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

(+) Yeah! (+)

like a lot of people here, I probably have something like 1,000 predictions on my contest resume. like a lot of people here, most of them are really mediocre, chalk-y picks that didn't really amount to much. 15 years of contest picks won me a total of one video game, Dragon Quest VIII, which I then picked against in the last game contest and lost a point on. that pretty much sums up my contest career.

these are the 10 picks that either made me feel like a genius look really bad. I've gone out on a limb for a number of picks thanks to being in the Crew for something like 12 or 13 years, so I've gotten my fair share of praise/mockery (mostly mockery, because that's how it works when you Crew). this will hopefully be a fun reminder to not take any of my Crew picks seriously.

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I'd imagine all my worst picks were in the first Games Contest since that was the first bracket I filled out and I didn't understand the voter base at the time. I might actually go through past contests and try to recall my picks and maybe come up with a list of my own.

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my best pick was chrono trigger winning 2015

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LeonhartFour posted...

I'd imagine all my worst picks were in the first Games Contest since that was the first bracket I filled out and I didn't understand the voter base at the time. I might actually go through past contests and try to recall my picks and maybe come up with a list of my own.

we'll come back to this!

The Mana Sword posted...

my best pick was chrono trigger winning 2015

this too

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my best pick from 2015 was having Pokemon R/B/Y in the final

the one time I swallow my pride and actually pick Pokemon to do something but it honestly could have made it if not for the Undertale rallies

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Tag!

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My 2003 bracket is so incredibly embarrassing that I wouldn't be surprised if it were the single worst non-joke entry that the site has ever seen, it was THAT bad. If you think I'm exaggerating, I had Isaac > Samus and that wasn't even my worst pick. My naive little butt.

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BEST #5: Golden Sun over San Andreas

Golden Sun 53.69% 30920
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 46.31% 26674
TOTAL VOTES 57594

This one wasn't unthinkable, but it was still super satisfying. GTA already had a history of.. let's call them questionable results, starting with CJ losing to Ness in 2005, but those were character battles. Vice City put up a serious result on Melee back in 04 and Vice City beat Metroid Prime in a weird 09 match. San Andreas came in last in 09, but it was a really tight poll of midcarders where no one got more than 27%.

Meanwhile, Golden Sun is a GBA game for babies. Its most memorable performance was some dude named Felix pulling 47% on Master Chief -- a clue for how this match might go with favourable circumstances. Round 1 came and Golden Sun put up a higher percentage on Ratchet & Clank than San Andreas did on Dead Space. At that point, the writing was on the wall, but it was still a GBA game vs. one of the biggest games of the decade, if not all time.

This match ended up not really being that close, but it still felt great to get right.

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Didn't have that one!

Looking at my GOTD Guru, the biggest upset I picked that actually panned out was Halo 3 > Mario Sunshine! I'm still kinda proud of that one, actually.

(my actual best pick was FFX winning the whole thing but you guys just couldn't leave well enough alone)

my worst pick was definitely having FFXII in friggin' round four



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LeonhartFour posted...

I'd imagine all my worst picks were in the first Games Contest since that was the first bracket I filled out and I didn't understand the voter base at the time. I might actually go through past contests and try to recall my picks and maybe come up with a list of my own.

Worst picks excluding your first contest might be more interesting since they'll probably be things you should have known better but somehow didn't.
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WORST #5: Mario Kart over Mega Man

Mega Man 58.12% 62075
Mario Kart 41.88% 44727
TOTAL VOTES 106802

This is only in my bottom 5 because it was literally the only debatable match in the bracket. (We'll ignore the final.) The series contest was awful, a constant mess of blowouts by the big franchises that was only equal to the amount of whining from randos. We occasionally would debate matches that were kinda undebatable, like Star Ocean over Pokemon (sup HM) or Soulcaibur over Metal Gear (sup Janus), but the rest of the time was spent parsing this thing.

The case for Mega Man: it's Mega Man! You know, the noble nine guy? The games aren't particularly strong on their own but the brand is big and there are a billion games.

The case for Mario Kart: Mario Kart 64 would beat every Mega Man game in existence, and Super Mario Kart might too. (This might still be true.) Voters aren't going to have played more than a couple of Mega Man games, and everyone has a pretty positive impression of Mario Kart.

These debates went on for weeks. Then the match came and... oh, Mario Kart is dead and so is my bracket (hooray one upset in the whole bracket). It wasn't the worst upset pick, but the way that it just immediately ended the contest for a lot of people in such an anticlimactic way made it a really memorable L.

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Star Ocean over Pokemon didn't even feel like that much of a reach!

how things have changed in the years since

I think I originally had Mega Man and yoblazer convinced me to take Mario Kart. Of course, he got it worse than me since that was the death of the yoblazer account.

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Yeah, hating Pokemon was the cool thing back in 2002-2006, and this site was the king of that trend.

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I marked over super hard when it looked like Pokemon would beat Star Ocean. I was really worried Pokemon would drop that match.
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Star Ocean was a bigtime reach. the Guru suggests that not a single person picked Star Ocean over Pokemon

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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2442-hyrule-division-semifinal-pokemon-vs-metroid

At one point in time, this was considered an incredible result from Pokemon.

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Also Golden Sun > GTA is probably the upset pick I pushed the hardest on B8 that actually ended up being right, so it would be on my list too. That day was a mess. Lots of upset people posting for the first time.

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oh wait, the Guru abbreviated it as SO so I missed it. looks like it was 102-6.

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Star Ocean over Pokemon was absolutely insane.

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transience posted...

Star Ocean was a bigtime reach. the Guru suggests that not a single person picked Star Ocean over Pokemon

Oh, nobody actually picked it because it was Star Ocean, but the fact that someone could plausibly entertain it (even if it was Heroic Mario) says a lot about our opinion of the series at the time.

Also, my one big upset pick that very nearly panned out was Street Fighter > Resident Evil. Now granted, it would've felt a little dirty because I know it only would've won because RE literally had a Gaiden match pic, but I'd have taken it!

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BEST #4: Halo 3 over Mario Sunshine

Halo 3 52.53% 22476
Super Mario Sunshine 47.47% 20315
TOTAL VOTES 42791

Leon spoiled this one! Look, I can't do this one justice because it was definitely a 'had to be there' moment. Sometimes, matches start out one way and slowly move in the other direction as part of a massive groupthink that's so strong that it's almost impossible to fight against the tide. Some matches just have that pull, and nothing has that more than a Halo game against a Mario game.

I wish I had the numbers to show the picks over time. The BOP probably had Halo 3 ahead, but by the time brackets closed, Sunshine was a 165-90 favourite. The stats topic and the rest of the board really made you feel like you were on an island if you were backing the Chief here, and there was no way to really feel good about it despite it being Sunshine. I think yoblazer was at the forefront of it but I don't remember. I just remember not even arguing it after a while because it felt hopeless to even talk about it. You either believed in Mario or you believed in Mario Sunshine sucking.

And, somehow, those who had the gall to stick with their original instincts pulled out a somewhat anticlimactic win. Mario Sunshine took the lead for about two minutes before the board vote died and Halo just slowly held on the rest of the match. It was just a silly one point victory but it felt like a big deal given how loud the conversation was around this one.

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Ngamer and yoblazer were absolutely leading the Sunshine > Halo 3 charge, something I never let them forget every time I do an episode of The Show with them!

But yeah, it was just a matter of whether you believed that just being Mario was enough to let you win a match, even if it was a game very few people actually liked all that much. It was easy to disbelieve Halo considering its history, but I felt good about that one all the way!

actually thinking about it GOTD1 might have been the last good contest showing for Halo and Master Chief

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BOP trend. Sunshine on the left and Halo 3 on the right
8-6
15-9
20-14
29-18

So Sunshine was the favourite.
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thanks TRE. looks like it was close up front but those numbers are always such a subset that it's hard to know

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I'm 3 for 3 on these matches. I think I mostly stayed out of Halo 3/Sunshine and was genuinely confused about why there was so much debate over 1 point.

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actually I'm pretty sure I know another match on this list because I know it'd be on my list and I'm fairly certain we both had it!

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oh it's there!

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WORST #4: Sans over Pac-Man

Sans 28.62% 8571
Pac-Man 71.38% 21380
TOTAL VOTES 29951

I, uh, yeah. Actually, believe it or not this isn't as bad as it looks. Pac-Man was, for some reason, kind of outrageously strong in 2018 compared to pretty much any other year. Yeah, Pac-Man got into Smash, but it was Pac-Man. It wasn't like people didn't know who he was and it wasn't like Pac-Man was awesome there.

To make matters probably worse, my pick for Sans wasn't some kind of stupid rally pick. I don't do those because I hate trying to predict a rally. Sans had become a pretty notable character by the time 2018 rolled around, and his competition was a yellow ball that always collapsed in the face of adversity. I don't have my bracket handy but I may have even picked Sans to beat Bayonetta in round 2. I forget.

So yeah, this pick is particularly dreadful. I don't ever take 70-30 L's at this point of my contest career. If I lose, it's a noncompetitive 57-43 or something like that, not something this bad. This one hurt.

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I remember the board being surprisingly quiet when Sans got rolled. Too many people who went '...oops' and just didn't want to talk about it.

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Sans might have a chance now that he's kinda in Smash too...!

(also I actually played Undertale like a month ago)

looking at the Guru Sans was actually the favorite? Wow, I'm surprised by that.

Looking at my CBX bracket, there honestly aren't a lot of wrong picks I'm embarrassed by, even though I did really suck at it! I really do wish I had taken Crash > Cecil though because I never felt good about picking Cecil and I love poking fun at the fact that he's never won anything!

I guess my dumbest pick was having Zero win Division 2, and I honestly don't know why I did that because I almost immediately regretted not having Pikachu once the contest started.

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And a lot of those who picked against Sans just wanted the match to end quietly.
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I don't remember many of my contest picks standing out other than maybe Vincent's run in 2005 and that was because I wasn't on the board when I submitted my bracket

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I picked Sans and wasn't comfortable with it, but I expected that if he lost it would be 40-60 at worst

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KommunistKoala posted...

I don't remember many of my contest picks standing out other than maybe Vincent's run in 2005 and that was because I wasn't on the board when I submitted my bracket

2005 was the "genius pick that never was" for me because I was loud about Squall > Magus and I never got the chance to actually see it happen! I was so close on Squall winning the Devil Division though.

(still Knuckles > Magus was the far more hilarious outcome so it still worked out)

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Sans/Pac-Man is why I'm pretty confident in Undertale bombing. You don't get 70-30ed by Pac-Man nowadays unless you lose all the neutral votes.

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I think my best pick to brag about was Starcraft > Halo back in 2004.

Conversely, my worst pick was MGS2 > Melee. I wasn't sure what to make of Melee, so it was either take it to FFX or lose in the first round. The wrong choice there cost me a possible total victory that year.

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The problem is Undertale's opponents are soft until it runs into Mario Odyssey. Octopath Traveler is very likely weak enough to lose. Shovel Knight is a harder call but might lose as well.
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

I think my best pick to brag about was Starcraft > Halo back in 2004.

Conversely, my worst pick was MGS2 > Melee. I wasn't sure what to make of Melee, so it was either take it to FFX or lose in the first round. The wrong choice there cost me a possible total victory that year.

Having Melee winning Division 128 was definitely the biggest upset pick I got right! The rest of the division was an utter disaster though (I had Kingdom Hearts > Metroid Prime in the upper half of the division lawl)!

I did manage to get a perfect Division 32/64 and only got one match wrong in Division 16, which was another awful pick in Sonic 2 > Mario World.

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I forgot I picked Starcraft over Halo until I just checked now. I'm pretty sure that was a completely fanboy pick but it worked. Looking over my bracket I was 47th going into Starcraft vs Wind Waker. I would then go 1-8 to close out the contest and finish last in the Guru contest as the only person who scored less than 100 points.
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I had literally never heard of Starcraft before the Games Contest, so its run was wild for me.

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That's pretty surprising. Back in the day Starcraft was so big it was one of the few PC games I have played.
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I did not grow up playing the PC at all, so unless it was something I heard about from the kids at school or it was featured in GamePro or something, such as Duke Nukem, I probably didn't know anything about it.

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Pac-Man > Sans might be my best pick, mainly because I called Pac to lap Sans in the oracle, getting first place on that match for it (though by less than 2/10ths of a percentage point). Not that it's saying much, since my contest "career" has been undistinguished even considering I've only been picking these since 2013 - and not only did I not even have an account prior to 2018, I also nuked everything I wrote about pre-2018 contests at some point.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

The problem is Undertale's opponents are soft until it runs into Mario Odyssey.

Eh, I don't think they're that soft, really. Octopath might not be truly beloved, but it's still a JRPG that deliberately aped the 16-bit classics, on a site that of course values JRPGs and nostalgia in general. Meanwhile, Shovel Knight the character looked like non-fodder in 2018, and there's no reason to assume that can't transfer over to his game.

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this seems like the right topic to give every hero who picked No Mercy to win a match a shoutout

(it was a 60/40 split lol)

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I feel like all my best picks where in BGE 2004. Melee winning 128, SMRPG > SF2, Starcraft > Halo, probably a few others scattered about.

worst is Kerrigan > Vincent listed four times in a row followed by SMB3 > CT (and then FF7) because I thought my bracket was too cookie cutter and needed upsets when in reality I was top 10 going into SMB3/CT.

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Oh yeah, I correctly called a Chrono Trigger resurrgence in 2015 that would take it to the semi-finals over Melee, and then Pokemon RBY would beat both it and OoT to win the contest.

The latter could have actually happened if RBY managed to beat Undertale, and was otherwise a wash anyway. The former really stung though because I was one of the few that pegged Chrono Trigger correctly that contest, but the Melee rally cost me leaderboard contention, if not prize contention.

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Brawl > Melee was probably the most satisfying, but it was not exactly a weird pick.

Being the only oracle to call Tifa > Sephiroth might be 1 if I made a list. I was among the ones picking Golden Sun over GTA, that would rank as well. In 2010 I had every single result of division 4 correct except Charizard > Bowser. I don't think anyone had that chaos division completely perfect. Had I known HGSS released on that day, I would have probably went with it. SMW & SMB3 reaching the semi-finals might also rank.

Worst pick is probably whatever was the last match I took Sandbag to win in 2008. I had it going quite far, it could probably rank more thna once. >_>


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Dr_Football posted...

this seems like the right topic to give every hero who picked No Mercy to win a match a shoutout

(it was a 60/40 split lol)

That's me!

I also had Up Your Arsenal winning a match lawl

xp1337 posted...

worst is Kerrigan > Vincent listed four times in a row followed by SMB3 > CT (and then FF7) because I thought my bracket was too cookie cutter and needed upsets when in reality I was top 10 going into SMB3/CT.

I had Mario 3 winning the contest because I thought it had the reputation for being the best game ever everywhere, this despite the fact that I had been here in 2003 for Cloud's win and seeing Sephiroth 60/40 Mario!

also I will never forget the fact that RPGuy96 literally scored 1 point in the entire Devil Division in 2005, and that was Squall > Geno. He had Terra > Dante, Magus > Knuckles, and Kerrigan > Vincent.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

I truly do not get why anyone picked Sans to win that.

Considering the reaction to the Sans costume in SSBU he does have fans that can be rallied. They just aren't here and no one successfully rallied them to come here.
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