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