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

Yeah, it was super early, as I remember new matches coming on in the afternoon here in the Pacific time zone, and then the start times changed when Daylight Savings Time stopped.

red_sox_777 posted...

Did the poll start time really shift to 8 p.m.? I have no memory of this. I guess I have very little memory of the 2018 contest in general.

Well, it was 8 PM at the start of the 2018 contest, then it shifted to 7 PM after the DST switch. The entire 2020 contest had 8 PM start times since it happened during the period where DST is active in most of North America and Europe.

http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/sc2k3/sum03b49.jpg

Well, we've already been talking about it for a while, but today marks 20 years since Link vs. Magus, one of the most important overperformances ever in the contests.

I love the sprite round template so much.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1354-north-division-semifinal-squall-leonhart-vs-samus-aran

thank goodness for the KHF letting Squall be one of the strongest non-Noble Niners for many years

we'll never get those days back

In retrospect, Squall was the 12th strongest character in the 2003 contest since Magus's division and Shadow were frauds in their 2003 matches.

He was probably as good as 10th or at least seriously contending for it; Samus’s division is likely a little underrated due to Link/Samus SFF. Also, that Squall performance on post-Prime Samus is less than a percent from what Sonic would get in 2004, and indeed, setting Samus 2003 = Samus 2004 projects 2003 Squall to break 49% on 2004 Sonic.

Squall's probably lost whatever boost he got from the KH series by now because he's at the weakest he's ever been since 2002

Yeah, it's safe to assume Sonic beats Squall pretty handily now, given they have a common opponent in Zelda in 2018.

Sonic handled Auron pretty easily, too, who we could argue is the 2nd strongest non-NN FF character (after Tifa).

Auron still being a contender for second isn’t wrong but he’s probably seen better days too; Auron/Sub-Zero 2006 vs. 2018 doesn’t look good for him.

With recent year trends I don't think I'd take Auron > Aerith. Hell, Auron > Yuna doesn't feel too good.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7312-division-3-round-2-alucard-vs-yuna

for all the deserved praise for how well female characters generally performed in 2018, Yuna was not one of them. She just did okay. Which I guess is still sorta praiseworthy considering what a lot of the Square boys were up to (jesus christ riku) but yeah

I'm not saying she would be stronger indirectly.

ctesjbuvf posted...

With recent year trends I don't think I'd take Auron > Aerith. Hell, Auron > Yuna doesn't feel too good.

Yuna was equal to Kefka in 2018. Auron has dropped from his peak, too, but not that much. I'd also say rSFF is out of the question. That makes no sense. Auron has always been the FFX favorite, and there's no reason to think that's changed.

Aerith might have a shot against Auron because of Remake, although I wouldn't rule out Vivi these days either. He did great against Ganondorf.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1355-east-division-semifinal-cloud-strife-vs-bowser

What utter decimation on the part of the future champion.

I miss the days when Cloud could do that

Cloud sent a message here. If Bowser = Ganondorf, this predicts Cloud to get close to 58% on Link through Magus?

Which would suggest Ganondorf wasn't stronger than Bowser until TP, which adds up.

Leonhart4 posted...

Which would suggest Ganondorf wasn't stronger than Bowser until TP, which adds up.

Bowser was definitely stronger than Ganon in 2003, but Ganon usurped Bowser well before TP, as Ganon did better on Sephiroth than Bowser in the Villains Contest.

Well, the TP hype is what allowed Ganondorf to pass Bowser, to be precise.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1356-east-division-semifinal-aeris-gainsborough-vs-sonic-the

Using Zelda as a common opponent, 2018 Sonic was projected to beat 2018 Aerith with 56.59% of the vote. Wonder how that's changed since Remake and the Sonic movies.

Wait, Bowser being stronger than Ganondorf in 2003 means that Cloud gets projected to even more than 58% on Link.

red_sox_777 posted...

Wait, Bowser being stronger than Ganondorf in 2003 means that Cloud gets projected to even more than 58% on Link.

Or that Magus was a fraud from the beginning, that's the point

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1357-south-division-semifinal-mario-vs-crono

Welp, this may have been the most controversial 24 hours and 25 minutes in all of the history of GameFAQs Contests.

http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MarioWins.jpg
http://thengamer.com/gamefaqs/03Summer/MarioWinsBoard.jpg
 https://imgur.com/a/qTKlEUu

The GOAT

Still the best

_SecretSquirrel posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1357-south-division-semifinal-mario-vs-crono

Welp, this may have been the most controversial 24 hours and 25 minutes in all of the history of GameFAQs Contests.

Draven/Link was far worse.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Draven/Link was far worse.

Well, that one had less than 24 hours. Mario vs. Crono II had more than that.

And honestly, thinking about it, I would still rate Mario vs. Crono II as more controversial, simply because there is no good answer as to how to deal with the downtime during L/S/D, whether it was a deliberate act of sabotage via DDOS attack or not. No matter what, a decision had to be made, fueled by the unfortunate timing of the match occurring on a holiday. It's not like anyone would have anticipated pre-contest that a Link match in Round 3 would have been the most pivotal day of the season.

On the other hand, most of the controversy of Mario vs. Crono II would have been avoided if the match simply hadn't started early. It was completely preventable and unexplainable, and we knew as soon as the bracket was released that the match would be powder keg.

Mario vs. Crono III might have the best contest match pic of all time.

Yeah, I'd say Mario/Crono II was the most controversial match of all-time for all the reasons stated. Plus, we were much more emotionally volatile and invested in the results back then.

Happy Birthday Ceej! (IIRC, both this and Sonic/Samus the previous year occurred on his birthday)

Link/Draven was way more controversial imo. Granted, I'm biased because I was still casually lurking in 03 but Mario/Crono was extremely controversial yes, but it was mostly still a traditional "inter-GameFAQs" controversy if that makes sense.

Link/Draven was an entirely new beast nobody saw coming and nobody had any idea how to react. We were getting invaded en masse by Reddit and the whole site was suspected to have been DDoSed. Pretty much cemented mass outside rallies as a permanently controversial boogeyman that still haunts every contest discussion to this day and that SBAllen's had to specifically design contests around.

Ah the good old days when Crono could go 50/50 with Mario.

Eh, it took Undertale ruining the Games Contest too for that to happen

I guess you could argue Link/Draven was more controversial because Draven essentially ruined the contest while Mario would get his comeuppance a round later

It was also more controversial because Draven went from losing to Chie to beating Link while Mario went from being slightly weaker than Crono to being slightly stronger than Crono. It changed one result and not 6.

I mean, our dip in vote totals (and the format) allowed for that. Draven doesn't get too far if we have 2003 level vote totals.

That's true, that and three ways (edit: I apparently skipped your paranthesis).

The point still stands though.

Fun fact — there is no 24 hour period in that match that Crono lost.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1358-south-division-semifinal-alucard-vs-sephiroth

20 years ago today, the aftermath of Mario vs. Crono II. And I suppose, Sephiroth wrecked Alucard too. Seph would certainly have trouble pulling this off today.

The 2018 X-Stats have Sephiroth worth 51.17% on Alucard.

Leon can you make the next one por favor?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1359-south-division-semifinal-solid-snake-vs-ryu

At first, I didn't think anything was really notable about this match, but then I realized this was Round 3, and you know what means. This is actually the first time a Snake sprite was in the foreground of a match picture. 2002 had sprites, but they were in the backgrounds of the pictures that year.

http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/sc2k3/sum03b55.jpg

The Snake sprite vs. the SF1 Ryu sprite with his ruby red slippers

and we wonder why sprite rounds cause such outlier results sometimes

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1360-south-division-semifinal-tommy-vercetti-vs-mega-man

The first ever L for GTA. The first of many.

Not really a bad result at all for Vercetti there.

If nothing else, I'm sure Vercetti would love to be going back to having 50-50s with DK and Kefka.

Friendly reminder that Mega Man would put up a similar number on Tidus a year later because, you guessed it, Magus was a fraud all along

In case you're wondering how we get there...

Vercetti/DK was basically 50/50
Tidus vs. Ganondorf and Ganondorf vs. Magus were basically 50/50
Magus/Sam Fisher was a doubling
DK/Sam Fisher in 2005 was basically a doubling

This is why Squall will beat Magus in the Devil Division in SC2K5

R.I.P. contests