Board 8 > The 128 Greatest GameFAQS Contest Matches of All Time

(+) Yeah! (+)

ctesjbuvf posted...

I have been thinking about this a good bit. Closest thing I could think of is Crono/Missingno.

Yeah, I guess it's up there, but I'd be reluctant to call it #1 since Missingno was a one year wonder

FF7 Chars are probably all back to where they used to be (relative to voterbase size of course) because of Remake and Rebirth now.

Last contest Tifa and Aeris did surprisingly well while Sephiroth and Vincent looked to have lost a step.

Vincent was also not in Remake. He is in Rebirth, though, so maybe that changes things.

I don't know how much Rebirth helps Vincent since his role is pretty minor. I imagine he'll get a big role in part 3 and probably a Dirge of Cerberus remaster before it drops.

I wonder how strong Zack is now

Leonhart4 posted...

Dirge of Cerberus remaster

:O

You know, it is pretty funny that we have seen Magus vs. Ganondorf, Ganondorf vs. Vincent, and Vincent vs. Magus at different times throughout the history of the contests, and each of them were 52-48 affairs. If you knew nothing else about the contests, you'd swear they have always been comparable to each other despite the 15 years between the three matches.

But nope, turns out they've been very volatile entities that just happen to be at the same level when they do face each other 1v1.

92. Luigi vs. Mudkip vs. Ganondorf vs. Vergil (2007) R2

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7131bcd8.jpg

Luigi 28.11% 39230
Mudkip 24.97% 34851
Ganondorf 31.06% 43349
Vergil 15.86% 22130
TOTAL VOTES 139560
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Luigi_vs_Mudkip_vs_Ganondorf_vs_Vergil_2007
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2903-division-5-round-2-luigi-mudkip-ganondorf-vergil

If the Bidoof match was Chapter 1, consider this Chapter 2 of a series of Second Round matches from 2007. Before the contest, this match was seen as a showdown between Ganondorf and Luigi, to see where exactly the two of them were positioned in relation to one another on the Nintendo totem pole. To that end, the rest of this 8 pack had been cleared of any other characters which would disrupt that or which could potentially take advantage of a vote split between the two of them. Mudkip had surprised most people with a better than expected performance in Round 1, managing to put up very respectable numbers against Luigi, and blowing away Pit and Tingle who he was supposed to be battling with for second place. Still, Luigi had just avoided doubling the 4chan meme, so he was a likely third place finisher in Round 2, and nothing more.

After Bidoofs crazy first couple of hours against Vincent a couple of days earlier, we all knew to expect some impossible looking numbers for Mudkip in the early going. Those numbers had collapsed within an hour and a half for Bidoof though, so thats about what we thought we were looking at when it came to the time frame for this match. Mudkip might very well lead Ganondorf and Luigi for an hour or so, but he should fall off soon after. The match started (half an hour late) and in line with everyones expectations, Mudkip started off strong. A bit stronger than people expected though, and within an hour he was up 500 votes on Ganondorf and 800 votes on Luigi, who was back in third place. Within that same hour though, Ganondorf started fighting back and beginning his comeback. This was a stronger performance from Mudkip than we might have expected, but he was much stronger than Bidoof after all, so that was still somewhat comprehensible. Mudkip would die in the next half hour or so, and Ganondorf and Luigi would sweep past him into the next round.

The thing was, though: Mudkip didnt die like Bidoof did after the Power Hour was over. Mudkip was steadily losing votes to Ganondorf, and it was clear that Ganondorf would take the lead by morning, but it was also clear that this was going to take a little while. Mudkip wasnt going to just give up and collapse. By morning, the projections came true and Ganondorf took the lead, but Mudkip was still looking strong, and had built up a close to 1,000 vote lead on Luigi, who was now in doubt of even making the Third Round. This was not some 1 or 2 hour long madness; Mudkip had managed to keep things going for six straight hours, all the way through the First Night Vote. This wasnt just proof that joke characters could be strong, it was proof that the joke could last the entire match.

While Luigi hadnt been able to do much more than stall against Mudkip overnight, once the Morning Vote kicked in he managed to start making consistent cuts, and just like Ganondorf, Luigi looked like he would be able to pull off a comeback too. It was just a matter of time. Around mid-morning, Mudkips collapse, something that was supposed to occur hours ago, finally kicked in, and Luigi ran away with things, moving past Mudkip around noon, and then building up a sizable buffer for the rest of the match. In the end, Mudkip would end up in third place, several thousand votes behind the top two, but the damage had been done. Joke characters could be legit. There was no other way around it. After Bidoof, we had reasoned Well, this only lasted for an hour or two, and now, after Mudkip, we had seen that this kind of joke rally could last almost halfway into a match. Still, halfway into a match was still halfway. There was no way any future joke characters would be able to extend this all the way to the end of the day.

This thread got me wasting hours reading past stats and contest analysis threads.

UltimaterializerX posted...

I love these writeups.

Are you saving them somewhere?

Thanks! I have them all in a Google Doc.

91. Draven vs. Chie Satonaka vs. Jak (2013) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/9c289bfb.jpg

Draven 40.47% 16081
Chie Satonaka 26.34% 10465
Jak 33.2% 13191
TOTAL VOTES 39737
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(3)Draven_vs_(16)Chie_Satonaka_vs_(25)Jak_2013
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5149-character-battle-ix-division-1-round-1-draven-vs-chie-vs-jak

Well, this match had to come at some point. Both literally for this list, and figuratively in the overall context of the contests. L-Block had been a fun rally that originated on the site/board itself, and any ill will people might have held towards it was erased the following year when it was revealed how much of a once in a lifetime, lightning in a bottle situation its victory was. Still, I think on some level, for the next five to six years we were silently waiting for the other shoe to drop. We had seen how much mass rallying had ruined various contests and polls across the Internet, especially, for three years in a row, Gamespots attempts at character contests of their own. Our high votals and idiosyncratic tastes had insulated us for a while, but once votals started to collapse, it was only a matter of time before this kind of doing it for the lulz rallies crashed a contest here the same way they did on Gamespot. There just needed to be a starting point. And this match was it.

Unlike some other rally beneficiaries, Draven was actually given good odds to win this initial match. If he wasnt the favorite to win, he was very close to it, this being one of the rare matches in 2013 where all three characters were given competitive odds to come in first. That wasnt due to perceived strength on the part of the competitors though. Quite the opposite in fact. With 81 first round matches this year, there were bound to be some made up of scrubs, and this was one of them. No one really thought much of any of them, but I guess if there was any potential standout it was Jak. His contest career up to this point was not an impressive one to be sure, but he was the one contest veteran in this bunch, and the match would be won or lost mostly on his strength. Or so we thought. The potential for rallies aiding Draven was there of course. We werent naive as to the size of the LoL fanbase. But we were naive when it came to the organizational skills at their disposal. We were expecting, worst case, a Blizzard size rally, if that. Enough to beat Jake possibly, but only if things were already close.

And in the early going, things were not close. Despite some pre-contest hype over Chie, Jak got off to an early lead that it looked like he was going to coast on for the rest of the match. Jak was finally getting his redemption, beating Chie handily and doubling Draven, who was finishing in a distant third place. And then, three hours in, after everyone had gone to bed for the night, the LoL community found the poll. Unlike other comebacks, rally fueled or no, this didnt start off slow and build up steam over time. There was a brief moment of hesitation as Draven started stalling Chie and then he went off like a rocket for the rest of the match. Jak had a ~2500 lead on Draven by this point, but at the rate Draven was going it was only a matter of time before he caught up, blowing past Chie an hour and a half into the comeback, and then past Jak another hour and a half after that. As the Day Vote kicked in, Dravens gains slowed slightly due to the increase in natural voters, but it was very clear that he wouldnt be running out of his own rallied voters anytime soon. In what was a complete mind **** to anyone that had gone to bed seeing him in last place, Draven would end the match in the lead by a healthy 3,000 votes.

Considering how much he had done in just a 12 hour mach, and with the rally getting a late start, this was a bad omen for the rest of the contest. I think we all tried to put it out of our mind as much as we could going forward, hoping that maybe this was a fluke. Draven had rallied an estimated 10,000 votes in a matter of 9 hours more or less. If this was his high end, then he could certainly be beaten in later rounds. But everything told us, whether we wanted to admit it or not, that this was just the beginning of what Draven could do.

I remember this match because I worked night shift at the time, so I was able to follow the dramatic shift in real time. It was wild to see first hand.

I was still into Draven at this point, really wanted to see Link lose (though I'd have preferred a Snake/Mario/Link final). During the X/Ryu match I was starting to have some second thoughts, I think (there were just so many votes it started to feel... cheap), but when LSD happened the way it did, nah, fuck that

It took like one LoL player troll posting here once before everyone should have been against it tbh.

Snake might actually have a shot at Link/Snake/Mario (or same match with Samus)

Draven was bad from the start. It should've been Jak's time to shine! I picked him in 2004, 2007, and 2013!

And yeah, Snake actually could've won a final against Link and Mario/Samus. People acclaim rallies for preventing Link/Zelda from winning, but all they did was rob us of the chance to lose to a real challenger (Snake in 2013 and CT in 2015).

ctesjbuvf posted...

It took like one LoL player troll posting here once before everyone should have been against it tbh.

Yeah, Board 8 is certainly no stranger to people being bad sports about contest matches, but I think the LoL fans that came here took the cake, and is a big factor in why we don't look back at Draven's run very fondly.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

Yeah, Board 8 is certainly no stranger to people being bad sports about contest matches, but I think the LoL fans that came here took the cake, and is a big factor in why we don't look back at Draven's run very fondly.

How many people here look back at UT fondly, when IIRC most of the shitters were gamefaqsers mad about the rally?

I don't look back at UT fondly - it was still an annoying rally that screwed with a contest people had waited for for over a decade - but I feel far better about it than I do Draven. Undertale fans were precious about the game at times and retreading the whole "rallies bad/good" debate got a bit silly but it was never anything anywhere near as bad as those motherfuckers.

People don't look back on either one "fondly" in general, but Squirrel is right that Draven's fans were a big factor in that and made it worse than the UT rally overall

Well the answer to that is that undertale's fanbase is less obnoxious than league's infamously toxic one

Ahaha, that pic! Mudkip butting in front of everybody and winking... ;)

The Melee rally was way worse than the Undertale rally

Both were bad though

The Games Contest was over as soon as Undertale won its first match, ironically making it vastly more predictable than it would've been otherwise

UltimaterializerX posted...

Board 8: "We want Link to lose!"

Draven: "Ok."

Board 8: "Noooo Link lost!"

It will never not be funny.

it will never not be funny to see someone be a complete moron

90. Cloud Strife vs. Solid Snake vs. Sephiroth vs. Kirby (2008) R5

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e1d8919a.jpg

Cloud Strife 30.5% 41927
Solid Snake 30.74% 42250
Sephiroth 16.1% 22134
Kirby 22.66% 31149
TOTAL VOTES 137460
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Cloud_Strife_vs_Solid_Snake_vs_Sephiroth_vs_Kirby_2008
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3305-contest-semifinal-cloud-snake-sephiroth-kirby

2008 was Snakes year. Appearing in the two biggest games of the year, on GameFAQS at least, will do that for you. Snake had been a consistent presence on the lowest tier of the Noble Nine for years, but in 2006, on the back of Brawl hype, Snake came into his own, and then in 2008 he would blow past everyone else to put up his strongest numbers yet. It was a nice reward for a longtime board fave who, for a while, could never seem to catch a break. He wasnt quite at Clinkeroth levels this year, but he came about as close anyone ever has. But as strong as he looked, he still had to run into the FFVII duo at some point. Snake had already beaten Sephiroth once before on the back of LFF between the two of them, but could this supercharged version of Snake actually do the same with Cloud? The previous round seemed to imply No. Despite a series of mediocre performances in earlier rounds, in the quarterfinals Cloud would beat Snake by a decent margin, the two of them advancing on in first and second place respectively. Snake would certainly be able to put up better numbers in the Semifinals now that Cloud had to split votes with Sephy, but going into the match it looked like whatever improvements Snake made, it just wouldnt be enough.

The match started, and a series of things soon became clear. Firstly, the FFVII LFF was severe. Sephiroth himself would end up finishing in 4th place, almost 10,000 votes behind Kirby, who was ending a Cinderella run of his own. And secondly, Snake was going to take advantage of that vote split too. MGS and FF had a long contest history of SFF and LFF due to the overlapping nature of their fanbases, and there was a theory going into this match that it would prevent Snake from taking too much of an advantage from any FFVII vote split. Well, if Snake was getting leeched he sure didnt show it, as he quickly took the lead over Cloud, and for the next hour and a half waited for Cloud to catch up. Cloud in fact, needed an hour just to move past Kirby into second, although Kirby would quickly fall away as the match went on. If Cloud could move like this against Snake next hed be able to take the lead in a matter of hours.

The Night Vote kicked in and Cloud started to come back as expected. This wasnt the typical FFVII Night Vote comeback against a Nintendo character though. This was some of Snakes best time as well, and Cloud would be unable to move fast enough to get anywhere near the lead. Still, the Day Vote was coming and FFVII could be surprisingly good with that at times too. Not this time though. Snake would slowly start building his lead back up again, and while it wasnt a runaway victory, once it became clear that there was no miracle in store for Cloud, the match had to be called for Snake. Cloud would make one final push during the Second Night Vote, and while he would succeed in bringing Snakes lead down to the lowest it had been since the opening hours, it was too little, too late. Cloud and Snake would be heading into the Finals as expected, but their expected order had been reversed. It might have taken LFF to do so, but Cloud had fallen. Not to a joke or a rally, but to a regular character, just like himself.

wow they really lucked out with that match pic huh

Kirby had a really fun run through that contest. I imagine another one of his matches from 2008 will show up at some point, too.

The funny thing about that match pic is that you can actually play Smash with all four of those characters now....!

It sucks knowing Konami killed any chance of Snake doing anything again. Not that we'll have another contest, but just the thought stings.

Can't believe Snake needed LFF to barely win

Draven/Link/Shepard might still be the craziest match of all time.

You know, it does suck that the two contests that happened when Link and OoT were at their lowest, and thus had the biggest chance of being upset without shenanigans, were the ones that got trampled over by rallies.

Mind you, I dont think Snake was going to pull it off in 2013, but maybe that just depends on who the third person would have been. I am a big believer that Ocarina was destined to lose in 2015, and Chrono Trigger was looking very capable, and it would have ridden high from big wins over FFVII and Pokmon RBY going into the finals. And even if its not CT, any game that made it out of the top half would be riding massive momentum against the weakest we have ever seen the top Zelda entity ever on the site.

But the potential of those runs were thrown away, while we had to sit through Rivalry Rumble and the Years contest which really could have used an unexpected monkey wrench so something could happen to challenge Link vs Ganon or 1998 as the foregone conclusion winner.

It's like wanting to beat someone in a game and then using cheat codes to do so and arguing it should count the same.

Kirby swallowing Sephiroth for third is also cool even if meaningless.

Undertale fans were generally more passionate. Sure, there were outliers, and they also got fueled by people like MWC and Extha whining and being idiots, with their posts being shared to fuel the rallies further, but the average rallied person was fine. The LoL fans (of course there were exceptions) were just generally bad sports and some of them went way over the line mocking the recent deaths of some B8ers, it was way beyond unforgivable.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Resorting to insults doesnt prove me wrong. Almost everyone on here wanted Link to lose and thought the format was a decent way to make it happen. Then they got mad Draven did it instead of Snake.

Nah we got upset because the Draven run was cheap

Like if you just want Link to lose no matter what then good for you, but Draven and Undertale were way more predictable and inevitable than Link ever was

What we didn't enjoy was the inevitability of Link. Replacing one inevitability with another is not an improvement.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Then they got mad Draven did it instead of Snake.

XDDDD still funny!

Leonhart4 posted...

Nah we got upset because the Draven run was cheap

Like if you just want Link to lose no matter what then good for you, but Draven and Undertale were way more predictable and inevitable than Link ever was

What we didn't enjoy was the inevitability of Link. Replacing one inevitability with another is not an improvement.

I wouldn't say Draven was "predictable" given there was some doubt at the time as to the win over Link - in hindsight there's a feeling that Draven would probably have just rallied more votes had Link overtaken him before the downtime but at the time it felt close, and Draven ultimately only won by less than a thousand

The problem with it was that it was a fucking rotten, suspicious match, and celebrated by rotten people. I don't necessarily mind "one inevitability replaced with another", and to me Draven didn't feel inevitable until he beat Link.

With that said I hope Amaterasu/Draven is on here, because that one felt really fuckin good.

Yeah, I think Draven gets the votes if he needs them at the end, but the entire thing is suspect.

If Link won that he would have steamrolled Snake at the end so either way we lost

pjbasis posted...

If Link won that he would have steamrolled Snake at the end so either way we lost

I think Link would have built momentum from beating Draven, but if Draven never happened, I'd give Snake a decent shot provided it's Mario or Samus as the third.

Nintendo fans know how to fall in line when the time comes so Link may have won, but it at least wasn't guaranteed.

Draven outright stuffed the ballot and our admin had no idea of how to actually analyze the votes for cheating

People like "rallied" because it's a more palatable way to lose but compare Draven and Undertale to L-Block and they're nothing alike. It's more like when Starcraft went at Melee at a much larger scale.

A GameFAQs user or users broke the system between then and now and will continue to break it most contests under the guise of a rally.

It's why I don't really care the contests are over. You need better detection and in absence of that actual competent forensics to analyze votes. I'm sure Allen had the data but didn't have the knowhow to actually do anything with it.

Tidus was caught stuffing at a 2:1 rate compared to Missingno

Never forget

And yes, in the absence of legitimate votes, Draven ralliers absolutely would've resorted to stuffing

They showed they weren't above cheating with the DDOS

I definitely think there were a LOT of rallied votes in those runs don't get me wrong.

But there was a certain constant floor the votes had which is not how information travels. Simply watching how things like Twitter and YouTube views work will tell you that. There should eventually be a point where the rally dies almost completely. L-Block had those dead updates where it would just look completely normal for hours.

The rally is probably what caused 90% of the fluctuations in the updates, but every update constantly being higher in votes and overwhelmingly for the rallied entrant was someone pulling the strings in the background. And I'm sure you could figure it out by analyzing what information was actually transmitted with the votes but at the same time it was a bit more nuanced than "herp let's look at common VPN ip addresses"

But like if you don't know what you're doing it is absolutely too much work to figure it out so I get it.

If I were in charge, I would have disqualified both Draven and Link after the DDOS and declared Shepard the winner of that match.

GavsEvans123 posted...

If I were in charge, I would have disqualified both Draven and Link after the DDOS and declared Shepard the winner of that match.

Tough but fair

Lopen posted...

will continue to break it most contests under the guise of a rally

ok but this didnt happen in 2018 or 2020

Leonhart4 posted...

I'm always surprised whenever people are surprised Mario RPG is strong

It never received a European release until the remake, and even in the regions where it did release it was only a few months before the release of the N64--I vaguely remember seeing a testimonial from someone who only played it for the first time with the Switch remake who said it was a simple matter of their birthday not being in the right part of the year for them to be getting any more SNES games after SMRPG came out, because they solely relied on getting them on birthdays and Christmas and by the time one of those came up again it was already all about the N64. It's a great game, but it getting overlooked wouldn't be surprising either.

I legitimately feel like it winning that match in 2004 is more surprising than its run in 2015, because by 2015 the site was mostly only frequented by the real hardcore gaming nerds that won't overlook anything.

Yesmar_ posted...

109. Golden Sun vs. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Fall 2010) R2

Is there a more definitive Only on GameFAQS result than this one? You have (following opinions not my own!) a Game of the Decade Contest where one of the most acclaimed, definitive games of its generation loses to a JRPG from a second rate series that no ones cared about in years. This is a result that would be almost beyond comprehension on any other site, and even on GameFAQS it was almost beyond ours. Despite a disappointing 2009 contest for the GTA team, especially San Andreas, it entered the contest as the heavy favorite in this match. Sure, it had lost to Tales of Symphonia in 2009, but that was a narrow loss, and ToS was a cult hit that had a lot of devoted fans. Did anyone really still care about Golden Sun in the year of our Lord 2010?

I've always felt that this board underestimated handheld games. I mostly noticed it when it came to them being surprised by Pokemon holding up to Nintendo SFF as well as it did, which I always attributed to the fact that even when they were losing the console wars, Nintendo always dominated the market on handhelds, to the point that the GBC's "biggest" competition was the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the GBA's was...the Japan-exclusive Bandai Wonderswan. Or for the rest of the world, the never-released-in-Japan Nokia N-Gage. Yes, seriously. The Wonderswan and the N-Gage are the #2 and #3 handhelds of the sixth generation by sales. And here's the point I'm about to make. The GBA, Gamecube, and XBox all came out in 2001. The Nintendo DS came out in 2004, the XBox 360 in 2005, and the Wii in 2006. The GBA outsold the Gamecube and XBox combined.

And Golden Sun was one of its first big hits. I'd long known that the first two games were originally meant to be a single game and were split up due to hardware constraints, but what I didn't realize until I was looking up dates for this, but that's because it was originally meant to be an N64 game. A full-fledged console game.