Lurker > Ulti_PCA

If Atlus made it then I'd be shocked if it sucks.
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Logience posted...

Oh Christ, Peace Walker actually gave The Boss a name? Man, that sounds silly.

Also, Im pretty sure its Ivan Adamska, if my memories of MGS1 are accurate.

Multiple things I could have gone with.
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Bet you pukes didn't see THAT writeup coming, eh? EEEEEH?
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Then the match started and all hell broke loose. Well by 2018 standards, anyway. Things were dead even at first, then Claire took a small lead, then Joker erased the lead before falling a bit. Then in a flash, Claire just buried the guy. Two hours in, these two were separated by 97 votes. This match was stone cold over 30 minutes later, and with how close this was to start we can chalk this thing up to the margin of error.

Does Joker win with a fair shake in naming and picture? Probably not, actually. Claire's picture was also trash and she has RE2 hype behind her. But the fact we can even have a gray area argument about this entire result is not good. Sure the winner was destined to lose to Sub-Zero anyway. So what? The guru was only won by 3 points. I won a contest on a tiebreaker. These points matter. You can't have doubts about results like this, and well-run stuff makes sure this happens as little as possible. I'll give Allen credit for correcting his mistake but it was bad to make this mistake in the first place.

I made a bunch of polls mid contest asking people how important the match pic was when voting. I was expecting virtually no 'yes' votes. To my shock, something like 35-40% of people vote based on picture! What in the actual hell?

So yeah, Joker got robbed and the Persona fans are being given one great writeup and one fair shot to be mature moving forward. Don't let me down, bros! Also, level with me. Are the games any good?

Oh last point before I forget. Before this contest only one 2 seed had ever lost to a 15. The Boss beat Nathan Drake. In this contest it happened THREE TIMES. This match, Aeris > Waluigi, and Bomberman > Kazuma Kiryu. The seeding in this contest was so messed up.
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Division 6 Round 1: (2)Joker vs (15)Claire Redfield

(2)Joker - 14278 [46.42%]
(15)Claire Redfield - 16480 [53.58%]
Total Votes - 30758
Prediction Percentage - 48.66%

For those playing the home game, you might be wondering why I'm calling him Joker in the PCA and having the page name on the Wiki named "Joker" instead of "Ren Amamiya".

To the surprise of everyone and for the first time in my entire life, I'm going to agree with Persona fans. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't planning on it originally. I was actually fully prepared to come in here, act as obnoxious as possible, and aim my most scathing possible rant at you people. You were going to get compared to the worst parts of our culture, you were getting the Election 2016 crybaby treatment, you were going to get absolutely shit on about how Claire pulled off the greatest upset possible due to Allen fixing his mistake and calling him Joker in the poll instead of Ren, the works. It was going to be awesome, and you would have deserved every second of it for how you act in every single Persona match in these contests. There is no fanbase more obnoxious in contest history, and there have been a ton of bad ones.

And then this happened.





And it wasn't just that. I actively tried looking for anyone, literally anyone, to call the guy "Ren". I didn't find a single example. Not one. So you know what? You guys win. With being in Smash, you're in the big time now and I'm going to give you a fair shot to redeem yourselves. I know exactly how happy you are right now, and I'm not going to take that from you. Plus with me having never actually played a Persona game and only going on contest behavior, for all I know those games deserve their fandom. Who really knows. You have a good thing here, Persona honks. Don't fuck it up. I don't change my mind on people very often!

So with that said, let's go back to the beginning and give a fair rundown. When the bracket first came out, Joker was foolishly listed in the bracket as "Ren Amamiya". For those not aware of how absolutely stupid this was, imagine Revolver Ocelot listed as "Adamska", Lightning listed as "Claire Farron", The Boss listed as "Mercury Lady", or Big Boss listed as "Ishmael". It was laughably, unforgivably dumb.

On top of that, look at these match pictures.

http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb10/95.png
http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb10/96.png

This was the biggest mess of round 1 by a mile, and Allen knew it. By the time the match happened, it was more or less confirmed without being directly confirmed when Allen changed the name to Joker in our brackets that the poll would have his name on it. But by then, the damage was done. People had long since made their picks, and as you can see by the prediction percentage Claire had just enough support to get just enough bracket/early/registered votes to win this match if it was close. I have no doubts this would have been a closer match if things were named correctly from the jump and Joker were given a proper picture. That doesn't forgive the laughably awful Claire picture either, just for the record.
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Oh sweet! Nice! Yay Lucina :D
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Division 6 Round 1: (7)Shulk vs (10)Sub-Zero

(7)Shulk - 11517 [37.43%]
(10)Sub-Zero - 19251 [62.57%]
Total Votes - 30768
Prediction Percentage - 66.63%

Remember when there was a debate on contest strength between Sub-Zero and Scorpion? Yeah me either. As the ultimate casual, I am proud to report Sub-Zero was always cooler. I would actually be shocked if people's reasoning for it wasn't similar to mine: blue is just a better color than yellow is, and when you're a kid things like that matter a ton when picking characters, sports teams, and so forth.

Laugh all you want, but I bring science! https://medium.com/the-peruser/why-most-peoples-favorite-color-is-blue-bd84fc4e4dfb

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6860-25-years-later-who-is-your-all-time-favorite-original-mortal

These are the things I dig up for predictable 63-37 blowouts. Favorite color science translating to character tastes.

Just for fun, let's plug Auron v Shulk from 2013 into the LOL x stats calculator. Auron gets 75%. In the actual match here, he got 63%. During the Ryu Hayabusa v Simon Belmont match, I asked how much a Smash appearance is worth. I legitimately think the right number is about 5-10%, depending on how strong you were to start off. We've seen these insane boosts from Smash for years, and even though Shulk got blown out here I imagine it would have been far worse without Sm4sh and Ultimate backing him.

This match also all but cemented we would see a fourth match between Sub-Zero and Auron. We've never gotten Mario vs Sonic, Sub-Zero vs Scorpion, Dark Link or Dark Samus into a contest, Blastoise into a contest, or a host of other obvious stuff, but we can get Auron vs Sub-Zero four times. Okay. Sure.
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Division 6 Round 1: (6)Magus vs (11)Vincent Valentine

(6)Magus - 14802 [48.11%]
(11)Vincent - 15968 [51.89%]
Total Votes - 30770
Prediction Percentage - 48.28%

Dammit Magus, you got my hopes up again. At least this time it happened in a match we all knew you'd lose, but still. This dude was one day vote away from what would have been one of the funniest upsets in contest history.

Confession time. I never grew out of being a fan of villains, loners, anti-heroes, badasses, or the dark brooding fake gothic types. I don't try to be some badass prick in real life or whatever, I just find them more interesting characters by and large in fiction. Heroes all do the same thing. Villains and anti-heroes and such are far more complex. I could point out a litany of examples where the public is actually on my side on this and tunes in in massive numbers, like Walter White, Dexter, Thanos, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Crow, John Wick, Omar Little, Jack Bauer, Tony Soprano, Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman, The Godfather, or a massive number of Game of Thrones and Quentin Tarantino characters, but I'll mainly stick to video games here since this is a video game analysis.

Erm, uh.... okay I went outside video games there, but hey! Some of my favorite gaming characters are people like Magus, Vincent, Cloud, Squall, Auron, Beatrix, Yuri Lowell, Vergil, Shadow the Hedgehog, Alucard, Solid Snake, Kefka, Sephiroth, Big Boss, Garrus, Lightning (sue me), Wesker, Kratos Aurion, Riku, JC Denton, Adam Jensen, Manfred von Karma, Master Chief (sue me), Nocturne, Sovereign, the Old Gods from World of Warcraft (SUE ME), Night Stalker, a whole host of other MOBA characters INCLUDING DRAVEN DO NOT @ ME, Kratos, Samus, GLaDOS, practically any ninja, Akuma, Javik.... you get the idea. I could keep going. You might call them edgelords. I call them Lawful Evil. Orzhov Syndicate forever.

I dunno, I just find that archetype awesome. Sue me. So for me this match was awesome on a couple levels, not the least of which is Magus shocking the world for 5 hours. For the first 5 hours of this poll, things were either deadlocked or within 100 votes, and people had a lot of hope Magus could pull this upset off. On top of that, Vincent and Final Fantasy 7 haven't exactly been clutch lately. I had hope myself, but it was very cautious optimism for two reasons. First of all, I've seen way too many contest matches at this point and one trend in deadlocked matches has become exceedingly glaring. There is always one character in a very slight lead trying to shake the other one off. Very very rarely does it go back and forth. And almost always, the character doing the shaking wins. In this case, it was Vincent. So that's point number one.

Point number two.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2088-devil-division-round-1-magus-vs-knuckles-the-echidna

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3272-division-8-round-1-shepard-magus-sandbag-sonic

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4563-southwest-division-final-alucard-vs-dracula-frog-vs-magus

The last time Magus was actually clutch was in 2003 against Ganondorf, which is a result that looks weirder every year. I had zero delusions the guy would actually pull this off, and was the least surprised guy on the planet when Vincent finally buried him. Still proud of the guy and still love him, but come on. It's Magus.

We really need a Magus v Tidus match so we can have an answer on who our least clutch character is.
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NowItsAngeTime posted...

I liked Lucina a lot in Awakening and was surprised (but happy) she was picked over Chrom originally in Smash WiiU but im glad both got in Ultimate

Ulti_PCA posted...

Keep your politics trash on either side out of my topic or I'm going to start marking people.

I did get a good chuckle out of the last 50 posts just of how unnecessarily crazy loud it got but anymore and I would gotten annoyed

I've cut a lot of that crap out of my life and I've been a lot happier for it. The occasional reference is far different from the people who let it consume their lives 24/7.

Go in the politics topic and just read it for a few weeks. How many of those people do you honestly think are happy in real life? There's a reason for that. I'm dropping this subject now because it's no accident people get along better when that garbage isn't talked about.
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red sox 777 posted...

Crono would have had a great year in 2003 if he hadn't run into a rally/stuffing fest with Mario. Magus did have a great year in 2003.

He really didn't. People thought him vs Link was the true final of that contest and he crapped the bed twice before overperforming with a sprite.
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Division 6 Round 1: (3)Auron vs (14)Lucina

(3)Auron - 20132 [65.44%]
(14)Lucina - 10630 [34.56%]
Total Votes - 30762
Prediction Percentage - 69.1%

I would bet good money I'm one of the few people who mainly likes Lucina for how insanely cool she was in Fire Emblem Awakening instead of her Smash appearances, but who knows. She's okay in Smash, but she is a damn legend in Awakening. Top 5 series character for sure. Unfortunately she was against Auron, who does the brooding swordsman turned softy routine much better than she ever could and comes from a far more popular game.

Auron went out there and pretty much showed exactly why he was the division favorite, because while the top half of the division was doing whatever it was they were doing, Auron was out here cracking skulls and taking names. I know Lucina isn't that strong, but getting 65% on a Smash character in today's environment is no joke. Auron even won the day vote and raised his percentages up, which for Square against Nintendo is virtually impossible anymore.

I love Auron, but man would I love to see Lucina win one some day. She deserves it. Taking Marth's name before ripping your mask off and taking fucking names on the battlefield next to Chrom is one of the coolest things in this series, and it happens in a game loaded with really fun characters. I know everyone loves Chrom and Tharja from that game, but I'm a Lucina honk. Sue me.
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Tennessee Titans
Los Angeles Chargers
Cleveland Browns
Dallas Cowboys
Minnesota Vikings
Indianapolis Colts
Miami Dolphins
New England Patriots
Green Bay Packers
Philadelphia Eagles
Carolina Panthers
Los Angeles Rams
Chicago Bears
New Orleans Saints
Seattle Seahawks
Denver Broncos

Oh and this is Ulti, btw <3
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Whiskey_Nick posted...

When I need to decide which side is correct in a political argument I go to the one source for unbiased and fair information.

CAPTAIN TOAD

Did you know Captain Toad cannot jump?

Did you know Captain Toad can barely muster a light jog?

Even with all that holding him back, he still adventures around the globe! The highest highs! The deepest depths!

He has killed dragons and people with an aversion to social situations.

He even uses a pick axe!

I would so turn gay for you before Roman Reigns or Momoa at this point, christ bro.
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5tarscream posted...

Well that's what happens when you gamble and try to go against the top 8 to make ground. 5-11 I think

Pretty sure we all did bad.
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BRUTAL week. I went 6-10. Gross.
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Keep your politics trash on either side out of my topic or I'm going to start marking people. Don't push me on this. This should be a fun topic where that garbage doesn't happen. I got my one reference out of the way as a joke and I don't plan on doing any more of them. There are plenty of things and people to make fun of outside that realm anyway! =p

As usual, my readers do all the heavy lifting here. Shout out to the wiki editors who keep me typo free!

https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Special:RecentChanges

Follow that link if you're a wiki fan! On we go. Next match up is Auron/Lucina.
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There is zero difference between SJWs bitching about dumb bullshit (candy canes) and anti-SJWs bitching about their bitching (again, its fucking CANDY CANES...WHO CARES either way?).

Because if people like you get candy canes banned, you can ban anything. You don't fight back against nonsense by staying silent. You call it out for the ludicrous nonsense it is and make sure these people are publicly mocked. Peer pressure can be used for good.

Also, it would be a lot easier for people to buy the I call out right-wing extremists too argument if you did it even semi-frequently, or if you didnt mistakenly label yourself as a moderate and a centrist.

I am a proud libertarian who goes right economically and left socially.

You wanna call out right-wing extremists? Why dont you start with the mouth-breathing morons that think Antonin Scalia was assassinated by the Democrats?

Keep this useless trash in the politics topic where it belongs. Keep it up next topic and I am 100% going to mark you for invasion. And when *I* mark people, it works.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com./user.php?db=.4.user=dva69

Do not push me and think for one second I won't do it. This topic isn't the place for politics topic filth. Piss off.

Nanis23 posted...

Can we go back to actual contest discussion now
And make the next writeups less offensive or something

Well who am I kidding, you knew it would happen
So now that it has, back to normal??

Just getting this to 500 before I do more actual writeups honestly.
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Logience posted...

@Espeon
I've read most of what Ulti's written up on the wiki, and it's pretty much never bringing politics up. The things he gets up in arms about tend to just be obnoxious fandoms spamming up the board (Deus Ex, Halo, LoL), or his usual bugbears about Celda and post-merge Squaresoft. This thread is pretty much the only time he's ever even mentioned politics to my recollection. And if the goal is to attack him for going on tangents, then you might as well just ask him to just reduce his entire recap to him just posting "Match was at X/Y throughout these periods" like a fucking bot.
Also, having a contest win on your sig =/= clinging to 14-year-old popularity. If he was clinging to anything, it would be being the guy who most eagerly writes the history books for this website, which can be easily contested by anybody willing to write up a wiki article or two in addition to his own. (Eg: https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Mario_vs_(1)Samus_Aran_2005#Ngamer.27s_Analysis) So get the hell down from that edge, would you kindly.

I intentionally and very rarely bring up politics in these -- it's maybe between 0 and 2 references per contest at most -- because it's a guaranteed way to get the usual leftist weirdos in here and I have no desire for these PCAs to become as bad as the politics topic has gotten. Look at Inviso's posts on this page or whatever LMS nonsense you've been quoting and imagine entire topics of that garbage. No thanks.

I forget which match it was but I specifically did say I was only limiting myself to one mention of it in the entire PCA. That was intentional and was done as a test case to see if they showed up to start trolling. And of course they did.

I do consider SJW whining a bit different from politics and sort of related to contests in a way, because video games are a very real thing those people have targeted.
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ColZach posted...

Imagine thinking trump is better for our country than Bernie would have been LOL

I've legitimately changed my mind on that one, to be fair. Bernie would have been a way better president.
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Espeon posted...

Apparently youve never gone into the politics containment topics to see Ulti politely expressing his opinions. I dont mind Ulti going on tangents about obnoxious fan ASRs or whatever. Its an Internet popularity contest, so that makes sense. But Ulti bashing SJWs for actions that are apparently only okay when HE does them...its just so old and tired and pointless, and the main reason I dont have this account blocked like all the others was because I wanted to read contest write-ups, not listen to either more whining about SJW nontroversies, or gloating about anti-SJW victories.

Then block this account or keep your SJW bile out of my topic. It's not hard.

Well it actually kind of is for your ilk, because hitting X and reading something else is secondary to pushing for as much censorship as possible. I'm sure it's magic that mods sent me a PM the second the SJWs showed up in this topic. Purely a coincidence I'm sure.
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Espeon posted...

Ulti_PCA posted...

Espeon posted...

And despite shitting on LMS for being a whack job, Ultis sniveling little rant proves LMS exactly right.

You clearly don't know what sniveling means. Quoting this before you edit because good hell are you an embarrassing user these days.

Though I imagine a grown man who pretends to be a 7 foot tall Asian underwear model online can relate to LMS's mental state ;)

Why dont you go back to working, paying some bills, watching sports, getting laid, playing video games and hanging out with friends instead of devoting your entire life to whining like a spoiled infant about SJWs. And Id imagine a whiny loser, desperately clinging to ePopularity he garnered years ago for correctly predicting an internet video game character popularity contest, while still claiming to be some badass alpha male whos better than all the peons on an Internet message board that he deigns to grace with his presence, would know all about using the internet as a means to live out the life one feels inside, no matter how false it may be.

Seriously, this contest analysis is the ONE thing you do that people still kinda like about you, yet you STILL cant shut the fuck up about SJWs. Get some fucking help, man. Your life is allegedly too good for the level of whining you unleash on a regular basis.

Keep this trash to the politics topic where it belongs.

Spoilers, the only people offended by extremist SJWs being called out are extremist SJWs. Shocking how that works. Funny though how when I call out right wing extremists there is never a peep.
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Espeon posted...

And despite shitting on LMS for being a whack job, Ultis sniveling little rant proves LMS exactly right.

You clearly don't know what sniveling means. Quoting this before you edit because good hell are you an embarrassing user these days.

Though I imagine a grown man who pretends to be a 7 foot tall Asian underwear model online can relate to LMS's mental state ;)
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KamikazePotato posted...

CT/SSBM is one of the best matches ever.

FIXED!!
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transience posted...

46.



This match feels wholly unsatisfying. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was the game of the decade, at least at that point in time. Now is obviously another story, but it was the strongest game that year.

You could feel the users of gamefaqs saying to themselves, "what have we done?", as perennial lightning rod Super Smash Bros. Brawl moved towards winning the contest. They preferred Brawl in each match, but it just didn't belong here. Not a game with such a backlash. And so, by the time we get to the semifinal against Fallout 3, it just kinda... stopped being beloved. Fallout 3 put up a similar number to Twilight Princess, a game that kinda killed Fallout 3 the year prior. It was nearly a doubling, and now it was at 46%. Something wasn't right.

Meanwhile, Majora's Mask, that plucky Zelda underdog, had all the buzz. It had heart. It had creativity. It had all the things that Brawl lacked. And so, the voting public kinda abandoned the strongest game and went for the best narrative. It's understandable. Brawl isn't GOTD quality. But the match just never felt right. Run this as a round 2 match and I think Brawl wins it.

Wins it in 2010, of course. Run it now and Brawl loses to anything. We'll get there.

Unsatisfying MY FUCKING ASS.

And I took Bowser > Snake that one year. I came so, so close.
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If you guys could stop quoting extremist weirdos like LMS that would be great, thanks. I block him immediately on all my accounts for a reason. The guy is a whack job and is not worth anyone's time. Logi and I will never agree politically but I can talk to the guy because he's clearly a normal dude. LMS is not a normal dude and never will be. If Logi and I hung out irl we'd laugh about Trump for like 2 seconds and just play Smash Bros or go to work or something like any other normal person. If LMS knew how to read (he clearly doesn't), he would have noticed I hate right wing extremist idiots just as much as I hate SJW extremist idiots. They're the same exact person.

I lived through the 80s. Unlike what stupid people think Trump supporters are (we're independents; you'd be shocked at how many of us like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Cortez, Obama, Beto, Corey Booker, or any other democrat that's actually cool), I actually remember extremist right wing morons very well. Right wing nutjob morons who think gay people getting AIDS was a divine punishment from God and left wing morons who get offended over and censor everything are infected with the exact same mentality. You know who used to censor everything? Right wing idiots. You know who wants everything censored now? Left wing idiots. They're one in the same. It's called being a fucking idiot that gets ignored and mocked by everyone else. I want nothing to do with either because they're both gigantic pieces of human waste. I just want to go to work, pay some bills, watch sports, get laid, play video games, hang out with friends, and so on. You know, normal everyday stuff.

The only difference between extremist trash on either side is the leftist SJW cult actually has the support of American media, which is hilariously dangerous. When Jim Acosta pushes a girl's arm down and the entire media sits there and pretends the video is fake and he never even touched her, when the media pushes lies about the president being unable to feed fish, when the media lies and tells people Trump removed the MLK bust, when the media lies and tells people Trump never visited Scalise, when the media lies and pretends SJW ideas are a good thing, when the media lies and acts like one-sided censorship is great, when the media lies and pretends Antifa isn't a violent terrorist group, when the media lies and says democratic leaders aren't calling for violence in the streets as they literally call for violence on the streets.... basically when the media lies 24/7 and there is a large subset of people who are dumb enough to believe a word these people say, your culture is fucked. There are zero examples of social or economic communism being a net positive. None. They do not exist.

It says a lot when people's first reaction to this point is to claim a definition was co-opted by morons instead of seeing the actual point of communism being really, really dumb.
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Nanis23 posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

People clearly have no idea what pic sabotage actually is.

Joker was a victim of pic sabotage, not the Dorf.

The thing you don't get about pic sabotage is probably what exactly pic sabotage means
Yes, Ganondorf NES Sprite is Ganondorf
Yes, Solid Shit is official Snake Sprite
And also yes, Sheik IS Zelda

It doesn't matter. We don't mean "pic sabotage" as "those pictures are not legit"
What we expect from you as a picsmith, and what you should aim for as a picsmith, is to make every character look as good as possible
It's a sprite round and you are making a Ganondorf sprite? good. Why don't you look for the best possible Ganondorf sprite there is?
You want to give Zelda a picture? why don't you search for the best picture of Zelda? the picture that makes her scream the most "I am Zelda"?

Now let me ask you a question.
(I tried to understand if you are a Phoenix Wright fan from the PW/Chris writeup but all I saw was 99% bashing on RE so I am not sure. But from your Godot writeup, looks like you do)

What do you make of this-

Is this Phoenix Wright? well I don't know if you played Apollo Justice, but IT IS Phoenix Wright. This is the only game in the series he looks like this.
He doesn't look like his old self at all, and yet this is Phoenix Wright. This is offical Phoenix Wright sprite.
Can you tell me with a straight face that putting this in a Phoenix Wright match is not pic sabotage? for real?
If you are asked to make a match picture, will you use this one? if yes, why would you pick this one instead of the more iconic "finger pointing" pose?

Number one: If the goal is to make every character look as good as possible then just use one picture all contest. Make it the best one possible.

Two: I legitimately love the Ganon sprite from Zelda. You will never, ever be able to convince me it's a bad picture. Ever. Ask Leon4 how stubborn I am when I like something.

And lastly, that's a fantastic picture of Phoenix.
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Which one was The Boss again?

Also do I have to unlock mii fighters or can I just make them?
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Division 6 Round 1: (4)Bayonetta vs (13)Riku

(4)Bayonetta - 19289 [64.4%]
(13)Riku - 10665 [35.6%]
Total Votes - 29954
Prediction Percentage - 70.84%

Remember how I said during the Geralt round 1 writeup that a case could be made for any of the top half of this division winning three matches? Well count me in as one of the morons who thought Riku could win three times. Good hell. I did eventually change my mind and picked a Geralt/Auron final, but even looking back on what I almost chose there is so embarrassing. I ended up picking Riku to win twice, and I didn't think the logic was that bad, either!

Right before this contest, a massive Kingdom Hearts 3 hype video came out. If ever there was a time for Riku and Sora to go on a tear in a contest, this would be the year. Pair that with Bayonetta being the most hated character in Smash Bros history, and it was a recipe for success. Plus I like the dude's character arc. Sue me.

Oh and I'm not joking about Bayonetta being the most hated character in Smash history, either. She has Kirby/Pikachu/Ness from 64, Sheik and Fox from Melee, and Meta Knight from Brawl completely and totally beat. Bayonetta in Smash 4 might legitimately be the most hated character in fighting game history (Smash is a fighting game, fuck off), and it frankly might not be close. People who play her in tournaments get death threats, which says a lot about how dumb the Smash fans are but I digress. Only Akuma from SF2 compares, and he required a complicated code to unlock and was banned from tournaments anyway.

I can't do this justice with words. I'll let the pros handle that subject.









When you factor all that together, Riku deserved to win. And then on a personal level, when you factor in music it isn't close. Music in games means a lot to me, and if your music is bad I grade you down pretty hard. I'm sure Bayonetta's games are fine. Haven't played them yet, but if they're anything like DMC3, and by all accounts they are, then they're ok. I mean Lady Gaga likes those games, and she would never support anything that's totally dumb like radicalized feminism, right?

Oh.

But to the point. Every. Single. Song in those games is objectively trash. All of them. It's the singular reason I haven't played those games yet. I can't actually listen to any of it without wanting my ears sewn shut. I'm sure Bayonetta actually deserves her contest strength, but she's probably be on Link's level if we could get rid of that laughably awful pair of soundtracks. And I usually like that style of music, too. It's on the level of The World Ends With You for worst soundtrack ever.

This win was convincing enough to make it look like she would make it to Auron, and from there, who knows? No one else in the top half of this division looked all that good in round one, outside Pac-Man but we all know he's fool's gold.
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Chief is super easy to explain. He overperforms in 4ways. Like him, a pokemon, Kirby, L-Block... characters like that just wreck 4ways. You could make a 4way contest right now and I think Chief would do well.
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transience posted...

You know, this match doesn't really mean all THAT much except for people who were there in the very beginning.

Yeah as someone here from literally day one that match is about 50 spots too low. There will never be a bigger board explosion. It's just not possible. The entire internet cared about that poll.
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

Simon is an interesting case, because he's been out of the public eye for a long time. He definitely gets respect as a video gaming icon of sorts, but he's so irrelevant that it doesn't translate to any sort of strength. On top of that, his only good picture was his sprite, and we don't see those until later rounds if he's lucky. Who the hell identifies that red headed goober as Simon Belmont?

Still, the guy does have the iconic Belmont name, and Alucard is proof that Castlevania does means something around here, so the guy just needed something to become relevant, and a re-design that conjures of the image of Super Castlevania IV, a game that probably could do half decent in a Games Contest if it could make the cut.

Enter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and it stands to reason that Simon would have more to gain from Smash than most characters would. Very few characters, save for complete unknowns, could make that gain, but Simon's old school respect is what helped make his boost that much more potent. Also, he was seeded against Hayabusa, a character who also leaned on a re-design, but now lacks the relevancy he had back when he got his makeover.

I took Simon to win the eight pack, and even though he didn't, I feel like it wasn't a bad call in retrospect.

None of those 8 characters was a bad call pre-contest.
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snake_5036 posted...

Seeing Castlevania finally doing something was so, so sweet this contest

Thank you Smash, Netflix, and PS4 SotN/RoB re-release

I have the platinum trophy in that game. It did nothing for Simon, for obvious reasons.

And fuck Richter Belmont. Can I throw that out there? Maria Renard > that punk.
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Division 6: (5)Sans vs (12)Pac-Man

(5)Sans - 8571 [28.62%]
(12)Pac-Man - 21380 [71.38%]
Total Votes - 29951
Prediction Percentage - 53.41%

If Monika and L-Block getting their asses whipped didn't prove it already, this match cemented the point home in hilarious fashion. This contest was a contest where people openly revolted against rallybait characters. Some people had real fears of Sans winning this contest, but I said this before: Undertale is the new Portal. It had its moment, but it will never have a repeat performance even though it should be strong enough to make contests moving forward. I took Pac-Man here without thinking, but I didn't in my wildest dreams see this one coming. If we had a games contest in the winter of 2007 following L-Block's run, I have no doubt Portal would have won it.

I hesitate to really call this a Smash Boost, because does anyone really care enough about Pac-Man to care if he's in Smash? I'm sure it's helped, but has it helped him as much as it's helped Samus, Simon Belmont, Cloud, or Snake? I doubt it. I also know the stats topic made up the Isaac Fodder Line, but I kind of like calling it the Pac-Man Fodder Line. Pac is the ultimate overlap apathy character. Everyone knows who he is, he's only capable of beating garbage, and anyone of any strength will destroy him. I feel obligated to remind people here that Pac-Man once lost to Nathan Drake.

And for all those reasons, THIS MATCH WAS HIGH COMEDY. This was like a rerun to the 2002 glory days when Pac was breaking 70% on fools before Scorpion hooked him. But the guy Pac was breaking 70 on this time around was the most popular character from Undertale, the game that shattered our web site 3 years ago and proved what insufferable manchildren the anti-rally crybabies are. And then all those same people made Reddit accounts and begged for votes during every close match this year. I've let a lot go this year, but the hypocrisy of the anti-rally weirdos is really something else. Those people are just as bad as democrats and all their whining since the 2016 election. I was allowing myself one political reference in this PCA and only one, and it was always going to be aimed at the anti-rally people being as bad as democrats. Might as well put it here in a match PCA that won't be remembered in a year just so it's archived somewhere, you know? But you people are never, ever living that one down until you admit you only like rallying when it benefits a character you like. It's okay to think that, truly, but don't lie about it.

And the funniest thing of all about this match? It wasn't close to being the biggest embarrassment for rallybait characters this year. Sans losing this match this badly is bad for him and Undertale, no doubts about it, but there was someone else looming that was about to have his own axes boomerang backwards and pretty much decapitate his entire legacy in one hilarious 24 hour time frame.
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Lopen posted...

Underrated and probably most significant factor of any Smash Boost is Simon actually gets a recognizable picture that isn't Judgment Simon with his 93 belts.

The pictures felt too small in rounds 1-3 to matter. People mention Quiet and Claire, but I legit could barely see the pictures until round 4.
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Division 6 Round 1: (8)Ryu Hayabusa vs (9)Simon Belmont

(8)Ryu Hayabusa - 14743 [49.22%]
(9)Simon Belmont - 15210 [50.78%]
Total Votes - 29953
Prediction Percentage - 57.94%

This match may look like it was a barn burner due to the final percentages and score, but it wasn't really a classic/great match. You know the phrase in sports "not as close as the final score"? That was this match. Simon Belmont took the early lead, and outside of a few speed bumps in the first hour, he was able to very consistently hold things at 52-53%. Ryu was able to cut the peak lead of 750 down to 450 or so, but it was never at a winning comeback pace.

We've seen Ryu in some weird matches in the past where he pulls off some astonishing feats, and I sort of include this match on that list, but he was a victim of two things. One was the 8pm poll start time killing our trends. I honestly think Ryu could have won this match had it started at midnight. Look at how well Ryu did after 2am. Shift this entire poll 4 hours and he may very well have won the day vote to win. I know that makes no sense, but we see weird things happen as polls get closer.

The other thing Ryu was a victim of is pretty obvious.



Just for fun, if you plug 2010 values into the stat calculator, you get Ryu winning this match with 55%. If you plug in 2013 numbers, you get 62%. If you plug in 2004 Ryu against 2002 Simon, you get 61%. And if you plug in 2007's numbers, you get a typical LOL x stats result of 75%. We can toss that one out as an outlier and just use the mean of the other 3, which is 59%.

Is a simple announcement of being in Smash Bros worth 10% in a GameFAQs contest? Nothing else happened that would have affected either character, and without Smash Ryu clearly wins this match. With it, Simon flips things 10%. If you use the lowest possible number, it's like a 6% flip. Any time someone tries denying Smash's influence on our site, just show them this PCA. Couldn't be more obvious.

And because I can:


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KamikazePotato posted...

Tumblr was an extremely popular site in 2015. It's fallen off some since then but I can absolutely believe that a large-scale rally came from there.

Allen pretty much said it was all referral links from twitter, which I honestly believe. Something like 20% of people in America are on twitter. It doesn't take much traffic from there to win a contest, and it's where the smart people try to rally from. Reddit and tumblr don't mean much. We found this contest that Twitch means literally nothing.
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I was going to use that reference for Rosalina but got focused on Geralt being awesome.
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I find it hilarious Monika might have gotten a bandwagon going if Noctis was her round 1 opponent.
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Division 6 Round 1: (1)Geralt vs (16)Rosalina

(1)Geralt - 16779 [56.03%]
(16)Rosalina - 13170 [43.97%]
Total Votes - 29949
Prediction Percentage - 75.56%

True fact: I heavily considered taking Rosalina to win three matches, and eventually settled on "Nintendo can't be THAT strong, right?". Picked Geralt here with zero faith whatsoever, because GameFAQs people haven't played anything released after 1999. There was very little faith that Geralt would be able to justify his seeding and largely because of him, this division was seen as the weakest in the entire contest. Pretty much everyone picked Auron to win it, but for the top half there were picks all over the place. The case could legitimately be made for all eight characters winning three times because of how bad they all were.

For 15 minutes, those fears were very well placed. This match was a stone cold tie for three updates, and people pretty much lost their shit over it. This wasn't just a 1 seed crapping the bed. This match was very significant, because it was the first time we'd ever seen a character originating from outside a video game in a 1v1 character battle. I know Dracula and Adolf Hitler happened, but those were in a gimmick contest. This was the real thing. A 1v1 character battle where you get the match all to yourself. Geralt was our breaker of a glass ceiling we've all wanted gone for years.

And he looked like absolute piss for 15 minutes, and made me wish I had stuck with the Rosalina pick. Thankfully, the dude made a quick recovery and was able to wreck the rest of the poll. I chalk it up to simple nerves, like how a super hyped 1 seed in the NCAAs might look bad for a half before wrecking shop. That's essentially what Geralt did here. He wasn't just a new character; he was representing all of our hopes to one day see a Spiderman, a Batman, a Superman, a Simba, or what have you. Allen broke his rule to allow Witcher 3 representation in this bracket, and I'm glad he did. This would not be the first Geralt match to follow the trend you see here.

I need to mention this before I forget. I like Allen a lot, but not changing Geralt's match picture to this when the Witcher Netflix thing was announced was just a crime: https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--EDDNwFn0--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/fvnnf23urglkrot4xasa.png

Like how does he miss that? Seriously bro.

This also bears mentioning: fictional characters 100% need to be allowed into these brackets. None of us want something insane like 90% fictional characters in a bracket, but as a random example, Spiderman for the PS4 is going to get a bunch of Game of the Year hype. Yet Spiderman can't make a bracket? Dumb. The easy exception here is allowing characters in who have obvious reasons for it. Charles Barkley should never make a character battle. It's just a dumb troll nomination. But Batman after an Arkham game, Spiderman after his PS4 game, or Thanos after Fortnite? Come on man, this is easy stuff and should have been a thing ages ago.
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LeonhartFour posted...

you're not in any position to talk about people not being able to let things go

Hey I let plenty of stuff go this contest!

And Undertale won legit. Period. This isn't arguing about something that's open to interpretation, it's denying literal fact and trying to tell me 2 + 2 equals 745. Allen did everything short of giving us IP information from each singular vote.
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Lopen still bitching 3 years later is adorable.
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CaptainOfCrush posted...

Joker, especially now.

Joker v Dark Link and you'd honestly pick Joker?
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Mario/Samus 2005 was a random SFF match and this year proved it wasn't influential. If anything it was influential in a bad way because of how it made people here act like assholes.

I'm not proud of it and I would take that one back if I could, believe me.
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Ngamer64 posted...

We mostly sang SB's praises in this episode, and I stand by our comments.

HOWEVER

The one thing that leaves me a tiny bit bitter... Spider-Man would have entered the bracket coming in hot with a GotY-worthy #1 video game on the site, as we've discussed. And he would have (potentially!) left the bracket tonight, in the Grand Finals versus Link, on the day his new movie with a 85 Metacritic, 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and 95% audience score is hitting theaters on its way to a $40 million+ weekend.

What a missed opportunity!

It's past time to open it up to fictional characters for this reason.

We don't need to go insane and have a 95% fictional character bracket, but the occasional Spiderman, Batman, Joker, Geralt, Thanos, or [insert random MvC3 character] after a major release should absolutely be allowed.

Adolf Hitler made it into a contest. It's not like we'll sink any lower.
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transcience posted...

Im looking forward to being called objectively wrong in a few days!

Bruh Link/Cloud or Mario/Crono are the reason we still have contests. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe L-Block in 2007. If that's your #1 then cool. No chance we still have these otherwise. It would be like pretending The Beatles or Led Zeppelin aren't the most influential bands ever, and I don't even like either one.

Fantastic topic btw. Please make a wiki page!
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Holy hell I remember those cartoons. Christ I'm old.

All I cared about as a kid was whether or not Link would finally make out with Zelda and I hated the fairy always getting in the way. Too good.
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transience posted...

62.



This match doesn't stand out at all today. Even at the time, it was generally seen as a tossup. Tidus was the slight favourite (51% in the oracle), but Kirby won big and so what?

This match is the first true indication we had of the Nintendo Boost. There were a lot of matches here that went for Nintendo. The next day, Bowser demolished Ryu. The day after that, Donkey Kong of all characters almost beat Master Chief. At this point we believed that the Boost was real.

What caused it? Who knows. My personal take on it is that Nintendo would have always beaten Square on this website.. but that Nintendo kinda sucked in the Gamecube era when it came to their heavy hitters. You went from Mario 64 and Ocarina to Sunshine and Wind Waker (which only became loved years later). Hold a contest in 2001 and I think Nintendo does awesome.

Then, by the time 05 rolls around, you start seeing Twilight Princess trailers and getting psyched over the next generation ("Revolution"). The DS hit in November 2004 and with it came Super Mario 64 DS and, yeah, Kirby's Canvas Curse. The DS was a surprise hit that everyone was into at the time and it trickled down. Meanwhile, Square put out KH in 2003 and just kinda faded away. That lack of permanence, along with Square turning into Square-Enix, just sorta pushed the contest along naturally.

Anyway, this match itself is only so-so but it's always been my indication that, yeah, Nintendo is real, Crono is in trouble and watch out Cloud.

That's an odd inclusion but hey.

And I was so, so happy over that Vincent result. I thoroughly enjoyed rubbing it in.

I can take a punch too, so it's all good. I'm ready to eat it when you get to Knuckles > Magus LOL
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Cloud retained strength because of Smash. I don't think it's deniable. Without it I highly doubt he beats Mario or Zelda.
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

tag

#1 best be Cloud/Link '03. It was the Super Bowl III of GameFAQs Contests. I think we would have never had more than BGE had it not been for this match.

It's this or one of the first two Mario/Crono matches. Like the list is just objectively wrong without one of those three matches at #1.
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Is there a trophy (or challenge spot, what the hell ever) for getting every spirit?
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