Board 8 > ~*~Zen Anal-yzes the Summer 2013 Contest - 5 Years Too Late Edition~*~

(+) Yeah! (+)

(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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(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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sadly the match pics are down on GameFAQs Contests so I can't post that one pic
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Great topic man. Fun read for nostalgia and also greasing the gears for a new contest.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

I also want to rant about how disappointing Uncharted 4 was

wow

UC4 was outstanding
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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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Which match is this one pic from?
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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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ZenOfThunder posted...

Is Yuna stronger than Tidus at this point?

I doubt it.

ZenOfThunder posted...

Not a fan of Nate's brother

Yeah, Sam kinda sucks. I didn't like him much.

but yeah I was hoping the pic was on the B8 Wiki but sadly it's not

it's hard to remember what games were in the match because they occupy like 1% of the picture
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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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Yuna has been around Tidus' level for a while. They perform pretty similarly.

The weird thing is that Rikku consistently performs a little better than both of them. She's just never been in a match that anyone cared about. Ended up higher in my Statz than both!
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ZenOfThunder posted...

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?

I want to clarify this statement. There wasn't a 24-hour stream of clips of just Teemo dying. It was a 24-hour stream that played continuously for about a few weeks straight before Riot shut it down for whatever reason.

I have no idea how Teemo got in either.
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Yuna has probably always been close to Tidus's level. 45% on 2003 Knux was pretty good.

She just wouldn't beat him straight up. Rikku wouldn't either.

also Rikku was in a match people cared about in this very contest
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ZenOfThunder posted...

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

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

Not even surprised. You don't create the biggest dickwad factory of the internet by being a good person.

SSJSephirothGokuX123 posted...

To people who played FF8 Seifer is unlikeable douchebag, he's your stereotypical high school jock (think Flash Thompson, hell he even looks like him) and for how tough he acts he's laughably easy in all of his boss fights, even if you don't abuse the game's broken mechanics and he never really has any cool moments besides the opening FMV and cutting Odin in two, and even then Gilgamesh steals the scene.

People were assuming he'd beat Celes since he's Squall's "Sephiroth" and appeared in Kingdom Hearts 2 and Celes easily lost to the boss, on top of that she had unrecognizable Amano art in the match. Image how bad she'd beat Seifer with this pic.

Celes is such a great character though.

I need to play more FF games.

Celes is good, yeah.

sometimes I feel like Allen just tries to stick it to me though (I mean I didn't get a special Board 8 seed for...whatever I was trying to rally that year)

at least put Seifer and Rinoa in positions where we can see their actual value regardless of how low it is
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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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well I suspect only Squall will get in this year (unless someone wants to get behind a Laguna rally with me) but thankfully Final Fantasy VIII has an abundance of art to choose from
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if you decide to make a Laguna rally I'll make banners and shit for you
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actually maybe we should try Rinoa again since she did just get announced for the new Dissidia

then again nobody in America likes that one so maybe not

it'd be like trying to rally for an SFV exclusive character

(although I could get behind a Laura rally because she's got that TJF)
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I've been enjoying this analysis very much. It's giving us a nice refresher before the latest bracket gets revealed.

You failed to mention that that MC/Yuna was a rematch, and that MC's previous killing of Yuna misled some brackets in the 2013 contest.

The thing about TIfa is that, even though she seemed to look consistently strong in all of her matches, female vs. female matches tend to be pretty wonky (and well, three-way matches are wonky themselves). She may have even overperformed against Samus, for all we know.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

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

Making TP with serial number 8.8 was damn genius, though.
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One time, about six years ago, I asked about investing in Acti-Blizzard stock. Ulti came in and made it very clear that they would go bankrupt and that I would be a fool to trust them with my money. I invested $1,000 that day at...$11.12 a share.

https://m.nasdaq.com/symbol/atvi

They didnt go bankrupt.
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baubeta posted...

I just caught up including the Kerrigan/SC2/Blizzard discussion.

One time, about six years ago, I asked about investing in Acti-Blizzard stock. Ulti came in and made it very clear that they would go bankrupt and that I would be a fool to trust them with my money. I invested $1,000 that day at...$11.12 a share.

https://m.nasdaq.com/symbol/atvi

They didnt go bankrupt.

-> Taking real life advice from Ulti.

I find it odd that master chief still has a slight impact in these contests. Sure he's basically a scrub but this site usually hates any fps character and halo hasn't really been relevant for years.
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Some influence from Red vs Blue, maybe? It's a pretty popular webshow. Or was popular 3-4 years ago, but hey, we are atlking about 2013.

After how bad Halo did in the games contest, well...

I mean, projected to get 32% on Smash 4 WTF.

Continuing something I was asking over in the main topics, which of these non-VG characters would you take over Master Chief in a GameFAQs contest setting:

"Mad" Max Rockatansky
John McClane
Robocop
Sarah Connor
Ellen Ripley
Rey
The Bride
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(1)Mario vs (18)Duke Nukem vs (27)Fawful




I'd argue that Duke was once a beneficiary of the Martyr Factor, and the longer it took for Forever to come out the stronger he looked. In 2008 Duke managed to get to Round 3, which is pretty respectable, right?

Then Duke Nukem Forever actually came out. As I mentioned earlier, Duke Nukem Forever was only released by Gearbox to make some quick money. They bought whatever 3D Realms had made (three failed iterations of the game that had been scrapped) and stitched it all together really quick, then packaged and released it with some really tacky junk and tried to sell as many Collector's Editions as possible.

And it worked, kinda. I bought the shit. One of the worst purchases I have ever made. I think the CE was like $80?? It came with "playing cards" (they were the size of my thumb), dice, two poker chips, postcards(??) and a bust of Duke.

I still have the bust. I realized it shared a mould with my Duke action figure. Like, they took the mould of the action figure, blew it up, made it gray, took the arms and shit off, and it became a "bust." Fuck, I'm an idiot for buying into it.

Now Duke will most likely be worthless in contests. He has a movie in the works starring John Cena, but knowing how these things usually pan out it probably won't see the light of day.

Fawful made a second appearance here, and he was just happy to be on the front page again (probably for the last time). This match wasn't meant for anything more than seeing if Mario was strong enough to get to at least the semifinals, where he would either meet with Samus and Mega Man or Samus and Charizard. There was also talk of him getting into a match with Squall and Red, and Squall finally getting his time in the sun and riding Red LFF to victory. Yeah, sorry Leon.

Nobody knew he would get knocked out in Round 2, especially after this performance.

(6)Vivi vs (13)Adam Jensen vs (22)Marisa Kirisame




I just wanna talk about Adam Jensen for a bit. We have all the time in the world to talk about Vivi (and boy will we next round), so right now let's talk about Adam Jensen.



What a fucking hero. I love Adam. Everyone who plays Human Revolution loves Adam. That game had some ass boss fights and a double-ass ending, but what a great game. I wasn't as keen on Mankind Divided, but it was OK. A lot of that "augment your pre-order" bullshit soured me on it pre-release. I don't hold that against Adam, though.

At the time, HR was a minor meme-generator. The two videos I remember most from that time are the one with the mirror and the one with the vending machine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whtNHRYJnrU" data-time="

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3wOT9cSg4" data-time="

Of course, nobody thought Adam would win here, he was another "happy-to-be-there" entrant. Deus Ex is lucky to even have two people in a contest, it's not like JC Denton was turning heads.

But what do those Touhou weirdos do? Vote stuff for their next diaper girl, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXpuRIZzJog" data-time="

The cheater was bragging about it on his blog, too. He didn't even seem to have a really solid agenda. He posted some weird manifesto and everything. What a freakazoid. I know we obsess over these contests, but at least we don't vote stuff or cheat. And if we did I am positive it would not be for Touhou characters. Yuck.

Vivi looked good here, but everyone attributed his mass over-performance more to the weakness of two jobbers. This was definitely not "beat Mario" levels of strength. Again, we'll talk more about it when we get to it. You can write a novella just about that match.
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(9)Ganondorf vs (10)Guybrush Threepwood vs (19)Max Payne




I never thought that Guybrush, the who got doubled by Ryo Hazuki, would win a match. Any match. Especially not against Max Payne! He beat Gordon once!

Max and Guybrush both have pretty storied histories in these things, and it's interesting to see them finally cross paths. Yeah, Max did beat Gordon, but that was pre-HL2 and pre Valve hype. If you go back and look at Max's history, his claim to fame outside of beating Gordon is tripling Dirk the Daring.

People still took Max, though. He had a recent big blockbuster release aaaaaand he lost. Wow, it's like recent western games don't mean shit on this site, huh? Especially with the votals this low. I'm sounding like a broken record, here, but we're going to have to be super careful with any of the "western darling" characters that get into the contest this year, if anyone bothers nominating them at all. Everyone is Tanner now.

I'm really happy that Guybrush finally got a win here. Yeah, there was cheating in the match, but even after the 100 or so votes were removed, he still pulled it off. Monkey Island seems to be getting more and more respect as time goes on. I gave a bunch of shit to Uncharted 4 in earlier posts, but the coolest part of the game was the inclusion of Guybrush Threepwood as one of the pirate kings:



iirc Alan Moore also included Guybrush in a version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, one that focused on famous fictional pirates. People who play Monkey Island really love those games. I wonder if we'll get a reboot any time in the future? I guess Disney owns it now, they must have plans.

In May 2016, Disney Interactive announced that they would cease production on gaming and transition to a licensing model.

oh. welp.

Ganondorf was here, he spent most of the match plotting on how to take down Mario in Round 2.

(2)Squall Leonhart vs (17)Rayman vs (26)Commander Video




look at this angsty angsty boi and his two cartoon pals. I want a show about Squall in SEED academy or w/e it's called where he has to make moral decisions based on the two angels on his shoulder, one being Rayman and the other being Commander Video. Rayman would just make funny grunts and Video make beeps and boops. Squall would always get flustered by this and never be able to ask Rinoa out and then Seifer would call him a "lamer." Actually I think I just described FFVIII in general.

This match was really just to see if Squall was strong enough to beat Mario and Samus later in the contest. Or at least Missingno in Round 2. He looked pretty good. That's about it. We all know what happens so talking about this match seems like a bit of a waste.

I never played the bit.Trip games but I hear they're good? I'm struggling to find something to say here.

Normally I'd say "maybe if Rayman gets into Smash he'll get a boost but I don't see it happening" but I think anything can fucking happen at this point. Next thing we know Minecraft Master Chief and Pop Figure Marcus Fenix are going to be revealed.

Rayman is always welcome in these things but I think he lost to Vyse in his one other appearance so only if the field is big enough. Just keep those fucking Rabbids out, please. Remember when "Best. Quote. Ever." was announced and people were trying to nominate "DAAAAAAA" from Rayman Raving Rabbids? Kill me.
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JC Denton is great. The new Deus Ex series deserved better than being shelved.

I have a lot to say stats-wise about Mario/Vivi but I'll save it for later. I'll just say that, even taking rallies into account, it made no sense.
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(5)Amaterasu vs (14)Vyse vs (23)Adol Christin




I think this might be the most boring match of the contest. Wow. I got nothing here. I can't even make fun of Adol Christin. He got beaten down pretty hard by Vyse the Living Fodder Line.

We really need to get around to picking a new fodder line and standardizing it before the next contest.

Also, I assume even though Ammy hasn't had a new game in forever, she'd still do well in a contest because her game is now on every platform ever created. I'm partial to the Game.Com version myself.

(8)Missingno vs (11)Tidus vs (20)Banjo




Listen to my write-up. This... may be our last chance.

Now this was a match, probably one of the best ones to come out of this contest. This was back and forth all day, and while Tidus was always destined to lose, he was the one that exposed Missingno and set Squall up for a nice, predictable round 2 victory. Tidus. The one we've been calling "Meg Ryan" for a decade and a half.

Everyone assumed 4chan had vote-stuffed vote Missingno, but according to Allen it was actually Tidus who was the cheater. That doesn't surprise me somehow, I'm not sure who did the stuffing, but Tidus is almost as much of a joke as Missingno. I'm (half) kidding, Tidus has grown on me over the years. Yeah, his outfit is dumb and his voice is annoying, but his arc in FFX isn't that bad.

I would love to find out who did the majority of the Tidus stuffing and ask them why. I guess it's just someone passionate for FFX? Or the laughing scene.

Banjo was also in the match, and if Yooka-Laylee was any indication, people love him and respect him to a crazy degree and will attack the pretenders and non-believers. But they won't vote for him, I guess. Banjo might end up in Smash at this point so who knows if he'll be back. Also:



bleh

As for Missingno, who knows if he'll be back? He definitely makes contests more interesting, and whenever he's on the front page you get the people coming to the board to flood it with topics like DAAAAAA I THOUGHT DIS WUZ CHARACTER BATTLE, WHY U LET IN GLITCH?? GLITCH NO CHARACTER!!!

Get over yourselves, we let a fucking horse in. This is Fight Club rules, baby. Or Thunderdome. Pop culture reference. Ready Player One.
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I would rather have Missingno than the horse.

Tidus/Missingno really sucked. Would have been nice for Tidus to get a nice close victory for a change, but oops he got rallied against at the last second. Shocker.
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KamikazePotato posted...

I would rather have Missingno than the horse.

Tidus/Missingno really sucked. Would have been nice for Tidus to get a nice close victory for a change, but oops he got rallied against at the last second. Shocker.

But tidus is insufferable...
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(3)Creeper vs (16)Wario vs (25)The King of All Cosmos




This match was super boring, but everyone had gotten so hyped on stuffing and rallies that MINEFEAR reared its ugly head once again but twice as strong. People thought Creeper would succeed where Steve had failed. Because not only is Creeper from Minecraft but he's a meme too!!!

Was Creeper actually a "meme?" I don't remember any Creeper-specific "memes," just the whole turning around and there's a creeper and UH OH boom aaaaaaahh. Is that all it takes to make one of these may-mays?

Wario cleaned up here and Creeper ended up closer to the King. It's sad that the King has never had a real shot, but I can't imagine a situation where he'd be able to pull a win without an incredibly lucky draw. The guy used to be the Board 8 mascot before Phoenix Wright. We were all about Katamari back in the day. That's another dead franchise, which is a shame.

There's a game coming out this year that's inspired by Katamari called Donut County. If you haven't seen the trailer, watch it here, it looks neat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jei2tYpNvcw" data-time="

(4)Pokemon Trainer Red vs (15)Corvo Attano vs (24)Sissel




I lead the Corvo nomination rally and I was psyched as all hell when Allen revealed the 15 seeds and there he was. I had been starting to doubt he would get in, I didn't have much support at the time. I know someone asked for "handsome characters to nominate" at one point and I posted a bunch of yaoi of unmasked Corvo and the Outsider kissing and he loved it. You have to be willing to do anything for a nomination rally. Like analyze an entire contest to drum up interest for Metal Sonic.

I want to really quickly add that Dishonored 2 ruined Corvo by giving him a voice and character, he was so much cooler as a Gordon Freeman analogue. I ended up not finishing Dishonored 2, D1 was a much tighter, cleaner, more appealing package to me. We're probably not going to see Corvo ever again, so I guess having a win, albeit a small one, under his belt is good enough for his fans.

Pokemon Trainer Red absolutely crushed it here, and how could he not with a match pic like that? My entire childhood is contained within his pic. Holy shit what a pic advantage. It's not even fair. We should put a paper bag on Red's head.

The entire debate here was over second place. Sissel was from the nichest-of-niche games, but Corvo was another "western darling." The thing is that Dishonored, despite appearances, is anime as all hell and had a much more niche, weird fanbase than the other western characters (hence the Yaoi), so he was able to win pretty handily here.

It's very strange to consider Missile the definitive Ghost Trick representative but you take what you can get.



I wouldn't have it any other way.

the girlfriend wants me to add that she thinks Ghost Dad would be better in a contest than Ghost Trick?? uuuuuhhhh



uuuuuuuuuhhhhhh
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Did you play as Emily in Dishonored 2? She's waaay more fun than Corvo is.
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Sadly, we've been down similar roads before and SBAllen would never let Ghost Dad in.

spoiler warning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OejdvWYaU" data-time="
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(7)Pit vs (12)Urdnot Wrex vs (21)Cecil Harvey




Let's break this down real quick. In this match, we have:

1) Pit, classic NES game protagonist, character in Captain N, veteran of one very popular Smash game as well as returning in a new one, and star of a brand new 3DS game with good sales and great reviews. Palutena and Hades had done poorly earlier in the contest. Pit had only beaten Tingle and barely beaten King Dedede before his new game had come out.

2) Wrex, a fan-favorite squad member in Mass Effect 1. He could die if you were bad at the game. Statistically, he died in over half of all ME playthroughs. By default, he is dead in ME2 and 3 if you do not have save data from ME1 with him alive. Shepard had failed to impress against Olimar and Garrus had been handily beaten by Sub-Zero.

3) Cecil Harvey, protagonist of the beloved Final Fantasy IV. A character in two Dissidia games. Final Fantasy IV was recently re-released and even had a sequel. Kain Highwind had come close to Raiden in 2008. Cecil had only beaten Jade Curtiss. Final Fantasy had been looking like shit the whole contest.

So how would you order these three? Great. Fucking. Question. I'd say this was in the top three most debated matches of Round 1. These guys weren't powerhouses or anything. It was freaking Pit, Cecil and Wrex.



I don't know if anyone called this order right, but people were absolutely pumped to see Wrex, the underdog, take this win. I'm still not sure how this worked out, like I said before, Western characters weren't shit this year, but then again, neither were lesser-FF characters and lesser-Nintendo characters. This was the years of memes, rallies, Pokemon and Vivi. Anything could happen. Guybrush Threepwood won a match.



I guess Wrex was kind of a meme after all.

(1)Mega Man vs (18)Geno vs (27)Magikarp

wow we got Magikarp into a contest huh.

and he made mega man look like shit and beat Geno huh.

...

2018 is going to be a wild fucking ride, man. What if we actually get Shellder in and he gets a good draw and beats a lesser character? I can't believe I am even contemplating Shellder winning a match in any way. Fuck.

Well, at least he didn't get rallied past our boy Mega Man. That could have very well been possible, at the time, Capcom was treating Mega Man like absolute garbage. They were using Bad Box Art Mega Man for everything and cancelling his games. They didn't give a hot fuck about their mascot.

The only one whos who cared were Sakurai and the fans. I still get chills when I watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIlIM9HlpQ" data-time="

That's all I'm going to say about this match. Mega Man is around for a while in this contest and I need to save things to talk about.

PS Geno for Smash, give him the boost and attention he deserves
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Wrex wrecked my bracket but warmed my heart. He's my personal favorite ME squadmate but I never would have expected him to ever come close to winning a match. Him beating Cecil and Pit still baffles me.
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People tried to argue the Tidus stuffer was from Indonesia.

The nerve of some people, I swear.

At least Cecil beat Pit.
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Why are you saying people who finished second and didn't advance won a match?

Also, very few people actually were talking about Squall beating Mario with Red in the match. People didn't believe LFF would mean as much in 3-ways.

And I was so happy Wrex won that I sang Mordin's Scientist Salarian song on The Show.
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Wait, Squall beat Mario? Man, what happen to my memory...
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Squall was denied a chance at beating LFFed Mario thanks to Vivi beating him to it.
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the worst

he would've beaten Sonic in 2007 too if he hadn't been announced for Brawl in the middle of the friggin' contest

can't catch a break
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One of my proudest moments of the 2013 contest was realizing how bad all the Western Action characters were bombing in the first round, and swapping Max and Guybrush in the Expert Challenge. I knew all those people that keep getting Guybrush into every single contest would keep him from getting crushed by Ganon just enough to sneak into second place.
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I'm pretty sure I had Pit > Cecil > Wrex

While it's not a surprise that Mass Effect had legitimate strength that other western games didn't (it's just a more GameFAQs-y game), I'm still pretty surprised that Wrex topped a lead Nintendo and FF character, even if they're B-listers.

I know we obsess over these contests, but at least we don't vote stuff or cheat. And if we did I am positive it would not be for Touhou characters. Yuck.

I just realized I said this but Smurf did actually vote stuff for a Touhou. Was it worth it, Smurf?

Leonhart4 posted...

Why are you saying people who finished second and didn't advance won a match?

I consider the battle for second a "match" because of the Expert Bracket. It actually mattered for once. I guess in 4-ways guessing who got second also counted.

Leonhart4 posted...

Also, very few people actually were talking about Squall beating Mario with Red in the match. People didn't believe LFF would mean as much in 3-ways.

I really think Squall could have pulled it off in this situation. The timing was just right. It would have been an incredible payoff after years of Squall getting stomped. It would have also been great to have a character who has beaten both Mario Bros that isn't Clinkeroth

Vivi > Mario is just as good though
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I feel like saying people who got 2nd "won a match" is fine because otherwise there were just too many matchups that were completely eaten whole by the same top tier chars as usual

Pit/Wrex/Cecil was one of my favorite matches of the tournament because it was so evenly matched without having anyone who was obvious fodder (Tharja/Juliet/Tina)

Even in a lot of the cases where the high seed char was an obvious jobber, the middle seed character was someone who could obviously take advantage

Just watched the Star Fox video you linked a while back. Truly excellent.
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(6)Kratos vs (13)Travis Touchdown vs (22)Recette Lemongrass




Here's another entertaining match featuring the lead character from a game Board 8 was currently in love with, Recececettear.

This match wasn't really up for debate, it was very clean cut. Kratos > Travis > Recette.

Travis wasn't exactly a powerhouse, and he was 3 years out from his last new installment in a franchise that was already really niche. Still, Recette was from an even more niche indie game that only Board 8 seemed to care about. Right?

Well, the creator of the game Tweeted about the match and drummed up a small Recette rally, which is way more wholesome than a dumb 4chan thing, although I heard they liked the game too and probably helped. The outpouring of support on top of low votals helped get Recette over Travis pretty easily, meaning Travis is now 0-3 and unless No More Heroes 3 is some level of groundbreaking he'll probably stay that way.

I wanna say that by this point everyone's Expert Brackets had been wrecked so nobody was super salty about the surprise upset. We were just happy to have more close matches in a contest with huge dry spells.

Kratos did fine here, he didn't blow away Travis and Recette but he did fine. His strength had been on a decline, people all of a sudden thought God of War was lame. Now, in 2018, post God of War reboot, he'd probably be a whole new animal. I think? Again, Western games don't mean shit, but Kratos was already a somebody before getting the modern PlayStation Last of Us treatment. Who knows where his power will fall in 2018?

(9)Red Bird vs (10)Mike Haggar vs (19)Jill Valentine




Some people had BIRDFEAR here but there was nothing really to worry about. Even with Haggar and Jill giving each other... Marvel vs Capcom SFF (???) neither could possibly be weak enough to lose to a "red bird."

And yeah, that was the match. A bunch of nothing. Hopefully we never see casualbait plaguing the contest field again. Just because Little Jimmy plays Angry Birds on his Kindle Fire with that ridiculous protective shell because he keeps throwing it across the room doesn't mean that he's going to go to the game facks dot com and vote.

Jill did well here, it was all the confirmation we needed that she'd beat Kratos next round. Jill hasn't had much going on post-MvC3, just some crossovers and re-releases, but she should still retain the same strength in 2018.

It was good finally seeing Haggar, yeah I guess he got... Marvel vs Capcom SFF'd (???) by Jill so we can't be 100% sure this is his true strength, but Haggar is the fucking best and I love him

On a side note, there is an alright Fatal Fury fan film starring Don Frye as Mike Haggar. He was partially the inspiration for Haggar so it's really cool that this exists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykIDS42BMEA" data-time="

(2)Zero vs (17)Kratos Aurion vs (26)Boko




I remember absolutely nothing of this match. I don't remember Boko even making the field or having a nomination rally. I don't remember how ridiculously close this match was. What the fuck.

It's great seeing Kratos pull off a win, imagine not only losing to Sackboy but also losing to a Chocobo. Boko is pretty cool though, so it would have been fine if he won. Was this a heavily debated match? I need someone to help me out here. I've remembered every match intimately up until this one, I must have had something important going on that day.

Zero was on a whole other level, so it would be extra surprising when he would get SFF'd by Mega Man to such a degree that Charizard wouldn't be able to pull a win that everyone assumed would be easy for him.
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