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

(+) Yeah! (+)

LinkMarioSamus posted...

But not quite to the same extent.

I picked Chrono Trigger to win its division in 2015 with the rationale that a close loss to Mario 64 was better than a close loss to Majora's Mask or Brawl.

The game was looking to be strong enough to beat OoT, so saying it's not to the same extent is silly unless you're saying it's more.

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I was referring to Frog and Magus doing so well back then too.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

I was referring to Frog and Magus doing so well back then too.

I mean, they were never as strong as they originally appeared. Magus dropped like crazy over the years but I think Frog has mostly been pretty stable.

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Another big sign indicating Frog was a fraud was Liquid Snake getting crushed by Sephiroth in the villains contest. That match projected Frog's real strength pretty accurately. Yet people blamed that match on SFF! And we were so dense as to think Lavos was worth 28% on base Link.

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We really believed in FF/MGS SFF!

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I think an honorable mention if I did this would be my confidence in RBY > SMB3 after its performance on Tetris. Looking at it, most oracles stayed with RBY, but that was because Undertale had a match at the same time. Basically everyone had agreed SMB3 would have won, but Undertale would be granting RBY the victory.

I was defending RBYs performance on Tetris A LOT. Mostly everyone was comparing Tetris to 2004 and calling it a day, but I kept insisting Tetris would benefit similarly to all the SNES games, calling RBYs showing impressive rather than disappointing, ironically for a lot of the same reasons that had tran taking Tetris far in 2004. Felt so satisfying to see RBY be ahead of SMB3 even before Undertale drowned the match (despite me thinking SMB3 is the much better game).

But yeah, because Undertale overshadowed the match and it was the popular pick when we made brackets, it'd probably just be an honorable mention and not higher.

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After some thought here are mine:

Best:

HMs: 2B & Geralt (2018), PoR>No Mercy (GOTD), Zelda>Final Fantasy (Series - remember when this wasnt obvious?), 2011>2006 (Years - someone has to say a Years prediction after all!)

5: Golden Sun > San Andreas (GOTD)
4: Undertale > Mass Effect 3 (2015 - little did I know...)
3: Majoras Mask > Pokmon GSC (GOTD)
2: Perfect Round 1 (Series - DAMN YOU KINGDOM HEARTS!)
1: Kirbys run (2009)

Majoras Mask winning that match in particular is a fun one because many on the board were so convinced that GSC would win that they refused to hear any explanations of why it happened and how you could get that prediction from looking at the 2009 match - namely that MM was getting LFFd as badly as GSC was.

But enough about the good stuff, heres a bunch of times I messed up!

Worst:

HMs: Consistently betting against DK in round 1.

5: Having Brawl > Melee AND KHII > KH at first guess then changing both (GOTD).
4: Kiryu > Bomberman (2018)
3: Kerrigan > Vincent (2005)
2: Sans not just beating Pac-Man, but going to round 3 (2018)
1: MGS4 TO THE FINALS! (2009)

Also a wrong pick I am weirdly proud of is Magus>Vincent in 2018, because while he didnt get it done a huge majority of the board favoured Vincent who then got thoroughly embarrassed. A valiant defeat!

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I dont consider the years contest to even be worth mentioning, but I had 1997 to the finals and probably would have won something if it hadnt gotten gimped by the match picture. but also, it was the years contest so who cares.

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MGS4 to the finals in 2009 isn't a bad pick! It almost made it!

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transcience posted...

I dont consider the years contest to even be worth mentioning, but I had 1997 to the finals and probably would have won something if it hadnt gotten gimped by the match picture. but also, it was the years contest so who cares.

Years was the worst contest but there were a few notable results like the 1997 issue. With the one I mentioned, I found it odd that 2006 was such a favourite given that outside of the top level it was kind of a middling year while 2011 was a banger. Yet there was near consensus for 2006. It was odd.

Leonhart4 posted...

MGS4 to the finals in 2009 isn't a bad pick! It almost made it!

Yes I had forgot it was so close, thanks!

...Of course, I neglected to mention that I had it in first place in the semifinal, despite still having OoT winning the final.

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What ever kirby cheats in contest he doesnt desver to beat anyone

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Yeah, first place over OOT wasn't a great pick but otherwise it was fine!

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As I recall I was a big believer in Brawls ability to split the Nintendo vote by a huge degree!

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Yeah, a lot of people believed in Smash's ability to resist LFF, and it turned out to be Pokemon who was better at it!

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Did you guys really only vote for Majora over FF10 because you wanted Brawl to lose? Were you seriously all hoping for a Melee vs Final Fantasy 10 final match?

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Trollblade74 posted...

Did you guys really only vote for Majora over FF10 because you wanted Brawl to lose? Were you seriously all hoping for a Melee vs Final Fantasy 10 final match?

One of the worst things this site has done is turn to plucky underdog Zelda to save them from Brawl when FFX would've done it anyway.

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Based on last contest Majora's Mask is legitimately stronger than FFX, unless you think Chrono Trigger 60-40's LTTP.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Based on last contest Majora's Mask is legitimately stronger than FFX, unless you think Chrono Trigger 60-40's LTTP.

things change a lot in 5 years

LTTP honestly didn't look as good in 2015 as it did in 2004 anyway

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My emphasis was actually on the Board 8 considered Final Fantasy 10 to be the 2nd best game of the 2000s, right behind Melee part.

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Trollblade74 posted...

My emphasis was actually on the Board 8 considered Final Fantasy 10 to be the 2nd best game of the 2000s, right behind Melee part.

Well, they were definitely wrong about that.

FFX was the best


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Bump to remind myself to do this later once I finish my games list.

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Games list is finished

Looks like I'll have plenty of time to work on this

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I should probably go read that huh

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man I'm looking at my Guru picks from 2008 and I could've sworn I made some of these picks correctly

of course I have no way of knowing now but I guess my memory of this contest isn't very good

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2008 is the second fourway, right? I feel like 2008-2013 is this weird lost era of contests, with the exception of GOTD. 2002-2006 are the glory years, 2007-2013 are the gimmick and joke years, and 2015+ are the legacy years where everyone left and we had our weird little quiet utopia. and undertale, of course, but even that contest felt mostly good outside of the Undertale matches.

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Yeah, 2008 and 2009 (4-way games) are vacuums to me, and I usually have a pretty solid recall for contests. I thought the 2010 Character Battle was really good though!

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also I'm looking at this 2009 Guru and there's no way I made some of these picks

there's especially no way I took Starcraft over FFVIII

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http://thengamer.com/guru/BGE2/stats.php?match=19

That looks so bad when I'm 11 years in the future and looking back. I have a saved copy of my bracket so I can't even pretend that I didn't have Starcraft over FF8 in Round 1. I then had (Oot >) FF8 > Starcraft in Round 2. I have no idea how I justified the two games switching position between rounds.
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yeah that's what my bracket has too

I literally do not believe I did that

I've got FFVIII > Starcraft in my Oracle in round 1, too! I either made a mistake in my actual bracket or I made a mistake in submitting it to the Guru

whatever now that I've looked over all my stuff from all the contests I don't think I'd have included anything from 2008 or 2009 anyway

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Remember that Xenogears was in the Starcraft and FF VIII match. It's reasonable to think that Starcraft could take advantage of the LFF, since the last time we saw Starcraft was Division 128.

It just turned out be a massive flop in 2009.

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Team Rocket Elite posted...

http://thengamer.com/guru/BGE2/stats.php?match=19

That looks so bad when I'm 11 years in the future and looking back. I have a saved copy of my bracket so I can't even pretend that I didn't have Starcraft over FF8 in Round 1. I then had (Oot >) FF8 > Starcraft in Round 2. I have no idea how I justified the two games switching position between rounds.

Perhaps you thought Xenogears would leech FFVIII enough in Round 1 to cost it the win even if it was possibly stronger.

Then I see you had OoT > Half-Life for the other match in that eight-pack. Throwing in Half-Life into the next round should hurt Starcraft at least a little more than FFVIII.

(In reality FFIX beat out Half-Life in that other match so instead FFVIII had an even stronger Square anchor in Round 2 than 1. Still beat Starcraft again though!)

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looks like you picked it in the Crew too. you can claim it, that's fine

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in fact, Starcraft's flop in 2009 is why the 2015 result was so crazy. if you went from 2004 right to 2015, that wouldn't have been at all notable.

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Okay, I've come up with a top 10 best and worst picks. I've also come up with a top 10 most painful picks, which are picks that I really regretted and I'm not sure why I picked them in the first place or picks that came really close to working out but fell short.

I'll hit the main list tomorrow but I'll do a few honorable mentions now!

Good Picks

--Halo 3 > Super Mario Sunshine (2010) & Mass Effect > Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2015) - I combined these because they're both wins over Mario games. I took no joy over Galaxy 2 losing since it's one of my favorite games, but the writing was on the wall for it. Halo 3 > Sunshine is a pick I still take great delight in because people thought "it's friggin' MARIO" applies to the games the fanbase doesn't like...!

--Rikku > ? Block (2013) - I was out front early on this one, but it was less satisfying because the joke character fad had passed by the time we hit 2013. L-Block was an ordinary thing now, as was Missingno and Weighted Companion Cube. None of them were all that impressive here. Also props to @ZenOfThunder for sneaking a Rikku fanart pic into the match pic. I knew it was fanart the whole time but didn't say anything until afterwards since it helped my cause...!

--Tidus > Shadow (2004) - SC2K4 didn't have a lot of hotly debated matches, but this was one of the rare ones. The X-Stats projected a super tight match, and that's what we got, although it honestly wasn't all that exciting. Tidus jumped out early and Shadow was never really able to make a serious push at overtaking him. That sums up SC2K4 pretty well! Even the close matches were kinda boring!

--Crash > Wheatley (2013) - My 2013 bracket suuuuuuuucked, but this was one of the few upsets I got right! I missed out on Spyro for whatever the reason despite him having the most winnable match of all, but I was almost all in on the Playstation mascot characters doing well!

--Brawl > Melee (2010) - Brawl was the favorite, so this isn't even an upset pick, but it just felt good to get Melee out of the contest, especially by losing to Brawl. Melee fans are the worst, man.

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Bad Picks

--Kingdom Hearts > Metroid Prime (2004) - This was a good pick in 2009, but not so much in 2004 since neither game even got to the match in question! I believed in KH1 after it basically turned Square's fortunes around in SC2K3, and yet it almost lost to SoulCalibur and bowed out without a fight to Starcraft. I took Prime > Wind Waker because I thought people loved Prime and they hated Wind Waker. After all, Link lost in part because of his cel-shaded design, right? Whoops.

--Vivi > Zelda (2005) & Aerith > Zelda (2006) - I think tran put this on his main list, but I've apparently made many worse picks than he has...! Seriously though, I've always overestimated FF and underestimated Zelda in particular in these contests, and (other than Zelda in 2018 where she became a Noble Nine killer, R.I.P. Squall) I've never been more wrong about her than in these two matches.

--Leon Kennedy > Tidus > Vivi/Pikachu (2007) - I've got a lot of bad picks related to Tidus (list spoilers)! I can't help picking him because I'm such a big fan. I went with the fanboy pick here, and my dreams were dashed early on when he got obliterated by Pikachu in round 1 (this was before we knew what a force Pikachu would become from this point forward). What was even more painful was that Tidus dragged Vivi down just enough the next round for Pikachu to advance again and then make a deep run.

--Balthier (2007) - I was convinced Balthier was going to be the next big thing for Final Fantasy. He was easily the best part of FFXII, after all! But nope, he got his butt handed to him twice by Ada Wong before promptly being sent home.

--So many GTA picks - Whether it's CJ > Ness (the original RacistFAQs match!), GTA > Warcraft, San Andreas > Golden Sun, or even Niko friggin' Bellic advancing two rounds in 2008, I keep picking these games to do well even though I know it's long past its prime. And apparently I just never learn because here I am picking GTAV to go to the division finals! what is wrong with me

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As far as a good pick that just fell short, Zelda > Charizard would have been such a sweet victory in a contest that didn't give me a whole lot of those.

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Painful Picks

--Tales of Symphonia > God of War (2010) and Thousand-Year Door (2015) - Symphonia surprised a lot of people by how well it did in 2009, even eliminating GoW in the first round. People insisted that it was a 4-way fluke and there's no way Symphonia even had a chance to win that match when you reduced it to 1-on-1, but I believed in its strength. And I was nearly rewarded on two occasions, where it put up valiant 48%+ performances in narrow losses. This is a cautionary tale to all you Xenoblade pickers! Be careful about throwing your support behind the non-Nintendo RPG just because it's on a Nintendo console!

--Jak > Chie > Draven (2013) - I've been on the receiving end of many tough Jak losses, starting with Ness > Jak in 2004. I backed him again in 2007 when it was Zero/Jak/HK-47/Lloyd, but now it looked like he was finally going to have his day in the sun. He was absolutely crushing this match. I remember I was still working night shift at Amazon at the time, and I checked the poll after getting off work with Jak comfortably ahead, unaware that the rally had already started. By the time I got home, Draven had taken the lead, and the rest is sad, sad history.

--Jill > Peach (2006) - I was on the right side of the first time Jill Valentine lost by 27 votes, but man, what are the odds that it would happen again to the same character? I feel bad for those who had Jill both times because whew, that had to suck!

--Dante > Yoshi (2005) & Dante > Ryu (2010) - I don't know why I kept picking Dante to win these debated matches. I don't even like Devil May Cry! That's part of what makes it so stupid! Why didn't I just fanboy pick Ryu in 2010 in particular? That was also the infamous "Hockey Factor" match where Ryu would surge depending on whether the gold medal hockey game was in a commercial or not. We come up with some weird stuff to explain matches, man.

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LeonhartFour posted...

I feel bad for those who had Jill both times because whew, that had to suck!

Can confirm. It really did suck.

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LeonhartFour posted...

--So many GTA picks - Whether it's CJ > Ness (the original RacistFAQs match!), GTA > Warcraft, San Andreas > Golden Sun, or even Niko friggin' Bellic advancing two rounds in 2008, I keep picking GTA to do well even though I know it's long past its prime. And apparently I just never learn because here I am picking GTAV to go to the division finals! what is wrong with me

Bad call. GTAV is going to win that division final, not just reach it. >_>
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Maybe that is my mistake this time...!

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gta always loses a round earlier than expected

get ready for a round 1 defeat

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Looking at this thread, and considering the smacking Sans and Draven got in the last contest, I wonder if Melee would get anti-voted in a future bracket.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Looking at this thread, and considering the smacking Sans and Draven got in the last contest, I wonder if Melee would get anti-voted in a future bracket.

the fans will just rally for it

it's the worst

I almost don't ever want to see another Games Contest where it's eligible to participate

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Honestly it might happen, but it might be more because its fans have generally become obnoxious rather than just anti-voting rallies.

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Good Pick #10: Mega Man to the Final Nine (2013)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5261-character-battle-ix-division-9-final-mega-man-vs-zero-mmx-vs

2013 marked the ninth Character Battle, and so SBAllen decided to make it a tribute to the Noble Nine and Board 8 as a whole. He made nine divisions and gave them all 1 seeds (as well as making all the 8 seeds B8 pet projects). I decided to believe in the power of the Noble Nine and I took all of them to reach the Final Nine, which turned out to be a huge mistake, since only four of them made it (Snake, Samus, Mega Man, and, oddly enough, Sephiroth). Many of them were huge upsets (like Mario falling to Vivi or Cloud losing to Squirtle), although some of them were expected and I was going against the grain on them. Crono/Pikachu with Magus in the match was one of them, which didn't pan out, obviously. The other one was Mega Man since the odds were good that he would be anchored down by Zero, whom he's had trouble SFFing in the past to the point that it cost him a match against Weighted Companion Cube in 2008.

When the time came, it didn't look good. Charizard wasn't exactly dominating, but he did jump out to a lead early on and was holding steady at around 500-600 votes. But then the ASV came along and Mega Man, to the surprise of many, starting cutting into the lead. When the night vote arrived, he was ripping hard into that lead and it looked like he might actually do it, but we were all skeptical of his ability to overcome the Pokemon "clutch" that allowed Charizard to escape defeat to Zelda the round prior. We all got scared when Mega Man had pushed his lead out to around 60 votes with about 20 minutes to go and then Charizard cut it down to 25 with only three more updates left. And yet, somehow, Mega Man held. In a contest that was largely marred by rallies and Pokemon dominating (seriously, the bracket felt rigged for them to weasel their way to deep runs), this was one of the few feel-good stories we had, and I was actually on the winning side of this one!

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Bad Pick #10: Ryu Hayabusa to Round 4 (2018) & Ryu Hayabusa > Sora (2004)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1764-chaos-division-round-2-sora-vs-ryu-hayabusa
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7279-division-6-round-1-ryu-h-vs-simon

The upper half of Division 6 in the 2018 Character Battle was one of the most wide open things we'd ever seen in a contest. Literally every single character in that section had at least one person in the Guru pick them to make it to round 4. Geralt was the decided favorite with 50% of the overall brackets, but everyone else was mainly split between Riku, Bayonetta, Sans, and Hayabusa. I legitimately had no idea what to do here, so I decided to pick Hayabusa because I had at least seen him do well in the past, and he had a really cool ninja design on his side. Well, that pick fell apart pretty quickly as Hayabusa couldn't even beat Simon friggin' Belmont, who had recently been announced for Smash Ultimate. I don't know how many times I've had a division finalist go out in the very first round, but I doubt it's been often!

But this wasn't the first time Hayabusa let me down! You'd have to go all the way back to his contest debut in 2004, where he emerged as the hot 3 seed, until CJayC mysteriously decided to give him Dead or Alive pics instead of his classic Ninja Gaiden look. As such, he nearly blew it against Jill in round 1 after the match had to be restarted because many people were still getting the Sora/HK-47 match from the previous day when they went to the front page to vote. Then Sora laid the smackdown on him like it was nothing. This was the first time the reality of SFF had bitten us in the butt. Sora got saddled against Aerith in round 1 in 2003 and was promptly doubled, so everyone just assumed that he was weak and nobody really liked Sora. With the impact KH1 had on the 2003 contest, we should've known better, but we still didn't fully understand the concept of SFF at the time. Thankfully, SC2K4 ingrained it into us with how much SFF was in the bracket...!

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Mega Man was the highlight of that contest but that was such a mess that I wouldnt even count it as a good pick.

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yeah CBIX was such a trainwreck but it felt good to get a big pick right

I still kept it pretty low on the list because of the circumstances but it made that moment feel even better knowing I predicted it!

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I suppose I did have Mega Man winning that match, though I did prep for Zelda instead of Charizard.

Though, that might have been a good thing, because Zelda could have beaten Mega Man there for a real shocker.

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#10 Painful Pick - Zidane > Knuckles & Cecil > Crash (2018)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7247-division-2-round-1-zidane-vs-knuckles
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7256-division-3-round-1-crash-vs-cecil

I made so many picks in 2018 that confuse even myself, and these are two of them. I guess I decided to take one final stand for Final Fantasy (which didn't work out for the most part). The closer we got to the start of the contest, the more I believed Knuckles had a real shot to beat Zidane, but I stubbornly stuck to my bracket. I think part of it is that I know I'm prone to talk myself into fanboy picks, and I just didn't want to let myself do that here, but I wish I had!

The one that really frustrates me though was picking Cecil. I don't even know what I was thinking. I routinely make fun of how Cecil never wins anything in these contests, and I had Crash > Wheatley in 2013, so it's not like I believed Crash was bad fodder. I honestly cannot explain why I didn't take Crash even for the potential to laugh at Cecil because it's not like I thought he was a lock here. I just wish I had listened to my gut on both these picks.

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