# Summer 2004 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 2004 Contest _source: Summer 2004 Contest (revid 88381)_ | Announced: | [Earlier than July 1, 2004](https://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/04Summer/04Summer-CJaySpeaks.txt) | |-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Started: | August 1, 2004 | | Ended: | October 3, 2004 | | Winner: | Link | | Contest Winner: | Balrog0 - 191 points \|-\< | **Summer 2004 Contest** **Summer 2004 Contest** was the third Summer Contest on GameFAQs. It is generally considered one of the most disappointing Contests, as it was filled with Same Fanbase Factor problems and did not produce many very exciting matches. ### Ulti's Analysis With the Spring Contest still fresh in everyone's mind, we barely had any break from the contest setting whatsoever. CJayC waited until August 1st to start the Summer 2004 Contest, but nominations for the contest were open a full month and a half ahead of time. We had all of two weeks of offseason, but it was little more than a breath of air than it was an offseason. This year's Summer Contest was set up different than in the past in that instead of the four cardinal directions being the names of the divisions, CJayC decided to name the divisions after their 1 seeds. It was a good idea on paper, but it wound up not giving us a very good bracket. With named divisions come characters within the divisions based off of that name, and in the end you're left with a disguised company-based bracket. It made for a very boring contest featuring a ton of Same Fanbase Factor matchups that look good on paper, but in reality lead to nothing more than predictability as we got thing rolling along. The aftermath of this match was rather small, and had more to do about the future of the contest than the contest that had just taken place. This contest, to put it bluntly, sucked. It was too predictable, and the only reason we didn't have any zero/perfect brackets were because of stupid mistakes. There was a very small number of surprises, and even the matches that surprised us went the way they were supposed to. We had five people finish one point off of a perfect bracket, and the lowest score on the leaderboard was 188. The winner of the Spring Contest scored 185 points, but in SC2K4, that score isn't good enough to even sniff the leaderboard. Two polls were held after the Summer 2004 Contest were over, and both of them cater to something new being needed next year. Personally, we don't need any drastic changes. Just retire Cloud and Link and put some time into making a decent bracket. The contests are fine, just not this one. I touched base upon this during my finals analysis, but I'll say it again. This contest sucked. It was too predictable, and even the matches that could have been deemed a surprise were not a surprise. Sure, none of us expected Tails to take down Viewtiful Joe, but were we really surprised to see it happen? Aside from Frog and Ryu Hayabusa's matches, there was nothing worth watching in this contest, and there was nothing whatsoever of excitement after the first two rounds. We need a better bracket, and if we are to leave Cloud and Link in, we need to handicap them. The way things went in this contest are simply unacceptable, and something needs to be done. And no, we don't need tag teams or threesomes. We simply need a well-done bracket and something to be done about Cloud and Link. This contest was once the greatest thing about this site, but it's turned into something that half the site no longer cares about.
Hyrule Division Link Mega Man Link Cloud Link
\(1\) Link (16) CATS Link Ganondorf Link Yoshi Link Crono
\(8\) Ganondorf (9) Alucard
\(5\) Yoshi (12) Ryo Hazuki Yoshi Luigi
\(4\) Luigi (13) Pac-Man
\(6\) Magus (11) Luca Blight Magus Crono Crono Mario
\(3\) Crono (14) Conker
\(7\) Bowser (10) Guybrush Threepwood Bowser Mario
\(2\) Mario (15) JC Denton (Deus Ex)
20XX Division
\(1\) Mega Man (16) Earthworm Jim Mega Man Tidus Mega Man Zero Mega Man Snake
\(8\) Tidus (9) Shadow the Hedgehog
\(5\) Tommy Vercetti (12) Max Payne Tommy V. Zero
\(4\) Zero (13) Protoman
\(6\) Frog (Chrono Trigger) (11) Liquid Snake Frog M. Chief Frog Snake
\(3\) Master Chief (14) Crash Bandicoot
\(7\) Kefka (10) Knuckles the Echidna Knuckles Snake
\(2\) Solid Snake (15) Tanner (Driver)
Midgar Division Cloud Samus
\(1\) Cloud Strife (16) Duke Nukem Cloud Vyse Cloud Squall Cloud Sephiroth
\(8\) Vyse (9) Laharl (Disgaea)
\(5\) Kirby (12) Kain (Legacy of Kain) Kirby Squall
\(4\) Squall Leonhart (13) Bomberman
\(6\) Ness (Earthbound) (11) Jak Ness Auron Auron Sephiroth
\(3\) Auron (14) Scorpion
\(7\) Vivi (10) Donkey Kong Vivi Sephiroth
\(2\) Sephiroth (15) Sly Cooper
Chaos Division
\(1\) Sonic the Hedgehog (16) Terry Bogard Sonic Ryu (SF) Sonic Dante Sonic Samus
\(8\) KOS-MOS (9) Ryu (Street Fighter)
\(5\) Viewtiful Joe (12) Miles "Tails" Prower Tails Dante
\(4\) Dante (13) Ratchet
\(6\) Sora (11) HK-47 (Star Wars KOTOR) Sora Ryu H. Sora Samus
\(3\) Ryu Hayabusa (14) Jill Valentine
\(7\) Sam Fisher (10) Gordon Freeman Sam F. Samus
\(2\) Samus Aran (15) Lara Croft
## Results and Analysis ### Interesting Facts - 2004's Ultimate Loser was Viewtiful Joe. Joe lost to Tails, who lost to Dante, who lost to Sonic, who lost to Samus, who lost to Cloud, who lost to Link - Only 9 of the 64 characters in this contest haven't appeared in a battle since 2004 ### Ngamer's Analysis Ugh, just ugh. CJay takes a ton of crap for putting together this bracket (which makes sense, since it was *awful*), but really, this was the Contest we asked for. There had been some ugly SFF in the Spring, but we thought that was pretty much a games-only thing; in fact, plenty of this board was pulling hard for Ganon back in '03 because we thought a Link/Ganon fight would be really cool to watch, and so when it was set up here for the next year we were happy. '04 gets partially bailed out because Cloud's upset the year before helped keep the Final interesting, and at least we were seeing the 2 strongest characters go at it in the Championship for the first time ever, but eh... in all honestly only Frog's amazing run keeps this Contest out of the bottom of the barrel. --- ## (1)Link vs (16)CATS 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (16)CATS 2004 (revid 88816)_ ## Results Sunday, August 1st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 01 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 1st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 62,319 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 87.80% 84 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 98.79% (32,819 brackets) CJayC flat-out told us that CATS was nothing more than a joke character, as well as LinkFodder, but appeased our appetite for the little guy by putting him in the contest anyway. Unfortunately for us, a glitched poll early in the match made us unable to see where all of the first votes went in the match. We were unable to see whether or not CATS got his standard early lead, and when the dust settled, Link was well on his way to a blowout win against the mistranslated favorite son of the CATS Army. What was truly impoprtant about this match was that Link and Cloud now had a common opponent: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1313-east-division-round-1-cloud-strife-vs-cats) Link wound up doing better against CATS than Cloud did by nearly a full percent, and the Extrapolated Statistics formula projected that Link could defeat Cloud's 2003 self with around 53% of the vote after this match. I'm not the biggest fan of set statistics trying to judge the transitivity -- or lack thereof -- among human opinion, but one quick look at the results of the finals shows that the Extrapolated Standing (Xst, for short) formula does work in cases where voting patterns remain static. But still, in defense of Cloud, we were only one poll into the contest. Unfortunately, the "wait until next round before deciding where Link truly stands" philosophy was used by Cloud defenders throughout the contest, despite Link doing better than expected in every single one of his matches. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1718&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Ganondorf vs (9)Alucard 2004 _source: (8)Ganondorf vs (9)Alucard 2004 (revid 55788)_ ## Results Monday, August 2nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 02 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 12,533 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ganondorf - 59.99% 83 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ganondorf - 63.02% (20,936 brackets) It pleases me to see Alucard do better than he was expected to in this match. There was a small chance to see Link vs Ganondorf last year, but Magus wound up putting an end to all of that after a fierce battle with the King of Evil. This year, the trick to finally pitting Link and Ganondorf together in a poll was to vastly underseed both Ganondorf and Alucard and throw them in an 8-9 match when they should be going at it in a 3-6 match. Regardless, neither one of these characters got what they deserved from the seeding in this contest. They had a decent match that challenged the Xsts by a few percentage points, but in the end, it's fairly obvious that this match was placed where it was in the bracket so that we would be able to see a Link vs Ganondorf affair. I personally don't like that idea all that much, because while such a match could look good on paper, people who analyse a lot of contest data know that Same Fanbase Factor matchups (SFF, for short) usually yield blowouts to the highest degree, and even SFF matches that are hard to call are rarely close enough to be exciting after the first couple of hours in the poll. Both Alucard and Ganondorf did well in their time in the sun, but with Link looming right above their heads, it was all for naught. The thing that really stands out here is the prediction percentage. As powerful as the Zelda franchise is, it is clear that people looked at past results (and Alucard's two Sweet 16 appearances) when deciding who to go with in this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1719&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k5&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yoshi vs (12)Ryo Hazuki 2004 _source: (5)Yoshi vs (12)Ryo Hazuki 2004 (revid 84044)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 03 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 41,506 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 75.39% 87 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 85.16% (28,291 brackets) This match barely needs any thought put into it. Shemnue, and Ryo Hazuki along with it, have become little more than fodder in every contest. Just look at the results. Ryo Hazuki may have tripled Guybrush Threepwood back in 2002, but it's nothing but downhill from there. He was killed by Lara Croft, he was killed by Dante last year, his game was killed by FFX in the spring, and now he has been killed by Yoshi. I like Yoshi and all, but he isn't all that strong when compared to a lot of other Nintendo characters. When you can allow Yoshi to get 76% on you, it's time to leave the contest in favor of someone else. Sadly, it seems that Shenmue has enough of a fanbase to constantly get Ryo Hazuki in the field, and subsequently killed by characters in the middle of the pack, year after year. Yoshi is good, but he is not good to the point of being able to get 76% on a consistent basis against anyone of decent strength. But trust me, I'm not undermining Yoshi in the least. Yoshi's Island is one of my favorite games, but aside from that, I can't think of how he has managed to stay as popular as he has for so long. Yoshi's Story was atrocious, and aside from good appearances in party games (Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, etc.), he has done very little since Yoshi's Island. For that reason, Yoshi scoring 76% on anyone is a good sign that the loser of such a match needs to go. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1720&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Luigi vs (13)Pac-Man 2004 _source: (4)Luigi vs (13)Pac-Man 2004 (revid 55792)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 4th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 04 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 4th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 26,709 - **Oracle Expectations:** Luigi - 61.46% 85 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Luigi - 68.69% (22,820 brackets) I'm really confused as to why there was such a surprise during the actual match between Luigi and Pac Man. Pac Man did around what he was expected to do based on the '03 stats. If you ask me, the match was about as ho-hum as a match could get; the only thing to be drawn from this match would be that Luigi technically underperformed, and given that his hyped second round match with Yoshi was right around the corner, any weakness in the armor could have been disastrous for him. I maintained that Luigi was the underdog in that match from the start, and when you factor in the results of his match with Pac Man here, the imminent Yoshi/Luigi result wasn't all that hard to see coming, despite the fact that the board was split virtually down the middle on that match. I almost have to tip my hat to Pac Man here. He has fallen off dramatically since his days of being a 1 seed in 2002, but so long as he is still here, he is still going to put up decent numbers against good characters. He isn't elite by any means, but he is surely not 13 seed material either. That said, getting doubled up by Luigi is not good, considering how badly Luigi's stock will suffer by the time all is said and done. Pac Man may be respected by most gamers, bu the fact of the matter remains that he has gone from a 1 seed to a 5 seed to a 9 seed to a 13 seed in four contests. He may be hard-pressed to make the field next year, and after that, he might be gone from the contest forever. He has yet to recover from losing to Scorpion back in 2002, when you think about it. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1721&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Magus vs (11)Luca Blight 2004 _source: (6)Magus vs (11)Luca Blight 2004 (revid 88817)_ ## Results Thursday, August 5th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 05 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 5th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 43,761 - **Oracle Expectations:** Magus - 76.08% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Magus - 90.45% (30,048 brackets) Just to warn everyone well in advance, this may be somewhat biased. Not only is Magus among my favorite characters, but I haven't played a game in the Suikoden series. With that in mind, the only thing that bothered me about this match was the low vote total. Magus had everything else going for him, and considering what fate await Magus in the second round, it was nice to see Magus in a dominating position before he was finally taken down. To see 90% of people predict Magus to win a match after seeing a mere 24.25% of people calling him to make the third round last year was a nice breath of fresh air. I don't know if this spoke of Magus's strength or Luca Blight's weakness among the general population of GameFAQs, but regardless, any stat that goes in Magus's favor will make me a happy guy =) On the other side of all of this, Luca Blight winds up being another glaring example in a long line; cult characters simply do not do well in these contests, and the mentality of the fanbases of cult characters is more of a "Happy to be here" than it is of having a chance to win. When one considers how low the vote totals were in this match, Luca Blight's stock looks even worse for not even being able to manage 20% of the vote. When the final Xsts are released, Luca Blight will look even worse. The Luca Blight army did their job of getting blight into the contest, but a couple hundred people doesn't make a character strong in these polls. Luca Blight may do better next year now that he has been in the field once, but I doubt it. I love Magus and all, but is he not a character who is typically able to get 80% of the vote. Luca just stunk it up that much. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1722&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Crono vs (14)Conker 2004 _source: (3)Crono vs (14)Conker 2004 (revid 88818)_ ## Results Friday, August 6th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 06 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 6th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 44,770 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 80.92% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 93.43% (31,038 brackets) Crono seems to get better with each passing year, yet for some reason, he cannot seem to catch a break in seeding. I can understand his getting a 5 seed in the first contest, but he has been nothing but short-changed in the two character battles since then. In 2003, Crono was given a 4 seed for but one purpose: to face Mario. This year, Crono was against seeded lower than where he should have been, and why? To face Mario. I understand that the Mario/Crono saga is legendary, but the same match three contests in a row is not a good way to make an unpredictable bracket. If anything, most people on the boards were tired of Mario/Crono after last year's mess. Putting them close together this year was simply overkill. But even for those of us that would rather see Crono face a character like Samus or Mega Man, there is always next year. We only had this year to work with, and despite an obvious rigging in the seedings to give us Mario vs Crono 3, Crono cared less about such things. Not only did he come out and smack Conker into next Tuesday, but take a quick look at one of the matches from the Summer 2003 Contest: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1346-south-division-round-2-kefka-vs-crono) Not only that, but the 2003 Extrapolated Standings would suggest that Conker performed around where he was expected to in this match: 46 Conker 17.56% 52 Kefka 15.56% Coming into this match, Conker was expected to do slightly better than Kefka. After the match, the final result followed along with this perfectly, and thus, the theory of Crono/Kefka SFF appearing in 2003 seemed less likely at this point. As such, Pac Man's performance against Luigi was around where it was supposed to be after all, which meant nothing but bad news for Luigi come the second round. In English, you could theoretically predict that Yoshi was going to beat Luigi and that Knuckles was going to beat Kefka after just the 6th match of the contest. There is also a running theme that started with this match: no one cares about Playstation platformer characters anymore. Characters like Conker, Ratchet, Jak, and Crash Bandicoot getting into this contest was all nice and good, but every single one of them bombed for a reason. Sales don't always translate to GameFAQs popularity, and Playstation platformers, regardless of sales, are better off not being in the contest. They're a waste of space. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1723&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Bowser vs (10)Guybrush Threepwood 2004 _source: (7)Bowser vs (10)Guybrush Threepwood 2004 (revid 55798)_ ## Results Saturday, August 7th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 07 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 7th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 49,079 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 82.53% 89 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bowser - 95.00% (31,560 brackets) I'm obviously not the biggest fan of characters like Ryo Hazuki or Conker in the contest, but I can at least understand why they get into it in the first place. Guybrush Threepwood, on the other hand, remains a mystery to me. He went from being tripled by *Ryo Hazuki* in 2002, to not appearing in the next two contests, to all of a sudden making the field this year. And not only that, but he made the field as a 10 seed. Take a good look at all of the characters that Guybrush outseeded this year. Do you actually think he could beat a good number of them? If you ask me, Guybrush's seeding was another prime example of rigging the bracket so that we would see "interesting" company vs company matchups in the second round. Guybrush is clearly overseeded here, but that's okay; he's facing off against a vastly underseeded Bowser. Bowser should be a 4 seed at best, and a 5 seed at worst. Instead, we have a bracket in which Bowser is knocked down a couple of spots so that we may see Bowser vs Mario in the second round? For what? We already know for a fact that Mario would kill Bowser in a poll, so why have the match? Unfortunately, at the expense of unpredictability, we had to sit through another boring match specifically designed to set up another boring match. The idea of setting up Bowser vs Mario looks good on paper, but in reality, we should be seeing a 4-5 matchup between Bowser and Squall. The funniest thing of all about this match is that because Guybrush sucked so much in 2002, a lot of us were expecting this match to be far worse on Guybrush than it actually was. 17.01% is a blowout in its own right, but considering some of the predictions that were being thrown around, you could almost make the case that Guybrush did better than expected. Almost. When it was all said and done, both characters fulfilled their roles in proper fashion. Guybrush was supposed to be BowserFodder from the start, and this was to set Bowser up to be MarioFodder in round two. Just another example of a good character getting the short end of things for favor of CJayC's idea of a "stacked bracket", I suppose. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1724&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Mario vs (15)JC Denton 2004 _source: (2)Mario vs (15)JC Denton 2004 (revid 55800)_ ## Results Sunday, August 8th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 08 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 8th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 52,337 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 85.78% 90 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 98.28% (32,650 brackets) Another day, another overwhelming blowout that goes in the favor of the higher seed in the Hyrule division. But unlike the other matches, this one had a special meaning to it. For the first time ever, Mario managed to perform to standards against a non-Nintendo character. In 2002, Mario allowed Servbot to get 25% of the vote against him, and he followed that up by barely doubling Morrigan Aensland. Yet somehow, he managed to turn around and blow away Donkey Kong before edging out two close victories against Cloud and Crono. In 2003, Mario was as much a wild card as the previous year. He managed to blow away Captain Olimar of Pikmin fame before allowing Shadow the Hedgehog to score nearly 45% on him. He once against followed up his supposed underperformance by edging out Crono in a rematch of the 2002 epic before getting killed by Sephiroth in the Elite 8. After all that, we had a few dilemmas facing Mario here in 2004. How could a character fail to blow away opponents, yet manage to turn around and constantly squeeze out close victories against the likes of Cloud and Crono? The answer was simple enough to see after this match. Morrigan Aensland and Shadow the Hedgehog truly are as strong as their matches with Mario would suggest. For the first time ever, Mario managed to make a non-Nintendo character look like fodder, and even though Mario failed in his bid to keep JC Denton under 15% until the end of the match, his blowout victory was nothing to ignore. JC Denton isn't very well-known on GameFAQs, but he stars in one of the better games out there in Deus Ex. If you like badassed characters, you'll love JC in that game. He was pulling the Neo look long before The Matrix ever even existed. The odd one out in all of this would be Servbot himself. Personally, I think that Servbot's 25% against Mario in 2002 was the direct result of it being the first match we have ever had in one of these contests. A lot of joke votes for Servbot were cast simply because Mario's victory was never in question, and anyone who was on the boards around that time knows this. With that in mind, it's easy to throw out Servbot's performance as a fluke and to finally give Mario to credit he deserves. Not only did Mario beating JC Denton so badly prove that he is still strong, but it also gives a new respect to Shadow the Hedgehod and Morrigan Aensland. We need Morrigan back in the contest, plain and simple. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1725&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (16)Earthworm Jim 2004 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (16)Earthworm Jim 2004 (revid 55802)_ ## Results Monday, August 9th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 09 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 9th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 55,813 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 86.98% 77 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 97.47% (32,381 brackets) If there was ever a match that proved that Mega Man was in trouble, this was it. Mega Man is responsible for some of the biggest blowouts we have ever seen, and yet he turns around and only manages 83% against Earthworm Jim? What's up with that? Oh that's right, Earthworm Jim *kicks unheralded amounts of ass*. Is there anyone out there who used to own a Sega, but didn't play Earthworm Jim? The guy absolutely owns. Hell, you didn't even need a Sega. He appears across nine different systems, eleven if you count the three different Game Boys as separate systems, and on all of them, Earthworm Jim's coolness is unmatches by most characters. Where else are you going to find a worm in a power suit who fights giant balls of snot in an effort to save cows from aliens? Yeah I know, Earthworm Jim was killed. But I must tell you this: in the first three contests, Earthworm Jim was a rather large example of someone who was missing. I'm aware that he is on the level of the "I'm just happy to be in the field" characters, but I love the little guy. He makes far better fodder to the elites than the likes of Ryo Hazuki, Tanner, and Guybrush Threepwood at least. Earthworm Jim, win or lose, is a character that most would find hard-pressed to dislike. Ask yourself, would you rather see another Tanner, or would you like to see Earthworm Jim? Sure he'll lose, but he is one of those characters that we all love to see so much that it isn't about whether he wins or loses. Just seeing him have a moment in the spotlight is more than enough =) I also don't think I'm alone in this sentiment. This match managed a high vote total in comparison to the other matches in the contest, and I don't think that this was solely Mega Man's doing. There was clearly an I Know Earthworm Jim Will Lose But I Love Him To Death And Will Be Certain To Vote For Him Anyway Factor (IKEJWLBILHTDAWBCTVFHAF) at work here. Mega Man may be a good draw, but so is the worm. God Bless the worm. In all seriousness, this was an impressive performance by Mega Man. I just felt the need to rant about how Earthworm Jim kicks ass, because if you didn't know, *now you know*. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1726&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Tidus vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2004 _source: (8)Tidus vs (9)Shadow the Hedgehog 2004 (revid 55804)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 10th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 10th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 1,546 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tidus - 50.44% 48 for - 29 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tidus - 70.06% (23,275 brackets) After nine of the most boring, predictable matches we had ever seen, we *finally* had something to get worked up about. In fact, the first nine matches were so bad that Tidus/Shadow wound up getting far more attention than it would have gotten under normal circumstances. Simply put, the board was desperate for something, *anything*, to get excited about in this contest. Unfortunately, while Tidus/Shadow looks close when looking at the final score, the match was over after the first thirty seconds. Still, the buildup was fun. When looking at the bracket as a whole, there were very few matches that were hard to call from the start, and most of those matches were in the first and second rounds. With the notable exception of Link vs Cloud, and to a lesser extent Mario vs Crono, all of the excitement in this contest came from the tough matches within the first two rounds. And as boring as most of this contest was, we still had our fair share of decent matches. Coming into the contest, the first match that struck everyone as being hard to call was Tidus/Shadow. They were dead even in the 2003 Extrapolated Standings, and given the track record of both characters, convincing arguments could be made on both sides. On Tidus's side, the argument was simple. Tidus is a Square character representing the defining Final Fantasy title for the Playstation 2. Regardless of whether or not he is liked by Square fans, the fact of the matter is that most Final Fantasy characters get their fair share of support. In close matches on this site, Squaresoft has gotten more and more difficult to defeated. This gave Tidus an innate advantage right from the start simply because of his company alliance, and when you factor in that 2003 Tidus would be expected to get 49% against 2003 Sonic -- an improvement of over 7% from the Tidus/Sonic match in 2002 -- the decision was easier to make for many of the people who were having trouble choosing between them. On Shadow's side of things, the typical argument was something along the lines of OMFG TIDUS IS TEH WHINY NOOBUKLAR GNBOOBIE FROM TEH FINL FANTAYZZY ECKS DEE'D TWO'D ADN SHADOW IS TEH BADAZZD CHARACTER FROM TEH SONIUC GAMEZ SHADWO IS SOOO CUL TIDUS IS TEH SUXXOR SHADWO WILL WEEN TEH MATCH LOLOLOLZROX!1!!++@2@!#!!!11!1SHIFTONE!11!11 Amidst all of the Tidus bashing that went on in the days leading up to (and following) the match, intelligent arguments were posed in Shadow's favor. For one, Tidus only managed around 41% on Sonic in 2002. For Tidus to beat Shadow, he would have to rely on Sonic taking a drop in 2003 on top of Shadow being no where near as strong as Sonic in 2004. That's quite the stretch. Secondly, Tidus was a 5 seed in 2003, and may very well have overperformed in his match against Ganondorf due to bracket voting and the "Anyone but Tidus" votes that plague him in every match. The problem with this match is that despite all of the hype it was getting, it wound up not living up to it. Sure the match was decently close when you look at the final score, but everyone who was here during the match knows that the final score is not indicative of how well Tidus truly did during the match. When the poll began, Tidus not only took the early lead, but he owned it. He did so well in the opening sections of the voting block that one could argue that the match was over after the first few minutes. The truly surprising thing about this poll was that Tidus managed to challenge not only Shadow, but the voting demographic. Sega is the undisputed king of the morning vote, yet when the morning vote came around, it failed to save Shadow the Hedgehog from Tidus's onslaught. Tidus not only withstood the day vote, but he didn't miss a beat en route to building a 1700 vote lead 10 hours into the poll. It wasn't until then that Shadow began fighting back, but by this time, the Sega morning vote that traditionally allows Sega characters to pull out close matches was already gone. Shadow began chipping away at Tidus's lead, but he was doing do during a time period in which other companies dominate the demographic. Shadow was doing a decent job of holding his own after falling behind by so much, but he was relying on the late afternoon and evening votes to help him out. These crowds usually favor Nintendo and Squaresoft respectively, and though Shadow managed to stay 50-50 with Tidus from the time Tidus went up by 1700 all the way until the end of the poll, Shadow did not have nearly enough of his own demographic assisting him in order to make any serious run at winning the match. Tidus taking a 1700 vote lead with the aid of the day vote that was supposed to go to Shadow decided the match right then and there, but that didn't stop the constant stream of OMFG SHADOW IS COMING BACK topics every time he took three votes off of the lead. Despite Shadow's best efforts to make some noise in the poll, all he managed to do was take 14 hours to cut all of 150 votes off of Tidus's lead of 1700. This was somewhat decent for board drama, but it meant nothing to Tidus. He had the match won after 10 hours when he took Shadow's day vote away from him. In the fallout from all of this, I do have a lot of respect for Shadow's strength after seeing what he managed to do in this poll. He may have lost the day vote, and because of this the match itself, but Shadow's ability to hold his own with Tidus for the final 14 hours of the poll was interesting. During a time period where Square usually dominates, Shadow the Hedgehog managed to take Tidus's evening and night vote away from him. Tidus could have very easily gone on to win this match by over 4000 votes, but Shadow held his own and went down fighting. It's hard to say anything bad about a character who takes his opponent's strength from him, and for Shadow, that meant holding his own during the evening vote. Not bad at all. But on the other side of this, this also means that Tidus deserves some respect for taking Shadow's day vote from him. Tidus failing to do well during his own voting block surely meant a collapse in the next round, but at least Tidus managed a victory in a close match this year unlike his near-miss against Ganondorf last year. To this day, I am convinced that Tidus would get the respect he deserves if he managed to take down Ganondorf and/or Shadow last year. After all of that, even though Mega Man was bound to kill the winner anyway, we finally had a match that gave us some excitement. It wasn't much, but at least we had a reason to refresh the poll every 2 seconds for a time. The characters themselves may have failed to have the match we were hoping for, but as characters, it is a true shame that they have such \*\*\*\*y voice actors. Tidus, despite popular belief, is not a bad character. He is the first Final Fantasy lead since Terra (and to a lesser extent, Zidane) to have emotions that we as players can actually relate to. It's nice to see Cloud and Squall rip everything to shreds whenever they see fit, but we can't do that in real life. I like how we get to see Tidus mature from an immature little kid to a man right in front of our eyes throughout the game. Part of the reason why I think people dislike Tidus so much is because a lot of people act the same way he does. They can't handle some of the bad things that happen to them, and instead of being a man about it, they whine for help until someone offers to hold their hand and guide them. Hating Tidus is more a reverse catharsis than it is Tidus not being a good character. And while the laughing/lake scenes were atrocious, there are quite a number of interaction scenes between the leads of Final Fantasy 7/8/9 and the secondary female characters that are equally painful to watch, yet you don't hear a lot of complaining about them. Odd coincidence. Tidus isn't a bad character; people are simply very close-minded. Shadow's case is far easier to analyze. For all intents and purposes, Shadow has been in all of two games: Sonic Adventure 2: Battle and Sonic Heroes. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that Sonic Heroes doesn't exist. Shadow appears in one good game, and despite having a horrible voice actor in the one decent game he appears in, Shadow still finds a way to be as strong as he in these contests. Even more impressive is the fact that Shadow is constantly working against the brackets to do what he does. Despite being bashed by even some of the most loyal Sonic fans out there, only appearing in one good game, and suffering from a case of the Gordon Freeman Herpes, Shadow still manages to pump out solid numbers every year. He was the underdog against Wario, SA2:B didn't even make the Spring Contest, and he was the overwhelming underdog against Tidus. And he still manages to do well. **Conclusion**: Rape, muder, pillage, lie, cheat, steal, harass, annoy, bribe..... whatever, just do whatever it takes to convince Cam Clarke to do the voice acting for Shadow the Hedgehog. With a proper voice actor and some more exposure, Shadow could do some serious damage in this contest. The fact that he continues to perform despite no one knowing who he is means that we have some serious potential here. If Sega plays their cards right (an oxymoron, I know), then Shadow could not only be a force in the contest, but he may also help the Sonic franchise to become mainstream again. It's clear that Sonic's glory days were in the 2D era, but with proper marketing and a few legendary games, that could all change. The fact that more people thought Alucard and Pac Man had a chance at upsetting Ganondorf and Luigi respectively needs to change. Of all the new characters created in this era, only Auron, Tidus, and Shadow come off to me as having any real chance at causing damage in this contest in five years, with Shadow having the brightest future of the three. Hopefully, Sega does not waste this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1727&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Tommy Vercetti vs (12)Max Payne 2004 _source: (5)Tommy Vercetti vs (12)Max Payne 2004 (revid 55806)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 11th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 11th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 18,618 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tommy Vercetti - 66.04% 77 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tommy Vercetti - 76.02% (25,255 brackets) With all of the failures that Max Payne has had in contests past, the 2004 contest could have very well been his last stand to see if he deserves to be here. This is the guy whose track record includes victories over Dirk the Daring and Gordon Freeman, and a loss to Scorpion. This year, Max Payne was stuck in a first round match against a fellow Rockstar character in Tommy Vercetti. In other words, for Max Payne to avoid getting blown out of the field altogether, he had to avoid Rockstar SFF against the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City mainstay. Max Payne may not have won this match, but he more than proved that he belongs in the field. Not only did Max Payne avoid getting blown out of the water, not only did Max Payne avoid suffering SFF, but Max Payne overperformed by 4.5%! Plug 2003 Xst numbers into the \[(CvA)/(BvA)\]\*50 = CvB formula, and Max Payne was expected to get 33.68% on Vercetti in this match without SFF. Make of this what you will, but if Max Payne can avoid being SFF'd to hell by his fellow Rockstar teammate, and perform far better than he was projected to, then he'll always have a place as one of the more loveable losers of this contest. His fanbase is clearly large and loyal enough to keep him in the field, and when he can do this much better than expected, he belongs. His matches are always boring, but it's hard to argue against him being in the field. As for Tommy Vercetti, can you guys believe how far he has fallen since last year? When the Summer 2003 bracket was first released, Vercetti was supposed to be able to ride Vice City's coattails all the way to a massive performance. Since then, Vercetti has been on a constant spiral downward, to the point where he can not only fail to grab SFF against Max Payne, but to the point where he can do 4.5% worse than expected. Blame whatever you wish, but when you go from being as hyped as he was in a near-loss to Donkey Kong to an underperformance against Max Payne, you have some problems. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1728&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Zero vs (13)Protoman 2004 _source: (4)Zero vs (13)Protoman 2004 (revid 55808)_ ## Results Thursday, August 12th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 12th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 35,324 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 68.78% 77 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 86.41% (28,706 brackets) It's easy to blame CJayC for stacking the 20XX Division's first half in order to give us SFF matches involving Mega Man, but unlike the SFF in the Hyrule Division, the SFF in the 20XX division wasn't nearly as boring to watch. Sure we all knew the outcomes of the match as easily as we did in the Hyrule Division, but the "fodder" in 20XX was far more fun to see in action. Protoman is one such example. This match was very hard for a lot of Mega Man fans, simply because it is difficult to decide who to vote for. Zero may be Mega Man's rival/friend/badassed companion in the Mega Man X series, but Protoman was around while Zero was still being put together. Protoman simply reeks of badass. His theme kicks ass, his character models kick ass, his match pic kicked ass (and was better than Zero's pic, I might add), and any part that he had in all of the games in the main Mega Man series kicked ass. I challenge any Mega Man fan to play through Mega Man 3 or Mega Man 7 and tell me afterwards that Protoman sucks as a character. It takes a little work to figure out what to do in Mega Man 7, but still, that isn't the point. Protoman, unlike some other characters destined for a first round loss in this contest, was a character whose appearance in this contest was warranted despite his actual performance. We need a bracket in which all 64 characters can say the same thing about themselves. I also need to tip my hat off to Zero here. Sure he may be somewhat of the "Protoman" of the Mega Man X series, but there is a reason that Zero owned this match in the way that he did. The Mega Man X series, aside from being quite the challenge in early installments, features a character in Zero who does everything that Protoman does, only much, much better. It may have been hard for some Mega Man fans to decide who to vote for, but for everyone else, the choice was simple. Zero didn't do better than Aeris against Sonic last year for no reason, and when the dust settled from this match, Zero managed to pull in almost 72% of the vote in a match that saw over 81000 total votes. No easy task. I simply hope that Protoman doesn't go the way of Raiden. Raiden could be a decent, well-desrving mid-carder in these contests, yet because of one first round SFF blowout, Raiden did not return to the field this year. Despite what these results may show, Protoman deserves to be here. Hopefully he returns. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1729&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Frog vs (11)Liquid Snake 2004 _source: (6)Frog vs (11)Liquid Snake 2004 (revid 88821)_ ## Results Friday, August 13th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 13th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 93 - **Oracle Expectations:** Frog - 61.76% 76 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Frog - 44.33% (14,727 brackets) I barely even know where to start on this one. Due in large part to creativename's sig during the entire 2003 offseason, Frog gathered a lot of board support by the time the nomination page opened up. CJayC even mentioned "a strong fan drive" that got Frog into the field this year. Okay, so most of the board nominated Frog, and we wound up in the field. That's nice. What followed after Frog's acceptance into the contest was one of the greatest epics ever seen in these polls. Frog vs Liquid Snake was wound up being what we were hoping to see from Tidus vs Shadow, and the best part of it all is that this match hit us from well out in left field. Coming into this contest, Frog was expected to dominate a fourpack consisting of Frog, Liquid Snake, Master Chief, and Crash Bandicoot with ease. After all, Crono has been taking names in every contest, and the belief is that due to Crono's performances, Chrono Trigger itself has gotten more popular. Chrono Trigger itself getting into the finals of the Spring Contest certainly helps the claim. As the match drew closer, a couple of people mentioned that Liquid Snake could very well make a run at the match, and most of them were laughed at. Aren't unexpected close matches fun to watch? In the very beginning of the poll, Frog jumped out to the early lead, but instead of letting Frog run away with the poll with ease, Liquid Snake soon fought back. Liquid began chipping away at Frog's percentage fairly quickly, though in terms of the vote gap, Frog managed to hold his own. Frog eventually recovered from Liquid's small push and began building his lead again. However, with every small push that Frog made, Liquid managed to hold his own and avoid being rolled over. Despite the fact that Frog retained control of the poll throughout the first few hours, Liquid constantly made small pushes at Frog's slim lead of only a few hundred as if to let everyone know that the match was far from being over. Despite all of Frog's efforts during the early vote and the morning vote to put Liquid Snake away, he failed to do so. Despite all of Frog's best efforts, the biggest lead that he was able to manage was **460** votes. That's it. It was at this point that the day vote kicked in, and it was at this point that Liquid decided to make a move of his own. Anyone who has been following these contests knows that the day vote is never kind to Chrono Trigger. Crono, Magus, and even Chrono Trigger itself in the spring all managed to suffer during the day vote. And this is where all of Frog's problems began. If characters like Crono and Magus had problems during the day vote, then how could Frog, who is a very distant third in terms of the most popular characters in the game in the first place, avoid the same problems? As the day vote began, Liquid Snake began making a push of his own. Frog's 460 vote lead soon started getting smaller and smaller, and even though Liquid never managed any massive, constant pushes on Frog's lead, he still kept a slow, methodical pace. As Liquid constantly used the day vote against Frog, the best thing that Frog was able to manage was to occasionally stall Liquid's advance. But even then, Liquid kept managing to chip away at Frog's lead. Frog tried as hard as he could to fight back, but by the time the evening rolled around, Liquid proved to be too much for him. Much like the Chrono Trigger/Link to the Past match in the spring, the match between Frog and Liquid Snake was tied before the evening rolled around. The typical evening demographic favors Square, but Liquid seemed to care less about this. Much like the Chrono Trigger/Link to the Past match in the spring, Frog and Liquid Snake defied any and all voting patterns in the dogfight that was to follow. For the next few hours of the poll, Frog and Liquid Snake went at it like animals (bad pun, I know =p). For every small push that Liquid made, Frog was able to counter and keep the match close. Every time one character looked like he was going to pull away and begin building a lead in the match, the other character was able to counter and pull the match even again. This match was unlike CT/LTTP in that during the time that Frog and Liquid were tied, both characters were constantly making pushes to try and separate themselves from the other. In CT/LTTP, Chrono Trigger was the entrant constantly breaking away from its opponent, while LTTP was the one constantly trying to catch up. Frog/Liquid was different. Through the entire evening, there were no subtle hints as to which character would be the one to finally break away and win the poll. The two simply went at it as if they were in a war, and the loser would likely be the first one to blink. Through the entire evening, we were constantly seeing a pattern of one character going ahead by a little bit, with the other character fighting back and refusing to give up. No matter who you were rooting for to win, seeing two characters stay dead even for a time period of several hours was truly a sight to behold. Unfortunately for Liquid Snake however, Frog was the one to finally make a major push at winning the match. As the evening wore on, Frog finally found enough of the evening Square voting pool to draw from, and after a slow push that was similar to the way Frog built his lead in the beginning of the poll, Frog managed to slowly build a lead of 170 by the time 1 AM rolled around. But even still, what happened in the next two hours made Frog's win look very unconvincing. Frog's advance came to an absolute halt at 1 AM, and Liquid Snake, ever the "Why the hell won't you just *die*?" character if there was one, began a desperate final push at Frog's lead. Unfortunately for Liquid, it was too late. There were not enough votes coming in at that point in the poll for him to stage a comeback, and it was clear after an hour that Frog's incoming votes would have to stop altogether in order for Liquid to win the match. Despite all of Liquid's efforts to make a huge push in the match, it soon became clear that it would take a small miracle for him to pull it out. Liquid Snake made a nice push in the final two hours of the poll, but the only thing that there was to root for was for the vote difference in the match to be as close as possible. It was clear that Liquid wasn't going to win, but at least he has a place on the "Closest Matches of All Time" list. A 93 vote difference is nothing to sneeze at, and you only have to wonder if things could have been different had Liquid started his final push an hour earlier. Another thought to ponder is how this match would have turned out had Liquid started his day vote comeback an hour or two earlier. The problem in analyzing this match is that both characters were brand new to the field when coming into it. There are a lot of ways to look at how each character did, though a majority opinion was reached when looking at them both in a positive and negative light. - **Chrono Trigger spoilers**\* \- - - - First, look at Frog. It was nice that he got into the field, but when you look at him as a character, it's very easy to argue that Frog doing well in this poll was little more than him leeching off the popularity of Crono, Magus, and Chrono Trigger as a whole. Frog's entire character is based off of Magus. Frog's best friend was killed by Magus, and Frog himself was turned into a frog in the process. This is tragic for the little guy, but the way he handled it was pathetic. He did little more than sit down in his little hole whining about his fate all the time. When you meet him, he whines about how how powerless he is. He is always toying with whether or not he should join the party, but no matter how much you try to help him, he constantly goes back into his little hole to whine about everything. As events progress, you learn that the only way to defeat Magus is with the Masamune, and you also learn that Frog is the only character who can wield the sword. So naturally, given that Frog can do little more for himself but sit and whine in his little hole, you have to go find the Masamune parts and get the sword fixed for him. But that's fine, right? Given that Frog was such a pain in the ass to get in your party in the first place, he surely has a positive effect when you finally get him in your party for good. After all, he must have some huge in-battle secret that has been hidden for all this time, right? Yeah, the secret is that Frog absolutely sucks in battle. He is outdone physically by three other characters, and his most powerful spell is Water 2. The only way for Frog to be of any use whatsoever is for him to constantly be in critical status so that Frog Drop may cause damage. You can also commit Frog to using Dual Techs, but then you're wasting the turns of other characters when they would likely be better off doing damage for themselves. But all that being said, Frog's attitude once Magus joins your party is priceless. Instead of growing some manlihood and trying to understand Magus's past, as well as his intentions, Frog does nothing more than sit there like a ball of snot and keep to himself about everything. Later in the story, Magus's entire past is laid out in front of you, and Frog still acts like a selfish ball of snot about everything. All he cared about was a duel with Magus. That's it. He's a bad character with little to no development at all, and he sucks in battle. If he isn't a prime example of someone who did well in the contest because of leeching, I don't know what is. - **Metal Gear Solid spoilers**\* \- - - - Liquid Snake, while clearly a better character than Frog, is equally difficult to look at. There is no way to tell whether or not Liquid is weaker than Solid by a great deal, whether or not he comes close to Solid, whether or not he leeches off of Solid, or whether or not Liquid's stock went up simply due to bracket voting. If you noticed, over half of all brackets had Liquid Snake winning this match. If for nothing else, this proves that Liquid has more mainstream exposure than Frog does. And while Frog is busy pulling his best Alice In Chains impersonation (they have a song called "Down in a Hole", for those who don't listen to them), Liquid Snake takes his unfavorable fate and does something with it. Using a group like FOXHOUND to fit your own desires is not an easy task, and even though Ocelot had his own intentions the entire time, he still managed to assist Liquid in his plot. Liquid Snake was so damned good at what he was doing that despite the fact that he could have theoretically done Solid in whenever he chose, he instead chose to toy with him. This, along with Liquid believing that he was the inferior sibling in the Les Enfants Terrible project, were Liquid's only weaknesses. Had Liquid acted to the fullest extent of his power without believing himself to be inferior, I fully believe that he could have beaten Solid Snake. But regardless of all that, Liquid is clearly the better character than Frog, and comparing the two in battle is pointless. Frog's entire character is very easily summarized, while Liquid's character is being debated among Metal Gear Solid loyalists even today. Why did Liquid believe from the start that he was the inferior sibling, and why did he let this influence his actions? We may never know, and I demand that MWIS get in this topic and give me his opinion on the subject. No matter who you were rooting for in this match, it is clear that some degree of respect needs to be given to both characters. Frog may be leeching off of the characters clearly better than him in Chrono Trigger, but regardless of this, he was still able to have enough power to win the match in the end. And Liquid, complete contest newcomer, managed to put up a fight that would allow this poll to go down as the closest wire-to-wire poll in contest history. It may be a very long time until we see another poll in which the largest gap is 480 votes or less at any point. I tip my hat to Liquid here, because even though he lost, he proved that he can cause some real damage in this contest given a bracket that favors his positioning. Another thing that I believed that this poll helped prove is that Liquid may very well be close to Solid Snake in popularity. It's hard to believe that both Liquid and Frog could be all that far away from him. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Board 8’s hero of the year in 2004 was Frog. Probably the board's most-nominated character, Frog had a huge push and a plethora of hype to get him into the contest. Most people figured he was a lock to take his four-pack, which consisted of Master Chief, Crash Bandicoot, and his first-round opponent, Liquid Snake. Well, this was Liquid’s inaugural year as well, and if there’s one thing Liquid Snake does not do, villains contest withstanding, it’s roll over and die. Frog got off the ground to a good lead, but Liquid kept cutting and cutting into said lead until the match became totally debatable. In the end, Frog does what Frog does best and made a huge push to victory. Funny thing is, this wouldn’t be Frog’s last debatable match that year – his match against Master Chief in Round Two was more of the same, and his match against Snake in Round Three was a fluke of Tifa/Samus proportions. Weird guy, that Frog. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1730&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Master Chief vs (14)Crash Bandicoot 2004 _source: (3)Master Chief vs (14)Crash Bandicoot 2004 (revid 64110)_ ## Results Saturday, August 14th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 14th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 31,917 - **Oracle Expectations:** Master Chief - 63.90% 76 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Master Chief - 76.58% (25,441 brackets) Is it possible to have a bigger fall from grace than Crash Bandicoot? Here we have a guy who has gone from being a 2 seed in 2002 to being not just fodder in 2004, but fodder to an Xbox character. Master Chief's stock in this contest has a very bright future, but seeing anything remotely related to the Xbox score 70% in any poll whatsoever on this site means that the loser of such a poll, Crash Bandicoot in this case, needs to get out of the contest and make way for someone more deserving. No one cares about 3D platformer characters anymore, and it showed in this match. Some people might not like Master Chief, but it seems that no one likes Crash Bandicoot anymore. Easiest analysis ever =) There was one interesting note to be drawn from this poll. While Frog was busy having the fight of his life against Liquid Snake, Master Chief was on cruise control here against Crash. Whether or not this meant the end of Xbox hate was yet to be determined, as was whether Halo's success had anything to do with Master Chief doing so well, but one thing we know for sure is that the Frog/Master Chief match looked mighty interesting after this day was done. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1731&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Kefka vs (10)Knuckles the Echidna 2004 _source: (7)Kefka vs (10)Knuckles the Echidna 2004 (revid 80283)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, August 15th, 2004 - **Division:** 20XX - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 15th, 2004 - **Vote Difference:** 12,358 - **Oracle Expectations:** Knuckles - 60.99% 71 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Knuckles the Echidna - 44.33% (14,302 brackets) \|- ## Ulti's Analysis Don't let the final score of this match fool you. Knuckles was in quite a bit of trouble in this match for quite a long time. Coming into this poll, Knuckles was expected to break 60% on Kefka with absolute ease based off of 2003 numbers. When you factor in that both Luigi/Pac Man and Crono/Conker shoot down the theory of Crono/Kefka SFF in 2003, there was little reason to believe that Knuckles wouldn't be able to steamroll Kefka in this poll. Most of the people who follow stats already knew this, and anyone who dared bring up how they felt Kefka had a chance was laughed at. But as the poll began, we were all shocked to see that Kefka was not only holding his own, but building a lead as well. Despite the Lettuce Kefka match pic, the fact that Knuckles was the overwhelming favorite on the board, and despite the fact that Knuckles was expected to break 60%, not just win, based off of 2003 stats, the board caught fire during the first few hours of this poll. Kefka's lead was relatively small -- around 130 votes at the most, if I recall -- but despite every attempt that Knuckles made to take Kefka's lead away, Kefka held his own and hung on tightly for the first few hours. The board was fun to watch during this time, but after the Sega morning vote kicked in, Knuckles began doing what he was expected to do right from the start. Knuckles not only came back against Kefka with ease, but he made a massive push at the poll and never looked back. Still, Knuckles put forth a very disappointing performance despite recovering from his early setback. The entire theory of Crono/Kefka SFF in 2003 started coming up again, and whether or not it truly existed was the hot topic for the entire match. Personally, I don't think this match proves that there was any SFF during Crono/Kefka at all. Take a look at the prediction percentage for this match. Well over 55% of brackets thought that Kefka was going to win this match despite Knuckles' past performances in this contest. There is also the Lettuce vs Enchilada factor; lettuce is far easier on the stomach than enchiladas for many people. Kefka getting the lettuce pic, in all seriousness, may have helped him get a large amount of the early support in the match. When you pair that with the bracket voters, it isn't hard to imagine Kefka taking the early lead. When you add all that to the people who fill out their brackets under the "Square characters always win close matches" clause, Kefka's performance doesn't come with as big a surprise factor as it did when we were all watching the poll in the first place. Something caused all of those people to go with Kefka, and it certainly couldn't have been last year's performance against Pac Man. Square could very well be on the rise in these contests, and thanks to the fact that Final Fantasy 6 has mainstream appeal on this site, Kefka could very well have been one of the recipients. Crono/Kefka SFF in no guarantee simply because of this one match. I just feel that Kefka was an anomaly in the stats, and Knuckles helped prove my theory in the next round. Knuckles may be the weakest character to win a match in all three contests, but maybe this is because he's always stuck against Snake in the second round? Just a thought. ## Stats and Analysis This match provided some interesting debate before the contest. Though Knuckles had more contest success, Kefka was the 7 seed to Knuckles' 10. Kefka was coming off of an embarrassing near-loss to Pac-Man, while Knuckles was smarting from another Snake loss, and set to suffer another. Before the match, we all learned that Lettuce Kefka would make his reappearance, leading to groaning across the board, who genuinely wanted Kefka to do well. Kefka opened this match up with a bang, hanging onto a 100+ vote lead. But it only took half an hour for Knuckles to cut up this lead. During a war of attrition that lasted 3 hours, Knuckles finally got the lead himself, but his margin increased very slowly. After 3 hours, the lead started to increase more, and by morning, Knuckles had taken Kefka out of the match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1732) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Solid Snake vs (15)Tanner 2004 _source: (2)Solid Snake vs (15)Tanner 2004 (revid 85060)_ ## Results Monday, August 16th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 16th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 69,759 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 85.77% 78 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 97.27% (32,314 brackets) Before this match, the two biggest examples of loser we ever had were Mr. Driller and Adventure. Adventure held the record for the lowest voting output, while Mr. Driller was considered the weakest character we ever had in the field. In one 24 hour time period, this all changed. Solid Snake is a great character and all, but the only way for him to ever score 90% on someone is if they absolutely suck. Snake didn't just score 90, but he came damned close to hitting 95%. This says virtually nothing of Solid Snake's strength, but it says everything about just how much Tanner sucks. How much does Tanner suck, you ask? The aforementioned Mr. Driller and Adventure could each score well over 60% on him. Take a good look at the 2003 Extrapolated standings. Every character above and including Tails could score 80% on him. *Tails* could score 80 percent! But what's worse than all that is the fact that Gordon Freeman could look at Tanner, call *him* a fucking loser, and not sound like a hypocrite. When Gordon Freeman, the man who genuinely tries to lose every match he is involved with, can score over 80% on you, then you know you suck. I love Solid Snake as much as anyone else, but he simply is not strong enough to score 90% in any match, and he's barely good enough to even break 80. Solid Snake was simply the benefactor of squaring off against the worst entrant we have ever had in one of these contests. To think that Tanner was seeded higher than Starcraft is a mockery. Danny Tanner from Full House could probably do better than Tanner did in this match. Tanner got into this contest for one reason, and one reason only. Remember Driv3r? Tanner stars in it, and it was released right smack in the middle of the nomination period. As much of a joke as Tanner is, the Driv3r games have all sold in the millions. Given how many characters are given support during the nomination period, it wouldn't take all too many people to allow Tanner to sneak in above the rest. But I swear, if Tanner somehow manages to sneak back into the field next year, it's time to start hunting down the users who nominate him and allow a perfectly good contest slot to not be used on more deserving characters like Mewtwo, Zelda, Aeris, Geno, Rikku, or even Raiden, Sigma, Dr. Wily, and/or Shion. Anyone but Tanner. I'm not trying to take away from Solid Snake here, because it's nice seeing him do this well in any match; however, something is seriously wrong when Solid Snake can score 90% in any poll. He simply isn't that strong, as his future matches would prove. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis 2004 may have sucked in a lot of ways, but one thing it did give us was plenty of hilarious blowout matches. I’d never thought it possible that there so many different types of blowouts, but 2004 had all of them, and more. But only a select few reach the level of being entertaining, and only a few of that group are classics. Snake vs. Tanner is easily up there with the funniest contest matches I’ve ever seen. The formula is so elegant: put probably the strongest character least likely to get anti-votes against the most generic character imaginable. The result? Over 95% victory. This debacle of a match was the whole reason for the Jay Solano rally (and the reason why Mr. Solano has a Wikipedia page!) – who can we find that’s possibly weaker than Tanner? Whenever you see a new character nobody’s heard of in these contests that’s doomed to failure, they’re “Neo-Tanner.” Tanner reached such high levels of suckitude that he’s doomed to rank last in the all-time Xstats, perhaps forever. Yet his legacy lives on in the hearts of every generic, fodderific protagonist with a gun and a crew cut. Godspeed, Tanner. Godspeed. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1733&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)Duke Nukem 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (16)Duke Nukem 2004 (revid 55818)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 17th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 17th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 53,705 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 85.32% 70 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud - 97.97% (32,547 brackets) Cloud *was* supposed to get upwards of 82% in this match, but after Duke Nukem's picture was put on a milk carton for the match pic, how could you not vote for him? It was one of the single biggest acts of genius ever seen in the contests, and Duke rode the humor all the way to pulling an early lead against the Summer 2003 champion. It didn't last long of course, but seeing Duke benefit from having such a great match picture was fun to see, even if it only lasted a few seconds. Cloud went on to do quite well against Duke, and even managed to break 80% by the time all was said and done. However, Cloud did end up underperforming by over 2%. Whether this could be attributed to the milk pic or a genuine underperformance remained to be seen at this point, but if you extrapolated the strength of Cloud and Link after their first round matches, Link would be expected to win with around 53% of the vote. It could easily be argued that Cloud not matching Link's level could be blamed on the match pic of Cloud's opponent, but theoretically, what would happen if Cloud underperformed, or did nothing more but meet standard expectations at best, while Link did better than expected in every single match? It may not have been something to watch after one round, but as the contest progressed, comparisons between Cloud and Link could not be helped. After all, the only character who had even a remote chance of stopping Cloud was Sephiroth, and there was literally no one on Link's side of the bracket that could touch him. If this contest wasn't all about Link/Cloud beforehand, it was painfully obvious that it was all about the two after this match. Cloud may have underperformed by 2%, but the fact of the matter is that he still scored 80% on a character who is able to get in the second round in many cases. No easy task. It was easy to still defend Cloud after this match, but would the same be possible as the contest progressed? We would see. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1734&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Vyse vs (9)Laharl 2004 _source: (8)Vyse vs (9)Laharl 2004 (revid 55820)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 18th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 18th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 14,072 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vyse - 56.04% 66 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vyse - 66.71% (22,162 brackets) As much as I hate admitting this, this match was nothing more than two cult characters going at it. TRANSLATION: Both characters suck in a contest setting, and we had to sit through a crapfest from the opening bell all the way until 3 AM. I love Laharl more than most people, and it would have been nice to see him win, but it was somewhat obvious that he didn't have much of a chance in this match. Vyse had everything going for him coming in. He was in the contest last year, so he has already had exposure in one of these contests. Skies of Arcadia made the Spring Contest, while Disgaea was busy sitting on the sidelines despite being one of the site's most popular new games between this year and last year. Vyse is also the main character in a decent little series, while Laharl, who is kickass in his own right, stars in a game that most people have never played. Vyse even had the indifferent/bracket voters going for him. When it comes to two characters that most people care about, the tendency is to go with who you're familiar with, hence because Vyse was in the contest last year, more of the people who could care less about either character would have gone with Vyse. When it came times to vote, Vyse also had a similar advantage. Put two things in front of any group of 100 people, and over half of them will always choose the first option. The first option in this poll happened to be Vyse. Of course you could just say that Vyse was going to win because he has more exposure than Laharl, but what's the point in covering everything in one sentence? =) As the match begun, it was clear that Vyse was going to have no problems winning the match, and by the end of it, Laharl failed to even break 40% on a character who was blown out by Donkey Kong. I love Laharl to death, but if this is the best he can do, then it might be better if he gave up his contest spot to someone who would be able to go down with respect. Imagine having to choose between Vyse and Mewtwo, for example. It would be much harder than this match. Another interesting note is that Team Rocket Elite, who was in first place on the leaderboard from day one in this contest, picked Laharl to win this match. His little run at the top (sadly) came to an end after this match =( But I take solace in two facts, however. One, 1/3 of all people chose Laharl to win this match. That surely means that I'm not the only one out there who thinks that Laharl is one of the single greatest characters ever conceived. Two, Laharl may suck in contests, but even he could blow the holy hell out of Danny Tanner. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1735&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Kirby vs (12)Kain 2004 _source: (5)Kirby vs (12)Kain 2004 (revid 55822)_ ## Results Thursday, August 19th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 19th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 23,576 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kirby - 64.13% 69 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kirby - 74.21% (24,653 brackets) That isn't Kain from Final Fantasy 4 up there, folks. That's Kain from the Legend of Kain series. Since Raziel stunk it up for two straight contests, CJayC threw Kain into the mix instead of taking out the Soul Reaver clan completely. Nominations may have also played a part in this, but honestly, who knows. The Soul Reaver clan on the whole has yet to do squat in these contests, and honestly, wouldn't Strider have more of a place here than either Kain or Raziel? Strider took down Raziel in 2002, after all. Regardless, whether it be Kain or Raziel wasting a contest slot, it's still wasting a slot that could be used on a more deserving character. Kain almost got doubled up by Kirby in this match, and even though Kirby kicks ass, he isn't the type of character who is strong enough to be able to do this in most cases. What gets me is the popularity of the Legacy of Kain series as a whole. Kirby's low prediction percentage, as well as Kain getting 35% in the first place, would suggest that the series has its fair share of fans, and because of this we may unfortunately be stuck watching Kain and/or Raziel getting their asses handed to them every year. I've played Soul Reaver, and I honestly don't get what the big deal is. It came off to me as having the gameplay of a vampiric Zelda more than anything, but it wasn't nearly as well-done. In the end, we had another ho-hum match in a contest that had been ho-hum as a whole. With the exception of two matches, virtually every match in the contest was like this. The winner was obvious, the match was boring to watch, and a shakeup was not only becoming a hope, but a necessity. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1736&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Squall Leonhart vs (13)Bomberman 2004 _source: (4)Squall Leonhart vs (13)Bomberman 2004 (revid 55824)_ ## Results Friday, August 20th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 20th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 23,943 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 71.00% 68 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 79.82% (26,517 brackets) In 2002, Jill Valentine went through Kirby and Bomberman in order to reach the Sweet 16, with Kane from Command and Conquer being the odd man out. In 2003, Bomberman and Kirby got stuck in a fourpack with Alucard and Ramza, with Alucard being the one to go through both Bomerman and Kirby. Ramza was the weakest link, and he was left out. In 2004, we have more of the same. Bomberman and Kirby are both thrown into the same fourpack as a character who is clearly stronger than both of them (Squall), and a contest newbie who is clearly weaker (Kain). I don't know if this is a running gag or what, but at least it fits. In all three contests, we have had a character go through Bomberman and Kirby en route to the Sweet 16. However this year, the character who was the benefactor of this position -- Squall in this case -- was royally screwed over. Squall deserved far better a reward for upending Jill Valentine and Luigi last year than being stuck in a company-based bracket in which his fate would be to get his ass mercilessly beaten all over the place by Cloud in the third round. In a better bracket, people could have underestimated or overestimated the holy hell out of Squall. In this bracket, his role was all to clear. Beat up the weaker characters, then take the expected loss to Cloud. But more on that later in the contest. Based off of 2003 numbers, Bomberman was only projected to get 30.88% on Squall in this match. He did nearly 5% better than what he was projected to, which bodes a few questions about the Final Fantasy 8 lead. First off, what was going on here? How could Squall return back to his 2002 level while characters such as Link, Cloud, and eventually Sephiroth, were all performing up to their current standards? Did Squall take a drop between last year and this year, or was it possible that Luigi and Jill were simply far weaker than what we first anticipated? Whether Squall truly took a dive or not remained to be seen, but if this had anything whatsoever to do with the Kingdom Hearts Factor wearing off, then this could only mean good news for Link. It was nice seeing Bomberman doing so well, but to see a match off by almost 5% of the original projection with little to no reasons is very odd. Personally, I think that Luigi and Jill Valentine are simply far weaker than everyone thought after the 2002 contest, and that Squall looked stronger in 2003 than he truly is. Take creativename's 2004 Xsts as an example. Despite Squall's underperformance against Bomberman, 2004 numbers project Luigi getting 38.81% against Squall, and they project Jill Valentine to get a mere 34.89%. Squall's aura of power had little to do with Squall being that good on his own. Luigi and Jill simply made him look that way. I'm not saying Squall did nothing on his own, but when he can take an appeared dive in 2004 yet be projected to blow away some of his 2003 numbers regardless, it puts the strength of his opponents, not Squall himself, into question. For all we know, Squall may very well have remained constant across all three contests. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1737&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Ness vs (11)Jak 2004 _source: (6)Ness vs (11)Jak 2004 (revid 55826)_ ## Results Saturday, August 21st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 21st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 7,397 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ness - 50.18% 43 for - 26 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ness - 54.16% (17,992 brackets) This match was the perfect example of an overrated, overhyped dud. When the bracket first came out, this match was one of the few that was heavily debated before hand. The question, of course, is why? One of the many running themes in this contest was that few people will vote for 3D platformer characters despite the games all selling well, and Jak fit into that mold very well. Because of Ness and Earthbound not having a good contest history, Ness was unfairly treated like a joke coming into this match. There are only two matches that you needed to look at in 2003 in order to make a solid prediction in Ness/Jak: Luigi vs Ratchet, and Bowser vs Ness. Bowser is much stronger than Luigi is, yet Luigi's percentage on Ratchet came very close to what Bowser's percentage was on Ness. For Luigi to have such a close percentage to Bowser, he would have to have faced an opponent much weaker than Ness. If that wasn't a blatant hint as to how Ness/Jak would go, then there was one other number of interest. *Assuming no Bowser/Ness SFF*, Jak would need to be able to beat Ratchet with at least 60% of the vote to be considered as strong as Ness. If you add in the possibility of Bowser/Ness SFF, that number gets much higher. Yet despite all of this, the Jak supporters on the board remained strong in their beliefs that Jak's mainstream exposure, Jak and Daxter's sales, and Ness's cult status would equal a win for Jak. I, like many others, had the belief that Ness's cult status didn't matter. Mainstream voters don't vote in our polls; we do. The average person might not know who Ness is, but most of the people who visit GameFAQs -- a site that favors console RPGs above all other genres -- are hardcore gamers. And most hardcore gamers know who Ness is, be it from Earthbound or the Smash Brothers series. When the poll started, Ness jumped out to a quick 1000 vote lead, and after the early morning vote kept the vote margin tied at 1000 for a time, the day vote favored Ness. He caught fire during that time, and rode the momentum all the way to a 55-45 blowout. I call this a blowout simply because if you went by board polls and/or BOP numbers, this poll was supposed to be dead even. The reality is that many people underestimated Ness simply because Ness, as well as Earthbound itself, bombed in past contests. But like I've said in every match involving them, no one cares about 3D platformer characters anymore. Jak is just another 3D platformer to this site, and he is no exception to the trend. His games may have sold well, but so did Tanner's. And Tanner is still trying to pull little pieces of shrapnel out of his skin over in the corner. The fate of Ness may have been little more than getting killed by Auron in round two, but it was nice to actually see him win a match. Ness isn't the type of character who deserves to be treated like a joke. Save that for the likes of Gordon Freeman and Tanner =) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1738&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (14)Scorpion 2004 _source: (3)Auron vs (14)Scorpion 2004 (revid 55828)_ ## Results Sunday, August 22nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 22nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 26,744 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 61.73% 70 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 70.14% (23,301 brackets) No one really knew what to expect of this match, except that most people knew that Auron would win with ease. The question, of course, was by how much. Scorpion was projected to score 43.06% on Auron going by the 2003 numbers, so naturally, a lot of questions can obviously be raised after seeing that Auron not only beat his projected percentage, but blew it away completely. Any one of a hundred reasons could be blamed for this, but I think that two stand out from the rest. First and foremost, it could easily be argued that Auron suffered a good deal of SFF against Cloud in 2003. The 2003 Xsts are currently unadjusted for SFF, so Auron may look far weaker than he truly is based off of 2003 numbers. But if this were true, then this would mean that Tails would have to be stronger than expected as well. Since this was not possible to know at the time (Tails had not yet had his match), this was merely a speculation. Secondly, Scorpion went down in strength from 2002 to 2003 despite having Deadly Alliance released in the time period between the contests. To my knowledge, Scorpion appeared in no games between 2003 and 2004. With that in mind, what reason could there be to believe that he didn't take another fall in strength? If he can go down despite a new game, there is little reason to believe that he wouldn't go down while appearing in nothing. It's quite possible that Auron's performance was a combination of Cloud/Auron SFF as well as Scorpion's weakness as well, but as the contest progressed, it became clear that it was more a Cloud/Auron SFF factor than it was the strength, or lack thereof, of the two characters in the match. **Summary**: Everyone knew Auron was going to win this match, but Auron doing as well as he did suddenly made Tails look like he could very well take down the heavily favored Viewtiful Joe in their match later on in the contest. Auron looked pretty damned strong after this match, but a certain match with Ness would throw all of this into question later. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1739&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2004 _source: (7)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2004 (revid 55830)_ ## Results Monday, August 23rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Monday, August 23rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 11,105 - **Oracle Expectations:** Vivi - 51.63% 53 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Vivi - 35.13% (11,671 brackets) The "instinct" pick for most board members in this particular match was Vivi. After all, Aya Brea pushed Donkey Kong to the brink before the Nintendo day vote saved Donkey Kong's rear way back in 2002. Could Aya Brea of Parasite Eve fame possibly be around Vivi's level in strength? However, it was soon discovered that Donkey Kong had the mathematical advantage, albeit a false one, heading into the match. For starters, no character had a larger weighted gain in percentage from 2002 to 2003 than Donkey Kong himself. The 2003 stats also put Donkey Kong right in the middle of a pack of decent midcarders such as Luigi, Jill Valentine, Master Chief, Tommy Vercetti, Knuckles, and Kirby. If you would have trouble picking the likes of Vivi to take down any of those other characters, then why pick him to beat Donkey Kong? The DK over Vivi upset special was a decent choice, though there were two factors not mentioned in the stats. Donkey Kong may have had the largest weight gain between 2002 and 2003, but this is more because of the massive SFF that DK suffered against Mario in 2002 than anything else. Secondly, the 2003 stats also made DK look stronger than he truly was. DK was in a very close match with Tommy Vercetti, and characters are oftentimes overestimated by the math after having been in a close match. When the match began, DK was only in contention for the first few seconds. Whether or not Vivi was aided by the Black Mage Factor, Final Fantasy 9, or anything else soon became irrelevant as Vivi jumped out to a lead that he would never look back from. A match that was supposedly going to be close turned into a surprise spanking, and given what Vivi was up against, his win was all the more impressive. Until this match, Donkey Kong had never lost in the first round of a contest. Furthermore, despite FF9 having been out since 2002, Vivi did not get the support necessary to even be in the field until this year. This match also featured one of the single lowest prediction percentages ever seen for a first round match, thanks to Donkey Kong's icon status in the gaming world being paired with Vivi's niche appeal. Final Fantasy 9 was a good game, but if FF9 alone was the reason Vivi did so well in this match, then Vivi would have been in contests of the past as well. This match was a perfect example of one character's weakness magnifying another character's strength. Donkey Kong, despite his status, has never proven to be reliable whatsoever in these contests. If anything, he is one of Nintendo's weaker links. Everyone knows who he is, but that means nothing when it comes to voting for him above someone else. A certain pill-popping yellow guy can attest to status meaning nothing in contest polls. When this weakness is paired with the fact that Vivi is not just a black mage from Final Fantasy 9, but a black mage period, it is no surprise that Vivi won the match. Besides, even if you hated Final Fantasy 9, you only need to play it for all of 15 minutes to know who Vivi is. And what is Vivi's reward for kicking ass as a first-timer to the field? Being the victim of a company-based bracket. I want to see Vivi in this thing next year so that we can verify his strength. Another conclusion that can be drawn from this match is that the math simply cannot cover everything, but everyone knows that already =) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1740&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Sephiroth vs (15)Sly Cooper 2004 _source: (2)Sephiroth vs (15)Sly Cooper 2004 (revid 88822)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 24th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 24th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 65,362 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 87.99% 67 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 97.37% (32,347 brackets) This may be the shortest analysis I make for the entire contest, because not only was Sephiroth's win in this match predetermined, but his route to Cloud himself was predetermined as well. That's the beauty of a company-based bracket. Stick a bunch of characters from the same company in each division, stack the seedings so that you get the matches you want late in the contest, add in a little fodder, and you get a bunch of matches that don't matter. This was one such match. Everyone knew that Sephiroth would win this match in a massacre, and sure enough, that's what happened. Like I've been saying all through the analysis, no one cares about 3D platforming characters. The games sell well, but they simply don't draw in the votes. Period. Sly Cooper, despite a lot of exposure, is just another example of this. Even worse is the fact that because we know for a fact that Sephiroth could easily beat any character he would be projected to face before Cloud, we got to see Sephiroth reduced to starring in matches that don't matter. 2002 was different. We got to see both Mega Man and Samus at least give us a decent show in facing Sephiroth. The Midgar division this year was nothing but a gigantic, obvious setup for Cloud-Sephiroth in the Elite 8. That match was decent enough to set up considering how close they were last year, but why make the earlier rounds suffer? I'm not disrespecting Sly Cooper here, but it was clear that he was nothing but roadkill from the start in this match. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1741&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (16)Terry Bogard 2004 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (16)Terry Bogard 2004 (revid 55834)_ ## Results Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 49,299 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic - 79.49% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic - 97.47% (32,381 brackets) Only one thing confuses me about this match. As the match was drawing close, a lot of Terry Bogard fans started making the argument that Terry would be able to score 25% in the match. That makes no sense, if you ask me. 2002 Terry would be projected to get a mere 11.35% on 2002 Sonic. Terry obviously suffers in the 2002 stats from Donkey Kong getting SFF'd to hell against Mario, but either way, expecting Terry Bogard to increase from 11.35% to 25% against a contest elite simply because he was in three games that few people had even heard of before Terry was unexpectedly put into the bracket is a little out there when it comes to theories. Those three games may have been what allowed Terry to get back into the field after his abscence in 2003, but I doubt that his small but dedicated fanbase would allow him to make such a large jump in percentage. As the match progressed, many people were surprised by Sonic pushing the issue and breaking 80%. Am I doing these calculations wrong? Because it seems like Sonic scored around where he would be expected to on an adjusted 2002 Terry Bogard. Either way, it was another predetermined, boring blowout in the contest. One thing that this match symbolized was the coming of the chaos division, which was the one division in the entire contest that had an aura of unpredictability to it from the start. 20XX came close, but the surprise in that division was unexpected. In the Chaos division, there were some matches that were hard to gauge no matter how many calculations were done. For a brief time during this match, the argument could even be made that Sonic had a chance against Samus. Not that this came into fruition, but the argument could at least be made after one Sonic match. Of course, Sonic still had to wait until Samus took the field before truly making an argument for himself. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1742&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)KOS-MOS vs (9)Ryu 2004 _source: (8)KOS-MOS vs (9)Ryu 2004 (revid 55836)_ ## Results Thursday, August 26th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Thursday, August 26th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 20,471 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu - 60.08% 62 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu - 70.09% (23,285 brackets) This match was never in question, for the simple fact that both of these characters have a common opponent. Ryu faced Samus in 2002, while KOS-MOS faced Samus in 2003. KOS-MOS gave Ryu a tiny scare in the opening minutes of the poll, but Ryu withstood it and managed to blow the poll wide open in his favor. But we all knew that would happen already. The underlying meaning in this match is that Samus was virtually guaranteed in a spot in the Final Four, assuming you actually believed Sonic could challenge her in the first place. 2003 KOS-MOS would be projected to score 32.09% on 2002 Ryu. As you can see, KOS-MOS beat that projection by almost 6% despite having no new exposure between 2003 and 2004. *Something* changed over the past year, and it doesn't take much to figure out what. 2002 Ryu faced a Samus that only had Metroid, Metroid 2, and Super Metroid on her side. 2003 KOS-MOS had to deal with a Samus fresh off of the duel release of Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime. Because of this, KOS-MOS overshooting her projected output helps show that KOS-MOS faced a much stronger Samus than Ryu had to deal with. When you factor in that the 2003 Xsts don't take SFF into effect, Samus was underestimated by the 2003 stats due to her unaccounted SFF against Link. This left the door open for Samus to drastically increase between 2003 and 2004, and the KOS-MOS/Ryu match was a warning sign that this is exactly what would happen. For some proof, go compare Samus's 2003 expected percentages against Cloud and Squall to her expected 2004 percentages against them. For whatever reason, be it SFF, Metroid Prime/Fusion/Zero Mission taking some time to set in, or Metroid Prime 2 hype, you could tell after one match that Samus went up. It must suck to be Sonic when your entire hope of springing an upset is shot down completely one match after you first take the field. It sucks for KOS-MOS and Ryu that their match helped show Samus's strength more than anything else, but we have reached an age in these contests in which unpredictability is rare, and an age in which we can compare stats across multiple contests to not only predict who can win matches, but by how much. Along those lines, it's difficult to do much else but extend the stats in order to make future predictions. It isn't like we didn't know for a fact that Ryu was going to win this match before it even started or anything. One final note about this match. Sonic was coming off of Sonic Heroes, while Street Fighter Anniversary Collection was to be released just days before Sonic/Ryu. Upset special? Considering how desperate we all were for *anything* major to happen by this point, it was nice to hope for. Fun Fact: This was the only match balrog0 missed in this entire contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1743&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Viewtiful Joe vs (12)Miles "Tails" Prower 2004 _source: (5)Viewtiful Joe vs (12)Miles "Tails" Prower 2004 (revid 55838)_ ## Results Friday, August 27th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Friday, August 27th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 7,673 - **Oracle Expectations:** Tails - 46.96% 13 for - 53 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Tails - 46.30% (15,381 brackets) Until Auron's match against Scorpion, Viewtiful Joe's victory in the match was believed to be a foregone conclusion. After all, Tails has been the sacrificial lamb for contest newcomers for two years running prior to this match. Why would this year be any different? Tails's loss against Auron in 2003 was acceptable, but the match to compare Joe/Tails to is the 2002 match between Alucard and Tails. In 2002, Alucard came into the contest as a relative unknown. What he had going for him was that he was the main character in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Despite the game not selling all that well (just under 1 million copies, if I recall), the game received rave reviews all over the internet, and Alucard was able to ride this momentum all the way to a victory against Tails. Viewtiful Joe fits within the same mold, in a way. His game didn't sell all that well, but those who did play the game gave it rave reviews all over the place. But Viewtiful Joe did not have quite as much going for him as Alucard did in 2002. Not only did SOTN sell close to one million coies, but Alucard himself starred in other Castlevania titles within the series as well. Viewtiful Joe, despite being critically acclaimed, did not give Joe nearly the exposure that SOTN gave Alucard. The game itself has sold around half as well as SOTN, and unlike Alucard, Viewtiful Joe's only appearance was in his one game. But even still, a good argument could be made in Viewtiful Joe's favor. He isn't Alucard, plain and simple. He is the main character from a recent hit, and on top of that Viewtiful Joe had his game released for the Playstation 2 just days prior to his match with Tails. But because of Auron's killing of Scorpion, it became clear that Tails was being underestimated coming into this match. Regardless of how bad Sonic Heroes was, the case can easily be made that Tails suffered a few percentage points in strength due to Cloud/Auron SFF, and if you really want to throw the SFF theories out there, it's very possible that the entire North division could have suffered a bit due to Mario's distant SFF against Link in the finals that year. When the match began, Tails jumped out to a small early lead, and after an attempt by Viewtiful Joe to come back, Tails started using the traditional early morning Sega vote to pull away for good. In a match that was supposed to go to Viewtiful Joe with ease, Tails wound up being the one to cruise to the win. This isn't to say that a 55-45 match is a blowout, but considering how easy it was supposed to be for Joe to pull this out, a 55-45 victory in the other direction is very convincing. Few people were surprised (unfortunately), simply because you could feel it coming after Auron's massive overperformance against Scorpion, but still, it was nice to see an upset. The funny thing about this particular upset is that we lost a lot of perfect brackets because of Tails. I can see matches like Tidus/Shadow and Vivi/DK killing perfects, but losing a perfect because of Tails is pretty damned hilarious. NOTE: NEVER LET HEROIC MARIO FORGET THAT HE LOST HIS PERFECT 2004 BRACKET TO A SONIC CHARACTER =) I kid, I kid. Sort of. Another interesting note is that this match became the biggest BOP upset ever, surpassing even the fabled Halo vs Starcraft epic. And I think this is awesome, because even though the match was more boring than we would have liked, we get to see it stand out in a few areas historically. And besides, Tails finally won a match. Like him or hate him, he didn't deserve to be treated like a joke forever. But what does this say of Viewtiful Joe? If having a game released all of three days before a match can't get him a win, then how is Viewtiful Joe 2 going to help him? I doubt that it will, and Joe is one more example that it's nearly impossible to avoid the traditional 5-12 upset that we see in every contest. Even worse is the fact that Joe may very well turn out to be on the level of the 3D platformer characters (TRANSLATION: THE CHARACTERS THAT ALL HORRIBLY BOMBED IN 2004) as the contest continues to evolve. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1744&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Dante vs (13)Ratchet 2004 _source: (4)Dante vs (13)Ratchet 2004 (revid 55840)_ ## Results Saturday, August 28th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Saturday, August 28th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 44,835 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 73.81% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 85.47% (28,394 brackets) Something about Dante just bores the hell out of me in these contests. In 2002, he expectedly defeated Q\*bert, but even in a debated match against Crono, the actual match was very ho-hum as if his path was directly laid out before him from the start. In 2003, it was more of the same. Everyone knew that Dante would take down Ryo Hazuki, and then in the second round, he faced Ryu in a debated match. He wound up losing that match, but once again, Dante went down in ho-hum fashion with very little outcry from those who picked him to win. In 2004, we see the exact same thing. Dante is yet again a 4 seed, and yet again, he gets a very ho-hum four pack. Dante, Ratchet, Viewtiful Joe, and Tails aren't exactly the most exciting characters to watch in a contest setting, no matter how their matches all go. The only difference this year was that Dante was virtually guaranteed a spot in the Sweet 16 right from the start. He did his part by blowing out Ratchet with 80% of the vote, and even though the illusion of Dante actually being strong was created after this match, this turned out to be false. Ratchet, like every other 3D platformer in this contest, flat-out bombed this year. Simple as that. When you can let Dante get 80% of the vote, you know that you've got some problems. We need to see Dante involved in a decent match, because he has been a bore to watch in action for three years now. The biggest thing to note about him is that he is the only character to get the same seed every year. And when something that minor is the most notable thing about you, you need to do something to draw some excitement to yourself. He may have it coming on the way however, as Capcom is promising that Devil May Cry 3 will put DMC on the map as one of the elite series in all of gaming. Dante also has the benefit of his series having one of the highest sales per release ratios of any gaming series of all time, which could explain why Dante performs on a decent level every year. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1745&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sora vs (11)HK-47 2004 _source: (6)Sora vs (11)HK-47 2004 (revid 55842)_ ## Results Sunday, August 29th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Sunday, August 29th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 25,642 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 59.99% 63 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 75.40% (25,049 brackets) Everyone knew that Sora was going to win this match, and the only people who went against this were those using the Spring Contest as their argument. You know, because KOTOR getting 40% on Vice City means that a character not even required in his own game was going to stand up to the lead from Kingdom Hearts, a game with a heavy Square influence to it. The problem with this match is that HK-47 had never been in one of these contests before, and because of this, we had no way to validate the strength or weakness of either character. All we had to go on were two matches involving Sora, and one of them was a 66-34 blowout at the hands of Aeris. For all we know, HK-47 could have been stronger or weaker than expected, and it's fairly possible that Sora was underestimated coming into the contest due to possible SFF suffered at the hands of Aeris last year. But regardless of all the theories, we had no way to validate Sora's strength until the second round. But even then, due to 2003 Xsts, Sora was expected to lose anyway to either Ryu Hayabusa or Jill Valentine. Jill placed so far ahead of Sora last year that it was assumed that no matter who won the Ryu/Jill match, that the winner would cruise to an easy win against Sora. After all, the only way for Sora to suddenly be as strong as the winner of that match would be for either character to be far weaker than 2003's version of Jill Valentine. There is also the Sora/Aeris SFF theory, but honestly, there is no possible way that Sora could have suffered *that* much...... right? Heh, *sure*. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1746&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Ryu Hayabusa vs (14)Jill Valentine 2004 _source: (3)Ryu Hayabusa vs (14)Jill Valentine 2004 (revid 88824)_ ## Results Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 27 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ryu Hayabusa - 59.99% 63 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ryu Hayabusa - 48.56% (16,132 brackets) ## Ulti's Analysis When the bracket was first released, there were the usual number of debates matches in the first round. But Ryu Hayabusa and Jill Valentine was the match in round one. Not only was this match difficult to call right from the start, but it was widely believed that the winner of the match had a free pass into the Sweet 16 simply because of Jill Valentine placing so far ahead of Sora in the 2003 Xsts. Unlike most debated matches, both sides of this match had a very convincing argument going into it. Ryu Hayabusa, despite being a newcomer to the contest, had a strong case as to why he should win the match. Ryu may not have been in the contest before, but he had a good history in the gaming world with his NES Ninja Gaiden series and his appearances in the Dead or Alive games. When you add in Ryu's recent Ninja Gaiden title on the Xbox and the fact that Xbox fans are very loyal when it comes to voting for their system, Ryu Hayabusa had a decent advantage over Jill Valentine in the match. Ryu also had history on his side, as the only 3 seed to ever lose in the first round of a contest was Gordon Freeman in 2002. But the problem with Ryu Hayabusa is that he was completely untested in a contest environment. It could easily be argued that Ryu Hayabusa could be as strong as the theories all suggested, but the fact of the matter is that no one knew what to expect from him. Ninja Gaiden's Xbox title only sold around half a million copies, which is around the same number of sales from Viewtiful Joe's title for the Gamecube. We all know how well that turned out. On the other side of this was a character whose strength has been seen in the contest twice in the past. Jill Valentine put out a solid performance in 2002, and despite falling off a bit in 2003, she was still a character to be recognized in the contest setting. The large debate in this match came from two sources. First of all, Jill Valentine is an established contest character whose strength has been verified from having done well in the contest for two years. Secondly, take a look at the 2003 Xsts. Jill Valentine is just under Master Chief in strength. How could a secondary Xbox character have the strength necessary to take down Jill Valentine if Master Chief himself could only have just enough conceivable strength to take her down? For Ryu Hayabusa to win this match, he would have to hope for Jill Valentine to take a drop in popularity between 2003 and 2004, and even though this was possible due to her drop between 2002 and 2003, relying on a drop in popularity to win a match is not a good thing to rely on in a contest poll. Another interesting number to look at would be Jill Valentine's vote totals across the 2002 and 2003 contests. She had been in five matches, and in three of them, she managed to score within a 1700 vote range around the 38000 vote mark. Given the vote totals from the Spring Contest, how close the match was expected to be, and how neither character involved in the match had the mainstream GameFAQs support to shoot the vote totals through the roof in a close match, Jill Valentine was primed to score at around that same 38000 total in this match. The question was, would 38000 votes be enough to take down Ryu Hayabusa? One could easily argue that Ryu was a cultish type of character going into the match, so a low-scoring match between the two was not out of the question. When the numbers were all crunched, the final result was that we had a match that was seemingly up in the air from the start. Both characters had an amazing argument for themselves going into it, and the only thing left to do was to actually have the match. For the first time in the entire contest, we actually had a match in which neither character could conceivably be favored over the other due to multiple outside factors. As the match drew closer and closer, everyone knew all of these numbers by heart. We finally had a match in this contest in which both characters had a solid case to make for themselves, and both sides of the board argued the points quite well. We had waited for this match all contest, and the solid intensity of the anticipation was only magnified by the fact that everyone felt that the match was worth three points. The weight of the upcoming duel between these two characters soon grew to a deafening pace, and eventually the entire board was on the edge of their seats in anticipation of a match that hadn't even started yet. At long last, CJayC slapped the poll up, and it was game on for these two characters. Ryu Hayabusa jumped out to a small early lead with the backing of the massive board support that he had, but Jill Valentine was not about to back down. She struck back with a passion after withstanding the initial onslaught, and soon managed to come back in the poll. Not only did she come back, but she began taking it to Ryu Hayabusa with a fury. Jill Valentine began drawing off of the support given to her by the mainstream success of the Resident Evil series as a whole, and she soon began building a lead on the favored Ryu Hayabusa. ....but something was drastically wrong. The characters were doing their part, but for some reason, the vote totals were far lower than expected. Before long, everyone had figured out what was wrong. Thanks to a server error, the poll was glitched. The Ryu/Jill poll was only displayed on the home page roughly half of the time, thanks to half of the servers never updating. On said servers, the Sora/HK-47 match was still being displayed. But regardless of this, the people who were eagerly anticipating the match knew exactly where to vote. The issue came with the lost casual votes. If someone were to go to the home page and still see the Sora/HK-47 match, then they would have no reason to think twice about what was going on. It is impossible to know where all of these casual votes would have gone, though history has proven that casual votes usually compliment the voting pattern of the hardcore votes. But even still, a match that had so much promise soon turned into a match that many people viewed under protest. Many people wanted the poll to restarted after knowledge of the glitch was released, and despite the fact that a lot of people disagreed with this sentiment, many people agreed with the fact that the poll should be restarted. The stereotype among these arguments was that the Ryu Hayabusa supporters wanted a restart because their character was losing, and the Jill supporters wanted to leave the poll along because Jill was in the middle of pulling away in the poll. The reality was that a great deal of those who favored a restart, myself included, simply wanted a fair match. However, it seemed as if the cries for a restart were not being heard. The poll was left running even with the glitch, and there was no word whatsoever from CJayC. Considering that we were in the middle of a heated battle with no other choice, we all went with what we had and continued to pay attention to the poll that we had instead of the poll that we would likely never see. Everyone had accepted the glitch's place in the poll, and because of this, everyone got back to enjoying the match at hand. Jill had begun to slightly pull away, but when the morning vote hit, Ryu Hayabusa began to make a comeback of his own. Jill tried her best to avoid the surge, but before she knew what had hit her, Ryu Hayabusa had used the momentum of his surge to tie the match up. But once again, Jill Valentine refused to roll over in the match. After Ryu made his push to even out the match, Jill Valentine quickly recovered and started to pull away with the late morning vote. It was somewhat of a slow advance, but it was an advance that allowed Jill to take a lead of a few hundred votes on Ryu. Not to be outdone, Ryu Hayabusa used the afternoon vote to stem the tide and begin a small comeback of his own. It was agonizingly slow, but this was more the glitch's fault than it was Ryu Hayabusa's. Ryu's push into Jill's lead was slow at first, but Ryu eventually built up some steam en route to using the traditional Microsoft afternoon vote to his advantage. Before Jill even knew what hit her, Ryu was hot on her tail. Around the time that the evening arrived, Ryu Hayabusa had managed to pull even with Jill yet again. After yet another struggle from the two characters during their phase of being tied, Ryu completed his comeback once and for all. He started pulling away from Jill once and for all during the evening vote, and as the hours wore on, Ryu built his lead to over 400 votes. After a very hard-fought match between the two characters, it seemed as if Ryu had proven to be the more popular character on this day. Jill was periodically stalling Ryu's attempts to increase his lead, but Ryu was doing more than enough to prove that he was in control of the match. All he had to do was hold on for another 5 and a half hou-- IN A.D. 2101 GLITCH WAS BEGINNING RYU H: WHAT HAPPEN ? JILL: SOMEBODY SET UP US THE GLITCH. BOARD 8: WE GET TOPIC. RYU H: WHAT ! BOARD 8: MAIN TOPIC TURN ON. RYU H: IT'S YOU !! CJAYC: HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMAN !! CJAYC: ALL YOUR POLL ARE BELONG TO US. CJAYC: YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO RESTART. RYU H: WHAT YOU SAY !! CJAYC: YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO FINISH MAKE YOUR TIME. CJAYC: HA HA HA HA .... RYU H: TAKE OFF EVERY 'VOTE' !! RYU H: YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DOING. RYU H: MOVE 'VOTE'. RYU H: FOR GREAT JUSTICE. The long explanation: It took until there were just over 5 hours left in the poll for CJayC to realize that there was a problem with the poll, but he eventually noticed that something was wrong. Instead of looking at the voting trend and deciding that Ryu Hayabusa had the match won, he did the right thing and restarted the poll. Most people wanted the poll to be restarted, but it was unfortunate that it took so long for CJayC to realize what was happening. But even still, the right thing was being done in this case. The problem is that because so much of the poll had already been completed, restarting the poll on the next day would likely only cause problems. But more on that in a minute. The quick explanation: Genius. Pure genius. With CATS' decision to force Ryu Hayabusa and Jill Valentine to restart their poll, the tension of the match only grew even higher. The two had already fought each other like brahma bulls on sugar highs once as it was, and now they were to do it all over again. A lot of questions were raised about how the restart would go, and whether or not it was even necessary in the first place. Ryu Hayabusa was very much in control of the match when the restart was announced, and when you add in the fact that almost 19 hours of the poll had already taken place, restarting the poll because of a glitch seemed illogical. For one, the vote totals of a second poll would be rather low, as a good deal of the people who voted in the first poll would have little reason to vote in a restarted poll unless they were closely following the contest. Another good point that was brought up was how the restart would affect the voting patterns. Would the Jill Valentine supporters come out in force, knowing that they were essentially being given a second chance? Would the Ryu Hayabusa suporters counter this support, knowing full well that they would need to? And what would be the purpose of announcing a restart so late in the glitched poll in the first place? It was somewhat obvious that Ryu was in control, and should Jill be able to use a restarted poll to her advantage and win, it could have meant chaos. It was fair to restart the poll, but not after 75% of the poll was complete in the first place. There was no evidence that the voting pattern would not have been the same had there not been a glitch, and restarting the poll after no much time had elapsed was an odd decision. Regardless of the risks involved, CATS' decision is the word of Jesus himself. Going against His prophecies means certain death at the hands of gotspork and the CATS Army, and in an effort to avoid a Board 8 civil war, the decision was accepted by most of the masses. There is no screwing with gotspork or CATS around these parts. Period. Death is the only consequence of any rebellious intent. After the debates on whether or not the poll restart being an acceptable decision were over, the attention soon turned to the match at hand. Not only did the debate from the night before rage on, but now there were concrete numbers to work with. And despite the fact that Ryu Hayabusa was in control after 75% of the first poll was done and over with, it took a comeback for him to do it. It was unlikely that Jill Valentine would simply roll over and let him have the match after being given a second chance, so Ryu Hayabusa would once again be in the fight of his life. After much deliberation, discussion, and analysis of the numbers already at hand, there was only one thing left to do: take the two characters and let them go at it one more time. With the agonizing wait finally over, we were finally able to see Ryu Hayabusa and Jill Valentine ripping into each other once more. Ryu Hayabusa opened up the restarted poll by jumping out to the early lead, but like the first poll, Jill Valentine did not take it lying down. She withstood the initial push from Ryu Hayabusa, and began making a comeback that was eerily similar to the first poll. And much like the first poll, Jill Valentine managed to come back and fight with Ryu for positioning before finally pulling away with a lead. But once again, Ryu Hayabusa's ninja skills took over. Despite Jill's best efforts to pull away in the match, Ryu Hayabusa constantly made small efforts here and there to cut into Jill's slim lead and make a comeback of his own. When the morning vote kicked in, he finally managed to get just enough support necessary to cancel out Jill's lead and make just enough of a push to tie the match up again. But yet again, Jill Valentine refused to die. After watching Ryu build a minimal lead of his own, Jill Valentine finally made the move that she had been trying to make since the beginning of this marathon match. She used the late morning vote to not only pull away from Ryu Hayabusa, but she also began to bury him. What was once a very close match had quickly hit everyone by surprise as Jill Valentine began pulling away in a manner that made the match look completely out of reach for Ryu Hayabusa. It was less about who would win the match at this point, and more about how large a margin Jill Valentine would have at the end. Ryu Hayabusa may have made a comeback in the first poll, but Jill Valentine turned a close match into a 970 vote lead for herself in a matter of a few short hours. All that was left to do at this point was to finish out the rest of the poll and avoid the massive whining that was to come from the Ryu Hayabusa supporters that would claim that they had already won the match the day prior. To think that the Ryu supporters had not already started making this claim by this point in the match was absurd. There was a lot of "Ryu already won this match, and what is going on right now is complete BS" sentiment all across the board, and unlike most contest whining, this was actually warranted. But as if possessed by some unseen force, Ryu Hayabusa soon began one of the most memorable comebacks in contest history. When the afternoon voting block began, Ryu Hayabusa began his imminent march to history by stopping Jill Valentine from increasing her lead to anything above 970. After a small bit of struggling, Ryu Hayabusa began slowly cutting into Jill Valentine's lead. It was a meaningless advance at first, but he soon began building up more and more speed until he managed to cut the lead down to 900 votes. No one really bothered to notice what was going on, and people instead chose to take part in the various "Ryu may be losing, but he already won this match once" arguments going on all over the place. Ryu Hayabusa responded to this by slow, methodically cutting another 100 votes off of Jill Valentine's lead. It was down to 800 by this point, but despite a couple of OMFG RYU IS MAKING TEH COMEBACK!!1 topics, people didn't pay much mind to what was going on. For some reason, most of the Ryu supporters still felt that Ryu had little to no chance of winning this match despite his comeback efforts. And in response to his own fans choosing to ignore him for the benefit of arguing a seemingly meaningless cause, Ryu Hayabusa's resolve only grew stronger. As if to give his fans a reason to stop complaining, his comeback speed soon grew even faster. One way or another, someone was bound to take notice of what was going on sooner or later. Despite what was going on on the board, Ryu Hayabusa began to build up some real steam in his comeback effort. Before Jill Valentine even knew what had happened, Ryu Hayabusa drastically turned the momentum of the match in his favor. What was once a 970 vote lead for Jill Valentine soon became 900, then 800, then 700, then 600. By the time Ryu Hayabusa managed to cut the lead down to 500 votes, word of the events within the poll finally caught the attention of the Hayabusa fans who were so fiercely arguing their case as to how they were being screwed by the poll restart. The entire site was seemingly keyed in on the events of the match, and Ryu Hayabusa did not let the sudden attention to the poll divert him from his mission. As if he felt the glow from the eyes of those rooting for him, he turned up the heat on Valentine even more. With the aid of what was now the traditional Microsoft day vote, Hayabusa began tearing into Valentine's lead even faster than he was prior to people taking notice of his efforts, and by the time the evening rolled around, he and Valentine were dead even. Not only did Jill Valentine do little to nothing to stop Hayabusa from coming back, but the traditional "fight as hard as you can while even in the poll" support was minimal at best after Hayabusa tied up the poll. It wasn't until Hayabusa began building a lead of his own did Jill Valentine finally breath some life back into the poll. Hayabusa was still building on his lead, but once the poll drew into the evening hours, Jill started slowing down his advance, and eventually drew it to a complete stop. By the time the restarted poll reached the point of the first poll's end, Ryu Hayabusa had a lead of roughly 450 votes. The voting pattern of the second poll followed the same exact pattrn of the first one, but with two notable exceptions. The voting gaps that the two characters came back from were larger than they were in the first poll, but despite this, the vote totals were actually much lower than they were in the first poll. This was to be expected, of course. But even with the lower vote totals, Ryu Hayabusa, despite getting a huge fight from Jill Valentine once again, proved that his performance in the first poll was no fluke. On two consecutive days, he managed to consecutive comebacks, and after the second poll, he once again found himself in complete control of things. Jill Valentine had stopped him from building his lead, but this was doing little more than assuring a 50-50 split from the incoming votes. Jill was proving to be no threat, and if this continued, then Ryu Hayabusa would need to do little more than keep the split going in order to win the match with relative ease. For the next few hours, this is exactly what was happening. Jill Valentine and Ryu Hayabusa split the vote virtually evenly once the late evening voting block kicked in, and Jill Valentine even managed to take a slight advantage as the evening wore on. But her advantage was minimal at best as she took four hours to cut Hayabusa's lead down from 450 to 300 votes. It was becoming evidently clear that despite the fact that Jill Valentine had given Ryu Hayabusa the fight of his life for two days, Jill Valentine was on her way to a very drawn-out, heartbreaking defeat. But if there was one constant in this match, it was the absolute unexpected. No one could have known what was to happen next, not even the most loyal of Jill Valentine fans. As the final hour of the match began, Jill Valentine did little more than continue at the pace that she had been maintaining for the last four hours. She was cutting into Hayabusa's lead, but it was nothing to be concerned about. After a few minutes however, Jill Valentine built up a slight amount of speed. It was nothing to cause any concern, but it allowed Valentine to cut the lead down to 250 with around 30 minutes left in the match. But right when everyone began to relax after watching one of the most exciting matches to date reach a resolution, Jill Valentine put on a push that would make Starcraft itself jealous. As if 2:30 AM EST was her cue to start raising hell on the poll, Jill Valentine began flat-out exploding once 2:30 came and past. It was a stagnant push at first, but it soon became faster and faster until those watching the poll began to have flashbacks of Starcraft's miracles in the spring. What was a 250 vote lead soon became 240, and Jill then cut it to 230 at an even faster pace. When Jill realized that her pace was not quite fast enough, she put on even more pressure in an effort to come back in the poll. However, despite Jill Valentine's best efforts to make one of the single most shocking comebacks in contest history, she was still working against the clock. With ten minutes left in the poll, even after her virtual orgasm set the poll itself on fire, Jill Valentine still found herself down by 100 votes with 10 minutes left to go. Never one to give up a fight, Jill Valentine began to make a push that was even more fierce than before. Jill Valentine took every cry of "She'll never make it in time!" and used it as extra motivation for herself. That 100 vote lead soon became 90, then 80, then 70, then 60. Jill Valentine made every effort that she possibly could to cap off the miracle comeback. Despite the fact that she was working against low vote totals, the clock, the fact that few votes were coming in, and the fact that most of the board support was going against her, she brushed it all aside and cared about nothing more than coming back in the poll. What was a 250 vote lead with 30 minutes to go became a 100 vote lead with 10 minutes to go, and from there a 50 vote lead with 5 minutes to go. But for all the effort that Jill gave to finally get to the mathematical pace necessary to come back in the match, Ryu Hayabusa did just enough to hold her off for those final five minutes. When the lead was 50 votes with 5 minutes to go, Ryu Hayabusa started fighting her off just enough to keep her under the pace necessary to come back, and as the minutes wore on, Jill's pace was slowing down at a constant rate. It took Jill Valentine almost two minutes to cut the lead from 50 to 40, and it took her another two minutes to cut the lead from 40 to 30. It may have taken a rather long time for Hayabusa to take notice of Jill's efforts, but he managed to do just enough at just the right time. In the end, Hayabusa's slight counterattack within those final five minutes was just enough to save him from disaster. Valentine may have been able to cap off her comeback had there been another two or three minutes for her to work with, but even though CATS was nice enough to give us two polls for the price of one, CATS also decided to stop the poll at exactly 3 AM. When he did so, Ryu Hayabusa found himself up by 27 votes, and barely clinging to the last shred of life he had remaining. He had won the poll, but Jill Valentine had taken him to the absolute brink in the match. If there was ever an example of being saved by the sell, Ryu Hayabusa was it. After the dust settled from the poll, there was really nothing left to do but appreciate what had just taken place. The poll had taken place twice, and when you combined everything together, there were a combined *eight comebacks*. **EIGHT COMEBACKS!!** And there would have been nine had Jill Valentine started her final push all of five minutes sooner. She may have lost, but seeing what she did in those final 30 minutes was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen in one of these contests. Hell, the entire match was amazing. To have a match see such a large amount of hype and exceed them all with such relative ease is a rare sight. No matter who you were rooting for, this match should go down as one of the greatest of all time. It was simply that amazing to watch. Not only that, but we got to watch it all twice. This match was legendary without Jill's final push, but when you add in what she did, this match was truly the personification of tension. The aftermath of a match like this was obvious. The board went crazy. But lost in all of this for quite some time was the prediction percentage. As a 14 seed, Jill Valentine was actually favored. in the match. To my knowledge, this has never happened before. What this symbolizes to me is that Hayabusa did not win this match as much as Valentine herself lost it. If the seedings were reversed, there is little doubt that Valentine would have won. But the seedings weren't reversed, and Ryu Hayabusa was able to ride the Microsoft day vote all the way to victory in a match that wound up breaking the record previously held by Sonic/Samus 2002 as being the closest match of all time. Even better for Ryu was that because he had enough power to take down Jill Valentine, he had more than enough power to take down Sora. We all know what would wind up happening there, but at the time of ths match's conclusion, this was the common belief. As for why the two characters were able to do what they did, this was covered in length before the match even begun. Both characters had a solid fanbase to draw from, even though the Resident Evil fanbase is much larger than the Ninja Gaiden line. In fact, it's difficult to figure out exactly how Ryu was able to pull this out when Resident Evil sales are compared to Ninja Gaiden sales. The only thing I can really come up with is the fact that Resident Evil isn't respected on GameFAQs as much as it is to a mainstream audience. Regardless, Ryu Hayabusa won the match. Twice. Whether this was due to board support, Xbox support, fighting game support, or any combination of the three, the fact of the matter was that Ryu Hayabusa managed to win. An odd theory would be that Ryu Hayabusa winning this match despite having so many things stacked against him would be due to a large drop for Jill Valentine. But this would mean that Sora would theoretically be strong enough to take down Ryu, and considering that Ryu/Jill was practically a guaranteed three points, considering such a possibility was insane. .....or was it? ~\_^ ## Stats and Analysis One of the biggest tossup matches in Round One of 2004’s contest (and heck, one of the only tossup matches in the entire friggin’ thing) actually managed to live up to the hype. Jill and Ryu fought back and forth all damn day, and just as Ryu pulled ahead, with Jill pulling ahead first and Ryu eventually gaining the lead. Back and forth, back and forth, and… what’s this? A glitch in the poll? Turns out on half of the servers, the previous day’s match was still being displayed. Whoops! "What happen" indeed. The match was reran the next day, with the hype factor being even louder. According to Ulti, taking both matches into account, there were a total of eight comebacks throughout the match. That’s absurd, and easily worthy of being one of the best matches in contest history. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1747&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Sam Fisher vs (10)Gordon Freeman 2004 _source: (7)Sam Fisher vs (10)Gordon Freeman 2004 (revid 55846)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 1st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 1st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 8,163 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sam Fisher - 60.67% 62 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sam Fisher - 65.22% (21,667 brackets) And now begins the portion of every contest in which we get to day one day, and one day only, to laugh at Gordon Freeman. In every contest, a spot is given to Gordon Freeman solely to give him a chance to win. In 2002, he was given a 3 seed and a weak Tina Armstrong in a seemingly easy first round match. But the legend of GFNW began on that fateful day as not only did Gordon Freeman lose, but he was blown away by Armstrong's TJF. So what happens in 2003? CJayC was well aware of how big a joke Freeman was after the 2002 contest, so he pits Gordon Freeman against the likes of Max Payne in a match that was seemingly designed to hand over a win to Freeman. But Gordon Freeman winning a match would not adhere to the laws of the universe, not would it? Not only did Gordon Freeman lose to Max Payne, but he was never even in the match. Gordon Freeman went from being a joke to being a flat-out laughing stock, but it would get even worse. Or better, considering your perspective on things. In the Spring 2004 Contest, Gordon Freeman was treated in the way he deserved to be when Half-Life was made a 13 seed and was forced to take on Metroid Prime in the first round. But rather than roll over and die, Half-Life actually wound up giving the heavily favored Metroid Prime a fight in the poll. Metroid Prime jumped out to a 300 vote lead, but Half-Life forced a 50-50 split for the next few hours before finally rolling over to the morning vote. So here we are in Summer 2004, with CJayC back to giving Freeman a first round match that caters to him. Sam Fisher performed well against Magus last year, but even still, he is just another lesser-known male character on the opposite side of Gordon Freeman. Unfortunately for us, we have access to Extrapolated Standings. Fisher finished far too far ahead of Freeman last year for Freeman to have much of a chance in the match, but we still had to sit through this crapfest for 24 hours. When the match began, Fisher jumped out to an expected lead despite multiple Board 8 members voting for Freeman just for the hell of it. But shortly after Fisher jumped out to the initial lead, Freeman began making a push at Fisher's lead. What was once a lead that threatened to hit 200 votes soon became a match separated by a mere 70 votes. But like every match Freeman has been involved with in the past, Freean was merely teasing with the idea of actually winning a match. Freeman's true colors came out, and Freeman's genuine desire to lose soon kicked in to play. Sam Fisher caught the morning vote, and soon after, he ran away with the match. But everyone knew that was going to happen already, didn't they? It was never a matter of whether or not Freeman would actually come back, but how long he would give the illusion of actually trying to win a match. Freeman winning goes against the very laws of the universe, and he soon accepted his role. On a serious note, Freeman did far better than what was expected of him in this match. He was supposed to get blown out, yet he managed to give Sam Fisher quite the battle before finally going down. Whether or not this was a sign of a Freeman strength or a Fisher weakness had yet to be constituted, but it was fun to ponder both sides of the equation during the match. Honestly, what else was there to do? Think that Freeman's good showing in the morning was a sign that he would win? Please. The fact of the matter is that Sam Fisher allowing someone like Gordon Freeman to stay so close to him for so long was only a symbol that Fisher was pretty damned weak in his own right, and he would have likely not won a match in this contest had he faced anyone other than Gordon Freeman himself. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1748&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (15)Lara Croft 2004 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (15)Lara Croft 2004 (revid 55848)_ ## Results Thursday, September 2nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 54,168 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 76.47% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 91.74% (30,477 brackets) The first round of the Summer 2004 Contest ended with a surprise blowout of sorts. Everyone knew that Samus was going to win this match, but the sheer dominance that she showed in beating the holy hell out of Lara Croft raised a ton of eyebrows. Samus began the poll on fire, and she simply did not let up until the match was over. To put this in perspective, Samus had never managed to break 80% in any match she had ever been in in the past, even against Isaac. ....who? Exactly. Samus clearly suffers from unaccounted SFF in the 2003 Xsts, but nothing could have possibly accounted for Samus suddenly gaining the strength to be able to break 80% with ease on Lara Croft, a former 1 seed in the contest. No amount of unaccounted SFF can possible hide the fact that Samus didn't just go up between 2003 and 2004, but she flat-out exploded in popularity between the two years. The question as to why remains unexplained to this day (Metroid Prime/Fusion were released before the 2003 contest), but the rise is there. In fact, if you go by 2003 stats alone, then Samus --- not Cloud, Link, Sephiroth, Mega Man, or anyone else --- but Samus, would be expected to win the contest with absolute ease. It's inexplicable, but for us Samus fans, it was a beautiful sight to see =) On the other side of this, what ever happened to Lara Croft? It certainly takes quite the fall from grace to allow Samus to score 80% on you, but considering that Lara was once recognized as being more popular than Mario himself by the Guiness Book of World Records, as well as the fact that she was once a 1 seed in the contest, a match like this says that she may very well be on her way out the door. Even Pac Man has been able to retain some shred of dignity after falling from his former 1 seed grace, but Lara has seemingly given up ever trying to do any damage in these contests again. She may not be coming back, and to be honest, I doubt anyone will care after she's gone. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1749&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (8)Ganondorf 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (8)Ganondorf 2004 (revid 55850)_ ## Results Friday, September 3rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 3rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 66,655 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 71.16% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 96.07% (31,915 brackets) As if Ganondorf didn't have enough problems going into this match. Take a quick look at that match picture. For the first time ever, we saw Link getting his fresh new look in a match picture, and if it wasn't clear that Ganondorf was going to get destroyed in this match before that picture was posted, the bell was certainly tolling afterwards. But none of this could have possibly prepared Ganon for the beating that he was going to take come match time. From the start of the poll until the closing bell, Link ripped into Ganondorf like a man possessed. It was so bad for Ganondorf that it took him until near the end of the poll just to break 10,000 votes, and in the unadjusted Xsts, CATS is above him. The biggest case of SFF that we had ever seen in a character contest before this match was Mario vs Donkey Kong back in 2002. We thought at the time that it would be the worst SFF beating ever, but this match simply took it farther than we had ever thought possible. Ganondorf went from a character on the brink of defeating Magus to someone beaten down by his Zelda counterpart so badly that the likes of CATS would be projected to do better than him. In fact, CATS did do better against Link than Ganondorf. CATS managed 12.17% of the vote to Ganondorf's measly 12.1%. You know what's really funny? Link vs Ganondorf was the match that every Zelda fan wanted to see in 2003, because it would be "exciting to watch". Link came out in this match to prove that he was championship material, and there was no part of this match in which he looked like anything but championship material. You need flawless performances to prove yourself worthy of the contest crown, and if anyone doubted Link's power after this slaughter, then they were crazy. The only possible way that Link couldn't be crowned the champion right here and now is if Cloud managed to equally surprise everyone during his matches. The entire contest was a game of "Can you top this?" between Link and Cloud, but with Link always being the one to set the bar higher. Oh, and one last thing. I doubt that we will ever see a bigger example of fanbase leeching than Ganondorf. He does very well on his own, but this is with Link out of the equation. When Link is there, well.... you can see what happens for yourself. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis Normally SFF matches are pointless bore-fests that are pretty much the opposite of entertaining, but this match remains the exception. Ganondorf, the potential Noble Nine breaker himself, is put against the flagship of the series from which he draws all of his strength. The result? Link beats him worse than CATS. Let me repeat that: Link beat Ganondorf worse than CATS. My god. When SFF gets this bad it stops being a wasted match and starts turning into comedy gold. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1750&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yoshi vs (4)Luigi 2004 _source: (5)Yoshi vs (4)Luigi 2004 (revid 55852)_ ## Results Saturday, September 4th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 4th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 6,769 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 71.16% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yoshi - 43.86% (14,571 brackets) Considering how debated this match was, the way that it wound up going was somewhat of a letdown for everyone, especially Luigi supporters. But for all of the pre-match hype generated from the match, a small bit of research yielded Yoshi's clear advantage going in. The Bowser/Ness and Squall/Luigi comparison had already been dissected to death by the time this match, but Yoshi's advantage was made even more clear after both characters' performances from the first round were compared. Yoshi's prediction percentage was higher, his vote total was higher, and the total votes from his poll were higher than that of Luigi's. In a match disguised by hype, the math from multiple sources pointed to a Yoshi victory. Sure enough, after some initial jousting between the two Nintendo respresentatives, Yoshi began pulling away in the poll and never looked back. The match was close by comparison standards, but in reality, Luigi barely gave Yoshi a fight at all. It was a surprise to many a Luigi supporter, but to those who analysed the math and/or the Yoshi supporters, this match's result was expected from the start. It was a boring match, but this was the nature of the bracket moreso than the match itself. Even more boring was the fact that the 2003 Xsts called this match to near perfection despite it being an SFF affair. A first round match having this problem is acceptable enough, but not a match in the second round. And even more ridiculous was the fact that this was the only decent match to take place in the entire first two rounds among the Hyrule division. A debated match going exactly the way it was supposed to go = Ulti falling asleep while writing this. On a side note, is anyone else in the mood to buy a bowling ball and paint it Yoshi Green? =) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1751&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Magus vs (3)Crono 2004 _source: (6)Magus vs (3)Crono 2004 (revid 88828)_ ## Results Sunday, September 5th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 5th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 30,822 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 59.79% 58 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 78.50% (26,078 brackets) Of all the contest matches I've seen, this one is the biggest disappointment. How anyone who has played Chrono Trigger could possibly not vote Magus over Crono is absolutely beyond me, but since I promised not to be too biased during this match, I'll keep this short. Crono does nothing throughout the game. Virtually every decision he makes is made for him by party members using peer pressure to drag him along for their asinine needs. And his one moment of glory wasn't anything but suicide. Magus wasn't laughing at him for his own health; he was laughing at Crono because Crono is an absolute moron who flew himself into a fight that was completely unwinnable. And after an entire game in which the main character says nothing whatsoever, the good folks over at Square decided to give Crono some CHARACTER and DEVELOPMENT by having him get married to Marle, whom he had not said a single word to throughout the entire game. "But Ulti!" you exclaim, "*You* are Crono! You play the role of him and put words in his mouth and make his decisions for him and everything!!1" Excuse me, but if I was Crono, not only would I not do half of the crap he did, but I would never be dumb enough to marry Marle. Ever. Oh yeah, the actual match. Crawling, skin, wounds, SFF, etc. Magus was shafted horribly by the seedings in this match. I don't mind seeing Magus losing to Crono (the "hero", if you can actually call Crono that, almost always bests the villain in polls), but a 70-30 beatdown is ridiculous. That said, Magus took the early lead in the poll thanks to the voters that actually have some common sense: Board 8. So the match wasn't a *total* vomit-inducing disappointment. But if there was ever a match that proved that these cute little company based brackets make for some very bad matches, then this was it. I can deal with virtually any other character getting treated like this, but not Magus. Even if you aren't a fan of his, it would have been nice to see whether or not Magus could have verified his strength this year. 35% on Link is no joke, but unfortunately for us, that's the last time we truly got to see what Magus was capable of. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1752&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Bowser vs (2)Mario 2004 _source: (7)Bowser vs (2)Mario 2004 (revid 88829)_ ## Results Monday, September 6th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Hyrule Division - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 6th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 32,796 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 75.50% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario - 92.85% (30,846 brackets) Thanks to yet another "stacked" match from CJayC, we got to see an "interesting" hero versus villain affair in the form of Mario vs Bowser. Someone really dropped the ball on this bracket, because to have such colossal blowout in the second round simply to set up Mario vs Crono 3 is wrong. Bowser and Magus were horribly shafted in this bracket, because in a balanced field they are among the better characters. But sadly, we got to watch two of gaming's finer villains go down on consecutive days simply because there were those who felt that company-based brackets and rigged matchups late in the contest meant for a better contest overall. I'm sorry, but look at the second round prediction percentages for the Hyrule division. With the exception of Yoshi/Luigi, every match in this division was literally predetermined for two rounds. This isn't just boring, but it's flat out wrong. And what was the point? To give Link the easiest road possible into the finals? To set up Mario vs Crono 3? Most people knew for a fact that Mario was going to make it into the Hyrule Semifinals, and those who didn't were likely filling out joke and/or zero brackets. As for those who actually believed in the OMFG MARIO VS BOWSER HOW INTRESTING!1!! nonsense, I feel sorry for you. All three of you. Even worse here is the fact that Crono and Magus were stuck in the Hyrule Division in the first place. If you're going to make a company-based bracket, at least put the characters in with the right company. Why they weren't stuck in the Midgar division is beyond me... oh wait, that's right. Mario vs Crono 3. My apologies. Since it was already obvious that Bowser was going to get royally screwed over by his placement in the bracket by getting SFF'd to hell again Mario, the only interesting comparison to be made from this match was between this match and the one before it. SFF may be a fickle thing to analyse, but in this case, what else did we have to look at? And to this extent, the math was somewhat of a tell as to who had the edge going into Mario vs Crono 3. Magus is stronger than Bowser by a few notches, yet in the two second round matches, Mario and Crono beat their respective opponents by nearly identical numbers. Assuming that Bowser and Magus remained static, the math leading from this would suggest that Crono was stronger than Mario; Mario would have to be weaker than Crono for Bowser to score the same percentage on him than what Magus was able to manage against Crono. Aside from SFF being inconsistent, this was the only way to explain why the two matches were so even. And if SFF were removed from the equation completely, then Mario was in for an uphill climb in his next match. No other way around it. The only way for Bowser to score equal to Magus in any poll was to face a weaker opponent than that of Magus. And even with SFF factored in, Crono clearly had the edge going into their predetermined duel. But everyone knew that already, as the Hyrule divison was that much of a joke. A quick question for those still following the topic: had Mario vs Crono 3 been as exciting as the first two Mario/Crono matches, would suffering through the rest of the matches in the Hyrule division have been worth it? Personally, I say no. But maybe it's just me, especially considering that Mario/Crono 3 could have easily been set up without screwing over Magus and Bowser in the process. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1753&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (8)Tidus 2004 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (8)Tidus 2004 (revid 88830)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 7th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 7th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 26,036 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 60.08% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 70.14% (23,301 brackets) If there was ever an analysis to be made in tribute of my good friend Heroic Mario, this would be the one, because God knows he got damn near everything wrong in the rest of the contest. Coming into this match, the 2003 Xsts projected Tidus to get 44.36% on Mega Man in this match. Most of the board believed that even though Tidus would likely not reach this number, he would at least break 40% in the match. Most people that is, with the notable exception of Heroic Mario. He believed from day one that Mega Man was going to win the contest, and en route to his victory, he would be able to break 60% on Tidus with ease. Needless to say, Heroic Mario was laughed at quite a bit whenever he noted his confidence in Mega Man being able to pull off the beat. But Heroic Mario vowed that he would be the only one laughing come match time. Needless to say, everyone that vowed that Tidus would break 40% were eating crow come match time. Not only did Mega Man start off the match on fire, but Mega Man absolutely obliterated the living piss out of Tidus from pillar to post for the entire 24 hours of the poll. Tidus was virtually never in the match at all, and not only that, but he never showed any signs of breaking 40%. And believe you me, there was not one single topic missed by Heroic Mario when it came to bragging about calling this match correctly. Many people, myself included, were dead wrong when it came to how well Tidus would do in this match. Mega Man killed him, and there is simply no other way of putting it. Tidus's loss in this match ranks as one of the worst ever suffered by a Square character. The worst part about this match is that it's nearly impossible to explain why Tidus collapsed so badly. He performed well in both contests previously, and given the fact that he is a Square character, there was little warning that he would do as badly as he did. Many things can be blamed for this, from the fact that Mega Man is the type of character that few people hate to the fact that a lot of people don't like Tidus to the possibility of Final Fantasy X itself fading. Whatever it was, Tidus absolutely bombed in this match. What does this set up? Tidus being beyond underestimated next year. Just you watch. I absolutely love the hell out of Mega Man, so seeing him show the projected strength necessary to take down Link was fine by me. But I also like Tidus, and actually think he is a good character. It was nice to see a humanized character in a Final Fantasy title that was not only the personification of what many of us would have done in his given situation, but a character who also matures to levels that most of us would be incapable of by the end of the game. Tidus is one of the finest examples of character development that there is, and even though most don't agree with me on this, I simply find him to be a good character. Nothing wrong with that. But this isn't about Tidus as much as it is Heroic Mario. Like I've been saying for two years, Heroic Mario \>\>\> most of you people. He may have been way off in every other match that he tried to call, but the fact remains that he kicked all of our asses in this match. Bow down and pay the respect, fools =) ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1754&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Tommy Vercetti vs (4)Zero 2004 _source: (5)Tommy Vercetti vs (4)Zero 2004 (revid 55860)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 8th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 8th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 19,100 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zero - 62.48% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zero - 31.57% (10,488 brackets) This was one of the single most boring matches in the contest by far. Everyone knew that Zero would win (on the board, at least), and Zero wound up doing almost as expected in the match. As such, I'll just touch on the couple of random other thiings about the match. First and foremost, what the hell is up with this prediction percentage? 20XX was a division specifically designed to give us Mega Man vs Zero (and Zero vs Protoman, come to think of it), in case you couldn't notice. Did anyone see how well Zero did last year? Who was going to beat him? Protoman? Vercetti? MAX PAYNE? Of all the "bracket busters" we have seen, a prediction percentage this low for Zero is borderline stupid. The only thing I can think of is that Max Payne and Vercetti are characters that are well-known among mainstream gamers, whereas the Mega Man X series isn't exactly the most well-known series out there. When most people think Mega Man, they think the original series, not the 2.8 million spinoffs. Secondly, take a quick look at all of Vercetti's matches. He is a horrible draw, which very well could have been a big part of the reason Zero only did as expected in the match. This is only speculation, but what else is there to talk about in such a boring match. Finally, this match set up the blatantly obvious Mega Man vs Zero duel that would decide the true ruler of the 20XX division. Joy. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1755&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Frog vs (3)Master Chief 2004 _source: (6)Frog vs (3)Master Chief 2004 (revid 88832)_ ## Results Thursday, September 9th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 9th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 7 - **Oracle Expectations:** Frog - 51.17% 44 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Frog - 22.56% (7,495 brackets) This was, without a doubt, the best match of the entire contest. It completely shattered the margin of victory record of 27 set by Ryu/Jill just days before this match took place, and the 22.56% prediction percentage was the lowest prediction percentage of any match in the entire contest. But believe it or not, there weren't very many signs of what was about to happen in the days leading up to this match. During the nomination period, Frog was one of the characters that Board 8 latched onto the most. CJayC even mentioned a strong fan drive putting him into the field, and that drive was us. As such, Frog being stuck in a relatively weak half division with the likes of Liquid Snake, Master Chief, and Crash Bandicoot was a blessing. After all, Board 8 got to see their beloved little ball of snot in the Sweet 16 before inevitably going down at the hands of Solid Snake. But as Lee Corso would say, NOT SO FAST MY FRIEND! In the first round of this contest, Liquid Snake was able to give Frog the fight of his life before after falling behind by 480 votes. Liquid not only fought back, but he made every effort he could to try and pull away from the Chrono Trigger swordsfrog. Unfortunately for Liquid, Frog was saved by the skin of his warts come the night vote, and even then, Liquid turned a late 170 lead into a win of merely 93 for Frog. Frog had no momentum whatsoever coming off of a match like that, and given Master Chief's absolute maiming of Crash Bandicoot in the match just after that took place, the wheels for a possible barn-burner were set into motion. Master Chief looked primed to take down the Chrono Trigger representative when it looked like he would never have any chance at him in the first place, but thanks to both Frog and Liquid being new characters, there was nothing to base this on. It was more of a feeling than it was statistical evidence. Circumstantial evidence perhaps, but nothing concrete. For all we knew, both Frog and Liquid Snake could be leaps and bounds above Master Chief in strength, and all of the debating would be for nothing come match time. For a match that wound up being an all time classic, it certainly didn't start off that way. When the poll first opened, Frog looked like someone who was being underestimated far too much. He not only jumped on Master Chief early, but he began opening a can on Master Chief en route to a 60-40 lead after the first hour of the poll. He was up by nearly 600 after the first hour, and with the percentage with which he was racking in the votes, this match looked like yet another one of the many overhyped duds that we had been plagued with through the entire contest. But after that first hour, Frog's advance began slowing down somewhat. Master Chief began coming back in the percentage, but Frog was still able to increase his lead with relative ease, and even though he was no longer pulling in 60% of the vote, he was still able to pull in roughly 58% of it. After 3:30 of the poll was complete, Frog was up by 1155 votes and in absolute control of the match. Once the morning vote hit, Master Chief finally decided to show everyone that he still existed. He managed to slow down Frog's advance very well, and even won a couple of meaningless updates here and there. The overall vote lead was still yet to be in question, but Master Chief was at least starting to show that he was not dead just yet. But even still, all Master Chief was really doing was teasing those who were rooting for him to win the match. He may have begun coming back in percentage, but he never made a true push at Frog's lead during the morning vote. All he did was split the vote 50-50 with Frog for a little while before Frog began pouring it on once again. After Frog absorbed Chief's minor noise in the morning, he began to extend his lead once again. And like the beginning of the poll, Master Chief barely did anything whatsoever to fight back. From the end of the morning vote until around 2:30 PM EST, Frog took it to Master Chief like an absolute champion en route to building a lead of 2400. There was very spaced and very minor resistance from Master Chief during this, but overall, the match looked to be about over. The percentages for Chief was respectable enough, but aside from his minor blip in Frog's advance during the morning vote, there was absolutely no sign whatsoever that Frog wasn't going to cruise to an easy 5000 vote victory in this match. 5000 votes may not be all that much, but considering how hyped the match was, Master Chief never being in it from the start was a disappointment. But just when the Chrono Trigger fans were celebrating the victory for their little ball of snot, Master Chief finally decided to show the power that he was capable of, and the very force that made him such a supposed threat to win the match in the first place. Between 2:30 PM EST and 3:00 PM EST, Master Chief took 80 votes off of Frog's 2400 vote lead. It wasn't much, and everyone simply wrote it off as the standard Xbox day vote. This was a fair assumption, because as the contests have shown, Microsoft has always been at its best during the day. With this said, Master Chief took another 73 votes off the lead between 3:00 and 3:30. It wasn't much, but it was a sign that he wasn't quite out of the poll yet. Still, Master Chief would need to make far more noise than simple 40 vote updates if he wanted any chance of coming back against a Squaresoft character on GameFAQs. He needed to begin pouring it on with absolute overkill, so much so that even the most loyal of Square fans would be powerless to stop it. If the previous hour wasn't a sign of what was about to happen next, then everyone was certainly aware of the upcoming events once the entirety of GameFAQs, as well as many other parts of the internet, were neck high in the events. Not only did Master Chief continue his comeback efforts, but he went on the tear that had to be seen in order to be believed. He went from pulling in 40 votes per update to pulling in 100, and from there, he began pulling in 150 votes per update. Not only was this more than enough to get him back into the match, but Chief also proved that it was no mere inconsistency in the system. He kept up the pace with absolute ease, and what was once a poll that projected Frog to win by 5000 votes turned into a poll that was projecting Master Chief to not only come back, but to win by 4500 votes in his own right. Very few matches have such a dramatic change in the voting pattern, but this was one of them. Master Chief was on an absolute roll, and everyone was powerless to stop it. Not only did Master Chief keep up the massive pace that he was caught from the Xbox day vote, but he managed to maintain it with ease. Most comebacks are stalled at various points, but Frog did absolutely nothing whatsoever to stop the bleeding. He let Master Chief pull in 150 votes per update like it was nothing, almost as if he had given up. Master Chief took advantage of this, and in a mere five hours, he brought a 2400 vote lead down to a tie. For those who can't quite believe their eyes, I have Mumei's update chart for the match archived. Here is the five hour block in which Chief made his comeback (see the graph below) In most comebacks, there is usually a massive stall once the characters are tied. Master Chief's dominance during the day vote was proven once he managed to not only come back, but when he flew right past Frog. During the evening, no less. Square usually dominates the evening voting block, and Master Chief blew past Frog as if he were nothing but a ball of snot. Again, courtesy of Mumei (AND THE FACT THAT HE KICKS AN ABUNDANCE OF ASS AND WILL BE RECOGNIZED AND SUCH), here is a small block of the update chart from after chief tied up the poll. Master Chief may have slowed down a tad after blowing past Frog, but the fact remains that he came back and extended a 620 vote lead as if it were nothing. Frog simply rolled over and died once the day vote started kicking in, which is a shame. ...or was it? Quick, trivia time? At what time during the Halo/Starcraft poll did Halo begin collapsing completely? Somewhere around the middle of the evening, right? Now take a wild guess as to what happened next during the Frog/Chief match. No seriously, guess. SURELY, the Xbox faithful would have learned their lesson and prevented yet another laughable collapse... .........right? Unfortunately, as if the inevitable demise were right on cue, Master Chief began collapsing at almost the exact same time as Halo itself in the spring. I'd go in detail about it, but we've seen the same old story from our friends at Microsoft over and over again. They do well during the day, but inevitably collapse during the night. It happened to Halo, it happened to Ryu Hayabusa, and now it was happening to Master Chief as well. It's almost as if a Frog comeback were expected, despite how badly he had performed in the afternoon and the evening. It was so predictable that people were calling Frog's victory all over the place after he took Chief's lead down from 620 to 500. It's almost as if Xbox was the contest's version of the Philadelphia Eagles. As for what happened afterwards, the best I can do is post the next part of the update chart. It truly speaks for itself. The funniest part about the entire mess was that even though Frog was coming back, he was doing it far too slowly all the way up until his 112 vote update. But even then, people were calling Frog's victory. It's like everyone knew that Chief was going to collapse, which is rather sad when you think about it. Chief will always be remembered for blowing it after shifting the poll an entire 3000 votes in his favor, but honestly, he was doing just fine until the 112 update late in the match. Unfortunately, no one will remember that part. But remember when Master Chief came back and blew right past Frog en route to opening up a 620 vote lead for himself? Frog was completely unable to do the same for himself. Despite every effort made by Frog to hang onto this poll after blowing it away so badly in the first place, Master Chief once again proved resilient, and these two would give us the single best hour we had ever seen in a contest poll. The first 23 hours were meaningless at this point. It was 2 AM, they were tied, and Frog showed nothing that would indicate that he would make the comeback and run with it. Remember when Liquid Snake turned a 170 vote lead into 93? Frog managed to have the exact same thing go wrong with him in this poll, but would it be enough? Despite the fact that Frog came back from being down by 620, Frog was completely unable to keep the momentum going for the final hour. Every time Frog tried to pull away from Master Chief, Chief managed to fight back and keep the score tied. Frog made a lot of pushes over the final hour that gave him leads of 20-25, but every time it looked like Frog would finally win the match, Master Chief was able to come back again. There were two cases over the final hour where Master Chief himself managed to build his own lead of 20-25 votes, and Frog himself had to fight back tooth and nail in order to stay alive in the poll. It was a fierce battle that had everyone on the board on the edge of their seat in anticipation of what would happen next. The F5 buttons were pounding, the IMs were off the hook, and the vote-stuffing on both sides was blatant. It continued like this for 59 minutes, and as we entered the final minute of one of the most amazing matches of all time, Frog was clinging to an eight vote lead. It was not a matter of winning for Frog at this point, but about survival. The seconds within that final minute couldn't possibly tick away fast enough for those supporting Frog, and like the entire match up until this point, Master Chief proved his resilience. Frog's lead of 8 dropped to 7, and then 6, and then 5.... the Frog supporters were growing more and more nervous, and very late in that final minute, Master Chief managed to bring Frog's lead down to three. THREE!! A mere three votes separated Master Chief from victory, but unlike Ryu Hayabusa before him, there would be no luck on Microsoft's side on this night. Frog got a very late (albeit very minor) push of votes to propel him to a lead of seven votes, and this is how the poll would close. After it was finally over, the reaction from the board ranged between every emotion in the book, from anger to sadness to rage and envy, and even "OH MY \*\*\*\*ING GOD, THAT WAS BETTER THAN SEX!!!!!" from the usually infallible ChichiriMuyo. But aside from the obvious accomplishment that was the final margin of victory, the obvious question had to be asked: How in the hell did all of this come to pass in the first place? This match was not normal. Well it was normal for a time, but something very odd happened come the afternoon. Characters simply don't go from being down 2400 to being up by 620. Something went on there, and two explanations can be placed above the rest. First and foremost, the vast majority of the Xbox's popularity comes from North America. All you need to do is take a look at the voting patterns through the Ryu Hayabusa/Jill Valentine match to see how powerful the Xbox is during the day on our site. Ryu Hayabusa's latest game didn't even sell 500,000 copies, yet he managed to come back against Jill Valentine of Resident Evil fame a combined four times in two days. If Hayabusa can pull off a comeback, then what stops Master Chief, the Xbox's main mascot, from being able to do the same? His voting pattern in this match directly agrees with that of Ryu Hayabusa's two voting patterns, and one could easily ake the conclusion that Chief truly is powerful enough to manage something like this. The other reason for Chief's comeback may very well have been the fact that multiple Halo sites across the internet became aware of what was going on over here. Bungie's main site was discussing the match across their forum, and a direct link was posted from halo.bungie.org to our homepage. Could this have been responsible for Chief's comeback? Perhaps. Frog was well on his way to a 5000 vote victory before Chief's comeback began, and even though Chief's comeback coincides with Hayabusa's voting pattern, it also coincides with when the sites became aware of our contest. This is unfortunate, simply because it takes away from Master Chief's performance. No matter which theory you believe in, the fact remains that both of these characters absolutely choked during this match. Frog went from being up by 2400 to being down by 620 a few hours later, and Master Chief capped off his miraculous comeback by blowing away said 620 vote lead, and not only that, but failing to come up with nine extra votes somewhere down the line. If I were a fan of either of these characters (thankfully, I'm not), I would be sickened by the way both of them performed, and would rather choose to focus on how good the match itself was. Unfortunately, there is a darker side to this poll. By now, everyone is aware of the glitch in the poll that allows people to vote multiple times under the right circumstances. As much as everyone would like to believe that there was no foul play in the final hour of this match, everyone knows that this match came down to who vote-stuffed the best at the end. Having been on AIM that entire night and seeing multiple people brag about the number of times they voted, it soon became clear that those stuffing for Frog simply wanted it more than those stuffing for Chief. I saw an absolute ton of people bragging about multi-voting for Frog, and I saw next to no one saying the same about Chief. Board 8 is usually the deciding factor in close polls, and it was no different in this poll. The fact that Master Chief managed to stay within 7 votes at the end is a testament to how strong he is, considering that nearly all of Board 8 was against him at the end. FACT: We don't know who truly won this match. We have the final vote total, and CJayC's distant response of "The cheating cancels each other out". I like the guy and all, but in a match that is this close, the margin of victory falls within the gray area caused by the cheating, and taking the aloof approach is not the way to fix the problem. Unfortunately, fixing the problem would also cause a serious issue in that should a system be implemented to prevent multi-voting with alts, we would see every contest poll have similar vote totals to Pokémon vs Xenogears. It's a major problem that has existed since the 2002 contest, but sadly, what can be done about it? Those voting for Frog simply wanted it more, and if history is any example, then Frog could be a force in the coming years. Samus was in a very similar situation in 2002, and look at how she's doing now. But I don't want to end such an amazing match on a sour note. Regardless of who you were pulling for, this entire match, especially the final hour, could be everything you want from a contest poll. They should all be like this. ## Match Trends ## Ed Bellis' Analysis If Frog vs. Liquid Snake was abnormal in terms of board expectations, this match was jaw-dropping. Few people expected the Chief to be able to hang with Frog, but hang he did – and how. If Chrono Trigger/Link to the Past exemplifies how exciting stillness can be, Frog/Master Chief exemplifies how exciting the opposite can be. Lead changes up the wazoo, comeback attempts galore… this match had all that, and more. The last few moments of this poll, with Frog holding on to a shrinking lead in the single digits and eventually pulling off a win with a margin of seven votes, rank among the best in contest history. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1756&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Knuckles the Echidna vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 _source: (10)Knuckles the Echidna vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 (revid 55864)_ ## Results Friday, September 10th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** 20XX Division - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 10th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 15,535 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 66.00% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 68.18% (22,650 brackets) - In 2002, Snake scores 60.71% on Knuckles in the second round. - In 2003, Snake scores 63.13% on Knuckles in the second round. - In 2004, Snake fails to break 60% in scoring 59.54% on Knuckles in the \*gasp\* second round. This could mean a Knuckles improvement, a Snake drop, or a little of both. Either way, this is a stupid, dumbassed, overplayed, overdone, boring match that needs to stop being held every year. Snake over Knuckles in the second round is not a fun contest tradition. It's stupid, it needs to go, it winds up doing nothing but screwing over both characters out of would-be entertaining matches otherwise, and any prediction percentage under 100% for this match by this point is nothing but deplorable, second round or not. I mean honestly, what the hell? I refuse to even give this match the time of day, simply because it's the worst "tradition" ever. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1757&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Vyse 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (8)Vyse 2004 (revid 55866)_ ## Results Saturday, September 11th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 11th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 57,252 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 80.52% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife - 96.48% (32,052 brackets) This could very well be the easiest analysis ever. Cloud did exactly as expected against Vyse, and the only thing of note about the match was Cloud once again giving up the early lead in the poll. The only thing anyone card about in this match were Cloud/Link comparisons, and honestly, Cloud did not impress me here. While Link was busy putting a world of hurt on Ganon, Cloud only did as expected against Vyse. "As expected" is not good enough when your main opponent is exceeding expectations. In fact, all Cloud had going for him after this match was the prediction percentage advantage, and that can easily be explained by Link having to deal with CATS, Alucard, and Ganondorf as opposed to Milk Nukem, Vyse, and Laharl. Cloud did not look good here at all. As they say, one's an accident, two's a trend, three's a problem. Link managed more total votes in an SFF match than Cloud in a pure match. Honestly, assuming transitivity in the finals, what argument could have possibly been made for Cloud at this point? ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1758&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Kirby vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2004 _source: (5)Kirby vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2004 (revid 55868)_ ## Results Sunday, September 12th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 12th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 9,378 - **Oracle Expectations:** Squall - 57.47% 54 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Squall - 54.91% (18,242 brackets) I played some Kingdom Hearts today, and Squall truly did redeem himself in that game (somewhat). He should have acted that way all through Final Fantasy 8, not just in the first two discs. And I also like the long hair he had in Kingdom Hearts. Oh right, the match. The Hyrule and Midgar divisions were the two most predictable divisions in the entire contest, and this match was another example of it. Everyone knew Squall would win this match, but the surprising thing is how poorly he performed, especially early on. When the poll first opened, there was no match picture. All we had were the names "Kirby" and "Squall", and during this time, the two characters were literally dead even with one another. It wasn't until the picture was posted did Squall finally begin pulling away. This could prove that pictures matter, though Board 8 doesn't seem to like Cloud and Squall in the polls for whatever reason. The rest of the day was very ho-hum and predictable, but Kirby wound up doing better than expected in this match. Kirby's projection in the match was a mere 41.51%, yet he managed to score 45% on Squall. No one knows whether this meant a Squall drop or a Bomberman/Kirby rise, and unfortunately, there is no way to know. Company-based divisions can do that to you, and after sitting through another predictable match, a match between \*GASP\* Cloud and Squall was set up. Gee, how interesting But hey, at least Squall/Kirby had a decent vote total. It's really sad when you're rooting for high vote totals in the match instead of the characters themselves. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1759&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Ness vs (3)Auron 2004 _source: (6)Ness vs (3)Auron 2004 (revid 55870)_ ## Results Monday, September 13th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 13th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 24,796 - **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 71.88% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Auron - 54.43% (18,082 brackets) Another day, another horribly predictable match in the Midgar division. Ness was fresh off of a heated victory against Jak, while Auron was coming off of a killing against Scorpion. So what do they turn around and do? Ness winds up doing far better than his 26.87% projection. But like the Squall/Kirby match, this meant nothing. We had no way of verifying the strength or weakness of either character, simply because of how the Midgar division was set up. Auron winning this match was a virtual guarantee, but thanks to Auron/Sephiroth being set up from the start, we had no clue what to make of this match. The logical explanation, of course, is that Ness went up due to unaccounted Bowser/Ness SFF in the 2003 Xsts. Maybe he truly was stronger than many of us thought, but how do you explain Auron overperforming so much against Scorpion? It really sucks that the bracket was set up the way it was, because there was no way to verify the strength of many of these characters after such odd matches. This match was another example. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1760&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Vivi vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 _source: (7)Vivi vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 (revid 55872)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 14th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Midgar Division - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 14th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 35,266 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 75.56% 56 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 91.26% (30,317 brackets) This match wasn't flat-out rigged as an SFF match from the start; after all, Vivi vs DK was hard to call. What was rigged however was Cloud vs Sephiroth. There were no characters in this division able to take either one of them down, and this match was little more than another stepping stone on Sephiroth's path to the Midgar finals. Since everyone already knew that Sephiroth was going to win the match, the only thing to really look at here is the fact that Vivi did better than most people expected him to. This could mean a few things, the biggest of which is the fact that Square SFF is far more difficult to come by than Nintendo SFF. Nintendo characters have so much exposure and star in so many games that the Nintendo heirarchy is set in stone at this point. While the same ranks are within Square, the fanbases of characters who appear in a game or two each are far more defined. Voters won't simply turn on Vivi simply because he is facing a character from another Square game. Square titles all have a life of their own, and even though Cloud and Sephiroth are undoubtedly the most powerful Square characters, the rest of the pack has enough of a fanbase so that they will likely never get killed by a fellow Square character. This match is a good example of that. Nearly pulling in 30% on Sephiroth is no joke, and Vivi deserves some respect for it. Other things may have been present, as well. For all we know, Sephiroth could have weakened over the past year. Or better yet, Vivi may have been far stronger than many people initially thought. Sadly, there is no way to truly know. The nature of the bracket makes it difficult to truly verify the strength of many characters, even though logical estimations can still be made. Regardless, we knew two things after this match. It was yet another bore to sit through, and Sephiroth was not looking good against Cloud later on. Showing any signs of weakness whatsoever is not good when you're looking to upend the champion. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1761&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (9)Ryu 2004 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (9)Ryu 2004 (revid 67770)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 15th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 15th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 8,738 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 57.63% 56 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 72.26% (24,005 brackets) After Samus's killing of Lara Croft in the first round, Sonic not only had to beat Ryu, but he had to make a statement to show Samus that he had a chance at taking the division. Unfrotunately, Sonic failed to do so. In the beginning of the poll, Ryu held his own and went 50-50 with Sonic for quite while before Sonic finally managed to pull away for good. Ryu never had much of a chance of winning the match, but he had a moral victory here nonetheless. His performance in this match, even though he performed exactly as expected according to 2003 numbers, more or less showed that Samus had the division wrapped up. This match showed that Sonic had more or less remained consistent, but consistency is not enough to take down a Samus that is on an obvious rise. As for the actual match itself, the one thing I found interesting was the horribly low prediction percentage. Sonic was 2 seed material at worst, yet only 72.26% of people had him into the third round? Aside from that, another predictable match in a predictable contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1762&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (12)Miles "Tails" Prower vs (4)Dante 2004 _source: (12)Miles "Tails" Prower vs (4)Dante 2004 (revid 88833)_ ## Results Thursday, September 16th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 16th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 11,637 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dante - 61.21% 54 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dante - 53.07% (17,630 brackets) Another day, another boring, predictable match. We all knew that Dante would win, and the only thing to even note from this match is the fact that Tails was even in the match in the first place. Well, that plus the fact that Tails did 6% better than expected. Not that it matters, because Tails never had a chance to actually win. For the first time in three contests, Dante was finally out of the second round, but it was no surprise in the least. Equally unsurprising was the fact that no one seemed to care. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1763&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sora vs (3)Ryu Hayabusa 2004 _source: (6)Sora vs (3)Ryu Hayabusa 2004 (revid 55878)_ ## Results Friday, September 17th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 17th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 18,853 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sora - 48.66% 14 for - 41 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sora - 39.06% (12,976 brackets) The match between Ryu Hayabusa and Jill Valentine was widely believed to be a 3-point match, simply because Jill Valentine finished so far ahead of Sora in the 2003 Xsts. Considering how the first round went, there was little reason to believe that Hayabusa wasn't going to own this match. Sora had a decent match against HK-47, but because HK-47 wasn't in the contest last year, there was no way to prove that Sora was any stronger than he was in 2003. And because Ryu Hayabusa managed to beat Jill Valentine, there was no proof that he wouldn't simply take Sora down with ease. But as this match began, it was clear that this match would wind up being the single biggest surprise of the contest. Not only did Sora beat the hell out of Ryu, but Ryu was never in the match in the first place. He began a 60-40 beatdown at the beginning, and never let up until the end of the match. The match itself was never in any real doubt, but most expected it to go like this in favor of Ryu, not Sora. Sora wound up performing so well that after this match, 2004 Sora would be projected to defeat 2003 Aeris, despite the fact that Aeris *doubled him up last year*. No character had a larger weighted gain than Sora this year, and it was all because of this match. And while we had our fair share of OMG WTF SORA IS TEH WINNAR?!?!1!!?1!1 topics, it was no true surprise that Sora won the match to most people despite how favored Hayabusa was by the board. Everyone knows who Sora is, plain and simple. He stars in a game that has sold well over 4 million copies already, and a game that has the Square tag. Ryu Hayabusa starred in the original Ninja Gaiden games in which you'll only see his name if you read the instruction manual, a fighting game series that few people on GF care about, and a Ninja Gaiden title for the Xbox that only sold around 500,000 copies. Hayabusa was able to pull one out against a declining Jill Valentine, but a Square lead is something else. Lastly, take a quick look at Squall last year. He had a decent victory in the first round, but despite this, he was expected to get killed in the second round. Um, oops? Squall turned around and proceeded to layeth the smacketh downeth on Luigi. Only around 35% of people picked Squall to do this. Fast forward to this year. Sora had a decent win in the first round, but everyone expected him to bow out in round two. Yeah, you know the rest. Factor in the prediction percentage, and Sora becomes this year's Squall. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1764&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Sam Fisher vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 _source: (7)Sam Fisher vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 (revid 88834)_ ## Results Saturday, September 18th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Chaos Division - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 18th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 50,345 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 75.29% 56 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran - 82.85% (27,524 brackets) Don't let that mere 80% fool you. This beating was worse than the percentages may seem. Samus beat Sam Fisher into the ground so badly that people thought the poll was broken early on. But there was no glitch; Samus simply managed to score the first 27 votes in the poll, which I believe is a record. This match was sort of a predetermined beating in the favor of Samus, but one thing to note is how big Samus's blowout was. Remember, she couldn't break 75% against Isaac, and here she was scoring two 80% blowouts consecutively. We all knew that Samus wasn't going to win the entire contest, but just for kicks, extrapolated strength had Samus as the strongest character in the contest after two rounds. The Samus hype began after this match, and even though we all knew that Samus wasn't going to take Cloud down, it was still fun to hop on the bandwagon =) As for Fisher, this was nothing short of pathetic. Losing to Samus is fine, but failing to break 20% on her is pathetic considering his recent exposure. It was a beating from the start, and Samus never let up. Simple as that. If there was any doubt whatsoever as to who was going to win the Chaos division, most of it was gone after this match. Sonic was only performing as expected, while Samus went well beyond her expectations in both of her matches. One match can be overlooked, but not two. All that was left for Samus to do was to actually go out and take Sonic down, and at this point, it looked like she would do so with ease. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1765&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (5)Yoshi 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (5)Yoshi 2004 (revid 55882)_ ## Results Sunday, September 19th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Hyrule Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 19th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 59,394 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 75.47% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 94.05% (31,244 brackets) Everyone knew that Link would kill Yoshi in this match, but what was surprising was the ease that Link had in keeping Yoshi under 20%. Most figured that the SFF wouldn't be quite this bad. But aside from that, there is very little to say about this match other than the fact that Link's prediction percentage was insane for this point in the contest, and the fact that the vote totals were rather high for a straight SFF match like this. 93558 votes total, with 76476 of them going to Link, is no joke. Other than that, the only thing to really note was the new theme for the match pics this round. The third round has traditionally been the sprite round for pics, and this contest was no different. CJayC even went with match pics that made the characters look like they were fighting, which is an added bonus. It didn't help make the matches themselves any better, though. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1766&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Crono vs (2)Mario 2004 _source: (3)Crono vs (2)Mario 2004 (revid 88835)_ ## Results Monday, September 20th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Hyrule Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 20th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 6,265 - **Oracle Expectations:** Crono - 50.03% 34 for - 20 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Crono - 38.31% (12,727 brackets) This match was *easily* the biggest disappointment of the entire contest, simply because of the history these two characters have with one another. In 2002, Crono made a miraculous run to the Final Four after taking down Simon Belmont, Dante, Lara Croft, and Solid Snake in succession. But in the Final Four, he was expected to get defeated easily by Mario. After all, if Cloud couldn't take down Mario, then what chance did Crono have? But as the match got underway, Mario was unable to simply blow Crono out of the water. The best that Mario was able to manage was a stagnant 1000 vote lead throughout the day, but even though Crono was doing better than expected, he was still well on his way to a loss. But Crono was not going to let Mario into the finals quietly. He began to fight back against Mario with a tenacity rarely displayed by characters in a contest setting. What began as Crono slowly chipping away at Mario's lead soon became a full-fledged comeback effort that was nothing short of shocking. Here we had a mute protagonist from a game that a great deal of people hadn't even played taking it to the *single biggest icon in the history of video games*. Crono staying within 1000 votes was a shock in and of itself, but Crono managing to make a push at defeating the icon of video games was nothing short of orgasmic. With every passing update that occured in the poll, Crono hysteria took over the board even more. Crono kept up the pressure until the last hour of the poll, and in an update that everyone on GameFAQs was waiting for, Crono took the lead against Mario. The upset to end all upsets was a mere minutes away! Sadly, it was not to be. Thanks to a vote stuffer that was dumb enough to get caught, CJayC removed 400 votes from Crono's total. Not only that, but CJayC would admit over a year and a half later that said vote stuffer cheated 3000 votes for Crono, not the mere 400 as originally thought. Crono tried to keep up the pressure after the monumental setback, but he was unable to keep the magic that he had for hours leading up to the penalty. Mario went on to win the match against Crono before getting killed by Link in the finals, but even though there was penalized vote-stuffing involved in the match, Crono gave us a match for the ages on that fateful day. With this fresh in our minds, why not pit these two characters against each other in a rematch in 2003? CJayC felt that this was the best option, and decided to vastly underseed Crono in order to guarantee us a Mario vs Crono rematch. From the moment the SC2K3 bracket was released, Mario vs Crono 2 was the most anticipated match in the contest. Not Link vs Cloud, not Vercetti vs Mega Man, not the Tidus/Ganon/Magus trio, not even the other matches that were hard to call; Mario vs Crono 2 caused hype that could be concealed in liquid form, and dear God, did they ever deliver on it. Mario and Crono were fed Captain Olimar and Tom Nook in the first round that year, and both handled their business quite well. It was the second round that caused the match to not have a clear favorite. While Mario was busy barely breaking 55% on Shadow the Hedgehog, Crono was beating the absolute hell out of Kefka. Crono seemed like the favorite going into the match, but because of how 2002 went, there was no way to truly tell. All anyone had to go on was momentum. Finally, after literally months of waiting, round two began. Mario jumped out to an early lead again, but unlike 2002, Crono fought back far more valiantly. Not only did he reduce Mario's slim lead to nothing, but Crono himself managed to build a lead of 800 votes. But Mario is not the icon of gaming for nothing, and he soon caught the day vote en route to not only taking down Crono's lead, but building a lead of 200 as well. But yet again, back came Crono. Despite Mario's best efforts, Crono managed to use the evening vote to its full advantage and build a lead of 830. Mario tried as hard as he possibly could to come back, but every single time Mario made any push at coming back in the match, Crono kept him down and kept his lead at 830. All Crono needed to do at this point was play out the final 2½ hours of the match and take home the win, because it was quite clear that he was about to get his revenge. ....or was he? Mario managed to win a couple of updates at this point, but despite this, he wasn't doing nearly enough damage to actually mount a comeback against the Chrono Trigger lead. But once Mario started winning updates in which he was taking off over 100 votes at a time, the entirety of GameFAQs was yet again completely fixated on the poll. Surely Crono wouldn't blow it all away after coming this close, would he? But no sooner did everyone notice Mario's comeback did Mario put even more pressure on Crono in the poll. After the 12:45 AM EST update came around, Mario was only losing to Crono by the slimmest of margins. With the next update, every Crono fan had their worst fears come to life as Mario capped off his comeback by taking the lead on Crono with the last possible update after Crono looked like he had the match all but secured. After a bit of research by CJayC, he deemed the results official, and Mario was declared the winner of the match. One of the single biggest board explosions in the history of GameFAQs came soon afterwards, but what's done is done. Cheating accusations flew all over the site after Mario's miraculous comeback, partly because the nature of the comeback in and of itself was odd, and partly because the poll was supposedly extended by CJayC solely to allow Mario the chance at victory. I don't know how valid the cheating accusations were, or whether or not the infamous Male/Female poll had anything whatsoever to do with Mario's comeback, but I could honestly care less. How Mario came back is beyond the knowledge of any of us, but all of this BS about CJayC extending the poll in 2003 needs to stop. The people who constantly say that the poll was extended always leave out the fact that the poll began 20 minutes early. Was CJayC supposed to close the poll at 12:40 the next morning? Of course not. Mario took the lead with the 1:00 AM EST update, and whether unpunished cheating went on or not, the time that Mario took the lead was completely legitimate. The poll was never extended merely to give Mario an advantage, but rather was allowed to run until 1:00 AM EST. The fallout from that match lingered even after the contest. Crono supporters maintained that Crono was the true victor of the match, while Mario fans could not have been happier with the way Mario won the match. Crono choked worse than the Yankees in his 2003 duel with Mario. So how does one finally decide which character was the true victor? How about three separate "Mario vs Crono" matches in the Spring Contest, followed by Mario vs Crono 3 in the summer? The idea sounded good, but all signs pointed to a very anticlimactic finish. Chrono Trigger took down three of Mario's best games in the Spring Contest. If that wasn't enough momentum for Crono, compare the matches he had with Mario between 2002 and 2003. Mario essentially won the 2002 match by 2700 votes, not 100. CJayC admitted to there being 3000 cheated Crono votes in that match, but he only took 400 of them away. In 2003, all of the votes were left in the poll, and Crono effectively made a 2600 vote swing. When you factor in the high vote totals in the match, this swing becomes all the more impressive despite the fact that Crono took the loss. Momemtum was clearly in Crono's favor going into the match, but the true telling sign of what was to come lied in the second round in the 2004 contest. Crono and Mario had back to back matches in the second round against Magus and Bowser, and the results were nearly identical. Assuming static voting patterns, Crono was clearly stronger than Mario after the second round, simply because of Magus being stronger than Bowser. There is SFF and all that to take into effect, but if there was no SFF in the two matches, then Crono would be assumed to be stronger than Mario based off of those matches in and of themselves. Mario was clearly the one that had a hill to climb in the match, despite the fact that the match picture was on Mario's home turf. Another hint of what was about to happen was the fact that the match itself got no more hype than any other match in the contest. Mario vs Crono didn't have the same feel to it as in the past, and the match didn't stand out from other tough matches as being the match of the contest. Sure enough, the match was over right after it began. Crono jumped out to an early lead, and despite Mario stalling Crono's after each gain of 100 that Crono made in the match, this pattern continued for the entire match. Crono would simply gain 100 votes, deal with a minor push from Mario, then gain 100 more. This was the entire match from start to finish. Boring, isn't it? This was so damned anticlimactic that people were flat-out begging to something drastic to happen. Even the most devout Crono supporters agreed that the match absolutely sucked, and despite everyone's hopes of seeing Mario pull a miracle, it was not to be. This was Crono's day for revenge, and in the end, he managed to get it. Mario was never in the match, and if I remember correctly, Mario only won a single update throughout the day. The one bright side to this of course was the fact that Crono got his revenge. But aside from that, there was nothing good to say about the match at all. The vote totals weren't nearly as high as they should have been, the match was ho-hum (and borderline predictable before it even started), and no one was even surprised at the prediction percentage. Mega Man vs Zero wound up being more exciting than this. MEGA MAN VS ZERO!! Honestly, there is something wrong with this. I understand that we needed to have a match to decide the final winner of this duel, but the duel is over. Crono has won. Stop giving us Mario vs Crono, because it may never again give us the magic seen in 2002 and 2003. How did this happen? Well, it could be any one of a hundred different reasons, but I feel that the biggest one of them all is the fact that Mario hasn't put out a decent game since Super Mario 64. And no, I don't count Mario Golf, Double Dash, or SSBM as Mario games. I'm talking about platformers involving Mario as the main character. Mario has gradually gotten weaker ever since the 2002 contest, and unless something with regards to Super Mario 128 is released soon, the same could happen to him next year. You could argue that Mario getting his Super Mario World sprite hurt him in the match, but I doubt that this allowed Crono to gain enough votes to beat him so soundly. Or maybe the overall population of GameFAQs has outgrown Mario, or maybe they've stopped caring about the contest enough to throw their support Mario in the way that they used to. For all we know, Crono could have been stronger than Mario from the start. Regardless, Crono has finally won the duel, and hopefully we never see this match again. At least not until after Super Mario 128 is released. But no matter how boring this match was, nothing can ever take away from the fun we had with this match in 2002 and 2003. They were two of the single best matches to ever take place on this site, if not the best outright. Crono may have clearlt been the better character on this day in the end, but nothing can take away from the magic caused by the first two matches between these two. I can only hope that we see a rivalry like this once again. On a side note, I feel sorry for Mumei. This was his first Mario vs Crono match, and it sucked. Sorry bro. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1767&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (4)Zero 2004 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (4)Zero 2004 (revid 55886)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 10,049 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 69.33% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 52.73% (17,517 brackets) And thus, we had the match that defined the 20XX division. Zero and Mega Man, two characters from various Mega Man games, got it on in their cute little rigged match to see who the ultimate robot was. The problem, of course, is that we all *knew* that Mega Man would win the match. No analysis necessary in that regard. The issue here comes from Mega Man completely dropping the ball during the match. In most SFF matches, the winner usually winds up killing the opposition. Not so in this case. Not only did Mega Man fail to kill Zero, but Zero had more update victories against Mega Man than Mario had against Crono. To put it simply, this match played out as if there was no SFF at all, which seemed virtually impossible before it began. But as the match progressed and the pattern of Zero being able to avoid SFF altogether became clear, two things could be derived from the results. One, there was no way in hell that Mega Man was going to come close to touching Link. Two, something has to exist in order to give Zero such power against one of his own. Personally, I think that Mega Man fans are smarter than the average voter. Unlike the nonsense that CJayC spews forth about the various forms of Mega Man being the same character, veterans of the series know better. Mega Man and Mega Man X are two completely different characters from two completely different series, and I think that this match helps show that even though the two series are entitled Mega Man, they have two somewhat distinct fanbases between them. In essence, I feel that this match was actually Mega Man vs Mega Man X. It isn't a stretch to consider. Furthermore, Zero stars in his own little series for the Game Boy entitled Mega Man Zero. I've never played it, but from what I hear, it's both fun and difficult. It may not be much, but it could be enough to allow Zero to avoid SFF against someone not even in the Mega Man X series. X might be in the series, but not Mega Man himself. And if none of that sounds valid, then this match would be the one and only example we have ever had of Reverse SFF. Maybe it *is* possible, though I doubt that it will ever allow underdogs in such matches to actually win them. Despite Zero doing far better than expected, he still lost by 10000 votes. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1768&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Frog vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 _source: (6)Frog vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 (revid 88836)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 2,429 - **Oracle Expectations:** Solid Snake - 59.14% 51 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Solid Snake - 50.43% (16,753 brackets) "Someone explain this concept of 'Noble Nine' to me again. I *think* it means not choking against a C-Grade Square character, but I could be mistaken." -Amazing Telephone The above result shows a win for Solid Snake, but it also shows Solid Snake being the single biggest flop of this entire contest. In 2002, Snake was expected to take down Crono. It was a shock that he lost, but at least he went out respectfully. He was expected to go down against Mega Man in 2003, but once again, at least he went down respectfully. But what Snake did in this match was simply inexcuseable, even though he won. The assumption that Snake had gone down after he failed to break 60% on Knuckles didn't seem like much, but denying a Snake drop after this debacle is nothing short of ignorant. Not only did Snake let Frog hang around in the beginning of the poll, but Frog actually took the early lead in the poll on Snake. Snake managed to come back with ease, but not before Frog went toe-to-toe with Snake through the first 1000 votes of the match. Snake eventually managed to break away from Frog and build a lead of over 3000 votes throughout the day, but just when Solid Snake was about to regain his respect, the evening vote came. Not only was Frog able to use the evening vote to his advantage, but Frog began a steady momentum that carried all the way until the end of the poll. Frog took a lead of over 3000 and brought it down to 2400 before all was said and done again a character who was elite material. Solid Snake will certainly return to his elite status, but not until after Metal Gear Solid 3. And yes, I'm aware that there was a certain degree of the Solid *BLEEP* Factor going on here, but take a look at a fun fact. Frog faced Liquid Snake, Solid Snake, and Master Chief in this contest. Of those three characters, Solid Snake performed the worst against Frog in the final six hours of the poll. *Liquid Snake* performed better than Solid in the final six hours of the poll. No amount of Solid Shit can possibly explain that; there was something else going on here. There are any one of a hundred different explanations, and to be honest, your guess is as good as mine. When a character performs better on Solid Snake in the final six hours than he did against his two previous opponents, it's nearly inexplicable. Rather than attacking either character in this match, I'm going after something else. This isn't to say that the characters don't deserve some attention, but again, I have no clue why Frog performed the way he did. There may have been cheating, it may have been the SS Factor, it may have even been Snake not having a decent game since 2002 (Twin Snakes and its 200,000 copies =/= decent), or it may have been that these characters truly are as strong (or weak) as this match suggests. Instead, this is the perfect time to attack the extrapolated standings. We all love them. We all use them. But what happens when the standings go berserk? How do you explain Ryu Hayabusa vs Sora, Frog vs Snake, or even lesser matches that skewed the standings like Tidus vs Mega Man or Ganondorf vs Alucard? The only explanations I have ever seen in these cases involve various degrees of SFF or margin of error. The fact of the matter is that even though the Xsts are a great reference point, the people that follow them to the letter will likely find themselves surprised somewhere down the line. And despite this, the same excuses are still used when something goes wrong. Sora may have suffered SFF against Aeris, but his match with Ryu H suggests that he would outright defeat Aeris in a non-SFF matchup. Something is amiss here. The issue with the Xsts is that they assume linear transitivity among voters. Unfortunately, even though we as humans tend to vote in patterns, we are not mindless drones programmed to vote a certain way in every match. CATS may have gotten 12% on Link, but I firmly believe that nearly every character in the field could score 80% or better on CATS. Dance Dance Revolution may have scored nearly 25% on Final Fantasy Tactics, but that doesn't mean that it would do much better against any other game. Each poll has a life of its own, regardless of trends. I firmly believe this. The stats can only tell you so much, and to be honest, the constant stream of "Character X WILL score xx.xx% on Character Y" posts annoy me. Projections are one thing, but using the stats as gospel is something else. I can already see the "Tidus took a massive drop in 2004, therefore he can only score xx.xx% on characters X, Y, and Z in 2005" posts next summer. The Xsts are a guideline. A very broad guideline. They're usually good in their projections, and I use them as much as anything else, but nothing annoys me more than all of the "stats were wrong" stuff that comes after every surprising match. Those standings aren't the bible, and there will be cases of them being wrong in every contest. There is nothing wrong with this. I enjoy picking apart the numbers as much as anyone, but there come times when you're allowed to do nothing more than sit back and enjoy a match. That's what was so amazing about the 2002 contest. There were no stats, no projections, no past results.... nothing. Just a bunch of people on Board 8 rooting for their favorites. It was pure back then. Nowadays, people get upset when their projections are off by the slightest percentage. This isn't necessarily wrong, but it practically guarantees that we will never have a contest as fun as 2002. Back to Frog vs Snake. Frog shocked everyone in this match, despite his loss. Can't we sit and marvel at the numbers that are there rather than the numbers that were "supposed" to be there? Xsts and projections and all of that other mumbo jumbo are a real buzzkill to matches like this. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1769&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (4)Squall Leonhart 2004 (revid 88838)_ ## Results Thursday, September 23rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Midgar Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 23rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 46,810 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 71.63% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife - 90.98% (30,224 brackets) Cloud vs Squall, FF7 vs FF8, a massive amount of SFF, blah blah blah. After three matches that held everyone's interest, we were back to matches in which the interest was in everything but the matches themselves. This was one such match. Everyone (except for beloved superfan of Final Fantasy 8, Leonhart4) knew that Cloud was going to win this match with ease, and the only interesting things to happen all day were seeing the match picture in all its glory and seeing how well Cloud would stack up against Link. And after this match, Cloud seemed like the clear underdog. His prediction percentage was lower than Link's, his vote total was lower, and the total votes in his poll were lower. Cloud was clearly on the defensive after this horrible display, and he didn't exactly have a lot of time to get it together. Oh yeah, Squall jumped out to the early lead. But then again, doesn't everyone do that against Cloud? Aside from all of that, this match was horrible to watch. What was even more sad was the fact that no match looked like it would be any more interesting than this one, with the exception of *maybe* the final. Maybe. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1770&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Auron vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 _source: (3)Auron vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 (revid 88839)_ ## Results Friday, September 24th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Midgar Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Friday, September 24th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 28,896 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 70.76% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sephiroth - 86.78% (28,829 brackets) Most people had everything in this entire half division called correctly from the start. Only Ness/Jak and Vivi/DK posed any threats to the experts, and along those lines, this match was equally predictable. Whether or not Auron would take down Sephiroth was never in question. This match served no other purpose than to make a comparison between Cloud and Sephiroth, and along those lines, Sephiroth horribly failed: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1341-east-division-round-2-cloud-strife-vs-auron) Cloud and Sephiroth had an equal opponent in Auron after this match, and Cloud did 4.5% better than Sephiroth against him. If Sephiroth can't draw a considerable amount of SFF from Vivi or Auron, then how would he take down Cloud? The easy answer is that he wasn't going to, WHICH SUCKED. Aside from that, another boring match in which we knew the result well ahead of time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1771&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (4)Dante 2004 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (4)Dante 2004 (revid 55894)_ ## Results Saturday, September 25th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Saturday, September 25th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 19,024 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 59.17% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic the Hedgehog - 55.56% (18,458 brackets) Another day, another boring match. Everyone knew that Sonic would win, everyone knows that the Chaos division was set up to give us a Sonic/Samus 2, and everyone was beyond sick of the predictability by this point. The only thing to really note about this match, aside from the hideously low prediction percentage for an icon like Sonic, was the fact that Dante was projected to get 40.43% according the 2003 stats. Sonic did 2.5% better than expected, but no sooner did people start giving Sonic a chance against Samus did everyone realize that Dante's picture in this match absolutely sucked. If a bad picture can hurt Solid Snake, then there is no reason to believe that it wouldn't hurt Dante as well. Sonic *may* have had a chance after this match, but we had yet to see Samus in action against Sora. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1772&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sora vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 _source: (6)Sora vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 (revid 55896)_ ## Results Sunday, September 26th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Semi Final - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Sunday, September 26th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 27,747 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 67.57% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran - 71.58% (23,780 brackets) The hope for Sonic fans yet *again* lasted only a single day, because Samus yet again shot them all down like they were nothing. The bad part, of course, was that we had yet another match that was never in question. It was all about future comparisons, because Sora had no chance from the beginning. The problem here was Sora's SFF in 2003. He suffered a lot of it against Aeris, so his 2003 Xst number was somewhat invalid. He was only expected to get 28.83% against Samus after all, and most people know that this is simply unrealistic. So with Sora out of the way, what is there to make of the final results? Most people came into the match saying that Samus needed to score 70% or better to have any chance against Cloud, and even though this match more or less killed the pipe dream that was Samus taking down Cloud, this match was a validation that Samus would be able to take down Sonic with ease. One final number about this match is that even though Sora had a monster of a contest, he failed to even come close to Squall's 2003 percentage against Samus. That doesn't necessarily make Sora look bad, but it makes HK-47, Ryu Hayabusa, and Jill Valentine look like absolute losers. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1773&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (3)Crono 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (3)Crono 2004 (revid 55898)_ ## Results Monday, September 27th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Midgar Division Final - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Monday, September 27th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 24,019 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 57.64% 48 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 77.09% (25,610 brackets) Even into the divisional finals round, we still had a constant stream of matches in which the winner was never in question, even before the match started. Few people expected Crono to actually do anything, and it was a moral victory for him if he even managed to break 40% in the match. Sadly, he didn't even come close, and this was just one more blowout in a contest filled with matches barely worth writing about. Yet again, the only thing to draw from this match was how Link would do against future competition. Yet again, Link looked like he had the clear advantage against Cloud in the finals. If Crono could only manage 37.18% against Link (which would have been lower had Crono not made a small recovery in percentage late in the poll), which is lower than what Mario managed to get on Link in 2002, then how was Cloud going to take Link down? It was blatantly clear after this match that Link went up, simply because an improved Crono did worse against Link than 2002 Mario. We could have easily called the contest after Link's massacre of Yoshi, but holding Crono to under 40% is a scary, scary thing. It was nice for Crono to finally take down Mario in getting here, but Crono learned on this day that he has a long way to go if he wishes to take down the more elite characters of the contest. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1774&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mega Man vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 _source: (1)Mega Man vs (2)Solid Snake 2004 (revid 88840)_ ## Results Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** 20XX Division Final - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 12,599 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 56.83% 47 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mega Man - 31.34% (10,411 brackets) Does this match even need an analysis? We had the exact same match last year. From [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1364-south-division-final-solid-snake-vs-mega-man): Solid Snake 46.5% 55322 Mega Man **53.5%** 63639 TOTAL VOTES 118961 In yet another match that proved that this year's 1 seeds had an easier road than ever, Mega Man took down Solid Snake in a rematch that never should have happened in the first place, simply because everyone knows that The Twin Snakes and its 200,000 copies sold isn't going to allow Snake to make enough of an improvement to take down the likes of Mega Man. Mega Man did nearly 4% this year against Snake than last year, which could mean a Mega Man improvement, a Snake drop, or a little of both. Plain and simple. Another day, another boring match to sit through. The only thing exciting about this was Snake's minor comeback attempt early in the poll in which he shaved all of 20 votes off of Mega Man's lead. Aside from that, it was another of those matches that was far too easy to call from the start. Well, most people knew who was going to win this match. Stealth Snake Zero decided to challenge common sense, and everyone knows what happened to him. He got quite literally pwned by Ulti -- he made a friend bet with me and the loser had to write "pwned by" the winner on their butt and snap a picture for the internet, which thankfully no one bothered saving and I blame the fact that we were all children and did very stupid things online back in the early 2000s -- and Snake capped off one of the single biggest bombs in this contest in the process. Oh and before I forget to ask, is anyone ever going to learn not to underestimate Mega Man in these contests? For someone of his status, his prediction percentages have been downright horrible for three contests in a row now. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1775&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Sephiroth 2004 (revid 88841)_ ## Results Wednesday, September 29th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Midgar Division Final - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 29th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 10,968 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 52.25% 43 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife - 60.59% (20,129 brackets) Before I say a word about the match, is that not the single best match pic ever? That thing kicks all kinds of ass. Okay now, for the match. As everyone knows, the 2003 final was between Cloud and Sephiroth, and as everyone knows, Cloud won with relative ease: [](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1367-tournament-final-cloud-strife-vs-sephiroth) The poll looks close on paper, but aside from Sephiroth getting the small early lead, he was never in the match the entire day. Cloud went on to win by 4713 votes. So in 2004, why not feed Cloud and Sephiroth a bunch of cupcakes in order to blatantly set up a match between them? After all, it isn't like Cloud and Sephiroth can gain or lose popularity separate from each other, right? Sephiroth should have a chance to not only take down Cloud, but Link as well! Yeah, right. Another day, another boring match. Much like their bout in 2003, Sephiroth managed the early lead before tanking completely later, and Cloud went on to an easy victory en route to his imminent showdown with Link. But unlike a great deal of the other predictable matches in this contest, there was actually a good reason to debate this one. If half of 4713 people change their minds, Sephiroth could conceivably take down Cloud. Factor in that the majority of Boards 8 and 20052 can't stand him either, and you have a true trap match for Cloud. Picking Sephiroth to upset Cloud and/or Link was this year's most logical risk to take, but unfortunately, it simply did not hold true. In one day, we lost our one chance of seeing Cloud upset before the finals, the final perfect bracket, and we even saw renewed hope for those who picked Cloud to win the entire contest. Even though Link had clearly outdone Cloud for the majority of the contest, Cloud turning Sephiroth into a prison beating during this match simply could not be ignored. The problem for Cloud were the total votes drawn in from both he and Link. Link was drawing more attention to his matches, which is all he really needed to take down Cloud this year. Link and Cloud may not have necessarily been about which character increased or decreased in popularity, but rather who showed up to vote for them in the match --- our contest in its purest form, in other words. Even though Cloud won this match with ease, and even though I had Cloud in my bracket, I wasn't exactly thrilled to see Sephiroth roll over and die after taking the initial lead into the poll. I like both characters, but I like Sephiroth far more than Cloud. I find him to be the better character. Simple as that. Cloud's amazing, but he simply can't hold a candle to Sephy. At least not in my eyes. After Cloud's dispatching of Sephiroth with ease, all we were left to think about was the fact that Link vs Cloud was right around the corner, and until Link's match with Mega Man, there was a slight chance of the match still being up in the air at this point. For Cloud to disappoint in nearly every match he has been in yet *still* kill Sephiroth is nothing to sneeze at, and Link needed a solid performance against Mega Man to show who the real favorite was. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1776&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 _source: (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 (revid 55904)_ ## Results Thursday, September 30th, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Chaos Division Final - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Thursday, September 30th, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 12,692 - **Oracle Expectations:** Samus Aran - 57.09% 48 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus Aran - 52.46% (17,428 brackets) In 2002, these two characters became entangled in a match that no one will ever forget --- or at least, those who were here will never forget it. Sonic was the 1 seed that year, and in the third round of the contest, he was slated to get it on with the 5 seeded Samus. Most people expected Samus to roll over and die that day, but in the end, that was the last thing she did. Everyone knows the story by now. The poll started two hours late, but no one cared. The match wasn't exactly the most hyped matchup in the world at the time. But Samus, instead of rolling over and giving up, managed to hang around like a pestilence for the entirety of the day. With a mere three hours left in the poll, Samus only found herself down by 1500 votes to the favored Sonic. Samus then began tear-assing into Sonic's lead in a manner that no one there will ever forget. In the final three hours of the poll, Samus managed to take off the entirety of the 1500 votes, hold off Sonic's desperate attempt to hang on to the match, then made a very small push to allow herself to win the match by a mere 34 votes. Those final moments were so hectic and so controversial that the servers broke from mass refreshing. The outcry was something to behold as well, as not only did CJayC make a topic to announce that the victory was legit, but he had to make a second topic in response to the thousands of people who refused to believe him. It was absolutely insane, and it's difficult to explain exactly how controversial it was to those that weren't there. How does one settle such a heated rivalry? Why, let's pull the old "Stick the two characters close together and feed them fruitcakes so that they're guaranteed a match!" trick. But as you can see by the results of the rematch, there was a slight problem with this. Back in 2002, Sonic was still an absolutely beloved character. He was still fresh in the minds of everyone who was a fan of his back in the Genesis days, and he was even coming off of a monster hit in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Samus had nothing back then except for Metroid, Metroid 2, Super Metroid, and an appearance in Super Smash Brothers. These were good games, but they were all so old that there was no way that they should have been able to propel Samus to victory in the match. Since that match, Samus has released Metroid Prime, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, and is setting up Metroid Prime DS and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Sonic has done virtually nothing since his loss in 2002, unless you count Sonic Heroes, a Sonic collection, and an N-Gage appearance as doing something for himself. If Sonic couldn't beat a Samus that had nothing new going for her, then how would he beat a Samus fresh off of some recent titles? After all, Sonic has performed near his 2002 levels, while Samus was performing at a level that would put her head and shoulders above everyone else in the 2004 field, including Link and Cloud. Samus, while clearly unable to take down the likes of Cloud after this match, proved that there was a definite improvement from 2002 until the present. She has simply released too many games. As for Sonic, Sega's status as a third party developer has likely screwed him over for life in these contests. Sonic started off as "the cool Mario", but his company has become a marketing joke ever since then, and that doesn't even factor in some of the dumbassed things they do with game design. Honestly, have you people heard the voice acting in Sonic Heroes? Sega releases a good game like SA2:B, then makes their fans wait for that trash as a followup. Sonic may never improve in strength in these contests, and honestly, that's sad. Sega was brilliant once upon a time. As for the match, there is no "Sonic deserved to win". There is no "Sonic deserved to do better". There is no "Sonic would have done better had his picture been better". There is no "Sonic will be back better than ever". Sonic got his blue ass handed to him for the entire match, and no excuses can take away from this fact. And unless Sega pulls a miracle, this is the way Sonic may always be. Samus, on the other hand, has a nice future ahead of her. We've already seen how strong she is, but she has yet to release Metroid Prime 2 or her demo on the Nintendo DS. And demo packagaed with the DS could do absolute wonders for her. Remember the 2002 match with Sephiroth in which she built up a 500 vote lead before collapsing? She may very well have what it takes to drop Sephiroth in a match after those next two games. Oh yeah, and the dumbassed rematch ideas *need* to stop. Frog/Master Chief and Ryu H/Jill might be nice, but the rematches that have no potential whatsoever (Sonic/Samus, Snake/Knuckles) are nothing but a waste of time. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1777&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Mega Man 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Mega Man 2004 (revid 55906)_ ## Results Friday, October 1st, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Friday, October 1st, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 33,291 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 59.47% 46 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 67.67% (22,481 brackets) If there was any doubt about Mega Man having no chance to take down Link prior to this match, how about looking at the results from the match itself? While Heroic Mario got his chance to laugh at everyone in the stats topic after his Mega Man/Tidus prediction was spot-on, I got my revenge here in the Final Four. I theorized that Link would be able to take down Mega Man and get over 65% of the vote, and I was laughed at mercilessly for it. Funny how actual match results can change things. Link not only had little trouble breaking 65%, but he *doubled* Mega Man with ease. The same Mega Man who set blowout records in 2002, who came stunningly close to taking down Sephiroth, was now reduced to being killed by Link. The obvious explanation for this would be SFF, but we can't ignore the fact that Link may very well have gone up over the past year. Maybe Link not getting Wind Waker pics does have a positive effect. Maybe the E3 trailer did make a difference for Link. Maybe Link is one of those characters who can benefit from the absolute slightest of exposure. There was definitely a certain degree of SFF in this match, but to be honest, I feel that Link's rise in strength had more to do with this than the SFF itself. Mega Man simply doesn't get killed like this on the back of SFF alone, even though we had a serious warning sign from Zero earlier in the contest. But don't let this match fool anyone. Mega Man is still a strong character capable of doing real damage in these contests; he simply ran into a nuclear weapon in this match. Link is just that damned good. This is the Link that we all thought we would see last year, but he was handicapped for whatever reason, be it Kingdom Hearts, his Wind Waker pics, or a mix of both. For a true personification of the power of Link, you don't need to look at the finals. Look at this match. *Two thirds* of all brackets entered had Link in the finals. TWO THIRDS!! After zero brackets, joke brackets, favorite brackets, and everything else, over two thirds of everyone entered had Link in the finals. Add in how easily Link doubled Mega Man, and this contest was pretty much over after this match. It would take a small miracle for Cloud to win, and despite Cloud doing as expected in every match thusfar, "as expected" simply isn't good enough to take down a Link not handicapped by Wind Waker pics. Even if Cloud were to break 60% on Samus, that still may not have been good enough for him to take down Link. After all, look at what Link did to Samus and Mario in the past. Oh yeah, one final word about this match. For the final three matches of the contest, we were treated with .php pictures --- in other words, multiple pics per match! For the Final Four, there were two pics per match. Each character was given a pic of themselves flat-out pwning the living hell out of the other character. In this match, we saw Marvel vs Capcom Mega Man blasting the hell out of LTTP Link, and in the other picture, we saw Adult Link holding his sword to Mega Man's throat as the Mega Man 7 version of Mega Man was lying on the ground. Amazing work by CJayC, if you ask me. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1778&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 _source: (1)Cloud Strife vs (2)Samus Aran 2004 (revid 88842)_ ## Results Saturday, October 2nd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Semi Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Saturday, October 2nd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 18,283 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud Strife - 59.70% 47 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cloud Strife - 55.11% (18,308 brackets) The only interesting thing about this match was the first five minutes. Like every other match involving Cloud, his opponent --- Samus, in this case --- jumped out to the early lead. But Samus, unlike the rest of Cloud's opponents, had the power necessary to hold a lead against him. Even though we all knew that Samus would eventually tank, it was fun to go crazy after her initial lead of 100 votes. But of course, it lasted all of five minutes. As expected, Cloud easily withstood the early damage and eventually came back to score nearly 60% on Samus. But we all knew this would happen. The question here was whether or not Cloud was powerful enough to take down Link. Unfortunately for him, Cloud looked to be at a disadvantage. Throughout the entire contest, Link has had better prediction percentages, better vote totals (for the most part), and a better aura surrounding his matches. Link was shown no signs of weakness whatsoever, while Cloud has surrendered the early lead to everyone he has faced. The only advantage Cloud had whatsoever going into the finals was the fact that his match with Samus was the first in the entire contest to score over 100,000 votes. But aside from that one fact, the contest was Link's to lose. Sadly, aside from the first five minutes, the only other interesting thing about the actual match between Cloud and Samus were the pictures. And why? Because *both* pictures were of Samus pwning the ever-loving hell out of Cloud. One pic saw SSBM Samus standing in the Fountain of Dreams preparing to let loose a Charge Beam right at Cloud's pasty FFT sprite. In the pic that was supposedly of Cloud pwning Samus, we saw Ehrgeiz Cloud ripping apart Metroid Fusion Samus. But not only was Cloud suffering from the fact that no one gives a crap about Ehrgeiz, he was also suffering from Samus TJF. I mean damn, we got to se a suitless Samus! Anyway, the finals were set, and \*gasp\* it was between Cloud and Link! Not that this wasn't set up from the start, of course. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1779&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2004 _source: (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife 2004 (revid 55910)_ ## Results Sunday, October 3rd, 2004 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Round:** Tournament Final - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Sunday, October 3rd, 2004 - **Vote difference:** 4,533 - **Oracle Expectations:** Link - 52.60% 40 for - 9 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Link - 35.39% (11,757 brackets) So here we were, waiting for the match between Link and Cloud, the match that was set up from the beginning, to play out. These two had a minor history between them, but it was a history nevertheless. 2003 was supposed to be the year of Link. He dominated in 2002, and for most of 2003, he showed the same dominance. But in the Final Four, he ran into the buzz saw that was Cloud's championship run. Link managed a minimal early lead after the first update, but he would not lead again for the entire match. Cloud jumped on Link after the first update was over, and even though Link fans were claming that there would be a comeback for the entire day, it was not to be. The best that Link was able to manage were a few minor, meaningless update victories through the match. Cloud's victory was never in doubt through the entire day, and he wound up winning the highest-scoring contest match of all time by the final of 76199-71438, a vote difference of 4761. A ton of records were broken in that match, but above all of the numbers was the fact that Cloud not only stood up to the heavily favored Link, but defeated him. Whether it was the Wind Waker pic, Kingdom Hearts, a mass of vote-stuffing, or any mix of the three, the bottom line was that Cloud upended Link in 2003. With two characters clearly ahead of the pack, why not set them up for a reunion by placing them on opposite sides of the bracket? It isn't like anyone else was about to take them down. The two of them took care of their business despite comparisons being made between the two after every match, and even though Link was the clear favorite going in, the two still had to play out the match. And this year, there were no excuses for Link. Eight different match pics were featured in these finals, and Wind Waker Link did not appear in any of them. This is simply a match decided by the names, not the pictures. Unfortunately, Link confirmed what was seemingly obvious all along. He was the dominant character of the 2004 contest after the first match took place. Like every match involving Cloud, Cloud's opponent took the early lead. But in this case, Link was taking in nearly 75% of the vote early on. Cloud rebounded quickly, but not after Link managed to build his lead to over 200 votes. Cloud's rebound began soon afterwards, but it was so God-awful slow that even those supporting Cloud wondered whether or not he would be able to not only come back, but survive the legendary Zelda day vote in the process. After Cloud spent the next few hours trimming Link's lead down to 40, we got our answer. Cloud looked like he was going to come back against Link and claim the lead for his own, but Link caught absolute fire with the morning vote. What was once a match going in Cloud's favor turned into an absolute rout in the favor of Link, and before Cloud could even blink, the match was completely out of reach. The only thing left for Cloud to do was to hold off Link from beating him by more than 4761 votes. Thanks to a minor push late in the match, Cloud managed to do so and preserve a moral victory, albeit a Pyrrhic one. And despite this, Link still managed to defeat Cloud with a higher percentage than what Cloud scored on Link in 2003. How did this happen? Simple. Link went up in strength. It was painfully obvious to see after every single match Link was involved in, and those of us denying it were only trying to convince ourselves that Cloud stood a chance. At least, that was my position. I felt in my heart of hearts that Link would win the contest after he beat CATS the way he did, but I kept telling myself that we didn't know what would happen until the finals. Well, the finals have come and gone, and Cloud got his ass kicked. Link went up, plain and simple. As for why it could be any one of a hundred things. Maybe the E3 trailor made a difference. Maybe KHF wore off a little. Maybe the fact that both Board 8 and the FF7 crowd loathe Cloud had something to do with it. Or maybe, just maybe, Link was the better character in 2003 after all, and was simply handicapped by his Wind Waker pic. I never waivered from my belief that a Link with adult pics could ever lose on this site, and I stay by that even today. I will, however, tip my hat to Cloud. Despite Board 8 and the Final Fantasy 7 board absolutely hating him, Cloud withstood the initial onslaught and brought the match to within 40 votes before the day vote gave Link the win. That has to mean something. ## Match Trends ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1780&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k4&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **No Next Match**