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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Also Rivals would have been interesting if Bacon hadn't decided for whatever reason that Mario vs. Sonic wasn't eligible.

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Rivals would've been a lot better if Allen had just straight up allowed Mario vs. Sonic.

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there never was any logic for that one was there.
like even both companies acknowledge it's a rivalry in video games so it was cheap.


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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

Also Rivals would have been interesting if Bacon hadn't decided for whatever reason that Mario vs. Sonic wasn't eligible.

Allen was really disingenuous about that. When we initially asked about it, he was very evasive about it but vaguely implied it wasn't eligible.

Then after the bracket came out, he insisted he never said they weren't eligible. They just didn't get enough noms, but he also avoided ever adding them to the nomination database.

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Mario vs. Sonic would have won, unless maybe if Link vs. Cloud were allowed.

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rivals is indeed worse than years

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You can't talk about Rivalry Rumble without mentioning ZenOfThunders amazing banners

it sucks that the only time we were ever allowed to do banners was for fucking rivalry rumble

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2013
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_2013_Contest

Before I get to MVP (which I'm sure you'll see by the bold), I just want to say that the 2013 contest is utter madness. It's the maddest contest we've had by a significant amount. It isn't just Draven, either. The results of the last week of the contest were so baffling that it made it hard to even write about. The playing field that we had for the first two months as compared to the last week is so much different that I don't even think it's possible to say who had a good or bad contest run.

The beginning of this contest had a whopping 243 characters which was absolute overkill and the end of the contest had a final 9 (essentially the semifinals) that included 4 Pokemon characters. Squirtle over Cloud is my go-to for just how goofy this thing got. Did Squirtle have a good run? I don't even know.

MVP: Draven
Confidence: 50%

In the absence of sincere, legitimate results, I have to give it to the contest winner. Draven delivered the single most impressive performance is contest history (MMX/Ryu/Draven), the single craziest day in contest history (Draven/Link/Shepard) and some goofy controversy involving SBAllen's wife, some WWE star and some voice actors. Something like that.

You could equally give this to Link, who put up one of the greatest resistances we've ever seen up until the downtime ran out the clock. But I'm going to give it to this goofball even though he will lose miserably in every contest match going forward.

Honorable Mention: Link, Mega Man, Vivi, Pokemon

Link is obviously the most memorable of the bunch, but I really had a soft spot for Mega Man's run. Mega Man was the sole "old guard" character that really seemed to be able to handle the craze. Cloud lost to Squirtle, Sonic lost to Mewtwo, Sora lost to Pikachu, and most importantly, Mario lost to Vivi with Ganondorf in the poll. Charizard, 2010's MVP, got to feast on Mega Man with Zero in the poll. But, somehow, Mega Man managed to hold on and eliminate him. It was the one bright spot for us old heads who just want to see classic matches, for better or worse.

Vivi had the aforementioned win against Mario and Ganondorf but it didn't seem legitimate at all. It wasn't even the two Nintendo characters sharing the poll, this just shouldn't have happened. This was maybe the most memorable result in 2013 (mostly due to the board really loving Vivi and being tired of Mario's BS) up until the contest really went off the rails. Of all the random Pokemon, Mewtwo seemed to have the most legitimate run, though it was obscured by Vincent randomly falling off the biggest cliff in contest history. He still hasn't recovered. Vincent turning into Magus is one of the strangest plot twists we've ever had.

2013 is bonkers and I can't take anything serious from it.

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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

Now hold on.

Rivals was not worse than Years.

Years is the only contest I won a prize in, which automatically makes it better than the bad contests <_<

ZenOfThunder posted...

You can't talk about Rivalry Rumble without mentioning ZenOfThunders amazing banners

it sucks that the only time we were ever allowed to do banners was for fucking rivalry rumble

You can't make a post about amazing banners without posting the images!
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People just vote for Zelda the game when they vote for Link. I can't see why else Link is so popular. Zelda is a great series but Link is just a mute avatar. Zelda herself is a better character.

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Snake should be also in the HM category for that year.
he, for a very brief period, looked like he could give Draven a fight even after Link fell.

even had Hayter tweet his support!

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2013 MVP is Vivi, sometimes the phrase "Vivi beat fucking MARIO" pops in my head til this day

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Mewtwo's run was the most fraudulent by far! Hence my 2018 campaign.

Also you forgot to mention that not only did Sora lose to Pikachu, he lost to him with Blue as the third character. In a contest full of embarrassing losses for big names, that might be the most embarrassing one!

Also Draven has to be the MVP of 2013 unless you just decide he was DQ'd for a steroids-esque cheating scandal.

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of course i can't find my rivalry rumble banners i'll have to check my old archive hdd when I get home

what I do have on hand are these fucking awful CBIX banners I made just in case bacon opened banner submissions (he never did)

https://i.imgur.com/d2DSMxr.png
https://i.imgur.com/pp16WnD.png
https://i.imgur.com/MDhGY2t.png
https://i.imgur.com/evYvHjw.png
https://i.imgur.com/4JqtSuQ.png
https://i.imgur.com/Do2JDQu.png

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ZenOfThunder posted...

of course i can't find my rivalry rumble banners i'll have to check my old archive hdd when I get home

what I do have on hand are these fucking awful CBIX banners I made just in case bacon opened banner submissions (he never did)

https://i.imgur.com/d2DSMxr.png
https://i.imgur.com/pp16WnD.png
https://i.imgur.com/MDhGY2t.png
https://i.imgur.com/evYvHjw.png
https://i.imgur.com/4JqtSuQ.png
https://i.imgur.com/Do2JDQu.png

what awful these are amazing
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the theme of one of them was "master chief cucks tidus, the true character battle" which was a very 23 year old ZenOfThunder thing

actually it's still a 29 year old ZenOfThunder thing

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transience posted...

Vivi had the aforementioned win against Mario and Ganondorf but it didn't seem legitimate at all. It wasn't even the two Mario characters sharing the poll,

I see, I see
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er whoops. I'll edit that

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Draven is a fraud.

No, not in the big rally go bye bye sense, though that too. I mean in the sense that Link straight up had him dead to rights, and only the site going down saved him. Undertale he aint. So even if I were to account for the contest-busting rallies, I still wouldnt pick him unlike L-Block and Undertale.

Long term, the only thing Draven actually achieved was making some of the board the board a lot worse regarding Undertale.

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I can see that, the problem is like, what do you pick otherwise? Draven epitomizes the wackiest contest we ever got. Like the only other contender is Squirtle beating Cloud because it was such an out there result, but literally no one cared about that.

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2013 was exceedingly wacky without Draven. Like I said earlier, its hard to pick because everybody was rallying and bandwagoning. So I stand by Vivi. Giant outside force wins with rally had happened before, Vivi beats Mario was different. And Vivi legitimately got stronger after. All Draven did was get us invaded.

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Im pretty sure Vivi was an invasion too.

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transcience posted...

Im pretty sure Vivi was an invasion too.

Yeah he was.

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Not of the board no? To be honest its a blur

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that was a 4chan rally for the lulz, if memory serves. but it wasnt drastic and we liked Vivi so it was acceptable.

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transcience posted...

that was a 4chan rally for the lulz, if memory serves. but it wasnt drastic and we liked Vivi so it was acceptable.

Correct.

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Yes, Vivi (and every Pokemon match) was the result of a rally. It's part of why Mega Man was the true hero of CBIX.

The other is that Vivi got in the way of Squall beating Mario, which is even worse now knowing that it might have been Squall's legit last chance to beat a Noble Niner.

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you just need to wait for FF8R


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Vivi > Mario is easily the most shocked I've ever been by a contest result. There was a rally and LFF but it shouldn't have mattered. The rally wasn't that big, especially by 2013 standards, and Ganondorf folded like a wet paper bag. I think one of the Crew Writeups gave Mario 70% or something! This was also before the contest truly descended into insanity. Results were still making sense. Even if you factor in a Vivi strength boost I'm still not sure how this happened.

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The Vivi result is probably the biggest evidence to me that Mario had been overrated for several years. 2005 Mario doesn't drop that.

But Mario still gets to hide behind the convenient excuse that Ganondorf was in the poll, too! Vivi would've gotten a very good number on Mario 1-on-1 that year.

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What makes that Squall result annoy me even more is i can't stand Vivi.

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2013 is the worst contest ever

Yes, worse than Series, Rivals and Years

At least 2015 had some decent matches between the rally stupidity, 2013 was just a dumpster fire start to finish

I can get someone thinking CBIX was the worst if you're not a fan of chaos and you enjoy structure in your contests (like me). There are enough good moments in it that I wouldn't rank it below some of the side contests, but it might be my least favorite mainline contest.

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completely agree. it is certainly the least pure contest we've had.

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I suspect that some of the wackier results don't happen if Draven didn't go on his rampage. The contest was fairly normal before Draven went berserk in Round 2. Of course the 3 way format didn't help either since it's even worse than 4 ways for LFF bullshit.
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Round 1 was fairly normal because of the sheer amount of turbo fodder. You didn't have many matches of two characters that were actually worth a crap (probably the only match that had three characters with legit arguments to win was Wrex/Cecil/Pit).

Draven definitely exacerbated the problem, but the potential for disaster was always there.

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2013 also suffers from being the only character contest from 2011 to 2017. That's a long time to go 'wow, our only character contest was a joke'.

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I think Draven opened the floodgates too. we've never seen that kind of tampering before or since.

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Mega Man also had a big 4chan rally IIRC.

It was basically everybodys rallying, Dave.

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Yeah, like I said, Draven made things worse than they otherwise would've been, but you probably still have stuff like Pikachu beating Crono because Allen set him up to lose.

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That definitely happens either way, yeah. I don't think Squirtle > Crono happens without a bunch of people just wanting the contest to burn
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I think with L-Block and Melee/Undertale, you still have people in favor of either the games or rally. You don't have any of that with Draven.

Undertale at least still showed mid-tier fodder to fodderline strength in spite of percieved mass anti-voting. Draven got single digit percenrage on a low mid-carder.

I unironically had Undertale reach RBY in 2015, but had FFX > CT so that galaxy brain gamble didn't mean anything in the end.

To this day I think "RaLlYs MaK3 t3h c0nt3St fUn anD r@nd0m lol!!!!!1111111111" is a next-level stupid take.

There is nothing fun at all about completely nonsensical random results. I suspect the people in this camp also though that the last season of GoT was great because it "subverted expectations".

As yoblazer explained with his sex analogy, the degree of rallies matters.
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Putting this here as a reminder that, yes, this result also happened:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5254-character-battle-ix-division-2-final-sonic-vs-mewtwo-vs

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To expand on that a bit more, the best contests and matches follow a sense of logic, and have a good narrative behind them. Pretty much every contest result before Draven/Undertale ruined things followed a logic/pattern, that while not obvious pre-contest, can be easily sussed out post-contest.

Cloud beat Link because of Kingdom Hearts and Celda. Crono beat Mario because of declining votals. Nintendo ran roughshod on the bracket in 2005 because of the DS dragging the rotting husk of Nintendo out of the Gamecube era.

Even this contest has those moments, with The Witcher taking the field and upsetting the previous Western RPG kingpin.

Rallies don't follow any sense of logic, and don't fit the narrative structure of the contests at all. That's why most of the board can't stand when that happens.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5265-character-battle-ix-bonus-battle-3-runners-up-battle

I just realized if you compare this to 2018, nearly 100% of Mewtwo's votes went to Pikachu!

Pokedrones

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Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5265-character-battle-ix-bonus-battle-3-runners-up-battle

I just realized if you compare this to 2018, nearly 100% of Mewtwo's votes went to Pikachu!

Pokedrones

Yes! Pokemon is the most dronish fanbase of all!

And Zelda is the least. *Runs*

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