Board 8 > ~*~Zen Anal-yzes the Summer 2013 Contest - 5 Years *2* Late Edition~*~

(+) Yeah! (+)

Vivi over Cloud next to reign supreme.
---

Looking at who got last in the poll, it's more like Squall stole Vivi's
---

As if Squall could ever beat generic pokemon protagonist 1v1.

KamikazePotato posted...

Looking at who got last in the poll, it's more like Squall stole Vivi's

Vivi has his moment forever in beating Mario and winning another match doesn't really add to his glory from this contest because nothing was going to top that (because he sure wasn't winning the whole thing). I mean look at the number of people just from this topic alone who've talked about how great Vivi > Mario was.

Squall again gets jobbed because he wouldn't have needed a rally or a bandwagon to win that match without Vivi there.
---

Honestly I think Squall gets beat pretty easily even if Vivi loses. Modern FF wasn't doing so hot in 2013, Pokemon doesn't LFF with Nintendo nearly as badly as other 'normal' Nintendo properties do, and - maybe most importantly - good luck rallying for Squall. That's an upset that should've been attempted years ago.
---

I slightly object to using SSB's Pokemon Trainer as Red.
---

KamikazePotato posted...

Modern FF wasn't doing so hot in 2013

eh you're conflating everything with FFVII's struggles (rather ironically considering you're arguing that Vivi could've made the finals with the right setup)

Squall looked fine in his first two matches. Mario and Red didn't need to LFF each other that badly for him to win. The Mario series wasn't looking so hot in 2013 either.
---

(1)Mega Man vs (2)Zero vs (7)Charizard






It's amazing how a match with Serious Sam in it pulled in more votes than this crazy quarterfinals match. I'm bringing this 2002 classic up just to show how Mega Man always finds a way to impress in these things.

This was the match that ruined my shot at winning the Guru; if Charizard had pulled this off you would all have been nominating Metal Sonic right now. I probably wouldn't have made this topic, though, or if I did it would have been called ~*~Zen's "Road to Victory" CBIX Analysis - 5 Years and He Still Hasn't Let It Go~*~.

I really didn't care if I won or not, though. I'm happy we got to see POKEFEAR stopped dead in its tracks here. Everyone had counted Mega Man out thanks to Zero being in this poll; Zero had looked pretty good up until this point, too, and Charizard was just considered too strong of an obstacle. A lot of other Noble Nine members had let us down and at this point Mega Man really didn't have many "new" games at the time other than 9 and 10 which were a few years old and basically just cash grabs. Good cash grabs, but cash grabs nonetheless.

Charizard never really had a shot at this match once it started. Out the gate he looked like garbage and even when he managed to pull ahead Mega Man was right there to take first place back. It was good to see Mega Man of all NN members escape to the semifinals.

How did this happen? Is Mega Man just that universally loved? Is Mega Man so deeply mired in Nintendo SFF that Zero was affecting Charizard too? I don't know. Probably. Fuck it at this point it's 2013 and that's all the excuse I need

Here's a fun exercise, rank the Noble Nine members by how much you personally give a shit about them. I'll start:

Snake
Sonic
Link
Mega Man
Mario
Samus
Crono
Cloud
Sephiroth

Allen can keep Sephiroth out of the CBX banner forever
---

LeonhartFour posted...

KamikazePotato posted...

Modern FF wasn't doing so hot in 2013

eh you're conflating everything with FFVII's struggles (rather ironically considering you're arguing that Vivi could've made the finals with the right setup)

Squall looked fine in his first two matches. Mario and Red didn't need to LFF each other that badly for him to win. The Mario series wasn't looking so hot in 2013 either.

Squall looked 'fine' but he didn't look 'able to beat Mario in any normal situation' fine. I don't think Red being there would have cut it.

FF9 is closer to old FF than modern FF (yes, despite coming after FF7 and FF8) in trends and demographics.
---

ZenOfThunder posted...

if Charizard had pulled this off you would all have been nominating Metal Sonic right now

another reason to be grateful Mega Man won

personal Noble Nine rankings for me

Snake > Cloud > Sonic > Mega Man > Mario > Crono > Sephiroth > Link >= Samus
---

Charizard is my favorite Pokemon and man it still felt amazing to watch Pokemon stumble at the finish for the first time since...ever?
---

KamikazePotato posted...

Squall looked 'fine' but he didn't look 'able to beat Mario in any normal situation' fine.

It wasn't a normal situation. Plus, like I said, Mario honestly didn't look that great himself. He seemed weaker in 2013 than previous years. Mario was only worth 53% on Crono in the REVENGE match when Chrono Trigger appeared to have hit rock bottom. He probably doesn't lose that match against Vivi in 2007 or 2008.

KamikazePotato posted...

FF9 is closer to old FF than modern FF (yes, despite coming after FF7 and FF8) in trends and demographics.

Eh, not really. That's a convenient explanation, but it's not that different from VII, VIII, or X.
---

Noble Nine Rankings:

1. Cloud
2. Sephiroth
3. Crono
4. Snake
5. Link
6. Mario
7. Mega Man
8. Samus
9. Sonic
---

Noble nine ranking.

Top 2 characters of all time tier.

Sonic
Mega Man

Still in Top 10 tier

Sephiroth
Cloud

Awesome but I prefer other characters in your series tier

Crono
Solid Snake

I still love you but it's boring that you win all the time tier

Samus
Link

I don't dislike you but I always want you to lose to other characters tier.

Mario aka Vivi fodder.
---

LeonhartFour posted...

He seemed weaker in 2013 than previous years. Mario was only worth 53% on Crono in the REVENGE match when Chrono Trigger appeared to have hit rock bottom.

Look at that another way - Mario was still worth 53% on Crono (who is stronger than Squall) when MMX probably overlapped with him more than with Crono.

Eh, not really. That's a convenient explanation, but it's not that different from VII, VIII, or X.

'Modern' FF has much worse early votes and much better day votes than FF9. I also don't think it's a coincidence that FF9's stock has risen with the fall of votals just like all the old FF characters have, while the modern iterations have gotten weaker.
---

Personal NN:

Link > Samus > Sonic > Mario > Snake > Mega Man > Crono > Cloud > Sephiroth
---

(3)Draven vs (11)Mewtwo vs (1)Sephiroth




I visited Draven's bio on the LoL site and it looks exactly the same as it did in 2013 when I went there to get pics of him and write his bio. Like, literally nothing has changed. It's been 5 years but I remember all the art there and the shallow backstory he was given.

Either Draven really ain't shit and the LoL fanbase will upvote anything not named "Teemo" or LoL is incredibly stale. You know what else is incredibly stale? Talking about Draven matches.

Draven had beaten Link, so at this point if you took anything over him you were crazy. We all knew he had this shit locked down, but you still had some people pushing for either Mewtwo based on POKEFEAR (fat chance arguing that point after Charizard bombed) or hoping Snake somehow had actually grown stronger than Link and that he'd beat Draven in the finals.

Uh, were those people not paying attention to the extra 50,000 or so votes Draven brought in from rallies alone in his last match? Most matches were lucky to hit 50,000 total. In 2013, the year the voters had forsaken us, Draven was free to walk up, kick Link in the dick, buttdevestate our asses and pry first place right from Bacon's open hands.

But then this happened:

"Hello! After discussing this topic internally, we've decided to remove this and other Draven CBIX threads for the following reasons. First, simply put, they aren't fully relevant to League of Legends. However, even if they were considered to be extremely relevant, there's another reason for their removal: the moderators of /r/LeagueofLegends received a request from a verified staff member at GameFAQs, asking us to remove the thread rallying behind Draven, as it was manipulating the voting on their contest.

As many of you know, reddit has long taken a hard stance against vote manipulation, and it would be incredibly unfair of us to tolerate this sort of activity just because it affects another site and not ourselves. This is why the post has been removed. It isn't fair of us to ask other sites not to game reddit, if we allow reddit to game other sites. Posts on reddit should only be voted on by redditors, not bots or spammers. Polls on other sites should be voted on by their communities, not ours. Thanks."

Bacon you are our one true God, all hands to the sky, praise this man:



But just as lord Bacon giveth, he also taketh away.

Turns out that the person who contacted r/LoL wasn't actually Bacon or something. Did anyone ever own up to that? I can't believe the r/LoL mods even fell for it, did they not ask for verification? Guess their mod staff is as much of a joke as the community.

I think at some point Bacon asked r/LoL to let the rallies back so he could make an extra $4 off of the ad revenue, and whatever lead and momentum Mewtwo was gone within a few minutes. No exaggeration, Mewtwo was done after less than an hour of rallying.

I kind of get why Bacon turned the rally switch back on. Rallies had already fucked up the results of this contest and if some jabroni was going to mess with the status quo by removing rallies to give himself some extra points in his Expert Bracket then it was super unfair to the rest of us who had already accepted Draven as our new lord and master.

Talking about all the craziness surrounding this contest is making me really appreciate it, holy shit. I had buried a lot of this in the back of my mind but you can't find drama better than this, even on Bravo!. There needs to be a Real Housewives of CBS Interactive.

Speaking of housewives, we'll get to that soon. Can't believe I'm even saying that. What a fucking nutso contest that I have to devote a paragraph to Bacon's wife.
---

Snake

Samus
Link
Mario
Crono

Mega Man
Cloud
Sephiroth
Sonic
---

Ugh Draven/Mewtwo

I forgot to make an expert pick that match so I ended up around 50th instead of like 10th or something
---

Snake
Link
Cloud
Crono
Mega Man
Mario
Samus Aran
Sephiroth
Sonic
---

Mega Man
Samus
Link
Mario
Crono
Sonic
Snake
Sephiroth
Cloud

Mega Man is like my favorite video game character, Samus is a character I really like, Link and Mario I think are funnier in their tv show or cd-i formats than in their more well-known incarnations, I like Chrono Trigger but that's about it for Crono, Sonic I only like ironically, the other three I don't give a shit about and I only ranked Sephiroth higher than Cloud because he's funnier

KamikazePotato posted...

Mario was still worth 53% on Crono (who is stronger than Squall) when MMX probably overlapped with him more than with Crono.

Crono being stronger than Squall in 2013 is debatable and so is MMX having a disproportionate effect on the poll. He didn't seem to hamper Mario much at all in 2008, and they were in multiple polls together. He certainly wouldn't have more of an effect on Mario than Red would, no matter how much you want to argue Pokemon resists LFF.

KamikazePotato posted...

'Modern' FF has much worse early votes and much better day vote.

Eh, that wasn't really the case in 2015. Pretty much across the board, FF's best time was the morning vote. Old FF and New FF weren't that distinct in their trends that year.

KamikazePotato posted...

I also don't think it's a coincidence that FF9's stock has risen with the fall of votals just like all the old FF characters have, while the modern iterations have gotten weaker.

Eh, I feel like that's a false correlation. What makes FFVII-X distinct from other games in the series is that they're much more popular in Europe.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5727-from-the-last-27-years-which-numbered-final-fantasy-title-is

Look at the Geolocation results there (where FFIX actually beat FFX in the UK). I think FFVI and CT have been able to get stronger because Europe's influence in general isn't what it used to be (which is partly why FFVII seems to be falling off because it's an absolute monster there).

It's honestly hard to tell how much IX's stock has risen. Its 2015 results aren't super convincing to me of anything. They seem inconclusive. Zidane doesn't seem to have gotten that much better either. Vivi's the standout, and there's a good reason for that. He has a broader appeal because of the black mage design. There's a reason why he's always been the most popular FFIX character by a lot. If you tried to rally for Zidane, there's no way it'd succeed.
---

Snake
Cloud
Link
Sephiroth
Mario
Crono
Samus
Mega Man
Sonic
---

This match is beautiful because Megaman was supposed to be the quintessential dead N9 member, and instead leaves the contest with a serious shot at beating Cloud in a future 1v1.

Link
Samus
Mario
Cloud
Sonic
Mega Man
Snake
Sephiroth
Cloud

well a lot of people have a shot at beating Cloud in a 1-on-1 this year (probably one of the biggest things people are going to be looking for in the upcoming contest is "who can beat Cloud and Sephiroth?")

but that's more because of Cloud than anything anyone else has done
---

what is the weakest pokemon Cloud could potentially lose to? including ones that haven't been in a contest

like if anyone wants to take a crack at listing Pokemon they think Cloud could potentially take an L to that would be great
---

KamikazePotato posted...

Charizard is my favorite Pokemon and man it still felt amazing to watch Pokemon stumble at the finish for the first time since...ever?

Same here, I don't even care that much about Mega Man (until last week I'd only played the Battle Network series), but it's nice to see something getting vindicated in this contest.

ZenOfThunder posted...

Turns out that the person who contacted r/LoL wasn't actually Bacon or something. Did anyone ever own up to that? I can't believe the r/LoL mods even fell for it, did they not ask for verification? Guess their mod staff is as much of a joke as the community.

I think at some point Bacon asked r/LoL to let the rallies back so he could make an extra $4 off of the ad revenue, and whatever lead and momentum Mewtwo was gone within a few minutes. No exaggeration, Mewtwo was done after less than an hour of rallying.

This isn't exactly how it went down. It's very likely that Bacon was the person that contacted reddit. However, he had to backpedal once his involvement was made public because legally, he was not allowed to directly try and influence the contest that way as there were money prizes on the line. His wife then became the scapegoat so he wouldn't get into trouble. Honestly, he tried his best to help.

Bacon has also said that rallies barely contribute anything to site revenue because no one who comes here for a rally clicks on ads or stays after the contest is over.
---

although it's weird to think that this will be our first Character Battle since Smash 4 came out

so while FFVII is on the downswing Cloud might be able to have a rejuvenation this contest because of his role there

it'll be interesting to see what all the 3rd party newcomers look like this year
---

I need to play FF7 sometime maybe.

Mega Man
Samus
Link
Snake
Mario
Sonic
Cloud
Sephiroth
Crono
---

I wonder what fraction of Smash 4 players even bought all of the DLC characters
---

LordoftheMorons posted...

I wonder what fraction of Smash 4 players even bought all of the DLC characters

It doesn't even need to be that much to get Cloud back up to respectability, honestly.

although he runs the risk of getting SFF'd by Link now I guess

he could pull a 2006 Snake where he dominates the whole contest and inexplicably loses to Samus in the finals anyway
---

Link
Snake
Mario
Samus Aran
Mega Man
Cloud
Sephiroth
Sonic
Crono

is probably how I'd rank them in strength going into CBX.
---

Also, that Mega Man match is seriously my favorite ever. I was pretty down about the state of Mega Man, so seeing him lose to an overrated Pokemon was obviously something I wasn't looking forward to. But seeing him keep it even for so long was amazing, and I even started rallying on Mega Man and Capcom fansites. Didn't get many replies, but I'd like to think I helped achieve that result. Beautiful stuff.
---

LeonhartFour posted...

LordoftheMorons posted...

I wonder what fraction of Smash 4 players even bought all of the DLC characters

It doesn't even need to be that much to get Cloud back up to respectability, honestly.

although he runs the risk of getting SFF'd by Link now I guess

he could pull a 2006 Snake where he dominates the whole contest and inexplicably loses to Samus in the finals anyway

I think we got to a point where everything can SFF everything because all the franchises gameFAQs loves have fused into one big Nintendo blob and the mainstream gamers moved on other platforms/franchises.

Like, anything that has contest strength is eligible to appear in Smash any day now.

get Spider-Man into Smash so we can persuade Allen to expand eligibility for the contest
---

Snake

Mega Man
Samus
Link
Sonic
Mario
Crono
Cloud
Sephiroth
---

ZenOfThunder posted...

what is the weakest pokemon Cloud could potentially lose to? including ones that haven't been in a contest

like if anyone wants to take a crack at listing Pokemon they think Cloud could potentially take an L to that would be great

Shelldar
---

LeonhartFour posted...

get Spider-Man into Smash so we can persuade Allen to expand eligibility for the contest

can you explain this recent "Spider-Man in Smash" obsession you've had

also who is your favorite Spider-Man villain that isn't the Big Wheel

Mine is the Big Wheel
---

I'm still amazed that Mega Man somehow beat Charizard with Zero also in the poll

I'm just fucking mindblown by that

ZenOfThunder posted...

can you explain this recent "Spider-Man in Smash" obsession you've had

Spider-Man is the best and it'd be cool to have a non-VG character in there (no Goku please).

ZenOfThunder posted...

also who is your favorite Spider-Man villain that isn't the Big Wheel

I'm going to be boring and say Venom.
---

My serious answer is probably Mysterio, then maybe Kraven (Kraven's Last Hunt was one of my first comics), then probably Shocker

I would love Spider-Man in Smash but he's more likely to be in PSASBAR 2
---

Kraven's Last Hunt is pretty awesome, yeah.

If I had to give a non-boring answer, I'd probably pick Hobgoblin
---

Doc Oct pretty easily.
---

ZenOfThunder posted...

(1)Mega Man vs (2)Zero vs (7)Charizard

I ended up loving this match despite the Zard losing. Such a great finish
---

Also

Snake > Sonic > Samus > Cloud > Sephiroth > Samus > Mario > Link > Megaman

Snake #1 is the easiest choice. Like laughably easy.

LordoftheMorons posted...

Ugh Draven/Mewtwo

I forgot to make an expert pick that match so I ended up around 50th instead of like 10th or something

In my ("victorious"!) expert challenge I did have Mewtwo over Draven for a while, I thought Mewtwo could stop the rally for some reason (I feel like there was some vague reasoning but I can't remember what it was). Luckily common sense kicked in to help me take GLORIOUS "VICTORY"
---

Take your pick:

MissingNo beats Squall, leading to Vivi winning against MissingNo/Red. Then imagine Zelda beating Charizard and Mega Man, leading to a Samus/Vivi/Zelda match. VIvi could have made the finals!

Or, on the other hand...

Imagine Vivi losing Mario, leading to Mario/Squall/Red where Squall takes it. Then imagine Zelda beating Charizard and Mega Man, leading to Samus/Squall/Zelda. Squall could have made the finals!
---