# Summer 2003 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 2003 Contest _source: Summer 2003 Contest (revid 80271)_
Summer 2003 Contest

Started:

July 1, 2003

Ended:

September 3, 2003

Winner:

Cloud

Contest Winner:

Leo0820 (183/192 points)

Notable matches:

Kefka/Pac-Man, Ganon/Magus

Squall/Luigi, Vercetti/DK

Mario/Crono, Link/Cloud
**Summer 2003 Contest** The **Summer 2003 Contest** was the second Summer Contest in GameFAQs history, and is also known as **Character Battle II**. It is considered by some to be the best Character Battle in GameFAQs history. ### See Also 2003 Contest Matches - complete writeups on every poll from the second annual Character Battle ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
North Division Link Samus Aran Link Cloud Strife Cloud Strife Sephiroth Cloud Strife
\(1\) Link (16) AiAi Link Fox McCloud Link Magus
\(8\) Pikachu (9) Fox McCloud
\(5\) Tidus (12) Ganondorf Ganondorf Magus
\(4\) Sam Fisher (13) Magus
\(6\) Squall Leonhart (11) Jill Valentine Squall Leonhart Luigi Squall Leonhart Samus Aran
\(3\) Luigi (14) Ratchet
\(7\) KOS-MOS (10) Crash Bandicoot KOS-MOS Samus Aran
\(2\) Samus Aran (15) Isaac
East Division Cloud Strife Sonic the Hedgehog
\(1\) Cloud Strife (16) CATS Cloud Strife Auron Cloud Strife Bowser
\(8\) Auron (9) Tails
\(5\) Bowser (12) Ness Bowser Yoshi
\(4\) Yoshi (13) Conker
\(6\) Sora (11) Aeris Aeris Master Chief Aeris Sonic the Hedgehog
\(3\) Master Chief (14) Felix
\(7\) Zero (10) Scorpion Zero Sonic the Hedgehog
\(2\) Sonic the Hedgehog (15) Ken Masters
South Division Mario Sephiroth Sephiroth Mega Man
\(1\) Mario (16) Captain Olimar Mario Shadow the Hedgehog Mario Crono
\(8\) Wario (9) Shadow the Hedgehog
\(5\) Pac-Man (12) Kefka Kefka Crono
\(4\) Crono (13) Tom Nook
\(6\) Alucard (11) Bomberman Alucard Kirby Alucard Sephiroth
\(3\) Kirby (14) Ramza
\(7\) Gordon Freeman (10) Max Payne Max Payne Sephiroth
\(2\) Sephiroth (15) Raziel
West Division Solid Snake Mega Man
\(1\) Solid Snake (16) Raiden Solid Snake Knuckles Solid Snake Ryu
\(8\) Knuckles (9) Yuna
\(5\) Ryu (12) Duke Nukem Ryu Dante
\(4\) Dante (13) Ryo Hazuki
\(6\) Donkey Kong (11) Vyse Donkey Kong Tommy Vercetti Tommy Vercetti Mega Man
\(3\) Tommy Vercetti (14) Kite
\(7\) Lara Croft (10) Zelda Zelda Mega Man
\(2\) Mega Man (15) Mr. Resetti
Note: This is the only site-wide 1v1 Character Battle tournament as of yet in which Link has actually lost a battle (to eventual winner Cloud Strife). ## Results and Analysis ### Interesting Facts - The Ultimate Loser in 2003 was Ryo Hazuki. Ryo lost to Dante, who lost to Ryu, who lost to Snake, who lost to Megaman, who lost to Sephiroth, who lost to Cloud. - Only six of the 64 characters in this contest haven't appeared in another one since. ### Ulti's Analysis The hype for the sequel to follow Summer 2002's smash success had finally dawned upon the site, and for those who don't remember, this was the first contest in which a formal nomination form was created. Summer 2002's nominations were all done in a topic on Current Events, but in 2003 CJayC polled all willing to fill the form out for ten nominations each. The results were a very well-balanced bracket, though before the contest started most people felt that Summer 2003 would be too easy. Link absolutely dominated the field in Summer 2002, and the main complaint this time around would be that everyone would have perfect brackets and that the tiebreaker would decide who won it all. People were also complaining that Link would win the contest too easily and that there was no real point in holding another one. Yeah, right. The 2003 field was a good one thanks to more public nominations, and gone were all of the cult characters and obscure fighting game characters that hardly anyone had heard of. The field featured a Nintendo-dominated field and characters that were more mainstream, but a few lesser-knowns still slipped through the cracks. Pay close attention to how this contest was, because it was the last of its kind. The dawn of the extrapolated standings and creativename's dominance of the 2003 Oracle Challenge (which he credits the stats for, though he didn't reveal his method until after the contest) caused everyone else to want to be equally good at predicting matches. This led to a tool that is useful, but sucks all of the unknown out of these polls. Gone are the days when we simply ask who win. Now we almost always know who wins; it's a matter of what the final percentages are, and the stigma that was in these first two contests hasn't been there since. It's not that the contests grew bad, but the stats deciding everything for us (including how we all debate matches before they happen) takes a lot of the fun out of them. You can't say much of anything anymore without some stat whore trying to correct you. This was also the final contest to feature the classic GameFAQs layout and 15 minute poll updates. One died during Soul Calibur/Kingdom Hearts in the first round of the Spring 2004 Contest, the other died in Metroid Prime/Half-Life directly after. On the brighter side of things, the contests still existing is a plus, as is the fact that Summer 2005 was proof that CJayC is still willing to put insane effort into them. We were all worried there for a bit. CJayC also brought back poll updates, but shortened them to 5 minutes. And now for the standard ranking of the contests: Summer 2002 \> Summer 2003. ### Ngamer's Analysis When the nominations were announced for '03, I was very upset. We'd already seen Characters, and in my mind we should have moved straight to Games with the second full Contest. When the results started rolling in and it eventually became clear that it was going to be Square's year, I was even more upset. But looking back on it, this was a fantastic Contest, perhaps the best of all time. All of '02s fodder meant there were tons of exciting newcomers joining the field, and even though we all thought we were experts on the returning characters, KHF threw a wrench in our plans and gave the whole season a unique new twist. The nomination system created a strong, well-seeded bracket and there were good matches all up and down the board... not much more you could ask for. --- ## (1)Link vs (16)AiAi 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (16)AiAi 2003 (revid 55463)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 1st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 1st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 84,196 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 99.12% (40,697 brackets) One the many lesser-known Nintendo characters to sneak into Summer 2003 was AiAi of Super Monkey Ball fame, and this is where the much-hyped Summer 2003 Contest kicked off. Much like Summer 2002, the first match wasn't about who would win, but by how much the favorite would win by. Link was the overwhelming favorite going into this thing (if odds were created, Link's would have been lower than 1.5:1, which is RIDICULOUS), and even with CJayC announcing that he would use Wind Waker pics in all of Link's matches Link still looked every bit the contest favorite in his first match. Breaking 90,000 votes was absolutely unheard of in 2002, yet Link broke that with ease in this match. The match itself also managed to break 100,000 total votes, which was also nearly unheard of in 2002. But above all was Link breaking the 90% barrier, a feat that only the true elites will ever have the chance to see, and starting this contest off by letting everyone know that he was the character to beat going in. Granted this may have had a little bit of SFF attached, but 90% is difficult to break regardless of who the opponent was. All that there was left to do from here was to soak in the blowout, welcome in a new contest and see what would happen next. • **(No Previous Match)**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Pikachu vs (9)Fox McCloud 2003 _source: (8)Pikachu vs (9)Fox McCloud 2003 (revid 88740)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 36,894 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fox McCloud - 57.41% (23,573 brackets) We got our first debated match of the contest fairly early, though you have to wonder what the big deal was going into this. For whatever reason, many people felt that Pikachu (who barely beat *PaRappa the Rapper* in 2002) stood a good chance to win this despite both characters sharing an opponent in 2002: Cloud Strife. [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=947) [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=975) I'm fairly sure that SFF wasn't a largely discussed factor back in the early parts of 2003, so it came down to simple extrapolation to see who had the advantage in this match. There was also the little matter of Pikachu being one of the only characters in which anti-voting actually made a difference, and when factored in with him going up against a character from his own company (which would later be known as the fabled SFF) his odds of winning were next to zero. Another reason that many a Pikachu supporter held (and this would bite many a bracketmaker in the ass multiple times through this contest) was the FAQ list on the homepage. Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire was all the rage during this contest, and people didn't yet know that FAQ hits on the home page meant squat. The people who were rooting for Pikachu woke up to quite the surprise in this one, eh? Fox was all over him from the start, and little can be said about this match other than the fact that it was an SFF doubling waiting to happen. I almost wonder how it wasn't an even bigger blowout, given how much Pikachu (and Pokemon in general) was once so hated on this site. As for Fox, though he was destined to get his ass whipped by Link in the second round, he managed to get past his horrendous (at the time) seeding in Summer 2002 and actually win himself a match. It's funny to think about the fact that Fox's blowout win over Pikachu was last time Fox won a match for quite a long while, at least as far as 1v1 is concerned. He couldn't even get into Summer 2005 with the help of Star Fox Assault, being the second best character in SSBM and having no company cap in place. Has Star Fox Adventure actually knocked Fox down so far that we'll never again see him winning matches? On a side note, Fox vs Pikachu in the original Super Smash Brothers would have been a much more entertaining fight than this match. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Tidus vs (12)Ganondorf 2003 _source: (5)Tidus vs (12)Ganondorf 2003 (revid 88741)_ ## Results Thursday, July 3rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 3rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 1,582 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 47.72% (19,595 brackets) We saw our first debated match on the second day of the contest, but it was the third day of this contest that gave us our first taste of "hell yeah, this is awesome". But let's back up for a moment. Despite the 5-12 seeding discrepancy in this match, there was a general consensus about this match (and this fourpack in general, but we'll get into that in a second). Most people felt that Ganon beating Tidus was a lock, for several reasons. Tidus was hated, Ganon was a hyped newcomer (weren't they all back then?), Ganon had SSBM exposure behind him, but most of all, Link had won the Summer 2002 Contest and this was clearly going to allow Ganon to steamroll Tidus en route to a tough second round loss to Magus. There were a few Tidus/Square fans in the mix, but even they had their doubts about whether or not Tidus could actually win this thing. For those who weren't here back in 2003, know that Ganon and Zelda were hyped to such extreme lengths that it's funny to think back on as I type this. (Side Note: Despite the overwhelming belief that Magus would beat Ganon with ease in the second round of this contest, many people were hoping for the "upset" because they wanted to see a "more fun" Link vs Ganondorf match. True story, and Slowflake can attest.) As many of us have come to realize, unexpected close matches are usually the best kind. Ganondorf started off as planned, though there was a slight glitch before we saw actual poll results (the first 100 or so voters got an error message). He was ahead, though not by the dominating numbers that many expected. Still, after Tidus gave Ganon a slight struggle early on, Ganon was able to build a lead in the high hundreds and it seemed as if Tidus's minor early fight in the poll was but a fallacy. Yeah, whoops. We didn't know about voting demographics with relation to the time of day back then, so once people began to see Tidus making a comeback they all went insane. And before thinking that we Summer 2003 fans were all idiots for this, put it in proper perspective. There were no X-Stats, no Square Night Vote, no Zelda Morning Vote, and nothing to suggest anything other than that Tidus's beginnings of a comeback was a simple glitch in the system against the heavily-favored Ganondorf. All we saw was Ganon's lead dropping ever-so-slightly with each passing 15 minute update before Tidus went insane in the early morning hours. Now if this poll happened today, we'd all call the match over once Ganon built a lead of nearly 1000 votes regardless of what Tidus did due to everyone knowing that Zelda dominates in the morning when ALL T3H KIDDAYS WAKE UP omg. But back in 2003, everyone was literally losing their minds and wondering how in the world whimpy little Tidus was even making a game of this, let alone making a comeback that would eventually make it look as if Tidus was going to actually win. It should be noted that this match began the tradition of update topics. Some guy I can't recall made a topic once Tidus began coming back, and his updates looked something like such: Tidus 4000 Ganon 4500 Tidus down by 500 - next update\* Tidus 4100 Ganon 4550 Tidus down by **450** Tidus would eventually slice Ganon's once-massive lead of nearly 1000 votes down to 170 before the two stalled. Ganon then caught fire during the morning vote and was able to pull away by a few hundred, though Tidus was able to make it interesting in spots. However, despite Tidus's best efforts Ganon was able to slowly increase his lead to over 1000, and eventually hundreds more. Tidus was able to use the evening vote (remember that polls closed at 1 AM EST at the time) to stall Ganon, but Tidus was never able to make a game out of the match again. As the match was closing and people realized that Ganon had it safely put away, the talk of the match was the update topic. People who were asleep during all of the best action were beyond grateful for a topic being around that showed how intense the match truly was. A 1600 vote match may not sound like much by today's standards, but back then it was a huge deal; we simply hadn't become so desensitized to such things like we are now. The update topic showing every little detail from every little update was even better for those who weren't insomniacs, and its popularity soared afterwards. It eventually had to have a very specific format, and people fought for claims to the update topics for the rest of the contest, especially for heated matches. Creativename has since created an auto-updater on his site that does all the work for us (and update topics have pretty much become pointless as a result), but nothing beats the drama of the old days. We'd all sit around, refresh like mad every 15 minutes, comment on the results and then flood the update topics with our fanboyism when we weren't busy yelling OMG COMEBACK in new topic titles all over the board. The other, more subtle motif of Tidus's near-upset was how he managed to get that close to such a heavily-favored character in the first place. Or was he even favored at all? This was one of the first cases of Board 8's hardcore contest knowledge almost biting everyone in the ass ("Did you see how easily Link won in 2002? OF COURSE Ganon is going to win this! He might even beat Magus!"), and it's interesting this hasn't gone away yet. There always seems to be a conflict of the casual bracketmaker versus the hardcore when it comes to some matches, and matches like this started all of that. What we felt was obvious in this match was actually the upset, as evidenced by the prediction percentage. We all believed that Ganon was a lock to win, but the reality is that people were split on who the favorite actually was, for several reasons. Square vs Nintendo, Tidus being an FF lead, Ganon being a newbie, the seeding.... the list goes on. Though people got over Tidus's unexpected strength real quick when they realized that Ganon's allowing Tidus to get so close *obviously* meant that their beloved son (Magus) would see no resistance whatsoever en route to the true final of the contest: Link vs Magus. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Sam Fisher vs (13)Magus 2003 _source: (4)Sam Fisher vs (13)Magus 2003 (revid 88742)_ ## Results Friday, July 4th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 4th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 29,732 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Magus - 56.92% (23,370 brackets) Before getting into the background of this match, let me quote Ngamer64 about how weird the beginning of this poll was... "Magus had just the strangest opening of all time... Let me break it down, for history's sake: 1\. The poll opened 22 minutes late, meaning it was being ransacked by about 400 gamers, all trying to get the first vote in, and refreshing 100 times a minute. 2\. The poll finally opened, but with a message saying that Ganon/Tidus was over, and you couldn't vote in it anymore. 3\. The results came online, but Magus was marked as having every single vote... plus 5-15 more added to that! He reached over 103% at one point. 4\. It got really strange here... at the same time as the results changed to show TWO Sam Fishers competing against 1 Magus (who still had more than all the votes), the pic at the front of the page got seriously messed up, stretching to about 50 times its normal size, all the way down the right side of the page. 5\. Normal results finally surfaced, with Magus leading with 72% of the vote with 240 votes cast." With that out of the way, this was the first tune-up for what was supposed to be Magus's dash at taking away Link's crown. Magus was the most hyped character after Summer 2002 due to Crono's success and people feeling that Magus was much more popular. Ergo, here we were. Magus was given a ton of board support during the nomination phase, yet somehow only received a 13 seed. And it was this 13 seed that people blamed for Magus not doing so hot in this match. It wasn't that a near-doubling was bad, but one needed to do a lot better than simply doubling Sam Fisher to have a shot at beating Link. But no matter. People simply blamed seeding and/or bracket voting and went on believing that Magus was the Second Coming. It should be worth noting that right from the beginning, Magus had a problem with starting off very well in his matches, then slowing down as the match went on. He went from being over 70% at the beginning of this to missing out on a doubling. As for Sam Fisher, the big talk wasn't how he did in the match or even who he was (am I the only one who had never heard of him before this match?), but how in the world he managed to get a 4 seed in this contest. The board was so unbelievably annoyed about this that in one contest, Sam Fisher cost his team a finals appearance because people didn't want to see him in it. It was one of those contests where the creator had 16 entrants, each grouped by the characters in the contest seeding. The 2 Seeds (Samus, Sonic, Sephiroth, and Mega Man) won with extreme ease, but the 4 Seeds could have beaten them if Sam Fisher wasn't on their team. The board's hate for Sam started with him getting this 4 seed, and it really hasn't stopped since. He's one of the worst of all time with the board vote, and his less-than-stellar games (all of which are failed attempts at being better than MGS series) don't exactly help stave this off. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Squall Leonhart vs (11)Jill Valentine 2003 _source: (6)Squall Leonhart vs (11)Jill Valentine 2003 (revid 88743)_ ## Results Saturday, July 5th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 5th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 19,118 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 62.09% (25,492 brackets) This was an odd match in that 60-40 was fairly unexpected. A very large part of the board felt that Jill would be able to win fairly easily, and virtually the entire board would have lost on this match if X-Stats existed back then. Check the 2002 numbers for yourself. Once the match began, many people were in for quite the surprise when Squall had over 60% of the vote early. Jill was eventually able to get Squall down into the 50s for a bit, but as you can see Squall went on to a fairly routine 60-40 win over an opponent that many felt would take him down without much trouble. People didn't have much faith in the guy after the egg he laid against Solid Snake in Summer 2002. What would be a good modern match to compare this to... \*hunts\* EarthBound vs Doom is a good one. Though the match was pretty much split down the middle, there was a general feeling that EarthBound would win. Doom then went out and whipped EarthBound in a match where it was barely challenged. The same thing applies to Squall/Jill, though Squall had it much easier than Doom did. Unfortunately for Squall, this was probably the end of the line for him. He was to take on the powerhouse Luigi in the second round, and really, Squall had no chance whatsoever. If Mario was a powerhouse, then surely Luigi would follow in his footsteps. Squall was done, though at least he got to win a match! Ahem. Side Note: It's actually interesting to look at the 2002 numbers. Neither Squall nor Jill were behind SFF or the like, and Jill would be expected to win with 55.5% of the vote based off of them. Clearly something happened between 2002 and 2003 that gave Squall a boost. Gee, wonder what that was. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Luigi vs (14)Ratchet 2003 _source: (3)Luigi vs (14)Ratchet 2003 (revid 88744)_ ## Results Sunday, July 6th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 6th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 46,451 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 87.92% (36,099 brackets) This was an odd little match, to say the least. Quick background on Luigi. After Magus, I'd have to say that Luigi was the most hyped character going into this contest. The man was literally supposed to kill his first two opponents, and many people felt that he was a legitimate threat to Samus. There were even those who felt he was a threat to beat Link, which is almost ridiculous given how favored Link was. Then again I think some of that was out of people desperate to see Link get upset, but that's a different story. When Luigi's match with Ratchet finally began, he started off looking like everything he was made out to be and more. This wasn't a Magus deal where Luigi was hyped to all hell, yet began a poll with 70% and failed to double the weak opponent he was up against. Luigi began his match against Ratchet with over 90% of the vote, which is obscene; only the true elites ever hit 90% in a poll. But something very strange happened after that. Luigi's percentage just sort of.... dropped like a rock after his fast start. He went from being near 93% at the match's onset into a rapid decline to what you see above. And while a dropoff of 20% isn't so bad when you start that high, it makes you wonder how we didn't see what was coming a little sooner. Another oddity was the vote total for the match. Compared to the standard set by the young contest prior to this, 94600 votes wasn't very high, especially for a character who was supposedly the second coming of Mario. People stopped assuming that Luigi had a chance at beating Link or Samus after this, though few people felt that Luigi was to be threatened in the next round at all. OMG FORESHADOWING. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)KOS-MOS vs (10)Crash Bandicoot 2003 _source: (7)KOS-MOS vs (10)Crash Bandicoot 2003 (revid 88745)_ ## Results Monday, July 7th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 7th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 23,631 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** KOS-MOS - 42.45% (17,431 brackets) The pre-match debates involving this one were fairly low-key, though this match would have been a much bigger deal if it weren't one of those "Oh well, the winner is guaranteed to lose so it's only one point" things. Contests back then weren't as easy to predict as they are now, so one point didn't matter so much. It's not like today where everyone has a fairly decent chance at going perfect. There was a split, though if I remember correctly, KOS-MOS fans picked the right winner but had a totally whacked out argument. Apparently since Xenogears kicked all sorts of ass, KOS-MOS being from Xenosaga would be a clear case of popularity leeching and she would win with ease despite Crash's popularity. On Crash's side, his fans... pretty much supported the favorite. It wasn't as if Crash were overly powerful or anything (especially when looking at 2002), but someone as well-known as Crash should surely be able to take down some cult character who takes all of her popularity from her game's title, right? Come match time, KOS-MOS went out and proved what many of her supporters have believed all along, which is that KOS-MOS isn't necessarily strong (though she sure looked it early) but that people no longer cared about Crash Bandicoot at all. Crash was the easy favorite going into the match, but was simply blown away from the beginning. He made a nice percentage recovery as the match progressed, but couldn't take away from the fact that this match was good symbolism of the era of the 3D platforming character being over. And if this match couldn't convince people of that, the Summer 2004 Contest (featuring Crash, Jak, Ratchet, Conker, and maybe others I'm forgetting) surely would. The odd thing about this match is that it didn't seem like most people were upset about Crash losing, almost as if they expected it to happen. If a favored character's loss being greeted with complacency isn't a sign of people not caring about him, I don't know what is. Unfortunately for KOS-MOS, this match sort of gave a false sense of her being stronger that she really was. Not that it would matter in the grand scheme of things, but it's odd looking back on 2003 and remembering all the people who thought that KOS-MOS could possibly give Samus a run... • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (15)Isaac 2003 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (15)Isaac 2003 (revid 88746)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 8th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 8th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 54,563 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 93.80% (38,512 brackets) Ah, Samus. She's one of the biggest oddballs to ever grace these contests, and believe it or not her matches used to be far weirder than they are now. Her 2002 feats are well-documented, but 2003 was just a strange year for her. Before the contest began, and again this was perhaps all out of "Can anyone beat Link?" desperation, Samus was right there with Magus in the discussion of possible upset candidates. Samus over Link was a hot topic in 2002, but Sephiroth put an end to all of that by beating Samus in the West Finals and we never saw the match. Enter 2003. Samus is literally given a free ride through her first two matches, and all she would need to do from there to take on Link would be to get past Luigi and hope that Link survives Magus. It sounds strange for people to actually be thinking along these lines, doesn't it? Unfortunately, something happened in Samus's very first match that threw a giant monkey wrench into all of the Samus \> Link hype. Isaac, this little-known character from Golden Sun, made Samus look fallable. It's not that he did anything more than get completely blown out, but for Samus to be involved in any form of "\> Link" hype, doing anything other than giving Isaac the SFF beatdown of his life would not be good enough. At least, that's how it went according to us. We had some fairly ridiculous expectations for Samus back in the day, though she has somewhat caught up since. In the beginning of the match, Samus only had just under 80% of the vote. This was disappointing, but most figured that she would go crazy later on, stave off Isaac's little cult following run and deliver the massive beating that most were expecting. It never happened. Not only did Isaac avoid allowing Samus to score in the 90s on him, but he turned the match into one of the most consistent of all time. In fact, Isaac spent the rest of the match taking Samus down from being near 80% to the 75% that she finished with. This little hiccup from Samus remains as one of the oddest matches to ever take place, because we have yet to figure out how Isaac avoided taking a good old SFF beatdown from his fellow Nintendo brethren. We could use a match between Samus and a weaker Nintendo character to see if she has issues SFFing him. Samus/Yoshi would be nice. Samus \> Link didn't slow down however, because people pretty much passed off Samus's disappointing performance as Golden Sun's fanbase being larger than expected and/or a few other things. People also began to realize that Samus \> Link could still happen. After all, both are Nintendo characters (and one had TJF)... what if the fanbase randomly supports Samus instead? Who will the leftover fans vote for? Sounds like the beginning of rSFF postulation to me, though the general idea is that Isaac was stronger than expected and that Samus was still ready to lock in. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)CATS 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)CATS 2003 (revid 88747)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 9th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 9th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 79,918 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 94.91% (38,968 brackets) After the North Division gave us a fairly good start to the Summer 2003 Contest, it was the East's turn to show its stuff. Tidus/Ganon especially gave the East a pretty high standard to live up to, though it took all of one match to give us the biggest laugh of the contest. HISTORY LESSON omg: Cloud wasn't like other characters who had suffered tough losses in 2002. Board opinion of him (and Final Fantasy 7) has always been fairly split, oft going against FF7 whenever possible. A good microcosm of this was the fact that many a user fully expected Sonic to win this division over Cloud due to Sonic fans being out for blood after his 2002 loss to Samus. Never mind the fact that to this day, Cloud was the victim of the single biggest miracle in these contests. Cloud has his fans, yes, but our board hasn't been in his corner in any regard since 2002. I think that this match was the beginning of this little trend. In 2002, CATS was little more than a joke. In 2003, someone (I think gotspork) created the CATS Army solely because a, the AYB fad is hilarious, and b, because it would have been hilarious to see CATS ahead of Cloud at any point in the match. Cloud was a lock to win, but the unthinkable happened as this match began. CATS, a character whose fanbase consists almost entirely of people who haven't played his game, actually took the lead on Cloud at the beginning of the match! This wasn't like today in which we're all aware that we can see any character lead the beginning of a poll if the board agrees on where to vote, mind. This was back in the day where it was still widely believed that whoever was winning at the beginning of a match would win the match outright. To see CATS ahead of Cloud was almost unthinkable, and the legend of The Army™ was born. Many a coalition has been created since, but the CATS Army is the only one to have ever amounted to being worth a damn. Cloud would eventually go on to absolutely slaughter everyone's favorite ZIG weapon, but the damage was done to him in terms of respect. He went from being a lock to defeat Mario to a guy that couldn't take the board vote from CATS in the span of a year, and Cloud has lost the board vote in virtually every match he's been involved in since. Not that this has much of a bearing on Cloud's wins and losses (for the most part, he's only lost to Link since this contest), but to not be able to win the board vote against anyone is sad. He'd probably lose it to Sam Fisher. The funniest thing of all however is the fact that people used Cloud's seconds-long blunder against CATS to preach that he was in trouble against Auron (who wasn't even a lock to beat Tails at the time). I guess some things never change :D Side Note: creativename claims that through extrapolation, Cloud's eventually winning this contest shouldn't have come as such a big surprise. Him preaching this, along with creative's dominance in solar's first Oracle Contest is a large reason for the eventual boom of the X-Stats. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Auron vs (9)Miles "Tails" Prower 2003 _source: (8)Auron vs (9)Miles "Tails" Prower 2003 (revid 55485)_ ## Results Thursday, July 10th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 10th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 31,514 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 60.70% (24,921 brackets) The hype entering this match was strange, because there probably shouldn't have been any hype at all. That said, most people felt that Tails would win. I can't exactly say what the reasoning was, though it was probably out of hope more than anything else. Many people were snake-bit by Alucard last year, and I guess they were hoping for Tails to beat Auron as a sort of make-up? I dunno. It's tough to make a case for why Tails can beat Auron if he can't beat Alucard. A lot of people brought up how hated Tidus was, though given that Auron has almost always been the most popular FFX character, Tidus hate was irrelevant. It was further irrelevant after what Tidus did against Ganondorf, and come match time Tails was out of this thing despite a good amount of the board being behind him. Auron began this thing by having nearly 70% of the vote (and as a new character that we didn't yet have a solid reading on, this was impressive), though Tails managed to get that down a little as the match went on. For the second year in a row, Tails went up against a character that a lot of people felt he could beat, but lost -- and it didn't take long for people to realize that his odds in 2002 were a hell of a lot better than 2003. Tails would eventually go on to win a match in 2004, though his stigma of not being able to win one (and being seeded 12th) caused a lot of people to pick against him that year. As for Auron, this was the first match of his career, though it took a long while before people began to feel that he was the strongest character from FFX. Even now, some people still believe it's Tidus. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Bowser vs (12)Ness 2003 _source: (5)Bowser vs (12)Ness 2003 (revid 55487)_ ## Results Friday, July 11th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 11th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 49,537 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 79.47% (32,629 brackets) Be honest. Did you pick Ness to win at least one match in 2003 because of Super Smash Brothers? \>\_\> I almost picked him to win *two* matches, but decided against it at the last minute and had Yoshi winning the fourpack instead. And I'm far from the only one. Ness was a very popular upset pick in this contest, mostly because we have a lot of SSB/M fans around these parts, but also because we have a few EarthBound fans as well. Board consensus eventually shifted from Ness to Yoshi (and more on why later), and everyone seemed to forget about ol' Bowser in all of this. Perhaps because for Bowser, it was his first contest appearance and people did not know what to expect. But after his poll with Ness began, the upset-minded phychic boy from EarthBound learned real quick that Bowser was no slouch in these things. Not only did Bowser start off on fire, but he had nearly 80% of the vote. That's pretty insane to do against a character that was supposed to be able to win this match. Bowser eventually calmed down a bit, but not enough for Ness to avoid being tripled. This was one of the more unexpected blowouts we'd ever seen, and soon the attention turned to Yoshi. For whatever reason the board shifted from Ness's upset prospects to Yoshi being the easy favorite to win this fourpack, but Bowser's getting 75% threw a wrench into that one real quick. Unfortunately, most people didn't read the warning signs on that one until it was way too late. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Yoshi vs (13)Conker 2003 _source: (4)Yoshi vs (13)Conker 2003 (revid 88749)_ ## Results Saturday, July 12th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 12th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 30,424 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 77.23% (31,710 brackets) Looking back on this match, it's a wonder why the Bowser upset was so unexpected. Probably because SFF discussions weren't all the rage back then like they are now. Yoshi is very good at putting on boring (See Also: Consistent) matches that tend to be blowouts one way or the other, and this trend of his began right from his very first match. Yoshi was around 70% at the beginning of the poll, and he settled down to a near-doubling later on. The problem is that people overestimated the hell out of Yoshi before this match. This was his first contest after all, and you know how we used to be with newbies. Remember the Yoshi \> Cloud hype? Despite Yoshi doubling Conker, many people expected Yoshi to do much better in the match. The faith in him beating Cloud was essentially gone after this match, though few figured that Bowser stood much of a chance due to some nonsensical factor about how Nintendo fans don't stick by their villains. Back then, most people didn't really know what SFF was, so they couldn't look at these two matches and go "Well since Bowser SFFd the hell out of Ness while Yoshi couldn't even SFF Conker down to a doubling, Bowser should win easily." And besides, it wasn't until Summer 2004 that people began to believe that Ness was even SFFd in the first place. As for Conker, he has yet to win a match. 0-5 lifetime. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sora vs (11)Aeris Gainsborough 2003 _source: (6)Sora vs (11)Aeris Gainsborough 2003 (revid 88750)_ ## Results Sunday, July 13th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 13th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 32,582 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aeris - 70.68% (29,021 brackets) Remember Aeris's 11 seed in Summer 2002? Remember how she blasted through her fourpack before a respectable loss at the hands of Solid Snake? Her reward for all that was another 11 seed, and another fourpack that she was destined to own the hell out of before an inevitable loss to Sonic in the third round. Her first opponent was Sora of Kingdom Hearts fame, and though Aeris was destined to blow him out his case was an interesting one. Kingdom Hearts, a little experiment where Square and Disney would work together, was one of the most hyped games of all time. And it delivered. It sold four million copies in a year, and this helped propel Sora to an easy first contest appearance. Unfortunately Sora was the guy stuck taking on Aeris as she was screwed with another of her 11 seeds, and the end result was an expected win for Aeris. 70% prediction rate when you're the seed underdog is no joke, and most of this was due to Aeris being in Sora's game. The funny thing about all this is that despite how easily we all picked Aeris (due to an extraneous form of SFF), most of us were too stupid to realize that this was an SFF match until after Sora's lovely little run in Summer 2004. The other funny thing is that I remember how much I loved Kingdom Hearts when I first played it, and mostly out of KH fanboyism I predicted that if Sora were put in a winnable situation, he would do much better than he did on this day against Aeris. Cue 2004 where Sora rips through the favored Ryu Hayabusa, then 2005 where he rips through the favored Alucard. *And* the man has Kingdom Hearts 2 coming in April, barring no more delays. He and Riku could be beasts this summer. By The Way, 66.66%, awesome. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Master Chief vs (14)Felix 2003 _source: (3)Master Chief vs (14)Felix 2003 (revid 88751)_ ## Results Monday, July 14th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 14th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 6,318 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Master Chief - 73.13% (30,026 brackets) All through Samus's match with Isaac, everyone wondered why Samus wasn't going Mega Man on his ass. It didn't take too much more time to figure out that the Golden Sun duo in this contest was no joke, and one has to wonder why it took so long for them to return. That said, Felix's supposed strength was not the story of this match at all. From day one, GameFAQs has hated the Xbox. It was once seen as being as big of a joke as the N-Gage is now, and after the Xbox finally launched the system was horrendous. Demo systems were literally breaking and overheating in malls all over the place, and the system was not received very well by hardcore console gamers (which is GF's main userbase) at all. The Xbox essentially only had one quality title worth playing during that rough beginning, and that game was Halo; by extension, the Xbox only had one exclusive character worth discussing, which was a little-known soldier named Master Chief. There has always been a bit of a rift between Xbox fans and those who feel that the Xbox was a joke. Those who went through with buying an Xbox eventually discovered a fairly good system that was a heaven for tech freaks, and I don't mean that term as an insult at all. I have some friends who have done so many things with their Xboxes that it's insane. What this led to on GameFAQs was a small group of hardcore Xbox fans willing to promote their favorite system above all others versus.... pretty much everyone else. For those wondering why Master Chief has always been such a hated-yet-beloved character in these things, he's simply always been that way. Take his first contest. Chief, despite both he and his system being bashed to high heaven for his nabbing of a 3 seed, was actually one of the top favorites in terms of the number of people picking him to win the entire contest. Oddly enough, Felix over Master Chief was also a fairly well-discussed upset prospect, especially given that Aeris beating the winner was a near-lock and giving up one point on the upset special was no big deal. When the match finally began, we were all shocked to see that there was some heavy anti-Chief sentiment going on. Not only was Chief disappointing, but the two characters were going 50-50! It didn't take long for Chief to begin pulling away for the eventual win (if you can call a 6300 vote victory pulling away, that is), but the damage was done regardless. As good as Golden Sun may be (I've never played it) or as powerful as the alleged TSF (The Sword Factor) was in this match, I doubt that Felix is actually strong enough to score 47% in most matches. There was some heavy anti-voting going on here, and it was all due to people having no respect whatsoever for Halo or the Xbox. The hate hasn't been \*quite\* as bad now that the system has had a couple of years to sink in, but it's still there. In every match that Chief has, the man has to get past thousands of anti-votes just to win even the simplest of matches save when he faces pure fodder. Had Chief faced Donkey Kong back in 2003, he may not have been able to win -- and we all know what happened to Halo itself. The Xbox and Chief have recovered somewhat since this minor debacle (it almost feels like Chief actually lost, given the performance), but who knows if the franchise will ever see real respect here on GameFAQs? • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Zero vs (10)Scorpion 2003 _source: (7)Zero vs (10)Scorpion 2003 (revid 55495)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 15th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 15th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 28,969 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 47.28% (19,414 brackets) Zero made quite the splash in his first contest match, though you need to look all the way back at 2002 to see why Zero's performance was such a surprise. You all know the story by now. Scorpion gets put into a wonderful spot in 2002 and proceeds to shock everyone by beating Max Payne and Pac Man in succession (both of which were *heavily favored*) before finally getting his ass handed to him by Link. Enter 2003, where Scorpion is stuck as a 10 seed after his wonderful performance against a character that few people around here had ever heard of, Zero of Mega Man X fame. People didn't want to get snake bit twice in a row by Scorpion, and they all overcompensated his 2002 performance by favoring Scorpion to win this match. Zero not being all that well-known to people who hadn't played the MMX series added to all of this, and you can see by the prediction percentage that Scorpion was the favorite both to us and the casuals. His 2002 run really was that important to everyone. But along came the beginning of the match, and Zero managed to prove that it wasn't Scorpion's strength, but his soft-as-crap half division that led to his run in 2002. This match started off badly for Scorpion and only grew worse, and the only good thing that can really be said about him is that a massive amount of people rallied to vote in this match one way or the other. Nearly 113,000 total votes in a first round match is no joke, but this tends to happen when a heavy favorite starts going down. Scorpion isn't exactly a weak character; he was simply a bit overestimated going into this match, and his opponent being somewhat of an unknown helped overrate Scorpion even more. The only reason this match was even relatively split (outside of the people who have actually played Mega Man X games) is because of Mega Man's massive success in Summer 2002. He left an impression on people, and the words "Mega Man" on Zero's little bio were an eye-opener to many. Zero would go on to have a rather impressive contest career (though we still need to see him in a close match), while this match would quietly end Scorpion's time in the sun in these contests. He hasn't won a match since, and recently he lacked the support to even get into a contest field in the first place. In an odd way, it's almost a shame that CJayC's bracketmaking skills have improved. It would be nice to see more middle strength characters like Scorpion make the Elite 8, but we simply don't see things like this anymore. Despite the bad loss from the favorite's seat, a seat that Scorpion hasn't sat in since he defeated Kazuya in 2002, that magical 2002 run cannot be taken away from him. All we need now is for Sub-Zero to get into one of these contests, or better yet, a match between Scorpion and Ken Masters. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (15)Ken Masters 2003 _source: (2)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (15)Ken Masters 2003 (revid 55497)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 16th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 16th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 40,338 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 84.41% (34,656 brackets) Talk about getting screwed over by seeding something fierce. In 2002, Ken was stuck as a 12 seed against a powerhouse Samus. Despite giving it his best effort, he stood no chance. His reward for losing? Being stuck as a 15 seed against the character that Samus pulled her miraculous upset on, Sonic the Hedgehog. This was seriously one of the worst cases of mis-seeding ever, and don't let Sonic's performance here fool you too much. Ken Masters is not your standard 15 seed, so Sonic not being able to break 70% on him or having a relatively low prediction percentage wasn't so bad. The issue is that for the longest time in this match, for whatever reason, Sonic was very slow. He hovered at just above 60% until the standard SEGA morning vote hit, but most people didn't think anything of it and simply chalked it up to people having sympathy for Ken due to how badly he was screwed over by the seeding in this contest. The big blow to all of the Sonic \> Cloud hopefuls didn't come until Sonic's later matches, though there were a few murmurs of Sonic not being all he was cracked up to be as he failed to break 70% on Ken. Then again, Samus had only scored 65.31% on Ken in 2002. Sonic, who lost to Samus, bettered this by over 3%. Sonic's match against Ken was no real cause for concern, and in fact him outdoing Samus by well over 3% against the same character showed signs of hope that this may have been Sonic's year. Though the thing that stands out the most in my mind is that after having to deal with Samus and Sonic in two consecutive contests, Ken has yet to return to the field. Here's a forgotten character that could use some board support, as well as a decent seeding. Ken vs Scorpion for 2006! \m/ • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (16)Captain Olimar 2003 _source: (1)Mario vs (16)Captain Olimar 2003 (revid 55499)_ ## Results Thursday, July 17th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 17th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 77,511 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 97.99% (40,235 brackets) And finally, the analysis reaches the South Division. You kids think that Division 128 hype was bad? It had absolutely nothing on this. The South had a little bit of everything, and just about every match was widely debated and up in the air. Mario, Crono, and Sephiroth were all packed into one division after their wonderful 2002 runs, and they were all on a collision course for beating the hell out of one another. Wario was hyped, Shadow was overlooked, Kefka was hyped beyond belief, the Kirby/Bomberman fourpack was back in swing, and we even had yet another match that caused Gordon Freeman to be overestimated. But the highlight of the division was Mario/Crono/Sephiroth, hands down. A great case could be made for any of them winning the division at the time, and all of the massively hyped newcomers added to the melee. This division really stood out as being the best of the contest, and this was before anything even began. The first match was a fairly mundane SFF beating in Mario's favor, though there are a few interesting notes to make about Mario's performance. With all of the hype surrounding Link, Mario was the forgotten Nintendo character in this whole thing. He didn't exactly get the attention he deserved (outside of the debates on who would win the division) until he started pummeling the hell out of Olimar, though SFF was in full swing by the time this happened and most people didn't think much of it. People also remembered that Mario was fairly ho-hum against non-Nintendo fodder, so this match was a given to get the division going and little else. Looking back, I'm actually surprised that Mario wasn't able to break 90% in this thing. Granted Mario Sunshine was a disappointment, but come on... Pikmin? It was tough to really tell if Mario was in it to win it after this one match, especially given that people hadn't exactly forgotten about what he pulled in 2002. Even if the miraculous occurred and Link went down, would Mario even be able to take advantage? Only time would tell, but Mario had to get out of his hellhole division before worrying about winning the entire contest. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Wario vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (8)Wario vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 88752)_ ## Results Friday, July 18th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 18th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 31,165 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shadow - 42.11% (17,291 brackets) True Story: Before this match began, not only was Wario the massive favorite (mostly due to his release of Wario world on the GCN in June of 2003, one month before this contest), but people actually felt that Mario vs Wario would be an entertaining match. This was well before the days of people realizing that most SFF matches were pure crap, so many such matches still seemed intriguing. Wario was the massive favorite until the picture was released for the match. We were greeted with a fugly cardboard looking picture of Wario against a badassed black and red Sonic, and it caused Wario's supporters to become a little nervous. Shadow did have his fans back in the day, and his exposure/support was very similar to Zero's. The people who knew of Shadow felt that he would easily win due to knowing his strengths, while almost everyone else went with Wario because it was the more "obvious" choice. However, there wasn't much hype surrounding the match due to Wario being far more of a lock to win than Scorpion was. Yeah, whoops. When this match began, we were all greeted with one of the most lopsided board upsets of all time. It was so bad for Wario that there was simply nothing to discuss; he got his ass whipped and was an overall flop that was never in the match at all. You can imagine the whining that took place, and Shadow has essentially been hated around these parts ever since. Then again this is mostly Shadow's own fault (people play the games after a character surprises them in one of these contests), but this isn't the place to go on an anti-Shadow/Sonic rant. CJayC went through two contests where he tried setting up "cute" SFFish matches, but in almost every case the third party would ruin it. Dunno how much this factored into Summer 2004's bracket, but that's besides the point. These two characters went in very opposite directions after this match. Wario was never hyped for anything again, while Shadow has been a fairly regular mainstay over the years (Doesn't stuff like this happen much more often than it should? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Magus didn't make the Summer 2006 field.). Granted this amounts to three matches, but the recent release of his own game should help him get past his getting snubbed in Summer 2005. On a side note, I love all the hoopla that surrounds these 4/5 or 8/9 matches. They're always worth one point, yet they all receive a ton of hype and way too much whining for what they're worth. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Pac-Man vs (12)Kefka 2003 _source: (5)Pac-Man vs (12)Kefka 2003 (revid 88753)_ ## Results Saturday, July 19th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 19th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 1,773 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kefka - 43.47% (17,850 brackets) This match was unintentionally hilarious to the highest degree even before it started, and it would only get better as everything unfolded. Kefka was one of the most hyped newcomers to the contest field. There were people literally talking about how he was a real threat to Crono, and some even went as far as to say that Kefka could win the division. This was back during the days of everyone thinking that FF6 could be at or near FF7's level, as well as the pre-X-Stats era where every newcomer could be overestimated to hell and back without recourse. Unfortunately for Kefka, there aren't any good pictures of him outside of his sprites. When the match pic for this thing was released, it marked the single biggest picture-related board explosion to ever grace this place. And if that thing was representing one of your favorite characters in a match, wouldn't you be a little peeved? People went nuts over this thing, and I distinctly remember going to SS and making a petition for the picture to be changed. It got over 200 posts within hours before being closed, and the picture was left alone. Kefka went from being the massive board favorite to win the match to causing everyone to be scared to death about his chances of doing much of anything in the contest. Forgotten in all of this was the fact that Pac-Man himself isn't exactly a slouch. He was coming off of being a 1 seed in 2002, and people kept treating this match as if Pac himself were the 12 in this 5-12 affair. Pac was perfectly capable of winning this thing even before the Lettuce Kefka fiasco hit, and the match pic being so horribly in favor of everyone's favorite pill popper only opened the window of opportunity wider for him. And people knew all of this, hence why Kefka's lettuce mug annoyed everyone so much. This was a classic battle of Board 8 versus the casual bracketmaker, and all that was left to do from here was to actually get the match going. The early stage of the match was all Kefka, and though he didn't dominate he was able to use the board's massive support for him to build a lead of over 1000 votes. I don't fully remember where this capped off, but I'm 99% sure it was in between the area of 1000 and 2000 votes before Pac Man was able to stall Kefka from pulling away with the match entirely. Kefka has been a champion of the board vote from the very beginning, though most people think that this trend began with Kefka's match against Knuckles. There's always been a certain sympathy/overestimation surrounding Kefka in these contests, with the sympathy coming from how damn ugly he is and the overestimation coming from Lord knows where. But Pac-Man would have none of Kefka simply running away with this thing, and in the wee hours of the morning Pac was able to stall Kefka and begin a slow comeback attempt. It was during this match that the now-popular "X number of votes needed per update to tie" thing got popular in the update topics, and given how slowly Pac Man was chipping away at Kefka's lead it was almost a necessity. Pac spent most of the morning and afternoon whittling Kefka's lead down to the hundreds, but Pac's dream of putting Kefka down ended once the evening vote hit. Kefka exploded in the latter stages of the match to pull away once and for all, though permanent damage was done to his reputation in the process. Kefka was no longer a real threat to Crono at all, and there was literally nothing stopping a Mario-Crono rematch as a result. Crono being a 4 seed in Mario's division looked like a setup, and it was. A few people clung to the hope that Kefka performed badly solely because of his picture (someone even created a lettuce Kefka account, and you can still catch it posting even today) and that he had nothing more than his name to get him by in this match, but that still wasn't enough to explain how Kefka would turn around and get past Crono after this. Kefka would eventually go on to having a decent contest career, though it hasn't come close to matching the early hype surrounding him. As for Pac-Man, he's always been an oddball case. He's never been one to draw in votes, and as such I'm convinced that Pac wins this match if 2002 vote total levels are in place. Part of the reason why Pac was able to upset Ocelot in 2005 was because of the vote totals being so hideously low. But on the down side, Pac is more prone to SFF than most other characters (everyone has played a game of his... I hope) and has been on a gradual decline since his days of being a 1 seed. His recent upset of Ocelot probably only prolongs the inevitable, which is that Pac-Man's time in gaming, and these contests, is coming to an end. He only appeals to an older audience and can't hack it against most characters. Seeing what's happened to Pac Man in his contest career is like watching Brett Favre in the 2005 NFL season. You can't help but respect the guy regardless of how you feel about his games. Pac may never see a good seed again and his upset of Ocelot may not be a sign of things to come, but he still means as much to gaming as anyone else. He's simply not been able to recover from Scorpion whipping his ass in 2002, though it's funny to think about the fact that Pac Man has held a 1 seed, while Crono has not. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis You may have noticed a user by the name of “lettuce Kefka” around these parts. Well, he got his name from this catastrophe of a match, featuring one of the most infamous match pictures in contest history. In 2003, the Noble Nine concept hadn’t yet come into play. People thought all sorts of crazy things – Magus could upset Link, Tommy Vercetti could make the semifinals, and generally the board abounded in chaos and disarray. Kefka was one of the most hyped newcomers to the game, especially since he was fated for an epic showdown with his fellow 16-bit gaming icon, Crono. But first he had to get past Pac-Man. Piece of cake, right? Pac-Man lost to friggin’ Scorpion last year. But then the match picture came out: Ask yourself, dear reader: what the hell is that on the right? If you answered "Why, it's Kefka, of course! Uwehehehehe!” you probably have the mental stability of a radish. This piece of lettuce would go on to fight in Kefka’s stead, doing quite horribly and actually turning a lock of a match into a semi-debatable, close slugfest. Unfortunately for Pac-Man, Kefka went on to look horrible in Round Two, even with a scary clown picture. But Lettuce Kefka has become something of a running gag in these contests, and the joke began here. ## Interesting Facts - Due to the picture fiasco this was the last time CJayC posted the picture early in the 2003 contest. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Crono vs (13)Tom Nook 2003 _source: (4)Crono vs (13)Tom Nook 2003 (revid 88754)_ ## Results Sunday, July 20th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 20th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 73,838 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 92.80% (38,103 brackets) After the madness that was Pac/Kefka(which lasted longer than the 24 hours allocated to the actual match thanks to the picture mess), we were greeted with a wonderful cooldown affair to relax everyone. It involved Crono's debut, which was virtually a bye against contest newcomer Tom Nook of Animal Crossing fame. Both Tom Nook and Mr. Resetti managed to make it into the Summer 2003 field after the massive success of Animal Crossing on the Gamecube, but both were put into bad spots. Nook was stuck with a 13 seed and up against a Crono who was on a collision course for revenge against Mario, and Crono proved that he was well above Nook's league within seconds of the match beginning. Crono was well over 90% as the match began, and the best Nook could manage was to get Crono's percentage down as low as he could by the end of the match. Crono's percentage leveled a little, but not enough to say that Tom Nook did anything worth noting in the match. Mario vs Crono 2 was officially a toss-up going by how well the two did in the first round of this thing, and all that was left to do was to get the formalities done and over with by dispatching their second round opponents. Though this was Tom Nook's first and last contest appearance, this match was virtually meaningless. His lasting impression to these contests is actually a moment that occurred in a contest on Board 8 itself in Summer 2003: (1)Final Fantasy 7 (16)Animal Crossing Enough said. And that wasn't the only upset that Animal Crossing managed to pull off in that contest, either. There may never against be such a massive case of the board rallying behind an underdog in a large user-made contest. Sure there will always be upsets in small contests with low vote totals, but nothing quite like Animal Crossing almost winning Ngamer's Best Game contest. It took SSBM and a high degree of SFF to finally bring it down, and only Presea's run in Leon's NCAA Contest can come close. When your best contest moment has nothing to do with the actual contest, you know you've got issues. Nook may return to another contest one day, but it would likely only be as fodder. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (11)Bomberman 2003 _source: (6)Alucard vs (11)Bomberman 2003 (revid 55509)_ ## Results Monday, July 21st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 21st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 29,318 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard - 62.96% (25,852 brackets) The first match in Alucard's fourpack marked a rather odd tradition in these contests. In Summer 2002, we saw the fourpack of (6)Bomberman/(11)Kane/(3)Jill/(14)Kirby. Jill had to go through both Kirby and Bomberman to get into the third round of the contest. Oddly enough, Summer 2003 featured another fourpack with Kirby and Bomberman in it. And as everyone knows, Summer 2004's bracket proved that this was no accident when Kirby and Bomberman were stuck in the same fourpack yet again. The strange thing is that they've never faced each other; they were always on opposite sides of the fourpack, and one character had to take both of them down in succession every year. Even funnier is the fact that Jill, Alucard and Squall all lost their third round matches after making it past the Kirby/Bomberman combo of death. Summer 2005 was the only contest where this wasn't the case, and this was only due to Bomberman not making the field. But I'm getting well ahead of myself. Despite Alucard's good run in 2002, he was still a fairly unknown character that people didn't want to place much faith in. The big debate surrounding this fourpack was not whether or not Alucard would beat Bomberman, but which of the big trio (Alucard/Kirby/Ramza) would have the honor of getting their ass whipped by Sephiroth. Apparently beating Tails and Duke Nukem wasn't enough to convince people of how awesome Alucard is, and he remained as another of those Zero-like unknown characters. Most of the people who had played Alucard's game (Symphony of the Night) realized that he had the potential to be good in these contests, or at least good enough to win this fourpack, while those outside the circle barely had any clue who he even was even after his 2002 run. It literally took Alucard's run in this contest and edouble to get this board to see the light, but that's a different issue. The point is that people didn't have nearly the faith in Alucard that they should have, and most of the debates surrounded Kirby and Ramza. But more on that in the next writeup. The formality of Alucard actually beating Bomberman had to take place first, and Alucard did so in standard fashion right from the beginning of the poll. Bomberman's loss wasn't eye-popping enough for Alucard to get his due credit (though Alucard had a massive percentage early in the poll before leveling off), but it was a prototype win for Alucard regardless. He never flat-out kills opponents, but he's always been good enough to beat them. All the support of Japan couldn't save Bomberman from getting his soul stolen with ease in this match, and I don't know that he's really recovered since. Bomberman's big moment was in 2002, in a loss to Jill Valentine that saw the board whine like hell due to Bomberman not getting revenge for Kirby. Since then he's been knocked down to the role of decent fodder. He has a fanbase, but not a large enough one to avoid getting bad seeds. Most recently in Summer 2005, he missed the field outright. For Alucard, the fun was only beginning given that the first part of this massively debated trio was finally set into place. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Kirby vs (14)Ramza Beoulve 2003 _source: (3)Kirby vs (14)Ramza Beoulve 2003 (revid 88755)_ ## Results Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 15,380 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 80.03% (32,861 brackets) The first part of the lesser Southern trio had been decided (Mario/Crono/Sephiroth being the big one), and it was finally time for the real fun to start. Like with so many other new characters in 2003, Ramza was vastly overestimated and hyped for no real reason. It was a common theme all through the contest, and maybe it's because the large board traffic caused it all to be more noticeable. At any rate, this match was debated fairly loudly even before the contest started. And as more and more people began to notice that Square characters were kicking ass in this thing, the Ramza \> Kirby upset buzz grew louder as match day drew near. Final Fantasy Tactics was a widely respected game right from FF7's time period, so why couldn't Ramza be popular? Probably because no one outside the FFT circle knows who in the world Ramza even is, and the people who know that Ramza is the main character of FFT but haven't played the game had no reason to vote for him other than to hope for the upset. He has no name appeal at all, and he isn't like other FF characters of the time period who can draw votes without requiring much help. On the other hand, Kirby had a disappointing 2002 to make up for and just the situation to do it in. Yet Alucard/Kirby/Ramza hype marched on. Alucard/Kirby was a match worth discussing, but as everyone found out seconds after the match began, Ramza had no upset potential whatsoever in this match and this fourpack was a two horse race from the beginning. But with this said, even though Ramza couldn't actually pull off the upset of Kirby he still had a fairly decent showing. Even as a 14 seed and with only 20% of brackets on his side, Ramza began the match with over 40% of the votes and did not go under later on like most cultish characters tend to do in these things. It was a fairly odd performance from both sides, but above everything it perhaps showed that Kirby was overrated in 2002 after all. Giving up 42.34% to a cult character (I love FFT and all, but let's be honest here) isn't ever a good sign, especially when you're a 14 seed with 80% of brackets behind you and were up against a "Here, blow out this guy en route to having an actual match" type of opponent. Granted Ramza may have overperformed due to all of the upset hype, but 42.34% seems a bit high for such a case. There was upset hype all over Ness, and he was tripled with ease. This could have meant several things for Kirby, the most obvious of which being that he was in real trouble in the next round if he didn't step up his game fairly quickly. It was also one of many warning signs that 2003 was Square's year, but that's something to delve into much later. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Gordon Freeman vs (10)Max Payne 2003 _source: (7)Gordon Freeman vs (10)Max Payne 2003 (revid 88756)_ ## Results Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 7,284 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Max Payne - 65.42% (26,860 brackets) Gordon Freeman may have lost in 2002 to Tina Armstrong as a 3 seed, but his legend wasn't truly born until this match against Max Payne. Amazing Telephone went absolutely insane during the time leading up to this match with various forms of hilarity and wit, and even though most people refused to put any stock whatsoever into Gordon there was still a fairly well-sized base of people that believed Gordon could win this match against Max Payne. But once the match began and everyone saw Gordon again tank a match that he probably could have won, the Gordon Freeman Never Wins (GFNW) fad was born. It obviously hasn't died since, because Gordon has yet to win a match. Future Edit -- it took 2006 against Phoenix Wright for him to finally win one, and Phoenix would likely win that one if a rematch ever happened. If you count the Rivalry Rumble, Phoenix DID win that rematch. At present, Gordon has only ever managed to beat Phoenix Wright and Princess Peach 1v1. He also finished in first place in a 3-way poll in 2013 over Hades and Simon Belmont. He got through in the 4-ways with some second place magic, but first place and second place is a huge difference in that format. What's lost in Gordon's failures is that he has yet to allow an opponent to break 60% on him. There's a very select list of characters that can claim this, but Gordon is far and away the character with the worst winning percentage (.000) among them. You'd think a character capable of breaking 40% in every match would have broken through by now, but no. Then again, CJayC has caught on to the whole GFNW joke and puts Gordon in these types of matches on purpose. One day Ceej'll probably crack and pit Gordon against pure fodder, but hopefully not. It would kill the joke if Gordon ever won one. It took Sora in 2006 to finally get that barrier. In 2018, after years of Half-Life disrespect and people giving up on 3 ever happening, Bowser came close to breaking 80% on him. Fun fact. In terms of final percentage, this is the closest that Gordon has ever come to actually winning a match. Ceej has gone the "stick Gordon against a generic male character with two names" route twice since, but Max Payne fit the whole near-miss thing for Gordon the best. Yet despite almost being given winnable matches every year, Gordon never manages much of anything. Even against Payne, a match that looks close when one looks at the final percentage, Gordon was never in the match and the vote total was the lowest of the Summer 2003 Contest. We really need Gordon Freeman versus Face CATS. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sephiroth vs (15)Raziel 2003 _source: (2)Sephiroth vs (15)Raziel 2003 (revid 55515)_ ## Results Thursday, July 24th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 24th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 70,526 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 93.91% (38,560 brackets) In the final match of the South division's first round, we finally got to see Sephiroth in action. He was an absolute lock to make the finals of his division, and all he really needed to do until he got there was to impress in each successive match to keep the whole Mario/Crono/Sephy thing going. Fun Fact: Most people still felt that Sephiroth was stronger than Cloud (and Cloud's 2002 match against Mario certainly didn't help matters), so most people felt that Sephy would be able to handle Mario with ease if they fought. The big debate was that many people felt that Crono, if he managed to get past Mario, was able to beat Sephiroth. Hilarious. Sephy did exactly what he was supposed to do in his first match in blowing out Raziel with ease from start to finish. Sephy didn't carry the anti factor that Cloud did, so he wasn't stuck dealing with massive amounts of anti-voting at the beginning of his polls like Cloud was. Raziel was simply a bug in comparison to the likes of Sephy, and it showed. After Raziel's loss to Strider in 2002, he was brought down to the role of fodder in 2003. Since his loss to Sephiroth, Raziel has yet to see another contest. Yet Strider, who beat Raziel in 2002, also has yet to see another contest. Makes sense. I remember a few people saying that Sephy was in trouble after this match, mainly because he only did slightly better against Raziel than he did Crash Bandicoot. It literally took until KOS-MOS/Samus for people to realize that Crash was dead and buried, but more on that later. Of course, the biggest note about this match wasn't actually the match, but Slowflake. In some random topic where people were picking the final percentage for each match, Slowflake managed to nail a perfect prediction on this match. The Oracle Challenge was born mere hours later. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (16)Raiden 2003 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (16)Raiden 2003 (revid 88757)_ ## Results Friday, July 25th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Friday, July 25th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 67,158 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Snake - 92.56% (38,004 brackets) The final division of the first round finally got its time in the sun, though it was widely believed that this division was the weakest (and thus most boring) of the four. Solid Snake and Mega Man were locks to make the divisional finals, though Vercetti and his massive Vice City hype caused Master Chief-like overestimation from his end. There were a couple of minor matches that were debated a little here and there within the West, but nothing that split hairs even after upsets took place. One of the strangest matches of the first round was Snake vs Raiden. A lot of MGS fans despised Raiden back in 2003, and as such they expected Solid Snake to SFF Raiden to epic proportions. Many people were calling for Snake to break Mega Man's percentage record in this match. The issue however is that Raiden actually does have a lot of fans out there, and while said fans wouldn't be nearly enough to help Raiden avoid an SFF beating, there were enough to help Raiden from becoming Tanner before Tanner even existed. All through this match, the only thing people were talking about was how Raiden was doing so well. Not that being below 20% can constitute "doing well", but people expected far worse. As an MGS2 fanboy, I can safely answer this by saying that both Raiden and MGS2 kick ass. Great story, great gameplay, great graphics... MGS2 is almost perfect save for the lameness of Fatman and Fortune, and I even liked those two. Raiden is no Solid Snake (and in fact Snake looks more awesome in MGS2 -- almost invincible, even -- when you're not in control of him), but there is a certain appeal to watching his maturation. Raiden may have been SFFd to hell in this match, but he and his game garnered him just enough support to avoid a Ms. Pac Man level of percentage. Raiden didn't see a contest for a long time after this match, but I maintain that he wouldn't be as weak as this match would assume. Lopen's Raiden drive has my support. As for Snake, 2003 was the continuation of a very successful contest career that has only grown stronger with time. In 2003 itself, the only character Snake had to worry about was Mega Man. He likely wouldn't win his Final Four match against Mario/Crono/Sephy if he got that far, so Snake's big goal was to try and upend Mega Man down the line. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Knuckles the Echidna vs (9)Yuna 2003 _source: (8)Knuckles the Echidna vs (9)Yuna 2003 (revid 80273)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, July 26th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis The prediction percentage really says it all about this match. No match has ever had a prediction percentage closer to 50% than this one, and for a time, there was a good reason for the hype. Three characters from Final Fantasy X got into this contest, and though few could agree on the order of the three strength-wise, they all helped add to a massive Square hype in this contest. And this was before the contest had even began. Tidus, Squall, Auron, Crono and Ramza all impressed, while Cloud and Sephiroth were at or near their 2002 levels of power after their first matches. There was little rhyme or reason behind the Knuckles/Yuna debates other than the fact that everyone knew that both characters had a good chance to win. There weren't really any stats to go off of, and it was simply a case of being lucky enough to pick the winner. The board was literally split down the middle in just about every topic, including the big contests like the Prophet Challenge. Two characters with essentially an equal chance to win, and no past stats to make your pick off of. Isn't this when the contests are at their best? The match to see who would get their asses kicked by Snake in the second round began (and quite a number of people were annoyed that we could see yet another Snake \> Knuckles affair in the second round), and Knuckles was able to slightly pull away at the start. Yuna fought to stay in the match for a few minutes, but Knuckles soon began to roll her over en route to getting his lead into the hundreds. Yuna made random stalls on Knuckles's lead at various times through the night, but she was never able to actually cut into Kncukles's lead; she simply went 50-50 with him for a time before Knuckles took off again. This culminated in Knuckles finally reaching a lead of 1000 votes, but Yuna beginning an hours-long stall with him. After it seemed like the two characters would be deadlocked until the end of the match, the day vote hit. You can all guess what happened from there, though it wasn't yet known that Knuckles was the champion of the day vote. His turning a deadlocked match into a 10000+ vote victory came as a surprise to many people, though this wouldn't be the last time that Knuckles snake-bit a Square character with that vaunted day vote of his... Yuna was one and done in Summer 2003, and Knuckles was again stuck facing Solid Snake in the second round. And while Knuckles would go on to have a good contest career and cause one of the biggest upsets of all time, it took Final Fantasy X-2 to even get Yuna back into another one of these things. - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Saturday, July 26th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 10,832 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Knuckles - 50.22% (20,620 brackets) ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match This was one of the most hotly debated match-ups heading into the contest. Strong cases could be made for both the echidna who performed respectably against Solid Snake in 2002, and the heroine from the most recent Final Fantasy. The final bracket stat was a testament to this split, with Knuckles barely eking out a win there, and the arguments for this match continued up until game day. #### After the Match Knuckles would take a small lead of about 1,000 votes early in the match, and both competitors would be in a stalemate throughout the wee hours of the morning. Yuna tried to cut into the lead, but Knuckles wouldn't budge. Once the daylight hit, Knuckles took off like a rocket, leaving Yuna in the dust and coasting to an easy 10,000+ vote victory. #### Interesting Facts - This match had the closest prediction percentage margin of any 1 on 1 match in contest history, as 50.22% sided with Knuckles and 49.78% took Yuna. - This was the second Sonic vs Final Fantasy X matchup of the contest, with Team Sonic securing a win to avenge Tails's loss to Auron. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Ryu vs (12)Duke Nukem 2003 _source: (5)Ryu vs (12)Duke Nukem 2003 (revid 55521)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, July 27th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Sunday, July 27th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 38,418 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 72.33% (29,696 brackets) Given that Duke Nukem went from being a 3 seed in 2002 (one that lost handily to then-unknown Alucard, no less) to being in a 12 seed fodder role against Ryu, it was widely believed that Ryu would come out and beat Duke with ease. However, I doubt most expected Ryu to dominate quite like this. Duke wasn't really considered full-blown fodder until this match, and this was supposed to be Ryu's tune-up for his eventual loss to Dante. Ryu blasting the hell out of Nukem should have been a warning sign for the upcoming match between Ryu and Dante, though that match definitely falls into the "Where the hell were the stats back then?" category. If they existed, people would have picked Ryu \> Dante without a second thought. As is, people had to make excuses for why Ryu was going to lose anyway. And the 70% he scored here could have actually been far worse; he was close to 75% when the match began. After Ryu's horrific beatdown of Duke Nukem, all the people who treated Dante \> Ryu as if it were a lock had to sit back and hope that Dante was equally, if not more impressive in his match against Ryo Hazuki. Of course, we're not even having this discussion if Duke Nukem Forever comes out on time. What the hell is taking them so long, anyway? • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Dante vs (13)Ryo Hazuki 2003 _source: (4)Dante vs (13)Ryo Hazuki 2003 (revid 55523)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, July 28th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Monday, July 28th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 52,752 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 83.54% (34,300 brackets) The fear of Ryu beating Dante only lasted for one match, because those hoping that Dante would come out and vastly outperform Ryu against Ryo Hazuki got their wish. Dante came out almost exactly like Ryu did, except that Dante's percentage rose throughout the day instead of dropping like Ryu's. Dante \> Ryu was seemingly back in order, though Ryu \> Dante "upset" hype would have been massive if the stats existed back then. Check out where Ryo Hazuki and Duke respectively are in the 2002 stats. Not to take away from Dante or anything, but Devil May Cry 2 caused him to be overrated to all hell going into this contest. Sure it wasn't a good game, but what has Ryu done to appeal himself to the non-fighting game crowd since Street Fighter 2? As for Ryo Hazuki, he fell from the ranks of being put in positions to win matches to the role of fodder within one year, and he would only see one more contest after this before losing the support necessary to make the field outright -- it was a one-and-done loss against Yoshi. Ryo has always relied on Shenmue's cult fanbase to get him into these things, but he has gradually lost his luster and appeal in these things. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Donkey Kong vs (11)Vyse 2003 _source: (6)Donkey Kong vs (11)Vyse 2003 (revid 55525)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, July 29th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, July 29th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 24,284 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Donkey Kong - 87.73% (36,020 brackets) The West continued a fairly boring first round with another fairly boring match, this time between Donkey Kong and Vyse. The match was predictable as could be (DK was going to win, durr), though it had a couple of interesting second round undertones. There was massive hype for Tommy Vercetti going into this contest thanks to the insane sales of Vice City, as well as the fact that people at the time believing that FAQ hits would directly translate into votes for Vercetti. Vercetti had a lot of people picking him to win the contest, though the more realistic but still insane only had him getting out of his division. A couple of people (including one of my all-time favorite posters, NeoElfboy) were smart enough to play Devil's Advocate and note that Vercetti was being overrated; "He might even lose to DK". But I'm getting ahead of myself again. For DK to have a real shot at the OMG MASSIVE popularity of Vercetti, he would have to come out and impress. In 2002, he did no such thing. He had a very odd win against Bub (you'd think that a Nintendo icon would be able to blow Bub the hell out) before going toe-to-toe with Aya Brea and getting SFFd to hell by Mario. DK came out against Vyse and did fairly well -- He had 70% at the start of the poll -- but his percentage gradually slid down to what you see above until the end of the match. This wasn't the overly impressive performance that the DK \> Vercetti hopefuls were looking for, but given that Vyse was a new character it was tough to judge exactly how well DK was "supposed" to do. Still, Vercetti had a very similar match upcoming and how strong he was remained to be seen. As for Vyse, this was his first contest appearance, but not his last. Skies of Arcadia has a hardcore fanbase, albeit a bit small to get Vyse a good seeding in these things. He has an all-time record of 1-3, with his one win coming against a character more cult than he is and his most recent performance helping to hype Tifa up as the next FF7 Noble Niner. We may be seeing the end of Vyse's run. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Tommy Vercetti vs (14)Kite 2003 _source: (3)Tommy Vercetti vs (14)Kite 2003 (revid 88758)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, July 30th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, July 30th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 30,750 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tommy Vercetti - 83.74% (34,384 brackets) Remember the first Summer 2003 writeup for this match where I called Kite a girl because I knew nothing about the games and went only on match picture? Good times. I also distinctly remember saying that this match exposed the hell out of Vercetti, and it did. Characters who are supposedly able to take down Mega Man and Solid Snake in succession are not supposed to only score 65% on cult classics like Kite. Even funnier is the fact that during the early parts of the vote (which is all board vote; the same board that overrated him in this contest), Vercetti was only barely able to get above 60% and had to spend the rest of the match getting his percentage up to the 65% he finished with. At this point, Vercetti being overrated was a given. Forget about him beating Mega Man. The question from here is whether or not he would even beat Donkey Kong -- and man, I love making NEB look like a genius. Pardon the fanboyism \<\_\< As for another poster who made a very excellent point involving DK/Vercetti, MMXcalibur eventually noted in the Prophet Challenge for that match that it could be very close; if you stick Vyse and Kite in a match, no one would know for sure who would win. Enter DK and Vercetti both having similar scores against these two. What was once a lock for Vercetti became quite the interesting match. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Lara Croft vs (10)Zelda 2003 _source: (7)Lara Croft vs (10)Zelda 2003 (revid 88759)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, July 31st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Thursday, July 31st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 28,001 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda - 61.72% (25,340 brackets) How the mighty have fallen. Remember when Lara Croft was a 1 seed? This was a very debated match before the contest began, for several reasons. Lara Croft's 1 seed in 2002 was a big one, but the biggest was that Tomb Raider 2 was scheduled to hit theatres the weekend before this match. And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't this match take place on either a Sunday or a Monday? That would mean that Tomb Raider 2 came out mere hours before this match. Maybe that has something to do with the ridiculous vote total for a meaningless first round matchup, though your guess is as good as mine on that one. Unfortunately, Lara was stuck facing Zelda in a year when Link-mania was at an all-time high. His massive support carried over into Ganondorf and Zelda on the boards, as anyone who remembers any of the pre-polls or the Prophet Challenge remembers. And then, in the biggest blow of them all for Croft hopefuls, movie-goers came home and wrote multiple reviews to say that Tomb Raider 2 sucked. Whoops. Enter match time, specifically the part where Zelda has 70% of the votes at the beginning. Lara made somewhat of a recovery later on, but it wasn't nearly enough for her to retain any ounce of public favor after this match. I'm actually surprised that she didn't lose worse than she did, and if this match were ever held again, Croft would lose by a much bigger margin. This match took place when people still bothered supporting Lara in her matches, and this match also signified the last time this ever happened, both in these contests and in gaming itself. Lara's fall from being the most mainstream gaming character out there to being universally hated came very swiftly, as did her fall from being a 1 seed to being out of these contests. Zelda missed making the contest in 2004, but came back in a big way in 2005. And after Twilight Princess finally comes out and Zelda is actually playable, forget it. She's going to be a beast. PS - Sir Chris's guess in this match's Prophet Challenge was 28000. Only a perfect guess will ever break this record. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Mega Man vs (15)Mr. Resetti 2003 _source: (2)Mega Man vs (15)Mr. Resetti 2003 (revid 55531)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, August 1st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 1st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 80,505 - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 95.61% (39,257 brackets) Believe it or not, people considered this a disappointment for Mega Man. You need look no further than 2002 to see why. In 2002, Mega Man's run was nothing short of ridiculous. He broke 90% in two straight matches at a time when breaking 90% was considered to be nearly impossible. He then backed this up by coming within six hours of beating Sephiroth, and he would have done it if Sephiroth wasn't the massive board favorite and the match was solely decided by GameFAQs visitors (if you look at all of 2002's matches, you can really tell that the contest went from being a GameFAQs thing to something much more by contest's end). I maintain that Mega Man beats Sephiroth in 2002 if it's a first round battle, but that's beside the point. The point here is that people were expecting Mega Man to back this up with more of the same in 2003. And why shouldn't he? He was literally put into a division that would require a complete choke job to lose, and it was possible that we'd see a Mega Man/Sephiroth rematch in the Final Four. People were all over this (minus those who actually thought that Vercetti would throw a wrench into this whole thing, though that was long gone by the time Mega finally hit the polls), and given what Mega did to Ms. Pac Man and Serious Sam in 2002, why couldn't he have a repeat performance against Image Not Available? But CJayC eventually did find a picture of Mr. Resetti, and to the shock of many, Resetti was actually able to break 10% in the match. And I'm not kidding about this. Many people expected Mega to set a new percentage record in this match, and were disappointed when he didn't even come close. Only in a GameFAQs contest can a character fall short of 90% by 1.04% and be considered disappointing. It's not like Resetti returned to the contests as a powerhouse or anything; this was his only match. And again I say Animal Crossing. Final Fantasy 7. It doesn't really matter what Nook and Resetti did in this contest, because their run came elsewhere. There was no reason to believe that Mega was in any sort of trouble after this match, despite it being an OMG DISAPPOINTMENT!1! for him. And on that note, we had finally reached the end of the first round of this thing. There was a little bit of everything in this contest's first round, but it was only a sample of what this thing had in store for us later on. One match in particular gave us the shocking upset we were all hoping for, albeit much faster than anyone expected. • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (9)Fox McCloud 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (9)Fox McCloud 2003 (revid 88761)_ ## Results Saturday, August 2nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 2nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 63,666 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 82.13% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 95.42% (39,180 brackets) The second round of this contest kicked off with Link further proving his dominance over the rest of the field. The man had performed to rather insane heights in 2002, but he came out in 2003 fully prepared to outdo himself. Poor Fox never stood a chance, especially given that you're more likely to see ESPN admit to being wrong about how badly they were owned by USC than you are seeing Link facing the ass end of Nintendo SFF. It simply won't happen. For the second match in a row, there was no real reason to believe that Link repeating was in any jeopardy whatsoever. If anything, he came out and did more than what we expected of him, and that's a lot given what he was coming off of. A few upset hopefuls took the Mario/DK 2002 route and claimed that this match proved nothing due to it being SFF (as was Link's first round match, come to think of it), but breaking 80% is good regardless of who the opponent is. Still, it is fair to cite that these were two SFF affairs that Link exploded in. The next round would be a much more telling sign for his repeat chances. On a side note, it's interesting comparing today's match to this Link/Yoshi 2004 affair: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1766-hyrule-division-semifinal-link-vs-yoshi) Granted it's a much stronger Link, but Yoshi only managed to do .72% better on him than Fox. Yet Yoshi is a contest staple while Fox's last match in contests was back in this very 2003 loss to Link. It was a quiet exit, but one that needs to end fairly soon. Fox could be a strong character if put into the right situation, and him being the second best character in SSBM can't hurt. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Ganondorf vs (13)Magus 2003 _source: (12)Ganondorf vs (13)Magus 2003 (revid 88762)_ ## Results Sunday, August 3rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 3rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 650 - **Oracle Expectations:** Magus - 57.44% 44 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Magus - 24.25% (9,955 brackets) Talk about Board 8 and the casuals being on completely opposite sides... You're all aware of what the Magus hype was by now. If Crono was able to almost beat Mario, then certainly a character whom the CT faithful all love vastly more than Crono should be able to be stronger than Crono; as such, Magus was the best chance at ending Link's shot at repeating in the Summer 2003 Contest. And he was not only hyped as such (remember, Link vs Magus was this contest's "true final"), but he was almost hyped as possibly being more dominant than Link was in the future. On our board, anyway. The casual bracketmaker looked at this thing and thought "Wow, Link kicked ass in 2002. Ganon and Zelda will be strong as well.... and who the hell is this 'Magus' character, anyway?" For a small while in the actual match, the casuals were shocked at the proceedings. Remember back in the first round of this analysis when I noted that people actually thought that Link/Ganon would be a good match? That was the topic of the night for quite some time, and the casuals simply weren't aware of who Magus was. It's another case where the people who have played the game like the character's chances, but no one else knows who the character is at all. And for the first six hours or so of this match, Magus schooled the casuals who went with Ganon based off of Link's success. Magus began the poll fairly well, and even though he slowed down a little bit as the early morning hours dragged on he was still able to increase his lead fairly easily. The only concern that people had is that Magus only had an 1800 vote lead after 6 hours, 30 minutes of the match had passed. But most people simply chalked this up to Ganondorf feeding off of how strong Link was and respected how well Ganondorf was doing. These people didn't have any clue what was about to happen to their golden boy, nor did they actually envision the possibility of Ganon coming back and winning this match. Think USC hype versus Texas being slighted, with Magus as USC and Ganondorf as Texas. That's essentially how people felt this match would play out. However, there was one slight problem. Ganondorf was only 1800 votes behind, and the morning vote actually favored him over Magus. It wasn't a drastic shift in vote intake, but it was enough for Ganon to cut off 36 votes with his first 15 minute update victory. Magus turned around and took 27 of this back, which was met with much relief. Little did Magus know that this was the last update that he would win for quite some time, and that Ganondorf was about to give him the fight of his life (until Knuckles showed up years later and exposed Magus as a fraud, that is). Ganon laughed off Magus's update win with a good hour and a half of small-but-solid update victories, and then at 9:45 AM EST, Ganon dropped the hammer by slicing off over 100 votes from Magus's lead and dropping it to under 1500. Ganon had caught the full swing of the morning vote, and he had plenty of time to get back into this match. He followed up his momentous 100 vote update by going on a tear that saw Magus's lead drop to under 1000 before lunch. It took Magus 6:30 to build an 1800 vote lead, but it took Ganon less than 4 hours to get the lead under 1000. At this rate, Ganon could win the match with ease and he knew it. He followed up getting Magus's lead under 1000 with two straight update wins of over 100 votes to bring Magus's lead down to 750. The time at this point was exactly noon, and at the rate Ganon was going (he cut off over 1000 votes in 4 hours, 30 minutes) he would be able to tie the match in three hours before winning by a good 2000 votes or so. If panic didn't hit Magus's supporters after Ganon started catching the morning vote, it had definitely set in by now and all eyes were fixed on the poll to see which character would come out on top. Unfortunately, for whatever reason Ganon completely ran out of gas after noon passed. He was able to ride the momentum of his massive morning vote (And his massive nose!) to continue winning updates, but he was winning them in much less stellar fashion than he was in the morning. Because of this, Ganon was only able to take off a few more hundred votes throughout the entire afternoon. After Magus's lead was dropped all the way down to the 200-300 range, Magus finally remembered that he had a pulse and began fighting back in the match. He wasn't able to gain back any votes for quite some time, but the important thing is that he was able to stall Ganon's advance from the late afternoon all the way until the evening vote began. Many a topic sprouted up about how Ganon couldn't get the lead any lower than 200, and finally, after an hours-long stall, the evening vote hit and Magus was finally able to begin gaining votes back. Ganon tried as hard as he could to get back into the match, but everything he threw at Magus was answered with Magus either stalling him or increasing the lead outright. By the time the poll was in its waning stages, Magus's lead was at a comfortable 600 and Ganon was simply unable to make up all the ground in such a short amount of time. It's difficult to say whether or not Magus won this match or if Ganon simply lost it, but the one thing most agreed on at this point was that Magus wasn't going to come anywhere near Link in the next round. If Magus had all of these problems with Ganondorf (who struggled with Tidus), how would he beat Link? The simple answer is that he wouldn't, though the way Magus would eventually perform against Link would set the stage for him to become one of the biggest frauds in the history of these contests. As for Ganondorf, his combined differential through his two matches in this contest was +932. He went through two razor-thin matchups in this contest that no one who saw them will ever forget, and he was able to use his first contest appearance as a building block for future showings. There was a minor hiccup in 2004 when CJayC decided to give everyone their wish and put Ganon up against Link in the second round, but Ganon has been kicking ass ever since and has been as noticeable as anyone in 2005. And like with Zelda, Ganondorf is going to be an absolute beast in these polls after Twilight Princess. I'm getting a little ahead of myself again, but if you ask me it wasn't necessarily Magus's match against Link that made him so overrated. Warning signs were all over the place that that match was a complete fluke that could be discarded for several factors. The issue is that before Summer 2005, whenever someone noticed that Magus could be a fraud, his match with Ganondorf was always the one that stood out as him being legitimate. I personally think that this match was every bit as responsible for Magus becoming overestimated as his match with Link was, and I often wonder if things would have taken a different course had Magus lost this match. He and Ganon have clearly gone in opposite directions since, and if this match were held again I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Ganon broke 60%. #### Interesting Facts - This is one of only three matches in contest history, and one of only two in the 4x16 format (the other being Aeris Vs. Tina) to occur between two lower seeds. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Oy, this cluster of a match. So many weird things went into this match, before, during, and after it. First off, Magus: the most hyped newcomer in the field. As I mentioned before, some people figured he could be a serious threat to Link, as weird as that sounds now. Second, Ganondorf: another hyped newcomer who struggled with an incredibly close match with Tidus. Two “badass” dark wizards with an awesome FFP match accompanying them. THE STAGE WAS SET INDEED This one saw a literal ton of lead changes, reversals, and crazy F5ing from everyone on the board. The match was completely up in the air until towards the end, when Magus finally pulled it out. In a rematch today? Ganon totally wrecks Magus. Doesn’t change that these two were evenly matched back in the day and delivered one of the best slugfests in contest history. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/GanonVSMagusUpdates.txt) (text file as collected by Ngamer) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Squall Leonhart vs (3)Luigi 2003 _source: (6)Squall Leonhart vs (3)Luigi 2003 (revid 55537)_ ## Results Monday, August 4th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 4th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 23,726 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 39.99% 6 for - 53 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 38.10% (15,642 brackets) There have been a lot of unexpected upsets through these contests, but no poll has ever generated a more insane "WTF?" reaction than this one did. For those who weren't here in 2003, I say again that Luigi was hailed as the second coming of Mario. He was supposed to tear through his fourpack before being a true threat to Samus, and given how hated Squall was at the time there was no reason to think that Luigi would do otherwise even after Squall's impressive showing against Jill Valentine. It's just Jill, right? Who cares? Luigi was going to smoke Squall like no other. One person was vocal enough to challenge all of this: nanasilencer. She's the biggest Squall fan to ever post on these boards (You think Leonhart is a fan of his? Pfffft.), though even she had her doubts about him going into this match. Her support was out of fanboyism more than anything else, though this didn't stop the board in its entirety from remembering every little thing she said. And when the poll began and Luigi was winning, there were a few "Take that, nana!" topics sprouting up all over the place. Little did these people realize that Squall had begun taking away Luigi's slim lead even before the first update hit. And then the second update came. Squall was in the lead. But... but how? And when the third update came and it was clear that Luigi was about to get his ass kicked, all hell broke loose around these parts. nanasilencer rubbing everyone's nose in it was only the tip of how bad things got that night. Not even Mario/Crono 2 brought as many cheating accusations as this match. Wylvane also committed account suicide over this match, which spearheaded a massive suicide movement from legions of Luigi fans. People were also getting banned from PlanetGamecube left and right, because the place was mail bombed and spammed to holy hell all night long. Thankfully, the idiots over there learned their lesson after the Mario/Cloud 2002 debacle and did nothing. Not that it would have mattered anyway. Everything that Luigi's supporters threw at Squall was met with Squall's furious push that lasted throughout the entire match, and one can imagine the reaction that came from the people who fully expected Luigi to kick ass, only to see him barely over 40% when they woke up in the morning. The board explosion lasted all through this match and well into the next one, and some of the most ridiculous reasons ever were brought up as to why Luigi lost. I should say Uigi actually, because people actually bothered postulating that people didn't know who Luigi was due to what the match picture read -- there is an L on Luigi's hat, and CJayC cleverly put "uigi" after it. And on top of the account suicides, there was a massive amount of flaming, trolling, and flooding that literally led to thousands of moderations throughout the match. By the time the dust settled, Luigi flat-out got his ass whipped en route to not even breaking 40% come match's end, and he went from being the favored Nintendo newcomer to a character whose stock was lower than Jill Valentine herself; she actually managed to break 40% against Squall in the prior round. Luigi hasn't been the same since, either. He was put in a very winnable situation against Yoshi in 2004, but choked. Come 2005, people finally stopped putting faith in Luigi. Against Tifa, in a match where he could have finally redeemed himself, he again lost. He has yet to make it out of the second round of these contests, and it will be difficult for people to put real faith in him even after the recent widespread Nintendo boost. Squall used this match as a launching pad to a good contest career, though some would argue that he has never been as strong as he was in 2003. This match also drew another line in the sand between Square and Nintendo, and I believe it also marked the beginnings of all the "Kingdom Hearts Factor" talk. What other factor could there be for Squall making such a large jump in popularity out of no where? KHF was a factor that would eventually become a fairly mainstream saying, though Squall was far from the last character who would give us evidence to such. But more on KHF later on in the analysis. It wasn't long before the focus turned to a Squall \> Samus bandwagon. If Luigi was a threat to beat Samus, then why couldn't Squall be as well? You know how this board is. Every time a major upset happens, they rally around the character that wins out of not wanting their overrated character to look so weak. Remember all of the recent Kuja \> Master Hand hype? Maybe Knuckles \> Squall rings a bell? Squall \> Samus was in the same category, and it should be noted that this was the first poll of Summer 2003 in which the character winning in the first few seconds didn't win the poll outright. It also wouldn't be the last. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Though this match seems easy to predict by today’s standards, it was a massive upset back in the day and was also one of the only 2003 matches where the eventual winner didn’t lead right out of the gate. Luigi was one of the most hyped newcomers in 2003, one many people felt could give Samus a run for her money. Squall, on the other hand, had lost badly to Snake last year and most didn’t think he could get past Jill Valentine. Well, the match started off normally, with Luigi winning, but Squall then absolutely ran away with it. I am not exaggerating when I say that the subsequent outcry and accusations of cheating rival those of any GameFAQs match in history, so much so that after this CJay cut off the board’s access to any accounts below Level 15 (fun bit of history for ya). This was the Magus/Knuckles of its day, and was possibly an even bigger upset, given its placement in the bracket and Squall’s crazy surge in strength. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)KOS-MOS vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 _source: (7)KOS-MOS vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 (revid 88763)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 5th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 5th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 44,702 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 70.94% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 82.29% (33,788 brackets) As odd as it sounds knowing what we now know about KOS-MOS, Samus's going 70-30 blowout on her was fairly surprising at the time of this match. People loved overestimating new characters back in 2003, and KOS-MOS's killing of Crash certainly helped her stock along. But when KOS-MOS entered her match with Samus, cold reality smacked her in the face and asking for her to go 70-30 with Samus again would probably be asking for too much. KOS-MOS's time in the sun in these contests ended almost as fast as it had started. She won one match here in 2003, and has been blown out in every meaningful match she's been in afterwards. The Xenosaga series not being all that good certainly doesn't help, and you have to wonder whether or not Monolith will actually go through with making the six planned games given the low sales. It would take a long, LONG time plus one of the weakest fourpacks in history for KOS-MOS to get her redemption arc. For Samus, this was more of the same. It wasn't quite the dominance that people were hoping to see from her (remember, Samus \> Link hype still existed at the time), but this match somewhat helped people get over her disappointing first round showing against Isaac. It also proved to most of the Squall \> Samus hopefuls that Squall had little if any chance of actually winning that match. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Auron 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Auron 2003 (revid 55541)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 6th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 6th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 50,246 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 69.10% 43 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 81.52% (33,470 brackets) Believe it or not, this was a fairly hyped match, especially in the first few minutes of Cloud's match with CATS. Both characters are FF leads from popular Square games, both characters wield huge swords, both characters are moody loners (CJayC literally called Cloud, Squall, and Auron 'The sully, moody character from FF7/8/X', or something alone those lines, in their bios), and both characters are OMG Badass! Badass! Badass! Badass! Clearly the idea of SFF and its nasty effects weren't in full swing yet, as was the idea of rSFF actually being worth much in matches like this. Cloud was the clear favorite going in, and what people were hoping for was a hardcore case of rSFF giving Auron the win. I do wonder how many people took Auron's upset prospects seriously, however. Well, aside from the 20% of people that actually gave CATS/Auron/Tails a chance of beating Cloud. It's a very bad prediction percentage, and it goes to show that people had no faith in Cloud after Mario broke everyone's hearts in 2002. Not that it had much bearing on Cloud's match with Auron, however, as he predictably jumped out to an SFF beating from the beginning of the poll and never looked back. This didn't drastically debilitate Auron from the contests like blowouts do with certain other characters, though. The guy is a shade or two under Noble Nine status, and has proven it in his days since the Summer 2003 Contest. The company he represents certainly doesn't hurt. This match went a long way to prove that Cloud was \#2 in the Square pecking order behind Sephiroth, and he may wind up being \#1 some day. At least, that was the mentality at the time. For the longest time, people either liked Sephiroth more or simply put more faith into him. It took a long time, Summer 2004 in fact, for people to fully agree to the contrary. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Bowser vs (4)Yoshi 2003 _source: (5)Bowser vs (4)Yoshi 2003 (revid 88765)_ ## Results Thursday, August 7th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 7th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 12,489 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 49.74% 22 for - 26 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 40.65% (16,689 brackets) At the time that this match took place, Bowser defeating Yoshi was a fairly large shock. The reason for this is simple. [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/634-which-mario-character-is-your-favorite) Because of that poll, everyone assumed that Yoshi would walk all over his fourpack in the event of Ness not pulling off any upsets. And using that poll wasn't exactly wrong, because people didn't know at the time that those polls weren't very reliable. This caused Yoshi to not only be the board favorite against Bowser, but a lot of people stretched out that poll into saying that Yoshi stood a chance to beat Cloud. Mario beat Cloud, and Yoshi finished ahead of Mario in that poll.... This all caused Yoshi to be the clear favorite in this match, and for the first few seconds of the poll he was in the lead. His lead was very slim however, and within a few minutes Bowser was able to catch up to Yoshi before laying an SFF beatdown on him throughout the rest of the match. It wasn't a Mario/DK type of a beating, but it was enough to ensure that Yoshi had no chance of winning the poll after only enjoying his lead for a few seconds. The only explanation that can really be made here is that Bowser is more popular than Yoshi in the Nintendo landscape, though it was almost impossible to know that GameFAQs felt this way before the match started. Both Bowser and Yoshi faced new characters in the first round, and the aforementioned poll showed that Yoshi was allegedly the \#1 Nintendo character on the site. One could have looked at the total votes and percentages from the first round and said that Bowser looked more impressive, but it was impossible to really see this coming ahead of time. Since this poll, several things have happened with both characters. Bowser, like Ganon, has massively increased his strength and is almost at Noble Nine status, while Yoshi is a solid middle character who can always win one or two matches in contests. People have also learned not to take those mass character polls all that seriously, though it would take awhile before Favorite Game polls and FAQ hits were discounted as viable sources as well. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (3)Master Chief 2003 _source: (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (3)Master Chief 2003 (revid 88766)_ ## Results Friday, August 8th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 8th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 21,975 - **Oracle Expectations:** Aeris - 67.88% 49 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Aeris - 45.89% (18,844 brackets) I know this has been said multiple times already, but it's fairly sad that Aeris so thoroughly dominated her fourpack two years in a row as an 11 seed, yet somehow had to take a contest break until 2006. But of Aeris's four wins, the one over Master Chief was perhaps the one that has the biggest potential for the higher seed actually winning the match. Or at the very least, the potential was there until Master Chief's gag job against Felix. After that match it became fairly clear that Aeris was going to win this match with ease. However, despite Master Chief completely blowing his first contest appearance down the toilet while being the overwhelming favorite to win his fourpack, there was a silver linine in his performance. As I mentioned earlier, Chief's matches almost always involve the people willing to vote Chief over anything else. What Chief would pull off in future appearances surfaced a bit in his match with Aeris. In the early stages of this match, Aeris was easily on her way to a doubling; Chief almost got her under 60%, and shaving percentage from a Final Fantasy 7 character is no small task. Chief being put in matches against characters at or near his strength, all after gaining more fans would make for some of the best matches of all time in future contests. But in 2003, he was simply the guy that Xbox fans overrated to all hell. The amount of people that had him winning it all was insane. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Zero vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (7)Zero vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 55545)_ ## Results Saturday, August 9th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 9th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 4,642 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 59.14% 46 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 60.55% (24,860 brackets) After the first round, the Sonic \> Cloud hopefuls were looking great. Cloud had done God knows what against CATS, while Sonic performed better in his victory against Ken than Samus did in 2002. Sonic was flyin' high, livin' large, ready to take on the world. And then his second round match with Zero came along, and Sonic was only able to nab 60% of the vote as the poll started. Fine, whatever. Zero was a new character that people were unfamiliar with, and maybe he was a bit stronger than anticipated. But then the absolutely unthinkable happened, and Sonic really hasn't been the same since. Actually he hasn't been a dominant force since his choking away a 1500 vote lead in three hours against Samus, but this match with Zero proved that recovering from that would take far longer than one year. Zero, this upstart newbie who had no business whatsoever being mentioned in the same breath as someone of Sonic's caliber, shoved that Z Saber right up Sonic's ass and began taking off percentage like no other. Sonic wasn't put in any jeopardy of losing (and for the most part, he was still increasing his lead fairly easily), but he went from blowing Zero the hell out to being in a Pyrrhic Victory, and his status grew worse as the match progressed. There was no massive Sega morning vote, no massive rally, and no huge voter shift that allowed Sonic to get back into blowout mode. Zero avoided all of this, and he even managed to win updates here and there throughout the match. Sonic went from blowing Zero out to having to struggle to build a lead, and he only wound up winning by a few thousand in the end. He was never in any danger of losing, but winning by less than 5000 votes against a new character that most people had never heard of? Something was either very wrong with Sonic, or Zero was the strongest new character in the field. And since very few people outside the MMX fanbase even knew who in the heck Zero was, the former was the consensus conclusion. It's not that Sonic magically became a weak character or anything, and in fact he still has his Noble Nine status well in hand -- but the aura of invincibility that he had before Summer 2002 was dead and buried after this match, as were any hopes of Sonic taking down Cloud in this contest. Clearly, the "2002 Revenge Vote" factor wasn't doing much. People went from wondering whether or not said factor could take down Cloud to wondering if the poor guy could even beat *Aeris*. Zero went out of this contest with a bang, and he later proved that he was no fluke. He put on a clinic in 2004 before having an equally good showing in 2005. In my personal opinion however 2003 was Zero's best performance, and his loss to Sonic is still his best match. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (1)Mario vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 55549)_ ## Results Sunday, August 10th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 10th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 11,062 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 70.68% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 85.85% (35,250 brackets) I'll let Ngamer64 handle the intro for this one: "This contest is officially stupid in the extreme. Ok, so..... Let me see here. Sonic HIMSELF came within a hair of being beaten yesterday. By a 2nd rate character from another series, who doesn't have great name recognition, and didn't look cool in his picture. WTH? This officially makes Sonic the weakest of the \#2s in the whole contest, who may not even make it to Cloud. Which means, the Sonic series is DEAD. D-E-A-D. No one respects it anymore, it's been way too long since it's put out a good game, Sega is over. RIGHT? So then we take a glance at today's matchup. Let's see here... oh, it's FREAKING Mario. You know, the \#2 character last year, the legend, the man who represents all things Nintendo, the most famous icon in gaming history. Playing who? SHADOW, a completely second rate character from the Sonic series (which was flat out EMBARRASSED last night, if you recall one paragraph ago), of which he has only appeared in a single game. Yeah, he has no name recognition, no character development, and he looks like crap in his picture. Blowout city! WRONG Holding the biggest gaming icon of our generation to below 60% is nothing less than a crime against sanity. Not to mention my predictions. That's it, I need to go lie down." And it gets much worse for Mario. He had over 60% of the vote at the beginning of this poll, and Shadow managed to get him all the way down to 55% by the end of it. And this wasn't some random character that Shadow pulled this off against, either; this was Mario. You can imagine how many topics were made during this match from people wishing they had picked Crono to make the divisional finals, and for good reason. Characters hoping to win contests don't only get 55% in matches like this, and it brings up another fairly good point. What happens if Mario and Sonic are ever in a match together? Assuming that rSFF is the reason Shadow managed to pull off 45% on Mario, could Sonic rSFF his way to winning such a match? A year or two ago, I would have said that it were possible. But we've since seen a massive Nintendo boost. As for the match at hand, rSFF is the only thing I can think of that would have allowed Shadow to do such a thing, especially given what we know now. Shadow isn't nearly as strong as the hard stats for 2003 show, and something fairly mythical happened in this match that allowed him to impress so much. Him performing so well due to being the black Sonic and perhaps getting a lot of rSFF may sound strange, but it's not like most other ascertains sound any more sane than that one. This wasn't 2004 or even 2005 Mario. In 2003, Mario was perceived as invincible against anyone not named Link, which caused massive amounts of hate for him in seemingly every match he was involved in. Mario was the favorite to win this division by a wide margin, and most of the upset talk came from hope more than anything else. There was some validity, but nothing major to fall back on. But in one match in the summer of 2003, Shadow changed all of that. Granted he hasn't seen nearly the same amounts of success since -- he's only appeared in one match over the past two years, which was a loss to Tidus -- but it changed Mario's image for quite some time. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Kefka vs (4)Crono 2003 _source: (12)Kefka vs (4)Crono 2003 (revid 55551)_ ## Results Monday, August 11th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 11th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 58,626 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 68.19% 51 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 60.93% (25,018 brackets) People expected Kefka to get rocked after he was barely able to beat Pac Man (and he was lucky as hell to win that match, quite frankly), but most didn't expect his beating to be quite this bad. Remember, Kefka/Crono was a massively debated battle before this contest started. However anyone with any sense knew that Kefka stood no chance after first round events, and Crono blowing him out wasn't exactly a surprise. The only real surprise (aside from Crono's 79999 votes.. how awesome is that?) was the arguments that happened during this match. SFF wasn't vastly mainstream at the time, and many argued that this wasn't an SFF affair. I can't remember too many blowouts that generated more arguing than this one, though in fairness I didn't bother believing that this was an SFF match until Kefka/Knuckles. For myself and others it was a little more difficult believing in Square SFF at the time due to each game having its own fanbase. For Nintendo characters, SFF is easier due to the widespread appeal. Though all of this was minor compared to what this match set up: Mario versus Crono, the Rematch. And this time, Crono was coming in with a full head of steam while Mario was struggling. You can imagine the hype, especially from those hoping for the upset. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (3)Kirby 2003 _source: (6)Alucard vs (3)Kirby 2003 (revid 55553)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 12th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 12th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 4,510 - **Oracle Expectations:** Alucard - 54.00% 40 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Alucard - 40.40% (16,589 brackets) If this match were ever held again, I think most people would go with Kirby fairly easily. He's got all the mainstream appeal, plus recent history would say that Kirby takes it with ease. But if you rewind back to 2003, it was an entirely different story. Alucard/Kirby/Ramza was a hot item, though Ramza fell out of the race early and made this a two-horse affair. Alucard vs Kirby was an odd debate, given that there weren't really any stats to work with. All we had was one close first round loss from Kirby and a good showing by Alucard in 2002. A lot of people picked Alucard to win this fourpack, but only because Alucard had a mystique about him after the Summer 2002 Contest -- I call this "Scorpion Syndrome", where people overcompensate for getting snake-bit one year by overestimating the characters who surprised come the next contest. Sometimes doing this works (2005 Sora is a good example), but most of the time it doesn't. For people doing this in Summer 2003, backing Alucard was a rare case of this working. However, if you slap Alucard into Jill Valentine's place in Summer 2002, I almost guarantee that Kirby would have been the massive favorite and that Alucard would have shocked the hell out of anyone watching. Alucard's upset of Tails would have been child's play by comparison. But this wasn't Summer 2002, and people were a tad wiser this time around. It's not that Alucard turned the hype into a 50-50 style board split out of stats or anything; there was simply a certain aura about him that couldn't really be explained when compared to Kirby's miserable 2002 showing. It should be noted however that even though I'm making it sound like Alucard was the clear favorite going in, he wasn't. At best it was a dead even board split, though more people seemed to favor Kirby winning this match. I'm simply saying that a lot more people would have been on Kirby's side if the events of 2002 weren't taken into account. The match to decide this hyped fourpack finally began, and it was dead even at the beginning. Come the first poll freeze, Alucard was ahead by the score of 59-55 and it seemed as if we would be in for quite the duel. Unfortunately Kirby fell off the map come the second update, and more of the same would continue until the end of the match. It was a close match on paper, but in reality it was one of those matches where the winner was never in question for more than a few seconds. For the second year in a row, Alucard won his fourpack in alarming fashion, as a fairly sizable underdog. And for the second year in a row, Kirby suffered a very disappointing, close early loss in the contest. Thankfully for Kirby, a widespread DS-fueled Nintendo boost was only two years away, and he would certainly be a large reason why. As for Alucard, he hasn't made it into the third round since this contest. It's not that he lost his strength, but he was stuck behind Ganondorf in 2004 and Sora in 2005. Alucard is strong, but beating the Square/Nintendo elite isn't something he can handle. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Max Payne vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 _source: (10)Max Payne vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 (revid 55555)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 13th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 13th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 70,809 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 83.53% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 84.23% (34,582 brackets) It's pretty sad if you're Max Payne and the only thing to talk about during one of your matches is how it looks like you're taking a crap in the match pic. Max Payne began this match by getting his ass whipped, never looked back, and everyone watching fully expected this to happen. There's not much else to say, save that it's interesting that Raziel did better than Max against Sephy, as well as the fact that Strider having not seen a contest since 2002 really sucks. Granted he's probably not actually stronger than Max Payne, Gordon Freeman or Raziel anymore, but it's worth a second appearance for confirmation. It should be noted however that Sephiroth is lucky that Gordon Freeman did not defeat Max Payne, as he would have failed to break 60% in the match and his image would have been tarnished forever from that point forth. On that note, the Mario/Crono/Sephy trio was finally set into place, save for the little matter of Seph having to get through Alucard first. And believe it or not, people still felt that Sephy would be able to take down Mario with ease, but would have issues with Crono. And given that a lot of people felt that Crono was going to defeat Mario, there were multiple topics from people wishing they had picked Crono to go a bit further. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (8)Knuckles the Echidna 2003 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (8)Knuckles the Echidna 2003 (revid 88767)_ ## Results Thursday, August 14th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis As everyone is well aware of by now, Solid Snake and Knuckles were stuck seeing each other in the second round of contests for three years running. In 2003 (the second match in this "rivalry"), people were pretty upset that we were seeing a repeat of a blowout match that took place in 2002. And you can imagine how riled up everyone got when they saw the 2004 bracket. It's not like this match occurred three times in a row by accident, either. It was set up to happen in the second round every year on purpose, and it was the least bit funny. On that note, here's the 2002 poll: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/979-east-division-round-2-knuckles-the-echidna-vs-solid-snake) Everyone knew that rerunning this match was stupid and that Knuckles wasn't going to make a match of this one year after getting blown out, and the general apathy towards this match led to a comparatively low vote total and Knuckles losing worse than he did the year before; not that anyone expected anything less than Knuckles getting blown out again, mind. Knuckles would be stuck facing Snake in the second round for another contest after this one, and when he finally got a bracket in which he didn't have to face Snake in the second round, he extracted his just revenge. Coincidentally, 2005 would also be Snake's best year to date, though he was far from a weak character in 2003. Snake's predictable defeat of Knuckles was business as usual, and the only thing to really look at in regards to Snake was his future match against Mega Man. His three opponents leading up to that match were simply stepping stones, and everyone knew it. - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 14th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 25,392 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 64.10% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 79.70% (32,725 brackets) ## Stats and Analysis #### Before the Match Unlike the first round, Knuckles did not generate interest in his second round placement. This match had been seen just one year prior, and Solid Snake beat Knuckles comfortably. This lead to disgust from some users who did not want to see the match again. Some even petitioned votes for Yuna just to keep this re-match from occurring. #### After the Match Knuckles did not do as well in 2003 against the Metal Gear Solid hero, finishing under 37% as Snake snuck on by to the next round once again. There was little to no intrigue in this match, because we had all seen it just a year ago. #### Interesting Facts - This was the first ever re-match in Character Battle history. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Ryu vs (4)Dante 2003 _source: (5)Ryu vs (4)Dante 2003 (revid 55559)_ ## Results Friday, August 15th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 15th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 7,609 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 53.20% 41 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 37.54% (15,413 brackets) As odd as it may sound, Ryu defeating Dante was the second-biggest upset in the first two rounds of this contest. Only Magus defeating Ganondorf was bigger, and the board actually expected Magus to win that one. You could fairly say that this match was the upset of the first two rounds, both from a casual and board standpoint. ...and no one really cared. Most people had Dante winning this match without putting a second thought into it during the bracket phase, and Dante \> Ryu looked just fine after the first round. But when the match began and Ryu was in the lead, complacency was the victor despite Dante still being in the match early on. It's not that the match wasn't an upset, but most people didn't really care that Dante was losing. Either Ryu is massively respected, or people hated Devil May Cry 2 enough to not mind seeing Dante get his ass whipped. Ryu maintained a steady beating of Dante all through the match, and the final result was one of those polls in which the numbers weren't a true indicator of how dominant Ryu actually was in the match. If anything, Ryu underperformed a little due to being the underdog. This match remains as one of the more boring upsets, simply because there was no outcry. Skipping ahead a little, a quick glance at the 2002 stats reveals that Ryu wasn't really the underdog in this match at all. There was simply no way to know this before the contest started, and I again say damn the stats for sucking all of the unknown out of these polls. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Donkey Kong vs (3)Tommy Vercetti 2003 _source: (6)Donkey Kong vs (3)Tommy Vercetti 2003 (revid 85182)_ ## Results Saturday, August 16th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 16th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 968 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tommy Vercetti - 53.80% 44 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tommy Vercetti - 52.43% (21,529 brackets) Donkey Kong Always Has A Close Match (DKAHACM). Going into this contest, Vercetti was the Playstation 2's version of Master Chief. He was a hot new character with a legitimate fanbase, but as such was very overestimated. Many people had Vercetti not only scoring some upsets, but winning the contest outright. The Top 50 list was used as a backbone for a lot of the reasoning, but then DK came along and helped people to realize that FAQ hits amount to squat. There was a general feeling of DK having a chance to win this from a few people, and while most realized that Vercetti was very overestimated after this match they still believed that he would beat Donkey Kong fairly easily. Whoops. It was clear when the match began that we were in for a classic, what with Vercetti jumping out to an early slim lead but doing everything in his power to choke it away. For the first 30 minutes of the poll, Vercetti couldn't get his lead above ten. It took until the 0:30 update for Vercetti to get on track, in which he enjoyed an update win of over 100. Normalcy seemed to hit the poll as Vercetti extended his lead past 200 before the poll's first hour was over, but DK was able to hit back quickly. In one update, he took Vercetti's lead from over 200 down to just under 150. But Vercetti was quickly able to recover, and he was able to spend the next two hours building a 500 vote lead. It wasn't pretty, but it was a lead nonetheless. DK began fighting back again at this point, but the best he was able to manage was a 50-50 stall for awhile. Vercetti was able to do his thing fairly easily en route to fighting off DK's efforts and building a lead of nearly 600 votes. But then the morning vote came, and all hell broke loose in the poll and on the boards. Vercetti's fall from contest contender to contest bust was not a nice one, and you can imagine how his loud-mouthed supporters were being treated on the boards. In the poll, the morning vote was very nice to DK. DK began chipping away at Vercetti's lead little by little, and though Vercetti was able to hold his own every now and then, DK was able to win the morning vote overall and get Vercetti's lead under 100 by lunch. A couple of nasty updates in DK's favor helped this along considerably. By this point the board was going nuts, much like they always do when the board favorite is in trouble. The big argument here was "Donkey Kong is a legend!" versus people wanting the two points from this match. Things got even more crazy when DK and Vercetti stalled at around the 100 vote barrier for a good two hours, before DK went nuts and took off all 100 votes in all of two updates. One update later, we saw one of the single coolest updates of all time: 14:00 \| Vercetti \| 50% \| Kong \| 50% \| Lead of 1 \| TV down by 3 The only thing that sucks is that updaters didn't put votals in the updates at the time (in fact if you look at Ngamer's chart, it didn't become a trend to do this until the latter stages of this very match), but it's still awesome to see a poll freeze with a gap of one vote. One update later, DK reaped the benefits of an update victory of over 100 votes, the first triple digit update score since the match was a mere 30 minutes old. The match looked to be over, but Vercetti was quickly able to fire back. It only took two updates for him to get his lead back. Just when Vercetti looked to be in control of the match, DK fired back with another 100+ vote gain to retake the lead. One update later, Vercetti scored a 90+ vote update to take the lead back yet again. The two characters went back and forth like this for hours, which led to arguably the best seesaw battle of the 15 minute update poll era. Whenever one character looked to be in control of the match, the other would come back one or two updates later and take the lead again. The two characters put on an absolute clinic, and the match wouldn't be decided until the evening vote. And as everyone knows, this classic battle had a very anticlimactic end. After DK and Vercetti went at each other like gladiators hour after hour, Vercetti caught fire with the evening vote and put this match away in a flash. He turned a deadlock into a lead in the hundreds with the same speed that he had in the early stages of the match, and at the time most people blamed bracket voters for DK's failure to close the deal. If you look back at this match, Vercetti's bracket advantage wasn't all that large. DK simply isn't good at bringing in votes at night, and it caused him to lose a match that he probably could have won had he begun putting up a fight earlier in the match. Knowing what we know now, I think it's safe to say that it wasn't bracket voting, but DK's night vote failures in general that cost him his match. As for the board, they were mostly happy given that they favored Vercetti in this one. But all of the people who thought that Vercetti had a shot against Mega Man weren't doing much talking after his near-loss against Donkey Kong. This match was a sign of things to come for both characters; both Vercetti and DK have each gone on to have similar matches against other characters, though neither is anything more than a midcarder in the contest setting overall. But for one nice 24 hour period, they were the stars of this thing. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Okay, maybe it does get more hilariously embarrassing than MC/DK '05. Vercetti entered the season hyped to possibly make it to the semifinals... Yeah, then he almost lost to Donkey Kong. What is it with people almost choking to Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong letting them come back? This match was basically the same as Master Chief vs. DK, but with more lead changes and more random wacky pull-aways and the like. At the end of the day, Vercetti was the winner… sort of. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/TommyVsDKupdates.txt) (text file as collected by Ngamer) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Zelda vs (2)Mega Man 2003 _source: (10)Zelda vs (2)Mega Man 2003 (revid 67610)_ ## Results Sunday, August 17th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 17th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 23,199 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 69.79% 57 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 52.18% (21,426 brackets) To this day, I'll never get why people underestimate Mega Man in every contest. 52.18% prediction percentage to get into the third round when his only competition was Resetti, Zelda, and Lara Croft? This hasn't gotten much better in future contests, either. The funny thing about Mega's match with Zelda is that it's the first match he ever had in which he didn't blow everyone away. Everything up to this point was either a killer blowout or the near-upset of Sephiroth. And while people didn't expect Mega Man to go berserk on Zelda, they expected him to do a lot better than this. It's not the 60-40 that bothered everyone so much as the fact that Mega Man had a doubling on Zelda when the match began. Mega then spent the rest of the match watching his percentage slowly being lowered, especially in the morning and early afternoon. This wasn't a bad match for Mega Man per say (you know, given that Link and friends were the stars for the first two rounds), but it's tough to imagine Mega taking down Sephiroth in a rematch when he can't manage more than 60% on Zelda. The only thing that really made Mega's supporters feel better was Link's dominance, by extension perhaps Zelda was much stronger than many expected. She is after all SSBM's best character. And on that note, the first two rounds of this contest were over. This contest had given us everything we asked for -- close matches, shocking upsets, classic Nintendo/Square battles and new characters doing well -- and the home stretch would continue to impress. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (13)Magus 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (13)Magus 2003 (revid 55565)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 20th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 20th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 33,441 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 64.71% 50 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 84.53% (34,708 brackets) Few people actually believed that Link/Magus was the hyped "true final" of this contest after Magus's flop against Ganondorf, but it's safe to say that Magus performed very well in his final match of 2003 -- perhaps too well. Fun fact: Everyone knows that I snapped my foot in half after beating Balk in the Calc SCC (cement floors in bedrooms suck ass). That actually happened when this match was less than an hour old. After killing Balk, I spent another couple of hours killing Altima, then I drove to a nearby college's computer lab (I didn't have a computer until after I graduated high school, which would explain the lack of PC RPGs on my recent top ten list that was posted on the homepage) to post everything in one of the SCC topics. I had a stick shift car at the time, and I still don't know how I managed to drive 20 minutes away given that I had to use my left foot to drive the stupid thing. I also checked out this match while I was there, and I was absolutely stunned to see that Magus was just barely under 40% against the infallible Link one round after almost losing to Ganondorf. I mean, Link is the same guy that had Sephiroth within a few percents of 40. I thought for sure that Link would crush the hell out of Magus and stake his place as this contest's dominant character with ease. Well after seeing all of this damn hype about Magus for a month and a half, I went home, went to bed, and started up a Chrono Trigger game via Final Fantasy Chronicles. Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed and could see why everyone loved Magus so much back in 2003. But Magus \> Link hype? To this day, I have no idea how all of that began. Crono coming close to Mario and Magus being so far ahead of Crono so as to challenge Link are two completely different things. Eventually the morning and day votes caused Magus to fall from his 40% down to under 35, but Link has always kicked ass during the day; consequently, Chrono Trigger characters have always tanked during those same time periods. It's a wonder that Magus only lost 5%, and I wonder how much the Magus hype played into Magus doing so well in this match. Most of the time I'd call a 65-35 affair utter destruction on the part of the winner, but in this match against this guy in Summer 2003, flirting with 40% was no joke. Unfortunately, everyone knows what happens to Magus next. His matches against the Zelda duo of Link and Ganondorf paired with the hype stemming from this contest caused him to be one of the most overrated busts of all time. He went from beating Ganondorf to losing to Knuckles in the span of two years, and every time someone mentioned that something was amiss about Magus, it always came back to 2003. Did board hype really make enough of a difference so as to cause Magus to overperform by this much? Who knows. The other factor that is always brought up is that Chrono Trigger characters seem to overperform when they get their sprites in a match pic, and in this match we saw Magus's sprite against the Link sprite from the original Legend of Zelda. Other matches involving CT characters could suggest that this is a valid claim somewhat, but again, overperforming by this much? And that doesn't explain how Magus was able to beat Ganondorf while his horrid artwork was in the match pic. Perhaps we'll never truly know the answer. The other thing that came out of this match is that for the first time in two years and nine matches, Link seemed beatable. Granted Sephiroth never came close to Link, but allowing an optional side character who is an NPC for well over half of Chrono Trigger to almost break 40% on you can't be good news. Then again, making Link look bad and actually beating him weren't the same thing. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Squall Leonhart vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 _source: (6)Squall Leonhart vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 (revid 88768)_ ## Results Thursday, August 21st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 21st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 18,479 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 59.14% 50 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 64.90% (26,647 brackets) Speaking of characters that people were hoping could beat Link, all Samus needed to do to face him in the Northern final was to take down Squall. Some people believed that Luigi was a threat to Samus before the contest began, and given that Squall slapped Luigi around like a doll, some expected that Squall could do the same to Samus. It was clear from the beginning of the poll that this wasn't going to happen, but it's not like Squall was disrespected in his final match, either. In fact, Samus was only a few percents over 60 when this match began. Squall was then able to spend the rest of the match doing to Samus what Magus could not do to Link, which was to finish the match over 40%. He almost finished with over 42%, which was good given how people had been trashing him for such a long time. Of course, most people blamed Samus's horrendous NES Metroid sprite for her not doing so well, completely ignoring the fact that Final Fantasy 8 characters are animated like crap when they aren't in cutscenes. Thus, the Samus \> Link hype was still on in some parts. And in less than a week, we would finally see a match that many of us had been waiting for for two contests running. As for Squall, he would go on to prove that 2003 was not some fluke occurrence. He's been impressive in just about every match he's been in since his wonderful 2003 run, and though he didn't go out with a bang in this contest, we now know that breaking 40% on Samus (sprited Samus in the pic or not) isn't exactly easy to do. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (5)Bowser 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (5)Bowser 2003 (revid 88769)_ ## Results Friday, August 22nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 22nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 44,610 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 64.81% 52 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 73.13% (30,027 brackets) As soon as Bowser took Yoshi down, a pre-poll was made for Cloud/Bowser. The results were almost unanimous in favor of Bowser, and it was clear that the board had begun hating Cloud for reasons unknown to myself. Even Sephiroth didn't have it that bad until Spring 2005. This makes what Cloud did to Bowser in the actual poll all the more alarming. Even with the board almost fully behind Bowser, Bowser never came close to Cloud even in the opening seconds. Cloud would go on to a massive 70-30 beating of Bowser that opened quite a few eyes when it came to the strongest characters of this contest. Given how Sonic had performed against Zero, Cloud's path to the division title and a showdown with Link almost seemed inevitable. But could Cloud actually give Link a run? Of course, many will say that Bowser only did this badly because Bowser was stuck with his Mario 1 sprite in the match pic, while Cloud was blessed with an in-battle polygon from FF7. It was quite the mismatch in terms of appeal, but could it really have made enough of a difference so as to prevent Bowser from getting his face kicked in? Bowser spent two matches kicking the hell out of his fourpack, yet Cloud shot it all down in seconds. It would be the final time that Cloud ever won the board vote in a contest poll, because hate for him only magnified after this match -- and given that there were still many who wanted Sonic to take Cloud down after the Summer 2002 Sonic/Samus collapse, revenge voters were ready to go. Of course, this assumed that Sonic even made it to Cloud at all. He had to get past Aeris first, which was no lock given recent events. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (11)Aeris Gainsborough vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 88770)_ ## Results Saturday, August 23rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 23rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 6,460 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 57.02% 49 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 33.76% (13,860 brackets) It was clear that Sonic was a bit off in Summer 2003, but only 33.76% of people had him winning three matches? That seems beyond strange, because it made this match the third-biggest upset to date in the contest. Only Magus \> Ganon and Ryu \> Dante tore up more brackets than this battle did, and if this wasn't an indication that Sonic lost a step after Summer 2002, I don't know what is. The prediction percentage wasn't the only bad thing to happen to Sonic in this match, either. In his previous match, Sonic went from being close to 60-40 on Zero before his percentage collapsed throughout the rest of the match. Against Aeris, he once again was close to 60-40 at the beginning of the poll -- only this time, Sonic didn't bother waiting for a percentage collapse. Aeris pulled Sonic under 54.5% with the second update, and spent the next 23.5 hours taking off another 1.5% from the blue blur. Sonic not doing so hot against Aeris wasn't nearly as unforgivable as his collapse against Zero was (Welcome to FF7FAQs!), but it was a tell-tale sign that he wasn't coming anywhere near Cloud in a few days. If Aeris came within 6500 votes, then one could only imagine what FF7's posterboy would do Sonic afterwards. This match wasn't quite the disaster that Sonic/Zero was, but it was still proof that Sonic was done for in this contest. On a different note, this was the last time we saw Aeris in a poll for 3 years. For whatever reason she hasn't had nomination support since Summer 2003, despite being an 11 seed in two straight contests and winning her fourpack both times out. And when one paired this match up with Cloud/Bowser, Final Fantasy 7 being stronger than ever began to come into focus. Not that most people considered the prospects of Cloud beating Link (yet), of course, but all three FF7 characters had kicked ass in every match they appeared in. On the funnier side of things, even with Aeris performing so well, Zero performed better than she did. Ouch. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (4)Crono 2003 _source: (1)Mario vs (4)Crono 2003 (revid 88771)_ ## Results Sunday, August 24th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 24th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 137 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 48.84% 17 for - 29 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 65.42% (26,862 brackets) No match was more debated before the contest than this one, and for good reason. All of those stupid little factors that people fling around like fact in every debate actually mattered in the rematch of the century. Never mind the sheer appeal of seeing these two in a match again, but the backstory itself was off the charts. In 2002, Mario was the overwhelming favorite to win it all, but the big question was Mario versus Cloud. After an epic match that saw Cloud go up by 1000 votes before Mario's clutch kicked in (namely Super Mario Sunshine being released on the day of the match and PlanetGamecube's linking to the homepage) to barely save him, Mario became Public Enemy \#1 on GameFAQs. People swore to not allow Mario to win that contest, regardless of who he was up against. Enter Crono. After an amazing run that saw him defeat the beloved Simon Belmont, the beloved Dante, the favored Lara Croft and the huge fan favorite Solid Snake, Crono was thrust right into the middle of the mess surrounding the hate for Mario. People vowed to support Crono, even if they knew that he had little to no chance of actually winning the match regardless. When the match began, Crono slowly fell behind by 1000 votes despite the best effort of everyone to put him over the top, and people had all but resorted to hoping that the winner of Link/Sephiroth would have enough gas in the tank to take Mario out come the final. But then the miraculous happened. The evening vote hit, and much to the shock of everyone watching, Crono had actually begun coming back in the match! Crono mania took over GameFAQs, and Crono's comeback gained more and more steam as the evening hours marched on. Crono eventually won an update that put him in the lead, and absolute pandemonium took over the entire site. Unfortunately, everything quickly died down once CJayC announced that a vote-stuffer was largely responsible for Crono's comeback, though he wouldn't say how many votes were stuffed until two years after this match. CJayC took 400 votes away from Crono (though after Starcraft/Wind Waker, he admitted that he should have taken away 3000) with less than 30 minutes remaining in the match. Crono's momentum allowed him to take off over 250 votes in that time, but it wasn't enough for him to win. You think people didn't want to see a rematch after Crono was robbed so badly? Of course they did, and CJayC knew it. Crono wasn't underseeded this badly by accident, nor were the two characters given such soft paths to each other by accident. The rematch was on before this contest even began, and the characters that Crono and Mario tossed aside could easily be considered collateral damage. Save for one: Shadow the Hedgehog. Of the four matches involving Mario and Crono leading up to this match, Mario/Shadow was the only one in which either character looked like complete crap. It was also the only one that allowed us to see whether or not either character had an advantage going in, because let's be honest, anyone who felt that they knew who would win this match with 100% accuracy was fooling themselves. This was all about two characters with equal chances to win being put on the biggest stage of them all, and the hype leading up to this thing practically led to liquid tension all over the boards. And to boot, the match was a Nintendo/Square affair at a time when both companies were amazing. Pity that Square has done nothing since. People didn't have to wait long for the match to start either, because CJayC ended Sonic/Aeris 20 minutes early, which caused Mario/Crono II to begin 20 minutes early. This would eventually go down as the single dumbest choice CJayC ever made in these contests, and you'll notice that CJayC has since added language related to this to the official contest rules. But more on this when the time comes. When the match finally began, voting was clearly going to be at an all-time high. Everyone and their mother was ready to go for this match, and it all led to Crono having a slight lead at the first poll freeze. It wouldn't last however as Mario jumped out to a lead of over 120 once 1 AM (which is when the poll should have started) finally hit. But Crono would weather the early bracket voting storm and begin his march toward a lead of his own in a flash. Crono stalled Mario the second the 120 vote lead occurred, and it took all of 30 minutes more for Crono to go berserk and win an update by 130 votes to give himself a 50 vote lead. Mario was unable to do much after this, for Crono was able to spend the entire night building up a lead for himself. Mario stalled Crono in an update every now and then, but these stalls were little more than blips in the radar en route to Crono building a lead of 750 at 6:00 AM EST. 750 may not sound like much, but in a match this large with two even characters, a lead in the hundreds is a good one. But just like in Mario/Cloud, the lead that Crono worked so hard to build began to slip away once the morning vote hit. At 6 AM, Crono had a lead of 750. It only took Mario until 10:30 to tie the match, and Mario's momentum gained more and more with each passing update before finally tying the match, to the point where it looked as if the match were over well before Mario even tied it in the first place. In the three updates involved with Mario finally tying the match and taking a lead, he won by 135, 124, and 103 votes. Football-like momentum carried Mario all the way past Crono, and given that CT characters perform like crap during the morning and afternoon, it seemed as if Crono's dream of scoring the all-time biggest upset of these contests had come to an end. But just like in their match in 2002, one could almost give credit to the miraculous when it seemed that Crono needed ethereal help the most. Somehow, some way, Crono was able to hold Mario at bay during what is historically his worst part of every match. After Mario stormed past Crono, Crono was able to regain his footing and prevent Mario from getting a lead of over 200. By the time noon hit, Crono had already begun fighting back and taking Mario's 200 vote lead away from him. Crono kept Mario deadlocked for another hour, and was able to bring the lead down to 120. It was at this point that Mario began to run out of gas, and Crono didn't wait long to let the killer instinct take over. When Mario's lead was 126 at the halfway point of the match, Crono proceeded to take off over 200 votes over the next 30 minutes en route to a lead of nearly 100 votes. Crono won the next update by 140 votes to take a lead of over 200, and it was at this point that people really began to feel that this was simply Crono's year. Mario threw everything possible at the mute one, but Crono took all of it and kept on rolling. Crono began to use his newfound love from the afternoon voters to his advantage, and he slowly began to extend his lead. Mario was able to stall Crono every now and then and even at times looked to be on the verge of making a big move, but the overall landscape of the afternoon vote is that Crono was able to use both it and the early evening vote to build a lead of over 800 votes. When Crono finally got his 800 vote lead, the time was 8:30 PM EST. Mario then won an update by 51 votes to scare everyone half to death, but Crono was easily able to recover. And given how well Crono did in the evening against Mario one year ago, people began to concede that this match was over. There was some disdain from some circles, but since the board was mostly for Crono winning this match there was an overall feeling of happiness and relief that Crono was able to pull this thing out. Mario gave Crono his best shot, but it simply was not enough on this day. Crono made it clear multiple times in this match that he wasn't going to be stopped, and he was finally able to reap the benefits at the end of it all. It was around this time that Heroic Mario and his concession topic became famous. He had talked a lot of trash in the weeks leading up to Mario/Crono II, and to see him concede was the nail in Mario's coffin. In Summer 2003, I picked Mario to win this match. I used pretty bad logic, too: "If Mario beat Crono one year, why couldn't he do it again? Crono needed to cheat to stay with Mario in 2002, anyway!" I remember reading over the boards, looking at all of the topics congratulating Crono and feeling pretty down about it. I knew nothing of Chrono Trigger at the time, and wasn't even rooting for Mario to win out of fanboyism; I just had a good chance to win that contest had I gone perfect the rest of the way, and I remember asking myself how many people were in the same boat as I was. Even when the match was essentially over, I still checked the poll every 15 minutes in hope of Mario pulling off a miracle. Yet all I kept seeing was 50.3X% next to Crono's name; nothing was changing in the poll, and maybe Crono really had pulled off the stunner to end them all. Mario finally gave a tiny bit of hope to the few remaining that were rooting for him when he won an update by 48 votes, but this quickly ended when Crono came back to win the next update by 15. At 11:00 PM EST, Crono was ahead by just under 800 votes. Even the most diehard Mario/bracket supporter didn't possibly believe that Mario was going to come back from this, and there were a ton of hugs and handshakes among the Crono faithful. Crono had finally taken Mario down! Mario won the next update, but no one thought much of it. It was only an update win of 26. Mario won the next update by 88 votes, but even then no one thought much of it. It was 11:30. Crono was up by 675 votes with all of 80 minutes remaining in the match, two hours if CJayC felt like extending the match to 1 AM. It took Mario 30 minutes to take 100 votes off of Crono's lead, and even then most felt that the match was over. But then, the absolutely unthinkable happened. Mario won the next update by 104 votes, and Crono's lead was taken down to 571! Absolute panic set in all over the place, and it would only grow larger as this poll continued. Mario win the next update by 60 to bring the lead down to 511 at midnight. This left Mario a now-massive 40 minutes to take off another 500 votes. When the next update hit, absolute madness set in. Mario took off another 130 votes from Crono's seemingly insurmountable lead to bring it down to 381, and people on both sides started losing their minds. Mario supporters were back in the game and frantically rallying for votes, while Crono fans had no idea what had just hit them. They too began to rally in an effort to help Crono hang on to his ever-slimming lead. Mario won the next update by 86 votes, which brought it down to 295. Crono fans were relieved at this point, because there was no way in hell that Mario was going to overcome a 295 vote lead in ten minutes. At this time, it was 12:30 AM EST. Remember, this poll started at 12:40 AM the night before. Had this match lasted 24 hours, the poll would have been over in 10 minutes. Even though Crono had tried his hardest to lose this match, it seemed as if he would hang on to pull it out anyway. Much to everyone's horror, the match did not end at 12:40 AM. Or 12:41. Or 12:42. People began to realize that this match was going to run until 1 AM, and the complaints began to roll in like you wouldn't believe. And could you really blame them? Crono's loss in 2002 could easily be blamed on a vote-stuffer, and it was likely that Crono wouldn't have come anywhere close to beating Mario without the additional help. But this time around, CJayC took the full blame for what was going on. And rightfully so. There was absolutely no reason to run this poll for longer than 24 hours, but that was secondary compared to seeing what the results of the next update would be. Come 12:45 AM, people were greeted with the largest update win of the entire match, and it once again went in Mario's favor. Mario had taken off 144 votes in 15 minutes to bring Crono's lead down to a measly 151. Absolute insanity took full hold on the entire site at this point. People could not believe that CJayC was allowing this to go on, yet despite this Crono was still in good shape to win the match. For Mario to win, he would have to follow the biggest update victory of the entire match with an even bigger update victory, and certainly Crono's supporters couldn't have had enough of a mental lapse to allow this to happen. Right? It's almost impossible to put what happened next into words. You really had to be there. When the 1:00 update hit, Mario came out with a lead of 92 votes after being down by 151 all of 15 minutes before. This means that despite there being no update win of more than 144 votes through 23 hours, 45 minutes (and there were only two updates over 140 through the entire match outright), Mario was able to win the final update by 243 votes to clinch the match. A lot of people will tell you that CJayC extended the match from this point to allow Mario's victory, but make no mistake. Mario was in the lead at 1:00 AM. The extra five minutes, so CJayC claims, was to check for possible cheating on both sides. For those five minutes, Crono's fans were almost certain that CJayC's little investigation would turn up cheating on Mario's behalf. Coming back from being down 800 with such speed is bad enough, but winning the final update by 243 votes? Something sure as hell was amiss about all of this. CJayC made a topic to state that there was no cheating detected and that Mario was the winner. He mentioned that he extended the poll to 1:05 AM to check for cheating, but gave no reasons why the poll was started 20 minutes early or why the poll wasn't closed at 12:40 AM 24 hours in. The biggest board explosion I've ever witnessed began mere seconds later, and CJayC's topic hit 500 in less than ten minutes. Almost all of the topics were filled with the standard order -- cheating accusations, celebrating, whining and the like -- but a few were actually filled with legitimate complaints. Why was such an important match begun early? It's not like CJayC didn't take into account that this could have happened one way or the other. The other major complaint came in the form of people reporting that they had been asked to take part in an "Are you male or female?" poll through various means. Apparently, people went out to spam for Mario votes by asking a trick question among internet sites that were predominantly male-oriented; those reporting that this poll existed said that they were spammed to take it via AIM, e-mail, and most notably there were AOL users claiming that the poll was spammed all over chat rooms. There were also allegations of the poll showing up on various message boards all over the internet, thought I don't remember a link to any such board. How could such a poll alter the results of a poll on GameFAQs, you ask? The top option was "Male", and the bottom "Female". The top option in Mario/Crono was "Mario", and the bottom "Crono". If such a poll redirected you to vote on GameFAQs upon answering... I don't know how valid the whole Male/Female controversy was, but it's hard to deny that something very odd happened in the final two hours of that poll. Regardless, CJayC said that Mario would advance. We couldn't exactly do much about it other than complain, valid as the complaints may be. The board explosion stemming from this match lasted for a very long time. Most people went to bed before Crono's collapse began, which led to everyone waking up to "Mario WON?!??!?!" topics all through the next match. This would easily go down as the most controversial match by far in the history of these contests. It's not that we haven't had cheating accusations or close matches before or since, but there has yet to be a match as large as this one. This match went beyond the hype when almost nothing ever does, and regardless of which side you were on, this match was one of the most memorable in the history of GameFAQs. For the second year in a row, Crono fell just short of defeating Mario. But in 2004, Crono would get a good measure of revenge. In the Spring 2004 Contest, Chrono Trigger took down Super Mario RPG, Super Mario World and Super Mario 3 en route to making the finals of the contest and losing to Final Fantasy 7. In Summer 2004, Crono himself was again stuck facing Mario in the third round. Crono began that match by blowing Mario the hell out, and there would be no miracle comeback that would save Mario from getting his ass kicked. Crono would beat Mario by over 6000 votes in that contest. The two again met in Summer 2005, in the grandest stage of them all: the finals. Crono fought to stay with Mario early, but Mario would eventually return the 2004 favor by beating Crono by almost 8000 votes. The rivalry has been a good one through the years and has had many great matches. Crono even managed to pull out a win in several of them. But you will be hard-pressed to find any match in or out of the Mario/Crono feud that tops this one. It had everything, plus so much more. If you take only one factoid from Mario/Crono 2003, let it be this one: There is no 24 hour voting block in this match that Crono lost. Mario only won because of getting 27 highly suspicious extra minutes to work with. And as a random aside, even the Mario backers felt dirty about this match. Everyone felt Mario cheated to win it, and everyone felt CJayC allowed the cheating to happen. Even now, as I do future edits and proofreading in 2026, no match has EVER come close to this one for controversy and nonsense. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MarioVSCronoUpdates.txt) (text file as collected by Ngamer) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=53) ### Cool Screencaps - [Mario takes the Board Vote (well, 5-1 at least)](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MariovCrono.jpg) - [B8's reaction to Mario surging ahead right at midnight](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MarioWinsBoard.jpg) - [B8's reaction after the polls close, at 16 minutes past the hour](http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MarioWins.jpg) - [The classic picture](https://imgtc.com/i/fM4Kxos.jpg) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Alucard vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 _source: (6)Alucard vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 (revid 55576)_ ## Results Monday, August 25th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 25th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 49,648 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 69.98% 48 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 70.89% (29,105 brackets) I doubt one single person actually cared about this match as it was happening, and why would they? This took place directly after Mario/Crono II, and you can guess what people chose to discuss given that Sephiroth blowing Alucard away was to be expected. The only thing to really be drawn from this match is that Alucard faced Cloud in 2002, and Alucard actually did better against Cloud than he did against Sephiroth: [](http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=989) Then again, this match took place at a time when a lot of people still believed that Sephiroth was stronger than Cloud was, so Sephy doing better than Cloud didn't come as much of a surprise. The issue is that this gave us a lot of insight into the upcoming Mario/Sephy duel. If Mario = Cloud, and Sephy performs 2.5% better than Cloud against a common opponent, wouldn't this mean that Sephy was in line to beat Mario? Not many people bothered looking at the numbers for this, however. They were all out for blood after what had happened to Crono, and Mario/Sephiroth quickly turned from a debated match into Mario versus the world. Again. People obviously weren't yet aware that Mario didn't need the revenge voter's help, though it couldn't hurt. Mario/Crono/Sephy was once a debated trio. It turned into Sephiroth being the fairly obvious favorite going into the divisional final. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Ryu 2003 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (5)Ryu 2003 (revid 55579)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 26th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 26th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 15,595 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 69.98% 48 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 65.68% (26,966 brackets) There was some discussion before this match that Ryu had a real chance of pulling off the upset. Take a wild guess as to why. It was the sprite round, and Solid Snake looked horrendous in the match pic. Not that Ryu looked much better, but at least people could pick out who Ryu was. Snake would have to rely on his name alone to win the match, though reports of his early demise were vastly premature. When the match began, Snake was comfortably in the lead and simply never looked back. Ryu never came close, and those who argued that Snake's sprite would hurt him ate their words fairly quickly -- for this match, at least. Future contests would prove that Snake sprite match pics yield some very bad results. For the second contest in a row, Ryu went down in fairly routine fashion. He broke 40% on a strong character in a match that most expected him to lose. Can't say much more than that, though this didn't exactly bode well for Snake come the next round. He was the underdog against Mega Man as is, and it's tough to imagine Snake beating Capcom's ultimate mascot when he can't even break 60% on one of Capcom's lesser characters. It's not that Snake didn't have a chance, but it wasn't a good one. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Tommy Vercetti vs (2)Mega Man 2003 _source: (3)Tommy Vercetti vs (2)Mega Man 2003 (revid 55581)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 27th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** West Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 27th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 38,095 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 66.86% 48 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 31.11% (12,775 brackets) All the Vercetti hype that existed before the match had certainly died down to a deafening silence by the time this once-debated match took place. Everyone knew that Vercetti was overrated going in, and it was about time we saw just how much. Remember, many people expected Vercetti to win this match with ease before the contest started. As you can see, no such thing came close to happening. Mega Man pummeled Vercetti into the ground from start to finish en route to a fairly easy doubling, though Mega was a far cry off from the days when he was flirting with 90% and coming close to beating elites in every match. Still, a doubling over a character that many once thought could beat you is still impressive, and it made for a nice tune-up going into his match with Solid Snake and eventual possible rematch with Sephiroth in the Final Four. People were more reasonable with Vercetti's stock after he bombed in 2003, though most were smart enough to not have him making it past Mega Man. Had Donkey Kong pulled off the upset, Vercetti would have gone down as a much bigger bust than history shows. Vercetti has been in both contests since this one, but he was never able to live up to what people first expected of him. With that, the final week of the contest was upon us! The Elite 8 all being 1 and 2 seeds was a crime, but there were some very interesting matches coming up. People have wanted Link/Samus for two years, there was still talk of Sonic upsetting Cloud, Mario/Sephy was guaranteed to be huge, and Snake still had a chance at beating Mega Man. The funny thing about this final week were all of the people claiming that Mario/Crono symbolized the end of this contest when it came to excitement. What a difference seven days can make. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (2)Samus Aran 2003 (revid 55584)_ ## Results Thursday, August 28th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** North Division Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 28th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 26,155 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 60.38% 38 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 72.17% (29,632 brackets) Almost 3/4ths of people having Link win his division should really tell you something about how dominant people thought he would be in this contest. Anyhoo, NeoElfboy can handle the intro for this one: But what if Samus \[beats Sephiroth\]? I didn't think it would happen due to Sonic revenge votes, but those just don't appear to be materialising at all. It appears that perhaps the revenge vote just isn't much of a factor, after all. Samus/Link... interesting. On the surface, one is inclined to favour Link, based on the fact that Zelda has been big in recent years, but one has to go back to 1994 to find Samus' latest effort (don't even bother with SSB). But... call me crazy... but if that happens, I think Samus will win. Reasons? 1\. For the embittered Square fanatics, she represents the lesser of Nintendo's evils. 2. The tremendous amount of respect for the Metroid games, particularly Super Metroid (you know, the best-game-of-all-time jazz that several major video game reviewers have blessed it with) 3. TJF. Figuratively, that is. I know I love Samus for what she represents as far as female characters go, and I also know many others like me. A little girl power could propel her to victory. As I said, call me crazy. I'm probably almost the only one predicting this. But I really do give Samus the edge if it comes to it. That post was made in the 2002 stats topic when Samus was in the middle of building a 500 vote lead for herself. Samus would eventually lose the match to Sephiroth, but the Link/Samus stigma remained until the next contest for all of the reasons NEB lists above. Thanks to little resistance in the North, we were finally greeted to the match we were all hoping to see in 2002. And for a little while, the match was fairly entertaining. Many people supported Samus in her upset campaign, and she was able to keep it close early. But it wasn't long before SFF started kicking in, and Samus's best efforts couldn't prevent her from being on the ass end of a 62-38 beating. Granted this wasn't hardcore SFF like seen in other Nintendo matches, but it was enough to make Samus look pretty bad when the stats came out post contest. All through this contest, Samus seemed a bit off. Isaac did much better than people expected, and Squall went from being below 40% to being above it with ease during his match with Samus. And while Samus did well against Link, hard stats after the contest show that she went down after the release of her first game in eight years, Metroid Prime. That sounds just a tad ridiculous, and it proves that Link SFFd her pretty handily in this match. The odd thing about Samus is that this is really the only contest where she has ever disappointed. Save for one bad loss to Mario in 2005, she has done very well in just about every match of every other contest. As for Link, this was his 10th win in a row in these contests. Two more would mean his second straight title, and it certainly didn't look like anyone would come close to him at this rate. Of the six characters remaining, Link didn't really have anyone to worry about. Cloud lost to Mario the previous year, and Mario got his ass kicked by Link. Sonic lost to Samus, who had just gotten her ass kicked by Link. Mario already proved that he was no threat, and Snake was probably too weak. This left Sephiroth and Mega Man, who at this point were the only two characters projected to even break *40%* on Link in a match. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sonic the Hedgehog 2003 (revid 55587)_ ## Results Friday, August 29th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** East Division Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 29th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 35,080 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 58.29% 38 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 54.13% (22,227 brackets) The Sonic fans that remained pissed off after what happened against Samus in 2002 were ready to go for this match, and for a few seconds they were effective. They were actually able to take the board vote from Cloud, and Sonic was ahead for a tiny little bit. But then the floodgates opened on Sonic, and Cloud proceeded to open up a can of whoopass the likes that Sonic never thought he would ever see in these contests. This match quickly turned into a bout where Sonic had upset potential into a complete laughingstock, as well as a microcosm of just how far Sonic had fallen in the past year. He went from having the lead on Cloud to almost being doubled by him, and no amount of spin can suggest anything other than the fact that Sonic had fallen a bit since his 2002 glory days in which many had him making the finals. I've said multiple times in these writeups that Sonic hasn't been the same since 2002, and this match was the final confirmation for this. In 2004, Sonic was given a rematch against Samus and got his ass whipped. In 2005, Sonic was handed a very winnable match against Mega Man, but handed the match away twice. As for Cloud, this match started up a very large Cloud \> Link stigma, and for good reason. Coming close to doubling Sonic is no joke, and it soon became very clear that Cloud had grown much stronger since 2002. Whether or not this would even get him close to Link remained to be seen, but *something* happened between these first two contests that lit a fire under Cloud's ass. And in the match that directly followed this one, people started to see exactly what caused all of this to happen. They had their suspicions, yes, but it took Sephiroth to confirm them. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mario vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 _source: (1)Mario vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 (revid 88772)_ ## Results Saturday, August 30th, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 30th, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 28,671 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 50.96% 24 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 32.76% (13,452 brackets) Howdy folks, and welcome to the Kingdom Hearts Invitational™! Remember when Mario/Crono vs Sephiroth for the South title was the most hyped trio of the entire contest? Mario/Crono certainly delivered, but hardly anyone expected what would happen next. Mario vs Sephiroth was supposed to be one of the biggest matches of the entire contest. It was supposed to be Mario vs Cloud Part the II, only bigger and better this time around. After all, Sephiroth was still believed to be more popular than Cloud, and he was the perfect guy to extract revenge on the ol' plumber after the latest Crono screwjob, not to mention what happened to Cloud the year before. But Mario still had.... the clutch, dundundun. Could Mario pull the clutch on a character stronger than Cloud? For one update, the match looked as expected. Sephiroth was slightly in the lead, though it seemed as if we were in for an epic. And then another update came. Then another. Then another. Within an hour, Sephiroth was beating the absolute holy hell out of Mario in the poll. But so what, right? This was FREAKING MARIO! Certainly he would come back and make a game of this, right? Wrong. As the updates kept pouring in, it became more and more clear that Mario was in for the beating of his life. The man never bothered putting up a fight, but with every coming update people expected Mario to begin the greatest comeback of all time. He never came close. Sephiroth whipped Mario at all points of this poll to the tune of an eventual beatdown of over 60-40, and the onlookers stared at the results as they were unfolding in absolute disbelief. Most truly believed that this would be the second coming of the Mario/Cloud fiasco, but it turned into the second coming of Mario's beating at the hands of Link instead. Given what had just happened to Sonic, it didn't take much longer for people to decide the cause of all this. Kingdom Hearts, arguably Square's most hyped and successful title since Final Fantasy 7, was released in September of 2002, just after the Summer 2002 Contest. When paired with the massive hype of the Summer 2003 Contest and the massive influx in total votes, it was clear that most of the new voters favored Squaresoft. The evidence was all over this contest. Cloud, Sephiroth, Squall, and even Aeris all did much better than most expected; as such, most people began giving credit to Kingdom Hearts. You could even argue that the Kingdom Hearts Factor (KHF) benefited Tidus. He did finish ahead of Auron in the stats this year, though he likely needed help from SFF to do it. It was very difficult to deny the game's effect on this contest, unless you feel like believing that several Square characters in the game all boosted for no reason whatsoever, while other Square characters not in the game were fairly disappointing. A voter influx all massively favoring one company arbitrarily was certainly possible, but there needed to be a reason for all of these new voters to come to this site in the first place. As for the non-KH Square characters that disappointed, Magus and Kefka were certainly in the discussion, and Crono's failure to beat Mario despite everything going Crono's way for over 22 hours of the match is certainly evidence. But for those who weren't quite ready to accept KHF as having a legitimate impact, there was still more contest to be played out. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Mega Man 2003 _source: (1)Solid Snake vs (2)Mega Man 2003 (revid 55593)_ ## Results Sunday, August 31st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** South Division Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 31st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 8,317 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 54.54% 31 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 14.53% (5,964 brackets) Someone please give me a good reason how only 1 in 7 pick Mega Man to win his division after what he did in 2002. A 2 seed beating a 1 isn't some massive upset. Going into this match, Snake was the underdog to win, but not by all that much and he still had a decent chance to pull the upset. Unfortunately, Mega Man was able to jump on Snake early without ever looking back. At the beginning of the poll, Mega Man had 54% of the vote. For the rest of the poll, Snake did nothing more than slowly shave off .5% from that original 54% en route to being handed a steady, respectable loss. This is what most people expected, which made it a fairly boring match. But things quickly turned around once people realized that we were in line to see a rematch between Mega Man and Sephiroth, not to mention the fact that in no way would Link roll over Cloud come the next match of the contest. From the looks of things, we had a very exciting Final Four coming up. The question from Mega Man's perspective was whether or not he would be able to keep up with Sephiroth's massive boost. Breaking 60% on Mario is no joke, but that didn't stop the Mega Man faithful from hoping against hope. The interesting thing about Snake's loss is that in the early days of this board, Solid Snake versus Sephiroth was the most hyped final. We were 8318 votes away from actually seeing it happen, though knowing what he know now it would be a miracle for Snake to receive anything other than the SFF beating of his life at the hands of the big FF7 duo. Snake would return to the contest in 2004, and would again run into Mega Man. Again, he would easily lose. 2005 was Snake's moment of glory, as he finally made his long-awaited Final Four appearance after three straight Elite 8 losses. Unfortunately, he ran right into Mario. He lost, but not before actually managing to win a couple of updates in the early hours. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2003 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2003 (revid 88773)_ ## Results Monday, September 1st, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 1st, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 4,761 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 48.19% 9 for - 24 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 13.37% (5,491 brackets) People figured that Cloud would be able to give Link a run after Cloud and Sephy annihilated Sonic and Mario in the Elite 8, but there was still the feeling that Link was invincible. Yes Cloud would do well, but actually win? Psssssh. When the match began, the first thing that everyone noticed were that the vote totals were insane. I don't have the updates for that match saved anywhere (TRE for the save, maybe?), but I'm fairly sure that the total was near 500 at the first poll freeze. That's ridiculous. At the first freeze, Cloud was certainly giving Link a run. Link only had a double digit lead, and it was not a large one. But even then, Cloud was just putting on a show. He couldn't actually beat Link.... right? When the next update hit, Cloud was not only winning, but winning by a large amount. This caused a bit of a stir, but people were still confident that Link was still going to win this match. But when the next update came and it looked as if Cloud was running away with the poll, the board exploded into a massive cesspool of disappointment. Almost half of people that filled out brackets picked Link to win, and a running joke for a long while is that a first round match (Crash/KOS-MOS) would end up being more difficult to predict than the winner of the contest. Even then, people still felt that Link would easily be able to come back and win this match. There was talk of a Link comeback even after Cloud built himself a lead all throughout the night. No matter, right? Link would simply catch the standard Zelda day vote and crush Cloud's lead into oblivion. It never happened. The best that Link was able to manage were a few stall updates and a small time period in which Link took off about 20 votes per update. Cloud was always able to counter with something better, and the realization finally hit that we were witnessing the biggest upset of all time in these contests when Cloud took Link's best shot and marched forward as if nothing had ever happened. By the end of the match, Cloud dispatched Link en route to a fairly large victory of nearly 5000 votes. The fallout from this match wasn't as bad as you might think, save for the massive amounts of whining and cheating accusations that took place. But I'm a believer that the cheating/rallying was equal on all sides in this match, so the cheating accusations were fairly standard blame game stuff. As for why the fallout wasn't that bad, most people wanted to see Link go down. Yes there were a massive amount of Link fans that either picked him to win it all or simply hated FF7, but there were also a massive amount of people who felt that Cloud saved this contest by preventing a repeat champion. This might not be too far from the truth. It's also worth noting that on top of KHF being in the discussion more than ever before (and this wouldn't even be the match that fully cemented KHF's place in this contest), a lot of people blamed the fact that Link's fugly Wind Waker mug cost him this contest. I'm a believer that pics can account for a 1-2% difference in the polls, and this one falls within that gray area. You're also looking at wind Waker Link matched up against Kingdom Hearts Cloud, which was a definite imbalance that a lot of people were fairly upset about. To this day, many people still point out that Link has never lost a match in which he was fairly represented, almost as if the match against Cloud can be thrown out due to the picture. Regardless of what happened or why during this match, it still remains as the biggest upset of all time. Even after Cloud's demolition of Sonic, people only felt that Cloud would come close. Few actually expected the victory, and those few who stuck with Cloud through this match were vastly rewarded once the final contest standings came out. This match also set records all over the place when it came to vote rallying and vote totals. We may never again see a match flirt with 150,000 total votes, not to mention a character breaking 70,000 votes in a loss. The only thing left to do from here was for Cloud to bring the contest home, though in the final he would once again be the underdog. People have assumed Cloud to be weaker than Sephiroth since the Summer of 2002, and given that massive amounts of anti-voting that Cloud would have to deal with in the final his victory there was anything but guaranteed. Assuming Sephiroth even made it past Mega Man, that is. 2005 was a contest in which CJayC (and many voters) felt that Link, Cloud and Sephiroth were too strong for the main bracket. As such CJayC created the Spring 2005 Villain Contest as a free win for Sephy, then took all three out of the main bracket in Summer 2005 and put them in the Tournament of Champions. Will Square ever be able to recover from all of this Nintendo love? It's possible, but Square needs to get their heads of their asses first. Ever since they almost went bankrupt making The Spirits Within, they've barely been a shell of the company they used to be. They were forced to accept Enix buying them out, and they should bend over backwards to thank Enix for turning around and allowing the union to be called a merger as opposed to the buyout that it truly was. Unfortunately, this hasn't much helped Square until very recently. They've had to release multiple cash grab titles (Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Final Fantasy X-2 are all excellent examples of this) to a fairly ignorant fanbase to get back into the game, and only recently have they finally begun to rebound from their failed box office attempt. Dragon Quest 8 and Kingdom Hearts 2 are seeing excellent success, and Square has promised that the final release of Final Fantasy 12 will not feature FFXI's horrendous MMORPG battle system in console format (the outcry from that demo packed in with DQ8 was murderous). Square looks as if they've finally begun to care about the people who have made them famous once again, but they need a smash hit Final Fantasy release to fully get over the hump. What does this mean in the contest landscape? Cloud beating Link in 2003 was the last time Square did anything of note in these contests against Nintendo unless you count the Spring 2004 Contest. Up until and including Summer 2003, Square vs Nintendo was a good, even rivalry. In Summer 2005, Nintendo won 10 matches against Square. The only victories that Square had were Sephiroth's victory over Mario and Crono's victory over Mega Man. Square has tailed off recently, and they need to get it together if they want any hope of pulling off upsets like this again. ## Ed Bellis' Analysis I am a firm believer that this single match saved the GameFAQs Character Battles. This anomaly of anomalies is one of only two times (Jay Solano excluded) that Link has lost a match, and the first time proceeded in spectacular fashion. Even after Link’s less-than-stellar performance against Magus and Cloud’s great performance against Sonic, few people saw this bombshell coming. Attribute it if you will to Link’s Wind Waker pics and Cloud’s Kingdom Hearts boost or whatever other factor you want to come up with, the fact is that Link lost. I remember Link having upwards of 70% brackets picking him to win… maybe even more. That’s huge, especially for just the second contest. But Cloud won, and Cloud, not Link, would go on to the win the second character battle. Which brings me back to my first point – if Link had won again, I honestly doubt we would have gotten any more character contests. Why bother when Link won so commandingly two times in a row? Instead, this match affirmed the time-honored belief that the 2007 contest struck home yet again: anything can happen. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sephiroth vs (2)Mega Man 2003 _source: (2)Sephiroth vs (2)Mega Man 2003 (revid 55597)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 27,766 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 57.16% 33 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 21.73% (8,922 brackets) This is the best proof for KHF. This match was hyped to a fairly high degree after what happened between these two in 2002, yet Mega Man was absolutely never in the match. Sephiroth rolled through Mega from start to finish with almost the exact same trend he displayed against Mario one round before, and Mega's only saving grace here was doing a tad better than Mario. But that's somewhat secondary compared to their match in 2002: (6)Mega Man - 48185 \[49.49%\] (7)Sephiroth - 49172 \[50.51%\] Total Votes - 97357 Vote Difference - 987 The 2003 version of the same match in which Mega Man almost pulled off the historic upset of Sephiroth drew an extra 26835 votes. Of those 26835 votes, **28** went to Mega Man. If you have some proof to discount KHF after hearing that, I'd love to hear it. Mega Man is akin to Sonic in that ever since 2002, he simply hasn't been able to find the same luster. Yes he's been successful, but he has yet to come as close to the true elites as he did in 2002. Ironically, Mega Man and Sonic faced each other in a 2005 match in which both characters tried their hardest to lose. Sonic would eventually wind up losing, which goes to prove which character has fallen father over the years. The only thing left to do from this point was to have the final, and Sephiroth was the favorite going in in some circles. People have believed him to be stronger than Cloud since 2002, and he would have the added benefit of Link's revenge voters giving him their full support. In fact if X-Stats were popular at the time, Sephiroth would have been the easy favorite in such a match, that is until Cloud's shocker against Link. All that remained would be to see how the match played out. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sephiroth 2003 (revid 55599)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 3rd, 2003 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Final - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 3rd, 2003 - **Vote difference:** 4,713 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 49.99% 11 for - 19 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 6.04% (2,482 brackets) After the first poll freeze, Sephiroth was in the lead and looked as if he would be able to pull this off like so many were hoping. But similarly to what Cloud did to Link, Cloud recovered nicely en route to a very high-scoring, close victory that was barely ever in question. Up until Cloud's upset of Link, most people felt that Sephiroth was the stronger of the two characters. He had higher odds than Cloud to win the contest in 2002 and didn't have the anti stigma that Cloud was stuck with in 2003. Yet despite seemingly everything going in Sephiroth's favor up until this match (doing over 10% better against Mario than Cloud had done the year before, having the backing of Link fans, etc), Sephiroth was completely unable to pull off the win in a match that was not nearly as close as the final score indicates. This match played out almost exactly like Link/Cloud, with most rooting against Cloud but watching in disappointment as he won anyway. Only the true Final Fantasy 7 faithful really enoyed this final, but then again we all had to deal with a Mario/Link final in 2002. Unlike Mario, the loser in the 2003 final actually made the match somewhat interesting. SFF likely had the most to do with Cloud winning this match, and this was later confirmed in 2004 when Cloud beat Sephiroth 56-44 in a rematch. Perhaps 56-44 was how this final would have gone had Cloud not defeated Link two days prior, which explains how Sephiroth lost despite so many people pulling for him to win. This was the final nail in the Summer 2003 Contest, and Cloud Strife was crowned the winner, with the assist going to Kingdom Hearts and its selling almost 4 million copies before this contest took place. ## External Links - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k3&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match**