Board 8 > Who was each year's contest MVP?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Man, I still remember the opening minutes of Sephiroth/Bowser and how we were all flummoxed by Bowser going 50/50 with him.

That FFVII rise to heaven really was the thing of legends back in the day!

And I'm surprised we've never really tried to get Bison into another contest after a decent showing in Villains.
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And then the opening minutes of Sephiroth/Mario were equally shocking when Mario, after crushing the main bracket, did worse than Bowser and Ganondorf had done (for the opening minute) and immediately got skewered.

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red sox 777 posted...

But 2003 was the year of Square, in which everything Square did great. Tidus was probably pretty strong too!

I mean, maybe, but I doubt he was ever 33-35% on Link. Plus, he would've had to fall off of a cliff within the next year and Magus would've had to fall off even harder within two years.

66% on Sam Fisher in 2003 is the result that pretty aptly demonstrates that Magus was never really that good.
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Pointless Trivia Alert:

For 12 years, Ganondorf Vs. Magus was the only Newcomer Vs. Newcomer match to independently occur. It wasn't until MGSV Vs. Dark Souls in 2015 that this would happen again.

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Yesmar_ posted...

Pointless Trivia Alert:

For 12 years, Ganondorf Vs. Magus was the only Newcomer Vs. Newcomer match to independently occur. It wasn't until MGSV Vs. Dark Souls in 2015 that this would happen again.

I'm assuming you mean main contests only and not specialized side contents like GotD.
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Yesmar_ posted...

Pointless Trivia Alert:

For 12 years, Ganondorf Vs. Magus was the only Newcomer Vs. Newcomer match to independently occur. It wasn't until MGSV Vs. Dark Souls in 2015 that this would happen again.

Wasn't Vincent/Kerrigan Newcomer vs Newcomer?

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LeonhartFour posted...

I'm assuming you mean main contests only and not specialized side contents like GotD.

There's a bunch this year probably, but there was actually not a single Newcomer Vs. Newcomer match past the first round in 2010

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squexa posted...

Wasn't Vincent/Kerrigan Newcomer vs Newcomer?

Did not independently occur.

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squexa posted...

Wasn't Vincent/Kerrigan Newcomer vs Newcomer?

indeed it was

SC2K6 had some too unless you just totally discount it because of the forced female bracket
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Yesmar_ posted...

Did not independently occur.

what does this mean

the only gimmick SC2K5 had was removing Link, Cloud, and Seph from the bracket
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LeonhartFour posted...

what does this mean

the only gimmick SC2K5 had was removing Link, Cloud, and Seph from the bracket

The match was in the first round, so it was explicitly set up.

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oh so you mean it had to be two newcomers who also won their first matches

"independently" doesn't really convey that very well!
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LeonhartFour posted...

oh so you mean it had to be two newcomers who also won their first matches

"independently" doesn't really convey that very well!

I guess, but it's not just winning the first round. Bowser Vs. Yoshi doesn't count either for example, since their entire fourpack was newcomers, so their match was going to be Newcomer Vs. Newcomer no matter what. Ganondorf and Magus's foupack had one Veteran in it, so that result wasn't set in stone.

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that's very oddly specific criteria
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I said it was pointless!

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Summer 2005
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2005_Contest

MVP: Mario
Confidence: 75%

NINTENDO BOOST. We can talk about what happened in this contest, the first 'modern' contest, a number of ways. You can call it a Nintendo boost or a Mario boost or even a DS boost. Mario, for whatever reason, just soared this contest. Luigi went from being a bum to being really legit. Bowser went from ehhhh to a star, crushing Ryu en route to just barely losing to Snake. Kirby got his turn to wreck Tidus. Ganondorf had no problem with a hyped Auron match. It goes on.

And above all was Mario. Mario *sucked* in 03 and 04, getting 38% on Sephiroth in 03 and 47% on Crono in 04 while Samus got 41% on Cloud in 04. But 2005 Mario, that Mario was incredible. He blasted through Zero, embarrassed Samus with a result that still resonates 15 years later, and took care of Crono once and for all.

Honorable Mention: Vincent, Tifa, Squall, Kirby, Knuckles, Bowser, Sephiroth, Link

Mario had one of the biggest jumps in contest history, won the contest is still isn't a lock for 2005 MVP. That's because of Vincent, a newcomer, an optional character, and the most divisive character in my contest memory. Vincent had arguments on all sides, and he was omnipresent throughout this contest. Even when there were weeks between Vincent matches, he was always there, in the spotlight.

His round 1 performance was a massacre on a contest flop in Kerrigan, but given the tenor of the board, it was all that we needed for people to claim victory. Every round was an event, from the battles around Vincent/Dante, to the showdown with Squall, to the prediction percentage we saw when he won the vaunted devil division, possibly the best division in contest history. Even his loss to Crono was thought of as some kind of rSFF at the time, which is funny in retrospect given what was coming. Vincent is right there with Mario as the character of 2005.

There are tons of matches worth talking about, like how fellow newcomer Tifa beat our fodder line as bad as Cloud would and had legitimate hype to beat Sonic before struggling with Luigi. Squall finally gets his chance to shine.. except that Knuckles, who beat the fraud Magus, was also riding a Frog-like high after a big upset. Squall was up to the task with Vincent but couldn't quite pull it off. Vincent's hype train may have been enough to carry him over.

My favourite 2005 match is Sephiroth/Mario, where Mario just spends two months wrecking the main bracket only to walk into Sephiroth and get impaled like the Midgar Zolom all over again. And Link, in a contest built up by Advent Children vs. Twilight Princess hype, in a contest that has Vincent and Tifa doing serious work to the main bracket, still has no trouble putting down Cloud in his easiest victory over him yet. The days of Square are over and Nintendo was here to stay.

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Series 2006
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Spring_2006_Contest

MVP: The Legend of Zelda
Confidence: 50%

The series contest was a weird one where there were only 4 entries worth a damn. (We'll get to the fourth in a bit.) Nothing else even broke 30% on the big three of Mario, Zelda and Final Fantasy. It was even more pointless to hold this than usual. Even Metal Gear and Kingdom Hearts, series' who we kinda sorta respect, can't come near the kings.

Final Fantasy went into this as the prohibitive favourite. The thinking was kinda clear: Cloud could hang with Link based on FF7 vs. the entire Zelda series combined, so all the diversity in the FF series will lead it to a comfortable win. The opposite ended up true, where Zelda fans like all Zelda games but FF fans are fairly divided because each FF game is so different and everyone has a different ranking of them. In the end, diversity was a weakness.

FF struggled like hell to beat Mario and then went down comfortably to Zelda. It was uninteresting but so was this contest.

Honorable Mention: Super Smash Bros.

The Smash series at this point was two games and a trailer, but that was apparently enough to take on the giants. Smash 64 was honestly probably less of a factor than the Brawl trailer which had hit that spring and instantly vaulted Smash Bros. into the stratosphere. Other short series' like Kingdom Hearts did poorly, but Smash? It defied all reason. Not only did it crush the Sonic series, but also put up an improbable 38% on Mario. If I'm being honest, this is the MVP, but it's hard not to pick an upset winner. If a game contest happens in 2006, Melee might have been a top 3 game on the site.

If we were smarter, we would have seen the Brawl hype boosts coming, but at the time we were so rigid in our thinking that we just ignored this as a one-off and moved on. Now we lose our minds over any kind of gaming news, but back then it was all about the games that were tangible.

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FF struggled like hell to beat Mario and then went down comfortably to Zelda. It was uninteresting but so was this contest.

Reading this sentence you wouldn't guess which one was a 53/47 match and which one was 51/49!

The Series Contest should also go down as the contest where the start time was switched from midnight Pacific to midnight Eastern. This was a change that would eventually render the famed Second Night Vote too short and weak to do anything. In the FF v. Zelda match, however, the old tendency for Square to beat Nintendo with the SNV made one last hurrah as FF defeated Zelda for the period of the final 11 hours of the match. (Note that this was a Summer match without an ASV and hence with a much earlier and more powerful SNV than usual).

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I didn't even look up the results. I think we expected FF to beat Mario like 58/42.

just looked at oracle and yep, 59.37%!

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The Devil Division in 2005 still remains one of my all time favorite divisions in a contest. There was no shortage of drama every round.

Compared to the Dream Division where every big match turned into a flop.

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Hm my picks (Though I wasn't really around for the really early ones)

02: Crono
03: Cloud
Games: Starcraft
04: Toughie, but I actually think it's Samus
Villains: Diablo
05: Mario
06: Snake
07: L-Block
08: Snake again
Games 2: Probably RBY here, Pokemon wasn't seen as a force until this contest
10: Zard
GOTD: Majora's Mask but SOTC is close
Rivals: Trainers
13: Rallies aside, Mega Man
Games 3: Rallies aside, probably SMRPG just a tad over CT
18: Zelda
This one: Xenoblade I feel like, seems to be shaking up the Nintendo heirarchy some

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Eh, I feel like it's gotta be BOTW or Witcher 3 (unless it somehow drops the next match to Skyrim) for this contest.

Xenoblade fans are determined to make sure their game is recognized as the best no matter what though.

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yeah Im not sure if I should include the crazy rallies like Draven and Undertale

it just feels like a completely different kind of thing to Starcraft even though its not

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Leonhart4 posted...

The Devil Division in 2005 still remains one of my all time favorite divisions in a contest. There was no shortage of drama every round.

Compared to the Dream Division where every big match turned into a flop.

Snake vs. Bowser was pretty exciting! As a match in itself, it was better than anything in the Devil Division it was closer than anything in the Devil Division and the only match there of comparable closeness was the trendless Vincent vs. Squall where Vincent just edged ahead by inches at a time, all day long.

As an aside, props to Magus for cutting 1000 votes off of Knuckles from 2700 down with the SNV. Nowadays it's hard to imagine someone making any cuts whatsoever with the SNV from 2700 down, yet Magus fought well here, after he was buried under the sun.

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Xenoblade is a fine honorable mention but I think people have gotten carried away with beating a Fire Emblem game and a Persona game. its nice to cheer for a game thats been an underdog for a long time and finally get over, I get it, but its not crazy or anything.

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maybe it's more just because I picked 3H over it without even any real thought but eh, maybe I am overplaying it there

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no a lot of people have that sentiment. I just dont share it to the extent that they do.

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red sox 777 posted...

Snake vs. Bowser was pretty exciting!

Wasn't the Dream Division! That was a quarterfinal!
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Oh that's right. We switched to 8 divisions of 8 instead of 4 divisions of 16 that year.

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Xenoblade is essentially Shadow of the Colossus if it beat MGS3. Thats why people are big on it, not just fans. However its gotta be BotW like I said. The difference is GotD1 didnt have a BotW. MM looked normal then rallied twice. BotW tore this whole thing apart.

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nah, thats too far for me to go. SOTC took down a killer franchise game by game. Xenoblade beat some niche jrpgs and some Rockstar games. I know this contest is punching at a different weight and all but thats too much of a gap to compare the two. this isnt a legendary run. more people picked Xenoblade in the guru than Persona.

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Yeah, SotC punched above its presumed weight class more than Xenoblade did without the benefit of being a Nintendo JRPG.
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My picks for the contests I've been here for (without an account for the first three):

2013: Draven, of course; Mewtwo if excluding mega-rallies because that was the year of PokeFEAR, and Mewtwo's incredible accomplishments represented that better than any other Pokmon.

2015: Undertale, of course; Chrono Trigger if excluding mega-rallies because I consider the emergence of a new challenger to the LAW more important than even Mario RPG's substantial bandwagon, and both represent the SNESFAQs that 2015 was most notable for.

2017: 1998

2018: For sheer outperformance and contest importance alike, Zelda's run just can't be competed with. It even presaged what Breath of the Wild would do this time around nicely.

2020: Either Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3, depending on what the finals look like. Breath of the Wild has been dominant all contest, of course, but Witcher 3 becoming the new strongest Western game has been its real big curveball. It also fittingly recaps the evolution of gaming discourse this decade.

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MK8 looking good reminded me of this from the Series contest.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2438-ultima-division-round-1-mega-man-vs-mario-kart

I imagine Mario Kart still loses this today despite having numerous games that are stronger than every single Mega Man game.
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

MK8 looking good reminded me of this from the Series contest.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2438-ultima-division-round-1-mega-man-vs-mario-kart

I imagine Mario Kart still loses this today despite having numerous games that are stronger than every single Mega Man game.

R.I.P. yoblazer

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Team Rocket Elite posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2438-ultima-division-round-1-mega-man-vs-mario-kart

I imagine Mario Kart still loses this today despite having numerous games that are stronger than every single Mega Man game.

I imagine you're right. You just don't hear a lot of people go "Mario Kart is my favorite series."

Though I like to dream that Mega Man 9 gave its series a Mega Booster (tm).

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Leonhart4 posted...

R.I.P. yoblazer

Don't talk about his loss in the Guru like that!

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Fall 2006
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2006_Contest

(a contest running from September-November is not a summer contest)

MVP: Solid Snake
Confidence: 95%

That goddamn Brawl trailer. That's everything here. It's commonplace now, but Snake being in a Nintendo game straight up broke the internet when it leaked all quietly shortly after Nintendo's e3 press conference. It was a Moment at the dawn of youtube, back when video streaming wasn't a thing yet but video sharing was just coming into prominence. This little 2-3 minute video changed the contest bigtime.

Solid Snake was always #9 in the noble nine, the one who got clowned by Frog and who barely held off Bowser the year prior. The NN didn't really change that much back then outside of Mario rising up, and that was largely seen as a Nintendo hierarchical thing. Most people picked Snake to lose the second he faced a NNer.

Squall, on the other hand, came out and had his turn embarrassing Tidus. Everyone had a turn with Tidus, but Squall looked like he might finally get one over after KH2. Instead, Snake beat him as badly as he did in 2002. Maybe SFF?! Nope, Snake is just a monster this year. He beat Mega Man handily and then took out the upstart Sonic to win the male division. Snake ended up losing in the finals to Samus which was really surprising at the time since Samus had just barely survived the ZSS picture on Tifa. He may not have won the finals, but he was the de facto winner of 2006.

But Snake wasn't done yet. In 2006 we did this goofy tournament of champions where the person who finished last would be eliminated until there was just two left. Samus went out first, because of course, and then Mario because Link was in the poll. The third match was Cloud/Seph/Link/Snake which felt like the most dramatic thing in the world despite it being a stupid idea. Snake barely edged out Sephiroth, like 17% to 16.9% or something, a result where Snake had like 98% of the board cheering for him. This board unifies around one thing: underdogs, and Snake was the definition of that. In reality he was just turning into a Nintendo character which is the opposite of plucky underdog, but hey, Majora's Mask, Super Mario RPG, Xenoblade, we have a way of signal boosting these kinds of things.

Honorable Mention: Zelda, Tifa?, Luigi, Sonic

Zelda is the only one I feel really strongly about here. Her competition in the early rounds of the female bracket was weak but she did her job. Her match with Aeris was debated, mostly because it was on the day that FF12 released, and Zelda treated her like Yuna, putting up a similar percentage on both. Zelda then went up against Samus in the semifinals and put up a really nice percentage in defeat. It wasn't impressive then but it is now. Zelda had a hell of a run.

The reason is wasn't respected is because blood was in the water. Samus was a wounded animal in 2006, having been exposed in 2005 by Mario and then needing the day vote to save the noble nine vs. Tifa thanks to an (actually pretty good) zero suit picture. Tifa's run is more circumstance than a legitimate run, but you can't deny that putting Samus in that kind of situation was impressive. You'd think everyone that saw the Brawl trailer and voted for Snake would have done the same for Samus, but apparently not! At a certain point you just have to give Tifa credit, a character that's always knocking at the top but never can finish the deal.

Samus ended up being doubted as both Tifa and Zelda made her look bad but she went on to beat Snake anyway. Still, the winner of the bracket got super exposed in a match with Mario and Link, something that was completely expected but still reminded us that Samus is put in her place and can't really break out of it. She's not beating Mario (not in the 2000s) and she's not going to hang with the Clinkeroths of the world. She had hit her plateau and you weren't getting around that. I can't give Samus any credit for 2006 because she just felt like such a wounded duck.

Luigi also had a really good run, beating Zero and Kirby in a heavily debated fourpack. (the male bracket was brutal because only 32 guys made it. Sometimes less is more!) Luigi had a fun hype circle where he was peaking and we were finally getting Luigi vs. Sonic which, after Mario vs. Shadow, was a pretty fun little upset train. Sonic made short work of Luigi though.

Speaking of Sonic, I think people really like his 2006 run because of his match with Crono, though honestly, that one feels more like Crono falling apart than Sonic rising up. Crono really suffered this year and was probably the LVP of 2006. A lot of people really talk up that Sonic comeback as one of the greatest of all time, though, so it's worth mentioning for those happy few.

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I hate that Mega Man vs Mario Kart match too. Cost me the Oracle. Had a really weird safety pick that I didn't change and lost 20 points to everyone. Nearly made up the entire defecit but fell just short. If only I changed that pick or FF had beaten Zelda....

Luigi beating Zero and Kirby after some of his losses was a shocker. I picked him to beat Zero out of status, but up until that point, Kirby had been much higher on the Nintendo totem pole (he had done much better against Squall directly, and against Bowser than Luigi through Yoshi).

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transience posted...

Instead, Snake beat him as badly as he did in 2002.

Squall actually improved quite a bit on the 2002 number (went from 35 to 42)!

But yeah, Snake is the lock for MVP in 2006. He may have lost to Samus in the main bracket but he made up for it by eliminating Sephiroth in the Battle Royal.

I always hated the fact that 2006 set up Zelda/Aerith rather than Zelda/Tifa because I was convinced from day 1 that Tifa would be stronger than Aerith. Zelda was totally wasted in 2006 (as were a lot of characters because of the male/female split, but still)

Sonic's 2006 run was fun because you had a lot of people hyping up the Vincent/Ganondorf winner to knock him off (R.I.P. Heroic Mario), and very few people were picking him to beat Crono even though he barely lost to Mega Man and Crono barely beat Mega Man the year before. Vincent put up a heck of a fight, and then he 60/40'd Luigi. But that Sonic/Crono comeback was magical, even if it was Crono having a bad year more than anything. Sonic has been the laughing stock of the Noble Nine most years, so it was nice for him to get his due one year.
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whoops! doing these from memory, and clearly my memory isn't all there.

good call on the Vincent mention, I actually almost included Vincent in my honorable mentions.

2006 is the year the bottom half of the NN got turned upside down.

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Man thinking back, it's kinda hard to believe Mega Man made the final four three years in a row back in the day (and was inches away from making it in 2002 as well, but he got 3rd in the X-Stats that year so that ought to count for another stellar performance). I know he was a powerhouse back in the day but he quickly became lower-tier Noble 9.

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2007
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2007_Contest

MVP: L-Block
Confidence: 100%

Here's maybe the only other unanimous MVP outside of 2003 Cloud. L-Block kind of transcended contests and became an internet phenomenon. I see this pop up all the time on the "today I learned" subreddit, because it's so baffling and kinda fun, at least for me.

I won't recap the whole contest, but L-Block started out as a funny little joke that turned into a very serious joke when he started taking out noble niners. L-Block was the good kind of joke though because it was an honest surge that started early and then died off over time, as opposed to the stuff we would see later on when people could be mobilized via social media a lot easier. L-Block felt like CATS on megasteroids, not like some kind of epic lulz type of thing. Or that's how I took it, anyway, since I rallied for it on russia.com.

Honorable Mention: Master Chief, Vincent, Ryu

I feel bad for the Chief. Dude never really catches a break. Even his big comebacks, like MC over DK in 2005, are seen as pathetic because he shouldn't have been in jeopardy anyway. 2007 is undoubtedly Chief's best year, a shockingly strong, game fuel-induced high because of Halo 3's impending release. And L-Block came along and ruined his finals run.

2007 Chief was the equivalent of Snake in 2006, honestly, and he destroyed Yuna in the first two rounds. You could make up a lot of excuses here, like Chief doing better in fourways than 1v1, or him taking advantage of Nintendo LFF, but he was a monster. Chief was within 2% of beating out Solid Snake and making it into the finals, and once he's there, who the hell knows what happens. Damn you L.

Vincent is the other memorable character from 07. Vincent kept having great results in 2005 and 2006 but he hadn't quite broken through bigtime yet. After Crono's disappointing 2006, everyone looked forward to perhaps our #10 guy going up against the bottom of the NN. The buildup wasn't great here for Vincent, but it was damning for Crono, and Vincent ended up "breaking" the Noble Nine, though a lot of people kinda shrugged at the whole thing because these fourway thingies were a sham. Still, Vincent went over clean. It wasn't some goofy result with Magus in the poll or something.

Ryu is the only other character that really stood out to me in 2007. Ryu got demolished by Bowser in 2005, and yeah, he had some other Nintendo characters leeching him in his early matches. But Ryu kind of destroyed Bowser throughout, including an Auron/Ryu/Bowser/Shadow match where Ryu went over clean. He pushed all the way to the quarterfinals where he ran out of luck against three NNers.

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Yeah, Master Chief would be the guy who finishes 2nd in the MVP voting but the MVP was still unanimous so nobody remembers he was the runner-up,
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Pikachu for HM in 2007. That run was fun, unexpected (I think I might have had it in my bracket though for shits and giggles) and way out of line with anything else Pokemon had done in contests up until that point.

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Yeah, the 2006 Series Contest where Pokemon nearly beat Metroid was a weird "what the heck was this result" moment where we chalked it up to Metroid being bad than anything else.

Pikachu 2007 was really when Pokemon became what it is now.
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L-Block has to be #1...but Vincent > Crono was historic and I was lucky enough to get that right which propelled me into winning my first prize ever on GameFAQs, so I tend to favor that match a lot.

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Pikachu will probably get an HM in 2008 though.

save_us.rat

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Maybe, because it killed L-Block, but I'd say its 2007 was honestly more impressive and definitely more unexpected.
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