Board 8 > Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1378

(+) Yeah! (+)

Scheduling notes for when contest retrospectives begin for 2025 (because there are a bunch!):

CBVIII - Ongoing!
Game of the Decade 2 - 3/27
Villains - 5/7
SC2K5 - 7/19
Game of the Decade 1 - 10/20
Games 2015: 11/5

~*creativename's contest site*~
http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/

~*The Board 8 Wiki (lots of useful contest and board information, including all past Post-Contest Analyses*~
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

~*List of All Polls (a search bar is at the bottom)*~
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll

~*NGamer64's Archive Sites (good stuff!) and (LOL) X-Stats Sim*~
http://www.thengamer.com/
http://thengamer.com/xstats

~*GameFAQs Contests Hall of Fame*~
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/GameFAQs_Contests_Hall_of_Fame
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/GameFAQs_Contests_Match_Hall_of_Fame

~*Closest Wire-To-Wire Matches*~
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Closest_Wire-to-Wire_Matches

~*All-Time Guru List*~
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/All_Time_Guru_Rankings

~*Most Surprising Results*~
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Most_Surprising_Results

~*Contest Histories*~
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Contest_Histories

~*All the Match Pics*~
http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/index.php

~*Daily Vote Trends - An Explanation for Dummies*~
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Daily_Vote_Trends

~*Leonhart4's Trend Charts*~
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?hl=en&key=tOGmynfNIiNy5VukpEF-PdA&hl=en#gid=0

~*Simple Explanation of Extrapolated Standings*~
A = Strongest Character
B = Character Weaker than A
C = Character Weaker than B
To figure out a character's extrapolated percentage ---> [(CvB)(BvA)]/50 = CvA
To compare how C would do against B ---> [(CvA)/(BvA)]*50 = CvB
To figure out how B would do against A ---> [(CvA)/(CvB)]*50 = BvA

Retrospectives are great, shows that the dedicated fanbase really loved the contests.

tag

Contest one day...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3740-chaos-division-round-1-ganondorf-vs-mewtwo

Not much to see here other than Pokemon resisting SFF yet again. I don't know if people had hopes for Ganondorf beating Sonic after Heroic Mario lost his account because of it in 2006, but I don't think this result really inspired confidence if they did.

I think there were some talk of it, but Kirby was the one that had most of the upset talk, and even then Sonic was a pretty big favorite. Though when Ganondorf didn't even get close some of the faith in Kirby died there as well.

No Ganondorf would need to look better than this but Sonic characters had looked bad too so the hope probably stayed for now.

Missed the discussion on Sonic/Lightning, but it is lowkey one of the funniest results ever. I don't think it's possible to replicate either. We don't attach ourselves to pre-release hype quite as much as fifteen years ago.

The closest thing would be the Ultimate boosts in 2018, but it's not the thing on established characters, even if the hype clearly seems to help them.

Mewtwo is weak to Dark, after all.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3741-chaos-division-round-1-albert-wesker-vs-ken

Every contest, there's a 1 point match that becomes one of the highlights of the entire thing. That was this match. Thanks to the NRT Returners Tournament, Ken was back for the first time since 2003 and in line to get his first win. After all, he was facing Wesker, he of losing to Lloyd Irving and getting doubled by Kefka fame.

However, Wesker came to play. He took an early lead, and then the two went neck and neck until...the California ASV. That's right, with California having a big fighting game community, Ken naturally made his big push from around 6-9 P.M. Eastern. It was still never easy, as the lead never got above 500 for either side, but Ken finally got his win and Wesker got a moral victory.

Is lol x stats a broken link? I cannot access it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3742-chaos-division-round-1-kirby-vs-rikku

Rikku has had a lot of bad draws in her contest career, but at least she had her run in the Female Bracket in 2006 and Zen was able to sneak in fan art to help her beat ? Block in 2013.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3743-chaos-division-round-1-glados-vs-fawful

Believe it or not, this isn't even Fawful's only contest appearance! This was another match where nobody was really sure what to expect in terms of percentage as the Oracle average was only 56.41% for GlaDOS, but Fawful being bad fodder should've been obvious in retrospect!

Didn't the contest happen when Bowser's Inside Story was hot and fresh? People were probably blinded a bit.

Very strong performance by Rikku actually.

Yeah, Bowser's Inside Story was 2009, so Fawful got in on the heels of that.

I do remember he just managed to get in top the 2013 contest as well but was fed to Mario.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3744-chaos-division-round-1-vivi-vs-donkey-kong

What a difference 6 years makes! A whopping 0.18% of difference, in fact! He did make more of a jump in their 2018 rematch, but I got a top 5 Oracle score just by guessing their 2004 match's percentage!

Also despite Vivi easily winning their first match, he still only had 40% of brackets winning this time around. I get most people either weren't around or don't have the kind of memory that a Stats Topic regular has, but it's still kinda funny.

Vivi/DK 2018 is another of the lowkey funnier matches we've had. Donkey Kong has boosted to the moon, somehow beating Tidus and Leon Kennedy with ease, and he's ready to take revenge on the little black mage that defeated him twice already...but Vivi has also boosted, so it's basically the same result for the third time.

An iconic trilogy of matches.

TeamRocketElite posted...

An iconic trilogy of matches.

Second only to the Snake/Knuckles trilogy

And I'm still kinda bummed my Vivi > Ganondorf prediction fell short in 2018 by going all in that 2013 was totally legit for Vivi (and it essentially was!)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3745-chaos-division-round-1-altair-vs-liquid-snake

Liquid Snake might be the most confusing entrant in contest history. He goes 50/50 with Frog, who puts up 48% on Solid Snake, and then he gets tripled by Sephiroth in Villains. He misses the next two contests, but then he beats Alucard by 3 votes and gets curbstomped by Game Fuel Chief in 2007. He has a deep run in 2008 where he puts up good numbers on Luigi (even when there was no LFF involved), implying he got the MGS4 boost and not Ocelot.

Come 2010, and he's the favorite against Altair, who had a decent run of his own in 2008 but was basically going even with Duke Nukem. I still don't understand how this match was 60/40. It wasn't brackets because Altair was only a slight favorite.

As we would see later that year in GotD, the MGS4 high had worn off and this was basically the peak of Assassin's Creed on this site, as well as Altair being very photogenic, so that might explain it to an extent, since he would put up a good number on Vivi in round 2.

To make matters worse, the only time Liquid has shown up since this was in Rivals. Truly a baffling contest history.

Also I tried submitting a picture of Liquid's arm from MGS2 for the match pic here, but Allen didn't accept it, unfortunately.

Yeah Liquid doesn't make sense. It's like he tries to take the MGS history og plot twists into the contests.

Leonhart4 posted...

Second only to the Snake/Knuckles trilogy

I think Vivi/DK is actually better. It was amusing and had enough years in between. Did anyone find it amusing to get Snake/Knuckles in 04

Hey now Knuckles broke 40% in that third match

Assassins Creed, another example of a series that lost strength due to oversaturation. Wild that there were annual games for six years running.

Annual???

Please some years had 2 games

I was going to say annual mainline and spinoffs but I forgot about the same year having both Rogue and Unity, that was really bizarre!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3746-mushroom-division-round-1-mario-vs-falco-lombardi

This match was the only 80%+ blowout of the entire contest.

And yeah, that's about it. Falco is another one of those guys who rarely got a chance to show what he could do. He made it to round 2 in 2008, but that's about it.

Sometimes it is tough being a lower tier Nintendo character.

At least Falco got it better than Wolf, being placed in a 3 way match with Fox, causing Fox to handily lose a debatable match with Blue that had IMPLICATIONS for the next couple rounds, while also causing Wolf to statistically be one of the weakest characters we've ever seen in a contest full of really bad fodder.

Wolf would be happy to know that he sabotaged Star Fox.

But then Pikachu beat Sora despite Blue being there.

And yeah, those lower tier Smash characters do have a pretty great chance of drawing a SFF match.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3747-mushroom-division-round-1-big-boss-vs-edgeworth

I wonder how many characters in contest history have a 70%+ win and a sub-30% loss without needing SFF to get either? Big Boss might be the only one.

At least Edgeworth never finished last in any of his multiway appearances.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1355-east-division-semifinal-cloud-strife-vs-bowser
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1724-hyrule-division-round-1-bowser-vs-guybrush-threepwood

Back to back at that. That was Bowser's last 2003 match and first 2004 match.

Good find! Bowser just barely qualifies there, but I'd guess he's the only 80%+ and sub-30% entrant, so he outdoes Big Boss on that one!

Ada Wong (also back to back)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2500-spazer-division-round-1-ada-wong-vs-jade
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2531-spazer-division-round-2-samus-aran-vs-ada-wong

Lara Croft (also back to back since Lara skiped 2k5):
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1749-chaos-division-round-1-samus-aran-vs-lara-croft
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2514-aeon-division-round-1-lara-croft-vs-alyx-vance

Liquid Snake (Villains contest is fair game, right? Almost got that 80% win):
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1996-jenova-division-round-1-liquid-snake-vs-officer-tenpenny
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2014-jenova-division-final-sephiroth-vs-liquid-snake

Max Payne:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/959-south-division-round-1-max-payne-vs-dirk-the-daring
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1348-south-division-round-2-max-payne-vs-sephiroth

Ryo Hazuki:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/949-east-division-round-1-ryo-hazuki-vs-guybrush-threepwood
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1720-hyrule-division-round-1-yoshi-vs-ryo-hazuki

Scorpion (Not SFF?):
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/958-south-division-round-1-scorpion-vs-kazuya-mishima
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/998-south-division-final-scorpion-vs-link

Bowser is the only one I could find with an 80+ win and a sub-30 loss.

Ha, I'm sure Kazuya Mishima would do much better decades later.

More than I thought! But 2002 and 2006 helps with some of the really bad fodder it had.

Knuckles could join the 80/30 club if he ever faced Link...!

Ryo having a 70+ win is kind of astonishing, and the fact that his opponent wasn't one-and-done either is incredible too, even if Guybrush is kind of legendary fodder in his own right (and even ranked above another member of the 70-30 club in Max Payne at one point).

Guybrush infamously had strong nomination support but would fold hard in the contest.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3748-mushroom-division-round-1-zidane-tribal-vs-claptrap

Gotta admit, I was super confused when I saw the Claptrap enemy from Donkey Kong Country made it in, only to discover that it's something from Borderlands.

Also this was kind of a bad showing from Zidane.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3749-mushroom-division-round-1-ike-vs-prinny

Prinny was the Guru nomination (can't remember offhand who won the 2009 Games Guru. Was that Zimzum?), but he didn't have high expectations. Ike was the favorite to get out of this fourpack, but doing worse on Prinny than Zidane did on Claptrap certainly raised some doubts about who would win their clash in the next round.

I wish he did the two for 24 hours thing during that contest instead of 1 every 12 hours

_SecretSquirrel posted...

Ryo having a 70+ win is kind of astonishing, and the fact that his opponent wasn't one-and-done either is incredible too, even if Guybrush is kind of legendary fodder in his own right (and even ranked above another member of the 70-30 club in Max Payne at one point).

Eh, while Guybrush keeps coming back, he's enough of a joke for blowing him out to not be that impressive.

I think considering Zidane's contest history, he looks fine there actually.

Ryo actually wasn't as completely weak in 2002 as he would be in later years. He looked decent (for him) against Lara, although I suppose some of that could have been anti-votes.

I would wager he benefited from antivotes in the same way Servbot did

What character with no connection to Nintendo/Square has boosted the most by the time the 2018 contest took place? Alucard? Crash Bandicoot or Spyro? Maybe I"m missing someone notable. I could do the research and calculations, but I'm too lazy to do that right now. (plus, not doing it will invite more discussion)

Alucard debuted on a Nintendo system!

I know 2018 gave him unfortunate bracket placement but Snake.

Assuming it was from debut and to 18

Drake did terrible in his debut and ok-ish in 2018.

Not really a boost from his peak though.