the less. He won the last time these 2 fought anyways. In 20 minutes Tifa was ahead with more than 57%! And as per typical for Sephiroth he managed to recover. So after some hours the match stalled and they basically went until the end with around 50-50. But man. Bad day for us Sephiroth fans. So why this happened? I believe that as some said that people really don't care now for Broody guys or like Androgynous guys or something. They care for cute or hot characters. Or both actually. A good example is Pokemon. I remember when it first came out EVERYONE was saying it was for kids. And that was the case for a lot of years. But in the later years this changed. Look at Pokemon Go. Almost always adults were playing it. And the Detective Pikachu movie. Pretty sure a lot of adults will see it. So yeah. Macho men or very sensitive men don't sell now. Waifus though? This is where the money is! Now I guess that means that Sephiroth is the weakest NN'er now. Man remember when he beat FREAKING Mario with more than 61%? Those were the times! Well if in the next contest we have FF 7 remake or at least he is in KH 3 maybe he will boost a little. Because even though he has a game on PS 4 now(Dissidia NT)I don't think anyone cares for that. Also Tifa's prediction percentage was 2.35% which is on the top 10 of the lowest percentages ever. And it makes sense too. Well that was at least an exciting result. ## Tsunami's Analysis Sephiroth was the overwhelming favorite here by just about every metric imaginable. We can't see exactly how many of the overall brackets had any one particular wrong choice, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was the most popular pick there, too. Maybe. Mario was a surprisingly slight favorite to beat "Division 8 Winner", or at least, it's surprising given how Sephiroth was only about a 4:3 favorite to win Division 8. So it wouldn't surprise me if the casuals were largely on board with Sephiroth \> Mario and had Mario winning this match. At any rate, even with it clear that the top female characters were boosting, only one Oracle pulled the trigger on this upset, because it's been drummed into our heads that SFF creates a clear hierarchy and that nothing will ever produce an upset when heavily overlapped fanbases match up. ...In 1v1s, nothing will ever produce a 1v1 upset between characters from the same fanbase. Yeah, that's what we meant to say. And suddenly, Sephiroth did look like he'd lost a step, and that his relegation to the main bracket was justified. Even with all of the doom and gloom surrounding the Noble Nine after Vivi \> Mario, to the point that some people thought Snake could wind up as the only one to win his division, Sephiroth still made the final nine there. This Top 16 finish was his worst ever. And this was never in doubt. Tifa jumped out to a huge lead right away, pushing it to triple digits by the second update. One third of the way through the match, her lead stood at exactly 1000, and from there, it fell into a stall, for the final margin of 1205. This contest had completely gone off the rails, and we were now seeing the bracket-buster records set by the likes of L-Block, Draven, and Undertale being seriously threatened by characters we already *knew* to be strong. Quite simply, it was a glorious return to the days of contests being able to surprise us. --- ## (1)Link vs (7)Pikachu (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (7)Pikachu (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88629)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We've seen Link deliver some epic SFF beatdowns over the years, notably that famous 88-12 beatdown of Ganondorf back in 2004. So when this match happened, people assumed it was just another SFF beating. Pikachu did "okay" for a little while, but it wasn't long before Link started getting updates well into the 70% range. Which is insane when you think about it, but this was a Link boosted by the power of Smash Ultimate and Breath of the Wild. No one in this contest was going to touch the dude. Not even Pikachu during the sprite round. Link was just on a whole other level this year. As for the so-called SFF. Pokemon in general resists SFF against Nintendo very well, and I don't think Pikachu suffered from it by more than a percent or two here. Reason being if you just take the 31.59% number he got here and just add a single percentage point, it puts Pikachu right at the level of where all the other near-elite Nintendo characters are. Add 1.5% and it's probably exactly where he belongs. We'll use KP's stats as an example: Pikachu - 33.09% Mega Man X - 32.98 Ganondorf - 32.98 Pikachu - 32.59% Luigi - 32.2 Bowser - 32.06 Kirby - 32 Sonic the Hedgehog - 31.65 Yoshi - 31.51 We have some precedent for this if you start looking from 2004 and on. So yeah, I don't know exactly how much SFF Pikachu ate here. Not that it matters, we're splitting hairs here anyway because there's never anything else to talk about when Link blows people out. Pikachu's Super Bowl was last round when he beat Mega Man and ended the Noble Nine. Just getting to this point and winning a match in the legends bracket like this was super clutch of him. ## Safer777's Analysis Link always wins. LAW we call it here. So he would win. But to tell the truth I was sure that Pikachu would avoid a doubling. And look at this. Link is so strong that it is ridiculous. Pretty sure everyone wants him to retire by now. Every other character here can be defeated by other characters. But not Link. Without rallies I mean of course. So of course he dominated here. I told before the contest that nobody would be able to break 35%. Maybe Cloud will do it. Still nobody will break 40% on him though no matter what I believe. As for Pika he did goot. Did anyone expected to reach that far and did so good against Link? So that is. ## Tsunami's Analysis So yeah, about that Pikachu... In 2007, he made it to the quarterfinals, which due to the fourway format meant Top 16 instead of Top 8, but nevertheless it meant outlasting 7/8 of the field. But everyone just chalked it up to SFF and LFF, and possibly Tidus having a reputation as a choker. With Pikachu handily getting second behind Leon Kennedy in Round 2, the idea that it was SFF/LFF that let him win his Round 3 fourpack might not have been totally unwarranted (although you have to figure that Leon might have benefited from STF in Round 2, being the protagonist of a dark, mature horror game against three bright, colorful characters). In 2008, Pikachu makes the quarterfinals again. Absolutely no one is accusing him of being the beneficiary of SFF this time; if anything, he's catching flak in the early rounds for dishing it out, allowing Arthas Menethil to advance over Ike and take 3rd place in Round 2 over Captain Falcon. But mostly they didn't really care because he knocked out L-Block, and because Samus's presence meant he wouldn't get in the way of the Crono-Vincent rubber match. In 2010, Pikachu takes a step back and is knocked out in Round 3, which despite the return to 1v1s is once again the Round of 32. But then the raw X-Stats come out and he's ***6th. ***Again, this is quietly swept away because it's Solid Shit vs. ...wait, is that a HeartGold/SoulSilver sprite, mere days after the game came out in the United States? *Damn* Pikachu had the pic advantage! We always talk about the sprite round being good for Pokémon, but a true "first appearance" theme like they have in a lot of the sprite rounds (though not this year; for example, the Legend of Zelda crew was rocking ALttP sprites) would actually be kind of iffy because the Gen I sprites are pretty hideous, especially if you *truly* enforced the letter of the law and used Japanese Red/Green sprites instead of the Japanese Blue sprites that were carried over to the international releases. In 2013, people are griping about Pikachu benefiting from SFF before it even happens, praying for Otacon to upset Magus so that Crono can get a fair shot at Pikachu. Pikachu wins handily, then resists LFF from Pokémon Trainer Blue, another SFF beneficiary, to edge out Sora for the Top 9. Board 8 was surprised for some reason when he managed to take second in the semifinal trio over fellow Gen I icon Squirtle; personally, I'm more surprised that he wasn't able to repeat the feat in the Fourth Place Match against Mewtwo (though Mewtwo rSFFing Pikachu seems logical given how Mewtwo was the cool, edgy overpowered final boss type, and I think maybe also a higher tier in Melee? I don't know; I don't follow competitive Smash. Then again, being more popular within the fanbase was a justification we often used for picking hilarious upsets in the early years, and this was probably the first time it actually came through.) And now here he was again, having advanced out of the Top 16. Due to the double-elimination format, this merely put him into the Top 12, not the Top 8, but nevertheless: ***Pikachu is legit.*** There's really no denying it. Getting more than doubled by Link is nothing to be ashamed of; it's even happened to Noble Niners. In 1v1s, even. His loss here set up a rematch with Mega Man, and given how close the first match was, it was no guarantee that he'd win again...but it was no guarantee that he'd lose, either. We really need to stop using the term "Noble Nine" in the context of measuring contest strength. The Noble Nine will always be the Noble Nine, and can never be added to or subtracted from. They are the original nine Elites, who have been in every contest and have been elite in every contest--yes, even when Crono got beat in Round 1 by a glitchy pile of garbage data, because that falls under the purview of "rallies". But as of this contest, it's clear that they have legitimate company in the highest tier (well, the *highest* tier is still just Link by himself, but aside from that). Zelda, Pikachu, probably Tifa. I'm still not entirely convinced that Mega Man X isn't really close to Mega Man Classic in indirect strength, and losing to Tifa doesn't invalidate that because she's part of this group of "new elites". Outside of the ever-dangerous rallybait, it would surprise me if any of them were to lose to competition outside of each other and the Noble Nine, even though all of them have done so in the past. (Well, X hasn't outside of getting double-barrel SFFed by Link and Mario, but that's because it took him so long to debut.) --- ## (4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88627)_ ## Ulti's Analysis A common theme that kept popping up pre-contest was trying to figure out which match Cloud would lose. He's been looking vulnerable for years in these things and Final Fantasy 7 has looked like trash for a decade. I myself have gotten caught up in this, mainly because I picked the Squirtle loss and loved that random Trainers \> FF7 upset we got as a bonus match in the Rivalry Rumble. For the curious, I had Cloud losing to Monika (lol) one round later and then losing to Link in the losers bracket. Shows what I know! What we all forgot is that Cloud appearing in Super Smash Bros is a huge deal, and staved off a lot of his erosion. Beginning with this match (some would say the Bowser match but I disagree), there was a lot of hype about Cloud losing. Crono's case was pretty obvious, too, given how insane Chrono Trigger looked in 2015. This was the first time these two had ever faced each other 1 on 1, too, which was really neat. Unfortunately for everyone, this match was a typical Final Fantasy 7 match. Close to 5 minutes, then FF7 wins like it always does lol. There are actually people who think FF7 wins every contest, which is so weird. The hope for Crono died in about 10 minutes, and given Cloud would end up getting 57% here, this was actually a fantastic match for the guy. Most people did not see him doing this well: This wasn't SFF, either, because we've seen that Final Fantasy slash Square doesn't really SFF itself outside of very obvious cases. This was just Cloud taking his newfound Smash Bros strength and putting an old-school ass whuppin on a pretender. I also want everyone to remember that this was a sprite round match. These two would have a rematch in a few days without sprites that would prove me right once and for all that sprites don't make one damn bit of difference and that all the crybabies who spent 2 weeks bitching about them would leave this contest looking unbelievably dumb. ## Safer777's Analysis There was a small debate that Crono would be able to win. But Cloud won easily. I still I am baffled that Crono is so strong after all these years with only 1 game! The question though is that is Cloud the strongest Non Nintendo Character? Hard to say. I think Snake beats him. And from Nintendo characters Mario and Samus may beat him? Zelda might too? To tell the truth Link is the only one that surely beats him. Still we will have another Cloud VS Link match. I think this is like the 69th time they fight? Or their games? Can't wait to see what will happen! ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, just one match after saying that we should stop talking about the Noble Nine, I have no choice but to talk about the Noble Nine! Well, not exactly. What I said in the last match was that we should stop using the Noble Nine as a shorthand for "the most elite characters who will never lose to anyone other than each other unless there's weird rally shit." This was actually a long-awaited match, one that we honestly probably should've seen way back in the CJayC days but even with all the SFF matches that CJay liked to set up he never sent the protagonists of the two most well-regarded Square RPGs to face each other, because Mario vs. Crono was already a meme by the time the SFF debacle of '04 took place. (I'm still not sure what I think of FFVII, because I'm too addicted to FE:TH to go back to my FFVII playthrough. I didn't like CT too much when I first played it but I want to give it a second chance after having played and enjoyed FFVI.) But instead, their only meeting was in the fourway finale of the 2008 contest, where Crono provided just enough LFF to allow Snake to upset Cloud for second place. As for what this result meant...the instinctive result was to say that it meant that FFVII really was weakening and that it went all the way to the top (the irony being that Sephiroth's weakness was exposed by a fellow FFVII character, but "porn rallies"), since the last time we'd seen Crono, he looked like he'd have probably struggled to beat Pikachu even without Magus LFFing him. What most of the board *wanted* it to be, on the other hand, was that CT's run through the Games Contest wasn't just a case of Games =/= Characters and that the CT crew was back. And the thing is, there was a good case for it. Not one Oracle picked Magus to lose by as little as he did (though some of them did predict him to win outright), and the two highest picks for Frog in his first match were the two closest. The only question is...why? Unlike fellow Squaresoft RPGs FFVI and SMRPG, CT wasn't included on the SNES Classic. It hasn't received a new series on Netflix like Castlevania did (also a franchise with representation on the SNESC). Crono hasn't even gotten into Smash Ultimate! There is no good reason why CT's plummet should have stopped, and yet, it seemed to have done so. Oh, wait, yes there was. The ever-dwindling vote totals. This site hardly gets any traffic normally, with contests representing an uptick due to social media spreading the word--but even then, it probably only draws in hardcore old-school gamers like the ones who've been sticking around all these years on Board 8. The hardcore fanbase that's still stuck in the 1990s is the only one still voting. So we're probably going to see whatever representatives of ancient franchises had new releases this past decade dominate the upcoming GotD. (I mean granted, we all *already* crowned Breath of the Wild the moment it came out, but it's even more obvious now.) --- ## (4)Zelda vs (6)Sonic the Hedgehog (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (6)Sonic the Hedgehog (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88625)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Good hell, Zelda. This contest had four matches where someone in the Noble Nine lost to someone from outside the group. Pikachu \> Mega Man, Zelda \> Snake, Tifa \> Sephiroth, and this match. I think in terms of overall impact Sephiroth's loss was the worst one, but this match here where Zelda made Sonic look like an absolute scrub was by far the biggest blowout of any of those four matches. We covered Sonic's near misses in the Sonic/Auron writeup, but it's worth noting that Sonic has some bad losses when he faces the upper tier in these contests. Samus has embarrassed him three times now. Cloud in 2003 was the match that made everyone go "uh oh, Cloud's got a real shot at this", because Sonic got his ass beat so badly that year. Link has beaten him like a drum, his games always underwhelm, and his performances in multi-way polls are just awful. And none of that prepared anyone for just how awful Zelda made the dude look here. This wasn't some bandwagon fluke where Zelda won close. She was the stronger character in this match and this was never actually a match. In fact Sonic is lucky this wasn't a whole lot worse. Zelda easily could have had 58% had she not taken her foot off the gas, and for my money this is Sonic's worst loss of his career. Getting blown out by Link or Cloud is one thing. Getting blown out by Zelda is quite something else, and proves one important thing on top of Zelda merely being on some BotW-induced steroids. Sonic is a Nintendo character now. And when you're a Nintendo character, bad things happen when you go up against The Legend of Zelda. Ask any of them. They've all bent the knee. The Zelda series is basically the Lannisters, or the Protheans, or Thanos, the ancient Romans. Bend the knee, or die. Those are your options. And yes I'm using Sonic losses to get hyped for Marvel movies and Game of Thrones and all the other great things coming in 2019 like 4 months early. I give no fucks. Sonic even looks like the Stark sigil and Zelda might as well be Cersei. Link can be Jon Snow, Cloud can be Jamie Lannister, Sheik can be Arya, and most importantly, Samwell Tarly is Tingle. Hell you could make the entire GoT cast with Zelda characters. Oh and did you think Zelda was finished playing the game of thrones in this contest? We've created a monster, gentlemen. This was going to get so much worse before it got better. ## Safer777's Analysis Zelda beat Snake who has to be the strongest non Nintendo character and maybe even Number 2 on this site. No way she would lose to Sonic. And after the previous match of Sonic where he couldn't even break 55% on Auron he didn't stand a chance. So Zelda won fairly easy. If Sonic managed to score above 45% I would consider this a really good result but now? I guess Sonic has to be the 2nd weakest NN member now. And Zelda of course continues to impress. Maybe star of the contest. Extremely strong of course. Also this is the worse defeat for a NNer against a non NNer too! ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh, hey, speaking of dwindling vote totals... It should be noted that Sonic had fewer votes in this match than Crono did in the previous one, but got a better percentage. Though this could be in part because Allen forced voters to vote for all matches taking place on a given day or for none of them, and Cloud-Crono, in addition to being a big draw for GameFAQs' core fanbase, was paired with Link-Pikachu, while Zelda-Sonic was paired with yet another Mario-Samus match. Granted, *we* love Mario-Samus matches, because there's never any shortage of people arguing that this will finally be Samus's chance to upset Mario. And it's not really a *bad* argument, per se. Samus *does* look like she's almost there, and picking Samus \> Mario was what won raytan the Guru Contest in 2013 even if it only worked out because Mario had gotten upset in an earlier round. Anyway this is pretty much the most anti-climactic "upset" you'll ever see, which is to say, it was only an upset in the sense that *pre*-contest, we still thought that the only non-NN characters a member of the Noble Nine would lose to were rallybait. Not a single Oracle picked Sonic to win here, and why would they when Zelda had already dispatched the superior Snake? Even in the Guru, the favorite won--which is to say that *no one* had Sonic winning this match, while one entry had Zelda...oh, no, wait, that was the dummy entry used to bugfix the double elimination. Titled "Mr Bad Picks". Yeah, not really so bad after all, is it? The second chance bracket also had Zelda being carried over by a majority of those who had picked her to beat Snake. The initial brackets? ...Yeah, barely, but then again that was already a very small amount. Makes the Top 25 for "most surprising 1v1 results", though it narrowly misses out on the Top 25 overall. --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (7)Mario (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (7)Mario (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88623)_ ## Ulti's Analysis By now, everyone who follows these contests knows about the match these two had back in 2005: The reason a 60-40 blowout has gotten so much run over the years is because it blew up extrapolated standings in the face of a lot of Samus \> Mario hype that year. transience calls it his third most important match we've ever had. Statheads all picked Samus, because she was indirectly stronger. People with common sense picked Mario, because the idea of Samus beating Mario in a poll on this site at the time was asinine to us. You all know the rest. I wasn't exactly known for being a gracious winner at the time, and I penned a pretty embarrassing writeup of the match. It can be found here: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Mario_vs\_(1)Samus_Aran_2005 \] My opinion on statheads and their holy doctrine hasn't changed, but there are much better ways to go about giving an opinion than that bile I wrote. Good hell. I often get asked why I don't update old stuff. It's because I like to look back now and again and see how far my writing has come. I also got asked during this match why I love Mario so much, because loving Mario as a character makes no sense. This will seem weird and uncomfortable to a lot of people, but I've been meaning to archive this in a PCA for a long time. I might as well throw it in here. My real dad was either kicked out or left when my mom was pregnant, and the first 8 years or so of my life was really rough. We weren't poor, but we were really close to it. It was my single grandmother, my single mother, a bunch of single aunts and uncles, I had some really bad ADHD (still do, but as an adult I manage it a lot better), and most people in that house were really abusive. When my mom finally met a guy to marry, he ended up being an abusive, alcoholic pedophile. You can fill in the blanks. To this day I remember my mom dying when I was in high school and not even remotely caring. I told her once what my stepdad was doing, and her response was to not believe me before telling everyone else in my family I was a liar and a crazy person. Yeah, because a 12 year old would make any of that up. Moved out the day I turned 18 and I've almost never talked to anyone in my family since. I forgive them, but I haven't forgotten one thing. Not a one. To the point. My main escapes at the time were school (smartest person in my family by a mile and I was always well liked in school) and video games. Well as a super young kid going through all that nonsense, I had the original Nintendo. In high school I mowed lawns for a Sega Genesis. Never had anything else until I moved out. For the Nintendo I had Mario 1, Mario 2, Mario 3, Zelda 1, Zelda 2, TMNT 1, TMNT 2, Tetris, The Guardian Legend, Crystalis, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Wheel of Fortune, Donkey Kong Jr (the one with both games on it), and Duck Hunt. For Sega I had Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Madden 94, NHL 94, Jewel Master, Earthworm Jim 1, Earthworm Jim 2, Shanghai 2, Tony Larussa Baseball, NBA Jam, Vectorman, and Super High Impact. I remember my entire childhood library like it was yesterday, because at home when you're being abused in the worst possible way, those are your best friends and your best memories. Video games probably saved my life. True story. My favorite game on that entire list is Mario 3. I cannot actually put in words how important that game is to me on top of it just being a damn good game, but let's just say there are reasons beyond gaming I freaked out so much when Mario won in 2005. I like him winning in 2002 and 2003 in those debated matches too, but 2005 was just different. It's like really, my childhood hero is going to lose to someone I hadn't heard of before Smash 64? Get out of here. I could have handled it better, but I hope this helps people see why I wasn't exactly cordial about it at the time. The way I came up is why I have no sympathy for people who make excuses, either. I came out the other side as an adult and became successful. Stop making excuses and go to work. If I can do it, so can you. So let's fast forward 13 years. Here's Mario and Samus slated for their first duel since 2005, and it was.... actually.... close? Say what? When this started, it was not an SFF match at all. This was only 53-47, and Mario only had a 125 vote lead after 30 minutes. Then Samus knocked it down to 50 in ten minutes. Right then and there, it hit me. The people who backed Samus in 2005 were actually right. She is stronger than Mario indirectly, and I owe you all an apology. So here you go. Consider this writeup as cordial an apology as you'll ever get. You guys were right and had a perfectly fair point. Samus is absolutely capable of beating Mario. That 10 minute window proved it. Unfortunately, Mario buried Samus from then on out. Relatively speaking, at least. He won by about 800, but had a peak lead of nearly 1000. Mario may have won the rematch, but the implications here are obvious. This match shut down a 13 year old argument and pretty much made both sides look correct. That's as good of an ending as you can have to a feud. For that reason, these two having a rematch in this exact contest a few days later was awful. This match was a perfect ending. The rematch ripped the wound back open. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was extremely hyped. And it makes sense. We had the 2nd and 3rd strongest Nintendo characters here. These 2 have fought before and Mario won easily. And people still debate on that much! Come on people, 13 years have passed! So most thought that Mario would win because of Hierarchy. But we saw a few matches ago in Tifa/Sephiroth that even that can be reversed. And Samus was always really strong. Mario is of course strong too. And in this match he won. Barely though. So Samus did really good but it wasn't enough. But why Mario won since people say that Samus is stronger than Mario indirectly? Because of Hierarchy! You can't deny that here. We are talking about Top Tier Hierarchy here!  In Tifa/Sephiroth don't forget that Sephiroth is the bad guy. This matter too. For example I don't think Tifa will be able to beat Cloud ever. I don't know much about Metroid games but I think in the last years she hadn't had anything amazing. I mean I think the SNES game is considered the best right? Still Samus did really good here. Name another site which this match is this close. But since she did so good here maybe in a few years she can beat Mario, like how Tifa beat Sephiroth. Who knows? ## Tsunami's Analysis Another one of those matches that never really blew up but was never in doubt. Mario's lead at the halfway point of the match--in *votes*, not percentage--was barely smaller than his final margin of victory, 815, yet his largest lead of the entire match was still under 1000. The second half of the match was just a stall. Samus didn't even do any early threatening; she got the initial board vote, 8-6 at the first snapshot taken a few seconds in, but it was the last time she'd be recorded in the lead. This match really would've benefited from being done "in the moment", because these two characters would have a far superior match in the Losers' Bracket in a few days! --- ## (7)Pikachu vs (8)Mega Man (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (7)Pikachu vs (8)Mega Man (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88621)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I really have to sit in awe of some of the calls yoblazer makes in these things. He went on The Show and called that we would have a rematch in the loser's bracket that flips, and he said this was the most likely candidate. He even predicted the trends and the reasons. Damn bro. I did not think Mega Man would be able to win the rematch, and the funny thing here is this match did not at all look as close as that score is. Without Europe, I'm willing to bet Mega Man pushes to a 1000 vote win or so. When this started, there was a small blip at the beginning, but then Mega Man just took off from poll opening until the overnight Europe vote kicked in. He had about a 500 vote lead at that time, and the typical "you murdered my dog" overnight vote that typically buries Mega Man simply was not there. Well I mean it was, but we've seen Mega Man do worse overnight. Pikachu only got that lead down to 250 during the assistance of the entire overnight vote, and when Mega Man won the morning match against a Pokemon this thing was over. Pikachu was able to shave off some votes during the day time, but he never once threatened to actually win this match after the first five minutes. It's cool that Mega Man got some revenge here, but I'm not sure how much a loser's bracket match actually means in the long run. I actually said during the contest that these felt like bonus polls to me. Like who really cares that ? Block won a bonus poll once? At the time this match happened, we all assumed Zelda would just stomp through the loser's bracket anyway, and even then these matches didn't feel like they had the same meaning as the legends bracket. Basically, Pikachu's win over Mega Man meant a lot more than the getback. I would feel the same had Mega Man won first and Pikachu won the rematch. Outside of Mario vs Samus, it was hard for me to really care who won these losers bracket matches, even though double elimination was a good idea. Having a predictable overall winner will do that. ## Safer777's Analysis We saw this match a few days ago and Pikachu won and it was the first ever win against a NN'er in a 24 hour 1 on 1 match from a non NN'er. In this match MM won and with more than Pikachu defeated him. Barely though. Well in such close matches it makes sense that they can turn around. I wanted Pika to win but I don't care. Pikachu will  always be remembered in the contest history as the one that broke the NN so that is all that matters to me. Still turning around such a loss with a bigger win is nice to see of course. The question is will Pikachu hold on this power for the next contests though? Because MM will hold it if not go up for sure. Guess we shall see eventually. ## Tsunami's Analysis Pikachu 13809 Mega Man 14182 Whereas Pikachu and Mega Man's first match set a new record for closest wire-to-wire 24 hour match, their second match set the record for closest wire-to-wire 24 hour match in which the loser never led. It was actually on the wiki for awhile as the closest wire-to-wire match in which the loser never led, period, due to a digit transposition that had Mega Man's maximum lead listed as 478 rather than 487. Yes, the 9 votes makes a difference; the record, set in a 12-hour match in 2013, is 480. The prevailing theory tossed around as to how Pikachu was able to pull out the upset the first time was that because of the hiatus between the end of the main bracket and the start of Legends, casuals "weren't ready" for the return. They point to the fact that Mega Man won the raw vote in that match and only lost because of the registered user bonus. And the fact that Mega Man's lead, which as stated above never reached 500, was already above 400 *three hours into the match*, certainly does suggest that a "readiness" was involved. But I say that's still bunk. Here, let me pull up the numbers for you from that first match: Mega Man 14396 Pikachu 14458 Mega Man had fewer votes in the match he won than in the match he lost! In fact, the only figure that's higher in the match that people were supposedly "more ready for" is Mega Man's unregistered votes, 5308-5288. Both characters received fewer total votes and fewer votes from registered users, though the most glaring discrepancy, at 5140-4845, is Pikachu's unregistered votes. A far more likely explanation is that Pikachu voters were unmotivated to go back for a match they'd already won. Which kind of makes sense, because double-elimination brackets aren't supposed to look like this. It's supposed to be that each successive round sends its losers to a far-flung region of the loser's bracket from the previous one, so that rematches of winner's bracket matches are kept to a minimum. I *kind* of understand why Allen did it the way he did--to minimize how much a wrong pick wrecks your bracket--but it was wrong and it was stupid. As for the match, Pikachu never really threatened to take back the lead. Mega's lead maxed out around 5 hours in, Pikachu eventually whittled it down to under 250 over the next 6 hours, and then Mega slowly started building it back up, maxing it at...478. Maybe it wasn't a digit transposition, but faulty searching that failed to notice how high the lead was early on? Pikachu would eventually get it down to 260 before Mega Man started building it again at the end. This would set up another hyped match, to see what the Noble Nine's pecking order really looked like. --- ## (5)Crono vs (4)Bowser (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (5)Crono vs (4)Bowser (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88619)_ ## Ulti's Analysis On November 28th, 2018, these two had this literal exact same match in the legend bracket: This match here in the losers bracket happened on December 5th, eight days later. It was literally the same exact match, and if memory serves Crono even had the same exact picture as last game. Same trends, same everything. The only difference this time is Bowser kept it close for 10 minutes instead of 5. "Yay." Oh, and there was 0.13% difference in the final percentage. Awesome. This is why the structure I talked about during the mid contest analysis is how it should have been laid out. We had six direct rematches in a double elimination bracket, which is not possible if it's laid out correctly. You should, at most, have three rematches. Six is just a bad layout, which sucks because I legitimately liked this idea. Coincidentally, only three of these six rematches were worth having (Mega Man/Pikachu, Mario/Samus, and Link/Cloud) and only two were good matches. Crono vs Bowser was not one of them. Moving on. ## Safer777's Analysis Yup another match that we saw a few days ago. Crono did a bit worse here, like 0.13%! So yeah pretty stable. Of course when the first match ended in such big win for Crono no way without rallies Bowser could win here. Nice thing for Bowser though is that he is the one Villain that lasted more than all other Villains! Both Ganondorf and Sephiroth lasted less than him. And these 3 are the strongest villains. So that is moral victory for Bowser! ## Tsunami's Analysis The poorly constructed double-elimination bracket resulted in 6 rematches, 3 in this round alone. A couple of those rematches actually had something worth talking about. This was not one of them. Like the previous match, the overall vote total went down from the original. But whereas the percentages in that match moved by 0.78%, and a very influential 0.78% since it was shifting in favor of the original loser who already had 49.89%, this one shifted a mere 0.13%. Please never do a double elimination bracket again, Allen, but if you do, at least do it right next time! --- ## (6)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Solid Snake (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (6)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Solid Snake (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88617)_ ## Ulti's Analysis LOL, X STATS Well would you look at what we have here.... And yet despite Snake doing better than Zelda did on Sonic, Zelda beat Snake! How is such a thing even possible? It's possible because as I have said for years and years, stats are a very loose guide and each match takes on a life of its own. Solid Snake was not going to go out of this contest like a bitch and get blown out in double elimination, so this was his time to shine. It unfortunately had to come at Sonic's expense, but what can you do. At least Sonic won a match in this thing, too, against Auron. In fact, all of the Noble Nine won at least one match in this contest. Sephiroth was the only one not to win anything in the double elimination, but he won matches in the main bracket. I guess Allen knew what he was doing with leaving Seph out, because he's probably the weakest Noble Nine guy at this point. This match was good for Snake, but it sucked for Board 8 because of him outdoing Zelda's number. This caused some dumb arguments about whether adjustments needed to be made, which I promise you I gave absolutely zero cares about. I look at these matches at face value and have fun with them. That's it. Arguing over percentage micro adjustments is just not my thing. With Sonic out of it as of this match, I really have to wonder how he was seemingly the only Sonic character to look bad this year. I get the others all faced garbage competition, but man. Sonic's only win was getting 54% on Auron. Brutal. That will happen when 8 of 9 members all get thrown into a bonus bracket immediately though! ## Safer777's Analysis This match was pretty easy to predict. They both faced Auron, Sonic scored 54.32% and Snake scored 61.48%. And these characters are not from the same company so no Hierarchy and such. So Snake won easily here. People say that Sonic and Sephiroth are the weakest NN'ers and Snake maybe is the strongest non Nintedo character. He lost to Zelda yeah, but Zelda is the star of the contest so no problem. But who really knows? Nice victory for Snake. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was the only match of Loser's Bracket Round 2 that was not a rematch of a winner's bracket match, which...counterintuitively, suggests that there was at least *some* thought put into the placements of characters. After all, this round was Losers 1 winners vs. Legends 2 losers. In a properly seeded tournament, you'd *expect *the entrants that lost to the Legends 2 favorites in Legends 1 to be the underdogs in Losers 1. I feel like I'm not really doing it justice in sentence format so let's use the seedings given to the eight Noble Niners given auto-passes to Legends and pretend that the eight division winners have the proper seedings to be facing them. 1\) Link 16) Ganondorf 8\) Mega Man 9) Pikachu 4\) Cloud Strife 13) Alucard 5\) Crono 12) Bowser 3\) Solid Snake 14) Zelda 6\) Sonic the Hedgehog 11) Auron 2\) Samus Aran 15) Tifa Lockhart 7\) Mario 10) Sephiroth ...Okay, so the actual results showed that maybe Mario and Samus had their seeds swapped, though in fairness, Seph is a Noble Niner and really probably should've been put against the 8-seed. But regardless of that, the only Loser's Bracket 2 match that isn't a rematch occurred when the 14-seed has managed to pull off two upsets. Does that bracket actually look perfectly seeded? No, it doesn't. If you wanted Mario-Samus in Round 2, they probably should've been the 4-5. Switching the placements of Cloud-Crono and Mario-Samus probably makes the top 8 feasible, though you'd obviously have to move Sephiroth so that he could properly receive his 9-seed because...oh, wait, Mario was the 7, not the 2. I guess Sephiroth as the 10 with Cloud as the 2 is fine. As for the match itself, it was a clear, unadulterated beatdown. Sonic occasionally won an update here and there but for the most part Snake was increasing all day. --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (3)Tifa Lockheart (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (3)Tifa Lockheart (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88615)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We just had this match: This was every bit as awful as Crono vs Bowser's rematch was, although I guess with these two characters being more popular some people cared more? I think? Maybe? The final difference between the first match and the rematch was 0.35%, which is not at all a rematch worth having. The only thing here worth talking about was Vlado's meltdown over Tifa losing, because he loves Tifa and hates Samus. I legitimately do not understand liking one of these characters and hating the other. They're both bad bitch good looking alpha females who just beat the hell out of everything around them despite being on the ass end of crazy odds. They might as well be the exact same character at the end of the day, but this match helped prove that Tifa has a very noticeable and definitive ceiling. Maybe in 15 years she'll get revenge on Samus the way she got her revenge on Sephiroth finally, but as of 2018 she is simply not on Samus's level. That isn't as crazy an idea as some might think, because it's pretty blatantly clear that Nintendo does not care about the Metroid series. I mean they make games for it, given Metroid Other M happened I have a hard time believing that they actually care about the series. No company with any respect for a franchise would put out such an abominable shit show of a video game. I'm quoting myself, because why not. I'll be as lazy as this match was! This is why the structure I talked about during the mid contest analysis is how it should have been laid out. We had SIX direct rematches in a double elimination bracket, which is not possible if it's laid out correctly. You should, at most, have three rematches. Six is just a bad layout, which sucks because I legitimately liked this idea. Coincidentally, only three of these six rematches were worth having (Mega Man/Pikachu, Mario/Samus, and Link/Cloud) and only two were good matches. Samus vs Tifa was not one of them. We had six direct rematches. I am ranking them only by how much I cared about them. 1 - Mario vs Samus 2 - Cloud vs Crono 3 - Mega Man vs Pikachu 4 - Link vs Cloud 5 - Samus vs Tifa 6 - Crono vs Bowser If you pay attention, I only actually care about one of these matches. The first one. Cloud vs Crono I only care about because it proved me right about sprites. The rest, who cares. This is a big reason I'm bummed out Zelda didn't go even farther, which we'll get to. ## Safer777's Analysis Another rematch. 3 out of 4 matches were rematches. Hope next time the Losers Bracket is better made. And unlike MM VS Pika where the match was extremely close and anyone could win, this one and the Crono one wasn't possible to change because the difference was so big. Tifa did slighlty better here at least. I wonder if Sephiroth was here would he do better? Probably not but who knows? Samus is pretty strong anyways. Also for the Tifa pic here she had HUGE tits! Seriously, big like her head! But of course it didn't helped much. Guess the TJF doesn't work against other women. Or when the opponent is so strong. ## Tsunami's Analysis And again, just a minor change to percentage. All three of this round's rematches featured the loser of the original match improving on their percentage, but only one--which had the highest movement anyway--had an original match close enough to be flipped. --- ## (1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88613)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Good. Freaking. Hell. We all knew Link would be a monster this year, but this is just insanity. As we all know, Cloud won the very first match he had with Link. Link has since spent 15 years beating the ever-loving shit out of the dude in revenge. It's been brutal. Here are all of the Link vs Cloud matches leading up to this one, in order: Their games have a similar history, too. Final Fantasy 7 won the very first match with Ocarina of Time, and has gotten its ass whipped ever since. There are two correlations here. One, Final Fantasy has not retained its strength. I'll get more into this when discussing the second match these two had, but Square been dropping the ball for almost two decades, and while Nintendo hasn't been perfect and in fact went through a long period between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild where they were awful, Nintendo has been killing it since Breath of the Wild came out. That singular game changed everything with making the Zelda series open world, and when you add in Smash Ultimate the Nintendo dominance on this site is unmatched. We saw signs of this all throughout the contest (just look at all my writeups and search for the word "Smash"), and those signs all had to lead somewhere. They led to Link breaking 60 fucking percent on Cloud. That is an absurd number to get on someone who may still be our site's \#2 character. Cloud actually breaking 40% in the rematch is a minor miracle. That's how dominant Link was in this contest, and had 1998 never happened in the years contest, Link in this one would be our most dominant non-rally champion ever. The other correlation here is that as GameFAQs has gotten more and more corporate and politically correct, it has gotten deader and deader and our vote totals have died. I want everyone to click on all of those poll links and just look at the vote totals. Now look at this one. It didn't even break 30,000 votes. Link himself had 30k by lunch time in most of those matches against Cloud. I have no interest in turning this into a politics discussion, but you have to be a company like Nike to survive going political in today's climate. GameFAQs has enough disadvantages as-is with intentionally staying obsolete as gaming went more and more streamlined and modernized. Going full leftist on top of that was just an idiotic move, and you see it in our vote totals. When you push enough people off of your site and constantly tell them they're free to leave, eventually they'll just leave. To the point, as vote totals have lowered, Zelda has retained strength. Cloud has not. It is that simple. But I want to focus on vote totals a bit. We don't even have to go back that far. Only five years ago, this match happened: 122,000 votes. The finals that year got 150,000 votes. Three years ago, this match happened: The final, featuring Zelda vs Undertale, got 157,000 votes. Now, our best matches get 30,000. That isn't just anti-rallying measures. That's us being on a site actively chasing people off. As for the match, it was interesting in the same way a car crash is interesting. Seeing Link be this much of a badass, even with lowered vote totals, was one hell of s site to see. He was actually over 62% at one point, which is just nuts. Cloud only won like 10 updates all match. This was just an embarrassment, and this is with Cloud having Smash Bros support. Can you even imagine how bad this would have been had he never gotten announced for Smash 4 or got cut from Ultimate? Does Link break 65% if that happens? Man. This was just brutal. Cloud would get to redeem himself in a way, but that doesn't stop this match from being completely and thoroughly embarrassing for him. ## Safer777's Analysis This is. The match that is tradition in these contests. We have seen this match so many times and only 1 time Cloud won. In the previous matches Link was scoring around 53% on average while Cloud was scoring around 47%. Now everyone in this match expecting Link to score high fifties while Cloud to score low forties. Personally I called before the match that Cloud wouldn't be able to break 40% and he would be lucky to even do that. Even the Crew didn't go such high for Link! And you see what happened. In the last hours of the match Cloud was beginning to gain percentage but he wasn't able to even reach 40%. We all knew that Link is strong but now nothing can beat him now. Not even rallies, nothing can I believe. There is Snake but we didn't know in this match how much weaker he would have gotten. So yeah. BOTW really boosted Link and Zelda. I believe Link is time to go finally. Have him face the champion as the bonus match and give no points for that. He will never lose again. And no other site cares for Gamefaqs to organize a rally anyways now. You can see that in the vote totals. All other characters can lose to other characters. All of them. Except Link. Fun! So  there you go. Link won! I know the journey matters, not the destination but still. ## Tsunami's Analysis In my write-up of Sonic vs. Snake, I talked about the seeding for the Legends Bracket and what might have made more sense. Mario in particular seemed underseeded, I guess so he could be matched up with Sephiroth but Allen could've easily moved the divisions around. But seeing this as a semifinal match just begs the question, how far did Allen think FFVII had fallen? Link vs. Cloud is pretty much a finals tradition; we've seen it in 60% of character battles, including this one thanks to the double elimination format. And yes I'm counting the finale of the 2006 Battle Royale here. The outliers are 2002, where they were on opposite sides of the bracket but Cloud was infamously upset by Mario; 2003, where they met in the semifinals; 2005, which was kind of a no-win situation because the Tournament of Champions was to be Link, Cloud, Sephiroth, and a main bracket champion that was presumed to most likely be Mario (it was). Even with that only being the fourth character battle, Mario winning the main bracket (which he did) would assure that all three matches of the ToC were rematches from the first three years. Probably still should've gone with Link-Sephiroth and Cloud-main bracket champ (since the other favorite in the main bracket, Crono, had faced Link but not Cloud or Sephiroth), but either way...and 2013, when Draven turned the entire contest upside down. They also met in the semifinals in 2007, but since two characters advanced from each fourpack, they were able to both make the finals. But really, it was hardly even relevant, because this was Cloud's worst performance against Link by far. In direct 1v1s, Link had never even broken 54% against Cloud, and even in matches with multiple characters, the only time Link was able to get 1.5 times Cloud's vote total (equivalent of a 60-40 in 1v1) was in Day 3 of the 2006 Battle Royale. Which I guess is proof that even Link is not completely immune to LFF since it suggests that he previously not only needed Sephiroth in the match to pull it off but also for Mario and Samus to both be absent. In a way, it's kind of disappointing that the top characters were held out of the main bracket. It's fun to see a good old-fashioned blowout every once in awhile, the big dogs going to town on the fodder every once in awhile. It's kind of like the difference between men's basketball and women's basketball. In the men's tournament, the raw records are usually a fairly good match to the seeding lines, because the mid-majors are usually going to get dinged in non-conference when they play the top teams. The women's tournament will frequently have teams with double-digit losses up around the 4-5 matchups while the 12-13 seeds they beat to get there had only 2 or 3 losses, because the top teams play each other in the regular season *all the time*, which by correlation means that there aren't any "big dogs" to keep the mid-majors from running up gaudy records. I suspect this is done to try to drum up interest in the regular season since the women's game is far more wanting for viewers, but let's be honest; if you're interested enough in the women's game to be enticed by the marquee matchups, you'd probably watch the marquee teams face overmatched teams, too. For those who aren't paying attention until the tournament, however, it's just confusing, because March Madness was built on the upsets. When a team like Stephen F. Austin makes it to the men's tournament with a record of 30-3 and gets a 12-seed, we jump on that potential upset. In the women's bracket, almost everything looks like a potential upset, and it usually isn't. Watching titans go at it is fun, but to truly appreciate greatness, you have to see it overpower weaklings from time to time, too. Otherwise you just have to trust the experts that yes, this is greatness, just not quite as great as some other greatness. Link was just on another level this contest. We saw it with Zelda in the main bracket, but it was clearly evident that it was the series boost too, as opposed to just that strange boost that a lot of female characters seemed to have this contest. --- ## (4)Zelda vs (7)Mario (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (7)Mario (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88611)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Right about here is where Zelda's run became completely insane. I mean it already was, but this was the exact "oh shit" moment that made everyone just lose it. These two actually had two matches together ten years ago. It looked like this: Mario has always struggled with the Zelda series, but he himself was a shit-kicking badass in these contests back in the day. But as of this match, this dude has a definitive and clear ceiling: The Legend of Zelda. All three characters have now tripped him up in contests. Link has beaten Mario like a drum, Ganondorf directly cost Mario a 3way match where Vivi snuck in for the win, and now this. Believe it or not this was a very close match for a long time, but Zelda took off near the very end. That said, Mario never once had a lead and Zelda was pretty much in control of things the entire time. Zelda won the board vote, and built up a 100 vote lead over an hour. Mario fought back a little, but one 40 vote update later and Zelda was holding serve again. She got it over 200 at midnight, and while Mario fought back a little overnight, we all figured Zelda would just go back up with the morning vote. Turns out it wouldn't actually happen that way. Zelda's lead fell to 60 overnight, but then the morning vote came and she shot right back up to 200. We all figured it was over at that point, but then Mario had one final small push in him before getting buried after lunch. These two were within 200 or so for 16 hours, but Zelda spent the last few just annihilating the guy. She eventually won by 500, which dispelled the whole idea of "The Mario Clutch". That hasn't been a thing for a long time, but Mario has lost enough close matches now to where we can put it to bed for good. Even the rematch with Samus doesn't technically count, which I'll get into later. Zelda was already the star of this contest, but this match converted any holdouts. Zelda was this contest's only real story at this point, as well as the only extended thing to hold our interest. She was the only one from the main bracket to go on a big run in the legends bracket. Including the main bracket, Zelda won 7 matches this year and beat three different Noble Nine members -- Snake, Sonic, and now Mario. Her bandwagon was growing really quickly, and if rallying were a thing, or if GameFAQs were still alive, she might have made a real push to win the contest this year. Unfortunately, this match would be her last victory. Doesn't make her run any less awesome, but this would have been so much cooler back when we had real vote totals. Still, that 1.66% prediction percentage can't go ignored. It's in the top ten hardest matches to call in the history of these contests, and is by far the hardest match to call for this one. In fact, the only things harder to call than this Zelda run are Draven, Undertale, and L-Block. Meaning this Zelda run was our biggest outlier for a non-rally ever. Most of the time this stuff is hard to explain, but in Zelda's case it's very simple. Breath of the Wild really did boost her this much. We'll see if her newfound Noble Nine level strength is sustainable, but for now let's just enjoy it, as this was legitimately the only sustainable bandwagon in Character Battle X with any real strength. Tifa was cute and all, but Samus destroyed her. Twice. Zelda actually threatened Link for 10 minutes and almost got a rematch with him. Ironically, Smash Bros being Nintendo's new strength was also what kept us from getting an all-Zelda grand final. Seeing her strength here was nuts. This girl went from losing to Charizard in 2013, losing to Snake in 2005, getting blown out by Mega Man in 2003.... to this. what an absurd jump in strength, and I freakin love it. We need way more examples of insane boosts or losses in strength. Props to you, Zelda. Star of the contest and by far the best story of the year. Well deserved, too, given people to this day keep getting Link and Zelda backwards. Sucks we didn't get a Zelda/Samus match either, but hey. Can't be greedy! Speaking of, props to the LOL x stat people for adjusting Zelda 3 points below a character she directly beat this year. Because Zelda wins this match, yet is somehow 3 points below him. Sure. You guys never fail with the unintentional comedy whenever a characters busts up your holy doctrine. ## Safer777's Analysis I still can't believe it. Well we said that when Zelda reached Squall that Squall had a chance to beat her. Nope. When she faced Snake we all said that was it for Zelda. Nope. Then Sonic maybe? Nope. But Mario? It is FREAKING Mario! Hierarchy! Nope. Zelda beat him. She beat everyone. Everyone! Do you know how many people had her reaching the final match? 1.66% which I believe is the 3rd lowest for a 1 VS 1 match! And one of the lowest predictions ever even if we count 4ways and 3ways of course. And she  did it! Also another crazy thing is that Mario was NEVER ahead. Never! Zelda was always ahead of him. Every time Mario was cutting and came close to her, Zelda was  pulling ahead. In the end there were porn rallies(of course there were)and Zelda managed to win with almost 500 votes too. I don't think anyone can say anything more. The final match is Link VS Zelda! Seriously! I know we jest and we say Nintendofaqs and Dronefaqs but there you go! Zelda big star of the contest no doubt. I guess we can say Zeldafaqs too now? Also another crazy thing about the percentage is that is the lowest for a non rally character/game too! I said there were some porn rallies but she would win without these too. Man BOTW did crazy things for the LOZ characters. Still amazing win. Congrats to the people that had her reaching the final match! You believed! ## Tsunami's Analysis Yes, it's really happening. The Zelda hype train was just too much to stop. Just like in her match against Snake, Zelda lost the registered vote but had enough unregistered vote to overcome the registered vote bonus. The trends were more pronounced here, though; whereas against Snake, she lost the registered vote by under 100 and made up for it with an unregistered vote lead of a bit over 300, here Mario took the registered vote by 203, only to lose the unregistered vote by ***897. ***Zelda led wire-to-wire, too; it looked for much of the match as though the biggest obstacle to breaking Mega Man-Pikachu II's new record would be Mario taking the lead, as he fought back at times, getting the deficit under 60 at the 2-hour mark after it had ballooned to 100 in under an hour and kept rising, then later getting it into the low sixties again amidst an entire hour below 100 after it had already swollen to 225 at one point, and finally getting it briefly back down to double-digits at the 15-hour mark. In fact at that point, both of the Pikachu-Mega Man matches' records were in jeopardy, as with just 9 hours to go, the largest lead Zelda had ever held was 225. But that's when Zelda took off. She set a new largest lead only an hour and forty minutes after Mario's cut to 97, then eliminated the chance of breaking Mega Man-Pikachu I's record in the next update before eventually getting it all the way up above 500 with nearly 3 hours to go. Maybe Allen's onto something with these decreased-frequency contests. Back when we got them every year, X-Stats were usually fairly reliable. Our last known value for Zelda involved her getting LFFed by Donkey Kong enough that she couldn't beat Charizard in a close match, a result that seemed okay immediately after it happened but less so after Charizard lost in exactly the same fashion to Mega Man while *Zero* was the third character. Any result that makes you compare unfavorably to the Weighted Companion Cube does not reflect well on you, which is why everyone started calling Charizard a ***FRAUD*** (he kind of was, but the degree of it might've been a bit overstated.) And yet, here's Zelda looking every bit the elite character. Unlike last round, where everyone knew she'd beat Sonic after she'd beaten Snake, the Oracles still sided with Mario, with only 10% of them picking Zelda to pull the upset. Just 1.66% of brackets picked Zelda to reach the Legends' final, which was tied for 7th all-time most surprising outcomes (trailing only Draven's last three wins, Undertale's last two, and L-Block's championship; tied with L-Block reaching the championship). That's arguably not even the most impressive part of her run, though. Remember, there was also a "Second Chance Bracket" that applied only to the Legends Bracket portion. Unlike in the regular bracket, you already knew when filling out that bracket that Zelda was in the final 16, and furthermore you would have seen her dominate her four regular bracket matches. And even in that contest, only 6.88% of brackets picked Zelda! That figure of 6.88% would be good for a spot in the top 25 for 1v1 matches only, tied for 17th. This meant that the Legends Bracket finals, and presumably the grand finals, would be an SFF match, something we hadn't seen happen since Character Battle II (not counting Rivalry Rumble). Talk about an anticlimax. --- ## (8)Mega Man vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (8)Mega Man vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88609)_ ## Ulti's Analysis At a glance, this will seem like just a regular close match in the losers bracket. For Board 8, it meant so much more. This board loves Chrono Trigger. Always has. And from the very first contest, we have watched Crono and his game get beaten down and screwed over so many times that we've just come to expect it at this point. The close losses and embarrassing choke jobs are too numerous to list in one writeup, but I've done it many times in the past and those examples are easy enough to find. The losses to Mario in 2002 and 2003. The Melee rally. Missingno. The Sonic comeback. The Knuckles comeback. Being the first one, ever, to break the Noble Nine's streak in any format. Crono and Magus killing each other so a mouse could get a win. Magus losing to a punching bag. Crono's only win over Mario meaning nothing. I could go on for a long time. Read MWC's writeup on this list: That's our top ten games list that we submitted with DDJ back in the day. Chrono Trigger was \#6. I'm almost positive it would be \#1 if we reran that list. This site in general agrees: Nick has a Chrono Trigger fan page on Facial Book. I could probably make the argument GameFAQs is the \#1 fan site for that game. I know it's 2018 and our vote totals suck and our site is dead now, but dammit, this was a convergence of so many things and so many people finally deciding to say fuck it. Enough is enough and we want the guy to finally clutch up. I love you too Mega Man, but Crono needed this a lot more than you did. Crono did this against a guy boosted by Smash, too, which makes this even cooler. Not that it wasn't one hell of a grind. After some early struggles, Mega Man built up a lead of 249 votes. It's the widest this match would get, and as of this match it would be second place on the list for closest 1v1 24 hours matchups -- topped only by Pikachu beating Mega Man in the legends bracket. Mega Man had quite the doozies this year, huh? After the lead peaked, Crono started to very, very slowly chip away. Come midnight, he was only down by 12 and coming on strong. Given Mega Man has the murdered-a-puppy night vote in Europe, one might expect Crono to start building a lead there. One problem. Chrono Trigger didn't come out in Europe until 2009. The one guy Mega Man might be able to win a night vote against is Crono, and it's like really? Mega Man spent the next few hours getting a 200 vote lead again, and given how bad Chrono Trigger is during the day time (the game and all the characters seem to go from bad to worse once the morning vote hits), the match looked over. But thanks to some random miracle, cosmic vortex, black hole, happenstance, coincidence, or whatever you want to call it, Crono actually fought back with the morning. I don't know why or how, and I don't even care. Our boy was back in this thing! These two then proceeded to have dual open heart surgery all morning and half the afternoon. It was a lot of stalling, back and forth, and chipping away at each other. Think the 20 inning game this past world series, except this poll in the grand scheme meant nothing. Although I guess the Dodgers winning that game meant nothing either, thanks to the metrics idiots actively ruining baseball. Way to sit your top four home run hitters in game 2, guys. Anyway, this ultimately led to the poll being tied with five hours left. When Crono finally decided to take a lead in this damn match, he was not letting up for any reason. He would end up ultimately winning by 112. I know this poll doesn't mean much at the end of the day, but for long suffering Crono fans it was something. When you have a starving human being on death's doorstep, you can't just jump right in and feed them ice cream and weight gain shakes. It'll shock the system to death. You have to slowly ease into a normal metabolism. That's basically what this match was for Crono fans. Our boy finally clutched up. Outside of maaaaaaybe that Vincent match in 2008, when has this ever actually happened? I do love Mega Man, don't get me wrong. I wrote two guides for his games. But Crono deserved this. No one can argue otherwise. ## Safer777's Analysis As you see from the results this match was really exciting. These 2 were head to head the whole match. MM was ahead for around 19 hours when Crono took the lead and  managed to win. Personally I didn't expected that. Also funny to see that Pikachu, MM and Crono have the same power basically. This is also one of the closest wire to wire matches since the maximum lead was from MM and that was around 250 votes. Eventually Crono won with like 110 votes. Also no lead changes strangely enough. Only 1! Also as someone told me this was Crono's first victory against a NN'er without LLF from 2005! Finally he managed to do it too! When a match is so close not much can be said. Any time these kind of matches repeat, the result can easily flip around. Still Crono won. Man imagine if Crono was in more games. He would be so strong! Also as per tradition MM did really bad in Europe and he won in USA. But he deserved a win. I will never understand how Crono can be so strong with only 1 old game on his name but there you go. Imagine if he was in Smash or we had a HD remake or something. I can only hope! ## Tsunami's Analysis This match was pretty much exactly what we wanted: two characters of relatively similar strength going at it. The Oracles were fairly split on this match; 30 picked Crono and 17 picked Mega Man, and on both sides, the highest pick was above 53% but below 53.5%. The Guru brackets...not so much. 101 Gurus had Mega Man winning this match, compared to just 86 who had Crono even *in* this match. Old trends die hard, and at the start of the contest, we thought Crono was still the weak link of the Noble Nine, except for maybe Sonic. As for the match itself, it was a barnburner. Mega Man won the first update and struggled to build a lead. 45 minutes in, he took an update by 40 votes and tacked on another 22 on the next one, only to see it almost all wiped out with a 43-vote win for Crono. At this point, a second such swing would give Crono his first lead...so *Mega Man* took the next update by 51 to end the first hour with a lead of 85. He'd have a similar big update at the end of the second hour to get his lead to triple digits for the first time, and he'd finish the third hour with a lead of 249. The first update of hour 4 was a dead stall, and then Crono started tearing into the lead. It took him less than two hours to get the deficit back to double digits, and with 10 minutes left in hour 6, Mega Man led by a mere 12 votes...but Mega Man refused to break, refusing to relinquish the lead and eventually getting it to 200 on the dot 3.5 hours after the local minimum of 12. It took Crono an hour and 25 minutes to halve that lead...and then another hour and 5 minutes to get back to that same deficit after Mega started fighting back *again*, allowing him to finally get the deficit back into double digits just before the halfway point of the match. Mega Man still refused to give up, and got it back into triple digits at the 15-hour mark. Shortly thereafter, Crono *finally* began the comeback that would stick, breaking through to take the lead for the first time with just 5 hours and 10 minutes left in the match, and this would prove to be the only lead change after the freeze. Crono's largest lead was a mere 137, half an hour before the end of the match, and Mega's max lead of 249 a mere *3 hours in* was good for a spot in the top 5 closest wire-to-wire matches--at the time that it occurred, it was 5th overall, 4th among 1v1 matches, and second only to Mega Man's *first* loss of the contest among 24-hour matches. So while it did appear that Mega Man had fallen to the bottom of the Noble Nine totem pole (well, okay, there's still maybe Sonic), you almost have to feel bad for him, losing in two of the most brutal slugfests ever. Also, it should be noted that despite Board 8's well-documented pro-Crono leanings and the site as a whole having pro-JRPG leanings, Mega Man actually took the registered vote and only lost due to a deficit with unregistered voters. Oh, and this managed to get a place on the 25 most surprising 1v1 results, too, with just 8.2% of initial brackets picking Crono to win this. He did get a slight boost to 13.9% on Second Chance Brackets, though, so I guess the field of 16 looked a little more favorable to Crono than the full field did? Actually I guess that checks out; Crono had a better prediction percentage in Second Chance all the way through, even in his very first match, so I suspect there were some people out there who thought Kirby could upset Crono but didn't feel Bowser could do the same when he got there instead of Kirby. Kirby still gets overrated because of his shenanigans in '08, when we've clearly seen that he's just not as strong in 1v1s as he is in multiways. --- ## (3)Solid Snake vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Solid Snake vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88607)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Most people didn't realize this when Draven was busy balling all over the contest back in 2013, but Samus was the third wheel in the final. Remember? Snake was openly rallied during that one, including David Hayter himself tweeting out support. None of it mattered and Snake got rolled. If Link was in there instead of Draven, Snake may very well have won that contest (do not fall for Board 8's revisionist history; they all wanted Link to lose, and then complained when he lost because someone who wasn't 'supposed' to beat Link is who beat Link, which is just dumb). Well Samus got doubly rolled on, which was an odd sort of revenge for Snake given he lost to her in the final back in 2006: For what it's worth Snake also finished ahead of Samus in this poll, but it's barely counted in writeups like this for obvious reasons: However you want to slice it, this match was a chance for Samus to return to form and layeth the smacketh down. I've said for a very long time that Snake's support collapses against Nintendo 1 on 1, because Nintendo is where his boost came from. Even this year, his two wins were against Sonic and Auron and he looked like a godkiller in the process. Put him against Zelda or Samus, and he completely folds. Put him against Mario or Link, and the same exact thing will happen. It's also exactly what happened here. This barely qualified as a contest match. It was Samus flexing some muscles for a little while and then waving on her way out like a boss. One of the most badass scenes ever. "Thanks, but I'm just doing my job. On to the next one like Jay-Z. Later." It would set up one of the best matches you'll ever see for Samus, and for Snake it was a rough way to go out, but he should have cashed in when he had the chance. He was in or near the contest final for almost a solid decade without ever winning one. I wouldn't call him the Buffalo Bills or anything because unlike them, Snake was actually competitive. He's more like the Vikings. They've been off and on as contenders since 1970, but they've never won anything and their losses are always brutal. That's pretty much an accurate description of Snake. He's trending down even with getting back into Smash, too. I covered why this makes me pretty sad in the Zelda v Snake writeup, so I won't rehash it here. It would have been great to see him win one. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was embarrassing for Snake. Remember when he scored almost 47% on Link? Yeah forget that. Samus dominated here. She is so strong. Don't understand why but she just is. Snake didn't stand a chance here. Funny enough with these results Tifa scores like 48% on Snake and Sephiroth around 45%? What is going on here??? Also Snake did good in most of Europe but he got buried in USA! Americans love their Nintendo! Personally I thought he was above Mario and Samus. I picked him in my bracket without a second though. Obviously I was wrong. I gues he has fallen this much because Konami doesn't care anymore? Don't know. He is in Smash at least so that gives him power. Anyways Samus won a great victory here. Well done. We need more strong females anyways! ## Tsunami's Analysis The hilarity of this double elimination bracket is that your Oracle and your Guru could both be right, but for completely different reasons. Samus was a 39-8 favorite among the Oracles who were still submitting predictions at this point in the contest, and she had over 75% of Guru brackets as well...because over 90% of Gurus had Snake winning at least two matches in the Legends' Bracket, and Round 3 losers wouldn't appear in the Losers' Bracket until the *next *round! Still, none of us expected Samus to nearly break 56.5%; only about a quarter of Oracles even had her winning by half that amount, and I managed just my second ever top prediction with a 55.6%. A win's a win, but it hardly had me feeling as prescient as my first \#1 did. --- ## (4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88605)_ ## Ulti's Analysis For most people, this was just another of this contest's pointless rematches. For me, this was a well earned victory lap for all of my volunteer work with picsmithing over the years. I usually ignore all of the idiots who whine about match pictures, but it was especially obnoxious and annoying this year so I am all too happy to give it right back when I am proven correct once and for all on the major sticking point these little crybaby manchildren were making for two solid weeks. Let's look closely at the first match these two had. (4)Cloud - 16694 \[56.73%\]   (5)Crono - 12731 \[43.27%\]   Total Votes - 29425 There was a difference of one percent between that match and the rematch that these two had one week later. One whole measly little percent. For all intents and purposes that is an irrelevant variance, but for the sake of argument we'll just say this is a difference worth discussing. And why do I concede this point? Because there was a huge difference between that match and this one. Sprites. You know, the same sprites that certain people were bitching about for two solid weeks? The same sprites that got all the blame for Ganon's so-called underperformance, even though he looked like garbage all contest? The same sprites that made people freak out for Snake, even though Solid Snake has never lost when his sprite was used? Yeah, that whole thing. Well look at what we have here. The exact same two characters had a match with each other one week apart, one with sprites and one without. This proves me right, as usual. Sprites don't make one goddamn bit of difference. None. At best, there is a one percent difference. Nice job, crybabies. You're wrong. As usual. Called it. Told you so. Vindicated. Yet another thing I was ahead of the curve on. As usual, Ulti Was Right. How does one man Fly All These Ws? On top of that, Crono got a Chrono Trigger sprite, while Cloud got his Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories sprite. The long standing belief is that Chrono Trigger sprites overperform. If that were the case, Crono would have done a lot better the first time. Yet he only did one percent better with a sprite that supposedly causes overperformances. If Crono had a so-called normal sprite, there would have been no difference whatsoever. This proves me right in duplicate. Called it. Told you so. Vindicated. Yet another thing I was ahead of the curve on. As usual, Ulti Was Right. How does one man Fly All These Ws? I promise you I am celebrating and giving the crybabies a big double bird, just like reynad did to his crybabies when he was falsely accused of sabotaging the Hearthstone meta to push Druid nerfs. I'm a lot louder than reynad though and have a much longer memory. Obviously. VI once said my Hearthstone comp is reynad. VI is correct on this. I'm the nicest guy on this planet until I get fucked with or falsely accused of something. Then it's justifiable pit bull time. People can disagree or argue with me all they want, but if they're fair about it (Logicblade during this PCA being a fine example) then it's all good. I'm making it a point to get like this as little as possible because I know full well it's not healthy, but it's well deserved in this case. People accusing me of pic sabotage over a sprite round is so laughably, certifiably, provably stupid that I didn't actually know if people were serious at first. By the way, I'm aware we had one other sprite vs non-sprite rematch happen. But this was the match to rant on, because Chrono Trigger sprites have been credited for overperformances since Magus in 2003. So if ever there would be a rematch to prove how sprites cause these wild percentage swings, this would have been the match. The other match, just for the curious, was Samus vs Mario. That match only changed by 1.5%, but there were reasons well beyond sprites that caused that difference. We'll get into that one in a second. In the meantime, it's time for me to celebrate. I'd like to thank me for all my hard work. I'd like to thank me for never giving up. I'd like to thank me for believing in me. I want to thank me for having no days off. I want to thank me for never quitting. I want to thank me for doing more right than wrong. I want to thank me for being a giver and giving more than I receive. Above all, I want to thank me for just being me at all times. ## Safer777's Analysis Another rematch. Fun! And unlike MM VS Pika the difference was huge so a different result wasn't possible. Cloud even did a whole 1% better too! Strangely enough I  believe that if MM was here he would do better but not win of course. And why you may ask? Because there is bound to be some SFF here. They are the main characters of the most popular JRPG's of this site. Not a big SFF but a small one. Still Cloud won easily of course. I think he is the strongest Non Nintendo Character for sure. As for Crono he did okay in this contest as most people will say. ## Tsunami's Analysis Loser's Bracket Round 4 consisted entirely of rematches of Legends' Bracket matches. One of them was an all-time classic, and the other was a boring retread of the first match. This one, sadly, was the latter. --- ## (7)Mario vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (7)Mario vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88603)_ ## Ulti's Analysis In their first match I discussed the history these two have, why I love Mario, and why the rivalry these two have is so important. No need to relive it, just read about it here: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(2)Samus_Aran_vs\_(7)Mario\_(Legends_Bracket)\_2018 \] I stand by what I said at the very end, too. It's great and all that these two had an epic rematch and gave us our best match of the entire contest, but it's awful that these two, of all people, had a rematch at all. We had a fantastic conclusion to that nonsense from 2005. This match happening and being as close as it was ripped everything back open. In the first match, Mario slowly built a lead and won, but only with 51.42%. This was great, because it proved everyone right at the same time. Samus can beat Mario, but "it's freaking Mario" kicked in even though it really does feel like Samus is indirectly stronger. In my Crono/Mega Man writeup, I mentioned Board 8's love affair with Crono. If you subtract all the close contest losses, Board 8 has a similar love for Samus. Of all the Nintendo characters, Samus might be the coolest. Link is cool, but he's an elf. Mario is a fat plumber. The princesses were all damsels in distress until very recently. But Samus? Samus is a shit-kicking, bounty hunter badass who goes on these insane missions and pulls them out against wild beasts despite insane odds. Look at Super Metroid logically. Who else is doing any of that? Add all that together with the contest history these two have, plus Mario being the contest villain for some, and people freaked. the hell. OUT when this thing started and Samus was close at the beginning. Then Mario looked like he was going to take off, but Samus.... built... a 100 vote lead? Say what?! But Mario got rid of that lead pretty quickly, and we all figured he just just auto-win again. That's what he does against Samus. But when Mario caught up, Samus... built a lead again? Huh? Then the night vote kicked in and all hell broke loose. Samus not only started winning the night vote, but she beat down any attempts by Mario to slow things down. She got that lead all the way up to 200 votes. But when we got into the dead zone, Mario finally decided to go to work. He got that thing down to 100 fairly quickly, after a mighty struggle by Samus, Mario had the lead all the way down to 30. I'll just spoil this now. The match never got farther apart than 206 votes, which means...! This match, right here, is our record for closest 1v1 24 hour wire to wire match. Couldn't have happened in a better rivalry, either. Unlike all the other ones from this contest, this one didn't get broken like 1 week later. This one will stick for awhile. Yet again we all assumed Mario would auto-win. And yet again Samus got the lead back up to 100. Samus wasn't just proving she could hang with Mario and proved me and all the doubters wrong, she was sitting there actually doing it. It was quite a sight to behold, and if this was a 2010 era 12 hour night match, Samus may very well have won. But when that morning vote showed up, Mario finally went "bitch, fuck off". Sort of. He erased the lead over breakfast, but Samus went out there and refused to actually get buried. She stalled as best she could, but Mario was finally able to build up a lead of 100. Game over, right? Over lunch, Samus yet again fought back and started building up a tiny lead. Come ASV time (very few matches this contest had an ASV due to polls starting in the evening, but this was one match where even a miniscule difference mattered), she had a lead of 60. Had Samus won the ASV, she wins this match. But it was Mario who took advantage of the 19 middle school and high school kids combined who still visit this site. He erased Samus's lead in an hour, and for about the 17th time this match, we all assumed Mario's auto-win clutch would kick in. IT'S FREAKING MARIO, after all. "Next time someone says you fight like a girl, remember Samus." I would love to say the final three hours of this poll were as epic as some of our famous duals from the past. Mario vs Crono. Frog vs Master Chief. The Metal Gear Solid series vs Star of the Contest. Melee vs Brawl. Link to the Past vs Chrono Trigger. Undertale vs The World. Pokemon vs Final Fantasy 7. Jill Valentine vs 27 votes. Crono vs Vincent. Starcraft vs The World. Even Link vs Cloud. These two qualify as a rivalry worthy of this list, but I know full well this match doesn't quite stack up due to the low vote totals, it being a loser's bracket rematch, and our site being dead. I get it. But by modern standards, this is as good of a match with as good of a history as you'll ever see. It's why this was my favorite match of the entire contest. People cared about who won, and were heartbroken by the result. That's what these contests are all about. Cheering on your favorite and having a result actually matter. The LOL x stats robbed us of most of that, because now you get people cheering for percentages instead of characters, but every once in awhile you get a match like this breaking through and getting everyone back to the good old days. For the last three hours of this poll, these two characters were never more than 27 votes apart. They only had five updates, or a grand total of 25 minutes in the last three hours, where they were more than 20 votes separated. They had 27 updates where they were between 10 and 19 votes. They had 16 updates in the single digits, which is just insanity as a poll is closing up. It's the best we could have asked for, and it all came down to the final update. With one update left, Mario was leading by only 2 votes. 15 minutes prior, he was winning by 21, meaning he was trending down fast and Samus was the favorite to win this match and slay a 13 year old contest rival. This was going to come down to who rallied the best at the end. Simple as that. When this match was closing up, I was helping tutor my classmates in clin lab hematology animal nursing. I've been in this profession for a long time, and in most of my labs I end up either officially or unofficially tutoring people, because I already know everything going in. There's a long story about why I left vet school and went back to nursing school to finish that certification instead, but the short of it is I'm not interested in being a doctor. I have enough money to where I can just choose the career I want, and nursing makes me happier than being a doctor. They don't tell human doctors or veterinarians that well over half the job is spent writing medical notes or joining up with the cover-your-ass please-don't-sue culture. You're ordering supplies, treating people or pets or employees as a way of making money or cutting costs, as if they're just another bill to be paid or another source of income. You're managing egos and worrying about a bunch of dumb shit. I want to go to work, interact with clients and their pets, help them, get along with everyone, do my job the best I can, and go home. I'm not interested in all the side show BS that comes with medicine. Shows like House and Scrubs are a lot more accurate than you guys might think. Granted I don't have experience on the human medicine side of things, but I've been around the block with animal medicine and good hell. Give me nursing and a patient schedule any day. It also might not seem like it based on Board 8 interactions, but I'm very well liked in the real world. I know, sounds weird. So at 6:55 pm in that clin lab hematology grind when I was tutoring people on the coming final, I said fuck it and asked for Mario votes on cell phones. All 15 fellow students voted for him, plus myself. I made sure to save my vote for late, like I did all contest because wasting a double vote early is just silly. You know the rest. Mario got 54 votes in the final update to Samus's 37, and Mario won the poll by 19 votes. It was Mario's biggest update in over six hours. Make fun of me all you want. I give no fucks. I think I explained pretty well during the last match these two had why I love Mario so much, but I also hope this writeups shows how I also love Samus. Mario's just a 10 to Samus's 9.9 is all. Simple as that. Some people in the stats topic had epic meltdowns over this result and THE CLUTCH kicking in when Samus was clearly about to win, but there are some things to discuss here. A couple people said I made this up about classmates voting (a common accusation of late is saying I make things up, which is just outright stupidity), but it's easy enough to prove if Allen ever wants to show us voter logs. Anyway. Me plus my classmates amounted to 17 votes. Mario won by 19. Even if you remove all their votes and I switch to Samus, it's only a tie. I also played by the same rules as everyone else. Samus only got 37 votes in the last update, which was about the same as she had been getting. Where were all the Samus rallies? Any of the people rooting for her could have asked for a few votes. Was no one playing Smash with some friends or something? In looking at this match, I'm pretty disappointed with the effort of Samus and her backers in those last five minutes. It's. Freaking. Mario. You can't stand pat and hope he loses. You have to go beat his ass. Why Samus backers didn't rally there, I have no idea. The other major reason Samus folks were upset over her losing is this loss symbolically ended the contest, which is logic I can actually understand. When this match happened, people assumed the rest of the contest would just be Link \> Zelda, Mario \> Cloud, Zelda \> Mario, and then Link \> Zelda again. Whoops. That, as Chris Berman would say, is why they play the games. But yeah, shout out to Mario and Samus for becoming our new hot rivalry. I wish people acted a little better as this was ending, but I think a bunch of passion is better than people being boring. I'll take meltdowns over nothing any day, even if they're idiotic meltdowns like what TheStupidRaptor was doing. It's part of what makes contests fun. Last point, and I'm putting this one the record now. If these two have a 1v1 rematch after Metroid Prime 4 and that game is good, I think Samus can finally win and I would pick it. Mario Odyssey came out only a year before this contest, and outside of some funny wedding pictures and Mario dabs, that game didn't really boost him. Samus is already a badass and is on the cusp of great things here. One more game could do the trick. I miiiiiiiight even root for her to do it! :p ## Safer777's Analysis Another rematch! Need to say anything? Just look at the result? Huh? Yeah this match was the best of contest no doubt. We had some exciting matches this contest but nothing like that. Mario had won before with almost 51.5% so almost everyone said it wouldn't be possible for Samus to reverse it. Yeah about that...   In the 1st match at the 5 minute mark, Mario was winning with around 51.6% and in this one he was losing with around 51.9%! Damn! Now that is a reverse. In the 1st match after 1 hour Mario was winning with around 52.4% and in this one he was winning with around 50.4%! A full 2% minus! So of course the board was in uproar because as with the previous trends it would seems that eventually Samus would be ahead after some hours because in the previous match she begun cutting too and she came close but couldn't do it. But now? Now it was her turn! And in the 1st match we hadn't a single lead change too. But here? We had numerous ones! Exciting stuff! So they went back and forth for  some hours. Eventually Samus went ahead and stayed there for a few hours. After about 13 hours after the match started Mario went ahead again. So Mario stayed ahead for around 5 hours too. Then Samus went ahead again! Then Mario, then Samus, then ties! Damn! Now that is a match! So with less than 1 hour to end the match Mario was ahead by 7 votes! Everyone was waiting for the updates! Mario ahead with 24, then with 6! Samus was not giving up! With 2 updates left Mario was ahead with NINE VOTES! Then with 1 update left Mario was ahead with TWO VOTES! Damn! Do I need to tell you how was the board? Glued to their screens! Of course some were saying that Mario has it, others that Samus has it, others that Mario was vote stuffing, others that Samus had rallies and that is why she would win(she did have some actually but rallies are okay!)and basically everyone was excited! Would Samus be able to FINALLY beat Mario? The last update came and Mario won with 19 votes. Samus was SO close but she lost. But the future refused to change! So she lost again! Of couse the board was in uproar! What did you expected? Others were happy, others were sad, there was fighthing  from both sides, the usual stuff. Man this match is why we love the contests. Also according to stats this is the new 24 record for closest match, since the maximum lead was 206 votes only. And the 5th closest in terms of votes winning, the winner won by 19 votes. Now these are matches. Imagine if this was the final match! Also 1 guy (XIII_rocks) said he went door to door at work to ask people to vote! I think also that Ulti did something similar at the end of the match, meaning finding some people to vote! People do anything for the contests! Others put porn rallies, others ask from people at work to vote! So is this finally the time for people to stop saying Samus\>Mario right? AS IF! IT WILL NEVER STOP! Actually Mario dominated in registered users, he scored 52.64% where with anonymous he scored 45.84%! So there you go. One of the best matches of all time. Of course now Mario is the villain and people want to see him beaten! But he can't lose! He will cheat, vote stuff, anything to win! In all seriousnes though amazing match. I don't know if it is the best of all time, but it is up there for sure.  As I said before anyone can lose from someone else, even Mario! Except Link of course, duh. ## Tsunami's Analysis Board 8ers love them some status quo. There were many matches where the registered and unregistered voters were in disagreement, but just three where the registered vote bonus actually flipped the match: Phoenix vs. Ike, the first Mega Man-Pikachu match, and this one. This one was by far the most dramatic, though--both Ike and Mega Man would've won by fewer than 50 votes if all votes counted equally. In this match? Let's give a hand to the two *lowest*-scoring Oracle predictions, Samus 51.00% by Furious Fura and Samus 51.27% by paulg, because in a world where all votes counted equally, they'd have been a *very* close 1-2. That's right, ***51.13%*** of all votes cast in this match were for Samus Aran...and yet because of the huge disparity between registered and unregistered voters, Mario still won by 19 votes. To be more precise, Mario had a 467-voter edge among registered voters, and Samus had a 915-voter edge among unregistered voters. I'm really disappointed that the registered voter bonus is back for GotD2; it isn't really going to do much to stop a genuine rally, but it can still flip a close result. That said, this was an intense, back-and-forth match. Samus led for most of the early match, including building the match's peak lead by either side, 206 votes at 1:20 AM Eastern. That's just over a quarter of the way into the match. Things continued to be interesting throughout, featuring a dead tie at the 8:55 AM update, Mario winning an update by 2 votes at 4:20 PM and it constituting a lead change *and Samus winning the next update by the same margin*, and of course, the 50.00% on the penultimate update (Mario ahead by just two votes). It was a down to the wire match, setting a new record for closest wire-to-wire 24 hour match (only Shadow of the Colossus over Metal Gear Solid 2 in the first GotD was closer) and making the top 5 for closest final margin as well (trailing Liquid-Alucard in 2007, Frog-Chief in '04, the third-place match from Rivalry Rumble, and Charizard's win over Zelda in 2013). And in that respect, the registered voter bonus did make things more interesting, because like I said, in raw votes, Mario didn't even break 49%. Our update trackers can only show the listed totals, with us only getting the raw vote data for the end, but just looking at the final margin, it certainly wouldn't have come anywhere near the record for closest wire-to-wire match--even if Samus's biggest lead was right at the end it would've been more than double what it was. Wouldn't have even made the top 25 for closest final margins even among 1v1 matches alone. It probably would've still gotten lesser spots on the wire-to-wire lists, and it might've even scored fairly high on "wire-to-wire matches where the loser never takes the lead"--because with a maximum lead of 128 with the registered voter bonus, it's hard to picture that Mario would have ever had one without it. Well, maybe when he had the 104 vote lead a mere 40 minutes into the match. That would've already precluded it from the loser-never-takes-the-lead list, since Samus did lead at the freeze and one update later as well. Geez, you guys really hate it when the status quo is upset, don't you? Because make no mistake, this is "FREAKING MARIO" to the max. You always expect him to pull out any close match, because he's Mario. And right here, he did. But this is definitely a reason to pay close attention to the types of games this site likes and doesn't like for GotD2. RPGs will reign supreme. So will remakes that somehow were allowed into the contest, because this site absolutely adores the 20th century. Keep that in mind, and you'll probably go far. --- ## (1)Link vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88569)_ ## Ulti's Analysis The craziness from the day before (Mario v Samus III) clearly spilled over into this one, plus Zelda had a bandwagon effect going. She actually opened a pretty big lead for the first few minutes of this match (77 votes) before getting completely buried, instead of just getting completely buried right from the jump. Given this happened the last time these two had a match together (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2901-division-4-round-2-link-bidoof-vincent-zelda), I consider this a major step up for Zelda. It remains to be seen if this is sustainable strength, but for this year her performance was great. That's how dominant Link was. We consider him "only" getting 64% on Zelda a minor miracle. Which it kind of was. Link is the king of SFF on this site, so for Zelda to do this is one hell of an accomplishment. Just this year, he almost got 80% on Ganondorf and got 68% on Pikachu, not to mention all the crazy beatings Link has put on people over the years. Zelda from his own series getting 37% is awesome, and puts her square in elite strength territory. It really, really sucks we didn't get Zelda vs Samus this year. That would have potentially been an amazing match. Maybe next time! This one gave Link the win in the legends bracket, where he waited the winner of the losers bracket for the grand final. ## Safer777's Analysis This is it. The Final match. Of course Link would win. But look at his opponent. Zelda. Around 1.6% had her reaching the final. Seriously. Obviously nobody from the board expected to reach that far. She was strong always yeah. But beating so many NNers? Yeah sure. But she did it. Call it bandwagon, rallies, whatever. She reached the final match. That is something that barely anyone else has done. How many characters have reached the final match on 1 VS 1 contest before this one? Link, Mario, Cloud, Sephiroth. And that is all. Now we have Zelda. Without huge rallies too! Amazing! If you want further proof that the LOZ games dominate here look at this match! Seriously! 2 characters from the same series, the lead pair too! Now for the actual match. This was exciting for the first 10 minutes that Zelda was winning. I guess from the previous match people were excited and voted for Zelda or something. Not even when Cloud beat Link did that! He was losing at the start! After that Link went ahead and never looked back. Also a negative record for Zelda too. She fell from the 5 minute mark to the end 17% which I believe is the highest drop. I think so at least. So Link won. And nobody even broke 40% on him! But no matter what Zelda is the star of the contest no doubt. NOBODY can deny that. She did amazing. Hope in the next contest we have an amazing run from someone else or something like that. Always nice to see these things. Because we all know the winner anyways so we hope for another great run like Zelda at least. ## Tsunami's Analysis There was a very real fear here that we were going to get an SFF blowout in what would be the final match if we still had a single-elimination format, resulting in some absolutely hilarious raw X-Stats. Then again, it's not like Link had been all that terribly challenged in earlier rounds either. There was a lot of debate as to which matches to use for the purpose of calculating X-Stats, the Legends Bracket (because that's what a traditional bracket would have produced) or the Losers Bracket (because those were the ones that caused eliminations and thus "meant more"), but let's face it, either way they were going to be inaccurate. Which pretty much is the same as every other year, because character battles have never been transient. The raw X-Stats are a joke because of SFF and bandwagoning and all sorts of weird factors that make up the matches, and the adjusted X-Stats are an even bigger joke because they represent guesswork and are subject to biases. In the early days, when a character was behind SFF, the tradition was to just assign them the previous contest's X-Stat value, which is how we ended up with 84% of Gurus picking Magus to win three matches in a year he won none. Frankly, this still comes off as more sensible than the current method of casually ignoring direct results that are inconvenient to the current narrative because there was obviously some sort of rally (example: Mario being ahead of Zelda in this year's adjusted X-Stats). I mean, yes, when there really *was* a rally, it massively obfuscates any sort of meaningful calculation, especially since it becomes harder and harder to figure out what the entrant's unrallied strength is because the rallies show up earlier and earlier. We all joked about Mass Effect 3 being \#2 in the X-Stats in 2015, but it was the one that forced Undertale to make its largest comeback. Meanwhile, the "just assume that Link/Legend of Zelda is \#1" logic wasn't even close to viable because the finals against Ocarina of Time was legitimately the only time that Undertale *never trailed*. So which of Undertale's victims was given the \#1 spot in the adjusted X-Stats? Pokémon RBYG, which had been building a lead even as Undertale was trying to rally? Melee, which actually managed to wipe out a four-digit deficit against Undertale before eventually fading away? ...Yeah these are really the only two logical options even if technically Mass Effect 3 was closer. And the answer is...none of them, because the acceptability of a rally is based not only on the rallying entrant, but on the opponent--possibly *more* on the opponent. Well, no, it's on both. Zelda may not have been allowed to remain ahead of Mario in the X-Stats, but I doubt those people minded too much the previous match when Samus would've beaten if not for the registered voter bonus, even if the fact that it was the *registered voters* who allowed Mario to win suggests otherwise. Because Samus is a member of the Noble Nine, and one who the X-Stats frequently suggested was indirectly stronger than Mario anyway. Her finally beating him is good theater. Zelda being here was a "farce". Point is, the whole board was fine with RBYG and Melee counterrallying against Undertale, but Melee has to sit behind the last two foes it vanquished, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII. OoT actually did get the \#2 spot, ahead of FFVII but behind CT. They saw CT put up over 81% in Round 2 and then get 65.52% on a game that had been in the Top 4 of each of the last two games contests and they were like "yeah CT's winning this as long as we can stop the Undertale monster". Now we couldn't, so it was a moot point, but let's be honest here: if Melee hadn't gone on rallies, CT absolutely still loses to FFVII. The stats people would've still put CT as the stronger game, because that's an SFF match, but FFVII *doesn't* lose to other Square games. We've *seen* those two games face each other before, and there's no good reason to think CT could turn it around (though there are plenty of bad ones, like backlash against the episodic content of the FF7 rerelease or the fact that other games are declining while CT, being so old already, can't really decline because everyone left here is part of that core fanbase. Except these contests have *never *been decided solely by the board's or even the site's tastes, and the fact that the registered voter bonus only flipped three matches when there were far more where the registered and unregistered voters disagreed only accentuates this.) Anyway, it turned out to be a moot point because Zelda easily avoided the doubling. In fact, let's go back and look at the last time Link and Mario went head-to-head in a character battle. And now Zelda's win over Mario: Based on that, Zelda would be expected to get about 36.07% on Link. If you adjust for the registered vote bonus in the Zelda-Mario match, it'd be more like 36.77%. And her percentage was...36.44%. Actual percentage 35.78%, because yes, Zelda actually had a better percentage with registered voters than unregistered. Still, that's not that far off, which makes it all the more ridiculous that the adjustments put Mario ahead of Zelda. --- ## (4)Cloud Strife vs (7)Mario (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Cloud Strife vs (7)Mario (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88601)_ ## Ulti's Analysis If you want to know how a grownup acts, XIII is cool is a fantastic example. This match cost him the guru contest, and he didn't act a fool about it. Major props to that guy. As for the match, this was an incredible experience, and it was so nice to finally get this damn rematch from 2002 that we've all been asking for for 16 years. The only match in higher demand at this point is Mario vs Sonic. A lot can change in 16 years, and there was a long time there where Cloud felt leagues stronger than Mario. We all wanted him to get the rematch and potentially get revenge for 2002. Then the years kept going, Cloud kept getting weaker, and we all slowly realized that Cloud's shot for redemption was probably done. I know there were some 4ways and battle royales in there, but it's just not the same as 1v1. By the time we actually got this rematch, we all assumed Mario would auto-win. Sound like a familiar theme? I know the stakes here in 2018 don't mean as much, but it was still fun to watch. It was practically an exact reversal of what happened trend-wise in 2002, too. In that match, Cloud built up a 1000 vote lead overnight. Then a combination of the morning vote, rallying from Planet Gamecube, 500 stuffed proxy votes, and Super Mario Sunshine launching on the day of the match all converged on Cloud all within 12 hours of each other. Mario got a lead of 200 votes heading into the evening, and he just inexplicably never let up. Now unlike most people you'll see talking about how great that match was and how great that contest was, I was actually there and remember it all. The three day time frame we had in 2002 with Samus \> Sonic, Sephiroth \> Mega Man, and Mario \> Cloud will absolutely never be topped. There was meltdown after meltdown after meltdown, with Samus coming back from 1500 down in the final three hours, Sephiroth coming back from 700 down, and the insanity of that Mario/Cloud match. By the time that Mario/Cloud match was over, the board had over 200 pages of topics at 50 per page, with over half coming from Mario and Cloud's duel. As I write this, Board 8 doesn't even have 4 full pages of topics. There is no comparison here. I've also been very consistent about rallying for 16 years, and you can check the 2002 writeup for proof. I've always supported it, even if something I'm rooting for loses. Cloud losing that match sucked, especially when there were clearly 500 cheated votes, but I've never been mad at Planet Gamecube about it. Fast forward 16 years. We're all in our 30s now and don't care nearly as much, but this was still a long time coming,. Especially with how Mario lost. This dude built up a 300 vote lead heading into the night vote. After some stalling, Square's old night vote supremacy kicked in and Cloud mounted a comeback overnight. But he didn't quite finish the job, and Mario started going up with the morning vote again. Right about here, it kind of hit me. We keep assuming Mario has this auto-win button, but this dude functions better when he's barely losing instead of barely winning. He's basically rubberband AI in a racing game at this point. His best play is to stay barely behind all match, then clutch up at the end. Dude is an awful frontrunner sometimes, and we saw it here. He only got his lead up to 200 with the morning vote, and coughed most of that up by lunch. By the time the kids got home from school, Cloud had already tied this thing up. One would assume the ASV would help Mario out, but it was somehow and someway Cloud that went up. Right in the face of all that history and that FF7 erosion and all that Mario clutch gene and whatever else, Cloud looked Death himself right in the face and said not today. Remember that insane Mario hold of a 200 vote lead in 2002? I do. Well in 2018, Cloud decided it was his turn to hold serve. Not only that, but as the poll was getting close to finishing up he did what Samus failed to do -- beat Mario's ass. There was no sitting back. In the final 30 minutes, Cloud made sure to go out there and layeth the smacketh down. Even then, people were terrified Mario would just erase a 150 vote lead in the final update. Nope. Cloud wins by 141 votes. I could come up with a myriad of reasons why Cloud pulled this thing off, but I'm pretty sure one reason stands out above all the others. The funniest thing about this, and I'll get more into this with the final match, is that Square has been actively trying to sabotage Cloud being in Smash and it hasn't mattered. He has absolutely gotten new strength from that series, he's retained popularity despite Square's bullshit (https://www.eventhubs.com/stats/ssbu/), and it showed in this match. No chance in hell he pulls this off otherwise. Good run by Mario this year, but it ended one round before he wanted. That's what happens when you keep failing to put people away. Eventually one just bites you. This doesn't erase the pain of the 2002 match by any means, but it was a pretty decent revenge nonetheless. Kind of like every now and again you get a Super Bowl rematch in the following regular season and the losing team wins. It doesn't mean as much, but it's something. That's effectively what this was. Nice job by Cloud, even if he had to get into Smash to do it. Remember back when Square could actually beat Nintendo now and again on this site instead of having every single debated match between the two companies be an auto-loss for Square? Isn't this nice? Granted Square had to bend the knee, but so what? This was awesome! Addendum from Kanz: What's interesting is I'm pretty sure if Cloud and Mario meet up without Mario having beaten Samus twice, once while having to expend the clutch, Mario wins here. No proof of it of course, but it felt like there was a very strong anti-Mario sentiment that probably cost him a few votes. Fantastic point and probably true, but who really knows. I will say that pretty much no one on Board 8 was rooting for Mario to pull this off, and there was some extra oomph behind that late Cloud push. It's like people realized they fucked up by not pushing for Samus harder and just wanted to finish Mario off when they had the chance again. Kanz's point here is very fair! ## Safer777's Analysis This result I didn't expected. Cloud has fallen from the early contests and Mario has constantly new games. Plus Odyssey came last year and it is considered perhaps the best Mario game. Plus the new Smash game is out. So I thought that Mario would win with at least 53% here. But Cloud did it! These 2 have fought in the first ever contest where Mario won because he had a HUGE rally(big for how things were back then of course) and a new Mario game the same day that they fought! And he barely won back there too! Also he beat Crono in a controversial match too and from back then he became the villain of the contest. The contest only, not in games obviously. But after he beat Samus 2 times in this contest and in the 2nd time with the last update it seems most people wanted him to lose from the board at least. And he did lose!  So for the actual match. Mario was winning from the start of course. But Cloud was always right behind him. Mario lead was around 310 votes and then Cloud started  cutting but Mario begun gaining and his lead maxed out at 335. But Cloud started cutting and cutting but after a while Mario started gaining again. He is a fighter!  Then Cloud got serious and started cutting and eventually after almost 20 hours he went ahead and started pulling. Mario tried to cut, but the best he could do is stall. So eventually Cloud managed to won. Mario clutch didn't saved the day! So yeah Cloud took revenge after 16 years! I know his power comes from Smash now but I don't care. He still has it! I think there was a rally for Cloud too though, because he did much better with anonymous votes than the registered ones. Still nice to see someone non  Nintendo win you know. FF7 man! Still has power! If only we FF 7 remake, or KH 3! If the FF 7 cast is in there at least. Still this match was really good no matter how you look at it. Also I believe almost the whole board had Mario winning here of course. Hey we can't predict everything. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well I guess we have our answer as to why Mario was ahead of Zelda in the adjusted X-Stats. The raw X-Stats may clearly use the Legends' Bracket numbers, but if the adjusted X-Stats were basing things off of the Losers' Bracket, Mario did put up a better performance against Cloud than Zelda would the following match. After Cloud held a narrow 250-247 lead at the freeze, Mario took the second update by 66 votes and proceeded to extend his lead past 300 within the first three hours of the match, peaking it at 335 about 7-1/2 hours in. Cloud would fight back over the remainder of the night, getting it down below 50 around 6 AM, but Mario rode the morning vote to a lead of over 200 before Cloud started fighting back again. Cloud took his first lead of the match with 4 hours and 35 minutes remaining, and the next update only increased his lead by a single vote before Mario took the next update--only by 5 votes, but that was enough for another lead change. But Cloud won the next update by 21 to take the lead for good, and the two battled for a bit, Cloud only taking a double-digit lead for the first time in the final hour. It was the \#8 closest 1v1 wire-to-wire match, \#6 among 24-hour matches...and yet, only \#5 for this contest! It meant that over half of the Top 10 came from this contest, except they already did because the match that it booted down to \#11 was also from this contest. Seriously, the all-time \#17 (again, for 1v1 matches only, since we keep the 3/4ways in a separate list) can't even make the contest's Top Ten. Maybe it's the registered voter bonus making things tighter than they should be, or maybe it's just the lowered vote totals, but this contest had a lot of really close matches, strictly speaking. Not all of them *felt* close. Here, let me give you a rundown of the overall top 25, except instead of listing the actual match, I'll just list what contest they're from: Asterisks are 12-hour matches. 1. GotD\* 2. CBIX\* 3. CBX 4. GotD\* 5. CBX 6. CBX 7. CBIX\* 8. BGE3 9. CBIX\* 10. CBX 11. CBX (that'd be this match) 12. CBX 13. GotD\* 14. CBIX\* 15. BGE2 16. CBX 17. CBIX\* 18. CBIII 19. CBX 20. CBVIII\* 21. CBIX\* 22. CBX 23. CBVII 24. CBIX\* 25. GotD\* 9 out of 25 from this contest. Even CBIX, which had similarly rancid vote totals whenever Draven was absent and had matches that ran only half as long, only had 7. Overall, 24-hour matches do now hold a 13-12 lead over 12-hour matches in the all-time top 25. I wonder what the upcoming Game of the Decade will look like. Will it break the records set here? And if it does, will it be because of intensity, or because of complete and utter apathy? I look at Minecraft, a casual game to end all casual games, and yet I have to take it to win *easily* in Round 1 because it's up against a MOBA and we absolutely abhor those after 2013. I look at Yakuza 0 getting its characters absolutely slaughtered in this contest and take it to Round 2 because it's up against something called The Witness. Overwatch seems like it'd fall squarely in the category of "things Board 8 hates, and is possibly slightly scared of the rally potential of", but iirc Death Stranding was considered a massive disappointment by all of those eagerly awaiting Kojima's next masterpiece after Konami kicked him to the curb and so I have to side with the casualbait. Except then you hop on over to the latest extruded Blizzard cash-extracting device and you're like "no, fuck that, I'm going with 'niche things that Board 8 loves'." I mean yeah it's probably still the wrong pick but it's a 7-10 match so eh, it's only worth one point. Though frankly the biggest problem is that all of these new games have generic "edgy" names. I initially had Bloodborne-CoD:BO as one of those "why do I have to pick one of these to win a match; they're both going to be megafodder" matches. But Bloodborne was actually respectable in BGE3, going up against a Final Fantasy game no less (not that I really trust recent Final Fantasy games to not be fodder either. Square spent most of the decade pushing Final Fantasy XIII sequels on us, and we responded by not putting *any* of the FFXIII games, not even the original one, in the bracket. And yes it was eligible; we were going by NA release dates unless no such date existed and Lightning rather famously appeared in a Winter 2010 Contest match before her game had released in the US. Not surprisingly, it was the strongest she'd ever look). The game that I was thinking of that got eviscerated was called "Hearthstone". Meanwhile, that same theory of "wait, this has actually been in a contest before" got me second-guessing taking Stardew Valley over Destiny, except Destiny actually did get blown out by something GameFAQs hates. --- ## (4)Zelda vs (4)Cloud Strife (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (4)Cloud Strife (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88599)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I feel like this match would have had a lot more impact had we not quite literally just watched Cloud beat Mario with the exact same trends and for the exact same reason. Cloud was in Smash, which gave him the boost he needed to stop embarrassing himself. It's really that simple. Here, you even get the same video I used last writeup because you might be a wiki reader reading these out of order or something. This match wasn't as exciting as Cloud's comeback on Mario, for two reasons. One, there is no history here. There was no hype, no insane loss from 2002 that Cloud was trying to make up for, no connection from people that grew up on contests and stayed on Board 8, nothing. In fact these two had never even been in a poll together before this match. The other reason is the early numbers being much smaller for Zelda than they were for Mario. Mario built up a 300 vote lead early and looked like he would do what he always does before Cloud pulled off one of the more surprising comebacks we'd ever seen. He reversed trends. That is not an easy thing to do. But when you repeat the exact same pattern one day later on a smaller scale, it doesn't mean as much. Cloud actually won the board vote here, which he never does, and then Zelda only built up a lead of 127 before she started struggling. Mario breezed past 300 before that happened, so when Zelda struggled much earlier we all knew what was coming. The only real point of contention here would be whether or not Cloud could win the morning/day vote over a Zelda character, which is simply a different beast than the Mario characters. It's like watching Aquaman fight all these amazing subterranean beasts with the awesome technology. It's great and all, but then he meets the fucking kraken. Turns out Cloud = Aquaman, Zelda = Mera, and Link = Thanos isn't all that crazy of a comparison. Zelda did her thing over the first few hours, and even got a lead inching toward 300 at one point, but Cloud erased it all overnight and had just proven he was capable of morning/day success against Nintendo with Smash's backing. So when Cloud won the morning vote and then beat the shit out of Zelda all day long until the poll ended, it wasn't a surprise. Which is a shame, because had the Mario match not just happened, this would have been a huge shocker. Just some bad luck for Zelda, I suppose. Switch this match with the Mario match in the bracket layout and we're telling a much different story here, but it is what it is. This also doesn't mean Zelda wasn't the star of the contest, either. She just ran out of gas after losing to Link, and I think a lot of people when faced with a choice of an all-Zelda final versus a Link/Cloud final, they picked the option less likely to be an SFF embarrassment. Can't blame them. ## Safer777's Analysis So Cloud edged Mario and here is facing Zelda. Zelda beat barely Mario too and did well on Link so that means that these 2 were equal. So for around 12 hours Zelda was winning and after that Cloud went ahead and he won easily. I once again didn't expected that. These 2 both faced Link and they both got owned so it didn't really matter who would face him again. Plus Zelda has a bandwagon and rallies and such so I thought she would win. But no. Cloud did it again. So once again he reached the final match. I still don't believe that Cloud managed to beat both Mario and Zelda to reach the final match. But this match prooves that Zelda is now top tier and can beat half of  the NN no problem. Man if another contest comes and we have another Zelda game she can be the 2nd strongest character in the bracket for sure. But I have to say I gotta hand it to Cloud. Defied expectations and reached another final too! Come on please, FF 7 remake! Or KH 3 boost! If the FF 7 cast is there. Or something! Also I don't believe that Cloud is still the Number 2 guy even though the matches say otherwise. I believe that Samus beats him for sure. Also Smash makes everyone hyper strong. It is scary to see how much power this game gives! Some said that people voted for Cloud because they didn't wanted to see another Link VS Zelda Final match. Eh I am not sure. The trends here were exactly like Cloud VS Mario so there you go. So this was the final match for Zelda in the contest too. She was the Star of the contest no doubt for me and for most people. Let us see next time how she does. ## Tsunami's Analysis Next up in the department of totally made-up "common knowledge": all those classic RPGs are weakening because we're the only ones who still like them, but they'll never completely turn into fodder because this site is run by exactly those people, the ones who are still stuck in the 90s. Yeah, not happening. For the second match in a row, Cloud would lose with the registered voters but still win because of his lead with the unregistered voters. I mean, yeah, antivoting FFVII is nothing new here, but I guess it's *because* we expect it to win anyway? Or perhaps we're dealing with "outsiders" who had GameFAQs accounts back in the day and still can log into them, or Board 8's tastes *aren't *representative of GameFAQs as a whole, because supposedly the board should've been pro-Cloud in both of these matches, yet the registered voters alone wouldn't have given him either of these matches. Zelda's peak lead wasn't all that far behind Mario's, but Cloud caught up much sooner--about halfway through the poll--and cruised to what for this contest probably qualifies as an easy enough victory, nearly winning by 600 votes and breaking 51%. I wanted to try to give an example of a match from our heyday where neither side ever broke 51%, but it turns out that a lot of our classic matches featured one side getting off to a sizable early lead and the other just not letting them go away easily. ...Actually that wouldn't have been the case for this one, either, even if Cloud hadn't gotten up over 51% at the end. I suppose that's a natural effect of every vote being a great portion of the percentage early on. As best as I can tell, it's never happened in a 24-hour match, not that that's a relevant fact since the disqualifying factor is usually that the match *starts* too uneven, one side getting a little bit of a percentage lead. Yet looking through the list of closest wire-to-wire matches, the only ones I can find where neither side cracked 51% past, um...wait, what should be the cutoff? Well, our list for "loser never took the lead" allows the loser to have the lead at any point before the end of hour one. So the two close matches from GotD definitely qualify--MGS2-SotC was inside of 51-49 at the freeze, an extreme rarity, cresting above it for a single update 10 minutes later, while Team Fortress 2 was at 53.15% on Fable at the freeze but that was the last time either side would even reach 50.6%. The closest 24-hour match I could find to pulling it off wasn't, in fact, Pikachu's victory over Mega Man (Mega Man didn't fall below 51% for good until the five-hour mark), but..uh...huh. I was about to say the Xenoblade Chronicles-DKC2 match, but then I was like "wait, *did* that ever go beyond 51-49?" because when I was scrolling to the beginning I only found one update listed at 51-49 exactly (and calculating it properly, it *was* still inside of 51-49, but I mean *just barely*, it's literally 50.999%-49.001%), but I could've sworn I'd seen it get bigger, and it turns out it was later. But even so, that might be the true closeness record for percentage because that match*never*, and when I say never I mean not only after the freeze but also at the pre-freeze snapshots for 4, 3, and even 2 minutes, got outside of 51.1%-48.9%. So I'm definitely optimistic that GotD2 will bring more thrilling matches. --- ## (1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Grand Final) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Grand Final) 2018 (revid 88567)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Let's hypothetically say Cloud had won this match. It would have meant Link's first loss. Since the legends bracket was double elimination, wouldn't that have meant a third match? This wasn't accounted for in the bracket layout, not that it mattered. Nothing was touching Link this year without a rally. I know the percentages are similar if you look at their two matches this year side by side, but this match was a little different in that Cloud actually won the board vote before getting buried. Seeing this dude lose every single board vote since 2003 before randomly winning them this year is really something else. It's also hilarious how with all the changes we've seen over the years, our final is still Link vs Cloud after all this time. One Cloud spot in Smash Bros changed everything, and there is real anti-Link sentiment building up here. I know this is very weird to say about our most dominant character historically in a final where him not getting 60% was an act of god, but it's true. I suspect that resentment will grow, assuming we even get contests anymore after the vote total shit show we just watched. What an embarrassment. To have a contest final not break even 30,000 votes is such a damned joke. More on that with my wrapup post. Usually in a final, even in a total mismatch, weird things happen and you naturally get a closer result. It's human nature. But sometimes, you get an entrant so savage that even the final can't be saved. In 2002, Link scored 62.53% in the final against Mario. In 2004, Final Fantasy 7 scored 58.24% in the final against Chrono Trigger. In the villains contest in 2005, Sephiroth scored 58.17% in the final against Ganondorf. In the Rivalry Rumble, Link and Ganon scored 57.72% on Mario and Bowser. In 2013, Draven scored 49.13% in a 3way match against Snake and Samus, which is completely insane when you think about it. In Years, 1998 scored 66.19% in the final match against 2001. Pretty much every other final has been close in percents, and some people would argue a few of these shouldn't be on the list. Link getting 59.27% in the final here gives him our \#3 most dominant 1v1 finals performance ever. Without Smash Bros, Link easily breaks 60% and quite possibly beats his 62.53% on Mario from 2002. That's some true savagery from the guy, and Breath of the Wild is really something else. I know people want Game of the Decade 2, but the reason Game of the Decade was so good is that it was completely and thoroughly unpredictable. I'll give you two spoilers for Game of the Decade 2. Breath of the Wild breaks 60% on everything except Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate takes second place unless we get an act of god. Which probably won't happen, because a bunch of whiny-ass children think rallying in a popularity contest is bad. More on that in a second. I had no idea where to put this in our PCA here, but this is probably the best spot given "Cloud broke 40%" is the only thing we have to talk about for the finals of a tournament that had 150 matches in it. Fuck Squaresoft. They do a great thing by letting Cloud get put in Smash Bros, they hype us all up that they might be good partners with Nintendo again, and then they go and fuck it all up by being assholes about licensing? For who? For what? Cloud in Ultimate didn't get a custom skin for his fighting spirit (that game's version of a trophy), and Final Fantasy 7 has two songs -- the same number as Game and Watch got. What a fucking joke. Remember all that vitriol I threw at Nintendo for all those years? It's almost Square's turn if they keep this stuff up. I want to like their games, because I loved them so much in the 90s and I have hope they'll get back to being good, but they constantly and actively give me reasons not to like them. The last time I truly had an "oh shit, awesome!" moment with them was 2002. The original Kingdom Hearts. Since then, they've been just ok. For the NFL fans, you know all those "just ok" commercials you keep seeing? That's Squaresoft. Just ok is not good enough. And stop being bloated corporate idiots. Even with Cloud in Smash, Nintendo just whipped your ass 60-40. Step your game up. I don't really feel like doing a massive takedown like I did for Blizzard, but just know that they're dangerously close to that point with me. Getting our hopes up and then pulling this trash is just unforgivably stupid after over a decade of being just ok. I don't care that you're giving us some Switch ports of old games. Go port Final Fantasy 8 and stops being idiots with licensing, you morons. Compilations, cooperation, and people working together is what everyone wants now. Should I pull up the amount of money the Avengers franchise has made so far? We haven't even gotten the fourth movie yet, which is probably going to add another 2 billion dollars to the pile. The model is right there, Square. Use it. With that, our contest was over. Let's wrap this bad boy up. ## Safer777's Analysis The True Final match! Oh yeah! And a rematch too! So Cloud did managed to do 1% better and finally break 40% on Link. I guess since he both beat Mario and Zelda in a row in close matches too he got a bit of momentum. Of course no way he would beat Link after he lost so much in the first match. Link is too strong now. Nothing except a major rally(which will not happen because no outsider cares enough now)would make Link lose. Still nice to see Cloud reaching the final. Again! Maybe he is the 2nd strongest character here anyways. But man Link dominated this contest. Well makes sense. BOTW and Smash. So that was it. The final match of the contest.  After all these years the final match is Link VS Cloud! Again! This site likes the traditions it seems! So that was it for the contest. I liked it to tell the truth. Some exciting stuff happened. The only true bad thing is the low vote totals. Seriously. Barely 30.000 AND with the double registered users bonus! Where all the people went? Hope you liked my analysis in all these matches! See ya next time! ## Tsunami's Analysis I mean, did we really expect otherwise? The final match was going to be a rematch no matter what. There was pretty much no way that the final match wouldn't end up being a rematch, because for it to feature someone who hadn't already faced Link, that someone would have to first beat someone who had beaten them earlier. Granted, Mega Man did exactly that this contest, and Samus nearly did, but it's a huge ask. I don't know, maybe if Samus had been able to pull out those few extra votes against Mario, she could've ridden a combo of the rallies that seemed to be popping up for every female character and her *actual* strength that got her to the finals of CBIX and won her the main bracket in '06 to upset Cloud, then SFF down Zelda to give us a fresh match. Which she'd lose, of course, but it'd still be better than having a rehash of a match we'd just had. That probably wouldn't have happened, though; beating Cloud without some mitigating factor is never an easy task if you're not Link. Snake's only victories over Cloud came when Cloud was being LFFed, first by Sephiroth and then by Crono (and maybe also Link, because swords? But mostly Crono). And his only other non-Link losses were...Mario in the infamous Planet Gamecube match, L-Block, and Squirtle in the Draven contest. And I guess the 3rd-place match of Rivalry Rumble but no one really cares about that. Actually when you consider she broke 47% on him in 2010 after being held just under 41% in 2003, maybe it's not so unreasonable to think that this would've been her year. Yeah let's go with this. Someone make up some adjusted X-Stats that say that Samus was actually the \#2 character in 2018 and only lost because Mario continues to be a bad matchup for her. It honestly probably wouldn't be any more wrong than any of the other ones we have floating around. Hell, if you use the raw vote totals instead of the ones adjusted for the registered user bonus, Cloud got 51.37% on Mario, while Samus got 51.13% in her second match. That's still a slight advantage for Cloud, but it's really slight and character battles are not and have never been transient. Given the way trends were going at the time, this seems really probable. As for Zelda, the percentages would be more along the lines of their 2006 matchup (roughly 55-45) than their 2010 matchup (roughly 64-36), but it's hard to think that Zelda could keep up her momentum when faced with another powerful female. Zelda may have long since moved beyond her damsel in distress days, but Samus has always been the heroine of her games and her first game is just as old as Zelda's. She's the original feminist gaming icon, and not even Other M was able to ruin that. Anyway, since Samus wasn't able to get that last push against Mario, we had Cloud in this match instead. He improved on the first match against Link, managing to break 40% this time. But this was never going to end in anything other than a comfortable Link victory. Honestly it's hard to imagine that Link will ever lose to anything other than a massive rally. Even Draven barely hung on at the end, relatively speaking--his raw margin of victory was higher than a lot of matches this contest, but we had 150 matches in this contest and if not for registered users' votes counting double, *Shepard's* vote total in the Link-Draven match would've been good enough to beat the winning total in 126 of them. Of the 24 that it wouldn't, 15 of these were in the first round, 5 in the second, 3 in the third, and then there was Link's SFF beatdown of Ganondorf. Even *with* the double-counting votes, Shepard's total was higher than Zelda's winning total against Mario, Crono's against Mega Man, Tifa's against Sephiroth, and the asbestos standard, Bowser's winning total in LB1 against Alucard, which failed to break 13000. The actual raw total of 8578 is almost certainly the lowest winning total in any character battle (though it's still better than the Years contest), which doesn't sound too bad until you remember that CBIX was three-ways with 12-hour matches. But even in a 12-hour match where third place had 30%, the lowest winning total in that contest was 8979. In 24 hours, in a 1v1, Bowser got fewer votes than that and won. If votes do go up significantly in GotD2--which I kind of expect them to--we should just stop having character battles. Do people even really care about individual characters anymore? So many of the newer games have customizable characters anyway, which is probably why so few new games even get characters in these things. I mean, let's look at the characters who debuted in this contest. Aren't like half of them from indie games, which have a disproportionate tendency to be "retraux"? I'm not going to go over them all and count them, but it looks like most of them are either from indie games or from newer entries in established franchises (e.g. Noctis, Aqua, Captain Toad). And out of 150 matches in this contest, do you know how many were actually *won* by a character making their contest debut? 8\. 8 matches out of 150. 5.33%. Except that figure is inflated, because there were 5 first-round matches where both characters were making their debut, leaving a grand total of 3 matches where a character making their debut beat a character who wasn't--all of them 1-seeds (Geralt twice and 2B once). It's not 3 out of 145, though, because there were also some first-round matches between characters with contest experience, and even fourpacks where all four characters had contest experience. (For a moment I thought Division 1 had an entire *eightpack* like that, because of generically named male syndrome; Victor Sullivan was the only newcomer in the bottom half of the division). It's 3 in 104. There were 104 matches out there that, at the start of the contest, could have been won by either a veteran (even by the loose definition of "1 previous contest" making you a veteran) or by a newcomer, 41 guaranteed to be won by a returning character (34 of these in Round 1 and 7 in Round 2), and 5 guaranteed to be won by a newcomer. Of those 104, new characters won *3* of them. 2.88%. I feel like that's low. Maybe it's not really that low, because the more character battles we have, the more returning characters we have, but it seems like it ought to be low. It's obviously lower than CBIX, because Draven alone won 4.13% of all non-bonus matches. CBVIII? Honest to god, there *were* more matches that were guaranteed to have a winner who'd been in a previous contest than not. 66-61, including a trio of R3 matches, and of course not a single match where both characters were making their contest debuts. *Two* of those three divisions where one of the R3 matches was guaranteed to have a returner win also had a third R2 match with such a guarantee, and a seventh R1 match on top of that. Literally only one character out of 16 in the division was making their debut. One of those two characters that were the only ones in their entire fucking division to be making their debut was *Charizard*, who won said division. That alone accounts for 6.56% of qualifying matches, and 3.15% of total matches. So yeah, 2.88% is low. A single newcomer managed to singlehandedly exceed that percentage *without* discrediting matches where all possible winners were returners in each of the previous two contests. Same goes for all earlier ones, because there were only 63 matches in any of them which means it only takes 3 wins. I mean if you want to quibble about requiring a first place finish to count as the "winner" in the fourways, then no single character did it in 2008, but you had one first round fourpack where two newcomers beat two returners, and you did have three newcomers win their first round matches outright and reach Round 4. 2007, L-Block did it. 2006...okay, 2006 was probably lower because any female character with experience was naturally stronger than any of them that needed the split bracket to make their debut. But that percentage is horrible. Character Battle is dead; long live Best Game Ever. Oh right this vote total thing distracted me from my original point, which was that while Link would've won no matter who he faced here, I honestly believe that if she'd just pulled out those few extra votes against Mario, Samus *would* have put up a better percentage than this. Not *much *better, probably only around 42%, but better. Unfortunately this undermines the point I *just made* because we'd need another Character Battle to test this theory. # Game of the Decade 2 (2020) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 128 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Game of the Decade 2 _source: Game of the Decade 2 (revid 88284)_
Spring 2020 Contest

Announced:

January 10, 2020

Started:

March 27, 2020

Ended:

May 13, 2020

Winner:

Winner: Breath of the Wild Runner-up: The Witcher 3

Contest Winner:

azuarc - 429 points

Notable matches:

Octopath > Undertale, SK > Octopath,

RE2 > Bloodborne, Xenoblade > P4G,

Witcher 3 > Skyrim, LoZ:BotW > Witcher 3
**Spring 2020 Contest** **Game of the Decade 2** is the second Game of the Decade contest GameFAQs has had, and obviously is the first such contest since 2010. Last time, the contest covered games released from the years 2000 - 2009 and was won by Majora's Mask. This time around, the contest will cover games released from 2010 - 2019. A notable quirk from this is that it makes League of Legends ineligible, since that game launched in 2009. A lot of people brought up Minecraft being eligible for this contest, but that game was only in alpha in 2009. It was not officially released until 2011. KamikazePotato was nice enough to take his adjusted x-stats from the 2015 contest and remove every game from before this decade. Here is his work, as a refresher for Game of the Decade 2: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim : 33.51 Super Smash Bros. for Wii U : 29.70 Grand Theft Auto V : 28.10 Fallout: New Vegas : 26.66 The Witcher 3 : 26.44 Super Mario Galaxy 2 : 26.35 The Last of Us : 26.24 Mass Effect 3 : 25.51 Mass Effect 2 : 24.54 Batman: Arkham City : 24.14 Dark Souls : 24.10 Red Dead Redemption : 23.60 Bioshock Infinite : 23.50 Xenoblade Chronicles : 22.76 Portal 2 : 22.35 Fire Emblem: Awakening : 21.96 Metal Gear Solid V : 21.49 Borderlands 2 : 20.46 Bloodborne : 20.38 Pokemon X/Y : 19.73 Monster Hunter 4U : 18.31 Shovel Knight : 18.04 Undertale : 17.77 Bayonetta 2 : 17.00 Minecraft : 16.14 Mario Kart 8 : 16.07 Civilization V : 16.04 Super Mario Maker : 15.64 The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth : 13.66 Journey : 13.63 Splatoon : 13.05 Animal Crossing: New Leaf : 13.01 Life is Strange : 12.40 Destiny : 12.24 The Walking Dead : 12.01 Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors : 10.72 Virtue's Last Reward : 10.27 Hearthstone : 8.25 ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis After what seemed like *forever*, we finally got a new announcement. To the surprise of no one, and to the delight of everyone, it was Game of the Decade 2! Second verse, same as the first, but this time we'd be looking at the time line from 2010 - 2019 instead of the previous decade. The contest start got delayed twice thanks to coronavirus and server moves, but it did eventually start. And because there are still idiots who need this explained to them, the de facto standard for the first decade AD is 1 through 9, giving us present-day decades that start on the aesthetically pleasing "zero" number instead of "one". No, you are not clever for telling us there was no year zero and that this decade should actually be 2011 - 2020. Now go away. The adults are talking. Try not to eat Tide pods or lick toilet bowls to get likes on Instagram. Nominations and the format was easy enough: 128 games in a 1v1 bracket, no loser's bracket this time (thank god), 4 matches per day for the first few rounds, then 2, then eventually 1 as we got down to the end. Board 8 dominated nominations as usual, leading to some hilarious overseeding -- Mass Effect 2, Super Meat Boy, DOOM, and plenty of others -- and Allen quietly stepped in with rules about critic scores and such to make sure Untitled Goose Game couldn't win the contest as a joke. This basically meant League of Legends wasn't eligible, though that game came out in 2009 anyway. That rule was tossed aside for Minecraft, which was in beta in 2009 just like League but whatever. The bracket itself was very varied, and even though Allen never said it directly it was clear there was a personal rule of his about no more than 2 games per franchise. The snubs list is already posted on the wiki, but some of the games on that list are nuts. Skyward Sword didn't get in. Mario Maker didn't get in. Smash 4 didn't get in. *None* of the Phoenix Wright or Final Fantasy 13 games. Resident Evil 2's remake, Pokemon Gold/Silver's remake, and Persona 4 Golden got in, but not Metroid 2, Xenoblade Chronicles X, or Captain Toad. Yeah I see you, Nick. Total miscarriage! This contest could have benefitted a lot from a few of these games as 14-16 seeds, but the Metacritic stuff was real. How real? Check out this list that user scaryice put together. Metacritic average by seeding: Average Metacritic score by seed \(1\) 94.3 \(2\) 92.3 \(3\) 91.1 \(4\) 92.4 \(5\) 87.1 \(6\) 89.9 \(7\) 90.1 \(8\) 89.3 \(9\) 88.3 \(10\) 86.6 \(11\) 86.8 \(12\) 85.6 \(13\) 86.9 \(14\) 84.8 \(15\) 84.0 \(16\) 85.8 This might explain why A Plague Tale, and other games that got meh ratings didn't make it in despite being hugely popular. Overall though, no real complaints or criticisms about the layout. We got robbed of a Breath of the Wild vs Smash Ultimate final, but it's understandable not to do it. The ridiculous anti-rally measures were back and, uh... "better than ever", if you're the type who hates fun. User votes counted double, the poll start time was 8 PM EST again, and the unbelievably dumb must-vote-in-every-poll stuff was back. "Yay." But hey, it was out first games contest in five years. LFG!! One final note that I wanted to put in the pregame section, since it was a good discussion during the contest itself. I think personally, one of the following games is objectively the game of the decade regardless of how any poll turned out: Skyrim, Dark Souls, Dota 2, Clash of Kings, GTA5, Fortnite, Red Dead Redemption 2, Smash Ultimate, Breath of the Wild, CoD: Black Ops, Witcher 3, Undertale, Bloodborne, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Mario Odyssey, Super Meat Boy, The Last of Us, Doom 2016, Overwatch, Borderlands 2, Shovel Knight, Hearthstone, Stardew Valley, Persona 5, Dragon Quest 11, Horizon Zero Dawn, Hollow Knight, NieR Automata, God of War 2018, Pokemon GO, and REmake Evil 2. You can pick any game you want subjectively, but any fair "game of the decade" for 2010-2019 has to be one of those games. And trust me, that is not a favorites list. On we go! **"Whatever happens next, it's been an honor F5ing with you all this evening."** -TheCodeIsBosco ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis "Good write up, Ulti. It’s honestly just genuinely entertaining to read the crazy, insightful, idiotic, galaxy-brain shit that comes out of your head. See ya next time." -ColZach When the coronavirus turned the world upside-down, the people willing to adapt, overcome, and change got or stayed rich. Rigid Guy went out of business. I understand government executive orders from idiotic blue states played a part in this too, but bear with me. I could come up with endless examples of Rigid Guy falling off and Adaptable Guy succeeding, but I'll go with just one example. WWE continued putting on wrestling shows, but with no fans in the stands for safety reasons. Sure, makes sense. They put on the same trash they've been putting on for the entire PG era, and they hit new record lows for viewership every week. They're now below peak TNA numbers, just FYI. You guys think Fox is regretting that TV deal yet? AEW meanwhile did the same type of shows, but they put their wrestlers in the stands as their "fans" and split them up in the arena between faces and heels. Their shows, despite feeling empty, still have a form of crowd noise and actually feel like a good wrestling show. WWE's stuff is sterile, boring, and flat. It might look like a wrestling show, but it's not one. This might have *looked* like a GameFAQs contest, but the lack of vote totals made it look like a wrestling show with no audience and no innovation. Watch those matches on mute. Aren't they trash with no crowd and no announcer? That's essentially what our contests are without voters. You can set up a good bracket, put all the bells and whistles on it, and all the board contests can fire off, but without voters, without excitement, without the usual new user influx, these contests feel like we're just going through the motions. This contest also had few truly great matches, but that's just bad luck. I can live with that. What I don't enjoy living with is a preventable low voter problem, and I should point out that viewership for everything across the board is way up for the things that are actually good. There are three main causes for the low turnouts: 1 - The site refused to adapt as the gaming world changed. It stayed text-based for way, way, way too long when it was clear that videos and fan wikis were the new hotness. At this point, it's too late to even fix the problem. The only traffic this site gets now are from Google referrals to the Answers sections, with the guides still getting *some* traffic. Trust me here, I have a big contributor page and I can see the page hits. Individual subreddits and message boards for each game or series is still popular, and we have that, but people left the site in favor of better places to offer that service a long time ago. The leads to issue \#2. 2 - **EXTREME** over-moderation. This site is well-known across the internet for this one, and this junk helped chase off many a user over the years. Lip service has been paid to relaxing things, but it's worse than ever. GameFAQs is as bad as ResetEra or anything other extremist far left site you want to name. When you tell users that only far left garbage is allowed on your web site, people are more than willing to leave. Especially gamers. We are not an easy group of people to please, and we will gladly bail for the latest and greatest if we're not treated properly. It's the entire methodology behind how games sell. The fix here is hilariously easy. Allow for diversity of thought and get rid of the moronic dispute system where mods vote on their own rulings. If you want people to vote on disputes, leave it entirely up to high level users who *aren't* moderators. Too many overturns, and the mod loses their job. It's a good system of checks and balances that would get rid of 95% of the biased deletions that happen on here overnight. People like Team Rocket Elite, Raptor, Centurion, spooky, DetroitDJ, and the mods who are actually really good would be fine under that system. It's the bad mods that would all poof, and this site has been in need of checks for a long, long time. Our moderation system being so bad that it's a meme killed our message boards. 3 - Get rid of most of the anti-rally nonsense. This debate is completely settled and over. I've won the argument. Killing the rallies has all but murdered our vote totals. The experiment has failed; get rid of it. I like registered users getting a bonus and I like the poll starting at 8. *Everything* else needs to go. No more forced voting in every match, no more fighting against referral links, and every round after divisional finals needs to be one match per day. Witcher 3 vs Persona 5 and Dark Souls vs Skyrim both happening at the same time was a joke. I saw people suggesting some truly absurd methods that don't address any of the actual problems. These ideas ranged from complete nonsense like hiding seeding in the bracket to total idiocy like completely changing the scoring system based on prediction percentage. There are people on the forum stupid enough to think calling a round one match in a seeded bracket tournament should have the same weight as calling a semifinal upset. I even saw people calling for banning Zelda from contests, which is absurd to do. Why should Breath of the Wild be excluded from a popularity contest when it hadn't won anything before this contest happened? These are the sorts of bad ideas that happen when a contest has no vote totals and a predictable winner. We don't need anything ridiculous. We just need good vote totals, excitement for the web site, and a web site that people actually want to be on because they're treated fairly. I'm not even asking for anything greedy like the crazy vote totals from the late 2000s. I'd be happy with the numbers we got in 2015. It shouldn't take a mega-rally in the finals for **one poll** to break 30,000 votes. That is asinine. There is a real problem here and some of you are way off with how to fix it. "Take out mid contest breaks too. Although I appreciated being top of the leader board in the second chance comp for a day, that contest break made me lose all interest after what had been an entertaining week or so." -Ringworm *Contest Ranking* Fall 2015 (Games) Fall 2010 (Game of the Decade) Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2013 (Characters) Winter 2010 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2005 (Characters) Spring 2009 (4-way Games) Summer 2007 (4-way Characters) Summer 2006 (Female Bracket) **Spring 2020 (Game of the Decade 2)** Spring 2006 (Series) Fall 2018 (Characters) Summer 2004 (Characters) Summer 2008 (4-way Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) Fall 2011 (Rivalry Rumble) Spring 2017 (Years) Last, but not least... **The Ultimate Loser™!!** The big, um.... "winner" this year was.... Terraria! Breath of the Wild \> Witcher 3 \> Skyrim \> Dark Souls \> The Last of Us \> Batman \> Bioshock Infinite \> Terraria. It's fitting that one of the many, many overhyped, useless indie games would be the big loser this year. Thanks as always and see you next time! I'd like to give a special thanks to my readers, and an extra special thanks to the guys you've never heard of behind the scenes who keep the wiki looking nice. Ngamer and I get all the credit, but without those unknown folks also helping out we could never do it all. Igordebraga, Averiah, MetalmindStats, Bwburke94, and anyone I might have missed, thanks guys! I really appreciate the help! Bottom's up, bros. ## Ctes's Pre-Contest Analysis Pre-Contest Thoughts The first Game of the Decade was a fantastic contest. It was quite possibly the best contest we’ve had, so I was very excited when this one was announced as expected. In fact, I’ve been some level of excited since the previous one ended, but mostly instantly afterwards and the past years. A lot have happened here since then, so it’s a slightly different format. While still 128 entrants in a 1v1 bracket, this time 12-hour matches are no longer a thing, instead we have several matches a day, which I do prefer. Since then we’ve had some large rallies overtaking the contest partly due to the aforementioned low votals, so in 2018 a lot of anti-rally measurements were taken and all of those still apply today. This meant a registered user bonus when voting so that votes count double if you registered an account before the contest began and it also meant you had to vote in every match a day. The former of the two had changed results in the previous contest, so it is worth factoring in. The second thing while smaller likely also makes a difference in earlier matches. There were no losers bracket this time, perhaps partly because most of the field has not been a contest before, so who would you remove? Of course, we could’ve still had the losers bracket when we reached top 16 if we wanted to, but I don’t mind it not being around this time, in particular if it would be constructed like last time where you run into the same entrant again in the losers bracket instead of being thrown into the opposite side. We did still get a second chance bracket that would go up in a week long break after the first three rounds, so there would still be something other than the regular bracket challenge to work on. Last Game of the Decade we had the Battle Challenge contest. I like that we try out some different things, as long as we keep the ordinary challenge. Nominations went on for quite a while this time, there was a few delays for unexplained reasons both during nominations and during bracket creation. It did serve the purpose of pushing the contest into the time where the whole world was closed down to the pandemic and I have personally loved having this during the worst of it. The timing was perfect to me. The most interesting thing we learned during the nomination period was that remakes and remasters were in the database making them eligible for the first time. Allen actively removed Ocarina of Time 3D and Majora’s Mask 3D indicating that it had to be full remakes, but the line ended up being shaky. The database had things such as “Shadow of the Colossus and Ico”, which would be very weird and stupid to have in the contest so perhaps Allen only actively removed the Zelda games because people were actually nominating them. The bracket came out and there’s a lot to talk about there. On the account of remakes, three of them ended up being in and it shows that the line of eligibility is a bit weird. Resident Evil 2 is quite the different game and right after its Game of the Year victory here it was expected to make it in. Then we had Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver and Persona 4 Golden, which were both more debatable. The latter especially is not much more original than the Zelda games, so perhaps Allen just specifically wanted no previous contest winners. Hopefully we’ll still be able to see FFVIIR in a decade from now, that’s a vastly different game! All three remakes were high seeds, so it’s possible Allen were not hugely in favor of remakes in general while these three were too popular to keep out. They made for a lot of discussion about whether or not they would act as proxies for the games they’re a remake of and to what extent. While we’re talking about Pokemon, one of the first things I noticed were how little representation it had. The only entry is a remake of a 90s game which didn’t even release this decade in Japan. It seems odd that Pokemon GO or some other generation didn’t get in especially considering HGSS was seeded 3. Was it really favored that much? I have a hard time believing that no other Pokemon game had no more nominations than some of the things that made it in, perhaps Allen thought one was enough seeing how similar they are. No franchise had more than two games in the bracket and this is clearly a rule that have been said. Mario did have three games in the bracket if you count Mario Kart, but it would perhaps be a bit too extreme to include all spin-off games from Mario. I do still think this is a bit too extreme. I understand that Allen wanted the most representative bracket as possible for a contest titled Game of the Decade and I believe the lack of a second Pokemon game is due to Allen thinking they aren’t different enough. It did however not make for a better contest in my opinion. We had a lot of fodder in this contest. That was always gonna happen when we excluded everything before 2010, but it was more than necessary imo. The bracket became a bit too chalky as a result and round 1 would have a lot of expected blowouts. I think the run Mario Kart 8 ended up doing is exactly what Allen wanted to avoid too much of. Nintendo is by far the most unfortunate when it comes to the bracket. The rule itself prevented stuff like Skyward Sword and a Mario Maker from making it in and I think it’s a real shame. I don’t think a franchise should be punished for being too good. Imagine if a 90s GotY contest only had two of 3, World and 64, everyone would riot! The cap only need to be a little higher than two and we’d have more interesting matches in round 1. It also results in the 3DS, which was a good contender for best console early in the bracket, have almost no games in the bracket, because we slightly prefer console games. Bracket placement was also rough on Nintendo. Allen wanted to avoid Nintendo domination, but I think he went overboard. Ultimate/Odyssey and BotW/the winner of that means that we would get no real read on the other big Switch games and have mostly boring matches. At this point of the contest, everyone was certain Ultimate was winning the former too and while doubt came as we went, and it ended up being true. It doesn’t even stop there though! Big 2015 snub A Link Between Worlds was fed directly to Smash. Xenoblade 2 could’ve been fun elsewhere and if you count them, both Bayonetta games were given completely unwinnable first round matches. After a contest where everything represented in Smash was stronger than expected, only HGSS, Mario Kart 8, Awakening and the winner of Xenoblade/Three Houses had a chance to do that. The biggest shame is definitely not getting a real feel for Odyssey and Ultimate. When that is all said, Allen did succeed at making a very diverse bracket. Not just by the variation in types of games but also in release years. I have forgotten who, but someone made this nice chart showing that there isn’t too much of a difference between how well each year was being represented: Of course, some are a bit more than others and rightfully so, we’d learn, but no year was snubbed. Breath of the Wild was perhaps the most expected winner we have ever had, and for sure for a new entrant unless we count Link/Ganondorf and 1998 as new entrants. All contenders for second were thrown in the opposite half of the bracket. Look at the games seeded 1. I don’t doubt it’s on purpose that the Nintendo game and the two weakest were put into the same half as Breath of the Wild. Except for this however, we knew almost nothing of the field and some of the entries we had seen before like Witcher 3 and Dark Souls were expected to be much stronger due to respect and the contest title. A vast majority of the games were not in the 2015 contest either due to being too weak or just not released. Part of what made Game of the Decade I such a great contest was that most of the big games were left out and it’s the same thing here, only this time we had not had a games contest a small year before so we had much less to base our predictions on, so it was very exciting to get going. ## Ctes's Mid-Contest Analysis Just like Character Battle X had in 2018, this contest featured a weeklong break before the top 16, so that everyone could fill out second chance brackets. Different from last time was that there was no losers bracket and a finals division, we just had a top 16 games. That would mean only 15 matches remained instead of the 30 matches there were left last time. The low amount of matches left made people skeptical, because there would be plenty of people getting all matches correct and it would take very few alt brackets to create every single possible outcome, in the sense of what realistically had a chance to happen. Breath of the Wild was basically guaranteed to win the whole competition and the winner of division 3 was guaranteed to beat the winner of division 4. That’s already four matches out of the way, and those are only the ones where not even a single crazy person took the upset. People recalled back in Rivalry Rumble, when the Battle Challenge had a ton of people going perfect into the final match of the contest and Allen had to create a crazy oracle finish. Would we the see the same now? Not quite, but the oracle kind of challenge would play a part. Allen worked out a second chance challenge in the best possible way in my opinion. You had to not just guess the winner, but guess their final percentage rounded to nearest integer. You would get 50 points for a perfect prediction and then lose a point for every whole percentage, you were away. However, if you guessed the winner wrong, you would get 0 points. That meant if you guessed Resident Evil 2 with 51% but Mass Effect 2 won with 51%, you would not get 48 points, you would get 0. This created a challenge that was bracket challenge first and foremost and oracle to break tiebreaker. Of course, you could theoretically win despite getting a match wrong, but everyone knew you would be out of contention. True enough, the 27 best brackets had more than 700 points, the maximum you could get with one match wrong. If we were to have a second chance bracket, this one was as good as they come, except that the slide bar you made picks on was a bit confusing and it caused a surprisingly high amount of people to pick the winner they didn’t intended. I mean, you should always look more carefully than that, so it’s the smallest complaint possible if it is one. People knew that the most important aspect of the bracket was picking the Breath of the Wild matches correctly. The rest of the matches were all thought to be reasonably close, so if you just picked 55% for your winner in all of those, you’d be really good. Breath of the Wild was different though, people’s opinions often had more than 10% between them in those, sometimes more than 15%. Whether or not we should have had a second chance bracket at all is another discussion though. People liked the format, but a lot of people also found it unnecessary because it would damage contest flow and votals just to give us an extra challenge. It made more sense in 2018. The promotion was also quite terrible. Casual voters really had no idea of knowing what happened. After the division 8 matches ended, there was simply no poll on the front page and initially no way to enter the second chance bracket, this would come a day later. That created a lot of confusion if you missed the part about the second chance bracket beforehand. Votals are higher than number of brackets, so a lot of people did. Considering the amount of second chance brackets weren’t much higher than the number of voters we seemed to initially lose, I believe the concept was unnecessary. Because Allen insists on having multiple matches each day until the semi-finals, we only had nine days left of matches. The break itself was almost that long as it was eight days. I hope this is the last time we had such a break, I appreciate the idea of a second chance bracket and it was fun, but if it can’t be worked without taking that much time off, I fully believe we’re better off without it. Promotion could help. A shorter break could help. Bonus matches could help. Ultimately though, I don’t think even the combination of those would make me prefer this. The Losers Bracket made it seem more reasonable, but that part had issues of its own. I believe it was fun for change but has no real reason to come back. In any case, we had an exciting last part of the contest ahead of us. A top 16 that’s a lot closer to the general opinion than GameFAQs usually is, division 4 being the biggest outlier, but the remakes in general also looking weird. The bracket was made to be quite diverse and respect the whole decade, it shows in our final bracket where likely top 16 games such as Super Mario Galaxy 2 and A Link Between Worlds were fed to top games early. It had not always made for a better bracket, but there was at least some excitement to almost all remaining matches now that the Breath of the Wild matches looked to decide the second chance bracket. ## Ctes's Post-Contest Analysis It’s been another fun ride that’s as always over before we know it despite how impatient we can get with getting matches rolling at times. The contest began right as the whole world was in lockdown and it was perfect timing. It has been very enjoyable to have a contest on GameFAQs to follow while being at home as much, I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling that. The first Game of the Decade was probably the best contest we have had, at least it’s up there. This one was good for a lot of the same reasons. Most of the games being untested and leaving our usual big games out for more interesting matches. This time, our winner was a whole lot more obvious and contests are so far in between that it’s not as necessary to remove our usual big games, but it still made a fun contest. I don’t think it made for as good a contest as the first one though. The bracket was very diverse and very chalky. It makes for “better results” to not have a low tier Nintendo game beat over-seeded games of little strength, but it doesn’t make for a better contest. Despite having four matches a day for the first two rounds, a lot of the days had no exciting matches at all. It’s one thing to not have close matches, they just went as everyone expected most of the time and that’s not just because we’ve been doing these things for a long time. It’s been suggested this should have had 64 entries instead of 128, but I don’t think that’s the main problem. I just think we should have had slightly less diversity and maybe not created so many Nintendo SFF matches. I know the series cap isn’t confirmed and not everyone believes in it, but there’s just no way I can imagine some of the lower seeded games receiving more nominations than some of the snubbed games. It’s also possible Metacritic is having a bit too much of a say in this. The amount of matches a day is also up for debate. In general, multiple matches is a much better solution than the day and night matches we had a decade ago and I like that we’re getting through the contests at a quicker pace, but sometimes it feels too quick. It was a good step in the right direction to only have two matches per day in round 3, but we need to switch to one match sooner than we do. Forcing us to vote in all matches doesn’t help in this regard. In general, despite the impatience, I don’t mind the contest lasting a bit longer than it does. We used to have a good bit longer contests than this and it was fine. The mid-contest break is a huge part of that problem. I know what the purpose of it is, but it does more damage. It felt so weird to have a break that long and then rush through the remaining part of the contest. The big problem is of course our votals. Theoretically, that shouldn’t influence how fun the contest is, but it does without a doubt. Trends disappearing is partly because of smartphones allowing everyone to vote wherever, but it’s also due to a lack of new and younger users and in general less people voting overall. I appreciate all our anti-rally measures for their intent, though I don’t agree that they’re all nice. The registered user bonus is fine even without these votals, but it’s crazy to me that we did that to help votals before many other more obvious things. The average GameFAQs user is not old because we’re on some old site, it’s because we doesn’t move with the times and thus most of the people here and the ones that were here when it wasn’t as outdated. The votals had become a major issue between 2010 and 2013, but Allen assured us site traffic was good, but that it was simply down for the frontpage. I believe that, but if it mostly comes from answer pages and such don’t we need to attract users here to keep having the info they need. Video guides should have become a thing here forever ago. There are lots of improvements than can be done and/or should have been long ago. In regard to our contests though, I don’t understand why we haven’t taken better measures to improve votals and participation. The promotion is very minimal. That’s one thing on other sides due to rallies, but even here it’s very easy to miss. It’s up on the front page for a surprisingly short amount of time and your window for noticing on any page is smaller and it doesn’t look attractive. Then as soon the contest gets going, it’s only visible on the front page. Why? I don’t understand why it’s not visible on every page. When someone googles something and is directed to GameFAQs, they should be able to see the match pictures and vote in the poll regardless of what part of the page they were directed to. I realize not everyone here cares for the contests as much as us, that’s obvious, but it doesn’t really change the experience of being here in any way that there’s a poll at the side of page. There’s plenty of unused room there. Not on mobile, but then put it at top or bottom or whatever, it can still easily be done without annoying anyone. This was a Game of the Decade contest in place of yet another Character Battle, it would have been the perfect time to try it out. Our six-digit votals are long gone, but our five-digit votals are even in danger at times now if not for the registered bonus. I know all this is not first site priority, it just seems like it would take relatively little effort and I’m sure that a bunch of users would help with it for free. I honestly don’t see why not. It sounds like a lot of negativity. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun this contest, I just think there’s a simple way to make things better. It has been enjoyable though and I’m glad Allen gave us the contest we hoped we would get every since last time. I’m excited for next time too, and speaking of next time, it’s fun to think of what would be. On the day of the bonus match, we also had this fun poll: It’s pretty clear from the results that the more times we’ve seen something, the less interesting in it we appear to be, though at least everyone correctly recalls Rivalry Rumble is bad. I’m open to something completely different, but only if someone actually has a good idea. I doubt it’s that people actually want something different as much as it’s just the stand-in for the usual “I don’t care about them” option. Character Battle is the obvious next one, but it’s not highly requested. Villains doing that well is a bit sad. If we really wanted another Villains contest, couldn’t we just do Character Battle by villainous level or something stupid like that. I don’t think it’d be much fun, even though the winner would be less obvious. Series contest would not be that great either. It’s a shame Best Game Ever has so few votes when the bonus match hyped that, but there’s another option probably stealing its votes. Game of the Decade 1990s is a great idea. It’s a very GameFAQs idea, by why not? It would be a good contest, lots of our strongest games are from that era and it will give us most of the matches we didn’t get in 2015 but hoped we would. Ocarina of Time is an obvious winner there, but I’m sure some people will buy bite and pick Chrono Trigger. I’ll have fun with regular Character Battles and Best Game Evers too, but if we’re to try something new, let’s do this one. ## Safer777's Pre-Contest Analysis I am back baby! Time to do another analysis for a contest! You know the thing that I have done only 1 time before? And everyone loved it? Yeah I am jesting and you all know it. So obviously I am not an expert even though I am here since the 2nd contest but I will try my best because well I just like the contest season. I don't know why, I just like seeing all these familiar names and their passion for the contest even after all these years. You feel like you are in a community of sorts. The contest season is just nice for me. Or something like that. Read the Crew analysis and the Ulti's post contest analysis to find good analysis from the experts. They are much better than me. Something to notice too. Since these analysis will go on as the contest is happening they will not be entirely accurate since we will not have the big picture yet. For example in the previous contest in Round 1 we had Zelda beating Ezio and people saying it was a bad result for Ezio. BUT since we have the big picture we know that it was a good result for Ezio since well Zelda reached the final match! So there you go. Anyway for this contest. It is GOTD one, so games that came out from 2010 to 2019 are fair game. Now in the previous decade we had only ONE games contest strangely enough (I am excluding the first GOTD contest) and few games from that contest are here too now so that makes things exciting since we don't have much info on what will happen. The general consensus is that BOTW will win easily since it is a Zelda game and it is open world too and these 2 things together are perfect. Now IF we have rallies anything can happen BUT I will tell you something. We will not have since nobody cares for these things anymore. Sure in the previous decade we had a few rallies but it will not happen again. Because nobody cares for this site anymore. Sad but that is the truth. We have Reddit to discuss things and Youtube to find help for a game. So in this site we only have old people now. Like me. So what other contenders we have with a chance to win? We have Fortnite which is THE most popular game in the world right now but unless a big streamer is a member of gamefaqs and cares for this contest nothing will happen. Another legitimate contender is Smash Ultimate. Seriously that game has so many characters that everyone has at least 1 character that they like. But since the LAW and Hierarchy exist it will not win too. Also the Guru pick for this contest is Super Meat Boy. Strange pick but fine. We have 24 hour matches and this is good since not all of use are living in USA you know and it gives people more time to vote. Oh my pick to win? I would like either Witcher 3 or Skyrim. After these Smash Ultimate since it has Joker and Sans(okay as a costume but still). So I don't think I want to say anything more right now. I am sure I forget something but eh. Time to write these analysis stuff. Feel free to post anything if you like I guess? I will try to update this topic after every day. Another thing I noticed in this bracket is that we have so many Indie games. I know that with Steam, Xbox Store and PSN developers could publish their games much more easily but still. I don't have anything against Indie games but nothing deserved GOTD. Maybe Minecraft and that is really. Also notable absents were PUBG and Pokemon Go. We do have Fortnite but for a while PUBG was THE biggest game on the planet and is still popular but yeah it has lost it's throne. As for Pokemon Go say whatever you want but for a few months the whole planet was into it. There wasn't a single day wihout hearing some crazy story and it is still popular now, but not as big of course. Still earns a ton of money too. And a final thing. We are currently(27/03/2020) in a pandemic which is going on for around 3 months and around 1/3 of the population is in a lockdown which hasn't ever happened before. What a time to be alive! So why I write this? Not sure. Maybe we will get more votes since people are just sitting on their homes? ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
Division 1 Zelda: Breath of the Wild Dragon Quest XI Zelda: Breath of the Wild Mass Effect 2 Zelda: Breath of the Wild Smash Bros. Ultimate **ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD** The Witcher 3
\(1\) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (16) The Outer Worlds Zelda: Breath of the Wild Halo: Reach Zelda: Breath of the Wild Final Fantasy XV
\(8\) Halo: Reach (9) Life is Strange
\(5\) Final Fantasy XV (12) What Remains of Edith Finch Final Fantasy XV Hollow Knight
\(4\) Hollow Knight (13) Tales of Berseria
\(3\) Monster Hunter: World (14) Bravely Default: Flying Fairy Monster Hunter: World Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Monster Hunter: World Dragon Quest XI
\(6\) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (11) Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
\(7\) The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series (10) Bastion Bastion Dragon Quest XI
\(2\) Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (15) The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC
Division 2 Mass Effect 2 Resident Evil 2
\(1\) Mass Effect 2 (16) Resident Evil 7: biohazard Mass Effect 2 Fallout 4 Mass Effect 2 Horizon Zero Dawn
\(8\) Fallout 4 (9) VVVVVV
\(5\) Borderlands 2 (12) Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Borderlands 2 Horizon Zero Dawn
\(4\) Horizon Zero Dawn (13) Fortnite
\(3\) Resident Evil 2 (14) Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Resident Evil 2 DOOM Resident Evil 2 Bloodborne
\(6\) DOOM (11) INSIDE
\(7\) Fire Emblem: Awakening (10) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Fire Emblem: Awakening Bloodborne
\(2\) Bloodborne (15) Call of Duty: Black Ops
Division 3 Smash Bros. Ultimate Super Mario Odyssey Smash Bros. Ultimate Xenoblade Chronicles
\(1\) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (16) Tekken 7 Smash Bros. Ultimate Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Smash Bros. Ultimate Spider-Man
\(8\) The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (9) Bayonetta
\(5\) Marvel's Spider-Man (12) Dead Space 2 Spider-Man Minecraft
\(4\) Minecraft (13) Dota 2
\(3\) Undertale (14) Octopath Traveler Octopath Traveler Shovel Knight Shovel Knight Super Mario Odyssey
\(6\) Shovel Knight (11) Dragon's Dogma
\(7\) Devil May Cry 5 (10) Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze Devil May Cry 5 Super Mario Odyssey
\(2\) Super Mario Odyssey (15) Mortal Kombat 11
Division 4 Persona 4 Golden Xenoblade Chronicles
\(1\) Grand Theft Auto V (16) Baba Is You Grand Theft Auto V Cuphead Grand Theft Auto V Persona 4 Golden
\(8\) Cuphead (9) XCOM 2
\(5\) Persona 4 Golden (12) FTL: Faster Than Light Persona 4 Golden Red Dead Redemption
\(4\) Red Dead Redemption (13) Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
\(3\) Xenoblade Chronicles (14) Splatoon 2 Xenoblade Chronicles Overwatch Xenoblade Chronicles Fire Emblem: Three Houses
\(6\) Overwatch (11) Death Stranding
\(7\) Dragon Age: Inquisition (10) Ori and the Blind Forest Ori and the Blind Forest Fire Emblem: Three Houses
\(2\) Fire Emblem: Three Houses (15) South Park: The Stick of Truth
Division 5 The Witcher 3 God of War The Witcher 3 Persona 5 The Witcher 3 Skyrim
\(1\) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (16) Assassin's Creed Odyssey The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Mass Effect 3 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Super Mario Galaxy 2
\(8\) Mass Effect 3 (9) Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
\(5\) Stardew Valley (12) Destiny Stardew Valley Super Mario Galaxy 2
\(4\) Super Mario Galaxy 2 (13) Return of the Obra Dinn
\(3\) Fallout: New Vegas (14) The Stanley Parable Fallout: New Vegas Dark Souls III Fallout: New Vegas God of War
\(6\) Dark Souls III (11) Dishonored
\(7\) The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (10) Nioh Nioh God of War
\(2\) God of War (15) The Talos Principle
Division 6 Persona 5 Portal 2
\(1\) Persona 5 (16) Heavy Rain Persona 5 Assassin's Creed IV Persona 5 Sonic Mania
\(8\) Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (9) Sid Meier's Civilization V
\(5\) Sonic Mania (12) Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA Sonic Mania Super Meat Boy
\(4\) Super Meat Boy (13) Slay the Spire
\(3\) Portal 2 (14) Tomb Raider Portal 2 Kingdom Hearts III Portal 2 Red Dead Redemption 2
\(6\) Kingdom Hearts III (11) Disco Elysium
\(7\) Animal Crossing: New Leaf (10) Street Fighter V Animal Crossing: New Leaf Red Dead Redemption 2
\(2\) Red Dead Redemption 2 (15) Dying Light
Division 7 Dark Souls The Last of Us Dark Souls Skyrim
\(1\) Dark Souls (16) Hotline Miami Dark Souls Rocket League Dark Souls Metal Gear Solid V
\(8\) Rocket League (9) Dragon Ball FighterZ
\(5\) Yakuza 0 (12) The Witness Yakuza 0 Metal Gear Solid V
\(4\) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (13) Dead Cells
\(3\) Batman: Arkham City (14) Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Batman: Arkham City BioShock Infinite Batman: Arkham City The Last of Us
\(6\) BioShock Infinite (11) Terraria
\(7\) Diablo III (10) Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward Diablo III The Last of Us
\(2\) The Last of Us (15) Crusader Kings II
Division 8 Skyrim Pokémon HGSS
\(1\) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (16) Subnautica Skyrim Journey Skyrim Mario Kart 8
\(8\) Fate / Grand Order (9) Journey
\(5\) Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn (12) Crypt of the NecroDancer Final Fantasy XIV Mario Kart 8
\(4\) Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (13) Mario Kart 8
\(3\) Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version (14) Night in the Woods Pokémon HGSS Rayman Legends Pokémon HGSS NieR: Automata
\(6\) Celeste (11) Rayman Legends
\(7\) Divinity: Original Sin II (10) Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Divinity: Original Sin II NieR: Automata
\(2\) NieR: Automata (15) Bayonetta 2
Snubs: ## See Also - [GotD 2 Bracket and Standings](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/gotd_20) - [GotD 2 Stats (slightly outdated by necessity)](http://web.archive.org/web/20200508234125/https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/gotd_stats) - Board 8's 2020 Nominations --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (16)The Outer Worlds 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (16)The Outer Worlds 2020 (revid 86480)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, March 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 83.04% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 96.95% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6925 The Outer Worlds - 1168 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5510 The Outer Worlds - 1073 Not to be confused with "Outer Wilds", which did not make the field. We all knew Zelda would smash this entire contest right from the jump, but the difference this year as compared to most is everyone was actually rooting for Zelda to smash this entire contest. It wasn't really the obvious winner catching anti votes until the tail end of the contest, and it started the Zelda Redemption Tour (remember, Zelda got embarrassed by Undertale last games contest) by utterly demolishing The Outer Worlds. There is a sick joy in watching a car crash unfold, and Zelda gave us seven of them this year. Usually with the first writeup I get to comment on how Nintendo has the \#1 overall seed and gets to squish some bug in the first match, but this was actually our first such Nintendo stomping in quite awhile. Dante was the \#1 overall seed in the last character battle, 1995 does not count, and Chrono Trigger had this spot in 2015. You have to go all the way back to 2013 to see the last true Nintendo \#1 overall seed in a contest (Link was the \#1 seed that year, but Draven won the contest), and you have to go back to 2010 to see the last Nintendo \#1 overall seed in a 1v1 contest. I could bring up the Rivalry Rumble, but I won't. I will say that The Outer Worlds deserved better given Obsidian is now doing Bethesda's job better than Bethesda does, but every seeded contest needs their 16s and *someone* had to get fed to Zelda early. It happens. ## Ctes's Analysis For the opening match of the contest, this was actually a pretty interesting one. It was the clear sign of just how beastly Breath of the Wild would be. Of course BotW would win big and of course it would have the biggest prediction percentage of the contest, but breaking 85% is insane. Only three other games failed to break 15% and they all ended up at the bottom of the x-stats too. This also came right after a contest where only a match involving our most hated character, Draven, was such a big blowout. Breath of the Wild is an expected winner, that almost always gives you some number of anti-votes and sure enough, Breath of the Wild did worse in the first 15 minutes, but it’s still incredible. The craziest thing is it didn’t face some of the worst turbofodder we had in this bracket. The Outer Worlds had just finished right behind Sekiro in a GotY poll, a game that was a popular upset pick to make round 3 and neither was that far away from the overall winner, Resident Evil 2. It was clearly ahead of Devil May Cry 5 in that poll. There is a lot of uncertainty in using Game of the Year polls for anything, but they’re a fine indicator. The Outer Worlds could probably win a fair share of matches, but instead it got to be completely obliterated against the contest favorite. Now, The Outer Worlds probably has a less dedicated fanbase than a bunch of our other weak entries, which might help fuel BotW. The game is often confused with Outer Wilds, that says something about it, but even so, Breath of the Wild opened up looking even better than expected and we expected it to roll over the contest, that’s very impressive. ## Safer777's Analysis So first match and we had the strongest game that is expected to win easily this whole thing. And EVERYONE loved this game. I mean once it has 99 on Metacritic! I am surprised that Outer Worlds managed to sneak in in this contest. I know the game is good since it is from the developers that made a good Fallout game(New Vegas)but still I don't think people were blown away and I don't see anyone talking about the game like 1 month after it came out. Eh whatever. So of course BOTW won easily. Now the funny part is that people expected BOTW to score lower than this so yeah we are talking about a monster contest strength game here. And everyone knows it, I mean look at the correct picks! Almost 96%! Damn! So there you go. What else? Oh yeah in the early concepts Link was supposed to ride a REAL life bike dressed as an astronaut! You can't make these things up! ## Tsunami's Analysis Not much to say here since it's the prohibitive favorite destroying some random fodder that I've never heard of, but with arguably the most well-received Zelda game since Ocarina of Time itself making its contest debut...vote totals were *still* down from the previous contest, where our opening match was Dante vs. Cuphead. Okay, yes, with this four-matches-at-once format, technically we also had Legend of Zelda in an opening match in CBX, too, but here's the scary part: when you take out the registered user bonus, not only did BotW-TOW draw fewer voters than Dante-Cuphead, but Breath of the Wild drew fewer votes than Dante! The registered-unregistered ratio was more lopsided here, though; in Dante-Cuphead, registered voters only outnumbered unregistered voters 8819-8756, whereas here it was 8093-6583. Which, uh, is kind of scary given that BotW's winning margin among the registered voters was **6925**-1168. More registered voters voted for BotW than unregistered voters voted period! That's ridiculous. I guess there was a lot to say after all. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7915&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Halo: Reach vs (9)Life is Strange 2020 _source: (8)Halo: Reach vs (9)Life is Strange 2020 (revid 86483)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, March 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Halo: Reach - 55.36% 53 for - 11 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Halo: Reach - 65.82% - **User Votes:** Halo: Reach - 4599 Life is Strange - 3427 - **Anonymous Votes:** Halo: Reach - 3483 Life is Strange - 3049 This match had some debate despite only being one point, believe it or not. Not only did a third of the site think Halo would lose, but a fourth of the gurus picked against it as well. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is the specter of Halo embarrassing itself due to anti-votes is always there. It has a massive history of underperforming or just outright losing winnable matches, and people look it up every contest. Look at this list of choke jobs, some of them wins in debated matches! And who could ever forget the ultimate choke of them all? Halo is so anti-voted on this site that people had open bloodspot debates on whether or not it would lose to the likes of Minecraft and Super Mario Sunshine. Remember the South Park episode where James Cameron was looking for the bar because it had gotten *so* low that it had to be at the bottom of the Mariana Trench? When people are arguing that you can't beat Mario Sunshine, then you win and people are arguing that you might lose to Life is Strange a few years later, it might be time to throw in the towel on nominating Halo games in contests. Can't get much lower than this, folks, and Halo has clearly bottomed out on this site. Now to be completely fair, Life is Strange is a big deal among casual gamer circles so I can understand why some would pick it here. On almost any big site other than GameFAQs, it probably wins this match. The proof is in what happened five years ago. In round one, Life is Strange was up against Fallout 3 and was getting thoroughly demolished. It was at something like 19% and no one thought anything of the game other than it being turbofodder garbage. Well during that day of that contest, a little-known match was happening between Mass Effect 3 and Undertale. You all know the story of that match, so we need not relive it. What lots of people *don't* remember is while Undertale was going godmode, Life is Strange was *also* going godmode. It jumped all the way up to 27% (!!) by the end of that match, and won some updates outright. It all added up to Halo looking like trash in winning, but never actually feeling threatened. Life is Strange is basically bottom of the barrel on this site, and will lose to anything with name recognition. Halo, though gigatrash for contest strength, does still have "name recognition". Sometimes, that's all you need to win. We'll see that theme a lot in this contest, because the field had a ton of fodder that needed to be rooted out in the early rounds. Case in point, here are Leon's 5 minute unadjusted stats from the final, with only games below Life is Strange mentioned: Life is Strange – 13.28% Destiny – 13.27% Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward – 13.08% Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – 12.95% Crypt of the NecroDancer – 12.86% Binding of Isaac: Rebirth – 12.82% XCOM 2 – 12.80% Fate/Grand Order – 12.32% Death Stranding – 12.26% VVVVVV – 11.86% Hotline Miami – 11.73% Call of Duty: Black Ops – 11.69% Subnautica – 11.66% FTL: Faster Than Light – 11.53% The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC – 11.51% Splatoon 2 – 11.23% Dragon’s Dogma – 11.00% Tekken 7 – 10.97% Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft – 10.85% Fortnite – 10.84% Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective – 10.77% The Stanley Parable – 10.64% Night in the Woods – 10.56% Baba Is You – 10.52% Crusader Kings II – 10.44% Dying Light – 10.41% Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair – 10.16% What Remains of Edith Finch – 10.02% Slay the Spire – 9.91% The Witness – 9.78% Dota 2 – 9.65% The Talos Principle – 8.71% Return of the Obra Dinn – 8.17% Mortal Kombat 11 – 7.97% INSIDE – 7.13% That's over 35 games! This site does not play games made after 2001. "But Ulti! What about the usual mention of the second match curse!" Oh we'll get to that. ## Ctes's Analysis The final match of the first day gave us a major blow to board 8 from casuals. This match was hotly debated on board 8 and when something doesn’t even break 40%, that’s on us. Hollow Knight was the guru favorite, so we weren’t completely off, but it was very evenly split. It also serves as our first indicator of indie games being legit, but that didn’t really take off until the next day. While the gurus favored Hollow Knight, the oracles did not and those are the bigger contest nerds. With 61.82%, Black Turtle had by far the best oracle prediction and it lower than the actual result. He sure made us here for it too! Then look at the prediction percentage. This was an embarrassing start for us even if we made up for later on. It was almost over right away, but there were a few minutes of hope for Berseria. It certainly had the board vote to the surprise of no one. A minute into the match, Berseria was doubling Hollow Knight, then suddenly Hollow Knight rose to heaven and was almost doubling Berseria at the freeze. The match had everyone’s attention, but the next update sealed the deal completely. Hollow Knight extended its lead above 200 votes and never looked back. What happened then? Basically everything we could look at indicated the match being even, and in even matches picking the RPG is usually a good call. Hollow Knight lost big time in its two GotY polls. Tales of Berseria had no such polls to make predictions based on, which probably didn’t speak well for it, but means to was untested. Kingdom Hearts III was snubbed from GotY too and that game had decent enough strength to win here. Velvet was in our latest contest and won a match with relative ease before getting almost 30% on Yoshi. Such strength could be enough today. For a long time, Hollow Knight was believed to just be really good. A contender for best indie game, which quickly looked to be a decent title. Also, a crucial thing a lot of people didn’t take into account when making this prediction was Hollow Knight’s Switch exposure coming later than its original release. I had Berseria today and expected it to be close thinking Hollow Knight was of the same strength as in its first GotY poll. Had I realized it wasn’t initially on the Switch, I would have picked it. I would not have felt safe, but I would have picked it. Last contest proved being on Switch is a really good thing. It seems clear now that the result had a lot more to do with Tales of Berseria simply being absurdly weak. Not that anyone thought it wasn’t weak after today, but it’s even worse than anticipated. It looks straight up awful. The Tales series is extremely niche these days, being mostly only cared about in very specific RPG happy circles like board 8. Symphonia looks like it will always be the strongest of these despite being limited to the Gamecube outside of Japan for a long time, and the previous games contest showed us it isn’t even the strongest RPG on the Gamecube as it lost to Paper Mario II. Not that there is any shame in that since Paper Mario II is perfect. A decade after Vesperia did slightly worse than anticipated, we’re taught to have no faith in this franchise in contests and we got a good early reminder that characters =/= games. ## Safer777's Analysis I don't know anything about the Halo series but I do believe that HR is beloved at least from the fanbase? As for LIS is a good game and I have seen playthrough and even though it is based on a ridiculous premise(the main character can reverse time!)it just works and the story is amazing too. This and the WD series brought back the Adventure genre for a while at least. So the match was closer that I expected. Sure we all thought that Halo would win with around the same percentage that it won and it did won but I thought the name would give it more power or something. Guess that doesn't really matter. 1 out of 3 picked LIS to win too. So there you go. Not a clear cut match as I thought. ## Tsunami's Analysis It's hard to have faith in anything Halo here, but Life is Strange was pretty fodderiffic when we saw it before. I thought that maybe with B8's penchant for VNs, Life is Strange could pull off the upset, but I forgot that they hate the game. Either way it was a meaningless 1-point match--and there was at least *some* debate here, a 77.3-22.7 split on the Guru compared to some of the other awful picks I made. Halo really does look pretty bad here, even in victory. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7916&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy XV vs (12)What Remains of Edith Finch 2020 _source: (5)Final Fantasy XV vs (12)What Remains of Edith Finch 2020 (revid 86489)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, March 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy XV - 72.70% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy XV - 88.19% - **User Votes:** Final Fantasy XV - 6036 What Remains of Edith Finch - 1990 - **Anonymous Votes:** Final Fantasy XV - 4788 What Remains of Edith Finch - 1744 This was one of the many, many matches in the first two rounds where little-known indie darlings got booted out of this contest in grand style. The methodology behind how this bracket was put together made for a *ton* of indies making the field (I believe the number is around 25?). Some were good. Most were not. Spoilers -- only one indie game made it into round 3, and it isn't one that a lot of people picked. Trust me, we'll get to it in due time. I don't know much about Edith Finch since I haven't played it yet, though I do own it, but I do know that it isn't often a contest entrant gets 25% in a match and doesn't come out looking like a total jobber. Final Fantasy 15 was never going to beat Zelda, we all know this, but Edith Finch was pegged pre-contest as a possibility for dead last in the x-stats. You can't go out and only win 75-25 in a match like this and come out smelling roses, especially with Zelda getting 85% on the same day. The reasons for this are fairly obvious, and we've been over them a million times over the years. No need to rehash them all here. The short of it is the Final Fantasy series has been such bloated, hyper-corporate garbage for so long that people detest these games now. I actually loved Final Fantasy 15, and I have the review to prove it (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/932981-final-fantasy-xv/reviews/163809), but the game was released unfinished. So unfinished, in fact, that Square decided to *never* finish it. Good job, Square. You really know how to make your fans happy, don't you? Fun little anecdote. I bought the game day one and got the platinum fairly quickly, though it wasn't difficult at all. Like it's a literal 1/10 difficulty platinum trophy. I finished the game the day before the free DLC started. If you check my PSN profile, I currently only have 45% of the game's trophies despite having a platinum in the game! If that isn't indicative of a laughably botched game launch, then what is? So.... yeah. I love the game, but I have no ill will toward people who dislike it and helped it have one of the only embarrassing 75% wins we've ever had. This performance was so bad given what Hollow Knight pulled off that FF15 had a whole new problem on its hands in round 2. ## Ctes's Analysis What Remains of Edith Finch looked like a candidate of being the absolute weakest entry in the bracket on paper. Final Fantasy XV is a previous GotY winner and it fell short of a tripling today. That should have been our first warning flag of FFXV struggling to get to round 3. It was mostly credited to Final Fantasy’s inability to score big blowouts, however. FFVII has looked off in so many contests and still managed to get where it should unless its 2013 where to be fair, almost nothing did. At high percentages, it obviously doesn’t take a lot of anti-votes to not score big and Final Fantasy is good at getting such. XV is probably better at it than most of them. It was initially fairly well liked here, as shown by winning GotY, but it still represents a lot of the issues with modern Square and it would not have won GotY most years. Its development was quite a rollercoaster both before release and during DLC phase. The canceled stuff probably doesn’t help it much either. Also, despite it being more stupid every single contest, I’m positive “Final Fantasy always wins” still gives it some anti-votes despite it not being true since Sephiroth won the villains contest 15 years ago. Final Fantasy XV might have benefit slightly from brand name here however, which should have made next round scary as well, but it took a while before some people anticipated a possible Hollow Knight upset since it’s hard to make much of big blowouts and since the indie craze hadn’t really shown itself yet. At this point, we were not paying much attention as other matches stole the spotlight. As for Edith Finch? Well, when you’re never gonna win a match and is just happy to be here, getting Final Fantasy XV is probably among the best you could hope for. Breaking 25% in its only match means it can happily leave the contest! ## Safer777's Analysis So a FF game and it won! Typical for this site am I right? Now even though I am a HUGE FF fan I still haven't played FF 15. I don't know it just doesn't impress me? I am not sure. The general consensus is that it is a good game but for 10 year development not good enough. As for Edith Finch it is a walking simulator game and I still don't understand how these games keep getting made. Sure some have good stories but seriously? These aren't for me so maybe someone that is into them can tell me. So the match got as expected with around the same percentage too. I mean I guess that it is bad for FF 15 because if it can't score a tripling against this game that people say maybe the weakest on the bracket what more can you expect? High prediction percentage too. Guess the name helps. ## Tsunami's Analysis Noctis may have embarrassed himself in 2018, but this was never in doubt. Final Fantasy may be declining as a series, but I *think* the opinion on XV was "it's still not great but it's better than XIII" and besides, What The Hell Is Edith Finch. I've heard it described as a "walking simulator", which I think means it's some sort of casualbait. This match followed the trend of nearly all of the early matches: despite the disparity between the number of registered and unregistered users, the loser's raw votes were very nearly a 50-50 split between registered and unregistered, while the winner's registered votes exceeded their unregistered votes by over 1000. The exact meaning of this, however, would not be clear until we saw a match that broke that trend. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7917&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Hollow Knight vs (13)Tales of Berseria 2020 _source: (4)Hollow Knight vs (13)Tales of Berseria 2020 (revid 86488)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, March 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Hollow Knight - 48.62% 21 for - 43 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Hollow Knight - 75.63% - **User Votes:** Hollow Knight - 5136 Tales of Berseria - 2893 - **Anonymous Votes:** Hollow Knight - 3917 Tales of Berseria - 2615 Though Board 8 typically dominates the leaderboard when all is said and done in these contests, the casuals always get some matches where they embarrass us. And they embarrassed the crap out of us on this one, boys: True story -- when I first made a bracket, I picked Hollow Knight to win twice and didn't think about it much at all. Then I made the all too common mistake of reading Board 8 and changed my mind to FF15 \> Tales of Berseria in this fourpack. This ended up in a one point gain overall, and it still annoyed me anyway because this match at first glance was *so* obvious. How obvious? Here is every single match involving a Tales game other than Symphonia: That's it. That's the entire list. Tales fans (and I include myself here) will tell you all day how good these games are, but they never get nominated enough to matter outside of one game that existed on a system with 10 good games on it total -- Melee, Tales of Symphonia, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, REmake, Paper Mario: TTYD, Fire Emblem 9, and Pikmin. Don't even try with Twilight Princess or Wind Waker. I don't want to hear it. The Tales characters themselves have a *laughable* contest history, too. Every single one of them, including the ones from Symphonia, have performed like gigatrash. The problem, which is why half the gurus picked Tales of Berseria here, was this poll: People equated Velvet to Berseria for obvious reasons, and people equated Hollow Knight to Silent Hill 2. Loud fanbase, underplayed game. Or so we thought. This match was close for two minutes, and two minutes only. Berseria took the bracket votes, and Hollow Knight then proceeded to beat the holy hell out of it for 23 hours and 59 minutes straight. 63-37 might not look like much, but FF15 only got 75-25 against a garbage can. I'm sure Edith Finch is a fine game, but let's be honest about its strength here. This blowout was so big and so surprising to a lot of Board 8 that the attention rightly turned to round 2. Because how damn funny would it have been had Hollow Knight beaten a main line Final Fantasy game? It would have been Master Hand \> Noctis all over again, only funnier because people care far more about games than characters. As for why this happened, there are two reasons. One, Tales is choke artist trash in these contests. I know we joke a lot about Donkey Kong and Fire Emblem being professional choke artists in contests -- just wait until we get to *those* two losers -- but Tales legitimately enters every contest with two hands around its own neck. It gets hyped up every contest, and every contest it embarrasses itself. We all need to do ourselves a favor moving forward with these Tales entrants. If there is *any* question whether or not Tales can lose, pick against it. The other reason this happened is because Hollow Knight is an incredibly strong game given its indie status. KP put some very good pre-contest stuff out there, and one major point he had was the indie glass ceiling theory and how some games would crack it. His pick was Cuphead, but really you could pick any of the well-performing indie games. To thoroughly simplify this, there is another theme that will pop up a lot in these writeups: "Did this game appear on the Nintendo Switch?". If so, it's probably got good contest strength. Mostly. ## Ctes's Analysis The final match of the first day gave us a major blow to board 8 from casuals. This match was hotly debated on board 8 and when something doesn’t even break 40%, that’s on us. Hollow Knight was the guru favorite, so we weren’t completely off, but it was very evenly split. It also serves as our first indicator of indie games being legit, but that didn’t really take off until the next day. While the gurus favored Hollow Knight, the oracles did not and those are the bigger contest nerds. With 61.82%, Black Turtle had by far the best oracle prediction and it lower than the actual result. He sure made us here for it too! Then look at the prediction percentage. This was an embarrassing start for us even if we made up for later on. It was almost over right away, but there were a few minutes of hope for Berseria. It certainly had the board vote to the surprise of no one. A minute into the match, Berseria was doubling Hollow Knight, then suddenly Hollow Knight rose to heaven and was almost doubling Berseria at the freeze. The match had everyone’s attention, but the next update sealed the deal completely. Hollow Knight extended its lead above 200 votes and never looked back. What happened then? Basically everything we could look at indicated the match being even, and in even matches picking the RPG is usually a good call. Hollow Knight lost big time in its two GotY polls. Tales of Berseria had no such polls to make predictions based on, which probably didn’t speak well for it, but means to was untested. Kingdom Hearts III was snubbed from GotY too and that game had decent enough strength to win here. Velvet was in our latest contest and won a match with relative ease before getting almost 30% on Yoshi. Such strength could be enough today. For a long time, Hollow Knight was believed to just be really good. A contender for best indie game, which quickly looked to be a decent title. Also, a crucial thing a lot of people didn’t take into account when making this prediction was Hollow Knight’s Switch exposure coming later than its original release. I had Berseria today and expected it to be close thinking Hollow Knight was of the same strength as in its first GotY poll. Had I realized it wasn’t initially on the Switch, I would have picked it. I would not have felt safe, but I would have picked it. Last contest proved being on Switch is a really good thing. It seems clear now that the result had a lot more to do with Tales of Berseria simply being absurdly weak. Not that anyone thought it wasn’t weak after today, but it’s even worse than anticipated. It looks straight up awful. The Tales series is extremely niche these days, being mostly only cared about in very specific RPG happy circles like board 8. Symphonia looks like it will always be the strongest of these despite being limited to the Gamecube outside of Japan for a long time, and the previous games contest showed us it isn’t even the strongest RPG on the Gamecube as it lost to Paper Mario II. Not that there is any shame in that since Paper Mario II is perfect. A decade after Vesperia did slightly worse than anticipated, we’re taught to have no faith in this franchise in contests and we got a good early reminder that characters =/= games. ## Safer777's Analysis I don't know why Tales games/characters keep getting nominated. They always do bad. They have fans but man they all are really weak. I don't know anything about Hollow Knight but I guess that people like it, at least more than the Tales series. However it is one of these indie games that the cool kids know. The Crew was split on this match and I don't get it. They should have known that people just don't care for the Tales series/characters here. Seriously. So HK won easily. So yeah. Stop nominating Tales games/characters. People don't care about them on this site. Also the prediction rate was really high for HK. Guess most people have caught on by now ## Tsunami's Analysis This was considered a very debatable match, because Hollow Knight was an indie game, which rarely fared well, while Tales of Berseria was, well, just look at the first two words of that title. The Tales series has a grand total of four wins in contests. Tales of Symphonia has three of those--once with Lloyd winning in Character Battle IV, and twice with the game itself advancing to Round 2, in both the fourway BGE2 in 2009 and in GotD in 2010, though it should be noted that its R2 loss in GotD was literally to one of the two games it beat out in R1 of BGE2. The most recent was in Character Battle IX, where some combination of DAT TOP OPTION (technically left option now, but still, higher seed in a fodder match) and TJF allowed Berseria's protagonist to reach R2. And while the fact that Berseria already had more wins than Tales of the Abyss might have been encouraging, we all knew full well that that was a fodder-vs.-fodder match, and Yoshi proved it by breaking 70% on Velvet in R2. The distrust of all things Tales narrowly won out--in order to avoid the procrastination that plagued my 2018 write-ups, to the point that the final rounds have references to this contest's bracket, I'm doing reactions *during* the Contest this time, so Guru submissions aren't technically closed yet, but at this writing it looks like about 54.6% of Gurus had Hollow Knight. And Hollow Knight won handily, with the casuals beating out the Gurus by 20% on the prediction percentage. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7918&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (14)Bravely Default: Flying Fairy 2020 _source: (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (14)Bravely Default: Flying Fairy 2020 (revid 86487)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, March 28, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 28, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Monster Hunter: World - 58.70% 60 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Monster Hunter: World - 88.85% - **User Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 4833 Bravely Default - 3206 - **Anonymous Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 3543 Bravely Default - 3173 BATTLE OF THE SUBTITLES!! Given what we know now it would be easy to say these games were both hidden dragons all along and that we should have known Monster Hunter would be a beast, but a lot of people saying that would not be telling the truth. Round 2 was always in debate right up until it happened: When this was all happening live, Monster Hunter v Bravely Default and Sekiro v Ni No Kuni were basically mirror images of each other trends-wise, and the matches were happening at the exact same time. The obvious question to ask here is "Bravely Default or Ni No Kuni, who you got?". The beauty of it is all four games in this fourpack were making their contest debut, and all but Sekiro looked horrible in any poll they had ever been in. This is a round 1 analysis though, so I'll get into more of that in round 2. This match was one of the many, many boring and predictable matches we had in this contest. There simply isn't much to talk about with a 58-42 beating, outside of one small point. I think it's possible Bravely Default may have overperformed by a percentage or three here, because Bravely Default 2 (not to be confused with Bravely Second and the incessant need of JRPGs to use stupid subtitles and numbering systems when naming their games) was announced during the Game Awards in December 2019. Given this is RPGFAQs, it may have had a small effect on the original game's percentage. I haven't played any of these games yet, but I have friends who swear by them. But really the story here is how this match and its sister match had the *exact* same trends and percentage. It was just silly to look at live. ## Ctes's Analysis This match went almost exactly like most of us expected, but unlike most matches that go that way, most appeared to not have a correct read on either game’s strength, just a correct read on the ratio between them. Because even as the games both ended up in the matches where most people expected them to, they look a lot better than we thought at the other side of the contest. Bravely Default appears to be quite legit and it’s a shame it got a completely unwinnable match because it could’ve damaged brackets elsewhere in a similar fashion to Octopath. Being a Square RPG on a Nintendo console is a good thing apparently. As Monster Hunter also ended up being a lot closer to Dragon Quest than expected, we instead of learned of Bravely Default being legit as the contest went on. Hopefully it’s not the last time we see it in the field, although with its low seeding in a Game of the Decade bracket it might very well be. This match set up Monster Hunter as the clear favorite for round 2. It was the guru favorite too, but Sekiro beating it was a fairly popular upset, but everyone had a hard time seeing Ni no Kuni get close to Bravely Default. That had more to do with the following match however. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have an action RPG against a turn based RPG here. But here is the thing MHW is really popular especially the last game. And these games are damn loved by the fans even though they are grindy and you have to keep slaying the same monsters over and over. Still a ton of stuff to do there. As for BD it is basically an old school FF game with just a different name. Seriously. It is loved but since it got released on a portable console you can't expect much. I have played it though along with the sequel and yeah it is amazing. So many job combinations and such. As for the match. It went as expected even with the same percentage that people predicted. So I guess that means that MHW is weak. I mean barelly beating a portable JRPG? Only on this site.The prediction percentage was huge too, I mean the 2nd highest so far. Huge name recognition I guess? Also Bravely Default 2 is getting released this year so that means that it has to be doing well in sales and in reception. And even though it says 2 it is actually the 3rd game. Strange I know. ## Tsunami's Analysis Now this was an interesting match to talk about, if not to watch. It was in the write-up of the Suikoden II-Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate match that "The Flowchart" was introduced: Nintendo \> Squaresoft \> Japanese RPG \> RPG \> Japanese \> old \> new \> contest experience \> top option \> everything else. However, while this did correctly lead to the answer that Suikoden would win because it was older, had contest experience, and was the top option, it was *not*, as stated in that write-up, a JRPG vs. a mere RPG. Monster Hunter is in fact a Capcom franchise, so that was JRPG vs. JRPG. Here, however, it was a bit murkier. Bravely Default was the older game, 2014 vs. 2017, but that probably matters less in Game of the Decade because the gaps are smaller. Monster Hunter: World had the huge seeding advantage, and was released on consoles while Bravely Default was a handheld game. But Bravely Default was *Squaresoft*--Square Enix, technically, but while it was well post-merger it was a throwback to their older games, in the same vein as their earlier spin-off "Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light". Hell, look at those abbreviations again: Bravely Default even had a subtitle with the initials "FF"!--while Monster Hunter: World was, as stated before, *Capcom*, which stunk up the joint like crazy in 2018. Yeah, yeah, "Characters =/= Games", but still, about the only Capcom character to do anything impressive was B8 mascot Phoenix Wright winning one of the three matches that was outright *flipped* by the registered user bonus, and one of the other two resulted in a Mega Man loss so there you go, Capcom sucks. Well okay Chun-Li also seemed to impress in 2018 but nearly every female character in the bracket seemed to be a step up from before. And with unregistered voters, it was indeed pretty close; 3543-3173. But with the registered voters, MH:W was above 60%, so even without the registered voter bonus, this wouldn't have been close. Monster Hunter: World had an 87.66% prediction percentage overall, so this was just a clear case of me overthinking things. Then again, we'd seen enough 15-2 "upsets" that the seedings alone didn't seem like an indicator that MH:W had this on lockdown. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7919&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice vs (11)Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch 2020 _source: (6)Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice vs (11)Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch 2020 (revid 86490)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, March 28, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 28, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sekiro - 61.87% 62 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sekiro - 78.35% - **User Votes:** Sekiro - 4877 Ni no Kuni - 3165 - **Anonymous Votes:** Sekiro - 3599 Ni no Kuni - 3116 CONCURRENT BATTLES OF THE OBNOXIOUSLY LONG SUBTITLES!! We just discussed at length this match's identical trends and percentages vis-a-vis Monster Hunter and Bravely Default, so we need not rehash it too much. But for wiki readers who like to skip around (...*why?*) or for anyone singularly linking to this one, this match and Monster Hunter v Bravely Default had the same trends, same percentage, almost the same prediction percentage, and it was cool because all four were contest newcomers. It was a good, old fashioned, boring 58-42 type beating all around. It was impossible to really project Monster Hunter vs Sekiro based on any of this, and you couldn't really use the Nintendo argument either. Ni no Kuni has a Switch port, while Bravely Default happened on the 3DS. There was however one interesting thing about this match specifically, which was the visceral hatred some people on Board 8 have for Ni no Kuni. Lots of complaints about it being overhyped at launch, generic and predictable on delivery. Stuff like that. Now I haven't played the game yet, so I can't comment on anything specific, but I laugh when I hear people complain about Japanese RPGs being generic and predictable. Bros, you *do* understand this genre has been the same exact thing for 30 years, right? You start every JRPG as a teenager with amnesia looking for your lost cat. You end all of them by killing a mutant. If you're still looking for innovation in the RPG realm, the linear JRPG style doesn't have it anymore. Open world Western RPG styles are what people want now. Go peek ahead to the end of the contest. Half of the final 8 is Western RPGs. The case can be made for Xenoblade and Dark Souls having a WRPG influence, too. Of course JRPGs are predictable and generic. That's why we all like them. ## Ctes's Analysis Sekiro won the match with relative ease as it was supposed to, but for anyone that picked Sekiro to round 3, this was not what you had hoped for. Ni no Kuni is beyond irrelevant at this point and is probably only remember for being animated by Studio Ghibli. While it is a very pretty game indeed, it’s rather forgettable and I would not have been surprised to see it not make the field at all. Let’s stay at the pretty animations part for a bit though. While I switched to Monster Hunter \> Sekiro after this day of matches, I did not think this was as bad as people thought. Because if you have not played either of the two, Ni no Kuni stands out quite a bit. I can see people thinking “Well, it looks nice and I like Studio Ghibli” here. I could’ve done that in some matters myself if I didn’t care for either game. That’s despite having actually attempted to play Ni no Kuni. I just got bored of it and never got around to finishing it. Now, although round 2 certainly did not do that line many favors, I’m about ready to pick it up again on the other side of the contest. Because while Sekiro didn’t get close to winning next round, this whole fourpack ends up looking good, all in the better half of the bracket. It’s hard a bit hard to imagine, but I think it makes the above point good after all. You could argue that it just has the right genre for us to care about it, but there are certain games today and yesterday proving it is not necessarily so. I have a hard time imagining Ni no Kuni put up much of a number on anything, but it seems like the kind of game that’s also hard to blowout entirely. I would not pick it above FFXV or Hollow Knight as the stats suggest, but I still think the stats tell us something. The game is forgettable to many, but rarely ever disliked, and we all remember what it is when seeing it in a poll. Sekiro is also a recent game and here on the other side of the contest, being a year old has not looked to do anything any favors anymore, we’re slow on this site. So it’s a good game for Ni no Kuni to perform well on while going out. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have Sekiro here which is a damn hard game for the hardcore people vs a JRPG that nobody cares about now. And it did bad. Man we do love our JRPG's on this site. And it isn't about name here, everyone knows about Sekiro especially with all these get good memes. Ninokuni had a remaster recently but still I don't think anyone cares enough for the series. I think the 2nd game did bad in sales too. So for the match. Nothing to say. Sekiro just doesn't have power and Ni No Kuni is even weaker. So there you go. I guess we don't care for either game here. ## Tsunami's Analysis And here's where The Flowchart, and everything else I thought I knew about GameFAQs, went completely down the toilet. I wasn't *that* familiar with Ni No Kuni and even less so with Sekiro, but remembering how Yakuza bombed all over the 2018 Contest and being *pretty* sure that Sekiro was an action game and not an RPG, I figured this was a lock. Ni No Kuni was fodder, sure, but Japanese RPG \> Japanese, not to mention I'd probably take a FPS over an Action Game on this site. Just look at how Devil May Cry regularly struggles to even get games into the Games Contests despite Dante being a very good midcarder. It's clear that both he and Kratos are far stronger than their games. And if Yakuza couldn't even do well in a *Character Battle*, how was an action game going to do shit in this contest? And my Oracle was only spared from being in an even bigger world of hurt by my misconception that this was Japanese RPG \> *Japanese*. It's not. Unlike the series I keep comparing it to, Yakuza, which is legitimately Japanese in origin, Sekiro is set in Japan but it's made by Activision, best known in this site's glory days for their *sports games* like the Tony Hawk series, and more recently for *Call of Duty. *When I learned *that*, I said I was glad I didn't know that because I probably would've taken Ni No Kuni to *double* Sekiro if I had. Researching them for this write-up, however, I learned that Activision also managed to acquire some old platformer icons like Crash and Spyro, not that those characters will ever be theirs, and they...*are now known as Activision **Blizzard?!?!?!?!*** Goddamnit, if I'd known *that* I don't think I'd have taken Sekiro to avoid a *tripling* by much! You've got a company that this site hates, in a genre that this site hates...and it's not only *not* challenging for the title of "lowest X-Stat value by something that isn't actively being anti-voted", but comfortably advancing to Round 2? And just like Bravely Default in the previous match, over 49.5% of Ni No Kuni's raw votes came from unregistered users; in fact, the splits are *extremely *similar with both voter groups-- 4833-3206 vs. 4877-3165 with the registered voters, 3543-3173 vs. 3599-3116 with the unregistered (in both cases, this match was the slightly more lopsided one). This was, plain and simple, the site's tastes being far different than what I...oh. I, uh, may not have looked quite close enough. Activision merely *published* the game internationally; it was actually developed by a Japanese developer, FromSoftware, best known for...*the Souls series?!* Well, geez, I feel silly now. The Souls series is one of the few IPs to debut during the contest era that has shown some strength in Games Contests. Dark Souls made Round 3 in 2015, where it nearly broke 30% on A Link to the Past, and managed to double its Round 1 opponent and beat an established franchise in Round 2, while Demon's Souls, the game that started it all...okay it's 0-2, but it looked good in both its losses and both were to quality competition. Probably. They've only had one appearance in a Character Battle and the character was put into a bad situation immediately, but if we ever go back to Character Battles, the series might have enough clout to not completely suck. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7920&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series vs (10)Bastion 2020 _source: (7)The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series vs (10)Bastion 2020 (revid 86492)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, March 28, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 28, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bastion - 41.54% 5 for - 59 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bastion - 33.76% - **User Votes:** The Walking Dead - 3987 Bastion - 4054 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Walking Dead - 2912 Bastion - 3803 Let's get the obvious out of the way -- I absolutely *detest* The Walking Dead. I hate everything about it. The comic blows, the fans are obnoxious, the TV show is overhyped trash that's gone on for far too long, and most importantly given this contest, the video game is gigatrash. Frankly, the entire franchise is gigatrash and I would almost go far enough to say the same about the zombie apocalypse craze. I don't care who defends it or what reason they try to give me. The only good thing to ever happen was the bat scene, because it made those indefensibly obnoxious people *suffer*. I've made a lot of strides in not being as much of a vindictive jackass anymore, but with certain things I cannot help it and The Walking Dead is absolutely on that list. Watching The Walking Dead choke all over itself wasn't quite as satisfying as the internet melting down over season 7, but I'll still take it. Bastion is a *wonderful* video game, but I honestly didn't think anyone had played it. I think in all my time on Board 8, I've seen maybe three people talk about it. It's the entire reason I picked TWD to actually win this match, and I wasn't alone. We all kind of figured people had only heard of one of these poll options, and that TWD would win by default. As luck would have it, and as Dragon Quest 11 would show us in round 2, it was actually Bastion that won by default. Both of these games are weak, but Bastion was slightly *less* weak. I also would love to think I'm not alone in wanting this atrocious zombie franchise to just go away, but who really knows. The added bonus was how good this match was for awhile, which makes Bastion winning it all that much better. When this started, Walking Dead had most of the bracket votes and was well over 60%. It had a lead of 70, and though it lost a few percents and votes by the freeze, that can happen with these low vote totals. We see random cuts all the time that don't mean much. When Walking Dead went back up a little with the first real update, people assumed the match was over. *That*, ladies and gentlemen, is why they *play the games*. Bastion erased the entire miniscule lead in a flash, and after a small fight from Walking Dead, Bastion kicked off its quest to take out the trash with a 62 vote swing. Bastion tried building a lead at this point, but the night time is zombie time after all. This thing stayed stuck at 50-100 votes all the way past midnight, but once midnight hit the night vote went to Bastion. Slightly. After some more stalling, the morning vote came around to bury The Walking Dead for good. And good riddance, too. You won't find many cases where I'm happier to lose a point than this match. Not only that, but Bastion *deserved* the publicity. It is such a beautiful, well-done video game. Not only did I get to watch it win a close contest match as an underdog, but I got to watch it beat a franchise that I just loathe. Sure it was just one point in the grand scheme, but so what. Some things matter more than contest points, and The Walking Dead losing is one of those things. Also notable here is the old Day 2 Curse rearing its head once again! It's insanity how often this happens. Look at this list, all Day 2 Curse upsets, and I'm not even counting the ones that were unexpected close matches: (remember, we didn't know what the hell "LFF" was at the time) (yes I am aware this was actually day 1) That all led up to this silly result. In division one, in about half of our contests, either the 8/9 match or some match from the second batch has some goofy result in it. It never fails! ## Ctes's Analysis Sekiro won the match with relative ease as it was supposed to, but for anyone that picked Sekiro to round 3, this was not what you had hoped for. Ni no Kuni is beyond irrelevant at this point and is probably only remember for being animated by Studio Ghibli. While it is a very pretty game indeed, it’s rather forgettable and I would not have been surprised to see it not make the field at all. Let’s stay at the pretty animations part for a bit though. While I switched to Monster Hunter \> Sekiro after this day of matches, I did not think this was as bad as people thought. Because if you have not played either of the two, Ni no Kuni stands out quite a bit. I can see people thinking “Well, it looks nice and I like Studio Ghibli” here. I could’ve done that in some matters myself if I didn’t care for either game. That’s despite having actually attempted to play Ni no Kuni. I just got bored of it and never got around to finishing it. Now, although round 2 certainly did not do that line many favors, I’m about ready to pick it up again on the other side of the contest. Because while Sekiro didn’t get close to winning next round, this whole fourpack ends up looking good, all in the better half of the bracket. It’s hard a bit hard to imagine, but I think it makes the above point good after all. You could argue that it just has the right genre for us to care about it, but there are certain games today and yesterday proving it is not necessarily so. I have a hard time imagining Ni no Kuni put up much of a number on anything, but it seems like the kind of game that’s also hard to blowout entirely. I would not pick it above FFXV or Hollow Knight as the stats suggest, but I still think the stats tell us something. The game is forgettable to many, but rarely ever disliked, and we all remember what it is when seeing it in a poll. Sekiro is also a recent game and here on the other side of the contest, being a year old has not looked to do anything any favors anymore, we’re slow on this site. So it’s a good game for Ni no Kuni to perform well on while going out. ## Safer777's Analysis An upset on the 2nd day! This contest is good! But in all seriousness this was a big suprise. EVERYONE(on board 8 at least)got this match wrong. And it makes sense. Everyone and their zombie grandmas knows about WD because of the TV series. And when WD Telltale came out it won so many awards that I lost count. It revived the Adventure genre too. As for Bastion it was good when it came out but now it has been surpassed by many games. So the match. It was close for a few hours actually, but eventually Bastion just kept rising and won. Why did this happen? Well the WD Telltale is very weak. That is. Even though 4 games have come out and the last game came out in the previous year too people just don't care I guess? No way Bastion is that popular. I mean it came out 9 years ago and it had no sequel either. The crew got this match completely wrong too and most of this site got this wrong. Look at the correct prediction rate. Only 1 out of 3 managed to get it right. So yeah. Too bad because WD Telltale has an amazing story. And as per tradition we had the Day 2 Curse too! What that is? Well on the 2nd day on the contest, like every contest, we always have as board an upset that comes out of  nowhere and we always go, well what exactly happened? So this happened here too! Ah tradition! ## Tsunami's Analysis While Day 2 of the contest was pretty bad for my bracket, it could've been worse. I took *three* upsets, and one of them paid off! Sadly it was the one that was facing the obvious winner of the eightpack in R2, so I was still screwed out of points in one R2 match no matter who won, but still, it softened the blow of being so far off base on Sekiro. The Walking Dead was definitely the "safe" choice, because it was both the top option and had contest experience, sort of, while Bastion had none. I say "sort of" because this was both games' Games Contest debut, but The Walking Dead had managed to get two characters into the 2013 Character Battle. Thing is, they both sucked. Spyro vs. Clementine vs. Reyn had the closest Guru spread between the top two characters of any R1 match (though not the lowest prediction percentage for a favorite because there was one match where all three choices were above 20%), and then Spyro just absolutely dunked on Clem, winding up with close to 57% of the vote in a threeway. Lee Everett, meanwhile, was the Guru favorite over Mr. Game & Watch and Meat Boy, because it was assumed that G&W being basically just another avatar for Smash wouldn't be enough and that Meat Boy's ridiculous design would cancel out G&W's silly design and they'd "joke SFF" even though Meat Boy is literally a main protagonist whose name is in the title of his game. Yes it's still ridiculous, but it's not like the "joke characters" who are largely side characters with memes. Game & Watch won anyway, because even foddery Nintendo is still Nintendo and should never be underestimated. I got both of those right then and I got this one right now. The Walking Dead is not the type of game to be trusted to be worth anything in contests, ever. Kind of makes me wonder why I picked Life is Strange but you can chalk that up to Halo being another thing that should never be trusted in contests. But here's where things get interesting. Whereas in the other seven matches over the first two days, the loser got nearly half of their raw votes from the unregistered users (only Life is Strange managed to even have a 300-vote disparity between registered and unregistered) and the winner received more than 1000 more votes from the registered than from the unregistered, in this match, that trend was *reversed*. Bastion's lead with the registered voters wasn't even 100 votes, at 4054-3987, but with unregistered users it was 3803-2912! It was largely the loser that benefited from the extra power of the registered bonus, making it closer than it should have been. Interestingly, this was also the only one of the first eight matches that was an upset, with just under 1 in 3 brackets getting it right. Hmmm...the number of registered votes for the first two days was just barely in the low 8000s. The number of brackets filled out, based on the prediction percentages, appears to be...*8703!* Holy crap, there are more brackets than there are registered voters! That wasn't the case in 2018; though the decrease in vote total is largely on the unregistered side, there were more registered voters in most of the 2018 matches than there have been so far in 2020, while the total number of brackets was just 7221. That's scary, because the general "line" on this site is that despite being largely millennials, we have the "boomer" mentality and are largely stuck in the 1990s. A contest entirely comprised of games from 2010 or later, it wouldn't at all be surprising if almost every voter had at least a few matches where they really didn't know much about the contestants and cared even less. Add in Allen forcing voters to vote in all four matches if they want to vote in any of them, and you get people voting with their brackets. I may have to go back over my Oracle and change every pick where I'm backing a Guru underdog, even though that would've burned me in this particular match, because it really feels like we might be in a situation where predictions and results have a higher correlation than in years past. Oh, and I guess there's something else funny to be talked about, too. With 4 and a half hours left in the poll, The Walking Dead went on somewhat of a run, winning six straight updates before losing one by a mere two votes, then the two games alternated update wins for 40 minutes except one of Bastion's wins was actually a tie. Since Bastion had only been up by 927 when the run started, it looked as though we were going to see the match go the full 24 hours with the maximum lead under 1000. It would've been just the 47th 24-hour battle to go wire-to-wire within 1000 votes and just the 11th in which there were no lead changes past the first hour (and just the 17th with no lead changes past the first hour even after throwing the 12-hour matches into the mix). But then Bastion started winning updates again, and it looked inevitable that its lead would reach 4 digits. With an hour and 20 minutes left in the match, Bastion led by 990 votes. The next update rolled in, and Bastion won it...by *one vote. *Next update, same thing, 1-vote win for Bastion. Then came a 2-vote win for The Walking Dead, wiping out the previous two updates. The next *two* updates were dead stalls, and then TWD won one by 6. 30 of the 80 minutes stalled out, and TWD had refused to let it happen! Bastion spiked an 11-vote win on the next update, however, and cracked 1000 with 35 minutes to go, en route to a final margin of 1027. In the Golden Age of Contests, I'm sure the stats topic would've been losing their shit about "barriers" and TWD's valiant fight to keep the margin in triple digits when its fate was sealed, but it's hard to muster up any sort of enthusiasm when those dead splits were 12-12 and 14-14 and the 11-vote "spike" was 21-10. If two entrants in a 1v1 each managed to get 2/3 of an update within half an hour of each other in the old days, it'd be a sure sign that one of them was cheating. Now, it's just expected statistical variance because the updates tend to be on par with what the fodderiest of fodder was pulling in in the contest's glory days. Remember how lopsided some of the early matches in 2009 were? Wold you believe that the final update that managed to get Crystalis *up* to **4% even** was only two votes fewer than The Walking Dead got on its final update? Or that in the final update of that ridiculous match where SMB3 pulled down over 75% of the total vote, the second-highest last-update total was exactly equal to Bastion's last update? These votes are awful and this contest is awful. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7921&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age vs (15)The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC 2020 _source: (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age vs (15)The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC 2020 (revid 86493)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 28, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dragon Quest XI - 72.52% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dragon Quest XI - 92.10% - **User Votes:** Dragon Quest XI - 6593 The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC - 1448 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dragon Quest XI - 5205 The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC - 1510 Every contest, Board 8 dominates nominations. Every contest, we get a lot of our darlings into the contest field. Sometimes it works out, as Phoenix Wright can attest to. Other times, you get matches like this. Trails in the Sky is the latest Board 8 cause du joir, akin to past obsessions like Phoenix Wright, Shadow of the Colossus, the Persona series, Umineko, and Orange Man Bad. Don't point out the flaw in this thinking, either, or people who spend every waking moment in a Discord chat day after day after day might say mean things about you and we wouldn't want that, right fellas? ;) I will say that it is nice when Board 8 champions a cause that's actually good, and Trails in the Sky qualifies for the good list, but the hivemind methodology is so over the top anymore that some of you have reduced yourselves to caricatures. Agreeing with everyone is easy. Thinking for yourself and being a rugged individual is called survival strategy for a reason. Remember that. Anyway, Trails in the Sky could not have drawn a worse opponent in this contest. I know other games would have kicked the crap out of it far worse than Dragon Quest 11 did, but Trails not even winning the board vote tells me that this match reeks of the good old SFF stink. Dragon Quest 11 ultimately proved itself to be a badass in this contest, but remember, this match happened on day two back when a lot of people still thought we were in anti-blowout-FAQs. We hadn't yet seen some of the absurd beatings to come, so SFF was (and still is) a reasonable conclusion here. I'd be shocked if the overlap on these games was less than 75%. They really cry out as having the *exact* same fanbase. It might be worth it to give Trails one more shot at a contest before calling it a wrap, but who knows when or if we'll get another games contest. Look at the vote totals as you guys read these. It's not good, my friends. ## Ctes's Analysis The final match that I could watch start at 1am instead of 2am because of the damned daylight savings. Oh well. Dragon Quest overperformed quite a bit here, proving to us that it’s truly legit. Which is good for it, because it would need to be later on, when Monster Hunter showed it was worth more than we though. This is the first time in a contest that Dragon Quest has looked great. It has been at best fine before, but this is on another level. XI has had great reception and it probably also did no harm that Dragon Quest now has Smash Bros representation, as like 75% of the elite characters these days is in Ultimate. In that regard, it’s a shame it got to be the \#2 in this division, but something had to run into Breath of the Wild. Trails in the Sky SC is just happy to be here. It’s a cult favorite, so I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it seeded higher. It doesn’t matter much though; it would lose most matches it could have gotten. Estelle Bright was in our precious contest and neared the bottom of the x-stats. At this point, the game looked to follow along. We can praise Dragon Quest, but at this point it could’ve just as well be that Trails in the Sky SC was just that bad. Yesterday we saw Tales of Berseria being very bad. Worse relative to the field that Velvet was. The result here could very well be a combination of the two. ## Tsunami's Analysis Holy word salad, Batman! In this match, we have a pair of 9-letter initialisms, one from a two-digit number (written as a two-letter Roman numeral) and seven other words and one from 9 words straight-up (which was shortened to seven words and two initials even on the voting page). The very next day, we had a matchup of a game with 9 total characters in its name (including a space!) vs. one with just 6, and the day after that we had one with 6 vs. one with *4*--barely enough between the two of them to equal the initials of one of these. The silliness of it all is astounding, and it's about the most interesting thing about this match because we all know that DQXI was going to ride the power of its franchise name to three easy victories before getting pasted by Breath of the Wild. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have the grandfater of JRPG's against another JRPG that I don't know anything about. Sorry about that! Also I do believe this is the biggest title for a contest match. I mean both games have so many words on their names! So for the match. People were expecting around 70% for DQ 11 and it scored more than 80%. So why? Here is the thing. DQ 11 sold like crazy and after more than 30 years FINALLY DQ series is popular with the video game people! DQ games were always popular but just in Japan. They never did good in the West. But DQ 11 broke the mold. It has shipped around 6.000.000 units so far which is impressive for this series. And any game really. I mean it is a turn based JRPG and these have basically stop coming out. Except the Pokemon series. I played recently DQ 3 on Switch which came out in 1988 by the way and NPC's, monsters, spells, jobs, items and others are the same even after all these years! DQ is as old school as it gets. And we just love it the way it is. I mean you do know what you get when you buy a DQ game. So that means that DQ is strong or Trails is weak? I think a combination of both. Amazing performance of course. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7922&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (16)Resident Evil 7: biohazard 2020 _source: (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (16)Resident Evil 7: biohazard 2020 (revid 86494)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 29, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 66.57% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 75.53% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 5205 Resident Evil 7 - 3042 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 4099 Resident Evil 7 - 2471 Every now and again you get a 16 seed that clearly got mis-seeded for whatever reason. The most blatant example of this was Starcraft in 2004, but there have been other examples. Raiden in 2003. Duke Nukem and Terry Bogard in 2004. Wii Sports in 2010. Ratchet and Clank 3 and Phoenix Wright in 2015. Rosalina and Wesker a couple years ago. And, of course, CATS whenever he's stuck being a 16 seed. Now I'm not saying a lot of these mentions didn't eat some "16 seed losses" as it were, but most of these items were mis-seeded in some way. We can clearly add Resident Evil 7 to that list. Mass Effect 2 looked so awful in this match that people rightly questioned its status as a division favorite, and that was *before* Doom, Resident Evil 2, and Bloodborne all went berserk the day after this. 63% on a 16 seed when four other games break 80% in your division looks wretched. There's also Resident Evil 7 being a divisive game in that series. Some fans loved the horror movie throwback style, and others hated it for being way too short and not "Resident Evil" enough. To see it pull this off was a huge eye opener. There are two prevailing thoughts here. One is that Resident Evil 7 was hilariously mis-seeded and we need not think much of what happened here. The other is that Mass Effect 2 was in a *lot* of trouble. I'll talk more about this when we get to Mass Effect 3's matches, but there are a lot of people out there who utterly detest this entire series now because of what happened with Andromeda and 3's ending. People can make fun of our voters all they want to, but our voters have very astute and they absolutely punish you if you go sour. The contest did ultimately prove Resident Evil 7 as a hidden gem, not to mention Capcom having a resurgence overall, but at the time of this match we simply didn't know that yet. It took Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5 to really bring it home on that one. ## Ctes's Analysis When you’re the favorite to win a division, you are not supposed to only get 63% in round 1. Something was clearly off here. The prediction percentage was also lower than every other match in the division except for the one including casual bait and rally feared Fortnite. Fallout 4 got a significantly higher number against indie game VVVVVV, and we had just learned those things were legit. Resident Evil 7? Does anyone care about the series at this point? The remakes brought back some fuel, but the early games were always popular. The fifth one was fine, but nothing extraordinary like what it followed up on. The sixth was bad and the seventh wasn’t extraordinary either, and it was promoted mostly through VR. This was how it looked at the time. Mass Effect 2 looked like it could potentially lose to Fallout 4, maybe the round after that, and it was certainly not the favorite in the division finals after this point. That went to Resident Evil 2 now maybe even DOOM or Bloodborne seemed more likely. This division played out perfectly that way because every round 2 match felt uncertain. Andromeda was obviously expected as the main reason for what looked a decline, but we hoped that people wouldn’t punish previous entries for that and that the contest title would help Mass Effect 2 out, as it is often brought up in such discussions. Of course, we know now that Mass Effect 2 is just fine and the thing that was off was the seeding of Resident Evil 7. This was considered at the time, but we weren’t sure for a while. I think in hindsight, we can figure out why. Resident Evil is still a huge franchise name. The fourth title is one of the most popular and revolutionary games ever and everyone knows what it is. The REmakes have been a huge success too, putting the franchise in a more positive light than it has been for some time. The franchise also never had bad reputation in the way Mass Effect or Fallout has had, it just declined a lot from its peak. I can see it getting a bunch of votes from people not having played either game. On GameFAQs that would certainly favor the older title, especially in a match where you see no point of bracket voting. It’s certainly a shame that Resident Evil 7 didn’t get to break brackets somewhere, but it did serve the purpose of making the division interesting until the end. It’s also a good reminder of how much more exciting the contest would’ve been if more than two games had been allowed per franchise. Resident Evil wasn’t big enough for two big titles to take high seeds, so it allowed for a game to cause havoc with a low seed, even if it meant no victory. We’d have more runs similar to Mario Kart 8 this way probably. I’m sure there are those that would complain we only care about very specific franchises, but I doubt it’s that different from elsewhere and we’d still have the same top 16. ## Tsunami's Analysis Finally, on Day 3 of the contest we had a match with relatively even proportions between registered and unregistered voters. ME2 scored 63.11% with registered voters and 62.39% with unregistered voters. Which is not all that impressive for a 1-seed! The stats topic was discussing whether disappointing later entries in the Mass Effect series soured the voters on 2, but this seems like the exact opposite of what normally happens. Maybe with casual voters who aren't familiar with either game, the series name plays--in which case Resident Evil 7 was the perfect entrant to take advantage of this, as RE1-4 were all fairly highly regarded--but usually the more entries a series has, the higher rated its oldest entries get. Pokémon is the best example of this, where obviously you have the people who say that everything after Gen 1 (or sometimes Gen 2) is trash, and then you have a backlash where there are others that say that the series didn't even start getting good until Gen 3 and the first two generations are unplayable, but generally speaking the later generations grow in stature each time a new generation is released after it. I was really surprised that the Gen 5 games didn't make it in; I figured that with Gen *8* being out already, they could be really strong, since usually the rule of thumb is that the two most recent generations are "trash" and everything older is at least passable (though I'm not sure if Gen 8 has given Gen 6 this boost yet). Though the only game to get in is actually Gen 4, so yeah. (Good choice, too; I'm personally of the opinion that the second half of Gen 4 was when Game Freak decided to finally bother making their plotlines actually engaging instead of just a throwaway to hang the monster collection on. I guess they sort of put some of the lore into Diamond/Pearl, too, but they just did it so much better in Platinum!) So this result had everyone calling for ME2's demise as early as next round. Certainly possible, but it seemed a tad premature. ## Safer777's Analysis RE 7 got shafted. It has power and it could beat some of the game on this contest but it got the lowest seed possible so there you go. ME 2 got so much praise when it came out and it is considered the best game of all 4. Yeah I am including the 4th one too! RE 7 went for a reboot since RE 6 had the lowest ratings for a main RE game. So we had 1st person perspective and a new main character too. But I have to confess something. Even though I am a huge RE fan I didn't liked RE 7. Yeah I know, but still. I even liked RE 6 because playing with a friend was a blast. But never the less RE 7 got really high praise and it did well in sales. Not as good sales as Capcom wanted but hey. I don't know what the rest of the fanbase things about it, but as I said I just didn't liked it. So for the match. I believe RE 7 did good here. But well a 1 seed going against a 16 seed what do you expect? I believe only 1 time a 16 seed won in all contests that have happened on this site and that was 16 years ago. Still ME 2 did as expected so I guess all are good? Eh we shall see. Oh first match on this contest that I have played BOTH games! Also pretty sure RE 7 is the strongest 16th seed of all 16 seeds on this contest. Too bad for placenement. Couldn't we have an indie game that nobody cares here? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7923&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Fallout 4 vs (9)VVVVVV 2020 _source: (8)Fallout 4 vs (9)VVVVVV 2020 (revid 86495)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 29, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 4 - 65.82% 63 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout 4 - 88.11% - **User Votes:** Fallout 4 - 5931 VVVVVV - 2316 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fallout 4 - 4679 VVVVVV - 1891 But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona. Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the “vox populi” now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V. "Are you, like, a crazy person?" I'm sure that they will say so. Remember, remember, the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason, and plot. I know of no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Some of the voluptuous yet verified independent vectors in this contest were verifiable vibraphonists of viand. Most, however, were vogue vulgarizers. VVVVVV for Vendetta is one of the many, many indie darlings that fell flat on its face this year. Fallout 4 is a reasonably strong game, but there aren't many spots where it can break 70% on anything due to how much it divided the fanbase. I'm sure most people by now know what an utter debacle Fallout 76 has been, but more fans than you all might think blame Fallout 4 for that series becoming what it now is. For it to then turn around and break 70% on *anything* requires it to be up against the absolute bottom of the barrel. That said, it's worth noting that every single game or franchise Undertale beat five years ago got its win back in this contest. Fallout 4 may not be the most popular game in that series -- far from it -- but it avenged its older brother nonetheless. ## Ctes's Analysis This match is hilarious because it got to fool us twice. We’d just seen Hollow Knight and Bastion look impressive and for some reason that made us fear every indie game, not just conclude that they potentially can be strong. We also saw Bloodstained look pretty great at the same time as this match. I don’t think anybody expected VVVVVV to win here, since it was not expected to be close before the contest. People did expect a much lower performance though, so Fallout 4 overperformed a solid amount relative to oracle expectations. The best part of that is that Fallout 4 went into the next round with a chance to win. At least some thought it had that. Even if that match was decided instantly, we had some excitement when the poll opened. The truth is of course that VVVVVV is just not very great, at all. There’s not much point in seeing it back another time, unfortunately. This ends up being a really bad performance. This match also hid away any Bethesda backlash that people were expecting, because the company really hasn’t got their stuff together for a while, Fallout 76 being by far the worst offender, but Fallout 4 also could not reach previous heights at all. At this point, it did not seem like such a thing existed, but it’d be brought up again later in the contest. ## Tsunami's Analysis It wasn't just Mass Effect 2's own performance that had people calling for its head, however. While it was busy going roughly 5-3 on RE7, Fallout 4 was going 5-2 on VVVVVV. After the first two days, there was a perception that we'd suddenly turned into IndieFAQs, and this helped prove that we had to look at things on a case-by-case basis. VVVVVV was *thought* to be another strong indie game, but maybe we should've looked at its protagonist's CBIX showing and second-guessed it. Yes, Characters =/= Games, and VVVVVV is the type of game that I'd expect to be stronger than its protagonist, but Viridian nearly got sextupled by Big Boss. Managed to finish in second place anyway, 53.81% on Peacock, but still. Even if you want to chalk it up to the fact that MGSV was just coming out in 2013 so Big Boss didn't have an old man pic, it's not a great look. And on the topic of releases near contest time, Fallout 4 came out during the 2015 Games Contest and Fallout 3 was already a GotD semifinalist, so it was supposed to be a real threat again in 2015. If only it could have delivered! ## Safer777's Analysis So we have an indie game with the strangest title on this contest. I don't play Indie games so I don't know anything about it. Sorry about that. The info on this site says it came out 10 years ago(!)and as a lot of indie games is a Retro 2D platformer. Fallout 4 doesn't need introductions. However from the main 3 single player Fallout games that have come out since 2008 it is the worst one and the least liked by the fanbase. It brought voice acting for the main character and most hated it. Including me. Yeah the main character talking was a bad thing! Also the Fallout series has become somewhat of a joke after Fallout 76 came out. It is WORSE than you think. Yeah worse than that! So my opinion on Fallout 4? Not as bad as people say. Plus it has the best expansion on the series, which is Far Harbor. That area is awesome! So for the match. Strangely enough Fallout 4 did better than predicted. So I guess that VVVVV is really weak. Makes sense. I mean very few indies have staying power and we are talking about an indie game from 10 years ago. I don't even understand how this game got in, while other famous indie games like Fez and Doki Doki Literature Club! didn't managed to sneak in which are more beloved and famous. Strange. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7924&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Borderlands 2 vs (12)Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night 2020 _source: (5)Borderlands 2 vs (12)Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night 2020 (revid 86496)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 29, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Borderlands 2 - 57.21% 55 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Borderlands 2 - 80.77% - **User Votes:** Borderlands 2 - 4908 Bloodstained - 3339 - **Anonymous Votes:** Borderlands 2 - 3816 Bloodstained - 2755 Borderlands 2 was not the heavy guru favorite to get out of this fourpack, but it was the favorite nonetheless. And when you compare this performance to what Horizon Zero Dawn was doing to Fortnite, it was no contest. Borderlands 2 laid an egg here. Now some people might say this is due to Bloodstained being a very respectable game. They would only sort of be half right. As someone who has legitimately loved and written the book on this game (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/158368-bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/faqs/77623), I'm more qualified than most to comment on this game's strength. For the unaware, Konami is complete trash and turned all of their franchises into slot machines. I am not making that up. One such casualty of this was Koji Igarashi, a pinnacle of Castlevania development. Thanks to the magic (if you can call it that) of Kickstarter, a bunch of people poured money into a new Castlevania-type project. You know the rest. Bloodstained is among the most well-known and well-liked Kickstarter video games out there, but that didn't stop the game from having all of the typical Kickstarter video game problems. That is to say, it was an unfinished buggy mess when it launched. I got lucky with enjoying my trophies and playing it on the Playstation 4; on other systems, such as the Switch and PC, the game outright did not work at all for *weeks* when it came out. But hey, that's okay. Patch culture! If there is one thing that shows how lazy today's gaming developers are, it's patch culture. It doesn't matter if we release a game with a bunch of problems at launch. We can just push it to market and fix it later. Patch culture! It doesn't matter if Final Fantasy 15 is only half finished at launch. Patch culture! Well I and many others think patch culture can go screw itself. That, predatory microtransactions, and the debacle of DLC are a huge stain on gaming today, and it's gotten so bad that games released at full on launch day get *criticized for being complete on launch day*. That was actually a problem some people had with The Outer Worlds. That actually happened. Go look it up. To go one step beyond this, Bloodstained early on announced one of the stupidest patches I can ever remember. They wanted to nerf single player content. Yes, you read this correctly. This isn't Madden, or NBA 2K, or League of Legends, or some other online competitive multiplayer game. It's a freaking 2D single player side-scrolling RPG platformer. That announcement more or less killed this game, and even dumber is that it was announced before any fixes. How does this relate to a match against Borderlands 2, I hear you wondering. Simple. This was not some 60-40 struggle between two strong games. This was Borderlands choking like a dog. 59% against all of Bloodstained's baggage is a terrible performance, and when compared to Horizon just thrashing Fortnite, it meant those of us who picked Borderlands to win twice were screwed. And frankly, good. I'll get into the people behind Borderlands being trash in round 2, don't you worry. I've said it before, but our voters are astute. ## Ctes's Analysis Another match that fueled the thought of indie games being legit. Borderlands 2 is a previous Game of the Year winner here, and while I think everyone agreed it had a good year to take such a price, this still wasn’t very convincing. While Final Fantasy XV would end up fighting for the title, Borderlands 2 probably goes out of round 1 looking like the weakest GotY, just like it went into the contest as. I suppose one could make an argument for Smash 4, but it isn’t in the bracket, so we’ll never know for sure. Borderlands 2 actually performed better than the average oracle expected of it. This shows that the indie fear was now for real. The Borderlands series is hardly what it used to be. The humor is outdated, and the gameplay isn’t as fun as it used to be. We even saw a handful pick against it after the first few days of indie success. This could be a place where another indie game could do damage. The fear was in full force. It probably would’ve performed below expectations if it had been up the first day. Borderlands 2 is still good enough, however, it was never going to drop this. It doesn’t look all too great yet, but it had hope going forward, since trashing Horizon trashing Fortnite tells us nothing about its chances in another match. The Walking Dead only barely lost against its indie opponent, and I doubt anyone would consider TWD to get close to Borderlands 2. Looking back, Bloodstained looks like one of the better indies in the contest. It’s exactly the kind that could have damaged brackets given better bracket placement. At this point, the idea that indie games from the second half of the decade were legit was starting to form. Hollow Knight and Bloodstained had looked really good. Bastion won, but only barely against what was expected to extremely bad and VVVVVV was looking terrible in a match next to this. It was a good idea, that would end up having some truth to it and is probably a good rule of thumb, though it does not come without exceptions. ## Tsunami's Analysis Borderlands 2 was our GotY in 2012, but it's frequently considered one of our weakest GotY winners ever. And we once had a Call of Duty game win GotY, which in the world at large would certainly be stronger but Call of Duty hasn't been worth anything in contests since, well, around the same time that it won a GotY. Anyone who knows me should know that I'm a huge fan of both music and statistics, so it shouldn't surprise you too much that I frequent [WhatNotToSing.com](http://whatnottosing.com/), and the good folks over there [have a perfect explanation](http://whatnottosing.com/library/editorials.asp?id=75): *The American entertainment industry is all about the here and now. All major industry awards, be it Oscar or Tony or Emmy or Grammy, tend to be as nearsighted as Mr. Magoo. In Hollywood and New York and Nashville, one year is about as far back as anyone seems to be able to remember. As such, every winter these various acadamies manage to embarrass themselves by bestowing a major award on something or someone that will be thoroughly forgotten five years hence.* That applies to the Internet and its court of public opinion, too. CoD 4 did very well in the 2009 Games Contest, and then Modern Warfare won 2009 GotY the following January. And then...we just kind of forgot about it. It was a fad. Also, how did I never notice that typo in the editorial I just quoted? But as for Borderlands 2, we saw its weakness. 0-3 in CBIX, with only one of the characters even getting second place. Got upset in Round 1 of BGE3. No characters even *made *CBX. Can we go back to CBIX again, where one of them managed to allow a non-Symphonia Tales character into second place? Okay yes that was the resident "joke entrant", but still. And while it had the greater name recognition here, it's not like its opponent didn't have the pedigree. Bloodstained is a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, produced by the series' long-time producer, Koji Igarashi. The similarity of its subtitle to that of the most popular Castlevania game is no coincidence. And remember how much this site loves Japanese things. This performance was very encouraging for Bloodstained, and if we ever get another Character Battle, I wouldn't be surprised if its protagonist was able to do okay. Not *great*, of course, because very few characters to debut during the Contest era have been worth much (Amaterasu, Altair even though he missed the last one entirely, Sora if you want to count by NA release dates but his game was already out in Japan by the start of Character Battle I). But decent enough for a newcomer. (And no, Geralt doesn't count; Witcher 3 may have been the game to boost him to *prominence*, but even just as a game character he dates back to the 90s, and across all media he's as old as Link.) ## Safer777's Analysis So we have the weakest GOTY winner from the previous decade on this site vs a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series. Yeah B2 had won GOTY here. Amazing eh? But then again once a Call Of Duty game won GOTY here. You heard me right. I don't know how myself too. B2 made popular the looter shooter genre. It is an amazing game and even better with friends. Do you know they released a DLC expansion for it 7 years after it came out? For free too? Yeah. The game is damn good! So for the match. The crew actually gave it lower win percentage(okay except Guest)and I don't know why. Sure we have a spiritual successor to Castlevania which is so popular that it coined the term Metroidvania but the Castlevania series is dead. The last game came out 6 years ago. Nobody cares anymore. Oh wait we have a pachinko Castlevania so all are fine I guess. Everyone knows the Borderlands series. The last game came out in the previous year. So name recognition for sure. I didn't know about Ritual since I don't play Indie games and I had to look it up. But Bordelands series? Too famous now. However B2 didn't even managed to break 60% which I say it is a moral victory for Ritual. Ritual is a good game from what I have gathered at least. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7925&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Horizon Zero Dawn vs (13)Fortnite 2020 _source: (4)Horizon Zero Dawn vs (13)Fortnite 2020 (revid 86497)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 29, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 69.22% 61 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 56.87% - **User Votes:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 6510 Fortnite - 1738 - **Anonymous Votes:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 5642 Fortnite - 928 Before getting to anything else, let me first say this -- I legitimately *love* Fortnite. No trolling, no BS. I love the game. I wouldn't put it on a top 100 list or anything, but it's legitimately a phenomenal video game. I'm pretty sure every kid in the world under 13 with access to electricity has played it, and Epic has done a wonderful job marketing their game specifically to kids. I'll leave my hatred for Epic's business practices and their continued stupid decisions, like banning a 9 year old from a game *marketed to children*, out of this. I want people to know I have legit positive feelings for Fortnite, and I was somewhat bummed out when in this contest it got treated similar to how Draven and Sans got treated in the last one. It truly did not deserve to get destroyed like this. I have two main reasons for liking the game. First and foremost, I volunteer with the middle school and young high school students at my church, and we're always messing around playing sports, playing video games, and discussing the word. Smash Bros and Fortnite are the two games that usually get booted up, and these kids just go nuts for it. It's so cool to see. If GameFAQs wants to be a bunch of boomers and hate on something because kids enjoy it, then the users of GameFAQs need a little more joy in their life. A lot of you guys clearly either don't have kids or don't have a connection to them. I don't have kids of my own, but seeing how happy these kids are in church makes me want to give them all the joys in the world. Remember, the generation of gamers that came before you probably looked at you in the 90s and thought all *your* games sucked, too. Remember all of our parents freaking out over Doom and Mortal Kombat while extoling the virtue of Nintendo games? You shouldn't grow up and treat others the same way, bros. Kids all talk about Fortnite and Tiktok the way we used to talk about 90s tech. Leave it alone. The other reason Fortnite is awesome is because it functions as internet day care. I love the kids at church, but I won't deny that a lot of kids out there are spoiled little brats who need an ass whuppin. Thankfully, Fortnite also fixed that problem. Every single other game's online community automatically got better the second Fortnite got huge. That's because all the screaming brats don't play other games anymore. They all play Fortnite and Minecraft, which leaves every other game's online open to being good. Finally! So yeah, Fortnite didn't deserve this. And yes, I was secretly hoping for a giga-rally. Sue me. As for Horizon, the game is super legit, but it wasn't totally possible to know that from this performance alone. The one hope Borderlands 2 supporters had going for them is that almost any game would have blown Fortnite out. Even games that finished super low in the stats. It's simply not the kind of game that will ever get votes here, and in any contest it's in it will always get the Draven treatment. So I say if there's ever another catch-all games contest, let's have this Fourpack of Fun: League of Legends : Fortnite :: Dota 2 : Undertale. "I think Fortnite is a pretty fun game too. I like it more than a lot of other games in the bracket tbh. It's by far the easiest battle royale to 'get good' at imo from what I played. The lack of building in other royale can get rough since I'm pretty bad at shooters generally. Fortnite also has cool seasonal modes like playing/fighting Thanos and best of all LIGHTSABERS. The Dances are pretty hit or miss but I do think it's cool stuff like Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up (with the OG song and everything) and stuff like Star Wars TRAITOR scene and force choking. And of course seeing flossing making it to the Sonic movie. I like the gimmick weapons like the Kingsman/umbrella. I got really excited to just whack builds, block shots, and blow people who have no idea how to fight it." -SuperAngelo128 "I think Fortnite deserves a little bit of credit in its design. PUBG was the real innovator of the Battle Royale genre, but Fortnite took its spot at the top because they had imagination in spades and designed something aesthetically pleasing with a lot of personality. At the very least, that's the reason why Fortnite took an 80-20 beatdown whereas PUBG couldn't even make the field." -Greatone10 ## Ctes's Analysis This was a very satisfying result to many. Fortnite has been huge in the end of the decade, there’s no denying that. It’s in no way a GameFAQs kind of type though. Its appeal is a lot more casual. It’s also the exact type of game that we’re scared to see catch a solid rally, however. The player base is so huge and active and could easily outnumber. The chances of that happening are extremely low, I’m sure, but it shows how traumatized we’ve been. I’m sure some regulars were holding their breath for a good 20 hours of the match before feeling safe too, despite Horizon not just winning but dominating the match. Look at the prediction percentage here. That’s really low for a match where the winning game breaks 80% Part of that is of course because Fortnite is the casual bait it is, but I guarantee it’s also because of rally fear to some small extend. There are less brackets these days, the average user making a bracket now is better than it used to be. In addition, stuff like GTA and WoW are actually big enough here. At least people visit the site to look at stuff about those games. Fortnite doesn’t really have that going for it, so it’s probably not as much casual bait as those. It makes complete sense to include Fortnite in a Game of the Decade bracket, but let’s expect this to last time we ever see it. It’s tough to imagine it putting up a good number on anything. While Fortnite was the sender of attention in this match, let’s turn our eyes to Horizon for a bit too. It looks great here. Fortnite got most of the attention, but you deserve some credit for breaking 80% on anything, particularly a game everyone knows what is, disliked or not. It ends up getting that credit, but it was still uncertain at this point. Its round 2 match was debatable, and Horizon would go into it as the underdog according to the guru. Still, the upset felt good after this match. Horizon did a lot more than what was expected of it. ## Tsunami's Analysis This match followed neither of the "trends". Whereas in all 8 of the matches on the first two days, the "extra voters" on the registered side largely congregated towards one entrant, and in the other three matches on Day 3, the proportions were very similar, in this match, the raw margins of victory among registered and unregistered voters were very similar: 4772 among the registered and 4714 among the unregistered. Since there are more registered voters than unregistered, that means that this match wasn't even as close as it looked! With the double-counted registered voters, it still came out to a little under 81%; in reality, it was a tad over 82%. Which doesn't sound like a huge difference but you have to remember that the difference in percentage between 1.5x and 2x is larger than the difference in percentage between 3x and 4x. In this case, it's the difference between a little under a 4.25x and comfortably over a 4.5x. Apparently Fortnite is just that hated; I knew it'd lose but I figured its popularity would at least let it not get embarrassed. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have HZD vs a game that is the most popular in the world and it is a battle FPS royale. So that means in this site it loses to every other game! In every other site except Gamefaqs Fortnite would dominate since as I said EVERYONE and their dancing grandmas knows about it. Millions play it EVERY day. HZD I have played it and it is an excellent game with a unique premise too(robot dinosaurs!oh and other robot animals too)but it works. So for the match. Someone(can someone remind me who exactly to write it?)tracks on polls the age ratings(why?)and currently around 5% of the people that come on Gamefaqs is under 20 years old. And Fortnite dominates on people under 20. So it never stood a chance. Of course with a rally it could do it, but as I said above nobody cares for this site anymore. Sure a few years ago people wanted to make fun of us but now? Most people don't know that this site still exists. Oh and even though the Crew gave high win percentages for HZD it won even higher than they predicted! So yeah Fortnite is damn weak here. However if you see the correct prediction percentage a lot of people went with Fortnite. Guess name recognition or hope for a rally? Come on people no outsider cares for this stuff anymore. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7926&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (14)Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair 2020 _source: (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (14)Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair 2020 (revid 86498)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, March 30, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 30, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 2 - 76.78% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 2 - 92.37% - **User Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 7116 Danganronpa 2 - 1421 - **Anonymous Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 5756 Danganronpa 2 - 1215 Some indie games were okay in this contest. Most were not. Listening to yoblazer trying to pronounce "Danganronpa" wasn't quite as painful as Rosie O'Donnell's impersonation of the Chinese, but it was painful nonetheless! Swirldude was nice enough to enlighten us on The Show about what that game actually is. Apparently it's a visual novel that Phoenix Wright fans would enjoy, which... actually doesn't sound bad at all. But seeded contests all have their slew of round 1 blowouts, so here we were. But even then, we were less prepared than Illidan's opponents for what RE2 was going to do in this contest. "Painful" is also an apt word to describe Resident Evil 2 ripping through this match. This fourpack of matches pretty much all made Mass Effect 2 look terrible, and Resident Evil 2 got the ball rolling by proving its Game of the Year showing to start off the 2020 polls was no fluke. In those polls, it beat Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Sekiro to take the title. It followed that up by **destroying** Not Phoenix Wright. It was far from done after this demolishing, either. This was another feather in the cap of Capcom's resurgence, and who knew that designing good games without worrying about dirty microtransactions and loads of sinister DLC practices would make fans like you? It's almost like this is what people have been saying all along or something. Gamers don't want microtransactions. Gamers don't want on-disc DLC. Gamers don't want their intelligence insulted. They want *good games*. That's it. It's not hard. When you give gamers what they want, they vote with their dollars. Free markets work, my friends. I will say though that Resident Evil 2 cheated hard with that name. Let's not forget that every single game made in 1998 is technically a contest champion! So rather than being called Resident Evil 2: Remake or something similar, Capcom went with the original name. I am legitimately and truly convinced that this game got a 1998 boost from nostalgia, which kind of feels dirty. Two games, Persona 4 Golden and Pokemon HeartGold SoulSilver, had absolutely no right making it into this contest. Those two are just graphical upgrades of games not released in this decade. Resident Evil 2 is very borderline, and pushes at it really hard, but ultimately I'm okay with it since it's a full remake. The other two no, but RE2 is fine. The issue is where does it stop? Do we let Ocarina of Time 3D in? How about Link's Awakening? That's a full remake. I just think it's dumb that all three of these games got to feed on nostalgia in a contest specifically designed to avoid it. If you booted all three of those games in favor of Pokemon Go, Skyward Sword, and Pokemon Sword and Shield, the contest would have felt more fair. ## Ctes's Analysis Picking Resident Evil 2 to win the whole division was a cool upset pick before and during the contest. A result such as this was exactly what it needed to make it look possible. Mass Effect 2 had performed below expectations yesterday and now Resident Evil 2 scores a huge blowout, proving its strength to us. Even so, DOOM managed to exceed expectations even more in its match today, so it didn’t get to be a lock to round 3 in the eyes of everyone. What a good division this was after round 1! Danganronpa finally got a game into a contest. It has its cult fanbase, so congratulations! There’s not much to gain doing it again, however. Even if you considered Resident Evil 2 the division favorite at this point, getting blown out this badly by anything except perhaps Breath of the Wild should mean there is no point in coming back, so in a contest setting, it’s probably time to big welcome to the despair instead. Seeing how many blowouts we’re having at this point makes me consider what having four matches a day along with four votes is doing. That obviously favors a Resident Evil against a Danganronpa, so maybe it could’ve cracked the 20% it should have hoped for if it was the only match? Of course, the high number of blowouts is also because of the two games per series rule. This was the first showing of the remakes in the contest and so far it looks like it’s just as strong as it could be in any setting. Though at this point, there was no telling what that meant for Persona 4 Golden or Pokemon HGSS. Resident Evil 2 is by far the most different game from its original between the three. Now had it shown up worse than it looked in the GotY polls, they’d have reason to fear for themselves. ## Tsunami's Analysis So yeah, remakes were allowed into this contest, though at times it could be hard to tell because there were also a couple of games with the same name as their franchise's debut game, like Doom and God of War. I'm curious as to whether Bacon showed any sort of discretion; if it was just generalized "yeah all remakes are eligible", it's kind of tough to imagine that RE2 got a 1-seed and OoT3D didn't even make the field. Or did the lack of recency and the fact that handheld games are largely viewed as second-class citizens here make people forget entirely that it was eligible? No, that doesn't make sense; HeartGold/SoulSilver made it in and that's even older. (Then again, it's also a much bigger improvement on its original game!) At a glance, it appears that this was another case where almost all of the "extra" votes went in one direction. Then you realize that in a blowout this big, the proportion isn't all that far off! The official percentage is 83.13%; the raw votes have it at 83% even. Either way, it's close to a quintupling, which either means that RE2 is an absolute monster or that even by the standards of VNs, Danganronpa is piss-weak. In 2015, four VNs made it in, two each from two series. The original Phoenix Wright, a 16-seed, narrowly avoided a doubling from Skyrim, while the third PW game even more narrowly avoided a tripling from Symphony of the Night in a 2-15 matchup. In a pair of other 2-15 matchups, 999 got 22.2% on Persona 4, so roughly halfway between a tripling and a quadrupling, while its sequel, VLR, got a little under 21% against Mass Effect 2. Now, we know that Phoenix has pretty much gone mainstream, but I'd expect the Zero Escape series to be roughly on par with Danganronpa. The original, not-remade RE2 was also in 2015's contest, where it lost in somewhat respectable fashion to Final Fantasy Tactics. In fact, let's pull up the X-Stat calculator to see what the expectation would be: Resident Evil 2 (2015g) VS Virtues Last Reward (2015g) Resident Evil 2 has a strength of 23.93. Virtues Last Reward has a strength of 10.70. Resident Evil 2 wins with 77.64% of the vote!  A win of 33,656 with 60,875 total votes cast. 77.64%. Not even what Persona 4 got on the stronger 999. Either the RE2 Remake was just *that* good (not entirely inconceivable since you're dealing with updating a game from the late 90s to the modern HD graphics and controls), or Danganronpa isn't even remotely in the same conversation as Zero Escape. Probably some combination of both. ## Safer777's Analysis So how a game from 1998 went into this contest? Simple. It is not RE 2 from 1998, it is RE 2 from 2019! In all seriousness though I don't understand how RE 2 got in. I thought no remakes and remasters? Otherwise we would have OOT or FFX or stuff like that? Guess since it is actually a new game which just keep the general story from the original RE2 and changes all other stuff it if fair game. Just like how FF7 remake will be eligible for the next GOTD contest(if we are alive by then). RE2 remake got amazing reviews and won numerous GOTY awards. As a person who played the original RE 2 back then when it first came out I have to say the remake is excellent too. I just prefer SLIGHTLY the original RE2 but that is a personal opinion. As for Danganronpa 2...Sorry don't know anything. It is apparently a visual novel? So for the match. Well what do you expected? Even if you don't know anything about the contests here pretty sure you knew what game would win. And as always the crew overstimates the power of such strange games. They all went under 80%(except one person)and RE2 scored even higher than he predicted. See here is the thing. People just don't care about these strange obscure games ESPECIALLY if they are visual novels. Only Ace Attorney is somewhat decent here and that is not by much. I know that the D series has its fans since the games keep coming out but you know what I mean. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7927&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)DOOM vs (11)INSIDE 2020 _source: (6)DOOM vs (11)INSIDE 2020 (revid 86499)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, March 30, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 30, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** DOOM - 70.62% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** DOOM - 94.22% - **User Votes:** DOOM - 7374 INSIDE - 1163 - **Anonymous Votes:** DOOM - 5941 INSIDE - 1027 **WARNING: THE SLAYER HAS CONTROL OF THE BFG.** **REPEAT, THE SLAYER HAS THE BFG.** **"You can't just shoot a *hole* into the surface of Mars."** **The ONLY thing they fear... is YOU.** **You are nothing but a usurper. A false idol.** **There is no chance that the subject is a demon. Maybe he is a God. He is uncompromising, a relentless being of violence. I believe him now to be more than just a man. He is.... DOOM.** All hail the coming of the Destroyer. The Slayer's time is now I could wax poetic for days about my love for these games. Really, I could. My Doom Eternal review alone is 5300 hundred words. It's funny, I first experienced Doom because a buddy of mine went "hey you'll like this song, check it out". I put on BFG Division for the first time and the rest of it figured itself out. But this is a contest PCA at the end of the day, so I'll *try* to be objective. First off, Allen clearly set this up on purpose. "DOOM INSIDE" is one of the first things people noticed when the bracket came out, and Inside got an 11 seed. 11! Above things like Mario Kart 8 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Given Inside would eventually end up dead last in the stats, I don't believe it naturally got an 11 seed. Allen set this up to be cute. Secondly, Doom 2016 *clearly* benefited from Doom Eternal coming out ten days before this match. We see this a lot where a recent or same day release cause a related contest entrant to go berserk. We've seen it with Charizard, we've seen with Mario, and now we've seen it with Doom. Anyone reading this can see how much I love this game, but Doom is not strong enough to get the second biggest blowout of the entire round 1 no matter what it's up against. This performance was just comically absurd. I would love if Doom were actually this strong, but come on. 86%? The highest oracle prediction was 80. This was clearly a boosted overperformance, and trust me when I tell you that it kills me to say that. Before I move on, I want to toss some love to Lightning Strikes for recommending Inside so hard. I enjoyed Limbo, so after this match I figured what the hell. He's like KP; he'll never steer you wrong with recommending something. Inside is a really, really good game and I fully recommend it. It's really short, about 4 hours, and you can beat the entire thing in an afternoon. I dare say it didn't deserve to get demolished like this, but the all-caps match was too good to pass up. I see you working, Allen. This set up one hell of a match with Resident Evil 2 next round, and the stakes felt very high given how vulnerable Mass Effect 2 looked. Two games with 90s nostalgia name value overperforming en route to a debated round 2 match? Sign me up. ## Ctes's Analysis DOOM BEGAN ITS CONTEST WITH ABOUT AS GOOD A SHOWING AS IT GETS. BREAKING 86%, DOOM MADE THE SECOND HIGHEST BLOWOUT OF THE ROUND, AND THE BIGGEST AT THIS POINT OF THE CONTEST. NOT THE MATCH WAS EVER IN DOUBT BECAUSE WHAT EVEN IS INSIDE, SO LETS JUST MOVE ON SAYING HELL YEAH DOOM. Error message from gamefaqs.gamespot.com Your text may not be in all uppercase. Oh, silly me. How could I not notice I had pressed caps lock? Well, since I was not allowed to post before, perhaps I can elaborate a bit on this one. Kudos to Allen for setting up some of the matches, making round 1 a little bit more fun. DOOM looked as good as it could possibly could here. If you’re breaking 86% on anything, you’re likely worth something. At the very least, if you were worried what a Bethesda backlash might do, today was not the to start worrying further. Although of course, DOOM is not really what the issues have been about. DOOM made as big a scare as it could coming into next round. I’m sure that if Resident Evil 2 had faced anything just worth a little bit, we would’ve seen more people jump on the upset train. Imagine what happens if Resident Evil 2 got to face Bloodstained for instance. That would’ve been fun. DOOM was still going into round 2 as a major underdog, but there’s no denying it looked great today. However, as the contest proceeded, it became more and more clear that INSIDE is simply that weak. It ended up being the single worst game in the bracket according to the x-stats. It doesn’t matter that the x-stats are favorable towards the latter half of the bracket, it still ends up there. Imagine how low it could’ve become if it had been under the layers of SFF that the especially bottom half of division 3 were in. It could’ve aimed at records there! Turns out not everything is worth anything just because its indie, but I don’t think many of us were surprised here. It had a generic name and a generic picture while DOOM is one of the biggest names in a gaming world. It’s not like people are just voting for the lesser name and INSIDE has had just about as little exposure as you can get. I’m surprised it made the bracket, and I wonder if it would’ve had if not for its name being all in capital letters. Let me just take a moment to talk about the game a little. I usually don’t do this too much in these, but I know someone who’s been working as a sound designer on the game and a lot of small games similar to it. He has also been making sounds for CD project red in the past. We’re not close, but I always check out his stuff and he often shares some insider knowledge (pun intended). I was very happy and positively surprised when I saw this game made it to the field. Did you know that a lot of the development team behind INSIDE are Danish? Probably not because you barely know about the game, but it’s good! Definitely worth the few hours it takes. ## Tsunami's Analysis **THIS MATCH IS IN ALL CAPS AND IT STILL HAS FEWER CAPITAL LETTERS THAN THE DQXI MATCH. WHAT IT DOESN'T HAVE IS VOTERS FOR INSIDE. EVEN BOTW DIDN'T SCORE THIS BIG A BLOWOUT.** ...Yeah that's going to get annoying real fast. What's there to say, though? INSIDE narrowly took away the title of "fewest registered votes received" from The Outer Worlds, though it at least managed more unregistered votes than Fortnite. DOOM did have the most unregistered votes received, though, with RE2 second and Bloodborne fourth, behind Horizon Zero Dawn but ahead of Breath of the Wild. So it's clear that vote totals are starting to climb. On both sides; The Outer Worlds only beat INSIDE among registered voters by 5, but DOOM beat BotW with them by 449. I guess the repeated delays messed people up, so day 1 got bad votals? Literally 3 of today's 4 winners had a higher vote total than BotW did, both raw and adjusted. ## Safer777's Analysis BATTLE OF CAPS LOCKS! So we have a game from 1993 here? Huh. Well what I said above for RE2 applies for DOOM too. See Doom was SO popular when it came out that every other FPS for a time was called Doom clone. Yeah it was that popular! Even though it wasn't the first FPS it sure as Hell popularized the genre. Also it got a bad reputation at 1999 for a famous incident at USA. I don't say what it is, just search for it. Videogames are bad and cause violence right? We still have this thing. As for INSIDE...you guess it, I don't know anything about it! Man what is this contest and me not playing the games? Seriously I don't understand how so many low key games got in. So for the match. Well it was a slaughter. Highest win so far in the contest. Move over BOTW! Also correct me if I am wrong but that is the highest correct prediction percentage for a 6 seed ever too. Seriously not even 1 seeds get so much high correct prediction percentage on their first match! Also the crew went really low with the win percentage. On average they went with 70% and it score over 86%! So yeah pretty sure they were suprised too. So why DOOM did so well? Because INSIDE is damn weak AND the sequel of DOOM released a few days before we had this match. Now that it wouldn't win of course. Name recognision for sure too. I mean everyone and their Demon Grandmas knows about Doom franchise. Oh Doom had 2 films too. A bad one and a real bad one. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7928&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (10)Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2020 _source: (7)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (10)Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2020 (revid 86500)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, March 30, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 30, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 66.03% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 76.07% - **User Votes:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 5448 Deus Ex: Human Revolution - 3090 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 4192 Deus Ex: Human Revolution - 2778 Fire Emblem didn't win by enough. I say that in jest given the obnoxious PC Master Race Deus Ex fans, but it's actually the truth. And yes, I know this isn't the same Deus Ex. Calm down. While Resident Evil 2, Doom, and Bloodborne were all going completely insane on the day this match happened, Fire Emblem sat there and only got 63% on a game this site assuredly does not care about. For those of us who thought Bloodborne wouldn't increase much from its 2015 loss to Final Fantasy 12 and picked Fire Emblem to beat it, this was the worst case scenario. It was plain as day after this match that Fire Emblem was screwed. It was a defensible pick, though. For those of us who picked Xenoblade to make a run, we had to pick Fire Emblem Awakening to make a run by default. Back in 2015 we had Fire Emblem, Donkey Kong Country 2, and Xenoblade all go 50-50 with each other in the same fourpack. So when I picked Xenoblade winning its division as my huge gamble this year, I looked at the paths of Awakening and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. ....yeah. We saw how those worked out. I had Awakening even beating Resident Evil 2 at one point, but thankfully I changed my mind. I'll talk more about this when the time comes to just trash Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but the very short version is the Fire Emblem series is not as popular as us fans want it to be. Trust me, I'm a hardcore series fan. It's never going to happen, friends. If Three Houses couldn't do it, nothing ever will. ## Ctes's Analysis It’s no good being the only advancing game in half a division to not overperform if you were hoping to get far. That’s how Fire Emblem: Awakening had it coming out of round 1. It even did slightly worse than expected of it, just to make matters worse. Fire Emblem was the slight guru favorite to make round 3 and a few even had it going further than that. The main reason for being the popular choice next round being it straight up looked better than Bloodborne back in 2015. Not my much, but still ahead of it. Also, Resident Evil 2 had a recent slim victory against Fire Emblem: Three Houses in the Game of the Year finals. It was expected that Awakening wouldn’t be too far below Three Houses, as it is the older game and has had more and better received Smash exposure to upweight that it’s a handheld game not quite as successful. Resident Evil 2 was expected to make the division finals, so if you thought Awakening wasn’t too far away from it, there was not too much room in between for Bloodborne to be. Also, when in doubt, picking the Nintendo game and or the RPG was worked out before. There’s no denying Awakening would go into round 2 as the underdog now. Human Revolution is surely the strongest game losing the this half of the division, but even so these just aren’t good numbers. We’ve seen the first Deus Ex a good bunch of times. It was destroyed as expected in 2009 and 2015. In 2010 it did shock us all by beating Rock Band 2 (however weird that sentence may sounds), but still lost big time to Fallout 3. It hasn’t been worth much. This isn’t the same Deus Ex. The reason it was the first that got into 2015 is probably because it’s better. This game is from 2011, so it only made it in because the first could not. Had Fire Emblem put these numbers up on the original, it might, just might, still be considered the favorite to round 2, but not like this. We’d have to see how Three Houses did, however. If Three Houses went big, then maybe this would end up not being as bad, but the writing was on the wall already. ## Tsunami's Analysis This can only be considered a disappointing performance by FE:A. This was the game that really brought Fire Emblem into the mainstream, much to the chagrin of longtime fans who thought that IS had taken all the challenge out of it. They didn't really...sort of. Yes, they made it more accessible than it was in the Super Famicom era, but then again just about anything would be more accessible than Thracia 776. Awakening was meant to be a celebration of the series' history, and the mechanic that actually got the most flak came from Genealogy of the Holy War! Well, no, that's not true. Second Seals really were absolutely broken, and combined with DLC that allowed for infinite grinding, Awakening really shouldn't give you much challenge unless you want it to. But the elitists were running challenge runs on the older games, so that's really nothing new. The "anyone can be paired with anyone (with exceptions)" mechanic, along with the children characters, is indeed borrowed from GotHW, and I'd say that Awakening pulls it off just as well as Genealogy did! Fates, not so much, but Fates isn't in this contest, because Fates was IS seeing dollars signs and trying to cater to their vast new fanbase of shippers, while *also* trying to placate their core fans by making the infinite grinding DLC less broken (and in the process, very nearly defeating the purpose of having it--making the DLC scale in level by your story progress just means that if you want to get all the children characters to their max potential, you basically have to kill all your momentum by grinding *everyone* up after every level.) Fates was a cash grab, pure and simple. I'm glad it's not in this contest. I mean, Awakening was also, but you basically needed the earlier DLCs to be able to beat Apotheosis. I've heard rumors of people handling it without Limit Breaker, but why would you want to? But yeah, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was never going to be worth much of anything. The first Deus Ex has done very little in every contest it or its main character has been in, with its only win coming against Rock Band 2 and by an extremely slim margin, and Human Revolution's protagonist made the 2013 contest and...barely managed to come within 10000 votes of Vivi while failing to double a Touhou character (and that's after she had fraudulent votes removed; if they'd been allowed to stay, Adam barely even *gets* second place). ## Safer777's Analysis So finally another match where I have played both games! Now we are talking! We have 2 games that revived their franchises too. Word from Nintendo was that if FEA didn't sold as much as they expected they would stop the FE series! Yeah as much the old fans whine FE never did good in sales. Fortunately FEA sold more than 5 times what they expected and the series is doing damn well now. I mean they have a gatcha game which has brought more than 800.000.000 dollars so far and they recently added a monthly pass for it which costs around 10 dollars per month. 10 dollars per month for a phone game and people bought it. All are lost. DEHR did well too both financially and critically but SE messed all that up with the sequel because of the damn microtransactions. They added a sequel hook campaign and added an extra mode which nobody asked for that was full of microtransactions. Plus the whole stupid thing with pre orders. And the game didn't sold well and the future of the series is uncertain. So for the match. Well FE series is Huge now and it wouldn't lose to DE. Strangely enough though it did slightly worse than expected. Still above 60% but lower than 65%. Guess DE has some power or something like that. Or just FE series is weak actually? Well FE is a SRPG while DE is an RPG and traditionally SRPG's don't do well in this site. Still bad seeding for DE. It could beat a few games here for sure. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7929&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Bloodborne vs (15)Call of Duty: Black Ops 2020 _source: (2)Bloodborne vs (15)Call of Duty: Black Ops 2020 (revid 86501)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, March 30, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 30, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bloodborne - 67.54% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bloodborne - 77.04% - **User Votes:** Bloodborne - 6878 Call of Duty: Black Ops - 1662 - **Anonymous Votes:** Bloodborne - 5610 Call of Duty: Black Ops - 1361 It never ceases to amaze me how non Board 8 contest prognosticators always pick these casualbait games in matches. Only 77% picked Bloodborne to win a 2-15 match, really? Did you know that Call of Duty games actually used to be able to win matches on this site? It's true! It's even beaten well-known Nintendo and Square games. I promise these polls are real: Yes, that is actual evidence of Call of Duty 4 beating Super Mario Galaxy TWICE. I get that LFF happened and that Black Ops is going to be weaker than 4, but good hell. As our vote totals have fallen off of the edge of a flat earther's planet, it's clear that the people leaving in droves are the casuals. Site loyalists are the only ones sticking around, and even they're bailing. And since this web site *loathes* casualbait video games, things like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are screwed moving forward. All that said, Bloodborne was in no way expected to be such a monster in this contest. No one in the oracle had it over 80% in this match, and most people went under 70%. The specter of that Final Fantasy 12 loss loomed large over Bloodborne in this contest, and can you really blame anyone for not having faith in it? The game lost 55-45 to freaking Final Fantasy 12. It's impossible to ignore that. Thankfully, Bloodborne has built up an incredible reputation in the past few years and came out meaning business this time. I know you all think Doom 2016 is my favorite game in this bracket, but it's actually Bloodborne, believe it or not. Seeing it go from losing to FF12 to holding steady over 80% for an entire match was just surreal. I could not have been happier over this performance, like a proud papa, and I was kicking myself for not picking it to win twice. It is AWESOME that this wonderful video game is getting the respect it so justly deserves. It's the best Souls game ever made, the best action game ever made, it's got the best DLC package ever, and it's really, REALLY difficult. Beating this game feels like a legitimate accomplishment, let alone getting the platinum trophy. ## Ctes's Analysis In a division full of huge blowouts, Bloodborne sought out to overperform the most. It fell just short of DOOM, but man does it look good here. There’s a lot to be said about Call of Duty these days (and I’ll get there), but it’s hard to think this would be the same Bloodborne as five years ago. Unlike a good bunch of the other +80% winners this so far, Bloodborne was not against a no name. Every single person voting know what Call of Duty is. It’s the first sign of the strength the FromSoftware games had achieved. Sekiro did not exactly look all too good at first, but Bloodborne went out the gates clearly wanting to bath in the first half of its name. Whether it was Souldborne generally rising or simply the contest title helping out here was not yet certain, but if you picked Bloodborne to round 3 as one of your risks, then what a happy day this must be. Not a single person in the oracle expected this big a blowout. The closest was still more than 3% off. I was in fourth being 7% off. That’s very telling. I had not expected it would be this much better than last time, but I did go high because I absolutely expected Call of Duty to be this bad. The huge result is undoubtfully a combination of one being better than expected and the other one being worse. I expected and had validated that Call of Duty has fallen considerably more than we already knew. Let’s recap for a bit. Call of Duty has won a Game of the Year award here in the past back in 2009. It looked good in Best Game Ever II and Game of the Decade I in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Fast forward five years and Call of Duty had been met with the criticism of favoring quantity over quality when making games. They weren’t as great as Modern Warfare. Black Ops is probably among the least disliked, but this caused a backlash on the franchise as a whole. I don’t blame you if you can’t remember Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare actually made it into the 2015 contest, but it did. It was a \#14 seed. I’m sure you remember Super Metroid that contest. Well, CoD4 was the game that Super Metroid destroyed in round 1 by breaking 80%. I expected this trend to have continued. It would decline further. Not as much as it did between our previous two games contests, but still decline. It wasn’t facing as strong an opponent this time, but it also wasn’t as strong a Call of Duty game. I expected the opponent to matter more though, because Call of Duty will get anti-voted to some extend no matter which entry it is. Well, I had the right idea, but I underestimated Bloodborne a bit. Back then I wasn’t sure if I just overestimated Call of Duty despite expecting it to be worse than most, but on this side of the contest, I can see that I had underestimated Bloodborne a bit. At this point, it became clear that we’d see a lot of blowouts this contest. Something we had almost none of last character battle. Round 1 had a lot of fodder due to the contest having a series cap and only recent games. From this day forward it was time to expect them more than we had done, even if this division had the most. Division 2 had a very boring round 1 with the best losing game in terms of percentage only barely breaking 40%, but round 2 was exciting. We’d have four matches that seemingly could go either way. I know some people thought some of the matches were obvious, but all of them had people on both sides. That’s quite rare! ## Tsunami's Analysis So remember back in the Borderlands 2 write-up, how I said that Call of Duty was popular here for a very short while and then it just kind of fell off a cliff? Yeah, it *really* tanked. Of course, even in 2015, the X-Stats say that Bloodborne was good for 63.25% on CoD4. 2009 CoD4 is allegedly good for 69.79% on 2015 CoD4, though, so there you go, that's a huge decline. I keep expecting Bloodborne to be weaker than it is because all of these new games have titles that sound like something an emo teenager would dream up. I can hardly keep track. Bloodborne's another Hidetaka Miyazaki production, though, so I'm not surprised that it's decent. Is FromSoftware going to become this generation's Squaresoft? It seems odd to think that way given that they've been around since the mid-90s themselves, but they broke out in 2009 with the release of Demon's Souls and they've had one hell of a good decade. Given how fed-up gamers are with so many of the big names of the past--Capcom, Konami, and even Squeenix themselves--there's certainly an opening! ## Safer777's Analysis Who keeps nominating COD games/characters? Seriously people. We are old on this site. Old people don't play these kind of games! I haven't played any of these games but I know them well. COD is a FPS that comes out every year, it is the same game and it always breaks record sales. Bloodborne is an exclusive to PS and I didn't know that. It is one of these get good games, meaning you have to be really good to advance because the game is damn hard. So for the match. Another slaughter. I know we had a COD GOTY here a lot of years ago(seriously even now nobody can explain it)but man. Once again the crew got low win percentage here. And to tell the truth I don't think anybody expecting this high percentage for Bloodborne. In any other site pretty sure COD wins. But not here. So there you go. COD is damn weak and it would lose to almost any other game here. Now if we had Fortnite VS COD... I would like to see that match! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7930&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (16)Tekken 7 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (16)Tekken 7 2020 (revid 86502)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 80.60% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 93.92% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 7104 Tekken 7 - 1404 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5646 Tekken 7 - 1270 This match was never going to be in doubt, but seeing Ultimate pull off this absurd blowout was beautiful to see nonetheless for one very specific reason. Whenever a disruptor comes along, the status quo always gets defensive and pissed off instead of evolving to meet new demands. We see it with the Trump presidency causing legacy politicians and their ignorant supporters to lose their collective minds. We see it with the taxi industry not liking Uber. We see it with retail chains blaming Amazon for their own failures. Microsoft and Apple have gone back and forth on this for decades. We saw it with Blockbuster not thinking streaming would take off. We see it with any paradigm shift, really. Most importantly, we see it now among all of the morons who think Smash Bros isn't a "real" fighting game series. This was never really an argument to begin with, but fighting game fans are hilariously insecure pseudo alpha male types who go around festooning greatness, so seeing them get embarrassed in this non-argument time and time and time again is so good. They are clearly threatened by Smash Bros being the most popular and highest selling fighting series in the history of gaming, and they can't handle people who aren't "real men" (whatever their stupid definition of that is) being more popular than they are. It is *hilarious* to watch, and so was Smash Ultimate getting 83% on a garbage can with a garbage can fanbase. Protip for those playing the home game -- if someone constantly tells you they're an alpha male, you are dealing with an insecure loser. The best way to deal with those goofs is to laugh right in their face. We've won this argument, and we just set the viewership record at EVO. Yeah, the same EVO that you thought Smash didn't deserve to be in. We just took your space over and kicked you out of it, losers. Go watch some more UFC and pretend you could have been a pro athlete if not for that one injury you had in high school. Oh, and I'm a so-called nerd and odds are I've slept with far more women than you. It's called deodorant. Try wearing it. Oh, and maybe tell your old school fighting game developers to evolve a bit. They all got embarrassed in this contest for a reason. The only real issue here was Smash being in the same half of the bracket as Zelda, but given how this contest ended I have to say it was the right decision. Smash showed here, despite the blowout, that it was not in Zelda's league. No game was. ## Ctes's Analysis Prior to the contest, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was considered by many to be either the second or third best game here. It was obviously behind Breath of the Wild, but a fear amount of people considered it second. Skyrim was before the contest mostly considered the potential second ahead of Ultimate, but a few other games were in consideration too. Wherever we predicted it to be exactly, we all agreed that it was among the very best. Nintendo is so big these days with the huge success of the Switch. It had to be up there. Most people expected it to have a really boring contest run because the Nintendo hierarchy would mean it had a free pass to the semifinals before being fed to Breath of the Wild. The biggest case against Ultimate’s strength was its final Game of the Year poll against God of War. It was only a little more than year ago, so likely still in full relevance. It “only” won with just less than 55%. A reaction to that was considering God of War to be a top game here. Another was the thought that perhaps Smash Bros has stronger hype that games. I don’t think anyone here will deny that the Smash Bros franchise can boost things prerelease more than anything else. We’ve seen characters clearly boosting significantly due to be revealed for Smash. We’ve even seen that happen mid-contest before with Sonic being the key example. Even so, there’s a good case to be made for Brawl and Melee to be the strongest games last decade, even if Majora ending up getting past Brawl in the final with a bandwagon. That was a while after the release of even Brawl. There’s also the argument that the site has shifted away from multiplayer games. While Smash has had good single player, it’s always a multiplayer game first and foremost. We don’t really see games that are primarily multiplayer doing well here much anymore. Ultimate is considered a celebration of gaming more than it’s considered a fighting game by Mr. Sakurai himself, and there’s something to it. Fighting games and multiplayer games have had a clear roof in these contests, which Smash has always been quite a bit better than everything else in those categories. But maybe it still hurt it a bit as well. It was most likely put in this half of the bracket to avoid a pure Nintendo finals, but some regulars were using this multiplayer decline to argue that it wouldn’t have stood much a chance in the lower half either, perhaps not even getting past the critically acclaimed Super Mario Odyssey in round 4. Despite most of us thinking Ultimate had the most predictable path possible, it had to prove itself to a good bunch of it. Getting 83% against anything can hardly be considered a bad result, but it’s also extremely unreliable. Tekken 7 is all the things we talked about before, so it doesn’t really tell us much in itself. However, seeing as Super Mario Odyssey was facing Mortal Kombat 11, there was a good way to compare them through those. I never thought it’s a good measure for predicting the division finals, but it gave us something to discuss at least. The main reason I never thought so is that I could not see Ultimate vs. Odyssey coming down to what game is stronger indirectly, unless one of them was way ahead, which I don’t think anyone thought. Ultimate also has some overlap with Tekken 7, making the uncertainties even greater. Finally, when something gets percentages this high, the uncertainties are already so great that it’s tough to conclude anything from, so we’d just have to wait for now. Let’s talk a little bit about Tekken 7 first though. Most people believed Mortal Kombat 11 to be the stronger of the two, because Mortal Kombat has always been better than Tekken here. The debut of both series all the way back in our original character battle saw Scorpion slaughter Kazuya and that’s a perfect picture of how they’ve done since. Scorpion is decent here and Sub-Zero has showed some really good results. Three characters from Tekken have made the field and there was no point of them returning. The best result was when Yoshimitsu actually won a match in 2013 before dying in round 2, but that was lucky bracket placement more than anything. Despite that, I honestly wouldn’t be surprise if Tekken 7 was slightly stronger at least indirectly. We can’t tell for certain, because most matches to base things on are unreliable. I expect the gap to have closed quite a bit since our first contests. Sub-Zero will still be good most likely, but anything released in the past chunk of years from the franchise likely would not. It’s far past its prime. Tekken 7 however is actually rather good! I wasn’t a big fan of the story mode ending, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I was in a small minority and story mode has never been Tekken’s selling point anyway. The real reason for Tekken 7 doing better than Mortal Kombat 11 is probably most of all that Ultimate is a bit less respected than Odyssey, which matters at those percentages, but I won’t rule out that the gap between those fighting games have closed! ## Tsunami's Analysis The expectation here was that Ultimate would stomp all over Tekken 7, which had never been higher than the \#4 fighting game series on this site--#5 if you count Smash itself--and possibly even lower, though it would be a bit hard to gauge. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were obviously 1-2, and Tekken's sister series Soul Calibur was likely \#3 as evidenced by Nightmare's repeated decent showings in character battles. The only Tekken character to ever win a match was Yoshimitsu...who is also a Soul Calibur character. But in the early contests, there were a lot more fighting game characters, and some of them managed to make Round 2, most famously when Gordon Freeman barely broke 40% on Tina Armstrong. And, well, in a vacuum this *was* a stomping--nearly a quintupling. But this match came one day after both Resident Evil 2 and DOOM managed higher percentages, with the latter breaking 86%. So it seems strange to say that a game scoring almost 83% of the vote disappointed, but that was the perception, and the board eagerly awaited Super Mario Odyssey's performance against Mortal Kombat 11 to gauge their expectations for a potential Divisional Final. ## Safer777's Analysis So here we have what most people believe it is the 2nd strongest game on the bracket. Smash games are a phenomenon. When these games come out it is an event. Because they have so many characters and all of them are excellent games. But here is the thing. A lot of games have a lot of characters like the Warriors series which I am a HUGE fan of. BUT no other series ever has so many characters from so many franchises. And Ultimate has characters, spirits, costumes, stages from so many franchises that I can't even count them. No matter who are you, what you like and you don't, you are bound to have characters you recognize and like. And it is amazing for casuals and pros alike. Oh and Ultimate is the best selling fighthing game of all time. And the game isn't even out 1.5 years yet! We still have DLC and much more stuff too. Truly a phenomenon series. Tekken series everyone knows it. Really good and popular especially in the PS1 Era. After that it fell a bit but it is always popular. So for the match. Let's be real maybe 1-2 games can challenge Ultimate on this contest and maybe even that is high. So a slaughter as expected. As for Tekken 7 it can beat some indie games from the bracket for sure. But then again not everything can go against weak indies. But well yeah we don't care for fighting games not names Smash in this site. Characters are a different story but even there they all mostly suck anyways. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7931&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds vs (9)Bayonetta 2020 _source: (8)The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds vs (9)Bayonetta 2020 (revid 86503)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 68.59% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 70.35% - **User Votes:** Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 5439 Bayonetta - 3067 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 4316 Bayonetta - 2598 This entire match was criminal. Let's start with the winner. Yes, it was obvious Link Between Worlds was going to win. We can debate percentages all day, but who cares? It was being fed to Smash next round, and one of the biggest what-ifs this year was what if Link Between Worlds was in the bottom half somewhere? A case could even be made that Link Between Worlds is the *best* Zelda game, and to see it be handed such a guaranteed path and early exit just sucked. I'm not one for using the 3D on the 3DS, but this game used it in the best way possible and I cannot say enough good things about it. Not only that, but FINALLY we get a damn Zelda game with no limits on items. It's all MP. Go play with your bombs. Go fire some arrows. Go mix and match everything and see what you can come up with. It was a beautiful breath of fresh air. That said, Bayonetta was royally and indefensibly screwed over by this bracket placement. Did you guys know that this was the first ever contest match for this game? Bayonetta 2 made the field in 2015, but not this one somehow. Given all the love from Smash and Bayonetta the character going on a really cool run two years ago, this was the contest for her game to finally shine. And she draws *Zelda* in round 1, of all things. A lesser Zelda game, but a Zelda game nonetheless. We couldn't swap 9 seeds and put X COM 2 here or something? This was by far the dumbest round 1 loss of the entire contest, and Bayonetta really did not deserve this. Atrocious soundtrack aside, and good lord is it bad, I put this right there with Devil May Cry 3 as best pure action game ever made. I was not alone in being really annoyed by this match, either. There were a whole of topics on the board about it that day, and good. Allen did a great job this contest, but this match was a total botch. ## Ctes's Analysis Here’s a battle of two games contending for the title of “who got screwed over by bracket placement the most?” One of them is a previous Game of the Year winner and a Zelda game on top of that. I’m not doubting Allen screwed that one over on purpose. Bayonetta I’m not as sure if it was intended, but it sure happened. It’s easily the most unfortunate franchise in the bracket, because both games could be worth something and they got to face A Link Between Worlds and Automata respectively. The Mario also has a case going of it, especially with how good both games look in the x-stats, but at least Mario got to be in a debatable match. Not a single serious person could see Bayonetta winning. I’m not sure why Allen bothered to include both games when he so clearly wanted to represent as many franchises as possible when he would just fed them both to top games anyway, but maybe it was random. Seriously though, Bayonetta wins against a lot of the \#8 seeds if not all of them. The one I’d hesitate to pick Bayonetta against is Mass Effect 3 and I probably still would honestly. This isn’t even the first time Bayonetta has had the most ridiculous luck. The previous contest saw only the second game make the field despite being a Wii U exclusive at the time. Then the first game gets the worst possible draw relative to the seeding this time around. It’s a shame we couldn’t give it a victory somewhere. It would lose to any \#1 seed anyways. Yes, most likely also GTAV though I’m sure that would have some people pulling the upset. If Bayonetta 3 has had another update next games contest that is not just Nintendo telling us they’re aware of it existing, then perhaps the games will have even better chances of winning a round 1 match than it already had. Hopefully it has been released and well regarded, so it’s something to fear in the future. At least the character has been allowed to show off before, most notably exposing Riku of being terrible these days. A Link Between Worlds also has just about no luck in contests, but this time it got in and got to win a match. You’d also have to seriously rig the bracket for it not to win a match, however. Or we could’ve nominated it more I suppose. It got a tough an opponent as it could basically and still won with ease. It actually underperformed about 5% relative to what the oracles expected of it though. It might not be as good as it would’ve been back when it was new. Everyone liked it, but it’s rather forgettable. For a while it was not because it was the first Zelda game in quite a few everyone seemed to like. Skyward Sword, Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass were not too popular. Twilight Princess, Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask were, but they have their haters too. It was also a return to 2D and more importantly a return to Zelda being non-linear. The reason it didn’t make it into the 2015 contest was most likely that while everyone liked it, it’s no one’s favorite. Then Breath of the Wild came and we forgot about it completely, unfortunately. I think the main reason it got into this contest above Skyward Sword other than Skyward Sword not being popular is that it was snubbed last time and board 8 thought it deserved to get into a contest. Board 8 influences nominations a lot these days, I could see that having made a strong push. I’d also argue it would be a shame not to have all 10 Game of the Year winners make it into a Game of the Decade contest, but Smash 4 already made that not happen, so it probably wasn’t its main drive. When all that is said and we can agree A Link Between Worlds probably isn’t as good as it would’ve been in 2015, I also think Bayonetta is just legit and that this match had no SFF, which I’m sure some were expecting. ## Tsunami's Analysis If there was any more need of evidence of a paradigm shift on this site, this was it. Bayonetta may have been an XBox 360/PS3 game when it first came out, but the character was largely considered pseudo-Nintendo after the sequel was a Wii U exclusive and the original was ported to Wii U at the same time, and then Bayonetta was added to Smash 4 back when third-party characters were still relatively rare in Smash. Given the general opinion of the Wii U, you might even consider the possibility that 3DS would trump Wii U despite the longtime mental block this site has had about handhelds (see: Link's Awakening as a slight Guru underdog to Mega Man X to advance out of R1 behind FFVI in 2009), but there was never any doubt that A Link Between Worlds would win. It's a Zelda game, after all, and one that got GotY in 2013, though it was far from dominating in doing so, only narrowly squeaking past Pokémon X/Y for 3DS game of the year and then getting LFF'd in the poll of all winners not only by the Wii U winner, Super Mario 3D World, but also by the fact that the winner of the "Download-Only" category was a fellow 3DS game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. This led to it narrowly finishing behind GTA V for third place in the poll of all winners, comfortably behind The Last of Us, before powering ahead in the final poll of the top three finishers to take the top spot. Because while it's clearly its own game, A Link Between Worlds will feel very familiar to anyone who's played A Link to the Past, and given how nostalgia-driven this site has been in the past, especially for Super Nintendo games, that should've been a very good thing. And while A Link Between Worlds did win comfortably, it wasn't even a doubling, which given the way the contest had gone so far was a very weak win indeed. Over half the matches through five days had ended with a doubling or worse! And this wasn't even an action/RPG hybrid like the games that had been doing well on previous days. This was a full-fledged hack-and-slash that was avoiding the doubling by, essentially, A Link to the Past 2. While it was obvious by its absence from 2015 that ALBW was categorically *not* held in the same regard as its spiritual precursor, this was an embarrassing performance that, of course, would be completely meaningless because it was expected to be hopelessly outmatched in Round 2 *anyway*. Of course, if anyone had been thinking quickly enough, they would've realized that this was a major hint as to the outcome of the most debated match of R1, which was due up the very next day. But who reacts that quickly, especially when the actual match outcomes were all so obvious that it was fairly safe to ignore the match once you'd voted in it? ## Safer777's Analysis Everyone agrees that Bayonetta got wasted here. The game has power along with it's main character. Couldn't we have a bad indie game here instead of Bayonetta? Damn. We have a Zelda game on this site so you have to know how it goes there. I don't know if ALBW is strong since it is a portable game and these are traditionaly weak and  not only that but it faces SSBU on the next round so that means that we will never know if it has real power or not. Obviously we can't have good bracket placement for every game/character in the contest but come on man, this seeding and bracket placement for both of these games was bad. So for the match. Well BTW did as most said. I mean it didn't even double Bayonetta. As I said above if only the bracket placement is different. Wasted matches. The Prediction Percentage is kinda low for a Zelda game on the 1st round too. Guess people thought that Bayonetta could do it? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7932&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Marvel's Spider-Man vs (12)Dead Space 2 2020 _source: (5)Marvel's Spider-Man vs (12)Dead Space 2 2020 (revid 86504)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Spider-Man - 66.50% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Spider-Man - 78.22% - **User Votes:** Spider-Man - 6010 Dead Space 2 - 2495 - **Anonymous Votes:** Spider-Man - 4710 Dead Space 2 - 2205 Not gonna lie, I forgot Dead Space 2 was even in this contest until I got to this match in my writeups. Apparently the voters forgot as well, because Spiderman destroyed it. This actually could have been a lot worse, because Spidey was up 75-25 early before settling down. It was nice to see for us MCU fans, and it was also nice to see for licensed games on the whole. Those games tend to be rushed crap, but this one was neither rushed nor crap. In a lot of circles, Spiderman was the game of the year for 2018. That's how well done and well respected that game is, so seeing it annihilate a middling game was no surprise. It also led to the predictable conversation that happens every single time a Spiderman or Batman game does well, which is that we need a character battle without the shackles. I fully agree with this, for the record. We've gotten too good at this and need the shakeup. Think of how unpredictable a lot of those matches would be. Spiderman vs Dante. Wolverine vs Luigi. Batman vs Kirby. Superman vs Ryu. Wonder Woman vs 2B. Thanos vs Kratos. Black Panther vs Ness. Iron Man vs Samus. Hulk vs Sephiroth. Mickey Mouse vs Sonic. Simba vs Solid Snake. Crono vs Goku. The possibilities are endless, and it would be a *great* contest. We would probably lean too heavily toward nominating too many characters that aren't pure gaming characters, but so what? Allen obviously knows we want this, too, and I doubt a fellow gaming nerd like him is averse to the idea. I don't think he's refused due to lack of desire. It might simply be an issue with licensing costs and such. Who really knows? But if that contest can reasonably happen, we need to do it. As a final side note, fuck Sony for trying to keep Spiderman out of the MCU. Sony's comic movies almost all suck ass, and this includes Into the Spiderverse. That might legitimately be the most overrated movie ever made. The first half was just dumb, but then Nic Cage, a pig, and an anime robot show up. Unless Nic Cage is being burned alive or bossed around by Sean Connery, I don't want to see him, hear him, or watch a movie that stars him. The *only* parts of that movie that I enjoyed were Miles and Prowler. Miles is good. Prowler is great. I'll take nothing away from those two. Everything else sucked, and I'm convinced half the stuff Board 8 gets obsessed with is an inside joke troll job. I refuse to believe you people actually like Into the Spiderverse, Shadow of the Colossus, Umineko, and Snakes on a Plane as much as you say you do. You're smarter than this. Supposedly. Ironically, I loved the original Spiderman trilogy and Venom was alright. Granted Venom was only alright because of Tom Hardy, but hey! I don't ask for much. Just about everything else though is dog shit, especially compared to what the MCU can pull off. Yeah, I'm kissing the ring, what of it? Bite me. Those movies don't all make a billion dollars by accident, and you're not cool for not liking them. ## Ctes's Analysis I was pretty excited to see Marvel’s Spider-Man in a contest because I thought it had great potential. The game was well received and sold extremely well. The Batman games have recent here and Spider-Man has actually been in good movies recently. I would be a lot more excited if Spider-Man didn’t have a pretty predictable path. I picked it to win two rounds without thinking and never looked back, but I still had some enjoyment in following it. Most of that is in the other two matches, however. I must admit had to look up Dead Space 2 to remember what it was other than “some horror game”. It was well enough received sure, but it’s not something that we care a lot about here and I’m sure I’m not the only one to have forgotten about it. Dead Space 3 did happen, but it wasn’t as popular and the company that made them has shut down since then. Dead Space 2 came out back when the whole world was incredibly excited about horror. We are that a lot less today. It had a lot of things going against it, but it wouldn’t have won either way. The first game got nowhere near beaten San Andreas a decade ago, a result that looked fine until Golden Sun made the upset the following round. The second appears to be the most popular so maybe it could’ve done alright if it was in a contest 8 years ago. All things considered, breaking 30% here was the best it could realistically hope for. It was below expectations, but Spider-Man ended up looking better than people thought, so this was honestly good for it. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have Spider-Man! Damn! A few years ago we wouldn't even dreamed to have such games yet here we are. If we ever have another Character Contest we should have ALL characters that have appeared in a video game to be eligible. Batman vs Chuck Norris anyone? I have played the Dead Space series and they are excellent games. I like the first one the most. But EA killed the series because the latest game didn't sold as well as expected even though it brought money. That is EA for you. Marvel's Spider-Man seems to be in the top 3 of best superhero video games ever so it has this going on for it. So for the match. Well for a Dead series(see what I did there? Get it?)Dead Space 2 did all right I guess. Some people thought that maybe DS would do better because of Super Hero fatigue or such. This thing doesn't exist. Super Heroes games/movies/shows are popular for more than 12 years and I don't see anything slowing them down. Too bad the DS series will never come out again. They had games on multiple consoles, phone games, comics, movies so many stuff. Yet apparently they didn't brought money. I do wonder why the 2nd game got in though. I thought most fans prefer the 1st game? In the first game the main character didn't even talked too! ## Tsunami's Analysis There is one debate that rages almost constantly on Board 8, and that is how characters from other media would fare in Character Battles if we allowed them in. The general consensus is that the most well-known characters would be very strong indeed, though there would of course be plenty of fodder. Perhaps the biggest issue is that by opening it up too far, you'd have such a large list of potential entrants that it would be absolute chaos. My solution, of course, would be to limit it to characters who have been in a "good" video game, since merely forcing them to have been in a video game doesn't really limit it much. Nearly everything has had licensed games these days. So how would we determine what's "good"? Why, how about "things that have been in Games Contests"?! Of course, we'd probably have to have Games Contests a bit more frequently, but as long as Allen's still gatekeeping to make sure only quality games get in, that'll do fine. Right off the bat you get a bunch of Disney characters via Kingdom Hearts, and a bunch of Marvel characters via MvC2. DC Comics doesn't quite get as good a deal as Marvel does, but the Arkham series has been a mainstay in these contests. The silly nomination system for the first BGE also allowed the Simpsons arcade game to get in, so that's a few more characters with potential. But there are people who figure that since this is a gaming site, anything non-gaming would get eviscerated by even a weak video game character. These people are wrong, but occasionally there are results that continue to fuel their belief. The Walking Dead getting upset by Bastion was one of them. Another one that was considered a major upset ironically came *in* a Character Battle, where people thought that having "Darth" in his name and being the top option would allow Revan (a KotOR-original character, therefore eligible for contests) to beat Terra Branford. Yeah, I don't understand why that's relevant either. The Star Wars Extended Universe is massive, including those video game-original characters. The fact that the Star Wars name alone doesn't make you strong doesn't mean that Han Solo or Darth Vader wouldn't be strong. We've seen that even in our top video game franchises, when we rallied Groose into the 2013 contest and he fell flat. Spider-Man fell just short of 70% against Dead Space 2, while GTA: San Andreas was only able to get 65.45% on the original Dead Space in the previous GotD. Some food for thought. Gamers are not so single-minded that they ignore anything that isn't related to video games. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7933&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Minecraft vs (13)Dota 2 2020 _source: (4)Minecraft vs (13)Dota 2 2020 (revid 86505)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Minecraft - 65.68% 65 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Minecraft - 89.25% - **User Votes:** Minecraft - 6504 Dota 2 - 2001 - **Anonymous Votes:** Minecraft - 5106 Dota 2 - 1808 Before we get to the match itself, Minecraft came out in 2009. It shouldn't have been in this contest at all, and no I don't care that it was in beta in 2009. League of Legends was disallowed from this contest because its beta was in 2009, so why does Minecraft get a pass? League having an awful fanbase doesn't mean we should have selectively enforced rules on bracket entry, and their subreddit doesn't allow for rallying anymore anyway. League would have gotten *annihilated* in this contest, and on the off chance it got rallied, so what? Rallies are always a good thing. No one will ever convince me of otherwise. Either both League and Minecraft are eligible, or neither are. I bring this all up because Dota 2, despite making its contest debut, never stood a chance here. It had a trash can performance against a game that GameFAQs doesn't care about at all -- Minecraft lost to Halo, of all things -- and Dota 2 did so badly here that it clearly falls in the realm of rallybait getting punished. Dota was never rallied, but this thing might as well have been a proxy for League for how hard it got buried. By the way, if you haven't listened to Ngamer's pro Dota rant on The Show, I suggest you check it out. I probably played 10,000 games of the original Dota, and I still voted for Minecraft here. The fanbase is truly that horrible, and it's what finally (mercifully) got me to quit. NG still loves the franchise though, and bless his little heart for it. I can see why. The games truly are a remarkable accomplishment and no two games are the same, but the actual people who play it are so, so awful. Co-op gameplay is probably not something I would ever bother with again, but I don't necessarily regret my old Dota playing days. They're some of the best gaming memories of my entire life. I just wish it actually... you know. Mattered? NG had a very funny point about why Dota 2 wouldn't get rallied here even if it wasn't in line to get punished. Voting for Dota 2 constitutes "not playing Dota 2" behavior, and the fans would never do such a thing. Exactly my point, NG. You're just a lot nicer about it than I am. This speaks nothing of the toxicity, the leaving, the trash talking, the bullying, the false reporting, that *stupid* banlist, the botting, the hacking, and everything else. Good riddance, Dota. You will not be missed. Well, except for oooooooone exception! ## Ctes's Analysis I do wish Dota 2 would have faced something other than Minecraft. Not because it would have won in many matches, but because it’s always fun to see casual bait lose a match against something far less known. Dota 2 is the type of game that would do that but look at what it faced. Minecraft. The biggest casual game ever, perhaps only rivaled by Wii Sports. Although Minecraft is probably slightly more cared about on a site like this. The prediction percentage against Dota is extremely high, so the casuals got this one right too. Minecraft looks pretty good today, but it’s hard to make much of it facing a game that probably gets its share of anti-votes. The true testament of its strength would come next round. Last contest it looked decent enough against the original Halo before Halo died against Final Fantasy VII the following round. Those are all games with some share of anti-votes probably, but I don’t think it’s a lot in Minecraft’s case, which is part of the reason it won so easily. It might just be the true neutral. No one has strong opinions about it at all, but everyone knows what it is and we’re fine with it. There has been talks about Minecraft’s eligibility in the contest because the classic version was made available in 2009. The full game was however was released in 2011, which is why it was allowed in. Most of the people complaining seem to complain because League of Legends was not allowed in while being in a similar situation. I’ve seen the same people claim both that Minecraft shouldn’t have been allowed and League of Legends should, which is a weird stance, but perhaps just a wish for consistency. If Allen told us that he just specifically targeted League of Legends I wouldn’t be terribly surprised. He specifically made Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask’s 3D version ineligible while allowing Persona 4 Golden and there’s not much consistency in that. I would also honestly believe him if he had told us it just didn’t receive enough nominations, but Dota 2 being in makes it seem likely it would have. It’s quite ironic in this Minecraft / League of Legends controversy, that Minecraft got to slaughter the game in the bracket League of Legends is most similar too. My own stance? I said before League of Legends was in a similar situation and similar is the key word there. It’s not the same and I don’t think it makes much sense to include Minecraft in the complains about League of Legends honestly. Just because both initial “releases” have been called alpha does not make them the same. The League of Legends we had in 2009 was an actual release, even though it was not out everywhere, and they’ve worked on it since. Basically, every place will list 2009 as the release year of League of Legends. Minecraft will be split between 2009 and 2011, but the ones saying 2009 probably acknowledges that the official release was in 2011. Of course, it sucks for League of Legends in terms of a contest like this that it’s release went the way it did, where some technicality means it couldn’t really compete in either Game of the Decade contest. I would not have minded it being allowed in because of this. It would’ve been an exception, but it would’ve been fair enough given the circumstances. I just wanted to point out I don’t think Minecraft should have been disallowed and I don’t think the decision on League of Legends should have anything to do with the decision on Minecraft. Besides, League of Legends would’ve been killed in round 1 in similar fashion to Dota 2, although probably worse because we bear a grudge on it here, so it’s not like we’re missing out on anything. Minecraft showed in this match that it’s worth having it in. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have the most popular game on the world here. And you may ask didn't you say that Fortnite is the most popular game on the world above? Yeah I did and it is true because both of these games are the most popular games on the world now. Depending on how you count. Fortnite is the most talked about game but Minecraft has more play rate. Oh and also apparently Minecraft is the best selling video game of all time. So there you go. Both of Fortnite and Minecraft are played mostly by people who are under 18 too. Yeah. Dota 2 is a MOBA game and guess what. We don't care for these kind of games here. BUT I want to say something. Why Minecraft is here? The game came out in 2009. Yeah the Beta started there and the official game came out in 2011 BUT League Of Legends came out with a Beta too in 2009 and the full game got released later and it wasn't allowed to enter this contest for this reason! I don't get it. Was the Admin afraid of a rally? Who the Hell cares for Gamefaqs now in order to rally something? Let us be serious. Pretty sure it would have lost in the first Round too. Well whatever. So for the match. Well since we hate MOBAs here almost anything could beat DOTA 2. And it just happened to go against Minecraft which we don't really care. Strange thing is that Minecraft did better than we predicted too. I have seen gameplay of Minecraft and it never impressed me. I guess if I was 30 years younger I could like it along with Fortnite. I do believe that Dota 2 is good though, not as popular as LOL but pretty sure it is the 2nd best MOBA. Or at least the 2nd most popular one. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was just...why? The outcome of this match was never going to be in doubt. I'm fairly certain that the Guest picker on the Crew only picked DotA 2 just to make sure there was no Crew Curse, because he, like all but one other Guru, had Minecraft in this match. But I'm going to quote the beginning of it anyway, because before it gets into the crazy logic, it makes a good point. Neither of these genres are particularly liked by GameFAQs. Its strange though, because both of these games are popular beyond belief. True, although I wouldn't necessarily call it strange. While in the previous write-up, I defended the overall gamer community as *not* being a bunch of elitists who don't care about anything non-video game, here I'm going to have to turn around and say that old-school gamers, like the majority of GameFAQs membership, are proud of the fact that they loved gaming before it was "cool" and hate anything with mainstream popularity. In fact I already talked about this exact same phenomenon on a single-fanbase level in my Fire Emblem: Awakening write-up. So while it was obvious that DotA 2 was going to get smashed just for being *a* MOBA, even if it wasn't the one that spawned the hated 2013 champion, it remained to be seen how high a percentage Minecraft of all things would be able to get. And the answer is...not *too* high, but pretty high. DotA 2 got a better percentage than Fortnite did, at any rate. It's odd, though; when I was writing these up, I thought that I'd underestimated Minecraft's ability to take advantage of DotA's weakness, and probably had a really bad Oracle because of it. In reality, my Oracle score was pretty good, and I was one of the few who overestimated it! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7934&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Undertale vs (14)Octopath Traveler 2020 _source: (3)Undertale vs (14)Octopath Traveler 2020 (revid 86507)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 1, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 01, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Octopath Traveler - 43.20% 10 for - 56 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Octopath Traveler - 21.58% - **User Votes:** Undertale - 4436 Octopath Traveler - 4779 - **Anonymous Votes:** Undertale - 3229 Octopath Traveler - 4245 I tried to warn you. *"Undertale is the new Portal. It had its moment, but it will never have a repeat performance even though it should be strong enough to make contests moving forward."* I never one time had any doubts that Octopath Traveler would lose this match. My only struggle in this fourpack was whether or not Shovel Knight could beat an Octopath Traveler that had just beaten the champ. It's a borderline miracle Undertale resisted getting punished here. Sans and Draven got *smoked* two years ago. Games that could even be *considered* rally threats got buried in this contest, yet Undertale managed to hang in there for 10 minutes before suffering a fairly respectable loss. There were a few reasons for that. One, Undertale has a legitimate fanbase. It wasn't some flash in the pan video game; it may not be the flavor of the month that gets the entire internet's imagination going en route to winning a contest, but it absolutely has a fanbase. There is a reason Kenny Omega used it for an entrance once and grown men were crying when this happened: Two, it was a 3 seed and had the brackets. There were bracket votes keeping this close. Three, the match started ten minutes late, so there wasn't the initial surge of anti-votes. Four, and perhaps most importantly, it has a Switch port and was the defending contest champion in a winnable match. This all combined to allow Undertale to avoid serving penance. I'm convinced that without a Smash character, a Switch port, *and* the much higher seed in a winnable match, this might have been in the same realm as what Draven had to go through two years ago. Hell if you remove all that and just switch the seeding around in this match, Octopath might have won 70-30. But all of those things converged together to make this a very respectable loss. I legitimately and truly thought Octopath would get 60% here. It's on record and everything! So for Undertale to lose close actually surprised me, though for some reason it losing shocked the board and turned this place into a sewer for a few days. Hell if there's something filthier than a sewer, I'd love to know what it is. Whatever that is is what the arguments were on Board 8 while this match was happening. Can't we just be happy Octopath Traveler won and call it a day? Do you people *still* have to argue over whether or not rallying is bad? Not only is there is no argument here, but Undertale happened five years ago. Get over it. Rallies keep these contests interesting, and the anti-fun brigade is just objectively wrong on this. They're also some of the most immature, obnoxious people this forum has ever seen. Did you know that if you enjoyed Undertale winning the contest five years ago and/or enjoy rallies, you're a victim blamer? No, really, that's an actual quote from a well known Board 8 user on this web site who also happens to be a moderator. Forget burn victims, orphans, the families of addicts, people in poverty, women forced into the sex trade, slaves, victims of domestic violence, the people killed by communism, or anyone else that is a true victim of their circumstance. The *real* victims in this life are those who don't like rallies during a contest on GameFAQs. That's what actually matters. This individual asked for his name to be kept off the record, so out of respect and journalistic integrity the usernames in this image are censored: Yes folks, if you enjoy rallying you are a victim blamer. That is an honest to goodness real quote. It gets better, too. From the same user: *"I don't see how I can lay it out any more clearly than I did here. If the **actually sane** "there's no middle ground" people want to actually refute this stuff then great, otherwise it's just thoughtless."* If you disagree with the anti-fun brigade or call out their hypocrisy -- don't think for one second that these people don't *love* rallies when they agree with the winner -- you are not a sane human being. That is a word for word quote. That is how dumb this mod thinks you are -- this individual, who will remain nameless, thinks you are mentally ill for *daring* to enjoy yourself in this life. Is it any wonder no one uses our site anymore when these are the types of people in charge of keeping the peace on it? Most mods used to act like DetroitDJ and Team Rocket Elite -- friendly, pleasant, fair, and knowledgeable. Now, a good number of them act like the one quoted here and a lot of users are on board with this type of mentality. People like to throw around the excuse of our site being dated causing the low traffic and collapsing vote totals, but the truth is no one uses our site anymore because of people like this pushing everyone away. Can you imagine the mindset required for thinking everyone who dares to disagree with your position is mentally ill? Couldn't be that you have a point that some might naturally disagree with. Couldn't be that one side of this issue is insufferable. Nope, disagreeing with anti-fun brigade must mean you're mentally ill. If that doesn't sum up why this site is done for, nothing ever will. I could draw some very obvious conclusions here about the political leanings of people who think this way, but I'll leave that one alone. Draw your own conclusions. Octopath Traveler, largely due to having enough natural strength to get around Undertale's advantages and getting boosted by juuuuust enough anti-votes to put this match away, was in a very interesting spot here. I think in a vacuum without 2015 ever existing, Undertale wins this match. But because Octopath won under some incredible circumstances, it was a wild card moving forward. Could it win this fourpack? Could it catch fire and be given a rallied thank you run? Who knows. But it's a Square JRPG on the Nintendo Switch, so it didn't win this match by default. It had to earn it, and earn it it did. ## Ctes's Analysis The biggest upset of round 1, at least if you go by prediction percentage, sees previous Best Game Ever III winner lose to a Switch exclusive RPG that people had mixed feelings about. It has since been released on PC too, but let’s face it, that didn’t matter much. Unlike the other big upsets of round 1, this one also cost a lot of people 3 points. It was bigger in every way. There were even a very few people taking it further than that due to its previous result, but all experts knew Super Mario Odyssey was out of reach. A few people predicted Undertale to lose today, but it was the clear favorite with most people picking rather high percentages for it too. The ones that thought it would be anti-voted picked Shovel Knight to beat it in round 2 instead. What happened here is a mix of a bunch of things that was the perfect cocktail for getting Undertale out early. The initial reaction was a huge number of anti-votes. Last contest we saw Amerterasu absolutely kill Draven in a contest that saw few blowouts. Draven was naturally weak, we knew that, but that result was out of proportions. Sans himself also looked very bad though not as bad. We have also seen various Poll of the Day questions show that we don’t forget the contest invasions and are bitter ever after. Most people did not expect it to mean Undertale would lose to Octopath Traveler of all things, but that anti-votes came surprised no one. In truth it’s probably not that bad. I don’t doubt that there were anti-votes for a second, but they probably don’t harm Undertale much worse than however much it’s boosted from the exposure last contest gave it. We’ve seen bandwagons lasting over several contests in the past. L-Block is the key example of this. While using a 4-way match to beat Link was a one-time opportunity, L-Block was significantly stronger in future contests than it started out being in 2007. Undertale is not a joke entry in the same way, but a bunch of our regulars played it because of the attention it got. Undertale is a perfect game to take advantage of such since it’s cheap and short. This result looked extremely weird at the time, but Undertale ends up landing almost right where it’s supposed to. The adjusted x-stats have Shovel Knight barely beating it. Obviously, those have as much uncertainty as you get, but everything is in line here. It then comes down to the severe underestimation of Octopath Traveler. As someone who expected Undertale to underperform and picked Shovel Knight to beat it, I did not expend Octopath Traveler to take enough advantage of it to win. The game was quite hyped before release. Being revealed at the first true Switch presentation, it had a lot of attention for its traditional RPG elements and graphics. It was aimed at people like us. However, while the game did fine, it wasn’t spectacular by any means. I have not gotten around to play it myself yet, but the eight stories of the game made it repetitive and most characters weren’t very interesting, certainly not enough to compensate. I wonder how big it could’ve been here if that was more popular. Because Square RPG on a Nintendo console is among the best criteria you can have on this site. Chrono Trigger is the best example obviously, but there are others. Look at how well Bravely Default ends up looking, we didn’t realize it yet, but this match had a lot to do with us just caring about Octopath. It would show next round. Tales of Symphonia is another good comparison. It’s not a Square RPG, but a RPG on a Nintendo console that lacks big RPG’s. Symphonia was almost unanimously liked, but the Gamecube wasn’t too popular. The Switch is however, so Octopath had the perfect console to get exposure. The part of the reason that people predicted big percentages was the huge indie hype round 1 had. It was thought that Undertale just didn’t get to boost from it due to anti-votes, but it looks decent enough and could’ve won a lot of round 1 matches. Its draw was rather unfortunate, we just hadn’t realized yet. It’s probably still a hindrance being an indie game. Not because of the fact that they’re indie games of course, just that indie games require word of mouth to become big, while something like Octopath is riding high on its developer name. Finally, I usually don’t express bitterness towards what happened in 2015, I mostly just express nothing. I’m not vengeful and do not judge Undertale differently because of it. I played it because of the contest too! It was quite enjoyable. I will however use this match as an opportunity to laugh at all the many people claiming that their love for Undertale was endless and that they truly did believe it was the greatest game ever made instead of being the hot new flavor of the time. Seriously, it’s one of the biggest moments of “what did we tell you?”. I didn’t mind using a flavor of the month kind of logic to vote in the contest, but the people saying so look so silly looking back. Almost none of them truly believed that, but just couldn’t realize it when confronted about it back then. Undertale is not the phenomenon the internet allowed it to be briefly, it’s not an all time great and it’s not the best game ever made anywhere. It’s just a pretty good and creative indie game with solid replay value. In that regard, it’s a shame it couldn’t get a winnable match when so many indie games could, but it had its fun last time. ## Safer777's Analysis The champion is back baby! Or not. We have 2 RPG's that were very well received from both fans and critics. Undertale was EVERYWHERE back in 2015. Seriously it has such an active community and it is a game that was made from 1 guy only! I haven't played it but people that have say that it is excellent. It is not a traditional RPG and this is the biggest thing it has for it. The characters are truly great and memorable, nobody denies that. I mean you can even finish the entire game without killing a single enemy! Seriously, name me one other RPG that this is possible. OT came out of nowhere and it is such an old school game that it is too old school for even people that like this thing! But it did well too and a sequel got announced too. So for the match. As you see Undertale lost. But why? People say anti votes. I don't believe it. Register users voted more for it than the unregistered ones. We all knew it wouldn't do so well now of course but this bad? Yeah Sans couldn't even score 30% on Pac Man in Character Contest but still. He got into Smash Ultimate! As a costume at least. We all knew that if it was against a stronger game we wouldn't pick it to win, but it is not that OT is a monster. This match also got in the top 5 of the most suprising Round 1 results and it makes sense. We rarely make Round 1 matches wrong except if we have unknown games/characters and we don't have any info on them. Sad part is that there was some kind of flame war on stats topic. Seriously people? After 5 years that barely anybody new is coming to this site? People are still pity about this sort of thing? I should known that after spending 18 years on this site but I thought we would have grown up. Not really. Also rallied games/characters do really bad without rallies. I mean when they use only their natural strength. We had Draven losing to Round 1 in the previous contest and now Undertale losing to Round 1 too. Plus Sans lost in Round 1 in the previous contest oo So yeah. Unexpected result for sure, expected stupid bickering between some regulars on this board. So there you go. I guess congrats to people that got this match right? ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh hey speaking of hated champions. The vote total for this match *was *the highest of the contest so far, but not by an overwhelming amount. And I have to say, this was not an outcome I expected! I figured that there was a chance that Undertale got anti-voted into oblivion the way Draven did in 2018 (and Sans himself to a lesser extent), but that if that didn't happen, Undertale probably had the natural strength to win its fourpack. Instead...this happened. The match actually got off to a slightly delayed start, for no apparent reason, and when it did, Undertale got off to a quick start, before fading back to closeness. By the freeze, Undertale was up by 5 votes, and on the next update, it raised that lead to 7. And then, bam, 41 vote swing, Octopath up by 34, and it never looked back. And it wasn't the registered voters killing it, either, although they were likewise motivated to come out in higher numbers. With the registered voters, Octopath won 4779-4436. On any previous day, 4436 would've easily been a majority of registered voters--hell, Bastion was at 4054! It was the unregistered voters who buried it, 4245-3229. Also the most unregistered voters of the contest so far, but it was enough of a blowout that 3229 would not, in fact, constitute half of *any* day's unregistered voters. (It would've come close on Day 1, where unregistered voters numbered in the 6500s.) We did get confirmation that all the usual spots from 2015 weren't allowing rally topics, which begs the question, where did these extra votes come from? Also, the mythical "casuals" didn't see this coming either. 21.29% prediction percentage in Round 1 was the fifth-lowest of all time, trailing only a pair of lolChief results (Yuna in 2013 at \#1 and Sub-Zero in 2010 at \#4) and a pair of 2009 matches (in)famous for very different reasons: the Oblivion/Symphonia/God of War/GTA:SA fatal fourway at \#2, which had the smallest spread between first and fourth of any fourway and is remembered fondly for it, and the Super Mario Bros 3 match that had the *largest* spread between first and second of any fourway and is laughed about as a result at \#3. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7935&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Shovel Knight vs (11)Dragon's Dogma 2020 _source: (6)Shovel Knight vs (11)Dragon's Dogma 2020 (revid 86508)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 1, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 01, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shovel Knight - 60.52% 65 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shovel Knight - 76.67% - **User Votes:** Shovel Knight - 6009 Dragon's Dogma - 3206 - **Anonymous Votes:** Shovel Knight - 4663 Dragon's Dogma - 2809 I know Undertale losing took up all the attention and most of the whining during this quartet of contest matches, but believe it or not, three other matches did in fact happen at the same time. One such match was Shovel Knight getting a ho-hum win over Dragon's Dogma. Some indie games were okay in this contest. Most were not. Shovel Knight is one of the ones that looked quite alright. It was actually over 70% early on before bleeding percentage all day, but the only stat that really matters in sports is wins and losses. Thanks to Undertale causing a bunch of noise, Dragon's Dogma fans (all 9 of them) got off easy for all the whining they did during this loss. What was so special about this game that it supposedly should have won this match? To try and find the answer myself, I went on Youtube, searched up the game's title, and immediately spotted a video called "Dragon's Dogma Is The Best Game You've Never Played". Okay, fair enough. Oh, it's the guy responsible for making the *bad* Devil May Cry games. No thanks. Moving on. ## Ctes's Analysis In a round where indie games were hyped to be as beastly as they were, this match should have served as a warning to us. We did expect worse of Shovel Knight on average though, so it probably only made the belief stronger, if it made any difference at all. Most were under the impression it was mostly indie games from the latter half of the decade that benefit, so what Shovel Knight did probably didn’t matter much to our overall view. Dragon’s Dogma is also an unknown quantity so the result would have to be extreme to change any overall views. I’m sure most of the people predicting a lower result simply ended up thinking that Dragon’s Dogma was a bit weaker than expected. The match should have served as an indie of just about how high an indie game could hope to reach. We were a bit back and forwards about what indie game was strongest. Everyone could agree that Shovel Knight was among the top, because of all the exposure and releases it has had. The best they could hope for were a doubling of Dragon’s Dogma. You can hear that doesn’t sound too good, no one gave Dragon’s Dogma any chances today. The game was fine, but we would’ve probably forgotten about it if it hadn’t gotten released on current generation consoles by now. I doubt it did the game many favors being released at a time where Devil May Cry was not thought the best of, when it’s basically Devil May Cry in disguise. Being able to beat it is not the most impressive feat. ## Safer777's Analysis So another indie game here. BUT I at least have heard of it! Shovel Knight has somehow become the face of indie games. Don't know why, he just has. He has even appeared in Smash Ultimate! Not as playable character but still. I don't know anything about Dragon's Dogma but I do believe it was liked. Then again all games in the contest were liked am I right? So for the match. Shovel Knight won easily. The only question that I have, is it the strongest Indie game here? Hard to say. It is super popular, it is like on 10 consoles or more! Damn! So many expansions, DLC and support too. Oh and all free. Yup. Big companies should learn from this. So nice to see at least some indies that deserve to do well doing well. ## Tsunami's Analysis While you'd never know it by my picks this year, I've actually gotten off to some pretty good starts in Guru before, even holding sole possession of first place in the Guru after correctly calling every match in Division 5 (two outright upsets and two others where the favorite had less than 60% of the brackets). That ended with Shovel Knight failing to be the indie darling I'd expected it to be. It's commonly accepted that for a rallied entrant to get moving, they need to have weak early competition to get past, because something too strong will kill it before it starts. L-Block didn't have to get past anyone stronger than Laharl in Round 1 and got a favorable LFF situation in Round 2, and Draven only needed to get past Jak and Chie Satonaka. Hell, L-Block and Draven were both Guru favorites to reach Round 2! But only that far. And Undertale got the polarizing Mass Effect 3, just weak enough for its rallies to work. Shovel Knight, in Round 1 of the 2015 Contest, was set to face Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Betting against GTA is never terribly risky on GameFAQs, so this was certainly a possible upset. And waiting in Round 2? The casuals would no doubt think it to be the massively popular World of Warcraft, as evidenced by prediction percentages in previous contests, but of course we all know that WoW is trash here, and so the Guru consensus (if you can call a roughly 5-3 ratio "consensus") was that it would be Chrono Cross, which is much maligned for being an alleged sequel to Chrono Trigger and not being even remotely as good a game. Either way, seems like a perfect target to start a bandwagon. If I'd really been thinking about it, I probably would've considered that enough time for the bandwagon to be fully rolling and picked more upsets based on the rallyFEAR effect, but mercifully I didn't, because while Shovel Knight did respectably, it never came close to beating GTA:SA. Come 2018, however, it seems that the casuals don't learn, because they must've seen 38.72% on GTA:SA and said "this game's really strong!" Shovel Knight the character was, astonishingly, comfortably favored in Round 1 against Captain Toad; the Gurus weren't so easily fooled. So when Shovel Knight came out strong against Dragon's Dogma, people were suddenly amazed. It was favored, of course, but it was still considered a strong performance, and the masses who picked Undertale for two rounds were feeling even worse because Shovel Knight to R3 wasn't nearly as unpopular a pick as it would be if Octopath actually got there. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7936&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (10)Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze 2020 _source: (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (10)Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze 2020 (revid 86509)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 1, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 01, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Devil May Cry 5 - 48.37% 21 for - 45 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Devil May Cry 5 - 70.37% - **User Votes:** Devil May Cry 5 - 5309 Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - 3906 - **Anonymous Votes:** Devil May Cry 5 - 4255 Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - 3218 Speaking of Devil May Cry, what an incredible redemption story. There aren't many games, or franchises, that deserved to win a heavily debated match more than Devil May Cry. I know Dante himself has some success in contests, but his games? Here is the entire DMC history in our contests: That's it. That's the entire list. Blown out in the series contest, and 1-2 in the last Game of the Decade. Not just 1-2, either; those were three *awful* performances. Failing to double a game never released in America despite an absurd picture advantage? Come on bro. On top of that, the series has been through hell and back. Twice. The original game was supposed to be a Resident Evil, but it got changed partway through without ever fixing the camera angles. Trash. Then 2 happened, which was an all-time disaster. 3 was arguably the best action game ever made, and people thought okay, good, the series is on track. Nope! 4 was literally only half a game, and DmC was laughable garbage that was no indefensible the series almost died for good. DmC was a self-insert fanfiction. Seriously, the director modeled that game's version of Dante after himself and spent the entire game crapping on series fans: It would be a long time before we got a new game after that disaster -- 6 years, to be exact -- and mercifully it was an *incredible* video game. The camera was finally fixed. The characters were all good. The gameplay was top notch. I could go on, but I won Review of the Month singing this game's praises so go read that instead: There was one catch here. A Devil May Cry game in a debated match against a Nintendo game with a well-known name, of all things? Donkey Kong was past the choker label, too. In 2015, Donkey Kong Country 2 won two close matches (something DK is *very* shaky with). In 2018, Donkey Kong of all characters went on an upset tour. Not only did he upset Tidus, but Donkey Kong -- yes, *the* infamous contest choker himself -- beat Leon Kennedy in a MASSIVE guru upset. 160 gurus signed up for that contest. Only nine picked Donkey Kong to win twice. In those two contests, one for games and one for characters, Donkey Kong had shed nearly 15 years of grief. Seriously, what the fuck even happened here? Mind you, I am not remotely upset DMC5 won this match going away. I played and loved both games, but DMC deserved this and I was rooting for it. This thing was close for 3 minutes, and then DMC5 just boat raced this thing. There was no indication whatsoever that this was possible. I know DMC5 backers were confident, and I'm happy for you, but I thoroughly disagree that there was any way to truly know this was coming. I'm going to commit a logical fallacy here and appeal to authority. Yoblazer33 is the best to ever do it, and if his first two contests actually counted toward his overall guru score, he would *far and away* be the \#1 overall guru in our contest's history. By the NG and Swirl, I really think we should legacy rule his first two contest scores into the overall and call it a wrap. Yoblazer is not the 11th best guru ever and everyone knows it. Anyway, he knows what's up. He was in third place this year until the penultimate match, and would have won this contest if Bethesda didn't suck ass. He looked at all the same data I laid out here, and came to the same conclusion. Devil May Cry in a debated match, against Nintendo? EZPZ. But then in one of the biggest shockers ever, DMC5 crushed it and gave Donkey Kong some PTSD. DK doesn't have his choke label back, but if he pulls this once or twice more, look out. Swirldude, the \#1 overall guru via technicality (the dude is a genius who has put in serious work for 2 decades, but everyone knows \#1 is Yoblazer) was kind enough to explain what happened on The Show. The short version is DMC5 is a fairly strong and well respected game, and Donkey Kong Country means very little outside of the SNES. On top of that, DKC Returns on the Wii just wasn't good, and Tropical Freeze was released two years into the Wii U's life span -- also known as two years after people realized the Wii U was garbage. Nintendo is the dominant entity on this site, but even Nintendo has a weakness. That weakness is the Wii U. And that Show appearance perfectly encapsulated what happened here. Truly. We should have seen this coming. For all intents and purposes, Breath of the Wild is a Switch game. So let's throw that one out. Once you do, what exactly on the Wii U is relevant outside of Mario Kart 8, Smash 4, and Captain Toad Treasure Tracker? Bayonetta 2 was a Wii U exclusive and the gaming public *destroyed* that game for it. You'd be hard pressed to find anything Nintendo has ever done that's more radioactive, and they couldn't get off that system fast enough in lieu of the Switch. So Swirl had it right, I think. This is the Wii U's fault. It's also one of the only examples of a Switch port meaning literally nothing. Either way, I couldn't be happier. Good job DMC5, you magnificent bastard. You deserved this one more than you can ever know. ## Ctes's Analysis I’m honestly still surprised that this match went this way given recent contests and this one too. Devil May Cry 5 was supposed to win this match, the prediction percentage shows that most casual brackets agree. Being supposed to win the match has never stopped anything from dropping said match before, however. Board 8 expected that to happen here. It was close, but Tropical Freeze was the favorite to win and for good reason! Yet it just didn’t come close, and it ends up looking really bad no matter how you spin things. It was in the match for just about 15 minutes, but that appeared to just be the board vote favoring it, perhaps because we thought it would win. Donkey Kong is known for being a choke artist. Not that it’s actually an ability. Yet last contest Donkey Kong made two consecutive upsets in his best attempt to throw that title away before doing slightly better on Vivi in their third match. While that was Donkey Kong’s third loss, doing slightly better meant a lot. Vivi is clearly stronger than he used to be, partly because Final Fantasy IX is a lot more well remembered today than it used to be, but he was almost riding high on the Mario upset in 2013. Almost everything from Smash Bros had boosted that contest. Tropical Freeze was initially a Wii U game, but it was very popular and believed to be among the best Donkey Kong Country had offered after a previous disappointing title. Being a Wii U exclusive is no good, but it had been ported to Switch, so it shouldn’t matter anymore that it used to be only on Wii U. Devil May Cry 5 was the best thing to come out of the franchise in many years, so people expected a close match, but picking the Switch game just seemed like the right idea in such a match. Not only was it not the right idea, the match wasn’t even close! Not that it’s a huge win, but for a debated match, it’s not a good result. Was Devil May Cry 5 that good? Did we underestimate it? Dante has always been pretty good in these contests. The first and third games are great, most of us agree. It was the best idea for what happened here at the time that Devil May Cry 5 was simply pretty good. It doesn’t look like it now unless you believe Super Mario Odyssey is indirectly stronger than Ultimate and there was a lot of rSFF in that match. Tropical Freeze is just bad, that’s all there is to it. Then why is Tropical Freeze that bad? Nintendo was criticized for charging full price for the rerelease with basically no updates, so maybe it didn’t help it as much as it should. I still don’t think it’s the full explanation. I’ve also heard people say that being a Wii U game is going to hurt you and no rerelease can help that. Bayonetta 2 is the other game where this is used as an explanation, but then just how beastly do you imagine Mario Kart 8 is if it’s hindered by being a Wii U game at first? It clearly is not. Unless you think Mario Kart games are similar enough to the point where one of them proxies the franchise, then the argument doesn’t explain everything. It’s still possible I suppose, but I think we’re left with Donkey Kong Country just being really bad, and that we clearly overestimated the strength of that franchise today because Donkey Kong isn’t trash anymore. That Donkey Kong Country needs to be on SNES to be worth anything. The best of them is just alright here. Donkey Kong being iconic and boosting from Smash Bros doesn’t mean his games are any better. ## Safer777's Analysis DMC 5 came recently and it was amazing. The best of all DMC games fans say. So DKC was the favorite of Board 8 here. But I don't understand why. Sure DMC games never do well and Dante everyone always says he is strong yet he never does well. Do you know that in the first every Character Contest he was in the top 10 favorites to win the whole thing? The other 9 were the Noble 9 of course. DKCTF was a DKgame apparently too. Look I don't know about this. Sorry. I just know the original DK games on SNES which I have played all 3 of them too! So for the match. DMC won and without any real trouble here. Now I know when in doubt go for Nintendo but here is the thing. When people think about DKC games which ones they think? Yup the ones on SNES. Which are more than 25 years old by the point. Have you heard anyone talking about any DK games after that EXCEPT if they are a big fan of the series? Yeah thought so. Same with Metroid games. People think the NES and the SNES one and the one for Gamecube. Meaning ones that are like 20 years old or more at this point. People just don't really care for other games except if they are a huge fan of the series. Maybe you say I am wrong but I stand on my thoughts. So there you go. DK get's his real power from the Smash series. Casuals beat us onto this match too since most of Board 8 went with DKCTF. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oy. Just when Donkey Kong had finally shed the label of being a choker, *this* happens. Though in fairness, he was never really in this match, unlike so many of his famous choke jobs where he threw away a win. It took about 2.5 hours for him to win his first update, and the match was more than a third of the way over before he won one by more than 5 votes. And while it doesn't make the list of *most* embarrassing results for the Gurus, it's pretty embarrassing. The Gurus had Tropical Freeze as a slight favorite, while the casuals pegged this match correctly at nearly a 70% rate. The reasoning was simple enough: DKC games had performed decently enough in contests when given half a chance (which is to say, in 2015 alone, because the voting system for 2004 meant there was no way one would make the field over fellow SNES classics like ALttP, SMW, Super Metroid, FFVI, and CT, and 2009 both DKC games just got fed into bad SFF situations--and one of them still managed to reach R2!), while Devil May Cry...uh...yeah. Devil May Cry still has yet to get a game *into* an "open" Games Contest. No representation in 2004, none in 2009, and none in 2015. DMC1 made the field in GotD out of the vote-ins, but unlike in the Character Battle earlier that year, the vote-in winners performed like their low seeds suggested they should. DMC3 was a bit higher up on the seeding list, and it...failed to double Mother 3 in Round 1 before a wholly expected R2 loss to Metroid Prime. Now, let's put things into perspective here: Mother 3 has never been released outside of Japan. The theme for Round 1 pics was "box art", which is perfectly fair and balanced, but it inconveniences Mother 3 because its box is just the name of the game on a solid red background. So, huge pic advantage, huge playrate advantage, only 64.86%. Wretched! Its main character has done fairly well in contests, but mostly in that he's put up good numbers in losses and wins over fodder. The strongest character he's actually *beaten* in a 1v1, based on strength at the time, is probably Ryu Hayabusa in 2006, though based on current strength, it's his 2004 win over Tails. In multi-ways it's another story; he made the semifinals in 2007 and the quarterfinals in 2008 (but beat out the same character he advanced in second place behind in the 2007 quarterfinals for 2nd place advancement out of R3), and, well, his 2013 wasn't exactly inspiring but at least in his exit he managed to beat out a decent midcarder for second place. But 2007 and 2008 being by far your two best contests is far from encouraging. So what changed? The site's opinion of action games, obviously. Devil May Cry's creator went on to create Bayonetta and the two series have very similar combat systems, so after seeing Bayonetta overperform against A Link Between Worlds the previous day, this shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. Apparently this is GameFAQs' type of game now. Go figure. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7937&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Super Mario Odyssey vs (15)Mortal Kombat 11 2020 _source: (2)Super Mario Odyssey vs (15)Mortal Kombat 11 2020 (revid 86510)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 1, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 01, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Odyssey - 77.56% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Odyssey - 91.57% - **User Votes:** Super Mario Odyssey - 7951 Mortal Kombat 11 - 1264 - **Anonymous Votes:** Super Mario Odyssey - 6365 Mortal Kombat 11 - 1108 Hey so remember how Smash Ultimate was supposed to waltz to the semifinal and its opening match confirmed it? **NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!!** Mario went completely and thoroughly berserk here, and it was a throwback to the early 2000s when Mario was just pasting fools all over the place. He was flirting with 88% at one point, too, but that didn't matter. What mattered here was this blowout being so massive that it had everyone sweating their Smash Ultimate \> Odyssey picks, especially the people who took that upset special and backed off. The reason for that is obvious. There is no planet, none, zero, where Tekken 7 would ever beat Mortal Kombat 11 in a contest match. It simply would not happen. Yet Tekken 7 did 3% better this round. By the way, Carl Lewis should thank his lucky stars for Fergie. Someone finally did the national anthem worse than he did. But yeah, Smash looked to be in some serious trouble after round 1. That would not let up in future rounds, either. ## Ctes's Analysis Forget about almost everything else, this here is a good contender for weirdest result of the contest. We don’t talk about it a lot, because the match was never in doubt and Super Mario Odyssey was expected to win big, but it has 86%! That’s an insane percentage in any match, but this match has just about no overlap between the games. They’re as different as it gets. Furthermore, while we saw similar percentages elsewhere, that was against games no one knows about. This is against a Mortal Kombat game. Shouldn’t they do a little bit better than this regardless of where the franchise is today? Only a single oracle predicted a better percentage for Odyssey that what it got, and he was in second. This is just beastly beyond sense. This match began the hype of Odyssey possibly upsetting Ultimate. They faced similar games, but Super Mario Odyssey faced the historically bigger franchise and did better. That opened people’s eyes. Prior to the contest, most people recalled how the Smash Bros game has been better than the Mario game on every single console except for N64 and didn’t think more of it. Let’s break this down for good measure. Super Mario is among the best games on the site and leagues ahead of the original Smash Bros, which isn’t that great a game, but just a tease of the good things to come. Super Mario 64 is in all likelihood better than all Smash Games, but it’s also from a console and time we value higher. Melee are leagues ahead of Super Mario Sunshine, most of which can be credited to the mixed feelings about Sunshine. We can debate forever about how strong the following Smash games are because they’ve become mostly obsolete and we will most likely never see them again. Regardless, at the time of being the most recent game in the franchise, Brawl was way better than Super Mario Galaxy despite the latter being decent, and Smash 4 was way better than 3D World, which we will never see in a contest now that it was excluded from this one. Also, all the Smash games would’ve beaten all the Mario games just mentioned except Super Mario 64. Odyssey did however have its small amount of support with most of them being among our best experts. A lot of this had to do with speculation and doubt about Ultimate, but it was also that Super Mario Odyssey is most likely the strongest game since Super Mario 64, similar to how Breath of the Wild is since Ocarina of Time. It was completely overshadowed by Breath of the Wild in all Game of the Year polls, but we also saw Super Mario 64 getting murdered by Ocarina of Time in 2004 before coming back to beat Chrono Trigger in 2009 despite another Mario game being in the poll. Fans are extremely passionate about Super Mario Odyssey and it shows. There’s a lot more to say about Ultimate vs. Odyssey in future matches, but it’s hard to argue Super Mario Odyssey did not have the better round 1. When that is said, we also need the friendly reminder of how little worth there is in comparing matches that are blowouts as big as these. Finally, back to Mortal Kombat 11. What in the world happened here? The x-stats have it at near bottom. The unadjusted stats are obviously worse to it because of the layers of SFF it got buried under, which leaves at it at second to last ahead of only INSIDE, but even being kind in adjustments puts it below every single game we know what is, including disliked stuff such as Dota 2 and Fortnite. It folded so badly. I know that Mortal Kombat is far from what it used to be, but it’s not disliked as severely as this suggests. Did almost everyone just stop caring about it? Super Mario Odyssey is very well respected, it likely has close to no one voting against it because they dislike it, but it appears here that roughly 14% of the site care more about Mortal Kombat than Mario and that every single person that cares about both or neither prefers Mario. This is most likely a case of people taking the contest title into consideration with the forced voting helping too, but regardless, I’ll be scared of picking a Mortal Kombat character to win much in the future if the franchise name couldn’t save it from this enormous embarrassment. ## Safer777's Analysis SMO.Hard to judge. It did amazingly well with sales and critical reception but where to put it with the other Mario games on this site on power? Don't know. MK 11 got in but here is the thing. From the 3 main MK games that have come out this decade, this one is the least favorite from the fans of the series. Then how did it got in? Who knows? So for the match. SMO shattered expectations. Even 80% was considered high and it got over 85%! And yeah MK 11 isn't popular but it is from a series that EVERYONE and their fatality grandmas knows about it. So why? Is SMO that strong? To tell the truth I think yes. Seems that the 1st party Switch games are damn strong. Remember BOTW scored higher than expected too. So yeah. Maybe BOTW can beat OOT and SMO can beat SM64 for the strongest franchise games? I would like to see that to tell the truth. I guess if we have some bonus polls or something it would be nice to see. Oh and we don't care for Fighthing Games here. Except for Smash games. They are fighting games, aren't they? ## Tsunami's Analysis While I'd advise against putting *too* much stock into this result, as the Undertale match raised the total vote count beyond what it had been in previous days, Mortal Kombat has always been a stronger series than Tekken, so for Odyssey to win this decisively was reason to question whether Smash Ultimate was really a lock against Odyssey in Round 4. I've always been of the opinion that there's little to be gleaned from the size of a blowout, however...at least, not for how foddery the loser is. If you get 8% or 12%, there's really not that much difference; it's just a measure of how strong your opponent is. But in that context, from the perspective of who wins those blowouts, it does say something, so Odyssey is probably the favorite right now! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7938&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (16)Baba Is You 2020 _source: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (16)Baba Is You 2020 (revid 86511)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 2, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 02, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto V - 76.23% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto V - 95.06% - **User Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 6931 Baba is You - 1782 - **Anonymous Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 5308 Baba is You - 1454 transience looked through the entire bracket and looked at all the games by ownership, and Baba Is You is either at the bottom or second from it. I know ownership on GameFAQs is a bit of a flawed stat, but it's better than nothing. I don't really care enough to look it all up myself. The point here is I am convinced Baba Is You would have finished dead last in the x-stats if it had faced a heavy hitter guaranteed not to get anti voted -- Super Mario Odyssey or Witcher 3, for example. But because it drew Grand Theft Auto, it got to be the beneficiary of GTA's intrinsic anti-strength. Baba was actually winning this match when it started, because Board 8 detests GTA so much. Grand Theft Auto 5 is the one game in that series with real strength, though the series has had *some* success on this site. Vice City once held Melee to 53%, San Andreas was our Game of the Year in 2004, and there are all manner of fair results in the fourways, 2010, and 2015. The issue is people see these famous close upset losses to Golden Sun and Chrono Cross and assume all the matches go that way. That just isn't the case. GTA is the type of series that, due to its nature, will never blow anything out or get blown out itself. In fact, 5's win here is likely to be the biggest win a Grand Theft Auto ever gets on this site -- and even then, due to anti-votes, it wasn't able to put an unknown 16 seed opponent at the bottom of the stats like it should have. For the record, I am one of those people who anti-votes Grand Theft Auto in almost every match it's in. Not for the reason you might think, though! I'm sure a lot of people think GTA's anti-votes come from nerds not liking how GTA players remind them of the guys who stuffed them into locker rooms in high school or whatever. Not me. GTA started as super goofy cartoonish nonsense, and was legitimately hilarious back in the day. Then 3 happened, the series went 3D, and it turned into this hyper-serious sandbox that it's never truly been able to get out of. I've never forgiven GTA for the change in tone or the types of players it now attracts. It used to cater to gamers like us. Now it's plagued by frat boy morons. The series needs to go back to being cartoonish and ridiculous. As far as I'm concerned, this is where the series peaked and it's yet to be topped: ## Ctes's Analysis Considering Grand Theft Auto V was a \#1 seed in Best Game Ever, it should surprise absolutely no one that it would also be that in Game of the Decade. Once again, it’s a recipe for disaster, because it’s not one of the 8 strongest games in the bracket and not close to either. Its division looked to be among the worst. Of course, that’s partly because of itself being the \#1 seed. Yet it was enough for a a fair share of people picking it to win the division. The far most popular opinion however was that the Nintendo game coming out of the lower half would beat it, if Persona 4 Golden or maybe even Read Dead Redemption didn’t get to do the honor first. Even Cuphead had been a fun little upset worth taking for a few people before the contest. Indie games were seemingly on a new level this contest and many expected Cuphead to be the best of them. All three winning games today both looked pretty good today facing similar fodder. It appeared GTAV would be in trouble if it could not impress against Baba is You. I think it looks pretty good all things today. Most people likely don’t recall it doing well, because GTA has just about as bad a board vote as it gets. If you have that and the match isn’t close, people are unlikely to come back and notice how much you rose over the course of the day. It had only 71% at the freeze. Cuphead had 74% at the freeze and was expected to be facing the better game. Even though GTAV rose to heaven from there and Cuphead dropped quite a bit, people were still hyped about the possible upset for days to come until the word that the percentages changed significantly had spread enough at least. Baba is You ends up being near bottom of the x-stats to the surprise of not a single person. Even so, I think getting almost 80% on something when you’re as disliked at GTA is pretty great. Baba is You is probably also among the hardest fodder for GTAV to look great against, simply because it’s as different from it as it gets. The simple design catches your eye almost immediately among these 8 games, surely more so if Cuphead wasn’t next to it. I’m surprised it made it in, though it was of course only barely. I played the game during the contest because of seeing it here and because of its name. I’ve been nicknamed Baba in real life a few places before and I had enough coins on Nintendo Switch to get almost free, so I gave it a go. Unless you use guides in which case it’s obviously super easy, it’s probably one of the contenders for most difficult game in the bracket. This is the only one I’ve played so far because of the contest, but I mention it because it’s a small side effect of these contests I’ve always really liked. When we spontaneously try out and enjoy games because they were in the contest, that we might’ve played otherwise. ## Safer777's Analysis Look here. Another Indie game that I haven't heard anything about. Great. On the other hand we have GTA 5. So what to say here. GTA V is the most profiltable piece of entertainment media in the history of manking. Yeah kind of a big deal. Over 6 billion of revenue and that was 2 years ago. Still you find it in the top 10 weekly sales charts every time too. If someone didn't knew anything about videogames and asked me to play a serious one I would recommend this one. I know most of the money is from microtransactions but if people are stupid and buy them in any game it is their fault. Yeah I don't like microtransactions. As for BIY don't know anything about it. I guess it is an action puzzle game that is barely a year old. So for the match. See in this site we don't care for GTA games. Yeah we have bad taste here. But against BIY anything can score a blowout. And GTA 5 did just that. So that doesn't say anything about the power of GTA 5. Which is low I believe too. Man remember how once time a GTA character beat Kefka one on one? Yeah that was 15 years ago but still. I just had to put that somewhere! Also people were expecting GTA 5 to score above 80% and it didn't even score that! Yeah I don't know what else to say. Oh GTA 5 was in the previous Games Contest and it lost on Round 2. Guess it can reach Round 3 at least now? Oh and where is the sequel Rockstar? Come on now! ## Tsunami's Analysis Baba is WHO? Seriously, this is exactly what a 1-16 match is supposed to look like, more or less. It's not a massive blowout by this contest's standards but that's probably largely GTA V anti-votes. There's absolutely nothing in this performance that says one way or the other whether GTA makes it to Round 3 or not. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7939&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Cuphead vs (9)XCOM 2 2020 _source: (8)Cuphead vs (9)XCOM 2 2020 (revid 86512)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 2, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 02, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cuphead - 62.19% 65 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cuphead - 77.96% - **User Votes:** Cuphead - 6027 XCOM 2 - 2684 - **Anonymous Votes:** Cuphead - 4457 XCOM 2 - 2305 Pre-contest, KP discussed the indie glass ceiling and thought Cuphead would have the best shot at being this contest's strongest indie darling. Spoilers -- KP is a really, really smart guy. In the raw stats, Cuphead did the best. How much of that is natural strength versus getting to go against GTA5 next round is anyone's guess, but either way this game is legit. XCOM 2 was one of the many, many early round fodder games to just get its doors blown off in the early rounds, which is typical of a seeded tournament but I'm still bitter Bayonetta wasn't a 9 seed in *any* other division. That said, this match was not about XCOM 2. It was about Cuphead proving how legit it was, and this final percentage doesn't even do justice to how good the game looked in this match. It was over 70% for quite a long time before falling off to a respectable 68. How good was this performance? This coincided with GTA5's anti-votes preventing Baba Is You from finishing last, which started up all of the hype trains for, as Harrich put it so beautifully, the **CUPSET!!!** Cuphead \> GTA5 hype was alive and well after this one, boys. If nothing else we were guaranteed to see Cuphead get an early lead, but one trend here was very important to keep an eye on. See how Cuphead started off like a house of fire and then burned itself out midway through the match? That was a very, very common problem indie games would have all contest long. ## Ctes's Analysis Cuphead was very well received upon release, being among the leading contenders for strongest indie game in the bracket. Unfortunately, it had a pretty predictable path, but there were a group of people that took the upset against GTAV in the following round. The number ended up being smaller in the oracle than in the guru, but if we had a tally the day before the round 1 matches, I’m sure it would be higher. Indie games had been huge and had been winning matches they were not expecting to. Being an \#8 seed, that task was tougher for Cuphead, but at least it got the one \#1 seed that could hoped to be beaten already. Cuphead itself looked a fine deal better than what was expected of it. It had easily the smallest blowout of the day, but most people agreed it was facing the strongest of the losing games, which on this side of the contest look to be true. Not that XCOM 2 is worth much mind you, we just had a solid amount of fodder going out today. Round 1 was a lot about taking out the trash and today is one of the most extreme cases if that, as 31% was the highest a losing game got. I’m not saying anything is wrong with XCOM, it’s just not exactly the type of game we care very much. It’d probably do better if it had been released on Switch before the contest and not shortly afterwards, but it still wouldn’t have made a difference in many matches, certainly not this one. ## Safer777's Analysis Look another indie game(Cuphead)Oh boy. But I have played one of these games that are here. And that is XCOM 2! Yeah it was free on PSN once and I played it. It is a good Turn Base Strategy but man it is WAY too hard. Even on Easy you are getting wrecked. You have to get really good to play it above Easy. Plus XCOM is a historic franchise and it does well financially and critically too. As for Cuphead...I actually have heard about it too! Yeah! It is an old school 2D Platformer and it is DAMN hard too. Yeah 2 really hard games here. Cuphead got a bad press when released from some journalists because it was so hard that they barely could get past the tutorial. As this is a bad thing. Those people should know that not every game has to be for casuals. Hard games have to exist because there are people that like challenge. So yeah not everything for everyone just like in every other media form. So for the match. Cuphead did as expected. It is one of the most recognizable Indie games too. Pretty sure a lot of people know it because of the unique art style. Fortunately it did well in sales too. Guess there is a market for that! Who would have thought that? Is Cuphead the strongest Indie? Guess it is in the top 3 of the Indies here. Well we shall see in the next match. ## Tsunami's Analysis Wait, "XCOM 2" is really the *full name*? No subtitle? No extended name that XCOM is short for? Geez, no wonder it sucks. This result was not really that surprising. Cuphead's only previous outing was in a Character Battle, but the titular character only just squeaked into CBX with a 16-seed, and the one placed against the presumed \#1 overall seed based on match placement. Indie darling though he may be, that was always going to be a losing battle. GTA V is *probably* the favorite for Round 2 based on playrate alone, but then again, GameFAQs has always tended to reject the mainstream in favor of niche stuff, so a game that's so retro that its aesthetic *pre-dates video games by multiple decades* might be right up their alley. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7940&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (12)FTL: Faster Than Light 2020 _source: (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (12)FTL: Faster Than Light 2020 (revid 86513)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 2, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 02, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 4 Golden - 72.80% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 4 Golden - 88.36% - **User Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 6845 FTL - 1866 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 5111 FTL - 1652 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. FTL was one of the games that ended up looking like a garbage pile. FTL doesn't just look like a garbage pile in polls, either. Okie dokie. When I first did my bracket, I actually had Persona 4 Golden winning three matches before deciding to have some faith in GTA5. Losing to Chrono Cross and Golden Sun, while embarrassing, makes sense. But surely GTA5 wouldn't lose to a Vita game even with its built-in anti-votes, right? Yeah once this poll started I regretted that decision in about 5 seconds. Not only did Persona 4 show none of the weakness one might expect from a Vita title -- this thing was clearly a proxy for the original Persona 4, which is why this and Pokemon HGSS should not have been allowed in this contest -- but Red Dead Redemption pulled off a similar blowout in round 1 of this fourpack. Barring Rockstar hierarchy and SFF (GTA pulling off SFF, ha!), the winner of Persona 4 v Red Dead was going to the divisional finals. That was set in stone after round one. The discussion when this happened live centered around trying to order Baba Is You, FTL, and Ghost Trick. That was a flawed discussion, because it assumes transitive linearity with Grand Theft Auto when we know 100% that this is not the case. The issue is whether or not the third round match would be close at all, which more or less guarantees GTA can't win, and these round 1 results showed it would be close. That right there meant GTA5 was done. Side note. Remember back in Bizarro World when Board 8 actually rallied for and rooted for Grand Theft Auto to beat Warcraft in the series contest? It's surreal to think about. ## Ctes's Analysis Persona 4 Golden was probably one of the most exciting entrants to the contest in every sense. How would it boost from the huge success of Persona 5? How much would it matter that it’s a remake? On top of that it’s a remake of a game that was released before this decade and thus its eligibility is up for debate? How much would it matter that it’s a Vita exclusive, when the Vita is a good contender for last console you want to be exclusive to? The range of contest strength we believed it could be in was bigger than what most games had, and it had the perfect bracket placement for its run to be as exciting as it gets too. It was never going to lose in round 1, even if all the things that I mentioned before went against it as much as possible. However, you could make a case for it losing in rounds 2, 3, 4 and 5. For how many games can you make reasonable different brackets that has it losing in so many different rounds. We often see an early match that is important because we know the winner will advance several times. This isn’t even that! It could reasonably lose in any of those rounds and it’s a good reason as to why division 4 was perhaps the most important division in the bracket and the most difficult one to get perfect. It was hard to determine much of Persona 4’s future in the contest from this match though. Read Dead Redemption delivered a similar blowout. You could argue which losing game is better, but at these percentages that barely matters. Both games also had reasons for potential anti-votes. For P4G that would be the aforementioned status as a remake that a lot fewer people played than the original. FTL is exclusive to PC, which is also something you really don’t want to be exclusive to in a GameFAQs contest. Unlike our Vita exclusive, it’s also not a genre we particularly care for. It’s fine, but it was no surprise to see it end up as badly as it did. I sure hope that there are people appreciating all these fodder games got in, because these are the kind of matches we’re getting as a result. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have an enchanced version here I believe. Not even a remake. Persona series is always extremely popular with fans but they don't do well in sales. Persona 5 broke the mold though and it got very good sales so Persona games are finally getting recognition in the West. I am big Shin Megami Tensei fan and Persona started a spin off of the SMT series but now it seems to has surpassed the SMT in popularity and most people don't even know that Persona is a spin off series! I have played P3 and P5 but not P4. I know, I suck. Why? It came on PS 2 and Vita and by the time it came out I didn't had any of these consoles but I thought it would get a port on PS3. But that didn't happened strangely enough. I have even played the Labyrinth games on 3DS too! As for FTL it is another indie game. Great. The Wiki says it is a Space Combat Sim? Huh? It seems to be somewhat popular but as I said above I don't really know indie games so yeah. So for the match. Well this was never in doubt. Pretty sure P4 beats all indie games here. And it did as expected too. So nothing more to say. All these games going against Indie games you can't really judge their power. And Persona games are weak on this site too strangely enough. I mean in the previous contest Joker couldn't beat even Claire Redfield on 1vs1 and RE2 remake hadn't come out yet. But Joker who is the main character of Persona 5 got in Smash as a playable character which is amazing! And I do believe we even will have a Warriors Persona game spin off. Also I said spin off but Persona games are getting strange spinoffs. We have fighthing games, dance games, action games, hack and slash games... Everything! Wonder why? Plus the winning percentage for P4 is amazing. 77.77% You can't make this up even if you wanted! ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, this just kind of proves the maxim that it's better to be an old game than a new one. Granted, FTL has always been extremely niche, but the fact of the matter is that arguably the most impressive win of the day came by the remake of an older game. At least I think it was the most impressive? Maybe FTL's so niche that it actually would lose to Ghost Trick? Either way, the upcoming P4 Golden-RDR match was looking like a 6-point match. It was highly unlikely that merely getting similar numbers to the two of them in Round 1 was enough for GTA V to be on their level, given how bad Baba Is You was expected to have been. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7941&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Red Dead Redemption vs (13)Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 2020 _source: (4)Red Dead Redemption vs (13)Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 2020 (revid 86514)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 2, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 02, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Red Dead Redemption - 74.97% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Red Dead Redemption - 94.77% - **User Votes:** Red Dead Redemption - 6843 Ghost Trick - 1868 - **Anonymous Votes:** Red Dead Redemption - 5382 Ghost Trick - 1381 Ghost Trick was one of the many, many games that served as mere filler for the early rounds, and it performed so badly that it might as well have been one of the litany of indie fodder titles. This is why we had a series cap of two, huh? So we could have even more blowouts than usual? RDR's blowout here was almost identical to what Persona 4 was doing to FTL. I mentioned this during the Persona 4 round one writeup, but I feel that Baba v FTL v Ghost Trick was a flawed conversation. You can't order these games in a vacuum, because GTA as a series comes with built-in negative strength. GTA5 was clearly screwed after round 1. What was *very* interesting however was the incoming Persona 4 Golden vs RDR in round 2. Both games scored identical blowouts against new competition. Both games were really close in the stats in 2015. It was clear that "Persona 4 Golden" might as well have been "Persona 4" in this contest, so it's fair to bring this one up... Persona 4 (2015g) VS Red Dead Redemption (2015g) Persona 4 has a strength of 25.16. Red Dead Redemption has a strength of 24.60. Persona 4 wins with 51.11% of the vote! A win of 1,355 with 60,875 total votes cast. Some of the best matches in contest history are the ones where you *know* it will be good in advance, and all the tools were in place for that one to make some magic. On top of that, it was also clear that the winner was the favorite in round 3. Unknown winner, high stakes? Sign me up! ## Ctes's Analysis Red Dead Redemption was an exciting entry to have back again. It looked fine in 2015 all things considered, and it recently got a very well received sequel which could boost the franchise name. Unlike in 2015, it did not have a predictable a path. Any possible Rockstar hierarchy is not something we have seen before as the games usually don’t get far enough to meet. Before that there was Persona 4 Golden to worry about. P4G vs. RDR was one of the most discussed round 2 matches both before and during the contest, though most of the discussion centered around the potential P4G had. Today they had similar enough high percentages against super weak games for us to not be any closer to a conclusion of that match. The board vote today was of course nothing short of hilarious. On one side we have a Rockstar game, which is not board 8’s cup of tea. On the other side, we have a game from the developer of Ace Attorney in the same genre, which is as much board 8’s cup of tea as it possible gets. It has always been amusing how it is so. Perhaps there is some overlap between interest in contests and interest in those games. Of course, Ghost Trick is not as big, but it’s still right down our ballpark. Ghost Trick has the honor of being one of only three games from the DS to make the bracket, the other ones being Pokemon HGSS, which is a remake and from 2009 in Japan, and Call of Duty: Black Ops which I can say with certainly that not a single person nominated because of its DS port and I’m sure it being released on DS is news to some people too. So congratulations to Ghost Trick I suppose! The DS is a wonderful console no doubt, but it’s a long time ago by now. Even the representation of the 3DS is quite limited. It’s not like we’re missing out on much. 2010 was the last year of DS before the 3DS released. The biggest snub is easily generation 5 Pokemon, which could’ve made it in. Then there’s a Golden Sun and a Harvest Moon, but I’m not surprised they didn’t make it. The real surprise to me is that there is no Ace Attorney game in the bracket with Ghost Trick being the closest thing to a representative. Did we forget or what happened? Board 8 controls the nomination to such a big extend that it sure feels weird. Metacritic matters too, but games of worse critics have made it in. I have never played Ace Attorney myself despite being here for so long, so I don’t know much about them. It might simply be that the more recent ones aren’t as well liked, so we did not care enough for them, but I still can’t help but be a bit surprised. ## Safer777's Analysis 3 blowouts in a day. Well against very weak games that is expected. Here is the thing. I thought GTPD was an indie game but, nope it is from Capcom! Yeah! It is apparently like an adventure/visual game? But I don't understand how it got it. It came out 10 years ago and it wasn't popular back then. Admin has to explain stuff how all these games got in but other more recognizable and popular games didn't got it. I just don't get it. As for RDR it made the western games really popular. Amazing story and gameplay too RDR 2 came out like 1.5 years ago and I believe it is considered slightly worse than RDR 1 strangely enough. Maybe because of the microtransactions? So for the match. Well I mean the match was pretty easy to predict. As it should be. I do wonder once again who exactly nominated GTPD. RDR was in the previous Games Contest here and it lost to round 2. Guess something similar will happen in this contest too. Also why RDR doesn't good in this site even though it does amazing everywhere else? Simple. We just don't like these kind of games here. We care only for Nintendo. Or something. Even though these games are doing amazing in sales and reception. But nope, not here. The winning percentage for RDR was huge too. Not even 1 seeds get that high percentage! ## Tsunami's Analysis Ghost Trick is basically like a spiritual...cousin, I guess you'd say, to Ace Attorney. Same creator, but it's a stand-alone game that doesn't fit into their continuity. It is therefore expected to be weaker than them, not that it really matters because no Ace Attorney games actually made this bracket. This is roughly a good percentage for Red Dead Redemption. It's tough to tell who should be favored in Round 2 due to the weak opponents everyone had. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7942&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (14)Splatoon 2 2020 _source: (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (14)Splatoon 2 2020 (revid 86515)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 3, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 03, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 67.87% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 77.66% - **User Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 6953 Splatoon 2 - 1973 - **Anonymous Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 5784 Splatoon 2 - 1476 Holy unexpected star of the contest, Batman! When this thing was announced, Division 4 was the big talking head debate show division. The case could be made for four games winning this thing (GTA5, Persona 4, RDR, Three Houses), and there was even some Cuphead buzz. But almost no one was talking about Xenoblade Chronicles. That changed in a hurry once this match happened, especially as Three Houses was stinking it up against South Park, but pre-contest? Not a word. Part of that is Yoblazer and I keeping our mouths shut. We both picked Xenoblade after a good look at the data pre-contest, but didn't say a word to anyone outside of yo I think giving one small Show hint. This is a competition, after all. I'll get into what I saw when we get to the divisional finals, because it was as good a pick as I've ever made. The important thing to remember about this match specifically is that Splatoon 2 is a game people actually care about. It sold over 1 million copies in its first week, it was an early Switch release, and it was used to launch Smash Ultimate. Remember? That video was seen probably hundreds of millions of times all over the world. Splatoon 2 helped do that. Xenoblade took that and beat it like it stole something. It was quite the start to the contest for Xenoblade, and confirmed why some of us had so much faith in it. Well, that and one of the best soundtracks in the history of video games. Seriously, go listen to it. ## Ctes's Analysis In a contest where everything released in 2017 manages to look good in the end, even things like Resident Evil 7 and Ys VIII that had all odds against them, Splatoon 2 sure just rolled over and died. I mean sure, this is a SFF beatdown, and sure, Xenoblade Chronicles turned out to be very good, but this still looks bad on the other side of the contest unless there is A LOT of SFF. Splatoon isn’t exactly the franchise that is in line with GameFAQs the most. It’s respected to some extend for being a decent new IP. The sequel is basically just the first game with continued updates because they needed it on Switch instead. Story Mode is fun in both games, but it’s mostly just more of the same. Even so, the original Splatoon managed to hold Metal Gear Solid below 80% last contest. It’s difficult for me to see the second one being any worse than that. At worst, it would be the same, but I have a really hard time seeing being released on Switch and getting Smash representation not doing the name any favors. This could be Zelda levels of SFF then, and it might be hard at first to think Xenoblade could be capable of that given that it has been a bit niche even though loved by most that played it. However, Splatoon is exactly the type of game you should extend to roll over and die when facing SFF. Nintendo fans like it well enough, but it’s no one’s favorite. At least not on our site. As soon as it faces something people have strong feelings for, everyone will turn to the other game. Xenoblade also isn’t as niche as it used to be since it got Smash representation and spawned more games. It’s also coming on Switch very soon! Regardless of any SFF, Xenoblade instantly became the favorite to win the division. A lot of people thought the winner of Xenoblade and Three Houses would go the final 8. The match against a potential Rockstar game reminded everyone of San Andreas against Golden Sun a decade ago and we know what to pick now. Three Houses was the favorite because of a combination of two things. Xenoblade and Fire Emblem: Awakening lost to the same opponent by an almost equal amount in 2015, and everyone expected Three Houses to be stronger than Awakening. Today, Xenoblade exceeded expectations by quite a lot. Three Houses also underperformed a bit, but that wasn’t enough for Xenoblade. Obviously, an SFF match is never the best way to measure anything, but it was already hard to argue Xenoblade took the title as favorite instantly. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have 2 games that are both Nintendo! Amazing for this contest! I have heard of this Xenoblade game and I wanted to buy it but for some reason I never did bought it. Strange. Splatoon is a multiplayer game and is very fun and good too from what I gather. Nintendo did well with this franchise. So a JARPG vs a multiplayer game on this site. Guess who won. So for the match. Well what to say? XC has apparently fought against Splatton 2 on some previous polls and it won there too so of course it won here too. Nothing to say, this match was pretty easy to predict and that is. XC took part on the previous Games Contest here and it lost on the 1st round against another Nintendo game too. So yeah. Seems that it is somewhat stronger now but we shall see. ## Tsunami's Analysis I've heard a lot of speculation that Splatoon 2 would be stronger than Splatoon because it was for the beloved Switch while Splatoon was for the hated Wii U. Was Splatoon really that recent or has the Switch really been around that long? \*checks\* Bit of both, honestly. Actually I guess that makes sense because I thought the Wii U had a pretty short shelf life. I never ended up getting one because by the time there were actually any games I really cared about, the "NX" had already been announced and I made the mistake of thinking that there'd be backwards compatibility like the Wii U had to the Wii and the Wii to the Gamecube. Luckily the one Wii U game I was really disappointed about missing out on just got ported to the Switch! (That'd be the Fire Emblem/SMT crossover; I love both those series so I was really excited to hear about it.) Then again, was XBC ever really going to be strong? It was a very late-stage Wii game and one that had...availability issues. Well, since Splatoon was in BGE3, let's go to the X-Stat calculator! Xenoblade Chronicles (2015g) VS Splatoon (2015g) Xenoblade Chronicles has a strength of 23.73. Splatoon has a strength of 13.60. Xenoblade Chronicles wins with 71.34% of the vote!  A win of 25,987 with 60,875 total votes cast. Just ignore the hilariously outdated projections on votes cast, where even with registered votes counting double, this match had fewer total votes than the projection's margin of victory. Now, granted, this contest has felt like BlowoutFAQs so far, but Splatoon 2 got 21.57% in this match. Splatoon's number for 2015 came from getting 20.93% on *Metal Gear Solid*. So...probably yet another case of the original being stronger. Being for the Switch might've actually hurt Splatoon 2 because it gets overshadowed by so many other games that the Wii U just didn't have! And given the usual fall-off for sequels...I'd say this feels like a constant enough result for XBC. Also, let me just check something...Okay. I honestly couldn't remember if Shulk was in 2018. Given that he'd had multiple Smashes since 2013 (well, okay, Ultimate came out *during* CBX, but they'd already announced that everyone was back), him missing the field entirely would've been a huge indictment. But he did make it. Didn't perform all that well, but he was there. Good enough to get by, at least given the competition for Round 2. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7943&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Overwatch vs (11)Death Stranding 2020 _source: (6)Overwatch vs (11)Death Stranding 2020 (revid 86517)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 3, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 03, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Overwatch - 52.59% 48 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Overwatch - 72.66% - **User Votes:** Overwatch - 5115 Death Stranding - 3811 - **Anonymous Votes:** Overwatch - 3809 Death Stranding - 3452 One of my favorite gimmicks from The Show this year was yoblazer crapping all over Hideo Kojima and Death Stranding every chance he got. Granted, anonymous inside sources have hinted that he didn't even *play* Death Stranding, but who even cares? The game is a bucket of literal piss grenades. I am in no way joking about that one, either. You can actually throw your own piss at enemies. I know a lot of people expect me to rant and rave over Blizzard winning matches this year, but I have a changeup for you on this one. The better game won this match. Yeah I said it. Me, probably the biggest Blizzard hater on the entire internet, agree with this result. This is not a defense of Overwatch, either. It's an awful (very awful) ripoff of Team Fortress 2, it began the loot box plague, the designers and artists are SJWs, and the player base is *laughably* awful. I've brought this up before, but in Overwatch you can get banned for picking off-meta heroes and Blizzard completely lied about it. No surprise to anyone who pays attention to their nonsense, but the reason this happens is because the report system is automatic. If a bunch of players report the same person, they're automatically suspended and oftentimes banned. For playing a video game for fun. And Death Stranding is still worse. This was a debated match pre-contest, because everyone knew it would be garbage versus trash. It's hard to pick these fodder matchups, especially when there is no metadata to draw from, but Overwatch was a well known brand name. That's likely the only reason it won. Death Stranding is absolute *trash*, and the game is so bad that I've stopped feeling bad for Konami screwing Hideo Kojima over. They clearly knew something. For the unaware, Death Stranding is about a guy delivering packages after a plague hits, also known as the gaming version of Door Dash. I get that this is topical, but the game is a gigantic world with nothing in it, and way, way, WAY too many dumb mechanics. The irony of all ironies is that the game is completely lacking of any action whatsoever, but when action finally shows up it always happens at the wrong time. Jim Sterling has a good perspective on it: Adding to how bad the game is is how incredibly overhyped it was. "Finally, Hideo gets to make a game without the tyranny of a parent company!" Yeah, turns out this dude was a hack the entire time and needed an editor to pull his one or two good idea from his hundreds of bad ones. Hideo Kojima is the Vince Russo of video games, and Death Stranding is the new Shadow of the Colossus. It is an overhyped, terrible video game with bad mechanics, a lifeless world, and an *awful* fanbase. Yes, some video games prove the medium is an art form. Your game is not one of them. Go away. I mean come on, Death Stranding has **me** happy that a Blizzard game won a contest match. Do you guys understand how impossibly bad a game has to be to pull that off? ## Ctes's Analysis This was a fun match in the sense that both games had a chance of being really bad on this site. It was essentially a matter of what game would be anti-voted the least, neither is particularly liked here. It’s been a long time since anything from Blizzard had success here. The only real success anything had is probably when Diablo reached the semi-finals of the contest. The games have never been fodder here, they’ve just not been as good as they’ve on a lot of other sides, despite stuff like World of Warcraft having some of our most popular FAQs. Both Overwatch and Death Stranding did just alright in their respective Game of the Year polls. Not fantastic, but both looked like something that could win a match if they got the right one. Overwatch just barely beat DOOM, which looked like a beast not many days prior, but was also fresh off the release of DOOM Eternal. Both of them were behind Final Fantasy XV, Uncharted 4 and Pokemon Sun and Moon, which doesn’t sound too great. Death Stranding was just behind Bloodstained and just ahead of Devil May Cry 5, which by their recent results looks good enough. It was then behind Sekiro and Resident Evil 2. The polls suggested that would be somewhat close, so you had to go with your gut feeling of how they’d do in a contest setting. They’re both games that I’d expect to do better in multi-ways polls, because they have their supporters, it’s just not that many. The percentages seem to agree. Overwatch is past the days where it got all too much attention, it’s probably not disliked too much at this point if it ever were. Death Stranding is a lot more recent, but it also a lot more our type of game. It can be argued that the match came down to something like Death Stranding being disliked more, but I don’t think that’s what it is. Look at the prediction percentage? It came down to bracket votes. I don’t think Overwatch being the top option mattered any, that would’ve only mattered when making the bracket since the games are side by side now. Overwatch was probably favored by quite a bit because it’s the more known name. The match is close enough and the votals low enough. I think bracket votes decided this one and it doesn’t matter all that much, because the winner was never getting past Xenoblade even before Xenoblade exceeded expectations. ## Safer777's Analysis So a Tactical FPS Multiplayer vs...something? Look pretty sure nobody knows what exactly is DS. Seriously. It is something for sure but I am not sure why. DS is one of these games that you either love it or hate it. Me I have seen reviews and I guess I don't like it? Seems like a complicated walking simulator? Look sorry for its fans but let's be real the game is weird as hell. Kojima knows for sure how to keep people guessing but man. It was his first game after the MGS series too. But let's be realists. If DS wasn't by Kojima nobody would care for it. People just gave it good reviews and it got a lot of hype because of his name. Sure the game has some interest things but it mostly sucks. I mean the main premise is that there is a guy that delivers packages. And that is. Have fun walking with nothing to do from destination to destination. Even the combat, what little there is, can be avoided. As I said above if it was from any other developer the game would be ignored, but nope it is from HK and he did really good with the MGS franchise but here? Most say no. So for the match. This was somewhat in doubt. To tell the truth we don't like games like Overwatch here BUT against DS...nobody knew what to expect. Even for the crew not all went with Overwatch. However they all predicted a close match and it was somewhat close. Pretty sure DS is damn weak. Overwatch is damn weak too but against this it did fine? Look this match is strange. The prediction percentage was high for Overwatch so I guess few people got confused or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Hoo boy. This was going to be the battle of the bad. On the one hand, GameFAQs hates the eSports scene. MOBAs get the brunt of their animosity because of what Draven did in 2013, but all of those types of games with teams and stuff are really not their thing. So the idea of Overwatch being worth anything was laughable. But its opponent was Death Stranding, a highly anticipated, recent game that had disappointed immensely. There was a topic on the board during this match titled "I thought it was popular....", that started thusly (emphasis added by me): Why, why must you lose Death Stranding. I haven’t played it, but **before it came out** people wouldn’t shut up about it. Well apparently it sucks. Yes, yes it does. Prerelease hype is possibly one of the *worst* predictors of contest strength ever. I hate to go back to the same examples over and over again but Lightning managed 36.14% on *Sonic the Hedgehog* while FFXIII was only out in Japan, then proceeded to get literally last place in a vote-in for Rivalry Rumble, failed to take advantage of Nintendo SFF to dispatch famed choker Donkey Kong in 2013, and only managed 34.38% on Dante in 2018 (which is admittedly probably more impressive than the loss to an LFFed Donkey Kong, but still looks bad compared to the Sonic match). Meanwhile FFXIII and its many sequels and spinoffs have yet to make a Games Contest, including this one. The fact that FFXIV, an *MMORPG*, is in this contest and FFXIII isn't is perhaps the biggest indictment of the game imaginable. So even though the idea of Overwatch having strength here was ridiculous, it was still expected to win this match, and it did, with an ease largely facilitated by the registered voters no less. Or maybe they were the ones rallying? This day clearly had a vote spike from the previous one. There hadn't been any talk of rallies, though, so it clearly wasn't evident enough to set off any red flags with the hypersensitive board. Surprisingly, it was this match, not the big upset that also occurred on this day, that knocked off the last remaining perfect bracket. We know this with 100% certainty because the last remaining perfect was a Guru. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7944&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Dragon Age: Inquisition vs (10)Ori and the Blind Forest 2020 _source: (7)Dragon Age: Inquisition vs (10)Ori and the Blind Forest 2020 (revid 86518)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 3, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 03, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ori and the Blind Forest - 39.05% 2 for - 64 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ori and the Blind Forest - 38.19% - **User Votes:** Dragon Age: Inquisition - 4283 Ori and the Blind Forest - 4646 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dragon Age: Inquisition - 3506 Ori and the Blind Forest - 3755 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. Ori and the Blind Forest pulled off an upset so unexpected that I went and bought it immediately upon seeing this match result. True story. This match was one of those types where it wasn't remotely as close as the final score would indicate, either. Dragon Age didn't even get the bracket votes, and Ori just sat there and boat raced this match en route to what I like to call a 52-48 blowout. This thing was never close and was never going to be, regardless of any periodic cuts or stalls Dragon Age made. I was frankly stunned into silence by this result, and didn't think Dragon Age would have a prayer of losing this. How many matches happened in this contest where a brand name video game demolished some indie darling? Hell, how many of the indie games this contest got to lose close? Two or three maybe? But once I did some digging to research points for this writeup, the reasons became clear. First off, people *hate* Dragon Age: Inquisition. Remember, this wasn't Dragon Age: Origins. Inquisition is the third game in the series, and the fanbase openly detests this game. It's apparently a very badly done game, too, with most Bioware honks rating it on the level of Mass Effect Andromeda. I wish I had looked that up pre-contest, because if this match was Andromeda vs Ori, I would have picked Ori without a second thought. More importantly than that is Ori having two huge breaks. One is that it got a Switch port in September 2019, four years after its initial release date on Steam. That will always help. Two and most importantly, this match happened on April 3rd, 2020. Ori and the Will of the Wisps launched on March 11th, 2020. Ori may have won this match with its own natural strength, we'll never know for sure, but these mid-contest game releases almost always help big time. It all added up to an incredible upset, with only two oracles and 18% of gurus picking Ori to win. This choke job by Inquisition had some people calling it the turd of the contest, but I don't agree with that. This was a one point upset, which in my world cannot ever be called a turd of the entire contest. Turd of the round maybe, but not an entire contest. The match didn't mean enough. Turd of the contest honors goes to Hideo Kojima. Oh wait, sorry, Kojima is just a hack who thinks toilet humor is funny and that bodily functions as weapons in a video game is a good idea and HYPER REALISM OMG. Can you imagine that trash in real life? It happens, you know. Antifa is known for putting bodily fluids in balloons, and there are idiots who think women shouldn't be allowed to arm themselves in self defense because if they're about to be assaulted they can just go to the bathroom on themselves or vomit. Yes, there are actually people dumb enough to think this. I'll bet Hideo Kojima helped come up with those ideas. Hey genius, it's called the second amendment and legal self defense. Use it. The *actual* turd of this contest is Fire Emblem. Speaking of. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of the most hilarious matches of the whole round. It was not the most exciting contest round to be fair, but this one still fully delivered. Almost no one saw this coming before the contest began. There were some gurus that went ahead with the upset, but it wasn’t a popular pick. Despite the success of indies so far, only two people had this in the oracle, and this match eliminated all but four remaining people in last man standing. The upset had been considered a bit during the contest, but we had seen indie games doing better than we expected them to, yet no one could really believe Ori was within striking distance in this match. Partly because Ori is from the middle of the decade and not from the last years, which seemed to be the best thing. Mostly because the match just wasn’t expected to be close. The match was close within the first five minutes, but that was a huge sign that we’d see an unexpected result. Ori was ahead at the freeze while being the underdog. The next update had everyone pretty excited, but it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Ori then jumped up quite a bit. It did the same thing the next update, and despite the match being close, it was never in doubt, and Ori never looked back. Dragon Age: Origins did pretty good in its Game of the Year poll and in the previous Game of the Decade. Nothing fantastic but enough to win a match like this for sure. It disappointed a bit against Super Mario Galaxy in 2015, but that was completely overshadowed by the fact that Super Metroid \> Super Mario Galaxy suddenly became the clear result. It also wasn’t enough to make much of it, but perhaps it was a small warning sign of decline. Dragon Age: Inquisition was never going to be as good as Origins, but man it’s still a hard fall. Ori and the Blind Forest was a for a while considered a contender for best indie game. It wasn’t initially, but this surprised us all enough for it to be. It should be mentioned that I think its status as an indie game is a bit in grey. It started out as that, but Microsoft backed them for three of their four years of development. It had a lot of exposure at E3 before release. Most indie games just hope to be included in some montage. It doesn’t make this result less impressive though! Dragon Age: Inquisition finished second in the 2014 Game of the Year polls behind only Smash 4. That means that judging from those, it should be the strongest 2014 representative in the contest. That means nothing though. 2014 is probably the worst year of the decade overall and I have a hard time seeing it beat Bravely Default or Bayonetta 2 today. Even South Park: The Stick of Truth looks to be within striking distance judging from this fourpack. It also obviously loses to Mario Kart 8, but they didn’t share a poll then. I don’t know exactly what happened to Dragon Age, but it apparently fell off a huge cliff, perhaps BioWare’s decline is all it took. Unless something big happens to that franchise, we should not have it coming back again. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have an indie game here...is what I would had say but Ori came out from Microsoft apparently! DAI was really big. People were dissapointed with DA2 but EA delivered with the 3rd game. At least this is my opinion. Most seem to think that the game wasn't good but for me it was amazing. It did really well with Critics and good with the fans, for critical reception I mea. As for Ori...it is a 2D platformer and is damn hard. It even got a sequel that came out few days before the match. I hear the game is pretty good but hate to say it I haven't heard for the series before the match. So for the match. DAI won and...Yeah okay Ori won. Here is the thing. I always get wrong matches in contests of course as everyone. In almost all of the ones that I get wrong I always think that maybe the other game/character can win. But not here. I didn't even gave a second thought. Sure DA isn't that popular now since DAI came out like 6 years ago but against a game that very few people have heard about? And DAI is an RPG too! Even the whole crew went with DAI here too. Is it possible the sequel that recently came out gave it a small boost that needed to beat DAI? DA series was never strong here, I mean we had the 1st game in a contest before and it lost to 1st round too. Another thing here is that DAI actually won a few hours too so the match ended pretty close at the end. For me a game/character that wins with less than 53% is pretty close so as you see here the match was pretty close but Ori was never in danger. Man sad to see that DA series doing that badly. And I heard that DA 4 will be big on microtransactions too so even worse when it comes out. ## Tsunami's Analysis I knew that Ori was at least somewhat popular among indies, but it was never going to stand a chance against a popular RPG series like Dragon Age...right? Well, let's take a look at the results: In the first GotD, Dragon Age: Origins piled up 69.21% on F-Zero GX in Round One (Oracle expectation: not quite 61%, with a few rogues picking GX to pull the upset outright) before pulling 31.13% in a loss to Twilight Princess. Now, if taken at face value, the 37.73% that Super Mario Galaxy pulled in on TP the following round suggests that DA:O would be able to break 45% on it, but of course SMG-TP is an SFF match so the adjustments suggest it's more like 41.25%. Actual result when the two games met in Round 1 in 2015: DA:O was held just under 36%. Origins also managed 30.32% in the final of the 2009 GotY, while Inquisition, the game in this match, also made the final vote in *its* GotY five years later and actually took second place (the 2009 final was close enough that 30.32% was actually third place out of three.) So by all indications, it's a strong series here. Probably. As such, just 17.61% of Gurus took Ori to pull the upset. "Oops." The casuals didn't exactly *embarrass* us on this one, but they clearly weren't as enamored of DA:I as we were; 37.68% of brackets had this match right. DA:I never led in this match, with the max lead for Ori coming about 3 hours from the end. But max leads are fairly meaningless in this contest, because with how low the votals are, there's barely any movement late in matches. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7945&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses vs (15)South Park: The Stick of Truth 2020 _source: (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses vs (15)South Park: The Stick of Truth 2020 (revid 86520)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 3, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 03, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 70.19% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 80.49% - **User Votes:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 6038 South Park: The Stick of Truth - 2889 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 4661 South Park: The Stick of Truth - 2600 Right from the jump, it was clear that Three Houses was in a *lot* of trouble in this contest. Stick of Truth is very comparable to Splatoon 2, and the comparison point between Xenoblade and Fire Emblem's performances was no contest. Xenoblade looked far, far better. Some people tried to claim Stick of Truth had respectable strength for various reasons, such as big name exposure and memes, but those same arguments apply to Splatoon 2. Fact is, Fire Emblem as a whole just laid a huge egg in this contest. In a vacuum this match was a simple doubling for the expected winner. When compared to future opponents... We'll get into this more in round 3, but here is the short version since I have to save *some* juice for later. On top of Fire Emblem just being the Tales series with slightly more strength -- overhyped every contest without ever winning anything of note -- Three Houses was always going to get doomed by anti-voting by weird Smash Bros fans. I talk a lot of junk about a lot of fanbases in these writeups, but let's make one thing perfectly clear. Tourneycrab Smash players are the absolute worst fanbase on this entire planet. I would rather spend time with literally *anyone* else. Unfortunately, there are a ton of these people and they are very, very pissed off at Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Adding anti-votes to a series that already has a tendency to choke is a recipe for napalm death. ## Ctes's Analysis The red flag was up when Awakening had its match, but on top of Xenoblade overperforming, Three Houses looked nothing like a division winner now. I mean, full respect for going for the exact doubling. The percentages are there, it was just a few votes away. That’s satisfying. It was an underperformance however and Three Houses needed the opposite of that to still be considered the favorite to make it out of round 3 when Xenoblade was looking so good in the other match. Everyone knows what South Park is. The games are also well-liked enough. They’re nothing big though, the seeding and the lack of the other one makes that clear. You should not believe it to be riding super high on the name alone, just because people know it. Everyone here knows Fire Emblem too so the forced voting shouldn’t make much of a difference. Three Houses had to hope that somehow South Park was significantly better than expected or that Xenoblade SFF’d Splatoon more than the already expected high amount. It didn’t seem great for it. This match was another loss for 2019. Every game from that year looked off, except for remake of a 1998 game, which has a clear explanation for being a possible exception. Perhaps we’re too slow to try out new games these days. That’s certainly not something that would surprise me. It’s also possible it was just a bad year, but relative to Resident Evil 2, the other things looked further away that the Game of the Year polls indicated. Perhaps Three Houses had some level of anti-votes behind it. The Smash Bros fanbase consists of some of the most whiny, greedy, and impatient people on the planet. Byleth, the main character of Three Houses, being revealed for Ultimate was not taken well among the fanbase. Fire Emblem had already been hated on for having too many representatives compared to what people thought it deserved and they’re also quite similar many of them. Then Byleth was the fifth character in a figthers pass that otherwise had only third party stuff. You can see where the disappointment comes from, but Smash fans don’t get disappointed, they riot. I think it’s entirely possible that Three Houses was anti-voted because of it, but it had to be a bit for it to make a difference in the Xenoblade match as things looked now. ## Safer777's Analysis So 2 RPG's here. Everyone knows about FE series. It almost got cancelled a few years ago and now it is bigger than ever. FE3H got universall acclaim from both critics and fans. I still haven't played it, but one of those days... As for SP...if you are a fan of the series you have to play that game. It is basically a long episode. The writing and the humor is exactly like the series. And it makes sense. I mean the writers of the show took part in the making of this game. So for the match. Well it was never in doubt. However I do believe SP did good here. Supposedly FE3H is damn strong since it was big when it came out and still is but it barely scored a doubling. The main character from FE3H got into Smash! Like almost every other FE main character it seems. If SP was vs another weak game it would have won for sure. But that is how things are. I am a huge SP fan. I still remember when a friend of mine brought the South Park movie on my house on 2000 and like 10 people were watching it and I couldn't believe what I saw. I mean they have stuff like this in USA that is for children? After that I managed to find the 1st season and I was hooked. I have been a fan almost 20 years now. And I still can't believe the show is going on! But once again I guess bad performance for FE3H unless you believe that SP is secretly strong. ## Tsunami's Analysis As if we needed more evidence that non-video game origins are no object for GameFAQs voters. This was a *horrible* result for Three Houses, which was seemingly a lot more well-loved in the fandom than Awakening or Fates even though it's probably even easier than those games. Seriously, this game still has a "Casual Mode" despite the fact that Divine Pulse makes it so that you can take the risks in Classic Mode that you wouldn't dream of taking in anything other than Casual Mode in any other game. I *think* I actually had to start tightening up my play at one point in my first playthrough because I was running low on (and eventually ran *out* of) charges, but I never had to reset to save a unit, and on NG+, you'll never even have to worry about running out of charges at any time. Which is fine for me, because I'm more of a story guy and replay for the completion of filling up the support logs (a fruitless task in the later games, though one I'd managed on both 7 and 8). In Awakening and Fates, that meant one playthrough on Classic Mode to prove myself capable and then all replays on Casual. In Three Houses, it's Classic Mode every time, because there's still pretty much no risk to doing so. And against South Park: The Stick of Truth (which is apparently also an RPG?), it...came up just seven votes shy of the doubling. Yeah, we'll just call it "a doubling", but that it was even close, let alone technically coming up just short, is embarrassing. And in the raw votes, it's not even close; FE3H polled at 67.64% among registered voters and 64.19% among unregistered. And yet, would that really affect anything? Three Houses was considered a massive favorite over Dragon Age: Inquisition, and it was even harder to imagine Ori and the Blind Forest pulling the upset. Awakening was expected to get 48.23% on Xenoblade based on their matches with DKC2 in 2015, so Three Houses barely has to be stronger than Awakening at all to win that (which it still should be just from being on the Switch, given this site's apparent anti-handheld bias). So, what, we're panicking about its chances against the P4G-RDR winner in Round 4? Were we favoring it there to begin with? \*checks\* ...Apparently not only is FE3H the Guru favorite there, but GTAV is the favorite over the P4G-RDR winner in *Round 3*, and there's enough of a split on that R2 match itself that *Xenoblade* is actually the \#3 choice to win this division, with P4G \#4 and RDR \#5. So either I'm going to be made a fool of, or I'm still in prime position in the Guru after all. (Unless it's Red Dead Redemption rather than Persona 4 Golden that knocks GTAV off, in which case I'm really screwed.) You know what, let's settle this once and for all. Back to the X-Stat calculator! - looks at outcome of hypothetical GTA5-P4 match in 2015\* ...Da fuq? Is this some type of weird trickery based on GTA5 being in the SMRPG quarter of the bracket? ...No, P4's considered the slight favorite over RDR, and RDR was in that quarter as well, albeit in Division 8 to GTA5's Division 7. Well now I feel silly, but come on, it's GTA. When has that ever been worth anything in Games Contests? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7946&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (16)Assassin's Creed Odyssey 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (16)Assassin's Creed Odyssey 2020 (revid 86521)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 4, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 04, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 76.65% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 92.23% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 7184 Assassin's Creed Odyssey - 1340 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5714 Assassin's Creed Odyssey - 1130 Well *this* was certainly an eye-opener. In these contests, it's all fun and cute to debate early round matches. They make things fun and I certainly wouldn't take that away from anyone. What actually matters are getting the late rounds right. We all knew Breath of the Wild was winning this contest, but there was a huge issue to solve in the bottom half of the bracket. Witcher 3, Skyrim, Pokemon HGSS, Mario Galaxy 2, Persona 5, Dark Souls, and even The Last of Us all had fair cases for making the final, though the prevailing opinion was that the second semifinal would be between Witcher 3 and Skyrim, with Skyrim as the favorite. Skyrim was the favorite because we have metadata on both games from 2015, and not only did Skyrim look like a shit-kicking badass that year, Witcher 3 lost to Metal Gear Solid 2. I know what eventually happened in this contest, but that is a real result. It actually happened. It led to Skyrim having a 60-40 advantage in those stats, and for Witcher to flip that around it needed all of the following to go right: -Netflix show boost -Switch port boost -"Respect" boost -Skyrim deboost because of people hating Bethesda -Skyrim having an overrated value due to being locked behind Undertale's value For those reasons, I picked Skyrim to beat Witcher 3 in the semis and make the final. I regretted that decision about 10 seconds into this match, because Witcher 3 was *clearly* a different animal in this contest as compared to 2015. It had over 85% early on and held steady for the entire match. Binding of Isaac Rebirth got 26% on Witcher 3 five years ago, just FYI. People make fun of the stats topic for making wild projections 5-10 minutes into a match, but we're usually *right* with those projections. Based on this match, the entire half of this bracket was done for. Holding Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which is arguably the most popular and well respected game in that series, to below 16% is just an absurd level of strength. The *one* hope the bottom half of this bracket had was the possibility of this being an SFF match. To that, I say *it doesn't matter* if this was an SFF match. The bottom half of the bracket was on notice either way. ## Ctes's Analysis The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was one of the most hyped returning contestants from the 2015 contest. The game has become a huge phenomenon, widely regarding as being one of the best games of the decade anywhere, which has only increased since release. In 2015 it did not look all that great, being a bit behind GTAV. You had to bank on it increasing from there to keep it far, and some did! Taking it as far as the finals. The Witcher 3 is also being remembered for the comment on the contest CD Projekt Red made when being contacted in a rally attempt. They didn’t notice it in time because of thanksgiving and would’ve liked to have been noticed further in advance so they could do something. That stuck with us. The Witcher 3 had some serious rally potential. Not that it would be needed today. Assassin’s Creed is way past its peak and Odyssey is easily the weakest of them to make the bracket. It was clear in 2015 that the franchise had fallen from grace by being trash in 2015. Ezio also looked way better in his debut than he did last time. They pumped out too many half-assed games too quickly and not even fans could keep up. I’ve never played past the Ezio trilogy personally and it wasn’t just because of lack of interest. One of the games would have to be seriously well received if I were to give it another go. I expected Assassin’s Creed to look absolutely terrible here. I remember when predicting percentage that I just kept going lower and lower on it and it just didn’t seem right. The serious doesn’t have many people caring about it any longer and I could see almost no one vote for it above The Witcher 3, one of the games that are always brought up anywhere when discussing Game of the Decade. Furthermore, Odyssey actually drew some inspiration from Witcher, causing them to be similar in some ways. The SFF hammer was in the hands of Geralt, and man, did it hit. Even if you expected anything Assassin’s Creed to be complete trash these days, this was a good performance. You could certainly be happy if you picked Witcher 3 to go far at this point. Though we still needed to see the other top finalist contenders in the bottom half. ## Safer777's Analysis The W3 is one of 2 games that can reach the finals, with the other beeing Skyrim. At least that is what we thought before the contest started. As for AC series you all know the series. This series had a game coming out every year but each game getting lower and lower sales so Ubisoft decided to stop making them for a while. So they decide to soft reboot the series with Origins and make them MUCH more combat oriented AND heavy loot based. Bassically they became action rpg's. With levels and all. I mean the previous games had combat and loot too but they never really matter. I mean you could just sneak around and kill everyone with 1 hit anyways. You can't really do that now though. As for the W3...Okay it is a game that basically every other open world action RPG compares it to see how it stands out to it. Yeah it is that good. It made the Witcher series REALLY popular and now everyone and their Magician Grandma knows it. I mean we even got a Witcher Netflix series and it was ACTUALLY good! And damn popular too! So yeah the Witcher series is everywhere now. So for the match. Well we have 2 action rpg open world games and of course the much popular one won. But it didn't simply won, it scored way too high. I didn't even expected to score above 77% myself and it scored more than 84%! Also the W3 is one of my favorite games of all time. BUT in this match I voted for ACO. Why? It takes place in Greece which is my country and barely any game take place there so I had to support it. I mean it was amazing to visit cities and landmarks that I recognize and have visited. For Americans that doesn't mean much since a lot of games take place in USA but it is different for me. So anyways W3 is DAMN popular now. I do believe thought that ACO could beat some indie games here. Which isn't saying much but hey. ## Tsunami's Analysis Way back when Assassin's Creed was a new series, it was a legitimate contender for being the rare new property that GameFAQs actually embraced. In 2008, Altair rode the Guru nomination to a highly advantageous bracket placement (the fourways didn't have proper seeds, but we're assuming he was like a 2-seed or something) and won his opening fourpack outright and advanced in second place out of Round 2. Come 2010, Assassin's Creed already had one sequel, and both Altair and Ezio got 2-seeds and made Round 2, where they ran into some very strong characters. Both those games made it into Game of the Decade, though the original needed to make it through a vote-in and got knocked out by MGS4 in Round 1; II got a 6-seed and reached R2 before losing to Wind Waker. Ezio also managed to have enough strength to get into Rivalry Rumble in 2011, somehow. He and Rodrigo Borgia were a 6-seed, which was the lowest seed possible without going through vote-ins; I have a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn't have fared so well in vote-ins. Come 2013, with the sequels piling up...Ezio *still* had enough popularity to get a 2-seed and had no trouble dispatching the 17 and 26 to reach R2, where he finished last behind L-Block and Auron. Altair, meanwhile, fell all the way to a 25-seed...which was not a bad place to be given that the 3-seed was reserved for "hyped newcomers who will inevitably flop". He took care of Shulk, the 3-seed in question, and Ratchet, then finished ahead of Lara Croft, former 1-seed, for second place behind, uh, Kefka. Yeah no one expected Kefka to be there but we all expected the winner of his R1 match to win in R2. Only in 2018, when Altair missed the field entirely and Ezio got fed to Zelda in Round 1, did either of the first two Assassin's Creed protagonists miss Round 2 of a Character Battle since their games' release! And yet, the interminable parade of sequels killed all buzz. This was a unanimous pick by the Gurus, and it was pretty close to unanimous with the casuals too--almost 91% got this right. Still, the degree to which ACO got owned was perhaps a bit concerning, even if a few Oracles did actually put in predictions that lopsided. After all, Assassin's Creed IV was favored in a match just two days after this! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7947&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Mass Effect 3 vs (9)Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty 2020 _source: (8)Mass Effect 3 vs (9)Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty 2020 (revid 86522)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 4, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 04, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 3 - 60.11% 57 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 3 - 64.54% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 3 - 5218 Starcraft II - 3305 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 3 - 4051 Starcraft II - 2793 This match was not hard to predict. We had already seen the varsity version of it five years ago: You're about to get your mind blown for a second straight Blizzard writeup -- I legitimately and truly enjoyed Starcraft 2. On my mother's ashes. I promise. My issue with it wasn't the game itself, but Blizzard's lying about it. Remember when they told us this would be three separate games, but only the first one would be full-priced and that the other two episodes would be relatable to an expansion pack? Yeah how'd that work out for you folks? There is a reason Wings of Liberty is what got in and not Heart of the Swarm or Legacy of the Void. I'm glad I have family that works for Blizzard that got me the games for free with the family discount, because I was not going to pay a penny to play any of them. But because of that, I got to enjoy a pretty good set of games. There were some flaws, namely too many maps being gimmicks instead of RTS campaigns, but I enjoyed most of it nonetheless. Heart of the Swarm was the weak spot, but the Zerg campaigns kind of sucked in the original too. The highlight for me was actually Wings of Liberty. My best friend's name is Jim, and to this day I'm always "daaaaaamn, Jimmy" when he's around. Tosh is great. Raynor is good. The little arcade game on the Hyperion was *really* fun. And with all that said, Starcraft 2 didn't deserve to be within a mile of winning this match. Mass Effect 3 is the better game with the better plot, the better gameplay, and even the better multiplayer. Yeah I said it. I am still, to this day, the \#1 Geth Trooper Soldier in the world. Every November 7th, I make sure to carry on the tradition by carrying a bunch of slugs through Platinums. This match goes a little deeper than just liking one game more than the other, though. I *love* Undertale, but Mass Effect 3 deserved better than to be its first casualty of the rally. It also gets unfairly dumped on for its ending and its sequel, when neither one is Mass Effect 3's fault. 99.9% of this game is A+, but because people are idiots they pretend the game is bad because of an ending. Screw EA for caving to these crybabies, too. Never give entitled brats what they want. I think I spent more time on Mass Effect 3 than the rest of the series combined, so seeing it get its redemption story was nice to see. I was shocked it was such a blowout, too. I figured the score would be similar to Mass Effect 2 v Starcraft, but I guess Starcraft 2 got run over by the Blizzard hate train. ## Ctes's Analysis If this match reminds you of another match, it’s probably the fantastic Starcraft vs. Mass Effect 2 from 2015. That one was quite the nail biter. Starcraft is known for delivering to good matches. Mass Effect 2 didn’t end up looking ahead of the other two Mass Effect games, but its loss against Metal Gear Solid 3 was all kinds of weird. Another issue is in that is how Mass Effect 3’s contest went. Mass Effect 3 is rather infamous for being second in the unadjusted x-stats of 2015. It was the game Undertale just managed a comeback against in round 1 and thus it’s buried under all sorts of weird stuff. I mean, if you believe that Mass Effect 3 is on that level, then this is an easy match and next round should be closer than most thought. Mass Effect 3 is one of the most controversial games this decade probably. It was initially disliked by many, but also cared a about by a great amount. The people complaining are always louder, so it might not be as bad as it seemed, but it still split the fanbase. DLC eventually fixed some the issues, but the damage had been done. Andromeda will always be the weak link now, but it also went into the forgotten realm. Everyone agreed it was awful. Mass Effect 3 is discussed more. The second game is the one that is remembered for being the best. In a contest called Game of the Decade, that will matter more than ever. It’ll never reach those highs. Then there’s Starcraft II. I don’t think anyone for a single second thought that it would be anywhere near the original one. The first has strength, but the second one was never that popular. It’s hurt more by any issues people might have with Blizzard today because it’s more recent. There is room for the difference between the Mass Effect games to be rather big and still have Mass Effect 3 win this match, so Mass Effect 3 was favored here with a good amount of certainty, just like the result shows it should. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have 2 games that I want to say some things about. ME3 was amazing for me. The first multiplayer game that I played online a LOT and made some friends and we played together and man it was amazing. I now can see why people like online games and playing with friends. The single story was amazing too. BUT. But! The ending of ME 3. Oh man. Now I know that it was impossible to put all our choices on an ending that most would like. I get that. But man when people finished the game and saw the ending...Okay I haven't seen more anger against a company. It was chaos. NOBODY was happy with the ending. Things were so bad that some people made a class action lawsuit against Bioware (or considering to do it, I can't quite figure it out). The point is that everyone was angry so Bioware made a DLC ending that was free. Yeah they tried to made a better ending due to angering fans! It made things much better at least, but of course a lot of people were still angry. So yeah. ME3 is known for this thing unfortunately. Still amazing for multiplayer with friends as I said though. As for S2...the first Starcraft game was big. Really big. Like BIG! Especially in Korea. It started getting tournaments in 2002 and man people that were taking part in these tournaments were celebrities. And not like the bad thing, the one that everyone respects and recognizes them. I mean the tournaments were on TV and there were HUGE crowds even so many years ago! I don't know why it happend but it did. As for S2...well it is popular but it came in 2010 which is more than 12 years after the first. So yeah. Also S1 was the ONLY 16 seed EVER in ALL contests that managed to beat a 1 seed in its very first match. We haven't seen this more than one time and we shall never seen it again because the seeding is much better and no rallies too. So for the match. Well ME3 would never lose since as I said S2 isnt' as popular as S1 plus we don't really core for exlusive PC games on this site anymore. Strange thing is that ME3 did better than predicted. People thought that even 57 would be high and it broke 60. So yeah. We don't care for PC games anymore as I said. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh, hey, sequel fight. That was a hotly contested battle, and the general consensus was that neither of these games were as popular as those games, even if the adjusted X-Stats say ME3 \> ME2--I have no idea how they came up with that, though, because I *think* the match against ME3 was the *only* one where we got to see what Undertale's unrallied strength looked like? Obviously the *raw* X-Stats have ME3 behind only Undertale, but that'd just be silly. ...Hm. Well that's disturbing. It turns out I remembered wrong, and we did get to see unrallied Undertale for quite a bit of the match against Fallout 3 in Round 2 (in fact, Fallout 3's peak lead came more than 13 hours in, which is especially scary given that it fell more than 2500 short of Undertale's winning margin). And of course, it's fun to note how even though Undertale was continuing to win updates by large raw amounts right up until the end, the *total* votes in the late updates aren't really any higher than in a lot of the early updates where FO3 was winning (though given how the updates usually get quite a bit *smaller*, the fact that they're of similar size is still the rallies' fault). Kind of lends some credence to what Allen said about the Link-Draven match, that people could always come back and vote later. But what's disturbing is that there, uh...was kind of a blip in that poll, too. Nothing prolonged like what happened in Link-Draven, but if you look at the updater, there's a single update where Fallout 3 won *4-0*. For a second I thought that the updater had accidentally taken a double, since the seconds on the two updates are different, but it's actually the later update that has the earlier seconds reading--they're 4:59 apart, not 5:01. ...Or maybe not. It took a second update a mere minute later and that showed a more normal amount of votes. But then why did it show any change in votes at all? Strange. Must've just been a hiccup in the counting software. But back on topic. Presumably based on the pre-rallying ME3-UT and FO3-UT values, ME3 was in fact supposed to get 51.92% on ME2 based on 2015. ME2, in turn, got 51.12% on StarCraft in a match where both sides were rallying. So this was a fairly obvious result and I feel silly for thinking it could be close even though I got it right. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7948&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Stardew Valley vs (12)Destiny 2020 _source: (5)Stardew Valley vs (12)Destiny 2020 (revid 86524)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 4, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 04, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Stardew Valley - 65.62% 57 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Stardew Valley - 68.26% - **User Votes:** Stardew Valley - 6123 Destiny - 2400 - **Anonymous Votes:** Stardew Valley - 4752 Destiny - 2092 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Stardew Valley, however, arguably looked better than any other indie game in all of round one. If I'm not mistaken, it scored the biggest blowout of all the round one indie performances, which is rather impressive given all the fodder in this field. I get that its opponent was Destiny, which is quite possibly the most hated game in the history of this web site, but still. An indie title going 71-29 over a AAA main line game is a crazy result, no matter what the big name game is. This was reminiscent of Florida Gulf Coast destroying Georgetown. The game was as unknown as could be when it first came out, but now look at it. Personally I think Stardew Valley is garbage and I couldn't wait for Mario Galaxy 2 to rip it in half, but I can still respect the hustle. I also think Destiny is even *more* garbage, so it's not like the wrong game won. For anyone who cares, I don't like these games like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, The Sims, Sim City, Minecraft, et al where there is no goal besides farm, craft, build, repeat. Farm, craft, build, repeat. Farm, craft, build, repeat. These are the kinds of games non-gamers play, and they barely count as video games. Still better than Destiny, though! ## Ctes's Analysis This match went as basically every one of us expected it to, but it was still able to fuel the indie fear since Stardew Valley did better than most people expected it to do. In that regard, Destiny is the perfect opponent. It’s bad and it was also in the previous contest where it was killed by Starcraft worse than it got killed today. If you expect some kind of SFF in that match, then Stardew Valley looks really good here. Not that in would matter much because Stardew Valley was never going to beat Super Mario Galaxy 2 regardless of how well it did this match. Destiny has every reason to decline, of course. Our site has never been too huge on multiplayer games like this one but even less than we used to. Five years is a lot of time. You should expect things to change quite a bit between then and now. It makes it harder to compare and to predict, which has its ups and down for contest nerds. It’s easy to see how much things can change in that time by looking at the character battles of 2002 and 2007. Or looked at 2004 and 2005 and see how much one year can do. If you’re declining by each passing day, then five years can make you decline a lot. Not to take any credit from Stardew Valley. It looks good here, and it’s probably one of the actual strongest indie games with the exposure and popularity it has had. It just wasn’t in any position to take advantage of it itself. On the other side of contest, however, I think it’s pretty clear that the main reason Stardew Valley went over 70% was Destiny and not itself. It’s a shame we have so many fewer brackets these days. Almost everyone that makes one has some contest knowledge. I don’t think there’s much of a chance that Sardew Valley would be the favorite with the activity in these we had a decade ago. On Board 8 it would, of course, but this is a clear casual trap. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have another indie game here. But this indie game has one of the biggest communities ever. The game is just a slice of life game. So many things to do and there are like a million mods for it. It is basically like an animal crossing game. Meaning there isn't a single goal or a big bad or something. You just play, relax, and have fun. And do things at your own pace too. So really good game and so many people like it. On the other hand we have Destiny. Seriously. Who keeps nominating Destiny and its characters? Yeah we had a Destiny character on the previous Characters Contest too. So nothing bad nominating characters and games you like BUT even the people that play Destiny don't like like it much! At least when it first came out. So yeah who exactly nominated it? Was it a trollish attempt or something? I just don't get it. So for the match. Well we have an indie game that is beloved against a game that almost nobody likes. So what did you expected? SV dominated. So people stop nominating bad games/ characters. At least the other games we have seen so far had something going on for them. Destiny has nothing. Let it go. Just let it go! ## Tsunami's Analysis Another match that everyone seemed to know the winner, but no one really felt comfortable about it. Stardew Valley was yet another indie game, and even though it is technically an RPG, the game series it's most commonly compared to is *Harvest Moon*. Actual Harvest Moon, not its RPG spinoff Rune Factory. Destiny, however, is neither Japanese nor an RPG. It is in fact made by Bungie, best known for notorious contest disappointment Halo. Destiny *had* been in a contest before, in 2015, where it lost in Round 1 getting 25.51% on...StarCraft. (Oracle expectation: 39.85%) Well, that certainly provides a good comparison for Round 3! Based on the 2015 X-Stats, however they were calculated, ME3 would be expected to get 76.02% on Destiny. Stardew Valley got 71.17%. So that comes out to...Stardew Valley being worth 48.35% on ME3? That seems awfully strange, but okay! (Far more likely that Destiny has fallen off a lot more than ME3 has; I wouldn't even really be surprised if ME3 had been vindicated by time somewhat, either because those who didn't get it *right away* only know the revised version or because the even *more* hated Mass Effect: Andromeda has lessened the hatred towards 3.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7949&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs (13)Return of the Obra Dinn 2020 _source: (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs (13)Return of the Obra Dinn 2020 (revid 86525)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 4, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 04, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 82.66% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 95.45% - **User Votes:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 7474 Return of the Obra Dinn - 1049 - **Anonymous Votes:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 5896 Return of the Obra Dinn - 949 Can someone explain to me how in the name of all that is good Mario Galaxy 2 only got a 4 seed? The same applies to Obra Dinn, which clearly should have been a 16. This entire match was a mis-seeded bork. The biggest blowout of an entire contest usually goes to a Nintendo entrant, and this contest was no exception. It was so weird seeing it from a 4 seed, though. There was a small portion of this match where it looked like Mario might flirt with 90%, of all numbers, but he eventually settled at "only" scoring 87. This wasn't a blowout on the same level as what Tanner, AiAi, Cave Story, or Ms. Pac-Man have had to deal with, but it was a legendary blowout nonetheless. So much so that I can update this list! That's one of my favorite lists to keep updating in these PCAs. Watching an insane blowout is almost as fun as watching BAH GAWD IT'S A SLOBBERKNOCKER. It still meant nothing for the looming Witcher 3 vs Galaxy 2 match, either. Some folks picked Galaxy 2 in "Nintendo always wins" crusade, which I can understand, but what Mario did to Obra Dinn here just isn't comparable to Witcher 3 aethering Assassin's Creed Odyssey. People actually know what Assassin's Creed Odyssey is. ## Ctes's Analysis It makes me happy that Super Mario Galaxy 2 would become the game to score the highest percentage in round 1 of the contest and also among the best ever! It speaks volumes about Return of the Obra Dinn, and we’ll get there, but it also says something about the Mario franchise. You basically have to have played and enjoyed Obra Dinn to vote for it here. More than Galaxy 2 even. With the forced voting and with the Game of the Decade title in mind, almost no one will not just vote for one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. Mario games are perfect at taking advantage of that system and Obra Dinn it not the type of game that stands out among picture of eight games, which might save something like Baba is You from dying as badly as it might have had. Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks good here, though it’s hard to make much of it when Obra Dinn is easily at the bottom of the games in the bracket. Unfortunately for Galaxy 2, it was in no position to make much use of any gained strength. It was never losing before round 3, and while a few looked at the chance of upsetting The Witcher 3 or just feared a Nintendo game would go berserk in the part of the bracket that had otherwise tried to avoid Nintendo dominance, just like Super Mario RPG did last games contest. At the same time as this match, however, we had The Witcher 3 doing almost as badly on a game people actually know what is. Even with potential SFF in that match, Galaxy 2 did not look to be on that level. ## Safer777's Analysis So here is the thing. SMG2 lost on the previous game contest against Mass Effect? I don't believe it. I thought people were made a mistake but no, it is actually true. I don't understand why. Sure ME was more popular back then but the SMG games are so popular with fans and critics. They both have 97% on Metacritic which is amazing for 2 games of the same series. As for ROTOD...It is an indie game and once again I do wonder how it got in, while other games like Pokemon Go didn't. So for the match. Slaughter of course. Remember when I said that Skyrim of Witcher 3 would reach the final match? After this performance SMG 2 is a contender too. I mean we all knew that it would win but this high? Highest win of the contest too! Yeah it dominated. I know that ROTOD is damn weak but still this is amazing performance. Well we shall see I guess. ## Tsunami's Analysis Just when you thought the vote totals couldn't get any worse... I'm fairly certain that that's a record low for votes in a 1v1 Games or Characters contest, even *with* the registered voter bonus. The Years Contest had a lot of first-round blowouts where even the raw figures for Return of the Obra Dinn were higher than the loser's vote total, but it's certainly worse than anything else this year or from 2018, including Draven getting hatestomped. Though at least the unregistered voters alone gave it more votes than Chester got in 2013. Honestly once you add in the registered vote bonus this isn't all that far off Chester's total for the end-of-round-1 "Worst of the Worst" bonus match. It's impossible not to look at the raw totals for this match and *not* think of the Years Contest, though, because Return of the Obra Dinn literally got 1998 votes before adding in the registered voter bonus. So now we were left to determine whether 87.25% on Return of the Obra Dinn was as impressive as 84.07% on Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. It doesn't seem like it should be, even if it was the biggest blowout of the contest so far by percentage. The biggest by total votes, though, was Super Mario Odyssey, so Galaxy 2 doing this as well...well, it was easy to think that Mario was just going to be a beast this contest. Hopefully Round 2 would give us a better handle on what to expect for the big SMG2-W3 matchup. Or, wait, is that even right? That was the foregone conclusion, but I can't help feeling that there's something in the way... After all, SMG2 narrowly lost to Mass Effect *1* in 2015. If The Witcher 3-Super Mario Galaxy 2 is supposed to be a close match, shouldn't Witcher 3 have trouble with ME3? ...Huh. The Witcher 3 did better in defeat than I remembered. Still, it does seem odd that The Witcher 3 is a unanimous Guru pick to reach R3 when the 2015 X-Stats say that it's only expected to beat Mass Effect 3 with 51.74%. What's SMG2's expected percentage against ME3? ...51.58%. Holy crap. The X-Stats have The Witcher 3 winning with just *50.16%* of the vote against Super Mario Galaxy 2. There are so many things that can change in five years. And yet Witcher 3 is more than a 5-to-1 favorite on the Guru (along with a sole Guru taking Stardew Valley to upset both of them--one of only three to even take Stardew Valley to upset SMG2.) Bring it on. (Even though I absolutely *hate* that I picked a game I hate to go so far.) Love the idea of such a close match. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7950&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (14)The Stanley Parable 2020 _source: (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (14)The Stanley Parable 2020 (revid 86527)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout: New Vegas - 78.05% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout: New Vegas - 91.38% - **User Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 6533 The Stanley Parable - 1665 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 5172 The Stanley Parable - 1403 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. The Stanley Parable was one of the many, many, many games in this contest that functioned as early round fodder for the heavy hitters, because the two per series cap meant for some incredibly obscure entrants. I will say though that I looked into every game at least a little bit to prep for these writeups, and The Stanley Parable legitimately looks interesting. The preview makes it look like Portal: The Office Version, and it even looks like it was done in whatever engine Half-Life 2 was made on. I might check it out at some point. It was also up against Fallout: New Vegas, meaning it had zero chance whatsoever and functioned as a standard happy-to-be-here low seed. If we pretend Octopath Traveler and Mario Kart 8 never happened, and that match against Undertale was a very special case, did you know the lowest seed to win a match in this contest was 10? It's true. Look it up. We only had two major seeding upsets this year. There was some minor debate surrounding New Vegas vs Dark Souls 3 in round 2, but that was put to bed fairly quickly when the round 1 results came in. New Vegas was the clear favorite, as it should have been. Dark Souls 3 happened long after that series jumped the shark (it came after Bloodborne, which is just the better game in every single possible way, so Dark Souls 3 felt like a step backwards), while New Vegas is often described by Fallout fans as being the *real* Fallout 4. Those people absolutely loathe Bethesda, Fallout 4, and obviously Fallout 76 -- but New Vegas, they're all in on. It showed with how well it did in this contest. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of the most straight forward matches of the entire round and that says a lot. The Stanley Parable had basically no matches it could win and is just happy to be here. It’s cool that something can go from being a mod in Half-Life 2 to being remade for a release as its own game and get representation in a contest like this. The contest was perfect for shining light on things like that, even though getting blown out in round 1 means we quickly forgot about them again, particularly when there’s eight games up on the game day and just one of the matches is interesting. Something worth noting about this match is that Fallout: New Vegas also didn’t appear to be much hurt from people thinking less of Bethesda than they used to. It’s hard to make much of it when against something like The Stanley Parable, but it was still good news for the many people taking Skyrim far. Or at the very least it meant no additional reason to worry. However, a bunch of people theorized that New Vegas might simply be immune to a backlash. It’s older and doesn’t have the issues that generally caused the criticism and most importantly it was only published by Bethesda and not actually developed by them. Regardless, it would remain the favorite in its round 2 match, just like it was before the contest. ## Safer777's Analysis So another Fallout game here. It is considered the best Fallout game that came out since the reboot in 2008 though and it faced an indie game. SP was amazing with it's clever writing but basically it is a walking simulator. Still it has a hilarious narrator and deserve a playthrough but these kind of games just don't impress me. So yeah. So for the match. Well I am dissapointed that FNV didn't even managed to break 80% here. And no, don't tell me that SP haw power. Seriously. But maybe I am overthinking this. I mean almost 80% has to be amazing right? Yeah that is probably it. So obviously really easy match to predict and nothing else to say. You can't judge game powers vs weak indie games. ## Tsunami's Analysis Having 4 matches per day is great, because it allows the boring Round 1 matches to be cleared out of the way quickly. And this contest had no shortage of those. Through ten days of the contest, there had been a grand total of *two* lead changes after the freeze. Undertale managed to make it to the freeze with a 5 vote lead and increased it to 7 at the next update before falling behind for good, and Walking Dead came out so on fire that its max recorded lead was *before* the freeze (64, compared to the 55 it had at the freeze) and managed slight gains over the next two updates before Bastion took the lead for good at the 40-minute mark. That's it. Even Ori and the Blind Forest, which had a smaller maximum lead than Bastion, never trailed. Honestly, in the absence of rallies, we're probably going to see this in every match. Fallout: New Vegas was considered by many to be a disappointment, yet it was still better than a 3 to 1 favorite among Gurus for Round 2. Given what we'd seen all contest, this was probably cause for concern. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7951&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Dark Souls III vs (11)Dishonored 2020 _source: (6)Dark Souls III vs (11)Dishonored 2020 (revid 88341)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls III - 66.31% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls III - 85.88% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls III - 5893 Dishonored - 2305 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls III - 4271 Dishonored - 2299 This was one of the many early round blowouts we had in this contest, and it was never going to be anything other than an easy win for Dark Souls 3. One thing of note here is that while Dishonored doesn't feel like a Board 8 type of game, the forum actually loves it. I don't know why or how, but it does. It's a welcome change of pace! Speaking of changes of pace, From Software really botched it (the pace, I mean) with Dark Souls 3. The game is not bad by any stretch, but you can't go backwards after Bloodborne and go back to playing as a piddling character in molasses whose every action takes 45 seconds. I want to dance around like Demyx's water, not actually feel like I'm fighting underwater. The shame of it is the design of 3 has some of the coolest areas and bosses in the entire series, but by this point it's on the ever so slight downswing. From Software recognizes this, too, so it was clear by the lore than Dark Souls 3 is the last one. The formula, at least for this character speed, is played out. Thankfully, From Software announced The Elden Ring, which is as clear and obvious a paradigm shift as we'll get. From Software, arguably the best game designers we've ever had (outside of their garbage camera systems, which somehow has not improved in *six games*), is making an open world game with all of these templates -- Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, among several other A+ titles -- to draw from. To say I'm hyped is an understatement. If we still have these contests in 2030, The Elden Ring has the potential to be top 5 in those x-stats. Maybe even number one. ## Ctes's Analysis The Souls franchise including Bloodborne and so on was certainly one of them most interesting this contest and of the decade. The first Dark Souls is widely respected as being one of the most influencing games this past decade and it’s easily the most popular of the three Dark Souls games too. The difference between them in contest strength appears greater than the difference in how much the fanbase likes them, but that can be contributed mostly to the original Dark Souls being the most influencing one. Dark Souls III being the second one of them to make the contest probably didn’t surprise anyone. The second one is the least popular one by a decent margin. Dark Souls III was mostly expected to win in this match and then lose the next match, but it had an outside shot of doing better than that. Bloodborne looked a lot better than last time, maybe Dark Souls III would be stronger than we thought. Dark Souls III did just about what you would expect of it. Dishonored is past its peak and will probably slowly be forgotten, while Dark Souls is still talked about a lot. Dishonored didn’t even make the bracket in 2015, where it more relevant. It just didn’t really do anything groundbreaking and while being a fine game for most part, it was overshadowed. It managed to hold Dark Souls III down enough for New Vegas to remain the favorite in the next round, of that’s any achievement. ## Safer777's Analysis So Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of the Dark Souls series! Yeah I am kidding. DS is a series that is really good and DAMN hard and it's name became synonymous with hard games from other series. For example Cuphead is the Dark Souls of Platform games and such. So yeah DS series is really popular and of course made popular the get good meme. Dishonored is a cool game. I have played it. It is a stealth game but you have cool powers to use too and cause mayhem. The sequel isn't as good as the original strangely enough. Still DS 3 is the worst of all DS games so I don't understand why this got in, and not the 2nd game. So for the match. Well Dishonored is damn weak as everyone expected. I also think that DS3 isn't as well liked by its fans as the previous 2 games. But still name recognition and a weak opponent and it made it score a big victory too. ## Tsunami's Analysis We'd seen Sekiro do well, and Bayonetta overperform on ALBW, and DMC5 "upset" DKC:TF. And now, we had an actual Dark Souls game. And it did...quite well! It doesn't look that way based on percentages, but with votals so low, the difference between winning with 69.93% and 79.40% is only a little more than 2000 votes. And to me, almost 70% on Dishonored *does* in fact feel more impressive than 79.4% on The Stanley Parable. The Stanley Parable is described as an "interactive drama and walking simulator". In other words, it should be utter fodder. Failing to break 80% on it is not great, though coming that close isn't bad, either. FO:NV is a game that was in 2015, where it got almost 56% on BioShock Infinite in R1 and almost 42% on RE4 in R2. So, not bad. But let's look at Dishonored. We don't have any Games Contest results to work from, but in GotY for 2012, when Allen decided to switch from polling by system to polling by genre, it came in second place in "Action/Adventure Game", still well behind poll winner Assassin's Creed III, but well ahead of third place and in fact *exactly* doubling up 4th place (in a 10-option poll). We also do have a Character Battle result to look at! Corvo Attano, the main character of Dishonored, made CBIX as a 15-seed. He was blown out by 4-seed Pokémon Trainer Red, but nevertheless managed to just barely double 24-seed Sissel, the protagonist of another game in this bracket, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. Now, there's no good way to figure out the relationship between character battle strength and game strength, but a doubling is a doubling even if it's, to round off, about a 70-20-10 threeway. This is a good performance by Dark Souls III, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see it pull the upset next round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7952&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth vs (10)Nioh 2020 _source: (7)The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth vs (10)Nioh 2020 (revid 86529)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Nioh - 44.89% 10 for - 50 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Nioh - 44.12% - **User Votes:** The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - 3633 Nioh - 4565 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - 2715 Nioh - 3857 The oracle, guru, board, and casuals all got this one hilariously wrong, but Isaac seemed like the obvious pick so who can blame any of us? Nioh, despite having very good sales, feels like it got lost in the shuffle of all the Souls clones that happened in the latter half of the decade. There's also the matter of the Souls games not exactly lighting the world on fire in these contests before this year. Demon's Souls choked in 2010 and got its ass whipped in 2015. Dark Souls won two matches, then failed to break 30% the second it faced legitimate competition. Not only that, but Isaac was guaranteed to have a *huge* picture advantage, and Nioh itself is the bastard stepchild of a bastard stepchild. No-brainer pick, right? *That*, ladies and gentlemen, *is why they **play the games**!* Isaac had a small lead early thanks to bracket votes, and was only losing by 9 at the freeze, but then after a small stall Nioh utterly destroyed The Binding of Isaac for 23 and a half hours. It was a blowout win so unexpected that it had people looking for answers, but thankfully that's part of why I do what I do! People clearly did not respect Nioh's sales numbers when making their brackets, and many people also didn't expect the Souls series to have such insane respect in this contest due to the contest's title. I've mentioned this a few times, but our voters are very astute. "Game of the Decade" means something to them. When you put an irrelevant video game up against a well respected Souls clone, it's a wonder any of us picked against the Souls clone. But there is another point that a lot of us keep forgetting to factor in when making brackets, but I suspect that won't be an issue moving forward with how I keep bringing it up in these writeups. This match happened on April 5th. Nioh 2 came out on March 13th. These mid-contest game releases are a *huge* deal, because they almost always cause these massively inflated performances in polling. Nioh likely would have won this match either way, but without a mid-contest sequel this likely would have been a 53-47 type of match. *With* a mid-contest sequel, you get what we have here. To date as of this writing, Nioh 2 has over a million in sales. The right game won, too. If you read my review you'll see a 4/10 score and me ratting off a bunch of flaws, but I can still be in love with an average video game. For all that Nioh does wrong, and it botches a *lot* of things, the things it does well are truly special. One such thing is the soundtrack. Check this specific track out, which is nothing short of mesmerizing. I'm not one of those people that likes to look at a thesaurus and invent new phrases when discussing music, like those idiots at Pitchfork are known for, but one comment on that video says this theme is hauntingly feminine and beautiful. Couldn't agree more. It's a huge reason I'm happy Nioh won, despite not picking it. It deserved this. ## Ctes's Analysis Here’s the match that got all the attention today. We had seen indie games being good so far and Binding of Isaac was already the favorite to win before the contest started. At this point, not many kept their faith in Nioh. In fact, people generally thought Binding of Isaac would win rather easily. Nioh had about a third of the gurus supporting it and about a sixth of the oracles. Yet it won, and it won rather easily, giving life to what was otherwise a pretty boring division so far. Neither Binding of Isaac or Nioh looked very great in their Game of the Year polls and the former got just 25% against 2015-Witcher 3 in the previous games contest. They both looked to be bad and not far from each other. The top option is usually a good choice in such cases. If anyone considered it, Binding of Isaac could also stand out like a sore thumb today. The fatal mistake here was probably to underestimate just how good 2017 is. Nioh was up against Persona 5, Horizon and Automata, which are all huge. It was the first real sign of how good anything that year was. Resident Evil 7 came first, but it wasn’t truly given credit before the next round happened. Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey dominated, but were also both expected to, and Hollow Knight wasn’t as big back then as it became. Nioh made the upset though. The match was exciting in the beginning. Binding of Isaac won the board vote and they were dead even in the opening minutes causing all of us to work our f5 keys. In those minutes, you should feel best as a Nioh supporter. Most indie games had started of strong and stabilized throughout the match. We also knew Binding of Isaac was the favorite and had most bracket votes. At the freeze, the difference was only a 9-vote lead for Nioh. It extended that to 40 next update, which basically sealed the deal. Binding of Isaac stalled for two updates giving hope to some supporters, but the board vote is not just the opening five minutes, it’s the first 15 or 20. It’s usually from that point the board opinion loses influence and true enough, Nioh went from 48 to 122 and never looked back again, being a few votes away from a 3000-vote lead by the end. This was hugely unexpected after all the indie dominance, but it gave more life to the idea that perhaps indie games from the first half of the decade would not be as strong as the ones from the latter half. Furthermore, with Bloodborne looking good and people generally having high expectations for Dark Souls, credit was also given to Nioh for simply just being better than we thought. No one had the idea yet that indie games just weren’t quite at the level we made them to be on average, or that you can’t really group them as much as we like to do. ## Safer777's Analysis So in this match the whole crew got the match wrong as most of Board 8 too. And it is easy to see why. A really popular indie game vs a game that is damn hard and new too and we don't really care for these games here. TBOIR was in the previous contest too and of course got crashed there. But it had a much stronger opponent there too. Nioh is one of these get good games and maybe the hardest of them all. It is hard for sure but yeah you have to be really patient to play it and beat it. So for the match. Well Nioh won relativy easy. So why? I do believe that even though these 2 games are weak the sequel for Nioh came out a few days before the match and people say it is as good if not better than the original. So it gave it the slight push to beat the indie game. And TBOIR seems that isn't as popular as we thought. Eh. The prediction percentage wasn't as low as I thought though. ## Tsunami's Analysis Nioh was a contest newcomer, an action RPG (good thing for this contest) made by Team Ninja (maybe not so good? This is a very Nintendo-centric board and a lot of Nintendo fans are probably still mad about *Metroid: Other M*) with a sequel (actually prequel, but its name is "Nioh 2") that was released not even two weeks before this match (always a good thing, but imagine how high it could've gone if the start of the contest hadn't been delayed!). Binding of Isaac: Rebirth had made the 2015 Contest as a 14-seed and proceeded to come up against one of the few things against which the "older = better" would've actually worked in its favor, which along with the fact that it was from a series I'd actually heard of, I initially entertained it as a possibility for our requisite 14-3 upset (3-seeds always tend to be hyped newcomers that inevitably flop; Allen even made a joke out of it in CBIX and of course a 3-seed won it all). Mercifully I was successfully talked out of that; *The Witcher 3* nearly tripled it. But "familiar" usually trumps "unfamiliar", so even though the only contest experience BoI had was being weak (the protagonist also made CBIX as an 18-seed, but that meant an immediate date with a Noble Niner), the fact that it had any experience at all made it a favorite on Board 8, at a little better than 2-1 on the Guru and *5-1* on Oracle predictions, including at least one person who said straight-out in the Oracle Discussion Topic that they had Nioh in their bracket but their bracket was trash anyway so they were hoping that it was their Oracle pick of BoI:R that was correct. The casuals? Well, they were upset, too, but not nearly as badly as the Gurus. 43.53% of brackets had this match correct, so while they too were ultimately wrong more than they were right, they correctly saw this as a debatable match. And let's face it, winning with 56.53% qualifies as "close" in this contest. I'm honestly not even sure why I'm still making Oracle predictions under 55%; I suspect it's to mitigate disaster when I know I'm picking against the majority. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7953&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)God of War vs (15)The Talos Principle 2020 _source: (2)God of War vs (15)The Talos Principle 2020 (revid 86530)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** God of War - 83.02% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** God of War - 96.10% - **User Votes:** God of War - 6943 The Talos Principle - 1255 - **Anonymous Votes:** God of War - 5618 The Talos Principle - 954 Some indie games looked alright this contest. Most did not. The Tales Principle was another in the long line of low seeded indie darlings that existed simply to get their asses whipped by the heavy hitters. Allen almost did *too* good of a job with the seeding this year, but it is what it is. Contests with 128 entrants have a lot of early round blah to get through. New rule. Two video games can't have the same exact name. No more "Doom" meaning two things. No more "Resident Evil 2" meaning two things. No more "God of War" meaning two things. None of it. It's a stupid, lazy, cheap marketing ploy to get sales. That said, God of War is an all-time *amazing* video game and one of the best paradigm shifts in gaming history. It really is. I know a lot of you don't like hack-n-slash, and that's fine! You do you. God of War 2018 is not hack-n-slash. It's an open world adventure of sorts. It was out for blood this contest, too. Sort of. This match had a lot to do with Talos Principle being a complete unknown, because Kratos isn't the type of dude to score 85% blowouts in these things and we all knew he was no threat to actually win the division. Witcher 3 or Mario Galaxy 2 would make sure of that. It's a shame this site doesn't really care about God of War, because these games deserve to do a lot better than they ultimately do. Kratos has a phenomenal character arc ongoing, too. I've played every game in this series, and God of War 2018 is the best one by quite a lot. If you only ever play one God of War game, this is the one to play. Scout's honor. ## Ctes's Analysis God of War was hyped to be something that could upset some \#1 seeds before the contest. The game was very well received, and it got very close to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the final Game of the Year poll of 2018, a poll that people like to being up more often that it probably should be, but nevertheless served to hype God of War quite a bit. God of War was however put in division of The Witcher 3, which had the potential to be the worst one you could draw other than of course Breath of the Wild. God of War did its best to live up to its hype, by almost cracking 85%, something that is never a bad result. It was against The Talos Principle, which is one of the weakest games of the bracket, but again, getting a percentage among the best of the contest isn’t bad. This match didn’t make its chances of living up to the hype worse. The problem was that The Witcher 3 did almost just as well on Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and while those two are more similar, Assassin’s Creed is also a much bigger name than The Talos Principle. God of War looked to be in a very similar situation to Super Mario Galaxy 2, which also demolished fodder but looked right ahead at The Witcher 3. The chances of God of War making it out of the division were not looking great. The Talos Principle is just happy to be the contest. It’s one of the most obscure games in the bracket, but perhaps being ported to consoles in recent years gave it just enough exposure to make it in. It probably needed to be against something unknown or something that gets anti-voted if it were to do better than this. Considering it’s a \#15 seed, only the latter seems possible, so I guess Three Houses was its best bet? Or The Last of Us if the leaks of the second game had emerged earlier? It’s a fun game if you’re into puzzle stuff, so hopefully its contest showing made some play it that had not already. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have GOW here. No not the one from 2005, the one from 2018. Why they couldn't add something to the sequel to differentiate it from the first game in the series I am not sure. GOW is excellent. Very different from the original trilogy too. The original trilogy was linear action adventure without character development and such. Kratos was always angry and was killing everything on sight. But GOW changed all that. We even moved from Ancient Greece to Ancient Scandinavia! Makes sense since Kratos killed all major Greek Gods so we had to change scenery! But man this game is huge with a lot of stuff to do, random loot, side bosses, side quests,amazing character development, exploration and optional areas and so much more. Seriously if you haven't played the game just play it. It is way too good. Deserves the GOTD title too. Also NO stupid DLC and Microtransactions. Just a huge Single Player game with a ton of stuff to do as you know were a ton of games a few years ago before companies became greedy? As for TP...it is a walking simulator? Yeah I don't know anything about that. So for the match. Okay the only question was how much GOW would win. And it won with really high percentage. Almost 85%. So yeah amazing performance. I do believe it is the strongest Sony exlusive game. But it is the strongest Western game here? Probably not but well we shall see. ## Tsunami's Analysis I really don't want to talk about this match. No, seriously, I *really* don't want to talk about this. I got this right in Guru, of course. Everyone did. And at 96.1%, it was second only to Breath of the Wild in prediction percentage among the casuals, too. Was I under some delusion that God of War was no longer popular here? Did I accidentally mistake the Talos Principle for something that might have anything remotely resembling strength? Or was I just not paying attention?! Because honestly, there is no good excuse for being more than *10 points* behind the second-worst Oracle prediction when you're not predicting an upset or even a threat of one. This match has single-handedly convinced me to start keeping tabs on what I put into Oracle for every match and adjusting them if I think I messed up. Predicting ***61%*** for a match where the actual winning percentage was nearly 85% can do that to a guy. Even *without* the benefit of being an established franchise, God of War's genre is much more of an asset this contest than it seems like it would've been in years past. That was just such a huge blunder on my part that I actually went to check my Guru to see if I'd screwed anything up in later rounds. Then I remembered what its next opponent was/would have been. Yes, it turns out, I *am* in the majority that picked God of War to make Round 4 and then lose. I just had a major stupid when it came to making my Oracle picks. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7954&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Persona 5 vs (16)Heavy Rain 2020 _source: (1)Persona 5 vs (16)Heavy Rain 2020 (revid 86531)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 5 - 78.21% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 5 - 90.40% - **User Votes:** Persona 5 - 6953 Heavy Rain - 1856 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 5 - 5573 Heavy Rain - 1692 How did Heavy Rain make this contest, but not Detroit: Become Human? Detroit is by far the best game Quantic Dream has done. There was a good discussion this year about which game in the bracket fell off the hardest since release, and Heavy Rain was mentioned the most. I like the game, but it's hard to disagree. That game was almost universally loved and discussed when it first came out, now it's.... pretty much the exact opposite. I'm surprised it even made this contest. But Persona 5? Man is that game is a badass slayer these days. Remember when the Persona series would struggle to beat games like Dead Rising, Civilization 4, and Street Fighter 4? Yeah, those days are long, long behind us. This is a mainstream series now, and it has a case as being the strongest JRPG series on this web site now. No Final Fantasy game released this decade can touch the Persona franchise, and you have to go back to the 90s to find some FF games to match up. With all of that said, in a vacuum this match was a standard 1-16 blowout. However, it showed that Persona 5 was a slight step below the strength it needed to hang with the big boys and make the final. This was a great performance, but it wasn't quite enough to prove it could beat the likes of Witcher 3, Skyrim, and Dark Souls. Remember, these round 1 matches were all about positioning for that second finals spot. ## Ctes's Analysis Persona 5 is one of the boards favorite games. If that’s wrong, then it just has the loudest fans. Board 8 was into Persona way before it was cool, and the fact that our baby has become as big as it has to the point of getting a \#1 seed in anything seems to be more happiness than our minds can handle. Persona 5 was given one of the easier divisions, seemingly. Most people didn’t think there was an upset chance here, but almost everyone that went for an upset in the previous division took it past here as well, although everyone in this context isn’t that many people. Persona 5 had one of the simplest routes in the contest, most of us would agree. Anything Persona 5 does that can be twisted into a good showing was taken as a good showing. Maybe I’m giving the stats topic or a couple of loud users too much credit here, but it’s the vibe you would get from reading the board on Persona 5 match days, and I’ve been defending the idea that Persona 5 is great but not fantastic in these contests a lot. That it never stood a chance of making it out of top 8, regardless of which of the top 4 it was allowed to face. Persona 5 finished second in the Game of the Year polls, winning the Playstation one and barely avoiding getting doubled by Breath of the Wild in the end in a 7-way poll. Severely SFF’d Super Mario Odyssey almost avoided that too in 10-way poll with two other Mario games that got almost no votes, yet the final poll seemed to be an indicator of too great things for Persona 5. Not that any of those polls should mean that much. Now what would Persona 5 need to keep the hype up today? In the minds of some, probably just advancing would be enough. It was 0.08% away from the general consensus in the oracle, so it did as it should almost as much as you possibly could I suppose. That should keep all hope up. Heavy Rain was never that big and it’s mostly a joke these days, I’m afraid. I’ll defend the game and say that I enjoyed it a lot, but I haven’t played it in 10 years, which might be good for what I think of it. ## Safer777's Analysis Persona is damn popular here even though their characters do damn bad in these contests. Actually the Persona games do bad though. All Persona  games do extremely well with critics and fans but not that good in sales. But Persona 5 changed this. It did damn well in sales, it broke records actually. Plus Joker got even in Smash as a main character! Damn! Also the Persona 5 cast appears in many spin off games. Strange but yeah. In fact a Persona Warriors spin off will come out sooon. I shall buy it since I am a huge Warriors fan and a Persona fan too. As for the HR game it is like an adventure/visual novel kinda style game? Look it is strange. It is known nowadays for the memes though. Hey at least it is widely known unlike some games in this contest. So for the match. Well P5 won easily. I mean as I said HR is known even though for wrong reasons but still. P4 did really good a few days ago too. P5 did 0.5% better than P4 too! So nothing else to say. Persona series off to a good start. Finally they are doing good! ## Tsunami's Analysis So of course, as I so frequently do, I immediately followed up my colossal blunder with an outright win. Only went over by 0.02%, and unlike some of my previous wins where I just had the high/low pick on a match we all messed up, there was some tight competition. In fact, the Oracle consensus was only 0.08% off from what actually happened--the top scores were the ones closest to the median! Also, despite having literally filled out a bracket, it was at the very least when I was making Oracle predictions and possibly even *on the match day itself* when I went "wait, how is Heavy Rain in this contest? Didn't that game come out in like 2008 or something?" Nope, but I understand my confusion. Exact years for things in the past often elude me, so I probably remembered seeing ads for it on TV in my college dorm room and figured "yeah, that's late 2000s"; it actually came out in February of 2010 for the Playstation 3. It was then ported to the PS4 in 2016...and to Windows in 2019. So, yeah, recent rerelease, makes sense that it somehow managed to squeak out a bid. Got crushed, of course, because Persona is mainstream now even if SMT as a whole still isn't. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7955&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag vs (9)Sid Meier's Civilization V 2020 _source: (8)Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag vs (9)Sid Meier's Civilization V 2020 (revid 86532)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 53.93% 41 for - 16 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 64.34% - **User Votes:** Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 5006 Sid Meier's Civilization V - 3804 - **Anonymous Votes:** Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 4030 Sid Meier's Civilization V - 3233 I half wonder if Allen got the two Assassin's Creed games backwards by accident when making this bracket, because Odyssey is in no way 16 seed material. Black Flag is. How in the world did Black Flag even make this contest, let alone as an 8 seed, eight lines above Odyssey? No one, not even the biggest Assassin's Creed series fans, likes Black Flag. It goes to show how little this site cares about the Civilization series, because you have to be megatrash to lose to Black Flag on GameFAQs. Civ 5 might have won this match if it was multi-platform and the seeding was reversed, but that's not the timeline we live in right now. This was a typical dat top option 8 vs 9 fodder duel. We get those now and again, and this contest was no exception. Congrats on winning a ticket to getting destroyed by Persona 5, I guess. I have nothing else to say about this match, so here's a list of DAT TOP OPTION fodder vs fodder 8/9 matches. Yes, Laharl is on this list twice in both a win and a loss. This is the dumb stuff one looks up during matches Assassin's Creed wins. Small correction: Board 8 users were kind enough to inform me that people actually do, in fact, love Black Flag. I just got unlucky with the people I interact with, I guess! ## Ctes's Analysis On paper, this really seemed like a big match of which of these things we don’t care about, do we care about the least. Civilization V is nothing like what we usually enjoy here, but no one has anything against it either, similar to Age of Empires, although Civilization is probably bigger than that. We know what it is but put it against something we care about and it rolls over. Black Flag is a by genre a lot more something that we enjoy, but there are definitely people with something against it. Civilization was also close to getting a victory in the previous Game of the Decade contest, losing just barely to Persona 3, which was pretty bad. The fifth one is generally regarded as being the best one from what I can observe, so it could be a bit better than that. Assassin’s Creed IV is untested, but Assassin’s Creed as a franchise used to be good enough but is pretty terrible today. A few days prior to this match, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey rolled over and died. Black Flag is generally preferred among the fanbase of the two however, so it might still have what it takes to beat a Civilization game. The match was about as uninteresting a one can get with percentages like those. It was over almost right away. Black Flag clearly had board vote, but after that it stabilized, and the percentages were quite consistent for the reminder of the match. It appears we cared slightly more about Assassin’s Creed in the end, but I don’t think that’s really what made the difference. The prediction percentage shows that Assassin’s Creed was favored by almost two thirds of bracket. That’s probably for being the bigger name or maybe for being the higher seed, even though it’s close. If Civilization had that prediction percentage, there’s a chance the result flips, at least it gets a lot closer. The match does show Assassin’s Creed isn’t as anti-voted as something like Dota 2, Fortnite or Call of Duty. It can still get the majority of the voters in some matches. I wonder if Odyssey would also win this just by having the Assassin’s Creed name. It probably still does, even if it’s a little closer. We don’t have that many hardcore Assassin’s Creed fans these days, what the fanbase favorite is probably means very little. I would’ve liked for Civilization to actually get the victory, it has never had, but this was probably its best chance ever. Maybe next Game of the Decade if they make another good one and it gets the right opponent. A little fun fact to round off the match. My girlfriend’s father is cited in Civilization for something he first said about thirty years ago. He’s not someone you know and can easily look up, so it just appears like a random name in the game. ## Safer777's Analysis So AC 4 is considered the best of the old AC games, before Ubisoft soft rebooted the series. As a fan of the AC series that have played all games I can see why. It made pirates damn cool and the whole ship combat mechanic was expanded so much from AC 3 that almost all AC games have it and it is super fun to defeat all other ships and collect loot and upgrades. Serious fun here. As for the CIV series CIV 4 is actually my most played game of all time. Yeah for real. I still play it occassionaly because the fans have made so many mods that I have lost count. Amazing game. But I haven't even touched CIV 5 and CIV 6. Okay I played a bit of CIV 5 but I just can't get into it because when you have played CIV 4 for thousand of hours you can't just change. However the CIV series is considered the best turn based strategy series too. And yeah all games are amazing even though I play only 1 of them. But man the CIV games are damn weak here. So for the match. Even though there was some fear that AC would lose, I never thought of that. Sure the series sucks now on this site but the CIV games are extremely weak here. We saw that ACO got demolished by Witcher 3 but Witcher 3 can even reach the final match. It is a damn strong game. AC series was popular on this site back then on the AC 2 era and its direct sequels but after that we abandoned it. Still at least it got a win which is more that I can say for a lot of franchises here. ## Tsunami's Analysis We were just two days removed from seeing Assassin's Creed Odyssey get quintupled by Witcher 3, and the original Assassin's Creed had needed the vote-ins just to make the first GotD while Assassin's Creed II was the series' lone representative in 2015 and it was a 16-seed. All indications were that the series was toast. And yet, we still believed in it here, for the simple reason that Civilization has always been absolute garbage here. Civ V itself had appeared in 2015 and got doubled by Dark Souls in round 1; Civ IV made it into the first GotD and lost a close match with Persona 3 where it was actually favored roughly 57-43 by both Gurus and casuals; the series as a whole managed to just narrowly clear 10% in the opening match of the 2006 series contest against The Legend of Zelda; and in the series' lone failure to come in dead last in a contest poll, the first game in the series beat out Castlevania III for third place by almost 1000 votes while still coming nearly 28000 votes shy of second place Street Fighter II (which was itself nearly 10000 votes out of first) in a first-round match in 2009. The Persona 3-Civ IV match might've been sticking in Gurus' heads, because honestly, neither 47.65% on P3 nor 33.3% on Dark Souls feel like awful results. But the fact that it lost as a favorite, even though with hindsight it doesn't feel like it *should* have been a favorite, leaves you with a "won't get fooled again" mentality. This is exactly why Kefka's been burning us over and over with his nonsensical newfound strength. But with AC also declining, this was far from consensus; over 25% of Gurus had Civ V, and about 28% of Oracle predictions were for it. The casuals were similarly conflicted but clearly leaning in the correct direction; 63.47% of brackets had this right, which feels about right for a match that had a clear favorite but was somewhat debatable. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7956&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Sonic Mania vs (12)Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA 2020 _source: (5)Sonic Mania vs (12)Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA 2020 (revid 86533)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic Mania - 72.89% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic Mania - 78.37% - **User Votes:** Sonic Mania - 5629 Ys VIII - 3181 - **Anonymous Votes:** Sonic Mania - 4356 Ys VIII - 2907 I bought Ys VIII because of this contest. True story. I looked into every game in the field, at least in part, and that one legitimately looks incredible. Can't wait to start! But what is with Japanese games and dumb subtitles? Look at this stuff: Not that anything will top the idiocy of *these* names: This match was never going to be unpredictable -- Sonic Mania was always going to win it easily -- but Sonic only getting 63% here was very disturbing. The game undershot expectations by 10%, and opened up all kinds of hype trains for Super Meat Boy beating it in round 2. We'll get to what happened when the time comes, but you know you've botched your round 1 match when you have people hyping up the possibility of Super Meat Boy upsetting you. By the way, the ultimate end result here wasn't people overestimating Sonic. People vastly underestimated Ys VIII. The series has been around for 33 years, so obviously it has a fanbase somewhere. ## Ctes's Analysis Sonic Mania was a huge board favorite, having gotten a solid nomination rally and earned its high seed as a result of it. It looked to be in a position where it could make round 3 and it was also the favorite to do so. Sonic Mania is popular for a modern Sonic game and the name still carries some strength with it. It’s crazy to think that there might not even be a Sonic game in the bracket if the board hadn’t pushed so hard for it to happen. Maybe Allen would’ve kept one in for legacy, but there’s no Mega Man despite those being just fine as well, no Metroid although that one didn’t have the best options. The Noble Nine is mostly represented in Smash Bros these days, except of course for Zelda and Mario, which are as dominant as ever. Super Meat Boy awaited in the next match and upon many indie games doing so well, the idea that Super Meat Boy could perhaps beat Sonic Mania in round 2 was gaining some traction. 15% of gurus went with before the contest, but it was getting more popular. Sonic Mania is most likely among the more preferable round 2 opponents to draw. An exciting battle of overseeded entrants at the cause of board 8 looked to come up. Then the match happened, and Sonic Mania went way below expectations. The board vote was very great, but Sonic fell drastically after that. It was against a Ys game, which isn’t something you expect a lot of people to know much about despite how many of them there exists. The franchise has existed for a long time but has only recently been promoted from nothing to niche. Sonic needed to do better here. It looked to be very lucky it didn’t draw something else or it might have not made it out of round 1. The next match looked to be close. Super Meat Boy looked fine, but not all too great considering it was facing something we expected to be among the worst of this already fodder filled bracket. We know that this result is just not as bad as one could have expected. Ys VIII is apparently not all that bad. I mean, there’s still not much point in having it in a regular games contest other than acknowledging it wasn’t trash, but it could’ve won the right match in this contest perhaps. If board 8 had pushed it to a high seed, it suddenly becomes a lot more possible. We have nothing to compare it to, because it’s the first time ever a Ys game has been in the bracket, but I don’t think another entry could’ve done better at any point unless perhaps we had a games contest in 1990, which we obviously didn’t. For all the worthless series we have, maybe you just have to be extremely patient and you can one day become worth something in a contest here. ## Safer777's Analysis A Sonic game finally! I thought the last good Sonic game was back in the 90's? Or not. Still nice to have at least 1 Sonic game here. I have played only the Sonic games back on Mega Drive 2 so I don't know anything about them after that, but I do know that almost all of them suck. As for YS...it is a JRPG but I haven't heard of the series and I find it strange because apparently there are at least 8 of them? Damn! They must have a lot of fans! Or at least I think so? Well they made so many of them so someone has to be bying them! Apparently they are around for more than 30 years! I am baffled! Okay obviously nobody knows all franchises ever but man a JRPG series that is going on for more than 30 years and this is the first time I hear of it! Well it happens to the best of us I guess! So for the match. This match was never in doubt but Sonic managed to disappoint! Classic Sonic. I mean people thought that even a doubling would be bad for Sonic Mania and it scored even lower than that! So yeah. People just don't care for the Sonic games I guess. Well makes sense I guess. But fans keep buying them so the company isn't in a hurry to make them good as the old days probably. Or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Sonic's woes have been talked about at length for many contests, so a blowout win felt unlikely even though Mania was the return to the series' roots that the fans had long been clamoring for and Ys has always been a fairly niche RPG series. Then again, it's still an RPG series, and a Japanese one at that, so, you know, Flowchart. Or maybe not. In fact, out of 57 Oracle predictions, a grand total of *one* predicted Sonic Mania to win with a percentage lower than it actually did, though it did so by a wide enough margin to not even get a top 5 out of it. Was it Sonic antivotes or just RPGFAQs up to its usual shenanigans? We'd hopefully find out next round, since its next opponent would be an indie game regardless of who won the next match! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7957&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Super Meat Boy vs (13)Slay the Spire 2020 _source: (4)Super Meat Boy vs (13)Slay the Spire 2020 (revid 86534)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Meat Boy - 69.26% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Meat Boy - 81.45% - **User Votes:** Super Meat Boy - 6131 Slay the Spire - 2679 - **Anonymous Votes:** Super Meat Boy - 4898 Slay the Spire - 2366 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. But what happens when the Board 8 guru nomination gets boosted up to the 4 seed line and causes an indie versus indie match? Well as luck would have it, these early 2010s pioneers of the independent revolution are well-known enough to score nearly 70% (!!) in a GameFAQs contest match. Super Meat Boy is often listed along with games like Braid and Minecraft as making indie games mainstream, and here is a good article about it: Super Meat Boy was in some Game of the Year polls all the way back in January 2011, and character battle 2013 not withstanding it had to wait nine years to make a contest debut. And what a debut it was. I get that it was up against some roguelike card game trash, but a 70-30 blowout is a 70-30 blowout all the same. There aren't many examples of a game that *deserved* a win like this more than Super Meat Boy. It was so massive, and Sonic Mania's win so disappointing, that imaginations ran wild about round 2. The hilarity of Super Meat Boy beating a main line Sonic title was just too good to pass up hyping, and who knows? Maybe Super Meat Boy could catch some insane rally and do crazy damage this year. That would have shut up the anti-fun brigade real quick, because no one actively hates Meat Boy. Unfortunately, Sonic was many, many bridges too far. ## Ctes's Analysis Super Meat Boy received a high seed this contest because of being Advokaiser’s choice as the guru nomination, which put it in a easy first match with a little shot of making round 3 due to likely running into another overseeded game in round 2. Considering how Allen clearly preferred to represent as many games as possible, Advo could’ve aimed to get something different into the bracket because Super Meat Boy would’ve made it regardless but getting to be in a winnable position is also nice. I’m glad the guru nomination wasn’t something like Super Mario Maker 2 if the series cap actually existed, so it’s a good choice. Slay the Spire was expected to among the absolute weakest of games in the bracket. It’s not known very well and it’s not the type of game we tend to like at all. Despite doubling it, Super Meat Boy didn’t look all too great here. Super Meat Boy still had hopes of getting to round 3 because Sonic Mania looked quite disappointing in the adjacent match, but this wasn’t a particularly good performance. At this point, we were pretty confident that indie fear should be limited to the later half of the decade with only a few obvious exceptions like Shovel Knight, which has all the mainstream exposure it could’ve hoped for. Super Meat Boy is among the earliest of them, so it was only natural it wouldn’t be all too god. It didn’t release in a time where many had opened their eyes to indies, so this match was in line with that theory. Not that it disappointed much, it just didn’t look on par with some of the other indies we had seen in action. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have the Guru pick here and it won a match! Believe me that is a rare feat. SMB is one of these get good games. Strange how many are in this contest. People are hardcore it seems! STS I didn't knew it all and I saw a review for it by accident and man it is amazing! Yah a card game but not the 1vs1 and stuff like that. No you go to dungeons, make your deck, random battles, random loot, stuff like that. It is a sort game but you are meant to play it many games and get items/characters/loot/cards, all the good stuff. So for the match. Well SMB won. STS is really good but since it is still new it doesn't really have a dedicated fanbase like the SMB game. So once again congrats to the Guru pick! Still once again strange that all these indie games got in. I guess the Admin wanted some varitey or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Super Meat Boy was the Guru nomination, which it rode to a 4-seed. Meat Boy had been in the contest before, once solo and once in \*sigh\* Rivalry Rumble. The 2013 solo outing is nothing to speak of--he came in third to Mr. Game & Watch and Lee Everett from *The Walking Dead*--but the ability to not get doubled by a Final Fantasy hero/main villain pair, even if it was only Zidane/Kuja, is actually kind of impressive. Though it could just be the silly character design at work. Giving it a fellow indie game to beat was a nice gesture by Allen, since so many Guru noms just fall flat immediately. But would it be beloved enough to get past an established icon like Sonic the Hedgehog? ...My bracket certainly hopes so! (seriously what was I thinking) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7958&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal 2 vs (14)Tomb Raider 2020 _source: (3)Portal 2 vs (14)Tomb Raider 2020 (revid 86535)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal 2 - 64.16% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal 2 - 80.20% - **User Votes:** Portal 2 - 5794 Tomb Raider - 2919 - **Anonymous Votes:** Portal 2 - 4410 Tomb Raider - 2674 Did you know this is the first ever contest match featuring a Tomb Raider game? Bit of random trivia for you. Lara Croft herself has an extensive contest history, but Tomb Raider just has this one match. This wasn't exactly the best debut, but it wasn't the worst either. We've certainly seen *far* worse. This was a typical, boring, predictable, ho-hum beating that Portal 2 put out here. This was certainly not the type of performance that would hint at what Portal 2 would ultimately end up doing in this contest. The main comparison here was Portal 2's performance in round 1 versus Kingdom Hearts 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Portal 2 was the guru favorite to win three matches, in large part because of what happened in 2015. It lost a close match to Sonic 2, which ultimately scored 22% in its loss to Pokemon. Not only did the game that beat Portal 2 get destroyed that year, but it had an inflated value due to being locked behind Undertale. I wasn't seeing what made Portal 2's being a hidden beast so obvious, and this match here against Tomb Raider wasn't exactly gangbusters, but hey, that's why I talk about what happens after the fact and you're all smart enough to see it coming better than I can :D I really would love to know how you all knew, because I don't think that Sonic 2 loss was some SFF beating. ## Ctes's Analysis Portal 2 was thought to be the most likely game to make the division finals, but I don’t think anyone of us had huge confidence in it. Kingdom Hearts is a more beloved franchise of ours, Red Dead Redemption 2 had good potential and even Animal Crossing could be good enough now that New Horizons had released to the best possible reception right before the contest. Back when the Portal games came out they were huge, spawned countless memes, and they were very popular here too. The board loved them. Portal 2 is only just recent enough to be in this contest. Its heydays are over. GLaDOS looked quite a bit weaker in 2018 than in previous contests. Portal 2 could only fall so much and not be out of favor for the spot. It ended up having the worst winning percentage of the day, so it shouldn’t be too dominant, but it still came out of round 1 as the favorite. Tomb Raider is a good game. It’s far from the series peak, but you should pick it against the other losing games today. It can do something on name alone, particularly when we have forced voting. People that have played neither game today might vote for the franchise with the bigger name. Portal is not the best series to take advantage of that against, but it still made Portal 2 look good enough here. We will probably never know how well the old Tomb Raider games would’ve done in a contest setting, but I’m not expecting it to be much more than this honestly. Maybe if we had a contest when they were new, but they would be riding more on their name than the actual games themselves. There is probably a reason that Tomb Raider has never been in any games contests before. Even back in the early contests, Lara Croft was never that good and I’m not thinking the games would be better relative to the field than she has ever been. ## Safer777's Analysis Portal and Half Life are these PC games that EVERY PC gamer raves about. Of course these have come in consoles but still they are primarily known as PC games. Also both portal games have appeared a lot in the games contests. As I said the Portal series is popular but I do believe they haven't released another game for some years. Well I guess either company doesn't see much money from this series otherwise why not made another one? Tomb Raider is here too! Oh it is the TR from 2013, not the one from 1996. Okay I know they are reboots but can't these companies add something to differentiate the titles of the same series? Mortal Kombat got rebooted a few years ago too BUT at least they named it MK9 because it was actually the 9th main game! I mean seriously. I have played the TR trilogy and it is fun but they tend to blend together since they are basically the same games, one on an island, one on snow and one on jungle. Very similar which I guess it is good if you like it but still. Also something that I have been informed. This is the first time EVER that a Tomb Raider game has got into a contest! Seriously! I know Lara has entered a contest many times but I could swear that a Tomb Raider game has taken part in a contest before. Apparently not. Damn! The old Tomb Raider Trilogy was so good back in the day. Also everyone was into Lara back in the day for 2 BIG reasons! Okay this is sexist but seriously even magazines were talking about this. I mean who cares for personality if you have big tits right? She was the first Video Game sex symbol too and she appeared in many non video game magazines too! I still have a giant poster of her in my door on my room that I got from a video game magazine like 25 years ago. Yup! You could say she was the first waifu before we ever knew what waifus were! The games were amazing too. They did well with the first 3, then they messed up and they had to be rebooted.  So for the match. TR got a bad draw. Sure it isn't as it used to be but it could beat some other games here, and not just some indies too. Plus Lara Croft isn't what she used to be. Of course like 25 years ago that the 1st TR game came out we had barely any main female hero and she became extremely popular for a while. She was in magazines, giving interviews, various events, movies, weird merhandise and anything really. But they kept messing the games and eventually the TR games just stopped coming out. So the Reboot was a huge success but not anything different than a ton of other games. Also from the new trilogy the 1st TR game is considered the best and the 3rd the worse strangely enough. So yeah Portal 2 was always going to be the winner. Still I would like to see at least a doubling here but eh. ## Tsunami's Analysis There was a lot of doubt as to whether Portal 2 would be terribly strong. The series seemed to be something that came and went--the first game did well in the first GotD because it was still fresh in everyone's minds, but it had a short shelf life. And this result...seems to suggest that the concern was warranted. Tomb Raider hasn't been worth a damn here in ages, if it ever was; Lara was at least worth a little bit in the early Character Battles but then again she was one of the pioneers of TJF in video game character design. Of course, people had concerns about its next opponent as well so who knows what would happen next. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7959&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Kingdom Hearts III vs (11)Disco Elysium 2020 _source: (6)Kingdom Hearts III vs (11)Disco Elysium 2020 (revid 86536)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts III - 70.14% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts III - 83.59% - **User Votes:** Kingdom Hearts III - 5971 Disco Elysium - 2744 - **Anonymous Votes:** Kingdom Hearts III - 4739 Disco Elysium - 2340 This match is hilarious to me, but not because of the actual match. A buddy of mine, Raven 2, runs these forum contests every year to determine Board 8's Game of the Year. How cool of a coincidence was it that Kingdom Hearts 3 vs Disco Elysium was a final four match in this contest for 2019, two months before becoming an actual contest match? This match was always going to be an easy win for Kingdom Hearts 3, but it was a bad performance nonetheless. In indie circles, Disco Elysium is an all-timer. In fact, if @KanzarisKelshen is ever around, he'll be happy to get into how influential this game supposedly is and how RPGs are likely to never be played the same way again. I'm not being sarcastic at all, I just know nothing about the game whatsoever and Kanz has a very eloquent way of discussing the things he loves. To the general gaming public, no one knows what Disco even is, so this match might as well have been Kingdom Hearts versus Not Kingdom Hearts. And Not Kingdom Hearts thoroughly embarrassed Kingdom Hearts here. It isn't often a game scores 68% and can be called a choke artist, but it's true. There is just no way to compare Portal 2 getting 65% on Tomb Raider and KH3 getting 68% here with anything other than Kingdom Hearts being screwed. I shall now bow my head in shame for considering Kingdom Hearts 3, a franchise I despite, had a chance against one of my all-time favorites. ## Ctes's Analysis I was pretty excited to see Kingdom Hearts III in the field. It missed the Game of the Year field because Allen has begun basically only looking at Metacritic scores picking games for those things, so it was snubbed for things no one remembers. It’s such a weird decision not to have sales influence at all in my opinion. Luckily, it did not mean it couldn’t make this contest, though I’m sure it has been nominated a lot to get a \#6 seed, because the critic scores sure didn’t do it. Sora has gotten a \#1 seed too many times, so it’s not new that the site nominates Kingdom Hearts things a lot. Everyone knows the game released to very mixed opinions. First of all, it came out 6 years after being revealed and they had probably been working on the concept for many years prior to that. We are skeptical of most things Square has released ever since… well, Kingdom Hearts II probably. In the meantime, lots of Kingdom Hearts things had come out. Calling this one III is mostly just a move to promote a console release, because it’s a sequel to Dream Drop Distance, which is a sequel to Coded and that one is a sequel to the one called II. Remaking all the handheld games as 1.5, 2.5 and 2.8 probably didn’t make anyone less confused about the whole thing. I mean, I appreciate the release of all the games on consoles leading up the release of this one, but it was just as much of a mess as the story of the series. They had less Worlds because they were going for bigger Disney names and Disney is the toughest company in the world to deal with when it comes to rights. They also chose not to include Final Fantasy characters on the mostly incorrect assumption that the original Kingdom Hearts characters have been well enough established and liked for them to not need Final Fantasy. Not only is that a bold claim, but it’s also weird to think that increased quality in one thing means they didn’t need something else that people loved. Were they aiming for conservation of quality? They sure did not appear to get that in the heads of most. It was still a anticipated game named Kingdom Hearts, so it was never going to be complete trash. This site is Square fans at heart even if they’ve done their best to make us change our minds most of this century. It was enough that taking Kingdom Hearts III to the division finals was a decently popular upset pick. It did not quite do well enough to be the favorite going into round 2, but it wasn’t out of the question. Disco Elysium looks really good and it’s a shame it could not win a match. Actually, what’s a shame is that it’s so far a PC exclusive. It’s being released on current generation consoles later this year. If it had been released on those already we had probably seen it with a higher seed and quite a bit stronger, even though it wouldn’t be extraordinary. It is an RPG after all. I want to play it when it hits PS4 so hopefully I can find the time. ## Safer777's Analysis Oh man we have KH 3. When the KH series was first announced and we got details, EVERYONE was saying the same thing. Lol Disney AND FF characters together? Joke game? But when it came out oh man. Oh man. The game was amazing. Nobody expected to become so famous. So of course a sequel came out 3 years after the original. This was in 2005. Then a spin off game. Okay fine. Another spin off. Then another. Then another. There are so many spin offs and remasters that I have lost count. FINALLY after 14 years KH 3 came out but by then nobody cared. And it makes sense. I mean people want always sequels from a series, not spin offs. Sure maybe 1 here and there helps but not as many without main games like the KH series! Out of all KH games KH 2 is considered still the best. I had played it back in the day and even know if you ask me one KH I recommend my first thought is KH 2. That game is amazing. I haven't played KH 3 but a friend of mine played it. When I asked him about it he said there are no FF characters and I thought he was joking. I mean a KH game without FF characters? Yeah sure. This is like having a Smash game without Mario or Link. But guess what. Just GUESS! Yeah NO FF characters in KH 3! Okay seriously? Oh wait it has MOOGLES so all are fine! Yeah a huge dissapointment to put it lightly. As for DE it is an RPG but not one in the traditional sense. I don't know who to describe it, but basically it has NO combat and it has perks and dialogue choices and such but depend on how much you have raised each of the 4 unique skill trees of the protagonist and their sub trees. It is weird, I mean an RPG without combat? But not only works, it works damn well! Plus it even won some GOTY awards! Yeah you heard me correctly! And the game is barely 6 months old! So for the match. No matter how people are dissapointed by KH3 it wouldn't lose to DE because even though it is popular and good I don't think it has a huge fanbase or something. If there was a strong indie game here then I do believe it would lose. Yeah KH sucks now.  Also the KH series has the more convoluted story ever, maybe tied with the MGS franchise. So it barely scored a doubling and that is decent. Probably. ## Tsunami's Analysis The good news is that Kingdom Hearts III got the doubling. The bad news is, it only barely got 68% against a PC-exclusive (with ports to other consoles planned for 2020, but still, currently a PC exclusive) indie game that is nominally an RPG, but contains no combat and instead progresses through skill checks and dialogue trees. Which kind of sounds more like a visual novel to me! So, VN/RPG hybrid, that's fine I guess, but it doesn't sound like the type of thing that should have the strength to get almost 32% on a big name Square Enix series. They can't do anything right these days, can they? Of course, Kingdom Hearts isn't *just* Square Enix, and its other parent company is known for being one of the most well-oiled machines in the world. Maybe it'd be better for us all if they just bought up the video game/manga giant (yes, Square does more than just video games). Apparently the title "Disco Elysium" was chosen for multiple meanings, including "disco" being Latin for "I learn". I am certainly learning as a result of this project. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7960&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (10)Street Fighter V 2020 _source: (7)Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (10)Street Fighter V 2020 (revid 86537)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 64.93% 54 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 69.08% - **User Votes:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 5930 Street Fighter V - 2783 - **Anonymous Votes:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 4438 Street Fighter V - 2643 True story -- I originally picked Street Fighter 5 and fully planned on sticking with it, even knowing the game is a trash can and knowing it had no chance. Before Smash Brothers came along, Street Fighter was my jam. I was never any good at it, but so what? My friends and I have been playing those games together for almost 30 years now, and it's very hard to look past that bias. I was one of the idiots whining about STREET FIGHTER 2 LOST??? back when Mario RPG beat it. I was trying to rally it past Persona 4 for a meaningless third place finish. I **lost my shit** when 4 clutched up and beat Sonic Adventure 2 ten years ago. One of my favorite achievements in my entire gaming career is pulling this off: O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood **From sea to shining sea!** I did it fully legit. No boosting, no cheating, nothing. All by myself, all against randoms online. It was some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game, and for the most part I went 50-50. Some characters, it was a breeze. T Hawk, Seth, Cammy, Adon, Gen, the shotos, El Fuerte, Blanka, Bison, and so on. For three characters, it was hell on earth. I think Viper, Makoto, and Guy took me something like 80 games each. Wouldn't change a thing, and it's among my most proud gaming accomplishments ever. I don't know how that web site calculates these things, but when I boot up my Playstation it shows only 3 players per 1000 has earned that trophy. Even if it's actually 1 per 100, that's still one hell of an accomplishment. I bring all this up because even I cannot defend Street Fighter 5 in any universe. That game is *garbage*. The V trigger system is a terrible copy of a terrible mechanic in its own right (X factor from Marvel vs Capcom 3, which can go burn in hell), the roster is trash, and the game released without a single player mode. Piss off, Capcom. I would have been willing to lose a point on purpose just on general principle of loving the Street Fighter legacy, but no. The game is bad enough to make me pick Animal Crossing, of all things. I can't stand those dumb farming simulators. Yes, I know it was the right pick and yes I know Animal Crossing was never going to lose this match, especially with New Horizons coming out two weeks before this match. Not the point. I wanted Street Fighter 5 to be good so much, and instead it might have tanked the entire series. By the way, this beating was so huge and the Animal Crossing hype so intense that regardless of RDR2's score in round 1, a lot of people were hyping up the upset train. And who could blame them? New Horizons has almost 15 million sales as of this writing, with 40% or so being complete non-gamers, so it was bound to help boost New Leaf in contest polls. Red Dead Redemption 2 was no lock next round. ## Ctes's Analysis This match is such a good example of how much a franchise can have changed in the eyes of its fans. Animal Crossing started out rather niche and took its time to become one of Nintendo’s greatest. New Leaf was huge, however, and this contest came right after New Horizons came out broke almost as many sales records as it possible could. If there’s one bad thing about this being a Game of the Decade contest and not a regular one, it’s that we could’ve seen New Horizons on the field right in the middle of when the whole internet is in love with it. The pandemic certainly helped to some extent, but it was always going to be huge. It’s coming out on a console that everyone really loves, which hasn’t really been possible for it before. You could argue the Wii, but Animal Crossing hadn’t quite reached the heights it is at now when the Wii was liked. It’s weird, it’s not the type of game we usually care hugely for but perhaps with Nintendo written on the box, that doesn’t matter as much. It would’ve been so much fun to see New Horizons in a contest this spring. New Leaf might have gotten some of that boost, however. It was expected to be stronger than it was back in 2015, though it’s hard to make much of that run when it was fed to Super Mario World in round one. In any case, when literally everyone is currently playing New Horizons, it’ll probably draw some votes to the Animal Crossing game. On the other hand, we have Street Fighter, which used to be a big series but has fallen off a cliff. Ryu has always been a character here, but it’s probably less than it used to be, and he can likely thank Smash that it’s not worse than it would’ve been if he hasn’t gotten into that. Street Fighter missed the previous contest and it’s only in now because the bracket is the most diverse thing we’ve ever had. It’s sad to see. New Leaf came just short of the doubling, but still looks great enough today. It’s a handheld game that’s pretty far from what we tend to like here, and the Street Fighter name alone might’ve kept it away from being complete fodder. Winning the next match wasn’t out the question, although Red Dead Redemption 2 looks pretty fine as well. ## Safer777's Analysis AC series is a series that I just can't get into it why people like. You don't have a clear goal. You just play, do some stuff, relax and have fun. Maybe that is the point. Not everything has to be super serious right? As for SF 5...Okay SF series made the Fighthing games popular ESPECIALLY SF2. The game was so famous that we had like 10 upgraded versions on it which I do believe is some kind of record. I mean we even had an updated version of SF2 that came on Switch and it had new stuff too! Damn! SF series is always popular but Capcom messed with SF 5 big time. When SF 5 came out it didn't even had an Arcade mode. Yeah a fighthing game without an Arcade mode! And no story videos too. Exciting! Basically it had nothing. They kept adding stuff via DLC. You know stuff that should be in the game from the START? Oh and they added 24 DLC characters. That you have to pay for. What I want from games! To not having anything when I buy them! Oh and they also added in game advertising. You heard me. Basically on loading screens and on the costumes of the characters they had logos of companies and such! Because when people play SF they want to see Ryu advertising Mc Donald's. I mean it makes sense right? So damn. So for the match. A strange thing happened. A new AC game out recently and it is DAMN popular. So the AC series is now the strongest it has ever been! What is going on? At least I can say that since this series is geared towards younger players it teaches them than when they grow up they will be constantly in debt, so it prepares them for real life! So yeah ACNL won pretty easy. I mean a doubling against one of the main game of the top 3 figthing game series is amazing. ## Tsunami's Analysis Animal Crossing has been nothing short of terrible in past polls. Or has it? Tom Nook did manage to get not-last place finishes in R1 matches in multiways, both in 2007 and 2013, with the latter being against someone who actually has...a not-last-place finish in 2008. But *that* was against someone with genuine contest wins, and in bizarre rSFF fashion, no less! Nook and his rival Crazy Redd also nearly avoided a doubling against Amaterasu and Orochi in Rivalry Rumble. The original Animal Crossing (or at least, the first one to be released outside of Japan) also managed to put up 41.45% on World of Warcraft in the first GotD, one of the few times that an entrant selected to win by over 90% of brackets failed to double its opponent and the only one to fail to even break 60%. But its most interesting poll was this very game appearing in the 2015 contest, where it proceeded to look *especially* like trash in a Nintendo SFF battle with Super Mario World. SMW got the lead to 1000 in only 15 minutes, to 2000 in another 20, and over 3000 by the end of the first hour, an 85-15 type of beatdown. And remember, 2015 didn't have great votals either, so those numbers are a lot bigger than they would be in our prime. So what made the poll so interesting? Well, like this contest, there were four matches per day. Which means that all of your potential opponents for the next *two* rounds are also active whenever you are. "Oh. That's only a Round 3 match, so..." Yeah. SMW had already been slowly bleeding percentage throughout the match; it's only natural when you've got such a big lead and the vote totals are so low, because even a few votes for your opponent can cut your percentage (in fact, hour 14 ended with SMW winning an update 14-4, which is a percentage cut). But once Undertale started rallying, the percentage bleed sped up considerably, and New Leaf even started occasionally winning updates outright. In the end, an entrant that was under 14% near the end of the first hour and at 15.86% when Mass Effect 3's lead over Undertale peaked over two-thirds of the way through the match wound up at *26.73%* when it was all said and done. It was a clear sign that if anything was stopping Undertale, it certainly wouldn't be Super Mario World. Flash forward to 2020. We've all grown a bit older, and many of us have kids. I fully suspect that's as much a reason why Nintendo always does so well here; we've moved past the "M-Rated video games so cool!" phase and want E-rated stuff we can share with our families. And then the pandemic struck, and we're all stuck in our homes, and what should release but a new Animal Crossing game for the Switch! And the thing about Animal Crossing games is, they're not terribly different from one another. If you love one, you probably love them all. The weakening of fighting games made this round a mere formality, not to mention Street Fighter V was hated even by Street Fighter fans. (I wish I'd known that; I figured this was a no-brainer based on Animal Crossing's past results.) The following round, however, would be far more interesting. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7961&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 vs (15)Dying Light 2020 _source: (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 vs (15)Dying Light 2020 (revid 86538)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 77.98% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 94.29% - **User Votes:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 7133 Dying Light - 1581 - **Anonymous Votes:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 5678 Dying Light - 1401 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Have we ever had a contest that was this packed with early round fodder? I can't imagine Dying Light deserving a spot in a field of 128 more than Dark Souls 2, Skyward Sword, Pokemon Go, Pokemon Sword and Shield, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Smash 4, Final Fantasy 13, the Phoenix Wright games, and plenty of others. By the way, the zombie thing? Played out. Don't let the success of Resident Evil 2 and 3 being remade, or the hype surrounding a remake of 4, fool you. Has anything ever been beaten to death more than zombies in fiction? Enough. We don't care anymore. And yes if Resident Evil 4 is remade, *again*, I will buy it. That game is an all-time legend regardless of what idiot hater has to say about it. Red Dead Redemption 2 scored a very predictable blowout, and there isn't much more to say. It's a good thing it did, too, because there were some potential hidden beasts waiting in this division. It was the casual favorite to *win* this division, too. It had the highest of all Division 6 round one prediction percentages. ## Ctes's Analysis Red Dead Redemption 2 released a bit more than a year ago and was a huge success in every way. On GameFAQs however, we tend not to be as huge on them as anywhere else. There was a chance RDR2 could make the division finals, but it’s hard to pick a Rockstar game in debated matches and be confident about it. They’re not weak, but they tend to lose matches here they would not lose anywhere else. RDR2 finished third in its Game of the Year poll behind Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and God of War. It’s not a bad showing, but Portal 2 was the clear board favorite to make the division finals and with Animal Crossing: New Horizons taking the world by storm, maybe RDR2 had to worry about the next round as well. Today, Red Dead Redemption 2 looked as good as could probably. Rockstar games are probably always voted against to some extent here, but Dying Light is a good opponent for it. That game didn’t do all that well and have already not aged too great. It was developed back when open world and horror was our two favorite things but came out a bit too late and wasn’t fantastic. It might honestly be anti-voted more if people remember it. They probably do when they see the name, so perhaps RDR2 gets a freebie today. Breaking 80% against anything is good and especially when you’re a Rockstar game on GameFAQs against a known game, so RDR2 could walk into round 2 with its hopes of getting further as high as it could’ve hoped for. ## Safer777's Analysis So a few says ago we had the original RDR game and now we have its sequel. General consensus is that RDR 2 is the weaker game. On the other hand we have a zombie game. However I have played it and it is damn good. At least for me. A friend of mine got it too and he has played it for like 200 hours. The game is pretty fun with all the random loot and such. Don't expect anything extraordinary too of course. The sequel was supposed to come on this year too but it got pushed back. So for the match. Well RDR2 would win no problem. The prediction percentage was huge too! Games like RDR don't do good in this site but against DL anything can be good. Although I am not sure how it got in. Yeah I say that a lot but at least I can see how almost all game got in. But not DL. I haven't seen anyone ever even mentioning it. I mean does DL has that many fans especially here? ## Tsunami's Analysis Since this was an obvious blowout (over 94% prediction percentage), it's fun facts time! The first Red Dead Redemption was originally considered a sequel, later redubbed "spiritual successor", to a game called Red Dead Revolver, but when Redemption proved far more popular, they renamed that as part of the series instead of just being the "Red Dead" series. Red Dead Revolver was itself considered a spiritual successor to *an NES game* called "Gun Smoke". Correction: an arcade game that was *ported* to the NES. If you're wondering how a Rockstar Games production could date back to the 80s, the original Gun Smoke was a Capcom game, but Red Dead Revolver kind of just sat in development hell for years until Rockstar took it off Capcom's hands. But things with pedigrees going back to the 80s tend to be very strong here, and even if most of the voters didn't know it, RDR qualifies. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7962&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (16)Hotline Miami 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (16)Hotline Miami 2020 (revid 86539)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 79.16% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 93.08% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 7167 Hotline Miami - 1458 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 5773 Hotline Miami - 1209 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Hotline Miami was one of the many, many games that looked like gutter trash. The game actually *is* gutter trash, too. I played a bunch of it over a buddy's house, and it's a wonderful example of how a great soundtrack does not a good game make. Thankfully, Dark Souls took out the trash. More than a few people banked on the Souls games being very strong this contest and overperforming their 2015 values, in large part because the words "game of the decade" might really matter to the voters. Two things dominated gaming in the 2010s -- open worlds, and Dark Souls. By the time Dark Souls made its round 1 appearance this contest, we already knew it would boost. Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and Nioh all outperformed expectations. Only Sekiro looked "off", and that's easily explained. People thought it was too hard, because they suck at video games and don't know what they're doing in Sekiro. When Dark Souls finally stepped on the stage in this contest, it was very clear the flagship of that genre was ready to **destroy**. Regardless of opponent, 83% is an awesome result. As someone who absolutely loves Dark Souls and wanted to see Hotline Miami suffer, I couldn't have been happier over this one. I felt like a proud papa watching his kid hit the winning home run or something. I've wanted to see Dark Souls slay a contest for a long time, and I was finally getting it. And yes, I picked Last of Us to beat this game. Not because of 2015 x-stats or whatever, but because I thought it would get a similar boost for similar reasons, not to mention Last of Us 2 hype mid-contest. "Whoops." ## Ctes's Analysis Dark Souls was one of the most anticipated games to watch in the contest. Last contest, it was already good enough to make round 3 by upsetting Metal Gear Solid V. This contested, it was expected to do better. You can’t talk about Game of the Decade without Dark Souls being brought up. The Soulsborne games have been a huge part of this decade and they’ve been growing in popularity in the latter half the decade as well. Dark Souls has been very influential and has gained a lot of respect, a lot of which comes from the fact that it’s a hard game that came out in a time where the surge in mobile games made console games easier to complete or at least gave you the possibility of getting through on easy mode. You needed players to not give up and spent hours doing nothing on their new smartphone. Dark Souls however appealed to gamers building a reputation of the game being hard and it was successful enough for casuals to buy into it to. It’s a bit stupid, but it worked. I’m sure lots of kids today would name a Soulsborne game as the hardest thing ever and it’s not that bad, not even for its time, but word of mouth did this game huge favors. Of course, Dark Souls would’ve have become that big if being hard was the only thing it had going for it. It’s a great game. Some people were taking it to beat Skyrim and a few took it to the finals. Others however looked at its 2015 stat and figured it already had its peak strength then, which would put it below The Last of Us, causing The Last of Us winning the division to be a very popular upset pick. Dark Souls proved itself today, however, adding yet another blowout to the long list this year. It was in this and we could not count it out of a long run yet. Hotline Miami is from the early part of the decade, but it has had releases in the latter half too. It was released on Switch a year ago and it was released on Xbox One on the day of this match. I bet you didn’t know, but it’s true, though only if you’re American, otherwise it would be past midnight and be the following day, but at the start of the match it was on release day. It probably didn’t help the game in the slightest and that’s confirmation that you aren’t really worth much, so as much as this looks good for Dark Souls, it was still not really possible to tell what it meant. ## Safer777's Analysis Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of videogames! Okay I jest. But DS when it came out it made the get good meme famous. It is a hard game. Like real hard. You know one of these games that apparently people now don't care because they have the gatcha games/MMO's/Casual games? Yeah things don't work like this. People always want something different. Sure hard games like DS aren't for everyone but for people that like stuff like that it is excellent. Plus we all know some challenge in our games right? Well these games offer a LOT of challenge and that is a good thing. Plus after the great success of DS so many clones followed. As for HM...another indie game that I don't know anything about it. Yeah sorry once again. I do believe it is fairly popular and a lot of copycats followed it though. So for the match. Obviously DS trashed HM easily. Duh. The only real question is how much would score. And I do believe it scored excellent. I mean almost 83% is amazing no matter what game does that against what game. Also I do believe from the 3 DS games the first one is considered the best strangely enough. Well that is. ## Tsunami's Analysis Dark Souls became the fourth game this contest to break 20000 votes, though it was the first of those to give up at least 4000. We knew Dark Souls was going to be strong, so if anything, this is a good performance by Hotline Miami. Nothing to worry about, though; the next match was going to produce a weak opponent for it no matter what happened. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7963&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Rocket League vs (9)Dragon Ball FighterZ 2020 _source: (8)Rocket League vs (9)Dragon Ball FighterZ 2020 (revid 86540)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Rocket League - 53.70% 42 for - 19 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Rocket League - 61.47% - **User Votes:** Rocket League - 4491 Dragon Ball FighterZ - 4134 - **Anonymous Votes:** Rocket League - 3534 Dragon Ball FighterZ - 3443 Oh hey, it only took 50 matches, but we finally got a match that was actually in doubt after an hour! Imagine that! Figures it would be some random one-pointer, but so what? It finally felt like contest time, baby! The best thing about matches like this is there is no true way to know what will win going in -- two fresh contest entrants, both fodder, both with good reasons for backing them, and lots of meme potential. For Rocket League backers, the game has something like 87 bajillion players and 3 million commercials. I don't care enough to look it up, but I would not be surprised if Rocket League had the highest play rate of any traditional sports game ever made. I get that Rocket League isn't "traditional" in the sense of a Madden or NBA 2K, but I use that term because if you count Mario Kart or Smash Bros in this discussion then it's obviously no contest. The case for Dragon Ball was even simpler: There was no real way to know, so all we could do was wait for the match. When it finally started, it was *exactly* like an episode of Dragon Ball Z. 10 minutes to recap the last episode, 2 minutes of action, and 10 minutes to preview the next episode! :D Actually, it wasn't quite like that. Dragon Ball won the board vote, and then Rocket League made things 50-50. At the freeze there was a very small Rocket League lead, which increased to 29 at the next update. Match over, right? Nope! Dragon Ball brought it back to even almost immediately, and that's where this thing stayed -- deadlocked -- for well over an hour. That's when Rocket League started making a move, but it was a slow one. When Rocket League pushed for a 100 vote lead, things looked over, but Dragon Ball cut the lead in half before finally falling off. Rocket League built up a small lead late into the evening and into the overnight vote, and though Dragon Ball kept threatening to come back and make this a match, it was not to be. When the morning vote finally hit and decided the match, that morning vote went to Rocket League to seal things up for good. It made for an anticlimactic second half of the match, but the first half was like an old school F5 match. And yes, the Dragon Ball memes were running wild. The match itself was quite good! All it really needed was higher stakes among stronger competitors, but that was coming in the later rounds. Round 1 of this contest was a series of blowouts, but that would change later on once the mini rallies on Reddit started. For now though, we all enjoyed this latest episode of Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball was never my thing -- anime in general was never my thing, really -- but I won't knock people who like it. The issue here is the American version of that anime was a meme for a reason. They would run these long recaps to get more episodes in, which I hear wasn't done in Japan at all. Maybe that has to do with why Rocket League won, who knows. I would love to make a grand declaration about this match, but I honestly think Rocket League won it by default. Someone had to win it, right? As a side note, though Allen only plays for fun, this match knocked him off the leaderboard. ## Ctes's Analysis This was a very debated match for the 1 point that it’s worth. You could make a good case for each of them here and the match and it was close enough to make each pick a fine choice. Rocket League is clearly the bigger game here, but we never cared for sports games and we never cared for racing games. Even though it’s different, Rocket League is still both of those! We also don’t care for fighting games. This contest already showed the most recent Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter being complete trash. If we ever did the days are certainly over. Mario Kart and Smash Bros are exceptions to this, but they’re different from their genre and also has well established popular characters in them. People picking Dragon Ball FighterZ were hoping that having such a big franchise name might be enough to give it the win in a debated match. The match was quite exciting for a while. The very early board vote seemed to favor Dragon Ball, but Rocket League had a super small lead up until the freeze where it led by 10 votes. An update later, Rocket League had extended this to only 29 votes, which should make you worry if you expected Rocket League to have the top option bracket votes. True enough, Dragon Ball took the lead 15 minutes into the match, although only by 5 votes. At that point, it seemed like it could run away with it, but Rocket League took the lead back again, though with a lead of only 2 votes. Fighting over who could have the smaller lead, Dragon Ball took the lead by 1 vote an update later, giving us perhaps the most exciting match of the contest so far. Dragon Ball would make a small attempt at taking the match from there, but it struggled a bit. It took some bumpy updates for Dragon Ball to get its lead above 30, and it couldn’t keep it. Slowly cutting the lead down again, Rocket League went on to take the lead back and simultaneously show it was also capable of leading with exactly one vote. Then Rocket League would make a better attempt to build its lead, it slowly got up to the same place Dragon Ball was before bursting up to 81, looking like it was done. Dragon Ball had another form and it wasn’t even the final one, so in 5 updates that it all won, the lead was cut back down to the 30s. Rocket League would have none of that and spent two updates putting the lead back up in the 70s. Unfortunately, Dragon Ball revealed its final form and in one beastly update threw the lead back into the 30s, but that would be the closest point of getting the lead back for the rest of the match. Rocket League defeated the final form and from that point forward it never really looked back again. The match ended close up being close enough and had lots of stalls, but once Dragon Ball got back its good updates, it was far too late, so no one really noticed. The match would ultimately end up below 1000 votes and contend The Walking Dead vs. Bastion for best match of the contest so far, not that it was a hard title to claim in round 1. Eventually, Celeste vs. Rayman Legends got that. If you look at the prediction percentage and how close this was, it might’ve been decided simply by Rocket League being the top option and in extension to that having more brackets. Rocket League dying next round supports that claim. The weird thing about it is that Dragon Ball was best early on where most bracket votes tend to appear, but it might’ve gone on for longer than usually because we just simply do not care for either game all too much. It’s the best lesson to go for the top option when we care about neither, just like Overwatch vs. Death Stranding and Black Flag vs. Civilization V showed. The hard part is then knowing for sure when we care about neither game. ## Safer777's Analysis Now we had the first real match of the contest. This match was pretty close for around 7 hours with lead changed and all that! Just like a real contest! In this match Gurus were split on which game would win as the Crew too. And it makes sense. Both games are really weak. RL has Football which americans don't care about and DBZ is a fighthing game which this site doesn't care about. Plus no info in either on these games too. I went with DBZ myself because of name recognition. But I was wrong. So for the match. As I said it was realy close for like 7 hours and then RL just passed ahead and never looked back. So why it won? Well I do believe that it is more popular because actually it is a really fun game. It is about Football true BUT you have CARS playing Football! Yeah you use them to ram the ball, you can jump in the air and do a lot of tricks too. Plus you don't really have to know the rules, just ram the ball! As for DBZ it is one of countless DB fighthing games, nothing special. Still we got a good match for like 7 hours at least with back and forths and lead changes and such. ## Tsunami's Analysis This match had more total lead changes than the entire contest to date, including the first one to occur outside the opening hour. Rocket League led at the freeze, but FighterZ spiked a big update at the 15 minute mark to go up by 5. Rocket League retook the lead on the next update, but FighterZ was right back in the lead on the next update and was still ahead an hour into the match. It was the last time all match that it led, but still, progress! A match was actually won by the entrant that trailed after an hour! Okay yeah, "vehicular soccer" game vs. licensed fighting game was the definition of a fodder match, but you have to take the little victories. And this was the tightest Guru spread of the first round, 73-69 in favor of Rocket League, so we knew this could be a tough one to call. But all of this was overshadowed by a hilariously inept troll. About 40 minutes before the start of the match, a topic was posted stating that "Rocket League must win; I'll alert the Discord with 200,000 followers". And the opening post had a picture to prove the follower count, along with the statement "Someone has to stop BotW". He was, of course, laughed at, and when told it wouldn't work, he said "probably not but someone has to try, we don't need a Wii U game winning the whole contest". When it was pointed out that Breath of the Wild is a Switch game, he instead started defending himself against non-existent accusations that he doesn't even play Rocket League with more pictures showing his accomplishments, or *someone's* accomplishments at any rate since the username in the pics didn't remotely match the one he was using here. When told that it was fine for him to dislike BotW without taking it personally, he responded that he does like BotW, but as you can see he does play Rocket League. By the way, this was the second straight day that votes declined. Nice rally, bro. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7964&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yakuza 0 vs (12)The Witness 2020 _source: (5)Yakuza 0 vs (12)The Witness 2020 (revid 86541)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yakuza 0 - 63.41% 59 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yakuza 0 - 86.12% - **User Votes:** Yakuza 0 - 6719 The Witness - 1905 - **Anonymous Votes:** Yakuza 0 - 5317 The Witness - 1667 There are a lot of games Board 8 has pushed over the years that make zero sense to me, and Yakuza might be at the top of the list. It seems like the exact opposite of what this place would like, yet here it is every year getting high seeds in our contests. Remember Character Battle X when Kazumiya Kiryu got a 2 seed, and it allowed Bomberman to get his first contest win in 16 years? It also, an odd way, allowed him to erase the memory of botching that big lead to Phoenix Wright in the LOL fourways in 2007. Well Board 8 was at it again this year, but this time they boosted Yazuka to a seeding high enough to take advantage in a contest loaded with slugs. A lot of you might remember Braid, which is a very famous indie game that was all the rage last decade. I would know, since I wrote a guide for it on GameFAQs. I loved the hell out of Braid, and I've played it multiple times. It's an incredibly clever game with an incredible soundtrack and a deceptively deep plot. Well the guy who made Braid made a second game that none of you have ever heard of, called The Witness. The Witness, while phenomenal, did not make the splash on this site that Braid did, and Braid wasn't exactly a strong game to begin with. The end result is that the same Yakuza that botched a 2 seed in a character battle managed to come back two years later and score a 77% blowout in a games contest. That is an incredible turnaround, and apparently the key to boosting wins is to keep getting overseeded until you break through. Who knew? ## Ctes's Analysis Sometimes a blowout is precisely what we need to get excited about a match and this one sure was that. After seeing big company games drop matches to indie games that they weren’t supposed to, so suddenly there was a bit of fear regarding this match, because Yakuza seems exactly like the type of game that is somewhat big but not cared about for on our site. This is the first time we’ve ever seen a Yakuza game in the bracket despite it being possible in all but the first games contest, and that’s just when we had a bracket that was clearly going for diversity above contest strength. No one actually thought the upset would happen, because The Witness was expected to be way too weak to take advantage of something like that. Indie puzzle games so far have not looked good and The Witness haven’t been lucky enough to get the Switch release we’re expecting helped so many other things out. Seriously, indie games are perfect for playing on the go and the Switch is a wonderful platform to play your indies on because of it. We did however underestimate Yakuza 0 by 14% in the oracle, which is without a doubt fueled by the indie fear still going on. That’s a lot. Not a single person went this high. Third place is more than 6% away, fourth place is more than 7% away. That’s despite only one person actually picking The Witness to win and he had it in his bracket too. It’s hilarious and it got plenty of attention today despite another match actually being good. We largely expected The Witness to just be that weak with no one really having played it, but Yakuza 0 is actually just decent enough we’ve later learned. It’s from 2017 so we should have seen it coming, but we didn’t. It would be hard to find matches it could win in a normal contest, but it might still be worth having there. It’s hilarious that despite Yakuza 0 looking great here, we weren’t ready to give it any credit for this match so all but a single oracle underestimated it next match as well. That’s even though it would go against a pretty controversial game! Part of the reason is that Yakuza characters appeared last character battle and were all terrible, but we know characters =/= games even if we occasionally forget. This says a whole lot about how little chance we gave The Witness. Obviously, it was weak, but we didn’t even consider that perhaps it wasn’t the worst in the bracket. It ends up being close to the worst in the bracket, but it’s still funny this match led to one to believe otherwise. ## Safer777's Analysis Man the Yakuza series. It is my favorite franchise of the 7th and 8th generation. The series is excellent. It follows the story of Kiryu which is an Ex Yakuza and tries to live a normal life but he just can't. He gets always pulled back in the Yakuza world. These games are mainly played for the story. The story is always good in these games. Of course they always have a TON of twists and you don't even know who the Big Bad at least like the final chapter and Kiryu always goes What? when he finds out. And there is always a guy that you beat him by punching him really hard then in a cutscene he pulls a gun and someone dies but never one of the main characters. It is a Yakuza tradition by now! Still it is awesome. There are 7 main games in the series that follow Kiryu. I was lucky to play the games in chronological order, meaning I started from Yakuza 0 and went up from there. Also these games(except Yakuza 0 which is a prequel)take place always in the year they come out. For example Y1 came out in 2005 and the story takes place in 2005, Y2 came out in 2006 and the story takes place in 2006 and so on. So you see these characters getting old and stuff like that. Now this series was always niche, meaning it did okay sales but it was never popular. Sega released Yakuza 0 in 2015 which is a prequel and it is the best place to start too since you learn about the characters. And man Y0 is the best game of the series. Having played all of them I agree too. Just play Y0. So what exactly are these games? They are like Brawler games, meaning you go around and punch dudes in the face. Also the world is small, like 1 area of a city and it sounds that it is small BUT there are always a TON of stuff to do. And so many minigames. I haven't seen another game that offers so many minigames which you just can ignore all of them if you want and no problem. But no, you just want to play them because they are so good. I mean I played Pool and Baseball which otherwise I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. But not here! Yeah I raved enough but this series is excellent. So that is. As for TW...I don't know anything about once again. It is kind of a puzzle interactive game? So for the match. Okay Yakuza series is weak here but it wouldn't lose again such a game. The funny thing is that the Crew had Y0 win by less percentage than that. So it beat expecations easily. So was Y0 strong or TW weak? Okay hate to say it but TW is just extremely weak. Once again I do wonder how games like this got in. ## Tsunami's Analysis Two Yakuza 0 characters made the 2018 contest, one of them getting a good seed. Neither put up any sort of resistance against characters who were either proven fodder or frequently anti-voted. And yet, we all knew that Yakuza 0 would win this easily, because of the quality of its opponent. Though based on what we've seen this contest, action *games* are actually quite strong here, even if their characters rarely are. Or, wait, no, that's the opposite of the way things used to be! Guys like Dante and Kratos always far outperformed their games. Something's shifted. This would also be part of a larger trend where series that had been niche for a long time suddenly broke out into the mainstream. Apparently the Yakuza series has been around since the mid-00s, but it was 2018, not the bloated 243-character boondoggle of 2013, that saw it make its character battle debut on the strength of Yakuza 0. Same goes for the Witcher 3 being a huge smash hit when I doubt anyone even remembers the first two games in the series--and yes, both of them came out prior to 2013, yet Geralt's nowhere to be found in that bracket. Persona was at least a cult classic series prior to 5 taking it to the mainstream, managing to get characters into the 2013 bloat, but you can stick that in here, too. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7965&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (13)Dead Cells 2020 _source: (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (13)Dead Cells 2020 (revid 86542)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid V - 67.75% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid V - 87.15% - **User Votes:** Metal Gear Solid V - 6273 Dead Cells - 2350 - **Anonymous Votes:** Metal Gear Solid V - 5022 Dead Cells - 1960 You did this on purpose, Allen. There is no chance this was a coincidence. Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Dead Cells, while aptly named for this match, was never going to make a match out of this. It's actually a very good game though, and I highly recommend it if Metroidvania is your thing. It's my thing for sure, so I was going to find it sooner or later. During the Persona 5 vs Heavy Rain match, we talked about games that fell off the hardest during this decade, with Heavy Rain being the game mentioned most often. The other game mentioned a lot was Metal Gear Solid 5. Now I *love* Metal Gear Solid 5, so this is painful for me to write, but I can see why people are down on it. The game released half finished and proved that Hideo Kojima was long past his prime as a storyteller. The gameplay was the best in the series, few people will argue otherwise, but almost everything else was suspect. That plot was trash. The setting was hit and miss. The characters and plot twist were really, really bad. The reused missions and home base aspect were such a turnoff. The potential for greatness was there, but once again, Kojima got in the way. Konami was right. It kills me to admit it, but they were. Death Stranding proved it. Metal Gear Solid 5 got very lucky to be handed such a weak fourpack, and in looking at the bracket, this fourpack and Undertale's fourpack are the only two MGS5 could have gotten out of. It serves penance anywhere else. But hey, those are the breaks and MGS5 was allowed to score a 73% blowout like nothing was ever wrong. ## Ctes's Analysis It looked like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain would have quite the easy path this year. It got what was believed to be a very weak fourpack before running into the exact same game it lost to the previous contest. Back then it was an upset, but no one was giving MGSV any chance this year. There is no bigger shame in the gaming world than what happened to Konami and what happened to one of the best franchises of all time because of it, but not much to do about that, unfortunately. MSGV was certainly getting anti-voted a bit here. Not as much because of the actual game as its just voting against Konami. Despite that, it managed to outdo the boards expectations a little bit. Some probably thought it would be hurt more from all the backlash. Others probably put too much faith in Dead Cells after good showings by indies this round. Dead Cells is released around the time that appears to be the preferred time to be released for indie games, but it didn’t do it much favor. It just didn’t quite hit the big scenes. I’m sure MGSV got a lot of franchise name votes from the forced voting. If Dead Cells couldn’t look better than this against MGSV then its playrate is probably very low. Despite Yakuza 0 looking good today, Metal Gear Solid V would still come into round 2 as the unanimous favorite to win and into round 3 as the unanimous favorite to lose, so it’s not like it made a huge difference that it did slightly better than expected. ## Safer777's Analysis So MGS 5 is the last MGS game that the creator of the series worked before getting kicked out of the company. Now I don't know anything about MGS series but I do know they always have ridiculous stories and twists that can give the Kindom Hearts franchise a run for its money. DC is another indie game. It is fairly popular but that is. The thing I don't understand is that 3 of the crew guys gave MGS 5 a 55% winning prediction percentage victory. Okay people seriously? I know you are experts but we are talking about MGS series here. You know a series that is HUGE here? Or at least it was. Even the strongest indie game here wouldn't beat it. At least I think so. I know that people were dissapointed with MGS 5 because I heard even the story wasn't finished or something but still. So for the match. MGS 5 won easily. Well of course. DC may be fun and all but at the end it is just a metroidvania indie game and we have already hundreds of them since apparently it is the most popular genre to make games of. So did MGS 5 redeemed itself here? Hard to say. It did score a big victory against a well regarded indie game at least. ## Tsunami's Analysis While the days of SFF matches out the wazoo seems to finally be behind us, Allen can't help but get cute with the bracketmaking sometimes. Dead Cells going up against a Metal Gear game is funny enough, but we're also looking at a probable 2015 rematch in Round 3. It wasn't even a particularly close match in 2015, though it was one with what seemed like a fairly even split in prediction percentage. MGSV was expected to have suffered from backlash. It feels like nearly every established franchise has been facing backlash towards its most recent games. No wonder indies are doing so well; any franchise not owned by Nintendo is essentially getting punished for how good earlier games in the series were, or are perceived to have been. We're in the midst of maximum hype about a Final Fantasy VII remake, and seeing the ads, it certainly does look beautiful. Modern graphics with, presumably, the original story. But I can't help but wonder, if it weren't a remake, would it be nearly so beloved? I haven't gotten that far into FFVII yet, but so far I'm less than impressed, and pretty new graphics won't fix that. Though I was happy that the game took mercy on me after I failed the stealth sequence in Shinra Tower too many times. Funny, I thought that the problem with *modern* games was that they held your hand too much? It wouldn't surprise me at all if some gamers held that mercy against the remake, if it's still there. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7966&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (14)Xenoblade Chronicles 2 2020 _source: (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (14)Xenoblade Chronicles 2 2020 (revid 86543)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Batman: Arkham City - 60.12% 54 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Batman: Arkham City - 71.52% - **User Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 4817 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 4040 - **Anonymous Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 4075 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 3378 Not to be confused with Xenoblade Chronicles X, which is the *actual* "Xenoblade Chronicles 2". The Xenoblade Chronicles 2 pictured in this match is, technically, "Xenoblade Chronicles 3". You can thank Japan and their nonsensical methodology with how they name and order video games. I don't get it either. By the way, remember TheStupidRaptor trying to claim Xenosaga and Xenoblade weren't in the same series even though the literal director said that both franchises are in the same series? Shout out to everyone on Board 8 spamming that gif at the dude until he closed his account. Finally some justice around here with getting rid of trashy users. I was paying very close attention to this match between Batman and Xenoblade 3 (you can't stop me from referring to it at such), because I had picked Xenoblade 1 to win its division. So while I knew Batman was going to win this match, I was also hoping for a very good Xenoblade 2.99~ performance. Batman won the match, and Xenoblade 2.5 Final Mix X Version 1.Beta Max / 4 Days Cubed Sideways looked good in losing. My one twinge of doubt here was perhaps both games being weak, but Batman put that fear to bed in round 2. As luck would have it, both of these games were quite strong and Xenoblade 3 could have caused serious damage in other parts of his bracket. It finished top 30 in the stats despite never winning a match, meaning it could have potentially won a bunch of the fourpacks. Not to mention all the hype for the Xenoblade 1 remaster that was happening during this contest. The Xenoblade train was alive and well! ## Ctes's Analysis Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is one of the most unfortunate games in the bracket and just like the others it’s a Nintendo game. As underseeded as it is, it failed to get a winnable match despite it being clearly being in the upper half of games in the bracket. It’s low seed is probably a sign of how the first one is so extremely favored. People liked 2 but not to the same extend as the first one. I’ve heard the DLC makes it closer, but it’s still easily the first. I haven’t gotten around to playing the second myself yet and I’ll be playing XenoblaDE on Switch soon before. That could’ve perhaps boosted the second one a bit as well. It’s pretty close here already and it’s just another point for 2017. Xenoblade 2 got really close here despite having all odds against it. A few people had it in their brackets, but I’m guessing most just thought Batman wouldn’t be as good as it seemed to be. Most people expected Batman to go above 60% here and it ended below 55%. I don’t think many people thought the performance was due to Batman being bad though. Xenoblade had looked incredible earlier and most things Nintendo had looked really good overall, Switch games in particular. Almost everyone knew right away that this was Xenoblade 2 being legit, although it’s still ways off of the first one. Batman proved its strength today. It should not be too surprising. They haven’t really been relevant for a while, but it’s Batman of course it’s going to hold up to some extent. Although this match did make people feel a little bit uneasy about picking Batman to round 3 when the BioShock franchise has shown itself to have a really high ceiling in the past. While it proved its strength, getting below expectations in percentage didn’t make that apparent right away and confirmation about that only came later. ## Safer777's Analysis Another Superhero game and it too won its match! Superheroes are awesome. I have played 3 of the Arkham games and I have to say that City is really the best. It is amazing. All 3 of them show how Batman games should be, the 2nd one is just slightly better. As for XC2 I only know it because of the controversy with the boob slider. So what was that? Basically you could costumize the character but she was 13 years old and you could make her tits big or small too! Yeah! I know it is strange but it is a game. Just relax and have fun? Anyways that is. Also it is an Action RPG. Strange thing to know about a game but I always like when in US news you can see everything violent no problem but if you show a little skin everyone there says think of the children because it is so bad to do that! So for the match. Well BAC did won BUT it did worse than expected. I mean 4 of the crew had it above 60% and it couldn't even score 55 here. So why is that? I guess that XCL2 is strong because I do believe the series is more known now. Plus Batman 4 was real bad and I even myself refuse to play it too. So it made the series look bad. Still it won. ## Tsunami's Analysis Remember everything I said about action games being the in thing now, and non-video game origins not being a detriment? Yeah, this match basically decided to throw that all out. 93% of Gurus got this right, and 71.32% of casuals, which means that it was by and large not a debatable match--yet look at how close it was! This was an absolute embarrassment, barring the possibility that XBC2 was almost as strong as the first--based on 2015 X-Stats, Arkham City is worth 52.86% on XBC, yet it could only get 54.46% on the sequel. And in the next round, it was set to take on a game that finished ahead of XBC in the 2015 X-Stats. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7967&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)BioShock Infinite vs (11)Terraria 2020 _source: (6)BioShock Infinite vs (11)Terraria 2020 (revid 86544)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bioshock Infinite - 63.78% 58 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bioshock Infinite - 75.41% - **User Votes:** Bioshock Infinite - 5920 Terraria - 2935 - **Anonymous Votes:** Bioshock Infinite - 5189 Terraria - 2263 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. Terraria was one of the many that served only as early game fodder, and though getting doubled isn't the worst loss in the world it managed to make BioShock Infinite look much, much stronger than it actually is. Only Heavy Rain and Metal Gear Solid 5 fell off more with people throughout the decade, and the reasoning for this is obvious. BioShock 2 damn near killed that series off for good, and Infinite tried far too hard to recreate greatness. Greatness cannot be artificial. It simply *is*. On the off chance anyone reading this hasn't played it yet I won't spoil you, but there is a reason people don't like BioShock Infinite, and it performed as such this contest. Can you imagine if Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, or Dark Souls was in this match instead of Infinite? The beating would have been legendary. But it is what it is, and we were treated to another run of the mill round one doubling. One thing I can talk about that spoils nothing is the gratuitous violence in BioShock Infinite. I'm not one of those idiots who thinks violence in video games causes school shootings or anything -- I've played a whole lot of games with a whole lot of violence myself, and I'm not exactly ready to join the military -- the violence in a video game has to be *in context*. The original BioShock was violent, but it made *sense*. BioShock Infinite's is just stupid. You're walking along in a fair, and all of a sudden your character pulls out a buzz saw pistol and cuts a guy's head clean in half? Come on, do better. That stuff existing just for the sake of existing is pointless. I doubt I'm alone in that belief, either. ## Ctes's Analysis If Batman had you worried about the next round because it got close to Xenoblade 2, then this match should remove any worries you had. Terraria is fine, but it’s not exactly the type of game that would ever do well here. Furthermore, at this point we all agreed that indie games from the latter half of the decade were the ones to fear and Terraria is from the early part of it. Just to add salt to it, Terraria ends up being the ultimate loser of the bracket. BioShock looks bad here despite getting the doubling. Of course, none of the above stopped the board from overestimating how close Terraria could get to BioShock, even though almost all of us agreed it couldn’t pull off the win. Expectations for BioShock Infinite were also very low. That series is way past its prime and we already saw Infinite in action last time where it lost in round 1 to peak strength Fallout: New Vegas. It was a step behind Arkham City then and with more reason to drop. The original BioShock could pull it off, but that one is on another level. You have to give BioShock some credit for managing to hit the sweet spot where it surprised us positively but still looked bad. It’s probably the forced voting at work again. It made a lot of round 1 matches less close than they would be otherwise. ## Safer777's Analysis So I don't know about the Bioshock francise but a friend of mine bought the trilogy a few weeks ago and from what I saw they are damn good and brimming with atmoshphere. As for Terraria people nick named it a 2D Minecraft so that is. Plus the game is excellent from what I hear too. Indie of course. Plus it has amazing sales so it has to be good right? I think the Bioshock franchise is on ice now too. I mean we haven't had a new game for 7 years which I don't get it. Good sales and amazing critical reception but that is? Companies should keep making games from their franchises that sell well you know. So for the match. Some people thought that Terraria could do it but I never even thought of that. Bioshock is still a strong name and indie games as we saw don't have serious power. Even more so on this site. So that is. ## Tsunami's Analysis If there was any good news for Arkham City, the presumptive favorite in Round 2, it was that its opponent, BioShock Infinite, was also disappointing in Round 1. Terraria is a sandbox game similar to Minecraft, hardly the type of game that GameFAQs goes crazy for. Yet here it was pulling down 32.33% against BioShock Infinite. Admittedly, Infinite hasn't had nearly the success in these contests, be it in games contests or Character Battles, that BioShock or BioShock 2 have had. But it's still an established franchise, which means it should be worth more than this. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7968&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Diablo III vs (10)Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward 2020 _source: (7)Diablo III vs (10)Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward 2020 (revid 86545)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Diablo III - 70.52% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Diablo III - 86.55% - **User Votes:** Diablo III - 6079 Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - 2776 - **Anonymous Votes:** Diablo III - 5202 Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - 2250 Okay, *now* we can talk about Blizzard being the worst company in human history. I played nice when discussing Overwatch and Starcraft 2, but Diablo 3 is in no way a video game worth playing nice with. Remember this garbage? Yeah, remember Blizzard being such useless, greedy trash that they released Diablo 3 with always-online DRM and *one server*? I remember. I was there. I bought a new computer to play that game and everything, and then I couldn't even log in because Blizzard thought one server would be enough. These people also refuse to add stash space to Diablo 2 or more deck slots to Hearthstone because they're worried about server capacity. It's unreal how much they lie. And then it got so much worse, but to understand how we need to go back in time a little to discuss the last great game Blizzard made -- Diablo 2. The game is so good that mere *rumors* of a remaster have people up in arms. To that I say those folks are gullible idiots (Warcraft 3 Reforged *just happened*, people), but whatever. Diablo 2 is still played extensively **TO DIS DAY**, and the game has its own economy over on d2jsp called "forum gold". A huge underground economy happened, and you guys know how well Blizzard handles news of anyone else making money instead of them. Just look at the Warcraft 3 Reforged EULA. Anyway, Diablo 3 finally got up and running, and much to everyone's horror the item drops basically did not exist. Anywhere you go, same complaint. And why was that? Because Blizzard was butthurt over d2jsp, so in Diablo 3 they turned item drops way down and launched the game with a Real Money Auction House. It's okay that items don't hardly drop in-game. Just open up the wallet and go buy them in the auction house! Blizzard tried claiming this was an improved way to sell items that you yourself picked up, but everyone and their mother knew that the sellers in the auction house were all Blizzard smurfs, because again, *items were not dropping in-game*. It was impossible for anyone to have all of the good items being sold in the auction house. It all added up to arguably the worst launch in the history of video games, and it never got any better for Diablo 3. People can talk all they want about the game getting better once content was added, I don't care. That game is laughable trash, from a laughable trash can of a company, and people are on my side now thanks to the whole debacle with China. Don't worry, we'll get to it. How do I know people are on my side? No one knows or cares about whatever Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is. Is it an indie title? Is it a book? Is it an adventure? Is it a visual novel? No one knows, no one cares. All I know is it led Diablo 3 for two minutes, which is a wonderful allegory for Diablo 3's launch. I don't care what Diablo 3 did in the rest of the poll after those first two minutes, because they told a better story than the final 1,438 minutes ever could. The Blizzard hate is real, and my side will win. By the way, do you guys not have phones? Fuck off, Blizzard. ## Ctes's Analysis Even with how much Blizzard is dislikes these days, Diablo III still managed to almost break 70%. That’s how bad Virtue’s Last Reward is. It didn’t surprise anyone either. It’s a game we’re solely putting in there because it’s our own niche thing. Same thing as 999 back in Best Game Ever III. On board 8, it just got second place in a best 3DS game contest. In a contest anywhere else, it’s just happy to be there. Visual novels are never going to be bigger than really obscure in these things most likely. I’ll also defend Diablo III a bit. It’s a good game honestly. It’s not as good as the second one at all, but that’s high bar and it was just nice to be back after so many years. I don’t think it’s what Blizzard is likes for and I don’t think it’s getting anti-voted as badly as some of the other games are. I mean, we on board 8 did of course. This match had one of the most insane board votes of the whole contest because it’s one of our favorite games against something we don’t like. Diablo was losing a minute into the match and was ahead by only 2 votes two minutes into the match. That’s insane for something that ended up getting nearly 70%! ## Safer777's Analysis Diablo series is HUGE on PC! Diablo 2 is still played on PC, 20 years after it came out! A friend of mine bought D3 for XBOX and he has put so many hours on it that I have lost count. These games are all for the loot and the levels, since D3 hasn't even a traditional level cap. I never liked these kind of games but eh. So Blizzard announced a Diablo gatcha game a few years ago and man oh man I haven't seen more disappointment in a room from a video game announcement. I mean it was extremely bad. It was so bad that the game isn't still out. I don't understand the fans. Sure Diablo series was always for hardcore gamers on PC but they do know that mobile games earn more money per year now than the traditional games right? I mean every company would be an idiot to not relase gatcha games of all their franchises. Still Diablo series is still popular and they announced a new traditional Diablo game a few months ago. So this ZEVLR is a visual novel game I believe? And it got into the previous Game Contest too? Damn! So for the match. Obviously Diablo 3 would win. But it would be nice to win with above 70% at least. I mean it faced a visual novel game. Also I do believe that Diablo 3 wasn't liked when it first came out because it simplified things from Diablo 2 and also you could sell items you get in game for real money to other players and it had even an auction house provided by Blizzard in game too! Yeah it lasted around 1 year but that is 1 year too many. I guess a win is a win though. ## Tsunami's Analysis This feels like it was actually a pretty good performance for Diablo III. No, VLR isn't strong, but Diablo III was absolutely excoriated by the fandom when it first came out. Though I guess nowadays, how good a game you are when you first come out is completely irrelevant because everything's so wired that they can just patch things? And D3 is apparently a better game than it used to be. We'd see that again soon. Still, Diablo II beats RE2 outright in the 2015 X-Stats, 56-44. If we peg Diablo III at even *half* Diablo II's strength, VLR's projected to get 26.73% on RE2, which is higher than what VLR is actually pegged to get on RE2 via 2015 X-Stats. Even adjusting for the expectation that this RE2 remake is actually *stronger* than the original, which flies in the face of *everything *this site has stood for for the past two decades...there's still no X-Stat voodoo I could come up with to suggest that VLR is weaker than DR2. Also, did people forget that 999 came out in 2010? It seems really weird that VLR made the bracket and 999 didn't. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7969&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)The Last of Us vs (15)Crusader Kings II 2020 _source: (2)The Last of Us vs (15)Crusader Kings II 2020 (revid 86546)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Last of Us - 82.52% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Last of Us - 94.41% - **User Votes:** The Last of Us - 7198 Crusader Kings II - 1656 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Last of Us - 6198 Crusader Kings II - 1254 Just how *many* fodderific games were in this bracket? My goodness, there are only so many ways to talk about all these round one blowouts. I understand seeded tournaments as well as anyone -- trust me on that, the NCAAs are my favorite sporting event and is half the reason I fell in love with these contests in the first place -- but this contest was legitimately seeded too well. Octopath Traveler and Mario Kart 8 were the only major seed upsets, and everything else was chalk. I'm sure Crusader Kings 2 is a fine game, but it had no shot here. For those of us who picked The Last of Us to win this division by beating Dark Souls, this was a pretty good result. We thought that match was always going to be close (remember, the leak for Last of Us 2 didn't happen until the tail end of April and it totally threw us for a loop), so Last of Us had to go out there and put up a comparable performance to Dark Souls scoring an 83-17 blowout over Hotline Miami. It did just that. 82-18 over Crusader Kings 2 is about as comparable as it gets to what Dark Souls did, so The Last of Us was right on track with what it needed to do. If only we knew what was coming. What an absolute disaster. ## Ctes's Analysis The Last of Us was a very hot upset pick to win the division pre-contest. No other upset pick was taken by as many in round 4 and the division 4 favorite was taken by only 2 more. The reason for this was that The Last of Us looked straight up better than Dark Souls in 2015. Dark Souls is considered very influential, but The Last of Us also got a lot of awards and prestige back when it came out. Dark Souls looks pretty good right off the bad, so The Last of Us had something to live up. The popular opinion is that it did not manage to do that. It’s also what ended up being true. Crusader Kings II was brought up when people considered what the weakest game in the bracket might be. It’s an eight year old PC exclusive strategy game that wasn’t all too popular. It basically has nothing going on for it. It’s the type of game that we absolutely don’t care about here. It’s not even a niche thing, we just straight up don’t care. That said, you could with good reason give The Last of Us the benefit of the doubt today. It doesn’t really matter how much you get above 80%. Up there it’s way too uncertain. The Last of Us also got an opponent that it has less overlap with than Dark Souls did. It wasn’t out of the question just yet. Ironically, at this point we thought it was a bad thing The Last of Us 2 had not come out yet and perhaps people were annoyed about the delay. That’s nothing compared to what was to come. ## Safer777's Analysis TLOU is one of these games that people say it is one of the best games of all time and almost everyone agrees. It is excellent from a story perspective because the gameplay isn't anything special. But still it is an amazing game. Just play it if you haven't done it by now. Yeah it is a post apocalyptic game with zombie like enemies but don't let that fool you. CK2...I haven't heard it. It is a Real Time Strategy game and these games are always timesinkers and it seems that the fans are really dedicated but we all knew that it would really weak. So for the match. People thought this would be the biggest blowout on the contest and I agreed too, but it wasn't like that in the end. Still a huge victory as expected of course. But as I said many times against such weak games you can't judge a game power. I want to know though who exactly nominated CK2. I mean do people in this site play these kind of games? I am going to say no. ## Tsunami's Analysis No meaningful conclusions could be drawn from this match, because Crusader Kings II was always going to be weak. But still, is it really stronger than Hotline Miami? Because it got a better percentage on TLoU than Hotline Miami got on Dark Souls, and the 2015 X-Stats say that TLoU *should* be stronger than Dark Souls. Technically speaking, they say that The Last of Us should actually get a higher percentage on Dark Souls in the division final than on Arkham City in the division semis, but Arkham City was in the top half of Division 1 which means its X-Stat number is horribly distorted by the collective delusion that a.) Chrono Trigger would've won in the absence of rallies and b.) *that matters.* Because it doesn't matter. Rallies have always been a part of the contest. Many of our greatest contest matches were great because both sides were rallying. And I guess they were fine with that because even if they shifted the outcome, they probably didn't shift the percentage that drastically. But when one side manages to tap into a source of votes that the other can't match, suddenly we have to correct for what "should be" instead of what *is.* And once a rally has knocked someone off, there's no longer any need to account for logic in projecting what "should have" happened. I'll say it again: Yes, Chrono Trigger was indirectly stronger than Final Fantasy VII in 2015. You can see it in the actual percentages they got against Melee and you can see it in the percentages that Allen was kind enough to provide for "registered voters only" for all of both Melee's and Undertale's matches. **Wouldn't have mattered. **Final Fantasy VII won't lose to a fellow Square game. There was a pair of PotD's shortly before the contest, one for "What is your favorite Final Fantasy game" and one between the top two vote-getters of that poll for "which of these two do you like more". *Both times*, FFVII lost to FFVI, and then FFVII still narrowly broke 60% when they faced each other in the Division 2 Finals. Also, let's take a look at those "registered user only" numbers, and pretend they're the actual numbers. Note that this isn't the same as subjecting the 2015 contest to 2018/2020 rules because we don't know what the registered/unregistered splits are and either way, 2-1 isn't the same as 1-0. Looking at Melee's percentages against Undertale and Chrono Trigger, Undertale would be projected to get 22.33% on Chrono Trigger. Undertale vs. Mass Effect 3 - 29.49% 70.51% Fallout 3 vs. Undertale - 75.67% 24.33% **Undertale vs. Super Mario World - 19.28% 80.72%** Pokemon Red/Blue vs. Undertale - 76.30% 23.70% Undertale vs. Super Mario 64 - 26.21% 73.79% Smash Bros. Melee vs. Undertale - 69.59% 30.41% Undertale vs. Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 33.44% 66.56% Yes, *Super Mario World*, the game that started hemorrhaging percentage to *Animal Crossing: New Leaf* when Undertale started rallying against ME3, is projected to beat Chrono Trigger by this metric. It's probably misleading because it's only looking at "logged in", not the age of the account--while it's possible that Undertale legitimately picked up a bandwagon here on GameFAQs, it's far more likely that Undertale's percentage rises each round after the SMW match because more of the people rallied from off-site had accounts, possibly because they wanted to taunt the "butthurt" people (though I'm pretty sure that BracketEntry was a false flag operation by someone from Undertale's camp, or possibly even *Draven's* camp because honestly the LoL bunch seemed like the bigger group of trolls and Allen basically set things up to exclude the game from the contest). So, yeah, that happened then, and Allen conceded to give longtime GameFAQs users (well, anyone who had an account at any point before the contest began and still remembered how to log into it) a greater say, and it...flipped a grand total of three matches last contest, probably only one of which actually made B8 happy, and through pretty much all of Round 1 there hasn't been a single match whose outcome would've changed no matter how the votes were counted because registered and unregistered voters, while their percentages have varied, have always chosen the same game. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7970&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (16)Subnautica 2020 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (16)Subnautica 2020 (revid 86547)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 84.77% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 95.40% - **User Votes:** Skyrim - 7354 Subnautica - 1363 - **Anonymous Votes:** Skyrim - 5975 Subnautica - 1216 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Subnautica was one of the ones that served as happy-to-be-here early round fodder. The name of the game in this match was not whether or not Skyrim would win; we all knew it was a guaranteed blowout. Skyrim was scoreboard-watching. It had to equal or outperform the likes of Witcher 3, Dark Souls, Persona 5, or any other hopeful game from the bottom half of the bracket. Skyrim's aspirations were to make the final, and anything less would have been a disappointment. The stats topic gets made fun of a lot for wild projections based off of early match performance, but we're often right. Go look at the updater. See how Skyrim was below 70% at the beginning of this match? Go compare that board vote to Witcher 3 and Dark Souls. Skyrim was *screwed*. I know Skyrim rose to 84%, but early board votes are often indicative of what's in store. No one on GameFAQs knows or cares what Subnautica is. Skyrim losing the board vote to it, or showing any weakness whatsoever, was unconscionable. I regretted my Skyrim \> Witcher 3 pick immediately, and my gut instinct was not wrong. Most of us have that intuition for a reason. We knew Skyrim was screwed right from the jump. We knew Xenoblade was a threat to win its division right from the jump. Among other things. Get used to Skyrim losing board votes, because it's apparently the new Final Fantasy 7 -- that is, the internet decided it was cool to hate on Skyrim for literally no reason other than being popular. Yes I'm aware Bethesda is trash now, but how is that Skyrim's fault? Final note before I move on. When looking into all the games this year, Subnautica reminded me of a long-standing hatred of mine -- people who record fake reaction videos for clicks. Streamers in general tend to be complete losers, but there aren't many things dumber than setting up a camera and recording yourself getting "freaked out" by something. We all know you're acting. Knock it off. Speaking of streamers, Twitch is about to turn into a thoroughly useless web site. I mentioned idiotic reaction videos on camera for attention just now. Well here is Steph Loehr, a member of the new Twitch Safety Advisory Council, pretending to be a deer on stream: In a previous livestream Steph called for voice communication to be banned from online gaming because, according to Steph, it gives \[normal people\] a massive advantage. However, later she admitted that the real reason she wanted voice chat banned in-game was because she’d be ‘constantly harassed by cis-gendered gamers’ on the platform. Ferociously Steph also stated that it is a fact that all white cis-gendered gamers are neo-Nazis, or rather white supremacists, and this is something she plans on changing by “banning these assholes” with her newfound powers. “I have power, they can’t take it away from me, and, honestly, there are some people that should be afraid of me and they are because I represent ‘diversity’. I am going to come for all these people. If you’re a really shitty person I’m going to come for you, period,” Steph said during her livestream. I just cannot figure out why people are abandoning the left in record numbers. Can you imagine having to be associated with this literal human trash? And yes, I said *human* trash. You are not a fucking deer and you full well know it. There is a huge subset of people with massive mental illness issues who use the LGBT community as a safe haven for mental illness instead of actually getting help. I live in the tri-state area, and I know a *lot* of great gay people around here. They absolutely cannot stand these people who use gays as a cultural shield, because it makes a mockery of trying to get equal rights in the first place. That's how bad round one of this contest was. It has me talking about how streaming has long since peaked and is only going to collapse from here. And I say good. 99% of these partnered streamers are literal trash cans. ## Ctes's Analysis The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had a rough contest. It was consider the favorite by the board to reach the finals and get the honor of being the final game Breath of the Wild beats, so it could basically only underperform from expectations. Furthermore, the other \#1 seeds in the bottom half had board 8’ers defending them at any chance, while Skyrim really lacked anybody doing that. The Witcher 3, which was from the start generally considered the most likely game to take the spot in the finals from Skyrim, had begun its contest run by exceeding expectations, so Skyrim could really only disappoint today. It got 84% against a game that is pretty different from it and that’s on top of any potential Bethesda backlash it might have been a victim of, which really starts to matter when you hit the big numbers. I don’t think it was a bad performance, although some was making it out to be because Subnautica is expected to be extremely weak. It’s not that it’s a bad game, but it’s no big name and it’s not a thing for us, that much is true. But Skyrim got below 80% here and I think that was what it needed to be in contention for the spot in the finals it could hope for. The Witcher 3 looked better in round 1 for sure, but there was no telling what either of them was truly capable of yet. We couldn’t say much about the Bethesda anti-voting yet, but it seems pretty clear it’s there later on. It’s hard to grasp how much of a difference that makes. Like, Cloud Strife will probably never be the character to score the big blowouts again. Final Fantasy VII got that against them a long time ago for “always winning”. For a while, they started out looking bad at every chance, but still did just fine in the end. Because the round 1 matches were as big blowouts as they were, it wasn’t yet time to lose all hope of Skyrim reaching the finals. The Witcher 3 might have tilted the favorite status slightly, and Skyrim sure heard of that, but it was still reasonable to hope for it. The oracles predicted this match almost perfectly. I mean, we’ve been closer to the consensus than 0.77% before, although that’s still good. But the worst prediction still got 44.30 points. That’s pretty darn great. Despite that, people were ready to throw dirt at Skyrim right away. A big reason for that is its horrible board vote, which was a good hint of the expected Bethesda anti-voting. Most people don’t see the percentages at the end of the day and Skyrim rose throughout the day, though not as much as in future matches, which says a lot about Subnautica. It was judged from when the match began, and I know trends aren’t what they used to be, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be shifts. I’ll probably defend it quite a bit, because I think it needs to be mentioned in any Game of the Decade debate even if what it did so well has been improved upon now, and nothing that is wrong with Bethesda has to do with Skyrim. It didn’t deserve all the hate. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have Skyrim here. It is one of the Top 5 games on the Decade everywhere and on this site too. The real question is what place does Skyrim get's in this contest? I have it reaching the finals but I do believe Witcher 3 can beat it. Witcher is extremely popular now especially with the Netflix show. And even the company announced a Witcher 4 game even though they had said that Witcher 3 would be the last. And they would have been stupid to not release more games, I mean seriously. As for Skyrim...it has to be in every console that has come since 2011. Seriously this thing is everywhere. Everyone that plays videogames have heard it, the memes, the mods, everything. 9 years have passed and this thing isn't slowing down. I mean the company hasn't even show a gameplay video of ES 6 and why they should rush to make another game? I mean this thing still sells like crazy and people constantly play it. I mean even on this site after 9 years it is still the number 2 most popular game.As for Subnautica...another indie game. Joy. So for the match. The only thing that mattered is if Skyrim would score under 80% because that would mean it is weak now, or if it scored above 90% because that would mean it is the strongest game here. But nothing happened, so Skyrim did as expected. So that is. 2nd highest prediction of Round 1 of the contest too. Okay it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis 84.00%. A nice round number, the type of match that perfect Oracle predictions are made of. And I threw one away! Among the many games that this board plays to liven up the contest even more is the "Spread Betting" topic. Allegedly the spreads are set by the Oracle picks, but having just been told by the Analysis Crew (and having done my own research and agreeing) that Subnautica would be a contender for weakest game in the bracket, I figured that Skyrim covering the spread was the smart pick, then checked my Oracle prediction to make sure that it was high enough to cover the spread. The Oracle consensus, even after me raising my prediction from 84% even to 86.67%, was only 84.77%. The average of the lowest and highest predictions was roughly 85.5%. Where the hell did they get -72 from?! So, yeah, Subnautica's weak, but getting 16% on Skyrim easily takes it out of contention for weakest game in the bracket. Far weaker games than Skyrim got higher percentages in R1. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7971&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Fate / Grand Order vs (9)Journey 2020 _source: (8)Fate / Grand Order vs (9)Journey 2020 (revid 86548)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Journey - 62.88% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Journey - 62.83% - **User Votes:** Fate / Grand Order - 2972 Journey - 5744 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fate / Grand Order - 2379 Journey - 4812 I had no idea what Grand Order was before this contest, but Gravy will periodically jokingly ask me to buy these little figurines from it for him. Normally I would consider it, but Grand Order making this contest was the first time I heard the term "gacha game". I legitimately had no clue what in the world that was before this contest, but thankfully we have Wikipedia. *Gacha games are video games that implement the gacha (capsule-toy vending machine) mechanic. It is similar to loot box, in that it induces players to spend in-game currency to receive a random virtual item. Most of these games are free-to-play mobile games, where the gacha serves as an incentive to spend real-world money.* The gacha game model began to be widely used in the early 2010s, faring particularly well in Japan. Almost all of the highest-grossing mobile games in Japan use it, and it has become an integral part of Japanese mobile game culture. Outside Japan, the game mechanism is also gaining popularity and is included in various Chinese and Korean games. Oh, so Journey took out the trash. Good to know. Nice to see it get a win after getting fed to Final Fantasy 7 five years ago, too. A lot of people expected me to dislike Journey based on my hatred of Shadow of the Colossus, but I legitimately adore that game and everything it was trying to do. I still replay it now and again, since it's legitimately only like an hour long. Video games can, in fact, be artwork. I'll even go full pretentious and quote myself! From the FF7/Journey writeup: *People will assume I hate Journey because of my opinion on Shadow of the Colossus, but no. Journey is actually an outstanding game. It deserved better than getting fed to FF7 in round 1, and it's everything Shadow of the Colossus wishes it could be -- simple, artistic, and extremely touching. The whole game is about 45 minutes long with no spoken dialogue at all, but has such an amazing message of friendship in it. Actually I suppose it could mean whatever you want, but I enjoy the friendship route.* Play Journey if you haven't. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was expected by many to give us the weakest game in round 2, which would end up providing Skyrim with yet another target on its cover before it proved to be wrong. Journey got rolled over by Final Fantasy VII in 2015, a game that most of us knows get a fair share of votes against it for always winning. It finished up near the very bottom of the x-stats and no one was really surprised. It’s a pretty game, and while it has gotten its prestige here and there on the internet, we’re not the place to get it from. We had no expectations for it, and rightfully so. Then there’s Fate / Grand Order, which has just about no business getting a seed that high. People know what it is because the anime series is pretty big but being the only mobile game in the bracket probably says a lot about how much we think of those. I’ve said before that Pokemon GO should’ve been in the contest. I stand by that, but not because I think it would’ve been worth anything. A few people picked Fate / Zero, but I’d expect that to be lack of faith in Journey more than anything. As I said, many people expected this match to give is the weakest game in round 2, even if a few other matches were brought up as well. Journey did better than the average oracle expected of it and no one picked against it there. We still expected Fate / Zero to among the worst games in the bracket and it’s weird how it ends up avoiding bottom 20 here. Perhaps the name helped. I’m thinking it’s a game enough people have tried out to prevent it from being destroyed so it has a possible larger playrate than the other bottom games. It drew a game we have previously shown to not cared about, which is perfect for taking advantage of such a playrate. It was also the top option in the bracket. Flip the seeds and Journey certainly scores a higher prediction percentage. On top of getting a good draw itself, Journey is probably also a bad draw for Skyrim being as different from it as it is. Skyrim has its anti-votes, but still ended up getting the job done for many rounds. That probably helped Fate / Zero escape the bottom. I think it could’ve easily gotten there elsewhere. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have our first gatcha game here! I don't understand how it got such a high seed here and we don't have other gatcha games like Pokemon Go or Dokkan Battle. I think though that F/G has a lot of Waifus so that is maybe it? But then again I always see F/G to be on the top of the Ios board so I guess it has to be popular. I do play some gatcha games like everyone else(if someone says he doesn't play or played at least 1 they are liars). I know they are the cancer of gaming since now every game and their gatcha grandmother has microtransactions but the fault is the people that buy them, not the companies that put them in. Journey is an indie game BUT when it came out it prooved that yeah even Indie games can win GOTY! Yeah it won some GOTY even though it is a walking simulator basically. But hey the art direction and the style were really good so that is. So for the match. We all knew that Journey would win. Sure nobody talked about Journey after the year that came out but F/G is a gatcha game so no way we would let such a game win a match. So even though Journey is really weak it won with a doubling. Even casuals got this match right even though the seeding was higher for F/G. Nice? ## Tsunami's Analysis Journey was piss-weak in 2015, so I figured the Fate name had enough clout to pull this one off. Then the Crew reminded me that even the people who play gacha games hate them, possibly even more so, because they make their money by making all the good stuff really hard to get. (It's true, too; half the time it feels like a chore doing my daily quests in the gacha games I play--which FGO isn't one of them. Sadly, the only one I truly *enjoyed* closed its international servers in 2016.) My Oracle still turned out pretty bad, though, because I still didn't have enough faith in Journey to not be awful too! And the apathy votes should've still leaned towards FGO because, again, recognizable name. It could very well fare better with people who *haven't* heard of it and don't know it's a gacha game than those who have! Also, in a contest full of blowouts, Journey failed to double a gacha game. On GameFAQs, which hates mobile games and other "casualbait" (even though FGO is less casualbait and more otakubait.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7972&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs (12)Crypt of the NecroDancer 2020 _source: (5)Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs (12)Crypt of the NecroDancer 2020 (revid 86549)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy XIV - 68.28% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy XIV - 82.97% - **User Votes:** Final Fantasy XIV - 6265 Crypt of the NecroDancer - 2452 - **Anonymous Votes:** Final Fantasy XIV - 5083 Crypt of the NecroDancer - 2108 The only game in this entire bracket I hate more than Final Fantasy 14 is Hearthstone. Don't worry, we'll get to the latter in a bit. I mentioned this in the stats topic, which prompted Team Rocket Elite to ask for my bottom 10 games since I tend to call a lot of things the worst game ever made. Good idea, TRE! I thusly present Ulti's Shit List: 1 - Hearthstone - The worst game ever made by far. 2 - Warcraft 3 - The worst game ever made until Hearthstone came along. 3 - Devil May Cry 2 and DmC: Devil May Cry - Going Chris Berman on this one. I covered both of these in the DMC5 vs Tropical Freeze writeup. 4 - Lunar Dragon Song - It's a JRPG where you can't choose attacks, you have to choose between EXP and money, and there is an actual plot point called "The Curse of Lost Equilibrium". The main character is a postal worker who attacks enemies (which you can't choose) by doing gymnastics and kicking with sandals. When he loses his equilibrium, he can't stand on his head anymore and it causes a bunch of problems. I swear this entire paragraph is the truth. 5 - Mighty No. 9 - The main example for why Kickstarter is trash. 6 - Knights in the Nightmare - A strategy RPG that wants to be a bullet hell, and you can't choose the directions your characters face on the grid. It is so hilariously stupid, and might have the worst tutorial in all of gaming. 7 - Shadow of the Colossus - I've covered this one at length. 8 - Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks - They might as well be one giant game anyway. Covered at length in reviews, no need to rehash it. 9 - Every MMORPG ever made, and yes this includes Final Fantasy 14 and I don't care what the honks say to try defending it. I've lost so many friends over the years to this stupid gaming genre that I will never, ever play any of the games or defend them. These games can all go and choke. I hate them. 10 - Every Mario Kart game ever made, for popularizing the ever-moronic gameplay mechanic of punishing skilled players. Mario Kart didn't invent this mechanic, but they're certainly the most popular and egregious about it. It will take a true standard of shittiness never before seen to crack that list. Trash like Dream Drop Distance, Super Princess Peach, the Dissidias. Resident Evils 0, 5, and 6, The World Ends With You, and plenty of other bad games are all garbage cans, but they have a saving grace here and there that prevent them from making the list. Games known for being bad (Superman 64, Crazy Bus, ET, Hydlide, et al) have an entertainment value due to their status. "Ulti, you cannot honestly think Crazy Bus is a better game than Final Fantasy 14 or Shadow of the Colossus. Stop trolling." I got more entertainment value from it than any game on my shit list. No one will ever convince me a single game on my shit list has entertainment value. You also have absolutely no idea how much I love the Warcraft 3 Reforged metacritic user score. It vindicated nearly 20 years of hatred and proved me right all along. All I ever need is a long enough time line. So yeah, it sucks ass that Final Fantasy 14 got to score a free blowout against some indie rhythm garbage. Untitled Goose Game or Goat Simulator couldn't make the bracket for fear of an ironic rally, but Final Fantasy 14 gets to waste a slot. Amazing. ## Ctes's Analysis Final Fantasy XIV has somehow managed to be the most well-liked Final Fantasy this past decade. Not necessarily the strongest, but certainly the one with the least things going against it. That’s pretty crazy considering what it is. Although it’s also something that it achieved down the line. It wasn’t as good at first. It also got an interesting bracket placement where it had a possibility of making round 3. It looked good today as well, which made the next round a bit more exciting. Generally, the winner of the next match was believed to advance twice, but FFXIV had a outside shot. Of course, Crypt of the NecroDancer was never something to expect very much of. We’ve learned already at this point that there is no such thing as general indie boost. Some indie games are just legit now, and this one is not really from the time you’d prefer to be. Furthermore, it’s a rhythm game and that’s probably not something you want to be. We had Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the previous Game of the Decade, which is fair enough, they had their time in the spotlight, but they underperformed. You should respect nothing of such games and little of indies. Final Fantasy XIV probably does good here on the forced voting stuff. You see the name Final Fantasy there and it gets your vote for recognition. That matters against games that are hardly known. I wonder if the name alone cements it as what is the strongest MMORPG now, which isn’t exactly a big title here, but still a title. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have a MMORPG! But not a random one, a FF one. When FF 14 first came out it was SO bad. Like really bad. So bad that basically SE offerend an apology, disbanded the team that made it and started working on it again. After some time they came out with Real Reborn and killed the original FF 14 in real life and in lore too! Yeah that world got destroyed in story too! But then something happened. RR was amazing! Seriously they did such good job that everyone was surprised. So even though we have the original version of FF 14 coming out 10 years ago and RR coming out 7 years ago the game is played by thousands upon thousands of players and new stuff keep coming out on regular intervals. Yeah they managed to make one of the worst lauched MMORPG into one of the best MMORPG's ever! Damn! As for Crypt it is something of a rhythm based game. I don't know how it works exactly but I do know it has amazing music plus it has to be popular because last year a Zelda spin off came out that uses the mechanics of Crypt! Yeah and it was really good and nobody really expecting that! So for the match. Well FF14 has FF in its name and is against an indie game so of course it would won. And it did good I do believe. I don't think anything can be said. I am just happy that we do have a MMORPG going on Round 2. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was one of those matches that I barely even considered debatable when making my bracket and it turned out it *wasn't* debatable, but in the other direction. I mean, let's look at the facts here: this site has never been big on MMOs, as evidenced by the way WoW constantly gets embarrassed, frequently losing as the favorite and failing to win convincingly even when it does win. Again: only entrant, game or character, to win with less than 60% with over 90% bracket support. And this site hates most of Square's recent output, so even if this were a regular Final Fantasy and not an MMO, it wouldn't be *that* strong, though it'd still be strong enough to win. And most importantly, Nintendo has been famously reticent to allow anyone else access to their IPs, ever since the Philips CD-i debacle. Even though Cadence of Hyrule isn't the game in this poll, its mere existence is a vote of confidence from people whose opinions matter a lot to GameFAQs. Turns out, FFXIV is actually really well respected now. That "A Realm Reborn" in the title isn't merely a fancy subtitle; it's to differentiate it from the original release of FFXIV, which was such a disaster that Square basically scrapped the whole thing and then went meta with the rerelease, setting it in a post-apocalyptic world that's basically the same cataclysm that they dropped on the original release's world when they killed it off. People love it, *especially* because it finally gave WoW some much-needed competition. So after being informed that I'd horribly misjudged two matches in the same day *again*, I went into the Oracle topic, came up with what I thought was a good percentage for FFXIV \> FGO, then went back before posting because I'd already forgotten what the other game that I'd wrongly had losing was...and realized, oops, FFXIV was facing Crypt of the NecroDancer! So I had to redo it, and it was killing me because I still believed that if the opponents were reversed, I'd only have to change one outcome; that Crypt of the NecroDancer could still win. After this? I no longer think Crypt of the NecroDancer could beat Journey. Unless FFXIV is just that beastly, getting only 28.47% is just not a good performance, and I really overestimated the psychological effect of "Nintendo let these guys make a game with one of their most valuable IPs". The actual Cadence of Hyrule probably would've been stronger. Too bad it's a 2019 game or else we could find out in ten years. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7973&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Uncharted 4: A Thief's End vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 _source: (4)Uncharted 4: A Thief's End vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 (revid 86550)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario Kart 8 - 55.75% 52 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario Kart 8 - 56.02% - **User Votes:** Uncharted 4 - 3507 Mario Kart 8 - 5210 - **Anonymous Votes:** Uncharted 4 - 3125 Mario Kart 8 - 4067 People really need to stop nominating these Uncharted games and characters to such high seeds. Death, taxes, and Uncharted blowing a match as a high seed. Well.... sometimes. Nathan beat Pac-Man back in the day, and Uncharted 2 has had some success. But when he botches a high seed, he botches it *badly*. In 2010, he was a 2 seed and lost to The Boss. Two years ago, he was a 4 seed and lost to Tails. This year Uncharted was yet again a high seed, and everyone with sense knew how this match would go. It's a shame, too, because Uncharted is a good series and all things Mario Kart are garbage. There is no defense whatsoever for any gameplay mechanic that either renders player skill irrelevant or punishes it for existing. And that gets to be the nonsense to take advantage of Uncharted losing as a high seed yet again. Puke. Doesn't surprise me though, because Mario Kart 8 is possibly the most popular and well-respected game in that series. It is in no way affected by the Wii U curse, as this contest showed. The true shame of Uncharted is that it's a victim of Misbehaving Canine going full SJW and alienating most of its player base. SJWs don't care about diversity, either, because they want everyone thinking like them. They act exactly like republicans did in the 1980s -- useless trash who censored and shut down everyone they didn't like, then acted all miffed when the country hated them for it. Trust me. I've lived through both. If you consider yourself an SJW, just know that you have the same exact mentality as people who thought AIDS was divine punishment for gays. Did you guys know the original writer at Naughty Dog was a woman, and an exceptionally talented woman at that? Skip to "Works". There are no bad games on that list. Zero. Uncharted 2 especially has a lot of contest success, in large part because of her writing ability. But no, let's fire her, redo Uncharted 4 from scratch, crunch our employees because we're total pieces of trash, and allow crazy people to write for us. Colin Cowherd has a saying I love -- "Don't let Twitter produce your show, because only 6% of the country actually uses it. Twitter doesn't matter". The companies who allow Twitter (or Tumblr, or ResetEra, or whatever other SJW trash rag you want to name) to produce their content all fall out of favor for a reason. Ergo, Uncharted 4 can't win any contest matches anymore. It doesn't stop there, either. Uncharted 4 was only the beginning of this mess. Just wait until we get to what happened with The Last of Us. Considering Uncharted 4 ended up on the top third of the x-stats, I don't think it was particularly weak compared to the rest of the field? Mario Kart 8 was just shockingly strong. "Ergo, Uncharted 4 can't win any contest matches anymore." is blatantly false. It would've comfortably advanced against every other 13 seed and beat a lot of higher seeded games. -Surskit A fair rebuttal. Time will tell! ## Ctes's Analysis This was one of them more debated round 1 matches of the contest. Not because it necessarily split the board the most, but because it was widely agreed that the winner of the match would advance all the way to round 3. Uncharted 4 is a big game and they have proved themselves to be alright in the past. Uncharted 2 advanced to round 3 in the contest we had a decade ago. The fourth one sold by far the most. Most of the discussing however centered around Mario Kart 8. Mario Kart 8 appeared in the latest Best Game Ever and got stomped by Super Mario 64 in round 1. It looked very weak back then, but it was also in a match that could be filled with SFF, so it was hard to tell. Racing games are historically worth just about nothing on our site, but Mario Kart is different from the norm and is this not really hurt by it. It’s similar to how Smash Bros has always been good despite being a fighting game. Now it has been released on the Switch to become one of the best-selling games of all time. It was largely thought to be best Mario Kart of all time, although people like us will probably insist on Mario Kart 64 being so. It had a high ceiling, but a low floor. Mario Kart 8 ended up being a favorite by a solid margin. The previous contest, Character Battle X, taught us to go with the Nintendo character in a debated match. This seemed like the same thing. This time, even the overall site favored Mario Kart ever so slightly, which is probably partially because experts make up a bigger portion of the brackets, but also because Mario Kart 8 has been one of the biggest casual games of the decade. I think it has some amount of casual bait in itself, so good thing that worked out for some of them for a change. Seriously, Uncharted 4 got screwed by bracket placement as much as you possible could. Even at the time of the match where most of board thought Uncharted 4 is weaker than it ended up being, it was unanimously agreed that Uncharted 4 would easily beat every other \#13 seed in the bracket. Mario Kart 8 is so far from the second strongest of them. The second best might just be Tales of Berseria. That doesn’t sound much like an achievement, so let’s look at the other perspective. Because on the other hand, Mario Kart 8 looks good enough to be able to upset every other \#4 seed too, except for Super Mario Galaxy 2, but including Horizon. Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks like it had a case for being among the eight strongest games, so that’s hardly a bad thing. Mario Kart 8 is easily the most underseeded game in the entire bracket and Uncharted 4 was the poor game to get screwed by that. It could beat a lot of games that made it to round 2 with relative ease. It took most of the contest before people accepted Mario Kart 8 is actually really good, so at the time Uncharted 4 was thought to be really weak. A few people were thinking Mario Kart 8 had no chance against Final Fantasy XIV next round and that this was just Uncharted 4 being trash, because the match was over right away. Mario Kart 8 won the board vote big time, it looked like it would go for a doubling for a moment before eventually calming down. I’m not sure if there’s some general Naughty Dog backlash going on. This was before The Last of Us 2 has leaked, but it was still not exactly the most popular company. Mario Kart 8’s inclusion shows that not all Mario spin-offs were not counted when considering the expected series cap of two games per franchise. It’s a good call too. It would be weird not having such a big game in the bracket. Galaxy 2 and Odyssey are both among the greatest received games of all time, they both had to make it in as well. Besides, Mario Kart alone of doing better than almost all series today, usually selling better than the platformer Mario on the same console. On the other hand, Uncharted 4 got in a high seed while Uncharted 3 did not. I’m sure this has been used as potential evidence of Uncharted 4 being weak by some, but it’s really just another snub a result of the game coming out in the game it doesn’t really belong to. It’s similar to God of War III in that regard. You don’t think of Uncharted 3 as a 2010s game when it’s part of an early Playstation 3 trilogy. By the end of the contest, Uncharted 4 ended up looking really good, Mario Kart 8 simply ended up looking way better than anyone had imagined it was capable of. I was defending this game a lot throughout the contest and I feel pretty proud for seemingly having had the correct read on it in the end. There are those that will probably still calling it a bust for being a high seed that dropped its round 1 match in a chalky bracket, but that’s quite unreasonable when it’s solely because of Mario Kart 8 being underseeded and many other games would have done the same. It seems like the general idea now is Uncharted 2 was pretty good, but the others weren’t as big and Uncharted 4 didn’t improve on the formula enough, so it wasn’t remembered as well. I mean, sure, there are surely parts of the internet that thinks so or we wouldn’t have the discussion, but Uncharted 4 was big in every way and you can’t deny how it was here 4 years after its release. IT was huge in reviews of both critics and users. It has sold more copies than any other Playstation 4 game. It also wasn’t supposed to improve upon the formula. It was created as the final entry in series to draw a conclusion to the story of Nathan Drake, and that’s exactly what it did. Besides, it’s not like the game just used the same gameplay, it’s better than the other games in the series and The Last of Us too, it’s just not as big as jump, but why should the fourth game in a four game story be that? GameFAQs has always been less interested in the series than most. People seemed to firmly believe that Uncharted 2 would easily be the strongest of the Uncharted games. I disagreed from the day of this match and claimed that I thought the fourth game has a chance of being the strongest and that I don’t think the difference is all too big. Uncharted 2 got the most outside praise, but Uncharted 4 sold better and fans aren’t really as settled on 2 being the best one as some people want to make it seem like. Plenty of fans prefer 3 or 4. My idea was mostly laughed at back then, but on the other side of contest, it sure looks like I was right. We can’t tell for certain, but let’s compare to the games that made both the 2015 and the 2020 contests. We obviously won’t use stuff like Witcher 3, Xenoblade Chronicles or even Mario Kart 8, which everyone can see boosted a lot. Compare them though Fire Emblem: Awakening or Borderlands 2, which have about the same distance to each other in both contests. Uncharted 4 looks better. Compare through Bayonetta 2 and Uncharted 4 looks better, and that’s even when believing Bayonetta 2 was SFF’d a lot this constant and keeping it constant. Compare through Civilization V and Uncharted 4 looks better. Compare through Minecraft and they’re about even, but it’s widely agreed that Minecraft was underrated in the 2015 stats. Compare through Shovel Knight and Uncharted 4 looks better, and sure, Shovel Knight is hard to read properly this contest, but you can see where we’re getting at. Even if you somehow want to say that all of that is within the uncertainties and it doesn’t prove anything, it sure as hell indicates that if the games are much different in strength, it’s in favor of Uncharted 4 and there’s not much else than gut feeling to tell us that Uncharted 2 should be stronger. There is no way for it to be by a lot. You can argue that some of the games I mentioned has reason to decline, but not all of them, and you can argue that for Uncharted franchise just as well. How a direct match between them would end is another discussion, but basically everything reasonable you can put on the table points towards Uncharted 4 not only holding up indirectly but looking straight up better. Part of the board wanted to call Uncharted 4 a bust, but it’s the opposite if anything. Everyone I’ve talked to about this claimed it would be way weaker than another entry from its series and it wasn’t at all. It exceeded our expectations and it’s a darn shame it’s complete lack of luck in bracket placement prevented it from getting a match where it could upset something. I don’t know what this board has against it, but whatever it is it sure isn’t a general opinion, not anywhere, but not even on our own site. Whatever happened with Naughty Dog was after this game came out. Uncharted 4 is a good game, and I’m glad it would end up showing it was good enough in the end. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was somewhat debatable but I don't see why. Has ever Uncharted games/characters do good here? No. We have MK 8 here(seriously how many MK games are out? Damn!) and even though it seems that after so many games MK series would have fallen over actually it is doing extremely well! I am shocked too. But then again when so many sequels of a game come out it is bound to be good and sell well. As for the Uncharted series I do believe that U2 is still considered the best. But all of them are good anyways. So for the match. Well MK did as most of Board 8 expected. A hard win. Seems casuals got it somewhat right too even though the highest seed was U4. So that is. We just don't like games like Uncharted here people. When you will learn? I want to say something else too. When the Uncharted series first came out everyone was saying it was a clone of Tomb Raider which okay made sense. BUT after the rebooted Tomb Raider series came out, everyone was saying it is a clone of the Uncharted series! So we have a clone of a series that was a clone of another series that got rebooted and is now a clone of the cloned series? Or something? So yeah we went full circle I guess! ## Tsunami's Analysis This match was debated for all sorts of silly reasons, most of them stemming as to whether voters would see it strictly as "Mario Kart 8", the Wii U game, or if they'd see it as both Mario Kart 8 and its update Switch version, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Because of course, voters will anti-vote anything associated with the Wii U. Uncharted has never been *that *strong here; Nathan Drake managed a single first-round win in 2013 against Pac-Man and Steve from Minecraft, but is better known for coming in 4th place in his debut despite having *CATS* in his fourpack and then later becoming the first 2-seed to lose in round 1 in a format with 16-character divisions (though we'd had 8-1 upsets in the 8x8 era, so...) As for the games themselves...er, the *game* itself, Uncharted 2, went two rounds in GotD, beating The Legend of Dragoon and Street Fighter IV, before losing to Halo, then beat out The Walking Dead in round 1 in 2015 before losing to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Neither Uncharted nor Uncharted 3 have ever been in a contest. No, Uncharted wasn't even in the vote-ins for the first GotD. (Uncharted 3 would've been in this one, not that one.) Honestly, this feels like a really bad result for MK8. I honestly wasn't that concerned about having blown two matches in the same day because unlike the Bravely Default/Ni No Kuni disaster, at least my wrong calls would *both* be R2 losers anyway, but after seeing MK8 held under 59% by UC4 while FFXIV was putting up over 71% on NecroDancer, I'm not so sure anymore! Obviously MK8 had the stronger opponent, but was it by enough to account for that big a difference? Though it should be noted that at 55.86% correct, this was the most debated match of Round 1 with the casuals, narrowly edging out Nioh's upset of Binding of Isaac: Rebirth which 56.01% of brackets had incorrect. *(Note: Apparently some brackets got banned or something, because the correct prediction percentage for a bunch of early matches went up since I wrote these reactions. BoI:R-Nioh is now the biggest toss-up, as Nioh's prediction percentage is now above 44 while MK8's is above 56.)* ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7974&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (14)Night in the Woods 2020 _source: (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (14)Night in the Woods 2020 (revid 86551)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 79.63% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 91.81% - **User Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 7143 Night in the Woods - 1463 - **Anonymous Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 5644 Night in the Woods - 1461 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Night in the Woods was one of the many, many happy-to-be-here low seed indie games that existed entirely to make the heavy hitter look good. Pokemon HGSS is one of the games I don't feel should have been allowed in this bracket at all, but now that it was here it was time to watch it work. And work it did. Any doubt that this game wouldn't be a true proxy for Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal was put to bed immediately upon the game scoring an 82% blowout. I get that no one knows what Night in the Woods is, but that's still a very impressive start. It also put Skyrim on notice, because Skyrim had a crack in the armor. If you go into a match against Pokemon off of your A game, it's likely you lose. We already long since knew Pokemon would win the board vote in that eventual duel, but this match showed that it could go either way. And no, NieR honks, that game never stood a chance. We'll get to that in round 3. ## Ctes's Analysis The final one of the three remakes would also score a big blowout. It’s always weird to speak of the Pokemon entries as a single game when they’re technically two, but it makes sense, I suppose. So far, there was nothing indicating that being a remake would hurt you in any way. It was also still hard to tell because it’s different when facing games that people actually think about remembering the past decade of games than when it’s against something not widely known. The big opponent for Pokemon HGSS was NieR Automata in round 3. It was the board favorite to make round 4 but expected to lose to Skyrim by everyone except a few that fear Pokemon too much, or underestimate Skyrim I suppose. NieR looked pretty good today, but it wouldn’t take many votes against HGSS to prevent it from getting a higher percentage, so I’m pretty sure most people still believed in whatever they did before the contest began. Night in the Woods is a cute game that was pretty well acclaimed, but it hasn’t gotten the attention a bunch of other indie games have gotten. It released on everything and it’s from 2017, so here’ a good reminder that people aren’t actually voting for things because they’re from 2017, it just happens to have a lot of games we care strongly for. That might just be the most obvious statement you can make. The same thing can be said about indie games, however. We grouped those together a lot more than we should, especially in the early part of contest. One indie game being good doesn’t really say anything about the others, regardless of exposure. That indie games generally seemed to do better likely just means that indie games in general have a easier time getting exposure today. That obviously increases the chances that we’ll have legit indie games, but it doesn’t mean a general rise. Of course, another match going on today was showing that better. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have finally a Pokemon game! But it is a remade of the Gen 2 which came out in 1999. And even though we had 4 generations since 2010 the one from the 2nd generation got in even though it barely count since it came out in 2009 in Japan but later in other regions. As I guy who has played all main Pokemon games multiple times for me the 2nd generation is the best. And I was so happy to see HG/SS with all the QOL upgrades. Gen 1 is special for everyone so it is above criticism and most pokemon fans agree that the 2nd generation is the best. On the other hand we have an indie game that I haven't heard anything about. Of course. So for the match. Well HG/SS would win easily of course. The only thing that mattered was the final percentage. I do believe it did better than expectations since the average prediction was a bit lower than 80 so there you go. Well even though the latest Pokemon games seems to mess up the series since there are way too many complaints to count, they actually sold extremely well, they have sold more than 16 millions and the games are like 6 months old only. And this sales chart is old. So yeah people love their pokemons. ## Tsunami's Analysis Long before the contest was even announced, I theorized that due to the apparent "two generations" rule, where two generations have to pass before people can start getting nostalgic for a Pokémon game, that Black/White could be a beast in the Game of the Decade because it'd have the benefit of *three* generations having passed. Then Allen decided to allow remakes into the contest, possibly fueled by RE2Make winning GotY 2019 (wait, *what?!*), and even Gen V, which I'm pretty sure *is* remembered fondly because its metagame was very much still evolving when the Gen VI games came out (blame this on Gen VI being when Game Freak shifted to worldwide releases; Gen V didn't just *feel* shorter than previous generations; it *was* shorter), was completely missing from the bracket, let alone the newer games, but Gen *IV* got a representative with a 3-seed. Because as we all know, being essentially from the previous decade is a winning strategy for Game of the Decade. Just ask "Ocarina of Time 2". (I'm joking, of course; Majora's Mask proved it was legit in 2015.) Though of course, no GameFAQser would ever forget that HGSS was released in 2010 and not 2009. You could say its release date is...burned into their minds. Other than that, there's not much to say about this match. No entrant in Round 1 received more raw votes from unregistered voters than registered, but Night in the Woods came closest. There were 1501 more registered voters than unregistered, and of these 1501 votes beyond the unregistered output, a grand total of *2* went to Night in the Woods. GameFAQs loves its Pokémon. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7975&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Celeste vs (11)Rayman Legends 2020 _source: (6)Celeste vs (11)Rayman Legends 2020 (revid 86552)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Rayman Legends - 42.39% 7 for - 52 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Rayman Legends - 37.78% - **User Votes:** Celeste - 4335 Rayman Legends - 4271 - **Anonymous Votes:** Celeste - 3373 Rayman Legends - 3726 Figures the best match of round one would be a one point affair between indie fodder versus mainstream fodder, but them's the breaks! This match was anyone's guess, and though Rayman had made contests before, he always performed like a total bottom-feeder. Celeste has almost no past polling to draw from, and she performed horribly in the few polls she was in. We all knew she would be weak, but we picked her because it's very difficult to be weaker than Rayman -- kind of like a Celeste winning by default kind of a deal. It was a measly one point match either way, so even though the match was *awesome*, it didn't really matter at the end of the day. "But Ulti, Azuarc only beat JONALEON1 by one point you scrub!" JONA got this match right. Azuarc did not. I rest my case. Azuarc won this contest because he picked Dark Souls to beat The Last of Us. JONA did not. That was the main difference. Don't worry, we'll get to it. A few times in this PCA, I've mentioned the indie match trend, where they start off hot and then fall off a cliff as the match progresses. It came to an ugly head in this match. After Celeste took the early bracket votes, Rayman evened it up with the first update. It was a sign of things to come, though Celeste was able to rebound from the bad start. Despite Rayman's best efforts at stalling, Celeste was able to build up a lead of 200 after two hours. Rayman fought back rather valiantly and stalled her out for a few hours, but not before Celeste built up a 300 vote lead by midnight. It's like we were back in the F5 days! Overnight, however, is when Rayman made his move. He did a wonderful job stalling things out for a few hours before making his comeback move, largely with the help of Europe. Before getting into the rest of the commentary, there's a small thing I'd like to mention here. As far as I can tell, Europe really doesn't like indie gaming. The entire reason these games fall off after hot starts is because Europe never votes for them. I don't know the reason for this, but maybe one of our friends from across the pond can enlighten us. Once the European vote kicked in (and it was the European Board 8 users cheering *hard* for Rayman, so I guess he has a following over there), Rayman started coming back hard. That 300 vote lead Celeste had was below 100 in a couple hours overnight, and it looked as if Rayman would run away with this thing. When the sun began to rise on America and the morning vote kicked in, it was.... Celeste who started going up. So it looked like Celeste, who won North America going away, would be able to hold Rayman off and win this match. **NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!!** It was a short-lived bump for Celeste, who was never able to stretch a lead out past 100. Rayman recovered nicely, despite not having support from North America at all. Europe was carrying this dude hard. Rayman was able to get the match down to even around 8 am, and after one final push where Celeste desperately tried to shake this guy off the mountain, it was not to be. Rayman kept the match tied all morning, and finally started making his move after lunch time. He got the lead, but it stayed under 50 votes for hours and hours. Once it got over 50, it stayed in the 50-100 range all the way until the evening. That's when the avalanche knocked Celeste, not Rayman, off the mountain. He would ultimately win the match by 200 votes, which was a very sad, yet fitting end for Celeste in this contest. She never could find that golden strawberry. Sucks, too, because I *really* wanted her to win. Rayman was never my thing, but I harbor no ill will at all toward his fanbase. I know you guys have been waiting for a match like this for your boy for awhile, and it's frankly very impressive that Rayman won entirely on the back of Europe carrying him over the finish line. Typically after going through a barn-burner like this I have a big writeup on what does this mean and where do we go from here. Sadly, this match meant nothing beyond a cute one point upset. Congrats Rayman, you finally made it into round 2, and your reward is one a one way ticket to getting your ass whooped by Pokemon. "Also noted is that this match caused the last zero bracket to fail, as it got a point for picking Celeste to lose." -Nintendogs ## Ctes's Analysis After a mostly boring round 1 with lots of blowouts, the final day of the round gave us the best match of the contest so far and got us all hyped again for round 2. It was almost out of the blue. We weren’t particularly hyped for the match before it came. No one was expecting it to deliver this much. Celeste was already the favorite by a pretty big amount and the first round hadn’t really done anything to change that, the contrary if anything. Celeste is everything that we up until this point had agreed was good to be as an indie. Rayman Legends marks the first appearance of a Rayman game in any of our contests. We also only got the character into two contests. First time when expanding the field 2007 where he jobbed hard to Snake, Nightmare and Vyse. No point in getting him back in then, until 2013 expanding the field as insanely much as it did. From that point forward, he might be able to win the right match as being a mascot or well known character is better now than it used to be. Unfortunately for Rayman, he drew Squall in 2013 and missed the field completely in 2018. Perhaps if he gets into Smash Bros, we might care to nominate him again. Otherwise it’s a long shot. That’s a huge part of the reason people had little faith in Rayman Legends. It’s not even considered to be the best of what a series capable of doing nothing had to offer. The match was exciting almost right away. Celeste won the board vote by quite a bit. It’s not too surprising, we love games that. A lot of indies have had similar trends, and I’ve seen people talk a lot about Celeste and never about Rayman. On top of that we have the bracket votes, but Rayman didn’t really allow Celeste to get away. It held the lead during the freeze, going up and down a little bit, before being ahead by 21 at the freeze. Given what trends we’ve seen similar games to Celeste have, and given that Celeste probably had the board vote and the bracket vote, this sure didn’t look very good for it. True enough, Celeste’s lead dropped to only 6 in the next update despite bracket votes and the like still being in its favor. At that point, you could be really happy having Rayman in your bracket, because things were looking really good for it. Then the match randomly turned. Celeste won the next update by 3 votes, which isn’t much, but everyone expected a lead change. Celeste extended that to 20 votes the following update and go slightly up from there for a few more updates, before Rayman made a small cut. With a small lead of 36, perhaps it was still the power hour in effect. There was hope for a Rayman supporter, right? The next update would have Celeste bursting up to 88 and the one after that up to 144. That was a very quick shift that certainly looked like Celeste had this one in the bag. The next while would have them go a big back and forth at times, but overall, Celeste was going upward. Suddenly, it looked like Rayman had actually won the board vote. Five hours into the match, Celeste was up by 300 votes. It was looking like it was over, but that it would just end up being a lot closer than we thought it would. The 5-hour mark is interesting, because it’s when Celeste stopped going up. Two updates later it was ahead by 333 votes, which is the highest lead any of them had the whole match. Rayman did a pretty big cut then, but no one was paying too much attention yet. An hour later Celeste would be at the same spot. In other words, they were stalling for an hour. Then Rayman began working at making the match interesting from that point forward, as the US went to sleep and Europe began waking up. Rayman was winning in most of Europe, while Celeste held the lead in NA. Rayman began winning the hours from that point forward. It was a pretty slow progression at first and most of the board were asleep, but we began noticing slowly that the Rayman was putting together something. It had the time, but would it be enough when Celeste was winning in NA? Rayman certainly made the attempt. While the match was almost even for the two following hours after the biggest lead, Rayman cut off 100 votes the next hour. At this point, every awake had taken notice. Rayman continued to cut the lead of at a a good pace having broken the 100-vote lead nine hours into the match. Rayman began slowing down at that point. It continued to cut for a few more updates, but then Celeste began to stall. It would appear Rayman’s best hours were over despite Europe still waking up and NA still being asleep. The thing is, it was probably just close enough anywhere, so perhaps there was more to this match than geography. The match would stand completely still for a few hours and I don’t think there’s really any trends to use there, it just did. Votals are low enough for such to happen. Celeste attempted to get some of its lead back, but it wasn’t really allowed to get away. Eleven hours into the match would be when Rayman would begin the final strike. Right before NA would supposedly wake up and save Celeste. Rayman could the lead slowly and a bit more than hour later, Celeste managed a 2 vote lead before the change finally happened. Rayman was ahead. Slowly it began to build a lead that was over 60 by the time we entered the thirteenth hour. Then Celeste cut big time. NA had seemingly finally woken up and things could go Celeste’s way. It made sense that the morning vote began a bit later because the match was on a weekend after all. Celeste slowly got that away before we got into the best hours of the match. Celeste took the lead with a single vote. Then Rayman took it back only for Celeste to lead with a single vote again. Next update by 2 votes. It looked like anyone’s game. Celeste wasn’t able to run away with it. It had a lead in the 10s for a while, until Rayman swapped that around and did the same. At exactly 14 hours into the match, we’d get a tie. Celeste took the lead again after the tie. That would be the final time Celeste had the lead, but it was exciting for a while yet. Next update, it was Rayman’s turn to lead by a single vote. Then for a couple of hours Rayman would lead with about 20 to 30 votes. Rayman then attempted to build a lead bigger than that, but Celeste kept putting it back down to that point for a while. They would continue to make push each of them for the rest of the match, but Rayman’s pushes were just a bit better and so it ultimately won with about 200 votes. The upset ended up happening. Board 8 didn’t expect it and casuals didn’t expect it. No one cared much though. The winner would not make a real attempt at Pokemon HGSS, everyone knew that. It was just great to follow a match like that again. Two matches in round 1 so far, The Walking Dead vs. Bastion and Rocket League vs. Dragon Ball FighterZ had been exciting for a little while, but this was the first time the match was worth following almost the full day. It gave us some much-needed excitement. North America never really helped Celeste much, even though it won there. It looks like it needed to win bigger there to depend on it. Trends are a bit weird today and we have less of them, which makes it harder for a game to complete comebacks. There’s the power hour and there’s the time of the match where Europe dominates the vote. Those are the things we have today. Geography and our own taste. Rayman just seemed a little bit better overall. Perhaps it got the win on its more recognizable name that the character hasn’t gotten a chance to yet. Round 1 was notable for having indies exceed expectations. This match served as a nice foreshadowing for most of round 2 when it comes to indies. They usually underperformed relative to expectations. This match did a good job highlighting that a group of indies simply had gotten perfect matches to look better than they were, but it was mostly due to the other games. That was a sign of things to come. ## Safer777's Analysis Best match of Round 1! Yeah strange to say that, but it was. We had an indie game vs a non indie game. I don't know Celeste but it is a platform game with good story actually and people seem to like it. As for RL it is another platform game too so we have a fair match? Rayman was the mascot and the focus of Ubisoft before they became big with the Assassin's Creed series and they shifted focus there. Oh and also Rayman gave us Rabbids! You know the characters that EVERYONE loves? So for the match. As you can see the match was EXTREMELY close. Celeste was around 52.4 after the first 5 minutes and after 4 hours it was around 51.7. But no problem since it was winning in USA a lot. But it kept losing percentage and after about 13.5 hours RL got the lead. But then Celeste got it back. The games kept goint like that for a while and we had even a few ties. But then RL got the lead and we all say well USA is waking up and Celeste there wins by 53 so it would be over. But a curious thing happened. Even though the match ended and RL won Celeste's percentage in USA stayed at 53! So why this matters? Because most of the people that come on this site are Americans so the game/character that wins in USA wins the match. Sure we had a few cases where something won in USA and eventually lost the match but the percentage on USA was lower, like 51. Not 53 like here. I can't explain it. I guess RL won in the States that have the most people or something? Anyways very good match. Oh and also the whole Crew got the match wrong as most of the site it seems. And it made sense. Even though RL is from a series that most have heard, Ubisoft doesn't care for that anymore. So we all backed Celeste. Eh still at least we got a good match so that is fine. ## Tsunami's Analysis FINALLY! FINALLY! FINALLY! Yes, it really needs that many finally's. A lot of trends were broken in this match, saving Round 1 from being complete and utter monotony. Celeste jumped out of the gate on fire; the earliest update on our vote tracker had it receiving 16 of the first 18 votes. Of course, there are a bunch of registered users who make a contest of getting the first vote, so it's probably fewer votes than that. It was a bit wobbly after that until Celeste spiked back-to-back update wins of 52 and 56 near the end of the first hour. From there, though neither side could put together more than 5 straight update wins (and Celeste had managed that feat *before* it hit the two big ones, all of which amounted to a smaller lead than either of those two updates alone), Celeste slowly built up a lead, peaking at 333 at 1:10 AM, about five hours in. At 3:30 AM, however, it was Rayman Legends that broke that trend, winning its sixth consecutive update and pushing the deficit under 200. Celeste promptly won the next update, but then Rayman rattled off a string of seven, then a string of five shortly thereafter. By 5:10, the lead had dwindled all the way to 65 votes--but then Celeste reversed the trend. At 6:20, Celeste was coming off its sixth straight update win and had climbed back to 123 votes ahead (hey, we're still talking about this contest's crappy vote totals; large swings in updates late in matches just don't happen, except sometimes in the big blowouts where the leader can still put up decent net positives). The next update was a stall...and then Rayman started chipping away again. At 7:15, however, chipping was no longer enough; Rayman spiked a 29-vote swing to cut its deficit to 66. At 8:20, Rayman took its first lead of the match. It was short-lived. Celeste retook the lead a mere 10 minutes later as part of winning 6 of the next 7 updates after falling behind. At 9:35, the poll read 50%-50%, with Celeste clinging to a 1-vote lead. And again at 9:45, after it responded to Rayman's +9 with a +9 of its own, constituting two more lead changes. It then got a bunch more little wins to pad its lead all the way up to...18. At 10:25, however, Rayman spiked another +22, flipping a double-digit deficit into a double-digit lead. And again Celeste fought back, bringing it to a dead tie at 11:00 AM and winning the next update by 11. So of course Rayman Legends wins the next update by *12*. Lead changes 6 and 7 in rapid succession. And that was all the lead changes we had, though it took until the final four hours or so for Rayman to really start breaking away. In the end, it was a 217-vote margin and a percentage of 50.45%-49.55%. The Gurus were really tripped up by this, with a correct percentage of 27.46%, but at 37.67% the casuals weren't much better. And in addition to this being our first match that was honestly intriguing for quite some time, it marked the first match where the registered and unregistered voters disagreed. Celeste polled at 50.37% with registered voters and 47.51% with unregistered voters. Oh, hey, that means the unregistered voters actually flipped a match! Bravo for them, I guess. It's a 1-point match anyway as neither of these games stood a chance against HGSS. I honestly thought this was the first appearance by anything Rayman in any of the contests. Courtesy of the wiki, however, I learned that Rayman the character has in fact been in two contests, though one of them was the bloated 2013 contest and his seeding was below the line where he'd have made a 128-character bracket (yes, even when you account for the 8-seeds being taken up by Board 8 rallies without regard to where they ought to have been seeded.) He didn't make it to Round 2 in either, though he at least managed to beat out Commander Video in 2013. Honestly I'm not surprised; even among forgotten platformer stars, Rayman feels irrelevant. What an amazing match though! I normally try to do the entirety of a day's matches at the same time, but my hands are already getting sore (admittedly, I'd already spent quite a bit of time on the computer today before writing these) so I'd probably end up half-assing the next two matches' write-ups if I tried to do them now. Let *that* be a testament to how good, and how *necessary*, this match was! We were just one day away from the highlight of Round 1 being a troll claiming he was going to start a rally before a match even started and votals for the day in question being *down* from the previous two while the game in question actually trailed after an hour but still won. Most matches could be called right at the freeze; only a couple of others even had any lead changes at all but that had been the only one where it took over an hour for the winner to take the lead for good. A match that stayed inside of 51-49 for the final 16 hours and 45 minutes was a godsend. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7976&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Divinity: Original Sin II vs (10)Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft 2020 _source: (7)Divinity: Original Sin II vs (10)Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft 2020 (revid 86553)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 64.98% 54 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 58.63% - **User Votes:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 5971 Hearthstone - 2636 - **Anonymous Votes:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 4887 Hearthstone - 2214 I'm not going to lie. I was low key worried Hearthstone might win this match because of this poll: In that poll, the original Divinity only beat Hearthstone by 350 votes despite Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft both having representation in that poll. I thought a straight 1v1 match with all the side stuff removed could give Hearthstone a chance, regardless of what the stats say in 2015. Thankfully, Divinity saved this contest and all of our lives by having none of it. I don't know what these Divinity games even are, but I bought Original Sin 2 and I will love every second of it on general principle. The reason for this is because Hearthstone is, with no debate whatsoever, the worst game ever made under any medium. Ever. It's so bad that there is practically no second place. If you want an esoteric analysis of Blizzard themselves, it's all right here: No need to go on another rant to rehash it all, and Blizzard screws up so routinely that I've been able to update that page every month with new information. You want Blitzchung, Warcraft 3 Reforged, and the entire Hong Kong debacle? It's all in there. Among much, much more. I'll stick to Hearthstone alone in this one, and I noticed that a lot of people don't know what Hearthstone is or why people hate it so much. Allow me to explain. Hearthstone pretends to be a card game. You get a mana crystal each turn, and you use that mana to play cards. Some cards are minions. Some are spells. You play cards, bash minions into each other, and eventually one hero's life goes to zero. That's how the game is advertised. What Hearthstone *actually* is is the very essence of what's discussed in this video: It's the very essence of U.S. Patent \#9,789,406: Hearthstone is in no way a video game, because *all* player skill is removed from ever factoring into any result. The only thing that ever affects any result in Hearthstone is RNG, and that is manipulated to encourage microtransactions and addictive player behavior. No decision you make ever matters in what happens on screen. No result is ever honest. It's a card game with every single skill option removed. All matchups are random, all draws are random, most of the targeting is random, a lot of the damage is random, the card generation effects are random, the discovery is random, and *all results* are random. All of it. That, by itself, makes it the worst game ever made, because in every other game ever made, actions taken by the player has *some* effect on the result. Not in Hearthstone. Every game plays out like those European board games where players are playing against the game itself, not against each other, and at any point the game can just tell anyone "you lose". The fact that anyone on this planet defends this garbage is beyond me, but they exist. On top of that, it's a card game that pretends to be competitive while offering zero skill options. There are no sideboards, no rematches, no card bans, no class ladder bans, no tournaments, nothing. Just RNG and nothing else. *Every other game ever made* is better than this on that fact alone, and there is no defending it. If you across someone who thinks player skill is in any way relevant in Hearthstone, you are dealing with a complete and total idiot. I would rather spend time with *anyone else* over someone who thinks Hearthstone is skill-based, because the game is factually not skill-based. Period. "But Ulti!" a defender of this trash will exclaim, "At the highest level every decision matters and blah blah reeeeeeeeeeee!" Fuck off. Hearthstone is not skill-based and it's specifically designed not to be. End of story. Go away. Original Sin 2 is in the mail en route to my route as I type this all up. I for one cannot wait for it to get here. I will play it, I will love it, and I will cherish it for preventing the worst game ever made under any medium from winning a contest match. ## Ctes's Analysis This was another one of the matches where it was discussed whether that the winner might be the weakest game to make round 2, although the winner was never really in doubt. Heartstone was in the 2015 contest and finished dead last in the x-stats after managing to get no more than 8.97% against Ocarina of Time, which is not exactly the game to receive the least number of anti-votes. Hearthstone is just that bad. It’s not our type of game and we don’t like Blizzard much anymore. We expected it to do very bad today. Divinity: Original Sin II was also a game we had just about no expectations for. It’s a PC game first and foremost, which is a bad thing here. It also focused a lot on its multiplayer experience, which likewise isn’t what you want to be here. Hearthstone reappeared after finishing dead last and yet we didn’t believe Divinity could pull off the doubling on average. That says a lot about how little we thought of it. Hearthstone would end up still being the worst of anything that appeared in the 2015 bracket, but it didn’t quite end up on the bottom this time, which makes sense, it’s a much weaker field. It’s seemingly casual bait to some extent judging from the prediction percentage. They both were a little better than expected, but mostly Divinity. It didn’t really change anything, because the winner today was clear and Divinity was never going to beat Automata. ## Safer777's Analysis Here we have DOS 2 which is maybe the best RPG that came out in the last 10 years. It is turn based and there are many customizations options, dialogue choices, combo moves, loot, so many stuff to do that seriously you can do anything. You hear that in many games but DOS 2 really does that. I do believe it is the only game that you can trully kill everyone on the map and still complete it. Sure you will lose most of the quests but the option is there. Just buy it if you like RPG's especially turn based ones. You can even change difficulty on the fly if you have problems plus there is a Magic Mirror on your base that you can change EVERYTHING for your characters except genders. So no problems if you think you made a wrong build or something. Money is somewhat tough to find but you can steal from everyone with a dedicated thief build. Which you can change any time anyways! Plus we got the the Definite Edition which adds even more stuff and it is all for all consoles so you don't have any excuse to not play it. On the other hand we have Hearthstone which is a card game. Card games are slightly liked better than gatcha games on this site so there. HS had been in the previous game contest which got owned easily so I guess almost every game could beat it here. So for the match. Well DOS 2 won easily. And it did really good. As I said we don't really play games like DOS 2 here which is a shame. Also forgot to mention something DOS 2 is an indie game! Okay mostly. The first game got made via Kickstarter. And also you do know how many microtransactions does DOS 2 has? Zero. Strange how the big companies say that the current model of making full games and selling them is unsustainable which a few years ago it was, you know, the NORMAL thing to do? But not anymore. Yeah money is good but make a good game at least first? Still nice win for DOS 2. The correct prediction percentage was kinda low too. I guess people went with the game that they have heard about? I had played Hearstone for a while too and to tell the truth to do good you have to buy cards with real money. Sure someone may say that you don't need to do that, BUT you have to play like the whole thing to get resources to get cards for free. Who has so much time for that to play a free card game? So yeah people just buy the cards. Gatcha game it is, so it does makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis Hearthstone was easily the weakest game in the X-Stats in 2015, certainly unadjusted and probably adjusted too. (The unadjusted X-Stats are mostly worthless because Undertale scored its largest blowout in the final against OoT. I feel like that definitely says *something* about Undertale, given that Link very nearly managed to stop Draven anyway, but I'm not sure what. But they can still be useful for comparing games that were on the same sides of the bracket.) Divinity was therefore expected to win easily, and it did just that. Some people were a bit surprised at *how* easily it did so, however, given its weak showing in the only other poll it had been in, but we all know that non-contest PotD results, even from GotY, are often suspect when used to predict contest matches. Nevertheless, this was the match where it was theorized that 2017 had actually been a stealth monster of a year and that there had been a number of games, Divinity: Original Sin II among them, that had flown under the radar because their only prior appearance in a poll was a poor showing in that year's GotY. People started talking about how 2017 would've done in the Years Contest. The thing is, it probably still wouldn't have done that well. There was a running joke about "just pick the closest year to 1998", except it wasn't a joke at all; if you actually made your bracket that way and picked correctly on all the "coin flips", you'd have a grand total of *two *wrong picks, though one of them would have been on a semifinal match so you'd still be far from perfect. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7977&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)NieR: Automata vs (15)Bayonetta 2 2020 _source: (2)NieR: Automata vs (15)Bayonetta 2 2020 (revid 86554)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 64 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** NieR: Automata - 63.85% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** NieR: Automata - 81.32% - **User Votes:** NieR: Automata - 5922 Bayonetta 2 - 2684 - **Anonymous Votes:** NieR: Automata - 4784 Bayonetta 2 - 2316 The Bayonetta games got screwed this contest. Bayonetta 1 drew a Zelda game, and Bayonetta 2 was a Wii U exclusive for some dumb reason. It also ran into the worst possible opponent it could have seen. I know other games would have beaten Bayonetta 2 worse than Nier did here, but come on. This is what Bayonetta is known for: This is what 2B is known for: Of course Bayonetta 2 was going to lose. This match is the contest version of a once beautiful girl pushing 40 and now having to watch the pretty new 20-something steal all of her shine. Let this be a lesson, ladies. Don't spend your 20s whoring around. Us men have every advantage in dating after 30, because we have nothing but time. You don't ;) By the way, this is no defense of 2B or that freakshow fanbase. Just wait until we get to the Pokemon HGSS match, my gosh. I always enjoy when round one ends on a dud match, because I like doing a small retrospective here. Round 1 of this contest was garbage. An 11, a 13, and a 14 seed won. There were no other major seeding upsets and less than five matches out of the 64 were good. The matches would get better later, but round one was blowout city. People also *massively* overhyped all of these indie games. Some absurd number like 95 of them made the field, but only Hollow Knight, Bastion, Minecraft, Shovel Knight, Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Stardew Valley won their matches. Seven sounds like a big number, but not when there are 64 games in round 2. Only one of these games would end up in round 3 and that required a developer rally, too. I have no problem with indie games, but the hype around them is just ridiculous. Star of the Round had to be Mario Odyssey or Xenoblade Chronicles. Those two meant business. Turd of the Round goes to Dragon Age: Inquisition and Hearthstone. Inquisition wasn't the biggest black eye of the entire contest like Fire Emblem was, but in round one it qualifies. Hearthstone was given a fairly winnable match and performed like the trash it is. On to round 2! ## Ctes's Analysis The final match of round 1 came down to a seemingly good-looking victory for NieR: Automata against yet another game screwed by bracket placement, Bayonetta 2. Automata was talked about quite a bit pre-contest. It looked alright considering its competition in the Game of the Year polls of 2017 and 2B made the latest character battle as a \#1 seed, showing that there’s definitely a fanbase here, even though she didn’t have the strength you expect of a \#1 seed. Automata had a match against Pokemon HGSS on the horizon. While Pokemon was the favorite, Automata was a popular upset pick. Bayonetta 2 did make our previous contest losing to Read Dead Redemption rather easily. Since then, however, Bayonetta was revealed as the final DLC character of Smash 4 and returned to Ultimate along with everyone else. Furthermore, both games have been ported to Switch, which the second one in particular needed to be. It was expected to be decent now, but it’s low seeding gave it a completely unwinnable match. Interestingly, despite the first one failing to make the previous contest, it was seeded a lot higher now, but they were both screwed by bracket placement. The oracles didn’t expect Automata to pull off a doubling, so it overperformed a bit. This made the people that picked Automata for round 3 happy, although the Pokemon match didn’t really teach us anything about what it was against. Automata would end up not looking as good in the next round though and would fail to make the upset, so what happened here then? The most popular idea is that Automata SFF’d Bayonetta 2. MechanicalWall was trying to put forth the idea already at the time of this match, but almost no one believed it at the time. Impressive seemingly being right about that from the beginning. I don’t think it’s obvious. The games are made by the same company, which has some rather passionate fans. They play similarly too. Those were the main ideas behind it, but I think it was reasonable to assume otherwise despite of it. Across all our contests, we have basically no evidence of previous SFF between things from different consoles from different companies. Different consoles is one thing if it’s a N64 game SFFing a Gamecube game or something like that, but a PS4/XBONE/PC game SFFing a Wii U / Switch game? That was hard to believe by many, myself included, and I don’t think you can blame us. But full credit where its due for sticking to it from the beginning. That explains why Automata looked so much better today than in the following rounds. The other possibility is that Bayonetta 2 simply didn’t boost the way we thought. That seems weird all things considered, but we also saw Tropical Freeze looking really bad despite getting that dreamy Switch release, so perhaps it’s possible? Mario Kart 8 being as good as it did is a point against it, although that game sold so insanely many copies on Switch that it might just have broken through to the boost regardless, or maybe people just see Mario Kart something and think that they know what that series is. Development of Bayonetta 3 is apparently happening, but that’s really all we know of it, which might not be too good for the series. A while ago it was including at the end of a direct where everything they had was a line confirming it’s still going on. Perhaps that’s a point against it. Finally, Bayonetta appearing in Smash likely did more for the character than the games, if it helped the games at all. That one at least seems likely to be. It’s just to say that we might simply have misjudged how good Bayonetta 2 actually is. I believe in the SFF idea the most though. It’s a shame it couldn’t get a slightly higher seed and make for some interesting matches somewhere else in the bracket. It’s actually the type of lower seeded game a bunch of round 1 matches were missing. If Bayonetta 3 is out the next time a games contest happens, then we’ll probably see at least one of them again, so let’s pray they get a better chance then. ## Safer777's Analysis You gotta feel sorry with the Bayonetta franchise here. Both games had so much bad seeding matches! If you could switch some seedings from the other divisions they both could win at least a match. As for the NieR franchise it got REALLY popular with the NieR Automata game. Before that barely anyone has heard of it because it is a spin off from the Drakengard series which even fewer people have heard of it. So why this NA game did that good? I have played it and the gameplay isn't anything special. So why? Because the art and the story are really good. Sure you do control androids and you fight machines but they ask philosophical questions like what is human, what is an android, what is a machine, does anything matter? I mean the main characters who are 3 of them know they are just advanced machines and their purpose is to die fighthing the machines and they know it they still have complicated personalities. Same with the machines. Sure most seem like the berserk type but there are others who just like to live in peace. But how are these things happening since all these things are just created, not born naturally? These things you do wonder along with the other characters. I mean others think only the missions, others want other stuff, others want both and you even find a pair of Androids, one is male and one is female who love each other and just want to leave everything behind and just have each other which is impossible since they are both advanced machines but they don't seem to mind that. So yeah you do wonder and make you think deeply. I mean even the Pods, which are just flying analyzing machines that you always have around and help in combat too have their unique personalities and they do wonder about stuff too! Plus the main character of NA is 2B which became famous of her sexuality. I mean she wears stockings a and a real low skirt which you can even remove so you can see all her glory. Okay she actually wears somekind of 1 piece cloth but still you can see her ass since it barely covers anything down there but hey I am okay with that! So yeah it is a weird game but weird in a good way. So for the match. As I said both Bayo games have some power and could win matches but they got strong opponents. So did NA did good? Yeah it did. More than a doubling and even though Bayo 2 is weaker from Bayo 1 due to beeing a Wii exclusive game, I count it as a good result. ## Tsunami's Analysis Both of these games were clearly going to be far weaker than their TJF-packing protagonists, although there was reason to think Automata might not be as weak as the original Nier presumably would be. I say presumably because we've never seen it in a Games Contest! It's actually recent enough that it would've been in this GotD, not the last one, and normally the instinct is that the first game in the series is always the strongest but Automata was far more successful commercially so it probably is stronger. Nier the character was weak in his only outing in the Character Battle but he was being SFFed by Riku. Then again, that kind of says everything, doesn't it? In fact, if you tried to use past results without understanding what they actually mean, there's a *direct* route you could've taken to getting this match horribly wrong: Riku beat Nier in 2013; Bayonetta beat Riku in 2017; sequels are always weaker than the originals; therefore there's no way that a Nier game could beat a Bayonetta game. The only question left is just how much weaker than the multi-platform original the Wii U-exclusive Bayonetta 2 is. Because this is GameFAQs, where Link Always Wins, and yet Nier: Automata won more convincingly here than ***2013 Game of the Year*** The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds did against the first Bayonetta. Even if being a handheld game is always a negative here unless you're Pokémon, I find it hard to believe that Nier: Automata would challenge ALBW. (Granted, it wasn't *that* much more convincingly, so the two Bayonetta games would have to be pretty *close* in strength for Nier: Automata to actually win.) Either that, or the "2017 factor" is stronger than we thought. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7978&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=64) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (8)Halo: Reach 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (8)Halo: Reach 2020 (revid 86555)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 65 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 80.43% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 90.96% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 7768 Halo: Reach - 1415 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6775 Halo: Reach - 1149 Zelda scoring an absurd blowout in round one was predictable. Doing the same in round 2 is some pretty rarified air. Since lists are fun, here is everything that's broken 80% in the first two rounds. -Mega Man in Summer 2002 over Ms. Pac-Man and Serious Sam. The blue bomber broke 90% twice, which is a record that is never getting matched. -Link in Summer 2003 over AiAi and Fox. -Sephiroth in 2003 over Raziel and Max Payne. -Zelda 1 in Spring 2004 over Adventure and Donkey Kong. -Final Fantasy 7 in Spring 2004 over Suikoden 2 and Xenogears. -Link in Summer 2004 over CATS and Ganondorf. -Cloud in Summer 2004 over Duke Nukem and Vyse. -Samus in Summer 2004 over Lara Croft and Sam Fisher. (God the Summer 2004 Contest sucked.) -Mario in Summer 2005 over Joanna Dark and Ness. -Zelda over Civilization and Mega Man X in the series contest. This one broke 80% in round 3 against Metroid, too. -Mario over Madden and Warcraft in the series contest. -Mario and Bowser over Earthworm Jim/Slug and Ike/Black Knight in that godawful rivalry rumble. -Link and Ganondorf over Arthas/Illidan and Amaterasu/Orochi in the rivalry rumble. -Chrono Trigger over Ratchet & Clank 3 and Dragon Quest 8 in Fall 2015. -1998 isn't in this club, technically, because it broke 80% in rounds 1 and 3 over 1993 and 2003. In round 2, it did not break 80% on 1992. Just typing this sentence is ridiculous because that contest was awful. That's the entire list, and it gets far more exclusive once we discuss round 3. It's pretty rarified air to get 80% twice in a row, and almost impossible to do it three times in a row. We all expected Zelda to go crazy here, but not *this* crazy. The oracle consensus undershot this match by 4%, and who can blame them? 85% in round 2 is insane, and this match really brought home how dominant a favorite Breath of the Wild was. It was around here where people realized that even a CD Projekt Red rally in the final might not slow this thing down at all. Halo pulled off a cute win in round 1, but that's all it was. Nice to know you, bro. We've compared Zelda to a lot of things over the years -- my favorite comparison is the New England Patriots, because beating them feels like divine intervention -- but I found the best comparison yet. I finally got around to watching No Country For Old Men, and Zelda in these contests is Anton Chigurh -- a dominant, cold, ruthless killer that just does *not* care about anything other than the mission. You never really get the better of Zelda. You can only delay the inevitable if you're in the crosshairs. But Zelda is a fair assassin. It's not undefeated. It just *feels* undefeated. "Call it." ## Ctes's Analysis This is an insane score to get in round 2. Breath of the Wild had absolutely no need to prove itself and yet it completely destroyed its competition once again by almost as much. I was tempted to fear Breath of the Wild was good enough to just slaughter whatever it came across, but that’s obviously not the case. It’s insane to keep doing this for a game that everyone with just the slightest bit of contest knowledge knew would be the winner. It also appeared that The Outer Worlds was fine and could’ve beaten something like Life is Strange too, but something had to get Breath of the Wild. Halo finished last in the x-stats of any game in round 2, so Breath of the Wild did have luck on its side looking good. Halo wasn’t really considered when figuring out what the weakest round 2 game might be. Halo: Reach is probably also yet another easy game to score a big blowout against just for being a Halo game. It could use its bracket votes and name to beat something like Life is Strange, but no one really cares about Halo anymore and Reach is a decade old already. I wonder if we’ll even see a Halo game next contest, but the original one might keep getting in on its name, I suppose. There’s a much bigger chance that fans of Life is Strange will keep getting that one back in again despite finishing so low in the x-stats twice, because that one actually has a small but very dedicated fanbase. I can’t remember seeing any Halo fans for a very long time, so if they’re still out there, they sure aren’t vocal about it. ## Safer777's Analysis Round 2 baby! And a huge win from BOTW. Now I did expected HR to break 20%. Sure we don't care about Halo anymore but still. But man BOTW did almost the same win percentage as it did in Round 1! After so many years and I still can't understand why people really like the Zelda games above all the rest so much. They are really good games yeah but man the story is almost always the same plus the personalities of the characters sucks. I mean the main guy doesn't even talk! And I can't think any other big franchise where the main character doesn't talk. And no Persona and Dragon Quest don't count since every game has different characters anyways there. You hear that people like good stories and characters but I guess since these series/characters are so old and they were that way from the start it doesn't really counts here. I guess though it is familiarity, I mean you buy a Zelda game, you know what to expect. Still people like their Nintendo on this site! So for the match. Well BOTW dominated. The crew had BOTW under 80% which I expected too but no, almost 85%. It seems the only thing that can beat a Zelda game is another Zelda game. Or a rally.  Man do you know that once upon a time Master Chief has reached a Semifinal match on a contest on our site without rallies? Yeah true story! Check it out! Now he would be lucky to reach Round 2! Man we really hate Halo now. Still a huge win for BOTW and well deserved. ## Tsunami's Analysis Breath of the Wild set a new contest high for votes received in a match, which is honestly kind of amazing given how lopsided so many Round 1 matches were. Then again, one of the truisms of the board is "there's rallying in every close match". This does indeed appear to be the first day to have over 26000 total votes, so there probably was some rallying going on, and since voters have to vote in all four matches (even though the totals never come out quite equal, because there is some way around that if you know what you're doing), it meant that Breath of the Wild got to pile on Halo: Reach even more. No one was complaining. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7979&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=65) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy XV vs (4)Hollow Knight 2020 _source: (5)Final Fantasy XV vs (4)Hollow Knight 2020 (revid 86556)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 66 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy XV - 54.84% 46 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy XV - 51.64% - **User Votes:** Final Fantasy XV - 4679 Hollow Knight - 4505 - **Anonymous Votes:** Final Fantasy XV - 3906 Hollow Knight - 4013 For all the hype that indie games got in this contest, round 2 is where all but one of them fell flat on their face. With that said, Final Fantasy 15 got *incredibly* lucky in this contest and was spared a huge embarrassment. Hollow Knight is great and all, but how embarrassing would it have been for main line FF15 had it lost to freaking Hollow Knight? The reason FF15 got so lucky is because this match happened on April 12th. Final Fantasy 7 Remake released on April 10th. The contest got delayed twice, and FF7R's release date got delayed by a month from when it was initially supposed to come out. It took all those stars aligning at just the right time to get the Final Fantasy series just the right exposure to drag Final Fantasy 15 across the finish line, and even then it almost lost this match. I have zero doubts that FF15 loses fairly easily without the universe aligning in its favor. When this match started, FF15 had the slimmest of leads, likely due to bracket voting. When that wore off, Hollow Knight came storming back and looked like it was going to put this match away quickly. But its momentum died as quickly as it started, so FF15 was able to close things up fairly quickly. After the match was tied for a couple hours, FF15 started taking off, and most people assumed the match was over right then and there. By now, we all noticed the indie trend of hot starts cooling off quickly, so once Final Fantasy started climbing overnight we all figured it was over. Not necessarily true, though! Hollow Knight pulled off an incredible fight here thanks to, apparently, being one of the only indie games popular in Europe. I don't know what FF15 did to piss off our friends over the pond, but it wasn't good apparently. Hollow Knight kept this match in the 150-200 range for the entirety of the overnight period. It gave folks hope that a comeback could happen come morning, but it was not to be. FF15 ran away with this match during the morning vote, and built up a 400 vote lead at lunch. But before this match finally ended, Hollow Knight put up one final act of defiance. It spent the last 8 hours of this match refusing to lose, and though it was never a threat to actually come back and win, FF15's 400 vote lead got chopped all the way down to a 221 vote win. It was as respectable a loss as one could ever have in a contest, and I have zero doubts Hollow Knight wins this match without Final Fantasy 7 Remake coming out two days -- TWO DAYS!! -- before this match. On top of that, FF7R launched on a Friday and this match happened on a Sunday, so there may have even been a small weekend boost. Final Fantasy 15 had all those direct lucky advantages, and needed all of them to win this match. Just pretend FF7R comes out on March 3rd like it was supposed to. How much does Hollow Knight win this match by? 500 votes? Maybe more? Or just pretend this contest isn't delayed twice and this match happens three weeks prior. Hollow Knight probably wins. Those are the breaks though, and only one stat ever matters in sports. Scoreboard. For all that luck and all that effort in winning this match, this was Final Fantasy 15's reward. Have fun, bro. "I have never seen a more Pyrrhic victory than Final Fantasy XV in this match. What should've been a fairly easy victory ended up in the most painful win I've ever seen for a game. The fact that Final Fantasy VII Remake was released days before yet allowing Hollow Knight to defy indie trends speaks a lot at what strength you have and what people think of you. It's even more embarrassing when using the raw vote totals, as it showed FFXV winning by a single digit. Final Fantasy XV was the 2014 Brazil team in the World Cup -- absolutely shaky in its wins and then pummeled into the babies they were in the match where they lost. They have lived in infamy ever since." -Nintendogs ## Ctes's Analysis Round 2 started out with a big match that was basically just as big as the best match of round 1, that we just had a day ago. One day of round 2 was all that took. It was clearly more exciting now. Ironically, the two also follow very similar trends, but the opposite ended up happened. Final Fantasy ever struggling to make round 3 of any contest is not something you’d get anyone to believe when these contests began and the most recent Final Fantasy was still from the golden days. Of course, it helps that we’re in a contest where the good Final Fantasy games are ineligible, so we’ll probably not see the same thing repeated next games contest, but it’s still crazy. Final Fantasy XV might very well lose this one if not for the bracket votes, although Hollow Knight likely isn’t too far behind in prediction percentage. Almost everyone took Final Fantasy XV here without thinking much about it, but after a bunch of indie games exceeded our expectations after Hollow Knight was the first to do it, the upset was considering quite a bit more. Hollow Knight was believed a good contender to be the best indie game in the bracket. Its high seed supports this idea as well. I have seen the idea that Final Fantasy XV won the match because Final Fantasy VII: Remake had been out for only a few days when this match happened, but I’m not sure it matters that much. Fans of FF7 might just as well vote against FFXV. It wouldn’t surprise me at least. The match begin with Hollow Knight being a clear board favorite, but FFXV quickly took the lead and starting gaining slowly as the first minutes went by, but Hollow Knight wasn’t allowing it go get anywhere, using that great indie board vote, as it has been called. FFXV managed to hold the lead until the freeze. On one side, most indie games fell off after the early vote and Final Fantasy is known to do the opposite, but on the other hand, FFXV was expected to have the most bracket votes, so there was hope for both of them. The next update saw Hollow Knight make a small cut, still keeping the excitement high. Then FFXV fell off a major cliff to lose the lead. Hollow Knight would keep that momentum up and quickly build a lead up to 64 votes. It would seem like it used its fuel quickly though. FFXV removed most of that lead, bringing it down to 18 in two updates. The match would then stand still for a while, until FFXV began very slowly cutting the lead down until it was just a single vote away. Next update had FFXV take the lead with room to spare, as it got its best update in a while, but Hollow Knight would have none of that and instantly tied match. Hollow Knight would take the lead back, but instantly lost it again. FFXV would struggle to run away with it for bit, which included getting a one-vote lead as well. Hollow Knight would then randomly take the lead with a spike and would keep it for a few updates before FFXV would take the lead back with a similar spike. That was the final time Hollow Knight was in the lead, but it would be able before FFXV supporters to breathe out. FFXV would build upon its lead slowly, but because it was winning in NA and losing in most of Europe, people hoped Hollow Knight would do a similar comeback to what Rayman did yesterday. FFXV had built a lead of about 200 votes when the dead hours kicked in, Europe began to wake up and NA was away and true enough, Hollow Knight cut into that. Hollow Knight began cutting and moved FFXV down to about a 150-vote lead. It had a great spike, getting the lead down to almost 100, but FFXV instantly took it back and then the match stalled for hours. Hollow Knight couldn’t really make progress, but it did allow FFXV to never get away for real. Hollow Knight wasn’t doing as well in Europe as Rayman was and FFXV also had South America, which Celeste didn’t. Geography didn’t look to help out Hollow Knight any. The match was just really even. After a while FFXV would rise extremely slowly until it many hours later peaked at a lead of 400 votes before slowly going in the other direction again. Hollow Knight began making steady progress near the end but didn’t have time and lost by a bit more than 200 votes in the end. `It was a really good match, but it’s also a victim of our general lack of trends these days. Back in the day, we could’ve seen huge swings in each direction, but the swings we have now are mostly random and comes from the votals moving as slow as they do. For a match that felt back and forward a lot, it barely moved at all.` This match made it seem like Hollow Knight was indeed very strong, but the next rounds would show it simply had exceptional bracket placement as Breath of the Wild murders Final Fantasy XV and then calms a bit against the rest of its opponents. It’s probably the final time that happened though, and fellow indie game Bastion was already looking terrible at the time of this match. Final Fantasy XV was even weaker than we thought. It’s interesting that if Hollow Knight had pulled this off, we would have the first contest ever where there was no match between The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this percentage. This is a disgrace. Seriously. FF 15 barely won and it all thanks to FF7 Remake which came out a few days before this match so people go to various gaming sites to find info about the quests and such. If this match had happened like 2 weeks before FF7 Remake had come out HK would win no doubt about that. I do know that FF 15 wasn't exactly the super game that everyone expected since after 10 years you don't really care(except if it is FF7 Remake of course). I am a huge FF fan too and even I refuse to play FF 15. I just don't feel like it and plus it has like a bajillion DLC and you need to watch a movie to really understand what is going on. How is it possible that after 10 years they still weren't able to fully finish a game? Seriously. So for the match. After 5 minutes FF 15 was ahead by 53 so we all said fine. But after 20 minutes it was losing! After like 1 hour it got the lead but it never had above 51. So yeah. This is a disgrace as I said above. FF 15 lost a lot of hours to HK too. FF7 Remake to the rescue! Even the whole crew had FF 15 above 54 but yeah. Now I do believe there were 2 reasons this happened. FF 15 is weak and HK is strong. Or FF 15 is damn weak and HK is decent. Also the prediction percentage was low here. I mean half the people here didn't had FF 15 winning in Round 2? I mean I just don't get it. Maybe people really believed in HK or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis We'd nearly gone all of Round 1 without a single barnburner, and on day 1 of Round 2, it looked like the floodgates had opened after the final day of Round 1 broke the dam. Which I think is a mixed metaphor, maybe. They're both related to a lot of water all over the place. Final Fantasy XV won the board vote, which is hardly a very Final Fantasy thing to do, but it took only 15 minutes for Hollow Knight to take a lead. It held onto that for an hour and 15 minutes before FFXV took the lead for one update, and then the next update was a straight-up tie. Hollow Knight did swing out in front on the update after the tie, but FFXV was right back in the lead the following update. 15 minutes later, back to Hollow Knight; another 15 minutes, back to FFXV. At this point, we were 2 hours and 15 minutes into the match and had had six lead changes. And...we wouldn't get a seventh, though it was far from smooth sailing for FFXV. It briefly got its lead above 200 at 10 minutes to 1 AM, and a mere 45 minutes later, it was down to 118. 2 hours after that, it again got past the 200 mark, and *again *Hollow Knight immediately started cutting. And FFXV started fighting back; at one point, HK shaved off more than 50 votes in just 10 minutes and it took only 15 more minutes for FFXV to get its lead back to higher than it had been before those 10 minutes. At 5:05 AM, FFXV's lead breached the 200 mark again, at 215 and this time it stuck. *Really* stuck; for the entire hour after that, the lead never dropped below 213 nor exceeded 225. It crested at 232 at 6:20, then Hollow Knight managed to briefly get the lead under 200 at 7:30. As was the match's trend, this meant it was time for FFXV to gain momentum; by 7:45, it had a new largest lead, 238, though this was merely the beginning; by the time Hollow Knight next took an update, it was to reduce the lead from *298*, and FFXV breached the 300 mark not long thereafter. Another prolonged stall began until FFXV spiked a win of 23 at 9:40 to push the new high to 340, only for HK to spike a 27 ten minutes later. FFXV went on a push at 11 AM, winning an update by 32, and at 11:35 AM, its lead stood at 400 votes exactly. And that's where it peaked; HK started slowly battling back, but far too slowly; it wasn't until 6:30 PM, just 90 minuted from the end of the match, that the lead dipped below 300 again. HK would continue to make a late push to make the match look closer than it really was, but the match had been in stall for way too long. It was, however, the second straight day where the registered and unregistered voters disagreed on a match...but this time, the registered voter bonus made it look more lopsided, not less. FFXV won 4679-4505 with registered voters; Hollow Knight won 4013-3906 with unregistered. Put it all together, and the raw total was 8585-8518, a win of 67 votes. That would've made the all-time top 25! Wait...holy crap, even with the registered voter bonus, this still makes the 1v1-only Top 25! And, hold on, Rayman Legends \> Celeste was still a few votes closer... ...Oh. This is a sad day indeed. With these two back-to-back results, the legendary Mario \> Cloud upset from the first Character Battle has fallen off the top 25 list. It's kind of inevitable that all these legendary matches start falling off these lists, because the lower vote totals means close matches are numerically closer, but it's still sad to see. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7980&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=66) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (6)Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 2020 _source: (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (6)Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 2020 (revid 86557)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 67 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Monster Hunter: World - 51.57% 35 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Monster Hunter: World - 53.48% - **User Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 5235 Sekiro - 3951 - **Anonymous Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 4201 Sekiro - 3720 This match absolutely destroyed me on a personal level. In a contest where all of the Souls games -- even Nioh -- looked good, Sekiro is the one Souls-like that crapped the bed. I don't know why or how, either. Was it the "too hard" memes? Was it the lack of weapon options? I truly do not know, and I would love the opinion of anyone reading this who doesn't like the game to hit me up. This one has me stumped. The game has some issues, no doubt, but to fall this flat while *all* of the other Souls-likes did so well blows my mind. Not to keep plugging my reviews, but I think this will give you guys an idea of my love for the game: Yes, the camera work is a joke. Yes, the game is obnoxiously hard. Yes, the rope swing is effing goofy. So what? It makes the journey so rewarding, and it's what made this match so hard on me. Of all the Souls types to choke, it had to be Sekiro? By the way, none of this is a slight on what Monster Hunter World accomplished or the respect that it's earned. Did you guys know it has 16 million sales, which is almost a third of sales for that entire series? It deserved to make waves during its long-awaited contest debut, and make waves it did. Just not at Sekiro's expense. Jeez :( At least it was a 55-45 type loss to a very, very strong game, and in skipping ahead a little, maybe Sekiro didn't choke after all. Monster Hunter World would end up having a very respectable exit, and the game that beat it would itself have a *very* respectable exit. Here's hoping Sekiro just got unlucky instead of choking. I will say this. If any game needs to die and come back for our sakes, there isn't a better example. The code must indeed be determined by the individual, my friends. ## Ctes's Analysis This was a hotly debated match before the contest where a lot of people took the Sekiro upset because it looked to be pretty good in the Game of the Year polls. When round 1 happened, a lot of people agreed Monster Hunter: World looked better, since it was hard to think Ni no Kuni could be better than Bravely Default, but a third of the oracles still went with Sekiro today. You could argue that console games tend to do better than handheld games, so that Bravely Default wouldn’t be much better and you could argue that Sekiro had a worse opponent for it than Monster Hunter did, but you had to stretch things a little bit. Monster Hunter won pretty, but there was a bit of excitement in the first minutes. Monster Hunter burst ahead with the early bracket votes, but Sekiro quickly got very close. The were about dead even until the freeze happened where Monster Hunter was ahead by only 11 votes. Then it got one of the biggest jumps in percentage all contest by jumping more than 5% to lead with 110 and the match was over from there. Monster Hunter quickly went up. Sekiro got a final glimpse of hope when it after half an hour cut from 257 to 228, but it was just that one update where Monster Hunter fell off, it took it all back and a bit more next update and proceeded to quickly shoot for 1000 votes. It’s the first time Monster Hunter ever really looked that good in a contest and I think it’s part of the reason why many went with the Sekiro upset. I regret picking Sekiro more than most mistakes I made personally simply because I completely failed to realize what its opponent was. I knew it was a bigger Monster Hunter, but just how much bigger I forgot despite knowing it beforehand. This game isn’t just the biggest of franchise, it was huge and sold loads of copies. Most people never gave the winner of this match a chance in the coming round, but Monster Hunter would do so well that I felt it redeemed the Sekiro upset pick quite a bit. Sekiro would end up actually looking pretty good, it’s just that Monster Hunter also looked better than anticipated. It makes sense considering how the other games from FromSoftware (missed pun opportunity) ended up looking. That company is doing well in these contests. I think it’s worth having Sekiro back another time. Then more of us might just have played it to, it’s one of the newest games in the bracket and we tend to be slow at getting through such. ## Safer777's Analysis Another debated match here. Even the crew was split here. Both games did as expected in Round 1. I mean no matter which game you picked to win you would be correct because as I said they have similar strengths and did as expected in Round 1. So for the match. Well even though the match was really debated and we thought it would be close MHW won easy actually and even broke 55 too. So I wonder why. I do believe that we just like MHW better. That game had even an expansion and it was very well received too. So in the end both games did fine. Fine to see a MH game in Round 3! Also these matches are always nice because we don't really know who will win. So there you go. Also once again a prediction percentage in the middle. Also I believe that MHW is the best selling Capcom game of all time so yeah people really like this franchise it seems. ## Tsunami's Analysis The "Soulsborne" boost evidently doesn't extend to Sekiro, because this match was expected to be close and it wasn't close. Remember, this is the same series whose only previous outing involved being upset by Suikoden II. (Yeah, I know, not the same game.) More importantly, this is Capcom, whose last win in a debatable match was probably Mega Man \> Charizard in 2013. (Oh, right, the DMC5-DKCTF match in round 1. There was that.) The idea of MH:W actually being strong seems ludicrous, but here it was, reaching R3 and still being the favorite to do so. Well, at least it'd be facing something strong next round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7981&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=67) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Bastion vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 _source: (10)Bastion vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 (revid 86558)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 68 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dragon Quest XI - 71.96% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dragon Quest XI - 64.99% - **User Votes:** Bastion - 2501 Dragon Quest XI - 6683 - **Anonymous Votes:** Bastion - 2378 Dragon Quest XI - 5543 As is very typical of seeded tournaments, entrants pulling off early round upsets usually get destroyed when they face legitimate competition. Bastion will be remembered for embarrassing The Walking Dead in round one, but that's all it managed to pull off in this contest. Well, unless you count rolling over and helping make Dragon Quest 11 look like a shitkicking badass. Dragon Quest 11 is clearly on a higher level than anything else in that series, and it proved its round 1 domination was no SFF fluke over some nothing burger Board 8 hype machine. Scoring 72% in round 2 is legit, regardless of competition, and this match was a huge eye-opener for how legit the game was. I think the reasons for the resurgence in Dragon Quest love are obvious enough. For starters, Hero got into Smash Bros. Ultimate and made a *lot* of waves in that game, both good and bad. So much so that it's too much to list in an unrelated PCA writeup. The series had respect long before 11 came out, but 11 is just a different animal. It's universally loved, has over 5 million in sales, and is on the Switch, Playstation 4, 3DS, and even Steam. The "universally loved" bit cannot be understated, either. People *love* this game, and that's how you end up scoring 72% in round 2 over a Bastion, a game that's universally loved in its own right. No disrespect to Bastion here, but DQ11 is many, many cuts above it. Spoilers, DQ11 would end up facing Zelda and getting into the top 20 of the x-stats anyway. Think of how crazy that is when Zelda was sticking 80% beatdowns on fools. ## Ctes's Analysis Despite Bastion pulling off a big upset the round before this, people had concluded that older indie games weren’t all too good and so not much was expected of Bastion today. We all knew that The Walking Dead was simply that bad and Bastion was lucky to draw it. Dragon Quest XI got almost exactly the percentage of the oracle consensus, so this match got by far the least attention today for being the only one that gave us pretty much nothing to talk about, but good job board 8! It’s ironic that no one was comparing Dragon Quest XI to Monster Hunter: World when that match would be closer that the heavily talked about Monster Hunter vs. Sekiro. The fourpack next to this one was simply better than anticipated. Today we had the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games in the bracket competing at the same time. I know there is another mainline Final Fantasy in the contest, but it’s quite different from our usual big ones. While FFXV undoubtfully had a better opponent, it’s weird to see the Dragon Quest game being so much better. Who would’ve thought we would see the day? The have been around for so long, both series and it has never been close. Final Fantasy was always the bigger name. It still is, but today it’s because of its history. Dragon Quest is so far ahead in recent years. Bastion would end up being one of the weaker round 2 entries and it’s likely the only time we’ll ever see it in a contest, so it’s great that its one appearance gave us an enjoyable match. ## Safer777's Analysis Even though the previous match was really debatable and you could even had doubts for FF 15's match this one was set in stone. Bastion suprised everyone with one of the lowest predictions in this contest for Round 1 but that was it. DQ 11 is damn popular. The best DQ game ever, the one with the most sales ever and the one where the main character came into Smash Ultimate! And his name is Hero. Yeah plain name but it says all you need to know. As a huge DQ fan I do agree that DQ 11 is damn excellent. Sure as old school as it gets but that is a good thing. Hey if it works, don't fix it right? So for the match. Well people expected DQ 11 to win with around 70 and it did just that! So yeah. Nice showing and it seems it is a lock for the division finals too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Still nothing to see here. DQ11's path was pretty much set in stone from the start: Win three matches, then get beat pretty hard by BotW. Nothing seemed to indicate that this won't still be the case. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7982&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=68) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (8)Fallout 4 2020 _source: (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (8)Fallout 4 2020 (revid 86559)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, April 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 69 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 57.34% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 58.29% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 6106 Fallout 4 - 2941 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 6386 Fallout 4 - 3332 There was a lot of concern for Mass Effect 2 in this division after its horrendous performance in round 1. Unfair 16 seed or not, Resident Evil 7 scored 37% on this game. Any 16 seed doing that is cause for alarm. We know now how grossly mis-seeded RE7 was, but at the time there was a lot of fear for Mass Effect 2's future. Was the game going to be punished due to Electronic Arts being a corrupt garbage can? There was fear it could even lose to Fallout 4 here, and even the oracle folks, arguably the smartest prognosticators we have on all of Board 8, only picked Mass Effect 2 to win this with consensus of 57%. Only a fourth of them picked it to break 60% in this match. Turns out that fear was completely misguided, and Mass Effect 2 would come out in round 2 and just beat the piss out of Fallout 4 for 24 straight hours. At a glance this doesn't look like the most impressive of wins, but for those reading this reads down the line out of context, remember what was going on here. Mass Effect as a series was deader than dead, because of the internet hating 3 and Andromeda. EA didn't help matters, either. It had just gotten 63% against a 16 seed, and people were worried it was done for in this division, because a bunch of other games broke 80% in round 1. So of course Mass Effect 2 beats Fallout 4 *worse* than it did a 16 seed. This was super impressive, and it was the win people have been asking for from Mass Effect 2 for a full decade in these contests. It was a win so strong that people invoked those three beautiful letters -- SFF. When that gets busted out, you've done something special. And make no mistake, given the circumstances this was a special, special performance. Let's not forget that Fallout 4 once got 45% on Witcher 3 in a Game of the Year final poll. Let's also not forget that Fallout 3 was a \#1 overall seed and make the semifinal in the last Game of the Decade contest, including wins over Halo and Metroid Prime, before getting over 45% on Brawl. It also had a 6800 vote lead on Undertale in round 2 in 2015. These Fallout games are legit, and Mass Effect 2 went full Rick James on it. Yeah, so all that consternation about Mass Effect 2 losing this division was greatly exaggerated, though not unfounded. EA completely and thoroughly ruined the reputation of that series, so the thought that Mass Effect 2 might be punished was not impossible. Thankfully ME2 was spared all that, and retained its rightful spot as the divisional favorite. What *did* get punished for the sins of the father was Fallout 4. Series fans already didn't like that game and blamed it for the series falling off, going so far as to call New Vegas the "real Fallout 4", but Bethesda has become such a stain on gaming that everything associated with it is screwed. They are so incapable of being complete and total shitstains that they waited over a month after launch to put Denuvo on the PC version of Doom Eternal. Bethesda, seriously, go fuck off. You legitimately ruin everything you touch. ## Ctes's Analysis Today was a very exciting day because people felt like each game had a chance in all four matches, which never happens. Now hold that thought and look at this result. Fallout 4 got killed completely. It’s hilarious when matches fool us like this. I was over 8% away in my oracle prediction and I was still closer than the consensus. Almost no one actually thought Mass Effect 2 would drop the match, but we sure didn’t think it’d look good doing this after its previous match. Resident Evil 7 was instantly redeemed of course and it’s yet another point in the bag for 2017. It’s one of the two contenders for most underseeded game in the bracket, only rivaled by Mario Kart 8. We didn’t fully know that yet, but it was already clear that it was in large scale. Mass Effect 2 was thought to have a really hard time winning division after last round, but now it looked like it could still do that. If the Bloodborne rally had any effect on this match it was actually in favor of Fallout 4, because Mass Effect 2 dropped as the day went on, but it should be mentioned that Bethesda games usually rises as the day goes by, so this was likely mostly unaffected. No oracles took the Fallout 4 upset, but I’m willing to bet someone would have tried the upset if we hadn’t gotten the idea that indie games from the early part of the decade weren’t very good, which made VVVVVV’s big loss look less impressive. Mass Effect 2 would still have been the favorite, but it would’ve been by a bit less. Part of the reason that no one took it is probably also that it’s hard to pick Bethesda games in a debatable match, especially the ones from Fallout 4 onwards. It had quite the backlash and it shows today. Remember when Fallout 3 got to the semi-finals last contest? That sure was a hard fall. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match was debatable and the Crew was split too. Wait really? I mean you couldn't ask for a more easy match. Sure ME Andromeda put ME franchise on ice with how poor it was received but still everyone says that the game isn't that bad actually. I have played all ME games and yeah the game wasn't that bad. Plus nice to see a whole different galaxy although we will never see how things will end. As for Fallout 4? Almost everyone doesn't like it as much as the previous games. Especially with the paid mods. You know mods that we always had for free now we have to pay for them. Seriously? Also better not talk about Fallout 76. EVERYONE hates it. Sure people play it but then again people play anything. Even gatcha games. Before F76 came out people were saying\. After F76 came out people are saying\ So yeah. So for the match. ME 2 won with a doubling. Pretty easy. I mean as I said it is almost impossible to find someone that puts F4 above F3 or FNV. ME2 on the other hand is still pretty strong and in the top 3 space games ever. So yeah. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well obviously Mass Effect 2's going to win; a weaker Mass Effect game than 2 did better against Undertale than a stronger Fallout game than 4. But seriously, this was a good showing for Mass Effect 2, the type of performance it needs if it wants to stand a chance at breaking 40% against Breath of the Wild in Round 5. (It probably won't do it, but it looks like it can avoid the doubling.) Round 4 opponent? No, there's no cause for concern there, don't be silly. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7983&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=69) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Borderlands 2 vs (4)Horizon Zero Dawn 2020 _source: (5)Borderlands 2 vs (4)Horizon Zero Dawn 2020 (revid 86561)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, April 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 70 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 53.55% 41 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 28.65% - **User Votes:** Borderlands 2 - 4106 Horizon Zero Dawn - 4939 - **Anonymous Votes:** Borderlands 2 - 4278 Horizon Zero Dawn - 5442 I love you Nick, but I can't support your love for Borderlands at all. They might be fine games for all I know or care. Not the point. I resisted mentioning this one during the round 1 writeups, because we have to save *some* material for later, so let's just do it now. I will never support or defend a single game on that list until Randy Pitchford is gone. Fuck that dude and everything he stands for. It's called voting with your dollars. Coming into this contest, I figured the crazy success of Borderlands 3 would help Borderlands 2 win two matches. It's not like Aloy set the world on fire last character battle, either, so I figured Horizon was incredibly niche and had no chance here. It was a logical conclusion. Then mid-contest, the news hit about what an indefensible piece of trash Randy Pitchford is. Long story short, I said screw my bracket and pulled as hard for Horizon as I've ever pulled for anything in any contest match we've ever had. Yes it was a longshot upset, but there is no planet where Borderlands deserves to win a damn thing anymore. Thankfully, the match was never in doubt. Borderlands tripped off the blocks, and though it got back into it at the freeze, the first update buried the game for good en route to Horizon Zero Dawn boat racing this poll. It slowly rose in percentage all match long from being tied at the freeze, to ultimately scoring a 55-45 blowout that was never that close. First off, congrats to Horizon for finally getting some fair time to shine. It had never made *any* poll before this contest, so we had no real idea what to expect. The game is *fantastic*, and Aloy losing to an Overwatch character made me sick two years ago. Not only was this match a wonderful bit of justice, but Horizon's performance in this might convince some more people to try it. It's a total win-win! This is also when we started to realize what a monster 2017 was in this contest. I don't want to steal MechanicalWall's thunder, since he's doing an analysis of specific years, but the very short version is that 2017 was just nuts in this contest. Notable releases that year were Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Persona 5, Divinity: Contest Savior 2, NieR: Automata, and.... Horizon Zero Dawn. It's not something that was lost on people as this contest moved forward, but more importantly, Randy Pitchford and Gearbox Software can go piss off. No offense to anyone who likes Borderlands, this has nothing to do with you at all, but this match was *justice*. ## Ctes's Analysis Borderlands 2 becomes the first of the Game of the Year winners in the contest to lose, although another one of them would fall tomorrow due to severe bad bracket placement. Final Fantasy XV almost did yesterday but managed to hang on. Borderlands 2 was the most popular choice for the weakest of the winners as it had an easy year to get title. The second place from 2012 would redeem that year as much as it could, however. Borderlands 2 was not expected to be as good as it was in 2015 and it lost to Earthbound easily back then. It hasn’t aged all too well, the humor isn’t as appreciated anymore, and the franchise didn’t really keep the level up. Despite all of that, Borderlands 2 was the favorite today. Lots of people took Horizon Zero Dawn in the upset, but we generally underestimated that game by a bit. It was completely overshadowed by being released right before Breath of the Wild and while it was still critically acclaimed, it seemed most people forgot about it quickly again. Well, at least you don’t forget it when it’s right there in the voting form. Horizon won this match easily. It won the early board vote big time, then Borderlands 2 looked to take the match when the freeze happened, but Horizon went up big time next update and never looked back. Then the Bloodborne rally happened and boosted Horizon a little bit more than already. It’s weird that Horizon wasn’t favored here to me. Look at the Game of the Year polls. Horizon isn’t too far behind Persona 5 and beats NieR: Automata, which we had great expectations for. I suppose people just thought people stopped caring very quickly. Or perhaps Aloy being trash in the previous character battle was what did it. The most cookie guru bracket this year was Master Moltar, who made just a single upset. This was the one, so he eliminated the guru cookie today on the first day of eliminations. Considering the Board8BOP user was on the leaderboard until the second semi-final and finished seventh on the second chance leaderboard, it’s pretty cool that the cookie died this fast, even if it really takes nothing to do it. ## Safer777's Analysis This match I was shocked by the result. I mean HZD is an exclusive game and Borderlands series is the one that made the looter shooter genre famous. We even had B3 coming out a few months ago too and it was very well received. HZD hasn't anything new in years. So yeah I thought pretty easy match. But no. So for the match. Well HZD won with relative easy. But why? I am not sure myself and I don't understand. Is it because the game is better? You can't really compare them though. Is it more popular? Once again I say no. So why this happened? I guess here in Gamefaqs we don't like Borderlands series even though we had B2 as our GOTY the year it came out. You heard me right. We had B2 as our GOTY! Things change eh? Still I have played both games and both are excellent in their own way. B2 for the loot and the wacky world and HZD for the story and the amazing world. The prediction percentage was extremely low too so I am not the only one that got this thingy wrong. ## Tsunami's Analysis When HZD scored a massive blowout of Fortnite, we all just chalked it up to Fortnite being antivoted to kingdom come. After this win, on the other hand, it looks legit. The Gurus were fairly split on this one, though they ultimately favored Borderlands 2; by the time Oracle came around, however, they were leaning towards HZD, likely as a result of BL2's Round 1 performance. With the casuals? Your guess is as good as mine who the favorite was. Technically speaking, more brackets picked HZD to win in this round than to lose in it, but the group that picked HZD to lose *last* round had the heavy plurality, 43.13% to 28.65% to 28.22%. Which means the favorite was *probably* Borderlands 2, which had an 80.77% prediction percentage in Round 1, but it's quite likely that "Horizon Zero Dawn-Fortnite winner" was favored over Borderlands 2 and certainly at least a *chance* that Fortnite could even be the favorite despite not being the favorite last round if enough of its R1 pickers were expecting it to be RallyFEAR and picked it to go deep. At any rate, this was a solid win for Horizon Zero Dawn. Its goal right now? Try to put up a better percentage on ME2 than its Round 4 opponent will. Prior to this round, I'd have called that impossible, but it just put up over 55% on presumably a stronger opponent than either of them faced, and neither of them broke 58%. Borderlands 2 (2015g) VS Fire Emblem: Awakening (2015g) Borderlands 2 has a strength of 21.33. Fire Emblem: Awakening has a strength of 22.89. Fire Emblem: Awakening wins with 53.41% of the vote!  A win of 4,149 with 60,875 total votes cast. ...Oh. Never mind then. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7984&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=70) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (6)DOOM 2020 _source: (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (6)DOOM 2020 (revid 86562)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, April 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 71 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 2 - 55.69% 52 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 2 - 64.72% - **User Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 5405 DOOM - 3641 - **Anonymous Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 5202 DOOM - 4517 The fact that a game with questionable qualifications for this contest almost got to beat three of my all-time favorite games right in a row makes it really, really hard to like Resident Evil 2 moving forward, but at least the game was a full remake instead of something truly dumb going on this run. I probably would have lost my mind if this was something truly dumb like Ocarina of Time 3D; at least Resident Evil 2 was a new game of sorts. Granted, Doom also cheated with its name. I can't deny it. I've mentioned this before, but enough with games within the same series having the *exact* same name. It is so stupid. I debated this match for quite a long time in my bracket, and settled on Resident Evil 2 winning for a few reasons. First and most importantly, this is not a web site that has ever cared about FPS games. Doom is very popular on this site, but FPS by and large is very hard to have faith in in any debated match. Secondly, "Resident Evil 2" is a former contest champion. I don't say that ironically, either. 1998 dominated Best Year in Gaming that nothing held it under 66% for that entire contest. If you've never looked this up, check out how laughably, absurdly stacked that year was in gaming: We can joke all day long about Turok 2, Oddworld, and NFL Blitz being contest champions, but that stuff is the truth. When people see "Resident Evil 2" on their screen, it's going to get nostalgia votes from being from 1998. Third, any boost from Doom Eternal was going to be offset by Resident Evil 3's remake coming out mid-contest. It launched on April 3rd. This match took place on April 13th. That's just way too much for Doom to overcome, which is why I ultimately settled on Mass Effect 2 \> Resident Evil 2 deciding this division. It *killed* me to pick against Doom here, but it was a relief to see that this match was never close. Had I picked Doom and it won some legendary duel, I would have never forgiven myself. As-is, I and.... 140 out of 142 gurus simply made the obvious call. Doom was never going to make a match out of this, and the blowout was so decisive that you could take all of the advantages away from Resident Evil 2 and it likely wins anyway. Remove the RE3 Remake release date, change RE2's name to "Resident Evil 2: Remake", and release Doom Eternal on the day of the match itself and Resident Evil 2 likely still wins in the 55-45 range. It was a dominant performance by Resident Evil 2, and set it squarely as the favorite next match. ## Ctes's Analysis This match wasn’t really in doubt before the contest where all but two gurus picked Resident Evil 2 and didn’t think more about it, but DOOM delivered such an insane percentage in round 1 that made people have second thoughts. Most people still went ahead with Resident Evil 2, since it also did really well in round 1, but a few people took DOOM and there were more people that considered it. In the end we overestimated DOOM quite a bit. It turns out INSIDE was just extremely weak and from this point forward it was in clear contention for being the weakest game in the bracket, a title it eventually won, even in the adjusted x-stats. DOOM was actually doing a little bit worse than this before the Bloodborne rallies hit and boosted it. The match was never really in doubt. Perhaps a Bethesda backlash did something here, but I find that doubtful because Fallout: New Vegas didn’t look to be affected any and DOOM is also only published by them. We saw Fallout 4 get destroyed at the same time as this match, clearly that’s where the damage was done. DOOM could use its name to go really high on INSIDE in round 1 because no one knows that game, but against a Resident Evil game, that would not be as helpful. DOOM might’ve made for a better match elsewhere, but at least it made us doubt a match that we shouldn’t have doubted by going so high in round 1. Doom Eternal coming out right before the contest began might’ve helped it a little bit, so Resident Evil 2 was looking really good here. Resident Evil 7 also looked really good from this day forward, another good thing for Resident Evil 2 supporters. It was not expected by many to have problems before the division finals before the contest and it was probably the favorite to win it at this point, at least it was after round 1. Though now Bloodborne showed itself capable of successful rallying in a match it already won, so Resident Evil 2 would need its a-game to get through then. ## Safer777's Analysis Hey battle of the reboots/remakes/games that have the same title as their predecessors? Seriously companies change the titles! Remind me of Rambo movies where the 4th Rambo movie is called... Rambo! So when people talk about Rambo you have to ask if they mean the first movie or the 4th movie even though the 1st movie had another title but EVERYONE just calls it Rambo. Ahem. This match was debatable because both games did good in Round 1. Also they both had sequels that came out on contest season so more power to them. So for the match. Once again the Crew was split. That is 2 splits on the same day! In 1st round both games faced really weak opponents and did similar percentages. So I believe that RE 2 won because RE 3 came out recently plus we don't like FPS here. Still nice match. These matches that are debatable are always nice to see them. The prediction percentage was high too so few were fooled. ## Tsunami's Analysis Huh, maybe DOOM's blowout of INSIDE *wasn't* just INSIDE being piss-weak? Not to say that it isn't, but apparently DOOM has some real strength. Or RE2 isn't as strong as it seems. Still, 57.57% is not a great score for Resident Evil 2; according to the 2009 X-Stats, RE2 should get 66.28%. That may or may not have been an excuse to put "according to the 2009 X-Stats" into a write-up about a contest that only covers games released between 2010 and 2019. I was planning on using the 2004 X-Stats, but apparently RE2 didn't make that contest. I guess first entry syndrome won out there; I always thought RE2 was better regarded than RE1, but RE1's the only one that made it in '04. Granted, '04's nomination process was awful and resulted in a bunch of games from obscure systems getting in. Also, unlike RE2, the "DOOM" in this contest is not a straight-up remake of the first game in the series. It's a brand new game, and was actually *called *"Doom 4" when it was first announced. So that makes the stat especially meaningless...except this is OldFAQs, where "pick the year closest to 1998" is a valid strategy. Resident Evil 2, the original one, *is* a 1998 video game. Wouldn't you expect it to get even *higher* on 2016's "Doom 4" than 1993's "Doom"? Also, holy crap that is legitimately 21 years between original and remake. That's long enough to be "excusable". It's really been that long since the fifth generation, huh? And yet we're still technically considered to be in the eighth generation, even though we all know that since the Wii U is an eighth generation console, the Switch kind of has to be a ninth generation console by default. It'll probably be reclassified as a 9th gen console once the PS5 and XBSX come out later this year. The Switch has officially succeeded the 3DS, also an eighth-generation system, as well as the Wii U. Even more evidence that the 9th generation is already well underway. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7985&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=71) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (2)Bloodborne 2020 _source: (7)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (2)Bloodborne 2020 (revid 88236)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, April 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 72 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bloodborne - 52.97% 40 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bloodborne - 48.94% - **User Votes:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 4117 Bloodborne - 4929 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 3476 Bloodborne - 6243 There were some very small rallies in this contest before this match happened, most notably during Celeste v Rayman and Hollow Knight v FF15, but this was the first match where there was a noticeable rally that made a serious difference in the match. The funniest part is Bloodborne probably would have won this match anyway, which is a reminder of this hilarity: That was a 55-45 match leading into the morning vote, and Melee was never in *any* danger of losing. Didn't matter. The fanbase went NO SIR NOT WINNING BY ENOUGH and rallied the troops to a 60-40 beating. It was a sign of things to come, though at the time we didn't think much of it. We just kind of laughed at the tourneycrabs and Reddit dorks for rallying the game in a match it was guaranteed to never truly be threatened in. The same thing happened here with Awakening vs Bloodborne, though some may argue Awakening was an actual threat to win the match. We'll never know either way. After Awakening won the board vote, Bloodborne stormed back to back the lead before the freeze. Typically when something storms back pre-freeze, they're a lock to win the match. Typically. There are exceptions, but it's not the norm. After a few updates where Bloodborne struggled to pull away, the fans took action and got the rally threads started on the Bloodborne subreddit. This allowed Bloodborne to go on a crazy pace in the match, because rally threads were up for the entire thing. This turned a potential 53-47 type match into a 58-42 beating where Fire Emblem never stood a chance. I don't think Awakening had much of a shot either way, but it *really* had no shot once rallying took off and Awakening wasn't able to keep up. I was one of the dopes that picked Awakening to win this match, because I didn't think the Souls clan would go up much from the 2015 numbers. "Whoops." But I wasn't mad or anything, because remember, Bloodborne is my favorite game in this bracket. Not Doom, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, or Smash Ultimate. Bloodborne. I say screw the bracket, Bloodborne deserves all the shine this match helped give it. I can tell you all from personal experience there was an uptick in online activity during and after this match happened, too. This game got a lot of love because of this contest, and to that I say *good*. It deserves every ounce of love that us fans give it \<3 It also turns out that much like Melee five years ago, that first rally was a sign. It also meant that Fire Emblem was halfway ready to become turd of the contest. Seriously, what is up with that series constantly being overhyped, overvalued, and underdelivering in every single contest? We'll talk more about this when we get to Three Houses puking all over itself like some loser alcoholic, but Fire Emblem losing early in these things is getting ridiculous. This match set up one hell of a hyped up clash between Resident Evil 2 and Bloodborne, and the obvious fear was whether or not rallies would decide things. Only time would tell! This match *also* started up the trend of rally threads popping up all over Reddit during these matches, and yes I'm proud to have made and boosted a bunch of them myself. See I'm not a part of the anti-fun brigade that hangs out in the increasingly exclusionary Board 8 Discord for 16 hours a day pretending to be cool as my testosterone slowly drops to a level that makes reproduction impossible. Men are made in the gym and in the real world, not in chat rooms. Deal with it, losers. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was another one that had the gurus almost equally split, but Fire Emblem: Awakening was the favorite before the contest began. After round 1 happened, it did not look as good at all and Bloodborne suddenly became the favorite. You had to believe Call of Duty: Black Ops was really bad to keep your faith in Awakening high. Especially because Three Houses didn’t look spectacular in round 1 either. While believing Black Ops is as bad as possible these days is pretty reasonable, Awakening was never really in this match. Fire Emblem was a very easy target this contest. Both games didn’t get as far as the majority of the board thought and with what people think is too much Smash appearance, the series hasn’t really been as well looked at as it used to before it truly became mainstream. It seems however like Awakening wasn’t actually any worse than in 2015. The difference is at least minimal. I’m sure most people thought Awakening was better than Bloodborne in 2015 here and didn’t see that change with a big new Fire Emblem recently out, and while that looked stupid today, perhaps that wasn’t all wrong. It’s Bloodborne that has risen a great amount. It was new back in 2015 and hadn’t truly found its ground yet, but the Soulsborne games have established themselves as some of the best this previous decade has to offer and they’re some of the first things you think of when you think of what game of the decade was. Bloodborne hasn’t quite achieved the status Dark Souls has, but that’s because Dark Souls came first. It seems pretty clear to me that Bloodborne is mostly preferred by the people that play all the Soulsborne games. This all redeems Awakening supports a bit I think, but good call to those that expected the Bloodborne rise. The match wasn’t ever really in doubt. Awakening won the board vote but lost the lead before the freeze and Bloodborne never really looked back. The Soulsborne games haven’t had good board votes at any point and we love Fire Emblem here, so it’s to be expected. Worth noting is that Awakening was a bit above 45% for a while until a Bloodborne rally kicked in. It was pretty clearly the most successful rally of the contest so far and pushed Bloodborne up to where it was now and also clearly affected the other matches going on. Being capable of brining an effective rally to the table even when ahead suddenly made it very possible that Bloodborne could go further than round 3. The Bloodborne fans are very passionate about their game! It’s not the first time we’ve seen a game needlessly rallying when already winning a match. The rally topic was put up right away, but it didn’t gain traction until later in the match. Super Smash Bros. Melee is known for doing this back in 2015 against Pokemon Gold and Silver. Melee went on to kill GameFAQs favorite Chrono Trigger with its rallying powers, which frustrated the board a lot since Chrono Trigger looked good enough to beat Ocarina of Time that year. Melee would then continue to rally past Final Fantasy VII before losing a battle of rallies against Undertale. That did not make it very popular with our board, as it took away a bunch of matches we looked forward to and trivialized them instead. You can see where I’m going with this. Bloodborne took villain status in the eyes of many and feared to win matches it wasn’t supposed to because of it, though it wasn’t nearly big enough for anyone to fear it would get past Breath of the Wild should it get that far. ## Safer777's Analysis When I was making my bracket I didn't even thought about that. Easy FE victory. We are talking about FE series which is a core Nintendo franchise, has like 10 characters in Smash AND it was the game that saved the FE series. On the other hand we had one of these get good games which are damn hard AND it is a PS4 exlusive too! Sure FEA was on a portable console but still. Also this is the first match on this contest where we had a successful rally! Yeah it finally happened! It was for Bloodborne and it brought around 1500 extra votes. But as you can see Bloodborne would have won without this rally too. Yeah Bloodborne is legit and I was wrong it seems. So for the match. I am not sure why Bloodborne won. Are these kind of games that popular here? Sure we are on a gaming site and we are hardcore I guess but still? I mean FEA? The game that saved...yeah you know. So not sure. I don't think anyone knows for sure. I guess people just don't like the FE franchise as I thought. What else could it be? Maybe people really like the get good games a lot? ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh, hey, something that the lol X-Stats wouldn't have predicted! Two write-ups ago, I said that Borderlands 2 was presumed to be a stronger opponent than either RE2 or Bloodborne faced, then looked up the X-Stats for Borderlands 2-FE:A and found that according to 2015, that wasn't the case. Only problem is, the 2015 X-Stats not only have FE:A ahead of Bloodborne, but they also have Borderlands 2 ahead of Bloodborne! Narrowly, of course; something like winning with 50.21%. Apparently FE:A's a *lot* weaker than it was in 2015, which kind of makes sense because the backlash against FE:A from the hardcore series fans only got worse when the next game was everything wrong with *Awakening* turned up to 11. It's funny; Awakening was meant to be a big series of shoutouts to the entire series thus far, and then Fates ended up just being one long ode to Awakening, except it was far worse than Awakening ever was because the mechanics that made sense in Awakening were just kind of bolted onto Fates for the sake of keeping them. About the most encouraging thing about the series is that Echoes was still fairly loyal to Gaiden, because Genealogy is next up to get a remake and even though that's the game that Awakening was referencing with the child mechanic, it could get really ugly if they try to make it too much like Awakening/Fates. Oh, right, Bloodborne. There's absolutely no good way to determine the strength of any of these games; it seems that the Undertale Effect was a lot harder to untangle than we thought. Still, Bloodborne put up a better percentage on FE:A than RE2 did on Doom. If we take that underperformance as a sign that contrary to popular belief, the RE2 remake *isn't* as strong as the original, well, RE2 isn't even projected to break 56% on Bloodborne by the 2015 X-Stats. The turnaround it made on FE:A, it's by enough that it should be able to get past RE2 as well. Remind me again where all these games actually were in 2015's bracket? Okay, RE2 was on the opposite side from the rest of them, so its numbers are filtered through two Undertale matches including the final. And Bloodborne is stuck behind a bunch of SFF matches--it was in the division that had a ALTTP-MM final for the right to lose to OoT the next round. Yeah, these numbers are useless. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7986&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=72) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (8)The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (8)The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 2020 (revid 86564)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 73 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 66.70% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 74.96% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 6093 Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 3288 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5521 Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 3356 Go back to my Zelda/Bayonetta writeup from round 1. I was pretty upset over that entire match, but Bayonetta being wasted was only half of it. I'm also upset that Link Between Worlds was wasted this contest on such a predictable path, because that game deserved far better. The case can be made that it's the best Zelda game in the entire series, specifically because of how the MP works. There is no stock on your items, and the MP recharges over time. The game actively encourages you to go nuts using your items, which is something that was sorely missing in the Zelda series until this game came along. The Link's Awakening remake for the Switch is actually the game I'm playing currently, and the item stock thing is just beyond old. I really hope that moving forward, Zelda games adopt the recharging MP model. That wasn't the only reason the game was amazing, either. It has the best use for the 3D function on the entire 3DS, some of the best dungeon design in the entire series (if not the best outright), and some *incredible* map design and puzzles involving the switch between light world and dark world. The game's title is apt, and it does such an unbelievable job with it. If you guys haven't played that game, you need to. That's why it sucked watching the game be an 8 seed and get fed to Smash Ultimate so early. Trust me, I have no hate toward Ultimate and I enjoyed seeing a Zelda game get destroyed as much as anyone, but it deserved to go an extra round or two first. By the way, it is incredibly rare for a Zelda game to get utterly destroyed like this in a contest poll. "How rare is it?", I can hear people asking. Sounds like it's time for another PCA List™! Here is a list of the worst 1v1 losses Zelda has had in contests. I'm only bringing up 1v1 because there are some incredibly strange results from the LOL 4ways: Oops. Not counting the bonus poll from this year, no Zelda game has ever finished below 40% in any 1v1 contest poll. Ever. It's never happened to Link, either. What's even more hilarious about this run of domination is that Zelda's contest history includes a poll that happened between Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past in 2015. One might assume an SFF beating, but no. Link to the Past scored 40.1%: As annoying as Link Between Worlds' path was in this contest, it was simultaneously fascinating to see a Zelda game get utterly aethered like this. Enjoy this one while you can, because you might never see it again. It took 18 years of contests to see Link or one of his games finish below 40%, though I suspect Skyward Sword, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, or Minish Cap could potentially fall that low if they ever got into one of these things. It was a very, very good showing by Smash, although Mario Odyssey would once again one-up it. ## Ctes's Analysis A Link Between Worlds becomes the second of the competing Game of the Year winner to exit competition. It did however lose to another Game of the Year winner, so there was no way around one of them going out today. ALBW is really one of the most screwed games in the bracket when it comes to bracket placement. The adjusted x-stats showed it in fifteenth, so not only did it exit perhaps two rounds earlier than it deserved, it also didn’t get to have the least bit interesting match, not only getting one of the best games in the bracket, but getting one that likely SFF’d it a lot. I know we don’t want to have Zelda games destroying the bracket, but there were only two of them anyways and ALBW wouldn’t have been too dominant. I’m sure it just didn’t get the nominations it needed to get higher, but there’s only one other \#1 seed that’d suck more to put it against. After it was snubbed in 2015, we might have finally got a real read on it, but no. It likely won’t be coming back either, because the console Zelda will have priority in future nomination periods. This was its best chance. A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic game. I know it didn’t win the prize anywhere else that it did here and many believe The Last of Us should have won back then. In any case, ALBW was really good and did a lot of things every Zelda fan missed. Being the handheld game after Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks is easy, but more people seemed more positive towards it upon any other release since perhaps Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess, Wind Waker and even Majora’s Mask had people a bit more split upon release. Hell, even Breath of the Wild, which largely overshadowed it, had people more split. Breath of the Wild even got all the credit for being nonlinear, but ALBW was that too! It deserves a bit more praise than what we’re giving it at the end of the decade. It’s hard to tell how much SFF there is here, but if you believe there is a lot, then Ultimate once again doesn’t look as good as Super Mario Odyssey does. It’s tough to truly determine anything because usually Zelda is before Smash Bros in the Nintendo hierarchy. If you believe the same here happened today, then it looks extremely good, but that’s unlikely. The hierarchy is more a rule of thumb when it comes to the games, it doesn’t apply for every single entry obviously. Exactly where A Link Between Worlds stood today also wasn’t too apparent, so this round wasn’t very good for comparing Ultimate and Odyssey. ## Safer777's Analysis So maybe the 2nd strongest game here again a Portable Zelda game. Yeah no need to analyze stuff much right? I will say one thing only. This match is the biggest loss for a Zelda game ever! History here people! Seriously even in SFF matches no Zelda game ever had finished under 40% but LBW finished with around 36% as you can see! Man people really don't like portable games. Unless they are Pokemon games I guess? This match will always be remembered as the worst defeat for a Zelda game ever so it will be mentioned a lot in the future! So for the match. Obviously Smash would win. BUT the crew overestimated Smash. Most had it above 70%. I mean yeah it is Smash VS one of the weakest Zelda games here, but it still is a Zelda game! So yeah even when Zelda games/characters lose they still overperform! Typical Zelda dominance! ## Tsunami's Analysis Pretty standard SFF match here. ALBW did well to avoid the doubling. It was pointed out that SSBU has more Links in it than ALBW has, so yeah, not even the LAW was going to help it here. It was a shame that two GotY winners had to face each other so early in the contest, but at least the 2013 winner could take solace in the fact that the 2012 and 2014 winners were out of the contest, too. In fact, the 2014 winner had never been in it to begin with. That was the year that Smash 4 came out, and being a Smash game is basically an instant win button in GotY [oh hey Melee what are you doing there.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/776-best-of-2001-overall-game-of-the-year) Most of the individual consoles' polls in 2001 only got their winner into the final poll, but for some reason the top three finishers in the PS2 poll all made the final poll, and finished 1-2-4. Melee lost to freaking *GTA3*. Weren't we supposed to be NintendoFAQs, not SonyFAQs? And yet Brawl, 4, and Ultimate all won their years. 4 did it so convincingly that they stopped at just the one final poll! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7987&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=73) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Marvel's Spider-Man vs (4)Minecraft 2020 _source: (5)Marvel's Spider-Man vs (4)Minecraft 2020 (revid 86565)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 74 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Spider-Man - 61.68% 50 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Spider-Man - 31.61% - **User Votes:** Spider-Man - 5431 Minecraft - 3949 - **Anonymous Votes:** Spider-Man - 5074 Minecraft - 3806 It blows me away that only 31.61% of people predicted Spiderman to win twice, while 82% of gurus got this right. Casuals get a few matches over on us each contest, but by and large we are much, much better than they are at all this. Either casuals had zero faith in Spiderman being a beast this contest, or they fell for the trap of thinking Minecraft or Dota 2 would win here via rallies. Leon4 has mentioned this a bunch of times, including currently where there are debates taking place over x-stats adjustments, but the disrespect for Spiderman before, during, and especially *after* this contest was insane. First off, Spiderman holds the record for fastest-selling first party exclusive on the Playstation 4. In the first three days of release, the game sold 3.3 million copies and had a PS4 bundle going on. The current sales data is a bit screwey, but estimates have it between 14 and 15 million. Those are some serious numbers, and to put that initial 3.3 million in perspective, the movie Spiderman Homecoming made 117 million dollars in its opening weekend. Far From Home opened on a Tuesday and made 185 million in its opening 6 day weekend. The PS4 Spiderman game that people keep trying to downplay for whatever reason made 198 million dollars in its first three days. Assuming the low estimate of 14 million in sales, it's made 840 million dollars. That is a seriously legit video game, and it's right up this site's alley. It's not the typical casualbait garbage like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, my friends. This is Spiderman.... you know, something us nerds should love. I don't quite understand the downplay here. By the way, this also shows how respectable Minecraft's exit was. 42% on Spiderman is no joke, especially given the numbers I just went over. If that game could ever rally its community to a poll for these contests, it would swamp everything. I think its players are too busy using quarantine time to try building Planet Earth to scale to really care, though. ## Ctes's Analysis This is probably the match that makes it so difficult for our board to accept Marvel’s Spider-Man is just really good. We have no faith in Minecraft being worth anything and we weren’t very openminded to Spider-Man being that either. Spider-Man had a really successful launch and we’ve shown to really like the similar Batman games in the past, so I’m not sure why it was that difficult to believe. Also, remember that Spider-Man was doing a few percentages better before all the rallying in the Octopath Traveler vs. Shovel Knight match happened. Both parties seem to prefer Minecraft in this match. The prediction percentage is really low. That’s what happens when you share a fourpack with both Minecraft and Dota 2, I suppose! Minecraft is not exactly the type of game that tends to do well here. It’s not one of our typically liked genres, a lot of its playerbase is younger than us, and why would you need to go to a FAQ site for it. It seems like obvious casual bait that isn’t worth much when it comes down to it. It also finished very low in the 2015 x-stats after losing to Halo, which went on to get killed by Final Fantasy VII. It was however brought up before that perhaps Minecraft was a bit undervalued in the 2015 x-stats because of the Halo vs. Final Fantasy VII match, as perhaps FFVII is a really bad opponent for Halo. This contest makes it seem like there might be some truth to the theory. I also just think we tend to group Minecraft too much with usual casual bait like GTA, Fortnite, Dota, WoW etc. Unlike all of those, it’s not really as disliked by anyone as it used be. We might not care for it much, but most of the hate movement against it has died down and everyone knows what it is. Furthermore, it’s huge enough that even a great part of our site has probably tried it out. Finally, it’s a Game of the Decade contest. Minecraft might boost a bit from that, because it’s one of the biggest games of all time and most sites mention it when discussing Game of the Decade. Minecraft will probably make it in again and be casual bait once more but still not get very far again, but it’s worth seeing it back I think, and it can win matches against the right games. ## Safer777's Analysis So most just picked MSM and it makes sense. Minecraft is the biggest game in the world and the game with the most sales ever and it is out for barely 10 years. BUT it is too casual for this site so yeah it never stood a chance without a rally of some kind. Well it can beat a lot of games here for sure but nothing major. So for the match. Of course MSM won BUT the crew overestimated it. Everyone had it above 60 yet it finished lower than that. So I guess it is a sign of MSM beeing weak because let's be real I don't think we really care for this game here. It just faced an easy opponent and it won. Or maybe Minecraft is legit and I am stupid. In every other site pretty sure Minecraft would win I do believe. Also if we ever have another character contest let's just have any character. I mean we have a Spider Man game and a Batman game who both did good in this contest but Spider Man and Batman are not eligible for character contests. Why? Just put everyone there and see what happens! Pretty sure almost everyone here wants that too! ## Tsunami's Analysis So about that assertion that Minecraft is weak...ah, wait, we don't have any gauge on Spider-Man. Let's try that again. So about that assertion that licensed games are weak... 57.65% may not seem terribly impressive for this tournament, but it is a round 2 match, and more importantly...Minecraft's not weak. Back in 2015, it got 43.28% on *Halo*. Not a Halo sequel; the original Halo. Yes, Halo is known for being a disappointment in contests, but it is still a big-name franchise and this is the first game in the series we're talking about. And Spider-Man did better against Minecraft than Halo did. Yeah, this was a match in which both games looked good. Minecraft was able to easily cruise past the percentage predicted for it by the Oracles, but Spider-Man still gets to say it beat a game harder than *Halo* did. Win-win! Except for the casuals; it's pretty clear by the prediction percentage that they thought Minecraft would win this outright. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7988&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=74) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (14)Octopath Traveler vs (6)Shovel Knight 2020 _source: (14)Octopath Traveler vs (6)Shovel Knight 2020 (revid 86566)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 75 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shovel Knight - 57.85% 47 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shovel Knight - 18.86% - **User Votes:** Octopath Traveler - 4623 Shovel Knight - 4759 - **Anonymous Votes:** Octopath Traveler - 4481 Shovel Knight - 4402 Either this match or Resident Evil 2 vs Bloodborne was the best match of the entire contest, and both of them had everything one could ask for from a contest match -- high stakes, lots of F5 moments, controversy, arguments, whining, the whole nine. We'll get to the latter match when the time comes, because this writeup is about Shovel Knight shocking the world. 18.86% prediction percentage in round 2, folks! Coming into this match, none of the hype at all was in Shovel Knight's corner. Octopath Traveler had ridden a wave of Undertale anti-votes right into the second round, and given the second match was against Shovel Knight, people figured Octopath Traveler would ride the momentum all the way through this match. I saw quite a lot of Board 8 users talking about how they would vote Octopath purely as a thank you vote for beating Undertale in round 1. This isn't unusual for games scoring upset wins, but a lot of people are still sore over Undertale winning the contest five years ago, which frankly speaks to how amazing Undertale's run truly was but I digress! Given how important the Undertale run was in 2015 and how important that round 1 upset was, it was only natural for Octopath Traveler to have football-like momentum on its side. All Shovel Knight had done leading up to this match was a bunch of bad showings in Game of the Year polls, a loss to Captain Toad, and beating a game in Dragon's Dogma that no one cares about. Of course the board was going to root for Octopath Traveler. I should note here that I picked Shovel Knight \> Octopath Traveler \> Undertale in my bracket for one very specific reason. I had a gut feeling Undertale would lose to almost anything because of anti-voting, but that Octopath Traveler would be weak enough to lose to Shovel Knight even with the momentum. The reason for this is very simple. No actually *likes* Octopath Traveler. People like the story of the game pulling off a round 1 upset over a contest champion in close fashion, but when seeing discussions about the actual game itself I don't see people saying anything good. I was of the belief that almost anything could have beaten Undertale in this contest, and that Shovel Knight would be respected enough to turn around and beat the winner. The fact that his mug is *everywhere* can't hurt, either. Technically speaking, I wasn't correct on all this and it took a literal act of divine intervention for things to go the way I picked. When this match started, it was a dead heat with no sign as to either game being able to win at all. Usually there's a sense of where things will go. Not this time! It was even for the first five minutes, and after a small (very small) Shovel Knight increase at the first update, it was short-lived. Shovel Knight scored another small update win, but again, it was short-lived. This pattern continued for an hour. Shovel Knight gain, tripped, Shovel Knight gain, tripped, Shovel Knight gain, tripped. These Octopath stalls and gains were fun, but Shovel Knight was slowly building a lead. After an hour, Shovel Knight finally took off. That early struggle to establish wrist control turned into a 250 vote lead very quickly, but back came Octopath Traveler yet again to show it wasn't dead yet. But after that bump to get it below 200, Shovel Knight took actual control of the match. Late into the evening and into the overnight period, it built itself a lead that would ultimately peak at 365 votes. If indie games had any presence in Europe whatsoever, this match would have been stone cold over, but once the dead zone started overnight and Europe started waking up, the match flipped. It started slowly (very slowly) at first, with the updates staying either tied or slight Octopath lean with every single one, with the occasional Shovel Knight +10 thrown in there. It was like watching open heart surgery, and it kept going like this all the way until the morning vote. As America began waking up, the lead fell down to 200 votes. But with America favoring Shovel Knight, easy win right? If you told me Nightwish did this song, I would probably believe you. Not only did Octopath Traveler win the morning vote, it *easily* won the morning vote. That 200 vote lead was under 100 in an hour, and though Shovel Knight tried its damndest to delay the inevitable, the lead was gone two hours later. After a tie that lasted *another* hour, because Shovel Knight was not about to just roll over and dig its own grave (yes bad pun, I am well aware!), it was Octopath Traveler that finally started winning wrist control in this matchup. It spent the rest of the morning and lunch time building itself a lead, though it never did so in any kind of domineering fashion. Octopath built up a 200 vote lead relatively quickly, but could never get beyond that. From here, it was hours and hours of stalling with Shovel Knight, of all things, having the slightest of leans in the match trend. This wasn't a "comeback attempt" so much as it was stalling thins out and hoping for the best, but it was working. Octopath's 200 vote lead got shaved down below 100 with five hours to go, and it was anyone's match from there. At this point, Shovel Knight made its move. It basically tried everything from here to erase that lead and try to jump ahead, but Octopath Traveler held on for dear life at every turn. Lead goes from 100 to 36 in three updates? Well here comes another stall where it stays at 50. Lead goes from 40 to 18? Well let's go back up to 33 because why not? It continued like this until Shovel Knight tied the match and seemed like it would break through with two hours to go. With two hours to go and lots of momentum behind it, Shovel Knight *finally* did the whole **LEAD CHANGE** routine, and it looked like the match would flip. Bu t true to form, Octopath Traveler just would *not* go away. When Shovel Knight finally got its lead back, this was what the match looked like for the next few updates afterwards: -Shovel Knight by 11. -Shovel Knight by 3. -Shovel Knight by 1. -Shovel Knight by 6. -Shovel Knight by 8. -Shovel Knight by 6. -Shovel Knight by 6. -Octopath by 30. With only 90 minutes left in the poll, that looked to *finally* end this match. But of course that wasn't it, because Octopath could not retain any momentum. It got stalled out for four straight updates, and then, at 6:49 pm EST, with just over an hour left to go, this contest's version of divine intervention: Stalwart stewards, we're calling for your aid!! The GameFAQs "Game of the Decade" vote is happening NOW and Shovel Knight needs your vote! Dig in at the top of the page! Octopath had no counter, and that was a wrap. What do you even *do* when the developer of your opponent rallies for their own game on Twitter? You sit there are you die, that's what. After nearly 23 hours of just beating the crap out of each other, Shovel Knight was bailed out in hilarious fashion, and it turned a 40 vote deficit into a 200 vote win in just over an hour. We'll never know what would have happened without a developer rally popping up right at the end of the match with perfect timing, and it's impossible to know for sure. My best guess is that Board 8 would have tried to get Octopath the win as a thank you for defeating Undertale, but with the way this match went, who really knows? It was anyone's game there at the end, but Shovel Knight caught a super lucky break to advance. Both games put on one hell of a show, and this is the type of match where it sucks someone has to lose, but shout out to Octopath Traveler here. It may have only been around for two matches, but they were two of the contest's most entertaining matches. Shout out to Shovel Knight, too, for pulling a *developer rally* of all things out of its ass to clutch up and win. This site talks about developer rallies a lot, especially when Witcher 3 is concerned, but to actually see one make this huge difference is always fun. It also opened up the door, however slightly, for Shovel Knight to catch fire in this contest and cause some real damage. It would need to, since its next opponent was Super Mario Odyssey. Yacht Club Games knew it, too: *"We can't give up! Not even if pitted against our beloved mustachioed main man!"* Who knows? Maybe lightning *can* strike twice. ## Ctes's Analysis Who could’ve guessed that this would be one of the absolute best matches of the entire contest? Shovel Knight was picked by a solid number of gurus to win this match but by far the most of them had it beating Undertale today. Very few people expected Octopath Traveler to be here, but even fewer people thought it would stand a chance. Almost everyone that did not pick Undertale to round 3 did not do so, because they expected Undertale to receive some similar anti-voting to what Draven got two years ago. Most people didn’t think it would be enough and that it could use its momentum to ride to round 3 in similar fashion to what L-Block did in the past. Not many were expecting a close match today, but it was exciting right from the beginning. They were neck to neck for the first five minutes, almost equal, and they went back and forth. Shovel Knight would make a minimal jump next update, but then Octopath stole the lead. Some argued Shovel Knight had the bracket votes and Octopath would run with it now, but others knew that most people weren’t bracket voting today because they had Undertale winning this match. Look at the prediction percentage and you see the proof. Octopath Traveler likely has quite a bit less than that, it already had close to this in round 1, and only a small handful of the gurus that picked Octopath in round 1 did so again. True enough, Octopath looked to be the bracket vote winner, probably as a minor bandwagon factor. Shovel Knight took it all back in the coming update and build on it afterward. Octopath would make its small cuts, but Shovel Knight would gain a good bit more. In the span of about four hours it would have build a lead of about 300 votes and almost no one one thought the match still lived. Then the night hours came and put the brakes in. It was similar to Celeste vs. Rayman Legends overnight, but Octopath initially didn’t make the same push and Shovel Knight looked to have a hold of the match. As morning came to Europe Octopath would stop stalling and start making progression. It was nothing fast at first, but it cut the lead down to below 300 again clearly moving forward. At this point people began taking notice, those of us awake at least, because Rayman had won its match with a bit of room to spare, so if Octopath could keep this up, it could win it. Octopath kept slowly cutting the lead down. The pace was inconsistent, but it went in one direction and a lead change seemed inevitable as the lead went down below 100 votes. With about 50 votes left to be cut, a rally thread was put on Shovel Knight’s subreddit, which seemed to halt Octopath’s cutting a bit, but not to anything major. It’s hard to tell how much it actually did, because it was also when NA was beginning to wake up and everyone expected that to give Shovel Knight some more footing. The match was around 50 votes for a while. A rally thread was then also put up on Octopath’s subreddit and that one later changed the course of the match. At first, it was successful enough to remove most of the remaining lead, but it looked to mostly a small spike. Octopath got close but couldn’t quite get there. Shovel Knight was ahead by nine votes, then three votes, then three votes again and then a single vote, but it just wouldn’t drop the lead. It looked like the reddit rallies have run their course unless they gained significant traction. Shovel Knight gained a little bit again from there, which might have been rallying I suppose, but is probably mostly the morning vote coming I think. It wasn’t all too fast. Then came the drama suddenly. As Shovel Knight just gained to be ahead by 46 votes, the moderators of the Octopath subreddit pinned it at the top of the page, meaning it didn’t really need to traction, everyone entering that subreddit would see it right away and they would know it had the moderators support. Its effect was plain to see. Octopath had a huge spike and the next update tied the match. It did the same thing again to take the lead of 50 votes. Octopath slowed a bit down from that point, but a lot of people thought the match was over at that point. Shovel Knight didn’t have anything to counter that with. While the first two updates were the most beastly, Octopath would have the rally thread pinned there for the rest of match, meaning a consistent boost throughout the day as more people visit the page. Octopath went up slowly but steadily and was leading comfortably with 8 hours to go. Then Shovel Knight really began stalling. Everyone was awake again now and the rallies had reached their potential. Shovel Knight did not lead Octopath get to a lead of 200 votes, though it was close at time. Shovel Knight then attempted to move things in its direction again, but it was a bumpy vote. Every now and then, Octopath would have a killer update, which often cancelled about 3 cuts, so it took a lot of time for Shovel Knight to get anywhere. With five hours to go, it still needed to cut off 105 votes. At the current pace, everything could happen. Shovel Knight had the time, but it was moving so slow that Octopath could perhaps do more if it wanted to. It seemed that most people on board 8 wanted Octopath to win, with most Shovel Knight supports being the ones that picked it to win today. That could end up bailing Octopath out if necessary. Shovel Knight made a solid push to get the lead from 101 and down below 50 before Octopath really hit the brakes. Then they stalled there for hours. Shovel Knight won by far the most updates, but they were almost never particularly big and Octopath had some seemingly random big updates every know and then. Octopath really stalled, as is natural in the later hours of our matches these days. Trends are hardly there anymore. With two hours to go, Shovel Knight took the lead with 11 votes, but it couldn’t get anywhere with it. Octopath cut and then took the lead back to be ahead by a single vote. Then Shovel Knight took it back and lead by under 10 votes for four updates. It seemed like the match would come down to the last second. This was super exciting, because our lack of trends almost always has it so that matches won’t be exciting near the end, but when the match seems to naturally land at just about it even, they can still be! Octopath had a huge spike next update, not only winning the lead, but getting 30 votes ahead, which put Shovel Knight in a very tough spot. It had such a hard time getting the lead and it couldn’t go anywhere with it. Some people believed the natural trends would give Shovel Knight the edge, but it just didn’t get anywhere, and it struggled to take this lead back now too, with only a bit more of an hour left. It was anyone’s game and at this point almost all of us were watching and were ready to do so until the end, but Octopath seemed to have the advantage. It was just nail biting and waiting for the next five minutes to pass until something following the twitter account posted this right away: Yacht Club Games, the creators of Shovel Knight tweeted about this match. Someone here who follows the account posted it instantly, so we’d see the effect right away. Most people agreed it would be game over for Octopath Traveler though. We did not know how much it did, but when the match was this close, this would be deciding. It was only 38 votes ahead. Still, everyone eagerly awaited the effect. After hours of excitement and refreshing, one user summed everything up very well right before the update stroke: "Whatever happens next, it's been an honor F5ing with you all this evening." – TheCodeisBosco Shovel Knight took the lead back right away. Only with 1 vote, but that was still a 39-vote victory. Plus, that was from the people that were very quick to see the tweet and act. Remember that everything I wrote last paragraph happened within five minutes. The match was over, everyone agreed. True enough, Shovel Knight would gain up to 37 votes next update and quickly burst well above 100. It slowed down again then, but with about half an hour to go, Octopath had nothing to counter with, when the effect still showed. It was over. Shovel Knight came just short of 200 votes and advanced. Yacht Club Games then made the biggest red herring in the world. Look at the comments section of that twitter post. People took notice that Super Mario Odyssey would be the next opponent and they rightly knew that would be a tough thing for Shovel Knight to get past. The account that answered that they’d still do everything they could to win, although they recognized that Odyssey is a great game at the time. No one here was worried about the match, because if this was what the twitter could do, it wouldn’t be enough, since Super Mario Odyssey are leagues ahead of Shovel Knight to begin with, but they ended up forgetting all about it, and no one here cared to give the reminder. It lost, but Octopath Traveler proved today that it was legit. It might’ve gotten some bandwagon, mostly early on, and it had pinned rallies, but it still looks really good today. Most people credited its victory to Undertale anti-voting, but it appears was alright after all, and that its momentum and anti-voting almost canceled each other out. It’s in line with what we’ve seen of Bravely Default. Being a Square RPG on a Nintendo console has always been a good thing. Maybe they should release Final Fantasy XVI on Nintendo’s most recent console if it ever happens. Shovel Knight ended up being the only indie game to advance to round 3 despite such a promising round 1. Whether it’s the strongest one remains to be seen. It seems to between Cuphead, Stardew Valley and Shovel Knight itself, but Shovel Knight ended up being behind several layers of SFF, so it’s really hard to determine. Cuphead was also below some. We’ll never really know. It’s hard to tell how the match would’ve ended naturally or even how it would’ve ended if Yacht Club Games didn’t tweet in the end. I’d call Octopath the favorite if only the tweet doesn’t happen, which means Shovel Knight takes the victory without it, since it easily had the least successful subreddit rally. It probably wouldn’t come down to the last second if no rallies interfered, but it would still be an overall close match. People tend to forgot Octopath already had a really strong really if they weren’t around, because that one didn’t change the direction of the match, it simply turbo boosted the direction it was going in. Shovel Knight likely wins a good bit easier in round 1, that means if Octopath hadn’t just beat Undertale. Though Octopath would still have looked good going out. In the midst of what was easily the best match of the contest so far and probably top 3 overall, there was of course talks of rallies and hypocrisy and everything in between. All the things about what you are allowed to think and what you are not. Shovel Knight used a rally to win in the end, so clearly any anti-rally person should be against it right? Oh, but Octopath had a big rally earlier, so it was mostly a counter, meaning Shovel Knight should be the game you cheer for as an anti-rally person. Oh, but wait, Shovel Knight did have a rally up first, so clearly it’s the villain, right? As an anti-rally person, you must figure out how the match, where the games are within a percentage of each other, would have ended with no outside interference and that’s the game you can root for. Except it’s hard to judge, so someone will disagree with you either way, it’s probably best to just not be happy at all then. If you’re pro-rallies, the only other option, then you had the time of your life, but you better have had the same stance in any other match with rallies regardless of size, otherwise you’re a major hypocrite and that’s no good. It’s probably obvious what I think of all that. I know, I’m beating a dead horse with some of the points but let me just make it clear how much I think all of the above is a major load of s\*\*\*. First of all, the good old idea that you either have to support all rallies or dislike all rallies. I wont ever hear counterarguments here because it makes no sense. Why am I obligated to enjoy Draven making Mega Man X and Ryu look like complete fodder on his way to swallow a contest whole if I enjoyed two games today rallied a bit back and forth using their subreddits? Nothing else in the worlds works that way. It’s no goddamn different that telling me I have to enjoy every single Final Fantasy game if I like one of them and no one is doing that. It’s not hypocritical by default. Sure, it’s probably hypocritical if you hate a certain type of rally influence in one match because it knocks one of your favorite games out, but then rally yourself in another match in similar fashion to help another favorite game of yours out. That does not mean you’re a hypocrite if you enjoyed today’s match, but hated Undertale and Draven and I really can’t stress this enough. You’re also allowed to dislike the tweet or the pinned rally more than the one rally this match had that didn’t do as much, because they’re not the same thing. It’s my clear observation that most people just want exciting matches. If rallies make a match more exciting, that’s great! That’s likely what happened today, but people got called hypocrites left and right if they had previous anti-rally in any context. If a rally makes what would have been a close match no contest, then that’s not great. It’s very simple! The last part goes in particular if it flips a result, and even more it goes on for several rounds to take away interesting matches from us. Still, we’re actually pretty consistent with these things. We disliked the rallies when they didn’t flip a result too, just look at Melee last contest or Bloodborne this one. A lot of also has to do with the fact that people want the games to fight on equal ground, so if one game can pull all the outside forces in the world, but the other one can pull none, then it’s not as well liked as if both pull people in. That’s completely reasonable! My own stance on rallies is somewhere in between. A lot of the issues with them these days is our very small votals, which makes it easy for a small really to have a big impact. If we still had 100k in total votes each match, then those small 100 vote boosts would barely be noticed and even some of our larger rallies this contest would be negligible. I like the idea that we give our site attention elsewhere and boost votals, but I would enjoy it a lot more, if people stayed around afterward. It makes predicting less fun most of the time because it’s so random what gains traction. I can appreciate a match like today despite rallies. I had a lot of fun following it all day, but I did not find Melee and Undertale fun for giving me one good match at best while likely ruining all of SMB3 vs. RBY, RBY vs. SMW, CT vs. FFVII, RBY vs. SM64, CT vs. RBY and CT vs. OoT (or however those would’ve turned out). Yes, the first one happened, but it was heavily influence and one of my best predictions ever was heavily clouded by the rally spillover. I suppose, I’m generally against them, but it’s circumstantial and I never really get angry I just care a bit less, and I would mind less if our natural votals weren’t as bad. Finally, I was rooting for Shovel Knight from before this match began. I love the game and I had it in my bracket too. Not only that, I would have been eliminated in the guru today if Shovel Knight didn’t win because Luster and I have identical brackets post round 2. I could go on a while about my passion for Shovel Knight, but you get the point. I was loudly cheering for Shovel Knight when the excitement was at its peak and I was happy that It won. I never stated that I was happy with the way it won, and I might have expressed earlier in the match that I thought it was a shame that one of the subreddits was pinned instead of zero or two. Suddenly, I was hypocritical for being happy when a game won that rallied itself past the goal line in the end. I was not being rude about it. Seriously? You are not a hypocrite if you hope the game you’re cheering for gets the same support the opposing game has had. Period. It’s not too surprising, but when not only trolls, but plenty of users were throwing the word hypocrite around back and worth, I wanted to bring it up. I was genuinely a bit sad at the end of that match that it did not seem like I could be happy without fueling that discussion. Was I just supposed to stop rooting for the game in the middle of the match because of how it turned out? Regardless of what you think about rallies and what you think others can think about rallies, these contests are all about rooting for your favorite games. Ultimately, it’s all about having fun and hoping that the games that made your decade better does well. Predicting and analyzing and all that stuff is secondary to that. Could we all f\*\*\*ing stop being jerks to each other for cheering for our favorite games, please? It’s a shame we couldn’t have this match without having these pointless discussions near the end, but make no mistake, this was a fantastic and memorable match. In a few days, round 2 was already way better than round 1. ## Safer777's Analysis So yeah as you can see from this result an EXTREMELY close match. 201 votes difference. So for this match the whole crew went with SK here. Plus they had it above 60 too! So the reason was that OT won against Undertale who was the previous champion via anti votes or something so people would vote normal here and they would favor SK because somehow SK has become the face of indie games. I mean Shovel Knight even got into Smash so you know that you have made it when you get into Smash! But here is the thing. Sure SK is the face of indies but OT is damn good. Not only it is popular and well liked but it prooved that people really care for the Old School games and that game is really old school. There is always a market for that. People just don't want constant MMO's, FPS, Battle Royale and such. They just want to play an old school game and have fun. Plus OT has a unique story. There are 8 characters and each has 4 Chapters to them BUT the other party members just don't exist in their story until the secret final chapter. So for example you can have a character getting trapped and that is since the other characters aren't there for the story, just for the gameplay battles. So theoritically you can just pick a characater and finish all their chapters and just 1 chapter of the other characters and you would have beaten the game. But why you would do that when there are so many stories to complete too? So for the match. Well in the 5 minutes SK was already ahead. After around 6 hours SK was still ahead by like 330 votes. There was even a rally attempt for SK on Reddit but it didn't took off. So yeah tough match but still we all thought SK had it. BUT then someone posted a rally on Reddit for OT and that one took off. So OT started cutting and after around 14 hours OT pulled ahead and started gaining. So we had a real close match. Eventually OT pulled ahead with like 200 votes. But then SK started cutting again. Then OT cut. Then SK cut. Then ties! Everything really! An exciting match! This went back and forth for hours until eventually only 1 hour remained. So like 1 hour before the end of the match we had a tie! Now that is amazing! But then something amazing happened. With like 1 hour to end the match the Official Twitter of the company that made SK started rallying on Twitter! Yeah! NOBODY expected that! So after this rally SK managed to win with 200 votes. So yeah the rally was effective! Really close wire to wire match. And the thing is that NOBODY thought this match would be so damn close! We all thought that OT was weak and SK is strong. Turns out these games are really close in strength. Strange to see an official rally decide a match but hey it happened. Rallies are always good at least for me. So yeah. I would like to see a strange game like SK winning the whole thing but alas. Still really excited match. Who know who would win without the official rally? Also lowest correct prediction percentage of the contest so far. And it made sense. Most had picked Undertale to win 2 rounds. Also something else to notice. When the contest started we all had this indiefear, that one of them would catch a rally and generally indie games will do good since there were so many of them and it is easy to rally for them. Classic underdog story. BUT you know how many indie games reached Round 3 out of around 60 that were in the contest? Only 1 AND what was with a rally too! So yeah. Indifear was a lie. It makes sense. When you are thinking of GOTD how many indie games you think? Only one and that is Minecraft. Sure indie games are good but not GOTD good. That is how it is. ## Tsunami's Analysis If you thought the end of Round 1 and beginning of Round 2 were exciting...you ain't seen nothing yet. It didn't look like it would start out that way. Octopath managed to take a lead 15 minutes in after trailing at the freeze, but Shovel Knight easily flipped it on the next update and got the lead into triple digits a mere 20 minutes after that. By the two-hour mark, the lead was over 200, and Shovel Knight followed the 35 vote gain that it made to end that hour with a 38 vote gain to start hour three. OT made some nice cuts as we reached 10:30, but again SK easily countered, tacking on 31 and 46 votes in consecutive updates. Every time Octopath looked like it wanted to cut, Shovel Knight countered. At midnight, four hours in, Shovel Knight led by 340 votes. It would gain *one* vote on the next update, then spend the rest of the hour futilely trying to increase its lead. But then the next hour hit and bam! +20, +24, new max lead at 1:15 AM. Shortly after 2 AM, SK's lead peaked at 365, but then at 2:15, Octopath made a sizeable cut and followed it up with another one two updates later. SK recovered, forcing Octopath to wait until nearly 3:30 to get within 300, but from there, the comeback was slow but inevitable. Then, suddenly, it wasn't so slow. Octopath got within 200 at 10 minutes to 6, then within 100 at 7:05, and a 25-vote cut at 7:20 left Shovel Knight's lead at a mere 45 votes. From there, however, it went into a stall; an hour and a half later, Shovel Knight's lead was at 43, having not dipped below 35 nor risen above 56 during that time. Shovel Knight won the next update to increase its lead to 61 at 5 minutes to 9, only to be met with an Octopath run. 61 became 46, then 24, then 9, then 3, then 3 again, then 1...and with its lead down to a single vote, Shovel Knight *finally* won another update, then two more, then a net positive over the next two, and then another one. At 9:55 AM, Shovel Knight had restored its lead to 46 votes. At 10 AM? *Deadlock*. At 10:05? *Octopath Traveler leads by 50.* Wait, seriously? Did we have an honest to God *rally* going on? Because that is an insane swing for this deep into a match. Octopath slowed down after that, netting only +17 over the next half hour before picking it up again to gain its first triple-digit lead at 10:50. It hovered for a bit, got up to 151 at 11:40, let SK spend about half an hour gaining back about 30 votes, then quickly smacked it down in only 10 minutes. At 12:45 PM, Octopath led by 193 and seemed primed to win easily. Shovel Knight took a chunk back, but it could never keep much of its gains; at 2:15, Octopath still led by 171. And then the comeback was on. Highlighted by a +21 at 2:25 and a +27 at 3:20, Shovel Knight got the deficit down to 36 before Octopath started putting up any resistance. And resist it did; it took until 5:55 for Shovel Knight to regain the lead, a +17 giving it an immediate double-digit advantage. Which Octopath wiped out in two updates to take a 1-vote lead at 6:05. Shovel Knight was back in front at the next update, but only by 6 votes, and the next update only grew it to 8...then back to 6...then 6 *again*... And at 6:30 PM, Octopath spiked another of its huge updates. +36, lead of 30. They traded update wins for the next 20 minutes, with a net of +8 for Octopath. And then, suddenly, it was Shovel Knight that had the huge rally power. A 38-vote deficit became a 1-vote lead, then 37, then 50, 76, 99, *137...* Shovel Knight won 13 of the final 14 updates to end up winning by 199, the largest lead by either side since 5:50 AM. A title previously held by its *penultimate*-update lead of 194, one vote more than the largest Octopath's lead ever got. Shovel Knight started out looking like it would win easily, then spent much of the second half of the match trailing, and in the end, still won by a fairly comfortable final margin. The registered voter bonus carried much of that; Shovel Knight's raw vote lead was just 57 votes, courtesy of a 136-voter advantage with registered users offsetting a 79-voter deficit with unregistered. The favorite in this match? Obviously it was Undertale. At 18.86%, Shovel Knight \> Octopath Traveler had the lowest prediction percentage of the tournament so far...taking the mantle from Octopath Traveler \> Undertale, at 21.58%. Undertale was the Guru favorite, too, and as for the Oracle...well, it seems that the Oracles were convinced that Octopath's win was a result of Undertale anti-votes, not its own strength. Very few people predicted a match this close, and most of the ones who did were Octopath pickers trying to mitigate the damage if they were wrong. I ended up with a top 5 for this match going over by nearly 3% on SK's percentage. So let's give a hand for everyone involved here. It's clear by the wild swings, at least relative to our vote intake, that this was a match where both sides were rallying, and it brings into question another outcome. It was, of course, noticed that Undertale had been trying to rally yet again, though it was far weaker than what it put up in 2015, and the common belief was that it just wasn't getting it done and couldn't get past the antivotes. But now, perhaps, one has to wonder if we weren't giving Undertale too much of the credit for the increased traffic. Maybe it just got outrallied? Shovel Knight's run would be coming to an end the next round, of course, faced with Super Mario Odyssey. But it should be noted that outside of 64, 3D Mario has had a long and storied history of looking like utter trash in Games Contests. Whether it's Galaxy losing to CoD4 twice in 2009 or Sunshine and NSMBWii getting upset by Halo 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in 2010 or the Galaxy games losing to Super Metroid and Mass Effect in 2015, Mario just hasn't been worth much as a platformer franchise this century. Maybe he continues to stay so strong in character battles because this is RPGFAQs; the Paper Mario games have done just fine in contests, after all. (Of course this isn't actually the reason, but the point still stands; PM64 and TTYD are the only Mario games from either of the past two decades to do well in any contests.) It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Shovel Knight made Odyssey look bad heading into its match with Ultimate. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7989&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=75) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 _source: (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 (revid 88237)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 76 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Odyssey - 73.00% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Odyssey - 76.50% - **User Votes:** Devil May Cry 5 - 2735 Super Mario Odyssey - 6652 - **Anonymous Votes:** Devil May Cry 5 - 2472 Super Mario Odyssey - 6408 After that crazy match between Octopath Traveler and Shovel Knight, I need a dud writeup to cool off! I would say "dud match", but this one happened at exactly the same time so it wouldn't be accurate. Either way, we've thankfully got a dud match to cool off with. Devil May Cry 5 pulled off a very cute one point upset over Tropical Freeze in round one. We call these matches "one point upsets" because everyone knows the winner has no chance in the next round when the time comes to pay the piper. Not only did DMC5 get utterly destroyed, but this was the second round in a row where Super Mario Odyssey looked better than Smash Ultimate. There was a whoooooole lot of "wish I could change my bracket" sentiment going around, from myself included, because that match looked like a done deal in Mario's favor after two rounds were in the books. I maintain there is no planet where Tekken 7 beats Mortal Kombat 11 in a contest poll on here, and 71% on Devil May Cry 5 is just more impressive than 64% on Link Between Worlds -- the irony of which is no Zelda game had ever lost that badly one on one before. There was also this poll that Team Rocket Elite was kind enough to dig up for us: In retrospect, we really should have taken holding Link Between Worlds to 36% more seriously, but at the time there was a whole lot of freaking out about Smash Ultimate's chances to beat Odyssey, when the latter was clearly an uncaged beast in this contest. ## Ctes's Analysis Super Mario Odyssey had yet another round of looking really dominant. It seemed to finish a little bit higher as a result of the rallying in Octopath Traveler vs. Shovel Knight, but it’s a bit hard to tell. It would probably still finish above 70% and that’s a really good showing. The goal for Super Mario Odyssey was to do the impossible for a post 64 Mario game; beat the Smash Bros game of the same platform. This round definitely taught us the least of the three rounds leading up to the clash because Ultimate was against a Zelda game, but Odyssey still did what it needed to do and look impressive enough to make us doubt the hierarchy. The board actually went even higher on Super Mario Odyssey on average, probably because it went so high on a game with a name everyone knows last round. I suppose we just have to acknowledge Devil May Cry had a release worth something again for the first time in quite a while. It’s not fantastic, but Devil May Cry 5 looks to have more strength in it than most of us thought and it explains why it took so easily care of Tropical Freeze when we all expected the Donkey Kong game to be alright with its Switch release. We didn’t have that great a read on the Devil May Cry series before this contest actually. The only time they’ve appeared in a contest in the past was in the previous Game of the Decade where the first and third one made it in. Neither looked particularly good, but they ended up being alright in the stats, not as much as one might have thought. Perhaps they would’ve looked better earlier in the decade, that’s when Dante looked best in the character battles. At this point the fourth game had come out and wasn’t as big as the third and DmC: Devil May Cry had just been revealed, so I think we had seen Donte already, which might have caused some backlash if we did. This contest, we fifth one just came out and it was well liked again. It has a big enough name that I could see it having good footing on franchise name alone and with the most well-liked Devil May Cry since the third, finishing where it did isn’t so bad. Of course, it’s buried behind some layers of SFF, so its exact placement is hard to tell. ## Safer777's Analysis Well after the previous super exciting match we had a simple match. People were expecting SMO to score around 70 and it did just that. DMC was lucky that it faced a damn weak Nintendo game(how many times you hear that on this site?)and well it got owned. And it makes sense. Sure Dante is a midcarder here but his games are always doing bad. Hell pretty sure Dante has become weak now. So for the match. Well SMO won easily as expected. But to tell the trutn I did expected to score under 70 here. Sure the best Mario game in some time but DMC 5 is the best DMC game ever too. Then again it is freaking Mario. So the question is that what place does SMO holds in this contest? Top 5 for sure. Guess at the end of the contest X-Stats will say us. Hey they still work right? ## Tsunami's Analysis I may have spoken too soon. Holy hell, DK, what's wrong with you?! This is an ass-whooping entirely commensurate with what you'd expect a Mario game to be doing to a Devil May Cry game. For comparison's sake, the weaker of the two DMC games in the last GotD would be projected to break 41% on Galaxy, the strongest Mario game in that bracket. Super Mario Odyssey was definitely for real, but still, how weak must Tropical Freeze be to get nowhere near beating something this weak? Odyssey suddenly looked like it would stand a chance against Ultimate, even though we all know it won't. That's the power of Link for you! Ultimate clearly got rSFFed...right? *Edit: Tsunami has since played Super Mario Odyssey. This is entirely deserved. Odyssey is the best 3D Mario game and SM64 is probably the only other one that's even close.* ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7990&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=76) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (8)Cuphead 2020 _source: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (8)Cuphead 2020 (revid 88342)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 77 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto V - 55.78% 49 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto V - 80.61% - **User Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 5744 Cuphead - 3609 - **Anonymous Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 4993 Cuphead - 3656 After how good Cuphead looked in round one, compared to how "off" Grand Theft Auto always looks, plus with this match being in the group of matches to take place directly after a developer rally for Shovel Knight, hype for **THE CUPSET!!!** was through the roof. A lot of people figured Cuphead would win the board vote plus get help from rally spillover, which could potentially create one of the all-time funniest matches ever, or at least one of the funniest freezes. All that hope got dreamcrushed in a matter of minutes. There was only a very small board vote win for Cuphead, and after the first couple minutes were over, Grand Theft Auto 5 dominated this matchup. GTA5 had 54% at the freeze. It won with 60% of the vote. That's a pretty good rise on a site where any win for Grand Theft Auto feels like running in mud, but it's worth noting that for all of the struggles GTA has around here, Grand Theft Auto 5 feels like the one game in that series with real strength behind it. It's easily the strongest GTA game on this site, and though it lost to Super Mario RPG in 2015, it scored 43% against a game that made the semifinals that year. GTA5 is clearly legit on this site, and a cut above the rest of the GTA games here. I don't think was Cuphead, or indies in general, crapping the bed here. GTA5 just picked a good time to give us arguably its best match ever. Shout out to Leon4 for this stat -- did you guys know that GTA5 winning this match meant that this was Grand Theft Auto's first appearance in round 3 of a contest since Tommy Vercetti beat Donkey Kong all the way back in 2003? It's true. Look it up. I couldn't believe it either. I don't like GTA games much at all, but I do enjoy when long droughts end. Props to the series for finally getting to hang with the big boys! And given this performance, maybe it was finally safe to take Grand Theft Auto seriously on GameFAQs, and maybe it could finally win a division. After all, its next match was going to be against a Vita game or Grand Theft Cowboy, so its ticket to the divisional finals was a lock. What could possibly go wrong? ## Ctes's Analysis Cuphead winning this match was a tempting upset to many before the contest, although not many actually ended up taking it. It doesn’t look very good now, because it didn’t even come close. It was another slap in the face to indie games, but just as much a time to recognize that Grand Theft Auto V is probably pretty strong all things considered. It will never be as good here as it is anywhere else. All of our contest history backs that up, but it wont job to the first thing that has some strength as some people thought and more people feared. After the first round, Grand Theft Auto V did look like the better game. Especially if you factor in any anti-votes it might have gotten. Considering its awful board vote, it probably has quite a few of those. Cuphead went neck to neck with it when the match began and still held its lead a minute in. GTAV would end up looking safe by the end of the freeze, but it was still only just above 54% at the freeze. It rose to heaven from there. There’s quite the difference. Indie games typically have very good board votes and that goes for Cuphead too, so the board vote was as funny as they get. Cuphead failing to get 40% is a disappointment when you consider the chances we gave it, it never had, but that’s probably more on us than on it. It still looks to be a good contender for the best indie game in the bracket, although there’s a lot of weird results ahead of it. All of GTAV vs. P4G, P4G vs. Xenoblade, Ultimate vs. Xenoblade, BotW vs. Ultimate and BotW vs. Witcher are matches where you need to think once again if the result is natural or the case of some other factors. That’s every single match ahead of Cuphead! Two of those pretty clearly favor Cuphead, two of those pretty don’t and the final one is something we can’t agree on. It makes it as hard as it gets. Cuphead looked really good in its Game of the Year polls, clearly indicating its on the high end of the indie rank, so the adjusted x-stats probably has it right. It got a ton of exposure and even a bit of Smash reference since then, so it makes sense to think it’s up there. It’s a shame it was seeded \#8 so it would run straight into a \#1 seed. Even in the weakest division, that was too much for it. It would’ve been cool to see it elsewhere. Imagine if it switched places with Super Meat Boy, going against Sonic Mania would be a neck to neck match. Grand Theft Auto V looked really good today, and at the same time Persona 4 Golden only beat Red Read Redemption by a hair. Almost everyone expected GTAV to be the better of the two Rockstar games, so that made GTAV the favorite going into next round as it had been before the contest began, despite that we now knew Persona 4 Golden would be a Persona 4 proxy. ## Safer777's Analysis I don't know why but there was an indiefear with Cuphead. Sure it is an amazing indie game and very recognizable because of the art style but man we are talking about GTA 5 here. If GTA V was facing a middle tier Nintendo game then yeah sure, but against an indie? Not really. I mean the whole crew had GTA 5 under 55 too! Of course it won with more than 60. So for the match. There was a fear as I said but GTA 5 managed to win easily. Indies aren't as strong as people say. I mean it is just a general thought but indies cover a myriad of genres and such so you can't just it is an indie game and that is. I mean even the biggest indie game of all time which is Minecraft didn't do much in the contest too. Also even though Shovel Knight seems to be the face of the Indies, Cuphead may be more popular! Strange but I do believe that is the truth. So yeah. GTA 5 seems to be weak on this site since we don't like good games ilike this it seems, but it just faced weak opponents. Or maybe we love GTA here? Of course not. ## Tsunami's Analysis GTA V continues to be casualbait, trailing only BotW and Witcher 3 *(and Skyrim, but that hadn't had its match yet when I wrote this)* in R2 prediction percentage. Cuphead's classic Disney aesthetic continues to perform well here, and while it never stood a chance of winning, this was a solid showing, more or less. It couldn't quite break 40%, though. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7991&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=77) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (4)Red Dead Redemption 2020 _source: (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (4)Red Dead Redemption 2020 (revid 86569)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 78 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 4 Golden - 52.06% 40 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 4 Golden - 31.05% - **User Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 4620 Red Dead Redemption - 4737 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 4664 Red Dead Redemption - 3985 There was a lot of hype during this day of matches about **THE CUPSET**, the board vote, and rally spillover helping Cuphead pull off the impossible. As luck would have it, those factors all ended up helping Persona 4 Golden instead. Did you guys know that the meaning of "Persona" actually means "yoblazer33 getting fucked in the ass"? I didn't know that myself, but he was kind enough to allow Board 8 to be privy to that information. Who knew? This match may look like a very close, hard-fought win for Persona 4 if you only look at the results, but it was one of those types of matches where the final score was in no way indicative of how the match actually played out. Persona 4 jumped all over Red Dead Redemption early, and Red Dead was never able to get back into it. Red Dead made this match a lot of fun with these random updates all over the place where it would chop 20-40 votes off, but then it would lose those votes back just as quickly. There were only two parts of this entire match -- once in the first evening and once during the late morning vote -- where Red Dead Redemption was able to string a few updates together and make any real headway at Persona in this match. But on top of all of those early factors helping Persona jump out to an early lead, rally threads popped up all over the place on Reddit all day long to help Persona 4 out during this match. Any time Red Dead tried to make any move whatsoever, it was smacked back down like whack-a-mole. This match may *look* close, but it wasn't. Red Dead Redemption was never going to win it, at least not with a bad board vote, rally spillover, rallies on Reddit, and having to potentially deal with getting some blowback from GTA anti-votes all at the same time. This was one of those rare 51-49 blowouts. Persona 4 Golden also officially hit bandwagon status from this match, which was pretty cool to watch for the rest of its run this contest. And yes, this would ultimately help Persona 5 out as well. This would set up a match between Grand Theft Auto V against Persona 4 Golden. Logic would say GTA5 was a bridge too far given the struggle to win this match, but given all things working in Persona 4's favor, who knows? GTA5 was the favorite going in, but bandwagons are very, very hard to beat in these things. "I think the quote was actually 'Shin Megami Tensei' means 'yoblazer33 getting fucked in the ass,' but I digress." -Greatone10 ## Ctes's Analysis Today would be the true test of how much strength Persona 4 Golden had compared to Persona 4. Back in 2015, Persona 4 and Red Dead Redemption looked to be very close, but Persona 4 a small step above. Based on that, Persona 4 Golden would need to basically be a Persona 4 proxy to reach that high, but it obviously doesn’t only come down to this. Both games have also gotten critically acclaimed new games in their series since last time, which might’ve boosted these two. Persona 4 Golden was the favorite to win, though most people overestimated how easy it would be for it. Most of us probably thought it proved itself to be on Persona 4 levels in the first round, but it’s different to be against some fodder game than one of the big names of the decade. There also seems to be a group of people who will pick Persona if it just has the slightest chance of winning, so maybe that helped make it the bigger favorite. Persona 4 won the board vote and that shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Rockstar games have the worst board votes and Persona games have the best. Everyone seemed to think it was fine after behind ahead of the freeze, but I was skeptical. Persona 4 barely gained in the last minutes of the freeze and while it went up from there, it was pretty slow considering there was all the reason in the world to think this would be its best time in the match with great lengths. I posted this in the stats topic at the time, but everyone was saying it fine. This happened for a few updates, but then Read Dead Redemption cut at the hour mark and people finally expressed the worry they should. It was not a big cut, but a Rockstar game cut Board 8’s beloved JRPG halfway through the power hour was a major warning sign. Read Dead Redemption continued to make small cuts in Persona 4’s best time of the match. Judging by the votals, there’s a good chance there was a little bit of rally spillover from the Shovel Knight rally in the final hour of the previous matches. Nothing big, but it seemed to help Persona 4 a little. Another reason that it was in trouble. There was a real reason to think Red Dead Redemption would win at this point. It never happened though. Red Dead Redemption made a lot of pushes, but it couldn’t actually get to close. The main reason for this is probably the board’s passion for Persona and the board’s lack of passion for RDR. Throughout the day, a lot of small Persona rallies would come help it out whenever it got close. Usually it doesn’t matter much what board 8 prefers in a match, but today it most likely did. We ended up having Persona 4 rallies here and there, and they worked a bit, because Persona is now big enough that there are places around the web where people care for it. Another important point is that no one tried to rally for Red Dead Redemption. People had it in their brackets, but no one seemed to care enough to counterrally. Or they just enjoyed seeing Persona get a victory. It’s hard to tell how the match would have ended if some people supporters RDR to the same extent, we can’t really know how well it would have worked. I think Read Dead Redemption claims a narrow victory here without outside interference, but it’s not easy to determine just how much the rallies did. It wasn’t spectacular, but that and a little bit of spillover might just have made the difference. There were definitely less complains about rallying as we usually see, probably because the result bothered nobody. I don’t think it’s hypocritical not to complain, just to make that clear. It only is if you passionately dislike rallies and then rally yourself. It’s only natural not be as annoyed when you hate the result. But it shows how much we like Persona 4. I just think Red Dead Redemption deserves a little more respect that it got, because Persona 4 definitely needed help to get this victory and I think the board is a little too good at turning a blind eye to when Persona is in trouble. The early part of the match makes that clear to me. Perhaps it’s more than Persona 4 Golden deserves a little less respect cause even though RDR never got too close, the idea that Persona 4 is just stronger than RDR by a solid enough amount to win with relative ease is misleading. Persona 4 had a very fascinating run that everyone should appreciate, but I still think it’s a shame we don’t get to see what we would prefer in a Grand Theft Auto vs. Red Dead Redemption match, even if we got something better. It’s just that it’s probably the best chance we’ll ever get to see how that hierarchy works because they almost never get further than round 2. I personally think Persona 4 should be happy it could gain some momentum in this match to overcome GTAV as well. I’m sure it wins that match without it. Considering the prediction percentage today and the ones in round 1, it’s pretty clear RDR was the sitewide favorite by a good amount. ## Safer777's Analysis Extremely close match and I didn't expected that. I don't think anybody expected that to tell the truth. Even the crew had P4G winning by around 54 and it made sense. The both faced weak games on the 1st round and RDR is HUGE! Like really huge. The sequel isn't even out for 6 months and it has sold already tens of millions of copies. P4G is an updated version of P4 and it is on Vita! Yeah a Vita game reached round 3! What are the odds of that? So for the match. Even though it says P4G pretty sure people just see P4 and voted for it. I mean I didn't even knew that P4G is on Vita, I just saw Persona 4 and voted for it. Also another match where the winner lost in USA but still won the overall match. I do believe there were some rallies too and it seems that may have helped P4G to win. I mean you can't really rally for RDR righ? Still really close match but strangely enough RDR never took the lead. P4G at the 5 minute mark was winning by 56% too and see how close it ended.  Yeah you look the final percentage which P4G won by 50.83 and you may think that there was an exciting match but not really. Overall nice match even though P4G was never in serious danger. Still seems that RDR is stronger than we thought because on this site we LOVE persona games/characters even though they are doing bad in contests typically. Until this contest at least. Low prediction as expected. ## Tsunami's Analysis Upset alert! Upset alert! Just 31.05% of brackets got this right, compared with 88.36% who picked P4G to win in Round 1. RDR's Round 1 prediction percentage was sixth-highest...and its *sequel's* was eighth-highest, so yeah, clearly getting a lot of respect from the voters. But do you really want to pick an action-adventure game over an RPG on RPGFAQs? ...Apparently, yes. This match broke a trend that had stood throughout the entire first round and into the second: *Unregistered voters made up the **majority** of Persona 4 Golden's raw votes!* Red Dead Redemption won over registered voters 4737-4620, but Persona 4 Golden smashed it with a 4664-3985 advantage with the unregistered voters. It made for a 562-vote win in raw votes, but just 451 on the scoreboard...wait, those numbers don't add up. 4620 **4664 9284 13879** **4737 **3985 8722 13428 Okay, the third column is indeed the sum of the first two columns...but with the first column, the registered voters, counting double, shouldn't it be 13904-13459? Makes me wonder if the "registered voters" column is in fact counting *all* registered voters, and Allen has to manually adjust it to make sure that only accounts that were created before the start of the contest are getting their votes counted double. Well, fixing it would only make things even closer, so it's no big difference. You see...Persona 4 Golden was still extending its lead almost right up until the end. Its maximum lead was 458 votes with just 10 minutes left in the match. That's two fewer than our long-time record, the legendary Frog vs. Liquid Snake match from 2004. But no big deal, right? That record's been broken like 15 times now. In this contest alone, three other matches had smaller max leads. Except Octopath led during its match. So did Hollow Knight. And Celeste. And Mega Man in both of his losses in 2018, and Mario in his loss to Cloud in the same contest, and all of the others, even the ones whose matches only lasted 12 hours. Red Dead Redemption? Didn't. Never even came close. Usually, the updater at least captures a single-digit lead because it takes its first snapshot only a few seconds in, but P4G was already up 22-10 by the time it could. It was up by 74 at the freeze and hit triple digits by the 15-minute mark. The lead entered the 200s by the end of the second hour. This was, in fact, never in doubt. It just happened to stay close. Heck, the lead didn't even hit 400 until only about 2 hours remained in the match. Could've really made a record that would be tough to break if P4G hadn't surged right at the end. This is a match that looks a lot better on paper than it actually is. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7992&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=78) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (6)Overwatch 2020 _source: (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (6)Overwatch 2020 (revid 86571)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 79 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 66.15% 53 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 38.68% - **User Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 6847 Overwatch - 2512 - **Anonymous Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 6370 Overwatch - 2278 Xenoblade Chronicles taking out the trash. Not only that, but it looked *good* doing it. I know Overwatch isn't a GameFAQs kind of game, nor should it frankly be anyone's kind of game given the company who made it, but Xenoblade scoring a 73-27 blowout in round 2 of a contest seemed impossible a few years ago. Remember when Nintendo was being a bunch of jackasses and refusing to release Xenoblade Chronicles, Pandora's Tower, or The Last Story over here in America? And it took the entire gaming public just totally embarrassing these people for them to *finally* cave? I remember it like it was yesterday. I bought all three of those games and still own them to this very day, out of pure respect for what gamers accomplished in all this via banding together and telling a big company to piss off with their stupid decision making. For those unaware of this, read about it on Wikipedia: Almost ten years later, look at Xenoblade now. I had a lot of proud papa moments in this contest, and this was a big one. Given how well I remember gamers wanting Xenoblade to come over here, and thinking it would never happen, and then being *so happy* when it did finally get over here.... this was so awesome. And it got to blow out a piece of trash game from a piece of trash company on top of all that. *And* it was a killer performance compared to what Fire Emblem: Three Houses was doing on this very same match day. Given the total insanity brewing in Division 4, could Xenoblade actually pull the impossible and *win a division*? Only time would tell, but this performance was an eye-opener for quite a lot of people. Xenoblade wasn't scoring these crazy blowouts against indie fodder trash. People actually care about Splatoon 2 and Overwatch. I don't know *why* anyone cares about any game made by Activision-Blizzard, but they do. Thankfully, all four games that made this bracket thoroughly embarrassed themselves. ## Ctes's Analysis The previous round saw Xenoblade Chronicles look absolutely incredible. However, the match likely had some unknown amount of SFF in it, so we couldn’t really know for certain if it was a misleading result. Today, it proved that it’s on a whole new level. You can really get far in five years it would seem. Xenoblade cemented itself as a favorite to win the division today by a good amount. Overwatch is not exactly the most beloved game on the website and is probably anti-voted to some extent, but it can win against tons of games in the bracket and has some strength to its name. Overwatch is another casual bait. Look at the prediction percentage for this match and then know that almost every guru picked it to win today. It’s a very GameFAQs kind of result, we had two of those today. Despite the board knowing Xenoblade wouldn’t be in trouble, every single oracle went lower than the result today. We expected Xenoblade to look really good and we really like it ourselves too, and yet it still outdid expectations by quite a bit. The consensus was below a doubling. It’s incredible how far the game has become, because to bury a big name like Overwatch, even on our site, you have to be recognized yourself. I don’t think Xenoblade was that yet five years ago and it definitely wasn’t when it released. But through Smash exposure and Nintendo acknowledging the series in recent years, it has gathered its respect. Xenoblade had basically nothing to worry about the coming round despite Three Houses being the pre-contest favorite to win that match. It would take some serious Nintendo hierarchy kind of thing to make it seem likely Three Houses could end on top of that match. ## Safer777's Analysis Boob Slider! Oh that is in the sequel, sorry about that. We all thought that XC would win but nobody expected such a big win. Man Death Stranding has to be damn weak. So yeah I don't know what else to say. I guess that XC winning a Round 2 match with 73 is so amazing that if you said that before the contest people would call you crazy and laugh at you for sure. So for the match. XC dominated here. Seriously that high? Even the whole crew had it around 66 too. So yeah. I don't know who the XC franchise got so strong but it did! Or they face really weak opponents? Too bad we didn't had Hentai rallies here. Overwatch has to be the AAA game with most Hentai ever. Probably? Still amazing win of XC. And for a while it was a Wii exlusive too! ## Tsunami's Analysis This is entirely in line with expectations for Overwatch. I guess the casuals got fooled by it? Or I dunno, maybe not. 38.68% got this right, compared to 38.98% who had XBC reaching this round and losing, but XBC's first-round prediction percentage was about 5 points *better* than Overwatch's. I feel like Overwatch probably was the favorite, but its low R1 prediction percentage was either people overrating Death Stranding or just there being a high enough percentage of people who *finally* realize that casualbait games tend to get slaughtered here. I think the upshot of this is that Kojima needs to bite the bullet and just *make movies* instead of trying to make these cutscene-heavy video games. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7993&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=79) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Ori and the Blind Forest vs (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2020 _source: (10)Ori and the Blind Forest vs (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2020 (revid 86573)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 80 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 63.04% 54 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 59.21% - **User Votes:** Ori and the Blind Forest - 3511 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 5845 - **Anonymous Votes:** Ori and the Blind Forest - 3310 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 5340 This was just a brutal match for anyone who had Three Houses beating Xenoblade and/or winning this division. In round 1, Three Houses looked off against South Park, but one could easily blame that on the match just being goofy. This match against Ori and the Blind Forest was not goofy. There were no excuses to be made here, even with Ori getting a sequel mid-contest and looking better than expected in round 1. One is an accident, two is a problem. Fire Emblem was in serious trouble, and remember also that this match was happening during a bunch of Persona 4 Golden hentai rallies. Three Houses is very heavily related to Persona with how it plays, so it's not unreasonable to think those types of rallies would help the game out. They didn't. Given what happened to Fire Emblem: Awakening in this contest as well, another bad performance from Three Houses would cement the entire series for "Turd of the Contest" honors. Spoiler alert -- Fire Emblem was the Turd of the Contest. These warning signs did not exactly bode well for Three Houses in the match to come, and we'll talk in full about what happened and why during the match Three Houses had with Xenoblade. That said, a lot of this was also Ori being a lot better than expected, so it deserves credit for both upsetting Dragon Age and exposing Fire Emblem. I actually bought this game on the Switch because of this contest, and it deserves all of the praise I saw you guys giving it while this contest was going on. I'm saving a lot of my love for when I finally write a review for it, but I feel like this writeup would be missing something without a quick mention of how incredibly beautiful the game is. That one shot really says it all. One of my favorite things about contests is getting to discover new games to play, and had this little run not happened I never would have known a game like this existed. Hell, without these contests I probably never would have played Chrono Trigger, Metroid Prime, Symphony of the Night, Kingdom Hearts, Gunstar Heroes, Lunar, Phantasy Star, Half-Life, and so, so, so many other games. Good times. I always love seeing topics pop up about people trying new games because of these things. ## Ctes's Analysis Yet another round and yet another underwhelming performance for Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This is in no way how you want to perform when you’re the favorite to win the division. Despite its round 1 result, it still went a little below Board 8’s expectations for it. Ultimately, none of that looked to matter all too much because Xenoblade was leagues ahead of where we expected it to be. Three Houses could have done what it was supposed to do for two rounds and it still wouldn’t be the favorite to win the following round. Three Houses had to hope there was some Nintendo or Smash hierarchy that favored against Xenoblade next round, but it was weird to imagine. Ori and the Blind Forest ends up looking like one of the top indie games, although I think its indie game status is a grey area. It appears to be behind Cuphead, Stardew Valley and Shovel Knight, but above things like Hollow Knight. I think it’s misleading and that it’s actually a bit lower than that. Ori was only released on Xbox and PC until very recently where it got a definite edition on Switch. I have a hard time imagining it’s that high up there. I think Fire Emblem: Three Houses is an easy game to overperform against. The Smash community are pretty tired of Fire Emblem right now and it was pretty clear in the previous Character Battle how much influence the Smash fanbase has over our contests. I also think Xenoblade overperformed a bit against Ultimate, but that does not seem to be the popular opinion. ## Safer777's Analysis So after the suprise win of Ori on Round 1  there was some scepticism here. Sure Dragon Age was far weaker than we expected but still it is not that FE3H dominated on the first round match. So we had to see what it would do in this match if it could be redeemed at least. So for the match. FE3H won and it did as expected I guess? Or actually worse now that I think about it. Look we all thought before the contest that it would win the division but now? I don't think anyone still expects that. Seems strange because FE3H is on Switch and it is the FE game with the best critical reception from both fans and critics plus FE is a core franchise. Also how many FE characters are in Smash? Seriously. Also Ori is a franchise now and I think it is not an indie game? I am not sure about that. Still when a game does decent and in the previous match a game does amazing where people were expecting to be the other way around you know you did something wrong. Anyways at least FE3H won. ## Tsunami's Analysis We all believed prior to this match that FE3H was probably the favorite in Round 3, and after this, not so much so. Holy crap what a disappointment. Or maybe Ori's just that good. I'd be willing to believe that Ori's actually kind of strong. But I still think XBC has the advantage next round, much as I hate it. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7994&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=80) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (8)Mass Effect 3 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (8)Mass Effect 3 2020 (revid 86574)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, April 16, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 81 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 69.09% 52 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 82.77% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 7137 Mass Effect 3 - 1944 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 7723 Mass Effect 3 - 2169 If you had any game other than Witcher 3 winning the bottom half of this bracket, round 1 should have dashed most of your hopes, and this match here should have killed the rest of them. This was a beating so laughably ridiculous that people threw around the three wonderful letters (SFF) to explain it, which does make a lot of sense under the circumstances, but I will once again make this point -- if people are calling your match SFF, it means you've accomplished something truly special by beating your opponent into a pulp in front of the entire world to see. The *only possible hope* for Witcher 3 not to make the final was some weird hierarchy where Western SFF was a big deal, but Nintendo could possibly still beat it. This wasn't impossible, but it was extremely unlikely at this point. Almost breaking 80% on Mass Effect 3 here is just completely insane, regardless of how much SFF was involved. The concept of "Western SFF" is fairly new in our contests, and a lot of people discussed this being the first contest where such a thing was possible at all, and if such a thing does exist then Witcher 3 is clearly the king of it. As for why it was so easy to SFF Mass Effect 3 like this, people will point to the obvious answers like "Bioware went SJW" or "The ending sucked". I'm going to go curveball on you -- the *fanbase* is indefensible trash, and *they* are why Mass Effect is dead. Not SJWs. Not Anita Sarkeesian. The fans are. Trust me, if feminism or SJW nonsense is what killed this series, I would be the first guy to mention it. But that isn't what happened. This all goes far deeper than a bad ending or erroneously consulting with a crazy lady for Mass Effect Andromeda. Bioware fans were a low key terrible fanbase for a long time, far before the ending to Mass Effect 3 happened. They're typical PC Master Race weirdos who complain about every single stupid little thing, but they kept getting a pass because Bioware's games were usually good. KP has talked about this a lot over the years, and I still remember him pointing out how ridiculous these people were when the original Dragon Age came out. Eventually, Mass Effect 3 happened, and despite the game being 99.9% amazing, despite the multiplayer being incredible, these people bitched nonstop all over the internet like some idiot toddler whose parent wouldn't buy them a candy at the supermarket. We've all gone shopping when this has happened. It's never fun, and those one or two children ruin it for the rest of us. Well these idiot Bioware fans ruined the franchise for the rest of us, long before Feminist Frequency or Mass Effect Andromeda ever happened. The whining over the ending was just absurd, and worse yet, EA caved to these idiots. The last thing you ever want to do with a spoiled brat kid is give it what it wants, because dumb kids can be trained the same way as dogs -- repetition and "let it cry". They'll get the message eventually. EA screwing up and catering to these morons is what ultimately killed Mass Effect. Not Andromeda, not the feminists, and not the SJWs. The fans did this. Don't forget that if EA releases the Mass Effect Trilogy that's rumored, either. It does not change what the crybabies and the trolls did to this once very fine series. It's how you get Mass Effect 3 getting SFFd into oblivion. Witcher 3 is a beast, no doubt, but this wasn't all Witcher 3. Oh and while we're on the subject of fans killing a franchise, WWE has been giving wrestling fans everything they've asked for for years. You wanted Seth as champion. Got it. You wanted Brock to put people over. Got it. You wanted Becky as champion. Got it. You wanted Kofi as champion. Got it. You wanted Roman out of the title picture. Got it. You wanted competition that's able to put on a good show. Got it. Among a whole lot of other things. And surprise surprise, wrestling is still garbage compared to what it used to be. Turns out listening to a bunch of smarks didn't work after all. ## Ctes's Analysis This was the match that truly changed the favorite to reach Breath of the Wild from this side of the bracket. The Witcher 3 looks so great today. Everyone who picked Skyrim in the semi-finals knew they were in deep trouble. Everyone who believes Persona will win whenever there’s a small chance knew now that it would take a miracle. Dark Souls supporters knew that even if they got past Skyrim, the final was almost out of the question. Galaxy 2 supporters literally lost all hope today. Not a single oracle went expected Witcher to win by this match, the closest being more than 1% away, and the second closest being more than 3% away. This was a bloodbath out of nowhere. It certainly wasn’t just Assassin’s Creed Odyssey being downvoted into oblivion. The Witcher 3 was serious now. The previous games contest actually saw Mass Effect 2 probably being the weakest, though of course, they’re as hard to compare as it gets due to Undertale and that Metal Gear Solid 3 vs. Mass Effect 2 match was all kinds of weird. Even so, it was pretty clear that the games weren’t too far ahead. Mass Effect 3 might have been hurt by the format a bit. The Witcher 3 is mentioned everyone when it comes to Game of the Decade and Mass Effect 3 will forever be hunted by the controversial ending, sadly. But even if you think the contest title severely boosted Mass Effect 2 and did the opposite to the third one, there’s no denying how incredible The Witcher 3 looks here. The Witcher 3 looks a lot more mortal later in the contest, although the games standing up to all finish within the top 8 of the x-stats. I’m not trying to take any credit away from this result, but Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Persona 5 are vastly different from The Witcher 3 in terms of fans, while Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey share a lot more of their fans with it. It was later widely accepted some kind of SFF happened here, popularly called Western SFF. We’ll save the talk of why that’s a stupid name for another time. Although given what we seem to know the forced voting and contest title can do to matchups like this one, it seems pretty likely that Mass Effect 3 was also hurt a bit by usual SFF, which redeems its performance a good bit. ## Safer777's Analysis So I thought that Witcher 3 wouldn't break 70 here since well ME is a beloved franchise and except the ending controversy ME 3 is a pretty good game. Plus it is the game that I have played the most online with others. Seriously I had so much fun and I even found a lot of people from my country to play around. But as you see I was damn wrong. Even the Crew had W3 around 72. Pretty sure after this result Witcher 3 was the favorite to reach the final match. So for the match. W3 dominated and nobody expected this much as I said. So yeah W3 is a beast and it is almost a lock to reach the final match. It would be awesome if it won but alas. Netflix boost for sure! I called it first on this site too! Yeah I am that amazing! Also another strange thing that I saw was that people saying that we had Western SFF? Huh? Seriously this has to be first. These games are completely different. Where is the SFF? This is like saying that MGS and Silent Hill if they face each other MGS would win because of East SFF? Come on, SFF doesn't work that way. ## Tsunami's Analysis Holy shit what just happened Any semblance of faith that anyone might have still had in the 2015 X-Stats meaning anything at all was obliterated here. Yes, we all knew there was no good way to figure out a proper X-Stat value for ME3 since it faced Undertale in Round 1, but the one they eventually came up with had it still beating ME2. Now, ME2 was in Division 8 and Witcher 3 in Division 7, so their relative X-Stat values should be fairly accurate--that's the SMRPG quarter, so the only SFF match that can gum things up was MGS-MGS3 in the Division 8 finals. The adjusted X-Stats say that the Witcher 3 only wins that matchup with 53.59%. The *raw* X-Stats say that Mass Effect 2 wins it with 50.56%. Yes, we all know that ME3 \> ME2 was comical to begin with, but this is an absolute brutalization. A lot of people said this was a huge SFF match. It probably was, but we've had SFF matches be close before. This is a beatdown, and taken at face value would arguably make Witcher 3 the favorite to win the whole damn contest. Something very strange was happening here. Some people were even saying that ME3 was getting caught in Undertale's backlash, either being punished for not stopping the menace before it could be started or for riding Undertale's wake to an undeserved \#2 in the raw X-Stats. This was of course ridiculous, and yet, Witcher 3 was only 13th in R1 prediction percentage yet *3rd* in R2 percentage, behind only BotW and Skyrim. It's clear the voters had no respect for ME3 at all. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7995&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=81) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Stardew Valley vs (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 2020 _source: (5)Stardew Valley vs (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 2020 (revid 86575)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, April 16, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 82 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 69.10% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 60.94% - **User Votes:** Stardew Valley - 3085 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 5999 - **Anonymous Votes:** Stardew Valley - 3909 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 5984 40% of bracketmakers thought Mario Galaxy 2 would lose to either Return of the Obra Dinn, Stardew Valley, or Destiny. Yeah I don't get it either. Mario Galaxy 2 was one of the most grossly underseeded games in this entire bracket, and I say this with the game having a 4 seed. It should have, bare minimum, been on the 2 line. If you want to skip ahead and look at the LOL x-stats, Galaxy 2 ranked 8th. Seems like the right spot, because this game having a 4 seed was just dumb. As good as Stardew Valley looked in round one, it looked just as bad in round two. Seeded tournaments have their fair share of blowouts in the first two rounds once all the happy-to-be-here entrants get beat up by the heavy hitters, and Stardew Valley was one of the many mid-majors of sorts to fold once legitimate competition showed up. Beating Destiny was cute. Beating Mario Galaxy 2 was not happening. Thanks for playing, friend. See you next time. This set up a very interesting match between Witcher 3 and Mario Galaxy 2, and for as amazing as Witcher 3 looked in this contest, we were getting set up to test the Western SFF versus Nintendo theory. Did Witcher 3 look this good because it was the new king of the west, or did it look good because it was just... you know. Really good? We would find out in round 3 in pretty funny fashion! ## Ctes's Analysis I think this is one of the rare matches where both games actually look impressive. Super Mario Galaxy 2 underperformed relative to our expectations, which were likely fueled by the absolute blowout it delivered in round 1, but this is still a very solid performance on a game that ends up looking really good. Unfortunately, Super Mario Galaxy 2 got screwed by bracket placement so badly, because The Witcher 3 currently looked to be god tier in contest strength and there was just no way you could hold on to that longshot upset any longer. Stardew looks really impressive today and it only looks more impressive with each passing round and each passing Witcher 3 match in particular. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the exact type of game to benefit from this format. It’s not too important that it’s from the Wii’s declining years any longer, because Nintendo are on top again and Super Mario Galaxy 2 is one of the best rated games of the decade, which absolutely matters in a contest like this. Yet Stardew Valley held up to it. We’re in the middle of a round that certainly isn’t kind to indie games. The ones that looked better would look a lot less good after the following round, but not Stardew Valley. I suppose Stardew Valley just had a really impressive amount of exposure and is exactly what we’re looking for in a game? It got a physical release, which is a dream come true for an indie game, but not just that, it was easily available in tons of places. At least my own observation was that every place had this game for a while, even places with slim selections. It had almost Shovel Knight levels of exposure in that regard. It’s also just really perfect at what it aimed to do. If simulation games aren’t your thing, then you won’t like it of course, but otherwise, you’re likely going to really like this game. It deserves to return to the field again in the future. ## Safer777's Analysis So there was a rally for the next match and this affected this match too since the rallied match and this one were going on at the same time. I mean SV got a lot more votes than SMG2  because it is an indie game and they are more easy to rally for them. But still of course SMG 2 would won but it dropped the win percentage by some margin. SV is a really beloved indie game that was made by only 1 guy so yeah. It is like an Animal Crossing game where you can just relax and have fun. No worries, just do whatever you want at your own leisure. As for SMG games they are both Wii exclusives but they both have 97 on Metacritic which is more than amazing. I don't play Mario games but man they have to be extremely good. So for the match. SMG 2 was winning by more before the rally so yeah it dominated here and even the crew went lower. I guess SMG 2 is a beast game because SV has to be one of the strongest indie games here. So yeah. Once again it is Freaking Mario! Also the prediction percentage seems kinda low for SMG 2 because well it faced really weak opponents and 4 out of 10 people thought it wouldn't even advance to Round 3? Strange. ## Tsunami's Analysis "Freaking Mario" may be strong, but his games aren't, at least not since SM64. Still...what is that prediction percentage? Galaxy 2 had over 95% prediction percentage in Round 1, yet it barely cracked 60% here. 35% of people thought that either Stardew Valley or Destiny would stop it? I mean, good for them; shows that maybe they have some taste after all. My bracket's pretty much busted since I was counting on this overrated piece of crap going deep because Nintendo Always Wins. It's pretty much toast next round against Witcher 3, which I continue to underestimate for some reason. Oh, right, maybe because the "common wisdom" is that licensed games are garbage? Yeah that's right I'm going to pull the licensed game card again. We need an all-media character battle desperately. Or even a limited one. We already force people to put game of origin in their nominations, right? So just make them do first game. Though I suspect that due to the "licensed *crap*" aspect, most of the beloved Kingdom Hearts Disney characters had other games first. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7996&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=82) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (6)Dark Souls III 2020 _source: (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (6)Dark Souls III 2020 (revid 86576)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, April 16, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 83 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout: New Vegas - 52.12% 40 for - 13 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout: New Vegas - 48.31% - **User Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 4743 Dark Souls III - 4338 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 5649 Dark Souls III - 4243 This was one of the stranger matches of the contest. There was some slight buzz for Dark Souls 3 potentially winning this match by jumping aboard the Souls hype train, but ultimately New Vegas was the favorite, as it should have been. I'm sure when everyone prepped their bracket, they all did the same math. Fallout: New Vegas (2015g) VS Dark Souls (2015g) Fallout: New Vegas has a strength of 27.79. Dark Souls has a strength of 25.11. Fallout: New Vegas wins with 54.82% of the vote! A win of 5,871 with 60,875 total votes cast. Even assuming a blanket and universal Souls boost due to the title of this contest being "Game of the Decade", Dark Souls 3 would have to boost well beyond where Dark Souls was in 2015, on top of New Vegas falling off. New Vegas was not going to fall off given it doesn't have the Bethesda stench all over it, so it stood to reason that New Vegas would win the match in the 55-45 range. On top of that, I'm a big, big fan of the Souls games. I've played them all, and in three of them (Dark Souls 1, Bloodborne, Sekiro) I have platinum trophies. I'll probably do the same for Dark Souls 2 at some point, oddly enough, because I love that one more than most people. Given all that, I would have been floored had Dark Souls 3 won this match. I've mentioned this before, but Dark Souls 3 came out after Bloodborne and felt like the most absurd step backwards imaginable. We went from perfectly fluid combat and aggression to back to "Hold L1 and wait". Yes, I am aware you don't *have* to use a shield and things like dodging and magic are a thing. Not the point. The game is hella slow compared to the previous one, and it's impossible to play Dark Souls 3 after Bloodborne and feel okay about it. Good game, but the shark had been jumped by this point. Ergo, a 55-45 match felt correct. How we got there, though, was quite strange. At the freeze, New Vegas had 57% of the vote. It started with 60, but hey, no cause for concern right? "Whoops." With the first update, New Vegas's lead went from 81 to..... 81. Things stayed fairly close for the next few updates, too, though New Vegas was slowly climbing. Then this match went straight to Funkytown. Did you guys know that on top of the typical rallying spots for Souls-type games, there is apparently a big community to draw from if hentai rallies are your thing? Yeah I didn't know that either and would have loved to go my whole life without knowing this, but if I had to learn this information than so do you. Yes, there is Souls hentai and people were rallying those people to this match with it. Thankfully, the New Vegas subreddit had a rally of their own that dwarfed anything Dark Souls 3 did, and that was a wrap for the match. Both sides rallied a bunch, but in the end, New Vegas was able to come out on top in the predictable 55-45 type match we all expected. "Come out on top" might not be the best choice of words given the subject material, but hey. It is what it is. New Vegas won fairly easily and finally got to enjoy making it to round 3 of a contest, joining its brethren, Fallout 3, which accomplished this feat twice. ## Ctes's Analysis Fallout: New Vegas was the heavy board favorite here, which should be a little surprising given how close the match was and the trends the contest had, but it’s a match that highlights very nicely how many experts we have. A general trend we’ve seen in the contest so far had been that the Soulsborne games have looked very good and they’ve also been some of the most memorable and defining games of the decade. Another general thing is that Bethesda has gone downhill quite a bit since the beginning of the decade, although they started it very high. Fallout was certainly a stronger series the last time we had a games contest, where both Fallout 3 and New Vegas were looking better than Dark Souls, but times change. The people that did not consider a Soulsborne boost, but simply looked at previous stats likely all picked New Vegas today without thinking twice about it. For once that worked out nicely, but it was a close call. New Vegas got less today than it was projected to get against Dark Souls in 2015. We still predicted this one very nicely in the oracle though. The Souldborne boost was clear this time, but people also knew that Dark Souls III would not be nearly as strong as the first one. It appears to be that it’s closer within the fanbase, but overall, the first one has gathered so much more respect. The third one is basically what the first one was five years ago. The overall boost could’ve easily been enough to win this match, especially if you thought the Bethesda decline would strike New Vegas today. Yet the board also correctly expected that New Vegas would not be harmed much by this, because it wasn’t developed by Bethesda, but only published by them. Of course, there are almost always exceptions, and it was reasonable to go higher on New Vegas or pick Dark Souls III, but this result was the general consensus on the board. New Vegas would have the edge, but it would be close. I think our board as a whole deserves some respect every now and then for things like this. It’s often brought up when we collectively screw up, so let’s bring it up when the opposite happens. The board seemed confident about this, and it’s not often you see us being so confident in a match as close in percentage as this one. It’s one thing when we had a Link vs. Cloud like this every year and we knew what would happen, but this was impressive. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match did had a rally on DS subreddit but here is the thing. It did brought votes but they were around 50-50 for both games. So why? Because if you have played any of the modern Fallout games FNV is your favorite and the best out of all them. So yeah even though DS 3 is a different genre you can't really vote against FNV here. Now IF DS 1 was here then maybe it could do it sure, but not DS 3. So for the match. Well FNV started at around 57 on the match, then it dropped to around 53 and basically stayed there for hours and that was it. So yeah rally votes but it didn't affected this match at all. I mean at the end FNV started even gaining percentage. Still a close match but in the end FNV wasn't never in any danger even with the rallies. Still good result from DS 3 since it seems to be the weaker of the DS games. ## Tsunami's Analysis The prediction percentage suggests that this was a toss-up in voters' minds. Only 48.31% got this right, down from 91.38% who had New Vegas reaching Round 2. Dark Souls III also had a R1 prediction percentage above 85%, so it's not the other entry's fault. The match failed to live up to their expectations, settling into a groove where the last 18.5 hours had the percentage between 53.69% and 54.19%, finishing at 53.96%. A good percentage by the loser, but never in doubt. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7997&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=83) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Nioh vs (2)God of War 2020 _source: (10)Nioh vs (2)God of War 2020 (revid 86577)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, April 16, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 84 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** God of War - 71.31% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** God of War - 79.71% - **User Votes:** Nioh - 2432 God of War - 6649 - **Anonymous Votes:** Nioh - 2307 God of War - 7586 Nioh pulled off a cute little one point upset in round 1 against The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, but we call them "one point upsets" for a reason. That reason is when the winner gets to the next round, they typically get annihilated. God of War scored a total beatdown in this one, which set it up quite nicely for its match with New Vegas. There was a small chance New Vegas could pull the upset there, so ol' Kratos had to make sure he looked good and ready in his warmup fight. Shout out to Nioh though, no shame in losing badly here. I love that game even with its flaws, and I'm very excited to play Nioh 2 and see what direction the series takes moving forward. I also love God of War 2018 to death, so this match was a win-win for me. Killer match picture, too: The case can be made for that image being the best and most iconic image in the history of video games. It's that good and that important. I don't know if it would be \#1 on such a list of hypotheticals, but it's in the conversation. It has to be. Remember, Kratos had beaten the entire Pantheon, plus a lot of esoteric Greek stuff of myth, and those games were just done by this point. Amazing games, but a reboot was needed and it had to be *bigger*. Going from Greek to Norse is such a crazy undertaking, and for it to work, the scale had to be insane. Then Jormungandr pops up and it's like.... oh. Yeah shit just got real, boys. This game is not messing around with you. ## Ctes's Analysis God of War looks quite dominant once again. Nioh just had a sequel right before the contest began and we’ve had a contest where anything FromSoftware has looked really good. God of War looked like it could give a lot of division favorites a good scare. Just not the one in the division it was actually in, unfortunately. God of War over Witcher 3 was a fine upset pick if you wanted something that would give you a good winning chance if it pulled through, though it required you to think The Witcher 3 hadn’t boosted much and that the Ultimate vs. God of War GotY poll could be translated to contest strength. It was always a longshot and the hope officially died today, despite God of War exceeding our expectations a little bit. Nioh ended up looking pretty bad despite looking good coming out of round 1. Despite just getting a sequel, it doesn’t look like the game was all that big. It just turns out The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth was among the weakest things in the bracket, which we didn’t believe at the time of its match. Nioh is a good example that 2017 just has a large collection of strong games, but that nothing does well because it’s from 2017, as it seemed at times. Games like Nioh was simply in a great position to make it seem like that because it got a weak opponent the contest had led us to believe would be decent enough. When all that is said, I do believe Nioh was perhaps SFF’d a little here. Although Nioh later came out on PC, the games were both released as Playstation 4 exclusives only about a year apart. I think they overlap a little in fanbase. ## Safer777's Analysis So Nioh did managed to win in Round 1 since it's sequel had come recently and it did pulled out the upset, but against GOW it didn't stand a chance. The question was how much GOW would score. The crew was between 70 and 80 and it scored in the middle. So it did really good. Almost a tripling! So for the match. I don't think the rally that was going on for another match that was happening at the same time affected this match because you can't really vote against GOW. It is amazing game. Seriously so good that I didn't expected that. Also a friend of mine told me something that I haven't noticed too. It doesn't have a single DLC or microtransaction! Seriously! Is this the only big  AAA  game that hasn't anything like that? Probably. So yeah a damn strong win. Is this the strongest exclusive non Nintendo game? For sure. I want to see how far it reaches. ## Tsunami's Analysis Without even meaning to, I ended up bringing up a topic of discussion with my Guest Analysis of this match for the Crew: Can Japanese and Western games SFF each other? I honestly don't see why they shouldn't, but apparently people think that they don't overlap that much. I mean, this isn't exactly the best match for it since Nioh's an ARPG and God of War is a straight-up hack-and-slash AAG, but I feel like unless you're loyal to a specific *company*, you wouldn't be any less likely to be a fan of other games from the same genre just because they were developed on the other side of the Pacific. In a weird way, even those same people realized it in other genres, when they figured that a Mario game would be harder for "the indies" to rally against. A lot of those indies are Western in origin, you know! But for some reason, platformers are apparently the only thing that's allowed to SFF across the ocean. (Though I have to admit I *haven't* played that many WRPGs, if any. I've had this copy of Skyrim sitting around for years since I got it second-hand for practically nothing and I've never actually installed it because I wanted to stream my blind playthrough and there have been other things higher on my streaming priority list. I need to play it! Maybe when this contest is over, since Skyrim's obviously going to go really far.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7998&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=84) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Persona 5 vs (8)Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag 2020 _source: (1)Persona 5 vs (8)Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag 2020 (revid 86578)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, April 17, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 85 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 5 - 71.20% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 5 - 73.69% - **User Votes:** Persona 5 - 6560 Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 2620 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 5 - 5519 Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 2358 I've seen a lot of strange things on Board 8 over the years, but you guys stanning for Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, of all things, after my round 1 writeup is one of the weirder ones. Since when do any of you care about the Assassin's Creed games? Thankfully Persona 5 utterly destroyed it to boot the series out of the contest entirely, so we can all move on with our lives. It's really fun to see how far the Persona series has come in contests, and it's likely only to go up from here. Remember this match? If you had told me ten years ago that Persona would headline a division so dominantly that it would be one of the easiest divisions to call in a gaming contest, I would have thought you were clinically insane. That is, however, exactly what has happened. I dare say Persona is the flagship JRPG series on this site right now, which was utterly preposterous a decade ago. Things have really changed around here. The only possible threat to Persona 5 in this division would be the divisional finals. Nothing in the top half was ever going to touch it, though I'll argue nothing in this division was going to come close to it regardless. Not with Smash Bros exposure. ## Ctes's Analysis If the previous day wasn’t enough in itself to make it clear Persona 5 would not get further than the quarterfinals, it surely became clear today. You had to believe a huge difference in strength between two Assassin’s Creed games despite the site not caring about neither or that The Witcher 3 SFF’d Assassin’s Creed into oblivion to still hold onto the idea that Persona 5 had a chance of getting to the semifinals. In the first round, we weren’t sure how beastly The Witcher 3 was because it might have been the Assassin’s Creed series falling off a cliff, but Black Flag still managed to win a match and look less terrible than Odyssey here, so the anti-voting clearly wasn’t on the levels of Call of Duty and such. Obviously, this didn’t stop Persona 5 supporters from believing it could do it, but from this day forward, you really shouldn’t believe there was much of chance. Despite winning a match this contest, I really doubt we’ll see an Assassin’s Creed game make the field again unless they’re a serious turnaround in that series or that the next Game of the Decade contest also tries its best to very diverse. Assassin’s Creed II barely made it in a five years ago. It had potential to be big at one point, but the ship has sailed. It’s a shame to see a series, that was so amazing at one point, fall at much as it has done, but here we are. Of course, the games are still successful from an economic perspective, so everything is fine at Ubisoft headquarters and we’ll likely see games released consistently for years to come, but the days where less casual gamers praised the franchise are long gone. ## Safer777's Analysis So obviously P5 would win because as I said before Persona 5 was hugely successful in sales and in reception plus the enchanced version came out recently. So the hype is real. Plus the main protagonist of P5 got in Smash which pretty sure nobody expected. So yeah Persona series is finally known by most. And it started as a spin off too! That is how you know you made it. As for the AC games I am sure AC 4 is considered the most popular and maybe the best too. For me the best is AC Odyssey since it takes place in Greece plus well as you know the series got soft rebooted with Origins and once again it is doing very good. The next game will have Vikings on it! So for the match. The only thing that mattered is if P5 would score above 70 and it did that so all are fine. What else to say? Nice to see a JRPG that isn't from Square Enix doing this good. The prediction percentage was huge too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, Persona's definitely in the mainstream now. 73.69% of brackets got this right, and ACIV *was* the favorite in its R1 match. I guess Assassin's Creed just isn't that well respected any more? I seem to remember that the other Assassin's Creed game in this bracket got slaughtered and everyone knew that it would. Who was that against, again? ...Oh, of course. The Witcher 3. Really looking more and more like a contender for the title with every passing match! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7999&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=85) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Sonic Mania vs (4)Super Meat Boy 2020 _source: (5)Sonic Mania vs (4)Super Meat Boy 2020 (revid 86579)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, April 17, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 86 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic Mania - 52.18% 40 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic Mania - 48.80% - **User Votes:** Sonic Mania - 6003 Super Meat Boy - 3179 - **Anonymous Votes:** Sonic Mania - 5009 Super Meat Boy - 2863 Random bit of trivia -- this was the 8000th poll in GameFAQs history. Not really contest trivia, but hey. This was one of the most surprising blowouts of the entire contest, and if anyone disagrees with that, just look at the oracle consensus -- Sonic Mania with 52%. Given how good Super Meat Boy looked in round one in beating the absolute tar out of Slay the Spire, how indies were overhyped in this contest, and that Sonic looked like dog shit against Ys 8: Sanctimonious Subtitle, it made sense to hype up Super Meat Boy and think this match would be close. It's also fun rooting for the guru nomination to do well, as we tend to do each contest. When the poll started and it was clear Sonic Mania was going to beat the holy hell out of Meat Boy in this contest, a lot of people went searching for answers. It was even a big topic on The Show, with Nick giving my favorite explanation on the panel. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said Super Meat Boy is the type of game with enough respect to beat up anything without name recognition, but anything *with* name recognition will destroy it. Okay, makes sense. I think that applies to most of the well-respected indie titles, but Nick is on point. I'm going to go one step further however and call this an SFF match. To understand why, you have to understand all the garbage the Sonic fanbase dealt with between Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast and Sonic Mania: Wikipedia doesn't even list it all, either. No mention of the terrible spinoffs, like Sonic and the Black Knight. I didn't like Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, but I can't hate on anyone who did. Even if you liked that game, you went **17 years** between good games in the Sonic series. For me, it was 20 years. I can't really understate how trashy that series got, guys. You saw it all happen. Just.... Sonic as a werewolf. Sonic 2006. Sonic Heroes. Shadow's entire character. It went on and on and on. On top of that, the Sonic fanbase isn't known as the *worst* fanbase in gaming, but it's very close. It's infested with perverts, incels, furries, weirdos, and just outright losers. A few of these people are even on Board 8, though I won't name any of them as they don't deserve recognition. They're few and far between, but they're here. Trust me. If you want a hint, pay attention to anyone who likes both the Sonic series and the Pokemon series. Odds are you've stumbled across one of these freak shows. So imagine being me, or one of the millions of people like me that grew up in the 90s. Most people on this site grew up in the 90s, so this won't be hard to imagine for most of you. You're just a regular dude who loved sports, hanging out with friends, playing video games, and the other usual stuff. You see Sonic, one of your favorite characters as a kid, reduced to being a shell of himself. I mean come on, a **werewolf**. I mean come on, people. Finally you just bail, because it's clear this series is gone. But you still like platformers, right? How does one scratch that itch when the Sonic series is dead and gaming is mostly 3D? With indie games and handhelds, of course. Games like Super Meat Boy, Braid, VVVVVV, a litany of Castlevanias on the DS, and so on. This love continues to the present day, too. Don't think Board 8 or this contest hyped up Celeste or Hollow Knight for no reason, or even games that didn't make it like Salt and Sanctuary or Dust: An Elysian Tail. Then, from almost out of nowhere in 2018, manna from heaven descended upon the earth. "Hold up, is that Green Hill Zone? Holy crap is that the old school sprites? **Is that the final boss from Sonic 2??? What in the world??**" Of course Sonic Mania SFFd Super Meat Boy into the ground. I'd be shocked if the two games had less than 80% overlap. This was such a huge proud papa moment for me personally, regardless of what happened next round. By the way, the other main reason I consider this an SFF match is because there are several games that finished above Meat Boy in the stats that I don't think would beat it in a contest match. That's pretty much the SFF hallmark. ## Ctes's Analysis This match is one of the most hilarious of the entire contest. It was expected to be close and it then Sonic Mania makes a real attempt at the doubling. Such results happen in round 1, especially in a contest where most of the field is new, but in round 2 it’s a lot rarer. Sonic Mania looked pretty bad against Ys VIII in round 1. It only remained the favorite in this match because we expected Slay the Spire to be among the weakest games in the bracket and Super Meat Boy didn’t look very impressive killing it. Sonic Mania was a bigger favorite before the contest begun that after round 1 though. The match ended up being a matter of who sucked less. No one had any faith in Ys VIII, so it seemed quite believable that Sonic Mania was just bad because everything Sonic being bad these days sounded believable. It isn’t exactly good, but not at all as bad as we thought for a moment. Then we had Super Meat Boy not destroying Slay the Spire as anything was supposed to. Games like VVVVVV and Binding of Isaac looks very bad after round 1, and those are indie games from around the same time as Super Meat Boy. This allowed Sonic Mania to remain the favorite despite the silly round 1 performance. Then the match was over in a matter of seconds and two other matches today actually looked better for a very brief while. Everyone supporters Super Meat Boy looked so bad, but it really didn’t seem like a bad upset pick at the time. The oracle consensus is more than 14% away from the result. The closest pick is more than 2% away and the second closest more than 4%. What a shocker this was. It really became apparent how much we’ve begun to appreciate smaller RPGs. Ys, Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler. Some of those have a big developer behind them, but the point still stands. On top of that we’ve seen Dragon Quest and Persona looking better than ever with Xenoblade looking to be very good as well. Perhaps a time has come where we’re looking at different RPGs, small ones too, because we’re a bunch of people growing up with Final Fantasy, which is trash today. It’s a shame Ys didn’t draw Super Meat Boy in round 1 for one of the most hilarious results of the contest, but we still got to have this insane overperformance due to how misled we were. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match was a suprise for everyone. I mean the Crew was split here too plus they all expected the winner to be around 53. But man SM dominated here. Almost a doubling! I was suprised too, I thought SMB would win since nobody cares for Sonic games anymore. Sure people know Sonic because of Smash but Sonic games? Almost all of them suck in the last decades. But from what people told me SM is actually a good Sonic game which I guess makes sense since well it is the only game that got in the bracket! So why we all thought that SM sucks in the contest? Because it couldn't even double an YS game which an obscure series even though there are like 10 of these games! So for the match. Well SM dominated. Why? Because Slay the Spire which Super Meat Boy beat easily has to be in the bottom 5 here. So yeah that weak. And SMB even though it is a fairly known indie series seems to be really weak too. Yeah there is a sequel now. Okay it is not out yet, but it will come out soon. After 10 years! So seems that we are wrong and SM is somewhat decent and SMB is damn weak. Hey at least as a Guru pick it won a match! Also seems that YS series isn't completely fodder. ## Tsunami's Analysis So apparently Sonic's worth something again? This was a great showing, and a lot of people saw it coming; while the prediction percentage was under 50%, it's close enough to be a clear plurality. It seems like a lot of the disappointments of the past decade figured it out at the end. Ah, well, at least the Guru Nomination made it to Round 2. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8000&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=86) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal 2 vs (6)Kingdom Hearts III 2020 _source: (3)Portal 2 vs (6)Kingdom Hearts III 2020 (revid 86580)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, April 17, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 87 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal 2 - 57.92% 51 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal 2 - 50.55% - **User Votes:** Portal 2 - 5754 Kingdom Hearts III - 3426 - **Anonymous Votes:** Portal 2 - 4844 Kingdom Hearts III - 3030 I warned you about Tetsuya Nomura, folks. I won't spoil FF7 Remake here, but you can't say I didn't warn you. That guy has been garbage ever since he became a director. The dude is a good artist. I will never take that away from him. He gets made fun of a lot because of belts and zippers, but I do legitimately like his art style. As a director and writer though? Trash. He is laughably unqualified, and we have almost two decades of games as proof. He's a hack. A few years back, I mentioned how I would rather pick Kingdom Hearts and be wrong than pick against it and be wrong. The series has pulled so many wins out of its ass in debated matches over the years that it's so hard to pick against it when there's even a small chance it can win. That said, I think we're at the point where this series is done for on this site. There have been way too many bad games in a row now in that series, not to mention Kingdom Hearts 3 itself being trash after 15 years of hype, for it to recover. So I knew Portal 2 was winning this match. Didn't care, I picked Kingdom Hearts 3 anyway, even over one of my all time favorites, knowing full well what was coming. At least, I *thought* I knew what was coming. Portal 2 delivered a beatdown so massive that it had people talking about it winning this division, perhaps even more, because it felt like we were watching something we hadn't seen before. The reason for that is simple. We hadn't seen anything like this before. Did you know this is the first time a Kingdom Hearts game got under 40% in a 1v1 contest poll? It's true. Look it up. The losses are always close, even in the LOL 4ways if you care to look those up as well. After all that, Kingdom Hearts 3 finally gets released, finally it gets into a contest, and.... dud. Much like its useless director. Seriously, how did we go from this... ...to THIS? Not only has Tetsuya Nomura ruined Kingdom Hearts beyond all repair, and we saw the result of his idiocy live this contest, but he's also in the process of ruining Final Fantasy 7 even more than it's already been ruined. All Square had to do was take the same game and make it shiny. That's it. Instead, we got hit with false advertising. Defenders of Nomura can call that trash whatever they want, but at the end of the day we got lied to. And I *told you* he was going to pull some BS with that remake. I fucking knew it. Add another one to the pile of things that goof has ruined. I mean really, hasn't FF7 been through enough? Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, Advent Children, Before Crisis, Last Order, and now this nonsense? Enough is enough. That cow has milked dry every which way and needs to be brought to the slaughterhouse already so it can be put out of its misery. And fire Tetsuya Nomura and just start all over while you're at it. When the only Final Fantasy game to get any respect for an entire decade is an MMORPG of all things, something has gone seriously wrong. Seeing Kingdom Hearts and its idiot director completely collapse at the hands of one of my favorite games made me *so* happy, too, because Portal 2 deserved to go on this crazy run it went on. It got screwed in 2015, so this contest was a nice bit of justice for it. Final point before I move on. I don't really care about credits in games and knowing who voice actors and motion capture actors are and all that other jazz, so until this week I was probably the only guy on the planet who didn't know that JK Simmons is Cave Johnson. I knew that voice sounded familiar when I was playing and I could never put my finger on it! Cave Johnson -- first man in human history to successfully give a potato an orgasm. ## Ctes's Analysis Kingdom Hearts III was a semi-popular upset pick taken by a good number of gurus. Kingdom Hearts has traditionally been stronger than Portal here and the third one was untested, as it did not appear in any Game of the Year polls. Portal also looked weaker in recent contests as it did a decade ago when it was a huge phenomenon everywhere. However, Kingdom Hearts III was not received too well for various reasons we’ve been through before. You had to hoping it could ride on its name to victory and that was always a longshot. We saw how well it worked out for the game thinking they had their own characters and didn’t need Final Fantasy anywhere. It’s the same thing here really, and besides, Portal is quite the name here as well. Oh, and I know that’s not the main reason the game wasn’t too well liked, but it all counts. The first round definitely made Portal 2 look like the favorite today, as shown by very few oracles picking it. True enough, it had little trouble, though we underestimated it a good bit. Kingdom Hearts III did best with the board vote, surprisingly. Despite not being too well liked here either, we still appreciate the franchise as a whole it would seem, because we sure used to love Portal too. It was close for a few minutes. Then it was basically over, but if you believed Portal 2 had all the bracket votes, you might have still had hope at the freeze, because Portal couldn’t really run away with it until that point. When the next update came it was pretty clear that Portal 2 was not going to break a sweat winning the match though. I think at the end of the day, this wasn’t really a matter of which franchise we think the best of a decade later, but just the games competing. Portal 2 was loved, and Kingdom Hearts III had a mixed reception. In a Game of the Decade setting, Portal 2 is still remembered despite being very early. The first Portal was good and did impressive last Game of the Decade too, but the second one took the good idea and really built upon it. I saw the name being brought up in many Game of the Decade discussions, it probably benefits a bit from the contest title, similar to what Mass Effect 2 seemed to do. Portal 2 goes into the third round as the big favorite, although it depended on how much a boost you thought Animal Crossing. Kingdom Hearts ended up looking fine, but it’s a huge fall from grace. Both games were among the biggest games last decade. This one barely made it out in time to enter this and after so many years of waiting, it wasn’t even that great. The future is not to bright for Kingdom Hearts. They pumped out handheld games and countless remasters up until the release of this game because it was hyped by the misleading title of it being a “mainline Kingdom Hearts” despite being a sequel to one of the handhelds that more casual fans probably thought of a spin-off. If they want to make up for this with another release in the future, they probably can’t get people to buy everything again, because it won’t be as anticipated. We might very well have seen the effective end of the franchise, but Kingdom Hearts II will probably continue to be a decent entry in these contests and Sora is probably still somewhat strong. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match. Damn. Okay so here it goes. KH is a beloved series. I mean KH 2 is still considered one of the best games of all time and it came out 15 years ago! But see here is the thing, when a sequel comes out after 14 YEARS it has to be the best game ever for making us wait all this time! Oh sure there were a TON of spin off but people ALWAYS want the main games to play. Not a spin off. So is KH 3 a bad game? No. But after 14 years everyone was dissapointed. Same deal with FF 15. Not a bad game but that game was in development for 10 years. You think it would managed to please everyone after all this time? Extremely few games can do it. Grand Theft Auto series can. Elder Scrolls series can. This is why games should be out every 4-5 years the maximum so people will not lose interested or find something else to play. Plus as I said in my previous analysis KH3 hasn't FF characters. You know the series that became popular because it had Disney and FF characters together? Yeah screw that now! Oh there are moogles! Yippee! And the reason FF characters weren't there? Because they wanted to focus on the stories of the main characters in KH? What? First of all pretty sure nobody knows what exactly is going on with the KH series since there are so many spin offs that either add things, take aways things, or change things. So if we had Cloud fighthing Sephiroth for example we wouldn't be able to understand the main story of KH 3? Yeah sure. So for the match. Well Portal 2 is a damn beloved game even though it seems that the Portal series is dead now. Portal 2 came out 9 years ago. It is some kind of puzzle platform and it still hugely popular. I don't get it. Valve has Half Life and Portal and they don't do anything with their franchises. Hey anything would be fine! Except gatcha games. So Portal 2 won with as much as expected. I do wonder if KH 2 was here though. Would it win? Who knows. As I said KH 3 came out, there was hype for 1 week and then everyone just moved on. Sad. I don't know if they make another KH game but pretty sure the franchise isn't what it used to be. Also strangely enough this was the worst loss for a KH game 1VS1! Damn it! This is strange. We had the worst loss for a Zelda game 1VS1 a few days ago and now this. ## Tsunami's Analysis Nothing to talk about here; over half the brackets got this right and the match wasn't even close. RPGFAQs strikes again... ...wait, ***Portal 2*** was the winner? Not Kingdom Hearts III? And people *expected this?* Fuck, man, I didn't even remotely *consider* this one, and their respective Round 1 results did nothing to sway me one way or the other. I guess KH3 did have the worse result, even with the slightly better percentage, because its opponent was a lot less recognizable than Portal 2's, but come on. Portal 2 got upset in Round 1 in 2015 (which I called correctly) and Wheatley lost to *Crash Bandicoot *in Round 1 in 2013 (not so much so). 2015 X-Stats say Portal 2 gets 35.96% on KH1 and 34.04% on KH2. And that makes perfect sense because *they're fucking Square Enix RPGs*; hell, I think KH1 might technically be pre-merger Squaresoft. Yes, the endless spinoffs dragged the series down, but this is a numbered game. Kingdom Hearts III. This wasn't supposed to be a contest. It just...I keep wanting to say "I didn't even consider this upset possibility", because I can't wrap my head around the fact that Kingdom Hearts III *was* the upset pick! I honestly wouldn't have been surprised to see Persona 5 \> Kingdom Hearts III as our "haw haw casuals" moment, because Persona still doesn't have the name recognition that Kingdom Hearts does. I'm pretty sure "the casuals" don't actually exist anymore, but still. Portal 2 was proven crap, and yet it's pretty much dead even with RDR*1* in the 2015 X-Stats so we knew that RDR2 would be even less of a challenge, except actually we didn't know that at all because the idea of Portal 2 not weakening considerably since 2015 was *also* laughable. You know what, Portal 2 was in Division 3, aka "the Undertale Division". Yes, it lost to Sonic 2 and Sonic 2 lost to Pokémon, but the exact X-Stat numbers on that would still be fishy because we were already prepping Pokémon to be our savior again, just like in 2013 with Mewtwo. Maybe Portal 1 can give us something "cleaner"? ...Goddamnit Portal 1 was fed to Melee in *the first round.* We had nothing. Nothing remotely reliable, aside from the characters bombing, and as we all know, Characters =/= Games. And we...oh. Forget "prepping to be our savior". RBYG-StH2 was the same day as UT-SMW! And Undertale's own rallies favor Pokémon there. We really had nothing. Except... Portal (2015g) VS Kingdom Hearts 2 (2015g) Portal has a strength of 24.72. Kingdom Hearts 2 has a strength of 34.22. Kingdom Hearts 2 wins with 63.88% of the vote!  A win of 16,900 with 60,875 total votes cast. That one barely moves at all when switched to raw X-Stats; I suspect the fact that it moves at all is just due to rounding errors. Because Melee was perceived to have rallied in Round 2 against Pokémon GSC, and then in every round from Round 4 against Chrono Trigger until its defeat against Undertale. The two matches where it had not been perceived to have rallied were Round 1 against Portal...and Round 3 against Kingdom Hearts II. *It's a clean comparison*, even if it was through an entrant that had rallied. Which begs the question: Why? Was Kingdom Hearts III *that* poorly received? There is no good reason for Portal 2 to have gotten stronger, since there are no other games in the series. Yet somehow, everyone just kind of knew that Portal 2 would win. Against probably the biggest Square RPG of the decade. What site am I even on anymore? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8001&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=87) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 2020 _source: (7)Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 2020 (revid 86582)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, April 17, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 88 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 57.31% 49 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 69.82% - **User Votes:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 3943 Red Dead Redemption 2 - 5238 - **Anonymous Votes:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 3237 Red Dead Redemption 2 - 4638 Given Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out mid-contest and the specter of casualbait titles getting anti-voted to death always exists, there was a little bit of fear that Red Dead Redemption 2 could lose this match. Red Dead Redemption 2's day would come, but it would not happen here. This isn't to say RDR2 had a good match by any stretch, but it didn't have a bad one either. It did about what was expected given the circumstances of New Leaf getting boosted by New Horizons selling 238 billion copies in ten minutes after it launched. Unfortunately, "about what was expected" was not going to get it done long term in a division with Persona 5 and Portal 2 looking like kings. The two Red Dead Redemption games aren't at the level of Grand Theft Auto when it comes to anti-votes or anything, but I feel like they're both stained just enough by the casualbait stench that they have a ceiling around these parts. As a total semi-unrelated side note since we're on the subject of Westerns, Django Unchained was added to Netflix recently and I rewatched it a couple nights ago. It's shocking to me that so many people are pro-censorship these days, because censorship kills artistic creativity. That movie would never get made today in 2020. I don't think white people should be going around using racist language or anything, but on the subject of artwork we're in a really bad time; sterility is anathema to good art. Django Unchained would be laughably unwatchable censored, and the villains would be completely toothless. But the uncensored version of that movie? Good hell, I've never wanted villains dead and good guys to win so much in my life. That movie was horrifying, as well as very historically accurate. The entire purpose of knowing our history is to learn from our mistakes so they've never repeated, not to sterilize everything and pretend it doesn't exist. People used to know this, and I don't know what happened in the past five years or so to turn everyone into a bunch of jellyfish. Remember when a streamer got banned for punching a feminist NPC in Red Dead 2, and then Youtube had to reinstate the account after the entire internet revolted? It's the Streisand Effect. This happened in 2017 and the guy was accused of being a Nazi and such, complete with all the usual garbage outlets talking about it, even though the streamer in question had a bunch of videos from the game with him killing a bunch of NPCs in the KKK and so forth. His play style was him literally attacking every NPC in the entire game. Quick to react pro-censorship folks should be very, very careful what they wish for. Censored cultures are generally not good. Obviously there should be a proper amount of decorum and good taste, but what's going on now is absurd. And yes I got sidetracked to Django Unchained and censorship when talking about Red Dead Redemption 2, because this contest had a large number of bad matches and blowouts and I need other stuff to talk about. Hey, at least the censorship bit was kind of related. Welcome to Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis! Sidetracks optional. ## Ctes's Analysis This match would probably not have been a doubt half a year before. Red Dead Redemption is not as fantastic here as other places, but it’s still pretty good, it just doesn’t get any praise because its results are disappointing and not surprising to the common eye. The second one had a huge release. The FAQs for Rockstar games are pretty frequented here too and they remain on top of the charts for a long time. Even on GameFAQs, this match should not be in much doubt. However, when Animal Crossing: New Horizons just had one of the biggest launches of all time leading right up to the contest, suddenly New Leaf doing the impossible seemed like a possibility. Last contest was also one of our most Nintendo dominant contest to date with everything that appeared in Smash looking at least decent. Ironically, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of two games ever with a launch better than or as good as New Horizons. They’re tough to compare because Nintendo released numbers for the first eleven days while RDR2 got numbers for the first two days. New Horizons certainly wins if you do a console split, then it probably also beats the \#1, Grand Theft Auto V. This obviously doesn’t matter much. New Horizons was the hottest game in the world during this contest, likely fueled by the lockdown, but also fueled by the game being a perfect game to play during lockdown. The match wasn’t really close though. The opening minutes were fun, because while Red Dead Redemption 2 clearly had the early bracket votes (and I’m calling it bracket votes since there’s no way board 8 favors a Rockstar game over Animal Crossing), New Leaf actually closed the gap for some minutes before RDR2 went ahead again. The first updates post the freeze weren’t big, but when a Rockstar game is leading at that point it’s very likely to win the match, and so it did, extending its percentage throughout the day. The main reason that New Horizons hype wasn’t enough to pull the upset is without much doubt simply that it wasn’t New Horizons competing. It probably helped New Leaf a bit, but the gap was way too big. Remember how awful New Leaf looked in the previous contest? Yes, it was SFF’d, but it also got Undertale rally spillover boosted. It was clearly a bottom game of the contest. It had a huge gap to close. It would be fun to see New Horizons in a contest right now. It’ll probably be alright whenever we get a games contest again. I’m not doubting it makes the field if it’s eligible, but I think the craze will be over by then. It will be remembered as a great game, but it’s during lockdown it had a chance to pull something like this off and likely be super easy to rally for. ## Safer777's Analysis Even though there was some fear that ACNL might win since the new AC game came out recently and it seems that it did extremely well and it is still talked about and make the AC franchise even bigger and has sold like a massive amount of copies, RDR2 did as expected and it won. I mean sure we do love some AC here but well against RDR 2? Eh not so much. Probably. However I do believe that if the new AC game was here it might have won. As for RDR 2 well it has managed to ship like 30.000.000 units and the game is out for like 1.5 years only so yeah. Kind of a big deal. Also pretty sure it is the best Western game ever made. So for the match. Well RDR 2 did as expected. I don't know if RDR franchise is strong since RDR1 barely lost from Persona 4 which we all thought P4 would win easily or their opponents are weak or something but still nice to see games like RDR 2 doing so good. It is one of these games that trully deservers the GOTD title. But of course it will not win. Eh. ## Tsunami's Analysis So, uh...Animal Crossing is legit, huh? This was a kind of underwhelming performance by what I presume, based on the prediction percentages for the first two rounds, is the casuals' favorite in Round 3. I mean, maybe it isn't, since the trio of New Leaf, Street Fighter V, and Dying Light really *shouldn't* have been able to stop it, while Portal 2 had to deal with Tomb Raider in round 1 and Kingdom Hearts III in Round 2. But we're dealing with almost 70% vs. barely over 50%. Unless Portal 2's R3 prediction percentage is over 75% of its R2 prediction percentage, one would have to figure that RDR2 would have the plurality even if Portal 2/Tomb Raider/KH3/Disco Elysium has the overall majority over RDR2/ACNL/SFV/DL. I'll admit, I screwed this one up in Oracle but not in Guru. I had RDR2 \> SFV in Guru, but I was impressed enough by New Leaf's win over SFV that I backed it in Oracle. Apparently SFV is just that bad. See, I told you that always picking against Capcom was a good idea! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8002&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=88) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (8)Rocket League 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (8)Rocket League 2020 (revid 86583)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, April 18, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 89 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 74.09% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 72.23% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 6637 Rocket League - 1989 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 5692 Rocket League - 1578 If round one wasn't a huge warning shot, then this match certainly brought it home. Dark Souls was all business in this contest. Rocket League escaped from a great match in round one that entertained the entire board, but only one game gets to have their last match in a contest be a win so here we were. Dark Souls came close to joining that exclusive club of contest entrants that broke 80% in the first two rounds, but it was not to be. This was just another speed bump on the road to facing The Last of Us in the division finals, and Dark Souls was showing itself to be the clear favorite. I thought further about what the strongest sports game on this site is thanks to Rocket League, and I've got my answer. I think it's NBA Jam. Remember, we're not counting fighting games, Mario Kart, or "Mario X". We're talking sports games in the more traditional sense, like Madden, NBA 2K, or Tecmo Super Bowl and such. I think NBA Jam takes it. Does anyone actively dislike NBA Jam? Of course not. Very possibly the best announcing job ever done in a game, too. HE'S ON FIRE! ## Ctes's Analysis This was probably the result that made it seem like Dark Souls getting to the semi-finals was a real possibility. At least it’s the result that Dark Souls was capable of taking advantage of capable of taking care of the weakness Skyrim was about to indicate. The oracles predicted Dark Souls a fine bit lower than this. It looks really good here, and I’m surprised its prediction percentage is not higher. Perhaps both Rocket League and Dragon Ball FighterZ are casual bait to some extent? I can see that, I’m just surprised if it worked against Dark Souls of all things. At this point of the contest, we probably overestimated Rocket League and Dragon Ball FighterZ a bit though. Being the best sports game, the best non-Mario Kart racing game and the best non-Smash fighting game sounds like cool titles, but they all mean absolutely nothing here. Rocket League is a very fun game, I can easily play if for many hours, especially if playing with friends. It’s generally pretty well liked, but is it anyone’s favorite on GameFAQs? Highly unlikely. It’ll win matches against games no one care about, and it turns out having Dragon Ball in the title didn’t make us care about FighterZ but put it against a real contest threat and it rolls over completely. That’s what happened today. ## Safer777's Analysis So here nothing to say really. Soulslike games do really well in this contest which I didn't really expected and DS might be the strongest of them all since you know it is the game that created the term Soulslike. On the other hand RL barely won against a DBZ figthing game. And it has football on it so yeah. We don't like sports games because real gamers don't play sports. Right? So what is the strongest sports game here? I don't know. I guess nothing? Do we even have sports games in contests? So for the match. The only thing to notice is with how much DS would win. Above 75 would considered good and it won with above that. So yeah. Things as expected, Soulslike games are awesome, next. ## Tsunami's Analysis Let's just go back to laughing at the guy who said he was going to rally for Rocket League last round. This was a *huge* fall-off from the previous day's vote totals, and IIRC one of the main Tumblrs that started the whole Undertale fiasco in 2015 was a self-professed Dark Souls fan first and foremost. Why she decided to rally for Undertale instead of Dark Souls is beyond me, but whatever. Point is, Dark Souls is going to be filthy in this contest if it needs to be. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8003&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=89) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yakuza 0 vs (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 2020 _source: (5)Yakuza 0 vs (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 2020 (revid 86584)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, April 18, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 90 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid V - 62.69% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid V - 68.32% - **User Votes:** Yakuza 0 - 3713 Metal Gear Solid V - 4917 - **Anonymous Votes:** Yakuza 0 - 3065 Metal Gear Solid V - 4205 There was some buzz pre-contest about MGS5 potentially losing this match. It wasn't that Yakuza was some beast or anything, but some people felt that the Metal Gear Solid brand would fall off a cliff in this contest and open the door for an upset. Yakuza made this an interesting match early by winning the board vote, and in the first couple hours it was even able to pull out the occasional stall and update win. The fun ended there however, and Metal Gear Solid 5 would go on to easily win this match. It wasn't a godslayer blowout by any means, but a win is a win and MGS5 moved on. I have no doubts that the MGS brand is damaged beyond repair anymore, and that it could have gotten upset in a different spot in the bracket, but this was not the fourpack for that to happen. This was one of the weakest fourpacks in the entire contest, so Metal Gear Solid 5 was able to win it by default. I personally loved most of MGS5, but I can completely see why people would anti-vote it. The funniest part of Metal Gear Solid 5 winning this match is that it set up a rematch (lol) with Dark Souls. Remember this match from 2015? The hilarity of this setup was great. Just how far had Metal Gear Solid fallen? We were about to find out. ## Ctes's Analysis Yakuza 0 being a game with actual strength was a surprise to many this contest, especially after the characters all looked horrible last contest. We thought The Witness was simply so terrible that anything could blow it out of the contest. True enough, The Witness would end up near the bottom, but this is the match that put it out of contention for the bottom spot, we thought it could have. We fully expected Metal Gear Solid V to be an embarrassment to the once extremely popular franchise after everything that happened with Kojima and Konami back then, and yet the oracle consensus still had it more than 5% above what it got. Yakuza 0 surprised most of us today. Perhaps the characters making it in should have been an indicator that the game is now cared about. Yakuza 0 ends up looking good and like something we might want to bring back again, but I do think MGSV was a very good game for it look good against, so the x-stats probably overrate it. When the winning game is something so obviously anti-voted, the losing game will look better, it’s dead simple. MGSV is not anti-voted to extreme amounts or it wouldn’t be in round 3, but it definitely is to some extent. Look at the board vote. Yakuza 0 won that, MGSV didn’t start running away with the lead until the end of the freeze. It didn’t look back, but it shows. MGSV was also eliminated in round 1 of board 8’s Game of the Decade of the Year, ZaziGuado’s Game of the Decade board contest using the format of User of the Year. Board 8 hates the game and board 8 is among the biggest Metal Gear Solid fans you’ll find. It was because of board 8’s love for the series that I originally played the series myself, though Snake’s success in the contests helped. The point is that while MGSV is appreciated for its gameplay and name alone, the hardcore fans of the series might very well vote against it, and it might very well be enough to be what caused Yakuza 0 to break 40% today. ## Safer777's Analysis I adore the Yakuza series. Read my previous Yakuza 0 match analysis to see why. As for MGS 5 I do believe it is the least liked of the main MGS games. Strangely enough Y0 did amazing in Round 1 but it faced maybe the weakest game on the bracket. So yeah MGS 5 wouldn't lose it at all except with a rally. Or not even with that actually. MGS series is constangly getting weaker with all drama with Komani and the creator of the series. So for the match. Well MGS 5 won but I do believe it did worse than expected. Even I, I expected at least 60% here but it didn't happen. I guess a combination of Y0 beeing sligtly stronger than expected and MGS 5 beeing slightly weaker did that. Still a win is a win, am I right? ## Tsunami's Analysis Man Metal Gear has fallen hard. This is a very strong performance by Yakuza 0, showing that it's a game far stronger than its characters, who were nothing short of atrocious in 2018. This would set up a rematch of a somewhat debated 2015 match, except the only debate this time would be just how much more lopsided it would be (the 2015 match wasn't terribly lopsided at all--Dark Souls only won with 55.4%. I'd be surprised if it doesn't exceed that by a full 10%.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8004&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=90) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (6)BioShock Infinite 2020 _source: (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (6)BioShock Infinite 2020 (revid 86585)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, April 18, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 91 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Batman: Arkham City - 55.25% 46 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Batman: Arkham City - 48.68% - **User Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 5183 BioShock Infinite - 3445 - **Anonymous Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 4305 BioShock Infinite - 2965 Ready for a joke? What do you get when you take the original Bioshock, put it in the sky instead of at the bottom of the ocean, make the writing worse, and insult the intelligence of your players? You get what you fucking deserve. Bioshock Infinite is not a *bad* game, but it's not a good one. Terraria wasn't able to take advantage of the newfound weakness in this series, but Batman certainly was. The two Arkham games have always performed well on this site, and scoring a 60-40 beating over a Bioshock was the latest example of this. The Batman games aren't likely to ever be top tier on this site, but they are solid midcarders that can beat most games before getting to the heavy hitters in brackets. Arkham Asylum made one contest, and Arkham City has made two. In those three combined contest appearances, Batman made round 3 in two of them. In the outlier, 2015, Arkham City had to go against a 90s all-star in Mega Man X. If you go and look at that contest's bracket, there are several fourpacks it could have won. To the point. We're long past time for character battles, if they even continue, to allow for any character that's ever been in a video game. Provided there are no licensing issues and such. It's just dumb to have a character battle on a video game web site without Batman, Joker, Spiderman, Thanos, Wolverine, and all the rest of it being eligible. It's the only way to make them unpredictable again, too. ## Ctes's Analysis Heading into round 2, this was expected to be a somewhat close match. Batman: Arkham City was the heavy favorite both before and during the contest, but the first round saw Batman get a very narrow win, lower than we expected, while BioShock Infinite scored higher than we thought. Of course, everyone expected Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to be better than Terreria, but both Xenoblade 2 and Batman were likely better than we thought. I’m sure a few additional people would have taken this upset, if the first Xenoblade had not just looked insane a few days before this match. The lesson was learned today. Xenoblade 2 was one of the games screwed the most over by bracket placement, as some had expected, and Terraria was just straight up awful. Batman: Arkham City won easily enough today that suddenly The Last of Us reaching the division finals didn’t seem like as big a lock at it was before, although that had more to do with its own match. BioShock Infinite actually ends up looking decent enough in the x-stats. The decline of that franchise could’ve been a lot worse, but there’s still far up to how well the original two did a decade ago. ## Safer777's Analysis This match is strange. We all thought that BAC did bad in Round 1 since it score less than 55 against Xenoblade Chronicles 2 BUT after we see that the original Xenoblade Chronicles did amazing we all think that XC franchise is actually decent now! Maybe even good! As for BI I do think it is a good game. It got amazing critical reception but it seems that it faded really fast from the gamers consience. Also this series seems to be dead now, since the last main game came out 7 years ago. I do wonder why? All Bioshock games sold well and really good critical reception. Eh whatever. As for the BA games the general consensus is:BA1 good, BA 2 perfect, BA 3 decent, BA really bad. Yeah strange how things change. So for the match. Well I don't think people were expecting BAC to lose. I mean as I said nobody really cares for the Bioshock games now since even the company seems to have abandon them. And BAC did won with higher than it did in Round 1. I do believe that XC2 has to be in the top 5 strongest Round 1 games that lost. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, my Arkham City \> The Last of Us upset loves this result...but my Three Houses \> Xenoblade Chronicles not-upset is scared shitless! (No, I still don't know why I picked Arkham City \> Last of Us, and it's a moot point because I wouldn't have picked Dark Souls over the Last of Us, either, so I'd have lost the R4 points either way.) Arkham City did better against BioShock Infinite than against Xenoblade 2. Is Xenoblade 2 any good? I might have to check it out. The first one seemed like it was promising from a story aspect but I just couldn't get past the janky battle system. Give me a traditional turn-based RPG any day, but failing that, if you're going to give me an ARPG, *give me a goddamn attack button!* So, yeah, turns out BioShock isn't that strong any more. 2013 certainly provided some hints with Big Daddy losing to Lloyd Irving and the Infinite characters not being worth much of anything, but the series' decline was hidden by both games in the bracket (the original and Infinite) being in the SMRPG quarter. BioShock had a close loss to Division 8 champ MGS3, while Infinite had a decent match with Fallout: New Vegas, which in turn broke 41% on RE4. Arkham City is, apparently, still fairly decent, and I expect it to give a good match next round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8005&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=91) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Diablo III vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 _source: (7)Diablo III vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 (revid 86587)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, April 18, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 92 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Last of Us - 69.45% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Last of Us - 75.20% - **User Votes:** Diablo III - 3207 The Last of Us - 5425 - **Anonymous Votes:** Diablo III - 2591 The Last of Us - 4679 The Last of Us taking out the trash and ridding this contest of Activision-Blizzard, the single worst company in human history. Not just gaming, either. The worst company *period*. Nothing will ever be worse, either, because there are still legions of idiots actually defending these people. See when Monsanto or Enron or Wells-Fargo or any other evil company gets caught acting as companies tend to act, the public turns on them. Activision-Blizzard gets caught being human trash cans *constantly*, yet out come the legion of sycophants to defend this garbage every single time. Blizzard will never get back to what they were in the 90s, folks. Get over it, accept it, and stop kissing the ring. Activison will never, ever allow that company to have things like "good ideas" ever again, and any time they're booted from one of these contests it's one of the best days of said contest by default. Blizzard has been trash for 20 years now. Deal with it. If you want a good comparison to how much I absolutely fucking *hate* this company, it's comparable to how much EDP pretends to hate the Philadelphia Eagles. I say "pretends" because EDP is clearly acting for the camera to get views. I'm not acting. I genuinely and truly hate every single thing about Activision-Blizzard, because that company in no way deserves to be in business. Independent of complete financial collapse of the company's assets, at least the public is *finally* starting to see the trash that is Blizzard for what it is -- indefensible human waste. To that end, thank you Last of Us for excising the final Blizzard tumor from this contest, though I will say when one compares this result to Dark Souls pasting Rocket League, it was very difficult to imagine a world in which Last of Us would be able to compete in that match. Allowing anything from Blizzard to get above 0% on you is bad enough, but 37%? That's a pretty big problem, and this match happened two weeks before the big leak that broke the internet. Don't worry, we'll talk about it at the appropriate time. For now, it was time to celebrate! Good riddance Blizzard, and fuck you forever. No company will *ever* be worse. ## Ctes's Analysis If you were one of the many board 8’ers with The Last of Us as the division winner in your bracket, but you had not yet lost hope in round 1 when Dark Souls clearly looked stronger than it was five years ago, this was the match where it became clear you were losing 8 points. The Last of Us underperformed quite a bit relative to what we thought. It was quite apparent that the game was not as strong as it was back in 2015. Dark Souls looked stronger than then, and the gap wasn’t too big to begin with. It was a sealed deal, and suddenly it looked more likely The Last of Us would drop to Batman: Arkham City than beat Dark Souls. I do think Diablo III is stronger than board 8 is ready to give it credit for though. The Last of Us probably doesn’t benefit from the contest title as much anymore as it would have had years back. Naughty Dog is in a weird place and the delay of the sequel probably doesn’t help much. Remember that this match happened before the leaks came. The Last of Us was huge when it came, but probably less so now, as it already hasn’t aged too well on some levels. Against something like Diablo III, it probably doesn’t gain much help from the forced voting here. Diablo is a bigger franchise name. Blizzard is in a bad place these days, but Diablo III is before things went downhill and a lot of the issues with Blizzard doesn’t apply to Diablo III. It was a fine game that simply didn’t reach previous series high. It ends up looking a good big better than I think much board 8’ers would have guessed it would. The Last of Us was fine today, even if perhaps a little bit weaker than in 2015. It just didn’t look like it could beat the boosted Dark Souls. ## Safer777's Analysis So D3 wasn't well received by the fanbase ESPECIALLY at the start where you could buy items in game from other players by spending real money! And this was legal too! However after the huge backlash they removed this option pretty fast which shouldn't have been in the game from the start. Diablo 2 seems to be the best Diablo game too. Plus after they announced this mobile Diablo game EVERY hardcore Diablo fan was dissapointed. I mean Diablo was always considered a PC series and to see a gatcha mobile game? Damn! Although that game isn't still out but it will suck. Now for TLOU is considered a GOTD by me and a lot of others. The game is excellent. The story and characters are top notch. Seriously. Play it you haven't. So for the match. Well obviously TLOU would win here, everyone predicted that based on Round 1 results. And it did as expected so what else to say? Just play the damn game. ## Tsunami's Analysis The Last of Us winning this match was never in question; faulty as the 2015 X-Stats may be, they suggest it to be slightly stronger than Diablo *II*. Now, Diablo III was not a terribly well-received game at all, so I'd expect the strength gap between Diablo II and Diablo III to be tremendous. We're only a few matches removed from a "III" losing to a game that its "II" beats *handily* in those X-Stats. I'm going to drag them out again: The Last of Us (2015g) VS Diablo 2 (2015g) The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. Diablo 2 has a strength of 27.23. The Last of Us wins with 50.24% of the vote!  A win of 289 with 60,875 total votes cast. Portal 2 (2015g) VS Kingdom Hearts 2 (2015g) Portal 2 has a strength of 23.30. Kingdom Hearts 2 has a strength of 34.22. Kingdom Hearts 2 wins with 65.96% of the vote!  A win of 19,426 with 60,875 total votes cast. Diablo III is worth 36.72% on a game that Diablo II is worth 49.76% on, but KH III is worth 37.64% on a game that KH II is worth *65.96%* on. ...How? This isn't even about KH3 losing that match anymore, though I am still baffled by that; the idea of KH3 being worth less on KH2 than Diablo 3 is on Diablo 2 (pre-SFF adjustments) is alien in its own right. I'm sure there will be a lengthy diatribe on this PCA anyway since I think this is the last Blizzard game to leave the contest, and I have to say...Bobby Kotick [could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any supporters.](https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/23/politics/donald-trump-shoot-somebody-support/index.html) That's really all I can liken it to; Blizzard has its consumers by the balls. The "Disney just buys Squeenix" idea I proposed last round is looking better and better all the time. Someone has to save them from themselves, and the idea of Square's properties being part of the Disney/Marvel/Star Wars stable is oddly appealing. Though given what happened when they tried to have Kingdom Hearts characters as walkarounds at the theme parks, they might need to work out a few kinks. Costumed Moogles might be fun, though, assuming that any of the younger fans would even know what a Moogle was. *Tsunami notes: These write-ups were done in a big burst, and by the time I could see the replies to the KH3-Portal 2 write-up I'd already posted this group. I edited in the following:* I have discovered that, yes, KH3 really was that big a disappointment. Upon doing some research of my own, I discovered that, no worries, "the kiddies" would know what Moogles were. They were in KH3. Part of the problem was that they were the *only *Final Fantasy characters in KH3, though the inevitable rerelease only a year later is said to have more. Good lord Square Enix really needs to be saved from themselves. Doesn't change what I said about Blizzard, though. If Square fans were *half* as blindly loyal as Blizzard fans, KH3 beats Portal 2 easily and actually *might *be a sexy upset pick against Persona 5. Square releases a game and then makes you pay full price for what amounts to the same game with DLC, and their fans are rightfully pissed. They've been doing this over and over, too, with Kingdom Hearts. But Blizzard splits a single game into, essentially, four full-priced games on a regular basis, and their fans wouldn't have it any other way. Heh, I guess I see why the idea of Japanese and Western games of the same genres SFFing each other is so foreign. It's because the Japanese games' fans have *working brains.* ...Huh. Kind of unfortunate that that rant had to be in a match where the winning game was Western too. I'm not a fan of The Last of Us's entire genre, but I hear it's a really great game!  ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8006&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=92) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (9)Journey 2020 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (9)Journey 2020 (revid 86588)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 19, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 93 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 77.88% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 88.32% - **User Votes:** Skyrim - 6752 Journey - 2158 - **Anonymous Votes:** Skyrim - 6259 Journey - 2281 It's not often when you can win a contest poll with 75% of the vote and come out looking badly, but remember, Skyrim's matches were not only about winning. It was all about going tit for tat with Witcher 3, and the leadup to this match included Witcher 3 holding Mass Effect 3 to 21.6% of the vote. Skyrim had to match that, at least, to hold serve. SFF or no SFF, there is no way anyone with an unbiased mind can compare that monstrosity Witcher 3 pulled off with Journey getting 25% on Skyrim and think Skyrim wasn't in a world of trouble. Even if you want to think the former was an SFF beating, it meant Witcher 3 was able to pull off Western SFF. There was no way around this. Skyrim was completely and thoroughly screwed. The game isn't weak or anything, and I could even argue it hasn't lost much strength if any which is a minor miracle given Bethesda's idiocy, but Witcher 3 was in total berserk mode this contest. Anything less than an A+ performance was going to lose to it, and Skyrim was putting out a series of A-. On top of that, it kept losing board votes. If round one wasn't a good hint into how that eventual semifinal would go, round two certainly was. It also got some minor hype trains going for Skyrim to potentially get tripped up by Nintendo long before the semifinals ever got here. Any way you look at it, Skyrim was in trouble. ## Ctes's Analysis This was the match that initially made Skyrim an easy target for most of the rest of the contest. The Subnautica result was one thing, only a few Bethesda anti-votes were needed to keep it from going higher then, but people had a tough time accepting this result and it didn’t help The Witcher 3 had looked extremely good a few rounds before. Journey finished at the near bottom of the 2015 x-stats and it was debated to be the weakest round 2 entry there was. The general consensus before the contest was that Skyrim was the favorite to each the finals. If it was still the case after round 1, it certainly wasn’t the case now, and on top of The Witcher 3 taking the title, Dark Souls beating Skyrim was now considered very possible. I was one of the people defending Skyrim at the time, but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t doubt The Witcher 3 would be the one to make the finals any longer, but I didn’t think this was as bad as people made it out to be. I’ll say once again that Skyrim was the Final Fantasy VII character of this contest. They always get where they’re supposed to, but it sure doesn’t look good getting there. The Bethesda anti-votes are a thing, that’s for sure. Skyrim has also become a victim of its own popularity. At least it seems that way to be. There are seemingly a group of people that find it cool to hate on the game, partly because Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 has overshadowed it in the latter half of the decade. This has had some bandwagon effect probably, it felt like people wanted to see Skyrim lose early and board 8 lacked the Skyrim fans to defend it. Still, most people are better than that and respect Skyrim. It’s a vocal minority. Then there’s Journey. The above doesn’t work if we really think Journey is as weak as 2015 project it to be, and I don’t! The 2015 x-stats project Skyrim to do about 5% better against Journey, although both are clouded by Undertale rallies. That’s not too big of a difference! Skyrim had room to be a little weaker and still easily get to the semi-finals and look good there and Journey had reason to be stronger than last time. It’s not good, but the game is mentioned in some Game of the Decade debates and during this contest it was made free for every person that owns a PS4. Not just the PS+ subscribers, but everyone. Sony’s way of telling people to stay home during the pandemic was by giving everyone the Nathan Drake Collection and Journey for free. That could help close that 5% gap a little more. Finally, Journey is probably a terrible game for Skyrim to look good against. It’s so vastly different and colorful in comparison. The Witcher 3 looked to be in its own league, but it also got opponents of similar fanbases to trash, Skyrim didn’t. I thought Skyrim looked fine already then, but there were people not understanding why we had such a hard time accepting Skyrim was just weaker. That wasn’t it! In the end, Skyrim looked fine and so Journey wasn’t as bad as we thought. There’s no point in seeing it in another contest, but it managed to get away from the bottom of the barrel where it used be, although it took most of the contest for the majority of people to see that. ## Safer777's Analysis Somehow we have this as a Round 2 match. Really? How weak was Journey's opponent? Extremely weak it seems! Well as I said before Skyrim is one of the most popular AAA games ever made and Journey is damn popular for an indie game. So for the match. Okay Skyrim won with a tripling. I mean is there anything else to say? I guess it is kinda low for Skyrim. Sure a tripling is always amazing but it should have finished higher. Maybe? I don't know. Well Skyrim is supposed to be the 2nd strongest game on the contest so I am not sure. We shall see of course. ## Tsunami's Analysis While a near-tripling in Round 2 sounds promising on paper, this was if anything a worrying performance for Skyrim backers. That it would win its division was of course still not remotely in question. And its 88.32% prediction percentage in this match was second only to BotW in Round 2. But The Witcher 3 managed to comfortably get the tripling over a presumably stronger opponent, and one round sooner for Skyrim's potential opponents, Dark Souls also got a tripling, albeit against what one would presume to be an even weaker game than Journey. It didn't quite seem like time to worry about it possibly getting upset by Dark Souls just yet, but it was absolutely looking like Witcher 3 might be the new favorite to reach the finals out of the bottom half of the bracket. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8007&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=93) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 _source: (5)Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 (revid 86589)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 19, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 94 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario Kart 8 - 56.78% 45 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario Kart 8 - 41.16% - **User Votes:** Final Fantasy XIV - 3457 Mario Kart 8 - 5451 - **Anonymous Votes:** Final Fantasy XIV - 3541 Mario Kart 8 - 4994 One day after getting Blizzard out of this contest, we managed to get rid of Final Fantasy 14. That meant two very good contest days for me personally regardless of any other result, and good riddance to all the garbage. You will not be missed. MMORPGs are such filth to me that this match actually had me cheering for a Mario Kart, of all things. I can't *stand* Mario Kart games, because they popularized the trend in game design of punishing skill, but at least they're not MMOs. "But Ulti! Final Fantasy 14 is the exception to the rule! You can't just hate all MMOs because of a few bad personal experiences!" haha mmo go lose Even if I was the type to give MMOs a chance, and I never will be, Final Fantasy 14 was so bad when it first came out that they had to blow up the world and start over. When your game's main endorsement is "well hey, it can't get worse", it doesn't exactly come off as a vote of confidence. You also need to understand the insane number of people I've met in my life who gave up their entire life to this trash. What really cemented it home for me was World of Warcraft, and these people have gotten no better since that game happened. I still remember being in community college in the mid-2000s when that game first came out, and it was insufferable. All the douchebag guys we all hate in everyday life would go around using actual World of Warcraft lingo to try and pick up girls, and the girls would all reciprocate to get free gold and such in-game. I can't remember a more embarrassing social display than how people acted right after WoW came out. "The game starts at level 60 bro, are you not a real man yet, why aren't you hitting up WoW in a top guild bro?" I was married by then thank god, but I can't even imagine growing up a nerd, getting made fun of for liking video games, then becoming an adult and suddenly the main way to get girls is video games. It's like fuck off bitch, all of you. Guys and girls. You all spent 20 years telling people that gaming is for losers and now you're pretending to like that culture? It's even worse now with those same idiots turning Twitch into a softcore porn site and simps throwing them hundreds if not thousands of dollars for badly -- and I mean *very* badly -- "playing video games" while showing cleavage. Imagine being such a loser that you donate to some thot's Twitch stream. There are some people on Board 8 that I have zero respect for, but I can't imagine anyone on here ever being *that* pathetic. Airquotes are obviously needed around "playing video games" here, because none of what Twitch thots are actually doing counts as playing video games. Go watch Kaceytron pretend to play League of Legends and try telling me that garbage is actual gaming with a straight face. I dare you. This meme really tells the entire story: Someone needs to make a version where it goes to 2020 and includes Twitch thots and their useless simps. Where did all this crap start? In MMORPGs, that's where. Not only has that genre stolen a bunch of my friends from me, but it almost single-handedly ruined gaming. I don't care how good people want to pretend Final Fantasy 14 is. I will always consider all of it to be trash. World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 11, Runescape, EVE Online, Phantasy Star Online, Everquest, Maple Story, Final Fantasy 14, all of it. It's all garbage. Actually, better yet: Every single game on that entire list and every single game that will ever *be* on that list is dead to me for life. Good riddance, Final Fantasy 14. You will not be missed. ## Ctes's Analysis People had such a hard time imaging Mario Kart 8 being any good that its round 1 victory against Uncharted 4 was thought almost entirely to be because Uncharted was terrible these days. Final Fantasy XIV looked very impressive in its round 1 victory and so a group of people were quite tempted by picking it to beat Mario Kart. Most people still went with Mairo Kart 8, but it didn’t seem like that many felt too good about it. Well, it turns out this match was the first part of Uncharted 4’s redemption and the next installment in the series of Mario Kart 8 annoying board 8 by having actual strength. It’s probably not much of board 8 that had difficulties accepting it, at least its board vote seems to indicate otherwise, but it was a group of contest experts, so it was still hilarious. For a match that made people feel uneasy, this was a huge victory, and Final Fantasy XIV was never in it. Mario Kart 8 was killing it from the moment the match began and was shooting above the doubling a while. It calmed down a lot throughout the power hour, but it still won very big for a somewhat debated match. Perhaps it didn’t even boost too much since last contest but was simply considerably buried beneath SFF from Super Mario 64. Despite failing to break 40% in a match expert gave it a chance in, Final Fantasy XIV ends up looking relatively good. It looked bad today if you had troubles thinking Mario Kart 8 could really be good, but that ended up changing. According to the x-stats XIV is the strongest Final Fantasy game in the bracket. It’s close enough to be within the uncertainties, but that’s crazy in itself! It’s almost certainly the strongest MMORPG today, after taking a few years to be worth anything and probably using its name a bit to achieve that. ## Safer777's Analysis Seems FF doesn't always wins. Okay it is a MMO and we don't care for these here. Also there are 8 Mario Kart games? Seriously? Damn! I still remember the original myself. So of course after the 1st Round MK8 was the favorite to win. Not that it wasn't the favorite before the contest started anyways. Strange thing is though that the whole Crew had MK winning with under 60. But it did score above 60. So I guess that FF 14 seems to be weak. So for the match. Well MK8 won as expected but high percentage and that we didn't expected. Okay it is freaking Mario but still. Man whatever happened with Final Fantasy? Every game was amazing and everyone like all of them. Now the last great FF game that everyone agrees it is good is FF X which came out in 2001! Seriously! That is the last FF game that the fanbase agrees it is good. Even the latest FF7 remake seems to be controversial at least among the people that have played the original FF7. So damn. Dragon Quest series getting better and better and FF keeps getting mediocre. Plus the prediction was low while everyone on Board 8 got this match right too. ## Tsunami's Analysis "Freaking Mario" strikes again, in an...upset? No, probably not. 41.16% looks like an awfully low percentage until you look back and remember that Mario Kart 8 was only a 56.02% bracket favorite in Round 1 against Uncharted 4. More likely, FFXIV was a decided underdog, but the debate as to who it would be facing made it so that the favorite could merely take a plurality. It still seems strange, though, that a Mario Kart game would be in R3. It shouldn't, though; Super Mario Kart went pretty much dead even with Super Metroid *twice* in the 2009 contest, their second match being decided by 56 votes back in the days where 56 votes meant it was probably undecided going into the final update. I don't even know what to say about this. Was it a good performance for FFXIV? A bad one? I feel like it's a good performance for FFXIV. MMOs have never been terribly popular here (probably; the only major one to get any attention is WoW and that's lolBlizzard) and Square seems to be struggling to gain the voters' love. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8008&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=94) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (11)Rayman Legends 2020 _source: (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (11)Rayman Legends 2020 (revid 86590)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 19, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 95 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 72.69% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 76.10% - **User Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 6471 Rayman Legends - 2438 - **Anonymous Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 6020 Rayman Legends - 2518 I've mentioned this a few times already, but they're called "one point upsets" for a reason. Rayman Legends pulled off a good one over Celeste in round one in one of the contest's best matches, but then round 2 came and it was time to enjoy the, uh.... benefits of making it into round 2. If anyone doubted that Pokemon HeartGold SoulSilver PowerCrystal CourageColor WisdomPrism wasn't a sufficient proxy for the original Pokemon Gold / Silver / Crystal, this match ended all of those doubts real quick. There was absolutely zero chance Rayman was winning this match, and that's okay. His success came in just getting to this point. This was a blowout big enough to raise alarm bells for the potential of Pokemon knocking off the Western heavy hitters later in this bracket, and for those playing the home game, this win meant Resident Evil 2, Persona 4 Golden, and Pokemon HGSS all easily made it into round 3. This added a lot of fuel to those who questioned the eligibility of those games. This also set up a round 3 match against Nier Automata, and apparently the Nier people thought that game had a chance to win that match. Um, have you guys not been looking at these contests or something? ## Ctes's Analysis Pokemon HGSS went through another round looking about as good as it was expected to. Following up on the victories of Resident Evil 2 and Persona 4 Golden, it seemed clear at this point that HGSS would not be a victim of its remake status. Although HGSS is still in another place than the other two. Not being downvoted for being a remake is one thing, but could it act as a proxy of GSC similar to what Persona 4 Golden was doing? It remained to be seen. Everything in its path so far were untested outside of meaningless GotY polls. It would go into its big third round match as the favorite, because most people expected Rayman to be better than Divinity, the latter being one of the games brought up in the debates of what was the weakest game to win a match. It was also rallied ever so slightly, but you had to make some bold assumptions for NieR: Automata to remain the favorite in that match. While things ahead looked to be tougher for HGSS after the first round, despite looking impressive in it, it was certainly the favorite to win now, if it wasn’t already. Rayman Legends get to lose in one the most boring round 2 matches of the contest, but the franchise can look back as this contest happily, as it got its first ever contest victory. ## Safer777's Analysis So a remake of the best Pokemon game ever here. Still I don't understand how this is the only Pokemon game that has entered this contest. Where is Pokemon Go? Pretty sure that Pokemon game was the one that people talked the most in the previous decade. So for the match. Okay obviously HG/SS would win here. RL BARELY won in the first match. Plus I don't think anyone cares for Rayman now. HG/SS score above 70 and that is the only thing that matters. Pretty easy victory and we STILL can't calculate how strong HG/SS is! How so many weak games entered this contest? ## Tsunami's Analysis Since this was an utterly predictable outcome, I'm going to instead use this space to talk about something interesting about all four matches today (also, this was the final day of four matches at once, which should be noted). There were still more registered than unregistered voters today, yet in all four matches, the *loser* got more raw votes from the unregistered voters than from the registered. Were we *finally* being noticed and "anti-voted"? It was hard to say; as Zen's screencapping topic would show, Reddit no longer seemed to have a hold on what would make us angry. Also I needed to mention that registered voters were still the majority on this day because I completely failed to notice that three days earlier, *they weren't*. Witcher 3-Mass Effect 3 was the only one of the four matches that day where both games got more than 50% of their raw votes from unregistered voters, while SMG2 was the only one of the four winners to get over 50% of their raw votes from the registered voters. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8009&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=95) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Divinity: Original Sin II vs (2)NieR: Automata 2020 _source: (7)Divinity: Original Sin II vs (2)NieR: Automata 2020 (revid 86591)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 19, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 96 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** NieR: Automata - 71.99% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** NieR: Automata - 63.27% - **User Votes:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 2653 NieR: Automata - 6254 - **Anonymous Votes:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 2935 NieR: Automata - 5602 This match was hilarious. Not because it was a good or particularly close match or anything, but because Divinity rallied so hard. At the very beginning of the match, it looked like Nier was going to completely and thoroughly torch Divinity off of the map en route to a blowout in excess of 70-30. But after the initial voting, Divinity went and rallied it ass off, and though it made no difference whatsoever in the match, it did matter in the final percentages and extrapolated standings. What likely should have been a 72-28 beating turned into a 69-31 result, which actually kept Hearthstone from being at the bottom of the stats where it belongs. Divinity took its role as Contest Savior so seriously that it actually rallied in this match to keep the opponent it beat from finishing last in the stats! What a man's man! What a bro. Sucks that Hearthstone got to be the beneficiary here, but I see you working there Divinity. Good stuff. This set up what would end up being an incredibly annoying round 3 match between the Pokemon and Nier fanbases, and it ended up being every bit as awful as one might think. We'll get there, don't worry. With this, round 2 was in the books and the contest shifted to two matches per day instead of four. Star of the Round - Shovel Knight. Of all the indie hype in this contest, only Shovel Knight managed to make it to round 3. That deserves Star honors on general principle. Turd of the Round - Lots of, um.... wonderful manure to choose from here. I'm going to give it to Zelda: Link Between Worlds, because we'll never again be able to give a Zelda game Turd of the Round honors. (The actual Turd of the Round is Kingdom Hearts 3.) I only bother with stars and turds for the first two rounds unless something crazy happens, because the field is too weeded out by this point. On to round 3! ## Ctes's Analysis After what seemed to be a very impressive first round result against Bayonetta 2, this match sounded the alarm for the chances of NieR: Automata reaching the division finals. Divinity: Original Sin II was debatably the weakest game to make the second round and NieR was expected to better than this and needed to if it wanted to beat HGSS the following round. Especially considering that being a remake now didn’t seem to be a problem after all despite the contest title. Divinity made a rally attempt during the match. Although it obviously wasn’t very successful, it probably skewed the percentages a little bit. It might have bailed it out in a close match because it clearly brought some votes in, but I don’t think it’s more than 1% or 2% today. I’d imagine people stopped trying rather quickly, because it was so far behind it rightfully seemed impossible. It’s still worth mentioning when discussing how big a chance NieR had in the following match. Looking back, I suppose Divinity is exactly the type of game that we like here. We’ve seen Yakuza and even Ys do surprisingly well. Here’s another RPG and a very successful one on top of that. It seemed bad at the time, but I don’t think NieR looks all that bad here. Its hopes of reaching round 4 was always banking on HGSS being significantly hurt either by being a remake or not being one of the first two generations despite being a remake of the second one. Divinity isn’t fantastic here and it took the right opponent to win a match, but easily doubling it, especially considering the rally, was a fine result. ## Safer777's Analysis So there was a rally in this match in the first 10 minutes that it started on Reddit for DOS 2. But here is the problem. You can't really rally for this game. I mean the game is excellent sure but I don't think it has such a strong fanbase. Plus since the characters are created by you(okay it has some preset characters but nothing major)you can't even connect with the characters even though it is an RPG. The gameplay and the freedom is there though. Pretty sure the only RPG where you can kill EVERYONE and the game will still go on. But even I that I adore this game I would never vote for it against other games that I have played. I just don't know why, it doesn't feel like it. As for NieR Automata...I said some things in my previous analysis, check there. So for the match. Since there was a rally going on for DOS2 it did better than expected so it looked decent here. NieR Automata pretty sure people vote for it for 2B since she is hot. Okay that is only 1 reason actually.The game is damn good and the story makes you think but hey Android Waifus are the best Waifus. Or maybe that is me. Still the game is good. ## Tsunami's Analysis There were some doubts as to whether Divinity was actually decent or if it was just lucky to draw the hated Hearthstone in Round 1. This performance makes it look like...well, like it wasn't overinflated, at any rate. Yes, it did get a fairly lucky draw, but it got a better percentage than Rayman did against Automata's next opponent, and Rayman at least has name recognition. Then again, Pokémon probably has much better name recognition than Nier, so it all balances out. And no, the next round won't count as a Nintendo vs. Square match. Nier, and Drakengard before it, are published by Square Enix, but they aren't really made by them; they're made by a company called Platinum Games. Actually, the series seems to have gone through a bunch of developers; the first three games were made by Cavia, Drakengard 3 was made by Access Games, and Nier: Automata was made by the aforementioned Platinum. Does Breath of the Wild vs. Dragon Quest XI count as Nintendo vs. Square even though it's part of a franchise that began with Enix well before the merger? I feel like technically it does since it's a post-merger game. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8010&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=96) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (5)Final Fantasy XV 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (5)Final Fantasy XV 2020 (revid 86592)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, April 20, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 97 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 20, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 76.97% 49 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 84.65% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 7648 Final Fantasy XV - 1820 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 7129 Final Fantasy XV - 1900 Zelda was dominant in the first two rounds, but it was done against lesser competition that this site wouldn't care about. This is the match where people realized Zelda was on the level with the shit-kicking badasses from the 1990s. Yes, I am aware the game was made in 2017. In terms of contest strength, it might as well be from 1998. We'll talk more about that in the final, but the very short of it is Breath of the Wild had *ridiculous* strength in this contest. There are three contest entrants in our history, and only three, that have managed to break 80% three times in a row: -Link in 2004 (beating CATS, Ganondorf, and Yoshi) -The Legend of Zelda in the series contest (beating Civilization, Mega Man X, and Metroid) -Breath of the Wild in 2020 We've had some good Zelda vs Final Fantasy duels over the years. Breath of the Wild vs Final Fantasy 15 was not one of them. The only "drama" in this match, if you can call it that, was whether or not Breath of the Wild would finish above 80%. There were a few updates, 21 of the 288 to be exact, where it was actually below 80. It did obviously manage to finish above that number and make history, which puts it on par with any character or game with 90s strength. With this one match, Breath of the Wild went from contest favorite to historically dominant badass. I know most blowouts are boring, but watching something be this dominant has a certain car crash quality to it. We're the same people that laughed all day long when Snake SFFd Tanner, after all. At this point, it wasn't whether or not Zelda would win the contest, but by how much. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of the most impressive round 3 performances of all time and one of only three times that something has managed to crack 80% three rounds in a row. To no one’s surprise, the other two times also belong to the same franchise, Link in 2004 and The Legend of Zelda in the series contest. Both times also involved at least one SFF match though, making this one look even more impressive in comparison. Breath of the Wild was completely steamrolling all competition. Despite being the favorite to win the whole contest, it managed to exceed our expectations three rounds in a row. It’s insane. This performance is so dominant that everything in the fourpack Final Fantasy XV won suddenly looks extremely weak. Hollow Knights was thought to be among the best indie games, and it ended up way below the others in contention. Final Fantasy XV ends up significantly below Final Fantasy XIV and while the latter probably isn’t as disliked, it’s still and MMORPG and something not as many has played. Does it really do any better in this match? This looks off to me is what I’m trying to say. Is it really a coincidence that twice in a row we’ve seen the worst game of a round in x-stats being the game that faced Breath of the Wild? Is it possible that Breath of the Wild used forced voting and the title of contest to overperform these first three rounds? No one has respect for The Outer Worlds, Halo: Reach or Final Fantasy XV when it comes to what Game of the Decade is. Dragon Quest does have a more dedicated fanbase than that. I also thought that maybe, just maybe, there actually is some SFF here after all? It’s a stretch perhaps, but both franchises are historically very big and very exposed on this site. Usually, we’re split on them, but everyone played them. This decade, there has been absolutely no doubt about which one is better. Breath of the Wild might have a vocal group not liking it, but FFXV certainly does too. SFF might not be the right term, but I think something caused Breath of the Wild to look better than it usually would today. There has not been a single contest on this site, that didn’t involve The Legend of Zelda vs. Final Fantasy in some way. 2013 came close with Draven and all the Pokemon wrecking the bracket, but Sephiroth still got to face Midna and Vivi got to face Ganondorf. This contest obviously made it statistically more unlike with less entrants, but it’s not like it was only because of that. Not that it was the only match, but Link against Cloud was the obvious final match for many contests, although it became less and less debatable over time. These two franchises against each other have been a defining part of our contests and our site. Now look at what it has become. Final Fantasy XV is below the fodder line. It’s crazy how uneven it is today. Of course, Ocarina of Time vs. Final Fantasy VII would not be this big of a blowout at all, but it’s still a bit crazy to think about. One of them still has the quality of the 90s. The other one doesn’t. Ironically, the Final Fantasy game we’ve been the most positive towards in a long time is a remake of the most popular one. Final Fantasy is in modern gaming no longer a big name. FFXV wouldn’t be in this match if it didn’t have the franchise name to ride on. It almost didn’t make it here already. It’s a shame to see one of the best franchises of all time come to this. Pumping out VII to X in five years is so incomparably impressive and it’s sad to see that it can’t even spit out quality like that once in a decade any longer. ## Safer777's Analysis This percentage is from a Round 3 match. Seriously. Over 80% on a Round 3 match. It has happened before BUT we are talking 3 matches in a row where the same winner has over 80% wins in all of them. I checked some results and seems that only Link in 2004 had 3 matches in a row where he scored above 80, again in 2006 with Zelda series and that basically is. So congrats to BOTW for doing something that has happened only 2 other times ever! And all 3 times it has something to do with Zelda series/characters. Only in this site! And it might even reach over 80% on the Division Final Match! So yeah that is the thing we should keep here! Now we are talking about power! So for the match. Okay the only thing that mattered is how much BOTW would win and yeah NOBODY expected this much! Okay maybe 1 person expected it. Also another thing to hold, this is the WORST 1 VS 1 loss between Zelda characters/games against FF characters/games. So in this contest we have the worst 1 VS 1 loss for a FF game AND for a Zelda game too! Yeah Link Between Worlds lost with 64-36 from a Smash game! At least not even a doubling there, against maybe the 2nd strongest game. But a quadrupling? What happened to Square Enix? Why they can't make Final Fantasy games as they used to be? Now the best you can say about the FF games is that they are competent. Great eh? Also from what I have been informed is we have once again Zelda VS Final Fantasy which has happened in ALL other contests ever made. Even when we had Threeways and Fourways and Battle Royales and Tournament Of Champions we still have Zelda VS Final Fantasy even with the 2 games per series limitations which we had in this contest. This thing has been going on for 18 years. Tradition! So yeah amazing win for BOTW, really bad loss for FF 15. I guess at least a FF game managed to reach Round 3 and that is all the compliments I can give. Man even FF 7 Remake with all the hype would still barely score over 40 on BOTW. Probably at least. If only it had come a few months earlier to test this theory! Well if we ever have another GOTD contest we shall see I guess. ## Tsunami's Analysis Here, have a list. [ ](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/988-north-division-semifinals-mario-vs-donkey-kong) There you go. That's your full list of 1v1 contest matches in which a character, series, or game got quadrupled in Round 3 or later. Once in Character Battle 1, once in Character Battle 3, once in the Series Contest, and now here. The first three were all Nintendo vs. Nintendo, though, so this stands out even more starkly as a sign of just how far Final Fantasy has fallen. What an absolute embarrassment. Yes, Breath of the Wild was well-received even by Zelda game standards, but how can the juggernaut that Final Fantasy once was have been reduced to *this?* ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8011&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=97) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 _source: (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 (revid 86593)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, April 20, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 98 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 20, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dragon Quest XI - 57.79% 46 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dragon Quest XI - 24.69% - **User Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 4340 Dragon Quest XI - 5129 - **Anonymous Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 4387 Dragon Quest XI - 4641 This match was the culmination of the entire debate over whether or not the winner of Monster Hunter's fourpack could beat Dragon Quest and make the finals of Division 1. I know the people reading this in a few years will think it's insane any of us ever thought Dragon Quest 11 could lose in this spot, but there are a few things to remember for those of us who were here live. First off, before this contest Dragon Quest had only ever been in three contests. In the series contest, Dragon Warrior got flattened in round one. In 2009, Dragon Warrior 3 got flattened in round one. In 2015, Dragon Quest 8 was up against Persona 3 in an 8/9 match, and 85% of the board thought Persona 3 would win that match. Dragon Quest 8 won, and then in round 2 Chrono Trigger completely flattened it. So we hadn't ever seen Dragon Quest show *any* contest strength. It was perfectly reasonable to think Monster Hunter: World or Sekiro could beat Dragon Quest 11 here. Not only was Monster Hunter a part of the big Capcom resurgence, but a lot of people thought Sekiro would ride the Souls train to big contest heights. When the match began, it was clear Dragon Quest 11 was a *very* legitimate game in these contests. It had almost 60% of the vote early, and though it spent the rest of the match bleeding percentage, Dragon Quest 11 was never in any danger of losing. This match was the quintessential example of a wrestling match where both guys come out looking like roses. Dragon Quest 11 easily won the match, but Monster Hunter: World looked very, very good in losing this match. Whether you supported Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, or Sekiro, you could watch this match and feel good about your decision. Obviously Dragon Quest would get flattened by Zelda next round, but it was nice to see one of gaming's most important series finally make a contest run. The only small point of debate at this point is whether or not the Monster Hunter fourpack was weak, which is impossible to tell by a close loss, but we would get our answer next round. ## Ctes's Analysis For a game that was a lock to reach the division finals in the eyes of many of us, Dragon Quest XI had a small scare today. The match was not actually all that close, but Monster Hunter made a solid rally attempt and cut off a great deal of percentage from Dragon Quest. At the same time, it made all of itself, Sekiro, Bravely Default and Ni no Kuni look better than expected, which is hilarious when you consider the early debates of what was good and bad in those matches. Dragon Quest XI would end up doing a lot better on Breath of the Wild than Final Fantasy XV did, making them all look even better, as they would all finish ahead of everything in the top half of the division except of course Breath of the Wild itself. The match was as mentioned never close. DQXI looked safe right away and quickly had a lead of a few 100 votes, which basically means match over these days, but after a short while, the rallies of Monster Hunter: World significantly halted the increase of DQXI’s lead and made a good many cuts along the way before DQXI could start increasing easily again in the latter parts of the match. While a simple match that was easy to predict, it’s also a good time to appreciate the growth in two franchises that are currently at an all-time peak after being around for many years. Dragon Quest has been around a good deal longer than Monster Hunter, but the sixteen years Monster Hunter has is a lot too! Dragon Quest VIII winning a match in 2015 is the only time any of them ever had a victory before. Now they came into a contest seeded \#2 and \#3 and living up to those seeds! ## Safer777's Analysis So while we had a massacre on the previous match, we had a close match here. These are the matches that are nice to see. However almost everyone was with DQ 11 here to win, even the whole Crew went with it. The reason is that MHW had 2 close victories but against weak opponents and DQ had 2 big wins but against weak opponents too. But everyone agrees that MHW faced somewhat weaker opponents that DQ 11 faced so we all thought it would be close and it was somewhat. For me any match that is under 53-47 is close and that match was barely like that. So yeah DQ 11 was never in fear of losing. So for the match. DQ 11 started at the 5 minute mark with 59 actually and it fell to even 52.7 at once but yeah no problems. It was the favorite of the board and the Gurus to reach the division finals but it seems casuals picked something else since the prediction percentage was damn low. So yeah once again DQ 11 reaching the division finals. I mean it is amazing because we have seen a DQ game on 2006 which lost in Round 1, once again in 2009 which lost in Round 1 too, again in 2010 which you guessed it! it lost in Round 1 again and in 2015 which BARELY won the first round match and it lost in Round 2 easily. So yeah huge thing that a DQ game managed to reach a division finals! And everyone agrees that DQ11 is the best DQ of them all. The series keep evolving. Unlike another RPG series that is from the same company and keep getting worse and worse. ## Tsunami's Analysis It didn't look like it'd be getting any more palatable for Breath of the Wild's detractors in Round 4, either. This very site, despite being generally quite knowledgeable about video games, frequently mistakes Monster Hunter for a WRPG, which should tell you just how obscure it is since it's actually created by one of the "Big Five" (you know, the five companies with a Noble Niner to their credit), namely Capcom. Dragon Quest was always well behind Final Fantasy in popularity here in the United States, but it's still a well-known and well-respected franchise. Only getting 53.27% on Monster Hunter: World is, quite frankly, absolutely pitiful. It's not like vote totals had dropped, either, though it'd be easy to be apathetic about this day. Seems strange to think that Nintendo's more dominant than they've ever been, but at least on this site, that seems to be the case. The rest of the Japanese contingent, or at least its old guard, are just struggling to stay relevant. ...wait, ***what?!*** 68 Dragon Quest XI 5580 64.99% 98 Dragon Quest XI 2120 24.69% This was the stealth "ha-ha casuals" moment. I almost didn't even bother checking prediction percentage because DQXI's path had seemed so set in stone. Over 40% of brackets had MH:W/Sekiro/BD:FF/Ni No Kuni beating DQXI? And MH:W was above 50% in prediction percentage in Round 2, so that's clearly largely on it. I'd honestly have been less surprised by that low prediction percentage if its R2 prediction percentage had been lower, because Walking Dead seemed like a casualbait pick, but that's as clear as day: more people picked DQXI to lose in R3 than to lose in R1 and R2 combined. Gurus, meanwhile, had an 81.69% prediction percentage on this match. It's good to know we can still embarrass the casuals once in a while, and it helps make this result make more sense; Monster Hunter: World was most likely the favorite. DQXI's R3 prediction percentage was just 38% of its R2 percentage, so flip that around to 62%, multiply by MH:W's R2 prediction percentage, and you get a rough estimate of 33.16%. There's no better way unless Allen were to actually release the pick data for all matches rather than just the percentage correct, so that's all I can do. Project. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8012&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=98) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (4)Horizon Zero Dawn 2020 _source: (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (4)Horizon Zero Dawn 2020 (revid 86594)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, April 21, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 99 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 58.29% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 37.49% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 5109 Horizon Zero Dawn - 3963 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 4563 Horizon Zero Dawn - 4114 Was Mass Effect 2 weaker than expected, or was Horizon Zero Dawn far more legit than expected? Yes. Both things are true. I have no doubts whatsoever that an entire series gets punished, even if only a little bit, when the parent company goes south. Mass Effect 2 probably did suffer a percentage loss across the board thanks to people not liking Mass Effect 3's ending or Andromeda. I think this had more to do with Horizon being legit though. Most people thought Borderlands 2 would be the second game in this match, but Horizon Zero Dawn gave us a good bit of justice instead. The sequel to that performance was this match, where even in losing Horizon looked incredible. Mass Effect 2 is a wonderful game and Board 8 loves it and no one denies this. No arguments here. But if you haven't played Horizon yet, I hope this contest clued you in to give it a shot. It's an open world action RPG where you run around shooting robot dinosaurs. You can't get much cooler than that, my friends. I dare say if you liked Mass Effect 2, Horizon is right up your alley. Us fans don't always hype this game up for no reason. It's really good, please play it! Unfortunately, 127 of the 128 games in this contest went out on a loss, so everyone had to bow out eventually. Horizon getting 45% on Mass Effect 2, the prohibitive division favorite and a game truly deserving of the title of "Game of the Decade", on its way out was another proud papa moment. It was another data point for those who believed Mass Effect 2 was primed to be upset in this contest, too. It was also more proof of how *stacked* 2017 was. Presented without comment so as not to step on the toes of Wall's project: His writeup on that year will be far, far better than anything I could ever come up with. And 2017 deserved every single little bit of the love Board 8 gave it during this contest. I don't quite think we understood how stacked that year was pre-contest, but man did we learn it as things played out. ## Ctes's Analysis Another round of Mass Effect 2 easily getting the job done despite being the second most shaky \#1 seed, ahead of only Grand Theft Auto V. Mass Effect 2 began the contest looking terrible against Resident Evil 7, then beat up Fallout 4 by a lot more in a match that had people worry and finally easily takes care of underrated game Horizon Zero Dawn and manages to go into the division finals as the favorite despite everything that happened so far. The final percentages here are misleading too. Mass Effect 2 was looking to finish above 58% before all the Bloodborne rallies started to come and significantly favor Horizon. Horizon Zero Dawn still had a really nice contest run that gave it some deserved attention. It came out a few days before Breath of the Wild and was vastly overshadowed. We’ve talked about many times how 2017 was the year of the decade by a significant margin. Tons of franchises had their biggest game in a long time that year. Horizon, being a new IP, and being a pretty good game but nothing groundbreaking, stood very little chance against all that. In its GotY poll here, it did manage to easily beat NieR: Automata for second best PS4 game behind Persona 5, an impressive showing. Since then, Aloy got into the previous character battle as a high seed but lost to a character from Overwatch, and the game has been talked little about. It was however remembered fondly, it would seem. It had its issues, people preferred the backstory parts to the present story and its open world mechanics were deemed inferior to many other games coming out at the time, but I’m glad it doesn’t mean the game can still be enjoyed. In a Game of the Decade setting, we talk a lot about the most influential and revolutionary games. We talk a lot about what games started certain gaming trends or did them best. Sometimes something comes out that does neither of that but it still very enjoyable. That makes it easier to forgot, especially if it’s something that had no pre-existing fanbase, but it does not mean the game should be disliked. Horizon is a perfect example of such a game. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous results there was some fear but still everyone picked ME 2 to win here even though with less percentage that expected but still. So ME 2 did won BUT there was a rally for the other match that I will discuss in the other match. Without the rally ME 2 probably wins with like 58 which was what I expected too. So for the match. Well ME 2 did win as everyone predicted but because the rally strangely enough favored HZD more it did score more than expected. Still I didn't even expected for HZD to do that good. It is an exclusive and it is an open world game like so many that we have seen. Plus no sequels so it isn't even a franchise. As for ME 2 maybe the best space game of all time. Single player at least. The game is excellent. HOWEVER my self I like ME 3 slightlly more because of the multiplayer. So many hours and so many friends I made there! Fun times. Still all went as expected. ## Tsunami's Analysis And suddenly, Fortnite's blowout loss looks decent. Last round, I said that based on the 2015 X-Stats, HZD beat Borderlands 2 convincingly enough that it theoretically had a chance against ME2, but I figured I was just illustrating how far Borderlands 2 had fallen (and yes, ME2-BL2 is a "legitimate" comparison because they were both in SMRPG's quarter, which means they can be compared to each other without having to account for Melee's rallying, Undertale's rallying, or OoT SFF-stomping ALttP). I didn't think Horizon Zero Dawn would actually put up this good a fight! This was, of course, good news for Skyrim, because we weren't questioning the idea that BL2 would have fallen and as such, ME2's poor percentage suggests that it, too, has fallen, which would then suggest that Witcher 3's blowout of ME3 isn't as impressive as it first looked. On the other hand, "as impressive as it first looked" would've put Witcher 3 potentially on BotW's level, at least until it broke 80% on a main line Final Fantasy in round 3. So this was far from a done deal. ...Goddamnit Allen you've got some explaining to do. As per usual, since I'm not familiar with a lot of these games, I looked up HZD to see how it managed to do so well. Sure enough, it was not the genre I expected it to be based on its name. It is, in fact, yet another of these ARPG's that are lighting up the bracket, and not a military game like it sounds like it ought to be. Which was fine, until I noticed that *that's* the game that...wait...never mind, that was an Overwatch character that HZD's main character lost to in R1 in 2018, not a Fortnite character. I thought Allen was getting cutesy again, like when he had Ninja Gaiden take on Halo in the first GotD after Ryu H's upset of Chief the previous winter. But I got my casualbait games confused. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8013&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=99) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (2)Bloodborne 2020 _source: (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (2)Bloodborne 2020 (revid 86595)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, April 21, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 100 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 2 - 52.27% 39 for - 13 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 2 - 32.58% - **User Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 4699 Bloodborne - 4374 - **Anonymous Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 4051 Bloodborne - 4619 What a match to have for the contest's 100th match, eh? This was by far the best match of this entire contest. It had everything. High stakes, lots of hype leading up to the poll, a ton of controversy, a bunch of trolls trolling each other, a bunch of whining, a bunch of rallying, and some far-reaching consequences. It's also the easiest photo finish match to analyze in the history of these contests. Resident Evil 2 won because the mods on r/Bloodborne mysteriously and inexplicably disallowed rallies midway through the poll. Had those rally threads been allowed for the entire match, Bloodborne wins by around 1000 votes. Maybe more. Had those rally threads never happened, Resident Evil 2 wins this match by about the same amount. That was the singular and obvious deciding factor here. Read on if you want the juice, but that's really all you need to know. In the leadup, Resident Evil 2 wasn't tested much. It easily beat some anime VN thing in round one, and easily beat Doom 2016 in round two. It was clear RE2 meant business in this contest, and had a boost from a mid-contest series release at its back. Bloodborne's path, while similarly easy, was a bit different. It had a simple 2-15 match in round one, and easily beat Fire Emblem Awakening in round two. But during that Awakening match, rallies took hold on the Bloodborne subreddit for some inexplicable reason, allowing it to beat Fire Emblem easier than it perhaps deserved to. On both sides, everyone figured the match would be close and everyone figured rallies would play a part. Everyone was definitely right on all points, and we were in for one hell of a match here when the poll finally decided to start. Of course a match like this would start **two hours late**, because what's a classic match without a dumb controversy thrown in? What the hell? There was apparently a site glitch with a site update paired with the contest switching from four matches per day to two, and it caused the poll not to start. Amazing. When this thing was being delayed, most of us figured it would be delayed for 24 hours. Nope! The poll started just after 10 PM EST, and... inexplicably kept going. No delay, no announcement, nothing. Seriously, Allen? You did a good job in this contest, but you massively botched this match. To put in perspective how stupid it was to just not delay the poll by a full 24 hours, we hadn't had a 2+ hour delay to start a contest poll since Sonic vs Samus all the way back in 2002 -- 18 years ago! Largely because of that match and a few other controversial matches with much smaller delays, the poll start times were automated. Any glitches since then, such as in 2004 when Jill Valentine versus Ryu Hayabusa got taken over by CATS, resulted in full 24 hour delays. But no delay here, for some reason. This delay also affected Mass Effect 2 versus Horizon Zero Dawn, but it didn't affect that match so who cares. Some people might say this match result is tainted, much like how people to this day do not feel the Sonic/Samus 2002 match was legitimate. I don't personally think it's a tainted result, but it was still *very* dumb not to delay it. When the poll got going and some trends materialized, Bloodborne got some early bracket votes, and then Resident Evil 2 started wresting control after the initial freeze. After a small bit of Bloodborne resistance, Resident Evil 2 started climbing overnight. There were some stalls and cuts here and there, but overall Resident Evil 2 had clear control of the match and was climbing fairly easily. It won the evening, it won the midnight hours, and then as the overnight vote started.... the match hit a stall point. Europe is apparently not a fan of Resident Evil 2, so things stayed deadlocked until around 4 am. America voted for Resident Evil 2, and Europe was voting Bloodborne. Things stayed in the 350 range for awhile, with Resident Evil 2's lead peaking at 400. And then it happened. r/Bloodborne had a very widely seen rally thread go up, and Bloodborne was off to the races. It was the most obvious and effective rally in this entire contest outside of the ending of Shovel Knight vs Octopath Traveler. That 400 vote lead that Resident Evil 2 had? Gone by 6 am, and Bloodborne just ran right past it en route to taking full control of this match. Had things continued like this, Bloodborne would have easily won. It was *flying* in this poll, and there was a vote swing of almost 600 votes in about 4 hours during the dead zone. This match was as over as over could be, and then..... poof. Gone. Just as quickly as the rally happened, the mods on the sub inexplicably deleted the threads and banned them for the rest of the match. Resident Evil 2, seeing an opportunity to turn things around, quickly pounced. Bloodborne had a ton of momentum and a lead near 200 votes, and though some word of mouth would remain for Bloodborne for the rest of the poll, it was nothing compared to a dedicated rally thread being there. This allowed Resident Evil 2 to come back, and come back it did. For the next few hours in the morning, Resident Evil 2 went through the painstaking process of erasing Bloodborne's 200 vote lead, and tied it at around 10 am. This trend favored Resident Evil 2, right? ...nope! When people think of insane stalls and ties in contest matches, this is the gold standard that everyone cites: For about 12 hours starting at 8 am, that match was *agonizing* to watch. That magic will never, ever be repeated. The stakes were insane, the match was insane, the hype was insane, and on top of all that, you had two titans in pure deadlock for half the match with live updating going on. On top of *that*, Chrono Trigger didn't get buried by the day vote against a Zelda game. Ultimately, the night vote showed up to end that match. The stall was great, but once Chrono Trigger took the lead at night, we kind of figured the match was over. Resident Evil 2 and Bloodborne, thanks to the final ten hours of this poll, belong in any discussion among all-time classic matches in these contests. At 9:40 AM EST, Bloodborne had a 9 vote lead. This match stayed completely and thoroughly tied, with some small blips, for the next **ten hours**. When it looked like Resident Evil 2 might finally make a push to build s lead, Bloodborne smacked it down. When it looked like Bloodborne might finally take a lead, Resident Evil 2 smacked it down. It was a joy to watch it all unfold, though I will say that in spots like this during contests, there's usually one entrant that looks better while the other is holding on for dear life. Bloodborne was definitely the one holding on for dear life here, because almost every push to actually take a lead was going RE2's way. That is, until the final two hours. It was here where Bloodborne, not Resident Evil, kept trying to build a lead and Resident Evil was holding on for dear life. It just kept going like this, update after update, hour after hour, until everyone looked up and went oh crap, we only have two hours left! As things started to wind down, it looked like Bloodborne was going to take this thing. It built a lead of 30, which seemed insurmountable, but RE2 fought back yet again. Things were tied yet again with less than an hour left, and Bloodborne yet again tried to win this match. It built up a lead of 26 with only 30 minutes left, and given the trends of the match, it really did seem like this was all she wrote. But then Resident Evil 2 knocked the lead down to 10 with 30 minutes left, and it was anyone's game from here. This is when Moonroof clutched up and handed Resident Evil 2 this win on a silver platter. In matches like this, Board 8 usually decides the winner. It is *very* rare in a photo finish for the Board 8 favorite to lose the match anymore, and Resident Evil 2 is clearly who the board was pulling for. Someone or someones was eventually going to step up, and that guy was Moonroof. He made a post in the stats topic about having about 70 votes ready to go for Resident Evil 2, and though people in there mocked the guy for making this claim, there's an old saying. Show me the receipts. Well I saw the receipts with my own two eyeballs. Hate on Moonroof all you want, but he is 100% legit on this. He had the receipts, I saw them myself, he delivered around 70 perfectly legal and legitimate votes, and as the match flopped over the finish line with two exhausted competitors, it was RE2 that came out on top and saved a whooooooole lot of our brackets. On a personal level, Bloodborne is my favorite game in this bracket and seeing it lose like this was just *brutal* to watch. But my bracket had Resident Evil 2 in it, and we've all gone with bracket over favorite in matches like this before. It was nothing compared to me having to cheer for Metal Gear Solid to beat Final Fantasy Tactics, of all things, but it was similar. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's start with the easy stuff. Rallies decided this match. That is not in debate. I covered that at the beginning. Moonroof is legit. If you don't like the guy, that's on you. Too bad. Even without him, I think Board 8 would have boosted RE2 to the finish in other ways. There were just too many people pulling for it here. The two hour delay combined with the rallies and the stalls gave us a weird 2020 baby version of Sonic vs Samus 2002 crossed with Chrono Trigger vs Link to the Past 2004. If our vote totals stay where they are, this is the best type of match we can hope for moving forward. I know some of you treated this match like watching your own open heart surgery and you had zero fun with it whatsoever, but in time you'll come to appreciate just how great this match truly was. And if you were cheering for Resident Evil 2, all the better! The contest did not stop here however, and the show must go on. Resident Evil 2 was now firmly the main contest bandwagon, and with Mass Effect 2 looking ripe to get beat and secondary bracket entries just around the corner, Resident Evil 2 \> Mass Effect 2 was a juicy, juicy upset special. I know I took it in the oracle bracket, and I regret absolutely nothing. As for Bloodborne, I don't think this match means this is the last we'll ever see of it. It put on one hell of a show here, and remember, five years ago it lost to Final Fantasy 12: That is a real poll that actually happened, and it gets more ridiculous every time I look at it. Bloodborne went from that to coming one rally away from beating Resident Evil 2 when RE3's remake came out mid-contest. This is the kind of match where it sucks that someone had to lose, but if you're going to go out, you might as go out in style. Bloodborne will be back I think, and hopefully when it does, it will be boosted by a sequel. Hey From Software, we want Bloodborne 2. Get on it, guys. In conclusion, it was nice feeling like we were back in the early 2000s again. Shout out to Resident Evil 2 and Bloodborne for giving of the match of the contest! It was all downhill from here. We had some good matches in the closing stretch, but nothing like this at all. Hopefully those of you who weren't here back in the day looked at this match and appreciated what we used to have. Contests used to *all* be exactly like this. Enjoy it when you can, my friends. ## Ctes's Analysis Today was a very hyped match, because while Resident Evil 2 was the clear favorite before the contest began, Bloodborne had showed itself capable of successfully rallying, even while being in front, and that made a good amount of people take Bloodborne instead. The match would end up being the most memorable match in the contest because it had everything. Resident Evil 2 won in the end, giving us the division final we expected, but Bloodborne sure made it seem like there was no nope at time. Everyone was ready to cast in their votes when the match came up, but once the clock hit the matches didn’t change. This technically affected four matches. The division 1 ones were running late and there was another match also being delayed, but none of those results were affected by this at all and probably ended almost the exact the same way. The division 1 ones in particular, since they weren’t on the front page anymore. This one however became very controversial because of it. Everyone was looking intensely at the match in the beginning, but we quickly paid less attention as it became clear it wasn’t just a small delay. After a while, people expected it to simply not start for another day. Two hours passed without the polls going up, as it broke the record Sonic vs. Samus had all the way back in 2002. Unless the match ended up not being close at all, there was no longer any way this one would feel legit to everyone, and spoilers, it did end up being close as excitement was there down to the final updates. It’s ironic how many of the times we’ve had poll delays, it ends it a wire to wire match. This match was one of only two of the contest to come down to the last seconds, although a third one came close too. Sonic vs. Samus was also incredibly close. Jill Valentine vs. Ryu Hayabusa was eventually reset and was very close both times. Link vs. Draven wasn’t delayed but still had downtime hours and a lot of people believe it flipped the result. Mario vs. Crono was started early and wasn’t ended after 24 hours. If we had the votals we used to have, this one would absolutely go down as an all time classic that we’d be talking about for years to come. It turned out the poll delay was due to a glitch caused by now having two matches a day instead of four. It’s a huge shame, especially because it would hurt our already bad votals for not just this day but also seemingly days to come. It’s what happens. It’s a shame, but it’s fair. The decision to not run the matches the following day and have them run for a full 24 hours is a lot more controversial. It would have been the right thing to do, but I’m sure Allen thought it was an equal disadvantage for both games. Board 8 seemed to think it would harm Resident Evil 2 the most, as it was expected to be able to build a good lead before Bloodborne inevitably rallied and began cutting. It’s tough to call because Bloodborne wasn’t able to put up a thread on time either. The belief that it didn’t change the outcome was naïve though, but I’m thinking Allen hoped it wouldn’t end up as close as it did. No one would have minded if this had happened one of the many days where we had a group of matches that weren’t exciting to follow at all. The easy way out would be to just have a day off, but I suppose Allen wanted everything else to be on schedule. In any case, the match began surprisingly about two hours and ten minutes later than intended. Bloodborne won the board vote in big fashion, which might seem surprising considering Resident Evil 2 is better here than most places and that most of the board had it in their brackets, but it’s likely the delay at work. We didn’t make out as many of the early votes as we usually do and the votals at the freeze were generally lower to confirm this, but the word quickly spread to everyone that stayed around. Bloodborne’s lead wasn’t huge either. It was ahead in the opening minutes and kept it until the freeze, but it was never a lot, and everyone correctly expected Resident Evil 2 to run away with it from there. True enough, the lead change happened at the next update and Resident Evil 2 would slowly build a lead from there. It wasn’t too easy though. While Resident Evil 2 was clearly stronger on natural strength, Bloodborne was already proving itself once more. As much as the board liked to criticize Fire Emblem this contest, Awakening no longer looked so bad. Its possible Bloodborne had some momentum going into the round, but it would have won the previous match regardless, so any bandwagon was probably not there, though it might pick it up if it won today. Fast forward about four hours and Resident Evil 2 has expected its lead to near 400 votes. A good amount that would give it some buffer if the rallied came, but not enough for anyone to feel safe. The biggest lead of the entire match would be a lead of 390 in this time. This was deep into the night hours and Resident Evil 2 suddenly had a tough time extending its lead any further. It seemed to be geography at work. Resident Evil 2 was doing better in the now mostly sleeping North America, while Bloodborne was doing better in Europe. For a while the match stalled around a 350-vote lead for Resident Evil 2. This is when the Bloodborne rallies started mattering. They came late because of the poll delay, but they came, and they started gaining traction now. Bloodborne cut off about 100 votes in an hour and gaining traction at the same time. Things went even faster in the next hour where Bloodborne removed 200 votes instead. With 14 hours to go, Bloodborne was only 47 votes behind and had a super powerful rally behind it. It looked over at this point. People were trying to get similar rallies for Resident Evil 2, but it proved a lot more difficult. Not only could they not gain the same kind of traction, but it seemed like the Resident Evil forums were a lot more split on the match and seemed to like both things. The Bloodborne forums, however, were a lot more passionate about their game and it showed. Two updates later the match had the first tie of the match and the Bloodborne went up. The hour that started with Resident Evil 2 being 47 votes ahead ended with Bloodborne being 176 ahead. A fair share of people stopped paying attention. It seemed like counter-rallying was impossible and that Bloodborne would only extend its lead. We had seen Bloodborne capable of successfully rallying when ahead, so it was expected that it would only keep gaining from here and end up winning the match easily. It was reasonable at this point to think Bloodborne would keep it up, gain momentum, win the division and lose to Breath of the Wild, because there are some things a rally of this caliber can not do. Then the match took a big swing. The Bloodborne subreddit chose to disallow rally threads and removed the successful one that was already there. At least one of the mods there took that decision and that person is the main reason Bloodborne ends up losing. If he had just kept it there a little while longer, it might have ended differently. If he didn’t remove it at all, Bloodborne obviously wins no doubt. Even if they disallowed them moving forward, Mass Effect 2 vs. Bloodborne might have been a really good match, because again, no doubt Bloodborne bandwagons from here if it pulled it off. The fans might very well have found other places to rally in the meantime, because again, they’re very passionate about their game. Those are all what-if things. What happened is that the Bloodborne rallies were removed and Resident Evil 2 was suddenly in the match accord to no doing of its own. Natural trends were in Resident Evil 2’s favor and it started slowly cutting right away as you expect. From one moment to the next, people went from thinking Bloodborne was a lock to win to thinking Resident Evil 2 was a lock to win it. It was a bumpy road down to take the lead, but it was the same thing when it was building a lead early on, so it all seemed fine. Bloodborne would stall or win some updates, but everything was going in the direction Resident Evil 2 wanted. North America was beginning to wake up as well. But Bloodborne was hanging on somehow. Resident Evil 2 removed 100 votes off the lead a lot faster than it neared in on the lead and when it finally got close, Bloodborne didn’t let it happen. Bloodborne was down to a 9-vote lead and everyone expected Resident Evil 2 to take the lead, but it didn’t, instead Bloodborne gained and Resident Evil 2 had to cut some more. Then Bloodborne had a 3-vote lead and the exact same thing happens. Finally, Resident Evil 2 takes the lead with a single vote and extends it to 21 the next update, but Bloodborne still refused to give up. It cut and took the lead again. Resident Evil 2 took it back quickly but couldn’t get anywhere with it and soon we had the second tie of the match before Resident Evil 2 took the lead again with a mere 4 votes. Everyone had so safe in a Resident Evil 2 victory a short while ago, but for whatever reason, it couldn’t run away with the lead like we thought it would. The match was exciting for literally every single remaining update except possibly the last very few. It was worth checking in at any point. For the next five hours, Resident Evil 2 would have the lead at any point, but its lead would never be bigger than 62 at its best point and would be as low as 4 votes. It seemed like everything could happen. It became more and more apparent that Resident Evil 2 would not run away with it, despite all of North America being awake again and despite the rallies being removed. This was a great match in itself but remember that all the controversy of the poll delay was being discussed the whole day too. It gave a crazy and nostalgic feel. One side was arguing that Resident Evil 2 was the one hit by it, because the GameFAQs core favored it and at any time of the matches people were coming in surprised to see the matches actually being up, which suggested that some people never came back to see it. On the other hand, Bloodborne might have teared things apart with its rallies for a longer time if the match wasn’t 2+ hours short of a full 24. With less than three hours to go, Bloodborne took the lead again, it was only by 4 votes, but it really highlighted that it was anyone’s game. There didn’t appear to be any trends to favor either game, we seemingly just had three hours of nail biting ahead of us. Over the first of those three hours, Resident Evil 2 made another attempt to build something, but it didn’t get anywhere, and Bloodborne removed it again. Then the tables turned. For many hours Bloodborne had been the game desperately hanging on, but now it took the lead and actually kept it a bit. Resident Evil 2 was the one desperately hanging on now. Bloodborne couldn’t get anywhere, but when Resident Evil 2 almost had the lead, Bloodborne ran away. This continued for most of the remainder of the match, until the match had its third and final tie with only 25 minutes to go and that’s as much of a photo finish match as you can ask for. The match wasn’t just good on paper either. This was a match where people had stronger feelings than in the other close matches so far. Most people had a clear favorite today. It wasn’t Mario vs. Crono levels of board explosion, we’re probably too old for that now, but it still had FFDragon seemingly needing a Resident Evil 2 victory for mental reasons and it all fueled the atmosphere with excitement. The match would perhaps anti-climactically end with Resident Evil 2 winning by 88 votes, a bigger lead than it had at any point ever since the Bloodborne rallies were active, but I don’t think anyone felt truly safe until it was over. The second to last update had Resident Evil 2 rise from 39 to 59 and I’m sure that basically sealed the deal in the eyes of many, but this match had been so crazy that we needed to look and poll and look at the next matches starting. What happened there in the end then? How did Resident Evil 2 suddenly take it so easily when it couldn’t get anywhere for many hours? It’s not something it seemed like everyone could agree on, but the short answer is most likely that the board favored Resident Evil 2. That absolutely matters in photo finishes like this one. Resident Evil 2 was the game that a majority were ready to go out and rally anybody for. When it’s this close everything matters. People texting their friends to vote and such. It looked like every single vote could make a difference and so such things happened. It’s the best explanation. The 88 votes seem like a lot, but if it enough people were doing it, or if the people doing it was just effective enough, it decided the match. I think Resident Evil 2 having the greater support from the people following the match to the end is what decided things here. The post-match explosion wasn’t very big and it’s a large reason as to why this match doesn’t get close to contending for greatest match ever despite being fantastic. Once it was over, we quickly moved on. The game the board felt should win managed to win. You could argue that Bloodborne was more deserving of a top 16 spot in a Game of the Decade contest. You could argue that it was hurt more by the downtime. You might be right in both cases, but the board was pleased with the victory. In a match without rallies and without downtime, it seemed clear this would have been the result and that means it was pretty widely accepted. I don’t think Resident Evil 2 gained much momentum from winning this match, as Bloodborne likely would have. It would not enter the division finals as the favorite, but most people thought it had a chance of pulling the upset. If there was any doubt prior to this match about whether it was hurt by being a remake, it was perfectly clear now that it wasn’t. It might not win without the remake of Resident Evil 3 releasing mid contest, but for a well-established game and franchise I also think it’s possible it didn’t make a difference. Bloodborne being this legit even without rallies also helped fuel the Dark Souls \> Skyrim upset hype that had been growing throughout the contest. Despite all the controversy in this match, it was a ride, it was enjoyable, and you can hate rallies as much as you like, but we need matches like this every now and then, so let’s enjoy the ones we get, regardless of how things went down and who you rooted for. This rally wasn’t contest breaking and it wouldn’t have changed more than two matches at best if they weren’t removed mid-match. The delay is unfortunate but screw that too. It was part of the reason as to why this match felt so great to follow and reminded us of the days where the contests peaked. ## Safer777's Analysis First things first. This match and the previous match lasted 22 hours only because for the first 2 hours there was a problem with the site and the matches just didn't start. The admin did came and explained what happened but still the previous 2 matches started just fine. So I do wonder what exactly happened. But hey this thing happened so that is I guess. Now the Crew was split too here because not only these 2 games had similar results PLUS Bloodborne had a rally in the previous round even though it didn't really needed it since it would have won anyways. But anyways the winner wouldn't have more than 52 here, that much everyone agreed on it. So for the match. Well as I said after 2 hours the matches finally started BUT a rally was posted on Reddit for Bloodborne. Still even with that RE 2 was winning with more than 52 for a few hours, as most expected from either game anyways. The highest lead that RE 2 had was 390 votes after around 6.5 hours that the match started. But I guess by then the rally really caught on by then and Bloodborne started cutting fast. After about 3.5 hours there was a tie. Then Bloodborne did managed to go ahead. The highest lead that it managed to build was 177. HOWEVER eventually the rally got deleted on the subreddit. Who knows why. So Bloodborne started losing steam. So after about 4 hours RE 2 caught on and eventually pass ahead! For a few hours the maximum lead that RE 2 had was around 60 votes and then Bloodborne started cutting ahead. No rally but I guess enough people caught on by now that they started voting for it anyways. For some hours the games went back and forth and no game could expand its vote lead. I mean the highest from both games was like 25! Yeah damn close! With around 30 minutes to end the match there was like a 10 vote difference only!  So yeah it seems that everything would end on the last update. But then one guy, I think his name was Moonroof said that he had a lot of RE 2 votes to bring in for the last update. Of course nobody believe him. But then in the end RE 2 won with 88 votes! So yeah I guess this guy somehow pulled it off. No cheating, no foul play, everything legit. So without the rally RE 2 wins with around 52 as most expected anyways. Still amazing match. BUT there is a controversy unfortunately. As I said the match got delayed for around 2 hours. So when the winner wins with like 88 votes EVERY vote counts and who knows how these 2 extra hours would affect the match? Still best match of the contest so far. I am amazed that Bloodborne is so strong. A Soulslike game and an exclusive too. RE 2 was lucky that RE 3 had come 2 weeks before the match and the RE hype is still big. So yeah amazing match. And rallies are always good, no matter what people say. Still if that rally hadn't been deleted from Reddit Bloodborne would have won for sure. But as I said once again amazing match. This reminded us of the good old contest days! Bloodborne has come really far from losing to damn FF 12 eh? Yeah Souls game did amazing well in the contest. Hope they continue to do well. ## Tsunami's Analysis What the... It wouldn't be a contest without at least one completely batshit match--the more controversial, the better. In this contest, matches had been starting at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific. When 8 PM rolled around to close out the previous day and put a merciful end to Breath of the Wild's beating of Final Fantasy XV, we got...nothing. Nothing at all. The match didn't start. And didn't start. And didn't start. Finally, a little bit over two hours past the scheduled start time, Allen and crew noticed the issue and fixed it. At 10:11 PM, Bloodborne jumped out to a 10-0 lead, but by the freeze, RE2 had bled the percentage quite a bit, and it would take the lead on the second update. It would stumble a few times during the first hour, but closed out the delayed hour one with a massive win, over half of what its lead already was, to wind up at 152 votes ahead after an hour. It would get that lead to 231 in just another 20 minutes, and by half past midnight, it was up by over 300 and continuing to be the one that would spike a big update every so often. Its lead would peak at 390 at 2:25 AM, but it was still 372 at 4:10, at which point the roof began to fall in. Over the next hour, Bloodborne cut double digits on ten of the twelve updates, with one of the remaining two also being a single-digit cut and the last being only a single-digit win for RE2. The following hour wasn't any better, and it ended with the match being tied at 8 hours in. The momentum would continue, as it took Bloodborne just 40 minutes to build a 179-vote lead of its own, but then support tailed off; that was as high as that lead went. RE2 retook the lead at 5 minutes to 11, by a single vote, then pushed the lead to 21 on the next update, but Bloodborne forced a stop after that, then took most of it back and was back in the lead by 11:20. This didn't last long, with RE2 retaking the lead at 11:30, then seeing the second tie of the match on the 11:50 update. RE2 didn't allow Bloodborne to turn that tie into a lead change, however, winning the next update and pushing its lead out to 55 at 12:25 PM. Bloodborne would halve that lead over the next 45 minutes, but RE2 laughed it off and spiked a 25-vote win at 1:25 to push its lead back to 60. They'd trade some big swings after that, but it was never enough to get Bloodborne into the lead. Until it was; at 5 after 5, with just under 3 hours left in the match (because, yes, Allen had already told us that the delayed start wouldn't affect the end time), Bloodborne retook the lead, by just 4 votes. The next update would be another stall before RE2 retook the lead. This lead would last an hour; at 6:15 PM, the percentages sat at 50-50, but the votes showed a 2-vote lead for Bloodborne. Half an hour passed, and the lead was up to 30; another half hour, and it was down to just 3. The next update went decidedly in Bloodborne's favor, however, expanding the lead to 24, and it would tack on two more on the next one before RE2 turned it around, winning the next two updates by 16 and...10. With just 25 minutes left in the match it was once again tied. But there was no let up from Resident Evil 2; it won all five of those remaining updates, four of them by double digits, to win by 88 votes. Outside rallies? Well, yes, probably, but the other reason why the shortened match time was such an issue was that for the first time this contest, and just the fourth time since we started having the registered user bonus, the loser of the raw votes *won*. Bloodborne had a 568-vote advantage with unregistered users but a 325-vote disadvantage with the registered, and while the math *still *doesn't come out right (28 RE2 votes and 34 Bloodborne votes were not properly doubled, which again tells me that the "registered votes" column is being done automatically and that Allen is manually adjusting to make sure only accounts that were created in the proper time frame get the benefit of doubled votes), it's enough to flip the match. And no, raw votes weren't higher from unregistered voters than registered, either. If there were rallies, the rallied voters were, at the very least, GameFAQs members. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8014&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=100) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (5)Marvel's Spider-Man 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (5)Marvel's Spider-Man 2020 (revid 86596)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, April 22, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 101 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 22, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 69.19% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 52.13% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 6011 Spider-Man - 3248 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 4627 Spider-Man - 3027 Having a day to relax and unwind after the insanity that Bloodborne and Resident Evil 2 gave us was nice. Division 3 is just what the doctor ordered. Smash was guaranteed to beat Spiderman, and Mario Odyssey was guaranteed to beat Shovel Knight. There would be no surprises here; all that mattered was the final percentages. Depending on how you feel about Spiderman's strength, this was either par for the course or a Smash underperformance. We'll get to this more next round, but this was a mixture of Spiderman being stronger than everyone thought and a Smash underperformance. You don't undershoot your oracle consensus by 6% without something weird going on, and I'm of the belief that Smash has gotten to the point where it gets anti-voted. Stingers stole my thunder a bit here, and that's okay, but I truly believe the hardcore Smash nuts are the single worst fanbase in all of entertainment and it's the cause for all these underperformances. I would legitimately and truly rather hang out with *anyone* else, and my biggest regret in my entire gaming life was ever sticking up for these people. I went back and reread some of my old stuff, and the Brawl fans were right. I should have seen it back then. It's not that Brawl is the better game, because it's just not, but Brawl represented the better fanbase. They're actually able to play a Smash game and have fun. Hardcore tourneydouche Smash idiots sucked the fun out of this series a long time ago. To put this in Board 8 terms, Nick is a cool guy that any of us would love to be around. He was on the Brawl side. That should be enough really. Is Smash crazy strong on our site? Of course it is. But there is a growing subset of people who will hate that fanbase and that series for life, and will never vote for it. It's not *all* of the fanbase, but it's enough of them. There are only so many stories like this people can see before they finally say fuck it and sour on these idiots: (not mentioned is the two Bayonetta players being doxxed, harassed, and being sent death threats despite only being teenagers) There are only so many videos like this people can see before they finally bail on taking Smash seriously: There are only so many stinky weirdos with no social skills one can be around before they're done. Did you guys know that these losers tried to get cheering banned at tournaments? You know, like the nutjobs who think clapping should be banned? There was a big movement for it. Did you know these morons once tried claiming Brawl Meta Knight is more broken than Street Fighter 2 Akuma, because "the esteemed Smash community" says so? The word esteemed belongs no where near these people. I could go on with countless examples and talk about this for weeks. Smash started as a fun party game. What it's turned into is anything but, and I have a vicious disgust for people who ruin things I enjoy. If every tourneycrab acted like Stingers, Zero, or Hungrybox it would be one thing. Most act like Inui, and if you play Smash in *any way* other than "OMG GOTTA PREP FOR TOURNAMENTS GUYZZZZ" they have actual manic fits. I don't blame anyone for anti-voting Smash games in these contests. I don't blame anyone for hating its fanbase. I just wish I had seen it sooner. I still love the series to death, but I have to separate the games from the fanbase to enjoy Smash games anymore. You Brawl fans were right all along. ## Ctes's Analysis This match seemed to be the main reason why Super Mario Odyssey \> Super Smash Bros. Ultimate became such a popular upset pick in second chance brackets despite almost everyone picking Ultimate without thinking twice about it beforehand. The reason is that people had such a hard time believing Marvel’s Spider-Man to have any strength, especially after it meant Minecraft would have to have strength itself. Ultimate would go into the division finals as the favorite, by not nearly as big a favorite as it was before the contest began. The popular opinion was that Super Mario Odyssey looked better every single round. Most people knew it wouldn’t come down to that however and it’s probably why Ultimate still remained the favorite. That match would ultimately come down to preferences within the Nintendo fanbase. In the end we also learned Marvel’s Spider-Man is legit! Just like the Batman games. I honestly don’t understand why that was so hard to accept. It was very successful and well-liked. It might not be the favorite games of a lot of people but that doesn’t mean it can’t be strong. It looked good enough in the Game of the Year polls, beating Dragon Quest XI and Red Dead Redemption 2 while losing to God of War. Sure, such a poll is not the best indicator, but a lot of the same people took God of War’s result that year at face value. It might have gotten a 1v1 result, but it’s pretty clear Spider-Man validated what it did then. Unfortunately, it had a very predictable bracket path, but it could have damaged good brackets if placed elsewhere. It’s like that with a lot of games. ## Safer777's Analysis So after an okay match and the best match of the contest we had 2 snoozfests. Oh well. This is bound to happen anywas. In both matches the winner was known for sure and nothing could undo it. Okay except huge rallies but yeah. So for the match. So of course Ultimate won BUT it did worse than expected. Everyone expected at least a doubling but it didn't happen. Ultimate is Top 5 in this contest so it is not that it is not strong or anything. Plus the hype for a Smash game lasts until the next Smash game comes out so yeah. I guess Marvel's Spiderman is stronger than we expected. From what people that have played it say it is actually an amazing Super Hero game. So that is. As I said before in the next Character Contest we need ANY character that has ever appeared in a video game! Spider Man VS Mario! Now that would be fun! ## Tsunami's Analysis After the madness of RE2-Bloodborne, Division 3's pair of obvious outcomes were somewhat of a breather. Both of these matches had over 50% prediction rates, and the fact that they were as low as they were was, quite frankly, pure anti-favoritism at work; just six Gurus out of 142 picked wither one of these games to lose, and none picked both. There was a case to be made that Odyssey had once again outperformed Ultimate, but Shovel Knight, mainstream as it may be, is still an indie game, and Spider-Man is, well, easily one of the three most mainstream superheroes out there. Yes, the recent proliferation of superhero movies and TV shows has brought a number of other heroes into the limelight, but let's be honest, Spidey still probably only trails Batman and Superman for recognizability. Also, as a PS4 exclusive, it's a good candidate for antivoting the Nintendo dominance--and at this point, Nintendo still was perceived as absolutely dominating this bracket, even when it was really just a handful of games (these two plus BotW) and the other Nintendo games still in it largely had soft paths thus far. So it's tough to say which game had the better outing. This was absolutely a good showing by Spider-Man, though. Allow characters originating from other media into CBXI, Allen! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8015&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=101) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Shovel Knight vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 _source: (6)Shovel Knight vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 (revid 86597)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, April 22, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 102 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 22, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Odyssey - 71.50% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Odyssey - 51.49% - **User Votes:** Shovel Knight - 2467 Super Mario Odyssey - 6797 - **Anonymous Votes:** Shovel Knight - 2183 Super Mario Odyssey - 5471 One is an accident, two is a problem, three is a trend. This made three rounds in a row where Super Mario Odyssey looked better than Smash Ultimate. We all knew Shovel Knight was never going to make a match out of this and was simply happy to make it this far, but Mario beat it so badly that there was legitimate cause for concern if you picked Smash Ultimate to win this division. **Round 1** -Smash 83, Tekken 7 17 -Mario 86, Mortal Kombat 11 14 **Round 2** -Smash 64, Link Between Worlds 36 -Mario 71, Devil May Cry 5 29 **Round 3** -Smash 64, Spiderman 36 -Mario 73, Shovel Knight 27 It's almost impossible to look at these results and think Mario wasn't the stronger game, not to mention what happened in the series contest: I guess you could still favor Smash if you take the Zelda result super seriously, and think Tekken 7 is stronger than Mortal Kombat 11, *and* think Spiderman is undervalued. Those are all possible, but I think the explanation for next round is much easier than all that. We should take a second to give Shovel Knight some props instead of mere passing this off as a Cinderella run ending. It was the only indie game to make it into round 3; none of the other 287 indie games in this bracket pulled that off. Mad props to Shovel Knight for making it into the final 32. That is not an easy accomplishment at all. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of the most boring matches in the contest as Super Mario Odyssey was always going to win very easily and the match can’t even be used as a good indicator for anything because of possible overlap between these two games that may or may not be there. Shovel Knight gets the honor of being the only indie game to get this far in the contest, which is something. It’s not necessarily the strongest, most people seem to think that honor goes to Cuphead or Stardew Valley. Shovel Knight would end up below several layers of SFF, so it’s hard to determine. One interesting this about this match is the lack of a rally. Everyone remembers when the creators of Shovel Knight, Yacht Club Games, tweeted about the match against Octopath Traveler making Shovel Knight win a battle of rallies. The comments to that tweet pointed out that Super Mario Odyssey was ahead and correctly recognized that it would be a tough match. Yacht Club Games responded to that saying “We can’t give up! Not even if pitted against our beloved mustachioed main man!”. They made it pretty clear they were going to attempt once more. Did anyone expect it make the match interesting? No, of course not. The gap was way too big and the affect of the tweet had already slowed down a good bit by the end of the previous match despite coming up with an hour to go. I did however expect them to try and cut off a significant chunk of percentage and finished somewhere between 30% and 40%. They seemed dedicated, but nope, they never tweeted about the match. I don’t know if they simply forgot, it would be my best bet. No one cared to remind them because why would we, it wouldn’t matter. Even if it had made no difference, it sure was anticlimactic. ## Safer777's Analysis So in the previous match of Shovel Knight it got a rally litteraly at the last hour of the match and managed to barely win. But against SMO? Yeah no chance. Pretty sure for the Mario fans this is the best Mario Game since Galaxy 2. So yeah. Even it had gotten a rally since the 1st minute it couldn't win except...no, no chance no matter what. So for the match. Of course SMO won easily and it did as expected. Duh. The one thing to notice is that before the contest Ultimate was considered the favorite to beat Odyssey but now Odyssey is the favorite! Hey Mario vs Mario! The match we all want! Also Shovel Knight was the only indie game to reach Round 3. Not even the most popular indie game in the world, Minecraft, managed to do that! ## Tsunami's Analysis After the madness of RE2-Bloodborne, Division 3's pair of obvious outcomes were somewhat of a breather. Both of these matches had over 50% prediction rates, and the fact that they were as low as they were was, quite frankly, pure anti-favoritism at work; just six Gurus out of 142 picked wither one of these games to lose, and none picked both. There was a case to be made that Odyssey had once again outperformed Ultimate, but Shovel Knight, mainstream as it may be, is still an indie game, and Spider-Man is, well, easily one of the three most mainstream superheroes out there. And make no mistake: Shovel Knight *is* mainstream. ZenOfThunder has been keeping a topic screencapping various posts, be they on this board, our associated Discord, or on Reddit (or anywhere else people might talk about the contest, but there haven't been that many of those), and Shovel Knight was a name that came up in replies to rally topics involving completely different games. It's got a hell of a lot of respect. All in all, though, it was tough to tell which game would have the advantage next round, which was really the main story for both of these matches taking place on the same day, which is why I literally copied half of my write-up from the previous match into this one. I initially was planning on just writing a single write-up for the both of them, but I decided that wouldn't be fair to Spider-Man or to Shovel Knight. I feel like the "half a shared write-up" gets the point across well enough, at any rate. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8016&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=102) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (5)Persona 4 Golden 2020 _source: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (5)Persona 4 Golden 2020 (revid 86598)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, April 23, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 103 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 23, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 4 Golden - 48.69% 21 for - 30 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 4 Golden - 14.01% - **User Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 4827 Persona 4 Golden - 4698 - **Anonymous Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 3783 Persona 4 Golden - 4637 This was the first round 3 match featuring a Grand Theft Auto game or character in 17 (!!) years, since way back in 2003 when Tommy Vercetti beat Kite and Donkey Kong before bowing out to Mega Man. In any other contest, round 2 has been the hard cap. GTA has a very dubious contest history on this site, and though it has a massive fanbase, very few people in that fanbase are on this web site. It's an interesting dichotomy that's led to GTA never truly scoring blowouts, but never really getting blown out either, all while occasionally being on the receiving end of some hilarious upsets. Here are the famous ones: Japanese RPGs and anti-voting are the GTA kyptonite, apparently. Oh and while a lot of people won't consider Pokemon RSE over GTA4 an upset, a lot of people were floored that anyone cared about a Pokemon game past generation 2. But leading up to this match, GTA5 just felt different. It's become very clear that on this site, Grand Theft Auto 5 is the one game in that series with true, legitimate strength. Yes it eats anti-votes, but it's still able to buck a lot of the trends that killed GTA in the past. Given Persona 4 Golden is a Vita title that struggled mightily with Red Dead Redemption, it looked as if this year, GTA might *finally* be able to break through the concrete ceiling, break into and through round 3, and maybe even win a division. It was right there for the taking. It's hard to imagine Grand Theft Auto getting a better opportunity than this one, guys, and it *still* didn't happen. I know the final result looks close, but this match was never in doubt at any point. Persona 4 won the board vote, and though it built up a lead extremely slowly with all of the usual bumps, stalls, and minor cuts, Persona 4 was able to take that board vote and methodically march to the finish line with a 600 vote win. There were only two points during the entire match where it looked like Grand Theft Auto 5 might make a game of it. Once was late in the evening when it shaved almost 150 votes off of a 400 vote lead, and the second time was the morning vote. Persona 4 had a lead of just over 600 at the time, and GTA5 managed to shave almost 200 votes away. Under normal circumstances there would be drama there, but this is Grand Theft Auto against a Board 8 darling. Even if this match got super close, there is no chance Board 8 wouldn't have rallied their balls off to hand this win to Persona. The end result was Persona 4 moving on, and Grand Theft Auto having to wait until its next opportunity. Again. But if not now, then when? Barring GTA being handed a laughably weak division intentionally, this was the perfect setup. As it stands, Grand Theft Auto 5 would be the one and only 1 seed to not last until the finals of its own division. For those playing the home game, all three remakes made it into the final 16 of this contest. We can argue about the legitimacy of Resident Evil 2 all day, but no one will ever convince me Persona 4 Golden or Pokemon HGSS should have been in this contest. I'm no GTA fan by any stretch, but Vita games behaving like they have the strength of the original game goes against the spirit of a contest like this. But it is what it is, and this would set up a wonderful match between Persona 4 Golden and Xenoblade Chronicles for the divisional title. "But Ulti, you haven't done the writeup for Xenoblade and Fire Emblem yet. You're kind of spoiling it there, buddy." If anyone at this point of the contest thought Three Houses was beating Xenoblade, they're out of their damn mind. ## Ctes's Analysis This match would be the final match of the contest where the consensus of what game won going into the match would not be the correct one. Grand Theft Auto V was expected to win this match because Red Dead Redemption had almost beaten Persona 4 Golden and GTAV was expected to be better. Others were thinking that they wouldn’t perform too differently indirectly against something like a Persona game and that Persona 4 Golden would win again because of it, but GTAV was the popular pick today. This was the match that decided Last Man Standing after not a single user got anything wrong since Dragon Age dropped the ball. Four users had been competing since then and three of them picked GTAV today. The winner, Agent_M, only survived here because he played it safe for future rounds. The match had some similar trends to the previous edition of Persona 4 Golden takes on a Rockstar game. Persona would win the board vote, but then not really get very far. GTAV actually did better than Red Dead Redemption did at that point, probably because it had more bracket votes. Persona was 45 votes ahead and the freeze and the match stood still for a couple of updates after that, then Persona took off, and it was a good bit faster than it was against Red Dead Redemption, indicating that perhaps GTAV won the board vote, at least relative to the rest of the match. Persona 4 took off a lot faster than the first time once it got going, though GTAV would cut and stall a bit. Once Persona 4 had neared in on about 400 votes, GTAV would make a fine comeback attempt by cutting a bit more than 100 votes off in an hour, but it didn’t go further than that and Persona 4 descended once more. The final attempt from GTAV came when had just passed the 600-vote lead. GTAV would stall for a while and then make a run for it with plenty of time to go. It managed to cut off about 200 votes this time, but it made less and less progress every hour and eventually time was running out and Persona 4 began gaining again and won by almost 600 votes, making GTAV lose by more than Red Dead Redemption did. It was never truly exciting and despite the comeback hours, no one really doubted Persona 4 would win once the match was on. The last round taught us that. If it came down to it, Board 8 would definitely bail out Persona 4 once more. Not many believed it stood a chance in the division finals, though we’d learn it absolutely did. I am not doubting that Persona 4 was stronger in round 3 than round 2. It does not necessarily mean Persona 4 would have lost to GTAV in round 2, but I think a lot of us were too quick to just accept that Red Dead Redemption was the stronger Rockstar game. It had definitely caught a bandwagon in the next round, and I think it begun already here. I’m not saying it’s impossible Red Dead Redemption is the stronger one, but I don’t think their matches against a game that clearly boosted by beating them settles any debate, and there’s just more reason to think GTAV is the stronger game. It’s the bigger franchise even on this site, and it was significantly stronger last time too. We’ll probably never know for sure, because this is the best chance we’ll ever have of two Rockstar games meeting, and hey, this is the furthest a Grand Theft Auto game has ever gone in a contest, although Tommy Vercetti has also managed round 3 before, which was top 16 and not top 32 because of a smaller field. It’s the first \#1 seed to fall and the only one that doesn’t fall to the others, but that hardly makes it a flop in my opinion. GTAV might have been the favorite to the division finals, but that’s because people didn’t expect Persona 4 Golden to be a perfect Persona 4 proxy and thought it would be hurt from being a Vita port of a 2008 game. Beating Cuphead so easily when a lot of people were scared it could drop then was what it needed to do to not embarrass itself relative to the site we’re on. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous P4 match which it barely beat RDR nobody knew what to expect. RDR and GTA are similar series by the same company. Hell everyone is calling RDR series GTA with horses anyways. But neither of these games is well liked here on Gamefaqs. However we all hypothesized that GTA is slightly stronger as a series so yeah tough match to predict. The Crew was split too and nobody had the winner with above 53. Basically anything could happen. A rally could affect everything too. So for the match. Well as you can see once again P4 manages to win barely BUT it did better than it did RDR. Does that mean that in this site RDR series is stronger than GTA series? Well according to the results seems so. But it is like that? I don't think so personally even though the stats say different. GTA 5 still has so many people playing online and RDR 2 is still popular so it is not that we have forgot any games. So why I think so? I just don't know. GTA series is just the archetype for open world games so I just value that above all else. Obviously there were always open world games but GTA 3 made them REALLY popular. Also no rallies and such to make us adjust stats and such. Also P4G the only Vita game to reach the division finals AND the lowest seed of them all too! So damn! Persona series is legit now. That is good. Still GTA 5 is one of the few games that trully deserve the GOTD win. Also I don't mention the user/non users bonuses in any match but here the users voted for GTA 5 much more than they voted P4G which is hilarious for our site! Is GTA 5 that liked here??? Also the prediction percentage was damn low. Makes sense since casuals always back GTA in the contests. If P4G won the division finals it would be one of the lowest prediction percentages ever! ## Tsunami's Analysis If we needed any more proof that "Reddit" is not a single unified entity, this was it. While rally topics for the other match on this day, and just about every other day, were calling us "weebs" for advancing P4G over GTAV, the Persona fanbase was trying to "buttdevastate" us by advancing it. And looking at the numbers...the Persona fanbase had it right! While Golden didn't reprise its feat of having more unregistered voters than registered, it was again really close between the two, while GTAV had a *lot* more support among registered voters than unregistered and actually took the registered voting block by 129 votes--not nearly enough to overcome the *massive* advantage P4G enjoyed with the unregistered voters. Just over 14% of brackets got this right, the second straight round in which more than half the brackets that had advanced it this far had picked against it. If this trend kept up, a P4G win in Round 4 would probably be among the least predicted matches of all time. Oh, and if you're looking for a long blow-by-blow of this match, don't bother. Persona 4 Golden's lead was 386 by quarter past 10--just a few votes shy of the max lead in RE2-Bloodborne, at the time of day that match was having its freeze. GTAV would spike a huge update win not long after that--in fact, it was the largest swing of *any* update, including those early ones that are typically larger due to the higher vote totals--but P4G controlled this match from start to finish. While it didn't challenge the record that it had set the previous round (max lead of 458), it again made the top ten of that list, with its maximum lead at 616. Two consecutive wins in which it never trailed, and the largest lead it had in either match was 616. But would it be able to clutch out another win? Also, this *was* considered an upset with Board 8 as well, no matter how you slice it. 52.11% picked GTAV to win this match to just 32.39% for P4G (although it should be noted that if you take it as "winner of Match 77" vs. "winner of Match 78", this *was* considered a debated match, 54.23% for the former; GTAV was just a far easier pick to reach this point), and the Oracles favored GTAV 30-21. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8017&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=103) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2020 _source: (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2020 (revid 86599)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, April 23, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 104 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 23, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 54.51% 45 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 16.70% - **User Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 5686 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 3859 - **Anonymous Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 5034 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 3388 Xenoblade looked better than Fire Emblem for two rounds straight, and this is the match where it came time for Fire Emblem to get the asswhipping that was clearly coming. A lot of people would end up calling this match an SFF beating, and there may have been some of that, but I think something else was at play here. We've seen the power of anti-voting in contests with vote totals this low. Just ask Draven, Sans, Undertale, Dota 2, Grand Theft Auto, or Master Chief. When that stink is on you, watch out. Fire Emblem, and specifically Fire Emblem: Three Houses, getting added to that list might seem a bit out of place, but remember that the Smash Bros fanbase is largely made up of spoiled, whiny, insufferable idiots who somehow have the money for video games but can't ever afford water, soap, a gym membership, or deodorant. To understand what happened to Fire Emblem here, we have to go back 14 years to May of 2006: In 2006 Sakurai, the creator of Smash Bros, launched the **DOJO**. It was a masterful piece of marketing, and it was used to slowly spoil content and get people worked up into a frenzy for the upcoming Super Smash Bros Brawl. This has continued in Smash games all the way through today, and they've even added DLC characters, season passes, and incredibly well done videos on the internet outside of the **DOJO** environment to keep this hype going to a wide audience. It's worked out beautifully. Smash Ultimate has sold something like 20 million copies, far and away the \#1 fighting game ever. Part of this is due to the incredible hype videos: On top of that, they do a wonderful job with these DLC character videos as well. Even *costumes* have people freaking out: "Ulti, didn't you call Smash people the worst fanbase in entertainment like two writeups ago?" Yes, but there are plenty of good ones left. I specifically mean the losers who are incapable of playing any of those games for fun. Anyway, all of the hype over the past 15 years has helped Smash become what it is today -- with one exception. Fire Emblem. It's been a long-standing belief that there are way, way too many Fire Emblem characters in those games, and that the characters they do pick are always main characters that all get made to play the exact same way. Sword, disjointed hitbox, keep people from getting in, rinse and repeat. It's been the same gameplay for 20 years, and the old joke is that all of the Fire Emblem characters are just different versions of Marth. I wish I could say these people are wrong, but they're completely right on this one. And yet with all of that, *nothing* prepared people for the absolute shitstorm that would come from this video: Smash fans get hyped for ANYTHING, but see how that video has 40% dislikes? These people lost their damn minds over this reveal, so of course Three Houses was going to fold like an accordion the second it faced anything decent. Was this match SFF? Maybe. But there was 100% confirmation of anti-voting going on. Three Houses looked like garbage all contest long, and finally it went up against a game in Xenoblade that could take full advantage. The true shame here is twofold. One, Xenoblade didn't get the credit it deserved here for going on a deep contest run. It was more blame being thrown at Fire Emblem than anything else, which is a shame. Xenoblade deserves to get some love here. And two, Smash Bros aside, Three Houses did absolutely nothing wrong. It's a *wonderful* game, and got such a raw deal here. You take Fire Emblem, a series known for choking as-is, and add anti-votes to the mix? Watch out. This match all but cemented Fire Emblem as Turd of the Contest, and set up an awesome match for the Division 4 final in Persona 4 Golden versus Xenoblade Chronicles. And by the way, I *knew* Three Houses would choke. You can go check my guru bracket. Smash fans were going to bury this game first chance they got. ## Ctes's Analysis Only the people insisting on sticking to their bracket, or the people having a lot of faith in a specific type of Nintendo hierarchy thought Fire Emblem: Three Houses still stood a chance in this match. The board 8 favorite to make top 8 lost big time today and mass eliminated gurus. Despite Xenoblade Chronicles looking vastly superior for two straight rounds, oracles still thought it would win by significantly less. Xenoblade went from just being praised and given a chance to go far to people now supporting the idea of it actually being a top 8 game here and not just being fortunate to get there because of being in an easy division. That claim is also helped by Xenoblade being a board 8 darling, but this really did seem like a performance of that caliber. It’s hard to judge. This match could very easily have some SFF influencing the result, but while we have a lot of data on how some of the biggest Nintendo series, Zelda, Mario, Smash and Metroid, affect each other, we have nothing when it comes to Xenoblade and Fire Emblem. Pokemon seemingly not being hurt by Nintendo SFF as much proves that it’s not necessarily a hierarchy question. The easiest way to compare these two is exactly what made Three Houses the overwhelming board favorite to begin with. Xenoblade and Fire Emblem: Awakening shared an opponent in 2015 and lost by basically the same amount. Three Houses was expected to be a good bit stronger than Awakening as it was the bigger release and the console game. I’m having my doubts about that though. Awakening was a long-awaited breakthrough for the franchise and saved it certain death and it came out in what was arguably the biggest year of the 3DS. Three Houses however did not have that savoir role. Instead it got a villain’s role by providing a character as the final character of the first Smash Ultimate fighters pass which otherwise consisted of only third-party stuff. A blue haired swordsman on top of it. I don’t really think there’s much of a difference in strength between Awakening and Three Houses, and I’m not even sure Three Houses is the stronger one. If you think it is, it’s definitely not a belief you should think is certain. There’s simply a limit of how much I think Xenoblade can have boosted as well. It had its Smash exposure and the definite edition was still on the horizon. Time and a bit more exposure could definitely help the game, I absolutely think it’s stronger and I really love that it is, but there has to be a limit. I believe it had some good opponents in the first three rounds to look good against. It would go to the division finals as the major favorite. Three Houses was probably SFF’d a bit, but most of all we just overestimated it a lot this contest. It’s popular opinion that Fire Emblem is the turd of the contest, but they lost to two of the games that boosted the absolute most between contests and when we look at the end of the contest, Awakening doesn’t look particularly worse and Three Houses just isn’t as much stronger than it as we thought it would be. ## Safer777's Analysis So XC is not only legit but maybe star of the contest. I mean people barely had it reaching Round 3 and now it seems that it will win the whole division. Who could have thought of that? I do wonder why. I know there will be a remake of this game for Switch soon but still this franchise never did any good in contests. But now man it does so well. I don't really know why. Maybe some fans can explain it? On the other hand we have FETH. This game made amazing sales for a FE game, got a character from it in Smash in like 6 months where no other game has done it, DLC is keep coming out, the game is constantly on Top 3 of the Switch board and the hype is still going on strong and people say it is the best FE game of all time too. 3 Routes BUT you don't need DLC to play all of them unlike Fates, all are just in the game and you can play any route when you feel like it! So for the match. XC won easily. So what happened? I don't know. XC even overperform, the crew had it on average 56 and it even managed to score above 60 for a while. So once again I am not sure. FE is really popular now, everyone knows about it. The one thing that I see people say is that it is a SRPG and these never do well against the traditional JRPG's. Could this be it? Maybe? But still so bad? I mean pretty sure before the contest FE3H was the favorite to win the division. So yeah. FE sucked in this contest and it should have done good since as I said the hype is still going on strong. So damn. Well congrats to XC for coming this far and maybe even winning the divsion which barely anybody expected. I mean look at the prediction percentage! Almost similar to the previous match! ## Tsunami's Analysis At 16.7%, the prediction percentage on this match wasn't much better than the previous one, but surprisingly enough for a 1 in 6, it's harder to conclusively call this an upset. Yes, it was less than half its prediction percentage last round, and yes, FE3H had a better R2 prediction percentage to begin with. Xenoblade was *barely* picked to advance to this round by half the voters that picked it in Round 1 at all, so it had a pretty low percentage going in here. Unlike the last match, however, everyone on Board 8 knew going in that their brackets were screwed--Three Heroes had 73.24% of Guru brackets, a far better percentage than GTA V had, but those same 51 Oracles that had ruled 30-21 in favor of GTA V were *45-6*in favor of Xenoblade in this match. The "Nintendo domination" was just a myth. And yes, I know Xenoblade is considered pseudo-Nintendo in its own right. Doesn't matter. Fire Emblem is seemingly Nintendo's biggest rising star right now, but this match showed just how steep a climb it has to make. It should of course be noted that Persona 4 finished ahead of XBC in 2015 straight-up. If you use GTA V's strength as a barometer, the results are even more stark. GTA V outright breaks 60% on Awakening in 2015, and the general consensus after this match was that contrary to our expectations, Three Houses wasn't any stronger than Awakening. If that's the case, Golden's got this in the bag. I'd be a lot happier about this if my bracket wasn't already shot from mistakes elsewhere, because that's one surprise run that I actually called correctly! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8018&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=104) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 2020 (revid 86600)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, April 24, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 105 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 24, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 61.29% 50 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 65.39% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5488 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 3768 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5372 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 3094 ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8019&num=2) \* [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=105) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** For five minutes, this had the potential to be one of the funniest matches of the entire contest. Here was Witcher 3, pasting fools from the west through two rounds, finally going up against a big-name Nintendo title and falling flat on its face. Through the first five minutes of this poll, it was outright tied, and it truly did look like the first two rounds were fool's gold. "Yeah that's cute Geralt, but this is GameFAQs, call me when you show up against Mario or Link." And then the next few updates hit, and it became clear we were dealing with a whole new breed of contest badass. Embarrassing Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Mass Effect 3 is one thing. Embarrassing Mario is something else entirely. In a way, it was almost more impressive for Witcher 3 to finally get punched in the mouth before returning to blowout mode than it would have been for Geralt to just steamroll into the finals. On this site, you don't have your stripes until you beat a major Nintendo contest entrant. For this match to be tied at the freeze and end up a 60-40 blowout was awesome, though it did give some hope that maybe this thing was beatable before the final. Quick note on Galaxy 2 before we move on. The two Mario Galaxy games get hyped up every time they're in a contest, and neither one of them ever *really* comes through in a debated match. Here are some examples: I'd mention the Twilight Princess loss, but I don't recall anyone really saying Galaxy 1 could win that match. The point here is in hearing people talk about these two games, you'd think they were on the level of Mario 64 or better. They *should* be at that upper echelon of Mario games, but they're crippled by the awful motion controls and disorienting perspective. For everything those games do well -- and when they're on, they're both incredible video games -- it can't be overstated just how much people detest motion controls. It's the tragic flaw in two otherwise brilliant games, and we see that play out in these polls. The second either one of those games can fold, they usually do. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of those matches where both games manage to look impressive magically. The Witcher 3 once again proved it was not going to have any trouble anytime soon. A few people feared a Nintendo game would run wild where they were kept out, similar to what Super Mario RPG did in 2015 and Galaxy 2 was an obvious candidate. It didn’t get close. The Witcher 3 showed its mortality, but still broke 60% against a huge fan favorite game that is often depicted as the 3D Mario of best level design. At the same time it was the first time it was down to earth, and it’s probably what kept people believing it could be upset by Persona 5 or Dark Souls, although it was probably more often than not that people just wanted to see it happen. Super Mario Galaxy 2 would need to have boosted since 2015 where it was fine but nothing spectacular, otherwise The Witcher 3 might be in trouble later on. Given how the first two rounds went, no one really doubted both boosted. Ironically it was right next to The Witcher 3 in the x-stats back then, which just proves how much stronger The Witcher 3 has become. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is criminally underrated in its seeding. In pure strength it’s most likely a \#1 seed, the x-stats suggest this, even after adjustments. It’s also even more unfortunate by not being placed in an eight pack it could upset out of. It would scare most \#1 seeds more than this and outright beat some of them. It would beat every single \#2 seed and \#3 seed except most likely fellow Mario game Super Mario Odyssey. Mario’s punishment for once again being set up as a contest villain in 2018 was perhaps the most ridiculously unfair bracket placement of a franchise ever. Regardless of that it makes me happy to see Super Mario Galaxy 2 get the respect it deserves when we look at contest stats in the end. The board seems to feel the same because this match was dead even until the update after the freeze. Although it feels like a late 00s game, it came out in this decade and it’s my favorite Game of the Decade by a decent margin. It perfects 3D platformers and the few games of all time that I believe I like better are all really hard to compare to because they’re so different from it. I could spend a lot of time praising the game, but there’s not much contest analysis in that. ## Safer777's Analysis So the first real match for Witcher 3. The previous 2 opponents were 2 WRPG's which are open world and such so all are kinda similar. But now facing against one of the best Mario games of all time. Much more difficult of course. So people said that anything above 60 would be good to have this game reaching the final round. And guess what, it did score above 60. Barely. So for the match. At the 5 minutes mark the games were TIED! Damn! But Witcher 3 won with like 60! So raising by 10 percent without a rally a gainst a main Mario game has to be some kind of a record! So yeah Witcher 3 is legit. Man imagine the hype when we see the first info for Witcher 4. Yeah they had said back then that they wouldn't make another one, but let us be real, only people who hate money wouldn't do that. So yeah. The Witcher 3 is the open world game that all other open world games compare themselves too. From 2011 to 2015 it was Skyrim, from 2015 it is The Witcher 3. It still hasn't been surpassed. Yeah the game is that good. Just play it if you don't have it. Oh and also NO microtransctions and 2 expansions, 1 of them lasts longer than more modern games. Yeah, imagine that! I guess companies can still do that! Wihout really caring that much about money, and caring most about the players! Greed is bad companies. I know! ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, what do you know. "It's Freaking Mario" still has *some* juice after all. After the godstomping that Witcher 3 put up in Round 2, it looked like it was a near lock to make the Finals, but it's clear that Mass Effect 3 was just horribly overrated. Which, granted, was inevitable given that it was Undertale's R1 opponent, but...okay, let's just try to figure this out. Let's assume that Octopath \> Undertale *wasn't* anti-votes due to what Undertale did in 2015, and it's just that weak. I think I kind of like that better, not because I want it to be weak, but because I'd like to think that it'd be treated more like L-Block than Draven. I know *I* for one am far madder about Draven in 2013 than Undertale in 2015. Undertale's cool; the whole deconstruction of "random encounters are there to level grind on" is pretty awesome. But if you consider Undertale just that weak, it's certainly possible that Mass Effect 3 slaughtering it before the rallies came really wasn't that impressive, especially when you consider that Undertale's natural strength probably would've been even *lower* in 2015 because of how new it was. Yes, games tend to get weaker as they age, but Undertale's an indie game, which means it relies on word of mouth to get noticed and build a fanbase. For a lot of us, the 2015 contest was our first exposure to Undertale. Anyway, this was the match that killed my Guru bracket, because hype backlash. I absolutely loathe SMG2, but it seemed to be fairly well-regarded here, at least in comparison with SMG1 and SMS. So it not being as hated as I'd like it to be tricked my brain into thinking it was really well-loved. Also, this is OldFAQs, so a Wii game seemed like a safe bet, the way an N64 game won the first GotD. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8019&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=105) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (2)God of War 2020 _source: (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (2)God of War 2020 (revid 86601)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, April 24, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 106 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 24, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** God of War - 58.11% 52 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** God of War - 48.88% - **User Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 4108 God of War - 5148 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 3854 God of War - 4616 This is going to be an incredibly biased writeup, but I don't care. God of War 2018 is about Kratos learning to become a good father, when in the entire series leading up to this game he was little more than an angry, mindless killing machine. It's incredible character development, and I can't wait to see more from this series. As a longtime series fan and product of a broken home myself, I found God of War 2018 very, very touching. Why bring this up in round 3 of a contest? Well not long after this contest ended, Shad Gaspard died while swimming. A riptide carried him and his son out to sea, and we later learned that as this happened and a lifeguard showed up, he told the lifeguard to save his son first. Gaspard's body was found on the beach a few days later. Who is Shad Gaspard, you may ask. He's a former pro wrestler, and he was the guy who did the motion capture for Kratos in God of War 2018. Meaning the dude who Kratos is now modeled after died because he was being a great father. I know a lot of people on the internet aren't religious, but God really does work in mysterious ways. You cannot make up a story like this. On a much, much, much less important note, this is the first time anything related to God of War got past round 3 in a contest. Kratos came close in 2007, but L-Block's bandwagon got in the way. New Vegas, you're a fine game and your time may come, but the right game and the right story was told here. No two ways around it, pal, but at least your loss was respectable. This set up a divisional final where God of War had zero chance of winning, and that is perfectly okay. These contests aren't only about winning the entire thing. If some new people check out God of War 2018 because of it making a deep contest run, that's all I can ask for. Seriously, go play this game if you haven't. ## Ctes's Analysis God of War was never going to lose this match, but Fallout: New Vegas wasn’t the worst upset if you were desperate to find one. Fallout is traditionally a stronger series than God of War here. Judging from the Game of the Year polls however, the new God of War would be a good step above the others and it’s not like they were that bad. The first one did reasonably well in the first Game of the Decade. If would go to the division finals looking good enough to challenge a few division winner favorites, but The Witcher 3 had removed all hope of an upset. This would have probably been closer if Bethesda didn’t screw things up so badly in the latter half of the decade. New Vegas is by all means not the game to get screwed the most by that as the game was developed by Bethesda and made by a bunch of the same people working on Fallout 3, the series peak. It does however carry the name of a series that isn’t exactly the most well liked in the eyes of people any longer. Fallout 4 wasn’t too good and Fallout 76 flopped horribly. I don’t think it’s a big enough difference to put God of War in danger, but the board vote indicates that it happened. It’s fun to think about whether or not there’ll be any Fallout in the next Game of the Decade. New Vegas is from 2010 and it’s the last one people truly enjoyed. The series is at a critical point at the moment and I doubt it’s the first thing Bethesda wants to fix. It might just be better to focus on Elder Scrolls and whatever else and new Ips before trying to follow up on Fallout again, if they ever should. Bethesda needs to regain some trust from the people before a new Fallout hits the market. ## Safer777's Analysis So for this match almost everyone had God Of War winning. Even though FNV is the best Fallout game, Fallout 3 is the strongest game. Since Fallout 3 made Fallout series REALLY popular. So the question was how much GOW would score to look good. Everyone agreed above 55. And it did just that. Barely. I think I said the same thing somewhere before too? Yeah. So for the match. So of course GOW won with no troubles but something strange happened. When in the previous match Wither 3 started at 50 and ended at 60, GOW started at 60 and ended at 55. Yeah I don't get it. No rallies and such so I am not sure. Don't get me wrong, GOW did really well here, I just I am not sure why that happened. So next match should be really good I believe. Also FNV is legit too, unlike Fallout 4. Man Fallout 76 really messed up the Fallout series. Also I believe this is the first time ever that something related to God Of War reached a Division Finals. And with a better bracket placement it could win a division too. But against Witcher 3? Yeah no chance. Well still if you haven't played GOW for PS 4 just do it. The game is way too good. ## Tsunami's Analysis Wait, was this an actual Round 3 match that happened? I honestly barely remember this, and the idea of one of these games making Round 4 on GameFAQs seems strange to me. Still, I'm not really surprised that God of War won, because it's entirely in line with the apparent shift in the site's tastes. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8020&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=106) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Persona 5 vs (5)Sonic Mania 2020 _source: (1)Persona 5 vs (5)Sonic Mania 2020 (revid 86602)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, April 25, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 107 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 25, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 5 - 65.16% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 5 - 63.69% - **User Votes:** Persona 5 - 6052 Sonic Mania - 2869 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 5 - 4979 Sonic Mania - 2347 I saw Sonic Mania getting made fun of a lot for eating a turbo blowout in the late rounds, which is just grossly unfair to Persona 5 here. I don't think people quite understand just how crazy strong the Persona series has gotten on this web site, or how rabid that fanbase is. If you skip ahead and look at KP's adjusted stats (https://pastebin.com/Pxt3zA8g), he has the game right at the strength of Dark Souls, and we can all agree Dark Souls made a big leap from 2015 to now. The Persona series has made a much, much bigger leap. I'm going to keep posting this poll to hammer this point home: Pretend that poll happened in this contest, and it was Dead Rising 2 versus Persona 4 Golden. My over-under on the oracle consensus would be Persona 4 with 60-65% of the vote. Maybe higher. This wasn't some LOL SONIC match. This was all Persona flexing some newfound muscle. This contest had a series cap of 2 games. For those playing the home game, only one series in this contest got both of its games into the final 16 -- Persona. It was an eyelash from getting both games into the final 8, too. Persona in this contest accomplished what no other series could. Not Zelda, not Mario, not Dark Souls, none of it. RESPEK THE NAME. ## Ctes's Analysis It was perfectly clear after this match what an awfully weak four-pack Sonic Mania came out of. The game clearly didn’t belong in round 3. It did however serve the purpose of giving people hope that Persona 5 stood a chance to reach the semi-finals, which gave us some more fun in the latter half of the contest. Persona 5 had just the right opponents to look better than it possibly was in round 2 and 3 and it was second place in our GotY polls in 2017 on top of that, where everything looked to be stronger than expected. If its match in the division finals were ever in doubt, it definitely wasn’t any longer. Sonic Mania feels weird, honestly. If it wasn’t a Sonic game, I’m sure a lot of people would praise it a good bit more. It’s a pretty fun game. I like to think of it is an equivalent to if Super Mario’s only good games post the 90s were New Super Mario Bros games. They’d be enjoyed, but Mario overall wouldn’t be the same because the newer games had nothing on the classic ones. Sonic Mania is probably stronger due to its name than it would have been without it. It would need to drop a lot to not reach this point, but I’m sure it performed better because of Sonic still has an iconic status. I think it’s funny to think of what games our Noble Nine comes from and see where they are today, obviously not counting Smash Bros which features seven of them. A lot of them haven’t kept up the level, in fact only two of them has games as good as ever, but unlike most others, Sonic actually had a better Game of the Decade than the previous one where only Sonic Adventure 2 got in and somehow managed to lose to lose to Street Fighter IV. So hey, Sonic actually moves forward! ## Safer777's Analysis This match was pretty easy to predict. Sonic Mania is one of the weakest games to reach Round 3. And Persona series is super legit now as I have said multiple times plus the enhanced version of Persona 5 recently came out, the main character got into Smash, we will have a spin off P5 game too so P5 is still very revelant. So yeah Sonic Mania was lucky to reach that far. Hey at least a Sonic game reached this far! So for the match. So everyone had Persona 5 winning with at least a doubling and guess what. It won with barely a doubling so all are as expected. Also we have 2 Persona games out of 2 Persona games in this contest to reach division finals! The only series to do that in the contest! Not Zelda, not Mario! Damn who could have expected that a few years ago? I still remember in the previous contest 2 years ago when Joker who was a 2 Seed lost to Claire Redfield who was a 15 seed in the first match! If you check my analysis for that contest I and everyone else agreed that Persona was damn weak until then. But now it is really strong. Strange how things work. Even the prediction percentage was huge for P5 for Round 3! ## Tsunami's Analysis Ah, now this is more like the Sonic we know and love. Horribly outmatched against anything with an ounce of strength. Mania is a return to the series' roots and was actually quite well-received by the fanbase that stuck with the series, but the damage has already been done; I'm pretty sure Sonic is an anti-vote magnet now. Which is not to take anything away from the legitimacy of Persona 5's wins; anti-votes alone don't cause doublings unless you were fairly close to able to do that anyway. But yeah, it's hard to have much faith in Sonic for anything anymore. Even the casuals knew it; Persona 5's 63.69% prediction percentage was *fourth* among the sixteen winners in Round 3. Its 95.07% prediction percentage with Gurus was, uh...tied for fifth. With *Skyrim*. I'm happy about this. I haven't played Persona 5, because I so rarely buy new games these days (and have enough of a backlog that I won't run out of new stuff to play any time soon), but I love the Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole and the Persona sub-series sounds like it'd be even further up my alley. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8021&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=107) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal 2 vs (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 2020 _source: (3)Portal 2 vs (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 2020 (revid 86603)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, April 25, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 108 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 25, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal 2 - 54.00% 46 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal 2 - 23.57% - **User Votes:** Portal 2 - 4765 Red Dead Redemption 2 - 4156 - **Anonymous Votes:** Portal 2 - 3925 Red Dead Redemption 2 - 3401 This is the match that knocked me out of the guru, and I truly couldn't care less. A big weakness I've always had is having way too much faith in new stuff in contests, and I figured Red Dead Redemption 2 would have a bunch of crazy strength behind it. Whoops! The final score was very close and respectable, but Portal 2 easily won the match to validate all of the beliefs about its true strength being hidden all these years. Props to those who saw this all coming. There were a few spots in this match where RDR2 was able to make some prolonged stalls, but it never made a push to do much in the way of actually winning this match. With its loss, this meant Rockstar's exit from this contest and the exit of casualbait titles altogether. One day I'll remember to stop having any faith in any of them, regardless of how popular they are off-site. This set up a very interesting match between Portal 2 and Persona 5 for the division title, and with a lack of reliable data on either it had the potential to be a very unpredictable match. ## Ctes's Analysis In what was a pretty good division half, Portal 2 managed to come out on top. Every match had the guru favorite winning, but you could make a decent argument for every game that won round 1 getting to the division finals. Portal was favored by only 50% of people, which is the most, but not that great in a chalky cookie cutter bracket like this one. Portal 2 is one of the leftover games of the previous decade. It was released in 2011 of course, but I mean that if you tried to group games together by era, Portal 2 belongs with its predecessor in the previous decade. Portal not being very relevant any longer is one of the main reasons why as many people hesitated to pick it here. There was fine reason to think it was not at peak strength any longer. The Portal games’ performances in 2015 looked weaker than how the first one had performed previously and GLaDOS looked a good bit weaker in 2018 compared to 2013. Then there’s Red Dead Redemption 2, the upset most people went with today and clearly also the best one. The game released to universal appeal in 2018 and the franchise is probably at all time peak. If you look at the 2015 x-stats, the Portal games look no better than Red Dead Redemption. Yes, both Portal games were clouded by rallies from Melee and Undertale, but even so. It was reasonable enough to expect Portal to continue to decline and RDR2 to be stronger than the first one. You only needed one of the things to be a little bit true for the upset to look likely. In fact, I’m sure more people would have picked RDR2 if the match had been more talked about. Most people probably looked at the match and thought it looked like something Portal would win on GameFAQs and didn’t think more about it. The match had a bit of early excitement. Portal 2 had the lead from the start but struggled to run away with it initially. People expected Portal 2 to have the bracket votes and it’s a big deal on board 8. On top of that, Rockstar games tend to not do so well with the board vote. The first Red Dead Redemption and GTAV had both made some decent comeback attempts later in the day, so maybe if RDR2 could keep it close early on, it stood a chance. It turned out Portal actually struggled the most initially and as end of the power hour drew near, it would take off and set the match in stone. I’m guessing Red Dead Redemption actually had the most bracket votes, it’s likely only board 8 Portal 2 was the favorite on and even here it wasn’t by that much. Turns out Portal 2 didn’t really decline or if it did, the Game of the Decade title kept it up again, perhaps even stronger than in 2015. It’s been mentioned in Game of the Decade debates in a lot of places and perhaps that helped it out today. I still believe Red Dead Redemption 2 is stronger than the first game, it makes sense for it to be. The adjusted x-stats kept it below, but I disagree with some of the decisions regarding division 4. I think Xenoblade should have been adjusted down a bit and Persona 4’s rallies and bandwagon effect certainly wasn’t adjusted for as much as I believe it should. I hope and expect to see Red Dead Redemption 2 back again. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match everyone predicted it would be really close. And it was close but not as much as people expected. Still who could have expected Portal 2 of all games to reach a division finals in this site? RDR series is decent here it seems after we saw how both games performed. Both RDR games had close losses too! However pretty sure in every other site RDR 2 beats Portal 2. At least I think so. So for the match. Well the match was close but Portal 2 was never in danger. So what does that say for Portal 2? At least for me it says that we still like this game even though it is 9 years old by now and the Portal series is dead. Yeah imagine you are a company having Portal and Half Life series and doing nothing with them. So yeah a good match even though nothing exciting happened. Funny thing is that in the previous games contest 5 years ago Portal 2 lost in the very first match even though it was the favorite to win too. So yeah. So is the game stronger now? No. I mean why it should be when we had nothing Portal related since then? I guess it was just lucky with the matches. Also I always thought this game was a PC game and then got ported to consoles, but no, it got released in PC and all consoles at the same time. Same with Portal 1 actually! I don't know why, but I always count Portal as a PC series. I guess since Valve makes games for PC mainly I thought that too. So I can't even say a PC series reached the division finals. Still nice match. I mean from losing to Round 1 in the previous contest to reaching the division finals in the next contest without having anything new and no rally is truly glorious. And it even has a shot to win the division too! Of course the prediction Percentage was low since well I guess casuals saw RDR 2 and went with that. ## Tsunami's Analysis If you ever wonder why the leaderboard always seems to be dominated by Gurus, here's why. Portal 2 wasn't the overwhelming groupthink favorite that a lot of games were (fully half the matches in R3 had the favorite holding over *90%* of Guru Brackets), but it was still the clear favorite, with 50% on the dot. Remember, that's as the culmination of an eightpack; 50% is still a pretty good figure. With the casuals, on the other hand, this was an upset. Just 23.57% of brackets got this right, coming off a 50.55% R2 prediction percentage, and the fact that the former figure is less than half the latter is generally the most telling sign that it's an upset. The next factor is to consider what the opponent's prediction percentage was, to see if the true "favorite" had in fact lost earlier. No dice; RDR2 had a 69.82% prediction percentage in R2 (then again, look at the fourpack it was in). That really doesn't leave much room at all for anything else to have been the favorite. So, score one for the Gurus (but not for me because I had KH3 in my bracket and RDR2 in the Oracle. Seriously, where is Portal 2 getting all this strength from all of a sudden?) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8022&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=108) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 2020 (revid 86604)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, April 26, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 109 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 26, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 64.22% 49 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 56.17% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 5533 Metal Gear Solid V - 3135 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 4405 Metal Gear Solid V - 2707 Did you guys know that these two games had a match in round 2 in the 2015 contest? In case you didn't know, don't worry, that poll was posted somewhere between 500 and 176,000 times in the leadup to this match. For a bit of context instead of just directly comparing that match to this one and thinking we were all stupid back in 2015, MGS5 came out in September of 2015 and the Fall 2015 Contest was announced just over a month later. 75% of the gurus picked MGS5 to beat Dark Souls that year, for several reasons. MGS5 was a hot, new release in a series this site loved at the time, and Dark Souls was still relatively brand new. Before the 2015 contest, this was the entirety of what we had to go off of for Souls in contests: That's it. One match. I'm frankly still blown away by how easily Dark Souls won that match in 2015, and I love seeing how far Souls has come since then. That contest, paired with KP constantly telling me to check the games out, is why I finally gave in and played Demon's Souls in 2016. I'm glad I did! I became a huge series fan, and it's more proof that when KP tells you to play something, you fucking go play it. No questions asked. The man's recommendations are peerless. Let's fast forward to now. A lot has changed in gaming since 2015. Konami went all fuck-all on us, and the Souls series, along with Western RPGs, has become *the* defining gaming trend of the decade. In 2015, 75% of gurus picked Metal Gear Solid 5. In 2020, all but one guru picked Dark Souls to win here. The lone holdout didn't even pick MGS5. He picked Rocket League. That's.... pretty good insight into how far Metal Gear Solid has fallen around these parts, actually. This match was never going to be in question. The only thing to know was exactly how far Metal Gear Solid 5 fell. The answer, as we now know, is 8%. That's a pretty crazy drop in only five years, but I think we're all smart enough to know that it's a combination of both the Souls series going up and Metal Gear Solid going down. How much of that 8% gets assigned to either factor is anyone's guess, and I doubt it matters much anyway. Who is their right mind going to pick anything related to Metal Gear Solid in a debated match anymore? ## Ctes's Analysis This match had the honor of being our only repeat of the contest, which does not often happen, but then we had a Game of the Decade contest happening five years after the latest games contest instead of a year later like the first one did. As such it was not exactly exciting. Last time they met, Metal Gear Solid V was the favorite, but Dark Souls managed to pull off the upset in a 55-45 match. No one thought Dark Souls could drop it this time. Even if you didn’t think Dark Souls boosted the slightest bit, there was no way Metal Gear Solid V would be even the slightest bit stronger. The best it could hope for was to not drop any further. The difference is almost 8%. I expect most of it to be Dark Souls boosting. The Souldborne games have continued to grow in popularity, and more importantly, we had seen countless times by now that the title of the contest coupled with the forced voting helped certain games and Dark Souls is among the most defining games of the decade. I don’t expect Metal Gear Solid V to drop that much. It might sound weird, but the game was simply not as well received as the others in the franchise at any point. Nothing has actually happened since last games contest. Though it’s hard to imagine Metal Gear Solid V not dropping at least a little bit. Then franchise name helps it a bit, but it should grow weaker as time goes by. I believe what happened with Kojima and Konami especially centering around Metal Gear is among the most unfortunate and frustrating things to happen to the gaming industry. There’s a good chance that all four of the first games would place in my top 20 games of all time. They’re that great. There was plenty of reason to think Kojima could make more Metal Gear masterpieces if all that didn’t happen. Even if they wouldn’t all be A++ games, I hate to think of what could have been. ## Safer777's Analysis So the exact same match happened in the previous contest 5 years ago and DS won with 55 there. And back then MGS 5 had recently come out so yeah no chance here. So of course DS won with an even higher percentage than expected. As I said before people care less and less for MGS series as time moves on. So for the match. Well as I said before the match was pretty easy to predict since MGS series has gotten weaker when DS series has become stronger. Funny thing is that for the fandom of the MGS series they consider MGS 5 at the bottom. I do wonder why. I mean it is the latest game so it has to be good right? Plus strange how in almost all series here in Gamefaqs we usually consider the newer games to be not as good as the previous ones yet we still buy them of course. It does makes sense right? But yeah Souls like games are really popular and the gaming community likes them. So there are a lot of people who are not filthy casuals it seems. Now why MGS series keep falling though? Sure the main guy that made them left but still we are talking about a legendary series with MGS 1 considered a Top Tier PS 1 game and a game that influenced so many other games. In a few years I expect the MGS games to be jobbers then? The prediction percentage was really high too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Dark Souls's prediction percentage of 56.17% feels awfully low here, considering this is a rematch of a match it won fairly comfortably in 2015 and MGSV *was* the favorite to make it this far. Still, I suppose it can't be helped; it was only at 72.23% to win in R2, and MGSV was lower than that. Still, the Oracle predictions are very telling as to what our expectations of these games' trajectories have been. In 2015, Dark Souls beat Metal Gear Solid V with 55.4% of the vote in a match where Oracles were fairly split on who'd even win, favoring Dark Souls a mere 45-42. In 2020, the *lowest* prediction anyone made for Dark Souls was 57.24%, and that person avoided last place because three people picked Dark Souls to break 70%. It's clear that Dark Souls was where it was at. But who would win the Dark Souls-Skyrim and Dark Souls/Skyrim-Witcher 3 matches? Only time would tell (oh, and I guess there was probably still some support for The Last of Us \> Dark Souls, but it was waning quickly.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8023&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=109) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 _source: (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 (revid 86605)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, April 26, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 110 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 26, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Last of Us - 54.08% 46 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Last of Us - 58.13% - **User Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 3873 The Last of Us - 4795 - **Anonymous Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 3195 The Last of Us - 3918 For anyone who still thought The Last of Us had a prayer to beat Dark Souls, this match was a good indicator that it was completely screwed. By now, it was clear that Dark Souls had boosted. The Last of Us, meanwhile, didn't move in strength much if at all between 2015 and 2020. Batman: Arkham City (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g) Batman: Arkham City has a strength of 25.17. The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. The Last of Us wins with 54.00% of the vote! A win of 4,873 with 60,875 total votes cast. The Last of Us did as expected here against Batman, but it needed to do so much more than "as expected" given Dark Souls wasn't playing around this year. On top of that, one would assume that The Last of Us 2 hype would help out the original in this contest -- we've seen sequel hype matter a lot in the past -- but it simply wasn't materializing this contest for The Last of Us. And all that has to be taken into account *before* "it" happened. See the date on this poll? April 26th, 2020? Learn that date, because 4/26/2020 is the last day in human history where The Last of Us, Sony, or Naughty Dog would have any respect whatsoever. On April 27th, that would all change. ## Ctes's Analysis Before the contest, The Last of Us winning the division final was one of the most popular upset picks. It’s ironic how it came closer to not even getting there than actually pulling that off, though we were already expecting that after the previous round. If we look at the 2015 x-stats, The Last of Us actually won by more than it was supposed, so I think we had just forgotten about Batman: Arkham City before the contest. Of course, there are reasons to think that result would have changed but were plenty of times in this contest where we only looked at 2015 stats and didn’t consider how things could have changed. In fact, picking The Last of Us to win the division final is a perfect example of that. It’s possible people thought The Last of Us would be consistent with a sequel coming right up, but thought Batman would fall off since it’s no longer as relevant. It turns out both superhero games this contest were pretty decent, however. They look to be close to equal indirectly, makes me wonder how a direct matchup would go. We’ll probably never find out. The match started out being pretty intense. Bracket votes weren’t there today, perhaps because people had started to be out of prize contention or perhaps because they didn’t think it would be needed. If you believed the early part to be bracket votes, The Last of Us was in even more trouble though. It was behind the whole freeze, basically. It was close, but Batman was ahead and The Last of Us couldn’t quite take the lead. It did in the next update, but only by a mere three votes, it would quickly take off though. Despite a few stalls and cuts from Batman, TLoU never really looked back eventually winning the match with ease. What a board vote that way though, and I think it’s mostly Naughty Dog not being very popular any longer. It should be noted that this match happened just before a lot of The Last of Us 2 was leaked to a massive internet outrage. I wonder how much that would have changed. There are quite different opinions on how much that damaged The Last of Us. I doubt myself that it would have changed more than 2500 votes, but it certainly would have given The Last of Us a bigger scare. ## Safer777's Analysis So the consensus for this match would be that it would be really close with TLOU winning since it faced stronger opponents than BAC. And the match was close, but not as close as expected. Once again I will say that TLOU is a game trully worth of the GOTD. Play it. So for the match. Well TLOU won as expected with higher percentage than expected. In the previous contest it won only 1 match and then it lost yet here it is in the division finals. Nice work for sure. My opinion of both games are amazing. BAC is the best Batman game ever for sure and TLOU even though doesn't have anything special for the gameplay wins via story. I mean there will even be a TV series on HBO soon enough! Damn! Castlevania had to wait decades to get one and it is animated too! So yeah TLOU is great and you should play it if you haven't already. As for BAC I didn't even expected to do that good. Still nice to see games that trully deserve greatness to do good. I guess if the HBO series was out TLOU would do even better since we see the same happening with Witcher 3 via the Netflix series. ## Tsunami's Analysis Obligatory "Allen allow licensed characters into CBXI." After Arkham City seemingly laid an egg against XBC2 in Round 1, it would've been tough to figure it being able to perform this well here, but then it went out and got a better percentage on BioShock: Infinite than it did on XBC2 and everyone realized that XBC is just kind of legit. The Last of Us had a fairly easy path to this point, so this was not even a lock, but for the most part B8 had this pretty well pegged; the Oracle scores were fairly tightly packed together and they were all pretty good. I guess maybe TLoU never really gained traction on GameFAQs? From what I hear it's a masterpiece. Then again, the whole "video games as art" thing never really took off here. That's probably why the later games in the MGS series aren't as strong as the earlier ones, too; Kojima got too artsy. MGS would make a great movie series, or TV series. The Last of Us would make a good movie, too. Weren't there plans to do just that at one point? Whatever happened to them? Yeah, it kind of entered development hell around 2016. But in March of 2020, it was announced that a TV series was in the planning stages at HBO. So there you go; TLoU is getting its screen adaptation. Probably. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8024&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=110) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 (revid 86606)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, April 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 111 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 63.46% 49 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 69.25% - **User Votes:** Skyrim - 5773 Mario Kart 8 - 3710 - **Anonymous Votes:** Skyrim - 5054 Mario Kart 8 - 3243 A few matches ago, we had a funny first five minutes between Witcher 3 and Mario Galaxy 2, where Galaxy famously had Witcher 3 tied at the freeze before getting buried. If ever there was a time for Skyrim to prove it still could make the final, this was it. Instead, we got a repeat performance. If you take the Witcher 3 vs Galaxy 2 match trends and put it up next to Skyrim vs Mario Kart 8, you get practically the exact same match. It's cute and funny to look at and such, but it also meant more confirmation of the obvious -- Witcher 3 was a cut above Skyrim for this entire contest. If only we knew that going in, huh? For the first five minutes of this poll, Mario Kart 8 made a match of it. For the final 23 hours and 55 minutes, Skyrim buried Mario Kart 8 to survive and advance. I'm happy Mario Kart 8 booted the MMORPG trash out of this contest, but it doesn't mean I enjoy any of the Mario Kart games. I just hate them less than I do MMOs. To that end, it was nice seeing Mario Kart 8 gets its teeth kicked in. Screw all of those games for life. The one and only thing that sucked about Mario Kart finally leaving this contest was our last high seed making its exit. I'm a huge fan of underdog runs in the NCAAs and seeing these tiny midmajor schools make deep runs, so when a high seed starts going off and making runs in our contests I tend to enjoy it. With Mario Kart 8's loss, it meant these seedings for the division finals: -1 vs 2 -1 vs 3 -1 vs 2 -5 vs 3 -1 vs 2 -1 vs 3 -1 vs 2 -1 vs 3 Had GTA5 not dropped the ball, it would have been all 1 seeds versus 2s and 3s. Allen did a great job with seeding this year, clearly, but it was almost *too* good. The reason we knew Skyrim was screwed is because in a hypothetical Galaxy 2 versus Mario Kart 8 match, 100% of gurus would pick Galaxy 2. As they should. This wasn't like the entertaining Tekken 7 versus Mortal Kombat 11 debate that popped up after round one because of what was going on with Smash Ultimate and Mario Odyssey; everyone and their mother knew Skyrim was done for. ## Ctes's Analysis This is the match that truly made Skyrim a big target and had people thinking it would be the weakest division winner in this half of the bracket, with a very few even thinking it could lose the next round. A group of us were defending Skyrim’s performance against Journey, but there certainly weren’t many people left defending Skyrim after today. I only remember myself and Lightning Strikes stepping up for Skyrim, though I’m not saying there couldn’t be more. People really couldn’t find the reasons to believe Skyrim would still be in the elite. Let’s first put some numbers on the table. The 2015 x-stats project Skyrim to get 76% in this match. Over 15% more than it got today. Mario Kart 8 was behind Super Mario 64 SFF back then, but they lost to the same game. Despite many thinking Skyrim disappointed against Journey in the previous contest, oracles overestimated it be roughly 2.5%. Skyrim did the same against Mario Kart 8 as The Witcher 3 did to Super Mario Galaxy 2, further darkening Skyrim’s chances of making the final. The 2015 stats also show Metal Gear Solid V well above Mario Kart 8 as well, so Skyrim looked a good deal worse than Dark Souls in the eyes of many too. Now, it’s time to pull out the Skyrim defense force again. First of all, Mario Kart 8 is near the bottom of the x-stats because we didn’t adjust for Mario Kart 8 at all. It drew Super Mario 64 and nothing was done about it. I think that’s largely forgotten. They’re both Mario games, that match is loaded with SFF. It could be 65-35 without it and it wouldn’t surprise me. Against something completely different Mario Kart 8 gets its appreciation but against perhaps the most respected game in the franchise and the biggest 3D Mario by a good margin, the fanbase has a favorite. That’s before we even consider how Mario Kart 8 has all the reason to boost significantly. We’ve talked about before how I believe Mario’s strength is determined partly by the current status of Nintendo. In 2015, Mario Kart 8 was a Wii U exclusive and that contest took place well after the peak of the Wii U. Do you know how low the peak of the Wii U was? Since then, Nintendo is perhaps bigger than they’ve been since the N64 or at the very least since the early DS/Wii years. Furthermore, Mario Kart 8 was released on Switch. People like to use Tropical Freeze and Bayonetta 2 as examples of why that might not matter too much, but those are different stories. Mario Kart 8 wasn’t just released on the Switch, it also sold significantly more copies than any Switch game and is one of the very best selling games of all time. Everyone appreciates Mario Kart 8 and Skyrim is the perfect opponent for it to show that against. The spin-off franchise is huge, and Mario Kart 8 is widely regarded as the best one. At least it is if we remove our nostalgia goggles when looking at Super Mario 64. People also tend to forget that after the initial board vote, Skyrim rises to the sky after the board vote, perhaps even to the outer rim. But Skyrim was behind for more than a minute and it was barely ahead at the freeze. It rose to heaven from there, but that embarrassment had already hit it, and people rarely look much at the match after it’s over. I’m sure a good bunch of people thought Skyrim looked worse because it was at 55-56% when they looked despite it ending above 60%. I don’t actually need to defend Skyrim on the other side of the contest, because it went on to prove that it was still quite strong, even though The Witcher 3 was stronger. Mario Kart 8 therefore also ends up being a lot stronger than what the general consensus was and what its seeding indicated. It’s the most underseeded game of the bracket, getting a \#14 seed when it should have easily been a \#3 seed at the least. Mario Kart games have been in contests before, but they literally always run into other Nintendo games. That has happened every single time until now. Mario Kart Wii beating Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is the only match the series has had without other Nintendo games and that was the Wii edition facing a DS game after the Wii stopped being too popular here. It really is a shame Super Mario Kart didn’t get to participate in the year of SNES appreciation 2015 because if really was on par with Super Metroid it would have looked beastly that year. I have believed Mario Kart had always had a bit more to show than it got the chance too, and as everyone knows I also believed Uncharted 4 was better than most people thought it would. ## Safer777's Analysis Okay this match was strange. Not because we didn't knew who would win, I mean Skyrim is in Top 5 Contest games for power of course. And almost everyone has it reaching the semifinal match and a lot have it reaching the final match. So yeah no worries there. The problem was what percentage it should have to be considered the favorite to reach the final match. But in my opinion no matter how Skyrim would win here, it would be considered bad except if won with like 70. So yeah don't know what to say. So for the match. Okay obviously Skyrim won, duh. The Crew had it around 65 BUT the Oracle had it around 60. So does that mean this is bad? I am not sure. I think it is okay. Not good but not bad either. Tough to judge. The game is almost 9 years old by now. When it came out oh man the MEMES! And the sales too. And the critical reception too. All amazing. Plus it has been ported to everything. If something is capable of playing Skyrim it is in that system. Yeah some kind of ported record. This is why they don't want to make another game. Even on this site it is always in Top 3 and even in Steam is in Top 10 after all these years. So yeah people still play this thing. A lot of them it seems. As for MK 8 I don't know anything, but it seems to be really good. The game came out in 2014 but had an updated version at 2017. Why they didn't make a new game I am not sure. So as I say again I consider it an okay result myself. The prediction percentage was huge too. 2nd highest of Round 3 actually. So yeah people still think this game is legit. And well it is actually, but how it stacks to other games here? Especially Witcher 3 So Witcher 3 scored 60 against Mario Galaxy 2 and Skyrim scored 60 against Mario Kart 8. What you consider better? Yeah I think we all know the answer. Plus something else. ALL division finals were 1 seed vs 2/3 seeds EXCEPT one division which we had a 5 seed instead who barely won too. You know in the previous contest we had in 2018 how many 1 and 2 and 3 seeds reach the division finals? 10 out of 16. In this contest it was 15 out 16. Do you know how many 1 and 2 seeds won the division in 2018? 1! Just one! How many 1 seeds won their division in this contest? 7! A record! 2018 contest was the worst seeded contest ever! And 2020 contest was the best seeded contest ever! ## Tsunami's Analysis Hey, remember back in Round 1 where someone suggested that voters would only view "Mario Kart 8" as being the Wii U game instead of including the Switch's "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" and that as such, it might not even get past Uncharted 4? I really hope that one got archived in Zen's topic. I don't think it did. That's some quality wrongness right there. I mean, ignoring the fact that this site has always been pro-Nintendo and as such, a Wii U exclusive vs. a PS4 exclusive probably favors the former...voters aren't stupid. I guess maybe the fact that there were remakes in the bracket might have colored that person's judgment? I guess it's a fair point. There had long been arguments that "Mega Man" represented *all* iterations of Mega Man, not just Mega Man Classic, until X was finally allowed in as a separate entrant. I can even understand the logic that CJayC used for excluding X; it's a slippery slope, since technically most Links are different entities. Just at the time of the first Character Battle, you already had Zelda/Zelda II Link, ALttP/LA/Oracle Link, and OoT/MM Link, and by Character Battle II, they'd already been joined by WW/PH Link *and* Four Swords Link. And Mario Kart is surprisingly strong here. We'd seen it before with Super Mario Kart going toe to toe with Super Metroid twice in 2009, and that was SFF. This performance feels kind of bad for Skyrim, but it honestly isn't really. At 69.25%, Skyrim's R3 prediction percentage was second only to Breath of the Wild's...84.65%. Which means the percentage that picked against it was 30.75% to 15.35%, a little more than twice as many. Yikes! BotW was looking to be one of the most predictable winners ever. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8025&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=111) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (2)NieR: Automata 2020 _source: (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (2)NieR: Automata 2020 (revid 88238)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, April 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 112 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 53.04% 35 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 48.25% - **User Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 5023 NieR: Automata - 4463 - **Anonymous Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 4097 NieR: Automata - 4197 This was perhaps my least favorite match of the entire contest, because the worst parts of two different fanbases acted like shitheads for 24 hours. First off, apparently this was some wildly debatable match even though 75% of gurus picked Pokemon here for obvious reasons. I don't know how or why, but the Nier fanbase all thought Automata was going to win this thing easily. Guys, have you not been paying attention to these contests for the past 10 years or so? Pokemon doesn't really lose unexpected matches anymore. Happiness is directly related to expectations in life, fellas. Anyone experienced will tell you that. So right off the bat, all the ingredients were there for a powder keg. To the credit of the Nier faithful, this match was close for about an hour and they had rallies ready to go. But about 45 minutes in, the floodgates opened and Pokemon finally broke through. It climbed fairly quickly in the evening and midnight vote to build up a lead close to 600, and held serve overnight. When the morning vote came and it looked like Nier might make a go at things, to the tune of cutting 100 votes off the lad, it turned out to be fool's gold. Pokemon would rebound, win the morning and day votes fairly easily, and ultimately win by 1000 votes. Remember Rock Band vs Deus Ex, when Deus Ex scored an upset win but the entire board was flooded with topics about how Deus Ex wasn't winning by enough? This match was the inversion of that, and it went both ways. The board was a total shitshow during this match, and it even bled into the stats topic a little. The worst part is both of these fanbases acting all sanctimonious and virtuous about their games and trashing the opponent. How about this -- you both suck. Pokemon fans *do* get that their fanbase is loaded with perverts and furries, right? Nier fans *do* get that a main selling point of Automata is 2B having her ass hanging out while looking like an underaged girl, right? "But she's a robot, bro!" Piss off. This entire match, which was far better than expected, sucked to watch because of fans on both sides acting so obnoxious. The Nier fans acted a lot worse, but both of them are to blame here. Thankfully we booted them out of this contest as of this match and everything else was smooth sailing save the final. This brought round 3 to an end, and it was all the home stretch from here on out. For those playing the home game, the final 16 was: -5 Action/Adventure games (Resident Evil 2, God of War, Portal 2, Dark Souls, The Last of Us) -4 Nintendo games (Breath of the Wild, Smash Ultimate, Mario Odyssey, Pokemon HGSS) -4 Japanese RPGs (Dragon Quest 11, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5, Xenoblade Chronicles) -3 Western RPGs (Mass Effect 2, Witcher 3, Skyrim) Very good mix! I know a lot of genres bleed together now, but still. Pokemon is also a JRPG, God of War could be considered a Western RPG, etc etc. Not the point. The point here is the final rounds were very varied. This was a good decade for gaming, my friends. My only issue here is all three remakes waltzing into the divisional finals, but we're long past the point where that could have been corrected. It is what it is. "I'm not going to lie: stats and discussions board realizing Pokemon hentai rallies were **also** a thing was one of my favorite parts of the entire contest. Whatever happened afterwards, it was pretty damn funny to watch, even if it was pretty stupid." -Ytterbicide ## Ctes's Analysis This match managed to stay exciting up until a bit into it. There were people thinking that Pokemon would have an easy time after the first few rounds, but there were also people thinking that a Pokemon game from generation 4 would start doing worse once it faced actual competition. The debated had been centered mostly around the strength of Pokemon HGSS before the contest, but the performances of NieR: Automata were obviously considered too now. The Bayonetta 2 result was the most discussed of them. People had a hard time believing in SFF in that match and without it, Automata (and Divinity) looks really good, though it requires you to believe Bayonetta 2 had boosted a bit from the first contest. What kept Pokemon HGSS as the favorite was probably that remakes had so far done as good as we possibly thought they could be. Resident Evil 2 and Persona 4 Golden were both still in the competition. They clearly wouldn’t have been if people anti-voted them for being remakes. Persona 4 Golden especially shows that it’s fine being a remake. Though not all of us, a good amount of people picked Automata to the division finals in their brackets because of lack of faith in Pokemon. There was not much reason to have that any longer. The match wasn’t without excitement initially, although there was never a point where Pokemon HGSS was not in the lead. They were neck to neck at first, until Pokemon very slowly build a small lead before the freeze. Pokemon would only gain from 30 to 38 the next update and Automata made a small cut after that. That gave people hope, because Pokemon usually has the board vote and bracket votes might be on its site too. It would gain from there, and while the match had a bunch of updates in a row that looked good for Automata, it was clear pretty fast in the overall picture that Pokemon wasn’t losing this. Pokemon HGSS and Automata probably both had a good amount of bracket votes and are both good with the board too. Board 8 seems quite into NieR, so it makes sense. I’ve seen people say that NieR: Automata was a disappointment after it could not win this match and HGSS went on to easily lose to Skyrim. It probably doesn’t help that it looked weaker than Mario Kart 8 when people had such a hard time accepting strength of Mario Kart 8, but it looks just fine at the end of the contest. I picked Automata today and I didn’t have expectations higher than this for it really. No, the reason Automata lost as I see it, had more to do with Pokemon HGSS being worth almost as much as we thought it could. It’s the perfect combination between nostalgic fans and hardcore fans and being a remake didn’t hurt it at all. The Automata upset being as popular as it was depended on Pokemon being weaker that that. I hope and expect to see Automata back in a contest again, I could see it coming back stronger when the franchise has more exposure. ## Safer777's Analysis Hentai rallies! Oh yeah! Okay there were some but in the end they didn't managed to mean much. Why? Pokefear baby! Even the crew was split here and most favorite NA but they should have learned by now that you can't really stop Pokefear! But let's be serious here. The match is strange. We have in this contest 3 games that are basically not from this decade of gaming. Resident Evil 2, Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver and Persona 4 Golden. And RE 2 and Pokemon HG/SS are from the 90's! But ALL these games managed to reach the Division finals and all of them barely did it actually. I do believe that is because most don't really care if these games are remakes/ports/enhanced/reimagines/proxies or anything you want to call them. I mean for example if you like RE 2 wouldn't you also play the other version too? And like it too? Mostly at least? So yeah. BUT are these versions stronger than their original versions? That is the big question and I don't know honestly. I don't really believe it to tell the truth. They seem to be kinda their own thing? So yeah not sure. So for the match. As I said the Crew was split and most favored Nier. I checked the Oracle and most favored Pokemon HG/SS. I checked the Guru and most favored Pokemon there. So yeah this match was a toss up, especially after the previous rounds. But once again Pokefear prevailed. The crew doesn't like Pokemon mostly but hey Pokemon is awesome! Now I have played all Pokemon games and all versions and remakes too and I have played Nier Automata too and I didn't know what to vote myself too. But in the end I went with Pokemon HG/SS. The 2nd generation of Pokemon is still considered the best and the remake of that one is way too good. Imagine if they could remake Gen 2 with the new things that Sword and Shield had! Man that would sell like crazy. Speaking of new Pokemon games we had 7(!)new series coming out since 2010 and only 1 of them was a remake. Basically we had 4 generations since then. And the only Pokemon game we had was a Generation 2 one! Yeah. We are awesome? Also technically Soul Silver/Heart Gold came out in 2009! In Japan at least. As a huge Pokemon fan I have to say that all generations are good and yeah even the latest one which supposedly a lot of fans quit or something broke record sales. I mean Sword and Shield have already sold more copies than most previous generations. Fastest selling Switch game! In like 6 months! And we have for the first time ever paid DLC. Expansions. Okay these aren't out yet. Eh. And a fun fact that I haven't noticed. NO pokemon game ever has above 87 on Metacritic! Huh? I mean so many games have above that yet not even 1 Pokemon game? Doesn't really matter, I just point that out. As for NieR it did really good. It almost came close to reach the Division Finals too and it lost a really close match. Who could have expected a series like this doing so good? So end of round 3. The round was good and by tradition in Round 3 all weak games get eliminated so all the good stuff remain. Same happened here. Out of all these games that remained most of them can trully say they are GOTD material. Also in this round we had the best match of the entire contest. Plus out of the 8 division finals half of them were a toss up. So yeah at least decent stuff in the contest. ## Tsunami's Analysis Nier actually managed a slight win with the unregistered voters, but it wasn't enough to even come close as HG/SS managed to win by over 1000 votes. The most interesting thing about the match was that said lead didn't break 1000 until the literal final update. It entered that update with a lead of 999, though, which is fun. Certainly a lot more fun than 1018. It really does amaze me that HGSS was able to get a 3-seed while the rest of the series was shut out of the bracket entirely. I'm not complaining about the first half, because HG/SS was amazing, but the Pokémon fanbase couldn't manage to get a 14-16 seed for the Gen 5 games? Were B/W and B2/W2 splitting nominations or something? Gen 5 really did end up as the forgotten generation. I feel like this is at least in part because of Gen 6 being the first generation to have a unified worldwide release, which meant that outside of Japan, Gen 5 had a really short lifespan--2011 for Black and White, 2013 for X and Y. Wait a minute... Pokémon Black/White release date outside Japan: March 4(EU)/6(NA)/10(AU), 2011 Pokémon X/Y release date: October 12, 2013 Span of 947-953 days. Pokémon Red/Blue release dates: NA: 9/28/98 AU: 10/23/98 EU: 10/5/*99* Pokémon Gold/Silver release dates: JP: 11/21/99 AU: 10/13/00 NA: 10/15/00 EU: 4/6/01 The Japanese release date for Gold/Silver is irrelevant, but I included it because lol at R/B being out in Europe for less than two months when G/S came out in Japan. But dang! Gen 1's lifespan outside of Japan is even shorter than Gen 5's. 748 days in NA, and a mere 549 in Europe. Wait, wait, there's more. Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire: NA: 3/19/03 AU: 4/3/03 EU: 7/25/03 885 days in NA, the longest of the three, and 840 in Europe. Gen II's shorter, too, though it at least gets a pass because in North America and Australia, it was the most recent generation for three "Holiday Seasons", whereas 1 and 5 both only held that status for two. Though I guess that does explain one thing--Generation IV was the *longest* generation in every region, even Japan. Wait, scratch that...Gen IV was *only* the longest Generation in Japan. Everywhere else, Gen III beats it out. Which means the real surprise isn't that there aren't any Gen 5 games in this bracket, it's that ORAS didn't get in as well. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8026&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=112) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 (revid 88597)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, May 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 113 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 75.41% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 76.59% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6336 Dragon Quest XI - 2626 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5096 Dragon Quest XI - 2278 After an incredibly stupid delay to set up a gimmick secondary bracket entry phase (seriously, that stuff needs to stop), the home stretch began. And with it... MATCH PICS!! I love me some picsmithing, and as usual the gang killed it. I'm only going to pull rank on the wiki once, beyond that I don't care what image you guys use for the articles. It isn't often that a game looks good when only getting 30% of the vote, but Dragon Quest 11 went out of this contest like a man's man. In a match where most people thought Zelda would finish in the mid to high 70s, and perhaps even break 80% again, Dragon Quest 11 actually walked right up to the Anton Chigurh of this contest and slapped it across the face. Zelda actually struggled to just break 70% in this match, and it took the actual morning and day vote to ultimately get it done. Mad props to Dragon Quest 11 here. This was still a 70-30 blowout at the end of the day, and putting on a show like this was impressive. If you had told me pre-contest that any Dragon Quest could potentially double any Final Fantasy game on this site, I'd have thought you were nuts. Yet in a direct match based on direct results through Zelda, Dragon Quest 11 could have doubled Final Fantasy XV. That is so good. All this said, Zelda still broke 70% four rounds in a row, which is some incredibly rarified air. Here is the entire list of everything to ever pull that off: -Link in Summer 2002 (beat Little Mac, Strider, Jill Valentine, and Scorpion) -The Legend of Zelda in the Series Contest 2006 (beat Civilization, Mega Man X, Metroid, and Metal Gear) -Link/Ganondorf in the Rivalry Rumble 2011 (beat Arthas/Illidan, Amaterasu/Orochi, Mega Man/Wily, and Alucard/Dracula) -Breath of the Wild in Game of the Decade 2020 (beat The Outer Worlds, Halo Reach, Final Fantasy 15, and Dragon Quest 11) There's a common theme there. I'll let you guys figure out what it is. Two notes. -Link and Ganondorf finished over **75%** in its first four matches, which is a record that could only ever possibly be broken by Link or his series. -In the 2010 character battle, Link finished over 70% in four of his first five matches, but he's not eligible for this record because Mega Man X held him below 70% in round 3 that year. He finished 3% short. We all knew Breath of the Wild would win this contest easily, but I don't know that we knew it would be *this* easy. ## Ctes's Analysis It’s to the surprise of no one that Breath of the Wild would continue to completely dominate the competition even this late in the contest. It did however do so significantly less than it did in the first three rounds. It went from breaking 80% three rounds straight to barely breaking 70%. That speaks volumes about Dragon Quest XI and it’s incredible how good you can look despite failing to break 30% in a match. Board 8 underrated DQXI by more than 5% today after underestimating it in the other rounds. It makes the whole upper division look almost unbelievably weak compared to the lower half. Something was off. We’ve talked a lot about how the contest title combined with the forced voting has caused more blowouts than usual and have caused the top games to perform even better than they would have otherwise. I believe the same thing happened to Breath of the Wild up until this point. Final Fantasy XV might be a previous Game of the Year winner, but this is the first time Breath of the Wild faced something that it actually cared about. It’s not to take any credit away from Dragon Quest XI, the contrary actually, but there’s no way the top half of the division is as bad as the stats suggest. As I stated last round, it’s no coincidence the weakest game in both round 2 and 3 according to the x-stats is the one that face Breath of the Wild. It took a game that actually have a big fanbase and that people believe deserves to be here to stop Breath of the Wild from taking 80% of the votes. It’s amazingly weird to see Dragon Quest succeed where Final Fantasy couldn’t. Being of the same time, there wasn’t a huge difference at first, but throughout the 90s Final Fantasy established itself as one of the biggest franchises of all time and without a doubt the biggest franchise on this site. Dragon Quest was rather niche and continued to be so. Not that everyone didn’t know how much that had changed, but Breath of the Wild striking down both of their main games from the last decade just makes it so clear. Of course Dragon Quest XI would have its strongest game come out 2017. It says a lot more about Final Fantasy than Dragon Quest, but it’s still clear that Dragon Quest is more legit than ever. It loses big time today, but it ends up looking like it deserved its seeding. ## Safer777's Analysis So finally after like 10 days of not having the contest, we have finally the contest. So okay obviously BOTW would win. I mean the game is favorite to win the whole thing and without a rally it will not lose. What else to say for prologue? So for the match. Here is the thing. People had BOTW winning with around 75-80 but it won with 70 and that was barely too. I mean for a few hours BOTW was under 70 too. Pretty sure nobody expected that. Personally I also had BOTW to 80. Why? Because DQ games never do well in this site plus they were not popular until a while ago. I say they were not popular because now with DQ 11 the DQ series is thriving. It has characters in Smash plus this game smashed sales and even the updated version did really well. I don't know if DQ11 is the highest selling DQ game, but it is at least the 2nd best in sales. So yeah. Still this result is nice. It means that there are stronger games from other series that can beat BOTW, just not in this contest I believe. Still BOTW the favorite but with lower percentages than we expected. Also check out the prediction percentage. Not even strong games that won in Round 1 didn't had that high percentage! ## Tsunami's Analysis Return of the colons! So the 2018 contest had a hiatus after Round 4 to set up the Second Chance Brackets, perfectly timed to allow for Thanksgiving break. This contest had a hiatus after Round 3 for no particularly good reason. It killed momentum, and it shows in those vote totals; barely over 25000 votes after, um...wait, that's actually higher than the Division 6 and 7 semfinals were? Huh, I guess it just looks bad because Division 8's semis scored so highly. Well, it was also a rather precipitous drop-off from BotW's R3 match against Final Fantasy XV, and that benefited DQXI immensely. One round after putting up 80.25% on FFXV, BotW was held to just 70.22% against DQXI. A Dragon Quest game outperforming a Final Fantasy game by that much? It's very strange, and I have to stop and try to figure out how it happened. The obvious answer, of course, is anti-votes. The Legend of Zelda dominates every contest unless a rallied entrant stops it, and even Draven was barely able to pull it off. The deeper into the contest you get, the more it'll get anti-voted for being too strong. But Final Fantasy is about the only series that *can't* benefit from this phenomenon, because the only times Zelda has lost without a rally being involved--2003's character battle, 2004's Games Contest, and technically the Villain contest but Sephiroth was *expected* to win that one, to the tune of the highest prediction percentage for a champion ever--it was to Final Fantasy, or more specifically Final Fantasy VII. Combine that with FFVII being the game that put GameFAQs on the map, courtesy of the late Kao Megura, and for the longest time there was a *perception* that "Final Fantasy Always Wins", even though in reality it's only managed a few sparse wins over The Legend of Zelda. (It might also help that we do Character Battles far more frequently than Games Contests and each numbered Final Fantasy game is a separate continuity while the Legend of Zelda has the same few characters in every game, even if technically the Link and Zelda are usually different individuals with the same name each time, so Final Fantasy characters dominate(d) the brackets even though they rarely win out in the end. Wait, hold on, let me do some math...yeah, Final Fantasy VII *alone* has put more characters into Character Battles than the entire Legend of Zelda series. FFVII: Cloud, Sephiroth, Tifa, Vincent, Aerith, Zack, Cid, Barret, Midgar Zolom Zelda: Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, Midna, Tingle, Epona, Groose 9-7 in favor of FFVII. So the sentiment is understandable even if it's wrong.) That said, this is an outstanding performance by Dragon Quest XI. Is it possible that the series is finally gaining traction outside of Japan? It has to be noted that a lot of people were surprised by how well its characters did in 2013; Slime was closer to 1st than to 3rd in a match it had no business winning, and DQV Hero burned a lot of Expert Challenge pickers with his second place finish even though it should've been somewhat obvious that Aerith was going to annihilate Rinoa with SFF, because that's just what FFVII does to other FF games and this isn't one of those "FF-not-VII leads can still hang with FFVII not-leads sometimes" situations; this was like vs. like. And a lot of people's analyses of that even acknowledged that fact, and still picked Rinoa to beat Hero because they were just that low on Hero's strength! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8027&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=113) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (3)Resident Evil 2 2020 _source: (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (3)Resident Evil 2 2020 (revid 88595)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, May 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 114 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 51.77% 43 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 20.82% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 4630 Resident Evil 2 - 4341 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 4013 Resident Evil 2 - 3361 Given the bandwagon Resident Evil 2 had built up leading into this match, I am convinced that the contest intermission hurt its chances to pull the upset here. I'm not saying Mass Effect 2 wouldn't have won anyway, but momentum is a real thing and those dumb delays that happen now really kill it for underdog runs. Outside of one match, Mass Effect 2 looked vulnerable for this entire contest. Resident Evil 2 meanwhile was coming off of an incredibly grueling, emotional win over Bloodborne and could have ridden football-like momentum through Mass Effect here. Didn't happen. If you ever talk to a professional athlete, and I've met about 50 of them from working various odd jobs, they hate all the TV timeouts and reviews and such in major sports. It kills the momentum. It kills the flow. I think that is a huge factor into what happened here. When this poll started, Mass Effect 2 had 52% of the poll, and then the poll just... stayed there. You can see the final result. This was the poll for the entire 24 hours. Resident Evil 2 never made a push to do much of anything, and this was certainly a far, far cry from the Resident Evil 2 we had seen in earlier matches. We can't confirm one way or another if the intermission helped Mass Effect 2 here, but it certainly didn't hurt it. It meant for a rather dud ending to Resident Evil 2's impressive contest run. I do have to say that I'm not upset about Mass Effect 2 winning a division though, especially with all of the nonsense that poor series has gone through. It was nice to see one of them finally break through a win a division, even if the means were debatable. ## Ctes's Analysis The battle of the sequels was one of the matches in the final phrase that had people split the most. Both games had a good case of making it through today. Mass Effect 2 looked really good in the previous two rounds. Everyone had accepted at this point that Resident Evil 7 was simply a lot better than people gave it credit for, but that could also mean good things for Resident Evil 2. It seemed like a case where many people simply went with whatever game their gut feelings told them to go with. There were people very confident in both games. Taking Resident Evil 2 to win here was always a good late round upset pick. Look at how it dealt with a rallied Bloodborne, which beat Awakening even before rallies. Mass Effect 2 is projected to easily win those two matches in 2015, with ~55% against Awakening and ~58% against Bloodborne, but look at how much stronger Bloodborne is now. Even if you believe Mass Effect 2 is undervalued in the 2015 x-stats, you can also believe Andromeda hurt the name. Resident Evil 2 took care of a rallied Bloodborne, so it was certainly within striking distance. Furthermore, the original Resident Evil 2 was in 2015 and is projected to beat Awakening with less than Resident Evil 2 beat Three Houses in Game of the Year. We've been through GotY polls, but certainly a 1v1 poll is worth a little bit and I just want to state that the upset was clearly possible. The match opened with much excitement. The games were dead even for the opening minutes until Mass Effect 2 started being every so slightly ahead. Then it jumped ahead by quite a bit at the first update and very quickly climbed above the 200-vote lead. Resident Evil 2 would then stall quite a bit, cutting the percentage Mass Effect 2 had from almost 55% to almost 51% as the lead was cut from 250 votes to below 200 in a very few updates. It couldn’t keep it up though. Mass Effect 2 began climbing again and this time it didn’t look back at all. It has been suggested that the break hurt Resident Evil 2’s chances here because it won the very close match with Bloodborne that would have given it a bandwagon. I seriously doubt it’s the case though. Resident Evil 2 was always the favorite to make the division finals, Bloodborne just made it a lot closer that people thought. Usually such things come from big upsets and that match wasn’t really that. Besides, if it did get something of a bandwagon, the break shouldn’t make much a difference. The people that followed Resident Evil 2 vs. Bloodborne closely enough definitely remembered it, but a lot of people just voted in the match and saw Resident Evil 2 won, which was largely expected. I believe the match was decided mostly by the contest title. It’s pretty clear that Mass Effect 2 was not hurt by andromeda or the third game or anything. Shepard looked a lot worse last character battle and Mass Effect 3 was killed, but in the light of the contest people remembered what Mass Effect 2 how did gaming, how big a deal it was. It would be the oldest game to reach the top 8 only barely being a game of the current decade. It’s nice that after the franchise quickly became an all-timer and seemingly dropped it rather quickly again, Mass Effect 2 would be remembered as the great game it was. Resident Evil 2 ended up being as good as you could hope it is despite being a remake, Mass Effect 2 was simply better than it looked in 2015. The remake discussion shouldn’t concern Resident Evil 2 much really, because it’s different enough that it deserves its spot for sure, while the other two can be discussed. The previous Game of the Decade contest had Resident Evil 4 get further and it was praised as one of the absolute best and most influential games of all time. The series isn’t at that point, but Resident Evil 7 was more like than we thought, and the recent three remakes have shown that they’re still capable of making fantastic games, so perhaps there’s hope for future entries after all. ## Safer777's Analysis Nice match here. Before the contest ME 2 was the favorite to win the division and as the contest went on things became shaky but still ME 2 was the favorite. Even the whole Crew went with ME 2 here with around 52 win and guess what, it did just that! In the previous RE 2 match there were some rallies against RE 2 but still RE 2 managed to hold on and it did won. Still this result seems to indicate that RE 2 is almost similar in strength to Horizon Zero Dawn and pretty sure nobody before the contest started would think of that. So for the match. Things were somewhat stable for all hours. So yeah really close match but ME 2 was never in fear of losing. Seems ME 2 is still strong even though the latest ME game sucked and the franchise is pretty much dead now. Maybe this will be the first game that manages to avoid a doubling against BOTW! Also check out the prediction percentage here. Around 20 here and almost 77 for BOTW. Yeah everyone knows that Zelda always wins. Still hope someone manages to take it down. Also I still prefer the original RE 2 for personal reasons. Plus ME 2 in this contest started with beating a RE game and it ended with beating a RE game because yeah it stands no chance against BOTW of course. ## Tsunami's Analysis Our second GotY vs. GotY match of the contest pitted the 2010 and 2019 winners against each other, and while normally you'd just say "OldFAQs" and pick the 2010 game without a second thought, the 2019 game was a remake of a 1998 game, and as we all know, when in doubt, pick the closest thing you can to 1998. That meme started in the Years Contest itself, but it probably held true for the most part in 2015 as well, aside from Undertale matches. It certainly explains away a lot of the strange "upsets", although back then we were just calling it "Year of the SNES". This match was briefly on the list of 25 closest wire-to-wire matches where the loser never led...for a few minutes, until I noticed that HGSS-Nier had been closer and hadn't been put up there yet. Which is better than the few *hours* I expected it to be there, since a match in progress at the time was looking like it could outright break the record! But we'll talk about that when we get there. Back to this match, where it was plainly evident that nostalgia is the route to success for these old companies. Capcom's learned that here; RE2Make was a huge hit and they've already followed it up with RE3Make here in 2020. I'd say that we can expect an RE4Make by 2022, but they literally just ported the original RE4 to Switch in 2019. Then again, the Switch is notably absent from the list of consoles that RE2Make and RE3Make are on, so I guess maybe Nintendo's still being looked at as the "little brother" the way it was in the "WiiS2/PS360" era. So yeah, RE4Make for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, coming to stores in 2022. Book it. Square seems to be learning that lesson as well with FF7R. Sega kind of is as well with Mania, but they're so far gone that nobody seems to even care. Nintendo, of course, keeps doing their own thing, but a lot of their recent output has been aimed at trying to recapture what people loved about their earlier games rather than continuing to innovate--just look at the two Zelda games in the bracket, or even FE:A. And Konami...doesn't really care, because their profile is so far diversified beyond just video games. Apparently they *did* try to produce a Metal Gear Solid movie back in the mid-00s, and it completely fell through by 2010...but there was a new version put into the works at Columbia Pictures (owned by Sony) as early as 2012, and as of the end of 2019, a draft of the film is complete. And it's got Hideo Kojima on board! Which brings me to the question, who the hell owns this franchise? Konami did put out Metal Gear Survive in 2018, after Kojima was no longer with them, but apparently they can still go around Konami for the film? Well, at any rate, I've long felt that with MGSV wrapping up the Big Boss arc, going as far as to end with the lead-up to the Outer Heaven mission, that Metal Gear Solid 6 should just outright be a remake of the original Metal Gear. Honestly that's something that Konami could do even without Kojima; it wouldn't be the first time (non-canon NES port, anyone?) But of course, nostalgia couldn't measure up to Mass Effect 2, still an incredibly strong game and likely one that's only bolstered by the later entries in the series being disappointments. This was a 52-48 match pretty much the whole way through, which makes it especially ridiculous that it even came close to being on a "closest wire-to-wire matches" list. Maybe if I have some spare time I'll archive binge the poll updater and craft a wire-to-wire list that's based on percentage rather than raw totals; the lowered totals make the current lists drastically favor the most recent contests. Doesn't make the possibility of a new record any less exciting, though! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8028&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=114) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 (revid 88593)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, May 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 115 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 51.70% 38 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 40.52% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5122 Super Mario Odyssey - 3944 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 4799 Super Mario Odyssey - 3980 RSFF is an incredibly rare thing in these contests, but we have seen it happen before. There may be other examples, but these are the two that jump out. I am thoroughly convinced Smash Ultimate RSFFd Mario here, because you can't convince me that Mario wasn't more impressive than Smash in all three rounds leading up to this match. Tekken 7 being stronger than Mortal Kombat 11 is just goofy. Link Between Worlds being held under 40% is impressive, but Devil May Cry 5 being held under 30% is better. We all saw the same thing and agreed. Yet come match time, Smash not only wins but wins *easily*. Something isn't right here chief, and it wouldn't be the first time something "off" happened with Mario when put up against Nintendo in a match. I wish I had a better reason than RSFF for this match, but it's the best explanation I got. Look at every other big match this contest where one game clearly looked stronger going in. Dark Souls \> Last of Us. Witcher 3 \> Skyrim. Xenoblade \> Fire Emblem. Even Skyrim \> Pokemon. I could go on. In all of those matches, that game that looked better going in won the match. The one exception was.... this match. Right here. Something screwey happened, and I feel like RSFF is the best explanation given how the rest of the contest lined up. Nothing else makes much sense. I know it's hard to believe, but the idea of Smash actually being the stronger one all along is even *more* hard to believe. "With the disclaimer that I'm a pretty big skeptic of RSFF in general: I don't think that's what happened here. To me, it's far more likely that Smash is indeed stronger — after all, it was the favourite going into the contest for good reason — and what we saw is simply that there are more people who vote against Smash than Mario when both face weak competition. Smash faces some anti-votes both from people who hate its fanbase (which you're more than aware of) and from fighting game fans who dislike that Smash takes attention from what they see as more pure examples of the genre. Meanwhile, nobody hates Mario Odyssey, not even people like me who consider it one of the weaker games in the series. Combine this with the format forcing everyone to vote and I suspect the effect is significant, enough to obscure the truth." -NeoElfboy ## Ctes's Analysis This was perhaps the most hyped match of the ones that were in the second chance part. Before the contest began, almost everyone picked Super Smash Bros. Ultimate because Smash has been bigger than Mario on every single Nintendo console since the Nintendo 64. The original Super Smash Bros was a good idea not yet truly experienced with, while Super Mario 64 is one of biggest games of all time and by far the strongest 3D Mario. On the Camecube, Melee easily beats Sunshine, the latter being a disappointment to many. On the Wii, the controversial Brawl easily beats Galaxy, and the fourth game is easily better than both 3D Land and 3D World as they never even appeared in a contest. Ultimate is the best selling Smash game, so the Nintendo hierarchy should do its work. Super Mario Odyssey had a few supporters before the contest, but no one really listened until Odyssey looked better than Ultimate every single round leading up to this match. Tekken 7 and Mortal Kombat 11 are similar enough except Mortal Kombat has always been the bigger deal of the two franchises here. Ultimate couldn’t SFF A Link Between Worlds and strugged with Marvel’s Spider-Man while Odyssey killed Devil May Cry 5 and Shovel Knight. Suddenly it was time to listen to the Odyssey supporters. A lot of people picked Super Mario Odyssey in their second chance brackets, because it didn’t look impossible at all. A lot of arguments in favor of Super Mario Odyssey were actually cases against Ultimate. Brawl is perhaps the most hyped game of all time and would have won the first game of the decade if not for some late round backlash. Since then, the games have been iterative. They add more things but doesn’t get a lot better. Ultimate has polls where it’s voted the best Smash game, but when the series is as iterative as it is, maybe it wouldn’t matter much. In 2015, Smash 4 was thought of threatening FFVII because it’s historically big and added Cloud, Ryu, Mega Man and Bayonetta amongst others, but it didn’t get close at all. It was being said that people buy Smash games because of the spectacle and the celebration of tons of various franchises rather than the gameplay. Sakurai himself have said that Ultimate is not simply a fighting game, but a celebration of gaming. When Ultimate came out the “Everyone is here!” was a huge selling point. Snake and Cloud returned contrary to what everyone believed, and every single other character returned to the field with them. Obvious new additions such as Isabella and Inkling came along with big fan demands such as Ridley and King K. Rool and third-party characters continued to come with Castlevania, Persona 5, Dragon Quest, Fata Fury and even Banjo & Kazooie now being in. There are great new single player modes, but that doesn’t seem to be the main draw any longer. Smash is a multiplayer game at heart, and we’re no longer a site that plays multiplayer with our friends, partly because we’re older. We’ve seen various multiplayer games declining in strength. People argued Smash was less and less about gameplay and more relevant because of how endearing a franchise it is and all the cool videos they make, which makes it universally loved but also means it wont complete with the top like it did a decade ago. Finally, there are its poll results, not just in this contest, people liked to point at the match against God of War for the title of Game of the Decade 2018. Ultimate looked vulnerable in those and there is only so good it could get without also boosting God of War up a lot, which judging by the contest so far didn’t seem right. The poll in talk happened right after Ultimate released and the hype was still crazy: That was a lot of cases against Ultimate, but it still got to this point with ease. Let’s go over why Odyssey was thought to make the difference. It has polls that back it up as the strongest 3D since Super Mario 64. Unlike Smash, Mario is not an iterative franchise, so it mattered here. The Galaxies are loved but they have the Wii to drag them down while Odyssey on a console that everyone loves right now. Galaxy 2 looking so good until now just meant Odyssey should be even better. Odyssey was a huge deal and it’s exactly what we love on this site. It was very hyped and lived up to every last bit of it. It helped get Nintendo in a positive light again that it hasn’t been for 20 years. Super Mario Odyssey has no Game of the Year polls to back it up, but that hardly mattered when it shared its only one with Breath of the Wild. Ocarina of Time killed Super Mario 64 in 2004, but then the latter came back in 2009 and beat Chrono Trigger when it shared the poll with Yoshi’s Island. Those parallels were drawn. BotW/Odyssey/Ultimate felt like a modern day OoT/Mario 64/Melee. When Zelda and Mario are at their best they will beat even the best Smash game. Brawl could defeat the Mario and Zelda games of that generation (and it did!), but it would have never challenged peak Zelda and Mario. Odyssey felt like peak Mario again. Nintendo aced their first party titles in the latter half of the decade. The hierarchy has shown itself ridiculous in the past, but lots of people all contest were expressing that they didn’t think Odyssey would beat Ultimate but that they wish it would. Well, if enough people think so, it might just do that. A final point in Odyssey’s favor people brought up was not as big but still worth mentioning. In 2015, Melee rallied past GameFAQs biggest darlings Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII. We’ve seen Draven and Undertale getting punished when returning to the field again. Most of the site aren’t loud about it, but still votes against them on principle. Now, Ultimate is not Melee, but perhaps this could transfer to Smash in general and could explain why Smash couldn’t reach the poll highs that Odyssey could. If Ultimate began rallies too, there would definitely be a lot of people counter-rallying Odyssey against it. That’s a load of evidence in Odyssey’s favor, but Ultimate was still the favorite. Let’s first go through a few things that didn’t end up being relevant. The first one is bracket votes. Ultimate absolutely had those and it could make a difference worth a few percentage points, although the second chance brackets might lessen those because Odyssey was slightly more popular then and most people knew they weren’t going to win the ordinary bracket challenge. Secondly, despite what I said before, if Ultimate actually went ahead and rallied in a close match, most people did know it would hard to anything against. The Smash community is if anything else very active and very online. They may like to swear off aspects of their game a lot because a great part of the fanbase is straight up awful, but seeing them bail their game out of stuff like this was within imagination and that’d be terribly hard to counter. People sided mostly with Ultimate because it felt right. The hierarchy is so well established, and we saw as late as the latest Character Battle how much Smash matters in our contests. Ultimate isn’t mentioned in a lot of Game of the Decade discussions. The game took a good formula and improved it. It celebrated a bunch of franchises while it revolutionized none. It’s why it wasn’t destroying stuff on the levels of the other top games of the bracket. It doesn’t have the same respect votes that Odyssey among other titles gathered from the forced voting and the title. It’s just really lied in general. I’m not doubting that Ultimate beats God of War by more if the poll wasn’t called Game of the Year. I’m not doubting Ultimate looks better in a contest not titled Game of the Decade and all its opponents honestly has at least as much claim to such a title as Ultimate. It’s not the most influencing game ever, it’s just really well liked. Most people expected the match to be over right away. Whichever game prevailed it likely would struggle because of the SFF involved in the fight. True enough, the match was over it mere seconds. Ultimate was ahead from the start and while it was slow to get going only a single update in the match gave real hope to Odyssey fans. That was the update after the freeze. Odyssey cut the lead from 64 to 44 and when you expect Ultimate to the bracket votes, that could mean things, but it didn’t. Ultimate went up to 103 the next update and by the end of the hour it was already above 400 votes. All that hype about Odyssey was for nothing, it lost as easily as we thought before the contest began. The hierarchy was obviously a thing, but people tend to forget why that hierarchy existed in the first place. People really do love Smash Bros. Perhaps we’re not as vocal about it as we used to be, but Smash would not be able to continue to get us hyped everyone single game if we weren’t all going to play it. They get us hyped because we loved it. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a rare exception in the final part of the contest to a trend. Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, Dark Souls, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2 and so on. They’re all here not only because they’re good but also because they’re praised for all they’ve done for the gaming industry. That clearly made some of them more dominant than they would have been otherwise. Ultimate does not get the same boost, but it’s still one of our favorite games of the decade. People never explain how they think it deserves it, but I saw Ultimate on the top of a lot of people’s favorite lists during the contest. It’s a game that’s here because it’s our favorite, not necessarily because it’s the best and that distinction is important. It’s so much more than a multiplayer game to its fans. I want to make it clear that I believe Ultimate deserves to be here as much as any other game. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t improve too much on the formula, the formula is nearly perfect and it’s a fantastic game. When that is said, Super Mario Odyssey got screwed so severely by bracket placement. I’ve complained slightly about this before, but this is the time to do it right. Mario had a fantastic decade. Super Mario Odyssey deserved to get further that this and Super Mario Galaxy 2 deserved to get further that it did. I realize that people are accusing us of always having Nintendo vs. Nintendo finals (or Square, but they were out of the question this decade), but this was just ridiculous. Mario has been fed to Link many times and it’s always lame. Last contest Mario and Samus were actually put opposite of Link and they didn’t get to him. Sure, Zelda was part of the reason, but in the end it was Cloud. Ultimate and Odyssey would have exactly on interesting match this contest, this one, and you could argue they had none. The winner here would lose to Zelda. Both games could have had very interesting bracket paths, but they were instead just here to take each other out instead. I wouldn’t be surprised if Odyssey would have been \#1 seed, but that they were set up to not have too many Nintendo first party games in the top 8. Not saying it necessarily happened, just that it wouldn’t surprise me. Nintendo were screwed so much by this bracket because apparently delivering top class games for many years deserves punishment. Even if you grow tired of seeing something like Super Mario RPG reach the top 4, could we not punish the Nintendo game that is actually universally praised, loved by everyone and generally regarded as an all time great? Odyssey doing good wouldn’t be a typical GameFAQs kind of deal. It would certainly not have beat The Witcher 3. It might beat the other division winners in the lower half, but we wont know. It’s as ridiculous as giving us Melee vs. Brawl in the top 16 last contest. Even if we did end up getting a Nintendo vs. Nintendo finals. So what? We’d have a more interesting path there if we didn’t have them run into each other, and let’s be real, the finals were perhaps as uninteresting as it has ever been regardless. Mario had both his games in the top 8 of the x-stats this contest, yet they made top 16 and top 32. What a waste. But let us give our respects to our favorite mustached plumper, because Mario is currently about as good as it has ever been, and such consistently of dominating a genre during the lifetime of an industry is about as impressive as it gets. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match was debatable and I am not sure why. Sure the Hierarchy or something. BUT here is the thing. EVERYONE likes Smash because it has something for everyone. The game is way too good. In fact even me which I never play 1st party Nintendo games(except Pokeymanz)want this game to win the whole thing. Yeah because man it really has everything for everyone! You are bound to have favorite characters there, no matter what. So even the Crew was split with Smash the slight favorite. But everyone knew that it would be a close match and it was a close one, but not as close as we expected. So why it won with an okay win then? Because as I said Smash Ultimate is way too good and even Odyssey is really good too, pretty sure for a Nintendo fan and for most fans in general if they had to play only 1 game most would pick Smash. This is what I believe at least. Or RSFF! So for the match. Okay Smash won and had no problems at all the whole match. The prediction percentage was okay for a division final too. Over 40 for this far is good actually and for a debatable match, at least pre contest debatable match. Still nice match. Hierarcy seems to not work against Smash! Unless it is a Zelda/Mario game from the 90's of course. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a very hyped match, and it only grew in hype when Odyssey outperformed Ultimate just about every step of the way leading up to the match. The common belief, however, was that the Nintendo hierarchy would assert itself when it mattered, and that's exactly what happened. Back in 2009, Brawl \> Galaxy was considered an upset. We're smarter than that now. This was just a nice cozy 56-44 win that we could all put aside while we watched the fireworks going on in Division 4 at the same time. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8029&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=115) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (3)Xenoblade Chronicles 2020 _source: (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (3)Xenoblade Chronicles 2020 (revid 88591)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, May 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 116 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 54.86% 52 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 6.29% - **User Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 4484 Xenoblade Chronicles - 4585 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 4445 Xenoblade Chronicles - 4336 This was it, boys. The hardest match of the entire contest to predict pre-contest, and our contest's last truly great match. Both came in on incredible runs, both had a ton of momentum behind them that even a contest intermission couldn't squelch, and both of them had perfectly even cases to be made for winning this thing. Before getting to the match, I'd like to discuss what is now commonly known as "The Yoblazer Test". He probably shouldn't have spilled the beans on this, truth be told. Because I hate myself, I started rewatching Game of Thrones. Early in season one, Jamie Lannister is talking some trash to Ned Stark about fighting and tournaments and such, and makes fun of Ned for not fighting in them. "I don't fight in tournaments, because when I fight a man for real, I don't want him to know what I can do." I doubt Yoblazer ever gets season one'd, but he went and fought in a tournament -- that is, told everyone on The Show -- what The Yoblazer Test is. Every contest, there is one, maybe two things capable of going on an incremental lucky bandwagon run from out of nowhere and going maybe one round farther than it probably should. The way to do this is to see if something can win a round or two easily, then win against things of similar strength through luck and the bandwagon effect. His best call ever was Super Mario RPG in 2015. Let's have a look and see how many gurus picked it to make the semifinals: (By the way am I blind or just dumb? Did yoblazer not enter the guru that year?) It's an insane call at first glance, but if you use The Yoblazer Test it makes perfect sense. If you had Mario RPG beating Oblivion, well why not take it to beat GTA5? If that win happens, well at that point you already know the game is stronger than Chrono Cross or World of Warcraft, and from there that thing was off to the races. How could Resident Evil 4 beat a bandwagoned Mario RPG late in a contest? And if you have it getting that far, why *couldn't* it turn around and beat Metal Gear Solid 3? It's beautiful logic, and I half hope he never shared it. There's a difference between thinking upsets could happen and knowing which one or two bandwagons are most likely, and that's why Yoblazer is the best to ever do it. Frankly his legacy top 50 finishes should be added to his guru score. No offense to Swirl or anything, but no one is better than Yo at this. There's a reason for that. To the point. Xenoblade Chronicles was the perfect Yoblazer Test candidate this contest, and you could possibly give that title to Witcher 3 depending on whether you thought its run would be a bandwagon or a boost. Had Persona 4 Golden and Xenoblade faced off in rounds one or two, Persona 4 Golden probably easily wins. But because it happened in the divisional finals, after Xenoblade built up momentum against Splatoon 2, Overwatch, and Three Houses, and after Xenoblade Remastered hype was in full swing, it was the right choice if you had it getting this far. What was going to beat a Xenoblade backed by bandwagon love, Nintendo, and remaster hype? Grand Theft Auto 5? Persona 4 Golden has a rabid fanbase and all, but that's a lot of things to ask of it. When this match started, the bandwagon effect was on. The match was close, but Xenoblade was just better. It jumped out to a 50 vote lead early, and then used the rest of the evening to build up a lead of 200. This is when the Persona fandom's rallies started popping up all over Reddit and getting their own momentum going, and that 230 vote lead got knocked down to 150 fairly quickly. But here the thing with bandwagons. They are very, very hard to beat unless you are considerably stronger than they are. Persona 4 Golden was just too similar in strength here. Xenoblade was able to smack away the multi-layered rally attempt, and back up it went as we got close to midnight. Try as Persona 4 may to come back in this match, Xenoblade just wasn't having it. When the overnight vote came and Europe started waking up, Xenoblade ever so slightly increased its lead all the way up to 350. This felt like enough given the match was a rock fight, but then the morning came and Persona 4 had one last big push left. For the final 12 hours of this match, Xenoblade had to hold on for dear life. It wasn't getting a ton of rallies all over a bunch of subreddits. It didn't have the full Board 8 love behind it. It wasn't being boosted by hentai. This was all bandwagon effect and remake hype. Even the usual Nintendo ability to win the morning and day vote wasn't coming through this time around. As this match kept inching along, Persona kept shaving and rallying, shaving and rallying. For most of the past 12 hours, if Persona could just get one push going it probably could have come back, but Xenoblade just kept fighting it all off, like Deadpool blocking bullets with swords and such. As Persona kept pushing, Xenoblade would come up with these random updates of +10, +30, +25 out of nowhere to keep itself alive. *Finally*, with two hours to go, the rallying efforts for Persona reached a fever pitch. With two hours left, the lead was at 230. Then Persona started pulling off these crazy updates with Xenoblade stalls mixed in. 10 votes gone. 20 votes gone. 25 votes gone. With an hour to go, the lead was down to 100 and it looked like Persona was going to clutch its ass off after all. Persona got the lead down to 80 pretty quickly, and then.... Xenoblade was pushed once too many times and said enough of this shit. It kicked Persona 4 into the pit of death, held serve at 80, and ultimately won this poll by 111. This doesn't sound like much, but think of the craziness of everything it had to fend off. Board 8 likes Persona games a *lot* more than Xenoblade. All of the rallies were in Persona's favor. Persona even had some bandwagon magic of its own. But in the end, Xenoblade had just a little bit more. I don't usually bring up the double vote user bonus, as I think it's incredibly stupid to give such a dumb gimmick any legitimacy, but there were two matches in this contest where the double bonus actually reversed a match result and nullified the effects of a rally. One was Resident Evil 2 \> Bloodborne, and you guys can debate the legitimacy of that shitshow to your heart's content. Personally, I think the two hour delay not extending to 24 was bull. The other was this match. Xenoblade \> Persona 4. Did you guys know Persona 4 wins by 8 votes without gimmicks? This lends a lot of credence to my Yoblazer Test theory. If this was a round one match, Persona 4 easily wins. But it was a divisional final and the site was bandwagoning Xenoblade enough for it to win. It was an incredible match, a joy to watch, and the last truly great match of this contest. Much like Resident Evil 2 vs Bloodborne, it sucked someone had to lose. It really did. Persona will be back and busting brackets next games contest though I'm sure, because these fans are cockroaches and I mean that as a compliment. They cannot be killed, they can live entirely off of postapocalyptic Twinkies, it takes divine intervention to beat them in a close match, and it took *all this* for Xenoblade to hold it off. Hell even had this match happened in round *three*, Persona likely wins. But it happened when it happened and the result was what it was. Xenoblade didn't win this match so much as survive it, but a win is a win is a win. Scoreboard. Go look at it. Xenoblade's run was clearly coming to an end in the next round, but that's okay. This thing went from losing in round one to winning a division, and with remaster + sequel hype who knows where it goes from here? Last point before I move on. Only two gurus correctly called Xenoblade's path on top of getting all three matches in the Shovel Knight fourpack right. One was Ngamer64. The other was... Me! I would have finished something like top 10 had I stuck with my gut and picked Witcher 3 to make the final, but I am in no way salty about how I did. When you're on a list with Ngamer and no one else, it's something to be proud of. I'm super happy for him, too. He killed it this year. Ngamer gets the deeper audio version because he is **MANLIER** than Ulti is. Moving on. ## Ctes's Analysis Not many of us expected this match to deliver as much as it did. Most of us took Xenoblade without thinking twice today. The logic most gurus used before the contest was that the winner of Xenoblade vs. Three Houses would win the division. Three Houses had some previous polls making it look like it should be the clear favorite to get here, as Xenoblade and Awakening shared an opponent in 2015, but most Three Houses supporters had acknowledged from the start that Xenoblade might as well do it instead. As soon as we saw the games in the field, it became clear Xenoblade would be the game to reach this point instead. The prediction percentage is the lowest of the contest. Casuals had GTAV, RDR or maybe even Overwatch winning this one. Mostly the former two, they were close enough for a bunch of experts to pick them as well with good reasons. Most experts knew the Nintendo games would have a real chance of winning the division. We remember things like San Andreas losing to Golden Sun and GTAV losing to Super Mario RPG. Picking the winner of the Nintendo showdown today was the expert move, but we sided with the wrong one because we trusted previous stats too much. As such, only a very few actually had Xenoblade going out of this one. Then there’s Persona 4 Golden. As much as we thought we would see another edition of GameFAQs Nintendo RPG darling beat a Rockstar game, another RPG stole that show and beat them both instead. People expected P4G to be a proxy of Persona 4 with some level of quality but not many expected that it would basically be a perfect proxy. It’s a Vita game, and there is no way it would have been here if it hadn’t also been a beloved Playstation 2 game. Yet here it was and so the division came down to two niche RPG series that are becoming mainstream in recent years. For as much as we believe this bracket is the most mainstream we’ve been in a long time, this division final was about as stereotypical GameFAQs as it gets. Xenoblade might have been on some hype train at this point. Some loud board 8’ers loved the game looking so good as it did while getting this far, but make no mistake, those were the people that always voted for it to begin with mostly. Whatever boost it had this contest, it had it from the start. There’s only so much you can bandwagon from beating Three Houses, especially when everyone was just trashing Fire Emblem and giving that much of the reason. No one was trashing Metal Gear Solid when Shadow of the Colossus was on a bandwagon, no one was trashing Kingdom Hearts or Wind Waker when Starcraft was on a bandwagon (at least not rightfully based on their performances). Those things happened because the games got further than most people believed they would, Xenoblade doesn’t have the same thing going for it because after round 1, literally all of us would have picked it to reach the division finals and probably win it too. Beating Overwatch might have given it a little bit, casuals were more likely to pick that, but Overwatch isn’t as big as any of the two Rockstar games P4G beat to get here. Persona 4 Golden is the game that was riding the bigger bandwagon to get there. Beating Rockstar games grants you that, in particular when even most experts had you losing before this point. Xenoblade “upsetting” Three Houses is a case where you think “oh, I guess I had the wrong Nintendo game winning that”, Persona 4 Golden getting here is a case where you think “s\*\*\* this Vita remaster is beating up some of the most critically acclaimed games of the decade, it’s hilarious”. If you don’t believe me try looking at the x-stats. You should take those with a grain of salt of course, but things look off if you believe Xenoblade is the game on a bandwagon here. In particular, the first Red Dead Remption being that high looks off. Make no mistake, Persona 4 was already on a bandwagon last match because “It beat a Rockstar game! Wouldn’t it be funny if it beat another?” and that absolutely fueled things to make it even stronger now. I’m not doubting for a second after seeing how good Xenoblade looked from the beginning that it wins this match easier if nothing had caught a bandwagon. It’s just legit now. It had gotten tons of exposure and trailers for its upcoming definitive edition on the definitive Nintendo console was releasing right around this contest. You can argue that it SFF’d Splatoon 2, but it certainly gained no momentum from winning that match and it slaughtered Overwatch way beyond our expectations too. Xenoblade 2 looks really good at this point despite not getting out of round 1. It all adds up, Xenoblade is just legit now. Xenoblade had to fight for its life today in what would be the last truly exciting match of the contest. Xenoblade struggled in the opening minutes, but eventually slowly got rolling, but Persona fans were not going to give it an easy time at all. That fanbase proved this match that it’s perfectly capable of rallying. Xenoblade was just never allowed to close the match. The first time it tried reaching for a 200-vote lead, it almost dropped to 100 instead. Then it got above 200 it was dropped down to mid-100s instead. Repeat that for a few times before Xenoblade went over 300. The match looked close, but it also looked like Persona 4 Golden could never really make a run for it. Xenoblade looked safe because natural votes were in its favor. That was all until P4G made its biggest rally attempt of the match near the end. It stalled when it was just above 300 votes away for a good bit, then cut down to below 300 votes for a long time as Xenoblade was holding on for its dear life. When it got close to 200 very suddenly, it looked like it just might pull if off but these surges of votes from rallies never last that long so Xenoblade held on once more. The biggest scare came in the end. With two hours to go Xenoblade was ahead by 232 votes, but with an hour to go it was only 99 votes ahead. Persona fans were really passionate and tried really hard and it came as close to paying off as you could hope for. At this point it looked like they might just pull it off, but Xenoblade managed to hold on in that last hour eventually winning the match by roughly that amount. If you want to know how successful Persona 4 rallies were today, it actually wins the match without the registered user bonus. It would then win by 8 votes. The only other time this contest where that happened was with Resident Evil 2 vs. Bloodborne where the latter with its rallies also would have won without the bonus. It would certainly have been on a monstrous bandwagon if it got out here, bigger than Xenoblade would be for having its name in the top 8, that’s for sure. Persona 4 came just short today, but man what a contest run it had. Its run is easily one of the most entertaining parts of the contest, I have to give it that. When that is said, I’m glad Xenoblade won today, I think it deserves to be that one odd one out in the late rounds the most. Board 8 has both joked and been serious about it being Game of the Year in five different years this past decade. The Persona franchise deserves a lot of praise and we’ll get there, I promise, but I’m happy the Vita port and proxy would not be that odd one out-game, however good it might be. We can eagerly await to see what Persona 4 is capable of next contest, but while Golden gave us a more exciting contest, it probably shouldn’t have been here to begin with. Persona already had top 8 representation in a game that actually deserved it. It just feels nicer having Xenoblade get there too. ## Safer777's Analysis Man this match. So okay. Since P4G BARELY won against RDR(seriously 50.8)and against GTA 5(seriously 51) and XC won easily against all its opponents we all picked XC to win here since well we knew that RDR and GTA 5 aren't that strong here on Gamefaqs. Plus both these games are JPRG's and even though the Persona name is more recognizable from what I have heard the XC franchise is doing damn well, it is getting more popular, a new remake will come soon and the fans petitioned for something to come out and it did I believe. Yeah XC seems to get more and more popular. The whole crew picked XC too. So for the match. This match at the 5 minute mark was at 45-55 which is what we expected. But as the match kept going on, the percentage started to change. After 2 hours it was 48-52 and after 4 hours it was 49-51. So yeah we had a match. After about 19 hours the percentage was 49.5-50.5. So yeah P4G kept gaining but extremely slow. But then the rally that was posted for P4G seemed to gained traction. So P4G started cutting like crazy and after a while if the trends continuing that it seems that it would win with like 20 votes. Seriously nobody was sure what it would happen! Damn! But somehow XC managed to hold on and never fell above 80 votes in lead. So the highest lead was 342 and the smallest was 80 and eventually XC won with 111. Also once again the User double bonus was in effect. Why we still have this I am not sure. BUT if we remove it P4G wins with like 10 votes which would be the ultimate close match! But why XC hold on I am not sure. Maybe people really like this game right? And the bandwagon effect too! It had no rallies either and we like Persona series more too! This mach was one of the closest wire to wire matches where the loser never lead either. If P4G had won it would have break so many records. Only a few more rallied votes and it would have done it. Still in 3 out of 4 matches, P4G won 2 of them with like 2% difference and the one it lost it lost with like 0,5% difference! Can you say clutch? I bet you can! If it had won it would have reached the final 8 and it would be the first time ever than a Vita game did so well. In fact I believe it is the first time ever than a Vita game does so good too! Damn! So yeah XC just refused to lose it seems no matter what. Also check the prediction percentage for XC. Like 6! One of the lowest ever for a divsion winner that is non rallied too! I think it has to be in Top 5, maybe even Top 3 for sure. I mean even Alucard back in 2018 which nobody expected to win the division had 8.7%. IF P4G won here though it would have the lowest prediction for a Division winner ever though since in the previous round it had 14, while XC had 16.7. So yeah. Oh and in case you wonder most of us had FE3H winning the division. Yeah we make huge mistakes too. Still these kind of matches are always nice to see and both games did really well. ## Tsunami's Analysis So where do we start? In Round 2, Persona 4 Golden led Red Dead Redemption from wire to wire, but never managed to establish a terribly large lead; at 458, it was a new record for smallest max lead by a wire-to-wire winner, breaking the record set by Ike \> Proto Man in 2013--which, it should be noted, was a *12*-hour match. It then followed that up by taking a second space in that category's top 10 with a wire-to-wire win over GTA V with a maximum lead of 616. But Xenoblade's no stranger to wire-to-wire dogfights, either. While it was broken three times during the Legends'/Losers' Bracket segment of the 2018 contest, Xenoblade's loss to DKC2 in 2015 was at one point the record holder for closest wire-to-wire 24 hour match, with the largest lead being 290 votes by *Xenoblade*. So there was definitely a good chance that we'd see something exciting, especially since there wouldn't be much bracket voting to get in the way; P4G's R3 prediction percentage was 14.01% and XBC's was 16.7%. Xenoblade jumped out to the quick lead, going up by 100 in just half an hour and requiring less than two hours to push it above 200, but it took a while for it to increase much beyond that, falling into a pattern of ebbs and flows. By early morning, it had gotten into the mid 300s...er, the low-to-mid-300s...well, anyway, at the halfway point of the match, the lead was at 342, which would turn out to be its peak. That right there was good for a tie for \#10 on the closest wire-to-wire matches list (1v1s only). And it looked like it was probably going to get that record for a wire-to-wire winner without any trouble, because P4G wasn't really doing much more than stalling things out; XBC's lead crested above 300 for an update at 10 minutes past noon, and it was 274 at 3 PM, five hours from the end of the match. 25 minutes later, it was down to 222, and it kept dropping. Xenoblade recovered somewhat, and had the lead at 232 with two hours to go...but one hour later, it was down to 99. The comeback was real; there was a pinned rally topic, and P4G was going to pull off another ridiculous win. Except...it didn't happen that way. XBC won the next update, then lost a couple, then won three in a row. The last hour was just a giant stall, and it was Xenoblade with the big final update to push its lead back up over 100. The record was secure. But I can't help thinking that there was another record this match should've been chasing instead... P4G 4484 **4445 8929 **13334 **XBC 4585 **4336 8921 **13445** *Are you kidding me?!* Yeah, this match was fun and all, we were expecting a lit final hour based on the penultimate-hour comeback...but without the registered user bonus, this becomes a legitimate final-update F5-er. 8 votes. 8 measly votes, which would've been just one away from the 1v1 record. Even with the registered voter bonus (which flipped the match, mind you), it still squeaked into the *overall* top 25 with its final margin of 111, comfortably landing in the 1v1 Top 25 at \#13. And that wasn't the only list where this match was \#13 among 1v1s and \#25 among all matches. Xenoblade' prediction percentage of 6.29% landed it at those exact same spots on the list of biggest surprises of all time. Normally this would be the point where I'd say "6.29% is less than half of 16.7%, so this was an upset", but I don't think it's necessarily applicable here. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out that P4G's prediction percentage was below 5.27%, which would be the equivalent percentage of 14.01%. These games were both considered underdogs all the way back in Round 2, though XBC's prediction percentage was at least *close* to half of its R1 prediction percentage, and they were both considered underdogs again in Round 3. So, yeah, of course most people who picked Xenoblade to reach this match thought it would lose; most of them likely had it facing GTAV or RDR. I mean, I *do* expect that "top half winner" was a favorite over "bottom half winner" to take Division 4. Just looking at those prediction percentages, it wouldn't surprise me to think that Red Dead Redemption had the second-highest prediction percentage to win this match in spite of the game it's trailing being its would-be R3 opponent. It's just a shame that this would likely be the only entry on the "most surprising results" list for the entire contest. XBC itself was done for next round, of course, leaving only the second semifinal as a match that would likely have that much debate--and even then, the fact that the apparent favorite to win it isn't the one that's going to get its prediction percentage depressed by a debatable quarterfinal match, even that should be able to get the requisite 10% prediction percentage to avoid the lists. Oh, yeah, I guess that's a thing to note. With this match, the cutoff to make the 1v1-only list fell below 10%, with Auron's division title from 2018 (9.97% prediction percentage) falling to \#25. Can't lol at the casuals on this one, though; only 9.86% of Gurus got this right. That percentage would've been even lower if P4G had won (which was my selection, for the record), though even if the Guru favorite had won, it'd only be 44.37%. And that favorite was...Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Which I guess is still a possibility for who the casuals' favorite was, but I'd still bet theirs was GTAV. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8030&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=116) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (2)God of War 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (2)God of War 2020 (revid 88589)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, May 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 117 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 58.18% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 51.77% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5956 God of War - 3194 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5256 God of War - 3075 After a small blip for one update against Super Mario Galaxy 2, Witcher 3 went back to its roots in this contest, namely beating up Western games so badly that people were calling for SFF as the reason for all these beatings. God of War's job was just making it up to this match; our boy Kratos was never going to win it, and that's okay. He finally made it into the fourth round. It's hard to argue against SFF as the reason Witcher 3 kept going berserk against other Western games, but the concept of "Western SFF" is pretty much brand new as of this contest so it's hard for a lot of people to believe. I get not buying it, but by this point of the contest people had seen Witcher 3 in action thrice and it was *still* overshooting its oracle consensus. This time, it was a 6% overshot. In round one it was an 8% overshot, in round two it was 9%, and here it was 6%. The only round where it didn't *wildly* (ha) overperform was against a big name Nintendo game. If that isn't proof that Witcher 3 is a Clint Eastwood esque king of the west, I don't know what is. Oh and spoilers, this would make four times in a row Witcher 3 was better-looking than Skyrim. How does that one saying go after three, anyway? One's an accident, two is a problem, three is a trend, four is.... what? Has that saying ever even gotten to four? ## Ctes's Analysis We didn’t really need any more evidence at this point that The Witcher 3 was going to reach the finals without breaking a sweat, but here we are. Witcher 3 made a complete joke of God of War today, it looked like it didn’t belong here at all. Picking God of War in this match looked like a somewhat reasonable upset before the contest if you used previous polls a bit much, but Witcher 3 did its best to make you looks ridiculously stupid for picking that. God of War looks too bad today though. Unless you were ready to accept the upper half of the division being ridiculously good or the lower half being ridiculously bad, something was off today. I was among the first to believe some kind of SFF here, similar to what happened to Mass Effect 3 and maybe even Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. God of War is a Playstation 4 exclusive, that is the console Witcher 3 is biggest on. Maybe it’s bigger on PC now, but that shouldn’t matter on GameFAQs. They also have similar demographics. Then thrown against each other with “Game of the Decade” written above them and forced voting and Witcher 3 will overperform. It doesn’t have too be all that much to make everything seem a lot more reasonable. God of War looked pretty good so far. I tried to explain this several times in the stats topic, but what everyone got from it was “Western SFF”. Let’s be real, that’s not what was suggested, but that’s what caught on. I mean, I’m sure someone suggested it, but I was quoted saying the idea of Western SFF sounded stupid. Eventually this term caught on, it was short and sweet, but let’s just make it clear how misleading that is. I’m absolutely not saying Witcher 3 could SFF whatever games come outside of Japan and I’m not sure anyone initially was, but it was eventually spread that I’m sure we’ve made people believe that by now. It doesn’t even make much sense because Witcher 3 is from Poland, that is, closer to Japan that to California where Santa Monica is based. That’s the developers of God of War in case you don’t know. I get it’s a short a sweet term, but could we not name things misleading names just because of that. Regardless of that, SFF happened here, but people definitely overshot it. I think God of War was adjusted a bit too high in the x-stats. God of War has been overrated the whole contest because of that one poll against Super Smash Bros. Ultimate where it got more than 55%. People were ready to accept lots of weird things before not taking that poll at face value. Smash Bros isn’t trying to make new exciting formats, it’s trying to perfect what it is and show love and exposure to all kinds of things. It’s an easy game to overperform against in a poll that says “Game of the Year” or “Game of the Decade” for that matter. We’re far from the days where Smash Bros games are dominating such things. On top of that, do we ever learn not to take regular polls to face value? It’s like we only learned not to take 10-way regular polls at face value. Regular polls are a fine indicator of contest strength, but you should be ready to discard them as soon as a contest match points against it. Does anyone remember Final Fantasy VI vs. Final Fantasy VII? That match happened in a regular poll and in a contest match not too long from each other. Neither result was close, but the winner was different. Why was it that didn’t reach us to always take regular polls with a grain of salt? It’s a shame God of War had to go out in such a humiliating way, but something had to draw Witcher 3 here I suppose. God of War is totally worthy of a top 16 finish, however. It’s a fantastic game which did not only bring life back into the franchise of one of Sony’s biggest mascots but is also the best game in that franchise and I am so darn prepared for more if it comes. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match was strange. Obviously we all had Witcher 3 winning here. The Crew got around 57 on average too. And if you see, it reached almost 65. And no rally here. Damn! Nobody expected this high. So what exactly happened here? I will tell you. So for the match. The thing that MAYBE happened was SFF. Or Same Fanbase Factor as the old people like the regulars call it. What exactly is that? It is when games/characters from the same series or similar series fight each other. For example Mario and Link. They are both really strong. But when they face each other Link always trashes Mario badly. Why? Because if you like Nintendo you like both of these characters BUT you will like Link more so more chances to vote for him. Same with series. FF 7 and FF 6 are both realy good games and beloved. But when they face each other FF 7 always dominates. Why? Because if you like the FF series you will like FF 7 mostly above the rest so more chances to vote for it. Now you may say, but Safer W3 and GOW aren't the same series and don't have the same characters! True that. BUT they are similar in a sense that they are both western open world games with similar structure. So if you like western open world games you are likely to like W3 more, so more chances to vote for it. So that is what happened. I guess. Hey I am not saying that I know everything! Also amazing victory for W3 no matter the reason too. Still I am not sure. I mean everyone would pick GOW to beat SMG 2 for sure. So yeah MAYBE the reason is SFF. I know that I said in my previous analysis that I don't believe in it but now I am not so sure. Whatever the reason Witcher 3 won easily and is damn strong. Man this game. Play both of these games if you haven't! ## Tsunami's Analysis Well this was a fairly predictable blowout. Over 50% of all brackets had The Witcher 3 here, with Gurus in particular calling it at nearly an 80% clip and almost two thirds of the Gurus that missed it having instead picked The Witcher 3's opponent from the previous round. ...Correction. Predictable result, yes; predictable blowout, maybe not so much. There's no exact data on the Second Chance brackets, which were something vaguely resembling the Oracle except you could only pick whole percentages and there was no option to pick a winner with 50% (which meant that a truly perfect score was impossible because such a pick would've been required to get the maximum 50 points from Xenoblade-P4G), but looking at the Oracle...Witcher 3 was the unanimous choice to win, but 51 out of 53 Gurus went under on the percentage, 44 of them by at least 5% and all of them by enough that the two that went over had the top two predictions. I guess it just seemed obvious to me because I *was* the highest pick and thusly the second-place finisher in that match. All in all, the Oracle Consensus was 6.30% lower than Witcher 3's actual score. Wait, hold on... Match \#33 - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt *vs* Assassin's Creed Odyssey Consensus: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 76.65% Result: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 84.07% Match \#81 - Mass Effect 3 *vs* The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Consensus: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 69.09% Result: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 78.40% Match \#105 - Super Mario Galaxy 2 *vs* The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Consensus: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 61.29% Result: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 60.60% ...Okay, so there was at least one match where Witcher 3 was fairly close to expectation, actually coming up a tad short. Ironically, it's the one where there were the most people picking it to lose outright. But that's still the third time in four rounds where The Witcher 3 vastly outperformed expectations. At this point, it was more or less taken for granted that the Guru Contest would be decided by Dark Souls vs. Skyrim; Witcher 3 making it to the finals and losing was more or less set in stone. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8031&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=117) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Persona 5 vs (3)Portal 2 2020 _source: (1)Persona 5 vs (3)Portal 2 2020 (revid 88587)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, May 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 118 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 5 - 57.28% 51 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 5 - 29.22% - **User Votes:** Persona 5 - 5226 Portal 2 - 3924 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 5 - 4854 Portal 2 - 3478 I honestly thought Portal 2 might be able to make a match of this with all the momentum it had built up to this point, but Persona 5 was absolutely having none of that stuff. This match was reasonably close for one update, but after that first five minutes Persona 5 just beat Portal's ass all over the place for this entire match. No comebacks, no momentum, no mercy. Just a cold, hard, swift asswhipping as Persona 5 marched right to a division win. I know neither game in the Persona duo won this contest or anything, but for my money the Persona series and Witcher 3 are tied for Star of the Contest. With the Smash Bros series giving Persona newfound strength and respect, on top of that series growing more and more each year, it has nowhere to go but up. When and if we get Persona 6, it has a good chance to slide into whatever we want to call the tier right below Zelda's top games. Speaking of stars of the contest, this win set up a match between Witcher 3 and Persona 5. Few things in these contests are more fun than two white-hot entrants dueling, so we were all hoping the match would live up to the hype it was getting while this was all going on live. (Spoilers: lolno.) I don't want to leave this writeup without giving Portal 2 some love, purely because I love the game but also because getting this far in a contest should mean something. So without further delay... You won't find many villains more likeable than GLaDOS. ## Ctes's Analysis There was at no point of the contest any real doubt of what game would make it out this division. Sure, some gurus tried to get a hot upset here, but Persona 5 was a lock to get past this point from the start. The fifth main installment in the series would be what finally pushed the series to what you would call mainstream and a while after the releasing it would even have Smash representation on top of that. Probably helps that it was released as Persona 5 and not Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 because that has always screamed “some cult Japanese thing” to casual owners of a Playstation, unfortunately. The main reason is of course just that it’s a really good game. The beginning of this match was very weird. Persona has consistently had great board votes. Portal usually has too, though against Kingdom Hearts III, it boosted after the board vote instead. Then this match begins right another match featuring a Persona game ends. That other match had the Persona game rallying quite heavily by the end of this match and I’m the general Persona subreddit stickied a rally thread and while later changing the title to show this match instead of the other one. Yet the first minutes were the worst for Persona 5 in the match. Well, the first minute was great, but Portal 2 looked like it was in this match all the way up until the freeze. It was actually ever so slightly closing the gap in the end. Then 10 minutes into the match, it was all over and Persona 5 never looked back. That seems weird. I mean, maybe board 8 just really loves Portal 2 as well or maybe some rally backfire happened, though that seems unlikely. What does seem likely is that the rally thread wasn’t affecting this match all too much early on, because it was somewhat out of fuel near the end of the Persona 4/Xenoblade match and it would be a bit before people on reddit noticed a title change. The votals at the freeze are slightly better than the other days, but they had been growing each day already so maybe that’s natural. Then I’m just left finding it weird that the hierarchy here is Kingdom Hearts III \> Portal 2 \> Persona 5, I would’ve guessed it the other way around, but alright, it’s not too important. Persona 5 likely does slightly worse without the rally thread but it’s nothing noticeably. I’m glad Portal 2 managed to get here despite the off chance it would have declining further throughout the decade as it hasn’t been relevant for a while and the memes are far beyond existing at this point. It’s nice the contest title is taken seriously. It’s probably the final time we’ll see one of the Portal games doing so well, so let’s enjoy that for a while. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match. Not only we all knew that Persona 5 would win but it would win with around 57 according to average predictions. And guess with how much it won! So yeah. So for the match. Everything as expected. Still strange to see Portal 2 reaching the Division Finals. Still the game is beloved even though the series has been abandoned by the creators. Eh. Persona series has become a beast in the last 2 years since the previous contest. Don't know why but man even P4G lost the match by like 110 votes. So yeah. I know we like JRPG's here but damn! Still nice to see another JRPG series doing really good. Imagine if P4G had won the division too! Persona series would be the most dominant in this contest! Only 110 votes and we would see that! ## Tsunami's Analysis This, on the other hand, was predictable no matter how you sliced it. Almost as well predicted by Gurus as the previous match, with Oracle percentages bunched up right around the actual outcome (50 out of 53 Gurus were within 5%, most of them dramatically so), casual prediction percentage...29.22%? Ah, well, it's a Round 4 match, so a high prediction percentage would be odd. Even Skyrim and Witcher 3 barely cracked 50%...Huh. Nope, P5's prediction percentage last round was 63.69%, so this constitutes an upset for the casuals. See, I knew they'd screw this one up! And Portal 2's prediction percentage last round was 23.57%, coming off a 50.55% prediction percentage the round before, so...the true casual favorite in this match was Red Dead Redemption 2? It did have one of the highest R1 prediction percentages, and an R2 prediction percentage nearing 70 entering the match against Portal 2 and its prediction percentage barely above 50. ...Although it'd have to retain a fairly good percentage each round to still have the plurality; P5 and RDR2 had similar R2 prediction percentages but then P5 barely lost *anything* from R2 to R3. 73.69% to 63.69%. LOL Sonic Mania, almost no one had it (or Super Meat Boy, since it seems like Mania wasn't favored by much) beating Persona 5. Incidentally, had Persona 5 made it all the way to the finals, we would've had our first two-time Guru champion...by tiebreaker over another past Guru champion. The last point of divergence between the brackets of Rivals Contest Guru winner SuperNiceDog and CBVIII Guru winner Dr Football was the Division 4 final, where Football had the Cookie pick of Three Houses (already eliminated one round earlier) and SND had Xenoblade. Once Xenoblade won, they were guaranteed to finish with identical scores, and would have beaten out everyone else if Persona 5 were to win two more matches. Dr Football appeared to still have the better tiebreaker, though, which is maybe ironic since SND's win came in a gimmicky contest so easy to predict that the Battle Challenge required an Oracle component hastily tacked onto its finale to break all the ties. (Relatively speaking, of course; even that year didn't have a single perfect Guru, though SND wasn't the only one with but a single wrong pick on a 1-point match.) They weren't even the only past champions still alive at this point--Skyrim defeating Witcher 3 in the semifinals (yes, Witcher 3 specifically; a win over P5 would've given it to someone else) would have given the win to Villains Contest winner yoblazer as long as the overall champion wasn't Smash Ultimate. Guru Contests, it seems, are much like the World Series of Poker Main Event--it's really hard to win it twice, but you tend to see the same names making deep runs. But on the other hand, it's still possible to fluke into a deep run, like when I was still alive with a mere 5 matches left in 2013. I'm still mad as hell that it wasn't two matches left--I already knew that my bracket was doomed by then because Vivi's nonsensical upset of Mario meant that a literal second Pokémon character had won Division 8, but come on, we'd seen Mega Man underperform 1v1 against Zero in 2004 and get LFFed into a loss against Weighted Companion Cube in 2008. The Guru stats even back this up; Charizard was heavily favored there. Huh, maybe that wasn't a fluke? My bracket was good enough to still be alive at that point if the cookie pick came through. How'd I manage to put together a bracket that strong, given my usual track record? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8032&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=118) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 (revid 88585)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, May 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 119 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 56.64% 51 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 30.19% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 5353 The Last of Us - 3667 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 4213 The Last of Us - 3335 Before we talk about the elephant in the room, let's set the stage here. Some fun with numbers: Dark Souls (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g) Dark Souls has a strength of 25.11. The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. The Last of Us wins with 54.11% of the vote! A win of 5,006 with 60,875 total votes cast. There isn't much reason to think these are fraudulent numbers. Dark Souls got like 30% on Link to the Past that year, and Last of Us got 40% on Kingdom Hearts 2. There is only so much adjusting that can be done there, and at a certain point if you think Dark Souls looked better anyway in 2015 then you're just adjusting the numbers around until you see the result you want. There was nothing wrong with looking at 2015 and picking The Last of Us to win this match, especially if you thought The Last of Us 2 hype was going to boost the original up. Even if you thought Dark Souls would go up due to the respect factor and the name of our contest (as well you should have, this was perfectly good logic and Souls was the decade's biggest story along with open world stuff), it had to go up enough to beat The Last of Us potentially being boosted by sequel hype. Oh it got boosted by sequel hype alright, but not in the way anyone was expecting pre-contest. One day after The Last of Us's match with Batman where it struggled a bit, Naughty Dog and Sony announced *another* delay in The Last of Us 2's release date. Now for the record, coronavirus has affected a lot of things in 2020 so delays on entertainment are understandable, but this game was originally supposed to come out on February 21st and the first delay was announced in October of 2019. A second delay was announced on April 2nd and corona was directly cited. Okay, sure, makes sense. We all understand that. But the announcement of a third delay really started to piss people off, and it happened right in the middle of this contest on April 27th. At that point, it isn't coronavirus causing the delays and we all know it. More on that in a second. On the *same exact day* that yet another delay was announced, all hell broke loose at Naughty Dog and the entirety of The Last of Us 2's plot was leaked and posted online. At first, it was widely believed that this was done by a disgruntled employee who was sick of the conditions there. And who could blame them? But as it turns out, the leak was done by a hacker who used an older game to exploit a server security weakness. I could go on an incredibly long rant here about how Naughty Dog legitimately treats their employees like slaves, but Jim Sterling covers this one far better than I ever could. Don't worry, this video mentions absolutely nothing about what's in the leaks. All he talks about is how and why they happened: Whether the leak was an inside job or not, the fact that everyone believed at first that it came from someone pissed at a crunch tells the story, doesn't it? What's even worse is what's actually in the leaks, so let's just get to it. I will not discuss any of them here, even with spoiler tags, out of respect for anyone who doesn't want to know them. Instead, here is a video with a very safe thumbnail. If you want to know what's in the leaks, watch this video. If not, skip past it. **WARNING: THIS VIDEO PROBABLY SPOILS EVERYTHING THAT'S IN THE LAST OF US 2!!! WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK!** I asked a mod whom we all love and respect if this video was safe to post, and he confirmed that it is. Here you go: I won't bother getting into how I personally feel about what this all means in terms of the series plot, because I already said I'm not talking about the specifics here. Just know that I liked the original quite a lot and that my opinion pretty much lines up with what everyone is saying on the internet. And believe me, you can't go *anywhere* on the internet right now without people talking about this. Naughty Dog fucked up, and they fucked up *badly*. What I do want to talk about here is the thorough and swift rejection of the SJW filth that's been infesting entertainment. Last decade was the rise of that puke, but this decade is seeing the public reject all of it at an alarming rate. "But Ulti, everywhere I look online people are happy about diversity and such! And Captain Marvel made over a billion dollars so lol you!" Social media in no way reflects the real world, and people need to learn this lesson. Don't let Twitter produce your show or control your opinions. If social media or going viral meant jack shit, we would have had President Bernie Sanders 300 times over by now. As for Captain Marvel, good example! I'm glad someone brought her up. Thanks, Hypothetical Guy. She is a wonderful example of audiences being smart, because people know the difference between well-meaning diversity like Captain Marvel or the Tom Holland Spiderman cast and the garbage The Last of Us 2 is trying to pull. You can have the opinions Brie Larson or Tessa Thompson have. Free country, free speech. Go nuts. The problem happens when you try to fight discrimination with discrimination in entertainment despite the audience, including most of the *women* in your audience, outright telling you to fuck off. Girl power and diversity based on merit are very, very good things. Forcing it at the expense of others (13 Reasons Why and the constant misandry being a great example) is where the problem starts, and I don't get how people don't understand the difference. I could name 100 female characters, probably more, who are strong, amazing, great female characters who aren't in their roles to check off diversity boxes and tell everyone men suck all day long. Hell this writeup is going to be long anyways, so let's do it. What's 100 extra lines on a wiki page, anyway? This is right off the top of my head in no order whatsoever. I won't cheat, look at any lists, nothing. You can make strong, cool, and lovable female characters without ever going the moronic "all men suck and we must check off as many diversity boxes as possible" SJW route. -Captain Marvel -Wonder Woman -Beatrix Kiddo -Sarah Conner pre Dark Fate -Commander Shepherd -Tifa Lockheart -Ellen Ripley -Princess Leia -Buffy -Jill Valentine -Presea Combatir -Sheena Fujibayashi, and don't ask me to spell her last name correctly -Rita Mordio -Judith -Scully (the real reason X-Files was popular!) -Elaine Benes -Althena from the Lunar games -Khaleesi -Cersei Lannister -Catherine Tully -Brienne of Tarth -Black Widow -Arya Stark -Xena, Warrior Princess -Katniss Everdeen (book version, the movies do her no justice at all) -Lara Croft -Padme (yeah I fucking said it, do not @ me) -Clarice from Silence of the Lambs -Miranda Lawson -Tali -Kasumi -Celes -Yuffie -Yuna -Rikku -Ashe -Lightning -Fang -Charlotte Flair -Becky Lynch -Shayna Baszler -Ronda Rousey -Sara del Ray -Sarah Stock -Portia Perez -Cheerleader Melissa -Kris Statlander -Toni Storm -Bianca Belair -The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -Maeve (Westworld) -Dolores (Westworld) -Bayonetta -Juno -Mulan -Ariel -Monica -Phoebe -Rachel -13 from House -Olivia Benson (the girl from Law and Order SVU with the big chin) -11 from Stranger Things -Jessica Jones -Catwoman -Maria from West Side Story -Mimi from Rent -Christine from Phantom of the Opera -Beatrix from Umineko -Beatrix from Final Fantasy 9 -Pepper Potts -Terra Branford -Ada Wong -Edelgard -Lyndis -Corrin -Undyne -Cammy -Chun-Li -C. Viper -Trish from the DMC games -Trish Stratus -Elizabeth Swann -June from Handmaid's Tale -Lucina -Tharja -Byleth -Sothis -Hilda -Petra -Ingrid -THUNDER CATHERINE, I MEAN COME ON HER NAME IS LITERALLY **THUNDER CATHERINE** FFS -Shamir -Rhea -Titania -Jill -Celica -Azura -Camilla -Anna -Micaiah -Sakura -Rose -Elena -Juri -Kerrigan -Meryl -Samus -Zelda -Palutena -Gamora -Do female Pokemon count? -How about generic female characters when I get to create my own, like in Skyrim or Dark Souls? This should be around 100 or close to it. Yes, there are a lot of Nintendo, wrestling, JRPG, MCU, and Street Fighter characters. Welcome to what most of my entertainment time has gone towards! I could go on for quite awhile here with naming great females who aren't pushing stupid agendas, but do you get the point yet? If you're a great character, you're a great character and people will just like you for being you. No one who isn't completely out of their mind is walking around, looking at the world, and going "X is represented in this piece of entertainment, and by enjoying X you must hate all of Y". I've been trying to find the right words to prove my point here for years, and that Upper Echelon guy really did a perfect job. No one worth interacting with looks at Samus and goes "well by liking her, you must hate any female who isn't white". "Actually I really loved Gamora's character arc in the Marvel movies, plus Zoe Saldana is an incredibly talented actress. You don't star in three different 2 billion dollar movies by accident." "Yeah but she plays up to black stereotypes." "Uh, she's Puerto Rican and Dominican, plus she was born in New Jersey so it's neat having someone from my home state star in the movies." "Shut up cis amab racist, they should have cast black MTF trans POCs." This is an actual conversation I've had with someone, and thankfully she was laughed out of the room. This stuff just does not sell, which is why these people go on social media to spread their BS; they just aren't accepted anywhere else. A great recent example is that idiot who is embarrassing the new Twitch Safety Council by pretending to be a deer, with the irony of all ironies being an MTF transsexual who now claims to be a deer but is always on stream wearing antlers. News flash -- female deer don't have antlers, genius. Are you telling us you're simply a moron, or are you you telling us that you're full of shit and that everyone is right to want you off of Twitch? This guy puts it best. It's the Emperor's New Clothes. Thankfully, even the internet is rejecting these people at record numbers. Or how about the SJW idiot in New York yesterday who called the cops on a black dude for walking her dog off leash? I refuse to link to the video, but the short version is her dog is off leash in a park in New York, he asks her to leash it, and she freaks out and *literally* says she'll call the cops and tell them an African is threatening her and her dog. Her words, not mine. Oh, and during the entire phone call she is quite literally **lynching her dog**. That's why I refuse to link to it or even say the dumb bitch's name. The good news here is not only did more SJW trash expose the entire movement as being the *actual* intolerant racism of our time, but the entire internet banded together and gave her exactly what she deserved. I could rant on that story alone for another 5000 words, but I'll keep it short. Conservatives get accused of being racist 24/7, yet the actual intolerant racists in our culture are always exposed as being these liberal SJW Karen types. Political donations are public, lady. Of course you virtue signal for equality and then turn into a plantation owner the second a black guy isn't following your orders. Anyone that's honest with themselves and pays any attention at all knew this already, but we're getting way off topic here. I just saw that story today and it made me sick, plus it's related to my overall point of SJWs being garbage, but all of them are being rejected from our culture in all mediums these days. Back to the point. Men have been saying they don't want this SJW nonsense in gaming for ages, especially if you're going to tell us how much we suck and how you want us dead all day. The issue was never needing great female characters. We all love them. The issue is, like I said, forced diversity and tearing others down while you do it. You cannot fight discrimination with discrimination and be morally correct in any way. Now women are on board with hating it all too, thank God, so the entire SJW nonsense is going to collapse in epic fashion. When even women aren't buying what they're selling anymore, when you lose the folks with the most buying power in our culture (women), the jig is up. This is why no one went to see Men In Black International, Birds of Prey, Ghostbusters 2016, Charlie's Angels 2019, Batwoman on CW, and a whole slew of other things. Gaming is still in the beginning stages of getting rid of this garbage, in large part because the medium is so young and naive, but we *are* getting rid of it. The one good thing about this shitshow with The Last of Us 2 is the momentum for getting the SJW vomit out of video games has hit a breaking point. Again, I won't mention anything specific in the leaks, but they're so awful and it's done in such poor taste that even the people Neil Druckmann is trying to cater to are telling him what a piece of trash he is. Dude fucked up hard. This video is safe to watch. It has no spoilers in it whatsoever. Scout's honor. Have I mentioned that Druckmann is so woke that he fired a woman from out of her position as head writer at Naughty Dog? I hope the irony isn't lost on people here. And even after all this BS and all this nonsense and all this controversy, it *still* gets so much worse. How do you guys think Sony and Naughty Dog reacted to all this? By going full Barbara Streisand, of course! Youtube, and most social media really, has a means to protect privacy and protect content from theft. You submit a DMCA complaint, and poof. The issue is because these social media sites are so huge, the process is often automated and leads to erroneous deletions of legitimate content. Did Sony and Naughy Dog respond to this controversy by diffusing it, issuing any apologies, anything? Of course not. They scoured the internet and submitted a bunch of falsified DMCA claims. Some of them were legitimate so as to get rid of videos playing the actual leak. That was fine. But they also flagged people who were simply *talking* about the leaks or covering it like a news story, which is why a bunch of content creators had to put legalese in their videos threatening lawsuits. Rather than try to cover all of the fraudulent deletions, this screenshot should suffice. Yes, Sony actually DMCA'd themselves. That is a real tweet that you can still see as of this writing, though I imagine they'll eventually delete it entirely. But trust me, for the wiki readers who see this in a few years, this actually happened. Be warned if you actually look it up though, as there are spoilers in the comments. It should also be noted that Sony went way, way overboard. Entire channels were deleted and they also struck down harmless memes that spoiled nothing. Does it get even worse? **Of course it does.** Sony and Naughty Dog have even gone so far as to blatantly submit false review scores to try boosting the game. Don't worry, this video is spoiler-free. He's using numbers from a couple weeks ago. We're up to about 3100 scores as of this writing, and the game still has a perfect rating on the Playstation store. I've said this many times, but the only reviews in gaming that tell the truth are word of mouth reviews and/or people who are 100% independent. People paid to write reviews for companies and these aggregator web sites are manipulated on the professional side. There are far too may examples to list, but this aggregate score is literally impossible. Review copies haven't gone out yet and there is no way 3100 people have preordered the game on the store just to give it a 5 star rating. This has all been one of the biggest scandals in gaming history -- the story truly is that nutty, and the game isn't even out yet, just wait until June -- and one of the biggest stories of a gaming company fucking up you'll ever see. The story isn't even over yet, which is the crazy part. tl;dr version - People don't want SJW trash infecting entertainment anymore, yet somehow even the legendarily awful levels of the actual SJW trash did not match how bad Sony's attempt at damage control has been. Which brings us to the actual match. In *The Art of War*, Sun Tzu discuss the tactics and strategy used that allowed his army of 10,000 to conquer an army of 100,000. One line from the text is very valid here: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." Dark Souls never had to actually "win" this match. It just had to sit there and wait. The Last of Us botched this entire build so badly that we were about to see one of the biggest contest collapses in our history, and this might legitimately be the biggest mid-contest fail we've ever had. I'm too lazy to try looking it up to compare it to anything else, but by the numbers I'll be shocked if anything tops this. We played fun with numbers during the last round's writeup for Batman vs Last of Us, but just in case anyone forgot: Batman: Arkham City (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g) Batman: Arkham City has a strength of 25.17. The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. The Last of Us wins with 54.00% of the vote! A win of 4,873 with 60,875 total votes cast. Last of Us would end up winning with 55.24%, so we can safely say adjustments and whatever else was done in the 2015 stats for these two games was accurate. Let's bring up the original fun with numbers from the beginning of all this one more time: Dark Souls (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g) Dark Souls has a strength of 25.11. The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. The Last of Us wins with 54.11% of the vote! A win of 5,006 with 60,875 total votes cast. Dark Souls clearly went up between 2015 and 2020, that much is obvious, but the exact amount is anyone's guess. Thankfully, we know through Dark Souls vs MGS5 that we have 8% to work with. 8% can be split up for a Dark Souls boost and MGS5 deboost however anyone wants, but here's the point. You could give that entire 8% to Dark Souls and it turns this into a 54-46 match. Obviously it wasn't the full 8%, but you can see where I'm going with this. When this poll started, Dark Souls beat the *piss* out of The Last of Us. It was well over 60% for a very long time here, and only a slight percentage bleed with the day vote gave The Last of Us any shred of dignity whatsoever on the way out of this contest. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that of the 8% we talked about earlier, we split it right in half. 4% Dark Souls, 4% MGS5. Pre-leak, we had evidence The Last of Us hadn't moved, so 4% from Dark Souls would have made this a 50-50 type of match that Dark Souls probably would have won in the 52-48 range. Maybe 51-49. In the actual match, Dark Souls won 58-42 and it could have *easily* been more. Do you guys understand how thoroughly ridiculous it is for a game to deboost by nearly 10% mid-contest in under 2 weeks? I'm not upset The Last of Us Lost this match -- though I am quite happy I was out of the guru by this point because losing on this garbage would have been beyond dumb -- because all evidence leading up to this pointed to an easy win for Dark Souls. What I am upset about is just how brazen and stupid Sony, Naughty Dog, and Neil Druckmann have been with all this. It's one of the worst displays of self sabotage I've ever seen from a gaming company, and it *almost* rivals the idiocy of Activision-Blizzard. This is an ongoing thing, so I doubt it's the last we'll hear about the indefensible shitshow this all is. Seeing it play out live in a contest was nuts, too. Like people wanted to **punish** The Last of Us here, and who could blame them? In the end, both games deserved what they got here. The Last of Us deserved to get its ass kicked, and Dark Souls also deserved to win a division. Let's not toss that aside. A contest called "Game of the Decade" would be borderline fraudulent without something related to Souls making the final eight, and having it be the flagship of the franchise made it awesome. This would set up a potentially incredible match between Dark Souls and Skyrim, provided Skyrim was able to get past Pokemon. In the end, game developers, be smart and listen to your fans. Don't be trash like Disobedient Canine. Be more like From Software. Post-Release Update It was every bit the shitshow I predicted, right down to critics loving the game and players hating it. Most of the so-called professional reviews are due to an embargo where reviewers were not allowed to discuss Abby at all under threat of industry blacklisting. I've said for many years these so-called professional reviewers are paid off SJW trash, and this game is the most blatant example of it. The Last of Us 2 is SJW trash, and 100% relies on emotional manipulation and outright lying. But what can you expect from the braindead idiots out in Seattle? ## Ctes's Analysis This match had not really been in doubt since round 2 where The Last of Us failed to look impressive against Diablo III and Souldborne in general looked to be better than ever, but man, for such a popular upset pick as The Last of Us winning here, it sure didn’t come close at all. Now under normal circumstances this would be a tribute to another fantastic game of the decade leaving the contest and all that, but this was not normal circumstances. The Last of Us part II had been delayed three times by now, which was not exactly a popular decision to begin with. Then a day after its previous match a new and final release day would be announced, but it would also be the day the world collapsed when the game was leaked to the internet. We’re talking lengthy videos. There’s gameplay and there are cutscenes. A lot of it was out there. This is always unfortunate, but we were still a good while off. It’s different that when this happens because some employee is a jerk. Information spreads rapidly fast these days and it has ever since been dangerous to be anywhere on the internet. Comment sections of Playstation threads that had nothing to do with the game became danger zones. Hell, I’ve seen people say they were spoiled on Smash forums. It was everywhere. The Last of Us has certainly been the talks of the internet these past months. This matters in this match because the internet really hated what they saw. I won’t go into details about what’s in there, no aspects about it either. It’s a very interesting discussion for another time, but I don’t think it would appropriate here. What we need to take from it is that it exploded the internet with negativity. Everything they’ve uploaded since has had liked/dislikes and comments disabled. There was that one video from Neil Druckmann where he passionately spoke about the game vaguely and told people to look forward to it that and 75-80% of people disliked it. It was insane. On top of everything, it was initially believed that the leak happened by an employee that was tired of his working conditions, a rumor which was believed by most because it’s not the first time we’ve heard something like that happening with Naughty Dog. Eventually we learned it was not why the leak happened, but I’m mentioning it because it certainly fueled the fire of burning hate coming in the direction of The Last of Us. This would hurt the game’s already bad chances of making it out of this match. Fortunately, it was not getting out of it in the first place, so the many people that had their brackets die today at least can’t blame this. How much the leaks damaged it is tough to determine, but we can try to look at it. Before the match, a few people went as high as thinking 15%. That’s pretty clearly not the case, but it’s reasonable to expect some backlash even here. Batman: Arkham City vs. The Last of Us went almost exactly as the 2015 stats suggest it would. Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V had Dark Souls winning by 8% more than it did in 2015. The Last of Us is projected to get about the same on Dark Souls as on Batman in 2015. These are the important things. The last of them is obviously the reason why The Last of Us was picked by as many as it was. It had a sequel coming and it had claim get far in a contest of this title. Even it Dark Souls was slightly stronger, it could still happen. Let’s begin with the 8% difference in Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V. I’ll credit almost all of that to Dark Souls and I’ve said so before. There’s not really much reason for MGSV to decline further, maybe a little bit but the whole Konami and Kojima incident was already past us back in 2015. The relevance of all that drama back then might even upweight that Metal Gear Solid is less relevant today. Dark Souls and Soulsborne in general are however one of the most memorable things of the decade. They have boosted a good bit this contest and are more popular than ever. It would not surprise me if Dark Souls just grew that much by itself. If we accept that the match would be about 54-46 in favor of Dark Souls. Most people probably expect Dark Souls and MGSV to split that a bit more. Most people also believed The Last of Us had already declined a bit before the leaks though, and that’s an important point. I believe so too. It just didn’t look that great, especially if you consider how many of the big games seemed to boost from the contest title and the forced voting. The Batman match suggests that The Last of Us was constant from 2015 to now, but it’s not hard to imagine that Batman just declined a bit as well. I mean, those games were a much bigger deal in the beginning of the decade than they are now. It would not be terribly surprising. I’m thinking that’s the case, because I doubt the leak is much more than a few points of percentage. Most of our site is a bit older than most of the whiny “fans” on the internet. Most of our site know that The Last of Us was still a good game despite of what happened and there are probably also many people trying to avoid the leaks and not judging things based on what little things they hear. This was a big deal of course, but the people complaining always seem like a bigger group than they are because they’re loud. There’s only so much damage I see the leak doing here. It’s impossible to know exactly, but I think it’s less than it seems most people think. The Last of Us is in no way as big a deal as it was when it came out. Those games also never were as big here as everyone else. It’s similar to how Uncharted was a bigger deal in general than our site suggests. The finalists at this point are all games that are big on our site. The game has aged fine in some areas but not as well in others. We’re past the zombie craze of the early part of the decade, and a lot of the in-game mechanics feel outdated already. That’s how it is with games like that, unfortunately. I can see it and Batman declining a few percentage points and thus the leak only mattering a few percentage points. When all that is said and done, The Last of Us deserves some respect. The game is great, I still think it’s fun today. They took some very bold decisions that paid off. I’m not as big a fan of the ending of the game as most, but that was a huge deal. The game had depth and was a fantastic presentation. Also, in a decade of open world games and very long stories I seriously have to appreciate the few of the gems that can be played in a few days. I have a much harder time getting through all the games I want to these days and it’s not just because I’m busier. We would go into a highly anticipated Dark Souls vs. Skyrim match without truly learning more about Dark Souls today because there are too many uncertainties regarding The Last of Us, but Skyrim redeeming itself made it look like we were in for quite a match! ## Safer777's Analysis Check Ulti's analysis above! This guy sure can write! Damn! So this match was somewhat debatable when we had our contest break BUT something crazy happened. Someone leaked gameplay videos and story videos from The Last Of Us 2 and man the Internet went crazy. Not only the story seems stupid, at least for me, but the worse thing is what the developer of TLOU did. Basically striking down videos on Youtube for people that just were discussing the spoilers. They didn't even had gameplay in their video, just some people talking around and Naughty Dog went after EVERYONE! So yeah people don't like Naughty Dog now, including me. I mean just discussing stuff and someone coming and saying no you can't do that! Go away! I am just talking! I mean just people sitting and talking and the video is taken down? Seriously. So we all thought it would affect the match. Well... So for the match. DS was expected to win with around 55 and it did slightly better. So yeah I don't think this leaked spoiler thingy affected much. Probably. Although people were expecting DS to win by less so maybe it did affected things a little. People just like TLOU 1. When TLOU 2 comes out we will see the reactions there. There will be pretty bad. SJW thingy! You shall see! I am not sure why I see so many SJW thingies around since nobody seems to like these things but that is USA for you. As for DS damn. This game is damn strong here. I would never expected that to tell the truth. People are hardcore! So yeah all the Soulborne games are legit. ## Tsunami's Analysis Time and again, we've seen that hype often trumps an actual release when it comes to strength on this site. We saw it in 2008, when Brawl disappointed so many Melee fans and led to all of the characters that had seemingly boosted in 2007 due to being in trailers falling back to earth, and we saw it in 2010 when Golden Sun pulled an upset in the first GotD on the release date of its disappointing sequel, Dark Dawn. (Though while I certainly had issues with the harsh difficulty spike after a certain spoilery event and the inability to return to areas earlier in the game to pick up anything you might have missed, my biggest gripe is that whereas Lost Age ended with a vague sequel hook that took seven years to deliver, Dark Dawn ended on a *clear* To Be Continued and we haven't gotten anything in over a decade.) Technically, we even saw it back in the very first Character Battle, given how poorly regarded Super Mario Sunshine is. So when the long-awaited The Last of Us 2 got a bunch of scenes and gameplay footage leaked not long before this match, it should've been fuel for a major upset, right? *Wrong*, because what was leaked depicted the game to be absolutely execrable, with the internet exploding and the general consensus being outrage at the creators themselves, considering it to be contemptuous to their fans. Uh...yeah, you keep posting your clickbaity titles, guys. I say "depicted" because not long *after* this match, it was confirmed that what the hackers (yes, this was the work of hackers, not anyone affiliated with Naughty Dog) leaked was in fact fully outdated. That's not how gameplay will actually work in the finished version, and the scenes...well, what type of *real* gamer wants plot spoilers, anyway? That takes half the fun out of it! So in the end, it all added up to the fans getting *massively *trolled, and the general consensus was that this would've made this number unreliable, and that TLoU was destined to underperform here. Which, uh...kind of means this should've been a pretty close match? With these types of vote totals, it would only take a couple thousand votes swinging the other direction to outright flip this match, even less if those were registered voters. (Remember, swinging the votes means subtracting them from one side *and* adding them to the other. So the entire 4250-vote lead would in fact be turned by a mere *1063* registered users that voted for Dark Souls having instead voted for The Last of Us. Though given how low the total number of voters is, that actually *is* a large figure.) Still, in a match that seemed prime for Dark Souls to overperform, it only got 58.30%. Oracle consensus: 56.64%. An overperformance, yes, but not a huge one. Seeing as how Dark Souls had fewer brackets taking it to the semifinals than *either* of its two potential quarterfinal opponents, this was definitely considered a discouraging result for Dark Souls fans...which made it an *encouraging* result for just about every Guru, even the eliminated ones, with the exceptions of Seginustemple, Xeybozn, and Agent_M, each of whom had a route to victory contingent on Dark Souls winning the next round. Xeybozn and Agent_M both needed Smash Ultimate to win it all, with Xeybozn specifically requiring Witcher 3 \> Dark Souls in the semifinal while Agent_M would win it if Dark Souls either lost to Persona 5 in the semifinal or made the finals and lost to Ultimate directly; while Seginustemple was the lone Guru to take Dark Souls to win it all--but had enough mistakes elsewhere that the *most likely path for this*, defeating Witcher 3 in the semifinal and Breath of the Wild in the final, would not be enough. If Dark Souls made the final and lost to anything other than Smash Ultimate, or if it won it all specifically by defeating Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild, the Guru Champion would be a troll account that had entered both the Guru and their official bracket under the name COVlD-19. That's a lowercase L, mind you, not an uppercase i, but the intent is clear. Most people were calling this "the darkest timeline", and so the prospect of Dark Souls \> Witcher 3 was not something we were looking forward to. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8033&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=119) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version 2020 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version 2020 (revid 88583)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, May 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 120 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 54.16% 49 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 53.66% - **User Votes:** Skyrim - 5338 Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 3685 - **Anonymous Votes:** Skyrim - 4635 Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 2914 This writeup will seem like a short letdown after the last one, but the last match's writeup took me three days to do. Give me a break :p There were a few matches in this contest, namely this one, Witcher 3 vs Mario Galaxy 2, and Skyrim vs Mario Kart 8, where a western titan went up against a Nintendo game of decent strength, but not *titanic* strength. These matches played out in exactly the same way -- a small struggle early where it looked like Nintendo might make it interesting, followed by the western titan flexing some muscle and winning the match in 60-40 fashion. A *lot* of hype was given to Pokemon in the leadup to this match, because Skyrim looked prime to be picked off in an upset, and Pokemon is a master at winning matches like that. Things were interesting when the poll started, but unfortunately for Pokemon, that's all she wrote. Even with Skyrim looking slightly weaker this contest than in 2015, it was still more than strong enough to get rid of Pokemon. I have no problem with the first three Pokemon generations, but given how the fans of this game acted against Nier Automata I was happy to be rid of them one round after we got rid of the Nier ass brigade. This would close out divisional play, and from here it was 7 main contest matches plus a single bonus poll. I'd love to build suspense up here as if we were wondering things live, but there was no way Breath of the Wild wasn't winning this thing. Still, journey not destination and such. This match also booted out the last of the three remake games, which was frankly nice to see. Resident Evil 2 getting in I can accept, but not Persona 4 Golden or Pokemon HGSS. Regardless of how strong the games were and how well they performed, it was unfair for them to get in. It was nice to see them not winning divisions over more deserving games. On to the final rounds! ## Ctes's Analysis Skyrim had had a rough contest up until this point with everyone targeting it for looking bad. Almost no one thought it would actually lose today, but it was underestimated by quite a bit, almost 6% by oracles. This would be Skyrim’s big redemption match. Beating Witcher 3 was out of the question a long time ago, but that didn’t mean Skyrim had to be significantly worse. After trying to defend Skyrim for a couple of rounds it was such a relief to see. This wasn’t even a fanboy thing, I have never played Skyrim and I love Pokemon HGSS, but being seemingly right is always nice and it sure seemed like it now. Although Skyrim needed to beat Dark Souls to truly confirm how legit it still is, along with how Journey, Mario Kart 8 and Uncharted 4 all being better than most people gave them credit for. The opening moments were of course hilarious as always. HGSS took the lead instantly and kept it for a bit. Then they were tied for a while, but Skyrim took it. For a little while, it looked to be somewhat close despite not being in doubt, but then Skyrim took off and never looked back, rising in percentage over the whole course of the day. We love Pokemon. We do not love Bethesda. I’m sure Skyrim wouldn’t be as big a favorite against Dark Souls if they met before Skyrim got to show off here, but it would actually end up being one after all. You had to be pretty stubborn to still insist Mario Kart 8 couldn’t be good at this point. Still, the match was hyped and everyone expected the guru contest to be decided with that match as the final three matches all seemed obvious. It’s part of the reason why it’s such a shame that only those three are up alone. The quarter finals are very often more interesting than the semi-finals. At the end of the contest, HeartGold and SoulSilver probably didn’t act as proxies for Gold and Silver. At least they seem significantly weaker. Skyrim is projected to beat GSC in 2015, but not by much. 51.79% to be exact. Everyone agrees that Skyrim is weaker now. That means no matter how you adjust things, the remakes are a good bit below. It’s not too surprising if you know the fanbase. They treat remakes as new entries and Pokemon fans consider these games part of generation 4 and not generation 2. They’re much more loved than the original fanbase among hardcore fans, but our site will not care about anything past generation 2 as much as the first two. I’m sure no one would have expected FireRed and LeafGreen to be as good as RBY if they had been in the first Game of the Decade. RBY looked so good in 2009 that it would have probably beat everything in the first Game of the Decade, and I’m sure no one would pick FireRed and LeafGreen to do that. In this way, Pokemon is quite different from the other remakes in the contest. I don’t mind them being in, but they probably should not have been. I don’t think it’s as clear a case as Persona 4 Golden. While it’s the same story line, it also comes with all the general changes they made fom gen 2 to gen 4, which were a lot. I also don’t mind them getting this far because they were the only Pokemon representation in the bracket. They represent how good Pokemon was at the beginning of this generation. It’s a huge shame that the more casual approach recent Pokemon games have had come at the expense of the quality that fans loved from Platinum to Black 2 and White 2. Pokemon is definitely a victim of its own popularity. Quantity matters more these days. It’s more important for them to spit out new entries constantly than to give us games that feel polished and good. I’m sure that only one Pokemon game appearing is a decision made to have a more diverse bracket. It’s the absolute biggest confirmation that Allen wanted variety regardless of whether or not a series cap at exactly two games was put in place. The Pokemon fans were split sure, and it hurt nominations sure, but no way one of them then took a \#3 seed while the others saw less nominations than Baba is You and Subnautica (no disrespect to either). There’s just no way. For some random trivia, HGSS being the one to get the most nominations and therefore be chosen to represent the series, means that Gold and Silver and their remakes have appeared in every single game contest to date. If you count HGSS as the same game, it’s the only game to accomplish this because two of our five contests have been Game of the Decades. It sure lucked out being the representant both now and in 2004 where it was the only Pokemon game in the bracket. The way things are going now, Pokemon won’t be worth much in a decade. The new games anyway. Hopefully they find some middle ground, but as long as we all buy whatever they put out, and I shamefully will, then they can care less and less about polishing their games. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match. Last chance for Skyrim to see if it is truly legit. Because it is legit, but how much? Pokemon HG/SS did really well to reach this far which I didn't really expected to tell the truth. So people had Skyrim winning with around 55. And it scored 60. So yeah. I don't know. So for the match. I am not sure. Man things are crazy. Seriously. This results shows that Skyrim is super legit strangely enough. Yeah as Skyrim goes it becomes more legit? I don't know what is happening to tell the truth. Maybe it was just unlucky with all the previous results. Or something else? Nobody can figure it out, at least not yet. Also this prediction percentage was the 2nd highest of this round. Only 3 games had above 50 in this round, these are BOTW, Witcher 3, Skyrim. And it seems Skyrim has higher prediction that Witcher 3 which it does make sense, since before the contest it was the favorite to reach the final round.  So end of Round 4. In this round all remakes lost so that is fine. Hey they all reached the division finals which is amazing. Also out of 7 1 Seeds that reached the division finals 7 of them won! Yeah as I said above perfect seeding. ## Tsunami's Analysis And with this, all three of the remakes of older games were eliminated shy of the Elite Eight--but all three had only just been eliminated this round. Given this board's penchant for things that are old, is it any wonder that they all made the Sweet 16? (I mean, sure, a bunch of other games in the bracket had updated remakes, but their originals were also in this decade--like Mario Kart 8 (Ultra) and Xenoblade Chronicles--or was XBC a straight-up port? I don't even know.) But that said, all were worthy candidates. The original GSC pulled 45% on Melee before Melee started rallying to make it a 60-40 match; Persona 4 did better on Twilight Princess in 2015 than it did in its third-round exit to RE4 in 2010, and Resident Evil 2 straight-up won the GotY polls for 2019. Speaking of which, if you count these remakes as being ways of "cheating" and getting older games into this contest, then Pokémon GSC is the only game to have been in all five Games Contests. (It's one of 11 games that had been in all three BGEs and the first GotD; obviously there are far more that have been in all three BGEs.) Skyrim's performance here was solid, nearly breaking 60% and outperforming Dark Souls against what was presumed, in the wake of the disastrous TLoU2 leaks, to be a stronger game. But it *was* still a remake and therefore something that "didn't belong in this contest", and a handheld game to boot, so there would be doubters. But let's be real here--saying GSC and HGSS are the same game is like saying that Ultimate is just Smash 4 with an expanded roster. Same goes for FRLG and ORAS to the games *they're* remakes of, though maybe not so much for any future remakes because honestly, the changes in each generation past the fourth have largely been minor rebalancing issues and weird gimmicks. I'm not saying I *dislike* the changes, though I'll admit I'm none too happy with LGPE and SwSh "GO-ifying" the series, but stuff like Triple Battles, Mega Evolutions, Z-Moves, and Gigantamax is not the same as Gen 2 splitting the Special stat into Special Attack and Special Defense and introducing held items, Gen 3 introducing Abilities, or Gen 4 making it so that each individual *move* was designated either Physical or Special instead of it being determined by the move's *type*. Those were all very big changes, and as long as they don't try to use a Dragon-type move on a Pokémon that *used* to not be Fairy-type, I'd imagine that someone familiar with Gen 4 battling would adapt *relatively* quickly to later generations compared with someone only familiar with Gen 1--or for that matter, that same person trying to go back *to* Gen 1. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8034&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=120) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)Mass Effect 2 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)Mass Effect 2 2020 (revid 88581)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Saturday, May 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 121 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 67.51% 46 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 64.65% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6173 Mass Effect 2 - 2856 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5345 Mass Effect 2 - 2487 I know the 2015 stats are totally all kinds of nutty, but, um... Ocarina of Time (2015g) VS Mass Effect 2 (2015g) Ocarina of Time has a strength of 47.95. Mass Effect 2 has a strength of 25.58. Ocarina of Time wins with 73.33% of the vote! A win of 28,400 with 60,875 total votes cast. Getting nearly 70% in round *five* is completely insane, and it helps prove the theory (though I doubt it's a "theory" at this point) that Breath of the Wild is a 90s strength video game plopped into a bracket that in no way had a prayer of matching up. Breath of the Wild might one day be challenged in a normal contest against games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, Ocarina of Time, Pokemon RBY, and the rest of the 90s heavy hitters, but for this contest we were living in the Breath of the Wild Invitational. It sucked to see Mass Effect 2 go out like this, but like I've said many times, only one game gets to end its run with a win. I would like to give a bit of love to Mass Effect 2 on the way out the door, because getting into the final eight shouldn't have a thoroughly unceremonious end. All the way back in 2011, I played 1 and 2 back to back. I loved 1, but I *loved* 2. 2 takes everything 1 does, flips it around, turns it all up to 11, and is one of the few games ever made that can be classified as "perfect". The entire reason butthurt idiots were so mad about 3's ending is because 2 was so good. It had the best characters, the best voice acting, the best gameplay, the Collectors were a truly terrifying villain even if they were a literal Aliens ripoff, and probably the best overall story. And yes, contradiction guy, I know it's just a glorified rail shooter. Fuck off. Very, very, very few games can match Mass Effect 2's brilliance. If for some insane reason you haven't played it or its series yet, you need to. Don't let it scoring 32% in some poll fool you. Mass Effect 2 is universally loved. Quick note about this match is that two matches per day were still happening, which is *massively* dumb. Winning a division should mean getting the spotlight alone. ## Ctes's Analysis The fifth match in the contest and Breath of the Wild once again easily achieves the doubling but still declined in percentage from the previous round. This time the oracles actually underestimated a bit, but I guess what we underestimated was Dragon Quest. The Witcher 3 does its best to look impressive each round and it does, but it’s just clear every time that Breath of the Wild has a match that even a solid rally from The Witcher 3 would not put it near Breath of the Wild. Fortunately, the second chance bracket being an oracle type of challenge meant that we had reason to follow a match like this. Mass Effect 2 is just happy to be here. It achieved everything it could hope for by winning its division and breaking 30% today was what it could have hoped for. It’s a clear step ahead of GTAV and a clear step below the rest of the \#1 seeds, so it’s a good choice for something to be fed to Breath of the Wild. It had already entertained us plenty up to this point. Mass Effect as a franchise is a done deal now, so it’s great to see that we fondly remember the second entry in the series. This was the game that made it as big as it was. Remember how much stronger Mass Effect was in 2010 than in 2009 because this game had come out? How much better Shepard looked after this game came out? It’s fantastic. They really nailed what they were trying to accomplish. I mean, the first one is good, but this is the one that really caught us. The series has been through a lot since then. The third game came out to a very mixed reception among fans. I personally love most of it, but I agree with the common critique of the story not being rounded off properly. DLC fixed some issues, but fixing things through DLC doesn’t redeem everything. They still dropped the ball a bit then. Andromeda came out years later to completely kill the series though. A huge shame they couldn’t create another fantastic trilogy, but what can you do. At least Mass Effect 2 having success today proved that the series reached our hearts back then and despite almost coming out in the previous decade, we showed that respect 10 years later. ## Safer777's Analysis So after BOTW barely scored 70 on DQ 11 we lowered somewhat our expectations and BOTW had an average of 65 winning percentage here. But guess what. We got fooled. In fact it barely did any worse than against DQ 11. That seems to be that DQ 11 is similar to ME 2. Also according to this DQ 11 beats even RE 2. Pretty sure nobody would have taken this before the contest. Man DQ is super legit now. I am glad for it. Hope it continues to do even better. So for the match. Well BOTW won and it even scored above a doubling. This is one of the best dominant performances ever in a contest. I mean this game has reached the semifinal and it scored above 70 in all games and even in this one it even managed to stay close to that. Zeldafaqs, am I right? And as I said above it did better than expected. Guess we can atrribute that to ME 2 beeing weaker too which does makes sense too. The game is old, the latest game sucked and nothing else has been announced. Still it did managed to reach that far which is great. Just play ME 2 if you haven't. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8035&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=121) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (3)Xenoblade Chronicles 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (3)Xenoblade Chronicles 2020 (revid 88579)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Saturday, May 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 122 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 62.62% 46 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 28.79% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5471 Xenoblade Chronicles - 3559 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 4495 Xenoblade Chronicles - 3343 Outside of the early parts of one match, the entire final eight of this contest really felt like one big dud and it all played out like mop-up duty. Just for fun, here is every contest where the final seven matches (so quarterfinals and on) was a dud. 1v1 only: -Villains Contest -Rivalry Rumble -Best Year in Gaming -Game of the Decade 2 Of the seven matches that closed out this contest, only one could even *remotely* qualify as "good" and it surely wasn't this match! For those playing the home game, this is the only normal contest we've ever had where the final three rounds blew. The only drama in this particular match was whether or not Xenoblade would hold Smash under 60%. Smash was just over 60% to start, and the Europe vote helped Xenoblade keep this under a 60-40. That's all she wrote. Given how strong Smash Ultimate is going to be on this site for many years, this was a very respectable way for Xenoblade to bow out. It definitely capped off its bandwagon with a good showing, and you can't ask for much better than that from a game that was clearly never going to be on par with the contenders. And make sure you all buy Xenoblade Remastered! ## Ctes's Analysis Except for the Breath of the Wild matches, this was the least exciting match of the second chance challenge. Not a single serious bracket had the winner of division 4 beating the winner of division 3. It doesn’t matter what permutation of Ultimate, Odyssey, P4G and Xenoblade we had today, the upper game would win easily and prepare itself for the biggest SFF slaughter in a long time. Xenoblade did better than we expected of it though, about 3%. It’s definitely better than almost all of us gave it credit for before the contest, but I think it got a bit too much credit today. I’ve praised the game a lot this contest and I personally love it, but let’s take a step back here. The idea was that Ultimate SFF’d Xenoblade today and therefore Xenoblade was likely better than this indirectly. An idea which I’m not personally a huge fan of, because that doesn’t really consider the bandwagon Xenoblade was on at this point quite enough. No matter the size of whatever bandwagon Xenoblade might have had already, it certainly was on one now. Xenoblade getting to this point of the contest was the biggest surprise judged by prediction percentage by a good amount. That’s the main material used for making a bandwagon. This reminds me a lot of the Mario vs Charizard match 10 years ago where Mario won by a good bit below 55-45 because Charizard was on a huge bandwagon by that point and had used a game release to each that point. It’s a good comparison because except for L-Block, Draven and Undertale matches, Charizard winning a 1/8 final match is the only match ever to have a lower prediction percentage than Xenoblade going so. Back then everyone knew Mario would have beat Charizard by more than that under normal circumstances. People didn’t exactly discard the idea of Xenoblade being on a bandwagon as much as they didn’t believe it mattered more than SFF. At least many felt that way. I disagree with this and I believe the stats overestimates Xenoblade because of it. Why are were so sure that there was SFF here again? I’m sure it’s partly so that some part of the x-stats look better, like Three Houses being better than Awakening for instance, but they’re covered up by layers of rallies and SFF matches on top of the uncertainties that come with it to begin with. Regardless of how you adjust here, something will look weird. It’s like that when we’re this late in the contest. Fixing one thing here will just break something else. Instead of looking at the x-stats, I’ll look at this match in itself and say I just don’t really think Ultimate would SFF Xenoblade by much if any amount. Sure, Xenoblade is a Nintendo game represented in Smash the Nintendo hierarchy doesn’t reach that far out. It’s mostly the first party titles and characters that work that way and even those can divert from the norm. What’s mostly consistent is the SFF between the strongest Zelda, Smash and Mario things. Metroid is often like that too but has shown resistance before. Let’s bring up that Mario vs. Charizard match again. Does anyone think that had SFF? Pokemon has often been immune to Nintendo SFF. I don’t see why Xenoblade should be all too much different. At the very least, we should be open to the possibility. In any case, it’ll be very interesting to see Xenoblade back in the contests in the future. It was a lot stronger this time and next time it will have a Switch release to help it as well. It’s definitely the biggest outlier in our top 8 games, but division 4 was almost certainly going to be the division to give us that from the start. Cheers to Game of the Year 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 and soon 2020. ## Safer777's Analysis So 2 Nintendo games here and we all know the hierarchy. XC star of the contest obviously. I don't think anybody disagrees with that. Nobody expected to do that good. One of the lowest percentages winning division finalists ever too. At least for a non rally, non multi way matches. Yeah XC was beasting in this contest. So for the match. Well obviously Smash won BUT XC did better than expected. Very few expected to go above 40 and yet it did managed to do just that. I think the future is looking good for the contests for XC because I am sure that something new has been announced for the series so it only can become stronger. Plus how many people before the contest had it reaching this far? Like 6% only. And I think like 2 Board 8 people had it reach thus far. Still nice results for XC! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8036&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=122) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (1)Persona 5 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (1)Persona 5 2020 (revid 88577)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Sunday, May 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 123 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 56.03% 44 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 39.23% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5249 Persona 5 - 3874 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 4711 Persona 5 - 3946 This match was a clash of the titans, because both games came into it firing on all cylinders and ready to go to war with anything. When this type of hype happens and the match is actually good, the potential for contest magic is there. These two games both flattened their divisions, so the only thing left was to jump into the octagon and fight to the death. And for a good little while, it looked like this would be the first match of this entire contest where something actually stared Geralt in the face and felt like fighting back. I honestly regret not making peace with the Persona faithful sooner, because you guys are legitimately a very lively, fun bunch. It's my own fault, really, because anyone should be able to go "oh well Sir Chris likes this so OBVIOUSLY it must be cool". Actually, check that, Chris likes World of Warcraft so this is invalid logic :p But seriously, waiting until Joker made it into Smash Bros to actually like Persona was super dumb. These games all have ridiculous board votes for a reason, and Persona 5 was *not* fucking around when this thing started. It had something absurd at the beginning like 80% of the vote, but such a thing did not last. Witcher brought it back almost immediately, and then we all figured this would be Witcher 3 vs Galaxy 2 all over again. It sort of was, but Persona 5 did not go gently into that good night. It raged. Raged against the dying of the light. And yes it's lame to go all Dylan Thomas in a PCA, but seriously, I need to find material *somewhere*. Round one was blowout city and had something like 3 good matches total, then the contest got good until the divisions were decided, and then it was back to blowout city. Puke. Persona 5 did not get swamped like Galaxy 2 did. It was able to keep this within 50 votes for almost half an hour, and at the 30 minute mark when it looked like Witcher 3 would go berserk, Persona hit us with a 20 vote update. "Hell yeah, we might have a match!" And *then* Persona 5 got swamped, but not in a godstomper kind of way. It went out with, all things considered, a respectable 57-43 loss. Witcher 3 in this contest was just on a completely different level from 126 out of 127 of its potential opponents, and there is no shame in going out as the first game to hold Witcher 3 under 60%. Persona will be back, and it will be stronger. That's just what this series does. ## Ctes's Analysis This match had been hyped a lot throughout the contest, a lot more than it should have. The Witcher 3 looked like a clear favorite to the finals every passing round, but Persona 5 proved to be strong and that’s all it needed to do for people to feel like it had a chance. Most people took The Witcher 3 to win rather easily, but Persona 5 had a vocal minority of people believing it could do this and a large group of people hoping it could. The fans are incredibly passionate about their game. A few times so passionate it annoyed me which is unusual, but at times it was borderline obnoxious. It seemed like Persona 5 could only do well. I see the franchise mentioned as the star of the contest often, and I mean, Persona 4 Golden impressed sure, but the fifth one? It did good, but when something does exactly like almost everyone expected you to every single round and that is completely in line with pre-contest expectations, then I’m not going to call that star of anything. The most annoying part was that it was praised every single round as if it exceeded any expectations. People were thinking it would be a challenge for Witcher 3 to get out of this match. Witcher 3 looked overly dominant every round and it was only enough for people to accept it was the favorite today despite, you know, being the guru favorite to win this match. You didn’t see Dark Souls or Skyrim treated that way. Witcher 3 won this match easily despite Persona 5 rallying a bit and the reaction was that Persona 5 looked so impressive going out despite not living up to the expectations of challenging Witcher 3 at all and looking like the weakest of the division winners in this half of the bracket. There were so many claims that both games here were better than the two in the next match and that this match would be closer than the semi-final. Being happy your favorite games does well and hoping they do better is everything these contests are about, and that’s cool, but let’s not go from there to acting like Persona 5 did anything we didn’t think it would. Alright, with that out of the way, let’s switch to positive thoughts. I hope you all know that I’m targeting a small but loud group here. Persona 5 deserves a lot of respect for how far it advanced the franchise and for how good a game it is. It’s pretty clearly a top 8 game in the bracket and that’s far from where it used to be. It has moved out of obscurity and placed itself as a top franchise with the latest game being a huge success. Now that aspect of it is impressive. The passionate fans made as big an attempt as they could. From when the match began, Persona 5 rallied full force. It looks to be around 600 votes give or take by the end of the match, but it seemed like full force at first. On top of that, Persona 5 has a fantastic board vote and Witcher 3 does not, so the opening minutes were entertaining. When the match opened, Persona 5 stormed out the gate leading big time and it kept the lead for a few minutes. Then they were tied basically the rest of the time until the freeze. Witcher 3 would gain next update, but after that it stood still for some updates. The board vote was definitely still in full effect. Witcher 3 made two decent jumps at the :30 and :35 updates, and it this point it seemed like the board vote and rally rush was over and that Witcher 3 would rise to heaven. I made that claim myself in the stats topic. The next thing that happened was the opposite. Persona 5 cut from 83 to 61 and suddenly I looked stupid lol. You can imagine you something like the stats topic reacted to such an upside judging by some of the earlier paragraphs here, I’m sure, but it looked like there was hope at that point if you thought the rallied could be kept up. Then Witcher 3 doubled its lead next update and that was the match. Witcher 3 rose a lot from there, especially once rallies stopped being effective and people realized victory for Persona 5 was out of the question. I’m excited to see the Persona games in future contests. I’m not sure there’s much point of anything before the fourth one returning. We had high expectations for the third one in 2015 and it completely failed to live up to them. Persona 5 especially will be fun to see in the regular field again. I really hope Atlus can keep up the level of quality. It’s impressive how large a jump they’ve done with every game up until now, hopefully that continues. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match was pretty much set on stone. There was a small chance that Persona 5 could do it because of a rally or because out of the 4 games we had in the semifinals, since we had 2 matches going on at the same time, 3 were WRPG's so Persona 5 was sticking out like a sore thumb. Alas it wasn't meant to be. So for the match. Witcher 3 had really no problems beating Persona 5 easily. In the 5 minute mark it was winning with around 51.3 and kept rising the whole match which is impressive. So yeah Witcher 3 dominated and it is not like Persona 5 is a slouch either. Still Persona series really did damn well in this contest. So yeah the series will keep rising. But man imagine when Witcher 4 comes out. They hyping will be out of this world. So yeah strong performance from Witcher 3 and it seems it is a lock for the finals. The game is damn popular and still reigns supreme in how a game should be made even though 5 years have passed after it has come out! For Persona series I don't need to say anything really. Both games did damn well, and P4G wasn't in this Round for like 110 votes. So yeah. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8037&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=123) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2020 (revid 88575)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Sunday, May 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 124 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 52.42% 38 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 35.31% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 4345 Skyrim - 4781 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 4042 Skyrim - 4614 I *love* Skyrim, so don't take this writeup the wrong way, but it just kills me that Skyrim won this match. Had Dark Souls pulled this thing off, Ngamer64 wins the guru contest and I think the contest outright. There aren't many people who deserve a contest win more than that guy does, and I hope no one disagrees. On top of The Show, on top of his web site where he hosts the guru contest and the x-stats and the calculator we've come to all know and love, he's also done a TON of work on the Board 8 Wiki. I was really pulling for the dude hard, and.... damn. For a good long while, it looked like his gamble had a shot. Picking Dark Souls to beat Skyrim at this spot was such an intelligent pick. The other reason this match kills me is actual gaming preference. Before this writeup, some of you asked me to explain why I love Souls so much. Will do. I started gaming in the 80s on the NES, and most games were fucking *hard* back then, especially for a very young child. Zelda 1 and 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 and 2, Mario 1 through 3, Crystalis, The Guardian Legend, a bunch of Mega Man games, Ghosts n Goblins, Yo Noid, Balloon Fight, Kid Icarus, Punch-Out, Contra, and even Battletoads. I beat all of those games as a kid, and probably some others I'm forgetting. I won't bore people with my story of growing older and games slowly becoming easier and easier and easier to the point where it was a joke. We've all lived that story by now. There were some hard games here and there, but nothing like the feeling of beating some absurd NES game as a kid. And then Demon's Souls came along. It was the first game I had played in a long, long time that brought me back to my childhood. It wasn't that I hadn't played good games or anything, but the experience of Demon's Souls almost had me lost for words. And then the damn motherload happened. I love Demon's Souls, and it did **nothing** to prepare me for how absurdly good Dark Souls is. Death matters? A huge interconnected world? Indirect storytelling? RPG elements and the game never actually gets easy? What the hell? I could wax poetic about the Souls series for literally years, so I will simply link to my review and move on: It's not my best work, but I've never updated it because I like to look back and see how far I've come as a writer over the years. The very short of it is Dark Souls is a once in a lifetime experience, defined a generation, and made me feel like a kid again. And by the way, those same words are used by everyone who loves Breath of the Wild. That game didn't flatten this contest by accident. It's a really, really, really good game. For those reasons and because I was rooting for NG so hard, this match murdered me personally in cold blood. But hey, there can only be one winner. When this thing started, Dark Souls was *right there*. The match was outright tied for what felt like forever, even though it was only 35 minutes. Then Skyrim won an update by 50, and that seemed like the end of the road for Dark Souls. But no, Dark Souls had to sit there and fight back before getting buried again. And then it fought back *again* before getting buried *again*. And then to make it even worse, Dark Souls looked like it was going to come back once and for all. It brought a 120 vote lead down to 40, so of course Skyrim buried it yet again, and Dark Souls fought back yet again. It was like watching an underdog in some sport fight their asses off even though they knew they were outmatched. When the poll got past 11, Skyrim finally decided to go "F this shit" and end this match, turning a 100 vote lead into 200 in all of 30 minutes, and after one final last gasp from Dark Souls, where our boy cashed all the souls in and made one final run at Paarthurnax, Alduin, and all 13 daedra, Dark Souls fell. Skyrim increased the percentage from 51% to 52 overnight, and that was that. It was an incredible first few hours, but Skyrim would ultimately win by almost 1500 votes. It was a wonderful match between two games I will be in love with for the rest of my life, but I just love Dark Souls that much more. This was also arguably the best match picture I've ever submitted, too. **PRAISE THE SUN!** I'd mention how Skyrim did well below what it needed to to match Witcher 3's performance, but I feel like that goes without saying at this point. Next round, we would finally get that match and see how it played out on screen. By the way, here are the seeding matchups for the final eight, presented without comment: -1 vs 1 -1 vs 3 -1 vs 1 -1 vs 1 ## Ctes's Analysis The final interesting match of the contest. Dark Souls pulling off the upset here had been hyped for a long time. First it was clear that Skyrim wasn’t getting past Witcher, but then it looked like it might not even get past here for a while. If Skyrim didn’t tear apart Pokemon HGSS like it did, Dark Souls might have been the favorite today, at least it would have had more supporters I think. It did still have people supporting it and I doubt people felt safe picking Skyrim. The match delivered for a while. Dark Souls and Skyrim have both had pretty awful board votes, although Dark Souls did better against Metal Gear Solid V and The Last of Us. It would be interesting to see which game had the worst one. Skyirm was the safe bet because it a lot more throughout the day than Dark Souls did, but only time would tell. The match was basically tied for the first five minutes. Next update Skyrim jumped up to a 51-vote lead in what could have been in, but Dark Souls had a lot more fight in it. Dark Souls that back all the way down to 15 and then they stayed there for a bit. The lead would at no point change, but Dark Souls made a push that made it seem like it would a lot of times. Skyrim quickly rose to near 100, but Dark Souls cut it down to near 50 again. Skyrim takes it all back and more in a single update and Dark Souls cuts most of it away again. That was basically the match. It took Skyrim more than three hours to finally take off, until then Dark Souls kept the lead below 100 for a long time. If the Persona 5 rallies mattered, they were probably in favor of Dark Souls, but it’s hard to tell due to the rallies being the most affective in Skyrim’s worst hours. Skyrim interestingly took off the quickest with the morning vote. The match ended up being fairly close, but Dark Souls didn’t really ever manage to make a match of it despite giving hope a few times in the first hours. This match eliminated the COVlD-19 guru bracket, which had eliminated lots of people and would win if Dark Souls could reach the finals. It was later revealed to be made by Polycosm, who managed to make a better bracket with the alt despite having Skyrim winning today in his own one. There were talks about whether entering twice should have any punishment, because it’s not actually allowed. Poly hadn’t imagined the alt would be one of the last brackets standing, it ended up getting more attention than anticipated. I don’t think anything should be done about it, other than declaring second place the winner had the alt actually won. As long as it doesn’t become a thing, it was fine for once, it entertained a lot of us. It would also be today that it was perfectly clear azuarc would win since the last three matches really weren’t in much doubt. Skyrim would end up redeeming itself a whole lot and do as thought of it, although nothing to do about The Witcher 3 being leagues ahead of what was expected of it. Dark Souls also looks very good here, even if it didn’t win. It’s hard to determine exactly how it would compete with the big Switch games not named Zelda, but it certainly proved that its seeding was deserved. The game had come a long way, had major influence on the decade as a whole and is just really good. Respected by casuals and hardcore gamers alike, it would not only do well itself, but FromSoftware looks really good and hopefully they keep the pace up. Dark Souls will be fun to see back in a regular contest because it’s a lot stronger than 2015 indicates, hopefully the contest title didn’t do too much of that! ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match was strange. The whole Crew went with Skyrim too but everyone said that Dark Souls could do it too. We all though that too. Skyrim was the favorite but Dark Souls winning would be not suprising too. I mean we all understand that Skyrim has gotten weaker and it makes sense because it is a 9 years old game and we still don't even have anything new Elder Scrolls after all this time! Come on! And Dark Souls is the game that created the get good meme AND the souls like term so 2 of the big gaming things at once! Damn! Also Skyrim is THE open world game. Sure Witcher 3 might look more impressive BUT Skyrim doesn't have a main protagonist so you can really roleplay there. Plus man there have to be like 500.000 mods for that game and the game is constantly in Top 10 played games in Steam and is in Top 3 in this site all these 9 years. Plus I think it is every console ever made? So yeah Skyrim is still really damn popular. So for the match. Suprise the match was really close! In fact in the first 30 minutes we even had Dark Souls winning by a bit too! Both games were around 49.5-50.5 for the first 3 hours with Skyrim barelly winning. So yeah we had a match. BUT after the first 3 hours Skyrim just took off and never looked back. Sure we had a few cuts here and there but at the end Dark Souls couldn't do it. Still I would NEVER expected that before contest for Dark Souls to be that close to Skyrim. A combination of Dark Souls having gained in power and Skyrim dropped in power. Still Skyrim did it at the end so that is all that matters. Seems Dark Souls got an arrow to the knee! See what I did there? Eh? Yeah that was stupid. But anyways seems Skyrim can't beat Witcher 3 like that but eh what can you do? Still before contest it was the favorite game to beat Witcher 3 and now is the underdog. Funny how things change. Also in this Round Witcher 3 FINALLY surpassed Skyrim in correct prediction percentage so it seems a lot of people had Dark Souls reaching the Semifinals. Crazy. What I mean is that in all Rounds before this one BOTW was 1st in Correct Prediction Percentage, Skyrim was 2nd and Witcher 3 was 3rd. BUT now it seems that Skyrim and Witcher 3 reversed places. Strange how more people had Witcher 3 reaching the semifinals match than Skyrim. People believed in Dark Souls a lot it seems. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8038&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=124) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 2020 (revid 88654)_ ## Results **Semifinals** Monday, May 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 125 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 64.13% 46 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 48.81% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6316 Smash Bros. Ultimate - 3133 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5571 Smash Bros. Ultimate - 2395 "That was the update of the contest." -Yoblazer33 I don't think I've ever based an entire writeup around one update, but it's kind of justified here. All of us knew Zelda would flatten Smash Bros in this match, and though it sucked to see these two locked in for a semifinal path when the bracket came out, seeing this match happen live made the placement make sense. This thing as a final would have blew. Believe it or not, this match was under a 60-40 at the freeze! Smash was getting some love, maybe Zelda was getting anti-voted for being the obvious winner, who really knows. It was a 98 vote lead for Zelda at the freeze, and maybe, just maybe, this would be a reasonable semifinal. And then Zelda goes "okay that's cute, thanks for playing buddy", increases from 98 to **255**, and that was that. See you next time, Smash. You had a great run, but Zelda is a whole different animal. It was also nice seeing the Smash fans get what they deserve, I'm not gonna lie. It isn't often that semifinals have blowouts like this. Originally I was going to bring up the list of every semifinal match 60-40 and above, but I think pulling up the ones to finish 65-35 or over paints a much better picture of how hard it is to do what Zelda did here. A similar pattern emerges. Respect **The LAW**. ## Ctes's Analysis This is the sixth out of seven rounds and Breath of the Wild has still managed to double everything in its path so far. Granted, this is a bad case of SFF, but it still just shows how absolutely dominant Breath of the Wild is. We’ve seen Ocarina of Time brutally kill other Nintendo games in similar fashion before, so it shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone, even if we did predict the match a bit lower than this. For our first solo match of the day, it’s rather anti-climactic and the prediction percentage is sky high for a semi-final. Breath of the Wild had started being hurt by its own popularity at this point. The power hour was by huge lengths its worst time of the day. I mean, Smash usually has a good time there, but this was rather insane. Ultimate was above 40% the whole time until the freeze happened, then it lost almost 5% the next update. It continued to decline the whole day until Breath of the Wild was well above the doubling. It’s incredible to think this was somehow the “worst” performance for our contest winner so far. Breath of the Wild has the anti-votes, but it also has the votes from the people who look at the contest title. Ultimate is such a huge game, but when people read “Game of the Decade”, they think of what games have been inspirational and innovative while simultaneously being top quality. Ultimate is only the latter of those things. It’s why it’s performances haven’t looked as dominating as you could expect. I’m sure it doesn’t do as badly as this under normal circumstances ether. Ultimate absolutely deserves to be here though. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t win as many awards, it’s a popularity contest first and foremost and Ultimate is just really good. I don’t think we’re appreciating quite enough what we have right now. The everyone is here deal is huge, we might never see a game be such a huge celebration of gaming again and I’m sure it’s part of the reason Sakurai is doing a second fighters pass, other than simply being forced to do it. Let’s get as many things into this game as possible, we might never have them all together again. A game that makes us fight as Mario, Link, Samus, Pikachu, Snake, Cloud, Sonic, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Bayonetta, Joker, Banjo & Kazooie, Simon Belmont, Ryu, Dragon Quest Hero, Terry Bogard and every other Nintendo character you can think of on top of the ones I mentioned sounds like something out of impossible not too long ago. Remember how crazy everyone went when Snake was released. People have run out of real suggestions for Nintendo characters at this point and that company has been with us for the lifetime of the industry. The roster is insane, let’s appreciate that. It wouldn’t be good on that alone, of course. The game has basically perfected what it is, and that’s a huge part of the reason why it’s not as innovative as the rest of the games getting far in ther bracket. Melee was still the biggest competitive scene when Smash 4 was the most recent one, that’s no longer the case, Ultimate surpassed it. The game sold phenomenally too. It’s one of the most perfect games for what it’s trying to be. ## Safer777's Analysis Do I need to say anything here? BOTW against a Nintendo non Zelda game. Hierarchy to the maximum here. BOTW would win with at least a doubling everyone predicted and yeah it makes sense. I mean what else could happen here? Even though Ultimate is the 2nd strongest Smash game(at least I think so)it stood no chance here. I mean it couldn't even avoid a doubling here. Damn it man. I know BOTW is really good but seriously we are talking about Ultimate the best selling fighthing game of all time plus everyone likes it. But well Hierarchy once again. So for the match. Well BOTW won with above a doubling. In a semifinal match. At least Smash barely did better than ME 2 against BOTW so that is something I guess. So yeah. What else to say? I guess only really weak Zelda games don't stand to hierarchy but then again I guess this is the same with all series. They all have weak games once in a while. The only good thing I can say is that BOTW will not be the most dominant winner ever since in Years contest 1998 won the final match with the doubling but that can't be done here. So there you go. Oh and if you don't know what Hierarchy is, here it goes:Zelda\>Smash\>Mario\>Xenoblade\>Fire Emblem. So that is. But once again when we see a Semifinal match where the winner scores above a doubling...It has happened a few times before and ALWAYS it has something to do with a Zelda game/character. Too strong! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8039&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=125) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2020 (revid 88655)_ ## Results **Semifinals** Tuesday, May 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 126 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 55.68% 45 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 21.57% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 4880 Skyrim - 4173 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 4691 Skyrim - 3383 The time had finally come for Witcher 3 to go out there and prove what it had shown us all contest -- it was a stronger game than Skyrim. I said pre-contest that the only way for Witcher 3 to win this match is for all of the following to be true: -Witcher 3 had to boost from Netflix -Witcher 3 had to boost from the respect factor due to this contest's title -Witcher 3 had to overcome a potential disparity in the Western RPG fanbase, which is fairly tight-knit about what they like -Witcher 3 had to boost from the Switch port more than Skyrim -Skyrim had to have a Bethesda deboost due to the company acting like a bunch of idiots All five of this happening seemed unlikely to me, which is why I picked Skyrim. And yet you can go right down the line: check, check, check, check, check, all with ease. Netflix was likely the biggest factor, but the other stuff all happened as well. Skyrim tried to make a show of it early, but it would find out the hard way that slow starts meant nothing for Witcher 3 in this contest. This thing was close for 30 minutes, and then.... swamped. Skyrim never stood a chance, and we all saw it coming for this entire contest. Three of the final four games in the field are open world RPGs, so it's fitting that this contest would be decided by Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, and Witcher 3. Skyrim may have lost this match with ease, but I don't think it takes away from how well Skyrim did in this contest -- being weaker than Witcher 3 doesn't mean it did badly -- and it certainly doesn't mean Skyrim didn't leave a lasting legacy on gaming. For a lot of people, Skyrim opened the door to the world of open world gaming, and I don't give a toss what anyone says or how games did things better later; Skyrim is an all-time great game. I know it's cool for the internet to hate on it and all, but I don't care. Skyrim deserves every amount of the love it got when it came out, and I hope people aren't holding Bethesda against it. This would set up the final that we all saw coming right from round one. Zelda versus Witcher 3. ## Ctes's Analysis The very hot upset pick which looked to be the favorite since the first round and grew basically every round since then finally happened. As it looked like, The Witcher 3 would have little trouble beating Skyrim to secure its spot in the final match of the contest, a feature it by all means deserved to achieve. The match was never truly in doubt, but both games today had had significantly bad board votes up until this point for whatever reason. On top of the fight for the spot in the finals, they’d also fight for who had the worse board vote. It turned out Witcher 3 won both of those. Skyrim lead for a very short moment, but Witcher 3 couldn’t close the match at first. It was only 15 votes ahead at the freeze and Skyrim managed to cut that down to 6 at the next update. Witcher 3 pulled that up to 13 again and then basically doubled its lead for a couple of updates as it rose to the easy victory we all thought it would have. It surprises me that Witcher 3 has such an awful board vote that it could do to Skyrim what Skyrim had done so far. It’s pretty clear to me that the board has a lot more respect for Witcher 3 than for Skyrim and while most of us favored Skyrim before the contest, I’m sure everyone had Witcher 3 in their second chance bracket, which would be the one alive at this point. A lot of us went perfect there. I suppose Witcher 3 does best in Europe, but even so, this seems weird to me. There’s a possibility that Witcher 3 SFF’d Skyrim a bit here. They’re both from the same genre and played by the same people where Witcher 3 is viewed as having evolved on a lot of things Skyrim did. Skyrim is already third in the x-stats before that SFF so it certainly ended up looking better than it seemed at first. Ultimate and Super Mario Odyssey were SFF’d to a point where we can’t tell how they’d do against Skyrim, but we thought that before the contest too. In the end, Skyrim managed to look basically as good as most of us thought, it’s just that Witcher 3 boosted from a variety of different things. The Bethesda anti-voting exists, but it seems minimal enough, I suppose it doesn’t hurt Skyirm a lot. It wasn’t an issue then. It’s no coincidence that the Game of the 2010s came down to these two open-world games facing another open-world game. Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3 and Skyrim are the pinnacle of a genre that has largely dominated this decade. Not only has the most popular games been huge overworld games you can spend hundreds of hours in, games have been criticized for being linear more than ever before. Skyrim deserves a lot of that praise. Maybe it isn’t the best of the genre at the end of the decade, but it sure influenced it the most. Open world games would not have been as big today if Skyrim hadn’t existed, that’s for sure. It could only underperform relative to expectations this contest, but perhaps next contest it will be an underdog instead and can surprise us. It’s impossible to tell if we’ll know more of the next Elder Scrolls game then, but we’ll certainly see Skyrim again. ## Safer777's Analysis This is it. The true final match. Yeah okay there was a final after that but let's be real, the instant the bracket appeared there were only 2 things that everyone knew. BOTW would win and the contest winner would be the one that correctly predicted the winner of Witcher VS Skyrim. These were the obvious things, barring a rally of course since well nobody can predict rallies. Now before the contest Skyrim was the favorite for like 7-3 against Witcher but when we reached this match Witcher 3 was the favorite for like 10-0. Yeah things changed a bit eh? Okay first things first. Both of these games are amazing and they are really top tier and they both REALLY deserve GOTD title. In fact I think Watch Mojo did a top 10 of best games of decade a few days before this match and the top 3 games they chose were BOTW, Witcher 3 and Skyrim. So yeah. Even on this site we reached the same consensus. Skyrim came out in 2011 and man oh man. It was HUGELY popular. I mean like everyone played and liked the game and the memes. Man the memes. How many are there? In fact the most famous ones, the one about an arrow, has appeared even in TV shows and a lot of other places. After that Skyrim ported to EVERY console that has ever been made. Seriously, if something can play Skyrim you bet your ass Skyrim has been ported there. Even now it is in top 10 most played games on Steam and even on this site it is constantly in Top 3. So yeah really popular. Plus the mods. An infinite amount of them. But one thing that Skyrim does better than everything else is roleplay. What I mean is there isn't a predetermined character there so you can put any race you like and any gender you like and do what you like. Kill everything, save everything, be a saint, be a devil or whatever. So yeah Skyrim is amazing. HOWEVER the story and characters aren't really memorable. I mean I know this is the nature of the game but still. So for Witcher 3. This game. Oh man. Okay it is amazing. You should play it. Witcher 3 is in a lot of systems too, but not as many as Skyrim. It came out in 2015 and it blew everyone out of the water. Geralt, the main character, is amazing. The setting is amazing. The characters are amazing. Witcher 3 does the story and the characters MUCH better than Skyrim since well everyone is established and has a unique personality. Seems fair since well there are so many books and novels and we are at the 3rd main game so it does makes sense right? But it is not just that. Even the sidequests are amazing. Plus it has 2 expansions which are bigger than most modern video games. Yeah even the expansions are amazing. Plus in a lot of quests your answers do affect the outcome and even the ending. HOWEVER you can't be a really bad guy in this one. You can't for example go and kill everyone since Geralt isn't like that. But that doesn't really matter anyways in the grand scheme of things. So yeah both games are amazing and you should play them. I mean if you haven't played them you can't trully call yourself a gamer. So for the match. Witcher 3 won easily with above 55. But why this happened when in pre contest Skyrim was the favorite? Well as I said Skyrim is really popular BUT we haven't heard ANYTHING about a new Elder Scrolls game since 9 years. We have 5 main Elder Scrolls games by now and the previous longest release between 2 main games was 6 years. Now we are at 9 years and we don't even have a release date for the 6th one! I know that since 5 is damn popular they aren't in a hurry to make a new one but still. People always want new games from established franchises. It makes sense. Okay we do have a MMORPG but nobody cares for this. Single player it is where it is. So yeah obviously people care less and less for Skyrim each year since I mean how long can you play it and care for it? Just give us the next one already. Now you may say Witcher 3 is 5 years old so it is now like it is new too right? Yeah BUT here is the thing. They DID announced a new game where everyone says that it is the Witcher 4! Probably. Okay maybe? Nobody knows that. BUT even without that there was an event a few months ago that REALLY boosted Witcher popularity. There was a Neflix series for Witcher and man oh man. Netflix said that this series was their most successful series of all time and broke all kind of records. I have watched that too and yeah it is amazing. There are only 2 problems with the series, Geralt doesn't use the Signs much and the timeline is wonky if you don't really know the series. But other than that it is amazing. When the series premiered the people that played Witcher 3 on Steam were MORE than when the game first came out. Yeah the series really helped the games and now Witcher is mainstream and a lot of people know at least the basics. So that is it won easily. More relevant. Plus Witcher games are from a non American company that have never done anything shady and are against micro transactions and everyone loves them. Seriously I haven't seen anyone saying anything bad about them. Elder Scrolls game are from an American company that was respected and well liked but after Fallout 76 everyone hates them or at least doesn't like them. Oh and they LOVE microtransactions and shady practices. I mean paid mods! My favorite! So a combination of all these made Witcher 3 winning easily. Still as I said Skyrim is strong but as time passes less and less relevant. Amazing victory for Witcher 3 of course. TLDR version. Witcher 3 had a HUGE Netflix Boost Show(seriously MORE people played Witcher 3 on Steam AS the show was going one than people played the game when it first came out! If you know your stuff a game is ALWAYS played more when it first comes out). Both are open world games but Witcher 3 does the story and characters better. Plus people hate Bethesda(including me)for not announcing new Single Player Fallout and Elder Scrolls games and the whole fiasco with Fallout 76. And even though Skyrim is played a lot it is less relevant now than Witcher 3 for sure. EVERYONE loves the developer, CD Projekt Red, of Witcher 3. Not only it became the BIGGEST video game company in Europe BUT NOBODY has anything bad to say about them. Seriously. They NEVER do do any bad things, no microtransactions, no shady practises, nothing. Just making good games! Yeah apparently it still happens! Seriously. So yeah. A combination of all these things.  ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8040&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=126) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 2020 (revid 88656)_ ## Results **Finals** Wednesday, May 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Final - **Match \#:** 127 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 59.87% 51 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 37.14% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5877 The Witcher 3 - 4131 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5296 The Witcher 3 - 5184 Simply because I feel like posting one final list, here is every tournament final we've ever had. I'm cheating with a couple contests, but so what? No real reason. Just felt like pulling this all up. Final matches are generally boring, if not screwey. Very, very few of these matches have been any good, and usually by this point we already know what's winning the contest -- even in years where the winner is out of left field. Undertale and Draven stick out, but when going through those contests live we knew what was coming. In this final, we all knew Breath of the Wild was going to cap off its run with a win -- only final percentages mattered. When the poll first started it looked like Zelda was going to deliver another giga-beating and deliver a swift 60-40 asswhipping to Witcher 3. 60-40 in a final, if you look at the list here, is a *huge* blowout. It's very hard to get much better than that in the finals of a contest. But once Witcher 3 weathered the early storm for a few hours, it did the unthinkable. No, it didn't win the match or come close -- but it *did* make Breath of the Wild look human, which hadn't happened in this contest even once to this point. "Even a god-king can bleed." -redrocket With the assistance of Europe and the fanbase *rallying their balls off*, Witcher 3 was able to turn a 60-40 blowout into a very, very respectable loss of 56-44. Breath of the Wild proved itself at or close to Ocarina of Time's strength for this entire contest, and Witcher 3 actually made it look mortal. I know the fans of Witcher were upset, but this is legitimately an amazing accomplishment. As a random side note, the Witcher series just passed 50 million units sold after only three games. To put that in perspective, it took the Resident Evil series 683 games to get 100 million in sales. All that said, this contest was the Breath of the Wild Invitational, and though a lot of people are tired of Zelda always winning contests, that sentiment tends to not be there as much when something gets to win for the first time. People were happy about Link in 2002. People were happy about Majora's Mask. People were happy about Breath of the Wild. Hell, people were even happy about Ocarina in 2009. It was such a mismatch though compared to the rest of the field that I can't wait to see this thing up against some 90s games. The obvious duel we need to have is Breath vs Ocarina, but I would also love to see it against Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, Link to the Past, Pokemon. and so on. All in all, this was a decent enough contest, though the vote totals blew. There was just one more thing to take care of... bonus match! ## Ctes's Analysis The final match of Game of the Decade II came down to this: Aside from such things, the final match of these contests is very rarely exciting, and this is no different. I don’t mind though, as long as the rest of the contest has been good, this is just another match. Breath of the Wild was absolutely never going to drop this match. The result you see is performed by Witcher 3 on steroids. Maybe it could’ve pulled something similar off in any losing match today, I don’t know, it didn’t in 2015, but I’m willing to bet making the final match helped. It’s easier to rally for the final of a contest than anything else. Witcher 3 rallied perhaps more than any other game has done in the contest. It could have flipped a lot of matches. Who knows how it would have went if these two were closer on natural strength. Breath of the Wild could probably counter and the match would have been very different. As it was, Breath of the Wild was never in danger. Let’s just try to put things in perspective here. The Witcher 3 had just shown that it would lose the board vote against even Skyrim, but Breath of the Wild is also pretty bad with the board vote. Any obvious winner to the contest is. Link himself does notoriously bad in the opening minutes because we’re so tired of seeing him in these contests. It’s hard to tell what won the board vote today, obviously, but I’d honestly bet most of the board wanted Witcher 3 to win despite how bad it looked until now. It’s entirely possible it didn’t favor any of them in particular. In any base, Breath of the Wild was close to 60% at first and went well above it a bit after the freeze, which does suggest the typical early vote boost for the non-favorite. Then look at where the match ended. Witcher 3 did everything it could to make a match of this, rallying as hard as it could. There were few cuts and stalls, but the lead never stopped growing on the large scale. Witcher 3 teared percentage apart though, especially in the night hours where Europe matters the most. The game is from Poland and it shows. It’s a lot bigger there than in NA where Breath of the Wild won big. It’s difficult to determine if Witcher 3 is the second strongest game in the bracket before rallying but it absolutely is with them. Breath of the Wild got almost 68% on Ultimate with SFF. Breath of the Wild looked to get well above 60% before all the Witcher rallying, but the Europe hours would have obviously still happened. If Witcher 3 also boosted from being in the final, then it looks pretty close to Ultimate. It’s a shame we didn’t get a third place bonus match, it would’ve taught us a bit. We would need a direct match to figure this out, but it’s for certain that Witcher 3 wins the match, it’s probably a lot easier to rally for and even a small one could do the difference. No one noticed initially because we just click on our favorite game and vote, but when you clicked on one of the games, but didn’t finalize your vote yet, the moon from Majora’s mask would hover over the picture of the game you didn’t pick. Allen had to come into the stats topic and tell us, but it was a really cool little Easter egg which teased the bonus match. The Witcher 3 did lose today, but it is without a doubt the star of the contest in my eyes. I don’t see how it could be anything else really, unless you want to pick Breath of the Wild for being even more dominant than we thought, but everyone knew it would have an easy time. Witcher 3 wasn’t even favored to get this far. Not only did it manage to get here, it creamed all competition, completely neglected rallying against it and then blasted a very successful rally out itself. It’s almost definitely the strongest Western game on the site, that wasn’t exactly a big feature before this decade. I’ve seen people suggest it as a top 10 game overall, that’s probably a good bit too much, but it’s high up there for sure, and could possibly rally its way to top 10 given the right circumstances. Breath of the Wild is a good contender for most predictable contest winner yet, though it has been a lock many times before. In the end it let something get closer to it than Link did in 2018, but he also didn’t have this big a rally against him. It has not been in doubt what would win this contest at any point since Breath of the Wild released in 2017 and I’m sure people expected it even before it came out. A lot of that has to do with the fact that it’s a Zelda game of course. Majora’s Mask clearly shouldn’t have the best game in the field in 2010 but won the contest regardless. Zelda is that dominant here. It’s more dominant now than ever through a mix of releasing a game this well received again 19 years after Ocarina and Time and the only things that could rival the Zelda franchise declining due to lack of relevance. We can hope, but I seriously doubt that a well liked remake of the first 10% of Final Fantasy VII is going to come close to closing that gap. Breath of the Wild did not only win because it’s a Zelda game though, while it certainly helped its case I’m sure. This decade it’s not just us, it’s generally accepted as the best of the decade. Take a look here: Breath of the Wild did significantly better than anything else on average. It’s incredible how well received the game is. The Legend of Zelda is not big here for no reason and Breath of the Wild reminded us all that. It’s not universally liked obviously, but nothing really is. The people against it are a vocal minority. It’s hard to deny how big a game it is and it absolutely deserves its title. Congratulations! ## Safer777's Analysis This is. The Final Match. After all this time it came down to this. Who would win? Okay let's be real from Day 1 we all knew BOTW would win barring a rally. So the only question was which game would be here. Most had either Skyrim or Witcher 3. As I said in my previous analysis, Witcher is damn popular now and had no trouble against Skyrim. So we all thought how it would do here. The Crew had BOTW winning with around 58 and most people that BOTW would win with around 60 too. But as you can see this didn't happened. So for the match. Witcher managed to score above 44 which to tell the truth nobody expected this high. I had BOTW winning with around 60 too. So yeah Witcher 3 did really good here. I would like for it to score above 45 but hey. Also one curious result. BOTW in USA had around 60 but in UK around 45! In fact in most countries Witcher 3 did won. So yeah Americans REALLY like Nintendo. I am not sure why. Sure Nintendo did really well with NES back in the day but decades have passed since then. And yeah their first party games always do well but still when people think which console to buy pretty sure they think either PS or Xbox and then a Nintendo console. At least here. I guess since Americans have more money than most they just buy everything? Eh whatever. So yeah. We all knew the winner but still it would be hilarious if another game had won. Now some said that the developers of Witcher would rally because they had it said back in 2015 but seriously, you think anyone would care for a contest in this site? The last time someone really cared was back in 2015. Sure we had some rallies too and some of them affected the results too but really small ones. Pretty sure the developers have you know anything else better to do. Also the final match had the most votes which is around 30.000. BUT don't be fooled the registered users have double votes. So it is closer to 20.000 actually which is amazing for this site too! I mean we started with 14.000 votes which is what we are used too. So it is true that the contest does bring people to this site and that is good I guess. Man I still remember when in some old contests even boring matches had like 80.000 votes. Still seems that the site is very slowly losing people but it can continue going on for a lot more years since us regulars we just can't leave. So anyways to recap congrats to BOTW and congrats to Witcher 3 too that kept fighthing untill the end. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8041&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=127) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2020 _source: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2020 (revid 88657)_ ## Results **Bonus** Thursday, May 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Bonus - **Match \#:** 128 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 53.04% 27 for - 7 against This was the clear and obvious bonus poll to have for this contest, and good *lord* did Breath of the Wild show up. This was just a beating right from the jump, and Majora's Mask never stood a chance. A lot of people are calling this match SFF, but I'm not so sure. The Zelda series tends to not SFF itself. Here are some great examples: Those matches weren't SFF, so why does this bonus poll have to be? Because Majora's Mask got embarrassed? I truly think Breath of the Wild is just this good. All the evidence is there already. A crazy boost for Link two years ago. An even crazier boost for Zelda two years ago. The game having strength fit for the 90s, which is the decade this site is still stuck in. It's the new hotness. Everything lines up toward this being a legit match, and Zelda only really SFFs itself in fourways. But it's a bonus poll at the end of the day and these are all lighthearted, so who really knows. We definitely need another catch-all games contest with no gimmicks or BS to find out though. Just throw everything in a normal bracket of 128 and let it rip. I'm also very happy Allen didn't turn around and have a poll between Ocarina and Breath of the Wild. *That* match needs to happen with money on the line. And with that, another contest in the books! I guess we'll see you all in ten years when Game of the Decade 3 happens, assuming this place is still around then. ## Ctes's Analysis We would get a bonus match this contest, as we often but not always do. People had been asking for this one a while, so Allen was nice enough to provide it to us. It felt right. Game of the 2000s vs. Game of the 2010s. Typically, a match between two Zelda games, though interestingly, it’s the two Zelda games being mostly different from the rest of 3D games fighting today. We were given more picture fun, as picking Majora’s Mask would have the moon slowly covering Breath of the Wild just like in the final but picking Breath of the Wild would instead have a major cuckoo cover the Majora’s Mask picture. It’s nice to see Allen is still getting some fun out of these things. Breath of the Wild was the overwhelming favorite to win this match. Majora’s Mask was always a weird winner while Breath of the Wild was an obvious one. Even with all the Zelda-drones, Majora’s Mask probably loses that contest to Brawl if not for the active campaign against the latter. Look at how easily Breath of the Wild handled the Smash game of this decade. It looked pretty clear the whole contest that Breath of the Wild would be up there with the absolute best games and Majora’s Mask is unfortunately not quite there. At least not when Ocarina of Time is also in the field. It won easier than most anticipated though, making everything from the previous decade look very weak. It would do bad with the board vote once again but rise a good bit from there. When you remember the rest of the results Breath of the Wild had, then it’s clear enough Majora’s Mask is very good, and it’s clear that we had a weak field this decade aside from the very top. I could spend a good while praising the actual game, but let’s keep that for another time and stay on its contest strength here. Getting a percentage like this against Breath of the Wild is very good, and Majora’s Mask had all the SFF in the world to worry about. It’s probably not the worst beatsown since the games are far apart in time and are quite different considering they’re from the same series, but it’s SFF regardless. I’m also guessing that this being a Game of the 2010s bonus match with Breath of the Wild coming out fresh as the winner, it overperforms a little bit. This was the contest match that made sense, but Breath of the Wild against Ocarina of Time would’ve been a more interesting match. Most would probably pick Ocarina of Time there, but Breath of the Wild did come fresh off of winning a contest, so it might look really good. Breath of the Wild is basically the modern Ocarina of Time. The highly acclaimed Zelda game that is often regarded as the best of its time. Majora’s Mask was never that. On the other hand, it’s good that we’re saving Breath of the Wild versus the biggest games for an actual contest and not a bonus match, so it’s a good thing we didn’t see Ocarina of Time today. We’ve seen that the title of the contest has boosted games, but it looks like Breath of the Wild could be a top 5 game of all time here, which is impressive for a game that recent. Majora’s Mask it up there and Breath of the Wild beat it rather easily, while A Link to the Past struggled a bit beating it in SNES dominant contest. That suggest it’s better than that, but keep in mind 3D Zelda games likely SFF each other more than a 3D Zelda SFFs a 2D Zelda and that none of two had just won a contest back then. This match did what it was supposed to, make us excited for an eventual Best Game Ever IV where we get to see this mostly untested field against all our usual juggernauts. Contests are rare enough these days though and who knows what other ideas we need to get through first. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8090&num=2) • **Previous Match**      • **No Next Match**