Lurker > UF8

Anagram posted...

I'm completely ashamed at how long it took me to think of posting screenshots of the games in the poll.

maybe could've saved all the ones i nommed that somehow made it on before now tbh...

also on another note, are we gonna go back and do a master system poll too or are we deciding it's safe to act like it's been covered through this and the genesis polls lol

anyway honestly Gunstar Heroes had been on my mind for this one since the genesis one but given the clear capabilities of the handheld which it demonstrated many times i honestly don't feel confident in saying it has a particular edge after all. i mean there's plenty of games on it that managed to pulled off pseudo-3D visuals on it so eh. i'll have to look into more of the overall selection than i presently know before i decide tbh

Monolith

while i did expect it to lose out to square and from and ms, it is another "surprised i'm the first" vote. also surprised to see kairosoft

Inviso posted...

Giratina is actively bad

words of the mad

side note drifblim is broken in pla lol and dusknoir haters have never played pmd2 imo

KCF0107 posted...

people like me don't really have much incentive to nominate anything unless we live for pain

well

KINESIS
+3 Drampa
+2 Klinklang
+1 Spheal
-1 Watchog
-2 Bunnelby
-3 Torracat

packed div

HEAL BELL
+3 Liepard
+2 Tynamo
+1 Swampert
-1 Oranguru
-2 Tornadus
-3 Binacle

tynamo and tadbulb in the same division was interesting. shame tynamo is cuter

Inviso posted...

Baltoy and Claydol are pretty dumb and weak, and managed to do very little with a unique type combo

https://www.smogon.com/dex/rs/pokemon/claydol/ i mean

Wordle 1,025 4/6*





PRANK
MOWER
MERCY
MERGE

Prince of Persia

gbc exclusive...

admittedly not an area i've thought as much about as others so i'm going to do some cheating this time and actually look into a few

(one research later)

gonna go with
Chee-Chai Alien
largely for its experimental infrared-based features that ironically make it too "advanced" for the GBA. add on rumble support too and i feel it has a respectable enough case here

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/debbe78b.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/735e1de7.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/00c88896.jpg
just some examples on how it was generally handled so people can get a better idea of what the process is (awkward as it is to post these since i may have had to edit more than a few of mine and those changes obv didn't show up on the archives...)

(yes we still called them locks, no they weren't guaranteed in because of that)

also it was honestly pretty funny that genshin had enough supports on day 1 to not even need any more before the last day to stay on the list to the end

UF8 posted...

i'd had ideas to make it more of a floating amount if it were to be implemented in vgmc, like say, up to 32 but there'd also be an initial threshold to reach first (like 3 unique supports) before any of them were counted, so it'd likely be way less than that in the first few days. the exact specifics though weren't fully decided tbh

since i ran out of edits, to elaborate on some of the ideas here, one of them was that i thought it could end up being like, up to T8 in the first couple of days, up to T16 on days 3-5, and and up to T24 or 32 in the days after the freeze, assuming the freeze had taken place later in

another one was up to T8 if the highest nom was at 4 noms, up to T16 if there were was more than one at 5 or higher, T24 at 6 and so on. as these lock updates would only happen daily, it'd mean it could end up with less than 32 on this window by the end if there aren't at least a couple of noms with 7+ by the start of the final day (which there probably would be, granted)

of course, there was also just having flat out all of the top 32 over the initial requirement from the get go with no additional stipulations but i just felt like it'd be better to not have to see such a theoretically large list of songs spammed every single day. the 8 per day is what i'm using by preference for mini-bost after all

anyway yeah i still think it would be nice to see and i'm just doing my part to keep the idea on the table for the future

DanKirby posted...

As I remember it, at the start of each day of the nominations process, a list of the current top X (not sure exactly how many it was) nominations in terms of nom count would be posted, and no one would be allowed to drop their support for anything on the list.

it was top 8 btw (and whatever else happened to be tied with them on noms). it was a pretty irrelevant system needless to say in a contest with no reason to drop supports in the first place but that's kind of the beauty of it imo, as it well and truly ensured that people were prevented from manipulating their supports at the last minute because of things being "safe" and then them getting cut.

so yeah it was mostly just there to advertise the most popular noms each day lol. (the anti-drop effect only lasted till the next tally update the following day to be clear. of course if a nom like say, genshin, was hogging the top 8 the entire time then it was protected from drops that whole time too)

i'd had ideas to make it more of a floating amount if it were to be implemented in vgmc, like say, up to 32 but there'd also be an initial threshold to reach first (like 3 unique supports) before any of them were counted, so it'd likely be way less than that in the first few days. the exact specifics though weren't fully decided tbh

Kenri posted...

It's also one of the biggest gens so if you value quantity at all it nearly always has an advantage.

yeah gen 1 having over 30 candidates here is a legit consideration here for sure

granted gen 3 also has 29 ithink so it really deserves to be doing better here :(

i get the feeling anagram was mostly just discouraging homebrew releases in saying that at the time but eh

the answer would be x even with gbc tbh lol

side note, i think it's unfortunate games like donkey kong and wario land 1 aren't also in the running, they had some cool stuff up their sleeve, especially factoring in their slick enhanced colour palettes on sgb/gbc/gbp which i feel are worth mentioning as regular gb games from '94

alright i guess i started on a few of the shows i said i would now

highspeed etoile managed to make even the events of the race dull as sin, how do you even fuck up a racing anime that badly?

the fable was... eh. without having read the source material, i get the feeling that half of the appeal of the series is for its gag reactions, and it makes me think that they've made the tone a little too hostile in this adaptation because of it.

the jellyfish band anime is a def contender for show of the season off that premiere. or perhaps it's the low bar set by the others i checked that got to me

lastly i went and watched the new bartender and uh.... so comments i've generally been seeing are saying this is a BETTER anime than the original? like seriously i even went over the first episode of the original straight after (for the benefit of my flatmate) and i cannot believe anyone would say this, let alone for it to be the consensus (it has better ratings too...)

will be getting to others probably in the next few days now that i've gotten the ones my flatmate agreed to so far out of the way (well, he did also agree to spice and wolf but it didn't come up on the couple of sites i checked and i was too lazy to download or check elsewhere for it)

gen 1 has a lot of options and is solid across the board honestly
gen 2 has a lot of options but is definitely weaker across the board honestly
gen 3 is really good and also surskit is my favourite pokemon so uh
gen 4 is also really really good honestly, much love for many of its slept on options like lumineon and mantyke
gen 5 (lol 6) isn't all there sadly but some of them i'm a big fan of (eg. carracosta)
gen 6 (for real this time) ... it's not a good sign when i like volcanion the most of these options
gen 7 has the best starter line of the generation and surskit 2.0 but past that i'm not a fan
gen 8 is honestly really strong, besides the fossils and the OP bear i dig all of them
gen 9 has the best water starter final evo ever and some other solid options, but the paradox mons and wugtrio line weigh it down

i'll put aside GBC and declare my vote for X (the 1992 game) (yes i bolded it, it may be hard to tell lol)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LETr1NoteMM&t=1323s

edit: also i checked again and i'm again confused that my pick from last time made the poll considering it only had my vote. i am flattered that my votes so far seem to be worth more than 1 point lol, but technically toy story had a better argument for making this top 2 poll than cotton.

PIayer_0 posted...

1) Hosting support: Should we open up hosting duties to the community? Seeing deo forget or be unable to post this topic multiple times this week, I'm reminded that 4 months of nominations, bracket construction, topic posting, and vote tallying is a lot of work to put on one person! With the growth from 128 to 192 to 256 and loop/composer tagging, it's only getting worse while we're getting older with outside responsibilities and life changes. deo already gets a lot of help with admin stuff, we're just missing a more official way to contribute. How can I help with posting the topic when deo's away? How do I tally votes accurately? Maybe we can lighten the load by assigning each day of the week to different people for the match topic, but there need to be resources to support that. Many of us know how hosting works by now, and the contest will probably progress towards being more community-run anyway.

well i've been fully stonewalled on this front after begging for years so idk if this is actually happening or if i'm really just blacklisted by everyone in the community at this point (probably)

PIayer_0 posted...

3) Noms and representation: Does everyone feel like their voice can be heard with the power of supports and doubles? A community bracket would ideally represent each demographic proportionally, *except* no one gets rounded down to zero representation. We're in a stable B8-Siiva-Supra period where we can try things that were vulnerable to bad actors in the past, like giving people the power to push in that one darling song. It would be a big leap to do auto-include noms, but we can try something with going beyond doubles. Everyone gets three triples? Or two quadruples? One quintuple? Maybe they can distribute their 20 votes across as few songs as they like, but with a cap per song. Representation is connected to bracket size too - we grew to 256 to have more tastes represented, yet doubling the field doesn't shift any demographics directly...we just get more of everything in the same proportions.

i'm not going to comment directly on this thought for now, but i will say that i've personally been interested in taking a different direction entirely and making doubles a more rare resource if anything. i'd been thinking heavily about giving doubles a one per day limit, as well as only allowing them for supports because i'm more opposed to the idea of people forcing in songs others wouldn't support than ever tbh. But I do know well, as one of the more outcast nominators to begin with, that it's a point worth discussing.

PIayer_0 posted...

4) Nom deadlines: How many rules do we add to try and satisfy everyone? All these deadlines are getting to a point where I have a hard time keeping them in my head, not to mention the newcomers parsing them for the first time. Some people like locks and some people like a moving cutoff, should both deadlines be stuffed in together each year? It can satisfy both sides, but it's also more criteria to worry about. This year, I'm reducing my original noms and have seen comments considering the same - will that make supports more concentrated and push the cutoff higher? I have no idea, so now I have to track how many songs are locking daily, check how many lock slots are free before the deadline, decide if I want to push for any locks, drop songs before the last day, then manage the moving cutoff at the end (whose speed is itself affected by how many users' votes are sitting on locks). I'm getting too old for this! Casual, public games are fun because they impose rules that are easy to learn and play with, and that goes for both veterans and newcomers.

one of the many factors in why i've been pretty strongly against the lock system the way it fits into the mix presently is how thoroughly casual unfriendly it is (or moreso just extremely biased towards those who are more actively involved, as it functions basically just the same as a regular deadline but without a preannounced date attached for the most part). I get that people may still be strongly against my thoughts here but I like to think that the drop protection system i also test ran in bost actually was a success as an alternative that didn't have that same effect (it seems a bit unwieldy in and of itself, but the primary purpose of it really is just to give the hosts an excuse to explain the state of noms each day more than anything, since the protection itself doesn't have any unfair advantage tied to it that people can game... well, i think anyway, it's rather difficult for me to be absolutely certain when i'd been doing it in a much smaller contest that also had limited merit to trying to "game the system" through support manipulation, seeing as it had no cap on them lol. outside of that, the final day's cutoff shifts are always an issue too and i'd also be interested in hearing ideas on how to further alleviate this, not just for VGMC but obviously for the mini-BOSTs moving forward too). that all aside, i do agree that confusing scheduling is perhaps a major issue in making all of this really casual unfriendly. buuuut at the same time, i think that making it complicated can also be a net positive in this regard. i mean yeah, we've got these convoluted rules like X noms per day and only half of the field can be locked and 2 days of break in the middle of noms, but they're all there to serve a pretty valuable purpose, and i'm very biased but i'd be taking it even further in this direction in the name of making it more seamless. This may seem a bit funny coming from someone who just ran a contest based around harrassing nominators constantly for input but i really do want to reduce the load on people coming in for the first time or even just casually. in my personal defense, for bost that was predominantly done through putting off all the heavy set decisions till AFTER noms and letting people just come in and say they're supporting whatever games they're familiar with in general, obviously that's not an applicable option here... but even just things like changing the approach to supports would do a lot to make it less... you know, competitive, and i think that's what we might need in the future

anyway yeah i've rambled aimlessly enough here i think, i just hope to have my two cents considered more in the future since i'm pretty hurt that all of my weeks of planning out a revamp got turned down again lol

PIayer_0 posted...

In case people forgot like me, the nom schedule is identical to last year, assuming 20 unique noms and 128 locks still. Even "April 19st" is a typo from copypasting last year's post!

ahh, i had a suspicion after i vaguely recalled making the same mistake over the phrasing used last year, but i didn't want to check out of embarrassment >_>

MZero posted...

Speed: 20

wtf

i see a lot of clickbait titles rag on about this kind of stuff and it's pretty obvious by now that speed usually more defines reaction speeds for pokemon, and given that escavalier is... well, a karrablast awkwardly wielding shelmet's armour and some lances, it's understandable that even if it can travel fast it's probably not the most flexible thing around (i like to think that this is shelmet scamming karrablast personally, especially since they're enemies)

azuarc posted...

So, ironically, the person the freeze helps the most is probably you.

normally this would be true but actually i'd been planning around the idea that my 10 unique nom limit would be accepted so actually not

Theme

oh ok so i misinterpreted the no limit to supports line my bad

with that in mind then, well for one thing i am still incredibly disappointed that you'll continue to prevent support of songs this way, but that aside, i am also pretty concerned over this current plan. you're really putting the freeze before the full amount of noms have been unlocked? (i mean sure there's supports but the idea is usually meant to be to use them *after* listening to everything). i get that you're probably trying to just encourage only 10 total per user but imo it'd have honestly been better to just flat out limit to 10 unique noms and 20 total than this (of course, i'd have been more for 10 and 30 total personally)

also another matter that i wish had been tackled is just the fact that even with the freeze, 5 per day seems to be a bit excessively stressful for day 1 with the current crowd and lowering to 4 or 3 per day could've been a good move. (getting a rule adjustment to further push for people provide loop/end points for their own nominations would also be a very nice thing)

thirdly, given that i'd been hoping to run bost23 significantly earlier than last year to leave sufficient room to start bost24 around the start of next year, i do hope that this contest can start more swiftly after noms than last time (in all fairness, that contest series is prob going to be a bit less involved moving forward so ideally it won't be as heavy a commitment as it was in the first iteration)

MZero posted...

-33 Roggenrola
-40 Dolliv

late to take note of this but wtf

G-MAX VOLCALITH
+3 Vespiquen
+2 Combusken
+1 Mamoswine
-1 Wishiwashi
-2 Tranquill
-3 Greedent

honestly i don't dislike anything here besides greedent

G-MAX SWEETNESS
+3 Sandygast
+2 Fomantis
+1 Teddiursa
-1 Dartrix
-2 Stunky
-3 Greninja

anyway i think i'm going to stick with my initial vote here and run with Panorama Cotton but the other ones so far are decent shouts (especially toy story tbh)

Anagram posted...

Its possible I misunderstood peoples votes. It would have been easier if people had consistently bolded. But since I just put the top three into a poll for a final vote, it shouldnt matter in the end, since it means people are still voting for it.

it's less the fact that that there was a fundamental misunderstanding/lack of clarity over post contents and more just that only three (four counting you) users were even mentioning the game last topic lol

Lock Threshold Change
The requirement to lock a song is being bumped from 6 +s up to 7. I debated bumping this even up to 8, but last year locks didn't go super insane so I think a bump by one will do for now. But with our community holding pretty strong after the influx we got after locks were introduced I think it's almost a requirement to raise the number. Those with a good memory may remember I almost did this last year even, but yeah I can't let it go by as it was any longer.

The Schedule
9pm Wednesday, April 17th - Nominations open, 5 unique nominations allowed with no limit to supports.

Whoa. Buddy. Pal. Bro. Yes. But also oh god. I wonder if we're likely to straight up start filling the cap immediately...

Anyway I'm just happy about the support fix, I put in my request on the lock system revision because I was concerned over how damaging it'd be with this change but there's really no way to know for sure without actually doing this. If it does end up being absolute bedlam then hey at least i can say i was right (but just in case i will say that you might want to put in a clarification or something that it could get emergency bumped up to at least 8 lol, the idea of locks potentially running out before even the unique nom limit is reached is scary!!!)

i did nearly add something to say i didn't dislike the gears, i just didn't consider them high enough to really bring up as doing serious legwork to try salvaging the gen from the rest (am unfortunately a cobalion and also genesect and also ferrothorn line hater, and don't care for excadrill or escavalier much either)

gen 1 (i mean, even if it had magnezone here i still wouldn't exactly be voting it here lol)
gen 2 (4 good mons, a surprisingly solid pick all things considered)
gen 3 (yes, objectively i know that i SHOULDN'T be picking it, but i did because i love all of these lines and solo mons)
gen 4 (a ton to like but they're not all winners in my eyes)
gen 5 (bisharp can't carry a generation alone)
gen 6 (keys, swords, and megas. this to me was a low point for steel in my eyes, though i did eventually warm to the idea of ones like mega mawile even if i was initially offended by the idea that they wouldn't even buff it beforehand (massive bruh moment that they just give mons that can't even hit 500bst with the transformation a mega to begin with))
gen 7 (sometimes i forget alolan sandshrew/sandslash even have steel. anyway damn that's an unhealthy number of legendaries lol. i mean i like most of them but i don't think i'd be comfortable picking it in a way)
gen 8 (i like the copperajah line... and that's pretty much it)
gen 9 (kingambit can't carry a generation alone (i get this is an unpopular opinion but i hope the others die in a fire blast))

oh i'd missed the news till now. continuing the running trend of setbacks happening to groups associated with Sony for one reason or another, apparently verse^n or however they're supposed to be referred to as kind of dropped out of the agency game and all its current members are part of VEE instead now. (both were under sony music)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaevK6USt3M
Apparently verse n still exists in some capacity, though it's some serious restructuring either way

Anyway the reason I found out is because one of the VEE members i watch just dropped a hiatus announcement now and i went to check if it had been announced prior on the vee twitter or anything (it hadn't)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzPonzMKqc

edit: by the way, this announcement actually timeclashed with the redebut of one of the verse members, so they actually had to reschedule to next hour...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWIa5uYaKcY

Wordle 1,023 5/6*






i definitely didn't do myself any favours by not guessing more vowels

actually i do also want to mention that i'm not sure you counted the votes properly yesterday since sf2 only really got 2 votes lol (excluding jc's double vote).

(this is probably my fault for saying it so much, my bad...)

Honestly tough call. first that came to mind was that one rail shooter Cotton game, but that feels like a weird answer considering it's not even that close to star fox (still decent though, i do think it at least has a slight edge over ones like space harrier 2 mostly for its greater variety in its stages)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NulVY_oegcs

i guess there's also ones like after burner if it's cool to count ports
... actually building on that thought, maybe the answer is Silpheed, somehow that game was STILL super flashy by the time it reached mega cd tbh (despite being 7 years old by then)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0znZTOhi1kQ

and besides those virtua fighter is just a safe choice too tbh

as said though, tough call tbh. gonna hold off on deciding for now

my first thought, though i didn't think of a specific one, were of those liberation quests in unicorn overlord (though those are usually "The Battle For")

By the way, interesting sales note again, turns out Gran Turismo 4 was also a game that vastly outperformed expectations in Europe specifically. The reported figures on them all come from their website back in 2013 and apparently it sold less than half as many copies in NA compared to GT3, and also only two thirds as many in Japan, but it was also the best selling GT game ever in Europe (and it wouldn't really surprise me if that figure still stands tbh). Still, I guess that explains a lot of why every other vote is automatically going for 3 here. I perceived them as pretty close in relevance but as usual the demographics of the site just don't see it that way since I guess Forza hit its long-term sales way harder elsewhere...

KamikazePotato posted...

What I'm finding is that the Prince of Persia trilogy sold 14 million over a period of time, including rereleases. That's believable.

i'll put you through the other numbers since you don't believe me. It had sold over 2 mil copies 2 months past release. At the time, north american numbers were accounting for about 25-30% of that (and the ps2 numbers half of that), and the rest pretty much only came from the PAL releases, which, since they hadn't put out the Xbox or GCN versions yet, were only for the GBA/PS2/PC releases (and frankly i haven't actually seen a gba copy before so i don't think that factored for much). The following month it was stated that europe was over half of that. By 2006, the US sales for the ps2 version had reached over three times the previous figure, around 700k. It's pretty safe to say that the other releases, including the pal ones, followed similar trends, and more than likely the xbox/gc versions also sold pretty well in europe too

the only standalone rerelease after that (at least before the 14 million figure was cited) was as a ps2 classic on the ps store, which you could choose to not count or you could. Given that it was a few months after the movie, it probably did pretty well at the time too, though numbers on it specifically weren't provided. It was 2014 where the over 14 million figure was cited, and it is true that could also be factoring in the trilogy/triple pack/hd trilogy sales... though to be fair just off what we already know it's more or less to be expected that it had somewhere around 700k-1m in NA and over double that in europe at a bare minimum for the ps2 version. but yeah, I'd have estimated that europe was contributing about 3 to 4 million to those numbers on ps2, NA as reported at least 700k, and other regions... an amount. That's what i based my guess that it had likely outsold them on, it's probably in the same ballpark as them...

KamikazePotato posted...

Not even close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStation_2_video_games

sands of time has reportedly sold over 14 mil units and it's very obviously known that the ps2 sales of the time outperformed the other platforms. It just did really fucking bad in america so wikipedia editors don't know shit lol

ZenOfThunder posted...

page 2 and so far ZERO Eye Toy support!!!

i'll be honest i would've included a Buzz game if i felt anybody else in the topic even knew what they were since that was the most PAL-only trend ever in gaming tbh

i'd say all the classic GoWs are somewhere in the top 25 most significant releases on their respective consoles but not actually in contention overall. both main gran turismos overwhelmingly outsold both god of war ps2 games combined which is all that really needs to be said imo. even sands of time most likely outperformed them on ps2 alone

NFUN posted...

probably a gran turismo uf8 can choose which for me

ok fair enough this is honestly tough though, I think 4 is the one generally with the bigger fandom now (turns out having a >700 car roster (which unlike later entries is almost fully comprised of models made for it specifically instead of just porting over old ones does it a lot of favours in maintaining relevance). Having said that, 3 was a massive leap forward in its own right despite the limited car roster, boasting arguably significantly more fun car physics (than 4) among other things, and it also comfortably outsold 4 (14mil vs 11mil sales)). It's a tough call but I guess it might as well be the one treated more as the GOAT among series fans nowadays

Gran Turismo 4
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Shadow of the Colossus
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

sands of time may be a bold vote considering it was multiplat but in all fairness it definitely also still sold millions on ps2 alone (which may come as a surprise to others since i see it apparently managed to bomb in america)

also on a multiplat note i'd also of course been considering burnout 3 (very biased) for this but sadly i think it's just out of contention because i don't think the ps2 version even outsold sotc, let alone the rest

Wordle 1,022 4/6*





tried to full send it on the first one and realised i'd left the remaining options a bit too open past that, glad it only took 4

Face

Anagram posted...

Does Star Fox 2 even count as a proper SNES game, when it never actually released in the SNES?

to be fair
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/10/you-can-get-a-star-fox-2-cartridge-but-not-from-nintendo.html

Kid Icarus
The Adventure of Valkyrie
The Mysterious Murasame Castle
Battletoads

have been playing too much Sailing Era recently (i'd estimate i've put in an extra 150 hours into a handful of playthroughs over the past couple of weeks...). also want to get back to and finish off Murders on the Yangtze River (so far only finished the first three cases before accidentally stalling it). After that I'm probably going to get around to a minor mod for 100%OJ I'd been meaning to do since they added the latest card pack a month ago, though I did also pick up a couple of neat suika game clones so fingers crossed they don't also rope me in for an extended period first lol

ToeJam & Earl
John Madden Football
Barkley Shut Up and Jam!
Flashback

Wordle 1,021 4/6*





the luck streak finally ran dry but i'll take the 4

protesting the decision to group the two tbh since they're functionally very different

none of these generations miss besides maybe gens 9 and 7 and even then only partially. gave a complimentary vote to 4 since i deeply value all of them unlike others here (am a noted bell mon appreciator, love chingling and mime jr immensely, think gallade is very cool and one of the most underappreciated mons, consider the lake beings as... admittedly a little middle of the road design-wise but given the generation's lore they're tied to, actually incredibly cool with arguably still the best battle theme for any legendary group (thanks PLA)), and cresselia is truly a behemoth worthy of being a rival to one of the other best mons ever made) but i have absolutely no beef with the winning gen here by any means