Board 8 > ~*Ultimaterializer's Post-Contest Analysis!!*~

(+) Yeah! (+)

Often duplicated, never replicated :D

Is what I would normally say, but we've had some fantastic stuff this year. Safer, Zen, Lightning Strikes all did some fantastic work, with Zen being the MVP. Please make sure you guys add your stuff to the wiki as I make the pages. I'd love to have it on there. Just make sure my writeup is at the top is all, because I have Hulk Hogan's creative control card =p

Zen, please add gifs. Begging you bro.

Let's do this.

Pre Contest

This was the tenth GameFAQs character battle, and the first contest anyone has actually cared about since 2015. This was our first 1v1 character battle since 2010, our first 1v1 character battle with 24 hour matches since 2006, and our first 1v1 character battle with a traditional format since 2005. 2006 had a half male, half female split that led to a ton of snubs, whereas 2005 was a very traditional format with its seeding even considering the legend rule. So for all intents and purposes, Character Battle X was our first traditional bracket in over a decade.

SBAllen walked back the legend rule for Character Battle X. After opening nominations up to Board 8 first and foremost for a few weeks before letting the entire site pick entrants, two cool new features were revealed. The entire Noble Nine outside of Sephiroth was put into a legends bracket where all eight would face the eight division winners, and that bracket would become double elimination for our first ever double elimination championship format. When I get to that in my writeups, I'm putting the seeding in a proper order for the wiki. My PCA, halfway my wiki, my rules =p

Seeding was a standard 1-16 per division format, though with Board 8 having far and away the most nominations in the field, some of the seedings were way out of whack. The #1 overall seed was Dante, for instance, but then we had some insane things like Waluigi as a 2 seed, Metal Sonic as a 5 seed, Metal Man finally making a bracket, and 2B from NieR Automata getting a 1 seed. It was all in good fun, because come voting time seedings don't usually matter much. I could spoil a whole bunch of stuff here, but we have 150 writeups and I need to save some material.

Rallies were a huge sticking point in the past, even though those people were all over any related subreddit during this contest begging for votes in every close match. Isn't it funny how that works? Anyway, here is the list of voting changes that Allen implemented to help stymie the effects of rallies:

-registered user votes counted double (only users registered before the start of the contest got the bonus when voting, which prevented registering mid contest to rally)<br/>
-poll start time changed to midnight UTC (8pm EDT/7pm EST), which was very smart because it essentially gives the favorite an extra 4 hours to build up a lead, the theory being that a rally usually doesn't kick off until the next day and then whoops, you only have until 8pm to come back instead of midnight<br/>
-to vote, one HAD to vote in every match; this one was very underrated pre-contest but its value became apparent later
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If you want to skip all the writeups and just go right to the post contest section, this contest was very easy to summarize: GameFAQs likes Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Zelda: Breath of the Wild a lot. The former came out mid contest and the entire contest had very noticeable results based on Smash hype. VERY well deserved hype, I might add. Am I allowed to call Ultimate a better game than Melee? Is that blasphemy? Is that a thing I'm allowed to do?

I can? Good. Because Ultimate is the better game. Yeah I said it. Don't even try to @ me.

Final side note before we get going on this bad boy. For those reading this on the wiki it won't affect you, but for GameFAQs readers I'm skipping match pic links this time around unless it's called for. Allen used super generic images for the first few rounds this contest and digging them up on creativename's site is a massive annoyance. Then when user pics were finally a thing, Allen split up the submissions between character and background, which meant one user could have a character pic chosen and someone else could have a background pic chosen. Why we couldn't just, you know, make a picture is beyond me, but hey. I think Allen wanted to double up the chances people's stuff got picked, because things like "quality over quantity", "the law of diminishing returns", and "less is more" are not in that man's lexicon.

Anyway, let's go. My writer's block is gone and I'm ready to beast through this thing.
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Ulti_PCA posted...

Final side note before we get going on this bad boy. For those reading this on the wiki it won't affect you, but for GameFAQs readers I'm skipping match pic links this time around unless it's called for. Allen used super generic images for the first few rounds this contest and digging them up on creativename's site is a massive annoyance. Then when user pics were finally a thing, Allen split up the submissions between character and background, which meant one user could have a character pic chosen and someone else could have a background pic chosen. Why we couldn't just, you know, make a picture is beyond me, but hey. I think Allen wanted to double up the chances people's stuff got picked, because things like "quality over quantity", "the law of diminishing returns", and "less is more" are not in that man's lexicon.

definitely the worst part of the contest by far
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Just wanna say, these are the things that got me into these contests for more than a cursory glance. Read the 2002-2006 ones all through high school, so thank you, always appreciate these = )
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Kamekguy posted...

tag

Just wanna say, these are the things that got me into these contests for more than a cursory glance. Read the 2002-2006 ones all through high school, so thank you, always appreciate these = )

I love you guys too man.

No matter how I act on B8 'in character' (I just let my id go nuts here honestly because a guy's gotta let off steam sometimes!), the PCAs are 100% the real me. Sure there's lots of nonsense, but it's as real as real gets with me and it's not like I'm 100% proud of some of my older stuff. We'll get to that. (looking at you Mario/Samus 2005)
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will you use this account just for stats stuff and not for trolling

(you can "troll" in stats stuff i mean outside of it)
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I really want somebody to end up remembering the French Revolution terminology I used for the double-vote phenomenon.

Also the fact that the double vote was a completely overblown precaution in the end, since Draven and Sans got antivoted to hell and back, and even Monika's rally wasn't enough to get her out of the 30s against freaking Wario.
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Division 1 Round 1: (1)Dante vs (16)Cuphead

(1)Dante - 18896 [71.59%]
(16)Cuphead - 7498 [28.41%]
Total Votes - 26394
Prediction Percentage - 81.71%

I know this contest started two months ago, but doesn't it feel like a year? It legitimately feels like this match was an entire lifetime ago, especially given how utterly bizarre it was for Dante to be the #1 overall seed in the first place. We are reaching a point of singularity in our culture where everything feels like it's happening at the same time and at no time at all, and it's really jarring. Or I'm just getting old and time is going too fast for me at this point. Anyway, here is the list of every #1 overall seed we've ever had, in order, even including the weird ones limited to format types. For fourways (puke) or threeways (kinky) I just listed the winner of the first match:

-Mario
-Link
-Super Mario Bros 3
-Link
-Bowser
-Mario
-The Legend of Zelda
-Samus
-Yoshi
-Zack Fair
-Tetris
-Link
-Fallout 3
-Mario and Bowser
-Link
-Chrono Trigger
-1995
-Dante

The ones that stand out as being thoroughly ridiculous are Zack, Fallout 3, 1995, and Dante. Fallout 3 happened because of the format (Game of the Decade), and 1995 happened because Allen had the bright idea to make a contest called Best Year in Gaming, an idea so dumb that Allen has yet to add it to the list of past contests as of this writing. Seriously: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/contest

This leaves Zack and Dante, both of which earned their position from new game hype. I know people reading this after 2010 or so won't believe this, but Final Fantasy 7 used to be liked on GameFAQs. It's true! So back in 2008, Zack got a bunch of nominations and was thrown into the first match. That bracket was largely randomized, but hey. Not taking anything away from the guy.

But Dante, somehow, got the #1 overall seed in this contest based off of this video even with Board 8 deciding everything this year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2lWUQHUapM" data-time="

I like Dante. I honestly do. He's cheesy and over the top in a cool factor way. And DMC5 looks fantastic, don't get me wrong, but that hype video isn't exactly an FF7 remake or grown men openly weeping tears of joy and passing out over Twilight Princess or Super Smash Bros Ultimate. It was just a solid hype vid. That's all. DMC is also a series that's produced two of the all-time worst games (2 and DmC, a game so bad they didn't even call it "5"), two average games (1 and 4), and one A+ game. 3. This is also Capcom we're talking about, which isn't exactly the most scrupulous of companies.

The point is here I think some dickery was afoot. And as one could expect, voters weren't buying it. Dante did decent here, but this was nothing earth shattering and nothing to make anyone think he had a prayer of escaping a division with Vivi and Ganondorf in it. It's not often one can call a 71% performance subpar, but we're holding Dante to the standard of a #1 overall seed. Being in this position is just different; Link has been here five times and this is the spot Chrono Trigger scored 239.44% from. You have to give me better against a character in Cuphead that 19 people care about.
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And yeah yeah, I know. "Cuphead's game is good and he's underseeded." These indie characters are all flashes in the pan, they all have no sustainable popularity, and their fanbases all think they're bigger than they actually are. That includes the all-time examples of Braid and Undertale, and I say this as someone who drove the Undertale bandwagon. Cuphead matters about as much as Frisk, Tim, Meat Boy, or the vehicles from Gradius and Blaster Master.

He doesn't. Moving on.

Oh and Nero is cooler than Dante, even if he does look like a vanilla midget Cody Rhodes wannabe. I love all these ex-WWE fans pretending the NWA title suddenly matters just because Cody Rhodes held it for an hour after winning it on a show he himself produced and booked. Cody and Dustin are both trash, and so was much of All In.

Pro wrestling will never, ever be cool again. Ever. Deal with it. That ship has long sailed.
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Ulti, did you ever hear of the "Donte" and "Vergin/Vorgil" disparaging nicknames for DMC:DMC?
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NFUN posted...

will you use this account just for stats stuff and not for trolling

(you can "troll" in stats stuff i mean outside of it)

Given the name I think it's pretty obvious what the purpose of this account is!
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Logience posted...

Ulti, did you ever hear of the "Donte" and "Vergin/Vorgil" disparaging nicknames for DMC:DMC?

Donte yeah but not the others. I honestly liked Vergil in DmC. He was the literal only bright spot in that entire game.
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Ulti_PCA posted...

NFUN posted...

will you use this account just for stats stuff and not for trolling

(you can "troll" in stats stuff i mean outside of it)

Given the name I think it's pretty obvious what the purpose of this account is!

just making sure

tag
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Tagging the FUCK out of this.
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Ulti_PCA posted...

Logience posted...

Ulti, did you ever hear of the "Donte" and "Vergin/Vorgil" disparaging nicknames for DMC:DMC?

Donte yeah but not the others. I honestly liked Vergil in DmC. He was the literal only bright spot in that entire game.

Well, that's a bizarre stance to take, especially since I'm pretty sure the guy killed an unborn baby in that game for no reason besides pure edge.
Speaking of, you seen this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyUArTDYYVc" data-time="
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The name Ren never appears in a single video game, so anyone who argued that it should be changed to the name Joker (which is the first thing he's called in the actual game) had a very good reason, and it wasn't some kind of completely pointless whining regardless of whether or not it flipped the result. Just people wanting a form of fair representation.

Just figured I'd throw that in this topic because why not

garetha200 posted...

The name Ren never appears in a single video game, so anyone who argued that it should be changed to the name Joker (which is the first thing he's called in the actual game) had a very good reason, and it wasn't some kind of completely pointless whining regardless of whether or not it flipped the result. Just people wanting a form of fair representation.

Just figured I'd throw that in this topic because why not

Spoilers: My stance on that match is going to surprise some people.
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Division 1 Round 1: (8)Chloe Price vs (9)Lightning

(8)Chloe Price - 6814 [25.81%]
(9)Lightning - 19589 [74.19%]
Total Votes - 26403
Prediction Percentage - 80.74%

This was a debated match pre-contest, and I don't blame or make fun of anyone for this being a debated match for two reasons. One, Final Fantasy is anathema to this web site at this point, especially modern Final Fantasy. One cannot blame anyone for not having faith in Lightning. Her contest history doesn't exactly light the world on fire, and she's hardly a well liked character.

And secondly, Board 8 has had Second Match PTSD from getting kicked in the balls by this match for almost 20 years. I've posted this list before but it bears reposting. Just look at this nonsense. Weird stuff in bold.

Summer 2002 - Spyro vs Morrigan. Everyone picks Spyro, because people have actually heard of Spyro. Morrigan wins, and everyone credits the match picture. The Jug Factor is born.

Summer 2003 - Pikachu vs Fox. Everyone picked Fox because they had a common opponent (Cloud) the year before. No contest.

Spring 2004 - Metroid vs Pac-Man. People picked Metroid because they treated games the same as charcaters. Again, no contest.

Summer 2004 - Ganondorf vs Alucard. Debated match for some reason, but by now everyone knew about x-stats and picked Ganondorf. Again, no contest. Of course now that x-stats were a thing, the second match would start screwing with people, though one could consider this a match that a lot of people debated and got wrong.

Spring 2005 - Sigma vs Andross. Other than Ridley/Diablo, this was the most heavily debated round 1 match and a LOT of people picked Andross. We know the end result. Sigma destroyed.

Summer 2005 - Ness vs CJ, shortly after San Andreas came out. Most people picked CJ, figuring the insane buzz around that game would lead to a very easy win. Ness won with ease, spawning the RacistFAQs fad that lives on to this day (and is unfortunately probably true on some level).

Spring 2006 - Suikoden vs Mega Man X in the series contest. No debate because it was obvious MMX would win.

Summer 2006 - Ada Wong vs Jade was obvious. Moving on.

Summer 2007 - Arthas/Diablo/KOS-MOS/Mega Man. People had no idea what LFF in 4ways was, at least not to this degree, and a lot of people picked Diablo to get second place. The guru pick was Mega Man > KOS-MOS, but enough people picked Diablo to where this gets "DAMN SECOND MATCH" honors.

Summer 2008 - Link/Luke/Shadow/Zidane. Everyone and their mother picked Shadow to get second place. This was before people realized Sonic was an honorary Nintendo franchise on our site, similar to Pac-Man. Zidane cruised to second.

Summer 2009 - Mega Man 2/Pac-Man/Pong/Oregon Trail. Mega Man > Pac-Man was the favorite, but a ton of people got scared into picking Oregon Trail because of all the joke trends in the prior contests.

Winter 2010 - Alucard vs Magus. If this were held in 2004 everyone would have picked Magus and some people still did. This was HIGHLY debated for whatever reason, even though Alucard cruised.

Game of the Decade - Rock Band vs Deus Ex. Rock Band is the overwhelming favorite, then Deus Ex pulls the upset but "not by enough" in one of Board 8's worst days ever. The board was unreadable.

Rivalry Rumble - Who fucking cares? (it was Ike/Black Knight beating Conker/Poo)
Summer 2013 - Raiden/Waluigi/Alan Wake. Easy Raiden win, though people feared a joke run by Waluigi.

Fall 2015 - Persona 3 was the HEAVY board favorite. Dragon Quest 8 stomped it into the ground with utter ease in a match that was never close.

Best Year - 1987 beat 1985. I don't care about this contest enough to look up whether or not this result was weird.
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You guys get the idea. The second match is just weird, and always treats us badly. I feel like if this match was placed anywhere else on the bracket, Lightning gets 100% board support in all the little side shows we have (BOP, Oracle, Guru, spread betting, bake sales, all that fun stuff), but because it was match #2, people paused. There was also the fear that Lightning would get anti voted into the ground, plus there was the fear of people loving Life is Strange. It has sold something like 3.5 million copies, after all.

Lightning ended up being the favorite, and thankfully, she put all doubts to rest in about 2 seconds. No crazy board vote, no weird comebacks needed. Just her beating Chloe up from pillar to post for 24 straight hours en route to a tripling. If only all the second matches could treat us so well, right?
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Ulti_PCA posted...

Summer 2009 - Mega Man 2/Pac-Man/Pong/Oregon Trail. Mega Man > Pac-Man was the favorite, but a ton of people got scared into picking Oregon Trail because of all the joke trends in the prior contests.

and then it had the most hilarious night vote ever
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Ulti_PCA posted...

Best Year - 1987 beat 1985. I don't care about this contest enough to look up whether or not this result was weird.

It's basically Metroid beating SMB1.
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Logience posted...

Ulti_PCA posted...

Best Year - 1987 beat 1985. I don't care about this contest enough to look up whether or not this result was weird.

It's basically Metroid beating SMB1.

Not even. We were specifically using North American release dates for any game that had been released in North America, so The Legend of Zelda was credited as a 1987 game.

I'll admit, I got that match wrong because SMB1 easily handled Z1 in 2009 until the other Mario games joined the poll (at which point Z1 very nearly upset SMB3 for second place behind SMW!), but there was a distinct pattern throughout that contest that years with a Zelda game almost invariably beat years without one. Add in that 1987 also had Metroid and it should've been obvious that as iconic as SMB1 was, it wasn't going to singlehandedly carry 1985 past many other years, not even a fellow NES year like '87.
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TsunamiXXVIII posted...

We were specifically using North American release dates for any game that had been released in North America, so The Legend of Zelda was credited as a 1987 game.

Dangit, forgot about Zelda 1 happening in 87. But was Metroid still in 87?
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Metroid was released in North America in 1987.

Although if Zelda 1 doesn't exist, 1985 probably reverses the result. Metroid on the NES is not a game people care about, and nothing in that year can threaten SMB1.

garetha200 posted...

Metroid on the NES is not a game people care about, and nothing in that year can threaten SMB1.

>Checking wiki
>https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Super_Mario_Bros._3_vs_(8)Metroid_2004
Dang. Course, that was SMB3, and it did still manage a 68-32 on Pac-Man...
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The 2009 round 2 (iirc) match is even more telling. Metroid got trounced by Zelda 1 and Mario 1.

garetha200 posted...

The 2009 round 2 (iirc) match is even more telling. Metroid got trounced by Zelda 1 and Mario 1.

>implying 4-ways matter
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TsunamiXXVIII posted...

Logience posted...

Ulti_PCA posted...

Best Year - 1987 beat 1985. I don't care about this contest enough to look up whether or not this result was weird.

It's basically Metroid beating SMB1.

Not even. We were specifically using North American release dates for any game that had been released in North America, so The Legend of Zelda was credited as a 1987 game.

I'll admit, I got that match wrong because SMB1 easily handled Z1 in 2009 until the other Mario games joined the poll (at which point Z1 very nearly upset SMB3 for second place behind SMW!), but there was a distinct pattern throughout that contest that years with a Zelda game almost invariably beat years without one. Add in that 1987 also had Metroid and it should've been obvious that as iconic as SMB1 was, it wasn't going to singlehandedly carry 1985 past many other years, not even a fellow NES year like '87.

Yep, 03 over 05 was my only wrong pick and cost me a perfect bracket :(
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Ulti_PCA posted...

The ones that stand out as being thoroughly ridiculous are Zack, Fallout 3, 1995, and Dante. Fallout 3 happened because of the format (Game of the Decade), and 1995 happened because Allen had the bright idea to make a contest called Best Year in Gaming, an idea so dumb that Allen has yet to add it to the list of past contests as of this writing. Seriously: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/contest

The Years Contest didn't have any seeds. I tried assigning seeds to all of the years in the bracket based on how each division has been seeded in past contests with a 4 division, 32 entrant bracket. The Wild Card years were treated as 9 seeds. What we end up with are the following seeds:

1 seeds - 1995, 1997, 1991, 1998
2 seeds - 2008, 1996, 2011, 2015
3 seeds - 2001, 2000, 1994, 2013
4 seeds - 1985, 2007, 2002, 1992
5 seeds - 1987, 2012, 2010, 2016
6 seeds - 2014, 1990, 2004, 2003
7 seeds - 2009, 1989, 2006, 2005
8 seeds - 1986, 1999, 1988, 1993
9 seeds - 1979, 1983, 1981, 1978

With the exception of the 1 seeds, most of these projected seeds don't really make sense, confirming that the bracket wasn't really seeded in a traditional sense.
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ulti's pca is also one of the things that got me interested in these back in 2003.
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Lightning DESTROYING chloe was one of my personal favorite moments of the contest.
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At least there was no whining about SJWs in the analysis of Chloe's match, though I'm sure Ulti's waiting to drop a bomb on us.
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Zack wasn't a 1-seed in 2008, unless you want to pretend that Link somehow missed out on 1-seed status that year. The fourways were just wonky in terms of match order relative to seeding.

Also,

snake_5036 posted...

You are now tracking this topic.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

For fourwaya I just listed the winner of the first match.

I'm fully aware of what you did - I'm just giving my opinion that it would sooner make sense leaving out fourways from your seeding comparison entirely than touting the winner of the first match in each fourway division as its 1-seed.

(Edit): Actually, it's a moot point. It's your PCA, not mine, so carry on!

Tag.
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UltimaterializerX posted...

MetalmindStats posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

For fourwaya I just listed the winner of the first match.

I'm fully aware of what you did - I'm just giving my opinion that it would sooner make sense leaving out fourways from your seeding comparison entirely than touting the winner of the first match in each fourway division as its 1-seed.

(Edit): Actually, it's a moot point. It's your PCA, not mine, so carry on!

Trust me, I wish I could forget 4ways ever happened.

What happened in the 4-ways? All I remember is Crono at the Bat, Kirby, and L-Block.
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I got a mention! Damn! Okay since I do not know how Wikis work all my analysis are in my topic. Just wait a bit to add the final ones and then add them or something. I could write more detailed analysis but it would be unfair since we know how the contestants did in the later matches so it would be skewed.

But if you want anything more just ask.
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Logience posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

MetalmindStats posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

For fourwaya I just listed the winner of the first match.

I'm fully aware of what you did - I'm just giving my opinion that it would sooner make sense leaving out fourways from your seeding comparison entirely than touting the winner of the first match in each fourway division as its 1-seed.

(Edit): Actually, it's a moot point. It's your PCA, not mine, so carry on!

Trust me, I wish I could forget 4ways ever happened.

What happened in the 4-ways? All I remember is Crono at the Bat, Kirby, and L-Block.

4-ways were the Twilight Princess of contests: people really liked the idea right away, but then turned on them very quickly.

I think the main complaint was Games 2009, which was probably the most disappointing contest of all time. Characters 2007 was really fun though, and 2008 had some memorable matches like Crono turning it around against Vincent, Pika killing the Block, WCC just beating out Mega Man, and Snake leading Link for a few hours.

I didnt like 4 ways from the beginning and glad we havent had them since

I mightve like 2013 more but i didnt like 3 ways either

1v1 24 hours with multiple matches a day is the perfect way to do the contests I just hope we are not forced to vote in every match ij the future

Thats the one flaw I had with this contest since the rest was quite solid
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