Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1376

Not exactly out of nowhere for Pokemon. Around 2007 people started to grow out of their blind hate for Pokemon. While they didn't necessarily pick up new Pokemon games, they were willing to recognize that they had a lot fun with the older games. Board 8 itself had a Pokemon boom around the same time.

I still see people who yearn for the glory days of turn based FF games, so I could see FF10 holding up.

I think Pokémon was allowed the shock factor by having been out of contests for a while. Nidoran F of all things being fed to Samus doesn't count. Series contest was a warning sign, as Pokémon largely exceeded expectations in both matches, but since both matches still got the expected result, it was probably not given the attention it should have.

If Pokémon had appeared more regularly we would have likely seen it in bits. Of course if a contest ever came again could be the same principle.

Yeah, we could see similar jumps if we had another contest since it's been six years since the last Character Battle.

The jump for Pikachu from 2002 to 2018 is still pretty unprecedented though.

We're at the point where we go long enough between contests (and lost enough voters) that we've gone from 'Poll of the Days are bad' to 'Poll of the Days can be looked to for trends in strength over time'.

How much time was there between the PotD FFVI vs FFVII match and the actual contest one?

pjbasis posted...

How much time was there between the PotD FFVI vs FFVII match and the actual contest one?

Almost exactly one year.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1760-midgar-division-round-2-ness-vs-auron

Aaron's path to Round 3 is a bit softer than Squall's.

Between 2003 and 2004, Auron got 65% on Tails, Scorpion, and Ness. He was pretty good at those near doublings!

Oh right, and he got 65% on Alucard in 2006, too! That one is kind of wild to think about now because Alucard might win that today.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1761-midgar-division-round-2-vivi-vs-sephiroth

I wonder what the percentages look like on this one now. I doubt Vivi could actually win, but he might make things uncomfortable for Seph.

I was about the same the same thing. Sephiroth does have SSBU and the FF7 Remakes to prop himself up a bit. But, the match probably is kinda uncomfortable for him.

Yeah, it's still really hard to imagine Vivi beating Sephiorth even in 2018, and that's before all SSBU and FF7R would at least keep him from bleeding further.

Vivi couldn't beat Ganondorf, and Sephiroth wouldn't lose to Ganondorf...I think.

Maybe post-TotK Ganondorf could get the job done but that's not the one Vivi fought.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1762-chaos-division-round-2-sonic-the-hedgehog-vs-ryu

This match gets forgotten about for whatever the reason, maybe because of how close Snake/Frog was or most people slept through the beginning. This match was actually 50/50 for the first two and a half hours. I think this might have been the first time a Noble Niner was losing to a non-Noble Niner beyond the opening minutes.

The Noble Nine will not go down so easily.

Yeah, matches started at 3AM EDT for this contest, IIRC. Now that start time was good if you liked having very distinct day/night votes, but not so much for people getting to participate in the opening parts of the match.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1763-chaos-division-round-2-miles-tails-prower-vs-dante

While Tails didn't come close to winning, for some reason my gut says he should have been weaker than this.

Yeah, the 2003 X-Stats projected a 63.85% win for Dante. However, Tails was probably undervalued because he was derived through Auron, who faced Cloud.

Can't pull up the Oracle website, so I don't know what the average was there.

Wiki has oracle expectations for most older contests on the match pages.

Dante - 61.21%
54 for - 2 against

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1764-chaos-division-round-2-sora-vs-ryu-hayabusa

Well, so much for Ryu Hayabusa vs. Jill Valentine being a three point match.

There goes bracket. That would be the last match I get wrong in the contest which will end up good enough for 45th place. I only missed 5 points and still so far off winning a prize.

But but Sora was so terrible against Aeris, how can he beat no 1 ninja i gaming?

There was debate over whether Aerith/Sora was SFF, and this match settled it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1765-chaos-division-round-2-sam-fisher-vs-samus-aran

For the record, Samus was only projected to get 69% based on the 2003 X-Stats. This was another Magus fraud warning since Metroid Prime could only account for so much.

Still not the last 80+% win this contest.

TeamRocketElite posted...

Still not the last 80+% win this contest.

It's the last one not attached to SFF, at least.

What did Sam Fisher do to be overrated

pjbasis posted...

What did Sam Fisher do to be overrated

He was the fourth character in the Magus/Ganon/Tidus fourpack that all got overvalued because Magus got 35% on Link.

pjbasis posted...

What did Sam Fisher do to be overrated

Pretend his games were as good as Metal Gear Solid

Ah right, for some reason I read it as him directly overperforming like Magus

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1766-hyrule-division-semifinal-link-vs-yoshi

somehow Link's lowest percentage thus far

He come to town.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1767-hyrule-division-semifinal-crono-vs-mario

The miracle. It's kinda amazing Crono managed to pull this off. Mario would take off in 2005 and never look back.

It was a bit anticlimactic since it was basically a wire to wire win, but I'm glad Crono got his moment over Mario.

TeamRocketElite posted...

The miracle. It's kinda amazing Crono managed to pull this off. Mario would take off in 2005 and never look back.

Technically Crono beat Mario in 2008...!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3304-contest-semifinal-link-mario-samus-crono

Well if that's not a fair match, I don't know what is.

It was definitely a moment earned after Crono got such a raw deal in the first two matches, and it would really be the final chance Crono would get in range for a fair win over Mario.

I think at point everyone just wanted Crono to get a victory he possibly deserved two other times already.

Then next year also had Nintendo boost.

I also think the poll being shifted downwards in the middle of the Games Contest and staying like that for the rest of 2004 benefitted Chrono Trigger and Crono heavily. Enough to ensure the match shifted from another potential 50-50 to 53-47.

Eh, I think "people wanted Crono to finally get his win" was more than enough to explain it

You don't need too many people to switch their votes to make that happen

Leonhart4 posted...

Eh, I think "people wanted Crono to finally get his win" was more than enough to explain it

You don't need too many people to switch their votes to make that happen

I don't think that's wrong either, but it was nice for Crono to have a demographic shift big enough to keep the match from being that close, because Mario was 2 for 2 on screwy finishes when it came down to the wire.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1768-20xx-division-semifinal-mega-man-vs-zero

An impressive performance by Zero, one he wasn't able to replicate when facing Mega Man in multiways. I imagine he became the sacrificial lamb in those matches to help the Blue Bomber survive.

That's a crazy good performance. Did he even get an SFF adjustment for that match?

Nope, not sure he needed one. He proved his strength by getting 47% on Sonic the year before. If there was any SFF, it was too minimal to worry about.

Yeah, 2004 was a crash course in SFF, and it's amazing that Zero was the one character that defied the whole concept.

Leonhart4 posted...

I imagine he became the sacrificial lamb in those matches to help the Blue Bomber survive.

He forgot to do his job with this in 2008.

Zero did his job. Mega Man was the one who didn't do his job and wasted Zero's sacrifice.

Then they had to find all the Zero parts and successfully sacrifice him in 2013.

given Pikachu was pretty much equal to Mega Man this strength was probably retained too!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1769-20xx-division-semifinal-frog-vs-solid-snake

Proof positive that bad sprites hurt

Is this still the most infamous bad match pic ever?

Nothing like seeing a booger holding a sword fighting a literal piece of s***.

And just think, Frog could have broken the Noble Nine if the sprite actually looked good.