Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1375 - Thank you, Allen!

Master Chief/Frog had some pretty wild vote swings.

Crono/Chief did too, but that wasn't a close match obviously.

Actually, Frog/Axel was pretty crazy, too

Remember the days when Kingdom Hearts was popular enough and Chrono Trigger was weak enough that a tertiary KH character almost beat the #2 or #3 CT character? What a time.

Just imagine how bad CT's day vote would have been if it had been released in Europe!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1616-division-16-round-1-final-fantasy-iii-vi-vs-mortal-kombat

Good opening match for FFVI.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3456-division-3-round-1-ff3-mega-man-x-ps-iv-zelda-la

I think this result was a little more surprising though. At the very least, I don't think people expected Link's Awakening to be the game that got this close to it. Too bad we never got a good look at it in 2015.

also poor Phantasy Star IV getting stuck in a match with three really strong games

No PotD today. This is already a bad look for the site admins after the recent privatization of CE.

First they came for the PotD, and I was furious because nobody votes in the PotD more than I do.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1617-division-32-64-round-1-final-fantasy-vii-vs-suikoden-ii

I miss the days when FFVII could do this.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3457-division-3-round-1-mk2-secretofmana-shiningforce2-sonic-2

A pretty good showing for Mortal Kombat II and Secret of Mana.

Do we know how strong Suikoden is nowadays? Maybe FFVII can still put up that percentage. I feel the anti-votes should have lessened by now. It's been 20 years since it won.

Fandom doesn't caaaare. :(

At least we have Discord and Reddit nowadays...

Masahiro Sakurai thinks 1986 is the Best Year in Gaming:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2yPIetSPDw

A hot take since on GameFAQs, it got 89-11'd by 1995.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6690-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-1-1995-vs-1986

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1618-division-32-64-round-1-pokemon-gold-silver-crystal-vs

The glory days. Wonder how this one goes now. This match also had to be restarted because initially only registered users were allowed to vote. People thought Pokemon would do better after the restart, but nope!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3458-division-4-round-1-dk-country-2-goldeneye-re2-s-mario-rpg

I think people were curious to see how well GoldenEye would do after its surprise top ten finish in the 2005 top ten games mini-contest (the only time I won prize money aw yeah). This was a good showing for everyone except DKC2 (which was the Guru choice, if I remember correctly).

GSC gets like 80%

Also we nominated Yoshi's Island for guru but DKC2 won the NRT I think. This was also the match that had people picking Xenoblade and FE: Awakening over DKC2 in 2015.

Actually yeah, I think you're right. I knew DKC2 had a B8 boost, but it may have been the NRT instead.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6061-best-game-ever-day-3-star-wars-kotor-vs-xenogears

Also Xenogears did pretty good here, so I don't think G/S/C goes quite that high.

PrinceOfKoopas posted...

Masahiro Sakurai thinks 1986 is the Best Year in Gaming:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2yPIetSPDw

A hot take since on GameFAQs, it got 89-11'd by 1995.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6690-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-1-1995-vs-1986

Japanese games released in 1986 that did not come out in 1986 in North America and so were not covered by gamefaqs's poll include:
Dragon Quest 1
Zelda 1
Metroid 1
Castlevania 1
Kid Icarus
Doki Doki Panic (pre-Marioized Mario 2)

And when 1995 had to straight up face a poll where three of those games (Zelda 1/Metroid 1/Cadtlevania 1, plus actual 1987 game Mega Man 1) were in the picture against it, this happened:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6706-best-year-in-gaming-round-2-day-1-1995-vs-1987

Yeah 1986 was a boom year for famicom stuff.

87 is our closest equivalent but with an even bigger explosion.

Based 1995 still winning.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1619-division-32-64-round-1-final-fantasy-tactics-vs-dance-dance

I'd say no FF game has fallen off harder over the years than Tactics. This game was legit back in 2004, and Ramza was at least a decent low midcarder when we saw him in 2003.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3459-division-4-round-1-ff7-mariokart64-star-fox-64-suikoden

It's too bad Mario Kart 64 and Star Fox 64 both missed the cut in 2015. I'd have been curious to see what they could do.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1620-division-32-64-round-1-metal-gear-solid-vs-resident-evil

I remember debating back in the day if PS1 SFF was a real thing or not, and this was one of the matches we'd argue about (along with FFVII/MGS1). Seems hard to believe the original RE1 would be this weak, all things considered.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3460-division-4-round-1-csotn-kirbyss-re-s-mario-64

Especially considering it didn't finish that far behind SOTN here and it was worth about 30% on this version of Mario 64. This result should have been our first hint Mario 64 meant business, but I think a lot of us had a hard time believing it could beat Chrono Trigger.

RE1 was legit in 2015 as well.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6104-best-game-ever-day-14-metal-gear-solid-2-vs-resident-evil

Although it has yet to win a match. Tough competition.

It's kinda fun doing these at the same as a lot of the games overlap on days.

Actually, I just looked at the date for MGS/RE, and it's 4/22. Did we skip a day? Or was this the readjustment from the Pokemon/Xenogears restart?

Oh yeah, that match started again the next day. Weird that the dates don't correct on the poll page until MGS VS. RE, but I guess FFT VS. DDR was already set up before the poll was rerun and no one's ever noticed.

Also, don't forget that KOTOR VS. Vice City ran two days since there were site updated happening then.

IIRC, there was one other random pause due to the site updates during 2004, but I can't remember when it was.

Edit: Looks like the one day break comes between FFVI/Doom and FFVII/Xenogears

Leonhart4 posted...

Actually, I just looked at the date for MGS/RE, and it's 4/22. Did we skip a day? Or was this the readjustment from the Pokemon/Xenogears restart?

There was already weirdness with the listed match dates on GameFAQs back in 2004, based on these 2 archived pages back in 2004.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040611190659/http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/list.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20040624052957/http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/list.html?page=1

Here's what we have for match date weirdness:

1. 3 matches listed on 4/2/2004, when it's clear they were all on separate days (and no days off either).
2. No match listed for 4/21/2004, though GSC/Xenogears weirdness might have played a role in causing that to happen.
3. No match listed for 5/14/2004
4. 2 matches listed for 6/3/2004, and no match listed on 6/6/2004.

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1620-division-32-64-round-1-metal-gear-solid-vs-resident-evil

I remember debating back in the day if PS1 SFF was a real thing or not, and this was one of the matches we'd argue about (along with FFVII/MGS1). Seems hard to believe the original RE1 would be this weak, all things considered.

Eh, MGS1 is a clear classic and arguably is still the best MGS, while RE1 was rough around the edges and surpassed by many of its sequels and its remake, so I can picture that being legit without SFF.

I think RE4 raised the pedigree of the series overall after that, and it's done a good job staying relevant till today, so I think it would do better now.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3461-division-4-round-1-c-trigger-earthbound-lufia-ii-yoshis

As mentioned before, Yoshi's Island was our Guru winner, and even though it easily finished 2nd here, this isn't exactly an inspiring performance. It's the lone Mario game against three RPGs and the weakest version of Chrono Trigger we've seen, and it manages around 30% on CT.

It was good to see the best Mario platformer ever make a contest, even if Yoshi's Island's path was pretty much set in stone the moment brackets were revealed.

Tough to tell if the others overlap nore imo but yeah, simple path.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1621-division-32-64-round-1-perfect-dark-vs-castlevania-symphony

Feels like Perfect Dark has several close losses to decent competition and not much else to show for it. Even here, it lives in the shadow of GoldenEye's success.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3462-division-5-round-1-banjo-kazooie-perfect-dark-pokemon-zelda

This was not close though, but at least it beat Banjo-Kazooie! I think this result was legitimately shocking for a lot of the board. We'd seen Pikachu look good in 2007 and 2008, but I don't think we were prepared to see R/B/Y lay the smackdown on a mainline Zelda. This result is also a big reason why Majora was underestimated in Game of the Decade a year later.

RBY/MM was a paradigm shift day.

Kind of funny that Perfect Dark is the game with two matches today from the past. At least it has a win against Conker's Bad Fur Day, so it's definitely higher on the late Rare N64 release ladder.

Banjo-Tooie/Perfect Dark would have been a close match based on GotD1 x-stats.
Tooie is behind a loss to MGS2 there, and SotC's results probably made MGS2 look closer to MGS3 than it deserved, so Perfect Dark likely wins in ~2010. Not sure now.

I looked up the Oracle results for Pokemon/MM. Even among those who had R/B/Y winning, the highest prediction for it was 41% (and MM with 39%). Yeah, nobody saw that coming.

R/B/Y is also a big reason why Undertale's run actually made that contest way less fun. It would've been more interesting to see if it could've run the entire Mario gauntlet (which I predicted) than to see Undertale just win rally-fests every time.

2015 had a really good bracket, too, which is another reason it felt like a waste.

@Ngamer

Don't know if you're aware of this, but some of the Guru links don't work and the LOL X-Stats link doesn't work either.

I mean I get we don't really need them and they probably barely see any traffic anymore, but I thought I'd let you know if you didn't already.

Leonhart4 posted...

I looked up the Oracle results for Pokemon/MM. Even among those who had R/B/Y winning, the highest prediction for it was 41% (and MM with 39%). Yeah, nobody saw that coming.

R/B/Y is also a big reason why Undertale's run actually made that contest way less fun. It would've been more interesting to see if it could've run the entire Mario gauntlet (which I predicted) than to see Undertale just win rally-fests every time.

2015 had a really good bracket, too, which is another reason it felt like a waste.

It's almost a shame that UNDERTALE couldn't have made it's run on Ocarina's side of the bracket where little actually happened. Almost, because the Super Mario RPG fan in me loved seeing its run, but both Melee and UNDERTALE's runs really did come at the expense of what would have been the most unpredictable high-level matches in that bracket.

Also, I'm still of the belief that Ocarina was destined to lose to the finals to whoever survived the gauntlet in the first half of the bracket, and that was the last chance a non-Zelda entrant would have ever won a contest without rallies.

I've said this all along but Melee's rally was more offensive than Undertale's. It's not enough for Melee to be a top ten-ish game. It had to ruin CT's magical run, too.

And yeah, I wouldn't have wanted to lose Mario RPG's run or MGS3 > MGS1 (perhaps the most unexpected result in that entire contest that I actually enjoyed!). This is why rallies suck.

Chrono Trigger would have beaten Ocarina in the finals without a doubt in a rally-less contest. And if Pokemon R/B/Y had been successful against UNDERTALE, it would have rode the resulting momentum to a contest win (and I win first prize due to having RBY > Ocarina in my contest bracket).

I can see hating Melee’s rally if you’re a huge FFX fan too because the game was trending to do worse in the stats.

Nah, I think Melee would've balanced out to around the same as FFX just due to its trends.

But Melee and FFX are still close in strength and have been in every contest they've been in together, so that's not a surprise!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1622-division-32-64-round-1-goldeneye-vs-panzer-dragoon-saga

I think Panzer Dragoon Saga was one of the only games in the bracket I'd never heard of beforehand, and based on this result, I doubt I was alone...!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3463-division-5-round-1-deus-ex-fft-mgs-pokemon-gs

In five years, MGS1/FFT went from a 50/50 match to a comfortable MGS1 win. Pretty good showing for Gold/Silver, too. Deus Ex would get its moment the next year when it wouldn't be winning by enough against Rock Band!

Leonhart4 posted...

I looked up the Oracle results for Pokemon/MM. Even among those who had R/B/Y winning, the highest prediction for it was 41% (and MM with 39%). Yeah, nobody saw that coming.

R/B/Y is also a big reason why Undertale's run actually made that contest way less fun. It would've been more interesting to see if it could've run the entire Mario gauntlet (which I predicted) than to see Undertale just win rally-fests every time.

2015 had a really good bracket, too, which is another reason it felt like a waste.

Yeah one thing is several games from the first system but RBY was beating them all combined.

After round 1 almost everyone was saying SMB3 would beat RBY but stuck with the latter only because of expected rally spill. I feel like I was the only sticking to RBY regardless there and Tetris just being legit, but the discussion didn't even matter because of another match. Huge shame.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1623-division-32-64-round-1-super-mario-64-vs-nights-into-dreams

I wonder how strong Mario 64 was back in 2004. Could it have actually been the strongest Mario game even then? Of course we'll never know because of what happened next round. It's wild that it was the 7 seed here because of the nomination format.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3464-division-5-round-1-ff8-soulcalibur-starcraft-xenogears

Inject it straight into my veins. People thought Starcraft might beat VIII here because of 2004 and Xenogears being in the match with it, but FFVIII put this match out of reach quickly. It'll never be this strong again.

Also, Super Smash Bros. was originally in this match, and somehow SoulCalibur got enough momentum to replace it here in the Add/Remove stage. And yet this is only the second dumbest Add/Remove we had because people thought it was a good idea to put Fire Emblem into a match with Wind Waker and Melee.

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1623-division-32-64-round-1-super-mario-64-vs-nights-into-dreams

I wonder how strong Mario 64 was back in 2004. Could it have actually been the strongest Mario game even then? Of course we'll never know because of what happened next round. It's wild that it was the 7 seed here because of the nomination format.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3464-division-5-round-1-ff8-soulcalibur-starcraft-xenogears

Inject it straight into my veins. People thought Starcraft might beat VIII here because of 2004 and Xenogears being in the match with it, but FFVIII put this match out of reach quickly. It'll never be this strong again.

Also, Super Smash Bros. was originally in this match, and somehow SoulCalibur got enough momentum to replace it here in the Add/Remove stage. And yet this is only the second dumbest Add/Remove we had because people thought it was a good idea to put Fire Emblem into a match with Wind Waker and Melee.

I think this showed how situational the Starcraft run in 2004 was. It got stronger as the contest went on, and I don't doubt it would have done better against FFVII if it got to the semifinal than it did against FFVIII here.

Yeah, it's easy to look back now and realize Starcraft had major bandwagon power (in addition to good old-fashioned vote stuffing) by the time it reached Melee. I just don't think we understood then (and maybe we still don't fully) how much this site gets behind what it perceives to be an underdog story. We've got several examples of it, but Starcraft is probably one of the more extreme ones.

It definitely helps if you got games that can be perceived as antagonists, and Halo, Kingdom Hearts, and Wind Waker were about as good as you could draw in that contest.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1624-division-32-64-round-1-the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time

Link, he come to town.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3465-division-5-round-1-c-cross-ff9-half-life-zelda-oot

Link, he come to town again. Both of these matches were pretty devoid of drama. I guess there was some debate over whether Chrono Cross would LFF FFIX enough for Half-Life to advance, but that didn't matter much in the end.