The 128 Greatest GameFAQS Contest Matches of All Time

azuarc posted...

That's hilarious. Before my time, so I never heard about some of the nonsense that went on in the first couple years, but it's also amazing to me that Xenogears was ever really that strong. (Or I guess Pokemon was just that disliked.)

Bit of both. Pokemon's pre-2007 results in contests were routinely awful, while SNES/PS1 Squaresoft was insanely beloved.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

You know, it is pretty funny that we have seen Magus vs. Ganondorf, Ganondorf vs. Vincent, and Vincent vs. Magus at different times throughout the history of the contests, and each of them were 52-48 affairs. If you knew nothing else about the contests, you'd swear they have always been comparable to each other despite the 15 years between the three matches.

But nope, turns out they've been very volatile entities that just happen to be at the same level when they do face each other 1v1.

Now that's hilarious. Vincent/Magus was after they'd both fallen off, too.

TsunamiXXVIII posted...

I've always felt that this board underestimated handheld games. I mostly noticed it when it came to them being surprised by Pokemon holding up to Nintendo SFF as well as it did, which I always attributed to the fact that even when they were losing the console wars, Nintendo always dominated the market on handhelds, to the point that the GBC's "biggest" competition was the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the GBA's was...the Japan-exclusive Bandai Wonderswan. Or for the rest of the world, the never-released-in-Japan Nokia N-Gage. Yes, seriously. The Wonderswan and the N-Gage are the #2 and #3 handhelds of the sixth generation by sales. And here's the point I'm about to make. The GBA, Gamecube, and XBox all came out in 2001. The Nintendo DS came out in 2004, the XBox 360 in 2005, and the Wii in 2006. The GBA outsold the Gamecube and XBox combined.

And Golden Sun was one of its first big hits. I'd long known that the first two games were originally meant to be a single game and were split up due to hardware constraints, but what I didn't realize until I was looking up dates for this, but that's because it was originally meant to be an N64 game. A full-fledged console game.

It's definitely true that we might underestimate handheld games to a certain extent, but at the same time, we are talking about the #1 seller of the PS2 with over 17 million copies choking against a niche hand-held RPG that didn't break a million.

89. Crono vs. Dante (2002) R2

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/06a01b44.jpg

Crono 66.58% 43939
Dante 33.42% 22055
TOTAL VOTES 65994
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(5)Crono_vs_(4)Dante_2002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/977-east-division-round-2-crono-vs-dante

Crono might have become one of the big guns in contest history, but when it all started he was just a little guy that could. In 2002, the initial hype tended to gravitate towards the main characters of long running series or the lead characters of the biggest games on the site. Crono was the odd one out. It wasnt that people didnt know that Chrono Trigger was popular. This was JRPGFAQs after all. But CT was seven years old by this point. Even FFVII was four years old, but FFVII was an institution on the site. CT was a popular game from two generations ago, nothing more. What kind of popularity would be generated from that was hard to judge and people really didnt know what to make of him. Projections ranged all the way from him losing in the First Round to Simon Belmont to making it to Snake in the Divisional Semifinals. Unlike the other future members of the Noble Nine whose popularity was all but guaranteed from the start, Crono was a wildcard.

Another potential wildcard was Dante. When it came to participants in 2002 with hype behind them, Dante was near the top. True, his game, while popular, wasnt a massive hit on the site, but Dante himself just epitomized cool. While we werent sure yet how big a role pictures would play in the match, we knew that Dante would be one of the beneficiaries of them. He had style for days, and he was considered the hot new character in gaming at a time when GameFAQS actually still cared about new games. Right as the contest got underway, Ceej posted a list of the odds for every characer, based on prediction percentages. The top 10 consisted of the future Noble Nine, plus one outsider: Dante. He had the eighth best odds in the contest, ahead of Sonic and Mega Man. And his match with Crono was considered one of the most debated and important ones of Round 2. And it would end up being important. Just not in the way we anticipated.

The two characters were pretty closely matched in the boards opinion, but things began to shift in Cronos direction after Round 1. Crono pulled off a tripling against Simon Belmont, a video game legend in his own right, and while Dante beat Q*Bert cleanly in his Round 1 match, it was considered a relative disappointment as he put up weaker numbers than Crono against what was supposed to be a weaker opponent. People were expecting good things from Crono by this point, but what we got exceeded those expectations. Crono demolished Dante, doubling him, and in the process making a mockery of what was supposed to be a nailbiter of a match. This was the performance of someone who was not just a strong character, but one of the strongest, and our entire preconceived tier list of popularity had to be thrown out. The original Cinderella run of GameFAQS had just begun, and Snake, who had previously been considered a big favorite to make the Final 4 was suddenly in a lot of trouble two rounds from now.

I wish Dante were a little stronger

It's a shame we didn't get a character contest within a few years after DMC5. Dante might've pulled off an upset with that game boosting him.

88. Undertale vs. Mass Effect 3 (2015) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/2439020c.png

Undertale 50.95% 28218
Mass Effect 3 49.05% 27162
TOTAL VOTES 55380
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(6)Undertale_vs_(11)Mass_Effect_3_2015
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6072-best-game-ever-day-6-undertale-vs-mass-effect-3

I couldn't wait too much longer after Dravens match to include this one. Unlike Draven/Chie/Jak, the day of this match had little hype surrounding it, even with four matches occurring at once, as was the practice at this time. The biggest debate was how much FFVIII would score on Vice City in their match, and once that match stabilized, it was quiet for the rest of the day. And then, around 6:00 in the evening, someone popped into the Stats Topic to say Umm.has anyone noticed that Undertales cut 2,000 votes off of ME3s lead in the last two hours? The 2015 Contest had been specifically set up to avoid a repeat of the League of Legends Rally from 2013. When it came to selecting games for the bracket, an algorithm was used that weighted both the total amount of nominations as well as critics scores for the games in question. While this ended up snubbing games like SMB1 and Zelda 1 (one of them was called out by name, I dont remember which), which were too old to have critics scores in any database, it did succeed in its principal aim: ensuring that League of Legends did not make the bracket. However, as became clear at 6:00 PM on the day of this match, LoL was not the only rally we had to worry about.

It didnt take long to figure out where the rally was coming from: Tumblr. Unlike Reddit, where someone could launch a rally, and then have it be upvoted and brought to the top of everyones attention immediately, a Tumblr rally took time to build steam. The user on Tumblr who had made the initial rally post actually posted it near the very beginning of the match, but as he had minimal followers it took time for the post to be reblogged throughout the Undertale ecosystem on Tumblr. Eventually, by the afternoon and into the evening, the posts spread on Tumblr had reached critical mass. Not only had it been reblogged and reblogged by many different users, increasing the rally in a linear fashion, the rally post had finally been noticed by some of the biggest names on the site (or at least in the Undertale/adjacent fandom), and the rally started to increase exponentially instead. In other words it became unstoppable. Or at least that was the feeling on the board. Unlike many of Dravens matches in the previous contest, there wasnt much of an effort to fight back. That previous experience had been so demoralizing that, even though Undertale would only win by 1,000 votes, people just shrugged and accepted the result. Here we go again, was the general attitude.

I dont want to re-litigate a bunch of drama again, but I did a lot of tracking at the time to see how the rally was spreading, and if it was possible to disrupt it. While there probably wasnt anything that could have been done to stop it, I dont think things were as hopeless as everyone determined they were. However, regardless of what one might think about the fatalism of the statement, it ended up being correct. Undertale would go on to contest victory, almost all of its matches playing out more or less the same way as this one. Undertale would start off far behind at the beginning of the match, someone on Tumblr would make a rally post which would initially have little effect, but which by afternoon/evening would snowball into a massive 10,000 vote comeback for Undertale, and an easy victory in the end. Super Mario 64 would put up more of a fight than some of the other non-rallied opponents, but that was the best it got.

I hate to break it to anyone who might have been looking forward to them, but this is the last Undertale match that will be on this list, even while Draven has a couple more to go.* Its not that the Undertale matches were less memorable, its just that they were all exactly the same. To riff on Tolstoy All happy rallies are alike; each unhappy rally is unhappy in its own way.

*Don't worry, I didn't put every Draven match on this list.

87. Starcraft vs. Kingdom Hearts (Sp2004) R2

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/c/cad8fed9.jpg

Starcraft 53.57% 40698
Kingdom Hearts 46.43% 35274
TOTAL VOTES 75972
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(16)Starcraft_vs_(9)Kingdom_Hearts_2004
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1645-division-32-round-2-starcraft-vs-kingdom-hearts

Speaking of legendary contest runs.Compared to Starcrafts other matches this year, its match with Kingdom Hearts is difficult to write about. Ill have plenty of time to get into the intricacies of its run later, so let this entry serve as a preview of attractions to come.

If one was to glance at the Board 8 Wiki page for this match, one might think, based on the Oracle predictions, that this was as big a shock as Starcrafts other matches. And Im not sure thats entirely true. It might have been a surprise as to how easily it won, but the fact that it won at all was not particularly shocking after Kingdom Hearts had faltered with Soul Calibur in Round 1. Dont be fooled by the Oracle predictions that show overwhelming support for Kingdom Hearts in this match. Look at how many of the Kingdom Hearts predictions have it winning by low numbers. Speaking as one of those predictors myself, thats the kind of prediction you make when you know that an upsets coming but you dont want to pull the trigger and pick against your bracket. And thats the position we were all in going into this match. We could feel the upset coming, we wanted it to happen, but we just werent ready to accept it.

Could a game that struggled with Soul Calibur beat Starcraft or beat Halo, which Starcraft was, for all intents and purposes, equal to, for that matter? That didnt seem right, but neither did Starcraft making the Sweet Sixteen, so we all kind of shrugged and guessed that Kingdom Hearts would find some kind of way to win. However, when the match started it became very clear that Kingdom Hearts would not find a way. Like most of Starcrafts matches, it jumped out to an early and impressive lead, but unlike most of those other matches, Starcraft actually held on to it. There was no back and forth throughout the day, no dramatic last minute comeback. Kingdom Hearts would bring Starcraft down by a percentage or two throughout the day but that was it. The match, despite taking place on a weekday, turned out to be remarkably consistent, proving that Starcraft was more than just a rally beneficiary, although in hindsight Kingdom Hearts not getting much of an ASV is kind of odd.

While this was certainly an impressive performance from Starcraft, it was also generally seen a result of Kingdom Hearts relative weakness, not any hidden reservoir of strength from Starcraft. At least not anything that we hadnt seen in the previous round. But it was hard not to draw *any* conclusions from the match. Kingdom Hearts might have been weaker than we thought, but beating both Halo and Kingdom Hearts meant that Starcraft had some strength. Starcraft would need more than some strength if it wanted to win its next match though, going up against the Zelda game of its generation. It would need *a lot* of strength, and after this match there were still a lot of questions swirling around in regards to how much Starcraft was capable of. Had we seen all it had to give, or was there more?

Yesmar_ posted...

While this ended up snubbing games like SMB1 and Zelda 1 (one of them was called out by name, I dont remember which)

It was Mario 1 (and Sonic 3 & Knuckles, never forget)

Also I feel like it was R/B/Y that actually came the closest to beating Undertale, not Mario 64

Leonhart4 posted...

It was Mario 1 (and Sonic 3 & Knuckles, never forget)

Also I feel like it was R/B/Y that actually came the closest to beating Undertale, not Mario 64

He said non-rallied opponents. Pokmon was definitely rallied.

Pokmon might have won too if the fan base wasn't too butthurt that gen 1 is very popular so that they started supporting Undertale instead.

And yeah, he had said Mario 1 was in top 100 nominations so we all expected it to be in. Then it got shafted because no metacritic was taken to be a value of 0 despite everyone knowing it would be like a 100 if it didn't predate the system. Somehow he topped saying it would lose to Halo 1.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Pokmon might have won too if the fan base wasn't too butthurt that gen 1 is very popular so that they started supporting Undertale instead.

Genuinely made me hate the fanbase so fucking much. Every single one of those people probably loved RBY before they became terminally online and picked sides

Definitely, I hate it too, anti-genwunners are at least as bad as genwunners ever were. No sides ever needed to be picked.

With that said I think the people antivoting gen 1 were a tiny minority of people rallied. It's the kind of performative stance you'd be sure to post about if you were going to do it.

I think apathy from the rallied Pokemon fans was probably the bigger enemy than anti-Gen 1 sentiment

It's tough to grasp, we had Bulbepedia and Masuda rallying to no clear effect. A Facebook page whose name I forget sid the same. It's probably also that Undertale was the hot topic of the internet but we did get popular comments stating that they would have helped had it been a newer gen.

The reddit rally worked but repeat threads were not allowed there and it was posted too early. If you could have repeat threads on the Pokemon subreddit, we might have a match.

Was it budget restraints or something that was the reason we didnt get any contests in 2012 and 2014? Or was it poor votals for Rivalry Rumble?

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Was it budget restraints or something that was the reason we didnt get any contests in 2012 and 2014? Or was it poor votals for Rivalry Rumble?

Budget restraints? How much do the contests cost to run?

The Tumblr with the biggest pro-Undertale impact was actually one run by someone who made custom Pokemon sprites/avatars for people. I noticed it showing up in a lot of the reblogs (retumblers?), and started tracking it. Undertale would see a huge spike in votes whenever it put a rally post/reblog up, and whenever the rally post would fall off their main page, Undertale's votes would collapse. I do think that if that person had gone on vacation, or not kept rallying for Undertale throughout the day, Undertale would have lost. You would think they would have had more loyalty to the subject of their Tumblr, but apparently not!

Hbthebattle posted...

Budget restraints? How much do the contests cost to run?

I'd assume prize money and admin time would be the biggest things. Maybe around $2000 prize money for everyone? (I don't remember exactly and I'm sure this varied by contest) I guess you gotta weigh whether you think the additional traffic is enough to offset this.

86. Amaterasu vs. Draven (2018) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/445785fe.png

Amaterasu 88.15% 25584
Draven 11.85% 3439
TOTAL VOTES 29023
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(5)Amaterasu_vs_(12)Draven_2018
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7296-division-8-round-1-amaterasu-vs-draven

The first round of 2018 saw a lot of people holding their breath. In 2013 and 2015 we had entered a contest with high expectations, only to see things collapse within a week when the scale of potential rallying became clear. We werent going to make that same mistake again. There were a series of booby traps spread throughout the first round, and despite the newly implemented anti-rallying measures, we werent going to relax until they were all past. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three times, we werent going to be fooled again.

First up: Monika vs. Wario. Doki Doki Literature Club had not shown any previous evidence of rallying on GameFAQS, but it had the exact type of committed fanbase that could potentially try to get something going for Monika. Monikas base popularity wouldnt be high, but Wario wasnt exactly a powerhouse himself, so any lead he had on her most likely wouldnt be high enough to withstand the kind of rally that might be in the works. In the end though, Wario would end up safely doubling Monika. Not really good enough to withstand a rally, but none came, so we were able to move on, one worry down. The next match in the series would be Sans vs. Pac-Man, this time featuring the main character of our most recent rally threat. Now, Undertale had grown in prestige and playrate since 2015, even on top of the attention its victory had generated, so there was a chance, people thought, for Sans to be able to win this match outright, without the need of anything more than a minor rally. However, just like the match with Monika, it turned out that we had nothing to fear. Pac-Man would cruise to a surprisingly strong 70/30 victory, completely shattering our predictions for this match. Not only was there no rally coming, Sans was quite deep into fodder range himself. Once again, a crisis had been averted.

And then there was Draven. His game was not as much in the current zeitgeist as the other twos were, but he was the one character of the three that had been rallied before. However, unlike Monika and Sans, we knew what Dravens pre-rally strength was, and it wasnt good. Still, it seemed likely that, despite the unpopularity of the 2013 rally, winning the 2013 Contest would have given him some boost, and so while people had Ammy winning solidly in this match, our pre-match predictions were in the area of 70/30, like the Sans/Pac-Man match. We could not have been more wrong. Amaterasu started off strong, and got even better as the match went on. Not only would she blow out Draven, she would blow him out with almost 90%, by far the biggest victory in the contest. Draven, who had set numerous records in his contest run five years earlier, would go on to compete for another one. His 3,439 votes would be one of the least number of votes ever cast for any entry in a contest match.

And we needed this. It might be unusual for a blowout to be considered a feel-good match, but this was a feel-good match. To see Draven get destroyed so utterly was like seeing the sites demons be exorcised. On a narrative level, 2018 works pretty well as a final chapter to these contests (think of 2020 as a little epilogue), and this match is one of the reasons why. If the contests had just ended after 2015, they would have ended without any kind of closure, but because they held out just a couple more years, we got it. We could move on.

That might be my personal second most cathartic match of that contest.

First place should be obvious (and could be on the list but I think it would've dropped by now if it were).

Exactly what League deserves

2018 was weird with the Zelda fuckery but yeah, it had a lot of the hallmarks of an old-school contest. I've got very fond memories of it.

And that match would probably have made my top 20.

I feel like I look back on 2018 more fondly, but remember 2013 better.

I usually tend to vote for which character I like better, regardless of contest history. But after 2013, I had to vote Amaterasu in this match, even though just judging by the characters I might vote Draven (haven't played either's game so this would just be surface level anyway).

I liked seeing Draven get what he deserves.

Did Snake still look a step ahead of Mega Man and Crono last character battle?

Yes

85. Mario vs. Link (2002) R6

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/bf8d564b.jpg

Mario 37.47% 36796
Link 62.53% 61415
TOTAL VOTES 98211
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(1)Mario_vs_(2)Link_2002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1002-tournament-final-mario-vs-link

Once upon a time, there was no LAW. With the exception of maybe GOTD1, most contests have at best 2 or 3 potential winners to choose from, and while the respective contests have their ups and downs in terms of predictability it all comes down to the same one or two entrants in the end. In 2002, that wasnt the case. The field was wide open. One cool thing about the initial leaderboards back then was that it would include next to the User and their score, what their Winner Prediction was. And unlike a later contest that would be nothing but Link/Cloud, a brief glance at the leaderboards in those days would have included a wealth of picks. Mario, Sephiroth, Snake, Link, Samus, Lara even! I remember a Ryu picker showing up even after hed already been eliminated. It truly was anyones game.

There were favorites of course, and while the Odds that were calculated by Ceej* werent strictly determined by how many people had that character winning (to quote Solarshadow: it was a weighted system that gave more importance to characters winning matches in later rounds.), it serves as a good proxy and matches up with my own personal memories of that times. Mario, Snake, Sephiroth, and Link were at the top of the predictions, with Cloud maybe a step below. Yes, this was a time when the conventional wisdom was still that Seph was more popular than Cloud. Mario was the obvious favorite, although people were certainly conscious of the potential for anti-votes as well as the belief that he was past his prime at that point, and the Mario and Snake pickers tended to be the most vocal as to their confidence in their prediction. Link was certainly considered a contender, but his support was quieter. While it might seem obvious in hindsight, there was something a bit counter intuitive about picking him. After all, Mario was the main Nintendo guy, wasnt he? Did Link have quite the same level of iconicity?

If people werent entirely convinced about Link when the contest started, they grew convinced as the contest wore on. There wasnt any big moment or match when Links dominance became clear. It was an accretion of evidence, bit by bit, and a gradual realization that this guy was special. His matches might not have been as exciting as the others, but that was exactly it. As everyone fought to get through to the next round, Link rose above everyone and dispatched his opponents with a boring ease, winning matches with 70+% rounds after other characters had fallen below 60% in their victories. Now, it must be said that, yes, Link did happen to be in the weakest division we have ever seen, and, yes, even at the time we werent entirely ignorant as to the lack of strength of his opponents when compared to the others. But still, a massive victory is a massive victory, and as Link kept pulling out one after another of these, people took notice. By the time the contests endgame had arrived, Link had emerged as the favorite to win, the only contender by this point that had not had any noticeable stumbles. By the time he faced his first serious opponent, Sephiroth in the Semis, the match was considered a done deal. People knew that Link would win it. It was only a matter of how much.

Any hope that Mario might have had going into the Finals was eliminated after Link once again dispatched an opponent with, if not quite the same margin of victory, the same relative level of ease as he had every round up to this point. Sephiroth couldnt even break 45% on Link, and Mario wasnt considered that much higher on the totem pole, if he was higher at all. And, to no ones surprise, in the final match, Link once again cruised to victory, in an easy 60/40 manner, and with a great match pic that showed the legendary status of each character. For better or worse though, this finals would prove to be Links coronation. GameFAQS was his site, and we were all just living in it.

*https://solarshadow2002.tripod.com/odds.html

Yesmar_ posted...

Amaterasu 88.15% 25584
Draven 11.85% 3439
TOTAL VOTES 29023

This makes me wonder... is the highest percentage a non-Noble Niner character has ever gotten?

Haste_2 posted...

This makes me wonder... is the highest percentage a non-Noble Niner character has ever gotten?

I think so. My first thought was Zelda/Carmen Sandiego from 2006, but that was 86%

Good catch! Let us also never forget that the first character to break 80% in a match was Knuckles!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/954-east-division-round-1-knuckles-the-echidna-vs-akira-yuki

84. Samus Aran vs. Sephiroth (2002) R4

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/09448185.jpg

Samus Aran 47.36% 46047
Sephiroth 52.64% 51177
TOTAL VOTES 97224
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(5)Samus_Aran_vs_(7)Sephiroth_2002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/999-west-division-final-samus-aran-vs-sephiroth

There has never been a run of matches quite like the last week of 2002. Out of the final nine matches that year, seven have made my list. The contest might have had its ups and downs up that point, but from the end of the Third Round onwards, it was electric. Six of the matches were 53/47 matches or closer, and with one exception were all matches amongst the Noble Nine themselves. That last fact might be obvious in hindsight, but at the time we had no clue who the elites on the site really were, and the fact that we not only found that out, but found that out via a string of nailbiter after naibiliter matches is an experience that can never be replicated. Theres a couple of individual matches throughout the years that can be said to have saved the contests, but this run of matches has to also be seen as a contender. If Ceej had any doubts about running a second contest the following year, the way that 2002 ended pretty much confirmed that hed have to.

All that said, this match is one of the hardest matches in that streak to write about, at least amongst the seven that made my list. A lot of the context depends on the two matches that came before, and which catapulted Samus and Sephiroth into the Divisional Final, but those matches wont be showing up until later in this list. Suffice it to say, the fact that this match was Samus vs. Sephiroth and not Sonic Vs. Mega Man instead was more or less decided by a coin flip, and neither character was going to let the other go down without a fight. If Samuss victory the round before had shocked the board, people got an even bigger shock when the match opened and Samus was leading yet again. And she wasnt leading Sonic, she was leading Sephiroth, someone who was a contender to win the entire tournament. Sephiroth would fight back and end up putting things to rest once more of the vote came in, but Samus proved in this match that her previous victory over Sonic wasnt a fluke. She was a true contender.

I would be remiss to not mention one odd thing about this match. Theres plenty of 2002 results that were shocking due to their close or blowout nature, but which in hindsight make perfect sense. This match is the opposite. The more we know about the historical strength of the contenders, the less sense it makes. There was a term called WDF or West Division Factor, and this was one of the original statistical anomalies that showed up when we tried to create an X-Stats ranking for 2002. For whatever the reason the X-Stats values for Mega Man, Samus, and everyone in Samuss half division seems very overrated. Mega Man, Sonic, Tidus, Ryu, Claire all seem to have values higher then theyve ever had before, and Samus herself seems to be at the strength she was at from 2003 onwards, despite the fact that the Metroid series had yet to receive its 2002 revival at the time of this match. What caused this effect? Did Sephiroth overperform in the following round? Was he getting anti-voted? Is it possible that both Mega Man and Samus fluked out strong performances on him for entirely different reasons?

Ive never favored the Sephiroth overperformance theory myself as his value seems perfectly fine to me, but regardless of the reason, something weird happened in the West Division in 2002. Sephiroth got the kind of scare that he would become insulated from in subsequent years as he arose to Clinkeroth status. But 2002, despite all it foreshadowed for later contests, was its own beast, and in this match, Sephiroth was lucky to survive.

The West Division Factor was simply that Link SFF'd Mario in the final, so that entire half of the bracket was undervalued compared to the West Division (and Mario probably overperformed/rallied/cheated against Cloud, which drove his value down).

Also Link was probably weaker in 2002 than in 2003. People blamed cel-shaded WW Link for his loss to Cloud in 2003, but the release of the game almost certainly boosted him. KH just boosted Cloud and Seph more.

But yeah, Sephiroth/Mega Man was so close for a while that Ceej had to have two pics ready, and there's a version where you have Sephiroth and Mega Man in the same pic, which was affectionately dubbed the Megaroth.

I thought it was widely accepted that Sephiroth and the entire FFVII crew boosted from Kingdom Hearts the following contest - see Sephiroth going from winning narrowly over Mega Man to outright destroying him. As for Samus I have no idea.

It's not necessarily relevant to this topic, but these contests honestly make me nostalgic for the late 2000s to the point that I kind of miss Super Smash Bros. Brawl in a way. It just feels like Nintendo put substantially more effort into the game's production values than for the next two games due to all the removed content in Smash 4 and all the obvious corner-cutting in Ultimate.

Leonhart4 posted...

The West Division Factor was simply that Link SFF'd Mario in the final, so that entire half of the bracket was undervalued compared to the West Division (and Mario probably overperformed/rallied/cheated against Cloud, which drove his value down).

Also Link was probably weaker in 2002 than in 2003. People blamed cel-shaded WW Link for his loss to Cloud in 2003, but the release of the game almost certainly boosted him. KH just boosted Cloud and Seph more.

But yeah, Sephiroth/Mega Man was so close for a while that Ceej had to have two pics ready, and there's a version where you have Sephiroth and Mega Man in the same pic, which was affectionately dubbed the Megaroth.

But the anomaly does not really concern the upper half of the bracket only, those mentioned characters are just too close to Link and Sephiroth. But they probably did both boost the next year and if Samus did too, she did a lot less.

Was the other picture really because Ceej needed to have it done by that day? There was another three matches coming before Samus vs. Seph lol.

ctesjbuvf posted...

But they probably did both boost the next year and if Samus did too, she did a lot less.

Well, Samus also faced Link in 2003, so her true strength is probably obscured a bit then, too. 2004 Samus is probably not too different from 2003 Samus.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Was the other picture really because Ceej needed to have it done by that day? There was another three matches coming before Samus vs. Seph lol.

He usually put out a bunch of match pics at once, and we would faithfully check the URLs so we could see them ahead of time. This would've included Samus/Seph then, too, so the Megaroth was a placeholder.

I saw posts from people who have me blocked or who I have blocked and was worrying it was Ulti bashing Brawl, but no it was just Leonhart.

Anyway, I guess Samus was kind of weird the first few contests? She did better against Link in 2003 than Mario did the previous year, then broke 40% on Cloud in 2004 when Mario couldn't do so against Sephiroth in 2003. Maybe she could've beaten him before the mid-00s Nintendo boost? Since this is such an old game-centric site I can also fully buy that she'd have a considerable amount of strength based solely on her older games (maybe just Super Metroid, who knows?). She also got humiliated less in 2013 than every other Noble Niner not named Snake and maybe Mega Man despite her most recent game being Other M of all things, though it might have helped most of her opponents were either fodder or characters who had reason to decline in strength themselves (Tifa being from FFVII and Mega Man's series hiatus likely being only cancelled out by the Smash announcement). I guess Samus's underwhelming result against Tifa AFTER Cloud had already been eliminated indicates she might have declined anyway and it could've just been masked because most of the rest of the Noble Nine also did? It was basically only her, Snake, and Mega Man who avoided getting embarrassed.

That also makes me wonder if Mega Man's old-school appeal kept him afloat in 2013 despite his series' cancellations. I guess as votals decline the characters of that nature keep doing well, so maybe in 2013 Mega Man actually boosted because of that plus the Smash announcement making up for him not getting any new games in a while, while Samus stayed about where she was relative to 2010. The same could have been true of the Chrono Trigger cast in 2013 and it just took a backseat to Pokmon destroying what little of the contest was left after Draven, especially since the 2018 contest all but proved that Crono, Mega Man, and Pikachu are all roughly comparable in strength so I guess Crono losing to Pikachu in R2 of 2013 was more Pikachu being good and less Crono disappointing.

After her recent franchise resurgence Samus could legitimately be #2 behind Link, wow.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

I saw posts from people who have me blocked or who I have blocked and was worrying it was Ulti bashing Brawl, but no it was just Leonhart.

I'm pretty sure you can still see posts from people who have you blocked as long as you don't have them blocked? Like I still see Leonhart's posts just fine.

83. Phoenix Wright vs. Gordon Freeman (Fall 2006) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/2ad774a3.jpg

Phoenix Wright 41.8% 46204
Gordon Freeman 58.2% 64324
TOTAL VOTES 110528
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(4)Phoenix_Wright_vs_(5)Gordon_Freeman_2006
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2520-destiny-division-round-1-phoenix-wright-vs-gordon-freeman

Going into 2006, there were certain contest rules to live by. Link is the favorite, Frog will always have a close match, Master Chief will choke, Knuckles always loses in the Second Round. But there was one rule about contests that rose above all others to become a meme: Gordon Freeman Never Wins. The number of characters that had made every single contest up to that point was a surprisingly small one. It contained the most popular names on the site, video game icons whose history stretched back to the arcade era, and Gordon Freeman. But that wasnt the only elite group Gordon was a part of. On top of making every contest, Gordon Freeman was part of an elite group within that elite group: one of only a handful of characters to never fall below 40% in a match. Now, unlike the other members of that group, his reason for doing so wasnt as impressive. Gordon Freeman, prior to 2006, despite being in every single contest, had never won a single match. And the matches he lost always played out with the same rules. He would go up against another character with a generic first and last sounding name, and then he would go on to break 40% on them, while still losing the match. Despite not hailing from the kind of game that GameFAQS tends to go for, he had become the lovable loser that everyone is excited to see fail again every year.

In 2006 though, something had changed. For the first time since 2002, Gordon Freemans first round opponent was someone that people thought he had a shot against. And, coincidentally enough, that opponent was someone else who was destined to become a Board 8 Favorite: Phoenix Wright. Now, keep in mind that this was less than a year after the first Phoenix Wright game was released in America, so Phoenix wasnt the cult fave he is now. There was no reason to think that he would be able to compete with a solid midcarder, which, after a strong 2005 performance, it seemed clear Gordon Freeman was. Even though the match bore superficial similarities to his last four (the naming pattern of his opponent remained the same), it seemed like, for the first time in his contest career, Gordon Freeman might actually win a match.

And the unusual thing is, despite how obvious the result seemed, a lot of otherwise analytical people used the meme to pick Phoenix Wright. It wasnt that there was some deep thought out analysis to prove that Phoenix Wright was stronger than he appeared, or that Gordon wouldnt retain his 05 strength. Nope, Gordon Freeman Never Wins was all the evidence some people needed, and even though Gordon was the favorite to win by a wide margin, a sizable segment of the board was basically memed into picking Phoenix.

Despite a famously godly Board Vote, Phoenix would go on to lose the match in a solid, but not remotely close fashion, and Gordon would go on to break another taboo the following round, when he failed to break 40% against Sora, in an otherwise impressive performance. And so, just like that, a legendary contest rule was broken, and one of our contests biggest losers finally had a taste of victory. Its always bittersweet to see a contest tradition fall by the wayside, but while GFNW was eventually broken, it wouldnt fade away from contest history.

I don't remember who I picked in that match. I may have picked Phoenix for the lulz since it was a 1 point match anyway.

I know GFNW was a big thing for a while, but actually seriously backing Phoenix Wright against Gordon required a bit of mental gymnastics to pretend that Gordon didn't boost from HL2, and thus Leon Kennedy was on the same level as Sam Fisher or Tina Armstrong.

If you were a big Phoenix Wright fan and wanted the point loss, that's fine. But Wrighto had no shot here, which is funny, because the Turnabout Terror would stomp Gordon Freeman now.

I took Gordon without hesitation.

Then did the same thing when he tag teamed with Dr. Breen against Phoenix and Edgeworth. It ended up being my only wrong pick in Rivalry Rumble.

82. Crono vs. Mario (2004) R3

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/9cb36bfd.jpg

Crono 53.24% 51430
Mario 46.76% 45165
TOTAL VOTES 96595
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(3)Crono_vs_(2)Mario_2004
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1767-hyrule-division-semifinal-crono-vs-mario

I hope I didnt give anyone a heart attack with the name of the match, lol. Although if anyone was a contest savant they would know that this is the only match between the two that is Crono Vs. Mario and not Mario Vs. Crono. In any case, I dont think anyone has to be told that Mario and Crono is the original, most enduring contest rivalry weve ever seen. They would meet up every year for the first four contests, once more in a four way match in 2008, and then finally once again in a Bonus Match in 2013. Mario would get the better of Crono more times than not, and he would be regarded as a clear favorite should the two ever meet again, but for a time in the early years of these contests, this was a rivalry based not on the fact that they were close to each other in the bracket. They were close to each other in popularity, too!

Mario had won their first two showdowns in matches that were as narrow as they were controversial. Despite having two tries at Mario, there was a still a sense that Crono hadnt gotten a fair shake, that we hadnt had a truly impartial match between the two of them without any outside factors interfering. If Mario/Crono in 2003 had been meant to settle the score, all it did was fire up people even more for a second rematch. For a real tiebreaker with no funny business. There was the requisite amount of debate when the 2004 Contest was announced as to what the bracket would look like, but there was one fact which was not in doubt. We would be seeing Mario Vs. Crono yet again. And sure enough, we did.

The last time the two had met up, opinions had been split, both in terms of who people thought would win, as well as who people wanted to win. Going into 2004, there was still some debate in regards to the former, but very little for the latter. The board was out for blood, and the contest community such as it was, was all in on Crono. While Marios image has gone through a fair amount of rehabilitation since then, in 2004 he was still the ultimate contest villain, and while he might have pulled out every dirty trick in the book to win in the past, this time we were hoping it wouldnt be enough. And it wasnt just hope. You could feel it in the air almost. This was Cronos year, and he would get his revenge.

And while the two rounds leading up to their rematch were relatively ho-hum they did nothing to dissuade us from that notion. Crono beating Magus by as much as Mario beat Bowser was considered quite the performance, and helped lock in the support of most who was wavering, Still, there were no real smoking guns. Then the day came, and. . . .Crono won relatively easily, in control of the match the entire time. It certainly was not as exciting as the previous two had been. And in a way, that worked. It fit the vibe. Would we have been happy with another knock down, drag out fight? Absolutely. But on some other level, we just wanted Crono to beat his rival, and there was something satisfying about seeing him do it so completely. He deserved it, and he would never quite be able to do it one on one again.

Yeah, I think Mario only won a handful of 15 minute segments the entire match. It was anticlimactic and yet satisfying at the same time.

In retrospect, Crono kicking Mario's ass so thoroughly should have been the biggest indication that the poll being further down the front page was affecting different characters in different ways.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

In retrospect, Crono kicking Mario's ass so thoroughly should have been the biggest indication that the poll being further down the front page was affecting different characters in different ways.

Well, I think it's not just that. Vote totals were lower, and for whatever the reason, CT's strongest years have been ones where the vote totals were low.

Plus, I think some of what Yesmar said is true. People remembered what happened in the previous two years, and I think that gave Crono a boost against Mario in particular.

Leonhart4 posted...

Well, I think it's not just that. Vote totals were lower, and for whatever the reason, CT's strongest years have been ones where the vote totals were low.

Plus, I think some of what Yesmar said is true. People remembered what happened in the previous two years, and I think that gave Crono a boost against Mario in particular.

Yeah, it was a double whammy. The voters who did show up and seek out the poll were much more likely to be RPG fans that love CT, and many knew about the last two Mario vs. Crono and wanted justice, while the voters who missed out were more likely casuals who just know Mario and don't know the Goku lookalike.

I find it interesting how "cutesy" mascots generally looked bad in the first few contests considering how well they as a whole did last one. In 16 years DK went from almost losing to Aya Brea to beating Leon Kennedy without a sweat!

Everybody was on board with Crono getting the victory after the previous year, that alone is enough for a swing. It was a match to decide who loses to Link anyway so it was all about setting things right with Crono/Mario.

81. Donkey Kong vs. Miles 'Tails' Prower vs. Tidus vs. Weighted Companion Cube (2008) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/aaf44e41.jpg

Donkey Kong 21.25% 29086
Miles 'Tails' Prower 14.81% 20279
Tidus 31.72% 43425
Weighted Companion Cube 32.21% 44096
TOTAL VOTES 136886
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Donkey_Kong_vs_Miles_%22Tails%22_Prower_vs_Tidus_vs_Weighted_Companion_Cube_2008
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3260-division-5-round-1-donkey-tails-tidus-cube

Most joke characters tend to enter a contest with a bang and take us all by surprise. There were certainly elements of WCCs run in 2008 that were surprising, but after what we had seen in 2007, we werent at all surprised that is actually had a decent amount of strength. After all, this match was, technically speaking, not WCCs first contest appearance. It would be one of the only characters to make their contest debut in a Bonus Match, showing up in 2007s battle of inanimate objects, where it put up a respectable 20%. Not a bad number considering that Portal was only a couple of weeks old at that point. But 2008 would remain its contest debut proper.

And while WCC might not have taken us entirely by surprise, it certainly did start things off with a bang. Now, the Board 8 Wiki says that the Oracle predictions for this match had Tidus in first, DK in second, and the Cube in 3rd. If thats what the numbers say, thats what the numbers say, but my personal recollection is that WCC was given quite a bit of credit/potential regarding its performance. If it wasnt supposed to challenge Tidus for first, there was still the opportunity for it to make a big splash in second place. Unlike L-Block, there was no debate as to whether or not people would get the joke. WCC had already become a beloved character across the gaming web, and it would have done well on much any site in 2008. But Portal was still considered, despite its HD Console release, more of a PC game. And we all knew that that kind of PC game culture had never quite stuck on GameFAQS. Would the Weighted Companion Cube?

Like most joke entrants, WCC got off to a strong start, and it became clear immediately that, if nothing else, DK and Tails had no shot at advancing into the second round. The two characters advancing would be Tidus and the Cube. Unlike many joke entrants however, it took the Cube a while to slow down. This wasnt a lead that reached its peak 30 or 60 minutes into the match. The Cube kept going up and up and up, beating Tidus for a solid 3 hours and building up a 1,500 vote cushion to serve as a backup for the inevitable collapse, which around 3 AM seemed imminent, as Tidus started to stall. This kind of performance from WCC was beyond what most expected, but we also knew how tricky these kinds of entrants could be, and we knew that Tidus had a shot at coming back if previous joke trends reasserted themselves in this match. The first step for Tidus was winning the Night Vote, which he did in dramatic fashion, cutting off more than 100 votes every hour, and managing to come back by 800 votes in only six overnight hours. If he could continue this pace, or hold on to even half this pace, he could have the match wrapped up by evening.

WCC had other plans though. By mid-morning, Tiduss comeback was grinding to a halt, and he would start a day long cat and mouse game with the Cube, as the two went 50/50 with each other for the next 12 hours. Tidus would start to make a run at a comeback, but then a rally would pop up on 4chan or elsewhere, and the Cube would take most of those gains back. This back and forth went on for hours, and while Tidus would come back by 300 or so votes throughout the day, pulling off a 1,000+ vote comeback overall in the end, the Weighted Companion Cubes early vote had sealed the deal. Tidus had made a valiant effort, but he would fall just short, and while both characters would still advance to the Second Round, the Cube would be the one doing so in the lead.