GameFAQs Contests

Aren't you guys being a bit presumptuous about this contest? I mean, at least wait until it's over to toss poor Allen under the bus.

UltimaterializerX posted...

LusterSoldier posted...

CaptainOfCrush posted...

Leaving Bloodborne out would be a travesty.

Looking at 2015's notable games, I think The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 seem like locks to appear in the match picture rotation. Undertale will probably also appear as well. Since Allen seems to be going with diversity for these match pictures so far, I see Life is Strange being left out to avoid having 2 indie games in the match picture rotation. If Bloodborne appears along with The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, and Undertale, the entire match picture rotation would consist of RPGs, so I could see Bloodborne being left out in favor of MGSV.

Bloodborne is the best game from 2015 and one of the 10 best games ever made. I haven't played Dark Souls 3 yet but it's probably the best game in that series, too. It's the closest you'll get to a perfect video game in the modern era.

Review when?

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Safer_777 posted...

What is the safe pick for next round? 2000>1996?

The guru is 55%-42% on 1996, so I don't think there is a safe pick.

Think of you poll those 55%, at least half of them would change their picks if they could.

spooky96 posted...

Yeah I gotta say that somehow Allen was able to pull off we never dreamed of, a contest worse than Rivals 2011.

Rivals wasn't bad. Certainly better than the villain contest.

Villain Contest at least had Kuja beating defeated by a hand.

The only good match of Rivals wasn't even an official match!

The only good thing about this contest is that there are no rallies because who will rally for years?

Not_Wylvane posted...

Villain Contest at least had Kuja beating defeated by a hand.

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/2004-triforce-division-round-1-kuja-vs-master-hand

Never forget.

Diablo/Ridley and the entire Ruin Division was debatable.

This contest also has as many debatable matches (< 80% guru consensus) as the rivals contest (11 vs. 12) despite having almost half as many matches. The main issue is that the first round has been mostly predictable. Matches 1-15, 3/4 of the wildcard+round 1 only had 1987/1985 which fell into debatable territory.

I think I prefer this to the rivals contest.

I am still bitter about the Villains contest. I called Diablo right, Master Hand right and everything else except one match - Of all the matches to get wrong, the only match I got wrong that cost my perfect bracket was Sin vs. Dr. Robotnik.

And it was the closest match of the contest too! I am certain that any match pic better than a blasted fin would have swayed the match in favor of Sin. If not for that, I would have had the only perfect bracket. Bah!!!

I felt similarly, cyko. I believed the winner of Diablo/Ridley would win their division, and I took Ridley...oops. Otherwise, would have been perfect. Bah!

I'll review Bloodborne once I get the platinum. That game deserves platinum love.

I didn't see Villains or RIvals, but compared to what people say about those, this contest is anything but predictable.

Having lots of blowouts doesn't mean it's predictable, when you don't know which game is gonna double which.

1990 is now the first year in this contest to have the honor of losing with more than 1/3 of the votes!

BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

Rivals wasn't bad. Certainly better than the villain contest.

Rivals was bad. Villains Contest is the one that wasn't as bad as people remember.

this contest was reminding me of villains last night. that contest had some interesting stuff later on but was total chalk for the first half. sounds familiar.

The results were mostly chalk, but there were at least some things worth discussing and the board cared about even that contest ten times more than it has this one. I think that's the big difference. I remember people going crazy over Ridley/Diablo, Kuja/Master Hand, Sin/Robotnik, and even stuff like Kefka/Mithos or Bison/Albedo. We just didn't care about Rivals and we just don't care about this one. People got legitimately angry during the Villains Contest. Kuja/Master Hand might have been the last time I was actually upset about a match result. I think a lot of that is age, because most of us were still in our teens or early '20s at that time.

The day I actually play FF9, I'll probably be mad about Kuja's loss...but until then, Master Hand's victory was glorious.

Speaking of which, anybody know if the FF9-port on Steam is legit? I've heard about the turbo-options and all that which sounds great, but I understood a lot of Square's Steam-ports had issues with save files too and I didn't wanna bother if that's still a thing.

well, contests have been in an interest decline since the first one. that's natural. character battle v is not going to have the same appeal as character battle i. in that sense, villains is in a weird spot because it was a bad contest in the center of the glory years. people probably have fond memories of the 2004 contest too and that one objectively sucked.

FF9 PC is great. get it!

HaRRicH posted...

The day I actually play FF9, I'll probably be mad about Kuja's loss...but until then, Master Hand's victory was glorious.

Maybe not! A lot of people, even FFIX fans, don't like Kuja! He's one of my favorite villains in the series, personally, but he's pretty divisive!

From what I understand, FFIX PC is the only way to play it now because it's got a lot of options to counteract how friggin' slow that game is.

transience posted...

people probably have fond memories of the 2004 contest too and that one objectively sucked.

2004 will always have Frog!

...And not much else.

Who the hell doesn't like Kuja? He's intentionally hammy as f*** since the whole game's partially a love letter to Shakespeare, and he ends up one of more effective villains in the series, accomplishing pretty much everything he wanted except obtaining Alexander and the whole "not dying" thing.

those are pretty big things

JDPizza posted...

Aren't you guys being a bit presumptuous about this contest? I mean, at least wait until it's over to toss poor Allen under the bus.

It's common for people to judge things prematurely on everything

It's not really presumptuous or premature. Allen didn't really handle the buildup to this contest very well at all, and that's a big reason why no one seems to care about it. He doesn't act like he cares about it, so why should we? The dude's not immune to criticism, and we don't have to wait until the contest is over to deliver it. The fact that we might have a few good matches at some point doesn't really absolve him.

Not_Wylvane posted...

Who the hell doesn't like Kuja?

me

I'm not particular into Kuja. Dont dislike him, just kinda forgettable

2004 also has Crono over Mario!

Which is basically that one time the Washington Generals beat the Harlem Globetrotters

It has the worst Mario/Crono match!

Also, if not for 2004 I probably wouldn't have ever actually stuck around Board 8.

So to the 5 people who participated in my projects over almost decade, you can thank 2004.

Any character contest is more fun than this because there's at least something to root for. I have attachments to characters, I don't have attachments to years in gaming really.

and making match pics was fun for those too... and dumb comics. It's a lot easier to draw Tidus as a tomato than it is to draw 1989 as a tomato.

please bring back a character battle, Allen

I'd rather have game and character contests that are forever ruined by rallies than contests like these where I really don't give a s*** what's going on.

Character Battles forever

MoogleKupo141 posted...

Any character contest is more fun than this because there's at least something to root for. I have attachments to characters, I don't have attachments to years in gaming really.

and making match pics was fun for those too... and dumb comics. It's a lot easier to draw Tidus as a tomato than it is to draw 1989 as a tomato.

please bring back a character battle, Allen

DQ slimes could probably be easily modified into tomatoes...!

Not_Wylvane posted...

My big upset is 2000 > 1997, so guess I gotta hope it gains GSC and D2 for the pics there!

It's pretty unfortunate how important pics are for this format, and how our closest match so far is a mere doubling. I'd rather have character or game contests ruined by rallying than this boring s***.

I still don't understand why we can't do a 128 games contest from 85-99. It's the perfect contest if you don't want a rally.

we had our first vote cut of the contest today

huzzah

LeonhartFour posted...

we had our first vote cut of the contest today

huzzah

There was a vote cut in the 1983/1989 match. The only reason it didn't get noticed until now is that the updater wasn't working at the time that cut happened. creativename had me manually add the missing updates for the first 2 days of matches.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

Not_Wylvane posted...

My big upset is 2000 > 1997, so guess I gotta hope it gains GSC and D2 for the pics there!

It's pretty unfortunate how important pics are for this format, and how our closest match so far is a mere doubling. I'd rather have character or game contests ruined by rallying than this boring s***.

I still don't understand why we can't do a 128 games contest from 85-99. It's the perfect contest if you don't want a rally.

I'd be down for this, especially since we've already had GotD for the missing years (and hopefully another GotD once this one ends).

I'm always down for a contest no matter which, as long as the people here make it fun.

But this year there's no spread betting, no last man standing, no why did they lose, almost no oracle, and no people coming here en masse to complain about their favorites losing.

All those blowouts means there is also no voting trends to discuss.

And matches alone aren't fun enough on their own. They are godamn polls. This needs the social part to work.

GameFAQs is dying.

SwiftyDC posted...

GameFAQs is dying.

"But google hits."

Forums are dying.

They are a thing of another generation.

Literally every forum I'm a member of is shrinking with no replacement on sight.

Reddit isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

SwiftyDC posted...

Reddit isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I basically consider reddit social media at this point

Reddit isn't a forum in the classical sense though. It's something else entirely, and it's one of the things that is killing the tradittional forums.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Forums are dying.

They are a thing of another generation.

Literally every forum I'm a member of is shrinking with no replacement on sight.

Reddit?

While GameFAQs forums have seen better days, that's about reason #12 as to why this contest isn't so hot.

Match XIII – Round 1 – 1991 vs. 1988

Notable Releases – Adjusted X-Stats (Year)

1991
Games
Sonic the Hedgehog – 22.96% (2009)
Super Mario World – 42.40% (2015)
Final Fantasy IV – 29.49% (2015)
Street Fighter II – 20.40% (2009)

Platforms
SNES

1988
Games
Metal Gear – 15.54% (2004)
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Wasteland
Phantasy Star – 16.67% (2004)

Platforms
None

Analysis

1991, it was the year of the SNES and Mario/Sonic rivalry. While everyone is focussed on Super Mario World the year does have decent depth with Final Fantasy IV, Sonic 1 and Street Fighter II. It may not be the best, but it is decent enough plus they have a strong anchor. The debate for 1991 is whether it’s strong enough to take on 1994 in the third round. Given all that has happened so far I would classify it as the underdog, but I do feel it has a chance.

1988 is mostly remembered by its sequels to Mario and Zelda. Sadly Super Mario Bros. 2 is not in the picture though given the opponent it may not have helped much. The rest of the year is pretty sparse, sure there’s Metal Gear, but most people didn’t get into the series until Metal Gear Solid.

When you factor in SFF this could be one of the largest blowouts of the contest. It won’t be 1995/1986 bad, but it’ll be pretty close. There’s only so much Zelda can do, especially a relatively unpopular one.

charmander6000’s Bracket: 1991 > 1988

charmander6000’s Prediction: 1991 wins, 86.46% - 13.54%

Match XIV – Round 1 – 2002 vs. 2010

Notable Releases – Adjusted X-Stats (Year)

2002
Games
Metroid Prime – 33.58% (2015)
Kingdom Hearts – 32.40% (2015)
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos – 22.01% (2015)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – 25.64% (2015)

Platforms
None

2010
Games
God of War III
Mass Effect 2 – 25.58% (2015)
Red Dead Redemption – 24.60% (2015)
Super Mario Galaxy 2 – 27.47% (2015)

Platforms
None

Analysis

2002 is another example of using depth as its strength. Metroid Prime and Kingdom Hearts do well in covering a large range of fans while Vice City and Warcraft III provide decent support. Initially I thought about pulling the trigger on taking this year over 1991, but chickened out. Regardless it should win the match here.

2010 is similar to 2002 in that it uses a bunch of games for its strength, but by just looking between the two years it’s obvious that 2010 is a step below. Both Metroid Prime and Kingdom Hearts defeat anything 2010 has to offer and while the gap is arguably closed as you go down the list I don’t see 2010 closing the initial separation.

Relatively speaking this should be closer than what we’ve seen so far in this contest, but I still feel relatively confident that 2002 can break 60% here. Metroid Prime could SFF Super Mario Galaxy 2, but Metroid games have always struggled with SFF so 2010 may have a respectable performance.

charmander6000’s Bracket: 2002 > 2010

charmander6000’s Prediction: 2002 wins, 65.35% - 34.65%

creativename posted...

OK, now I'm willing to say depth beats top heavy. Not looking good for 1995 backers.

1995 should beat 1987 next round, but it's not going any farther than round 3. 1987 has a good amount of depth, but all of that depth is very weak compared to Chrono Trigger. No game from 1987 would even sniff 25% against Chrono Trigger in a 1v1 match. Chrono Trigger would just slaughter every 1987 game quite easily.