Board 8 > transience presents: the 75 most important matches in contest history

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think @ShatteredElysium has those results somewhere.
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I have them on my old laptop which requires a new charger but I do have up to Match 96 on drop box if you require a specific match(es)

I just wanted to see the Draven results and where people were after the Chie match. I guess the Vivi one too. (list spoilers!)
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I'll get them to you when I get home.

Vivi was match 65 right? I know Draven was early.

Keep in mind that year there was no penalty for incorrect winner and with it being 3 way it was hard to actually be very wrong so the average was insanely high.

yeah, im not worried about the scores, just what the consensus was. if youve just got a spreadsheet or whatever I can work from that. thanks!
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don't worry about Vivs, SE

53.



God, 2013 is such a god damn mess. Its unpredictability was good, but its permanence was all over the damn place. I like a great contest run and for someone to cause upheaval, but in 2013 it was just coming out at the seams. It was like someone opened Pandora's Box and all the madness just flew everywhere. And then, like that, it was gone.

This match is probably thought of as fondly as any, along with the MM/Zero/Charizard match that just missed the list. These results almost always favored the joke character or the Nintendo character, but here was Vivi giving it to the ultimate gamefaqs villain. How great is that? Of course, he had help in the form of Ganondorf being in the poll, but still! This should never happen. I've heard that there was rallying here but Vivi kinda stayed constant throughout. It didn't look super fishy. Vivi was just a god suddenly.

Then he went and surged past Squall with ease and lost to... Red. What the hell is that? Vivi's run defines the 2013 contest and is why I think of it as being probably at the bottom of the tier list despite some seriously wild results. It's what you want and yet it's not. The anti-stat crusaders probably love it because chaos is what they're hoping for. I don't need my numbers to be neat like some but I do like some sense of carryover from day to day. Squirtle beats Cloud and doesn't make the next contest because he's literally not notable enough to crack the top 5 Pokemon. That's the bleak dystopian contest reality of 2013. Things happen, you might have dreamed it and they won't happen like that again. I consider this notable because it's Vivi beating it's-freaking-Mario, Mr. last-second-BS-update but only because of the characters involved. This match is a weird haze that I might have dreamt and I love the result but not how we got there.
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Yeah, for all of 2013's chaos, Vivi > Mario might somehow be the most stunning result for the reasons you said. This just isn't the type of match Mario drops and non-FFVII Square wins.
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Yeah, Vivi and Mario is where the contest really started going off the rails. We knew Draven was going to run wild if he could get past Link, but we thought it would just be contained to his stuff. But once Vivi started taking it to SFFed Mario, it was now plausible that all of the Noble Nine could be in danger of getting upset. It was like they all had targets on their backs.
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Feel like that match is too low on the list. It was the first time Mario ever dropped a close one, it removed a Noble Niner that was guaranteed to walk through his division, and more than anything else in 2013 it emphasized the chaos of everything. It's Freaking Mario died that day.

Vivi losing to Red next round isn't really surprising. Pokemon was at its peak and Squall was in the same poll.
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I go back and forth on it. I agree with you, but I also, just, the 2013 contest is all around wonky. I don't think Mario feels any more impactful than Cloud or Sonic or whoever. I just happen to love the result.
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I think I agree with the ranking. I think I tend to hold multi-way results as inherently less significant because of the format.
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52.



This dumb match has fostered more baseless speculation than just about any other. We've talked about this match for 15 years now. How did Shadow get 45% on Mario? What the hell happened?

It wasn't a Sonic boost. We know this because Cloud doubled Sonic and Snake did similar to Knuckles. It *probably* wasn't a Mario deboost because he beat Crono, though granted, that match is one of the most suspect of all time. (I'm actually not opposed to this idea, by the way. Mario and Luigi and Bowser definitely didn't have the most stellar of reps after 2003 ended.)

The obvious conclusion has always been some Mario vs. Sonic weirdness. We've been waiting a full generation to see that match and it's just never happened -- and so Mario vs. Shadow just continues to live on in our memory. Mario's faced every other N9 member, most of them multiple times, but never the one you REALLY want to see. The oracle average here was Mario with 70% which tells you how bizarre it was. Shadow took this result and has underperformed ever since.

My opinion is that Mario beats Sonic without much of a sweat. It isn't 1997 anymore, or even 2007. That stuff is 20 years in the past and Sonic is just way too old and washed to make it count.
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I'm surprised Mario/Vivi isn't higher but I guess this is importance, not "the degree to which we look back and think about how ridiculous a match was"

Although I think it's pretty explainable - 3-ways are silly and the exact dynamics of how a person picks their favorite of 3 characters is complicated, but Ganondorf being the third character there obviously sabotaged Mario greatly

Sonic wasn't very consistent by that point (he lost to Auron and Kirby in the same year) and FF7 is rally bait. I remember the sentiment at the time was that Vivi was screwed if it was close because It's Freaking Mario and it just...didn't happen. I don't think the result is anywhere near as impactful if it had been any other N9er outside of Link - Sonic, Cloud, Sephiroth, Crono, Snake, Mega Man, and Samus had all had results where they embarrassed themselves far more recently than Mario, who looked like a champ since 2005. Mario may not have even been #2/#3/whatever for very long, but weird stuff like that just didn't happen to him.
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The sad thing is that while we should have absolutely gotten Mario/Sonic at some point in contest history, if it happens now Mario would wipe the floor with Sonic, it's barely even a real rivalry anymore

I think 2003 was just Nintendo's lowest point

Yeah, the fact that we've still never gotten Mario vs. Sonic is kind of baffling. I mean, it's hard to believe it'd be in any way compelling at this point, but yeah.

Mario/Sonic was the one thing that could've saved RR, too.
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I think Mario vs. Sonic is a doubling at this point, and I thought that even before Sonic looked really bad this year. That rivalry is so one-sided at this point that it's hard to imagine anyone but the Sonic faithful voting for him over Mario, and that number dwindles every year. The novelty of that match would wear off after 15 minutes,
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Rivalry Rumble got 'saved' by the Trainers. 100% of the surprising results in that contest came from them.
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I think Link vs.Cloud would have been a funny entry to have seen in the Rivalry Rumble. Although this timeline wouldn't have had the same bonus match which was the high point of the Rivalry Rumble.
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Random thought: Have we also never had Mario/Luigi in a contest? I can't think of it happening

Paratroopa1 posted...

Random thought: Have we also never had Mario/Luigi in a contest? I can't think of it happening

It happened in a 4-way once.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3293-division-2-final-l-snake-luigi-mario-mega-man-x
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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3293-division-2-final-l-snake-luigi-mario-mega-man-x

Just that 4 way match.
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nope. we did get Luigi/Tails this past one though and it was ugly.

edit: those fourways barely count, honestly
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My train of thought to that, by the way, was that I was thinking that I might honestly take Mario over Sonic in a 3-way with Luigi in it

The difference is that big

We actually haven't had a Mario same-series match 1-on-1 since 2004, now that I think about it, and we had several in 2003 and 2004 (Mario/Bowser, Bowser/Yoshi, and Luigi/Yoshi).
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LeonhartFour posted...

We actually haven't had a Mario same-series match 1-on-1 since 2004, now that I think about it, and we had several in 2003 and 2004 (Mario/Bowser, Bowser/Yoshi, and Luigi/Yoshi).

What the fuck that's really weird

51.



This is similar to the Mario/Samus match, but worse -- Sephiroth just doesn't lose to the likes of Tifa. It's our first 100% confirmed case of what we call "rSFF".

...or is it? After the rest of the results of that contest, it's hard to know. Tifa/Seph actually kinda sorta lines up with what you'd think of Samus and Mario looking at Snake and Zelda. Sephiroth looked shaky the entire contest. It's not at all surprising that he lost to Mario given how his series looked. In fact, every badass Square character type seems to have died off -- everyone but Cloud who, yeah, Smash.

All I know is that this result is super bizarre, and if we have another character battle in 2021 or whatever, people will be treating Sephiroth with a huge amount of skepticism. Literally any result is possible with him. Does Yoshi beat him? Zero? Charizard? The possibilities are kind of endless.
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Yeah I'm honestly not sure Tifa/Seph is rsff. I think Tifa just aged better and was maybe the beneficiary of a little contest momentum

Yeah, at the very least, Tifa was close enough that if she was weaker indirectly, I don't think it was by much.
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For what it's worth, the current version of the 2018 x-stats (which is probably the final version), where I mostly ignored the Tifa/Sephiroth match, does have Tifa ranking a little higher than him.
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Sephiroth looked shaky the entire contest... except for that time he demolished Ryu. Sephiroth was kinda strange all contest long.
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Also it's kind of telling that I look at Tifa/Seph and my thought isn't "wow, Sephiroth has really dropped off a cliff," it's "well, I guess Sephiroth actually isn't as weak as I thought he might have become," considering the characters Tifa was able to beat

I had X > Sephiroth in my losers R1 (and I still stand by this having been a really good pick that just didn't pan out)

Also, Tifa > Seph probably shouldn't be too surprising just given the rules of protagonist > antagonist

that's Sephiroth for ya. biggest contest enigma in history.
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Was there actually ever a time that Tifa looked weak? I sort of suspect that she was always this strong

Yeah, I had Luigi > Seph and still feel pretty good about it if he had beaten Tifa.
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Tifa has always been about this strong. People just sort of...forgot? She hasn't been in any big debatable matches in a while.
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Paratroopa1 posted...

Was there actually ever a time that Tifa looked weak? I sort of suspect that she was always this strong

I've been a big believer in Tifa from the start. I was one of the people who pushed for her to get in back in 2005 because I thought there was no way she'd be weaker than Aerith. She's never really had a "bad" loss, honestly.
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No, Tifa has has always been strong but turning this around is still a sizable feat:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3849-jenova-division-final-sephiroth-vs-tifa-lockheart
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

No, Tifa has has always been strong but turning this around is still a sizable feat:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3849-jenova-division-final-sephiroth-vs-tifa-lockheart

Oh wow, yeah, I forgot about this.

transience posted...

that's Sephiroth for ya. biggest contest enigma in history.

Fun fact about this - the Sephiroth/Ryu match this year is so out of line with how everything else matched up that it basically had to be discarded. Unless Mario gets 68% on Ryu these days. It's the only match in the entire contest where I had to do something like that.
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KamikazePotato posted...

transience posted...

that's Sephiroth for ya. biggest contest enigma in history.

Fun fact about this - the Sephiroth/Ryu match this year is so out of line with how everything else matched up that it basically had to be discarded. Unless Mario gets 68% on Ryu these days. It's the only match in the entire contest where I had to do something like that.

...I wouldn't rule out Mario getting 68% on Ryu

Sephiroth in 2013 is weaker than 2010, and Sephiroth in 2018 is weaker than 2018. It's actually impressive that Cloud managed to turn things around a little when you consider what happened to 'badass' FF characters like Vincent, Sephiroth, Squall, and even Auron.
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Paratroopa1 posted...

...I wouldn't rule out Mario getting 68% on Ryu

Eh, Ryu would have had to drop a decent bit for that to happen. 2010 Cloud only got 66% on him.
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Ryu also got added to SSB4. Even if that doesn't boost Ryu, it should slow his descent.
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Speaking of which, I kind of hope Cloud/Sonic 2003 is on here somewhere but it's probably not because I think it might be too high at this point.

But I think that was the first time people really thought Link could lose, and seeing a Noble Niner get doubled without SFF being involved is still legitimately stunning.
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Ryu did well in all his matches up until that point, and in a way that very closely lined up his previous contest results. Maybe I should have left it unadjusted, but I'm not taking Chun-Li over him anytime soon, which is what happens if I take the Sephiroth match at face value.
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Cloud/Sonic was 76!
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LeonhartFour posted...

We actually haven't had a Mario same-series match 1-on-1 since 2004, now that I think about it, and we had several in 2003 and 2004 (Mario/Bowser, Bowser/Yoshi, and Luigi/Yoshi).

Oh wait, I take this back. We had Peach/Daisy in 2006 (LOL), but that barely counts.
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I'm late to the party, but I don't know why anyone still wants Mario/Sonic. Sonic would be lucky to avoid a doubling.
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Anagram posted...

I'm late to the party, but I don't know why anyone still wants Mario/Sonic. Sonic would be lucky to avoid a doubling.

Just for the lore at this point, really.
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