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Contest Bracket
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Division 1
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Samus Mega Man Cloud Ryu SF
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Cloud Samus Link Sephiroth
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Link Cloud L-Block Snake
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L-Block Link
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Knuckles the Echidna Rikku Vaan Yoshi
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Yoshi Knuckles Mega Man KOS-MOS
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Mega Man Yoshi Samus Scorpion
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Arthas Menethil Diablo KOS-MOS Mega Man
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Axel Frog Samus Sarah Kerrigan
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Samus Frog Scorpion Midna
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Agent 47 Kratos Aurion Midna Scorpion
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Division 2
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Kefka Marcus Fenix Tom Nook Zelos Wilder
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Marcus Kefka Cloud Ocelot
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Cloud Marcus Auron Ryu SF
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Cloud Strife Jill Valentine Midgar Zolom Revolver Ocelot
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Auron Chris Redfield Pyramid Head Shadow the Hedgehog
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Auron Shadow Ryu SF Bowser
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Bowser Mewtwo Ryu (Street Fighter) Toad
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Division 3
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Sephiroth Mario Link Vincent
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CATS Meta Knight Princess Peach Sephiroth
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Sephiroth Meta Knight Fox Wario
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Sephiroth Fox Mario Big Boss
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Banjo Captain Falcon Fox McCloud Wario
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Big Boss Mario Pac-Man Wander
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Mario Big Boss Magus Phoenix Wright
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Bomberman Crash Bandicoot Phoenix Wright Magus
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Division 4
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Agent J Bidoof Link Miles Edgeworth
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Link Bidoof Vincent Zelda
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Link Vincent Crono Zero
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Miles 'Tails' Prower The Boss Vincent Valentine Zelda
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Crono Sam Fisher Simon Belmont Raiden
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Crono Raiden Zero HK-47
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HK-47 Lloyd Irving Jak Zero
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Division 5
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Master Chief Luigi Pikachu Dante
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Master Chief Dante L-Block Snake
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Luigi Mudkip Pit Tingle
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Luigi Mudkip Ganondorf Vergil
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Ganondorf Luigi Master Chief Yuna
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Ganondorf Ratchet Thrall Vergil
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Master Chief PaRappa the Rapper Tommy Vercetti Yuna
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Master Chief Yuna Liquid Snake Alucard
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Alucard Liquid Snake Ness Zidane Tribal
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Division 6
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Amaterasu Dante Little Mac Matt (Wii Sports)
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Dante Amaterasu Ada Balthier
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Dante Amaterasu Leon Pikachu
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Ada Wong Balthier Bunansa Frank West Jade Curtiss
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Isaac Pikachu Serge Tidus
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Pikachu Tidus Leon Vivi
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Leon Kennedy Ridley Spyro the Dragon Vivi Ornitier
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Division 7
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Snake L-Block Sonic Squall
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Kirby L-Block Laharl Nathan Hale
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Kirby L-Block Kratos Donkey Kong
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Kratos L-Block Snake Riku
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Donkey Kong Kratos (God of War) Marth Prince of All Cosmos
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Nightmare Rayman Solid Snake Vyse
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Snake Nightmare Ryu H Riku
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Haseo Riku Roxas Ryu Hayabusa
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Division 8
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Aeris Gainsborough Akuma Geno Squall Leonhart
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Squall Aeris Sora Lara
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Squall Sora Sonic Sub-Zero
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Albert Wesker Daxter Lara Croft Sora
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Duke Nukem Ike Gordon Freeman Guybrush Threepwood
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Duke Nukem Gordon Sonic Sub-Zero
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Sonic the Hedgehog Sub-Zero Prince of Persia Viewtiful Joe
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## Results and Analysis
### Ngamer's Analysis
The true wildcard of the group; perhaps even as big a wildcard as L-Block himself! Block's run was the most shocking and unbelievable thing ever to happen on this site, and so naturally it's always going to be the first thing that springs to mind when people think back to 2007, and I get the impression that the whole year is going to end up being judged by how people feel about L himself. That makes sense, but it's a long ways from fair, IMO, because '07 had a ton of other notable events and surprises as well. 4-way matches may have been more a "gimmick" than a true twist, but hey, the Character battle needed something new, and 4-ways sure as heck beat Tag Teams or Best Sidekick or whatever other kind of nonsense was being thrown around in early '07. It was a whole new way of looking at character strengths, and for the first time since '03 we pretty much had to throw old stats overboard and expect the unexpected. Pokemon and Halo went from jokes to serious threats, Nintendo's third tier were exposed as SSB-leaches who get dropped the moment something else likable comes along, and with Team Sonic likewise taking a nose-dive, Square was able to come closer to evening the gap with Nintendo than we'd seen since back in 2003.
The other great thing about 2007 was, with maybe one or two exceptions, there was no such thing as a bad match. Even when the winner was never in doubt, there was nearly always something interesting going on below the surface, like watching Frog fight back valiantly to overcome Axel, or Phoenix hold the line against Bomberman, or Vincent crush (not *really*, but still!) the Noble Nine against Crono. On the other hand, because there was so much going on at once, no poll could match the full on intensity of the best 1v1 slugfests of the past. I wasn't so crazy about 2007 that I want to start switching over to a 4-way format full time, or even half-time for that matter, but still, it was a cool change of pace and ends up earning high marks across the board in my book.
---
## Knuckles the Echidna vs Rikku vs Vaan vs Yoshi 2007
_source: Knuckles the Echidna vs Rikku vs Vaan vs Yoshi 2007 (revid 88419)_
## Results
**Round One**
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 1
- **Match \#:** 1
- **Match Date:** Monday, September 3rd, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Yoshi - 34.59% Knuckles - 30.32% Rikku - 21.59% Vaan - 13.53%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Yoshi first place (2pts) - 29.96% Yoshi second place (1pt) - 50.91% Knuckles second place (2pts) - 21.34% Knuckles first place (1pt) - 37.78%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Yoshi - 80.87% (29,699) Knuckles - 59.12% (21,711)
Usually I do a pre-contest thing, but I'm sticking it here because it basically amounts to "CJayC felt like it". But just in case people are looking at this stuff in a few years, I should probably mention a few things since this is getting written in 2011 four years after the fact. First and foremost, this was our first-ever fourway contest so there was a lot of things people weren't really aware of -- like, order mattering when filling out a bracket. Remember all the whining about that? Cripes.
And believe it or not, fourway matches didn't always suck. You wouldn't know it by how much we hate them now (mostly bitterness because of 2009's games contest), but the first contest was actually pretty good from start to finish and the first match was fairly hyped. Normally you get a Nintendo overall 1 seed against some slug for an easy blowout, but with no seedings this year you couldn't really do that. Eventually the board settled on Yoshi \> Knuckles at the top, but that ended a few seconds after the match started. This match technically extended Knuckles' first round winning streak, though he didn't need to get first place to do it and like usual he had to work hard for it.
Not many people really expected Rikku to give him a challenge, but once Knuckles did well early the typical FFX night vote paired with Sega's *terrible* night vote allowed her to come back from down 300 fairly quickly. Then Knuckles exploded with that typical Sega morning vote before falling down equally quickly by lunch. You'd think Square would have been able to hold even after holding off the Sega morning charge, but ask Magus how well that works out. Sonic characters never behave in polls, but at the end of the day they always have these huge day pushes. Rikku held out for awhile, but ultimately got swamped and lost by 1100.
Knuckles is really odd when you look closely at it:
2002 - Blows out Akira, gets wrecked by Snake. 2003 - Weird match with Yuna where he was up by 1000 forever before blowing up in the morning. Loses in round 2 to Snake. 2004 - Weird match where Kefka is winning for awhile, but Knuckles blows up in the morning and loses in round 2 to.... Snake. 2005 - Everyone knows about Magus, but the loss to Squall in round 2 was actually really respectable. 2007 - Barely beats Rikku in another "saved by the morning" match, loses in round 2 to Mega Man and Yoshi. 2008 - Loses in round 1 for the only time ever, and even here he was respectably close to Zelda. 2010 - ANOTHER morning save against a character he should have destroyed and ANOTHER round 2 loss.
I can't think of a single character who deserves to get to round 3 more than this guy. He's definitely earned it. Somewhere in here I should probably lament on how 12 hour matches while great completely murdered all sense of high vote totals and drama. I didn't remember how good this match was with the high vote totals until I looked at it again, but jeez. I kinda miss it.
Oh and a note on Vaan. This was his only contest match ever, and you can see why. Dude's absolutely terrible and has got to be the weakest post-NES Final Fantasy lead. Does *anybody* like this guy?
## Stats and Analysis
Judging by how 85% of Gurus had Yoshi slotted for first place here, you wouldn't think of this as the most exciting match to start a Contest season that GameFAQs has ever seen, but in reality it was. Of course much of that has to do with CJay's always making a Nintendo powerhouse the overall \#1, playing against a fodderific 16/8 seed, but also there were many on the board claiming Knuckles had a good chance for the Day One upset. Because the Female bracket had kept him out of the '06 Contest, Knux's stunning '05 defeat of Magus was still fresh in our minds, perhaps over-inflating his value. Some people also suspected that Nintendo had traditionally benefited from casual support, especially where Melee characters were involved, and so the company would be weaker in this format now that people had three other options to choose from, and that possibly Team Sonic's more dedicated supporters would give them an advantage.
The bubble burst on that pipe dream within seconds, as Yoshi shot out to a huge lead that not even bracket voting or the Nintendo Power Hour could account for. Knux did decently with the board vote as well, but from there it was all downhill for him; Rikku was making cuts on him within the hour, and by the time a couple more hours had passed he was getting completely owned on every update. Knuckles fans didn't give up though- the legendary Sonic morning vote was still to come! It came alright... and went almost entirely to Yoshi! This match did a perfect job of setting the trends that we would continue to see in the 63 days to follow:
- strong opening few hours for Nintendo
- Square domination during the dead of the night
- Nintendo ownage for a few hours once the sun rose
- no clear Nintendo/Square advantage with the ASV (except where Kingdom Hearts was involved)
- Sonic Team flat out disappointing no matter what time of day it was
Meanwhile, Vaan was just awful all day. In retrospect the warning bells for an upcoming Balthier flop should already have been sounding, but instead most people choose to just chalk this up to Vaan being the pathetic Tidus to Balthier's Auron. What Vaan DID accomplish though was to bring about the first case of what would become the dominant factor of 2007: LFF (aka Leach Fanbase Factor). The FFXII lead had been embarrassed, but still managed to affect the final result by leaching away enough of Rikku's Square support to cost her a spot in the next round.
The other interesting thing to note about Match One was the insane vote total - **158k** were cast, making this the **third** most popular matchup in site history (behind only the Zelda/FF Series Final and the Link/Cloud/Seph/Mario/Snake/Samus Battle Royale). As this was only the first day, we naturally assumed that interest and rallying would continue to grow the rest of the season, and that we'd be seeing 200k in a matchup before too long. We ended up being wrong, as votals instead took a dive for the remainder of Round One, only returning to approach the 160k mark in the L-Block-boosted final stages of the Contest.
## Match Trends
## transience's Analysis
historically, the first match of the year is a Nintendo-sized blowout - Mario crushing Joanna Dark, Samus smashing a random Pokemon, Zelda putting up 90%+ on Civilization, etc. our alpha dogs from our alpha company go first, and while people are excited about the match because the contest is starting, we rarely get a good match.
that's what makes this match so good. Yoshi and Knuckles were the class of the match, Yoshi having beaten Dante the year before and Knuckles having perhaps the Greatest Upset of All Time before giving potential Noble Nine Breaker Squall a fight two years ago. Rikku was a decent character who had a nice match against Ryu two years ago, but she didn't do all that well against friggin' Kairi and got doubled up by Samus. oh, and Vaan was in the match to ruin her chances.
too bad things didn't work out that way. Yoshi came out dominating, just like he always does during the board vote, and Knuckles was out of the running before the poll froze. from there, it just got worse for Knuckles as Rikku slowly gained percentage while Knuckles sat there not doing much of anything. Knuckles grabbed a 300 vote lead, but FF10 is a night vote beast and Rikku took advantage of it, snatching the lead within about 90 minutes and building the lead out to 500 votes by morning. Knuckles recovered with the patented Sonic Day Vote, but Knuckles was no longer the lock to make round 3 due to Yoshi/Mega Man overlap; we had expected Knuckles to be about 7% closer, after all.
from here, we tried to explain what happened. some possible explanations were: Yoshi and Knuckles having some overlap (not THAT crazy of an idea - they're both fan-favourite platforming characters, and we've seen Sonic and Mario overlap before); Square doing well in this format; and Knuckles being overrated thanks to fluking that match against Squall. in the end, the answer was a lot simpler - Sonic characters just suck in this format. I'm not about to try to explain why or if Sonic would have had a bad year in a traditional format, but by the end of the contest it was very obvious that Sonic was not in its element in 2007.
## External Links
- [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2863&num=4)
- [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=1)
- [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=1)
• **(No Previous Match)** • **Next Match**
• **(No Previous Round)** • **Next Round**
---
## Arthas Menethil vs Diablo vs KOS-MOS vs Mega Man 2007
_source: Arthas Menethil vs Diablo vs KOS-MOS vs Mega Man 2007 (revid 82892)_
## Results
**Round One**
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 1
- **Match \#:** 2
- **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Mega Man - 50.83% KOS-MOS - 19.84% Diablo - 19.43% Arthas Menethil - 10.12%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mega Man first place (2pts) - 43.16% Mega Man second place (1pt) - 50.43% KOS-MOS second place (2pts) - 18.17% KOS-MOS first place (1pt) - 11.92%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Mega Man - 93.59% (34,370) KOS-MOS - 30.09% (11,050)
Everyone knows about SFF, and most people who follow fourways know what "LFF" means. But before LFF came not knowing what it even was. Then this match happened.
The consensus for first place was easy. Mega Man was going to stomp, as he tends to do in the first round. Past that, almost everyone expected Diablo to get second place. The logic there was how he would hammer Arthas into the ground because of them being from the same company, plus KOS-MOS is weak anyway. The only thing she'd ever done of note in a contest prior to this is prevent Balrog0 from getting a perfect bracket in the summer of 2004.
Then the match started, and it became readily apparent same fanbases in fourways behave very differently than they would in 1 on 1s. If you put Diablo against Arthas heads-up, Diablo probably wins really easily. Don't forget that Diablo beat Kefka while (3 years after this match) Arthas was thoroughly embarrassed by Kefka heads-up, although this here fourway match had everyone picking Arthas which led to some hilarious whining.
Regardless, Diablo and Arthas completely screwed each other out of getting second place, allowing KOS-MOS to advance by default. If you advance in a fourway by only scoring 18%, odds are your competition completely blows or something weird was going on. In this case, it was probably both. KOS-MOS advancing was the biggest upset of the first round, kept that damn second match jinx in tact and got the statheads coming up with a new abbreviation to explain away anything they don't like.
One on one, two characters of the same fanbase leads to stuff like Link getting close to 90% on Ganondorf. In a fourway, no matter how good the stronger character in a fanbase is, the presence of another character in that fanbase will always weaken both characters. It's how you end up with dumb crap like KOS-MOS advancing, and it gets especially fun when you get more than two characters of the same fanbase sharing a poll.
## Stats and Analysis
- KOS-MOS advancing was the **\#1** most surprising result of Round One
- It was also the **\#8** most surprising Round One result of all-time
early in the contest, we weren't yet spoiled by every single result being unexpected, or someone wildly overperforming. as such, this match is better than it seems -- KOS took an early lead and never let it go, staying pretty constant throughout the day. Diablo, for the most part, disappointed - people were expecting him to be neck-and-neck with KOS, but it didn't happen. he came out pretty weak and never really went anywhere.
the surprise of the match was Arthas, a character most expected to do pretty poorly. his opening vote was bad, but after that, he slowly crept up on Diablo, and after a while people stopped paying attention to Diablo whatsoever and focused on Arthas vs. KOS-MOS, even though Arthas was in fourth place. Arthas ended up slowing down come daytime, but managed to hold his slim lead over Diablo, showing that he deserved a place in the next character battle, assuming we have another one. Arthas got next to no discussion at all, so being within 3000 votes of KOS-MOS and beating out a guy who once won three rounds in a contest is fairly impressive.
## Match Trends
## External Links
- [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2864&num=4)
- [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=2)
- [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=2)
• **Previous Match** • **Next Match**
---
## Axel vs Frog vs Samus Aran vs Sarah Kerrigan 2007
_source: Axel vs Frog vs Samus Aran vs Sarah Kerrigan 2007 (revid 88420)_
## Results
**Round One**
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 1
- **Match \#:** 3
- **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 53.28% Frog - 21.15% Axel - 14.94% Kerrigan - 10.71%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Samus first place (2pts) - 58.33% Samus second place (1pt) - 38.60% Frog second place (2pts) - 25.40% Frog first place (1pt) - 17.34%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Samus - 96.93% (35,597) Frog - 42.74% (15,696)
This was the second match in a row where a Noble Nine character took over 50% of the vote, which for now proved the format wouldn't slow these people down much. It was also the second time in the first three matches where second place was heavily contested and the last place character was a complete joke. Kerrigan winning that recent Gamespot contest is going to lead to a bunch of people picking her to win a match she's destined to lose, you watch.
Axel vs Frog was the major highlight here, and before the game completely collapsed Chrono Trigger was always good for a classic match or two every contest. Hell even *after* the collapse, we get to see Crono getting upset by a jumble of pixels or the game itself losing to Mario 64 twice. Good times.
But here, for awhile, it looked like there wouldn't be much trouble for Frog at all. Frog jumped all over Axel early -- relatively speaking, anyway, there's only so much "jumping" you can do from second place when the top character is getting over 50% of total votes -- up to a lead of 1500 in only a few hours. It slowed down overnight, but so does everything when Samus is sitting here phazon beaming everyone else's collective face.
Even when the huge Kingdom Hearts morning vote showed up, which is right about the time Chrono Trigger always bombs, it still barely mattered. Axel got the lead under 1300, then the morning vote gradually wore off before Frog went back up again. Late morning, early afternoon, Frog went way up to 1900.
And then...? That damn Kingdom Hearts day vote. We really need to get something KH and something Halo of similar strength in a one on one poll to settle the title of Day Vote King for good.
Anyway, at 3 in the afternoon Frog was up by 1900 votes. Pair the Kingdom Hearts day vote up with Chrono Trigger's s\*\*\*-tier awful day vote, and you get Axel turning 1900 votes into 1000 in about 6 seconds. Well, two and half hours, but you get the point. It would only get worse, too. Axel came all the way back by 8, which is completely nuts when you really think about it. A 1900 vote lead in a fourway is what, 4000 in a one-on-one? How many characters could swing 4000 votes in five hours?
The problem for Axel is how his fanbase is mostly comprised of people in *bed* by 8, so he wasn't able to keep the momentum going and finish Frog off. Oh he built a lead, but slowly. Way too slowly. Over the next three hours he was only able to build a lead of 330, and with the 25th hour rallying Frog gets in every match that lead needed to be more like 500 or more.
Of course Frog was going to come back in the final hour. Doesn't he always? That 300 vote lead disappeared in something like 40 minutes, and Frog completely dominated the final few updates to win. It's rare a character both impresses the masses and completely embarrasses himself via one of the biggest choke jobs ever all in the same match, but that's Frog for you. As for Axel, this was probably his one and only chance to ever win a match. KH is getting weaker with each passing year, and 3 cannot come out soon enough for these people.
## Stats and Analysis
this match was a match of trends: Frog is a CT character, one that does great to start out the poll but then goes into hiding the second the sun comes up. in some cases, they go into hiding even earlier, building up a huge lead in 3-4 hours and then holding on for dear life for the rest of the match. Axel, on the other hand, is the exact opposite: pathetic at first, but unequalled in the daytime thanks to the whole Disney thing. Axel is an upset pick that just about nobody even considered, self included. Frog was exposed pretty badly as a fraud in 2005, but even then, he wasn't going to be upended by a guy that was seen as fodder by most.
when the match started, people called it within minutes. with the early vote/bracket vote/Axel's patheticness at night, Frog was cruising to a huge lead. 142 vote lead in five minutes, 500 votes after 30 minutes, up 834 by the time the first hour was over. CT was bad in the daytime, but it wasn't going to drop a lead of several thousand votes that Frog was expected to take by morning. the lead hit 1300 votes by the second hour, and by 3 it was up to 1500.
from there, the first uh oh of the match happened: Frog stopped increasing. Axel froze him, and by 5am he started fighting back. by the time the morning vote -- usually indicative of the day vote -- was done, Axel had cut the lead to 1250 votes. Frog had the whole during-school vote still to pad his lead, and he did so - by the time school let out, he was up 1900. it was a nice buffer for the inevitable Axel comeback, and most people felt confident that Axel was not going to make a 1900 vote lead disappear.
those people underestimated Axel -- or expected too much of Frog's day vote, one of the two. those polar opposite trends made this the most exciting comeback of the contest. by 4pm, it was already down to 1663. Axel tore 400 more votes off the lead in the next hour, by 5:30 it was under 1000, and by 7pm there was only 400 votes to go. Frog was thought to be able to stabilize by 11pm or so, but Axel was just going too fast. Axel made some huge cuts and by 8pm, we were tied. this match was Axel's to lose.
Axel went on to take a 200 vote lead with no problem, and while Frog was occasionally stalling him now -- which was much better than the 60 vote cuts Axel was making with ease earlier -- Axel's lead kept on pushing up. 300 votes was hit by 10:30. Frog made an unusual 40 vote cut and followed it with another 20 vote cut, but Axel shut everyone up by winning the next update. Frog's comeback was on, but it was going nowhere. 10-20 vote cuts on a 265 vote lead with 45 minutes to go? it just wasn't fast enough.
people believe that Frog has some strange "clutch" ability as if he's a real person, and nothing would convince them more than the last 45 minutes of this match. out of literally nowhere, Frog cut 51 votes off the lead, nearly a quarter of what was needed to take the lead. the next update, he took another 45. there were topics everywhere, including on LL, rallying for Frog. it isn't Frog that's unique, it's how far his fans are willing to go in order to ensure a win.
what followed was the single most illegitimate result since Mario/Crono 2003: Frog ripped another 50 votes, then 30 more, then a whopping 67 to punctuate taking the lead. just like that, the match was over with 15 minutes to go. Axel was not going to come back from this kind of rally. Frog went on to win by a fair anticlimactic 128 votes. if I could change one thing about this match, it would be delaying Frog's comeback ten minutes. THAT would have been something.
how shady was Frog's final hour?
Time \| Axel . . . \| Frog . . \| Samus \| Kerrigan
20:00 \| 21.87% \| 15.37% \| 52.09% \| 10.67%
21:00 \| 21.24% \| 18.84% \| 49.65% \| 10.26%
22:00 \| 21.50% \| 19.01% \| 48.89% \| 10.60%
23:00 \| 18.76% \| **19.57%** \| 49.40% \| 12.28%
00:00 \| 17.09% \| **26.88%** \| 44.86% \| 11.17%
[gamefaqscontests.com/images/poll_graph.php?matchnum=2865&type=2&seconds=60](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/images/poll_graph.php?matchnum=2865&type=2&seconds=60&max=0)
pretty damn shady. but as far as exciting, wild matches with huge lead changes go, this was the single best match of the year.
## Match Trends
## transience's Day-After Analysis
Frog started out on fire; he blew out to an 800 vote lead in an hour and showed no signs of slowing down. Chrono Trigger characters have always had an amazing night vote, so it wasn't unexpected. On the other hand, Kingdom Hearts characters may have the best after-school vote of any we've ever seen, so a big vote shift wasn't unexpected.
What *was* unexpected, though, was when Axel ripped 200 votes off Frog's lead at 5am. That was Frog's best time and Axel was ruining it. Frog recovered, though, and built out his lead to 1900 votes before school let out.
The second school let out, Axel just started ripping into Frog's lead. It started innocently, but by the time the full afterschool vote was in effect, Frog was getting absolutely destroyed. He was losing 400 votes per hour, and Frog supporters were so desperate that they were calling a mere 30 vote loss a "stall". Axel was moving so quickly that it looked like he would blow by Frog without so much as a struggle, and at 9pm EST, he did. The night vote was starting to kick in, but Axel would slowly push his lead out to 329 votes at 10:45. Even during Axel's peak hours, he was only getting 400 votes per hour. Everyone knew Frog would make a small comeback, but it wouldn't be fast enough. He was out of time.
It started innocently with a modest 16 vote cut. No big deal there. I don't think anybody even noticed. Even Frog made that 40 vote cut, though, the entire board woke up. Frog is a bit legendary in these contests - he has two of the closest wins of all time including arguably the greatest comeback - so the second board vets saw this, they were like "oh \*\*\*\* not this again". Most reasonable people said "oh, that was just a fluke. let's see him do it again before we start flipping out." Frog's next cut was smaller, and Axel won the update after that. Frog was just screwing with us.
From there, Frog cut off some votes, but he simply wasn't moving fast enough. 20 votes, 18 votes, 55 votes..
*55*? At this point, the board utterly exploded. A good chunk of the board was rallying for Frog and this format allowed it to show. Frog had pulled an update of 30% -- even when the entire board was bracket voting for Frog in the first five minutes, he only got to 24%. The next update came, and 45 more votes were pulled off the lead. At this point, cheating was the only way Frog was going to lose and everyone knew it. Frog's next update as a 31% update - to compare, Samus's was only 39%. Axel was being left in the dust.
With ten minutes to go, Frog passed Axel and there was no comeback from there. The entire board celebrated. Was it a legitimate win? Probably not - there's literally no way that Frog would have come back under normal circumstances. But in this format, with a ton of brackets on the line? Frog got everything he needed and more.
## External Links
- [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2865&num=4)
- [Guru Match Predictions](http://www.thengamer.com/guru/stats.php?match=3)
- [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=3)
• **Previous Match** • **Next Match**
---
## Agent 47 vs Kratos Aurion vs Midna vs Scorpion 2007
_source: Agent 47 vs Kratos Aurion vs Midna vs Scorpion 2007 (revid 66086)_
## Results
**Round One**
Thursday, September 6th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 1
- **Match \#:** 4
- **Match Date:** Thursday, September 6th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Midna - 34.55% Scorpion - 30.67% Kratos Aurion - 22.43% Agent 47 - 12.35%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Scorpion first place (2pts) - 20.12% Scorpion second place (1pt) - 46.59% Midna second place (2pts) - 26.05% Midna first place (1pt) - 18.69%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Scorpion - 66.71% (24,499) Midna - 44.74% (16,430)
This was our first "boring" match of the contest, but that didn't stop it from being good anyway.
See, most people expected Midna to be the one way out in first place. After all, she was the new Zelda character from Ocarina of Time Rehash: Delayed to Sell Wiis Edition. Most people really like her in said game, and as we all know, Zelda Always Wins.
Well, it didn't really turn out that way. Scorpion *dominated* this poll about as well as a non-elite can dominate, and even though she advanced into round 2 Midna completely crapped the bed here. The only reason she advanced at all was being a hyped Zelda character, and the bad competition helped. Agent 47 is irrelevant, and Kratos is another character in the long line of Tales characters unable to win a match. Even if you reran the one match a Tales character was able to win, Lloyd \> Wesker all the way back in 2005, is there any doubt the result gets reversed now?
Now that I'm looking back on stuff for the first time in awhile, Midna lucked out big time here and Scorpion did *REALLY* well. With Mortal Kombat 9 getting such rave reviews all over the place, he and Sub-Zero should boost and we should also finally get more than two characters from that series into the field.
## Stats and Analysis
- Scorpion overperformed by **+5.97%**, the **\#15** most impressive performance of 2007
- Midna underperformed by **-9.84%**, the **\#2** most disappointing performance of 2007
this was the first real upset of the contest, and it wasn't even close. Midna was touted as the first Zelda character with actual personality and the star of Twilight Princess, the 2006 Game of the Year that crushed the competition. her competition was a washed up fighting game character, a fairly cult RPG character and Agent 47. easy, yeah?
well, Scorpion took the lead early, widened the gap quickly and never looked back. Midna may be well-known, but it seems the voters look at her as being more like Navi than Link. Midna was one of the biggest bombs of 2007, and this was looked at as being overestimation of Midna as opposed to underestimating Scorpion.
in reality, it was both.
## Match Trends
## External Links
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---
## Kefka vs Marcus Fenix vs Tom Nook vs Zelos Wilder 2007
_source: Kefka vs Marcus Fenix vs Tom Nook vs Zelos Wilder 2007 (revid 66103)_
## Results
**Round One**
Friday, September 7th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 2
- **Match \#:** 5
- **Match Date:** Friday, September 7th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Kefka - 34.86% Marcus Fenix - 27.95% Zelos Wilder - 22.24% Tom Nook - 14.72%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Marcus first place (2pts) - 28.55% Marcus second place (1pt) - 27.59% Kefka second place (2pts) - 14.27% Kefka first place (1pt) - 57.62%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Marcus - 56.14% (20,617) Kefka - 71.89% (26,401)
It's funny how even when Kefka wins, he loses. The majority of people picked him to get first place, and for a good while he was in first place quite comfortably. He built up a lead near 900 overnight, tapered off a tiny bit in the morning, but then went back up to 900 again during school hours. It sucks when something is called "Summer 2007 Contest" and you're dealing with an ASV.
But even without school, Kefka's day vote is a complete joke. He started collapsing away those 900 votes looooooong before school let out, then the ASV hit and it was the Red Sea collapsing on the Egyptians all over again. At 2:30 PM EST, Kefka was leading by 10 votes.
9 hours later, he lost by 5812 votes.
I know we were dealing with Lettuce Kefka and Gears of War was Halo Lite for a tiny little while on this site, but still. If Tom Nook or Zelos were worth *anything*, Kefka could have potentially fell all the way down to third place here. Eventually Kefka would get his Dissidia appearance and *finally* get a boost, plus a match picture worth looking at, which ultimately led to him getting that long-awaited big win. But for years and years, this guy was a massive choke artist and would always get listed with stuff like Halo and Donkey Kong.
Oh and a note on Zelos. I love the Tales series. Really, I do. But can you people PLEASE stop nominating these guys? Only Kratos will ever win anything, and that's only if he's against some slug. Just stop.
## Stats and Analysis
- Marcus Fenix overperformed by **+8.84%**, the **\#7** most impressive performance of 2007
- Zelos underperformed by **-9.71%**, the **\#3** most disappointing performance of 2007
nobody really knew what to think of Marcus Fenix. on the one hand, he was the star of the most popular 360 game to date, Gears of War. on the other hand, he was a generic looking, generic sounding character who most people knew as "the Gears of War Guy" than anything else - it was questionable as to if people would even recognize him. it came down to what kind of picture the guy got, or so we thought.
*looks up to match pic*
oh, he got it all right. and not only that, we got Lettuce Kefka. what happens when Lettuce Kefka -- the worst thing we've ever seen during the daytime -- goes up against Master Chief-lite?
this happens. Kefka did well at the start, building up an 850 vote lead through the poll's first six hours. the morning vote, surprisingly, didn't hurt him at all. all Kefka had to do was hold on during the afterschool vote and he had this match. unlikely, but possible. the during-school vote brought him down into the 600s, but he had stabilized. no one was going anywhere.
the afterschool vote thought differently. in one update, he lost 50 votes. he stabilized a little, then lost 50 more. then he lost 80. then 100. within 70 minutes, he went from being ahead 10 votes to being down 1050. within one hour, we went from a match we were all watching intently to a match everyone was laughing at. some of us looked back a couple hours later and saw Kefka was down 4000 votes. hilarious. Lettuce Kefka strikes again, and Kefka finds a way to outdo his previous disappointments with a collapse for the ages. only the Master Hand/Kuja debacle could match this one.
one last note about this match -- man, Zelos bombed, and bombed hard. some people were talking him up as a second place finisher to Kefka -- the beating was so bad that a couple of delusional folks called SFF with Kefka, despite the fact that Mithos did better against Kefka one-on-one that he did. pretty funny match all around.
## Match Trends
## External Links
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---
## Cloud Strife vs Jill Valentine vs Midgar Zolom vs Revolver Ocelot 2007
_source: Cloud Strife vs Jill Valentine vs Midgar Zolom vs Revolver Ocelot 2007 (revid 66102)_
## Results
**Round One**
Saturday, September 8th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 2
- **Match \#:** 6
- **Match Date:** Saturday, September 8th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Cloud - 61.29% Jill Valentine - 17.68% Revolver Ocelot - 15.22% Midgar Zolom - 5.95%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Cloud first place (2pts) - 93.00% Cloud second place (1pt) - 3.27% Ocelot second place (2pts) - 52.84% Ocelot first place (1pt) - 2.45%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Cloud - 96.27% (35,354) Ocelot - 55.29% (20,305)
Even back when Cloud was a true elite and wasn't almost losing full 24 hour matches to Solid Snake, he would always get jumped on at the very beginning. But rather than get beat early by Jill or Ocelot, two characters of decent strength, the entire poll was losing early to.... the Midgar Zolom. Yeah.
This was our first match with a true slayer elite in it, and the result was.... ugly, to say the least. Getting over 60% in a fourway poll is *hard* to do, but Cloud pulled it off largely due to Zolom being one of the most piss weak characters in the field. He wouldn't end up getting dead last in the LOL X-Stats, but he came close.
The match of note here was Ocelot vs Jill, but that wasn't as close as the score suggests. Ocelot won by 3000, was never threatened and without Cloud sucking up all the votes he probably wins even easier.
Which is what makes Jill's turnaround on him a year later one of the most puzzling results ever. There's almost no explanation for it at all.
## Stats and Analysis
this match was funny in that no one knew who would win between Jill and Ocelot, but everyone sided with Jill. it was just a toss-up, Jill had the impressive performance against Peach in 2006 while Ocelot was a no-show and sucked it up against Pac-Man in 2005, and we left it at that. no one felt good about the match, no one was surprised Ocelot won, and very few got points. the end.
Ocelot slowly built a lead in the opening hours, Jill supporters hung onto the belief that Ocelot might bomb harder than her in the daytime, and it just never happened. Cloud did great once the initial FF7 anti-vote wore off, and the Zolom pretty much sucked as expected. not too much to be said about this match.
## Match Trends
## External Links
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---
## Auron vs Chris Redfield vs Pyramid Head vs Shadow the Hedgehog 2007
_source: Auron vs Chris Redfield vs Pyramid Head vs Shadow the Hedgehog 2007 (revid 66108)_
## Results
**Round One**
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 2
- **Match \#:** 7
- **Match Date:** Sunday, September 9th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Auron - 40.27% Shadow - 31.54% Chris Redfield - 17.35% Pyramid Head - 10.58%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Auron first place (2pts) - 69.36% Auron second place (1pt) - 13.63% Shadow second place (2pts) - 51.65% Shadow first place (1pt) - 13.41%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Auron - 82.99% (30,477) Shadow - 65.06% (23,893)
Scorpion \> Midna was the first boring match, but at least the result was surprising. This match was just boring period. There was no way Auron wasn't getting an easy first place. There was no way Shadow wasn't getting an easy *second* place. This was all about setting things up for the next round, specifically how Auron/Bowser/Ryu are all kind of close and who knows what could happen in a fourway.
The only interesting thing about this match was Pyramid Head miraculously beating Chris Redfield for third place, although it comes with a bit of an asterisk since Resident Evil 5 didn't exist yet. Lame. Pyramid Head's one moment of contest glory can't even be his. If this poll were rerun, Chris probably gets second place.
## Stats and Analysis
- Pyramid Head overperformed by **+5.60%**, the **\#25** most impressive performance of 2007
- Shadow underperformed by **-5.28%**, the **\#15** most disappointing performance of 2007
completely obvious first place winner. completely obvious second place winner.
the distance between the two was surprising, though. most people thought that Auron would take this without a struggle, but not by 25,000 votes. Shadow actually had to use his great day vote in order to even make it look this close -- during the nighttime, he was actually losing updates to freaking Pyramid Head. Pyramid Head got quintupled by Bowser, the guy Shadow would be going up against next round. needless to say, Shadow's chances at advancing to round 3 were officially screwed here.
speaking of Pyramid Head, what an unexpected result from him (it?). Pyramid Head got the exact same percentage against Bowser as he did against all three of these guys combined. that's either a completely static fanbase (extremely unlikely) or Silent Hill is more popular nowadays. Good show.
## Match Trends
## External Links
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---
## Bowser vs Mewtwo vs Ryu vs Toad 2007
_source: Bowser vs Mewtwo vs Ryu vs Toad 2007 (revid 85791)_
## Results
**Round One**
`Monday, September 10th, 2007`
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 2
- **Match \#:** 8
- **Match Date:** Monday, September 10th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Bowser - 36.22% Ryu - 32.33% Mewtwo - 20.09% Toad - 20.10%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Ryu first place (2pts) - 70.26% Ryu second place (1pt) - 16.75% Bowser second place (2pts) - 54.53% Bowser first place (1pt) - 18.02%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Bowser - 72.55% (26,643) Ryu - 87.01% (31,954)
It's easy to look at this in retrospect with current information and go "Oh, Ryu vs three Nintendo characters all killing each other, Ryu easily wins!", and you'd be right. Unfortunately, people didn't really think that way in 2007. Everyone looked at Bowser just absolutely embarrassing Ryu in 2005 and assumed this would be a cakewalk. Just look at the Oracle predictions for this and you'll see what Board 8 was thinking.
But every contest has some matches where the casuals murder the gurus, and this was one such match. Because while Board 8 was picking Bowser \> Ryu without thinking twice, the public was picking Ryu \> Bowser without thinking twice. As you can see, the public ended up beating the sharps, and quite handily at that. Bowser having to deal with Mewtwo, a strong Nintendo character in his own right, and then Toad thrown in for the hell of it was way too much to handle. Bowser still advanced, but Ryu got first place almost by default.
Normally the public's random win over the sharps is meaningless, because we always beat them in the end anyway. But with this match, it was a bit different. It would take until next round to see why, but needless to say, Bowser wasn't exactly apt to turn this result around once all the Nintendo disappeared.
## Stats and Analysis
- Bowser underperformed by **-9.70%**, the **\#4** most disappointing performance of 2007
this was, in my mind, the first real upset. there were a couple matches prior to this that broke a lot of brackets, but this was the match, a match featuring two upper-tier characters in Ryu and Bowser, that had real implications for future rounds. the majority of the board had Bowser to round 4 with confidence - Bowser crushed Ryu in 2005, Auron was going to be in the same match as Cloud, and Bowser was the natural choice there.
but oh man, this thing did not go according to the majority's thinking. most expected a Bowser win; some expected a Ryu win since there were two other Nintendo characters in the poll. Bowser did indeed start out with the lead, and held it for a couple minutes. but after that, Ryu went to town on Bowser. by 00:15, he was losing updates by 100 votes. Ryu has one hell of an early/night vote, and Bowser felt the wrath of Ryu here. an hour in, this match was as good as over.
but it didn't stop there. Ryu's one of the strongest night characters we have. his day vote is a joke, and while Bowser isn't as strong as some other Nintendo characters in the daytime, it was thought he could at least stop the bleeding. instead, it was Mewtwo that absolutely rocked the daytime, going 50-50 with Bowser all the way to the end of the poll. in the end, Ryu won by 15,000 votes, and Bowser could only manage a 5,000 vote lead over Mewtwo. not the most inspiring of efforts from the guy most had pegged as round 4 material!
## Match Trends
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## CATS vs Meta Knight vs Princess Peach vs Sephiroth 2007
_source: CATS vs Meta Knight vs Princess Peach vs Sephiroth 2007 (revid 66213)_
## Results
**Round One**
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 3
- **Match \#:** 9
- **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Sephiroth - 58.24% Princess Peach - 17.69% Meta Knight - 12.32% CATS - 11.79%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Sephiroth first place (2pts) - 53.03% Sephiroth second place (1pt) - 40.80% Meta Knight second place (2pts) - 16.65% Meta Knight first place (1pt) - 21.37%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Sephiroth - 93.83% (34,458) Meta Knight - 38.02% (13,962)
In retrospect, this was a hilarious upset even from my perspective as a Peach fan. The big argument here was whether or not Sephiroth would blow everyone out hard enough for CATS to get second place. CATS gets 11-12% in every poll, and he held serve here. The idea was Peach and Meta Knight would screw each other over, Seph would be too strong and CATS would finally win a match.
"Whoops"
Sephiroth did well, but not godslayer-level well. This forced CATS into last place quite easily, Seph of course was way out in front, and Peach had the lead on second place and would of course stretch it out because who cares about Meta Knight when Brawl wasn't even...
"Wait, what?"
The second update hit, Meta Knight stormed out in front of Peach and would never let up after that, en route to a very easy second place. Fourways are kinda famous for an easy first place, an easy last place and two characters close enough to make second place interesting, but Meta Knight dominated this.
It's easy to blame Brawl for this huge upset, but in a way that was only half true. All we had at that point was a trailer and I think the DOJO! site, and in retrospect it's easy to say that site plus the first month or two after Brawl's release was that game's strongest time. Of course then people realized the game was terrible beyond words, so all the hype and initial soma wore off really quick.
If this were rerun, Peach might actually have a decent chance at second place. Most people in North America prefer Melee, Spam Knight and his Whorenado and his awful game left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, and most importantly Sephiroth is just plain weaker now. He lost to Snake, and could potentially not score 50% in this poll again. Barring the HD Remix treatment, Final Fantasy 7 is slowly going the way of Chrono Trigger on this site.
## Stats and Analysis
- Meta Knight overperformed by **+5.88%**, the **\#18** most impressive performance of 2007
- Meta Knight advancing was the **\#8** most surprising result of Round One
what a weird, weird match. Peach, maybe the most well-known female video game character in history vs. Meta Knight, known more for his appearance in a trailer than anything else. or so we thought.
I really have no idea what's up with Meta Knight. the argument going into this match was Peach vs. CATS, because CATS always gets about 12% in every poll. if Sephiroth were to dominate this poll as expected, CATS had a chance of winning just because he's guaranteed that 11-12%. and he got it.
the thing is, Sephiroth did a lot worse than most expected, allowing for Peach to blow past CATS in no time at all. Peach came out with her customary awesome board vote - either because she was the obvious bracket vote, or because we suck Nintendo hard here, or who knows why. but she's always done her best at the beginning, and today was no different.
the thing that was surprising everyone is that Meta Knight was not dying off after the board vote. Meta Knight seems like the kind of guy that the early vote would favour, but it was quite the opposite here - as time passed, he was doing better and better. after three minutes he passed CATS, at five minutes he was stalling Peach, and at ten minutes he shot way ahead with a massive 50 vote gain. Meta Knight built up a 300 vote lead fairly quickly but then just stopped - Peach came back a little bit during the dead hours, and then Meta Knight padded his lead slightly during the time people were in school. it seemed logical that Peach would take the day vote - I mean, she's by far the more known quantity here.
Peach has had a pretty mediocre day vote though, kind of like Bowser. she just kinda flops in the day, and Meta Knight started tearing into her. after jumping 300 votes in an hour, this match was over. Peach, a fairly popular round 3 pick, was out, and the character a lot of people thought would finish in a distant 4th ended up with a very surprising, impressive victory.
I still have no idea what to make of Meta Knight. I imagine that with Brawl out, he'll be like Falcon and Marth and all of those - around the fodder line. Peach seems like the kind of character you vote for when you either don't know or don't care about the others though -- who seriously cares about Peach? -- but when there's more options, you're not likely to vote for her. chances are, the format played tricks on her here, and in a straight-up match she'd take Meta Knight.
but who knows?
## Match Trends
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## Banjo vs Captain Falcon vs Fox McCloud vs Wario 2007
_source: Banjo vs Captain Falcon vs Fox McCloud vs Wario 2007 (revid 66124)_
## Results
**Round One**
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 3
- **Match \#:** 10
- **Match Date:** Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Fox - 32.27% Wario - 29.07% Captain Falcon - 21.47% Banjo - 17.06%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Fox first place (2pts) - 44.12% Fox second place (1pt) - 39.68% Wario second place (2pts) - 37.95% Wario first place (1pt) - 16.30%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Fox - 83.80% (30,775) Wario - 54.25% (19,923)
This match is proof why I take all those dumb Oracle stats with a huge grain of salt; Nlamer says Fox in this match was the most impressive performance of the entire contest, but that's because the Oracle crowd messed up. If you call this Nintendo SFF more impressive than L-Block, please schedule a CT scan at your earliest convenience.
That said, Nintendo SFF or not, this was a beast performance by Fox. If you're going to get into a contest for the first time in four years, might as well make it memorable. As memorable as an all-Nintendo fourway match can be, anyway.
Past that, things went mostly as expected. Wario was expected to get second place by default, since the consensus is Fox would SFF Falcon more than him. Falcon managed to stay in this match for 30 minutes, but got swamped overnight en route to a reasonably distant third place. Banjo was expected to stink it up and get last place, which he did.
Oddly enough, Falcon was probably stronger than Wario all along, but it took all the way until 2010 for us to get the proof of it.
## Stats and Analysis
- Fox overperformed by **+13.36%**, the **\#1** most impressive performance of 2007
- Wario underperformed by **-6.56%**, the **\#12** most disappointing performance of 2007
the wiki tells me that Fox's performance is the \#1 most impressive of the entire contest -- moreso than every L-Block, Vincent, Pikachu or Mudkip match. Nintendo SFF can do that to ya. Fox put up one hell of a performance here.
though to be fair, it was only partly his doing -- Wario really laid an egg here, and was in a real fight with Captain Falcon for a few minutes until he pulled away during the nighttime. in a match with a guy most people are apathetic on in Wario, an N64 platforming character not named Mario and another SSBM character, Fox really put on a performance here, one of the best of the contest. Wario, on the other hand, proved that he does not need to ever make another contest. Fox on the other hand needs a real shot against real competition. Fox's bracket placement was one of my least favourite things about this contest.
this match was probably a little bit better than its ranking, but it's tough to rank a weak fourpack full of fourth-tier Nintendo characters all that high. it was unexpected, but still not very interesting.
## Match Trends
## External Links
- [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2872&num=4)
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## Big Boss vs Mario vs Pac-Man vs Wander 2007
_source: Big Boss vs Mario vs Pac-Man vs Wander 2007 (revid 66152)_
## Results
**Round One**
Thurday, September 13th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 3
- **Match \#:** 11
- **Match Date:** Thurday, September 13th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Mario - 58.00% Big Boss - 17.18% Pac-Man - 16.91% Wander - 8.02%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Mario first place (2pts) - 81.52% Mario second place (1pt) - 14.91% Big Boss second place (2pts) - 19.19% Big Boss first place (1pt) - 14.60%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Mario - 96.43% (35,413) Big Boss - 33.79% (12,409)
This was a pretty debated match, although it really shouldn't have been. Mario is the absolute worst possible character for Pac-Man to share a poll with -- worse than Link, even -- because they're both from the exact same time period and appeal to the exact same people. And while both are complete legends in the industry, Mario definitely got the better end of the fame stick.
Yet for some reason, most people thought Pac-Man would get second place over Big Boss anyway. Possibly because of the big Pac-Man \> Ocelot upset a couple years prior, I dunno. Board 8 actually got this one right, so it was a good HAW HAW CASUALS day.
What most people didn't expect though was just how easy this would be for Big Boss. Mario didn't just beat Pac-Man; he pounded the living crap out of him. Pac-Man v Mario heads-up in this match wouldn't have even gotten Pac-Man 15% of the votes, allowing Big Boss to get one of the more surprising easy second place finishes around. This match was the first in a long line of Mario \> Big Boss results across the years, and while it's not quite as bad as Snake \> Knuckles was it's pretty close. Oddly enough, I'm still not sure how a Pac-Man vs Big Boss match would go. Big Boss probably wins, but I wouldn't feel comfortable picking it.
Wander of course got last place even with the ridiculousness everywhere else. lol Wander and lol his game.
## Stats and Analysis
- Big Boss overperformed by **+5.82%**, the **\#19** most impressive performance of 2007
- Pac-Man underperformed by **-6.80%**, the **\#9** most disappointing performance of 2007
- Big Boss advancing was the **\#4** most surprising result of Round One
Pac-Man beat Ocelot in 2005. Ocelot is stronger than Big Boss. easy, right?
yes, actually, since Pac-Man's kryptonite is an old-school Nintendo character, and seriously, who defines old-school more than Mario? Pac-Man stumbled out of the gate and never had a chance. Big Boss went up against a guy with no name in Wander and an icon that got SFFed to death. the result was a boring blowout for Mario, a commanding second for Big Boss, and everyone looking forward to the next match.
## Match Trends
## External Links
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## Bomberman vs Crash Bandicoot vs Phoenix Wright vs Magus 2007
_source: Bomberman vs Crash Bandicoot vs Phoenix Wright vs Magus 2007 (revid 88421)_
## Results
**Round One**
Friday, September 14th, 2007
## Ulti's Analysis
- **Division:** 3
- **Match \#:** 12
- **Match Date:** Friday, September 14th, 2007
- **Oracle Expectations:** Magus - 41.48% Bomberman - 21.53% Phoenix Wright - 21.30% Crash - 15.66%
- **GameFAQs Expectations:** Magus first place (2pts) - 21.17% Magus second place (1pt) - 30.40% Phoenix second place (2pts) - 26.89% Phoenix first place (1pt) - 16.86%
- **Advancing Prediction:** Magus - 51.57% (18,939) Phoenix - 43.75% (16,067)
This was such a weird match, and we may never again see another match personify a winner so well.
First and foremost, what the hell Magus. Ever since Knuckles beat him in 2005, it's been like popping a balloon with him. He went from being hyped as the Link-slayer in 2003 to now getting beat by the likes of Alucard and.... Sandbag. I mean damn. Even here when he gets first place in a poll, it just looks... bad. 31% in a fourway poll is not good when your opponents are fodder, fodder, fodder. Board 8 may be obsessed with Phoenix Wright, but facts are facts. He's weak. And Magus's percentage against these guys is just awful. Any dream of him making a deep run in this contest went totally out the window here. This wasn't like that Oblivion \> Tales of Symphonia match in 2009 where the top game doing bad was due to good competition.
Secondly, what the hell Crash Bandicoot. Before this, the best last place finish we'd seen was something like 18% from Agent 47 in that weird Scorpion \> Midna match. Then this happened. Sometimes, last place isn't really last place. We really need to get Crash a better seed one of these years so he can go out in style with a win. One win over Ulala (who?) in 2002 isn't really fair, he needs something else.
And of course, what the hell Phoenix Wright vs Bomberman. Before that even happened, Phoenix was scaring the living hell out of Magus himself for first place. Phoenix got this ridiculous board vote, which was to be expected in his first-ever winnable contest match. He ran out of gas quickly, but led Magus for 30 minutes and put another nail in that guy's contest coffin. He's worse than the PS3 at this point.
If you look at the update chart, this really shouldn't have been much of a match at all. Phoenix led outright for 30 minutes, and then when Magus caught up he was still out in second place over Bomberman. When an hour was up, he led by 700 votes and just kept on going up. Magus was totally sucking it up in first place, so there was plenty of love to go around for everyone else. What this basically meant is Phoenix had all night to build a lead, and though he slowed down in the dead hours he was still going up. Then the morning vote came, and he still kept going up. He didn't really start losing momentum until the brats went to school, but by then he led by 1300 votes and the match seemed over. I mean really, who cares about Bomberman?
OBJECTION!
Apparently, lots of people care about Bomberman. Because as the afternoon wore on, he started building some momentum and kicked off one of the slowest comebacks ever. But a slow comeback is still a comeback, and all those update charts people slave over saw Bomberman stay within proper parameters update after update after update. It didn't really seem like such a problem at first, but he kept it up for so long that it became a legitimate trend come ASV time. That 1300 was knocked down to under 800 by the time the brats got out of school, and then it gained a little steam and just kept on going.
But as the hours wore on, the comeback got slower and slower. Under 800 at 3 turned into 700 20 minutes later, which turned into 600 over an hour later, and 400 an hour or so after that. The problem Bomberman ran into is he ran out of a lot of steam come evening vote time and he was up against a character Board 8 refused to see lose.