Board 8 > my 5 best and worst picks in contest history

(+) Yeah! (+)

transcience posted...

I did pick Dante > Vincent, but not Kerrigan. I never even considered it even though I had Vincent pegged as a disappointment.

See, that's why I thought you might have picked it because I remember you doubting how popular Vincent could be since he's just an optional character.

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I just checked the oracle and I had Vincent over Kerrigan with 62% which, while not great, was surprisingly high for a debated match!

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You had to believe in Kerrigan to pick that with any reasonable level of doubt on Vincent and yeah I never recalled him singing her praises whatsoever.

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Hmm, another weird pick that a lot of people had that was pretty bad in hindsight was Phoenix > Gordon in 2006.

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GFNW

until he did

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Underleveled posted...

Hmm, another weird pick that a lot of people had that was pretty bad in hindsight was Phoenix > Gordon in 2006.

Dude lost to Tina Armstrong

Anything was possible

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This site was all goo goo ga ga for Chrono Trigger back in the early contests.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

This site was all goo goo ga ga for Chrono Trigger back in the early contests.

it still is

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That brings up a good question.

Do you take Phoenix over Gordon now?

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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

That brings up a good question.

Do you take Phoenix over Gordon now?

Absolutely. Half-Life is fully dead, VR Alyx or not.

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man, forget Phoenix

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7286-division-7-round-1-luigi-vs-miles
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7265-division-4-round-1-bowser-vs-gordon

he might even lose to edgeworth

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Keep in mind that Gordon only got 58% on Phoenix when Half-Life 2 hype still existed and Ace Attorney was like a year old. I think Phoenix takes him relatively easily.

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I'll admit I forgot Gordon was even in the last contest. Yeah you needed to be a special kind of trash to fail to get 25% in a match last contest.

Let's just rerun Gordon vs. Tina Armstrong.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Last contest definitely validated the Samus > Mario folks, even though Mario won twice. Took 14 years, but I finally get it. Mario only won the rematch because I had a class I was tutoring vote for Mario at the very end anyway.

That contest also proved the sprite factor doesnt exist.

Wrong

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Sprite Factor conclusively exists because I dare anyone else to explain 2003 Magus v Link and Solid Shit's entire career without it.

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I know Ulti loves the sprite round and wants it to continue, and I know he doesn't purposely sabotage characters with it.

But ugly pics do hurt. We've got 20 years of contests demonstrating it.

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My best is definitely getting Kirbys 2008 run right. Also while it was fairly obvious, the sheer brashness of the No Mercy proponents made that one delightful.

My worst is Kerrigan>Vincent because I didnt know who Vincent was and went with the seed. Oops.

LeonhartFour posted...

Keep in mind that Gordon only got 58% on Phoenix when Half-Life 2 hype still existed and Ace Attorney was like a year old. I think Phoenix takes him relatively easily.

Not only was HL2 still fresh but Episode 1 was like four months old. Half-Life was near its absolute peak of popularity then. One of the more interesting long term contest trends has been the waxing and waning of Half-Lifes fortunes.

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pictures dont really matter anymore because our voters have been doing this shit for a decade

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transcience posted...

pictures dont really matter anymore because our voters have been doing this shit for a decade

I feel the fact all voters are vets at this point makes pic factor stronger in certain cases

like people are absolutely gonna meme it up if Solid Shit shows up, it's a contest tradition at this point

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Best #1: Chrono Trigger TO THE FINALS (2015)

Chrono Trigger 65.52% 30132
Final Fantasy X 34.48%15860
TOTAL VOTES 45992

Yeah, not 2004, when it actually made the final. 2015, its final hurrah.

Chrono Trigger had a real rough... honestly, a rough decade leading up to this. 2004 was its apex as CT made the final in fairly dramatic fashion, and Crono beat Mario. From there, Crono lost to Mario bad enough that it was never a discussion again; Crono lost to Sonic in embarrassing fashion; Crono lost to Vincent in a sad fourway; Crono losing to Missingno in the first round.

It went from bad to embarrassing, and that's to say nothing about Frog, who lost to Axel in a sad fourway comeback, and Magus, who lost to a bag of sand (I got that one right!). And before you say games don't equal characters, CT got waxed by Mario 64 in 2009 despite another Mario game being in the poll, the last time CT was eligible for a game contest. CT's trends were to do well for the first four hours and then just fall apart because no one knew or played the game anymore.

The main CT debate for the 2015 contest was if it could get past FFX which really says it all. FFX was a 116-79 Guru favourite and the winner was widely expected to go down to Melee. I went the complete other way on CT - since our vote totals had fallen way the hell off, I doubled down on truly classic GameFAQs games. I thought CT would be a monster in this reduced contest footprint format as all the voters had left the site. I had FF6 as a tossup vs. FF7 because that's how those favourites polls go these days. Super Metroid was going to be legit for the first time. I believed in team SNES, basically.

And that was absolutely right. For whatever reason, SNES games were monsters this contest, and CT looked like a godslayer. It demolished its round 1 and round 2 opponents with 80%+ victories and while FFX was stuck with better competition, it couldn't get out of the 50s. This anticipated match finally came and, whoa. Could Ocarina of Time put 65% on FFX? Did Melee even have a chance? Was this the contest favourite?

And then the worst thing happened: rallies. Chrono Trigger walked into the Melee match and dropped 60% on it at the start. It's crazy to see Melee, an early vote legend, get under 40% in the early going. But then the rallies started and before you knew it, CT's 800 vote lead it had built up was gone. CT then made a valiant effort to come back during the daytime against Melee -- think about that for a second -- but it wasn't ever going to be enough. This match ended up a full 30,000 votes above the previous matchup.

I didn't hate L-Block, I didn't hate Undertale and I didn't even hate Draven. But you know what? Fuck Super Smash Brothers Melee for ruining Chrono Trigger's great redemption arc. It would have gotten annihilated by Undertale anyway but at least that was a feel good story. Melee doesn't need help around these parts.

Argh, it still makes me so mad that this happened. Here I was, one of just 5 people to take CT to the finals, and it was all dead. I still consider it my best pick even though the future refused to change.

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As a reminder, based on all of their results in that contest thus far, CT was projected to beat OoT with around 53%.

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That's a really good prediction! I had CT going to the final four.... only 14 people predicted that. I had it losing to RBY in the semi's, though. Kinda crazy that FFX was the favorite over CT... I had forgotten about that. (actually, I forgot I had picked CT to go that far... I thought I had picked Smash to make the finals, but when I think about it, that pick was done in my alt bracket)

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I am so sorry that happened to you.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6147-best-game-ever-day-25-round-3-chrono-trigger-vs-final
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6155-best-game-ever-day-29-round-3-zelda-ocarina-of-time-vs-final

Chrono Trigger did better on FF10 than OoT did on FF9. CT would have went into the final with every numerical advantage. What would the board look like when faced with the possibility that a god could be defeated clean? I mean there were people who thought OoT stood a chance against Undertale.
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For the record, Frog beat Axel, but it was extremely sketchy!

But yeah, Melee rallying is the worst offense ever committed in any contest.

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oh right! that was such a bomb that its all I can remember. (fourways suck for remembering what happened.)

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transcience posted...

oh right! that was such a bomb that its all I can remember. (fourways suck for remembering what happened.)

Yeah, Axel actually caught him and passed him near the end, but then Frog started getting those suspicious spikes like Crono did against in Vincent in 2008!

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Knuckles magus tho

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heres a take - thats always been an overreaction

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It's probably four years away, but you know what we need for the next games contest? A classic game contest, with games only from the 90's. Or GOTD, 90's style. That way we might get to see CT get a championship without any worry of rallies.

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thats a cool idea! until you realize that thats just called best game ever

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Best. (Non-rallied.) Game. Ever.

I see no issues here.
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star fox 64 wins

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What happened to Chrono Trigger in that contest was downright tragic. I get sad whenever I think about it. We were priming up to have an all-timer of a match and then the contest just broke.

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I guess you could compare it to a baby version of the 2003 contest when everything lined up for Cloud, huh? argh

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transience posted...

I guess you could compare it to a baby version of the 2003 contest when everything lined up for Cloud, huh? argh

The 65% on FFX was like when Cloud doubled Sonic and you realized, "Holy crap it could actually do this"

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WORST #1: Tetris TO THE FINALS (2004)

The Legend of Zelda 74.57% 52197
Tetris 25.43% 17801
TOTAL VOTES 69998

Yeah, I can hear you snorting through my computer. This pick is suuuuuuuuuuuper dumb! The rationale is obvious: Tetris is a game the entire world has played, and that the entire world likes. As it turns out, Tetris is the Pac-Man of games - it's well-liked but put it against a game with name recognition and it just collapses. Put it in this contest and it would probably do really well! But put it against a big Nintendo game and it dies.

And the worst opponent you could give it is The Legend of Zelda. Tetris did well enough through the first two rounds but Zelda's first two rounds made it look like it was going to win the damn contest. This match came and it wasn't even close. If there was one match that said "all Zelda final four", it was this one.

My 2004 games bracket is hilarious. It had Tetris, FF6, FF7 and FF10 in the semis. It had FF1 beating Mario 3 which is its own separate joke that isn't even worth writing about. It had Super Metroid over LTTP. It probably had SOTN over Goldeneye, Vice City over Melee and Metroid Prime over its eightpack. This one is so bad that it's probably not worth mentioning, but man, there's no doubt that it's my worst pick ever.

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I had Pikachu winning in 2k2 so I can't judge.
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I had Mario 3 winning the whole contest because I thought everyone thought it was the best game ever! But yeah, my Games Contest bracket was bad but still had a few gems in it!

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I didn't make a bracket, but I had Cloud! that was like my CT pick argh

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Melee is the worst

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i had metroid prime over vice cit
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I had Kingdom Hearts > Metroid Prime

I had a perfect Division 16 except for Sonic 2 > Mario World

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god damn I really eviscerated FFX in my Crew writeup. and I still undershot it by 5%

Transiences Analysis

Dear Final Fantasy X,

You are a contest fraud and have been for a decade. Let's run down your list of transgressions: letting FFTA get 33% on you, losing to Melee before Melee had much strength at all (56% on MGS2 is not impressive and that is Square's best year - you still dropped it), struggling to advance in both OOT/RBY/Melee/FFX and OOT/MGS4/FFX/Brawl, putting up pretty pedestrian numbers on games like Golden Sun and Viewtiful Joe.. you look good when you're in big multiway polls like best FF or Game of the Decade against 4 other Nintendo games, but otherwise, I'm not impressed. 64% on a PC-deboosted Half-Life and 55% on Mega Man X is more your style. You've had built in reasons for underperforming for forever - SSBM's match picture, Kingdom Hearts dragging you down in 2009, Majora's Mask boosts in the semifinals - but really, they're just excuses.

Your one good match was against Resident Evil 4, a nice 56/44 match that is proving to be less impressive than we thought as both MGS3 and RE4 have been underwhelming by a pretty large degree this year. I'll be curious to see if TP and KH2 follow the same trend. I don't think that you've deboosted so much as we're finally getting the matches to show the truth. Division by era and fourways really did you a world of good.

Chrono Trigger is on a different plane than you are. It's widely considered to be an all-time game even outside of GameFAQs. Most Square fans will go FF7 > CT > FF6 > FF10 and there's a chance of some weird SFF here. You've never put up a performance on the level of Chrono Trigger's first two rounds. You're a nice upper tier Square game but you're closer to FF8 or FF9 than you are to FF6 or Chrono Trigger.

Please apologize to Leonhart for getting his hopes up for the better part of a decade.

yours,
transience

transience's prediction: Chrono Trigger with 60.14%

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I still maintain FFX would've beaten Brawl...! And it's always been in Melee's league. That's been the overrated game!

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Haste_2 posted...

It's probably four years away, but you know what we need for the next games contest? A classic game contest, with games only from the 90's. Or GOTD, 90's style. That way we might get to see CT get a championship without any worry of rallies.

I made a mock bracket for Game of the 90s a while back.

It's crazy how many potentially strong games there are from the 90s we have yet to see in any form in the contests.

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Super Smash Bros

MELEE

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LeonhartFour posted...

it still is

But not quite to the same extent.

I picked Chrono Trigger to win its division in 2015 with the rationale that a close loss to Mario 64 was better than a close loss to Majora's Mask or Brawl.

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I have made some shocking picks in the past, will almost surely make more awful picks this time (because I'm not planning on modifying my original bracket, I know there's some awful picks), but I was one of the 8 to call Sub-Zero over Master Chief as well. Think that would be my best pick of all time.

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