Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1372 - The Last Hurrah?

He looked alright in 2007 too. He clearly benefit from that format.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1332-west-division-round-1-dante-vs-ryo-hazuki
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7254-division-3-round-1-sora-vs-ryo

Ryo Hazuki has come a long way in 15 years.

Ryo Hazuki has come a long way, but has he found any places where sailors hang out?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1333-west-division-round-1-donkey-kong-vs-vyse

Vyse's contest debut! Play Skies of Arcadia.

It's on like Donkey Kong.

The debut of the Vyse Fodder Line

It's July 29. 4 more days of round 1, then Link vs. Fox to start round 2 on 8/2. In some sense it's hard to believe that round 1 spanned the whole month of July while almost the entire rest of the contest happened in August.

I believe we were still running the contest on Central Time in SC2k3? I think the transition to Pacific Time happened midway through Spring 2004, and the transition to Eastern Time happened in 2006.

As nice as the shift to starting at 12 ET/9 PT felt at the time in 2006, it permanently killed the Second Night Vote. After that we had maybe half an hour to an hour of SNV at the very end of the match, and a very weak one at that. I think that shift also weakened the day vote strength of a lot of entrants who became frontloaded with a strong first hour.

Yeah, matches still ended at 1 AM Eastern in 2003. I remember because I had to go to bed before the end of Mario/Crono because I had school the next day.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1334-west-division-round-1-tommy-vercetti-vs-kite

You can tell this was a 2003 match. Does Kite still show up in .hack games? Although, it seems like it has been a while since the last one.

Most of the matches Tommy has won would very likely not go his way if they were repeated. At least he probably still beats Kite.

I wonder what the percentages would look like now.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1335-west-division-round-1-lara-croft-vs-zelda

Post-BotW Zelda probably makes this look ugly. Zelda beat Squall worse than this.

Lara probably held up way better than Squall sadly. It'll be worse, but not proportionally worse.

Zelda is now a Top 5 character, and I can't imagine she's dropped any due to Tears of the Kingdom's release.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2019-tournament-final-sephiroth-vs-ganondorf

I wonder if post-TotK Ganondorf takes the rematch.

TeamRocketElite posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2019-tournament-final-sephiroth-vs-ganondorf

I wonder if post-TotK Ganondorf takes the rematch.

Being in Smash probably helped Sephiroth quite a bit since the Tifa match, but all bets are off against a fellow Nintendo/Smash character. If you want a real scary proposition, three of our top 5 might be the Triforce now.

Let's not go crazy. Ganondorf isn't threatening Mario or Samus anytime soon, and if we're even debating Ganondorf/Sephiroth then he loses to Cloud comfortably.

Yeah, I wouldn't expect Ganondorf to receive the same kind of boost Zelda got.

LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, I wouldn't expect Ganondorf to receive the same kind of boost Zelda got.

Yeah Zelda had a combination of the biggest game in the history of this site's favorite series and the general female character boost to send her to the heavens.

Tears of the Kingdom will probably be the biggest post-BotW game by a decent margin barring another Zelda coming out, but I don't see it giving Ganondorf the sort of boost BotW gave Zelda and Link. Zelda had a lot of circumstances beyond BotW, and Link is Link.

If it does though, get ready to debate if Cloud can break 35 on Link anymore.

Keep in mind that Zelda's "real" strength pre-bandwagoning last time was probably not on the level with Mario, Cloud, or Samus either:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7362-finals-bracket-round-1-snake-vs-zelda
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7381-loser-bracket-round-3-snake-vs-samus

Something weird happened with Snake/Samus. It doesn't really line up with everything else.

Either that or the anomaly is elsewhere, but that match in particular gave me fits working on X-Stats because it doesn't line up with anything else. Keep in mind that Samus got 58-59% in both of her matches against Tifa. I know Tifa beat Seph, but I don't think she's on the level with Zelda and Snake.

It would also mean Samus...rSFF'd Mario...? What a twist!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1336-west-division-round-1-mega-man-vs-mr-resetti

Mega Man is pretty good at getting big wins.

LeonhartFour posted...

It would also mean Samus...rSFF'd Mario...? What a twist!

Not too impossible with how much of the site are regulars that wanted to see the upset lol

What was the last 90% performance? Was it Mario vs. Madden in the Series Contest?

Multiway contests prevented us from being able to see them for a stretch after 2006, but still.

Oh right, forgot about that one lawl

LeonhartFour posted...

Something weird happened with Snake/Samus. It doesn't really line up with everything else.

Either that or the anomaly is elsewhere, but that match in particular gave me fits working on X-Stats because it doesn't line up with anything else. Keep in mind that Samus got 58-59% in both of her matches against Tifa. I know Tifa beat Seph, but I don't think she's on the level with Zelda and Snake.

It would also mean Samus...rSFF'd Mario...? What a twist!

Why would it mean Samus RSFF'd Mario? We don't have a read on Mario that year because he wasn't in any matches without Link.

Edit: You are probably talking about a year other than 2006.

I'm just talking about comparing the results from that portion of the bracket in 2018. The benefit of the double elimination format is that we got to see everybody in at least two matches, which makes comparisons easier...except when you have an outlier result.

(I don't think Samus rSFF'd Mario, by the way. It would probably be easier to explain by Mario rSFFing Samus each time, but that would mean Samus was the #2 character in 2018 and it wasn't particularly close)

It's wild to me that Zelda is a Noble Nine killer now

I guess "now" is a strange word though.

We might as well just call her a Noble Niner now and kick someone out

I'd say Sonic but I don't know how much the movies have helped

We need a Loser Leaves Town match between him, Crono, and Mega Man

Leonhart4 posted...

We might as well just call her a Noble Niner now and kick someone out

I'd say Sonic but I don't know how much the movies have helped

We need a Loser Leaves Town match between him, Crono, and Mega Man

Okay well that handles Pikachu's spot but what about Zelda's?

Mega Man got the last laugh in 2018 so Pikachu can reapply next time

I refuse to accept Crono's spot should be at stake since he beat Mega Man when it mattered in 2018.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

I refuse to accept Crono's spot should be at stake since he beat Mega Man when it mattered in 2018.

Which was 5 years ago now!

I'd be fine with the spot coming down to Mega Man and Sonic because Crono at least had the decency not to lose to a non-Noble Niner last time.

Crono has wins over Snake, Mario, and Mega Man. Mega Man has wins over Snake and Sonic. Sonic has one win over Crono. None of them have wins over Clinkeroth and Samus. So I'd boot Sonic if anyone, but on the other hand, the Noble Nine has staying power that a lot of our challengers to the NN have not shown (Magus, Vincent, etc.). 8 of the 9 are main characters and the 9th is Sephiroth, which is probably part of the reason for this.

Based on 2018 performances, boot Sephiroth and Sonic for Zelda and Pikachu.

Maybe the former two redeem themselves next time based on Smash or movies or whatever. Until then they can hang out with Tifa and MMX as our top near-elites.

People were too harsh on Sephiroth. Already from the moment he wasn't given a round 5 bye like the rest. General likence shift from edgy badass characters to female leads gave Tifa the edge so that without the same fantom she wasn't gonna lose. But I still think Seph had more general acceptable than Tifa. Saying this as the only b8er to call their match correctly.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xc8ghy

I made this 13 years ago, and nope, I can't tell you why I chose that song.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1337-north-division-round-2-link-vs-fox-mccloud

Hey, nice poll number for the beginning of Round 2. Also, Link absolutely wrecking Fox here.

Link. He come to town.

Also, gotta give it up for Pikachu, who was doubled by Fox in Round 1 and then got behind this absolute killing of Fox. Now, the electric rat is beating Noble Niners in both multi-ways and singles.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

Also, gotta give it up for Pikachu, who was doubled by Fox in Round 1 and then got behind this absolute killing of Fox. Now, the electric rat is beating Noble Niners in both multi-ways and singles.

Yeah I miss the good old days when Star Fox was an important franchise for Nintendo and Pokemon was a fad that was about to fade.

I'm glad GameFAQs doesn't play the newer Pokemon games so the backlash won't hurt their performance in contests. As a bonus, it makes external rallying harder as well.

Remember when the Pokemon fanbase decided to not help RBY beat Undertale despite getting both Masuda and Bulbapedia to tweet about the match

ctesjbuvf posted...

Remember when the Pokemon fanbase decided to not help RBY beat Undertale despite getting both Masuda and Bulbapedia to tweet about the match

That was the actual match where Undertale was a lock to win everything. Pokémon actually fought back and still lost because elitist idiots in their fanbase pretend gen 1 is bad.

Spoilers Undertale was a lock the second it took the lead against Mass Effect 3

There are megarallies that have not won contests. More than not actually!

Back when we had enough native votes to stave off a massive rally.

That was not the case in 2015, so the contest was over. This is not hindsight. You can look through the Stats archives. I called the contest over and never wavered off of it.

Melee had a similar rally that exact contest and lost >_>