Board 8 > Tsunami's Post-Contest Analysis

(+) Yeah! (+)

Ulti's write-up mentions that Draven's vote total of 3439 is the lowest we've ever seen in a 1v1 contest. Vote totals may have been down, but that number is actually inflated thanks to the registered voter bonus; his raw total is only 2287. Is that the lowest ever?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5153-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-lucina-vs-dracula-vs-caim
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5157-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-chester-vs-mewtwo-vs-zero-999
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5184-character-battle-ix-division-5-round-1-dancin-vs-zidane-vs-ridley
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5209-character-battle-ix-division-8-round-1-squall-vs-rayman-vs-video

It is not! Damn, was 2013 filled with awful fodder. And that's just the ones that fell short of Draven's raw total; far more fell short of his adjusted total, including at least one character that might actually be worth something (though not above the fodder line) when not eating hero > villain SFF.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5196-character-battle-ix-division-6-round-1-fox-vs-blue-vs-wolf

I am a huge Star Fox fan and this makes me sad. Wolf wasn't the only one to get screwed over in this fashion in 2013, but the third character in Leon Kennedy-Albert Wesker was weak enough that Wesker managed to get second place anyway. Wolf, on the other hand, potentially screws Fox out of a victory. It's tough to say for certain but Blue didn't make it to 50% and it's unlikely that Wolf was eating much of Fox's Smash support. That 7.75% is probably about 90% SF64 fans, and if you give even 75% of that 90% to Fox, you get...well, okay, you still get Fox only at 49.32%. So Fox really does need almost all of Wolf's votes to pull off this win.

Wolf's only appearance other than this was in Rivalry Rumble, where he and Fox got to beat up on one of the contest's many "non-rivalries" in Round 1 (Fox would probably be an underdog against Yuna 1v1 at the time, though not now, but Wolf easily outclasses Seymour and the rivalry was stronger) before being unfortunately fed to Ryu and Ken. I can't even advocate for giving him a chance to actually prove his strength, though, because the Star Fox series is completely irrelevant now and he'd just be "Random Smash Character #37.25964".

Although I think Ulti either completely forgot about 2017's Years Contest or intentionally left it out because it undercut the point he was trying to make, because sub-3439 wasn't all that rare and even sub-2287 was somewhat common.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6686-best-year-in-gaming-wildcard-round-day-1-1979-vs-2009
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6689-best-year-in-gaming-wildcard-round-day-2-1978-vs-2005
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6690-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-1-1995-vs-1986
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6692-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-2-2001-vs-2014
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6697-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-4-1996-vs-1989
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6698-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-5-1991-vs-1988
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6702-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-7-1998-vs-1993

There were only 35 matches in that contest, so this is fully 20% of them. Allen really achieved his goal of a rally-proof contest with that one, didn't he? I'd ask for a moratorium on gimmick contests, but we have so few contests as it is and I'd still prefer gimmick contests over no contests.
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Match 60: Lara Croft vs. Metal Man

Lara 19706
Metal Man 9319

Oh, hey, speaking of "Random (insert game here) Character #3.14159", have a Robot Master from Mega Man 2. I briefly entertained the idea that an attempt at a Draven rally might actually let Metal Man pull this upset, because the types of trolls that would be attracted to this would pick the most anti-establishment choices possible and Lara Croft isn't strong enough to weather that storm. Turns out, Lara's either not as weak as I thought, or nominating random Mega Man characters that don't recur across the entire series was just that stupid an idea. I prefer to think it's the latter.

X's presence in contests has conclusively proven that "Mega Man" refers only to the classic incarnation. Why have we not tried to put other Mega Men into contests? I mean, heck, if you go back far enough Mega Man Legends has seen representation in these contests.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2511-aeon-division-round-1-yuna-vs-roll

...Oh, right. Literally every other member of the Noble Nine had a female member of their franchise seeded higher than this. Marle was a 7-seed. Amy Rose was a 6. Amy Rose! And Roll was only an 8-seed, and probably only got that because people wanted to get every Noble Niner's best female co-star into the contest.

(Just quietly ignore the fact that with Brawl not out yet, no one on the female half of the bracket had actually been in the same game as Solid Snake as of that time. The Boss is easily the strongest female Metal Gear Solid character, and MGS3 was the most recent release in the franchise at the time. This was a far superior option to putting Meryl or Sniper Wolf or someone into the contest.)

If we ever have another half-male, half-female bracket, it should be mixed up rather than split, so that every Round 1 match is male vs. female. Do it evenly, though, so that stronger female characters are against weaker male characters and vice versa. Zelda probably gets a 1-seed and gets to school some 16-seeded male.

Link probably gets to feast on Hat Kid in Round 1, which will confuse people who still don't realize Hat Kid's a girl.

Match 61: Ryu vs. Lloyd Irving

Ryu 19671
Lloyd 9073

Oh hey, Tales doing Tales things again. I am pleased that Tales didn't get to fodder up this contest too much. I am also pleased that Ryu got a chance to do Ryu things. He was consistently one of the strongest non-Noble Niners in the earliest days of the contests, though he hasn't quite been the same since his loss to Bowser in 2005.

After the Lineal Noble Nine had first been proposed, I made a thought experiment as to what if the then-arbitrary cutoff for the elite tier had been placed at something other than 9 (which ultimately ended up being the perfect number, but that's with hindsight; the Noble Nine had been crowned long before 2006 proved that Nine was the correct number, no more and no less). Ryu ended up taking back his own spot twice, once when he avenged his 2005 loss to Bowser in round 1 in 2007 and once when he advanced in second place behind Auron in Round 2 in 2007, only for Cloud to SFF Auron the next round and allow Ryu to advance in second place again. Someone else commented that this was a very Ryu thing to do.

There is one Noble Niner who owns a spot in the Lineal Nine that they previously owned, but it's not their original spot. After losing his original spot to Vincent in 2007, Crono took Sonic's former spot by defeating L-Block in 2008. After losing that spot to Missingno in 2010, the spot changed hands three times in as many rounds in 2013, ultimately landing with Mega Man (who still hadn't recovered from losing to WCC in 2008), who Crono beat this year (though not before taking Mega Man's original spot from Bowser only to give it to Cloud.)
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Match 62: Commander Shepard vs. King K. Rool

Shepard 14726
K. Rool 14019

Remember what I said two matches ago about another gender-equal bracket? Yeah, forget that I even mentioned it. Thanks to characters so customizable that they don't even have a canon gender, we can never have that particular gimmick ever again.

K. Rool is another Nintendo villain that failed to make the Villains Contest. Granted there were only 32 slots, but we had representatives from Grand Theft Auto in there. I mean, technically doesn't that series have a villain protagonist/hero antagonist?

Nintendo was boosting all over the place, though, and Mass Effect is a decaying franchise, so this was a decent upset pick. K. Rool led for nearly 7.5 hours, too, before ultimately fading away.

Match 63: Ellie vs. KOS-MOS

Ellie 13094
KOS-MOS 15654

To be honest, I didn't even realize KOS-MOS had been in a Xenoblade game. I figured she was less relevant than this. Like most people, I ignored TheStupidRaptor. Apparently there are people out there who refuse to believe that Xenoblade is part of the same franchise as Xenosaga and Xenogears? Although it's apparently the video game equivalent of a series that has just enough of a fanbase to get picked up by a new network whenever it gets canceled. Xenogears vs. Xenoblade would literally be considered a Square vs. Nintendo match, but neither Xenogears-Xenosaga nor Xenosaga-Xenoblade (which has actually happened) would be. (Namco published Saga; Nintendo published Blade. Both were developed by third-party developer Monolith Soft, whom you might also know from the Baten Kaitos series, which was founded by the creator of Xenogears after he left what was then Squaresoft, where he worked when he created Xenogears.)

Anyway, it was fairly obvious, though disappointing, that an unrealistically proportioned character from an early 2000s Japanese RPG would beat out a realistically proportioned character from an early 2010s American Survival Horror Game. Not that I'm a fan of survival horror, because I'm not, but everything I've heard about The Last of Us is absolutely amazing. I want Ellie to succeed. Maybe in CBXI, once she has TLoU2 behind her. Though that game's supposed to be coming out this year so she'll probably have to hope for a TLoU3 to be relevant. And really, once you're on the third game, isn't the title "The Last of Us" kind of misleading?

https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy

Ah, right then, carry on. Also, while it's way too late now, how did we not get Kalas into even one Character Battle back when Baten Kaitos first came out? We've gotten all sorts of other obscure JRPG leads into these things. I tried to rally for one this year, but was handicapped by the fact that the lead in question suffers from Vaan Syndrome but most of the better characters to nominate are spoiler risks. Though honestly most of the reason I continually pimp Stella Glow on this board is just to get music from it into VGMC, because that soundtrack is amazing.
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Match 64: Aqua vs. Quiet

Aqua 18432
Quiet 10320

As so frequently happens in these contests, the last match of Round 1 was extremely dull. Well not really because we always had four matches going on at once and Shepard-K. Rool was interesting, but you know what I mean.

Aqua was a Guru nom, and she failed to double a side character from the least successful MGS game. Quiet didn't even get to use her sex appeal in her pic, either. Kingdom Hearts just flat-out sucked this contest.

Okay, yes, Aqua would be fodder even if Kingdom Hearts was still strong. Though it should be noted that there's only one KH character to make even one contest that's never won a match, and he still looked damn good in one of his losses.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2865-division-1-round-1-axel-frog-samus-kerrigan

No really, what is this? Axel almost beat Frog? And he's the only KH character without a win?

Ansem only appeared in the Villains Contest, but managed to draw beloved loser CATS. Kairi only made the female bracket, but beat Claire Redfield, which is actually possibly a decent win.

But this contest suggests that Kingdom Hearts does not hold strength on its own merit any more. Maybe what it needs to get its mojo back is for its other set of non-original characters to be allowed in!

...Actually, given that different incarnations of the same characters are allowed into these things, do you think if we tried nominating him as "King Mickey"--that is to say, specifically the Kingdom Hearts incarnation--we'd be able to get Mickey Mouse in? Though as per the Captain Toad debate, that would probably end up limiting his strength.

In any case, if we do get an open character battle, Disney characters has better get Kingdom Hearts pics. Tetsuya Nomura and his zippers would definitely help Donald and Goofy. Well, they probably would. Maybe. I don't know.

I'd comment about Quiet being the only character to debut in MGSV to make the field, but I'm pretty sure no one that debuted in MGS4 has been in a character battle. Then again, no one of much consequence debuted in that game. The main villain was Ocelot, who's been around since MGS1, and Solid Snake was the main protagonist for the first time since MGS1. (Well, okay, he was still the protagonist of MGS2 even though he was only the player character for a short time, but that's a minor detail.) We got a character from Revengeance into the 2013 contest, though. Of course, I suspect the MGSV character we all really wanted was denied for being a huge spoiler. Criticize Allen all you want, but he has never allowed anything like what happened in 2005's villains contest, where a major (albeit telegraphed) plot twist for Tales of Symphonia was ruined. The character is fought four times in that game, and the first three battles all have him going by one name and looking a certain way, but CJayC decided to credit him by the name and appearance from the final battle.

And with that, Round 1 is complete.
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Match 65: Dante vs. Lightning

Dante 18682
Lightning 9787

I said it in Round 1 and I'll say it again: Final Fantasy fans are a lot like Pokmon fans, always whining about how awful the most recent entry is and how much better things used to be. Older characters do better on this board in general anyway, but if you're from one of those franchises, the best thing that can happen is for a new game in your series to come out, because it establishes your age. 34.38% on Dante is surprisingly respectable given how awful opinions of FFXIII were, and I suspect the existence of FFXV is a large part of it.

Final Fantasy is a lot like these contests. The NES and SNES (well, Famicom and Super Famicom; the US equivalents didn't get all of them) managed three main series games each, and so did the PS1. Not counting the MMORPGs, we've had just four of them since. Meanwhile, we've all turned into crochety old men reminiscing about the good old days when we had contests every year and the upsets were genuinely surprising rather than the result of off-site rallies, except even then they were the result of off-site rallies. Look again at the previous write-up and the linked Frog-Axel match. Everyone suspected that Frog's comeback was less than legitimate, but it was a CT character beating a KH character so we all rejoiced rather than being upset.

Match 66: Chun-Li vs. Ganondorf

Chun-Li 11699
Ganondorf 16773

As usual, the board overreacted to this, suggesting that Dante could challenge Ganondorf. Probably because our inherent biases suggest that "Final Fantasy protagonist" should be a more impressive win than "fighting game character". Except Street Fighter (and I guess Mortal Kombat, though we've never tried anyone other than Scorpion and Sub-Zero from that franchise) have never been fodder like other fighting game franchises. You might even be able to add Soul Calibur to that list; Nightmare has managed to do okay in his appearances and Yoshimitsu (who is sort of a shared character between Tekken and Soul Calibur) got a win in 2013. And Lightning still suffers from being a post-merger Square Enix character.

Chun-Li put up another solid performance. She's never faced a Noble Niner, but all four of her losses are to solid midcarders from Noble Nine franchises--Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy.

Match 67: Vivi vs. Aya Brea

Vivi 21489
Aya 6993

This was a predictable blowout. Regardless of who won, it would set up a rematch of at least one previous Square vs. Nintendo match, and based on those past results, it was easy to joke that Square had fixed the match. Aya making this contest was honestly kind of surprising; she was a 26-seed in 2013 and hasn't had any releases since then to make her relevant. Of course, she's hardly the only bottom-third seed from that contest to make it to this one. The full list:

19-seeds:
Jill Valentine

20-seeds:
Aerith Gainsborough
Ridley

21-seeds:
Ryu Hayabusa
Simon Belmont
Chun-Li
Cecil Harvey

23-seeds:
Vincent Valentine

24-seeds:
Peach
Pac-Man
Claire Redfield

26-seeds:
Aya Brea
Bomberman

8 for 13 at making Round 2, with one of them making it all the way to Round 4. Though we were guaranteed at least one 21-seed from last contest would make Round 2 due to two of them facing each other in Round 1. My only explanation for this was that people saw the expanded field and figured that it would be easy to rally whatever ridiculous obscure character they loved into the field, so contest regulars got even fewer nominations than usual.

One of the other seeding gimmicks that year was that the 3-seeds would all be highly touted newcomers who would no doubt fail miserably. Only 4 of those 9 even made this contest and they all lost in Round 1.
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Match 68: Donkey Kong vs. Leon Kennedy

DK 15859
Leon 12629

Wonderful. Now this is exactly what the grumpy old folks of Board 8 are looking for! This was an upset, plain and simple, and there was nothing fishy about it. It wasn't some newcomer doing unexpected things; it was an established veteran beating another established veteran when we all expected otherwise.

Just 5.625% of Gurus picked Donkey Kong to win this match, though to be fair, only 32.5% even picked him to beat Tidus. Yes, we get nice round percentages for this, because the total number of Gurus was 160, a number with 2 and 5 as its only prime factors. Since we work in base 10, these are the only prime numbers that will result in a terminating decimal. I suppose when you look at it that way, the Gurus were giving DK a better chance against Leon than they were giving Tidus, as despite having over twice as many picks to reach Round 2 he had not even 1.5 times as many picks to reach Round 3 (Leon was a unanimous choice to reach Round 2, so I don't even need to go deeper to know that this is solely based on the potential matchup with Leon). So this was definitely an lolGurus moment.

"But wait!" you say. "The casuals were held under 50% on this one, too!" Yes, they were, and it's certainly possible that Leon was the favorite there, too, but it's quite unlikely.

DK's Round 1 prediction percentage: 66.99%
Leon's Round 1 prediction percentage: 72.69%

DK's Round 2 prediction percentage: 38.06%

This means roughly 56.82% of brackets that took DK to Round 2 continued to take him to Round 3. Not a heavy favorite, but a favorite nonetheless. If you assume little to no correlation between DK > Tidus pickers and Leon > Dragonborn pickers, you'd expect only about 48.7% of brackets to even have both of those correct. If you further assume that the 56.82% ratio is also applicable specifically to DK-Leon pickers, you're left with just over 21% of brackets specifically picking Leon > DK. Leaving Leon in need of over 18% of brackets to have Leon > Tidus, when as per our previous numbers, DK being a bit over a 2-1 favorite over Tidus means that under 24.5% of brackets even have Leon-Tidus.

Now this does make a lot of assumptions. If there is in fact a surprisingly strong correlation, it's quite possible that an inordinate amount of DK picks were actually DK > Dragonborn, and that both Leon > Tidus and Leon > DK were more common picks than Tidus > Leon and DK > Leon. After all, it is at least mathematically possible that fewer than 40% of brackets had the correct matchup (in the event that no brackets got both matches wrong.) But chances are, DK was the slight favorite here. Given that Vivi had been the casuals' underdog in each of his first two matches with DK (conclusively confirmable because they were both Round 1 matches), fans of low prediction percentages were eagerly awaiting Round 3.

(Final numbers note: Just 8.96% of Oracle pickers sided with DK here, so it's not like we saw this coming by match time and adjusted accordingly. This was an upset through and through.)
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Match 69: Zero vs. Knuckles the Echidna

Zero 16811
Knuckles 13128

Both entrants in this match are red anti-hero rivals to blue heroes from the mid-90s, which is honestly a more interesting bit of trivia than anything in this match.

Well, that's not quite true.

Zero (2010c) has a strength of 31.71 against Base Link.
Knuckles (2010c) has a strength of 27.79 against Base Link.

Zero wins with 56.18% of the vote!

I usually don't trust adjusted X-Stats as far as I can throw them (and seeing as how they're an abstract concept, I can't throw them at all), but that's only 0.03% away from the actual result and Knuckles literally faced Sonic in 2010. And then Sonic got blown out by Link, making the entire division look pitiful in the raw X-Stats when in fact it was full of reliable midcarders such as Ganondorf, Mewtwo, Vivi, Kirby, and Knuckles himself, in addition to others such as Donkey Kong (who is not reliable, but made Round 3 this year), Altair (who as I noted in my write-up of Ezio's loss has never lost in Round 1, and this is the first time since his debut that he missed the field entirely), and Rikku (who frequently misses the field but always performs well when she makes it).

And yes, I feel like we can call Knuckles a "reliable midcarder" even though he's never made it to Round 3. He's been in 9 out of the 10 contests (only missing 2006 because half the field was reserved for females), and he's only lost in Round 1 once, and that was when he had to deal with Mario and Zelda in a 4-way. He's almost certainly the strongest character to never make Round 3. Early on, CJayC was entirely to blame (stupid gimmicky bracketmaking), but as time has gone on, it really just does feel like he's been unlucky. Far weaker entrants have made it to Round 3 due to soft placements, including one from the same series as Knuckles. (At least I'm assuming Knuckles > Tails. That might actually be a match worth seeing, though!)

Match 70: Master Hand vs. Wario

Master Hand 11686
Wario 18257

And you needn't look any further than this match to see that a decent record doesn't necessarily mean you're strong. This was Wario's first run to Round 3, but his only Round 1 loss was to Shadow the Hedgehog (who immediately had to face Mario after that. No points for guessing which admin that was under), which means he's officially .500. Except not really because two of his contests were 2007 and 2008 and both times he advanced in second place in Round 1 and got 4th place in Round 2, meaning he went 2-4 against individual characters but is credited with a 1-1. His 2013 performance is, I suppose, a "proper" .500, getting last place in Round 2. But the only win he has that's kind of impressive is coming in second place in a match in which he was the only character not to appear on the N64, going up against Fox, Captain Falcon, and Banjo. Banjo is weak, but beating Captain Falcon is pretty good.

Master Hand is also .500 all time, having lost in Round 2 in both of his contest appearances.
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Technically Wario did appear on the N64, albeit only in spin-off games.

It's just hard for me to forget because DOH I MISSED.
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Match 71: Yoshi vs. Velvet Crowe

Yoshi 21148
Velvet 8796

Yoshi is never going to be an elite, but he's never going to be weak, either. Just look at 2010, when he had the misfortune of running into a rally entry after it had already taken out a Noble Niner. Normally, once that happens, there's no hope for anything stopping it. Now, that happened to be the one rally entry that was stopped after it had done some damage, but nevertheless, Yoshi managed to stand up to Missingno like a champ, and it got him something like #9 in the raw X-stats.

Unfortunately for him, not even those numbers would give him a chance next round, because Pikachu was #6 in the raw X-Stats that year.

Match 72: Pikachu vs. Kratos

Pikachu 18987
Kratos 10957

Why does this match feel so familiar?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3809-heart-division-round-2-charizard-vs-kratos

Ah, that's why. Same seedings and everything. It's kind of depressing to see how far our vote totals have fallen since then, and even more depressing when you remember that the current vote totals are inflated by the registered bonus...but it should not be overlooked that, admittedly only thanks to the registered bonus, Pikachu has a greater margin of victory than Charizard did. And Kratos has had a recent game, so that may actually be meaningful.

This was the second time in as many rounds that Pikachu's percentage was lower than that of his next opponent, and the second time that hardly anyone expected that to mean anything because Pikachu clearly had a stronger opponent.

Match 73: Sora vs. Pokmon Trainer Red

Sora 15212
Red 15772

This was another match where the registered and unregistered voters went in different directions, but Red would've still narrowly won without the registered vote bonus. Very narrowly.

Sora 10508
Red 10566

Yeah that's narrow. Still, this wasn't exactly a wide margin, either.

Sora was the Guru favorite to win this division, which seems wrong to me. Though there weren't really any proven winners in the group. Nearly half the division had been to Round 3 of a contest at least once prior to this year.

...Huh. Sora's record is better than I thought it was. He's never been to Round 4, but this is the earliest he's exited since 2003, his first year in the contest. It's been Round 3 exits ever since--and for once, I don't have to say "not including Rivalry Rumble" because he and Riku made it to Round 3 in that as well. Nearly upset Squall/Seifer, too; it's the closest Sora's ever come to Squall (though they've never met in a true 1v1, Sora having advanced in second place behind Squall in Round 2 of both fourway contests to allow for four total matches in those two years.) If Bacon ever decides to do another gimmick contest like that one, Sora might actually win in a couples contest; I'm almost certain that Rinoa would hold Squall back even more than Seifer and Kairi actually reached Round 2 in the Female bracket, and not by beating some other fodder that only made the bracket because of the gender segregation. She beat Claire Redfield, who regularly makes the bracket when it's not gender-balanced and made it to Round 2 this year.

Red has quietly amassed a rather impressive resume himself. He's never lost in Round 1 and it usually takes nothing short of a Noble Niner or the equivalent thereof (yes, I'm still sticking with the X Mega Man theory) to finally take him out. Of course, quietly is the only way Red knows how to do anything :)
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Match 74: Crash Bandicoot vs Big Boss

Crash 14601
Big Boss 16381

The opponent here seems oddly appropriate, because that's exactly what Big Boss did here. He crashed and burned. This was an absolutely awful performance. Look at Crash's history.

2002: Gets horribly overseeded, allowing him to face fodder in Round 1. (Although he still got lucky because there was a far stronger character on the same seed line as his opponent.) Fails to break 20% in his Round 2 match
2003: 38% in Round 1 against KOS-MOS. This might be a high point.
2004: Allows Master Chief to break 70% on him.
2007: Returns from a hiatus; loses to Magus, Phoenix Wright, and Bomberman. At this point, Phoenix's only previous contest appearance was the loss that ended Gordon Freeman Never Wins.
2008: Doubles up Raz from Psychonauts, but still falls well short of advancing over Nightmare (Samus Aran was the obvious first place finisher).
2010: 38.21% against Ryu Hayabusa. Remember, Crash couldn't even break 30% against Master Chief.
2013: Finally gets another win, beating Wheatley and Tommy Vercetti, but finishes in third place in Round 2 behind Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite. All you need to know about her is that she was a 3-seed, which meant low expectations thanks to that being one of the gimmicked seed lines.

So is Crash just stronger now? I know there was some sort of compilation release or something, but that shouldn't do that much for a character. It is a mystery.

Match 75: Alucard vs. Yuna

Alucard 18472
Yuna 12512

With Big Boss struggling with Crash, the instinctive thought was "wait, is Kefka the favorite in the division now?" That was what felt right, but it was easy to see that it wasn't true, because Alucard was putting up nearly identical numbers against a clearly stronger opponent. I suppose a case could've been made for Red to be the favorite; I didn't think that way because I didn't feel like narrowly beating Sora was all that strong a performance. It is, because Sora only feels weak because he never lives up to his seed lines.

I'm sure there's some analysis that conclusively shows that yes, Alucard was the favorite now.

Match 76: Kefka vs. Bomberman

Kefka 18537
Bomberman 12451

It's tough to say that a character has the most decisive win of the day and still looks bad, but Bomberman's just not that strong a character. We last saw him losing to Ezio and Tails, and that didn't seem awful at the time but Ezio looked awful this year. It probably wasn't awful, though. And he did beat Crash in 2007.

Still, Bomberman was a 26-seed in 2013. How did he even make the bracket?
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Match 77: 2B vs. Ness

2B 16239
Ness 13991

Ness was the straight-up Guru favorite here, and that's even before taking into account that considerably more people took Shadow to win this match than took 2B to lose last round to Cayde-6. So yeah, this came as kind of a surprise.

I didn't even realize until this contest was well underway that Nier is a Square Enix franchise. I'm not sure if that knowledge would've given me more faith in 2B, or less. Probably less, because everything post-merger tends to be completely trash in these contests.

The casuals didn't exactly jump all over us on this one, either. Given that 2B's Round 1 prediction percentage was only 81% or something, the 46.42% this round means she was probably technically the favorite, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Ness + Shadow had more brackets than 2B + Cayde-6.

Match 78: Charizard vs. Bowser

Charizard 13136
Bowser 17096

Do not let anyone talk you into believing that this loss made Charizard look bad. This was barely half a percent away from the Oracle consensus. Bowser has always been one of the strongest midcarders, and 43.45% is a good percentage to get on him. I think. ...Actually, the list of characters to do better than that is surprisingly long. Kirby has, more than once. Ryu didn't, but then he turned around and beat Bowser twice in fourways. Leon Kennedy outperformed him. So did Yoshi, but only barely. Honestly the fact that Leon's number is better than Yoshi's...oh, wait, I think RE4 was still fresh when that match happened. So Leon was a lot stronger than he is now.

Charizard may not have had the perfect timing that he had in his first match against Bowser, but he's had plenty of reasons to remain strong over the years. He's made two more Smash appearances since 2010 and gotten two Mega Evolutions. Both Mega Evolutions got showcased in the anime, under the ownership of recurring characters, and prior to that, but still post-2010, Ash's Charizard returned to his party for a while. And then the 20th movie, which was basically an alternate continuity retelling of the entire first season distilled into one movie, again had Charizard as Ash's ace. This is a strong performance, and yes, it was somewhat redeeming after he disappointed in Round 1. Of course, it would be a few more rounds before his "disappointing" 2013 campaign was massively vindicated thanks to the efforts of his anime teammate Pikachu as well as his second-round opponent from that contest.
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Match 79: Phoenix Wright vs. Ike

Phoenix 15320
Ike 14913

This was our first match to be flipped by the registered user bonus. The raw votes are even closer, with Ike winning by just 28 votes, but Phoenix is Board 8's favorite character, so it came as no surprise that he'd be the first character to outright steal a win because of the registered bonus. It's entirely in character, too. Phoenix always does his best work when the odds are stacked against him, and occasionally he's unable to pull out victory on his own power, but someone else comes along to bail him out at the last minute. 1-2 is obviously the most prominent example, but there are other times, too, like 1-4 when Larry Butz comes busting in and Phoenix finally gets a chance to cross-examine a witness that Manfred von Karma hasn't tampered with in advance.

I still need to play Spirit of Justice. I hear Phoenix is back to being the main protagonist in that one after being demoted to side character in the fourth game and being part of an ensemble in the fifth. Still, those games did give us other Ace Attorney leads. If they're any good in Spirit of Justice as well, maybe we should consider them for future experiments with other characters. The Godot thing didn't work out too well, and Edgey's been struggling for years now without a win. Couldn't be any worse than that, right? Well, okay, maybe it could because Apollo's debut game was roundly panned (I kind of liked it). He'll suffer for that. Athena might do okay just because females are doing better.

Actually, forget those two. I also heard that Ema Skye is reprising her role from AJ:AA as the main detective, and she's had other appearances in the series before that. If we want to see if two X chromosomes really is an asset in these contests, we'll make her the next AA character to get a shot.

But even without the registered voter bonus doing him in, Ike would have barely squeaked past Phoenix. Given the way Ike regularly dominates the Voting Gauntlets in Fire Emblem Heroes, that really doesn't speak very well for the strength of Fire Emblem as a whole. Or rather...it doesn't speak well for the characters' strength. It's been fairly rare in recent entries for there to truly be a lone main character. Ike kind of was in Path of Radiance, but even there he was the first lead to not be royalty in a game that still had plenty of royalty. Beyond that, you really have to go all the way back to Roy. It's quite possible that Fire Emblem will forever suffer from ensemble cast syndrome. The series has done okay for itself in Games contests, though not spectacularly.
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Match 80: Isaac vs. Kirby

Isaac 8982
Kirby 21249

This is an SFF match, plain and simple. Golden Sun is a handheld-exclusive series, and while Kirby isn't quite handheld-exclusive, he is very handheld-dominant. His debut game, Kirby's Dream Land, was for the original Game Boy, as was Dream Land 2. Dream Land 3 was a Super NES game...released more than a full year after the debut of the N64. And then there's the little matter of the 2000s. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards came out in June of 2000. Let's look at the ensuing decade--and keep in mind that Isaac's debut game wasn't out yet when this decade begins, while his most recent game was just a few months away from release when it ends.

August 2000: Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble for the Game Boy Color. One of the first games to use motion controls.
December 2002: Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land for the Game Boy Advance. Remake of his console debut, 1993's Kirby's Adventure for the NES. Like Dream Land 3 with the N64, that was well after the debut of the SNES.
October 2003: Kirby Air Ride for the GameCube. Racing game spin-off. Surprisingly fun given how simple the controls are.
October 2004: Kirby & the Amazing Mirror for the Game Boy Advance. I really need to go back and beat this game. I think this is the only game that I've ever gotten stuck in and my sister was able to beat.
June 2005: Kirby: Canvas Curse for the Nintendo DS. Like Tilt 'n' Tumble, this is about 50% tech demo. Kirby tends to be the go-to series for Nintendo to try out new gimmicks.
December 2006: Kirby: Squeak Squad for the Nintendo DS.
September 2008: Kirby: Super Star Ultra. An updated remake of Kirby's second console outing, 1996's Kirby Super Star. Super Star just narrowly manages, in all three regions, to be Kirby's first console outing to be on the most recent console at the time--none closer than North America, where it was released just nine days before the N64 came out.

And that's it. Kirby did manage another console outing before Isaac's most recent game came out (in November 2010), October 2010's Kirby's Epic Yarn for the Wii, but that's outside the 10-year window from, we'll call it starting from July 2000 since Crystal Shards came out in June of that year. 10 years, seven releases, and only one of them for a home console rather than a handheld. And that one was a single-button racing game rather than the platformers that he's known for. Yes, this conveniently ignores that HAL Laboratory in general and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai in particular are also responsible for Super Smash Bros., and that the focus on the three Kirby characters in the game has led some people to consider Brawl's Subspace Emissary "basically a Kirby game with a lot of guest stars", and thus if you include the two Smash games from that time frame, Kirby had some very prominent releases in that decade. Kirby's a handheld star in my mind, just like Pokmon.
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On this website, Kirby is a Smash character. The major weakness of his series and his games are proof of that.
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All in good time, swirl.

Match 81: Squall Leonhart vs. Garrus Vakarian

Squall 19202
Garrus 10792

As per usual, once you've started heading into the bottom half of a round, you generally get very few relevant matches. This won't actually be the case for this bracket, where some surprise results would come from low divisions, but...well, there were surprising results in low divisions in previous contests under Allen, too, but that was largely the result of the later divisions being worthless. Remember how Super Mario RPG made a contest semifinal? The game that I noted is extremely easy to screw over because it eats the ass end of SFF against Nintendo and Square? But Division 7, its division, had only one other game from each of those companies: Paper Mario for Nintendo and Chrono Cross for Square. And Division 8 had absolutely no Square and its only Nintendo games were from the Mother series. The prevailing theory was that Allen set it up that way because he wanted a company other than Square or Nintendo to be represented in the Final Four (Square was considered the favorite for Divisions 1 and 2, with Chrono Trigger and the 3 most popular Final Fantasy games, while Divisions 3 and 4 had RBY and the top three Mario games and Divisions 5 and 6 had the 3 biggest Zelda games). Well, there was one non-Nintendo, non-Square entry in the Final Four, but it was Undertale. Furthermore SMRPG was the only Square entry at all because Melee got in the way of the Square-fest in Divisions 1 and 2. Divisions 7 and 8 had most of the top non-Nintendo, non-Square entries, like the MGS games and RE4. Didn't matter.

Squall failing to double Garrus was another one of those warning signs that we all missed. There, I actually said something about this match.

Match 82: The Boss vs. Zelda

The Boss 8788
Zelda 21205

After this performance, it was hard not to think Zelda was the favorite against Squall, though the margin would still come as a shock. The Boss has been fortunate enough to almost always draw a winnable first match, allowing her to reliably reach the second round without ever really establishing herself as a true midcarder. But she's considered one due to her strong Round 1 record, so this beating was a statement win for Zelda.

Match 83: D.Va vs. Fox McCloud

D.Va 8543
Fox 21451

This was also a statement match, and that statement was "goodbye and good riddance, RallyFEAR!" Fox has always been one of the weaker members of the Original Twelve, coming in ahead of Jigglypuff, Ness, and probably Captain Falcon, but behind the other eight. Well, he wasn't always eighth, obviously; the only win he has more impressive than this one came at Pikachu's expense. That was back when Pokmon was anti-voted just on principle. It might be anti-voted again due to its perceived dominance, even though the only time Pokmon outright won a contest was as sidekick to Ocarina of Time in the Years contest. Fox breaking 70% in a Round 2 match is fairly astonishing.
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Match 84: Captain Toad vs. Aerith Gainsborough

Toad 12000
Aerith 17995

Look at those numbers. Captain Toad lands right on a multiple of 1,000, and Aerith comes up just five votes short of breaking 60%. Which actually does amount to a swing of just one registered user's vote making it 60% exactly (17997 to 11998).

The overall Oracle consensus was that Captain Toad exceeded expectations, but as you'd expect with it falling so close to a round number, the top picks were all extremely close. Five different people went for 60.00% exactly, and it would've had to fall right on it for them to get first place because 59.99% and 60.01% were also taken (which, yes, means that a score of 49.98 failed to be good for a top five. There's a 49.89 that's outside the top ten.)

Match 85: Geralt vs. Simon

Geralt 15334
Simon 14045

And now we're into Division 6, aka the Division of Blah. This division seemed almost custom-made to promote a bandwagon effect, because even in the absence of a true rally, a certain level of bandwagon effect tends to occur when a character is perceived to reach a round beyond what they "should" be capable of, and this division was guaranteed to allow multiple characters to reach rounds that they never had before. Obviously this was true at the highest level for most divisions since normally by Round 5, there's nothing but Noble Niners left, maybe one or two others (non-rally) if the bracket was suitably lopsided (quick, which Noble Niners did L-Block knock out in the 2007 semifinals? The answer is none of them because he'd already knocked one out in the quarterfinals and seven of the other eight had been on the opposite side of the bracket.) But Vincent Valentine was the only one in this group to make Round 4, and Ryu Hayabusa, Riku, Pac-Man, and Auron were the only other four to have made Round 3. (Also there were a couple of Round 1 matches in this division where neither character had any prior wins, although only one of the four characters in those two matches even had any prior appearances so that's a little misleading.) Oh, and Riku's only Round 3 appearance outside of Rivalry Rumble came in a year in which he didn't finish in first place in any match, getting second place in two straight rounds of fourways.

Geralt-Rosalina was the match where both were newcomers, and with Simon upsetting Ryu H, both of these characters had already reached new heights. The newcomer winning only cemented it, however. Ladies and gentlemen, start your bandwagons.
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Match 86: Pac-Man vs. Bayonetta

Pac-Man 14082
Bayonetta 15299

But before Geralt cold get a proper bandwagon going, he'd have to deal with another potential bandwagon, and one with boobs, no less. You could argue that Bayonetta hadn't truly reached new heights despite having gone to Round 3 for the first time, because 2013 cut out two thirds of the remaining field each round rather than half, and if you measure simply by distance from the end of the contest, a Round 2 appearance in 2013 is at best equivalent to winning a division in 2018, possibly even equivalent to winning your first Legends Bracket match.

Yes, that's right, Link's 2018 record is the same as Draven's 2013 record. Link did it in 1v1s rather than 3ways so he beat fewer characters (not to mention he beat the same character twice), but even with a free pass to Round 5, he needed to win 5 matches to take home this crown, just like Draven did.

Of course, it's kind of impossible to come up with a good equivalence between either of those two years and any other year, because the 2013 field using powers of 3 instead of powers of 2 and the 2018 field having a losers' bracket (You know who else besides Link had 5 wins in 2018? Cloud! Also Pikachu, Bowser, and Tifa all had exactly five wins and Zelda had 7, but they were in the main bracket.) It's much easier with the earlier brackets. 2010 had 7 rounds, Villains had 5, and the other brackets all had 6. You could make an argument for counting 2007 and 2008 as though they had 7 rounds, since they also had 128 characters just like 2010 did.

Okay, granted, 2005 also had a Tournament of Champions, similar to this year's Legends Bracket. 2005 was essentially an 8-round contest in which 3 out of the 4 characters in Round 7 had direct byes there. It feels wrong to say that a Round 5 appearance in 2005 is only equivalent to a Round 3 appearance in 2004, though. It would be foolish. So then how, even if you ignore the loser's bracket, do you score this season? In 2005, we narrowed 64 down to 1, and then put that 1 in a 4-character bracket. This year, we only narrowed 128 down to 8, and then put those 8 in a 16-character bracket.
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...I think we would have to ignore Losers' Bracket and just treat this as an 8-round bracket. I know a lot of people are treating Losers as the "true" values for X-Stat purposes since those are the ones that actually knocked characters out of the contest. I feel that this is a view largely perpetuated by those who feel that the two rematches that had significant shifts in percentage produced more "legitimate" results than the originals, which is a belief that meshes with their preconceived notions. One of the matches I'm referring to is Mario-Samus, where Samus nearly pulled the upset the second time, and the other is a match with only one Noble Niner in it where said Noble Niner outright lost the first time, and only the first time. Really, the presence of a Loser's Bracket just muddies the waters, especially when it's set up like this with it being single elimination for four rounds and then double elimination. When listing the Most Surprising Results of All Time, Zelda's upset of Mario is listed as a Round 7 match. Because that's what it is. That's the percentage of people who thought that Zelda would win 7 matches. Contrast, say, the very next match, which is also on that list. That's the number of people who thought that Crono would either lose his first match and win the next three or win his first match, lose his second, and win his next two. And it gets murkier the further you go along. How many people who correctly picked Mario > Samus II did so because they actually had Mario losing in the Legends Semis (most likely to Snake), and how many did so because they mistakenly thought Sephiroth would continue his previous dominance of Mario and would still be alive in the Legends' Finals?

So I think you have to just treat the Legends matches as the only ones that matter for how deep a tournament run you've made. By that metric, making Round 3 in this tournament is essentially equivalent to making the field at all pre-2007. It's not exactly the same since there are only 40 characters alive at the end of Round 2, not 64 like there were then, but it's still six wins away from a title. It's either that or you just ignore the 8 legends and pretend that these first four rounds were just the first four rounds of a seven-round tournament, and then...what? Honestly, that whole "128 down to 8, then those 8 are part of the Sweet Sixteen" bit is throwing me. I guess 2005 and 2006 were no better, what with the fact that technically Mario and Samus won titles in those years, but Link is still the ultimate champion (no, Jay Solano doesn't count) and Samus in particular was eliminated from three days before the runner-up from the main bracket, who was also included because CJayC loved getting cutesy and the favorites on the Male and Female sides were Crono and Samus, and even though that would make the Battle Royale 3 parts Nintendo and 3 parts Square, it wouldn't be tough to imagine Link's presence allowing Crono to steal another win over Mario. We've never quite seen if that would be the case. We've seen Crono steal a win over Samus and Mario in a fourway with Link, and we've seen Crono miserably in last place with Cloud, Link, and Snake, but we never saw Link and another Nintendo character and Cloud and Crono.

All of this is irrelevant, though, because Bayonetta's Round 2 appearance in 2013 came at the expense of N and Wander. So clearly this is her best run. Also, you are just now realizing that Bayonetta has never lost in Round 1 (though she has failed to advance out of a vote-in poll. She's not the only character whose record is positively affected by losing in those polls; I mentioned Wario's .500 record but he's also among those who lost out in the vote-ins in 2010.

Pac-Man is also among those who failed to advance out of vote-ins in 2010.)
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Match 87: Auron vs. Vincent Valentine

Auron 16396
Vincent 12989

Bracketmakers were not fooled here; 37.61% may not sound high for a second-round match, but it's higher than three of the previous four winners. Besides, Vincent was a slight underdog in Round 1, and Auron himself had under 70% prediction percentage in Round 1. So let's look at the Gurus instead!

...Whoa.

Board 8 loves to hold on to the past. Once they're convinced that someone is strong, it takes a while for them to accept that they aren't. And in particular, there's this feeling that even if a Final Fantasy 7 character is naturally a little weaker than their opponent, they'll pull off the win anyway if that opponent is from a Final Fantasy game other than 7. And honestly, FF7 does have a damn good record against other FF games. Squall beat Aerith twice in 2007, and Auron beat Aerith in 2010, and Kefka beat Zack in 2013. But that's it for FF7 characters losing to characters from other FF games, and it's not just Cloud and Seph who keep the record afloat--Vincent beat Squall in 2005, and Tifa, Aerith, and even Zack all have wins against other FF characters. (Though admittedly Aerith's is pretty weak.) And when something doesn't fit Board 8's preconceived narrative, they like to come up with excuses for why the result isn't "legitimate". The single highest-profile Board 8 failing is Knuckles beating Magus when literally no one in Guru, Oracle, or Board Odds Project predicted it. It no longer qualifies as the "Most Embarrassing Result" because that's measured by the difference between the Gurus and the casuals and the casuals were surprised by that too, but it was a complete blindsiding and it came because Magus was fed to Crono in 2004 and rather than trying to figure out what the degree of SFF was, the adjusted X-Stats just gave him his 2003 number, which was entirely bogus. The reason I bring this up is because nearly everyone wanted to make excuses for Vincent's 2013 performance, namely that he'd been sabotaged by a picsmith. (They refused to use "rallies" as an excuse, even though that was a much better one, because admitting that Mewtwo was rallied meant they couldn't call him a FRAUD for not retaining his 2013 strength. And yes, that is a perfectly valid explanation for why Vincent finished in third; Phoenix's consistent overseeding alone should be evidence that his fanbase is dedicated, and as such he retained a greater portion of his natural strength in the presence of a rally than Vincent did.) But in spite of all the justifications available for Vincent, 95.625% of Gurus picked Auron! The Oracles even more so, at 98.5%, though that's understandable because Oracle picks are made far closer to the match itself and Vincent's struggles with Magus made Auron > Vincent even more obvious than it already was.

We don't have a list for the matches where we outpredicted the casuals by the greatest amount, but this one probably has to rank up there pretty high. 58.01% difference. Of course, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of our greatest "triumphs" came in later rounds, because prediction percentages naturally wane there but a lot of times we're still nearly unanimous where Noble Niners are concerned.
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Match 88: Sub-Zero vs. Claire Redfield

Sub-Zero 19471
Claire 9915

Oh hey there's another match where we're still nearly unanimous (over 90%) and the casuals are split far enough that the favorite has less than 50% of brackets. This one's at least a little understandable because of the seedings; Joker was a 2-seed and a newcomer and Shulk was also the seeding favorite and didn't have Smash yet when he lost in Round 1 in 2013, so it would be easy enough for people to overestimate them. If anything, this shows where our biggest weakness to being embarrassed by the casuals lies--we usually don't have much faith in newcomers, so if one of them actually shows strength, they can easily ruin us.

Match 89: Luigi vs. Frog

Luigi 17681
Frog 11008

This was an entirely normal result, so probably the best thing to do is compare this to Bowser vs. Frog 2010. Bowser got a better percentage there, which is entirely in line with what most seasons would suggest. After all, fellow Mario character Yoshi has met both Luigi and Bowser in 1v1s and defeated the former while losing to the latter. The problem, of course, being that Luigi and Bowser met in a 4way and Luigi won. To that I say lol 4ways. It's that simple.

Match 90: Master Chief vs. Miles "Tails" Prower

Chief 12771
Tails 15923

I'm sure most of you have probably had at least one moment where you look at your bracket during the contest and say "I picked WHAT?!" Because it seems so obvious to you that you can't believe that you actually picked it wrong. I had that moment in Round 1. While 55% of Gurus were lamenting the loss of 3 points (yes, that's how many had Drake > Chief/Majima) and an additional 25% were lamenting the loss of 1, I was celebrating my insight for getting this right...only to discover that I'd picked Chief > Tails. Why had I done that? Chief hasn't been worth a damn thing for quite some time. The board knew it, as both Drake and Tails had over 50% retention rates for this match. Tails only barely, however, so I guess I wasn't the only one who thought Chief > Tails was possible.

The casuals also felt that Tails vs. Chief/Majima was more or less a toss-up. Only 16.29% picked Tails to win this match, but only 16.87% picked him to lose it, with the remaining 66.85% picking him to lose to Nathan. Yes, I know that adds up to 100.01%. We got to see raw bracket counts for correct picks as well as percentages, and I assure you that each of those numbers is correct and the extra 0.01% is the result of rounding errors.
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Match 91: Tifa Lockhart vs. Mewtwo

Tifa 16669
Mewtwo 12023

Just another piece on the growing mound of evidence that Tifa has always been the #3 FF7 character, except not really because Mewtwo was rallied in 2013. We all know that. Mewtwo wasn't going to be as strong this year.

...Okay, I admit it: I had Mewtwo here in my bracket. And next round. By the time this match actually came around, I'd realized I'd made a mistake and took Tifa in Oracle, albeit with a very low number that got me fairly low in the rankings for that match. That was largely because I was still rooting for Mewtwo, because my bracket needed Mewtwo. We saw very easily in 2010 that Mega Man X was stronger than Luigi; they had a common opponent only a round apart, and yes Luigi probably gets SFF'd harder by Link but they're both probably SFF matches. And Tifa outright had a previous win over Luigi. I would have taken either of them to beat Luigi in Round 4, no question--but Mewtwo, being a true Nintendo character, I expected would suffer from Nintendo hierarchy. I had Luigi > Mewtwo in Round 4 fully expecting that it would be wrong if Mewtwo lost in an earlier round.

Honestly, I identified this as one of the toughest divisions to predict. In Round 1, you've got Ocelot-Dedede. In Round 2, you've got Tifa-Mewtwo, and then in Round 3 you've got the winner of that vs. MMX (although I think I even gave MMX a slim chance of being upset by Dedede if he got past Ocelot--or was it the other way around? I don't remember; neither of those upsets seems likely now but I'm certain I didn't consider MMX an absolute guarantee, merely a heavy favorite.) And then in the division final, Luigi being a likely favorite against one of his three most likely opponents but a likely underdog against the other two. And that's without considering any other result on Luigi's half of the bracket; Tails/Nathan/Chief was a bit of a mess as well.

Match 92: Revolver Ocelot vs. Mega Man X

Ocelot 9062
X 19621

Ocelot's results have always been a tad uneven, as I mentioned last round. But this is unquestionably a good performance for X. The final percentage isn't that far ahead of the Oracle Consensus, but that's with the biggest outlier being an overestimation. There is one other significant outlier and it's on the opposite side, though. At any rate, X still looked like he would probably be slightly favored next round. There's some fun to be had with those numbers but I'll get to that then.
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Match 93: Sephiroth vs. Captain Falcon

Sephiroth 18597
Falcon 10046

Falcon did 5.00% better here than he did against Cloud in 2010, but this was still not necessarily cause for concern for Sephiroth. After all, Falcon, being a Smash character first and foremost and one of the Original Twelve at that, had likely boosted. Furthermore, although this could be considered an even bigger cause for concern, the match wasn't actually as close as it seemed. Just barely over 50% of Falcon's raw votes came from registered users despite unregistered voters outnumbering registered voters by nearly a thousand. Like, close enough to 1000 that Seph's unregistered votes outnumbered his registered votes by over 1000 while Falcon's registered votes outnumbered his unregistered votes by less than 10. On raw votes, Seph had 65.54%; 63.64% with registered voters and 67.26% with unregistered. That could bode ill for him in the future, since the registered voter base, while smaller, is more important.
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Nice to see you add your stuff on Board 8 wiki.
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Match 94: Amaterasu vs. Lara Croft

Amaterasu 15728
Lara 12915

Counterevidence to the "pink wave"? Yes if you think it's mainly fueled by horny incels, but if you think it's a sign of gamers' tastes changing, who want their characters to be relatable, this is no such thing. I think Lara's reboot has brought her in line with what Gen Z wants, or at least what Gen Y perceives as what Gen Z wants, but I don't know. Amaterasu, however, is busy being an actual goddess, saving the world with a paintbrush and being a single mother. I may not be very well in touch with the female half but I seem to remember these being feminist goals.

Actually to be honest I'm kind of weak at all direct interpersonal communication. I prefer to express myself through writing, hence the analyses and playthrough topics. I refuse to coopt the "incel" moniker even though it's technically true because I'm too paralyzed by fear. When I was young, it was merely fear of rejection, but I got over that. Unfortunately, we live in the Age of Me Too. I have no doubts that the majority of complaints levied under Me Too are real, but the whole idea of it has me so rattled that my best strategy right now is to just be as charming as possible and wait to find a girl aggressive enough to make the first move. See, that's the other advantage of writing things down; you can see how stupid you're being. I need to get out and mingle and not care what happens next.

I somehow turned what was supposed to be an inspiring ode to powerful women into my own complaining. I should not write these this late.
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As I said in my analysis the Tomb Raider games sold extremely well. The first sold 10.000.000 and the 2nd around 7.000.000! Man! But Lara isn't talked about now. Don't get why. I wonder who is supposed to be the most popular female videogame character now.
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In the gaming community, it's probably 2B. Outside of gaming, it's probably still Lara.
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On this site it's Samus by a mile. Or okay, maybe Zelda.
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Match 95: Ryu vs. Commander Shepard

Ryu 19063
Shepard 9581

Shepard avoided the doubling here. It's clear that s/he still hasn't run out of strength yet. Though this is definitely a huge step backwards from beating Aerith last time out.

I may expand upon this analysis later but this was mostly just something to hold the place. This isn't exactly a terribly interesting match.
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Match 96: KOS-MOS vs. Aqua

KOS-MOS 16438
Aqua 12209

Ulti's got the, erm, "stupidity" surrounding this match covered, so I'm going to avoid talking about ranting users and stick to the characters in the match. Here, have a quote from KOS-MOS's Contest History page.

What in the world happened to KOS-MOS? After two years in which KOS-MOS was a middle of the pack character, she went out against Luigi in a match that she had a decent chance to win and completely bombed.

After Xenosaga 2, no less. KOS-MOS's disappointment paired with Albedo turning out to be cannon fodder in Spring 2005 confirms what many already believe, which is that the popularity of Xenosaga is likely gone for good. Either that or Luigi boosted beyond belief.

That's from her 2005 contest run, one and done. Luigi would end up losing the very next round to Tifa, and normally a character putting up 66% in a match that was supposed to be debatable would lead to massive overestimations but Tifa's Round 1 performance literally saw her get a better percentage on Vyse than Cloud did in an earlier contest so Luigi was still the underdog. I bring this up because her two "middle of the pack" runs only granted her one win. She's since made it to Round 2 via the awfulness of the female bracket and via Blizzard SFF allowing her to easily come out in second place in a match with a clear winner and three characters of similar strength fighting for second place, but this is her first trip to Round 3. Even though her games proper are over a decade in the past, and she only maintains any relevance via a consistent string of guest appearances. (Play Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier.) This, however, probably is one of the reasons that this site gets ridiculed. There's a perception that we're stuck in the past and that characters/games are worthless until they can be viewed through nostalgia goggles. Sure enough, KOS-MOS finally breaks through to Round 3 only when placed in a fourpack with three characters from the 2010s.

Of course, it should be noted that this was only the second contest where that was possible, because nominations for Character Battle VIII were in December 2009. Compare this to the six contests in as many years that she was in after her game came out (yeah, she's still too young to have been in CBI).

What is the current policy on vote-ins, by the way? I know that at the time, Ulti said he was in favor of considering the 2010 vote-ins part of the contest because it kept alive CATS' streak of making every contest (which was undeniably broken here), but in this year's topic when he mentioned how wide a range of seeds Lara Croft has had, I brought up the stat about both she and Pac-Man falling in the vote-ins that year after being 1-seeds in 2002 and he said that no one cares about vote-ins. I bring it up because if they do count, KOS-MOS is on the list of characters to debut post-CBI that have been in every contest since their debut game came out.

KOS-MOS was actually one of three characters that made the vote-ins but not the main bracket in 2010 that reached Round 3 this year, along with Wario and Bayonetta. We were guaranteed at least one before Round 2 even started because of Bayonetta's 2nd-round opponent also qualifying. The rest of the vote-in field did fairly decently, too. I'll put them all together, even the ones I already mentioned.
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Round 4:

Aerith Gainsborough (Made 2010 bracket as a 14-seed)

Round 3:

Wario (Missed 2010 bracket)
Bayonetta (Missed 2010 bracket)
Sub-Zero (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed and reached Round 3)
Tails (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed)
Mega Man X (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed and reached Round 3)
KOS-MOS (Missed 2010 bracket)

Round 2:

Lightning (Made 2010 bracket as a 16-seed)
Chun-Li (Missed 2010 bracket)
The Boss (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed and reached Round 2)
Simon Belmont (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed)
Pac-Man* (Missed 2010 bracket)
Frog (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed)
Lara Croft (Missed 2010 bracket)

Round 1:

Spyro the Dragon* (Missed 2010 bracket)
Scorpion (Missed 2010 bracket; apparent final cut)
Ridley (Made 2010 bracket as a 16-seed)
Peach (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed)
Godot (Missed 2010 bracket)

*Lost to another name on this list.

So that's 19 characters in this bracket who were in the 2010 vote-ins--9 who missed the bracket entirely--and those 19 characters went 14-5 in Round 1, with a perfect 19-0 impossible because two were facing each other--the nine that missed entirely going 6-3, with, again, a perfect 9-0 being impossible because two of them were facing each other.

Now you might also notice that two of the three listed as being 13-seeds made it all the way to Round 3 in 2010. That's no accident. Frog had the misfortune to run into Bowser in Round 1 in 2010, but the other three 13-seeds that came out of the vote-ins all went to Round 3, and 14-seeds also went 2-0 in Round 2. The four 13-seeds that were direct entrants into the bracket, plus the full set of eight 11- and 12-seeds? 1-19 in Round 1. That one actually was a 13-seed, oddly enough--Ken Masters' tight win over Albert Wesker. But the point is, the 13-15 seed lines were generally stronger than the 11-12 lines that year (not the 10's; they had some absolute monsters. In fact both of those 14-seeds that made it to Round 3 lost to 10-seeds). The reasoning was obvious: a lot of good characters have trouble with nominations due to having to fight other members of their own series, but those characters easily rise to the top in vote-ins. The other low seed lines can often be filled with all sorts of weird fodder that got a rally.

In fact, here's my newest stupid idea: for the next contest, have the entire field decided by a series of vote-ins. If you want to speed them along, break out the old 12-hour format for those; you can whittle down 280 characters to 128 in only two weeks that way. Obviously, make sure to use an actual S-curve when grouping the characters for vote-ins, so the #1 nomination-getter would be in a poll with #56, #57, #112, #113, #168, #169, #224, #225, and #280, etc. (It doesn't have to be 280; I just threw that out there so that the vote-ins would cull more characters than it kept and we'd have a multiple of 70 so it could be an exact number of weeks.) The top characters would still get their high seeds, most likely, but the characters who are forever plagued by that little clause where nominating too many characters from the same game/series will get your ballot thrown out can finally get the seeds they deserve. (Due to being a series with a new set of characters in each numbered game, Final Fantasy suffers from this a lot, especially secondary females like Aerith and Rikku.) Yes, the vote-ins will likely become tedious, but it should produce an extremely strong field. Now that I think about it, that's not a stupid idea at all!
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Finally, it must be noted that this particular result is not an upset. Yes, the prediction percentage is only 23.29% which is too low to even possibly make her the favorite this early in the contest, but that's residual upset effect. KOS-MOS's Round 1 prediction percentage was only 41.48%, which means that 56.16% of brackets that had her in this match had her winning. Not a great percentage, and well within the range where it's possible that brackets that had this particular match-up favored Aqua slightly since she herself fell a little short of 2/3 prediction in Round 1, but it's definitely a decent amount, and while I don't believe that "bracket votes" make a huge difference, it can't be denied that Ellie outperformed Aqua against KOS-MOS and that this effect was even more pronounced among registered voters, which might suggest that the plurality of casuals had Ellie winning this match. (And yes, "voting your bracket" when you've already lost your pick for a match does often mean voting for the one that broke it, especially given those prediction percentages. Pre-match, it would be entirely likely that an Ellie bracket would see that Aqua was a bigger favorite than Ellie in their Round 1 matches and assume that more brackets would be busted by KOS-MOS > Aqua than by Aqua > KOS-MOS--which isn't necessarily false, because even if Ellie > Aqua is the most common pick, if the second-most common is Aqua > Ellie rather than KOS-MOS > Aqua, Aqua could have the second-most brackets anyway.)
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KOS-MOS has no games starring her in a decade (or even a re-release of Xenosaga, which could help wonders, as Crash's new strength proves), but still got to round 3 - leading to those hilarious stupid meltdowns, but that's a detail - because only here that could happen. Along with "we're stuck in the past", there's the fact that RPGs are just a genre that requires game guides, and this site was built on them. All the Noble 9 in fact have the help of being from beloved games with FAQ appeal (FF7 and CT are RPGs, Zelda and Metroid have lots of items to get, Metal Gear is weird, and Mario, Sonic and MM hail from the old school hard platformer days). And of course, the opponents were weak: even TLoU2 hype couldn't help Ellie and her unfavorable pic in a site that barely cares about her game, and the protagonist of a KH side game (and those spin-offs while waiting for a KH3 might have even eroded the fanbase a bit) also borders on niche, without the PS2 nostalgia appeal KOS-MOS has.
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good writeups
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@igordebraga She is in Project X games which are on 3DS. She is not the star but I learned about her, her rival and her games from these games if it counts.
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Match 97: Dante vs. Ganondorf

Dante 12926
Ganondorf 16720

An utterly predictable result. Dante's surprisingly strong for a non-Nintendo, non-RPG character, but there's a limit to how powerful you can be if that's the case unless you're Solid Snake. (Technically also Mega Man and Sonic from among the Noble Nine, but they're still pre-PS1 platformer characters so they might as well fall under the "Nintendo" umbrella). About the only thing he has in his favor is that he is not, in fact, a western character, a fact which I frequently forget because his character design screams "American developer". Nope, he's actually Capcom, although these days, that might be even more of a liability than being non-Japanese.

But this is still a good performance against a Triforce Wielder, even if he is (ironically given that his is the Triforce of Power) the weakest of the three. I say this because even before Zelda boosted to near-Link levels this year, there was probably a wider gulf between the #3 and #4 characters from that series than between #1 and #2. Then again, it's not like Legend of Zelda has had that many characters participate. Midna was at least somewhat of a regular after Twilight Princess came out, getting into four straight contests, but other than that we've had Tingle a few times and Epona and Groose making the giant 2013 field. Of those, only Midna and Epona have managed to make Round 2, and none have made Round 3.

But that's kind of to be expected, because The Legend of Zelda has about as much cast carryover between games as Final Fantasy, except Final Fantasy has a full party of characters each game rather than a lone hero and the LoZ protagonists, while technically different characters, have the same name and similar appearances so they end up as a lone entrant in these contests. So you've got these three characters who appear in nearly every game (even if two out of three of them are technically the Identical Descendants/Ancestors of their counterparts from other games rather than truly the same person/beast every time) and a bunch of other characters who are lucky if they manage to appear twice. Why wouldn't there be a huge gulf between that trio and everyone else?

Match 98: Vivi vs. Donkey Kong

Vivi 16301
DK 13347

https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Vivi_vs_Donkey_Kong

I thought it was worth making during the contest, so I did. Through the first two rounds, we were wondering how much Donkey Kong had truly boosted. Unless Vivi also boosted, the answer is "probably not by as much as we thought". This was Donkey Kong's best outing against Vivi, but it still wasn't anywhere near what his first two rounds would suggest.

Also, https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Pikachu_vs_Tidus_vs_Leon_Kennedy_vs_Vivi_Ornitier_2007.

That's all three of DK's opponents this year in the same match. At the time this match happened, it looked like there was a chance that if DK won this match, he could make it all four members of that match. After all, given DK's past history, if he made it past Vivi, it would signify a legitimate boost, to the point that he probably would stand a chance against Ganondorf. Then DK-Pikachu would most likely occur in Losers' 1, or possibly Losers' 2 if they both managed to upset Mega Man but the idea of a DK > MM upset seemed fairly inconceivable so it would really come down to whether or not Pikachu could beat Mega Man.

But of course DK couldn't get past Vivi, so this mostly just served to show how far Leon had fallen. Did you actually follow the link to that 2007 match? Leon came out in first place, with 33.31%. Hard to imagine him even getting that percentage in a 1v1 against Pikachu nowadays.
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But let's take the comparisons to 2007 a bit further, because there's still a point to be made. That match I linked to above was a round two match. This was one of the Round 1 matches that fed into it: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2886-division-6-round-1-leon-ridley-spyro-vivi. Now, aside from the bit where a character with no contest wins outside of Rivalry Rumble where a Noble Niner was carrying him manages to comfortably spank a character that has one (albeit only one which came in the watered-down 2013 field) for third place, the key thing to note here is that even without Tidus LFFing him, Vivi lost to Leon. As such, unlike in 2010 where the casuals had no excuse for Vivi having only a 39.95% prediction percentage (not even a full 5% better than the initial match in 2004!), they can actually be excused for dropping nearly two-thirds of Vivi's R2 prediction percentage here (65.96% of brackets had him making it to this match but only 22.96% had him winning it). He was, by all rights, the underdog in this match pre-contest, except the favorite ended up eliminated a round earlier.

...Maybe. DK was the favorite with the casuals in Round 1, though not with the Gurus, and his Round 2 prediction percentage, while under 50%, was more than half his Round 1 prediction percentage--and more than half of Leon's Round 1 prediction percentage. Which means that DK might have had the plurality of brackets in the Tidus/DK/Leon/Dragonborn fourpack. Which would mean that there's...maybe less excuse? Heck, once you consider the fact that Vivi had a 65.96% prediction percentage in R2 and DK only had a 38.06%, but the percentages fell in such a way to make it look like that was a plurality...it's possible, if unlikely, that the casuals were so split on DK's fourpack that Vivi's 22.96% is actually the plurality. Unlikely, because that still leaves 77.04% to mostly be split among DK's fourpack (the other three members of Vivi's fourpack will probably take a little bit, but not much). If we give about 3% to the other three members of Vivi's fourpack, DK's fourpack would be averaging about 18.5% apiece. Given that Dragonborn barely had twice that to get out of Round 1...yeah, I doubt Vivi was even the technical favorite here. Though it does bring up another intriguing possibility, that DK was the favorite in his fourpack but Leon was the technical favorite in the eightpack due to being perceived as having a greater chance at getting past Vivi. It would only serve to underscore the fact that transitivity is not a thing in these contests. Hell, just look at Bowser/Yoshi/Luigi.
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Safer_777 posted...

She is in Project X games which are on 3DS. She is not the star but I learned about her, her rival and her games from these games if it counts.

I know Monolith puts her in everything. Wonder if that or Xenosaga, whose last game was in 2006, draws more votes for her.
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igordebraga posted...

Safer_777 posted...

She is in Project X games which are on 3DS. She is not the star but I learned about her, her rival and her games from these games if it counts.

I know Monolith puts her in everything. Wonder if that or Xenosaga, whose last game was in 2006, draws more votes for her.

On this website? Probably Xenosaga. Or the Xenoblade 2 cameo.
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Match 99: Zero vs. Wario

Zero 17867
Wario 11789

Round 3 is where the last of the weaklings are usually weeded out. Occasionally an entire eightpack is weak enough that something not normally capable of making a deep run gets there (think Scorpion in 2002), but even in the era-divided games contests, there were rarely undeserving entrants in the fourth round.

Fourpacks, however, are a small enough entity that they can be comprised of nothing but weak characters. Wario in Round 3 is definitely a weird result in a vacuum that wasn't weird at all given the competition he'd face. What's weird is that his second-round opponent wasn't even the weakest character in this division to make the second round!

It's been commented that it seemed like as compensation for making him the only Noble Niner not in Legends, they gave Sephiroth an easy division. Personally, I think this was an even easier one for Pikachu. Other "potential Noble Nine breakers" didn't have divisions nearly this easy. Vivi and Vincent both beat Noble Niners in the past, but were given highly challenging paths that they failed to handle. (Well, okay, Vincent wasn't in a terribly strong division, in that whoever came out of his fourpack would almost certainly win the division barring RallyFEAR.) Kirby and Bowser had largely easy paths to Round 4, but then had to face each other. And so on.

Match 100: Yoshi vs. Pikachu

Yoshi 13405
Pikachu 16249

See what I mean? This was probably Pikachu's biggest challenge, and it's a same-company match. All-Nintendo matches rarely produce unexpected results. One would further down the line, but that's beside the point.

That said, this qualifies as a strong performance for Pikachu based on most recent X-stats. Not the raw 2013 X-stats, but Yoshi faced Link in 2013 and Nintendo characters facing Link will always have poor raw X-stats.
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Well in all divisions except Sephiroth's there were a couple of potential winners so there you go.
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Hm. Yeah, I suppose Seph was the only one with a 50%+ prediction percentage in Round 4. Pikachu was second in that category, though.
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Match 101: Pokmon Trainer Red vs. Big Boss

Red 15748
Big Boss 14431

Add another one to the pile of results that disprove the popular notion that Pokmon had a bad contest outside of Pikachu. Honestly, other than Charizard's close call against Terra this was a phenomenal contest for Team Pokmon, in large part because they weren't spread so thin like they were last time. I mean, yeah, it's kind of disappointing that a character that literally beat Cloud last contest didn't get to return, but the quartet we got was really all we needed. And Charizard's poor outing in 2013 would soon be vindicated. Maybe. Honestly it's tough to tell because Charizard's downfall involved a character that had previously resisted SFF from his series' lead like a champ suddenly failing to do so. And Zelda clearly boosted a lot, so it's kind of misleading to say that that "disappointing" narrow victory looks a lot better now, but it does look a lot better now, especially with Donkey Kong also suddenly looking good.

So for the second straight contest, Red is in Round 4. Dude's been in three contests, one of which only had five rounds, and he's been to Round 4 twice. Oh, yeah, I guess he was also in Rivalry Rumble, whereupon he and Blue literally took home the bronze medal. So from another perspective, he's been in four contests and has two semifinals appearances. Remember when Butler went to back-to-back title games while they were still a member of the Horizon League? Yeah, that's kind of what Red is.

As for Big Boss, this was a respectable exit for him. It's clear that the series is on the decline here, due in large part to the series being completely dead, but it's still got some strength. Honestly, they don't really need to create a "new" game, just to make sure that the Konami/Kojima breakup doesn't cause the characters to fall into a legal gray area where no one can use them. Metal Gear Solid V literally ended with the prelude to the original Metal Gear. They officially wrapped up Big Boss's story and brought it back to the start of Solid Snake's. The obvious solution would be for Metal Gear Solid 6 to literally be an expanded remake of Metal Gear 1, the way the 11th, 15th, and 12th Fire Emblem games are remakes of the first three games. Except much better, because you're taking a game from the 1980s and giving it the full 3D console makeover.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/AZComics/comic509.png

Yeah, the TX-55 definitely needs some upgrades. Hopefully Kojima Productions can get the rights to Kojima's creations; the only game listed for them since they ceased to be a subsidiary of Konami appears to be a brand new IP. (Also still unreleased with release date TBD.)
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Match 102: Alucard vs. Kefka

Alucard 17943
Kefka 12242

This match goes beyond simply "lolKefka". This is like a "lolKefkaception". Pre-contest, Kefka was a definitive favorite here, getting over 50% of Gurus. The second most popular pick to win this match among Gurus was literally Kefka's first-round opponent, L-Block. Yet it was precisely because of this that, come match time, we all knew that Kefka was the underdog. "Kefka/L-Block winner" was a 154-6 pick over "Kiryu/Bomberman winner", while Alucard was only an 87-67 favorite over Yuna (remaining 6 brackets taking Alucard's Round 1 opponent, Peach.) But Alucard was every bit as dominant as Kefka against what appeared to be a stronger foe!

And yet, Kefka still embarrassed himself here, barely outdoing Yuna's number against Alucard. In fact, Kefka and Yuna are only two spots apart in the raw X-Stats. Kefka's #33, and Yuna's #35. And therein lies the biggest joke of all. That one spot between them belongs to none other than Terra Branford! And while the raw X-Stats are a bit wonky due to the number of SFF matches in the late rounds, Division 3 is probably the truest numbers you'll get, and Division 4 the second-truest as it's only stuck behind Cloud > Crono, which is marginal at best. Division 1 is stuck behind Link > Ganondorf, Division 2 behind Link > Pikachu, and Divisions 5-8 behind Link > Zelda. So it becomes kind of hard to argue that there's some sort of SFF result leading to Terra being right behind Kefka--if anything, you could actually make a case for Terra > Kefka indirectly, as Terra's number is not only behind Cloud > Crono but also Bowser > Charizard, which is probably a stronger SFF result.

And even with the evidence that Alucard was stronger, nearly 37% of Oracles still backed Kefka here. Because it just makes more sense.

The casuals, on the other hand, seemed to tentatively have this one from the start. Vaguely. Over 25% of them picked this, down from just under 49% having him reach this round. That was largely on the first round, however--Yuna was a far heavier favorite to reach round 2, but Alucard still managed to get that respectable R2 prediction percentage. It's highly unlikely, especially given Kefka's R2 prediction percentage being worse than Alucard's, that any other character had a higher percentage. Which kind of says what we'd all been thinking--Division 3 was thought to be wide open. Or at least, the bottom half was.
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Don't worry about the deleted post; I just posted in the wrong topic.
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Going to bump this too, even though it's less important to keep bumped because I've been putting these on the wiki as I go.
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A few more matches more!
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TsunamiXXVIII posted...

Honestly, other than Charizard's close call against Terra this was a phenomenal contest for Team Pokmon, in large part because they weren't spread so thin like they were last time.

Oh come on, Mewtwo was exposed as a FRAUD this contest.
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The stats say otherwise. Even in the raw X-stats, Mewtwo still rates well above the fodder line, even though Division 7 is literally stuck behind an SFF loss at all four rounds of Legends.
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More people would have picked Mewtwo to go deep if not for the FRAUD meme. That made people realize Mewtwo's 2013 was in fact rally-fueled fraudulence.
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Except that much was already obvious.
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