GameFAQsContests.com

Super Smash Bros. Melee beat Metal Gear Solid 2 but looked much shakier than its seed suggested. The writeup credits Metal Gear Solid 2 with being underestimated and remembers the match for inspiring the joking phrase "Ulti-Style Blowout."

Super Smash Bros. Melee pulled away from Vice City after an early deadlock and survived another difficult matchup. The writeup gives Vice City credit but says the weak turnout and Melee's repeated struggles left the division without an obvious favorite.

Melee overturned the old assumption that Final Fantasy X would beat it comfortably. After an early lead, a comeback, and long stretches of near-even voting, Melee held off the late Square vote and advanced to face Starcraft.

Melee ended Starcraft's Cinderella run in a chaotic divisional final dominated by outside promotion, flame wars, and a detected cheating surge. The writeup remembers the match as both a strong Melee win and a damaging controversy around Starcraft's run.

Rally · Cheat: The writeup says Starcraft was promoted through Battle.net and multiple Starcraft sites, while a separate sudden proxy-vote surge was identified as cheating. The controversy cast doubt over the legitimacy of parts of Starcraft's run even though Melee still won.

Final Fantasy VII dispatched Melee in a semifinal the writeup considered essentially predetermined. Melee's failure to make the match competitive reinforced the contemporary belief that it could not challenge an elite game.

Melee and Wind Waker advanced exactly as expected, but Wind Waker held up well enough to raise concerns about Melee's future ceiling. Fire Emblem collapsed under an especially hostile overlap situation.

SFF: The writeup says Fire Emblem was SFFed from two directions by Wind Waker and by Melee, the game that had helped introduce the series to many voters.

Melee won easily, while Diablo II repeated its first-round success and comfortably advanced again. Halo collapsed to last behind a SFF-affected Wind Waker, producing another major embarrassment for the series.

SFF: The writeup says Melee SFFed Wind Waker, though Wind Waker still held up better than expected and even finished ahead of Halo.

Melee and Final Fantasy X advanced through a largely featureless staircase match. Kingdom Hearts briefly fought Diablo II for position but never threatened the top two once the PS2 split took hold.

LFF: The writeup says Kingdom Hearts was held down by its PS2 overlap with Final Fantasy X, preventing it from mounting a serious challenge for second.

Ocarina of Time dominated the Nintendo-heavy field, while Final Fantasy X used the favorable bracket setup to advance. Melee fell to last and Pokémon could not overcome Ocarina's presence.

SFF: The writeup says Ocarina of Time heavily SFFed both Melee and Pokémon RBY, with Pokémon resisting the Nintendo suppression better than Melee.

Melee delivered one of the contest's largest blowouts and immediately framed the East as a coming Melee-versus-Brawl showdown. The writeup also treats the result as further evidence that rhythm games had collapsed on GameFAQs.

Melee posted another blowout, but its overnight and morning trends looked increasingly unfavorable for the looming match with Brawl. The writeup treats the performance as one of several signs that Brawl had become the favorite.

Melee beat Call of Duty 4 easily but again bled enough support to make the writeup increasingly pessimistic about its chances against Brawl. The poor bracket confidence around Melee added to the warning signs.

Melee built the early lead, but Brawl's European and morning strength completed the comeback and settled the rivalry for the bracket. The writeup argues that the timing format may have mattered enough to make the result less definitive than the rivalry deserved.

Melee beat Portal comfortably in an otherwise uneventful opener, with its usual early strength followed by percentage bleed. The writeup says the result gave little hint of how badly a later Chrono Trigger matchup would go.

Melee was already winning comfortably when its fanbase began a successful rally that inflated the final result. The writeup later treats this as an early trial run for the far larger Melee rallying still to come.

Rally: The writeup says Melee fans organized a noticeable rally despite already leading comfortably, boosting Melee substantially over its natural level against Pokémon GSC.

Melee beat Kingdom Hearts II as expected, but bled enough support to look doomed against the newly dominant Chrono Trigger. The writeup also notes that the Melee rally from the previous round did not return here.

Chrono Trigger looked ready to crush Melee until Smash fans mobilized across Reddit, social media and community sites. The rally flipped the match and stopped each comeback, ending Chrono Trigger's apparent path toward the championship.

Rally: The writeup says a rapidly spreading Smash community rally erased Chrono Trigger's large early lead and repeatedly countered every later Chrono comeback attempt.

Final Fantasy VII briefly led, but Melee's outside support quickly took control and turned the quarterfinal into a comfortable upset. The result reversed their old hierarchy and ended Final Fantasy's main title hopes.

Rally: The writeup says Melee's community rally engine took over after Final Fantasy VII's brief early lead and then drove the rest of the match decisively toward Melee.

Melee and Undertale mobilized massive outside communities and produced one of the highest-profile matches in site history. Undertale finally won the rally war after repeated swings, while a caught botting attempt added another layer of controversy.

Rally · Cheat: The writeup describes an enormous two-sided rally war between Undertale and Melee. It also quotes the administrator saying an attempted automated vote-stuffing operation for Melee was caught and its fraudulent votes ignored.