Lurker > transience

I think Draven opened the floodgates too. we've never seen that kind of tampering before or since.

---

xyzzy

completely agree. it is certainly the least pure contest we've had.

---

xyzzy

er whoops. I'll edit that

---

xyzzy

2013
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2013_Contest

Before I get to MVP (which I'm sure you'll see by the bold), I just want to say that the 2013 contest is utter madness. It's the maddest contest we've had by a significant amount. It isn't just Draven, either. The results of the last week of the contest were so baffling that it made it hard to even write about. The playing field that we had for the first two months as compared to the last week is so much different that I don't even think it's possible to say who had a good or bad contest run.

The beginning of this contest had a whopping 243 characters which was absolute overkill and the end of the contest had a final 9 (essentially the semifinals) that included 4 Pokemon characters. Squirtle over Cloud is my go-to for just how goofy this thing got. Did Squirtle have a good run? I don't even know.

MVP: Draven
Confidence: 50%

In the absence of sincere, legitimate results, I have to give it to the contest winner. Draven delivered the single most impressive performance is contest history (MMX/Ryu/Draven), the single craziest day in contest history (Draven/Link/Shepard) and some goofy controversy involving SBAllen's wife, some WWE star and some voice actors. Something like that.

You could equally give this to Link, who put up one of the greatest resistances we've ever seen up until the downtime ran out the clock. But I'm going to give it to this goofball even though he will lose miserably in every contest match going forward.

Honorable Mention: Link, Mega Man, Vivi, Pokemon

Link is obviously the most memorable of the bunch, but I really had a soft spot for Mega Man's run. Mega Man was the sole "old guard" character that really seemed to be able to handle the craze. Cloud lost to Squirtle, Sonic lost to Mewtwo, Sora lost to Pikachu, and most importantly, Mario lost to Vivi with Ganondorf in the poll. Charizard, 2010's MVP, got to feast on Mega Man with Zero in the poll. But, somehow, Mega Man managed to hold on and eliminate him. It was the one bright spot for us old heads who just want to see classic matches, for better or worse.

Vivi had the aforementioned win against Mario and Ganondorf but it didn't seem legitimate at all. It wasn't even the two Nintendo characters sharing the poll, this just shouldn't have happened. This was maybe the most memorable result in 2013 (mostly due to the board really loving Vivi and being tired of Mario's BS) up until the contest really went off the rails. Of all the random Pokemon, Mewtwo seemed to have the most legitimate run, though it was obscured by Vincent randomly falling off the biggest cliff in contest history. He still hasn't recovered. Vincent turning into Magus is one of the strangest plot twists we've ever had.

2013 is bonkers and I can't take anything serious from it.

---

xyzzy

rivals is indeed worse than years

---

xyzzy

2011 Rivals
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Rivalry_Rumble

MVP: Red/Blue
Confidence: 80%

I super duper do not care about this contest. I didn't even really follow it. The only match I remember was Red/Blue beating Ryu/Ken and Cloud/Seph which apparently was a bonus match. Apparently I went perfect for the first two rounds which might have been notable if there was a single Guru risk in there.

I don't want to spend any more time thinking about our worst contest. I even skipped writing for the Crew this year because it was that uninteresting.

Sorry!

---

xyzzy

honestly there's not that much to object to from an integrity perspective, outside of maybe Brawl losing. RE4 and MGS3 were virtually equal in 2009 and FFX/Majora got the same percentage on both, and then went 50/50 in the final.

---

xyzzy

Game of the Decade
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Game_of_the_Decade

MVP: Majora's Mask
Confidence: 80%

First of all, this contest is great. It's amazing what happens when you stop seeding by year.

Pokemon RBY made Majora look so awful that very few people took it to beat Pokemon GSC in round 2. In hindsight, it doesn't make a lot of sense to doubt a mainline Zelda, but Majora wasn't the darling then that it is today. You might not even have called it a mainline Zelda in 2010. It was more a niche game that didn't appeal to the broader audience.

But Majora won that, beat Wind Waker, wiped out MGS3 and had a great match with slight contest favourite FFX. The final is weird because people were adamant about Brawl not winning, but it's hard to deny that Majora was the clear winner. A lot of people didn't like it because a small bandwagon swelled around it once it got to the final four, and because a Zelda game winning is a bit of a disappointment, but it was a very unexpected winner that wasn't expected to get past round 2.

Honorable Mention: Shadow of the Colossus, Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Honestly, there aren't a lot of good runs in GOTD. Good seeding means that everyone more or less performed as you would expect, and the ones who had great upsets just ran into another juggernaut the next round.

Shadow of the Colossus is one of the very best cinderella stories that we've had. gamefaqs has a very clear corner that it hangs out on and all of the games are largely similar: story heavy, RPGs, japanese, etc. This division is set up to determine the best Metal Gear Solid game and there are debates abound for weeks. But before we get to that, Shadow of the Colossus comes in and crashes the party hard, beating MGS2, the vaunted MGS4 and almost beats MGS3 too. I'm not sure what happened here, if SOTC picked up some steam after beating MGS2 in a close one or if it was legitimately on MGS3's level. Either way, this is one of the more cherished runs we've had.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl was more of a rollercoaster run than a good run. Brawl is still the talk of the town in 2010 and all eyes are on the great debate between Brawl and Melee. As the contest goes on, people get more and more convinced of Melee, specifically that if this is at all close, the Melee faithful will make sure to kill Brawl. Instead, Brawl walked to a close but never in true danger victory.

That wasn't the end of it though as Brawl pushed into the semifinals and found itself getting antivoted against a much weaker Fallout 3. I think Brawl was the most popular game of this decade but it got to the end of the contest and everyone was like, "wait. are we sure we want to do this?" Once everyone realized what they had done, they tried to change course and ended up abandoning it for Majora. Brawl's run was fascinating, and maybe it should have won, but it's OK that it didn't.

It's super interesting, actually. 12 years ago, the battle between MGS4 and Brawl felt like the battle for the future of this website. Both games killed it in 2009 and Brawl almost won the 2010 contest. Run this match today though and both games might not be in the site's top 50.

---

xyzzy

Winter 2010
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_2010_Contest

MVP: Charizard
Confidence: 30%

2010 marks the return to 1v1s, but in a 12 hour format. This was very needed after three fourways in a row, but this contest just doesn't resonate with me at all. In fact I barely remember most of the results.

The best run was maybe Charizard's. Charizard's run is uneven as he wasn't great in the early rounds but then got a bit of a bandwagon at his back as he went. This is probably because Charizard drew L-Block, who had an easy fourpack until he ran into Charizard. Charizard went on a tear from that point on, beating Bowser and putting a real scare into Mario despite the Nintendo hierarchy. Pokemon has always been weird.

Honorable Mention: Missingno, Sephiroth, Solid Snake, Ryu

My main memory of this contest isn't Charizard, but Missingno - the one who broke the noble nine, yet again at poor Crono's expense. Crono was really running on fumes at this point and Missingno took advantage in a 12 hour match that just felt kind of bad. Missingno went on to beat Yoshi and it seemed like we had harnessed the power of jokes with the power of Pokemon for an unstoppable contest force.

And then Sephiroth, out of nowhere, somehow stops the glitch. Sephiroth has always been the craziest character in contest history. No matter what Pokemon or jokes may feel like in the moment, the totality of Sephiroth overwhelms everyone else. Nobody really had any respect for Sephiroth and he somehow goes and puts the glitch down handily. Neither of these really qualify as runs, but the whole experience kind of makes 2010 what it is.

The more accurate answer for a contest run, though perhaps less interesting due to previous years, is Snake, who took his 2008 performance on Sephiroth and validated it by beating him straight up. This had become a bit of a contest rivalry at this point, but it was all one-sided. Snake got Seph in 2006, 2008 and now 2010. Snake's next attempt was Cloud, and he did great, but could only pull 48%. Cloud then lost to Link as he always does.

The other interesting path was Ryu. Ryu got to face Dante, who once again looked amazing in round 1 only to drop it in round 2. Dante had a history of this sort of thing, first with Yoshi in 2006 and then to Ryu here in 2008. Ryu ended up beating Leon before going down to Cloud, and though he couldn't pull 40% this time, it was still a nice run.

But overall, this contest feels forgettable, a weird transition point between the classic contests and the madness that was to come.

---

xyzzy

I think it's on the wiki

---

xyzzy

Games 2009
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Spring_2009_Contest

MVP: Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow
Confidence: 75%

This is the greatest newcomer entry of all time, jokes or rallies notwithstanding. Pokemon was starting to get somewhere on this site, and Pikachu was a midcarder that had ended L-Block's reign, but it wasn't crazy like this. Most people picked RBY to come in second to Majora's Mask in round 1 and then lose in round 2. It was absolutely a reasonable take, but RBY crushed expectations, winning the Majora's poll outright with 50% and then placing an easy second despite GSC being in the poll alongside Metal Gear Solid and Majora.

In fact, RBY had the worst bracket situations that you could imagine and just kept on surviving. It got paired with Ocarina starting in round 3 and still managed to beat out MGS and FF8, and then had a nightmare SFF/LFF match with Ocarina/Melee/FFX that it still almost qualified in, losing just barely to FFX.

RBY had a legitimate claim to being a top 3 game on the site, which is not what anybody expected. Easy pick here.

Honorable Mention: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Super Mario World, Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy X, Tetris

There are a lot of good runs in 2009, many of them due to circumstances. Division by era + fourways really killed the hype that this contest would have had. It's one of the great tragedies in contest history, that we didn't get a proper 1v1, no gimmick game contest until 2015.

First of all, it's impossible to avoid talking about Ocarina. It wasn't an amazing run, and the final was tainted by the presence of LTTP and FFX in the poll as well (woo fourways), but this was a watershed moment. Link had beaten Cloud, and Zelda had beaten Final Fantasy in the series contest, but FF7 was still our top dog at the time. This was the last frontier where FF7 could claim an edge, and with this result, we had officially transitioned into FF7's post prime. It was no longer our #1 game. And in case there was any doubt, FF7 and Ocarina had a bonus poll the next day where Ocarina had a Link-like win over FF7. End of an era.

But in terms of an actual run, I don't think any game had a bigger claim than Mario 64, a game that beat the beloved Chrono Trigger despite having Yoshi's Island in the poll with it. Crono had a nice finals run in 2008, and CT was a former finalist while SM64 had gotten demolished by Ocarina in 04. But here it was, taking care of CT pretty handily and eliminating it when FF7 joined the poll. Mario 64 almost beat LTTP but came up just short. It would have been fascinating if it had won because it would have meant FF7/Mario 64/Mario 3/Mario World, which probably goes to 64 due to the 2d/3d split but still.

Speaking of Mario World, we rarely see a shift in hierarchy. FF6 doesn't suddenly beat FF7, for example. But Mario World rose up and took out Mario 3. At first maybe you could explain it away because fellow NES game Zelda 1 was in the poll, but the next round was with LTTP and Mario World still finished ahead of 3. This was a change to stay. Mario World's run was also good because there was a goofy Zelda 1/Mario 1/Mario 3/Mario World poll and both World and 3 still managed to eliminate Zelda.

Metal Gear Solid 4 and Brawl had such a weird relationship for these two years, with an intense GOTY poll battle back in 2008 and then this 2009 rematch. Brawl beats MGS4 easy in round 3 only for MGS4 to come back and hang on to first place for dear life when Twilight Princess entered the poll. Little did we know that this was the end of MGS4 as a legitimate contest game.

FFX is worth a quick mention as it made the final. The other three spots felt pretty secure with FF7, LTTP and Ocarina, but FFX was the wildcard. Thanks to division by era, it was the one Square game that was able to ride without a lot of overlap, with the only exception being Kingdom Hearts which it got rid of by scoring second place to Melee. It rode the RBY/Melee/Ocarina match to second place and then edged out MGS4 in a match with Ocarina and Melee.

And finally, I have a soft spot with Tetris showing Mega Man 2 what was up. Tetris was embarrassed in the 2004 contest by Zelda and the thought was that it would get destroyed by any good game. Mega Man 2 was a good game, but not better than Tetris. Tetris ended up running into Mario and Zelda and getting destroyed, but there's something about early round matchups that stick with you in a contest, like Hollow Knight over Tales this contest. Tetris was that contest's version of that.

2009 should have been so much better, but you have to look at every result with a huge grain of salt because of all the overlap. I wish we could have seen another contest with RBY, because honestly we never did thanks to Undertale.

---

xyzzy

oh yeah

man a lot happened in 2008! almost too much, because it all blends together into one big madness.

but not nearly as mad as 2013

---

xyzzy

2008
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Fall_2008_Contest

MVP: Solid Snake
Confidence: 75%

It's tough to pick against Solid Snake for MVP of this forgettable contest. 2007 was a novelty, and had L-Block, but 2008 was back to "normal" characters winning and another run of fourways just wasn't as much fun.

But that's not to take away from Solid Snake, who was the talk of the contest with a rematch with Sephiroth, again with Cloud in the poll. The debate was largely around those two, with most people siding with Snake because we'd seen it before in 2006. But instead, Snake takes advantage of the fanbase split and takes first place with a shocking match, probably full of rallying. Cloud made a furious comeback but couldn't retake the lead.

But that was just because of Sephiroth being in the poll, so we replay it with Link and Crono instead and.. yeah, Snake still wins. At this point it was largely a bandwagon effect, but hey, it happened. Snake actually led Link for most of the night until Link rose with the dawn as he always does. But Cloud wasn't as lucky and never really put up a fight here. Snake broke up the streak and may or may not have been the second strongest character in 2008. Who knows.

Honorable Mention: Pikachu, Zack, Crono, Kirby

Honestly, I feel like the first thing to remember from 2008 isn't Snake's win, but Pikachu's shocking upset of L-Block. No result before or since has made less sense. Going into the contest, we all had one thought: either L-Block loses in round 2 with a dream fourway of Crono/Ryu/L-Block/Amaterasu, or it rides to the finals. Instead, Amaterasu continued its tradition of being way stronger than anyone expected and L-Block rode his 28% to an easy victory.

Move on to round 3, and.. Pikachu rises up? Crono comes in first again, but this time Pikachu gets 28% to L-Block's 24%. It was the only time in contest history that everyone united behind a Pokemon character. Usually these guys are the devil, some of the most unpredictable characters around, but the L was dead and we celebrated. Pikachu didn't make it much further, but wow.

I don't think I can explain ZACKFAQS well enough, but basically he was well doubted and most people picked Wario over him, only to be proven wrong by black haired Cloud. 2008 was the year Crisis Core came out and I'm sure he doesn't do nearly as well today, but for this period in time he was hot as hell and managed to ride all the way to round 4 alongside Link, beating Zidane, Altair (back when people cared about him) and Duke Nukem. It wasn't an amazing run or anything, but this guy drew so much chatter that you have to mention him. He was like Vincent redux only with a much more jovial mood around him. Everyone celebrated ZACKFAQS.

Crono had a great redemption arc, getting a rematch with Vincent and making the most of it with a dramatic comeback victory. This looked like it was going to go similarly to 2007 where Crono fell apart in the daytime, and he did, but then had an improbable comeback in the closing minutes to seal it. Crono looked better in 08 than 07, and I know a lot of people call BS on this one, but that's been Crono's MO since 2002, where he had votes subtracted from him. I can't say I mind seeing Crono thrive, especially at the hands of Vincent, one of the most toxic contest entrants we've had.

I don't even understand what happened to Kirby. Kirby was awesome this year and went and randomly beat Sonic in a match that would have been impossible to predict. Kirby had a killer run to the semifinals, and even beat Sephiroth convincingly in the Snake/Cloud poll. Again, I have no idea what happened here and thinking back on it feels like a fever dream. In fact, thinking back in 2008 really is a fever dream. These fourways feel so bizarre so many years later.

---

xyzzy

2007
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2007_Contest

MVP: L-Block
Confidence: 100%

Here's maybe the only other unanimous MVP outside of 2003 Cloud. L-Block kind of transcended contests and became an internet phenomenon. I see this pop up all the time on the "today I learned" subreddit, because it's so baffling and kinda fun, at least for me.

I won't recap the whole contest, but L-Block started out as a funny little joke that turned into a very serious joke when he started taking out noble niners. L-Block was the good kind of joke though because it was an honest surge that started early and then died off over time, as opposed to the stuff we would see later on when people could be mobilized via social media a lot easier. L-Block felt like CATS on megasteroids, not like some kind of epic lulz type of thing. Or that's how I took it, anyway, since I rallied for it on russia.com.

Honorable Mention: Master Chief, Vincent, Ryu

I feel bad for the Chief. Dude never really catches a break. Even his big comebacks, like MC over DK in 2005, are seen as pathetic because he shouldn't have been in jeopardy anyway. 2007 is undoubtedly Chief's best year, a shockingly strong, game fuel-induced high because of Halo 3's impending release. And L-Block came along and ruined his finals run.

2007 Chief was the equivalent of Snake in 2006, honestly, and he destroyed Yuna in the first two rounds. You could make up a lot of excuses here, like Chief doing better in fourways than 1v1, or him taking advantage of Nintendo LFF, but he was a monster. Chief was within 2% of beating out Solid Snake and making it into the finals, and once he's there, who the hell knows what happens. Damn you L.

Vincent is the other memorable character from 07. Vincent kept having great results in 2005 and 2006 but he hadn't quite broken through bigtime yet. After Crono's disappointing 2006, everyone looked forward to perhaps our #10 guy going up against the bottom of the NN. The buildup wasn't great here for Vincent, but it was damning for Crono, and Vincent ended up "breaking" the Noble Nine, though a lot of people kinda shrugged at the whole thing because these fourway thingies were a sham. Still, Vincent went over clean. It wasn't some goofy result with Magus in the poll or something.

Ryu is the only other character that really stood out to me in 2007. Ryu got demolished by Bowser in 2005, and yeah, he had some other Nintendo characters leeching him in his early matches. But Ryu kind of destroyed Bowser throughout, including an Auron/Ryu/Bowser/Shadow match where Ryu went over clean. He pushed all the way to the quarterfinals where he ran out of luck against three NNers.

---

xyzzy

whoops! doing these from memory, and clearly my memory isn't all there.

good call on the Vincent mention, I actually almost included Vincent in my honorable mentions.

2006 is the year the bottom half of the NN got turned upside down.

---

xyzzy

Fall 2006
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2006_Contest

(a contest running from September-November is not a summer contest)

MVP: Solid Snake
Confidence: 95%

That goddamn Brawl trailer. That's everything here. It's commonplace now, but Snake being in a Nintendo game straight up broke the internet when it leaked all quietly shortly after Nintendo's e3 press conference. It was a Moment at the dawn of youtube, back when video streaming wasn't a thing yet but video sharing was just coming into prominence. This little 2-3 minute video changed the contest bigtime.

Solid Snake was always #9 in the noble nine, the one who got clowned by Frog and who barely held off Bowser the year prior. The NN didn't really change that much back then outside of Mario rising up, and that was largely seen as a Nintendo hierarchical thing. Most people picked Snake to lose the second he faced a NNer.

Squall, on the other hand, came out and had his turn embarrassing Tidus. Everyone had a turn with Tidus, but Squall looked like he might finally get one over after KH2. Instead, Snake beat him as badly as he did in 2002. Maybe SFF?! Nope, Snake is just a monster this year. He beat Mega Man handily and then took out the upstart Sonic to win the male division. Snake ended up losing in the finals to Samus which was really surprising at the time since Samus had just barely survived the ZSS picture on Tifa. He may not have won the finals, but he was the de facto winner of 2006.

But Snake wasn't done yet. In 2006 we did this goofy tournament of champions where the person who finished last would be eliminated until there was just two left. Samus went out first, because of course, and then Mario because Link was in the poll. The third match was Cloud/Seph/Link/Snake which felt like the most dramatic thing in the world despite it being a stupid idea. Snake barely edged out Sephiroth, like 17% to 16.9% or something, a result where Snake had like 98% of the board cheering for him. This board unifies around one thing: underdogs, and Snake was the definition of that. In reality he was just turning into a Nintendo character which is the opposite of plucky underdog, but hey, Majora's Mask, Super Mario RPG, Xenoblade, we have a way of signal boosting these kinds of things.

Honorable Mention: Zelda, Tifa?, Luigi, Sonic

Zelda is the only one I feel really strongly about here. Her competition in the early rounds of the female bracket was weak but she did her job. Her match with Aeris was debated, mostly because it was on the day that FF12 released, and Zelda treated her like Yuna, putting up a similar percentage on both. Zelda then went up against Samus in the semifinals and put up a really nice percentage in defeat. It wasn't impressive then but it is now. Zelda had a hell of a run.

The reason is wasn't respected is because blood was in the water. Samus was a wounded animal in 2006, having been exposed in 2005 by Mario and then needing the day vote to save the noble nine vs. Tifa thanks to an (actually pretty good) zero suit picture. Tifa's run is more circumstance than a legitimate run, but you can't deny that putting Samus in that kind of situation was impressive. You'd think everyone that saw the Brawl trailer and voted for Snake would have done the same for Samus, but apparently not! At a certain point you just have to give Tifa credit, a character that's always knocking at the top but never can finish the deal.

Samus ended up being doubted as both Tifa and Zelda made her look bad but she went on to beat Snake anyway. Still, the winner of the bracket got super exposed in a match with Mario and Link, something that was completely expected but still reminded us that Samus is put in her place and can't really break out of it. She's not beating Mario (not in the 2000s) and she's not going to hang with the Clinkeroths of the world. She had hit her plateau and you weren't getting around that. I can't give Samus any credit for 2006 because she just felt like such a wounded duck.

Luigi also had a really good run, beating Zero and Kirby in a heavily debated fourpack. (the male bracket was brutal because only 32 guys made it. Sometimes less is more!) Luigi had a fun hype circle where he was peaking and we were finally getting Luigi vs. Sonic which, after Mario vs. Shadow, was a pretty fun little upset train. Sonic made short work of Luigi though.

Speaking of Sonic, I think people really like his 2006 run because of his match with Crono, though honestly, that one feels more like Crono falling apart than Sonic rising up. Crono really suffered this year and was probably the LVP of 2006. A lot of people really talk up that Sonic comeback as one of the greatest of all time, though, so it's worth mentioning for those happy few.

---

xyzzy

I didn't even look up the results. I think we expected FF to beat Mario like 58/42.

just looked at oracle and yep, 59.37%!

---

xyzzy

rSFF confirmed

---

xyzzy

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - 58.50%


---

xyzzy

this contest end would be so much better if we swapped division 3 and division 5/8.

---

xyzzy

Series 2006
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Spring_2006_Contest

MVP: The Legend of Zelda
Confidence: 50%

The series contest was a weird one where there were only 4 entries worth a damn. (We'll get to the fourth in a bit.) Nothing else even broke 30% on the big three of Mario, Zelda and Final Fantasy. It was even more pointless to hold this than usual. Even Metal Gear and Kingdom Hearts, series' who we kinda sorta respect, can't come near the kings.

Final Fantasy went into this as the prohibitive favourite. The thinking was kinda clear: Cloud could hang with Link based on FF7 vs. the entire Zelda series combined, so all the diversity in the FF series will lead it to a comfortable win. The opposite ended up true, where Zelda fans like all Zelda games but FF fans are fairly divided because each FF game is so different and everyone has a different ranking of them. In the end, diversity was a weakness.

FF struggled like hell to beat Mario and then went down comfortably to Zelda. It was uninteresting but so was this contest.

Honorable Mention: Super Smash Bros.

The Smash series at this point was two games and a trailer, but that was apparently enough to take on the giants. Smash 64 was honestly probably less of a factor than the Brawl trailer which had hit that spring and instantly vaulted Smash Bros. into the stratosphere. Other short series' like Kingdom Hearts did poorly, but Smash? It defied all reason. Not only did it crush the Sonic series, but also put up an improbable 38% on Mario. If I'm being honest, this is the MVP, but it's hard not to pick an upset winner. If a game contest happens in 2006, Melee might have been a top 3 game on the site.

If we were smarter, we would have seen the Brawl hype boosts coming, but at the time we were so rigid in our thinking that we just ignored this as a one-off and moved on. Now we lose our minds over any kind of gaming news, but back then it was all about the games that were tangible.

---

xyzzy

Summer 2005
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2005_Contest

MVP: Mario
Confidence: 75%

NINTENDO BOOST. We can talk about what happened in this contest, the first 'modern' contest, a number of ways. You can call it a Nintendo boost or a Mario boost or even a DS boost. Mario, for whatever reason, just soared this contest. Luigi went from being a bum to being really legit. Bowser went from ehhhh to a star, crushing Ryu en route to just barely losing to Snake. Kirby got his turn to wreck Tidus. Ganondorf had no problem with a hyped Auron match. It goes on.

And above all was Mario. Mario *sucked* in 03 and 04, getting 38% on Sephiroth in 03 and 47% on Crono in 04 while Samus got 41% on Cloud in 04. But 2005 Mario, that Mario was incredible. He blasted through Zero, embarrassed Samus with a result that still resonates 15 years later, and took care of Crono once and for all.

Honorable Mention: Vincent, Tifa, Squall, Kirby, Knuckles, Bowser, Sephiroth, Link

Mario had one of the biggest jumps in contest history, won the contest is still isn't a lock for 2005 MVP. That's because of Vincent, a newcomer, an optional character, and the most divisive character in my contest memory. Vincent had arguments on all sides, and he was omnipresent throughout this contest. Even when there were weeks between Vincent matches, he was always there, in the spotlight.

His round 1 performance was a massacre on a contest flop in Kerrigan, but given the tenor of the board, it was all that we needed for people to claim victory. Every round was an event, from the battles around Vincent/Dante, to the showdown with Squall, to the prediction percentage we saw when he won the vaunted devil division, possibly the best division in contest history. Even his loss to Crono was thought of as some kind of rSFF at the time, which is funny in retrospect given what was coming. Vincent is right there with Mario as the character of 2005.

There are tons of matches worth talking about, like how fellow newcomer Tifa beat our fodder line as bad as Cloud would and had legitimate hype to beat Sonic before struggling with Luigi. Squall finally gets his chance to shine.. except that Knuckles, who beat the fraud Magus, was also riding a Frog-like high after a big upset. Squall was up to the task with Vincent but couldn't quite pull it off. Vincent's hype train may have been enough to carry him over.

My favourite 2005 match is Sephiroth/Mario, where Mario just spends two months wrecking the main bracket only to walk into Sephiroth and get impaled like the Midgar Zolom all over again. And Link, in a contest built up by Advent Children vs. Twilight Princess hype, in a contest that has Vincent and Tifa doing serious work to the main bracket, still has no trouble putting down Cloud in his easiest victory over him yet. The days of Square are over and Nintendo was here to stay.

---

xyzzy

Spring 2005 (Villains)
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Spring_2005_Contest

MVP: Diablo
Confidence: 90%

This contest is a bust, obviously, a clear ploy to get Sephiroth into the tournament of champions and out of the main bracket for Summer 2005. Bowser, Ganondorf and Sephiroth were obvious winners of their division, leaving the Ruin division to be the only one worth truly debating. Kefka, Ridley, Diablo, Wesker and M. Bison got thrown into a sea, with Kefka and Ridley, the 1 and 2 seeds, having favourite status.

As it turns out, the best two guys were Diablo and M. Bison. This was a trash heap of fodder line characters and nobody wanted to pick anybody, but we sided with Nintendo and Square out of apathy. That didn't pay off before the Boost.

Honorable Mention: Ganondorf, Bowser

It's more that Sephiroth is the LVP (maybe I should have made that a category) than Bowser and Ganondorf were great. But here they were, facing a clear favourite, and leading Sephiroth for the opening minutes and scoring a surprising result due to obvious champion backlash. It was a shock to see something come close to Clinkeroth at the time, and it did kind of hint at what we would see in Summer 2005.

You could say that Master Hand maybe deserves a mention for the Kuja flop, but honestly, whatever to the villains contest outside of the Ruin division.

---

xyzzy

yeah, I guess I should have mentioned Samus too. after all, her 2004 is why 2005 happened.

---

xyzzy

Summer 2004
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2004_Contest

MVP: Link
Confidence: 70%

Honestly, I want to pick someone besides Link, just because Link's 2004 resurgence doesn't feel as impactful as Cloud's in 2003. That is probably bias on my part as Link has dominated since the beginning and it felt more like a reversion to the mean than anything else.

But still, Cloud won 2003 and FF7 beat OOT clean in 2004. Nintendo was at its lowest point in 2004. And yet, here's Link, probably fresh off of the Twilight Princess reveal, taking back the crown permanently from Cloud. It's hard to give it to anyone else based on that permanent shift in dominance.

Link's matches were more crazy than interesting; he got matched up with Ganondorf which led to the biggest SFF destruction in contest history. Nobody knows how to get in line more than Nintendo fans. Link then faced Mega Man and beat him hard. I'm going to save writing about this one for now. It might have been a SFF match as we would come to realize later, but back then we were still newbies to the whole SFF thing. In fact, the 2004 contest is kind of a mess because it set up all these SFF matches we didn't need to see. It's one of the worst contests because of it, despite taking place during our golden era.

Link walked into the finals as the favourite after Cloud couldn't break 60% on Samus. As it turns out, that was more Samus than Cloud, but Cloud still couldn't keep pace and lost a close one to Link to forfeit the crown. Cloud didn't seem to drop - Link just rose up.

Honorable Mentions: Frog, Mega Man, Crono

Honestly, I wanted to put Frog for MVP. This felt like Frog's contest: all the buzz was around him thanks to one hell of a match with Liquid Snake and the photo finish in the Master Chief match. A scramble between a CT character and Master Chief is always going to be nearly unanimous for CT and Frog gained a major bandwagon after that match, along with a "clutch gene" perception.

That, along with the infamous Solid Snake sprite picture, overrated Frog so hard that it took years for people to come back down. Frog put up 48% on Snake, leading for a few updates, and made people question Snake hard until he broke through after the Brawl reveal. Frog owned this contest and I won't begrudge anyone who says 2004 is about him. He only made it to round 3 but he left one hell of an impact.

In terms of the greater contest narrative, the bigger storyline was Mega Man, thanks to this board's greatest hype man of all time. Heroic Mario was a tour de force in those days, pure walls of text combined with super strong feelings about every video game ever. 2004 was the Mega Man Anniversary Collection, and Mega Man, fresh off of getting beat down worse by Seph in 2003 than 2002, was HM's guy.

And he looked good for a while. Mega Man blew up his fodder opponent in round 1 before putting up a cool near-doubling on Tidus. Tidus was thought to probably be pretty good, nearly beating Ganondorf in 2003 and being essentially equal to 2003 Magus. Stats suggested a close one, but Mega Man put him in his place pretty hard, and then held off Zero for a matchup with Link. Victory for HM.

Or it was, until we saw Link. That match was exciting until it started. Link doubled Mega Man in the semifinal and that was that. Still a great run, mostly a board-driven one by the best hype man in the biz.

I guess I should mention Crono finally breaking through against Mario, though honestly this isn't very exciting. CT's best year was 2004, at least until 2015, and Crono had no trouble putting Mario down. But the next match was against Link who has a way of ruining the mood. Yeah, I guess Link has to be MVP, but man, did you see that Frog run?

---

xyzzy

yeah, the Link case for 2002 is totally credible. I won't argue against it.

---

xyzzy

Games 2004
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Spring_2004_Contest

MVP: Starcraft
Confidence: 60%

Games 2004 is seeded by era and quite honestly half of the games didn't even belong in the contest. This was back in the day when newer games were allowed to be great as opposed to the cryostasis that we're in now, so division 128 was the most exciting thing. It didn't have the strongest games per se but it was the most balanced bracket, with a number of games having a chance to win. FFX, Melee, Wind Waker and Kingdom Hearts (who was coming off of the 2003 contest that boosted all Square characters) all had legitimate claims, and you could make backup claims for Metroid Prime, Halo and GTA too if you wanted.

And then there's Starcraft, the 16 seed that just kind of broke the contest. Its matches were exciting because they were overseeded and overestimated. Starcraft's win over 1 seed Halo was exciting and everyone was on the same team because lol Halo lol upsets. But then it beats Kingdom Hearts without too much of a struggle, and uh oh what is this? Starcraft was easily the most talked about entrant in 2004, and it was coming up to face Zelda.

Zelda's 2004 contest was insane, as Zelda 1 was putting up 95% on Adventure and LTTP is blasting the higher seeded Super Metroid into oblivion and Ocarina is demolishing Super Mario 64. Talk of an all Zelda final four is at a fever pitch and it's easy to see why. They were destroying everything. Starcraft/Wind Waker is a match I won't recap, but it was crazy, a meme unto its own, with Starcraft coming out with an improbable/impossible win at the 11th hour. Zelda was defeated and four days later, every Zelda game was out of the contest. Starcraft outlasted every Zelda game, but it would bite off more than it could chew vs. Melee and got caught for massive cheating.

Starcraft had easily the most memorable run of the contest, cheating or not.

Honorable Mentions: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, Ocarina of Time

I'm putting Chrono Trigger a little bit above the top dogs because the run was that much more interesting. I'll get to FF7 and OOT in a second. Chrono Trigger had a gauntlet of tough games: Super Mario RPG, Super Mario World, Link to the Past, and finally SMB3. In fact, you can say that Chrono Trigger ran the Mario gauntlet after two years of coming up just short vs. Mario, and he defeated them all. You could come at it from a purist angle and say that CT had the best run of the contest because it didn't have anything fraudulent going on, and was facing way stiffer competition than Starcraft. Fair enough.

The Chrono Trigger/LTTP match is the best neck and neck match we've had, where they were virtually tied for hours until CT took over in the evening hours. SMB3 is the king Mario game, or was back in 2004, and CT had a close win there too. It couldn't hang with FF7 in the finals, but getting to the finals felt like a crowning achievement.

As for FF7 and OOT, it was fascinating to see them finally get their chance to go head to head.. but their contest runs were impossible to compare because of all the overlap. FF7 got Xenogears and Metal Gear Solid which felt FF7-adjacent; OOT got Mario 64 and Goldeneye. That led to one of the most anticipated matches of all time -- but without any good measuring sticks. It was similar to this year's Smash/Mario match, actually.

Once FF7 and OOT was decided, which was way earlier in the contest than it should have been thanks to division by era, there was nothing else left to really worry about. FF7 was going to win the contest and the last matches against Melee and CT were underwhelming.

There were other good runs here, too -- like SMRPG's victory over SF2, or Melee's close victory over FFX (thanks in part to a BS picture) or even LTTP if you want to give it credit for destroying Super Metroid and putting down FF6 in a close match. Spring 2004 was a case of high highs and low lows.

---

xyzzy

yeah, I'm still giving Squall third place treatment. he just didn't get a chance to be a true cinderella run because he ran into the noble nine. story of his contest career, actually.

---

xyzzy

2003
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2003_Contest

MVP: Cloud
Confidence: 100%

There's absolutely no question about this one. Cloud, after losing to Mario in controversial fashion last year, overcome a huge gap to beat Link who looked unstoppable in 2002. Cloud didn't just do it in the finals either: he dominated every step of the way, most notably when he put 70% on Bowser and doubled Sonic in the quarterfinal. It was a combination of a great buildup leading to an exciting upset, and even better in retrospect since this contest might not get off the ground if Link wins it again.

If you want to get more broad, you could give the 2003 MVP to Kingdom Hearts. All of the runners up have good cases for being super notable as well, and all the best runs were thanks to Kingdom Hearts.

Honorable Mention: Sephiroth, Squall, Crono

The most notable 2003 match was probably Sephiroth's destruction of BS artist Mario who had pulled off another controversial win vs. Crono the round prior. It was such a destruction that a lot of people picked Sephiroth in the final over Cloud -- yeah, Cloud/Link was somehow not the final.

Squall gets props for that Luigi win, a great upset for sure as Luigi had hopes of beating Samus, but it was more of a single round upset than an amazing contest run. Squall would have to wait a couple of years to flex his stuff thanks to awful bracket placement in 2004.

Crono's destruction of Kefka was notable but it was more on Kefka than Crono, and that huge bomb made Crono's run, and ultimate disappointment of losing to Mario at the last second again, all the more painful for Square fans.

---

xyzzy

I almost put Mega Man too. I decided not to because I didn't want to have the whole noble nine showing up!

---

xyzzy

if it isn't then Melee is a weak game

---

xyzzy

I got to thinking about this today and went down a bit of a nerdy rabbit hole. Who was the most important entrant each year?

You can be simplistic and just say the winner every time, but that's boring. Sometimes (usually) it's the journey and not simply the contest winner. One entrant, or a handful of entrants, sometimes suck up all the oxygen in the room even though they're not a true threat to win the whole thing. This thread will be about those guys (or games).

Let's start at the beginning, a really hard one to gauge because there were no true expectations. I'll also list a confidence percentage, which is how certain I am that this character was the MVP. Sometimes there are a few good options, like this one.

2002
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2002_Contest

MVP: Mario
Confidence: 40%

Link won the contest going away with no real competition, and you can argue that he's the MVP just because he won the first one, the only time he wasn't an obvious winner. Link's run was boring though compared to some of the other fireworks in the last week. Everyone remembers the two Mario matches above all else.

I won't get into exhaustive detail, but you can make a case that Mario/Cloud and Mario/Crono made this contest going forward. Mario kinda feels like the wrong pick here because he's sort of a contest villain for what happened with the PGC rally, and the bad guy won.

Crono is a super close second place, and if you ask me tomorrow he might be my MVP. He's the silent protagonist of a niche game that's hard to expect much of, but he beat Dante, #1 seed Lara Croft, Solid Snake (a true surprise) and somehow hung with Mario after he beat Cloud. Crono had a better run early on, but Mario made it happen twice against big competition in super close matches, and for that he barely gets my vote.

Honorable Mentions: Crono, Link, Samus, Sephiroth

---

xyzzy

yeah, I took 2015 to be the SNES year. I took CT to the finals but also FF6 over FF7, thinking that we were in for a big SNES year. and we were, just not big enough to overcome the hierarchy.

---

xyzzy

based on the first few rounds, yeah, I'd agree. but it's so hard to say if that holds when facing the king. yoblazer will tell you -- you don't just assume that Ocarina loses without exceptional proof. that's where those adjustments, while necessary, are dangerous.

---

xyzzy

damn you double SFF

or Zelda/FF SFF

or everything is SFF

---

xyzzy

that's TRE

---

xyzzy

game of the decade!

---

xyzzy

MithosLowell posted...

What would BOTW need on smash for RE7>FFXV?

0%

---

xyzzy

you know as well as I do that being a fantastic game isn't enough to do well in a contest here

---

xyzzy

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 67.34%

---

xyzzy

I just want to say that we've been spot on lately

crew curse not here

---

xyzzy

it's worth a reminder that Nintendo isn't the outlier here on gamefaqs -- it's jrpgs.

---

xyzzy

that "Witcher SFFs western games" thing is a little unfair - Skyrim's gotten Mario Kart, Pokemon and Dark Souls the last 3 rounds.

I do think Witcher has Skyrim's number, but that one's an actual honest to god SFF match as opposed to whatever we're calling God of War and Assassin's Creed. if it's Dark Souls here, I'm not sure.

---

xyzzy

I'll be interested to hear what people who thought Dark Souls > Persona 5 think about the semifinal match. there sure has been a lot of talk here about how Witcher was a lock for the finals.

---

xyzzy

LeonhartFour posted...

I imagine I'm not the only one who will be playing Xenoblade for the first time on Switch because it's finally easily accessible

you'll really like it! Xenoblade is great.

HaRRicH posted...

You're being unfair calling RE2 a random '90s game that almost won its division, and I say this also not liking DKC2 (Returns on the 3DS was one of my disappointments of the decade too).

well, I don't mean it negatively - just that there are dozens of games from that era that would clown this contest, and RE2 just happens to be the one we got. RE1 would also look pretty good in this contest, I'd wager.

---

xyzzy

for all of the antihype about Last of Us, the opposite can be said about Xenoblade (and no one is saying it). Xenoblade remaster is literally the only Nintendo game on record as coming out in 2020. the only one. I wonder if it stays as strong in future years.

---

xyzzy

I hope you're right about DKC2. I dislike those games!

I feel like you could dump dozens of random 90s games that would rock this contest. Sonic 2, Mega Man X, Tetris, Oracle of Ages, Xenogears, etc. RE2 is one such example and it almost won its division.

---

xyzzy

I think of a "real" game contest this way: there's a sea of Nintendo and Square games that aren't super notable, but would beat a lot of games just on name recognition or general respect. games like DKC2, or Super Mario Kart, or Final Fantasy 4, or Mario Kart 8, or whatever. if you can't get over that general tier of games, you're probably not worth a spot outside of for diversity's sake. Dark Souls crosses that line. so does Persona 4/5. Xenoblade too. but Last of Us? ehhh I dunno. God of War, the same.

not saying you have to agree with me - that's just my take.

---

xyzzy

maybe. I don't think very highly of God of War, and Last of Us looks to be weaker than Mario Kart 8.

---

xyzzy

Nintendogs posted...

Is the same true for Sonic 2? Portal 2 lost to that game, making people think that Portal became weak.

yeah, I think people really underestimate how weak this contest is because we're comparing relative strengths. I said it in my crew writeup so sorry for repeating, but this match is the only four games out of the bottom 64 that actually belong in a big boy game contest. you could have some fodder like Galaxy 2, Mass Effect 3 or whatever but the only games that actually belong are these four.

it reminds me of the 2005 contest, where Mario went to town and Link/Cloud/Seph were relegated to the tournament of champions bracket. Mario whipped everyone so bad that we thought he had a legit shot at Sephiroth.. and then he just got destroyed, just like in 2003.

---

xyzzy