# Character Battle X (2018) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 150 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Character Battle X _source: Character Battle X (revid 88412)_
Fall 2018 Contest

Announced:

August 4, 2018

Started:

October 19, 2018

Ended:

December 14, 2018

Final positions:

Winner: Link

2nd: Cloud Strife

3rd: Zelda

Contest Winner:

half_silver28 - 541 points

Notable matches:

Wario > Monika, Ammy > Draven,

Tifa > MMX, Pikachu > Mega Man,

Zelda > Snake, Zelda > Mario,

Crono > Mega Man, Mario > Samus
**Fall 2018 Contest** **Character Battle X** was the 10th character battle hosted by video game website GameFAQs, and the first such tournament after 5 years. The main event lasted from 2018 October 19 until December 14. This edition saw the return of the classic **1 vs 1** single-elimination format with 128 contestants split into eight 16-player divisions. However, eight members of the "Noble Nine" - except Sephiroth - were excluded from this bracket. Instead, they will be automatically seeded into the newly-introduced **Legends Stage**, where they will meet the eight division winners in a special double-elimination bracket to decide, once again, the most popular character on GameFAQs. **Link** defeated Cloud Strife in their third Grand Finals meeting, earning him a record-fifth championship. Besides the obvious Link \> Cloud final, the tournament was highlighted by Zelda's incredible Legends Stage run resulting from her appearance in *Breath of the Wild*, as she defeated three Noble Niners in the upper bracket, before losing to the eventual top two finalists in consecutive matches. Meanwhile, the defending champion Draven was completely blown out of the first round by Okami Amaterasu, suffering the tournament's most lopsided defeat in the process. This is largely a repsonse to his controversial victory in previous Character Battle where he was carried by rallying voters from /r/leagueoflegends. To add insult to injury, Draven also garnered the fewest votes in the entire tournament, and arguably one of the lowest *in the entire history* of GameFAQs. ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis This was the tenth GameFAQs character battle, and the first contest anyone has actually cared about since 2015. This was our first 1v1 character battle since 2010, our first 1v1 character battle with 24 hour matches since 2006, and our first 1v1 character battle with a traditional format since 2005. 2006 had a half male, half female split that led to a ton of snubs, whereas 2005 was a very traditional format with its seeding even considering the legend rule. So for all intents and purposes, Character Battle X was our first traditional bracket in over a decade. SBAllen walked back the legend rule for Character Battle X. After opening nominations up to Board 8 first and foremost for a few weeks before letting the entire site pick entrants, two cool new features were revealed. The entire Noble Nine outside of Sephiroth was put into a legends bracket where all eight would face the eight division winners, and that bracket would become double elimination for our first ever double elimination championship format. When I get to that in my writeups, I'm putting the seeding in a proper order for the wiki. My PCA, halfway my wiki, my rules =p Seeding was a standard 1-16 per division format, though with Board 8 having far and away the most nominations in the field, some of the seedings were way out of whack. The \#1 overall seed was Dante, for instance, but then we had some insane things like Waluigi as a 2 seed, Metal Sonic as a 5 seed, Metal Man finally making a bracket, and 2B from NieR Automata getting a 1 seed. It was all in good fun, because come voting time seedings don't usually matter much. I could spoil a whole bunch of stuff here, but we have 150 writeups and I need to save some material. Rallies were a huge sticking point in the past, even though those people were all over any related subreddit during this contest begging for votes in every close match. Isn't it funny how that works? Anyway, here is the list of voting changes that Allen implemented to help stymie the effects of rallies: -registered user votes counted double (only users registered before the start of the contest got the bonus when voting, which prevented registering mid contest to rally) -poll start time changed to midnight UTC (8pm EDT/7pm EST), which was very smart because it essentially gives the favorite an extra 4 hours to build up a lead, the theory being that a rally usually doesn't kick off until the next day and then whoops, you only have until 8pm to come back instead of midnight -to vote, one HAD to vote in every match; this one was very underrated pre-contest but its value became apparent later If you want to skip all the writeups and just go right to the post contest section, this contest was very easy to summarize: GameFAQs likes Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Zelda: Breath of the Wild a lot. The former came out mid contest and the entire contest had very noticeable results based on Smash hype. VERY well deserved hype, I might add. Am I allowed to call Ultimate a better game than Melee? Is that blasphemy? Is that a thing I'm allowed to do? I can? Good. Because Ultimate is the better game. Yeah I said it. Don't even try to @ me. Final side note before we get going on this bad boy. For those reading this on the wiki it won't affect you, but for GameFAQs readers I'm skipping match pic links this time around unless it's called for. Allen used super generic images for the first few rounds this contest and digging them up on creativename's site is a massive annoyance. Then when user pics were finally a thing, Allen split up the submissions between character and background, which meant one user could have a character pic chosen and someone else could have a background pic chosen. Why we couldn't just, you know, make a picture is beyond me, but hey. I think Allen wanted to double up the chances people's stuff got picked, because things like "quality over quantity", "the law of diminishing returns", and "less is more" are not in that man's lexicon. Anyway, let's go. My writer's block is gone and I'm ready to beast through this thing. ## Ulti's Mid-Contest Analysis Say what? A mid contest analysis? Yeah, never done one of these but I have to say something that can't be plopped into any one match. I also wanted to explain when this contest shifted, and it deserves its own writeup. Starting in round 4, Allen allowed for user made pictures (finally), there was a Thanksgiving break from voting, and each division winner was plopped into a legends bracket with our top 8 waiting. It was the Noble Nine minus Sephiroth, so (1)Link, (2)Samus, (3)Snake, (4)Cloud, (5)Crono, (6)Sonic, (7)Mario, and (8)Mega Man. There was actual seeding down there, and the more I look at this the more I realize how botched this idea was in execution. It was a good idea, but the actual way Allen did it was all wrong. Those were how the legends were seeded, but they were ordered in the legends bracket like this: (1)Link --- (8)Mega Man --- (4)Cloud --- (5)Crono --- (3)Solid Snake --- (6)Sonic the Hedgehog --- (2)Samus --- (7)Mario --- Allen has gotten 4/5 and 3/6 backwards compared to the NCAAs for years, which is annoying but ultimately doesn't change much. But while the seeding was sort of done by the NCAA style, the order of the legend bracket placement was done by order of division winners. This meant Division 1's winner would face Link, 2's winner would face Mega Man, and so on. This made no sense, and Allen also never bothered explaining how the legends were seeded. Personal preference? Nominations? No one knows. On top of that, this was a double elimination bracket, which is great, but it was done in bracket order instead of NCAA style order for the rerack. So for the loser's bracket, seeding was thrown out and everything was done chronologically instead of just doing the entire winner's bracket first like any tournament would do. It's difficult to explain why this was bad with words, so just look at this page and hop to the bottom: See how the loser's bracket is chronologically ordered instead of spacing everything out to prevent rematches? The loser's bracket was a great idea, but it was done horribly. How it usually goes is this: Match 1 loser Match 8 loser Match 5 loser Match 4 loser Match 6 loser Match 3 loser Match 2 loser Match 7 loser And then you do it chronologically. If it was done like this even including the weird placement of the winner's bracket, as it should have been, the loser's bracket would have looked something like this: Ganondorf vs Sephiroth Solid Snake vs Bowser Auron vs Alucard Mega Man vs Tifa Sephiroth vs Pikachu Solid Snake vs Crono Auron vs Sonic the Hedgehog Mega Man vs Samus And on down the line as things get moving. Or something along those lines. Basically, the correct way prevents most rematches and people would have cared a lot more about the double elimination idea, which I legitimately love in tournaments but it's clear Allen either has no experience doing a bracket like this or just doesn't care. Two. The legends and double elimination idea was good. But not allowing the main bracket to conclude was unbelievably stupid. This was the first time in contest history, even in contests where tournament of champion stuff has happened, where we had no main bracket winner. This pisses me off the more I look at it. The division winners could have all been plopped into a legends bracket anyway, so why rob us of a main bracket contest winner? People not being more upset by that one blows me away. Seeing Zelda win the main bracket and destroy Sephiroth in the process would have been unpredictable, hilarious, and it would have given us more matches to pick. This contest had 150 matches stuffed into a 2 month time frame anyway. What's 7 more matches to make sure the main bracket has a conclusion? DUMB move. Three. Match pictures this year were... bizarre. We could only submit a character or a background, never both at the same time. So for most pictures, one user would have a character credited while another could have the background, which was the case for most of the contest. Ange and I thankfully figured out a style that we could work off of each other with where I would submit most characters and he would get credit for most of my backgrounds, but why can't we just.... you know. Make a full match picture? It made zero sense and it took a really good team of smiths to work around whatever Allen was going for there. I can't even explain the logic there on Allen's part. It was really, really weird. Lastly, I've been holding this one in for years but it needs to be said. Every time user-made match pictures are a thing, the usual cacophony of losers, crybabies, and idiots that contribute nothing whatsoever to this site all cry pic sabotage. If you have a contributor page or you're a picsmith, I'm not talking to you. Well, most of you. One of you is getting called out later. But if Zen or yoblazer or whoever wants to offer constructive criticism and not be a dick, I always listen. But people whining who contribute nothing? Piss off. Sabotage implies a clear and intentional undermining. You not liking a match picture does not imply sabotage. It just means you don't like a match picture. Match pics are a public forum and anyone can submit them. Instead of crying like a little bitch, submit something better or piss off. Nothing is stopping you. And yeah, I have a big contributor page, submit a picture for every match, and my stuff gets chosen more often than other people. I've given a LOT of free time to this web site and Allen likes my material more often than not. So I asked for a sprite round this year, submitted in advance as if we were getting a sprite round, and got one. Don't like it? Too bad. I don't care. A lot of us love the sprite round. There are mature ways of giving criticism past crying sabotage every year, and some of you are complete failures about it. I'll even call you out by name, KP. I don't know when you jumped off the deep end and started acting like vcharon circa 10 years ago, but you very clearly need to look in a mirror. You've done a ton of match pictures and know how difficult they are. For you to whine about pictures and troll people is very unlike you, and you really need to knock it off. That paired with your meltdown during Mario/Samus was as big of an embarrassment as anything I quoted from anyone else this year, but I expect that stuff from people like StupidRaptor and Black Turtle. You? Come on bro, you used to be better than this, not a guy who whines about match pictures and embarrasses the stats topic. Furthermore, some characters don't have good sprites and sprite rounds have been a thing since the very first contest. I and many other people love the sprite round. The people who complain about sprite rounds every year are people I just don't get. Why ruin other people's fun? Sprites are harmless. That's all I got. Sorry for getting upset here, but I love making pictures and I legit feel unappreciated on that front. Unless you're lazy and crop a known image (http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb8/cb8-121-2.jpg), these are very difficult to do. Some of you who complain really need to take the time to make images before whining about other people's stuff, because it's really not as easy as it looks. By the way, user pictures in 2008 were mostly garbage, and I never once attacked anyone personally over them. Grow up. Anyway, back to the show :) ## Ulti's Post Contest Analysis Either get rid of the anti-rallying measures, allow fictional characters that make sense, or stop having contests. At least, stop having character battles and focus on games for awhile. We're at that point. We've now had three contests that either existed as an anti-rallying measure (years, rivalries) or this contest where a bunch of anti-rally stuff was put into place to appease a bunch of hypocritical crybabies who magically love rallying the second one of their characters or games wins because of it. As someone who sees the bigger picture here, it's now plain as day that rallies are a net positive on contests. We can see the difference in vote totals, and the people who think rallies are bad are proof that it's possible for an opinion to be factually wrong. Most matches in this contest struggled to hit 30,000 votes. Most were in the 26k-29k range, including a final between Link and Cloud after 150 matches happened, and this was WITH registered users having their votes count double. In reality, most matches this contest scored about 7k-9k less than the actual total, so really we had most matches struggling to hit 20,000 votes. That is unacceptable garbage. Get rid of forcing people to vote in multiple polls and put the poll start time back at midnight. Those two changes completely murdered this contest in cold blood. I know we had some good matches, but a good match without an audience doesn't mean anything. It's the old saying about trees falling in woods not making sounds if no one hears them. For the wrestling fans, I need a good crowd. If that isn't there, the match is bad for me. AJ Styles v Shinsuke Nakamura at Wrestlemania 2018 and Finn Balor v Seth Rollins at Summerslam are great examples. Both were good matches, but the crowd didn't give a shit about the former and was too busy booing a belt design to care about the latter. But if you watch those matches on mute, they were good matches. That also works in reverse. If you watch Rock/Hogan from Wrestlemania on mute, that was a terrible match. But the crowd reaction makes it A+ and rewatchable forever. This contest was essentially a good wrestling match with a dead crowd. We had some good matches, some good drama, good comebacks, photo finishes, underdog runs, really surprising results, random "how the hell?" moments, you name it. Everything you could want from a contest was there. Hell, even with all the anti-rally garbage, one of the big stories from this contest was people using porn subreddits to rally for Tifa. It's blatantly obvious that the anti-rally people are just talking out of both sides of their mouths and actually do want full rallies, which I've been supporting for 16 years now. This contest wanted to be a good contest. But with how dead this site is and how awful these vote totals were, most of it will go unremembered. Let's take these two matches as an example. Which match means more? Obviously Undertale vs Melee. Now swap everything around. Make Undertale vs Melee a round 3 match with 32,424 votes and Tifa vs Mega Man X a contest semifinal with rallying on all sides and 176,159 votes. Which match means more? That is what this contest was missing. There might be a QB out there better than Tom Brady, but if we don't see that with an audience, no one gives a shit. One final point before I wrap up, which I intentionally left out of my Mario vs Cloud writeup because I wanted to mention here during the wrapup. During the early parts of that match, Maximilian Dood was streaming Smash Bros Ultimate, and someone in the stats topic thought it would be a good idea to donate to the guy to rally on stream. So I threw the guy 10 dollars and asked for Cloud votes. Why not, right? Skip to 2:15 am. When it popped up on stream, Max read my note and then went "GameFAQs still exists?". Cloud got updates of 65 and 68 before going back to normal levels. I don't know the answer to our vote total problem or the reputation we have, but actively putting things in place that tell people not to vote in our polls probably isn't the answer. Dumb move. Geralt should have easily won this contest with a rally, but the creators of Witcher 3 didn't care enough about our site to bother. These contests used to draw in new people, they get people talking about our site, and the contests or matches with rallying are by far better than the rest. I don't care how many good matches this contest had. No one can convince me this was actually a good contest. Average maybe, but not good. As a total side note, Twitch rallying meant dick, because the second the message is read it's gone. It's takes something sustainable like twitter or reddit or a combination of things to actually take off. I will compromise on the registered double vote. Double votes for users is fine, even if I hate it. Everything else has to go. Let Contests Rally Again. Last point. I promise. This was the first PCA where I was looking at it going "150 matches? Where the F am I going to find the time for this?". I can delve up passion all day long, but 150 matches is just stupid. The legends bracket as a single elimination was really enough. Double elim was overkill with all the rematches and such. Less is more, Allen. A big reason for these vote totals is the law of diminishing returns. Contest Ranking: Fall 2015 (Games) Fall 2010 (GotD) Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2013 (Characters) Winter 2010 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2005 (Characters) Spring 2009 (Games 4-way) Summer 2007 (4-way Characters) Summer 2006 (Female Bracket) Spring 2006 (Series) Summer 2008 (Characters 4-way) Summer 2004 (Characters) Fall 2018 (Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) Fall 2011 (2v2 Characters) Spring 2017 (Years) Last, but not least... The Ultimate Loser™!! The double elimination thing made this a little weird to figure out, but The Ultimate Loser this year was... Goro Majima! Link \> Cloud \> Zelda \> Mario \> Samus \> Tifa \> Luigi \> Tails \> Master Chief \> Goro Majima. How fitting for one of those useless Yakuza characters to be this contests's ultimate loser. I mean really. Thanks as always and see you next time! I'd like to give a special thanks to my readers, and an extra special thanks to the guys you've never heard of behind the scenes who keep the wiki looking nice. Ngamer and I get all the credit, but without those unknown folks also helping out we could never do it all. Igordebraga, Averiah, MetalmindStats, Bwburke94, and anyone I might have missed, thanks guys! I really appreciate the help! Bottom's up, bros. ## Safer777's Pre Contest Analysis Oh hi! This is my first ever analysis on these contests! I just decided to write analysis for this contest since it is the 10th one and I am here since the 2nd contest so I thought why not? Of course I wrote these analysis as the matches went on. So that means I didn't know how far and how strong were the characters so you will see some strange remarks and such. So I repeat. These analysis aren't post contest, meaning I didn't had the full picture of all the matches and characters. For this read Ulti's analysis. He always was the best on these things and well he still is of course. Also don't expect in depth analysis and such. I write these for fun. Read Ulti's posts once again! Anyways here I go! So after so many years we finally had 1 VS 1 24 hour Character battle since 2005!!! We had contests since then of course but not with all these things together! Seriously it is that long! We had some changes too this time. Double Register Votes(to counter rallies I guess)and we had to vote in every match to count our votes normally. I like the 2nd thing but not the first. Come on now rallies are fine!  Another thing is that 8 of the NN'ers went to the Legends Bracket where they would face the winners of the 8 divisions. Yeah I said 8 of the NN'ers. Sephiroth was in the normal bracket and that was because the Admin said that we had already Cloud representing FF 7 so we didn't need another representative there. So Sephiroth got an easy dividion with potentially only 1 character posing a slight chance to beat him. Also we had a Loser Bracket too! Meaning characters that lost in the Final 16 had another match with the characters that lost in the final 16 too. Meaning another chance to advance too. So we had 3 Final matches actually! The Normal Bracket one, the one from the Loser Bracket and the Final one where the winner of the Normal Bracket would face the winner of the Loser Bracket! That is a lot of Finals!  So out of all these things I like the we have to vote in all matches thing and the Loser Bracket too. Of course the Loser bracket ended not that exciting but it can be tweaked in the next contest. ## Tournament Bracket *Click on the date above each match to see its article page (which mostly contains analysis / write-ups made by noted Board 8 users).* *Since votes made by registered users count as 2 votes than unregistered users, the brackets will only display the **final scores (adjusted votes)** from each match. For details on each match's vote distribution, **[click here.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/cbx_stats)*** ### Division Rounds | | |-------------------------| | **Division 1 (Devil?)** | | | | Oct 19 - **26394** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 19 - **26403** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 19 - **26398** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 19 - **26402** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 20 - **26022** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 20 - **26039** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 20 - **26042** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 20 - **26037** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |----------------------------| | **Division 2 (Maverick?)** | | Oct 21 - **29219** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 21 - **29219** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 21 - **29223** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 21 - **29229** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 22 - **29107** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 22 - **29119** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 22 - **29119** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 22 - **29121** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |----------------------------| | **Division 3 (Keyblade?)** | | Oct 23 - **29737** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 23 - **29744** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 23 - **29744** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 23 - **29745** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 24 - **29284** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 24 - **29284** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 24 - **29289** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 24 - **29288** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |----------------------------| | **Division 4 (Automata?)** | | Oct 25 - **29525** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 25 - **29527** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 25 - **29526** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 25 - **29532** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 26 - **28762** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 26 - **28758** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 26 - **28756** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 26 - **28760** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------------| | **Division 5 (Garden?)** | | Oct 27 - **28693** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 27 - **28695** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 27 - **28701** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 27 - **28704** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 28 - **28819** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 28 - **28826** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 28 - **28826** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 28 - **28824** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |------------------------| | **Division 6 (Wild?)** | | Oct 29 - **29949** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 29 - **29953** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 29 - **29951** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 29 - **29954** | | 4 | | 13 | | Oct 30 - **30762** | | 3 | | 14 | | Oct 30 - **30770** | | 6 | | 11 | | Oct 30 - **30768** | | 7 | | 10 | | Oct 30 - **30758** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |---------------------------| | **Division 7 (Mansion?)** | | Oct 31 - **28911** | | 1 | | 16 | | Oct 31 - **28913** | | 8 | | 9 | | Oct 31 - **28917** | | 5 | | 12 | | Oct 31 - **28919** | | 4 | | 13 | | Nov 01 - **30604** | | 3 | | 14 | | Nov 01 - **30607** | | 6 | | 11 | | Nov 01 - **30614** | | 7 | | 10 | | Nov 01 - **30616** | | 2 | | 15 | | | |--------------------------| | **Division 8 (Shinra?)** | | Nov 02 - **29025** | | 1 | | 16 | | Nov 02 - **29027** | | 8 | | 9 | | Nov 02 - **29023** | | 5 | | 12 | | Nov 02 - **29025** | | 4 | | 13 | | Nov 03 - **28744** | | 3 | | 14 | | Nov 03 - **28745** | | 6 | | 11 | | Nov 03 - **28748** | | 7 | | 10 | | Nov 03 - **28752** | | 2 | | 15 | ### Legends Stage *Due to the website's limited horizontal space, the first round will be split into a separate section. Afterwards the rest of the double- elimination bracket will be displayed as usual.* #### Round 1 | Legends Stage Round 1 | |-----------------------| | Date | | Nov 27 | | Nov 27 | | Nov 28 | | Nov 28 | | Nov 29 | | Nov 29 | | Nov 30 | | Nov 30 | #### Finals Bracket | Upper Bracket & Finals | |------------------------| | | | Dec 03 - **29424** | | 1 | | B | | Dec 03 - **29425** | | 4 | | 5 | | Dec 04 - **28717** | | E | | 6 | | Dec 04 - **28715** | | 2 | | 7 | | Lower Bracket | |--------------------| | LB Rd 1 | | Dec 01 - **25238** | | Ganon | | **MM** | | Dec 01 - **25239** | | Alucard | | **Bowser** | | Dec 02 - **25886** | | **Snake** | | Auron | | Dec 02 - **25885** | | **Tifa** | | Sephiroth | | | ## See Also - [CBX Main Page](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/cbx) - [Final CBX Standings & Stats](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/cbx_stats) - Board 8's 2018 Nominations --- ## (1)Dante vs (16)Cuphead 2018 _source: (1)Dante vs (16)Cuphead 2018 (revid 84612)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know this contest started two months ago, but doesn't it feel like a year? It legitimately feels like this match was an entire lifetime ago, especially given how utterly bizarre it was for Dante to be the \#1 overall seed in the first place. We are reaching a point of singularity in our culture where everything feels like it's happening at the same time and at no time at all, and it's really jarring. Or I'm just getting old and time is going too fast for me at this point. Anyway, here is the list of every \#1 overall seed we've ever had, in order, even including the weird ones limited to format types. For fourways (puke) or threeways (kinky) I just listed the winner of the first match: -Mario -Link -Super Mario Bros 3 -Link -Bowser -Mario -The Legend of Zelda -Samus -Yoshi -Zack Fair -Tetris -Link -Fallout 3 -Mario and Bowser -Link -Chrono Trigger -1995 -Dante The ones that stand out as being thoroughly ridiculous are Zack, Fallout 3, 1995, and Dante. Fallout 3 happened because of the format (Game of the Decade), and 1995 happened because Allen had the bright idea to make a contest called Best Year in Gaming, an idea so dumb that Allen has yet to add it to the list of past contests as of this writing. Seriously: This leaves Zack and Dante, both of which earned their position from new game hype. I know people reading this after 2010 or so won't believe this, but Final Fantasy 7 used to be liked on GameFAQs. It's true! So back in 2008, Zack got a bunch of nominations and was thrown into the first match. That bracket was largely randomized, but hey. Not taking anything away from the guy. But Dante, somehow, got the \#1 overall seed in this contest based off of this video even with Board 8 deciding everything this year: I like Dante. I honestly do. He's cheesy and over the top in a cool factor way. And DMC5 looks fantastic, don't get me wrong, but that hype video isn't exactly an FF7 remake or grown men openly weeping tears of joy and passing out over Twilight Princess or Super Smash Bros Ultimate. It was just a solid hype vid. That's all. DMC is also a series that's produced two of the all-time worst games (2 and DmC, a game so bad they didn't even call it "5"), two average games (1 and 4), and one A+ game. 3. This is also Capcom we're talking about, which isn't exactly the most scrupulous of companies. The point is here I think some dickery was afoot. And as one could expect, voters weren't buying it. Dante did decent here, but this was nothing earth shattering and nothing to make anyone think he had a prayer of escaping a division with Vivi and Ganondorf in it. It's not often one can call a 71% performance subpar, but we're holding Dante to the standard of a \#1 overall seed. Being in this position is just different; Link has been here five times and this is the spot Chrono Trigger scored 239.44% from. You have to give me better against a character in Cuphead that 19 people care about. And yeah yeah, I know. "Cuphead's game is good and he's underseeded." These indie characters are all flashes in the pan, they all have no sustainable popularity, and their fanbases all think they're bigger than they actually are. That includes the all-time examples of Braid and Undertale, and I say this as someone who drove the Undertale bandwagon. This contest proved that in spades. Cuphead matters about as much as Frisk, Tim, Meat Boy, or the vehicles from Gradius and Blaster Master. He doesn't. Moving on. Oh and Nero is cooler than Dante, even if he does look like a vanilla midget Cody Rhodes wannabe. I love all these ex-WWE fans pretending the NWA title suddenly matters just because Cody Rhodes held it for an hour after winning it on a show he himself produced and booked. Cody and Dustin are both trash, and so was much of All In. Pro wrestling will never, ever be cool again. Ever. Deal with it. That ship has long sailed. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: This was a fairly standard, easy to predict 1 vs. 16 blowout. The only remarkable thing about it is that Cuphead beat expectations, avoiding a tripling and even getting up to just below 30% during the Early Night Vote. Dante did better with registered users, though the prediction percentage was perhaps a bit lower than you might think with 81.71% choosing Dante. **What could this mean?**: That Cuphead was thoroughly under-seeded mainly. It's not surprising that he overperformed the board's expectations and his seed, his game destroyed two GotY polls (it even quadrupled a well-liked Assassin's Creed game) and came third in the final poll. Some people are nervous about Dante vs. Ganondorf or even vs. Lightning from this, but this specific match isn't cause to be I think. Just that Cuphead deserved a better match-up, and hopefully will get one in the future. I also feel better about Shovel Knight thanks to this performance, as the most comparable character in the bracket to Cuphead. ## Safer777's Analysis This is the first match of the contest so of course easy win for Dante. He got a 1 Seed too! Dante was always decent in these things. Not the strongest of course but good enough. He had some nice matches in some of these contests. I still remember the Ryu/Dante match from so long ago with the Hockey Factor! Nice. As for Cuphead he is newcomer and from an indie game. So don't expect much. Still he did okay I believe. He has a unique appearance so people recognize him easy. As for Dante I never seen pics of him with the New Dante look. Hey don't kill me! I am just saying! Yeah I know everyone hates New Dante. Still nice win. However the prediction percentage seems kinda low for a 1 Seed. Eh whatever. ## Tsunami's Analysis Not much to say here. I actually entertained the upset pre-contest because I'm more dialed in to the speedrunning segment of gaming and Cuphead was an indie darling and a *recent* one at that, but as soon as I learned that Dante had gotten a new game and it was a return to the pre-DmC days, that was enough to get me to reject that idea. Still, as we'll see in a few divisions, I was hardly the only one to think that an indie darling could actually be worth something! --- ## (8)Chloe Price vs (9)Lightning 2018 _source: (8)Chloe Price vs (9)Lightning 2018 (revid 85394)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was a debated match pre-contest, and I don't blame or make fun of anyone for this being a debated match for two reasons. One, Final Fantasy is anathema to this web site at this point, especially modern Final Fantasy. One cannot blame anyone for not having faith in Lightning. Her contest history doesn't exactly light the world on fire, and she's hardly a well liked character. And secondly, Board 8 has had Second Match PTSD from getting kicked in the balls by this match for almost 20 years. I've posted this list before but it bears reposting. Just look at this nonsense. Weird stuff in bold. Summer 2002 - Spyro vs Morrigan. Everyone picks Spyro, because people have actually heard of Spyro. Morrigan wins, and everyone credits the match picture. The Jug Factor is born. Summer 2003 - Pikachu vs Fox. Everyone picked Fox because they had a common opponent (Cloud) the year before. No contest. Spring 2004 - Metroid vs Pac-Man. People picked Metroid because they treated games the same as characters. Again, no contest. Summer 2004 - Ganondorf vs Alucard. Debated match for some reason, but by now everyone knew about x-stats and picked Ganondorf. Again, no contest. Of course now that x-stats were a thing, the second match would start screwing with people, though one could consider this a match that a lot of people debated and got wrong. Spring 2005 - Sigma vs Andross. Other than Ridley/Diablo, this was the most heavily debated round 1 match and a LOT of people picked Andross. We know the end result. Sigma destroyed. Summer 2005 - Ness vs CJ, shortly after San Andreas came out. Most people picked CJ, figuring the insane buzz around that game would lead to a very easy win. Ness won with ease, spawning the RacistFAQs fad that lives on to this day (and is unfortunately probably true on some level). Spring 2006 - Suikoden vs Mega Man X in the series contest. No debate because it was obvious MMX would win. Summer 2006 - Ada Wong vs Jade was obvious. Moving on. Summer 2007 - Arthas/Diablo/KOS-MOS/Mega Man. People had no idea what LFF in 4ways was, at least not to this degree, and a lot of people picked Diablo to get second place. The guru pick was Mega Man \> KOS-MOS, but enough people picked Diablo to where this gets "DAMN SECOND MATCH" honors. Summer 2008 - Link/Luke/Shadow/Zidane. Everyone and their mother picked Shadow to get second place. This was before people realized Sonic was an honorary Nintendo franchise on our site, similar to Pac-Man. Zidane cruised to second. Summer 2009 - Mega Man 2/Pac-Man/Pong/Oregon Trail. Mega Man \> Pac-Man was the favorite, but a ton of people got scared into picking Oregon Trail because of all the joke trends in the prior contests. Winter 2010 - Alucard vs Magus. If this were held in 2004 everyone would have picked Magus and some people still did. This was HIGHLY debated for whatever reason, even though Alucard cruised. Game of the Decade - Rock Band vs Deus Ex. Rock Band is the overwhelming favorite, then Deus Ex pulls the upset but "not by enough" in one of Board 8's worst days ever. The board was unreadable. Rivalry Rumble - Who fucking cares? (it was Ike/Black Knight beating Conker/Poo) Summer 2013 - Raiden/Waluigi/Alan Wake. Easy Raiden win, though people feared a joke run by Waluigi. Fall 2015 - Persona 3 was the HEAVY board favorite. Dragon Quest 8 stomped it into the ground with utter ease in a match that was never close. Best Year - 1987 beat 1985. I don't care about this contest enough to look up whether or not this result was weird. You guys get the idea. The second match is just weird, and always treats us badly. I feel like if this match was placed anywhere else on the bracket, Lightning gets 100% board support in all the little side shows we have (BOP, Oracle, Guru, spread betting, bake sales, all that fun stuff), but because it was match \#2, people paused. There was also the fear that Lightning would get anti voted into the ground, plus there was the fear of people loving Life is Strange. It has sold something like 3.5 million copies, after all. Lightning ended up being the favorite, and thankfully, she put all doubts to rest in about 2 seconds. No crazy board vote, no weird comebacks needed. Just her beating Chloe up from pillar to post for 24 straight hours en route to a tripling. If only all the second matches could treat us so well, right? ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: A blowout most people expected, for an 8 vs. 9 match the prediction percentage was a huge 80.74%. I was a little cautious on this one due to distrusting Lightning and wondering if Life is Strange had gained popularity. Obviously I was wrong. Trend-wise Lightning had an awful board vote, but then gradually increased before stabilising at 74% around the halfway point. **What could this mean?**: That Life is Strange is garbo on here. And Chloe might not even have the support of fans of that. Even the prediction percentages showed it. Lightning might be better than expected after her awful 2013 showing, but it is too early to say. How she holds up against Dante is the real test of this. Chloe is probably a bottom 5 character, almost certainly bottom 10. She'd certainly get destroyed by Cuphead so I think Dante will clear Lightning easily, 60-40 or more. ## Safer777's Analysis Chloe is a newcomer and there were some fears for rallies for her since her game is liked in certain circles. Nothing happened of course. As for Light you all know her of course. She is weak actually. Shame.Though I believe Chloe is really weak. Like bottom 5 for sure. Come on we don't care for Adventure games here except Monkey Island. All 4 people that nominate this thing(don't beat me please!). I have seen playthroughs of LIS and it is really good. It manages to focus on everyday things that people face.Especially young adults. Good writing too. Anyways at least Chloe managed to avoid a tripling. But don't be fooled, Light is weak. But still FF always wins so she won here of course. Also the prediction percentage is kinda high for an 8 seed VS 9 seed. Guess people saw FF and thought that Light would win. But nobody likes the modern FF games I believe, except FF 10. But after that...yeah nothing. Still at least Light won a match. ## Tsunami's Analysis Final Fantasy has taken on Pokémon-like fandom trends--the most recent installment is bashed, and everything else grows in stature as a result. The first contest that XV exists, Lightning finally gets a win, and in dominating fashion at that. Chloe Price was considered a near-lock for the bottom of the Raw X-Stats after this, in part because Ganondorf was the favorite to win the division and would be fed to Link, but also because no one believed that Lightning was as strong as she looked in this match. Little did we know that the entire bottom half of the bracket would be trapped behind Link \> Zelda! But back to Lightning looking strong in this match: Life Is Strange is super-niche, while Final Fantasy is, well, Final Fantasy. And while you *could* vote in only some of the matches if you knew what you were doing, if you voted the conventional way, you had to vote in every match of the day if you wanted to vote in any of them. That vastly favors Nintendo and Square, and to a lesser extent Capcom/Konami/Sega. You know, the five companies with a member of the Noble Nine. --- ## (5)Spyro the Dragon vs (12)Chun-Li 2018 _source: (5)Spyro the Dragon vs (12)Chun-Li 2018 (revid 83671)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every year in the NCAAs, we year about the 12 \> 5 upset. We have those now and again too, and we got ours out of the way right on day one. red13n is good for one boneheaded topic every contest, and for him this contest he just couldn't contain his furry-dom over Spyro the Dragon. To call that topic an embarrassment would be an understatement, but I chose not to save it out of respect. I like red, truly, but the annual "how dare people like women for their bodies as I stare at prepubescent fuzzy cartoon animals" topic is getting really dumb. Which is whatever, you do you bro, but TJF was not the reason Chun-Li won this match. For the unaware, TJF stands for The Jug Factor, which ironically enough exists because of.... Spyro the Dragon! Way back in 2002, everyone picked him to beat Morrigan in round 1. Then Morrigan was given a match picture with her boobs flopping all over the place, and people credited her jugs for winning; ergo, "The Jug Factor". TJF. TJF may have been the reason Spyro lost back in 2002, but in 2018? Come on man. First off, Spyro was hilariously overseeded due to the Spyro Reignited Trilogy coming out right during this contest and the bracket having 128 characters. You're bound to get insane nonsense when you remove the 8 strongest people and keep in a field of 128. Secondly, and most obviously of all, this is a picture of Chun-Li: Er whoops. Wrong Chun-Li! This is a picture of Chun-Li: This was Chun-Li's match picture: There's a distinct lack of jugs there, plus Capcom has spent nearly 30 years making her legs look good. Really, it's in her moveset and everything. Ask Justin Wong. Anyway, red wasn't alone in overrating Spyro, as one can see from the prediction percentage. 45% of people thought he was winning for whatever reason, plus he had a respectable showing as the poll went on. Chun-Li was never in any actual danger of losing, but she did have some updates under 50%. If you put Spyro in KOS-MOS's fourpack, he could have won two matches this year -- which is true of a LOT of characters, just wait until we get to that abomination. Does our language have a phrase for whatever the opposite of "murderer's row" is? Creampuff scheduling? This was a good contest for 2002 characters in need of a break. But Spyro got his break in 2013, so his fans can stop whining about a TJF that doesn't exist. Boobs are for children, anyway. Men like ass ;) ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: This was the first debated match of the contest. It shows in the prediction percentage, with just over 55% getting it right. Historically Chun-Li would stomp, but arguably Street Fighter has faded from relevance a bit and Spyro has been the most relevant he's been in almost 20 years. His 5-seed speaks for itself here, his highest ever. Additionally, he looked miles better in 2013 as a result of nostalgia for that era starting up. In the end it wasn't quite enough. Spyro looked pretty good here, and for the first hour-ish looked like it could be close, with Spyro winning multiple updates. Unfortunately soon after the kiddies went to bed, and Chun-Li was gaining slowly for the rest of the match other than a few random spots. Unsurprisingly Spyro looked best in Europe, even winning in a few territories, but it wasn't enough and the match ended up a fairly standard 56/44 affair. **What could this mean?**: For this contest, nothing. Whoever wins is going to get stomped by Ganondorf. In general though, despite losing this was a big moral victory for Spyro. Back in the day this would have been at least a doubling if not a tripling. Spyro has boosted a lot, and that 2013 performance seems legit after all. It's too early to say if Chun-Li has changed at all, but it would probably be pretty slight. She did better with the GameFAQs vote, but it won't matter given what she's up against next round. ## Safer777's Analysis Spyro is a PS 1 icon. He was really famous back in the day. Chun-Li is the most iconic female fighter from the most famous fighting series. Still she barely scored above 56% here. As time goes on we care less and less for fighting games here it seems? Spyro also is in Skylanders which is HUGELY popular! Not here of course. Still she managed to win and that is that I guess. Man I remember when I first saw Street Fighter 2 in an Arcade machine when I was young. I was so impressed! What else to say? Spyro is really weak in these things. Chun-Li is somewhat stronger. But as the years go on, fighthing characters keep doing worse and worse and we have fewer and fewer in the contests. Remember when DOA characters were in these things? Yeah. Also the prediction percentage is low. Well makes sense. They  both had a chance at win here anyways. Also I didn't know when this match first came out but Icons did well in the contest. So it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis Poor Spyro can't catch a break with these fighting game females, can he?  That was the match that created "TJF", which was discussed quite a bit this contest. Spyro got a bad draw regardless, however, because a lot of characters with similar old-school credentials were able to impress this year. Spyro? Stuck behind a fellow gaming icon. Chun-Li might not be the *first* female fighter, but she's the first to reach mainstream consciousness. They even make fun of it at one point; she has a line in one of the more recent games where she reminisces about being the only girl on the roster. As a result, the strength that Crash and Bomberman showed later in this contest came as a surprise. I'll talk about them in good time though. --- ## (4)Ganondorf vs (13)Neku Sakuraba 2018 _source: (4)Ganondorf vs (13)Neku Sakuraba 2018 (revid 83672)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I grow exceedingly happy every time Neku loses a contest match -- the little turd is a well deserved 0-4 now!! -- because Neku and his game are both steaming piles of monkey trash. To this day I am 100% convinced everyone who says they like The World Ends With You are in on a massive inside practical joke, because I refuse to believe anyone actually likes that game. I don't like things like Shadow of the Colossus or Warcraft 3 or Hearthstone or Phantom Hourglass, but I at least understand why people like those games. I don't actually get what people see in TWEWY. Is it the bad writing with a literal repetitive story, the terrible artwork, the joke-tier plot, the confusing gameplay, the embarrassing music, or a mixture of all of the above? I really would love an answer as to what anyone can see in that game. And don't even try defending the music, especially with me. The only possible way anyone can like trash like this is if they're listening to songs for the deaf. You can't even hear it! The only thing, and I quite literally mean the only thing defensible in that game is no random battles. Everything else can go get thrown into a bacon grease fire for all I care. TWEWY blows. Speaking of bacon, Ganondorf came out in this match and showed everyone who's boss. Because who doesn't love a big ol' piece of pork fat with their breakfast, right? Breath of the Wild plus Smash hype was on full display in this match, and it was a huge sign of things to come later. Even Ganon's prediction percentage as a 4 seed dwarfed what Dante was doing, and outside of Vivi, there was nothing standing in Ganon's way in this division at all. Neku getting even one vote was an embarrassment to gamers everywhere, but I'll take Ganon breaking nearly 80% on the little punkass beta. We need a new word for beta males like Neku, because people actually know what a "beta" is and being in second place isn't all that bad. I was thinking Rho Male, because Rho is the one letter in the Greek alphabet everyone forgets about. Which is exactly where Neku Sakuraba should be. If we do have to suffer through him making a bracket, put him against Link in round 1 every year until he goes away. We got rid of Guybrush Threepwood. We can get rid of Neku. Stuff like this is why Square is such a joke now. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: ZeldaFAQs, baby. This was always going to be a stomp (it was the most correctly predicted of the first four matches), but Ganondorf easily outperformed reasonable expectations here. He was nearing 80% during the Power Hour, and looked great otherwise. In 2008 Ganondorf got 77.9 on Neku, in 2010 he was projected to get 71.8 and in 2013 69.6. This was a big overperformance. **What could this mean?**: Either Ganondorf is at his best, or Neku is at his worst. I am sceptical of the latter. Neku has looked better and better with each appearance, and for good reason. TWEWY is a beloved cult-ish game that has steadily gotten more and more eyes on it. Additionally in 2012 there was a major phone port and Neku was in a Kingdom Hearts game. There was a definite boost in 2013 as a result. Now this match came days after the Switch port (which seems to be outselling the original) and I see no reason for Neku to have reverted to 2008 levels or below. This was a great showing from Ganondorf, and he looks primed to take the division. Him overperforming with the GameFAQs vote just shows how much the Zelda franchise will benefit from the new system. Squall had better beware against Zelda herself also. Zelda is bigger than it's ever been and GaneFAQs loves it some Zelda. ## Safer777's Analysis This was a massacre. Neku's game was always a favorite of mine and it recently released again on Switch. BUT Ganondorf is in Smash and oh yeah in Hyrule Warriors too! Oh I guess he is in the Zelda games too or something. Ganondorf was always strong. I mean in the Villains contests he did really good on Sephiroth and back then FF7 was THE SHIT here. But now? Now he can take down N9's for sure. Bad guy yeah but an iconic bad guy since he appears in a lot of Zelda games. Poor Neku. I always liked him. The prediction percentage here is massive too! I think this is the highest for a 4 seed ever too! Seriously not even 1 Seeds have such high percentages! But I believe that after all these years people know that LOZ always win so they went with this too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Geez, Neku, what happened to you? Yes, The World Ends With You has always been niche, but it's still a niche *Square* RPG. And Ganondorf is strong, but not that strong. *This* was the match with the highest prediction percentage? Higher than Zero-Primrose? Squall-Hat Kid? X-Isabelle? Sora-Ryo? Heck, even Kirby-Guile probably belongs on that list. I mean, obviously Ganondorf was winning this, but...the only theory I have is that Neku was a *proven* loser, while those other matches I listed mostly had first-timers as the low seeds (Ryo Hazuki being the exception). Given that I've already admitted to initially having Cuphead before being talked out of it, I guess it makes sense that more people had those upset picks than this one. --- ## (3)Vivi vs (14)Yu Narukami 2018 _source: (3)Vivi vs (14)Yu Narukami 2018 (revid 83673)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I would love to go on a massive rant about Persona fans being among the worst in all of gaming for this match, but I'm actually not going to do that for this PCA. Hop over to Joker/Claire if you want to know why. I was going to, but not anymore. I have a good reason for it, which I'm saving. Plus I haven't actually played a Persona yet, only dealt with the fanbase online during these contests, so for all I know maybe they have good reason for being the ultimate weebs. Not that Yu had a prayer of winning this match anyway. Overall, Squaresoft would end up having a laughably terrible contest, and this includes Old Square, New Square, and everything in between. One of the only exceptions, somehow, is Vivi. He's retained the magic he's always had, and he came out with a purpose this year. I know he had Ganon's help last time, but him beating Mario was clearly no fluke. People absolutely adore Vivi, and he's clearly going to be a character that retains his upper midcard strength no matter how far Square falls..... and man are they falling off a cliff fast. Turns out almost two decades of bad PR and being largely mediocre will do that. The obvious comparison here was between Vivi and Ganon, but they got similar scores against fairly equal levels of fodder. The only difference between them was prediction percentage, which we didn't actually have until halfway through the contest this year. So at the time this match happened, Vivi and Ganon looked like equals and it could have gone either way. We didn't know until later Ganon was the clear favorite, Breath of the Wild or no. How Allen missed on prediction percentages and stats beyond registered voter bonus is beyond me, by the way. That's pretty basic stuff that we all want. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis What happened?: This was a pretty uneventful blowout, without much interesting in the way of trends other than Yu's strong board vote. Vivi performed almost exactly to expectations. This has to be the most boring match of the the contest so far, thank Allen for four matches at once. What could this mean?: The only possible takeaway of value is that Vivi might be as strong as he was in 2013. He is a clear standout among the FF characters in that regard. This is muddied by the possibility of SFF though. As for Yu, Persona is strong and Persona 4 is strong, but as an avatar that doesn't even get the name he's running with in the game, he's inevitably going to struggle. ## Safer777's Analysis Vivi would win here for sure. I mean he has beaten Mario you know! Yeah rallies! Anyways Yu is the main guy from Persona 4. Here is the thing. I like Persona games. They are way too good. But man both the games and their characters suck in the contests! Too bad I say. People should play them! They are so good! At least Yu managed to evade a tripling. Barely. Vivi is also THE black mage. Seriously look at him! How can you not like this guy??? Stronger than the main guy of FF9 too. Oh yeah FF won again. Also people can you stop nominating Persona games/characters? I don't want to see them losing all the time! It hurts my soul! The prediction percentage is good too. Well seems nobody trusts the Persona characters/games. ## Tsunami's Analysis This match was pretty much business as usual. Vivi was coming off that stunning upset of Mario in CBIX, while Yu lost to...who, again? \*looks it up\* Ah, right, Shadow the Hedgehog. Huh, Kat was the third-place character in that match? I could've sworn she was a 26, not a 25, though that's probably because of how forgettable she was (seriously, she's what, a Vita exclusive? Or was it PSP?). I only remember that she was even *in* that contest because of "Who Would You Have Sex With?", because she was one of two characters that basically had a free pass to the semifinals because she was the only female in her division, and honestly hers was freer because the other was Marisa and the Touhou characters were being held back by the question of "are they actually underage or is it just ZUN's art style?" --- ## (6)Victor Sullivan vs (11)Aya Brea 2018 _source: (6)Victor Sullivan vs (11)Aya Brea 2018 (revid 83674)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every contest has some matches where the board takes a giant dump on the casuals (and they give it right back sometimes too!), and this was one such example for Character Battle X. That said, this was a debated match on the board as well, with only two thirds of people supporting Aya Brea. The casuals clearly supported him far more than we did. The basic argument is Victor Sullivan is a huge casualbait character with being from Uncharted, while Aya Brea legitimately hasn't been relevant in gaming for 20 years. On top of that, her only contest highlight was going 50-50 with Donkey Kong all the way back in 2002 for over half the match before choking. Let's not forget that Donkey Kong, one of the biggest choke artists in contest history, clutched on someone. That's Aya Brea's lone point of relevance in these things. Backing a newcomer over someone as unscrupulous as Aya isn't a bad bet, even if it didn't pay off. When the match finally started, Aya ended things in seconds. This was a 60-40 beating for 24 straight hours, and when I say 24 straight hours I mean it. These percentages didn't budge one inch for the entire match, and a once debated match was a pretty boring undertaking within minutes. As we would learn later, this was not exactly a quality win for Aya Brea. Uncharted has just totally fallen off a cliff, as Nathan Drake would show us all later in hilarious fashion. Letting Victor Sullivan break 40% on you isn't exactly something to write home about. This was just a bracket with a lot of fodder in it, and some of them faced each other in round 1 before getting pasted is all. What's sad is remember when Square was actually good? For the entire 90s, every single game they released was good. Even the Final Fantasy Legends, the Saga Frontiers, and the Parasite Eves. All of them. They could do no wrong. And now? Aya can't break 60% on a character no one on this site cares about. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: This was one of the most debated matches of the first round. Literally nobody cares about Parasite Eve anymore, that series is quite dead. Uncharted has always been strangely weak on GameFAQs, despite Sony first party games doing well, including The Last of Us. Nathan Drake lost to CATS, then post-Uncharted 2 has been around the fodder line. Sully was a slight overall favourite, while Aya was the board favourite. This wasn't a blowout, but Aya won pretty easily. Earlier on this looked like it would be a fairly savage beating as Aya trounced Sully with the board vote and through most of the Power Hour, but then it turned into a fairly standard 60/40ish affair for the rest of the match. **What could this mean**?: GameFAQs is decidedly stuck in the past. Parasite Eve and its first sequel were well-received but they weren't classics. However, large numbers of the people voting in these polls have been here for a long time and will definitely vote for the lead of that over a (well-liked) side character from Uncharted. The 90's still reign on here. Additionally, Sully and Uncharted as a whole are quite bad. I don't think this reflects on Ellie vs. KOS-MOS because TLoU is worth a lot more than Uncharted here for some reason. I will say though, I think this match slightly disproves TJF as it was just Aya's face in the picture. Sully was arguably more recognisable in the picture, yet even a mid-tier (at best) 90's Square franchise topped him. The last thing I'll say is that this match and No Mercy vs. Path of Radiance back in GotD have convinced me that the 6-seed is the default Guru nom seed. That bodes well for Aqua and her 2-seed. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this was the first debatable match of the contest.  Although I don't see why. Sully is from Uncharted series who is critically acclaimed but as you know we don't play new games here. We are old. Aya is from a series that the last good game was like 20 years ago. And she is from an RPG. Plus she has tits too! Okay this is sexist, I apologize. So she won easily here, what did you expected? I find it hard though that she got in this contest. I mean why? The last good game as I said was many years ago.  Do people really still care for her? Also a strange fact, Aya got her 2nd win here and she hadn't win since the 1st ever contest! Better late than ever! Nothing else to say here. She won and that was it. The percentage was also less than 50%. Why? Don't people after all these years know that we don't care for new games here? Eh. ## Tsunami's Analysis Sully was one of the Guru noms, right? I know Aqua was one, but I forget who the other was. Aqua got a 2, so if Sully is the other, the difference in their seeding should've made this completely obvious--as well as making it obvious why I forgot who the other was, because seriously, I can't remember all of these western characters with both first and last names. Instead, the Gurus only picked Aya at an 11-5 rate. Which is still far better than the casuals, who outright favored Sully, but still. Not a great showing. Kind of understandable since Aya hasn't been relevant for over a decade, but still, we've seen her impress in these contests before. This shouldn't have been that surprising. --- ## (7)Tidus vs (10)Donkey Kong 2018 _source: (7)Tidus vs (10)Donkey Kong 2018 (revid 83675)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Last match I talked about how the board gets some matches where they get to laugh at casuals, but these contests are such that the casuals often get to give it right back. On the literal same exact day where we picked Aya to beat Victor Sullivan, the casuals destroyed us in hilarious fashion. This was a hotly debated match pre contest for all kinds of reasons, but the main one is both characters have a contest history of being epic choke artists. And if they aren't choking, they're having these insanely close matches for no reason. Donkey Kong: -Goes 50-50 with Aya Brea for over half the match in 2002 before winning with the day vote. -Goes 50-50 with Tommy Vercetti of all people in 2003 before losing. -His game came dangerously close to blowing a 3000+ vote lead to Duck Hunt, and only won because Duck Hunt ran out of time. DK showed ZERO resistance whatsoever and would have lost had Duck Hunt started rallying one hour sooner. -Lost to Vivi in 2004 as a pretty decent favorite. -Choked away a 2000+ vote lead against Master Chief in 2005. -Almost lost to Marth in 2007 before becoming L-Block's second victim in 2007. -2008 speaks for itself, and it's the main reason Tidus was the board favorite in this match: -In 2009 games, Donkey Kong got a DISTANT second place before getting stomped in round 2. Donkey Kong Country pretty much had the exact same story. Barely got through round 1, stomped in round 2. -In 2013, he barely beat Lightning, which is another reason Tidus was favored. Surely, Tidus had to be stronger than Lightning enough to be able to beat DK. -In 2015, DKC2 went 50-50 with Xenoblade and Fire Emblem Awakening before getting rolled by Symphony of the Night. Tidus: -Goes 50-50 with Ganondorf in 2003 and loses. -Goes 50-50 with Shadow the Hedgehog in 2004 and wins. -In 2005 there was a debate between Tidus and Kirby. Tidus lost. -In 2006 there was a debate between Tidus and Squall. Tidus scored 28%. That is not a typo. -In 2007 he finished a close second to Pikachu and then basically went even with Pikachu and Vivi. -In 2008 he lost to a nonsentient hexahedron. Twice. We already covered him rolling DK that year. -In 2010 there was a debate between Tidus and Sub-Zero. Tidus lost. -In 2011 there was a debate between Tidus and Metal Gear Solid. You get the idea. -In 2013 there was a debate between Tidus and Missingno. Tidus decided to cheat that year and he got caught, because Jecht Shots don't work on land. So as you can see, we had two atrocious resumes going at it, but Tidus had good reason to be the favorite here. He had already beaten Donkey Kong badly once, and his stat value was consistently ahead of DK. I'm all for LOL x stats, but when you're stronger every year you're stronger every year. "Whoops." We forgot two very important things. One, Tidus has won one debated match in 16 years. One. He beat Shadow the Hedgehog. "Congrats." And two, we had zero idea the degree Smash Brothers Ultimate hype was going to completely dominate this contest. This match was our first real example, but it was going to get very ugly for a lot of characters very quickly -- even in wins! Tidus was just the first casualty. Without Smash Bros, the Switch being a godsend, and his own contest history being worse than the Minnesota Vikings in the playoffs, Tidus might have had a chance. With all of that, no way. Ask any tortured fanbase. The second anything goes wrong, their team feels it and collapses. There's a very real "oh no" energy to the pre-2004 Red Sox, the Vikings, Cleveland pre-2016, the Cubs pre-2016, and so forth. When this poll started and Tidus only held it together for a grand total of two minutes, his fans all knew. Even the cheaters from the Missingno match. They all knew. Tidus was toast. This match was 50-50 at the jump. By the freeze it was 54-46 and by the end of an hour it was completely over. For how debated this match was, Tidus got completely destroyed. What was especially hilarious is everyone thought this match was a debate in good fun, because this was only supposed to be a one point match. Yeah. About that. Also, Square is just completely done. They can win matches here and there, but their chances of ever winning a contest against given the Switch and Smash Bros are just gone. Nothing they do can compare to the amount of hype Nintendo is able to generate. By all means tell me the last time Square got a reaction like this over a game reveal: I'm happy for my wife's sake I avoided all those hype vids. She would have had to dealt with me openly weeping tears of joy like everyone in those videos did. Sorry not sorry, Square cannot compete with that anymore. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** HA HA HA HA HA HA This match was... Hilarious. Going in this match was a tough one on paper. Two kings of choking going up against each other. Donkey Kong lost the last choke-off against Master Chief, then was redeemed in 2013 when he humiliated Lightning despite having Falco in the poll. Tidus nearly beat Missingno. in 2013 but then that looked pretty bad in round 2. He has also generally slid in strength, now looking like the weakest FF protagonist (other than Cecil) and arguably the weakest character in his own game. If Wakka got in he might look better than Tidus. Still, statistically Tidus has looked very slightly better than DK, so he was the board favourite. Then the match started. It was close for five minutes as board 8 furiously bracket voted, but the Donkey Kong ran away with it. Tidus just about won a few night vote updates but this match was never in question. To top it off the casuals bodied us on this one, taking DK two to one. **What could this mean?:** A few things. First that Tidus is the unquestioned king of choke. Second, Donkey Kong has gotten so much better in recent years. We should have seen it coming really. In 2013 Donkey Kong looked to have boosted which was largely ignored. This made sense, thanks to Donkey Kong Country Returns making that series relevant (and well, existant) again. Since then, Tropical Freeze came out and was beloved, and then the Switch version came out and put it in front of more people. So this is the best Donkey Kong has ever looked. Add to that the Switch boosting Nintendo in general, and it makes sense. I think he will look good against Leon next round. And of course, beware if you're up against Nintendo. Lastly we really should consider new releases and relevance more than just going with the stats. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match was hilarious. It was somewhat debatable but man DK winning easily? Yeah I know he is in Smash but we are talking about the main guy from FF 10 which is in Top 3 of the main FF games! Damn! Man Tidus sucks in these things if you check his contest history. He is really bad in these things! Man people really don't like him. Also in one of his matches he cheated and the Admin removed some of his votes! Seriously who thought to cheat for Tidus to win? Has to be a massive fanboy! Also DK has defeated 2 main FF protagonists! Proof that Kongs always win! But to tell the truth he is bad in the contests too! So we have 2 characters that either choke or are bad in the contests! Also the prediction percentage was massive for DK here. Tidus was the Guru favorite by 67% too. Casuals beat us easily here! Well it happens! ## Tsunami's Analysis While the casuals were being caught off-guard by Aya \> Victor, the Gurus were being burned by DK \> Tidus. I got this right, because I never trust Tidus in a close match. I honestly forgot that Tidus came out on the winning end of his close match with Shadow in 2004, and as such, that said match *was *in round 1 in 2004 rather than being sandwiched between Shadow \> Wario and Mario \> Shadow in 2003. But yeah, this was a matchup of two legendary chokers; I said before the match that they'd somehow find a way to both finish below 50%. So no, I'm not pretending that I was confident in my DK \> Tidus pick. I felt that DK's rep was based more on older results, while Tidus has been declining every contest, but neither character would surprise me by losing. I just guessed right. Apparently, the casuals agreed with me. --- ## (2)Leon Kennedy vs (15)Dragonborn 2018 _source: (2)Leon Kennedy vs (15)Dragonborn 2018 (revid 83676)_ ## Ulti's Analysis The most boring matches to analyze in these things are the non-entertaining blowouts, but they do at least give me a mental break while writing. These types of matches are always too big a blowout to be interesting, but not enough of a blowout to be interesting either. They're just kind of.... there. This match was never going to be in doubt, the end. There's almost nothing more to be said here, outside of Leon's hilarious percentage drop. At the beginning of this match, he had a tripling. By the end of the match he was only able to preserve a doubling. Right then and there we should have known what was coming. Do you guys think Leon was sitting around enjoying himself a little too much during this match and didn't bother taking DK seriously? I do. Then again, there wasn't much reason to suspect anything. While no one plays Skyrim for the main character, that game is really, really strong for a western title and Dragonborn did win a match last time. He even beat Yuna for second place in round 2, too. So Leon getting almost 70% on the guy was pretty impressive despite the percentage loss, and there was absolutely no way to know what DK was about to do. And I don't want anyone trying to tell me there was. The guru/oracle/BOP numbers are all public, folks. As John Gruden would say, hindsight is 50-50. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: Dragonborn looked good last time, but here never stood a chance, losing to Leon as badly as they lost to Tifa. In the early hours this was almost a tripling. To Dragonborn's credit however, they did recover as the match went on, especially with the day vote as you might expect from their respective games. **What could this mean?**: Leon looked really good here, and I think has cemented himself as the favourite over Vivi. He looked bad in 2013 relative to previous appearances and would have only gotten 54% on Dragonborn but here he excelled. This speaks to the health of Resident Evil, with 7 and the 2 Remake it is back. As for Dragonborn, a generic avatar from a beloved game was never going to stack up to a defined character. Skyrim would beat RE4, but nobody cares about the Dragonborn. People LOVE Leon. This was a victory for character (that is also tied to a series people know and love). I am now very curious to see how Joker vs. Claire turns out, as that is in many ways a mirror of this match but the seeds are reversed, the RE character is less popular, and Joker is more of a real character. ## Safer777's Analysis Leon is the strongest RE character. RE 4 is considered the best RE game and after that RE 2 and guess what? He is the protagonist in both of these and a remake of RE 2 is coming soon as the time of this writing. Dragonborn isn't really a character. It is an Avatar of you. No personality, no nothing. You can't get attached to this kind of character. Skyrim is pretty strong as a game of course and  it is really popular here but Dragonborn isn't even really a character as I said. So Leon won with more than a doubling. Go Leon! And it makes sense that his percentage would be so high. ## Tsunami's Analysis Leon got the doubling here, so it wasn't immediately evident that he was in trouble next round. Dragonborn had made round 2 in 2013, albeit against weak competition, and his game had done very well in 2015. Skyrim is a game that I expect to be a lot stronger than its main character, though, partly because Dragonborn is customizable. Honestly, Shepard being at least somewhat strong is a tribute to just how well-written Mass Effect is. --- ## (1)Zero vs (16)Primrose 2018 _source: (1)Zero vs (16)Primrose 2018 (revid 83677)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I won't be able to comment on Octopath Traveler until after Christmas because it's coming as a gift, so for now as far as I'm concerned Primrose is just bottom of the barrel fodder. A bracket like this is bound to have tons and tons of garbage fodder, and Primrose is on that list. For all I know she could be a perfectly fine character, but even if she is, she was a 16 seed against Zero. Didn't have a prayer. For Zero, this match was about one thing and one thing only. Is he still near elite? Getting a tripling is nice, but I'm going to say the answer is "no" on near elite status. As we now know, the definition of "near elite" is "can you beat a Noble Nine character or come really damn close?". Zero no longer qualifies, and one wonders if he ever truly did. That said, this match proved that even had Monika caught a rally, Zero was probably good enough to end that run in round 3. Thankfully, it never came to that because Wario did the job for us. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: This was a fairly standard 1/16 match, though I think Primrose definitely exceeded a lot of the board's expectations here, escaping the tripling. Zero was more than tripling during the Power Hour, but then Primrose gained percentage and it was fairly stable from there. Primrose arguably benefited from the Monika rallies but that isn't entirely clear. **What could this mean?**: some people are taking this as an indictment of Zero but I don't think so. I think Primrose is actually not trash. Octopath Traveler is an open world RPG in the style of a SNES JRPG developed by Square and published by Nintendo. It is exactly GameFAQs's sort of thing. It will probably come second in this year's Switch poll. And Primrose is the shining star of that game. She got in despite extreme recency and no rallies, I think with time she might end up a reasonable fodder line character. ## Safer777's Analysis Zero was always good in these contests. And he is from a really popular franchise. Primrose is a newcomer. So no problem for Zero. Primorse is from a new RPG game that people say it is good and it reminds them the good old days. I can't really say since I don't have a Switch now. But I have seen gameplay and yeah it does look old school. She managed to avoid a tripling at least. Also Zero is a name or a code name or something? Sorry don't know anything about the MM franchise!  The percentage is massive too. I wonder though why Dante which was also a 1 Seed had 10% lower? Who knows. ## Tsunami's Analysis Primrose is from Octopath Traveler, right? I'd never even heard of that game until this contest. It's fairly new though so I'm not surprised. I didn't expect much and that's what we got. The advantage to not being the primary PCA-writer is that I can get away with occasionally writing something this short for a meaningless early match like this. At least this time the feminine name actually turned out to be a female. I think there was one character that I hadn't heard of that I expected to be female and they weren't. --- ## (8)Zidane Tribal vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018 _source: (8)Zidane Tribal vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018 (revid 83678)_ ## Ulti's Analysis All of us have a few feels-good-man calls in contests where we go against the board in the face of all logic and all of the LOL x stats. I got some matches hilariously wrong this contest, but I had some feels-good matches as well. This was one of them. Never a doubt for me. I know the stats and the gurus and all that stuff favored Zidane, not to mention this match happening eight years ago: Knuckles only got 52% against Cecil at the time and it was considered a massive embarrassment. Which it was. Cecil is so laughably bad in these contests that Cecil Harvey Never Wins has taken off as the new lulz. Did you guys know Cecil is now 0-6 in these things and that Gordon only started out 0-4? It's true. And that guy got 48% on Knuckles, so the logic for picking Zidane here made sense. But here's the thing. That was eight years ago, and Knuckles has a way of winning these debated matches he always appears in. He was supposed to lose to Yuna in 2003. He beat her. Some people thought Kefka could beat him in 2004. Knuckles won. Everyone already knows about Knuckles beating Magus in 2005. Knuckles was in the opening match in 2007, and people had no idea what would end up happening. He ended up barely getting second place. He only failed to get out of round one in 2008 because Mario can't SFF Zelda. We've already discussed 2010. Going into this match, Knuckles had appeared in eight contests. He was 7-1 in round 1 coming into this year. He's 0-7 in round 2, but hey! There's also the common sense stuff that one doesn't need the LOL x stats for. Since 2010, a few things happened in Knuckles' favor. One, the Sonic series has all but bent the knee to Nintendo. Sonic was already in Smash Bros Brawl at the time, and since then you might as well call Sonic a Nintendo character. Two, remember how well Mega Man 9 was received by gamers? Sonic had his version, called Sonic Mania. It was very well received, and took the series back to its roots. No doubt this would help Knuckles. Pair that with Square being a thorough abomination, and Zidane and Knuckles are clearly headed in opposite directions. On top of all that, this match was slated to happen on the day of Wario/Monika, and although Monika never came close to winning that match, she was absolutely going to get rallied. I had zero doubts that the kinds of voters who would come over here due to that rally would vote for Knuckles. So when this match started and Knuckles beat the piss out of Zidane en route to an Ulti-style destruction in which he was never once challenged, I was in no way surprised. I thought the match would be closer than it was, but I was not at all surprised that Knuckles won. If he isn't facing elites or near elites in round one, it's a safe bet he's winning. His one loss was because he was in a fourway with Mario and Zelda in the poll. In every other contest, he wins round 1 and jobs in round 2. Every single time. This year was no different. Total side note: it's hilarious to me that Tails made it to round 3 before Knuckles could, despite Knuckles having FAR more high profile wins and being a much cooler character. People must really, really hold that damn elevator in Sonic 3 against this guy. Last point. The casuals wrecked the board on this match, meaning my casual perspective on this match was right. People don't care about Square anymore. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Another debated match turned fairly one-sided. This was very similar to Tidus vs. DK in a lot of ways. It briefly seemed close then reality set in and it was stable throughout. Historically this match would have either been close or even reversed in favour of Zidane. And sure enough, the casuals beat us again in the prediction arena easily, showing that the "mainstream" picks have some weight behind them. **What could this mean?:** That Final Fantasy is DEAD. But more on that in the next match. It was a good show for Knuckles, and there is a fair argument for a Sonic Mania boost. We will have a clearer picture of how much is a Sonic boost and how much is FF decline when Knuckles goes up against Zero. I also have to wonder if Knuckles benefits from the apparent Nintendo boost too, his franchise has been linked to Nintendo for a while. After all, Sonic Mania is as they say perfect for Switch. Expect more Nintendo associated characters showing up Final Fantasy in the future. ## Safer777's Analysis Man another hilarious match. Seriously Knuckles won? Damn! It was a debatable match true but seriously. Zidane sucks! Vivi who is from the same game is much stronger. Also strangely enough almost all victories of Knuckles are against FF characters! What? And it is not that he is strong or anything. Still he is from the Sonic series and that makes him recognizable aI guess. Or most FF characters suck now.  Guess a combination of both!So congrats to him I guess. A fun fact is that he has advanced all but 1 times in the 2nd round but he has never gone in Round 3! Guess we should have watched this when we made our picks! The gurus had Zidane with 61.5% too. So once again the Casuals embarrased us. Hey it happens. Two times in two days too! But it does happen! And yeah the prediction percentage was good for this kind of match too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Today's vote total is quite a bit higher than the previous day's, which suggests that Monika really *was* rallied; it just didn't make a difference. Ironically given that she was up against a Nintendo character, it was Square that got screwed over by this. Zidane wasn't winning this regardless, but it was thought to be a debatable match and it wasn't even close. Knuckles got a better percentage against Zidane than he did in 2010 against Cecil Harvey Never Wins. Did Team Sonic boost, or is this just the seeming blanket deboost for any Square character whose game wasn't released between 1994 and 1997? Because seriously, FFVI/CT/FFVII were the only things that didn't look awful. Alternatively, Zidane has *never* been as strong as we thought he was. His first appearance isn't relevant because he faced a Noble Niner in Round 1, but in 2007 he finished fourth, comfortably behind Ness, in the Alucard-Liquid Snake 3 vote match. In 2008 he broke a lot of brackets by beating Shadow (wait, is that foreshadowing or something?) and beat out Wario for third place in Round 2, but both of those were riding behind Link. In 2010 he lost to Ike, which it turns out is not really a respectable loss after all. There really isn't anything here to suggest a reason to have faith in Zidane against anything with strength--and no, 2013 Ridley doesn't count; Ridley may be stronger than his record but he's not *that* strong. --- ## (5)Noctis Lucis Caelum vs (12)Master Hand 2018 _source: (5)Noctis Lucis Caelum vs (12)Master Hand 2018 (revid 83679)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Before I get into this match, I need to explain something in perfect detail. I loved Final Fantasy 15. I have the platinum trophy to prove it. I have my review to prove it. It's a fantastic video game from start to finish, even with that weird chapter where you need 18 keycards. The gameplay is great, the graphics are superb, the music is good, the scope is the best in the entire series, and most of the characters are fantastic. Most of the characters. Because Noctis is absolute gutter trash and is the exact example of the kind of guy no one likes in real life. This dude is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, gets handed everything for free, and we're supposed to sit around worshipping the ground he walks on because of his status as some prince. He gets handed infinite money. He gets handed a car that flies. He gets handed the hottest girl on the planet. He gets handed the best weapons in the world. He gets handed these awesome teammate bros. Fuck that. On top of all that, he's a whiny little bitch who literally starts crying the second life gets hard, gets bailed out again, then becomes a sensitive little bitch the second his boys slap the taste of his mouth for being a punk. What makes it worse is if this game was about any other character, it would have been perfect. Gladio is amazing. Ignis is one of the best sidekicks in RPG history. I adore Prompto. Lunafreya is awesome. Ardyn is damn cool. Even that chick with the boobs who does nothing more than flash boobs and pretend she knows her way around a car makes for a better main character than Noctis. I loved FF15's ending, because the little shit got exactly what he deserved. The type of people who like Noctis are the type of people involved in Celebrity Worship Syndrome and sit around reading about the British royal family all day. I get that your life didn't turn out like you wanted, but reading about Prince Harry and his doofus wife will not fix it. Put the gossip rag down and hit the gym. Speaking of getting the taste slapped out of his mouth, Master Hand was also in this match and this was a glorious result. Monika losing on the same day sucked, but getting two feels-good-bro calls right on the same day, one of which being Noctis getting absolutely pissed on, was so nice. Leading up to the match, things were 50-50, with the obvious comparison point being Master Hand vs Kuja: And I'm just sitting here wondering why anyone had any faith in Noctis whatsoever. The dude is a garbage character and didn't have a prayer of being stronger than Kuja, let alone the character that beat Kuja in such hilarious fashion. Plus he was up against the Square Decline, Smash hype, and "if Monika gets rallied, her voters are clearly going to pick Master Hand". I had zero doubts Master Hand was winning, and given my bias in the match, it was glorious watching Noctis eat an Ulti-style destruction in a debated match. Fuck that guy. I love FF15, but Noctis is a very real and obvious blight. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Part three in the Final Fantasy protagonist loses to a 90's mascot in a debated match trilogy (?), this was split down the middle in the general bracket results and our own, it seemed like a true tossup. Then the match started and Master Hand ran away with it immediately, with little change other than the standard Nintendo/Square trends. Despite beating Kuja Master Hand looked terrible in 2005 so Noctis should have won. But the meme came back to life, and Noctis lost as Kuja did to a goddamn hand. **What does this mean?:** Final Fantasy is screwed, especially against Nintendo. Master Hand is low tier Nintendo as far as we know, yet beat the best Square has given us for a decade. Add to that Zidane and Tidus losing what should have been close matches easily and it's a bad look for FF. This also further makes Lightning look not strong at all since I can't imagine she does better. Master Hand probably loses to Wario next round, which shows exactly where on the totem pole Noctis is. To be fair, Master Hand is probably better than in 2005 thanks to Ultimate and Nintendo being generally stronger, but still, Noctis looked dreadful here. It is now likely that Lightning and Squall are the only FF leads out of 7 to win their first match, with the former being due to a very lucky draw. Dante might double Lightning, Zelda is likely to beat Squall. This is a terrible contest for FF and a great one for Nintendo. ## Safer777's Analysis If I thought the previous match was hilarious this I don't even! Okay Noctis is from the newest main FF game. Fine. Master Hand is from Smash. Fine. But seriously? A Hand won? How? Yeah more votes I get it. Still I can't understand why this happened. I haven't played FF 15 yet so maybe Noctis suck as a character. I am not sure. But this much? I know we don't play new games here but seriously this match was pathetic for Noctis. I guess congrats to the Hand??? Sad day for FF. We got another main FF character losing in the 1st round too. Damn! Also both the gurus and the percentage was at around 50%! So that seems that half of the people had Noctis losing! This is so sad! I understand losing to a real character but this??? New Square sucks! ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh well never mind. I remember this match being a close one, but it clearly wasn't! Maybe I was thinking of the prediction percentage. 50.55% of brackets had this correct, the only Round 1 match to be within 51-49. (There was a Round 1 Legends match that had an even smaller spread in the Second Chance brackets, but all in good time.) This was Master Hand's first appearance in an "open" Character Contest, even considering how huge the field was in 2013, but he appeared in 2005's Villains Contest and upset a Final Fantasy character in Round 1 then, too. Though the prediction percentages say this technically wasn't an upset! --- ## (4)Monika vs (13)Wario 2018 _source: (4)Monika vs (13)Wario 2018 (revid 83680)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I have no problem holding this L, no worries. Lord knows I've rubbed a few in over the years! I REGRET NOTHING!! :D I vowed I would back a rallybait character in the next character battle or games contest, and here we are. I settled on Monika for no real reasons outside of "I love her" and "this is hilarious". I'm not the only one, either, and some gurus even picked other rallybait characters to win the contest. We had some picks for Monika, plus D.va, Waluigi, and even a Red and a Geralt thrown in there for good measure. Backing a rallybait character was great fun for me, and it was really calming being out of this contest on day 3. I could just sit back and have fun the rest of the way, which I did. No stress, no pressure, no worrying about polls. Just rooting for favorites from here on out, having fun, and making match picks and taking PCA notes for when the time was right. There's also the added factor of being rich, which always helps. I don't exactly need extra help to buy video games, and should I ever win another contest I'd probably donate the winnings to my church or give it away to Board 8ers or something. I mean really, what's 1k in gift cards when I could buy 100k in "things" tomorrow if I wanted to? There were real warning signs that Monika might catch fire, too. The DDLC subreddit started rallying for her before the contest even started and knew about all the anti-rallying measures, and these bandwagons often start against very weak character who no one likes. The perception was that Wario wasn't exactly lightning the world on fire. As luck would have it, Smash Bros Ultimate hype would help every single freaking character involved in that game. Literally all of them. Wario was no exception. If Monika and Master Hand switched places, she very well could have caught fire. All it takes is that first win. However, she was against Wario, not an actual hated character like Noctis. This was never a match, even with Monika catching a legitimate rally. She was too weak to do any damage whatsoever, and Wario just rolled her. It makes one really appreciate the rallies that actually work, because Monika had a lot going and still never came close. But hey, she avoided the doubling and people not voting for her is totally meta, so it's all good! Turns out Allen's anti-rallying measures worked well, and rallies in 1v1 matches are a whole different animal than rallying in multi-way polls. I know rallying in this contest never panned out, but I don't think we're done with it moving forward. If you looked around the internet this contest, a lot of rally requests (99% of which were from Board 8ers on reddit, which proves how unbelievably hypocritical you people all are) were met with "who gives a crap about GameFAQs, that site still exists?". But at some point given our low vote totals, a rally will catch fire again. It just didn't happen in this contest. Make a console or game contest though and watch what happens. Consoles especially get treated like children these days and we've yet to have that contest. We're overdue for it just for the nonsense we would get to witness. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Board 8 got overly paranoid about rallies and convinced itself that Monika might win the whole contest. This did not happen. There was a rally, hence the higher vote totals, but not nearly enough to make Monika a threat to Wario. Stalls and small cuts were all the rally managed. **What could this mean?:** That Allen's anti-rally system works, that we can't predict contest changing rallies, and that small dedicated fandoms not in the zeitgeist the way Undertale and LoL were are not to be feared. It was a straightforward match that was very much overhyped. I think the rallies we will see will be smaller ones like the one in this match, and unlikely to change the course of the whole thing. Otherwise Wario looked reasonable and should get to round 3 with no trouble. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match had a small rally for Monika from Reddit! Our old enemy! She is from a game called DDLC(the initials of course)and it is a visual game. She is a newcomer too. It is very popular in some sites. But here? Yeah you know what? It is a new game so of course we automatically don't like it! Wario you know him. Still I guess she evaded a doubling with the help of the rally probably? I have heard that DDLC is really good. I just don't like these kind of games so I can't comment on this. But you can try playing it. Also for the rally. Think about rallies is that if they work and the character wins 1 match and manages to win a 2nd one too that means that they are going to win the whole thing. Seriously. You just need 2 wins and you are set. Unfortunately here Monika faced Wario who is decent. If there was a weaker character than Wario here she may have done it. Also seems that very few people believed that she would win if you look at the winning percentage. Even the Gurus had Wario with over 60% support too. Also rallies are fine if they are for the character you like of course! Right? ## Tsunami's Analysis I haven't gotten around to playing DDLC yet. I kind of got spoiled to the big twists thanks to this contest, at least regarding Monika, but I still think I'm blind enough to include it in the revival of my Blind VNs Playthrough topic...just as soon as I finish PLvAA. And Zero Time Dilemma, because back when I initially did the VN series in 2013, I ended up getting my sister into the Zero Escape series as well and now she's pestering me to getting around to the third game. And probably also Spirit of Justice. ...Maybe I won't actually bother reviving the topic at all. I tend to write things up in advance in Word, and the formatting doesn't always translate well to GameFAQs posts. Anyway, DDLC is available on Steam, so I'll probably just stream my playthrough of that on Twitch. I forget how long I have to keep the Guru winner in my signature, but I'll put my Twitch handle in my signature when I'm clear. Oh, right, the match! I'm convinced that this board doesn't actually dislike rallies; they dislike rallies that *they don't control*. Had Monika gone on a rampage, there'd definitely be salt, but I don't think it'd be anything like 2013 or 2015. --- ## (3)Yoshi vs (14)Shantae 2018 _source: (3)Yoshi vs (14)Shantae 2018 (revid 83776)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was supposed to be a typical boring blowout, and it was, but for some reason a gigantic argument broke out all over Board 8 about whether or not Shantae was fodder. I don't mean the standard "we're bored so we're making up stupid crap to argue about in the stats topic", either. Shantae and her 19 fans were sitting here screaming over the character having real strength. Just for the hell of it, I went and looked at KP's adjusted stats. Here's yet another fantastic example of why extrapolated standings are a joke. Shantae - 16.22 Noctis Lucis Caelum - 15.96 Kazuma Kiryu - 15.95 Yu Narukami - 15.91 Dragonborn - 15.84 Joker / Ren Amamiya - 15.74 Primrose - 15.64 Aya Brea - 15.56 Goro Majima - 15.32 Metal Man - 15.2 D.Va - 14.82 Miles Edgeworth - 14.51 Gordon Freeman - 14.5 James Sunderland - 14.45 Neptune - 14.26 Neku Sakuraba - 14.11 Aloy - 13.95 Godot - 13.86 John Marston - 13.68 Estelle Bright - 13.45 Sans - 13.15 Monokuma - 13.01 Hat Kid - 12.94 Isabelle - 12.76 Victor Sullivan - 12.58 Quiet - 12.13 Cayde-6 - 11.9 Chloe Price - 8.65 Draven - 6.22 Here's the bottom of his stats. Even by the ridiculous arbitrary adjustments these stat people make, Shantae is gutter trash. Nothing against KP here (he'll eat his L later on in these writeups, don't worry), but half of these characters or more would beat Shantae in a match. No one knows who or what a Shantae even is, and we're supposed to believe she could beat Noctis, Dragonborn, Aya Brea, Quiet, Gordon Freeman, or John Marston in a 1v1 contest match? Get the hell out of here. I cannot believe I had to waste more than 5 seconds on round 1 fodder getting blown out, yet here we are. Shantae's fanbase quickly reached Persona levels of 'way to convince me never to play any of the games you people care about'. Instead of white knighting pixel boobs, try hitting the gym so you guys can have the real thing once in awhile. Some of you clearly need it. Which is fine. We all start somewhere. Shantae is gutter trash fodder, the end. Yoshi scored a very clear and obvious blowout, and Shantae has no contest strength. Deal with it. This match wasn't to the level oF DEUS EX ISN'T WINNING BY ENOUGH, but it came close. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** This was a fairly standard blowout. Shantae is very much a "just happy to be here" character, but did better than a lot of people thought she would. She's weak, but not ultra-fodder. Yoshi soared with the board vote, but then things stabilised below a tripling and Yoshi struggled to get over 74% until the last few hours. It was an uneventful beatdown, but Shantae has something of a moral victory in the fact that she didn't get destroyed. **What could this mean?:** This wasn't nearly as bad for Yoshi as it might look on the surface. Shantae has well-liked, relatively well-known games with a dedicated fanbase and is essentially a low-tier Nintendo character. Her not getting totally blown out is a testament to her being kind of okay (she did get a 14 seed compared to the 16 seeds of comparable characters like Cuphead and Hat Kid). Regarding Yoshi, he performed very similarly to how Zero did on Primrose and in that match I might lean Shantae, but it's suffice to say that Yoshi and Zero are definitely looking comparable. I wouldn't read too much into this one, I think there is just a bit of underestimation of how weak the new characters are. I'm even starting to think that Cayde-6 might not get annihilated! ## Safer777's Analysis Shantae is a newcomer. Yoshi is in Smash and in the Mario games. Yeah pretty easy win for Yoshi. He has a lot of victories in the contests actually. Didn't expected that. He is near Elite actually! Well he is a dinosaur and everyone likes dinosaurs. Or is he a dragon? Or a mix of both? Actually I think it is a Yoshi species? Anyways he won easily. At least Shantae evaded a tripling barely. She doesn't have  any power. To tell the truth I haven't even heard of her before the contest. Hey I haven't heard some of the other characters actually. ## Tsunami's Analysis Shantae's debut game was released in June 2002 for the Game Boy Color--roughly a year after the GBA was already out. And for 8 years, that was her only game. Her next game was originally for the Nintendo DSi. It got a non-Nintendo release the next year on*iOS*of all things, but the series didn't get released on a Playstation or XBox system until 2015 when both the second and third games got ported to PS4. A pseudo-Nintendo *platformer* character breaking 25% on a solid midcarder from the Mario series? Sounds good to me. Banjo couldn't break 25% on one of Nintendo's *non*-platformer characters in 2010, and he already firmly had his paw in the Microsoft cookie jar. Granted Pikachu is overall stronger than Yoshi, as we'd see in two rounds, but nevertheless, this is a respectable performance under the circumstances. Also, unless you're Pokémon or Kirby, being a primarily handheld character is usually a recipe for disaster. (Yes, Kirby is primarily handheld and debuted on a handheld. It's easy to forget this because he's had console games, too, but he literally went over a decade with his only non-Smash console game being *Air Ride*.) --- ## (6)Velvet Crowe vs (11)James Sunderland 2018 _source: (6)Velvet Crowe vs (11)James Sunderland 2018 (revid 85395)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I had to look this up for myself, because I saw it posted during this match and could not believe it. Until this very match right here, Lloyd Irving is the only character from a Tales game to have ever won a match. Ever. None of the other popular characters from those games have ever won. Not Kratos, not Zelos, not Luke fon Fabre, not Yuri Lowell. None of them. I remember crusading back in the day pleading with people to stop nominating these characters, because I adore these games and got so tired of seeing them get flatlined every contest. Turns out all Tales needed was a super popular main character (popular by Tales standards anyway, I am under no delusion about Tales actually being a popular series) from a recent game to go up against a dumpster fire. James Sunderland was all too happy to bring out his gas can and do his best impersonation of a Vietnamese protestor, because I can't imagine many other spots in this bracket where literal Velvet Crowe breaks 60% on someone. Even Aya Brea, who I believe was the weakest character to actually win a match, couldn't break 60%. I like Silent Hill 2, but those characters will always be absolute bottom tier in these contests. I'll speak for myself here because I have a casual perspective on a lot of things that I bet translates with a lot of voters. When I play a video game, I want something decidedly unrealistic. Doesn't mean I won't play a realistic game, or even enjoy some realism from my characters. A good example is Solid Snake. He sits there in a world growing more and more insane by the hour, but we appreciate him both for his realism and for the fact that we'll never be like Snake. That's a hard balance to pull off. In other cases, like with a Link or a Mega Man, it's all about having fun. With Dante or Bayonetta or Doom Guy, it's all about beating up some bad guys and being cool af while doing it. With most RPG characters, like Velvet Crowe or Cloud, we get lost in a huge story. There's all kinds of reasons we love a character. What we don't love are characters where we look at them and go "wow even \*I\* can do that, what's the point?". It's why sports games will never matter here. It's why pro wrestling is done. And it's exactly why James Sunderland is total fodder. Any one of us could waltz through Silent Hill and do exactly what James Sunderland does. He is nothing special. And deep down, the people who were so happy to get him into a bracket all know it. Silent Hill itself is the star of Silent Hill games, not their lame-ass main characters. The villains and the town are the stars in those games, and when you have that paired with characters who control badly, you have a bad formula for contest strength. Well that plus Konami being complete and total garbage, but I'm saving that rant for Solid Snake's loss to Samus in the loser's bracket. Fuck Konami. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis What happened?: This was a slightly debated match. The top tier Tales games (by which I mean Symphonia and Vesperia, mainly Symphonia) are pretty good, but the characters have done badly with the exception of 2005. Lloyd is okay, but doesn't get enough support in nominations to get winnable matches anymore. Yuri isn't a disaster, hovering a bit below the fodder line. Those are the two best comparisons or velvet I think. Silent Hill and its characters have never been good, with even Pyramid Head looking fodder line at best. So this was a match between perennial underperformers in a lot of ways. Then it opens and Velvet just destroys James, especially during the board vote. In some ways this was actually the surprise of the day. Velvet winning wasn't a shock after Aya vs. Sully, but the margin was larger and Velvet wasn't from a 90's Square RPG. In the end this was another debated match turned easy victory, and Tales characters got their first win since Lloyd beat Wesker in 2005. What could this mean?: Well, this could easily speak to issues of recognisability and picture quality. James Sunderland just being "James" in the options can't have helped him, and Velvet was a cute anime girl with a striking artstyle. I did think James's pic was ok though, it had the distinctive Silent Hill look to it. More than just that I do think Velvet would have won without too much trouble anyway. Berseria is definitely a top tier Tales game, it is one of very few games in that series to sell over a million and is the best reviewed behind Symphonia and Vesperia (other than some rereleases anyway). The series is a mixed bag and this is one of the good ones. At the end of the day, Yuri would probably win this match too and I can't imagine a world in which Velvet's much weaker than him. So Velvet won this match legit, but the other factors might have helped too. Now let's hope this shuts Black Turtle up about how much he hates Tales. ## Safer777's Analysis This was a somewhat debatable match. You can see that from the prediction percentage too. James is from Silent Hi;; series and man I like these series. I still remember the very first SH game and man I was scared back then. I couldn't even played it at night! Fun times. But Konami decided to mess all up because they don't care about good games anymore, they care about stupid pachinko machines. Also James is a generic guy and with a generic look too. Both of these were newcomers but Velvet is from the Tales series which is a JRPG series as you know. So since James is really weak she defeated him easily. At least a victory from the Tales series! I think also this is their 2nd victory on the Character Contest too? Well it makes sense. Tales series were never big here anyways. ## Tsunami's Analysis I initially had James in my bracket because he's the older character and Tales never wins in Character Battles except one other time. Then I remembered that this was likely a fodder match, and the higher seed was the one with the boobs. This line of thinking would let me down once in this contest, but this wasn't it. --- ## (7)Pikachu vs (10)Scorpion 2018 _source: (7)Pikachu vs (10)Scorpion 2018 (revid 83683)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Scorpion is a very consistent dude in these contests and is a fantastic measuring stick for other characters. He's pretty much the exact definition of a low midcard character that won't ever win anything, but he's always good to have around because he won't ever gain or lose strength. He's worth about 23-25% on Link. Always has, always will. As we all know by now, outside of fourways, which flat-out do not behave like 1v1 and this contest proved that beyond all doubts, Scorpion's only moment of relevance came all the way back in 2002. That's the year he won three matches, including upsetting the 1 seed Pac-Man before getting utterly demolished by Link. Since then, it's been a whole lot of being used as a measuring stick or missing the bracket entirely. Why do I bring this all up? Because Scorpion helped us see very early this year what a damn monster Pikachu was going to be in this contest. Go back and look at all of Scorpion's losses in his history. I'll even include the LOL 4ways. He has lost to Link, Zero, Auron, Mega Man, Gordon Freeman, Mega Man X & Zero, Sora, and now Pikachu. In that entire list, only Mega Man in 2007 and the Link match in 2002 had winners more impressive than Pikachu in this match. Pikachu was a damn beast for this entire contest, and we would see it right off the bat. 66% on Scorpion is just nuts. Zero only got 63%. Auron got 65. Doing this really cemented Pikachu in near elite status, and this was before the Detective Pikachu trailer happened. Had that thing come out before the contest he might have broken 70% in this match, which is hilarious to think about given only Link has ever pulled that off. It also meant poor Kratos was even more screwed than he already was. Dude had no chance. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** PokeFEAR returns. we all knew Pikachu would win, the question was how much. Scorpion has looked good before, he's iconic, albeit not as strong in these as Sub-Zero (good taste, GameFAQS). He couldn't get destroyed right? Wrong. Pikachu flew out the gate here with a stunning 69%. Scorpion was getting destroyed in the early hours of this match. It did start to turn however, with Scorpion cutting nearly a full 3% off of Pikachu as the match went on, even winning updates at points. In the end he escaped the doubling, and this definitely ended up looking less dominant than it did at first. **What could this mean?:** A lot of people were shaken by this match, I am skeptical. Pikachu gets 64% on Scorpion using 2013 stats, which is only 2% better than this. Add only a slight Mortal Kombat decline (X was three years ago and kind of came and went, and also the next one has not been announced yet leaving the series in a kind of limbo) and this result actually starts looking quite sensible. Pikachu is a true elite, no questioning that, but I'm not expecting him to run rampant by any stretch, at least not on the basis of this match. The one other thing I'll say is that this gives us a really clear view of Pokemon's trends, starting incredibly strong and then calming down. Keep that in mind for close starts in the future. ## Safer777's Analysis POKEFEAR baby! But seriously Pikachu managed a doubling here. Pokemon characters were weak at the start of the contests, reached their peak in strength that 2013 which they did REALLY good and now are weaker true than 2013 but don't get fooled. EVERYONE and their mothers know what Pokemon are. I believe Pikachu is the most recognizable video game character now. So they can get the casual votes or something like that. Anyways as I said above as the years go on we care less and less about fighthing game character. Scorpion was a beast in the 1st ever contest but that was it for him. Nothing since then. He can beat some weak characters of course but yeah. Too bad he got against Pika in his first match too. He could have beat some other characters. Also Pikachu has a low seed I believe. Only 7? Strange. ## Tsunami's Analysis My first reaction when I saw the percentages on the matches in progress were "why is Pikachu not winning by as much as Yoshi and Kratos?" Then I remembered that unlike those two, Pikachu had a worthwhile opponent. Scorpion had about as good a contest as he could've hoped for. He avoided the doubling against Pikachu, who proved to be very strong indeed, and with no shortage of dark horse runs in this contest, his 2002 Elite Eight run kept him in the conversation long after he'd departed. --- ## (2)Kratos vs (15)John Marston 2018 _source: (2)Kratos vs (15)John Marston 2018 (revid 83777)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was our first major case of SFF this contest, and Marston took it right on the nose. This wasn't some legendarily hilarious case of SFF like Link \> Ganondorf in 2004, but it was still brutal to look at. Don't try telling me this isn't SFF, either, because if you look at the final stats Marston is in no way as weak as those stats would suggest. Red Dead Redemption is way too big of a series, even on this site, for the dude to be like bottom 10 in the LOL x stats. His game almost doubled Bayonetta a mere 3 years ago, and then it broke 40% on Shadow of the Colossus. That's pretty respectable. Not crazy strong, but respectable. Then there's that whole Red Dead Redemption 2 thing, which is so huge even South Park did a bit on it. You know what the prime recipe for SFF is? It isn't sharing a fanbase. Mega Man and Zero share a fanbase. Zero got 44% in that match. SFF happens when you share almost the exact same fanbase and one character is clearly stronger than the other. Kratos and John Marston are both casualbait, strong, male, badass tough guys from major, popular series that had recent blockbusters. But Kratos is clearly out of Marston's league, thanks to a much longer history with the gaming audience. That is exactly how you get matches like this. It's also how you get things like Snake \> Tanner and The Legend of Zelda \> Adventure. Take two entities in a popularity contest where one is clearly already stronger than the other and it gets ugly quickly. That's what happened here. Rivalry Rumble aside, did you know Kratos had never broken 61% in a poll before this match? Not once. You don't go from that to 73% by accident when another popular character is involved. This was SFF, plain as day. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** To set up this match we need to look at God of War's history on GameFAQs. That series used to be really good, and I think a lot of people forget that on this board. All three of the original trilogy games got into the Game of the Year finals, with two of them in the top three. It looked quite good in 2009 and really good in 2010, coming very close to peak Half-Life 2. Kratos kind of followed its fortunes, looking better than ever until a great performance against Charizard in 2010 (however strong you think he really is). Then 2013 happened. Kratos looked absolutely dreadful, struggling to double Travis and Recette then getting just annihilated by Mega Man X and losing to Jill. This follows how people thought of the series. In 2013 constant releases and Ascension had almost killed the series. 2013 Kratos would struggle with Marston, who looked alright against Zelda in 2013 and is helped by the fact that RDR2 releases four days after this match. But then we come to the match and Kratos lets loose, starting big and getting bigger as the match went on before stabilising over 73%. It was almost as big a victory as Yoshi's over Shantae. **What could this mean?:** This was a dominant performance by Kratos, and I have to imagine it was legit strength. There is talk of SFF but I don't see why there would be more here than Yoshi vs. Shantae or even Pikachu vs. Scorpion, the two are fairly different, one is multiplatform, and is well-loved. Additionally I'm not sure if Marston has fallen to the bottom or anything, RDR is still floating around the top 30 on this site and RDR2 is very hyped. Marston even had his RDR2 art in the match pic I think. So this was a really good showing for Kratos, and if he wasn't running into Pikachu next round he could really run rampant. Going off 2013 an upset is possible, and I'm not expecting it but I would definitely like to see it. It makes sense that Kratos would look this good - God of War 2018 is the Breath of the Wild of the series. It's not just revived the series either, but it has also redeemed Kratos as a character. I think this is the strongest he's ever been and I wish he was in any other division. Hopefully he will give us a good show in his next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Here is what I don't get about this match. Of course Kratos would win. But this much? When this match happened RDR 2 was days away from release and I thought Marston would have some power based on the hype. Seriously the hype was huge. But seriously? I know GOW 4 came out in this year but man Kratos either gained really much power from that game or Marston is really weak? Or SFF? Who knows. This proves that strong games don't equal strong characters. RDR is a popular game and it is the best Western game ever made. Man too bad for Marston. I really like him. Also this is the biggest win for Kratos ever too! Damn! Also I think Kratos has to be the strongest Western character too. Still nice win for Kratos. ## Tsunami's Analysis I guess this is an SFF match as well? These percentages are very similar, so even if Kratos SFFs Marston just as much as Yoshi SFFs Shantae, you're still left needing a *lot* of rSFF in Yoshi-Pikachu to explain this one away. Also, I may not know a thing about Red Dead Redemption, but if it's the same genre as God of War, well, if it's a fodder match, I'd invoke genre hierarchy to give Shantae the advantage even before TJF. Remember, this is GameFAQs. M-rated games aren't popular here at all. Also apparently there was supposed to be hype for a game that I could've sworn had already come out a long time ago...I think it's because Red Dead *Redemption* was already a sequel to begin with. It became the most popular entry in the series so they kind of renamed the series, kind of like how Metal Gear *Solid* was originally a clever play on the [Third is 3D](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThirdIs3D) trope, refusing to explicitly call it "Metal Gear 3D" even though it was the third game in the series and the first in 3D, except the first two games were on a fairly obscure system that was never released outside of Japan (and the first game got butchered so badly when being ported to the NES that the NES version was eventually deemed non-canon), so it became as good as a franchise reboot and the next game was called Metal Gear Solid 2. Whatever. Not important. 2000s \> 2010s in the hierarchy, especially with so many other factors being identical. --- ## (1)Sora vs (16)Ryo Hazuki 2018 _source: (1)Sora vs (16)Ryo Hazuki 2018 (revid 83685)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match was never going to be in doubt, but that was not the purpose of this match. Sora's entire job in this match was proving he was worthy of a 1 seed and was capable of beating Pokemon Trainer Red in a highly pro-Nintendo contest. He failed, spectacularly, on both counts right off the bat. Ryo Hazuki is pretty much a step up from bottom of the barrel sludge. He's the last good drop or two in the barrel before you hit the indigestible cesspit, meaning he'll never be at the bottom in strength, but he always comes really close. This is a guy whose only win is against Guybrush Threepwood, an all time useless piece of trash comparable to Dirk the Daring. This guy let Dante and Yoshi separately almost get 80% on him, and is so irrelevant he's only made 4 of the 10 character battles -- none since 2004 and he only made this one to pad out the roster. He's fodder. No other way to put it. I will say however that his fanbase is awesome. You can tell they legit just love the dude, and never try to force an opinion on anyone. Persona fans, Deus Ex fans, and Shantae fans could do well to learn from Shenmue fans. Sora couldn't even break 70% on the guy. We've seen a similar omen from a bad 1 seed before against Ryo. Remember this turd of a match? We've seen this story from Sora before. In 2006, Sora was a 1 seed. He underperformed against Tingle and Gordon Freeman before getting demolished by Mega Man. In 2010, Sora was a 1 seed. He underperformed against Midna and Laharl before getting demolished by Bowser. And then 2018 happens, which we'll get to next round. There were some turds laid as a 2 seed in there, too. Sora is always able to get high seeding, but he never does anything with it. Did you know Sora has never won a division with all these high seeds he always gets? Not once. The closest he came was when he came 500 votes short in the Rivalry Rumble. I'd love to call 2013 a close call, but failing to advance in a poll against Pikachu and a Pokemon Trainer is just an embarrassment. I don't care how close that poll actually was. Sora should have steamrolled it. Crono lost early and that division was right there. He still couldn't get the job done. But hey, congrats on getting 69% against Ryo Hazuki in your one win as a 1 seed this year. And I know I'm being hard on the guy, but when you regularly get high seeds, you are held to that standard. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** This is probably the most interesting 1/16 match so far. Square has been consistently underperforming (almost, more on that tomorrow) throughout this contest but KH has always been fairly separate. The two series in question here are in very similar situations (Allen likely knew what he was doing on this one) After being dormant for a long time KH hype is starting to gear back up with the rereleases and III finally, finally, being only a couple of months away. Ryo was near ultra-fodder in the early contests then vanished. However, since then Shenmue 3 got a very high profile announcement and is releasing next year, with the first two games getting a rerelease on modern systems just recently. So Ryo may be much stronger. For reference, in 2004 Sora would have gotten 78% in this match, and 2013 Sora would have gotten 81%. And Sora did come sprinting out the gate with nearly 72%, but then that gradually declined to 69%. Sora looked a lot like Pokemon characters here, and that speaks to how the new start time has suppressed the day vote, instead making the traditional "day" characters very front loaded. Ryo didn't look like trash here, but then Sora didn't exactly impress. **What could this mean?:** Either Kingdom Hearts has weakened as the wait for III has become more and more of a joke, or Shenmue has strengthened significantly. In this case, it's most likely both. A reasonable performance for Sora would have been near a tripling, but I just can't see Ryo making up 12% on Sora from Shenmue 3 hype and 1/2 HD. This was a fairly poor performance from Sora and he't looking great to take the division. Then again who is? ## Safer777's Analysis KH 3 boost confirmed! Yeah sure. Sora always does good againts weak opponents but man he hasn't a victory against a strong opponent. As for Ryo he is here because of the upcoming title as the time of writing called Shenmue 3. Shenmue games were amazing back in the day but they didn't good financially. Anyways for here to Sora not  even break 70% I consider it a bad result. Should there be a KH 3 boost or something? It was coming soon as the time on the writing. I believe at least he should have done better. Or is Shenmue 3 hype boost too? Don't know. But man Sora did good in the start of the contests but after that he get's his ass kicked. But he is always a high seed. Don't understand why. Also he has never won a division too! Seriously? I guess when KH 3 comes he will finally be able to do it? Also his prediction percentages are always high. Guess people expect him always to do good but he never does! ## Tsunami's Analysis Is there any bigger contest underachiever than Sora? Let's ignore Rivalry Rumble, because it doesn't count. Without looking, name the last time that Sora didn't have the *absolute highest seed possible*. A 2-seed in 2013, because the 1-seeds were prereserved for the Noble Nine, or a 1-seed otherwise. Remember, there were no seeds in the fourway contests. It was 2005. He was indeed a 2 in 2013, and a 1 in 2006, 2010, and 2018. Now remember that all nine Noble Niners were in the main field in 2010, and there were indeed 4 Noble Niners in the male half of the 2006 bracket. He wasn't the only one in this match with a long-awaited "3", but Shenmue has always been cult and this is not how a 1-seed should perform. --- ## (8)Neptune vs (9)Pokemon Trainer Red 2018 _source: (8)Neptune vs (9)Pokemon Trainer Red 2018 (revid 83686)_ ## Ulti's Analysis While Sora was busy mucking it up against Ryo, Red was out there showing us who's boss and how screwed Sora was in round 2. The only person on Board 8 who actually knew who Neptune was before this contest was SHINE, which says a lot. I love the guy, so no offense to the dude, but he literally plays every single video game and has no life outside of gaming and working. Which is fine. I legit have nothing against that if that's what you want to do with yourself. You do you bro. For those of us with other interests, this match might as well have had Neptune the planet or Neptune the Roman god in it. I don't even want to know who the freaks are that got Neptune the video game pedophile simulator all the way up to an 8 seed. Oh wait, one look at the characters tells us exactly who they are. They're lolicon fans. Looking at underaged Japanophile cartoon boobs and ass bouncing around because you're too scared of the FBI to look at the real thing doesn't make you any less of a pedophile. Go vote for Roy Moore some more and get the hell out of my life. Thankfully Board 8 has almost none of these people left on it, but they're out there in the world at large and need to be called out whenever possible. Red was doing the lord's work in beating the hell out of this trash and all the freaks who support that subculture, and when compared to Sora \> Ryo, it was no contest who looked better. Red got a better score, and despite a much worse seeding, his prediction percentage for the round was only 4% lower. All the signs of what was coming were there, and that wasn't even counting the esoteric stuff like Smash hype, this being Nintendo's year, and so forth. A Kingdom Hearts 3 hype video just couldn't compete with all that. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Neptune's 8 seed might beat Chloe's for the most baffling in the contest. She is the kind of character you expect to show up as a just happy to be here 16 seed. She looked like ultra-fodder, and got blown out accordingly in the second biggest defeat so far. Red started near 80% but then got hit with those frontloaded Pokemon trends and slowly declined, but he still cleaned house. The question is, did he clean house by enough? **What could this mean?:** Sora vs. Red is one to watch. Red didn't destroy Neptune like he had to to look like the clear favourite but it was still behind only Ganondorf's win for the biggest beatdown thus far. Additionally Neptune has a dedicated fanbase (just look at the seed) which gives her an alright floor even though she's definitely bottom five (so far I'd only solidly take her over Chloe). Ryo would beat Neptune, but 57% beat? I'm not so sure. That match is a true tossup, and their similar trends could mean that it doesn't look settled for a long time. ## Safer777's Analysis I have a question here. Why it says Pokemon Trainer Red in the poll? Is Red a generic word? What about Link? Cloud? Aren't these generic words? Don't get it. Anyways Red won with more than a tripling against a newcomer from a series that we haven't seen again here too. Well I consider it a good result. I mean a tripling is always good.  Neptune has to be a weak character too I guess. But man seeding really doesn't mean anything in these contests. Now where Red stands in the Pokemon hierarchy is  the question I ask. Still awesome win for Red. I haven't even heard of the series that Neptune is a part of myself too! And apparently there are a lot of games too! So obviously I didn't know who Neptune was. Well nice to see new characters but can't we get a decent one at least? Also really high percentage for Red. Is this the highest ever for a 9 seed??? Maybe. Guess not even the casuals were confused with the seeding here! ## Tsunami's Analysis I was thrilled that Neptune's nomination rally got her all the way to an 8-seed. Nippon Ichi is reliably great for quirky RPGs. (Play Phantom Brave.) But this was an absolute nightmare of a draw. Ah, well, that's what happens with these niche characters. You get them in and they stink it up. Like in 2013 when I got three Touhou characters into the bracket. Biggest embarrassment ever; Marisa couldn't even challenge a Generic Two-Name Guy *while stuffing votes.* I wasn't involved with the stuffing, but I was heavily involved with the nomination rally so I'll wear that fiasco as a badge of shame. Seriously, though, Nippon Ichi is great. Don't let this percentage discourage you from checking Neptunia out. --- ## (5)Crash Bandicoot vs (12)Cecil Harvey 2018 _source: (5)Crash Bandicoot vs (12)Cecil Harvey 2018 (revid 83687)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Cecil. Harvey. Never. Wins. GFNW (Gordon Freeman Never Wins) was one of the original contest memes, and it was so well known that even CJayC was joking about it and trying to feed Gordon easy competition to get a win. Well Cecil actually has it worse. He shined in this match for about 3 minutes, and then Crash just swamped him. This match was never close after the 3 minute mark, and would quickly become the latest example in a long line of Cecil Harvey flops in contest lore. If this was going on during the early days, this would be a legendary contest history. And now the Crash loss. Outside the original Kirby match, Cecil was debated to win all of these. He's come close a lot, but he's never actually won anything. He shocked the world by putting up 48% on Knuckles, but didn't win. He surprised everyone with how close he got to Luigi, but still. He lost. He was supposed to win the 3way match with Pit and Wrex. He lost. And then Crash happens. We all like Crash, but in his extensive contest history, he had two wins before this match. 2002 against Ulala (who?) and 2013 in a 3way against Wheatley and some trash from Grand Theft Auto. He's lost every other match. And the guy went out there and beat the tar out of a well known Final Fantasy character, in another match Cecil was supposed to win. The logic was "hey there's no way Crash is stronger than Knuckles, right?". Turns out things change from year to year and your holy extrapolated standings are garbage. Again. Using the LOL x stats is about as smart as picking sports based on who won last year. They mean nothing. The especially funny thing here is it's well known Final Fantasy 4 is Allen's favorite game. He's been blatantly putting Cecil in matches where he has a shot to win, and Cecil keeps losing anyway. This is the steroid version of what Ceej was doing with Gordon Freeman, and we're not far off from Allen just blatantly disregarding normal seeding and putting 2 seed Cecil against 15 seed Cayde-6 or something. And I frankly wouldn't blame the guy. This is embarrassing to watch if you're an FF4 fan. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: In the "Final Fantasy lead loses in a debated match they were the board favourite in" Trilogy, part 4/3, Cecil Harvey Never Wins (CHNW) officially became a thing. With five straight losses he has officially beaten Gordon's record. This match also cements the strength of 90's mascots and the weakness of Final Fantasy. Five years ago this match would have had the same result or worse going the other way around. Cecil always loses but he's not weak, he has come close a few times. This was his to lose. But Crash has boosted just like Spyro did thanks to his rerelease, and Final Fantasylooking generally poor. Once again this started close as board 8 tried to bracket vote their way to victory, but then Crash started to build his lead and it was never in question. **What could this mean?:** There's not much to say really, Crash has gone from fodder to a reasonable midcarder and CHNW. This result was foreshadowed nicely by Spyro vs. Chun-Li and Zidane vs. Knuckles. I actually originally had Crash in my bracket, before you absolute arseholes (joking, joking) convinced me to change it to Cecil, then those two matches happened and I was like "Oh". This match didn't tell us much new, but it did give further confirmation of a few trends. I also wonder if there's been a Sony boost. Crash owes a lot of his strength to the PS4, as does Kratos and arguably Spyro. Lastly, the casuals continue to beat us - I think the only match the B8 favourite beat the casual favourite on is Sully vs. Aya. Oops. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was sad. I didn't know when the match happened but Cecil is one of the few people that have taken part in 5 contests and hasn't a single victory! As for Crash he was a PS 1 icon. The Sony mascot back then! Then he fell from grace. But last year some Crash games were re-released updated of course and they did really good in sales. The Crash Trilogy was in 1st place on sales on UK at least! Guess people really want Crash? Nostalgia? Anyways at least an icon won. But man yet  ANOTHER FF protagonist fell on the 1st round! Also the Casuals beat us easily here. 60% of the Gurus had Cecil win! Man we make mistakes too you know! ## Tsunami's Analysis Cecil Harvey Never Wins became the new meme here, because he's frequently had winnable matches and he's just never managed to pull it off. But it's not quite like Gordon Freeman where he's losing to obvious fodder; the only truly questionable one, except maybe this one, was losing to Wrex in 2013 (when we still weren't sure if he'd win, but it was Pit that we thought he'd lose to). FFIV as a whole is 0 for Character Battles, but I don't think Cecil represents its best chance to break that trend. Even in obvious losses (e.g. his debut in 2005, against Kirby, though Kirby was still flying under the radar then), he underperforms. Rydia's two matches have been obvious losses and she's performed well in them. Her first contest was 2008 and she was in the same fourpack as Auron, but despite being SFF'd, she still came in third place, beating out a character who'd made Round 3 the previous year against legitimate competition. Well, against Ocelot and Kefka, at any rate. Kefka actually advanced to that Round 2 match in second place behind Marcus Fenix. He lost to Marcus *twice* in 2007, and the very next year Marcus can't even beat Rydia with Auron in the poll. That's either the biggest single-year dropoff, the biggest LOLKefka, or Rydia has potential. Probably a combination of all three. Female characters were boosting all over the place this year. Imagine what Rydia could do with an *After Years* pic. She probably wouldn't even sacrifice recognizability, and she'd have a tough TJF to take out. Of course, given how most of our nomination rallies this year fared in bracket placement, if we tried getting her a Returners Nomination Rally we'd probably see (6)Tifa Lockhart vs (11)Rydia. Still, I think it's worth a shot. Also the casuals didn't find this all that debatable. Over 73% got it right. The Gurus didn't even break 40% correct on this. LOL us. --- ## (4)Big Boss vs (13)Ridley 2018 _source: (4)Big Boss vs (13)Ridley 2018 (revid 83688)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Because of how Smash hype was clearly affecting this contest, paired with how Konami basically murdered Metal Gear Solid, there was a ton of fear that Ridley would be able to pull the upset. Turns out Ridley wasn't too big for Smash after all! HE KILLED SAMUS! OH MY GOD HE KILLED SAMUS!! But he couldn't kill Big Boss, or even get the board vote against him. This one was never close, though Ridley was clearly a step above from where he used to be, and Big Boss was clearly a step down. The effects of Smash and MGS's fates are pretty obvious, but they weren't going to close such a wide gap. For Big Boss, this match was a small measure of revenge for what happened in the Rivalry Rumble: Then again, does anyone care enough about the Rivalry Rumble to try getting revenge for it? Without looking it up, all I remember about that contest was Link winning, the Pokemon Trainers beating FF7 in a fake match, and Adolf Hitler making it into a GameFAQs contest match. There weren't many bright spots for non-Smash characters versus Smash characters in this contest, and even some of the wins in that position were rough. But this was one of the few bright spots. We are in a time line where Ridley winning this wouldn't have surprised people, but Big Boss shot that one down immediately. Turns out the old dog can still hunt! ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Battle of the big bosses. This match is a pretty good test of just how much Nintendo has boosted. Ridley is one of the two gatekeepers of Nintendo's low tier characters (more on the other one in the next day). Big Boss is a low elite. This should have been a 61-65% affair. However, the success of the Switch and especially Ridley's fan-pleasing confirmation for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate mean that he's facing a different Ridley. Ridley came out swinging, at times even looking like he would take the whole match during the board vote, but then Big Boss was able to keep a safe distance throughout. Still, this was a major moral victory for Ridley. **What could this mean?:** NintendoFEAR, even when it loses. This doesn't speak to Big Boss's weakness but to Ridley's new strength. It's not exactly the round 1 performance you expect of a potential division winner, but Big Boss has no real reason to weaken. If anything him effectively officially supplanting Solid Snake as the main character of Metal Gear should arguably boost him a little. He did have an old man pic but it was the identifiable MGS4 one and it's not 2005-2006 anymore. Really Ridley just looked good. The Nintendo boost is real, and hopefully next time Ridley can get a winnable match (in fact, outside of the Rivalry Rumble his record is as bad as Cecil's, largely due to bad draws). ## Safer777's Analysis BB would win of course. But people expected a higher percentage. But I have to say 2 things here. Ridley is in Smash so Smash boost and Ridley has taken part in 5 contests and has lost all matches too! Yet if you see the results here it doesn't make sense. So I searched a bit and man he always get the strong characters against him thus he loses. But seriously he can take down some characters in this bracket for sure now. Maybe next time he will win! So I can't really say that Big Boss here did bad. But man what is with these MGS names? They all look strange! Yeah I guess they are code names or something. Also the prediction percentage seems kind of low. Guess people saw Ridley and thought he would win since he is from the Metroid series. ## Tsunami's Analysis AKA the match where I started panicking re: Guru. Big Boss is very pic-dependent, since he can look a lot like Solid Snake sometimes, but not other times. I thought this year's pics were pretty good; you wouldn't mistake him for his son, but he still looked more like he did in his prime than as an old man. Ridley doesn't have any proper wins, either (though unlike Cecil, he at least got to ride Samus to some wins in Rivalry Rumble), but this is far from the first good showing he's had. He beat out Spyro for third place in a fourway, and he broke 40% in a threeway, which would usually be good for a win but the third character was one of the absolute weakest characters in the field. With Smash on his side, it feels like it's just a question of *when* he'll get his first win without Samus's help, not if. He just needs a better seed. --- ## (3)Alucard vs (14)Princess Peach 2018 _source: (3)Alucard vs (14)Princess Peach 2018 (revid 83689)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match was virtually identical to Big Boss v Ridley, right down to the votes, the percentages, the prediction percentages, and the fear going in that Nintendo/Smash was going to roll over everything. Granted Alucard is in Smash as an assist trophy, but he's also dealing with a character more popular than Ridley. Basically after round 1 of divisions 1 and 2, people who aren't fans of Smash and Nintendo had resigned themselves to what was coming. The irony is Smash itself had a mole working from within, but we'll get to Cloud's amazing run later. Let's stick to the early stuff for now. Looking back on people being afraid of Alucard losing this match, doesn't it all seem ridiculous now? This is a dude that would end up dispatching Peach in seconds before moving on to do some pretty amazing things. Alucard is always good for a good contest run, and this is the best one he would end up having by a mile. But if you look at 57% on Peach in a vacuum it's a bunch of whatever. I love Peach, everyone knows this, but let's actually look at her history here. Her one shining moment came in that terrible male/female 2006 bracket, where she SFFd Daisy and beat Jill Valentine by 27 votes. She has won nothing since. She even has a Gordon Freeman loss in there, which would have been a hilarious first victory for the GFNW legend. 57% on someone like that means nothing, but given Alucard's contest this year, I'm counting everything he does as impressive because it helps Peach save face \<3 ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** In some ways this was Peach/Gordon come again. Peach is a reasonable midcarder who is kind of Nintendo's top of the bottom tier. Her exact strength has never been pinpointed though. Alucard is more or less a high midcarder but his exact strength is hard to pinpoint. A lot of people were hyping this one up. Honestly for me this was an open and shut Alucard victory from the off. Peach lost to Gordon, Alucard would easily clear that era of Gordon so it's no trouble. After what he did to Magus in 2010 I am stunned people doubted him - Peach by no means underperformed, doing a fair bit better than Magus. Overall this was a pretty hohum match. **What could this mean?:** They both looked pretty good here. Peach beating Magus's performance makes her look strong, and was another good Nintendo performance despite not living up to board hype. Alucard however took a relatively easy win and looks very strong, better than Big Boss. It makes sense - Castlevania's stock is pretty good right now despite, or even because of Konami not giving a damn about their licenses. The Netflix series is great and very popular, there's rereleases and it's in Smash Bros. now. So this was fine news for both contestants. ## Safer777's Analysis So guess what. These 2 are both in Smash! Doesn't matter than Alucard isn't playable. He is there! Alucard has a decent record in these contests. Peach is a low tier Nintendo character. So Alucard won here with a decent win. I guess Smash boost for Alucard and he SFF'ed Peach? Or something like that? But man in a few years every match in these contests will have a character that has appeared in Smash! Damn! Guess we should have a contest with just characters that have appeared in Smash! Yeah okay bad idea.  Of course we didn't know from this match that Alucard would do so good. Guess Peach was strong after all. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a fairly modest win for Alucard, far from the performance that would mark him as a favorite to win this division. Are we supposed to think Peach is strong now? Peach is the casual choice, one who gets more votes from recognizability than from popularity. Which would make her a decent candidate for the fodder line. I think she'd beat our current pick for that honor, though. But this isn't a good performance for Alucard and it makes this whole division look bad. Is now a bad time to bring up that I had Big Boss \> Crono in Match 130? Because I did. Not that this match should necessarily have made many of us panic, because Peach had as many Gurus taking her to win this division as Alucard did--a grand total of **1**. Sora legitimately had a *majority*, with Big Boss and Red the two next-most popular picks. --- ## (6)Yuna vs (11)Godot 2018 _source: (6)Yuna vs (11)Godot 2018 (revid 83690)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Godot finally gets into a character battle and we all have to watch him get fed to Yuna in round one? Really? We couldn't have had him get put up against Shantae, one of the Yazuka losers, Neptune, or Draven? Come on Allen, how you gonna do us dirty like that? =p The thought of Godot breaking like 85% on Draven is hilarious to me, but I digress. If Manfred von Karma didn't exist, Godot would be my favorite character in the entire Phoenix Wright series. Even if you're not a fan of visual novels or adventure type games, I highly recommend Trials and Tribulations. It's the one game in that series that really stands out, even more than the original, and Godot is the biggest reason for it. Third game, fifth case. I don't need to say much else. There aren't many examples of better storytelling in video games than this dude. Unfortunately, it feels like Board 8 is the only place on the entire internet that's actually gone through these Phoenix Wright games. Then Phoenix appeared in Marvel vs Crapcom: DLC Edition and his legacy was ruined for good. There is just no coming back from something that stupid, even if it did help boost Phoenix's strength a little in contests. Anyway, we got Godot the lead for a few seconds, and then Yuna just smashed him en route to breaking 70%. I don't get sad over blowouts often in my jaded old age, but this one gutted me. I like Yuna. I really do. Her character in FFX was amazing, even if her voice actress was a steaming pile of hemorrhoid cesspool. Outside of a comedy guy acting like an N7 marine commander in Mass Effect, I don't think it can get much worse than whatever the hell Yuna's voice actress was trying to do. But the character is good, hence why Yuna has retained some strength even in the face of bad voice acting, Square being in the toilet, and Final Fantasy X-2. Just sucks her moment this year had to come at Godot's expense. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** We finally got Godot in!!! And he lost easily. He did escape the tripling which was nice. Not much to say on this, it was a fodder blowout of one of the best actual characters in this thing. It did show off how good the Ace Attorney early vote is, but we knew that already. **What could this mean?:** This was a pretty uninspiring performance by Yuna, only slightly better than she'd do on Edgeworth, but it's tough to read a lot into it. She didn't embarass herself either. Godot is bottom ten for sure, very likely bottom five. Given that he lost badly in a vote-in (he got doubled by Simon Belmont and barely beat Sol Badguy), he's not worth much, so to escape a tripling is the best he could ask for. ## Safer777's Analysis Yuna is the main character in FF X and FF X-2. Yeah I know that technically Tidus is the main character of FF 10 but come on now, everything revolves around Yuna. As for Godot he is from the Ace Attorney games. This board LOVES the Ace Attorney series. Seriously. But the rest of the site doesn't. So Yuna did really well. I guess Godot was lucky to avoid a tripling. Still the board get's their favorite characters but yeah don't expect them to have any wins unless they face each other or something. At least a FF character managed to advance on the next round. Not many of them did that you know! But in all seriousness Godot is probably pretty weak. If you see the the prediction percentage it is pretty high too. Seems everyone knows that Ace Attorney games/characters do bad here. ## Tsunami's Analysis If the 8-9 match in this division wasn't enough to make it feel like the bracket was stacked against Board 8, this match sealed it. The first two 6-seeds we saw were complete and utter fodder (and they still went 1-1 because so were the 11-seeds), and then Godot draws...Yuna. Granted, the other five 6-seeds are midcarders, or at least former midcarders. And one of those 6-seed fodders was the Guru nom... but hey, if two of our picks were put against each other in the first round, it'd guarantee that one made Round 2! Board 8 loves Phoenix Wright, and Godot is probably the most beloved single-game Phoenix Wright character here, with good reason. There's one other character that could challenge him for that title if we restricted it to one appearance in the *main* series, but he's been in both of the Edgeworth spinoffs. It was definitely a nice accomplishment getting Godot into the field, but it's painful watching characters we love get fodderized. Let's not repeat this experiment with getting other PW characters in; we haven't even been able to get Edgeworth a win outside of Rivalry Rumble. --- ## (7)Kefka vs (10)L-Block 2018 _source: (7)Kefka vs (10)L-Block 2018 (revid 83691)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was one of the most hotly debated matches in round one, because it was widely believed the winner would be able to go on a deep contest run. Division 3 was perceived as being very weak, and it was well within the realm of possibility that the winner here would be able to win the entire division. The winner of this was almost guaranteed to make it to round 3. If that winner was L-Block, it was not impossible for a bandwagon effect to show up and hand the guy the entire contest. Anyone who claims they had a good beat on this either way was pretty much lying, because neither of these characters is predictable in the slightest. Kefka's contest history is well known for the guy never doing what he's supposed to do. The dude was supposed to easily beat Pac-Man but went 50-50 with him. He was supposed to easily lose to Knuckles but got super close until the morning vote. He was supposed to win a division but lost to Diablo. The 4ways are just a cluster of 'what'. He was supposed to lose to Arthas and beat Arthas's ass. He was supposed to lose to Zack, then won two 3way polls because of course he did. The only contest he's ever made sense in was the Rivalry Rumble, which says a lot. L-Block's runs don't make sense, either. Everyone knows about 2007, but he was making a run in 2008 too before Pikachu beat him. Then the guy gets to Charizard and can't break 40% on the guy, before beating Auron. I doubt most people would call Kefka stronger than Auron, yet here we are. This is a great example of why stats mean positively dick in these contests, especially when we haven't had a proper character battle in over a decade. I ended up picking L-Block, because whenever Kefka is the board favorite the dude falls flat on his face. That's the one predictable thing about this guy. Turns out we couldn't even rely on that much. In what was quickly becoming a pattern in this contest, this was never even a match. It's why so many of my writeups thusfar have been about esoteric feelings instead of match trends and cold facts. "Character A won the board vote and went from X% at the freeze to Y% by the end" 100 times just isn't interesting. That said it actually was interesting here, because debated matches turning into hilarious blowouts are always entertaining. L-Block was a threat to win this match and go on a deep contest run. Instead he lost in round one and made Kefka look as strong as Charizard. That's one hell of a feat, and it was another data point in a very real trend this contest -- people are beyond fed up with rallybait joke characters. Every single one of them got demolished this year, and L-Block was no exception. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: Ahhhh this match. A true headscratcher going in, nobody knew what to make of this one. The two most unpredictable characters in contest history going up against each other. And given that the winner almost certainly goes to round 3, it is a really key decision. And then Kefka came out and won easily, looking very strong early on. Of course that's how this goes, a classic debated match turned one-sided. Oh Kefka. **What could this mean?**: Trying to make heads or tails of this match is a fool's errand. Is Kefka a true elite? Or is the joke just dead? Who knows. Kefka never makes any sense. ## Safer777's Analysis You can't judge Kefka. Seriously. His contest history doesnt' make sense. He loses to weak opponents and beat strong opponents. Then sometimes he does as expected. And other times not. L-Block was the champion from 2007 as people said. Now the strange thing. In the contests after 2007 L-Block always managed to advance to the 3rd round! And now it lost to Kefka in the 1st round! I tell you,nothing makes sense anymore! So Kefka did good here. Or did he? Who knows? Personally I don't want to see L-Block again. The joke is done. ## Tsunami's Analysis No past champion has ever been completely absent from the field of a contest they were eligible for, though this would not be true had Brawl beaten Majora's Mask in GotD. And I don't expect L-Block to be the one to break that trend, if for no other reason that there's another past champion with a much better case for being dropped. (Also, I expect the next contest of any kind to be Game of the Decade in 2020, but let's be honest, Undertale *deserves* to make that field. It'll probably get anti-voted out of fear of a repeat of 2015, but it would be a crime if it missed the field entirely.) The narrative that is often pushed around here is that Board 8 hates *all* past rally targets, but L-Block is in fact a beloved contest institution. Look no further than what hir seed was in 2013. L-Block has taken over CATS' former role as the joke character that Board 8 loves, except L-Block actually has some form of contest strength. Speaking of Board 8's favorite jokes, let's give it up for the Clown Prince of Contest Wackiness! Though to be honest Kefka's recent results haven't been as uniformly weird as they're often made out to be. No, we didn't expect Kefka to make Round 3 last contest, but that's really only *one *unexpected result, not two. Only about 8% of Gurus took him to make it out of Round 1, and of those, 60% took him to Round 3. His two Round 2 opponents were heavily favored in their Round 1 matches, and they each had fewer picks to reach Round 3 than Kefka did to make Round 2. And that Arthas result? If I recall correctly, that was the result of Arthas winning an SFF battle against Diablo in fourways, since Diablo had beaten Kefka in Villains. But honestly it should've been obvious that Blizzard had declined significantly since Villains. It was a defensible pick--B8 even talked me into it--but Kefka's win shouldn't have been surprising, and only was because the board is conditioned to not expect Kefka to do what he ought to. In this contest... well, this is Division 3 so it's hard to say what "ought to" have happened. But the Kefka meme is getting a bit old. --- ## (2)Kazuma Kiryu vs (15)Bomberman 2018 _source: (2)Kazuma Kiryu vs (15)Bomberman 2018 (revid 83692)_ ## Ulti's Analysis It's very rare when you can look at a 2/15 match and immediately pick the 15 seed without thinking, yet here we were. This is because before this match, the only 15 seed to ever beat a 2 was The Boss beating Nathan Drake back in 2010. That was a 12 hour match that went 52-48, too, so I imagine some people put an asterisk on that one. I know we had some 4ways and 3ways and some contests with dumb 1-8 division seeding instead of 1-16, but I can only work with what I got. The point here is these Yazuka characters that got into the field this contest are simultaneously the most unknown, overrated, and overseeded characters we've ever had. The best job a 15 seed had ever done until this was a 52-48 match. All the others easily lost. Yet Bomberman, a fodder character whose only contest win ever came against a TV set (this seriously actually happened, I kid you not: ) went out there and damn near got 61% against a 2 seed. It wasn't because Bomberman is strong, either. It's because Yazuka is gutter trash. Every contest we get some recent casualbait characters to serve as the opening round punching bags. Sometimes those characters are from Grand Theft Auto. Sometimes they're from Call of Duty and you get a match picture with a swamp thing in it. Sometimes they're from Uncharted or a random games contest has a sports title in it. Well in this contest, where we saw nothing from Grand Theft Auto make the biggest field we've ever had, that was Yazuka. Good lord. Who nominated these people to such high seeds? That's why the Kefka/L-Block match was so huge, Neither of these dudes had a chance of beating either one of them, and then who knows. Shout out to Bomberman and the 2002 contest, by the way. Nice seeing those old characters get some shine. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** Bet you never thought you'd see Bomberman 60/40 someone! Kiryu is a character that has been around for a while, but along with his series has had a recent surge in popularity. He got a high seed with a heavy board effort, but would have been here anyway, Yakuza's a fairly big deal now. Not big enough however, and Bomberman won an unspectacular match. **What could this mean?:** I'm pretty convinced now that Bomberman is the perfect fodder line character. He has the apathy factor Pac-Man does but is not as strong or significant. To put this into some perspective, Pac-Man got to be playable in Smash and Bomberman's an assist trophy. And Kiryu is fodder. He might build strength over time but for now he's quite weak. 2002 excluded, is he the weakest 2-seed ever? He has to be up there. At least he looked better than Kane. Also Majima might be the true weakest character in the bracket, look out for that. Finally, shout out to the casuals for not getting fooled on this one. They're having a good year for sure. ## Safer777's Analysis Yakuza is an awesome series. But I don't understand how Kazuma got a 2 seed. Seriously? We don't play games after 2005 here! As for Bomberman he is an icon of the really old times. But guess what. Just guess. He is in SMASH! Need to say more? Of course he won. Now I believe he would win even if he weren't there. If you are above a certain age you have played a Bomberman game. You just have. Still nice to see an icon of old days to grab a win even against an awesome character like Kazuma. The prediction percentage though seems to be in the middle. Helps that Kazuma had the highest seeding too. But man not even 40% from the 2 seed on the first match too? Overseeding at it's finest. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a tough loss to take, because I initially had Bomberman solely on recognizability before remembering that he's *Bomberman* and has never been worth anything, and no way he's going to upset someone who got a 2-seed *without* Board 8's support. Oops. Wrong on all accounts. Yakuza *was* a Board 8 creation, which **alone** would've been enough for me to stick with my instincts, but Bomberman... honestly hasn't been that bad! He's had a tendency to get tough opening draws, hence his only prior win being against a TV, but... Yeah. Phoenix may have been a lot weaker then than he is now, but that's still 43.64% on Magus, 49.93% on Phoenix, and *52.91% on Crash.* And we'd already seen Crash this contest, so it's no surprise that anyone in the know--which is to say, almost everyone but me--picked Bomberman in the Oracle. Kiryu had over 25% of Gurus, but only about 9.2% of Oracle picks. --- ## (1)2B vs (16)Cayde-6 2018 _source: (1)2B vs (16)Cayde-6 2018 (revid 83693)_ ## Ulti's Analysis When the bracket first came out, people looked at 2B as a totally bizarre 1 seed and had zero faith in her whatsoever. I had some faith in her, just not as a 1 seed. I did not think she would be legit at all, and stupid me picked Shadow the Hedgehog to win two matches. Pair that with this division having Charizard, Bowser, and Kirby in it, and the girl had no prayer of actually validating her seeding. Even now, people are still arguing over whether or not she was legit in this contest. Spoiler. She was. I don't care who you are or what you're up against. If you start a poll at 90%, spend a good chunk of it over 80, and finish at 78%, you have legit strength. It might not be 1 seed strength, but it's strength nonetheless. Nier Automata is the truth. Granted 2B clearly has the assets to be a popular character among gamer nerds on this site, but hey. Also I didn't know this, but I got it confirmed with the 4 Destiny players on Board 8. Apparently the reason Cayde-6 was so weak is because you can play through all of both games and never actually know or care who that character is. You know you suck when even your own fans don't know who you are, which leads one to wonder how he made the field in the first place. Cayde-6 was destined for only one thing in this contest, and that was being at or near the very bottom of the LOL x stats. I'm sure a joke could be made here about Abbreviated number SFF, but it's so lame that not even my lame PCA should include it :) ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?:** 2B smash fodder. Cayde-6 is a lot of people's pick for the weakest character in the contest and it's easy to see why (though Majima hasn't been yet). 2B started this match extremely high, over 85% in the board vote, then well over 80% for much of the match, getting the highest margins of the entire contest for much of its duration. The beatdown calmed down a lot after the first few hours though and 2B dropped to around 78% - nearly a 4% drop which is sizeable, even bigger than Pikachu over Scorpion. This was nearly the biggest victory of the contest, but Ganondorf vs. Neku still has it, which is kind of a disappointment - however strong 2B really is, it would be great to say "2B won with the biggest margin of any character in CBX" . **What could this mean?:** Unsurprisingly, Cayde-6 is really, really weak. I would caution against calling him Tanner though. Tanner was a special confluence of nobody knowing or caring about him or his games, and looking like some nobody to boot. Cayde-6 is from games people have played even if they are very weak and at least has a good design. We'll never see a "natural" (i.e. not somebody B8 rallied in to deliberately top Tanner) Tanner again, the closest was probably Nathan Hale and he would double Tanner! As for 2B, without knowing exactly how weak Cayde-6 is, it's hard to get a good read but she didn't fall on her face. You don't get nearly 80% from random apathy voting, so she is at least recognisable enough to get those votes. I know 2B's seed was inflated by the NRT win but given how much of Nier Automata's marketing was centred around her, it's hard to see her lower than a 2 or a 3. My expectation now is a decent midcarder, but her true strength is hidden by facing an unknown weakling. Lastly, with the trends, it's hard to say if 2B is frontloaded, Cayde-6 does better at night, or that kind of beatdown is just hard to keep up, but it's probably a bit of both. I think 2B looks good to beat Ness, but I can't say it with confidence. ## Safer777's Analysis Both of these characters have numbers in their names! Now the question that everyone asked when they saw the bracket. How Cayde-6 got in? Even Destiny players don't like Destiny! What? As for 2B look at her. Just look at her. Ms Fanservice right there! So of course a very easy win with more than a tripling. But something happened after this match too. 2B got announced for Soul Calibur 6! What? I guess that means that she will get a boost in power too and that is good for the matches. What else? Cayde-6 is bottom 5 for sure. Also 1 seed for 2B. Pretty sure nobody expected that. Don't know why. I have heard that Nier Automata is a good game but seriously. I guess since NNers are on their bracket we saw some weird seeding too. ## Tsunami's Analysis How cute, 2B's total is in the 22,000s and Cayde-6's is in the 6,000s. Anyway I'd never heard of either of these characters, so I figured I'd go with the higher seed. Then I heard discussion about hentai and figured that made sense. For some reason having a dash as well as a number made me feel that Cayde-6 was even more likely to be female than 2B. I guess because it sounds more robotic and roboticists in video games tend to be perverts who like "toasters with breasts". Cayde-6 is neither a robot nor a female, so this blowout is entirely expected. I guess I must have found that out in advance of the match, though, because I was going to blame my ignorance of these facts for why my Oracle pick was so bad, only to discover that my Oracle pick for this match was actually really, really good! I feel like my picks in Oracle seem to always be either awesome or awful, never mediocre. I don't think that's actually true but I guess it's easier to get emotional about being near one end of the list than in the middle. --- ## (8)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (9)Ness 2018 _source: (8)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (9)Ness 2018 (revid 83694)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I have to confess something. I legitimately love the Sonic clan and they're a bunch of really cool characters. Yeah yeah, not a great thing to admit. Don't care. The games aren't great sometimes, but the characters are all really cool. Any time Sonic or Shadow or Tails or Knuckles is in a contest match, it takes me back my my Sega Genesis Sonic 2 days as a kid. If you want a great reason for me to loathe furries and despise that fan base, there you go. They ruined something that was once amazing. I also tend to overrate them, especially Shadow, when making picks. I picked the dude to win two matches this year. I picked him to beat Zidane in 2008. I really wanted to pick him over Tidus in 2004. I love the dude. He looks like Sonic, but he's all dark and cool and such. What's not to like? Turns out most voters don't see it that way, and this match stayed remarkably stable for the entire 24 hours. The percentages basically never moved, which kinda sucked. I like Ness, don't get me wrong. You all know my love of EarthBound by now. But Shadow is my dude. At least this was a respectable loss with an obvious reason attached. Ness is no longer the character we thought could lose to Jak, the character who was the odd one out during the closest finish ever, the character that lost to Pac-Man (ugh), the character that got 40% on GlaDOS, the character we all thought could lose to Locke, and most importantly, the character that got rolled by Big Daddy. This Ness has been in Smash Bros for almost 20 years, he's had EarthBound rereleased a few times, and the Angry Video Game Nerd finally did a review of his game. He isn't big time now, but he's certainly big enough to beat Shadow the Hedgehog. Maaaaaybe Shadow could have won this if he were an echo fighter in Ultimate, but it was not meant to be. The real shame is most of us thought the winner of this could beat 2B, too, and I would have loved to see Shadow make it into round 3. Turns out 2B ain't no slouch. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** This was a fairly debated match, but it didn't really need to be - Ness has looked at worst very slightly above Shadow and it would only take a small shift to Nintendo to make this one his. Shadow kept it close however, not letting Ness pull away too much after his early lead, and resulting in a match that got closer and closer as the match went on. This just further highlights the new frontloaded nature of Nintendo, though in this case it was exacerbated by Europe where Sonic is good and Earthbound is weaker. To be fair, Ness did seem to do better in Europe than he usually does, likely helped by his game actually being out there now (finally). **What could this mean?:** Not too much. Ness looked more or less to par here. Shadow has obviously fallen a lot from his 45% on Mario days but hey, at least he ain't falling further. Despite being a fairly close match this match didn't give us much. Ness would have needed to beat Shadow very easily to look like a clear favourite against 2B, but it's hard to say the odds are stacked against him either. ## Safer777's Analysis A close match here. And I don't get why. Ness is in Smash and he is in one of the most beloved games of all time. As for Shadow he was strong in the 1st contest but that was it. Even Tidus has beaten him! Damn! Ness is weak of course but as I said his power comes from Smash. Shadow is low tier Sonic character currentlyI believe. Still Ness won and that it is I guess.  I haven't played Earthbound myself too. Yeah I know. I shoulda have played it but I haven't. Have seen the most important parts of it on various videos too. ## Tsunami's Analysis I was the guest picker for the Crew for this match, and I got it right for the wrong reasons. Sonic Team looked pretty awesome all around this contest, but not as awesome as everything Smash. So my theory that Earthbound would be stronger because it's been getting wider releases via VC and has inspired so many recent beloved games (like Undertale) was completely wrong, but a separate factor led to Ness having boosted anyway. Or did it? One match after expecting my Oracle to have been awful, I look to see that a match I thought I'd called really well, I actually got outperformed by literally everyone who hadn't picked Shadow outright. Maybe I would've been better picking with my heart. SA2 was one of my favorite games growing up and has influenced nearly every one of my usernames across the Internet--yes, including this one, indirectly, the eventual last name of a character that started off as a Shadow knockoff but eventually became humanoid because I was RPing with a bunch of other edgelord teenagers and all sorts of weird stuff happened. We all initially met through the official SA2 BBS, no less, before moving on to a place we'd created using InvisionFree. It was around this time that I first discovered the GameFAQs message boards, though not Board 8. I don't even remember what the name of the account I used back then was and I didn't post on anything that I'd still be able to find my posts on all these years later. I was also possibly one of the more *mature* members of the admin team for that InvisionFree board, which really says a lot. Or at the very least one of the oldest. This was in the early 2000s and I'm *still* not 30 yet so again, I probably don't need to say anything more for you to figure out how hilarious dysfunctional it was. Then again, by that logic, I should've picked Shadow outright! Which I might've done if I hadn't figured this was a three-point match. After all, new characters, especially those from new games, are always complete crap, right? So I couldn't afford to get this wrong. We'll talk more about that in Round 2's write-up, though. --- ## (5)Terra Branford vs (12)Charizard 2018 _source: (5)Terra Branford vs (12)Charizard 2018 (revid 83695)_ ## Ulti's Analysis People are going to look at Pikachu's run and think Pokemon had a good contest, but in reality outside of Pikachu Pokemon had a terrible contest. Remember when the bracket came out and people thought Charizard or Mewtwo or Pokemon Trainer Red would go on these insane runs? That was put to bed pretty early this contest, and this match was one example why. I'll delve into all the FRAUDULENCE later when we get into how Mewtwo did, but for Charizard this was one of the worst wins for a hyped character I've ever seen. He struggled early, and though the match would never end up being in any real danger for him, Terra was able to make a lot of major cuts all throughout the match. I don't know what happened to Charizard, but this is clearly not the same version that won four matches in 2010 or the dude that would have gone on a good run in 2013 had Mega Man not been rallied. I know there was a close Zelda match in there, but Zelda is pretty legit these days. As for Terra, she's one of those characters that doesn't win much but always finds a way to make hyped characters look awful. Outside of one blowout loss to Dante in 2005, she always manages to look good. Kerrigan was hyped once upon a time. Terra embarrassed her. Darth Revan was hyped. Terra embarrassed him too. She even held her own against Kirby and Samus once. But this is probably the best Terra has ever looked. In an era when Square routinely looks like hot garbage and Nintendo dominates this site, we got this result. It's going to be forgotten in the ether, but this really shouldn't be some randomly forgotten contest match. 47% on Charizard given all the outside factors is no joke given all the hype he had. To put this a different way, the Oracle people routinely guess the final percents within razor thin margins. The consensus for this match was Charizard getting 62.52%. The lowest pick was Charizard with 56%. This was a bad match for the dude and all but cemented he had no chance against Bowser next round. ## Lightning_Strikes 's Analysis **What happened?:** Good goddamn question. This match seemed open and shut. Nintendo has been beasting, Final Fantasy has been not, Charizard has looked great twice in earlier contests, Pikachu looked great, Red looked great. Then this match starts.. And it's neck and neck during the board vote? What? Terra then spent a long time over 47%, looking like she might take the whole thing during the power hour. Then things started to go Charizard's way and he began winning updates consistently, and Terra never really got it back. It is very interesting that Terra was best during the Power Hour here, and the match was relatively stable otherwise. Charizard didn't have the 3-5% losses that other Pokemon characters have shown, instead only bleeding less than 1% from his peak. Lastly it's really significant that the match was effectively tied between anonymous voters with the registered boost helping Charaizard keep clear. It didn't change the result, but I wonder if it hadn't happen, would there have been rallies to push Terra over? Who knows. **What could this mean?:** A lot of people are calling Charizard and Pokemon/Nintendo/whatever a fraud, I dunno. Both Nintendo as a whole and Pokemon more specifically have looked consistently great, including in this match. Really I think this is just Terra. She didn't act like most Square characters have, though it's likely no coincidence that the closest comparison is Kefka. I think a lot of this is on her strength. FFVI has been growing over the last several years, and she likely earned that 5 seed. It would be interesting to see Terra put up against some typical midcarders, she could probably do a lot of damage. As for Charizard, well I suddenly feel glad I have Bowser, but a lot of that is to do with the next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result! Just look at it! Charizard is a fraud confirmed! Probably? Charizard in the 2010 contest was massive power house. Just look at the percentages of his wins back then! He did amazingly back then. At 2013 he did really good too. SFF helped him a lot there too. But now? And he is the 3rd most popular Pokemon too! As for Terra she never does good in these things unfortunately. She does have power but she just can't win. Now in this contest either Terra is strong or Charizard is weak. But I guess both. Pokemon isn't as big as it used to be back in the day but still they do good. Still I feel bad for Terra. No matter what though really bad result for Charizard. Still a win is a win I guess.  Even a win such as this one. Pikachu seems to be the strongest of the Pokemon. Makes sense since he is the mascot. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was the match where everyone started crying out that Charizard was a fraud. And with good reason, I suppose, even if all of those "awful" 2013 results suddenly looked really good by the end of this contest. Terra continues to look extremely good in these contests for no discernible reason, though obviously there's that whole thing about females boosting all over the place this year. Obviously Charizard was in trouble against Bowser next round but honestly we all knew that his win in 2010 was a fluke. So I guess technically Charizard is a fraud, the same way Shadow and Tidus and Magus all overperformed in *their* contest debuts. There's another fraud worth mentioning but I'll save it for his first-round match. Finally, take note of what the seeding is in this match. A 12-seed upsets a 5-seed and everyone feels that the *winner* did horribly? Granted, all this really proves is that the seeding was nonsensical (and it was; Terra is a 5 now?), but it's still worth noting that a 12-seed beat a 5-seed and everyone takes it as proof that the 12-seed is not as good as they thought it was (which wasn't necessarily true; the 5-seed was better than we'd thought. Probably.) --- ## (4)Bowser vs (13)Gordon Freeman 2018 _source: (4)Bowser vs (13)Gordon Freeman 2018 (revid 83696)_ ## Ulti's Analysis If we didn't already know Charizard was boned, this hammered it home like a frozen banana in Oymyakon. Look it up. Just for fun, I looked at some LOL x stats. In 2013, Bowser is projected to get 61.14% on Gordon. In 2010, 59.85%. To blow past all that and get 77.39% is absolutely insane, and it opened up the floodgates with people losing their shit over Bowsette and how this contest was already over. For the unaware, there's a Super Crown item in NSMBU Deluxe that allows Toadette to turn into Peachette. Someone made a comic based on the crown where Peach rejects both Mario and Bowser, so Bowser puts the crown on and becomes Bowsette. Mario and Bowser start dating. The internet, doing what the internet always does, took this and ran with it. Unlike most memes, this one stuck: Needless to say when Bowser sat here and just demolished Gordon Freeman like this, Bowsette was given all the credit. That has something to do with what happened, but I think there's a more valid explanation here and we saw it a few times this contest. Gordon Freeman is paying for Valve's sins. Remember when Valve actually made video games instead of trying to nickel and dime gamers for every penny possible? Yeah me either. Valve has become as trash as Capcom or Konami anymore, and it's sad to watch. They were legitimately the best company out there. Now they're just trash, and Gordon has to pay for it. Duke Nukem Forever spent 15 years in development and is the butt of every joke there is about games taking too long to come out. Half-Life 2 came out 14 years ago. If you want to know why Gordon is back his early contest days of being total garbage, that's a good place to start. Half-Life 3 might never happen, because Valve doesn't care anymore. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes) 's Analysis **What happened?:** If it wasn't for the other match's insanity, this would have been the surprise of the contest. Maybe it still is! WTF Bowser? WTF Gordon? For years this potential matchup has looked like a straightforward 60-40 affair. Bowser's great, Gordon is good. The "Gordon Freeman Never Wins" days are long gone. Well, not anymore. Bowser came out of the gate with **80%**, and although it did subside after the power hour he still dominated this match. For the gap between these two to widen by nearly 20% between contest He beat Gordon Freeman nearly as badly as Ganondorf beat Neku! That's really all you need to say to summarise this match. **What could this mean?:** One of my favourite jokes to come out of this contest is that Gordon saw that Cecil took his gimmick and got pissed, so did his best to get it back. A 20% discrepancy doesn't just appear, so I think that this is due to two factors. First, with Nintendo in general being great and Odyssey being what it was, I think Bowser has boosted a lot. Even now I don't think Gordon would lose to Neku. Second, Valve has completely abandoned Half-Life (and all games not called Dota2) and Gordon is feeling a direct consequence. Even with a Bowser boost this may be the biggest drop in contest history. we got a preview of this in 2015 when Half-Life 2 looked notably weaker than during Game of the Decade, but this is a whole other level. Also Cecil vs. Gordon bonus match please Allen! ## Safer777's Analysis Gordon does so bad in the contests that we had a meme. Gordon Freeman Never Wins! Although he has won some matches actually. But here is what I don't get it. Gordon has taken part in all contests! We have some other characters that we consider a stable but they haven't taken part in all contests. And Gordon just keeps coming back!Seriously! Valve doesn't care about Half-Life, why we keep nominating him? I know that Half-Life games are good but still they came so many years ago.So why Gordon is always in these things? Bowser is strong and he keeps getting stronger. Well he is the most iconic Villain of the Mario Brothers. And he is in Smash. So more than a tripling here. Nice win for Bowser! And he will be able to take revenge on Charizard too! Man I feel sorry about the Zard! ## Tsunami's Analysis The original loser, accept no substitutes. We knew that Gordon would be one-and-done for the first time since his first win (not counting Rivalry Rumble), but this is embarrassing. Made me feel good about taking Bowser \> Pikachu, though, which I hadn't felt comfortable with before because I expected Pikachu to be stronger indirectly. Turns out I was right about that part, but not about either Bowser or Pikachu reaching that match! --- ## (3)Phoenix Wright vs (14)Chris Redfield 2018 _source: (3)Phoenix Wright vs (14)Chris Redfield 2018 (revid 83697)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every year Phoenix Wright gets hilariously overseeded by Board 8, and every year his pattern is the same. I have nothing against the dude, it's just hilarious to see the seeds he gets every year. The pattern is usually the same, too. He either wins his first match close, loses his first match close, or gets completely blown out -- usually the latter is reserved for his games, but he's eaten a blowout or two as well in his day. Thankfully for Phoenix, Chris Redfield is no Jecht and while this match would be "close" in percentage, Phoenix still thoroughly demolished Redfield. Which is good, because there might not be a better example of intentional self sabotage than what Capcom has done with multiple series of theirs. For obvious reasons, I'll just look at Resident Evil for now. Sorry, FFD. Since Resident Evil 4 came out, these games have been nothing but trash. Resident Evil 5 was a forced co-op mess where the worst people in our culture, the SJW idiots who currently think Baby It's Cold Outside should be banned, the immaculate conception was rape, and candy canes being shaped as a J for Jesus are a problem, were bitching about the game before it even came out. Of course Capcom caved, and made a bad game even worse before it even happened. The second you start caving to cultural marxists, you're done as a franchise. For the unaware, RE5 takes place in Africa and SJWs were very happy to virtue signal about how killing black people zombies is racist, even though the series has had people of every race as zombies forever. Is there a bigger portent of doom for anything than caving to SJW rejects who would have no effect on you to begin with if you just ignored them? Then came 6, which somehow managed to be even worse than 5. I almost couldn't do words for how bad that game is, but I tried: Chris Redfield was in both of those games, just FYI. If you want to know why he ate his first ever round 1 1v1 loss, those are good reasons why. Marvel vs Capcom 3 is another. Then came 7, which was a good game that no one cared about because people are done with this series. I haven't even gotten into the spinoff nonsense, the remake cash grabs, the ridiculous DLC practices Capcom is involved in, or the other franchises Capcom has ruined. This match was justice. Go away, Capcom. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** For a long time Phoenix and Chris Redfield have been in a similar ballpark. But as Phoenix's series and exposure have risen, so have his strength. He also benefits a lot from the more focused GameFAQs audience these days. He's legit good now. Chris somehow missed CBIX entirely despite its massive roster, and probably weakened a fair bit before climbing back up. Phoenix was a clear favourite but the question was by how much. Phoenix dominated the board vote, but then dropped harshly, going from near a doubling to a fairly standard 57/43 win. This gave him his first 1v1 victory as it happens, and it's about time too. **What could this mean?:** As expected Phoenix is slightly stronger and Chris is slightly weaker I think. Phoenix has a dominant early vote then falls off, which is exacerbated by the new start time. I believe percentage-wise he had the biggest within-match drop of the contest (counting from after the board vote). I think Phoenix looked solid here but not good enough to beat Ike, more on that in the next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Have I mentioned that this board REALLY likes the Ace Attorney games? Because it does! Now I believe Chris is the weakest of the 4 RE protagonists. Also now Phoenix is  considered old since he first appeared in a game over 16 years ago! Man time passes. Also even I who have never played the games know about the Objection Meme. So I  think he did good here. It is not that Chris is super weak or anything. Nice win for Phoenix is what I say. Hey this board deserves to see at least 1 of their favorite  characters win! But man how far RE has fallen. The games are good. Even the spin off ones. I wonder when the RE 2 remake comes, will people care some more at least? ## Tsunami's Analysis One match after GFNW lost in the first round for the first time since his first win, the contestant who gave him that win reached the second round for the fourth time in five tries since. Chris is one of the more pathetic RE characters, only managing to avoid the winless characters list because he ran into a Call of Duty character in 2010. In retrospect, this isn't really a good win for Phoenix. --- ## (6)Ike vs (11)Joel 2018 _source: (6)Ike vs (11)Joel 2018 (revid 83698)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Not gonna lie, I had to hop on the ol' googler machine to see who Joel even was. I haven't played The Last of Us yet, though I hear nothing but good things about it. Apparently I'm not the only one on that boat, because Joel never came close to winning this match. Ike is at least a character people have heard of thanks to Fire Emblem and Smash, so this match was essentially someone people heard of vs someone people haven't. What kind of game even is The Last of Us, anyway? I have the PS3 version sitting right next to me. Also, I picked Ike to beat Phoenix Wright without even thinking out of pure fanboyism and felt pretty good after this match. A better score and a better prediction percentage as a lower seed usually means good things. "Whoops." I will have you all know I love the dude because of Path of Radiance more than Smash Bros. I love him in Smash against AI, don't get me wrong, but his path (ha) in Path of Radiance is fantastic storytelling. He was good in Radiant Dawn too, but that game does the style where we follow 48 different viewpoints. Path is better. Do not @ me. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** This was similar to the last one in that Ike was the large favourite but the question was how much he would win by. It turns out a lot. Ike won easily and looked tremendous during the Power Hour. He also didn't drop quite as hard as Phoenix which is significant. **What could this mean?:** Ike looks like a good favourite over Phoenix now. Joel isn't going to be weak, The Last of Us is strong on here, even though Joel is not the draw. The floor for Joel is likely Booker and Phoenix wouldn't do these numbers on him. It also has to be emphasised that Fire Emblem has gotten a lot more popular since 2013, and Ike is THE guy among the fanbase, he is absolutely beloved. This is probably a stronger Ike and he should beat Phoenix I think. ## Safer777's Analysis Ike is from a SRPG series and Joel is from a series that debuted after 2005. So yeah Ike won easily. Duh. Never mind that TLOU is considered on the best games ever! And we will get the sequel soon! But seriously as you have noticed new characters/games do bad here. Hey we like our past, thank you very much! At least Joel avoided a doubling. And games doesn't equal characters I know. The prediction percentage is high for Ike too. Guess most people didn't got fooled too. As for FE games they became really big in the last years with FE Awakening on 3DS. And the mobile game FE Heroes does extremely good, it earns a ton of money every month. A lot of FE characters are on Smash too. So yeah a lot of people know about FE games/characters now. ## Tsunami's Analysis See, it's not so hard! Just don't give your character a last name! Ike may not be that strong, but he's still a Smash character and Fire Emblem is still a series on the rise. This is a good performance for Joel, though I doubt he'll be returning since Ellie is supposed to be the main character in TLoU2. --- ## (7)Estelle Bright vs (10)Isaac 2018 _source: (7)Estelle Bright vs (10)Isaac 2018 (revid 83699)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Board 8 has a new huckleberry, and its name is Trails in the Sky. You guys were also well aware Estelle was a 'happy to be here' round 1 exit type of character, but getting her a 7 seed when I'd bet 99% of her nominations came from Board 8 is quite the accomplishment. No one made any delusions about Estelle having a prayer of winning this match, which is fine. Isaac is one of our most consistent characters in contest history, which is why the stats topic thinks "Isaac Fodder Line" is a fair thing to move forward with. If you can beat Isaac, you're not fodder. Simple as that. Characters Isaac has lost to: Samus, Tidus, Pikachu, Altair, Lucario, L-Block, Solid Snake, and Kirby Characters Isaac has finished ahead of: Serge, Guybrush Threepwood, Professor Layton, Commander Keen, and Estelle Bright. Yeah I support the Isaac Fodder Line. He can pretty much only beat trash and loses to non-trash. Here's my question. Is Trails actually good or is Board 8 overhyping another bad or mediocre game? Every now and again you guys hype something good, but you have a long track record of overhyping average and/or garbage. For every Symphony of the Night or Chrono Trigger you guys overhype -- and let's be honest, I don't need Board 8 to know those games are good -- there's a SLEW of nonsense. Katamri Damacy, most Phoenix Wright games, and Umineko are average. Brawl, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Shadow of the Colossus, The World Ends With You, any Mario Kart, Phantom Hourglass, any Blizzard game, Dissidia, and Valkyrie Profile are all piles of shit. Some of you have even tried telling me DmC: DMC Devil May Cry dee em shee dmc is good. So where does Trails in the Sky fall in on your list of overhyped hivemind games, Board 8? Be honest. You've overhyped some mega trash? Is Trails mega trash, average, or is it actually good? ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** A just-happy-to-be-here character loses badly to a midcarder, not much too it. When Isaac isn't stuck with other Nintendo characters he looks pretty good. He hasn't had a game in ages, but is a fan favourite, in a lot of demand for Smash, and keeps getting in these things for a reason. Estelle got a big Board 8 push and got a good seed. Her games seem popular and have a dedicated fanbase so she probably isn't super weak, but she is still bottom 10 for sure. So this ended up being a straightforward easy win for Isaac. **What could this mean?:** Nothing. Even the trends were boring. And the winner gets pasted by Kirby. Isaac is one of my favourite characters though and I'm just happy to see him win again. ## Safer777's Analysis I thought first that this Estelle was from the Tales series but no, it is another Estelle. They are both from an JRPG series but Golden Sun is more famous. Also Estelle is a newcomer. Still she evaded a doubling and that is decent I guess. Oh and Isaac is weak. Don't forget that. Meaning his win isn't impressive or anything. Still he won.  At least something from Golden Sun got a win. The prediction percentage for Isaac was pretty big too. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a 7-10 match featuring a new character from a niche RPG against a returning character from an RPG. You could make comparisons with certain 8-9 matches (although Neku wasn't making his debut when he lost to Laharl) and you would've gotten this right, or you could compare it to some past 7-10 matches in which DAT TOP OPTION was the one bringing the TJF and gotten this totally wrong. Admittedly, the matches in question were from *Games* Contests, but I still felt like those matches were a valid comparison. Except Golden Sun's *not niche*. It was damn near a release game (I think it was released a few months in) for the Game Boy Advance, which came at the height of Nintendo's dominance over the handheld market. The series hasn't necessarily aged well, in part because it took seven years to get a third game and what we got was largely disappointing on multiple accounts, chief among them the gameplay but also that it *explicitly ends on a sequel hook* (Lost Age definitely ends with some loose threads, but it would've still been a decent place to end the story. Dark Dawn ends with "hey, remember that thing that seemed like it was going to be driving the plot for the first, uh, maybe at most a sixth of the game? You forgot? Don't worry, so did the characters, because it didn't come up at all once the main villains were introduced, but it's still a threat.") Golden Sun and its characters have really never performed poorly. Isaac doesn't have that many wins largely because he always draws either Noble Niners or high Nintendo midcarders, but he hasn't done poorly, and of course we have Golden Sun \> San Andreas and Felix getting 47% on Master Chief when Chief was still a midcarder. Camelot, please get off your asses and make a fourth game, and make it more like the first two. (Note: I have since checked out Quorak's LP of the first two games, which brutally points out everything that's wrong with them. I agree with the poor writing, but not so many of the other complaints.) --- ## (2)Kirby vs (15)Guile 2018 _source: (2)Kirby vs (15)Guile 2018 (revid 83700)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Guile's theme goes with everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Did I mention everything? Yep. Everything. Everything? Everything. Ev-e-ry-thang? Ev-e-ry-thang. Ev-e-ry-thang? Ev-e-ry-thang. ....EVERYthing? Yep. Everything. You get the idea. Also, apparently there was a match today that Kirby won? Something along those lines? ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** Third dominant Nintendo performance of the day. Classic Board 8 push gets tripled as well. We've seen this happen before, same old same old. **What could this mean?:** Strong, strong performance for Kirby. Guile can't be that weak, he's a major Street Fighter II character. Overall though Nintendo dominating is getting hard to talk about, I'm looking forward to it facing itself for some interesting matches. ## Safer777's Analysis So why Guile and not Ken is here? Don't get it. Anyways for Kirby. As years go by he becomes stronger. And I don't get it. I have never seen anyone saying that Kirby games are his favorite. Or anyone beeing hyped for a new Kirby game. A few years ago I thought no more Kirby games were coming out! Yeah I am stupid I know. But I thought that because nobody ever talks about Kirby games! Also Kirby is in Smash as everyone knows. So of course Kirby did really well, barely missing a tripling here. Also Guile's theme is awesome, so he has this going on for him! As I said before fighting characters are doing worse and worse every year. And it makes sense. The only fighthing series that is good is the Smash series and I don't even know if it counts as a fighting series too. ## Tsunami's Analysis It's hard to believe, given how beastly he is now, that it took until 2008 for Kirby to even *face* a Noble Niner. He wasn't losing to nobodies, but he was always knocked out by a fellow midcarder. Overall I feel like fighting game characters performed better than usual this year but it wasn't on display in this match. Maybe Guile's just weak. --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs (16)Hat Kid 2018 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs (16)Hat Kid 2018 (revid 83701)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Some 16 seeds don't deserve to only be 16 seeds. Some do. For the hell of it I went and looked this up. Here is the list of every 16 seed we've ever had in a contest. Servbot, Chop Chop Master Onion, Goemon, Pitfall Harry, AiAi, CATS, Captain Olimar, Raiden, Metal Gear, Secret of Mana, Suikoden 2, Starcraft, CATS, Earthworm Jim, Duke Nukem, Terry Bogard, Thrall, Lightning, Falco, Midna, Prince of Persia, Ridley, Proto Man, Marth, inFamous, Star Ocean 3, Guitar Hero 2, Beyond Good and Evil, Viewtiful Joe, Jet Grind Radio, Timesplitters 2, Wii Sports, Ratchet and Clank 3, Assassin's Creed 2, Age of Empires 2, Phoenix Wright, Hearthstone, Cave Story, Shenmue, Splatoon, Cuphead, Primrose, Ryo Hazuki, Cayde-6, Hat Kid, Rosalina, Miles Edgeworth, and Wesker. If you want to count the 27 seeds (ugh) in that 3way contest, you get Tingle, Dan, Little Mac, Commander Keen, Prinny, Missile, Sandbag, Fawful, and Magikarp. Of that list, here is my opinion on who is actual 16 seed material, and by this I mean comparable to the NCAAs where they have the 16 for a reason and would have no prayer of ever winning a match regardless of opponent. I know with LOL x stats and such we can give almost anyone a win on a technicality, but bear with me here. My list of true 16 seeds: Servbot, Chop Chop Master Onion, Goemon, Pitfall Harry, AiAi, inFamous, Star Ocean 3, Guitar Hero 2, Beyond Good and Evil, Jet Grind Radio, Timesplitters 2, Wii Sports, Age of Empires 2, Hearthstone, Cave Story, Cuphead, Primrose, Cayde-6, Hat Kid, Commander Keen, Prinny, and Missile. A case could be made no one else on that entire list is immune from winning. We saw CATS beat Nathan Drake once. Terry Bogard would probably beat most other characters on this list. Phoenix Wright is a 3 seed every contest and his game just got forgotten about once. I could go on, but you get the point. Here's my point. Hat Kid is on the 'true 16' list and it took Squall almost an hour to get over 70% on him. I don't know who or what a Hat Kid even is and I frankly don't care. There were a lot of smart people who took Zelda to win this division, and I wasn't one of them, and that debate ended right off the bat. Struggling to blow out Hat Kid? Come on bro. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** A disappointing Final Fantasy performance? In this contest? Well I never. Squall looked really, really bad at the start of this match, struggling to get over 70% in the first hour. He quickly improved from there, rapidly improving to a tripling where it was more or less steady, but it was still a fairly poor show. Hat Kid looked very frontloaded here, for a while escaping a doubling, and Squall showed the same trends expected of a "modern" FF character. Squall also did better with the registered user vote which is fairly critical for his later matches. **What could this mean?:** I hope this is the match that hammers home the poor show that FF has given throughout this contest. Before the contest started there was talk of Squall being the new \#10 character after Vincent declined. He did worse on Hat Kid than Bowser did on Gordon so that clearly isn't the case (and if it is, lol Gordon). Hat Kid is largely expected to be a bottom five character, we won't know for sure for a little while, but looking at the relative popularity of A Hat in Time I have a very hard time imagining her doing better than certain other characters she would need to beat for Squall to be anywhere near his old strength. ## Safer777's Analysis Squall is damn strong. Some people said he might even be the strongest character in the bracket. Of course that is a lie but still you get the idea. Hat Kid is a newcomer and she is from an indie game. Obviously pretty easy win for Squall with a tripling. But man Hat Kid is so adorable! Just look at her! Squall is a monster that dares to go hard to such a cutie! But in all seriousness nothing else to say. Man I just want to see a FF main character do good in this contest at least! Maybe Squall will give this to me! Now that I see this analysis...Things have changed! But back then things were simpler... ## Tsunami's Analysis It's easy to look at this blowout and wonder how Squall managed to get so thoroughly embarrassed two rounds from now, but the answer is that he has a *really* weak opponent here. The enduring memory I have of Hat Kid's time in this contest is how frequently she was mistaken for a boy and someone had to correct someone else. That sounds like the epitome of obscurity to me. --- ## (8)Garrus Vakarian vs (9)Ramza Beoulve 2018 _source: (8)Garrus Vakarian vs (9)Ramza Beoulve 2018 (revid 83702)_ ## Ulti's Analysis "I want Final Fantasy characters to be my pallbearers so they can let me down one last time." On the bright side, heeeeeey, our first contest match that was an actual match! Some of the best matches you'll ever see are when a match with zero debate is unexpectedly close, and most of us just picked Garrus without thinking. After all, Square has looked like a Victorian slum for years and Garrus is someone we all love no matter what Mass Effect looks like. There's also the fact Ramza has never won anything and is from a game that hasn't been relevant in 20 years. Don't even try telling me that garbage PSP port matters, either. The bonus content was cool. Bastardizing the script and that unreal animation lag made the game damn near unplayable without an outside patch, and outside patches do not affect a game's score for me. It's why Warcraft 3 will forever be 0/10 bile regardless of how much I love Dota. When this match started and they were even, we were shocked. Then Ramza was up 28 at the freeze and it was a lot of "uh oh". Then Garrus evened things up and we all figured there was a weird early bracket vote or something. Nope. Ramza spent the next few hours slightly ahead and trying to shake Garrus off like a bad case of fleas. Garrus held his own here, but when things settled down and we entered the dead zone of the night vote, He hit 200 at midnight and it looked like he was going to pull away for the win. After all, Square's night vote is still one trend that holds true with our new start time. As luck would have it, Ramza was only able to quickly get his lead up to 256 overnight, and it was Garrus, not Ramza, that won the night vote. Garrus kept chipping away at the ol' vote lead brick, and after a tie in the morning, the brick broke and favored Garrus pretty easily. Garrus won the morning vote rather convincingly and ended this match, but with the match over there was still one thing left to root for in this one. You all know what it is, because the stats topic goes insane about it any time there's a close match: Could Ramza keep Garrus under a 460 vote lead? That was all anyone cared about. And as luck would have it... A record that stood for 14 years was broken in this contest. The new one was 419 votes, at least for character battles. DKC2 vs Xenoblade is the true record at 290. 12 hour polls do not count and don't try telling me they do. Either way, whether you consider 419 or 290 the true record, both would get broken multiple times this contest thanks to our fossilized vote totals. I want to be proud of close matches, but when polls used to all get 100k+ votes and now we struggle to even hit 30k, it's sad to watch. Speaking of sad, you guys might think I'm bummed out Ramza lost. I was a little, but there are much cooler characters in Final Fantasy Tactics. Ramza stops being interesting some time in chapter 3 when he stops being a naive kid. He pulls a Freya from FF9 and just starts kind of being there. If this match involved Delita, Orlandu, Wiegraf, Agrias, Rafalak, or even Zalbag, Mustadio, Reis, or Elmdor, I would have been sad. Ramza? Boring. Lastly, I cannot cover this match without commenting on the obvious. This was as Pyrrhic a victory as it gets, and Mass Effect is done on our web site. I'll get into this more when I cover Shepard later, but good hell. This match never should have been close, and it wouldn't have been if Electronic Arts wasn't among the absolute worst companies in the history of this planet. I could make a very real argument that EA is more morally corrupt than Monsanto or Apple, and those companies kill people to stay ahead of the game. Look up Monsanto suing independent farmers or Apple's suicide nets in China some time. EA is on that level, and if you only stick to video games instead of geopolitics at large they are easily the worst company to ever happen in gaming. Only Blizzard is comparable. ## [Lightning_Strikes](https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Strikes)'s Analysis **What happened?:** The first true nailbiter of the contest. This was generally expected to be Garrus's match, he would win relatively comfortable based on 2013 and Ramza has never been especially strong. Then it started and was neck and neck, with multiple lead changes in the first two hours. This continued throughout the night with both contestants unable to get over a 100 vote lead. Ramza eventually pushed away a little bit, getting over 200 votes which he held for a couple of hours. Things quickly went back to back and forth though, until Garrus finally gained a consistent lead with the day vote. Ramza started to cut again in the last hour but by then it was too late. In the end this match had the smallest peak lead of any character battle match at just 419 votes, and will definitely go down as one of the most exciting ones this contest. **What could this mean?:** Poor Ramza. His record is as bad as Cecil's, but he has had fewer winnable matches. He at least kept this match much, much closer than most people here expected. I think a lot of this has to do with the fortunes of Mass Effect. That series has died an absolute death over the last several years, since Andromeda in particular, and I think all Mass Effect characters, even the ones people like, are going to suffer. There is still a poor taste in people's mouths from Andromeda without a doubt. Brace yourselves for an uninspiring Shepard performance. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was debatable before the contest. And just see the result. Great match for the fist time in this contest. We had lead changes, Ramza winning for 12 hours, then Garrus coming back and taking the lead, Ramza trying to catch up and all drama with the close matches. Anyways good match. One of the closest wire to wire matches I believe. Garrus is from Mass Effect and Ramza is from FFT. ME has fallen and Andromeda hurt the ME name even further and as for Ramza I feel sorry for him actually. FFT  is an AWESOME game! And oh yeah ANOTHER FF main character didn't advanced! Still awesome match. Nobody can deny that. The prediction percentage was in the middle too. But Garrus was the heavy Guru favorite strangely enough. Over 86%! Don't know why. Guess people thought that ME series would be still good? Did people forgot Andromeda? Yeah it hasn't anything to do with the original trilogy but it doesn't matter! ## Tsunami's Analysis Our first match in which the users and the anonymous voters disagreed. In this case, the registered voters favored Ramza, but Garrus won the anonymous voters handily enough to overcome the registered user bonus. Also, it was an exciting match for quite some time. Garrus led at the freeze, Ramza took his first lead on the second update, Garrus had it again after the third by *one vote*, and then Ramza took the lead on the fourth update and started building. Or trying to; Garrus had the lead for four updates in the second hour as well and only three were consecutive. Ramza would eventually max out his lead at 256 at 1:10 AM before Garrus began cutting, but Ramza would not give up his lead easily. Here are the updates from the 5-6 AM hour. Ramza leads by 18 Ramza leads by 23 Ramza leads by 6 Garrus leads by 3 Tie Garrus leads by 7 Ramza leads by 3 Tie Ramza leads by 3 Ramza leads by 3 Ramza leads by 9 Ramza leads by 10 Ramza leads by 13 Garrus would retake the lead at 6:55 AM, and after Ramza took it right back on the next update, Garrus took the lead for good at 7:05. It took only 4.5 hours for him to build that lead above 300, and it never dropped below 300 over the remaining 8 hours and 25 minutes, but also never grew higher than 419 (a little over an hour from the end of the match). It just sort of went into stasis again. I suppose it was kind of even for most of the match, which meant that Garrus going from trailing at 7 AM to up by 301 at 11:35 was enough to put the match away. Ramza has never won a match either, but he's not from a main series game like Cecil so we expect less of him. He barely beat out Laharl for third place in that Hogger match. Why do we keep nominating this guy? Also he has roughly the same hairstyle as Guybrush, who also has never won a match. Though in this year's match pic he just plain looked like a girl instead of a guy with a girl's hairstyle. Apparently FFT got some new port that gave him better pictures? (Post-script: I have been informed that he was also in a Dissidia game. Does this mean that there are now at least three of those, or was he actually in one of the first two, something which I was explicitly certain *was not* the case? Either way that's sad. Upon researching the matter, I have found that there are now *four* Dissidia games and the fourth one, the only one that Ramza is in, is a *mobile game*. Excuse me while I experiment how far I can stick my finger down my throat.) --- ## (5)Metal Sonic vs (12)The Boss 2018 _source: (5)Metal Sonic vs (12)The Boss 2018 (revid 83703)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Giving my loudest possible shout out to the one, the only, THE MAN, @ZenOfThunder for pulling this one off. Zen got me into picsmithing, has been a friend of mine for ages, and never one time has he had a cross or negative thing to ever say about me. Ever. The guy is an angel on a board increasingly filled with a bunch of aging, jaded assholes. He never gets negative, ever, and always finds a way to make everyone laugh during contest season. I'm not alone in feeling this way, either. We all love Zen. He wasn't just the MVP of this match, but the MVP of this entire contest. You the fuckin MAN, bro, and it needs to be immortalized in a PCA at some point. Here you go. So of course when he asks us to nominate someone we all chip in for Metal Sonic, AND THE GUY GOES OUT AND GETS A 5 SEED, WHAT IN THE WORLD. Even better is the guy didn't do badly at all! He was in this match for real for 10 minutes before The Boss showed him the advanced techniques of CQC. Balance the knife, quick strike, and retract. Balance the knife, quick strike, and retr--!! .... Nope. Not a Giant Enemy Crab, just a hedgehog. Metal Sonic can't rip tanks apart. The Boss's knife was ok, just took 10 minutes for her to get warned up and call in the MIGs to blow up the place. In all seriousness, The Boss only getting 56% in the match and only having 55.2% prediction is an embarrassment. People are not happy with Konami and it shows. This also shows that it's past time we get Dark Link into a character battle. If Metal Sonic and Mega Man X are allowed in, why can't we finally see what Dark Link can do? It's long overdue. ## Safer777's Analysis The Boss isn't that strong in the contests and she was facing a character from a Sonic game. As for Metal Sonic I know next to nothing about the Sonic games but I think he has appeared in a lot of games but never as the main antagonist but I think I may be wrong on the 2nd one. Anyways of course The Boss won with above 55%. Don't think anyone didn't expected The Boss to win. As for Metal Sonic don't know what to say. Guess he did all right? Still this proves that women can beat robots. Or something? But the seeding was high for Metal Sonic. Don't know why. And the percentage for The Boss was low. Guess people saw Sonic and high seed and went for that? Still it was above 50% at least for The Boss. Man what is with these MGS names? ## Tsunami's Analysis Zen's Metal Sonic rally was a rousing success, but he got a rough draw. The worst possible draw? No, there were stronger 12-seeds. The 12 line was actually really solid, with Charizard, Chun-Li, and Pac-man also on that line. Or is The Boss simply very *lucky* with her draws? This might actually be the strongest opponent she's beaten to advance in a match (either him or Nathan Drake in 2010, but I don't think Drake was ever really that strong), which is not to say that Metal Sonic is the strongest opponent she's ever beaten. Ironically, the only time she beat someone stronger was also the only time she *didn't* make it to Round 2! In 2008, she narrowly beat out Tails for third place in Round 1, with the top two spots going to Vincent Valentine and Zelda. Every other contest she's been in, she's made Round 2, but never Round 3. Normally an 80% success rate in Round 1 would suggest a sure midcarder, but it's not a sure thing in this case. --- ## (4)Zelda vs (13)Ezio Auditore da Firenze 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (13)Ezio Auditore da Firenze 2018 (revid 83704)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Oh sweet, a match where I can somewhat take a mental break. You need that now and again when doing 150 writeups. After all, we've seen this match already and there isn't much to comment on for the rerun: Zelda got 62% on Ezio eight years ago, and Ezio had zero reason to change in strength since then. Zelda going out and just murdering the poor guy with 13 extra percents was quite a sight to see, and it ended all debate about this division outside of rally shenanigans from D.Va or Waluigi -- and that question was answered very quickly when their round 1 matches came up. This was done, and it was positively adorable watching Leon4 pretend Squall wasn't destined to get raw dogged by a cactus in two rounds. I know LOL x stats and all, but Hat Kid and Ezio got almost the same exact score. Come on bro. I picked Squall like a doofus too, but at least I can laugh about it. Pretending Hat Kid and Ezio are equal strength is just silly. Zelda was pretty clearly meant to steamroll this contest right from the jump, and if it wasn't for Nintendo fatigue by the end she would have made the final. That's how insane this was. More on that later. ## Safer777's Analysis We had the same match before and Zelda had won with around 61%. And check this result. Man Smash and Breath of the wild made everyone from the Zelda games a beast. At least the 3 main characters, Link, Zelda and Ganon. I feel sorry about Ezio. He is an awesome character. AC doesn't really have a main representative so I guess Ezio is the closest one. Losing with more than a tripling is always bad of course. AC games are good games. But they are new so we don't like this thing here. Also Zelda is damn strong. N9 breaker even! ## Tsunami's Analysis Above a 60-40, but not a doubling. This is a tripling. Wouldn't quite be a tripling without the registered user bonus since she won the registered vote more handily than the anonymous vote, but pretty close. Assassin's Creed had some contest strength when the series first began, but it quickly got fatigued by the constant releases. This is the first Round 1 loss by any representative of the series in a Character Battle (except Rivalry Rumble, but who cares about that?), as well as the first time since his game came out that Altair missed the field entirely. Let me repeat that: *This is the first time since Assassin's Creed came out that Altair was absent from the second round and the first time since ACII came out that Ezio was.* Okay, yes, that's partly a function of how few character battles there have been in the past decade, but that is an astounding stat for a Western franchise. This should've been an immediate sign of how ridiculous Zelda would be this year, but it was easy to just figure that Ezio had drastically weakened. He probably did, based on his seed (he was a 2 in each of his first two contests). But maybe not as much as it initially appeared, now that we know how strong Zelda is. --- ## (3)Aloy vs (14)D.Va 2018 _source: (3)Aloy vs (14)D.Va 2018 (revid 83705)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Hey so remember when people were being ridiculous pre-contest and kept acting like D.Va was going to catch a bunch of rally strength and win the entire contest? It's time to puff my chest out and rip this shmedium tee clear off, because the damn thing doesn't fit. Called it. Told you so. Vindicated. Yet another thing I was ahead of the curve on. As usual, Ulti Was Right. How does one man continue to fly all these Ws? When in doubt, just blame Russia! Copy and paste to trigger a liberal today! At least picking Monika to win the contest made logical sense, and if this contest happened in 2017 she probably would have won. That fanbase was prepping a rally before the contest even started. But D.Va? Come on, people. You're better than this. I will now sit here and wait for someone, anyone, to give me a list of every FPS character with GameFAQs contest strength. Seriously. I'll wait. ... ... ... ... ... Still with me? ... ... ... Okay we're done. Unless you want to count Samus because your first Metroid game was Prime, the only FPS characters with any strength are Master Chief and Gordon Freeman. I might give you GLaDOS. That's about it. And I'm supposed to believe a bad character, from a trash tier video game, made by arguably the worst company in gaming, paired with one of the worst fanbases in gaming, is going to care enough about our dead web site to vote in a poll based on reddit traffic and pornography? Are you people insane? I hope this contest has taught you all a very valuable lesson: Reddit traffic does not matter to the extent you all seem to think it does. League of Legends was clearly a flash in the pan and only worked because back in 2013 GameFAQs was still relevant enough to catch rallies. Now? This site is dead and reddit doesn't care. I hope people have learned that, especially the former. GameFAQs, the site we used to all like, is done. I don't care what BS Allen and CBS feed you people; I'm a big contributor and I see the page hits on my stuff. Don't fall for it. I actually picked Aloy to win this match because I just knew D.Va would be garbage. Turns out only having 19 people play your game doesn't win you polls. But even then, as a heavy favorite D.Va went out there and just crapped the bed. She was over 60% early, looked good for about 15 minutes, and then puked everywhere. Losing 7% when you start at 60% is not easy to do -- it's much harder than, say, starting at 85% and dropping to 78 -- and it got so bad for D.Va that she badly lost the morning vote. We had very few trends this contest, but D.Va had a 1750 vote overnight lead get chopped down to 1400 at one point. She would recover the votes as the day went on, but the damage to her candidacy was over. This was a bad match for her, and it showed that outside of Blizzard fans actually caring about something without having to be bribed to care (shout out to neonreaper for calling this one out, too), D.Va was done. Which was fantastic. Blizzard is complete and total garbage, and has been since the second Activision took them ov-- errrrr, merged with them. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match had 3 fun facts. Both are female, both are newcomers and both are from western companies! So this match was debatable. And look at the results. It was a  close match. D.Va is from Overwatch which is extremely popular thus she managed to score a win. Aloy's game is newer too so fewer people would have heard of her. Close matches are always good though. But people thought that D.Va might get a rally too. Obviously she didn't got one. I mean Reddit cares! Right? But you know what? Nobody cares about our site anymore. Sad but that is the truth. It got surpassed because other better sites just got better and such. Still I believe that all of us old members will stay here until the site has ended. The prediction percentage was high for D.Va too. Didn't expected that. I guess a lot of people thought about a rally. ## Tsunami's Analysis Outside rally? What outside rally? This was the second match in which the registered voters and the anonymous voters went in opposite directions, but it was the registered voters who favored the so-called rally threat. The raw votes still favored D. Va, though, as there were more total anonymous voters and, amazingly enough, D. Va's registered votes and Aloy's anonymous votes were *identical,* at 5205. Or was this a case of one rally being swallowed up by another? D. Va wasn't the only rally threat in action today. Still, even with two rallybait characters in action, the raw votes fell short of 20,000. That wasn't true when Monika's match came around. Still, this represented Allen's annual friendliness to rallies. Well, not annual because we don't have annual contests, but you know what I mean. L-Block only needed to overcome Laharl to reach Round 2 in 2007; Draven was threatening to lose to *Jak* namesake of one of the worst fourpacks ever; and Undertale got to start out against a game with an ending so hated that the company released a new ending. Rallies require momentum, and there's always at least one that gets the opportunity. (2007 had more than one. I'll lament this more later.) And here, a feared rally entrant was given an easy first match. Too easy, though; Draven and Undertale weren't strong enough to even beat their opponents without the rallies, and the board's reaction to those huge turnarounds assured that the rallies would be even stronger in future rounds. The only good comparison is L-Block, who got by on natural strength in Round 1 and benefited from LFF in Round 2. Once you've reached Round 3 when you're not considered "strong", even if you beat weak competition to get there, you start to build a bandwagon. We'd see that later in this contest. --- ## (6)Jill Valentine vs (11)Fox McCloud 2018 _source: (6)Jill Valentine vs (11)Fox McCloud 2018 (revid 83706)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Don't worry yoblazer, Jill would have beaten the hell out of D.Va too even had Jill won this match. I can get why you picked Jill to win. Every now and again you just have to make a fanboy pick and hope, you know? Plus I totally get why Jill has her fans. Unfortunately, she's in the Resident Evil series. For the wiki readers, I'll just copy-paste the same rant from Chris Redfield's match. It all applies. And yeah I'm going fifth level narcissist and quoting myself off of something I wrote like an hour ago. What of it? My PCA, my rules. There might not be a better example of intentional self sabotage than what Capcom has done with multiple series of theirs. For obvious reasons, I'll just look at Resident Evil for now. Sorry, FFD. Since Resident Evil 4 came out, these games have been nothing but trash. Resident Evil 5 was a forced co-op mess where the worst people in our culture, the SJW idiots who currently think Baby It's Cold Outside should be banned, the immaculate conception was rape, and candy canes being shaped as a J for Jesus are a problem, were bitching about the game before it even came out. Of course Capcom caved, and made a bad game even worse before it even happened. The second you start caving to cultural marxists (which has no roots whatsoever in Nazi ideology, it's a communist belief from Russia, christ almighty you people are ignorant and need to read a book once in awhile), you're done as a franchise. For the unaware, RE5 takes place in Africa and SJWs were very happy to virtue signal about how killing black people zombies is racist, even though the series has had people of every race as zombies forever. Is there a bigger portent of doom for anything than caving to SJW rejects who would have no effect on you to begin with if you just ignored them? Then came 6, which somehow managed to be even worse than 5. I almost couldn't do words for how bad that game is, but I tried: Chris Redfield was in both of those games, just FYI. If you want to know why he ate his first ever round 1 loss, those are good reasons why. Marvel vs Capcom 3 is another. Then came 7, which was a good game that no one cared about because people are done with this series. I haven't even gotten into the spinoff nonsense, the remake cash grabs, the ridiculous DLC practices Capcom is involved in, or the **other** *franchises Capcom has ruined. This match was justice. Go away, Capcom.* *Addendum: What I forgot to mention the first time is the same people who virtue signal about black people all day are the same ones who call 911 on 9 year old black kids or guys simply trying to go home to their own apartment. And we're supposed to let these people decide policy. Fuck outta here.* Yeah I made an addendum on a self quote on something I wrote an hour ago. Ego level 17, son. Always be the best. Always be \#1. Can you came the 4th person to walk on the moon without googling it? Me either, because no one after Neil Armstrong matters. Shout out to Wendy's twitter feed. All of it applies to Jill, outside of RE5. She wasn't in that game, which is probably a huge reason she's stronger than Cuh-riiiiiiis Redfield in contests. Jill has Resident Evil 2 remake hype. Fox has Smash Bros Ultimate hype. You tell me which character had a better shot of winning this match? Fox slammed the door shut on this mildly debated match immediately, but it would not be his big moment in this contest. That was coming next round, and thank god for it. Props to you, my man. ## Safer777's Analysis Fox would never going to lose here. Come on now, he is Smash and Jill is not. Need to say more? Still Jill did good. I think people expected Fox to win with a higher percentage and Fox barely scored 54%. Man if only Jill was in another match. Also I will say it here even though it doesn't matter. Jill has lost 2 matches and both  times she has lost with 27 votes! Damn! Anyways Fox won and that is it. But as for the result...Don't know. I think it is bad. Fox should have won with more I believe. Guess his games aren't good now and that hurts him. Still seems almost a lock that he will go to Round 3. The prediction percentage for Fox is in the middle too. Guess people were fooled or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Next. . . . . Okay I'm joking. But honestly, there's not much to say about this match. Two low midcarders went at it, they had a fairly close match, but not close enough to be exciting, and the winner was the one affiliated with Nintendo. The casuals were fairly split on this match, but still favored the right character (55.78% got this correct), as expected; the Gurus heavily favored the correct entrant (just under 7/8 of Gurus got this right), as expected. About the most interesting thing about this match was that the Oracles expected Fox to win *more *decisively. Maybe Jill outperforming expectations was part of why even in Oracle, DK's win over Leon came as a surprise. It suggested that RE hadn't fallen as far as we'd expected it to, when in reality, it had and Jill merely overperformed because this contest had by far the strongest TJF boost of any contest. That's probably going to be a running theme in this analysis, because it was the defining trend. --- ## (7)Shovel Knight vs (10)Captain Toad 2018 _source: (7)Shovel Knight vs (10)Captain Toad 2018 (revid 83707)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Okay what in the world happened with Shovel Knight between 2015 and now to where the character is getting a 7 seed and is on the ass end of the lowest prediction percentage in round one? Huh? ...HUH? I thought for sure it would be Tails. Is Shovel Knight really that good? Anyway, to the point. This was a reasonably debated match, with 35% of gurus picking Shovel Knight to win. The logic for Toa-- errrrr, Captain Toad supporters was easy. "When in doubt, pick Nintendo." But most people reading this know that already. What most people don't know is Nick can steal the whole f'n show Rob Van Dam style whenever he wants. Captain Toad wasn't only going to win this match, oh no. Link vs Cloud? Captain Toad. Picsmith controversy? Captain Toad. 2018 midterms? Captain Toad. A fix for climate change? Captain Toad. An answer to how the police treat black men or how we can get California to stop lightning on fire every autumn? Yep, Captain Toad. Stormy Daniels telling us what Donald Trump looks like naked? Captain Toad rSFF, baby. By the time Nick was done hyping up the Cap, I was afraid to put mushrooms on my chicken because I felt like the cure for cancer was in there and I should be donating all my food to the local kitchen for the homeless or something. Nick was right, too, and it always feels good to say that because I love the guy. Shovel Knight clearly got bracket votes early even in the face of the pro-Toad board votes, and this match was in doubt for about an hour. But once that hour was up, Toad took off and easily put things away. I legitimately want to know this: what is Shovel Knight and is it any good? All this public backing has me intrigued. I ignore most indie type games, but this one seems to having staying power for whatever reason. ## Safer777's Analysis Another debatable match and as you can see it was close. Also this match had the lower prediction percentage so far. Around 30%! Don't know why. Toad is from Mario  Galaxy! Do you know this game has 97 on Metacritic and it is one of the highest rated games there? As for Toad. Everyone knows him. But I think this is another Toad or something like that? Sorry don't really understand. Still Shovel Knight did good. I just wish he could win. But he is from an indie game so he can't be strong. Still nice match. All close matches as I said above are always good to see. Also for Shovel Knight. Seems to be the mascot for indie games I guess. Not only the game is popular BUT he got into Smash too! What? Yeah he is Smash as an assist! Also he has appeared in other crossover games too! Guess his appearance is memorable and such? Nice to see at least a character from an indie game taking part in so many games. And maybe next contest will have some power or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was the first of two matches with a controversy over how a character was credited, and frankly, it was a stupid one. Yes, Captain Toad is not the same as a generic Toad, but it probably doesn't make a huge difference and definitely not with a bracket placement this obvious. A character from a major Nintendo franchise, even a D-lister like (Captain) Toad, isn't losing to an indie character from the current decade like Shovel Knight, and at the same time, there's no way he'd be able to challenge a medium-high midcarder like Aerith, nor could he win an SFF match against Waluigi (debatable at natural strength, but for Waluigi to get there he'd have to have the theorized rally strength.) So this was a nontroversy. Oh, did I say "obvious path"? The casuals obviously thought otherwise. At 30.55%, this was the largest bracketbuster of the first round. The Gurus didn't exactly *kill* it, splitting 103-57 in favor of the Captain, but really, that still means that a greater percentage of casuals got this wrong than Gurus got this right. Usually that only happens when the Gurus' prediction percentage is really low. Of course, maybe this really *wasn't* super obvious. The Guru Consensus came out fairly close to the actual result, but the individual picks ranged from Captain Toad 63.85% to Shovel Knight 64%. And I was among those that fairly heavily overrated Captain Toad. This was the match I was referring to in the Dante-Cuphead analysis, and I'll admit, part of why I wasn't sold on Shovel Knight is precisely *because* I took a flier on the game in 2015. I figured that betting against GTA and WoW is never a bad idea and Chrono Cross is often hated for being a poor excuse for a sequel to Chrono Trigger. I was right to think that GTA:SA and WoW would embarrass themselves, but the former still managed to get past Shovel Knight. I had sole possession of the lead in Guru prior to SA \> SK, too, after being I think the only Guru to perfectly call Division 6. It wouldn't have lasted because I had some weird late-round upsets, but it still stands out in my memory. Also, Shovel Knight the game lost to a GTA game in 2015. Why would Shovel Knight the character be any stronger? --- ## (2)Waluigi vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 _source: (2)Waluigi vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 (revid 83708)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I will never, ever, ever call her "Aerith". I in no way care why I'm supposed to and never will. Stop asking. I will continue naming pages on the wiki "Aeris" until the day these contests die, and if they continue after my death I might even put it into my will that whoever I pass this on to should keep that tradition going. I am only partially kidding on that last point. "Aerith" can go off and die for all I care. Aeris is ok though. Always love using her in the game. As far as Waluigi is concerned, I was promised a meme run in 2011. He and Luigi were SFFd by the Trainers. I was promised a meme run in 2013. In round one, Waluigi drew Raiden and Alan Wake. Who? Exactly. Raiden won that match. This year, Waluigi was snubbed from Smash Bros Ultimate and it gave us this poll (this poll is HILARIOUS, by the way): Based on all that, I was promised another meme run and Waluigi rode his Smash Bros snub all the way up to being a 2 seed. Well hey now, before this contest only one 2 seed had ever lost to a 15, Square has looked terrible, Nintendo is boss, and Waluigi was supposed to have all the momentum in the world to go on a deep joke run. Aeris was a very winnable match to start with, right? This match was close for about 5 minutes thanks to bracket votes and Board 8 meme anti-voters. Then the second update kicked in and Aeris just rolled this match. Nothing against the early voters and their funny contest trends, truly, I find those early numbers hilarious, but I think we've proven that those early votes largely don't matter. But that's a different conversation for a different match. This can very easily be summed up as Waluigi being one of the most overrated, overhyped characters in gaming history. Not only in contests. In all of gaming. Who gives a rip if he's Character \#97 in Smash Bros or not? I wouldn't complain if he got in, but I'm not literally crying he's out like some people. If I didn't already know people were serious about liking the dude, I would assume this was some TWEWY-level mass practical joke. Waluigi crapped the bed in a winnable match in a Nintendo dominant environment. I've seen all I need to see. The dude sucks. I know I'm being hard on the dude, but the entire list of characters that have lost as 2 seeds to 15s is Nathan Drake, Kazuma Kiryu, Waluigi, and Ren Amamiya. When you're a 1 or 2 seed, there is a different standard. Waluigi does not live up to it. Period. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this match. Nobody knew what to think. Obviously Aerith would be stronger. But Waluigi is a Troll character. And of the best troll characters too! Plus he is in  Smash too! So he could get a rally thus winning. Plus anti FF 7 votes. Also joke votes too!  And he is Smash too! Damn! But nothing happened. Aerith won. FF 7 is getting weaker every year but not that weak to lose to such characters without a rally. So about this win...Don't know. I guess it is a decent one? Also another 2 seed lost here. Yeah I know seeding doesn't mean anything. Also it is Aeris for me. That was her name when I first played FF 7. But I guess SE changed their mind and they put her name as Aerith in almost all games after FF 7 so I guess I will go with that one myself too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Non-leads in Final Fantasy games often struggle to get decent seeds, but when they make the field, they do well. This year, some of the ancillary characters actually got good seeds, but Aerith wasn't among them. (Actually now that I think of it, Tifa had a decent seed in 2013 as well.) She's never had a great seed except for maybe in the split bracket in 2006, but she's 5-1 in Round 1 and the one loss came against Auron. There's this strange dichotomy with Final Fantasy: most of the leads tend to get anti-voted because of the perception that the series is this dominant force, but the real reason that the series is a dominant force is because side characters that struggle to get the nominations to make the field pull these huge seeding upsets. Aerith, Vincent, and Rikku all had seeds in the 20s in 2013 and they all made Round 2, and in Aerith's case, very nearly Round 3. Though I can't help but wonder if Link-Draven would've been as close with Aerith as the third character instead of Shepard. Final Fantasy 7 has every reason to boost now, because they've finally ported it to a Nintendo system. I really need to get around to picking up a Switch soon; unlike the WiiU which had maybe one game I really cared about and that was released late in its life span, the Switch has so many games that I want. It seems that I'm the only one of the PCA writers who refers to her as Aerith and that's probably because I still haven't played FF7. Also, how is Waluigi still a meme in 2018? He's been a meme for what seems like forever. --- ## (1)Geralt vs (16)Rosalina 2018 _source: (1)Geralt vs (16)Rosalina 2018 (revid 83709)_ ## Ulti's Analysis True fact: I heavily considered taking Rosalina to win three matches, and eventually settled on "Nintendo can't be THAT strong, right?". Picked Geralt here with zero faith whatsoever, because GameFAQs people haven't played anything released after 1999. There was very little faith that Geralt would be able to justify his seeding and largely because of him, this division was seen as the weakest in the entire contest. Pretty much everyone picked Auron to win it, but for the top half there were picks all over the place. The case could legitimately be made for all eight characters winning three times because of how bad they all were. For 15 minutes, those fears were very well placed. This match was a stone cold tie for three updates, and people pretty much lost their shit over it. This wasn't just a 1 seed crapping the bed. This match was very significant, because it was the first time we'd ever seen a character originating from outside a video game in a 1v1 character battle. I know Dracula and Adolf Hitler happened, but those were in a gimmick contest. This was the real thing. A 1v1 character battle where you get the match all to yourself. Geralt was our breaker of a glass ceiling we've all wanted gone for years. And he looked like absolute piss for 15 minutes, and made me wish I had stuck with the Rosalina pick. Thankfully, the dude made a quick recovery and was able to wreck the rest of the poll. I chalk it up to simple nerves, like how a super hyped 1 seed in the NCAAs might look bad for a half before wrecking shop. That's essentially what Geralt did here. He wasn't just a new character; he was representing all of our hopes to one day see a Spiderman, a Batman, a Superman, a Simba, or what have you. Allen broke his rule to allow Witcher 3 representation in this bracket, and I'm glad he did. This would not be the first Geralt match to follow the trend you see here. I need to mention this before I forget. I like Allen a lot, but not changing Geralt's match picture to this when the Witcher Netflix thing was announced was just a crime: Like how does he miss that? Seriously bro. This also bears mentioning: fictional characters 100% need to be allowed into these brackets. None of us want something insane like 90% fictional characters in a bracket, but as a random example, Spiderman for the PS4 is going to get a bunch of Game of the Year hype. Yet Spiderman can't make a bracket? Dumb. The easy exception here is allowing characters in who have obvious reasons for it. Charles Barkley should never make a character battle. It's just a dumb troll nomination. But Batman after an Arkham game, Spiderman after his PS4 game, or Thanos after Fortnite? Come on man, this is easy stuff and should have been a thing ages ago. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** This is definitely the most interesting 1/16 match, featuring an entirely new character versus the rare untested Nintendo character. Geralt also doesn't originate in a video game, one of very few characters in these to not do so (but not the only one, Dracula and Amaterasu).The Witcher (well, 3 anyway) is good on here, and Geralt is both a good representative of the game and a good character, but it's facing a very dominant Nintendo. Rosalina's likely to be no weakling, being very popular in the fandom and having been effectively promoted to the status of Mario main character. Some even took her to win in an upset. That didn't happen but it did look far closer than the typical one of these. Geralt started pretty badly as well but eventually managed a fair looking 56/44 win. **What could this mean?:** Rosalina is probably pretty good, we've seen all the signs from other Nintendo characters. I've seen Rosalina called the weakest Mario character on here and I don't buy it - I'm having a hard time seeing her losing to Captain Toad, Toad-ass Toad, or even Waluigi maybe. She is in all likelihood the strongest 16 seed, so this doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on Geralt. It wasn't necessarily a show of strength either though - Geralt should still squeak by Simon but might have a tough time, and then faces some serious competition from a certain other witchy contestant. ## Safer777's Analysis Man this match suddens me. This is why other sites make fun of us. Geralt who is in one of the best games ever and he is an awesome character barely defeats a low tier Nintendo character. Yeah she is in Smash I know. I recently finished Witcher 3 GOTY. Just play this game. Seriously. Do it. Then you will see how good a writing in a  video game can be! And how main characters should get written! Still Geralt won I guess. Even if only someone could contact CD Project and get a rally for Geralt I don't believe anyone would complain if Geralt won the whole thing. Seriously just play the damn game if you haven't! Also another thing why the taste of the site is bad. Geralt was losing at the start! Seriously! Can you people stop voting for everything from Nintendo? There are other games and characters and companies too. I wonder why other sites don't care for us! Okay he was losing only at the freeze but still. He recovered nicely at least. Also we have something here that is amazing. Geralt originated in a Book but here he is! We had people that were real life people, like Lu Bu and even Hitler! so we now have someone from a book too! Come on Admin, just let us have characters that are in good games too. Arkham games are good. Why not having Arkham Batman? Just a thought. It would make the contests great again! ## Tsunami's Analysis Okay, okay, I've learned my lesson already. I needed to be talked out of taking Binding of Isaac: Rebirth to upset Witcher 3 in Round 1 of 2015, and I underestimated it again here. It's an understandable mental block, though: Recent game, WRPG, this shouldn't be strong, right? Even though in both cases, the opponent wasn't exactly old either. Geralt may not have entered the mainstream until The Witcher 3 in 2015, nor made his video game debut at all until 2004, but he actually made his overall debut just a few months after Link. Much was made of the fact that other characters that debuted in non-video game media were not allowed into the bracket, but Geralt was a 1-seed. Was this a trial run, or did Allen just rationalize it that a lot of gamers might not even realize that Geralt originated in a short story and then a series of novels, while everyone knows that Spider-Man originated in a comic book? And make no mistake, I fully expected Rosalina to be weak. I get the feeling that a lot of people feel that she's been forced into too many of the spinoffs and was better as a single-game character. But she's still a Mario character, and with this division, that could have been enough for multiple wins. --- ## (8)Ryu Hayabusa vs (9)Simon Belmont 2018 _source: (8)Ryu Hayabusa vs (9)Simon Belmont 2018 (revid 83710)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match may look like it was a barn burner due to the final percentages and score, but it wasn't really a classic/great match. You know the phrase in sports "not as close as the final score"? That was this match. Simon Belmont took the early lead, and outside of a few speed bumps in the first hour, he was able to very consistently hold things at 52-53%. Ryu was able to cut the peak lead of 750 down to 450 or so, but it was never at a winning comeback pace. We've seen Ryu in some weird matches in the past where he pulls off some astonishing feats, and I sort of include this match on that list, but he was a victim of two things. One was the 8pm poll start time killing our trends. I honestly think Ryu could have won this match had it started at midnight. Look at how well Ryu did after 2am. Shift this entire poll 4 hours and he may very well have won the day vote to win. I know that makes no sense, but we see weird things happen as polls get closer. The other thing Ryu was a victim of is pretty obvious. Just for fun, if you plug 2010 values into the stat calculator, you get Ryu winning this match with 55%. If you plug in 2013 numbers, you get 62%. If you plug in 2004 Ryu against 2002 Simon, you get 61%. And if you plug in 2007's numbers, you get a typical LOL x stats result of 75%. We can toss that one out as an outlier and just use the mean of the other 3, which is 59%. Is a simple announcement of being in Smash Bros worth 10% in a GameFAQs contest? Nothing else happened that would have affected either character, and without Smash Ryu clearly wins this match. With it, Simon flips things 10%. If you use the lowest possible number, it's like a 6% flip. Any time someone tries denying Smash's influence on our site, just show them this PCA. Couldn't be more obvious. And because I can: ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** Put simply, Super Smash Bros., but more on that in the next section. Ryu H is hard to pin down in terms of exact strength but is at least pretty good, and has a huge pic factor bonus. Simon has been fodder line at absolute best. In any other contest this would have been open and shut. Masahiro Sakurai had other ideas however, and Simon's announcement for Smash made this a tough one. Simon got off to an early lead which he never actually gave up. The match never got further than around 700 votes and it hit that early, at about five hours in. After that it was a slow match of attrition, with Simon only winning by 467 votes. **What could this mean?:** This match was undeniably flipped by Smash. Without that great trailer giving Simon more relevance than he has had since 1991, This was coupled with the best design he's ever had, which was nicely featured in his match pic. Ryu H is probably a bit weaker than usual, as nobody cares about Ninja Gaiden anymore. I want to get The Messenger (from a great game nobody here has played) in here to see just how much being a cool ninja in match pics actually helps. ## Safer777's Analysis This match had the whole Crew picking Ruy. And almost everyone on the board picked Ruy. So Simon won of course. Wait what? Seriously though this was a huge surprise. Ruy isn't that strong or anything but look at him. Pure ninja! And he does have some wins. As for Simon he has taken part in 5 contests and he finally scored a win. So why that happened? You are not going to believe it. Simon is in Smash! Yeah what else could boost him? Ruy has appeared in some Warriors games but we don't care about there here. As for the match. A really close one which is good. Simon was winning for a lot of hours and suddenly Ruy was coming back. He kept winning updates and it  looked that he could do it. Then Simon started stalling. We are talking about Simon winning updates with like 2 votes. So Ruy eventually couldn't do it. Still awesome match.  Also the prediction percentage was good for Simon and that surprised me. I thought almost everyone would pick Ryu here. I wonder why most picked Simon? ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh hey a close match! This was the match where people really started talking about the Smash boost, even though Ryu Hayabusa had no real reason to hold on to any of his past strength. Still, it's no surprise that this tripped up a number of people. Ryu Hayabusa is remembered for the two-day clash with Jill in 2004 and the upset of Master Chief in 2010. He had a reputation for being clutch. Simon Belmont... first managed to finish ahead of someone in a contest match when he came in second place in 2013, behind Gordon Freeman and ahead of Hades. In 2007, he finished comfortably in 4th place behind *Sam Fisher*, a character whose only win was against GFNW-era Gordon. But that doesn't even do justice to how awful Simon was in 2007, because the second-place character in that match was *Raiden.* Yes, pre-MGS4 Raiden isn't exactly strong, but how is Sam Fisher not horribly weak in the same poll as the protagonist of a Metal Gear Solid game? I first arrived to the board in 2009, so my first Character Battle was 2010, and I picked Simon to beat a newcomer because old characters \> new characters. That was the match that Ezio won in order to get to that 2010 Round 2 match with Zelda. Unlike then, I was in good company here, at least on the board. Nearly three quarters of Gurus got this wrong. The casuals got this right, though only at a 57.94% rate, so it's pretty clear that our knowledge of the past was what ruined us here. And this was a *close* match. Most Oracles called it to be close, but not this close, so I got a pretty good position in Oracle despite having the wrong winner because I was one of only two Ryu H pickers to go under 51%. Oracle actually had a *worse* prediction percentage than Guru, 13 for and 61 against. Except...it wasn't ever really in doubt. Simon got off to a triple-digit lead in 10 minutes, 200+ an hour later, 300+ by the end of the second hour, and 500 less than an hour after crossing 300. To be specific, Simon's lead at 10:25 PM--just 2 hours 25 minutes in--was identical to his final margin of victory of 467, and a grand total of *one* update in between those saw Ryu Hayabusa get even a few votes closer than that. Maybe Hayabusa would've been better off with another 48-hour match. Oh, right, and this was another one where the registered and unregistered voters favored different characters, but the result remained the same. The registered voters were the ones that favored Simon. --- ## (5)Sans vs (12)Pac-Man 2018 _source: (5)Sans vs (12)Pac-Man 2018 (revid 83711)_ ## Ulti's Analysis If Monika and L-Block getting their asses whipped didn't prove it already, this match cemented the point home in hilarious fashion. This contest was a contest where people openly revolted against rallybait characters. Some people had real fears of Sans winning this contest, but I said this before: Undertale is the new Portal. It had its moment, but it will never have a repeat performance even though it should be strong enough to make contests moving forward. I took Pac-Man here without thinking, but I didn't in my wildest dreams see this one coming. If we had a games contest in the winter of 2007 following L-Block's run, I have no doubt Portal would have won it. I hesitate to really call this a Smash Boost, because does anyone really care enough about Pac-Man to care if he's in Smash? I'm sure it's helped, but has it helped him as much as it's helped Samus, Simon Belmont, Cloud, or Snake? I doubt it. I also know the stats topic made up the Isaac Fodder Line, but I kind of like calling it the Pac-Man Fodder Line. Pac is the ultimate overlap apathy character. Everyone knows who he is, he's only capable of beating garbage, and anyone of any strength will destroy him. I feel obligated to remind people here that Pac-Man once lost to Nathan Drake. And for all those reasons, THIS MATCH WAS HIGH COMEDY. This was like a rerun to the 2002 glory days when Pac was breaking 70% on fools before Scorpion hooked him. But the guy Pac was breaking 70 on this time around was the most popular character from Undertale, the game that shattered our web site 3 years ago and proved what insufferable manchildren the anti-rally crybabies are. And then all those same people made Reddit accounts and begged for votes during every close match this year. I've let a lot go this year, but the hypocrisy of the anti-rally weirdos is really something else. Those people are just as bad as democrats and all their whining since the 2016 election. I was allowing myself one political reference in this PCA and only one, and it was always going to be aimed at the anti-rally people being as bad as democrats. Might as well put it here in a match PCA that won't be remembered in a year just so it's archived somewhere, you know? But you people are never, ever living that one down until you admit you only like rallying when it benefits a character you like. It's okay to think that, truly, but don't lie about it. And the funniest thing of all about this match? It wasn't close to being the biggest embarrassment for rallybait characters this year. Sans losing this match this badly is bad for him and Undertale, no doubts about it, but there was someone else looming that was about to have his own axes boomerang backwards and pretty much decapitate his entire legacy in one hilarious 24 hour time frame. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** This match was one with a lot of debate, leaving the board split down the middle. There were two arguments for Sans. First, RallyFEAR. Second, Undertale did have some natural strength, and he is a very memorable character from it. On the other hand, big contest-breaking rallies haven't turned up yet, and this is probably a better Pac-Man than we've seen thanks to Smash. Then the match starts and Pac-Man is instantly at 70%. The crazy thing though was how he kept building throughout the match. To top it all off this wasn't GameFAQs's doing entirely, as Sans actually did better with registered users. **What could this mean?:** This wasn't just rallies not turning up, Sans is just that weak. Additionally, this wasn't GameFAQs revenge voting - Sans did better with registered users. Pac-Man is probably pretty decent now, he's been okay for a while and should be at his strongest. Sans has to be bottom 10 here, and I am honestly surprised he is this weak even assuming zero rallies. This was the underperformance of the contest for me. ## Safer777's Analysis There were going to be 2 ways for this match to go. Either Sans(which is from Undertale)would take a rally and win or he wouldn't get a rally and Pac-Man would win. As you can see he didn't get a rally. Pac-Man won. But here is the thing. Pac-Man did really good. Why? I will tell you why. Pac-Man is in Smasn and Sans is not! And it is not that Sans did get a lot of anti-votes or something. He did better with registered users anyways. So yeah Sans is REALLY weak which is to be expected. Still when Pac-Man scores more than 70% in a win you don't know what else to say! Oh wait I have a fun fact. The day after the match the creator of Undertale released a new game! Damn! Nice coincidence I guess. The prediction percentage was in the middle too. Guess people were expecting a rally again. ## Tsunami's Analysis Pac-Man blowing out *anyone* like this is astounding, because Pac-Man is the King of the Apathy Vote. I figured that Sans, being a good character from a popular game, would beat him on natural strength. And from what I heard, Bayonetta was likely to be a major anti-vote magnet, so Sans would probably beat her even worse. And, uh, it wouldn't exactly take the bandwagon forming for him to beat Rosalina *even worse than that*, because as far as I can tell no one actually likes Rosalina and she only got my pick for Round 3 because this half-division was so bad. Sans ended up being the Ultimate Loser of this division, and I *still* only regret picking him to catch a bandwagon past Auron and Sonic (twice), not having him to Round 4. This division was largely unproven recent characters, proven fodder, and a couple of former low midcarders that were rightly expected to have fallen. Oh, and Pac-Man. Pac-Man was there too. Also, this qualifies as a Guru upset, if only barely; Sans had an 83-77 advantage in Guru brackets. Ironically, if I had incorrectly picked the next match, my bracket is probably better off for it in the long run. I'd lose the one point for Bayonetta \> Riku, but pick up points for Auron \> Riku (actually Auron \> Geralt) and Sonic \> Auron. But back to what this meant for the near future. If Pac-Man was getting this type of percentage on Sans, well, suddenly Chloe Price's lock on the absolute bottom of the unadjusted X-Stats was no lock at all. Amaterasu has always been a consistent midcarder, and Draven is far more hated here than Sans/Undertale. It was clear that he was gonna have a bad time, and all that remained was to see just how hard he'd get dunked on. --- ## (4)Bayonetta vs (13)Riku 2018 _source: (4)Bayonetta vs (13)Riku 2018 (revid 83712)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Remember how I said during the Geralt round 1 writeup that a case could be made for any of the top half of this division winning three matches? Well count me in as one of the morons who thought Riku could win three times. Good hell. I did eventually change my mind and picked a Geralt/Auron final, but even looking back on what I almost chose there is so embarrassing. I ended up picking Riku to win twice, and I didn't think the logic was that bad, either! Right before this contest, a massive Kingdom Hearts 3 hype video came out. If ever there was a time for Riku and Sora to go on a tear in a contest, this would be the year. Pair that with Bayonetta being the most hated character in Smash Bros history, and it was a recipe for success. Plus I like the dude's character arc. Sue me. Oh and I'm not joking about Bayonetta being the most hated character in Smash history, either. She has Kirby/Pikachu/Ness from 64, Sheik and Fox from Melee, and Meta Knight from Brawl completely and totally beat. Bayonetta in Smash 4 might legitimately be the most hated character in fighting game history (Smash is a fighting game, fuck off), and it frankly might not be close. People who play her in tournaments get death threats, which says a lot about how dumb the Smash fans are but I digress. Only Akuma from SF2 compares, and he required a complicated code to unlock and was banned from tournaments anyway. I can't do this justice with words. I'll let the pros handle that subject. When you factor all that together, Riku deserved to win. And then on a personal level, when you factor in music it isn't close. Music in games means a lot to me, and if your music is bad I grade you down pretty hard. I'm sure Bayonetta's games are fine. Haven't played them yet, but if they're anything like DMC3, and by all accounts they are, then they're ok. I mean Lady Gaga likes those games, and she would never support anything that's totally dumb like radicalized feminism, right? Oh. But to the point. Every. Single. Song in those games is objectively trash. All of them. It's the singular reason I haven't played those games yet. I can't actually listen to any of it without wanting my ears sewn shut. I'm sure Bayonetta actually deserves her contest strength, but she's probably be on Link's level if we could get rid of that laughably awful pair of soundtracks. And I usually like that style of music, too. It's on the level of The World Ends With You for worst soundtrack ever. This win was convincing enough to make it look like she would make it to Auron, and from there, who knows? No one else in the top half of this division looked all that good in round one, outside Pac-Man but we all know he's fool's gold. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** And now for the overperformance of the round. Again, this was a highly debated match. Bayonetta didn't look great in 2013, Riku is a decent meat and potatoes high(ish) midcarder. Sora didn't look amazing, but he didn't look dreadful either. To Bayonetta's advantage, she has become effectively a Nintendo character since, with 2 being a Nintendo first party game, 1 and 2 coming to Switch this year, and her being in Smash. So, based on the 2013 stats, this would go to Riku with 62%. Then this match starts and Bayonetta destroys Riku after the board vote ends. Not only that, but she built her lead over time. **What could this mean?:** This has to be the biggest boost of the contest. Bayonetta flipped a projected 62% loss to win with over 64%. That is mad. She is looking like a serious division finalist here, perhaps even a division winner. I never thought I would say that. She alsoo didn't trend like a Nintendo character so that's interesting, though that might just be because of Riku. This was possibly the most exciting day yet overall, and I love the way this contest has gone. Anything could happen. ## Safer777's Analysis KH 3 boost oh yeah! Yeah I am kidding. Bayonetta won easily. She is in Smash you know. As for Riku...He does really bad in these contests. At least he avoided a  doubling I guess. But man if only Riku was in Smash or something! But yeah I guess if KH 3 comes out he will gain a boost or something. But as for now he sucks. Also I believe that Bayonetta 3 is a Nintendo exlusive so we can consider her a Nintendo character now correct? Also most people had Riku winning this. The X-Stats were saying that too! But I wonder why he lost that easily? Yeah Bayo is in Smash. But the trailer for KH 3 came a little while ago. But nope. People don't care for KH it seems anymore. That is too bad. KH 2 is an amazing game no doubt. So yeah. Pretty embarassing match for Riku here. ## Tsunami's Analysis The Gurus were split even tighter on this match than the last one, Bayonetta ultimately winding up with the 82-78 advantage. At one point during the inputting of Guru brackets, Bayonetta was the favorite to reach Round 3 despite being an underdog against Riku. (The COOKIE did indeed end up with an impossible bracket, but only because of the double elimination format; Mario was a 78-67 favorite over Snake in the Legends semis, and with Mario-Snake so split it's no surprise that Cloud was the most common pick to win the Losers semi, but Snake was ultimately the most common pick to win the Losers final.) The Oracle Challenge broke 45-29 in Bayonetta's favor, with the Bayonetta pickers largely having a lower average percentage than the Riku pickers, resulting in a consensus of Bayonetta 50.49%. The highest pick was a flat 60-40, which was a full 2% contrast of the next highest picks. 64.40%. That's what Bayonetta got. Holy crap this was a blowout. Casuals got one over on us here; sure we ultimately wound up favoring the right character but they broke 70% in prediction percentage and a 45.60 is an awful score for a first-place Oracle prediction. Not the worst, obviously, since we've had matches where we were unanimously wrong (Magus-Knuckles 2005, for example), but not good. --- ## (3)Auron vs (14)Lucina 2018 _source: (3)Auron vs (14)Lucina 2018 (revid 83722)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I would bet good money I'm one of the few people who mainly likes Lucina for how insanely cool she was in Fire Emblem Awakening instead of her Smash appearances, but who knows. She's okay in Smash, but she is a damn legend in Awakening. Top 5 series character for sure. Unfortunately she was against Auron, who does the brooding swordsman turned softy routine much better than she ever could and comes from a far more popular game. Auron went out there and pretty much showed exactly why he was the division favorite, because while the top half of the division was doing whatever it was they were doing, Auron was out here cracking skulls and taking names. I know Lucina isn't that strong, but getting 65% on a Smash character in today's environment is no joke. Auron even won the day vote and raised his percentages up, which for Square against Nintendo is virtually impossible anymore. I love Auron, but man would I love to see Lucina win one some day. She deserves it. Taking Marth's name before ripping your mask off and taking fucking names on the battlefield next to Chrom is one of the coolest things in this series, and it happens in a game loaded with really fun characters. I know everyone loves Chrom and Tharja from that game, but I'm a Lucina honk. Sue me. ## Lightning_Strikes 's Analysis **What happened?:** Another Nintendo overperformance. Auron used to be a solid elite (he was effectively FFX's Vincent) and is probably still up there. Lucina was a not terrible but uninspiring FE entrant in 2013, and going off of then this would have been near a tripling, instead she escaped the doubling. Also worth noting that there wasn't a huge amount of movement after the power hour, which is a bit unexpected given the franchises involved. **What could this mean?:** Lucina is a lot stronger for sure, thanks to Smash and a general rise in FE's popularity. This wasn't a very inspiring performance by Auron, but if we assume Lucina's pretty decent now he probably still has it in him. ## Safer777's Analysis Auron is awesome. If you don't agree you are wrong and you know it. Auron always manages to advance to at least to Round 2 in all contests he has appeared. He is the strongest FF 10 character too for sure. Here he faced Lucina who I believe that she is the most famous FE female. But because of FE Heroes(I know it is a gatcha game but man is it popular!)she did good. Oh yeah she in Smash too! Yeah everyone is there! She avoided a doubling! Still nice win for Auron. And for next round we should have another fine performance for him too. And I will say  it again. Auron is way too cool. He wears sunglasses! What more to say! Just look at him! Still even though the FE franchise is so popular now, with good games on 3DS, characters appearing in Smash and a really profitable Gatcha game the chararacters don't do good. I know it is a SRPG but still. Eh whatever. ## Tsunami's Analysis On the subject of [Creators' Pets](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatorsPet), meet Lucina. She's basically a Final Fantasy lead--wangsty and androgynous. Except unlike those guys, she's *actually* female, though she pretends to be male (specifically, an earlier androgynous Fire Emblem lead) for the first half of her game because reasons. And because she's "What if Marth were actually a girl instead of merely looking like one", the Japanese part of the fanbase loves her and the rest...well, I guess they kind of like her too? Fire Emblem Heroes tends to reflect the wishes of the *whole* fanbase, unlike earlier entries where DLC was based on the results of popularity polls that were solely based on the Japanese fanbase because the games weren't even out elsewhere yet, and she hasn't received a new alt in quite some time so I guess maybe her popularity really is waning. But yeah Lucina is an awful character and this is a good result. Also the Oracle Consensus was just 0.09% off, the closest of Round 1. --- ## (6)Magus vs (11)Vincent Valentine 2018 _source: (6)Magus vs (11)Vincent Valentine 2018 (revid 83714)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Dammit Magus, you got my hopes up again. At least this time it happened in a match we all knew you'd lose, but still. This dude was one day vote away from what would have been one of the funniest upsets in contest history. Confession time. I never grew out of being a fan of villains, loners, anti-heroes, badasses, or the dark brooding fake gothic types. I don't try to be some badass prick in real life or whatever, I just find them more interesting characters by and large in fiction. Heroes all do the same thing. Villains and anti-heroes and such are far more complex. I could point out a litany of examples where the public is actually on my side on this and tunes in in massive numbers, like Walter White, Dexter, Thanos, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Crow, John Wick, Omar Little, Jack Bauer, Tony Soprano, Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman, The Godfather, or a massive number of Game of Thrones and Quentin Tarantino characters, but I'll mainly stick to video games here since this is a video game analysis. Erm, uh.... okay I went outside video games there, but hey! Some of my favorite gaming characters are people like Magus, Vincent, Cloud, Squall, Auron, Beatrix, Yuri Lowell, Vergil, Shadow the Hedgehog, Alucard, Solid Snake, Kefka, Sephiroth, Big Boss, Garrus, Lightning (sue me), Wesker, Kratos Aurion, Riku, JC Denton, Adam Jensen, Manfred von Karma, Master Chief (sue me), Nocturne, Sovereign, the Old Gods from World of Warcraft (SUE ME), Night Stalker, a whole host of other MOBA characters INCLUDING DRAVEN DO NOT @ ME, Kratos, Samus, GLaDOS, practically any ninja, Akuma, Javik.... you get the idea. I could keep going. You might call them edgelords. I call them Lawful Evil. Orzhov Syndicate forever. I dunno, I just find that archetype awesome. Sue me. So for me this match was awesome on a couple levels, not the least of which is Magus shocking the world for 5 hours. For the first 5 hours of this poll, things were either deadlocked or within 100 votes, and people had a lot of hope Magus could pull this upset off. On top of that, Vincent and Final Fantasy 7 haven't exactly been clutch lately. I had hope myself, but it was very cautious optimism for two reasons. First of all, I've seen way too many contest matches at this point and one trend in deadlocked matches has become exceedingly glaring. There is always one character in a very slight lead trying to shake the other one off. Very very rarely does it go back and forth. And almost always, the character doing the shaking wins. In this case, it was Vincent. So that's point number one. Point number two. The last time Magus was actually clutch was in 2003 against Ganondorf, which is a result that looks weirder every year. I had zero delusions the guy would actually pull this off, and was the least surprised guy on the planet when Vincent finally buried him. Still proud of the guy and still love him, but come on. It's Magus. We really need a Magus v Tidus match so we can have an answer on who our least clutch character is. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** This match was basically SBAllen's love letter to us, pitching two fallen legends against each other. Magus has undeperformed consistently since 2005 (whether or not 2005 is included is debatable), not even appearing in 2006 and bombing really, really badly against Alucard in 2010. He is arguably a fraud, as he basically had two inarguably good performances and that's it. Vincent was good for longer, but just bombed in 2013 (pic sabotage or otherwise). Even on that though, he looked well clear if Magus. Then the match starts and Magus took the lead after the first few updates (FF7 winning the board vote wtf). It went back and forth for a bit before Vincent finally stayed ahead, but he never built a big lead. **What could this mean?:** Oh my god, Vincent looked so damn bad here. Even with a Chrono Trigger boost, which is believable, he should have beaten Magus by more than this. He shouldn't look substantially worse than Alucard. Would Vincent lose to Peach now? Is that how far we have come? He might be alright against Auron because of SFF but he is screwed in the long term. ## Safer777's Analysis When Vincent first appeared in the contests he was strong. Really strong. We called him the N9 breaker! In fact he did beat a N9er but that was in multi way matches. When he first appeared in 1VS1 he won a division! Amazing! So damn strong! And he kept doing good. But in 2013 something happened. There were rallies sure. But man he was in a 3-way match and he finished last.  Okay fine. Mewtwo was strong back then. And he had rallies, everyone knows that. But the guy that came 2nd? Phoenix Wright! What? Man I heard so many people back then screaming about the bad picture that  Vincent got(I was one of them too!). I don't know what happened then. Anyways for this match. It was a toss up actually. 2 fallen characters here. Most favored Vincent to win and he did that.  But look at the result. Pathetic. Magus is weak you know nowadays! Also there is something that people said after this match that I hadn't think about. Vincent is  mysterious and he has a cool design. And that is. I mean he is an OPTIONAL party member and his Limit Breaks suck! Seriously! In a game where Cloud, Barret and Cid can hit multiple times with their Limit Breaks, Vincent turns into a monster for his Limit Breaks and we can't even control him! And he got a spin off game too! Guess if you have a cool design you deserve anything. Still he managed to win I guess. A bad victory is still a victory. The prediction percentage was just under 50% for Vincent too. Magus was the slight favorite it seems. Also for Magus...man this guy has fallen so much too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Remember what I said about forever-overrated **FRAUDS**? Board 8 still hasn't gotten over the fact that a match between two newcomers that was supposed to be debatable (although most people did eventually choose correctly) ended up being a 79-21 blowout, and that Vincent went on to upset Squall. Also there was something about a 4way match that reversed an existing 1v1 loss for Vincent? Bah, it's a fourway; it's not important. Besides, he was the lone PSX character against three characters that shared the SNES, one of which was Link. People blamed Vincent's loss to Phoenix in 2013 solely on the pic sabotage, and while I agree that Vincent should still be naturally stronger than Phoenix, a bigger issue there was that people just didn't *care* enough about Vincent. Board 8 loves its Phoenix Wright, so we weren't going to abandon him to hop on the Mewtwo bandwagon. And let's not beat around the bush: everything that happened from the moment Draven took X and Ryu to the woodshed was centered around trying to stop him at all costs. We identified Pokémon as the one thing that might be able to muster up a strong enough counterrally should Link fail to stop the threat with his natural strength, and since the other Pokémon were too far away in the bracket and would SFF each other out before the finals, that meant Mewtwo was our rally target. 2010, however, showed exactly where Vincent really sits on the FF7 totem pole. Both he and Tifa faced Sephiroth, and one of them did a lot better than the other. But here, he was up against Magus, another character that crushed it in his contest debut and has never lived up to the hype. It was only fitting that the two had to battle it out, and the fact that it was so close should tell you exactly how strong Vincent isn't. Vincent won with 51.89%, which is still comfortable *enough*, but every Oracle that picked this match to finish under 52-48 picked *Magus* to win it. With good reason considering that he was the underdog, but still, not one person who believed in Vincent to win it at all thought it would be this close. --- ## (7)Shulk vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 _source: (7)Shulk vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 (revid 83715)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Remember when there was a debate on contest strength between Sub-Zero and Scorpion? Yeah me either. As the ultimate casual, I am proud to report Sub-Zero was always cooler. I would actually be shocked if people's reasoning for it wasn't similar to mine: blue is just a better color than yellow is, and when you're a kid things like that matter a ton when picking characters, sports teams, and so forth. Laugh all you want, but I bring science! These are the things I dig up for predictable 63-37 blowouts. Favorite color science translating to character tastes. Just for fun, let's plug Auron v Shulk from 2013 into the LOL x stats calculator. Auron gets 75%. In the actual match here, he got 63%. During the Ryu Hayabusa v Simon Belmont match, I asked how much a Smash appearance is worth. I legitimately think the right number is about 5-10%, depending on how strong you were to start off. We've seen these insane boosts from Smash for years, and even though Shulk got blown out here I imagine it would have been far worse without Sm4sh and Ultimate backing him. This match also all but cemented we would see a fourth match between Sub-Zero and Auron. We've never gotten Mario vs Sonic, Sub-Zero vs Scorpion, Dark Link or Dark Samus into a contest, Blastoise into a contest, or a host of other obvious stuff, but we can get Auron vs Sub-Zero four times. Okay. Sure. ## Lightning_Strikes 's Analysis **What happened?:** Shulk is a character a lot of people expected to boost a lot because of Smash Bros. and the growth of the Xenoblade franchise. So of course get gets put up against Sub-Zero, a near elite (and make no mistake, Sub-Zero is well stronger than Scorpion). He had no chance of winning this match, and then did not. Oh well. **What could this mean?:** Shulk clearly got a lot stronger, he did roughly as well on Sub-Zero now as he did on Altair. This was just bad bracket placement and my one real issue with the bracket. ## Safer777's Analysis I always liked Sub-Zero. From the first time I played a MK game which was MK 2 to a friend of mine he was always my favorite MK character. Anyways of course SZ here won. Nobody expected anything else. Even though Shulk is in Smash! Like almost every video game character ever it seems! Still it is not that he scored a really big win. But Sub-Zero is so cool! Did you see what I did there? Did you? Yeah I know. I am stupid. Sub-Zero seems to do good even after all these years and this site's apathy for fighting games that aren't Smash. Smash is a fighting game right? ## Tsunami's Analysis Xenoblade Chronicles was originally meant to be Japan-only, but the rest of the world made a stink and the developers caved. It was hugely acclaimed and beloved, and...as a result, it was hard to get a copy at all. From what I can tell it really *was* interesting, but the battle mechanics were so awful that I eventually gave up on it. Even with the character you're directly controlling, your basic attacks are automatic, so it boils down to "dart in, hope that you actually get an attack off, dart away to avoid enemy attacks. Then somehow manage to build up your special meter because the bosses aren't actually vulnerable to anything other than the specials that are really hard to pull off." Xenoblade is the one entry in the Xeno series that has yet to do anything in contests, with Xenogears having once managed to beat a Pokémon game in a Games Contest (seriously, *huh?*) and KOS-MOS being something resembling a reliable midcarder. The game itself was a 3-seed in 2015 and got upset by Donkey Kong Country 2, which was by no means the only reason that I was the only one to get all eight Round 1 matches in Division 6 correct (three of them had Guru prediction percentages inside of 60-40, with the slight favorites only going 2-1), but was definitely the biggest deterrent. Sub-Zero has a history of pulling seeding upsets, so this was a pretty easy pick. The casuals weren't terribly fooled, either, with Subby coming just shy of a 2-1 advantage in brackets. --- ## (2)Joker vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018 _source: (2)Joker vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018 (revid 83716)_ ## Ulti's Analysis For those playing the home game, you might be wondering why I'm calling him Joker in the PCA and having the page name on the Wiki named "Joker" instead of "Ren Amamiya". To the surprise of everyone and for the first time in my entire life, I'm going to agree with Persona fans. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't planning on it originally. I was actually fully prepared to come in here, act as obnoxious as possible, and aim my most scathing possible rant at you people. You were going to get compared to the worst parts of our culture, you were getting the Election 2016 crybaby treatment, you were going to get absolutely shit on about how Claire pulled off the greatest upset possible due to Allen fixing his mistake and calling him Joker in the poll instead of Ren, the works. It was going to be awesome, and you would have deserved every second of it for how you act in every single Persona match in these contests. There is no fanbase more obnoxious in contest history, and there have been a ton of bad ones. And then this happened. And it wasn't just that. I actively tried looking for anyone, literally anyone, to call the guy "Ren". I didn't find a single example. Not one. So you know what? You guys win. With being in Smash, you're in the big time now and I'm going to give you a fair shot to redeem yourselves. I know exactly how happy you are right now, and I'm not going to take that from you. Plus with me having never actually played a Persona game and only going on contest behavior, for all I know those games deserve their fandom. Who really knows. You have a good thing here, Persona honks. Don't fuck it up. I don't change my mind on people very often! So with that said, let's go back to the beginning and give a fair rundown. When the bracket first came out, Joker was foolishly listed in the bracket as "Ren Amamiya". For those not aware of how absolutely stupid this was, imagine Revolver Ocelot listed as "Adamska", Lightning listed as "Claire Farron", The Boss listed as "Mercury Lady", or Big Boss listed as "Ishmael". It was laughably, unforgivably dumb. On top of that, look at these match pictures. This was the biggest mess of round 1 by a mile, and Allen knew it. By the time the match happened, it was more or less confirmed without being directly confirmed when Allen changed the name to Joker in our brackets that the poll would have his name on it. But by then, the damage was done. People had long since made their picks, and as you can see by the prediction percentage Claire had just enough support to get just enough bracket/early/registered votes to win this match if it was close. I have no doubts this would have been a closer match if things were named correctly from the jump and Joker were given a proper picture. That doesn't forgive the laughably awful Claire picture either, just for the record. Then the match started and all hell broke loose. Well by 2018 standards, anyway. Things were dead even at first, then Claire took a small lead, then Joker erased the lead before falling a bit. Then in a flash, Claire just buried the guy. Two hours in, these two were separated by 97 votes. This match was stone cold over 30 minutes later, and with how close this was to start we can chalk this thing up to the margin of error. Does Joker win with a fair shake in naming and picture? Probably not, actually. Claire's picture was also trash and she has RE2 hype behind her. But the fact we can even have a gray area argument about this entire result is not good. Sure the winner was destined to lose to Sub-Zero anyway. So what? The guru was only won by 3 points. I won a contest on a tiebreaker. These points matter. You can't have doubts about results like this, and well-run stuff makes sure this happens as little as possible. I'll give Allen credit for correcting his mistake but it was bad to make this mistake in the first place. I made a bunch of polls mid contest asking people how important the match pic was when voting. I was expecting virtually no 'yes' votes. To my shock, something like 35-40% of people vote based on picture! What in the actual hell? So yeah, Joker got robbed and the Persona fans are being given one great writeup and one fair shot to be mature moving forward. Don't let me down, bros! Also, level with me. Are the games any good? Oh last point before I forget. Before this contest only one 2 seed had ever lost to a 15. The Boss beat Nathan Drake. In this contest it happened THREE TIMES. This match, Aeris \> Waluigi, and Bomberman \> Kazuma Kiryu. The seeding in this contest was so messed up. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** Early on this seemed like an easy win for Joker, but then as less recognisable characters and avatars faltered, as well as Resident Evil looking good, this started to go to Claire. Joker, at least, did not get screwed with a name nobody knew. The match started neck and neck but then Claire pulled away, with Joker turning out to be very frontloaded indeed. **What could this mean?:** When Leon beat down Dragonborn I knew an avatar from a strong, popular RPG would struggle with a beloved Resident Evil character. Joker just does not have enough to him despite the strength of his game. At least he's a lot better than Yu probably. As for Claire I'll say it again, Resident Evil is back. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was strange. When I made my bracket I didn't even noticed that this is Joker from Persona 5, because they don't use real names in the Persona games for the main characters. You can give them any names too,.  But when I saw he was the Persona 5 main character I picked Joker. The whole Crew picked Joker too. Claire was in 3 contests before and she hadn't a win. But I made a mistake. Persona is weak here in this site. Really weak. There was even a controversy with Joker's real name so we got both names! It should have been only Joker by the way. And the picture wasn't him in the traditional Joker Outfit too! So many mistakes in this match. Come on now! I know the board loves Persona too but yeah. Also the instant RE 2 remake was announced it is in top 10 boards in the PS 4 section here. And you know who is in RE 2? Leon and Claire. So Claire managed to win a victory. Strangely enough for a while Joker was winning! Persona 5 is in my top 3 JRPG's. It is  way too good! Still out of the 5 main RE characters only Leon and Claire advanced. RE 2 remake boost confirmed! And oh yeah another 2 seed lost. This is the 3rd time on this contest too which is a record! I think like 2 seeds have ever lost from a 15 seed in all contests ever too! And in this contest we had 3 losing! Man the seeding was so bad. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was our second accreditation controversy, and the one that actually meant something. The name "Ren Amamiya" comes from the anime, not the game itself; like Yu Narukami when Persona 4 first came out and all of the SMT protagonists before him, the P5 protagonist was not initially given a "canon name". (Yu's canon name was eventually established by spinoffs.) As such, failing to credit him as Joker--especially in combination with an unmasked match pic--was tantamount to sabotage. I picked Joker in my bracket, but had Claire in my Oracle when it was initially believed that the single-word accreditation in the match would be "Ren". Turns out, I shouldn't have wavered on that when Allen changed it to what it should have been all along. So was this a case of old \> new, or merely DAF? (Oh, come on, you know full well you're not looking at what she's got going on in the front. The picsmiths certainly weren't in 2013.) At any rate, this represents Claire's first contest win, which is all kinds of hilarious because the 2002 X-Stats say she could have reached Round 3 if she hadn't been horribly screwed by bracket placement. She finished 13th, breaking 30%, in the Raw X-Stats, following a fairly close (at least by 2002 standards) loss to Tidus of all people. Then she disappeared until the Female Bracket in 2006, where she lost to Kairi. And after that she didn't return until that 2013 match that I linked the match pic from, where she literally has to deal with booty SFF. Joker was later announced as a DLC character for Smash Ultimate, making everyone wonder if he'd have won the match had that happened earlier. He might have, but I feel like Claire could've still gotten by. --- ## (1)Luigi vs (16)Miles Edgeworth 2018 _source: (1)Luigi vs (16)Miles Edgeworth 2018 (revid 83535)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Somehow I forgot Edgey on my list of edgelord characters that I love list in the Magus/Vincent writeup. I should probably be executed for this oversight given I once asked the New Jersey DMV if "EDGEY" was available as a license plate. True story. I've led a rather oddball life, if you can't tell. Anyway this match was always going to be a massive blowout, and it got scarier as it went along. Luigi was the type of character who could cause some serious damage in a non-Noble Nine bracket like this, and he had the 1 seed and the pedigree to prove it. Luigi has historically been an ass kicker in round 1, but he does it in a way that makes him look non-threatening, Smash Bros Luigi Taunt style. For those who enjoy lists, look at some of these numbers. And then this match here today, which was the first match Luigi ever had as a 1 seed and he delivered. This was Kansas beating Niagra. How Luigi never had a 1 seed until today I don't know, but he has one of the best pedigrees in round 1 of any non Noble Nine character. If you face this dude in the first round, don't even show up. You are done. Sucks for Edgey because I adore the dude, but hey maybe don't appear in bad video games like Ace Attorney Investigations and you stop being 16 seed fodder for green people. I did get to see Phoenix carry him to a win in Rivalry Rumble, so technically Edgey is off the schnide! ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** Another standard Nintendo fodder beatdown, in which Nintendo overperforms expectations based on the last contest. The one really notable thing about this match is the trends, with Luigi building his percentage over time. Looks like Ace Attorney is more frontloaded than Nintendo. **What could this mean?:** Strong showing for Luigi. Edgeworth is fodder but he's reliable fodder, and Ace Attorney as a whole has looked better lately. I do think this match should be looked at in the context of Bowser vs. Gordon because even now I'm having a hard time imagining Edgeworth beating Gordon. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was brutal. Nobody doubted that Luigi would do good but this good? Damn! More than 77%. Miles is from the Ace Attorney series. Have I mentioned that this  board loves this series? But anyways a Luigi domination. Also Miles joined the 0-5 club, meaning a character that has taken part in 5 contests and hasn't a single win! Maybe he will get one eventually. Which I doubt it. Oh well. --- ## (8)Frog vs (9)Monokuma 2018 _source: (8)Frog vs (9)Monokuma 2018 (revid 83536)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I have no idea whatsoever what a "danganronpa", a "Happy Havoc", or a "Monokuma" even is. All I know is that thing was given heavy consideration as a rallybait character, and if you haven't noticed it by now the rallybait characters all got completely steamrolled in this contest. This wasn't the worst of it to happen, but letting Frog get 76% on you when you're hyped to catch a rally is pretty bad. Frog is a shell of what he used to be and shouldn't be hitting 76% on anyone under any circumstances. But who knows, maybe Frog got a random boost from the chemicals in the water that are turning the freaking frogs gay. 'Scuse me. Been waiting ages for that reference. Remember when Frog used to be good for a great match every contest? Yeah, me too. I got sad looking this up, but the last entertaining match from Frog was eleven years ago. It's true: For whatever reason, it stopped on a dime right then and there. It teaches you to appreciate what you have while you have it, because those windows close really fast. Now we're sitting here watching Frog get 76% on anime panda bears with zipper lips. I get that not every match can be good but sheesh. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?**: Another overseeded fodder blowout. Monokuma is bottom 5 for sure, but was able to get a decent seed anyway. Frog also built his lead over time, showing that Monokuma is another frontloaded "cult" character. **What could this mean?**: Chrono Trigger is still good and Monokuma is very weak, next. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result. Frog won a match with more than a tripling! Damn. I don't know anything about Monokuma. Haven't even heard about the game too. But I bet my ass that he is really weak. Frog was a beast in his 1st ever contest appearance. Also I believe he is the only character that has a win with 50% percentage against another character! Not even Link has done that! But anyways of course he won big here. Nice to see him get a win. --- ## (5)Master Chief vs (12)Goro Majima 2018 _source: (5)Master Chief vs (12)Goro Majima 2018 (revid 83537)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Master Chief and his games are so loathed by our site's user base that people take every possible opportunity they can to anti vote the crap out of him. I actually like the dude and think he's badass as fuck, but I can understand this site not liking him. The entire Xbox line of consoles is a complete joke and was never destined to have any good exclusives. Ever. I said this before the very first system came out and it was obvious to anyone with a brain. Microsoft is making it. Any good game will end up on PC anyway, and lo and behold. Proven right again. I don't find it fair that Master Chief has to pay for Microsoft's sins, but what can you do. The Xbox has one of the worst fanbases in gaming, too, and they've proved it in spades in 2018. Those idiots were all over twitter spoiling PS4 games intentionally because they were butthurt over the Xbox having no good exclusives, as if everyone else didn't tell them ages ago that there would never be good exclusives. With Tales of Vesperia now officially coming to Playstation, there is absolutely zero reason to own any Xbox system. I knew it was coming, too. Just needed a little patience, Guns N Roses style. The best part about these losers, none of which are actually on GameFAQs, is how they sit around pretending they're all alpha and hard all day, even though they sit online arguing about video games 24/7 and treat consoles like their own children, largely because women are very intelligent and know not to have children with trashy human beings. Trust me, "bros", whenever you try telling us how cool you are we all picture you as the road rage marine and laugh at you. Because as all normal people know, you deal with bullies by laughing at them. It drives you all insane and we love it, and now with everyone having a supercomputer in their pockets you can't even retaliate physically anymore. Fuck off and go pretend the Xbox is good. Loser. I bring this all up because Master Chief, who has all that baggage to carry around and all those hurdles to jump over any time he's in a match, got 69% on someone and wasn't even anti voted in the slightest. He had no trend whatsoever in this match. Multi-way matches aside (a guy like this will naturally overperform in that format), have people already forgotten this dude's history? He almost lost to a guy named Felix in his debut. He lost to Frog by 7 votes in a match that by all accounts he should have won. CATS broke 31% on him and he needed an insane 2000 vote comeback to beat Donkey Kong, of all people. He lost to Sub-Zero as a 2 seed. Then after fourways happened and threw everyone off the scent, he let something named Spy get 40% on him before losing to Ryu Hayabusa. And this guy -- this guy -- gets 69% in a contest match. I like the dude come on man. Can we all have a gentleman's agreement to never nominate a Yazuka character ever again? These guys are the definition of megatrash. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** This should have been a huge blowout and wasn't. Chief was struggling to get over even 65% during the Power Hour. He recovered somewhat and then held steady, but ultimately was far lower than expected. **What could this mean?:** Majima should be one of the weakest characters in the bracket, that Chief could not get over 70% is fairly embarassing. Would he even beat Bomberman? It follows that Majima would be weaker than Kiryu after all. This was a really bad showing. ## Safer777's Analysis Ah yeah. MC. The XBOX mascot. We hate XBOX here I believe. Anyways of course he would win. He went against a Yakuza character and man this series is extremely weak in  this site. Now his win is actually his 2nd highest ever! That is how weak Yakuza is. But man. If only Frog and Tails had the reverse position. We could have the rematch of one of the best match ever in these contests! But alas. At least we will see them again fighting in the same day! And once again nice win from MC. I just want to say that MC once reached a semi final match WITHOUT rallies! I still can't understand what happened back then. We liked FPS? XBOX? No. So I am not sure. His prediction percentage is really high too! --- ## (4)Nathan Drake vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 _source: (4)Nathan Drake vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 (revid 83538)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Only CAPTAIN TOAD had a lower round one prediction percentage than this one, and it did my childhood and my fanboyism a world of good to be on the right side of Tails' path this year. yoblazer made a fantastic topic about best feels-good calls this contest, and my \#1 is Tails. I'll get more into his actual path and why it meant so much to me in round two, so for now let's just focus on this one match. 80% of the board and almost 70% of the brackets picked Nathan Drake to win this match, but I knew. I just knew. Well I didn't "know" per se, because this was a pure fanboy pick that I could not pass up. I was always pissed I didn't take Tails \> Viewtiful Joe back in the day, and I vowed to pick the little guy again if I ever got the chance to pull an upset. How long did I wait? I could not pass it up. Nathan Drake was the perfect opponent for Tails to get some redemption. The guy got less than 7% in a poll and lost to CATS in his contest debut. Then he got a 2 seed and became the first 2 seed ever to lose to a 15. His one win was in 2013 against Pac-Man by 700 votes, and I have my doubts Drake could win that match if it was a 1v1. That was it, Drake's entire history leading up to this match. Why he continues to get these high seeds and all this bracket backing, I will never understand. Nathan Drake is on par with GTA and Call of Duty, only he actually keeps making contests to embarrass himself in while a lot of other casualbait knew when to quit. Not that Tails's history was all that much better, but his round 1 losses were generally to more respectable opponents. And for pete's sake, the guy has never lost to CATS. When the match started and Tails just boat raced this clown, I could not have been happier. I didn't get a whole lot of debated stuff right this contest, but I can always look at this match plus the one after and just smile. You finally did it little man, and with my lucky \#13 to boot. It might be time to retire Nathan Drake, by the way. If he keeps getting in I'm sure this won't be the last of his embarrassing losses. If he does get in again, I would put him 1v1 with CATS for hilarity's sake. ## Lightning_Strikes's Analysis **What happened?:** Another debated match that looked less debated as things went on. Sonic looked good, western characters have been a mix and Uncharted looked bad even despite 4. The match started as 60/40 which is pretty awful, but Drake did redeem himself somewhat as the match went on. Still pretty bad since I can't imagine Tails suddenly being super strong. **What could this mean?:** Uncharted has never been good here for some reason, even among Sony series, and that is clearly still true. Sonic Team has looked good and that continues, this was a better showing for Tails than The Boss managed in 2010, and I can't see Drake being that much weaker. ## Safer777's Analysis Before the contest this match was debatable. But as the contest went on it was obvious that Nathan would lose. He is from a new series and we hate new things here. So Tails won easily. At least Nathan has a win because he will never get another if he appears in another contest anyways. And he is PS All Stars too! Also for Tails  this is his chance to finally reach a 3rd round in a contest too! Also people had so much faith in Nathan that Tails prediction was around 33% too! This is embarassing for Board 8 too because yeah almost all of us thought that Drake would win too. --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (14)Geno 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (14)Geno 2018 (revid 83723)_ ## Ulti's Analysis As Final Fantasy 7 has continued to slowly erode over the years, a few things have kept it from complete and total collapse. One is Cloud appearing in Smash Bros. Another is probably the Dissidia games, even though I loathe them all and think they are absolute filth. I'd rather deal with any parvo diarrhea over ever playing a Dissidia game again. For those not involved in animal nursing, parvovirus destroys a dog's intestinal lining and renders them unable to absorb any nutrients. Without a ton of emergency care, they eventually die from a fatal diarrhea, and this sometimes happens anyway because it's very difficult to get rid of the virus to where the body can regrow the intestines. It's a terrible way to die, but the smell is what's worst. Imagine a bloody, liquid shit death emanating from something that's still alive. That's parvovirus. And it's still better than the Dissidia games. The last thing keeping FF7 afloat is Tifa, who is in the same boat as Vivi. No matter how far Square falls, she still has a "magic" to her that makes it very difficult to anti-vote or hate her. Her contest strength has held well over the years, and it really showed in this match. Geno is a beloved character from a beloved game, and people have been pining for him to get into Smash for well over 10 years. Tifa gave no fucks and just annihilated him. Think she cares he's never won a match? Bitch please. Meteor Strike right upside that doll's head. A good comparison for this match is the Squall/Geno match from 2005 where Squall got 75% on him. For Geno to ever win a match, he needs a Smash appearance. This is plain as day at this point. As for Tifa, this match was about prepping for the Mewtwo scrape. Her fans weren't necessarily worried about division titles yet, because this division was stacked. Her, Luigi, Mewtwo, and Mega Man X were all packed in here and they all had a good case behind them. She definitely got off on the right foot though, that's for sure. ## Safer777's Analysis Tifa is from FF 7 but she doesn't get antivoted as much as the guys. I think there are 2 good reasons for this. Have you checked her gloves? They are awesome! Anyways Tifa is strong. Always has been. Sure she falls as all FF 7 characters but not as much. She manages to advance to Round 3 all the time except 1 time where in a multi way poll Sephiroth was there so SFF'ed. As for Geno I learned something.  He is a record holder! Seriously! He has taken part in 6 contests and hasn't a single victory! Damn! Who keeps nominating him? But there is a twist now. He got in Smash! As a costume. But it doesn't matter. He will be in the next contest and maybe he will get his 1st win too! Which I doubt. The Dissidia games seems they don't do anything for the FF series too. I wonder why? I don't like them to tell the truth but still you would think they would do something for the characters since they have made 3 of them, meaning people care for these games. ## Tsunami's Analysis Geno is another one of those characters that has become a bracket mainstay despite never winning a match. He's now 0-6 after this loss, and none of them have been terribly close. There are many reasons for this. He's a side character from a fairly niche RPG, one that wasn't released in PAL regions until much, much later (via Virtual Console). Furthermore, its initial release was fairly late in its console's lifespan, a Super NES game from 1996, albeit still a good few months before the N64 came out. Unlike its Japanese counterpart, the Super Famicom, which was still getting new games in 1999, the SNES died out pretty quickly once the N64 arrived, with no games coming out beyond 1997. (Though the N64 did even worse, managing to essentially die out *before* the GameCube actually launched, resulting in roughly 85% of Nintendo's US releases in 2001 being for its handhelds.) And worst of all, he's *extremely* easy to SFF, being the product of a collaboration between Nintendo and Square, which means that either company's presence in a poll is bad for him. I don't think he's incapable of winning a match, because that last factor could easily work in his favor if he ever drew one of those overseeded nobodies we see so often, but it's an exercise in futility trying to make it happen. --- ## (6)GLaDOS vs (11)Mewtwo 2018 _source: (6)GLaDOS vs (11)Mewtwo 2018 (revid 83724)_ ## Ulti's Analysis There are people pointing to this match as evidence of Mewtwo's FRAUDULENCE before the Tifa match even happened, but I highly disagree. This is pretty much exactly what Mewtwo was supposed to do against GLaDOS -- a boring 63-37 type of beatdown that gets chalked up into the ether of forgotten round one matches. Given he was only an 11 seed, only had 59% of people behind him, and is finally back in Smash Bros without DLC, I find this blowout fairly impressive. It's right in line with with the LOL x stats from 2010 and 2013. As for GLaDOS, this is the best possible outcome for rallybait characters. You can catch and bandwagon and maybe win a contest, but after that your best hope is getting a middling seed and retaining a fraction of strength. GLaDOS and L-Block are the best examples we have of a life after rallybait (I know Portal never won anything, but it took over the internet in 2007 in the same way Undertale did in 2015). Some strength, maybe a win or two, and it's all good. What's happened to Draven is pretty much the exact opposite of what a rallybait character could hope for. We'll probably see GLaDOS and L-Block every year. I'll be shocked if we see Draven again. ## Safer777's Analysis There were some voices that Mewtwo is a fraud and GlaDOS could do it. I don't understand why. Sure GlaDOS did good in 2013. So did Mewtwo. And in 2013 we had rallies everywhere. So Mewtwo won easily here in this match. You know he is one of the 3 most famous Pokemon right? Anyways nice and easy win for Mewtwo. Oh yeah he is Smash too in case you are wondering. This results is according to the X-stats too so that means everything is fine! ## Tsunami's Analysis Even before the contest started, people were calling for Mewtwo to be exposed as a **FRAUD**, which was perfectly natural because he'd overperformed last time. The thing is, there was nothing "fraudulent" about Mewtwo's strength. As I stated during my write-up of Vincent's match, Mewtwo was our rally target because Pokémon was something we could rally around to try to stop Draven, and Mewtwo was the only one with a bracket placement favorable to doing so, as the others would SFF each other out before they could see Draven. 2013 wasn't Mewtwo's first deep run, however, so it was easy for a casual who merely looked at past results without actually comprehending them to think that Mewtwo was an absolute beast. (Mewtwo's first deep run, in 2008, was the result of extremely fortuitous bracket placement, advancing two rounds on natural strength and then taking advantage of triple Square SFF to advance out of a third-round fourpack in which he was probably the weakest character naturally.) This match, however, would not give the board what they wanted, as Mewtwo handily destroyed a character that had reached the Top 27 in 2013 and finished in second place in her Round 3 defeat. Of course, it wasn't truly surprising as GLaDOS was expected to decline--Games may not equal characters, but Portal falling from Top 16 in GotD to 14-seed fodder for Melee in BGE3, along with Portal 2 failing to reach the second round in BGE3 as a 5-seed, suggested that the series was already on the decline then. It's nothing to be ashamed of; it's not easy for a franchise to walk the line between oversaturation and irrelevance. By opting not to turn into a franchise zombie, Portal instead risked fading into the ether. The Oracle Consensus for this match was less than 0.60% off, and the two worst scores were comprised of one overestimation and one underestimation. That's a sign that we knew what we were doing here. --- ## (7)King Dedede vs (10)Revolver Ocelot 2018 _source: (7)King Dedede vs (10)Revolver Ocelot 2018 (revid 83728)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Dedede (2008c) VS Revolver Ocelot (2008c) Dedede has a strength of 15.97. Revolver Ocelot has a strength of 22.67. Revolver Ocelot wins with 64.78% of the vote! LOL X STATS Before every contest we get a series of prediction topics where people analyze each match. It's a super fun series of topics and you get some really good users making really good points. But every now and again you get a huge dud, and this match was it. Ocelot had a 100% chance to win, really guys? Have you been paying attention to how loathed Konami is right now? OR how insane Smash hype is right now? Come on bros, there was no way this match was going to follow the stats. I almost picked Dedede and I frankly wish I would have even though he lost. I absolutely love the guy. He's a big, overly friendly but overly competitive dude who wants to eat all the food and always teams up with the hero when needed. He gets into some fights with the hero, but hey! Gotta keep things lively! He also swings around a megaton hammer that explodes for fun, belly flops on people to KO them in Smash, sits on people to KO them in Smash, does the foot-foot-foot-foot-foot air dance, chain grabs people, and this is his main taunt. What's not to love? Of course he was going to give Ocelot a good fight! When the match first started, things were even for a few minutes before King Dedede started slowly climbing. And when I say slow, I mean 5-10 votes per update with the occasional Ocelot run. The king's a bit heavy, so it's hard for the guy to climb up. Give him a break, okay? I've been there. Losing weight is tough, but you gotta start somewhere. Down 150 and still dropping, son. Ahem. Dedede was able to peak at 168 early, but Ocelot kept stalling, making cuts, or going on the occasional run to keep Dedede from actually winning the match. It continued like this all throughout the evening, past midnight, and alllllllll night long. The best thing Dedede was able to manage was a 200 vote lead, but Ocelot was able to stall that one out too. We finally got an answer to how this match would go as the morning vote started trickling in. Around 4 am, Ocelot finally started taking the match over. By 5:30 we were tied, and from there it was all about who would win the morning vote. One would assume the Nintendo character would take the morning vote, but not today my friends. Remember that slow climb Dedede made at the beginning of the match? Ocelot started doing that in the morning, and after spending all morning fighting with Dedede with the match in the 100-150 range, noon came and just buried the king. This match never got completely out of control, as you'll see in a second, but Dedede never came close to winning once noon came. There was, however, one major silver lining for King Dedede in this match. 328 votes! It beat Garrus/Ramza by almost 100, which is nuts. Make no mistake here though, Ocelot may have won this match but this was a horrible result. He was supposed to break 60%, and even the oracle people who had sniffed a rat didn't see this coming. Their consensus was 55%. 50.5% is just a total embarrassment, and it required a small miracle with the morning vote, a superhuman effort to not get buried at night, a small reddit rally, and the double votes from registered users to avoid a very embarrassing upset. There was however a silver lining for Ocelot, which is that he finally came up clutch in an unexpectedly close match. He has a bit of a history choking these away. In 2005 no one thought anything of his match with Pac-Man, and then he chokes out of no where. In 2007, he gets this super close win over Jill Valentine for second place in his round one 4way, and then in round two he gets in this weird battle for second place with Kefka and Marcus Fenix. Ocelot lost that one close too, in a match that never should have been in doubt. Who the hell is Marcus Fenix? Then 2008 happens and Jill Valentine erases Ocelot's one moment. 2010 was probably his worst ever match, because for once he was the one making things close unexpectedly. Pokemon Trainer Red was a massive favorite, and Ocelot made it close by some miracle. But as usual, Ocelot lost. So for Ocelot to win a close match like this, and set a record in the process, was an exorcism of sorts for the dude. But given his luck, Dedede will get a rematch next time and beat him by 300. We'll see. ## Safer777's Analysis For this match almost everyone had Ocelot. The Crew had him too. But you aren't going to...Okay screw it. King Dedede is in Smash. Duh. So of course he put a major fight here. Still it is not that Ocelot is strong or something. I mean even Pac-Man has beaten him! So this match had Dedede going up at the start and after a hew hours he was winning with around 200 votes. But then Ocelot came back and he was winning with around 300 votes! Damn! Dedede started cutting though but Ocelot managed to hold on and he won with exactly 300 votes. Also I noticed something strange here, for me at least. Dedede had over 51.50% at USA which is where most votes coming from and he still  lost because Ocelot was winning in almost everywhere else. I think this is the first time in the contest that a character won in USA but lost eventually. Don't quote me on that though. And as always a close match is always good. I think one of the closest wire to wire matches too! As I said in a previous match a bad victory is still a victory. The prediction percentage was in the middle too. ## Tsunami's Analysis This set a new Character Battle record for closest wire-to-wire 24-hour match, though still trailing DKC2 \> Xenoblade in 2015 for the overall 24-hour record. The largest lead by either side was 328. The final margin of 300 is also \#25 on the list of closest 1v1 matches, though unlike the previous stat, that's based on where things stood at the end of the contest rather than at the time that it happened. At the time it would've been \#19. Dedede took the early lead and managed to get it out over 200 for a little while about 5 hours in, but Ocelot took the lead during the 10th hour and never relinquished it. This, like most results, was seen as a sign of Metal Gear declining, but honestly, Ocelot has always been like this. He debuted in the Villains Contest and couldn't even break 55% on Nemesis, but the very next round he got almost as much against Dr. Wily. Made his "regular" contest debut that summer and lost to Pac-Man. Ruined a bunch of Gurus in 2007 by beating Jill Valentine in what probably amounted to a neutral field re: the other two characters in the match (Cloud and Midgar Zolom), then ruined them *again* the following year by losing to Jill despite MGS4 being released in the interim. And then in 2010 he has a match very similar to this one, against Red, coming out on the losing end in what might've been one of the last gasps for "wait till the kiddies wake up" (12-hour match, midnight EST start, Ocelot led early but lost it at the end). This would seem to be a weaker character than he'd been going even with last, but it's long been my belief that each successive appearance in a Smash game strengthens a character. Captain Falcon was one of the original twelve and has become a decent midcarder despite hailing from a franchise that almost no one has played, and it seems likely that Kirby also gets more of his strength from being one of the original 12 than from his own games. Well, Dedede's now on his third appearance in Smash, dating back to Brawl. There's a chance he's not really that weak after all. It's tough to say since he didn't make the bracket in 2013 and wasn't in the Villains Contest in 2005 (not that he's really a villain in most of his appearances, but I'm sure he was eligible anyway), leaving him with only a single previous appearance shortly after Brawl came out in which he had to contend with another Brawl newcomer and two midcarders who were independent of Smash and of each other. At any rate, I think he deserves further consideration. The Smash roster is so big as of Ultimate that an entire 64-character contest could be held without a single non-Smash character. That's a little frightening. --- ## (2)Mega Man X vs (15)Isabelle 2018 _source: (2)Mega Man X vs (15)Isabelle 2018 (revid 83727)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Mega Man X put his hat into the ring for the division title in dominant fashion as division 7's first round came to a close, and it took us back to the 2002 days of the classic Mega Man matches where he beat the absolute piss out Ms. Pac-Man and Serious Sam. TUHDISDAY those are some of our biggest blowouts ever. And though we're well past the days where characters and games regularly break 90% in polls, what Mega Man X did here in this match is about the best one could ask for in modern times. To put this a different way, Link couldn't break 80% on Ganondorf this year. Yeah. Also I think this match might be decent evidence against the whole Smash thing, unless Isabelle would be trash enough without it to get 5-10% against Mega Man X here without it, which she could very well be. As for the division, obviously we know what happened now because if we only factor in round one I honestly think Luigi's performance looked the best. 81% on Isabelle or 73% on Geno just doesn't look as good as 77% on Edgeworth to me. But what do I know, I'm just a hindsight 50-50 guy :p ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result! Damn! Okay I know MMX is strong but a quadrupling? Isabelle is a newcomer yeah but seriously. We are talking about a heavy beatdown here. I wonder how MMX would do in 2013 if there wasn't a rally back then. Eh we will never know. What else to say? MMX is a beast! I wonder though why the first contest for MMX was  2008. Why not in any of the previous ones? I am not sure. Maybe there is something that I don't know. What else to say here? The biggest victory in the contest so far! Americans really love the MM series. Who knows why. ## Tsunami's Analysis There's only so much that a Smash appearance can do for you, though. Animal Crossing is part of the long list of franchises that Nintendo initially thought would be unpopular outside of Japan, then decided (or were told) otherwise. It's far from the most successful franchise of that class, however; if I'm not mistaken, *Pokémon* qualifies as something Nintendo was initially unsure about bringing to other markets, and of course we all know the story of how Fire Emblem only made it to the western world because the localization team for Super Smash Bros. Melee defied orders to remove Roy and Marth from the game. We still can't get a conclusive read on whether Mega Man X or Mega Man Classic is stronger. Up until this year, I thought it was X, but Classic looked good this year. It seems silly to be talking about that in a match where X broke 80%, but there aren't exactly a lot of other opportunities to do so. I guess maybe I could've saved that for Round 2 though. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (16)Albert Wesker 2018 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (16)Albert Wesker 2018 (revid 88240)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match seems oddly familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Hmm. Oh yeah! It was almost the same exact percentages and the same exact trends, too. It was freaking eerie, and it kind of showed how off Sephiroth would be for this entire contest. Division 8 in general was the oddball division, and I feel like Allen did this intentionally to make sure Sephiroth would end up in the Noble Nine's group post-contest instead of just totally snubbing him. With the way this bracket was set up, either legends were waiting for every division winner in a double elimination bracket. This meant one had to be left out, which ended up being Sephiroth. Message From Ultima_X on 10/05/2018   For archiving/post contest purposes only (you're free to just ban me if I share this one publicly before the contest ends, seriously, got no plans on spilling this before its due date): why was Sephiroth not counted as a legend despite winning a contest in the past? Did he just get the least amount of nominations? Did the other 8 get ordered by nomination number or was it kind of planned out intentionally? If this gets answered, am I free to share the info when the contest ends and I do my writeups or no? Message From GameFAQs on 10/05/2018   We only needed eight for the double elimination bracket and Sephiroth was the most obvious cut since Final Fantasy VII already has a more popular rep in Cloud. You can share this with anyone since it's not a big secret and I'm sure plenty of people figured it out on their own. So there you go. But Allen was smart about this and made Sephiroth's division hilariously weak to make sure he won it. Only two threats were possible, a rallied Draven or Seph being so weak now that Ryu would beat him with a Smash boost. Seph would end up really weak this contest compared to what he was, but he's not that weak. Not yet, anyway. I would love to see a Seph vs Kefka match just to see where Wesker actually stands. Wesker got such a raw deal in this contest. I'm sure Seph is stronger than Kefka, but both of them having identical matches with the guy is just weird. ## Safer777's Analysis Finally a N9'er! We haven't seen one of them in a long time! Anyways people were expecting for Seph to do around 70% and see how he did. RE has boosted I believe.  All RE characters did decent I say and 2 managed to advance too. Seph maybe the weakest N9'er yeah but come on he can take out almost all the cast in the main bracket even now. So okay performance I say. Man remember the term Clinkeroth? ## Tsunami's Analysis This should've been an early warning that Sephiroth was off his game this year. Yes, he broke 70%, but the popular line was that Resident Evil had vastly declined. Keep in mind that not only should Wesker be weaker now than he was when he faced Kefka, but Kefka should've been weaker when he faced Wesker than he is now. Yes, that *was* the first time Kefka had gotten his final boss sprite in a match pic, so it was probably a stronger Kefka than what we'd seen up to that point in contest history, but Kefka is definitely a character who seems to have boosted over time rather than declined. So unless a lot of our assumptions are incorrect, a stronger Wesker did worse against a weaker Kefka than this Wesker did against Sephiroth. Is anyone taking the Kefka \> Sephiroth upset? ...Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some people took that upset simply because Kefka has a reputation for strange results and beating his FF7 counterpart is about as strange as it gets. I don't think I would, even though I picked FF6 to upset FF7 in 2015. --- ## (8)Richter Belmont vs (9)Captain Falcon 2018 _source: (8)Richter Belmont vs (9)Captain Falcon 2018 (revid 83729)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Richter Belmont got a lot of nominations and a ton of hype to pull an upset in this match thanks to this trailer for Smash Bros Ultimate. I know it's a trailer for Simon, but Richter was just randomly thrown in there and it shocked everyone. He actually got a higher seed than Simon in this contest, if you can believe that. That trailer even got Alucard a ton of run. And here I am feeling like the odd one out, because fuck Richter Belmont. @KanzarisKelshen and I keep struggling to figure out why I hate games like The World Ends With You, Shadow of the Colossus, the Gwendolyn path of Odin Sphere, and so on. I've finally figured it out. If a character handles like fucking garbage, I'm done with them. It's why Richter Belmont can fuck right off. He's winning me back over in Smash but good hell is he ass in Castlevania. I recently got the platinum trophy in the Rondo of Blood + Symphony of the Night PS4 port, which means I had to suffer through this asshole's garbage-ass handling. Twice. I at least sort of understand why Simon handles like shit. It was the NES. You get a half pass for being on such a weird system. But Richter? Nope. In Rondo of Blood, my first goal was to unlock Maria Renard ASAP and just get the 100% as her, because Richter fucking sucks. That game was in no way designed for him to do well. At least Maria gets a double jump and weapons that can actually handle the game, bad as it is with you dying in 1-3 hits to literally anything and having such trash level design. Rondo is complete and utter sewage, but playing as Maria makes it sort of bearable with her handling ability. Then you play through Symphony of the Night and have a total blast with Alucard while Richter is sitting there letting Shaft do whatever he wants like the little punk that he is. Alucard has to bail his sorry ass out, twice, and it's no big deal. And my reward for clearing everything as Alucard? Having to beat the game with this useless garbage and dealing with all the same issues from Rondo of Blood. Hey Konami, bad handling, bad move inputs, and dying to anything in 1-3 hits wasn't fun the first time. Why the fuck would you not learn from your mistake? Richter's handling is absolute shit, his HP is shit, his move inputs are embarrassing, and his actual character is complete dick. At least Simon, for having similar handling problems, is modeled after Conan the Barbarian. Simon is a man's man. Richter is an idiot. Do not let this video fool you. These inputs are Virtua Fighter tier of bullshit and I am 100% convinced this guy modded his controller or hacked the game for simpler inputs or something. There is just no way. We can't just have a simple hadouken motion for dash, oh no. Gotta have us hit up first for some dumb reason. Can't have high jump be dragon punch, oh no. Gotta hit down then up then jump. Dumb. He is fun in Smash and is winning me over a little, don't get me wrong, but fuck 'em. He deserved to get his ass whooped. Shout out to Captain Falcon for lapping this fucking clown. What a well deserved 60-40 from one of the biggest Smash boost characters ever. I would love to know how many people knew who this dude was before Smash 64. I sure as hell didn't know him. Didn't know Ness or Samus either, let alone Falcon. I would bet at least 95% of his strength comes from Smash Bros alone, yet here is he going 60-40 on a fool. Good show bro. Sucks you had to deal with Sephiroth round 2, because I'm extra bullish on the guy right now with how easily he can cheese the stupid Dr. Wily spirit battle in Ultimate. You know who sucks ass in that fight? Richter Belmont. Know who can cheese it and win without thinking? CAPTAIN MOTHER FUCKING FALCON, THAT'S WHO. Yet another reason why this match was JUSTICE. ## Safer777's Analysis Richter is in Smash! But Falcon is in Smash too so SFF here! If you are in Smash you are a Nintendo character! Or something! Listen even I know the Falcon Punch thing now. Now way he would have lost. Not from Richter at least. He got a higher seed than Falcon too strangely enough. So a win above 60% is pretty good for Falcon. Punch them Falcon! Just punch them! What else to say? ## Tsunami's Analysis AKA the point where the concept of "Smash Boost" eradicated all ability to think rationally. People were calling for the potential upset here because of Richter's appearance in a trailer, noting that he'd managed a higher seed than Simon despite merely being his Echo Fighter. Also there was something about a Castlevania series on Netflix. Based on Alucard's performance, and maybe even the Belmonts', the idea that the series caused a boost might have been valid. But "Smash Boost" doesn't help when you're up against a fellow Smasher, and it *certainly* doesn't help when you're up against someone who's been in *more* Smash Bros. games than you. As I stated just three write-ups ago, Captain Falcon is a midcarder entirely based off of being one of the original twelve. Quick, name the only contest other than Rivalry Rumble (where the nature of the contest *forced* Captain Falcon to bring someone else along) to feature a representative of the F-Zero franchise other than Captain Falcon himself? It's Game of the Decade. F-Zero GX was a 12-seed, losing in Round 1 to Dragon Age: Origins. This result was extremely obvious and all the talk of an upset was silly. Nice showing by Richter, though. --- ## (5)Amaterasu vs (12)Draven 2018 _source: (5)Amaterasu vs (12)Draven 2018 (revid 83778)_ ## Ulti's Analysis For the sake of this writeup, I'm only historically looking at 1v1 results. If someone else wants to look up 4ways or 3ways, have fun. In our very first contest, the Summer 2002 Contest, Ms. Pac-Man only scored 5257 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Summer 2003 Contest, something called AiAi scored 8802 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Spring 2004 Contest, our first games contest, Adventure only scored 4686 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Summer 2004 Contest, Tanner only scored 4492 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the villains contest, Giygas only scored 11966 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Summer 2005 Contest, Yuri Hyuga only scored 10813 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the series contest, Madden NFL only scored 9186 in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Summer 2006 Contest, Carmen Sandiego only scored 16578 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Fall 2010 Contest, Falco only scored 10419 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest: In the Rivalry Rumble, Arthas and Illidan only scored 4598 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest, and good, because fuck Blizzard. They are indefensible trash: In the Fall 2015 Contest, Hearthstone only scored 3604 votes in a poll. It was the lowest of that contest, and good, because Hearthstone is by far the worst video game ever made: That brings us to this match, but before we do, take a deep dive into those polls. The winners, in order: Mega Man, Link, a Zelda game, Solid Snake, Ganondorf, Samus, the Mario series, Zelda, Mario, Link + Ganon, and a Zelda game. Snake is the only odd one out, and his Tanner match was pretty blatant SFF on top of Snake himself bending the knee to Nintendo. Hold that thought. Everyone knows the story of the 2013 contest by now. Draven escaped round one with a late rally, caught fire in round 2, and then it was a shitstorm. We don't need to revisit how embarrassing Board 8 and the League subreddit both acted, though anyone on Board 8 who acts like B8 wasn't just as bad as them is being intellectually dishonest. You all acted like garbage. Anyway Draven won the contest, which we all know by now. People knew Draven would be weaker this time, but no one saw this insanity coming. Amaterasu scored something like the first 70 votes of the poll, and before long people realized Draven was about to pay, big time, for what he did in 2013. The crazy thing is Amaterasu never stopped going up and never lost percentage. There would be no rallies. There would be no miracles. Just Amaterasu of all characters scoring the biggest blowout of the contest. By pure votes one on one, Draven and his 3439 votes were the lowest we've ever seen in a 1v1 poll. Ever. Only the failure of Blizzard even comes close, but here's the thing. Amaterasu did this. Can you imagine if Draven was up against a universally loved character or game instead of a mediocre contest entrant like Amaterasu? How many votes does Draven get here against Zelda, Mega Man, Solid Snake, or Chrono Trigger? 1500? Maybe 2000? It can't actually be overstated how nuts this blowout was, and it shouldn't be a footnote in contest history just because it happened during the dead era on our web site. I've alluded to this match several times in the PCA so far, but rallybait characters got destroyed in this contest and Draven himself ate the biggest blowout of them all. It's a fitting punishment for 2013, and I say this as someone who supports rallies. There was one more rallybait character to get rid of, but this match showed us we had nothing to worry about. D.Va wasn't going to pull off a damn thing this year. Not in this environment. It's also really hilarious to see Amaterasu up there with the likes of Nintendo elite in our record books. It shows just how badly people wanted Draven to get his ass whipped. Hell before this match, only Mega Man X had broken 80% in a poll. Amaterasu beat that by 8%. That's just nuts. It leads to the obvious question: Can a rally ever happen again on our site? I think so, but this just wasn't the year for it. Simple as that. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result. What to say? If Draven could get a rally he would win. But if not he would lose. But back in 2013 he was losing to Jak and Chie without a rally.  And these 2 are really weak anyways! And 5 years have passed since then and LOL isn't as big as it used to be. So Draven would be weaker. And he didn't get a rally of course. But I don't think anybody expected this! One of the biggest wins of all times and Amaterasu did it? Damn! Most people were ecstatic to see Draven doing that badly. Me not so. Like it or not he was the Champion! And the board was butthurt back then it was fun to see all the memes and the discussions and the mayhem. Hey it was exciting! Of course most didn't liked that thing and I get it. But then again another champion lost in the  1st round too. I am reffering to L-Block of course too. Still no matter what this prooved that no rallies were in Round 1. Rallies make things exciting. Yeah it is my opinion and all that. But man! I think Draven is the weakest character in the bracket! So the strongest character in the previous contest goes to be the weakest in the next one! Now that is a reversal! Also imagine if a strong character was her instead of Amaterasu. We could see more than 90%! Someone did the math and Link would score like 98%! Damn! Also I believe this is the lowest a character/game has ever scored in 1 VS 1 match! If you check some previous statistics as Ulti posted them you will see that once upon the time even the worse losers were scoring a lot more. Times have changed. Amazing win for Ammy of course. To tell the truth I don't want to have Draven again in a contest. Think about that. 2 contests, in 1 he came first, in 1 he came last! Perfect to retire that character! ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: I won't get into the 2013 Draven rally but it was the worst example of rallying we have seen from a very toxic place, and I am not staunchly anti-rallying. So this match was pure catharsis. It was always going to be a beatdown, even if the League of Legends subreddit hadn't banned rallies it isn't what it was and the joke wouldn't work twice. For it to be this strong however, was stunning. It also built over time which was surprising as well, it wasn't just diehards anti-voting. **What could this mean?**: Draven is the only character in this bracket to truly have a claim at being Tanner level. This really hammers home how much that rally hijacked the last contest, now let's never see him again. Good show for Ammy too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Remember what I said about poor first-place Oracles? Yeah, nobody had Amaterasu winning *this* handily. This is somewhere between a septupling and an octupling; the highest anyone predicted was merely between a quadrupling and a quintupling. Arti took first place with a prediction of 82.28% and only three other Oracles had Ammy breaking 80%. I was one of them, which honestly surprises me because I usually have a mental block about predicting huge blowouts. This place was AntiBlowoutFAQs for a while in the early 2010s, and I had some horrendous Oracle predictions on the biggest blowouts of 2015 because I refused to go much higher than the low eighties even on obvious blowouts like Ocarina of Time vs. Hearthstone. I mean, granted, "low eighties" is exactly what I *did* pick here--82% even--but it worked because Oracle consensus was in the low seventies. Interestingly enough, exactly as many Oracles picked Ammy to fail to break 60% as picked her to break 80%, but three of the four that had her under 60% had Draven winning outright. Also, I feel it should be mentioned again that in 2013, Draven was legitimately the Guru favorite in his Round 1 match. 64.08% picked him to beat Jak and Chie, though only 2.04% picked him to beat Ryu and Mega Man X the following round. That's how weak his opening draw was. I talked about this during the Aloy-D. Va match. Allen does this every time, and he'll continue to do it. I'd give a hypothetical, but given how infrequent contests are, there is a 0.00% chance that anything already released would have the rally potential. Unless it's something Pokémon-related, because that's always a possibility. We had Mudkip and Bidoof in 2007 and Missingno in 2010. I could totally get behind a Mimikyu rally. Of course, given how infrequent contests are, by the time CBXI rolls around we'll probably be rallying behind a Gen IX Pokémon. There was also something that went around the board for a bit in later rounds called the "Lineal Noble Nine." Basically, it was a hypothetical scenario where beating a member of the Noble Nine would make a character a member of the Noble Nine, but rather than expanding, the defeated member would lose their status. It doesn't take into account past results, so it's not like that "defeating one is defeating all of them" argument. At the start of the Legends Bracket, it looked as though there could be as many as eight original Noble Niners in the Lineal Noble Nine, and Amaterasu was the one non-original Noble Niner whose spot in the Lineal Noble Nine was safe. As it turned out, there were only five original Noble Niners thanks to some weird upsets--up from the four that were there entering the Legends Bracket. The idea of it consisting of eight actual Noble Niners and Amaterasu was well received. She's beloved here. Combine that fact with how hated Draven is for hijacking the 2013 Contest, and it added up to a huge blowout. I hinted at this in my L-Block write-up, but it seems highly likely that whenever Character Battle XI comes around, it will likely mark the first time that a former contest champion misses the field entirely. I can't imagine that he'll get any nominations from the regulars, and since we only get a contest every other year and 2020 is reserved for a Game of the Decade contest, we probably won't see CBXI until 2022, at which point Draven's run will be nine years old and few trolls would feel the need to try nominating him again. Draven's vote total of 3439 is the lowest we've ever seen in a 1v1 contest. Vote totals may have been down, but that number is actually inflated thanks to the registered voter bonus; his raw total is only 2287. Is that the lowest ever? It is not! Damn, was 2013 filled with awful fodder. And that's just the ones that fell short of Draven's raw total; far more fell short of his adjusted total, including at least one character that might actually be worth something (though not above the fodder line) when not eating hero \> villain SFF. I am a huge Star Fox fan and this makes me sad. Wolf wasn't the only one to get screwed over in this fashion in 2013, but the third character in Leon Kennedy-Albert Wesker was weak enough that Wesker managed to get second place anyway. Wolf, on the other hand, potentially screws Fox out of a victory. It's tough to say for certain but Blue didn't make it to 50% and it's unlikely that Wolf was eating much of Fox's Smash support. That 7.75% is probably about 90% SF64 fans, and if you give even 75% of that 90% to Fox, you get...well, okay, you still get Fox only at 49.32%. So Fox really does need almost all of Wolf's votes to pull off this win. Wolf's only appearance other than this was in Rivalry Rumble, where he and Fox got to beat up on one of the contest's many "non-rivalries" in Round 1 (Fox would probably be an underdog against Yuna 1v1 at the time, though not now, but Wolf easily outclasses Seymour and the rivalry was stronger) before being unfortunately fed to Ryu and Ken. I can't even advocate for giving him a chance to actually prove his strength, though, because the Star Fox series is completely irrelevant now and he'd just be "Random Smash Character \#37.25964". We can't completely forget about 2017's Years Contest, because sub-3439 wasn't all that rare and even sub-2287 was somewhat common. **** **** There were only 35 matches in that contest, so this is fully 20% of them. Allen really achieved his goal of a rally-proof contest with that one, didn't he? I'd ask for a moratorium on gimmick contests, but we have so few contests as it is and I'd still prefer gimmick contests over no contests. --- ## (4)Lara Croft vs (13)Metal Man 2018 _source: (4)Lara Croft vs (13)Metal Man 2018 (revid 88241)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Hopefully HaRRicH and I can make up one day, because his topics and his rallies are always super fun. The cause celebre this year was for Metal Man, which was pretty hilarious because who knows if some random robot master from 1988 (christ I'm old, I remember when Mega Man 2 came out) would even be eligible. Turns out he was! This match was never intended to actually be a match, it was just a nod from Allen to Board 8 for a job well done over the years. None of us had any delusions of Metal Man actually winning this match, and it's hard to really look at what Lara did here as anything impressive. Congrats, you got 68% on a mid boss that no one actually cares about, who is so awful that he's weak against his own weapon. I'm convinced 90% of the people who voted for Metal Man in this match did so because Mega Man in Smash Bros uses the metal blades as one of the B moves. The other 10% probably voted for him because of how hilariously absurd the metal blades actually are in Mega Man 2. You could do an ESPN 30 For 30 about just how much they utterly break the game. I do know that no one actually gives a crap about Lara Croft anymore. She won this match by default. It's as simple as that. Her glory years were back in the 90s and with Square now publishing the Tomb Raider games, the brand is radioactive. One of the only things worse would be "Blizzard" or "Electronic Arts" on the box. We would see proof of this in round two soon enough. ## Safer777's Analysis For people that know their Megaman games Metal Man is an iconic enemy. For the rest of us he is just an enemy that has appeared in some MM game. Also Lara was a 1 seed in the very first contest! And even though she is an icon and she is from back then when we were playing games as a site she never did good. But no way she would lose against a random robot master! So she won with more than a doubling. Still seeing icons getting wins is always nice. Also I don't understand why Lara isn't that popular now. I mean the new Trilogy did really well. The first game of the new trilogy called just Tomb Raider has sold more than 11.000.000 copies! How many games can say that they have sold that well? The 2nd called Rise Of The Tomb Raider sold more than 7.000.000! Seriously! I have played these 2 and I can confirm there are good games. So why isn't she more famous or why most people don't like her I don't get it. And it is not that there are other more popular female heroes in video games too. And you know some games that people here really like? They have sold like less than 1.000.000! And don't tell me sales don't mean much. Sales mean everything. A game sells well and we have sequels and spin-offs. And that is. I guess this is why people say that gamers are sexist or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh, hey, speaking of "Random (insert game here) Character \#3.14159", have a Robot Master from Mega Man 2. I briefly entertained the idea that an attempt at a Draven rally might actually let Metal Man pull this upset, because the types of trolls that would be attracted to this would pick the most anti-establishment choices possible and Lara Croft isn't strong enough to weather that storm. Turns out, Lara's either not as weak as I thought, or nominating random Mega Man characters that don't recur across the entire series was just *that* stupid an idea. I prefer to think it's the latter. X's presence in contests has conclusively proven that "Mega Man" refers only to the classic incarnation. Why have we not tried to put other Mega Men into contests? I mean, heck, if you go back far enough Mega Man Legends *has* seen representation in these contests. ...Oh, right. Literally every other member of the Noble Nine had a female member of their franchise seeded higher than this. Marle was a 7-seed. Amy Rose was a *6. **Amy Rose!*** And Roll was only an 8-seed, and probably only got that because people wanted to get every Noble Niner's best female co-star into the contest. (Just quietly ignore the fact that with Brawl not out yet, no one on the female half of the bracket had actually been in the same game as Solid Snake as of that time. The Boss is easily the strongest female Metal Gear Solid character, and MGS3 was the most recent release in the franchise at the time. This was a far superior option to putting Meryl or Sniper Wolf or someone into the contest.) If we ever have another half-male, half-female bracket, it should be mixed up rather than split, so that every Round 1 match is male vs. female. Do it evenly, though, so that stronger female characters are against weaker male characters and vice versa. Zelda probably gets a 1-seed and gets to school some 16-seeded male. Link probably gets to feast on Hat Kid in Round 1, which will confuse people who still don't realize Hat Kid's a girl. --- ## (3)Ryu vs (14)Lloyd Irving 2018 _source: (3)Ryu vs (14)Lloyd Irving 2018 (revid 83735)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Not gonna lie, I completely forgot Lloyd had even made this bracket until I was actually doing the PCA this year. That's how forgettable some of these round one matches are, and it's sad because Tales of Symphonia basically took this site over for a few months back in the day. Can you believe that was 15 years ago, by the way? God I'm old. That was one of the 10 games I picked after winning Spring 2004. I can't remember them all offhand, but I remember that one game for HaRRicH, a game for Aeon Azuran, Tales of Symphonia, and Chrono Cross. Tales by itself made the whole thing worth it. I love that style of game where you're actually a part of the action instead of just "press attack x47, cure, cast a spell for fun, repeat". As for Ryu, he is my most hated character in all of Street Fighter but he's winning me over due to -- surprise surprise -- Smash Bros. He finally made it into a game where he doesn't shotospam for 10 minutes at a time, and it's a huge breath of fresh air. The guy is damn satisfying to use, and you feel the weight of his man mode kicks on people. Heaven help you if he lands a perfect shoryuken, too. I feel like this is what he's supposed to be in Street Fighter but he just falls flat when he plays identically in every single game. He even sucks in MvC3 and the other crossover games. But in Smash he really works. Dunno why. But yeah this match was an expected blowout and told us nothing about whether or not Ryu could beat Sephiroth. Moving on. ## Safer777's Analysis Well Ruy is the most popular fighting game character here. He is good enough in these things. He has always in all 10 contests managed to reach at least the 2nd round. As for Lloyd he is in one of the Tales games. And Tales games don't do well here. So of course Ryu won easily. He almost reached 70% too. So what else to say. Supposedly Ruy has a chance to even beat Sephiroth now but we will see about that. Ryu is an icon. Icons deserve to win matches! Oh and also he is in Smash? Of course he is in there.  Also people told me that Ryu is a non NN'er that has faced the most different NN'ers too! He always loses to them of course but this prooves what a fighter he is. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh hey, Tales doing Tales things again. I am pleased that Tales didn't get to fodder up this contest too much. I am also pleased that Ryu got a chance to do Ryu things. He was consistently one of the strongest non-Noble Niners in the earliest days of the contests, though he hasn't quite been the same since his loss to Bowser in 2005. After the Lineal Noble Nine had first been proposed, I made a thought experiment as to what if the then-arbitrary cutoff for the elite tier had been placed at something other than 9 (which ultimately ended up being the perfect number, but that's with hindsight; the Noble Nine had been crowned long before 2006 proved that Nine was the correct number, no more and no less). Ryu ended up taking back his own spot *twice*, once when he avenged his 2005 loss to Bowser in round 1 in 2007 and once when he advanced in second place behind Auron in Round 2 in 2007, only for Cloud to SFF Auron the next round and allow Ryu to advance in second place again. Someone else commented that this was a very Ryu thing to do. There is one Noble Niner who owns a spot in the Lineal Nine that they previously owned, but it's not their original spot and they didn't take it directly from the character they lost it to. After losing his original spot to Vincent in 2007, Crono took Sonic's former spot by defeating L-Block in 2008. After losing that spot to Missingno in 2010, the spot changed hands three times in as many rounds in 2013, ultimately landing with Mega Man (who still hadn't recovered from losing to WCC in 2008), who Crono beat this year (though not before taking Mega Man's *original* spot from Bowser in Round 1 of Legends only to give it to Cloud in Round 2.) --- ## (6)Commander Shepard vs (11)King K. Rool 2018 _source: (6)Commander Shepard vs (11)King K. Rool 2018 (revid 83740)_ ## Ulti's Analysis There are some Mass Effect series spoilers in this writeup. You were warned. I feel like this match would have been a lot more shocking and a lot more interesting had we not literally just watched the exact same match happen with Dedede vs Ocelot two days prior. Seriously, go open this match and Dedede vs Ocelot on the gamefaqscontests updater charts in separate tabs. It's the exact same match. Just replace Dedede with King K. Rool for the plucky Nintendo underdog slot fueled by Smash hype and Ocelot with Shepard as the non-Nintendo favorite who doubles as an anti-vote magnet. King Crue-- errrrrrr, "King K. Rool" (what a freaking stupid name) opened the match with a shocking but tiny early lead, just like Dedede. He got it up to 150 votes, then Shepard fought back overnight just like Ocelot did. Around 5 in the morning, just like last time, we got answer. It would have been in doubt had we not seen this just happen, but we all knew Shep was taking the morning vote and winning. He has more innate strength to draw from than Ocelot and one would think Rool is weaker than Dedede. Not exactly debatable here, though it's quite funny that the villain in Donkey Kong games now has his own personal contest choke under his belt. Had he pulled off this upset it would have been such a randomly awesome result. That said, this match was 100% a referendum on just how badly Electronic Arts fucked up the Mass Effect series and how much gamers loathe that brand now. People like Shepard, but he has the sins of EA crawling on his back and paid for it big time in this poll. Not that he was going to beat Ryu anyway, but needing a morning vote boost to beat Nintendo's 87th tier is such an embarrassment given where the character used to be. We used to joke about how he was actually the best character in that Link/Draven scrap. Now we had people actively rooting for him to lose to a fat alligator with predictable super armor, in a match where almost 100% of the Rool voters were Smash fans or Mass Effect haters. No one voted for Rool because they actually like him from the DK games. I actually disagree with the anti-Mass Effect crybabies and largely think they're a bunch of spoiled idiots who never should have been catered to in the first place, and EA changing the ending of Mass Effect 3 was a mistake. You don't deal with a spoiled POS by catering to it, be it a spoiled SJW moron, a spoiled alt right moron, an incel, a dog, or anything else. In any dog training manual not written by a positive-only dipshit, you learn "let it cry". Dogs will whine to get what they want. You train them by ignoring them when this happens, and because the types of gamers who whined over the Mass Effect 3 ending are on about the same intelligence level as a dog -- that is, the level of a 2 year old toddler -- they should have been trained in the exact same way. Ignore it until it shuts up. Whiny gamers are not people to cater to. Ever. That's how the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy got worse after EA caved, and it directly led to all of the entitled trash surrounding Andromeda. A bunch of whiny trolls and idiots killed off a fine series, and now we're sitting here watching Commander Shepard struggle to beat a reptile no one cares about in a contest. How did we get here? Let's back up a bit. I have a platinum trophy for all four Mass Effect games, so I'm more qualified than probably 95% of people who have played those games to explain why people voted here the way they did. Back in 2007, Mass Effect dropped. It was a sci-fi adventure that most people couldn't make sense of unless they had played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It was fun, but it was raw. It was a glitchy Mess, but it gave us some new characters we could sink our teeth into, some great storytelling, and some amazing plot twists. We were shocked that Seth Green was a voice. We were shocked at how damn cool Garrus and Tali and Wrex were. The whole thing was an incredible, albeit flawed. And then this happens. Oh. Okay. Well, fuck. Then whatever feelings that scene drew up in all of us were there for all of Mass Effect 2, and really that's where this all went wrong. Mass Effect 2 was too good, which made it impossible for 3 to satisfy people. \*I\* was happy with it because I'm not an entitled punk, but I want to point out that 99.9% of that game is on 2's level. Mass Effect 3 is a fantastic game, and even if I agreed with people on the ending it shouldn't ruin how good that game actually was. It's like letting a slightly premature ejaculation ruin a good night of sex leading up to it for you. It's like hey moron, you still got a girl to have sex with you. Shut the hell up and enjoy it. As a random example, these two scenes are legendary for me. Am I supposed to let a weird ending ruin all that? I admit that we're better off not knowing the motivations of a Lovecraft villain, but am I supposed to let that one ending scene ruin an entire series? Fuck no. "They have earned the right to try." Nothing beats bringing Javik on every mission. That guy is such a fucking savage. And EA never, ever, ever should have caved. It caused the nonsense with Andromeda that killed the series, unless some other developer gets to make it I suppose. I feel like my review does a decent enough job of defending the game: Thanks, trolls. No more Mass Effect because you liked the second game too much. And here we are. Here the bleep we are. With Shepard struggling with whatever the King is supposed to be. I get Smash hype and all, but jeez. Three final points. I am better at Mass Effect 3 multiplayer than you: To this day I am the \#1 Geth Trooper Soldier in the world in that game. I could log on right now and within an hour have people asking me for carries in platinum. Second, Shepard was indoctrinated. Do not @ me. Last and most important, FemShep \> a comedy voice actor's trashy acting job. People who compare Mark Meer to Jennifer Hale and try pretending Hale is worse are probably the same people who need to be told not to eat Tide Pods. They are proof that opinions can be wrong. Renegade FemShep \> whatever garbage you like. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this result. Need to say more? And people were saying that Shepard is the strongest western character too! But after Garrus barely beat Ramza people got worried. Plus Rool is in Smash. So yeah. But Shepard should be much stronger right? Yeah sure! In fact Rool was winning for a while at the start! Man Smash does wonders. Eventually Shepard managed to recover and won with no problems in a close match. So why this happened? Mass Effect Andromeda came out recently and man this game had so much negativity when it came out it is frightening. I played it out recently with the patches and it was good. But when it first came out? Yeah sure. It was so bad that EA cancelled the series! Not officialy at least but yup. And Shepard wasn't in the game but since he is the face of the ME series he of course have suffered. At least he managed to win I guess. And without Smash boost for Rool he would have win even easier. Still close matches are always good especially ones where there are some lead changes like this one. ME games are amazing. I have played all 4 of them and ME 3 was the only multiplayer game I have ever played. I met some people there and we were playing and having so much fun! Then ME Andromeda came and everything went down. Still seeing Shepard suffer because of this is sad. Remember when he beat Aeris easily? Yeah. ## Tsunami's Analysis Remember what I said two matches ago about another gender-equal bracket? Yeah, forget that I even mentioned it. Thanks to characters so customizable that they don't even have a canon gender, we can never have that particular gimmick ever again. K. Rool is another Nintendo villain that failed to make the Villains Contest. Granted there were only 32 slots, but we had representatives from Grand Theft Auto in there. I mean, technically doesn't that series have a [villain protagonist](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist)/[hero antagonist](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroAntagonist)? Nintendo was boosting all over the place, though, and Mass Effect is a decaying franchise, so this was a decent upset pick. K. Rool led for nearly 7.5 hours, too, before ultimately fading away. --- ## (7)Ellie vs (10)KOS-MOS 2018 _source: (7)Ellie vs (10)KOS-MOS 2018 (revid 85396)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I thought Ellie could win this match, because The Last of Us is popular and Xenosaga hasn't mattered in ages. I have never, ever been more happy to get a random round one match wrong. Because who doesn't love a good melty? Ellie is currently competing in Gamefaq's character tournament. Posted by u/TheStupidRaptor "There is this big character tournament going on over at Gamefaqs, and Ellie was popular enough to make it in. If anyone is already aware of this, then you would know that Joel made it in as well, but he lost to Ike from Fire Emblem in the first round. Pretty unfortunate. But it's Ellie's turn now; so if anyone is interested, you can go to their main page and vote for her. Especially since Ellie is up against Kosmos, and Kosmos is one of the worst, dullest characters ever. How she ended up in a best characters tournament I will never know..... Not that anyone here even knows who she is; the game she's from is extremely obscure and niche after all. Come on, you don't want the amazing, award winning character Ellie to lose to a nobody like Kosmos do you? Edit: Are you fucking kidding me? Ellie lost to Kosmos?! I guess it's true then, Gamefaqs really is ruled by weeaboos who are biased to Japan, RPGs. and boobs. They just lost any credibility they had. Their "tournament" might as well end now." "Are you kidding? The poll just started less than an hour ago. Do you really think that Ellie, an award winning character from a highly successful critically acclaimed game that redefined the survival horror genre, would lose to a bland emotionless cardboard cutout of a character like Kosmos from a obscure forgotten game that made zero impact on the gaming industry? Hell no, Ellie is going to win. I guess all the biased weeaboos got to the poll first. Votes like this fluctuate constantly. Besides, Shulk lost to Sub-Zero. If Shulk, one of the best protagonists to any game ever, LOST, then Kosmos has zero chance of winning. Just you wait, it'll correct itself soon." "What about YOUR and the entire fandom's hatred of Fiora? Everything you all do to her is just uncalled for. And you all cover it up with the whole "we must circle to make Melia our mary sue" agenda. You should be righting the faults in yourself before you call others out for the same exact thing. If you all won't stop hating fiora, why should I stop hating Kosmos? Don't tell me what's unhealthy. ?????? Last time I checked, Mary Magdalene was a real person who died like 2,000 years ago, and not some fantasy game character. I thought Kosmos was a robot, now you're telling me she's reincarnated? I don't even know why I'm talking to you anymore if you're just going to make shit up. And what do you even care? I thought everyone on the internet was an atheist except me." "You're so full of shit. Kosmos in no way overshadows any of the blades that originated in this game. Last time I saw a blade that wasnt Pyra or Mytha on the internet was a rule34 one. You saw porn of Blades. So? I don't know what you're getting at here. (in no particular order) Fiora, Elma, Sharla, Vanea, Pyra, Poppi, Meyneth, Lora, Melia, Celica, Mythra, Hope, Newt, Perun, Morag, Mia, Lin, Haze, Praxis, Kasandra, Alexa, Brighid, Nia, Theory, Irina, Tyrea, Dahlia, Crossette, Pandoria, Oka. There; 30 waifus from Xenoblade Chronicles, and they all hold a million candles to the dumpster fire that is Kosmos. Is your taste fixed yet?" "Stop pretending you're the good guy here; I see through all your empty lies." "Clearly you would need to hear it even more if you think a girl as generic looking and devoid of personality as Kosmos is 'bae'." "Blimey. All of the useless "I got Kosmos" posts get like 50 upvotes each. But when I start an actual discussion on the lack of worth these posts have and how they're somehow allowed despite being against the rules, I get downvoted? .................. Does this mean the subreddit's rules mean NOTHING anymore? Are we allowed to upload all the lets plays, porn, and unmarked spoilers we want now too? And even posts that have absolutely nothing to do with Xenoblade Chronicles too? Because I've seen several posts here a few times that had nothing to do with the game. No one's even allowed to question why rules are being broken? Yeesh; how obnoxious does a group have to be for all this backwards nonsense to happen?" "You are completely blowing things out of proportion. My hatred of Kosmos is irrelevant here. The whole "I got Kosmos" thing is annoying and against the rules regardless. If any other character happened to be the rarest Blade that people bragged about getting, example.......... Vale or....... Dahlia, or Dagas, it doesn't matter who. Seeing these meaningless posts be made over and over is annoying in it of itself. And as for the quote unquote "hate campaign"; you're exaggerating. What happened during gamefaq's tournament does not even come close to being able to be called a "hate campaign". All I did was encourage people on The Last Of Us boards to vote for Ellie because she's a good character and deserved to win far more than Kosmos. I'm sure many other users did the same thing for other characters; there's nothing wrong with that. I only got confused when Kosmos was winning even though the odds were completely against her. I asked why; and it was only then I realized it was because gamefaqs as a whole is unfairly biased to RPG's, games made in Japan, Nintendo games, games that are "old, from their childhood", and they favor "girls with boobs" over actual characters with personality. I doubt 90% of the people that voted for her even heard of Xenosaga before, they just voted for the "weeb" option. That coupled with Shulk losing even though he had so much going for him cemented how hypocritical and contrarian gamefaqs truly is and how they lack any credibility. All the people on this subreddit that said gamefaqs is not a good website, they're totally right. If that all looks like a "hate campaign" to you, and that "I'm only pointing this annoying phenomenon out because I hate Kosmos", you have your head way too far up your ass. Maybe YOU'RE the one launching a "hate campaign" against ME. Ever thought of that?" "Because everyone here is nostalgia blind and can't let go of the fact that their game is dead like a canceled cartoon and has zero hope of ever getting rereleases or sequels. So they made up the "same IP as Xenoblade Chronicles" lie as a way for them to pretend that Xenogears and Xenosaga are still relevant. I get what you're saying. Xenoblade Chronicles is much more impactful when it is its own thing, and not chained down by some games from the distant past that the general public has forgotten about (and probably never knew about in the first place)." "A brand new Nintendo IP in 2010 that unfortunately was not released in the US, but was the subject of a fan campaign of many people begging and trying their hardest to get this game available in the US; for the sole reason that it is just a high quality, memorable game that deserved recognition. It became a highly sought after Wii game as a result, and even got sequels that were just as good and continued it's legacy." Isn't that inspiring? So when people say people only play Xenoblade Chronicles because 'it's the exact same IP as Xenogears and Xenosaga' when one is a Nintendo IP and the other two are not............. that kind of ruins the whole impact Xenoblade Chronicles had, you know?" " I just finished Torna The Golden Country. After trying to go back to the main game, I noticed a new section in the events theater; it was an image gallery. I was pleasantly surprised at seeing it, but then disappointed that there were only 5 pictures; there should've been like 30 or something. Anyway, despite the criminally small amount, I did enjoy what I saw....................... until the last one, which was of Kosmos and Telos; and it was a high quality image to, while the others looked more like concept art. I.............. WHYYYYY?!! This was the very last update, we'll probably never get more than 5 images; so each image slot was valuable. A grand shot of some landscapes, or a picture of all the villains together, lots of great things could've been put there. But, they, WASTED it on these two worthless side characters! And of all the side characters they could've picked, why them? Praxis and Theory would've made a great one, or Wulfric, maybe one with a bunch of nopon npc's, or maybe even a grand picture of ALL the rare Blades together, that would've been so cool. If they had to have a picture of cameo characters, they should've done one of Shulk Fiora and Elma, since they're far more relevant and developed, and a good reward for those who've stuck with Xenoblade chronicles since the start. But............. (sigh) like..... Kosmos is extremely rare and unlikely to be obtained early on, and Telos literally can't be obtained until after you beat the game; so any player would have to be really dedicated to this game, even to the point of continuing to play after the main story is done, to even know about these two. They're not the most well known of the game's side characters, nor would they ever convince anyone to buy this game. But they reserve one of the very limited spaces in the art gallery JUST for them, they put far more effort into their picture than all the others, and they intentionally put it at the bottom, likely being the last one the player sees and what they'll get out of it; it's as if they're very proud of giving Kosmos and Telos special treatment over everyone else. Kosmos................. KOOOOOOOOSMOOOOOOOOS!!! I am so fucking sick of seeing her all the time on Xenoblade Chronicles fansites, getting special treatment over the other side characters, and the fandom treating her as if she's part of the main cast. Monolith Soft had their chance to make Kosmos a good character, and they failed. They failed because they relied on people already knowing who she is and didn't think they'd have to try with her personality. Did they honestly expect everyone who bought Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for Switch, a game they intended to bring a lot of newcomers in, would have played an old game on PS2 that was never rereleased in any form? Big mistake if you ask me. This image is like one last middle finger finger to me. It's like "Oh, you beat Torna The Golden Country, and all Xenoblade chronicles games before it. Do you expect some reward for your loyalty and dedication? Well SCREW YOU! You have to have played Xenosaga in order to understand anything. Oh? You think you don't need to? That the two games are not canon to eachother? HATER! LIAR! You don't know what you're talking about! And since we will never rerelease it, that means you're SOL. You will NEVER be a true Xenoblade Chronicles fan!" And the fandom's perception of it isn't much different; pisses me off so much. Is............ is this the future of Xenoblade Chronicles? Endless Xenosaga pandering to the vocal minority of annoying fans who refuse to let go of a dead game? Xenosaga is not a popular game; the attention it gets on Xenoblade chronicles sites is disproportionate to how popular it actually is; why won't Monolith Soft realize this? All this does is alienate those who are unfamiliar and cause rifts in the fanbase. (sigh) Why?" Don't do drugs, kids. The literal director of these games has talked about Xenosaga and Xenoblade being the same IP, but hey StupidRaptor here is going to educate all of us. When guys like me talk about being a real man and such, just read some posts from TheStupidRaptor, PrestonStarry, Whirlybird, maplejet, LMS, Tsunami the XVIIVIXVI XVIXI ssj3gokux1331x DARK, and so on. I'm not the bad guy here. I'm trying to protect you from turning into guys like that before it's too late and you end up being nothing more than fuel for people who make fun of incels. None of whom have celibacy that's "involuntary", just for the record. Trust me if I hate you, I'll happily let you act like this and laugh during your entire downward spiral. I'm trying to help you. There are entire subreddits dedicated to laughing at incels. Go read them, go learn the behavior and the tendencies, and don't ever act like one. It's how you end up creeping girls out and turning to whining about KOS-MOS before becoming a Board 8 meme for life. TheStupidRaptor is one or two meltdowns away from his dad making a post online about having to kick his son out of the house for being a useless family parasite. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if this dad's son is TheStupidRaptor: And this was only the round one meltdown. There was another one coming, and it made entertaining the weakest fourpack of the entire contest. And trust me Raptor, I know you'll read this eventually -- you brought this upon yourself and it's entirely your own fault. No one else's. Look in a mirror, blame yourself, man up, hit the gym, take the path less traveled, and turn your life around. ## Safer777's Analysis Before the contest this match was debatable. But after some matches it was clear that Ellie would lose. I mean she is from a new game. And you know what we think of new games here. KOS-MOS is from Xenosaga series. I haven't played any of this series but people say that the series is good. I know KOS-MOS though from the Project X games. Plus she is a hot Android. Bonus points for that. Anyways she managed to win with no problems. And this is also her chance to finally advance to Round 3 even for the first time! But man there was some uproar how a character from such a great game which is TLOU was losing to KOS-MOS. Yeah like it matters this here. One from a new series that it is an Action Adventure series and one is from an old RPG series. So that is. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: Ellie had a lot going against her into this match. Her game is strong but it was five years ago with the sequel potentially years away still. She had a very plain looking match pic and KOS-MOS has somehow become relevant again thanks to Xenoblade 2. This match started badly for Ellie but she did build a lot of percentage over the course of the match. The other notable thing is that this was only the second match the site as a whole got wrong, heavily favouring Ellie. Board 8 got one over on them for once instead of the other way around. **What could this mean?**: Ellie didn't look terrible here all things considered. I think without Xenoblade 2 this match is neck and neck, and I think KOS-MOS doing so well in Europe (where Xenoblade is very popular, but 2/3 Xenosaga games didn't even release) probably indicates that. The next match for KOS-MOS is going to be a tough one, but she looked good enough to not be worried about it if you have her. ## Tsunami's Analysis To be honest, I didn't even realize KOS-MOS had been in a Xenoblade game. I figured she was less relevant than this. Like most people, I ignored TheStupidRaptor. Apparently there are people out there who refuse to believe that Xenoblade is part of the same franchise as Xenosaga and Xenogears? Although it's apparently the video game equivalent of a series that has just enough of a fanbase to get picked up by a new network whenever it gets canceled. Xenogears vs. Xenoblade would literally be considered a Square vs. Nintendo match, but neither Xenogears-Xenosaga nor Xenosaga-Xenoblade (which has actually happened) would be. (Namco published Saga; Nintendo published Blade. Both were *developed* by third-party developer Monolith Soft, whom you might also know from the Baten Kaitos series, which was founded by the creator of Xenogears after he left what was then Squaresoft, where he worked when he created Xenogears.) Anyway, it was fairly obvious, though disappointing, that an unrealistically proportioned character from an early 2000s Japanese RPG would beat out a realistically proportioned character from an early 2010s American Survival Horror Game. Not that I'm a fan of survival horror, because I'm not, but everything I've heard about The Last of Us is absolutely amazing. I want Ellie to succeed. Maybe in CBXI, once she has TLoU2 behind her. Though that game's supposed to be coming out this year so she'll probably have to hope for a TLoU3 to be relevant. And really, once you're on the third game, isn't the title "The ***Last*** of Us" kind of misleading? Ah, right then, carry on. Also, while it's way too late now, how did we not get Kalas into even *one* Character Battle back when Baten Kaitos first came out? We've gotten all sorts of other obscure JRPG leads into these things. I tried to rally for one this year, but was handicapped by the fact that the lead in question suffers from Vaan Syndrome but most of the better characters to nominate are spoiler risks. Though honestly most of the reason I continually pimp Stella Glow on this board is just to get music from it into VGMC, because that soundtrack is *amazing.* --- ## (2)Aqua vs (15)Quiet 2018 _source: (2)Aqua vs (15)Quiet 2018 (revid 88243)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Man do I love when the final match of round one is... simple and clean. No? ...ahem. There was some debate about this match pre-contest, because Aqua was clearly overseeded and people were banking on an unknown factor like Kingdom Hearts 3 hype. If it isn't Nintendo hype, it's unreliable. And this is Metal Gear Solid, weakened state or no. But that was pre contest. Any and all debate about this match ended very quickly when this abomination was uploaded to the web site. Not that Quiet was strong enough to win this match anyway, but good hell. What even is that? And this match wasn't due to Aqua being strong, either. I've played Birth By Sleep. Outside of Terra, that game is a pile of sewage and Aqua is a huge reason why. We could have avoided the entire laughable Kingdom Hearts plot if she would have just trusted Terra from the jump. We could have avoided it all. All of Tetsuya Nomura's pretentious drivel. All of the bad artwork. All of the belts. All of the EVERYONE IS XEHANORT garbage. Everything. Kingdom Hearts as a series was amazing for the original, pretty good for Chain of Memories, decent for 2, and pure trash afterwards due to Tetsuya Nomura being a complete idiot. The guy sucks at art. Of course he sucks at game design. He is the \#1 reason for the current state of Square and I will never forgive him for it. We went from the 90s era of Square, where they could do no wrong, to this. To say I was pumped up for the possibility of KOS-MOS beating this bitch's ass in round 2 was putting it lightly. I like Kingdom Hearts. I really do. But there are parts of these games that are so embarrassing that I'd rather get caught watching porn. I at least have a logical explanation for that. What on earth would be the explanation for stuff like those two songs? And with that, round one was over. If this were a normal PCA, I'd actually be done the entire thing. For this bracket, I'm not even halfway done. We are past time to reduce the field in these things and make getting into a contest special again. 136 characters in 1v1 matches is just nuts. This can, and should, get cut back down to 64. I could maybe see the logic for 96 and letting the top 8 in each division have a round one bye. But the way things are is just too bloated, and I think it contributes to the low vote totals. The slow burn of a 64 character 1v1 with one match per day and 15 minute updates was fine. Too many characters with too big a field these days. ## Safer777's Analysis The last match of Round 1 and it was normal. Nothing exciting. Thought it was a debatable match pre-contest  And from the final results you wouldn't know. KH isn't doing well in the contest. And both of these characters are newcomers too. Quiet is from MGS 5 and even though that game got a ton of rewards apparently this site doesn't like it. Don't know why because I don't play MGS games. So Aqua won easily. But it is not that Aqua is strong or anything. Quiet is just weak I believe. Still KH managed to score a victory against MGS. So that is something I guess? ## Tsunami's Analysis As so frequently happens in these contests, the last match of Round 1 was extremely dull. Well not really because we always had four matches going on at once and Shepard-K. Rool was interesting, but you know what I mean. Aqua was a Guru nom, and she failed to double a side character from the least successful MGS game. Quiet didn't even get to use her sex appeal in her pic, either. Kingdom Hearts just flat-out sucked this contest. Okay, yes, Aqua would be fodder even if Kingdom Hearts was still strong. Though it should be noted that there's only one KH character to make even one contest that's never won a match, and he still looked damn good in one of his losses. No really, what is this? Axel almost beat *Frog*? And he's the only KH character without a win? Ansem only appeared in the Villains Contest, but managed to draw beloved loser CATS. Kairi only made the female bracket, but beat Claire Redfield, which is actually possibly a decent win. But this contest suggests that Kingdom Hearts does not hold strength on its own merit any more. Maybe what it needs to get its mojo back is for its *other* set of non-original characters to be allowed in! ...Actually, given that different incarnations of the same characters are allowed into these things, do you think if we tried nominating him as "King Mickey"--that is to say, specifically the Kingdom Hearts incarnation--we'd be able to get Mickey Mouse in? Though as per the Captain Toad debate, that would probably end up limiting his strength. In any case, if we do get an open character battle, Disney characters had better get Kingdom Hearts pics. Tetsuya Nomura and his zippers would definitely help Donald and Goofy. Well, they probably would. Maybe. I don't know. I'd comment about Quiet being the only character to debut in MGSV to make the field, but I'm pretty sure no one that debuted in MGS4 has been in a character battle. Then again, no one of much consequence debuted in that game. The main villain was Ocelot, who's been around since MGS1, and Solid Snake was the main protagonist for the first time since MGS1. (Well, okay, he was still the protagonist of MGS2 even though he was only the player character for a short time, but that's a minor detail.) We got a character from Revengeance into the 2013 contest, though. Of course, I suspect the MGSV character we all really wanted was denied for being a huge spoiler. Criticize Allen all you want, but he has never allowed anything like what happened in 2005's villains contest, where a major (albeit telegraphed) plot twist for Tales of Symphonia was ruined. The character is fought *four* times in that game, and the first three battles all have him going by one name and looking a certain way, but CJayC decided to credit him by the name and appearance from the final battle. And with that, Round 1 is complete. (Also, to answer your question, Ulti, Kingdom Hearts is still technically a *Disney* franchise, not a Square Enix franchise. All of the original characters are Disney property. And while those videos you linked seem extremely out of place in a Square Enix creation, they are entirely normal for a Disney production, which is what Kingdom Hearts is.) --- ## (1)Dante vs (9)Lightning 2018 _source: (1)Dante vs (9)Lightning 2018 (revid 83746)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Feels good to be able to say "quarterfinal". Round 1 in these things takes so long now. Final Fantasy 13 ate a lot of crap from people, and I legitimately believe it was unfair criticism. A good example to point to is Pat's review from SMPS: The game has issues, but it isn't close to being as bad as that review makes it seem. I still remember Albion making dumb topic after dumb topic to trash the game while quoting one dumb review after another. I have a long standing belief that word of the mouth is the only thing worth listening to and that professional reviewers are a bunch of paid off idiots with a bias to push. As a fantastic example, look at any site who defended Blizzard after their Diablo Immortal gaffe this year. Stuff like that is how you know who is or is not honest. Independent reviewers with no bias is the way to go here. FF13 tried to embrace its linearity, it was a mixed bag, and the game is fantastic once you hit Gran Pulse. Only Hope is truly abominable as a character. Sazh is a bit boring. Everyone else is good to great. The optional content is fantastic. The plot is a bit weird, fighting giant turtles is also a bit weird, and the optional superboss being some metal butterfly palette swap you can just poison to death even weirder, but hey! I had fun, which is all that matters. I bring this up because Lightning suffers in our contests for two reasons, with this match being a fantastic contrast of why. Lightning comes from a mixed bag video game (I haven't played the sequels, maybe Robazoid can offer more context on how those are), and though her character is one that tries to be cool, she comes off to a lot of people as trying way too hard. She randomly punches party members in the mouth for no real reason, and it seems awkward a lot of the time. I like her a lot as a character, but randomly trying to break Fang's face without ever getting a receipt just comes off as trying way too hard to be a badass. Compare that with Dante. This dude was in Devil May Cry 2 and DmC: dee em shee devil may cryz LOL, two of the worst games ever made. He was decent in 4, but Nero was legitimately cooler than him in that game. He has scenes that are so hilariously over the top in his games where I should feel like they try too hard, yet somehow it never really feels that way and a scene like this can make sense: Sure let's jump off a building, run down while changing momentum, throw a sword straight down and then shoot it to kill a bunch of bats, then somehow increase speed running to catch the sword, jump off, and get eaten by a flying leviathan monster. Just a regular Tuesday afternoon for Dante. Had Lightning been given a scene like that it would have been laughed at. That's essentially why Dante won this match, even though I personally think Lightning summoning Odin is just as awesome. There's just nothing like a high strung, highly educated alpha female that does badassed stuff while retaining a feminine look. It's a shame people hate her game unfairly. ## Safer777's Analysis 1st match of Round 2 and of course Dante won easily. Duh. Well everyone thought that Chloe was really weak and she was. Probably bottom 5 here. Light is weak. People hate FF 13. Maybe the most hated main FF title! I don't really understand why. I am not saying that is great but the worst of them all? Don't think so. Funny enough in FF13 you can't go back and such and the game opens up after a lot of hours. Okay. But in FF 10 which you can't go back(okay you techically can)and the game opens up  after a lot of hours and nobody complains there. I really like FF 10 and it has my favorite mini game of all time but I am saying. Eh whatever. So for the match.  Light is weak and thus Dante beat her easy. Dante is looking good. Let us see if can continue to win! Also FF 13 had 2 sequels too! First main FF title to do that! This means it is good! Right? Yeah I am joking. I still don't get it why it did receive 2 sequels too. Who asked for them? Another thing is also 1 crew member, who I can't remember the name, sorry, was saying that Light had a chance to win. Hast to be a huge Light's fan. Lol sure. The prediction percentage was good for Dante too. ## Tsunami's Analysis I said it in Round 1 and I'll say it again: Final Fantasy fans are a lot like Pokémon fans, always whining about how awful the most recent entry is and how much better things used to be. Older characters do better on this board in general anyway, but if you're from one of those franchises, the best thing that can happen is for a new game in your series to come out, because it establishes your age. 34.38% on Dante is surprisingly respectable given how awful opinions of FFXIII were, and I suspect the existence of FFXV is a large part of it. Final Fantasy is a lot like these contests. The NES and SNES (well, Famicom and Super Famicom; the US equivalents didn't get all of them) managed three main series games each, and so did the PS1. Not counting the MMORPGs, we've had just four of them since. Meanwhile, we've all turned into crochety old men reminiscing about the good old days when we had contests every year and the upsets were genuinely surprising rather than the result of off-site rallies, except even then they were the result of off-site rallies. Look again at the previous write-up and the linked Frog-Axel match. Everyone suspected that Frog's comeback was less than legitimate, but it was a CT character beating a KH character so we all rejoiced rather than being upset. --- ## (12)Chun-Li vs (4)Ganondorf 2018 _source: (12)Chun-Li vs (4)Ganondorf 2018 (revid 83745)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know these writeups are done post contest and we have the power of Jon Gruden's 50-50 hindsight, but what the hell happened to Ganon in this match? He was supposed to break 60% and look like a division champion. He went out and laid a complete egg here, which looked extra bad compared to Vivi just utterly demolishing his round 2 opponent. This was supposed to be a debate between Ganon and Vivi, but when this match happened there were people seriously wondering if Dante had a shot to beat this guy. But because we know Ganon would eventually win, this is a forgotten match. Make no mistake, this was a garbage performance and it's one of the reasons people who complained about his sprite picture for weeks on end looked like complete idiots. Ganon looked very odd this contest, and I can't put my finger on why. Do people just not like the guy? Are people unimpressed with his Breath of the Wild performance? Are his Smash appearances unimpressive? I legitimately don't get it, and I don't see how Chun-Li could have boosted much. She's a popular character and all, but winning updates against Ganondorf on ZeldaFAQs when you are clearly weaker than him is another thing entirely. Ultimately, this wouldn't mean much, like Mario/Shadow or that one random Sonic/Vincent snafu. Weird match, but a speed bump at the end of the day. People often talk about round 1 being the most boring. I honestly think it's round 2. This is where we get all the low mid tier or lucky fodder getting blown out by clear favorites. Round 1 is us being happy to be here. Round 3 and on is where all the good matches are. 2 is a lot of.... yeah. Moving on. ## Safer777's Analysis Remember when I said that Ganon can beat even N9's now? Yeah I was stupid. Check this result. People were expecting around a doubling for Ganon. And he didn't even  reached 59%! What? And it is not that Chun-Li is strong or anything. Nor that she boosted recently of a game or something. Ganon is in Smash and in almost all of Zelda  games. So him, Bowser and Sephiroth are the strongest bad guys here. But for this result? Is it because he is a bad guy and people don't like him? He dropped for same  strange reason? I just don't get it. So why I thought that he was that strong? Well because back in the Villains contests he was the finalist and after that contest he  was again doing really good. So I thought that he would have boosted now. Guess I was wrong. Still it is not that he isn't strong. He isn't as strong as we thought. Probably? But yeah he won. The prediction percentage is once again really good for a Seed 4 in Round 2 none the less. ## Tsunami's Analysis As usual, the board overreacted to this, suggesting that Dante could challenge Ganondorf. Probably because our inherent biases suggest that "Final Fantasy protagonist" *should* be a more impressive win than "fighting game character". Except Street Fighter (and I guess Mortal Kombat, though we've never tried anyone other than Scorpion and Sub-Zero from that franchise) have never been fodder like other fighting game franchises. You might even be able to add Soul Calibur to that list; Nightmare has managed to do okay in his appearances and Yoshimitsu (who is sort of a shared character between Tekken and Soul Calibur) got a win in 2013. And Lightning still suffers from being a post-merger Square Enix character. Chun-Li put up another solid performance. She's never faced a Noble Niner, but all four of her losses are to solid midcarders from Noble Nine franchises--Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy. --- ## (3)Vivi vs (11)Aya Brea 2018 _source: (3)Vivi vs (11)Aya Brea 2018 (revid 83744)_ ## Ulti's Analysis In every NCAA tournament a low seed wins a game or two and people completely lose their shit. Remember when Florida Gulf Coast shocked the world, dunked all over Georgetown and San Diego State, and Andy Enfield was able to lie to USC and convince them he can actually coach? There was a massive reality check waiting for them after a week of interviews and getting smoke blown up their asses; it was called "Florida", and they got utterly destroyed when an actual good team decided to show up. It's very rare to get a George Mason or a Loyola Chicago, and even those teams eventually got blown out of the gym. Almost always, the underdogs eventually eliminate each other or run into a good team late and get destroyed. The NCAAs have had a few close calls where underdogs almost win the tournament, so let's not act like our version of a mid major can't win anything, but they aren't called miracle runs for a reason. The mid major teams that actually threaten every year (Gonzaga these days, but back in the 80s it was a bunch of teams getting ready to join power conferences) usually end up recruiting like a power conference or just outright joining one. Louisville was a mid major in 1986 when a mid major last won the tournament, but does anyone actually consider them a mid major college? Not really. To translate this into GameFAQs terms instead of making this about college basketball, our mid majors need to catch rallies to win. That's their version of a Cinderella run, with Undertale or L-Block being the ultimate example of one paying off. Usually, you get what happened to Aya Brea here. Yeah your win was cute, but one win means very little. Vivi is playing big boy basketball and just annihilated Aya for this entire match. He did so while Ganondorf was busy choking himself, which got people in a frenzy that everyone's favorite Final Fantasy underdog could win this division even in the face of Breath of the Wild. There was also one other hilarious result going on during all of this, which we'll get into in a second. (For the wiki readers, that's alluding to Leon Kennedy vs Donkey Kong.) Side note. Someone asked how I can still write so much. My favorite sporting event is the NCAA men's basketball tournament (even above the Superb Owl) and my favorite hobby is video games, plus I love math. These contests combine all those worlds, and I could stare at these numbers all day while trying to explain them in an entertaining way. I also bottle up a bunch of writing energy and let it loose come PCA time. It's lame as fuck I'm sure, but I don't care. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this! I believe Aya maybe the weakest character to reach Round 2. So here we have a rare result of a character doing better in Round 2 that he did in Round 1!  Damn! Of course Vivi won with more than a tripling. But we have another strange thing. We can't really judge Vivi's power because he has faced 2 really weak opponents.  So yeah he is Round 3 but haven't really seen what he is capable for. Well we shall see in the next match! Vivi is strong of course but how strong? ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a predictable blowout. Regardless of who won, it would set up a rematch of at least one previous Square vs. Nintendo match, and based on those past results, it was easy to joke in "Why Did They Lose?" that Square had fixed the match. Aya making this contest was honestly kind of surprising; she was a 26-seed in 2013 and hasn't had any releases since then to make her relevant. Of course, she's hardly the only bottom-third seed from that contest to make it to this one. The full list: 19-seeds: Jill Valentine 20-seeds: Aerith Gainsborough Ridley 21-seeds: Ryu Hayabusa Simon Belmont Chun-Li Cecil Harvey 23-seeds: Vincent Valentine 24-seeds: Peach Pac-Man Claire Redfield 26-seeds: Aya Brea Bomberman 8 for 13 at making Round 2, with one of them making it all the way to Round 4. Though we were guaranteed at least one 21-seed from last contest would make Round 2 due to two of them facing each other in Round 1. My only explanation for this was that people saw the expanded field and figured that it would be easy to rally whatever ridiculous obscure character they loved into the field, so contest regulars got even fewer nominations than usual. One of the other seeding gimmicks that year was that the 3-seeds would all be highly touted newcomers who would no doubt fail miserably. Only 4 of those 9 even made this contest and they all lost in Round 1. --- ## (10)Donkey Kong vs (2)Leon Kennedy 2018 _source: (10)Donkey Kong vs (2)Leon Kennedy 2018 (revid 83747)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Of the 160 gurus this year, nine picked Donkey Kong to win this match. Of the 67 people who played the oracle for this match, only six picked Donkey Kong to win it. To put some perspective on this, more people picked Tidus to win in this spot than Donkey Kong. Fucking Tidus! In retrospect, we should have seen this coming, but people are blinded by the old 'games =/= characters' routine. Resident Evil 4 looked like shit for every single match it was in during the 2015 games contest. It got 59% on Paper Mario, 58% on Fallout New Vegas, and 54% on Metal Gear Solid 2 leading up to the Super Mario RPG match. Want to see something eerie? Look at the percentages for Leon/DK here and then look at what happened when Resident Evil 4 got upset. Super Mario RPG - 27502 \[55.53%\] Resident Evil 4 - 22027 \[44.47%\] "But Ulti, Donkey Kong is not in Super Mario RPG!" you explain. Even more eerie is how dominant RE4 looked in Game of the Decade in 2010 compared to 2015. The Resident Evil series decline is real, and Leon Kennedy and Resident Evil 4 can't carry that franchise forever. That game came out in 2005, and Capcom is so desperate to regain lost magic from a decade plus of dumb bullshit that Resident Evil 4 has been released 27 times on every major system since. I wouldn't be surprised if a freemium phone game existed for RE4 at this point. When your parent company completely blows and loses the confidence of consumers, you go back to old habits instead of looking in a mirror and telling yourself to stop being a moron. I feel bad that Leon Kennedy has the sins of Capcom crawling all over his back, but here we are. Here the bleep we are. Shout out to Jim Rome. I feel like if another Nintendo character on DK's level were in his place, more people would have picked that slot to win twice. Let's just hypothetically say Knuckles or Peach were here instead. More people would have picked it. But this is DK, so you get the anti-clutch factor. DK had two obstacles pre-contest. One, he's known for being a choke artist. Two, he drew Tidus in round one in a highly debated match. That's a lot to overcome, and shout out to the 9 people who picked this upset. After the freeze, this match was never even a match. Donkey Kong just went out there and beat Leon Kennedy's ass. Even the trends looked identical to the RE4 upset. This would set up, of all things, Donkey Kong vs Vivi. Again. Could DK, boosted by finally being clutch, some great recent Country games, and Smash good will finally take down his nemesis? lol no As for where Resident Evil goes from here, who the hell knows. Capcom has sabotaged all of their own brands and it will take a long time to recover. The match pic crybabies should look at Capcom or Konami's business practices if they want to know what actual sabotage looks like, just for the record. ## Safer777's Analysis This is the strangest result of the contest so far for me. Donkey Kong defeated Leon almost as much as he defeated Tidus. And you know how many people saw that? We had around 85% of the Gurus having Leon advancing to Round 3! Hell more people picked Tidus than Donkey Kong to reach Round 3! I repeat, more people had Tidus beating Leon, than DK beating Leon! So what happened? Okay DK is in Smash. Fine. And he had some games in the last few years. Okay. Leon of course has nothing in the last years. But here is the thing. The instant RE 2 remake was announced I see it in the PS 4 top 10 message boards all the time. And so many articles talking about it. So many videos! So much hype!Also RE 4 recently got announced for the Switch too! And in both of these games Leon is the protagonist. So it is not that people forgot who Leon is. But DK winning this much? Seriously? As I said around 5.5% of the Gurus had DK advancing. So I don't know what to say. Maybe DK is a really strong character now? Or is Leon and Tidus that weak? Or a combination of both? Anyways an Icon won so that is cool I guess. Icon's winnning are always good. Of course the prediction percentage was bad, but not that bad actually. More than 38% so I guess we were fooled or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Wonderful. Now this is exactly what the grumpy old folks of Board 8 are looking for! This was an upset, plain and simple, and there was nothing fishy about it. It wasn't some newcomer doing unexpected things; it was an established veteran beating another established veteran when we all expected otherwise. Just 5.625% of Gurus picked Donkey Kong to win this match, though to be fair, only 32.5% even picked him to beat Tidus. Yes, we get nice round percentages for this, because the total number of Gurus was 160, a number with 2 and 5 as its only prime factors. Since we work in base 10, these are the only prime numbers that will result in a terminating decimal. I suppose when you look at it that way, the Gurus *were* giving DK a better chance against Leon than they were giving Tidus, as despite having over twice as many picks to reach Round 2 he had not even 1.5 times as many picks to reach Round 3 (Leon was a unanimous choice to reach Round 2, so I don't even need to go deeper to know that this is solely based on the potential matchup with Leon). So this was definitely an lolGurus moment. "But wait!" you say. "The casuals were held under 50% on this one, too!" Yes, they were, and it's certainly possible that Leon was the favorite there, too, but it's quite unlikely. DK's Round 1 prediction percentage: 66.99% Leon's Round 1 prediction percentage: 72.69% DK's Round 2 prediction percentage: 38.06% This means roughly 56.82% of brackets that took DK to Round 2 continued to take him to Round 3. Not a heavy favorite, but a favorite nonetheless. If you assume little to no correlation between DK \> Tidus pickers and Leon \> Dragonborn pickers, you'd expect only about 48.7% of brackets to even have both of those correct. If you further assume that the 56.82% ratio is also applicable specifically to DK-Leon pickers, you're left with just over 21% of brackets specifically picking Leon \> DK. Leaving Leon in need of over 18% of brackets to have Leon \> Tidus, when as per our previous numbers, DK being a bit over a 2-1 favorite over Tidus means that under 24.5% of brackets even *have* Leon-Tidus. Now this *does* make a lot of assumptions. If there is in fact a surprisingly strong correlation, it's quite possible that an inordinate amount of DK picks were actually DK \> Dragonborn, and that both Leon \> Tidus and Leon \> DK were more common picks than Tidus \> Leon and DK \> Leon. After all, it is at least mathematically *possible* that fewer than 40% of brackets had the correct matchup (in the event that no brackets got both matches *wrong*.) But chances are, DK was the slight favorite here. Given that Vivi had been the casuals' underdog in each of his first two matches with DK (conclusively confirmable because they were both Round 1 matches), fans of low prediction percentages were eagerly awaiting Round 3. (Final numbers note: Just 8.96% of Oracle pickers sided with DK here, so it's not like we saw this coming by match time and adjusted accordingly. This was an upset through and through.) --- ## (1)Zero vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018 _source: (1)Zero vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018 (revid 83779)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We knew this after round one, but this match confirmed it. Knuckles is freaking legit, and it's a crime he's never made it into round 3 in one of these contests. The dude has an 8-1 record in round one, and the worst luck on the planet in who he gets for round 2. Check out this ridiculous list, in order. -Solid Snake -Solid Snake -Solid Snake again -Squall -Yoshi, Mega Man, and KOS-MOS -Fei Fong Wong, Mario, and Zelda -Sonic the Hedgehog -Samus -Zero I mean seriously, look at this damn list. There wasn't one year in there where he could draw Aya Brea, Serious Sam, Aqua, or Sandbag in round two? I honestly blame CJayC for this because of his dumb idea to feed Knuckles to Snake three years in a row. Two years in a row I can understand, but by 2004 he couldn't have just swapped places with Jill Valentine or something? Dumb. The closest he came was against Squall in 2005, where he had a small bandwagon behind him after upsetting Magus. He got 46% in that match. We got Tails into round 3. My new crusade is getting Knuckles in there. Dude deserves it for being awesome for 25 years. As for Zero, he did what he always does. He's always around 20-25 in the LOL x stats, never really moves, and is remarkably consistent year to year. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the guy and love him for all the same reasons I love Knuckles. He's a stone cold badass when I don't have to hear a terrible voice actor doing terrible voice actor things. I just wish Knux could catch a damn break one of these years. ONE round 3 run. It's all I ask. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was never in doubt of course. Zero would win. And he did, duh. The question is, is this a good victory? I think it is good. Knuckles isn't that weak. He was never strong true but not weak either. As I said above almost all his victories are against FF characters. So Zero did good here. Nice win for Zero! That proves that Zero isn't a zero! Okay yeah I am stupid. What else? I know him from the Project X Zone games myself. Haven't played a MM game ever. A fun thing is that Knucles ALWAYS get strong opponents in Round 2 that are out of his league. Man has to be a record for bad draws in the matches! ## Tsunami's Analysis Both entrants in this match are red anti-hero rivals to blue heroes from the mid-90s, which is honestly a more interesting bit of trivia than anything in this match. Well, that's not quite true. Zero (2010c) has a strength of 31.71 against Base Link. Knuckles (2010c) has a strength of 27.79 against Base Link. Zero wins with 56.18% of the vote! I usually don't trust adjusted X-Stats as far as I can throw them (and seeing as how they're an abstract concept, I can't throw them at all), but that's only 0.03% away from the actual result and Knuckles literally faced *Sonic* in 2010. And then Sonic got blown out by Link, making the entire division look pitiful in the raw X-Stats when in fact it was full of reliable midcarders such as Ganondorf, Mewtwo, Vivi, Kirby, and Knuckles himself, in addition to others such as Donkey Kong (who is not reliable, but made Round 3 this year), Altair (who as I noted in my write-up of Ezio's loss has *never* lost in Round 1, and this is the first time since his debut that he missed the field entirely), and Rikku (who frequently misses the field but always performs well when she makes it). And yes, I feel like we can call Knuckles a "reliable midcarder" even though he's never made it to Round 3. He's been in 9 out of the 10 contests (only missing 2006 because half the field was reserved for females), and he's only lost in Round 1 *once*, and that was when he had to deal with Mario and Zelda in a 4-way. He's almost certainly the strongest character to never make Round 3. Early on, CJayC was entirely to blame (stupid gimmicky bracketmaking), but as time has gone on, it really just does feel like he's been unlucky. Far weaker entrants have made it to Round 3 due to soft placements, including one from the same series as Knuckles. (At least I'm assuming Knuckles \> Tails. That might actually be a match worth seeing, though!) --- ## (12)Master Hand vs (13)Wario 2018 _source: (12)Master Hand vs (13)Wario 2018 (revid 83780)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I had some hope that Master Hand could pull this upset, because I am an insane Smash Bros fanboy. Well, partially insane. I've toned it down a lot since spending some time with the series pros, and I outright refuse to act like any of those idiots. Every Smash group has a few noticeable "guys" in it. Yahtzee joked about it. Well I'm the chill as fuck turtle who everyone hates playing against because I have the most annoying play style on the planet, but because I'm so nice to everyone while also supplying the house for play space and the food for you parasites to mooch off of, you can all piss off =p. Trust me, there are far worse "guys" out there in the Smash community and I go out of my way not to be like them. I will never forget Inui getting kicked out of my play group within a month for being an arrogant douche to people, then whining on Smashboards about it. Some of you hardcores might remember Inui being last on the tier list once because the entire community hated him so much. You're welcome. That was due to a few incidents, one of which involved my group. It's a very small claim to internet fame for me. Fuck that guy and fuck everyone who acts like him. For the unaware, he showed up just before Brawl came out (there's a big Smash community here in NJ and a lot of us used to play at Mercer County Community College or Rutgers, so we all get around quick) and started acting like Smash people are prone to act, and my group likes to play 4-man Melees with all items off except final smash balls. Top 2 stay in, bottom 2 rotate out, winner picks the level. None of that 24/7 tournament practice bullshit, because some of us are still capable of seeing Smash Bros as a video game instead of a job. Well Inui did nothing but whine and act like only he knows tech strategies and blah blah blah and we should be practicing 2v2s and etc. So what we would do any time that idiot showed up is gang up on him 3 on 1 so he would have to rotate out. He would occasionally throw a fit, but it was nothing we didn't just laugh off because the guy is a harmless idiot. Well one day he shows up acting extra dumb, so we finally decided in Brawl to pick Mario Bros as a stage and just gang up on him first in every match he was in. You all know the stage. So he throws this gigantic manic fit of rage (I legitimately had to punch him in the mouth at one point because he was clearly about to try getting violent, which is hilarious because I am twice his size) about how Sakurai is an idiot and that level should not be in and blah blah blah. The usual idiocy among Smash pros, you've all seen it I'm sure. So after I punch him and he finally shuts the hell up, he drives home, gets his own Wii, comes back, and hooks it up to the TV 10 feet from us. No one interacted with him or played with him all day. I could get into a very deep conversation here about how bullying and peer pressure in certain situations is actually a good thing because it's part of the normal social structure in getting people to not grow up to act like Inui, but I'm pretty far off the point already. With Ultimate coming out recently, just remember that liking Smash is fine. Acting like Inui or Mew2King is not, and frankly either their parents or their peers should have showed them ages ago that acting like they do is in no way socially acceptable. These are the tangents I go on for predictable round 2 blowouts. This was never going to actually be a match, because for both characters their entire job was knocking off larger seeds. Wario was meant to stop Monika's rally, and Master Hand was meant to embarrass Final Fantasy again. The only thing about the follow-up act of any interest was the match pictures side by side made it look like Wario was actually wearing Master Hand as a glove. I don't ask for much but someone PLEASE put that on the wiki for me. I beg it of you :D On a total side note, I love matches or NCAA games with gigantic seeds facing each other like this. It makes me smile. ## Safer777's Analysis After the suprise win against Noctis I thought that Hand would get the joke votes or a rally or something. But alas nothing happened. Wario won fair and square. He scored more than 60%. I guess if you have a legitimate character, even though that character is Wario, he can beat a proxy character from Smash. Yeah I know that Master Hand is the Boss but man you can't really say that it is a real character. I mean it just a hand! No personality! So congrats to Wario. First time he reaches Round 3 too! Still that Hand managed to even reach here is hilarious. ## Tsunami's Analysis And you needn't look any further than this match to see that a decent record doesn't necessarily mean you're strong. This was Wario's first run to Round 3, but his only Round 1 loss was to Shadow the Hedgehog (who immediately had to face Mario after that. No points for guessing which admin that was under), which means he's officially .500. Except not really because two of his contests were 2007 and 2008 and both times he advanced in second place in Round 1 and got 4th place in Round 2, meaning he went 2-4 against individual characters but is credited with a 1-1. His 2013 performance is, I suppose, a "proper" .500, getting last place in Round 2. But the only win he has that's kind of impressive is coming in second place in a match in which he was the only character *not* to appear on the N64, going up against Fox, Captain Falcon, and Banjo. Banjo is weak, but beating Captain Falcon is pretty good. Master Hand is also .500 all time, having lost in Round 2 in both of his contest appearances. --- ## (3)Yoshi vs (6)Velvet Crowe 2018 _source: (3)Yoshi vs (6)Velvet Crowe 2018 (revid 83784)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Yoshi wins a match and gets Velvet Crowe for a round 2 opponent. Knuckles goes 8-1 in round 1 over the years and gets nothing but noble niners and near elites. I don't get it. And no, I am never letting this go until Knuckles wins one in round 2. Thanks for asking. I'm looking at some of these round 2 beatdowns these year just shaking my head. In the 2015 games contest, I made a list of 1v1 matches in round 2 or later where the winner broke 80%. It can be found here: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Chrono_Trigger_vs\_(8)Dragon_Quest_VIII:\_Journey_of_the_Cursed_King_2015 \] I really don't feel like doing that level of research with 70% as the threshold instead of 80, but I can't imagine it would be a much bigger list. These contests naturally have closer margins as you get later. It's just the normal way of things. For a character or game to break 70%, you need two things to happen unless we're talking about weird SFF stuff. One, you need an elite, near-elite, or upper midcarder in the winner's spot. Yoshi qualifies. And two, you need the other half of your fourpack to be abject garbage. I should note that Velvet got 61% in her round 1 match. So yeah this was just a forgettable beatdown en route to Yoshi getting back to where he always goes, and I love him for it. I'm one of those knuckleheads who always votes for Yoshi in those favorite Mario character polls. Love the dude. Always have. ## Safer777's Analysis When a character wins a Round 2 match and isn't a N9'er with above 70% you can't help but wonder how the opponent even reached Round 2! Of course Velvet would be realy weak duh. So Yoshi with above 70% for the 2nd time in this contest! Yoshi is so strong! But seriously I say that I can't judge Yoshi in this contest so far. He has beaten 2 super weak opponents and both of them were newcomers too. So there you go. Of course Yoshi is in Smash and he is recognizable from the Mario series so he has some power of course but how much? We shall see in the next round for sure. Oh and also Yoshi has always managed to reach at least Round 2 in all contests he has appeared. Nice for him. ## Tsunami's Analysis Yoshi is never going to be an elite, but he's never going to be weak, either. Just look at 2010, when he had the misfortune of running into a rally entry *after* it had already taken out a Noble Niner. Normally, once that happens, there's no hope for anything stopping it. Now, that happened to be the one rally entry that *was* stopped after it had done some damage, but nevertheless, Yoshi managed to stand up to Missingno like a champ, and it got him something like \#9 in the raw X-stats. Unfortunately for him, not even *those* numbers would give him a chance next round, because Pikachu was \#6 in the raw X-Stats that year. --- ## (7)Pikachu vs (2)Kratos 2018 _source: (7)Pikachu vs (2)Kratos 2018 (revid 83785)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I like Pikachu and Pokemon, so I'm okay with Pikachu winning here even though Kratos might be my favorite character in gaming at this point. Something about the guy being a bloodraged maniac maturing somewhat as he ages resonates with me, I dunno. I've always adored Kratos and love his games. God of War is one of the best series I've ever played, but there was no chance in hell Kratos was going to win this match even with God of War 2018 getting set to mop up 1398 Game of the Year awards. Even if Kratos had a prayer of winning, I have access to some metrics non-contributors don't. That review won me Review of the Month. As you can tell by reading it and by my platinum trophy, I love the game to death. It was an incredible experience. I don't post the review link to brag. I post it because at the time the bracket came out, that review had less than 30 hits. For a comparison, my Brawl review has almost 50,000. Part of that is GameFAQs being dead, but part of it is because for whatever reason, Kratos and God of War games are just not what resonates on this site. And even then, I did not think this beatdown would be as bad as it was. God of War sold like a bajillion copies and Pokemon fans were mixed at best on that Pikachu Let's Go game. Even with all that, Pikachu damn near doubled the poor guy. It wasn't a surprise Pikachu won, but winning this hard given all the Kratos hype was really something to see. Pikachu was super legit this year and was primed to kick ass well beyond the main bracket. This all but ended any hope of anyone other than him winning this division, too. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was never in doubt. Of course Pika would win. Now people say that Pika did worse than expected. But here is the thing. Pretty sure that Kratos has boosted.  I mean GOW 4 came out recently and it was instantly beloved. Haven't seen anyone talking anything bad about that game. As for Pika you know him. The face of Pokemon.  The best selling franchise of all time? The one character that almost everyone knows? Anyways I think Pika is legit. This win is good. Kratos has boosted as I said before. No way that Marston is that weak. Still another win for Pokemon. Man they always win these things! But next round we shall see if Pika is legit or not. (Spoilers=He is.) Also supposedly Kratos is the strongest Western character but I don't know about that to tell the truth. ## Tsunami's Analysis Why does this match feel so familiar? Ah, that's why. Same seedings and everything. It's kind of depressing to see how far our vote totals have fallen since then, and even more depressing when you remember that the current vote totals are *inflated* by the registered bonus...but it should not be overlooked that, admittedly only thanks to the registered bonus, Pikachu has a greater ***margin*** of victory than Charizard did. And Kratos has had a recent game, so that may actually be meaningful. This was the second time in as many rounds that Pikachu's percentage was lower than that of his next opponent, and the second time that hardly anyone expected that to mean anything because Pikachu clearly had a stronger opponent. --- ## (1)Sora vs (9)Pokemon Trainer Red 2018 _source: (1)Sora vs (9)Pokemon Trainer Red 2018 (revid 84050)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know Charizard looked weak in round one, but after what Pikachu had just done the writing was kinda sorta on the wall for this upset to occur. Most of us saw it coming pre-contest, but the main point in Sora's favor was the Kingdom Hearts 3 hype. Remember, Kingdom Hearts the original was the game that everyone credited for the 2003 contest being so heavily weighted toward Squaresoft results. Yet 15 years later, and here we are with Sora unable to beat a mute Pokemon trainer right after getting a hype video. Not that he didn't try, so let's get to the actual match. I have a thing to explain here anyway. The final score looks close, but the early parts of the match were not. After a few small hiccups early with either small gains or random Sora pushes, Red started taking off in a flash and got a 250 vote lead. Then just as quickly, it looked like things were wearing off and the night was kicking in. Pokemon has these random spots where it's awful at night -- one of the few trends where our old JUST WAIT TIL THE KIDDIES WAKE UP 2002 meme still applies -- and it looked possible here. Sora blasted over 100 votes off that lead in under an hour, and it legitimately looked like he might win the match. So I rallied the Pokemon subreddit. Fuck it. Don't care. I made one topic around 9:30 when Sora was making his push, and I made another for the morning vote. Both were deleted eventually, but they were both viewed a few thousand times and it clearly made the difference. Could Sora have won otherwise? Would someone else have rallied? Don't know, don't care. Red is a better character from a better series. I don't dislike Sora, but I'm over having to choke on Tetsuya Nomura's vomit any time I play a Kingdom Hearts game these days. Had that series stopped at 2, we're good. But it didn't, so I give no fucks. Justice done, justice served. The final score of this poll was close, but Sora was never in contention of winning. The best he could manage is shaving off 150 votes, but you can believe I was ready for more Pokemon subreddit topics with throwaway accounts just in case. Sora was not winning this match. What's extra hilarious about this is all the people who whined over that rally were all over hentai subreddits asking for Tifa votes later on in this contest, or the people not doing that were supporting the people doing it. You either support rallying or you don't. You don't get to have two standards and only like rallies when it benefits a character or game you like. Don't be a hypocritical douchebag. I support rallies, so I like all of them. Hearthstone or Shadow of the Colossus could win a contest tomorrow with rallies and I would support it, because I'm not a punk. This would mark only the third time a 1 seed has lost to the 8/9 winner. Before the 2015 games contest, it had never happened. In that contest, it happened twice. Pokemon Red Blue Yellow Green Teal Orange Mauve Off-White Neon Beige Subtitle Psychic Olive ver 1.3x \#RReload Socket beat Mario 3, and Mario RPG beat GTA5: Casual Gaming is Bad Edition. Add Red beating Sora to the list. All three involve Nintendo pulling the upset, though in only one of those matches (Mario 3) did the 1 seed actually deserve their seeding and eat a legitimate upset. Sora and any GTA are just undeserving of that spot, as we've seen multiple times. ## Safer777's Analysis KH 3 boost man! Yeah I am jesting of course. Well this match was somewhat debatable. We thought that with KH 3 hype Sora would win because who cares about Human Pokemon characters? Seriously. But as you see Red won even though the match was close. I know in the previous contest Sora lost to a Pokemon character again but there were rallies back then. Red had a big lead but Sora started fighting back and was either cutting or stalling. Man after all these years and KH still can come back with ASV.  If that thing even exists anymore. Kiddies have smartphones now from what people told me. So Sora was dissapointing again. Also he is the first 1 Seed to lose and in  Round 2 too! Come on now! I guess if KH 3 was out he would win for sure. But at least the match was good. Also Pokefear baby! Pokemons always win! Except when they don't. Also for Sora he always has a high seed in these things. I guess people really like KH series? Plus Sora has  NEVER won a division! Seriously! And he is always overseeded. Guess when KH 3 comes out he is bound to gain some power for sure. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was another match where the registered and unregistered voters went in different directions, but Red would've still narrowly won without the registered vote bonus. Very narrowly. Sora 10508 Red 10566 Yeah that's narrow. Still, this wasn't exactly a wide margin, either. Sora was the Guru favorite to win this division, which seems wrong to me. Though there weren't really any proven winners in the group. Nearly half the division had been to Round 3 of a contest at least once prior to this year. Based on the huge drop in prediction percentage, along with some other extrapolating based on the prediction percentages for Red in Round 3 and Alucard in Round 4, he was probably the casual favorite, too. ...Huh. Sora's record is better than I thought it was. He's never been to Round 4, but this is the earliest he's exited since *2003*, his first year in the contest. It's been Round 3 exits ever since--and for once, I don't have to say "not including Rivalry Rumble" because he and Riku made it to Round 3 in that as well. Nearly upset Squall/Seifer, too; it's the closest Sora's ever come to Squall (though they've never met in a true 1v1, Sora having advanced in second place behind Squall in Round 2 of *both* fourway contests to allow for four total matches in those two years.) If Bacon ever decides to do another gimmick contest like that one, Sora might actually win in a couples contest; I'm almost certain that Rinoa would hold Squall back even more than Seifer and Kairi actually reached Round 2 in the Female bracket, and not by beating some other fodder that only made the bracket because of the gender segregation. She beat Claire Redfield, who regularly makes the bracket when it's not gender-balanced and made it to Round 2 this year. Red has quietly amassed a rather impressive resume himself. He's never lost in Round 1 and it usually takes nothing short of a Noble Niner or the equivalent thereof (yes, I'm still sticking with the X ≈ Mega Man theory) to finally take him out. Of course, quietly is the only way Red knows how to do anything :) --- ## (5)Crash Bandicoot vs (4)Big Boss 2018 _source: (5)Crash Bandicoot vs (4)Big Boss 2018 (revid 83789)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Crash 100% deserved to win the 2006 Oscar for Best Picture and the people who still whine about it are a bunch of idiots. Not only was that a damn good movie, but its competition was Munich, Good Night and Good Luck, Capote, and Brokeback Mountain. Giving Brokeback the best picture award as a tokenism achievement for gay people just because they're gay people would be every bit as bigoted and short sighted as hating gay people just because they're gay people. In the actual equal society I keep hearing people say they want, sexual orientation wouldn't even matter and we would just pick the best stuff. Crash was the best movie that year and seeing it always get mentioned on the 'most undeserving winners ever' lists is just dumb. And now Hollywood hands out awards to movies about fish sex, so who even knows what's going on over there anymore. I actually really liked The Shape of Water, but best picture? Come on. Oh wait, wrong Crash. Whoops. Well forgive me for having to come up with new material for all these predictable round 2 blowou-- Wait, what? Literal Crash Bandicoot held tough with Big Boss, got 47% on him, and won a bunch of updates throughout the entire match? This actually happened? The fuck? I know Crash had that trilogy, but this match says a lot more about Big Boss. Metal Gear Solid is done. There is just no other way of putting it. This is about as embarrassing a win as you'll ever see. Konami just murdered that series in cold blood and it's translated to contest polls. There is no way this happens in, say, 2008. What's utterly terrifying that Crash probably wins this match if he was a surprise entrant in Smash Ultimate before the contest, and not one person would have picked it. It would have been our biggest upset since Knuckles \> Magus. (Watch Crash get in now.) ## Safer777's Analysis Obviously Big Boss would win. But man nobody expected the match to be this close. I know in this contest old icons do really well but still. Big Boss is good. Or at least he should be. MGS characters don't do so good in this contest. So as I said old icons are doing really well for some strange reason. Still that means that Crash can beat a lot of other characters in this bracket. Who would have thought that? I guess that Big Boss should have dropped too but still this much? Anyways Big Boss managed to do it I guess so that is. Still a hollow victory but a victory none the less. Guess that prooves that MGS franchise has fallen or something. Don't understand why. Yeah EVERYONE hated MG Survive but can this be the only reason? Maybe the way Konami treated the Creator? Who knows. ## Tsunami's Analysis The opponent here seems oddly appropriate, because that's exactly what Big Boss did here. He crashed and burned. This was an absolutely awful performance. Look at Crash's history. 2002: Gets horribly overseeded, allowing him to face fodder in Round 1. (Although he still got lucky because there was a *far* stronger character on the same seed line as his opponent.) Fails to break 20% in his Round 2 match 2003: 38% in Round 1 against KOS-MOS. This might be a high point. 2004: Allows Master Chief to break 70% on him. 2007: Returns from a hiatus; loses to Magus, Phoenix Wright, and Bomberman. At this point, Phoenix's only previous contest appearance was the loss that ended Gordon Freeman Never Wins. 2008: Doubles up Raz from Psychonauts, but still falls well short of advancing over Nightmare (Samus Aran was the obvious first place finisher). 2010: 38.21% against Ryu Hayabusa. Remember, Crash couldn't even break 30% against Master Chief. 2013: Finally gets another win, beating Wheatley and Tommy Vercetti, but finishes in third place in Round 2 behind Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite. All you need to know about her is that she was a 3-seed, which meant low expectations thanks to that being one of the gimmicked seed lines. So is Crash just stronger now? I know there was some sort of compilation release or something, but that shouldn't do that much for a character. It is a mystery. --- ## (3)Alucard vs (6)Yuna 2018 _source: (3)Alucard vs (6)Yuna 2018 (revid 83788)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Not gonna lie, I thought Yuna was going to win this match in a rout. I adore Final Fantasy X and it's been hard coming to grips with how damn weak that entire franchise has gotten these days. Not that I'm complaining! Alucard is one of my all time favorite characters and the recent PS4 port of Symphony of the Night gave me a chance to get a platinum trophy in a game I'm just in love with. Richter Belmont and his terrible inputs can fuck right off, but Alucard is amazing. I wasn't surprised Alucard won, but I was surprised to see a 60-40 beating in a match slated in the 55-45 range. He had clearly gotten a buff from that PS4 release, and some people keep talking about the Castlevania Netflix special. I didn't watch it, but maybe it helped. Who knows. This was another for the pile of examples of why Square has been looking like ass this year. Alucard just keeps finding ways to go on these deep contest runs, and it started right at the beginning. Check out some of the damage he's caused through two rounds in his career, all of which comes with these crazy low prediction percents. Summer 2002 - He beat Tails and Duke Nukem. Duke was the favorite in that fourpack that year. Summer 2003 - He beat Bomberman and Kirby. Almost everyone picked Kirby. I'm one of the few who actually picked Alucard, because I went and played Symphony of the Night before that contest and was on an everglow high. Kirby is a great character, but his games leave a lot to be desired. Alucard has both. Summer 2008 - After a five year break from busting brackets, he was back with a vengeance. The dude advanced twice in fourways, both of which in highly odd matches. He also had that 3 vote nonsense in 2007 and two night vote leads against Kingdom Hearts before getting buried by the morning vote. Dude's a vampire and the kiddies woke up, what do you expect? Rivalry Rumble - Wins his division before getting fed to Zelda. This made two losses to Link and one to Ganon back in the day. And then this year happened. There were a lot of close calls in round two in there that I didn't list, not to mention the ridiculous 2015 snub. The point here is if the guy has a decent path, he can win, and 2018 would prove it in pretty extreme fashion. Unlike most years, this dude was not done in round 3. ## Safer777's Analysis Alucard was the favorite to win true after his first victory but people hadn't Yuna out. Actually she was the favorite before the contest too. But man look at this result. Alucard won easily. I guess that Yuna scoring above 40% at least is  something. Obviously FF 10 has fallen. But I didn't expected that much. I know Alucard isn't weak or anything but still. Also that means Peach\>Yuna I guess? Find it hard  to believe but the stats don't lie! He even has a chance to win the next round too! Proof that beeing a Vampire is a good thing. Still Alucard is looking good in the  contest so far. Ah FF 10. Still has to be the 3rd strongest or maybe even the 2nd strongest FF game here. Right? ## Tsunami's Analysis With Big Boss struggling with Crash, the instinctive thought was "wait, is Kefka the favorite in the division now?" That was what *felt* right, but it was easy to see that it wasn't true, because Alucard was putting up nearly identical numbers against a clearly stronger opponent. I suppose a case could've been made for Red to be the favorite; I didn't think that way because I didn't feel like narrowly beating Sora was all that strong a performance. It *is*, because Sora only feels weak because he never lives up to his seed lines. I'm sure there's some analysis that conclusively shows that yes, Alucard was the favorite now. --- ## (7)Kefka vs (15)Bomberman 2018 _source: (7)Kefka vs (15)Bomberman 2018 (revid 83790)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match right here is why Kefka vs L-Block was such a big deal -- the free win that followed. No matter the Kazuma/Bomberman match, it was a bye for the Kefka/L winner and not even Kefka could have screwed this one up after getting by his first test. This was just a simple, easy, clean blowout. Nothing more to say about it. Except for one tiiiiiiiiiny thing that everyone will find hilarious. As you can see, Kefka scored 59.81% on Bomberman. No big deal, right? We all saw that coming. The guy scored 60.19% on L-Block! Can you even imagine if L-Block and Kazuma switched places on this bracket, and we got to see a 2 seed L-Block against a 15 seed Bomberman, and L-Block lost? Does that go down as our funniest upset ever or is it still Sandbag \> Magus? I suppose L-Block's 2007 run should always be mentioned when we talk about funny upsets, but I'm too busy burying the thing to care. Does even one guru/oracle/bop/\[random Board 8 alphabet games\] pick Bomberman there? I sure as hell wouldn't have. For the record, I would still say Sandbag \> Magus is funnier. That match happened when people still actually cared about this web site and we weren't some far left echo haven. These days no one gives a rip about this place and we're a meme for even existing; there are tons of reasons for that, but the extreme lack of free speech is near the top of the list. You don't even have to talk politics when mentioning that, either. The entire methodology behind this site's moderation system was trash from day one and was always going to cause people to leave. We said it at the time and we were proven right. That's why Sandbag is funnier. It comes from an era when this place was actually cool to be on. ## Safer777's Analysis After Kefka beat the champion in the previous round of course he wouldn't lose now. Bomberman is an icon but against Kefka what could he do? So Kefka did good. I guess? You can never be trully sure with Kefka. Still next round we will finally see if Kefka can be trully good! Yeah? Bomberman scored above 40% too so that means he too can beat the champion? Stats don't lie! I don't know what else to write in Kefka matches. He is too unpredictable. ## Tsunami's Analysis It's tough to say that a character has the most decisive win of the day and still looks bad, but Bomberman's just not that strong a character. We last saw him losing to Ezio and Tails, and that didn't seem awful at the time but Ezio looked awful this year. It probably wasn't awful, though. And he did beat Crash in 2007. Still, Bomberman was a 26-seed in 2013. How did he even make the bracket? --- ## (1)2B vs (9)Ness 2018 _source: (1)2B vs (9)Ness 2018 (revid 83849)_ ## Ulti's Analysis 2B's prediction percentage here was no accident. A lot of people, myself included, felt like the Ness/Shadow winner could win this match and that 2B was a hilariously overseeded character. People have major recency bias about this and think her match with Bowser proves she's legit, which shows a lack of context. Not dumping on her or Automata here, but it's just facts. She beat Ness and beat him easily, but this match was close enough in percents to prove she was not a legitimate 1 seed. Maybe a 2 or a 3, but 1 seeds are held to one standard and one standard only -- "Can they win the contest?". Some will point to characters like Sonic and Mega Man, but low rank noble niners could, conceivably, win a contest without an insane rally. Even high midcarders like Zero or Luigi could do it. Just remove Link from a bracket, have Mario and Samus get randomly upset somewhere, and Luigi or Zero could catch fire. We saw Zelda do something similar just this year. 2B? Nope. Not when you're getting 54% on Ness you aren't. People look at one good match with Bowser as proof, but one good match doesn't erase the point here. Legitimacy means having results like that over and over again for years. Consistency. I like her a lot, but I harshly judge 1 seeds. It's part of the deal, lady, and 54% on Ness is just bad news. I don't care about Smash. You're a 1 seed. To put this a different way, is Shadow the Hedgehog legit? Is Magus? (The hilarious irony here is 2B might actually get into Smash and cause this writeup to fade away and classify itself as ob-so-lete by 2020. Shout out to the Hardyz.) ## Tsunami's Analysis Ness was the straight-up Guru favorite here, and that's even before taking into account that considerably more people took Shadow to win this match than took 2B to lose last round to Cayde-6. So yeah, this came as kind of a surprise. I didn't even realize until this contest was well underway that Nier is a Square Enix franchise. I'm not sure if that knowledge would've given me more faith in 2B, or less. Probably less, because everything post-merger tends to be completely trash in these contests. The casuals didn't exactly jump all over us on this one, either. Given that 2B's Round 1 prediction percentage was only 81% or something, the 46.42% this round means she was probably technically the favorite, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Ness + Shadow had more brackets than 2B + Cayde-6. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this result was a suprise. We have a newcomer defeating a Nintendo/Smash character in Round 2 no less! Damn! Don't know what to say. I guess the SC6 boost is real? Maybe the fanservice is so strong? Okay I know that Ness is weak and such. Still you would think that he would be able to defeat a newcomer from a new game. We don't play new games here as you know! But anyways I guess 2B has some strength with the recent announcent of her beeing in SC 6. Still nice win from her. Once again I will say it was a suprise since most Gurus had Ness here anyways. Again though these kind of results are always nice. --- ## (12)Charizard vs (4)Bowser 2018 _source: (12)Charizard vs (4)Bowser 2018 (revid 83850)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We all knew this was coming after the 'Zard choked in round one, but it still had to be finalized and there was a small tinge of doubt before match time. But there wasn't going to be any crazy Charizard runs this year. Bowser clearly waited 8 years for this one to his get-back at this guy, much like how Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff wanted Warrior in WCW for only one match, and it showed. There wasn't even a Pokemon board vote in this match. If anything there was a Bowser board vote, and the best Charizard was able to do was bleed a few percents throughout the day. It's a good thing a Pokemon game came out in 1998, because it feels like their window to win a contest is completely and totally slammed shut. When you need Best Year in Gaming to win one, you're probably screwed. Relevant point regarding Bowser's board vote: When Smash Ultimate came out post contest and Board 8 had the first Save My contest for Smash characters, Bowser won it. That dude is insanely popular here, which might explain him being over 60% at the start. We just talked about legitimacy. This was legit. Bowser went out there, clearly kept this match in mind as motivation, and just beat Charizard's ass. That was fueled by Heart Gold and Soul Silver. The 'Zard we've seen lately, even with Pokemon Trainer's return to Smash, is the real Charizard. I won't go so far as to call him a fraud, but he is absolutely not what we saw in 2010. It's worth noting here that without Pikachu, Pokemon would have looked like trash all contest long. Their results were all mediocre or garbage, even in wins. All of them. Pikachu was the one standout. I don't know how many of you listen to the John Middlekauf 3 and Out podcast, but this was a John Middkauf Ass Kicking. Hyped match, one showed up. I maintain Bowsette was a huge influence, just for the record. I don't see any mainstream outlets covering Charizard porn, nor do I want to. And for those wondering why I keep making random porn jokes, that was an actual factor later in this contest. ## Tsunami's Analysis Do not let ***anyone*** talk you into believing that this loss made Charizard look bad. This was barely half a percent away from the Oracle consensus. Bowser has always been one of the strongest midcarders, and 43.45% is a good percentage to get on him. I think. ...Actually, the list of characters to do better than that is surprisingly long. Kirby has, more than once. Ryu didn't, but then he turned around and beat Bowser twice in fourways. *Leon Kennedy* outperformed him. So did Yoshi, but only barely. Honestly the fact that Leon's number is better than Yoshi's...oh, wait, I think RE4 was still fresh when that match happened. So Leon was a lot stronger than he is now. Charizard may not have had the perfect timing that he had in his first match against Bowser, but he's had plenty of reasons to remain strong over the years. He's made two more Smash appearances since 2010 and gotten *two* Mega Evolutions. Both Mega Evolutions got showcased in the anime, under the ownership of recurring characters, and prior to that, but still post-2010, Ash's Charizard returned to his party for a while. And then the 20th movie, which was basically an alternate continuity retelling of the entire first season distilled into one movie, again had Charizard as Ash's ace. This is a strong performance, and yes, it was somewhat redeeming after he disappointed in Round 1. Of course, it would be a few more rounds before his "disappointing" 2013 campaign was massively vindicated thanks to the efforts of his anime teammate Pikachu as well as his second-round opponent from that contest. ## Safer777's Analysis Obviously after the first match of Charizard nobody had any doubt that he would lose to Bowser. Yeah Charizard was damn strong when he first appeared. And he beat Bowser with the help of the release of HG/SS since his match against Bowser back then happened the same day that these games came out.. And in the next contest he did good with the SFF and such and won some matches. But yeah he isn't that strong. But since he was my first Pokemon ever I can't say anything bad about him. I guess that Bowser not going above 57% is something. Bowser is legit of course. And Charizard has fallen a lot. I think Pokemon is doing decent in the this contest so far. And they are strong. We saw Pikachu and Red winning and advancing. Also Pokemon seems that it isn't SFF'ed against other Nintendo characters. Still Bowser won fair and square. --- ## (3)Phoenix Wright vs (6)Ike 2018 _source: (3)Phoenix Wright vs (6)Ike 2018 (revid 83851)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This one just floored me. I knew it was possible, and knew Ike was never all that strong, and that there was some stats proof Phoenix was stronger for this match, but I had to see it to actually believe it. The thought of Phoenix Wright, a visual novel character (no one cares about visual novels, get over it people) with a marginal Marvel vs Capcom 3 appearance and dubious contest history, beating Ike was just insane to me. Yet here we are. I can't really overstate how huge this is, because look at how bad Phoenix's history is. This dude got blown out by Gordon Freeman. He almost blew a 1300 vote lead to Bomberman of all people in a second place duel. Bomberman! He was a 3 seed and lost to Jecht. His games always get completely and thoroughly blown out. The only times he has ever looked good are the Rivalry Rumble and Vincent getting a high school prom match picture in one of the biggest cases of sabotage we will ever see -- as a side note to KamikazePotato, that is picture sabotage, genius, not a well known sprite. Ike's contest history isn't too much better, but was at least better than Phoenix's. He also has Smash backing, which is a better cameo than anything Phoenix has been in. In retrospect I should have seen this coming when the dude lost to Sarah Jessica Parker in 2013, but I digress. When this match started, Phoenix didn't have his usual godslayer board vote, which was likely due to bracket voting. Phoenix was only able to slowly build a lead, so I figured Ike still had a shot. Nope. Well I mean he did, but this match stayed too close for too long for him to potentially overcome a rally later. You don't beat Phoenix by having close matches with him. Board 8 won't allow it. You have to beat him. So then this poll was stuck in the range of Phoenix leading by 100-200 for the first 6 hours, it was effectively over. Ike could never truly make any headway, and then the night vote hit and just ended it. Phoenix took off overnight, Ike never got the morning vote, and that was that. This match was relatively close the entire time, but there was never one second where it looked like Ike was going to win it. This was the latest in a long history of underperformances, but this was the worst one. Let's run through the list. In 2007, nominations were open when Ike was announced for Smash Bros. Brawl. His first fourpack had Duke Nukem, Guybrush Threepwood, and Gordon Freeman in it. Ike finished in third place, 1100 behind Gordon, as the only Nintendo character with two FPS characters stealing votes from each other. It's one of the most embarrassing losses I've ever seen. In 2008, his fourpack had Pikachu, Arthas, and Spy in it. Third place again, this time 1100 behind Arthas. Again, a thoroughly embarrassing loss but at least he was sharing the poll with Nintendo. It was explainable. In 2010 he finally got his chance to shine. In the first round he beat up a penguin, and in the second round he would have lost to Zidane but got lucky and drew Zidane in a day match. He would eventually get annihilated by Mario. Ike 100% loses to Zidane in a night match. Make no mistake there. In 2013 his opening threepack had Proto Man and Dr. Robotnik in it. Ike only beat Proto Man by 170 votes and his lead was 500 at one point. If this poll was 2 hours longer, Ike would have lost. As-is, he only won with bracket votes. Then in round 2 he drew GLaDOS and Julia Roberts. He finished a distant third. Which brings us to this year. Phoenix Wright is just an inexplicable loss. My whole job is finding out why people vote the way they do, but I got no answers here outside of Ike being a character that always gets into these weird debatable matches and always underperforms. I would bet most of his strength comes from Smash instead of Fire Emblem, too, and I can tell you the Smash fans are pretty fed up with all the Fire Emblem swordsman in those games. I would not be surprised if the male swordsmen were all anti-voted by those people. Ike, Chrom, Roy, and Marth are pretty much the exact character as far as Smash fans are concerned and none of them are particularly well liked outside the people who play them. That theory would explain a lot actually, because under normal circumstances with Smash backing a character shouldn't constantly choke. Edit: This match was flipped due to registered users having double votes, which explains the odd result as Ike might not have lost otherwise. I do think Phoenix gets rallied late if this is close though. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was our first match to be flipped by the registered user bonus. The raw votes are even closer, with Ike winning by just 28 votes, but Phoenix is Board 8's favorite character, so it came as no surprise that he'd be the first character to outright steal a win because of the registered bonus. It's entirely in character, too. Phoenix always does his best work when the odds are stacked against him, and occasionally he's unable to pull out victory on his own power, but someone else comes along to bail him out at the last minute. 1-2 is obviously the most prominent example, but there are other times, too, like 1-4 when Larry Butz comes busting in and Phoenix finally gets a chance to cross-examine a witness that Manfred von Karma hasn't tampered with in advance. I still need to play Spirit of Justice. I hear Phoenix is back to being the main protagonist in that one after being demoted to side character in the fourth game and being part of an ensemble in the fifth. Still, those games did give us other Ace Attorney leads. If they're any good in Spirit of Justice as well, maybe we should consider them for future experiments with other characters. The Godot thing didn't work out too well, and Edgey's been struggling for years now without a win. Couldn't be any worse than that, right? Well, okay, maybe it could because Apollo's debut game was roundly panned (I kind of liked it). He'll suffer for that. Athena might do okay just because females are doing better. Actually, forget those two. I also heard that Ema Skye is reprising her role from AJ:AA as the main detective, and she's had other appearances in the series before that. If we want to see if two X chromosomes really is an asset in these contests, we'll make *her* the next AA character to get a shot. But even without the registered voter bonus doing him in, Ike would have *barely* squeaked past Phoenix. Given the way Ike regularly dominates the Voting Gauntlets in Fire Emblem Heroes, that really doesn't speak very well for the strength of Fire Emblem as a whole. Or rather...it doesn't speak well for the *characters*' strength. It's been fairly rare in recent entries for there to truly be a lone main character. Ike kind of was in Path of Radiance, but even there he was the first lead to not be royalty in a game that still had plenty of royalty. Beyond that, you really have to go all the way back to Roy. It's quite possible that Fire Emblem will forever suffer from ensemble cast syndrome. The series has done okay for itself in Games contests, though not spectacularly. ## Safer777's Analysis Another suprise win! Obviously Phoenix is the favorite character of this board. But that doesn't say anything. Ike is from FE and he is in Smash so most people had him winning. But Phoenix managed to win! He had a lead but Ike kept coming back and pushing but Phoenix hold on and did it. Also I believe this is the 2nd time where a character wins in USA but loses the match. Ike had in USA more than 52%! But since Phoenix won in almost every region he did it. Still nice to see a Board favorite going to Round 3! Phoenix is legit now! His games are old mpw and like everyone knows the Objection thing by now. And as always as with all close matches this was good too. Also I  believe this is the first match where with the new rules that Ike would win instead of Phoenix. Meaning since registered votes count as double and Phoenix had more of them he won. Still Phoenix won and is all that matter. --- ## (10)Isaac vs (2)Kirby 2018 _source: (10)Isaac vs (2)Kirby 2018 (revid 88244)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This match was never going to be anything more than a typical round 2 blowout of fodder that got lucky to get through round 1, and it would barely be worth commenting on outside of a huge argument people had in the PCA this year. That's what happens to the winner of fodder v fodder winners. They face real competition and get slaughterhouse'd. But I saw people trying to say Golden Sun wasn't any good. Are you people insane? And Felix \> Isaac. Yeah I said it. ## Tsunami's Analysis This is an SFF match, plain and simple. Golden Sun is a handheld-exclusive series, and while Kirby isn't quite handheld-*exclusive*, he is very handheld-dominant. His debut game, Kirby's Dream Land, was for the original Game Boy, as was Dream Land 2. Dream Land 3 was a Super NES game...released more than a full year after the debut of the N64. And then there's the little matter of the 2000s. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards came out in June of 2000. Let's look at the ensuing decade--and keep in mind that Isaac's debut game wasn't out yet when this decade begins, while his most recent game was just a few months away from release when it ends. August 2000: Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble for the Game Boy Color. One of the first games to use motion controls. December 2002: Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land for the Game Boy Advance. Remake of his console debut, 1993's Kirby's Adventure for the NES. Like Dream Land 3 with the N64, that was well after the debut of the SNES. October 2003: Kirby Air Ride for the GameCube. Racing game spin-off. Surprisingly fun given how simple the controls are. October 2004: Kirby & the Amazing Mirror for the Game Boy Advance. I really need to go back and beat this game. I think this is the only game that I've ever gotten stuck in and my sister was able to beat. June 2005: Kirby: Canvas Curse for the Nintendo DS. Like Tilt 'n' Tumble, this is about 50% tech demo. Kirby tends to be the go-to series for Nintendo to try out new gimmicks. December 2006: Kirby: Squeak Squad for the Nintendo DS. September 2008: Kirby: Super Star Ultra. An updated remake of Kirby's *second* console outing, 1996's Kirby Super Star. Super Star just *narrowly* manages, in all three regions, to be Kirby's first console outing to be on the most recent console at the time--none closer than North America, where it was released just *nine days* before the N64 came out. And that's it. Kirby did manage another console outing before Isaac's most recent game came out (in November 2010), October 2010's Kirby's Epic Yarn for the Wii, but that's outside the 10-year window from, we'll call it starting from July 2000 since Crystal Shards came out in June of that year. 10 years, seven releases, and only one of them for a home console rather than a handheld. And that one was a single-button racing game rather than the platformers that he's known for. Yes, this conveniently ignores that HAL Laboratory in general and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai in particular are also responsible for Super Smash Bros., and that the focus on the three Kirby characters in the game has led some people to consider Brawl's Subspace Emissary "basically a Kirby game with a lot of guest stars", and thus if you include the two Smash games from that time frame, Kirby had some *very* prominent releases in that decade. Kirby's a handheld star in my mind, just like Pokémon. ## Safer777's Analysis I can't understand why Kirby is so strong. I just can't. Yeah he is the hero of Smash supposedly but still. I have wrote some stuff about Kirby in my first analysis of  his match so go check out why I don't get it. So obviously Kirby scored a massive victory here. When you see a non N9 character winning in Round 2 with above 70% you  know that something is going on. Kirby takes the division for sure. Probably? Also a plus thing I understand is that you can't hate Kirby because just look at him! How can you  hate that? Unless you hate round things I guess? Kirby is too cute and strong! As for Isaac...at least he managed to reach here which is a big thing for this character/franchise! --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs (8)Garrus Vakarian 2018 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs (8)Garrus Vakarian 2018 (revid 83859)_ ## Ulti's Analysis 1/3rd of people had Squall losing to Hat Kid, Garrus, or Ramza. I will never understand some of the prediction percents we see sometimes. This was also a match featuring the manliest of manly men. Squall and Garrus are just incredible characters, and since this was a predictable match with nothing to say I'll just get into why I love these two. First, Squall. I legitimately hated the dude when I first played Final Fantasy 8, but then I replayed it when I got a bit older. Of course the guy is a loner who thinks everyone around him is a moron. Look at those people. Quistis is the only one worth being around, and why Squall was stuck with Rinoa I'll never understand. Rinoa is useless trash. Zell is useless trash. Irvine is mega trash. Selphie might be the worst character in Final Fantasy history. So my party was always Squall/Quistis/Zell, and the latter was only there because of his limit being insane. The side characters aren't too much better with their "everyone is Xehanor-- errrrr, everyone is Ultimecia TIME KOMPRESSION RAWR" plot, but hey at least Laguna's stuff is nice. The constant? Squall. Through all the dumb characters and insulting plot twists, Squall pretty much tells everyone to fuck off so he can stab fools, which is exactly how one should act when surrounded by garbage. Then his Kingdom Hearts 1 and Dissidia appearances happened and brought it home. I love this dude. He isn't grade A or anything, but he's a solid B+. And he's voiced by David Boreanaz who my wife loves, which is always a plus. Then there's Garrus, who is the damn king of Mass Effect for party members. I cannot possibly put my love of the dude into words, so I'll let these videos handle it for me: My \#1 reason for playing FemShep is that I love her as a character. \#2 is getting a romance option with Garrus. He's probably my favorite character in the Mass Effect games outside of maybe Tali. And Tali only comes close because of the emergency induction port joke. Garrus is the man, but he went to someone equally acceptable so I'll take it. ## Tsunami's Analysis As per usual, once you've started heading into the bottom half of a round, you generally get very few relevant matches. This won't actually be the case for this bracket, where some surprise results would come from low divisions, but...well, there were surprising results in low divisions in previous contests under Allen, too, but that was largely the result of the later divisions being worthless. Remember how Super Mario RPG made a contest semifinal? The game that I noted is *extremely* easy to screw over because it eats the ass end of SFF against Nintendo *and* Square? But Division 7, its division, had only one other game from each of those companies: Paper Mario for Nintendo and Chrono Cross for Square. And Division 8 had absolutely no Square and its only Nintendo games were from the Mother series. The prevailing theory was that Allen set it up that way because he *wanted* a company other than Square or Nintendo to be represented in the Final Four (Square was considered the favorite for Divisions 1 and 2, with Chrono Trigger and the 3 most popular Final Fantasy games, while Divisions 3 and 4 had RBY and the top three Mario games and Divisions 5 and 6 had the 3 biggest Zelda games). Well, there was one non-Nintendo, non-Square entry in the Final Four, but it was Undertale. Furthermore SMRPG was the only Square entry at all because Melee got in the way of the Square-fest in Divisions 1 and 2. Divisions 7 and 8 had most of the top non-Nintendo, non-Square entries, like the MGS games and RE4. Didn't matter. Squall failing to double Garrus was another one of those warning signs that we all missed. There, I actually said something about this match. ## Safer777's Analysis Squall winning this round was never in doubt. And after Garrus barely beating Ramza this was a lock. But Squall didn't even managed to score a doubling here. I wonder why. I thought he would do it for sure. Is it anti-votes? Squall has gotten weaker? Both? Who knows. Maybe the result is good and I am beeing strange. Maybe. This is my opinion. It is not that result is not good, don't be fooled. Man next round Squall has to step up his game or else he is out. Guess people don't like the Angsty characters anymore. --- ## (12)The Boss vs (4)Zelda 2018 _source: (12)The Boss vs (4)Zelda 2018 (revid 83860)_ ## Ulti's Analysis If Zelda \> Squall wasn't already set in a tombstone, this match solidified it in metal. I know MGS is down, but 71% on The Boss is far more impressive than 64% on a guy that barely beat Ramza. 76% on Hat Kid also means nothing compared to 75% on Ezio. There were some Squall holdouts trying to pretend this match was a weird form of SFF a la what we saw in some female bracket matches in 2006, because stats people will do anything to justify a bad position. Those are the kinds of people that run the Dodgers and thought sitting their top 4 home run hitters in a world series game was a good idea. If you want to know where too many stats and advanced metrics get you, look at the state of baseball right now. Does anyone under 75 actually care about that sport? Just for fun, people put this Zelda number in some stat calculators and found that it put her on the high Noble Nine level. Which is why some people thought this result was weird and couldn't possibly be legit. After all, Zelda would have no actual reason to boost this much, right? It's not like there was some well received recent game from this site's favorite franchise happened and she played a huge role in that game or anything. Nah. By the way if we get Game of the Decade for the 2010s, and we should, I'd really struggle to choose between Breath of the Wild and Smash Ultimate. Both are phenomenal games, but one has weapon durability for literally no reason whatsoever. That works in Fire Emblem. It does not work in Zelda. Not that Breath of the Wild being great would cause Zelda to boost. No sir. ## Tsunami's Analysis After this performance, it was hard not to think Zelda was the favorite against Squall, though the margin would still come as a shock. The Boss has been fortunate enough to almost always draw a winnable first match, allowing her to reliably reach the second round without ever really establishing herself as a true midcarder. But she's considered one due to her strong Round 1 record, so this beating was a statement win for Zelda. ## Safer777's Analysis Man Zelda dominated here. A victory above 70%? And I know that The Boss isn't that strong anyways. But Zelda is a beast. Number 2 female character here for sure. After Samus of course. Probably at least. Well beeing in  Legend Of Zelda and Smash series does wonders for you. Also people say that MGS characters don't do good in this contest. I don't see that myself. I mean Quiet lost yeah but apparently we don't like MGS 5 or something. Big Boss won 2 matches as it was expected. And of course The Boss lost to Zelda. Eh whatever. Still seems that next round Zelda is the favorite to win but who knows? --- ## (14)D.Va vs (11)Fox McCloud 2018 _source: (14)D.Va vs (11)Fox McCloud 2018 (revid 85755)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Some people point to Draven as the big cathartic result of this contest. Do not listen to those people. They are communists. Shout out to Jon Stewart's A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, and shout out to him in general. Him leaving The Daily Show is the biggest reason our political climate stopped having any nuance or humor whatsoever. He is BADLY missed. Want to know when and why and how democrats stopped being cool? When Jon Stewart stopped being the checks and balances in our discourse. He would make fun of everyone and anyone, not just one side of things like you see now with everyone expected to fall in line. Go read the Board 8 politics topic some time if you feel like puking in your mouth at all the one sided mentally ill leftist garbage in there. These people don't just dislike a president. They LOATHE a president and buy into every single piece of mainstream media brainwashing, because it's very easy to exploit the mentally ill and the mentally weak. It's no accident most of those people end up voting for democrats these days, because the entire media is leftist. It wasn't always like that. There was a balance to things. If Nancy Pelosi acted like a hung over idiot during State of the Union and kept falling asleep, he would make fun of it. If Bullshit Mountain (Faux News) spread their bullshit, he would make fun of it. If CNN or MSNBC spread their bullshit, he would make fun of it. If Jon Stewart were still alive and the media tried telling us an 11 year old drag queen 'performing' at clubs in New York for pedophiles was a good idea, Jon Stewart would eviscerate these people. If Jon Stewart and George Carlin were still alive, people would still be getting along instead of being in echo chambers and listening to fake news like the good little NPC bots they are. That isn't at a shot at either side, either. It's a shot at all of you. You all do it, you all know you do it, and you're all dumb enough to convince yourselves only you're right and the other side is evil 100% of the time. People see me shit on leftists all the time and assume I'm some redneck Trump supporting racist, which couldn't be a bigger lie. They just happen to be the biggest douchebags in America right now. I was just as vicious towards hardline conservative trash in the 80s and 90s back when they were acting the exact same way. But today for the leftists especially, that mentality is why most of you hate religion and churches. I get it. Well look in a mirror, champ. You act the same exact way now. You have become exactly what you hate -- joyless fuckheads who want to censor everything because you actually think making everyone else as miserable as you are is a good idea. Well piss off. You're now hated every bit as much as hardcore fundamentalist conservatives. Congratulations. Was it worth it? Speaking of bullshit no one likes, we have to talk about Blizzard. Their one and only contest entrant didn't get 28% on and blown the fuck out by an overrated, overhyped fifth rate Nintendo character by accident. This was the most cathartic and best result of the entire contest. In 2001, Blizzard released Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, which was an expansion pack that added a fifth act on to Diablo 2 itself. This effectively means that Diablo 2 in the year 2000, almost 20 years ago, was the last time Blizzard would make a good video game. Everything they have done since has been abject, total, and complete garbage. I tried thinking of a few different ways to go about this writeup, but I'll just get into each series one by one. But before we do that, we need to go back in time and look at exactly how and why Blizzard became such garbage in the first place. I will point out that the PC master race idiots, including a bunch of Board 8 users, tried telling me during the Activision-Blizzard merger that Blizzard would be better off for this. Those people looked like idiots then and they look even dumber now, because as usual, I was proven right. I have the patience of a serial killer. It was only a matter of time before I was proven correct, and this is my best and most successful example to date. Blizzard is complete shit. In 1996, a company you've never heard of called Vivendi Games (then known as CUC International) announced their intent to acquire Davidson and Associates, another company you've never heard of. What you have heard of are the names "Activision" and "Blizzard", which are the companies involved in the mergers we're about to discuss. Vivendi Games would eventually acquire Blizzard, a subsidiary of Davidson and Associates due to a corporate merger, in the year 2000. Most people think the Activision merger is what started the decline of Blizzard, but this all started in the year 2000. It just takes awhile for corporations to worm their way into a culture and get rid of all the good people that helped build up a company in the first place. But make no mistake. This started in 2000. When World of Warcraft happened not long after the Vivendi deal, people assumed everything was gravy. It was actually the exact opposite, because it would be the financial catalyst for Vivendi and Activision to complete another corporate merger to form Activision Blizzard. Bobby Kotick came out not long after and said that video game development should in no way be about having fun, which should have been a signal to anyone with two functional brain cells to rub together to stop buying video games from these people, but the public is a bunch of mentally weak sheeple punkass bitches. When I rail on people for being dumb and buying dumb games and funding dumb things, World of Warcraft and the billions upon billions of dollars the disposable income idiots still living with their parents funneled into that game is the prime example. That is the example of millennials being dumb with money and then bitching later about not being able to afford things. It's your own fault. Piss off and stop trying to tell me socialism is the answer for your own stupidity. I don't have to pay for your bad decisions. Fuck you. Got mine. If these people were smart, they would have done their research into Vivendi and realized these people were bad news. But I get it, people only care about video game quality, which is why the Warcraft series is as good a place to start as any. It would be one thing if World of Warcraft was actually good, but it's nothing more than programmable addiction, as beautifully told by Johnathan Blow: Warcraft With the popularity of Warcraft 2 launching the battle.net service and Starcraft being a cultural phenom, the hype for Warcraft 3 was insane. I remember it. I was there. Blizzard promised us better graphics, a new engine, and a new way to play RTS. They would slow burn on the web site and release one unit at a time. The footmen looked so cool! Wow look at those grunts! The animation and graphics are sick! It was awesome. We were eventually told there would be races beyond humans and orcs. There would be elves and undead, too? Say what?! That's nuts! But Blizzard balanced three races perfectly in Starcraft, so adding one more with better graphics should be a breeze, right? Nope. I still remember when that hero RPG item bullshit was first announced, and how people completely lost their shit for it. I remember how disappointed I was and I remember thinking at the time that this was the worst idea for an RTS there could ever be. You can't take a genre about micromanaging units while macromanaging resources in real time and add in singular units that completely warp the game balance into being all about them. It stops being an RTS. People were of course stupid and thought it was a great idea because Blizzard (more on that bullshit mentality in the Diablo section, holy fucking hell), but I knew. RPGs and RTS do not mix. When Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne ultimately came out, it was a mess and stood as the worst video game ever made for 10 solid years. The main reason was the hero RPG item system, which ruined both single player and multiplayer. The other reason was the abominable upkeep system, where you were penalized for having a big army. This was directly intended to make sure your army was small and only the hero units mattered. No longer did you micromanagement skills matter. The entire game became about leveling up 1-3 hero units and micromanaging them only. It was a joke, and it ruined one of my favorite genres beyond all repair. To this day it hasn't recovered, with only Advance Wars providing any sort of an RTS fix, and even Advance Wars has a form of hero system in it. I remember thinking at the time that such idiocy had to be intentional, and it was later confirmed by Blizzard themselves that it in fact was. They never wanted to make an RTS at all and wanted to only go the RPG route. I could not have been more vindicated from the morons who tried telling me this is what Blizzard wanted all along. They wanted RPG only and hamfisted an RTS game because people were hyped for an RTS other than Starcraft. Single player was bad. Multiplayer was infinitely worse. There was no balance to speak of, and almost no units outside of heroes mattered. The only things that did matter were stacking items on heroes, leveling up on neutral minions, and making units that countered opposing heroes -- not that this even matters once a hero reaches a high enough level. The logic behind this braindead, idiotic design decision was to have some action earlier in multiplayer games. It would be the single worst design idea in gaming history, even including all the idiotic trash Hearthstone does. Hero units and RPG effects were never, ever meant to exist in an RTS realm. The genre was not designed for it. It was every bit a mistake as Akuma in Street Fighter 2. That game was in no way designed for aerial fireballs. RTS was in no way designed for balance once hero units got involved. Some were worse than others, but all of them are complete cancer. None worse than the Blademaster unit, which can go invisible from level 1 and warp the entire game around him even existing. If you're playing against an orc, your entire strategy becomes walling your base off with pathing glitches so the Blademaster can't enter your base. If you're in a bad spot on the map, you're fucked. You then have to tech to detection as soon as possible. It's one example of hundreds how the hero RPG item system was so badly implemented in a genre never designed to handle it that it ruined my opinion of Blizzard for good. And this was only the first example. They could have redeemed themselves with other games. Instead it just kept getting worse for almost two decades, and only recently have people begun figuring out what trash this company is. Some people point to the lore as a reason why Warcraft 3 is good. The entire plot, and I mean the entire plot, was ripped from Starcraft and given a medieval coat of paint. No credit given for a rehash of old themes with new faces. Some people claim Dota makes Warcraft 3 good. Again, this has nothing to do with Warcraft 3. Dota was talented people using the map editor. That's it. That has nothing to do with Warcraft 3 at all, but people are so desperate to defend anything Blizzard does that they'll cling to anything. It's also a good way to spot people that know nothing about Dota, because the original version of it that Guinsoo made was garbage IceFrog had to come along and improve on the model, and let's not pretend inventing the MOBA genre is something to be proud of. There is no community in video games worse than MOBA players. Zero. I've played a lot of video games and have been in a lot of communities. Nothing touches MOBAs for people being human waste. I'll let Brian Kibler explain this one, who can do it in a much nicer and quicker way than I can: Warcraft 3 was actually given a balance update recently where they nerfed/buffed a ton of stuff and added new maps. It was the first one in something like 9 years, and people fell over themselves giving Blizzard credit for this. Two seconds on Google offers proper context. Number one, what took them so long? The game was a broken mess from day one. And number 2, the new maps were all player made. Imagine my shock, the players themselves are better at design than Blizzard. Again. It also turned out this all happened due to Warcraft 3 Remastered being on the horizon, because Blizzard has run out of ideas, people have FINALLY figured out they're shit, and the only thing left for them is graphical updates on old games. World of Warcraft happened not long after Warcraft 3 and not long after the Vivendi screwjob, and no game has ever had a worse effect on a company than WoW did. The only comparable example is Nintendo released Wind Waker and discovering just how stupid their fan base actually is. They realized they could sell literal shit with a shiny coat of paint on it and their fans would eat it right up. Well WoW is the Blizzard version of this. WoW is nothing more than accepting a quest and following a yellow map marker over and over again for thousands of hours at a time and 15 dollars a month. I am in no way exaggerating this and it's embarrassing as a human being that so many of my fellow humans fell for such obvious programmable addiction. I still, to this day, see people on my friend list doing nothing with their entire lives outside of World of Warcraft. There is no substance there. There is nothing actually happening. It's just quest, yellow exclamation point, repeat. At one point, this garbage-ass formula had 10 million active players. That's 150,000,000 dollars a month, or 1.8 billion dollars per year. Blizzard con jobbing all these people into paying for a terrible video game remains the dumbest thing I have ever seen in gaming history. It would be one thing if WoW was actually good. It being garbage is another thing entirely. There is zero defense for anyone that's ever paid a dime to play that game. None. You are a sucker and a chump, and you need to stay away from used car lots. Granted you could see a car with no engine, no tires, no transmission, and no steering wheel and you'd take out a second mortgage and a personal loan to buy it if it said "Blizzard" on it. Oh wait, none of you actually have a house to take out a second mortgage because you spent everything playing WoW and now you're stuck living with your parents well into your 20s. And of course you're the same people who think socialism is the answer. Amazing logic. When WoW finally collapsed, which happened very quickly once people realized the game was bad, Blizzard finally panicked and skipped the whole classic leveling thing. Now you can just jump right to level 110 (the cap was 60 when the game first came out, for those who were smart enough not to play this trash) and join raiding parties. This I can actually defend, and it's what should have been there from the jump. Raiding is legitimately fun, and so is the game's storyline. Had Blizzard just done this from the jump, the game would have been defensible. But they didn't, therefore they and the game are not defensible. Chris Rock once made a joke about how black men get credit for being good fathers to their kids and not having babies out of wedlock. Why the fuck am I supposed to give people credit for doing something they should have been doing in the first place? No credit given for doing your job, and no credit given to Blizzard for doing something they should have done from day one. Fuck Blizzard and fuck you too if you defend this crap. They only act in the best interest of their players when they panic. More on that in the Hearthstone section. People will point to "the world" and "immersion" as defenses for WoW, which are fair points. The one thing Blizzard actually does well are aesthetics. It's how they trick people into thinking their games are actually good. You can click on a unit a lot and get funny quotes. You get good graphics. You get immersion. All masks for shitty gameplay. MMORPGs, or Massive Morbidly Obese Recluses Pretending to be Girls, is by far the worst genre in gaming. I don't exactly give credit to any company profiting off of making one. I will never for as long as I live remember how utterly obnoxious that fanbase was in the 2000s, both online and in real life. There was nothing more annoying in gaming history for me than WoW players. If it wasn't jock assholes pretending to be gamers, it was smelly nerds with worse hygiene than usual talking about nothing but WoW and failing out of college. Fuck all of those people. I don't know why abstinence only education is a thing when the religious right could just buy people WoW accounts and have a much higher success rate of ensuring virginity until marriage. The only good thing to ever happen in that game was the funeral raid, which was a great thing for WoW because a bunch of braindead idiots thought a funeral in a PvP zone was a good idea and thus it demonstrated how stupid Blizzard fans are, and it was also a positive for Board 8. It was a major point that drove the jp's fat ass off of our board, because he was literally crying about it and got no support here. For once, Board 8's bullying of the persecuted paid off. Good riddance to that idiot. I'll cover Hearthstone in its own section, because that game is such laughable garbage and Blizzard has lied about it so many times now that it deserves its own section. I need to close this section with one final and obvious point. The success of WoW sucked up all of Blizzard's attention. No Starcraft until 2010. No Diablo until 2012. No updates on old games past the bare minimum, and even then the fans played a bigger part than Blizzard did. Look at this time line: Notice anything funny? Once WoW happens, there is NOTHING else for the entire decade. They're also so embarrassed by anything after 2014 that they stopped updating the time line. It's the classic story of not caring once one gets rich. As of this writing, that company is worth 36 billion dollars on the backs of you idiots funding bad video games. They're buying yachts and spending time not making video games. What are you left with? Bad video games and wondering why you're unsuccessful into your adulthood. Blizzard has lost their grit because they made fuck you money. I'm worth a paltry 11 million (I say paltry because compared to 36 billion I ain't shit), but the difference with me is I got more gritty when I made my money because it showed me how the world actually works. Blizzard? They're just laughing at you all the way to the bank. Starcraft In 1998, Starcraft and Brood War both came out in the same year. I know, hard to imagine given how slow Blizzard is today, but that pair of games paired with bnet was a cultural phenom for years. It set the stage for online tournaments, it revived the economy of a country (really, this happened), it really set the stage for video games as an online platform, and above all it was just a damn good video game. It was so good that Starcraft actually got people to lie to themselves and convince themselves Warcraft 3 was good. Think about this. That is impressive. So given how good Starcraft was, how fast the games came out, and how good the plot was, we wanted more. It was okay if Blizzard took their time, because we wanted them to get it right. Mind you, this is something we started openly asking for back in the year 2000. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. ... ... ... ... 12 years between Starcraft games. Duke Nukem Forever and Half-Life 3 eat all these jokes, yet somehow Blizzard never does. 12 years of time might as well be dog years in the tech world. The iPhone isn't even that old. That's longer than the time period between 9/11 and Obama announcing that Bin Laden was dead. Remember W's presidency? That was only 10 years ago. Facebook is only 14. Youtube is only 13. I could go on. To the point. Let's revisit 2009, where Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision-Blizzard, went on record as saying he would raise the prices of games even higher and that the main goal in game design would be to take all the fun out of making video games. These are literal word for word quotes that happened right before Starcraft 2 was announced. This right here should really be enough for anyone who isn't a complete fucking idiot, but we're talking about Blizzard fans. When Starcraft 2 was finally announced, it was announced as a 3 part series where we would get the three races as three separate games. But don't worry! Fear not! We were promised at the time by Blizzard, the same company that had just gone on record as saying games need to be more expensive and not fun, with profit above all else, that only the first game would be fully priced. I said at the time this was a blatant lie and to this day I have those Escapist articles bookmarked for anyone dumb enough to deny Kotick's literal words. Not that it didn't stop some of you, notably the PC master race idiots like joyrock, from trying to defend this vomit. Well what do you know, Starcraft 2 ended up being three fully priced games. "Imagine my shock." It's almost like Blizzard's CEO went on record as saying he would pull this crap just to see how many people would be stupid enough to defend him. Oh and make sure to buy the collector's edition for 200 dollars each, suckers. As for Starcraft 2 the game, Wings of Liberty and Legacy of the Void are actually decent. There aren't nearly enough missions that are actually RTS, though. Too much timed bullshit or random gimmicks. Give me a base with nothing in it and let me work. Enough with the bullshit. But it's Blizzard, and bullshit is all they know anymore. The Zerg stuff was the biggest dumpster fire of it all, with literally zero RTS maps in the entire game. The highlight of all of Starcraft 2 was a random shooter mini game on the Hyperion. I honestly don't know to this day if that's a credit or discredit to Starcraft 2 itself. I never bothered with the multiplayer, but I'm sure LordOfDabu would be able to destroy it with a rant of his own. Starcraft, like Warcraft, was rereleased with an HD update because Blizzard is out of ideas. It was an absolute dumpster fire. Diablo I'm old enough to remember when Diablo first came out. It was this amazing, controversial game that drove all the pro-censorship conservatives insane. Diablo got lumped in the pile with Mortal Kombat, Doom, Postal, and so forth as games who were corrupting the youth or some such. We would continue to hear stupid shit about games causing mass shootings and sex crimes from more than one republican idiot (including Trump, who I actually like but come on bro, that's just dumb). This is nothing new for those morons, because they would rather blame anything else for their failures as a parent instead of the mirror. Remember when they also tried blaming music, movies, public schooling, their kids' friends, and even TV? There are some stupid fucking people out there. Remember Jack Thompson, the idiot Florida lawyer that made it his crusade to take down video games and he ended up disbarred? Good riddance, trash. Diablo was in it right from the jump, and it's no accident the game itself was fantastic. It was simple, clean, and effective. 16 floors of increasing difficulty, an environment change every few floors, and one town. That's it. Find some items, gear up, and keep it moving. Eventually you kill Diablo and start over until your character reaches level 50. I never bothered much with the multiplayer in the Diablo games, because it was nothing more than a dupe fest that Blizzard never bothered fixing (surprise surprise). Even Hellfire, that weird expansion not totally made by Blizzard, was great. You trap a skeleton behind a wall as the archer and gain like 30 levels right at the jump. Four years later, we got Diablo 2. I was initially put off a bit, because I was expecting a similar experience to the original. Open green fields, more than 8 directions of movement, 4 acts, and a bunch of bright colors? Auras? Hirelings? What the fuck? But the game eventually grew on me a lot, and with the expansion pack I came to love it to death. Outside of dupewords (surprise surprise, duping was again a problem and Blizzard refused to ever fix it), everything added by Lord of Destruction was amazing. Runes rendering all other gear obsolete was dumb, but the rest of the game was good enough to make up for it. Over the years I got paladin and sorceress to 99, and beat the game with all the others. Believe it or not, the most fun I had was with a Kicksin (assassin that kicks). My greatest accomplishment in that game was making a legitimate, real Last Wish. I found the sword and all the runes on one character myself, without really looking for them. I don't know if Blizzard upped the drops of runes or what, but soloing Uber Trist and the buffed version of Diablo that drops an Anni stone was an incredible experience. The Anni was a pretty high roll and the torch was of course assassin points. That whole run was great. Eventually got her to 97. Necro is highly overrated. Never cared about him. Barbarian is boring. Druid is just a bad sorceress paired with a bad barbarian. Sorc, Paladin, Amazon, and Assassin are where it's at. It's kind of funny watching idiots pretend I'm a sexist for liking Trump when in almost every game I play I naturally gravitate toward female characters. Love them in Diablo. I vastly prefer FemShep. I always played as a girl in the Elder Scrolls games. I could go on. It shows the utter stupidity of giving idiots a keyboard, anonymity, and no consequences. People used to get punched in the mouth and taught via peer pressure not to say or do stupid things. Now we give everyone a keyboard, treat everyone like they're special, give everyone a trophy just for showing up, and invent social media to pander to delusions of grandeur. Again, Chris Rock said it best. No credit for doing what you're supposed to do. Social media is the worst invention in our planet's history and it isn't close. But I'm getting off subject here. The two major issues with Diablo 2 were inventory space and Blizzard themselves. Blizzard never once made any real action against botters or cheaters. They deleted accounts, sure, but you had to FLAGRANTLY cheat to do it to the point of selling duped items. If you just duped and gave things to friends, they didn't care. They also time ban legit people all the time while never actually addressing the bot problem. I don't know how it's possible to be that dumb, but it's Blizzard. I'm not surprised by it, but the games used to be good so we didn't care. Then there's the inventory space, which holy hell could Blizzard be stupider about this? It's way too small, we end up having to use the Horadric Cube for more space, and then Blizzard comes out and tells people increasing inventory space would put too much strain on their servers. If this was any other company I would assume it's an April Fool's Joke to say something this hilariously and legendarily stupid, but it's Blizzard. They're in the Tyson Zone at this point. There is nothing about that company I wouldn't believe at this point, because their idiocy is legendary. Which brings us to Diablo 3, one of the most hyped games ever made, and a game none of us were actually able to play at launch because Blizzard had one server when the game was first released. We're thankfully getting into the age of the internet where youtube and internet archiving was a thing, so even Blizzard sycophants can't deny this one. When we were finally actually able to play the game, people thought something was wrong with it. Items were not dropping. Ever. Anywhere. The whole point of Diablo is killing stuff, picking up gear, and getting stronger. That's how dungeon crawls work. We would maybe get an occasional good thing for killing a boss, but that's about it. People actually thought the game was glitched. Nope! "Working as intended." -Jay Wilson, director of Diablo 3 I covered the myriad of lies and bullshit Blizzard put out with Diablo 3 in my review, and there's no reason to repeat them all: The short version: Blizzard opened this game with a real money auction house, made item drops nonexistent, released a buggy mess, lied about it, got caught, insulted the entire player base, and Jay Wilson had to resign over it. They were more worried about emulating what d2jap was doing with Diablo 2 than they were designing a video game. That much is clear to anyone that's not a complete and total fucking idiot. If you didn't think low item drops coincided with a real money auction house, you are thoroughly a moron and there is no helping you. Bethesda is catching holy hell for Fallout 76, as they should. It's being called the worst launch ever. Well I'm here to tell you that Diablo 3 was the single worst launch in gaming history, and I give no fucks about any rereleases or ports or fixes or whatever since. That game is forever indefensible trash, and somehow, some way, it gets worse. "Do you guys not have phones?" If you want to know which people and which web sites are in no way trustworthy for honest gaming information, pay close attention to the people who defended this announcement. There are actually people out there dumb enough to think fans booed because of sexism and that people equate mobile gaming with things females like. If ever you need an example of why SJWs are a cancer on our culture that we need immediate chemo for, this is it. I say this as someone whose mother died of cancer when I was only 17, after a years long battle with something that should have killed her within 6 months. I get my stubbornness from her, clearly =p. SJWs are worse, because when the big C hits someone in your own family it's very easy to see something that needs to be dealt with and overcome. But when cancer disguises itself as something friendly, as SJWs will do at first, that's when you get something truly evil. That's when you get things like open borders for easy invasions, 11 year old drag queens promoting pedophilia, and daily viral meltdowns from people too stupid to understand why their SJW culture doesn't make them happy. These people are parasites and need to be excised immediately. There is no nice way to put it. It's beyond obvious they don't even play video games, and any company who buys into that filth deserves the loss in sales that will follow. Star Wars found that out the hard way. Hillary Clinton tried to embrace that nonsense and lost an election over it, when all she needed to do was stay even keel for a year and she would have won in a landslide. I could go on for years about why SJWs and communism are the worst people in human history (look at the length of this one writeup; don't even doubt me that I could write a book on it and I probably should), but I digress. I won't even link to the sites who tried pushing that dipshit narrative, but they're easy to find. To the point. Females have nothing to do with why Diablo Immortal and Blizzard are dumpster fires. Polygon covered it beautifully, and there's a wonderful quote from Steve Jobs in there that absolutely exemplifies why Blizzard is a shitty company today: There have been a lot of bad press conferences over the years, from 599 US DOLLARS to Wii Music to anything a member of the Bush family says (PLEASE CLAP), but nothing will ever top the embarrassment of the Diablo Immortal announcement. You have to suck at a level never before seen to get booed at your own convention, but that's exactly what happened there. Wyatt Cheng, who by all accounts is a fantastic dude, was in no way ready for that immediate backlash and is in no way a public speaker. The guy was thrown on stage when he wasn't naturally meant for it, and I don't blame him for what happened. That is 100% the fault of his bosses for being fucking trash. Plain and simple. What happened next shocked me, because I'm used to Blizzard getting away with this garbage and their paid off minions like Forbes and PC Gamer using the PR spin machine to make them come out looking good. It's finally stopped working. In October of 2018, Blizzard's stock was over 83 dollars a share. That press conference was the catalyst for a complete stock collapse, the exodus of hundreds of employees, and millions of players. They couldn't even lie about this one. Activision themselves reported it. Eat shit, sycophants. As usual, Ulti Was Right. I only need a long enough time line. There are two major things in play here. One, Blizzard got meme'd. Gamers are a pretty smart bunch for as much garbage as I fling at them, and once something gets meme'd they're out. That press conference was so hilariously bad that there was no other result to be had. Of course people are going to leave. It's why Europe banned free speec--- errrrrrr, banned memes. Social engineers know the effectiveness they can have, and Europe doesn't exactly want their citizens having free speech when they're being lorded over by an unelected beurocracy known as the European Union. And if you support restricting free speech, fuck you. The other is that Blizzard's employees are both quitting and are being paid to leave. Activision took charge after the stock collapse and will take a more active role in cutting costs and developing games, as I predicted. By the way, good job to the PC master race idiots on Board 8 who tried telling me a decade ago that Activision merging with Blizzard wouldn't mean Activision deciding things for them. How does crow taste, you little bitch boy rho male idiots? This will add up to Blizzard getting even worse, as we have recently seen in an ever increasing pace of speed. Former employees are all over the internet in open revolt against their business practices, their work hours, and how they no longer know what game players want. Easy articles to find so I won't link to them all. I will simply give you one: Hearthstone The worst video game ever made, and a game so bad that I can't just lump it into the 'other modern Blizzard games' section to give it shorthand attention. The idiocy of Hearthstone truly has to be experienced to be believed. Things started off well enough because Hearthstone was able to attract two audiences that were in dire need of something new -- frustrated Blizzard fans and frustrated Magic the Gathering players. Blizzard fans I've covered already, but it's impossible to talk about Hearthstone without mentioning why Magic sucks, and a lot of it is for the same reason Blizzard sucks. Hearthstone might be the worst game ever, but Magic is the worst game ever. Behind all the aesthetics and the artwork and the lore of Magic is a game that fundamentally does not work due to the mana system. That game has been around since 1993, and Wizards refuses to fix it, update it, or print anything whatsoever that would help fix the problem. It is very possible, and in fact quite plausible, for a game of Magic to exist where one person literally cannot play due to not drawing their mana producers, and Magic's idiotic community continues to defend this crap even to this very day. I'll get to the community being a virus later. It actually mirrors the Blizzard time line. The only people still hanging on to Magic are company loyalists and stupid people, and the number is a lot less than it used to be. It took a pro tour final having someone get mana screwed into a 3 card starting hand (when you mulligan, you reshuffle and draw a starting hand minus one, so the player had to mull 4 times) for Wizards to actually change something, but all the changed was letting you look at the top card of your library with the option of punting it to the bottom if you mull. That's it. Everything else is the same. The fix is actually really simple, and props to metroid composite for this idea. Allow basic lands in the sideboard. If you need a land, skip your draw step and go fetch one. This makes it so there's two disadvantages to doing it -- a weaker sideboard and you're not drawing a card -- and it adds a lot of strategy to an already overly complicated game (https://twitter.com/nathanfillion/status/428761514984472578). Will Wizards do this? Of course not. Why? "Tradition". If tradition is your only reason for doing something stupid, then you have a very bad idea and very stupid people in charge. Tradition is why gay marriage took way longer to legalize than it should have and why legalizing weed is taking WAY longer than it should. You people can bash me for hating SJWs all you want, but I promise you I hate fundamentalist conservatives every bit as much. Really I hate most people but I'm nice in real life and use the internet to vent, but I digress. Magic has other major problems besides the mana, as well. The community is a virus. Spend a long enough time with these losers and you become a jaded, smelly asshole rules lawyer looking to get one over on people. I could explain this in detail but anyone that's ever visited a hobby store already knows how bad those people smell. It's disgusting, and some stores are having to adopt hygiene standards due to lost revenue. I am in no way making that up: Imagine being a grown-ass adult with bad hygiene. But sure bro, it's the fault of women that you're an incel and not at all an issue with you. Loser. Then there's the secondary market, where an entire thesis can be written over how awful vendors and secondary markets are for any overarcing product they sell. Gamestop is loathed for a reason, and I promise you Magic's secondary market is worse. It's made possible for three reasons. One, printing is a joke. Buy a box or case of any other card game and you'll get most of what you need. Buy one in Magic and you'll be lucky to get half of what you need. This allows vendors to charge stupid prices for already overpriced bullshit, and they get to inside trade to boot. That leads to reason \#2. Wizards has been caught leaking inside information to vendors too many times to list at this point, and it's hilarious watching that virus of a community try to deny it and defend it. There are people who have leaked entire sets in advance and vendors like Star City were magically dumping product before the leak knowing reprints were coming. Three is the reserved list, which started this problem in the first place. Magic players panicked over baseball cards tanking in value, and the tanking of collectible value in general in the 90s, and made Wizards legally sign a contract that certain valuable cards would never be reprinted. It is the most anti-player thing you'll ever see in a game, and if you come across someone who defends the reserved list policy, know right then and there that you are dealing with a massive piece of shit and move on from them socially. Trust me on this. Go hang out with better people. It's why I openly support counterfeit Magic cards The event that got me to quit Magic was rules lawyering in general, specifically this garbage-ass community defending the Borborygmos Enraged Pithing Needle bullshit: If you defend that in any way, you are a fucking scumbag and I want nothing to do with you. Ever. Thankfully, most people have common sense and didn't defend it. Only the virus section of the Magic fanbase did, and they very quickly drove away everyone else. Only a complete and total fucking idiot scumbag piece of trash, like the guy who wrote that Channel Fireball article, would ever defend the rules lawyering trash that goes on in Magic. I and millions of other quit over it. There are other examples I could bring up, like a player getting DQd when his opponent cheated, game quality being at its lowest point since the early 90s, stores having no revenue from the game anymore, and so forth, but I bring up rules lawyering last for the simple reason of no one actually liking a tattle tale. No one likes them in grade school, in the family, or as adults. It's no accident that this childish mentality killed Magic for so many of us, and is currently killing GameFAQs thanks to having the worst moderation system on the entire internet among any major gaming site. If you hop on Google trends, Hearthstone's biggest spike in interest was directly due to that Borborygmos trash. All these factors combined had players thinking there had to be something better out there, and along came Hearthstone. Magic and Blizzard have very similar time lines with very similar issues, right down to the only people left defending either brand being the worst people in our society. It was only natural for these two games to be related. Hearthstone filled a void and beautifully tricked people into thinking it was actually a good game due to providing people what Magic couldn't -- constant mana. On turn one, you have one mana and it's not colored. On turn two you have two mana. If a card says it costs 5 mana, it costs 5. Simple and easy. Above all that, the player on turn decides everything outside some rare exceptions. None of this dumb rules lawyering stack bullshit where I can name a card and have a judge say I didn't name the card. None of that. Hearthstone is digital only with a contained economy, so no secondary markets. No smelly losers. No reserved lists. No politicking or cliques. Just people playing cards, which is all any of us ever wanted. Hearthstone blew up due to filling a void we all wanted filled and had over 100 million players at its peak. But this is Blizzard we're talking about. Too good to be true. Hearthstone started as a little side project from a small indie company, which Blizzard eventually acquired and took over. When Blizzard gets involved with anything, you can guarantee a lot of lying a bullshit will soon follow. When Hearthstone first came out, only 8% of the game was RNG based. This was annoying, but whatever. The occasional misfire on Lightning Storm or Animal Companion kept variance in there. Blizzard thought this was a fantastic idea, and pushed for more and more RNG until Hearthstone was unrecognizable. Now, well over 25% of the game is RNG based and all player skill has been removed from deciding any results. Every single game, no matter what class you play, comes down to randomized luck. Nothing else ever matters. Blizzard wants things this way, no matter how many tournaments get ruined by randomized bullshit and no matter how many players quit over it. What people want is a card game based on skill, because Hearthstone's mana and functional gameplay are legitimately perfect. It even implements 9 classes plus neutral cards in a remarkably balanced way. The issue is Blizzard and their RNG fetish. They intentionally and deliberately removed any and all skill aspects from Hearthstone, because their belief is that this attracts more players and makes more money. There is no ban option on ladder, no card ban options, no sideboards, and nerfs typically take forever to happen on problem cards. We only got quick nerfs recently because Blizzard thoroughly panicked over the insane number of players that quit the second Smash Bros. Ultimate came out. Imagine that, a great game from a company that actually cares attracted people. Shocking and amazing information. Blizzard openly and admittedly loathes their customers, and no game proves this better than Hearthstone does. A few examples offhand: -literally calling the players too stupid to understand a nerf beyond mana costs when nerfing Fiery War Axe. -lying to players when deciding not to update Deathstalker Rexxar for each new set, claiming it's too difficult to code due to text size. Mike Donais got DESTROYED on reddit for this one. -claiming no Druid cards are a problem before nerfing the problem Druid cards immediately after Smash Bros. Ultimate came out and stole away a massive amount of Hearthstone players. -claiming Vicious Syndicate's article about polarity (https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/meta-polarity-and-its-impact-on-hearthstone/) is wrong because Blizzard's internal data says so. This one is just LAUGHABLY stupid given play data is public information, but Blizzard has gotten away with lying to people for 20 years so why not keep trying? -claiming Cubelock was only the 12th best deck in the game after nerfing every other tier 1 deck, then having to nerf Cubelock anyway. -waiting a year to fix Naga Sea Witch in wild, which only happened because one angry player took out ad space on the Hearthstone subreddit and attracted media attention. -nerfing Unleash the Hounds because they don't like players punished for playing minions, then printing Spreading Plague and refusing to touch Mind Control Tech, before banning Mind Control Tech in arena. -when nerfing Tess Greymane, they outright lied and tried to slide it in under "bug fixes" so they wouldn't have to give players the free dust, then blamed the players for being mad about it. Kripp, the \#1 Hearthstone streamer, made a video saying that people should in no way be celebrating a victory here for convincing Blizzard to change course, as them being dumb and trying this in the first place is a massive insult. -they printed The Caverns Below, a card so badly designed that it was nerfed three times, and they tried to not nerf it at all by citing win rate stats before saying it should be nerfed due to 'player feels'. Two nerfs for Caverns directly, and one for Giggling Inventor because Caverns easily abused it. This was also the fault of the players. You cannot make this shit up. -their constant lying about arena deserves its own rant, but just know that a topic like this happens about 5 times per year at least: -failing to properly test Jan'alai's battlecry with Brann Bronzebeard, then lying to players and claiming it was a client side issue. -lying to players about sales data and play rate metrics when this information is all public, which is similar to what Wizards tried to pull with Magic not too long ago. -Shudderwock and Kingsbane. I don't need to say much else. I'd be stealing davidponte's thunder. Ask him about those two cards some time. I could easily go on. Just look at how long this writeup is. If you want someone else's opinion from someone a lot calmer than I am, VaatiVidya covers it very well here: Multiple streamers have quit, Ben Brode has left (shout out to DonnyG for being right on this, Brode was the man and he is BADLY missed, he was never the problem), Blizzard designers are quitting left and right, stock is down \$45 per share in a month, and Hearthstone is at its lowest point in popularity since launch according to Google trends, so I am on the right side of history with Hearthstone being a garbage video game. Yet hilariously, the cultists who defend Blizzard in a sycophantic manner actually continue to claim the game is skill based; Blizzard has openly said it isn't, just for the record. Blizzard 100% does not want Hearthstone to be skill based, and it's hilarious watching the Hearthstone fanbase try to claim otherwise. This company has been lying to people for almost 20 years, and you still get total morons defending this crap like they're being paid. I actually wouldn't be surprised if some were being paid by them, because it's hard to imagine people being that dumb naturally. They never wanted Hearthstone to be an e-sport. That's their goal for Overwatch only, I have this directly from Blizzard themselves, and Hearthstone will absolutely continue to get worse and worse as more people leave and more sets don't sell. Pair this with Activision taking a more active role in the company and the whistle being blown everywhere, and Hearthstone's collapse will be the catalyst for the entire company's paradigm shift for the worse. Despite what idiots with their manic ritalin habits and attention spans shorter than goldfish want to think, I actually have something called a "memory". Go get one and pay attention. Speaking of Overwatch. Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch Shocker. Blizzard lied to their players. This has NEVER happened before! I honestly don't hate either one of these games. I don't like them, but it isn't due to some high-reaching hatred of Blizzard. The games just aren't very good, but at least they aren't bottom of the barrel vomit like Warcraft 3 and Hearthstone. Heroes of the Storm took a big risk and tried to shake up the MOBA genre in two different ways. The game removed all items and it randomly plops giant things right in the lanes. Imagine you're playing League and Baron just shows up mid lane for one side when everyone is level 5. That's essentially what HotS does, while having all the characters available be Blizzard characters. I personally think both of these ideas are really stupid, but I actually appreciate the risks taken. It just isn't a MOBA without character progression beyond experience points. I want to be able to buy items and snowball things. That's the entire point of a MOBA, and it's why Dota and League are well ahead of HotS in popularity. Even the Blizzard machine couldn't get HotS off the ground in any meaningful way, and in December Blizzard once again took a giant shit on their players and announced the end of Heroes of the Storm as an e-sport. Remember when Blizzard paid to stream HotS on ESPN? Well neither does Blizzard, apparently. All the time and all the work put in by the players was gone in an instant because Blizzzard fans are too stupid to know better than to trust a company that has lied to them for almost 20 years. There is no longer anything for you to play for. Take the hint and put your effort elsewhere. Overwatch is a game I want to like, because it puts a new spin on what Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike started. You get these 5v5 FPS arena fights with pretty good characters, you start things, and then.... done in less than 5 minutes. The fuck? Not nearly enough time to get to know your team, the players, or really what you're doing, and things just end. It's like getting a lap dance and 5 minutes in the girl goes 'time's up, 20 dollars please'. Yeah I'll take an hour with an escort and an actual fuck next time, thanks. Overwatch has two major problems. One is the community being every bit as toxic as any MOBA, and we've covered the MOBA issue already. No need to rehash it. The other is Blizzard themselves, and people getting banned for picking off meta. See for yourself: And this subpar version of TF2 is Blizzard's best game since Diablo 2, which says a lot. It's the only game that actually got a character into the field this year, as a 14 seed no less, and D.Va's more known for pornography than she is Overwatch. It's not like Fox is some amazing character, either. Star Fox 64 and the arwing itself is cool. Falco is cool. Fox's dad is cool. The game itself being quotable is cool. Even Slippy's incompetence is adorable in its own way. But Fox? He's kind of lame, and he's been an annoyance in Smash from day one. And he went out there and got 72% in this match, by far the biggest blowout he's ever gotten in these contests. It was not due to Fox himself being any good. It's because finally, fucking finally, people are seeing what I've seen all along. Blizzard is indefensible, unsalvageable waste and D.Va was paying for it. This useless POS character was a threat to win our contest? Please. Voters are too smart for that now. It took you guys awhile, but you're finally where I'm at and I couldn't be prouder of you for it. A lot of you are going to read this writeup and think I'm insulting you directly. For some that's true, but for 72% of you I could not be happier to have you in my life. I'm not even kidding. I made this writeup extra vicious to see who actually has reading comprehension, because if you get this far down and see how much I love you guys, we're good. If you just skim or stop halfway, I'll know because you won't see this. \<3 "So why are you buying Blizzard games when you clearly hate them?" I don't buy them. Haven't spent one penny on a Blizzard game since Warcraft 3. My brother in law did sound engineering for Blizzard in the mid 2000s for a couple years and I get all their games for free. He currently works for EA. Dude really knows how to pick em, doesn't he? I've shown the proof to metroid composite, Forceful Dragon, and Leon4, three people I trust with my life who I know wouldn't share his info with people. You're free to ask them if it's true or not. Another connection I have is through my wife's coworker's husband (they're a gay couple) does web engineering for Blizzard and I meet a bunch of them around Christmas. This is the second year I've run into a bunch of them via holiday parties and such. Holiday parties kinda suck, but it's part of the deal when you're married. 2017 is when I more or less got it from them that Hearthstone is not a skill based game, that they couldn't believe it became an e-sport, and that their main goal was Overwatch. Blizzard would eventually admit this publicly and it made their defenders on Board 8 look completely dumb for doubting me in the first place. This year their main fear is being laid off. Activision is serious about cutting costs and taking things over. A lot of people are being forced to quit. And here we are. Blizzard only got one character in, and she got thoroughly embarrassed. In a way, D.Va is the perfect mascot for them. Good on the eyes, bad on substance, and overhyped trash when all is said and done. Good riddance. Article continues here with monthly updates: ## Tsunami's Analysis Okay, wow. I have to follow *that*? This was also a statement match, and that statement was "goodbye and good riddance, RallyFEAR!" Fox has always been one of the weaker members of the Original Twelve, coming in ahead of Jigglypuff, Ness, and probably Captain Falcon, but behind the other eight. Well, he wasn't always eighth, obviously; the only win he has more impressive than this one came at Pikachu's expense. That was back when Pokémon was anti-voted just on principle. It might be anti-voted again due to its perceived dominance, even though the only time Pokémon outright *won* a contest was as sidekick to Ocarina of Time in the Years contest. Fox breaking 70% in a Round 2 match is fairly astonishing. It wouldn't take very long for the apparent statement to proven completely untrue, but this year's rallies would merely be making already strong characters even stronger. ## Safer777's Analysis After the longest rant ever in these contests by Ulti what is more to say here? Just that D.Va is really weak. I thought maybe she would get a rally or at least did a little better but rallies are out in this contest. Nobody cared and I don't think nobody will ever care again for these contests. Fox dominated. I know that he is a  midcarder but man this victory is impressive no matter how you look at it. More than 70%!  We really hate new games here. Even though the polls say we play new games but it is a lie. We don't play new games here! Anyways what else? Oh yeah. I still remember when I played Fox's game on SNES. I was so impressed back then! They were simplier times. Also  once again awesome win for Fox. --- ## (10)Captain Toad vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 _source: (10)Captain Toad vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 (revid 83862)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Feels weird going back to normal writeups after the behemoth from last match, but hey! It also feels weird talking about Aeris in a 60-40 match with Toad. Is this impressive for Aeris? A failure for Aeris? Just a good performance by Toad? We can't exactly go by the 2007 numbers (the only other time Toad was in a contest) because both characters had SFF everywhere in their matches. I can't reliably go by that Toad number when Bowser was right there. Besides. That was Toad. This is CAPTAIN Toad! SHOUT OUT TO NICK, STAR OF THE CONTEST AND WINNER OF MY HEART. MAPLE LEAFS GONNA DO IT IN OUR LIFETIME SON. One thing I do know is that Aeris was the first, and currently the only, 15 seed to win two matches. And given she was up against Fox next, she was going to win three matches before bowing out. It shows how badly seeded we made this bracket, and I say "we" because it was clear Board 8 had way too big an influence here. This bracket had the worst seeding since Current Events decided everything back in 2002, and Aeris being a 15 seed might be the biggest example. But I love giant seeds facing each other and advancing, so hey, more fun for me. ## Tsunami's Analysis Look at those numbers. Captain Toad lands right on a multiple of 1,000, and Aerith comes up just *five votes short* of breaking 60%. Which actually does amount to a swing of just one registered user's vote making it 60% exactly (17997 to 11998). The overall Oracle consensus was that Captain Toad exceeded expectations, but as you'd expect with it falling so close to a round number, the top picks were all extremely close. Five different people went for 60.00% exactly, and it would've had to fall right on it for them to get first place because 59.99% and 60.01% were also taken (which, yes, means that a score of 49.98 failed to be good for a top five. There's a 49.89 that's outside the top ten.) Also, if anything, Ulti's underselling this. We were literally guaranteed a double-digit seed in Round 4 by the end of Round 1, because all four matches in the bottom half of this division went in favor of the lower seed. The real NCAA tournament has never seen that happen, though it's seen plenty of half-regions where the higher seeds went 1-3 in Round 1, including last year's South Regional where UMBC became the first 16-seed to upset a 1-seed. That regional was crazy, with a 9-seed upsetting a 5-seed in the Sweet Sixteen with *neither* of them having pulled a seeding upset the previous round, only for the 9-seed to *get upset* in the Elite Eight because they were playing an 11-seed. Who only needed to beat a 7-seed in the Sweet Sixteen. Well, at least the seeding helps explain away the weird prediction percentages in these last two matches. Well, that and RallyFEAR. And Fox having had a legitimately debated match in Round 1. ## Safer777's Analysis After Aeris(that is how it was spelled in the game back in my day you know!)beat Waluigi we knew that she would win the 2nd round match of course. Also funny enough  that means that Waluigi\>Toad! Damn! Anyways Aeris was lucky that she got 2 weak opponents and she advanced to Round 3. But I believe next round she loses. Also both  wins were under 60%. I like when the results are closer myself. Well at least FF7 scored some wins. Still that proves that FF 7  always wins. The prediction percentage was low too but this is normal since the bottom division was very strange. --- ## (1)Geralt vs (9)Simon Belmont 2018 _source: (1)Geralt vs (9)Simon Belmont 2018 (revid 83863)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was, by far, the manlist duel of this entire contest. Only Squall vs Garrus was close, but Squall has his spots of being ridiculous. Geralt and Simon don't have this issue. They are the manliest of men and just beat the shit out of each other heads-up with no tricks. It was like watching two heavyweights just throw bombs until someone died. Look at that BEEF! For about five hours we had a damn good match on our hands, too. Geralt was pretty much this contest's version of an overseeded, overhyped mid major who had all the big conference boys pissed off and playing their hearts out to prove a point (think St. Joseph's in 2004). All his matches were good, and Simon really took it to him early. Simon won the board vote, likely on the back of Smash hype and MANILNESS, and even won the second update. Geralt started pushing back after that, and it seemed like the fun was over. For the first few hours of this poll, the match was a stone cold tie, with maaaaaybe Simon having a slight advantage. Castlevania also has a very good night vote, so there was a chance Simon would take off at night and pull off one hell of an upset. But as we started getting closer to midnight, Geralt finally decided to make a push and he built himself up a 100 vote lead. Looked over at that point, but Simon made one last push near midnight. Had he been able to put together a night vote he would have had a shot, but it was Geralt that would win things over at night. After a stallfest in the 100s, Geralt opened things up once he broke the 200 barrier and that was all she wrote. This would become a very familiar trend for Geralt in this contest, and for Simon there was no shame whatsoever in losing. He rode Smash Ultimate hype to giving us two fantastic matches in this contest, and all we ask from people with no chance to actually win the contest is entertainment from their matches. Simon gave us that. Can't complain! ## Tsunami's Analysis And now we're into Division 6, aka the Division of Blah. This division seemed almost custom-made to promote a bandwagon effect, because even in the absence of a true rally, a certain level of bandwagon effect tends to occur when a character is perceived to reach a round beyond what they "should" be capable of, and this division was guaranteed to allow multiple characters to reach rounds that they never had before. Obviously this was true at the highest level for most divisions since normally by Round 5, there's nothing but Noble Niners left, maybe one or two others (non-rally) if the bracket was suitably lopsided (quick, which Noble Niners did L-Block knock out in the 2007 semifinals? The answer is none of them because he'd already knocked one out in the quarterfinals and *seven of the other eight* had been on the opposite side of the bracket.) But Vincent Valentine was the only one in this group to make Round 4, and Ryu Hayabusa, Riku, Pac-Man, and Auron were the only other four to have made Round 3. (Also there were a couple of Round 1 matches in this division where neither character had any prior wins, although only one of the four characters in those two matches even had any prior appearances so that's a little misleading.) Oh, and Riku's only Round 3 appearance outside of Rivalry Rumble came in a year in which he didn't finish in first place in any match, getting second place in two straight rounds of fourways. Geralt-Rosalina was the match where both were newcomers, and with Simon upsetting Ryu H, both of these characters had already reached new heights. The newcomer winning only cemented it, however. Ladies and gentlemen, start your bandwagons. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was a debatable match of course since Geralt is a newcomer and Simon is in Smash and in Castlevania too. For the first 5 hours Simon was barely winning too! Eventually though after around 5 hours Geralt managed to fight back for good and won with no problems. So we have a newcomer beating a smash character! Take notes people! Not something you see many times! I also want to say that Simon was winning in USA with around 51,5% but as you see he lost. Americans ruin everything! And they REALLY like Smash! I believe  Simon's peak is this. He will be weaker from now on at the next contests I believe. As I said in the previous match analysis Geralt is AWESOME! Man wish he won the whole thing. Still good match with back and forths, lead changes, and all that drama we have in close matches. Also SC 6 boost\>Smash Boost confirmed! --- ## (12)Pac-Man vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 _source: (12)Pac-Man vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 (revid 88245)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This is one of the weirdest matches of the entire contest. It's close by final percentage, but legitimately stayed 52-48 for the entire match. Usually when things are close you get a rally in one way or the other, but that didn't happen here. It was just a steady, easy, 52-48 win for Bayonetta where she was never threatened. Either no one cares enough about Pac-Man to try rallying him, no one cares enough about Bayonetta enough to try rallying her, or no one cares about either of these two period so people just left the match alone. What I don't get is how Pac-Man got 48% on her in the first place. I get Bayonetta being decent. She's all over Smash Bros and her series is on Nintendo consoles now, which is about all it takes to have decent strength on this site anymore. Pac-Man only has Smash, and he's not exactly a character people will rally behind. I have no clue what happened here, and we know Bayonetta would end up looking decent, so my best guess is Pac-Man boosted from being in Smash. Your guess is as good as mine, but something happened here. Clearly. Pac-Man is always good for a weird result, and this was his this year. Because let's be honest, the guy has overlap with everyone and it's impossible to actually hate Pac-Man unless you're this guy. ## Tsunami's Analysis But before Geralt cold get a proper bandwagon going, he'd have to deal with another potential bandwagon, and one with boobs, no less. You could argue that Bayonetta hadn't truly reached new heights despite having gone to Round 3 for the first time, because 2013 cut out two thirds of the remaining field each round rather than half, and if you measure simply by distance from the end of the contest, a Round 2 appearance in 2013 is at best equivalent to winning a division in 2018, possibly even equivalent to winning your first Legends Bracket match. Yes, that's right, Link's 2018 record is the same as Draven's 2013 record. Link did it in 1v1s rather than 3ways so he beat fewer characters (not to mention he beat the same character twice), but even with a free pass to Round 5, he needed to win 5 matches to take home this crown, just like Draven did. Of course, it's kind of impossible to come up with a good equivalence between either of those two years and any other year, because the 2013 field using powers of 3 instead of powers of 2 and the 2018 field having a losers' bracket (You know who else besides Link had 5 wins in 2018? Cloud! Also Pikachu, Bowser, and Tifa all had exactly five wins and Zelda had 7, but they were in the main bracket.) It's much easier with the earlier brackets. 2010 had 7 rounds, Villains had 5, and the other brackets all had 6. You could make an argument for counting 2007 and 2008 as though they had 7 rounds, since they also had 128 characters just like 2010 did. Okay, granted, 2005 also had a Tournament of Champions, similar to this year's Legends Bracket. 2005 was essentially an 8-round contest in which 3 out of the 4 characters in Round 7 had direct byes there. It feels wrong to say that a Round 5 appearance in 2005 is only equivalent to a Round 3 appearance in 2004, though. It would be foolish. So then how, even if you ignore the loser's bracket, do you score this season? In 2005, we narrowed 64 down to 1, and then put that 1 in a 4-character bracket. This year, we only narrowed 128 down to 8, and then put those 8 in a 16-character bracket. ...I think we would have to ignore Losers' Bracket and just treat this as an 8-round bracket. I know a lot of people are treating Losers as the "true" values for X-Stat purposes since those are the ones that actually knocked characters out of the contest. I feel that this is a view largely perpetuated by those who feel that the two rematches that had significant shifts in percentage produced more "legitimate" results than the originals, which is a belief that meshes with their preconceived notions. One of the matches I'm referring to is Mario-Samus, where Samus nearly pulled the upset the second time, and the other is a match with only one Noble Niner in it where said Noble Niner outright *lost* the first time, and *only* the first time. Really, the presence of a Loser's Bracket just muddies the waters, especially when it's set up like this with it being single elimination for four rounds and then double elimination. When listing the Most Surprising Results of All Time, Zelda's upset of Mario is listed as a Round 7 match. *Because that's what it is.* That's the percentage of people who thought that Zelda would win *7* matches. Contrast, say, *the very next match*, which is also on that list. That's the number of people who thought that Crono would either lose his first match and win the next three *or* win his first match, lose his second, and win his next two. And it gets murkier the further you go along. How many people who correctly picked Mario \> Samus II did so because they actually had Mario losing in the Legends Semis (most likely to Snake), and how many did so because they mistakenly thought Sephiroth would continue his previous dominance of Mario and would still be alive in the Legends' Finals? So I think you have to just treat the Legends matches as the only ones that matter for how deep a tournament run you've made. By that metric, making Round 3 in this tournament is essentially equivalent to making the field at all pre-2007. It's not exactly the same since there are only 40 characters alive at the end of Round 2, not 64 like there were then, but it's still six wins away from a title. It's either that or you just ignore the 8 legends and pretend that these first four rounds were just the first four rounds of a seven-round tournament, and then...what? Honestly, that whole "128 down to 8, then those 8 are part of the Sweet Sixteen" bit is throwing me. I guess 2005 and 2006 were no better, what with the fact that *technically* Mario and Samus won titles in those years, but Link is still the ultimate champion (no, Jay Solano doesn't count) and Samus in particular was eliminated from *three days before* the runner-up from the main bracket, who was also included because CJayC loved getting cutesy and the favorites on the Male and Female sides were *Crono* and Samus, and even though that would make the Battle Royale 3 parts Nintendo and 3 parts Square, it wouldn't be tough to imagine Link's presence allowing Crono to steal another win over Mario. We've never quite seen if that would be the case. We've seen Crono steal a win over Samus and Mario in a fourway with Link, and we've seen Crono miserably in last place with Cloud, Link, and Snake, but we never saw Link and another Nintendo character and Cloud and Crono. All of this is irrelevant, though, because Bayonetta's Round 2 appearance in 2013 came at the expense of *N and Wander*. So clearly this *is* her best run. Also, you are just now realizing that Bayonetta has never lost in Round 1 (though she *has* failed to advance out of a vote-in poll. She's not the only character whose record is positively affected by *losing* in those polls; I mentioned Wario's .500 record but he's also among those who lost out in the vote-ins in 2010. Pac-Man is also among those who failed to advance out of vote-ins in 2010.) ## Safer777's Analysis Before the contest nobody believed in Pac-Man. But after the 1st match people thought that maybe he had a change? And look at this. Sure he lost but scoring almost 48% on Bayonetta? She is a Nintendo character now. Not only she is in Smash but Bayonetta 2 and 3 are only on Nintendo consoles. Also guess what. Pac-Man was winning in USA with around 51% but he lost! 2nd time in a row where a character wins in USA but loses. Also both of these are in Smash so there is that. Still a win is a win. Wish though that an icon such as Pac-Man would have reached round 3. Next match will be a good one! But why Pac Man got such a boost? I don't get it. He is in Smash and everyone knows him  yeah, but does anybody cares? Don't think so. Still nice match. Of course the prediction percentage was low for Bayonetta. --- ## (3)Auron vs (11)Vincent Valentine 2018 _source: (3)Auron vs (11)Vincent Valentine 2018 (revid 83865)_ ## Ulti's Analysis It dawned on me during this match that Auron always seems to be in matches against other badass male characters, which is probably just a quirk of bracket placement but it's kind of silly when you actually look at his history. He has gone against Cloud, Scorpion, Sephiroth, Big Boss, Ganondorf, Alucard, Sub-Zero, Crono, Chris Redfield, Pyramid Head, Shadow the Hedgehog, Ryu, Bowser, Marcus Fenix, Sonic (he counts as a cool and badass male character, shut up), Kratos, Zero, Squall, Revolver Ocelot, Ezio, Vincent, Geralt, and Snake. It's nuts how long that list is and how relatively few rematches there are, all without him ever facing Link, the king badass of GameFAQs itself. Auron is this remarkably consistent upper midcard dude that wins matches every year at the bottom of the bracket and is great for people who like consistent characters to adjust stats with. This year he added Vincent to the list, and man was this embarrassing for Final Fantasy 7. While this wasn't quite as trashy as the Vincent we saw during that hellacious match picture in 2013, this was still really bad and I dare say Magus might have done better. This was well over 60% at one point, and Vincent's only saving face was bleeding Auron's percentage for awhile. I would love to say Vincent might have made a game of this a few years ago back when everyone believed in the dude, but his recent performances give me serious doubts there. What exactly has Vincent done that's supposed to give me any faith in him? He did well in 2005 when he debuted. Okay, sure. He beat Dante and went 50-50 with Squall. Then he had a close match with Ganon before getting 48% on a neutered Sonic, overperformed in lol 4ways, and collapsed a bunch as the years have gone on. Auron has always been good. Vincent is all over the place. It should be no surprise to anyone this match was never close, and from the looks of it Board 8 pretty much all knew Auron was taking this fourpack. He was the overwhelming favorite in this division period and was definitely performing like it. ## Tsunami's Analysis Bracketmakers were not fooled here; 37.61% may not sound high for a second-round match, but it's higher than three of the previous four winners. Besides, Vincent was a slight underdog in Round 1, and Auron himself had under 70% prediction percentage in Round 1. So let's look at the Gurus instead! ...Whoa. Board 8 loves to hold on to the past. Once they're convinced that someone is strong, it takes a while for them to accept that they aren't. And in particular, there's this feeling that even if a Final Fantasy 7 character is naturally a little weaker than their opponent, they'll pull off the win anyway if that opponent is from a Final Fantasy game other than 7. And honestly, FF7 *does* have a damn good record against other FF games. Squall beat Aerith twice in 2007, and Auron beat Aerith in 2010, and Kefka beat Zack in 2013. But that's it for FF7 characters losing to characters from other FF games, and it's not just Cloud and Seph who keep the record afloat--Vincent beat *Squall* in 2005, and Tifa, Aerith, and even Zack all have wins against other FF characters. (Though admittedly Aerith's is pretty weak.) And when something doesn't fit Board 8's preconceived narrative, they like to come up with excuses for why the result isn't "legitimate". The single highest-profile Board 8 failing is Knuckles beating Magus when literally no one in Guru, Oracle, or Board Odds Project predicted it. It no longer qualifies as the "Most Embarrassing Result" because that's measured by the difference between the Gurus and the casuals and the casuals were surprised by that too, but it was a complete blindsiding and it came because Magus was fed to Crono in 2004 and rather than trying to figure out what the degree of SFF was, the adjusted X-Stats just gave him his 2003 number, which was entirely bogus. The reason I bring this up is because nearly everyone wanted to make excuses for Vincent's 2013 performance, namely that he'd been sabotaged by a picsmith. (They refused to use "rallies" as an excuse, even though that was a much better one, because admitting that Mewtwo was rallied meant they couldn't call him a **FRAUD** for not retaining his 2013 strength. And yes, that is a perfectly valid explanation for why Vincent finished in third; Phoenix's consistent overseeding alone should be evidence that his fanbase is dedicated, and as such he retained a greater portion of his natural strength in the presence of a rally than Vincent did.) But in spite of all the justifications available for Vincent, *95.625%* of Gurus picked Auron! The Oracles even more so, at 98.5%, though that's understandable because Oracle picks are made far closer to the match itself and Vincent's struggles with Magus made Auron \> Vincent even more obvious than it already was. We don't have a list for the matches where we outpredicted the casuals by the greatest amount, but this one probably has to rank up there pretty high. 58.01% difference. Of course, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of our greatest "triumphs" came in later rounds, because prediction percentages naturally wane there but a lot of times we're still nearly unanimous where Noble Niners are concerned. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous round Auron was the absolute favorite. And he won. BUT the strange thing is that people expected Auron to win with more. Also Vincent kept raising the whole match! He started at the 5 minute mark with around 36% and look where he ended. It is FF 7 yeah but still, didn't expected that. Auron is an elite of course. And I believe that even though Vincent lost he still has some power. If people don't give him bad pictures on purpose. I wonder why he did so good back in the day? Seriously. Winning a division in his first appearance! and even breaking the N9 in a multi way poll! Not sure. Both of these characters are so cool based on their designs. Come on now, Auron wears sunglasses as he fights! What more you want? Also funny that not the protagonist of FF 10 is the strongest character from that game, but a party member. Also Auron is consistent all these years. He always does good and he does as expected. This is awesome. --- ## (10)Sub-Zero vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018 _source: (10)Sub-Zero vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018 (revid 83866)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Over half of people thought Sub-Zero would lose to Claire Redfield, Joker, or Skulk. Sure. I don't get it. This match is the reason why all the arguing about Joker vs Claire seemed a bit pointless, because it was alwaus destined to be a one point match. Granted each point is important, but it's not like that winner was going on a run like the Kefka/L winner. Sub-Zero demolished lucky fodder that couldn't even benefit from getting hype in her own series. We talked about Kingdom Hearts 3 hype being a dud, because Resident Evil 2 remake hype was worse. It did nothing and no one cares. That series is dead on arrival on this site and it will take a long time to fix it. Resident Evils 5 and 6 just murdered it in cold blood. Capcom in general is just loaded with self sabotage, and this match proved it. Claire Redfield should never get demolished like this. Blizzard and Konami are the only examples worse than Capcom for self sabotage. What an embarrassment. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh hey there's another match where we're still nearly unanimous (over 90%) and the casuals are split far enough that the favorite has less than 50% of brackets. This one's at least a little understandable because of the seedings; Joker was a 2-seed and a newcomer and Shulk was also the seeding favorite and didn't have Smash yet when he lost in Round 1 in 2013, so it would be easy enough for people to overestimate them. If anything, this shows where our biggest weakness to being embarrassed by the casuals lies--we usually don't have much faith in newcomers, so if one of them actually shows strength, they can easily ruin us. ## Safer777's Analysis This was the only normal match this day. People were expecting around a doubling from Sub-Zero and guess how much he won? With a doubling! Sub-Zero is cool! Get it? Man I still remember when I first played MK 2. Sub-Zero was my favorite since then and he still is. I also believe he would beat Scorpion on this site. Sub-Zero has  to be the 2nd strongest pure fighting game character. I don't count the Smash ones of course. As for Claire well she did okay. RE did bad in this contest unfortunately. She did earned an upset win at least. Divisions should be like this one. We barely knows who will win the next matches! A strange thing is though the prediction percentage. Less than 50%. Why? People thought that Claire, Skulk or Joker would win here? Seriously? I guess people thought that Joker since he had the 2 Seed would win? But seeds mean nothing as we know. --- ## (1)Luigi vs (8)Frog 2018 _source: (1)Luigi vs (8)Frog 2018 (revid 83867)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Green SFF! This was a very standard match that got us yet one more year away from Frog actually being entertaining. I covered the list in the round 1 writeup, but this dude just cannot catch a break anymore. The second his first round match ended in 2007, he was simply not the same when it came to match entertainment value. He's been stuck in the oblivion of predictable paths for over a decade now, and it's sad to watch when for three years running he was our most entertaining character. As for Luigi, this was the dude just taking care of business. I'm sure some could point to his percentage being a bit below expectations as proof he was in trouble later, but frankly he showed no weaknesses until the divison final. Frog is hardly some slacker character and we still love him, so 62% on him is not easy to do. Even if you wanted to call this a subpar performance for Luigi, he went out a round from now and showed how legit he was. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was an entirely normal result, so probably the best thing to do is compare this to Bowser vs. Frog 2010. Bowser got a better percentage there, which is entirely in line with what most seasons would suggest. After all, fellow Mario character Yoshi has met both Luigi and Bowser in 1v1s and defeated the former while losing to the latter. The problem, of course, being that Luigi and Bowser met in a 4way and Luigi won. To that I say lol 4ways. It's that simple. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was never in doubt. Both of these characters defeated really weak opponents in the first round. But man here we have Luigi. You know the brother of Mario? Also Frog...He isn't strong anymore. As for Luigi always managed to advance to at least Round 2 in these things. He is good. Still I believe Frog did okay here. I don't know if CT characters are still good. Maybe they are? We have to wait to see Chrono. I mean Magus lost to Round 1 and Frog lost to Round 2. Not good right? Still Luigi looked good here. Let us see how he does in the next rounds. --- ## (5)Master Chief vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 _source: (5)Master Chief vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 (revid 88246)_ ## Ulti's Analysis My best and most favorite call of the entire contest. One of my favorite characters as a child was Tails (and I still love him as an adult even though admitting this is embarrassing thanks to all the furrydom weirdos but what can you do), and one of my favorite games was and still is Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I kicked myself for years over not picking Tails to beat Viewtiful Joe, and this year I couldn't resist taking him on the upset train in this fourpack. This wasn't just years in the making for my love of GameFAQs contests. It was an ode to my childhood and one of the best games I played back then. Beating Drake was awesome, but I legitimately kind of saw that coming and covered why in the round one writeup. This match was another thing entirely. I had no doubts Chief would win and only picked Tails on a blind fanboy pick. When this match started and Tails was blowing the dude out, I audibly cheered and I don't really do that for contest matches anymore. On top of that, it wasn't some board vote fluke. Tails had a 500 vote lead after an hour and maintained a 55-45 beating for the entire match. There was no day vote nonsense for Chief or any miracles. Nothing. Just a good old fashioned ass beating from one of my favorite, long-deserving characters. Tails had finally made it to round 3, I picked him purely on a favorites pick, and got to cheer my ass off for the dude. That's what these contests are all about and all the advanced metrics have robbed us of that joy (just like in real sports, by the way). It was such a great throwback to the old days os just cheering for favorites, picking favorites in brackets, and having a good time. Good job, Tails. Now we have to get Knuckles into round 3, boys. ## Tsunami's Analysis I'm sure most of you have probably had at least one moment where you look at your bracket during the contest and say "I picked *WHAT?!*" Because it seems so obvious to you that you can't believe that you actually picked it wrong. I had that moment in Round 1. While 55% of Gurus were lamenting the loss of 3 points (yes, that's how many had Drake \> Chief/Majima) and an additional 25% were lamenting the loss of 1, I was celebrating my insight for getting this right...only to discover that I'd picked Chief \> Tails. Why had I done that? Chief hasn't been worth a damn thing for quite some time. The board knew it, as both Drake and Tails had over 50% retention rates for this match. Tails only barely, however, so I guess I wasn't the only one who thought Chief \> Tails was possible. The casuals also felt that Tails vs. Chief/Majima was more or less a toss-up. Only 16.29% picked Tails to win this match, but only 16.87% picked him to *lose* it, with the remaining 66.85% picking him to lose to Nathan. Yes, I know that adds up to 100.01%. We got to see raw bracket counts for correct picks as well as percentages, and I assure you that each of those numbers is correct and the extra 0.01% is the result of rounding errors. Addendum upon uploading: Agh, you're killing me here Ulti. You were one of the Tails pickers and you *didn't* actually expect him to win? I had half a mind back in Round 1 to lie to NGamer and say that the Guru had my bracket wrong and I'd actually picked Tails because I was in such disbelief that I'd done something so stupid. I prepared to go to the Oracle to back myself up on how confident I was in Tails, but, uh... ...my Oracle pick was actually pretty good. Normally when I'm overconfident in a result, I overestimate the character quite a bit. Only the thing is...so is almost everyone else's, including yours. 61 out of 65 Oracles picked Tails, and 20 of those 61 got within 1% of the correct score. ## Safer777's Analysis Afer Tails won the first match he was the favorite to win. MC wasn't out though. But as you see Tails won easily.Well not that easy but you know what I mean. I mean in the first round a lot of people had Tails losing and here he is, winning and reaching Round 3. Damn! Man can you believe that Master Chief has reached a Semi final match WITHOUT rallies once upon a time? Yeah old times were strange! Still I believe MC did decent here. Obviously he is weak now but still he reached Round 2 at least. As for Tails...I am not sure how he reached round 3. I guess Sonic characters do good now? Or western characters are really weak? I mean in most contests he has lost in Round 1! So congrats to Tails I guess.  Also the prediction percentage was abysmal. The lowest so far in the contest. Makes sense. I guess most people had either Drake or MC winning and that was the consensus before the contest anyways. --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (11)Mewtwo 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (11)Mewtwo 2018 (revid 83870)_ ## Ulti's Analysis MEWTWO. IS. A. FRAUD. I would go one step farther and call Pokemon itself a fraud, but I'll be nice. Pikachu did a good enough job this year of preventing that series from looking like a total flop. @Leonhart4 is good for one balls-on-the-table prediction every contest that comes true, and this was his. Dude embarrassed himself hard for thinking Squall could beat Zelda after the results were showing what was coming, but this more than makes up for it and everybody was memeing the FRAUDULENCE line. To get how good this was, you need to understand how good Mewtwo has looked a couple times in the past. In 2007 (the first lol 4way) and 2010 when he faced Ganon in round one, he lost in round one. In his other two appearances, he stomped. In 2008 he got through three fourpacks before going down to Cloud, Snake, and the Cube. 2013 is where he really shined however, where he legitimately came close to winning the contest. He beat Chester and Zero 999 in round one, he beat Phoenix and Vincent in round 2 in a match where no one was actually talking about him (everyone mentions the Vincent match pic and forgets who actually won that match), he beat Sonic and Bowser and somehow got revenge for the 2007 loss, and in the semifinal he was beating Draven and Sephiroth before reddit allowed the Draven rally again. Mewtwo was one topic away from making the final, and if that final was Mewtwo/Snake/Samus instead of Draven/Snake/Samus, it's highly possible Mewtwo would have won that year. The guy looked nuts. But Leon knew. I don't know why or how, but he just knew. He convinced everyone to take Tifa here, and man he could not have been more right. My only thing there is this is a competition. If you see a bunch of people making a pick you think is dumb, let them. Helping someone beat you makes no sense to me, but whatever. Tifa completely pasting Mewtwo right from the jump meant in five short years, Mewtwo went from potential contest champ to a total punk -- excuse me, a fraud. Between him and Charizard stinking up the place in round two and Red's moment to suck coming a little later, Pokemon was on a massive downswing this year for reasons that make no sense to me. It's not like Mewtwo didn't have Smash Bros and Nintendo behind him, which are usually good enough to win debated matches around here. Only getting 42% is such an embarrassing number, and this was arguably the performance of the contest were it not for Tifa doing something much cooler later on. You can't ask for much better from a debated match than Ulti-Style Destruction if you backed the winner, and in a way this reminded me of Vincent vs Kerrigan from back in the day. Kerrigan came into that contest with a bunch of hype, and sucked. Mewtwo came in hyped this year, same thing. But I could argue Mewtwo's performance was worse given the Nintendo/Smash connections. This was only \#2 in a long line of scalps Tifa was collecting this year. That girl was on a mission! ## Tsunami's Analysis Just another piece on the growing mound of evidence that Tifa has always been the \#3 FF7 character, except not really because Mewtwo was rallied in 2013. We all know that. Mewtwo wasn't going to be as strong this year. ...Okay, I admit it: I had Mewtwo here in my bracket. And next round. By the time this match actually came around, I'd realized I'd made a mistake and took Tifa in Oracle, albeit with a very low number that got me fairly low in the rankings for that match. That was largely because I was still rooting for Mewtwo, because my bracket *needed* Mewtwo. We saw very easily in 2010 that Mega Man X was stronger than Luigi; they had a common opponent only a round apart, and yes Luigi probably gets SFF'd *harder* by Link but they're both probably SFF matches. And Tifa outright had a previous win over Luigi. I would have taken either of them to beat Luigi in Round 4, no question--but Mewtwo, being a true Nintendo character, I expected would suffer from Nintendo hierarchy. I had Luigi \> Mewtwo in Round 4 *fully expecting that it would be wrong if Mewtwo lost in an earlier round.* Honestly, I identified this as one of the toughest divisions to predict. In Round 1, you've got Ocelot-Dedede. In Round 2, you've got Tifa-Mewtwo, and then in Round 3 you've got the winner of that vs. MMX (although I think I even gave MMX a slim chance of being upset by Dedede if he got past Ocelot--or was it the other way around? I don't remember; neither of those upsets seems likely now but I'm certain I didn't consider MMX an absolute guarantee, merely a heavy favorite.) And then in the division final, Luigi being a likely favorite against one of his three most likely opponents but a likely underdog against the other two. And that's without considering any other result on Luigi's half of the bracket; Tails/Nathan/Chief was a bit of a mess as well. ## Safer777's Analysis If this was the same Mewtwo we had at 2013 he would win pretty easily here. But he wasn't. FF 7 has fallen but still Tifa managed to win easily here. Also apparently there was a poll on Board 8 that people voted Mewtwo to be the strongest non N9er? What? I am not sure why. He is decent yeah but so much strong? No. Not without rallies. But anybody with rallies can be strong. As for Tifa she looked good here. As you know Tifa is hot and people well they like hot women. Especially fictional ones! Well we have 2 FF 7 characters going in Round 3 and both are females...I wonder does this say anything about this site? Also I like Pokemon so I can't say anything really bad here. Mewtwo did good in multi way matches though.  Back in 2013 he was damn strong. Seriously. He almost won the entire thing! Who knows what happened. --- ## (10)Revolver Ocelot vs (2)Mega Man X 2018 _source: (10)Revolver Ocelot vs (2)Mega Man X 2018 (revid 83871)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We all knew this beating was coming after Ocelot struggled to beat King Dedede of all people, but man was this embarrassing to watch as a Metal Gear Solid series fan. Could you at least show up next time, bro? Then again, if we're calling it the Pac-Man Fodder Line \<\_\<.... It's highly possible this guy has just been trash all along but his opponents have helped hide it. This match also helped confirm Mega Man X to near elite status, which most of us already knew but believe it or not, until this match we had never had a good read or comparison on Mega Man X's strength. Draven kind of killed any opportunity to get one. This match was nothing more than a very strong character beating up a tomato can. Our real read on X would come one round from now. ## Tsunami's Analysis Ocelot's results have always been a tad uneven, as I mentioned last round. But this is unquestionably a good performance for X. The final percentage isn't *that* far ahead of the Oracle Consensus, but that's with the biggest outlier being an overestimation. There is one other significant outlier and it's on the opposite side, though. At any rate, X still looked like he would probably be slightly favored next round. There's some fun to be had with those numbers but I'll get to that then. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was never in doubt. But after Ocelot barely beat Dedede people wanted to see how much MMX would win. And he did really good of course. Almost 69%! I believe MMX might even be the strongest non N9er. Or at least one of the top 3. So nothing else to say. MMX dominated. People say that MGS characters have done bad in the contest but I don't know to tell the truth. Let us see how much MMX can reach. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (9)Captain Falcon 2018 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (9)Captain Falcon 2018 (revid 83872)_ ## Ulti's Analysis There was some buzz Seph could lose this match coming from people who overestimated his downfall a bit. Basically, it went "hey Seph always loses the board vote, and if Falcon is leading early people might rally". Stuff like that. It actually wasn't a bad theory and Falcon did lead for a few seconds, but Sephiroth proceeded to stomp the crap out of him shortly after. This was never a match after the first few seconds, and we have a fantastic comparison point for this one. Seph did right about what one would expect, and as of this point the rumors about his death were greatly exaggerated. It got me thinking about something I read recently though. \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/Board_vote \] I'm sorry but this is just dumb. How many votes do you people think you're capable of getting? Anyone can rally. I'm not impressed there. But for actual votes, how many do we actually put in? Maybe 250? Come on man, the idea that we have the biggest influence on results is ridiculous. The board vote matters for about 20 seconds and then matches go as planned. ## Safer777's Analysis People were expecting Sephiroth to score around 65% and he did that. So what else to say? Obviously Seph would win here. Also he beat a Smash character! Smash boost my ass! But in all seriousness this match was good if you are a fan of Seph like me. Seems that Seph still has some power and it makes sense. Man if only this FF7 remake would come out! What happened to it? As for Falcon of course he did as he was expected. Even I know the Falcon Punch thing now. So yeah pretty normal stuff here. --- ## (5)Amaterasu vs (4)Lara Croft 2018 _source: (5)Amaterasu vs (4)Lara Croft 2018 (revid 83934)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know this match was super predictable, but three things blow me away about it. One, 75% of people thought Amaterasu would lose to Draven, Lara Croft, or Metal Man. What the actual hell? Two, Lara Croft is a 4 seed. How did she pull that one off? Lara in general is weird on seeding. She's been a 1, a 7, a 15, she didn't make it in 2010, and here she is at 4 in her return. The only way to beat that range is to be a 1 and a 16 in separate contests. Good luck with that one. I think the only real chance we have to see that record happen is by Lara beating her own record or Pac-Man randomly being a 16 seed some year. No other 1 seed we've ever had is really something weak enough to be a 16. And three, this match was actually close on percents. That isn't what blew me away though. If you throw out the Draven match (an outlier) and the Rivalry Rumble, did you know this is Amaterasu's biggest 1v1 win? Granted that's due to not showing up until 2007, but still. Amaterasu is wholly unimpressive in these contests outside of one match against the 2018 version of Tanner. This could say a lot about Amaterasu, but it really doesn't. For all we know Lara's recent shift in tone helped her. I'm not a Tomb Raider guy outside of seeing Angeline Jolie in the shower so I don't frankly know or care. 55% on Lara is just a bad performance. As such, this actually proves how bad Draven was this year. Good hell. We're never again going to see a fall that hard. ## Safer777's Analysis I can't understand why Amaterasu does so good. She is on Okami which is a good game yeah. But you know what this game is famous for? For not selling well! Guess people have played a remake or something? She is also in Marvel VS Whatever series too I believe. Or is it the design of Amaterasu? She is a wolf and she does look cool.  As for Lara we all know her. The first video game sex symbol! Yeah! Okay she is in Tomb Raider games where back in PS 1 days they were AWESOME! Man I remember me and a  friend of mine where huge fans! We would buy them at the same day and then compare our plays and what secrets we found too! These were the days. Also Amaterasu has advanced to at least Round 2 in all contests too. As for Lara...even though she keeps having games it seems that people don't care at all now. Too bad. The new games  are good. Also the win was nice for Amaterasu. Seriously the new games are good. And the first one sold really well as I said before and the 2nd one did really good too! Well gone are the days of female characters as sex symbols I guess. The prediction percentage was the 2nd lowest of Round 2 too. Hell even I as a veteran of the contests took Lara here. I mean Amaterasu? Who cares about her? But people care apparently. Still Lara broke 45% so that is good for me at least. ## Tsunami's Analysis Counterevidence to the "pink wave"? Yes if you think it's mainly fueled by horny incels, but if you think it's a sign of gamers' tastes changing, who want their characters to be relatable, this is no such thing. I *think* Lara's reboot has brought her in line with what Gen Z wants, or at least what Gen Y perceives as what Gen Z wants, but I don't know. Amaterasu, however, is busy being an *actual* goddess, saving the world with a paintbrush and being a single mother. I may not be very well in touch with the female half but I seem to remember these being feminist goals. Actually to be honest I'm kind of weak at all direct interpersonal communication. I prefer to express myself through writing, hence the analyses and playthrough topics. I refuse to coopt the "incel" moniker even though it's technically true because I'm too paralyzed by fear. When I was young, it was merely fear of rejection, but I got over that. Unfortunately, we live in the Age of Me Too. I have no doubts that the majority of complaints levied under Me Too are real, but the whole idea of it has me so rattled that my best strategy right now is to just be as charming as possible and wait to find a girl aggressive enough to make the first move. See, that's the other advantage of ***writing things down***; you can see how stupid you're being. I need to get out and mingle and not care what happens next. I somehow turned what was supposed to be an inspiring ode to powerful women into my own complaining. I should not write these this late. --- ## (3)Ryu vs (6)Commander Shepard 2018 _source: (3)Ryu vs (6)Commander Shepard 2018 (revid 83933)_ ## Ulti's Analysis For the wiki readers, I wrote on my love of Shepard and Mass Effect here. No need to relive it: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(6)Commander_Shepard_vs\_(11)King_K.\_Rool_2018 \] Shepard needing to fight off a fat alligator thing meant round 2 was always going to be a predictable blowout, and the sad thing is this might have been a competitive match before crybabies started bitching about a perfectly acceptable ending. And that was back during the last game Shepard was actually in. Shep is clearly going to pay for Andromeda from now on, and we saw it in this contest. We were one morning vote away from this match being Ryu vs King K Rool, of all things. I will say this. Before Smash Ultimate I would have been really annoyed over one of my most hated characters destroying one of my favorites. But Street Fighter 5 was laughably bad and got me to stop playing the series, while Ryu in the Smash games has slowly won me over. So while I don't love the guy, I can at least watch him win matches like this without going nuts. The other story here was whether or not Ryu looked good enough to beat Sephiroth later, since that's clearly where this division was going. Commander Shepard (2010c) VS Sephiroth (2010c) Commander Shepard has a strength of 29.62. Sephiroth has a strength of 44.65. Sephiroth wins with 66.83% of the vote! So far, so good! Especially if you were banking on Smash and Nintendo giving Ryu the boost he needed while also banking on Seph losing more strength. ## Safer777's Analysis Since Ryu beat Shepard with more that Squall beat Garrus obviously everyone said Ryu\>Squall. And it makes sense. Almost always the main character is stronger than the  other characters. There are expections like Vivi from FF9 who is the strongest and Auron who is from FF 10 who is the strongest. But I am not sure about that. But who  really knows? Still bad match from Shepard. Seriously losing with a doubling? Come on now. ME Andromeda wasn't that bad. And Shepard wasn't even in that game! As for Ryu he is the strongest fighthing game character and it seems he has boosted from beeing in Smash too. Still as a ME fan this saddens me. And we thought that Shepard would be the strongest western character too! Remember when he beat Aeris? Well Ryu does good at least and he is an icon so that is fine. ## Tsunami's Analysis Shepard avoided the doubling here. It's clear that s/he still hasn't run out of strength yet. Though this is definitely a huge step backwards from beating Aerith last time out. I may expand upon this analysis later but this was mostly just something to hold the place. This isn't exactly a terribly interesting match. --- ## (10)KOS-MOS vs (2)Aqua 2018 _source: (10)KOS-MOS vs (2)Aqua 2018 (revid 84035)_ ## Ulti's Analysis What, you thought TheStupidRaptor was finished embarrassing himself and proving why he was by far the worst user of 2018? Think again. "Aqua is a beautiful, strong character with a relatable personality. She has many cool moments in her game where her character shines through. The video game IP from 2001 she is from is highly successful well known and relevant, having an extremely hyped over a decade upcoming title coming soon. Said game is made in Japan, is an RPG, and has characters from Disney Movies and Final Fantasy games, of which very few people are not familiar with. And for the shallow folks out there, she has a slim waist, large breasts, stockings, and is showing her bare back. She's pretty without it detrimenting the other aspects of her character. Kosmos is literally just a sex doll with no personality from a dead, irrelevant game no one's ever heard of. Even taking into account Gamefaq's skewed biases due to being run by weebs, Aqua checks all the boxes for "victory" around here. An attractive woman from an old game that's 17 years old, an RPG, made in Japan, and with characters from other IP's that everyone loves. Her game is even actually relevant unlike the other one. It's sad that characters from video games that aren't made in Japan seem to automatically lose here; if this was any other website, Ellie would've won. Literally every character in this tournament should beat Kosmos. But Aqua? She SHOULD have this in the bag. So what BS reason is going on this time that Aqua isn't winning this "tournament"? It makes no sense, no matter what type of logical system you use." "Kingdom hearts has no side games; each game is completely relevant to the story." "Low status?! Of all the Kingdom Hearts games that aren't 1 2 or 3, Birth By Sleep is considered the best. And with all the Kingdom Hearts collections released in recent years, you can't NOT bother playing most of the games in the series (by the way, there are no KH spin offs, every game is relevant). You play as Aqua in the final and secret episodes of birth By Sleep, so she definitely stands out in that game. Aqua's also like the only playable female in the whole series. She's even playable in BBS 0.2, and will have a big role in Kingdom Hearts 3. Said game has been hyped for over a decade, and even more hyped over the past 5 years. How can anyone be apathetic to it? Any if everyone's being shallow and we're going by attractiveness, Aqua is a million times more attractive than Kosmos the lifeless sex doll. Aqua has everything going for her, she should be winning in every sense. What other reason could there be huh? Is it the Disney characters? Disney characters are some of the most nostalgic characters you can imagine; and I thought blind nostalgia always wins on gamefaqs. Does gamefaqs hate Disney movies because they're made in America? Does the existance of American characters and IP's somehow make Kingdom Hearts "less weeb"? And only the weebiest of the weeby weeby characters win on gamefaqs? Please tell me this isn't true; I knew gamefaqs has no credibility, but this is just absurd." "Kosmos is NOT more well known. The game she's from is obscure and niche and exclusive to one old console. Aqua is from a game series that built up quite a reputation and presence, and games from the whole series are on so many consoles. I've knows of Kingdom Hearts and Aqua for many years now, but I've only heard of Xenosaga a few months ago and only due to some annoying nostalgia blind fanboys. Saying that "Kosmos is more well known" is absurdly wrong on so many levels. If it's not cheating, there must be another reason." "Kosmos looks so much like a generic anime girl. Nothing about her stands out. If no one told me that is Kosmos, I literally would never recognize her; that's how plain she looks." "I'm like the only person in the whole world that doesn't like Super Smash Brothers, so I don't give a shit; but I know for a fact that if Waluigi didn't make it, a nobody like Kosmos has no hope of that either. There are no Xenosaga characters in that game, what garble are you on about?" "That is never going to happen in any timeline. If Xenosaga was ever going to be rereleased, it would've done so by now. You know why? Because Nintendo, Namco, and Monolith Soft know nobody will care. It did poorly when it was still relevant; it's never going to get itself out of that hole." "Obvious tasteless trolls are obvious." "Where are all the Aqua fanboys? I think all the people hating me don't even like Kosmos, they just want to be contrarian." "So, no reason then huh? Aqua lost just..... BECAUSE right?! I could stomach American video game characters losing and dismiss it as gamefaqs just lacking all credibility. But THIS?!....... this is just idiotic. If lifeless sex dolls are really the only kind of women people on this site want in their games.......... sigh; Kosmos lost in everything that really matters, remember that. So I'm just going to go with gamefaqse hates Disney movies and characters because "non Japanese cartoons are trash because they're not WEEB, I need muh weeby weeby anime bitches, reeeeeeeee". Is that true? I guarantee like 85% of you grew up with Disney, but whatever; contrarianism is the life blood of gamefaqs right? sigh......" And here we all thought this was the worst fourpack of the contest. Nope. ## Lightning Strikes' Analysis **What happened?**: Aqua disappointed a bit here, looking worse than Ellie. KOS-MOS also looked very frontloaded again, declining from over 60% at the start. She also did very well in Europe which is novel but significant. **What could this mean?:** Aqua's not bad but I think KOS-MOS has looked her best in some time. I do legitimately think Xenoblade 2 is a big part of that, she has almost Nintendo-like trends and Xenoblade's good in Europe while Xenosaga is not. I think she will outperform both Lloyd and Shepard against Ryu next round. ## Safer777's Analysis This result is strange. Based on this that means that Ellie beats Aqua. How many people would pick that before the contest? Nobody I would say. Seems that KH boost wasn't real. When Sora loses to a human Pokemon character well you see how things are. I know KOS-MOS from the Project X Zone games. She is a hot android with big tits! Yeah sorry about that but I don't know about the Xenosaga series. Sorry again! But man KH sucks. Hope KH 3 comes soon. But even then it will boost the characters for like 1 year and that will be. Still nice win for KOS-MOS. Nice to have such characters winning. Also this is the first time that KOS-MOS reaches Round 3. She faces Ryu next and he has beaten her before so that is for her without a rally. Still she reached round 3 at least! ## Tsunami's Analysis Here, have a quote from KOS-MOS's Contest History page. *What in the world happened to KOS-MOS? After two years in which KOS-MOS was a middle of the pack character, she went out against Luigi in a match that she had a decent chance to win and completely bombed.* *After Xenosaga 2, no less. KOS-MOS's disappointment paired with Albedo turning out to be cannon fodder in Spring 2005 confirms what many already believe, which is that the popularity of Xenosaga is likely gone for good. Either that or Luigi boosted beyond belief.* That's from her 2005 contest run, one and done. Luigi would end up losing the very next round to Tifa, and normally a character putting up 66% in a match that was supposed to be debatable would lead to massive overestimations but Tifa's Round 1 performance literally saw her get a better percentage on Vyse than *Cloud* did in an earlier contest so Luigi was still the underdog. I bring this up because her two "middle of the pack" runs only granted her one win. She's since made it to Round 2 via the awfulness of the female bracket and via Blizzard SFF allowing her to easily come out in second place in a match with a clear winner and three characters of similar strength fighting for second place, but this is her first trip to Round 3. Even though her games proper are over a decade in the past, and she only maintains any relevance via a consistent string of guest appearances. (Play Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier.) This, however, probably is one of the reasons that this site gets ridiculed. There's a perception that we're stuck in the past and that characters/games are worthless until they can be viewed through nostalgia goggles. Sure enough, KOS-MOS finally breaks through to Round 3 only when placed in a fourpack with three characters from the 2010s. Of course, it should be noted that this was only the second contest where that was *possible*, because nominations for Character Battle VIII were in December 2009. Compare this to the six contests in as many years that she was in after her game came out (yeah, she's still too young to have been in CBI). KOS-MOS was actually one of three characters that made the vote-ins but not the main bracket in 2010 that reached Round 3 this year, along with Wario and Bayonetta. We were guaranteed at least one before Round 2 even started because of Bayonetta's 2nd-round opponent also qualifying. The rest of the vote-in field did fairly decently, too. I'll put them all together, even the ones I already mentioned. Round 4: Aerith Gainsborough (Made 2010 bracket as a 14-seed) Round 3: Wario (Missed 2010 bracket) Bayonetta (Missed 2010 bracket) Sub-Zero (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed and reached Round 3) Tails (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Mega Man X (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed and reached Round 3) KOS-MOS (Missed 2010 bracket) Round 2: Lightning (Made 2010 bracket as a 16-seed) Chun-Li (Missed 2010 bracket) The Boss (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed and reached Round 2) Simon Belmont (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Pac-Man\* (Missed 2010 bracket) Frog (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed) Lara Croft (Missed 2010 bracket) Round 1: Spyro the Dragon\* (Missed 2010 bracket) Scorpion (Missed 2010 bracket; apparent final cut) Ridley (Made 2010 bracket as a 16-seed) Peach (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Godot (Missed 2010 bracket) \*Lost to another name on this list. So that's 19 characters in this bracket who were in the 2010 vote-ins--9 who missed the bracket entirely--and those 19 characters went 14-5 in Round 1, with a perfect 19-0 impossible because two were facing each other--the nine that missed entirely going 6-3, with, again, a perfect 9-0 being impossible because two of them were facing each other. Now you might also notice that two of the three listed as being 13-seeds made it all the way to Round 3 in 2010. That's no accident. Frog had the misfortune to run into Bowser in Round 1 in 2010, but the other three 13-seeds that came out of the vote-ins all went to Round 3, and 14-seeds also went 2-0 in Round 2. The four 13-seeds that were direct entrants into the bracket, *plus* the full set of eight 11- and 12-seeds? 1-19 in Round 1. That one actually *was* a 13-seed, oddly enough--Ken Masters' tight win over Albert Wesker. But the point is, the 13-15 seed lines were generally stronger than the 11-12 lines that year (not the 10's; they had some absolute monsters. In fact both of those 14-seeds that made it to Round 3 lost to 10-seeds). The reasoning was obvious: a lot of good characters have trouble with nominations due to having to fight other members of their own series, but those characters easily rise to the top in vote-ins. The other low seed lines can often be filled with all sorts of weird fodder that got a rally. In fact, here's my newest stupid idea: for the next contest, have the *entire* field decided by a series of vote-ins. If you want to speed them along, break out the old 12-hour format for those; you can whittle down 280 characters to 128 in only two weeks that way. Obviously, make sure to use an actual S-curve when grouping the characters for vote-ins, so the \#1 nomination-getter would be in a poll with \#56, \#57, \#112, \#113, \#168, \#169, \#224, \#225, and \#280, etc. (It doesn't have to be 280; I just threw that out there so that the vote-ins would cull more characters than it kept and we'd have a multiple of 70 so it could be an exact number of weeks.) The top characters would *still* get their high seeds, most likely, but the characters who are forever plagued by that little clause where nominating too many characters from the same game/series will get your ballot thrown out can finally get the seeds they deserve. (Due to being a series with a new set of characters in each numbered game, Final Fantasy suffers from this a lot, especially secondary females like Aerith and Rikku.) Yes, the vote-ins will likely become tedious, but it should produce an extremely strong field. Now that I think about it, that's not a stupid idea at all! Finally, it must be noted that this particular result is not an upset. Yes, the prediction percentage is only 23.29% which is too low to even possibly make her the favorite this early in the contest, but that's residual upset effect. KOS-MOS's Round 1 prediction percentage was only 41.48%, which means that 56.16% of brackets that had her in this match had her winning. Not a great percentage, and well within the range where it's possible that brackets that had this particular match-up favored Aqua slightly since she herself fell a little short of 2/3 prediction in Round 1, but it's definitely a decent amount, and while I don't believe that "bracket votes" make a huge difference, it can't be denied that Ellie outperformed Aqua against KOS-MOS and that this effect was even more pronounced among registered voters, which might suggest that the plurality of casuals had Ellie winning this match. (And yes, "voting your bracket" when you've already lost your pick for a match does often mean voting for the one that broke it, especially given those prediction percentages. Pre-match, it would be entirely likely that an Ellie bracket would see that Aqua was a bigger favorite than Ellie in their Round 1 matches and assume that more brackets would be busted by KOS-MOS \> Aqua than by Aqua \> KOS-MOS--which isn't necessarily false, because even if Ellie \> Aqua is the most common pick, if the second-most common is Aqua \> Ellie rather than KOS-MOS \> Aqua, Aqua could have the second-most brackets anyway.) --- ## (1)Dante vs (4)Ganondorf 2018 _source: (1)Dante vs (4)Ganondorf 2018 (revid 84001)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Man does it feel good to be in the late rounds of this thing. Round 2 is always the hardest one to write, because most of the matches suck. But what can you do. A true sternographer covers everything! After how bad Ganon looked against Chun-Li, there was some question about whether or not Dante could win here that was shut down immediately. This was legitimately a boring old 56-44 match for 24 straight hours with no movement whatsoever, so it's time to look into when and how all of our overall \#1 seeds have lost. That's the seed Dante got, so it's the standard we have to evaluate him on. Summer 2002 - Mario loses to Link in the final. Summer 2003 - Link loses to Cloud in the semifinal in famous fashion. Spring 2004 - Mario 3 loses in the semifinal to Chrono Trigger. This contest was seeded by era. Summer 2004 - Link wins the contest. Spring 2005 - Bowser loses in the semifinal to Sephiroth. Summer 2005 - Mario wins the main bracket. Series Contest - The Legend of Zelda wins. Fall 2006 - Samus wins the main bracket. \[4ways didn't have real seeding, fuck outta here.\] Winter 2010 - Link wins the contest. Game of the Decade - Fallout 3 loses in the semifinal to Brawl. This contest was seeded by era. Rivalries - Mario and Bowser lose in the final to Link and Ganon. Fall 2013 - Link loses in round 3 to the Draven rally and LOL 3ways. Games 2015 - Chrono Trigger loses in the divisional final to a Melee rally. Which brings us to this year, and Dante losing in round 3 without putting up a fight. Anything seem a little out of place on this list? Yeah, Dante himself. If you're the top seed, the standard is you make a deep run or you lose to a rally. You can't sit there and not compete before even making the finals of your own division. Normally this loss would be whatever, but this is a bad loss for a \#1 overall seed. Dante clearly did not belong in that spot and was clearly overseeded based on the DMC5 hype video. It's easy to pull a Gruden, claim 50-50 hindsight, and say it should have been obvious Zelda was our \#1 overall seed. I won't go that far, because that's unfair. All I'll say on that is giving my own list of who deserved that spot with pre-contest information. No hindsight. Not who deserved it more than Dante, which would have been a much longer list, just who deserved the \#1 overall seed period with our top 8 characters removed for a legends bracket. Bowser Ganondorf Kirby Luigi Mega Man X Pikachu Sephiroth Squall Tifa Zelda That's 10 characters, with Sephiroth being the most obvious one since he was the odd one out of the noble nine this year. I waffled a bit on Auron vs Squall, but Squall won that match heads-up once. To the point. Stick any of those characters at the top and they aren't losing in round 3 so easily like this unless they face each other. This was a major botch by Allen, who usually does a decent job on seeds. You can't just look at nominations, bro. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous matche Dante VS Ganon was projected as a toss-up match, meaning Ganon was the favorite but of course Dante had a chance. And it made sense. I mean  Dante did really good against Lightining while Ganon didn't do good with Chun-Li. So as you see from these results Ganon won easily. Huh? Why? Don't get it. Also according to this result Dante barely beats Chun-Li! What is going on here? Who before the contest would had Chun-Li scoring like 48% on Dante? NOBODY! I don't know.  I checked around and it seems that nobody knows. Seems DMC 5 hype wasn't real. Chun-Li must have been boosted right? But why? There was a post here from various polls considered the Street Fighter games and Chun-Li does better and better against Ryu. Is it because she is the most iconic female fighthing character? I would say Smash boost but she is not there too! I just don't get it. I guess Dante and Ganon have dropped a lot too? Not sure. Guess after the end of the contest we will have a clear picture. And congrats to Ganon. Maybe he is the strongest bad guy on the bracket now. We will see about that too. Also the prediction percentage was huge for Ganon. Seems people know about the contest stuff now? I mean over 43% for Round 3 for a 4 Seed too? We see some strange things here. ## Tsunami's Analysis An utterly predictable result. Dante's surprisingly strong for a non-Nintendo, non-RPG character, but there's a limit to how powerful you can be if that's the case unless you're Solid Snake. (Technically also Mega Man and Sonic from among the Noble Nine, but they're still pre-PS1 platformer characters so they might as well fall under the "Nintendo" umbrella). About the only thing he has in his favor is that he is not, in fact, a western character, a fact which I frequently forget because his character design *screams* "American developer". Nope, he's actually Capcom, although these days, that might be even more of a liability than being non-Japanese. But this is still a good performance against a Triforce Wielder, even if he is (ironically given that his is the Triforce of Power) the weakest of the three. I say this because even before Zelda boosted to near-Link levels this year, there was probably a wider gulf between the \#3 and \#4 characters from that series than between \#1 and \#2. Then again, it's not like Legend of Zelda has *had* that many characters participate. Midna was at least somewhat of a regular after Twilight Princess came out, getting into four straight contests, but other than that we've had Tingle a few times and Epona and Groose making the giant 2013 field. Of those, only Midna and Epona have managed to make Round 2, and none have made Round 3. But that's kind of to be expected, because The Legend of Zelda has about as much cast carryover between games as Final Fantasy, except Final Fantasy has a full party of characters each game rather than a lone hero and the LoZ protagonists, while technically different characters, have the same name and similar appearances so they end up as a lone entrant in these contests. So you've got these three characters who appear in nearly every game (even if two out of three of them are technically the [Identical Descendants/Ancestors](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdenticalGrandson) of their counterparts from other games rather than truly the same person/beast every time) and a bunch of other characters who are lucky if they manage to appear twice. Why wouldn't there be a huge gulf between that trio and everyone else? --- ## (3)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2018 _source: (3)Vivi vs (10)Donkey Kong 2018 (revid 83986)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This is one of our coolest contest rivalries ever. I forget who made this point at first, but the history between these two is legitimately amazing. These aren't noble nine characters like Link and Cloud who always just outlast and see each other. This isn't a forced rivalry like Snake vs Knuckles or Sora vs Squall. This is just two characters linked together. That's it. In 2004, Vivi made his debut in a very debated 7 vs 10 match against Donkey Kong. A lot of us, myself included, thought DK could win. Remember, he wasn't yet known as a choke artist. Vivi got 56.47%: Six years later in 2010, these two got matched up in yet another 7 vs 10 match in round one. It was an exact repeat. Remember? Vivi got 56.29% in the second match, a whopping .18% deviation. I use this terminology because I remember making a joke back then that I'm looking forward to the trilogy concluding in 2016: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(7)Vivi_vs\_(10)Donkey_Kong_2010 \] Turns out my joke prediction was two years off, and these two weren't supposed to see each other this year anyway. Donkey Kong was a 10 seed for the duel yet again, but this time Vivi was a 3. They both had to win twice to get here, which was ok on Vivi's end but DK had to rely on Leon Kennedy shitting the bed in epic fashion to get here. I was hoping DK could make a match out of it this time around, but... nope. We had the literal exact same match for a third time. DK gets the board vote, Vivi wins easily, and I get miffed by the low prediction percentage. Come on, casuals. Your other 7 choices on this half of the division were Yu Narukami, Victor Sullivan, Aya Brea, Tidus, Donkey Kong, Leon Kennedy, and Dragonborn. Who the hell was Vivi losing to on that list? For the actual match, Vivi "only" won with 54.98%. So in 14 years, DK has knocked 1.5% off of there, meaning DK is on pace to win this match in 2069. Seriously. It was nice to see DK do better and prove his run wasn't a fluke, but these small shifts in percentage against the same character prove we're overstating the narrative about DK being legit. In reality, Tidus and Leon Kennedy took massive steps backwards and DK just held steady. Just like Jak's DK did against my Simon Belmont when Nintendo's garbage-ass online functionality gets in the way. Seriously Nintendo, biggest game in over a decade and you still fail at online. Garbage. Buy some servers or fuck off already. Anyway. It was nice seeing these two get a third match that wasn't a blatant setup. I wish DK would have done better, but hey, Vivi is the dude's kryptonite. This was DK's first trip to round 3 since 2002, so of course Vivi was in the way. That's just how it is. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous 2 victories of DK we thought it was finally time for him to catch a bandwagon or a rally or something. And finally beat Vivi and advancing! Also Vivi has defeated 2 weak opponents so we couldn't really judge his power. Personally I was with DK too! But guess what? Vivi beat DK. Again. For the 3rd time! First time he won with around 56.5%, 2nd time with around 56% and now with around 55%. That means that in like 10 years DK will win! So does that means that Tidus and Leon are really weak now? Guess so? I mean Vidi did as he did in all previous times so that means that DK hasn't boosted? Maybe? Still nice to see Vivi continue impressing. His look is amazing. I mean he is the typical black mage. Look at him. Even if you don't know about FF you can recognize him as some kind of wizard. Helps that he doesn't show his face too. As for DK...too bad he didn't win. Come on now, imagine if he kept winning. It would be amazing! Just look at this face! Damn! But yeah. So nice win for Vivi. Strange that the main character of FF9 sucks and a party member is so damn strong! FF always wins it seems! The prediction percentage was very low so this at least makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis I thought it was worth making during the contest, so I did. Through the first two rounds, we were wondering how much Donkey Kong had truly boosted. Unless Vivi also boosted, the answer is "probably not by as much as we thought". This was Donkey Kong's best outing against Vivi, but it still wasn't anywhere near what his first two rounds would suggest. Also, https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Pikachu_vs_Tidus_vs_Leon_Kennedy_vs_Vivi_Ornitier_2007. That's all three of DK's opponents this year in the same match. At the time this match happened, it looked like there was a chance that if DK won this match, he could make it all four members of that match. After all, given DK's past history, if he made it past Vivi, it would signify a legitimate boost, to the point that he probably would stand a chance against Ganondorf. Then DK-Pikachu would most likely occur in Losers' 1, or possibly Losers' 2 if they *both* managed to upset Mega Man but the idea of a DK \> MM upset seemed fairly inconceivable so it would really come down to whether or not Pikachu could beat Mega Man. But of course DK couldn't get past Vivi, so this mostly just served to show how far Leon had fallen. Did you actually follow the link to that 2007 match? *Leon* came out in first place, with 33.31%. Hard to imagine him even getting that percentage in a 1v1 against Pikachu nowadays. But let's take the comparisons to 2007 a bit further, because there's still a point to be made. That match I linked to above was a round two match. This was one of the Round 1 matches that fed into it: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2886-division-6-round-1-leon-ridley-spyro-vivi. Now, aside from the bit where a character with no contest wins outside of Rivalry Rumble where a Noble Niner was carrying him manages to comfortably spank a character that has one (albeit only one which came in the watered-down 2013 field) for third place, the key thing to note here is that even without Tidus LFFing him, Vivi lost to Leon. As such, unlike in 2010 where the casuals had *no* excuse for Vivi having only a 39.95% prediction percentage (not even a full 5% better than the initial match in 2004!), they can actually be excused for dropping nearly two-thirds of Vivi's R2 prediction percentage here (65.96% of brackets had him making it to this match but only 22.96% had him winning it). He was, by all rights, the underdog in this match pre-contest, except the favorite ended up eliminated a round earlier. ...Maybe. DK *was* the favorite with the casuals in Round 1, though not with the Gurus, and his Round 2 prediction percentage, while under 50%, *was* more than half his Round 1 prediction percentage--and more than half of *Leon's* Round 1 prediction percentage. Which means that DK *might* have had the plurality of brackets in the Tidus/DK/Leon/Dragonborn fourpack. Which would mean that there's...maybe less excuse? Heck, once you consider the fact that Vivi had a 65.96% prediction percentage in R2 and DK only had a 38.06%, but the percentages fell in such a way to make it look like that was a plurality...it's possible, if unlikely, that the casuals were so split on DK's fourpack that Vivi's 22.96% is *actually the plurality*. Unlikely, because that still leaves 77.04% to *mostly* be split among DK's fourpack (the other three members of Vivi's fourpack will probably take a little bit, but not much). If we give about 3% to the other three members of Vivi's fourpack, DK's fourpack would be averaging about 18.5% apiece. Given that Dragonborn barely had twice that to get out of *Round 1*...yeah, I doubt Vivi was even the technical favorite here. Though it does bring up another intriguing possibility, that DK was the favorite in his fourpack but Leon was the technical favorite in the *eightpack* due to being perceived as having a greater chance at getting past Vivi. It would only serve to underscore the fact that transitivity is not a thing in these contests. Hell, just look at Bowser/Yoshi/Luigi. --- ## (1)Zero vs (13)Wario 2018 _source: (1)Zero vs (13)Wario 2018 (revid 83999)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Wario getting out of a very weak fourpack was adorable and all, but all these middling characters that sneak into round 2 or 3 all get wrecked eventually. This was just Wario's turn a round later than usual is all. That said, getting 40% on Zero is not easy to do and it puts you right in the middle of the LOL x stats. This blows me away, because what in the world has this fat bastard ever done to earn a fanbase? Toilet humor is just not my thing, so a fat dude farting on people on Smash Bros just autoamtically makes me not like the guy. Fart jokes were George Carlin's one weakness. It's why I don't listen to Howard Stern. There are more intelligent ways to make people laugh, and then I see 'fart of gold' puns on Little Mac's smash stage and it's just stupid. Those WarioWare games cannot possibly be good enough to cancel this stuff out for anyone that isn't childish. Some of the names below him in the stats are just silly to think about, because I never would have picked it pre-contest. Wario over The Boss? Wario over Zidane? Wario over Ocelot or GLaDOS? Wario over Shadow when he got 35% on the dude once? I don't get it and I don't get his fanbase. I don't get people who actually find toilet humor funny. Never have, never will. For Zero, this was business as usual and it's a shame his path was so predictable. Remove the big dogs and he's a good 1 or 2 seed. He goes about his business, cuts people in half, and keeps it movin. It sucks he was destined for Pikachu in the divisional finals this year, because I fully believe he could have beaten Sephiroth or Sonic had those two linked up. One day! All he needs is to be playable in Smash. ## Safer777's Analysis Finally a normal match. I mean Zero winning was set in stone no matter the opponent. And he did good. A victory above 60%. So a character did better in Round 3 and he  did in Round 2. Wario isn't strong or anything. He was lucky he faced weak opponents and reached round 3. So what else to say? Zero does decent in the contests anyways. He is always doing as expected in these things. He is from MM series so that helps. Hey nothing else. Pretty normal stuff. ## Tsunami's Analysis Round 3 is where the last of the weaklings are usually weeded out. Occasionally an entire eightpack is weak enough that something not normally capable of making a deep run gets there (think Scorpion in 2002), but even in the era-divided games contests, there were rarely undeserving entrants in the fourth round. Fourpacks, however, are a small enough entity that they can be comprised of nothing but weak characters. Wario in Round 3 is definitely a weird result in a vacuum that wasn't weird at all given the competition he'd face. What's weird is that his second-round opponent wasn't even the weakest character *in this division* to make the second round! It's been commented that it seemed like as compensation for making him the only Noble Niner not in Legends, they gave Sephiroth an easy division. Personally, I think this was an even easier one for Pikachu. Other "potential Noble Nine breakers" didn't have divisions nearly this easy. Vivi and Vincent both beat Noble Niners in the past, but were given highly challenging paths that they failed to handle. (Well, okay, Vincent wasn't in a terribly strong *division*, in that whoever came out of his fourpack would almost certainly win the division barring RallyFEAR.) Kirby and Bowser had largely easy paths to Round 4, but then had to face each other. And so on. --- ## (3)Yoshi vs (7)Pikachu 2018 _source: (3)Yoshi vs (7)Pikachu 2018 (revid 84000)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This one just warms my heart, because there is something special for me whenever the original eight Smash Bros link up in a contest match. These two have always been pretty close in the stats, with Pikachu being slightly ahead outside of his early days of flopping. It was really, really cool to finally see them in a match together. Pikachu has been around since 2002, Yoshi since 2003, and somehow they never once fought. Unfortunately for Yoshi, Pikachu was the favorite and he was the one Pokemon that bothered showing up in this contest. If this was Charizard, or more hilariously if it was Mewtwo, Yoshi probably wins in epic Al Michaels "HE DID WHAT?" fashion. In fact if you stick Yoshi in Pikachu's spot in 2008, I'm willing to bet Yoshi makes it just as far as Pikachu did. But Yoshi is juuuuust weak enough and juuuuust unlucky enough with bracket placement to have never won a division, while being strong enough to get to round 2 or 3 every year. This one kind of blows me away, because he's the fan favorite in the Mario games and some will tell you Yoshi's Island is the best platformer ever. Come match time, it was never really close after the first five minutes. Yoshi kept it tied until the freeze, and then got buried by Pikachu. Even had Yoshi tried coming back, the Detective Pikachu trailer launched on the day of this match. Yeah, November 12th. Detective Pikachu trailer and Pikachu gets a contest match. That's just silly and it's frankly a miracle Yoshi finished above 45% here. If GameFAQs was still alive and people cared about these contests, Pikachu probably goes above 60% on the strength of that trailer alone. I honestly wonder if Pikachu would have fallen as much as the other Pokemon had he not gotten a Ryan Reynolds movie plus meme treatment mid contest, but those are the breaks! Sometimes you just get them, not that Pikachu would have lost anyway. One last point about this match that made it really cool. We got some more confirmation on the Nintendo hierarchy because of it, plus some stuff that happened later. More on that when the time comes. ## Safer777's Analysis A good match here. But here is the strange thing. Others said that Pika did good, others said he did okay, and others said he did bad! What? Really? This is a good  performance in my invisible book. Listen. Yoshi is good now. He gets stronger as years go by. Plus look at him. Who doesn't like Dragon-Dinosaur hybrids? Everybody likes these! Probably. As for Pikachu...Man is he getting stronger and stronger every year! Beeing the face of the best selling franchise helps too. So here he won with a good performance. If he was above 55% nobody would complain. But anyways. Recently the Detective Pikachu movie trailer got released. And it looks good too! So maybe that will give him a boost too! Pika deserves to go really far! Yeah I like Pokemon! But what else? In all the later contests Pikachu always wins the divisions or comes 2nd in the multi way polls and advances anyways! I believe so at least. So yeah. Seems that Pika is damn strong. And oh yeah he is in Smash too. Personally I want him to win the whole thing! Man this site would be a mess! Still seems he will win the division. The prediction percentage was very good too. Well it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis See what I mean? This was probably Pikachu's biggest challenge, and it's a same-company match. All-Nintendo matches rarely produce unexpected results. One would further down the line, but that's beside the point. That said, this qualifies as a strong performance for Pikachu based on most recent X-stats. Not the raw 2013 X-stats, but Yoshi faced Link in 2013 and Nintendo characters facing Link will always have poor raw X-stats. --- ## (9)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (4)Big Boss 2018 _source: (9)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (4)Big Boss 2018 (revid 84048)_ ## Ulti's Analysis So after an entire contest where Big Boss, Ocelot, and Quiet all made the Metal Gear Solid series live up to the name Solid Shit, and after an entire contest where Pikachu was the only one in the Pokemon clan making that series look good, we get this hilarious match. You don't even need to go far back in history to see why this one is funny. You only need look at this contest. Big Boss flopped twice. Ocelot flopped twice. Quiet embarrassed herself. Mewtwo and Charizard proved they were frauds. Red may or may not have needed my reddit rally to hold off Sora. Only Pikachu was impressive. That said, we didn't know before the match Red was included in the 'Pokemon looks like ass' pile and figured he was just pulling a close upset on Sora, and thus living up up some expectations. Whoops! This match was actually even early, which is highly unusual for a Pokemon character, and then it took a couple hours for Red to actually put this match away. Big Boss kept pulling these huge updates out of his ass, and it wasn't until later on in the evening where Red finally pulled away. Normally this would be whatever, but this match was not too long ago: As much as I'd love to just call the top half of this division all legit based on this match, there are too many contradicting data points here. First off, the Metal Gear Solid series is done. We've been over it enough now to where I don't need to have you guys relive the reasons (and I'm saving my Konami rant for later, fuck those people). For Red to struggle with Big Boss after recently struggling with Ocelot is just bad. This match all but confirms that the Pokemon clan overperform in 3/4ways and those results cannot even remotely be trusted. Red would end up verifying this one round later as The Plan™ came into fruition. ## Safer777's Analysis Well after Red defeated Sora no way he would lose here. I mean come on now, Big Boss didn't do anything good too. But here is the strange part. Look at the result. He did almost as good as Sora. Why? That means he scores on Sora around 49%. Let us be real, would anybody say that before the contest? No. Also Crash scores like 45% on Sora too? Why? So from what I gather from these results. Seems that Crash, Red, Big Boss and Sora are close in strength? Who would have thought that before the contest? So I guess they aren't that strong anyways. Still Red managed to advance and that is all that matters. When you see that Mewtwo and Charizard ddidn't do good but a human Pokemon character advances that far you know that strange things are happening. Man I wish the Zard was here instead of Red. Eh whatever. Well Big Boss fought valiantly but of  course he lost. I mean people had him losing easily but nope. Still any match with around 53%-47% is always nice. Man these Pokemon though. They win even when there are no Pokemon around! The prediction percentage was really low too. Well most people had Sora winning here anyways so it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis Add another one to the pile of results that disprove the popular notion that Pokémon had a bad contest outside of Pikachu. Honestly, other than Charizard's close call against Terra this was a *phenomenal* contest for Team Pokémon, in large part because they weren't spread so thin like they were last time. I mean, yeah, it's kind of disappointing that a character that *literally beat Cloud last contest* didn't get to return, but the quartet we got was really all we needed. And Charizard's poor outing in 2013 would soon be vindicated. Maybe. Honestly it's tough to tell because Charizard's downfall involved a character that had previously resisted SFF from his series' lead like a champ suddenly failing to do so. And Zelda clearly boosted a *lot*, so it's kind of misleading to say that that "disappointing" narrow victory looks a lot better now, but it does look a lot better now, especially with Donkey Kong also suddenly looking good. So for the second straight contest, Red is in Round 4. Dude's been in three contests, one of which only had five rounds, and he's been to Round 4 twice. Oh, yeah, I guess he was also in Rivalry Rumble, whereupon he and Blue literally took home the bronze medal. So from another perspective, he's been in four contests and has two semifinals appearances. Remember when Butler went to back-to-back title games while they were still a member of the Horizon League? Yeah, that's kind of what Red is. Did you know that Red actually finished ahead of *Tifa* in the Raw X-Stats? Because he did. I may rail against Adjusted X-Stats due to the fact that the adjustments are completely arbitrary, but that fact shows why they're necessary. That's entirely on Tifa's number being too low, though; Red's is calculated entirely through non-SFF matches (unless you consider Link-Cloud an SFF match by this point, which honestly wouldn't be that outlandish but it's not the same as Tifa's number being calculated through Link-Zelda, Zelda-Mario, Mario-Samus, and perhaps even Samus-Tifa itself due to the hentai rallies). No Pokémon entry finished lower than 23.92% in the raw X-Stats, and that was Mewtwo's number which, as I said, is behind SFF matches at every round of Legends. All three entrants that failed to win their divisions lost to the eventual division winner and broke 40% in doing so. But please, go on with the narrative that Pokémon was awful this contest. As for Big Boss, this was a respectable exit for him. It's clear that the series is on the decline here, due in large part to the series being completely dead, but it's still got some strength. Honestly, they don't really *need* to create a "new" game, just to make sure that the Konami/Kojima breakup doesn't cause the characters to fall into a legal gray area where no one can use them. Metal Gear Solid V literally ended with the prelude to the original Metal Gear. They officially wrapped up Big Boss's story and brought it back to the start of Solid Snake's. The obvious solution would be for Metal Gear Solid 6 *to literally be an expanded remake of Metal Gear 1*, the way the 11th, 15th, and 12th Fire Emblem games are remakes of the first three games. Except much better, because you're taking a game from the 1980s and giving it the full 3D console makeover. Yeah, the TX-55 definitely needs some upgrades. Hopefully Kojima Productions can get the rights to Kojima's creations; the only game listed for them since they ceased to be a subsidiary of Konami appears to be a brand new IP. (Also still unreleased with release date TBD.) --- ## (3)Alucard vs (7)Kefka 2018 _source: (3)Alucard vs (7)Kefka 2018 (revid 84051)_ ## Ulti's Analysis In the guru, Kefka was the overwhelming favorite in this match. Half of people picked him here, and the leftovers was an even mix of Yuna, L-Block, and Alucard. Pre-contest the Alucard/Yuna match was 50-50 on the board, while most people assumed the L/Kefka winner would make a deep contest run. In the oracle, most people favored Alucard here and had figured out mid-contest the guy had clearly boosted somewhere. I don't know if it was his game coming to PS4 or the Castlevania Netflix series or popping up in that Smash video or what, but this guy was on crack this year. This was a match few people saw coming in a very debatable division, and Alucard just trounced the pre-contest favorite. Well, after five minutes of Kefka keeping things even for the board vote anyways. This was a tie at the freeze, and then after things got going Alucard just smoked this clown. That wasn't TY Hilton, The Joker, or people from The Purge over there that could actually fight back, either, but an actual clown that just rolled over and starting crying the second he got punched in the mouth. Kefka is one of those characters I'll never get a proper read on in these things, because even with Alucard looking better going in you just never know with this guy. Kefka could have been the one getting 60% here with how much of an oddball he is, but unfortunately for him this was Alucard's year. Alucard made Kefka look like lucky fodder that came from a weak fourpack, when he really wasn't. Kefka belonged here and just got smoked. And if it wasn't for PokeFEAR, Alucard would have far and away the universal favorite next match. ## Safer777's Analysis So as matches went we saw that Alucard did good and Kefka did good too. So Kefka we thought had some chances to win. Yeah sure. Man this guy trolls us all the time! How he does that in all the contests nobody knows. But as for Alucard. Not only he does so good but he has a chance to take a division too! First time he does so well. Yeah the opponents are weak sure. But still. Alucard is on a roll here. I wonder why. Alucard...is Dracula spelled backwards! WHAT? Mind=blown! But in all seriousness nice to see such a character to reach that far. Still it seems that the division final match will be amazing. Finally a Castlevania game/character is doing so good. Yeah I know we had SOTN doing good once but still. Variety is always nice! We need to have such things instead of you know FF and Zelda games/characters. As for  Kefka...pretty sure he laughs on us all! Keep doing what are you doing Kefka! And of course in the next contest prepare for a trolling for him again! ## Tsunami's Analysis This match goes beyond simply "lolKefka". This is like a "*lolKefkaception*". Pre-contest, Kefka was a definitive favorite here, getting over 50% of Gurus. The second most popular pick to win this match among Gurus was literally Kefka's first-round opponent, L-Block. Yet it was precisely because of this that, come match time, we all knew that Kefka was the underdog. "Kefka/L-Block winner" was a 154-6 pick over "Kiryu/Bomberman winner", while Alucard was only an 87-67 favorite over Yuna (remaining 6 brackets taking Alucard's Round 1 opponent, Peach.) But Alucard was every bit as dominant as Kefka against what appeared to be a stronger foe! And yet, Kefka still embarrassed himself here, *barely* outdoing Yuna's number against Alucard. In fact, Kefka and Yuna are only two spots apart in the raw X-Stats. Kefka's \#33, and Yuna's \#35. And therein lies the biggest joke of all. That one spot between them belongs to none other than *Terra Branford*! And while the raw X-Stats are a bit wonky due to the number of SFF matches in the late rounds, Division 3 is probably the truest numbers you'll get, and Division 4 the second-truest as it's only stuck behind Cloud \> Crono, which is marginal at best. Division 1 is stuck behind Link \> Ganondorf, Division 2 behind Link \> Pikachu, and Divisions 5-8 behind Link \> Zelda. So it becomes kind of hard to argue that there's some sort of SFF result leading to Terra being right behind Kefka--if anything, you could actually make a case for Terra \> Kefka indirectly, as Terra's number is not only behind Cloud \> Crono but also Bowser \> Charizard, which is probably a stronger SFF result. And even with the evidence that Alucard was stronger, nearly 37% of Oracles still backed Kefka here. Because it just makes more sense. The casuals, on the other hand, seemed to tentatively have this one from the start. Vaguely. Over 25% of them picked this, down from just under 49% having him reach this round. That was largely on the first round, however--Yuna was a far heavier favorite to reach round 2, but Alucard still managed to get that respectable R2 prediction percentage. It's highly unlikely, especially given Kefka's R2 prediction percentage being worse than Alucard's, that any other character had a higher percentage. Which kind of says what we'd all been thinking--Division 3 was thought to be wide open. Or at least, the bottom half was. --- ## (1)2B vs (4)Bowser 2018 _source: (1)2B vs (4)Bowser 2018 (revid 84081)_ ## Ulti's Analysis So this is the match that got everyone calling 2B a legitimate contest character, which she is. Sort of. 42% on Steroid Bowser is legitimately a fine accomplishment and means she isn't some joke tier fodder that lucked into a 1 seed because of a meme or whatever. It's a fine performance, and puts her squarely into midcard status. This is a perfectly fine and acceptable performance, and given the type of female GameFAQs fantasizes over (more on that embarrassment later, way to prove the stereotypes about gamers folks) 2B is set up to be around for awhile. She even won/tied a few updates in this match. Nice job. Except for one thing. 2B was a 1 seed in this contest, which means you get judged by the 1 seed standard. You can not go out there and get 42% in a match in your third match as a 1 seed. It's unacceptable. 2B is a legit contest character, but an embarrassing 1 seed. Her, Dante, and Squall had no business on the 1 seed line. Zero. I'm not Bank of America. I don't get involved in the business of giving credit. 2B had zero business being a 1 seed in this contest, and this match proved she was one of the most over-seeded characters in this contest. She's right there with Squall, the Yazuka losers, and so on. Multiple things can be true. You can both be legit and over-seeded, which 2B was. Simple as that. ## Safer777's Analysis 2B did really good for a newcomer to reach here but of course everybody knew that Bowser would win. You can't just beat the most iconic videogame villain of all time especially if you are a newcomer! But here is the thing. She did really good! Everyone was expecting at least 60% from Bowser! Damn! So why? Well she is a fanservice character yeah BUT she got announced for SC 6 AND her game is actually pretty good from what I gather! Seriously! So people supported her. I mean she got a 1 seed so seems that yeah this is true. So even though she lost, she went out with style at least. As for Bowser well he is strong. Duh. He should be anyways! But funny to see a character losing by a lot and still impressing! Maybe next time she does better or something. Hope that is true! ## Tsunami's Analysis I stated back in Round 1 that Bowser was in a very similar position this year to the one he was in in 2010--a 4-seed, in the division with the weakest 1-seed. The difference was that at least then, said 1-seed was a proven midcarder, and merely had the title of "weakest 1-seed" because the Noble Nine were still in the main bracket and the Heart Division was the only one that lacked one. Of course, while Bowser did knock off the 1-seed then, he had the poor timing to run into Charizard on the release date for a main-series Pokémon game. It's easy to forget that that was only a division final and not an Elite Eight match, until you remember that the Noble Nine were still in the main bracket. This? Was not a worthy use of Bowser's time. When you're a 1-seed and the 12-seed gets a better percentage against the 4-seed than you do...yeah. 2B did well to get a bracket placement that allowed her to reach the third round, but Ness barely qualifies as a midcarder. 2B is not a threat to make a deep run, and it wouldn't surprise me if we didn't see much more of her at all. However, she did show some strength here, and this would actually have an impact on things to come. --- ## (3)Phoenix Wright vs (2)Kirby 2018 _source: (3)Phoenix Wright vs (2)Kirby 2018 (revid 84082)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Given how big a fan of Ike I am and how tired I am of seeing that dude come up short, this was a good measure of revenge for me. I like Phoenix, but I don't love him and his fanbase has become increasingly annoying with each new contest. They're not to a level of causing me to rant or anything, but they're getting there. Phoenix is a hilariously overrated character with a terrible Marvel vs Capcom 3 appearance, so seeing the guy get worked was nice. It's like when the Bears lost to the Eagles last night; Chicago is a gutter run by heroin dealers and routinely ruins people's lives over things that mean nothing in the grand scheme, and that place deserves to get smacked once in awhile. Look at what those losers did to Steve Bartman, or what they're trying to do to Cody Parkey right now, or their murder rate. Sometimes you get a group of people in need of humbling, and Phoenix Wright fans? You're getting there. Knock it off. I like the dude and he has some good games, but you're making me want to not like him. Stop that. Phoenix's fanbase pretends everyone loves him, but Kirby is a character everyone actually does love. Put Phoenix against actual competition and watch the blowouts commence. He didn't even get his usual board vote here, because Kirby is a character no one can actually hate unless they have severe issues. My biggest issue with Phoenix outside of his fanbase is the bad writing in parts of his games, specifically the constant deus ex machina bailouts. Visual novels in general seem to have this problem and have not caught up as a literary art form despite being literal novels, but these dopey main characters always get help from paranormal beings or random AHA moments. It's a terrible writing style and should be used very very sparingly. I felt like Phoenix was getting bailed out by otherworldly stuff in every single case, and it got so ridiculous by the time I was done reading the trilogy. Then Apollo Justice, those awful Ace Attorney Investigation games, and the MvC3 garbage happened and I was just out on that series. Phoenix is a good character, but he is not a great character. He suffers too much from deus ex machina, a genre no one really cares about, and 'everyone around me is cooler' syndrome. That's not a recipe to compete with the big boys on this site. This would set up a match between Kirby and Bowser that would blow my mind, but not for the reasons you guys might think. ## Safer777's Analysis After a miraculous victory on Round 2 we all knew that this match would be end of the contest for Phoenix. He isn't strong or anything, we all know that. I mean Gordon  Freeman got his first victory against Phoenix!This contest is the one that has reached the further too! Damn! So who beat him? Kirby. I wrote above about Kirby, read if you want. Basicallly I don't understand why he is so strong. Anyways of course he owned Phoenix, I mean he won with more than a doubling. Kirby is improving with every contest. Would you believe me if I told you that in the very first contest he lost on the 1st match against Jill! Yeah! Man! Things change eh?So yeah. Kirby is damn strong. Don't ask me why, I just don't get it. Anyways awesome win for Kirby. As for Phoenix hey he did his best so that is all anyone could ask for! Maybe next time he does better? Don't think so but we can hope! The prediction percentage was massive for Kirby too. Well I guess it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis And that "impact on things to come"? Right here. While Bowser was merely cruising to an Ulti-style blowout against 2B, a character with no track record (and thus, not expected to be worth much), Kirby was cruising to an *actual* blowout against Phoenix, who was generally believed to have finally risen to midcarder status after his shocking upset of Vincent Valentine in 2013 (admittedly only for second place in a match that had been decided almost 24 hours before it began, and remember that the matches were only *twelve* hours long). And Phoenix had put up what seemed to be a decent win in Round 2, albeit only with the help of the registered user bonus. Then again, Ike lost to a horse in 2013. A horse from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, mind you, but still an actual horse. Only here's the thing: Phoenix struggling with Ike **ABSOLUTELY SHITS ALL OVER** the idea that Mewtwo was a **FRAUD**. Phoenix got a better percentage on 2013 rallybait Mewtwo than Ike got on GLaDOS in the Epona match, the same GLaDOS that FRAUDtwo annihilated in Round 1. If you really think Mewtwo is a **FRAUD**, then GLaDOS is the Turd of the Contest, because that is truly ridiculous. Check this inequality. Phoenix's percentage against Mewtwo in 2013 \> GLaDOS's percentage against Mewtwo in 2018 \> Ike's percentage against GLaDOS in 2013. Now remember that 2013 Mewtwo is a rally-fueled monster and 2018 Mewtwo isn't. There's no combination of Phoenix dropping and Ike boosting that doesn't still make that embarrassing for GLaDOS. Of course, as I suggested in an earlier write-up, Phoenix's win over Vincent is kind of an illusion, precisely *because* Mewtwo was being rallied as a potential insurance policy if Link failed to stop Draven. Board 8 loves Phoenix. Always has. And they're not alone. Phoenix Wright fans are a loyal bunch; I feel like the rally probably hurt Vincent a lot more than it hurt Phoenix. Oh, but I seem to be getting off track. Sort of. Point is, Phoenix wasn't as strong as he seemed to be. Also, this is a pseudo-SFF match. Kirby gets the majority of his strength from Smash, of course, but he's still one of Nintendo's bigger stars to be primarily associated with their portables rather than their consoles, trailing only Pokémon. Different genres, too...if you're being generous, you could say that Kirby is *the* biggest platforming star on the Game Boy/DS. Yes, bigger stars *have had* platformers on those systems, but most of the better Mario games available for a portable system are merely ports of games that started on a console. (6 Golden Coins is pretty good, and I guess 3D Land isn't bad.) But because Kirby was absolutely wrecking Phoenix here, in fact marginally improving on the number that Bowser put up on a weaker Phoenix in 2008 (in Round 1; we won't even count Round 2 because Bowser was being SFFed by Luigi), suddenly everyone was declaring Kirby the favorite in Round 4. Like, seriously. Bowser is a slight favorite over Kirby in the Guru, based on pre-contest expectations, but in the Oracle, based on what we've seen so far, Kirby is the overwhelming pick. Now let's continue laughing at a psychopathic AI. --- ## (1)Squall Leonhart vs (4)Zelda 2018 _source: (1)Squall Leonhart vs (4)Zelda 2018 (revid 88247)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Throughout any contest, you'll see a bunch of topics talking about stars and turds each round. I don't get involved in doing all that every round, but this match showed a wonderful contrast between the two. Zelda, the clear star of this contest as of this match, didn't just beat Squall. She destroyed him. After the early board vote went Squall's way because of brackets or whatever have you, Zelda went out there and put down a beating so bad that if you ran the numbers, this result puts her squarely and high up in the Noble Nine level. Some people weren't ready to go there, but I was. I have the second chance picks to prove it, and even I didn't go far enough because Zelda was on the juice all contest long. She was like this in the first two rounds too, but this was the match that really made people notice. The really scary thing is this didn't start off all that bad, but within 10 minutes this was a laughable blowout. It was basically this match in reverse, actually. Zelda went out there and got some revenge for her distant cousin from the Mario games: On the other side was this contest's biggest turd. You cannot go out there and get 37% as a 1 seed in round 3. You just can't. I don't care who or what you're up against. This was a thorough embarrassment and there is no defense for it, regardless of how down Square is. That 1 seed line is supposed to be special. We had three 1 seeds in this contest that completely failed the 1 seed line for various reasons -- Dante, 2B, and Squall. Squall by far had the worst exit, and I don't know how he comes back from this. Even a port of Final Fantasy 8 to the PS4 wouldn't help at this point, I don't think. By the way, fuck you Square for not saving the original files and giving FF8 the love it deserves. You save it all for every other game except 8? Really? Fuck you Square. No wonder you suck eggs outside of one game on this site. Seriously, look it up. Pretty much every other game in that series has been ported or rereleased at some point all the way up to 12. That company is such a joke at this point and it's a big reason I enjoyed this match so much. Nintendo's online may suck, but at least I can tell they care about their fans when I play their games. Square literally does not give a shit anymore. I used to be very much in the Square camp whenever these duels would happen in contests, but outside of FF7 I am firmly in the Nintendo camp now. They've won me back. As such, this match was great. The star of the contest stomped, and though I like Squall a lot he represents Square's idiocy. FF8 not being ported yet is such a joke. For those who don't understand what I mean about losing source files, I am in no way kidding. Square really is that stupid and Squall is paying for it: ## Safer777's Analysis Don't know what to say. Look at this. Okay. Let us talk about this. Before the contest Squall was the favorite but Zelda had supporters too. As the contest went on Zelda became the favorite but Squall wasn't out too. But man. Don't know. When I first checked the results I thought there was a rally. Or something. Still I can't believe it. A little bit of history for Squall in the contests. 1st contest Squall loses to Snake. 2nd contest Squall loses to Samus. 3rd contest Squall loses to Cloud. 4th contest  Squall loses to Vincent but barely enough and Vincent was a beast back then. 5th contest Squall loses to Snake. 6th contest Squall loses to Snake. 7th contest Squall loses to Mewtwo BUT there were 3 Square characters in that match so a lot of SFF. 8th contest Squall loses to Snake(his cryptonite). 9th contest Squall loses to Vivi but Pokemon was rallied and of course Vivi is another Square character so SFF again. So why I wrote all this? To see that Squall is pretty damn strong! Some people were saying he might be the strongest character in the bracket except Sephiroth of course! So for 1 VS 1 Squall has lost only to N9er's except Vincent back then when he even defeated Crono indirectly. So for Zelda. She hasn't done well in the contests except the Female one where of course she did well, duh. I mean which females are strong here? Tifa, Samus and Zelda. Maybe Aeris too. So NOBODY could predict this result. NOBODY. Don't deny this. So what is going on? Squall has fallen this much or Zelda has risen this much? Maybe a combination of both or just 1 of them? According to these results Zelda beats Squall's opponents with like 85% to 90%. No way this is right. I can't fathom this. But if the boost to Zelda and Link is real and it is so strong that means that nobody can break even 35% on Link! Even with strong rallies.  Seriously. So once again I don't know what to say. The only good thing I can say is that makes Ezio looking somewhat decent. And congrats to Zelda. This match was the one that nobody expected this result, at least not this much difference in percentages. Man Link will beat another Nintendo character with like 80%! Damn! This contest has lost all credibility! Nah just kidding about the last part. Impressive win no matter how you see it. The prediction percentage was really good for Zelda too. Guess a lot of people saw this? Well I certainly didn't and the board didn't too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well. This is certainly a thing that happened. And it was *terrifying*. Squall has been in every contest, and he's consistently been one of the top midcarders, though it took until CBII for this to really be noticed due to some *horrendous* seeding in 2002 that saw Squall fed to a Noble Niner in Round 1, and a Noble Niner that was actually *seeded properly* (which not all of them were). How bad? He was a ***15-seed.*** Anyone who's been reading these write-ups in order should already know how few 15-2 upsets there have been, and while the 2-seed line was in fact the strongest in 2002 (Three Noble Niners were 2-seeds, while only two were 1-seeds and the two 1-seeds that *weren't* Noble Niners have both missed contests outright since then), Crash Bandicoot was also there. Just picture (2)Crash Bandicoot vs (15)Squall Leonhart for a moment. Yeah, 2002 was weird. Squall's not even the only 15-seed that year that could've beaten Crash, so he's lucky that he got a 15-seed that was actually legitimately bad instead. Now, Zelda hasn't been there for every contest, because for some reason it took until CBII for *any* Nintendo franchise to have multiple representatives in the contest unless you consider Mario and Donkey Kong to technically be the same franchise due to their shared origins. But she's been in every contest since then save for CBIII, and it's usually taken a Noble Niner to defeat her (though she did come in second in a fourway to Vincent in a "clean" match, one round before Link showed up and absolutely annihilated her). All things considered, this result might've been far more expected if not for a handful of votes. Stop and think about it for a moment. Yeah, that's right. Zelda lost to Charizard by all of *15 votes* in 2013. And it was widely expected that Charizard would be able to take advantage of Zero's demonstrated ability to not get SFFed into oblivion by Mega Man (see: Weighted Companion Cube, 2008) to win Division 9. Charizard was considered a disappointment in part for failing to do this, by the only slightly less narrow margin of 23 votes, but also for nearly getting "upset" the round before by Zelda. Now, remember also that Pokémon had a representative in almost every match near the end of that contest. Divisions 2, 5, 6, and 8 had all been won by Pokémon entrants, which meant all three Contest Semifinals would also contain one. There was serious Pokéfatigue. Is it unreasonable to think that, had Zelda managed to muster up those 16 extra votes needed to beat Charizard, she could've done what he couldn't and beaten Mega Man? And then of course she easily outpaces Red in the contest semis to get to the 4th place match and, just as Mega did, has no trouble handling the LFF-afflicted Mewtwo and Pikachu to win that match. But back to the match at hand. Nintendo had clearly boosted, and Zelda especially seemed strong, so most Oracles, at least, saw this coming, selecting Zelda at a bit over a 5 to 1 ratio. (Gurus, not so much. 93-65 in favor of Squall.) But the magnitude? Not even close. Zelda won with 63.32%, 3.31% above the highest-scoring Oracle prediction...which was itself 2.75% above the *\#2* Oracle prediction. This was just a gobsmacking. And of course, everyone was quick to dump on Squall, because taking this at face value would mean Zelda was at Noble Nine level, and that just couldn't make sense. After all, it's called "Noble Nine level" for a reason, and that's because they're the only nine that can ever reach it naturally. L-Block and Draven got there with rally power, sure, but when a Noble Niner loses a legitimate match? Only happens because of the Noble Niner's decline. Not because the other character has strengthened to their level. That just can't happen. And yes, it took a conscious effort to write "couldn't" and "can't" rather than "didn't" and "shouldn't". Or "won't". Because that's the way most of the old guard thinks. The Noble Nine, and their peak games (okay mostly just OoT, CT, FFVII, and to a lesser extent ALttP/SMW/SMB3), are put on a pedestal. They've finally accepted that they're not all going to stay invincible forever, but the idea that something else could be as strong as they once were... ...well, it wasn't always that way. CBII was, in many ways, a very weird contest, because a bunch of side characters from games whose main characters were in CBI debuted and people expected these side characters to be stronger than their leads for some reason. Maybe because leads tend to be bland. People figured that if *Crono* could come as close as he did to Mario, then Magus should be able to outright win the contest--but on the other hand, Mario has no real personality at all so surely Luigi will be even stronger than Mario. As awful as CBIII was for all of the SFF matches, it was, one supposes, at least useful for derailing that kind of misguided thinking. But on the flip side, it might just have been what led to *this* kind of misguided thinking, that the Noble Nine have some sort of untouchable aura that no other character will ever be able to attain. Well, okay, there's that, and there's also the fact that new characters tend to do poorly, and the inherent advantage of having existed for a long time means that anything that *could* be on that level *would* have shown that capability by now. That is an entirely more logical reason for thinking that no other character would ever be able to dominate non-fodder the way the Noble Nine do, or once did. Forgive me, I've been railing against the unwillingness to see members of the Noble Nine weakening for so long that I overlooked that the converse, that nothing else will ever *rise up* to that level, actually had a logical basis. That said, there was something overlooked, and if you scroll back up to the point where I mentioned the *games* that are treated with the same reverence as the Noble Nine, you'll probably figure out what it is. No, that wasn't an accidental omission. This contest, Smash Ultimate was certainly considered a factor as to why Nintendo--and certain non-Nintendo characters--had boosted, but far too often, Smash is overlooked. I suspect that this is because of one of the exact same things that I consider to be among the three reasons that Melee isn't looked at in the same light as those other games. Namely, *Brawl*. The threefold reason that Melee isn't given the reverence it deserves are the loss to Brawl in GotD, rallying to turn what was already an assured 55-45 win into a 60-40 win in BGE3, and rallying again to defeat Chrono Trigger in BGE3. That last one, I assume, brings this into grudge territory, because this board loves Chrono Trigger almost as much as it loves Phoenix Wright. (I promise, when I decide to go back and play Chrono Trigger, I'll make a playthrough topic. It's something I intend to do because the reasons that I vaguely remember hating it the first time I played it were things that I actually *enjoyed* when I encountered them in FFVI, so I'm fairly certain that I'd actually like the game if I tried it again.) But back to why Brawl is relevant. In 2007, a bunch of characters made their Character Battle debuts based on being announced for Brawl, and even more debuted in 2008 for getting into Brawl. And the newcomers were largely underwhelming in the contests, which led to everyone believing that Smash wasn't really as big a boost as it seemed. *It is.* They were just looking at things the wrong way. See, being new to Smash is only good for a small boost. But here's the secret. Each time you appear in a Smash game? *The boost gets bigger*. Remember, Metroid Prime wasn't even out when Character Battle I happened. Super Metroid is certainly an all-time classic, but being one of the Original Twelve (and the Original Eight, at that), surely gave Samus the added strength to be a Noble Niner right from the start. (Though maybe people put too much weight on the lack of a Metroid game since SM at the time of CBI; it's only a year older than Chrono Trigger and actually *had* a PAL release on its initial system to boot.) Kirby, of course, gets most of his strength from Smash even now. Same goes for Captain Falcon. And of course, Fox. He had a pretty decent contest this year even though he hasn't had a game anyone really cared about since 1997. (*Star Fox Zero* got panned for being too much of a retread of *64*, but given how poorly received every game since then has been **with the exception of the literal SF64 remake on the 3DS**, why *shouldn't *they try to stick with what people liked?) And it most certainly has trickled down to Melee's cast of newcomers, or at least, some of them. Conventional wisdom coming into this year was that no one really *cares* about Peach; she's just an apathy vote magnet. Which...okay that would actually be a pretty decent explanation for why she gave Alucard a better match than either of his next two opponents; this contest's format made "apathy vote magnet" a surprisingly strong thing to be. And of course, Mewtwo is still the second-most *consistently* strong Pokémon...actually let's face it, Mewtwo should probably be ahead of Charizard in the adjusted X-Stats, because Division 7 is in a horrendous place in the raw X-Stats. Guess which one made it into Smash first. Don't get me wrong, a lot of Smashers would be strong anyway. But Zelda has been there since Melee, and more importantly, there was a kind of big Legend of Zelda game out recently. You know, the series with her name in the title? She was, as usual, only a supporting character despite being the title character, but she still had a pretty decent presence, not to mention one of her best designs yet, which, again, was used for her appearance in Smash Ultimate. Also, if that bit about the Smash Boost becoming stronger with each successive appearance is true? It really explains a lot of characters getting these *massive* boosts. And sure enough, they did exactly that. Cloud recovered from his signs of weakness in 2013, and Bowser hasn't looked this good since he gave Snake a scare in 2005. You figured it out yet? That's right. This was the first Character Battle since *for WiiU/3DS* came out. And since they made a point of bringing back *everyone* from Melee, Brawl, and WiiU/3DS (the original roster has been present in every game anyway), even ill-advised decisions like Pichu, it's a 100% guarantee that any character in *Wii U/3DS* had their *Smash* counter incremented by ***2*** since the most recent contest. So, yeah, there were bound to be some absolutely ridiculous power boosts. Long live NintendoFAQs. Addendum: Response in the topic made it clear that this write-up was poorly worded, as it suggested that later Smash games *gave* larger boosts to series veterans than to newcomers. A more accurate way of putting it would be that the *existence* of newer Smash games *increases the value* of being in older ones, due to the way Nostalgia Factor works. Pokémon is another series with this trait, and one that has it to an even more pronounced degree than Smash, so as both a Generation I Pokémon ***and ***an Original 12 Smasher, Pikachu is by far the most dramatic example of this effect in action. For reference: Pikachu struggling to put away fodder in 2002; Pikachu slaying the threatening joke (and beating another of this year's division winners) in 2008; Pikachu the Noble Nine Breaker in 2018. --- ## (11)Fox McCloud vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 _source: (11)Fox McCloud vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 (revid 84116)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Until this contest, only one 15 seed had ever won a match. With Aeris out here balling on Fox, she was here setting records. We may never again see a 15 seed win two matches, let alone three. This run will probably be forgotten in the contest ether, but it shouldn't be. I love me a giant seed making a deep run, and with this match Aeris tied Starcraft's old record of winning the most matches as a huge seed. The only way to beat this a 15/16 winning a division, which isn't possible outside of a rally or some hilariously awful seeding. Nice work, Aeris. She was destined to get killed off next round by Zelda, but enjoying her being around while still alive in this contest was nice to see. Well, "balling" on Fox isn't really the right word here. This was just a match where the final percent was not indicative of the match itself. Aeris held this at 53-47 for 24 straight hours with no movement, so it was one of those close-looking matches where the winner was never in doubt. Just for fun. Aeris (2010c) VS Fox (2010c) Aeris has a strength of 31.01. Fox has a strength of 30.67. Aeris wins with 50.55% of the vote! Final Fantasy 7 is back and boosted, baby! Cloud's run was now super obvious! But for real, Fox getting this close was fun even though this match was never in doubt. Too bad Aeris had to face Zelda next. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this is a strange match. What I mean? Before the contest Aerith was the slight favorite. As the contest went on Fox became the clear favorite. But Aerith managed to do it. Also a strange fact is that Fox won in USA! And he lost with more than 3% which is a record for sure. Man Americans REALLY like Nintendo! Don't know why. Maybe some Americans can tell me why. Anyways nice to see FF 7 winning at least. Fox is always a midcarder in these things. Also Aerith is the only 15 seed to reach the division finals! Damn! So we have a record that will NEVER break! Unless we have a contest where like Link is the 15th seed so he would win the division. Yeah the opponents were weak. Okay fine. Still that is impressive. Also she beat 3 Nintendo characters! And 2 of them were in Smash too! Square\>Nintendo confirmed! So as a  FF 7 fanboy this match was good. But man I dread to think about the next match. ## Tsunami's Analysis In my mind, this is a good performance for Fox. Aerith's always been a fairly strong midcarder, and Fox, for the longest time, wasn't. Mostly he just preyed on weaker characters, often using SFF to do so. But there is the sincere possibility that FFVII has just weakened. Tifa managed to stay strong because of the rallies or whatever, and Cloud managed to stay strong because he's in Smash. But Sephiroth definitely looked weaker, too, and of course so did Vincent. Maybe Aerith lost a step as well, even if this is her deepest run ever? Sounds weird but I guess it's possible. --- ## (1)Geralt vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 _source: (1)Geralt vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 (revid 84115)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I feel like this match would have been a lot more fun had we not seen the exact same trend with Geralt v Simon Belmont. creativename's site doesn't have working graphs for this contest yet, but I promise they're identical! Against Simon, Geralt struggled and didn't make his move until midnight. Geralt struggled a little more with Bayonetta, but she has a little more Nintendo going for her. Simon has only Smash Bros and very old games that don't resonate here. Bayonetta has multiple Smash games and multiple games that this site cares for, so she was going to be stronger than him. How much stronger? About 800 votes :D This poll was tied at the freeze, and then Bayonetta started slowly (very slowly) trying to build up a lead. Her early push peaked at only 140 before Geralt fought back, and her second push peaked at 213. From that point, this match was a big stallfest and would almost assuredly get decided by the night vote and the morning vote. Well around midnight, Bayonetta had a lead of only 150 and actually started going up during the time of Geralt's push one round ago. It actually looked like she was going to push for the win in this match when she built up her lead to 260 very quickly, but at 2 am Geralt started fighting back for good. It took him all night, but he got that lead under 100 by morning time. This would come down to the morning vote, and like Geralt had done all contest, he swiped that morning vote and ran home with the poll. He took the lead at 8:30 in the morning and never looked back. He didn't even bother keeping it close enough for me to oogle over close wire to wire records :'( This was Geralt's second close match in a row, and third match where the results were the result was close-ish. This was one of the contest's better matches, and while there is a very obvious joke to be made here with a witcher killing an actual witch, I have some limits to how cheesy I'll get. Some of the most fun contest runs you'll see are new characters proving they belong and winning close, and Geralt definitely qualifies for that list after this match. There are people who credit Soul Calibur 6 for Geralt's performance in this contest, but I never cared for that series so I can't comment on whether this is accurate or not. 3D fighters are just not my thing. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was awesome! hightly debatable too. Not only Bayonetta was the favorite to win but Geralt win and a newcomer reaches the division finals too! Yeah the opponents are weak. Fine. But man! Geralt is awesome! Also strangely enough he won in USA too! What?Isn't Bayonetta a Nintendo character now? She is in Smash and 2 of her games are on Ninendo consoles. Also once again like the previous match Geralt was losing but he came back and won.I think he was losing like 12 hours! Don't know why this happens. But this is nice to see. Close matches like this one are always awesome. But this proves that Geralt can't get a rally. If he hasn't gain a rally until now, he will not get one. Still I don't know if this is the best a newcomer has done, meaning reaching the division finals but still as a guy that likes Geralt I can't complain. Obviously Bayonetta did well too but it wasn't enough. And matches like this are the best ones. Close ones and we can't be sure who will win until the match ends. Not like N9'ers who based on the opponent we instantly know who will win and by how much usually. Nice win for Geralt once again. ## Tsunami's Analysis Legitimately close match here. Registered voters actually favored Bayonetta, by a scant 9 votes. This match does feel more appropriate to the second round than the third; these characters are too "new" to be worth anything, or so it seems. In reality, maybe not so much. Geralt, of course, has been around for a long time. Even if you only count from his video game debut, that's probably longer than you realize, because it wasn't until The Witcher 3 that he really made a name for himself. And Bayonetta's coming up on a decade, too. The first game came out in October 2009; if she makes waves in GotD, it'll have to be with the second game. It still feels like she's a newcomer, though, because of how infrequent Contests have been; she made the vote-ins in CBVIII but was so new that she couldn't even make the main field, and then in CBIX she caught an incredibly weak first-round 3-pack and then ran into a Noble Niner in Round 2. That Round 1 match was so stupid; "pick the oldest character/game" is usually a good rule of thumb for fodder matches as long as they aren't *too* old (which usually means 8-bit era), so when the oldest character is the consensus last place finisher in a multiway, well, you'd expect that to be something ancient, not a character whose piss-weakness *also* comes from being too recent. --- ## (3)Auron vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 _source: (3)Auron vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 (revid 84117)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I can't believe I forgot to list these two when talking about tired rivalries during the Vivi/DK writeup. Did you guys know this was their fourth match together, all with similar results? At least this was only their third contest together and second 1v1 match, but we weren't going to have anything new happen this year. The only fun to be had here was comparing this to 2006, and Auron lost 3% on the same character in a 12 year time frame. On that pace, Sub-Zero can win this match in 27 years or so. Until then, can we stop having this match? I suppose one could maybe use this match as proof Auron has fallen a little, but still. Boring match, predictable result. ## Safer777's Analysis We knew that Auron would win here. Auron is an elite and Sub-Zero is decent. So not much to say. Auron won but as I said before he didn't win with as much as expected. Well FF 10 has fallen of course but not that much for Auron to lose. Still a win is a win. Also look at Auron. If his design isnt' badass, I don't know what it is. As for Sub-Zero he was always my favorite MK character. I guess he is still recognizable here. Well I should have expected that. Still nice win for Auron to end this thing. Also I recently learned that these 2 have fought 4 times as of now! And the results are always very similar. Auron is dropping a bit as years go on though like Vivi VS DK has Vivi dropping a bit year by year so that means that Sub-Zero will eventually win!  But we will not see this for a long time though. Auron is awesome. ## Tsunami's Analysis This wasn't a terribly interesting match to look at--the percentage stayed within .3% of 57-43 for the final 21 hours and 15 minutes, which is only mildly interesting in that the final percentage was very close to the edge of that range in favor of the *loser*--but it is an interesting one to interpret. Was Auron one of the weakest division winners this year, or were fighting game characters on the whole doing better than usual? Or maybe both? Division 6 was certainly one of the softest divisions, with the best established track record going to a character already known to be on the decline (Vincent) and the number two and probable number three being said \#1's first two opponents (in reverse order; and yes, as many embarrassing losses as Magus has had, he racked up enough of a resume early that he might still be one of the more accomplished characters in this absolutely silly division). I feel like the fighting game characters were "up", though. The actual wins weren't necessarily there, because of rough draws (Scorpion got Pikachu in R1, and avoided embarrassment but still got beat pretty bad, and Chun-Li drew Ganondorf in R2 and did a very good job in a loss.) But outside of Guile's horrible loss to Kirby, they looked good. Now, part of that is that they weren't bogged down by lesser representatives--Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are the strongest fighting game franchises (not counting Smash) and they were the only ones with reps, and mostly their strongest reps at that. But it's still interesting to think about. --- ## (1)Luigi vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 _source: (1)Luigi vs (13)Miles "Tails" Prower 2018 (revid 84118)_ ## Ulti's Analysis It was great to see Tails finally make it into round 3 (JUSTICE FOR KNUCKLES), but every middling character that sneaks through a round or two meets their maker eventually and it was time for Tails to meet his. This was a blowout so bad that a lot of people thought this was SFF. It may have been or it may not have been, but we'll frankly never know for sure until we get Mario vs Sonic in a contest match. How we haven't yet had a Mario vs Sonic match is beyond me, and in all of contest history we've only had three matches that even remotely come close to resembling Mario/Sonic. That's it. That's the entire list. Sonic 2 vs Mario World, a fourway match with Mario Kart in it, and the Rivalry Rumble. We can't get one division in 16 years of contests with Sonic as a 1 seed and Mario as a 2 or something? It's the most famous rivalry in gaming history and pretty much single-handedly pushed the 90s gaming environment forward. They deserve a 1v1 contest match. And that's the legacy of Luigi vs Tails. It was the biggest blowout of round 3 and got everyone wondering why we haven't gotten Mario vs Sonic yet -- and a lot of people think it's pointless because Mario would just 70-30 the guy with SFF. Thanks for coming, Tails! ## Safer777's Analysis Obviously this match was set in stone. But man. Almost 70%? Man Tails is weak as expected But the opponents he beat are super weak it seems! Or Luigi is a beast. What else to say? Luigi has reached that far a couple times before but he has never win a division. Maybe he can do it now! Weegee for sure man! And yeah nothing else to say. This match was boring of course. Nice to see a Sonic character reaching that far though. Tails reaching this far is the best he did. The prediction percentage seems low though. Sure it was around 50% but people expected another character to win? I guess Master Chief or something? Who knows. ## Tsunami's Analysis It's a well-known fact that Mario-Sonic is one of the few inter-NN matches that we've never seen in any format. But how many times have members of the two franchises met? 2003 R1: Shadow defeats Wario with 64.90% of the vote 2003 R2: Mario defeats Shadow with 55.10% of the vote 2006 R3: Sonic defeats Luigi with 60.19% of the vote 2007 R1: Yoshi puts up 56.03% directly on Knuckles, who still advances over Rikku and Vaan 2007 R2: Yoshi puts up 58.21% directly on Knuckles; both finish ahead of KOS-MOS and behind Mega Man, so Yoshi advances and Knuckles is eliminated 2008 R1: Mario puts up 65.95% directly on Knuckles, who is eliminated behind Zelda but takes 3rd place over Fei Fong Wong 2013 R3: Sonic puts up 59.43% directly on Bowser, but both lose out to Mewtwo 2018 R3: Luigi defeats Tails with 69.65% of the vote Definitely favors Team Mario; Team Sonic's only wins came when they had the clearly higher-tier representative. (I guess technically Wario's a separate franchise now, but unlike Donkey Kong, who technically also originated as part of Mario's franchise, he hasn't really established himself as a true independent.) Even in cases where the franchises' own pecking orders would seem to at least slightly favor Team Sonic (which is to say, Yoshi-Knuckles), Team Mario handily won. But this *is* an SFF matchup, make no mistake. That's why there haven't really been any close matches in that series. Mario-Shadow is still a huge anomaly that may never truly be explained, but this was predictable. The blowout being as bad as it was, though? Maybe not so much. The Oracle consensus had this at roughly a 65-35 match, and only four Oracles out of 57 overshot the actual percentage. --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Mega Man X 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Mega Man X 2018 (revid 84184)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was one hell of a match and quite possibly the best of the entire contest with all of the meltdowns this caused, but for most of it you would just think we had a great match on our hands. Tifa and Mega Man X have a long history of being in the near elite club, with even debates of Noble Nine breaker status and whether or not X was at or above Classic's level. Having these two plus Luigi decide a division when all of them are at the same strength level was all kinds of awesome. When the match started, it lived up to the hype. It was a stone cold tie at the freeze. But then Mega Man X started taking off, relatively speaking for a close match anyways. 2 hours in the dude had a lead of 255, and despite some hiccups he trended up all the way until 11 and had a lead of almost 500 votes. This thing looked over, but the one trend Square still has is owning the dead zone. On top of that, Mega Man must have murdered a puppy and a firstborn son for every family in Europe or something, because everything related to that series collapses overnight and gets destroyed in Europe. I don't know if the games were never released there or what, and Tifa didn't exactly care. That 500 vote lead? Gone in a few hours and Tifa kept going up before the morning vote even came. She got the lead all the way up to 200, and then it was time to decide the morning vote, aaaaaaaaand... Mega Man X started taking it. On top of that, a topic popped up on a Mega Man subreddit that quickly got over 1000 views. Not to be outdone, a similar topic popped up on the FF sub. This match was turning into a rally war, and if you look at the morning vote it looked like Mega Man had more rally power. Tifa's 200 vote lead? Under 100 by breakfast, but then something funny started happening. Once the lead got under 50, these two stayed stalled around that level for hours. It was awesome to watch, but Mega Man X would eventually and finally take the lead with less than 6 hours to go. He then started slowly building a lead up to 100, but Tifa had one final push left. I'll let Black Turtle explain what happened during the poll's final three hours. "As opposed to the wealth of personality that Tifa 'Tits McGee' Lockhart is known for? X has a pretty complicated struggle with pacifism versus the fact that the world needs him to fuck shit up every once and a while. Tifa has...... daddy issues? Also, 1pm now, the stalling will stop and X will begin to take off. Again, these trends are set in stone and were never in question." "I love how all the people that are supposedly 'anti-rally' have no problem harassing casual acquaintances on facebook to vote for their favourite jerk-off material on a 30 year old video game site" "Any match any Mega Man character has been in has been the same, strong out the gate, die overnight, recover around noon, run away with the match" "I mean, this post is one of the reasons MMX needs to win. The only way this supposed 'deep, well-endowed' character can win is by appealing to horny virgins on reddit. If that doesn't make ExTha think hard about why he's supporting Tifa, I don't know what will." "To be fair, the Tifa neckbeards on this site are posting on literal hentai websites to push this win. How can noone else see how sad this is?" "Unreal. MMX finally gets a decent draw, and he loses because of basement dwelling hentai fans." "I love how everyone that is anti-rally immediately turns around and starts cheering because someone is successfully rallying on a hentai board. Literally any person who has complained about rallies in the past that is supporting this is a hypocrite." "This contest is a fucking joke. Literal hentai perverts deciding a division final with Board 8's blessing. Guess rallying is okay if you can imagine having sex with the winner." "Even though we had people in the stats topic literally admitting to votestuffing, I don't remember the last time Allen ever actually interfered with a fraudulent contest result." "I'm not sure what the worst part of that match was: \- Bullshit rallies   - People posting on hentai websites making a difference in the match   - ExTha praising bullshit rallies after years of complaining about rallies   - ExTha taking credit for the rallies that happened when he wasn't even actively on the board   - People defending ExTha's bullshit   I think the one thing we can take away from that match, is that the board's biggest manchild is no longer Ulti." "Won't matter, the Pokemon furry community would make any close match a wash. Unless you have a fanbase of disgusting perverts to draw from, you won't win a close match on this site." "Let's be clear here, no matter your thoughts on rallies, or the characters in question, ExTha didn't do shit to affect the result. He didn't start posting here until well after the hentai rallies took effect" "At this point who fucking cares, yet another contest has been ruined by the rally crew. Even with the registered voter bonus, these contests are impossible to run in 2018, with all the porno subreddits and shitty Twitch streamers that offer an endless pool of votes for the degenerates on Board 8 like ExTha and Leon." "ExTha, literally the loudest pervert/Tifa fanboi in this topic 2 WEEKS AGO was jumping down Ulti's throat for rallying in the Pokemon Trainer match. And half this topic was siding with him. For as big of an insufferable manchild Ulti is, at least his terrible opinions are somewhat consistant." I'm hot and cold on Black Turtle. Recently he's been a pretty cool dude and I unblocked him for it, but this was the mother of all meltdowns and I'm only quoting the worst stuff from the stats topic. This guy was all over the board whining for two days straight about this match, even though rallying has been an allowed and accepted part of these contests forever. For those who don't want to read that garbage (don't blame you), ExThaNemesis plus a few other people rallied hentai subreddits, of which there are a ton, and continued rallying the FF subreddit for Tifa. This got Tifa her final push and allowed Tifa to come back in the literal 23rd hour for the win. Both characters rallied, but Tifa had more pools to rally from. In a dead even match, that made the difference. Mega Man X probably wins this match otherwise, but that, as Chris Berman would say, is why they play the games. I am pro rallying and I'm completely cool with what happened. Everyone knows my position on this. I will say though that Black Turtle halfway makes a fair point. If you're into hentai because you can't get women in real life, you are an indefensible pervert and will probably show up on an incel forum at some point. Thankfully, Tifa wasn't rallied for that reason. I know ExTha personally. Cool dude. He didn't rally because of hentai love. Far from it. He just wanted Tifa to win. Fair enough. I'm cool with it. Nothing was stopping Mega Man X from rallying everywhere either, you know. The issue is ExTha is famously anti-rallying and was quoted all over the contest when Undertale was running wild. To this day, him and MYC's bitching are credit for Undertale actually winning that contest, because nothing pisses off a fanbase more than people complaining about the thing they like without knowing anything about it. I don't do double standards. You're either for rallying or against it. You don't get to only favor rallying when it benefits a character or game you like. Anyone who picks and chooses is a hypocrite and a punk. If you like rallying, cool. If not, cool. But you get ONE standard. Don't behave like a politician. Pick one standard and stick with it. Picking and choosing is dumb and doesn't fool anyone. There are a lot of people on this forum who pick and choose, and seeing grown men without the nuts to stick up for what they believe in is embarrassing as a man. If you don't agree, go buy a pair of John Kerry/Mitt Romney flip-flops and buzz off: ## Safer777's Analysis If the previous match was boring this is the best match of the contest so far. Look at the result! At the 5 minute mark there was a tie! But after that MMX started gaining and we thought that was it. Tifa cut somewhat but MMX was still ahead. Oh well. Eventually MMX was ahead by around 450 votes so that means in this contest this wasn't possible to beat without rallies. Or was it? But after USA gone to sleep Tifa begun fighting back. As you know Americans really like Nintendo so of course MMX had a huge lead there. Okay MMX isn't pure Nintendo but he started there. So since we Europeans know better of course we supported Tifa, duh. Also MM games and characters do REALLY BAD in Europe. Personally I didn't know MM before I heard him on these contests. So Tifa begun cutting and cutting. And she went ahead! She was winning with 2 votes for 2 straight updates!!! Then Tifa used a Limit Break I guess and she begun pulling. She was ahead with around 195 votes then MMX used his special oves(haven't played the games, don't know what he uses!) and he begun cutting. After some hours he was ahead with like 8 votes! And he begun gaining again! He picked with around 90 votes! The Tifa used her Ultimate Limit Break and started fighting back! She begun cutting and eventually  there was a TIE! Then Tifa ahead with 16 votes and then another TIE! Damn! Then Tifa ahead with like 1 vote! With less than 1 hour for the match to end! And she finally managed to win with around 115 votes! Phew! So what saved Tifa? PORN! Of course! I am serious! Porn man! Someone posted a rally on Hentai sub reddit and this gave her the final push to win! Man porn saves the day again! I think MMX had a rally too but you can't win over porn! So yeah awesome match. Also it is in top 10 of the closest matches. But man! MMX fought bravely but he can't defeat the porn! Nobody can! So yeah even though MMX won easily in USA with more than 53% he lost. So yeah. Man these kind of matches are why I like contests. I had MMX on my bracket but I didn't care! Still awesome match. Wish I was there in the last few hours but I am from Europe so I can't. Still even with this match beeing so close we can't even fill 2 stats topics? Man things have changed a lot. In the old days with stupid matches we were fililng stats topics like crazy! Still as I said so many times amazing match. I think also the user that posted the first reddit porn rally is called Kiraamaya or something like that? That is his Reddit name at least. Others followed of course. So after this match ended there was an uproar with rallies. Others were supporting them, others don't, others supported rallies only for their favorite characters, the usual stuff. As I said before I am all for rallies, for good or bad characters. Rallies make things exciting! ## Tsunami's Analysis For the second time in four matches, the registered vote was separated by single digits, in favor of the loser of the overall match. That said, this was probably the most hyped pre-Legends match, and with good reason. Both of these characters had already shown potential Noble Nine breaker power--Tifa directly, when she finished second in the main bracket X-Stats in 2006 with a near-upset of Samus (even with the Noble Nine getting beaten outright by outsiders more frequently, this is *still* the only time they've failed to break 50.5% in a 1v1 *win* against an outsider) and Mega Man X a bit more indirectly, to the point that it probably wouldn't even be brought up if he weren't **Mega Man** X. Namely, that X's percentage against Link in 2010 compares favorably to the original's 2004 percentage. And as of this point, he'd yet to be threatened by anything that you wouldn't immediately say "this is not a spot where Mega Man Classic would have lost". 2008, he wins his R1 fourpack outright and then finishes second to Mario twice before losing out to the combined strength of Link and Mario. Yes, he also lost to Zack Fair in that match, but given how close Zack got to *Mario* it's clear that Black-Haired Cloud was the beneficiary of some massive STF in that match. Come 2010, it's Link directly who took X down. 2011, if you want to count that, it was Mario/Bowser who took out X/Zero. And then in 2013, it was peak strength Draven. And even in that contest, X doesn't look horrible--because there was never any chance of either of them taking down the rallied Draven, X's battle for second place with Ryu is probably fairly organic, and X won that with 57.21%. Ryu might not be quite the dependable barometer of near-elite strength that he used to be, but he's still a strong character and that's a quality win. Also, games may not equal characters, but when we were finally given a gimmick-free Games Contest, one that wasn't intentionally balanced over the eras, Mega Man Classic got shut out while X still got his debut game in--and it did pretty damn good, almost breaking 45% in a loss to the heavily favored Final Fantasy X. This match had no true Guru favorite. Well, it *did*, because you can only take the match that's actually there, but it was a match in which both characters were picked by more Gurus to reach this match and lose than to win this match. How is that possible? Mewtwo. 49.375% of Gurus had MMX winning here and 50.625% had him losing (no one had him losing in the first two rounds)--but among the 70% of Gurus that had this exact match, he was favored 52.68%-47.32%; those who picked Mewtwo \> Tifa, on the other hand, continued to pick Mewtwo here at a 59.57% rate. So Tifa was a heavy favorite over Mewtwo, MMX was a slight favorite over Tifa, but "Tifa/Mewtwo winner" was a slight favorite over MMX. (Or more accurately, "Tifa/Geno/GLaDOS/Mewtwo winner"--one Guru picked both R1 upsets and had GLaDOS \> Geno in Round 2 and X \> GLaDOS here) But now for the match. This one was deadlocked at 320-320 at the freeze, though X would ride a big third update to a triple-digit lead by the half-hour mark (even though Tifa had already managed her first update win by then). His lead would eventually peak at 469 at the 4:05 mark. At the 7:00 mark, Tifa won her eighth consecutive update, the first time either one had even won 5 straight since X's 7 in a row from 0:20-0:55. Tifa took her first post-freeze lead at the 9:40 mark and X promptly stalled the next one, but that zero-change update was Tifa's only update non-win for a period of just over an hour, from 9:05 to 10:10, which for this match qualified as huge momentum. She reeled off a bunch more after X's update win there, but stalled out in the 110s for a bit before recovering to eventually push it out to 194 at the 12:15 mark. Then X fought back and cut 100 off that deficit in the next 1:40. 45 minutes later, he took off 30 votes in a single update to cut it to 43, only for Tifa to take back 25 the very next update. The next time he got within 50 was met by *two* straight double-digit wins for Tifa, and when he got it below 20 at the 18:20 mark he was again met with a 22-vote update win for Tifa. *Finally*, at the 19:15 mark he took an update by 21 to take an 8-vote lead, skipping right over whatever she might have in store for being pushed down to single-digits,and kept up the momentum to a 66-vote lead 45 minutes later, then fought off Tifa's return push to expand the lead by another 23 over the next hour. But Tifa was not done yet. From that peak of 89 at the 20:50 mark, she quickly picked up a double-digit update win to close out the hour, then fought through a wall of single-digit wins for both sides over the next 1:20 to leave X's lead at the 22:20 mark at 52. That was when she made her move, pulling three double-digit wins in the next four updates to pull it back to dead even, then adding another on the next update--only for X to win the following one by the *exact same amount*, pulling it back to dead even with just 1:10 left in the match, and taking the next one by double digits as well. Entering the final hour, X led by a mere 8 votes, and it only took one update for Tifa to turn her single-digit deficit into a double-digit lead. X would win the next two updates to reduce Tifa's lead to a single vote with 45 minutes left in the match, but Tifa won all nine of the remaining updates, many by double-digits, to win by 114--the first triple-digit lead by either side in over 10 hours. In some ways, it could be seen as an anticlimactic ending--this match barely even makes the Top 25 list for closest final margins, and only does so at all because we don't count battles for placement among non-advancing competitors in 3- and 4-ways. During the final hours of this match, rallies were once again on everyone's minds. Some users, I don't remember who, decided to rally for Tifa on hentai sites, because why not? And since it ended up being such a close match, people blamed the rallies. Did they really make a difference? Maybe. There have always been rallies, though, and it's clear that there wasn't anything this contest on the scale of what Draven and Undertale did in 2013 and 2015. It livened up the contest a bit, and had people wondering what Zelda, Tifa, and Samus could do from here on out--but mostly Zelda and Samus, because Tifa's path was still largely set in stone. She beat Luigi long before hentai rallies were a thing, and she'd be facing Samus and then Sephiroth in the Legends bracket, two Noble Niners that she's already lost to multiple times. Her best chance at pulling some sort of crazy upset would be if Sephiroth managed to continue his historical dominance of Mario, but the consensus was that Mario would finally break through with a win against Seph. At any rate, while there had been some rallying involved, the unlikelihood of Tifa upsetting a Noble Niner this contest meant that the X ≈ Classic bandwagon would finally quiet. It wouldn't last. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (5)Amaterasu 2018 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (5)Amaterasu 2018 (revid 88249)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Just for fun. Amaterasu (2010c) VS Sephiroth (2010c) Amaterasu has a strength of 27.86. Sephiroth has a strength of 44.65. Sephiroth wins with 68.80% of the vote! Amaterasu is a pretty interesting contest character in that she doesn't really score big blowouts (that Draven match barely counts), but she herself doesn't really get blown out in losses. The only time she was ever truly embarrassed was against the Zelda clan in the Rivalry Rumble, and come on. Everyone gets embarrassed by them eventually and no one gives a shit about the Rivalry Rumble. Just ask Squall. This match followed a pretty standard Sephiroth victory pattern. Lose the board vote badly, climb all match, slightly underperform based on the previous stats, rinse and repeat until he loses badly somewhere. Given what would eventually happen to the guy, I'm convinced Allen gave him a weak division intentionally. Hell, he was one handed an entire weak contest intentionally. Allen knows what the Noble Nine is, and it would be an embarrassment if one of them was outright precluded from the legend bracket. So he handed Seph an easy division to waltz through. I will say that only getting 61% on Amaterasu was a portent of doom, even though we would all get tricked by this guy next match. ## Safer777's Analysis Well Sephiroth would win here of course. But look at this result. Is this bad, decent or good? Don't know. Guess it is bad but I don't admit it. This seems that Amaterasu is stronger than Falcon. But is she? Is Falcon that weaker? Can't really say. She always does decent of course in these things. Doesn't win by much, doesn't lose by much. But don't know. There is 1 thing for certain though, the division final will be hell. Since I am a Sephiroth fanboy I will say that it is a good result. Hey! The prediction percentage was the biggest for Round 3 too. Well it makes sense. The only NN'er that appeared in the main bracket. ## Tsunami's Analysis I believe it was sometime during Round 4 that the "lineal Noble Nine" concept was introduced, and I bring it up again because at the time, people were still expecting the Noble Nine to largely hold serve and possibly restore the Lineal Nine to something closely resembling the actual Nine, with probably seven and as many as 8 of them in there--with the one guaranteed outlier, there in place of Sonic, being Amaterasu, courtesy of her Round 1 blowout of defending champion Draven combined with Sephiroth having managed not to lose his spot in 2013 despite finishing in third place in his eventual defeat--largely because said defeat came in the semifinals and as such, everyone else involved in the match had already gotten past an actual Noble Niner that still possessed a spot in the Lineal Nine at the time. (In Mewtwo's case, the aforementioned Sonic.) Of course, things didn't go that smoothly--Zelda ran over almost everyone, taking *Snake's* spot (which he was unable to win back); Tifa defended the spot she won from Mewtwo by defeating Sephiroth; and Mega Man won the rematch with Pikachu so it was *his* spot, not Pikachu's, that Crono took in Match 143. (Yeah, 2013 did a lot of weird things to the Lineal Nine--the lowest finisher is the one that loses their spot, so three characters outright earned their spots in second place finishes because they were the only ones entering the match without a slot and a fourth actually *defended* their slot with a second place finish because the third-place finisher also had one to give up to the winner.) *(Correction: Crono already had a spot by Match 143--ironically, the one that Mega Man had **originally** owned and lost back in 2008 to the Weighted Companion Cube. Luigi beat Cube for the spot in 2010 and then lost to Link so he still had it in 2013, when Big Boss took it in Round 2 but lost it in Round 3, and since Sephiroth still had **Crono's** old spot from beating Vincent in 2010 while Kirby had lost Seph's original spot to Sonic in 2010, it was second-place finisher Kirby who got that spot.)* When this was stated, someone said they were fine with the idea of it being Eight Noble Niners and Amaterasu. Slaying Draven certainly gained her a lot of good will here, but I feel like she's been a favorite here for awhile. The public perception of Board 8 is that we're a bunch of sticks-in-the-mud who hate anything upsetting our established order of expectations, but the truth is that we hate it just as much when things are *too* predictable, finding it boring. The nuance that the outsiders that invaded us in 2013 and 2015 didn't understand is that the upset has to *make sense*. Draven and Undertale putting up 201st-decade numbers in the 202nd decade and generally making a mockery of the elites didn't make sense; it was a clear aberration, and furthermore, because it eventually polarized things to "pro-X vs. anti-X" instead of "pro-X vs. pro-Y", it meant that entrants of vastly different natural strengths could get comparable numbers on the eventual champs, leading to the proven fodder Jak and a game whose ending was so ill-received that the creator's eventually released a "fixed" ending as DLC winding up near the top of the X-Stats. Amaterasu pulled "upsets" because we just vastly underestimated her. In her very first match, she was up against a proven midcarder, an unproven (Round 1 loss to Link in his only previous appearance) but recognizable character, and a potential target for a joke rally; as a new character without the benefit of joke appeal, people weren't expecting her to advance. She did, then advanced again when a more hyped newcomer flamed out massively. Actually, nothing she's done since then can reasonably qualify as an "upset" except maybe beating Shadow in 2010--she's made it to Round 2 in every contest, sure, but she's gotten favorable draws every time. We've learned to stop underestimating her. --- ## (3)Ryu vs (10)KOS-MOS 2018 _source: (3)Ryu vs (10)KOS-MOS 2018 (revid 84135)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Oh hey, I can finally talk about a KOS-MOS match in a normal way. Imagine that. KOS-MOS randomly making it into round 3 was hilarious, and not only because of TheStupidRaptor. She got here not because of having strength or anything -- she is not at all a strong character -- but because her fourpack was laughably, historically, and pathetically weak. I actually went and did some research on this, and I put together a list of fourpacks in 1v1 contests that are comparable to Ellie, KOS-MOS, Aqua, and Quiet. KOS-MOS was by far the weakest character to win twice this year, with only Wario really being comparable. And Wario would probably break 60% on her. My basic criteria here is 'if you plop 2018 KOS-MOS into this fourpack, does she win it?', because I feel like KOS-MOS winning a fourpack is a pretty good indicator your fourpack blows. Though when I went and researched this, the critera should really be whether or not Call of Duty 4 can win your fourpack. Good lord what a shitty franchise CoD is. Summer 2002 - Lara Croft, Chop Chop Master Onion, Ryo Hazuki, and Guybrush Threepwood Summer 2002 - Pac-Man, Goemon, Abe, and Kyo Kusanagi Summer 2002 - Scorpion, Kazuya Mishima, Max Payne, Dirk the Daring Villains - Ocelot, Nemesis, Dr. Wily, and Ultros Villains - Kefka, Mithos, Luca Blight, and Wesker Villains - Albedo, M Bison, Ridley, and Diablo Villains - Robotnik, Sin, Master Hand, and Kuja Fall 2010 - Cube, Sandal, Nathan Drake, and The Boss Fall 2010 - Ryu Hayabusa, Crash, Master Chief, and Spy Fall 2010 - Phoenix Wright, Jecht, Ratchet, and Eddie Riggs Fall 2010 - Soap MacTavish, Big Daddy, Ness, and Geno Game of the Decade - Batman, Psychonauts, Team Fortress 2, and Fable Game of the Decade - Uncharted 2, The Legend of Dragoon, Sonic Adventure 2, and Street Fighter 4 Game of the Decade - Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Call of Duty 4, and Prince of Persia Game of the Decade - Pokemon Diamond, Metroid Fusion, WWF No Mercy, Fire Emblem 9 Game of the Decade - The World Ends With You, Dead Rising, Persona 4, and Braid I didn't bother with years, because look at this shit: I also didn't bother listing the ones that are more debatable, like the year Captain Falcon won twice or the year Mass Effect 1 won twice, where if you held that fourpack now and plopped KOS-MOS in there she probably could win. The point here is KOS-MOS winning twice required a series of unfortunate events, and Ryu was here to put a stop to this nonsense rather coldly. We had this match once before, too: I blows my mind how close some of these rematch results are even though they're held so far apart. 3% in 14 years, jeez. I also still can't believe to this day that Balrog's one miss in 2004 was Ryu vs KOS-MOS, of all things. This concluded round 3 of the contest and got us down to the nitty-gritty. ## Safer777's Analysis Obviously KOS-MOS didn't stand a chance here. Also Ryu and KOS-MOS have fought before like 14 years ago and Ryu won with around 62% back then. Now he did better. Of  course Ryu now is much more known than KOS-MOS. Also this is the 1st time that KOS-MOS advances that far. So I think she did good reaching that far. I know her from the Project X-Zone games but that is. As for Ruy everybody knows him. Also Ryu seems really strong. Maybe he can win another division too. He is in Smash too now! Let us see. Good win for Ryu of course, duh. Another thing that I have to say that Tsunami posted on his analysis. People say that we live in the past. And the instant KOS-MOS faces 2 characters that are after 2010 she beats both of them and reaches the furthest she has reached! Guess this is why people make fun of us and nobody cares for this site anymore. ## Tsunami's Analysis As is often the case with these bracket set-ups, Round 3 closed with a whimper. The later divisions in the bracket are often stacked with the lower-glamour entrants, though it's not a hard and fast rule. 2002 had some interesting matches in the last division, but a bit too high up to truly close out any rounds until we were getting double-elite matchups. 2005 had two good upsets ending its two contests' first rounds, and the 2006 Character Battle had a couple of nice ones, too. 2010, like 2002, largely only suffered in that the notable matches were in the top half of the final division. And...2013 actually had two great matches to close out rounds, which is impressive because it didn't have that many rounds. So maybe it just seems worse than it is because of how Games Contests usually have the designated non-Squintendo divisions near the bottom of the bracket. And yes, even in the division-by-era contests, the final division is the closest thing to the non-Squintendo division, because when we talk about those companies' mystique, we're talking about their classics, not their recent output. We refer to just about everything from the 8-bit era, and much of the 16-bit era, as "pseudo-Nintendo" for a reason. On another note, this was the second match of Round 3 to be a rematch of a Round 1 match from 2004. KOS-MOS was more relevant in 2004 than she is now, so it's no surprise that match was closer than this one was. --- ## (4)Ganondorf vs (3)Vivi 2018 _source: (4)Ganondorf vs (3)Vivi 2018 (revid 84150)_ ## Ulti's Analysis 1200 votes. Dammit Vivi, you came so close to winning a division. I struggled a lot with this pick, because I felt in my heart of hearts Vivi could win this match. I ended up picking Ganon because of Breath of the Wild, Smash Brothers, and the current Nintendo \> Square dynamics on this site. Swap any of those three factors, and I think Vivi could have convinced 600 people to change their minds here. Vivi is immune to the Squaresoft erosion due to his character design, and will be about this strong no matter how far Square falls. People just like the black mage archetype too much. This was actually a real match for an hour, too. Vivi took the early lead, Ganon took it quickly, but then outside of two Warlock Punches these two guys were about even. But once Ganon got that lead over 100, this was done. It was a slow, steady, effective climb for the entire match. Hold this thing before Breath of the Wild or before Smash Ultimate's hype, and Vivi probably wins. But with all of that in Ganon's favor, it was just enough for him to win this despite looking weird all contest long. Ganon's reward for winning? "Uh oh." ## Safer777's Analysis So of course after Ganon beat Dante easily we knew he would win. Vivi did beat Donkey Kong yeah but he did as expected. But man. He broke 48% on Ganondorf! Now this we didn't expected. We were expecting around 55% to tell the truth. Maybe 54%. But no. Vivi did really good. So what this says? It says that Vivi is damn strong! And that is good. But man. I don't know what place is Vivi on FF hierarchy but it has to be a really high one. Gotta be his design. What else could it be? Also I don't understand that he has boosted. From where? And don't say that Ganon got weaker. Don't believe that. Still not much else to say. Ganondorf won and as per tradition he did much better in USA of course. Still Vivi impressed a lot. Now the reward for Ganondorf is to score like 15% on Link and make everything in the division look extremely weak. Fun! ## Tsunami's Analysis Vivi narrowly managed to take the unregistered vote, but registered voters easily carried Ganondorf to a win. This was especially satisfying as Ganondorf was the third-place finisher in Vivi's legendary upset of Mario in 2013, definitively declaring that RallyFAQs was truly dead. --- ## (1)Zero vs (7)Pikachu 2018 _source: (1)Zero vs (7)Pikachu 2018 (revid 84151)_ ## Ulti's Analysis So, uh... remember this match from way back in 2004? Hmm. Had this match happened one round earlier I probably would have dumped on Zero for not living up to the 1 seed line, but I think I've established my standard by now. If you're a 1 seed you have to at least make a divisional final unless you lose to a rally. Zero got lucky Pikachu wasn't a 4, 5, 8, or 9 seed, because he clearly would have gotten bodied by the little rat regardless of when this match happened. But it was a divisional final, so he at least gets to preserve his respect as a 1. I know I keep harping on this, but if you're not an NCAA fan you won't understand how much I respect the royalty of that number. By the time this match happened, we pretty much all knew a 55-45 type of beating was coming, not that it was easy to watch for us Zero fans but hey: Pikachu for whatever reason was the only Pokemon to show up this year, and outside of Detective Pikachu it's not like he had some crazy advantage. Charizard, Mewtwo, and Red are all in Smash and all looked killer in the past. Maybe Pikachu got some extra mascot love, I dunno, but he put an ass whuppin on Zero that the other three clearly weren't going to replicate this year. This wasn't really a match, either, given the crazy Pokemon board vote burying Zero immediately. It's worth noting here that the only time Zero has ever won a division was when Mega Man X helped carry him in the Rivalry Rumble. Zero himself always gets capped at this spot, and one wonders if he'll ever win a division on his own given this contest was a perfect opportunity for it. Pikachu's reward for winning? A very winnable spot, actually. We already covered the 2004 comparison, but this one isn't far off either: ## Safer777's Analysis Well the rat would win no problem here. Also funny enough he beat Yoshi with lower percentage than he did on Zero. Meaning Yoshi\>Zero? The stats don't lie! Some say that Pokemon have fallen but I don't believe it. I mean they are not insane like they were in the previous contest with the rallies and such but they are good. And Pikachu is damn strong. I am with the rat all the way myself! As for Zero he did as expected. Basically this match was as expected. So congrats to the rat. Oh and also Pikachu won a division for the 2nd time in a row! Save_us.rat indeed! The prediction percentage was good for Pikachu too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Division 2's final was a yawner, as while rallies may have been dead, PokéFEAR was still alive and well. But it was still worth something to look at. Pikachu won this match with 56.56% of the vote. Way back in 2004, despite theoretically having SFF on his side, Mega Man was only able to beat Zero with 56.01%. Granted, Zero's fared worse against Mega in two later fourway matches, culminating in Mega Man beating Charizard with Zero as an anchor after having previously lost to Weighted Companion Cube, but 2013 especially showed that SFF is magnified in multiways because the fans will abandon the lesser of the two characters to support the one with the better shot of winning. Last-Place Factor, we call it. --- ## (9)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (3)Alucard 2018 _source: (9)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (3)Alucard 2018 (revid 84152)_ ## Ulti's Analysis 8.7% of people picked Alucard to win this division, and can you really blame people for not thinking he'd get through a division that had Sora, Red, Kefka, L-Block, Big Boss, and Yuna in it? This was nuts, and I never in my wildest dreams thought it was even possible. Even when the match started and Alucard got this massive board vote, I'm sitting here like Dick Vitale. Are you serious? Hell let's get some John McEnroe in here. Alucard got a 300 vote lead in half an hour, which is usually Pokemon's best time, and then just steamrolled this match. The final percentage might look close, but this was never close. Alucard stomped this guy, and put one hell of an exclamation point on Pokemon looking like crap this contest. Only Pikachu did anything notable, and I have a good theory as to why. Pokemon are similar to Kirby in that they're strong characters, but they overperform hilariously in multi-way polls. Stick them in 1v1s and they fall back down to earth with everyone else. Pokemon isn't weak or anything, but they aren't close to being as strong as 3/4way polls would suggest. Red also had these crazy runs in the 3ways and the Rivalry Rumble that he simply could not duplicate heads-up, which made him look very similar to what he was in 2010. He almost lost to Ocelot that year before getting destroyed by Mega Man X. This year he blew out some loli bait piece of trash, then had three close matches (by percent) where he came out on top in two of them. Frankly without my rallying, he doesn't beat Sora and we're sitting here in this spot talking about Big Boss or Sora looking bad. This was just not a good contest for Pokemon outside of the mascot. For those who weren't around in the old days, there was a user named edouble who went on and on every contest about Alucard's Plan™. Any win? All Part of The Plan™. Any loss, even by other characters in unrelated matches? All Part of The Plan™. Well now we know what that Plan was: Alucard winning a division. Props to KP for this image. I cannot stress this enough. I love Alucard as a character, and that dude getting into Smash as an assist trophy and using the fucking Crissaegrim of all things is just so, so, soooooo damn good. It would only be topped by him actually being a playable character, but I'm not greedy here. An assist trophy is enough. I played Symphony of the Night after the 2003 contest, loved it, and was all too happy to be Part of The Plan™ for 15 years. For Alucard to finally see The Plan™ come into fruition was so satisfying. This was one of my all time favorite contest results, and could quite possibly be my favorite result of this contest outside D.Va and her garbage-ass parent company getting annihilated. Alucard, this one's for you bro. ## Safer777's Analysis By the time we reached this match Alucard was the heavy favorite! Nobody expected that before the contest. You know how many Gurus had Alucard winning the division? 1 person! Which is one of the lowest picks ever for a division winner I believe! Seriously! Alucard star of the contest no doubt. Before this he hadn't done anything important. And look at him now! Now why all this though? Has he boosted this much? Personally I don't believe so. I believe everyone on this division has fallen a lot except Alucard who has boosted of course a little. Netflix series and SOTN remake of course. As for Red. He did okay actually. Seems strange though, I mean that means that Big Boss and Sora have fallen a lot! And it makes sense probably. KH 3 boost is fake and it makes sense because after so many years nobody can keep caring. Remember when Sora scored more than 45% on MM? Yeah! And as for Big Boss, MGS characters haven't done so good. We don't like MGS 5 here I guess and Kojima left too. We shall see that Snake does though. But anyways. Alucard rocked man! Also all his wins were under 60% which is impressive on its own way! So yeah. Hybrid Vampires man! They rule! The prediction percentage was the lowest of Round 4 which does make sense of course. The Plan™! It all makes sense now! ## Tsunami's Analysis The PLAN! Alucard may not have been the intuitive choice to win Division 3, and both the Guru and the casuals' prediction percentages show that, but he staked his claim as the favorite to win the division back in Round 2, when he was beating Yuna with the same percentage that Kefka was beating Bomberman. Was he the weakest division winner? Yeah, probably. But he took advantage of a weak division and showed that he's still got some strength, 16 years after he initially shocked the board with a deep run in CB1. --- ## (4)Bowser vs (2)Kirby 2018 _source: (4)Bowser vs (2)Kirby 2018 (revid 84145)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every contest there's a match or two I feel is easy as piss to call, get it right, and I stare in shock at Board 8's consensus being almost entirely the other way on it. This was that match for Character Battle X. I spent all of 5 seconds thinking about this one. They had a match in 2005 where Bowser won 52-48. Close by percentage, but Kirby never threatened to actually win the match. Fast forward to today, and there was no actual reason for that gap to close. If anything, Bowser had reasons to widen it. Let's start with Kirby. You know all those arguments made by very smart people about how the Pokemon characters were fraudulent? How they overform in 3/4ways and such? All of those same arguments apply to Kirby. Kirby isn't a fraud or anything, but he has even more reason to overperform in that style of poll than Pokemon characters, because no one actually cares about Kirby's games. He is liked because of character design, being cute, being an easy character to emoticon on forums \[KIRBY HUGS!!!! \<(^\_^)\>\], and Smash Brothers. yoblazer later in this contest made a fabulous point about Samus being the \#1 example of Smash Bros boosting in these contests. I actually think it's Kirby. If Smash Bros never happens, Samus still has Super Metroid and the Prime series to at least be a midcarder. What does Kirby have? Subpar platformers and Kirby Super Star? I love Kirby's Dream Land for the Game Boy and Kirby's Adventure for the NES, but those are way too old to matter for him on this site. Now look at Bowser, whose obvious comp is Ganon. Zelda fans don't exactly love Ganon. They like him, but he's just kind of.... there. He has ugly character design and we see the fans bail on him in close matches. But Bowser? Bowser means a hell of a lot more to Mario fans than Ganon does to Zelda fans. Mario's fanbase loves Bowser. He looks cool as shit, like a dragon crossed with a snapping turtle. He has those amazing spots in the early games, his hilarity in the Mario RPG games, even more amazing spots in the 3D platformer games, he too has the Smash Bros effect like Kirby does, and oh by the way, Bowsette happened before this contest. Kirby has never once had a meme boost him the way Bowsette helped the big man out this year. I make some 'no doubt in my mind' bad calls all the time, like L-Block \> Kefka or Magus in 2005, and you guys are welcome to make fun of me all you want for those, but I have to puff my chest out a little when I'm on the right side of these things now and again. I had zero doubt Bowser was winning this, and it took all of 10 minutes for this match to be over. In 2005, Kirby put up a fight for about 20 minutes before getting worked. This year, he lasted 15 minutes and ended up losing worse than last time. Kirby is simply not on Bowser's level, for the reasons outlined here. Simple as that, and Bowser is the better character anyway. Kirby is a one trick pony. Yeah I said it. I like the little guy, but he's no Bowser and he frankly falls behind a lot of other characters as well. Kirby isn't even the coolest guy in his own series. Meta Knight and King Dedede take those honors. Bowser is absolutely in the discussion for coolest Mario character. The coolest thing Kirby was ever involved with, and I am 100% convinced this was intentional, was this video. I say intentional because you cannot convince me Snoop didn't get high as fuck while playing a Kirby game when making that song. There's just no way it lines up that perfectly otherwise. Oh, and I'd like to thank me for just being me at all times. ## Safer777's Analysis So before the contest Kirby was the favorite. And as the contest went on Kirby became the heavy favorite. Also all the Crew picked Kirby to win. There is always a crazy person that picks the other guy in most matches but not here. So of course Bowser won! What? How could that have happened? Why almost everyone had Kirby winning easily? The answer is...I don't know! Someone made a post based on x-stats for every year and every year Bowser was above Kirby. Every year! Damn! I guess people thought that since Charizard and 2B did okay on Bowser Kirby would beat him. But here is the thing. Kirby has defeated weaker opponents and that made him looking good. So that is probably why Kirby was considered the heavy favorite. So when the match started the Nintendo Hierarchy came into play. What is this thing? Basically you like Nintendo. So you vote for these characters of course. But the characters from the more popular series beat the ones from the least popular. So when you have a character from the Mario series and a character from the Kirby series you will vote for the one from the Mario series because well that is the one you like better. Or I may be wrong here. So yeah. This is what I believe at least. Also another villain won a division too! If Sephiroth manages to win that would mean that the 3 strongest villains will be winning divisions. Well we shall see. Still awesome win for Bowser. Turtle/Dragon/Dinosaur/Ox(?) hybrids man! Also this match had almost the same percentage as the other match and they both were going at the same time and in both matches hybrids won! Something is going on here I tell you! But seriously Bowser defied(Board 8)expectations too. That is always good. ## Tsunami's Analysis When a greater percentage of Gurus get a match correct than Oracles, you know we've screwed up somewhere along the line. Bowser has always been one of the strongest midcarders; by raw votes, his match with Snake in 2005 was still the closest 1v1 between a Noble Niner and a non-Noble Niner (though that would obviously change this year because of the horrible vote totals), closer than even Samus-Tifa 2006. He'd beaten Kirby before, during that same 2005 season. Now, Kirby had established quite a resume since then as well, so Bowser was only a slight favorite there--69 to 60, with 28 of the remaining 31 Gurus picking Charizard. But in the Oracle, which was made with the additional "knowledge" of the first three rounds? Kirby received 80% of Oracle predictions. But it's a shame it even came to that. I love both of these characters, and if one of them had been in Division 3 or 6 instead, that'd be great. Preferably Division 3, if it's Kirby who was moved; for someone who hadn't faced any Noble Niners until 2008, Kirby sure has had a lot of matches with Sonic. Why do I love them so much? For Bowser, it's mostly the more recent games. The RPGs were what allowed Bowser to really show his character--I was planning on spamming SMRPG and BIS quotes any time Bowser did anything good in his matches with Crono, but he never really did--but it's since carried over into the main games. A common criticism of video game leads is that their personalities are very generic, a necessary evil because they're supposed to represent the player. Think Mario, Link, Crono, and *especially* Red, who Game Freak has decided shall forever remain silent even when not the protagonist. The villains are not bound by this restriction, so they get all the good lines. Remember all the hype surrounding Magus in 2003? It's because Magus actually had a character, so he was thought to be much more popular within the fanbase than Crono. Kirby, on the other hand, appears at first to be one of those low-characterization leads, and in some ways he is, but it's more accurate to say that his characterization *is* a child-like simplicity. Kirby has faced all sorts of cosmic horrors, and he still maintains his cheerful demeanor, waving and dancing and constantly smiling ([no matter how much American box art tries to hide this last fact](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmericanKirbyIsHardcore)). We could all learn a lot from Kirby. --- ## (4)Zelda vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (15)Aeris Gainsborough 2018 (revid 84253)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I almost listed Zelda as a 1 seed by accident when doing this writeup, because that's what she was performing like. Just for fun. Zelda (2010c) VS Aeris (2010c) Zelda has a strength of 32.46. Aeris has a strength of 31.01. Zelda wins with 52.23% of the vote! Given Zelda's prominent role in Breath of the Wild, I don't think it's insane to credit that game for giving her a 10% boost. It's very consistent with how she performed in this contest, and right after destroying Squall she went out there and pretty much murdered Aeris in cold blood. We all knew Zelda was never going to be challenged in this match, but this was still just a brutal beating. It made Aeris actually look like a 15 seed, even though it was clear she was underseeded this year. Still, it's always fun watching high seeds made deep runs and we might never again see anything like this without a rally. Aeris, a 15 seed, naturally won three matches, one against a meme and one where she was reasonably close to losing. That's good stuff. But when you get to this part of a contest, you don't fluke your way into wins. It's a crime we didn't get to see a conclusion to the main bracket, because Zelda would have won it. Not that she didn't provide us with some entertainment value during that legends bracket, good hell. ## Safer777's Analysis So after the previous match where Zelda dominated Squall there was only 1 question. Would Zelda do better against Aerith? Personally I thought so. I mean Aerith should be weaker than Squall right? But as you can see she actually did a little worse. So does that means that Aerith is stronger than Squall? Possibly? Can't be sure. Also this is the highest win for the division finals in this contest. Zelda is a beast confirmed! Now if she did more than 65% I would admit that she would beat even some N9ers. But now I don't think so. Or maybe she can? Did BOTW boosted everyone a lot? Still amazing win for Zelda. All her wins in the division are above 60% too! Now that is power! So yeah. I don't know how will she performs against N9ers but we shall see. As for Aerith she did okay. She broke a record that will never be broken again so that is awesome! I mean most had her losing in the previous round anyways. I guess FF7 is still good around here. Well she did beat 3 Nintendo characters in a row! But the 4th one was too much for her it seems. ## Tsunami's Analysis Okay fine I guess I can't avoid this forever. Because honestly, at one point I was all ready to go back to this, then I saw what match was up next and was like "nah, I'm good". Because most of these division finals, even if they were never really in question, the loser still put up a good show. This was just a steady beating, and nobody was really that surprised by it, not after what Zelda did to Squall the previous round. For the casuals, it didn't even take that long--Zelda's prediction percentage was still above 25% and proportionally she lost more brackets this round than the last one (even by raw numbers, it's close) even though Aerith making it this far was considered fairly surprising. Though that's mostly from fear of rallies that never materialized; she was considered an underdog with the casuals all the way back in Round 1. --- ## (1)Geralt vs (3)Auron 2018 _source: (1)Geralt vs (3)Auron 2018 (revid 84252)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Only 10% of people had Auron winning this division? Who exactly was supposed to beat Auron with no rallies? Come on, casuals. Without a rally, this was never in any doubt whatsoever. That said, I have to hand it to Geralt for going down like a man. 47% on Auron in another manly duel is a pretty hardcore way to go out, and it proves the obvious: we are beyond overdue for allowing any character that's been in a video game to appear in our contests. They're legit and it's time. I don't think we should go overboard and have a bracket with 90% Marvel characters or whatever, but not allowing Spiderman into a contest when he might have the game of the year is just stupid. Not allowing Thanos in when he's the most popular character in the most popular game in the world is really stupid. Say what you want about Fortnite, but Thanos getting into a contest on the back of that game's explosion and Infinity War happening in the same year made sense. What a lost opportunity. Allen got rid of the rule, but only to allow Geralt in. Geralt proved that only him being here was dumb. Instead of trash like Shantae, Hat Kid and Neptune, we could have had Spiderman, Thanos, and Batman. This is not a difficult decision, Allen. Geralt had four close matches in a row, but against Auron his clutch factor just ran out, as the top half of this division was clearly a step behind the bottom all contest long. Seeing Auron finally win a division was nice, because it's a goal that's eluded him since 2003. Seeing Geralt's run end kind of sucked, but he'll be back. I really, really hope this opens the door for more all-fictional stuff getting into brackets. Dracula was great and all, but the Rivalry Rumble is not going to be a lynchpin for anything. Geralt could be. Funny side note: how would Geralt have looked in a sprite round had he won this match? Does any official sprite of him exist? ## Safer777's Analysis Man this saddens me. Geralt in all his matches was losing at the start before fightingback and eventually winning! Seriously in all 3 of them! He is a fighter! But yeah without a rally we all knew he would lose here. Yeah Auron has fallen but he is still strong. I mean look at him. We can only dream to be so badass as him! Still Geralt kept fighting and of course he won some updates too as expected but it wasn't enough. But I think he did good for you know a newcomer. I mean he reached the final division match and scored around 47% too. So yeah. Man if only we had some kind of a rally. Well you can't have everything. But I believe in the next contest he will be weaker. Except if the Netflix Witcher series is really good and boosts him, like Neflix Castlevania series boosted Alucard. Also strangely enough Auron did worse here than he did on Sub-Zero. Even though I like Geralt I would never picked him over Sub-Zero before the contest. Did he caught a small bandwagon as some said? I believe that is true. Still nice fight. Also we have finally a FF character that won a division! Still funny enough that Auron and Vivi are much stronger than the protagonists in their games! So yeah good match and nice win once again for Auron. A duel between 2 badasses is amazing! The prediction percentage was really low too. Less than 10%. So many people picked Geralt to win? I don't get it. ## Tsunami's Analysis LOLCasuals. 9.97% for Auron isn't necessarily funny in its own right since this was somewhat of a wide open division, but how we got to that point is. Over 30% of brackets had him losing in Round 1 to Lucina, and the first time that he actually lost more brackets than he retained was this round, even though the top half of Division 6 was extremely weak. I was willing to blame it on RallyFEAR but Pac-Man was actually the slight favorite against Sans in R1 and Geralt seems to have retained enough percentage to be considered the clear favorite every round. 1-seed fear? Whatever; this was a pleasantly close match. Here's hoping that Geralt really was a trial for a character battle that openly embraces having characters not originating from video games. It doesn't even have to be a fully open one; there can still be some sort of requirement for a gaming tie-in. You'd probably have to institute something like what Allen did to determine the field for BGE3, too, when considering the games involved, since most licensed video games are awful and serve little purpose other than to be licensed video games. None of that. I'm talking about characters from highly acclaimed games such as Goldeneye 007, the Kingdom Hearts series, the Arkham series. --- ## (1)Luigi vs (3)Tifa Lockheart 2018 _source: (1)Luigi vs (3)Tifa Lockheart 2018 (revid 84250)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Unlike division 6, this one having a 10% prediction percentage for the winner made a ton of sense. Tifa had to beat, in order: Geno, Mewtwo, Mega Man X, and Luigi. This was also a division with Master Chief and Nathan Drake, noted casual bait, taking up some picks as well. Remember the Miracle on Ice clip? You've all seen it. What everyone forgets is that was only the semifinal. The USA still had to go out and beat Finland in the final, which wasn't exactly easy street. They fell behind 1-0 and 2-1 before ultimately winning 4-2. That's essentially what this match was for Tifa. Beating Mega Man X was great and it's the match everyone is talking about, but Luigi is no joke and Tifa easily could have lost this match had she not shown up. There was one thing she had in her favor, though. These two have met before. It's a very comparison between Bowser and Kirby, who also had a rematch from 2005. The difference here is there actually was a reason for the gap to close between Luigi and Tifa. Square and Nintendo have trended in very opposite directions since 2005, and Tifa getting 53% thirteen years ago didn't exactly inspire confidence. The oracle was split down the middle and most people had this as a dead even match. Much like Finland did in 1980, Luigi scored first. He won the early board vote, and Tifa quickly recovered to tie things at the freeze. As things kept moving, it was Luigi who started slowly building a lead. We can call him getting a 100 vote lead our version of Finland leading 2-1, because after that Tifa just swamped the dude. That 100 vote lead of Luigi's was gone pretty quickly, and though Luigi tried his best to hold off her push leading to midnight, Tifa would eventually take control of the match and win relatively easily. Winning by 850 given how close it was early is pretty impressive, and it sent Tifa off to the legends bracket where she would have one more hilarious match before ultimately bowing out of this thing. ## Safer777's Analysis I think before the contest the winner of MMX/Tifa match was considered the favorite. But Luigi could do it too. Meaning these 3 characters had equal support from what I believe. As you all know in the MMX/Tifa match there were rallies and Tifa managed to barely advanced. In this match there were no rallies and Tifa beat Luigi more easy that she defeated MMX. Tifa VS MMX was the best match of the contest anyways. This match was close of course but Tifa was never in danger. Well she was losing for 1 hour and then she went ahead and stayed ahead. Also once again at the 5 minute mark she was tied! Now that is awesome. You know I thought actually that Luigi would win. Yeah I know that Tifa had beaten him before but I thought she would have fallen while Luigi would have risen. And this was true but in smaller percentages that I have expected. So yeah. Tifa managed to win and that was good. She also had much tougher opponents that Luigi had. So she deserved to win the division! Also a strange thing I noticed. Tifa has taken part in 6 contests including this one only! I always thought she was there in all of them! Luigi has missed the very first contest too. Eh whatever. ## Tsunami's Analysis These two had met before in a match back in 2005, and it was somewhat close, but Tifa was never really in danger of losing. And here, with Tifa fresh off a rally-fueled victory...nothing really changed. This wasn't a blowout, which suggests that Luigi could've fared pretty well against MMX. Honestly, this wasn't really a surprising result, even if it does go against the "cookie" bracket--Luigi had barely over a third of the Guru brackets, with the rest being split between X, Tifa, and Mewtwo--X having the largest portion of those due to the Mewtwo-Tifa split. Which I guess means that the "true favorite" was X? This was a distinctly weird division due to the Mewtwo/Tifa/X kerfuffle making it impossible to declare who the favorite really was in that match. --- ## (1)Sephiroth vs (3)Ryu 2018 _source: (1)Sephiroth vs (3)Ryu 2018 (revid 84251)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Every now and again a match happens that I can't explain at first, and this definitely counts. Sephiroth looked like absolute shit in every single one of this matches this contest, except for this one. How? What makes Ryu so special that he's the only one this year who couldn't take advantage of Sephiroth's weaknesses? Wesker, Falcon, Amaterasu, Mario, and Tifa all made the guy look like everything ranging from 'weakened' to 'complete joke'. Yet Ryu, who had a lot of advantages in this match thanks to being in Smash 4 and hyped for Smash Ultimate, went out there and just got destroyed. It's not like Ryu didn't do what everyone else does, either. He won the board vote. He then proceeded to get his ass whipped for 24 straight hours, and when the time came for Seph to break 60% on the guy we all just kind of sat there stunned. It was like watching Clemson just beat the absolute living shit out of Alabama in the 2019 title game. Although when you look at it, Sephiroth does kinda sorta look like Trevor Lawrence: My best guess here is Ryu had a similar fate to that of Gordon Freeman, the Metal Gear Solid clan, the Resident Evil characters, Commander Shepard, D.Va, and some others I might be forgetting. When your parent company is indefensible garbage, the characters pay for it in these contests. Capcom has been so bad for so long that I might have been short sighted here. It's not like the Street Fighter characters or Dante lit the world on fire in this contest, which makes sense. Street Fighter 5 was released as a half finished game, and so was Marvel vs Capcom 3 originally. Ryu is in both of those games, and Capcom at this point is known more for money-grubbing DLC practices than releasing video games that are actually good. When people think of "on-disc DLC", Capcom is the first company they think of. Ryu paying for that against legitimate competition makes sense. This match isn't all that different from Bowser beating the hell out of Gordon Freeman or Fox embarrassing all of Blizzard. People just don't want to give Sephiroth any credit for being a shit-kicking badass, because hating Final Fantasy 7 is the cool thing to do these days. Sephiroth was the only 1 seed to actually win his division, and he had by far the highest prediction percentage in this round. It's true. Look it up. Dante, Zero, Sora, 2B, Squall, Geralt, and Luigi all failed to win their divisions. Only Sephiroth pulled it off, and he do with some Marv Alvert + Eric Cartman + Triple H authority. What a fantastic performance by the dude. Too bad he followed this up by stinking up the joint. ## Safer777's Analysis So well before the contest there was a small chance that Ryu would be able to beat Sephiroth since well everyone was saying that Sephiroth has fallen a lot. But as the contest went on this prooved to be false. People were expecting Sephiroth to win with around 57% but he won with more than 60%. Even I as a Seph fan didn't expected it. Because of Amaterasu. Guess she is strong now or something like that? Also Ryu was beating Sephiroth for like 2 minutes. This is the tradition for FF 7 characters, meaning they lose at the very start, then start winning and then keep rising as the match goes on. In the 5 minute mark Sephiroth was around 52.7% and he won with more than 60%! Damn! So what I gather from  all of these? Sephiroth hasn't dropped as much as people said. Why I say that? Because I don't believe that Ryu has fallen that much and that Amaterasu is  weak. Or maybe it is true? Can't be sure.  Anyways he won a good victory. And in fact some people were even saying that Seph\>Mario based on this result! Yeah sure. Even I as a huge fan can't see that. Still nice to see FF 7 still do good. So there you go. We had in 1 day 2 FF 7 winners! FF 7 always wins. Also a fun fact. Sephiroth was the ONLY 1 Seed to win the division!!! Also no 2 Seed won either! This is the worst contest ever for the high seeds. We have said so many times that seeding doesn't mean anything and this prooves it. Also the prediction percentage was massive. Not even some Round 1 matches had such a big one! Well as the only NN'er it was to be expected. ## Tsunami's Analysis Ryu fared better with registered voters than anonymous voters, so this match isn't even as close as it looks. Which isn't terribly close. Fighting game characters seemed somewhat stronger this year, but you'd never guess it from this match, where the allegedly struggling Sephiroth still managed to break 60% on Ryu, a character that famously always required a Noble Niner to take him down in early contests and always broke 40% in those losses. At this point, Sephiroth was probably only considered to have "weakened" because of the overall weakness of Division 8. Think of it like L-Block's 2007 run in reverse. Sephiroth's always going to draw a certain number of anti-votes, so he looks stronger against strong characters like Ryu here than he does against weak ones, just as L-Block's so-called "joke trends" meant it would draw a consistent percentage regardless of whether it was facing R1 fodder or Noble Niners. --- ## (1)Link vs (4)Ganondorf (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (4)Ganondorf (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88653)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We all know Link would eventually win this contest with ease, but this was a very bad start for the dude. I know calling an 80-20 blowout bad seems weird, but we have a precedent here. Given that match and all the crazy boosts Link has gotten over the years, I honestly feel like he should have broken 90% in this match. What Zelda fan would ever vote for Ganon over him? I know a lot of people were planning on anti-voting Link in this contest, but dropping 8% in this match when we saw other random rematches from that era barely move in percentage feels weird. Not that it really mattered at the end of the day, because without a crazy rally no one was coming close to beating Link this year. I don't have a great explanation for why Ganon got 20% instead of 12%, but at that point you're asking me to explain a 42-10 or 43-8 Super Bowl loss for the Broncos compared to 55-10. Who even cares? ## Safer777's Analysis Finally the(former)champ is here! Of course he would win. And this match has happened before. So the question was with how much he would win though. In the previous match Link had beaten Ganondorf with around 88%! Now he won with less than 80%. So why? I believe Link has dropped a bit. Yeah it happens to everyone.  Probablye at least? Also anti-votes too probably. So there you go. Funny when someone wins with around 80% and it is not considered good! Of course Link will win the whole thing anyways so there you go. Also I hope the stats guys adjust the X-Stats because with this result Vivi scores like 18% on Link which is a lie, since he breaks 30% for sure. Nothing more to add. It is a Link match. He wins.  ## Tsunami's Analysis Normally I hate adjusted X-Stats, because there's no scientific way to determine the adjustments and then you end up with the "sharps" being unanimously wrong about Magus-Knuckles 2005 because Magus was just arbitrarily assigned his 2003 value (which was earned directly against a Link far weaker than 2004's) to account for the SFF Bracket of 2004. But then you get a near-quadrupling in Round 5 and it becomes impossible to defend the sanctity of raw X-Stats. Clearly Ganondorf's stronger than his raw numbers will suggest. But how much stronger? Who knows. About the only clear takeaway from this is that Zelda was able to withstand SFF from Link far better than Ganondorf did. Before this contest, it wasn't necessarily clear which one was stronger, though it seemed more likely even then to be Zelda. Now there's no doubt; Zelda came out looking like the new \#3 character on the site. --- ## (8)Mega Man vs (7)Pikachu (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (8)Mega Man vs (7)Pikachu (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88651)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was SUCH a good match, and it reminded me a lot of Mega Man v Zero v Charizard back in 2013. Mega Man had every reason in the world to just roll over and die in this match, but the little guy just has the clutch gene and refuses to quit in close matches, even when a lot of people on Board 8 were sitting there expecting Pikachu to just roll this dude. Pikachu stomped through the main bracket, and outside of Smash Bros Mega Man hasn't done much lately. No, MM9 through 11 doesn't count. Dude's really something. When this match started, it didn't exactly look like we were getting some great classic. Pikachu held strong early, but then Mega Man had a 100 vote lead in 15 minutes. It looked to be one of those standard matches that looks close on percents, but is never actually close. But then Pikachu won the next update by 26, and it was on. Pikachu got this thing back under 50 very quickly, but then Mega Man started going up again and built a lead of 200. Not to be outdone, Pikachu countered again and in only a few updates it was below 100 again. We continued on the two steps forward one step back routine for Mega Man until he built his biggest lead of the match: 237 votes. Remember that number. After some stalling and as we continued on through midnight, Pikachu slowly but surely fought his way back into things. Remember a few matches ago where I joked about Mega Man going to every house in Europe and killing a house pet, a first born son, and torching the place? Europe despises this dude, and it shows up every time Mega Man has a match. We don't usually notice because most matches with these characters aren't close, but in matches like this it really matters. Pikachu tied this poll at 3 am, and then veeeeeery slowly started building a lead. He hit 100 in time for the morning vote, where one would assume a Pokemon would take over. Mega Man won the morning vote, and in only a couple hours we were tied again. Did Mega Man take advantage and start climbing? Of course not, because these two guys were out there giving us the best match of this contest to this point. King Dedede and Revolver Ocelot having a match like this is great, but Mega Man and Pikachu doing it actually meant something. But despite all the back and forth, Mega Man slowly trended up all morning and well past lunch en route to a lead of 150 votes. But you can't have classic matches if someone just dies, so once again Pikachu fought back. During the afternoon and largely thanks to the ASV (after school vote, for those playing the home game), Pikachu erased that 150 vote lead and yet again we were tied up. At 5 pm, with only two hours left in the poll, these two were dead even. It was going to come down to which fanbase wanted it more, and for once, the Pokemon fans actually bothered caring about a close match. I've been asking these people to try showing up for years. Today, they finally did it. Pikachu built up a 100 vote lead over the next 45 minutes, and though Mega Man fought like hell to get back in the match, he simply ran out of time. Pikachu was ready for that last push, went 'oh hey the guy I'm against is made of metal, maybe I should electrocute the little bastard', and that was all she wrote. Pikachu wins by 62, in our first true loss for the Noble Nine. More on that in a second. Remember when I said to remember the number 237? A new wire to wire record! I'm a sucker for that list, and seeing such a great match set a record like that warms my heart. Props to these two for giving us one hell of a show, and props to Pikachu for finally "legitimately" breaking the Noble Nine. No excuses this time, much as the people obsessed with that list would love to come up with one. We all know it was actually broken in 2007, but I digress. Let's talk about the Noble Nine. Link, Cloud, Mario, Samus, Crono, Solid Snake, Sephiroth, Mega Man, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Nine characters so much stronger than everyone else that they could only lose to each other. Nine characters who have had entire contests warped around them so others have a fair chance of winning. Whenever something happens that proves the LOL x stats wrong, I'm the first guy to laugh. You all know this. I go the other way with the Noble Nine. Sort of. I used to be the guy that made fun of excuse-makers with this list, but now? I've become the kind of guy to make excuses whenever they lose in some weird bracket idea like 4ways, 3ways, and Rivalry Rumble, simply because the whole reason those formats happened was to give other characters a chance of winning. The only losses they've had I consider truly legitimate are 1v1 24 hour losses. I don't care that Crono lost to Vincent in 2007. That was a 4way poll. I don't care that Kirby overperforms in 4way polls and beat Sonic. I don't care that Missingno got a 12 hour day match against Crono with backwards trends. I sure as hell don't care about 3way polls, because anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows why those were stupid. That said, the mental gymnastics I saw after this match were really, really dumb. There are people claiming this "doesn't count" because Pikachu only won with the registered user bonus. There are people claiming this "doesn't count" because Mega Man won the rematch. There are people claiming this "doesn't count" because this sent Mega Man to a loser's bracket instead of actually eliminating him from the tournament. How about you people stop moving goalposts with your mental gymnastics and fuck off? Mega Man lost, fair and square. Deal with it. Mega Man losing here meant this was the first time, ever, that a Noble Nine character lost in a 1v1 24 hour match to someone from outside the group. That is a big deal and the push to cheapen this win so that Tifa or Zelda can take credit instead is an embarrassment. Pikachu is the character that broke the Noble Nine with no excuses, no weird formats, and no doubts. Period. He did so in a really good match, too. Between this and Save_Us.RAT, the little guy is officially a contest legend. ## Safer777's Analysis This is it. This is maybe the most important match in contest history. For the first time ever a non NN'er beats a NN'er in a 24 hour match, with no rallies and no stupid things. Damn. And the one that did it? Pikachu. The guy who barely break 55% on Parappa on the first contest! Man how much he has risen!  Obviously MM was always strong. He is a NN'er after all. Of course in the last years he has fallen and he even was considered the weakest NN'er too. Guess he is? Doubt it. Pikachu is just a  monster. A pocket monster! Yeah I am stupid I know. Still this match was the best of the contest so far no doubt. Also this is one of the closest wire to wire matches ever. Don't know in which position but it is. Anyways at the start MM was winning of course. He managed to get to 237 lead which was the highest for both characters and then Pika started cutting. This started happening after around 5 hours. So after almost 4 hours of Pika cutting he managed to get ahead finally. Then he started getting a lead. Managed to go to around 110. Then MM started cutting and he went ahead too. And then he started building a lead. He went to 150 and then Pika started cutting again. Then Pika went ahead with like less than 2 hours left in the match. And MM started stalling and cutting but he wasn't able to do it at the end. In the end Pika won with around 62 votes. What a match! Now of course people will say that MM won with the resistered voters and that is true. MM also won in USA too. And that is true too. But let's be real. He just lost. And that is. Still he went out with a fight. Of course the term NN'er will not die. There is currently a topic that details the matches from NN'ers. Seriously even if we count ALL the matches ever, including multiways they have like 95% victories too! That is impressive. Still as a fan of Pokemon I like this result. So there you go. Pika got revenge for Charizard for 2013 too! Pokemon man. I still don't get why they are so strong though. And I am a fan too! Still this match will always be remembered. Of course the prediction percentage was under 20% which makes sense. I mean almost all Gurus too had MM advancing here too. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was definitely one of the more interesting matches of the contest, because it was the first time that a Noble Niner had outright lost a 24-hour 1v1 match against a non-Noble Niner--though just like when they lost in fourways and threeways and 12-hour matches against weird glitch characters, there was plenty of room for the Noble Nine apologists to spin this one, chief among them the fact that Mega Man *won the raw vote* and only lost because of the registered user bonus, though technically there was also something about two matches going on at once (though since the other match in this particular case was Link vs. Ganondorf, I doubt it . The stats topics blamed this on the fact that this match was coming right out of the Thanksgiving break, that casuals might not have known to come back while the contest diehards--which is to say, *us*--were ready to come out supporting our horses, or rats as the case may be. And Board 8 has been fans of Pokémon for quite some time now. There's almost always a Pokémon ranking topic or a Save My Pokémon or something floating around this board, and they can last quite some time because there's over 800 of them already with that number only set to rise by the end of the year with Sword and Shield coming out. (And what a time, too--Pokémon has a strong nostalgia factor, such that each new generation seems to make the fanbase like earlier generations even more. So while they'd still be a dark horse to win it all--though barring rallies, the same could be said of almost any game not named "Breath of the Wild"--the fact that Gen VIII will already be out makes me think that the Gen V games could be stronger than expected in GotD next year). Mega Man, on the other hand...well, okay, the classic Mega Man games get some love here, too. I remember buying Mega Man 2 on Wii VC after it was voted Board 8's Game of the Year for my birth year of 1989. (I...never quite got the hang of it. Maybe I should give it another try, seeing as how I'm apparently into platformers now.) And the classic Mega Man series is, amazingly enough, the most "active" at the moment. But Mega Man is always going to suffer from mismanagement--both the fact that the early games never made it to the PAL regions and the fact that it's a series made by Capcom, which is not a good thing to be in this decade. Board 8's favorite series is made by Capcom and I still doubt many people on this board would defend the company itself. So this was an upset ripe to happen. My Oracle pick was initially far more bullish, but that was pure fanboyism/salt about Mega Man \> Charizard being the match to officially eliminate me from the Guru in 2013 (though seeing as how I was banking on Samus and Mario splitting with each other enough for Charizard to get past them, I was probably dead as soon as Vivi upset Mario, and if not then, the very next match when Squall held off Missingno's upset bid to allow an easy path for *Red* to be the one in Mario's place.) I backed down on the prediction of Pikachu winning easily, but couldn't bring myself to pick against him. I'd like to say that I had some great insight, but honestly, I think I just got lucky here. Mega Man is, at least marginally, still stronger than Pikachu, and proved it later in this contest, but Pikachu caught the perfect circumstances for the upset and capitalized, and I got my best Oracle ever, just 0.01% off of perfect. And of course, there's the question of "is this the match that truly 'broke' the Noble Nine?" To which I say, no, it isn't. L-Block's run in 2007 and Vincent beating him to the punch with the win over Crono is cool, and 2013's format was just weirdness and shouldn't be taken too seriously. But again I should mention that Mega Man won the raw vote. It's hard for me to say that "certain votes count more than others and also there's another match going on at the same time" is less of a gimmick than "only 12 hours long instead of 24". So while I personally say that Missingno was the one to break it, I certainly don't think that if *that* doesn't count, this one should. But maybe that's Board 8's fanboyism again (even though Missingno's Gen I as well!)--63.55% of Second Chance brackets got this one *right*, even though less than 20% of main brackets did. Not that it matters because it would be all of two days until a completely unambiguous Noble Nine break, and if the two polls in one day was still too much gimmick for you, that'd be fixed by contest's end as well. --- ## (4)Cloud Strife vs (3)Alucard (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Cloud Strife vs (3)Alucard (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88649)_ ## Ulti's Analysis You can check my other writeups. I love Alucard, but he was overmatched here. This was very tight at the freeze and I hoped for a miracle, but Cloud put that to bed real quick and proved once again that FF7 just has these weird early votes that make no sense. Cloud turned a tied poll at the freeze into a 60% win, and some might look at a result like this and think Alucard doesn't belong in matches with the big boys. Well guess again pal. Way back in the day, Alucard got embarrassed by the FF7 bros. Fast forward 16 years and he's getting 40% on their mascot. I wouldn't honestly be that shocked if he could get 45% on Sephiroth tomorrow. It was nice seeing this match be decent instead of some 71-29 murdering, but at the end of the day, Cloud was able to survive and advance. That's the name of the game in these things. ## Safer777's Analysis Alucard did well to reach this far but he would never win it. He is the weakest of the Division winners no doubt. So of course Cloud won with above 60% too. Of course at the start of the match Cloud was around 51.5% and look where he reached. Man can you imagine this early result like 10 years ago? It would have filled like 5 stats topics! But now? Eh. Also Alucard has faced Cloud in the very first ever contest where he lost with around 70% too. Now he did 10% better. Of course things have changed a lot since then. Also Alucard is one of the few characters that has appeared in all contests too. So yeah Alucard lost easily but he impressed. The plan man! Now for Cloud...I guess this is a good result. I can't really say because I guess that means that either all Alucard's opponents are weak or Cloud has dropped a lot or some combination of it. Or anything I guess. Still Cloud won and that is fine. ## Tsunami's Analysis This is a pretty good performance for Alucard, one that erased any doubt that he was legitimately stronger rather than merely being the beneficiary of a weak division. (Though make no mistake, he *was* the beneficiary of a weak division. Sora's inexplicable ability to always land a 1-seed, or a 2-seed when the 1-seeds were reserved for Noble Niners only in 2013, usually results in a wide-open division. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Allen acknowledged that fact when he put Sora as the 2-seed in *Crono's* division in 2013, since Crono had already shown himself to be the most upset-prone member of the Noble Nine.) I think this was also the match where we realized that the stats for the Second Chance brackets were messed up because they seemed to suggest that Alucard was actually the favorite there, which clearly wasn't the case. Cloud's prediction percentage in primary brackets was *far* lower; over twice as many people picked against him when his opponent wasn't known than when it was. And that makes sense in a way, because Division 3 was host to a number of theoretical threats. Hell, two of the characters in that division had beaten Cloud already, although both of these events should be taken in the context of "weird gimmicky contests". (Mount Gamemore was pretty awesome, though.) Add to that a character that is frequently thought of as a potential Noble Niner proxy, perhaps rightly so since most of the recent Metal Gear games have been prequels, and there was certainly reason to think that *someone* in that division could pull the upset. Yeah, about that... --- ## (5)Crono vs (4)Bowser (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (5)Crono vs (4)Bowser (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88647)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Wiki readers won't get this bit, but board readers will. Bear with me. So the prediction percentage for this match was 41.5%, which means well over half of people who made a bracket picked Crono to lose in this spot, to the winner of Division 4. This means most people had either Bowser, Charizard, or Kirby beating Crono here. I get that Crono has looked like piss for a very long time and that this match would end up looking very respectable for Bowser, but really? 41.5%? Crono did some of you dirty with his early exits and routine choke jobs over the years, huh? Either that or people just really expected Division 4's trio to be really, really good. (Total side note: I don't care one iota about listing second chance prediction percentage while writing this, for the same reason I never bothered listing battle challenge or win streak type stuff. I try to avoid side show stuff in the PCA and only stick to the first bracket everyone submits.) And boy, does Crono have a lot of choke jobs that gave people pause for this year. Mario 2002 and Mario 2003 are the famous examples, but this guy almost lost to Mega Man in 2005 before losing the Mario rematch in the final that year. Mario got his revenge. Hard. Then in 2006 he goes and chokes away a huge lead to Sonic instead of losing to Snake or Samus like he was supposed to. 4ways? Forget it. This guy was the Noble Nine's first loss back in 2007, granted it was a LOL 4way. He got revenge in 2008, but so what? He went 5 years without winning after that, including his ridiculous Missingno choke job, and the 2013 win barely counts. It was a 3way. The point here is until this match, Crono hadn't won a 1v1 match, 12 hours or otherwise, for 12 full years. Did you guys know his last 1v1 win before this was against Auron? Random bit of trivia for you. The counter to all this is before Melee and Undertale started rallying their balls off in 2015, Chrono Trigger was absolutely going to win that contest. So no one really knew what to expect from Crono here. Just for fun. Bowser (2010c) VS Crono (2010c) Bowser has a strength of 37.09. Crono has a strength of 41.69. Crono wins with 55.52% of the vote! Well then. Bowser scared everyone at the freeze and made the first five minutes interesting, but Crono settled in after that and did almost exactly what he was supposed to do. Which didn't bode well for people hoping for big upsets from this guy, but at least he got the monkey off his back en route to going out and winning an actual match finally. It's been way too long. ## Safer777's Analysis So yeah Crono won. These 2 have fought before and Crono won with around 57%. Now he did around 3% lower which is to be expected. Many years have passed since then. I would like for Crono to break 55% but he couldn't do it. Still a nice win for Crono. People say that Crono is weak but the previous contest(the games one)prooved that he is still strong. Don't know why. Also the strange thing about Crono is that ALL other NN'ers have a lot of games and spin offs and guest appearances in other games but Crono has nothing and man he is still really strong. He is only in 1 game and that is! I mean a lot of years ago he even defeated Mario! Do you think that would have happened in any other site? Of course no. Still the next match will be amazing I think. Also of course CT is one of my favorite games of all time. Duh. And also Bowser did good too here of course. ## Tsunami's Analysis Here, on the other hand, was a far more tangible upset threat. By now, bracketmakers have learned to stop trusting Crono; since the start of the Allen era, he'd lost to a non-Noble Niner in 3 out of 4 contests. As such, he was considered an underdog in primary brackets, being picked to beat the Division 4 winner by just 41.5% of them. This, however, is a sidenote to the most awesome prediction percentage ever, which is the Second Chance Bracket prediction percentage. It should be noted that since Second Chance Brackets were filled out during that Thanksgiving break, the first round of the Legends Bracket is analogous to a Round 1, in that the matchup is already set and so you have full knowledge of exactly whom you are picking to defeat whom. And with full knowledge that the matchup would be Crono vs. Bowser, bracketmakers favored... No one. Or both, take your pick. In an event that would've been impossible in Round 1 of the primary bracket owing to the fact that the number of brackets filled out there was odd, the Second Chance brackets were a perfect 50-50 split, 2856 for Bowser and 2856 for Crono. Now if only the match itself were that close. After Bowser briefly led with the board vote, Crono established a lead by the freeze, broke 55% a little before the four hour mark, then fell back below 55% less than two hours later and managed to never reach it again while also never falling lower than 54.67%. Just a dull match where Bowser was always keeping it respectable but never threatening to win. Finding out the Second Chance prediction percentages afterwards was honestly the most interesting thing about the match. Well, that and the fact that Crono was apparently "back". Coming on the heels of Pikachu \> Mega Man--and the Second Chance bracketmakers *favoring Pikachu* when they were merely calling this match a true coin flip--Crono's long-assumed spot as the weakest Noble Niner seemed to be no more. But would we get confirmation, or would the electric rodent get in the way? --- ## (3)Solid Snake vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Solid Snake vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88645)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Blizzard got the full brunt of my wrath, but Konami isn't out of the woods here. What those idiots have done to gaming is completely unforgivable, and it wasn't just one dumb decision. Konami literally and intentionally murdered Suikoden, murdered Silent Hill, murdered Castlevania, murdered the Yugioh card game, murdered arcades, and ruthlessly murdered Metal Gear Solid. And for who? For what? For the unaware, remember Plinko from The Price is Right? Imagine that as a slot machine and you have pachinko machines. Konami decided to kill off all of their gaming franchises to focus on licensed slot machines, largely because Japanese people apparently have a massive gambling problem and spend all of the time and money on the damn things. Which means nothing to you, outside of not getting to play good games from that shitty-ass company anymore. That's the main difference between Konami and Blizzard, and why I'm not writing a 9500 takedown of the former. Blizzard is trash because their games all suck. Konami is trash because their games are almost always good, so them leaving the gaming business for dipshit slot machines was garbage. It's unforgivable, and Solid Snake clearly has the sins of Konami crawling on his back. He has to eat shit twice, because of all the franchises listed, Metal Gear Solid was the only one murdered three different times. One when Hideo Kojima was fired. Once when Metal Gear Solid went full pachinko. And once when this bullshit happened. All that paired with the Zelda boost and Snake's Nintendo support always abandoning him against Nintendo characters made for some very, very bad news for Solid Snake. Had Tails never happened, this would be my favorite call of the contest. I just knew this was coming. Board 8 loves Solid Snake and has developed a habit of anti-voting Zelda characters. You guys tried your best for 15 minutes to save Snake, but it was not to be. After those 15 minutes were up, Zelda slowly and methodically marched her way up to a lead of 350 around midnight. Well, 342 to be exact. Snake fought back overnight, and tied things up as the morning vote showed up. We all kind of assumed Zelda would bury the guy in the morning and that would be that. But miraculously, almost as if Snake knew this was his last shot, Snake started mashing that damn triangle button like he was getting cooked alive in a microwave hallway. This match was pretty much tied all morning, and Snake battled his ass off to try building a lead. But any time he got anything going, Zelda just bitch slapped him. When lunch time hit, Snake just ran out of gas and finally got buried for good. The match stayed between 100 and 200 for the last seven hours of the poll, but I remember watching it and never once feeling like Snake had a chance of winning. 342 puts this in the top 10 of the wire to wire list, but if you look at it this was the one match on there where you never really felt like the losing character had a prayer of winning. There was just too much in Zelda's favor combined with way too much going against Snake here. Snake has had a lot of close non-Noble Nine calls over the years, most of which coming with people blaming the sprite round, but at the end of the day he simply had to kneel at the altar of the Zelda series like everyone else. If I wasn't such a big Zelda fan, I'd be sad about this. But I love the series, so this was great to watch. Zelda deserves all the run she got this year, too. It's about time. Right after Pikachu broke the Noble Nine, Zelda dug its grave. Not long after this match, Zelda and Tifa would combine to bury them for good. The Noble Nine is officially dead. There is no coming back from what happened to them in this contest. The saddest thing of all is something I actually saw ExTha post on Facebook, so shout out to @ExThaNemesis here. Remember Smash Ultimate hype and how great that game would end up being? I do. This video is a huge part of it. (nice job to all the idiots who thought it would be a port, by the way) The best part of that video was Solid Snake -- "everyone is here" -- but then it dawned on me. Nintendo is treating Solid Snake better than Konami ever has. Even worse, Smash Bros Ultimate might be the last game Solid Snake appears in. Bolded for emphasis because let that sink in. That is a really, really big deal. It's also the reason Snake lost. He should have cashed in when he was actually close to Link's level a few years ago, because he is never again coming close to winning a contest. It's unbelievably, incomprehensibly sad. ## Safer777's Analysis This I didn't expected. Snake was the legit Number 2 in this site for a long time, only Link was ahead of him. But man. Okay. Zelda was strong this year. Of course. But beating the possibly Number 2 on this site? Yeah barely but she did it. Okay I know the LOZ series is loved here but seriously? Did BOTW boosted Link, Zelda and Ganondorf that much? I know I like the contests but this is bad. Now you not only have Link beat everyone but Zelda beating everyone too! Where is the fun on that? As for the match. Snake was winning for around 15 minutes at the start. After like 12 hours Snake managed to get ahead for like 2 hours and that was it. Zelda dominated here. Also this is one of the closest wire to wire matches too. This contest has a lot of them at least! This is something I guess. But man. A few people said when Zelda beat Squall that the final would be Link VS Zelda. Of course everyone laughed. But it may happen actually! Don't know what to say. This is unreal. We need to have strong characters that can challenge Link at least. Now? Now Zelda beats everyone too and Link? If he finishes this tournament with a win less than 65% I would be suprised. Also another match when a NN'er lost to a non NN'er obviously. I wonder how many more will lose until the end of the tournament? Also this result makes Squall and Aeris look better at least. So that is something. The prediction was kinda high for Zelda too. Around 25% which may seem low but it actually isn't. Nice for Zelda I guess. ## Tsunami's Analysis The registered and non-registered voters went different directions on this match, but the registered voter advantage for Snake was too small to overcome Zelda's unregistered support. Again, which one was which surprises me not at all; Snake is probably one of Board 8's favorite Noble Niners, because he was almost as big a surprise member as Crono at the start, he took a while to get his first win against a fellow member, and then once he got off the schneid he almost immediately started pulling off all sorts of crazy upsets against the upper echelon--first beating Sephiroth in the 2006 Battle Royale (our first experience with non-1v1s, so we were unprepared for what LFF could do), then beating Cloud twice in 2008 (the first time admittedly with Sephiroth also in the match, but the second time was *relatively* clean, only having a Crono as a weight, though you could certainly argue that Link hurts Cloud more than he hurts Snake because swords. And yes, I linked that first match solely because the same LFF allowed Sephiroth to get beaten by *Kirby*. I will never get tired of that) and beating Seph 1v1 in 2010. All of this was merely a prelude to 2013, when he--and his voice actor!--became the hero of Board 8, fighting valiantly against the Draven menace. And losing, but who cares about that. Point is, we love Snake here. A lot of the Noble Nine, the only ones who really hate seeing them lose are the statheads because the loss is an affront to their expectations. "Link Always Wins" and all that, though honestly we were much quicker to leap to Link's defense when he was in danger than...oh, right, Cloud's embarrassing 2013 loss came against a Gen I Pokémon, so of course Board 8 was on board with that. Of course, Snake wasn't losing to some rallied newcomer. Zelda's only missed two contests, and one of them was CBI, which barely even counts because you look at all of the fighting game characters and you realize that the people creating the bracket seemed to be treating the "Character Battle" name literally. Maybe. Some of the characters in that bracket were just plain weird; I don't know *that* much about Space Channel 5 but I'm pretty sure that its protagonist's presence runs counter to that assumption. Whatever; I still consider characters who debuted in CBII to have "perfect" records if they haven't missed a contest since then, and no, this wouldn't affect the sanctity of the Noble Nine because no one that debuted there has come close to doing what they did. (It's also more convenient because Lightning's presence in CBVIII set precedence that for a character who debuted after CBI to be considered to have a perfect record, they'd need to make the bracket as soon as their game came out in *Japan*, and Kingdom Hearts *was* out in Japan in time for Sora to have theoretically been in *every* contest.) She's done well in all of them, too; 39.25% against Mega Man in her debut in 2003 (with the hated Wind Waker art, no less); 45.59% against this very same Snake in 2005; 44.73% against Samus in 2006...I'll skip the fourways because she ran into Link in Round 2 one year and Mario in Round 1 in the other. And then a loss to Samus again in 2010 and the close match against Charizard in 2013. Charizard in 2013, *barely*, Vincent in 2007, and Mega Man X in 2008. That's it for non-Noble Niners she's lost to when not literally sharing a fourway with Link, and the last of them she was still sharing it with Mario. Those are all very high-tier opponents, or at least they were in the years she faced them (Vincent is definitely nowhere near the near-elite he was in the mid-2000s, though he's probably still a decent midcarder.) But there have been plenty of high midcarders who have gotten multiple shots at the Noble Nine and come up empty every time, so why should this be any different? Because of "hentai rallies"? ...No, probably not. That was just a fun meme on the board, explaining why female characters seemed to be overperforming all over the place, but I doubt they really made any difference in any match except for Tifa's win over Mega Man X. Because of Breath of the Wild? Far more likely. But there's something else that can't be ignored, and that's that the Metal Gear series is, sadly, seemingly dead. And I say "sadly" despite having never actually played one of them for myself. It's just not my genre, which saddens me because everything I've heard about them is that the story is amazing and I love games with strong stories. The movie critic Roger Ebert was once criticized for saying that video games weren't art, although he clarified what he meant and it wasn't nearly as bad as what it was made out to be. The Metal Gear Solid games, especially around the time of 4, were also criticized for largely being movies with a bit of gameplay tacked on, due to the large number of unskippable cutscenes. So, uh...why not actually make movies out of them? Give the superhero movies some competition for the summer blockbusters? This should be a no-brainer. But with the rift between Konami and Kojima, it seems unlikely that much of anything will ever get done, since the license for the series still belongs to the former. I honestly didn't even realize that there'd been another Metal Gear spinoff in 2018, nor that there was apparently a *board game* released here in 2019? That said, even without Kojima's input, Konami could still easily release new Metal Gear Solid games and have them be actually good. Without spoiling any of the twists of MGS V, it's the end of the prequel series and the final scene is set in 1995, the year that the original Metal Gear took place. To me, that just *screams* "Metal Gear remake" for a hypothetical MGS6, especially since the fact that the Metal Gears got more and more complex with each passing game *released* means that the technology suddenly takes a massive step backwards between 1984 (MGSV, released in 2015) and 1995 (Metal Gear, released in 1987). Not to mention that pesky bit about the Soviet Union still existing when it didn't in the real 1995, though I think they officially stated that in the Metal Gear timeline, the Soviet Union legitimately doesn't fall during the 1990s (Metal Gear 2 was also released prior to the fall of the Soviet Union and is set in 1999). Updating the MSX2 games to modern hardware seems like it'd be a great idea. Someone get Konami on this. But back to the match at hand: did Snake's series's status really play a part? It honestly might have. Snake lost for good the moment he ran into another Nintendo character, after beating on Square and Sega characters. Nintendo knows how to take care of their flagship franchises, and it shows with their consistently strong performances in these contests. --- ## (6)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Auron (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (6)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Auron (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88643)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Heeeey, remember 2008? Back when Auron beat Sonic in round 2 of the LOL 4ways and then only turned around and beat him in the divisional final because Sephiroth showed up? I still have no clue how Leon4 called that one, but that's why I write stuff after contests end and he writes stuff before they start when it actually matters :D Seeing Sonic and Auron link up again 1 on 1 with no excuses a decade later was pretty neat, even if it was predictable. Then again over half of people thought Division 6's winner would win this match, which blows my mind. Division 6 was destined to have one of the weakest division winners ever. This was never going to be a match that was in any doubt whatsoever, and on top of that it was very boring. The percentages stayed at 54-46 for 24 straight hours. That said, 46% on Sonic is no joke and it takes us back to the old days when a bunch of people kept calling for Sonic to lose early every year because of how he would have these random bad performances. Which makes sense. This is the dude that let Zero almost break 48% on him, let Aeris get 47% on him, let Ryu get 45%, let Tifa almost get 44%, choked against Mega Man, and almost let Vincent get 48% on him all before 2006. Add in some weird 4way performances and him not looking so hot since, and here we are. Getting into Smash clearly saved this dude's career, because it was going down fast. All that said, the other three Sonic characters (Knuckles, Tails, and even Shadow) all looked decent this year. Sonic, uh.... didn't. And that's putting it very nicely. I have no idea why. I've always loved the guy but he just cannot catch a break. 54% on Auron is just not very impressive, and he followed it up with some bad polls. ## Safer777's Analysis A normal match this one. Sonic would always win this. Auron was always an elite but never in position to challenge a NNer. But he at least managed to hold Sonic under 55%. I consider this good. Okay he has defeated Sonic but in a 4-way match. Don't know what else to say here. Normal stuff I guess. But man at the next  match...Yeah good luck Sonic! Another thing I can say that I find funny is that at the 5 minute mark it was around 52-48 for Sonic and everyone was saying lol Sonic. Well he managed to raise a bit higher but well that wasn't a good result. Well a win is a win I guess --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (3)Tifa Lockheart (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (3)Tifa Lockheart (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88641)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This was just a brutal match to look at, especially given this happened back in the day: No, those vote totals are not a typo. Samus once had a match with Tifa where she had a 900 vote lead disappear in under 4 hours, and she needed the Nintendo morning vote to bail her out. Even funnier is Samus built up a 1700 vote lead in that match, but only won by 1400. I know people reading this in 2018 might not know this, but our contests used to have things like "vote totals", "trends", and "outside interest". Square was a real terror with the night vote. Nintendo's power hour and morning votes were just unreal, and you had to be there to get how insane they were sometimes. Fast forward 12 years. In a match that barely broke 29,000 votes, Samus beat Tifa with a bigger margin than a match that got 144,000 votes. If you take the 2018 percentages and apply them to 2006 vote totals, just for fun, you get something like this: Samus - 84859 Tifa - 59141 Total Votes - 144000 That's almost a 26,000 vote victory. I know people are slurping Tifa for her run in this contest, but she got her ass whipped all over the place the second a truly elite character showed up. This match happened twice, too, with the exact same result both times. This was no accident. I'm sorry, but Sephiroth is not elite anymore, Mewtwo proved himself to be a fraud, and Luigi/Mega Man X just got unlucky. It happens. Tifa is clearly a step behind Samus, and the reason I bring up 2006 is because that match is far more interesting to talk about than whatever you guys call this thing. 59-41 this late in a contest without SFF is an epic annihilation. Samus was on some serious steroids this year. I'll get more into why Square is trash later, don't worry. ## Safer777's Analysis These 2 have fought before. And Tifa almost became the second person to beat a NN'er 1 VS 1 since Samus won back then with 50.5%! The first person was Bowser actually who scored around 49.4% against Snake in 2005! Tifa did that in 2006. So as you see in the results things have changed a lot. People couldn't rally for porn sites or something since both opponents are women so no luck there. Funny thing is that after Pikachu and Zelda beat 2 NN'ers, people were afraid and they lowered the win percentages for Samus. But Samus was always extremely strong. Maybe even stronger than Mario from what the stats guys say. Don't know why but she is. So of course she won easily. FF 7 has fallen a lot. Only the FF 7 remake can give it some boost. Or cameos in KH 3 I guess. Samus of course has a lot of games and she is in Smash too. Still I guess Tifa managed to score at least above 41% so that is okay. I want to see how far Samus will reach myself. --- ## (7)Mario vs (1)Sephiroth (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (7)Mario vs (1)Sephiroth (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88639)_ ## Ulti's Analysis One match after Tifa went out there and got annihilated by Samus, Sephiroth went out there and showed he was not to be outdone in the "Final Fantasy 7 is a choking dog" department. Tifa losing the way she did was eye-opening and was a measure of revenge for Samus for that 2006 match, but it was nothing compared to the revenge Mario was after in this one. For years, we called Sephiroth Mario's kryptonite. For good reason. Mario ripped through the bracket in 2002, including close wins against Cloud and Crono, before losing in the final. In 2003 it looked like he hadn't missed a beat, until, well.... He didn't just lose to Sephiroth. He got thoroughly and absolutely embarrassed. Okay, sure, whatever, Mario had an off day. Two years later, Clinkeroth were removed from the main bracket. In their place, Mario went on some anabolic steroids, some HGH, some TRT, and some EPO. The guy was on more juice than Brock Lesnar or Jon Jones before USADA showed up to ruin the UFC heavyweight division. He was on more juice than John Cena, Ultimate Warrior, The Rock, or Hulk Hogan, who are dudes that clearly don't do the correct 4 month cycles. Look at them. I know it sounds ridiculous to compare Mario to real life supermen, but he really looked that insane in 2005. He won the main bracket with hilarious ease. Tournament of Champion time. A rematch with Sephiroth. Mario getting 44% instead of 38% was great and all, but that was still an embarrassing loss given how good he looked. Sephiroth gave no fucks. Oh, you thought it was just 1 on 1 where Sephiroth embarrassed the dude? Here's Sephiroth beating Mario in a LOL 4way so badly that Mario still doesn't win if he takes all of Fox's votes. Here's Sephiroth beating Mario so badly in a 4way that if you take all of Vincent's votes and give them to Mario, Mario only wins by 900 votes. But frankly, if that was a 3way poll Seph would naturally go up in strength and beat Mario anyway. Oh, you thought the pain stopped there? Here's the Battle Royale from 2006. Day 1: Day 2: We can stop on day 2, because that's when Mario got eliminated. Needless to say, when this match was slated for the legends bracket in 2018, all those old wounds reopened for Mario fans. It's like really, the guy couldn't draw anyone else? Well Mario ended those fears in literally two seconds, and then took 15 years of pent up frustration with this Sephiroth guy ending a bunch of his runs and just beat the absolute ever-loving shit out of him with it. This was a good old fashioned ass whuppin, and for Mario fans it was a joy to watch. Mario finally got his revenge. This was clearly Mario's Super Bowl, too, because he took his eye off the ball for the rest of this contest. I doubt he even cares, either, because he finally beat the one guy he could never beat. (Link doesn't count.) ## Safer777's Analysis Remember when Sephiroth beat Mario with more than 61.5%??? This result was always strange for me. Yeah he was really strong back then. But it is FREAKING MARIO! What happened back then? KH boost? Maybe. But why when KH 2 came out it didn't provide the same amount of boost? Who knows. Now after all these years Mario defeated Sephiroth with almost as much as Sephiroth defeated Mario back then. This result now I get it. Mario is the face of the gaming. Pretty sure he is in top 3 of most recognizable video game characters. Tons of games and he is in Smash of course. Sephiroth is the iconic villain of FF 7. And yeah FF 7 is the JRPG that most people that don't know much about gaming refer when they thing about JRPG's. Also so many anime/video game characters that copied his look, meaning long silver or white hair and some form of longcoat. Yup. So anyways. Personally even though I am a Sephiroth fan I was expecting Mario to score around 60%. As I said above we need FF 7 remake or at least KH 3 to have Cloud and Sephiroth to get some boost in power. At least Sephiroth stayed above 40% so I cosinder this a moral victory. Also once again as before people had llowered the winning predictions for Mario. Man Zelda and Pikachu really scared everyone. --- ## (4)Ganondorf vs (8)Mega Man (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Ganondorf vs (8)Mega Man (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88637)_ ## Ulti's Analysis SPRITE ROOOOOOOOOOOOUND!!!!!!! :D The losers bracket was quite the interesting beast, but not on this day. For those skipping around in the wiki, the basic idea was if you lose in the legends bracket, you were put in the losers bracket. Lose here, and you're out for good. Win the loser's bracket and you get another shot at Link-- errrrrrr, the legend bracket winner. But if you take a middling near elite like Ganondorf (I know that's an oxymoron, but still!) and put him against a legit Noble Niner that got upset, you get blowout city. Mega Man was never going to be challenged here, but he did a little more than go out there and just win a match. He put an absolute ass whuppin on Ganon right from the jump en route to a 60-40 beatdown. Ganon doesn't lose like that too often without SFF getting involved, so this was quite the sight to see. This match was so bad for Ganon that a bunch of crybabies to this day (as in, to the time of this writing) are still blaming the sprite round for his performance, because his number here goes against their holy doctrine of extrapolated statistics. These people might as well be Puritans at this point, because they lose their damn minds the second any of the holy LOL x stats are challenged and tons of micro adjustments must be made at all times to preserve their stature. I have legitimately seen religious fundamentalists use less rancor in real life than some of these statheads whenever a percentage is way off in a GameFAQs contest. I said my piece about this during the mid contest analysis, so we won't go back and fully relive how embarrassing these people are. There are a few new points to make that I was saving for this match. One. We have had a sprite round in almost every contest since 2002. I and many others like them, especially now that we get to make pictures for it. Trying to ruin our fun because your oracle percentage is wrong makes you a punk-ass bitch. Sprite rounds have been a part of contests for 16 years. Deal with it. The oracle consensus was Mega Man with 53.65%. If you want to know why people are crying like they're having male PMS, start there. Two. Ganon either looked off or underperformed in almost every single match for this entire contest. If you think a "normal" picture would have turned this match from 60-40 back to Mega Man only winning with 54% like the oracle people said he was "supposed" to, you are an idiot. In fact, that belief is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. Three and lastly, this is what non-sprite Ganondorf looks like: This is what Ganon's true form looks like: This is where Ganon probably looked his coolest in 3D in any Zelda game: This is what Ganon looks like during his best boss fight in the entire series: This is where Ganon looks his coolest, ever, in any game: The dude is just ugly as shit, and a sprite makes zero difference whatsoever. Mega Man is a damn legend, who can whip Ganondorf's ass 60-40 in any contest. Do you guys not remember some of the epic blowouts Mega Man has pulled off over the years? Complaining about the sprite round, or thinking Ganon's sprite meant iota of difference is just objectively, certifiably dumb. ## Safer777's Analysis So after Pikachu defeated MM, MM managed to look really good here. Of course we couldn't judge Ganondorf's power since well he faced Link, but he didn't even managed to score 40% here. MM is very strong of course. It is that Pikachu is damn strong now. He had a new game and he will have a live action movie soon, the first ever for Pokemon too. Also according to stats Ganondorf underperformed here. Still impressive win for MM. Personally I thought he would score around 55% but well I was wrong. Man how much Pikachu has risen! Also guess Ganondorf didn't get boosted enough from BOTW? Because I find it hard to see that MM has boosted actually. Still impressive win for MM. ## Tsunami's Analysis First off, are we actually having two contests in under a year? That hasn't happened in almost a decade! I didn't expect GotD2 to be this early in the year, I guess because the last one wasn't, but then again we started off 2010 with a Character Battle. Oh, we're not? This contest was in 2018? Damnit, how did I let this slide for that long? As for this match, it's clear that whatever it was that gave Zelda a massive boost (generally assumed to be Breath of the Wild) failed to do the same for Ganondorf. Remember this match? That's Ganondorf getting almost 42% against Sephiroth in his prime, or close to it. Not one Oracle predicted that Mega Man would hold Ganondorf under 42%; a few picked Ganondorf to win outright. Nope. Ganondorf got 40.57% with the registered voters, which even with them getting double weight wasn't enough for him to break 40% overall. Was Ganondorf really as weak as his SFF beatdown against Link made him look, or was Mega Man's loss simply a signal that Pikachu was legitimately Noble Nine tier? Probably the latter, honestly. We'll look at that soon enough. --- ## (3)Alucard vs (4)Bowser (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Alucard vs (4)Bowser (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88635)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I know that Bowser ended up winning this match relatively easily given how close the final percentages were, and I know Alucard went 0-2 in the legends dealie after winning his division, but I give zero fucks. For Alucard to go out there and give Bowser a real match when the latter was beefed up for this contest was awesome to watch. This wasn't some fluke. Alucard was in this thing for a good two hours before finally getting put away, and even after the match was clearly over he went out in a highly respectable way. Bowser came out slow and only built up a lead of 100 over the first 30 minutes. Alucard then started actually fighting back, but a 50 vote update by Bowser pretty much sealed it. They stalled for a little while after that, but once Bowser got this past 200 he kind of took off. Alucard made one final push once Bowser got it past 400, but it was not to be. Bowser would end up winning by 625, in a sprite round match when both characters had their most iconic images. Bowser may have won this match, but no one was really talking about him. This was all about Alucard's Plan™, and how good The Plan™ looked for this entire contest. Remember my mid-contest analysis where I lamented the main bracket not getting finished? We ended up getting two guaranteed main bracket matches had it kept going. One was this match, and the other was Tifa vs Sephiroth later on. There were a lot of MANLY DUELS in this contest, but few were better than Alucard and Bowser in a match with high stakes. Not that Geralt and Simon Belmont can actually be topped on the True Manliness Scale, but hey! How good was this match even though it wasn't really close? It actually pops up in the top 25 on this list: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/Closest_wire_to_wire_matches \] ## Safer777's Analysis Man look at this. At the start of the match we thought that Alucard would do it actually! And even though he was always close, Bowser was never in fear of losing at any time except maybe at the start. So does that means that Alucard is really strong now? Because pretty sure nobody expected for the match to be this close. However according to stats guys this result makes sense. Because Big Boss, Sora and Red would score similar to Bowser which makes sense according to past results. Also this match had the lowest prediction percentage so far in the contest with around 4.5%! I wonder how much will be the lowest prediction for the contest? Still Bowser did good and he won. ## Tsunami's Analysis Wait, doesn't that light blue border mean that the registered and unregistered voters were split? Yes. Yes it does. Alucard was thought to be the weakest of the eight division winners, but he put up a damn good fight here, taking the unregistered vote by just 7 and holding Bowser to just 51.24%. Bowser was never in danger, however, leading wire-to-wire and staying above 51% from the 15-minute mark of the match onwards. But perhaps that was The Plan all along, as surely Alucard would get a better X-Stat number through Bowser than he would against Crono directly? The max lead of 627 (10 minutes before match's end) would be good for a spot in the top 25 closest wire-to-wire matches, and would rank \#6 among those where the loser never led. --- ## (3)Solid Snake vs (3)Auron (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Solid Snake vs (3)Auron (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88633)_ ## Ulti's Analysis In no small part due to the insane amount of bitching I had to deal with thanks to me helping get a sprite round, I will now list every single match involving Solid Snake getting his sprite in a match picture, not counting this one against Auron. Snake in general is the most famous example of sprites supposedly being harmful, so let's actually put some context on this. Snake with a sprite picture was 10-0 coming into this contest, and in this match with Auron Snake went out there and showed us all what a giant steaming pile Division 6 was. Auron pretty much didn't belong in the legends bracket at all, but in a contest like this you'll get a weird division winner or two. Auron was definitely the odd man out this year. I get that Auron also had a sprite picture, but if you go by people's complaining you would think the so-called Solid Shit either loses every match he's in or comes close. I don't want to hear the sprite excuse only go one way if that's what the play is. Anyway, Snake is now 11-0 with a sprite picture, with only Bowser and Frog even having respectable matches against Snake in sprite rounds -- and those two characters can easily be explained by the bandwagon effect. This idea that sprites wildly affect results is flat-out wrong, and the idea we should do away with sprite rounds entirely is ridiculous. We have no proof it makes any difference. I could easily argue it only matters for Chrono Trigger, and when we start talking about Chrono Trigger sprites during an unrelated match you know we had an epic blowout on our hands. By the way, see those two fourway polls from 2007 and 2008? Snake got first place in those, with the supposed sprite that ruins contests. There are bad takes, there are hot takes, and then there's the molten lava that anti-sprite people throw around. It shows a pretty big lack of research or context. It's no accident that these are the same exact people who are either against rallies or, even dumber, magically support rallies when it benefits a character they like. Sprites make virtually no difference, but if this doesn't convince you we have a hilarious example coming up. We have proof that in the best possible situation, sprites make a 1% difference. That's it. ## Safer777's Analysis Since this round was a sprite round people were afraid that Snake will not do well since well his sprite isn't good or something. People are stupid. Pictures don't really affect anything EXCEPT when they are really bad like when Phoenix beat Vincent. Never forget! Maybe they affect like 1% but that was it. So for Snake. He beat  Auron with more than 7% than Sonic beat him. Snake is really strong, possible even the 2nd strongest. Yeah he lost to Zelda but pretty sure Zelda is out of the charts strong now. So that makes him the 3rd strongest? Who knows. I guess that Auron did good however. He is weaker but his percentage wasn't that bad. So yeah, Snake is good. Wonder how far he will reach. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was another wake-up call re: strength of certain non-Noble Niners. Snake's victory was never in doubt, but not a single Oracle had him winning that handily. Given how unexpected Snake's presence in the loser's bracket was, it might surprise you to learn that Auron barely had more Guru brackets picking him in this match than Snake did...until you remember that Zelda was considered an underdog all the way back in Round 3 against *Squall Leonhart.* Also that nobody was quite sure what to make of Division 6, with fallen stars such as Vincent and Magus along with entirely too many potential rally-bait characters, but Squall was a comfortable Guru favorite to win this match. --- ## (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (1)Sephiroth (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (1)Sephiroth (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88631)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Had Zelda never happened, this would have been our lowest prediction percentage of the entire contest. I know Tifa got annihilated by Samus twice, but that does not take away from Tifa's insane run this contest, how nuts this result is, and how epic these two sprites looked next to each other for us Final Fantasy fans. Tifa's wins, in order: Geno, Mewtwo, Mega Man X, Luigi, and Sephiroth. You won't find many contest runs better than Tifa's this year. Remember this match? It was only eight years ago. Sephiroth won 56-44, but I remember thinking at the time Tifa had a damn fine match and that Seph looked like absolute trash. Here's the proof: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Sephiroth_vs\_(10)Tifa_Lockheart_2010 \] It's also worth noting that back when Sephiroth was actually elite, these two had two fourpacks together in 2008. It did not go well for Tifa at all. But here, in 2018, Tifa was done fucking around and decided to just beat Sephiroth's ass for eight solid hours. Seph's early vote struggles were going to catch up to him at some point, and it happened in this match. Tifa had a 200 vote lead in half an hour, and parlayed that into a 1000 vote lead through the poll's first eight hours. Seph actually did really well for the final 16 hours of this poll, and by "well" I mean he "only" lost the last 16 hours of the poll by 200 total votes. But that didn't matter. The damage was done and Sephiroth's exit this year would go down as nothing short of embarrassing. He only looked good against Ryu, his early votes have been garbage for years, and this dude was bound to get exposed at some point. I just never imagined it would come at the hands of someone from his own game who has been weaker than him in these polls for 13 solid years (Tifa's debut was in 2005). Pikachu broke the Noble Nine. Zelda dug its grave. Tifa lowered the corpse in and buried it for good. People know what Same Fanbase Factor (SFF) is by now, but this match is probably our first confirmed case of Reverse SFF. It's been talked about a lot, usually among Nintendo characters, but seeing Tifa beat Sephiroth like this is impossible to ignore. It's also the other direct match we would have gotten had the main bracket concluded, and with this we pretty much know what would have happened. Pikachu \> Ganondorf Bowser \> Alucard Zelda \> Auron Tifa \> Sephiroth Bowser \> Pikachu Zelda \> Tifa Zelda \> Bowser That would have been so, so entertaining. Thanks, Allen :( I still think Seph might be stronger than Tifa indirectly by maybe a percentage or two, but he will never be what he once was. It would also be very, very, very difficult for me to pick him over anyone in that low Noble Nine to near-elite range. Basically, that whole group of Luigi, Mega Man X, Mega Man, Sonic, Bowser, Ganondorf, Pikachu, Kirby, Crono, Yoshi, and so on could all make a case for beating Sephiroth. It's pretty sad given he almost won the contest in 2003, and outright won a contest once. That dude has fallen really far from where he once was. You know what could save him though? And I'm not even kidding about this. Unfortunately, Square is run by a bunch of complete idiots. There is nothing and no one in media that hasn't benefited from compilations. Coachella draws more interest than any one tour from any artist playing at Coachella. Avengers speaks for itself. Smash Bros taking our site over speaks for itself. Lebron ushering in players controlling leagues instead of other way around speaks for itself. "Nah bro I'll do my own thing" just doesn't work anymore. But I'm spoiling something I want to talk about later so we move on. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was hilarious. I mean most expected that Sephiroth would win, he would struggle yeah, but win none the less. He won the last time these 2 fought anyways. In 20 minutes Tifa was ahead with more than 57%! And as per typical for Sephiroth he managed to recover. So after some hours the match stalled and they basically went until the end with around 50-50. But man. Bad day for us Sephiroth fans. So why this happened? I believe that as some said that people really don't care now for Broody guys or like Androgynous guys or something. They care for cute or hot characters. Or both actually. A good example is Pokemon. I remember when it first came out EVERYONE was saying it was for kids. And that was the case for a lot of years. But in the later years this changed. Look at Pokemon Go. Almost always adults were playing it. And the Detective Pikachu movie. Pretty sure a lot of adults will see it. So yeah. Macho men or very sensitive men don't sell now. Waifus though? This is where the money is! Now I guess that means that Sephiroth is the weakest NN'er now. Man remember when he beat FREAKING Mario with more than 61%? Those were the times! Well if in the next contest we have FF 7 remake or at least he is in KH 3 maybe he will boost a little. Because even though he has a game on PS 4 now(Dissidia NT)I don't think anyone cares for that. Also Tifa's prediction percentage was 2.35% which is on the top 10 of the lowest percentages ever. And it makes sense too. Well that was at least an exciting result. ## Tsunami's Analysis Sephiroth was the overwhelming favorite here by just about every metric imaginable. We can't see exactly how many of the overall brackets had any one particular wrong choice, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was the most popular pick there, too. Maybe. Mario was a surprisingly slight favorite to beat "Division 8 Winner", or at least, it's surprising given how Sephiroth was only about a 4:3 favorite to win Division 8. So it wouldn't surprise me if the casuals were largely on board with Sephiroth \> Mario and had Mario winning this match. At any rate, even with it clear that the top female characters were boosting, only one Oracle pulled the trigger on this upset, because it's been drummed into our heads that SFF creates a clear hierarchy and that nothing will ever produce an upset when heavily overlapped fanbases match up. ...In 1v1s, nothing will ever produce a 1v1 upset between characters from the same fanbase. Yeah, that's what we meant to say. And suddenly, Sephiroth did look like he'd lost a step, and that his relegation to the main bracket was justified. Even with all of the doom and gloom surrounding the Noble Nine after Vivi \> Mario, to the point that some people thought Snake could wind up as the only one to win his division, Sephiroth still made the final nine there. This Top 16 finish was his worst ever. And this was never in doubt. Tifa jumped out to a huge lead right away, pushing it to triple digits by the second update. One third of the way through the match, her lead stood at exactly 1000, and from there, it fell into a stall, for the final margin of 1205. This contest had completely gone off the rails, and we were now seeing the bracket-buster records set by the likes of L-Block, Draven, and Undertale being seriously threatened by characters we already *knew* to be strong. Quite simply, it was a glorious return to the days of contests being able to surprise us. --- ## (1)Link vs (7)Pikachu (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (7)Pikachu (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88629)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We've seen Link deliver some epic SFF beatdowns over the years, notably that famous 88-12 beatdown of Ganondorf back in 2004. So when this match happened, people assumed it was just another SFF beating. Pikachu did "okay" for a little while, but it wasn't long before Link started getting updates well into the 70% range. Which is insane when you think about it, but this was a Link boosted by the power of Smash Ultimate and Breath of the Wild. No one in this contest was going to touch the dude. Not even Pikachu during the sprite round. Link was just on a whole other level this year. As for the so-called SFF. Pokemon in general resists SFF against Nintendo very well, and I don't think Pikachu suffered from it by more than a percent or two here. Reason being if you just take the 31.59% number he got here and just add a single percentage point, it puts Pikachu right at the level of where all the other near-elite Nintendo characters are. Add 1.5% and it's probably exactly where he belongs. We'll use KP's stats as an example: Pikachu - 33.09% Mega Man X - 32.98 Ganondorf - 32.98 Pikachu - 32.59% Luigi - 32.2 Bowser - 32.06 Kirby - 32 Sonic the Hedgehog - 31.65 Yoshi - 31.51 We have some precedent for this if you start looking from 2004 and on. So yeah, I don't know exactly how much SFF Pikachu ate here. Not that it matters, we're splitting hairs here anyway because there's never anything else to talk about when Link blows people out. Pikachu's Super Bowl was last round when he beat Mega Man and ended the Noble Nine. Just getting to this point and winning a match in the legends bracket like this was super clutch of him. ## Safer777's Analysis Link always wins. LAW we call it here. So he would win. But to tell the truth I was sure that Pikachu would avoid a doubling. And look at this. Link is so strong that it is ridiculous. Pretty sure everyone wants him to retire by now. Every other character here can be defeated by other characters. But not Link. Without rallies I mean of course. So of course he dominated here. I told before the contest that nobody would be able to break 35%. Maybe Cloud will do it. Still nobody will break 40% on him though no matter what I believe. As for Pika he did goot. Did anyone expected to reach that far and did so good against Link? So that is. ## Tsunami's Analysis So yeah, about that Pikachu... In 2007, he made it to the quarterfinals, which due to the fourway format meant Top 16 instead of Top 8, but nevertheless it meant outlasting 7/8 of the field. But everyone just chalked it up to SFF and LFF, and possibly Tidus having a reputation as a choker. With Pikachu handily getting second behind Leon Kennedy in Round 2, the idea that it was SFF/LFF that let him win his Round 3 fourpack might not have been totally unwarranted (although you have to figure that Leon might have benefited from STF in Round 2, being the protagonist of a dark, mature horror game against three bright, colorful characters). In 2008, Pikachu makes the quarterfinals again. Absolutely no one is accusing him of being the beneficiary of SFF this time; if anything, he's catching flak in the early rounds for dishing it out, allowing Arthas Menethil to advance over Ike and take 3rd place in Round 2 over Captain Falcon. But mostly they didn't really care because he knocked out L-Block, and because Samus's presence meant he wouldn't get in the way of the Crono-Vincent rubber match. In 2010, Pikachu takes a step back and is knocked out in Round 3, which despite the return to 1v1s is once again the Round of 32. But then the raw X-Stats come out and he's ***6th. ***Again, this is quietly swept away because it's Solid Shit vs. ...wait, is that a HeartGold/SoulSilver sprite, mere days after the game came out in the United States? *Damn* Pikachu had the pic advantage! We always talk about the sprite round being good for Pokémon, but a true "first appearance" theme like they have in a lot of the sprite rounds (though not this year; for example, the Legend of Zelda crew was rocking ALttP sprites) would actually be kind of iffy because the Gen I sprites are pretty hideous, especially if you *truly* enforced the letter of the law and used Japanese Red/Green sprites instead of the Japanese Blue sprites that were carried over to the international releases. In 2013, people are griping about Pikachu benefiting from SFF before it even happens, praying for Otacon to upset Magus so that Crono can get a fair shot at Pikachu. Pikachu wins handily, then resists LFF from Pokémon Trainer Blue, another SFF beneficiary, to edge out Sora for the Top 9. Board 8 was surprised for some reason when he managed to take second in the semifinal trio over fellow Gen I icon Squirtle; personally, I'm more surprised that he wasn't able to repeat the feat in the Fourth Place Match against Mewtwo (though Mewtwo rSFFing Pikachu seems logical given how Mewtwo was the cool, edgy overpowered final boss type, and I think maybe also a higher tier in Melee? I don't know; I don't follow competitive Smash. Then again, being more popular within the fanbase was a justification we often used for picking hilarious upsets in the early years, and this was probably the first time it actually came through.) And now here he was again, having advanced out of the Top 16. Due to the double-elimination format, this merely put him into the Top 12, not the Top 8, but nevertheless: ***Pikachu is legit.*** There's really no denying it. Getting more than doubled by Link is nothing to be ashamed of; it's even happened to Noble Niners. In 1v1s, even. His loss here set up a rematch with Mega Man, and given how close the first match was, it was no guarantee that he'd win again...but it was no guarantee that he'd lose, either. We really need to stop using the term "Noble Nine" in the context of measuring contest strength. The Noble Nine will always be the Noble Nine, and can never be added to or subtracted from. They are the original nine Elites, who have been in every contest and have been elite in every contest--yes, even when Crono got beat in Round 1 by a glitchy pile of garbage data, because that falls under the purview of "rallies". But as of this contest, it's clear that they have legitimate company in the highest tier (well, the *highest* tier is still just Link by himself, but aside from that). Zelda, Pikachu, probably Tifa. I'm still not entirely convinced that Mega Man X isn't really close to Mega Man Classic in indirect strength, and losing to Tifa doesn't invalidate that because she's part of this group of "new elites". Outside of the ever-dangerous rallybait, it would surprise me if any of them were to lose to competition outside of each other and the Noble Nine, even though all of them have done so in the past. (Well, X hasn't outside of getting double-barrel SFFed by Link and Mario, but that's because it took him so long to debut.) --- ## (4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88627)_ ## Ulti's Analysis A common theme that kept popping up pre-contest was trying to figure out which match Cloud would lose. He's been looking vulnerable for years in these things and Final Fantasy 7 has looked like trash for a decade. I myself have gotten caught up in this, mainly because I picked the Squirtle loss and loved that random Trainers \> FF7 upset we got as a bonus match in the Rivalry Rumble. For the curious, I had Cloud losing to Monika (lol) one round later and then losing to Link in the losers bracket. Shows what I know! What we all forgot is that Cloud appearing in Super Smash Bros is a huge deal, and staved off a lot of his erosion. Beginning with this match (some would say the Bowser match but I disagree), there was a lot of hype about Cloud losing. Crono's case was pretty obvious, too, given how insane Chrono Trigger looked in 2015. This was the first time these two had ever faced each other 1 on 1, too, which was really neat. Unfortunately for everyone, this match was a typical Final Fantasy 7 match. Close to 5 minutes, then FF7 wins like it always does lol. There are actually people who think FF7 wins every contest, which is so weird. The hope for Crono died in about 10 minutes, and given Cloud would end up getting 57% here, this was actually a fantastic match for the guy. Most people did not see him doing this well: This wasn't SFF, either, because we've seen that Final Fantasy slash Square doesn't really SFF itself outside of very obvious cases. This was just Cloud taking his newfound Smash Bros strength and putting an old-school ass whuppin on a pretender. I also want everyone to remember that this was a sprite round match. These two would have a rematch in a few days without sprites that would prove me right once and for all that sprites don't make one damn bit of difference and that all the crybabies who spent 2 weeks bitching about them would leave this contest looking unbelievably dumb. ## Safer777's Analysis There was a small debate that Crono would be able to win. But Cloud won easily. I still I am baffled that Crono is so strong after all these years with only 1 game! The question though is that is Cloud the strongest Non Nintendo Character? Hard to say. I think Snake beats him. And from Nintendo characters Mario and Samus may beat him? Zelda might too? To tell the truth Link is the only one that surely beats him. Still we will have another Cloud VS Link match. I think this is like the 69th time they fight? Or their games? Can't wait to see what will happen! ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, just one match after saying that we should stop talking about the Noble Nine, I have no choice but to talk about the Noble Nine! Well, not exactly. What I said in the last match was that we should stop using the Noble Nine as a shorthand for "the most elite characters who will never lose to anyone other than each other unless there's weird rally shit." This was actually a long-awaited match, one that we honestly probably should've seen way back in the CJayC days but even with all the SFF matches that CJay liked to set up he never sent the protagonists of the two most well-regarded Square RPGs to face each other, because Mario vs. Crono was already a meme by the time the SFF debacle of '04 took place. (I'm still not sure what I think of FFVII, because I'm too addicted to FE:TH to go back to my FFVII playthrough. I didn't like CT too much when I first played it but I want to give it a second chance after having played and enjoyed FFVI.) But instead, their only meeting was in the fourway finale of the 2008 contest, where Crono provided just enough LFF to allow Snake to upset Cloud for second place. As for what this result meant...the instinctive result was to say that it meant that FFVII really was weakening and that it went all the way to the top (the irony being that Sephiroth's weakness was exposed by a fellow FFVII character, but "porn rallies"), since the last time we'd seen Crono, he looked like he'd have probably struggled to beat Pikachu even without Magus LFFing him. What most of the board *wanted* it to be, on the other hand, was that CT's run through the Games Contest wasn't just a case of Games =/= Characters and that the CT crew was back. And the thing is, there was a good case for it. Not one Oracle picked Magus to lose by as little as he did (though some of them did predict him to win outright), and the two highest picks for Frog in his first match were the two closest. The only question is...why? Unlike fellow Squaresoft RPGs FFVI and SMRPG, CT wasn't included on the SNES Classic. It hasn't received a new series on Netflix like Castlevania did (also a franchise with representation on the SNESC). Crono hasn't even gotten into Smash Ultimate! There is no good reason why CT's plummet should have stopped, and yet, it seemed to have done so. Oh, wait, yes there was. The ever-dwindling vote totals. This site hardly gets any traffic normally, with contests representing an uptick due to social media spreading the word--but even then, it probably only draws in hardcore old-school gamers like the ones who've been sticking around all these years on Board 8. The hardcore fanbase that's still stuck in the 1990s is the only one still voting. So we're probably going to see whatever representatives of ancient franchises had new releases this past decade dominate the upcoming GotD. (I mean granted, we all *already* crowned Breath of the Wild the moment it came out, but it's even more obvious now.) --- ## (4)Zelda vs (6)Sonic the Hedgehog (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (6)Sonic the Hedgehog (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88625)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Good hell, Zelda. This contest had four matches where someone in the Noble Nine lost to someone from outside the group. Pikachu \> Mega Man, Zelda \> Snake, Tifa \> Sephiroth, and this match. I think in terms of overall impact Sephiroth's loss was the worst one, but this match here where Zelda made Sonic look like an absolute scrub was by far the biggest blowout of any of those four matches. We covered Sonic's near misses in the Sonic/Auron writeup, but it's worth noting that Sonic has some bad losses when he faces the upper tier in these contests. Samus has embarrassed him three times now. Cloud in 2003 was the match that made everyone go "uh oh, Cloud's got a real shot at this", because Sonic got his ass beat so badly that year. Link has beaten him like a drum, his games always underwhelm, and his performances in multi-way polls are just awful. And none of that prepared anyone for just how awful Zelda made the dude look here. This wasn't some bandwagon fluke where Zelda won close. She was the stronger character in this match and this was never actually a match. In fact Sonic is lucky this wasn't a whole lot worse. Zelda easily could have had 58% had she not taken her foot off the gas, and for my money this is Sonic's worst loss of his career. Getting blown out by Link or Cloud is one thing. Getting blown out by Zelda is quite something else, and proves one important thing on top of Zelda merely being on some BotW-induced steroids. Sonic is a Nintendo character now. And when you're a Nintendo character, bad things happen when you go up against The Legend of Zelda. Ask any of them. They've all bent the knee. The Zelda series is basically the Lannisters, or the Protheans, or Thanos, the ancient Romans. Bend the knee, or die. Those are your options. And yes I'm using Sonic losses to get hyped for Marvel movies and Game of Thrones and all the other great things coming in 2019 like 4 months early. I give no fucks. Sonic even looks like the Stark sigil and Zelda might as well be Cersei. Link can be Jon Snow, Cloud can be Jamie Lannister, Sheik can be Arya, and most importantly, Samwell Tarly is Tingle. Hell you could make the entire GoT cast with Zelda characters. Oh and did you think Zelda was finished playing the game of thrones in this contest? We've created a monster, gentlemen. This was going to get so much worse before it got better. ## Safer777's Analysis Zelda beat Snake who has to be the strongest non Nintendo character and maybe even Number 2 on this site. No way she would lose to Sonic. And after the previous match of Sonic where he couldn't even break 55% on Auron he didn't stand a chance. So Zelda won fairly easy. If Sonic managed to score above 45% I would consider this a really good result but now? I guess Sonic has to be the 2nd weakest NN member now. And Zelda of course continues to impress. Maybe star of the contest. Extremely strong of course. Also this is the worse defeat for a NNer against a non NNer too! ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh, hey, speaking of dwindling vote totals... It should be noted that Sonic had fewer votes in this match than Crono did in the previous one, but got a better percentage. Though this could be in part because Allen forced voters to vote for all matches taking place on a given day or for none of them, and Cloud-Crono, in addition to being a big draw for GameFAQs' core fanbase, was paired with Link-Pikachu, while Zelda-Sonic was paired with yet another Mario-Samus match. Granted, *we* love Mario-Samus matches, because there's never any shortage of people arguing that this will finally be Samus's chance to upset Mario. And it's not really a *bad* argument, per se. Samus *does* look like she's almost there, and picking Samus \> Mario was what won raytan the Guru Contest in 2013 even if it only worked out because Mario had gotten upset in an earlier round. Anyway this is pretty much the most anti-climactic "upset" you'll ever see, which is to say, it was only an upset in the sense that *pre*-contest, we still thought that the only non-NN characters a member of the Noble Nine would lose to were rallybait. Not a single Oracle picked Sonic to win here, and why would they when Zelda had already dispatched the superior Snake? Even in the Guru, the favorite won--which is to say that *no one* had Sonic winning this match, while one entry had Zelda...oh, no, wait, that was the dummy entry used to bugfix the double elimination. Titled "Mr Bad Picks". Yeah, not really so bad after all, is it? The second chance bracket also had Zelda being carried over by a majority of those who had picked her to beat Snake. The initial brackets? ...Yeah, barely, but then again that was already a very small amount. Makes the Top 25 for "most surprising 1v1 results", though it narrowly misses out on the Top 25 overall. --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (7)Mario (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (7)Mario (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88623)_ ## Ulti's Analysis By now, everyone who follows these contests knows about the match these two had back in 2005: The reason a 60-40 blowout has gotten so much run over the years is because it blew up extrapolated standings in the face of a lot of Samus \> Mario hype that year. transience calls it his third most important match we've ever had. Statheads all picked Samus, because she was indirectly stronger. People with common sense picked Mario, because the idea of Samus beating Mario in a poll on this site at the time was asinine to us. You all know the rest. I wasn't exactly known for being a gracious winner at the time, and I penned a pretty embarrassing writeup of the match. It can be found here: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Mario_vs\_(1)Samus_Aran_2005 \] My opinion on statheads and their holy doctrine hasn't changed, but there are much better ways to go about giving an opinion than that bile I wrote. Good hell. I often get asked why I don't update old stuff. It's because I like to look back now and again and see how far my writing has come. I also got asked during this match why I love Mario so much, because loving Mario as a character makes no sense. This will seem weird and uncomfortable to a lot of people, but I've been meaning to archive this in a PCA for a long time. I might as well throw it in here. My real dad was either kicked out or left when my mom was pregnant, and the first 8 years or so of my life was really rough. We weren't poor, but we were really close to it. It was my single grandmother, my single mother, a bunch of single aunts and uncles, I had some really bad ADHD (still do, but as an adult I manage it a lot better), and most people in that house were really abusive. When my mom finally met a guy to marry, he ended up being an abusive, alcoholic pedophile. You can fill in the blanks. To this day I remember my mom dying when I was in high school and not even remotely caring. I told her once what my stepdad was doing, and her response was to not believe me before telling everyone else in my family I was a liar and a crazy person. Yeah, because a 12 year old would make any of that up. Moved out the day I turned 18 and I've almost never talked to anyone in my family since. I forgive them, but I haven't forgotten one thing. Not a one. To the point. My main escapes at the time were school (smartest person in my family by a mile and I was always well liked in school) and video games. Well as a super young kid going through all that nonsense, I had the original Nintendo. In high school I mowed lawns for a Sega Genesis. Never had anything else until I moved out. For the Nintendo I had Mario 1, Mario 2, Mario 3, Zelda 1, Zelda 2, TMNT 1, TMNT 2, Tetris, The Guardian Legend, Crystalis, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Wheel of Fortune, Donkey Kong Jr (the one with both games on it), and Duck Hunt. For Sega I had Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Madden 94, NHL 94, Jewel Master, Earthworm Jim 1, Earthworm Jim 2, Shanghai 2, Tony Larussa Baseball, NBA Jam, Vectorman, and Super High Impact. I remember my entire childhood library like it was yesterday, because at home when you're being abused in the worst possible way, those are your best friends and your best memories. Video games probably saved my life. True story. My favorite game on that entire list is Mario 3. I cannot actually put in words how important that game is to me on top of it just being a damn good game, but let's just say there are reasons beyond gaming I freaked out so much when Mario won in 2005. I like him winning in 2002 and 2003 in those debated matches too, but 2005 was just different. It's like really, my childhood hero is going to lose to someone I hadn't heard of before Smash 64? Get out of here. I could have handled it better, but I hope this helps people see why I wasn't exactly cordial about it at the time. The way I came up is why I have no sympathy for people who make excuses, either. I came out the other side as an adult and became successful. Stop making excuses and go to work. If I can do it, so can you. So let's fast forward 13 years. Here's Mario and Samus slated for their first duel since 2005, and it was.... actually.... close? Say what? When this started, it was not an SFF match at all. This was only 53-47, and Mario only had a 125 vote lead after 30 minutes. Then Samus knocked it down to 50 in ten minutes. Right then and there, it hit me. The people who backed Samus in 2005 were actually right. She is stronger than Mario indirectly, and I owe you all an apology. So here you go. Consider this writeup as cordial an apology as you'll ever get. You guys were right and had a perfectly fair point. Samus is absolutely capable of beating Mario. That 10 minute window proved it. Unfortunately, Mario buried Samus from then on out. Relatively speaking, at least. He won by about 800, but had a peak lead of nearly 1000. Mario may have won the rematch, but the implications here are obvious. This match shut down a 13 year old argument and pretty much made both sides look correct. That's as good of an ending as you can have to a feud. For that reason, these two having a rematch in this exact contest a few days later was awful. This match was a perfect ending. The rematch ripped the wound back open. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was extremely hyped. And it makes sense. We had the 2nd and 3rd strongest Nintendo characters here. These 2 have fought before and Mario won easily. And people still debate on that much! Come on people, 13 years have passed! So most thought that Mario would win because of Hierarchy. But we saw a few matches ago in Tifa/Sephiroth that even that can be reversed. And Samus was always really strong. Mario is of course strong too. And in this match he won. Barely though. So Samus did really good but it wasn't enough. But why Mario won since people say that Samus is stronger than Mario indirectly? Because of Hierarchy! You can't deny that here. We are talking about Top Tier Hierarchy here!  In Tifa/Sephiroth don't forget that Sephiroth is the bad guy. This matter too. For example I don't think Tifa will be able to beat Cloud ever. I don't know much about Metroid games but I think in the last years she hadn't had anything amazing. I mean I think the SNES game is considered the best right? Still Samus did really good here. Name another site which this match is this close. But since she did so good here maybe in a few years she can beat Mario, like how Tifa beat Sephiroth. Who knows? ## Tsunami's Analysis Another one of those matches that never really blew up but was never in doubt. Mario's lead at the halfway point of the match--in *votes*, not percentage--was barely smaller than his final margin of victory, 815, yet his largest lead of the entire match was still under 1000. The second half of the match was just a stall. Samus didn't even do any early threatening; she got the initial board vote, 8-6 at the first snapshot taken a few seconds in, but it was the last time she'd be recorded in the lead. This match really would've benefited from being done "in the moment", because these two characters would have a far superior match in the Losers' Bracket in a few days! --- ## (7)Pikachu vs (8)Mega Man (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (7)Pikachu vs (8)Mega Man (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88621)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I really have to sit in awe of some of the calls yoblazer makes in these things. He went on The Show and called that we would have a rematch in the loser's bracket that flips, and he said this was the most likely candidate. He even predicted the trends and the reasons. Damn bro. I did not think Mega Man would be able to win the rematch, and the funny thing here is this match did not at all look as close as that score is. Without Europe, I'm willing to bet Mega Man pushes to a 1000 vote win or so. When this started, there was a small blip at the beginning, but then Mega Man just took off from poll opening until the overnight Europe vote kicked in. He had about a 500 vote lead at that time, and the typical "you murdered my dog" overnight vote that typically buries Mega Man simply was not there. Well I mean it was, but we've seen Mega Man do worse overnight. Pikachu only got that lead down to 250 during the assistance of the entire overnight vote, and when Mega Man won the morning match against a Pokemon this thing was over. Pikachu was able to shave off some votes during the day time, but he never once threatened to actually win this match after the first five minutes. It's cool that Mega Man got some revenge here, but I'm not sure how much a loser's bracket match actually means in the long run. I actually said during the contest that these felt like bonus polls to me. Like who really cares that ? Block won a bonus poll once? At the time this match happened, we all assumed Zelda would just stomp through the loser's bracket anyway, and even then these matches didn't feel like they had the same meaning as the legends bracket. Basically, Pikachu's win over Mega Man meant a lot more than the getback. I would feel the same had Mega Man won first and Pikachu won the rematch. Outside of Mario vs Samus, it was hard for me to really care who won these losers bracket matches, even though double elimination was a good idea. Having a predictable overall winner will do that. ## Safer777's Analysis We saw this match a few days ago and Pikachu won and it was the first ever win against a NN'er in a 24 hour 1 on 1 match from a non NN'er. In this match MM won and with more than Pikachu defeated him. Barely though. Well in such close matches it makes sense that they can turn around. I wanted Pika to win but I don't care. Pikachu will  always be remembered in the contest history as the one that broke the NN so that is all that matters to me. Still turning around such a loss with a bigger win is nice to see of course. The question is will Pikachu hold on this power for the next contests though? Because MM will hold it if not go up for sure. Guess we shall see eventually. ## Tsunami's Analysis Pikachu 13809 Mega Man 14182 Whereas Pikachu and Mega Man's first match set a new record for closest wire-to-wire 24 hour match, their second match set the record for closest wire-to-wire 24 hour match in which the loser never led. It was actually on the wiki for awhile as the closest wire-to-wire match in which the loser never led, period, due to a digit transposition that had Mega Man's maximum lead listed as 478 rather than 487. Yes, the 9 votes makes a difference; the record, set in a 12-hour match in 2013, is 480. The prevailing theory tossed around as to how Pikachu was able to pull out the upset the first time was that because of the hiatus between the end of the main bracket and the start of Legends, casuals "weren't ready" for the return. They point to the fact that Mega Man won the raw vote in that match and only lost because of the registered user bonus. And the fact that Mega Man's lead, which as stated above never reached 500, was already above 400 *three hours into the match*, certainly does suggest that a "readiness" was involved. But I say that's still bunk. Here, let me pull up the numbers for you from that first match: Mega Man 14396 Pikachu 14458 Mega Man had fewer votes in the match he won than in the match he lost! In fact, the only figure that's higher in the match that people were supposedly "more ready for" is Mega Man's unregistered votes, 5308-5288. Both characters received fewer total votes and fewer votes from registered users, though the most glaring discrepancy, at 5140-4845, is Pikachu's unregistered votes. A far more likely explanation is that Pikachu voters were unmotivated to go back for a match they'd already won. Which kind of makes sense, because double-elimination brackets aren't supposed to look like this. It's supposed to be that each successive round sends its losers to a far-flung region of the loser's bracket from the previous one, so that rematches of winner's bracket matches are kept to a minimum. I *kind* of understand why Allen did it the way he did--to minimize how much a wrong pick wrecks your bracket--but it was wrong and it was stupid. As for the match, Pikachu never really threatened to take back the lead. Mega's lead maxed out around 5 hours in, Pikachu eventually whittled it down to under 250 over the next 6 hours, and then Mega slowly started building it back up, maxing it at...478. Maybe it wasn't a digit transposition, but faulty searching that failed to notice how high the lead was early on? Pikachu would eventually get it down to 260 before Mega Man started building it again at the end. This would set up another hyped match, to see what the Noble Nine's pecking order really looked like. --- ## (5)Crono vs (4)Bowser (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (5)Crono vs (4)Bowser (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88619)_ ## Ulti's Analysis On November 28th, 2018, these two had this literal exact same match in the legend bracket: This match here in the losers bracket happened on December 5th, eight days later. It was literally the same exact match, and if memory serves Crono even had the same exact picture as last game. Same trends, same everything. The only difference this time is Bowser kept it close for 10 minutes instead of 5. "Yay." Oh, and there was 0.13% difference in the final percentage. Awesome. This is why the structure I talked about during the mid contest analysis is how it should have been laid out. We had six direct rematches in a double elimination bracket, which is not possible if it's laid out correctly. You should, at most, have three rematches. Six is just a bad layout, which sucks because I legitimately liked this idea. Coincidentally, only three of these six rematches were worth having (Mega Man/Pikachu, Mario/Samus, and Link/Cloud) and only two were good matches. Crono vs Bowser was not one of them. Moving on. ## Safer777's Analysis Yup another match that we saw a few days ago. Crono did a bit worse here, like 0.13%! So yeah pretty stable. Of course when the first match ended in such big win for Crono no way without rallies Bowser could win here. Nice thing for Bowser though is that he is the one Villain that lasted more than all other Villains! Both Ganondorf and Sephiroth lasted less than him. And these 3 are the strongest villains. So that is moral victory for Bowser! ## Tsunami's Analysis The poorly constructed double-elimination bracket resulted in 6 rematches, 3 in this round alone. A couple of those rematches actually had something worth talking about. This was not one of them. Like the previous match, the overall vote total went down from the original. But whereas the percentages in that match moved by 0.78%, and a very influential 0.78% since it was shifting in favor of the original loser who already had 49.89%, this one shifted a mere 0.13%. Please never do a double elimination bracket again, Allen, but if you do, at least do it right next time! --- ## (6)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Solid Snake (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (6)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (3)Solid Snake (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88617)_ ## Ulti's Analysis LOL, X STATS Well would you look at what we have here.... And yet despite Snake doing better than Zelda did on Sonic, Zelda beat Snake! How is such a thing even possible? It's possible because as I have said for years and years, stats are a very loose guide and each match takes on a life of its own. Solid Snake was not going to go out of this contest like a bitch and get blown out in double elimination, so this was his time to shine. It unfortunately had to come at Sonic's expense, but what can you do. At least Sonic won a match in this thing, too, against Auron. In fact, all of the Noble Nine won at least one match in this contest. Sephiroth was the only one not to win anything in the double elimination, but he won matches in the main bracket. I guess Allen knew what he was doing with leaving Seph out, because he's probably the weakest Noble Nine guy at this point. This match was good for Snake, but it sucked for Board 8 because of him outdoing Zelda's number. This caused some dumb arguments about whether adjustments needed to be made, which I promise you I gave absolutely zero cares about. I look at these matches at face value and have fun with them. That's it. Arguing over percentage micro adjustments is just not my thing. With Sonic out of it as of this match, I really have to wonder how he was seemingly the only Sonic character to look bad this year. I get the others all faced garbage competition, but man. Sonic's only win was getting 54% on Auron. Brutal. That will happen when 8 of 9 members all get thrown into a bonus bracket immediately though! ## Safer777's Analysis This match was pretty easy to predict. They both faced Auron, Sonic scored 54.32% and Snake scored 61.48%. And these characters are not from the same company so no Hierarchy and such. So Snake won easily here. People say that Sonic and Sephiroth are the weakest NN'ers and Snake maybe is the strongest non Nintedo character. He lost to Zelda yeah, but Zelda is the star of the contest so no problem. But who really knows? Nice victory for Snake. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was the only match of Loser's Bracket Round 2 that was not a rematch of a winner's bracket match, which...counterintuitively, suggests that there was at least *some* thought put into the placements of characters. After all, this round was Losers 1 winners vs. Legends 2 losers. In a properly seeded tournament, you'd *expect *the entrants that lost to the Legends 2 favorites in Legends 1 to be the underdogs in Losers 1. I feel like I'm not really doing it justice in sentence format so let's use the seedings given to the eight Noble Niners given auto-passes to Legends and pretend that the eight division winners have the proper seedings to be facing them. 1\) Link 16) Ganondorf 8\) Mega Man 9) Pikachu 4\) Cloud Strife 13) Alucard 5\) Crono 12) Bowser 3\) Solid Snake 14) Zelda 6\) Sonic the Hedgehog 11) Auron 2\) Samus Aran 15) Tifa Lockhart 7\) Mario 10) Sephiroth ...Okay, so the actual results showed that maybe Mario and Samus had their seeds swapped, though in fairness, Seph is a Noble Niner and really probably should've been put against the 8-seed. But regardless of that, the only Loser's Bracket 2 match that isn't a rematch occurred when the 14-seed has managed to pull off two upsets. Does that bracket actually look perfectly seeded? No, it doesn't. If you wanted Mario-Samus in Round 2, they probably should've been the 4-5. Switching the placements of Cloud-Crono and Mario-Samus probably makes the top 8 feasible, though you'd obviously have to move Sephiroth so that he could properly receive his 9-seed because...oh, wait, Mario was the 7, not the 2. I guess Sephiroth as the 10 with Cloud as the 2 is fine. As for the match itself, it was a clear, unadulterated beatdown. Sonic occasionally won an update here and there but for the most part Snake was increasing all day. --- ## (2)Samus Aran vs (3)Tifa Lockheart (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (2)Samus Aran vs (3)Tifa Lockheart (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88615)_ ## Ulti's Analysis We just had this match: This was every bit as awful as Crono vs Bowser's rematch was, although I guess with these two characters being more popular some people cared more? I think? Maybe? The final difference between the first match and the rematch was 0.35%, which is not at all a rematch worth having. The only thing here worth talking about was Vlado's meltdown over Tifa losing, because he loves Tifa and hates Samus. I legitimately do not understand liking one of these characters and hating the other. They're both bad bitch good looking alpha females who just beat the hell out of everything around them despite being on the ass end of crazy odds. They might as well be the exact same character at the end of the day, but this match helped prove that Tifa has a very noticeable and definitive ceiling. Maybe in 15 years she'll get revenge on Samus the way she got her revenge on Sephiroth finally, but as of 2018 she is simply not on Samus's level. That isn't as crazy an idea as some might think, because it's pretty blatantly clear that Nintendo does not care about the Metroid series. I mean they make games for it, given Metroid Other M happened I have a hard time believing that they actually care about the series. No company with any respect for a franchise would put out such an abominable shit show of a video game. I'm quoting myself, because why not. I'll be as lazy as this match was! This is why the structure I talked about during the mid contest analysis is how it should have been laid out. We had SIX direct rematches in a double elimination bracket, which is not possible if it's laid out correctly. You should, at most, have three rematches. Six is just a bad layout, which sucks because I legitimately liked this idea. Coincidentally, only three of these six rematches were worth having (Mega Man/Pikachu, Mario/Samus, and Link/Cloud) and only two were good matches. Samus vs Tifa was not one of them. We had six direct rematches. I am ranking them only by how much I cared about them. 1 - Mario vs Samus 2 - Cloud vs Crono 3 - Mega Man vs Pikachu 4 - Link vs Cloud 5 - Samus vs Tifa 6 - Crono vs Bowser If you pay attention, I only actually care about one of these matches. The first one. Cloud vs Crono I only care about because it proved me right about sprites. The rest, who cares. This is a big reason I'm bummed out Zelda didn't go even farther, which we'll get to. ## Safer777's Analysis Another rematch. 3 out of 4 matches were rematches. Hope next time the Losers Bracket is better made. And unlike MM VS Pika where the match was extremely close and anyone could win, this one and the Crono one wasn't possible to change because the difference was so big. Tifa did slighlty better here at least. I wonder if Sephiroth was here would he do better? Probably not but who knows? Samus is pretty strong anyways. Also for the Tifa pic here she had HUGE tits! Seriously, big like her head! But of course it didn't helped much. Guess the TJF doesn't work against other women. Or when the opponent is so strong. ## Tsunami's Analysis And again, just a minor change to percentage. All three of this round's rematches featured the loser of the original match improving on their percentage, but only one--which had the highest movement anyway--had an original match close enough to be flipped. --- ## (1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88613)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Good. Freaking. Hell. We all knew Link would be a monster this year, but this is just insanity. As we all know, Cloud won the very first match he had with Link. Link has since spent 15 years beating the ever-loving shit out of the dude in revenge. It's been brutal. Here are all of the Link vs Cloud matches leading up to this one, in order: Their games have a similar history, too. Final Fantasy 7 won the very first match with Ocarina of Time, and has gotten its ass whipped ever since. There are two correlations here. One, Final Fantasy has not retained its strength. I'll get more into this when discussing the second match these two had, but Square been dropping the ball for almost two decades, and while Nintendo hasn't been perfect and in fact went through a long period between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild where they were awful, Nintendo has been killing it since Breath of the Wild came out. That singular game changed everything with making the Zelda series open world, and when you add in Smash Ultimate the Nintendo dominance on this site is unmatched. We saw signs of this all throughout the contest (just look at all my writeups and search for the word "Smash"), and those signs all had to lead somewhere. They led to Link breaking 60 fucking percent on Cloud. That is an absurd number to get on someone who may still be our site's \#2 character. Cloud actually breaking 40% in the rematch is a minor miracle. That's how dominant Link was in this contest, and had 1998 never happened in the years contest, Link in this one would be our most dominant non-rally champion ever. The other correlation here is that as GameFAQs has gotten more and more corporate and politically correct, it has gotten deader and deader and our vote totals have died. I want everyone to click on all of those poll links and just look at the vote totals. Now look at this one. It didn't even break 30,000 votes. Link himself had 30k by lunch time in most of those matches against Cloud. I have no interest in turning this into a politics discussion, but you have to be a company like Nike to survive going political in today's climate. GameFAQs has enough disadvantages as-is with intentionally staying obsolete as gaming went more and more streamlined and modernized. Going full leftist on top of that was just an idiotic move, and you see it in our vote totals. When you push enough people off of your site and constantly tell them they're free to leave, eventually they'll just leave. To the point, as vote totals have lowered, Zelda has retained strength. Cloud has not. It is that simple. But I want to focus on vote totals a bit. We don't even have to go back that far. Only five years ago, this match happened: 122,000 votes. The finals that year got 150,000 votes. Three years ago, this match happened: The final, featuring Zelda vs Undertale, got 157,000 votes. Now, our best matches get 30,000. That isn't just anti-rallying measures. That's us being on a site actively chasing people off. As for the match, it was interesting in the same way a car crash is interesting. Seeing Link be this much of a badass, even with lowered vote totals, was one hell of s site to see. He was actually over 62% at one point, which is just nuts. Cloud only won like 10 updates all match. This was just an embarrassment, and this is with Cloud having Smash Bros support. Can you even imagine how bad this would have been had he never gotten announced for Smash 4 or got cut from Ultimate? Does Link break 65% if that happens? Man. This was just brutal. Cloud would get to redeem himself in a way, but that doesn't stop this match from being completely and thoroughly embarrassing for him. ## Safer777's Analysis This is. The match that is tradition in these contests. We have seen this match so many times and only 1 time Cloud won. In the previous matches Link was scoring around 53% on average while Cloud was scoring around 47%. Now everyone in this match expecting Link to score high fifties while Cloud to score low forties. Personally I called before the match that Cloud wouldn't be able to break 40% and he would be lucky to even do that. Even the Crew didn't go such high for Link! And you see what happened. In the last hours of the match Cloud was beginning to gain percentage but he wasn't able to even reach 40%. We all knew that Link is strong but now nothing can beat him now. Not even rallies, nothing can I believe. There is Snake but we didn't know in this match how much weaker he would have gotten. So yeah. BOTW really boosted Link and Zelda. I believe Link is time to go finally. Have him face the champion as the bonus match and give no points for that. He will never lose again. And no other site cares for Gamefaqs to organize a rally anyways now. You can see that in the vote totals. All other characters can lose to other characters. All of them. Except Link. Fun! So  there you go. Link won! I know the journey matters, not the destination but still. ## Tsunami's Analysis In my write-up of Sonic vs. Snake, I talked about the seeding for the Legends Bracket and what might have made more sense. Mario in particular seemed underseeded, I guess so he could be matched up with Sephiroth but Allen could've easily moved the divisions around. But seeing this as a semifinal match just begs the question, how far did Allen think FFVII had fallen? Link vs. Cloud is pretty much a finals tradition; we've seen it in 60% of character battles, including this one thanks to the double elimination format. And yes I'm counting the finale of the 2006 Battle Royale here. The outliers are 2002, where they were on opposite sides of the bracket but Cloud was infamously upset by Mario; 2003, where they met in the semifinals; 2005, which was kind of a no-win situation because the Tournament of Champions was to be Link, Cloud, Sephiroth, and a main bracket champion that was presumed to most likely be Mario (it was). Even with that only being the fourth character battle, Mario winning the main bracket (which he did) would assure that all three matches of the ToC were rematches from the first three years. Probably still should've gone with Link-Sephiroth and Cloud-main bracket champ (since the other favorite in the main bracket, Crono, had faced Link but not Cloud or Sephiroth), but either way...and 2013, when Draven turned the entire contest upside down. They also met in the semifinals in 2007, but since two characters advanced from each fourpack, they were able to both make the finals. But really, it was hardly even relevant, because this was Cloud's worst performance against Link by far. In direct 1v1s, Link had never even broken 54% against Cloud, and even in matches with multiple characters, the only time Link was able to get 1.5 times Cloud's vote total (equivalent of a 60-40 in 1v1) was in Day 3 of the 2006 Battle Royale. Which I guess is proof that even Link is not completely immune to LFF since it suggests that he previously not only needed Sephiroth in the match to pull it off but also for Mario and Samus to both be absent. In a way, it's kind of disappointing that the top characters were held out of the main bracket. It's fun to see a good old-fashioned blowout every once in awhile, the big dogs going to town on the fodder every once in awhile. It's kind of like the difference between men's basketball and women's basketball. In the men's tournament, the raw records are usually a fairly good match to the seeding lines, because the mid-majors are usually going to get dinged in non-conference when they play the top teams. The women's tournament will frequently have teams with double-digit losses up around the 4-5 matchups while the 12-13 seeds they beat to get there had only 2 or 3 losses, because the top teams play each other in the regular season *all the time*, which by correlation means that there aren't any "big dogs" to keep the mid-majors from running up gaudy records. I suspect this is done to try to drum up interest in the regular season since the women's game is far more wanting for viewers, but let's be honest; if you're interested enough in the women's game to be enticed by the marquee matchups, you'd probably watch the marquee teams face overmatched teams, too. For those who aren't paying attention until the tournament, however, it's just confusing, because March Madness was built on the upsets. When a team like Stephen F. Austin makes it to the men's tournament with a record of 30-3 and gets a 12-seed, we jump on that potential upset. In the women's bracket, almost everything looks like a potential upset, and it usually isn't. Watching titans go at it is fun, but to truly appreciate greatness, you have to see it overpower weaklings from time to time, too. Otherwise you just have to trust the experts that yes, this is greatness, just not quite as great as some other greatness. Link was just on another level this contest. We saw it with Zelda in the main bracket, but it was clearly evident that it was the series boost too, as opposed to just that strange boost that a lot of female characters seemed to have this contest. --- ## (4)Zelda vs (7)Mario (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (7)Mario (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88611)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Right about here is where Zelda's run became completely insane. I mean it already was, but this was the exact "oh shit" moment that made everyone just lose it. These two actually had two matches together ten years ago. It looked like this: Mario has always struggled with the Zelda series, but he himself was a shit-kicking badass in these contests back in the day. But as of this match, this dude has a definitive and clear ceiling: The Legend of Zelda. All three characters have now tripped him up in contests. Link has beaten Mario like a drum, Ganondorf directly cost Mario a 3way match where Vivi snuck in for the win, and now this. Believe it or not this was a very close match for a long time, but Zelda took off near the very end. That said, Mario never once had a lead and Zelda was pretty much in control of things the entire time. Zelda won the board vote, and built up a 100 vote lead over an hour. Mario fought back a little, but one 40 vote update later and Zelda was holding serve again. She got it over 200 at midnight, and while Mario fought back a little overnight, we all figured Zelda would just go back up with the morning vote. Turns out it wouldn't actually happen that way. Zelda's lead fell to 60 overnight, but then the morning vote came and she shot right back up to 200. We all figured it was over at that point, but then Mario had one final small push in him before getting buried after lunch. These two were within 200 or so for 16 hours, but Zelda spent the last few just annihilating the guy. She eventually won by 500, which dispelled the whole idea of "The Mario Clutch". That hasn't been a thing for a long time, but Mario has lost enough close matches now to where we can put it to bed for good. Even the rematch with Samus doesn't technically count, which I'll get into later. Zelda was already the star of this contest, but this match converted any holdouts. Zelda was this contest's only real story at this point, as well as the only extended thing to hold our interest. She was the only one from the main bracket to go on a big run in the legends bracket. Including the main bracket, Zelda won 7 matches this year and beat three different Noble Nine members -- Snake, Sonic, and now Mario. Her bandwagon was growing really quickly, and if rallying were a thing, or if GameFAQs were still alive, she might have made a real push to win the contest this year. Unfortunately, this match would be her last victory. Doesn't make her run any less awesome, but this would have been so much cooler back when we had real vote totals. Still, that 1.66% prediction percentage can't go ignored. It's in the top ten hardest matches to call in the history of these contests, and is by far the hardest match to call for this one. In fact, the only things harder to call than this Zelda run are Draven, Undertale, and L-Block. Meaning this Zelda run was our biggest outlier for a non-rally ever. Most of the time this stuff is hard to explain, but in Zelda's case it's very simple. Breath of the Wild really did boost her this much. We'll see if her newfound Noble Nine level strength is sustainable, but for now let's just enjoy it, as this was legitimately the only sustainable bandwagon in Character Battle X with any real strength. Tifa was cute and all, but Samus destroyed her. Twice. Zelda actually threatened Link for 10 minutes and almost got a rematch with him. Ironically, Smash Bros being Nintendo's new strength was also what kept us from getting an all-Zelda grand final. Seeing her strength here was nuts. This girl went from losing to Charizard in 2013, losing to Snake in 2005, getting blown out by Mega Man in 2003.... to this. what an absurd jump in strength, and I freakin love it. We need way more examples of insane boosts or losses in strength. Props to you, Zelda. Star of the contest and by far the best story of the year. Well deserved, too, given people to this day keep getting Link and Zelda backwards. Sucks we didn't get a Zelda/Samus match either, but hey. Can't be greedy! Speaking of, props to the LOL x stat people for adjusting Zelda 3 points below a character she directly beat this year. Because Zelda wins this match, yet is somehow 3 points below him. Sure. You guys never fail with the unintentional comedy whenever a characters busts up your holy doctrine. ## Safer777's Analysis I still can't believe it. Well we said that when Zelda reached Squall that Squall had a chance to beat her. Nope. When she faced Snake we all said that was it for Zelda. Nope. Then Sonic maybe? Nope. But Mario? It is FREAKING Mario! Hierarchy! Nope. Zelda beat him. She beat everyone. Everyone! Do you know how many people had her reaching the final match? 1.66% which I believe is the 3rd lowest for a 1 VS 1 match! And one of the lowest predictions ever even if we count 4ways and 3ways of course. And she  did it! Also another crazy thing is that Mario was NEVER ahead. Never! Zelda was always ahead of him. Every time Mario was cutting and came close to her, Zelda was  pulling ahead. In the end there were porn rallies(of course there were)and Zelda managed to win with almost 500 votes too. I don't think anyone can say anything more. The final match is Link VS Zelda! Seriously! I know we jest and we say Nintendofaqs and Dronefaqs but there you go! Zelda big star of the contest no doubt. I guess we can say Zeldafaqs too now? Also another crazy thing about the percentage is that is the lowest for a non rally character/game too! I said there were some porn rallies but she would win without these too. Man BOTW did crazy things for the LOZ characters. Still amazing win. Congrats to the people that had her reaching the final match! You believed! ## Tsunami's Analysis Yes, it's really happening. The Zelda hype train was just too much to stop. Just like in her match against Snake, Zelda lost the registered vote but had enough unregistered vote to overcome the registered vote bonus. The trends were more pronounced here, though; whereas against Snake, she lost the registered vote by under 100 and made up for it with an unregistered vote lead of a bit over 300, here Mario took the registered vote by 203, only to lose the unregistered vote by ***897. ***Zelda led wire-to-wire, too; it looked for much of the match as though the biggest obstacle to breaking Mega Man-Pikachu II's new record would be Mario taking the lead, as he fought back at times, getting the deficit under 60 at the 2-hour mark after it had ballooned to 100 in under an hour and kept rising, then later getting it into the low sixties again amidst an entire hour below 100 after it had already swollen to 225 at one point, and finally getting it briefly back down to double-digits at the 15-hour mark. In fact at that point, both of the Pikachu-Mega Man matches' records were in jeopardy, as with just 9 hours to go, the largest lead Zelda had ever held was 225. But that's when Zelda took off. She set a new largest lead only an hour and forty minutes after Mario's cut to 97, then eliminated the chance of breaking Mega Man-Pikachu I's record in the next update before eventually getting it all the way up above 500 with nearly 3 hours to go. Maybe Allen's onto something with these decreased-frequency contests. Back when we got them every year, X-Stats were usually fairly reliable. Our last known value for Zelda involved her getting LFFed by Donkey Kong enough that she couldn't beat Charizard in a close match, a result that seemed okay immediately after it happened but less so after Charizard lost in exactly the same fashion to Mega Man while *Zero* was the third character. Any result that makes you compare unfavorably to the Weighted Companion Cube does not reflect well on you, which is why everyone started calling Charizard a ***FRAUD*** (he kind of was, but the degree of it might've been a bit overstated.) And yet, here's Zelda looking every bit the elite character. Unlike last round, where everyone knew she'd beat Sonic after she'd beaten Snake, the Oracles still sided with Mario, with only 10% of them picking Zelda to pull the upset. Just 1.66% of brackets picked Zelda to reach the Legends' final, which was tied for 7th all-time most surprising outcomes (trailing only Draven's last three wins, Undertale's last two, and L-Block's championship; tied with L-Block reaching the championship). That's arguably not even the most impressive part of her run, though. Remember, there was also a "Second Chance Bracket" that applied only to the Legends Bracket portion. Unlike in the regular bracket, you already knew when filling out that bracket that Zelda was in the final 16, and furthermore you would have seen her dominate her four regular bracket matches. And even in that contest, only 6.88% of brackets picked Zelda! That figure of 6.88% would be good for a spot in the top 25 for 1v1 matches only, tied for 17th. This meant that the Legends Bracket finals, and presumably the grand finals, would be an SFF match, something we hadn't seen happen since Character Battle II (not counting Rivalry Rumble). Talk about an anticlimax. --- ## (8)Mega Man vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (8)Mega Man vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88609)_ ## Ulti's Analysis At a glance, this will seem like just a regular close match in the losers bracket. For Board 8, it meant so much more. This board loves Chrono Trigger. Always has. And from the very first contest, we have watched Crono and his game get beaten down and screwed over so many times that we've just come to expect it at this point. The close losses and embarrassing choke jobs are too numerous to list in one writeup, but I've done it many times in the past and those examples are easy enough to find. The losses to Mario in 2002 and 2003. The Melee rally. Missingno. The Sonic comeback. The Knuckles comeback. Being the first one, ever, to break the Noble Nine's streak in any format. Crono and Magus killing each other so a mouse could get a win. Magus losing to a punching bag. Crono's only win over Mario meaning nothing. I could go on for a long time. Read MWC's writeup on this list: That's our top ten games list that we submitted with DDJ back in the day. Chrono Trigger was \#6. I'm almost positive it would be \#1 if we reran that list. This site in general agrees: Nick has a Chrono Trigger fan page on Facial Book. I could probably make the argument GameFAQs is the \#1 fan site for that game. I know it's 2018 and our vote totals suck and our site is dead now, but dammit, this was a convergence of so many things and so many people finally deciding to say fuck it. Enough is enough and we want the guy to finally clutch up. I love you too Mega Man, but Crono needed this a lot more than you did. Crono did this against a guy boosted by Smash, too, which makes this even cooler. Not that it wasn't one hell of a grind. After some early struggles, Mega Man built up a lead of 249 votes. It's the widest this match would get, and as of this match it would be second place on the list for closest 1v1 24 hours matchups -- topped only by Pikachu beating Mega Man in the legends bracket. Mega Man had quite the doozies this year, huh? After the lead peaked, Crono started to very, very slowly chip away. Come midnight, he was only down by 12 and coming on strong. Given Mega Man has the murdered-a-puppy night vote in Europe, one might expect Crono to start building a lead there. One problem. Chrono Trigger didn't come out in Europe until 2009. The one guy Mega Man might be able to win a night vote against is Crono, and it's like really? Mega Man spent the next few hours getting a 200 vote lead again, and given how bad Chrono Trigger is during the day time (the game and all the characters seem to go from bad to worse once the morning vote hits), the match looked over. But thanks to some random miracle, cosmic vortex, black hole, happenstance, coincidence, or whatever you want to call it, Crono actually fought back with the morning. I don't know why or how, and I don't even care. Our boy was back in this thing! These two then proceeded to have dual open heart surgery all morning and half the afternoon. It was a lot of stalling, back and forth, and chipping away at each other. Think the 20 inning game this past world series, except this poll in the grand scheme meant nothing. Although I guess the Dodgers winning that game meant nothing either, thanks to the metrics idiots actively ruining baseball. Way to sit your top four home run hitters in game 2, guys. Anyway, this ultimately led to the poll being tied with five hours left. When Crono finally decided to take a lead in this damn match, he was not letting up for any reason. He would end up ultimately winning by 112. I know this poll doesn't mean much at the end of the day, but for long suffering Crono fans it was something. When you have a starving human being on death's doorstep, you can't just jump right in and feed them ice cream and weight gain shakes. It'll shock the system to death. You have to slowly ease into a normal metabolism. That's basically what this match was for Crono fans. Our boy finally clutched up. Outside of maaaaaaybe that Vincent match in 2008, when has this ever actually happened? I do love Mega Man, don't get me wrong. I wrote two guides for his games. But Crono deserved this. No one can argue otherwise. ## Safer777's Analysis As you see from the results this match was really exciting. These 2 were head to head the whole match. MM was ahead for around 19 hours when Crono took the lead and  managed to win. Personally I didn't expected that. Also funny to see that Pikachu, MM and Crono have the same power basically. This is also one of the closest wire to wire matches since the maximum lead was from MM and that was around 250 votes. Eventually Crono won with like 110 votes. Also no lead changes strangely enough. Only 1! Also as someone told me this was Crono's first victory against a NN'er without LLF from 2005! Finally he managed to do it too! When a match is so close not much can be said. Any time these kind of matches repeat, the result can easily flip around. Still Crono won. Man imagine if Crono was in more games. He would be so strong! Also as per tradition MM did really bad in Europe and he won in USA. But he deserved a win. I will never understand how Crono can be so strong with only 1 old game on his name but there you go. Imagine if he was in Smash or we had a HD remake or something. I can only hope! ## Tsunami's Analysis This match was pretty much exactly what we wanted: two characters of relatively similar strength going at it. The Oracles were fairly split on this match; 30 picked Crono and 17 picked Mega Man, and on both sides, the highest pick was above 53% but below 53.5%. The Guru brackets...not so much. 101 Gurus had Mega Man winning this match, compared to just 86 who had Crono even *in* this match. Old trends die hard, and at the start of the contest, we thought Crono was still the weak link of the Noble Nine, except for maybe Sonic. As for the match itself, it was a barnburner. Mega Man won the first update and struggled to build a lead. 45 minutes in, he took an update by 40 votes and tacked on another 22 on the next one, only to see it almost all wiped out with a 43-vote win for Crono. At this point, a second such swing would give Crono his first lead...so *Mega Man* took the next update by 51 to end the first hour with a lead of 85. He'd have a similar big update at the end of the second hour to get his lead to triple digits for the first time, and he'd finish the third hour with a lead of 249. The first update of hour 4 was a dead stall, and then Crono started tearing into the lead. It took him less than two hours to get the deficit back to double digits, and with 10 minutes left in hour 6, Mega Man led by a mere 12 votes...but Mega Man refused to break, refusing to relinquish the lead and eventually getting it to 200 on the dot 3.5 hours after the local minimum of 12. It took Crono an hour and 25 minutes to halve that lead...and then another hour and 5 minutes to get back to that same deficit after Mega started fighting back *again*, allowing him to finally get the deficit back into double digits just before the halfway point of the match. Mega Man still refused to give up, and got it back into triple digits at the 15-hour mark. Shortly thereafter, Crono *finally* began the comeback that would stick, breaking through to take the lead for the first time with just 5 hours and 10 minutes left in the match, and this would prove to be the only lead change after the freeze. Crono's largest lead was a mere 137, half an hour before the end of the match, and Mega's max lead of 249 a mere *3 hours in* was good for a spot in the top 5 closest wire-to-wire matches--at the time that it occurred, it was 5th overall, 4th among 1v1 matches, and second only to Mega Man's *first* loss of the contest among 24-hour matches. So while it did appear that Mega Man had fallen to the bottom of the Noble Nine totem pole (well, okay, there's still maybe Sonic), you almost have to feel bad for him, losing in two of the most brutal slugfests ever. Also, it should be noted that despite Board 8's well-documented pro-Crono leanings and the site as a whole having pro-JRPG leanings, Mega Man actually took the registered vote and only lost due to a deficit with unregistered voters. Oh, and this managed to get a place on the 25 most surprising 1v1 results, too, with just 8.2% of initial brackets picking Crono to win this. He did get a slight boost to 13.9% on Second Chance Brackets, though, so I guess the field of 16 looked a little more favorable to Crono than the full field did? Actually I guess that checks out; Crono had a better prediction percentage in Second Chance all the way through, even in his very first match, so I suspect there were some people out there who thought Kirby could upset Crono but didn't feel Bowser could do the same when he got there instead of Kirby. Kirby still gets overrated because of his shenanigans in '08, when we've clearly seen that he's just not as strong in 1v1s as he is in multiways. --- ## (3)Solid Snake vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Solid Snake vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88607)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Most people didn't realize this when Draven was busy balling all over the contest back in 2013, but Samus was the third wheel in the final. Remember? Snake was openly rallied during that one, including David Hayter himself tweeting out support. None of it mattered and Snake got rolled. If Link was in there instead of Draven, Snake may very well have won that contest (do not fall for Board 8's revisionist history; they all wanted Link to lose, and then complained when he lost because someone who wasn't 'supposed' to beat Link is who beat Link, which is just dumb). Well Samus got doubly rolled on, which was an odd sort of revenge for Snake given he lost to her in the final back in 2006: For what it's worth Snake also finished ahead of Samus in this poll, but it's barely counted in writeups like this for obvious reasons: However you want to slice it, this match was a chance for Samus to return to form and layeth the smacketh down. I've said for a very long time that Snake's support collapses against Nintendo 1 on 1, because Nintendo is where his boost came from. Even this year, his two wins were against Sonic and Auron and he looked like a godkiller in the process. Put him against Zelda or Samus, and he completely folds. Put him against Mario or Link, and the same exact thing will happen. It's also exactly what happened here. This barely qualified as a contest match. It was Samus flexing some muscles for a little while and then waving on her way out like a boss. One of the most badass scenes ever. "Thanks, but I'm just doing my job. On to the next one like Jay-Z. Later." It would set up one of the best matches you'll ever see for Samus, and for Snake it was a rough way to go out, but he should have cashed in when he had the chance. He was in or near the contest final for almost a solid decade without ever winning one. I wouldn't call him the Buffalo Bills or anything because unlike them, Snake was actually competitive. He's more like the Vikings. They've been off and on as contenders since 1970, but they've never won anything and their losses are always brutal. That's pretty much an accurate description of Snake. He's trending down even with getting back into Smash, too. I covered why this makes me pretty sad in the Zelda v Snake writeup, so I won't rehash it here. It would have been great to see him win one. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was embarrassing for Snake. Remember when he scored almost 47% on Link? Yeah forget that. Samus dominated here. She is so strong. Don't understand why but she just is. Snake didn't stand a chance here. Funny enough with these results Tifa scores like 48% on Snake and Sephiroth around 45%? What is going on here??? Also Snake did good in most of Europe but he got buried in USA! Americans love their Nintendo! Personally I thought he was above Mario and Samus. I picked him in my bracket without a second though. Obviously I was wrong. I gues he has fallen this much because Konami doesn't care anymore? Don't know. He is in Smash at least so that gives him power. Anyways Samus won a great victory here. Well done. We need more strong females anyways! ## Tsunami's Analysis The hilarity of this double elimination bracket is that your Oracle and your Guru could both be right, but for completely different reasons. Samus was a 39-8 favorite among the Oracles who were still submitting predictions at this point in the contest, and she had over 75% of Guru brackets as well...because over 90% of Gurus had Snake winning at least two matches in the Legends' Bracket, and Round 3 losers wouldn't appear in the Losers' Bracket until the *next *round! Still, none of us expected Samus to nearly break 56.5%; only about a quarter of Oracles even had her winning by half that amount, and I managed just my second ever top prediction with a 55.6%. A win's a win, but it hardly had me feeling as prescient as my first \#1 did. --- ## (4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88605)_ ## Ulti's Analysis For most people, this was just another of this contest's pointless rematches. For me, this was a well earned victory lap for all of my volunteer work with picsmithing over the years. I usually ignore all of the idiots who whine about match pictures, but it was especially obnoxious and annoying this year so I am all too happy to give it right back when I am proven correct once and for all on the major sticking point these little crybaby manchildren were making for two solid weeks. Let's look closely at the first match these two had. (4)Cloud - 16694 \[56.73%\]   (5)Crono - 12731 \[43.27%\]   Total Votes - 29425 There was a difference of one percent between that match and the rematch that these two had one week later. One whole measly little percent. For all intents and purposes that is an irrelevant variance, but for the sake of argument we'll just say this is a difference worth discussing. And why do I concede this point? Because there was a huge difference between that match and this one. Sprites. You know, the same sprites that certain people were bitching about for two solid weeks? The same sprites that got all the blame for Ganon's so-called underperformance, even though he looked like garbage all contest? The same sprites that made people freak out for Snake, even though Solid Snake has never lost when his sprite was used? Yeah, that whole thing. Well look at what we have here. The exact same two characters had a match with each other one week apart, one with sprites and one without. This proves me right, as usual. Sprites don't make one goddamn bit of difference. None. At best, there is a one percent difference. Nice job, crybabies. You're wrong. As usual. Called it. Told you so. Vindicated. Yet another thing I was ahead of the curve on. As usual, Ulti Was Right. How does one man Fly All These Ws? On top of that, Crono got a Chrono Trigger sprite, while Cloud got his Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories sprite. The long standing belief is that Chrono Trigger sprites overperform. If that were the case, Crono would have done a lot better the first time. Yet he only did one percent better with a sprite that supposedly causes overperformances. If Crono had a so-called normal sprite, there would have been no difference whatsoever. This proves me right in duplicate. Called it. Told you so. Vindicated. Yet another thing I was ahead of the curve on. As usual, Ulti Was Right. How does one man Fly All These Ws? I promise you I am celebrating and giving the crybabies a big double bird, just like reynad did to his crybabies when he was falsely accused of sabotaging the Hearthstone meta to push Druid nerfs. I'm a lot louder than reynad though and have a much longer memory. Obviously. VI once said my Hearthstone comp is reynad. VI is correct on this. I'm the nicest guy on this planet until I get fucked with or falsely accused of something. Then it's justifiable pit bull time. People can disagree or argue with me all they want, but if they're fair about it (Logicblade during this PCA being a fine example) then it's all good. I'm making it a point to get like this as little as possible because I know full well it's not healthy, but it's well deserved in this case. People accusing me of pic sabotage over a sprite round is so laughably, certifiably, provably stupid that I didn't actually know if people were serious at first. By the way, I'm aware we had one other sprite vs non-sprite rematch happen. But this was the match to rant on, because Chrono Trigger sprites have been credited for overperformances since Magus in 2003. So if ever there would be a rematch to prove how sprites cause these wild percentage swings, this would have been the match. The other match, just for the curious, was Samus vs Mario. That match only changed by 1.5%, but there were reasons well beyond sprites that caused that difference. We'll get into that one in a second. In the meantime, it's time for me to celebrate. I'd like to thank me for all my hard work. I'd like to thank me for never giving up. I'd like to thank me for believing in me. I want to thank me for having no days off. I want to thank me for never quitting. I want to thank me for doing more right than wrong. I want to thank me for being a giver and giving more than I receive. Above all, I want to thank me for just being me at all times. ## Safer777's Analysis Another rematch. Fun! And unlike MM VS Pika the difference was huge so a different result wasn't possible. Cloud even did a whole 1% better too! Strangely enough I  believe that if MM was here he would do better but not win of course. And why you may ask? Because there is bound to be some SFF here. They are the main characters of the most popular JRPG's of this site. Not a big SFF but a small one. Still Cloud won easily of course. I think he is the strongest Non Nintendo Character for sure. As for Crono he did okay in this contest as most people will say. ## Tsunami's Analysis Loser's Bracket Round 4 consisted entirely of rematches of Legends' Bracket matches. One of them was an all-time classic, and the other was a boring retread of the first match. This one, sadly, was the latter. --- ## (7)Mario vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (7)Mario vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88603)_ ## Ulti's Analysis In their first match I discussed the history these two have, why I love Mario, and why the rivalry these two have is so important. No need to relive it, just read about it here: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(2)Samus_Aran_vs\_(7)Mario\_(Legends_Bracket)\_2018 \] I stand by what I said at the very end, too. It's great and all that these two had an epic rematch and gave us our best match of the entire contest, but it's awful that these two, of all people, had a rematch at all. We had a fantastic conclusion to that nonsense from 2005. This match happening and being as close as it was ripped everything back open. In the first match, Mario slowly built a lead and won, but only with 51.42%. This was great, because it proved everyone right at the same time. Samus can beat Mario, but "it's freaking Mario" kicked in even though it really does feel like Samus is indirectly stronger. In my Crono/Mega Man writeup, I mentioned Board 8's love affair with Crono. If you subtract all the close contest losses, Board 8 has a similar love for Samus. Of all the Nintendo characters, Samus might be the coolest. Link is cool, but he's an elf. Mario is a fat plumber. The princesses were all damsels in distress until very recently. But Samus? Samus is a shit-kicking, bounty hunter badass who goes on these insane missions and pulls them out against wild beasts despite insane odds. Look at Super Metroid logically. Who else is doing any of that? Add all that together with the contest history these two have, plus Mario being the contest villain for some, and people freaked. the hell. OUT when this thing started and Samus was close at the beginning. Then Mario looked like he was going to take off, but Samus.... built... a 100 vote lead? Say what?! But Mario got rid of that lead pretty quickly, and we all figured he just just auto-win again. That's what he does against Samus. But when Mario caught up, Samus... built a lead again? Huh? Then the night vote kicked in and all hell broke loose. Samus not only started winning the night vote, but she beat down any attempts by Mario to slow things down. She got that lead all the way up to 200 votes. But when we got into the dead zone, Mario finally decided to go to work. He got that thing down to 100 fairly quickly, after a mighty struggle by Samus, Mario had the lead all the way down to 30. I'll just spoil this now. The match never got farther apart than 206 votes, which means...! This match, right here, is our record for closest 1v1 24 hour wire to wire match. Couldn't have happened in a better rivalry, either. Unlike all the other ones from this contest, this one didn't get broken like 1 week later. This one will stick for awhile. Yet again we all assumed Mario would auto-win. And yet again Samus got the lead back up to 100. Samus wasn't just proving she could hang with Mario and proved me and all the doubters wrong, she was sitting there actually doing it. It was quite a sight to behold, and if this was a 2010 era 12 hour night match, Samus may very well have won. But when that morning vote showed up, Mario finally went "bitch, fuck off". Sort of. He erased the lead over breakfast, but Samus went out there and refused to actually get buried. She stalled as best she could, but Mario was finally able to build up a lead of 100. Game over, right? Over lunch, Samus yet again fought back and started building up a tiny lead. Come ASV time (very few matches this contest had an ASV due to polls starting in the evening, but this was one match where even a miniscule difference mattered), she had a lead of 60. Had Samus won the ASV, she wins this match. But it was Mario who took advantage of the 19 middle school and high school kids combined who still visit this site. He erased Samus's lead in an hour, and for about the 17th time this match, we all assumed Mario's auto-win clutch would kick in. IT'S FREAKING MARIO, after all. "Next time someone says you fight like a girl, remember Samus." I would love to say the final three hours of this poll were as epic as some of our famous duals from the past. Mario vs Crono. Frog vs Master Chief. The Metal Gear Solid series vs Star of the Contest. Melee vs Brawl. Link to the Past vs Chrono Trigger. Undertale vs The World. Pokemon vs Final Fantasy 7. Jill Valentine vs 27 votes. Crono vs Vincent. Starcraft vs The World. Even Link vs Cloud. These two qualify as a rivalry worthy of this list, but I know full well this match doesn't quite stack up due to the low vote totals, it being a loser's bracket rematch, and our site being dead. I get it. But by modern standards, this is as good of a match with as good of a history as you'll ever see. It's why this was my favorite match of the entire contest. People cared about who won, and were heartbroken by the result. That's what these contests are all about. Cheering on your favorite and having a result actually matter. The LOL x stats robbed us of most of that, because now you get people cheering for percentages instead of characters, but every once in awhile you get a match like this breaking through and getting everyone back to the good old days. For the last three hours of this poll, these two characters were never more than 27 votes apart. They only had five updates, or a grand total of 25 minutes in the last three hours, where they were more than 20 votes separated. They had 27 updates where they were between 10 and 19 votes. They had 16 updates in the single digits, which is just insanity as a poll is closing up. It's the best we could have asked for, and it all came down to the final update. With one update left, Mario was leading by only 2 votes. 15 minutes prior, he was winning by 21, meaning he was trending down fast and Samus was the favorite to win this match and slay a 13 year old contest rival. This was going to come down to who rallied the best at the end. Simple as that. When this match was closing up, I was helping tutor my classmates in clin lab hematology animal nursing. I've been in this profession for a long time, and in most of my labs I end up either officially or unofficially tutoring people, because I already know everything going in. There's a long story about why I left vet school and went back to nursing school to finish that certification instead, but the short of it is I'm not interested in being a doctor. I have enough money to where I can just choose the career I want, and nursing makes me happier than being a doctor. They don't tell human doctors or veterinarians that well over half the job is spent writing medical notes or joining up with the cover-your-ass please-don't-sue culture. You're ordering supplies, treating people or pets or employees as a way of making money or cutting costs, as if they're just another bill to be paid or another source of income. You're managing egos and worrying about a bunch of dumb shit. I want to go to work, interact with clients and their pets, help them, get along with everyone, do my job the best I can, and go home. I'm not interested in all the side show BS that comes with medicine. Shows like House and Scrubs are a lot more accurate than you guys might think. Granted I don't have experience on the human medicine side of things, but I've been around the block with animal medicine and good hell. Give me nursing and a patient schedule any day. It also might not seem like it based on Board 8 interactions, but I'm very well liked in the real world. I know, sounds weird. So at 6:55 pm in that clin lab hematology grind when I was tutoring people on the coming final, I said fuck it and asked for Mario votes on cell phones. All 15 fellow students voted for him, plus myself. I made sure to save my vote for late, like I did all contest because wasting a double vote early is just silly. You know the rest. Mario got 54 votes in the final update to Samus's 37, and Mario won the poll by 19 votes. It was Mario's biggest update in over six hours. Make fun of me all you want. I give no fucks. I think I explained pretty well during the last match these two had why I love Mario so much, but I also hope this writeups shows how I also love Samus. Mario's just a 10 to Samus's 9.9 is all. Simple as that. Some people in the stats topic had epic meltdowns over this result and THE CLUTCH kicking in when Samus was clearly about to win, but there are some things to discuss here. A couple people said I made this up about classmates voting (a common accusation of late is saying I make things up, which is just outright stupidity), but it's easy enough to prove if Allen ever wants to show us voter logs. Anyway. Me plus my classmates amounted to 17 votes. Mario won by 19. Even if you remove all their votes and I switch to Samus, it's only a tie. I also played by the same rules as everyone else. Samus only got 37 votes in the last update, which was about the same as she had been getting. Where were all the Samus rallies? Any of the people rooting for her could have asked for a few votes. Was no one playing Smash with some friends or something? In looking at this match, I'm pretty disappointed with the effort of Samus and her backers in those last five minutes. It's. Freaking. Mario. You can't stand pat and hope he loses. You have to go beat his ass. Why Samus backers didn't rally there, I have no idea. The other major reason Samus folks were upset over her losing is this loss symbolically ended the contest, which is logic I can actually understand. When this match happened, people assumed the rest of the contest would just be Link \> Zelda, Mario \> Cloud, Zelda \> Mario, and then Link \> Zelda again. Whoops. That, as Chris Berman would say, is why they play the games. But yeah, shout out to Mario and Samus for becoming our new hot rivalry. I wish people acted a little better as this was ending, but I think a bunch of passion is better than people being boring. I'll take meltdowns over nothing any day, even if they're idiotic meltdowns like what TheStupidRaptor was doing. It's part of what makes contests fun. Last point, and I'm putting this one the record now. If these two have a 1v1 rematch after Metroid Prime 4 and that game is good, I think Samus can finally win and I would pick it. Mario Odyssey came out only a year before this contest, and outside of some funny wedding pictures and Mario dabs, that game didn't really boost him. Samus is already a badass and is on the cusp of great things here. One more game could do the trick. I miiiiiiiight even root for her to do it! :p ## Safer777's Analysis Another rematch! Need to say anything? Just look at the result? Huh? Yeah this match was the best of contest no doubt. We had some exciting matches this contest but nothing like that. Mario had won before with almost 51.5% so almost everyone said it wouldn't be possible for Samus to reverse it. Yeah about that...   In the 1st match at the 5 minute mark, Mario was winning with around 51.6% and in this one he was losing with around 51.9%! Damn! Now that is a reverse. In the 1st match after 1 hour Mario was winning with around 52.4% and in this one he was winning with around 50.4%! A full 2% minus! So of course the board was in uproar because as with the previous trends it would seems that eventually Samus would be ahead after some hours because in the previous match she begun cutting too and she came close but couldn't do it. But now? Now it was her turn! And in the 1st match we hadn't a single lead change too. But here? We had numerous ones! Exciting stuff! So they went back and forth for  some hours. Eventually Samus went ahead and stayed there for a few hours. After about 13 hours after the match started Mario went ahead again. So Mario stayed ahead for around 5 hours too. Then Samus went ahead again! Then Mario, then Samus, then ties! Damn! Now that is a match! So with less than 1 hour to end the match Mario was ahead by 7 votes! Everyone was waiting for the updates! Mario ahead with 24, then with 6! Samus was not giving up! With 2 updates left Mario was ahead with NINE VOTES! Then with 1 update left Mario was ahead with TWO VOTES! Damn! Do I need to tell you how was the board? Glued to their screens! Of course some were saying that Mario has it, others that Samus has it, others that Mario was vote stuffing, others that Samus had rallies and that is why she would win(she did have some actually but rallies are okay!)and basically everyone was excited! Would Samus be able to FINALLY beat Mario? The last update came and Mario won with 19 votes. Samus was SO close but she lost. But the future refused to change! So she lost again! Of couse the board was in uproar! What did you expected? Others were happy, others were sad, there was fighthing  from both sides, the usual stuff. Man this match is why we love the contests. Also according to stats this is the new 24 record for closest match, since the maximum lead was 206 votes only. And the 5th closest in terms of votes winning, the winner won by 19 votes. Now these are matches. Imagine if this was the final match! Also 1 guy (XIII_rocks) said he went door to door at work to ask people to vote! I think also that Ulti did something similar at the end of the match, meaning finding some people to vote! People do anything for the contests! Others put porn rallies, others ask from people at work to vote! So is this finally the time for people to stop saying Samus\>Mario right? AS IF! IT WILL NEVER STOP! Actually Mario dominated in registered users, he scored 52.64% where with anonymous he scored 45.84%! So there you go. One of the best matches of all time. Of course now Mario is the villain and people want to see him beaten! But he can't lose! He will cheat, vote stuff, anything to win! In all seriousnes though amazing match. I don't know if it is the best of all time, but it is up there for sure.  As I said before anyone can lose from someone else, even Mario! Except Link of course, duh. ## Tsunami's Analysis Board 8ers love them some status quo. There were many matches where the registered and unregistered voters were in disagreement, but just three where the registered vote bonus actually flipped the match: Phoenix vs. Ike, the first Mega Man-Pikachu match, and this one. This one was by far the most dramatic, though--both Ike and Mega Man would've won by fewer than 50 votes if all votes counted equally. In this match? Let's give a hand to the two *lowest*-scoring Oracle predictions, Samus 51.00% by Furious Fura and Samus 51.27% by paulg, because in a world where all votes counted equally, they'd have been a *very* close 1-2. That's right, ***51.13%*** of all votes cast in this match were for Samus Aran...and yet because of the huge disparity between registered and unregistered voters, Mario still won by 19 votes. To be more precise, Mario had a 467-voter edge among registered voters, and Samus had a 915-voter edge among unregistered voters. I'm really disappointed that the registered voter bonus is back for GotD2; it isn't really going to do much to stop a genuine rally, but it can still flip a close result. That said, this was an intense, back-and-forth match. Samus led for most of the early match, including building the match's peak lead by either side, 206 votes at 1:20 AM Eastern. That's just over a quarter of the way into the match. Things continued to be interesting throughout, featuring a dead tie at the 8:55 AM update, Mario winning an update by 2 votes at 4:20 PM and it constituting a lead change *and Samus winning the next update by the same margin*, and of course, the 50.00% on the penultimate update (Mario ahead by just two votes). It was a down to the wire match, setting a new record for closest wire-to-wire 24 hour match (only Shadow of the Colossus over Metal Gear Solid 2 in the first GotD was closer) and making the top 5 for closest final margin as well (trailing Liquid-Alucard in 2007, Frog-Chief in '04, the third-place match from Rivalry Rumble, and Charizard's win over Zelda in 2013). And in that respect, the registered voter bonus did make things more interesting, because like I said, in raw votes, Mario didn't even break 49%. Our update trackers can only show the listed totals, with us only getting the raw vote data for the end, but just looking at the final margin, it certainly wouldn't have come anywhere near the record for closest wire-to-wire match--even if Samus's biggest lead was right at the end it would've been more than double what it was. Wouldn't have even made the top 25 for closest final margins even among 1v1 matches alone. It probably would've still gotten lesser spots on the wire-to-wire lists, and it might've even scored fairly high on "wire-to-wire matches where the loser never takes the lead"--because with a maximum lead of 128 with the registered voter bonus, it's hard to picture that Mario would have ever had one without it. Well, maybe when he had the 104 vote lead a mere 40 minutes into the match. That would've already precluded it from the loser-never-takes-the-lead list, since Samus did lead at the freeze and one update later as well. Geez, you guys really hate it when the status quo is upset, don't you? Because make no mistake, this is "FREAKING MARIO" to the max. You always expect him to pull out any close match, because he's Mario. And right here, he did. But this is definitely a reason to pay close attention to the types of games this site likes and doesn't like for GotD2. RPGs will reign supreme. So will remakes that somehow were allowed into the contest, because this site absolutely adores the 20th century. Keep that in mind, and you'll probably go far. --- ## (1)Link vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018 (revid 88569)_ ## Ulti's Analysis The craziness from the day before (Mario v Samus III) clearly spilled over into this one, plus Zelda had a bandwagon effect going. She actually opened a pretty big lead for the first few minutes of this match (77 votes) before getting completely buried, instead of just getting completely buried right from the jump. Given this happened the last time these two had a match together (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2901-division-4-round-2-link-bidoof-vincent-zelda), I consider this a major step up for Zelda. It remains to be seen if this is sustainable strength, but for this year her performance was great. That's how dominant Link was. We consider him "only" getting 64% on Zelda a minor miracle. Which it kind of was. Link is the king of SFF on this site, so for Zelda to do this is one hell of an accomplishment. Just this year, he almost got 80% on Ganondorf and got 68% on Pikachu, not to mention all the crazy beatings Link has put on people over the years. Zelda from his own series getting 37% is awesome, and puts her square in elite strength territory. It really, really sucks we didn't get Zelda vs Samus this year. That would have potentially been an amazing match. Maybe next time! This one gave Link the win in the legends bracket, where he waited the winner of the losers bracket for the grand final. ## Safer777's Analysis This is it. The Final match. Of course Link would win. But look at his opponent. Zelda. Around 1.6% had her reaching the final. Seriously. Obviously nobody from the board expected to reach that far. She was strong always yeah. But beating so many NNers? Yeah sure. But she did it. Call it bandwagon, rallies, whatever. She reached the final match. That is something that barely anyone else has done. How many characters have reached the final match on 1 VS 1 contest before this one? Link, Mario, Cloud, Sephiroth. And that is all. Now we have Zelda. Without huge rallies too! Amazing! If you want further proof that the LOZ games dominate here look at this match! Seriously! 2 characters from the same series, the lead pair too! Now for the actual match. This was exciting for the first 10 minutes that Zelda was winning. I guess from the previous match people were excited and voted for Zelda or something. Not even when Cloud beat Link did that! He was losing at the start! After that Link went ahead and never looked back. Also a negative record for Zelda too. She fell from the 5 minute mark to the end 17% which I believe is the highest drop. I think so at least. So Link won. And nobody even broke 40% on him! But no matter what Zelda is the star of the contest no doubt. NOBODY can deny that. She did amazing. Hope in the next contest we have an amazing run from someone else or something like that. Always nice to see these things. Because we all know the winner anyways so we hope for another great run like Zelda at least. ## Tsunami's Analysis There was a very real fear here that we were going to get an SFF blowout in what would be the final match if we still had a single-elimination format, resulting in some absolutely hilarious raw X-Stats. Then again, it's not like Link had been all that terribly challenged in earlier rounds either. There was a lot of debate as to which matches to use for the purpose of calculating X-Stats, the Legends Bracket (because that's what a traditional bracket would have produced) or the Losers Bracket (because those were the ones that caused eliminations and thus "meant more"), but let's face it, either way they were going to be inaccurate. Which pretty much is the same as every other year, because character battles have never been transient. The raw X-Stats are a joke because of SFF and bandwagoning and all sorts of weird factors that make up the matches, and the adjusted X-Stats are an even bigger joke because they represent guesswork and are subject to biases. In the early days, when a character was behind SFF, the tradition was to just assign them the previous contest's X-Stat value, which is how we ended up with 84% of Gurus picking Magus to win three matches in a year he won none. Frankly, this still comes off as more sensible than the current method of casually ignoring direct results that are inconvenient to the current narrative because there was obviously some sort of rally (example: Mario being ahead of Zelda in this year's adjusted X-Stats). I mean, yes, when there really *was* a rally, it massively obfuscates any sort of meaningful calculation, especially since it becomes harder and harder to figure out what the entrant's unrallied strength is because the rallies show up earlier and earlier. We all joked about Mass Effect 3 being \#2 in the X-Stats in 2015, but it was the one that forced Undertale to make its largest comeback. Meanwhile, the "just assume that Link/Legend of Zelda is \#1" logic wasn't even close to viable because the finals against Ocarina of Time was legitimately the only time that Undertale *never trailed*. So which of Undertale's victims was given the \#1 spot in the adjusted X-Stats? Pokémon RBYG, which had been building a lead even as Undertale was trying to rally? Melee, which actually managed to wipe out a four-digit deficit against Undertale before eventually fading away? ...Yeah these are really the only two logical options even if technically Mass Effect 3 was closer. And the answer is...none of them, because the acceptability of a rally is based not only on the rallying entrant, but on the opponent--possibly *more* on the opponent. Well, no, it's on both. Zelda may not have been allowed to remain ahead of Mario in the X-Stats, but I doubt those people minded too much the previous match when Samus would've beaten if not for the registered voter bonus, even if the fact that it was the *registered voters* who allowed Mario to win suggests otherwise. Because Samus is a member of the Noble Nine, and one who the X-Stats frequently suggested was indirectly stronger than Mario anyway. Her finally beating him is good theater. Zelda being here was a "farce". Point is, the whole board was fine with RBYG and Melee counterrallying against Undertale, but Melee has to sit behind the last two foes it vanquished, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII. OoT actually did get the \#2 spot, ahead of FFVII but behind CT. They saw CT put up over 81% in Round 2 and then get 65.52% on a game that had been in the Top 4 of each of the last two games contests and they were like "yeah CT's winning this as long as we can stop the Undertale monster". Now we couldn't, so it was a moot point, but let's be honest here: if Melee hadn't gone on rallies, CT absolutely still loses to FFVII. The stats people would've still put CT as the stronger game, because that's an SFF match, but FFVII *doesn't* lose to other Square games. We've *seen* those two games face each other before, and there's no good reason to think CT could turn it around (though there are plenty of bad ones, like backlash against the episodic content of the FF7 rerelease or the fact that other games are declining while CT, being so old already, can't really decline because everyone left here is part of that core fanbase. Except these contests have *never *been decided solely by the board's or even the site's tastes, and the fact that the registered voter bonus only flipped three matches when there were far more where the registered and unregistered voters disagreed only accentuates this.) Anyway, it turned out to be a moot point because Zelda easily avoided the doubling. In fact, let's go back and look at the last time Link and Mario went head-to-head in a character battle. And now Zelda's win over Mario: Based on that, Zelda would be expected to get about 36.07% on Link. If you adjust for the registered vote bonus in the Zelda-Mario match, it'd be more like 36.77%. And her percentage was...36.44%. Actual percentage 35.78%, because yes, Zelda actually had a better percentage with registered voters than unregistered. Still, that's not that far off, which makes it all the more ridiculous that the adjustments put Mario ahead of Zelda. --- ## (4)Cloud Strife vs (7)Mario (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Cloud Strife vs (7)Mario (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88601)_ ## Ulti's Analysis If you want to know how a grownup acts, XIII is cool is a fantastic example. This match cost him the guru contest, and he didn't act a fool about it. Major props to that guy. As for the match, this was an incredible experience, and it was so nice to finally get this damn rematch from 2002 that we've all been asking for for 16 years. The only match in higher demand at this point is Mario vs Sonic. A lot can change in 16 years, and there was a long time there where Cloud felt leagues stronger than Mario. We all wanted him to get the rematch and potentially get revenge for 2002. Then the years kept going, Cloud kept getting weaker, and we all slowly realized that Cloud's shot for redemption was probably done. I know there were some 4ways and battle royales in there, but it's just not the same as 1v1. By the time we actually got this rematch, we all assumed Mario would auto-win. Sound like a familiar theme? I know the stakes here in 2018 don't mean as much, but it was still fun to watch. It was practically an exact reversal of what happened trend-wise in 2002, too. In that match, Cloud built up a 1000 vote lead overnight. Then a combination of the morning vote, rallying from Planet Gamecube, 500 stuffed proxy votes, and Super Mario Sunshine launching on the day of the match all converged on Cloud all within 12 hours of each other. Mario got a lead of 200 votes heading into the evening, and he just inexplicably never let up. Now unlike most people you'll see talking about how great that match was and how great that contest was, I was actually there and remember it all. The three day time frame we had in 2002 with Samus \> Sonic, Sephiroth \> Mega Man, and Mario \> Cloud will absolutely never be topped. There was meltdown after meltdown after meltdown, with Samus coming back from 1500 down in the final three hours, Sephiroth coming back from 700 down, and the insanity of that Mario/Cloud match. By the time that Mario/Cloud match was over, the board had over 200 pages of topics at 50 per page, with over half coming from Mario and Cloud's duel. As I write this, Board 8 doesn't even have 4 full pages of topics. There is no comparison here. I've also been very consistent about rallying for 16 years, and you can check the 2002 writeup for proof. I've always supported it, even if something I'm rooting for loses. Cloud losing that match sucked, especially when there were clearly 500 cheated votes, but I've never been mad at Planet Gamecube about it. Fast forward 16 years. We're all in our 30s now and don't care nearly as much, but this was still a long time coming,. Especially with how Mario lost. This dude built up a 300 vote lead heading into the night vote. After some stalling, Square's old night vote supremacy kicked in and Cloud mounted a comeback overnight. But he didn't quite finish the job, and Mario started going up with the morning vote again. Right about here, it kind of hit me. We keep assuming Mario has this auto-win button, but this dude functions better when he's barely losing instead of barely winning. He's basically rubberband AI in a racing game at this point. His best play is to stay barely behind all match, then clutch up at the end. Dude is an awful frontrunner sometimes, and we saw it here. He only got his lead up to 200 with the morning vote, and coughed most of that up by lunch. By the time the kids got home from school, Cloud had already tied this thing up. One would assume the ASV would help Mario out, but it was somehow and someway Cloud that went up. Right in the face of all that history and that FF7 erosion and all that Mario clutch gene and whatever else, Cloud looked Death himself right in the face and said not today. Remember that insane Mario hold of a 200 vote lead in 2002? I do. Well in 2018, Cloud decided it was his turn to hold serve. Not only that, but as the poll was getting close to finishing up he did what Samus failed to do -- beat Mario's ass. There was no sitting back. In the final 30 minutes, Cloud made sure to go out there and layeth the smacketh down. Even then, people were terrified Mario would just erase a 150 vote lead in the final update. Nope. Cloud wins by 141 votes. I could come up with a myriad of reasons why Cloud pulled this thing off, but I'm pretty sure one reason stands out above all the others. The funniest thing about this, and I'll get more into this with the final match, is that Square has been actively trying to sabotage Cloud being in Smash and it hasn't mattered. He has absolutely gotten new strength from that series, he's retained popularity despite Square's bullshit (https://www.eventhubs.com/stats/ssbu/), and it showed in this match. No chance in hell he pulls this off otherwise. Good run by Mario this year, but it ended one round before he wanted. That's what happens when you keep failing to put people away. Eventually one just bites you. This doesn't erase the pain of the 2002 match by any means, but it was a pretty decent revenge nonetheless. Kind of like every now and again you get a Super Bowl rematch in the following regular season and the losing team wins. It doesn't mean as much, but it's something. That's effectively what this was. Nice job by Cloud, even if he had to get into Smash to do it. Remember back when Square could actually beat Nintendo now and again on this site instead of having every single debated match between the two companies be an auto-loss for Square? Isn't this nice? Granted Square had to bend the knee, but so what? This was awesome! Addendum from Kanz: What's interesting is I'm pretty sure if Cloud and Mario meet up without Mario having beaten Samus twice, once while having to expend the clutch, Mario wins here. No proof of it of course, but it felt like there was a very strong anti-Mario sentiment that probably cost him a few votes. Fantastic point and probably true, but who really knows. I will say that pretty much no one on Board 8 was rooting for Mario to pull this off, and there was some extra oomph behind that late Cloud push. It's like people realized they fucked up by not pushing for Samus harder and just wanted to finish Mario off when they had the chance again. Kanz's point here is very fair! ## Safer777's Analysis This result I didn't expected. Cloud has fallen from the early contests and Mario has constantly new games. Plus Odyssey came last year and it is considered perhaps the best Mario game. Plus the new Smash game is out. So I thought that Mario would win with at least 53% here. But Cloud did it! These 2 have fought in the first ever contest where Mario won because he had a HUGE rally(big for how things were back then of course) and a new Mario game the same day that they fought! And he barely won back there too! Also he beat Crono in a controversial match too and from back then he became the villain of the contest. The contest only, not in games obviously. But after he beat Samus 2 times in this contest and in the 2nd time with the last update it seems most people wanted him to lose from the board at least. And he did lose!  So for the actual match. Mario was winning from the start of course. But Cloud was always right behind him. Mario lead was around 310 votes and then Cloud started  cutting but Mario begun gaining and his lead maxed out at 335. But Cloud started cutting and cutting but after a while Mario started gaining again. He is a fighter!  Then Cloud got serious and started cutting and eventually after almost 20 hours he went ahead and started pulling. Mario tried to cut, but the best he could do is stall. So eventually Cloud managed to won. Mario clutch didn't saved the day! So yeah Cloud took revenge after 16 years! I know his power comes from Smash now but I don't care. He still has it! I think there was a rally for Cloud too though, because he did much better with anonymous votes than the registered ones. Still nice to see someone non  Nintendo win you know. FF7 man! Still has power! If only we FF 7 remake, or KH 3! If the FF 7 cast is in there at least. Still this match was really good no matter how you look at it. Also I believe almost the whole board had Mario winning here of course. Hey we can't predict everything. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well I guess we have our answer as to why Mario was ahead of Zelda in the adjusted X-Stats. The raw X-Stats may clearly use the Legends' Bracket numbers, but if the adjusted X-Stats were basing things off of the Losers' Bracket, Mario did put up a better performance against Cloud than Zelda would the following match. After Cloud held a narrow 250-247 lead at the freeze, Mario took the second update by 66 votes and proceeded to extend his lead past 300 within the first three hours of the match, peaking it at 335 about 7-1/2 hours in. Cloud would fight back over the remainder of the night, getting it down below 50 around 6 AM, but Mario rode the morning vote to a lead of over 200 before Cloud started fighting back again. Cloud took his first lead of the match with 4 hours and 35 minutes remaining, and the next update only increased his lead by a single vote before Mario took the next update--only by 5 votes, but that was enough for another lead change. But Cloud won the next update by 21 to take the lead for good, and the two battled for a bit, Cloud only taking a double-digit lead for the first time in the final hour. It was the \#8 closest 1v1 wire-to-wire match, \#6 among 24-hour matches...and yet, only \#5 for this contest! It meant that over half of the Top 10 came from this contest, except they already did because the match that it booted down to \#11 was also from this contest. Seriously, the all-time \#17 (again, for 1v1 matches only, since we keep the 3/4ways in a separate list) can't even make the contest's Top Ten. Maybe it's the registered voter bonus making things tighter than they should be, or maybe it's just the lowered vote totals, but this contest had a lot of really close matches, strictly speaking. Not all of them *felt* close. Here, let me give you a rundown of the overall top 25, except instead of listing the actual match, I'll just list what contest they're from: Asterisks are 12-hour matches. 1. GotD\* 2. CBIX\* 3. CBX 4. GotD\* 5. CBX 6. CBX 7. CBIX\* 8. BGE3 9. CBIX\* 10. CBX 11. CBX (that'd be this match) 12. CBX 13. GotD\* 14. CBIX\* 15. BGE2 16. CBX 17. CBIX\* 18. CBIII 19. CBX 20. CBVIII\* 21. CBIX\* 22. CBX 23. CBVII 24. CBIX\* 25. GotD\* 9 out of 25 from this contest. Even CBIX, which had similarly rancid vote totals whenever Draven was absent and had matches that ran only half as long, only had 7. Overall, 24-hour matches do now hold a 13-12 lead over 12-hour matches in the all-time top 25. I wonder what the upcoming Game of the Decade will look like. Will it break the records set here? And if it does, will it be because of intensity, or because of complete and utter apathy? I look at Minecraft, a casual game to end all casual games, and yet I have to take it to win *easily* in Round 1 because it's up against a MOBA and we absolutely abhor those after 2013. I look at Yakuza 0 getting its characters absolutely slaughtered in this contest and take it to Round 2 because it's up against something called The Witness. Overwatch seems like it'd fall squarely in the category of "things Board 8 hates, and is possibly slightly scared of the rally potential of", but iirc Death Stranding was considered a massive disappointment by all of those eagerly awaiting Kojima's next masterpiece after Konami kicked him to the curb and so I have to side with the casualbait. Except then you hop on over to the latest extruded Blizzard cash-extracting device and you're like "no, fuck that, I'm going with 'niche things that Board 8 loves'." I mean yeah it's probably still the wrong pick but it's a 7-10 match so eh, it's only worth one point. Though frankly the biggest problem is that all of these new games have generic "edgy" names. I initially had Bloodborne-CoD:BO as one of those "why do I have to pick one of these to win a match; they're both going to be megafodder" matches. But Bloodborne was actually respectable in BGE3, going up against a Final Fantasy game no less (not that I really trust recent Final Fantasy games to not be fodder either. Square spent most of the decade pushing Final Fantasy XIII sequels on us, and we responded by not putting *any* of the FFXIII games, not even the original one, in the bracket. And yes it was eligible; we were going by NA release dates unless no such date existed and Lightning rather famously appeared in a Winter 2010 Contest match before her game had released in the US. Not surprisingly, it was the strongest she'd ever look). The game that I was thinking of that got eviscerated was called "Hearthstone". Meanwhile, that same theory of "wait, this has actually been in a contest before" got me second-guessing taking Stardew Valley over Destiny, except Destiny actually did get blown out by something GameFAQs hates. --- ## (4)Zelda vs (4)Cloud Strife (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (4)Zelda vs (4)Cloud Strife (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88599)_ ## Ulti's Analysis I feel like this match would have had a lot more impact had we not quite literally just watched Cloud beat Mario with the exact same trends and for the exact same reason. Cloud was in Smash, which gave him the boost he needed to stop embarrassing himself. It's really that simple. Here, you even get the same video I used last writeup because you might be a wiki reader reading these out of order or something. This match wasn't as exciting as Cloud's comeback on Mario, for two reasons. One, there is no history here. There was no hype, no insane loss from 2002 that Cloud was trying to make up for, no connection from people that grew up on contests and stayed on Board 8, nothing. In fact these two had never even been in a poll together before this match. The other reason is the early numbers being much smaller for Zelda than they were for Mario. Mario built up a 300 vote lead early and looked like he would do what he always does before Cloud pulled off one of the more surprising comebacks we'd ever seen. He reversed trends. That is not an easy thing to do. But when you repeat the exact same pattern one day later on a smaller scale, it doesn't mean as much. Cloud actually won the board vote here, which he never does, and then Zelda only built up a lead of 127 before she started struggling. Mario breezed past 300 before that happened, so when Zelda struggled much earlier we all knew what was coming. The only real point of contention here would be whether or not Cloud could win the morning/day vote over a Zelda character, which is simply a different beast than the Mario characters. It's like watching Aquaman fight all these amazing subterranean beasts with the awesome technology. It's great and all, but then he meets the fucking kraken. Turns out Cloud = Aquaman, Zelda = Mera, and Link = Thanos isn't all that crazy of a comparison. Zelda did her thing over the first few hours, and even got a lead inching toward 300 at one point, but Cloud erased it all overnight and had just proven he was capable of morning/day success against Nintendo with Smash's backing. So when Cloud won the morning vote and then beat the shit out of Zelda all day long until the poll ended, it wasn't a surprise. Which is a shame, because had the Mario match not just happened, this would have been a huge shocker. Just some bad luck for Zelda, I suppose. Switch this match with the Mario match in the bracket layout and we're telling a much different story here, but it is what it is. This also doesn't mean Zelda wasn't the star of the contest, either. She just ran out of gas after losing to Link, and I think a lot of people when faced with a choice of an all-Zelda final versus a Link/Cloud final, they picked the option less likely to be an SFF embarrassment. Can't blame them. ## Safer777's Analysis So Cloud edged Mario and here is facing Zelda. Zelda beat barely Mario too and did well on Link so that means that these 2 were equal. So for around 12 hours Zelda was winning and after that Cloud went ahead and he won easily. I once again didn't expected that. These 2 both faced Link and they both got owned so it didn't really matter who would face him again. Plus Zelda has a bandwagon and rallies and such so I thought she would win. But no. Cloud did it again. So once again he reached the final match. I still don't believe that Cloud managed to beat both Mario and Zelda to reach the final match. But this match prooves that Zelda is now top tier and can beat half of  the NN no problem. Man if another contest comes and we have another Zelda game she can be the 2nd strongest character in the bracket for sure. But I have to say I gotta hand it to Cloud. Defied expectations and reached another final too! Come on please, FF 7 remake! Or KH 3 boost! If the FF 7 cast is there. Or something! Also I don't believe that Cloud is still the Number 2 guy even though the matches say otherwise. I believe that Samus beats him for sure. Also Smash makes everyone hyper strong. It is scary to see how much power this game gives! Some said that people voted for Cloud because they didn't wanted to see another Link VS Zelda Final match. Eh I am not sure. The trends here were exactly like Cloud VS Mario so there you go. So this was the final match for Zelda in the contest too. She was the Star of the contest no doubt for me and for most people. Let us see next time how she does. ## Tsunami's Analysis Next up in the department of totally made-up "common knowledge": all those classic RPGs are weakening because we're the only ones who still like them, but they'll never completely turn into fodder because this site is run by exactly those people, the ones who are still stuck in the 90s. Yeah, not happening. For the second match in a row, Cloud would lose with the registered voters but still win because of his lead with the unregistered voters. I mean, yeah, antivoting FFVII is nothing new here, but I guess it's *because* we expect it to win anyway? Or perhaps we're dealing with "outsiders" who had GameFAQs accounts back in the day and still can log into them, or Board 8's tastes *aren't *representative of GameFAQs as a whole, because supposedly the board should've been pro-Cloud in both of these matches, yet the registered voters alone wouldn't have given him either of these matches. Zelda's peak lead wasn't all that far behind Mario's, but Cloud caught up much sooner--about halfway through the poll--and cruised to what for this contest probably qualifies as an easy enough victory, nearly winning by 600 votes and breaking 51%. I wanted to try to give an example of a match from our heyday where neither side ever broke 51%, but it turns out that a lot of our classic matches featured one side getting off to a sizable early lead and the other just not letting them go away easily. ...Actually that wouldn't have been the case for this one, either, even if Cloud hadn't gotten up over 51% at the end. I suppose that's a natural effect of every vote being a great portion of the percentage early on. As best as I can tell, it's never happened in a 24-hour match, not that that's a relevant fact since the disqualifying factor is usually that the match *starts* too uneven, one side getting a little bit of a percentage lead. Yet looking through the list of closest wire-to-wire matches, the only ones I can find where neither side cracked 51% past, um...wait, what should be the cutoff? Well, our list for "loser never took the lead" allows the loser to have the lead at any point before the end of hour one. So the two close matches from GotD definitely qualify--MGS2-SotC was inside of 51-49 at the freeze, an extreme rarity, cresting above it for a single update 10 minutes later, while Team Fortress 2 was at 53.15% on Fable at the freeze but that was the last time either side would even reach 50.6%. The closest 24-hour match I could find to pulling it off wasn't, in fact, Pikachu's victory over Mega Man (Mega Man didn't fall below 51% for good until the five-hour mark), but..uh...huh. I was about to say the Xenoblade Chronicles-DKC2 match, but then I was like "wait, *did* that ever go beyond 51-49?" because when I was scrolling to the beginning I only found one update listed at 51-49 exactly (and calculating it properly, it *was* still inside of 51-49, but I mean *just barely*, it's literally 50.999%-49.001%), but I could've sworn I'd seen it get bigger, and it turns out it was later. But even so, that might be the true closeness record for percentage because that match*never*, and when I say never I mean not only after the freeze but also at the pre-freeze snapshots for 4, 3, and even 2 minutes, got outside of 51.1%-48.9%. So I'm definitely optimistic that GotD2 will bring more thrilling matches. --- ## (1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Grand Final) 2018 _source: (1)Link vs (4)Cloud Strife (Grand Final) 2018 (revid 88567)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Let's hypothetically say Cloud had won this match. It would have meant Link's first loss. Since the legends bracket was double elimination, wouldn't that have meant a third match? This wasn't accounted for in the bracket layout, not that it mattered. Nothing was touching Link this year without a rally. I know the percentages are similar if you look at their two matches this year side by side, but this match was a little different in that Cloud actually won the board vote before getting buried. Seeing this dude lose every single board vote since 2003 before randomly winning them this year is really something else. It's also hilarious how with all the changes we've seen over the years, our final is still Link vs Cloud after all this time. One Cloud spot in Smash Bros changed everything, and there is real anti-Link sentiment building up here. I know this is very weird to say about our most dominant character historically in a final where him not getting 60% was an act of god, but it's true. I suspect that resentment will grow, assuming we even get contests anymore after the vote total shit show we just watched. What an embarrassment. To have a contest final not break even 30,000 votes is such a damned joke. More on that with my wrapup post. Usually in a final, even in a total mismatch, weird things happen and you naturally get a closer result. It's human nature. But sometimes, you get an entrant so savage that even the final can't be saved. In 2002, Link scored 62.53% in the final against Mario. In 2004, Final Fantasy 7 scored 58.24% in the final against Chrono Trigger. In the villains contest in 2005, Sephiroth scored 58.17% in the final against Ganondorf. In the Rivalry Rumble, Link and Ganon scored 57.72% on Mario and Bowser. In 2013, Draven scored 49.13% in a 3way match against Snake and Samus, which is completely insane when you think about it. In Years, 1998 scored 66.19% in the final match against 2001. Pretty much every other final has been close in percents, and some people would argue a few of these shouldn't be on the list. Link getting 59.27% in the final here gives him our \#3 most dominant 1v1 finals performance ever. Without Smash Bros, Link easily breaks 60% and quite possibly beats his 62.53% on Mario from 2002. That's some true savagery from the guy, and Breath of the Wild is really something else. I know people want Game of the Decade 2, but the reason Game of the Decade was so good is that it was completely and thoroughly unpredictable. I'll give you two spoilers for Game of the Decade 2. Breath of the Wild breaks 60% on everything except Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate takes second place unless we get an act of god. Which probably won't happen, because a bunch of whiny-ass children think rallying in a popularity contest is bad. More on that in a second. I had no idea where to put this in our PCA here, but this is probably the best spot given "Cloud broke 40%" is the only thing we have to talk about for the finals of a tournament that had 150 matches in it. Fuck Squaresoft. They do a great thing by letting Cloud get put in Smash Bros, they hype us all up that they might be good partners with Nintendo again, and then they go and fuck it all up by being assholes about licensing? For who? For what? Cloud in Ultimate didn't get a custom skin for his fighting spirit (that game's version of a trophy), and Final Fantasy 7 has two songs -- the same number as Game and Watch got. What a fucking joke. Remember all that vitriol I threw at Nintendo for all those years? It's almost Square's turn if they keep this stuff up. I want to like their games, because I loved them so much in the 90s and I have hope they'll get back to being good, but they constantly and actively give me reasons not to like them. The last time I truly had an "oh shit, awesome!" moment with them was 2002. The original Kingdom Hearts. Since then, they've been just ok. For the NFL fans, you know all those "just ok" commercials you keep seeing? That's Squaresoft. Just ok is not good enough. And stop being bloated corporate idiots. Even with Cloud in Smash, Nintendo just whipped your ass 60-40. Step your game up. I don't really feel like doing a massive takedown like I did for Blizzard, but just know that they're dangerously close to that point with me. Getting our hopes up and then pulling this trash is just unforgivably stupid after over a decade of being just ok. I don't care that you're giving us some Switch ports of old games. Go port Final Fantasy 8 and stops being idiots with licensing, you morons. Compilations, cooperation, and people working together is what everyone wants now. Should I pull up the amount of money the Avengers franchise has made so far? We haven't even gotten the fourth movie yet, which is probably going to add another 2 billion dollars to the pile. The model is right there, Square. Use it. With that, our contest was over. Let's wrap this bad boy up. ## Safer777's Analysis The True Final match! Oh yeah! And a rematch too! So Cloud did managed to do 1% better and finally break 40% on Link. I guess since he both beat Mario and Zelda in a row in close matches too he got a bit of momentum. Of course no way he would beat Link after he lost so much in the first match. Link is too strong now. Nothing except a major rally(which will not happen because no outsider cares enough now)would make Link lose. Still nice to see Cloud reaching the final. Again! Maybe he is the 2nd strongest character here anyways. But man Link dominated this contest. Well makes sense. BOTW and Smash. So that was it. The final match of the contest.  After all these years the final match is Link VS Cloud! Again! This site likes the traditions it seems! So that was it for the contest. I liked it to tell the truth. Some exciting stuff happened. The only true bad thing is the low vote totals. Seriously. Barely 30.000 AND with the double registered users bonus! Where all the people went? Hope you liked my analysis in all these matches! See ya next time! ## Tsunami's Analysis I mean, did we really expect otherwise? The final match was going to be a rematch no matter what. There was pretty much no way that the final match wouldn't end up being a rematch, because for it to feature someone who hadn't already faced Link, that someone would have to first beat someone who had beaten them earlier. Granted, Mega Man did exactly that this contest, and Samus nearly did, but it's a huge ask. I don't know, maybe if Samus had been able to pull out those few extra votes against Mario, she could've ridden a combo of the rallies that seemed to be popping up for every female character and her *actual* strength that got her to the finals of CBIX and won her the main bracket in '06 to upset Cloud, then SFF down Zelda to give us a fresh match. Which she'd lose, of course, but it'd still be better than having a rehash of a match we'd just had. That probably wouldn't have happened, though; beating Cloud without some mitigating factor is never an easy task if you're not Link. Snake's only victories over Cloud came when Cloud was being LFFed, first by Sephiroth and then by Crono (and maybe also Link, because swords? But mostly Crono). And his only other non-Link losses were...Mario in the infamous Planet Gamecube match, L-Block, and Squirtle in the Draven contest. And I guess the 3rd-place match of Rivalry Rumble but no one really cares about that. Actually when you consider she broke 47% on him in 2010 after being held just under 41% in 2003, maybe it's not so unreasonable to think that this would've been her year. Yeah let's go with this. Someone make up some adjusted X-Stats that say that Samus was actually the \#2 character in 2018 and only lost because Mario continues to be a bad matchup for her. It honestly probably wouldn't be any more wrong than any of the other ones we have floating around. Hell, if you use the raw vote totals instead of the ones adjusted for the registered user bonus, Cloud got 51.37% on Mario, while Samus got 51.13% in her second match. That's still a slight advantage for Cloud, but it's really slight and character battles are not and have never been transient. Given the way trends were going at the time, this seems really probable. As for Zelda, the percentages would be more along the lines of their 2006 matchup (roughly 55-45) than their 2010 matchup (roughly 64-36), but it's hard to think that Zelda could keep up her momentum when faced with another powerful female. Zelda may have long since moved beyond her damsel in distress days, but Samus has always been the heroine of her games and her first game is just as old as Zelda's. She's the original feminist gaming icon, and not even Other M was able to ruin that. Anyway, since Samus wasn't able to get that last push against Mario, we had Cloud in this match instead. He improved on the first match against Link, managing to break 40% this time. But this was never going to end in anything other than a comfortable Link victory. Honestly it's hard to imagine that Link will ever lose to anything other than a massive rally. Even Draven barely hung on at the end, relatively speaking--his raw margin of victory was higher than a lot of matches this contest, but we had 150 matches in this contest and if not for registered users' votes counting double, *Shepard's* vote total in the Link-Draven match would've been good enough to beat the winning total in 126 of them. Of the 24 that it wouldn't, 15 of these were in the first round, 5 in the second, 3 in the third, and then there was Link's SFF beatdown of Ganondorf. Even *with* the double-counting votes, Shepard's total was higher than Zelda's winning total against Mario, Crono's against Mega Man, Tifa's against Sephiroth, and the asbestos standard, Bowser's winning total in LB1 against Alucard, which failed to break 13000. The actual raw total of 8578 is almost certainly the lowest winning total in any character battle (though it's still better than the Years contest), which doesn't sound too bad until you remember that CBIX was three-ways with 12-hour matches. But even in a 12-hour match where third place had 30%, the lowest winning total in that contest was 8979. In 24 hours, in a 1v1, Bowser got fewer votes than that and won. If votes do go up significantly in GotD2--which I kind of expect them to--we should just stop having character battles. Do people even really care about individual characters anymore? So many of the newer games have customizable characters anyway, which is probably why so few new games even get characters in these things. I mean, let's look at the characters who debuted in this contest. Aren't like half of them from indie games, which have a disproportionate tendency to be "retraux"? I'm not going to go over them all and count them, but it looks like most of them are either from indie games or from newer entries in established franchises (e.g. Noctis, Aqua, Captain Toad). And out of 150 matches in this contest, do you know how many were actually *won* by a character making their contest debut? 8\. 8 matches out of 150. 5.33%. Except that figure is inflated, because there were 5 first-round matches where both characters were making their debut, leaving a grand total of 3 matches where a character making their debut beat a character who wasn't--all of them 1-seeds (Geralt twice and 2B once). It's not 3 out of 145, though, because there were also some first-round matches between characters with contest experience, and even fourpacks where all four characters had contest experience. (For a moment I thought Division 1 had an entire *eightpack* like that, because of generically named male syndrome; Victor Sullivan was the only newcomer in the bottom half of the division). It's 3 in 104. There were 104 matches out there that, at the start of the contest, could have been won by either a veteran (even by the loose definition of "1 previous contest" making you a veteran) or by a newcomer, 41 guaranteed to be won by a returning character (34 of these in Round 1 and 7 in Round 2), and 5 guaranteed to be won by a newcomer. Of those 104, new characters won *3* of them. 2.88%. I feel like that's low. Maybe it's not really that low, because the more character battles we have, the more returning characters we have, but it seems like it ought to be low. It's obviously lower than CBIX, because Draven alone won 4.13% of all non-bonus matches. CBVIII? Honest to god, there *were* more matches that were guaranteed to have a winner who'd been in a previous contest than not. 66-61, including a trio of R3 matches, and of course not a single match where both characters were making their contest debuts. *Two* of those three divisions where one of the R3 matches was guaranteed to have a returner win also had a third R2 match with such a guarantee, and a seventh R1 match on top of that. Literally only one character out of 16 in the division was making their debut. One of those two characters that were the only ones in their entire fucking division to be making their debut was *Charizard*, who won said division. That alone accounts for 6.56% of qualifying matches, and 3.15% of total matches. So yeah, 2.88% is low. A single newcomer managed to singlehandedly exceed that percentage *without* discrediting matches where all possible winners were returners in each of the previous two contests. Same goes for all earlier ones, because there were only 63 matches in any of them which means it only takes 3 wins. I mean if you want to quibble about requiring a first place finish to count as the "winner" in the fourways, then no single character did it in 2008, but you had one first round fourpack where two newcomers beat two returners, and you did have three newcomers win their first round matches outright and reach Round 4. 2007, L-Block did it. 2006...okay, 2006 was probably lower because any female character with experience was naturally stronger than any of them that needed the split bracket to make their debut. But that percentage is horrible. Character Battle is dead; long live Best Game Ever. Oh right this vote total thing distracted me from my original point, which was that while Link would've won no matter who he faced here, I honestly believe that if she'd just pulled out those few extra votes against Mario, Samus *would* have put up a better percentage than this. Not *much *better, probably only around 42%, but better. Unfortunately this undermines the point I *just made* because we'd need another Character Battle to test this theory.