Lurker > transience

yeah, remove FF7 and Final Fantasy might not make it.

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xyzzy

https://i.imgur.com/H4I6XZi.png

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xyzzy

not bad. you've gotten all but one. that one is probably pretty hard to guess, though.

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xyzzy

mega man x is in the mega man category, and yeah, no appearance restrictions.

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xyzzy

well, here's something. I just sorted characters into what franchise they are from and then calculated their win percentages.

of the 186 franchises we've had, the number of franchises with a winning percentage is... 19, which completely floored me until I thought about it for 10 seconds and nodded along.

how many of the 19 can you name? some are obvious and I've revealed some in this topic. others are a little harder.

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xyzzy

eh, it's a three day weekend. I'll give it a look after the next thing I'm doing.

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xyzzy

a game contest... yeah, I guess FF7 wins for sure, with CT or OOT second. maybe Melee competes thanks to the rallies since some of those 2015 matches had 2000s votals.

maybe I'll do it, but there's so many entries across the years that it would be a headache to tally.

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xyzzy

Team Rocket Elite posted...

One thing that amused me is how all the bars would just freeze whenever the later rounds of a contest were happening and it was Noble Nine time.

I love this too. I was going to mention it and forgot. I considered trying to remove the rounds where no one moves but I felt like it would lose some context because you know exactly what happened there.

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xyzzy

I made a non-NN vote race out of curiosity

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2520819/

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xyzzy

here's win %

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2514638/

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xyzzy

if memory serves, we had a "super six" or "super seven" back in the day, which was FF7, OOT, CT, LTTP, Mario 3, Melee and, if you wanted to include it, FF6. that obviously doesn't hold up with RBY becoming a threat, or with Mario 3 falling off in favor of newer Marios.

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xyzzy

I need some feedback. for the 2008 contest, would you consider Snake to have 'won'?

I would typically consider the second place finisher to be a 'won' match as they qualified and moved on. how about for second place in the whole contest? did Link 'win' 2007 by coming in second?

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xyzzy

oh, I see. whenever something seems out of whack, just blame Pokemon in 2013!

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xyzzy

here's a bonus question. I hope I have this right.

Every Noble Nine character has faced the other eight characters with two exceptions. One is obviously Mario vs. Sonic. Who is the second pair?


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xyzzy

How many of the top 25 highest voted characters were developed outside of Japan? (0 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 9)

Master Chief is 21st.

Just to show off the disparity:

Top 20 - 0
Top 30 - 2 (Master Chief, L-Block)
Top 40 - 5 (Gordon Freeman, Sub-Zero, Kratos)
Top 50 - 7 (Scorpion, Lara Croft)

The worst winning percentage for a contest character who has won a match is 12.5% (1-7). Who is it? (Lloyd Irving | Laharl | Ratchet | Wesker | Sam Fisher)

Wesker: 1-7
Laharl: 1-6
Lloyd: 1-6
Sam Fisher: 1-4

(Simon Belmont and Vyse are both 1-5)

Wesker has losses to Kefka, Lloyd, Sora/Lara, Snake/Vivi, Ken, Leon and Sephiroth. The most notable one here was Ken, a match that he looked like he'd take before the "California ASV" saved Ken.

Which of these Metal Gear Solid characters has received the most total votes? (Big Boss | Liquid Snake | Revolver Ocelot)

I think most people think of this as a 2 person race, but Ocelot isn't far behind thanks to being in a lot of contests:

Big Boss - 380,517 votes, 8-6 record
Liquid Snake - 368,187 votes, 5-5 record
Revolver Ocelot - 292,197 votes, 4-7 record

For once, villain contest factor doesn't sway the result!

Which of these series' has had the most character battle matches? (Fire Emblem | Tales of | Xeno- | Starfox | Ace Attorney)

I really just made this to show off just how inept Tales is.

Tales: 2-19
Starfox: 8-12
Fire Emblem: 6-14
Xeno: 5-15
Ace Attorney: 5-12

Lloyd beat Wesker and Velvet Crowe beat James Sunderland in what might be the worst combined strength of any 1v1 match ever. Don't quote me on that, but it's gotta be up there. Kratos Aurion, Sheena, Mithos, Jade Curtiss, Yuri Lowell, Zelos and Luke are a combined 0-14. Remember this the next time we get a Tales/Hollow Knight type of match.

Which 'sidekick' character has the most contest wins? (Knuckles | Zero | Yoshi | Vivi)

Zero: 15-9
Yoshi: 14-9
Vivi: 10-7
Knuckles: 8-9

If I was being a little more honest in my questioning, I would have included Luigi as an option but everyone would have picked him. Luigi is 17-9, not that much better than Zero but that 2006 match puts him over the edge.

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xyzzy

Which "kain" has the most contest votes? (Kain (Legacy of Cain) | Kaim Argonar | Kane | Caim | Kain Highwind)

Kain Highwind - 34477
Kain (LOK) - 33927
Kane - 11476
Kaim - 6467
Caim - 1586

This one is obviously silly so I won't go into detail. LOK Kain did make two contests though, not one, so I'm a little surprised that that wasn't enough. But whatever.

How many characters have received less total votes than Tanner? (0 | 4 | 11 | 28)

Tanner 4492
Steve 4488
Kat 4401
Ragna the Bloodedge 4240
Dan Hibiki 4217
Alan Wake 4152
Red Bird 3976
Zero (999) 3866
Teemo 3788
Marisa Kirisame 3402
Hades 3352
Reyn 3332
Dunban 3233
Adol Christin 3228
Cirno 3215
Isaac Clarke 3193
Captain Viridian 3128
Welkin Gunther 2999
Commander Keen 2769
Sen. Steven Armstrong 2721
Francis York Morgan 2692
Peacock 2685
Nier 2640
Sissel 2426
Wolf 2322
Commander Video 1814
Spring Breeze Dancin' 1587
Caim 1586
Chester 924

Tanner was in last place from 2004 until 2013, when he fell to 28th. Interestingly, 2018 didn't add a single character to this list. The lowest vote total in 2018 was Isabelle with 5923, good for 41st worst. As it turns out, three-way battles and 243 characters are more important than lower vote totals.

Link has the most votes in contest history. Who is second? (Cloud | Solid Snake | Sephiroth | Samus)

This one's close.

Cloud - 2,558,296
Solid Snake - 2,510,510
Sephiroth - 2,370,932
Samus - 2,252,595

The bar chart race in post 51 explains this one pretty well. Cloud and Snake have been neck and neck since 2010, and were 30,000 votes apart at the end of the 2013 contest. Cloud's run through the losers bracket gave him a bit more of a cushion, though not as much as he maybe should have gotten due to the low vote totals.

This makes me wonder if I can make some adjustments based on average # of votes so that every contest is equally represented, or perhaps use something like adding up each character's percentage from each round. I don't have that tabulated though and it would probably be heavily weighted towards characters that have been in more matches, even more than total votes. I'll think about this and probably do nothing about it.

Which franchise has the most character battle wins? (Half-Life | Fire Emblem | Portal | Mass Effect | Mother/Earthbound)

Portal - 9-8, 3 characters
Mass Effect - 7-8, 4 characters
Half-Life - 6-11, 2 characters
Fire Emblem - 6-14, 6 characters
Mother - 5-10, 3 characters

Everyone forgets Weighted Companion Cube! (and rightfully so.) WCC has some really good wins that feel completely weird because WCC lives in a post-L-Block world where stuff like this was already normalized, and because it never truly had a deep run. Its best was making the quarterfinal in 2008. It did beat Mega Man thanks to Zero being in the poll though, something that made the Mega Man over Charizard win in 2013 all the more impressive.

Which perennial contest failure has received the most contest votes? (Kefka | Tidus | Magus | Donkey Kong)

Tidus - 542,199 votes, 5-10 record
Kefka - 521,680 votes, 9-9 record
Donkey Kong - 496,792 votes, 8-9 record
Magus - 440,423 votes, 5-8 record

I didn't include Gordon, but I should have:

Gordon Freeman - 498,175 votes, 6-10 record

Which one is the biggest contest failure? I'd probably go with Tidus, a dude who almost always had winning chances in later years but could always find a way to drop a match. His losses are to Sonic, pre-boost Ganondorf, Mega Man, Kirby, Squall, Pikachu/Leon/Vivi, Cube, Sub-Zero, Missingno and DK. I don't have the drive to look through the Guru but I bet he was the favourite against Kirby, Vivi, Cube, Sub-Zero and DK.

But Tidus is also one of only 17 characters to make 10 character battles (18 if you include Sephiroth, who is the only character to have made all 11), and was halfway decent in our best years which helps. Gordon had a better post-prime than Tidus in terms of results but he was terrible from 2002-2006 when vote totals were still healthy. Both characters are more than 200,000 votes below the next lowest character to have made all 10 character battles (Alucard).

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xyzzy

this reminds me of jyobin, a dude who had all the skills but just couldn't help himself from screwing around constantly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w2ALH90Sd8

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xyzzy

nah cause fuerte actually takes some level of skill as opposed to online dp mashing

that ryu plays like me

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xyzzy

this makes me miss SF4 so much

and also the Rufus player deserves to be bodied because he plays Rufus

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xyzzy

yep, Tidus is 5-10.

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xyzzy

Which of these Final Fantasy VII characters has received the most total votes? (Aeris | Tifa | Vincent | Zack)

I'll ignore Zack for obvious reasons. He's not in contention with the other three (though his best run is probably better than Aeris's best run)

This one is actually pretty close, at least by rank. By the numbers:

Tifa - 22nd overall - 903,639 votes - 23 matches - 16-7 record
Vincent - 24th overall - 800,353 votes - 20 matches - 13-7 record
Aeris - 26th overall - 671,138 votes - 18 matches - 11-7 record

Tifa leads by over 100,000 votes, but a lot of that is the female bracket. Let's compare their 2006 runs: Tifa got Ivy, The Boss and Princess Peach before making it to Samus. Vincent got Ganondorf and Sonic.

The argument between Vincent and Tifa for best FF7 supporting character has always been really fascinating. I won't recount everything, but Vincent had some really impressive results while Tifa always felt like she was good enough but never given a chance. Vincent beat Squall, beat Ganondorf and beat Crono in a fourway. Tifa lost narrowly to Sonic, almost beat Samus due to a wardrobe malfunction, missed the 2007 contest and got saddled with Sephiroth in 2008 (back when that mattered). Tifa didn't really get a chance to strut her stuff until 2018 when she beat everyone before going down hard to Samus, and by then Vincent became a nobody.

Aeris had great results as one of the original cinderella runs as an underseeded character in the 2002 and 2003 contests, but has been a clear step and a half behind ever since they let Tifa and Vincent into the contests in 2005.

Fun fact: Sora is actually ahead of all these guys in votes.

Which contest gathered the most total votes? (2003 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2010)

2003 - 6,666,441
2006 - 8,233,828
2007 - 8,537,038
2008 - 8,424,961
2010 - 8,161,178

It's really close! By comparison, 2018 had 4,377,530.

Which winless character has gathered the most votes? (Guybrush Threepwood | Ramza | Kratos Aurion | Cecil | CATS)

CATS - 157,168
Kratos Aurion - 123,806
Ramza - 103,892
Cecil - 103,280
Guybrush Threepwood - 82,877

CATS is actually a fascinating contest character. This dude is a contest legend. Kratos Aurion, Ramza and Cecil are 0-5. Guybrush Threepwood is 0-6.

CATS is 0-9. Only 29 characters have been in 9 or more contests! Of them, the lowest number of wins after CATS is 5. Despite being in 3 more matches, and being most notable during our vote total apex, he *still* is only 30,000 votes above the others. CATS isn't the weakest character of all time but we should probably think of him that way as a badge of honor. We didn't need Jay Solano. We had CATS.

Which non-Noble Nine member has the highest average number of votes across all their contest matches (minimum 10 contest matches)? (Dante | Master Chief | Aeris | Yoshi | Yuna)

Master Chief - 44159
Yuna - 42156
Dante - 41975
Yoshi - 40345
Aeris - 37619

For the record, Master Chief is only 300 votes behind Sonic and Mario. When we have our next character battle, he'll probably be ahead.

As others have pointed out, this is more about avoiding the recent contests where vote totals dropped off. One of the contests' lost memories is Master Chief's 2007 contest. Chief was probably a top 5 character in that contest, but it's forgotten because L-Block blew a hole in the whole thing. Chief *destroyed* everyone, was almost equal to post-Brawl Snake and pulled in a ton of votes. He's fallen off as the site has gone even more in the tank for Nintendo, and as a result hasn't been dragged down by the recent mediocrity.

Fun fact: As you would expect, Link is #1 with 56,854 votes. But if you remove the 10 match minimum, #2 is Kairi. 2006, man.

Which of these Pokemon characters has received the most total votes? (Charizard | Mewtwo | Red | Missingno)

This one is a two-character race.

Mewtwo - 298,506 votes - 12 matches - 7-5 record
Charizard - 288,543 votes - 10 matches - 7-3 record
Red - 194,073 votes - 10 matches - 7-3 record
Missingno - 139,449 votes - 5 matches - 3-2 record

2013 being such a messed up contest really inflates these guys' records.

Which Noble Nine member has the least number of contest matches? (Mega Man | Sonic | Solid Snake | Crono | Mario)

Solid Snake - 54 (I may have put him in as a swerve for an earlier question)
Mario - 44
Mega Man - 41
Crono - 39
Sonic - 39

My bad here. I meant to write votes instead of contest matches, in which case it's easily Sonic, who trails Crono by over 100,000 votes. The difference there is almost completely 2002.

For those who don't know, the 2002 battle took a while to gain steam. Some early matches had really bad vote totals, not quite as bad as 2018 but not far off. It wasn't until the contest got going that they really moved, and by then Sonic had lost that shocker with Samus. Crono was ahead by ~150,000 votes thanks to an epic Mario match coming off of Mario/Cloud. Crono shot ahead of him there and never gave it up.

Crono had some really bad contests, 2010 being the most obvious one, but the 2018 contest brought him back to a tie thanks to the losers bracket. Crono was able to beat Bowser and Mega Man to stay alive while Sonic got slaughtered by Snake and Zelda. Sonic would have lost to Crono too - he looked pretty terrible. 2018 was a real paradigm shift.

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xyzzy

anyway, here are the top four:

Final Fantasy (363 matches, 36 characters)
Mario (168 matches, 12 characters)
Zelda (126 matches, 8 characters)
Metal Gear (110 matches, 9 characters)


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xyzzy

only Guy and Cody! yeah Poison is the 8th, and I think of her as a Street Fighter character though maybe I shouldn't. oh well!

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xyzzy

okay, here goes:

Who has been in the most character battle matches? (Link | Cloud | Sephiroth | Solid Snake | Samus)

Here, have another race visualization: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2461470/

2006 is kind of cheating for Snake as he got to be in 10 matches. Everyone talks about the Villain Contest but that was only 5 matches. I haven't run the numbers on Leonhart's request for who got the most votes in a contest but I'm almost definitely sure that it's Snake. The only other character with a run like that is 2018 Zelda and the vote totals were 1/5 what they were in 2006.

Sephiroth should be the guy here because he had not one, but two contests that he got in that the rest of the NN had to skip. Sephiroth mega-bombed the 2018 final bracket though. I was thinking yesterday about how Bowser/Sephiroth was such a crazy overperformance in the 2005 villains contest and how that's a legitimate tossup in 2020. What a bomb.

I'll talk about Sonic and Crono in a later post.

Link has the highest single match vote total in contest history (oddly enough, in a fourway match). Who is second? (L-Block | Cloud | Zelda | Draven | Samus)

I forget who, but somebody called me on this one: Draven and L-Block are complete bait. I had to come up with something to make Zelda look like she belonged, because if I put four NN characters and Zelda, it would have been a little more obvious.

Here are the top five:

1. Link - 103465, 2007 round 1 vs. Agent J, Bidoof and Miles Edgeworth
2. Zelda - 102509, 2006 round 1 vs. Carmen Sandiego
3. Yuna - 97716, 2006 round 1 vs. Roll
4. Tifa - 96118, 2006 round 1 vs. Ivy Valentine
5. Samus - 95533, 2006 round 1 vs. Nidoran F (imagine this match today)

So yeah, 2006 is a beast and the female bracket was the very opposite of that. It was like Game of the Decade 2 where maybe 5 or 6 characters were worth much and the rest were just junk.

For the record, here are L and Draven's best numbers. They're not close to the top 10.

L-Block - 65462 vs. Link/Cloud/Snake
Draven - 73396 vs. Snake/Samus

And finally, the top performance by contest:

2002 - 69544 - Link vs. Scorpion
2003 - 94086, Cloud vs. CATS
2004 - 77605, Sephiroth vs. Sly Cooper
2005 Villains - 70458, Sephiroth vs. Ramirez
2005 - 80185, Mario vs. Joanna Dark
2006 - 102509, Zelda
2007 - 103465, Link
2008 - 82662, Link vs. Zidane/Shadow/Luke fon Fabre
2010 - 69074, Link vs. Cloud (24 hour matches help!)
2013 - 73396, Draven
2018 - 25584, Amaterasu vs. Draven

Which non-Noble Nine member has received the most total votes in contest history? (Bowser | Squall | Ganondorf | Ryu | Kirby)

The viz I posted earlier more or less explains this one. Bowser has two major advantages: the villain contest, and the 2018 winners/losers bracket. 2018 had low vote totals but an extra 3 matches vs. Alucard/Crono/Crono means that Bowser was second only to Zelda in total votes that year. Not bad for a guy who should have lost to Kirby.

Bowser is actually in his own tier between the Noble Nine and everyone else. He's 130,000 votes above 11th place, Ganondorf, a guy who should honestly be in 10th because he was lucky enough to not have to face Sephiroth until the final in the villain contest. But Ganondorf has his own problems, things like dropping that Mario/Vivi match or the dreadful 2004 Link match where he got obliterated. If you want to take the villain contest factor out, Dante edges out Squall by a few thousand votes for the title. Ryu is in 18th.

Which franchise has been in the most character battle matches? (Sonic | Mega Man | Pokemon | Chrono)

This is actually extremely close, to the point that I almost didn't post it in case I missed some obscure Pokemon or Mega Man character.

Mega Man - 88 (57-31, 9 unique characters)
Pokemon - 86 (54-32, *15* unique characters)
Sonic - 85 (46-39, 7 unique characters)
Chrono - 72 (43-29, 6 unique characters)

These franchises are 4-7 in total matches. I'll let you guess the other 3 in order, and maybe even guess some numbers if you want. Here's a fun hint: #1 is more than all four of these combined.

this is getting kinda long so I'm going to pause here and post, and I'll get back to this in a couple of hours.


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xyzzy

my favourite is Cloud being in 9th place heading into the 2006 TOC.

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xyzzy

this project really reminded me of how dominant the NN is. there's the NN and then there's everyone else playing on a different tier. I almost feel like I need to make a viz that removes them just to show all the variety underneath the top tier.

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xyzzy

yeah, I didn't include Dante in the options because I didn't think anybody would pick him. my pick was actually Ryu because he always does well, has been around since the beginning and doesn't have any bad matches where he gets stuck with Cloud or Link or whatever. but, he also doesn't have many deep runs because he has this habit of running into a NN dude in round 2.

Dante has this amazing 2007 run where he rides overlap to the semifinals thanks to Pikachu which helps him out a lot. he also has this well documented habit of going really big against weak opponents time after time before disappointing, and that helps in a thing like this.

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xyzzy

okay, here's what I've been working on. I'm really proud of this for some weird reason. watch and enjoy!

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2428210/

this will answer a few of the trivia questions. I'll write out more detailed answers to them later tonight or tomorrow depending on how many more guesses we have. it also might spur on some more discussion/guesses.

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xyzzy

I want so badly to resolve this discussion with data but I don't want to end it prematurely

maybe next page

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xyzzy

squexa posted...

So for the record, the 2005 Link vs Sephiroth, Link vs Cloud, Mario vs Sephiroth count, but the 2013 Link vs Snake doesn't right?

correct. anything you could predict counts, basically, with the exception of the rivalry rumble for obvious reasons.

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xyzzy

yeah Leon is right. I didn't even glance at series, and I skipped game contests because so many games get excluded each time thanks to game of the decade 1 and 2.


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xyzzy

I'm really enjoying reading the logic. some are totally logical yet totally wrong, and some are dead on. keep 'em coming.

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xyzzy

I started working on a silly contest project, mostly around vote totals. before I post that (I'm not done yet), here's some contest trivia! I'm not going to give answers for a day or two so take your time answering. I'm going to give options so you can just bold your responses.

a few guidelines first:

• first of all, these questions relate to official contest matches involving character battles from 2002-2018.
• to be clear, this includes "second bracket" types of matches such as the Tournament of Champions or the winners/losers bracket from 2018, but does not include bonus battles such as L-Block vs. ? Block or Link vs. Jay Solano.
• it also does not include any results from the rivalry rumble.
• a 'win' in the fourway contests means that you advanced, not that you came in first place.

okay, here goes!

1. Who has been in the most character battle matches? (Link | Cloud | Sephiroth | Solid Snake | Samus)
2. Link has the highest single match vote total in contest history (oddly enough, in a fourway match). Who is second? (L-Block | Cloud | Zelda | Draven | Samus)
3. Which non-Noble Nine member has received the most total votes in contest history? (Bowser | Squall | Ganondorf | Ryu | Kirby)
4. Which franchise has been in the most character battle matches? (Sonic | Mega Man | Pokemon | Chrono)
5. Which of these Final Fantasy VII characters has received the most total votes? (Aeris | Tifa | Vincent | Zack)
6. Which contest gathered the most total votes? (2003 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2010)
7. Which winless character has gathered the most votes? (Guybrush Threepwood | Ramza | Kratos Aurion | Cecil | CATS)
8. Which non-Noble Nine member has the highest average number of votes across all their contest matches (minimum 10 contest matches)? (Dante | Master Chief | Aeris | Yoshi | Yuna)
9. Which of these Pokemon characters has received the most total votes? (Charizard | Mewtwo | Red | Missingno)
10. Which Noble Nine member has the least number of contest matches? (Mega Man | Sonic | Solid Snake | Crono | Mario)
11. Which "kain" has the most contest votes? (Kain (Legacy of Cain) | Kaim Argonar | Kane | Caim | Kain Highwind)
12. How many characters have received less total votes than Tanner? (0 | 4 | 11 | 28)
13. Link has the most votes in contest history. Who is second? (Cloud | Solid Snake | Sephiroth | Samus)
14. Which franchise has the most character battle wins? (Half-Life | Fire Emblem | Portal | Mass Effect | Mother/Earthbound)
15. Which perennial contest failure has received the most contest votes? (Kefka | Tidus | Magus | Donkey Kong)
16. How many of the top 25 highest voted characters were developed outside of Japan? (0 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 9)
17. The worst winning percentage for a contest character who has won a match is 12.5% (1-7). Who is it? (Lloyd Irving | Laharl | Ratchet | Wesker | Sam Fisher)
18. Which of these Metal Gear Solid characters has received the most total votes? (Big Boss | Liquid Snake | Revolver Ocelot)
19. Which of these series' has had the most character battle matches? (Fire Emblem | Tales of | Xeno- | Starfox | Ace Attorney)
20. Which 'sidekick' character has the most contest wins? (Knuckles | Zero | Yoshi | Vivi)

good luck!

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xyzzy

2002: Mario
2003: Cloud
2004 Games: Starcraft
2004: Link
2005 Villains: Diablo
2005: Mario
2006 Series: The Legend of Zelda
2006: Solid Snake
2007: L-Block
2008: Solid Snake
2009 Games: Pokemon RBY
2010: Charizard
2010 Games: Majora's Mask
2011 Rivals: Red/Blue
2013: Draven
2015 Games: Chrono Trigger
2017 Years: 1998
2018: Zelda
2020: The Witcher 3

thanks everyone - I'll see you guys in 2022 or whenever the next contest is.

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xyzzy

next page

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xyzzy

2020
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Game_of_the_Decade_2

MVP: The Witcher 3
Confidence: 55%

You can argue both Breath of the Wild and Witcher 3 here. Here's the thing: Zelda never had a moment where it truly went above and beyond besides the FFXV match, and quite honestly, getting 80% instead of 75% isn't that big of a deal to me. Witcher 3 had at least 3 times doing this: against Assassin's Creed, against Mass Effect 3, and against God of War. And, if you want to count it, against Breath of the Wild, where it put up a strong 44% on a game people are talking about as a potential top 5 game.

As I've said before in other writeups, the greatest compliment you can get in these contests is when people just make up SFF reasons for you. Witcher 3 is apparently so notable now that it can SFF entire continents, no matter the genre. People will overestimate God of War years from now based on some kind of SFF magic.

And this is to say nothing of Skyrim, a game that used to rule the WRPG genre that's been usurped by a game that lost handily to MGS2 5 years ago. Witcher 3 was still a somewhat popular pick to make the final, but the ease at which it did it was pretty impressive. We might be talking about a top 20 game on the site which didn't seem too realistic pre-contest.

Honorable Mention: Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Persona 4 Golden, Xenoblade

I actually don't think too many games from this contest had a good run. That's because the field was so weak and because it was hard to have a good run without good competition to measure up to. A game like Horizon: Zero Dawn might have had a good run in another contest but it's hard to say because it faced such middling competition.

Breath of the Wild speaks for itself, a game that barely faced any pushback until its opponent drew like 15% more votes than any other match this contest against it. Even then, it was a smooth 56% victory that was never in any kind of doubt. Breath of the Wild made us awe every round at how easy it was putting away its competition. Its only decent competition coming in to the final was Smash Ultimate and there was no way that a paint by numbers Smash game was going to hang with a genre defining Zelda.

Its best performance was a crazy SFF victory over Majora's Mask that really doesn't factor into my evaluation that much because, while you need to be pretty strong to beat a quality game down that hard, it's still an intra-series matchup and not the best barometer. Time will tell what's up with BOTW but I expect it to be a monster for years to come.

My personal favourite run was Persona 4 Golden which had a Frog-like run. P4G looked like it was about to lose to Red Dead Redemption after a strong board vote but it hung on in surprising fashion, possibly due to some minor rallies. Next was GTA5 which most people thought would win since it was assumed to be stronger than Red Dead, but Persona hung on to a close-but-not-as-close match. The next round was Xenoblade which was a clear favourite going in, yet P4G managed to make a fight of it and only lost by a handful of votes in the end. P4G's results probably weren't 100% reliable, but for a remake that people counted out repeatedly, it managed to deliver.

Xenoblade gets a lot of pub for its performance, and yeah, it had a good run, including putting 40% on Smash Ultimate, a game that could have SFFed it into the ground. The RPG crowd rarely goes quietly though unless it is purely propped up by Nintendo fans, and Xenoblade was never that. It was a nice comeback after a disappointing 2015.

But it also did its best work against 2020 LVP Fire Emblem and couldn't show out against Persona 4 the way that we expected it to. Xenoblade had a good run but it wasn't a great one. That Smash match is so hard to gauge because Smash never faced a good opponent that wasn't Nintendo.

2020 wasn't a great contest due to how many weak games we got, but we did get a couple of really good runs.

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xyzzy

Geralt had a fine run but that whole eightpack was a big coin flip. it wasn't a surprise that he did okay like 2B was.

edit: I just looked and Geralt was actually the bracket favourite by a good bit to make it to Auron.

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xyzzy

2018
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Battle_X

MVP: Zelda
Confidence: 85%

Zelda getting stronger makes sense since she was front and center in the biggest game of the decade. Sure, she might beat Squall if people really value her run, and maybe a great run would be letting her face off against one of the noble nine that we segregated off from the rest of the bracket (well, besides Sephiroth, because lol Sephiroth)

But this run was crazy. Zelda had one of the best kinds of runs, ones where you couldn't even reconcile the numbers you were seeing with logic. She rocked her first two opponents to set up the hype train, then destroyed Squall (ever notice how Squall always draws the characters that bulk up?), and put up a similar number against Aerith to reach the big boy bracket. Nobody could get to 40% against Zelda. It felt almost like Link.

But most of these amazing runs end up falling off when they finally face a real opponent, and let's face it, this was Zelda. A secondary character like this has never had any success of actually bulking up to take on the big guys. Ganondorf was always rumored to be the one who could put Sonic or Samus in their place, but at every chance he had, they pushed him back without much struggle (or he couldn't even make it there). But now Zelda had the results to suggest she could beat the bottom half of the noble nine.

Zelda's first match was against Snake, widely thought to be the second or third strongest character depending on what you thought of Cloud. Zelda edged him out, then rocked Sonic, then beat Mario. Now, I understand beating non-Nintendo characters when the site goes bonkers in the Nintendo direction, but Mario? The only character that could put her in her place was Link, and then she had a nailbiter match with Cloud in the loser's final where her luck finally ran out.

I have absolutely no idea what to do with Zelda if we ever have another character battle. She could stay the second or third strongest character in the bracket or fall apart. I have no idea. Her BOTW role isn't significant enough for this to make any kind of sense.

Honorable Mention: Samus, Cloud, Pikachu, Tifa, Alucard, 2B

First of all, let me talk about how hard it is to keep this contest straight. Four matches a day means that individual results kind of blur together. There isn't the same buildup as having one match a day, and to make things even more complicated, the losers bracket just felt like contest fanfiction where we got every manner of noble nine match day after day. As a result this contest is a straight up mess in my memory.

Samus didn't have any really impressive wins, and honestly not even a contest run. But Samus standing up to Mario was huge. Mario/Samus 2005 is one of our most infamous matches and Samus stood up to Mario not once but twice. Samus didn't win, but she pulled 49% in the first match and came about as close as you could in the losers bracket rematch, a true 50/50 match until Mario pulled a big final update to take it by just a handful of votes. It sucked that Samus couldn't get one over but this was just as good. She had proven her legitimacy and we got the Mario/Cloud rematch that we wanted, with Mario reasserting his contest villain status once more.

Cloud's run really stands out though. It's a weird, wistful, nostalgic kind of run. Cloud was once a contest villain, the guy everyone antivoted in the early going. But 20 years is a long time without a proper new game and Cloud had grown quite long in the tooth, turning into what Crono used to be: just an old fogey. He wasn't even competing with Link anymore: in their semifinal, every single Guru picked Link except for 11 people who picked... Monika. Now Cloud needed a good result just to hold off Snake, and that's to say nothing of his 16 year old rival, Mario.

With Zelda beasting all contest, it was clear that Cloud had no chance against Link and indeed he couldn't even get to 40% against him. Going into the losers bracket, How would he handle a match with Mario? Mario was the clear board favourite but the underdog Cloud managed to edge him out in a rematch we had been waiting a long time for. Cloud reached the losers bracket final, where he would have to deal with a Zelda on steroids. Again he was the underdog, and again he managed to barely pull it off. Cloud had day vote comebacks on both Mario and Zelda, ironic given how many day vote comebacks he had to swallow from Link over the years. Cloud got destroyed by Link in the final again, and it's sad that our #2 is now relegated to needing a comeback to beat Link's maiden, but it was still great to see him hold on regardless.

Pikachu/Mega Man was a debate all contest, and the match lived up to the hype, but Pikachu ever so slightly pulling off the upset (I think this might have been the first 1v1 24 hour victory against the NN?), and then Mega Man getting the rat back in the losers bracket. This was a nice little rivalry and it was interesting to see Pikachu stand up against an off-brand Nintendo icon. But, I guess Pikachu is an icon in his own way.

Tifa's run is a good one. She had a great match with MMX that I remember thinking was BS. Maybe it was one of those hentai rallies that seem to hit us every other match? It's been a bit. Anyway, that's almost forgettable becauseTifa over Sephiroth is one of the most shocking results in contest history, at least for me. Tifa got rocked by Samus the round prior, and Sephiroth looked pretty bad throughout the baby bracket, but this is Sephiroth vs. another FF7 character and he never had a chance. Sephiroth has always had the weirdest results and this was no exception.

When we talk about the main bracket, Alucard stands out as having maybe the best run. His round 1 match with Peach was debated, as was his round 2 with Yuna, as was his round 3 with Kefka and his round 4 with Red. Only 1 person had Alucard getting through all that, but he did, and put a full 49% on Bowser in the losers bracket. Maybe we see that in 2003, but never at any time since then. Alucard would struggle to avoid a doubling from Bowser, but 2018 Alucard was legit.

And finally, 2B. It was hard to have any expectations for 2B, a character from a niche RPG that didn't even seem to qualify as niche at the time. But 2B blew up some Destiny character, beat Ness handily and then broke 40% on Bowser. It wasn't a huge upset run due to bracket placement but it might have been the most uplifting result of the contest: a new character from a new series that wasn't looking good due to inclusion in a Smash game or being Nintendo-adjacent. 2B signaled a new RPG series that we had no expectations for that could possibly do some damage in future years.

2018 is a year of turning previous expectations upside down, and despite the low interest and vote totals, all of the noble nine matches were still pretty interesting. Pretty good contest - a lot easier to like than 2013.

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xyzzy

final votal graph. that last day



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xyzzy

division by era was the contests' first great mistake. we don't need it again.

I agree that a regular game contest is effectively a 90s contest once you get far enough along. there's no need to run a strictly 90s contest.

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xyzzy

charmander6000 posted...

Also someone asked how much fodder would the 90s contest have. I made a list of a potential 128 game bracket. I'm likely missing something, but while the top games are indeed strong the strength level is expected to drop considerably as you approach 128 games.

here's some adds. you got the main ones, but these might be stronger than some of what you have.

Crystalis
Wolfenstein 3D
Ninja Gaiden 2
Double Dragon 2
Actraiser
Uniracers
Dragon Warrior 3/4/5
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
Secret of Evermore


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xyzzy

yeah absolutely nobody wants to see a new series contest

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xyzzy

lordjers posted...

The only way you could consider 1994 the underdog is if you consider console launches and include SNES for '91, otherwise 1994 is the bully here.

not according to the gurus:

1991 - 76 (52.05%)
1994 - 46 (31.51%)

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xyzzy

I do too - but more like top 20 than top 10.

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xyzzy

so are we doing this? I'm only going to bother if others are doing it too!

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xyzzy

I love that update so much

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xyzzy

this poll is going to have the most votes by a pretty significant margin

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xyzzy

2017 Years
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Best_Year_in_Gaming

MVP: 1998
Confidence: 90%

So yeah, this contest barely merits mentioning as an honest to god contest, though I do like it better than rivalry because at least we usually knew what we were voting on. The rivalry concept was so goofy that it didn't even make sense what you were supposed to vote on.

Unfortunately, this one gets a bad taste in my mouth because I had 1997 > 2001 in my bracket, and if it happens I would have won money or maybe the Guru or I don't remember exactly. But 1997 getting screwed by the picture really killed it. I know gaming years extremely well just because that's a thing that I randomly care about, but others aren't going to know that Symphony of the Night is 1997 or that Super Metroid is 1994. Oh well.

The big match here, outside of 97/01, was 1991 vs. 1994, which the underdog 1994 won. And 1998 murdered everything. In fact, I kinda wonder if 1998 could have beaten the rest of the 90s combined. That year is unbelievably stacked.

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xyzzy

2015 Games
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Fall_2015_Contest

MVP: Chrono Trigger
Confidence: 60%

First, let me address the elephant in the room. Undertale was a good rally, but we had seen something like this before. Once we saw round 1 vs. Mass Effect 3, it was widely known that this was going to be the fate of the contest for the rest of the way. There wasn't any suspense or any buildup. It was going to get the votes that it needed, no matter what, unless something could out-rally it. I remember getting a lot of heat because for one Crew writeup I just wrote, "Undertale wins." and picked a percentage somewhere in the 50s. It was low effort but that was because there wasn't anything to really predict besides if the rally came or not, and you knew it would come.

The one good thing about the Undertale rally is that the people were genuinely enthusiastic about the game, whereas with the Draven rally it was primarily to ruin the contest. You could see it in the way the rest of the 2013 contest played out. There were some bad eggs on the Undertale side, but we were pretty bad eggs all around too.

The highlight of a contest run is when you put up an unfathomable result and then keep adding to it round after round. Undertale never had that. You know what did? Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger came out and just destroyed its round 1 competition and just kept upping the ante round after round. By the time it got to round 2 (DQ8), people called SFF. The best contest runs are the ones where people have to justify your result with some goofy form of SFF or some other excuse. By round 3, it was doubling FFX and putting its name in the ring as the game that would actually challenge Ocarina, which could only pull 65% on FF9.

Of course, round 4 hits and a 60% lead on Melee turns into a rally that CT can't quite fight back on. Even still, it got pretty close, only losing by a thousand votes despite 30,000 more votes than the previous round. That was a real disappointment but in a way it only enhances CT's legacy. Here is a game that's been left for dead after numerous crushing losses that rises like a phoenix and dies before it gets a chance to finish its mission. We'll talk about what could have been in 2015 for a long time.

Honorable Mention: Undertale, Super Metroid, Super Mario RPG, Metal Gear Solid 3

2015 had a lot of really good runs because there were decades-long storylines that we were rewriting in the moment. Take Super Metroid. Like Chrono Trigger, Metroid has taken some real lumps over the years, whether it's getting murdered by Link to the Past or losing hard to Mario or holding off Super Mario Kart by just a handful of votes. 2015 was a year of exorcising Metroid's demons, first wiping out a Mario game and then going toe to toe with our game of the decade. Super Metroid couldn't quite pull it off during the day vote but this was a huge boost on the last 11 years. Super Metroid was finally legit and not a Nintendo leech.

The best run of the year was technically Super Mario RPG, which made an improbable run. SMRPG was never really that amazing. It got doubled by CT in 2004 and got beat pretty good by Goldeneye with MK64 in the poll. It had a 9 seed here. It still ran a gauntlet of upper tier games - Oblivion, GTA5, Chrono Cross, RE4 and MGS3 - to reach the semifinals. It honestly wasn't even that close. SMRPG was never really in danger.

But still, there was something about the SMRPG run. That bottom semifinal spot was custom made for a non-Nintendo, non-Square game to represent. We threw everything we could at it here. And yet here we were, a Nintendo/Square hybrid crashing the party. It was a bit of an indictment of ourselves, and also because very few people think SMRPG should be considered one of the 4 best games of all time. Even Undertale belonged here more than SMRPG.

It didn't go as far, but I liked MGS3's run a little bit more just because of how unusual it was. MGS3 couldn't break 70% on Mother 3 and then put up a disastrous 52% on Bioshock. How are you going to beat MGS1 if you struggle with Bioshock? But then it went on to beat Mass Effect 2 pretty convincingly and then to topple MGS1. It's pretty rare that we see a newer entry take out the progenitor, but after many attempts, MGS3 showed that it is the best MGS game in the series. Of course, that's not good enough to take out a SNES RPG with Mario in it.

There are other interesting runs, such as Pokemon RBY beating Mario 3 in a second match that felt more like a semifinal due to how the bracket drew out. RBY looks to have beaten Mario 3 in a close one but then Undertale spillover threw the whole match out of whack. The rest of the run was basically just wondering if RBY had what it took to hold off the Undertale rally and, oh hey, it didn't. RBY could have had a Chrono Trigger-like buildup and could have been a likely finals contender but we'll just never know. As for me, I never really took RBY as being a serious threat because the Undertale comeback rallies were just immense. Also, I was pretty down on RBY's round 1 match against Tetris, a game it should have SFFed to oblivion but couldn't even match what Zelda 1 scored in 2004. Chrono Trigger was going to town immediately.

So yeah, this is a good contest with a lot of really good runs, but with Undertale gumming things up in the middle of it. But even with that, we managed to have a lot of really fantastic matches thanks to finally getting a real-ass game contest.

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xyzzy

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 57.46%

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xyzzy