Lurker > ZenOfThunder

I'm hoping it would go Sonic > Knuckles > Metal > Shadow > Tails

who knows tho, metal and shadow would probably be equal. i don't think being a smash echo would help Shadow THAT much but it would definitely help
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see if they like Sub-Zero, he does ice too
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Do you get the light halos at night when you look at light?
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if you decide to make a Laguna rally I'll make banners and shit for you
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Leon for this contest if any FFVIII characters get in I want you to send me all the best pics, I will make match pics for all of them in your honor

You can even submit them if you want

I genuinely feel bad that characters you like get shit on constantly
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Thank you Ash!! I got your back too, buddy. Let me know what you wanna nom. We have too much history for me not to help you out.
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it got a giant patch after a series of other giant patches

it's finally the game that was promised at release, apparently it's pretty good? i hear some polarizing things though. it still isn't perfect but at least you can make an actual character and interact with others now
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When I was at PAX the year before The Last of Us came out, I was in line to play the demo. I liked it so much I waited in line three times in a row, and one of the lead devs, I forget his name, I have his business card somewhere, chatted with me a bit about Uncharted.

I asked him what he thought of Uncharted 3 getting reviewed a little worse than Uncharted 2, and he told me that the team knew they were not going to be able to top Uncharted 2 unless they went all out, so they tried just pushing themselves to make something as technically impressive as possible with a deeply impactful story, but they believed in the end that story was not enough to bring the experience together in a way that took it out of Uncharted 2's massive shadow.

I really agree with that statement, I think Uncharted 3 was trying too hard to "beat" Uncharted 2 by tugging on heartstrings in the final hours of the game. I think Uncharted 4 had the same problems to some extent, it really was reliant on you caring about Nate, the Uncharted franchise and, to some, extent, Naughty Dog in general.

I was really turned off by how ham-fisted the tributes to Uncharted, a series less than a decade old, were in an Uncharted game people weren't really clamoring for. At least, I wasn't frothing at the mouth for more. I thought Uncharted 3 had put the series to rest, the ending seemed pretty definitive to me. I don't think there was any need for "one last ride," and I had that mentality through the whole game. I was looking for something to justify the game's existence and I did not find it. At least the game played very well, though. Naughty Dog is a very good developer but I think their heads were a little too big going into U4's development.
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one of the 4-way game contests, I think it had Twilight Princess and RE4 in it, I forget what other two games were in the match. it was the Charles Atlas parody one. It's really, really, bad. I was reading a lot of old comics at the time and thought it would be a good idea. It absolutely was not
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I really didn't like the intro, felt too much like a circlejerk to me. Not a fan of Nate's brother and the plot in general, and I thought the twists were kind of obvious and that the game took forever. I'm kind of sick of Nathan Drake in general.

Game is technically competent, though. Naughty Dog knows how to polish their games. It's very pretty. That does not make up for my other personal issues with the plot.
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(4)Master Chief vs (15)Yuna vs (24)Claire Redfield




It's nice to know that even when Final Fantasy is looking like shit for an entire contest that Master Chief will do his best to keep his title and choke hard for everyone to enjoy

Everyone saw this coming, the result was not a surprise. 343 Industries doesn't know what the fuck to do with Master Chief. The Master Chief Collection was released as a broken, buggy mess with barely functioning online. Halo 5 was embarrassing trash everyone forgot about immediately. Microsoft doesn't even seem to care about releasing exclusives anymore, let alone good ones, so Halo is basically dead.

Claire had Revelations 2 recently and it was pretty good. Will we see her again? Probably not, unless the field is huge. She's a fan favorite but it seems like every RE character is a fan favorite.

Is Yuna stronger than Tidus at this point? She seems to have aged more gracefully. After a dozen re-releases of FFX and X-2 plus some serious nostalgia for those games and appearances in Dissidia, Yuna is probably going to do just fine in 2018.

(7)Tifa Lockheart vs (12)Cirno vs (21)Chun-Li




If anyone was still doubting Tifa > Dragonborn, those fears were immediately put to rest. It was good to see Tifa so dominate in this match when so many other FF characters failed. Perhaps TJF is the key to staying strong?

Tifa straight-up annihilated Chun-Li, who isn't exactly fodder. Yeah, fighting games looked bad this year, but it's Chun-Li. She, Ryu and Sub-Zero are basically immune from any decline. Maybe Akuma too.

also fuck touhou, I do not understand the appeal of those games. Cirno looks like a big diaper baby in her pic. I vaguely remember someone cheated for Touhou. Let me check.

[...]

Oh right, Smurf fucking vote-stuffed for Cirno of all characters. How sad. What motivates someone to cheat for a Touhou? Keep these things out of the contests.
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(3)Dragonborn vs (16)Tom Nook vs (25)Pyramid Head




Picture this: Nominations for 2018 are over, we wait patiently for over a month, spam Allen's inbox with tickets asking where the "damn bracket" is, Allen finally posts a new sticky, says that the contest is taking on a new and exciting format, asks us to click a link.

Our browsers go dark, then fade into a horse-drawn wagon on a dirt road. Slowly the title of the contest appears: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Now on GameFAQs.

There was some serious DOVAHFEAR going into this contest, everyone assumed Dragonborn was going to be a powerhouse, although that was debatable. The guy was a blank slate, and the "mascot" version of him was pretty boring to look at despite being in all the CG trailers and promo art. We didn't know how people would respond to seeing a generic version of "their" character on the front page.

As far as Skyrim goes, yeah, everyone on this site loves it, and I think it won the GotY poll, but "characters who represent big western franchises" usually don't do shit in a contest setting. See: Vaas, Booker, Handsome Jack, etc.

But nobody was dumb enough to put Dragonborn behind Nook and Pyramid Head. Pyramid Head, who went from being sextupled by Bowser to beating pre-RE5 Chris to a close loss to Tom Nook. Tom Nook went from losing to Crono to beating Zelos to barely beating Pyramid Head.

You know, neither are impressive contest histories, but they are at least histories. Animal Crossing and Silent Hill have polar opposite fanbases, but at least their characters consistently make appearances.

Pyramid Head has two movies and a dead franchise whose last installment was a pachinko machine, and while Animal Crossing has had a "mainline" game in a while, it's still getting nods here and there, as well as a terrible amiibo-based Wii U game that nobody played which put a full-stop to the amiibo momentum.

I'd say at this point it's time to retire K.K., Nook and Resetti in favor of Isabelle and Villager. Everyone is nuts for Isabelle, she got to be a costume in Smash and is a racer in Mario Kart. She's basically the new mascot for the series, and people are speculating she'll be Villager's Echo in Smash 5.

So, these results weren't too surprising, people just used this match to gauge Dragonborn's strength, and he disappointed here. He definitely wouldn't be able to take down Tifa, even with Yuna in the match.

In the end, Dragonborn wasn't a complete embarrassment, and he was overhyped to heck, but several years of concentrated meme-ing might end with a small Dragonborn comeback in 2018 if he's given a good bracket spot.
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(8)L-Block vs (11)Teemo vs (20)Palutena




Back in 2013, right after this contest, I went to PAX East with some of my buddies who were super into LoL. Again, the convention was right after this contest, so I thought LoL was lame as hell.

Riot Games was having some contest where every day in the morning they would hide Teemo mushrooms all around the convention center. If you found one of these glowing green tchotchkes, you could bring it to any Riot Games employee at the foul-smelling LoL booth and they would give you a Teemo hat, free of charge! They'd also let you keep the mushroom.

So in I strolled on day 2, my friends scrambled around the convention hall looking for these fucking mushrooms. I saw some nerds grab them from different non-affiliated booths and hold them aloft like it was a Piece of Heart. I had no interest, so I kept right on along to some game demo booth. I think it was Borderlands TPS?

I was waiting in line and my eyes, still tired from waking up early, wandered over to some random clothing booth across the way. There, on the floor, under their table, I saw a glowing green mushroom. I looked left, looked right. Nobody was making a move. I made eye contact with the man at the booth. He saw that I saw. I wasn't interested but I felt obligated to get the mushroom for my friends. I got out of line, went over and took the mushroom.

"Congrats," the man at the booth said, "A ton of people ran right by it. You must be pretty excited."

I looked up and forced a smile. "Yeah," I mustered unenthusiastically, "I, uh, love Teemo."

I got back in line. One of my friends caught up with me.

"I couldn't find a mushroom anywhere! Maybe tomorrow," he said with a frown.

I held up the mushroom.

"HOLY SHIT!" He grabbed my arm and dragged me out of line and to the Riot booth. I handed the mushroom to a Riot rep.

"Wow! That was fast," the rep said. He took the mushroom from my hand, popped the top off of the base, and put a small black "X" on the inside of it to mark that it had been turned in. He then went to the back and grabbed a Teemo hat and handed it to me. I said nothing during this entire exchange. "Congrats, man! Enjoy the con!" he finished.

I turned and handed my friend the Teemo hat. We then walked back to the booth. I looked down at the mushroom. How anti-climactic.

"Hey, man," my friend started, "I know you hate League cuz of that GameFAQs thing. You mind if I have the mushroom? You can keep the hat, they're worth like $15 on eBay right now."

Well, I don't like League, but I do like money. "Let me try something first," I said. I popped open the top of the mushroom, licked my finger, and slowly but surely rubbed off the black "X."

I turned around. We went back to the booth. It was massive, bigger than Nintendo's, so I found another rep far from the one I first went to. I handed them the mushroom. They handed me a hat and marked the mushroom. I walked away. I did it again. I did it about ten times throughout the day.

That mushroom and those hats paid for my PAX East ticket.

I love Teemo.

Also I don't feel bad because Riot got #metoo'd yesterday, and I believe it. Fuck those guys:

https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/kotaku-riot-games-sexism-1202898427/

Oh yeah there was a match, people thought Teemo would get rallied but there was a 24-hour Twitch stream that was just clips of Teemo dying so yeah not even LoL people cared. How did he even get in?

L-Block looked good here, he has natural meme strength. Palutena was hot off of being made into a real character. Post Smash 4 and 5, she might have grown in strength, but probably not enough to come back.
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(5)Auron vs (14)Revolver Ocelot vs (23)Roxas




I have some choice things to say about Ocelot's pic here. I made it.

Everyone was really hyped about Snake and his friends' potential boost from the upcoming MGSV. That E3 gameplay demo was great. Everyone watched it. Everyone got hyped.

So I made a pic from the gameplay demo. I went frame-by-frame and picked out the best angle of Ocelot and rendered it myself. I touched up the scarf so that the red would be eye-catching.

And when the pic was revealed, people lost their minds. They couldn't believe Ocelot would get such a bad pic from the thing they said would be the reason he had a shot at winning! Now he had no shot at winning!!!!

To this day I still can't believe that of all the bad pics I've ever made this (and the really bad one @LeonhartFour is going to post at some point I fucking know it) is the one people give me the most shit for. Ironically, if a contest were to happen, say, in 2018, people probably wouldn't have a problem with me using this perfectly recognizable picture of MGSV Ocelot. I'm just a Picsmith Futurist. I will defend this pic 'til the day I die.

Ocelot never had any shot, and if anyone thought this pic made a character named "Revolver Ocelot," who is best known for being an old man in a beige cowboy coat with a red scarf, unrecognizable enough to bleed 3000+ votes from a potentially above-Auron level of strength, then they were out of their mind. I think Ocelot did pretty alright here.

The problem is just how strong Auron is. He really stomped Roxas, I'd say he was barely affected by his presence at all. Sure, he could have broken 50% without him easily, but he still looked good here. Again, people seriously thought Ocelot, the dude who lost to Pac-Man, could ride Roxas LFF to victory.

There's a dialogue going in Allen's sticky right now about who would win in a contest that is only post-2000 characters. It would probably be Auron. Dude is cool as hell.



Also I really wanted to post this:


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(9)Knuckles the Echidna vs (10)Seifer Almasy vs (19)Celes Chere




Knuckles was bound to win this match. I talked about it a bit in my last writing project, but Knuckles is probably the most universally well-liked Sonic character. Nobody hates Knuckles. Nobody is capable of hating Knuckles. Well, before he was a meme. People seemed to really like that meme, though. So much that I heard it helped kill VR Chat.

Second place was a pretty obvious choice: Our boy Seifer, NRT winner! Finally, after all these years, Seifer would have his time in the sun, we just had to hope Celes wouldn't hold him back too much.

Oh, shit, wait, Allen didn't check the calendar before he scheduled this match!



What an unfortunate coincidence. Well, Seifer sure did get his ass kicked. I have no idea why, again, I'm not an expert on FF strength in contest, but it just seems to me like Seifer is just a huge weenie from a game that is not particularly strong anymore. Seifer single-handedly wrecked what few perfect expert brackets were left. I'm pretty sure after this nobody had called everything right, and it was extra embarrassing because this match was supposed to be one of the obvious ones.

After Seifer's loss, @LeonhartFour was devastated. To this day he is in self-imposed exile, leaving nothing but a note before he left. It read "when I finally pass from this world, have Seifer be the pallbearer at my funeral so he can let me down one last time."

(2)Ezio Auditore da Firenze vs (17)Miles "Tails" Prower vs (26)Bomberman




What a bunch of winners we got here. I'm not being sarcastic, they each have a win! Ezio beat Simon, Tails beat Viewtiful Joe, and Bomberman beat a TV. Alright, maybe they're just "wins" by definition but not really "accomplishments."

Some people had Tails winning here, but unlike Knuckles, there are a lot of people who don't like Tails. People with nostalgia for the 2D games usually like Tails, but recently SEGA has been shitting all over the guy. When Sonic "dies" in the opening of Sonic Forces, Tails does nothing but cry in a corner while Knuckles, Amy and literally every other Sonic character step up to stand against Eggman. This did not go over well with the fanbase, and it probably wasn't winning him any new fans either.



In the end, this match played out like most people expected it too. It's too bad Bomberman is deconfirmed for Smash, he's a low-level icon waiting to be taken to another level in these things. He did beat Crash in a close match once. If the outpouring of support for him post-Smash deconfirmation shows us anything, it's that the potential for another win is there.

Ezio may actually be weaker than Altair, or they're probably about even. AC characters do OK in these things, mostly because of design. Lately, though, people have been really down on the franchise. Between 2013 and 2018 there have been 9 AC games released, with a ton being released in a state of dubious quality.



Will we ever see a new AC character? Will Ezio and Altair be back? I'm going to say one, but not both, and probably not at a very high seed. Altair had a good run in his debut contest, so I don't think anyone is itching to see them go the distance once more.
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the next Fighting Polygons should be "fighting VR headsets" and it's a bunch of HTC vives and Oculus Rifts flying at you
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wow this is just anime girl Shadow the Hedgehog
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Yo Ash what's up!! How are the kids?
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if I was just some random dude visiting gamefaqs and I saw Neku / Vaas / Catherine I'd probably vote Catherine over dumb Sora-lookin' Neku any day
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was it really? I remember people talking about it but nothing specifically, i guess maybe it was bad things
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Daisy
Dr. Mario
Dark Samus
Lucas
Lucina
Roy
Chrom
Ike
Robin
Corrin
Dark Pit
Palutena (I played the original KI but Palutena really isn't in that I think)
R.O.B
Wii Fit Trainer
Inkling
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sonic
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(7)Fox McCloud vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (21)Wolf O'Donnell




A reminder that if you haven't seen A Fox In Space yet you totally should, it's the best Star Fox media we've gotten since 64:



This is by far the dumbest match of R1, worse than Leon and Wesker in the same match. At least Wesker had a contest history, but Wolf was new, and he never was given any chance. Some of these matches scream to me that Allen wanted us to be aware the he understood SFF and LFF and wanted us to think he had set up some cool scenarios, but then you get dumb shit like this. Swap Wesker and Wolf and see how the matches play out.

Everyone assumed Blue was going to be the next hot thing, especially after coming off of Rivalry Rumble with Red as no doubt the best looking pair that participated. People assumed that not only would he SFF Fox into oblivion, but Fox would look even worse due to Wolf LFFing him.

Right at the start we knew something was wrong. Fox was dangerously close to Blue and Blue was not pulling away. Sure, Blue won by a decently comfortable margin and was never really threatened, but his balls were out on stream and everyone could see them. What should have been one of the biggest blowouts of R1 turned out to be... this.

(1)Samus Aran vs (18)Isaac Clarke vs (27)Sandbag




are we over the sandbag thing yet

it was not funny the first time, it is not funny now

the only thing worth noting here is that Isaac couldn't beat an SFF'd Sandbag, although Sandbag's joke vote always seems a bit stronger than other weird Board 8 joke entrants. you look at him and instantly "get it," like L-Block but lamer

also some funny contest trivia is that there were three whole Isaacs in this contest and all three were 18 seeds

(6)Neku Sakuraba vs (13)Vaas Montenegro vs (22)Catherine




oh man, I forgot how much effort I put into Catherine's pic here. It took me forever to render out those drills nicely. i wish i put that much effort into my day-to-day life.

This was another case of "which obscure Japanese character will win and how will the face of a popular western game do comparatively?"

A lot of people took Vaas here for the same reason they took Booker and Lee. That was a bad idea. We're probably not going to see Joel and Ellie in these contests now because all new-age Western characters have been exposed as worthless. I hope I eat those words, though. I want a contest completely opposite of this one to keep us on our toes.

Neku had lost to Laharl once, and there were very few people who thought Catherine could be much stronger than Laharl, especially after K/Catherine only barely managed to avoid getting tripled by Sonic/Eggman. Catherine sold pretty well though and people love it on this board and site in general. It was even played at EVO for a while:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IMjIbTbloY&t=5h15m15s

So was this result really that surprising? Yes, kind of, Neku was the safer pick for sure, but in retrospect it seems obvious, and at the time people had very little faith in what was seen as niche Japanese fodder.

Also I wanna call back to one of my fave pics ever, my Catherine Rivalry Rumble pic:



Pretty sure I used hentai for Katherine's half. Whoops. I was really proud of that symbol in the middle, though. There was no clear version on the internet at the time so I had to pretty much remake it from scratch I think.

Catherine is getting an HD remake this year, I encourage anyone who hasn't played it to give it a shot.
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(3)Lee Everett vs (16)Meat Boy vs (25)Mr. Game & Watch




I won't reiterate what I said in the Clementine match analysis, but I find it hard to believe how this was considered an "upset."

Lots of people played TWD, yeah. You know what else people play a ton of? oh I don't know it's just an obscure game you might not of heard of called SUPER SMASH BROTHERS MELEE.

Lee put the fear of the casual vote in people's hearts, and yeah, Game & Watch really doesn't have much going for him outside of Smash, but shit, once you see him in action you're never going to forget him. He's a really unique concept for a character and he stands out way more than blank-slate Lee Everett.

Yeah, Lee is alright. Yeah, there's some really great emotional moments in TWD. And again, I will stress that while a lot of people did play TWD and it got great reviews, that doesn't translate into votes, especially when the votals were so pathetic.

Meat Boy was here too, and I think he might still be getting games? He was one of the first ever "Indie Darlings," but now that market is really oversaturated and there's way better candidates for these things. Shovel Knight will probably do alright this year. He'd definitely have a shot at beating these two.

also something something racist ha ha game and watch is black too ha ha haaaaaaa

(4)Nathan Drake vs (15)Steve vs (24)Pac-Man




Here's a match that was basically impossible to call correctly pre-contest. Nathan Drake was a AAA superstar by this point and had come a long way since losing to CATS in 2008. Uncharted 2 is well beloved in the gaming community, and is even well respected on the FAQs.

On the other hand, you have Pac-Man, who is always pulling crazy upsets but has wildly inconsistent strength depending on the likability of whoever he is up against. He also got a pic with his less popular Ghostly Adventures design. Have you seen the opening for that shit?



That design was "chosen" over three others thanks to the results of a "fan poll."



Which was fake, of course. This image went up and everyone voted for everything but A, but of course, when the results were announced, A had won and won by a lot. About a month later they showed off polished footage of the show and game using these designs. It was all a giant sham to make people think that this was the design people wanted.

So who used it in a pic? Uhhh... who knows. Definitely not me. Under an alt. Why would I do that? (I actually have no idea why I did that I'm sorry)

On the third hand you had Minecraft Steve who is from Minecraft so he should win because Minecraft. I didn't think MINEFEAR would ever be a thing but here we are. The only thing about Minecraft is that it's mostly played by actual babies who primarily use musical.ly as their primary social network. Those kids don't go to GameFAQs. The adults who play Minecraft are too busy making 1-to-1 recreations of Westeros to visit and vote.

The match was a crapshoot and Nathan Drake was the one who won it. He struggled for a bit with Pac-Man but not much. Steve never had a shot, nobody cares about Minecraft characters.

I also want to rant about how disappointing Uncharted 4 was and I hate how every game reviewer sucked its dick but I don't have much room left. The game was an Uncharted circlejerk that was a celebration of a series that had one good game, two mediocre ones and an OK Vita port. It reeked of self-importance and I think that took away from the experience. Also the grappling hook was not cool enough to base the game around. Bleh.
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(5)Booker DeWitt vs (14)Gilgamesh vs (23)Kaim Argonar




There's a lot to talk about with this match, but the thing I want to highlight first is that Kaim got into a second contest and this time there was already a Caim in the field. People still chose to nominate him after he got doubled by Frank West. 2013 was a weird year.

People were quick to discredit Gilgamesh as "too obscure" of a Final Fantasy character despite being in a ton of games in different cameo appearances that were all great. He was also in Dissidia, I think, but maybe not by the time this match happened?

People thought Gilgamesh just looked like a weird Japanese blob and that Booker's recent smash-hit game would have enough recency and momentum to carry him past some obscure JRPG fodder that got rallied into the contest after many failed attempts to do so for years. I'm not sure if Gilgamesh was an NRT winner or just the product of a successful standalone rally, but it was nice to finally see him get his time on the front page.

So of course Gilgamesh took a big shit on Booker. I know that Irrational Games tweeted out support for Booker but it didn't help at all because nobody cares about Booker. The twist in Infinite is such forced trash and tries so hard to be deep, but in the end Booker is just DudeBro McShooty from the cover of a highly overrated game. I played through that shit like 3 times and I barely remember it.

Who would have thought we'd see Gilgamesh not only make the field but win a match? What a crazy time to follow these contests. Things were only going to get crazier from this point on.

(8)Groose vs (11)Lu Bu vs (20)Yoshimitsu




Theme for this post:

I had been rallying for Yoshimitsu for three nomination periods and while I once got him into one of the vote-ins, I never had any success until the year I stopped rallying him and he mysteriously made it in. I like to think my years of petitioning helped somewhat.

That vote-in was the point of contention for this match. Yoshimitsu came in second-to-last against such jobbers as Dan Hibiki and Alex Mercer. Can you name what game Alex Mercer is from without Googling it? I can but I'm the big nerdo writing this so I have an excuse.

So naturally everyone assumed that Yoshimitsu was going to get stomped once the Groose was loose and the Lu Bu was... in... view?

I'm not sure where people thought Lu Bu was going to get the strength to beat Yoshimitsu from. He had a half-serious, half-"Hitler got in let's see if this guy can get in too" nomination rally. I know I had seen Lu Bu rallies in the past but they didn't get really serious until Allen decided to relax a little on what constitutes a video game character vs historical figure.

Most people had Groose > Lu Bu > Yoshimitsu, some had Yoshimitsu over Lu Bu, but almost everyone had Groose winning. Because Zelda.

The thing about Groose is that he is a Zelda but he is a bad Zelda.

Well, maybe not bad, but, y'know. Not great. Derivative. Polarizing. Nobody even talks about Skyward Sword anymore.

The match starts, Yoshimitsu takes off, Lu Bu follows behind, and Groose falls flat on his face. Can I remind you that the 8 seed was given to Groose because primarily Board 8ers nominated him? Being a Zelda meme that Board 8 finds kind of funny does not equate to any kind of contest strength, not even enough to beat freaking Yoshimitsu and Lu Bu.
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(9)Magus vs (10)Hal "Otacon" Emmerich vs (19)Jade Curtiss




This match was super highly debated because Magus had previously lost to Sandbag and Snake was on steroids this year, so his brainy best boy would probably get some of that rubbed off on him, right?

Unfortunately for Otacon, he was up against the thing he loved most, and he crumbled at the start and never had a chance.



Magus "impressed" here but we can't really get a good read on him or Otacon because Magus would go on to get SFF'd by Crono in Round 2. Dude absolutely cannot catch a break.

This was not Jade's first contest appearance so I'm sure KP can extrapolate Otacon's relative strength based on that. I don't know how Jade keeps getting into these things, but I'm happy Board 8's everlasting darling Tales gets plenty of reps, even if they end up usually just being bracket filler.

Also of note is Otacon continuing the trend of non-Pokemon NRT winners looking like trash. Barret, Otacon... who else won this year that wasn't shaped like a turtle?

(2)Sora vs (17)Scorpion vs (26)Aya Brea




If Sub-Zero had been in this match there might have been something to talk about, but Scorpion has been around since the beginning of contest history and there was plenty of data to show that he had absolutely no shot.

Kingdom Hearts III is finally coming out this year after two centuries in development, and even though Haley Joel Osment looks like he's one cheeseburger away from a massive heart attack, Sora will most likely be stronger than ever in this upcoming contest thanks to the continued KHIII hype train that pulls into the station every few months.

It's like Snowpiercer, the hype train just keeps going through the frozen tundra of mediocre KH spinoffs while on board Haley Joel Osment is eating babies to gain strength or something. Not sure where I was going with that metaphor. I'm one to talk I literally had three burgers and eight beers and like five babies last night at my friend's place.

Yeah this was a match that happened, Aya Brea got her time on the front page again, and some people argued she might LFF Sora because... Square Enix? OK, sure, yeah. That worked out great.

In other news Mortal Kombat XI is probably coming at some point. Did we ever revisit the idea of getting Reptile into one of these things? Or Liu Kang, Johnny Cage or Shao Kahn? There's some kind of potential there. Maybe. Probably not.
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(1)Crono vs (18)Sarah Kerrigan vs (27)Missile






wow I completely forgot Kerrigan lost to a dog

also what the hell is up with Blizzard character pics? They're universally awful. Like Kerrigan looks a tiny bit better than Thrall but slap some jugs on that orc and they're basically the same pic.

I guess Heroes of the Storm Kerrigan would look better cuz at least she looks like a Zerg:



But after a result like this? We're probably never seeing Kerrigan again. That's not upsetting. She's done nothing but disappoint in these contests, and all the people ignoring the warnings that Missile would have the ultimate pic factor, people still took her to get second here.

I don't have much investment in Blizzard, but as you probably may know from Ulti's recent "Blizzard made the two worst games ever" topic, here's pretty passionate about it, so I suggest giving his rant about Starcraft a read: https://bit.ly/2B8yDzs

All I remember about this match was the whining. The insufferable whining all day about Kerrigan losing to an adorable doggy. If Blizzard fans are so passionate, why couldn't they anti-rally Kerrigan past a small canine? Because the Blizzard fanbases suck ass and don't even like each other. Shit, I'm turning into Ulti.

So will we ever see Missile again? Apparently Ghost Trick has a very devoted yet small fanbase, but unless someone gives them a call I doubt they'll rally Missile or Sissel into another contest. It's not like Missile was strong or anything, just that Kerrigan was incredibly weak and that the votals were so low they lent themselves to people tossing a vote at the cute dog.

Crono was here he would later go on to lose to a Pokemon so we'll talk about that when it happens

(6)Pikachu vs (13)Lloyd Irving vs (22)Big Daddy




Pikachu's design is second only to Kirby's in dominating match pics. Your eye just keeps wandering over to this cheerful yellow blob on the left. You can't even get halfway to the giant turd that is Big Daddy before your vision snaps right past the anime boy and back to the rat.

Big Daddy was favored for second here, and rightfully so. Lloyd hadn't done much since his first game had come out, he had some cameos here and there and was in an unpopular SoulCalibur game. Big Daddy was in exactly three seconds of BioShock Infinite, the Citizen Kane of video games. You don't get purer expressions of art than a game where the main character punches people in the face with a big spinning hook.



Thanks, Cliff. How's Fortnite working out for your company? Oh, wait, you left your company because you thought Fortnite was the wrong direction only to release a bad knock off of Fortnite at your new company that was so poorly received that it caused you to go out of business?



Yeah, Lloyd impressed here, Big Daddy isn't exactly the strongest in these contests but when you look at the timing Daddy had all the moment here to win and win easily. Both of them might make it back into a contest, Big Daddy is an icon of a good series that's on hiatus, and Lloyd has second life through the PC port of ToS and a very devoted fanbase. Maybe he'll even be in Smash 5? He was a Mii costume in Smash 4, and after that last Direct, I'm not taking any ideas off the table anymore.
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(4)Leon Kennedy vs (15)Albert Wesker vs (24)Oliver




I'm not a huge Resident Evil fan but good god does the very idea of this match enrage me. Imagine being FFD or ExTha and looking down the bracket for the first time and seeing that Allen matched up fan favorite and ultimate villain Wesker with the strongest possible RE character in a contest setting.

What the hell, Allen? You can only wonder what happened here. Something tells me this was the last match he made for the 4 / 15 / 24 seed pairings and he was probably like "shit, I have two RE characters left over, oh well, fuck it, does anyone care about Wesker? I have to give OLIVER a shot to get second." I cut Allen a ton of slack and I'm usually one to defend his actions but this is really lazy.

Oliver who was so weak he couldn't get ahead of a heavily-SFF'd Wesker. Wesker who has done nothing but lose close matches is given nothing to work with here. Yeah, if he was given a real winnable situation he probably still would have lost, but we would have at least had something fun to watch for half a day.

I have nothing to say about Oliver but if we ever do get an "all characters" tournament we should get Totoro in. Fuck it, why not? People are ravenous for Ghibli shit. Yeah it's great and yeah the movies make me cry like a bitch but only sometimes.

Also this match was the return of the Anonymous Picsmith, meaning nobody actually made a pic for Oliver and Allen had to do it himself. Why nom a character nobody even wants to take 5 minutes to make a pic for?

(7)Gordon Freeman vs (12)Hades vs (21)Simon Belmont




THE ACTION FIGURE PIC RETURNS! This is the second time ever that an action figure picture has been used, the first time was in 2007 when I submitted an action figure pic for Kratos. I tried covering up that it was an action figure and thought I had slipped one past Allen, but in retrospect he was probably like "yeah whatever that's Kratos who cares" and just used it without any thought. I don't know why I was so obsessed with trying to bend pic rules.

I'm personally a fan of the First4Figures Simon statue:



Of course, now that Simon is confirmed for Smash and looks dope as hell, we won't need action figure pics for him anymore. I'd still take a figure over the truly awful Light Yagami-look alike art he got in his bio pic. With Smash, Simon probably could give modern Gordon a run for his money. Not win, but do a bit more respectably. But...

I want to return to the MFer ("Martyr Factor," for those just skimming these writeups) for a second here. There's not many characters this could apply to, but I believe Gordon is one of them.

Half-Life 3 is the video game joke as far as I'm concerned. It's the meme that keeps on giving. You think it's gone but then shit like this happens:



Which, naturally, gets people riled up again. They look up and shout, "Save us!"

And Gaben whispers... "No."

So despite not having a new game and probably never getting a new game, Gordon will remain popular, and people will vote for him and his games out of respect and a little bit of pity. We may see Gordon at full strength in 2018, or maybe even stronger.

Back to 2013, and Gordon looked pretty good here. This match was just set up to Gordon getting beaten by Leon in a rematch nobody asked for, but eh, they can't all be winners.

Oh shit I forgot to talk about Hades uuuuuh unless we get an Uprising 2 within the next week or Hades is announced as an Echo Fighter of my ass then we're never seeing this jobber again.
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(3)Yu Narukami vs (16)Shadow the Hedgehog vs (25)Kat




I usually only skim Ulti's analysis of each match because I don't want to sound derivative of his writing. Ulti has way more technical information and reading his write-ups for close matches are super entertaining. I skip over the analysis for matches like this one, though. But I did read what he had to say here:

"I'm still confused as to how [Shadow], a guy that started out with so much promise is just LOATHED, even by his own fans. Did Sega really drop the ball that hard?"

I have some things to say about Shadow's popularity in the fanbase. GameFAQs is definitely not a haven for hardcore Sonic fans, but wherever I find pockets of the fandom, people love Shadow unironically. He's really the only character in the series with any kind of depth. Sonic fast. Knuckles punch. Tails smart.

Shadow has a tragic past, and as basic as his origins are, at least there's some conflict there. Yeah, there's a ton of "ow, the edge," but that's pretty unique in the franchise, and you can't fault SEGA for trying to do something different with these furry weirdos. They just went too early-2000s with it, because it was the early 2000s. People loved it then, then were ashamed, but now people love it again. Like Pokemon?

As for the "7 Shadow fans," I'm living with one, and wake up to this every day:



I'm not in complete defense of how ridiculous Shadow is, though. If you want a laugh, like a real hearty belly laugh, watch this video from the 9m30s mark for about 45 seconds:



It's fucking terrible. SEGA knows people like Shadow but they aren't willing to spend more than like $20 and a pack of Skittles on his DLC pack.

But you know who knows how to treat a franchise right?



There's a ton of evidence pointing to Shadow being included as an Echo of Sonic in Smash Ultimate. If it all works out, Shadow will probably get a tiny boost in power. Also if he doesn't say "THIS IS THE ULTIMATE" before his Final Smash it'll be the biggest missed opportunity in gaming history.

Yu was repping a game that came out in 2008, and because he really didn't have a name and his game was still pretty cult, he didn't make it in 'til 2013. He didn't perform great here, yeah, but Persona has slowly moved from being a Board 8 sweetheart to a GameFAQs sweetheart and now a mainstream sweetheart. If Joker makes the field this year, he might be able to escape Round 1. As for Yu, yeah, he's still around, but P5 characters have recency and cooler designs.

As for Kat, her franchise is basically dead before it began. Due to poor sales, Sony decided to shut down the online servers of Gravity Rush 2 after a little more than a year, leading to backlash from the 7 fans of the series:

https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/12/16883496/gravity-rush-2-online-servers-shutdown-date

Kat has a great design, I did her pic here, and I remember spending a ton of time touching it up and making sure she looked good for her only contest appearance ever. If we ever see Kat again it would be a small miracle.

I'm not a big Gravity Rush fan, I only played the Vita one for a bit then got the PS4 version on PS+, but the games look pretty cool and have a great aesthetic. The controls are fucking weird and gimmicky though and I can see why it never caught on. I hear GR2 is a big improvement, but it's already destined to fade into gaming obscurity.

Also the games are called "Gravity Daze" in Japan but Americans don't know that word and "Rush" is more EXTREME ps make Kirby look angry those fat ugly Americans love that
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INTERWEBUSER posted...

Can we please limit characters to ones that debutted after 2000. Tired of Link and Cloud every time.

"most popular video game character" is a lot less entertaining with a ton of asterisks

after we find out the best post-2000 character, do we get frustrated that Auron always wins and then make it post-2010? after that do we make it post-2015 and just give it to Shovel Knight or something?
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baubeta posted...

Enjoying this.

I write stuff sometimes and worry Im just typing into a void and it makes me give up. Well Im here to let you know that Im reading all of these and enjoying them quite a bit.

Ill nominate Metal Sonic.

Yes!!! Thank you!!

And thank you to everyone reading through this topic. As baubeta says a lot of times it feels like I'm just shouting into the void, but seeing everyone come out of the woodwork to talk about contests again, even if it's to yell at me for getting all my facts wrong, warms my heart.

If I do somehow manage to finish this writing project before noms go up, I think I might do a critique of all the new characters I see people nominating or something. How long does it usually take for Bacon to put up noms after a contest announcement? I remember waiting for a long time on some occasions.
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metal
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i legit wonder how pikmin would taste please tell me paramedic
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my firefighter friend is randomly in town tonight so i'm going to go grab a brewski with him. either no more posts tonight or look forward to late night zen drunkposting
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(8)Spring Breeze Dancin' vs (11)Zidane Tribal vs (20)Ridley




It always bothered me how blue Spring Breeze Dancin' is in his pic, so I went and threw an auto-level adjustment on it:



It's kind of blown out now but do you see what I mean?

[Imagine 5 minutes passing]

Alright, I can't find the fucking video of Spring Breeze Dancin's performance, but this came up in YouTube search instead??



17 million goddamn views and her name is EVERLEIGH. What the fuck kind of name is this? It's somehow worse than every kid being named some hipster variant of "Aiden." Let's adopt this garbage naming convention for the next contest. "Lyyynk," "Claughd," and "Sefeighroughth."

Spring Breeze Dancin' is apparently the bottom of the X-Stats this contest, and I'm not surprised. As far as Board 8 in-jokes go, this one is the deepest cut I think we've ever seen actually make it to the front page. Way deeper than Midgar Zolom.

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Yes, but now I am posting about how respectable Ridley looked here. Zidane was never the strongest but Ridley had been comfortably beaten by Vivi back in the day so it was strange seeing him come within 2000 votes of Zidane. I'm not going to reiterate how bad FF looked outside of the really obvious exceptions.

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|......O....__.....O......| I BET I WOULD HAVE LOOKED GREAT IN 2013
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Sure, Zolomy. Now sleep. I'll repost you in 2023 when I do my 5-Year-Late analysis of Summer 2018.
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(2)Dante vs (17)Laharl vs (26)Raz




iirc I used a Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne pic for Dante just because I wanted to post it in the Picsmith thread with this under it:



I think I got one person who humored me with a "haha" and then Allen used the pic. Kids, never meme and pic. Although it does look pretty dope.

We were coming off of DmC: Devil May Cry by this point and the wounds were still fresh. I hear that game got reworked a bit on PC and is actually really good, but it was so divisive that I doubt its original band of haters would ever admit that.

But back in 2013, we were all worried that a potential bad pic paired with bad buzz would ruin Dante's chances to beat Squirtle in R2. Again, Pokefear was super real and Dante was the king of letdowns. He's had some good runs, but he also choked to Yoshi and Ryu, lost to Master Chief, and performed like shit against Tails.

So he got 70% on Laharl, but that doesn't mean much if you can't beat Yoshi. It was assumed that Dante would have a rough time and if he beat Squirtle it would only be by a little. Nobody knew how bad Squirtle would expose Dante in R2.

Also, nice to see Raz. Hot damn does he look ugly. He's just a big sack of potatoes getting used as a punching bag. I hear he has a VR game now and my only thoughts on that are "why would you want to get that close to Raz."

This is Laharl's third win, and I think it's a good way for him to end his contest run. He now has the unimpressive heads of Nathan Hale, Neku and Raz mounted on his wall. I don't think he'll ever be more successful than that. Laharl vs Vyse Grudge Match 2018, who ya got?

(5)Squirtle vs (14)Ramza Beoulve vs (23)JC Denton




JC Denton finally gets a second shot in a contest setting and gets paired with a Pokemon and a fan-favorite Final Fantasy character.



Ramza's since been in a Dissidia game or two, in 2018 he'd probably still do OK. It's not like he impressed here or anything and he did get doubled by a cartoon turtle, but at least he didn't lay down and die. People were expecting much worse of a blowout, which lead to people still championing Dante > Squirtle in R2 as if DmC and Pokefear didn't exist.

Another note on the pic side of things: This is one of the first appearances of "anonymous" being credited as the contributor of a pic, AKA "we submitted nothing but shitty meme pics so Allen had to make one himself." In this case it was for Squirtle.

I think all the Picsmiths submitted for Squirtle were anime pics of him wearing his Kamina sunglasses as if he needed even more help. Sometimes I think sometimes we get too caught up in seeing what we can get away with instead of thinking what's best for the contest.
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(6)Handsome Jack vs (13)Frog vs (22)Viewtiful Joe




Here's a fun match that was kind of debated for a bit. I say "kind of" because most people assumed Borderland 2's main antagonist, Handsome Jack, would easily beat Viewtiful Joe, the dude who let everyone down when he lost to Tails in 2004.

Since 2004 Joe had made a few sparse appearances, the most recent at that time being Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. He wasn't really used competitively and nobody cared. On the flip side, Borderlands 2 did really well in the GameFAQs GOTY polls. No brainer, right?

Well, Frog was in the match (good on him for breaking 50%), so by law, it needs to be entertaining. Handsome Jack was the jobber this time, and Joe once again fucked over a lot of brackets.

In other news, I recently did a playthrough of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel as Jack's body double, and holy shit is that game so much worse than Borderlands 2. It's amazing how adding one mechanic can ruin a game. Yeah, let's set the game on the moon and give the player a limited oxygen supply that also drains when they double jump or do slam attacks. Let's limit exploration by making players have to run from oxygen supply to oxygen supply. They'll never be able to relax because they'll always be thinking about the ever-diminishing number in the bottom left of their screen. Some people defend this mechanic and say it adds to the game.

What a crock of shit. Also this incredibly annoying 7-second voice clip would play CONSTANTLY as Jack:

I almost quit and started over to get a new character. I'm happy Jack lost here. Hope Borderlands 3 doesn't suck! And that it comes out! Gearbox is probably looking for more companies to scam like they did with SEGA and Colonial Marines. Maybe they'll buy another game in development hell and cobble together a poorly-coded release like they did with Duke Nukem Forever for some quick cash to make up for the millions they lost on Battleborn.

(9)Sly Cooper vs (10)Francis York Morgan vs (19)Lugia






Please keep this looping while you read, thanks.

Board 8 was super into Deadly Premonition at the time of the nom period. Well, maybe not all of Board 8, but enough to get York a decent seed. The game burned bright and as far as I can tell it isn't burning anymore. There's been no word of a sequel but I really don't think it needs one. It's astounding that a game as bizarre as DP even made it to a commercial release and any more would take away from the magic.

That said, York only managed to get around the same amount of votes as Armstrong, but they were both happy just to be on the front page for a day.

Wait...



Did you see that, Zach?!

Clear as a crisp spring morning!

"Lu Gia"...in the contest!

I knew I could count on it. Never fails.



Whose idea was it to get freaking Lugia into a Character Battle? Was he a Guru nom or something? Why? Was it to make a statement? I'd argue this is worse than N but they're both pretty bad.

There was a little bit of debate as to whether or not Sly could sneak past Lugia to win this, but when you remember he got quadrupled by Sephiroth in his debut appearance, this result was pretty obvious. This much of a slaughter, though?

If you hadn't figured it out by now, Pokefear was very, very real. I'm not sure how widespread that term was before and after this match, but there was no doubt denying it existed after this.

Also I think Sly has a movie coming who cares
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(7)Kefka vs (12)Zack Fair vs (21)Ryu Hayabusa




Kefka always gives me writer's block. I never know how the hell to talk about this guy. He's the king of inconsistency. In my last writing project I stalled for almost two weeks trying to think about what to say about Kefka.

So instead I'm going to talk about how cool it is that Allen made the dimensions of the match pictures 299 x 187. He could have made it 300 x 187 but Character Battle IX whoa what an easter egg better put it in my shitty clickbait article with a picture of Morrigan's boobs and a giant red arrow pointing to nothing

Let's talk about how great Zack the Living Buster Sword looked here. I went on a big rant last post about how the Monado ended up amounting to nothing, but here's the Buster Sword pulling so much support from Kefka that it managed to get Zack into second over Ryu Hayabusa, a proven contest vet that's looked good in a ton of situations over the years.

Maybe Kefka was really just that weak, or maybe Zack really is just that strong. I find it hard to get reads on either of them, because FF looked so bad this contest that I feel like I can't be sure of anything. Usually Ulti and Leon are better at analyzing FF's popularity trends.

At least this was an entertaining match. Kefka never fails to disappoint. I remember having some big projects due in college this week so my memory is a little blurry for some of these matches, so if anyone has personal anecdotes relating to them please jump in and share.




Imagine coming to this site not having played Metal Gear Rising and trying to figure out why the fuck a US Senator with a big cigar and a nice suit is in a GameFAQs character battle. Then you go to the totals page and see his bio pic with the weird Resident Evil growth all over his chest. What the hell is up with this guy? Short answer:

NANOMACHINES, SON.

As far as video game memes going around in 2013, that was one I really liked. I didn't even play Revengeance; I don't have patience for parrying or anything, but shit, Armstrong and Jetstream Sam are the raddest characters and I wish they were canon. Then again, nothing in MGS is really canon anymore, right?

It's hard to believe it's been so long since Revengeance dropped. It feels like just yesterday. Yet the more time goes on the more it seems to become overlooked and forgotten. You can't even play it legally on Macs anymore: https://bit.ly/2ntVfRi

Back to the point: Armstrong is cool but not cool enough to be doubled by Prinny of all things. Is Prinny stronger than Laharl at this point? Would Etna play to the pedo crowd of GameFAQs and pull in more support? Will any Disgaea rep even make the field ever again?

The big takeaway from this match is how Cloud couldn't pull off 70% in a Round 1 match against two of the most bottom-of-the-barrel fodder characters this contest has ever seen. Yeah, there were low votals and yeah, FF gets anti-voted, but it shouldn't matter much. If you hadn't already lost faith in FF by this point, now was the time to worry.
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sometimes i lay awake at night wondering what it would be like to polish metal sonic's shiny head
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Thanks to everyone here for participating in actual contest discussion! It's good to see users other than Luster Soldier back in the spirit of things. So 50% of this topic's goals are successful, now I just need to raise enough noms for Metal Sonic. I think we'll be here a while.

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(3)Shulk vs (16)Ratchet vs (25)Altair




If I told you that there was a secret pic Shulk could get that would instantly double, nay, triple his expected vote total, would you believe me? Would anyone on this board believe a pic could be that strong?

KamikazePotato and the rest of the Xenoblade fans on this board would have you believe that this was the key:



Yes, the key to Shulk's victory was-- Shit, I should be more specific here. It wasn't a bad child-size cosplay of Shulk. It was this thing:



The Monado! People were convinced that if someone could squeeze this giant red phallus into a match pic with Shulk that he would at least be able to beat Ratchet, perhaps even proven multi-way contest veteran Altair!

After a few days of bad pic submissions, KP found the best Picsmith for the job:



KP, the ultimate weapon wasn't the Monado, it was your heart all along.

So Shulk got what was considered the best possible picture, and... lost. Lost pretty hard. I had fallen for all the Shulk hype and taken him over Ratchet in my Expert bracket. Whoops. To be fair, KP is right a lot of the time and he's pretty convincing, and that XENOFEAR got to me.

It actually wasn't crazy to consider Ratchet weak enough to lose to Shulk. He had lost to Thrall once, and failed to double Eddie Riggs. Since 2013, Ratchet has received a bad movie and a good, albeit short, movie tie-in game. Where is his strength now? Probably the same, but I don't mind seeing him in these things.

Altair once again has a decent contest showing. It's astounding that the basically personality-void protagonist of the first ever Assassin's Creed game is still one of very few reps the series has had in this contest. People don't even like the first AC or Altair in general anymore. Outside of Ezio, there really isn't any better pick, though.

(4)Lara Croft vs (15)Yuri Hyuga vs (24)Slime




Poor Yuri, he almost got septupled by Samus in his first ever appearance then took a loooong nap and got woken up with Lara Croft's gun in his face. Stick him in the freezer, Lara!



Lara was coming off of her hot new reboot game where she looked like Alicia Vikander, the only woman worthy of Michael Fassbender's love. Wait, I think I got my timeline wrong...

Regardless, people now take Lara seriously now despite ridiculous scenarios like her murdering 300000 people then getting real real sad cuz she killed a deer. I get it, it's a video game, but other video games do "being a video game" way better. Having Lara grunt a lot and talk to herself sarcastically is enough to get her onto Nathan Drake's level I guess. Should have gone all the way and gotten Nolan North to voice her.

Slime finally made a contest appearance and even though it was nice to see copious Dragon Quest reps make the field, unlike Final Fantasy people don't seem to particularly care for that series' characters here, even its mascot. Maybe Jessica from DQVIII would do alright? Boobs.
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(5)Ike vs (14)Proto Man vs (23)Dr. Robotnik




Over the past few years the line between the Nintendo, Mega Man and Sonic fandoms has definitely become was more blurred. While Eggman had no shot to beat either of these guys, it's interesting to speculate how many votes he pulled from the other two.

Having a match this close a day after another close one was a real treat, and if you still weren't feeling in a contest mood post-Draven, this string of matches was a pick-me-up for sure. In the end Ike barely won, but he didn't really struggle, just fell flat on his face. I don't think he lost the lead at any point, just had to put up with little cuts here and there.

Which overall was a bad look for Ike. Proto Man has never been good in these things and Ike is a national treasure and a real sweetheart. He even got his big dick adult Ike pic. I'm not even a Fire Emblem fan and I like Ike.

As for Eggman, you know who would have done better here? Metal Sonic!

(8)Epona vs (11)Mordin Solus vs (20)Niko Bellic




I completely forgot that we rallied a horse into this contest. It's all coming back to me and I want to vomit.

We're all anti-rally now, but back in the day we were doing nothing but cramming our bad jokes into this contest and hoping they took off. Everyone wanted to guess what the next L-Block was gonna be. Is Epona a classic video game character? I... guess. Does she deserve a spot more than Ragna the Bloodedge and Commander Keen? Maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure why I'm worked up about this. I fucking made Epona's picture, so who am I to talk?

Speaking of Epona's picture, it took forever to render and the end result looks awful. You can see the 1-point brownish-red stroke I put around her mane because I couldn't get the render to look good. Really phoned that one in.

I feel awful for Mordin, here's this beloved tertiary Mass Effect character who people legit love. Yeah, he didn't put up great numbers against Niko, but in the right scenario he might escape round 1.

Epona looked good here, I remember people posting "SHAPED LIKE A HORSE TO KICK YOUR ASS" or some other really awful jokes all day and it was all just so derivative and forced. L-Block somehow felt more natural. Also, L-Block didn't need a field of 247 characters to finally get in. This wasn't the first time we had try to get Epona in, either. Nobody REALLY wanted a horse in the bracket. Again, it all felt forced, and not very fun. For me, at least. This thread is about me.
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(9)Bayonetta vs (10)N vs (19)Wander




Of all the matches that were highly debated in Summer 2013, this one baffled me then, and it still baffles me now.

How did N get into a contest? At a 9 seed? Instead of Brock and Misty? Instead of Blastoise? Instead of... There's so many better choices. Who the hell is N? Does anybody stay awake at night with visions of N dancing around in their heads?

If you're just reading about this match for the first time ever in 2018, you may be shocked to find out that, yes, many, many people took N here because Pokemon. That was the only reason.

Seeing Bayonetta rocket way out ahead right from the start was so satisfying.

N isn't even in my top 20 letters. Give me Z or Q any day.

Actually I am turning this topic into a Q nomination rally, sign up here:



Round 1 match Q / N / Zed from Pulp Fiction, who ya got?

Wander showed up here as well, and I guess N was too big of a colossus to climb. I did just dump all over N, but due to recency and being one of those hot characters of the moment, N was able to secure a win over Wander. Something tells me that a 1-v-1 between the two today would go differently.

Remember everyone Tweeting at Roger Ebert that Shadow of the Colossus is true art? Then he died.

I cut that train of thought short because my girlfriend just came home and asked why I am typing so furiously (I do that when I'm typing about the highest expression of art, ~*~Shadow of the Colossus~*~) and I asked "do you remember what game 'N' is from?"

"Pokemon?"

"Do you remember what he looks like?"

"Green... green hair."

"Do you remember anything else about him?"

"Uhhhh..."

"Anything at all."

"..."

But hey at least she remembered him, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've thought of N this year, or his dumb green anime hair.

(2)GLaDOS vs (17)Cole vs (26)Ragna the Bloodedge




You know nobody on this site cares about your anime fighting game when the main character can't beat freaking Cole McGrath.

Of course, Cole is an absolute powerhouse in these things because he had two whole character slots in this site's favorite Smash game, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. The game with Emmett Graves in it:



You know Emmett Graves, the star of hit PlayStation exclusive StarHawk. Truly deserving of the title "PlayStation All-Star."

GLaDOS looked good here but only because of that Portal 2 recency and also who the hell is Cole and why is that other guy named "Ragna the Bloodedge." That sounds like a Sonic fan character. A pretty good one, actually. Take notes.
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(1)Solid Snake vs (18)Isaac (Golden Sun) vs (27)Commander Keen




Snake comes out of the gate dick first, asserting his dominance over Link and smacking Isaac so hard upside the head that he knocked him out of the Smash roster forever.

Hey let's take a trip over to the Smash Ultimate board, shall we?



Wow! People seem to really want this Isaac guy. They want him so much that Sakurai took him out as an Assist Trophy in Smash 4, the only time that has ever happened ever.

Remember how close Felix got to Master Chief back in the day? Look at Isaac now, unable to triple Commander Keen. No wonder Sakurai isn't putting him in Smash. What does he owe to the 6637 people asking for him?

I want to take a moment to talk about Solid Snake and ZenOfThunder's newly-coined Martyr Factor (or the MFer):

Konami spent the years post-Summer 2013 taking big, steamy dumps all over Kojima, Kojima Productions and Metal Gear Solid V. The franchise itself is in ruins, and everyone is aware. The developers of Metal Gear Survive, the heavily-panned, poorly selling Rust-like spinoff of MGS, were even in on the hate, hiding easter eggs in their own games dissing their Konami producers and crying out for their lord and savior Kojima to save them.

But what does that mean for Snake? Well, obviously he's not going to be in any games outside of Smash Ultimate anytime soon. Hayter would be willing to voice him but outside of Sakurai asking him to reprise the role in Smash, Konami doesn't seem (Commander) keen on bringing him back. Keifer Sutherland has such a busy schedule filming such classic new films as Pompeii and Flatliners that there's no way Konami could get him back to record three more grunts for a new MGS game.

So where am I going with this? Shouldn't Snake be weaker with less appearances? Well, yeah. Yeah he should. That's where you mix in a vial of concentrated Zen "kind of reaching there, buddy" juice.

The downfall of MGS, Kojima and Snake was so highly publicized and Konami was villainized to such an extreme degree that I believe love for Snake has reached a new level, and the story of his fall will be etched into gaming history in such a way that people will vote for him not only out of love but respect and a little bit of pity. Even though MGSV was pretty polarizing, the fate of Kojima offsets all the negative feelings, because even if the game was lacking, it was not Kojima's fault, not Snake's fault, it was Konami's fault, and FucKonami.

The MFer.

You heard it here first.

Snake > Link 2018 let's go boys

(6)Alucard vs (13)Captain Falcon vs (22)Rydia




It was here at our 30th match of the contest that we finally got something balls-to-the-walls entertaining. Not counting Draven.

Every ingredient for a successful match was here: A reliable contest all-star, a four-time Smash vet and crowd favorite, and a classic, semi-proven Final Fantasy character with titties that, uh, beat Marcus Fenix once.

Yeah, Rydia wasn't a lock to pull any upset here, but people always overestimate FF characters. Actually, I don't remember much intense debate here. People dismissed Falcon pretty easily. Alucard, again, has proven himself as a strong competitor in these things. He's no jobber.

But thanks to low votals Falcon was able to come dangerously close and the two were able to trade blows throughout the day. These are the matches Allen should aim to create. I was on the edge of my seat all day. My bracket said "Alucard" but my heart said "Captain Falcon" and I suppose my dick said "Rydia" so no matter what I was a winner.
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Is this Elite Beat Agents 2?

thank you Ulti but your writeups are the only ones that should be there, they're contest tradition and honestly I sometimes look forward to your post-contest analysis more than a contest itself

also I doubt I'll even finish this, as Leon pointed out I don't even remember a lot of this contest, especially the later matches
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Is this Elite Beat Agents 2?

(4)Kirby vs (15)Terra Branford vs (24)Princess Peach




Even when the match pic is aggressively pink all-around, Kirby still manages to stand out by just being so spherical. Does anyone have more of a pic advantage than Kirby in any scenario?

Coming off of Dissidia, Terra was able to take advantage of Peach LFFing Kirby to look really respectable here. She definitely looked much better than Kefka did losing handily to GLaDOS.

Terra should be Sakurai's next pick for Smash. I know a lot of people are on team Vivi/Black Mage, but Terra just feels right to me. FFVI is one of the biggest and most beloved SNES games. If Cloud can make it in just cuz he walked on screen once in Chain of Memories, then Terra definitely deserves a spot.

Coming off of Mario Odyssey, Peach should have gotten a tiny boost, but probably nothing substantial. It's been a long time since she was in the spotlight. If 3D World had been more recent she probably would have been a bit stronger due to actually being playable. The biggest question is whether or not Daisy makes it in again now that she's an Echo in Smash.

(7)Wheatley vs (12)Crash Bandicoot vs (21)Tommy Vercetti




I was trying to find words for describing how flash-in-the-pan Wheatley was at the time, but that just put me in a melancholy mood. Wheatley is great. GLaDOS is great. Cave Johnson is great. Portal is great. Valve... was great. Now you can buy the use of their assets and IPs for a nominal fee. Portal Bridge Builder, anyone? What a timeless classic. Dozens of people are sure to have fond memories of that fun-filled two hours when they played Portal Bridge Builder before requesting a refund.

I'm being really sour, but I think we all kind of are. Valve now gives bonuses based on how much of a profit you can turn with whatever you're working on. They encourage their employees to do whatever they can to make money as fast as they can. What takes a ton of employees and a lot of time? Making full Portal and Half-Life games. You know what takes just one or two dudes and a week? Making Team Fortress 2 hats.

We're probably not going to see Wheatley again, we might see GLaDOS, but we're definitely not going to see Cave Johnson. Who knows where Gordon will even be? I'll get to him in a bit, there's a lot to say.

Alright, rant over, Crash Bandicoot was here and he won, as expected. The only kind-of surprise to people not familiar with these things was Tommy losing to Wheatley and losing pretty hard. This was the guy people had once taken over Crono. GTA protagonists ain't shit on this site. During the big hiatus in between contests, people speculated if Michael, Franklin and Trevor from GTAV would be worth anything.

Short answer: No. Long answer: Let's just stick to nominating GTA games into Games Contests and keep the characters out. Because no. Especially not after this long.

Crash had a remake of his first three games on PS4, XBONE and, recently, Switch. It got a lot of great buzz and people even started speculating he would be in Smash for some reason. That's... OK. Sure. I also saw a long 4chan post yesterday detailing how Ashley is still in Smash despite being shown as an Assist Trophy and that Sakurai is just pulling one long con to punk us. Hell of a community Smash has.

We'll probably see Crash back this year, and maybe thanks to his resurgence in popularity we'll see him get a third win. He deserves better than Wheatley and Ulala.
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Is this Elite Beat Agents 2?

(8)CATS vs (11)Ness vs (20)Locke Cole




@GANON1025 can you explain your choice of match pic here? Locke looks like a keychain you'd get out of a capsule machine at the trendy boba tea spot in the gentrified part of downtown that's right across from three identical trendy boba tea spots and eight ramen places.

There was some non-debate before this match because Ness had been punked by Big Daddy recently and people thought some rando FFVI party member would be able to take him down because of that.

Which is not the case, Ness was able to beat Zidane once, why would he struggle with Cole? In fact, Locke was closer to CATS than he was Ness.

Speaking of CATS, remember how he beat Nathan Drake in 2008? Good times. I wonder if he'll ever get another shot at a real win.

(3)Elizabeth vs (16)Poison vs (25)Thrall




Whoa, POISON was in a contest? What the hell was going on in 2013? Was it the comeback year for fighting games? Actually... Yes. Fighting games had a resurgence around 2010-2014, but then Capcom flooded their own market and ruined it again. There's another small renaissance going on right now, actually. We'll see who makes the field this year.

There was a lot of pre-match debate on where Thrall would fall here, he could be in first, second, or third, but Elizabeth was definitely stronger than Poison, so it really depended on your perception of Thrall's strength how to make your Expert picks.

The match pic finally dropped and, shit, what is up with Thrall's pic? He looks awful. He's definitely recognizable, but surely there's some better art of him...



oh



oh



ooooooooh

I'm being facetious, of course. Thrall actually does have some good art, it's all just like this:



Art like this is really hard to work with, it's not meant to be rendered, the lighting and angles don't lend themselves to a clean cut out. It seems obvious to me what kind of art would or would not be good in a match pic, but I guess that logic isn't too common, because any time a character got a bad or mediocre pic you'd get people posting "WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU USE THIS ONE" and linking to shit like this:



and not realizing how bad it would look in a tiny match pic box then getting offended when we would tell them to use their brains

Back to the topic at hand, yeah, Thrall and Warcraft in general is pretty weak, the characters aren't like Diablo where they have a series named after them and they look badass. To most people Thrall is just some Warcraft orc. Perhaps Hearthstone will change that?

Poison impressed here, she has boobs, yeah, but other than that she's fairly iconic even outside of the FGC because of the whole "lol did poison have a penis once" thing that people just can't seem to get over. It's like the most surface level video game trivia and people love to put it in their crappy "6 CRAZY facts about the Street Fighter Universe!!!!" clickbait videos.

ps I denied it at the time but I did purposefully sabotage Elizabeth's pic here to remove her TJF and iconic outfit to give Poison a fighting chance. I am despicable. Don't trust anything I say. Close this tab and go read one of the three other threads on this board that are actually about discussing contests.

If a Zen bullshit topic is the only place to get your contest fix then it's a sad time to be a stat junkie.
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Is this Elite Beat Agents 2?

my girlfriend has very curly hair and she's thrilled whenever it's an option

it usually isnt
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Is this Elite Beat Agents 2?

any stage with a walk-off danger zone would be banned

actually, any stage with a weird/small/overly large danger zone would probably be banned.
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Is this Elite Beat Agents 2?