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

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1625-division-128-round-1-halo-combat-evolved-vs-starcraft

To this day, this is still the only time a 1 seed lost in its first match (to be fair, we've had multiple contests with no seeding, so you can't draw any conclusions from those). That being said, this upset was also a product of the nomination system, where you could only nominate one game per system, so Halo naturally got a lot of nominations as one of the few popular Xbox titles at the time, and Starcraft got in as a 16 seed among the vast sea of PC games. Halo was a paper tiger here, but this was a taste of what was to come in a wild division.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3466-division-6-round-1-ffx-mgs2-silent-hill-2-morrowind

This was a good showing for Final Fantasy X, putting up an impressive performance on MGS2, which finished closer to Morrowind than FFX here.

Still my best call ever. The only logic anyone applied to Halo winning was the seeding.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1626-division-128-round-1-soul-calibur-vs-kingdom-hearts

After Kingdom Hearts helped propel Cloud to victory in SC2K3, there were some high expectations for it in the Games Contest. I know I had it getting all the way to the division finals (whoops). It nearly fell at the first hurdle, struggling to get past Soul Calibur.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3467-division-6-round-1-gtavc-k-hearts-metroid-prime-paper-mario

But Kingdom Hearts would finally live up to those lofty expectations five years later. I think even if you take Paper Mario out of the poll, it still beats Metroid Prime here because it had a higher percentage than both games combined. 2009 was a rough contest for Metroid. Super Metroid struggles to beat Super Mario Kart, and Prime fails to get past the first round. It almost certainly beats Vice City if Paper Mario isn't there, but them's the breaks.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1627-division-128-round-1-the-legend-of-zelda-the-wind-waker-vs

There's nothing to say about this match. All I want to say is that Sega needs to get their act together and port Skies of Arcadia to a modern platform. There's no reason that this amazing game should be trapped on the Dreamcast and the GameCube. I'd say you should play Skies of Arcadia if you haven't yet, but...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3468-division-6-round-1-diablo-iilod-gta-3-halo-swkotor

This was a highly debated match, and for good reason, based on the result. I honestly don't remember what I had in my bracket here. I think I had Halo > Diablo, but I don't recall for certain. I feel like I had Halo advancing, but I'm not sure what other game I picked.

Skies of Arcadia works great on Dolphin. So I've heard.

I have also heard this

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1628-division-128-round-1-metroid-prime-vs-half-life

Feels like Metroid Prime has to face a Half-Life game in every contest it's in. Wonder what the percentages for this one look like now considering this is about what Prime got on Half-Life 2 in 2015.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3469-division-6-round-1-disgaea-fire-emblem-ssbm-zelda-ww

Somebody is gonna have to explain to me how enough people thought it was a good idea to replace Golden Sun (which would prove its worth in GotD) with Fire Emblem, in a match featuring Melee and Wind Waker. It still baffles me that this change went through.

LeonhartFour posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1627-division-128-round-1-the-legend-of-zelda-the-wind-waker-vs

There's nothing to say about this match. All I want to say is that Sega needs to get their act together and port Skies of Arcadia to a modern platform. There's no reason that this amazing game should be trapped on the Dreamcast and the GameCube. I'd say you should play Skies of Arcadia if you haven't yet, but...

I do think it's hilarious that the only two games in the bracket with sailing as a mechanic for traversing the game map got put against each other in Round 1.

Sailing SFF

Leonhart4 posted...

Somebody is gonna have to explain to me how enough people thought it was a good idea to replace Golden Sun (which would prove its worth in GotD) with Fire Emblem, in a match featuring Melee and Wind Waker. It still baffles me that this change went through.

No game had a chance to advance so a little SRPG duel was fun to see.

Leonhart4 posted...

Somebody is gonna have to explain to me how enough people thought it was a good idea to replace Golden Sun (which would prove its worth in GotD) with Fire Emblem, in a match featuring Melee and Wind Waker. It still baffles me that this change went through.

That was one of my earlier Board 8 memories. While Golden Sun is generally somewhat popular, it has a large and vocal hatedom due to its bad writing and other problems. So a lot of people wanted it out either due to thinking voters would think the same or just out of general dislike for the game.

Zylothewolf posted...

No game had a chance to advance so a little SRPG duel was fun to see.

There was no duel to be had because Fire Emblem was going to get SFF'd into the ground

"Neither game had a chance" is all the more reason not to change anything

Golden Sun got removed because B8 back then really didn't like Golden Sun (or at least there some loud vocal voices that didn't), while it loved Fire Emblem. It's pretty much that simple.

I get that people dislike Golden Sun, but it wasn't going to do anything anyway.

I guess I don't really understand using this system just to get rid of games you don't like. I thought it was just to give games a chance that didn't make it that could actually do something.

Although my main issue would be to at least pick a better game than the one that got doubled by Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

Golden Sun wouldn't have done anything against Melee or Wind Waker, but it probably withstands the SFF hammer enough to not lose to Disgaea.

If you wanted to try for an upset that match (albeit an unfair one), Disgaea is the game that should have been replaced. Melee/Wind Waker/Golden Sun is three-way Nintendo overlap and Golden Sun is both way stronger than GBA Fire Emblem and probably better at resisting SFF. We'd later see Melee SFF and overlap alone hurt Wind Waker enough to almost let it finish behind Halo 1. Doesn't sound insane to me to think that, I dunno, DMC1 or Soul Calibur II could have at least given a scare to WW with a three-way Nintendo split.

Yeah, but Disgaea is a bit of a B8 darling, so it was never going to be axed in any realistic scenario.

Removing Golden Sun is always, always a good idea

f*** it

Shun Golden Sun

Too bad it didn't get removed in Game of the Decade lawl

Yep

SA wins a rematch, I would expect. But jesus christ, gamefaqs, what a f***ing low point

Eh, I think it'd be a toss-up. San Andreas feels like the GTA game that never meets expectations.

Golden Sun would probably be weaker so maybe but I would except San Andreas to be weak too.

XIII_Rocks posted...

SA wins a rematch, I would expect.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6140-best-game-ever-day-23-round-2-gta-san-andreas-vs-chrono

Probably not

No, SA would win a rematch, because the world needs to at some point make f***ing sense

Golden Sun is a better game than San Andreas though

Golden Sun would beat the s*** out of any Grand Theft Auto title on this site. This place absolutely despises GTA, Halo, and Call of Duty type games that fray boys are into.

Remember when Call of Duty won Game of the Year here once

Spoilers we'll be seeing it soon

GTAV vs. Golden Sun could be a good match. I mean I'd still take Golden Sun for the lulz but GTAV probably wins that.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1629-division-128-round-1-final-fantasy-tactics-advance-vs-fire

Once again, people thought this game deserved a second chance after getting doubled by FFTA. Wonder what the percentages on this one look like today.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3470-division-7-round-1-god-of-war-gtasa-tos-oblivion

Oh hey, speaking of San Andreas perpetually underwhelming, here's another example! This is the closest we ever got to a 4-way tie in this format, with the difference between 1st and last being just over 4000 votes.

I don't remember what I had here. I just remember people thinking it was a total fluke that Symphonia advanced, and that it had no chance in the rematch against GoW when they squared off in GotD a year later. While Symphonia lost that match, it proved its legitimacy because it was a very close loss.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4151-south-division-round-2-star-wars-kotor-vs-fire-emblem

FE looked better in 2010 at least.

gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80760217

contest rushmore today!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1630-division-128-round-1-final-fantasy-x-vs-shenmue

Shenmue was a moment in time, huh. I think people realized that when Shenmue 3 finally came out, and now we're not getting Shenmue 4, I'm guessing.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3471-division-7-round-1-halo-2-mgs3-okami-wow

I originally didn't think this was a great showing for MGS3, but honestly, all four of these games are at least low midcarders, so a clear victory where it's under no threat of losing is good enough.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1631-division-128-round-1-grand-theft-auto-vice-city-vs-star-wars

This match lasted 48 hours because of site maintenance issues, which makes it the longest running match ever. There were other matches that had to be restarted the next day, but they were stopped before the restart.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3472-division-7-round-1-gears-of-war-k-hearts-2-re4-sotc

Man, Kingdom Hearts II came so close to a big upset here. I think people had high expectations for RE4, not so much for KH2. Also, it's kind of funny to see how far behind Shadow of the Colossus finished here, considering what it would do only a year later.

48 hours and barely any votes is really funny. This site does not care about GTA.

I imagine most people who vote in contests are daily visitors, so I'd think most matches wouldn't get a ton of extra votes by running for an extra day, especially if it's not close.

https://deadline.com/2024/05/knuckles-viewership-streaming-record-paramount-plus-1235902338/

Too bad we stopped having Character Battles right before this Sonic Renaissance

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3473-division-7-round-1-ff12-half-life-2-p-wright-zelda-tp

There was a time when a mainline Final Fantasy game losing to a PC game would've been unthinkable, and then FFXII happened.

I miss when Half-Life was decently strong on this site.

Another favorite "5" game poll today:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/9544-

UltimaterializerX posted...

48 hours and barely any votes is really funny. This site does not care about GTA.

The site was down for long stretches of time due to a major site upgrade based on the match updates here:

http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=1631&num=2

The last update before the first stretch of downtime was the 2004-05-03 16:54:00 update, and the next update came at 2004-05-03 22:59:00. So about 6 hours of downtime there.

A second stretch of downtime happened after the 2004-05-03 23:59:00 update and lasted for around 5 hours. Site came back up shortly before the 2004-05-04 05:18:00 update for around 5 to 10 minutes and went down for maybe another 2 hours for the third stretch of downtime. After coming back up shortly before the 2004-05-04 07:39:00 update, the site had no downtime for the rest of the match.

Around 13 hours of voting was lost to the downtime.

Leonhart4 posted...

I imagine most people who vote in contests are daily visitors, so I'd think most matches wouldn't get a ton of extra votes by running for an extra day, especially if it's not close.

There's been 2 instances of a non-contest poll running for more than 36 hours and the trend based on that is an extra 24 hours of voting wouldn't help that much. Going off the pace of vote totals after the 24 hour mark suggests around 75% of the total votes in a 48 hour match would come in the first 24 hours. Running matches for 48 hours is not recommended just for a 25% boost in total votes.

Big jump for FFV this time around compared to last time. We'll see if it holds.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1632-division-128-round-1-super-smash-bros-melee-vs-metal-gear

This result was dubbed "utter destruction" by a certain user who also happened to win this contest. And that's the end of round 1!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3474-division-8-round-1-gta4-persona-4-sf4-ssbb

Street Fighter IV replaced TWEWY here, presumably because enough people dislike the game. At least SFIV wasn't a total waste of a spot because there was no SFF at play here (unless you think Brawl SFF'd it), and we had never seen it get doubled by FFTA in a previous contest. I thought it would be stronger than this, but this site doesn't care about any fighting game that isn't Smash, sadly.

Final Fantasy Tactics vs Final Fantasy V

Who ya got?

Tactics. If in doubt, the one closer to 1998, particularly the one released in the USA.

LeonhartFour posted...

This result was dubbed "utter destruction" by a certain user who also happened to win this contest.

If I stuck to my gut with SMRPG it never ends up a tiebreaker.

The only way V beats Tactics is if something happens that makes everyone hate the very concept of the PlayStation ever existing.

It would have to turn out like Sony was covering up PlayStations having the blood of enslaved children as an actual component, and Square was in on it.

And even then Tactics would probably still be the favorite.

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

The only way V beats Tactics is if something happens that makes everyone hate the very concept of the PlayStation ever existing.

Have you not been following the news lately? Between the Stellar Blade forced censorship and murdering Helldivers 2 to the point of the CEO s***ting on Sony in public, they’re having a very bad month.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Have you not been following the news lately? Between the Stellar Blade forced censorship and murdering Helldivers 2 to the point of the CEO s***ting on Sony in public, they’re having a very bad month.

I have been, and I included 'hated the concept of the system ever existing' because of it.

Modern Sony sucking won't hurt any PSX FF to the level of losing to FFV. It would need to be something to make people hate Sony ever entering the gaming market just to give FFV a shot.

LeonhartFour posted...

Big jump for FFV this time around compared to last time. We'll see if it holds.

Looks like it didn't hold. The night vote killed FFV and now it's only doing about 1% better than the 2022 poll.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1633-division-8-round-2-super-mario-bros-3-vs-metroid

Round 2 was blowout city, so probably won't have a lot to say about most of these! It takes until MGS/FFT before we get a match that's under a doubling, and we saw a lot of triplings and even quadruplings this round.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3475-division-8-round-1-cod-4-pokemon-dp-s-mario-g-tf2

I do wonder what this match looks like without Pokemon in the poll here. Either way, it's not a good look for Galaxy here. Not sure why those two games never took off here (other than just being on the Wii, I guess), which is unfortunate.