Board 8 > transience presents: the top 75 matches in contest history: part 2, the top 25.

(+) Yeah! (+)

swirl we want it unfiltered baby
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Also, if Link gets 50%, X gets 27%, and Ryu gets 23% in such a hypothetical match (based on X's ratio with Ryu in the actual 2013 match, adjusted a bit for SFF), Link pulls 68.5% against Ryu directly (before accounting for X's votes). For comparison's sake, he only managed 73% directly against Raiden in their 2013 match (before accounting for Yoshi's votes).

In contrast, a scenario where Link scores 45%, X scores 30%, and Ryu scores 25% puts Link at about 64.5% against Ryu directly (again, before accounting for X's votes). The truth is likely somewhere in between, which underscores just how weak the Link of 2013's first two rounds was.

Of course, this math changes if you assume Link substantially SFFs X, though he only managed minor SFF, if any, in 2010.
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Steiner posted...

CaptainOfCrush posted...

Ultimaterializer (8:25:04 PM): Seeing swirldude's favorite character get his face kicked in by Magus is awesome

@swirIdude your comments?

Careful what you wish for, Ults.
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Smurf doesn't count. that dude would pick anything with Sonic in the name, and he didn't enter the Guru if I remember right.
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Smurf was "the cream of Knuckles fanboyism", which was required to pick Knuckles in that match.

I remember how threatened he was by having another Knuckles fan around. That's probably why he didn't let me join UotY for several years, even though I signed up.
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Holy shit lol, what a weirdo
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That may not even be the weirdest thing to happen involving board contests and swirldude.
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So Magus was so hyped back then? Fun times.
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Safer_777 posted...

So Magus was so hyped back then? Fun times.

In 2003 Magus did only 3% worse than Crono did in 2004 on Link.
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CaptainOfCrush posted...

I remember a pre-contest AIM convo with Ulti back in 2005 (the days when I was 19 and totally sucking up to him).

I remember when Ulti had a private AIM account and getting on his buddy list meant You Made It.
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14.



This dumb round 1 match is probably the single most surprising result in my 15 years of pollwatching. Draven might have annihilated MMX and Ryu but that was at least within my realm of possibility. Doing this to a mainline Zelda game was... not. This match also had huge ripple effects for the next two contests.

Pokemon was getting more legit every year. Pikachu had already knocked off L-Block the year prior and had gone from being awful to being a midcard type of character. He wasn't beating Noble Niners or anything, but he could hold his own. He beat Dante and Leon in a 2007 match that also broke my brain, though not as much as this one. Pokemon surprisingly almost beat Metroid in the series contest. By 2009, Pokemon was pretty well accepted as being decent to good. Not THIS good, though.

Majora's Mask was the favourite in this match. Why? Zelda, hierarchy and everything that comes with the name. I actually picked the winner correctly (thanks to 3 N64 games in the poll) and was still flabbergasted at what happened. RBY didn't just win, it dominated Majora. The first minute, I thought it was just a funny board vote. Nope!

Take away the other games and this is a 64/36 result. The number of games that can get 64% on a big Zelda game on this website is... Ocarina, LTTP and maybe FF7. Actually, LTTP faced Majora a few years later and couldn't even break 60. So maybe just Ocarina and maybe FF7.

RBY wasn't done though. In case people thought that the 3 N64 game thing mattered, it took on MGS and Majora with GSC in the poll. RBY still finished second, well ahead of Zelda. It then faced MGS and FF8 with Ocarina of goddamn Time in the poll and still finished second. It wasn't until it got sandwiched between Ocarina AND Melee, against FFX, that it lost. And it didn't lose by much. Take Melee out of the poll and RBY makes the finals (and FF7 wins the contest easy). It was the clear star of the contest.

The whole contest, we were debating what the #3 game was. Mario 64? LTTP? Chrono Trigger? We were all way off. It was, unquestionably, RBY. It might have even been the #2 game. RBY killed the 2009 game contest the way that Zelda killed the 2018 contest.

But that's not all this match did. It also exposed Majora as a fake. How could you pick Majora in GOTD when it got stomped by RBY the way it did? Majora nearly lost to GSC with RBY in the poll. You'd have to intentionally ignore the previous contest to believe in it, and a few people did because Zelda, but most people went with GSC.

And a few weeks later, Majora was a plucky underdog that won game of the decade. If you want to know why people question Majora's legitimacy, look no further than this match. RBY destroyed two contests at once. Too bad 2009 wasn't a 1v1. RBY could have destroyed some people. This match might even be too low on this list.
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Huh, I totally forgot about that match. That's truly a stunning result that foreshadowed much of the success Pokmon entrants saw from 2010-2015, so I really see why you ranked this one so highly.
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13.



I won't try to comment on the moment to moment drama of this match, if it was fair or any of that. That's not really why it's up this high. My understanding is this one only ran 22 hours due to a two hour downtime early in the match. This is one of the few contest matches on this list that I don't remember watching and I never feel comfortable relying on oral histories from others, especially when they are written for maximum drama. You can read about it on the wiki from people who can write better than I can.

Instead, I want to comment on what I think are the two most important aspects of this match:

1. Samus isn't immediately thought of as a top tier character. She's not an icon on the level of a Mario, Mega Man or Sonic. Samus is well-known and liked but she doesn't jump off the page as someone who could win a contest. She's not niche like Crono, but any random fan without contest knowledge would automatically pick Solid Snake or Mario over her in terms of general popularity.

This is her coming out party, going head to head with a legit icon and coming out on top. Her results in previous rounds do show that, but in 2002 you wouldn't have immediately thought that Samus was on Sonic's level. This match also isn't like Mario/Cloud where something clearly went wrong. Metroid Prime and Fusion weren't out yet in summer 2002 and we were all super confused as to how you turn Metroid into a first person game. There wasn't any Prime hype going on - we were all just baffled. This is the weakest form of Samus that we will ever get and she STILL hung even with Sonic. We talk about how amazing it is that Crono is legit, but Samus, having essentially just two slightly niche Metroid games and Smash, isn't that far from that.

2. This is the first super close matchup in contest history. DK/Aya was the previous closest, a 51/49 match that ended with DK winning by 1300 votes. Contests are all about those intense battles and this is the first of its kind. That's worth something.

This match, and the two that follow, put contests on the map. The contests were starting to draw a lot of attention from across the internet. Samus/Sonic deserves some credit for that. It's really fun to look back at this match and try to imagine what the reaction was like. Everyone certainly had Sonic in their bracket and Samus doing so well was probably really confusing. You could say that this is the first great upset in the contests -- sorry, overrated 1 and 2 seeds, but you don't qualify -- and this kicked off what could be the greatest week in contest history. Only spring 2004 can compete.
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Funny to see that back then Sonic was considered so strong but now? And he has a lot of games too!
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Back then, the only real info we had was how famous a character is. Sonic is more famous than Samus, so assumptions were made.
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This was the first match with major rallying offsite. I participated in that rallying for Samus. I rallied every random ass place I could think of. I rallied on Battlenet, I rallied on random IRC channels, I rallied on radom BBS's. CJayC was completely caught off guard by this. After the match he made a post where he mildly chastised us saying something to the effect of, " It should go without saying that you shouldn't spam other sites about this contest." LOL. It was a completely different time.
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transience posted...

I won't try to comment on the moment to moment drama of this match, if it was fair or any of that.

Thats some Switzerland level shit.
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@redrocket So you were a pioneer eh? Damn! So back then the Admin didn't want rallies? Times have changed a lot!
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Link versus Cloud posted...

transience posted...

I won't try to comment on the moment to moment drama of this match, if it was fair or any of that.

Thats some Switzerland level shit.

there really isn't much to say anyway. Sonic could have won this just as easily and the two hours, who knows because we don't have poll updates, and even then
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I wonder how a contest would have gone prior to the release of Melee. Samus being that strong off of Metroid NES and Super Metroid is insane, so I wonder if she would have been a high midcarder before Melee took its hold on the site.
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Safer_777 posted...

So Luigi VS Squall is the reason we have a minimum user level? Wuigi? Seriously?

There were many account suicides that day.
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redrocket posted...

This was the first match with major vote stuffing. I participated in that vote stuffing for Samus. I vote stuffed every random ass place I could think of. I vote stuffed on Battlenet, I vote stuffed on random IRC channels, I vote stuffed on radom BBS's. CJayC was completely caught off guard by this. After the match he made a post where he mildly chastised us saying something to the effect of, " It should go without saying that you shouldn't spam other sites about this contest." LOL. It was a completely different time.

I just wanted to fix this for historical accuracy. Its bullshit you rank this bullshit match at all, since its complete fabrication

Back in 2002, I had never played a Metroid game and considered it an abomination that Samus would beat an icon like Sonic. By the time we got a rematch in 2004, I had beaten Prime/Super and was then and forever in the Samus camp.
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12.



Every match going forward is going to have some level of madness in it. That's just what makes a good match great.

I don't have the words -- or more specifically, the data -- to do this one justice. It was a "you had to be there" moment. The only thing comparable to what Starcraft did was Draven, and we never truly saw Draven in a close match due to, well, we'll get there soon. Starcraft looked like it had met its match and then the most insane rally I've ever seen just springs to life. There was one update (15 minute, of course) that it won by like 900 votes. The vote total spiked by 500.

Starcraft had finally gone too far, and Ceej ended up killing votes that he could find via public proxy lists or some such. Melee was just out of its league. Personally, I think the Wind Waker result was too much for gamefaqs to handle. You know how people liked L-Block in 2007, but then 2008 came and everyone recoiled in terror? That was what happened after the Wind Waker match. Starcraft was cute when it was beating bad games, but when you come at the king and tumble it like that, people take you seriously. Starcraft could never stand up to Melee on traditional grounds so it went dark.

Now, was there cheating in Wind Waker? Honestly, who the hell knows. Starcraft was nuts, a good kind of nuts. A kind of nuts that could eventually lose to a stronger game and with an admin that paid close attention. Things weren't as tight on the security side of the internet in 2004. It was thanks to stuff like Starcraft and George Romero that we've had relatively legit results since. Some may dispute that, but I know Starcraft when I see it, and outside of Draven or Undertale we haven't seen it since.
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transience posted...

12.



Every match going forward is going to have some level of madness in it. That's just what makes a good match great.

I don't have the words -- or more specifically, the data -- to do this one justice. It was a "you had to be there" moment. The only thing comparable to what Starcraft did was Draven, and we never truly saw Draven in a close match due to, well, we'll get there soon. Starcraft looked like it had met its match and then the most insane rally I've ever seen just springs to life. There was one update (15 minute, of course) that it won by like 900 votes. The vote total spiked by 500.

Starcraft had finally gone too far, and Ceej ended up killing votes that he could find via public proxy lists or some such. Melee was just out of its league. Personally, I think the Wind Waker result was too much for gamefaqs to handle. You know how people liked L-Block in 2007, but then 2008 came and everyone recoiled in terror? That was what happened after the Wind Waker match. Starcraft was cute when it was beating bad games, but when you come at the king and tumble it like that, people take you seriously. Starcraft could never stand up to Melee on traditional grounds so it went dark.

Now, was there cheating in Wind Waker? Honestly, who the hell knows. Starcraft was nuts, a good kind of nuts. A kind of nuts that could eventually lose to a stronger game and with an admin that paid close attention. Things weren't as tight on the security side of the internet in 2004. It was thanks to stuff like Starcraft and George Romero that we've had relatively legit results since. Some may dispute that, but I know Starcraft when I see it, and outside of Draven or Undertale we haven't seen it since.

ANYONE WITH AN IQ OVER 3!!!!!!

Was there fucking cheating for SuckCraft?!!!

What the fuck kinda bullshit is that. No fucking shit there was!

Also, there is still plenty of cheating (I proved BT vote stuffed MM) but when you have a guy running something who is just south of worthless....

As a huge Starcraft fan, these results always made me so happy.
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RoseChevalier posted...

As a huge Starcraft fan, these results always made me so happy.

I mean... they arent legit. Most people still hated your fucking game...

Just the few who did like it were sad sack enough to vote stuff....

Wow, FinalFantasyV sure is getting riled up about this stuff
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CJayC never did remove votes in Melee/Starcraft. Overall he found around 650 cheated votes though was exhausted and stopped looking. He also debated on entirely removing a 3000 vote block which Starcraft won ~2050-950.
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Starcraft was hilarious. Especially in the Wind Waker match.

CARRIERS HAVE ARRIVED

WHAT NOW LINK?
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KamikazePotato posted...

Starcraft was hilarious. Especially in the Wind Waker match.

VOTE STUFFING HAS ARRIVED!!!

WHAT NOW LINK?

I remember CJayC having to specify later in the year that "Mass Carriers" isn't a character and wouldn't be eligible for the 2004 Summer Contest.
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

I remember CJayC having to specify later in the year that "Mass Carriers" isn't a character and wouldn't be eligible for the 2004 Summer Contest.

Worst decision of the CJayC regime.
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Mass carriers are a group of characters. They shouldn't count as a single entrant.
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Lopen posted...

_SecretSquirrel posted...

I remember CJayC having to specify later in the year that "Mass Carriers" isn't a character and wouldn't be eligible for the 2004 Summer Contest.

Worst decision of the CJayC regime.

Allowing Nintendo characters to blatantly cheat 4 times in 2 years is his worst decision by leaps and bounds

11,



16 hours and 40 minutes into the poll, Mass Effect 3 had a 9252 vote lead. It lost by 1056 votes.

This result -- I don't know what the second biggest comeback in contest history is, but it's probably not even one third as big as this one -- gets short-changed a bit because of where the site was (we were pulling in only about 35k votes a match), and because of what we had already seen (namely, Draven). Once the comeback started, you knew it was going to be fast enough. The comeback would oscillate to whatever was needed to finish it.

Still, this wasn't some joke character. This was Undertale, a heartfelt single player indie game with a huge presence with the touchy feely indie crowd. We weren't talking about a game with 57 versions like Tetris or with 70 quadrillion concurrent players like League. You could kinda get behind this one in a way that you couldn't with Draven.

Unfortunately, the Draven stuff, and even the L-Block stuff for some, brings us to our most nihilistic place the second we see interference. This match had 18,000 more votes than the previous day which is quite a lot when you're only averaging 35k. Undertale pulled in 66% of the votes in the afterschool block, with some single updates reaching as high as 84%. That's wild.

Unlike Draven's comeback over Chie, you knew this contest was over the second you saw this. Board 8 had just been burned by enough rallies to know, in the age of low vote totals, that we were about to get washed. There wasn't going to be some mythical game that could shut it down like Pikachu did to L in 2008. The only response here would be a counter rally response, and there wasn't any faction out there that cared as much as the Undertale crowd.

This contest hit at the perfect time when that game was just exploding out of the corners of the internet and people were out looking for anything Undertale. Gamefaqs just ended up in the middle of it.
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Many people called the contest over in Undertale's favor after its Round 1 match but that definitely wasn't the common opinion of Board 8 at the time. Even well into Pokemon vs Undertale, a lot of people were holding out hope that Pokemon could get the job done.
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transience posted...

11,



16 hours and 40 minutes into the poll, Mass Effect 3 had a 9252 vote lead. It lost by 1056 votes.

This result -- I don't know what the second biggest comeback in contest history is, but it's probably not even one third as big as this one -- gets short-changed a bit because of where the site was (we were pulling in only about 35k votes a match), and because of what we had already seen (namely, Draven). Once the comeback started, you knew it was going to be fast enough. The comeback would oscillate to whatever was needed to finish it.

Still, this wasn't some joke character. This was Undertale, a heartfelt single player indie game with a huge presence with the touchy feely indie crowd. We weren't talking about a game with 57 versions like Tetris or with 70 quadrillion concurrent players like League. You could kinda get behind this one in a way that you couldn't with Draven.

Unfortunately, the Draven stuff, and even the L-Block stuff for some, brings us to our most nihilistic place the second we see interference. This match had 18,000 more votes than the previous day which is quite a lot when you're only averaging 35k. Undertale pulled in 66% of the votes in the afterschool block, with some single updates reaching as high as 84%. That's wild.

Unlike Draven's comeback over Chie, you knew this contest was over the second you saw this. Board 8 had just been burned by enough rallies to know, in the age of low vote totals, that we were about to get washed. There wasn't going to be some mythical game that could shut it down like Pikachu did to L in 2008. The only response here would be a counter rally response, and there wasn't any faction out there that cared as much as the Undertale crowd.

This contest hit at the perfect time when that game was just exploding out of the corners of the internet and people were out looking for anything Undertale. Gamefaqs just ended up in the middle of it.

Im not gonna say anything else about this piece of shit except this.

This game sucks, and its fanbase is the worst humans in the world.

And I cant think of any way to show more how worthless the Admin is then 1: allowing it in, and 2: not disqualifying it.

This game nor its fanbase deserves no more of my words

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Many people called the contest over in Undertale's favor after its Round 1 match but that definitely wasn't the common opinion of Board 8 at the time. Even well into Pokemon vs Undertale, a lot of people were holding out hope that Pokemon could get the job done.

As someone who pulled the trigger on Pokemon > OoT in the finals, if only.
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some people thought Link would beat Draven after the MMX result too.
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Much of B8 was in denial, but certain smart people such as Leon (iirc) called 2015 over after Undertale prevailed against Mass Effect 3.
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http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k15&type=match&match=115

Only 55% of the picks were for Undertale. Undertale was the favourite to win but not by much and this was already Round 4.
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FinaIFantasyV posted...

transience posted...

11,



16 hours and 40 minutes into the poll, Mass Effect 3 had a 9252 vote lead. It lost by 1056 votes.

This result -- I don't know what the second biggest comeback in contest history is, but it's probably not even one third as big as this one -- gets short-changed a bit because of where the site was (we were pulling in only about 35k votes a match), and because of what we had already seen (namely, Draven). Once the comeback started, you knew it was going to be fast enough. The comeback would oscillate to whatever was needed to finish it.

Still, this wasn't some joke character. This was Undertale, a heartfelt single player indie game with a huge presence with the touchy feely indie crowd. We weren't talking about a game with 57 versions like Tetris or with 70 quadrillion concurrent players like League. You could kinda get behind this one in a way that you couldn't with Draven.

Unfortunately, the Draven stuff, and even the L-Block stuff for some, brings us to our most nihilistic place the second we see interference. This match had 18,000 more votes than the previous day which is quite a lot when you're only averaging 35k. Undertale pulled in 66% of the votes in the afterschool block, with some single updates reaching as high as 84%. That's wild.

Unlike Draven's comeback over Chie, you knew this contest was over the second you saw this. Board 8 had just been burned by enough rallies to know, in the age of low vote totals, that we were about to get washed. There wasn't going to be some mythical game that could shut it down like Pikachu did to L in 2008. The only response here would be a counter rally response, and there wasn't any faction out there that cared as much as the Undertale crowd.

This contest hit at the perfect time when that game was just exploding out of the corners of the internet and people were out looking for anything Undertale. Gamefaqs just ended up in the middle of it.

Im not gonna say anything else about this piece of shit except this.

This game sucks, and its fanbase is the worst humans in the world.

And I cant think of any way to show more how worthless the Admin is then 1: allowing it in, and 2: not disqualifying it.

This game nor its fanbase deserves no more of my words

Oh there are far worse people on this planet sadly.
The Zeldadrones

you guys really need to stop responding to MWC
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ha
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If Undertale faced Pokemon RBY or Rallied Melee in Round 2, I think it could have lost. The bandwagon wasn't THAT big by then. It didn't get challenged until Round 4, and by then it was a tad too late.
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transience posted...

you guys really need to stop responding to MWC

finally someone realizes the actual counter to people theyre annoyed by who clearly won't stop
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At least stop quoting him so I am wondering why people are talking to themselves, as opposed to actual exposure of his words.
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I held out hope that Melee would be able to outrally Undertale for the sake of my bracket.
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I'll get started on the top 10 tomorrow. any predictions? I don't think there are any shockers that people aren't expecting.
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